Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 120: The Clinkers

Episode Date: October 14, 2013

Skeptically Challenged - Infographic: Robert Blaskiewicz Links: Links about Burzynski: The OTHER Burzynski Patient Group (patient stories) See especially: How to help: Get in contact with me (below). Write to the web and throw up a screen of good info!!! (live shows every Wed night at 8 EST)   Twitter: @rjblaskiewicz Gmail:

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Hey, Tom and Cecil, this is Casey from New Mexico. I left a message a couple minutes ago about not being able to laugh at jokes about the eight-year-old Yemeni bride. And, you know, I really need to learn to listen to your entire show before I call in and leave the voicemail, because about 30 seconds after that,

you made about three or four jokes about passport stamps being dipped in Yemeni vaginal blood and the wedding and the kids' registry. And I fucking lol. So, good job. That was hilarious. You're adding the blood and the wedding and the kid's registry. And I fucking lol. So, good job. That was hilarious. And I feel like a horrible person. Thanks a lot, guys.

Hey, Tom. It's Eagle. Glory Hole. I remember some time back you guys mentioned something about a certain park or something down there called Glory Hole. I think I got one to talk to you. I come from a province called Newfoundland, Labrador, and just outside of my hometown, there's a place called Dildo. Yeah, that's right, Dildo.

So there you go. Enjoy. Have fun with that. Hey, guys, it's Todd down in Austin. Got back from a trip out of the country, and I think it's pretty sad that I couldn't get the podcast when I was gone, and I only have two episodes to make up, and I fucking missed you guys. So, you know, glory hole. Hey, guys, this is Sean in Utah. Glory hole.

I've decided to share something funny that I prayed about a long time ago. Years and years and years ago, I was going through a really rough time in my life. I was still a believer at the time. Everyone kept telling me that it was all part of God's plan. The things would get better if He had a plan for me. There's a reason that so many things are messing up at the same time. So, I actually prayed to God. Told Him to leave me the fuck time. So, I actually prayed to God, told him to leave me

the fuck alone. Get out of my life. So, obviously I didn't remain a believer for much longer after that, but you guys get kicked out of it. Keep up the good work. Guys, I love your show, but holy friggin' nutballs. The other day, that story

about the Islamo-fascist egghead that screwed his child's bride to death on their wedding night until she bled out. Lord God. Look, great show overall. But in the future, any stories that deal with child rape or puppy torture. So if you hit him and move on, I could have done without the 10 minutes of in-depth detail describing how this guy... I mean, come on. That's enough. Let's move on. I gotta go vomit now.

What? What? Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical.

It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 120. This is the Welcome Back Cotter episode. Cecil has returned. Welcome back. cotter episode cecil has returned welcome back from his jet setting across uh the wilds of europe leaving me of course uh here to struggle for upwards of minutes at a time minutes i don't appreciate that cecil how dare you need any of the work how difficult was it to load the show

it was extremely easy i took seriously like it took like maybe like six minutes and most of that was just because i'm too dumb to realize which tab i'm on and i'm like okay uh what oh fuck that tab about you doing it now is i can't complain as much about it. Well, don't do the editing. You know, that's the big – and I think we proved that to our audience last week, right? Yeah. Well, we got a couple of comments. People were like, yeah, you should do that more often.

It's like, hey, Tom lives fucking 40 miles away from me. I ain't doing that very often. Yeah. No. It was fun though. It was fun to do. You can only do that for a very short amount of time. That live show, live-ish show we did was something you can only do for a very short amount of time. And when people say, oh, you guys should do it live in like front of an audience, Tom and I stared at our computer screens the whole time.

Like it wasn't – it's not fun. It wouldn't be fun for you to see that. It's like two ugly people not looking at you yeah you know what i mean like it's like going to the zoo you know it is like you know what it is cecil it's going to the zoo and all the animals are asleep and facing away from you because you've been like you've done that right you go to the zoo and it's like oh there's a grizzly bear yeah or a rock i'm not sure It's vaguely brown lump. You're right, Tom.

It's like the animals are looking away from you, not paying attention to you and farting. That's what it is. And to be fair, when we record in this office, it's 109 degrees. It's a fucking bajillion degrees in there. You know, I have no idea how you can stay so fat. I mean, my God. I would think that the pounds would just melt off just doing the podcast each week you should market it somehow as like a fucking diet tape or something like a richard simmons sort of thing it's like an anti-diet

tape is what it is it's like follow the follow the tom diet and no matter what happens you'll still be fat yes you know You know what I mean? It doesn't make any difference. It's like you've been adrift in the open ocean for seven months. You've been surviving on seawater and your own calluses for a week. You're abandoned in the middle of the Sahara with like a fucking Dasani bottle and a strip of jerky. And you're like, I'm good. I'm good.

I'll be fine. It's fine. Hell, people will treat me like an oasis. Are you kidding me? Fucking herds of people. Like herds? Travelers are seeing that. Oh, look at that.

It appears to be a particularly large dune. Let's camp under it. It's either shimmering or glistening with man sweat. We're not sure. And it smells terrible. It's eaten all the buzzards. Yeah. The buzzards.

It's eaten them all. Just like a pile of feather and bone on the ground buzzards don't stand a chance they show up to like uh sir you've eaten all of our buzzards like oh you mean those desert turkeys yeah i love buzzard sashimi it's delicious so i want to mention before we before we continue that we have uh later on in the show we have an interview with Robert Blaskowitz, and I probably mispronounced that, but Robert does a whole bunch of stuff. And we're going to be talking to him specifically about stories from the Brzezinski Clinic. So you're going to want to stick around for that, but we're going to do some stories, I think, before then. I just pray over this equipment.

We speak over the PowerPoint presentations, all of the video projectors. And we say, devil, we know what you love to do in meetings like this. And we say, you will not, in Jesus' name, you will not prevent this message from going out. No microphone problems, in Jesus' name. So this story comes from Salon.com. Also, everywhere else on the Internet this week, because it's awesome. Scalia, I believe in the devil. And then there's a great quote right underneath it.

What he's doing now is getting people not to believe in him or God. He's much more successful that way. He's very successful. This is some argle blargle. This is some Scalia brand argle blargle. He gave an interview, Cecil, that was as chock full of crazy as many of Pat Robertson's most senile blathering. Yeah, this guy, you know what he reminds me of is like a really, really superstitious George Costanza. That's what he reminds me of.

He looks like him. Doesn't he look like him? You know, the thing about this is. He's eating while he's having sex with somebody. It's like dropping corned beef on her back. Oh, yeah. I could see this guy knocking a kid out of the way to get out of a burning house. You know what I mean?

Like that's the kind of guy he is. But no, one of the things when he's talking about uh there's a great part here where you're talking about the devil and he talks about um he talks about you know whether or not the devil exists and he says isn't it the interviewer says isn't it terribly frightening to believe in the devil and scalia says you're looking at me as though i'm weird my god are you so out of? Most of America, most of which believes in the devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the devil. It's in the Gospels. You travel in circles that are

so removed from the mainstream America that you are appalled that anyone will believe in the devil? Yeah, I'm appalled that you fucking are one of the most important legislative, not a legislative, judicial branch people in the country. One of, you know, what is it?

Nine. Yeah. One of nine. One of the most nine important judges we have in this country. And you believe in a fucking guy in a fucking spandex suit with horns and a pitchfork. You fucking freak. What is wrong with you? You literally believe in the devil.

You shouldn't have your job. The fucking devil. Like, an actual physical devil. He refers to him in the interview as a person. Right. Like, a person. Like, somebody, like, wakes up on a Wednesday. You know what I mean?

Like, the devil's like, oh, fuck, I slept like shit last night. Oh, I got to go fucking torture Hitler for a minute. Hang on. That always cheers me up. Like, for fuck's sake, the devil. And how is this an argument? Like, this is a person whose his livelihood, his reason to be is to hear people argue and to suss out the most logical logical the best arguments the arguments that have the best legal standing and his fucking defense of this is if all my friends jumped off the bridge i would

too right exactly it's the argument for popularity and and and then just throwing out like well and jesus believed in the devil oh fuck me that there go if Jesus believed in it I mean well let's get him on the phone and just double check that little factoid oh what Jesus isn't answering his fucking telephone well that's because he's not a person evidently oh that minor fucking detail

it's like the devil is a person well is God a person yeah he's like fucking six foot four he's got a great free throw percentage i mean what the fuck it's a crazy thing for somebody and i just and you know when he looks at a reporter and he says something to me you know like you travel in circles you know you're so far removed and i want to be like you need to be that far removed yeah i'm pro'm pro-elitism. I really am. Like the whole like, well, we just should have an everyman doing the job. No, we shouldn't.

We should have the best. We should have the best, the brightest, the most educated. You know, like everybody uses that phrase like the ivory tower, like it's a fucking derogatory. No, fuck that. If I've got somebody who's going to be one of the nine most important judges on the planet, arguably, and certainly in the country, that motherfucker needs to be so much better at judging. He needs to be so fucking smart. That guy needs to make me feel like a fucking pinhead every day when I wake up. I need to feel like I can barely tie my fucking shoes in front of that person. He needs to be the Michael Jordan of litigation.

Right. There needs to be no way that when I think about something, he hasn't done that better. Right. There needs to be no subject where when Tom thinks about it, it's like, oh, well, Tom made a lot of sense on that one. No. No. like, oh, well, Tom made a lot of sense on that one. No!

Hello, Napa! Hello, Napa! Hello, Napa! So, Cecil, this story comes from BuzzFeed.com. Taliban vows to again try and kill 16 year old Malala Yousafzai. I'm probably horribly mispronouncing that. I'm sorry. Everybody knows her as Malala. Yeah. So they said, if we get another chance, we will definitely kill her.

And that will make us feel proud. Members of the Taliban in Pakistan said, you know, that you have fucked up all of your priorities when you're thinking about shooting a 16-year-old girl and being like, oh, point of pride. That was me. Yeah. You know, the thing is, is the Taliban is getting a bum rap on this. And this is actually has to do with the government in Pakistan. They passed that controversial No Child Left Alive Act. And, you know, with no child left alive, they have to kill all the children. That's true.

That one barely squeaked by. I mean, 16, you're close. But the thing is, is that they started it when she was younger. Well, you know, I mean, this is Islam, right? So a woman is or a girl is a marriageable woman at like eight. So like no child left behind like that. They're not really children after about six because you can fucking marry them off. Right.

Because otherwise that would just be creepy. We'll just be wrong. Cecil. And it's not it's clearly not wrong. I you know, this is a, this is a girl who's, she is out spending a lot of her time in the United States. She just did, I think she just got off the show, the daily show the other day, she was on a daily show. So she's, she's doing all the right things. And, you know, good for you, Taliban. Tell us what you really think.

Good for you. Tell us that you would do this because you just make yourself more and more relevant every time you open your fucking mouth every time you say we we should kill her you make yourself look like such a fucking fool that everybody in the world cannot take you seriously and thinks you're fucking worthless so go ahead sing the praises of allah and tell them how that you need to shoot every smart girl in the face because it makes you look like a fucking idiot. And I love this quote from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Extremists have shown what

frightens them the most. A girl with a book. Yeah. It's fucking awesome. You can't say it better, right? Fucking A. A long black cock, long black cock, long black cock. A long black cock, long black cock. So this story comes from TheExaminer.com.

Rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes by Saudi court. A woman who was raped, she was raped and beaten by seven men. And she was punished and she was punished. She was sentenced, I think, to 90 lashes until her defense attorney spoke up at the injustice of her being sentenced to anything at all. And the judge basically shut him up, barred him from practicing law and sentenced her to 200 lashes, increased her sentence to punish him for defending her. Well, I mean, you know, look, you got to punish these women or else they're just going to go out and get raped again, Tom. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Like you've got to punish, You've got to whip the fuck out of them.

You've got to make their back bleed or else they're just going to go out and get raped again. And we can't have a society like that. How do you have a constructive world, you know, where women are just free to go around and be forcibly beaten and raped? I mean, that's, yeah. Who wants that? Nobody wants that.

And specifically the Saudi Arabian government doesn't want that beaten and raped. I mean, that's, yeah. Who wants that? Nobody wants that. And specifically the Saudi Arabian government doesn't want that because they're obviously showing they have a hard line on rape. They have a hard line and they make sure that the, that the rape victim receives as much punishment as possible. You know what I would do if, I mean, seriously, if I lived there, I would just not be raped. Yeah. Because that's the best solution. Right.

Because you clearly, I can't even do this i can't it's so awful so what the fuck are you even thinking and the first thing i thought when i read this is i'm thinking in saudi arabia they look at fucking the quran and they chew the judges just shoot shit how the fuck are you a lawyer over there? I wondered that myself. What do you even do? You just like you like point counterpoint the fucking Koran with them. What are you going to do? You're going to be like, well, I would like to cite case law. Nothing at all.

Versus the people. I'd like to cite the Koran versus the people, the all of it. You know, I mean, seriously, is that what they do? Do they stand up in court and just read out of the holy book and try to, like, outdo each other with fucking quotes from their book? I don't know. I can't even. And how many times does this fucking poor woman have to be fucking abused by the system? Like, she's already beaten.

She's raped by seven dudes that's like the worst fucking thing like that that probably was not a good time that's i'm going on a limb that's all the worst thing and then to be like oh yeah you're you're being arrested yeah i'm being arrested what do you mean i'm being arrested oh yeah and then you're gonna get 90 lashes i object 200 lashes fuck what it's like a bear eating off your leg and then you're gonna get 90 lashes i object 200 lashes fuck what it's like a bear eating off your leg and then you getting run over by the ambulance well that sucked what why is that even a country i don't even know how they get how do you get by like like you know it's so funny we look at a place like north korea where we say oh we're gonna sanction them you know

we're gonna make sure we you know they do awful things. They put people in prison camps or whatever and stuff. Yet somehow we have a relationship with a country that beats rape victims. Right. I mean, you don't want to be like, well, it's all because of the oil, but I'll tell you what, it's all because of the oil. Because it's not because of the anything else. Right. Remember all those great technological achievements that came out of Saudi Arabia? Yeah.

Such as the... Oil. Oh, man. Oil. I guess. It's the oil. It's pretty much just oil. They're fucking leading the lubrication front. You know, just morally speaking, getting away from oil and just being able to fucking say

fuck you saudi arabia would be such a joy like such a great moral victory to be like yeah all my cars are powered on fucking unicorn farts and rainbows so eat a bag of dicks saudi arabia yeah yeah i totally and it is good that they are in, you know, that they produce so much oil and so much lubrication because they fuck their citizens like crazy. Yeah, they do. So this story comes from WhyNotNews.com Why not?

Why not? Jewish world. Kosher phone. That's right. Kosher phone blocks crisis hotlines. emergency numbers for mental counseling sexual assault victims are unavailable for subscribers of kosher certified mobile service how the fuck do you have a kosher certified mobile service let's put dill and like soak it in vinegar first yeah you know what okay so like a, you know, they're getting smaller and smaller.

Well, kosher, if you're familiar with kosher salt, it's just bigger salt, right? It's bigger crystals of salt. So what they use is, like, the 1990s phones. So that's a kosher phone. It's, like, a huge phone. It's, like, you could call in airstrikes with that phone. Like, that's how big it is. Every phone has, like, a huge, like, antenna.

It's like a bag that you have to plug into your car. It's a bag, yeah. An antenna on the roof. It's basically a CB. Like, at this point, it's a fucking CB. It's like a walk-around ham radio. Hang on, let me call my buddy. Breaker, breaker.

You gotta tune man it's like you could you've got like a fucking giant vietnam era fucking backpack on this is yellow jacket coming at you so uh i want to think about this that is so crazy is that okay first off cross your phone hilarious i mean i don't understand that did they have a halal phone that was sacrificed while it was looking up at a certain place? You know what I mean? Right. They just slit the phone's throat. Just like the phone's like, it doesn't work.

Smash it on the ground in the direction of Mecca. But this phone has certain numbers that don't work. And some of those numbers are kind of important. I mean, just like the rape crisis centers. You know, that's something you would like to have work. You know what? That doesn't seem like a selling point. How do you even, I mean, how do you even take this to the device manufacturer, right?

How are you like, yes, it's a great phone, but it will call out for rape crisis. And you're like, yeah, we know. It calls numbers because that's what the phone does. That's a phone. I don't know how else to tell you that. Is there any way we can block the numbers that we want to block? Is there any way we can make sure that our most vulnerable portion of the population does not have access to resources with this phone?

And then somebody has to say yes to that. Like somebody has to sit around a boardroom and be like, okay, I'll take this to the engineers. Engineers, is there any way we can make this phone like a misogynist, horrible version? Like I know it's like just a phone. But if there's any way it can do damage to people specifically. Right. Short of electrocuting them with a battery charge. It's a huge phone, so the battery charge is big.

You know what I mean? You couldn't build a phone more dangerous than this unless you had fucking, like, spring-loaded razor blades in the earpiece. Like when you dial the wrong number. It's just like something on a Hellraiser. Like the hooks come in and just tear your flesh off. It's like something on a hell raiser, like the hooks come in and just tear your flesh off. When your body burns this stuff with no carbohydrates, what happens is you build up the clinkers.

And you get swollen joints. You get gout. You get all kinds of problems where you ache like crazy. Now, I know everybody, they thought Atkins was wonderful and they've got all these scientific tests but that's the truth of it if you don't have some carbs in there the carbs are the fire that burn everything but it's like that's what they've discovered is that there are carbs that are good carbs that you add to it not really they're not adding any I mean this thing is almost totally fat and protein, and you can eat cheese and you can eat a lot of bacon and so forth.

But sooner or later, it violates the principles that God set down. So this is kind of awesome. This is from Right Wing Watch. Pat Robertson reveals how low-carb diets violate God's principles and how halal foods fund terrorism. And by reveals, what I think they really mean to say is he just says it. Yeah. Right.

It's not really much of a reveal. Yeah. Like he's not the Vanna White of revealing things. He doesn't like do like a little gesture and like a sparkle dress and like turn it over. And it's actually it's actually less information than Vanna provides. Yeah. It's like one bit worth of information she provides. Because look, when Vanna turns over a D, it's demonstrably a D.

It is. When Pat Robertson says something, it's not demonstrably true. No. Like it's actually less accurate than the Wheel of Fortune girl. What the fuck is he talking about in this thing? The first one is awesome. He talks about, like, if you eat proteins with no carbs, you get clunkers. What does that even mean?

I don't know. What is he saying? Isn't that what he says, though? Yeah, it's like you get clunkers. Like you drop a deuce and you break the bowl? Is that what that means? Like, oh, yeah, you get clunkers. I'm going to listen to it again.

Hold on. When your body burns this stuff with no carbohydrates, what happens is you build up the clinkers. The clinkers? You get clinkers. What the fuck is a clinker? I don't know. Do you know anyone who's gotten the clinkers?

I don't even know. I don't even know what that is. Let me look it up. Let me see. I'm going to go to WebMD here. It's like an old-timey term for something. It's like it went out with the buggy whip i know it's not did he say clankers i know it's like referring to your couch as a davenport you know you're just like oh have a seat on the old davenport it's like oh let me get you a beer out of the old ice box

he's got a bad case of the clankers. Is that what he said, clank? Because I'm typing in clank. Nothing's coming up here. Clank. I'm just going to do a C-L-A-N-K. Let's see how that works. Results are zero.

Pat, I'm going to listen one more time. When your body burns this stuff with no carbohydrates, what happens is you build up the clinkers. Clinkers? Let me try clinkers. Yeah. He's such a fucking blubber mouth. He can't really. What the fuck is a clinker?

I don't know, but you get them if you have too many proteins. You eat too much proteins and not enough carbohydrates, you get the clinkers. It's like getting the consumption. You know what I mean? She's got the tuberculosis. Putting a definite article in front of any name for a disease is hilarious. Because it just demonstrates that you don't know anything about that thing. It's like, oh, he's got the cancers there.

The clankers sound like really noisy neighbors. Well, he kind of rubbed. I live next to the clankers and they never shut up. Doesn't he kind of rub his hands like a little bit? Like maybe the clankers are like. We're trying to decipher what the fuck he's even talking about. He's just making up symptoms and diseases as he goes through. This guy is clearly insane.

Like he's making up things. And then he's talking about like how you need carbs to like burn the fuel. It's like, dude, you put food in your stomach and you will fucking digest it. Because that's fucking, that's millions of years of evolution at work right there. Yeah, and I like that he's like, it's the fire to burn all the rest of the stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the fire. That's the fire.

Oh, right. Because I don't – you do know that that's – Yeah, that there's no such thing as fire in your stomach. No actual fire. Like when they talk about a fire in your belly, they just mean you're motivated. You know, Pat, they're not referring to actual chili pepper you know like yeah a little fire in my belly oh yeah fucking roll aids will take care of that yeah just fine in the morning um and then he also has a video where he's just like talking about somebody writes in and say like hey

is it okay if i eat halal foods like foods that are and halal foods are just you know just foods that are butchered in a way that's consistent with the you know quran or what have you got to make sure the animal's last fucking sight is vaguely toward mecca i guess before you slit its throat um and he's like yeah that's not a problem like the butchering of the animal he doesn't have an issue with but what he's got an issue with is that his team, Cecil. His team. His team has learned that the prophets go to the Muslim Brotherhood. What is the uniform his team wears? I'm just wondering.

It's just cod pieces. Is it a white shirt with a white tie? A skinny white tie. Okay, so this Hawal thing you know he's like I don't have a problem with how it's butchered I just have a problem with that the butchers basically are owned by the Muslim Brotherhood like is that what he's saying like because that's the dumbest thing

like what immediately they're like the Muslim Brotherhood comes in and be like hey this is a nice butcher shop it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it you know what I mean like what are they fucking the enforcers they come by and collect their their kickback for slaughtering a meat in this way like what does that even i don't fucking just give me some information that's useful besides fucking anonymous hearsay pat robertson but i heard it on pat robertson's show it must be true what he wouldn't say it

look a 700 year old man has no reason to lie to me. Methuselah there does not have any reason. Yeah, next year it's going to be the 701 Club. You want answers? I think I'm entitled to them. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth!

So this story comes from NewZimbabwe.com. Flying witches and Africans. This story is insane. And it deals with a law which was passed which prevents witches on brooms from flying more than 150 meters. I guess when you're driving a car, you've got a speed limit. Right. And when you are a witch riding a broom, you have an altitude limit. What?

Because that's a thing in Zimbabwe. I suppose you're not actually worried about airplanes at that point. Like your culture has not progressed to the point where you're like, oh, yeah, you know, airplane traffic. Instead, you're like fucking witches on brooms. That's what we need to legislate. We've solved all of other Zimbabwe's problems. Now we've got to deal with these high-flying witches. They have like aircraft controllers that are like werewolves and Frankensteins.

It would be awesome if it was just Count Chocula. Count Chocula. Like Boo-Berry. Can you even play Quidditch at 150 meters? I don't think you can. That's probably part of the problem. I think you have to go higher than that. Maybe there was just like a – they just didn't like people doing that.

Well, maybe they were mad that they were poking holes in all their clouds. Oh, that's true. Because you wouldn't want to hit one and then knock it down and then there would be a fucking cloud accident. I don't even understand what you're preventing what is you know sometimes we get mad at our legislative branch for doing stupid shit this is the dumbest thing that i ever spent time on it's awesome you you've got to think too that part of the reason that you would pass legislation like this is for the safety of the witches right you know after a certain altitude you know you've really got to have some serious safety gear and most of these brooms and i'm sure you've seen the crash test video of these witch brooms yeah most of these brooms are simply not equipped to deal with high altitude flying you

know they don't have the proper uh storage compartments and gas and air. Yeah. The airbags don't deploy very quickly. Yeah. At that height, the coldness too. Another thing too, is that their clothes, the clothes they wear, it's not enough. We all know that witches wear cloaks, but that's just not enough to cover their body and their extremities when they're flying at such great heights, 150 meters, you know, that's a pretty good distance up in the air.

But, you know, higher than that, you're starting to get a little nippy in the air. Hey, you go up to 1,000 feet. You know, I don't know what that is in meters. That's a lot of meters. But you go up that high and, you know, I mean, gosh, you're starting to get a little cold there. You need face protection. And witches, they have those long noses.

And those noses are very prone to frostbite. That's what I hear anyway. From Zimbabweans. If it's a passenger. Zimbabweans. Right. Zimbia. Zimbabweans.

Zimbabweans. That's terrible. Zimbabweans. That needs to be a thing. It's not a thing. It is now. That's a thing. Plus, if it's a passenger broom, you really need to watch out for the safety of the other parties on the broom.

You can't – because 150 meters, that's a survivable fall. Right. If shit goes south – If you're a witch, it's a survivable fall. Yeah, you're fine. You're just like, whatever. It's only 150 meters. It's not that big a deal.

It's like 475 feet or something. You're golden. You bounce a couple of times. You fucking land right in your cauldron. You're like a cat. Yeah, it's no problem. You land on your feet. It doesn't matter.

Yeah, you land on your feet with your back arched. But shit is sketchy after 150 meters. Sure. So we're going to take a break. When we come back, Bob from all the places is going to be here. Bob Blaskowitz. Blagojevich. Blagojevich.

I'm sorry, Bob. Your name is totally pronounceable. Bob Blaskowitz is going to be on, and he is going to tell us all about the Brzezinski trials and the Brzezinski clinic and kind of what's going on there. So stay tuned for that interview. Tuned? Do people tune anymore? They don't. No.

Yeah, you fucked that up. Want to contact Cognitive Dissonance? Visit them on Facebook. You can find the link at the website DissonancePod.com or type it in the Facebook search bar. Be sure to follow the guys on Twitter. Their handle is at dissonance underscore pod. The guys also post to Google Plus now too, so check them out there. And if you'd like to email them, you can do so at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. You can also leave a comment on the blog at their webpage or give them a call at 740-74-DOUBT.

That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. And to everyone who listens, shares, retweets, or rates the show, Cognitive Dissonance would like to cordially thank you for all of your fucking support. So we are here talking to Robert Blazkowicz, and he did a talk this year at TAM, and we wanted to get him on the show. So what we wanted to do first is just have Robert introduce himself to the audience. So, Robert, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I'm Bob Blazkowicz.

I'm a writing teacher in Wisconsin. But by night, I'm a skeptical activist. I write at skepticalhumanities.com. That's my blog. I also appear on the Virtual Skeptics, a Google Plus hangout show. I also contribute a monthly essay to Skepticality. I also contribute a monthly essay to Skepticality. I'm the CSI's Conspiracy Guy web columnist, and I contribute to the JREF Swift blog. Wow, make us all look like crap. Well, that's the idea. Way to go, Bob. You know, like here I am half-assing half of this show.

Yeah. Half. Half. Half. Cecil, I'm being generous. Oh, I broke Cecil I'm being generous I broke Cecil That's awesome That's the best thing I heard all day

That's a full Half is like 20% right That's what half is That's how we're doing that these days That's an impressive Array of skeptical credentials, my friend. Thank you. As opposed to my credentials, which include Ann.

And that's pretty much it. The entirety of my CV. Pretty much. Bob, you were kind enough to give a talk at TAM, and our listeners were foolish enough to have sent us to TAM. So Cecil and I heard your talk at TAM. And both Cecil and I felt immediately during the talk and then after, we both kind of looked over at each other and said, we've got to get this guy on the show. You gave a talk.

You were giving a lot of information about patient case histories related to the Brzezinski trials, the Brzezinski clinic. Your talk was extraordinarily powerful. In terms of total emotional impact, it was the most powerful talk at TAM, hands down. There wasn't anything in the same ballpark. So first, I think, Cecil and I both want to tell you thank you for coming on our show. My pleasure. We genuinely do appreciate it. And if you could give us, and I'm not asking you to recreate your TAM talk.

But if you'd be so kind as to kind of give us an overview as to what that talk was about so our listeners could sort of start off on the same page and then we can jump off from there, I'd certainly appreciate that. Oh, sure. The talk that I gave was – I had shared time with David Gorski, an oncologist in Detroit who has been working with me on a topic for about the last two years and that's the Brzezinski Clinic. The Brzezinski clinic is in Houston. It's been operating since the late 70s and early 80s. And for that time, they've been treating patients with a chemotherapy known as antineoplastins. It's billed as an alternative to chemotherapy, but by any reasonable definition, it's a chemotherapy. It's a chemotherapy. And what's so extraordinary about this, however, is that he claims to have discovered something that – an endogenous compound that prevents cancer from forming in human urine and blood. And he synthesized this and mass produces it at a facility that he also owns. And he's called it antineoplastins or anti-cancers.

And the problem is, you know, we're all for experimental therapies. But he's been unable to complete a clinical trial for the last 15 years, having started over 60 of them. These after 35 years are still an unproven treatment. And 35 years is long enough, especially when the turnover rate for the cancers he's treating is so quick. He should have results by now and he just doesn't. so quick. He should have results by now and he just doesn't. And so I got involved with this when Reese Morgan, a writer and blogger and high school student at the time in Wales, started receiving threats from someone who had been hired by the Brzezinski Clinic to clean up his online reputation. And that went well.

Now, I think I saw that. Is that where somebody pretended to be an attorney? Is that the one where they were not actually an attorney and they were sort of throwing out some legal cease and desist sort of language out there? Yes, that's exactly what happened. The person really did try to speak legal language, but they also threatened an actual lawyer. Generally not a good idea. It actually landed one of the best lines, I think,

in all of skeptical discourse was when Popat told him to snort his taint. That was just the mother of all smackdowns. That's awesome. But what they did and this – it went from just like you're not being accurate to we're going to send – we're going to file a lawsuit for defamation against you. And in the UK, the defamation laws are really serious. They favor the plaintiff and they can bankrupt people. Not only did they threaten him with this, but the guy sent Reese a picture of his house. Clearly the message is we know where you live.

So Reese doesn't take this type of thing lying down. Um, and he started to raise awareness about this. And at that time, uh, this was November of 11, 2011. Um, I decided to see, you know, just a blog about it at Skeptical Humanities. And so I went back into the databases. I had access to university databases and looked for instances of patients who appeared in the press usually begging for money and to see what their outcomes were. And for something like out of 17 patients, 16 were dead. So clearly what's happening is not – and that's the first random sample that you see. The people who have gone to him and have survived. Totally credit Brzezinski with saving their lives.

And those stories are very, very powerful. However, they're not representative of the whole. In the time since that, additional actions against skeptics were perpetrated, one of which was a website that defamed James Randi and people who had written about the Reese Morgan affair and labeled them as pedophiles. I was on that list. I was listed next to Simon Singh and Stephen Fry, like two of my heroes. So that was the best defamation ever. It was great.

It's the coolest pedophile club ever. Absolutely. So yeah, it was a – that kind of like – just I kind of dug in at that point. That kind of like – just I kind of dug in at that point and ever since then have been looking for ways to make sure that good information gets in front of cancer patients who may be tempted to look for alternative treatments in Houston. So you had said that he has had 35 years at this point to produce. Now, how long typically does it take to produce? So you've got a treatment, you're working on something, you think, okay, I've got a promising area of research here, and I'm going to go ahead and explore this with human trials. So you've gotten through and now you're at the human trial stage, uh, 35 years. How

excessive is that by comparison to the norm? Um, as best I can tell, I don't do, uh, you know, clinical trial research myself. Um, but I believe it's fricking bunkers. clinical trial research myself um but i believe it's freaking bonkers that's exactly the answer i was looking for because that strikes me as an impossibly long time yeah to not have answers yeah i mean let's just say the 15 years where he's been required to uh uh only distribute antineoplastins under the auspices of a clinical trial. Any number of small startup companies who didn't have the 20-year head start and funding, they could have gotten backers. They could have applied for government grants.

They could have produced these trials and come to some resolution and up or down on whether or not these are more effective than chance. And he's never been able to do that apparently. And how many papers, like how many peer-reviewed clinical trials has he released? Oh, let me count. One, two, three. Zero. That's not very many.

Yeah. That's about as much work as I do for this show. Like I know zero. So now with regular clinical trials, do you have to – I mean like you just go in. So does he give this away for free to people? Well, that's what he says, that it's given for free. But it does cost quite a bit of money to start on these clinical trials. That's abnormal in the clinical trial world.

There are some rare cases where you might expect a patient to pay. But the consensus seems to be among the people I've talked to that this is not one of those cases. You said you specialize in some patient stories and in some storytelling that happens around what this clinic does. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Well, I work with a couple of people on a website called the Other Brzezinski Patient Group. One of the features of the Brzezinski Clinic and how it's publicized is that the people who have survived going there and many people who are hoping to survive by going there, so it's current and

former patients, they promote him aggressively and they tell their stories and their stories are powerful and overwhelming sometimes. And this is the classic quack move is to depend on testimonials instead of verifiable evidence. We know as skeptics what the problem with testimonials are and eyewitness – well, not exactly eyewitness reports. But the problem with testimonials in cases like this is that these people have had combinations of therapies. They've done other alternative therapies. What caused it. We need to have a mechanism for screening out the false positives, the misdiagnoses, the spontaneous remissions, and that sort of thing from a real signal. And instead of that, he relies on these testimonials. And the problem is that no amount of bad evidence equals a single bit of good evidence. But it's still very persuasive.

And so up until about a year ago, all you would see online was uncritical praise of Brzezinski and the alt-med community. And so our thought was, well, he doesn't have a monopoly on stories. Surely other people were telling stories as well about their treatment and experiences there. And so we started to collect names. At this point, we have, I think, over 500 names of people who expressed interest in or contacted the clinic. It's a running tally, so we keep adding more. And we've been researching these stories and been telling them in the patient's own words over at the other Brzezinski patient group. And we have over 50 stories, probably about 60. I think our patient group is now bigger than the one that's had 35 years to accumulate survivors.

Oh my goodness. Do you have any idea how many people have been treated at the Brzezinski clinic? Is that a known quantity since he's not publishing clinical trials? How much do we know? Yeah, that's a tough one. And the most recent figure that I heard from a patient was, and this was maybe a year or so ago, that something like he was told 8,000 patients. Oh. And I've heard higher numbers, much higher numbers in more recent publications. But I'll go with that one. I'd say that's a good estimate.

8,000 patients. And do we have any idea what the mortality of the 8,000? I mean, how many of those folks? Because obviously none of this is published, right? Isn't that one of mean, that's like one of the things we do like in science. I shouldn't say we, I don't do any science. I don't even do any work, but like that's one of the things that science is kind of known for, right? Is quantifying this information. So is there any estimate of how many of those patients survive like a five-year survival rate of that 8,000. Is that a known item of quantity or no?

Well, it depends on who you talk to. We don't have any reliable numbers, but there's an interesting story. A family in the UK, the family of Amelia S., they went to Brzezinski about a year ago. She had one of these really bad tumors. It's called an intrinsic pontine glioma. And so it's growing on the brain stem. And it's one of these tumors that it's like the survival rate is very, very low. There are a couple of reports in the literature of people who've had spontaneous remissions,

but don't count on it. The treatment is difficult. A developing brain does not handle the radiation very well. The chemotherapy is horrible on these poor kids. It's not a good diagnosis. It's generally considered to be fatal. When they, according to a report in the Get Reading, the local newspaper, after their daughter had died, they said that they'd been given a 54% chance of survival with the clinical trial in Houston.

This is a quote. However, Chantel S, 36, that's her mother, quote, believes the actual figure was just 1%. percent. Um, uh, she's in, in the BBC, uh, documentary that was produced, uh, in the spring, the number of skeptics were, were interviewed for, um, Mrs. Saunders said, quote, I think that's wrong. The 54% figure. I think that's a complete lie. I think 1% is a more accurate figure. Um, 1% is a more accurate figure. And the father kind of rationalizes this by saying that he'd only found two patients who had survived this rare brain tumor and said that, quote, it didn't work for Amelia, but we absolutely know it works for other people, but they don't. That's the problem. We haven't separated the noise from the signal. And this is actually a pretty significant statement on the part of this family because they were his biggest supporters.

They gave him so much press in the UK raising money for their daughter. They raised, I think it was close to 200,000 pounds, I think, to get her treated. They didn't use it all. She didn't survive past January. But they donated it to the children's hospice where they treated her in the last days. You know, one thing that occurs to me when you're talking about the story of Amelia, and I actually read that story or at least a story very, very similar to it online at some length.

One thing that occurs to me is if you're the parent, you know, and you've got to believe, right? I mean, that's like you've got to believe that this worked for other people, that you didn't waste your time, that's an emotional requirement and that's why emotion and and anecdotes um and testimony are totally powerful but incredibly not science like that's like that's that's exactly antithetical to what we should be striving for because if i'm that if i'm that parent i'm saying the same thing i know this worked for other people. It has to have worked for other people. If it didn't, I fucked up. If it didn't, I did wrong by my daughter that I can't, you know, emotionally, you just, you just, there's some shit you just have to kind of compartmentalize and seal off and be like, oh, that's not for me. So, you know, getting these

stories out, um, the other side of this, of the case, because I remember one of the things that you said at TAM is that part of the reason that some of these other stories don't come out is because the other people don't live long enough. And one of the things I remember hearing you talk about is, you know, there has to be somebody to survive in order to pursue, in order to sue, in order to take legal action. And if the families have to compartmentalize emotionally, oftentimes they're sort of their role, their complicit role in this treatment system, who's left to act on behalf of these patients? That's a good point. And complaints that are, you know, there are also other problems. Since we started this, a number of former patients have gotten into contact with skeptics and wanted to know what they can do.

Patients and their families want to know what they can do. We've kind of sketched what recourse is available to them with the medical board and with other authorities. And, you know, I believe some of them have pursued that option. But for the most part, these people have not had good news for a long time. Absolutely no good news whatsoever. These patients report that they have a 60% chance suddenly of surviving. When you've been told that there's a 2% chance, that there's no hope, that palliative care is all that's left for you, you bite down hard on that and you put everything you can into that. You put everything you can into that.

And that usually, if not usually, very often bankrupts the family. They can go into deep debt. You know, if it costs $30,000 to start this clinical trial up front and then on top of that, it's $7,500 per month for treatment because you can only get it from Brzezinski, at least the antineoplastins. That's a huge, huge emotional and financial loss on the part of patients. So the wherewithal to pursue it, even if they decide that they want to pursue some sort of action, they may not have the wherewithal to do it. Now, I'm looking at the American Cancer Society's website right now. And on the American Cancer Society's website, I'm going to quote directly from the American Cancer Society website here. It says, no randomized controlled trial

showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In other words, there are no convincing evidence showing that antineoplastons actually work. Now, this is on the American Cancer Society website. You know, did you say earlier

that the antineoplaston therapy is no longer going on? The antineoplastin therapy has been suspended for about a year, I think since about June of last year, when a – according to an SEC filing by the clinic, The trials were suspended. It's called a partial clinical hold was declared because a child had died. This child, you know, we're not exactly sure who it was. You know, we have some ideas based on our database about the right time and stuff, but there are no new trials starting up. In fact, if you go to the clinicaltrials.gov, where the over 60 clinical trials are registered, some of them are withdrawn. Most of the status is unknown. Based on a document that was released by the FDA about two weeks ago maybe, we don't expect the antineoplastin trials to start up again anytime soon. That's good news.

That is good news. However, it doesn't seem to the people who are still raising money like that message is getting communicated to them. They are still looking for anti-neoplastins. And even though Brzezinski isn't promoting them anymore on his website, you'll notice that he doesn't talk about them at all, and there's a reason for it. So there's a movie, I think, on Netflix that talks about the Brzezinski Clinic. Do you know anything about that movie? I'm in the sequel.

You're in the sequel?zinski Clinic. Do you know anything about that movie? I'm in the sequel. You're in the sequel? Yeah, yeah. I play the role of Bob Evil. You strike me as particularly evil. Yeah, you know, I get that a lot. It's usually around exam time, but, you know. But, yeah, the Brzezinski movie series is done by a guy by the name of Eric Morolla. He did the first movie a couple of years ago and he talked about – he shows about four patients, four cases, and this is used as definitive proof that it works, which of course we know can't

possibly be true. And when it's reviewed by oncologists who know what they're looking for, they see some holes in these cases that lead them to doubt whether or not the antineoplastins were having any effect. For instance, the tumor size doesn't track to either the dose or the time on treatment. That's weird. Um, you know, uh, things like that stick out that wouldn't occur to a director necessarily. Um, so that, that one, it didn't do much until it ended up on Joe Mercola's site. Um, and then it kind of went crazy. Um, and so that was the, the, the, the biggest completely uncritical, uh, uh, endorsement of Brzezinski. Um, then this past spring, uh, the second Brzezinski movie was released. And in that one, um, there was actually a whole section about skeptics There was actually a whole section about skeptics and how bad and evil they were.

And my take – what they did was took snippets from my web show where we were talking about the Brzezinski Clinic. And then – OK. So what they did, they took out things that they, you know, points they wanted to make and refute. But behind my voice, first of all, they blurred our faces, covered our names, and played like evil, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, Like pipe organ music? Like ominous music? Yeah, really ominous. Is it like Photoshop, like a half phantom of the opera mask over you? Yeah. They put a huge handlebar mustache on you. I know.

They've got you tying up a damsel. If he had the skill, which he doesn't, he would have. That's awesome. You're tying Brzezinski to a train track as it's coming. Yeah. So, I mean, it really is so far over the top. It's like a dirty political ad. And I don't know if he realizes how ridiculous it looks. But that's fine.

I mean, he's a true believer. We knew that we were going to be in this movie because I had received a phone call from the lawyer at my university saying that the chancellor's office had received a letter from this clown, the director, saying that he was going to put me in his movie. And he wanted a comment from my university about what I did, quote, in my free time. Why a university which cherishes free speech and is built on free speech would have anything to say about what I do in my spare time is beyond me. Blaskowitz is not supposed to know about this. Um, and so we had a good chuckle about that when I got to the lawyer's office. Um, you know, I checked with the lawyer, um, before I did anything with it. Um, and then we used that to kick off the Brzezinski birthday bash. Um, I announced that my, my, uh, employer, uh, had been told that I was going to basically get smeared in front – in millions of homes and shared the letter with people.

And we used that to launch our campaign to raise money for St. Jude Children's Hospital. Oh, good, good. Yeah, in Brzezinski's name, mind you. That is spectacular. Now, we have an amazing group of people who listen to the show. I have no idea why they listen to this show, but they do. And they are motivated. They are the type of people who, when there's a call to action, they do normally follow through with that call to action.

Now, what is something that – are you involved in any way in anything that you could help sort of organize some of the people who listen to this show to help you out in some way? Yeah, your listeners can get in contact with me via email or on Twitter. On Twitter, I'm RJ Blaskowitz. It's spelled like it sounds. I'll have it on the show notes for this episode, episode 120. Just have them contact me. I am happy to hear ideas. And some of the best stuff that we've done has been kind of brainstorming.

The Brzezinski birthday bash is a case in point. One thing I do want to mention, and you didn't ask the question specifically, but it strikes me as very, very important to the stories that we've sifted out from the internet, following Facebook, looking at Twitter streams and blogs and news coverage. Twitter streams and blogs and news coverage. One thing that we noticed over the course of our investigations was that a lot of patients were reporting excitedly. And this started with Amelia. We first noticed it with her, that her father was very, very excited that the tumor was breaking up on the inside. And as Gorski pointed out, this is actually not something you want to hear because it means that the tumor has outgrown its blood supply.

So the tumor is dying on the inside, but it's not a sign of improvement. And this family was ecstatic that it was dying on the inside. And so Gorski wrote a post explaining this and encouraging the family of Amelia to get a second opinion with someone who could evaluate this. And of course, back in the UK at the hospital there, they said, yes, the tumor is still growing and it's time to go to palliative care, which they did. And that got us looking back through our other cases that we'd already written up.

And we noticed a pattern that this particular prognosis was being celebrated by patient after patient after patient. And I can go back to 1994 finding this. What you would expect would be that either a tumor would be shrinking from the outside in, or it would be breaking up like disgusting Swiss cheese. But over and over and over, going back to 94 and God knows how far back, really, you see people excitingly, excitedly declaring that the tumor is dying on the inside. And so we have lots of people reporting that signs of getting worse are signs of getting better. We have lots of people reporting that signs of getting worse are signs of getting better.

And that strikes us as really quite disturbing. We don't know why that is. We don't have access to their files. We don't have access to the conversations that they have at the clinic. But it seems to be a very strange thing for so many people to be reporting. After Amelia died, that family was interviewed in the movie. And there's this, when they discuss what happened in the second Brzezinski movie, I can read you a quote from the screen. Two months after this interview, Amelia's tumor began to swell and fill with fluid. There was confusion and disagreement among their local radiologists and the radiologists in Houston

about why this was happening. So her parents decided to discontinue antineoplastin therapy. Then they cut to a picture of Amelia's obituary. Oh no. They go to Amelia's obituary. Oh, no. They go to Amelia's obituary and says, they say, quote, Amelia passed away with her parents by her side on January 6, 2013. And I find that to be absolutely inexcusable. It's amazing that people can think that they can get away with that type of stuff.

First of all, saying there was confusion, disagreement, no. One side was right and the other side was absolutely wrong. And when it goes back so far, you have to wonder. And the way that the blame is kind of shifted over to the family, I find to be excrucible. Yeah, that's just inexcusably awful. I wonder, are you aware of any other clinical trials for any treatment of any kind that require a movie to support them? A movie?

Because that's not, I mean,'ve never seen any any movies with sequels nonetheless yeah about clinical trial because typically i don't think that's how how they report you know no science it's it's generally not how it's done in fact it's a really bad sign this is worse than science by press release. This is – it's propaganda. I mean there's only one side presented. It's separated into a world of light and darkness. I'm darkness. Embrace it, Robert.

Embrace it. Yeah, I know. I know. That's probably why we had the Skype problem. Maybe you brought too much darkness to the table. A little bit, you know, Windows eight doesn't play well with darkness. Oh, actually Windows eight is darkness. Oh my God.

So Robert, I want to thank you for coming on and talking about, about your work. Um, why if we're going to send the listeners to the website where you talk about the stories, and we'll also have links on episode 120 to all the other stuff you do. But keep fighting the good fight, and thank you for all that you do. I mean, this is really amazing work,

all the stuff that you put together. Thanks very much. We appreciate it. Thanks very much. We appreciate it. in our show notes. Um, but it's an hour long and, uh, and it's, there's a video portion, but he didn't get video of us and you wouldn't want to see video of us anyway. But, uh,

but there's a video portion on his website, but there's also an audio download that you can listen to, um, directly from iTunes. Uh, I think it turned out pretty good. Uh, Ross was a very good,

uh, interviewer. He interviewed us very briefly. And then we also talked about some news items and kind of did a little cognitive dissonance thing on his show. And it was fun. He was a funny guy and he had a lot of fun. Uh, he had a lot of funny things to say. So give him a listen. If you can, it's skeptically challenged. I'll put a link on episode one twenties, uh, show notes. We want to also thank John and Sophie for their generous donations. Thank you very much for sending in money, uh, to help support the show. That's going to

go a long way to the hosting of both the podcast and of the website. So we got an email. I messed up last time and a lot of people pointed this out. This isn't last time. This is fucking ages ago at this point that I called Revelations. I guess that's a big deal. A lot of people like to point that out, but, uh, but we got an email from Don here and why don't we just let his words speak for him, Tom?

Why don't you read both of his emails here? Sure. Uh, he said, uh, I spent much of my time listening to lectures, podcasts, and programs from the atheist community because I am genuinely interested in

the arguments frequently presented as a Christian. I believe it is necessary to know how to give answer to objections. For whatever credit I once gave you to assist me in understanding something, you totally destroyed every shred of credibility in your Revelations sucks episode. I could go through bit by bit and explain why certain things were troublesome, but suffice it to say it is obvious you don't know your subject, and worse, don't don't know your subject, and worse, don't care to know your subject, all the while ferociously pretending to attack it. See, even your attempts at attack were meaningless because they were all simply absurd, misguided assumptions regarding

Christianity in general, and the book of Revelation, no S, specifically. It would serve you well to consult just one decent commentary. Let's say Matthew Henry, for example. It would serve you well to consult just one decent commentary. Let's say Matthew Henry, for example. It's free online for Pete's sake. Then you'd at least have some, his emphasis, understanding of the literary devices used in the book and the historical references as well. Would you mock and ridicule a science textbook you found yourself incapable of comprehending? Would you do the same to Shakespeare? Honestly, I'm not writing because you made me angry.

I'm simply hoping to give you some useful feedback. If a person is going to presume to critique, at least have the courtesy to respectfully critique fairly. Now, I know you have no respect for the Bible, God, or Christians, and that's fine. But again, in my opinion, you did more damage to your own credibility rather than offer anything of substance for us to take you seriously, hoping for something better in the future. Well, Tom then replied to him and said, you know, that's all well and good,

but here's the thing. How is Revelation supposed to be interpreted? Because, you know, I mean, come on, let's, you know, there's a million different interpretations out there. How is it supposed to be interpreted? Because, you know, I mean, come on, let's, you know, there's a million different interpretations out there. How is it supposed to be interpreted? And how are we supposed to take it as a 20th century people? And he said, you know, he came back and he said, well, at least you're consistent. You have no biblical understanding whatsoever. Do not care to have any biblical understanding.

And yet you're going to take up a biblical topic and attempt to rip it to shreds based on your admitted ignorance. And yet you're going to take up a biblical topic and attempt to rip it to shreds based on your admitted ignorance. That only makes you come across as a couple of whining adolescents, but lacking any substantial argument. I mentioned I could take the show bit by bit and address any of your objections. Now I think I'm motivated to do so, given that you assist upon your course. Cognitive dissonance, huh? We'll put that to the test. Yeah.

You know, the argument that he's making is that, is that, well, you guys just didn't understand it. Well, great. Get out your objective revelation measuring stick. Get out your big book of here's what it really means, and then we can talk. But there is no big book of here's what it fucking really means. That's the argument you constantly hear. Well, you just really didn't understand. You're reading it wrong. You're misinterpreting it.

You don't have the historical background. You don't have all the facts. Really? Okay, great. So this is a divinely inspired work meant to speak to all people across all time. That's what it's for. It was divinely inspired by a literally perfect being to communicate a message. And yet that message is this unclear that we even have a conversation about it?

I mean, I tell my son, go to bed. I don't tell my son, and verily there will be fucking locusts if thou dost get, you know, fucking just tell you to go to bed right this could be written in ways that are clear across time and space it's not written that way it's written in an incredibly parochial fashion because it's an incredibly parochial book end of fucking story so tom um david sent in a link to, uh, to women who are going to esplodonate their ovaries. Yeah, this is awesome. This is a, I actually saw this this week and I meant to tweet it as well. So I'm glad he sent it to us. It's from CNN. Saudi cleric warns driving

could damage women's ovaries. What a fucking lunatic. What an absolute fucking lunatic that if a woman drives a car, he says, it could have a negative physiological impact. And this is my favorite part. Medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman's ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward. What the fuck are you talking about? You sit in a chair to drive a car a chair dude it's a very different very different front seats right what is going on in a saudi arabian automobile like is the driver's seat fucking configured geometrically different than the passenger seat it's just like broken glass like you just like you step on the gas and all the chisels and sharp alls and just shit you have

to sit on that'll just pierce you and destroy you but you you hit the gas and like saudi arabian cars just fucking shoot owls at your crotch like what what's happening we got an email from aldo and he says, Hi there, I saw a link on your site to a ThinkProgress article about the prison system and wanted to suggest a follow-up to your readers. And he puts a link here, and I will put this link in the show notes. He says, My team is promoting this infographic that uncovers many problems with the prison system, specifically for-profit prison corporations like the CCA and the GEO group.

I think this might generate some discretion from your audience. If you decide to share, all I ask is that you credit the source. So I'm crediting the source. The source is you. And so it's credited. And I'm going to put this on the show notes. So if you want to take a look at this infographic, please go take a look at it. And I think that it's great. And it's great that people are paying more attention to that sort of thing.

Yeah, it's a good infographic. Check it out. We got an email from Tim the Teacher. And this is something we actually were going to be talking about. Tim said that last week his mom died at 54 and he's 33. And this is the first time he's had to deal with death as an atheist. There's a lot of things that made him feel better. They're doing, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's, you know, obviously it's a very difficult time. They're doing okay.

And he says, what I did not expect was the reaction that along with immediate family, would have at the funeral. The pastor, my mom was a Lutheran and still religious, talked about 30 minutes and talked about her for about two minutes. He read verses out of the book of Revelation. Yeah, the crazy stuff you guys just got done talking about. And kept talking about how either God needed her up there or that he had to take her there early because something bad was going to happen to her. Needless to say, it angered all of us. And I'm even further from being a theist than before. My brother has decided that through this he isn't agnostic, that he's openly atheist.

Have you guys ever dealt with this? Funerals never bothered me before, but now they infuriate me. I don't understand how any of the typical platitudes could be comforting to someone. me. I don't understand how any of the typical platitudes could be comforting to someone. I've been to many funerals and this is a very, very, very common thing, mainly because I think the person behind the pulpit doesn't really know the person. And there are some people who are comforted by those platitudes. As weird as that sounds, there's a lot of people. I mean, somebody will hear, somebody who is listening to us now and says, when they say they needed her early because something bad was going to happen to her, I'm thinking worse than death.

I know, I was thinking the same thing. Is that something worse than death? Because I can't, it's hard to believe that there's such a thing. But, you know, there are people in the audience, though, that I think are sitting there saying, yeah, you hear it all the time. Everything happens for a reason. Oh, there's a reason that this happened. There's a reason this happened. People – we're pattern seekers.

We need to have reasons for things. We need to have these things make sense because if we don't, we feel small. If we don't, we feel like we're alone. And that's really hard and it's really traumatic and it, and it really does a doozy on the brain when somebody dies and you don't have those things to cling onto. So, um, so yeah, I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but I've been to many funerals like that where it's just like 30 minutes of like, did you even know who this person was? And then two minutes of stuff that they got from the family, obviously.

You know, I think it's also important to, as difficult as it is in those times, is to recognize that weddings and funerals, both kind of, they have the same ring to them in a lot of ways when the priest or the preacher or the pastor or whatever is doing their spiel. This is another work day for these guys. It really is. It sucks. It sucks so bad to even say it. But you lost a friend or a family member. This is a monumental occasion.

This is probably the 250th funeral this guy has done. He's at work. And he's got a way that he deals with funerals. You know, like he gets a call, so-and-so died. You got to do the funeral thing. Okay, cool. Let me get out my funeral speech. I'll talk to the family. I'll get the snippets. I'll insert it into the outline. I'll do my funeral thing. He's a dude doing a job. He's a guy at work. I'll do my funeral thing. He's a dude doing a job. He's a guy at work.

We all want to have this ultimately customized experience because our loved ones are so incredibly important to us. So the idea that they would get a boilerplate treatment is kind of disgusting. It's disgusting to even say it. But I think that it's true. I think that people have a script that they roughly stick to because they're going to do another one of these next Wednesday and they're going to do another one of these on Saturday. And it's unfortunate, but it's the case. And it helps some people. For me, I feel the same way, Tim. I listen to this shit and I'm baffled that anybody could possibly give three shits about what this guy is saying, but clearly they do or

they wouldn't invite these guys to stand up and speak uh sorry for your loss tim by the way oh yeah yeah sorry for your loss i'm sorry um yeah no don't i mean seriously though i mean it's it's a shitty thing and it sucks and uh and you know we hope you get through it we got an email from uh from gene and he says i I spent a couple months, uh, agreeing with you about the death penalty. Um, and then he says,

uh, basically, uh, that he stumbled upon a link and, there's videos of Americans that were being beheaded by people. And after watching, uh, this one,

I had to admit to myself that these fuckers deserve to die. Um, and, you know, basically he's saying, you know, that they deserve the death penalty. They don't deserve my tax dollars in prison to rehabilitate. someone, you know, when I see someone, you know, obviously someone guilty of harming another, murdering another person, whatever my first reaction, just as you, even it doesn't matter how horrific it is. It's like that person deserves to die, but that's an emotional reaction. And I certainly wouldn't want to legislate my emotions. Yeah. And we, you know, it's important to recognize that for every super, super clear

cut video evidence, um, footage, a hundred percent nail in the coffin, sort of a deal that you have, you've got 10,000 more that are much more ambiguous. And until you can have a criminal justice system, that's incapable of making mistakes. I don't think it makes sense to have a punishment that's incapable of being retracted. Right. An email title. Yeah, I love the song titles of our emails, Tom, are really just pretty amazing.

This one's just Long Black Cock. So today, shortly after listening to you guys, I had the Long Black Cock song sung in my head, and I happened to sing it in a place where I thought I was alone. Turns out I was not alone, and the nice woman who heard me singing asked, Oh, are you a Muslim? Awesome. That is pretty decidedly awesome.

That's great. David sent in an email. He says, Hey, guys, I just figured this one out. He's talking about the finger chopping machine, automatic finger chopper offer that they have in Iran he says hey guys I just figured this one out they probably need an elaborate finger chopping machine in Iran because no one has any fingers

left to do the chopping two pulleys yeah that's damn hard to pull the trigger on a thing if you don't have the fingers and it's very true that's awesome so next week it's our hope that we're going to have on uh dj growthy he's going to be on um we're going to be talking to

him about stuff so that'll be fun and uh and we're going to definitely have all links to uh to to robert uh blaskowitz's site uh the places where he can be found. He's on a bunch of different podcasts and blogs. And do go out of your way to contact Robert to find out if there's anything you can do to help him. He's one of those guys that is really accessible. So if this is something that interests you and you're interested in this sort of thing,

go out of your way to contact him on Twitter and he's going to send us other ways in which to contact him. They're going to be on episode 120. But go out of your way to talk to him because he will find some way that you can help. If this is some way that you're – if you're definitely interested in this, do go out and seek him out. And you should be interested in this. This is like of all the skeptical topics, this is something where action can be taken. There's nothing you can do about Bigfoot, right? Um, nothing you should do. Who gives a shit? Loch Ness monster. Fuck it. Who cares? Um, this matters. So I totally agree. You know, take the five minutes. Yeah. Even just take

five minutes and just send him a message to tell him that he's doing good work. Go visit his sites, go visit the story site specifically and read some of those stories and, and, and, and, you know, just support his work. So that wraps it up for this week. Back in the saddle again, so to speak a little longer episode than we had hoped, but, but I don't think anybody's going to mind. We'll be back next week with DJ, hopefully, and with another batch of our bad stories and bad jokes. So until then, we're going to leave you with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble Pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized

Stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing Water downward spiral, brain dead pan Sales pitch, late night info docutainment Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage Death in towers, tarot cards Psychic healing, crystal balls Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens Church churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double speak, stigmata, nonsense. of nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our

wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Outro Music