Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 127: Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracy

Episode Date: December 2, 2013

Special thanks to Mike from the Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracy: -

Do you want to get Cognitive Dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. Hi guys, this is Satan calling from hell. I just wanted to say that I love your show, and I'm looking forward to drinking with you in hell. I have a special glory hole set up for you. Glory hole. you in hell. I have a special glory hole set up for you. Glory. G'day, Tom. G'day, special. Yeah, sexual bike again. I phoned you about six weeks ago. I was drunk then. So I'm hoping you didn't play that one. That would have been embarrassing.

So I'm hoping you didn't play that one. That would have been embarrassing. And I know definitely you'll edit this one and make me sound great. But I just wanted to say, I'm up to about 115 in the episodes, and it's fantastic. You guys have been really, really good. And that's probably all I have to say. So glory toory hole.

And, you know, the amount of toilets I thrust while he throbbies through gory holes. I really hope, you know, you guys aren't on the other side because it's going to hurt. Anyway, keep up the good work, gentlemen. Bye-bye. 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 at this. This is episode 127 of Cognitive Dissonance, if you can believe that shit. We've got a very special guest joining us today for the end of the program. It's Mike from the Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracies. And this is a conspiracy-laden show, Cecil.

We're going to be talking about three conspiracies throughout the course of this show, one of which involves me having a shitty cold. That's not a conspiracy. There must have been a conspiracy. I've developed... See, here's the thing about conspiracies, Cecil. I've figured it out from reading these stories. Sure, no. See, first you just take the facts

and throw them in the trash. Right. So the facts of the case would be that I got a fucking virus and that i'm fighting a virus okay well that's that's so pedestrian i can't even give it credit it's i'm gonna throw that out the window fuck that absolutely and then you just make some shit up on a whole cloth that furthers your agenda so what's your conspiracy on your well i i think that i have been given a conspiracy by mike from the skeptics guide topiracies as proof that there are conspiracies.

I think that this is his – Is he going to come on and is that going to be his thesis? Right. So Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy, his thesis is conspiracies exist. I think so. I think that he's going to prove the truth of conspiracies. And he's doing this in part by engaging in this. And I've never met the guy. So clearly, in order for him to have given me this cold, there must have been a long clandestine string of events in which I was infected probably by a poisoned umbrella. That's my guess. It was a poison umbrella that shot a dart into my foot when I was taking a shit at Starbucks.

Who was that who got the poisoned umbrella? That was actually a thing that somebody used. That was. I think it was a Soviet spy or something. Yeah, it was like a spy or some shit got fucking poisoned. There was a fucking poison. That's like some Q shit. That's some James Bond stuff. It's like an exploding. That's like some Q shit. That's some James Bond stuff.

It's like an exploding, it's like a hand grenade watch. Right, right. Or an ejector seat in your car or something. Right. Did you ever see the Mythbusters where they did the ejector seat in a car? No, I've never seen it.

It's awesome. To put an ejector seat that will actually eject a person out, they had to basically rip the whole car apart. And the car now doesn't look anything like a regular car. Right, sure. You know, people be heavy. It looks like a stack of explosives on wheels.

And then to get it to go off, it kills you. Like, there's no way that you could just eject. It's like the worst ejector seat. It ejects your life out of your body. Right, it's like a murder seat. And then the interior of the car, so like if you wanted to eject your passenger you can't eject your passenger without you catching on fire you die in the process you die so it's like fuck you dude it's a suicide bomber ejector seat is

what it is it's fucking spectacular actually what the fuck yeah it's great so what is what is wrong with society we can't even make a fucking ejector seat. I know, right? I mean, we are so far from personal jetpacks. Nope, no flying cars, no jetpacks. We don't have any of the good shit. No androids I can fuck. I mean, come on. You can't fuck hardly any robot. I mean, it's like, I mean, like, you can like fuck a flashlight or something, but that's only, part of a robot. I have bought dinner for my Roomba so many times. And it still rejects my advances. Just buzzing around my living room, ignoring me like I'm not even there. That bitch.

Specifically avoids me. It'll suck anything but me. So, holy shit. So, okay, I just linked Cecil to this story from the Huffington Post for our first story. But I do want to point out, I don't know if you linked to it, there's a red banner across right now

that says Holiday Spirit, a legend stabbing at Walmart on Black Friday. I love turning a stabbing into like, hey, let's throw an irony tag. Yeah. Come on, because we're a credible news source. Somebody got whole, whole holes in them.

That's awesome. Gene Rosen, Sandy Hook hero, harassed by conspiracy theorists who claim he's an actor. This story is super sad. This is a story about a dude. So we don't have to tell you what Sandy Hook was, right? Like, Sandy Hook was a horrifying massacre of children that occurred, what, probably about a year ago. Yeah, something like that.

And there was a guy, a couple of kids showed up at this dude's door. They're like, fucking teacher's dead. We're kind of fucked up about it. And he took them in. He was like, great, you know, come to my house and I probably won't shoot you. So that's better than the place you were just at. And these fucking conspiracy theorists are busting this guy's shit. Yeah, totally.

And, you know, like he puts those kids away, helps them out. And then these conspiracy theorists start putting out these videos where they're talking about him being, like, a pedophile. They talk about him being an actor, that he has, like, a Screen Actors Guild card or something like that. Right, right. And, you know, them accusing him of this is like, it's like accusing Oskar Schindler of being like a fucking like in league with Hitler or something.

You know what I mean? Like, what's wrong with you? What are you thinking? This guy goes out of his way to, you know,'s protecting the, you know, the victims that this are the potential victims that this guy wants to kill. And people, I don't know what kind of fuck nuttery brings people to this, but they somehow think that they should make videos and talk about this stuff and i what part of me thinks it is is just youtube hits like the reason why you make something like this that's inflammatory stupid and gets people fucking you know gets their hackles up is because you want to make sure that you get that ad revenue on youtube that's the only thing i can think of that would make somebody think that this is a good idea to put on you know i mean what what

other fucking reason would there be to make something like this, to just make it up? Yeah, well, you know, I got to tell you, I think the reason is you've got gun nuts, I think, who look at something like Sandy Hook. And the part – I think this is a cognitive dissonance issue. I really do. I think it works like this, and I'm not even being facetious right now. I think it works like this. I think you've got some people who are super crazy invested in the idea that there should be no controls at all or regulation on ownership, private ownership of firearms. Right. And who harbor – and the same people – so you got that on the one side.

And then those same people – so we're making a smaller and smaller subset, who have an intense hatred and distrust of the federal government. So they see something like this, and part of them immediately recognizes that this is going to start a debate, a debate that should be happening. They see this and they think, holy shit, this happened with guns. I support guns. The government is going to come after my guns. So I need this not to be true. How can I make this not true? Here's how I can fabricate without even knowing they're doing it. I think here's how I can fabricate a story that explains away all of these things and makes me comfortable with my everybody should have all the bazookas stance right like and not bazooka gum here we're talking about like bazooka the thing that kills many

people in one shot right well it's like david barton right like that guy we talked about him what a week or two ago and he he said you know the second amendment guarantees you should be able to have you know fucking rpgs like an f-16 to have, you know, fucking RPGs and fighter jets. Yeah, like an F-16. Like an actual human, like an actual person could afford an F-16. Right. No kidding. Like the only people that have, like Warren Buffett would be driving to work in a fucking F-16.

Everybody else would be like, I still have a Hyundai. You know, like, fuck. What? Yeah, an F-16 costs $14.6 million. It's so funny because Warren Buffett could seriously buy that. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, like billionaires could easily buy one of those things. Sure. I mean, but seriously, like fucking there's what other $14 million vehicle other than

like a fucking, you know, 100 foot yacht or something is there? Right. You know, like a big giant yacht or something, something huge that you could cart could cart like you know 50 people on in comparison to just like a two-seater what two-seater vehicle right is 14.6 million dollars and do you have to have a co-pilot named goose if you have one like is that required no but you have to goose your co-pilot okay well then fair enough yeah you know you have to you have to grab hold. But I really do think that's where these conspiracies come from, man. I think it's like, instead of engaging that part of their mind that says, holy cow, maybe there is,

maybe there is something I need to consider about this stance. Maybe we really do have a problem when like regular everyday folk can get their hands on assault weapons. Maybe not, but in order to even engage that conversation, you have to have some level of intellectual openness to that conversation. But if you can instead shift everything off into this conspiracy theory, well, now it's the government trying to take my guns and they're, because these people claim that the massacre never happened. They're not just saying this guy's a liar. They're saying none of these kids got killed, that it never happened. Right. And then there's also the people who say that there was a conspiracy that happened in Aurora. There was a conspiracy even with Gabby Gifford.

You know what I mean? Like when she got shot out in front of the thing, there was a conspiracy there. And I have a feeling you're right in some way here, Tom, because I think that there is that connection each time with firearms, that somehow these people who are so, like you say, so invested in having complete and all access to firearms, they need something to sort of make sure that that always is the case. to sort of make sure that that always is the case. Well, and this isn't the only conspiracy theory to hit the stories this week, see. So this next one comes from The Raw Story. And this one is so weird. Birther Preacher claims Obama had mother of his love child killed outside the White House. Now, a few weeks back, there was a woman who

crashed her car, like drove past a security checkpoint. It's actually kind of unclear to me still what exactly happened. But the nuts and bolts of it is she had a kid in her seat. She fucking did a weird thing and drove past the security checkpoint and the police opened fire and shot this woman, killed her. And this dude just decided he seriously just fucking decided that this was Obama's the mother of like, it's a love child conspiracy fucking love boat thing going on. He just made it up.

He seriously just made it up. See seriously just made it up, Cecil. There's no other explanation. He did make it up. I mean, there's no other. I mean, come on. His mother of his bastard child is so furious at him that drives the car into the thing. Like, why wouldn't you just be like, I would like a DNA test. Just go to the press.

It would be the easiest thing in the world. It's like the safest thing you can do, right? Right, just call Fox News. Fox News would give you first all the money. Just all the money. Fox News would even change their stance on abortion for this one. Right.

If you had a credible claim to an Obama love child birthing, you could seriously call Fox News and be like, I would like a check for all the money. Right. All of America's money. Just give me all the money.

I would like to be your next commentator. Commentator? I'd like to be your next fucking CFO. Yeah. Just, I want a job. Like, what do you have in the realm of jobs where I just get big checks? Right. Yeah. Like where I don't even have to come in on Tuesday. And I, and I'm not talking like the checks that you get with like, that are like six foot by four foot checks that you got to walk down to that bank to cash. Yeah. I tell you what, Cecil, if I ever get rich enough, and this is very unlikely,

if I ever get rich enough, I want all of my paychecks in giant oversized novelty checks. There's no reason you shouldn't. I want a checkbook. That's that big. You mail your checks, like you mail your bill payments

in oversized novelty checks. Giant oversized, I'm almost like, what the fuck, did somebody mail me a placemat? What is this thing? You, like, roll up, like, to deliver it in person. You fold it into an enormous paper airplane, walk in.

You hang glide in on it. Like, the clerk sitting at the front desk of, like, fucking Citibank's like, can I help you, sir? You just, from two feet away, like, plink, throw a huge check at his chest. It knocks him out. It him out kills him skewers him like i'm that rich i don't even give a shit yeah well you get away with it when you're super rich like obama you know you just get away with it why is it that people think like you know this is the other thing that people people think that the president has like this ultimate power to like

murder people. While he does have the ability to assassinate people, he's at least accountable for it. Yeah, I mean, it's not like he can actually go out and shoot people in the face. Like Obama cannot. Like, let's cut the shit. The man's president, he's a powerful fucking dude. Absolutely. But he doesn't have a fucking license to kill because we don't live in fiction yeah right because that's not an actual thing this is the

same guy who previously hosted a woman on his program who claimed that obama had traded gay sex for cocaine yeah yeah i remember this guy yeah uh as a teenager and this is the best part of this i also remember trading uh gay sex for cocaine with Obama, too. Yeah, well, I did. He liked to trade that as well as his Pokemon cards. He was a huge fan of trading both of those things. You beat me to it by a... Oh, yeah, did I steal another one?

You did, it was great! Damn! It was awesome. That was awesome! Just for that, I'm getting out of this story. You're just leaving it. Now you're just abandoning this story. I'm a fucking sore loser.

What you do when you think you've discovered something, what you do is write articles in scientific journals, give talks at the professional societies, go to the civil engineering department at MIT or Florida or wherever you are, and present your results, and then proceed to try to convince the national academies, the professional society of physicists and civil engineers, the departments in the major universities, convince them that you've discovered something. Now, there happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn't work like that. So this next story also comes from the

raw story. Noam Chomsky slaps down 9-11 truther. People spend an hour on the internet and think they know physics. I, first of of all i have to say i fucking love noam chomsky i've seen him speak i've he's just a super cool dude um and he's he's also a guy who just calls bullshit when he sees bullshit like that's a guy who's unafraid to be like that's some bullshit um so there was there's the never-ending conversation right about building seven um i like the way noam chomsky approaches this cecil yeah his his approach is really simple he basically says two major points the first one is he says look the safest thing you can do is start writing academic papers and go out and speak at conferences and

publish your results if you have results if you have actual science in your engineering, uh, you know, claims that building seven was blown up with thermite or whatever the hell he's like, go start speaking at conferences and publish a paper. He's like, that's the safest thing you can do. He's like, nobody can stop you from doing that sort of thing. And he's like, he's like, so, you know, you're not gonna, there's no way you're going to be like, you know, because there's all these people who say you can't say you can't talk about it. So that's why they haven't done it. Well, that's bullshit.

And he says that's how science gets done. That's how you do it. And he also just drops the bomb on this guy by basically saying, look, you don't have to know physics to know that 9-11 wasn't an inside job. It's real easy. All you have to do is look at the motive. People say the motive was that we could go out to war with Iraq. He's like, well, look, when 9-11 happened, we didn't blame Iraq. We blamed the Saudis who were our ally.

So there's no reason to think, I mean, if you're going to go with motive, and that's the thing, right? All of these things, the one thing that a lot of these, maybe not a lot of them, but most of them sort of have this weak motive. There's a very weak motive. And 9-11 to me feels super weak. Why did we blow up our own big buildings on our own land and shoot something into the Pentagon and drop a plane in the middle of some field in Pennsylvania. Why did that happen? Well, we wanted to go to war.

And it's like, no, Bush was going to go to war. He was going to find a way to go to war. They actually went in there with the idea about the weapons of mass destruction. They didn't go in there with really anything to do with 9-11. It was just like, man, we got to get in there. They wanted to go to war with that guy. I don't think they really wanted the war with Afghanistan. And it's proven because we're still over there. We're still fucking mucking about over there. I think we really

wanted that war with Iraq and we got it. And we got it not because of anything that 9-11 did. Yeah, I guess, I mean, the only argument that could be made is that people were all fucking worked up about the middle east in general and afraid in general and willing to do whatever the government was going to say like i guess i guess weak sauce that's the argument but yeah i mean why not just say they were right in 19 iraqis did it if you made it up any war against iraq just be like it was fucking 19 iraqis yeah that's it if you made it up anyway if you're gonna make it up make it up and make it fit do a better job like it's it's almost like

saying like you have you're building a narrative you have infinite possibilities when you're building a false narrative right you can just build it however you want so why would you build a narrative that only tangentially fits into a story that you're trying to construct it doesn't make any sense and in the one hand tom they're fucking giving these guys this ultra genius um status by saying oh well they planned all this they planted all the fucking bombs and then they fucking timing wise rammed a fucking jet in there and then blew them up and then they did the same thing to world trade center seven for some reason because they need to blow that building up too for i don't know what the fuck for and then you know all these other little things that had to happen that had to be

like perfectly timed or whatever and planned out and they had to shush up all these people and so that takes just this immense amount of planning and dedication yet they can't even get their fucking story straight when they want to decide who they want to fucking invade i mean on one hand they're they're like geniuses and the other fucking man-children. It's almost like somebody fucked it up. Like somebody didn't get the last memo. Oh, gosh, yeah. And like lost the information.

Like, wait, did they just say the Saudis? I thought we'd agreed on Iraq. Fucking Bush. Goddamn Bush fucked it up again. Jesus, don't you even know who you're angry with? Let's fucking spell it after me, stupid. I-R-A-Q. Bush fucked it up again. Jesus, don't you even know who you're angry with? Uh, it's fucking spell it after me, stupid. I-R-A-Q.

Yeah. Idiot. Well, there's a Q after that. Isn't it I-R-A-Q-U? Isn't it Q-U? Q-U. You always need a U after a Q, right? Right. Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord. Open hearts. So this story comes from the Friendly Atheist blog. right we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of jesus open hearts lord open

hearts this story comes from the friendly atheist blog report parents of injured baby choose emergency baptism over hospital visit with fatal consequences uh no shit imagine such a thing here you're presented with any fucking emergency and your baby so should you get him baptized real quick or to the hospital i don't know like maybe if he's got like a little burn on his head the baptism will fucking cool it off yeah but if the problem isn't a slight fucking scalp burn the baptism strikes me as entirely pointless i think you know the reason why people do this is because they don't want their little baby to like burn in hell or whatever the fuck they believe you know what i mean like they don't want the baby they want the baby to

go to heaven and you're like well you know look if you try as hard as you can to save your goddamn kid you know maybe your made-up God might actually fucking like that. Rather than just be like, well, gotta get him to the fucking baptismal font. Gotta make sure. And what fucking priest do you show up and he's like, get that kid to a hospital. I know. Right? Wouldn't the beast of beasts be like, I'm not doing what the, well, you shouldn't be here.

Yeah. Get data while I will fucking drive. Let's go. go like i'll fucking put on the pope lights whatever needs to be done you know the the part of this story that that cracks me up is wrong but there's a quote in here it says a spokesman for the saint petersburg orthodox church said quote this is superstition, not religion. Uh, what? There's a distinction without a difference?

That's... Really? This is superstition, not religion. Well, let's not fucking confuse those two. Yeah, we wouldn't want to do that. We wouldn't want to have somebody accidentally baptized. I like, too. You know, you're taking your kid to make sure, because the kid isn't baptized yet, so you've got to make sure the kid gets baptized before the kid's obviously going to die.

Well, the kid hasn't had his first birthday yet, either. Are we going to take him to stop by the bakery to get his first cake on the way there? Be like, oh, well, you know, he's going to die soon. So can you make him a cake that says happy four and a half weeks? You know, we just want to fucking put a hat on him before he goes blow a candle out. Can you do that? Jeez, he's not even going to get his driver's license. Can't we just like glue him to the steering wheel?

There's all kinds of shit he's not going to do. Right. There's a yeah, you got to go get him laid. Right. I got to buy a hooker for my two months old. Maybe that's why they went to the priest. You know what I mean? It's a win

all the way around. That's the wrongest thing. Don't you have to wonder too, like, what kind of belief set you have to have where you look at a two month old infant and you say, ugh, if I don't put some fucking magic water on his head, he'll burn in hellfire

for eternity because my God is just. Right. Or if I don't fix his head, he's dead. But I mean, even if you believed in God, even if you believed in God, how do you, who, I seriously do not understand this. Who believes in a God who sends babies to hell? Like it's such a ridiculous concept.

Westboro Baptist Church. Right. hell like it's such a ridiculous concept westboro baptist church right i mean you have to have you have to have all your brain thinking bits broken at that point like oh man god loves me so much he'll burn a baby um seems kind of uncalled for actually maybe the babies are the most delicious that's why he braised the baby. No, you cook that fast. Cook it quick. They're still tender. Yeah, I mean, it's like a veal. Unless you can use the bones and make a hell of a stock.

I bet, I bet. Collagen in there has just got to be amazing. Baby mouthfeel. It's got to be something. French onion and baby soup. Just ask a priest. They'll know. Right?

Or one of those rabbis. Yeah, those rabbis know for sure. The moles, yeah. Yeah. So we're going to take a short break. I just wanted to say before we go to break here, I want to thank everybody who has followed us on Stitcher or put us in their playlists or favorited us. I'm not sure what the terminology is there, but we have cracked 2,000 playlists this week, Tom, on Stitcher. Really? Yeah, so we're in 2,000 playlists. That's really awesome. If you have Stitcher as an app on your phone – actually, Tom and I really love Stitcher as a program.

It's cool. They don't pay us any money or anything to say this, but we like Stitcher as a program, and I really enjoy using Stitcher to find new shows, and it gives me a good way – it's a good way to find new shows because it suggests them. But if you do have Stitcher and you do listen to Stitcher, take a moment. Maybe you can rate us on Stitcher or you can just add us to your favorites playlist. us to, because right now we're hovering around 25 on society and culture, which is a big, difficult area to fight in because the top spots are This American Life and Radiolab. We can take them out, Cecil. Yeah. These monolithic shows.

We can take out Ira Glass. Yeah, Ira Glass. Yeah. Be honest. I could probably take out Ira Glass. I mean, I don't know that I would say that about many people, but I think I could say that about Ira Glass. Yeah, so if you find us on Stitcher and you have that app, it might be useful. And Stitcher is a great way, if you do have a smartphone and you listen to our show, Stitcher is a great way to find our show and listen to our show because you can listen to it.

It just streams directly in. The sound quality is pretty good and it doesn't burn up your data rates. So it's actually just streams directly in. The sound quality is pretty good and it doesn't burn up your data rates. So it's actually a really great program. So if you have Stitcher, like us on Stitcher or friend us or whatever the hell it is, whatever their terminology is, so we can get more playlists because now it's just about vanity. Was it ever about anything else? No. Want to get in touch with the show? Send an email to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Be sure to follow the show on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance

underscore pod. Like the podcast page on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash dissonance pod, or just type cognitive dissonance into the Facebook search bar. Want your voice featured on our show? Leave a short message on our Google Voice at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Visit DissonancePod.com to see the news stories featured in the show, buy apps and merchandise,

or just leave a comment. And to everyone who helps spread the word about the show by sharing it, tweeting it, and rating it on iTunes, Glory Hole, you fucking rock. So this story also comes from the raw story. Catholic bishop performs exorcism with armed officers. Armed officers? Arfisher.

Arfisher. Arfisher. Wait a minute. That's a different thing. The Catholics are more familiar with it. Armed officers over Illinois same-sex marriage. Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki kept his promise on Wednesday and performed an exorcism on the state of Illinois. So the whole state of Illinois, I felt it.

It felt like a fucking tremor in my soul actually when he did it. Did you feel it, Cecil? I did. I felt it right in my balls. Yeah. It kind of tickled a little. It tickled a little. It was like I was getting a prostate exam kind of. I don't know why. I just instinctively turned my head and coughed. It just felt right. It just felt right. It just felt right. Look at the picture of this guy. Tell me he doesn't look like one of those symbol monkeys where they bang the symbols.

Doesn't he? It's that little beanie hat that they wear. They wear those little rabbi hats or whatever. The little fez. He's got a Shriner's fez on. His face is sort of that flat smile face. I guarantee that cut out of this picture, cropped out of this picture is two symbols. It's certain to be true.

And he probably used those symbols during his exorcism, Cecil, because he stood in front of the church basically just saying to, I'm going to read it. I exercise you, every unclean spirit, every power of darkness, every incursion of the infernal enemy, every diabolical legion, cohort, and faction in the name and power of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the first thing I thought was, if you can get rid of all of them in the whole state, why don't they just do this why don't they do this regularly right like they'd be like the orcan guy coming out and being like i'm just gonna bug bomb

one room you know let's get the whole just fucking exercise all the demons from the earth right this is this is preventative maintenance there's no reason you shouldn't be doing that there's a reason why practiciropractic care for your soul. Exactly. Well, you know. You gotta do it three times a week though. That's the problem. If you're gonna be cleansing the demons out of the state of Illinois

because you don't like the gays, why don't you go start making your rounds where all the priests have diddled kids? Why don't you go fucking start cleansing demons there? You know, this is one of those things where it's like, you know, there's a clear wrongdoing on the Catholic Church's part when it comes to children getting abused, right? There's a clear wrongdoing. That

is clearly against the law. It is clearly morally abhorrent for them to do that. Not just by like a select group, because there's a select group that thinks homosexuality is morally abhorrent. But there's a much larger group that's all of the population that thinks that pedophilia is morally abhorrent. So why don't you go do that instead? I mean aren't there greater evils than that, than in your tiny little mind? No, that's the greatest evil. The greatest evil is genitals. What you gonna do with your genitals?

That's the evil. That is the only thing that matters. It doesn't make any difference that people live in, say, abject poverty across much of the globe. Right. Let's exercise that. You know what? Let's just exercise. Yeah.

let's exercise that you know what let's just exercise yeah it would have been more effective if he had led the congregation of 500 people in a hundred jumping yeah jumping jacks that would have been either one more effective like let's all just do fucking some jumping jacks for a while oh that seems okay well actually might get something done we might actually get something done instead he's just fucking calling out spirits to get rid of the evil of same-sex marriage in Illinois. This is the least potent gesture that he could have possibly made. It's pretty weak sauce. And the other thing too, is that this is a tactic to, as we said before, demonize. And when I say demonize, I literally mean to demonize someone else's position. And this is a tactic to show that they are evil, that it's not that it's just,

you know, one of those things where you look at it and you say, well, that's just not morally correct. God wouldn't approve sort of thing. No, this is something that Satan is basically face fucking. He's like, oh yeah, be gay, be gay, be gay. He's super happy about it. And so you're trying to make sure that people recognize that are not only people that are part of your faith, but other people that are Christian, that they're not in your sect, but they're Christian. So they're gonna look at you as a holy man,

regardless of whether or not they're giving you 10% of their check. They're gonna look at you as a holy man, regardless of whether or not, you know, they're giving you 10% of their check. They're going to look at you as some sort of authority. And they're going to say, well, if they're exercising the demons and they're saying that they're demonic, et cetera, then they must be bad. And so he's, you know, poisoning the well for, you know, how many different Christian groups? And doesn't it occur to any of these folks that it didn't work? Well, yeah, right. He casts out the demons, right?

I cast you out and then nothing happens. And same-sex marriage is still a thing. And gay people are still fucking totally unaffected by his yibber-jabbering in the church. At some point, wouldn't you be like, well, that was ineffective. God doesn't give two shits. Well, God is like, I was trying to filibuster, but I couldn't do it.

They wound up using the nuclear option. You would think that they wouldn't pull this kind of shit because it just shows, you know, this honestly reminds me of- It shows how impotent their God is. Doesn't this seem just like the guy who's like, I'll fucking kill you with my magic spell on TV. And then you're just like, do something. Right.

It's the guy who talks about his Lamborghini, you know? And you're just like, well, where's your Lamborghini? I'm in your garage. Oh, well, it's at the shop. Yeah, right. It's at the shop in Niagara Falls. I can't... Yes.

Dude, it's the guy at camp who's got a hot girlfriend in the other state oh yeah yeah you know what i mean it's like my fucking girlfriend's so hot she's like a hundred feet tall and all made out of boobs and you're like wait what that's not every day right whenever i see her like i have to like punch her in the face to get her to stop sucking my dick it's's like, come on, dude. Really? Because everybody's met that guy. Like, everybody fucking knows that guy who's telling you some crazy shit. Like, and then it's so easy to find out it's not true.

Like, this guy, he just, it's so funny because he ran the experiment. Right. Right? He ran the experiment. Like, his thesis, his hypothesis is there's a God who intervenes in our lives and I can call upon his power to rid the fucking world of spirits like same sex marriage demons. Hey, it's not my fault. But still, like, get rid of same sex marriage demons. And then he does the experiment, right?

Like, I fucking did the thing and then nothing happened and you're like well when we know how that one turned out fail big fun mythbusters this is busted yeah it certainly wouldn't be plausible that's for sure So this story comes from the Telegraph. Afghanistan plans to reintroduce public stoning as punishment for adultery. So much better than the private stonings as punishment for adultery. At least they're moving them to the public square. Good for them. Way to rocket yourself into the 21st century Afghanistan.

You know, you look at this photo, Cecil. Look at the photo of this thing. I can't really tell. There's like a bag out there. Seriously looks. I mean, just take your hand and take the troop like put your hand over the the photo of the right of the soldier this could this photo could be taken in fucking 1480 yeah i mean it really fucking good it really there's a mud wall there's a mud wall right

right like this is how you're gonna get ahead like somebody sitting around like oh man the whole rest of the world looks at us like we're a backward civilization what do we do should we increase our education initiatives should we invest more money in math and science no let's throw rocks at people let's murder people with rocks because that's what you do i guess fucking chimpanzees throw rocks yeah they do actual fucking chimpanzees yeah throw rocks at some point where some of these people are going to regress to the point of our common ancestry like they're actually going to start sprouting more hair what is you know okay so we have a policy that they're trying to put back in place which is essentially people and when i say people i mean women should

be stoned to death for adultery punishment for adultery should be stoning to death but that's not the men right no i don't think they're chucking rocks at dudes man i mean because it's it's a dude come on no one's gonna throw a rock at me but we'll totally throw rock i mean there's a whole second religion which has that saying like he who's without sin cast the first stone they're just like fucking get me the stone we got bigger stones i got i'll fucking throw some rocks right now i don't be giving no shit Like he who's without sin cast the first stone. They're just like, fucking get me the stone. We got bigger stones. I got, I'll fucking throw some rocks right now.

I don't be giving no shit. This is crazy stuff. Cecil it's, it's fucking insane that in 2013, almost 2014, people are actually like reconsidering the idea of hurling rocks at each other. It's fucking, it fucking, it would make, it would actually be a more humane law if it was like Afghanistan considers shooting adulterers with an RPG. That would be, that would be way more humane, actually.

It'd be more humane, Tom, if they lit them on fire. I know, right? I mean, the only reason it was rocks is because it was written when that was like the fucking height of technology yeah right when rocks were like people were like people were there's a scientist he burst out he's like look what i just invented i mean like rocks were like i mean like the you know, the arms race was really heating up when we figured out how to fucking cock our arm backwards. Yeah, well, use our arms.

That's why, I mean, that's why it was stoning, right? It wasn't, because I would, I mean, maybe it would be RPGs if it was right now. Maybe it would be like, well, fucking shoot them. Before, it was like, fucking chuck some stones at them. I don't know. What else do we have? We literally have no resources. We're in Afghanistan.

The whole country is just made of rocks and angry sunshine. And mud walls and cast iron pots. I saw a hilarious skit this week where they had these two women who were in the full outfit, right? And their faces were covered with like all the way like all basically all they had was their eyes were open and they're sitting at a table and they're trying to eat spaghetti and it's the funniest thing i saw it's so funny because they're pulling like the little veil thing in front of their face back and they're like stuffing the fork in there and they're just like tapping the spaghetti down into in front of their mouth. It's the funniest shit I saw all week.

It's awesome. You know, we really can't criticize, Cecil. If we criticize Islam, and that's where this law comes from, right? It's not just, it's not a secular law, right? So if we criticize Islam right now. How do you get there from here? Yeah, you can't. It's not a secular law. So if we criticize Islam, though, you'll be— How do you get there from here? Yeah, you can't. It's not a secular law.

So if we criticize Islam, though, you realize that we're being racist somehow. Yeah, because Islam is a race. It's the great race of Islam. It's the great— Don't you know about the great race of Islam? Right. Yeah, no, I forgot about it, actually, because they don't exist. You know, I feel bad.

I genuinely do. I feel fucking awful for the people who have to grow up in Afghanistan. Especially a young girl, right? No access to education. You go to school and your fucking well is poisoned. You have a chance of, you know, getting married off at a very young age. And if, you know, you commit adultery or even if you're just fucking accused of adultery, because let's be honest, no justice system is perfect. You can get stoned to death right and there should never be anything you can do where you get stoned

to death right no i totally unless it's like like unless it's like smoking pot until you like pass out until you pass out and choke on your own can't even overdose on it but still like that should be the only stoned to death like oh i oh, I got so fucking stoned, I fell off a fucking 30-second story balcony in my hotel or something. Like, that should be stoned to death. In 2013, there shouldn't be, like, I sentence you to rocks. Who's that guy on the other side of the glory hole? It's Jesus.

See, so this story comes from I don't know, a dolphin? LDolphin.org. It comes from Reddit, really, is where it came from. And it may or may not be true, but we decided we don't care. Because it's hilarious.

Steps in Overcoming Masturbation. Attributed to Mark Peterson, Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a guide to self-control to make sure you don't fucking masturbate. And it's extensive, Cecil. And I think these are some real-world, practical, reasonable suggestions that any of us can undertake to make sure that we don't have pleasure. I'm sorry, were you saying something? I was jerking off to this. Yeah, I was jerking

off while I was speaking, so I don't blame you for it. I just have no self-control. I don't know what it is. You've got to turn that camera off while we're talking, by the way. The text on the screen here was making me wank it. I do want to point out, Tom said that we're not sure if it's real. Someone had said they're not sure if it's real. They tweeted at us. It was posted on Reddit earlier in the week, and I found it on a different Mormon site. I don't know if it's real. When I did a search to look to see if there was a Snopes article or something, nothing

really came up. It was on a Snopes board, but nobody refuted it, so I don't know if it's real or not. The thing about it is, is that when you read it, if it is a Poe, it's such a good Poe that you believe it, because it's one of those things when you read through, you're like, I would believe that someone would say this if they were hyper-religious. I would believe that they would say something like, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts vital parts tom that's what they call those and so it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove these clothes by the

time you started to remove the protective clothing you would have sufficiently controlled your thinking and your temptation would leave you bull shit bullshit there's no way if you got a hard on you're thinking man if i could only get these pants off faster. If it takes 20 minutes, eh, took 20 minutes. Yeah, look, this is, first of all, this is why my wife dresses me in a straight jacket every night just to leave her alone. And it doesn't work. Doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work.

She fucking laces that thing up, you know, fucking hangs me me upside down padlocked outside the fucking it doesn't you've never met a 15 year old boy with an erection in your life if you think that putting a clothes on it yeah no kidding are you kidding me hey fuck the clothes and i'm not even kidding yeah like a tight clothes and be like i'll rub that i don't give a shit i'll fucking you could tie you could fucking mummify him you'd fuck the sarcophagus you have no idea what you're up against trying to quell the libido of an adolescent yeah it simply cannot be done and right and that's what you're going for here this is not self-control for you know the 40 or 30 year old guy this is self-control for that 15 to 16, 17 year old kid who's, you know, I mean, you got 30 seconds. Cause if you got 30 seconds, you can finish one out.

Got 30 seconds. You can probably get a twofer. Yeah. When you're 16, are you kidding? Like you got a two for a few minutes to play Call of Duty. Some of these suggestions. So I like this one. When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror. My first thought was, well, fucking fat chance. I'm like a vampire. I don't look at the mirror.

I'm like, ah, fuck. What? I have painted all my mirrors in my house black. Yeah. No, just so I won't look at myself. I fucking just shatter them. I'm like, bad luck? I'll take it.

It's better than accidentally seeing me. Bad luck? Have you seen me? Right? Bad luck would be a functioning mirror. That would be the bad luck. Bad luck would be an upgrade to my face. It's, you, fuck it. And like, as if a dude is going to look at him,

as if anybody's going to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I'd fuck me. Oh, well, there's that one guy from the Sons of Lambs who would fuck me. I'd fuck me. Would you fuck me? Yeah. Um, that's not how that works. Yeah. Like that's just, you're not like, oh man, me. I want to get me a piece of me. Here's tom this is interesting if you are associated with other persons having the same problem you must break off their friendship never associate with other people having the same weakness don't suppose the two of you can quit together you never will you you must get away from people like of that kind and i'm thinking to myself i'm like when are you sharing this like man do you really have a hard time not whacking off?

Like with your friends at that age? Right. You just like show up at the lunch table. You're like, man, I just can't stop beating off. Guys, can you? Do you guys have a hard time jerking it? Yeah. Show of hands, guys.

Yeah. Show of hands. Actually. Yeah. Just if you just knock on the table from underneath one time. Show. You know, in here, though, it does describe why masturbate. Because my first thought was like, well, what's the harm?

You know? Right. Masturbate. Like, okay, well, fine. But it says it's a sinful habit that robs one of the spirit. So clearly, come as spirit. I had no idea. I didn't either.

But, you know, there you go. I've been filled with the spirit since I've been a young boy. You know, I have fucking spirited up some Kleenex. I've fucking spilled some spirit. I have an outpouring of spirit, Tom. There's a, I mean, there's spirit everywhere. I'm just saying, like. I'm like the fucking Long Island medium.

There's spirit everywhere. If you were to get a spirit blacklight for example there'd be some spirit you know i mean that's not good there's one that tells people to like go eat a food it's like if you feel like you want to jerk off go eat a food instead it's like don't worry about your weight just get to the kitchen even in the middle of the night right i would be even more enormous i would be one of those people that has to be fucking like airlifted out of my bedroom like by like six of those military helicopters yeah replace my current drive for sex with my current drive for food yeah that's just like you just add one to the other that's really not you know and and then

later on in the same article they're basically saying you know what you can do to prevent you from jerking off and one of them is reduce the amount of spices and condiments in your food eat as lightly as possible at night yet go run to the fucking fridge every time you feel like you want to beat it right yeah so you it's it's like it's like taking the joy of jerking off and replacing it with food but then making sure that you don't have any joy in your food yeah like oh i gotta eat fucking boiled chicken so good yay more boiled chicken i fucking hate my church i mean even still even if it was fucking cottage cheese or fucking rice crackers i don't know i would be i mean i'd be so fucking big people would poach me

i would be fucking i'd be shot on the savannah someone would be someone would be digging in your mouth looking for your tusks. Right, exactly. If they could find the mouth. They're like pulling back, just fold after fold and they're like, we can't determine which way is up. It never stops. It just keeps going and going. It's like some horrible flush nightmare.

There's one of these where it's like, just put a little calendar in your pocket. And then every time you don't beat off or every time you do beat off, put a black square. And your goal is to have a month with no black squares and then a year or whatever with no black squares or something like that. Like if this is a document that you're sending out to your whole church, what happens if somebody finds the black square laden calendar in your pocket? Yeah. No kidding. You know, I would just take my calendar and fucking dunk it in black paint. happens if somebody finds the black square laden calendar in your pocket yeah no kidding you know i would just take my calendar and fucking dunk it in black paint i just like yeah i would color

every day in uh preemptively and then erase the days that i did yeah that you don't right even like at the end of the year you're like anyone need an eraser right right it's uh this one here in the field of psychotherapy there's a very effective technique called aversion therapy and this is it goes on to explain it's like the clockwork orange yeah version you know so he's like when he is when we associate i think it's something very distasteful something which has been pleasurable but undesirable the distasteful thought and feeling begin to cancel out that which is pleasurable if you associate something very distasteful with your loss of self-control, it will help you to stop the act.

For example, if you're tempted to masturbate, think of having to bathe in a tub of worms and eating several of them as you do the act. That's just going to create a worm fetish. Oh, all you're going like you misunderstand how this works you're still you're still getting the fucking you're still jerking off because it still has you doing the act but now you're just thinking about worms so you're just gonna grow up the fucking weirdo who's eating worms while you come like that's what you're gonna do you'd be like odd fucking earthworm just saying just saying i watch x-men only for nightcrawler that's it

i like that it's a manual for masturbation i like i think that's very funny that it's a manual for masturbation because just like every other manual people threw this out and just tried to play with the toy initially. And for the most fun, it might require batteries. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth!

See, so this story I tweeted, this is from Right Wing Watch, that if you can make heads or tails out of this story, you win a prize. don't know what the prize is because i don't believe it can be i don't believe the prize can be won this is like the fucking randy foundation prize like you're not gonna win this prize i don't i don't even party nation exposes the gay food nazis what is what once and for all well that's good finally we've got this one clear. Saturday Tea Party Nation emailed readers a TPN blog post. The gay food Nazis, which argues that progressives are hypocrites for supporting portion control and gay rights. Timothy Bird now.

I'm just reading. I'm just fucking reading. Timothy Bird now, who blamed the Sandy Hook shooting on teachers and called for the school to hire George Zimmerman, attacked Missouri. Worst security guard ever. Did you see that he was, by the way, just rearrested for pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend's face? Yeah, well, I mean, he's just arrested for it. Let's not jump to any conclusions here. We know we have a lot of Zimmerman fans in the audience. Yeah, he, I mean, he's just arrested for it. Let's not jump to any conclusions here. We know we have a lot of Zimmerman fans in the audience. Yeah, he allegedly did.

But he also allegedly pointed a gun at his wife, which is why she left him. Allegedly. Let's just be really clear about this, and let's just say he's a really super cool dude who likes his guns. That's all there is. He seems to point a lot of guns at a lot of people. He likes it. I think he's just trying to show them to other people. I think he's just one of those guys who's just like, really, I would just really like you to look at it.

And she's like, I already saw it. He's just, will you look at it, please? Just look at the barrel, please. And tell me if it's loaded. Just tell me if this hurts at all. Maybe it's actually a duck hunt gun. Maybe he's just a dude who likes duck hunt yeah no that's that's possible it strikes me as a plausible yeah sandy hook yeah put him in

put him in sandy hook he'll just he's fucking so nuts by the end of the week he's pointing a gun at the nurse right just the the fucking lunch lady's like it it's corn and potato. What? The school mascot quits. They're just like, I'm done. We should just change the school mascot to a gun. Just a school mascot should just be a gun. And it should be a fucking firing gun. Like fucking one of the, like one of those Decepticons, you know, that can just like transform. It's like Megatron.

Right. I will say too, as an aside, that I never, like as a kid, I was pretty hyper literal and I never would play with the toy that would just turn into a gun because I was like, there's nobody to shoot it. It would just lay on its side. It doesn't make any, like the gun doesn't make any sense.

It needs a shooter. It needs a thing. In the cartoon that was on tv it like shrunk so like he would he would he would stand there and be like okay and like one of the star screamer whatever would change from a jet into a thing and then he would transform into the size of like a the size that a jet could shoot a gun but when he transformed if he did that for real like when he was an actual toy, he would be like a, like a one 16th the size of the other guy.

I know, but I, but that's why I wouldn't play with him. Like I just refused. I also wouldn't play with matchbox cars where you could demonstrably tell there was no driver. Like when they had a clear windshield and there was no, like there's no one driving. You clearly have no imagination.

I was terrible at playing toys. Like, I don't, I would only play with toys that made sense. So this story. Speaking of making sense. Yeah, right? I mean, we may as well talk about fucking matchbox cars. You just want to, I'm going to read some pieces of this thing. Yeah, no, do it.

Yeah, that's better than what I can say about it. Quote, if controlling the kinds of foods and portion sizes that children are allowed is a state-sanctioned function then shouldn't controlling homosexual imagery and experience be likewise shouldn't we be trying to put homosexuality back into the closet to prevent children with genetic tendencies from suffering temptation wait what well you see uh snickers bars are like a dick that's why i like him so much and you know if you have a genetic tendency to eat too many Snickers bars, that's the same thing as liking the dick instead of, you know, as a guy.

Right. Right. You know, as a man, I'm speaking like this. Yeah, because if it was a woman, then you'd like the gash. Right. Oh, God. It's better than cons. Come on.

Oh, shit. Fuck. I don't know that it is. I don't know that it is i don't know what it is i'm very uncomfortable right now so so like if the state can control one thing i mean this is basically the argument right if the state can say we can control one thing then the state gets to control all things. Yeah, because he says right afterwards, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Yeah.

What? What? My first thought was like, what kind of sauce? Like, you didn't define your sauce, sir. And I kind of got to think, like, geese and gander don't really care so much about sauce. Well, not because basically by the time the sauce is introduced they're already dead they're really dead they're fucking roasted

at that point they're they're 165 degrees internal temperature right or 187 if i cooked it dried out the goddamn goose again this next one let me read this next one so both obesity and homosexuality may have a biological component and are both bad for public health so why are we treating these two behavioral issues differently if society must discourage obesity should it not equally discourage Sexuality? Wait, what? Well, let's see. Obesity is bad for your health, demonstrably, in like all the ways. Consensual sex amongst adults? Yeah, well, no, not so much. I don't see that on my list of bad to your health.

Yeah. no, not so much. I don't see that on my list of bad to your health. Yeah. And you know, the counter argument that they would make is like, well, you know, these various diseases are much more, you know, rampant amongst homosexual male populations. Like people need to do a better job having safe sex. That's the solution. Right. The solution is like, and that's across every board. Like everybody needs to do a better job having safe sex. The solution is like, and that's across every board, like everybody needs to do a better job having safe sex. Everybody needs to. But the solution is not like, it'd be like saying like, well, there's no food. Or like, actually, let's continue his crazy metaphor, right?

Because like, I would not like to have gay sex. Like, I would really not like that. It's just not something I'm interested in. So I'm going to presume that a homosexual man would really not like to have heterosexual sex. Like, I would really not like that. It's just not something I'm interested in. So I'm going to presume that a homosexual man would really not like to have heterosexual sex. So that if you were using food, it'd be like somebody saying like, yeah, Tom, all you get is eggnog. What? I hate eggnog. Can't I have steak? Steak? I like. I like steak. Steak tastes good to me. You can have steak and eggnog. Yeah, right? It's like, no, you just get to eat eggnog.

Eggnog and fucking pureed lima beans. That's what you get. Be like, that's not appealing to me. I really, really don't want to eat that. I would rather not eat than eat eggnog and lima beans. Like, well, that's also a viable option. Yeah. It's real easy to control the portions of my eggnog. Right.

You know, that's super easy. Just zero portions. I don't understand the portion control. I mean, like, obviously he's upset because they want to do some sort of state-sanctioned portion control. But don't they already do that with, like, public lunches anyway? Yeah, they do. And isn't this an argument for bigger government? It always is, though.

It always. I mean, this is, you know, that's that's such a that's such a non-issue to those people, the Tea Party people, even though they claim to be small government. It's such a non-issue to them. So we're here with Mike from Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy. Mike, thanks for joining us today. Oh, no problem. So Mike, if people have never heard of you. Which strikes me as unlikely.

Which is very unlikely. Could you just tell the audience just a little bit about yourself? Okay, well, I do a podcast, A Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy. I take on a conspiracy, examine it, try to peel it apart a little bit, that type of thing. And that's about all I really do. I'm pretty, I have no life, so. Well, Mike, I wanted to ask you a question just straight out of the gate here. Your website is your first and last name.

Just fucking, it's just, I mean, it's just mikebowler.com. Fuck you. This is me. Are you at all concerned that the conspiracy theorists are going to start their own conspiracy wherein you are murdered? Right. I'm just curious, because most people online, they make up a name, right? Like some crazy fucking like, I'm Jack the Mad Hatter or some fucking half clever pseudo interesting bullshit. But you're just like, I'm fucking Mike Bowler dot com. I love it.

But that's that's ballsy. I'm just throwing that out there. It's just fucking straight out ballsy. You know, honestly, I'm not too worried, to be honest, because first of all, I think they're all chicken shits. to be honest because first of all I think they're all chicken shits they talk a big talk but when it comes down to when it hits the road

they just puss out that's the only way to describe it guys like Alex Jones he thumps his chest he yells at you between him his listeners they're all chicken shits.

I mean, there's video of Alex Jones cheap-shotting Geraldo Rivera. There's a cop trying to keep the two apart. You can see Jones go around the back of this cop and does one last shot at actually hitting Geraldo Rivera. I mean, it's like, if you're going to fight the guy, fight him face to face. Don't be this. Yeah, it's just fucking Geraldo Rivera. So, I mean, take the guy on for crying out loud.

I might not know who Alex Jones is. Who's Alex Jones? He's had that loud mouth in Austin, Texas. You'll see him at 9-11 rallies. He's done... He did a Piers Morgan after the Sandy Hook massacre. Was he the InfoWars guy?

Oh, that fucking guy. That fucking guy. Oh my god. So that guy gets... He gets punchy with people? Oh yeah. I would love to fight that guy. I would fight that guy. He's a little doughy though. The fighting, I would fight with that guy.

Holy shit. My money's on you, Tom. I would fight him. It would be the greatest day of my life. The guy is just a big blowhard. I mean, he pumps his chest up. He goes, I'm all for the Constitution and First Amendment. And he's in it for the money.

I think that's all he does. He loves the paycheck that he gets. Do you think some of these conspiracies keep getting propagated because of that paycheck? Because, I mean, these guys make – if you're a 9-11, let's say you're a 9-11 conspiracy theorist, you can make a lot of money off a book or that Loose Change video's shown all over the place. You know what I mean? There's some money to be made here. Oh, yeah. All of them. I mean, was it Jason Burmiss? He's one of the creators of Loose Change. He's got a lot of work out of it. He actually works for the network that Alex Jones is on. Alex Jones financed Loose Change, the final cut. So there's money floating around out there.

And at $20 a pop for a DVD, people just eat this stuff up. Yeah, they're getting ad revenue for their sites. They're getting ad revenue for everything on YouTube, things like that. So they're definitely making some money. Last estimates I heard, Alex Jones makes about $2 million a year. Fuck, what?

$2 million. For that guy? For that guy. I will definitely fight that guy. I'll do it for free! And David Icke, the guy that believes in the reptoids. I love that guy. Yeah, he's at two million.

What? Yes. For making up V? Like, it's V. He didn't even make it up. It's like just rehashing V. Are you kidding me? Like, he's basically saying, like, that campy television program was a real.

That guy? That guy. Holy shit. See, so why do I go to work? I don't know. But, Tom, the reason why we do this podcast is so we can get about $50 or $70 worth of donations every year. No kidding. This show took 126 episodes to purchase a microphone.

Yeah. Well, we're on the layaway planet, Kmart. We should really become conspiracy theorists. I'm telling you what, that's where the cash is. I mean, it's either be a preacher and hide behind tax-exempt status and get a megachurch, because those people make tons of money. And it doesn't seem like they could just do hookers and blow-to all the time anyway. It doesn't matter. There's no repercussions.

Or you could just be a conspiracy theorist and you get to take punches at Geraldo Rivera on occasion, which isn't a bad thing either. Why settle for either or? I say go fucking whole hog. I've just gone through all this JFK stuff. I've been trying to get a count of the number of books written on JFK, and it's well over 1,000 books.

So if you're talking – I mean I don't know what kind of numbers you could be talking. Wow. These authors are making – there's a billion-dollar industry out there, and it's all just to propagate bullshit. You know a lot about the JFK conspiracy stuff. I'm going to ask you a question about that. So like with the 9-11, you know, I know a little bit about several conspiracies. I don't know a lot about any one in particular one, but like with the, let's say that I'm going to take a couple, like, so the Sandy Hook elementary school people that had that

conspiracy, they're kind of on the, the sort of Obama wants to get rid of all guns. So there was a conspiracy and then like the people who thought about 9-11 they they want to blame george bush for attacking iraq and that was the motive behind 9-11 what's the motivation behind the president getting killed jfk getting killed like what was the what is the motivations that some of these conspiracy theorists bring up for the conspirators in that? Okay. There's actually hundreds. Okay.

We just want you to go through the first, like the best. Like 99. Okay. No problem. No problem. Over the past 50 years, all sorts of ideas have been thrown around. There's, of course, the Russians, the Cubans, the mafia. Let's see what else there was.

LBJ. Oh, LBJ did it. Yes. He was a super assassin. He had a license to kill them. He did. They should have realized after the fact, like, fuck, we only got to give that to the president, not the vice president. Yeah. The vice president gets the license to main.

It should be like a license to kill, but underneath the license it says, but not the president. You know, so that way there's no more fucking... No takesies-bagsies. Because they were really, they were like, oh, fucking eggs on my face. Did we not tell him that he can't kill the president? I forgot. God damn it. Richard Nixon's been...

I thought you were going to say Richard Simmons for a second, and I was going to decide that was the most fabulous fucking conspiracy possible. Richard Nixon, really? Yeah. There was something about his grudge against losing the election in 1960. Oh, for crying out loud. Then there's like the Secret Service has been linked in there now.

And then you got the combinations, the Russian Cuban, the Cuban Mafia, the Mafia. The Cuban sandwich. Yes. The Cuban sandwich. Yes. The Cuban. Yes. Delicious Cuban sandwich. Yes. And it all has to do with Kennedy getting, he was getting soft on Cuba.

There's also been the race thing. LBJ may have been involved because of, since he was from Texas, they wanted to – and Kennedy was starting to move toward more racial equality. That ticked off a lot of the Southern Democrats, so they enlisted LBJ to knock off the president. And it's all conjecture. I've yet to find any real – I mean, yes, the mafia. The mafia, I think, is the cool one. I think between Giancana from Chicago, there was – What was the mafia's – what would the mafia's motive be, though?

They got kicked out of Cuba when Castro took over. Oh, okay. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. And they held a grudge against Kennedy because – Well, okay. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. And they held a grudge against Kennedy because...

Yeah, because Kennedy really should have been like, oh, well, fuck it. I mean, all these other issues we're having with Cuba. We don't want... Just let the mob stick around. That doesn't make any sense at all. So when did you get interested in conspiracies? What made you get interested in that? Well, it was kind of a...

I think it was a kind of a melting together of a few things. Growing up, I was a real science nerd. I was the kid with the telescope and the microscope, really into science and history. I did, for a brief time, I was kind of turned on to the ancient aliens, you know, Von Daniken, all those books. You know, Von Daniken, all those books. And then I really got interested in Pearl Harbor, the attack on Pearl Harbor. And then in the book, At Dawn We Slept, toward the back was all this conspiracy stuff that's been written about Pearl Harbor as being a conspiracy so it was kind of like my skepticism my my my interest in history and i think even that's when i was really learning to be an atheist or i was realizing i was an atheist that uh it all kind of came together and i love history and that's that's why i try to focus on the history aspects more than the science in my show because there's hundreds of science shows all over the place. So I thought maybe doing purely history with the science mixed in, which would be a good niche within the market.

I mean, it all kind of melded together. Plus, I like good murder mysteries and you know that type of stuff so right so it kind of everything kind of gelled together and um in my early days i used to run the old uh computer bulletin board and uh i would see all these weird stories on these on these uh on i don't know if you're familiar with fido net event or no i mean it'd be like a forum on the internet type of thing, but it was all done through the bulletin boards. And there was always these stories about, I mean, at the time I was in it was Oklahoma City, the Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge and the Koresh in Waco. And there was all this crazy stuff coming across about how so-and-so in the government was doing this

and how the government killed Koresh, which maybe up front it was kind of true, but it was like they had it out for him because he was Christian, that type of stuff. My skeptical senses were twingling on those. And it's like, oh, well, wait a minute. You know, this is all bullshit. You know, it's like, yeah, I mean, what we were seeing is really an inept government trying to deal with a situation that they were not prepared for.

Yeah, yeah. And it all turned bad. What strikes me is that's a common theme for these conspiracy issues, right, is that there's a lot of chalking up to conspiracy what can be most readily explained by incompetence. Pretty much. You know, by incompetence and misunderstanding. But there's this – I think there's this human need that people have. And I think this is part of what fuels – and tell me if you think I'm totally fucking nuts. But part of what seems to fuel a lot of these conspiracy stories is this idea that all the pieces should connect just so.

And if all the pieces don't connect just so, then there's got to be another explanation. And the explanation so frequently is miscommunication and incompetence but because that's a less engaging story and because that's not this real nice neat bow to tie everything together instead it's like well we'll fucking stretch that string all the way over here to people with fucking reptile skin underneath their exactly fucking reptile people i'm gonna come back to those people every time we can by the way because i fucking love that shit what's your favorite crazy conspiracy man like what's the craziest one the one that like that you just can't help but love because it's so fucking nuts like this like sylvia brown crazy like really

oh they're all crazy uh they're all one and they're wonderfully. I mean, I love them. Actually, I love them all because it's actually, I mean, this is just the thought that went behind it. I mean, I have to give these guys credit. They got great imaginations and real, I mean, they could probably make bigger money writing, you know, science fiction novels or, you know or murder mysteries or whatever, but they've chosen

to, I don't know, go off the deep end. I mean, David Icke, reptilian stories, I mean, you can turn that into a whole trilogy or multi-trilogy. You could turn it into several short pieces to put on TV, like V, let's say. Yeah, exactly. Like a miniseries. Yeah. Or are there any that you think are credible?

Have you looked into any and thought, okay, maybe there's something here? That's the other fun thing about, there are real conspiracies. The 1919 White Sox, that was a real conspiracy. And when you looked at the news at the time and the guys that were looking into it, Featherston, if you ever saw Eight Men Out, that's kind of the rough story there. No one believed him. They thought he was nuts that the White Sox would throw the World Series. And it eventually came out.

Yeah, they did. And it eventually came out. Yeah, they did. You know, it's like now with Snowden and I think New York to intercept transatlantic telephone. And it was operated by, I don't remember exactly if they told you who it was, but it was like, they kept saying government, the government, this was a government room. And I'm like, when I first heard that, it's like, okay, that's kind of weird. But you know, it, it kind of makes sense if you're a, you know, if it's the NSA, they're tapping international phone calls. Okay. I can kind of deal with that, but it's still the way it came out. It was really real flaky,'s still, the way it came out, it was really, real flaky.

You know, it didn't really sound right. But now with Snowden and starting to spill the beans on the NSA, that may not have been a conspiracy after all. I mean, that's kind of the neat thing. And, you know, as a skeptic, I think it's important that we do reassess certain things, and that's what I've been doing with the NSA, what's the new revelations. I'm actually trying to follow that a little bit because it was a conspiracy that turned out to be true. Well, speaking of ones that are true, are there any that you would wish were real? Like, are there any that, like, the famous ones that you

kind of wish actually were real? The aliens. I really would like the aliens to be real. Like the ancient alien ones? Yes, either or. Either the current, you know, the ones that are butt-diddling Southerners or

or the ancient ones who are probably butt-diddling Southerners or the ancient ones who were probably butt-diddling Egyptians. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Those Egyptians have tight asses. That's why you got to butt-diddle them whenever you can. Probe the shit out of that thing. That's all I'm saying.

Now, what about those people with the face on Mars and stuff? There was big conspiracies with that, too. Yeah, it's still going on. They don't believe that the actual photos, they think those are doctored now because it comes out of NASA. Anything out of NASA is automatically conspiracy. That's the Richard Hoagland, Mike Baratipes. That Hoagland made his living on that Coast to Coast show.

That guy was on there all the time. Oh, yeah. I like how Stuart Robbins on his Exposing Pseudo-Astronomy, I love how he tears into the guy. I don't know. It sounds almost like he is harassing Mike Barra a little bit. But Mike Barra is a douchebag because there's that ziggurat on Mars thing. That was Mike Barra who founded it on a, what was it? His imagination? Right. I think that's exactly it, right?

Yeah, yeah. He found it. Where did he find it? What on fucking Mars? That's where he didn't find it. Yeah. It was the Call of Duty Zombies Forum. That's where he found the photo.

What? Are you serious? Yes yes he found it on a fucking incredible yes that's awesome that's fucking that's perfect that couldn't be any more perfect holy shit that's like that's like the setup for like a shitty fucking jerry bruckheimer movie you know what i mean like it's like some fucking hacker kid with his fucking Xbox One, like, dicking around. He fucking finds, he, like, plays so well,

he gets the secret level, and then the NSA gets the fucking bat phone goes off, like, sir, somebody's beat level N63. What the fuck? And then they, like, give him the keys to the universe, and he saves Jupiter or some bullshit. Like, oh, my God. Bruce Willis is in it. There's a fucking Aerosmith soundtrack.

That's all I know. I would watch that movie. I would see it. Yeah. That's good. I like that. So, Mike, if people were going to find your podcast, where would they look? MikeBoller.com.

That's my website. You can also find me on iTunes. It's under A Skeptic's Eye to Conspiracy. Where else can you find me? I think I'm on a couple other podcatchers that I don't know. I look at the stats and it tells me all these things and I don't know where else it is, but those would be the two good places to find me. Do you do another podcast too? I i'm also uh i am i'm the tom of the uh bitch bot report oh so so you're the you're the crappy one who doesn't do any work i'm the crappy one who doesn't do any work okay it's a great position to hold isn't it it's excellent i love it i i just i just read a bunch of stories uh comment on it and uh cefas

does all the heavy lifting on it i mean it's great it sounds like a hell of stories, comment on it, and Cephas does all the heavy lifting on it. Right. I mean, it's great. Cephas sounds like a hell of a guy. Right? Like Cephas, Cecil, you just got to find that guy. Yeah. It's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It's awesome. Yeah, that's fucking great. Mike, it was great having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks a lot for your time, Mike. Oh, no problem. Anytime.

So we only got a few pieces of email here. And we kind of ran long anyway. So we're going to just burn through this real quickly. I do want to thank everybody who rated us on iTunes this last week. We just switched over to News and Politics. So if you haven't rated us on iTunes and you're thinking about doing it, now's a great time to do it. It pushes us up in the rating. So if you can get over there and if you enjoy the show and you want to help the show out, that's a great way to do it. So head on over

to iTunes if that's something you do. If not, like we said earlier, you can go to Stitcher and Addison and playlist there. That also helps the show. We want to thank Frozen Atheist again. That's Frozen Atheist on Twitter, at Frozen Atheist. He created the song last week. So a bunch of people were asking who created the song. Frozen Atheist did. We put it at the beginning of the show last week.

So if you missed it, it's in episode 126, the very beginning. And it's walking to a dirty Glory Hole is what it's called, and it's very funny, made us laugh, and we wanted to include it last week, so thank you, Frozen Atheist, for creating it. Yeah, that song was awesome. I really do appreciate you sending it. We got a message from Joe from Jakostan,

and Joe listens to us while he goes to sleep, And so I don't understand how that's even possible with Tom's coughing and farting through. I mean, maybe that's sort of putting him to sleep though. It makes me worry about the sounds his wife makes next to him. It's like a marron heat. I will say at the end, he says enough with the Australian jibes. Yeah, that's never going to stop. Until Australia becomes less ridiculous yeah right

yeah it's got to become a little less ridiculous and less poisonous and if it does either of those things you have two choices you can either become less ridiculous or you can kill all of your wildlife those are your only two options right except for the koala well actually the koala bears right don't they have

chlamydia and they're mean or whatever and they all they make those weird sounds jake said they make those really strange sounds like mating season or whatever it's fucking angry about chlamydia sounds i make really weird sounds during mating season too so i'm not going to make fun of the koala bears for it so yeah that's that's called struggling to breathe yeah no that's what that is yeah that's called me having another heart attack you got got to take that CPAP mask off in order to really get the job done. Sarah has to get the defibrillator out most nights. She just wants you to put the turkey leg down. Just for a minute.

I did want to mention that I tried to fix the site up this last week. So we really quickly, for people who are website inclined, we use a WordPress site as the housing for our site. So that's the architecture. And it's wordpress.org. And I use a certain type of template. Well, that template needed to be updated. And I kept putting off, kept putting off. And then suddenly the site was just not working. It was to the point where I had put it off enough where it just was not functioning right. So I had to go and update it. Well, when I did, a bunch of stuff just got all borked up and weird and strange.

So at this point, I tried to fix the site to as best as I could remember what it was like. But some of the functions and the options got all weirded out. So I was just doing stuff from memory. So some people were asking us, you know, what changed and whatnot, but the site was kind of down and a little weird for a couple of days. I still don't think it's up to perfect stuff, but I can't get, I can't find a good template. Like I have a template that we've used and I was kind of thinking, Oh, maybe I'll change out the whole way it looks, but I just, I'm totally inept when it comes to WordPress. And I'm like,

well, I'll find a template and none of the templates. I look for podcasting templates, Tom. And the templates cost like a hundred dollars or something like that just to use like a podcasting template. And I'm like, fuck you. I'll just keep using what I got. Right. So that's like for a template. Well, you gotta like, you have to like buy like a certain architecture. I don't even know what it is. Like, I don't even understand what it is. But the one I searched up is a podcast theme and it looks great. Like, I mean, like, I think that the podcast theme itself looks very good. architecture so not only do i have to buy that theme which costs like 50 bucks let's say i also have to buy their you know i i forget what it's called but it's like an architecture type of their like so i have to get like like i have to set my site up to even be able to use this theme fuck that so it's not only like 40 bucks but it's like another 50 bucks on top so it's like 100 bucks just to get this nice podcast, which looks great.

Looks fucking great. Mark Maron's website is based off of it. Looks fucking great. But it's 100 bucks. And I'm like, yeah, well, I'm already in the hole for the podcast. I'll be like, here's another $100. So that's why the site was all fucking wonky and weird all week. So I'm sorry about that.

I'm going to try to fix it. If there's problems, send them to us and we'll try to figure out what the deal is um and remember when i say we i mean i mean i'll try to figure out what the deal is i'll be vaguely aware of the word website yeah i've heard some of these words before i remember we when we were doing everyone's a critic and you're, you had asked me for something. We were talking, and you're like, you should point him to the site. And I was like, we have a website? It's on the internet?

Yeah, you've been an asshole for a long time. I really am not getting any better. Like, this is it. This is the fucking peak of my performance. And with that, we're going to leave you as always with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative,

acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free 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, Death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. 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. We'll see you next time.