Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 345: Bad PR / Fake News

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

Special thanks to Michael Marshall for joining us @MrMMarsh. You can find his work: Stories covered in episode: Extra Clips: 

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Hey, C-Saw and Tom, this is Ryan Summers from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And I'd like to let you guys know that Ishmael Brown and the Black Lady from London are not your only Black listeners. I, too, am a Black listener, and I am offended and dismayed that you guys think you only have three of us listening to your podcast. Keep up the great work. I love you guys. This show is probably one of the best atheist podcasts that I follow. Oh, and glory old. Hey, family people. This is Ellie from North Carolina.

I just thought I'd say I found you guys, and you've been a real light in the dark for me. I found you guys and you've been a real light in the dark for me. I live in Bones Park, North Carolina, and everyone around here is completely, completely, insanely religious. And I appreciate everything that you guys are doing. You give hope to humanity and glory to all the mothers out there. The best part of waking up Is jizzing in a shop 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. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago 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 makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome back. This is episode 345 of Cognitive Dissonance. And we are joined by Mike Marshall from the Merseyside Skeptics Society. Also from the Lady Gaga blog, Bad Romance.

I hear really good things about that. We'll talk to him in some detail about that. Ooh la la, or however that goes. I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, heaven for certain, you make half an effort to get one of my projects right by name. One of these times you actually use the correct title, even just once would be fantastic.

And of course, from the Be Reasonably Skeptical podcast. This has merchandise, by the way. It does. There are two t-shirts out there in the world. They're out in the world somewhere. We gave Marsh a

t-shirt and we gave Andy a t-shirt that said Be Reasonably Skeptical. That was a beautiful piece And we gave Andy a t-shirt that said, Be reasonably skeptical? We took their logo. That was a beautiful piece of, that was a beautiful visual gag. It was very funny. We gave it to him at QED.

Yeah, we gave it to them. They threw it in the audience. As soon as he gave it to him, Andy looked at it and was like, Huh? And he threw it in the audience. He's such a dick. That was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I've still got got mine i've still got mine

i cherish it uh if i ever do any painting and decorating it'll be first on to protect anything else that i wear from uh from spillages or other such uh ruination all jokes aside you know marsh you've got you've got a uh a project a bad pr project that you're working on. And unfortunately, it's super fucking relevant. It's terrifyingly relevant right now in a way that makes me die inside in all the few ways I'm not already dead inside. Yeah, it feels really weird to have been plowing this furrow for probably about five or six years. I think that I've been kind of doing the bad PR stuff on the side as one of the projects that I'm really interested in and see it suddenly shift into focus in terms of relevance. Because a lot of the time,

the type of stuff that I do in that area, it tends to expose relatively light, silly, inconsequential stories with the point of being that, as we'll get into, the fact that this story got published isn't just about this story. It's about all the mechanisms which allowed it to get published, and those mechanisms exist and are exploited by far more serious stories,

far more serious people who are looking to get their agendas pushed. They're pushing at an open door, and I'm trying to show you the door as much as anything else. But, yeah, it suddenly has become very, very clear that this is an issue that goes beyond a few companies and corporations assure you the door as much as anything else. But yeah, it suddenly has become very, very clear that this is an issue that goes beyond a few companies and corporations trying to get some cheap time in the newspapers and goes to the very heart of what the fuck is going on with your country right now. And it's kind of weird, actually, because, I mean, you can do a show where you

talk about politics a lot. And I'm guessing some people have said to you, well, you know, President Trump, as much as anything else, it must be great for you guys because you must get so much content out of that which must feel a little bit like saying to someone yeah this polio epidemic is terrible but your iron lung business must be booming right now so you must be absolutely delighted you know you guys are thriving we are killing it in iron lungs it's the best year for iron lungs you know it's the thing is like i'm sure the show will continue to do better and better as the apocalypse draws more and more nigh. But I'm just not sure what all that fame, popularity, and money is going to buy me in the road scenario. Jim Baker buckets.

It's going to buy you a lot of Jim Baker buckets. Right, exactly. Oh God, what if it turns out Jim Baker was right the entire time and you guys will have egg on your face for taking the piss out of this entire time. It's okay because the world will have ended, Marsh. No one will care anymore. What they will

care about is how much, how quickly they can break down their own children to save them to eat them later. So I want to talk- Baby jerking. It's delicious. All you got to do is put it in the dehydrator.

I'm going to cure this baby. Oh, is he sick? No, I'm going to cure him. I'm going to cure him. I need more salt. I'm just deciding if it's smoke or salt. That's it. Get me that teriyaki.

But I want to talk, before we get into the fucking dumpster fire that is the American media and their relationship with our current president. I want to talk a little bit about bad PR. And you tell a story about a golden boat. So can you tell us a story about a golden boat and a golden like iPad and things like that? I know that I know that this is something that that that you've spoken about before. Yeah, it is. And I guess things being measly covered in gold is, again, frighteningly relevant to your country

right now. We are gilding literally everything. Yeah. So this was one of the first things. Once I started looking into how stories made the news and why stories got selected and why stories made it through past the natural filters that a journalist should have. There were certain stories that kind of caught my eye. And there was a couple in particular that were all about consumer products that were gold plated or made of solid gold. And there was one about- Or encrusted in dinosaur bones. Please, please, please do not gloss over the one that is supposedly encrusted in dinosaur bones yeah this was the ipad 2 just at the start of it being released it was uh five the five million pound ipad 2 and i think five million pounds is roughly uh like 40 million

dollars right now i think in this post-credits world i don't know pretty soon we're gonna have to give up pounds and actually trade in dinosaur bones. We're going to be raiding the national history museum because that's the only thing we'll have. That's actually worth anything. But yeah, apparently some guy,

uh, Constitution for your Rosetta stone. I, I, I do want to interject very briefly with, with the idea that like you're taking an animal that is become obsolete and you're encrusting it or using it to encrust a device that will soon become obsolete. Like of all the things to encrust in something like with dinosaur bones or

something that you're going to trade it at fucking GameStop in two years. Oh, the iPad three is out. I'm going to trust this with fucking pterodactyl wings or whatever. How do you upgrade? You know? Yeah. Well, there was even like a mobile phone from about 2009 that they kind of made out of gold. Basically, so there's loads of these consumer products made out of gold. Five million pounds for an iPad 2, that's gold and dinosaur bones.

There was a yacht that was meant to be the world's most expensive yacht. That was three billion pounds made out of solid gold. How does it float? It's gold well exactly exactly you know if it's got three billion pounds worth of gold on it it shouldn't it that should be an obvious question if this is carrying three billion pounds worth of gold how does this stay it's like a neutron star i love to the idea that like people wouldn't i would swim up to it with a fucking file i would just file some gold off of that thing every now and again.

Right. Like, where do you moor a boat covered in solid gold? You know, the only place to put it is in a boathouse made of diamonds. And dinosaur bones. Yeah. Like, it just gets exponentially more ridiculous. But I mean, it's not it's not that these stories were being reported in fairly fringe places. I mean, these are in national newspapers in the UK and internationally. The Daily Mail, right? The Daily Mail was reporting some of this stuff?

The Daily Mail reported it. The Sun reported it. The Sun is a horrible girl. The Sun has a page five, girl. This is not like... Page three. Page three. Come on.

Let's not be ridiculous now. You don't want to have to turn the page twice to see tits. This is your version of a reputable newspaper? In a national reputable newspaper, you don't want to have to turn two pages to see tits. Come on. Be reasonable about this. So there are loads of these kinds of stories about, and it was all stuff like, you know, these kinds of high-end products that were being bought up by celebrities. And it was kind of about how the other half live kind of stuff. And, you know, there was even ones where it was a BMX bicycle made entirely out of

gold. But you guys have hit on the problem here very, very quickly, is that surely these products don't actually exist. You know, it should be very obvious to ask the question, well, does this product exist? But none of the newspapers that were publishing these, and, you know, it was in Time magazine, none of them would actually question, do any of these products actually exist?

And when you look at the picture of the supposed solid gold yacht in the sun, you can actually find the same of the supposed solid gold yacht in the sun, you can actually find the same yacht, not solid gold, on the website of a company that sells yachts. And that's the discount version. That's the thing. Like, you know, when you go to buy something, it's like you get good, better, best options. But they all have a good name, right? So it's like, do you want the deluxe, the ultra premium premium or the super unleaded or fucking whatever yeah like like a starbucks coffee that the smallest one is called tall fuck off that makes no fucking sense that's not how words work in fact i blame starbucks for all of this stuff around the erosion of truth in the world um but yeah but if you see you see this picture of a yacht which is an identical picture but it's not gold and that's because that was the original picture

of that yacht and it's just been photoshopped and stuck up on and put out in a press release to newspapers all around the world. And someone's going to publish it. And actually, all of these gold products all came from the same person, who's a guy actually based in Liverpool called Stuart Hughes, who was a goldsmith, apparently. In my other job, you know, I've worked in marketing and digital marketing for 10 years or so now. And he was actually a client of mine at one point. And he stopped being a client of ours when he started asking us to Photoshop some of this stuff, genuinely, and put together some other stuff. And there was all sorts of other kind of hinky stuff going on there as well. But there was

nothing there to make me think, it's weird that this guy is the source of all these stories. And there's no evidence that any of those products exist. You know, the bike, the bicycle, the BMX that was made of solid gold, apparently, was literally spray painted gold. But this made national news. Solid gold, spray painted gold. I'm fucking, I feel like you're quibbling. You're a little pedantic here.

So, okay. So getting these stories in seems to be pretty easy, but what's the purpose behind getting the story in though? Well, for him, he is, uh, he's able to use this, uh, press coverage as, uh, essentially testimonials. This is how reputable I am. This is how wonderful my work is. It's covered all around the world. I'm an internationally

renowned goldsmith. So the stuff that he actually does do, which was essentially cheap gold plating of whatever you give him, um, he can sell that service on. So, oh yeah, I do these products that end up being bought by Jersey-Z and Kanye and Beyonce and people like that. So you want to come to me for your product. He's the goldsmith to the stars. Exactly. That's what he wants to set himself up as.

He can make himself the goldsmith to the stars without actually being a goldsmith to the stars. Yeah, without doing any of that stuff. Which is amazing because I hear he gold plated a star. But Chris, I mean, he didn't even have to claim that he sold any of these products to anyone because he can just point to the newspaper coverage and say, oh, do you see this story? That's my work, you know, and nothing more than that. So very clearly, his side of that equation is pretty obvious. You know, if you were to try

and buy a full-page advert in Time magazine and the Daily Mail and The Sun, it's going to cost you a lot. And everybody who looks at it is going to think, well, that's an advert. Of course, they want me to think this because that's an advert. We think of editorial and adverts very, very separately. We encounter them and engage them in a very different way. Whereas if you can spend a little bit of money putting together a press release and an interesting-looking story, no matter how fake it might actually be, and then get several different newspapers or magazines to run it, then you're maximizing the amount of impact you can have for very little cost. But also, you're not the one making the claim. The reputation of those publication houses are

making those claims. The newspapers are making the claim. So if you publish in the Daily Mail, it's the Daily Mail seeing this product exists, which your average reader is much more likely to accept than seeing an advert for a company. So his side of it's clear. But what isn't clear is why the journalists

wouldn't question these stories. You know, if it's obvious to three dickheads like us knocking around on a podcast that this thing is nonsense, then someone whose job is to check facts and validate information should be able to spot this really quickly. The problem is that they just don't have the time, the skills, the inclination anymore. And this is kind of a core thing in the newsroom.

Can I push on that a little bit? Because I wonder if there isn't something else that's going on too. And I don't know. So, you know, if I'm wrong, just tell me, but it, it strikes me that there has to be more than just, you know, kind of, there's no time or inclination, but there must be some incentive there. You know, I mean, we, we, people work, we're driven by incentives where we're driven away from things by disincentives. There must be some incentive for a journalist to, to run with a story like this is, is, is there, and I'm not saying it's necessarily a nefarious incentive, but I wonder, is it the case that they can get more stories done quicker if they're less diligent? Is it the case that their workday responsibilities or their pressures have changed in such a way that

they're incentivized to take this information? Whereas maybe in days of yore, they would have to go run this down and gather the information. Now they're sort of being fed information, right? Journalists, I think, are getting fed information by press releases and other things in ways that maybe haven't always been the case or have been less the case. And are they being incentivized by systems now to be less diligent? That is exactly it. See, they've always... That's why I asked it.

I wanted it to be exactly it. That is exactly it. See, they've always... That's why I asked it. I wanted it to be exactly it. It's exactly right. So they've always been fed press releases, but typically they would have just ignored a lot of them. And if you talk to a journalist who was working in like the 80s, 90s, it was often a fax machine, a fax would come through, and they'd often just station the fax machine above the bin and just let it all kind of flow straight in the bin.

As an aside, I used to work for a place that was a press release company. They were a PR company. Sure. And we used to, we used, I used to Photoshop like ads, sort of ads, but not ads. They had to look like stories. And then we would, you know, send them what looked like a news story. And we sent it to, we would fax it to, like you said, it used to come in and fax. We would, I the fax machine and enter numbers for an hour and a half, just standing at the fax machine, faxing it to different newspapers all across the country. Yeah, yeah. So if you think that's what was going on then, now if you imagine, even if there were the same number of PR companies, but you don't have to spend an hour and a half to send it to everyone. You can just do a mass mail out. You can very easily see how, as an average journalist, the amount of stuff that you'll send is going to rocket up through email. But why would you accept

that? Well, if you think about how the news actually works, and typically, if you look back maybe 30, 40 years ago, something like that, newspapers, certainly in the UK, and I imagine in the US too, tended to be owned by newspaper men, you know, newspaper magnets. They typically were men. And they were captains of industry who'd made their money elsewhere. And now they wanted the power and prestige of having a newspaper. But around about, you know, sort of 80s, 90s, that kind of era, certainly in the UK, that started to change with people like Rupert Murdoch, people like Robert Maxwell, who bought the change with people like Rupert Murdoch, people like Robert Maxwell, who bought the Mirror, people like Richard Desmond, who bought the Express

and the Daily Star and still owns those. Those people were businessmen who wanted to make money out of journalism. So if you're wanting to make money, what you do is you see where there are overheads that you can cut and you start laying off staff. And so what happens is why have somebody who is a specialist courtroom reporter sat in a courtroom every day when you can snack that person and have your general staffer journalist call the courtroom at the end of the day and say, send me over whatever information you have about the interesting cases that came through that day. You're still covering those cases. The specialism of being able to identify the nuance of those cases is

completely gone. And you're basically having to accept whatever the courtroom sends you as fact, but you're getting the same amount of content from less people, from fewer staff rather. Then ramp up the fact that who buys newspapers anymore? Who puts the money into journalism? Almost nobody. And because there are certainly print newspapers, their circulations are way down, the advertising reviews rate way down. So there's fundamentally much less money involved in journalism, which also has an impact on the number of people who are working there. And if you're now in a position where even if you had to fulfill the same number of stories and articles and words per day with fewer staff members, you'd be in a bit of a clinch.

But we also have online. So a journalist will be expected not just to write for the newspaper at the end of the day, but to get a story up online as quickly as possible. And because in a world where it's important to get the most clicks to a story as you can, often immediacy will trump accuracy. So it's better to be first and wrong than last and right. So you'll rush to print. So the amount of pressure on journalism is much, much higher. And there was a study in 2008 from Cardiff University's journalism department, which looked at the amount of copy that journalists were writing per day

and compared it to their contemporaries 20 years previously. And they found that journalists today are writing three times as much copy every single day as they would have had to have done 20 years before that. When you increase the workload three to threefold like that on somebody, I mean, how in the hell are they supposed to do a good job? You've got a quantity over quality issue that is, I mean, I don't know. What's the solution to that? Is there one? I mean, this is such a cycle. Everything that you're describing, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm interrupting anyway. Everything that you're describing is, you know, it feeds itself, right?

The system feeds itself. It seems terribly cyclical. And then another major part, we talked to Cara Santa Maria on our show about a Stanford study about fake news. And one of the things that she was talking about, and this was also brought up on Thomas's show when he had the people who actually did this study.

The researchers who did this study. What show was that? Was it Atheistically Inquired? It was Be Reasonably Atheist. Was it seriously talking? I think that's what they're... But one of the things that the researcher said was people that are young have a much harder time

telling the difference between an ad and a regular story, especially when it's written in such a way that it seems like it's actually written like a story. So a PR story like you're describing, younger people have a harder time recognizing that that's not a real thing or that it's trying to sell them something. Sure. It gets way worse than that, though. So I remember I heard that particular show and there was a point that I wanted to to bring up but i'll sort of i want to lay a bit more of the landscape before i get to that um so you're saying it worse is it a hellscape can we just okay if anything about the last year and a half has taught you anything is that everything always gets worse that's the new mantra you have no idea what the last year and a half has taught me

okay so so you're saying that um the amount of money and the the fact that there are fewer bodies is a cycle which is going to perpetuate. There's another factor that plays on here, because where are all the people who were going to go in journalism? Where are those guys now? Podcasting. Vlogging. Yeah, you wish, you wish. Not many of us are making money out of this. There's very, very few of us making money like this. No, you go into PR because you've got all the skills because you might have gone through a journalism degree or you might have gone through an English degree like I did, a communication degree, something like that.

You might even have done a few years as a journalist, which makes you a much more saleable asset to PR because you know how to write like a journalist. And so if what you're trying to do is to reach out to journalists in a way that makes it as easy as possible for them to accept the content that you're sending them. Just write it for them. That's exactly what you do. It's exactly what you do. And it's why the days of mass mailing through fax and then mass mailing through email are gone. Good PR people will not send the same email to a hundred different publications expecting to publish it. Instead, what you do is you know what story you're trying to write, what the angles on that story are. You look at, say, the Daily Mail because you want to get it in the Daily Mail. You find a journalist at the Daily Mail who's written a similar story on a similar kind of topic.

You look at that story and then you write your story to be almost identical in terms of tone and style. A good PR will even understand the in-house copy editing style of the publication they're targeting. So you've written a story that looks like a Daily Mail story and you're sending it to a Daily Mail journalist. You're writing their paper for them. We're writing their term paper. That's exactly it. In fact, it got to a point where there was a story in the mirror about 18 months ago, something like that, about this lady who had a very aggressive form of breast cancer, I think. And she said she wasn't having chemotherapy. She was treating it entirely with juices and cleanses and all this kind of stuff. And it was all very-

Exactly. Yeah. It was all praising her for this. And I spoke to the health editor of The Mirror and said, when you publish a story like this, you are putting your readers at risk of thinking this is a good idea and following suit. And his reason for publishing this, his justification was, we didn't write this. The person in the byline doesn't work for us. They work for a news agency who delivered that copy to us. So we didn't do it. It's not our fault. It's like, it's under your masthead. It's yours. The people who read this, when they buy the Mirror, they're not thinking, oh, here's an article from Cater's news agency that happens to be published in the Mirror. This is a story in the Mirror. You can't absolve yourself of the responsibility. That is outrageous.

It is. So this will kind of expand out the story a little bit more, is that they think, well, you know, we're there to fulfill copy. So if you think that a journalist's job is three times as much content as it would have been 20 years ago, I think there are maybe two different ways that you approach that problem. You know, there's a couple, but I can see two distinct ways. One is that you do a shittier job on all of the stories you're going to write for that day so let's see what i would five or six stories of course it would tom that's what you do to every single episode of this show i listen but let's say you're writing six stories for the day you can you can spend an hour ish on all six of your stories and you're not going to do anything good in an hour to file 500 words, 500 words of copy,

you know, spend 500 words to write 500 words, a copy on a story in an hour. You can't do any background checking. You can't do any fact checking. You can't call up anyone and see if it's even true. And bear in mind when I've done stuff that got published, uh,

front page of the BBC, when we did the 10 23 overdoors, that was front page of BBC without anybody from the BBC calling me to check if it actually happened at all. Shut the fuck up, what? Oh, yeah. So I spent a fortnight trying to get the BBC

interested in that story and they were not interested. They said, yeah, maybe we'll be involved or not. I offered them every kind of level of access. They could be one of the overdoses, not interested. I gave one interview

to the Press Association that morning and it ran in every national newspaper and was front page, front story, top story of the BBC for the day. And nobody checked. The only person who checked was a minor Scottish newspaper who called me up at about 4pm. No one ever checked because I spoke to the Press Association, a news agency, and they think, well, if it's in the Press Association, it has to be true. The Press Association are a good name. They must do all their fact checking. Of course, the Press Association, being a news agency, are also under scrutiny, also under kind of pressure.

People might not know what a news agency is, but effectively it's if you are the BBC or if you are the Daily Mail and you want to get a story from a far-flung corner of the world like Zimbabwe or something like that, rather than the Daily Mail or London, yeah. Some meaningless garbage town. One of those places, yeah. Rather than the Daily Mail having somebody, yeah. Some meaningless garbage town. One of those places, yeah.

Terrible place to live. Rather than the Daily Mail having someone risking their lives walking the streets of Chicago every day. They don't do that. The Press Association will have someone there. The Press Association will have someone in Zimbabwe. We kill people from the Press Association every week.

I'll tell you what, if you looked like you were from Zimbabwe, you'd have a better time. But this is really important, right? Because if you trust the Press Association fully, then what you do is they will report to you what happened. And if you want to be a journalist, you then use that as a starting point for your story and add a lot of detail because the job of a news agency is to report accurately rather than to aim for truth. And that sounds like a very technical distinction, but the implications are really important, right? So let me give you an example. It's one I always use. Robert McGarvey tomorrow gives a speech about why he is the single greatest president any African nation

has ever seen. And he's done nothing but good for his people. If you're reporting that accurately, you say, well, he did this. He gave a speech at this place, this many people came, it started at this time, and here are the words that he said. If you're going to report it truthfully, you add in, here's why he's lying. Here's why that's bullshit. Here's the historical context. Here's everything he's ever done that shows the words he's saying are not true. So that's the distinction between accuracy and truth. If your remit is to report accurately, you stop before saying, six months ago, he was involved in this. And a year ago, he did this to his people. And this is what life is like in Zimbabwe, because that's not about his

speech. That's the wider context that his speech is in. And that's not your job necessarily as a news agency. But if you're a responsible newspaper or a responsible publication, you take that initial piece. So you as BBC, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, all those people will sign up to the internal feed of the Press Association. They'll pay a large sum of money every year to get access to all the Press Association's starting points on stories, and they'll take those and they'll rework it. And you have to rework it to make it journalism, because then you aren't just accepting what's true. When it came to the 1023 overdose, they all just published exactly what the Press Association wrote, never added anything to it. None of them added anything to it. And this happens all the

time. In fact, at one point, the BBC had an internal memo that said, if you see something from the Press Association, you can print it verbatim, because we'll assume they've done the copy checking because they're the press association. They've got a good reputation. And they are one of the best news agencies out there. But it's important that you still do that extra checking. And that's just not happening because journalists don't have the time to do that. And they trust the news agencies. Problem is, the news agencies make their money from journalism. They sell to the journalists. If there's less money in advertising, make their money from journalism. They sell to the journalists. If there's less money in advertising and less money in income from subscription, there's less money that the newspapers compare, which means there's less money they compare the news agency, which means

the news agency lays off staff and accepts PR every now and again because they're under exactly the same commercial pressures. And now we have a mechanism where not only is the journalist, maybe a journalist would turn down a press release from a PR company, but if that press release was published in a news agency that they trust, they wouldn't turn it down. They'd assume it's fine. And in fact, there was an amazing study from Bournemouth University's journalism department that interviewed people involved in PR companies. And one of those people who ran a PR company said, well, we were finding that some of our stories were getting filtered out by journalists. So we bought a news agency.

And what we do is, a lot of the news that we push to a news agency is normal news agency stuff. But every now and again, we'll throw one of our press releases in and hey-ho, there it is by exactly the same journalist who was ignoring us before. Now they're accepting our press releases

and they don't know it's us. So that gets quite dark. I got to say, though, one interesting point that you made earlier, which is sort of a glimmer of hope, as you were saying, the more subscriptions, the more money that comes into these places, the better job they can do. And we've noticed that since since Trump has declared war on the media here in our country and has called literally everything except for the stuff that completely gives him glowing reviews, fake news, there has been an influx of money to these organizations. And on a large scale, the New York Times is doing better than it has in many, many, many years. Failing New York Times.

No, I think that is an absolute key, is that financing the journalism you care about is one of the solutions to this. I think it's only one of them. It is only one of them. Because I think, like I say, if you go back to your job as a Daily Mail journalist, and like I said, there's two ways of doing your six stories for the day.

One is to pump out six shitty stories you spent an hour on because you're taking a press release from the press association and various, or you're taking a report from the press association, things like that. The other way of doing it is to spend half an hour each or less on three or four of those stories and just accept whatever's in your inbox from anybody. And then you've got the rest of the day to do two really, really good quality stories. And you do a hell of a bang up job on those. You're absolutely brilliant at them. This is responsible, perfectly sourced, wonderful journalism.

Two thirds of your output that day were shit. Two thirds of your output was probably not true and you facilitated the entire degradation of the news cycle. But you come away thinking those two stories I wrote were fantastic. I want to revisit. I want to take us back a little bit. I want to revisit this idea of accuracy versus truth in reporting. What struck me immediately was the difference is here's a set of facts versus here's a set of facts and an analysis, right? Yes. When you add the analysis piece on, that's what you're saying is truth now, right? That's the difference between Mugabe gave a speech and it happened and here are the you know, Mugabe gave a speech and it happened

and here are the words and Mugabe gave a speech and it happened and here are the words. And as you said, here's why it's bullshit. But I wonder too, are we in a place where we need to be able to identify and understand the difference between analysis and editorializing? Because it strikes me that editorializing is always that sort of deeply slanted spin world that we also, you know, may not be fake, but is also troublesome and problematic, right? And that is different than real analysis from a point of integrity. And so I wonder, is the problem a little more nuanced there as well? I think if you look at something like, well, Breitbart is analysis, but it's obviously deeply slanted and utterly flawed analysis. But I think there is a difference between,

I guess, maybe analysis isn't the right word, because obviously editorializing is the kind of thing that the Sun, the Mail over here in this country, the Express, which will run a front page saying that the pound has soared after Theresa May's latest speech. And that's a good example of kind of editorialising. And that was a front page. Pound soars as Theresa May talked of hard Brexit. And then you look at what that soaring of the pound was. And it's effectively the cliff that we fell off in June after the Brexit result, we've gone back up a tenth or a quarter or a one percent of that cliff.

But in the relative terms, looking over the space of a day, it looks like that's a soar. But I think then the difference between editorializing and what real journalism is, is putting it in clear context, clear and sourced context. But I take your point that, yeah, being able to distinguish between good in a moral sense and an evil analysis is important. I'm not really sure what the key is there. Yeah. So now the problem is just that much worse. You know, it's like, how do you tell real news from fake news? How do you tell, you know, good analysis from this deeply slanted analysis? It's a consumer of news.

I found myself yesterday. I just want to tell a quick story and then have you jump off on it. I found myself yesterday. I looked at my phone and there was a tweet out by the Associated Press. So it's the Associated Press, right? Yeah, I saw the same tweet. I think I know what you're going to say. press. So it's the Associated Press, right? Yeah, I saw the same tweet.

I think I know what you're going to say. And it said, you know, Trump is mobilizing 100,000 National Guard troops to go round up illegal immigrants. And I saw it and I was like, what the fucking what? And I reacted pretty much like that in the grocery store,

which is totally appropriate, by the way. And then, you know, it turns out that that was bullshit. It's just bullshit. And as a consumer... In what sense was that bullshit? It's not happening. And what was the source at the AP Quarter? I don't know, because it was a tweet.

That was the problem, too, is that it was just a tweet. All I saw was a tweet while I was at the grocery store, right? And I don't have time to read the article. But as a consumer, I get... I didn't go to the grocery store, right? But I saw it. And then it's like, you know, first of all, we're headline driven as consumers. We look at something from the AP and it's like, okay, now I can't trust the AP.

You know, Trump said something the other day, you know, he says, look at what's happening. He says, we got to keep our country safe. Look what's happening in Germany. Look what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? And I wonder if he's having the same, and I don't want to give credit where it shouldn't be due, but I wonder if he's having the same trouble that I'm having. As a consumer of news information, you get a headline, you're moving through your day,

you read a headline, you react to the headline, and you don't have time necessarily to go back and vet everything. The level of vetting, the depth of vetting that's required is getting more and more challenging to do. And the tweet, I want to read the tweet aloud here. Breaking Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants. And then and then a whole bunch of news organizations are saying they basically dropped the ball that it's not. But the way that's worded considers mobilizing doesn't mean that it's happening, right? No, right. Yeah. But it's there to spark.

Sure. And when I read that, I'm like, holy shit. If I hear that Trump is considering mobilizing something, the man is not full of deep consideration. Like, he probably said he's doing something, right? Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily always mean—I think this is the key point, really. Because the AP's job, basically, is to report what's being said, really. I mean, it's a little bit more than that, but it's to their reporters rather than journalists, rather than analysts. And I think that's a way to, you always have to view the AP that way, is if Trump tomorrow

said, we're going to bomb Jupiter, the AP would report Trump administration considers bombing Jupiter. But I think that's kind of key, is that understanding the difference between, the associated price is not journalism. It isn't. It's reporting on what's happening. And that might be a thing that's actually happening or a thing that someone says they're thinking of doing at some point. That's kind of what their job is to do. Now, whether they should have reported that, probably not, because without being able to source it to any, without being able to link it to anything tangible, anything reality, then it's for a president you have at the moment, which is an unprecedented challenge to understand what he actually thinks he wants to do at any given point

and what he's serious about and what he's not. I can understand why the AP would jump on that. You know, what's crazy, again, is as a consumer, these are fine distinctions. And they're fine enough distinctions that we have to even have this conversation about, you know, what's the difference between reporting and journalism? You know, I'll be honest, that's not a consideration I'd ever thought about before. It's absolutely key, though. It really is. And I wonder if part of this as well is the immediacy of everything. Is that, go back 15 years or whatever, if the Associated Press are putting that out on their

wire, that makes it to news headquarters, basically, where the journalists and editors might sit around thinking, is this something we should report on? And by the end of the day, they might think, actually, no, this didn't come to anything. We're not going to report on that. It doesn't make it in the newspapers. We never know. We never see that because that filter has happened. And partly because that filter has been given the time to happen. And partly because that filter at the time maybe had a bit better resource to be able to do it. Those two checks have been taken away because we're getting access to what the journalists are getting access to. And that can often be very good. And sometimes, obviously, clearly, it can be very, very bad,

because a journalist doing their job properly filters out crap. And one of the most important jobs of any editor, and it's something I talk about with newspaper editors and other similar people, their most important job is keeping stuff out of newspapers, not what goes in. Their job is spiking the crap. And they do a good job of it, by and large, under quite tricky circumstances, I think. And what we see is the part of the crap that makes it through that process. So that timing issue is causing us a massive amount of problem when it comes to analyzing what's actually real in the news. And even the time that you were sitting there, Tom, is that I read it. I saw it in the grocery store. I only saw the headline. I didn't have time to read anymore.

And I reacted to it. We need to get better at not doing that right across the board. That's going to be a key, key problem. And it's only going to carry on causing issues for us until we figure out a way of not reacting to the headline and actually understanding what's in it. Because I think if you'd have been able to click through and see that this is the AP saying Donald Trump in a statement yesterday or sources from the White House are saying that they're thinking about maybe doing this, I don't think you'd be reacting in a, oh my God, this is a terrible thing that's actually happening. You'd think, Christ, these people are mental. I hope they never do that. And that's a different way to think about it. That's a very different way to think about it. Something is happening. Oh my gosh, our government's incompetent.

You know, I get the point. And I think, you know, we run into this all the time because a lot of the stuff that we cover is from right wing watch or raw story because what we do is we take the clip and then we play the clip and then we comment on the clip. And while we're not really reading the story

that goes along with it, but most of these have such click baity titles that they don't actually say what they said in the piece. Or they say it and it's so taken out of context that it doesn't really fit the narrative that they're trying to paint through the headline. The headline is a very different narrative than the actual clip. The clip can still be very egregious and still have some things in it that are horrible. And that when you listen to it, you're like, I can't believe someone said that,

but it's bad enough. There's no reason to escalate it by making something up. Well, there is a reason to escalate it by making something up, and that's to make you read it on their site and not on someone else's sites because they have their Google ads

on the side to get ad revenue. And kind of, I think, there's a straight line between basically, you can go back to search engine optimization and people who would try and game that system. And once Google stopped you being able to game that system, I think there's a straight line into clickbait into fake news. It's kind of like fake news is weaponized clickbait, I think. And yeah, that relies entirely on the fact that we will pass along stories without properly reading them and we'll pass stuff around and based on which headlines caught our attention. And I think we all need to get better at not sharing the thing with a sensationalist headline if the headline doesn't reflect the reality.

You know, don't share anything unless you've actually read it. And I've been guilty of it. You know, I try not to be, but I'm just as guilty of it often. But yeah, read the thing. And if the thing doesn't match the headline, find a place where the thing does match the headline and share that one. So we can try and take some of the weight out of ClickBit, take some of the power out of it. Because it is, I'd love to see research on the psychology of ClickB because it's whether it's uh it has uh flourished intentionally or whether it's been a sort of a natural competitive evolution we've gotten to a point where the people who are very good at clickbait are very very fucking good at clickbait

are getting you to to do the only thing they care about which is to click on their site and i'd love to see what exactly an analysis of exactly what psychology it's exploiting, because I think it's very, very smart. It's always titties. It is. That is true. It's titties. Yeah, I think the weaponized clickbait is what's driving fake news. And I think it's very, very clear that for one reason or another, that has been particularly weaponized with one side of the political spectrum. Now, that might be because it's easier to court outrage with that side of the

political spectrum. And I think it may well be. I mean, it's very it's the hugest irony to me is that the extreme right wing accused the left of taking of being a fence tick as being snowflakes will take offense at everything. And it's the right wing who are offended by everything. Two guys walking down the street holding hands offends the right wing. Right. But they will paint the protesters. Protesters offend the shit wing. But they will paint the left as theirs. Protesters offend the shit out of them. They can't stop talking about protests. You're like, well, don't they? Aren't they allowed? No, they're just crybabies, damn it.

I don't want them doing it. You're like, well, calm the fuck down, dude. You're crying about this. Literally nothing to do with you. Women in the workplace offend them. Exactly, yeah. So I think partly it's that it has been easier to outrage one side of the political spectrum than the other. And that means that's a very easy, fertile ground for clickbait.

And I think there's probably another large element that the people who want to exploit the far right or far right sentiment or the kinds of fears and sentiments and things that the far right prey on, those people are much less ethical about what they're choosing to do. I think it's very, very hard for someone who is kind of progressive, left kind of leaning, let's all just get along, let's make things equal for people. It's very hard to square that off with, okay, then we'll use this incredibly overtly and intentionally exploitative technique in order to do that. I don't think that's impossible. I think you can get there. But I suspect the barriers to getting there are far, far lower. And we certainly saw that in the UK during the Brexit debate, where we had Nigel Farage, who is not an elected MP, has never been an elected MP, stood in front of a big poster, which is very clearly echoing Nazi propaganda of a line of Syrian refugees.

And that was their leave, get out kind of, that was their pause to say, let's get behind the get out campaign. So there was a line of refugees and it just said, who would miss them or something? I forget exactly what the headline was, but it was kind of essentially saying, these are people all coming over,

but these are garbage people and we hate all of them. Please kill them on the street. They photoshop the word terrorist on all their shirts yeah yeah exactly but the thing is it could not have been more clearly uh echoing nazi propaganda it was literally a still like you could put it side by side with a still from nazi propaganda and it looked exactly the same now i suspect the people who put that poster together didn't think you know what you know who was really good at this? Adolf Hitler. Joseph Goebbels. I don't think that's what they would have said, but I think they would have completely

known what they were doing in terms of the message they were sending with that image, but they were very happy to do that in order to get their win. So, Marsh. I just have this feeling of doom. No, there's another one.

Also gloom. There's a doom and a gloom. If it helps, we haven't even scratched the surface. Honestly, there is a lot more in here. How would that help, Marsh? How would that help? We haven't even scratched the surface. If people wanted to scratch the surface and find your blog, what would they do?

They go to badpr.core.uk. And you can find me on several other places where I'm having this kind of conversation too. In fact, you can find me on Talk Nerdy with Cara Santamaria a couple of episodes ago where I went into a different aspect of this thing too.

So if you're enjoying this and you want to- No one is enjoying this. No one is- Enjoying is not the right word. If the intellectual masochist side of you wants a bit more of this, then that conversation with Cara went in a very different direction, but still kind of explored this kind of stuff.

I think it is a depressing area, but it's becoming frighteningly more real than I ever thought it would be when I started looking into these silly stories some years ago. So you're still doing Skeptics with an Incredulous and Be Reasonable is Skeptical. Those are two things that you're still doing. Very much. Be be reasonable is back i kind of uh hadn't done much be reasonable uh for the majority of last year it was unreasonable but i've got a couple of episodes out i interviewed a guy who believed that not only is the world flat um but also it exists within a dome like a snow globe essentially he directly references the truman show as his uh his uh wait are you kidding me this guy was amazing right is it a full spherical dome or is it is it like a half dome like a like a dinner plate dome yeah yeah like a dinner plate dome yeah yeah and on the outside so you've got the stars painted on the top of it so the sun and moon exist because

we can see them moving around but we know they're not far away because i can't wait it had my favorite point of one of my favorite points of these conversations that i've ever had really because he said at the beginning that uh he was a conspiracy he was really into lots of different conspiracy theories and then the more he looked into it, this was the one that he started following even more. And so towards the end of the interview, I said, well, you said you're into all these conspiracy theories before. Have you subsequently found one conspiracy theory that you used to believe in that you no longer believe in? He said, well, you know, the thing is, once you know the world's flat, this brings it all together. Because I was thinking, why did they kill JFK? Well,

obviously it's because he knew we didn't land on the moon. And so he's putting all these conspiracy theories together. So he said, but the one that I don't believe in, and I really want to have a debate with this guy to show him how wrong he is, is Richard Hoagland's theory of the face on Mars and civilizations on Mars. I don't believe that's true anymore. And I said, yeah, but that's because you don't

believe in Mars. You don't believe Mars exists. Yeah, you didn't really walk that one back. That doesn't count. When are you going to have David Icahn? Oh God, I've been trying. I have been trying for years. I really want to keep trying. I really want Andrew Wakefield on. I really want him on and I'm going to keep trying on that. And yeah, if anybody has any requests for areas they want me to cover or people they think would be good, then I'm all ears. I'm always looking out for new, interesting, odd, unusual beliefs to explore. So yeah, people can get in touch on the show there.

And yeah, I'd be all ears, really. Marsh, thanks for coming on and depressing us today. We really do appreciate it. Yeah. Always a pleasure, guys. I'm going to give you my gun at the end of this episode, so I'm going to use it on myself. Sounds good. Thank you.

Keep up the great work, Marsh. Cheers, guys. You too. Ready to stick it in the glory hole? Get links to their Facebook, Twitter, and if you still use it, Google Plus account at their website, dissonancepod.com. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a ransom message at 740-74-DOUBT.

That's 740-743-6828. Want to hear Cognitive Dissonance commercial free and gain access to exclusive content, including full patron-only shows? Head to patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod and become a patron to support the show on a per episode basis. Love commercials? Not ready to become a patron? Give the guys a a per episode basis. Love commercials? Not ready to become a patron? Give the guys a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher.

Or tell your buddies in the drunk tank about the show. We want to send a big sloppy glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. This story comes from deadstate.org. Deadstate.org, I guess it's a like a charitable organization, right?.org, that's what that's for? Not always. You can just be a.org? You can just buy a.org. Instead of a.com? Sure.

We should be a.org. I feel like it's fancy. No. No? It's not a fancy. I feel like it's fancy. Can we be a.biz? We could be a.tree. Can we change our website to gloryhole.biz? Because this business happened at the gloryhole, buddy. I guarantee there's already a gloryhole.biz? Because there's business happening at the gloryhole, buddy. I guarantee there's already a gloryhole.biz. I kind of want to look it up and see what it says.

And I also kind of don't want to crash my iPad. It's funny because Megan, when she posts our show, will put hashtag gloryhole. And I'm just thinking that is the fucking absolute worst thing to hashtag. Because hashtags are there so you could click on them and see right and see all the hashtag glory hole's gotta be the worst some poor you know what i actually feel bad for is some poor guys out there searching for a good glory hole and he stumbles upon this show i know hashtag glory hole and he's like fuck these guys these guys can't even get me half first of all they're like look they're like he's fully erected, still looks half, you know.

We don't judge at the glory hole. Oh, yeah, we do. We just, we're quiet about it. We're just quiet. It's polite. We use sign language and you can't see because you're on the other side of the wall. We'll just be bitchy to our friends about it later. Just hold your fingers about a couple inches apart. I'm back.

Creationist Ken Ham claims dinosaurs and humans fought in gladiator battles. And I fucking love this. So when we were down at the, at the arc encounter, what was that? What, I mean, how would you describe the arc encounter Cecil?

A something that was put together by someone who one time won a science fair project for making a volcano out of coal it's like you know i like to think of it as like um an indoor taxidermy zoo yeah of animals that didn't exist. It's like an imaginary indoor taxidermy zoo. There are some animals that existed for sure. That's true. But there's a few. But the weird poo monster or whatever. The turtle without a shell.

Yeah. It hadn't evolved its shell yet or whatever. That is my favorite. I love the turtle without a shell. I would eat the fuck out of that thing. Oh, God. You know, the only problem is he doesn't carry a bowl with him.

So like you got to bring your own bowl for the soup. It's fucking weird. I love animals that carry their own utensils or serving ware with them. Yeah, like a lobster. Yeah, there's nothing better than eating a crab that you've killed and then you scoop out its guts and serve it to somebody in its own body.

I fucking think that's just so right. I think it's funny when they take like a chicken and put it in the crab. And you're like, why would you? That's like a fucking super insult to the crab, right? It's like when I am eventually killed and eaten for my carcass, I don't want to be stuffed in something else. No one's ever going to eat that. Not one sitting. I'll tell you what.

Not in one sitting. You don't know where I've been, Lou. You don't know where I've been. I know where I've been. Nobody's going to eat that. So anyway, I remember... Jesus Christ. They're going to stuff me in a series

of five-gallon buckets. That's going to be the last set of buckets. They're just labeled Tom. After they take your amber grease. And Ishmael sits on your back but we were there you know one of the one of the highlights of the arkan connor and there were so many so many there were so many but one of that one of the highlights was standing in a very long line oh yeah yeah all these uh now it wasn't just a regular long line because it actually

it was one of those like great america lines yeah it was a waiver yeah it wasn't just a regular long line because it actually it was one of those like great america lines yeah it was a waiver yeah it like went around a corner and like up and down two of those whatever the fuck those things are those little racetrack things to get you moving in the right direction everything was a ramp though because it was in kentucky yeah right so like nobody could climb a stair yeah like if somebody had dropped a pencil on the ground there would have been like three heart attacks trying to get over. My scooter don't got stuck. If you take one out though, he's just going to roll down and take out all the rest on the way up.

It's like bowling with Hicks, right? Yeah. The nice thing about waiting in a Kentucky line is the line takes up a lot of physical space, but it's still only four people deep, you know? So like the first guy,

you're like, you're like, fuck, I'm like a half a mile behind. And then one guy first guy you're like you're like fuck i'm like a half a mile behind and then one guy goes you're like a quarter mile now you're like that's a big one it's like being behind four double-decker trucks right yeah but at this thing there was a goofy one of those goofy lines that made you go up a backseat yeah yeah right yeah and so we got in that line i remember like oh man it's gonna be good now it's not gonna going to be like a cage with a speaker that tweets like a bird, for example,

because that's a thing. No one stayed by that. Yeah. Nobody, nobody hung out there. That was pretty self-explanatory. But you go into like the, the, like the hallway of dioramas. Yeah. And it's, it's maybe like, I don't know, I don't want to exaggerate or under, but it's

maybe like 20 feet long. It's real short. You know, it's like 20 feet long. It's real short. You know, it's like short and disappointing. It's like sex with me. When you say hallway of dioramas, what you mean is one diorama and the rest are paintings. Yeah, you're totally right. So, but everybody was enthralled with the diorama. So they had a diorama of how like evil everybody was.

Like it was like before the flood, right? Pre-flood. So evidently they've added a new diorama. And this is big news because if one diorama caused a traffic jam like that, I mean, people's scooters, like the batteries were running out. It was fucking tragic. They've added a new diorama

with people fighting dinosaurs in a coliseum. Can I just say before the flood. I'm not going to talk to you. Okay. God, if you want me to believe, make this a true thing right now.

God, I'm talking to you right now. Make it a true thing that happens right now where I can turn a channel on like fucking make it on ESPN, the Ocho where I turn it on and there's a fucking dinosaur versus a giant versus a human. I'm with you. I'll fucking eat those waf a giant versus a human. I'm with you. I'll fucking eat those wafers and drink that wine.

I'm with you, bro. In this diorama, there's giants, right? Then there's regular sized folks. Then there's the folks that are looking at the gladiatorial spectacle, right? Sure. But all the people appear to just be food animals for the dinosaur. Makes me want to go back down to the ark. Me too. Everything's like this

WWE Battle Royale shit going on. I'll tell you what, if they... I kind of want to come off the top ropes on here. If they add three dioramas to their... Oh, we got $18 million in tax breaks, guys. Can we get some more poseable G.I. Joe guys fighting dinosaurs? It won't just be

a backup there. It'll be like a whole fucking backup all the way down there on the one garbage road to get to the fucking dirt road you have to get to. All of like Lawrence Burger, wherever it'll be. Now here's what I want you to understand here. He says, look, when you sacrifice

a child to an idol, you are sacrificing that child to demons. That's the word that's used right here in the scripture. I looked it up in the Hebrew lexicon. You know what that word demon means? It means demon. So this story comes from DW.com.

Court sentences main suspect in deadly Frankfurt exorcism to jail time. And evidently they just put a fucking box on his head or something. That's like an iPad or ipad what is going on that's like a book look at it's a book oh it's okay yeah it's like a book with a like a cover maybe it's the bible i mean maybe he's double checking maybe there's no answers in here says on page seven this is legal so i want i mean this this story is at this point it's it's so repetitive that it almost doesn't even go without. I mean, I actually skipped these stories a lot of times when I'm looking around because at some point we've said everything we've got to say about this.

But if you scroll down a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about the, the defense here or rather what they, what they were saying in court. One of the excuses, you know, they said they could have asked for a more, and the prosecutor actually said this, they said they could have asked for a harsher sentence. But this guy thought he was doing the right thing in service of his religion. And so they asked for a lesser sentence. And I thought, that's why I want to talk about this. What fucking difference does it make why you suffocated somebody to death? Right. Is there ever like there's never been like a self-defense case, right, where it's like and then I fucking suffocated him to death.

Right. A burglar broke into my house. And so I held him down and I suffocated him to death. That's not a thing. That's not a thing. Who cares that he thought he was doing the right thing religiously? Yeah. Like, why is that an ameliorating circumstance at all?

Like, well, he didn't, you know, when he when he tied that person down and beat the shit out of him and then suffocated. Can you imagine how scary it would be to suffocate to death? Fucking so scary. That's a miserable. It wouldn't be like short. It wouldn't be like, fuck the whole be like you'd be like fuck the whole time you know what's happening yeah yeah for sure and it's just a sheer awe but i like would that be a comfort to my family like if somebody in my family was like well they thought they were doing

the right thing because you know they read an old book one time so now you know uncle frank's dead but they i mean they have an old book so don't throw the book at them. You know what I mean, guys? You know what I mean? Are you fucking kidding me? You know, it's funny. Like fucking wouldn't somebody think that you could see that this is going to get you out of jail time? Yeah. You know, if I accidentally killed somebody, I'd be like, oh, I was just trying to exercise.

Got the demons out of them. Got the life out of demons out of them. Hold that. Tell you what, the demons not there anymore. Demons have to have the life, of i mean demons out of them hold that tell you what the demon's not there anymore demons have to have the life though they have to have it there in order to keep in order to keep so this is a very effective way to exercise people actually 100 of the time the demons go yeah i mean it's gone every time they held this woman down they beat her they put a they put a cloth and a clothes hanger in her mouth to keep her quiet. And that's how she suffocated.

Right. That's the method that, that, I mean, a clothes hanger. Yeah. I'm trying to picture how that works. I'm trying to like,

did she have oral sex? They were trying to do an oral abortion. Is that what they were trying to do? Like what is, what is the clothes hanger? How do you even stop a clothes hanger on somebody's face? I have a feeling there was clothes in it. That's why it would maybe.

I mean, seriously. What are they like plunging her? Plurp, plurp, plurp, plurp. Like stuffing the fucking. She keeps screaming. I'll push the cloth down deeper. It's fucking three quarters of the way down her esophagus. It's like you're cleaning a gun barrel.

Right? Chunk, chunk, chunk. It's stuck on something. It says here, the defendants attempted to perform an exorcism on the victim in a Frankfurt hotel room on December 5th, 2015 because they believed the woman had been

quote, possessed by demons after she allegedly began talking to herself and lashing out for no apparent reason. Holy shit, my dad was possessed by demons. Had no idea. Until I read this, my dad was possessed by demons. I had no idea. Until I read this, I didn't have any idea. Oh, God.

No more training do you require. Already know you. That's what you need. Then I am a Jedi. I am a Jedi. Not yet. then I am a Jedi. Not yet. I picked this story, no shit, just for you. Because I don't understand this at all.

This is from Right Wing Watch. This is Josh Bernstein. Obama is a Saul Alinsky Jedi Knight trainer organizing the protests against President Trump. I have no idea what this means. Saul Alinsky was wasn't he an author, right? But why is he a

Jedi Knight trainer? We'll find out. I mean, it's a short clip. So let's play it. This is from Right Wing Watch. This is Josh Borstein. Finally, we have someone that's plain spoken. He's talking about Trump. Yeah. Plain spoken. Because he can't form complex sentences.

That's like when you go to parent-teacher conferences and they try to be real nice about your stupid kid. Right. Oh, he's gentle. He's very gentle and he's emotional. Right. And he's a good friend to this stuffed animal. He seems to be a good listener. He has no other friends.

Take him out of school now, actually. Actually, if you could suffocate him with a coat. We're not sure how, but we know it could be done. We have evidence from Frankfurt. Get off early. Who's going to shake things up. That's going to fight back against the liberal bias, call them out as what they are, which is fake news. And I think it's amazing because, again, the the left coast and the New York area, those two areas of country, they don't get it. They're so disconnected from the reality

of what is really taking place in America, where people live, the two areas of the country where people live and have an education like those areas of the country where people live and have an education. Yeah. Like, those areas of the country with the culture and the thought learnings and most of the GDP.

Yeah. Like, really? I mean, literally, it's most of the GDP. You just named the left coast.

Haha, so clever. Whoa. And then the New York area. Yeah, that's, that's most of the education, culture,

and money. Oh, you wacky guys yeah and they're the most disconnected from america right yeah that's it they're less american right well they're most well yeah they're the most disconnected from the fucking tumbleweeds in fucking nebraska or whatever but nobody cares about that right we talked about this when when they when they show that stupid fucking image of all the counties that went red this last time when trent was like and he won all those votes and they're like this is two americas look at two americas look at how tiny the blue is and you're like yeah that's because the blue has people stacked on top of it and the red has a cow and a fucking human

150 miles away from him like it's like it's so ridiculous when you try to compare you're like you're looking at geography man you're not looking at fucking population when you look at the population centers yeah a ton of land voted for trump so So fucking what? It's land. It's not people. And the thought process of Americans, how they feel about the country, the direction of the country. They're starting to feel better about themselves. And one of the things President Trump does that Ronald Reagan did and not too many others were able to do is he makes you feel good about yourself and your country once again. They're starting to feel better about themselves. What he's saying is white people aren't scared anymore.

No, like who gives a fuck if people are starting to feel better about themselves? What the fuck is this? Snowflake shit, right? Feel better about yourself. Fuck you. You fucking asshole.

You're not allowed to feel better about yourself. What they want is they want to turn America into their safe space. Yeah. Right. America's our safe space. We had it first. This was our safe space where we've had eight years of this diabolical leader in Barack

Obama. Diabolical. Wait a minute. Of all the things you could describe Barack Obama as good, bad and sideways yeah fucking diabolical wait what what is his what was his he's done like at this point they're done they have no more conspiracy well they don't because we'll talk about more but they they should have no more conspiracy theories around barack obama left right everything he was going to accomplish as president that ship has sailed. It's over at

this point. What's the most diabolical thing he did? Like, 20 million people have health insurance. Ha ha ha ha! Women got to use the bathroom of their choice, and men got to use the bathroom of their choice, right? I mean, I'm trying to think of what is

the diabolical piece. Hey, he didn't take your guns, guys. He didn't take them. You still have your fucking guns. It's all you were worried about. The black guy didn't take your guns. He didn't fuck your wife. He didn't take your guns.

You're fine. They're still paranoid that the big, scary black man in office is going to do the fucking evil, evil, like fucking mustache twitching, twitching fucking, you know, volcano layer shit. There's nothing left. He has no more time. Who has done nothing but divide and conquer. Divide and conquer. Fucking explain a six year fucking congressional cock block.

Explain that. Where'd the conquer piece come from? I would fucking you could talk about divide all day, though. Yeah. You know, he's saying that that Obama divided. Right. Because I know I know their argument is that Obama racially divided America. Right.

I know that they would argue that they would say that because he was black. I don't know if you noticed that he really was. What they would say is that those riots, the whole Black Lives Matter thing, the none of it would have happened without Obama in office. What they would say is that all of it's not happened without obama in office what they would say is that all of it's not how he responded to it oh i wouldn't have even happened yeah because the uppity black folks he enabled the uppities right yeah the black folks done got some power now got it in order to grow his political base and we're starting to see that now where he's never going to go away we've got the shadow government that's going on in Washington. He's

moved to Washington. He's moved to Washington. So what? You don't move to where you were. Yeah, right. He's moved out of the White House. He's stayed in the same city. Well, okay.

Was he required to leave the city? Oh, you're not president more get the fuck out it was a gunfight jesus at the okay corral and he had to leave town no more black guys in dc after 2016 like that's it like a sunset and boy you best be a running are you kidding me shadow government these guys can't figure out what story they want, right? Shadow just means black time. All right, you got me. He's sending out, you know, 25,000 to 30,000 protesters at a time. He's training them.

He's training them? Yeah, no. You ever see those old kung fu movies where the one guy stands in front of everybody with a spear and all those protesters. They're all doing the motions sorrow signs like they've all got their fucking like super nice high quality hobby lobby sorrow signs or fucking whatever oh it wouldn't be hobby lobby eddie's teach him chance you're right

obama's standing in front of him no hate no fear immigrants are welcome here what training do you need i don't know to gather with other people and stand training what was it oh i don't know what to do should i sit no it's just they're doing like tons of cardio bro so they can walk should i wear shoes right should i wear pants did you even attend the training joe did you even go They could stand for up to hours. I mean, he is literally the Saul Alinsky Jedi Knight trainer. I don't know

what that means. I don't know. I don't know what that means at all. I don't know what that means. I do know this. If you strike him down, he'll become more powerful than you could possibly imagine. I know that. I know that. They've got their protester signs.

They're trying to hit like a glowing orb with their fucking blindfold on or something. Wah, wah, wah, wah. At a certain point, at a certain point, Trump releases the rancor monster.

Don't do it. Boo, boo. And Obama, at the last minute, takes a protest sign and sticks it in his mouth it's perfect it's absolutely perfect and then he uses mind tricks to make

a portacalist fall on his face I don't know what a Jedi why you would even bring Saul Alinsky into the same as a Jedi Knight trainer I don't understand what that means these are not the metaphors you're looking for Jedi Knight trainer right now and what he's doing is he's setting up shop and he's trying to defend I don't know what that means. These are not the metaphors you're looking for. It's the night trader.

Right now. And what he's doing is he's setting up shop and he's trying to defend his, you know, horrible eight-year legacy. Why would you defend your legacy? You know, and the thing is like, okay, that's fine. You know, maybe they're mad that he should just be saying, okay, I did a bad job, everybody. Sorry. Whoopsie doodle. That was a whoopsie doodle two-term presidency.

I know, right? Whoopsie. Sorry for ruining everything. Although... They're just mad that he's not disappearing. Yeah, I think that's really what this is about. I think that's what this is about. They're mad that he isn't crawling into the woodwork or at least saying, you know what?

Trump's got a point. I was a terrible, terrible black president. That's the worst. I was the, you know, he's the was the worst. He's the worst black president. He is the worst black president we've ever had. We've never had a worse black president. A black president that has been as bad as Barack Obama. That's true.

We probably at this rate won't for a long time. They're going to make you conform to them. You're going to say you like anal sex. you like oral sex, you like bestiality, you like anything you can think of, whatever it is, and sooner or later you're going to have to conform your religious beliefs to the group of some aberrant thing.

It won't stop at homosexuality. This is Pat Robertson, also from Right Wing Watch. People who oppose Trump are revolting against God, says a man so revolting himself. His ears are nearly catching up to his cheeks at this point. They are starting to droop. They're melding into one is what's happening. He looks like something hastily formed out of clay. Like it's really just Mr.

Robertson. The press is against him. So, you know, you read the Bible and no, I don't know. No, we've already lost me.

What are we? Eight, six seconds in. Oh, you know, you read the Bible me. What are we? Eight, six seconds in. Oh, you know, you read the Bible now. Pass hard pass. Nope.

There was a point in there where God told Jeremiah, he said, tell them to take the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar. And they didn't want to do it. Jesus Christ. The yoke of Nebuchadnezzar. Isn't that like one black, one blue,

and three colors? I'm going to tap a ship in the Matrix? I'm going to tap my soul ring. God told Jeremiah, he said, tell them to take the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, and they didn't want to do it. Wait, what did that have to do? Wait, I don't understand. No, no, you've got to take the yoke of

Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, and then what? I get the yoke or y yoke or what is it? It's oak, I guess. I thought he said yoke. I think he says oak. I feel like that's yoke. What is Nebuchadnezzar? I'm going to type in both.

What is a Nebuchadnezzar? Of Nebuchadnezzar. Oh, no, there it is. You're right. It's the yoke. The yoke of Nebuchadnezzar. And you read the Psalms, the second Psalm, which says, you know, why do the nations rage and imagine a vain thing? And they revolt against the Lord and his anointed.

I think somehow the Lord's plan is being put in place for America. And these people are not only revolting against Trump, they're revolting against what God's plan is for America. The fuck? Yeah. He's saying, he's saying that, uh,

that God has decided that Trump should be president. Trump is now president. And now if you don't like it, you are attacking God's plan. And certainly he would have said the same thing if Hillary had won. No. Oh, you don't think so, Cecil? Well, I think he would have said something very similar. It would have been the exact opposite,

though. It would have been like, these people wanted God's plan for the country, and they didn't get it, and now we have to take our yoke off, and then we have to just use the whites. That's not very good. Well, that's what he wants to do. They just want to use the whites. Maybe a little shallot that might turn it into something good.

But here's the thing. Because we just used the whites, now we have Trump. You know what I think, Trump? I think uncooked egg whites. I think, yeah, no, that's about accurate. I think he looks like a? I think uncooked egg whites. I think, yeah, no, that's about accurate. I think he looks like a sack full of uncooked egg whites. He has the fucking body consistency. Like a viscous fluid.

He doesn't have bones or organs or anything. He's just this big bag of viscous fluid. He is sort of like uncoagulated. He looks like he has water weight gain issues. These other people have been trying to destroy America. These left-wingers and so-called progressives are trying to destroy the country that we love and take away the freedoms they love. They want collectivism.

They want socialism. What freedoms are we talking about here? Are we talking about freedom to use what bathroom you want to use? Is that the freedom we're talking about? I don't know. He says take away the freedoms they love. That's a weird freedom that people should just have, right? I don't have any idea what thing I can't do.

Do you have freedoms to maybe have control of your own body? Is this all about fucking gay wedding cakes again? Freedom that the liberals are going to try to take away? Huh. That's weird. Yeah. Seems something like the Republicans just fucking tried to take away.

Right. Like a woman's going to get an abortion. It's like, you can't do that, but you're more free. You're more free. You're more free here. Enjoy. Oh, you want to use any bathroom you can?

Sorry. Sorry, you can't use any bathroom you want Because you're more free now Enjoy gestating your rape baby Jesus When your rape baby comes out give him this tiny American phone This will make him This will cheer him up

So we want to thank Of course we want to thank all our patrons. We kind of appreciate our patrons enough for their hard-earned dollars. Thank you also very much. But we want to thank our newest patrons, Barbecue at the Laser Factory, Chris, Jack, Marcus, Michael,

Jeannie, Kimberly, and Sierra. Thanks so very much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate it. Thank you. Got a message from Cindy, and Cindy says, Jesus Christ. Right after we got married in the 80s, my husband went back to school in the Midwest,

and I found myself pregnant here in Utah. That's a nightmare. Can you imagine being pregnant in Utah? You got to give birth to the baby on a salt flat. Jesus Christ. That sounds horrible. He was sexually assaulted as soon as it's born. Oh, God.

He had to write a letter and get it notarized giving me permission for my abortion. That is incredible. Holy shit. I can't even believe that that's a thing. Who would notarize that letter? Awful. Just awful. What's this country come to? I can't even believe that that's a thing. Who would notarize that letter? Awful. Just awful.

What's this country come to? Devin left, I think, a very funny message, which happens to be Donald Trump's D&D full character sheet. So I'm going to, for all you gamer geeks out there, check this out. It's going to be on this episode's show notes. It's two PDFs. I thought it was hilarious, Devin. Thank you so much for creating it. It made me laugh out there. Check this out. It's going to be on this episode of Show Notes. It's two PDFs. I thought it was hilarious, Devin. Thank you so much for creating it. It made me laugh

out loud. Got a message from Joseph and a couple other people. This is an Alex Jones mashup with him just screaming and grunting. It's real hard to listen to the whole thing, but it's amazing. It's really funny. So check it out. It's on this episode of Show Notes. This is episode

345. We got a message from Dlenka about episode 343. And Dlenka says, can you tell me why you bleeped out the N word and the T word when Ishmael was on? I love this. And the reason why I bleep out the N word, one, I don't feel comfortable saying that. Sure. I don't mind that Ishmael says it, but when Ishmael came on the show for the very first

time, I joked about bleeping him, and then he made a big deal out of it. Right. When he made a big deal out of it, I had to bleep him. Because it's awesome. I just had to. I couldn't not let it go, right? If it irks, Ishmael, pillow hands. It's really just a, it's me jabbing at him.

So I bleeped him. I bleeped him i bleeped him three or four times on the first show then we had him on again and he came on and and i bleeped him again when he said it a couple times and he told me i shouldn't bleep him but then later on in the show he said that thug is the new n-word and well the moment after he said it i was gonna bleep it all then i decided no i'm just gonna say until he said it, I was going to bleep it all. Then I decided, no, I'm just going to say until he says it because it wouldn't make sense until he says thug is the new N word. And then I just started a switch

to bleep those as well. I was very, very close to only bleeping it when Tom and I said it because we're white. And that's what he implied was when a white guy says. So I was very close to doing that, but I didn't know that,

that people were going to catch it. I didn't know if that subtlety was going to get through. So I just bleeped it all. And I thought it was hilarious. And we got some messages when people were very confused that I was bleeping the thug word.

And I was like, well, that's just, it's just a joke. Cause I, I don't think thug is a bad word. I don't, I don't, I don't even know that I agree

with Ishmael's assumption that it is the new Edward, but it's what he said. And it just so happened that I wanted to bleep it. It's a joke. It's just a joke. That's all. Uh,

this is from EE and EE, uh, or sent in, uh, sent in this. And it's, uh, I just want to read the top.

It says, as you joked in your latest episode thinking gay thoughts when inseminating a woman makes a baby gay. It may actually have some biblical support. It describes how animals fucking while seeing stripes stick will give

striped offspring. So here it is. It's Genesis 3037. Go ahead, Tom. This is the dumbest fucking thing. Go ahead. Jacob, however, took fresh cut branches from poplar, almond, and plain trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches.

Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs so they could be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they made it in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they made it in front of the branches and they bore young that were strict or speckled or spotted. This is people's holy book. This is so amazing. I just got to ask now,

you know, like when, when Eli's favorite question is like, are bats birds? Because it says the bats are birds. And this is my new favorite question. This is my new question to ask everybody be like, okay, so

let's say that there's a horse. You got a horse. This is why we have zebras. And I give them sticks. Don't give them the sticks. I put sticks all over around them and then they fuck. Will it make a stripe

of the horse? And it's so... that's the greatest thing ever because that's because if that's the case the next cat I get is gonna be a tiger cat I'm just gonna be like no when they're fucking just put them in the yard by the sticks you would think you could make any animal

any color and like variation you could make any animal any color and like variation whatever it is you could just get custom cats like you could start think of the money you could make selling custom cats just to Thomas alone fucking Mona Lisa on the side of it so good alright so this

is this is a message from Jason we got this again from a bunch of other people and this is Stephen Colbert just going off on Alex Jones. I'm not going to play it. It's a four-minute clip. But go ahead on our website, dissonancepod.com. We'll link this to this week's show notes,

episode 345. And it's the intro to The Tonight Show. It's when he comes out and does his little jokes. Is that on The Tonight Show? Is he The Tonight Show guy or is he The Late Show guy? I don't know. Whatever. I don't know. He's on the CBS one. That's the Late Show. Okay. So he's

going to, he gives his little spiel, but the best part is he goes after Alex Jones and he like calls him an idiot. He's totally unkind. He's completely, he does not give fucks at all. He's just like, nope, I'm just going to wreck this dude. And he does. It's very funny actually.

So, so check it out when you get a chance. We want to thank Marsh from Be Reasonably Skeptical for coming on. What a great guy. Incredulous with a K. I mean,

just, he is just an excellent, excellent guy. Very funny. Also really knowledgeable. Scared the hell out of us with this stuff.

So he's very, very knowledgeable. Super depressing. Yeah. So way to do that. Yeah. If you want to find out anything about Marsh, you can hell out of us with this stuff. So he's very, very knowledgeable. Super depressing. Yeah. So way to do that. Yeah. If you want to find out anything about Marsh, you can check out this episode,

show notes, episode 345. We're going to link his various projects that he's involved in on this week's show notes. We want to thank him though for coming on. He is really just a great guest. And I love to talk to him. Really cool guy. So that's going to wrap it up for this week.

I do want to mention that we did a live show this last Sunday, the 18th. This upcoming Thursday, we're going to be releasing that live show audio only on our feed. So this week on Thursday, you'll get a show will come up and it will be the live show that we recorded. That show will be going out. Like we say, it'll just be audio. It'll just be, it'll just be audio. It'll just be the audio that has been ripped from that. Uh, if you want to see the video, the video is on a live stream and it's also on YouTube. So you can check out those videos, but we're going to be releasing that entire episode,

which is a good long episode. Actually. It's, it's a good hour, hour plus hour and a half, I think maybe an hour and 40 minutes almost. I think so. Um, and we cover the Trump press conference. So we play clips and then we. Hour plus. Hour and a half, I think. Maybe an hour and 40 minutes almost. I think so, yeah. And we cover the Trump press conference. So we play clips and then we talk about it. And then we also interacted with people that were online.

So if you want to listen to it, it'll be releasing this Thursday. But again, like I say, you can also watch the videos. Those videos exist. So you can listen to it right now if you wanted to. Just go into our YouTube page. Or you could also just go to the live stream page. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do 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 energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. 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 double-speak stigmata nonsense expose. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive.

Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you