Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 369: QED 2017

Episode Date: July 17, 2017

Stories covered in episode: itter.com/MrMMarsh      

This show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. If you go to AdamandEve.com right now and enter GLORY, the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout, you'll get 50% off almost any item, a free sex swing, and free shipping. All right, fellas, it's Dave Thomas from Low Hampton, UK again.

I just wanted to ring up and say that Tom actually used the wrong word when he was talking about his dog shit. He said feckin' instead of fettettish i didn't know if you noticed that yeah glory on hi guys my name is john i'm calling from the republic of ireland and i'm listening to episode three so faith at the moment now as well as my it degree, I happen to have a degree in law, and it is the Council of Europe whose function it is to run the European Court of Human Rights. So, in fact, Russia is a member of that organisation,

just the Russian Federation, but of course is not a member of the European Union. But I just thought I'd let you know. And we enjoy your shows, by the way. And thank you very much indeed for the cause. Cheers, man. Bye. Hey, Tom and Cecil. At one time, cities in the US did have privatized fire departments. And it was hysterical because they would burn houses down to generate revenue. They would also fight each other over who got to put out the fire and thus collect the fees for putting out the fire.

So you call the fire department. They show up. Another fire department shows up. They fight each other. And your fucking house burns down while they beat the crap out of one another. God bless libertarian America. Hi, Colin Siegel. This is Celia,

and I just finished listening to your show today. You know, every time I hear Dave Dovenmire talking, the more angry he gets, the more he sounds like a fucking cartoon, cartoon caricature, you know? Listen here, you troglodyte bastard, fat-eyed, very regal, St. Bernard gentleman.

I love you. I've listened to you since episode 34 and still listen to you. You guys are awesome and I listen to you way too much, way too much. I forgot to say glory hole. So you did it. I love you guys. Keep doing what you're doing. 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 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 it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode 369 of Cognitive Dissonance. And I am not going to make the obvious 69 joke because it's cheap. It's cheap. That is. I won't bow to that kind of humor. God, give me a break. But I will say that with three people, how do you 69?

It's like a human centipede. You have to stack them. I feel like that's just an extra person to disappoint. Is it like one of those stairways in those... Yeah, like an M.C. Escher stairway. Yeah, exactly. Impossible. Impossible.

It's always impossible to convince that third person, actually. That's the thing. And speaking of unwelcome thirds... And a possible 69. Don't talk about me like we are joined by michael marshall from the be skeptically reasonable yeah podcast and uh you should think better well i think that's what it's called something like that i've got this pretty much down at this point skeptics with a k

skeptics skepticals with some letters. I don't know what he does. I know that one for sure. The other one is a little... Well, I like that the time that you put the time into writing a good introduction for me, that involves getting everything I do wrong and then inviting me to a three-way.

Well, I get that wrong too. well i get that wrong too so thank you very much for coming on um what what are the actual projects that you're working on right now what's what's going on oh we've always got a huge amount uh going on the the biggest thing we've been uh announcing recently with good thinking is actually rather than uh the tighter projects that we do where we're tackling bullshit, there's one that we're doing that's actually trying to do a bit more new, positive kind of stuff. So we announced a new top set maths project where Simon Singh, who's head of the Good Thinking Society, for a while- Wait, how many maths?

How many? It's a multiple maths. It's double maths. Why is it like that? It's two maths. This is why you Americans aren't really good at maths, because you can't even count how many maths there are, and that's a fundamental part of counting. It is kind of funny that maths is so...

No, we're so good, we just do it one time and we're done. That's it. We don't even check our work. That's it. Yeah, but so the whole point of the project is that Simon recognized that you can go through high school maths. And at the end of that, you can be top of your class. No, I can't. I'm sorry. High school maths, I shall talk down to the Americans.

Also, if I ever say the word favor or color, you can just imagine that I'm not saying the U. We can pretend the U's aren't in there. Just any time I say, analyze or something, we'll make sure we get the S's and Z's the right way around for you guys. So yeah. Zed? Zed?

I'm being very impolite. Who says that? Do you have a fucking translator? Is this why you guys don't have any listeners? Actually, is this why you guys don't have any Scottish listeners? Because we've seen hard evidence of that. Oh, a shot in Edinburgh.

That stings. My heart space, sir. There was three people in that room that knew us. Thank you very much. Yeah, and they were all on stage. Yeah, Eli had no idea who we were. The Queen loves us. And her swans. Yeah, so i will tell you what this project is then

unless the question was entirely tokenistic yeah no so uh you can get all the way through high school math and uh you you might not have uh um you can be top of your class but not be that experienced in doing complicated math because what happens is you can be in the very top class of your, your school. And the teachers necessarily have to make sure that if you're doing well at the top, they need to make sure whoever at the bottom of that class is also doing well.

So what Simon's idea was to do was to say, instead of having a class of 20 kids, you actually just pick the top five, six kids from the entire school. And you kill the rest of the kids. Yeah, exactly. Just get rid of the kids. Yeah, exactly. Just get rid of the rest.

They're not useful. Okay. Everybody over here, we've given up hope on you. Everybody over here, take out your rubber duckies. You need to count to broom. We'll call that plan B. We'll uh the eugenics angle as plan b but yeah so he wrote a whole new uh or he worked with teachers to write a whole new kind of math math curriculum where you just take these top top top kids and instead of just teaching by the the sort of recognized curriculum you say we won't put any limits on this.

We'll just try and challenge these kids as much as possible. We'll teach them every different angle that they can. And it's been going for a year now in four different schools. And we're already seeing results that if, when you assess these kids in different math competitions, they're performing much better. The schools are performing much better. And the idea is after they've been all the way through secondary school,

all the way through high school, and they go to college, they'll now have so much more grounding in complex math that they can go on to become good mathematicians, good coders, good developers. They won't be distracted by sex with people. There is that element too. Hey, baby, I'm at the math competition. Oh, yeah, really? Guess who's there alone? You know, one of the things that they could do, I mean, this is something you might want to work into the curriculum,

is have them teach the stupider kids. So you can use them as free labor to teach the dumb kids how to do math. There you go. See, that's that American exceptionalism coming right in there. If we have a resource, first of all, how can we exploit it in order to take money out of the public system? Call it an unpaid internship. Yeah, yeah. No, it's brilliant.

That's why everything is working so perfectly in America right now. That's why there is just smoothness. We learned how to say you're fired really well. I'm just waiting for it to be great. What does it look like from over there? Like when you look over here and you look in your telescope over at the colonies, what does it look like? Does it look like the clown car that it feels like we're in? I am curious if you were ever embarrassed that you were like, it's like looking at like your ex-girlfriend

or something like, oh, you're like, that wasn't me. That wasn't, I just, if I want to acknowledge. It does just look embarrassing as fuck.

It looks like you guys don't know what you're doing. I mean, and it's hard because we're following every detail of it, but it's not really that consequential for us. So it's not like we can see, you know, the Trump, well, apart from Trump pulling out of the Paris Agreement, which is going to be highly consequential for everybody who wants to be able to breathe and stand on dry land. Yeah, that's true because Antarctica's already sent their votes. It's a giant fucking iceberg. Yeah, like within weeks of him doing it as well,

it's like, he can't do anything right. This is how disastrous he is. But he, yeah, even the ice shelves start splitting up and moving off the back of the fucker that he makes. It's like, no, we're leaving. It's like, you can't go. Fuck it, we're just leaving.

I was just like, I'm going to America and talking to those motherfuckers. Oh, God. But surely, I mean, even from over here, it could not be clearer that this was, you know, that he was colluding with the Russians, that there's some very dicey stuff gone on. It just seems so fucking obvious. But what's amazing from our side is that if that were to happen in the UK, and it won't, because we might Brexit, but we're not fucking idiots. 52% of us may well be idiots, but it's only 52%. And we're working that down as we're going.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. We elected Trump on under that, to be fair. We actually elected him on under that, and he actually lost the popular vote. Right, so. Yeah, seriously, we elected our president on less than 52% consensus. Because we're so stupid, our fucking system doesn't even require it.

That fact makes you much smarter. Well, we'll just agree to be governed by... No, wait, that doesn't help. That's not helping. Well, that's it. Because at least with us, we make a fuck up with our government. If something like that happened here, we could just end up calling a snap election and getting rid. But you guys are tied in for four years. There's no part of your constitution that says we need to start again. We do not have a no

confidence vote. You can call an audible in the middle of the play like you just be like, no, we're doing like we're just not doing this. Wait, did I use the metaphor right? Well, you just saw the the election we just had in the UK. Yeah, what was that about? Now, explain that to us. Explain that to the Americans. Yeah, so if you go back a couple of years, we've had a few elections in the UK. Say math. So 2015, we had an election because it was due.

It was time for the election. And Cameron won that. But one of the things he did to win it was to promise that we would have a referendum on whether we'd be part of the EU or not. And that was one of the things he did to sort of quieten down the crazy right-wing part of the conservative government. He never thought you'd do it. He never thought you'd do it. It's like when we were like, yeah, Hillary's going to be in there. No worries. Right. Yeah. Nobody thought it would happen to the point where they didn't even really pay attention to the fact that he'd promised it. I didn't notice that he promised it. And I tend to keep an eye on politics, but it was just such a small thing that nobody made a big deal about the fact that he made this promise. A year later,

we have the referendum. It all goes to shit and Cameron has to resign. So then Theresa May comes in, but she hasn't been elected. Her party hasn't been elected with her as leader by the people. She just is now replacing, which is what will happen when Trump gets impeached and Mike Pence has to come in. He will just step straight into that void. And void is the right fucking word for what's going on in American politics right now. So, yeah, because Theresa May hasn't got the public behind her because they haven't sort of voted for her manifesto, for her policies, for her vision, she called a snap election to say, right, I'm going to increase my mandate. I'm going to prove that the people are on my side

by having this election and winning it. So if you're in government, you can basically call an election large at any point, not quite, but pretty much at any point. And she called it because she thought at the time she was so far ahead of uh her opposition jeremy corbyn that this was a everyone called her politically cynical for taking it because it was such a clear step to say i'm going to call this with such a lead that i'm expecting to get jeremy corbyn's the guy from top gear right that's the guy now you're yes he's he's the uh i think actually jeremy corbyn is the complete opposite of jeremy clark Like if you put a, you put a medium Jeremy, Jeremy though,

good for you. But if you put a medium Jeremy into some sort of sci-fi machine, it will split that Jeremy into Jeremy Clarkson and Jeremy Corbin, like taking the good and the bad, the yin and the yang. I think they are complete polar opposites. If they ever touch, they merge back into one person.

All right. Anyway, so hold on. Hold on. No, I got to ask a question. I i gotta ask a question i gotta ask a question theresa may is she like that crazy right wing lady from paris is she like a then like crazy right wing as well she's yeah she's she's ultra conservative i would say um i'm not sure so the

right wing is a slightly tricky thing because obviously there's different parts of it but she's very very conservative so she was the does she hate brown people yes yeah pretty much so she was the home secretary before uh before she was the the prime minister and when she was home secretary one of the things that she did to tackle immigration which was under her her kind of jurisdiction at the time was to have a van drive around london with a sign on the side saying if you're here illegally, go home. And here's this number to text if you are an immigrant and we want you to go home, just text this number

and we'll effectively send you home. And she got really criticised for this. Wait a minute, who texted that number? Well, it turns out lots of people who weren't illegal immigrants, but who did want to fuck with the people who were trying to sort of tackle immigration in that way because they sort of viewed the van as being racist. Because what would happen is that van would drive down the street

and your average racist in the street would point at the nearest brown person and say, you see, fuck off, the van's telling you to go home. So it wasn't really about, it wasn't effective as a strategy, but it was effective as a piece of signaling to the people who have a problem with immigrants that we are a government who also has a problem with immigrants, so you should vote for us. It was a pretty nasty bit of work. That's so short-sighted because the brown people make your good food. And I don't know, if you don't make good food there,

why would you get rid of the only people who can cook? I don't understand. It's not just the brown people. There are plenty of non-British white people who people who can cook. I don't understand. It's not just the brown people. There are plenty of non-British white people who know how to cook. And we've had those guys in as well. It's not a case of

cookery skills being a characteristic of what a particular is. It's more that it's a characteristic of being lacking in our particular is. In that the people whose ancestry has been in Britain for hundreds of years, we're the ones who can't cook. Everyone else has got it fine.

An actual serious question. Do you guys have an immigration problem? Is there an immigration problem, an illegal immigration problem, and a immigration issue that needs to be addressed? Well, yes, there's an immigration issue that needs to be addressed,

but it's not the one that's getting addressed. So we're a country that largely, in many industries, relies on immigration. So you look at the nursing sector. We used to get about 1,700-ish nurses per year coming to Britain from the EU. Since we voted out in the referendum, that dropped to about 10. So we've lost a shitload of nurses coming in. We've also had- What, it dropped from 1,700 to 10? Yeah, it was literally into double figures. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was a huge, huge drop, which is a massive problem because we've also had a drop of 20% of people learning to become nurses because the government, at the same time as voting out, getting out of the EU where we get a lot of our nurses from they dropped all of the bursaries and uh sort of funding for the people to train to be nurses it's uh it's basically if you say you're going to train to

be a nurse if you're going to go to college to be a nurse you get a stipend from the government who'll pay you to go through training or they would we have something similar but we call them student loans yeah so yeah well we have we have a lot of student loans as well. We have that. This would be like, because you're doing a job that has a direct vocational benefit to as soon as you graduate,

we will pay you, pay you a small amount. No, yeah, no, I understand. We do the same thing again. We just call it crippling debt. So like if you want, and the more, and it is,

and it is crippling. I mean, it is stupid crippling debt. Seriously. Like the more good you want, and the more, and it is, and it is crippling. I mean, it is stupid crippling debt. Seriously. Like the more good you want to do with your degree, the less likely you are to make real money afterwards with it. Well, and even doctors have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to college. Yeah. Crushing, crushing, crushing amounts of debt.

Yeah. So, so amounts of debt. Yeah, crushing amounts of debt. Yeah. So they're trading. So basically, you're not training the people that you would need because you thought you would get them from the EU. And now you're not getting them from the EU because you guys decided to close all your borders like it's 28 days later. So now... But that's a level of joined up thinking that just hasn't taken place. Because you're saying, okay, there must be a logical link between these two things. So there's a problem that we aren't training

them because we assume we're getting them from elsewhere. It's just that nobody has prioritized that question. So they haven't put the two pieces together. And if you talk to the average person on the street, they'll say, well, the problem with immigration is they're coming here to take our jobs. But those people on the street aren't training to become nurses to take the jobs that the immigrants aren't taking. And actually, there weren't enough nurses going around in the first place. Which is why you needed them anyway. Yeah. I do want to point out that in America, our immigrants like, our immigrants work in the meatpacking plant. Your immigrants show up and are nurses.

But we have that too. So for us, immigration, if you look at farms, when it comes to harvesting season, a lot of seasonal workers will come in and help just pick the food just get the food out of the ground and onto the shelves now that's starting to be you guys have mexicans too i was gonna i was really wondering like it's a long way i was a largely polish i think our mexicans are uh polish uh weirdly uh just strange how that works they make a different quesadilla. I mean, largely it's because itinerant workers, it's hard for them to fly all the way from Mexico to Cornwall to pick up the fruit. But yes, there's a genuine risk that there's just going to be food

rotting in the ground because we don't have the people to pick it out. And even though we still have an unemployment problem, it's people, you know, if you are unemployed in the northeast of the country, you aren't going to travel to the southwest of the country for a couple of weeks to pick fruit. So yeah, we do have an immigration problem. And it's that there are sectors that are dependent on immigration.

But the other immigration problem is that a lot of politicians have spent a long, long time demonizing immigrants and also not tackling the problem. So people think that that's our problem. It turns out this is a universal in modern politics. So you have a Department of Cholo deportation. So Donald Trump, when he came in, what he decided to do was make it make make a department

where we reported to that department all the crime that immigrants do so they saw that i guess vilify them vilify them more so do you have a a crazy department like that did theresa may make a nutty like a boxcar precursor yeah that's really what we're working on station i's like a train station. I don't think we've got anything quite like that. Again, I think that's not because we didn't want to do that. It's just because we haven't had the level of structure or forethought to actually do that. If you see what decisions this government's making, it's pretty clear they aren't planning ahead.

They call an election, but it turns out they get decimated in and end up losing power. But even if you look at Brexit, so at the moment, we're just going through the Great Repeal Act, which is the Great Repeal Bill now, because an act becomes a bill. And what that does is it literally says all of the laws that apply to the UK that are originated from the EU just become UK law in one sweeping motion. So it's something like 17,000 laws or something like that. We just write them just become UK law in one sweeping motion. So it's like something like 17,000 laws or something like that. We just write them all into UK law under the powers of this. But you can't just do that. Well, is that why you left? Well, yeah, exactly. But now we get to control those laws ourselves. But this is the dangerous

thing is that you can't just cut and paste those laws into the British law books. So the government have to go through one by one and see what changes they need to make to the wording of the law to make sure it applies to Britain. So the Great Repeal Bill says for two years, the government have to go through one by one and see what changes they need to make to the wording of the law to make sure it applies to britain so the great repeal bill says for two years the government has the power to write these laws without scrutiny without debate and without the opposition or the public coming having their say in it for two years yeah it's a fucking crazy land grab because sure the government will say well we're just making sure these laws work in britain so that they actually apply and they don't refer to things that don't make sense in britain but there is almost nothing at all stopping them changing the the the details of those laws and introducing new elements of those laws while they're doing that and there's 17,000

of the fuckers and it's happening behind closed doors it's it's just in absolutely incredible so um now when we talk about immigration over there, one of the things that somebody said before I went over there, this was a year ago, but somebody sent us a bunch of tweets and they were saying that immigration is so bad that I shouldn't even use the tube over there

because I'm going to get raped. Is the tube the bathroom there? No, no, no. What is the tube? It's the thing you send money to the teller yeah okay no but they said they said i shouldn't even use the tube because i'm gonna get raped by a muslim guy or something i don't know they said some stupid shit jesus who the hell's tweeting you that we have fucking racists who listen to our show man so i don't get it but but you would

think they would feel really unwell how do you still have racists listen to your show it's pretty clear that you're against racism. Is it just that there are so many racists in America at this point emboldened by Trump that you just can't move? I think the guy was from Europe. He was because because there's a lot of people who really do feel like Europe has a bad immigration problem with the refugees. And but also when you when they come into a country that then the front page of so many newspapers demonize them on a daily basis. There's newspapers that one. We have such a toxic environment in terms of the press and some of the sentiment that press whips up that you can imagine that it would be hard to integrate if you've come from one of those places, come here and just see constant hate at you. Now, obviously there's also crazy assholes

come here and they are committed to terrible causes. And I don't care how many newspaper articles I see. I don't care how many newspaper articles I see, I don't know that I would kill someone. I mean, that seems like, you know what I mean? I understand your point, but at the same time, I think, you know, clearly somebody who is unhinged to do a terrorist attack is probably unhinged from the beginning.

No, no, I think it's an unhinged person that can be directed by the people around them or the culture around them. We had a similar thing actually where a guy drove a van through a crowd of people who were coming out of a mosque. And it was a white guy from Cardiff who had been radicalized by the right to hate Muslims and effectively copied one of their techniques in driving a van at a crowd.

Now, I'm sure he probably wasn't a level-headed person ahead of that, but it seems too close to be coincidental that in the weeks following a similar type of attack and all the hatred that we've seen from the right on that, he then goes and does a similar thing. But guys like that are good tools to use by the guys who are really masterminding that shit. Absolutely. And the same is true in, you know, in Muslim culture, in where they are using those unhinged people to enact their, the small groups enacting their political and terroristic will. It's funny we never use that terminology, like radicalized by the right. Yeah. Right. We don't we don't think of it that way. You hear that terminology, at least here, most frequently, like, you know, the radicalized by, you know, fundamentalist Islam or something along those lines. Right. But you don't hear when there's an attack on the right. You don't hear that they were radicalized by the right.

You don't hear. In fact, here, at least, we are loathe to call those terrorist attacks. Yeah, we won't even do that. Same here. Same here. we won't even do that same here same here there's a guy who killed a sitting politician um during the 2015 election and that still does not get described in the media as a terrorist attack even though when he he shot her in the street he shouted britain first death to traitor fuck how much and he was not a right wing and she was a left-wing politician who had a a record of being uh very accommodating to people and speaking out about how we need to have a cohesive community. We need to welcome refugees. We need to help migrants. And yeah,

he killed her in the street and yelled Britain first. When he gave his name in trial, he gave his name as, I think it was Britain first, death to Muslims or death to traitors, something like that. And he does not get described as a terrorist. When we talk about terrorist attacks, the newspapers skip over his and just go to the time that a Muslim killed a soldier. We didn't talk about Dylan Roof, the guy who killed all the black people in the church in one of those southern cities.

I don't remember what one was, but Charleston or something like that. He killed a bunch of people in a church. He killed like nine people. Nine people killed black, a bunch of black people. We didn't use that radicalized language. I don't killed a bunch of people in a church. He killed like nine people. Nine people killed black, a bunch of black people. We didn't use that radicalized language. I don't think we talked about him as a radical.

I think they talked about him as like, they always talk about him as like a lone gunman or like a lone nut or whatever. There's like that. Yeah, yeah. And you see the sort of satirical pieces where they'll have a pinned color chart held up and you can see exactly what color makes you a lone wolf and

what color makes you a radical terrorist. But I think the reason we don't talk about the right being radicalized is because the right is in charge of that part of the discourse. Yeah, that's their discourse. You're right. So, you know, we have the right wing media. We have the right wing, your Trump-esque movement, your green frogs filling up Twitter. So much of that is driven by the right that we see, even not just when it comes to terrorist stuff. The current narrative is that the left are very emotionally reactive, that they won't listen to voices that disagree with them, that they have to be ideological pure, and they want countenance

views that go against them. And you look at the way that the right-wing report on basically anything. I mean, look at the way you guys cover all the time, the way the Christian right talk about anything that isn't them being completely in power. Oh, they've changed the color of these cups at Starbucks, and this is a major scandal. That is the exact kind of emotional, knee-jerk, snowflake-y response that the right will call out left. But it doesn't get called out the same way in the right, because the right's in charge of the narrative at the moment. We've seeded the narrative so much.

How much of it do you think, or if any, has to do with otherism, too? You know, like, it's real easy to look at somebody who's, you know, got, you know, different culture, different customs, different skin color, all of that. That's a real easy other, right, to identify. And so, you know, we can call them very quickly. We can say, oh, they're radicalized. They are a terrorist. They are other, right? We can use all these othering terms to describe these folks. But if it's, you know, the white guy in Cardiff who looks like me and smells like me and goes to the same grocery store as me. It's way more difficult to otherize that person. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's

certainly a factor in it. Although it's hard, I wonder as well whether there is an element that the, well, I'm trying to figure out what I'm trying to say here, that because the left try and be relatively kind of understanding of things, that's kind of how you would kind of characterize a lot of the left is let's try and understand, work together, collaborate, that we may be just less prone to shouting about that otherism where we see the extreme right. So I think I've got almost nothing in common with people on the extreme right. I mean, we might have the same skin color and largely the same language, but I don't think our cultural values overlap at all. And I grew up in a place that was extremely

right-wing, but it was the poor right-wing rather than the moneyed right-wing. It was unemployed people blaming immigrants for taking their jobs, for taking their houses, for stopping them having opportunities. And I would say that those values that lead to that, I have almost no overlap with. But I can't recognize that as otherism because there aren't those, as you say, immediate signifiers, I think. Yeah, right. And I guess that's sort of like, you know, it's if I'm if I'm a person who is scared. Right. If I'm a person who is and I'm not. But if I were a person who's just scared. person who is scared, right? If I'm a person who is, and I'm not, but if I were a person who's just scared, right? If I can identify the other and vilify them, and then it's easy to come up with solutions, right? I see the enemy. I know what uniform they wear, right? And I'm generalizing,

but I know what uniform they wear. I can put them all in a place and in a bucket called, I don't like this. But if they eat the same cereal that I eat and they have the same, you know, they go to the same barbershop and they're the same kind of person in these broad sort of general terms, it's harder for me to pick them out in a crowd. I don't know. It just seems like human nature to do this. I don't know how you get past this kind of thing. No, I think you part of it as well is they can pick out solutions to it, but those solutions ultimately are not just ineffective, but are self-defeating. Because the solution is, well, what we need to do is isolate those people more. We need to keep migrants, well, keep refugees.

And I hate the way that we conflate migrants and refugees like it's the same thing. You know, migrants are people who are moving for work, for economic reasons, that type of thing. Refugees are moving because we bombed the fuck out of their country recently. And we left them with all the bad guys that we don't like. So we went up. Yeah. Well, we, yeah, we, we also went, uh, went in and bombed Syria recently. And, and so the, the solutions that people on the right will come up with will be, we need to send them all back in Syria. And you need to see people sharing stuff like, during the second world war, Britain was bombed and we didn't send all of our men, women, and children out to other countries. We stayed and fought. It's like, no, we sent a shitload of people away from London because London was

getting bombed. There were shitloads of refugees during the Blitz. You've just forgotten about that. But you have this kind of narrative of, we need to send them all back there and keep them there. But the idea of keeping everybody in a place and then bombing the fuck out of the people who they're scared of in that place, and they get caught up in the collateral, you're not only going to send people a message that the West does not care about those people,

which might lead some of the more looser or unhinged people in that group to think, well, if the West don't care about me, and these are the bad guys over here, and I'm scared of those bad guys, if I join those bad guys, I'm no longer scared of those bad guys. So you end up kind of promoting a bit more, especially the people who are already unhinged or who've lost everything. You know, I think we end up keeping people in a tinderbox, and then it explodes again. And then they go, well, it's even more reason why we need to keep fewer of them over here because it keeps exploding over there. So I think having that level of simplistic solution just exacerbates the situation to a point where I don't think the people who suggest these solutions

will ever know or care that the reason that there are more terrorist attacks is because there's more volatility. One of the reasons, one of the reasons, obviously, is there's more volatility in that region. And part of the reason there's more volatility is because we keep going over there and fucking bombing them now there's still crazy religious extremist assholes who are doing that thing and that's it's not causing that but it is causing enough instability that that's can spill into other areas and start to affect stuff yeah so who do we bomb to fix that. I guess I'm really mixed up. England. Guy Fawkes had the right idea. Bomb Parliament. I'm sure that'll solve everything.

Super confused. Speaking of things that are mixed and things that are separate, do you guys have Neapolitan ice cream over there? This is an important question. We do have Neapolitan ice cream. When you get a thing of Neapolitan ice cream, yeah. Okay, so when you get a thing of Neapolitan ice cream, and this is very important.

This is fucking critical right now. I am crossing my arms. If you were to be forced, let's say you're in prison, and it's the only ice cream you can get, how would you go after that thing of Neapolitan ice cream? Would you scoop, say, a scoop of vanilla and maybe a scoop of chocolate,

or would you scoop across? Yeah, I've heard this debate raging on your show, and I have to say, I find this to be a very divisive argument. I think of all the stuff you talk about, this is the thing that's going to polarize people the most. I think, for a second, when you talk about this, when you were saying single scoops, I thought you meant you were just taking a scoop of vanilla and fucking off. Answer the question properly. I think you take a scoop of each. You motherfucker. But you don't scoop across because you start mixing and then it all gets mushy and weird around the edges.

Because you already have the issue with ice cream that if you leave it out whilst you're getting these scoops, it's going to start melting a bit and melting into each other. And that's already going to be a bit weird. You don't want to end up with this kind of pinkish brown that you get when you're playing with, you know, modeling clay as a kid. Everything turns brown when you mix it together. It's no good. You want to keep them separate.

Thank you. I just wanted to... Keep the colors separate. That's the message of this show is keep the colors separate. If there's anything the last half an hour discussion has told us is that we need to keep the colors separate. If there's anything the last half an hour discussion has told us is that we need to keep the colors separate. Brexit. Brexit-flavored Neapolitan ice cream.

Oh, that's great, guys. Yeah, that's how all the puppy frog guys eat the ice cream, too. So, yeah. Enjoy the fucking racism ice cream. I think the Brexit ice cream, yeah. Fucking clanhood motherfuckers. On the box, the Brexit ice cream would say a taste of every single flavor. And then when you get it, it would just be like a muddy, brown, shitty flavor.

Nobody actually wanted this flavor. Nobody likes this flavor. But it's the only flavor we've got left, and we're going to have to lump it. It's the purest, whitest flavor you could ever see. I think the other thing with Brexit ice cream is it would say it was one liter of it on the tub. And then when you open it, it would be only half a litre. So yeah, we're getting a lot less than we thought we'd get, to be honest. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. The story comes from RT.com, and I love this story.

Vatican rules the body of Christ can't be gluten-free. Yeah. It can't be gluten-free. It can't's, uh... Can't be gluten-free. It can't be, and you know why? Why is that? Bread and fish. Bread and fish. I should have emphasized the bread, not the fish. It's real late, Cecil.

It's real late. I'm a little tired. It's been a long week! You are a little tired. It's been a long week! Let me try that again. Bread and fish. Okay, the joke doesn't work. How about this? Jake Farr Wharton. Jake Farr. The end.

I thought you were going to say David Smalley. Jesus had Celia. Oh, David Smalley. He's gluten intolerant, too. He is intolerant. I agree with you. They just write themselves. You can't even handle it in small amounts no he can only handle things in small misunderstanding uh yeah this is uh this is crazy when i was reading this

is it this though when they're talking about at, at one point, they say something like, hosts that are completely gluten-free are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist. Like, isn't this arguing over, you know, like, you're like, I'm sorry, but that green paint is not the color of a dragon. I know, right? You're like, you're arguing over painting lead figurines. You're like, that is not the official color of Warhammer 40K Space Marines. I'm very sorry. You can't like, it's fucking, it's ridiculous. It's like arguing whether or not fucking Harry Potter's wand should be fucking ash or birch.

Who fucking cares? It's not real. God damn it. It's in the books. This is canon, people. It's like God's magic bread to bodies to bodies to bread or however that works it doesn't work without gluten that so is the magic in the gluten it's like one of the mysteries of the trinity it's the gluten the lactose intolerant and the sugar-free

but there's a weird symbol you gotta do yeah that's you holding your stomach exactly right it's a weird symbol just called fucking gas sex's you holding your stomach. Exactly, right? It's a weird symbol just called fucking gas sex. That's it. The weird symbol is just a fucking thing of gas sex. If you're lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant and sugar free, you are fucking, you are no fun at all ever. You know what you are?

Just kill yourself. Dead 30 years ago. You're just a straight carnivore at that point. Like a cheetah. You're taking bites out of fucking dogs at the dog park at that point. What could you eat? This is from, what the fuck, where is this from? C? DW.

DW, thank you. It's fucking late and it's far away. This is from DW. DW. Thank you. It's fucking late and it's far away. This is from DW.com. Turkish marriage guide sparks controversy. The Turkish city of Kutaya. Nice. Nailed that, right? It's got a little umlaut over the U.

I think I killed that. I like this. It says it's known for its fresh mountain air. Ceramics. Yeah, because remember that time you went on that ceramics tourism trip? Oh, honey, where should we go on our ceramics

tour? Said nobody ever. Nobody goes on ceramics tour. I need another cherub for the TV. Oh, you know, we should really go to Kutaya. I hear good things about their ceramics. I need to finish my collection of Love Is characters. What are those stupid, there's a name for them, and I don't remember what it is because I don't care about it. But like those assholes, they collect these little things, these little goddamn ceramics.

The tchatskis, yeah. Yeah, but there's like a specific kind. They cost like fucking a million dollars. And all you do is buy them and you put them in a thing. And then when you die, yeah. Yeah, but there's like a specific kind and they cost like fucking a million dollars and all you do is buy them and you put them in a thing and then when you die, your grandkids throw them away. I literally have no idea what you're talking about. God damn it. I'm sure that there is a collectible market for those things, but it's like

you're telling me a brand of a Beanie Baby. I wouldn't know. I'd be like, oh. I thought Beanie Baby was the brand. See, I didn't know that. Well, anyway, all so they this this fucking garbage city in turkey uh came up with a marriage guide they handed out this 394 page book yeah how far into do you get where the penis goes into the vagina 394 the penis goes into the vagina whether she wants it or not That's page 2 actually Yeah right It's called Marriage and Family Life

And it says that wife beatings Are legitimate and recommended means For conflict resolution If a woman refuses To wear makeup for her husband How would you see it anyway? She's covering her face up. I feel like if you beat her enough,

she'll have to wear the makeup. Oh, come on. That's true. Yeah. And it says that a wife has to remain quiet and apologize if her husband is angry with her. But, you know, other pieces of advice in the book um let's stop for a second yeah a 400 page marriage and that's been read as many times as fucking a

bread machine manual right it's been read that many times i don't know man if it if it contains things that says hey if i'm mad at you you have to be quiet and apologize? I feel like I'd be like, page 322. 322. I do that with my wife all the time. Like, hey, when you said the words, you said obey. And then she hits me. I wear makeup.

It's not working, man. It's not working. A little green concealer. Anyway, I'm more of a winter, Tom. What's wrong with you? It also says other pieces of advice in the book include the notion that women should not talk during sex as this will lead to the

child developing a stutter. Only if she chokes on it, though. A child? Like, who wrote this well if you're doing it in the butt the kid will have irritable bowel syndrome these are the same people though that think like women who ride around can get pregnant or some shit

they're like fucking you should have the woman on top ride around can get pregnant or some shit. They're like fucking cuckoo. You should have the woman on top or the baby will be breached backwards. The baby comes out reverse cowgirl. That's how the baby comes out as a cowboy. It's just babies with a fucking hat on.

He's got a Sam Elliott mustache. Sam, have you been in here? Doggy style, you got a tail on the thing. Sam, it's what's for dinner. It's really late.

Keep going, power through motherfucker it's really late though it also says that uh but I like this because this is this is the essence of American capitalism this next one so for all you fucking capitalists out there who think the fucking competition fixes everything polygamy is suggested as a way to keep wayward women in check as it apparently creates competition among wives. I feel like I'd get out of the equation right away.

Two women would be like, within 24 hours, they both look at each other. We don't need him at all. He's gone. What do you add to this? What is your value add? Somebody fire this guy. Oh, God. It also allows for children as young

as 10 years of age to be married. That's the age of reason. I guess I would suggest a different city for your pottery. Oh, shit, man. This is fucking horrible. It is horrible. I mean, it's just it's a manual.

It's a manual for creating misogynists. Well, and also pedophiles. So is Peter Magosian's book. Now I think about it. So you can't do that. You can't do that you can't do that he'll pass him aggressively twit at you or whatever

he'll say that I have a bad physique yeah right I offered him hey Pete come at me bro I responded to him on his Facebook page. I said, all right, buddy, let's stand there and take our shirts off and see more of a man. He didn't get back to me.

He didn't get back to you yet? No. Yeah, okay. Dad bod Pete. He also wrote that thing about like people don't want to like fight in a cage. Guy is fucking off the rails. He's got lots of fucking mind. He's off the fucking rails, man.

You know what they say. Fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice, strike three. Well, this story is distressingly familiar. It's from Fox 8. Oh, yeah. This is familiar. It is. It is. But it's a different girl. Different girl, different manner of deathingly familiar. It's from Fox 8. Oh, yeah. This is familiar. It is.

It is. But it's a different girl? Different girl, different manner of death. Okay. All right. The last one caught on fire. Oh, that's right. Remember where she asphyxiated?

No, it was carbon monoxide, I think, or something. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Because she started a fire in her menstruation hut. Yeah. This is a Nepalese menstruation hut ritual claiming the life of a teenage girl uh because she got bitten by a snake while she was banished to a cow shed during her uh banishment during her banishment period fuck 20 years ago we figured out you can't you shouldn't even fucking develop photographs in

huts you know what i mean like we started the fucking photograph you remember this yes okay so all you people that are that have never had have never had an actual photograph developed um oh my god there's a lot of people who have not had a photograph eli bostic right that was dying as you're so there there used to be these things called cameras okay and you put inside of the attached to your phone you put in no you put in film inside of these cameras and there was little gnomes in there and when you clicked it they would write draw really quickly a picture on this film and the film the little gnomes were sneaky they made you pay for the pictures they didn't just want to give them to you and so you

would have to go to these photograph huts literal huts in parking lots i I'm not even kidding you. Why would they like that? I am not even kidding. They were a drive-up hut and you would hand them a film in a package. You would tell them what speed the film was at. So it was like 110 or 35 millimeter. ISO 400. And then they would take that film

and they would put it in a little envelope and they would drop it in an envelope bucket thing and it would go into a fucking hole somewhere where underground they must have had a huge print run. Don't even know where it went. But they took those pictures. They developed them and a week later

you would be able to go back and see your photos because you couldn't see what you just took a picture of. It was impossible. It made it so much harder to post to Facebook. Yeah. You're like, oh, God, I want to put this picture of me, my fucking dog up. I got to go to the photo hunt, get it developed, invent Facebook.

Facebook was an album that you bored people at your house with. Was he pictures of my vacation? I'd actually rather kill myself. Absolutely not. I would rather stop being friends with you. I'm going to go into the bathroom and pull my eyelids out. I've got something in my eye. No, you don't.

I do now. I'm going to poke myself right in the eye. I've just touched my brain. Yeah, no, like these huts, these little fucking huts that they're sticking people look at that hot yeah that hot that hot is disgusting that hot is not i fit for i wouldn't put the snake that bit the girl i know it's so fucking sad it's so sad i i just i can't here's the thing that i don't get everybody shits once or twice a day. Unless you're Eli, you shit six or seven times a day because you're

dying. Why is that bad? I drink a lot of coffee. But somehow we poop every day. Everybody doesn't. But women get a bloody nose in their crotch once a month that lasts for four weeks.

That's what my wife tells me. I don't know. Is that true? I don't know. But, sorry, I'm on my period. She's batting you away like, no, it's heavy day. How could it always be a heavy day? You know, we poop.

That's infinitely more disgusting than a period. Oh. Right? Infinitely more disgusting. You know, you can't have a period with corn in it. You know what I in it or peanut chunks you know what I mean you just can't

if you do it's like what the fuck is happening here I gotta go I gotta keep running you just run and you never stop Mr. Peanuts in the corner he's like you had an abortion he's got his you had an abortion?

He's got his little monocle sort of tilted. You killed my baby. Little Peanuts. Oh, my Peanuts. No, but it's infinitely grosser. Pooping is infinitely grosser. And somehow in fucking 2017, we're still being like

oh you bleed out your crotch gotta go stay outside what the fuck man i don't know don't you poo i can't understand i genuinely don't understand it man like there's been some shit that's come out of me you've just been fuck, don't go in there. Actually, what you could do is just nail the door closed. Never go in there. I have taken shit that's like, we need to buy a new house. That's it. That's not ours. We need to move out of state.

That's what happened in Indiana. Tom used to live in Indiana. You can no longer go there. I have taken shit that have required me to be relocated by the FBI. God. It's, I mean,

and here's the fucking kicker here is Nepal. I'm going to read a quote from this article in Nepal. We have a female president. The speaker of the house is female. And until recently we had a female Supreme court justice, chief justice, but even top women leaders haven't said a single word about

this issue. They have females in power in that country. And it's still such a stigma they've passed laws against, but people still do it. They still do it. We cover the story. We just keep covering the story. We just talked about someone who

died recently because they tried to stay warm well yeah and it's awful man this is a 19 year old you know think about how many times you're you're 19 right so a woman starts menstruating at let's say let's say she's a 15 late bloomer 15 come on this This is Islamic. Let's say nine. Jesus, man. I'm saying like late bloomer, right? 15. Just give everybody the benefit of the doubt. 10.

10 and a half. And like, you know, let's say she's the same woman goes into menopause early, right? So again, benefit of the doubt. 45. Sure. 30 years, right? Every fucking month unless they're early, right? So again, benefit of the doubt. 45. Sure. 30 years, right? Every fucking month unless they're pregnant, right? So every fucking month.

This is happening. Yeah, two days out of the month. They got to go spend three, four, I mean like three to five, 21 days out of the month. I mean, how many days are they spending

in these fucking run-down shitty fucking ramshackle huts for because they're unclicked just fucking clean them up then like if you think they're unclean go take a shower or a bath or get some running water or head down to the fucking ganges or whatever plug it up right plug it up what the fuck just you know put a piece of whatever it is that you know women dude i don't know what they do i don't know what kind of parts they have yeah i don't know what they do i don't know what kind of parts they have i don't know what they do with that but however the parts work but seriously silly putty this is not a difficult thing to do you just figure it out like you know i mean like the rest

of the world i mean and not the rest of the world though because i mean like this isn't you know you talk about different cultures there's a lot of different cultures that are still really fucking skeeved out that women bleed from their vagina. Do you think that this is just all bullshit? Like the whole thing is bullshit. This is really just misogyny writ physical, right? That's all that this is.

All this is is literally putting a woman in her place. Literally putting you in your place. Because it's gotta be. That's what it's got. It can't be anything else. Right, right. Here's the thing. Unless this is ingrained over and over and over again, and the reason why this is ingrained is because your dad treated your mom as less than, and so now you treat your wife as less than.

And your daughters, Jesus. And your daughters as less than. Because you learn that growing up. It's systematic. It's systematic misogyny. Yeah, it's all that it can be. Systemic. I don't know.

Systematic might be the wrong word. I'll probably get an email. That's okay. This story comes from The Independent. Chilling footage captures female suicide bomber cradling baby moments before she blows them both up. So this is pretty awful. This is an ISIS suicide bomber in Mosul in Iraq and she blew herself up and she was holding

her kid. She's got a picture. She's actually got the baby in her arms right before she died. It's hideous. It is amazing to look and see the tragedy that has really unfolded around this baby boomer generation.

Oh, come on. What's crazy to me is that women are taking this job. Do they blow up 77% less when they take this job? Do they explode? You know, if childcare wasn't so fucking expensive, you wouldn't have to bring your kid to work you know

we're gonna get a the wage gap isn't real and we're gonna get a the wage gap is real i know we're gonna get both those emails from that i didn't even say a position on it all i did was just say the 77 but it's still we're still gonna get two emails about it i'm gonna what i'm gonna do is if you send that email i'm gonna put you in touch with the guy who said the opposite. And I'm going to have you fight. Now, this is just a horrible thing. They're clearly showing, you know, female suicide bombers are starting to get involved a lot more. And it looks like they probably had a much of a pass in a lot of these checkpoints.

Right. These checkpoints would come into these checkpoints and people wouldn't pay a lot of attention to them because most women, especially if you're carrying a baby. Right. These checkpoints, they would come into these checkpoints and people wouldn't pay a lot of attention to them because most women, especially if you're carrying a baby. Right. You wouldn't expect that that person would then explodinate themselves. But now these people that are involved in this, they've got a whole nother group of people that they've got to check for, I think, more thoroughly than they had in the past. You know, like in all honesty, you look at something like this and I thought like, OK, well, what's the difference? These people are already raising their sons and their daughters to kill themselves and their teenagers. So, you know, you already think that killing yourself in the name of this cause is a great good. Right. It has a a moral component to it that's driven by this religiosity. Right. You don't blow yourself up with your baby unless you

think that there's something next or you think there's something really so amazing about this cause so fucking they just like why bother raising them yeah bring them to work actually be honest you're right and they say it's her child they do say it's her child so at first i was going to argue and be like well what if it was just a cut they picked up on the street just to get to the thing and then blow it up? But it says her child. So I suspect they know who she is and they know that this was actually her child. But you're right. In fact, this person killed themselves with this baby, but that baby might have grown up to be radicalized as well.

And it could have been, you know, another suicide bombing in the future. Just horrible horrible though. I mean, like, like there's nothing this worldly that gets you to do this. We talk about this all the time.

There's nothing this worldly that gets you to do this. You're not doing it for politics, man. Certainly not. You know, like, like you might throw your purse at somebody and blow it up,

but you certainly aren't going to do it yourself. Right. Because you want to, you want to, you want to reap what the benefits of this. Even if you kill yourself for the benefit of a future generation. It's the future

generation you're holding on to. But when you're taking out the future generation, it's only, it's only the craziness of religion that can do this sort of thing. A long black cock, long black cock, long black cock. A long black cock, long black cock. All right, this story is from The Friendly Atheist.

The Egyptian cleric says female genital mutilation is good for the economy. And I actually, I read this and I thought, okay, I'm not even going to argue the point with you, buddy. So what if it is? It's not good for the clitoris. Like, I don't care how much money

is involved. You're not cutting the clitoris off of people without objection. There is a lot of money because they started a charity and there's a jingle for it. 1-877 cars for clits. You haven't heard this one? You've heard this one before, right? You just put

that song in everybody's head. You just earworm for cars for clits. The best part is when you hear that on the radio, you're going to replace clits from now on. Cars for clits. There's all these lonely guys turning in their cars. Can you see the clit first?

I want to read some of this article because this is actually a really funny article. This guy is like, he says, I quote, Egyptian women are circumcised, yet they give birth to more than all the other mothers in the world. And he's talking about specifically, people are saying that it's bad for women to be circumcised because it affects their reproduction. And he's saying, well, this is bullshit because Egyptian women are circumcised. They give birth to more women. They're super fertile. because Egyptian women are circumcised. They give birth to more women.

Yeah, they're super fertile. They're more than all the other mothers in the world. And there's 60 other countries with a higher birth rate. But I have a country I got to ask you. Yeah, all right, all right. Quiz here. Yeah, all right. Highest birth rate country. Who do you think it is?

Liberia. Close, Niger. Okay. But I? Liberia. Close, Niger. Okay. But I think Liberia might be up there. How many, if you were going to say a number based on that fertility rate, what would it be in Niger?

What would you say? I don't understand the quantifier for the question. The number? The number. I think it's the number of children. How many kids? I think it's...

In Niger? Yeah. Seven. 7.6. Good for you. Man, I'm fucking good fucking good ask me another question i didn't think you'd get it because i when i saw it i was shocked i was seven i was like seven what do they fucking got they got a fucking t-shirt going over there what the fuck they got no birth control man think about a world where there's just no birth control it's just so shocking to me because like fucking we made a show about a woman who had eight you know what I mean

yeah right well eight at once to be fair eight is enough like that's you know like there's another show where like oh I thought you were talking about Octomom or like John and Kate plus eight oh John and Kate plus eight I guess she had them all at one time we've also had a show where like I guess the Duggars is a lot

the Duggars is double is. The Duggars is double. It's double this. Triple, almost triple this. It's almost triple that. Triple this. Niger, Niger, Niger. I feel weird saying the word Niger. I feel like I should say N country.

I feel like I'm getting away. I feel like I'm getting away with something. Niger. This email is pissed off at me right now. I want. Oh, yeah. This is... Is she else pissed off at me right now? I want to read, too.

It says, female circumcision is a preventative medical measure. Someone who is uncircumcised will be affected with many serious diseases is what the person said.

Yeah, like orgasms. Yeah, or squirting. That's another serious disease that I need to look into. You know what I mean? You got to get checked out. Right. If that's happening.

Symbionosis. That's another one. Symbionosis. Adam and Eve-itis. Adam and Eve. So let me just mention, if you still have your clit, let's say, let's just say that you still have your clit attached to your body. Let's just hope you still have your clit let's say let's say let's just say that you still have your clit attached to your body let's just hope you still have your clit okay i can hope yeah absolutely i feel like

if you started with one let's hope you finish i'm gonna hope with one hand only though um the other hand's busy but anyway let's say you still have your clit and you wanted to say stimulate that clit. I don't see why you wouldn't. You could do it by going to adamandeve.com typing in Gloria Checkout. You'll get a free sex swing, which probably gives you more access to the clit. It does.

I think. I don't know. Where is the clit located? Is it on her boob? It's under the butt. Is that it? It's the real butt. Under the rope under under the butt i like that under the butt like you have to like lift like you look up and you're just like where is it where is it i can't find it so anyway if you wanted to look under the butt for the clit, you could buy something to penetrate under the butt. You get a free sex swing, something you buy, you buy something.

You can get almost any item 50% off and you get free shipping. All you have to do is type in Gloria checkout, go to adamandeve.com and you can get some stuff for your clit. Or your dick, if you want it. I mean, your dick is also available. It's just like a clit writ large. Just like a big giant clit that's not under your butt. It's a front clit.

It's a pointy outer clit. It's sort of in front of your body. It's a pokey clip. It's a pokey clip. We can't air this whole episode. This whole thing is garbage. Oh, God. so we're joined again by michael marshall from uh be reasonablyical and Skeptics of the K. He also has his blog, Think Better. It does have a Think Better blog. Now, Michael, you are going to be hosting again an amazing

conference, a conference we were lucky enough to go to last year. My favorite conference I've ever been to. It's my favorite conference I've ever been to so far too. QED is happening again this year. Yeah, it is. It's our seventh QED happening in October, the 14th, 15th. And yeah, it was so great to have you guys there last year. That was a huge amount of fun. That was the biggest QED we've ever had. And yeah, you guys- Weight-wise. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, it was. I mean- Had a lot of Americans there. Not just weight, there was also a significant increase in volume with you guys there. So that really did, the loudness certainly went up. People could hear you fall around.

So that was good. I don't know, man. That last night you were holding court. You got some volume, my friend. Yeah, I mean, I definitely made up for it on the Sunday. Oh, geez. Yeah. That was a fun night for me and not the people around me, I think.

But no, I mean, it was great to have you guys there last year. And, you know, we had loads of people saying that they were excited to see you. And I think that's kind of the thing that I really love about getting, about putting QED together is that the people who come to it feel like it's theirs. It feels like it's for them. So I think everyone just knows that everybody's there to talk to each other. There's nobody who's off limits. There's no green room. There's no celebrity sense of things where that person's over there, but you can't talk to them. Everyone just kind of mingles and throws in and does their own thing and brings their own thing to it. And that's the spirit that we kind of have every year, really. And yeah, we're looking for the same this

year. So last year and this year, we were running five rooms at once, which is a ridiculous thing for us to be doing. We've got the main room where we've got speakers doing a conventional hour-long speaking slot. And then we've got a panel room where we get people together to just mix up and see what conversations you can have there. We get a workshop room where you get a smaller group of people and they might be taught something a bit more hands-on. So last year we had a lot of investigative journalism workshops and even a magic workshop, stuff like that. We had the podcast room, which you guys graced so fantastically last year. And then we also have like an exhibition type space that we're figuring out quite well what we want to do with it this year. So it's one of those things that

our aim is that we always want at every point at QED to think, I'm enjoying this, but I also wanted to see that thing in the other room and I can't get to see everything. Because I think if you get that feeling of like, there's nothing worse than being at a conference and you're in the same room for four hours. And for two of those, you're like, well, I'm not even interested in what this next speaker is saying, but I'll sit through it because there's something else coming up. We always want it to be, there's enough going on that if you're not enjoying this, there's something else in one of the other rooms that you can always enjoy. So yeah, that's kind of the spirit of QD.

And I appreciate you guys saying that you enjoyed coming. It was a blast. Oh, it was amazing. Is it still going to be at that Piccadilly Circus or wherever you guys had it last time? Yeah, so we actually hire out the entire Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester. you guys had it last time? Yeah, so we actually hire out the entire of the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester and just use,

they give us, once we do that, we can use the space to basically do whatever we want in all the different rooms and to put on whatever kind of stuff we can really. And it's a nice space, that hotel. It's kind of, it's not too big

to get around and it all seems to work. But I think the atmosphere at QD is what I always enjoy the most is it really does feel that it's a community event, I think. It feels like you get the sense of it being a community there, which when so much of stuff is online, when we have so many of these, you see,

conversations happening over Twitter, and even within parts of the sceptical movement, you see people taking these big disagreements and having quite heated debate over it. I think being able to get people in a room and know that we're all largely pulling in the same direction or we're all people with largely good intentions, I think that's the sense I like the best,

that there is this community there, that you aren't just a lone voice out there. You are kind of one of a bunch of people who kind of follow the same ideas, really. Yeah, I got to say, in all honesty, when we were there, it felt like, and see, this is when I made a comment comment about this it felt like everybody was in a goddamn nice off it was like everybody was trying to be nicer than the next guy everybody was nobody that we met was anything other than incredibly approachable and kind and generous with their time you know from from other speakers that we met to

the you know other attendees of the event yeah um i mean except for your co-host who said she was going to be on our show and then never contacted us. Other than her, though, everybody was great. Everybody was great. One exception. One exception.

But other than that, really great. And the other thing I think that I thought works really well and other conferences should learn from this is the separate rooms is really smart. You get the audience that, that comes in that room wants to see what they're seeing because that the choice,

there's a choice there. Do I want to see Captain Disillusionment right now? Or do I want to go and see something else? So I want to see, do I want to see Cara Santa Maria on the main stage? Or do I want to see the God awful movies that's playing right now? You know what I mean? Like there's a, you have to make a decision based on that sort of thing. And there's some people, you know, that wrongly chose to see something else other than our show, right? Terrible mistake. Terrible mistake. But, you know. And they'll regret

it forever. And that's the good thing about QED. You go home with a lifetime of regrets. That's what we try and sell you for your ticket price. A great, a great way to run a conference because I feel like everybody in each one of those rooms wants to be there. Whereas you were talking, you know, sometimes you're in the middle of this speech, a speech is going on or something, someone's giving a talk and people are in the audience just chit-chatting because they don't care about what's happening on the stage if you just have one main stage. And I think that you guys have figured out a really good way to make a conference that is interactive for the person, not just a showcase for people to talk.

Yeah, that's how we've always thought about it, really. And partly I think it's because, as you say, if you've got one room at the conference, then whatever's on stage, if the person in the audience doesn't like it, they kind of begrudge sitting through it. And I've been there at conferences where there's one thing kind of going on. You think, okay, this isn't really exciting to me that much. So we thought if you've got that other room, what will happen is that person will sit through a few minutes of that and think, actually, I don't think it's for me. They'll take a few minutes to walk to the other room. They'll sit through a few minutes of that. And they'll think, actually, this isn't for me. At this point, they've seen two things that they're interested in. They might

think, actually, maybe it's just me right now. So I'm going to go to the bar. I'm going to go and have a cup of coffee and I'll come back in. So, so I think people don't blame you if you give them options. Um, they won't blame you for giving them too many good options and then the stuff they're going to miss. But I don't think anyone ever feels that, uh, there's, if there's nothing there for you across five rooms that in that hour, then you, you know, you've got time to, to go and, uh, make yourself a cup of tea somewhere and, uh, and, uh, enjoy yourself. So I think that does work quite well as giving people the choice. Because yeah, if you put Godawful Movies up against something that is, or put your show up against something that's a scientist on stage

talking about the work they're doing in physics, you might find science-y people will be interested in that talk. Atheism-y type people will be interested in your podcast. They would have enjoyed the you know switching those audience that enjoy it but they wouldn't enjoy it as much as something that feels closer to what they're they're interested in so you start splitting the audience up a little bit but and mixing it up later so yeah i think that works uh that works pretty well and it's something we've always tried to do doing five at once was a bit of an undertaking uh last year but

it worked and we're going to do it again this year. So you guys have some great organizers. It ran like clockwork. You guys are just, I mean, everything was, was perfect. It ran great in the nights that you guys had entertainment was fun too. Um, so I'm sure it's going to be great this year. How do people get tickets? Uh, so you can go to, uh, qdcon.org. Uh, that's the website for it. Tickets are 109 pounds, which I think at this point is about $40 because we are being hit hard on the currency thing. But if you wanted to come to QED, now is the time. Now is really the time. Especially if you're from the EU, ironically enough. If you're coming to QED from Europe, the pound and the euro are basically the one-to-one ratio right now, which means it is super cheap to get to QED and get a hotel. So it's, uh, it's worth it for that. Uh, if you're a student, we do have student tickets, which are 75 pounds. Uh, if you have

kids and you want to put them in a creche, we've got a creche there as well, uh, which is you basically buy a ticket for your, your child for the weekend and you get full, uh, you know, accredited childcare, professional childcare services there. Yeah. Time you should fly over. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Childcare? We have there. Yeah. Tom, you should fly over. Are you kidding me? Yeah. You have childcare? We have childcare, yeah. We have childcare anywhere in America.

It's amazing. All the kids here are raised by wolves. For real? That's amazing. Well, we want to make sure that it's accessible as possible. If you're a single parent. It makes sense,

but nobody does that here. Nobody does that anywhere you go ever here the higher homeless people or whatever immigrants no it's not homeless but not that'd be gross yeah that's not crazy oh one more question before we let him go how are the queen swans i've been worried are they okay they are doing okay. They're doing okay. I think they took a bit of a hit when Prince Philip declared he was going to retire from doing the nothing he's been doing for his entire life. The Queen's husband

has retired. Well, at least you paid him very well. Yeah, exactly. He's been very well recompensed for the nothing. Well, in fact, he has been doing something because he was traveling around the world being super racist to people uh which he was doing if i don't know if you guys have seen some of the things prince philip has ever said have you seen some of the things he

said in the past uh i know i haven't oh god you need to google it did he say they smell different way worse way worse okay he i'm not even sure i can repeat exactly what he said he was he was uh i think he was in hong kong at one point talking to uh someone who was living there who wasn't from hong kong and says i can tell you haven't been here for too long because you haven't and then he said something about the natives eyes your eyes aren't looking that way but he he didn't even say it as delicately as i just did as if you hang out there long enough and you i think i'm turning japanese the exact phrase he used was you haven't got you haven't gone slitty eyes no no he said that that's amazing yeah he totally said that. God, that's Eli Bostic. I could see something like that. Yeah. Well, there's a job opening.

If he is willing to fuck a woman in her 90s, then there's a job opening as married to the queen. The very best royalty. Eli would be amazing royalty. He would bring you guys kicking and screaming into the 21st century of racism. If there's one thing we need to do right now, it's modernize our racism. That's the thing that we really need to modernize in this country.

Make sure that we get the very latest spec, the very latest updated software download for our racisms. And Bob Robb and his big black rod still okay? Bob Robb? They're holding out. Black Robb, right? I Rob? No, they're holding out. Black Rob, right?

I don't know. Bob Rob, his name is. Bob Rob. He's like bangs on the door of Parliament and then he announces the Queen, right? To come in and make a speech in the third person. That's Bob Rob, right? That's his name.

Well, there was a big controversy recently and this just shows where we are in this country. Because the Queen's speech happens after an election when the government agrees what it's going to do and the Queen then ratifies that by reading it out. And when she read out the latest the Queen's speech after the last election she wasn't in full ceremonial garb.

She was just in her everyday kind of blue outfit with a blue hat. She was in her leisure wear. Yeah, she was in relaxed wear. She was in a jacket that buttoned up to her nose. She was in active wear. She's got like yoga pads, like her Lululemon's on. Well, if you look, she was actually wearing as well. And I'm sure this is coincidental, but she was wearing a blue hat,

which had gold buttons on the front of it, or sort of yellowy buttons on the front of it, that was sort of in a circle or sort of in a shape. And it looked a bit like the EU flag. And the only thing she was reading out basically in the Queen's speech was, we're going to leave the EU. So it was like, the only thing this government is planning to do is leave the EU. And she looked like she was dressed as the EU flag.

At the end of it, though, she took her hat off and threw it up in the air. Graduating. Does she do that? Like the first one who catches it becomes the next Queen? They get to be Bob Robb. That's how you elect the next Bob

Robb. Well, Andy, if people were going to find your work, where would they look? It's Marsh. Andy couldn't make it. My name is Shows Rock. You named him wrong. I'm going to call you Andy again.

It's also midnight here. Marsh, people are going to find you over there like you can find me on Twitter at Mr. M Marsh. And that has all the stuff to do with good thinking. That has all the stuff I do with the podcast with QED.

You can find kind of everything I do there and you can find me making sarcastic and incredibly increasingly bitter comments about the government there as well. Wonderful. Thanks so much for joining us today. Cheers for having me on, guys.

Always a pleasure. So we want to thank all our new patrons. We just got a whole starship full of people from Star Wars. I'm going to start there. Chancellor Palpatine, Mace Windu,

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala, Wilhuff Tarkin. That's Grand Moff Tarkin, although that's his actual name, I guess. Darth Maul, Boba Fett,

Jedi General Anakin Skywalker, Grand Army of the Republic. Jeez. Well, they all came in in the Millennium Falcon. Thank you very much for all your donations. We have more people too. Brandon, Fergus, Jide, Jeez. Bill, Michael, Caleb, Devin, Jeff and Maggie, Marky Mark.

I knew it finally. Abraham, Stephen, Paul, Scott, Michael, Brian, Lynn, and Julie. Thanks so much for your generous donations. We really do appreciate you're the reason Glory Hole Studios exists. So thank you for your generous support. So a bunch of people sent in a ton of calls to prayer. We are done playing calls to prayer for right now, but we do want to encourage people to vote for the call to prayer. So you can continue to vote on our website. Actually,

if you go to dissonancepod.com, you'll go and there's an actual link right on the right hand side, the very top of the page. Just scroll down just a little to get to the second most recent episode. And on the right hand side, there's a call to prayer poll. You click on that link. You can vote. You vote as many times you like. We're going to be tallying the votes until next week. So you have until next week to vote.

I think it's next Wednesday night. We're closing the poll down and then we're going to pick the next week to vote. I think it's next Wednesday night. We're closing the poll down. And then we're going to pick the best calls to prayer. I did receive a bunch of calls to prayer from people that said, the one person said they sent it to us last year. I had totally missed it. I did not see it. I didn't check any from last year.

I didn't see it from last year. That's so funny. They're just going to keep chasing this thing. So what I am going to do, though, is instead of doing it once a year, I think I'm going to do it twice a year, but I'm only going to do it one week of the month. I'm not going to do like a whole month of them. Yeah, that's a good idea. So we'll just do one week.

We think we'll probably do it sometime in December. So if you sent one recently, put it in your save file. The moment I open it up in December, and it's probably going to be relatively early in December, maybe the second week or something in December, I'll do another call to prayer thing. I'll actually put it in my calendar. I'll make sure it's there and we'll mention it on the show. And then you can submit them for a couple of weeks and then we'll have another vote and we'll probably give away another couple of shirts at the beginning of next year. We got a message. I just want to mention that we said last time that when there was a call to prayer, we were like, wow, that girl's got a nimble tongue.

That's a dude. That's a dude. But he still has a nimble tongue. He definitely does. We watched the video. He looks like a man with a nimble tongue. That guy was doing some crazy shit. We have a message from Natalie.

And Natalie sent an image, just a really striking image of a, just a terrifying America. I don't like it. It's like a collage of bad things in America. We're going to post it on this episode's show notes. Got kind of an ad busters feel. It does. This is episode 369. So check it out. Tom, someone sent in a message about garbage states. And at the end, they have a little message. He said, the whole thing is like a riddle of the Sphinx. How do you harm the economy of a state that doesn't have an economy? So as an aside, if you didn't see it happen, would you be able to tell if a dog shit in your car while you were physically inside Mississippi state lines?

No, you would not. I want to mention too, someone had sent us a message or a tweet or something. And it was about why California won't send people to states that have laws against LGBTQ people.

And we said they didn't want to put any California money into those states. And this person corrected us and said, no, what they don't want to do is send somebody who's LGBTQ that happens to work for the state to a place

that could be hostile towards them. And treat them as less than a person. And so they said, fuck that, we're not going to do it. And so they have this ban, quote unquote ban, on state money being spent on sending people to these places, state workers to these places.

We got a message, someone mentions that they had a death in the family, Tom, on state money being spent on these, sending people, these places, state workers, these places. We got a message. Someone mentions that they had a death in the family time and a really just awful, awful story. It says, you know, this, this person's father passed away.

It says, after his father passed away, there was a little bit of money that was involved, you know, life insurance, that sort of thing. My mother-in-law called the money a blessing from Jesus. Oh God. It's involved, you know, life insurance, that sort of thing. My mother-in-law called the money a blessing from Jesus. Oh, God.

It's like a blessing from Jesus that I would give back all of it, plus all the money I will ever make to have him back. Yeah, no shit, right? It's not a blessing from Jesus. It's a fucking blessing from State Farm. Yeah. That's why you get insurance. Oh, what an awful thing. It's an awful fucking thing to say.

We got a limerick this one is from jeffrey i like this i i got a soft spot for limericks here we go there once was an old man from kent whose poor old pecker was bent so to save himself trouble he shoved it in double and instead of coming he went i love it I love it. I love it. They don't make sense. They're all filthy. He went right under the butt. That's where the clit is. You gotta penetrate the clit. That's how you really get it.

You have to actually get a map from Nicolas Cage. Like National Treasure? Like National Treasure to find it. It is a National Treasure. Not for me, it's not. So we got a message. This is from Brian.

It's actually funny. He says that David Frum suggests a clever method to understand complaints about the quote unquote deep state. He simply replaces references to the deep state with the phrase rule of law so that's the statement donald trump is facing opposition from the deep state becomes donald trump is facing opposition from the rule of law that is so fucking funny thanks for sending that in brian we got a message from Char, and Char says that growing up Pentecostal, my mom and her nutty church friends prayed in tongues over me that I would receive the spirit of the Holy Ghost in the form of angelic gold dust on my hand. They told a seven-year-old kid that if Jesus loved her enough, gold would come out of her hands.

Imagine my surprise when weeks later I was on the playground and my hands were dirty and sweaty and my hands appear gold tinted. Jesus just loved you that day, Char. So we got a message from Ben and Ben says, we said that we didn't think that, you know, we said that Jews who sit beside a woman on a plane should sit in a, that don't want to sit beside a woman on a plane should sit in a bigot section, not with normal people. And he thought, what if you could prove that being religious is virtually not a choice by a scientific study? Would you be forced to say that religious people deserve the same rights as homosexuals.

And he says, I'm a gay atheist and I completely agree with your thinking so far. So don't take it as an attack. And we didn't. It's actually a very interesting question. I think I would certainly, if it was provable that human beings could not break out of religion, that religion was just something genetically you're disposed to, that if you have this gene, you are definitely religious, then I would certainly rethink

my thinking about how religion is thought of. Because I do, I don't think that gayness is something you can control. Yeah, we talked about this before the show, and I don't know how you get around that.

If a scientific study came out and said, hey, this is just a personality defect that certain people will have, like a genetic disorder, how do you blame somebody for that? Yeah. You don't blame somebody for, you know... Any other chromosomal anomaly, right? Yeah. You have to say, like, I'm sorry

this person has the broken, shitty gene that makes them religious. that makes them religious or a woman or something. Something terrible. Something terrible. Yeah. They can't take that. They can't change.

Yeah. We got an interesting article. This one was sent by, uh, by Richard and Richard sent in an article, Tom, where Pittsburgh people in Pittsburgh have Tom, where Pittsburgh, people in Pittsburgh have this app where they

can enter in what it's, if it smells bad. Is this a problem in Pittsburgh? I don't know if this is a problem in Pittsburgh, but I fucking love this. I fucking love this. My house would be a fucking hazmat.

The app is just burning through the battery on your phone. No. It's just constantly going up. See, it. I fucking love this. My house would be a fucking hazmat. The app is just burning through the battery on your phone. It's just constantly going up. Chili, no. I feel like White Castle. Moments away, technology-wise, from smell text messages.

You could just send somebody an odor. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be? You're sitting in a meeting and all of a sudden your 10-year-old boy just sends like a... I would break my phone. As soon as that happens, I break my phone and never pick another one. I buy several extra.

I break my phone. I put them strategically all over the house. Like those Wix air fresheners that just... God. Somebody is going to get out of a workout and send you their armpit and then I'm going to want to fight them. That would be the new thing.

That would be the new thing. Instead of people posting their workout on Facebook, I just worked so hard. It's going to be like, smell my ball sweat. Okay, I'm back in. See, it just had to be properly sold. All right, so we got a message

about Neapolitan ice cream from Katie. Tom, I think maybe this could clear some things up. Eh, maybe. When I was a kid, we would go down to my grandmother's in Florida once a year. I was raised by crazy people and food was one of their things. I wasn't allowed cereal, candy, chocolate. No sweet, unhealthy food things. So my grandmother naturally fed us all of those things.

One of the things she gave us regularly was, you guessed it, Neapolitan ice creams because she's old and didn't know better. I don't know if this... I get three for one? It's depression-era ice cream. Let's fill up my cart! I don't know if this exists anymore, but she

bought her ice cream in a box. The package was a square box with a lid. Sort of like shoe boxes. It still exists, yeah. The way she would service the ice cream would a box. The package was a square box with a lid. Sort of like shoe boxes. That still exists, yeah. The way she would service the ice cream would be to slice it. She would seriously slice it. She would disassemble the box on one end. What?

Yeah, they make a thing to scoop it. She's like so OG fucking depression. She's just like, no, man, we don't fucking, we don't have no unitaskers in this motherfucker. I was thinking if you scoop it, you can't get the corners out real good. I'm not wasting some of this.

We get a thin rectangle of ice cream on a plate. On a plate? Not even in a bowl. That's weird. The fuck? They had to drink their tea from a saucer. Your grandma's weird. She said, I'm just saying, maybe there's room for all of us to live in this world. With this technique, you can then either

eat the flavors one at a time, take a bite of each, take a bite of them all at the same time. The combinations are endless. No, they're not. The combination is like four. Three. Yeah. So maybe with this new information,

we can all finally get along my wallet is endless i have three dollars so maybe with all this information we can finally get along no we cannot no we can't cecil's wrong and he needs to know it has no idea how to eat what is wrong with you what tom is the worst person i've ever met. That's true, but still, I'm right about this. No, you're not. We got a message from Aaron, and Aaron sent a ISIS flag to us. We're going to post this in the show notes.

It's really funny. Check it out. So we want to thank Michael Marshall of the Merseyside Skeptics, who does a host of podcasts and also has a wonderful blog and is and is just a great activist over there in the UK. He's putting on QED. You can find links to QED and to Michael Marshall's Twitter, which can lead you to all the various things that he does on this episode. Show notes is episode 369.

Marsh, thanks for joining us. 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,urized 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 and towers tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. 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.