Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 422: Andy and Marsh, QED Con

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Thank you to Andy and Marsh from Merseyside Skeptics from coming on. If you want to learn more about QED visit: It's an excellent convention - we highly recommend attending.   Stories

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. 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 chic, 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 ad. This is episode 422 this is the third recording in our long leg of marathon recordings today and we are joined by andy wilson and mike marsh from the

mercyside skeptic society gentlemen what i love that you make it sound like you're saying mercy side mercy side wait what did i do wrong what did i do wrong when you're not from mercy side is that not the thing we can let's cover things i think technically andy wilson is no longer part of most side skeptics and technically my name is michael marshall but if we want to go for uh such a high level of professionalism guys i i'm disgusted at the low level of professionalism for this show that you'd get the guest name wrong. And frankly, I'm used to better. What the fucking incredulous website is that? Mercysideskeptics.org.

Mersey. It's like a Z. Mersey. It's used as an asset. I'm looking at it. It's like a Z. You fucking use a Z, you crazy assholes. You want to lose America?

This is how you lose an entire set of colonies. Hold on, let me translate. Use a Z. Yeah, just fuck with the spelling like you do elsewhere in the English language. Wait, is it Merseyside? It is. It's Merseyside. It's pronounced Merseyside.

Merseyside. Did I get it? As in ferry across the Mersey. Perfect that time. Absolutely spot on. It's Mersey-side. So guys, what do you think of the royal wedding? Let's talk about it.

Let's get into this. Beautiful. Let's get into it. I didn't really watch a lot of it. I'm not really going to ask you. Wait a minute. You weren't invited? Well, yeah.

I'm not going to accept the invitation. You know minute. You weren't invited? Well, yeah. I'm not going to accept the invitation. You know, I was busy. I had a hair appointment. I had books to read. I had to do some extensive IT support on my laptop, which seems to be a minute by minute recurrence at the moment. It's awkward because he was with that girl who got married before. That is weird.

When you're just like, I don't want to go to my ex's wedding. It's like crazy. So, so to go to my ex's wedding. It's crazy. So weird. I hear she's black. Half black. It's not the same over there. They didn't own them for as long. They didn't even own us for that long.

Half black, that's offensive. That's pessimistic. She's half white. Come on, let's look on the bright side. Ha ha ha! Oh, man. That's so funny. I hear he's got an English dick, so she's only half full. I'm scared of the old bangers and mash.

I watched the entire thing. I watched the entire thing. I loved it. How long was it? Oh my god. You didn't fucking lobotomize yourself beforehand. You can do that. You can just put an ice pick right in your eye. Crochet needle. I'm a big fan of the crochet needle.

It's got a grabber at the end. People were talking about it here and I was like, when they started talking about it, I'm like, I could literally care about nothing less than that. You gotta stop talking about it. Really genuinely, please stop talking about it here, and I was like, when they started talking about it, I'm like, I could literally care about nothing less than that. You've got to stop talking about it. Really, genuinely, please stop talking about it. It's amazing. You didn't watch the whole thing, though. You're just pulling my leg, right, Andy?

You're just pulling my leg. I know I watched the entire thing, and I'm not even a monarchist. I think the monarchy should go. But I do like a wedding. I've got to admit, I do like a wedding. I've got to admit, I do like a wedding. And they filmed the shit

out of this wedding. He's just dabbing at his eyes with a lace kerchief. He's crying. Andy likes weddings so much, he even celebrated the wedding of Hitler and Eva Braun. He's like, look, there were monsters, but such a beautiful ceremony.

But she looked so pretty in her dress, Marsh. I mean, theirs was a white wedding, so they had that going for it. Eva Braun was half brown as well. So I do seriously, though, want to ask you how Brexit's going. I mean, I know we heard a big, long diatribe when we were at the last QED.

Yeah. And that's when it was sort of just sort of breaking and stuff. What's happened since then and how deep down the toilet has Britain fallen? When you say diatribe, you're referring to Drunk Marsh there. I am. We're always referring to Drunk Marsh. By the way, these guys are on talking about QED. If you have the means, you need to go to QED just for the last night when Drunk Mars holds court.

It is unbelievable. It is truly. There has never been a more close talker when drunk than Mars. We were making out. We're just like, he's just in there. Well, I think the problem is you guys are very, very loud. I can't compete to that volume. So I've got to get closer because of the distance squared. It's just in there. Well, I think the problem is you guys are very, very loud. I can't compete to that volume, so I've got to get closer because of the distance squared. It's just simple physics.

If I'm closer, I'm louder. So Brexit, going great or super great? I bet it's going very, very well. I haven't been following it. I'm optimistic. In London, we have rhyming slang. What rhymes with Brexit? Brexit is a nightmare.

Why is it a nightmare? You guys voted for it. This is what you wanted. This is like, I mean, come on. I mean, you had it coming. If you didn't want it, you shouldn't have voted like that.

I remember talking to you guys the night of the presidential election. And I remember how to you guys the night of the presidential election. And I remember how depressed you were. And that's how I'm feeling right now. Yeah, we've been on a low slump, a slope down since that night for a while. So Brexit is, where are you at? I guess start there for me. Where are you at with Brexit?

Because this is not something that just happens. It's a process. Yeah. So they said the problem is that the people who voted for it and the people who convinced them to vote for it made out like this was just a thing that would happen overnight. It's like an off switch. We switch the EU off and we're fine from there. But we have to do a fuckload of stuff. have to do a fuckload of stuff and it's going so well at the moment that airbus the uh aircraft manufacturer have now said that if brexit goes the way it's looking to go they will leave the

uk and take 110 000 jobs with it um and the foreign security board the nice thing is they can all get a flight when they're done exactly yes one of those big fucking planes they have fly them out of here the government's response to that was fuck big business fuck businesses um that's now you don't get sacked if you are the foreign secretary who responds to that news by saying fuck business you don't get sacked for that that's just a thing that happens wow well did he actually say that he said fuck business it wasn't in a public statement i don't think but uh it was it was that's what he said in a meeting. Wow.

I mean, that's that's like that's what Trump regularly does. But he doesn't say it. You know, that's just like his. And then he has to pay business one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to keep quiet about it when he's done. All right. So Airbus Airbus is going to fuel up and go. If Brexit continues long, where again,

like help me understand the process. Cause I know it, it was made out to be like, well, we left the EU. Like you'd like break up with your fucking girlfriend or something, but like, it's not like that. This is a,

this is more of like a long, painful divorce, right? And who pays the alimony? Right. It's specifically like your divorce. Yeah. Ouch.

Well, get ready to write. It's going to haunt, Tom. Well, get ready to write some check money. It's going to haunt us for a long time, and we're going to suffer massive amounts of trauma as a result of it, but we're pretending like we're better off, and that's the important thing. And it'll still be the best thing you've ever done. You'll end up marrying a much hotter, more pleasant EU

down the road. You'll be much happier. So where are you at with this Brexit situation? We're still stuck right in the middle of it. You know, it's not going to go well. It's getting worse and worse and worse because all of the people who pushed for Brexit to happen made promises that physically cannot happen. So they literally have just said, well, we'll be able to trade with the world and BMW, they'll want

us more than we need them so they'll come running to us to set up all these deals and that's never going to happen and so the best case scenario if brexit was to still goes ahead is that we have the softest brexit possible where we basically stay in the eu in all but name and have no say over any of the eu laws that we have to live by that's the best case scenario oh that's a great scenario. How would that work? Tell me how that would work. Why would you still be subject to EU regulations if you were not a party to the EU? Because we trade with them. We've got to trade with them. The thing at the moment is you've got all the stuff

we import from Europe to then go into manufacturing sector. So all of the Airbus factories, the Nissan factory in the Northeast, all of those import their parts from the EU. So to do that without having to worry about customs and having to have massive tariffs and inspections and everything like that at the border, being in the EU, goods can just move around. goods can just move around. So if we want to keep that frictionless trade, we have to either be in the EU or agree that we will abide by the EU's rules, which means that the goods that go in and out of the UK are exactly the same as they would be for the EU. If we don't abide by that, if we decide that we don't want to abide by their rules at all, we then don't get frictionless trade, which means the supply of those factories goes from instant to it takes a week for the goods to get there, which kills those factories and they all fuck off and

go to Paris and Bulgaria and Dublin. The Leave campaign made a big deal out of their allegation that the EU imposed hundreds and hundreds of regulations and laws on the UK. Well, they did, hundreds and hundreds of regulations and laws on the UK. Well, they did because that's how we facilitated trade. That's exactly the set of regulations which are now being enshrined in British law so that we can continue to trade in the EU. I've got another example for you here. The other day, Theresa May, who's the Prime Minister in Great Britain, she announced an extra £2 billion of funding, I think it was for the NHS, and

this was widely touted as being a Brexit payoff. Two days later, she announced there will be tax rises to pay for it. Well, she specifically said, we'll pay for the NHS rises out of the Brexit dividend, which is the money we're no longer sending to the EU. Instead, we'll be able to put that on the on the uh nhs but of course the money we spend the eu comes back massively in terms of economic benefits that sucks do you guys have a wall fund like can you guys dip into your wall fund because we have a wall fund that's our money you know if you don't call mexico they'll pay for it it's like a whole

thing yeah see if mexico will pay for it. It's like a whole thing. Yes. Mexico pay for it. It's like borrowing money from your dad. Just like you never have to pay it back. Yeah. Yeah. We're thinking of filling in the English channel with British politicians. Is that the same thing?

Now you guys left. You guys are at least voted to leave. Was it was it immigration was the big sort of thing? Was that the pendulum swing? Was that the reason why? Yeah, certainly one of them. I think amongst a lot of the working class... I'm glad we figured that out over here.

Yeah, I mean, we have some cages we can loan you if you need them. You can just put people in those. They're made in Germany. They're a great, really high-level construction. Well, we'd need to make sure they conform to regulations before we can marsh why don't you tell um um sorry what are your names again which americans are you why don't you tell cecil and tom the uh fact you told me today oh no so this is a great fact that uh fun fact i didn't tell you that that was the other Mike in your life. That was my call, but I'm glad you got the two of us completely confused.

Oh, sorry. So the gap between the people who voted remain and the people who voted leave was like 1.7 million, something in that kind of area, I think. And if you look at the population change since the Brexit vote, more than 1.7 million old people will have died. vote, more than 1.7 million old people will have died. Old people were the ones, if you look at the demographics, like 70%, 80% of the over 70s, something in that kind of region, voted Brexit. There is a very good chance that the majority that they had has died subsequently. Here in the States, when someone does some sort of great legislation, you know, they finally get that one thing passed in the House, they'll retire. So you think that that's what they did? Is that they voted for the one thing they

wanted to pass, and now they're just retiring? It's basically just dropping the mic on their whole thing. When I die, can you just drop this mic on my grave? I'd like to think it's more like when old people who die within a couple of days of each other, you know, the relationship

with the EU has died. They couldn't live on. They couldn't live on without it. So was it immigration, though? You started to say like it was, it felt like it was. But was that a large part of it or what was the main reason? Misconceptions about immigration. It was. It was a lot of jingoism and, you know, either closets or overt racism. Yeah. So I think that was a huge part of it. I don't think it was the was it was a lot of jingoism and um you know either closets or overt racism yeah so i think that was a huge part of it i don't think it was the only thing because obviously you had the um you had the lies put out by the leave campaign around uh how much money would go

at the nhs three we'd spend the eu money let's spend it on the nhs which they now say well we didn't say we would do that we just said let's in the sense of let's have a party at some point in the future we're not going to invite anyone yet but yeah uh you know let's let's learn french it's it's that kind of but a lot of people voted thinking it would get more money to the nhs and then there are a lot of people who aren't really talked about who are in the comfortable middle classes who've never been comfortable with us being in europe and have been agitating to get out of Europe the entire time. We should never have gone in. And a lot of these people are relatively wealthy, and it's not immigration that worries them.

It's, you know, the relationship with the EU. And they think the little England mentality of like, well, we once ruled this world and the sun never set on the British Empire. And now here we are taking orders from Brussels. I mean, yes, there are orders that we helped write and had a real leading hand in shaping, but there are orders nonetheless, and therefore we shouldn't follow them. And they are a major, major factor in the Brexit vote that we weirdly don't talk about. And I guess it's the same with Trump in that it's much easier to talk about the forgotten workers in this working class town

that has been left behind by progress and successive governments. It's easier to talk about that than the white nationalists and evangelicals who were a major force for Trump. And it's the same with the comfortable, well-off middle counties, home counties people here in the UK. So who was your MS-13? Who was the group that they were trying to demonize and scare you about? Turkey. Really? It was a Turkish? So they said Turkey is going to join the EU. They literally, in one of the flyers that was sent out by the Part of the Leave campaign, it made out that Turkey was about to join the EU tomorrow. And this would allow 12 million or 20 million or whatever the number was, Turkish people to move to the eu tomorrow and move to the uk tomorrow um take not taking account the fact that that's a very large percentage of turkey

and they wouldn't all move to the uk but also like they got to get in that air bus and all fly up that's what they gotta do they're all waiting at a starting line like come on i have thousands of miles to walk if If Turkey were going to join the EU, they'd have to get a sign-off by all the members of the EU, and one single member saying no would stop their membership happening. So in the EU, we could see Turkey. Also, Turkey had to go through all these other checks, including proving that they had a better human rights record,

to improve their human rights record, which they haven't done. So there was no danger they'd ever actually be joining. But there was a guy that, my wife, one of her clients, actually pointed out the reason he voted leave was because Turkey has already joined the EU and we need to get out before we all get here.

So he just totally misunderstood the fact that they weren't going to be joining. They weren't even part of the conversation. I guess I have, here's the question that I, that I want, who benefits from Brexit? Who's winning? Somebody wins, right? Well, I mean, people like Nigel Farage, I don't think anybody's winning. Wins, you know, people, so Nigel Farage is the guy from the UK Independence Party, You know, people saw Nigel Farage is the guy from the UK Independence Party, UKIP, which is a was an extremely minor fringe lunatic party 10 years ago, 15 years ago, who but has now effectively hijacked the conservative government and is now directing their policy on Brexit.

But he is now a major player in politics and he wins heavily from it um people who own businesses uh where they can offshore their money people who will benefit from uh the uk in if if the uk goes ahead and enact some of their plans to become a bit of a tax haven you know there are there are politicians talking about that's what we should be doing is having ourselves as a low tax uh haven for business you'd be the cayman islands like that's the thing you just, that's their plan is to become the fucking European Cayman Islands? Well, the ones who've got loads of money

and want somewhere to put it do that, you want that, yeah. That's a plan? That doesn't seem like a plan. Right. And you have just summarized British policy for Brexit better than any politician.

It doesn't seem like a plan. You guys should make those bumper stickers. It doesn't seem like a plan. You guys should make those bumper stickers. It doesn't seem like a plan. We've got two years into this planning stage, or almost two, well, actually, yeah, two years into this planning stage, and we are no closer to a plan.

And you look at, like, one of the major issues is Northern Ireland, okay? So at the moment, you've got no border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which means people, goods, they can just go back and forth, which is great because traditionally there was a bit of kerfuffle in the old Irish area, especially around where that border was. So having a safe… I've never heard of that. So weird. That's weird. But here's the problem. If we leave the EU or when we leave the EU, the Republic of Ireland won't be leaving the EU.

So you now have a situation where either anybody who wants to get into the UK can fly into the EU, fly into Dublin, take a train to Belfast and fly to the UK. And then we have no way of tracking those people, which is a problem from a terrorism point of view. If people wanted that kind of easy access into. Well, it is when you say it out loud. It's like Irish anchor anchor babies that's amazing but to stop that you could put a hard border up between republic of ireland and northern ireland and split up like the 300 towns and villages or however many it is that are that are along that area which is only gonna make them fight together make them fight again yeah we have an amazing international history of the success of walls.

Couldn't they also just like load people into a potato gun and fire them over? That's an option too, right? Unless you're like low on it for some reason. What they could do is they could take a lead from America and leave the children on one side of the border. No, we take the children in

and then we just put them in a kennel. We just keep them in a different place. And we tape them crying. And it different place. That's how that works. And we tape them crying. And it's good. What's the deal with that, guys? Can you just give us the skinny on that? Oh, yeah, sure.

So they basically, they change the rules on how you can enter the country when looking for asylum or other things. If you were looking for work or whatever and you show up at the border and you're like, hey, I want to get into this country. And a lot of these people are looking for asylum. And they change the rules on that. What they used to do, that used to be a civil offense. So they would say, okay, well, we're going to have to hear your case. So we're going to let you go. And now instead, what it is, is we're going to put you in jail because we're going to

call it a felony or a very high level misdemeanor. And you're going to go in jail. But since you're going to jail, we can't have you have your family. So we're just going to split you up. And so we'll take these kids and we'll put them in a tender age facility. And then we'll take the adults and separate them from their children. And then we'll just have people that take care of the children. And we record them crying. We're creating like baby jail daycare for immigrants that are trying to seek asylum. And we're doing that because we're afraid of MS-13

who out of 250,000 entries across the border accounted for 250 and that was only linked to MS-13. These weren't actually gang members. They were just linked to it. So it's all. I noticed that in the background, the FBI have detected you talking about this

and they've sent the sirens in. Yeah. They're going to separate Tom and Cecil. Have Tom in a cage, Cecil in another room. It's going to be a night. You just have sound, audio files of Tom crying in a cage.

That's what we're going to have. Oh, please put Tom in a tent. I'm not wearing this shock collar for nothing. I've been waiting for the time. So the summary you've given of that policy sounds really inhuman. Is that how we're making America great again? Well, it sounds that way. But then what we did to combat that is we left the UN Human Rights Council.

So now we don't have to worry about that. I know. We're really dotting our I's and crossing our T's. the UN Human Rights Council. So now we don't have to worry about that. Genius. We're really dotting our I's and crossing our T's. We figured out the best way to plug our ears and say la la la. By unsubscribing from international standards. I mean, we cannot criticize you for that because we're about to do that. I want that bumper sticker.

America, unsubscribing from national standards. I would like to unsubscribe. Oh gosh. Yeah. It's been, it's been something. So yeah, I want to talk about this other,

there's a story that we, that we taught. We sort of sent along and it's a story from right wing watch self-described classical liberal YouTubers joined far right European political party. This is a party. You just mentioned Marsh. This UK a party you just mentioned, Marsh, this UKIP party. A couple of YouTubers have gone over

and joined this party. I have never heard of UKIP. Is it a far-right party? Yeah, sort of, sort of. It's certainly very, very right-wing. It's certainly very racist as a party. The irony is these guys, they've joined it just as UKIP

is completely meaningless now because UKIP's only purpose was to make the UK, quote unquote, independent from the EU, which they did with Brexit. And what happened in the local elections immediately following Brexit

was UKIP basically got wiped out because why would you vote for a party whose only issue was to do the thing that was already happening? So they joined a party just as everyone else is leaving, which I'm guessing is not the first time that Paul Joseph Watson has turned up at a party and everyone else has left. Who's this other guy? You had mentioned that you knew who Count Dankula was. Jesus Christ. And I had never heard of a Count Dankula.

Can I pause real quick and just say, like, I know I've said this before, but like, I know that I'm living in a weird, I just don't understand the world anymore. And we're about to have a serious conversation about somebody calling himself Count Dankula. About Count Dankula. What the fuck is happening?

None of this can be true. We keep it real here at the Glory Hall. Go ahead, continue. Count Dankula. I mean, these are the battles that in 50 years' time, historians look back on and have to try and make sense of

and have to teach this kind of bullshit of the kind of weird situation they're in in so count dankin is a guy called uh i forget what this mark meachum is it i know his surname is meachum who's a scottish youtuber who put up a video uh of him having taught his girlfriend's pug to do nazi salutes whenever he said the phrase gas the jews which oh my god Did it look adorable in that outfit though? Come on, come on. It probably looked adorable in that outfit. You know, I will say also like, if you're ever bored, Google cats that look like Hitler.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean a killer once in a while. They're real fucking funny. Absolutely. Yeah.

All right. He's on his, uh, All right. On his Twitter account in his bio, it says, I'm not a Nazi, but my dog is. I learned it from watching you, Dad. Because normal people spend how

long it takes to train a dog. They're sitting there like, I'm not racist. Now, you got to treat your hand, you got a little fucking piece of sausage or whatever, you're like, gas the Jews. No, get the hand up at a 30 degree. Fuck you, dog. You don't even know how to be a good Nazi. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to get a goose and just teach him to walk. He'll be goose stepping down the hall. It's easier. It takes half the time. Oh, goose. He's so cute. I'd put jackboots on a bird. He's so cute I'd put jack boots on a bird he's so adorable oh god

so that's where we are, we've got this guy who's taught his dog to do a Hitler salute so this is obviously a horrible thing to do, not so much the salute, which fair enough, that might be a silly thing, but the fact that he has triggered, the trigger term is gas the Jews, and he's saying it so many times in the

video now he then gets pulled up in front of court for gross offense which is a uh uh law which you guys have like hate crime like hate crime laws well it wasn't a hate crime law this is the thing it's getting reported as he was done for a hate crime law and he wasn't he was done for gross offense and gross offenses that the uh uh effectively that he knew his actions would be offensive beyond the pill and intentionally did them in order to offend that group of people. So it was specifically an offense law thing. Can I ask you about that? Can I pause real quick? I'm sorry. What do you think of the gross offense law? I'm curious what your thoughts on that are. Is that good law no i don't i don't like i don't

like it as a law no um i i don't think we should be criminalizing uh offense but i think the the term around gross offense is very codified it's very specific and it's not just like oh you said something that's offensive it's it's along along the lines and i'm not a legal expert but i believe it's along the lines of uh you have deliberately said something in order to provoke people in in sort of certain groups i don't think it's just like you've been a fence of january but i'm no expert on the law and you've seen a lot of people weighing in on the law and i'm not a not an expert on that but what what has happened is an awful lot of people like ricky gervais like there's a uh uh who's obviously comedian there's a guy who pretends to be a

comedian called jonathan pie who made a big big show we've got a guy named There's a guy who pretends to be a comedian called Jonathan Pye, who made a big, big show. We've got a guy named David Smalley who does this. So they make a big show about the fact that a Scottish comedian making a joke is now being done for offense. But the important thing here is that Meacham is not a comedian. He doesn't describe himself as comedian. He's never described me. He says, I'm not a comedian. His friends would say, I'm not a comedian. So he's just a guy who put his shit. His audience would say he's not a comedian. He's the kind of guy who's like, I've never been funny once in my life. So they're saying he's not a racist. And you know who would hate a dog doing a Hitler salute? Nazis. They would think that was offensive to Nazis. No, he wasn't doing it to be

offensive to Nazis. He was doing it to be offensive to the Jews. That's why he said gas the Jews 20 odd times. That's very specific. You don't, you know, that isn't there to be offensive to the Nazis. And so they're saying this guy isn't a racist. If you look back through some of his videos, you'll see him talking about how the BBC is promoting white genocide. And you'll see him making a lot of very racially dicey and outlier racist statements, a lot of hugely transphobic statements. But they just don't bother looking into that for the context. And he now becomes this symbol of free speech, which he became for a while.

I think in the end, he didn't go to prison, because I don't think that was likely to have happened, given the offense that he had been causing. I think he got a fine of less than £1,000. And I think he got something more than like 20,000 or 10,000 pounds in the Patreon donations, way more than that. So he's doing pretty all right for himself out of it.

And he gets to be a right wing, uh, free speech drifter, um, claiming that he's the martyr here and having what would be otherwise sensible people support him without looking to the fact that he is clearly a racist bigot. You know what you said?

He was a Scottish comedian? Or Scottish, yeah, but a Scottish YouTuber? How the fuck do people understand him anyway? That's crazy. Might as well just be fucking like, might as well just be signing that shit. I have no idea what he said.

I just, I cannot, how can you differentiate between a joke and him just screaming at a fucking couch cushion? Like it's all, it all sounds the same anyway. I can't tell. I want to give the Heimlich to everybody who starts talking. I just assume they're choking on something.

Well, I mean, I've worked with Scottish people before and I'm surprised if gross offense is a law in Scotland, I'm surprised that most of the Scottish people I know haven't been prosecuted under it from the language. So QED this year, it's going to be great right or super great which one is it which great it's going to be great it's going to be a huge amount of fun and it's one of the reasons it really has to be is we've got to let our entire audience we've got to give them something to hold on to because we aren't doing a qed next year we're taking a year off

so it's going to be good enough for people to last two years worth of uh of qed uh excitement over that's how good we're gonna have to make it so you're taking a year off for qed what's the um are you gonna is it just one year for sure you guys get pretty positive you'll come back just taking a step away to take a breather back it back in back in 2020 we're just taking a rest that's all it's been eight years it's been eight years. I mean, they take five, six months' worth of solid work to put together. So we just need a little bit of a break. And so where is QED? The same as last year, the Mercure Piccadilly?

Yeah, Mercure Piccadilly in Manchester on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of October. So tickets are like £113.75 for a student. The tickets are almost all gone. They're really flying out. They're selling quicker than they ever have. And I think part of that is because we aren't doing one next year and people have gone, huh, I better make it this year. So if you are thinking of coming and you've been sort of sat on your wallet

waiting until later, there might not be a later. It's best to get moving. But, yeah, it's going to be a huge amount of fun. We've already announced the Skeptics Guide. They're going to be doing their first ever show in the in uh in the uk there we've got uh helen army who's a uh a comedian who's part of a comedy comedy group called festival of the spoken nerd she's very very good she's gonna be emceeing we've got george crab uh he's gonna be uh doing a main stage talk and uh doing some other stuff too we've got a load of other stuff that we haven't

yet announced but we're on the verge of we're just about to announce a load more stuff so uh it's it's going to be a cool one i gotta say like see when i went to qed in 2016 and it was it was just so much fun like as as conferences go yeah the crowd is incredible the organization is just crazy well run and manchester was delightful if you go the right direction. Yeah, it was beautiful. I really enjoyed Manchester. What you mean if you go the right direction? You're talking about Canal Street. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't grab a map or anything. We just started walking.

We wound up in an industrial section, a weird area where we're like, what the fuck? There's not even a place to eat around here. Later on in the evening, we turned around and walked and there's this beautiful area with a million restaurants right by the— Man, we just missed it. We just walked right past it.

We could literally just go on the other— Like, we just made the perfectly wrong turn, and it was not as good. Yeah, it was like a weird industrial section. Like, places with no windows. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, is this like fucking Oliver Twist time? I thought I was still in Chicago. I was like, weirded out.

Like, didn't I get on an airplane? But it was wonderful. And the people, they were wonderful. We had a great time the last time we went. It was an awesome conference. I'll be going just as an attendee. And I'm really looking forward to just going and hanging out and seeing everybody again that was over there. Because I had such a fun time in 2016. So I would ask Andy about his podcast, but Marsh, you're doing some podcasts. I've listened to a couple of your reasonably skeptical. A lot of people get the name of that wrong. A lot of people don't call it that.

I'm glad you put the effort into getting it in. But yeah, they have merch, Be Reasonably Skeptical reasonable skeptical shirts that's for sure there's at least there's at least yeah the one good lucky guy in the audience got in but uh but you say lucky uh i've listened to a couple of these uh what what kind of topics have been happening on your show recently because they're fucking amazing amazing well i spoke i spoke to a 9-11 truther recently he was a scientific 9-11 truther he cared a lot about the science of scientific method and he believed there was absolutely no evidence that the planes had anything to do with the towers falling um there's zero correlation he was getting like correlation is not causation. You're like, well, I mean, I listened to that episode.

I just I was in my car and I fucking just stared. I almost crashed my car just staring forward blankly. It was lovely because he said, yeah, he said the fact that the planes hit the towers doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the towers falling. That's just correlation causation. And I said to him, yeah. I'm like, why is your nose bleeding? I know it's got nothing to do with the towers falling that's just correlation causation uh and i said to him yeah i'm like why is your nose bleeding i know it's got nothing to do with my fist i just hit your face it must have been something else but he but does he believe that that bombs knock them down yeah he believes in the control demolition thing is what he was proposing he does but if you pin him down on what he actually believes he wouldn't actually uh especially wouldn't be specific because what he'd say is well i'm just

looking at the evidence and to me the evidence says it wasn't the the planes so i'm not here to put forward other theories i'm not here to start postulating conspiracies i'm just looking at the evidence and your evidence doesn't stack up we need to start looking at another theory so maybe it was to do with uh having them pull down or controlled demolition we need to look at that a bit more because your evidence doesn't uh doesn't stack up um so he's more about uh decrying the the skeptical side uh rather than putting forward his own uh his own view um but he was a delight uh cecil did you hear tom cecil did you hear the hollow earth that i had no i didn't i think i did hear this one hollow earth like a yeah like a

gumball uh-huh like a balloon yeah so he was he was brilliant so he talked about how uh the earth's hollow there's a sun inside which is where the heat from the inside of the earth comes from wait wait slow slow down for those of us in the little slow there's a sun yeah inside yeah i'm sorry but if there's a something inside how is it still hollow well no it's like a shell it's very small tom that's rude see so it's average thank you well when it gets warm it's a little bigger so yeah you can you can go in through a hole in the sea near the north pole as you walk in you'd walk around the inside of the crust yeah we chatted about that for a while. He talked about... Wait a minute, wait a minute,

wait a minute. You can go into the crust? You can just... Are there stairs? One thing I'm curious about, if it's hollow on the inside, how do you stick to the top of the crust? How do you stick to the inside of the crust? Is it gooey? How does that work? He

had a theory for this he said gravity wouldn't work so gravity is my everyone thinks it is so i've come up with my own theory that's that's explains things better than gravity and it was to do with um particles being ejected from the center of the earth going out through the hole in the south traveling along magnetic lines like the magnetic uh force lines and coming in through the hole in the north and the speed of those those particles moving pins you to the inside of the Earth's kind of shell through like a centripetal

force type thing. So what do you think was responsible for the magnetic forces? We never got to that because the conversation started going in two other directions. Oh, I'm sorry. After that, the conversation didn't... Yeah, it took a bad turn there, Tom. We heard imaginary particles we can't measure that he just postulates exist that squeeze out

of the farting asshole of the hollow Earth. You're not really sure you could go into a crazy place in that, but bear in mind this guy said, you know, you can go to the center of the Earth. People have been there. The Nazis escaped there after the Second World War. Some of the Nazis went there in submarines.

Others went in spaceships. Why did they go in submarines? Wait, submarines. Others went in spaceships. Why did they go in submarines? Wait, what? Others went in spaceships. Others went in spaceships that were given to them by the people from Venus. Oh, Venus. Wait a minute. I'm still, this is Andrew.

Venus has been penetrating us for a long time. I haven't finished, Tom. Oh my God. I haven't finished. Men are from Mars. Nazis are from Venus. No wonder we don't see eye to eye. So when you say gas, the Jews, what you mean

is sulfur, right? So the Nazis had these Venusian spaceships during the Second World War, but they promised the people of Venus that they wouldn't use the spaceships to win the war. Guys, we're all about to be slaughtered. Well, we made a promise to Venus, so we can't use our spaceships. We're just going to have to die. So I pointed out,

you know, Nazis, famously not that good guys, not very good at keeping promises. He said, actually, the Nazis weren't that bad. They were pretty good guys. All they were doing was protecting Germany. They were protecting Germany from Poland, protecting Germany from Russia. They were protecting Germany from

the inside of Poland. Protecting it from French food. Yeah. So I said, well, all those Jewish people they killed, I mean, that wasn't very nice. Well, they didn't kill that many Jewish people. It wasn't that many at all.

God, he's a Holocaust denier. Why would we talk about the Holowar? Why did I spend 20 minutes talking about the Holowar? He's a Holocaust denier. Why would we talk about the hollow earth? Why did I spend 20 minutes talking about the hollow earth? He's a Holocaust denier. That's like the trifecta. That is an amazing... How did you find this guy? I don't even know.

I can't even remember where. Marsh, he's a Holocaust denier, and he thinks there's an acceptable number for the amount of Jews being killed. Yeah, right? It wasn't even that many. It's an acceptable amount. No, but you had a men's rights guy on, though, too, didn't you?

Oh, yeah, that was recent. Yeah, yeah. So he was a guy who used to attend murder site skeptics events many years ago. But he just kept pumping up on my Facebook anytime I said anything that wasn't directly decrying feminism as the invention of Satan to share his badly researched egotistical hot takes. So we had a long conversation about lots and lots of different things in that one. It was just so weird. That one was more debatey, though. You pushed back on him more than I've heard you push back on anyone else.

Yeah. So part of that is I think I sort of cared about those issues maybe a little bit more, when you're talking to a guy who thinks the earth's flat, it's hard to really get too riled up about that or it's easy to keep you cool but when you're talking to someone I guess the other reason I push back as much is because there aren't that

many people who are saying the earth is hollow there are a fuck ton of people who are parroting all of the Breitbart-esque info wars-esque stuff he was saying about feminism and trans rights and uh you know racism black lives matter things like that um he was just spewing fox news talking points at me and it's that's a hugely popular uh opinion for a lot of uh uninformed and misinformed people so it felt like that needed more of a direct pushback

than someone who was saying, did you know that the Nazis escaped the Second World War in spaceships from Venus and went to the center of the Earth? You didn't feel the need to do anything other than just say it out loud back to him? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to go ahead and summarize what you just said back to you, and then we'll just go ahead and stop there.

I think everybody will know. You know what's funny to me about the MRA people is they they're men's rights activists that spend most of their time talking about women. Yeah, exclusively so. Right? It's so interesting that like if their real issue is men's

rights, you'd think that they would talk about men, right? But they spend like men's rights activists talk mostly about women and feminism and i i it's just it's it's it's kind of fascinating it's sort of the trump talks about obama and clinton thing all the time yeah exactly it's like you're just this is just something you're fucking upset about yeah the stuff you talk about shows what you care about and you don't care about men's rights you care well the degree to which they care about men's

rights is where they think men have a right to power and supremacy. And that is the right that's being taken away from them. So that's the right that they care about. Men have a right of total control and an ownership of women, ownership of women's bodies, that type of thing. Yeah, they don't care about any of the issues that are genuinely affecting men. They'll talk about men being more likely to commit suicide suicide but they're doing fuck all to change that and they'll be actively shaming men who show emotion so yeah and those things aren't men's rights those are men's privileges like it's totally different it's very different you don't have to you just

can and should there's a difference so so how's skeptics with the k go uh yeah it's gone it's gone pretty well we've done uh the we're back onto our kind of regular shores but we went through a space of doing specials where uh we talked about events that we'd attended so i attended with alice one of my co-hosts i spent a weekend at the flat earth conference in birmingham um i spent a weekend with flat earthers watching all the talk did you use gps to get there lots of them did lots of them did use gps to get there um honestly i've got to say first of all one of the most fascinating weekends i have ever spent i fucking loved it it was amazing it was so interesting

um there were lots of people who were wrong in ways i did not expect um and it was well i thought a lot of it would be kind of physics based but but a lot of people, there was a huge amount of Bible there because a lot of biblical literalists think the earth is flat because of a couple of specific sentences of Genesis. So I thought that was quite interesting. One of the things that I found really fascinating, and I wrote about this for, it was either Guardian or Gizmodo. I wrote an article for the Guardian and one for Gizmodo outlining all of this and outlining my thoughts. And it was really fascinating just how many of the speakers at one point during their talk would just often offhandedly mention some personal trauma that happened to them before they became flat earthers. single one of them um would casually refer to some big traumatic event that happened or some personal tragedy or some some sort of you know suffering circumstances you mean like a death in the family or something more like uh so someone talked about how he had a a nervous breakdown a little while after he was a volunteer fireman uh around new york in 9-11 he didn't actually uh you

know go he didn't actually go to the Ground Zero during the event, but he was there and he knew people nearby. And he had a nervous breakdown a little while after that, and now he's one of the most prominent flat earthers in the world. He also lives off the grid and drinks his own urine and exclusively washes in his own

urine every day. Oh my God, wait. He probably smells marvelous. Well, you wouldn't want to use somebody else's would you walk up and take a fucking big sniff of that guy you know like jesus christ would it be like when a dog pees like they're marking their territory i feel like when you're dumping urine on yourself like you're marking territory nobody else is going to claim at that point it's definitely a mark of something it's certainly a mark of something yeah what is the trauma thing how do you think the trauma thing influences or like interacts with the flat earth thing like what's that what's that connection there um i think well i'm not i'm

not a psychologist or anything like that so this is purely speculative but i can imagine that if you've had uh an event that has uh caused you to be dissociated or disconnected from your normal life, you could look for greater significance. And there's a lot of people were saying that. And there were some people who I think probably went through a mental health episode. And there are certain mental health conditions where you one of the symptoms is everything seems way more significant. You see, you see significance in everything. And if that happens to coincide with when you're starting to see videos of flat earth stuff, then that seems to be the thing that unifies everything. A lot of people have a lot of conspiratorial beliefs,

and they believe in all the different conspiracies and found it hard to necessarily map those together. And I think the flat earth can be a unifying theory of those kind of conspiracy theories. And I think that's part of it, too. So I think that's it, is that once you're outside of the mainstream and you feel you have rejected or you feel rejected by the mainstream, the flat earth community, the flat earth belief system is extraordinarily welcoming to any beliefs and doesn't really pay a lot of scrutiny to those beliefs. And the best illustration of that was, and I really can't go into details because I wouldn't do it justice, but it was the single greatest talk I've ever seen in my life. It was incredible. It was by a guy called Martin Kenny, who did a three-hour talk on the Saturday evening about his model of the universe, which was the cosmic egg model of the universe.

And the best thing to do would be to listen to the episode of Skeptics with a K, where I just talked. We spent two hours nearly explaining his model of the universe and exactly what that meant and how he unveiled it. And it was just wonderful and bonkers and had a bit of everything honestly it was it was lovely so i'll uh yeah i'll let you know which uh episode of uh skeptics play that was if people want to see what is the single greatest talk i have ever seen in my life uh they can check out that episode and find out we'll we'll put that on this week's show notes uh well

when you send the link to me we'll put it on this week's show notes guys if people were going to find you on the internet where would they look now you can find the conference at qedcom.org yeah and you can find uh my work at uh moseskeptics.org.uk you can find be reasonable there and skeptics okay there or you can find the work that i do in skepticism for a living at goodthinkingsociety.org and you can find the back catalog of incredulous. Most skeptics are old as well. I am pretty excited to be on the incredulous panel in October

for the fourth episode since two years ago. Two years ago. Yeah. Awesome. That's not an exaggeration. Guys, I'll miss you guys

in October. I'm sure you guys are going to have a great time. People are going to go to QED. They should go. Yeah, be shaming up there, man. Be seeing it. Yeah, we'll catch you guys soon, though, hopefully.

And guys, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much. Ready to stick it in the glory hole? Get links to their Facebook, Twitter, and if you still use it, Google Plus account at their website, dissonancepod.com. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a ransom message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828.

Want to hear Cognitive Dissonance commercial free and gain access to exclusive content, including full patron-only shows? Head to patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod and become a patron to support the show on a per episode basis. Love commercials? Not ready to become a patron? Give the guys a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher or tell your buddies in the drunk tank about the show. We want to send a big, sloppy glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. So this story is from the

Huffington Post. I think it's from the weather section. It's hard to tell because there's clearly a fucking snowflake in the forecast. It's so melty. It is. Oh my god. Alright, so Olaf from Frozen here is crying.

This is Jeff Sessions. He says it's painful hearing Christians condemn his family separation policy. Let it go, Jeff. Let it go. So Jeff Sessions, I mean, this is pretty much he's saying like, look, I'm getting criticism from a lot of different places, specifically even from his own church. And this is in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. He says, I have critics from a lot of different areas. I think our church people are really concerned about children. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah. What clued you in, Jeff?

Here's the thing, big guy. Humans generally are concerned about humans. What's crazy to me is that he didn't, in Washington, D.C. hear those children with those ears. That's what's crazy to me is that those fucking radar dishes that are on the side, those fucking direct TV towers that are on the side of his fucking face.

You know, if he holds a feather in his nose, he could just say it. It's a Dumbo joke. Oh, man. They separated the mom and the daughter in that one, too. It's a similar.

They did. They actually did. They put them in cages. That's because it's the same thing. Why is it a perfect analogy? Oh, gosh. Every Disney movie, they separate the pair. They create orphans.

It's an opening thing. Every Disney movie, they separate the pair. They create orphans. It's an opening thing. Every Disney movie. What I thought was interesting was, you know, we talked on one of our episodes recently where we talked about they rolled this out. This was not a bug. This was a feature. They wanted this to happen. They went out of their way to make sure this particular thing happened. They planned and plotted this out.

This was not whoopsie doodle. Sorry. You know, I forgot to pull out. This is something, you know, ridiculous. And it's funny because the end of this article really does point this out. And it's funny because the end of this article really does point this out. They say that the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, said in March that the administration was considering separating children from their parents, quote, to detour to deter more movement and quote across the border. And he similarly said in May that separations would serve as, quote, a tough deterrent and, to immigrants trying to cross the border illegally. And they also, Stephen Wagner, another person had said it had a deterrence effect.

And Fox News host had specifically asked Sessions, are you considering this as a deterrent? And he replied, yes, hopefully people will get the message and come through the border at a port of entry and not break across the border unlawfully. Yeah. So this, and then the, and that's important because in the earlier part of this article, when he's crying about how he's taking all this heat and, you know, and this is a backtrack from the, uh, from Trump's official statements where he's like, look, this isn't my policy. This has been in place since he blames Obama, but he says, you know, the policy is actually

from Bush and then Obama. And then I'm just enforcing it, you know, and all of that, all of that is a lie. All of that is a smokescreen. And then you got somebody like Jeff Sessions who's like, well, I don't know why nobody likes me. I'm just being mean to children. It's like, it's like, what are you going to kick a puppy when you're done with that? Are you going to punch a kitten in the eye? Are we like, we're running out of things.

when you're done with that? Are you going to punch a kitten in the eye? Are we like, we're running out of things. There are, there's like, there are some things that we are just universally

sort of like, literally biologically programmed to be protective of. Yeah. And like the small versions of people, we're, we tend as a fucking species

to be relatively protective of those. Yeah. The idea that like, it's so fucking tone deaf that he's like i can't believe that more people don't like it when i'm mean to kids like what the fuck did you expect it asshole oh my god and it's and you fucking planned it get the fuck out of here you know don't fucking cry to me when you plan this shit and it's not like it was

an accident like i like you know when some ass drive in his brand new fucking Maserati down the road too fast, you know, yeah, he was driving too fast, but he didn't mean to fucking crash the thing, right? This is fucking specific. This is fucking hyper-specific. You had this plan all along. You can't cry afterwards and be like, man, this fucking sucks.

No, you made the sucky plan. Deal with the suck. You know what they say, fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice, strike three. And stories from the New York Times behind Trump's plan to overhaul the government, scaling back the safety net. And what I thought was really interesting about this article, Cecil and I have talked a lot about how some of the, and Cecil, I know you feel strongly about this, that some of the more like visible pieces of Trump's buffoonery are a distraction from the policies that are really

going to have the larger sort of social consequences. And this article is a great example of the way that in the background, running in the background while we're all fucking paying attention to the smoke and the mirrors running in the background

is really a large-scale dismantling of the social safety net. This article talks about major changes to the housing allowance for the very, very poor, major changes

and overhauls to SNAP. That's a supplemental nutrition assistance program. I think I have that right. There's 42 million poor people classified as poor people in the United States. That's out of 320 million or so. So that's about 12 and a half percent, give or take if my top of my head math is right.

It's about one in eight people in this country would be classified as poor. And I got to tell you, we don't classify a lot of people who are in practice poor as poor because we set that fucking bar too low. So there's a lot of like, I'm actually poor, but don't actually meet the criteria for poverty.

Exactly. Yeah. So this nation needs its safety net. And we don't have as strong a safe series of safety nets as most of Europe, Scandinavian countries. Right. Way better safety net. And we're scaling that back. Yeah. We're just going to be fucking bootstraps the country.

Yeah. I was watching a thing on, I want to say it was Denmark the other day. And they were saying like how happy the people there are. And they were talking back and forth about why are they happy? What's, you know, what makes them so happy? And the guy said, well, we pay about 60% in our taxes. So 60% of our check goes directly to taxes,

but they never have to worry about healthcare and the college, they can go to college. You know, when they want to go to college, they go to college. And there's just this level of, you know, security that every single person has there that they can they can you know, they have a they have a baby. The person was saying I had a baby and I had a baby right next to where the royalty had their baby in the same hospital. We don't have a special, you know, they don't go to the Mayo Clinic.

Right. I mean, where there's a special hospital that only rich people go to or whatever. It's you know, it's the same hospital everybody goes to. And socialism isn't a bad word. It's not a thing that people get upset about, right? Here in our country, you can, there's, you know, we're talking about 42 million poor. There's no way to like, like say like, that's a small segment of society. That's a, that's a few people that we're looking, that are just like hangers-on, that are not industrious. They're lazy.

All they want to do is suck on the teat of the government. And you're like, 42 million people? We're really saying that about 42 million? About one in eight. About one in eight people. That's outrageous. That's crazy. And there's so many studies that show that those plans that these people get on, the social safety net that we do have, it's a revolving door.

They get on it for a bit, and then they get off of it. All the studies show that. Which is what it should be. They show that they use it when they need it, and then they get off of it until our economy starts going down. We hear all about the economy constantly. Constantly. Oh, yeah, the economy is great. Economy is great.

Economy is great. The economy is not great if 42 million people are still poor. The economy is not great is if even if you don't qualify for poor, you're still getting snap, right? If you're working and you're still getting assistance, how can the economy be great? The economy can't, it's not, that's not great, right? That's not great for a lot of people. That's, that's fucking great for a lot of people. That's, that's

fucking poor for a lot of people. And so, you know, we'll hear all these, you know, this, this touting of the numbers from, from the one side, you know, you could have a bunch of jobs, but if your jobs don't pay fuck all, then it's a shitty job and it's, and it's shitty for the economy. You know, and there's, there's a, like built into all of this is this same old poor shaming shit. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the reason, like, the Trump administration and all the cronies that he's appointed are going through and dismantling all this. Betsy DeVos is doing it.

You know, their whole function here is to dismantle the pieces of the government that don't benefit the ultra wealthy. Right. Because the pieces of the government that do benefit the ultra wealthy are kept intact. They're changing the language around these programs to include words like welfare, because those words have a certain social stigma attached to them. So we're going back to using words that we know send a message that leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. We're doing that on purpose. It's to create a environment where we are comfortable, poor shaming.

Yeah. And, you know, like these are people like who need the most assistance. Like if you're fucking actually poor, the idea that you should be poor and ashamed. Yeah. How's that going to help move you you know like that you know that bootstraps analogy is thrown on its head because you can what do you do at that point you're already you're ashamed of who you are right it this this this this is part of that like pay attention to what's happening piece that you've been talking about yeah you know we

got to pay attention to this stuff because while all the smoke and mirrors and what jacket did melania wear and all of that stuff hits the news and is important, you know, to people about messaging and so on and so forth, there's messaging involved here. Absolutely. Changing the language around how we support people who are most in need. Absolutely. That's a fucking message. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing too, is they're talking about taxes all the time, tax cuts. And they're talking about the budget. We got to cut some of these programs. We got to cut this program. We got to cut this program. Look at the shit they're not cutting, right? Look at the shit that they're adding in where

you're talking about lots of people getting big tax breaks that we're getting, not getting tax breaks before. That doesn't change the economy. We've shown that over and over and over again. You can cut the fuck out of the richest taxes, but they're not going to go out and buy 17 Maseratis when they only need one. Well, you know, it's like, like you hear all the time like that, like we don't want a redistribution of wealth, redistributing wealth. They're fine as long as they're redistributing it up right now. It's fine. Right. Down is bad. Right. Up is fine. We're happy to redistribute wealth in the upward direction. You know, I want to go back to redistribute wealth in the upward direction. You know, I want to go back to the thing you said about the tax situation.

Like in, you know, certain countries, the tax burden is much greater. Yeah. But the set of social services is much higher. I, you know, I was looking this up the other day. I was talking to Haley. We were looking at some statistics. And like America is 11th on the World Happiness Index. And the World Happiness Index is more than just,

you know, how do you feel today on Thursday? It measures 14 different markers from economic markers to health markers, et cetera. The United States is 11th on that list. So we're not one of the happiest nations. We're not even all that close. Not even top 10. Our infant mortality rate is no good.

Our maternal mortality rate is no good. Our maternal mortality rate is no good. Our life expectancy rate is not in the top 10. We talk about America like it's this nation of exceptional opportunity, like it's better to be here than it is to be in so many other places across the industrialized world. Like America is this. But, you know, I can't find a marker where we're winning. I can't find a marker where we're in the top five.

If we measure any of the important... Most guns per capita, we got that fucking nailed down. We spend an exorbitant amount of money on the things that make us feel the most secure. If you think about the things that financially are the things that you need in order to not have anxiety about your future, making sure you can pay for healthcare, making sure you can pay for education,

making sure you can pay for childcare, making sure that if somebody gets sick, you can take time off to help care for them. Those are the kinds of anxieties that people live with and worry about every day. And in the nations that you described where the tax burden is higher, they don't have that anxiety. They were saying that they had, in Denmark, it was 52 weeks off for paternal leave. Yeah. So you have a kid. You get a year. You get a full year off of work to take care of your kid for the first year.

And a big chunk of that, if not all of it, is paid. Yeah. Paid. Paid. Yeah. That's not just, you can go not work now and then, you know, I don't know what you're going to eat. Yeah. You paid. Yeah. Paid. Paid. Yeah. That's not just, you can go not work now and then, you know, I don't know what you're going to eat.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. In most of the industrialized world, like in most of the Western world, your standard regular vacation time is six weeks. Yeah, six weeks.

The American working week. Two weeks. It's two weeks for us. Right. That's a pretty good job to start out. That's a good job. Two weeks off a year. Paid. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a, that's a pretty good job to start out. Good job. Two weeks off a year.

Paid. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good job. Yeah. If you're saying the American working week, American working week keeps creeping up. Yeah.

We're working more. We get less time off. We pay more. If we get sick, we have more anxiety around how the fuck are we supposed to do all this? And the idea that like, well, my tax rate's 10% less

than the other guy. I don't give a fuck. I don't get anything for the money I am spending. Yeah. All I get is a little more money in my pocket, but not enough to offset

the financial anxieties that I now have to shoulder the burden of fixing. Yeah. And, you know, you said, where are we the top five? Where are we the top, you know, where are we the top

in anything? I want to sort of piggyback off that and say, if you want to see whether a country is good or not good, watch where they spend. You know, you could look at your mission statement all day, but show me your budget line. Right. Show me where your budget is. And, you know, look at the budget in the United States and you'll see the things that, you know, the things that are the most important to us.

It's military. And then you start looking, you start working your way down and look at near the bottom. And it's the people who are trying to help. It's these people that are, you know, that need this social safety net. These are very, very small programs. And they want to cut these before they cut anything else. You want answers? I think I'm entitled.

You want answers? I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. So the story comes from Right Wing Watch. This is Dave Koch. Dot Koch. Not a coach. Dobbenmeier melts down over criticism of Trump's family separation policy.

What? Now, it's probably not the meltdown that you would expect, though. Like that a person with empathy would have. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, it's the meltdown I expect from him. But it's not what you would expect from a normal person. No. Which is like the meltdown you and I have had where it's like, we shouldn't be doing this.

Everybody should be upset. Or the meltdown that Rachel Maddow had where she choked back some tears. It's not that. It's going to be, I hate brown people. If you really want to help the people on the border, go get them and bring them into your house. Well, I could, but you keep

putting them in fucking detention centers. This is not how it works. It's such a fucking shitty, shitty straw man. It's like go put them in your house. It's like that's not how fucking any fucking immigration works at all. Right. Like, okay, fine. Well, why don't you take a Western European into your house then? Yeah. Well, that don't you take a Western European into your house then?

It's not a fucking student exchange program. I was going to say the same thing. They're coming here. They don't want to stay in my house. These are people who want to make their own way. They want to make their own life. They may have family that's here. It's nonsense. I get what he's saying.

This is the not in my backyard argument, but he's saying, right? It's like, it's he's, this is the not in my backyard argument, right? But he's talking about other people. Yeah. You know? And it's like, not in my backyard. Well,

what don't I want in my backyard? I don't want undesirable things in my backyard. Yeah. And he's saying these asylum seekers are undesirable things you don't want in your community and in your neighborhood and in your home. Yeah. But don't make me do it. Nobody's making,

nobody's making you. You're a fucking a fucking idiot because nobody said hey coach you gotta throw somebody in your fucking garage and support them now but i think you know if what he's suggesting here is that like your house is sort of the metaphor for america and like we all share the same house well it's a real big house then yeah and it's got a lot of fucking space in it and then we can like there's room for all of us because i fucking hate this guy and he lives in my house right like his metaphor is a fucking flaw that and how the fuck did anybody get here anyway right like how did anybody get in the fucking door period right and it's and it's because fucking immigration hasn't been illegal forever right immigration started becoming illegal about

100 years ago that's when we started having rules about immigration but before then they don't fucking have any rules we had a massive massive country that we needed to fucking populate just like cool come on over right bring your tired poor and huddled masses now we're like hey bring your wealthy well-educated white people. That's between me and the Lord. And if I'm really a Christian, then I am going to reach out to my Christian brothers and sisters who are in need, and I do that. But I'm sure as H-E-double-L-L, not... Wait, is that four L's?

Oh my God. H-E-double-L-L? Is that four L's? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Sure as hell.

Hell-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. I'm going to demand the government take care of them. Is that four L's? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I'm going to demand the government take care of them. I thought there was a separation between the church and the state. What the fuck are you talking about? He's talking about like, I'll reach out to my Christian brothers if I want. But I thought there was a separation of church and state. Nobody's saying that the church needs to take care of it. Right. Just because you feel a religious obligation to take care of your Christian

brothers and sisters doesn't mean that only you can take care of other people. What the fuck is that? That is a crazy thing to say. That is a really crazy thing. Well, you know what? I eat bread at church. And so the only time you can eat bread is at church with me. Yeah. And nobody else can have bread. The only bread that is, is at church. And so the only time you can eat bread is at church with me. Yeah.

And the only bread that is, is at church. And then the government's giving away free bread. There's a separation of church and state issue guys. What the fuck? Morality was personal. Yet the government's telling the church how the church should behave. Morality is not personal.

Nobody's telling the church how to fucking behave either. But scale all the way back. Morality is the least personal thing. It's the thing. Anything you do to yourself has nothing to do with morality. Unless it affects other people. Right. Morality is not a, oh, I decided

what's moral and that's how morality works. It's social rules. Right. Morality, there's a reason philosophers spend time debating how we arrive at moral decisions and moral decision making and moral systems it's because it's not just well it's what i think yep yep we wouldn't have an entire fucking system of ethics if it was just like well that's what i think yeah i don't know everybody's opinion Everybody's opinion counts. Everybody's opinion is the same.

Whatever you think is right. Whenever you, you know, like, like I get it though. Right. Because if, if he can say morality is, is, is, is personal, right. Then everybody gets to make their own decisions and nobody can be questioned about the rightness or wrongness of those decisions. And so when he decides that he doesn't want to support or pay or, you know, is he saying that, though? I think he's saying I think it's the opposite of that. I think he's saying you guys are the ones who say that morality is

personal. I think. Oh, I think he's saying like it should be like, right. Like by your standard, morality is personal. I'm saying like, I see that's no standard. Nobody is saying nobody thinks. Right. Yeah. Right. Because it's a crazy thing to think. That's a narcissist way to view the world. Yeah. Can't you see it? They murder babies. They light up the White House with rainbow colors and then tell us. I like in the same sentence, they talk about baby murdering.

Not a thing, by the way. But if it were, it would be horrible, right? Right. They talk about that in the same sentence as oh my god the white house had different colors on it yeah right the white house supports lgbtq families yeah or at least it did it doesn't anymore but like at one brief shining moment in time yeah back before we turned into this alternate timeline but like and we're going to conflate those two things.

One which if it happened. Would be genuinely fucking concerning. And the other. I love someone. How we're supposed to treat children. It's the devil. It's the stinking devil. Deception.

Yeah Jeff Sessions. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm kicked off! He's B-read! He's B-read. He's gonna have a heart attack on air. Do you think he's, you know, he's gotten more and more aggressive in his videos

lately? Do you think he's playing that up for the camera? Possibly. I think so. There's a possibility. I think he probably gets more feedback when he, like... i think people found him through right wing watch i know there's there's got to be people out there who look at right wing watch to find people they like right oh oh to find people they agree with find people they agree with and then they're like oh i never heard of dave daubenmeyer that never occurred to me i bet you he's gotten more more people to find him right it's just that old

saying, like, I don't care if you put me in the paper, just spell my name right. Yeah. Huh. Right. Yeah, you're right. It feels like the same. Fuck. Most of those kids aren't even that are coming across. Kids. They're not even humans. Most of those kids. Have you noticed that they're not white?

The way we like them to be, to care about them? Do the caring part. Off the border with these adults. That is not even their parents. That's not true. And how do you know? Would you go down there and do a survey, dude?

Yeah, but I read an article because that was one of the criticisms. There was some lying, but the amount of lying is fucking minimal yeah you know like and but but even if you even if you took that on its face even if you took it on its face even if you give them this point i'll give them this point and i would say like i still care about those kids because there's still children and somebody needs to fucking look out for that's the thing right is that is that even if i did take you on your word,

which I don't, there's going to be a vulnerable, innocent person involved in this equation. Right. What the fuck is wrong with me? You know, it's even worse then that we don't take them in because they were brought here and they weren't somebody else.

They weren't that person's kid. It's even worse. It's even more of a sin, quote unquote sin, for us to turn our cheek to those children. Because you're basically saying, you know, before you had a mom to take care of you. Now it's just a random stranger using you as collateral to get into a country, using you as leverage to get into a country. That's fucking horrifying.

Well, we should take care of those kids. We should do something. Yeah, because as soon as they get here, if that were the case, they're going to fucking discard this kid. Yeah, what are you going to do? You're going to just trebuchet them back to where they go yeah but the thing is like i'm in a fucking pumpkin chunker and shoot them back to mexico city the fuck are you gonna do with a pumpkin chunker that's a midwestern thing like i you know like it's it what i think here is that there's a a slew of people and it occurs to me that like, they just don't give a shit about, like

they'll pretend they give a shit about kids. They'll pretend they give a shit about other people that they're empathetic, but really what they care about is me and mine first. Yeah. And that's the big hard lines, right? And I think we're all guilty of me and mine first, right? I think so, sure. But like, I'm talking like hard fucking lines where it's like, yeah, it's me and mine first, right? I think so, sure. But like, I'm talking like hard fucking lines where it's like,

yeah, it's me and mine. And then what I want to do after that is just pay lip service to the idea of empathy. I just want to think I'm empathetic. I want to maybe even cry if I see something sad. But if you ask to touch any part of what's mine,

if you ask to impact me in any significant way at all, fuck that. I don't give a shit if that other kid that isn't mine faces a world of misery. I can't see past my own shit. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Probably not.

Probably not. They're gang members. They're gang members. The kids are gang members? The little kids. The little kids. The little four-year-old gang member. They're like, shallow in their face. They're gang members. The kids are gang members? The little kids. The little kids. The little four-year-old gang member. They're like, shallow in their face. Fucking, they're learning like,

like MS-13 signing times, like throwing signs out. All the little kids that were crying in that thing, actually, are just tattoos of tears on their face. They won't.

They're silently weeping all the time. They're like, their teeth blacked out. Like a skull tattooed on their face. This little kid's got a neck tattoo. Oh, man.

That kid turned his pacifier into a shiv. Drop him. Drop him. We're missing the point. We are missing the point. See, the point is, hey, dudes, it just as christian to follow the law that's just as christian as helping somebody who broke the law well then you can pick which one yeah right if it's the same thing if it's just as then i can pick the one i like better and you could pick the one that actually has

empathy right you have a pixies choosies book and religion yeah so if it's just the same i'll pick the one where i can look at myself in the mirror and not feel like a monster and when you say okay well i've got to punish them for breaking the law okay how bad is the crime they just committed right well how bad is that crime how awful how how badly should we treat them what level of vengeance should we meet out to this person who happened to break the law by crossing a country's boundary? What should I do to that person? How badly should I injure them? How long should I confine them? What's my goal here? And what the previous administrations had in mind was they would say, okay, well, that's a civil matter. Okay, that's a misdemeanor.'re not and they let the person go now they're like

fuck you hardline felony so I'm going to thank Andy and Marsh for joining us today that was a lot of fun generous of their time and they're funny guys they're really great guys

really really clever funny guys if you're going to go to QED get your tickets soon check the show notes you can meet with meet up with Tom Tom's going to be there and the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm guys're going to go to QED, get your tickets soon. Check the show notes. You can meet me up with Tom. Tom's going to be there. And the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm guys are going to be there too. So there

should be a lot of fun. There'll be a lot of hanging out and that bar there was a blast the last time we went. So go up there. If you want to meet Tom, he should be there. And like I said, these tickets are going fast. So check the show notes if you want to pick up tickets. They're relatively cheap. As I recall, that conference was stupid cheap to go to.

It's like 113 pounds. Yeah, it's really cheap. And I remember like, and in the States, you go to certain conferences, it's a couple hundred dollars plus just to get in the door. This is a really good deal. Yeah, it's a super good deal. So check it out. We'll put this, put it in this week's show notes.

You can check out Marsh's podcast, Be Reasonably Skeptical, as well as Skeptics of the K. Really great shows. And then if you want to check out the backlog of Incredulous, you can find it, I'm sure, on the Merseyside Skeptics website. We'll put links in this week's show notes to all their stuff. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with

the Skeptics' Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues,

temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. 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.