Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 518: Natalia Pasternak Taschner / V4C Part 6

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Vulgarity for Charity continues!    For more from Natalia Pasternak Taschner check her out here:   And drop her a follow

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. 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 from our own shelter-at-home bunkers, this is Cognitive Dissidence. 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 518. Tom is okay. He's just, what happened was, is we recorded weird this week. We recorded a little early for Vulgarity for Charity, and then we recorded an interview, and we weren't sure if we were going to need an intro with the interview or not. And so what happened was, after we got done with our live stream, we forgot to record the intro. So I'm recording the intro this time. Let me tell you what's going to happen this episode. We're going to have Vulgarity for Charity, like I mentioned already, that's going to happen later on in the episode. But first we're going to be

doing an interview with Natalia Pasternak. Natalia Pasternak is the head of the IQC, which is the National Skeptic Organization in Brazil. She's a PhD scientist from the University of Sao Paulo. She is a microbiologist, and she's also someone who debunks studies that do not have the proper rigor, medical studies. And she's gonna talk to us about chloroquine and the studies that are coming out now about its use against the coronavirus. So she is a very knowledgeable

person. We had a wonderful conversation with her. You're going to want to stick around for that and for Vulgarity for Charity later. So without further ado, on with the show. Oh, Dennis, you don't look good. Trust me, D. If I found myself getting sick, I would simply say, should this be done? So we are joined by Natalia Pasternak, PhD. She was put in touch with us by a friend of the show, Michael Marshall. Natalia, welcome to Cognitive Dissonance. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thank you for having me.

So we wanted to talk a little bit, you're in Brazil and we wanted to talk a little bit about what's happening in Brazil with the coronavirus. Maybe talk a little bit about your insane president, because we have one too. And then maybe we could move on to talk a little bit about some of the studies that are coming out about medications that they're trying to find out will combat the coronavirus. So I want to start by asking you, let's talk a little bit about Brazil. How are things in Brazil and how are they combating the coronavirus down there? Well, it's starting now. So we're a little behind the other countries. It hit us a little bit later, but it's not going well. So it's progressing very quickly. And of course, the president doesn't help.

You know that we call him the tropical Trump here. That's not good. You know, like when you're president is the point of shitty reference for all other nation's leaders. You're just like, yeah, that's our lousiest, lowest bar. Awesome. That makes you feel good about what you've done.

You see, it could be worse. That makes you feel good about what you've done. It could be worse. I don't know if I trade you, but I'm almost likely to because I think my president can be even worse. And so what's happening here is that the president himself doesn't respect the lockdown rules

and the isolation rules. So he takes to the streets mostly every day and he talks to people and he shakes people's hands and he takes selfies on the cell phone. He hugs people and the Ministry of Health can convince him that he needs to stay at home. And we have the impression that he, I don't know if he got the virus already and he recovered, but we have the impression that the virus doesn't like him. I don't know if you remember, but before he was elected, there was a campaign here in Brazil that was called Not Him. And so maybe the virus joined, and that's why he takes to the streets every day and doesn't get sick. It is true from what he has said that the virus in Brazil is less of a problem because you can dunk Brazilians in toxic sewage and they come out just fine. He's said that with his own face work. I wish he would try it himself.

But so far he hasn't. So it's what we have. So that's the president of Brazil. And he sets a bad example because he says that people have to go back to work and that Brazilians who are afraid of the virus are sissies and they should behave like men. And so there are lots of people who are starting to doubt the Ministry of Health and question the real necessity of a lockdown and of staying at home. Wow. So it's very dangerous. What he's doing is really, it's criminal. He should be stopped. Well, if they don't go back to work, the rainforest isn't just going to burn down itself. I mean, it seems... That's probably what he thinks.

that's probably what he thinks what do you think so do you think so right now we're america is number one in coronavirus numbers um we are the number one uh country we have the largest amount of people with the coronavirus um you know there's plenty of people in the coronavirus. You know, there's plenty of people in America right now chanting USA, USA, because they're very excited for this. What do you... We're like waving a giant foam finger around, but it's got a rubber glove on it and like it's covered in hand sanitizer. Whatever you do, don't take that foam glove and touch your eye. Whatever you do, Whatever you do, don't take that foam glove and touch your eye. Whatever you do, do not do that. So we're number one right now.

Do you think, I mean, even our president has been pulled back several times. He had said he wanted by Easter to see if we can get back to work. Now he's saying that the stay-at-home order should last until the end of April. Many people think that that's not even close to when it should end, but they also aren't sure that they're just rolling it out slower and slower to make sure that people don't just give up on it too early. Do you think that you guys will surpass us in coronavirus numbers? Or do you think that there are people down there, medical doctors down there thinking that? Because if you're already talking about going back to work, then that means that there's a good chance you could just fly right past us. Well, it depends on notification, really, because we don't really know the real numbers in Brazil.

Brazil is a developing country. We don't know. We're not sure how many people already have the virus or are dying or are sick and we don't know about because we don't get notification. Brazil is a very big country with the north and the northeast are very, we have very poor states over there

and maybe we just don't know the real numbers, the real figures. So we could surpass you, but I don't know if we'll, the real figures. So we could surpass you, but I don't know if we'll be able to brand it as number one. Gosh. Oh, that's terrible. Thankfully, there's tiny, tiny studies proving that,

you know, there's a miracle drug just over the horizon to combat this. So I think we can all breathe easily. Except for those of us who can't breathe at all. Bolsonaro too. Trump immediately when there was a very, very small study had said that

this was kind of a miracle drug and a bunch of people had bought it up and we had someone use in Arizona here, someone had used an aquarium cleaner, which is, I guess, a similar, maybe had a similar name or something, and they died from it. And they were just using it prophylactically, just trying to prevent just getting the coronavirus. But in the several studies recently, they have been giving this lupus medication and it's called chloroquine.

And that's lupus medication and arthritis medication that they're looking at to sort of combat this. And there's been a couple of tiny studies, but people are treating this like it's some sort of wonder drug. Yeah. So for starters, it's not a wonder drug. It's a drug approved for malaria and some autoimmune diseases, like you said, like lupus and arthritis. And for these diseases, it has been studied. It has been tested. We know the dosage. We know the toxic side effects. And people use it with prescription by doctors. And they are followed by doctors as they use it to check for side effects. If the side effects are too pronounced, the doctor will change the medication. So it's not something that you can use on your own

because it's dangerous. And what happened here in Brazil was very similar to what you had in the US. So like Trump, our president just branded chloroquine as a possible cure. And then people went crazy. People took to the drugstores and they bought all the stock of chloroquine. So people who really need it, people with autoimmune diseases who need this medication on a regular basis, they were left without their regular medication.

They can't find it in any drugstore. So they have no meds and they need it. It's like the whole country went crazy. And then our president decided to have the army labs produce it. So he's using public money to produce millions of pills, of chloroquine pills. And the Ministry of Health passed a decree to distribute it to our health care system. We have a public health care system in Brazil. It's already overwhelmed. And still they are using part of the money to distribute chloroquine to the whole country. So it's a real waste of money. We have no evidence whatsoever

that this thing works at all. And even if it works, we don't know how it works. We don't know if it's going to work as a prophylactic or as a treatment for severe patients, for CTI patients. We have no idea. And it's not like we have a great probability that it's going to work because it has been tested for several other viruses and it never worked. We have been tested for dengue, for Zika, for yellow fever, for influenza, for chikungunya fever, and it never worked. Yeah, but isn't the way to figure out if something works is to just randomly give it to an unstudied population and then hope for the best? I mean, that just seems like the best possible way to get a good epidemiologically sound result. I don't know. I'm not a scientist. Yes, but that's the joke, really, because we have standards and everybody knows that we have standards for

clinical trials any scientists know what needs to be done and we are already bending the rules so the world health organization is running clinical trials that would never be run if if we were not in the middle of a pandemic because we are already bending the rules. The way that the World Health Organization is going to run it is just by comparing a treatment group with a control group that's going to receive standard care, and they're going to measure several endpoints. And they're not going to have a double-blind placebo-controlled study, because we don't have time to do it, and we can't do it in the midst of a pandemic. So we are already bending the rules too much. We know that any results that we get from the trials will be biased and we do it in any way.

If we bend even further than that, we'll break. We'll break the rules. So there's nothing in it. But don't you think if a politician says that a drug works, that that necessarily means the drug works? I mean, politicians are in charge because they have all the answers. The scientists just get in the way. Yeah, I can think of something even better than that. What if the FDA says it works?

Yeah. better than that. What if the FDA says it works? Yeah. And what's interesting is that a lot of these, the FDA is relaxing restrictions. And like you said, the World Health Organization is pushing for these things to happen. I do want to ask though, do you think that any good data can be gleaned if they do some of these studies without some of these? I know you said that they're going to be biased, but what if many of these studies happen? Let's say that a bunch of these studies happened and a lot of them find that this is a good medication for this. Even if they are biased, is any of that data good? It depends on some factors. And I think that's what the World Health Organization is aiming at. If you have a very large number of people enrolled, and that's what they're trying

to do, they are enrolling people from all over the world, you can try to decrease the bias, but you can't eliminate it. To really eliminate it or to almost eliminate it, you would have to get a controlled, run an RTC, a randomized controlled trial. But if you have a large number of people and the effect is very big, for instance, the effect is very big. For instance, if you, the only example I can think of really is vitamin C for scurvy.

The effect is so big that even if you walk with a small number of people, you're going to see it because the effect is too big. So I think that's what the World Health Organization is going for.

If the effect is big and if we have a large number of people, we'll have an idea if it works. But still, it's going to be biased. And if the effect is not that big, the answer will not be reliable. So we need, we must have a controlled test, even if it takes time, maybe not for this outbreak, maybe not for this pandemic, but for the next one. Because as I said, it's not the first time that chloroquine comes around. It was tested for SARS. What is it about chloroquine that like when these things happen,

why is this drug one of those drugs that pops up into the fevered imaginations of politics? hops up into the fevered imaginations of Paula. Because there's no science that says, try this over, you know, anything else that I, is there? What is it about chloroquine that's like, somebody got sick somewhere, let's throw some chloroquine at them? Well, I don't know why the love affair, because really there are lots of other drugs that are much more promising.

But chloroquine works really well in test tubes in the lab. So I think some scientists are fooled by that wonderful results. When you work with cell cultures in the lab, chloroquine seems to be a good antiviral. But it never translates to animal models or to human models. So far, it has been tested for all the diseases that I mentioned, and it worked really well in cell cultures in the lab, but it never translated to animal models. And some didn't translate to human models models like dengue and influenza. They tried and chikungunya too. They tried clinical trials with humans and it didn't work.

So I don't know if you really if you do your homework and you check the literature, there's no reason to believe that this time it's going to work because it never did before. So and people keep trying. It never did before. And people keep trying. The other factor, I think, is because chloroquine, it works as an antiviral in vitro in test tubes. And it also has immunomodulatory effects and anti-inflammatory effects. And that's why people without immune diseases use it. So maybe it could have some kind of immunomodulatory effect or anti-inflammatory effect that could be beneficial for virus infection, but it never works. For instance,

when they tried it for chikungunya fever, they tried it as an antiviral because it worked really well in test tubes. And then they tried an animal model in primates. And it really enhanced virus load. Oh, no. Really? It enhanced the virus load? In primates, yes. I bet it still also had a lot of side effects.

Just in order to win in every direction, I hope it just... Right? You need more of everything. Like just, just in order to win in every direction. I hope it's just right. Right. No. Yeah. You need more of everything. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like a buffet. Just keep piling it on a plate. Why is it that like when there's a drug that comes out, the side effect is never like you're more handsome as a result. Like the side effects are always, they're like, you never take anything where it's like side effects may include your dick got a little bigger. Instead.

It's always like. That's the exasperation, I think. Right. The side effects always include like something horrible doesn't work in your body anymore. And it never goes right again. Yeah. Side effects may include you'll have terrible nightmares and kill your wife. That's the side effects.

Yeah. Like, can't we just get something with wonderful side effects? Like side effects include, you know, unmitigated joy and weight loss. Where's that? Well, there are some quarks that try to sell things with that side effect. Yeah, I guess. I want to ask about what kind of effects people think this is having right now. So right now, there are a couple of studies out there.

The latest one was from China where they did this study and they had two different groups of people. One group that didn't receive any kind of real, they just received the regular level of treatment that anyone with this disease would get. And then they gave this medicine to another group. What kind of effects are they seeing? So the latest Chinese is a preprint.

So that means it hasn't been published yet. So it hasn't been peer reviewed. And when you have a close look, you see that it looks like a well-conducted study. The first time I saw it, I said, wow, this is the first good study about chloroquine because they say it's randomized. They say it's double blind and it has a control group. And they even say that it has a placebo group. But I thought the results were a little confusing.

So I checked. I thought the results were a little confusing, so I checked. And every clinical trial has to be pre-registered in a clinical trial website so that you see what they were supposed to do, what they have to register, how they are going to conduct the clinical trial. And it didn't match. So when I checked the registered clinical trial, it was all different. The endpoints that they were going to measure don't appear in the preprint, in the paper. They said that they were going to have three groups. Each group would have 100 people. So it went of a total of 300 people. And we call these groups ARMS. So it was a study designed to have three ARMS. One ARM was going to receive chloroquine, the other ARM was going to receive a placebo,

and the other ARM would be a negative control, meaning it wouldn't receive anything other than the regular treatment. All groups would receive standard care. And somehow it turned out in the paper to be only two groups. The placebo group vanished and became only standard care. The total number of people, which was going to be 300, and 300 was a good number because we don't want to walk with small numbers. But then in the paper, paper they showed 62 people so 31 for each arm for for each group the the control group and the treatment group uh they say it's double blind but there's no way it was double blind if the placebo vanished because if there is no placebo people know what they get the the nurse the doctors they they know what they get. The nurse, the doctors, they know what group is receiving the medication and what isn't because there is no placebo.

So there's no way that this was a double blind. Not all the data is available. So we don't have access to the tables with all the data from the patients. They said in the registry, in the registered clinical trial, they said that they were going to measure viral load and they didn't. So they just measured fever, cough and CT of the lung, lung images to see how pneumonia was evolving. And they said, so fever is OK. Fever is something that you can measure. And they showed that people in the treatment group reacted, they had lower fever, but cough

was self-reported and it's not a double blind. So self-reported symptoms in an open study are not reliable. We don't have access to the images. So they say that the images are better for the treated group, but we don't see the images. So we don't know because it's a preprint. It hasn't been peer reviewed. It's not a real paper yet. And it's very,

we get very suspicious as scientists when the clinical registered trial doesn't match the actual paper, because it means that during the trial, the researchers changed their minds. Why? Why didn't they measure what they were supposed to measure? Maybe they didn't like the numbers. Maybe it wasn't answering the question the way they wanted it to be answered. So we don't know.

I'm not accusing anyone, but it is suspicious. So until I have access to the paper itself, to the tables, and until the authors answer why they changed the endpoints during the trial, I don't trust this study. I don't think it's reliable data. So 62 people, and I can't believe I'm going to ask a woman this, but 62 people seems small. What's a good size? Well, you know that it's true when we say that size doesn't matter. I mean, I appreciate any time someone wants to spare my feelings, but really, when it comes

to science, I think it does. Sometimes you have to hear the hard truth or the not so hard truth, depending, depending. For a clinical trial, there are ways of calculating the required size of the trial. So statisticians, they can

they have a way of calculating calculating how many people you would need to measure the effects that you want to measure and to have a reliable answer. And I don't remember the exact number now, but I saw someone on Pubpeer, that's a website that you can criticize preprints. So, there's lots of scientists who go there and comment. And the idea is not to criticize because you don't like the people. No, the idea is to help the authors to get a peer review before the actual peer review when it's still a preprint.

So I saw some people commenting on PubPeer that the actual peer review when it's still a preprint. So I saw some people commenting on Papier that the actual size of this study would be around 140 people. But I don't have the actual number now. I can send it to you later. But 62 people is a very small number for a clinical trial. Really, it's very small, especially when you are testing something

that is on popular demand like chloroquine you have a lot of popular pressure so what we should do what we need to do and it's urgent that we do it we need a reliable study we need a good clinical trial a randomized controlled double blind placebo clinical trial with a good number of, double-blind placebo clinical trial with a good number of people. If we don't do that, we will not get the answer that we need. We will not know if chloroquine works. And if it works, we still have to measure the dosage.

We have to know if it works as an antiviral or if it works for severe patients that are in CTI as an anti-inflammatory or immunomodulator or anything that can help. But we still don't know. We still don't even know if it works. And if it does work, we have to understand in what phase of the disease it's working. So we have nothing. So far, we have nothing. The small studies don't help. Okay, but to be fair, we have at least two belligerent presidents

yelling about it, so I don't think that's nothing. I mean, that's awesome. Maybe we can get Jared Kushner to run the study. Maybe know, maybe he could run the study for us. Jared Kushner. We don't want some big federal bureaucracy like the FDA standing in the way. You know, we want, we want a different set of bureaucrats making our decisions rather than that set of bureaucrats. Okay. I think my president has a better idea. My boyfriend is showing me here that it of bureaucrats. Okay, I think my president has a better idea. My boyfriend is showing me here that it just came out,

very interesting piece of news, saying that Bolsonaro is calling for a religious fasting day against the virus. Oh, well, that'll do something. I have heard that the hungrier you are, the better your immune system works. Like, I don't know. I just,

maybe that's not true. I just made that up. Yeah. Yeah. Probably not. That's not probably true. Is there any possibility that like, I mean, chloroquine, is there, is there a mechanism of action, which is no, I mean, you said it works in cell cultures, but it's not worked in any animal models at all. Is there a reason that like, is there some mechanism of action that's particularly promising outside the test tube here that we should even go down this road? This seems like a waste of time at this point. I think the only possible mechanism by which it could work is the way it works for autoimmune diseases like lupus and arthritis arthritis because it lowers your immune system. We don't really know how chloroquine does that, but it works for these diseases.

And it could work for CTI patients that are under cytokine storm because what happens when your lungs give is that you have an immune reaction that we call the cytokine storm. And it's a very strong immune reaction. So maybe chloroquine could work there, but we don't know. It could be just a mild effect. And we have other drugs that could do the same with no side effects or with fewer side effects.

Of course, no side effects doesn't exist, but maybe with fewer and not so strong side effects. Because chloroquine has a lot of severe side effects depending on the dosage and on the amount of time that you have to use it. The longer you use it, the more side effects you have. Some of the side effects include heart problems, eye problems, hearing problems. Those are like half the best parts of a person. I know, right? What, are you kidding me?

You need all of those things, right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. But you see how dangerous it gets because the virus has also been shown to attack the heart. So you are going to use a drug that has side effects on the heart that can cause you heart disease. At the same time, when your lungs are impaired and your heart can be impaired. So it's not something mild, as many people say, and it's not from personal experience. So, for instance, I received many comments on my work here in Brazil because I've been given a lot of interviews

and I've been writing lots of articles for my magazine and for national newspapers here. So I get a lot of very cute comments. Some saying that they wish that my father will be the next to die so that I learn a lesson. So, yeah, people can be so nice. And some people just say that, oh, I've been using chloroquine all my life and I never had any side effects. And I said, well, good for you, but other people have side effects.

So it's not something from personal experience and that's why we need to test it. Or we could rely on one anecdote as relayed by the internet. I mean, that's another way to do science. Exactly. And the odd answer that I've that's another way to do science. Exactly. And the audience that I've been getting a lot comes from doctors. That's quite surprising, really, and very sad that many doctors

don't really understand clinical trials and scientific method. And many doctors, but I think they are under a lot of pressure, too. So I cut them some slack there because I think they are under a lot of pressure too. So I cut them some slack there because I think they are really under a lot of emotional pressure to help the patients and they're seeing people die. And so I've been having comments from doctors saying that,

accusing me of not being a doctor myself. I'm not, I'm a microbiologist. And they say, oh, you don't see patients. You are not a doctor. You have no idea what it is when you see your patient die and then you want to try anything. And I can understand that. I really can. I think it must be awful to feel like there's nothing you can do and you should be doing more for your patient and you can't. So it must feel like hell. But still, it's not a reason to try some drug, some untested drug that could cause more harm than good. And this is what I'm trying to convey to people and to doctors here in Brazil. It's not a miracle cure. It's not going to save anyone, or at least we don't know that yet.

I am sympathetic to that, like, level of responsibility, for sure, that doctors must feel when faced. But, like, the response can't be like, well, I don't know, just try some random drug that has not, I mean, like, that's not, that's not, it's a wholly,

entirely unreasonable, and I mean, I dare say, irresponsible thing to do. I mean, it's a wholly, entirely unreasonable, and I mean, I dare say irresponsible thing to do. I mean, it just is. It's like, I'm not a doctor. I don't prescribe. It'd be like if I was like, well, my dad is sick, and I felt an urgent need to do something, so I just brought over a bunch of medicine from my medicine cabinet and started feeding him pills in the random hope that one of them helped like that's

not there's no science there that's not how this is done no it's not how it's done and it could be dangerous but i don't know uh i don't know if it was because of the hype brought up by our two presidents or or even because of the international hype brought up by France, because this all began in France with that Professor Raoul's studies, lousy studies, by the way. You can't call bad papers clinical trials. They are lousy papers. And then I think because of the hype, doctors who don't really understand scientific method felt pressured to use it because they say

if people are saying that this works and i don't use it then then maybe i am being unethical and it's not like that at all they are not being unethical they're they would be good doctors not to prescribe it because they don't know they have have to be careful. What I think the one problem too, there's a couple of things that I can think of and I'm an idiot. There's a couple of things that I can think of. One of them is that the information that we're getting from these studies and from the people in power is not a, there's no dosage. There's no when you should take it. There's just, it's just that it's a drug. And so people don't know, if you don't know anything about the drug, you might take it beforehand

or you might take it when you're really sick or you might take it when you're partially sick or when you just have like a tickle in the back of your throat. And then you might take too much of it or you might take too little of it. And you said it was a thing that sort of reduced the immune system.

I don't think that that could be good taking before. And wouldn't that just maybe open you up for getting this if you took it before you had any symptoms at all? It just seems like there's so many things that could go wrong if you were to self-prescribe this medication. It seems like just a mess. Yes, it is a mess. And self-prescribing is the worst situation ever. At least this, our regulatory agency here in Brazil, similar to your FDA, Anvisa, this is the only good thing that happened here in Brazil. Anvisa turned chloroquine, which was not really over the counter, but it wasn't a prescribed medication. And now it is by prescription only. So at least they did this. So it's not something that you can, you cannot go to the drugstore now and buy chloroquine first because it's sold out. And second, because you need a prescription to do that.

And so at least this changed and now we protect people from self-medicating. They are going to get chloroquine in the healthcare system, in the hospital, but still could be trouble because we don't know if it works and we don't know for which phase of the disease it could work. If it's prophylactic or for mild cases or for severe cases, we don't know. And as you said, if it's

for severe cases because of the immune system, it probably wouldn't work as a prophylactic, and it wouldn't be a good idea to use it as a prophylactic. On the other hand, if it works reducing viral load, then we could use it as a prophylactic. But it wouldn't do much good when the person is already with lung disease because then this is not the virus. This is the immune system reacting in a cytokine storm. So then it wouldn't do any good. So we need to study.

We don't know. We don't know that much about the virus. We don't know that much about the disease. And we don't know enough about how chloroquine would work if it works at all. So it's almost like we should know stuff before we randomly start taking drugs. That's like kind of the, okay, all right. That's a novel concept. I so much to write that down.

Yeah, you're right. It's ridiculous that we're even discussing this. Really, you know, is the reason that we're discussing this just, I mean, it's primarily political at this point, right? Yeah, that's disgusting. So that's good. That's good. It is for both our countries.

Yes. It's a political question. This is not a scientific question. Well, this has been an absolutely fascinating talk. I followed about a quarter of it. So really, really fast. I'm sure smart people in our audience will be able to follow all of it. It was really wonderful to talk to you tonight.

And I'm very glad that you were able to join us. You said that you were writing. Where would people find your work if they were going to find it on the internet? Oh, but it's all in Portuguese. I have some articles in English, but nothing about the pandemic and about chloroquine yet. I will have something published in English soon and then I'll send it to you.

But so far, it's only Portuguese. Okay. All right. Well, when we do get that, we will make sure to post it on our website under this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. It's really been enlightening. Thank you. It's great. Thank you so much for joining us. It's really been enlightening. Thank you. It's great. Thank you for having me. I love it. We want to take a moment and thank our sponsor, Adam and Eve. You know, free stuff is awesome, but free stuff to spice up your bedroom is even better. Select almost any one item for 50% off,

and then Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff. Enter offer code GLORY at checkout and get 10 tantalizing free gifts. A sexy item for him, a special gift for her, and a third item you'll both enjoy. And six free spicy movies. Plus free shipping. That's GLORY. G O R Y at checkout at adam and eve.com. Fucking has never been so fun. No jokes. We are still plugging away at our Vulgarity for Charity roast for 2019, which means it's time to bring back the only three guys less

popular than Price Gouge's hand sanitizer, Noah, Heath, and Eli. Guys, welcome to the show. Okay, Cecil, in my defense, I offer a tremendous amount of supply in the hope that there will eventually be demand. Right. That hand sanitizer trickles somewhere. Yeah. All right, let's get started. Eli, Jared would like a roast for his friend, Emily.

Aw, Emily's the best. She's one of the camp directors for Camp Quest and everything, but I will do my best. It's for charity. So Emily looks like when the Boy Scout news broke, she gathered her staff to ask him what Camp Quest could do to compete. She looks like her proposal for rubbing tussin in it was rejected by the camp nurse.

She looks like her proposal for rubbing tussin in it was rejected by the camp nurse. She looks like she was extremely disappointed when she learned she couldn't make the bug juice out of actual bugs. Yeah, I don't want to say Emily has a severe jawline. I'm just saying that Camp Quest offered wood shop glasses way before they bought any equipment. Okay, Heath, Chris would like a roast for Father of the Bride. All right, so this guy gave a giant Christian sermon at his daughter's wedding. And at the end of it, he said to the groom, I need you to promise to put my daughter second. And there's a big pause.

And then he ended with, and make Jesus number one in your life. So... Jesus Christ. Oh my God, I would have said, fuck you right that late. I wouldn't even have to be getting married. So tip number one, always invite Noah to your wedding ceremonies,

just in case that happens. Tip number two, if you think this might happen, if this does happen at your wedding, be ready for this. So first, you definitely do a reading from the Quran as your toast.

But when the Christian dad pauses during his big line there, you let Noah say, fuck you really loud. And as he's doing that, you take out your real doll of Jesus from under a table and you start fucking it right in the hand hole. Way ahead of you, Papa.

Yeah, Chris didn't send us a picture, but I'm pretty sure he looks like speech that nobody asked for was a guy. That's true.

Yeah. All right, Noah. Nicholas would like a roast for his cat, Billy. Okay, Billy, you are the Triscuit of cats.

And if there's a way to mean that, if there's like a good way to take that, that's not the way I mean it. Okay? I like Triscuit. You are such a boring fucking cat you couldn't decide

between orange striped and white. The two most boring flavors of cat. Right? Like even the pictures that Nicholas sent reinforced your inherent Triscuitness in one he put you in a bow tie in the other he has you in a baseball cap because you are too dull to stand alone all right now i have to tighten my silas and whip myself off mike so i have one for you

here see so eric would like a roast for the organization justice for all oh man justice for all is a group that starts conversations while protesting a woman's right to choose. It's like the abortion version of just asking questions, you know? The kind of fuckwits that wear shirts that say, destroying feminism with thinking and logic, you know? These idiots just need to set up shop at college campuses with a table and a sign that just says, women aren't people. Change my mind. My favorite meme right now is just a blank with nobody there.

Also, they couldn't be more ironically named if they tried. They might as well call themselves welleducated.org. Tom, Tristan would like some of that something something for their co-worker, Pam. You know, one of the many, many tragedies that is coming out of our current crisis is the vast numbers of people who will become unemployed as a result of this goddamn catastrophe. But, Pam, you are not one of those tragedies.

That's not to say that you might not become unemployed. That's only to say that when you do, unlike most of us, you're going to have it coming. And it will be a joy to watch as your life slowly unravels beneath you, leaving you penniless and desperate and wondering why you're so very, very alone. Oh my God.

Echoes of tears. What in the world? After the record, Tom's going to go like, why don't you guys give me any of the happy ones? Alright, I got another one for you, Cecil. Jim needs a roast of his friend, Quentin. Quentin needs a moob lift, man. His belt is acting as like a makeshift border wall

so the tig old bitty refugees won't find asylum in his underwear. I know you call him a budding writer, Jim, but he looks like a fully flowered and quickly wilting writer. That's what he looks like. He looks like he's about to start lecture at a high school gymnasium about butt wits.

Eli, this next one's for you Walt would like a roast of himself Okay, Walt, listen You have to let the adorable little girl And the pretty lady doctor go I know you think they're your wife and child But trust me when I say This make-a-wish has gone too far What did you do?

How big is your penis, Walt? You look like Augustus Gloop did a teen Christian speaking tour after the chocolate incident. Good for you, Walt. Yeah. Also, Walt looks like he couldn't decide on a haircut

at the barbershop, so he just like pointed at the stripy pole. He was like, meh. You make it spin? So he just like pointed at the stripey pole. He was like, no, Eric needs a roast for his three kids. Do you have one roast that can rule them all? Yeah.

Okay. So apparently they adopted a fucking college brochures worth of multicultural drug babies, slapped them down in Arkansas because of how racially inclusive our Kansans tend to be. And, and now they want me to make fun of them because Eric thinks that this will make me feel bad.

But you know what, dude? The callous assholery is not just an act. It's really who I am. Fuck these little twerps with their bullshit innocence. They're obviously faking it. You know what other multiracial trio of boys were adorable when they were six?

Idiom mean pool, and fucking Hitler. All notorious atheists. That's right. Yes, absolutely. And Heath, Nikita would like a roast for their dad's girlfriend, Dylan. Yeah, okay. I don't even know if it's really pronounced Dylan

because first of all, it's spelled D-Yostrophe-Y-L-N-N. Maybe it's Dylan? Yeah, I hope he fucking died. And just for the record, when Nikita's dad was a kid, his babysitter was Dylan, who is now his girlfriend. So yeah, she's a member of Nobla, so that's fun. And it looks like her barber hates her

and definitely gave her a haircut that would eventually turn into a mullet so she wouldn't realize at first, which I think is fucking amazing. Like, her barber gave her

the mullet seed haircut. So good for us. Surprise mullet. That's amazing. She also tried to frame a seven and an eight year old for attempted murder which honestly even if it were true i'd still be on the kids side she's like a a prada bag away from being a nicktoons villain okay tom chris needs a roast for his ex-girlfriend

alissa oh my god alissa's a goddamn disaster shops for magic, Wiccan arts and crafts supplies at a store unironically called Hocus Pocus. What? And she strings people along to support her bullshit lifestyle and have some vain hope that they might someday get to fuck her. But here's the newsflash that Alyssa hasn't gotten. Hey, if you're primarily valued for something you offer that lasts maybe an hour, you're not valued at all. You're disposable. Being fuckable is literally

as easy as being able to be fucked. And you will be, Alyssa, because you're temporary. You are a utility. You mistake being used for being useful. And they're not the same. You're a scam. You're temporary. You are a utility. You mistake being used for being useful. And they're not the same. You're a scam. You're perpetuating only on yourself. You have nothing tethering you to the world. Nothing at least that can't be replaced with a phone call and a credit card. And you've built a disposable life.

One that will come crashing down around you. And when it does, it won't matter. It will not make a sound, Alicia, because nobody will be around to hear it. Okay. Next up, we got a round of special roasts. These roasts are so perfect for you

that Heath won't call them back. Okay. Okay. Can we just get fucking going with the roasts? Heath, Suzanne would like a roast of her boss, Mike Pompeo.

Oh, awesome. Hi, Suzanne. Suzanne would like a roast of her boss, Mike Pompeo. Oh, awesome. Hi, Suzanne. Suzanne's cool. We met her. So, Mike Pompeo looks like a Nintendo

Me Republican. He's a great Republican on that thing. Except, his body is even more globular than his

crazy amoeba head. Globular. Which seems impossible, but he did it. He's a bobble body of himself. Oh, that's amazing. Okay, no, Richard would like you to roast him and specifically his teeth. Oh, all right.

Well, that's going to be pretty fucking hypocritical coming from me. I'm two cavities away from Mary to Joe Exotic myself, but okay, here goes. It's optical. Richard, your teeth are nonconformists. That's nice. That's nice.

They'll line up with a damn well, please. And I'd make fun of your receding gum line, but something tells me that when it comes to your receding lines, that one isn't your first concern. Taru would like you to roast your write-in candidate, Tim Ryan. Never!

Eli? Fine, fine. Hi, Tim Ryan. Never! Eli? Fine, fine. Hi, Turo. All right, what can I say about Tim Ryan that he didn't accidentally blurt out during his ill-fated, too-debated attempt to be leader of the free world? Dude, Marianne Williamson beat you so badly

her basement gimp sent you flowers. Tim, baby, I've seen guys with buttholes full of crack cocaine on episodes of cops handle themselves better than you. And get a bigger percentage of the vote in Florida.

That too. Okay, but Tim, to your credit, your last words on the national stage turned out to be the truest of the entire election season. Nobody's coming to save us. So, you know, that's true. All right, Cecil. That is true.

That is so sad. That's the last thing he said ever. Ever. I don't even know if he's alive still. It might have literally been the last thing. They took him off stage and killed him right there.

He's no longer alive. Mercy killing. Okay, Cecil. That's how the Chinese do it at the Olympics, isn't it? That's why they bring the gymnasts in 12 packs.

Okay, Cecil. Time for some vengeance. Adam wants you and Tom to roast his college friends, Adam and Mike. How is that vengeance? I mean, you had to talk to me just now. That seems... That is fair.

Okay, that's fair. Okay. Adam and Mike look like they're the least crucial members of a Bon Iver cover band. Like the third bassist in the tambourine. They feel like they call a lot of hotels looking to exchange 55 Instagram followers worth of exposure for a night's stay. Adam and Mike.

Okay, here's how they spend their time in no particular order because I've already forgotten which cliche is which. So it's video games making dollar store knockoff Glade plugins. That's real. Doing something called Rocket League, which I won't Google. One of them I think has a snake and the other, maybe the same one, not sure. Surfing Tinder. Sorry, knockoff Glade plugins?

Knockoff Glade plugins for a dollar store. That's their job. That's their actual job. What the fuck am I going to do in my limited capacity as a roaster? That would be meaner than just pointing out, you know, like who Adam and Michael are and how they spend their time, which is, I should point out just as limited as, you know,

your time and mine and far be it for me to call how you spend your life and utterly and pointless waste. But you know, your time and mine, and far be it for me to call how you spend your life an utterly and pointless waste, but, you know, every moment of your lives has been squandered, guys. Squandered. All right, Tom, this last special request is for you. Scott would like you to roast Bilbo Baggins. I love this request.

Okay, I had to look this up because I think I was supposed to do this one last year, and then I got confused, and I confused Bilbo with Frodo and the Hobbit one. And I guess they're not the same. The first one from the Hobbit. I was like, I guess maybe that's racist against Hobbits. Yeah.

Who fucking cares? That's what I was like. Who fucking cares? Seriously. Is there anything in the world that could possibly matter less than which of the fucking Irish tree dwarves? I insult. We're in a huge fight, Tom. We tom we're in a fight they don't live in trees they're not irish they're not no so many things that am i supposed to make sure like super duper sure that i get this one right and i don't make the wrong joke about which hairy footed imaginary north carolinian wins the big elf prize or has the

fanciest jewelry or fucking whatever they're on about. What am I supposed to do with a guy whose name already rhymes with dildo? Where are you supposed to go? All right. It is time for another Spikening Round. Categoriest mamas for this Spikening Round. I'd like roast in the form of a yo mama joke. Let's get started. Hands on your buzzers

Always there Cecil Jessica's mother Monica Jessica's mama is so ugly The CDC recommends she wears a mask No matter what Topical Okay Lisa's mom's husband, Bill. So not a mama's joke.

All right. Well, Bill's mom is so stupid, she's genetically exactly 50% of Bill. Which makes her, I don't know what this exactly means, but makes her half of a racist, abusive, alcoholic Trump supporter. And by the way,

if that describes you, we need you to stop finding the other half of your very upsetting locket and having kids. Stop reading bills. Okay, Mark's mom, Selena. Yo mama's so off. Fuck, man, this one. God damn it, Mark.

Like, I know this is like the pithy, fun, spiting round, but God, man, your mom. Your mom's just a piece of shit. Okay, sorry. Alright, your mom is so shitty, she's the reason we're all out of toilet paper. Seriously, man, your mom's the fucking worst. Jesus.

She is the worst. Okay, Cecil, how about a yo mama for Nick's mom's husband, Chris? Well, if it's for the husband, we're going to go with stepdaddy on this one. Your stepdaddy's so boring that when he goes out for karaoke, he requests the Comcast hold music. He's so boring he has to dip his plain rice cakes in milk because they're too spicy. That would be such a power move at karaoke, though, if you actually pulled that off. Okay, Noah, by special request, Nettie's mother, Luann.

Okay, Luann is too much of a bitch for one of these yo mama jokes, so apologies for this. Like, my wife saw our picture and she says, man, she looks like the kind of person that threatens to hit people with shoes. And she's exactly right. That's exactly what she looks like. So, you know how bad a mom bitching at her daughter for not having kids already is? Now imagine that, except the daughter is infertile and the mom fucking

knows it. Jesus. It would literally be no different than my mom bitching at me for not getting pregnant, yet Luann literally does that. Literally calls her infertile daughter and says, I had a dream you were pregnant. Did Jesus reverse your infertility?

Are you sure? Did you check? Sorry, hold on. No, fuck what? Luann, if you want a fucking baby to don't on, I'll tell you a way to go about it that's at least as effective as harassing your daughter.

Go fuck yourself. Holy shit. Okay, fantastic. In the words of Heath and Tom, how about another round? I feel like you already did that joke, C-Saw. Well, they're still

alcoholics, Eli. That's true. Damn it. This category is Shitty Sisters. Of course, everyone knows about the black sheep of the family,

but for this round, I'd like to know what position these siblings fill. Let's start with Christy's sister, Sharon. Okay. She's the white cunt.

Did I do it wrong? Okay. She's the white knuckles. She looks like she gives a handjob like Sarah Huckabee Sanders trying to get the last of the cake icing out of the food.

Effectively? That's aggressive. Nicolette's sister, Laura. Well, Nicolette adores her sister, which is very, very nice of Nicolette because Laura is the bay sheep of her family. Oh, you like sci-fi and Marvel movies, huh? Well, move over Jonathan Goldsmith. There's a new most interesting person in the world.

Her and her husband look like they're about to Bonnie and Clyde a Krispy Kreme. By which I mean die in a Krispy Kreme. Mary's sister, Monica. All right, Monica isn't a black sheep. She's more like a black mamba. I don't know.

She's a slithering, repulsive, lying snake. No, actually, snakes are kind of cool. Monica's not cool. Monica is what happens when insane, insecure jealousy runs unchecked like a virus through a family, and the only cure for a bad case of Monica is an infinite amount of social distance.

The black coronavirus of her family. Yeah, there you go. Alright, Cecil, one for you. Sarah's sister, Tara. Okay. I mean, I would say she's clearly a bitch, but she's not going to feed even the smallest litter with those tits. So small

that if she wore an N95 mask on her chest, she'd still feel exposed. I feel like an infinite number of her tits could dance on a head of a pin is what I'm saying. And I just want to say that the small boob comments

were requested by Sarah here. In the picture, you can't tell boob size because it's two-dimensional, like Tara's chest. Okay, Noah. Take us home with James' son, Hunter.

Alright, I didn't get a sister. That's alright. I'm almost certain that I roasted this dude already, but I couldn't find it in the past script. So here we go. Hunter is less the black sheep of the family and more the black mold of the family. He's still in the house at

26 despite all of his parents' efforts to get rid of him. It's dangerous to inhale near him. And he refuses to wear a shirt at home, and his body hair literally looks like black mold. Either that or he's clean chested, like bare chested and moldy. I honestly can't tell what I'm looking at here. Yeah.

In fairness, that's a lot of 46-year-olds right now at the parents' house. Okay, so for our last round of roasties tonight, these are folks who forked over the big bucks for our bile. So in the words of Heath's mom, Don't do that.

all the rest of you boys should feel free to jump in. I didn't write that. God damn it. Let's start with James who gave us $500. My mom likes your show better than ours. It's fine. James who gave us $500 to roast Missouri

governor Mike Parsons. And we love your mom too. Mike Parsons looks like Jimmy Stewart fuck droopy dog. And I just have to say that is such an excellent comparison. I will forever regret not being in a visual medium forever for the rest

of my life. You will not know how great I am. He looks like a failed attempt to Photoshop a dick into the rest of my life. You will not know how great I am. He looks like a failed attempt to Photoshop a dick into the mouth of Jimmy Carter. His campaign photo is exactly what comes up if you Google Canoscrotum Smythe. Next up, Dan also gave 500 bucks

to Rose, Missouri, and it's former governor Eric Greitens. Okay. Well, first of all, congrats to Missouri for being a neighboring state of Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. That's impressive. It never gets old. Congrats on electing lifelong Democrat Eric Greitens to be your governor right after he contracted a dangerous strain of affluenza and became a Republican in 2015.

And you got him in office just in time to watch him get indicted on felony charges of campaign tampering and then resign in disgrace a year later. So snuck it under the wire. Good job. Was Richard Nixon's frozen head not available?

Could you not have written in him oh wait sorry it was but you elected it to be a senator and named it roy blunt that's right um he roy blunt looks like richard nixon forgot to become al franken who forgot to become the joker who forgot to become a republican senator, to put it more succinctly, he looks like a Missouri senator. So there you go. Dan gave bonus points for doing Roy Blunt, too. Oh, okay, okay.

I'm not saying greetings is a child molester, but if he ever goes missing, I'm having the dog smell a middle school wrestling mat instead of his dog. That's all I'm going to say. It looks like somebody made a special racism edition Ken doll or something. Here's the roast

that pretty much writes itself. Jacob kicked in 500 bucks for us to roast Pennsylvania. Oh, see, so what I did, if you roast, I don't tell you how good and easy they should be beforehand. All right, Pennsylvania,

clearly the incel of states, right? It literally had to name a city intercourse to try to trick us. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure if you look in the northeast somewhere, you're going to find a town called You Don't Know Her, She's Canadiansburg. Even Ohio and New Jersey are embarrassed to share a border with it. I wasn't going to go all the way to West Virginia on that joke. Ohio and New Jersey is one thing.

Fair. Yeah. Pennsylvania is the sudden infant death syndrome of states. You know it's bad. You know it matters. But you can't help but think that maybe stuff is just working itself out in payroll. Maybe. Alright, Carl donated 500

bucks for us to roast people who are afraid of chemicals in food. And let me go here. I just want to point out the obvious. Everything that is made of stuff is made of chemicals. So anything you can think of, made of chemicals.

That thought you were just thinking, thinking about stuff right there, that was made of chemicals. That thought realizing that other stuff was made of chemicals was also made of chemicals. That thought realizing that other stuff was made of chemicals was also made of chemicals. It's like being mad about marriage because there's too much commitment.

It's like walking into Disneyland and sign because it's so commercialized. Harry Potter movies are realistic because there's too much magic. You're just afraid of unfamiliar chemicals, not all chemicals. So my suggestion would be just take it easy on reading the labels

and just enjoy food. But stay away from dihydrogen monoxide. That shit is killer in large cases. Just stay away from it. Yeah, it's true. It kills a lot of people. Hey, if there's anything you can be sure of, it's the same people who stuff a jade egg up their hooch also think chemicals are dangerous.

You guys are so negative. You've got to give them a chance. I feel like we should put the levers of state at their disposal. My proposal is that we just help them out. Anytime somebody says that they avoid chemicals in their food, we just create a law that doesn't allow them to eat those anymore. And last but certainly not least, unless we mean quality and effort, Tom, take us home with a roast of Joe who gave us $329 for you to roast him.

Okay, Joe, first, that's not a beard. That's not. That's a chin strap of hair. What is that? That's vagina deet, Joe. Like, what the fuck? I will seriously, I'll get to the roast of your horrible, defective life choices in a minute.

But really, dude, you got to shave. Stop what you're doing right now. What is happening there? That's not even like, that's not even a funny joke, Joe. You have to not do that anymore. And you seem to have that ability from what you wrote. You had a conversion, a moment where you looked at your whole life and all the choices that you had made, a lifetime of thoughts and opinions, an entire worldview, and you decided, wow, I have never been so wrong about every single choice I have ever made in my life.

I applaud you for that. It takes courage to change, and you had to change everything. No part of you was eligible. The whole you, the whole fucking thing was just shitty and wrong and petty and stupid and obviously misled. And I have no idea what has to happen on the road to Damascus to cause such a conversion. But kudos, Joe. Honestly, good job. No longer wasting your life after having shit so many of your years down the toilet.

You're not getting those back, by the way. Those are just now your stupid years. You wasted those., by the way. Those are just, now you're stupid years. You wasted those. It's a garbage. But no more, Joe. Now, instead of being a dumb fuck Stephen King voting Iowan young earth creationist,

well, now you only look like one. You voted for Stephen King? He did. Twice. Oh, God. God. Doctor's just like, you're all cancer. I'd cut out you, but that doesn't, God. God. Doctor's just like, you're all cancer.

I'd cut out you, but that doesn't, that means nothing. Do you mind rolling around the emergency room floor for a little while? All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up

for this Vulgarity for Charity. Remember that we are going to keep plugging away at these. We just did one on scathing this week. So be sure to check out that and be sure to check out these guys. Other shows are really funny, guys. Thanks for joining us, guys.

We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Go to modestneeds.org and donate more money. They need it. Hey, guys. Thanks for checking out our channel.

If you haven't yet, go ahead and hit that like button. Maybe subscribe. Maybe share it with your friends and family. You know, we love making this podcast. And if you want even more, why not check out our live streams every Thursday at 9 p.m. Central on Twitch and Mixer and YouTube and Facebook and Periscope and OnlyFans and YouPorn and FuckHamster and FarmersOnly and Meatspin and HelloKittyInternational.biz. In fact, why not take the time right now to set up a calendar event? Remember, that's Thursday

at 9 p.m. Central on all those places I just mentioned. Go ahead, set it up. I'll wait. Did you do it yet? Did you do it yet? I feel like you're not paying attention. And when you don't pay attention, bad things happen. And if these bad things keep happening, then there will be consequences. And when those consequences come to fruition, then problems will arise. Oh, I just got the notification that you did set it up.

Thanks. Well, here's a clip from our most recent live stream. Enjoy. It's like, it's up to me. It's up to me to expose the truth by driving a train wrong. When did you ever learn something because somebody drove a train poorly? When were you like, oh man, that really,

my knowledge of the world has really expanded because that guy can't drive a train good. Oh gosh. Devin has a great comment here. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Great comment. So Cecil, it's also possible though that this all happened because of a chugga chuggas argument.

Right, yeah, chugga-chugga argument. How many chugga-chuggas do you think he was insisting on as the train was barreling toward a boat? I don't know, Tom. How many chugga-chuggas do you need before you say choo-choo? Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, choo-choo. No, it's four chugga-chuggas. It's chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga. No, you're right. It's three chuggas and then the choo-choo. Chugga-chuggaugga chugga chugga chugga. No, you're right. It's three chuggas and then the chew chew. Chugga chugga chugga

chugga chugga chew chew, right? It's three. Anyone else outside of three is just wrong. Yeah. Three is the right number of chuggas. Three is the correct number of chuggas. Are you going to go two chuggas? Has anybody ever suggested two chuggas? Chugga chugga chugga chugga chew chew. Who's in that kind of hurry? I guess if you only have

you got to pay the motel guy by the 15 minutes, then yeah, you suggest two chuggas. But I think you go for the third chugga if you got the whole hour, you know? If you splurged on the whole hour. I'm getting my fucking money's worth. That's all I'm saying. Somebody's saying two, two chuggas. Come on, it's not two chuggas. That's insane. That's all I'm saying. Somebody's saying two. Two chuggas.

Come on. It's not two chuggas. That's insane. It's three chuggas. Four is too many. Two chuggas, that's a dirty communist number of chuggas. That is. And anybody who's saying six, you're right out.

Six is out. Six chuggas? Yeah. What am I, 25? I don't have six fucking chuggas in me. Yeah. Six chuggas. Exactly. Six chuggas. The train has fucking left the station after three.

It is not eight chuggas. Eight chuggas, Alice. Get the fuck out of here. The fuck out of here with that fucking shit. Yeah, eight chuggas if I have a full 24 hours. Yeah. Eight chuggas. You're just losing track of time.

That's all that is. That's just, you're just hoping to get it back. Patrick, it is not chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-choo-choo. It is three. It is six. So it's chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-choo-choo. It's six total. We're saying how many chugga-chuggas you need, guys.

It's not how many chuggas do you need. It's chugga-chuggas because they come in twos. It's a pair of chuggas. You can't get a singular chugga. Right? There's no odd number of chuggas, right? That's crazy. You don't just say it's three chuggas. Chugga chugga

chugga choo choo. No, that's no. You're a psychopath. You're a psychopath if you say that. You are fucking psycho. God damn it. I didn't say how many chuggas. It's how many chugga chuggas. Yeah, exactly.

They come in pairs. They come in pairs. They come in pairs. Yeah, you don't get a singular chugga. You can't go to the supermarket and buy one chugga. That's ridiculous. Are you buying one shoe? Yeah, exactly.

I'm here for a shoe today. What, are you kidding me? You can't go buy one hot dog at the supermarket. You gotta get a pack of them. These aren't like kidneys where you can accept just one of them. Exactly. Yeah.

God damn it. So, we had an amazing patron outpouring this upcoming week. We want to continue to encourage people to become patrons. While we had a great outpouring this week, we definitely still need your help right now. So if you are a listener to the show and have been for a while,

we would really love it if you went to patreon.com and became a patron. We are also this week, and we're not sure when it's going to be, but probably by the time this episode releases, we should have a PayPal button on the website too. So if you don't want to become a patron and you get a ton of extra content, but if you just didn't want to have that hassle, you can always do a one-time donation too through PayPal. And we'll have that button up on Monday. And I just really wanted to mention what it means to me personally. So the pandemic, I know, is hitting a lot of people hard economically. It is going to have a dramatic impact on my

economic situation and my family's. And it's been incredibly heartwarming to see the patronage increase over the last week. It matters. It matters to me and it matters to my family and it matters to Cecil. And it gives me a tremendous amount of security that I frankly am counting on. So I'm really just want to say thank you and can't tell you how grateful I am to all of you that have been patrons, both new and old. So I'm going to read these patrons off here. We're going to get started. It's going to take a while. Podunk, Alethea, 485, Tracy, Joshua, Justin, Perry, Nicolette, Michelle, Mill, Daniel, Hangover101, Daniel again, Christopher, Dilbo Shaggins, that's fucking baller. That's great.

Cameron, Genevieve, Nurse Dave the British Yeti, Constantinos, DQ, Randy, Melanie, Natalie, Tasha, Henrik from Norway, Jason, Jordan, Joey, Brandon, Caleb, Charles, Dean, Pope of the Picas, Joey, Brandon, Caleb, Charles, Dean, Pope of the Peekas, Sweaterhawk, Tasty Trollbait, Lalia, David, Angry Scotsman, Susanna, Jack Tway, Kermit the Hawk, Matt, Gunther, Gear, I think I'm pronouncing that right now, I'm not sure, Ben, JM, Burz Molly, John, Jack, CD, Derek, Timothy, Mark, Aaron, Hunter of Necros, Anita, explicitly telling you to take legal advice from a podcast since 2016, engulfing flame, Kevin, August, Matthew, Blake, Steven, Kara, Justin, Theodore, Joe, Riley, Tyler, Darren, Ed, Caleb. This one's for you, Tom. Ian's Adoption Fund.

Kenny. And then patrons who upped their pledge. Rubix, Tesseract, Mark, Susie, John, Jonathan, Kathy, Steve, Memphis, Invisible Unicorn, Heather, That One Furry Listener, Ravenclaw Perfect, Steven, Robotronic, Preston, Amber, Diego, Sonia, Chimera, Robert Anderson, Phil, appropriately inappropriate, Catarthus, Mango Cat, Tony Stark, Byron, FHVJXR, that's not pronounceable, fuck you, F-H-V-J-X-R. That's not pronounceable.

Fuck you. Katie, Daniel, Daniel Charles, Rhea, Morden, Tabitha, Renee, David, Lisa, Travis, Frode, Chris, The Magic Tapeworm, Nora, Elias, Princess Thunderballs, Henrik, John, Don't Panic, Cooking Heath with Ramen, Doug, Michelle, and a big, huge shout out to Heather who gave us just an immense amount on Patreon. We really do genuinely appreciate it to everybody. Like we said, while there's a giant outpouring of patrons, if you are not a patron,

we really would like you to become a patron to help support the show and to help support Tom and possibly myself in the near future we still get messages Joseph sent a message and said hey do you want to I want to send you something we're not going to be in the studio for a while and if you send something to the studio it

might get stolen because that studio is still open but I don't people still have stolen packages in the past so we're going to wait if we will when we will let you know when we are back in the studio and we'll give you our address then. But as it stands right now, we're just not going to be back there anytime soon.

Got a message from Preston and Preston sent in an image. It is a religious themed Pokemon image. So I will post it on this week's show notes. It's great. I'll post it on this week's show notes. It's really funny. We got another message from Rasmus, and he's from Sweden.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but he sent an image of his daughter in Burger King over there. They have rainbow crowns. So he has a rainbow colored wrapper for his whopper. There you go. We got a message from Amanda, and Amanda was talking about how in, you're going to be able to hear my cat, and I can't stop the cat from doing this.

Amanda in Wyoming had said that there was a church that went basically digital, and her sister had to do a bunch of work because she was the youngest one there. work because she was the youngest one there. They just defaulted her all the work and it turns out she couldn't get it all to work at the Zoom meetings or whatever to work. So Amanda's atheist boyfriend had to jump in and watch the streams and troubleshoot

on the spot. That's the worst. You're not only a volunteer, but you have to watch that shit too. God. We got a message from James and James says, hey, you guys are saying Trump says things like when the weather warms up, shit's going to settle down. Well, he's like, I'm in Southern Australia and where I live, it's fucking hot and it is getting worse. And I agree. It's a bullshit argument that he keeps on saying over and over and over again.

It's to sort of be able to try to dial people down, I think is what he's doing it for. Because people want to have something to look forward to. And I think that they're saying it even though it doesn't make any sense. You know, it's one thing, too, to, like, be the leader and try to keep people calm. And it's another thing to be the leader and lie to keep people calm. Yeah. It's weird. The second one is not good.

It's just going to create, like like behavioral changes that make this thing worse. Tom, Bart sent us a long message telling us the difference between regular sort of just farming and, you know, having animals, livestock, and then the difference between that and the wet markets that they're having in China and stuff. Yeah. The message was great. And I'm going to summarize some of the key points because they go against kind of the conversation that I was having and some of the things that I had thought were true. So while it's true that like keeping a bunch of domestic animals creates bacteriological issues and some viral issues like flu, those are less serious in many ways than, you know, having zoonotic, you know, like exotic animals. Because something like flu, there's some amount of immunity to because there's been exposure to those things. But when

you get these unique animals in these wet markets, you have unique viruses. And the way they move and spread through populations can be significantly more serious because it's something our systems haven't developed any response or immunity to. So that's a great point, Bart. And I know I'm summarizing a very long email, but I'm grateful to you for the correction. Got a message from Michael and he sent us something from Copenhagen. There's an image of Trump we're going to post on this week's show notes. Really turned out. It's hilarious. There's an image of Trump we're going to post on this week's show notes. Really turned out, it's hilarious. It's really good.

Tom, we got a correction from Big Easy Blasphemy. They said New Orleans called for shelter in place in March 16th. And then also it turns out that the Mardi Gras parades and celebrations took place between the February 6th and the 25th, and nobody really knew it was that big a deal back then. Yeah. So, you know, that I'll absolutely concede that point. In the middle of February,

we were living in a different world. And so to be shitty and blamey about Mardi Gras, that's my mistake. And I thank you for the correction. I actually didn't know, to be perfectly honest, when Mardi Gras was, and I had read some articles and I took that on faith and I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. And I think the way that the people, especially the mayor or whatever down there had framed it, it felt like it had sort of happened much later. And one of the things, too, that we have to understand is that, you know, Trump was downplaying it in February, too, right?

It's not that it wasn't, people didn't know about it, but Trump was very much downplaying it in February too, right? It's not that it wasn't, people didn't know about it, but Trump was very much downplaying it. So it was clearly still a problem, I think, in the United States back then. It just so happens that we were just downplaying it like crazy. Big easy ask when we locked down here in Illinois,

we locked down, you locked down on the 23rd, we locked down on the 20th of March. So we actually locked down three days earlier than you did. And our shelter in Illinois, we locked down, you locked down on the 23rd, we locked down on the 20th of March. So we actually locked down three days earlier than you did. And our shelter in place, we didn't get a shelter in place message, but we definitely got a, you shouldn't be going out probably around the same time you did around March 16th. And then it got to be shelter in place on the 20th. Got a message from John and John said that, I had said that supermarkets were crushing it. And John sent a message to say that they operated very slim margins with links that showed that supermarkets don't operate at very high margins. They're very slim. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not still crushing it. I mean,

regardless, they operate at those margins all the time. It's not that they don't operate those margins all the time. And if you're making more, if you have more business, then you're going to be making more money. And so they are making more money now. And so I feel like they have an opportunity to pay people that should be getting hazard pay that money. Yeah, and it's also the case that any business

as revenue goes up, margins almost always go up as well because economies of scale kick in. There are fixed costs that don't change. So there are some costs which are tied to your volume and there are other costs which are fixed costs. Like the rent at the grocery store doesn't change because the grocery store is 30% busier. So margins also tend to increase as revenue increases. We got a message from Dave and Dave said he wanted to let us know how crazy things were.

His daughter works at a pharmacy and they're very busy and they have a shortage of masks and gloves. Then the crew has to be issued them one a day and they have to sign them out and lock them up when they go on break. And he was just talking about the shortage of PPE and that's just all over the country. It's just genuinely all over the country.

I saw today that the FBI raided someone's house who was charging a 700% markup on PPE and trying to sell it to like hospitals and whatnot. And he had 200,000 H95 masks or whatever in his house. Holy shit. How does somebody even get all those? They must've just known ahead of time and they just ordered a shit ton of them and they just had a bunch of them. I guess they seized them. They just said, fuck you, I'm seizing them. And they just seized them all. So I want to thank Natalia Pasternak for joining us today. We really do appreciate her coming on. We thought that the conversation we had with her was wonderful. We'll post some links to her on this week's show notes, along with a couple of

links that she sent after we got done talking about some COVID studies that she has sent to us. So we'll post those on this week's show notes. We also want to thank this scathing, gam, citation-needed guys, skeptocrats for coming on, Noah, Heath, and Eli for doing a little vulgarity for charity with us.

Those are still going to keep running out every month. A lot of fun. Hopefully you guys heard yours this week. If not, we'll be getting to it soon. Don't worry. We're going to keep on plugging away at those. But we want to thank them for coming on. Check out all their podcasts and the show notes. You should know them already for GAM, Skeptocrat, and the Scathing Atheist. I think they have a brand new one, D&D Minus, that just came out. I think it's only on Patreon now. I'm not sure if it's released, but you can check that out as well.

And Citation Needed, of course. And this week we did the Etruscans, really amazing essay by Noah, probably his best work. So check it out. 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,, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram,

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Temples, Dragons, Giant Worms Atlantis, Dolphins, Truthers, Birthers, Witches, Wizards Vaccine Nuts Shaman Healers, Evangelists, Conspiracy Double Speak Stigmata Nonsense Expose your signs Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands.

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