Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 563: Outbreak: A Crisis of Faith with Noah Lugeons

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Thank you to Noah Lugeons for joining us Get his book   Follow on twitter and support his patreons              Show Notes  

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It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 563 or thereabouts. And we are joined today by no illusions. Noah, I was thinking about when the hell were the, when were you on the show last, man? Oh, it's been a while. It's been a long while.

500 or something. God damn. I can't believe we held it off this long. That's the part I'm proud of. Like, that's really what I'm trying to emphasize. Yeah, no, it's a new personal best for me. I've been away from you guys for, I mean, other than the once a week that we get together over on the other time yeah the other time we

get together before we start did you get your complimentary share of gamestop before it's for all our guests we get them one one share of gamestop um and nitroglycerin i'm not sure which is more volatile you know i'll tell you i i shorted it about a week ago. It's going great. I think I'm starting my own hedge fund. What did it fall to today? I saw today that it fell. Yeah, down to 50. That's a rough go if you bought it. 300.

Man. Now all the rich people are... Still rich, anyway. Yeah, nothing happened there. We sent a message to them. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing happened there. We sent a message to them. Yeah. Uh, did not know.

The reason we had you on is because we know you're a prolific writer and you just finished a book last year, late last year. And, uh, and we wanted to hear about it and we wanted to talk to you about it. The book is called outbreak, a crisis of faith.

First, let's talk about, let's talk about the inspiration. Why did you write this book? Well, yeah. So our fear at the time was, boy, can we, can we get a book about the pandemic out while it's still relevant? I'll write one word a day. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

But the honest... So as we were looking at it, myself, Heath Enright, Eli Bosnick, and Andrew Torres, we all worked kind of together outlining the book. And it was sort of an inspiration that my partner Eli had that I was just eventually tasked with wording in, in his term. I got this great idea.

I got this great idea. Please dedicate several months of your life to it. Is that the pitch? Right. Well, that was basically it. Yeah, right. So our fear, though, was because, of course, we do basically the same thing on Scathing Atheist that you guys do here.

We cover all of the shit that's in the news and with a specific focus on atheist news or news that's relevant to skeptics. And, of course, for that period from, let's say, you know, March or so of last year to today, all of those news items are about the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, and it occurred to us that like in the future, when the story is told of the pandemic, it's going to be, you normally, you have to kind of go out of your way to find the historical scapegoat. You have to kind of guess,

gee, I wonder who the scapegoat for this is going to be. You know, we know who the scapegoat is going to be for this one. We had a volunteer from the very beginning um and my fear is because trump was so obviously at fault for so much of the stuff that went wrong the the larger role played by religion and more specifically by cultural deference to religion might ultimately get ignored uh so the book itself the main body of the book was written in a three-week period right

as the nation kind of entered that quasi-national lockdown that we did right before easter i like to think of it as the lockdown yeah there you go um so but and and it really it chronicled exactly all of the ways that we saw religion standing in the way of a science-based response. Now, that comes down to like, you know, look, religious people had spent decades trying to get people elected based on how they felt about, you know, clumps of cells in uteruses rather than how qualified they were to do their jobs. Oh, are you talking about people, Noah? Those are people. With heartbeats. It's just, yeah.

Noah, your book's title is A Crisis of Faith, How Religion Ruined Our Global Pandemic. And I like that because it sort of implies that like without religion, this would have been so much more enjoyable as a pandemic. It would have been amazing. I would have been like, man, I am really glad we were able to enjoy this pandemic

and religion didn't sneak up and fuck with it. You know, I'm not a hugger, Tom. People get all touchy and shit. I love having this. I have not had to do a family thing for a year. I got all the way through the holidays without having to do the family shit. I mean, you know, there's some buses to this. You're living your best life right now.

It is the introvert's dream right now. If it wasn't for the hundreds of thousands of people dying. Right. Well, I guess. You're living your best life. Right. I would think as a misanthrope and an introvert, this is

like, this is your peanut butter and chocolate moment. Well, what's funny is, and I'm seeing this increasingly in the memes and shit, is that people like me are finally starting to crack. Right. It took 300 or whatever days, however the hell long it's been. And I've been hardcore locked down.

Right. I do the podcasting thing as a full time job, so I don't have to go anywhere. Job wise, I can work from home. My wife does the shopping. home uh my wife does the shopping i with the exception of occasionally taking my father-in-law back and forth to doctor's appointments and a couple of trips to help a friend who needs a ride um i haven't left the house in you know nearly a year at this point um and it's just starting to get to me i'm just starting to get to where i'm like i don't know if i want to play video games again tonight man i was in a fucking full-blown existential panic

as soon as it hit Wuhan. I read a New York Times article about it, and I was like, I want to go out. Can we go out? I feel like we should go out. No, I feel terrible for people. Because look, I could not be set up better for this. If I had known the damn thing was coming and had a year to prepare, for people like because look i could not be set up better for this right like this is like i if i

had known the damn thing was coming and had a year to prepare with the exception of more toilet paper you know the being portioned out over time i don't know that i could have done much better with it because like i i you know like i said i have a job where i don't have to go anywhere i live somewhere where the weather is warm and i'm in a fairly rural area i have like a separate apartment where I work. That's like, it's like a mother-in-law apartment on top of my house. So I can actually be away from my wife. She can be away from me a little bit. So we're not like constantly sitting in each other's laps. And I have a lot of like, you know, keeping to myself type hobbies. I'm a

musician. I'm a voracious reader. I like to write, obviously. And if it's getting hard on me, I can't even imagine what it's like on people like you, man. It's not been my best life. People who like human interaction, yeah. It really hasn't. So back to your book, though. So religion, I mean, I think that's a piece of the puzzle that like to your point we're not talking about that piece very often so how did religion prime us to have like this i think we can agree optimally bad experience as the pandemic goes we sort of optimized all the

worst fears of this pandemic so how was how what role did religion play in that? Well, you know, we already talked a little bit about the way that they gave us bad leaders. And let's, you know, look, we already said Trump deserves a lot of blame. Well, religion deserves a lot of blame for Trump, right? I believe you're pronouncing Cyrus wrong. That's weird. It's a whole thing. But, you know, so it started off by giving us bad leaders who

are underqualified for their position especially in positions that were related to science that has been a bugaboo for us religion for a very very long time for obvious reasons right anybody who deals in concrete reality is going to butt up against religion a lot. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I mean, I just pushed back a little bit on that. I mean, Rick Perry, he was the energy secretary. You can't even do it without laughing. You can't even get there. He was the head of the department of,

what's the, it's not the education, it's... Sarah, did you write it on your hand? Yeah. You probably wrote it on your hand. It's the one that I don't know. Sarah knows about it. Don't look at your business card. Stop.

But I mean, he's got a degree in animal husbandry and that's like science. And that's very much like nuclear energy. So I don't know. Like those things. That's yeah. Obviously missed the boat on that one so yeah so it starts off with that and then also let's talk about like a little bit about the demonization of science that's that's going along with it right biology is is evil biology is uh is a

science that's being used by the devil to draw people away from the word of of jesus because evolution is inconvenient to them. Well, gee, you know, let's hope nothing comes up. We're having demonized biology for the last couple of decades, fucks things up, right? You have the distrust of science. You have the piss poor leaders. And then on top of all of that, when the pandemic hits, you have all of these greedy, grifty ass pastors

that come out and, you know, look, yeah, sure. There were a lot of churches that shut down. There are also a lot of churches that didn't shut down where they came out and they said, no, you are protected by the blood of Jesus. Some such and such no plague shall touch your house or whatever the hell it is. You're just fine. Keep giving me money. Keep showing up. Jesus would never give you a disease for going to church right and then on top of that you even got these guys like uh uh what's his name the um the guy who with the oily hands that spit on everybody to cure the pandemic kenneth copeland yeah

pastor in america how did i get that how did get that? You had so many choices to be right. I did. I felt, I feel like, I feel like, I don't know, like we communicated that ahead of time or something because I couldn't.

How did I get that out of just what you said? That's amazing. Anyway, yeah, no, he did the whole, there was a whole remix

of him like blowing COVID away going, and like, it was amazing. It was absolutely outstanding. And he had the thing, he did the thing where like, touch my hand through your tv screen and your covid will be cured oh yeah yeah the whole yes yes yeah that was him holy hand yeah yeah yeah like seriously short of like

encouraging people to flick their boogers at people like you couldn't do anything more right touch my hand and let me blow on you? Are you fucking kidding me? Ugh. I read somewhere, there was a great line going around. They're talking about, remember when we all used to stand around and it was somebody's birthday and they would blow on a cake and we would eat it?

Well, what's funny is, we had a birthday like almost immediately after like the lockdown and everything with a friend. And it was a COVID birthday, right? And we thought about that immediately afterwards. We're like, that's kind of fucked up that we ever did that. That's fucking crazy. Clearly, the televangelists were a huge problem. But did you see any of the main,

were there problems with like mainstream, you know, cause, cause it's easy to point to all the, the Catholic or not the Catholics. It's easy to point to all the, the evangelicals cause they do crazy shit all the time. So whether it's a pandemic or it's not a pandemic, they're going to do something crazy and stupid. did you see mainstream religion at all pushing back on any of the covid stuff that was going on trying to break any of the lockdown stuff that they had put forth well so let's first of all let's be clear that evangelical christianity is the most mainstream of mainstream you know what i i i will take that correction thank you notice no that is absolutely true you're absolutely right there's more evangelicals in this country i think than anything else i think really i i believe so

and but but you know you have to so evangelical isn't you know it's not a really definitive category it means white baptisty protestanty guy or gal right um so it's yeah but but i you know so but yes the the the answer to the question that you're asking though, uh, you know, with, with, with all of the, um, the caveats is yes, absolutely, man. I saw the Pope giving dangerous fucking shit or saying dangerous shit about the, uh, pandemic talking about how it's God's revenge for us not, um, taking good care of the environment now.

What? Yeah, no, i get that no so he he couched it in some terms that made it sound slightly less medieval right but but he sort of couched it in that in in that terminology which i get the idea of you know trying to link these types of problems but still the idea that this is god's vengeance is a little problematic right in the modern day but the other important thing is like you're saying or i'm sorry i don't mean to put words in your mouth but i think like you're implying even where they're not directly espousing these dangerous beliefs they're often not pushing back against them either yeah right i see survey after survey now showing these uh you know the the

prevalence of uh conspiracy theories about the vaccines and stuff within churches and i see remarkably few you know christian organizations coming out and and and wholeheartedly throwing their endorsement behind you know the the evil bill gates 666 vaccine. This is such a horrifying missed opportunity. I don't even mean this facetiously for religion, right? Because they have an opportunity to step up and turn all their churches into vaccination centers. And they have a real opportunity to perform the social good function that they always tell us that they are there to perform. So if you listen to them, they're always telling you, yeah, I don't pay taxes because at the end of the day, churches are a social good. We provide these amazing services, which they don't, but that's the reason for their tax-exempt status in broad philosophical terms, right?

their tax-exempt status in broad philosophical terms, right? But this was this great opportunity for them to step the fuck up and prove their value to us, right? They have such sway, such influence. There are authority figures over hundreds of people at a time, maybe thousands, depending on the size of a congregation. And the absolute lack of responsible leadership from the religious community is, I mean, they could have just, they could have helped. And I would have been not even begrudging about it, right? Like if the churches had turned over in mass, their buildings and their resources and their infrastructure, some of which is pretty substantial to the vaccination effort, to housing the homeless in responsible ways so that the homeless people have places to stay that are socially, they had an opportunity to really do

the thing that they were supposed to do. And rather than do that, they fucked the whole thing over. They fucked the whole thing sideways. Right. If they had done nothing, it would have been better than what they did. Yeah. Right. Not only did they fail to step up to the plate, but they actually actively hindered the effort all along the way. Instead of stepping up to the plate to try to help, they sued their

governors right for for refusing to let them gather together if the if the governors were democrats you know it also strikes me that like one of the things that religion does is religion requires that everything have a consequential explanation meaning like this happened because of that rather than this just happens. Like we live in a world that, you know, chaotic shit happens, viruses appear. Okay. That's just, that's just part of living in a world is the world, but everything has to have a, a, if this, then that moral consequence, you know, and that insistence on that moral consequence pushes people's thoughts to, well, if the result is COVID and the cause was, you know, homosexuality or whatever they're blaming it on, then to fix COVID, we fix homosexuality.

Right. Rather than give everybody a fucking vaccine at church. Again, like their whole their whole mission. They could have really done some good here. Well, and that's really the whole point that that I was hoping to make with the book is that this is inevitable. Right. Like as soon as you have religion, you create this instance, because like you said, they have to in order for there to be a God, in order for there to be a God, in order for there to be a loving God who's out here killing off, we're at like two and a half million people worldwide.

At this point, we're higher. It's higher than that. It'll be higher than that by the time this goes to air. So, you know, in order to have that loving God, like you said, you have to have some excuses.

It has to be because we've fallen from his ways, because we ignored him, because we didn't do this, because we didn't do that. So no matter what, as soon as you allow anything at all to compete with observable fact, you know, when when the question is, what should we do about the deadly disease that's going on or whatever, the next thing that we actually need science to help us with is as soon as you allow us anything to compete with truth on that. is as soon as you allow us anything to compete with truth on that you you've created a situation where inevitably you're going to have if not a situation as bad as the one we had with the the pandemic at least one that is suboptimal to the degree to which you are religious or to which your society uh indulges the religious did religion benefit from the pandemic will religion come out stronger well i saw a survey from pew uh that came out i believe just a couple of days ago

that said some 28 percent of americans said that their their faith was strengthened by the pandemic the you know proof that there is not an omnibenevolent omnipotent being at the helm. How the fuck is 400 plus thousand dead people? In our country alone, yeah. That does seem like what a loving God would do. Well, I mean, I've read the Bible. It sounds like their God, yeah. Yeah, no, it sounds exactly like what he'd do. I mean, it sounds on brand.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it sounds on brand. I guess you're right. It's just that there's a falsehood that God is benevolent, right? And that's nonsense if you read the Bible. But you guys know it more than most Christians know it. So, yeah.

I want to ask. So, in general, it's the evangelicals who really we should thank for four years of Trump. The evangelicals were the ones who came out and voted for him en masse, and they were the ones who pushed him. And then they were also the ones who excused every single thing he did for four straight years. So did they try to downplay it because of Trump?

And I feel like there's got to be some sort of connection there. Yeah. Well, you know, look, I mean, I think one way the other the it all of their incentives lined up neatly for that right right like whether it was entirely for trump or whether it was partly because you know it's a little hard to explain the loving god around this you know or whatever it was or whether it's just because they wanted people sitting in the damn pews because people don't show up at church if there aren't other people to notice them be there right um you know like there was a huge drop off in in church attendance when people were asked to do it online so uh you know funny how cognitive dissonance doesn't have that problem you don't have to you know guilt anybody into showing up to listen to your fucking

show you just make a good show yeah so and works, but that doesn't work with church. So, you know, like they had a number of incentives. Show up. That's amazing that it's true. You're absolutely right. And it never occurred to me.

The reason why is because if nobody's watching me to go, then why the fuck would I be there? Right. And that's, I guess it never occurred to me, but I guess I really didn't know that they, that there was huge drop off. Oh yeah.

Like, I mean, you know, there was huge drop-offs. Oh, yeah. Most of these megachurches especially, but even moderately large churches, already have the ability to stream their services online because you've got, you know, come on, you're milking the indigent the hardest. Sorry, you're milking the people who are at death's door who can't get out and go to your church. The hardest because you want them to leave stuff to you in their wills. So they have the ability to broadcast online and use all of these various services long before this pandemic ever hit. They could all virtually all do that. Hell, we did it. I mean, you know, you did it.

You do like it's not like there's a huge barrier to broadcast at this point. No technology has, has democratized this quite a bit actually. Yeah. And so even the churches that weren't already set up to do that could still do exactly that. If the goal was to actually get the word out of God out there and get this, but it was to get the collection plate in your hand. Absolutely. Yeah. Right? So, you know, you put all of these things together, you know, this whole, like, you know, kind of hard on your theology. It's kind of hard on your politics. It's kind of hard on your wallet. And what are they, you know, obviously they're going to do what's in their best interest.

And once again, as a society, because we're so deferent to religion, because we're like, well, everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe even if it's demonstrably false you know we we put ourselves in a position where this is inevitable this is going to happen and it's not i get you know trump is gone so it won't happen as bad but the next bad thing that comes where we need science to you know rush into the rescue is it there's going to be a huge contingent. There's going to be the Marjorie Taylor Greene contingent that's also getting a vote on that. That's also dragging down any effort that we have to fix the problem. And very often that person might be in the halls of power but neutered. But very often that person is going to be the goddamn governor or on the Supreme Court. You said something I want to ask you about. So we fetishize this bullshit idea

that there's a right to believe nonsense that should not be questioned, that's not only not to be questioned, but really is to be cherished. Our right to believe complete and utter bullshit is a right Americans uniquely cherish. And I wonder about your thoughts on how that right to believe bullshit unencumbered by facts or pushback helped to push the disinformation campaigns or primed us for the disinformation campaigns that really like exacerbated this crisis. Yeah. I mean, you know, you look at the, it's because of Donald Trump's, you know, the way that, that, that he treated the truth. I think the media had already learned a couple of very, very hard lessons about indulging in bullshit and giving bullshit

equal time. They made that mistake all through the 2016 campaign. They basically hand-delivered the presidency to Trump because of it. They continued to make that mistake over and over again for the first couple of years of his presidency. And so to a greater degree than I think at any other time point in my lifetime, the media did seem to know not to give maybe hydroxychloroquine will do the trick equal time during the pandemic. But regardless, the extent to which they were able to be definitive on that is, is, is hampered by exactly that tendency you're talking about.

Even, you know, onto the right now, like where I get, and I'm sure you guys do too. I get messages from people saying, you know, like,

well, Twitter shouldn't be allowed to ban Trump because X, Y, and Z. And again, because, and that all boils back down to that. Well,

he should be able to believe whatever the hell he wants. Kind of a, kind of ideal as though that somehow should stand above fidelity to the true. It's just such a striking moment in history where people have this idea that, I mean, it started off, that it was so funny how much of this was broadcast, how loud the Harbingers were at the very beginning, right?

When Spicer, I think it was, stood up in front of everybody and said, well, we've got some alternative facts. And that's like, that is like the theme song. That's the fucking, that's it. That's the undercurrent of the last four years up until we got to this fucking plague. And in the middle of a plague, in the middle of a plague,

you've got an expert, you've got Fauci, or you've got Deborah Birx, Birx? Birx. Standing in front of the reporters and they're trying to say, here are true things. And then moments later, they're contradicted. And the conversations that you see on the ground

level, at the Twitter level, at the Facebook level, at the neighbor down the street level, really reflect that idea that there are more than one thing. Like, well, that's your truth. That's true for you. That's not what I think is true. As if true is no longer objective. And they set a tone, religion sets a tone, that truth is something to believe first and then find out about later.

It primes us for exactly the disinformation crisis. We've been priming ourselves for this for 2000 plus 3000 plus years. We just haven't had this kind of amplification technology. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we also haven't been in a position where, or rather we put ourselves in a position where any even obvious solution is anathema to our moral values, to our whole concept of what it is to be America. Because, you know, like, come on, like anybody who's been in the skeptical movement for any amount of time has watched as efforts to advocate for critical thinking as a subject being taught in school on a regular basis crumbles time and time again. Because let's face it, because eventually people that that leads to kids coming back and home and saying, Mom, I learned today that Jesus is nonsense. This is silly. It's everything. You know, it's all of these, it's all of these logical

fallacies that they're teaching me about in school. Every single one of them like lined up in a row, like ducks, right? So you can't do that. You put yourself in that position one way or the other. And look, Tom, I mean, honestly, you're one of the first people I heard that was really advocating for this position. And it's not a popular one and it's not one that i like to talk about much given that i make my living by the fact that we can just say whatever the fuck we want on the internet these days right but if you wrote the novel 2020 right with donald trump as president and the pandemic happening back in 1995 or something like that you try to get it published everyone would assume that it was a novel it was a it was a allegory about the dangers of not having

gatekeepers to your information it would be about the dangers of giving everyone a voice in that way and and and having no check on on on just blatant bullshit. The dangers of allowing conspiracy theories to run rampant. And I think, because the honest truth is, I don't think anybody would have published it then, right? Because we were so enamored of the internet and all the wonders and glory when everyone had a voice. And I'm not trying to shit on that. I think there's a lot of good that's come from that.

I still, you know, everyone on this call is old enough to remember a time where when bad shit happened to you in the world you had no goddamn recourse at all unless you want to be some crazy guy marching in front of a business with a with a pamphlet or some shit that you wanted to give out right so you know i'm not saying i want to go back to that way but like that is clearly the lesson of 2020. And it's really hard for us to learn because we grew up in an era that just, you know, deified this this very concept that we would all have this voice to express our beliefs, no matter what kind of time cube shit we were selling. And lo and behold, fast forward fucking 25 years and we've got Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress. years, and we've got Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress. Well, it strikes me that we just, to your point about not teaching critical thinking, the problem is that the technology outpaced the prerequisites.

The prerequisites for doing this well would have been to teach digital information literacy and critical thinking, skills which are absolutely essential to our continued well-being and skills which we are very much, to your point, specifically and intentionally not going to teach, right? And religion is going to be a huge part of why we choose not to offer these critical skills to everybody that needs them. And the people that need them are literally everybody. It's not kids. Kids need them for sure. But if you look at who shares the most misinformation, it's people 65 and older. Yeah. I was going to say, one of the things I was going to say, Tom, is that the thing is that the people who are doing the most misinformation are ones that think they know everything already. They think they already think that they don't need to go to school. They're wise enough to know,

but they're not wise enough to know how these things work. And so there's a real problem there, a real problem with the oldest people, like you say, 65 plus. Well, and then it also trades in on this weird, bizarre kind of a concept that we wound up with as a culture where it's just rude to correct somebody if they're wrong. So it's more

rude to correct misinformation than it is rude to spread misinformation. And that just seems like a doomed place to start from. Yeah, don't want to start a. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't want to start a fight on somebody's Facebook. Right. Yeah.

Vaccines when they're clearly saying that vaccines have a microchip or something and some dumb shit. And could this not be like, again, this is just it's, you know, it's like it's out of a fucking book, right? Because vaccines specifically have been for so long a litmus test for us as skeptics of can we win this fight and and that's been where we've been trying because you know of all of the shit that these woo meisters do the idea of bringing back old eradicated diseases like smallpox and polio that's one of the most

terrifying right um so that's sort of been our focus for so long. And now to see the final exam of whether the skeptical world can get people on board with vaccines and to see how poorly we're doing from the gate. Well, there was a real problem though. When I saw this happen, there was people initially, the moment the lockdown hit, if you look at Pew, right?

You look at the people who were asked. This is just regular old folk. They're all asked will you would you take a vaccine for this it was in the 70s high 70s when we were in lockdown and then the problem was is donald trump was put trying to put his fucking name on it just like he signed his name to our stimulus checks that were our money. It's the same fucking thing. He was trying to sign his name to this vaccine, trying to hurry the process, trying to, and he was doing the things he always does,

which is say vague statements. But the problem is, is when you say vague statements about a vaccine, it actually becomes foreboding rather than reinforcing. It sounds a little scary when you make vague statements about a vaccine. And so that's what was happening was he kept on saying these weird, vague statements

and that number, Noah, dropped to about 45 to 50% right around October when people were saying, I don't know if I would take a vaccine. Now that number has since rebounded up to about 60, but 60 is not enough for herd immunity. It's got to get higher than that.

And so the current administration really has to turn around their science education in order to really move this forward. Because if you don't, you're stuck in the Trump days where people weren't really sure if it was a good idea. Well, look, I mean, and you know, in those people's defense,

if they had asked me in October, I think I probably would have said, well, it depends on when it comes out. I agree. He was like, yeah, he was actively saying, well, we're going to just cheat it a little bit, just for political purposes. I mean, not that.

I mean, they told me to say not the opposite of that, is what I meant. That's the one thing that I miss about Trump is he was too dumb to lie. He was. He was. Unintentionally the most transparent president we've ever had.

We just didn't listen to him. He's probably saying that to play some games. No, he's probably just saying that. The problem though genuinely is that that damaged. That damaged our outlook on it. It really did damage it

and it didn't bounce back to the pre... to the lockdown pandemic levels. It hasn't bounced back there yet. Now, I hope that with more people getting vaccinated and with things opening up and with, as Tom said before, Tom said on our show before, you have to put some sort of incentive in there

for people to get it who are on the fence. Be that, you know, your work puts it in there or there's some sort of bonus or something for you, travel, you're allowed to travel more freely, whatever that is, we need to make sure that there's some sort of incentive for people who are on the fence. And I think if you do that

and then you just get the regular old folk who are like, yeah, cool, I'll get a fucking vaccine. I'm cool with that. Maybe we can get to that point where we actually have herd immunity, but he genuinely damaged it. And it's not just him because you know, these, these religions were all spreading everything he had to say as if it were gospel. Well, and, and again, they've been primed to demonize precisely vaccines for so long, you know, that didn't necessarily start as a religious thing, but it's been incubated by religious not not just by religious institutions you know this is it's big now uh uh in a lot of american muslim communities and a lot of evangelical communities

but also through religious exemptions to vaccine right that's usually the vehicle that allows for it why the do you know the history that why Why the fuck are religious groups so keen specifically to demonize vaccines as opposed to antibiotics? I know that some do, but the pushback against vaccines is so specific and broad and unique and the idea that there is a specific exemption for the religious which makes no sense it's never i mean vaccines aren't in the bible anywhere it's a silly fuck it's fucking silly and i don't understand the history there do you know that do you know why they have a fucking boner hate for fucking vaccines in this way i don't know that there's an agreed upon answer to that so if there is i i you know i don't know it i's an agreed upon answer to that. So if there is, I, you know, I don't know it. I have a bit of a theory on it, which is, you know, because look, you know,

one religion or another, as you said, there are people who demonize antibiotics. There are those wackaloons in Idaho that demonize all medicine. You got the Jehovah's Witnesses demonizing blood transfusions, which, you know, that came up because there was that convalescent plasma therapy or whatever it was that the Jehovah's Witnesses said would not be acceptable under their religion. So I think virtually every medical practice of any kind has been demonized by some religion at some point somewhere. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of different reasons, right? One of them is simply being, you know, jealousy. That's supposed to be, you know, curing diseases, supposed to be their department, et cetera. But I think with vaccines specifically, there's there's not as much downside or visible downside. You know, right. Like so like people aren't afraid to get in polio.

People aren't afraid to get measles or mumps or rubella right so i i think of the various medicines that you can demonize the two that are easiest to demonize without the consequence the negative consequences being perfectly obvious immediately upon the demonization are vaccines and you know pre pre-covid are vaccines and psychiatric medicines i see i got you so it gives them something to rally around like a demon it gives them in a common enemy that has very low stakes for them to i got okay that makes some sense because i i have i'll be honest i've never really understood where they arrived at choosing vaccines to draw this weird hate for. I've just, I've never really gotten that.

I mean, it's evident. It's all over the place. Religious fucking, they constantly have this fear that is different than any other medicine. I mean, it's so much more ubiquitous. It's not like, they're not like, oh my God, you know, antibiotics. They got the devil inside them and microchips from Bill Gates inside your antibiotics.

Nobody says that shit. Well, right. But that's the thing though, is that like the group that says, oh my God, the antibiotics, you know, their legs start falling off and shit and that group of people are like, maybe the antibiotics are just fine.

Yeah, antibiotics are good. Yeah, we're good. But you can go without vaccines, especially because of herd immunity, right. Yeah, antibiotics are good. Yeah, we're good. But you can go without vaccines, especially because of herd immunity, right? Yeah, herd immunity helps. That's why they give the religious justification or the religious exemption to these. That makes sense.

Because they're like, you know, it doesn't matter if, you know, this being incredibly, because up until recently, it's like, you know, it was like eight guys. It was like, it was the, you know, there was one Muslim group

and then there was some weird, whatever, Amish type group or something like that that didn't do vaccines. Up until very recently, it was just this incredibly small group of people where it's just like, OK, it's not worth browbeating you into doing it to let your kids go to school. Fine. If nine people don't get vaccinated, it's not going to make a big difference in the whole overall vaccination process. But obviously that's not going to make a big difference in the whole overall vaccination process. But obviously, that's not sustainable. If the number grows, we can't keep doing that. And the numbers grow. Hey, I'm curious, man. How do you think our next pandemic is going to go? I will say, look, you know, I think the biggest problem that we had, you know, when you set aside religion and Donald Trump, the next biggest problem we had was lack of imagination.

People can't imagine things happening until they happen. When George W. Bush got the warnings that they were going to knock buildings down with airplanes and shit, he's like, come on, that's not a real, that's a thing out of a movie. That's not a thing that happens in real life. People can't imagine shit until it happens. At the very least, the next pandemic

will have imagined it beforehand that's fair if it's a zombie thing I am absolutely going to be shooting people well ahead of time I am 100% trigger happy during that zombie thing if it's a zombie thing I'm going to show up and have you just shoot me I'm just going to be like burns I am not believing a single person

who doesn't have who says no I didn't get bit you should have an advance rate anybody who's wearing person who doesn't have, who says, no, I didn't get bit. I'm like, yeah. Anybody who's wearing their armor like a little weird, like how you wear the mask now where it's below your nose, their pauldron is hanging below their shoulder. I'd be like, no, no. Sorry, man, you're not wearing your armor right.

You get shot. That's just how it works. No, I got to ask a question. So I know how thorough you are. Like we work together every week on Citation Need. So I know how thorough you are. Like we, we work together every week on Citation Needed. I know how thorough you are when you research things. And especially when it comes to things like the Etruscans, I know how, how deeply you research things. Were you surprised at all by religion? Was there, and I don't mean negatively, it could it be positively? Were you surprised at all by religion when you started doing this book or was there you know in the mountains of research that

you went through or was there was it all pretty much yeah i i kind of guess that's how bad it would be yeah i mean i'd love to say that i still have the ability to be surprised by how awful but you know like after you know we've been doing this for eight years now. You guys have been doing it for, what, ten now, right? Ten. Yeah, ten. Yeah. So, you know, no. Like, as soon as you go into it, you know immediately. Not only do I love the no, I was like,

no. Yeah, absolutely not. No. The bitterest of all the no's. Yeah. I want to say, though, I got to say, you know, you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but that's a really good cover you got there. Pretty sweet fucking cover. I mean, really good cover.

That's really the best part of the best aspect of the entire book. I think it's the best. How on earth did you get a cover so good? I mean, that cover is really. You couldn't afford it, Cesar. I couldn't. Can you turn me on to who did it for it, Cesar. I couldn't. I couldn't afford it. Can you turn me on to who did it for you, though?

Maybe I could see. No, it was actually your wife who did it, and she rocked it. She fucking rocked it. I'm just pushing and pushing and pushing until he says it out loud. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Yeah, no, and I will say, honestly, she did an awesome job with it. It was really cool. Loved the design and the color scheme and everything else. And we kept trying to pay her, and she wouldn't let us pay her. Finally, we were like, Cecil, at least tell us what kind of wine to send her or something, man. But yeah, it was very awesome of her to do, and it looks phenomenal. And it looks, it honestly, it makes it real obvious how bad a job I did

on my other two books when I tried to do that shit myself. So I might have to get her to do two more. It's always nice when you can feel a little shamed of yourself, you know? Exactly. That's great.

Noah, where would people buy this book? I'm sure there's plenty of places to find it, but tell them the name again and tell them where to buy it. So yeah, you can get it on Amazon. And yes, unfortunately, it is an Amazon exclusive, so you have issue with Amazon.

I get it. I don't blame you for having issues with them, but in terms of profitability for self-publishing, they pretty much have that shit on lockdown. So the name of the book is Outbreak Crisis of Faith, How Religion Ruined Our Global Pandemic. And if you don't want to get it from me, get it for the very awesome preface that my friend Andrew Torres wrote. He kind of gives you a very good breakdown of how we got where we are vis-a-vis religion from a legal point of view. And I think it's really

important to understand that going into the larger story. Uh, so, you know, and you know, that's, you get a free one of those with every purchase. And check out Noah's podcast. Of course, I'm sure everybody on our audience already listens to it, but scathing, atheist, skeptocrat, God awful movies, D and D minus. And we also are joined every week. Uh, we all, we joined forces for citation needed. So Noah, thank you so much for joining us and telling us about your book. Can't wait for the next one. Thanks for, uh, thanks for forces for citation needed. So Noah, thank you so much for joining us and telling us about your book. Can't wait for the next one.

Thanks for giving me the chance. The next pandemic? Yes. Or the next book? Yes. I don't have to be specific, do I? He's not a big hug guy either. There you go.

It was wet outside. Real wet. The kind of wet that you feel squishing in your souls. I planted myself in front of my rusty radiator. It was warm. Reminded me of her. Rough exterior. Hot and steamy.

I slumped down with my two buddies. A heart-shaped box of half-eaten chocolates beside me. For 23 years, I've been a private dick. I mostly go unnoticed. But it's February. Knock, knock at the door. I looked up. Silhouette looked dumpy. Landlord. Looking for rent again.

I stayed quiet. Just another month, I guess. Time passed. Another knock at the door. Guess he's more persistent this month. Silhouette looked different this time. I get up. It's her. She'd been gone for just about a year. Like an old German composer, she was Bach again. She loves that joke. I open the door.

She had legs that went all the way down to the floor and lips the kind of pink you want to gnaw on for hours. Hasteful, she moaned. Kitty, I heard myself croak. I'd give her the skin off my grapes. They looked at me. Don't worry, boys. I noticed she was holding something in one hand and a wad of cash in the other. What's with the dough? You in trouble, I asked.

No, she said. This came from our friends, you know. Adam and Eve. Pretty much anything I want, I give. 50% off, she divulged. I eyed her, curious. That's it, I questioned. She moved in closer, her scent enveloping. That's not it, she purred.

She opened her bag. It was lousy with items. You running box jobs again, I accused. No, it's free, she declared. It's just something for you, something for me, something for us. What are you trying to pull, I quizzed. You, she exhaled.

You must think I'm a rube, I lobbed. Only if you don't G-L-O-R-Y at checkout, she countered. Well, you're about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs, I alleged. Adam and Eve has those too, she noted. I hummed with a raised eyebrow. Listen, hardwood, she rebuked. I'm the looker and you're the bean shooter and I'm yearning for some lead poisoning. I had to catch my breath. She looked me up and down. I don't know if she was looking at my two bits, haircut, or the pants around my ankles.

How about a flick, she asked as she piloted me over to the boot tube. I've got six of them free from Adam and Eve. I grunt in agreement. You're just like other men, only more so, she commended. The sound of the rain washed against the windows. It was still wet outside, and it wasn't any drier in here. Well, that's where it fades to black, looky-loos.

It's time for you to take code glory and go. Don't forget that free shipping. A Swedish professor saying, no, no, we can eat dead people, but that's not fast enough. So I think your next campaign slogan has to be this. We got to start eating babies. We don't have enough time. There's too much CO2. All of you, you know, you're pollutant.

Too much CO2. We have to start now please so we have to get rid of the babies so the story comes from inquisitor but i saw it everywhere uh former q anon follower to anderson cooper i apologize for thinking that you ate babies i love this so much holy shit so what a weird conversation by the way yeah um that's that's a. So what a weird conversation, by the way. Yeah. That's a weird, that is a weird moment in therapy.

You know what I mean? It's like a, it's like one of the, it's a very strange 12 step program to go to somebody and say, I'm sorry. I thought you ate babies. You know, have you ever been wrong about somebody?

Yeah. Like just like, sure. Just straight up. You know, I was wrong about you. Years ago, I was wrong about somebody? Yeah. Like, just like... Sure. Just straight up... You know, I was wrong about you. Years ago, I was wrong about you. I can't imagine... I thought you were an asshole.

I was right about that. You were right about that. I was... What was I wrong about? You were right about that. I can't remember what I was wrong about. I'm trying to think about what you were wrong about. I don't know what I was wrong about.

Anyway. I can't imagine thinking that somebody was like a murderer. You know? And then being like, whoopsie daisy and then just being like oh man some shit before don't get me wrong like i've been wrong about people before and i've had to apologize i've had to be like oh man i i am and i'm the guy sorry but i've never been like sorry i thought you ate a baby i've never had to eat that kind of crow not even baby crow no absolutely if you eat that kind of baby it's an ortolan

and you have to bury your face you have to hide your face I like to get them when they're still in the shell like those duck eggs what is it the balut that's a duck abortion crow balut

holy shit this is a truly truly truly bizarre and and there's there's got to be these moments of reckoning for all the for not all of them but for some of the q believers the ones who and and this is one of those um doomsday right? Where doomsday is going to happen on August 15th. Harold Camping. Yeah. And there's going to be some people who just move the goalposts and double down, right? That is, they intellectually, for whatever reason, emotionally, psychologically, whatever it is, they cannot bring themselves to reevaluate their worldview.

It's just, there's so much psychological damage. They just won't do it. But then there's a huge number of other people who are going to be like, oh, man. Oh, and I have to think, Cecil, that there's a ripple effect to that, right? Because it's not just one thing you were wrong about. It's like a whole worldview you were wrong about. Yeah, yeah. So there's going to be that time when you're like in the grocery store pushing your cart

and your brain is just kind of in the fucking background. You're like, Oh, I was wrong about that too. Yeah. Oh, it's going to go on for a long time. And it's amazing.

Yeah. Well, it's, it reminds me of that, that, uh, uh, that getting rid of God or good.

I forget what it is. So it is a good, something getting rid of God or something. I mentioned it a couple of times. It's Julius's book and it's letting go of God, I think is what it is. What is it? Something, getting rid of God or something. I mentioned it a couple of times. It's Julia Sweeney's book. And it's letting go of God, I think is what it's called. And there's a moment where she's walking from her shed to her house.

And she says, and I didn't, and I just sort of struck me that God didn't exist. But then she also sort of had to sit down because she wasn't sure how gravity even worked without God. And then she- Yeah, because everything is just mushed together. And then she stopped and said,

well, of course gravity works because of this and this and this and this. But she literally for a moment was like, why don't we just fly off into space? I don't understand how this- Everything, the entire fabric of her life was woven together by God. And so the same thing happens here.

How many things, how many pieces of your life are balancing on Q? How many pieces of your life are now affected by this, right? Because there's so many aspects to the Q belief, the QAnon belief. There's so many tendrils that shoot out. And what's crazy is, is that even this guy didn't believe all of them. When you, when you read through the story, there's parts of the story where the guy said, yeah, I didn't, it's kind of a pixie choosy belief and he didn't believe all of them. He left some of them and he chose others. And like the Q thing is not dissimilar. I think it's, I think you hit it on the head. The Q thing is not dissimilar to religion in that it seeks to have a unified explanation for everything.

For everything. And when you throw that away, people are going to be walking around and be like, wait a minute, it's not just that the Democrats didn't eat babies. It's that there's no such thing as a deep state. Yeah. And the EPA is just people that are scientists who wake up and kiss their spouse and go to work. And they're not like an evil cabal.

Their whole idea of how the world works and how decisions are made and how power is structured, all of that, totally upended. Yeah. But this one perfect Anderson Cooper moment is just, I got to read it. Sure. I got to read it. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper moment is just, I got to read it. Sure. I got to read it.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper recently interviewed Jitarth Jadeha. I'm probably mispronouncing that. A former QAnon supporter who earnestly believed in some of the most absurd conspiracy theories peddled by the mysterious Q. According to a clip of the interview released on Saturday, Jadeha apologized to Cooper for once thinking he ate babies. Did you at the time believe that Democrats, high-level Democrats and celebrities were worshiping Satan, drinking the blood of children? Yes, I did, Jodeha replied,

noting that many QAnon followers believe that, although some think that Anderson Cooper is actually a robot. So there's a really amusing aside because that assumes that robots eat babies? Which is... Fucking why? Just because? Somebody programmed

a robot to eat babies? Years ago, we did a story where robots that ate organic material were powered by it. Remember this? Yes, I do. And it was Rick Wiles, I guess. I think it was Rick Wiles who was terrified that organic eating robots

were going to come and climb into his bed and eat him or whatever. And so this is just an extension of that, Tom. They just eat organic material. That's all it is. Just an extension of that. Just why would you? I don't know, man. He said to him, Anderson, I thought you did that and I would like to apologize

for that right now. So, I apologize for thinking that you ate babies. If you're Anderson Cooper, what are you thinking? Like, you thought I was a baby-eating Satan-worshipping robot. Could you imagine if somebody came up to you, Tom, and said, hey, man, I'm sorry. I thought you were a child rapist.

I apologize. I don't know that I could talk to that person. Yeah, I don't think I could accept that apology. I don't think I'd accept it. Not only could I not accept it, I don't know that I wouldn't jaw that person. Right. Right? Yeah.

I don't know that I would be like, holy shit. You thought I, what? Yeah. Like you think so lit, like you think I'm capable of this monstrous shit. Yeah. You don't even know me. It's outrageous. I'm just a silver Fox on TV. That's all I am. And you think I eat babies. That's the, I mean, genuine. And like, like this isn't a joke, man. This isn't a joke. This isn't some guy who thought, ha, ha, ha, you had babies. No, this is, guys, I mean, trigger warning,

but genuinely, these are people who think other human beings eat other human baby human beings. Yep. That's what they, they think that for real. They think half the country's power structure. Yeah. They think half the country's power structure. Yeah. They think half the country's power structure plus the media, plus, plus, plus.

They think a huge number of people, a massive number of really powerful, important people are consuming children and building CNN anchor robots. Yeah, and not just consuming them,

murdering them, raping them, torturing them, drinking their blood, trafficking them all over the country. This is, it's 100%. This is, they really genuinely believe this. This isn't a joke. It's not funny because there's no joke. There's no punchline.

And it's worse than that because it's not a – Q initially, when we first started talking about it, Cecil, it was funny because it was so absurd. But now Q has become a motivating – Q has become a factor. Q has become, ironically, the X factor. We have a guy who says, the same guy being interviewed, said that he believed the people behind him were actually a group of fifth dimensional, interdimensional, extraterrestrial, bipedal bird aliens called Blue Alien. I don't even have any idea what that sentence I just read could possibly mean, but I do know that a group of those people

stormed the fucking Capitol. Yeah, yeah. That 75 million people turned out to vote for Trump and a not small number of them believe some element of this. This should be disqualifying. This isn't the millions.

It's not a small group of people. It's a large group of people. As an aside, Tom, you know what you call a bird alien from space? What? A Millennium Falcon. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. That's so good. It's a millennial. Is it a Millennium Falcon? I guess it would be a millennial Falcon. Yeah. Well, those don't count. It doesn't vote. I want to say though, I want to say though that, you know, you're right. When we first started talking about this, it was ha ha funny.

Yeah. And it was ha ha funny because it was one guy, but you have to put yourself in this guy's head. Just, I know it hurts, right? It hurts your brain to put your head in there for a second, but Liz Croken is earnest, right? She is earnest when she says that she thinks there are people who are murdering children and eating them. She is earnest. She's not lying to you. She thinks it, right? And if she doesn't think it, she's convincing other people to think it for money. So it's not any better. Yeah. Think about how earnest that guy who stormed pizza, the common pizza place was yes i was willing to literally put his life on the line to protect what he thought were children

but he like he thought he was fucking temple of dooming that shit you know what i mean he thought he's gonna bust into that place and a whole bunch of fucking kids were gonna come pouring out and fucking kalima shakti dang all the fucking kids out of there like that's what he thought was gonna happen there's one guy just pulling hearts out and putting it on pizzas just the and fucking Kalima Shakti-Ding all the fucking kids out of there. Absolutely. Like that's what he thought was going to happen. There's one guy just pulling hearts out and putting it on pizzas just the whole time.

He's just pulling hearts out of people. He sees that guy running with a gun and he starts pulling them out faster. Just like, I got to get them all out of there. As he does it,

the boulder starts coming down and these boulders are all in at him. These people have been taught that their government is now in control by Satan worshiping baby eating robots and bipedal bird alien things. Like we cannot come back from this very easily. No, I agree. Because those things that I just said

should sound so disqualifyingly farcical, but they don't sound disqualifyingly farcical to an amazing number of people. A lot of people. And we've never seen that before. We've never seen the crazies be able to aggregate together and then like have a leadership structure. And it's not that they're crazy. I think that there's a lot of really just like genuinely uninformed, uneducated people out there, like just massively uninformed. And I think it's genuinely been since the beginning pulling at their heartstrings.

That's why there's so many people on the anti-vax train because they want to protect children. We talked about this with Marsh in the past. There's this idea that you want to protect children. The children are the ones who are going to get sick from it because there's two different types of anti-vaxxers. There's no vaccines at all, but then there's also the people out there that say,, well, that's too many, too soon, right? There's the too many, too soon vaxxers. They're just as much anti-vaxxers as everybody else because they're still spreading disinformation that has no bearing on vaccines whatsoever. But there's a couple of different groups. But if you notice, they're all going after children. They want to make sure that

they protect all children all the time. They're constantly doing that. And the same thing is here. That's what, that's what gets people on board. They, you know, they're either fathers or mothers or they're, you know, they have nieces or nephews or whatever. And they're thinking to themselves, they're just being empathetic. Holy shit. Are you being serious when you say somebody is genuinely eating a child, like they're torturing and eating a child and other people are that they trust are saying yes. Yeah. And then,, like they're torturing and eating a child and other people that they trust are saying yes. And then they're just being empathetic. And I don't want to excuse anybody's misinformation or following this misinformation. They should really genuinely come to sort of figure this shit out because this is super dangerous. But at the same time, I want to recognize that those people are acting off empathy and that's what

they're being, that's what's being tuned up. And I think that's part of what's going to make this so difficult to wind back down. Yeah. Because you have to get people who cared so deeply. We taught like the power structures, important religious and political power figures in their lives taught them that

these things were happening, wound them up and said, there's a crisis going on. And it's really, and they never had any evidence of the crisis before. So they're still going to think there's a crisis. Maybe they're going to think that the actors changed or that somebody different is responsible, but in their mind, there's still going to be, well, what do we do about the pedophiles then? If it's not this, then how do we solve this problem? You sold me that there was this problem. So if it's a different solution set, fine, but the problem remains. It's, we're in a tight spot when we think that fucking bird aliens from the fifth dimension

is not such a crazy thing that should be disqualifying. But none of these things apply in the case of Mother Teresa because it's a simple matter of record that she was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud. I think probably the most successful confidence trickster of the last century and responsible for innumerable deaths and for untold suffering and misery.

I'm proud of it. Should I just assert this or would you require any proof? Well, so here's an uplifting story. We didn't really have an uplifting story this week, Tom. Go to the stream and you can catch us doing talkies. Get some funny stuff. But these are not. These are not.

A little rough. This isn't funny. You know, a little rough. God, just reading the title of this one is tough. German nuns sold orphaned children to sexual predators. According to a report. Hold on a second. Why would

you sell them? Wouldn't you just transfer them to a different section of the church? I don't get it. When they talk about this, they talk about how they sold them to priests and businessmen. And I think when you sell it to priests, isn't that just taking money from your back pocket

and putting it in your front pocket? I don't even understand how that works. Yeah, so it's just awful. It's just awful. The report is the byproduct of a lawsuit. And it's talking specifically about orphan boys living in a nunnery, like with this sisterhood of nuns. And they fucking sold these kids and they fucking rented them out

as sex slaves to predators who were in... And it's just, it's as awful as everything else that you've ever read. And I mean, I know we talked about this before, but I just think it bears repeating as many times as it fucking happens, right? If you're looking for the pedophile sex ring, you need look no further. International pedophile sex ring. International.

Is there a country that the Catholic Church operates in? And I ask this without being facetious. Is there a country that the Catholic Church operates in, and I ask this without being facetious, is there a country that the Catholic church operates in that has not had a massive, disgusting, horrible moral violation? I mean, we covered a story about the Catholic church in Ireland and their mother and child homes like a week or two ago. We've covered a million stories here in the States of child sex abuse and the systematic coverup of that abuse. We've covered it in Australia when that motherfucker got convicted and then his conviction later overturned for turning a blind eye to the

systematic child abuse. This is Germany. We've seen it all over South America. This is not like a few bad apples. Yeah. Right? This is not a few bad apples. And I'll just say like, if you have a few bad apples that are this bad, the batch is fucking ruined.

Close up shop. Yeah. Why are we allowing this church to continue? Why are we pretending that this is not anything other than a disgusting foul organization that should be raised to the fucking ground and the earth salted over here's here's what you got to understand this is calculated right yeah this stuff is coming out uh one of the things that says here, the survey also found that 80% of the abusers are now dead and 37 had left the religious order. So they're waiting until these people die or they're out of

their order. So there's no, there's, I mean, if they're waiting that long, they're waiting how long for these other people. These are, this is calculated release, man. This is, again, showing you the evils of this organization. This isn't, and again, they even blame it. Listen to this. They say the report finds that 175 people, mostly boys between the ages of eight to 14 were abused over two decades.

It failed to blame the nuns directly, instead saying systemic management errors and leniency. What is that? Sister systemic management and sister leniency, which is two different tons. For those who were accused by the children enabled the abuse to continue.

So it was leniency for those who were accused and systemic management errors, Tom. Management errors? Tom, you're in management. Have you ever had a management error where somebody accidentally

got raped? Yeah, management error is like, oh man, I didn't get my report in on time or, you know, holy cow, I didn't realize that, you know, reviews are coming up in a week and I'm unprepared to evaluate.

Management error. It's not a management error. This 560 page report names various German businessmen and complicit clergy who rented the boys specifically for gang bangs and orgies that these boys were forced to participate in. And when they were returned to the convent, they were beaten if their clothes were wrinkled and covered in semen. That's not a management error. Well, I think, you know, obviously your TPS reports, not in order.

Also, you're covered in semen from being rented out as a young age to sexual predators. So how is that a fucking management error? How is that leniency? I don't get it. What are you lenient about? I don't get it. Who's lenient to sexual predators? That's that.

What? The Catholics are. The Catholics are's lenient to sexual predators? That's the, what? The Catholics are. The Catholics are super lenient to sexual predators. It boggles my mind that this continues to happen and we keep getting more and more reports and then nothing seems to happen. Or, you know, and if stuff does happen, it's a tiny bit of money way too late, right?

You basically sold out. You fucking, you basically get paid for your PTSD later on in life. fucking, you basically get paid for your PTSD later on in life. That's what you get paid for. And not a lot of money either, guys. They don't get like,

it's not like they're walking around with a fucking 12th century Pope hat that's worth 6 million. Yeah. They get, you know, 20, $30,000

for PTSD that they get to spend the rest of their life fucked up by. I would not call this, I would not say that justice was served until these motherfuckers were in prison and they sold everything down

to the last fucking papal ring investment to pay these fucking people. To pay these people. That's it. They should bankrupt the fucking church. The Vatican should be sold. Sell the fucking thing for condos. I don't give a shit.

The whole thing. There's no justification for the continuation of this organization. It's gotta go. I want to thank our newest patrons, Ken, Dylan. The Etruscans episode

finally broke the curse and now I can open the Patreon website with any computador. That's a long name. That is a long name. Cheryl, Jordan, Adam, and the people who up their pledges, Christopher, Robert, and Bill,

thank you so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate it. Glorial Studios exists because of your generous donations, so we want to thank you so much, everybody who puts in, who chips in to make it happen. So thank you so much. And the counter to that is Gloriole Studios would not exist without patrons.

So, you know, if you like Gloriole Studios and what it produces, I don't know, maybe you should be a patron. Give it a whirl. You'd like it. Tom. Yeah. Tom. Yeah.

Only one person sent this in to us. Only one person talked about this at all. It's a weird catch. Only one person out of everybody online on all the social media, on our email, on our multiple different channels.

Only one person caught this. I want to read their name right. This is Kristen. Congratulations, Kristen. You're the only one person caught this. I want to read their name right. This is Kristen. Congratulations, Kristen. You're the only one who caught this. Nobody else. PG&E is a major electric company in California. And it's not Procter & Gamble. Tom, I know it's a tiny little piece of last show.

Right. But my goodness, Kristen, you're the only one to catch that. That- Amazing. Let me just raise my hand, Kristen, you're the only one to catch that. That amazing. Let me just raise my hand, guys. I made a mistake. Sorry. I'm sorry.

I just was reading quickly. Moving on. Yeah. It had no substance. It was no substance. It doesn't change on anything. It doesn't make it any different if she was talking about PG&E. It could have been French's mustard. change on anything. It doesn't make her make it any different if she was talking about PG&E or I mean like

It could have been French's mustard. It starts from a little more plausible place if it's PG&E than it is Procter & Gamble but not much. So.

I mean she's blaming fucking Feinstein at the end of it folks. Yeah there's raw children involved and lasers from space and like get the fuck out.

It doesn't matter how many fucking degrees of Kevin Bacon you are away. It's still crazy. But I was wrong. So let me say it. I was wrong.

I saw the PG and I just, I was reading quick and I never heard of PG and E because I'm not from California. So I just, my brain was like Procter and Gamble. Eh, what are you going to do? I made a mistake. It's okay, Tom. I forgive you. You know what, Cecil?

I forgive the shit out of anybody. We got a bunch of messages. A couple people on Twitter sent us messages and John sent a message and said that MTG's Democratic opponent had really bad luck, wound up leaving the Democratic

Party because they moved out of state, were getting a divorce. I saw an article that was sent to us that it looked like the QAnon people were making their life a living hell. So they might've even gotten death threats. So the reason why she was unopposed was because of all of the bad shit that happened to this guy. And he left during the middle of a race,

not to say he'd have won because it is Georgia and you don't know, I don't know how democratic or not that little area of Georgia is that she represents. So, but it's Georgia. I actually, I listened to another podcast, a news podcast earlier this week, and they did say that MTG was originally going to run in a kind of where she used to live, which would be, it was in a fluent, um, suburb, um, uh, of Atlanta. And then somebody

else, uh, dropped out of the race or died in a much, much more conservative district. And she actually picked up her shit and moved her home to a more conservative district. Yeah. Just to run someplace where she'd have a higher chance of winning. And she's rich, so she can do that. Right. Well, and I just want to say, too, that shouldn't be fucking allowed. There should be fucking residency requirements that have some fucking time attached to them.

There should be a length of residency requirement. attached to them. There should be a length of residency requirement. If you want to be a Chicago school teacher or in a lot of places, if you want to, if there's a requirement for residency, you have to be a resident for a certain period of time. I would think to represent

a fucking district, you shouldn't be able to just notice an opportunity and move there. Got a message from Michelle on Patreon and she says, this is hugely, this is hugely offensive and upsetting reporting by these QAnon people.

Everyone knows that frazzle drip is what was really leaking from Rudy Giuliani's head. That's good. I love that shit. That's good shit. We also got a couple of images of Jewish space lasers

that I'm going to put on this week's show notes. They're so good. One's good shit. We also got a couple of images of Jewish space lasers that I'm going to put on this week's show notes. One from Kernan. One from Kernan and one from Weiss Reino. So fucking good. The fucking one from Weiss Reino. I love it. It's like a fucking meme inside a meme inside a meme. It's

genius. It's so good. The one that the one that Kernan sent also very good. We're going to put them on this week's show notes. Check it out. It's so good. The one that, uh, the one that Kernan sent also very good. We're going to put them on this week's show notes. Check it out. It's a episode five 63. Uh, we got a message from Tony and Tony was also letting us know about the PG and E thing. And he said, Hey guys, this is the latest episode. And you were talking about representative Taylor green, believing that the California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers. Now, I know it sounds far-fetched, but the story is somewhat true.

I live in Santa Cruz, and I saw the space lasers that started the complex fire that happened here. Some people call these space lasers lightning. I love it. You drew me in. You drew me in. You had me in the first half, Tony. You had me in the first half. It was very good.

It was very good. So last week, we got a bunch of messages on YouTube, on Facebook, and to our personal message. We made some fat-shaming jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

And we just wanted to apologize if anybody felt bad about themselves when they heard those jokes. We know that this was not a... We were trying to, we don't like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and we said some bad things about her,

but we recognize that there's other things we could have said that would have been more relevant. And we're sorry if we hurt anybody's feelings with those jokes. Yeah, certainly. I just want to echo that. The intention was not to, the intention was not to do anything

other than take what were admittedly cheap pot shots at Sarah Huckabee Sanders entirely in jest. And if those came across and hurt anybody, I am sorry. Our goal is not to hurt anybody or any of our listeners. And to the extent that that was inappropriate, I apologize. All right.

Well, we want to thank no illusions for joining us. Noah has a bunch of podcasts that you probably already know about. You can check the show notes for all of them. But the most important one, of course, Citation Needed, he joins us every week for that. And we have a blast hanging out with Noah every week doing that show.

You can also check out his many other podcasts and his book, Outbreak, A Crisis of Faith, with an amazing cover on it, I want to say, by the way, just an amazing cover on that book by a very talented artist. I just wanted to say that again. But Noah is an excellent writer. You hear him write every week, his diatribe every week. You know how good a writer he is. So check his book out. Go give it a buy. I even saw at one point that Kindle Unlimited is giving it away as one of the Kindle

Unlimited books for a little while. So you can go get it on your Kindle Unlimited if you have that setup. But anyway, check it out. No Illusions, friend of the show for many years. And you should check out his book if you get a chance. That is going to wrap it up for this week. Remember to join us every week for our live streams. We do live streams on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. You can catch those live streams after they happen, but of course you can catch them live 9 p.m. Central. And we do them for about an hour. Come hang out with us. Come hang out with the community that has gathered around these live streams

and they have a good time and they love to chat. And we sometimes interact with that chat. So check it out. But we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative,

acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water downward spiral, brain dead pan dead pan sales pitch late night info doc utainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms atlantis dolphins truthers birthers witches, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands.

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