Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 575: Cara Santa Maria Interview

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Big thanks to Cara! Make sure to follow her at      Show Notes

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episode 575 if you can believe that shit and we are joined this evening by cara santa maria host and creator of the talk nerdy to me podcast you may also know her from skeptics guide to the universe and i think you've got a few other projects rummaging around in there. Oh, always too many, too many projects. So last time we had you on, Cara, we spoke, it was in December. It was in December of 16, right after Donald Trump was elected. And he hadn't even been inaugurated yet. And we were already talking about a post-truth ecosystem. That was one of the things that we really spent a lot of time on. We've gone through four years of Donald Trump and is it as bad the ecosystem, the information

ecosystem, the sort of the post-truth, what we were talking about post-truth, is it as bad as you thought it would be right now? Uh, yeah. I mean, I would have, I gotta tell you, like if you had said no, I'd have been like, I'm going to leave this call. Cause I don't live in the same world you live in right now. Pretty fucking bad. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Um, it is as bad. I think actually, uh, it, it actually is maybe starting to get a little bit better. It's hard for me because I live, I'm a coastal elite, right? I live in Los Angeles and I see the LA, you know, vibe. That said, I'm born and raised in Texas and my parents still live in Texas, so I get reports back from the front lines on a regular basis. Do they live in blue Texas or red Texas? Because Texas is fairly divided, urban centers versus rural, right? Right. They live in purple Texas.

So they're in the suburbs of Dallas, and my mom is quite progressive. She wasn't always, but she definitely is now. My father is a Trumper. So it's, yeah. Oh, that's gotta be so weird. You gasped. That's gotta be so weird. Yeah, it's weird.

It's really weird. It's crazy. He sent me a birthday card last year. So my birthday is October 19th. So it was right before the election. And he sends me a birthday card that said, don't worry, you'll live through another four years of Trump just like I lived through all of Obama.

Oh. And I'm like, oh yeah, it must have been so hard for you. Yeah. Living through Obama. Pretty much the same thing. I don't remember celebrating Obama's fourth year with an insurrection, but sure, okay, that's fine. Yeah.

So there's that. There's that. But sure, okay, that's fine. Yeah. So there's that. There's that. And like, come on, how savage. That's his birthday card to me? I guess that's true too. That's rough, man. It's so crazy how much politics is, like politics used to be like, polite people don't talk about their politics.

That was like how I grew up. Religion and politics and money, you don't talk about them in a polite conversation, that was like how I grew up, like religion and politics and money. You don't talk about them. I'm in a polite conversation. And now it's like, fucking happy birthday and you better vote for the people I vote for. You get, like, everything has just gone insane. It's just, wow. Yeah, and it's definitely been a difficult source for me

because I think my father is one of those classic individuals who, you know, Robin DiAngelo is writing to in White Fragility, one of these people who doesn't identify themselves as racist, who doesn't identify themselves as part of a white supremacist movement, but definitely benefits from it, definitely is on the same side of the aisle as it. And there are times when the confronting nature of his ideology is too much. So we'll get in these text arguments. And it's really, really tough because he'll spend a lot of time being like, hey, your father's not racist. And I'm like, I just feel like if you spent the same amount

of effort in trying to defend why or how you're not racist in working on your implicit racism, that the world would be a better place. But that's the first hurdle is just getting to, because like I can sit here as a white liberal who studies social justice and diversity in my PhD in existential psychotherapy and say, of course I'm racist. I live in a racist system and I have internalized all sorts of racist ideologies

that I'm actively fighting against and I take an anti-racist stance. But until people can recognize that, holy shit, they're just part of the, ah, he's so fucking part of the problem. It's rough. It's rough. A lot of people too,

when they hear that, they think that they can just sort of do one thing, dust off their hands and just say, I'm no longer racist, you know? And, oh, I stopped doing, I don't do that anymore.

I don't make any anti-Asian jokes anymore. So I'm not racist anymore. And they'll just dust off their hands and think they're done and not realize it's a whole process. You have to go through every day to realize that you're not only living in a system that's a white supremacist system, but you're also constantly perpetuating that through all these little things that you do throughout the day and the way in which you think. And people just presume that it's one thing or that they can blame one big entity like the Proud Boys and say,

that's it, it's over. Yeah, that's racism. It's their fault. It's their fault. It's their fault. But it's really, it's all of our fault. We perpetuate it all the time. People don't want to hear that.

They don't want to hear that. They don't like that. That's too icky for them. They want to be able to say, those people are different from me, even though they're benefiting from a system in the same way that the Proud Boys are benefiting from the same system. Yeah, if we're not actively

dismantling this system, if we're not doing the work to dismantle it, then we're part of the problem. We're perpetuating it. Absolutely. Martin Luther King, in his letter from a Birmingham jail, he explicitly said, it's not the clanner that I'm most worried about. It's the white moderate

this is how we keep these systems in place and how we entrench them and this is how racism becomes nefarious and under the radar and it seeds in every aspect of our experience when if all racism was was people using the n-word and like

lynchings that would be a very like it would be very easy to recognize. And unfortunately, there's a huge swath of the population that thinks that that is the definition of racism. Absolutely. Well, we've caricaturized it as part of the problem. Like, we've caricaturized what racism is, and then we've caricaturized the way to better understand.

Like, the right has done, I think, a very effective job in caricaturizing critical race theory in a way that makes it this sort of absurdist postmodern boogeyman that they can all point to and mock and make fun of. But we have to get to a place where we recognize that racism is not the caricature of racism. It is not, to your point. It's not lynchings. It is lynchings, but it's not just lynchings. Lynching is the most overt and obvious and kind of the easiest possible target. It's also like when you pointed out, of course I'm racist.

I've thought the same. Of course I'm racist. And that only makes me individually bad if I say, of course I'm racist and I'm good with that. Yeah, exactly. Right? Yeah. And I just can act on it all day, every day. Yeah.

And that works for me. Then, okay, I have some moral. But I think that there's also some communication that's really necessary and some messaging that isn't being done where people don't need to feel guilty about benefiting from systems they didn't create as long as they understand those systems and, to your point, work to dismantle them for future generations. And I don't know that we message that very well. And so I think there are people like your father who's like, look, I'm not a bad guy. I don't want people to think of me as a bad guy. And I'm like, then stop voting for Trump. Right. Well, okay. Maybe that wasn't the right thing. I think you know what I, okay. All right. Point Kara. All right. That's

definitely a point in the bad guy column for sure. But you're right. This idea that racism is a good guy, bad guy binary is also, that in and of itself is problematic. Absolutely, yeah. Racists are bad. Non-racists are good. Therefore, those people are racist and I am not. It's like, no, racism is a system. And it's a perpetual system that it's not three dudes in a dark room who are, you know, wheeling and dealing to keep racism going.

It's a thing that's self-perpetuating because the people who are in power want to maintain power. And historically, the people who are in power were rich, white, cis, Protestant men. Right? So, of course, they're going to try and maintain

the same power structures that benefit them and keep them above. That's how systemic racism, sexism, whatever, you know, cisgender, heteronormativity, all of that. That's how it exists. And these are not liberal talking points.

And this is not me being brainwashed by my liberal education. This is like, this is me reading books and knowing things and like visiting parts of the world. Yeah, right. I want to talk. I want to shift a little. Let's talk a little bit about the pandemic. Joy. It's gone so well. I think it's just a moment

to just celebrate how well it's gone. When the pandemic first started, the main consensus was that the way out of this, the way we're going to get out of this was a vaccine. And I remember seeing people that were polled then. We were coming back with,

would you get a COVID vaccine? When the pandemic first started, it was very high. The number was high. It was in the, I believe in the 80s percent, you know, people who were polled. And it has dwindled and fallen pretty sharply.

Did you expect, now you've known about anti-vaxxers for a long time. You've been, you know, you guys combat anti-vaxxers on Skeptic's Guide. You talk about it.

What, did you expect this much pushback from this vaccine in such a short amount of time? I think in a way I did. I was concerned because I see

a multi-pronged anti-vax approach here and it's different for different people, right? So you've got your dyed-in-the-wed anti-vax approach here. And it's different for different people, right? So you've got your dyed in the wool anti-vaxxers who literally believe that there are like chips in the vaccine or who think that vaccines cause autism or these ones who are like,

the evidence has been put forward. They're not looking at the evidence. They're ideologically bound to an anti-vax mentality. So you've got that group. And I still think that that's a pernicious group, and it's bigger than I would like it to be, but it's still somewhat small. But it's a very vocal minority. And then you've got your individuals who are vaccine hesitant for multiple reasons. They are afraid that this vaccine was pushed through too quickly and unsafely. They identify this vaccine with Donald Trump.

This is where you see the anti-vaccine coming in, kind of another layer of the anti-vaccine coming in on the left. You see individuals who are vaccine hesitant purely because they are afraid of vaccines or they're afraid of side effects of vaccines. And I think there's a legitimacy, a certain level of legitimacy to somebody who is needle phobic or somebody who is like, I heard from all of my friends that they got brutally ill after their second shot and I'm freaked out to get my second shot. Or I heard that it caused a lot of soreness and now I'm afraid of that soreness. Or I am diabetic or I have these other problems. What will a vaccine do to me? So I think a big part of this has been What will a vaccine do to me? So I think a big part of this has been fucking horrible public messaging, just failures left and right in public science messaging. And it sort of just like meshes in a really complicated way with some more prudent paranoia that individuals have, where if they had the right information put in front of them, those fears might be assuaged. And that's why we're seeing that some of the best sources of turning somebody from being vaccine hesitant to wanting to get the vaccine are their individual physicians.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have primary care physicians. You know, there's a large swath of the population that doesn't get regular healthcare. And so, where are they going to hear from a trusted source that, no, it's okay? Well, they can go to their death panels, right? Right, exactly. It's like, how do I hear that, i hear that no it's okay you know so the hope is that you have community organizers community leaders individuals who are willing to stand up in certain communities who look like me who talk like me who sound like me who come from the same background of me to say look i got it done i'm okay i feel safer now i have freedoms that i didn't have before um you know you this too. I saw a really interesting,

I actually covered it on SoCal Update recently, which is a PBS show that I do, PBS KCET show that I do here in the local LA market, where LA's, LAFD, a Los Angeles fire department, has a higher vaccination rate than any of the surrounding counties. And some of those counties are blue and some of those counties are red. And what LAFD does, which is amazing, is if you're a fireman, you can opt out of getting the vaccine. It's your choice. We can't force anybody to get the vaccine. Even at the hospital where I work, you can't force the hospital employees to get the vaccine because it's not FDA approved. It was fast. Right, emergency use. Yeah, it was emergency authorization. So legally, they can't do that. I have to get flu shot, but I don't have to get my COVID vaccine.

I did in January, by the way. LAFD was like, you don't have to get it, but here's what you have to do. You still have to show up for your appointment and you have to pledge, you have to elect that you're not getting it and they have to give you a piece of paper. And just the simple act of requiring people to go

means that A, some of them were just like shamed into it because they see all of their coworkers that are getting jabs in their arm. Yeah, you create some peer pressure around it, right? And they're like, A, some of them were just shamed into it because they see all of their co-workers there getting jabs in their arm. And they're like, oh, okay. Other ones are like, well, I'm here anyway. They're literally just like, all right, I'm here in line anyway. Might as well get the shot. I might as well care about public health.

I love the human animal because it's just like, you can trick us in mass into doing the right thing just by being like okay fine i'll go like you get a lollipop do you want to go like didn't didn't krispy kreme be like free donut to anybody who gets vaccinated and everybody's like hell yeah free krispy kreme worth it we're gonna go to the fucking armageddon because of inertia just because just like oh god but i want to lay on the couch.

You're right. And there's actually a social psychology component to this, and it has to do with positive risk and negative risk. We identify less risk with negative risk, meaning that if I sit here and do nothing, it seems to us less risky than doing the thing, which also has a risk-benefit analysis tied to it. So even though we know that getting the vaccine

is almost the safest thing you can do, it prevents potentially deadly illness and the outcome, the negative outcome of getting a vaccine, like the potential for Guillain-Barre, for example, or any sort of severe vaccine risks, which do exist. That's the other thing. They do exist. They're just so fleetingly rare.

Fleetingly. But we know that that risk-benefit calculus is better. Yet, we think, well, if I stay home and do nothing, I'm not actively engaging in the risky behavior. That's where our minds go. And it's a really difficult cognitive bias that we have to get past, that the do nothing bias is actually not better for us. It's worse in this situation. We have to do something and that is get the vaccine. So we talked to the very beginning, the opening question was sort of, did you anticipate it being this bad? And it was funny

because maybe two and a half, three years into the administration, I made some joke on the show. Like, can you imagine if something really tragic happened during this administration like a pandemic? And then a handful of months later, we have this pandemic. the role of public health messaging and science messaging could not have been more important over the last 15, 16 months, right? It literally could not have, there's no way to overemphasize how vital quality science messaging around public health was. And we did possibly the worst job. And I mean that because not only did we send the wrong message, it actually, in my opinion, I'm curious what you think, we didn't just send the wrong message.

We sent a slew of conflicting and confusing messages from a variety of experts who contradicted one another. Oh, and non-experts. Yeah, and very much non-experts across many different spheres. So I'd be curious to get your take on that in general. And also, what's the way out of that messaging crisis? Because we find ourselves still dealing with the ramifications of that messaging crisis. So if I have the answer, do I get like a Nobel Prize?

Is that how this works? Yeah, I mean, we're gonna solve all of these problems on Cognitive Defense Podcast for sure. So here's the thing. I think that we tend to do this, and I'm doing it right now. We use the royal we a lot. And like, are we saying we as Americans?

Are we saying we as the American government? Because like, who is we in this? I think that Trump's administration really set the groundwork for just garbage upon garbage. And so not only was there good public health messaging that was pushing and attempting to exist against a background of self-sabotage and against a background of lack of promotion um we also and so it's like fauci for example yes we can point to one specific time in history where he did send conflicting messages where he said let's not freak out we don't all need to go and buy masks and then you know within a couple of months like, yeah, we should probably buy some masks. Like, we're seeing now that there's American xenophobia. If we had taken the time to internalize some of the more Asian cultures' approaches to preventing disease early on and not been so afraid of it, we might have gotten ahead of this easier. And I think, yeah, that

does come down to xenophobia and just our customs seeming like they're the better customs and those customs seeming like they're being overly customs and those customs seeming like they're being overly cautious it's not true we know now that that's not true let's listen to the people who've been through this before with mers or with um sars um but on top of that you add the fact that fauci is standing right next to trump and trump is saying the opposite of what fauci's saying right that's confusing to the general public. Fauci's saying, let's drink bleach or inject it in our veins or shine a light inside of the body

to purify ourselves. Yeah. And he's basically saying, it's a hoax, but wait, we're going to take it seriously. But also, I burned the book that the last administration made for us. Yeah, right. You know, in case of a pandemic. And like, what is the average American supposed to think?

Supposed to do? You know, I'm curious because one of the things that you mentioned is in the beginning, Fauci said, well, you know, let's not panic and go out and buy masks. And there were, I think there were good reasons and bad reasons to say that, right? And one of the things later, additional information comes to light because that's how science works. And so then the recommendations change. And they continue to change as we move through this pandemic. And I suspect that they will continue to change. And so I'd love your thoughts on how messaging should deal with the changes that are inherent in how science works.

We learn something new and the general public sees that as they don't know what they're talking about. See, last week they said this and next week they're going to say something else. So I ain't listening to them scientists. Yeah, right. How do we get past that? You know, like this might sound like a real leap, but follow me on this, until we have good campaign finance reform. And the reason that I think campaign finance reform, which seems like it's a completely different issue, I think is directly linked to this, is because the way that, who are the most famous and popular faces within any nation state is generally the people who hold power within government. I mean, you could also argue that Kim Kardashian is more famous than Donald Trump. I don't think that's actually ultimately true, though. I think that Donald Trump, you know, now Joe Biden, then Barack

Obama, are some of the most famous people in the entire world. And when you've got famous people who have a lot of power and clout, good or bad, polarizing or not, who have to kind of position their own agendas in a way that seems unwavering and unflappable in effort to raise enough money to then run again. And it's all a four-year cycle. And I'm committed to this, and we're going to get this accomplished. And it's the only thing that I'm talking about. And if I change my mind, I'm a flip-flopper. So I've got to stay the course. And let's raise as much money as we can to get elected again.

And now my entire term is going to be about re-election. As long as that, and we see in Congress too, we see it in the Senate and the House. As long as that is the way that the political structure is going to work in the U.S. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have terms. I love term limits. I'm saying the fundraising component, which is directly tied to the marketing, which is directly tied to getting out in front and doubling down and never being wrong and never changing our minds, has created a culture where people don't trust you if you change your mind. People don't trust you if you say, there's new evidence, and I want to now go with that new evidence. And I think that those

things are, you know, really related until our politicians are willing to say, I was wrong, and not get skewered for it. There's a reason that they can't say it now. It's crucifixion, you know, until they can say, there new evidence and I've changed my mind. And that means I'm growing and I'm learning and I'm going to now be a better leader and we don't crucify them. I don't think our scientists are going to be very good at doing that. It's like the Johnson and Johnson pause, like the Johnson and Johnson pause was a wonderful thing. If you ask anyone involved in the science around it, it's like, yeah, great. From a science perspective, yeah. But from a marketing perspective,

it was a massive mistake. Exactly. And it's a horror. Like there's that, and that's the kind of point I'm driving. Like there's a massive disconnect between what scientists understand is a good decision and the right thing to do

and prudent and honest and transparent. And then how that's perceived by the public. And that's always been the case. Yeah, so here's my solution. Listen to the social psychologists. Because social psychologists and neuroeconomists, they study this for a living. And it's scary and sad because it's,

when is it most often used? Marketing research. Right. Marketing, you know, it's the big companies who know the power of this and who actually hire these people to help them with persuasion. But we should be doing this

in government as well, just back to that Los Angeles fire department. Like, it can be used for good and it can be used for evil. I don't believe in good and evil, but you know what I mean. I do.

And so it's like, yes, there are people who already get this shit. And somehow we're constantly reinventing the wheel. Let's listen to those people. What do you think about vaccine passports? I mean, I don't really get what it is. Like, I think that's a very vague term that until we've really drilled down into what it means is something that I get why people would be, you know. The American kind of way is to be like,

I'm debating my freedom. But at the same time, we have passport passports. We're not allowed to fly without those. We have real passports. That shows that I did a background check.

I have a yellow card that shows I have my yellow fever vaccine. There are countries I can't go to without my yellow card. You have to go? Yeah.

Yeah, there's some countries you have to, if you're going to go there, you have to have vaccines. Like if you, you have to have them. You got to get vaccines to go to register for school. Like vaccines are just part of our public health infrastructure. Totally. I have a pretty intensive yellow card because I spend quite a bit of time in kind of more difficult places in South America or in like Southern Africa where there are certain things that you not only are required, but are recommended to have. So my yellow card is pretty extensive.

And I in no way feel like my freedoms are being taken away from me if I travel with my yellow card. You don't have the freedom to get yellow fever anymore, which is a bit of a bummer. Yeah, no yellow fever for this girl. So, I mean, I think for me, it's again, I think for a lot of people, the calculus comes down to freedom versus, or maybe not freedom, but convenience versus privacy. And I think this is a convenience issue. It's like you sometimes have to give up a little bit of privacy if you want

your world to be more convenient. At what level is it too much? A lot of us keep using Twitter and Facebook, even though we know better. We know what we're giving up in privacy. And we know about the overreach that's happening. But we're like, but it's so convenient. They tell me what I should buy, you know? And people are willing to make that calculus. And I think if you want to travel to a country that's like, we don't trust you, America.

You have failed in our eyes. The only way we're going to let you in is if you show me that you did your due diligence, that you got the jab to prove it, then now I get convenience. And yes, I have to give up a little bit of privacy to do that, but we already do that by having passports. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I want to touch on something you just said about social media and something else that you mentioned. It's a thought occurred to me like when you're talking about the role of persuasion and for lack of a better term, manipulation. The first thing I thought is like there's nobody better at doing this from a data standpoint than social media companies.

They're experts. They've become incredibly good at it. Well, yeah. They've become incredibly good at it. From a public health perspective, I mean, what are your thoughts about leveraging big tech and just monetizing public health outcomes? Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that it's, we're in a hybrid capitalist system,

which is really confusing and fucked up. And so it's easy for me to sit here and go like, ugh, I don't want that because I don't even want insurance companies. I think that we should have a national health service. Right. Here you are. And so for me, it's like, okay, let's make this more corporate. Let's make it more profit motive. All I see happening when you add a profit motive to health and wellness is that rich people get benefits and that poor people suffer. I see a bigger division between rich and poor, and that's

what bears out in the literature. And so there's a part of me that's really stressed out about that. The problem is we're not operating on a clean system. We're operating on a system where you're right, the government has not much funding for this kind of stuff, and big tech has a lot of money for it. I would like to see this be a public partnership. I would like for it to be a not-for-profit arm, if that were going to happen, a way that, you know, a Facebook or a Twitter gives back, and that it's their choice to do so. I don't think we should let it rest solely in their hands, hells no. But it would be great to see a Twitter, a Facebook, an Instagram,

which is Facebook, a WhatsApp, which is Facebook. No, but to see these different companies say, we care about this shit and we're going to do our part to improve public health outcomes. But that's on them. They're a private fucking company

and that's the fucked up thing that happens when we give them that much power. Right. Barring any newfound Zuckerbergian altruism, which strikes me as kind of utopian, I wonder if, unfortunately, utopian, I do wonder why the government wouldn't just... I mean, we, cognitive distance right now, could buy ads on Facebook. And then Facebook would leverage their data mining and their algorithms in order to push that in front of people. And it just strikes me that we haven't done that for the vaccine. We haven't done that for public health. The state of Illinois has not spent $30 million on Facebook to get messaging out. You know, the U.S. government hasn't done that.

You know, I think that there, so there's a twofold thing here. On one hand, we kind of have, but we've done it in a more legislative way. So, like, if you go on Instagram and somebody's talking about their vaccine, there is a CDC disclaimer that they, it's required that they read, you know, that says, like, this is where you can go to get a vaccine. Like, this is actually government overlay. And so, that does kind of exist, but you're right. It's not using persuasion science to its fullest. I wonder if part of that is because the cost-benefit analysis isn't there. Like, is an ad actually going to be what works?

Or is it going to work more if, like, Aunt Mary shares a meme? Right. And how do we get, how do we tap into that? And the question is, is money the way into that? I don't know. Is this a problem we can buy our way out of? Maybe, maybe not. I just feel like money's made it worse.

You know, money's made it so much worse. And I'm just sort of like, man, we're not, unless we retool capitalism, I'm just wondering, don't get me wrong, totally pro, pro-retooling capitalism. Yeah, that's the problem. So until we retool capitalism, we have to work with a broken system. It's the same thing that we see with like a racist system, right? Until we make our system actively anti-racist, we have to work within the constraints of a racist system, which is why we saw vaccine initiatives that were like, vaccines are going to black and brown people first. And then all of the racist fuck nuts in the South were like, that's racist. That's reverse racism. You can't do that.

And it's like, no, we're just trying to operate within your shitty racist system. And this is the only thing we know how to do. Well, and then here in Illinois, you send it to the very red parts of Illinois and there was, you could literally like look across. I went to go get it in one of these red rural parts of Illinois, right? And so you could just look and see there was 15 bays of seats

with the cloth that separated it. And they were all, there was 15. There had to be hundreds of places to get a vaccine. And they were filling one tiny little corner of it. One tiny, you know, because there's, because nobody wants it down there in those red parts. But yet they'll scream about how they wanted it. But they only just, all they really wanted

was for the black and brown people not to get it. That's literally it. And that's, I think that's what comes down to maybe that money should be spent less on let's buy some Facebook ads and more on let's get down, boots on the ground, grassroots, and do some real community organizing.

Because this is the thing that we forget living in a sort of social media society and living in a society where we've seen how these russian bot campaigns did actually make progress and have an effect is that we also forget that biden still got elected and how did biden get elected because people gave a shit and they went out there and they talked to people and unfortunately slash fortunately that's how political change still exists it happens at the local level it does and so we need community organizers again who speak the language who look the way the people look because they came from that same background and who are armed with

information to say listen grandma i did it you can do it too like let's let's go down there together and we'll set up an appointment this is this is why i canvassed for obama in sasquahanna in in the sasquahanna region of philadelphia and just like walked and said you're registered you're a registered democrat you're on my list you need a ride to the polls do you need help Is there anything we can do that day? It's, it's about getting the people even who want to do it, the access.

And then for those who are hesitant or who don't want to meeting them where they're at and having real conversations with them. But of course the government can't do that by themselves. We have to do that shit. So do you think we're going to hit herd immunity? Do you think we're going to reach that level? Do you? You're optimistic for it? Here's why I'm optimistic. Yeah. The data don't lie. And there's a point where the sun comes up every day and the sun goes down every day and you just start trusting that the sun is going to be there. Science is

kind of hard to ignore when it's strong. And when certain communities are able to exist and thrive the way that they used to, and fewer and fewer people are going to the hospital, and normalcy starts to creep into people's lives, and the fear starts to become mitigated, I think that people will see that outcome. We're going to need boosters, for example. And I think it's going to become really clear when the waves start to come back, and people are going to go, holy shit, I need to go get that booster. There may be, you know, there may be a time, you're right, where our actions let some of these anti-vaxxers off the hook, where they get to utilize our own herd immunity to their advantage. But ultimately, there's going to be that sort of tipping point. their advantage. But ultimately, there's going to be that sort of tipping point. And when we hit those tipping points and we finally see, we never had evidence to what a world was like when we're

vaccinated. And now we do. And I think that evidence is going to be strong. People are starting to see this horrific failure in India. We're starting to see these global places where the pockets hadn't quite hit. And now what happens when people don't have access to the vaccine and it's fucking devastating. We're seeing it recapitulated all over. And, you know, I think one of the bad, one of the worst talking points, and this is such an American exceptionalism like bullshit thing. And I grappled with it a lot at the beginning was when people were like, the vaccine, it's just a conspiracy to keep Donald Trump from getting elected. COVID is a hoax

and we're just trying to keep Donald Trump. And I'm like, do you know that there are places that are not America? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. It's like this is not a domestic crisis. It is an international crisis. That is genuinely the most American response to that though is to realize you're the only one that matters. That is the most most American response to that though is to realize

you're the only one that matters. That is the most American thing you could possibly do. And I was thinking about that the other day because I was thinking, I don't know why it came up,

but I was listening to, I was listening to Don't Judge Me, this really beautiful Mumford & Sons album that's like, it's a combination with the very best

in Baba Mal. So it's like Mumford, it's called Johannesburg and it was recorded in Southern Africa. And there's Baba Mal, who I think is single-ese and he sings on the album. And it's, I mean,

it's just this amazing thing. And I was thinking, if this were 20 years ago, they would call this world music. And then I realized, how fucking racist is that? So there's our music and then the rest of the world?

Right. The rest of the world. Right. The rest of the world. Oh, my God. And this is a phrase, like Paul Simon, who actually was doing stuff with Ladysmith Black Mombazo and was like actually traveling the world. He somehow had to just be like, yeah, world music. Yeah, I guess it's world music.

I mean, in America, we know that there are people who don't know that Africa is a continent. They think it is a country. And that people from, you know, Ethiopia and people from Namibia and people from Mozambique and, you know, like Eswatini, like that these people are all just the same,

even though they're more diverse than any of us are. So we know that this is an issue but literally that's really bad when it's just the u.s and the world i love it i love the world music other that category is now just other like we've literally otherized you we've put it in a category yeah yeah we want to be respectful of your time. We know you only have a couple minutes left. I wanted to ask you one more question if you don't mind.

Sure, yeah, because you know I'm going to answer for the whole seven minutes. Yeah, for the whole seven minutes. 30,000 feet view here. Oh, fuck. And Tom and I talk about communication technology, especially Facebook and sort of the disinformation

that spreads on Facebook, how quickly it spreads and how sort of pernicious that is. You know, it's, it's, there's a lot of it. Has technology, this is a, this is going to be one of these great questions. Has technology made your job as a science communicator harder or easier? Um, my job, I guess it depends. I feel like I need to operationally define what is the goal. So when you say my job as a science communicator, do you mean has it made it harder or easier for me to,

in whatever way I do, improve science literacy? Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that. Easier. Yeah. Good.

Much easier. But that's from a personal perspective. It is easier for me to improve science literacy. Yeah. No way to throw that in there. Wait.

No way to throw that in there. No way to throw that in there. Is it? Oh, just for me. Are the outcomes better or worse? It's hard to know because, I mean, there are definitely times when I post things on social media, and I do. I post five science stories a day across social media platforms, and it's been something I do not get paid for, but I do pay my assistant, Noelle Dilworth. Shout out to Noelle. You're so kick-ass. I do pay her to help me do this. And I just think of it as sort of the way I give back, which is that I curate about 35 science stories a week

from my various feed readers. And then I post them throughout the day, every day on different social media outlets. So if you follow me on Facebook, if you follow me on Twitter, not only are you going to periodically see, hey, here's a new thing I'm working on, or hey, here's a cute picture of my dog, you're going to get mostly, here's something that's going on in the science world that you may not know about. Look

at this cool article. Let's read this new thing. And you know, because I curated it, that I've vetted it, and I've read about it, and I feel comfortable sharing it. That's huge. I couldn't do that before. I never would have been able, it would have taken, like, it would have been a full-time job to do that. For real. And now it's not, you know, it's just, it's not. And so that's really cool. But when you look at some that have a social justice component to them, even though they're completely evidence-based, especially on Facebook, are you going to find trolls that we have to constantly mine out of the comment sections? Are you going to find people

that we have to block? Of course. See, that Are you going to find people that we have to block? Of course. See, that surprises me. As a woman on social media, I wouldn't think you'd have any trolls. Like, that's just shocking. Oh, no, never any troll. I mean, yeah, Jesus.

Has social media made my life harder as a woman? Yes, social media. But also, I think it's like any tool, right? It can be used, like a hammer can be used to drive in nails, and it can be used to bash in somebody's brains. I think that social media is, from our perspective, a tool that we can use. I think from the perspective of the architects of social media and the individuals who actually make money off of social media,

there is a very pernicious undercurrent there. And I think that ultimately, they know what they are developing they know how it can be utilized by bad actors in um in government by individual forces um revolutionary forces who are trying to uh you know um quash uh free speech who are trying to um dox political dissidents and this is really scary and really dangerous for my purposes um you know it's like yeah people people gonna read dumb ass shit and they're gonna believe what they're gonna believe um and you know i think we can use the tool the same way that the people who are sowing misinformation can use the tool. The problem is, are we putting the same efforts in?

There's a lot of those financial incentives on our side, it feels like. Well, that's the problem with capitalism. George Soros listening, give us financial incentives, George. Come on, hook us up. And this is why as I become older and older, I become more cynical about the capitalist system as a whole, is that I do think that there are intrinsically sort of sexist and racist and anti-human aspects of capitalism.

Because it's not a bug, it's a feature that capitalism rewards greed and it rewards a lack of ethics and so until we really truly fundamentally go back to the founders of this political or this um economic movement and reread some of the founding documents that say without regulation this doesn't fucking work this can only happen with very strong regulation that is imposed from a moral stance by the people in an effort, you know, like torts, in an effort to protect us as consumers. But when we have individuals at the helm who want to

repeal and roll back those regulations who literally believe in a Milton Friedman, like, laissez-faire, free market. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so dangerous. And we have the evidence to prove it. Fuck Milton Friedman. That's what we're market. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so dangerous and we have the evidence to prove it. Fuck Milton Friedman.

That's what we're saying. Yeah, exactly. I'm with you. Fuck him. Yeah, Cara, if people were going to find you on the internet, where would they look?

My main website is my name. It's carasanamaria.com but also talknerdy.com takes you to the podcast and I'm on every social media place. I'd say, to be honest, like on Facebook, that's really just my assistant posting the stuff I tell her to post. On Instagram, you'll see like more pictures of my

dog and me being like, look how pretty LA is on my hike. But on Twitter, it's where I engage. I've, you know, it may be a generational thing. I'm 37. I was born in 83. I feel like Twitter hit me at the right time. And I get Twitter in a way that I, that the other social media outlets I don't get. And so that's, if you actually think I, you know, you want me to read something that you wrote,

probably tweet it. Twitter. Probably the best chance of hitting me in the head with a rock. But you can see, you can see my work across my, across my website and you can go to talknerdy.com. Oh, and my Patreon, of course. Patreon.com slash talknerdy.

Kara, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today. We really do appreciate it. Yeah, this was great. Yeah, thanks for having me, you guys. What? Hey, boss. What are you running to? Wait, who is that?

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exactly what it is they are seeing right now? I guess they're watching paint dry. To the wonder of television. This story comes from New York Magazine's Intelligencer. George W. Bush can't paint his way out of hell. The chilling spectacle of watching the political class redeem a criminal again. And this is an awesome article that really talks about

the way that all of a sudden George W. Bush has changed from the guy who got us into a illegitimate war, hunting for WMDs that didn't exist, that he fucking lied about. And now all of a sudden, this guy is like this happy paternalistic grandfatherly figure. There's so much more too. It's stuff we forget where he crashed the economy. He tortured people off American shore. He held people indefinitely off American shore. And it's not just him, right?

Because that was continued on in other administrations, but he started it. Well, that's the thing. Like the Bush administration was the beginning of this incredibly, I almost said slow, but it wasn't slow and it wasn't insidious. It was incredibly fast. This new era of politicking and governance and new theories about governmental power and executive power and the role of the executive in government and this massive expansion of authoritarian rule from the executive

all kind of came into being as a direct result of Bush and Cheney and all the rest of those like think about those fucking monsters that were in charge the names, the names, you know the names, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Karl Rove, those guys were

fucking evil they were straight up monsters. They were. And they have changed the face of politics. They have corrupted the morals of our country. They have eroded our democracy and they did it intentionally. Like it wasn't an accident or a byproduct of their activity. Think about like the Patriot Act and the terrible infringements

on your civil liberties that we all embrace, or not all of us, because I know I certainly fucking didn't, but many of us fucking embraced. Think about like all the gives towards security, all the freedoms that we lost in order to gain a wisp of fucking security, the lives that were lost pursuing this nonsensical idea that we're going to attack terrorism, the concept, and root it out across the world. That's all this guy. That's all this guy.

And now George W. Bush is like the silly guy who can't put on his raincoat. He's the guy who's painting. You know who else painted? John Gacy, okay? John Wayne Gacy, the guy who murdered kids you know who else painted john gacy okay john wayne gacy the guy murdered kids and stuffed them in his fucking crawl space also painter by the way also literally hitler yeah painter painter painter painter get out of here with that shit but you know what's happening though, is this convenient forgetting

that the Democrats do time and time again, because there needs to be, this is only one sided. There's only one side that does this. It's the Democrats, it's the left that always feels like there always has to be this sort of slow hand reaching to shake. We always have to sort of meet

and not only meet in the middle ground, but always cave, always give to them, always say to them, you know, oh, we need to be, we need to be buddies. We need to respect each other's humanity. You know, sometimes people don't deserve that respect. This guy was a fucking monster and he doesn't deserve the respect and no amount of hugs from Michelle Obama should redeem his image. You know, and the other thing that we're doing, Cecil, is we are sort of wistfully remembering a time, right? And we're doing that inaccurately. And we're doing that by comparing Trump, the trauma of the Trump administration to the Bush administration. And it's exactly right. It's because it's fresh. But also, you know,

the Trump administration's evils and excesses were more overt and they were louder. Yes, yes. But the excesses and evils of the Bush administration were more effective and more insidious.

Yes. Because he was a better politician with smarter fucking advisors around him. So we're not being honest in that comparison. If you compare effect versus effect, what did George W. Bush do? To your point, he fucking decimated the economy, absolutely crushed it, and then tried to throw everybody 300 bucks in the hopes that that would get better. He got us involved in wars that cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Yeah. Totally fucking annihilated for no reason. Wars that dragged on for decades that accomplished nothing, predicated entirely on lies for which he was never properly held accountable for.

The complete erosion of fundamental freedoms that are inherent in being an American citizen, the idea, the very concept as a nation that we would look to torture as a solution to our problems, to our security problems. These ideas all came from Bush. They all came from Bush. The radicalizing of our Islamophobia, the weaponizing of Islamophobia, that came from Bush. Axis of evil.

He used that. Axis of evil. Those were his words. Yeah. Yeah. He used it as a weapon. Horrible man. And it's funny because

we like to think that during the Trump administration, we saw a bunch of apologists for Trump and that felt new to us. But scroll back. Scroll back in your timeline, folks, to when Bush was president and look at how many people

were fighting and trying to tell you that waterboarding wasn't torture. Do you remember that? Do you remember that big push about how waterboarding's not torture? I remember there was a Chicago DJ who said it time and time and time again, and then they waterboarded him,

and he cried, got up and said, I fucking take it all back. I take it all back. It's absolutely torture. The moment someone actually did it to him. I mean, Jesse Ventura, the mayor or whatever, governor of Minnesota. I don't know what they have down there. Their king, whatever they got up there.

Earl, I don't know. They have a different Minnesota system, eh? Whatever it is. Oh, yeah. You betcha. You're the leader up here now, eh? He's the leader of the potluck, you know? Get out the big, fancy snowmobile.

You're about to get up here, eh? You're about to wear your hat around here. You're an important guy. But yeah, that fucking guy. I remember him saying, all I need is a bucket of water, a rag and 15 minutes and I'll tell and he said, I'll make Dick Cheney. What did he say? I'll make him confess to the Sharon Tate murder.

He said, all I need is 15 minutes. And he's right because it's fucking torture and you'll literally say anything to stop it and we know it doesn't work. It's literally, all it is for is to make us feel

like we're getting vengeance on people that may or may not be bad. Like, I'm using quotes here in the most ironic sense, bad guys. Under Bush,

we saw the opening of Guantanamo Bands, which is still open. That is a detention center where we just pick people up from all over the world with no due process. They still have had no due

process. Enormous numbers of those people have been found to have been a no threat whatsoever. And they are no different than like you or like me or anyone else. These are cab drivers and dudes with families and shit that were fucking picked up and tortured and interrogated and stuck in cages halfway around the world. And they're never going home. Yeah. They're never going home. And that's just a thing that we did under Bush. And that that is that was such a fucking horrifying

toxic thing to have done that we still haven't figured out how to close the fucking thing yeah what like three fucking administrations later we still have no idea what to do with that fucking mess we see so we're winding down the war in afghanistan? Yeah. 20, maybe, 20 fucking years later. Good caveat there because, yeah, we said the same thing before.

We have been down this road before and every, like, every president since Obama, Obama included, said they were going to end it

and nobody's ended it. Nobody's ended it. And what the fuck did we get out of invading Afghanistan? Raise your fucking hand if you know what we got out of that. How that made us fucking safer. Yeah.

PTSD. That's what we got. Yeah, right. That's what we got. This is 1900. We don't have pills. We don't have, uh, what, we don't have, what's it called? What's that pill that solves everything?

Antibiotics. We didn't have that, okay? What's that pill that solves everything? Antibiotics. We didn't have that, okay? There's no antibiotics, okay? So this story comes from Slate. This is just bonkers. Miami private school informs parents vaccinated teachers may be transmitting something from their bodies. Wait. What, the idea that science works?

Is that what they're transmitting? I'll tell you what, if you don't have the vaccine, you actually may be transmitting something called COVID. You might be transmitting a virus, literally a vector for disease. Yeah, I guess maybe

if they get the Sputnik V, they could transmit something. That beep sound we were just doing. A private Miami area school has taken a counterfactual approach to protecting student health during a pandemic,

informing parents in a letter Monday that it will not employ any staff that has received a coronavirus vaccination and those that have gotten vaccinated will be asked to isolate

from students who range from pre-K to eighth grade. The thinking school founder, Lila Centner explained with a very heavy heart in the bulletin is that reports have recently surfaced of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated. What do they have? The big sads?

What's going on? I'm sorry. I think you have that backwards. Yeah. I think the fucking non-vaccinated people are the threat. Centner and her husband, David Centner, opened a school in 2019 which now has nearly 300 students, paying

up to $30,000 a year in tuition, and promotes itself as a happiness school. $30,000, dude? $30,000 a year? $30,000 to have a vaccine denier. You're going to pay somebody 30 grand to educate your kids and this is their take? To send them to a

happiness school? I thought money couldn't buy happiness. Which is total bullshit. It absolutely can't buy happiness. Emotional intelligence. I'll tell you what, Cecil. In my life, I've had no money. I could not find happiness. And a little bit of money has really helped the happiness quotient.

I will say this. Money can't buy happiness, but it sure as fuck can insure it. That's for damn sure. A lack of money sure can buy unhappiness. Yeah, that's for sure. It values emotional intelligence and mindfulness. Science, not so much. Vaccinated adults, quote, this is fucking amazing. Maybe transmitting something from their bodies. intelligence and mindfulness science. Not so much vaccinated adults. Quote,

this is fucking amazing. Maybe transmitting something from their bodies that could be impacted, impacting the reproductive systems, fertility and normal growth and development in women and children. Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated. I love the embedded misogyny in there that like men are just fine, right?

I'll tell you what, it's got to be for the weak ones, the women, the children. Us men, you know, we're fine. We're fine. We can get. Look, here's the thing. All those womanly gears inside you, they could get spun up pretty easy. So, but us men know. There's never a moment where they say, hey, you know what?

If you get the vaccine, guys around you are going to pop boners and shoot jizz out of their cocks. They never say that. They never say that. It's always, oh, it's all your womanly parts are going to start spinning. And then what do we do? You know, I don't really know what those parts are or what they're called or how to make them feel good

as a woman. All them delicate mystery bits that y'all have down inside there. They're an enigma wrapped in a mystery. They pull out their tome and just blow the dust off of it. It's hilarious.

When they talk about it the way they're talking about it, it sounds like it's that clip from the Dark Crystal where it's the great conjunction. There's three women. They're all having their conjunction menstruation at the same time. It's a great conjunction. You spend time with a vaccinated person and you're just like, oh man, like now I don't menstruate the same way.

No, it's like the vaccine's like a fucking metronome. It gets you, it gets you regular. It's like metamucil. You know what I mean? Like boom, boom,

boom. You know, when you're, you know, when it's going to happen to you. Yeah. But you're right though. It's always the,

it's always the woman gears. It's always the little bits inside of women that are so easily shifted by any little thing in the world. And you're right, though. It's always the woman gears. It's always the little bits inside women that are so easily shifted by any little thing in the world. And you're right. That's just like a deep misogyny that just is always there. Right, because nobody's going to write down like, you know, hung around some vaccinated people

and now I'm impotent. Yeah. Because then dudes would have to say they were impotent. Exactly. Right? And they're never going to say that. Instead, it's like,

my woman's got her timelies, you know? Her timelies. And I don't really know how that works because she does that out in the barn, you know, like a proper girl is supposed to. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Get a book.

Literally any book. You can pick one. Just any book. Here's my advice to this school. Stop trying to learn emotionally because it's not working. It's just not working. You've got to crack a book once in a while. I don't care how many times you hug.

You're not going to learn about anything else. You can hug a lot of things out, man, but you can't hug out knowledge. No matter what you do, you can squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, you're never getting it out of there. The fucking happiness school. Jesus, man. 30 grand for happiness. 30 grand, dude. Jesus. That is so

much money. That's a Patreon I want. That's college. The happiness Patreon where you send me 30 grand and I give you a hug. I'd like to see the Kansasansas city caucasians that would be kind of you know white guy out there wearing a leisure suit you know after each home running dance around a mobile home you know that would be kind of so this is racist beyond all comprehension this story comes from huffington post rick santorum says nothing was in america before white colonizers arrived i mean yes we have native americans but candidly there isn't much native

american culture in american culture said the cnn commentator and i was surprised to learn that rick santorum was a cnn commentator yeah he was on he was on CNN commentator. Yeah, he was on like crazy. He was on throughout the entire election cycle. So he was on CNN as the counterpoint throughout the entire election debacle. And I will be honest, as much as I hate Rick Santorum, he at least had a viewpoint that, while it was extreme right, it certainly didn't lend itself to the conspiracy

that the vote was stolen. Oh, he wasn't pushing the Steele stuff? At least the narrative? And I won't say that is what his entire view was because I can't speak for the entirety of his view, but at least what I witnessed, that's what he said. It felt like he was at least on that level. But yeah, he's a CNN commentator.

I did want to point out though, Tom, can I just read a list of states named after Native American names? So Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming all have roots in Native American language.

I've never heard of any of those. The third largest city in the United States states chicago means wild leaks or something in i know yeah it's it's literally it's literally a fucking native american word i want to read his full his full quote here because what he says is we birthed a nation from nothing and i have to stop already and be like you know the whole idea that there's a we, right? We, I am a part, because he's saying we is including himself as part of the European colonizers and essentially saying, I am amongst that group. Right.

You, if you are like me, are amongst that group. And we have extra legitimacy as a result, like extra Americanosity, right? As a result of being part of this more legitimate America. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn't much Native American culture in American culture. And I do want to read from the same article, The very foundation of the United States and its system of representative democracy stems from a political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations founded in 1142. The U.S. Senate even paid tribute to

the Iroquois with a 1988 resolution stating, quote, the confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles incorporated into the Constitution itself.

But yeah, man, haven't contributed much to American culture. No. Also like, you know, it is true that we did subjugate and slaughter those people and repopulate or, or home those people into fucking,

you know, reservations and whatever. So it's, it's not like, Oh, we showed up and there was nothing here. It's like, we showed up,

we fucking conquered it with violence, disease yeah with lies and manipulations with outright warfare and then it's like well you know there wasn't really much here because you destroyed what was here you it'd be like it'd be like a see so if i showed up to your house and shot your whole family and then i was like you know i built this house from scratch. There wasn't a fucking house here when I showed up. There wasn't anybody here at all. Man, I got to say, you haven't really been keeping up the house very much. Well, you fucking killed me.

It's kind of your fault I took it over. I mean, no, it's really your fault. What were you wearing? What was the house wearing? Maybe the Native Americans shouldn't have been out so late. Yeah. Whose fault is it?

I can't believe he wasn't fired for those comments either. It's weird, man. You know, he's such a piece of shit, though, and he's been a piece of shit forever. Let's not forget how fucking anti-gay this guy is. Oh, I know. Let's not forget.

You know, the reason why we even know the name Santorum is because of Dan Savage, who made his name synonymous with the discharge that comes out after anal sex out of an asshole. That's what he... He made it so that people, when they search for Santorum,

that's what they find on the internet. So there's a reason why, and it's because he's such a search for Santorum, that's what they find on the internet. So there's a reason why, and it's because he's such a despicable shitbag. That's why. Yep, yep. CNN knew what the fucking snake was when they picked it up. That's all I'm saying, right? Yeah, it's just, you know,

I don't want to hear any fucking nonsense about cancel culture, though. Right, right. Because here's a motherfucker who basically was like, Native Americans weren't here, and they aren't people, and they never counted. Yeah. And it's just like, wow. Wow.

Yeah, where's cancel culture when you need it, right? They're canceling everybody. I don't know, man, because the bar is pretty fucking high. Yeah, I don't know. Because here's a guy who just shat on all of Native Americans.

You could be the worst LGBTQ bigot and still be bad against Native Americans and no one cares. Right. You're still getting a paycheck on a liberal news network. Yeah. The liberals cancel everybody

except for this guy. This guy. Holy shit. So I want to thank our patrons. Of course, I want to thank all our patrons. I want to thank our patrons. Of course, I want to thank all our patrons. I want to thank our newest patrons, Allison, Juliet, Far Harder, Kandalian,

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we really do appreciate it if you were going to super chat this week guys if you were going to come and super chat and you saw super chat was off because YouTube says we were harassing people or something and they canceled our super chat go turn that into a Patreon go over to Patreon

become a patron on a per episode basis you get extra stuff and we love you for it so thank you so much all you patrons got a little bit of email to a Patreon. Go over to Patreon, become a patron on a per episode basis. You get extra stuff and we love you for it. So thank you so much, all you patrons. Got a little bit of email we want to go through this last week. We got an image from Holly and Holly sent in an image that just really captures Josh Duggar's arrest today. And we're going to post it on this week's show notes. So go check it out. This is 575. Got a message, Tom. Last week, you and I were talking about filming the police. Jeremy sent in a message and it's a Gizmodo article that says there's 12 states you should

not be filming the police in. Yeah, this really surprised me. And I read through this, our whole Gizmodo article. And it's crazy because Illinois is really the state you most don't want to film the police in. We have some of the most restrictive double, like dual consent restrictions around eavesdropping, wiretapping, and filming. Basically though, the thrust of the article is 99% of the time you can film whatever the fuck you want in public. But when you're filming the cops, they will use the anti-wiretapping and anti-surveillance laws that are available to them to prosecute you in order to restrict your surveillance of the police. That's ridiculous.

Even though you might be in public, even though it's entirely reasonable for you to be filming your kids in public and other people are in the background or filming a building and people are walking past it and no one's going to bother you. If you film the cops in these 12 states, you could be in for real trouble and they are prosecuting. There are examples from the Gizmodo article.

So thank you so much for sending that in. I know the advice that we gave that was to film the cops at all times. Well, don't do that without knowing the risks. So you should know that there are risks. Yeah, knowing your 12 states for sure. And of those states, Illinois is on there. So is Massachusetts and Maryland.

Those three states don't feel like they're very conservative, but they have very conservative laws when it comes to filming people. So check it out, double check, make sure your laws allow you to do it. We talked about My Little Pony last week, and we got a lot of messages about it. One person, this is Carl from Germany. Carl sent in a message and he said that he heard about the neo-Nazis hijacking My Little Pony. And he said it reminded him of a story that he read about furry community a few years ago that basically had the same problem. And we talked about this. The reason why that is, is because those inclusive communities allow people in, and then you have that one frame of reference that you can talk

to other people about. And then their infectious bullshit garbage that they're going to spew on you is easier for you to swallow because they're part of the same group as you. And so they have this in with you that other people don't. And they can influence you and other people to believe dumb shit like the neo-Nazis believe. Yeah, it's crazy that there is no place that seems safe from the infiltration of white supremacy. And yet we are still having a debate about whether or not white supremacy exists. Got a message.

This is from a person who doesn't want to tell us who he is. He says he wanted to talk to us about marriage because mainly he's in a talk to us about marriage because mainly he's in a relationship now, a marriage relationship now, but he's also polyamorous, his family's polyamorous, and they want to sort of be part of a polyamorous relationship that also includes some sort of marriage, but can't do it. So the other person that wants to be part of this relationship will never be able to be really fully a full-fledged member of that relationship

because our governments are based on a marriage system that is basically monogamous and religious. And there is not any room for this sort of thing in the governments because the government sort of takes on the religious institution of marriage. And it's interesting because I was thinking about it,

I was wondering, because the first thing that popped into my head was, well, what do you do with insurance? But insurance doesn't discriminate when it's kids that get married or get kids that get born, right? So if I have a bunch of kids, I still have to pay a little extra for the deductibles or whatever, and I have to pay

more money as a primary or whatever in the principal that I have to pay the insurance company. But they shouldn't be stopping my coverage because I have kids, right? If I have five, six, seven kids, it doesn't matter. They still have to insure me, and then I have to pay those fees. Why couldn't that be? That's the only thing I could see that would be the real issue, would be the stopping point legally for other people to have a relationship where there was multiple consenting adults in a relationship. I don't understand why that gets blocked.

And the only reason I could think is because it's religious. Yeah, it is because it's religious and people feel like judgmental and shitty and squeamish about polyamorous relationships because there's not that many of them. Like at the end of the day,

it's drops in the bucket financially. I don't think there's a massive financial impact because there's just not a massive number of polyamorous relationships that have that kind of, you know, long-term commitment where they would have a big financial impact on medical insurance. I don't know. I think that that's like maybe what people would say in order to hide their bigotry against these relationships. Yeah. Got a message from Matt, number one, and he sent it. He's like, I just wanted to let you guys know, I couldn't even find the message that I sent you guys farthest back, but he did, but he did quote a message that he

sent us from 2012. So that's really early on too. That's like, that's like a year in. Yeah, man. He sent us, he sent it. Matt's been with us for a long time. Thanks for being a listener, Matt. That's awesome. We got long messages about My Little Pony and how it's far right and how the show itself might be a little problematic

and lean into that a little or at least be easily interpreted as sort of a right-leaning, weird, racist thing. Because the one that, the one that stands out here, Tom, is they're talking about all the different types of animals in that cartoon. And zebra is listed as very clearly African.

And that to me is like, ah, I don't know that I like that at all. I don't know why cartoons have to do that shit, but a lot of them do that sort of shit where they're just like, let's have like ethnic characters. You're like, no, don't do that. Don't do that.

It's really bad. You shouldn't be doing that. Why are you doing? Just don't, just let the ponies be ponies and the Z, just why do you have to do that? Do you remember when we were watching

the Phantom Menace and all the Star Wars movies and the fucking, the business guys were Asian racist stereotypes. Yes. And you're just like, holy shit, they can't pronounce R. And you're just cringing the whole time.

It's so bad. It's just a different time. It's so full of racial stereotyping. It's so bad. Look's just a different time. Phantom Menace is so full of racial stereotyping. It's so bad. Look, I know what you're doing even with a mask on. Yeah, I know. You're not masking it that well. So bad.

Jason's in a message and he says, you guys were talking about how the cops lie. What do you guys think about how the cops are allowed to lie to suspects during interrogation? What about those other lies? I think that is such bullshit. I think that the way in which we allow police officers to bend and break ethics all the time to try to get quote unquote somebody to confess. I mean, I just think about all those people that

had false confessions and how often those people are lied to. And it doesn't like, just like we were talking about torture earlier, it doesn't give you a good result, right? We've seen that they lie and manipulate people and it gives us a bad result in the end. Someone is exonerated because they didn't actually commit the crime. So why allow them to do it? It doesn't give them a benefit. All it does is allow them to get it? It doesn't give them a benefit. All it does is allow them to get something quickly done and get a collar quickly. And that's not beneficial to anybody. It's not beneficial to society

because the person who did the actual crime is out on the loose. And it's not beneficial to the person who got tricked. It's not beneficial to the institution because they look like assholes. It's not good at all. I don't know why we allow it. Yeah, there are a lot of times where,

and they're not lying about small things. They're lying about things like, hey, we know we've got you. The repercussions are enormous. We can ameliorate the damage for you if you'll just confess. So somebody's sitting there and they think like, holy shit, I didn't do this,

but I'm going to go away for it anyway. And they've got all this shit. But if I say that I did it, I'll get 10 years instead of 30. And so they're doing a kind of like trolley problem calculus based on inaccurate information. And so then they confess that's bullshit. They should absolutely not be allowed to use that kind of intimidation tactic. They should not.

So I want to thank Kara Santamaria of the Talk Nerdy podcast for joining us today. She also does Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and she does all kinds of other video and science communication. She's a wonderful guest. We want to thank her for taking time out of her day to come on our show and talk to us.

She's a real treasure and we're so happy that she was able to join us. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to join us on our live streams. We had to move our live stream up a little bit this week because we recorded with Kara early. So if you missed it, you can catch the repeat or the restream or whatever afterwards. We moved it up two hours, but we will be back normal time next week, 9pm. So come check us out. We'll be doing our normal thing on live stream. We do it every week and we have a lot of fun. So come check us out.

Come chat with us. Come hang out with us. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative acupunctuating pressurized

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