Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 578: Footprints

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Show Notes      

Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp and Adam and Eve. Go to BetterHelp.com slash COGDIS for 10% off your first month. And go to AdamandEve.com and use offer code GLORY. When you do, you'll get 50% off almost any one item, a bunch of free stuff, and free shipping. Thank you to the sponsors of this show. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence

to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 578 of Cognitive Dissonance. And Cecil. Yeah. I do briefly, Cecil, want to mention the fucking recount audit debacle

going down in Arizona. Because like we are at this point almost, no, we are literally to the day, five months from the election. We are five months from the election, from January 12th, from the inauguration. Not the election, from the inauguration. Yeah.

Sorry. The election was two months before it. Yeah. So we're seven months from the election. We are five months from the inauguration. And there are still fucking Yahoo's cyber ninjas who are in Arizona performing an audit with no audit experience for vote for, for auditing votes and no idea how to recover data from dispersed data. That is a cross drives as a name for it.

I forget what it is. So did you see the, like the tweet where like, Oh, these votes are lost. Then they're like, they're not lost. You just don't know how to look for them.

Cyber ninjas. They're're like, they're not lost, you just don't know how to look for them. Cyber ninjas. They're just like, they're fucking wasting all of this time performing this massive audit. And what I love is that they're doing that at the same time that their own Republican leadership is saying, I don't know why we're still talking about the election. It's time to move past the election. How much more gas lit could's crazy right now by these

narratives they have whipped and and there was there was no way of getting around this they whipped those people up into too much of a frenzy to just let this go cold turkey they have to there's there this is this fucking uh audit that they have is the Nicorette gum that you need to sort of wean them off of their conspiracy theory. You have to give them some concessions. This is the, you know, I'm only going to smoke two cigarettes today type of thing that they're going to need in order to come down a little bit from their hype train that had been running nonstop with no breaks until they had an insurrection and so now they have to somehow try to appease them but at the same time recognize reality and it's it's they're having a very hard time doing both those things because you cannot appease those people with reality they are not appeased by

reality at all so if you tell them something is real they will not believe you and then they will call you a liar and a shill and a whatever and they are trying to hold that back because they want their fucking votes even if they don't represent any of their values anymore. Brother, I knew we were in trouble. Four years ago, there was this moment, and we've talked about it before, but it's that moment where you're like, it was this national narrative, cultural moment that happened four years ago that was like watching you slam your own keys in the car and knowing it was going to happen and being helpless to do it. And that was when Sean Spicer stood up and talked about living in a post-truth world. Yeah. I mean, he talked about alternative facts. As soon as he mentioned the idea of alternative facts, and you and I, we

talked about it. It was like, it was such an absurd idea that the whole world kind of exploded into, into like disbelief and ridicule at the idea of alternative facts. And it, we fast forward four and a half years later, and that is the reality of our everyday now. The reality in four and a half years, the idea of a objective reality and an objective history and a knowable series of truths about the happenings of the world, that idea is quaint. That idea is so fucking quaint,

it fucking raises a barn with the Amish. Like that idea churns its own butter. It quilts on the weekends. That idea scrapbooks on Saturday. That idea has five cats that snuggle with it in bed. So I just wanted to recognize the fucking atrocity of this audit going down in Arizona and the amazing whiplash that has to be taking place. Because they started it, Cecil.

They started that audit long enough ago that they were still trying to drive that narrative as part of the problem. Right. And now that's no longer politically valuable to the GOP to drive the stolen election narrative. They're trying to move past that because they want to move past the January 6th commission. So they can't, you can't have your cake and eat it too. So they're in this, they're in this unenviable position of having to

finish this thing they started that tells a story that they're trying to pretend they no longer want to tell. It's amazing. It's a disaster. But the problem is that the other problem though, is that nothing ever bad is going to happen to them about it. Right. We're, you know, we'll probably talk on the stream tonight about the nine, the, the, the nine 11 commission, January 6th commission. We're going to probably talk about it on the stream tonight, but the idea that, that the one idea that you're going to, you're going to glean from that is that nothing bad is ever really going to happen to them because of this. Like there can be a commission. There can be a, they can have a fucking three ring circus with a fucking elephant in the middle of

it. It doesn't fucking matter. Like nothing's going to happen. No one's going to pay any attention to it. And it's going to literally wash off of them. And no, there's not going to be any, like, nothing's going to come of it, man. It's just going to, it'll come out in the end of the world. There'll be a commission. They'll say, these are the facts. And then there will be a whole group of people who just say, no, they're not. Yep. Yep. It really, it genuinely won't matter because we don't hold the powerful to account. Yeah. So there's, there's account yeah so there's there's that i mean there's a powerful account absolutely there are no political consequences for being

untruthful anymore yeah in fact being like if you are not truthful in a way that matches the series of untruths that your side wants to hear, that's an advantage now. Right. That's just like, but we've all, we've gotten to this weird place where it's like, well, you don't have to say true things. You have to say marketable things. You have to say things that like

we can sell to a demographic. And that is more important than recognizing the reality of the problems that we have and attempting to reach solutions with them. It's crazy, brother. Yeah. It's crazy. Fools, you challenge me with trickery and i don't believe in magic onward

so this first story comes from the raw story fox host says vaccinating children is disgusting and suggests it will be a 2022 GOP issue. So this is Fox personality, Laura Ingram. And I want to read to you what she said about mandating the masking of children. She said, mandating the masking of children, though, that is going to go down as a very dark chapter for the Democrats and the public health experts who advocated it. And I read that, Cecil, and I thought, first of all, the public health experts that advocate for things, they are the experts on public health, by the way. Maybe those are the ones we should listen to about whether a thing is valuable to do or not valuable to do. Not Fox hosts.

Yeah. Not like random TV personalities. Maybe. And listen to the rhetoric in which she uses to describe this. And you can tell that she is, you know, you can go watch this clip. This clip is on our, you know, there's, there's a two minutes of her doing this. And you can tell that the way in which she's talking about it is not trying to convince you that it's good or bad. She never wants the sites, any studies that talk about whether or not it's good or bad for children or anything, none of that stuff.

It's immediately evil. And she tries to demonize it because she's trying to pull your emotions. She's the, the arguments for logic. I don't know if you remember these. When masking first came out, people were saying, well, the viruses are so small. There's no way they get caught in there. It's stupid to wear a mask.

The other one was, you'll breathe your own germs and then you die. Like, how many- You'll breathe the germs your ex-husband. It's like they're already there. They're going to kill you. They'll go back in. They're real bad. They come out and then they come back in. They're exhale. They're already there. They're going to kill you. They'll go back in.

They're real bad. They come out and then they come back in. They're mad. They're real mad. They come back in. They're angry. They like push the door, the saloon doors to your body back open.

And then they're ready for a showdown. But seriously, like how many dumb fucking things did we hear? Oh, you can't get oxygen. Oh, your own germs are going to kill you. If you breathe your own exhale, you'll get sepsis or whatever. There's all these weird, dumb fucking things that people said. But Tom, when they were all debunked so easily, right? When everybody came out and said, yeah, the mask isn't protecting against, it's not sucking the viruses into your face.

The viruses get through, but what transmits the virus is the spray and that's what you're preventing. Then immediately they stopped that whole trying to argue logic. Now it's just evil. Now it's just, now they're just trying to demonize the mask wearing.

Yeah. Well, and I'm going to read this next quote from Laura Ingraham, where she kind of tries to talk about the demonization, but what she really talks about is that there is a lack of political utility. And that's the part that we're just saying the quiet part out loud so much lately that I have begun to think, Cecil, that I'm just living in the Truman Show. You're the Truman Show. I really am just inches away

from believing that all the time. It's not you. It's me. I'm in the Truman Show. I hate your show. Cancel this show. Democrats and their union buddies are hoping, though, that mask rules for kids will force parents to relent and get their kids vaccinated, even if they're uncomfortable

with that. But here's some advice for the left. Injecting children with an experimental vaccine for disease they rarely get sick from and don't efficiently spread is a non-starter for most parents. It's going to cost you votes and possibly help you lose control of Congress and the presidency. Frankly, it's disgusting. So that second half is the entirety. The second half is actually her conclusion is her thesis. Yeah. Right. And it's the difference between having an honest conversation about what keeps people safe and therefore makes for good public policy versus what is politically valuable or not valuable. What allows me to maintain control?

Yeah. And she says at the end of it, she says out loud and everything. And I just, I'm sort of like, I'm at a place where I'm gobsmacked that somebody could just come out and say, well, you know, I, I, I know I was making a big fucking fuss about public, about public health and whether this is good for kids. But the reality is, you know, this is about politics, power and control. And then we hear that and we aren't throwing that person to the wolves for, cause there's nothing that matters anymore. that person to the wolves for.

Yeah. Because there's nothing that matters anymore. Right. Well, it isn't weird that the mask is the hill people die on. It just feels

such a strange thing. Super weird, bro. Super weird. Especially when it comes to kids because kids, you know, little babies and, you know,

kids that are in their toddler stage, it's hard just keeping clothes on kids, right? Because kids just shed clothes. They just shed. Like, I don't have kids myself,

but I've been over at somebody's house a couple of times where you're just having dinner with somebody and their kid will walk out buck ass naked. Like the kid will just be like, I'm fucking naked now. It's naked time. And they'll be like, and the parents are embarrassed. They're, oh my gosh, I can't believe that they have to go grab the kid. And then they throw clothes on the kid because you're trying to socialize the kid to say, this is how we respect other people, right? You are wearing these clothes

so that you don't embarrass other people with your body, right? That's why we wear clothes. That's why we all walk around in clothes so that other people don't feel weird about being around us and our nakedness. And so that's why we do it. And human beings, there's all kinds of required clothes in the world, man.

All kinds. Go try to buy a pack of cigarettes without a pair of underwear pants on at the grocery store or whatever. Go walk in and see what happens. I guarantee you're leaving in handcuffs. You know, so, you know, there's rules on clothes already.

We have plenty of rules on clothes. We follow these rules all the time. And, you know, the fact is, is that little kids, we teach them how to do this anyway with other clothes. This isn't a big deal for them. Yeah. You know, it's so weird because I was just thinking when you said that, that maybe the pandemic would have gone much better if the required clothing coincided somehow with our American prudishness about the human body, you know? And then I thought, I don't think so though, because we're both prudish about the, because then I immediately thought, well, it doesn't work for condoms, right? Which is a particle of clothing you wear just to have sex to avoid spreading disease.

But the right is still like, no, don't wear that. Don't wear a condom. Don't wear a mask. Condoms mean that you're allowed to fuck. Masks mean that you're like, what are you fucking people? Like what? I can't with these fucking people. Yeah.

I can't understand your world. They probably, they don't even want people to know that condoms exist, let alone argue against them. They don't even, they're just like, those are the unmentionables. We don't even talk about that. Are you kidding me? There's no way we're ever going to bring up a condom in conversation. Right? Yeah.

Don't you think that's super, like, it's super weird that like the inherent sort of like puritanical body shaming prudishness of the right. And they're like fear of sex. You think they'd be the first people to be like, yeah, absolutely. Wear condoms, more stuff to cover your dick all the time. Always be covering your dick. 100% of the time,

put a condom on it. And then like, like a fucking suit of armor over your car. But no, they're like super fucking weird about everything. That fucking, the fucking right can't get it right at all. The mass thing blows me away.

The idea that there is such a push against mass blows me away. But it is, it's so funny because all you need to do is look at all these people on the right and you say, you're literally getting your marching orders from one person essentially, from Trump. You're say, you're literally getting your marching orders from one person,

essentially, from Trump. You're literally, you're such sycophants. You're all such weird worshipers that you'll follow one guy's advice on whether or not you should wear, because he initially came out and was like, no, we probably shouldn't wear masks. And then he kind of went back

on it, but then he didn't, and he never was forceful about it. Never ever was forceful about it. Even when he got the Rona, like the first thing he did was he stood on his fucking balcony and, you know, like defiantly took his own mask off. And he did his like weird car chauffeur tour without his mask on in a closed car

full of Secret Service people. Like that guy's been, like he feeds the cultural fire all the time. That was the game. The game wasn't that he had a strong stance on any one thing. The game was to keep the cultural fires stoked all the time. And the result is that we failed to control a pandemic set to easy mode. This is a pandemic set on easy mode. Yep. This is a pandemic set on easy mode. We're playing the tutorial of a pandemic. There are so many other diseases

which are massively more contagious. Like the R0 value of coronavirus is around three, give or take. And I know there's still some data that kind of like moves that needle back and forth. But a lot of the stuff I read is it's around three. Man, there are diseases where the R-naught is 18. And imagine if you had a disease where the R-naught was 18 and it would have the same lethality as coronavirus. Or imagine if the R-naught was three like coronavirus, but it had lethality of say smallpox, which is 30% instead of,

you know, 2%, 3%. Guaranteed, they'd be likening it to the flu. Guaranteed. Yeah. Guaranteed. Would we wear a mask, though? I don't even know if we'd wear a mask then. Hi, what a cute boy. Interested in my body, aren't you? Not interested not interested oh you're into that i like girls but now it's about justice this story comes in the new york times the pandemic created a child care crisis and mothers bore the burden so this was i thought this was a really interesting article and the way that it sort of begins is it discusses the incredible amount of progress that women made educationally, socially, and in the workplace from, you know, really the 1970s forward. And up until the moment that the pandemic struck, there were more women, at the moment the pandemic struck, I should say, there were more women in the workforce than there were men. Women, young women were obtaining more degrees and more advanced degrees than men.

This was a cultural watershed moment where women as a demographic of 51% of the population were really beginning to come into what should have been real power and what could have been real generational power, right? And the pandemic absolutely crushed that. And one of the statistics from this that just reached out and grabbed me, Cecil, was that in terms of women being back at their place of employment, the pandemic set us back to 1986 levels of employment for women. And that's because women bear socially the vast burden of childcare.

Yeah, raising children, yeah. And I thought about this too, that about one in four households are single parent households. It's like 24% are single parent households. And the bulk of those single parent households are single mother households. So it's not evenly distributed, single dad, single moms. It's vast majority of those are single moms.

When the pandemic hit and it sent everybody's children home and school was no longer available and childcare centers shut down, women were set back 40 years, man. Damn near 40 years worth of progress. 51% of the population has been set back now 41 years in terms of their employment. If we don't get a handle on this, the amount of brain drain that that will produce in our society, it is impossible to overestimate. Yeah. And hopefully some of the things that are in the pipeline now, we're talking about like universal pre-K and things like that to try to help that. I don't know what that does during the pandemic, right? So I don't know how universal pre-K

even operates during the pandemic. I don't know how even daycare is operated during the pandemic. I don't know. But, you know, we still sort of try to think about things outside of the pandemic, right? We started to think about how life might be if there wasn't one or if things change.

And universal pre-K changes so much for the working household, for the people that can't get ahead because there's so much money we spend on childcare someplace. some figure was it 30% of our income is being sent of people's incomes are being spent on childcare. That's an immense amount of money, especially when you consider, throw into that what they say

you should be paying for your housing, which is 40% of your income. Throw in it, that's 70% of your income. All the rest of it, everything else is now 30%. That's 30% of what you have to feed yourself, how you live the rest of your life, how the rest of your life goes

is based on now what? 30% of your salary. And that's an insane amount of money that we spend on that kind of thing. And if we just, if everybody just chipped in, that just goes away. And it just,

that's a thing that we are handled. That's handled now. That is just handled. Yeah. And the consequences of not doing that are paid by everybody. Keeping an enormous number of women out of the workforce. I was thinking about this. One of the other effects that it will have is it will begin to renormalize men being the dominant force in the workforce. Women every day in the workforce in many, many fields have to struggle uphill, constantly struggle uphill because it is only relatively recently that women in the workforce and in equal numbers to men, and especially in powerful positions, has begun

to even out. Well, when you pull an enormous number of women out of the workforce, now what you've done is you've renormalized, you've created a new cultural norm. And it's a regressive cultural norm. And so less women in the workplace means less women in certain fields, less women in positions of power and authority. And then that has a cyclical effect, right? It means like, oh, well, we will be lucky if we avoid the detrimental effects of that

cultural impact, not to mention the economic impact and then the brain drain of pulling this incredibly well-educated. It's the, like, comparatively, it's more educated. More education is on that other side, yeah. We're pulling that group out and saying, stay home. Yeah. That is not to anyone's advantage when we have these massive problems to solve. And an enormous number of women are getting degrees in fields that are like STEM fields, man. And, like, that's where a lot of the solutions we need right now are coming from. And an enormous number of women are getting degrees in fields that are like STEM fields, man.

And that's where a lot of the solutions we need right now are coming from. It's just like this has got to get fixed. And the child care piece has less to do with children and everything to do with gender equity. It's so important. There's a quote from here. It says, quote, men who are out of work are still presumed to be workers, but women aren't because we frame work for women as a choice. And that was Sarah Damski, a sociologist from Penn State. And that is so, that's exactly it. That's exactly the problem is that, you know, the more we reinforce this, the more this just becomes the cultural norm. And then you never, like you said, you never break out of that cycle. And I was thinking about the tolls that happen

with the coronavirus. We think about the death toll. We think about that long COVID. We think about all these bad things that happen. People lost their places to live. They lost their jobs. But think about the entrepreneurial toll. Yeah.

There's stories in this article about these women entrepreneurs. They went out of their way to create a business. They started a business. They were, as George W. Bush would say, job creators. They went out and they created a business. And now that business fell apart because they created it in a year that just so happened that they created a business. And now that business fell apart because they created it in a year

that just so happened that there was a pandemic. And a lot of the women are in a service industry, right? A lot of women are disproportionately in an industry that was shut down by our society. And so they were the ones who lost, more women lost their jobs than men because of that. And so it's just, it's a double whammy, right? It's not only they have to deal with childcare,

but then they're also in fields that are getting shut down and they're getting laid off more frequently. It's a bad situation and it needs to be rectified. You're absolutely right. Because if you don't, then forever from now on, it's always, you know, you got another 40 years to crime yourself back up to get back to where we were a year ago.

Yep. It literally will take a generation or longer just to regain that status quo. That quote, Cecil, I thought of something when you read that quote. And it's, we framework for women as a choice. for women as a choice. And I do want to say, that's a bullshit framework because numerically, almost all households

with children specifically are double income households. The days when a single earner can provide for a family, those days are gone, man. The world's become too expensive. That's a very, like statistically, that's rare.

It is much, much more common that both people work. So if the economic reality of the society that we've created means that both parties have to work in order to put food on the table and keep the fucking lights on because fucking wage inequality and wage stagnation has not allowed people to keep up a standard of living unless everybody fucking hustles a thousand hours a week. Like we are, we are painting women into a corner where they're damned if they do. And they're damned if they don't like if women, if work for women is a choice and then, but it's not actually a choice, but then they can't work because they're forced to stay home. That's a, that's a fucking horrible position

to put women into. It's a horrible position. And it's a bullshit position because it's not reflective of actual choice, not reflective of actual economic reality. Ian, quick, come here. What is it? Is that a portal?

There's no time. We have to go now. Where are we going? No time. Go. Gary? Yes, Ian? Where are we?

You don't recognize it? Well, it's pitch black. Well, you have to open your eyes, Ian. Oh. Wait, are we in a vent? Yep. Why? Because to really understand our listeners' needs and desires, we need to get into a tight space.

What? Also, that's kind of phallocentric. Yeah, like we have a dick and the vent is a vagina. Right. Or a butt. Sure. Or a mouth. Oh, okay. And if you like to be in and out of tight spaces with your vagina, penis, butt, or mouth, or any other combination, go to AdamandEve.com and use code GLORY. Here, read the ad in.

Uh, right. And when you do, you'll get 50% off almost any one item. A free gift for you, a gift for them, a gift for both or more of you, depending on how many vents you'd like to enter or exit. Or be. The free shipping, man. Right, right. And you get free

shipping delivered discreetly to your door. Do you hear that? Hmm? I hear someone. It's nothing. Thousands of products, man. Oh, right. Adam and Eve has thousands of products to choose from. You can shop from anywhere. Even a vent. There's definitely

someone else in this vent. AdamandEve.com, Ian. That's AdamandEve.com. Use code GLORY. Wait, where are we? And why are you wearing a Mission Impossible harness? I just gotta drop in and get something. Wait, is that Cecil's kitchen? Are we in Cecil's house?

Maybe. Who else is in this vent? Oh, some other show. What the fuck, Gary? You know you can't be within 500 feet of Cecil. That's not how that works. No, Gary, you're lactose intolerant! Oh, crap, we just broke Cecil's kitchen.

How are we going to get out of here? No, seriously, Gary, how are we going to get out of here? By going to adamandeve.com and use code glory? No, seriously, Gary, how are we going to get out of here? I don't know. You're the one writing the script. What? Uh, Google Gary Teleport. Is that the TARDIS? No, it's a TARDAT, which is different and non-copyright infringing.

This ad is off the rails. Told you. Oh, no. The TARDAT only runs on promo code uses, which means you have to go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY or we'll be stuck here forever. You're talking to the audience right now, right? Yes. So this ad will end without any resolution? Probably, unless people go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY.

Oh, God. Tom can smell the mac and cheese. We gotta get out of here. Christ, please. Go use code GLORY. He's coming. And if you want to be coming... No time. Run, God. Tom can smell the mac and cheese. We gotta get out of here. Jesus Christ, please. Go use code glory. He's coming. And if you want to be coming. No time. Run, Gary. What? Oh, my gosh. We're back. That was a close one. Oh, so frightening. This mac and cheese is good. Oh, we have another ad.

Oh, we do? Mm-hmm. From BetterHelp. Oh, you know what, Gary? I think I left the Oh, we have another ad. Oh, we do? Mm-hmm, from BetterHelp. Oh, you know what, Gary? I think I left the ad read in the car. Can you go get it? Oh, yeah, I'll be right back. Thanks, Gary.

Yeah. Okay, real quick, let's do this ad read, everybody. Hey, all right, we want to thank our newest sponsor, BetterHelp. BetterHelp is the largest online counseling platform worldwide. They make professional counseling available anytime, anywhere, through a computer, tablet, or smartphone. BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. They're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed.

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wasn't in the car. Ian, what are you doing? Uh, nothing. ASMR only fans stuff. Oh. Do you need me to get the mayonnaise? Um. Okay. I didn't ask to be photographed. What did you say? Your face was

asking. That's why I took the photo. So this story comes from the Friendly Atheist blog over at Patheos. I'm just going to go ahead and read this one because it's, wow. Victims say a church ministry promoted body shaming, fighting, cruelty, and more. For nearly a decade, Bethany Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana held a leadership program called 220i, a reference to a Bible verse all about living for Christ instead of for yourself, designed to train young men and women to become ministers or church leaders in the future. I like this part. It costs participants $5,000 that does not include food, travel, or lodging. We're in the wrong

industry. Cecil, what does it include? Yeah, I know shit. I can teach this. I can teach young men and women to become church leaders for five grand. Five grand? Five grand a person. That's a pop. That's a pop. You know it wasn't an

empty class. You know there's a whole group of people there. It's five grand a person that's a pop you know it wasn't an empty class you know there's a whole group of people there it's five grand a pop did you get 20 or 30 people in there and like brother you got yourself a stew oh 20 or 30 people five grand a pop yeah you make 150,000 dollars a year it's so much more money than i make. So much more. It's just like, what do you have to do? This is like a seminar. It's a fucking weekend seminar, and you made like way more than my salary. Like, what the fuck? I'm not saying I'd work every weekend.

Oh, Jesus, dude. I'd take every other weekend off. Could you imagine, though, like the amount of money that you could make off of? And it's, the thing is, is like, all you need to do is tap into those large Christian networks, though. Yep. And those people are so gullible, they'll drop five grand on you to tell them fucking,

and it's not even telling them stuff. Tom, what did they do to them? So, yeah. So still, what do you think that kind of training would include? Public speaking skills? Management classes? A deep analysis of the Bible? Not even close.

Okay, none of those things, by the way, none of those things are worth the $5,000. No, you could get all of that way cheaper. Yeah, you could get most of that except for the Bible verses on LinkedIn Learning. So you're fine. Dude, if you want to get fucking bougie about it, sign up for Masterclass.

You can get all that and learn to cook. And learn to cook as well. Learn to make bread from some bougie lady who's telling you how to make bread. Turns out Pastor Jonathan Stockstill led a program that encouraged gay bashing, fat shaming, sexism, racism, and a Christian version of fight club where the boys sometimes beat the shit out of each other. And this actually reminded me a little bit, Cecil, I think I told this story before, of my very first job that my dad got me a job when I was a young man at a car wash. And it was the worst fucking job. And like, they also had fights in the detail bay. So the detail bay was almost never used.

And so they would just organize fights in the detail bay. And sometimes you were just thrown into the detail bay to get into fights. And then they would like bet on who was going to win the fight. But you were like a little kid. you fight i was 15 i got thrown in there twice i was fucking 15 man i was i had a worker's permit they fucking threw they also like would just like fuck with you and like throw people into the wash itself jesus and like those big spinning like wool things what now would like smack them around you get these terrible like abrasions and bruises and shit. Because that shit is powerful.

Like it'll like, it'll rip shit off your car. It fucks you up. It was the worst. That sounds terrible. And it was still, and I was terrified to quit that job. I never quit that job because my dad got me the job. So I was scared to tell him it was a bad job. It's still better than this fucking Christian Fight Club.

For the listeners, he would not have approved of the fighting. No, he would have had my back all day. Yeah, none of that. My dad was a wonderful man. He would have had my back all day. I was just afraid of him. Like, I was afraid to say no to my dad because, like, I had so much respect for my dad.

And, like, my dad didn't brook a lot of argument so like if he said to do something you just did it instead of go to work you fucking go to work yeah you don't say but i don't like this job dad yeah you go to work that's what you did just do it so yeah so this guy set up basically the car wash out of this church. Like, that's the horror car wash I worked at. By day, the 220i interns took part in boot camp where they had to perform calisthenics, run, and sometimes dig trenches in the stifling

heat for hours in a field that was behind what was then the Stockhill family home on Oak Bend Drive. This is where Marjorie Taylor Greene got her start. She was doing burpees and digging holes and whatever she got all fucking hard

got all Christian and then came straight up so that sounds like a prison breakout movie seriously this sounds like they're going to tar the roof and share a beer and have a heartwarming moment they're going to chuck a guy off the edge of the roof holy shit Goumet Laurel who is now openly gay and have a heartwarming moment. They're going to chuck a guy off the edge of the roof.

Holy shit. Goumet Laurel, who is now openly gay, said male interns who were thought to be homosexual were targeted for torment. He recalled one day in particular when the interns were ordered into a pool

and made to tread water for hours as part of a workout. Some of the program's leaders zeroed in on a teenager who displayed less traditionally viewed masculine behaviors oh they would be calling him and i'm not going to say it and they were spraying water from a hose into his mouth while he was trying to tread water jesus christ what

like what the fuck is happening how do you send your kids to this thing how do you go back like i understand like i get it if you're you know you're sending your kids and your kids to this thing. How do you go back? Like, I understand, like, I get it if you're, you know, you're sending your kids and your kids don't have a say or whatever. But, I mean, how do you walk away from this experience still religious?

When you're getting the shit kicked out of you because you're religious, how do you walk away saying, no, that was good. That was, that was, I knew that or whatever. That's what Jesus wanted me to do.

Where's his footprints? Is Jesus holding me while I'm in the fucking water here? Yeah, right? That'd be perfect though because he can walk on water. So he just holds you. Oh, scoop you up.

Yeah. And there would only be no sets of footprints because you don't leave footprints in water. So there'd be no sets. He wouldn't see them. Well, the footprints in the sand

were on his way to the beach to get to the water. To get to the water to pick you up, to hold you, or else they could shoot water in your mouth like you're a fucking clown at the circus. Cecil, who do you have to be to do that? Like, who do you have

to be to look at somebody on the verge of drowning and be like, should probably spray him in the mouth with a hose. What is in your heart? Did you ever run into anybody though that you know for sure if there was no religion they would be a fucking murderer or in your heart? Did you ever run into anybody though that you know for sure if there was no religion, they would be a fucking murderer

or something? Have you ever run into anybody like that? No, I don't think so. I can't think of anybody like you. I talked to people in my life before and that subject has come up and there's a couple of guys that I met

that 100% would not, they would not follow rules if they didn't think there was some sort of cosmic punishment. Really? So for them, a religion might be good in a sense because it keeps them, but they're fucking psychopaths, right? So they're, these people are, these people are unhinged bad people. And the only thing that's keeping them in line is this, but then if some of those bad people might also get a job at the fucking church, and now they're abusing people in the Lord's name so they can get away with it and not face those consequences, but also still feel like they're doing the Lord's work.

Yeah, and satisfy Satisfy that part of them that likes to damage other people while at the same time still think that they're reinforcing and helping people. Man, it's fucking insane. Religion facilitates all that, right? So religion 100% facilitates that. Religion makes it all possible because it's the get on a culpability card. Yeah, and you wouldn't have this if there wasn't a religion because there's no promise so great as what religion offers. The reason why it, it, it, it exists is because we're, that we're motivated to believe it because it's such a great promise. I have 80 shitty years and an eternity that's fucking baller. That sounds amazing. That's a great trade. I'll take it.

And so the promise of religion is so great that people don't turn it down. Yeah, and the fear angle is also so good, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm gonna burn forever in a lake of fire or whatever your joy-filled religion tells you. Yeah, fear and reward are what keep people coming back. And that's why people don't just walk away from somebody shooting fucking water in their mouth while

they're trying to tread water for hours at a time. For hours. I don't think I could tread water, by the way, for hours, regardless of somebody who's spraying me with a hose. People underestimate the danger of drowning. Yeah. Like dramatically underestimate the danger of drowning. Yeah. Like, dramatically underestimate the danger of drowning. Yeah. And the speed at which things can go really fucking bad. Yeah. So, like, fucking with kids in the water? Fuck.

Awful. And then this part. There were two different fight nights at Danielle Ferguson, 31, who took part in the program from 2007 to 2008. One of them was for the guys and they really pumped it up i mean this is like the thing to do whether you wanted to fight or not two things about that sentence one is that one of the fight nights is for guys that means the other fight night is for the ladies yeah that's ladies they've got co-ed fight nights at your weird, here's how to be a minister church. And I would think Cecil that that would be not teaching you how to be a minister.

But I guess if you have to teach people how to belittle shame and like waterboard people, maybe fight night is part of the program. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's actually a good part of the curriculum. Maybe that's how you get shit. That's how you get your game face. How else, how else do you build these fucking psychopaths?

Holy shit. A lot of the time they would pit somebody who was like really small against somebody that was really big, just like a hyper toxic view of masculinity being important and a vital part of Christianity. And that's actually a huge part of this story, I think, Cecil, is the worst elements of toxic masculinity

are celebrated as virtues within an enormous amount of the Christian community. Yes, absolutely, 100%. Yeah, Christian churches are the truck nuts of society. Yes. That's what they are. Yep. Yeah, man. It's, it's God's guns and gays for a reason. Fucking A dude.

That like that whole idea of like the man is the, is the head of the household and like all of that, all of the, the sort of gender sexual power dynamics that are a part of Christian theology, all of them, all of them are toxic. Yeah. I can't think of any that aren't toxic. There is nothing like, there is nothing well considered and genuinely loving about any of the relationships and any of the relationships between men and men and men and women that it's a, it's a fucking nightmare across the board. It's a nightmare across the board. The more Christian, the more, the more those values are rejected. I mean, think about just

the beatings of children that you find in the ultra Christian homes where they just beat children. They just beat them because they, they think that that Bible got it right, and they think you should be kicking the shit out of your kids. And that's a thing that they do. They do that all the time. They kill these kids. They don't just kick the shit out of these kids. They kill these kids, right? They murder these children. They make them do, you know, this little thing that we're talking about was a story I was reading about a woman who adopted a bum, a woman and a man who adopted a bunch of kids. Uh, and they wound up having these kids that, uh, that were, uh, they, they were, you know, these adopted children and they started following this guy, this to train up a child guy who says you should beat your kid with this flexible PVC tubing. And he's like a fucking psychopath. And he teaches everybody else how you should like

kick the shit out of your kids. And they like had these kids kneeling on pipes and sitting outside and in the, you know, in the cold weather, the kid died of malnutrition because they just didn't feed him because they, I mean, this is horrible live horrible short lives beat to death hurt and it's because of the religion the religion is poisoning these parents thinking that's what's that's what's needed to make this child strong right that's what all those that's what all those hillbilly christian uh tough guy that that that you know treat their children like shit and like think that fighting is what a guy does and all that stuff. That's what they do because they think that's going to help the child. They think that that is a bonus and that's going to make the child

into a stronger person and is going to be, because I don't think that they go out wanting, willfully wanting to damage their child. They think that's good for them. Yep. Yeah. Because they think that that's going to yield the result that they want, which is an emphasis, like the whole, like particularly American Christian ethos is built on a reverence for male strength. Yes. And male stoicism and strength through stoicism. And like that is horrible. Like there is, there is a mountain of evidence. There is mountain of evidence that that yields terrible

results. That, that trauma simply begets trauma. That trauma does not beget strength. And there is, there is absolutely no data to back up things like corporal punishment. And corporal punishment is still allowed. Weirdly, corporal punishment is still allowed, I think, in 11 states in America, in regular public schools, in a regular, like, you know, your local elementary school. Sure. Yeah. And it's all red states, man. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's always red states. It's always states that place a greater emphasis on religion than science. A greater emphasis on faith than in data, than in what's true, than in reality. Yep. Chris, this house is too dangerous. There are terrible demons out. This story is really interesting.

It's from CNN. When a black homeowner concealed her race, her home's appraisal value doubled. And this is really a story that highlights what systemic racism looks like in housing, right? And how incredibly prevalent it is and really how systemic racism is actually built into our economic and financial systems themselves. There is nothing more systemic than our economic and financial systems and nothing that plays out more than

this. This is a woman who had her house appraised a total of three times. The first two times she got her house appraised, the appraisal came back and it was much, much, much lower than what she anticipated that appraisal would come back at. It's like 100 and 120. Those were the two, like 110, 120. And so she had a hunch that perhaps race was playing a role in the result of her appraisal. And so she went through her house and she took down artwork that might be reflective of her African-American heritage. She took down pictures of her family. And then she had a white woman that was a friend of hers

attend, like open the door for the appraiser. The appraiser, a third guy shows up, appraises the house. It appraises for twice the value. Yep, $220,000. Twice the value of the highest of the first two appraisals. Like $257,000. Oh, it was even more than that. Yep, $220,000. Twice the value of the highest of the first two appraisals. Like $257,000.

Oh, it was even more than that. Okay, yeah. So it was an enormous, enormous, enormous difference. And the value, like here's something, like appraisals are incredibly important. They're incredibly important, not just if you want to sell your house, but they're incredibly important when you want to get a loan on your house.

So whether or not you have equity in your home that allows you to leverage really low interest rates to reduce the amount of your monthly payments, whether you want to leverage equity in your home for home improvements or to send a kid to college or debt consolidation or other things, getting an accurate appraisal of your home is fucking essential. If you can't get an accurate appraisal of your home, if your home is consistently undervalued because of your race, it doesn't just mean that you're not going to be able to sell your house for as much as it's worth, although it does mean that, but it also means that while you're living in your home,

you are unable to take part in the same economy that I get to take part in. Because as a homeowner now, I look and I say, oh, rates are down. Well, great. I'll refinance my house and I'll save a few hundred dollars a month. And then I can use that few hundred dollars a month

to do other things. But if you can't get an appraisal on your house that's accurate, you may not be able to capitalize that's accurate, you may not be able to capitalize on those rates, or you may not be able to reach into your home's equity and leverage that equity to open a business or to send a kid to college. And what does that mean? That means that your kid doesn't maybe go to college. The cycle of poverty is built into this systemic racism. And the's, the woman suspected this

because the way that they presented the first appraisal, they said that the traditional black neighborhood just to the north of her, she lives in a traditional black neighborhood, and the traditional black neighborhood just to the north of her had better construction. So that's why they gave her less money. But that traditional black neighborhood

has been since gentrified, which is sort of saying to her that they're saying, it's better across the tracks. It's better over there. And that's why you're getting a lower price. You're getting a lower price. They'll use construction,

but what they're really saying is black people live around here and they don't live around there. And that's why you're getting less money. But when it became a white person who was supposedly living there, that changed the way in which they looked at it. And she's like suing. She's like got a case now, which she should have absolutely have. But it's a shocking thing to see this woman. But it's a shocking thing to see this woman. And one of the things she says,

which I just wanted to quote here because it's just so sad. She says, but when you think about the fact that I had to remove myself from my home in order for my home to have value, that's the part that really hurts. It felt dehumanizing. It felt demoralizing.

She was bringing the price of her house down on just a woman who has darker skin than someone else was bringing the price of her house. It's the same fucking house, man. It's the same fucking house. It's that they don't change. And this poor woman, this poor fucking woman is the only factor in those two different things. It's it. It's so fucking egregious. I would be furious if this was me. Dude. And there is a, this highlights that an enormous amount of what we think of as the objective nature of economics is subjective. Yep. Yep. I mean, like there is a bullshit pretense that the economy and numbers and data, that it's subjective, that it's objective, that it's, well, a house is worth what a house

and the values are worth this. And, you know, bullshit. It's fucking bullshit. Because when it comes down to it, it's people that make most of these decisions. People do the decisions. Yep. So when people make decisions and appraising is an art, it's not a fucking science. Choosing comps, all that stuff. That's why if you get three appraisers, you get three different fucking

numbers, right? That's going to happen every single fucking time. In this particular instance, the first set of people who came in didn't choose comps from that gentrified area. They didn't do that. They had to try to find comps in the area if they could, but they couldn't find any. And the problem was, is because this is a traditionally black neighborhood where these people get their houses are handed down as part of the sort of inheritance to other people. These houses don't change hands like that. They don't sell like that, like they would in other neighborhoods, right? Because that part of their, that inheritance is part of their wealth. And so it just doesn't change hands like it normally does in other places. And that's fine.

But the problem is, is that they're picking comps from different places that specifically are lower end comps. And they're not choosing it from the gentrified area with the same kind of conscious, the same fucking area, man. It's right across the way. You know, and something you said, it occurred to me that there is very likely a differing view of how we look at our homes culturally, how we look at our homes, depending on where you live, what your home means to you, what your home means to your family. But also it matters in terms of whether your home is viewed as a financial asset or whether your home is viewed as a place to live, like in a way to be a part of a community. And I think that as you sort of move up the economic scale of things, very often your home becomes one of your assets because you have other assets,

because you have an entire financial world that you can move within and move assets and trade liabilities and gain access to capital and credit. And that is, I think a lot of people who have always had access to those things and have always thought of property as an asset and credit as something attainable and leverageable. They're living in a fucking entirely different world than people who have a lot less, right? People who have and have historically and generationally not had access to credit

because of redlining, not had access to many of the same financial and economic opportunities, of course, your home is a place to live. Passing that on generationally, it's not necessarily going to be the same financial asset to leverage. So when we don't understand and recognize and give people the same access to credit and give people the same access to their own financial assets, we ground people in exactly the same economic circumstances that they have always been in. And that has nothing to do with the power that they're able to exert on their own fucking bootstraps. That has everything to do with a system

that disadvantages and disenfranchises those people. Yeah, those people, they just don't have that same leverage. They can't do it. Right. But there's all those people in the world that look at economics and say it's an even playing field.

It's even. But like you said, it's because it's controlled by people and those people have biases. And they walk in biased. And they make decisions that are biased. And that's what happened in this case. These are biased decisions that you can't opt out of. You can't check out of this system. There's no other way for that person to, like you said, revalue their home so that they can get a mortgage. They have to get an appraisal. That's a system that they have to be involved in. And if it's biased, then they're going to be the victims of that bias over and over and over again. Not just them, their whole group of people is going to be a victim of that bias. It's you.

Hi. Hi there. The emperor and his three sons, dead right under the noses of the imperial god. It's a disgrace. Interesting. See you. Goodbye. How are you?

Been better. How about you? Great. Good for you. Good day. This story comes from Rolling Stone. Katie Porter delivers another knockout punch. This is Katie Porter. She is a California representative and she is grilling Richard Gonzalez. Richard Gonzalez is the CEO of the pharmaceutical company Abbvi. I may be mispronouncing that. And she's talking to him about the unbelievable criminal rise in prices of their flagship drug Humira that's used to treat autoimmune disorders like Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis. That drug now costs $77,000 for a year's worth of that medicine.

Are you kidding? $47,000 for a year's worth of that medicine. Are you kidding? Which represents a 470% increase from what that drug cost just 18 years ago in 2003. So since 2003, that cost of that drug has gone up 470% and now costs 77 grand. Katie Porter is not fucking having his shit all right let's play katie and then we'll talk about it mr gonzalez how much did you spend did abby spend on litigation and settlements from 2013 to 2018 uh i don't have that number off and we'll be happy to give it to you okay 1.6 billion dollars 2.45 billion on r&d 1.6 billion, $2.45 billion on R&D, $1.6 billion in litigation and settlements.

What about marketing and advertising? How much does AbbVie spend on that? Well, marketing and advertising, we spend about $4 billion a year. Yep, $4.71 billion. How about executive compensation, 2013 to 2018? 2013 to 2018, it's probably on average about $60 million a year. Try 334 on per size. Now, how much did AbbVie spend on stock buybacks and shareholders, stock buybacks and dividends

to enrich your shareholders from 2013 to 2018? Well, stock buybacks, if you actually look at just poor stock buybacks, it would be about $13 billion. Stock buybacks and dividends is the question, sir. Dividends, and I have to come back with a number for that over that period of time. $50 billion. So, Mr. Gonzalez, you're spending all this money to make sure you make money rather than spending money to invest in, develop drugs, and help patients with affordable, life-saving drugs. You lie to patients when you charge them twice as much for an unimproved drug, and then you lie to policymakers when you tell us that R&D justifies those price increases. The big pharma fairy tale is one of groundbreaking R&D that justifies astronomical prices. But the pharma reality is that you spend most of your company's money making money for yourself and your shareholders.

And the fact that you're not honest about this with patients and with policy makers that you're feeding us lies that we must pay astronomical prices to get innovative treatments is false. The American people, the patients deserve so much better. I yield back. That is a fucking mic drop moment though. It's so good to watch. It's so good to see somebody

put their feet to the fire. I had an old boss. My old boss used to say he was into a mission, finding out missions of organizations. So they would call him up. He was a consultant. And they would say, help us write a mission

statement. Help us find our values. Help us figure out what our values are as a company. Help us write this mission statement. Help us write, you know, find our values. Help us figure out what our values are as a company. Help us write this mission statement. And he would say to them, I don't want to see the drafts to your mission statement. Show me your budget. I can tell what you do as a company and what you value as a company if I look at your budget. That's all I need to do. I don't need to look at anything else. I don't need to look at your paperwork. I don't need to look at your high ideals. All I need to do is look at your budget. Look at their budget. That's all I need to do. I don't need to look at anything else. I don't need to look at your paperwork. I don't need to look at your high ideals. All I need to do is look at your budget. Look at their budget. This is what she's doing. She's looking at their budget and you can tell

their values. Their values are make a lot of fucking money, man. That's my value. My value is make a lot of goddamn money. Holy shit. We made a lot of goddamn money. Let's shit the money out in a t-shirt gun at the fucking dividends dividends party end of year dividends party for our stockholders and we'll fucking shit money out at them and we're going to have a fucking blast and then we're going to keep up fucking upselling the same unimproved medication

and lie about R&D that's your budget you fucking it's right there yeah the thing is like an enormous enormous number of people like regular people, have bought this myth. I have heard so many times regular people defend pharmaceutical companies raping the American public with these insane prices by saying, well, they got to do that because they're spending so much on R&D. It costs a lot to develop these new drugs. It doesn't.

It doesn't cost a lot to develop these new drugs by comparison to the amount of money that they're spending on other things. And that's the only thing that matters about a company, right? Or think about your household budget. Like if you spend 80% of your money on your car, your car costs a lot. It doesn't matter what your car actually dollar value wise costs. I don't need to know the amount of your monthly check to pay off your car. If you tell me 80% of your budget is on your car, I can tell you you're spending a lot on your car.

The point being that like what you like to your point, like what you spend most of your money on is what's most important to you. But like what you spend the least amount of your money on, like you can't ever fucking sell that back to the people about you got to be broke. You got to fucking choose you fucking people out there. you got to choose between this life-saving or life-altering medication or paying your rent. Because, hey, otherwise we're not going to be able to make the next big blockbuster drug. It's bullshit. Yes, you can make the next big blockbuster drug. You just won't make the next big blockbuster drug. You just won't do those other things. You just won't do those other things. Because if $334 million is going to executive pay, and how many billions of dollars is going toward, in this example from Katie Porter, is going toward stock buybacks and dividends?

$50 billion. $50 billion. And a fraction, a tiny, tiny fraction is going to R&D? Yeah. billion and a fraction, a tiny, tiny fraction is going to R&D. The R&D piece, that's a fucking shell game, man. That's this distraction. You're not in it for the fucking R&D. It's 100% distraction. And the thing is, is like that R&D may yield something. There is a possibility that R&D yields something, but they aren't banking on that. They're not banking on it because they're literally not banking on it. Because you could see that They're not banking on it because they're literally not banking on it because you could see that they're not banking on it, man.

What they're banking on way more is marketing. Like their marketing budget dwarfs, it dwarfs their R&D budget. It dwarfs it because what they want to do

is market their drugs. They want you to buy their drugs. And when they market them effectively, they get a great return on that marketing investment. It's not their R&D investment.

That might eventually yield something, sure. And they do have to put some money into that. But how much of that is guilt money? You know, how much of that is, oh, money we've got to spend on this. But, you know, what I'd love to see as a follow-up is how many new drugs came out of that company

since the time of this, you know of this drug's been shooting up. How many new drugs come out? How are you turning that over time and time and time again? Chances are they're probably not. She says it's unimproved. Yeah, well, a lot of pharmaceutical companies, not the enormous giant pharmaceutical companies, they make one drug, one or two drugs. Then they spend the rest of their time

protecting their patents and advertising. We're like, we're one of the, I think we're one of the only, or one of the only countries that allows drug companies to advertise their drugs. And they pretend they're not advertisements. They pretend they're like informational, but they're fucking commercials, you know? And that plays into the rest of the

fucking garbage medical system we have where I watch these commercials and then I go to my doctor and I'm like, I'm supposed to ask you about Jumbo Jumbo or whatever the fucking new drug is. Preventa or whatever. Right. And then the fucking doctor's like in a rush and is like, oh, you know, the patient wants that and I should write a script for it because otherwise I'll get a bad fucking patient review and I got to move on in the next 15 minutes to the next fucking patient. Anyhow, like our whole system feeds on itself to do nothing other than to make money, to push money up to the top. And the other piece that like, I think, don't pay enough attention to is you already bought these drugs because the NIH and the university system, which is publicly funded,

does the vast amount of the foundational research for free and then hands that off to big pharma. They give that research away, the foundational research that leads to the bulk of the breakthroughs. Big Pharma doesn't say like, well, there's a problem. Let's start from scratch. Big Pharma is handed foundational research from the university system and from the NIH, all of which is publicly funded. You're already paying for that with your taxpayer dollars. And they take it not from the starting line to the finish line.

They take it from the three-quarter point to the finish line. They put the finishing touches on it. And then most of what they do is sell it. They're a sales company. Yep. They market it to you. And tell me somehow how fucking, how a national healthcare system doesn't fix some of these fucking problems.

I know. Tell me how, all that billions of dollars that they're just shitting out and fucking stocks and fucking dividends and all this money that they're just throwing at executive pay,

all that fucking money. Think of that. Think of that money. That's just money that just some rando made. He's just some fucking really rich dude who sits in an office.

The executive pay is $300 billion, man. Everyone in their marketing department makes $4 billion. I mean, we have pharmaceutical sales reps. Yeah. Like we have an entire system which is based on moving money around rather than improving healthcare outcomes. It's terrible. It's a terrible system. It's always been terrible, but somehow we lie to ourselves and tell us how great it is. And we lie to ourselves. That R&D myth,

man, that is a very pernicious myth. That is a very, very pernicious myth. I'm happy she blew it out of the water. I am too. So we want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons, Tim, Audrey, Catherine, Jason.

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You can help pay someone's salary out there. Go to dissonancepod.com or you can go to patreon.com slash DissonancePod and you can donate on a per episode basis. We got some messages this last week. Someone commented on a post, I think it was probably a couple weeks ago when we talked about the death penalty.

Morier says, my reckoning on the death penalty is that if someone murders my mom, we should kill that person as many times as it takes to resurrect my mom. No more. My math seems to come up with, come up with this zero times. Yeah, that's right. Should do it zero times. Exactly. I, you know, it's so true. Cause it's like, nobody ever gets their loved one back, man. Nobody ever walks away from that better off. Somebody just died in that equation and like murdering

murderers is the only time that our justice system ever goes straight one-to-one eye for an eye like we don't rape rapists or steal shit from burglars but like we kill killers it's so it's like the only time we're like i will do what you did yeah this time that'll make it right we're gonna be unoriginal with our punishment we're gonna do what you did. Yeah. And that'll make it right. We're going to be unoriginal with our punishment. We're going to do what you did. Yeah, just, it's like cheating off fucking like the Justice Department's homework.

Tom, we got a message from the Unapologetics podcast. And my girlfriend and I live in Florida and we were driving to Savannah to help her family. My girlfriend, who happens to be a person of color, needed to stop at a gas station

to use the bathroom. And right then we came around the bend and we both saw the massive Southern flag. And she said, actually, you know, I think I can hold it until we are past the panhandle. Right? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

I did hear though that they took that Florida flag down. So I heard that they took that flag down. Now this looks like it says you're in Southern Florida. The one that I saw was near the panhandle. It was near the top. So it was like right as I came in from Georgia. But they did, from what I heard, somebody said that they took that flag down

or like didn't make it through a hurricane or something. Got a message from Chris and Chris sent us a TikTok. We're going to post on this week's show notes. This TikTok shows you where Gary has been. So you could go check it out. It's actually pretty crazy. We got a message, a bunch of messages about Russia and Republicans.

A bunch of people told us basically the reason why the right-wing people like them is, one, they're run by fascists, and two, they're super anti-gay Christians now. That makes them feel like they're... I don't know. You make me feel like they're, it's like,

I don't know, you make me feel like I'm home or something like that. It's like that song plays every time you think of the Russians. Yeah, it's become a Christian nation, which is the big thing. A bunch of people said that. We got a message from Adam who says that he has a hard time getting out to get the vaccine. So he hasn't been vaccinated

yet because he has some very difficult problems. He said, but he would super like a vaccine truck. And Tom, you said they're sending those out. Yeah, it's interesting. I just saw something today that they are now in certain areas and communities, there are vaccine trucks. They're driving around and they're going door to door and they're trying to deliver a vaccine to as many people as they possibly can. It's about time and it's good to get that work done. It's important work. That's great. Got a message from Paul who said, he sent us a message and said, as for the gas bags, it might be worth treading carefully before sharing. It sounds like some of those images

were recycled from 2019. One of those images was recycled from 2019. There was one I was talking about where a bunch of people had a bunch of gas cans in their car. That one was recent. The other one with the guys filling the thing up is recent. And the other thing too that we have to understand, and this is something that, you know,

we don't mention on the show, but could easily happen. Someone with a gas bag, a bag and a gas and gas or a fucking bucket and gas can just be trolling you too, right? So they can just go to the gas station and say, hey, bro,

take a picture of me filling this thing up. I can make this go viral if I fill up a Home Depot bucket with gas. You know what I mean? So there's also that aspect. So every time we mention this stuff, not only could it also be from a different time, like Paul points out,

but it could also be that they're just trolling us and we are falling for it. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes people are that stupid though. And there was somebody who lost their Hummer very recently. That did happen. And they had gas cans in the back where they filled up and then one of them was open and they lit a cigarette

and it blew their fucking car up. And then the other one where they were literally stacking gas sideways in the back of their car, that happened too. That was a viral photo that happened. They had gotten just a shit ton of gas cans and they just started stacking them in their car. So people were stocking up on gas, but some people might not have put it in bags, at least not this last time. So we got a message from John about coming out of Christianity, Tom. We did, but even more importantly, John found us from Citation Needed. So that's pretty awesome. Usually I think it goes the other direction, but we've gotten a handful of people who've come over

to us from having found Citation Needed. First, we think that's great. John, welcome. If you guys haven't listened to Citation Needed, stop not listening. Yes. And do start listening. It's a great show. It's a lot of fun. Check it out. It's a project between Cecil, myself,

and the guys from Puzzle and a Thunderstorm. We think it's a hoot. It's a really great show. And it's one of those shows that we can talk about things that aren't based on basically the shows that we do with those other guys. We the shows that we do with those other guys. We do shows that are similar to those other guys. They do shows, they do a politics show, they do a religion show. And so we sort of all do very similar stuff.

But on this, we get to sort of break out of that and do something different. And if you listen to it in the early days and you didn't want to come back to it, I suggest listening to it again. We did revamp it a little bit to take out. So initially, we put in a lot more jokes

and now we've taken some of the jokes out and we made the writing a little more funny. And so we think that the changes that we've made to the show

and recently, if you listened to it in the beginning and you didn't really like it, give it another shot. Give it like, particularly this upcoming episode just came out,

this Libertarian runs into a bear episode is very funny. And it's also politics based. So you might actually have a tie to it. Caitlin by the window says recently the grocery store I work at spent $2.1 billion on anti-theft robots rather than guarantee

my union a raise that we keep our pay competitive. How horrible is that? That's ridiculous. Jesus Christ. But we talk about that with the R&D though, right? It's like, you know, you could see what they, you see what they value. They don't value their employees. They value their merchandise more than they value their employees. Yeah. Companies are about money, not people. They're about money and making money. Got a message from Tim and it's a long message about his medical plight.

Really difficult time trying to find out what's going on with you. And now they finally did it and you're on the mend. So we're hoping for you, Tim. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for, uh, you know, for sticking with us even through difficult times. You know, I hope anything that if we said any joke that brightened your day, we're excited for it. So, uh, we, we hope for the best for you, Tim, and we hope you're on the mend. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tim, for listening. So we hope for the best for you, Tim, and we hope you're on the mend. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tim, for listening. Tom, this is interesting. Chris sent this in. He said that, you know, as somebody who is disabled,

you don't have to get minimum wage? Yeah, there are weird carve-outs to minimum wage. So you would think minimum wage would be the least that could be paid to everyone. But that is unfortunately just not the case. And it is absolutely sickening that people with disabilities can and oftentimes are paid even less than the already criminal and paltry minimum wage. It's abusive. It's just straight up abusive. I think the idea was to incentivize hiring people with disabilities. But I mean, I don't know that it helps anybody to incentivize people to hire people with disabilities in order to pay them a non-living wage.

There's got to be a better way to manage that socially. All right. That is going to wrap it up for this week. We want to thank you guys for joining us. Come join us on our live streams. And there is a possibility. I'm not saying it's going to happen.

There's a possibility Tom might be in studio next week. We're hoping, fingers crossed. Tom might be in studio. You don't want to miss that one. But hey, maybe we trick you when you show up

and Tom isn't in studio and you still came to the live stream. Suckers! So anyway, check us out next week. Live stream everywhere you catch your live streams. 9 p.m. Central Time. You can come check us out next week. Live stream everywhere you catch your live streams, 9 p.m. Central time. You can come check us out. We got kicked off YouTube for a little while this

week because they thought we're anti-vaxxers. So check that out too. That was weird. Anyway, check us out there and check us out on Citation Needed. And thank you for downloading the show and for hanging out with us. We'll see you next 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, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy,ogram Free energy Water downward spiral Late night info

Leo Pisces Cancer cures Foot massage Tarot cards Crystal balls Bigfoot Yeti Aliens

Temples Giant worms Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive.

Doubt even this. 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. you