Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 593: The Horror of Texas S.B. 8

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Show Notes \

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from GlorHill Studios in Chicago 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's political and there is no welcome matt this is episode 593 of cognitive dissonance and cecil there is so much to talk about oh gosh there is so much to talk about we we you know we had like a little bit of a reprieve where it was like, okay, it's just the usual awful shit. And now we're in that like hyper-miling crazy news cycle. So, but I want to start off, Cecil, with playing with some numbers because I thought it was kind of interesting.

So I read an article about the Afghan war and I don't want to go through the politics of the Afghan war anymore. I'm done doing that. I don't have any answers. I'm probably wrong about everything important when it comes about the Afghan war and I don't want to go through the politics of the Afghan war anymore. I'm done doing that. I don't have any answers. I'm probably wrong about everything important when it comes to the Afghan war. But one of the things that I read is that the war in Afghanistan,

which accomplished, I think it was a failure. The war in Afghanistan. I had to say it. I had to say it. It cost $2 trillion. Okay. And I read that and I stopped in my tracks because we are arm wrestling and arm wrestling and arm wrestling day and night, right?

About this $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan. And the $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan, that's a massive, massive, crazy amount of money. And we spent $2 trillion to go adventuring in Afghanistan and accomplish nothing and lose. And not to count, not to mention what it costs to go to Iraq, which is a different rant. But so I started playing with the idea of what is a trillion dollars? And it occurred to me, one, I'd never seen it. I've never seen, I've never written down a trillion, just written it down. Care to guess how many zeros are in a trillion? A trillion would have 12 zeros.

12 zeros. It looks silly, Cecil, when you write it down. It genuinely does. It looks silly when you write it down. And if you take $2 trillion and you divide it, and thankfully it's a couple of twos, so it's fairly simple, and you divide that by the 20 years we were at war, it's $100 billion a year.

That's a lot of money. It's a lot. And if you divide that, Cecil. It's like a Bezos a year. It's about $300 million a day. Okay. $300 million a day to fight that war. That's an insane amount of money, man.

Do you know, if you had $100 billion, so you're starting with $100 billion. That's what you spend every year at war with Afghanistan for 20 years. You could produce, you could pay for the medical education for 416,000 doctors every single year, which is half the number of total doctors in practice today. There are only about 900,000 doctors in practice right now. Yeah.

We could create 416,000 new doctors for that. In six years or something. right? In one year. No, no. I thought you could pay for them to go to... Oh, you pay for their 100% of their schooling in one year. Yes. You could pay for it because it costs about $240,000 to educate a doctor. I see.

Okay, so you're saying just give them a grant in one year and they could just go to school and finish it off. In a single year. Now, we have 20 years to play with, though, right? We spent $2 trillion over the course of 20 years. In one year and they could just go to school and finish it off. In a single year. The time, clearly. Now we got 20 years to play with though, right? We spent $2 trillion over the course of 20 years. In one year,

we could have 416,000 new doctors entering the profession, Cecil, with no student loans at all. With no debt. With no debt. With no crushing debt. You do that in a 12-month period. Do you have any hospitals

you could build? It costs about $112 million to build a hospital. Well, I imagine that's probably about 1,000 hospitals or thereabouts, 900. About 886 hospitals, give or take. 800. You could build in a single year. 886 new hospitals.

You could put 17 hospitals in every state of the union in 12 months and fill those hospitals with 416,000 doctors, Cecil. And you could do that in the first two years of one Afghan war.

When we talk about we didn't go fucking bankrupt as a country. You have these fucking liars. Yeah, oh yeah. And they're fucking liars talking about how, oh, you're mortgaging your children's future.

You're mortgaging your children's future. Where are you going to come up with this $2 trillion? Well, motherfuckers, or $3.5 trillion. We came up with $2 trillion to go to fucking war with Afghanistan. And then we came up with

however many other trillions of dollars to go to war with Iraq. Sure. Right? We find the money for that. Yeah. Every time. And if you just crunch the numbers just to play with them, and I know those numbers are overly simplistic.

I recognize that. But if you think about what that money would mean invested in America, you get money back for doing that. Yeah, right. Every invested in America, you get money back for doing that. Yeah, right. Every hospital you build, you get money back for. Every doctor you pump into the workforce without an educational loan, you get money back for socially. You get nothing back for going to war in Afghanistan. Two trillion dollars.

People will tell us we can't afford this three and a half5 trillion infrastructure plan. People will tell us we can't afford pre-K for kids and we can't afford an education, even as modest as a community college education, to be paid for. People will say, well, we can't expand Medicare or we can't offer dental coverage to be a part of the Medicare program. They'll say we can't afford it. program, they'll say we can't afford it. And I just need to point out, we spent $2 trillion on nothing. And we got nothing back for it. It's $100 billion a year. And we had the money. We spent the money. And I'll notice that we did not go bankrupt. The country did not fold. The economy did not collapse. We did not go bankrupt from spending that money. If we spend the next $2 trillion investing in ourselves, we get money back from that. We will not go bankrupt. Don't let them tell you we'll

go bankrupt for that. It makes me crazy. It's 12 zeros worth of money, man. Yeah. There's these swaths of Republicans out there who genuinely don't, they don't care about other people. They don't have empathy for other people. So for them, that doesn't matter. They don't care about creating a public good. They don't think a public good is good.

They think it's bad. They think it's the antithesis of their political ideology. And so we are constantly butting heads with people who are unempathetic. How far could our culture go if we just invested in ourselves and helped each other out? How far could we go? Right. I'll tell you what, $2 trillion, if you just start thinking about how much things that are important cost, $2 trillion pays for almost all those things. Pays for a lot of them. Pays for a lot of them.

Pays for an enormous amount of really important things. Abortions for anyone. Very well. No abortions for anyone. Miniature American flags for all well see so i it's funny well it's not funny actually at all but we had to postpone our recording a day i had some stuff going on we had to postpone recording a day and in that day uh the supreme court sort of shadow overturned roe v. Wade just about through the lack of a ruling or the lack of a decision in the Texas abortion case. structurally worth talking about that basically bans or effectively bans abortion after six weeks,

which is all abortions. Like most women wouldn't know they were pregnant at six weeks. Five weeks is a heartbeat or something like that. I know they were trying to do heartbeat bills in other places. It's five to six weeks for the heartbeat. This is as soon as we've ever seen.

Right. And it's, you know, most women at six weeks would not yet have known that they were pregnant. Like, if you just look at, like, how fucking ovulation cycles work and when conception would happen, like, most women would not be aware or might not be aware that they were even pregnant. So it's effectively a ban on abortion. a ban on abortion. So one of the things that is devious about this bill and that really is causing a lot of people to lose sleep at night is the way that Texas structured the bill is they said, all right, well, we're going to place this ban on abortions after six weeks. No exceptions for rape and incest, by the way. Horrifying. It's just, I mean, it's clearly just a monstrous bill lacking empathy and targeting women. And the way that they're going to get around Roe v. Wade is they're going to say, our public officials are not charged with enforcing this law. So what typically happens

is a government passes a law, and then the way that it is challenged in court is they challenge the government officials who would be charged with enforcing that law. And the Texas bill says, all right, well, there will be no government enforcement of this law. What we will instead do is we will allow for random citizens to civilly enforce this law.

So anybody and any number of anybodies can, if they find out that, you know, Jane is getting an abortion or they suspect Jane is getting abortion, I can sue Jane for $10,000. And if I win, I get $10,000 and I get court costs. No, you cannot sue Jane. The patient may not be sued.

Oh, that's true. That's true. The patient may not be sued. That's absolutely true. I can sue the doctor. Yeah. And then I can sue everybody who might have helped Jane get that. Staff member, counselors, people who pay for the procedure. Uber driver, spouse. Yeah. Anybody who might have counseled, helped, aided, or abetted that abortion. Anybody. But then, crazily, you can also sue Jane. So just because I sued her doesn't mean you can't sue her. You can also sue her, Cecil.

Well, you could sue her doctors. And not Jane, but all the other people. All the other people. I keep misspeaking. I'm sorry. You can sue all of those other people. And any number of other people can sue over and over. Any number of people can sue those folks. So it effectively creates an almost

unlimited financial penalty to an enormous number of actors that may be even tangentially related to an abortion. And they get 10 grand and their legal fees recovered if they win. Yeah. And if they sue you and you win, you get nothing, not even the legal fees. Nothing. So if they sue you and I win, I don't get the legal fees because you sued me and you lost. I get nothing. All of it is weighted in the favor of the plaintiff. Yes.

All of it, 100%. And it went to court and they blocked it. It went to appeal, appeal, punted, went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court basically said, we're not doing shit. We're not taking the case up. It was a five to four decision

about whether or not to take the case. And they chose not to take the case. Roberts flipped over to the four. He was the one conservative on the liberal side. Roberts was. But the two brand new justices that got put in by Trump, those ones said we shouldn't take it up. So, you know, we got to talk about that. When it comes time to vote, I know there's a lot of people that are like, I'm not going to nose and vote i'm not gonna hold my nose and vote hold your fucking nose and vote because this would not have happened 100 if hillary had won the white house yeah you can't say it would have

you cannot you can't say it there are there are women out right now who are unable to get an abortion because this specific action by this specific court allowed for this nonsense to take place. This is going to be copied because it was successful. This is going to be copied state after state after state after state. They wrote the law, Cecil, in a template-like format specifically to make it easy for other red states to copy this. They can fucking just like control F, find and replace Texas with Oklahoma, Texas with Missouri, Texas with Utah, Texas with South Dakota, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Disenfranchising how many millions of women? Right. So the day before it happened at Whole Woman's Health in Fort Worth,

the last patient appointment was completed at 1156 PM on Tuesday. And the person they asked, the senior director of clinic services, she said doctors started early on Tuesday morning and treated 117 patients, far more than usual. I just want to point out to everybody, every single one of you lawmakers there, if those were abortions, they're on you. They're on you. Those people might've changed their minds.

They might've done something else. They might've reconsidered if they had more time to think about it, but you pushed their hand. You're the one. The Republican fuckers down there are the ones that push their hand. They're the ones who shoved them into that position because they had to make that decision that day. Without time. Without any time to think about it. You are responsible for that. If that's what you think, I don't care.. Like I like fucking great, whatever, 117 procedures. So what? That's the, that's between the women and their doctors. Now it doesn't include me, but you know what? If you think it includes you, guess what it fucking

does. It fucking does now. Right. And all these women, like one of the things I noticed then when I just read it, reread this, it says people who will pay for the procedure can be sued. So I don't know if me living in Illinois, if I want to just create a fund for women to go get an abortion somewhere else out of state, if they can sue me, some fucking rando down in Texas, not just some, a fucking dozen randos can get 120 grand out of me. Because I created an account. You know, and the crazy thing is like, think about, this is essentially law by bounty. Yeah.

It's law by vigilantism and bounty. And if I see that, if I just am just a money-making motherfucker, if I see that you've got money, Cecil, and you were successfully sued, why don't I just sue you too? Yeah, why not? All I need to do, all I need to do is just monitor the courts and see who has been successfully sued, and then I could just sue them as well. I don't have to have any interest in it. I could make a business out of this. This is why it shuts it down because it's such an egregious penalty and the stakes are literally limitless. They're crazy. The point of all of this, the point of the anti-choice legislators has nothing to do with fucking babies. I'm done. I'm absolutely done entertaining that conversation.

The point of anti-choice legislation is, and I believe always has been, about controlling women. This is nothing to do with babies. And I, at this point, I refuse to entertain, and I think we should generally, I refuse to entertain, and I think we should generally, I refuse to entertain conversations

about viability and about when is a good time and a bad time. Because all of that is, I think, the red herring bullshit distraction that they want you to have. They want you to have conversations like that rather than point out the truth. The truth is that this is and has always been about keeping women subservient to men. And the lack of access to abortion is always, indisputably and invariably, always higher in states that do not have comprehensive sex education and access to inexpensive and ubiquitous contraception. Yeah. If there was really a genuine concern about quality of life and quantity of life for babies, the actions of those states would reflect that. Sure. What they really want is for women to get pregnant and to have to keep those babies even if they don't want to.

They don't want to stop the sex. Why do you want women to get pregnant? If women are pregnant, they're out of the fucking workforce. If they got two, three, four, five kids at home, they're likely out of the fucking workforce. It's less competition at college. It's less competition at college. It's less competition in the workforce. It's less competition for men. This has always been about controlling women, limiting their access to financial freedoms, limiting their

access to educational opportunity to reduce their impact on men. And I think we do ourselves a terrible disservice when we have conversations about abortion that entertain any other argument. I will entertain the viability argument when we have solved the contraception problem. When contraception is free and ubiquitous in every county and every state. Yeah, sure.

When sex education is comprehensive and not abstinence based, when sex education is comprehensive and does not have any to do with religious themes about sullying your body if you have sex, right? All this nonsense that is meant to drive people into a shame position so they are less likely to go buy condoms. And they're less likely to have frank conversations with their parents, their doctors, their authority figures, who would give them access to contraception so they don't get pregnant. All of that, all of that shit, I think, misses the fucking point. The point is to keep women down.

The point is to keep women subservient. The point is to further enshrine patriarchal hegemony. And I think everything else is a fucking distraction, man. And it makes me crazy. They engineered this and then they utilized the biggest patriarchal organization in the country, the religious right. They utilized and they carried, they used the religious right. They used the religious right to spread this message for years.

The religious right loves this message because the religious right loves the idea of the patriarchy. They absolutely adore it. They want to keep it in. They want to keep the status quo the same way that it is. That's why that fucking same exact institution,

that Christian institution, was the same for millennia. It was the same for, look in the Catholic church. Where's all the women priest at guys? What? Oh, are you saying that it's a patriarchy there too? Yeah, of course it is. And it always has been. And they knew that they could mobilize this group of people who were one

very gullible right super easy because they're gullible and then two they could easily use them as a force so they created this wedge issue newt gingrich fucking like engineered this whole thing created this whole wedge issue so that it became the big overarching policy that everyone was going to fight for, that they were going to plan, that literally everything, think about all their picks for Congress. Think about all their picks for the House. Think about all their picks for the Supreme Court. Think about where they land on this issue. And you know that it's been engineered. And I want to say that there's going to be women that are going to be Republican

that are going to get an abortion. That's 100% true. They're going to get an abortion, but they could probably leave the state and have no issue with it. The other thing I want to point out too, and I think this is something that I haven't really heard anybody talk about.

You know, Texas can go blue. A couple of things can push Texas blue. One of them is a horrible cock-up by their fucking governor on how to handle COVID. He's been an absolute fucking nightmare and he's been doing literally all the wrong shit. And DeSantis is feeling the fucking wrath down in Florida doing essentially the same thing.

But the other thing is, is alienating a lot of middle of the road voters that might've voted for you before. And they're fine, I think, in principle with this idea, but when the rubber hits the road, it might not be as, you know, it's great to have as a sort of high ideal and never actually hit it. But when you finally hit it and you finally start taking rights away from women and women vote more than men, folks, you might see a blue Texas very soon. Yeah. And the thing is, like, when it's in your family, man, most

people, just by the polling, most people, and not a small majority, most people are pro-choice. Most. Most people do not want Roe v. Wade overturned. Most people are in support of Roe v. Wade. And again, these are not small majorities. Most people don't want this shit. their mistresses, when their, like, daughters come home pregnant, when their teen sons impregnate the, you know, their first crush. These guys are all, well, it's a little different when it's me because of. And they name the fucking bullshit circumstances. Man, it's not different. It's not different. You're not different. Your circumstances aren't better. You aren't morally superior. There is no moral element to it. Shut the fuck up about that shit. Like I joke in my house, like my stepdaughter has an unlimited abortion budget. Unlimited Cecil. Yeah. She can have all the abortions she wants. Sure. If she wants 27 abortions, there's never a time she's

going to come to me and say, I want an abortion. I'm going to be like, sorry, the wallet's closed. You can't have, you know what I mean? Fuck that. You have a baby you don't want? Yeah. Let's fucking get rid of it. Like maybe we should put some other interventions in place here, honey, but like, let's get rid of it.

Fucking A, man. My boys, my boys have an unlimited abortion budget. Like they don't have unlimited budgets on anything else because we should never bring people into this world that are unwanted. Yeah. anything else because we should never bring people into this world that are unwanted. Yeah. We should never force people to go through the pain and the complications of childbirth and child rearing if they don't want to.

That's just, we don't have the technology to solve this problem. Right. We lie about it, right? We build this fucking mythology of family values around this fucking nonsense. Family values is just a way for the religious right to say women stay home and the men go to work. Exactly. Yeah. That's what family values is. It's like they make it sound like something else. It's nothing else. There's nothing else to it.

Family values is shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen. Yeah. And that's what these anti-choice laws are designed to do. They're designed to keep women giving birth, to keep women pregnant, to keep them therefore less educated and less competitive in the workforce during their prime working years so men don't have to compete with them. Sure. That's what family values is. If they cared about pregnancies happening that they didn't want,

they would figure out a way for the man to be the one who has to go somewhere, like go to the doctor to have a kid, right? And the reason why the birth control pill actually happened is because the women are responsible to take it because they don't want to have the fucking kid. Because they're the ones that are going to be saddled with the kid. At the very least, if you really cared, you would be giving condoms out like fucking lollipops. There would be an unlimited number of condoms that would be mailed to everybody.

Free birth control pills for women. Free birth control. Free birth control pills for women across the board. If that's the case, if you really cared, be free across the board. But these same fuckers fight that shit. They fight contraceptive access. It goes against their weird sky daddy,

but it also very much fits in line with everything that the fucking right wants to have, right? It's a hundred percent. They have fucking, this is the marriage literally made in heaven. Like it is, you know, perfect. Isn't it a coincidence that like your religion happens to also agree with all the things that benefit you personally as a dude? What, what, what an amazing coincidence. I, you know, I don't know. It just, it just so happens that i'm the one who gets all the blow jobs i don't know it's just it says here on page 83 just saying you know but i do love tom i do love that already

tiktok activists are already going after this website so as tom mentioned earlier there's a website that you can go ahead and report people on like it's, like it's fucking Gilead, fucking terrifying, terrifying world that we live in. But you can basically go on and report people. Well, this one TikTok, guy on TikTok,

created a bot that submits a new report every 10 seconds from a random zip code in fucking Texas. So just flooding it with fucking constant, like a constant flow

of fake reports. And hilariously, I saw that people were sending porn and all kinds of other stuff. So this is not going to stop. People are going to constantly fill these websites up with links to fucking, I don't know, like fucking Goatsy

and all kinds of terrifying shit. Shit you never want to see again. Two girls, one cup, whatever. It's all going to be sent to them.

There's going to be just this slew of garbage that they're going to force people to have to sort through. They're going to have to sift through this stuff and they're going to

waste man hours sifting through it all. And, you know, they're going to be able to create some scripts that can just go through and be like, I don't get rid of all that stuff. But they're going to be able to create some scripts that can just go through and be like, I don't get rid of all that stuff. But there's going to be some that slip through the cracks.

And then there's going to be some that they're just like, it's my hope that they do it so much that people just say, fuck it, we're not doing this anymore. Y'all, I found a payphone. I can't believe it. I was searching online. There was a picture of it somewhere. I saw the picture I found with the location. I went to it. It's this weird alley. I searched long and hard for it.

And speaking of things that are long and hard or wet and tight, whatever situation, I mean, it could be short. It could be what? It doesn't matter. Go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY because when you do, you get what's the pitch? Oh, right. Use code GLORY. You'll get 50% off almost any one item. Six free spicy movies. You'll get free shipping. There's that. You get gifts. There's all kinds of... I gotta get out of here.

There's gifts and stuff. Other things are true. Like a gift for me, a gift for you or whoever, your significant other, and a gift for yourself. And a gift you both might like. That's cool. And the gift of free shipping, which I mentioned earlier. Jim? No, Gary. What are you doing in the closet? Gary, I can't... Are you pretending to be on a payphone? of free shipping, which I mentioned earlier. Ian? No, Gary?

What are you doing in the closet? Gary, I can't. Are you pretending to be on a payphone? Gary, I can't find one. Really? I can't find a payphone. There's none. Seriously.

They don't exist, Gary. Liar. I don't know what to do. Unprofessional. What should I do, Gary? Well, first off, turn off the effect, and then go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY. Yeah. Because when you do, you get 50% off on the first new item.

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Well, that sounds nice. Wait, I found a payphone. When you go to AdamandEve.com, you don't need a payphone. You could just stay home and sex. Ian, enough with the effect. Yep. Okay, sorry. Say bye, Gary.

I'm more pants. No, that's not what I'm... Okay. Yep, goodbye. Sorry. Say bye, Gary. I'm Laura Pan. No, that's not what I, okay. Yep, goodbye. Hello and welcome to Breaking News, the show where we don't know what we're about to say and we aren't allowed to smile or laugh. I'm Buck Fruckster. It begins.

Out of the gate. And to my left is anchor number two. She does have a name, and that name is... Glenn with three S's. This story comes from the progressive.org. I think this is great news. We don't do a lot of great news. No.

Illinois, our home state, Cecil, becomes the first state to require media literacy classes for high school students begins next year. That begins next year year and it's going to teach teenagers to discern fact from fucking fiction. I love it. I love it. And I hope that this is something that more states start to do. We've seen that the major problem with a lot of the things that we're having issues with, if you think about the disinformation that comes from COVID, the disinformation that comes from the QAnon,

the disinformation that's, I mean, it's just all over the board. There's all these different types of disinformation that are tearing our society apart. Yeah. There needs to be something in there. There needs to be something in education early.

Not, we're not talking college level. We're not talking critical thinking where you have to do it as an elective. We're talking about an actual class that says, this is what reality is. And here's how you find reality on the internet. And we need that more than ever now, because we're seeing more and more people fall for this stupidest shit you've ever seen. Man. And speaking of the stupidest shit, there's a story from Uproxx. Ted Cruz is

being roundly called out for sharing a fake story about the Taliban hanging an Afghan man from a U.S. helicopter. Now, I don't know if Ted Cruz knew this was bullshit or not, but, and let's assume, let's not assume anything. It's fucking Ted Cruz, this fucking weird fucking discount Jolly Hugh Jackman fucking Wolverine bullshit. Like, but people believe it because they don't know how to not believe the right things, right? They don't know. They haven't taken that media literacy class.

They don't know how to look at this video and watch it and source it and figure out where it comes from and timestamp it and see what, yeah. They don't know how to do all that. And they don't know that they should or have to do all that. And stories like this fucking spread, man.

Absolutely, absolutely. And Ted Cruz, how irresponsible is it for a person who's in one of the highest offices in our government to share something false? And then his backtrack on this, Tom, like when he fucking shared something that was false and he was called out, it turns out that it was not what they said it was at all.

Ted Cruz says, it turns out the post I shared with a video of the Taliban hanging a man from a helicopter may be inaccurate, so I deleted the tweet. What remains accurate is the Taliban are brutal terrorists. We left them with millions of dollars of U.S. equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.

So it doesn't matter that it's not true. The thing I was trying to get across was important. The thing is, your example is only illustrative of your larger point. If it is an accurate fucking example, otherwise, it's fucking true.

it's hypothetical. Yeah. And then, to make matters worse, in that same tweet non-apology that Cecil just read, he also includes

the original video. Yes. So there again, he again puts that same image out there. There is a real phenomenon where the more you see something,

the more you think it's true, just by virtue of the number of times you see it. It doesn't matter that the retraction is on page three. He deleted the tweet to get rid of the fucking public record of his own incompetence and arrogance and ignorance, right? But then he puts this video back up there because the video looks upsetting.

Yes. It's not. It's not. It's a guy. It's not what's happening. It's somebody in a harness. Yeah, it's somebody in a harness. It's not somebody being hung.

And again, like that's the problem. This is like anybody can take any image and then put a narrative behind it. And then there's no critical faculty that looks into it at all. They just, they see it. It agrees with what they think. And then they share it. That's it's as fast as that. It's literally as fast as that. And I will admit that when I first, like when, when this idea and concept of sharing, which is relatively new in human history, by the way, I want to point out

the, the idea of sharing things on a social media, which was only introduced within, I want to point out. So the idea of sharing things on social media, which was only introduced within, I think, the last 10 years, I remember I was very quick to do it initially. And then I caught myself when I started seeing little memes pop up and being like, is that true? And I would catch myself and wonder, is that true? And then I would look it up. And by the time I got done looking it up, I would always be like, yeah is that true? Then I would look it up. By the time I got done looking it up, I would always be like, yeah, I guess it's not really worth sharing because I already took the time to look it up. Sometimes it didn't have as much information as was necessary to make the point or it was taking things out of context. There's been so many times I've seen

these memes or these tweets come across where somebody says something and it's just, it's that all it's doing is making you feel. It's not making you think. It's making you feel. And you feel like you need to share this because it agrees with the thing that you agree with. It confirms your bias. And so you feel the need to share it. And it's almost compulsory at a certain point. Yeah, well, we're at a place

where I really genuinely believe we are getting too much data. We are not able to meaningfully sift through it. And the information that we get comes to us too fast and we consume it too casually to be careful consumers because we're not trying to consume. We consume information without the how to consume information, if you consume information just casually without the intent to get real information, you will still receive messages, right? It's the same way that—Cecil, turn me on to it. I'm finishing up listening to a book called White Fragility. It's the same way that we receive messages about race our entire lives.

All of those messages that we receive, or nearly all of them, are implicit rather than explicit. Yes. We receive an enormous amount of implicit information that we are neither seeking out nor vetting, nor do we have a plan to have sought out that information. It just appears in a scroll, appears in a feed, appears before us when we're looking for something else. And the repetition of those images and those concepts, when they agree with us, to Cecil's point, they punch that dopamine, man. They do. They punch that dopamine. They agree with you. It feels good to be agreed with. Or they outrage you or something. And it just, click, it moves on. And it it click, and it moves on, and it makes us less critical. Every time we casually consume information without doing it on an intentional

basis, every time we do that, it makes us a little less critical. And people like Ted Cruz are using that intentionally against you. They are weaponizing that. It's not an accident. intentionally against you. Yes. They are weaponizing that. It's not an accident. It's not. Guys like this have enough money and enough at stake

that they are hiring. You think Ted Cruz doesn't have a media and PR guy? You think he's doing this on his fucking phone laying in bed at night? Oh, I got to do my tweets. Maybe he does some of them.

But you think a guy like that doesn't have people? See, so we have fucking people. I know. Helping us with our fucking social media. It's absurd. You're being played. Whenever this shit happens in the fucking non-pologies, that wasn't an accident. You're being played. There was always a guy in between you and Ted before. So back in the day, there was always some person in between you that would mediate the conversation or whatever. But now there's nobody in between you. There was always an editor. There was always a journalist. There was always somebody. There was the FCC. There was always somebody to make it so there wasn't just anybody could do anything, right? And now that's not there anymore. There's nothing there. There's no distance between you and someone else. And that means that these people

have access to you that they've never had before. And they're using it to manipulate you. There's no question that our best, strongest pain medicines are the opioids. Now, they don't wear out. They go on working. They do not have serious medical side effects. And so these drugs, which I repeat, are our best, strongest pain medications, should be used much more than they are for patients in pain. The lie detector test determined that was a lie. So Cecil, this story kind of harkens back to a deep dive that we did. This story comes to New York Times. Purdue Pharma is dissolved and the Sacklers pay $4.5 billion to settle opioid claims. So the briefest of possible summarizations,

the Sackler family are the horrifying monsters that are almost entirely personally responsible for the opioid crisis. They created OxyContin. And the reason why we know that is because of the memos that were sent. That's very true, yeah. All those memos that are 100% available that people found where they were

trying to hide the fact that their shit was addictive. Yep. And they created a series of incentives and purposeful lies about the addictiveness of their drug. They tried to push more of the drug and higher dosage amounts of the drug and incentivize their salespeople, not just for the number of scripts, but for the dosage, the higher number of the higher dosage,

knowing that that would create an addiction cycle and drive sales. These fuckers killed so far about 500,000 people in America as a result of the opioid epidemic and crisis. They were taken to task and the company Purdue Pharma has been dissolved, Cecil, and the Sacklers pay four and a half billion dollars. Yeah, it was handed down by the judge. The judge's name was Judge Drain, by the way. Judge Drain. And I just think it feels like a post-apocalyptic drain cleaner. Like, I am Judge Drain. I am the law.

I love the idea of Judge Drain. This clog is guilty. He's got a specific gun, and he just talks to it. He's like, drain cleaner. And then he shoots it in there. Shoots the fucking clog out of there. But Judge Drain, can't get enough of that.

I 100% love it. He said that this is a bitter result. He said that he expected and wished for a higher settlement, but he could not. And the Sacklers have gone out of there. Like, first off, the Sacklers have gone out of their, like, first off,

the Sacklers testified that neither the family nor the company nor its products bore any responsibility for the epidemic. None whatsoever. None whatsoever. Other than, and in the article, they say other Sacklers

struck a more conciliatory tone saying that they were horrified that the medication intended to alleviate pain and in fact, and caused pain in so many, but nobody apologized or took any personal responsibility. And the thing that makes me crazy, Tom, it says additional funds will come from the anticipated profits from a new company's drugs, including addiction, reversal medications, addiction, they created addiction and now they're making a medicine to turn around. They got you going in and they got you coming back.

What the fuck, man? It's, you, like, honestly, you can't write a more insane world than the one we're living in. I know, dude. I got to read this quote from the professor at Johns Hopkins. He said, I don't think anybody would say that justice has been done because there's just so much harm that was caused and so much money that has been retained by the company and the family.

The Sacklers still have like six and a half B, B, B billion dollars in offshore accounts, which is untouched. Offshore accounts that you can't touch. Six and a half billion dollars. That's what they, that's what they get. We didn't get half.

Yeah. We didn't even get half. There's still multi-billionaires. They don't give a fuck. If somebody said, hey, man, at the end of the day, you know, it's going to be a rough time. You got a lot of people are going to hate you, Tom. But, you know, when it's all said and done, when it shakes out, you it's going to be a rough time. A lot of people are going to hate you, Tom, but when it's all said and done, when it shakes out,

you're only going to be left with six and a half billion dollars. I'll be like, what the fuck? What? What? I would make a sock puppet out of gold and tell myself how awesome I am. Are you kidding me? I don't need friends with six and a half billion dollars.

Six and a half billion dollars? Six and a half billion dollars? God damn, man. That's what we're doing? That's the fucking game we're playing? Oh, what a victory. We dissolved the company and then a company with another name shows up

to Cecil's point to sell the cure. The fuck is wrong with us? Fuck school. Fuck all this bullshit. What the fuck? This story genuinely made me mad. This is one of the most angering stories. Stories from Business Insider. Fuck Wisconsin. Fuck it forever. A Wisconsin school district says students can become spoiled with free meals and opts out

of Biden's free lunch program. So there are federal funds which are available to all school districts to provide free lunch, and in many cases, free breakfast for all students. It's part of the, holy shit, we're in a pandemic and poverty is a real problem. Let's try to fix that plan. Waukesha, Wisconsin, which is a huge county in Wisconsin, Waukesha, Wisconsin said, yeah, you know, we don't want people to get spoiled. So we're opting out of the free federal money and kids that just go without, go without. Well, they're allowed to apply for it. Yeah. So they want to shame them. That's what they want to do, Tom. That's what they, I was on public lunch when I was a kid and it's a shame

program. It's literally a shame program, but when everybody a kid, and it's a shame program. It's literally a shame program. But when everybody gets it, it's not a shame program anymore. Suddenly, it doesn't affect you socially anymore because every single kid gets it. How fucking terrible would it be, Tom, if you talk about the $2 trillion that you were talking about at the beginning of the show.

How fucking terrible would it be if our tax dollars, instead of going to war in another country, once in a while bought a rich kid a meal too? Yeah, I- How fucking terrible would that be? The thing is, I would buy every rich kid a sandwich to buy one kid that couldn't afford it a sandwich.

Yes, yes. I don't care. I do not care. There's no part of me that will ever care that I spent too much money feeding a kid who goes without. I can't. You can't put a price tag on that that I'm going to get worked up about. And I got to read what this fucking horrible person. Her name is Karen, of course. Karen Radnicek. She is a board member in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Karin Radnicek. She is a board member in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and she's a fucking monster of a person.

Here's what she said. I had three kids. I had them. And so I'm going to feed them. I feel like that's the responsibility of an adult. I feel like this is a big problem and it's really easy to get sucked into it and become spoiled and think it's not my problem anymore. It's everyone else's problem to feed my children. You bitch, you're sending your kids to public school. We understand at some point that some things it's okay to pool our resources and do. Like, I don't know, educate your fucking three kids. You drive your kids on the fucking roads we pay for to get to the fucking school? Do they take a bus that your taxes fucking pay for? This fucking selective usage of public resources by these rich entitled fucks makes me so crazy. You're going to make somebody else jump through the fucking hoops of applying for fucking government aid so that you can be like, well, I don't need it. of applying for fucking government aid so that you can be like,

well, I don't need it. That makes you feel like a fucking big person, you fucking bitch. It's not fucking $2 trillion. No. It's not a lot of money to feed these kids. We should feed, and some of these kids,

this is the only meal of the day they get. This is it. This is the meal. This is it. And we, I can't imagine a world where we even want to look askance at that, where I can't imagine being the kind of person who's like,

well, you know, I mean, like, let them fucking jump through the fucking flaming hoops to get their free fucking meal. Make them fill out the fucking forms. Make them sign their name. Make them walk into an office and say, I'm too poor to feed my kids today. Let's shame the parents.

Let's shame the kids. Let's shame the kids. Let's shame everybody who's not privileged. Let's do that. That's a better world to live in than a world where we just say, hey man, we'll just feed kids. It's just part of what schools do. Schools do lots of things other than educate.

They take on a lot of social roles in addition to education. They employ armies of other types of people. They employ physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, guidance counselors, emotional counselors, educational counselors. They employ lots of people that are not exclusively in educational roles. Schools play an important social function that is larger than simply educating people on fucking math and science and history, etc. Why can't it be this too? Where is the harm? What do we lose by feeding the wrong kid?

Yeah. And it's not, all kids deserve to eat. We're not writing them. It's not the wrong kid. And you know, like nothing's stopping you from giving your kid something else. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, if you's stopping you from giving your kid something else. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, if you don't, if you're already going to like pack a lunch for your fucking kid, there's literally nothing stopping you from. And I know this because in my house, like everywhere in America, all of my kids go to school. I have four fucking kids. Some of them still bring a lunch. They are very picky eaters. They still just bring a lunch. So at night I pack them a fucking lunch. I pack them a lunch. They are very picky eaters. They still just bring a lunch. So at night, I pack them a fucking lunch.

I pack them a lunch every day. I put a fucking bunch of shit in a fucking lunch box and I cram it in their fucking backpack and they toddle off to school with it. There's nothing that prevents... It's not like they get on the bus and somebody searches their backpack.

It's like, no, free lunch. Throw away your sandwich. Fuck you, kid. You have to eat this Marxist lunch. Being a robot has its benefits. I can pronounce tongue twisters now. Check this out.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? She sells seashells on the seashore. The shells she sells are seashells on shore. Also, since my brain is connected to the internet, I've become a medical expert. Did you know that bacillus membrane and otolaryngology are not autocorrelations? All right. So Cecil, vaccines really probably should take them.

Let's talk about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan's got a bit of a popular podcast, world's most popular podcast. He's on horse dewormer and fucking steroids or whatever he's doing now. He might be taking the human version of ivermectin. Maybe not. Maybe. Maybe he is. Who knows?

Yeah. Yeah. So he's been, he's one of those dumbass motherfuckers who's constantly platforming the stupid, the credulous, and the fucking irresponsible. He's constantly doing that. And oh, lo and behold, he's got the fucking Rona. He's also fucking irresponsible. He's constantly doing that. And oh, lo and behold, he's got the fucking Rona. He's also fucking rich.

So according to this article from Variety says, we threw the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds, monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, Z-Pak, prednisone, everything. I got an NAD drip

and a vitamin drip. Like this guy has the resources, right? It's like when Trump gets fucking sick. It's like, is he probably going to be fine? Yeah, he's probably going to be fine because you can fucking shit money at the problem until every fucking private doctor is fucking filling his ass full of fucking horse dewormers and all kinds of shit that doesn't work in the off chance that one of these other therapies does actually work. Well, Joe Rogan, podcasting caveman, said this in an April.

He said, he told healthy 21-year-olds not to take the vaccine. Quote, if you're like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I'll go, no. Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Look, like don't do anything stupid,

but you should take care of yourself. He said at the time, quote, you should, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young and you're eating well, like I don't think you need to worry about this, end quote. So that's what Joe Rogan said in April of this year. So, you know, Joe Rogan doesn't think

you should get fucking vaccinated. Joe Rogan isn't vaccinated himself. Joe Rogan also not a healthy 21 year old. He may be a healthy 45 or 50 year old, but he's not a fucking healthy 21 year old. Nope. That's for sure. And right now he's dealing with COVID. Now, from what I hear is that he's already feeling better or whatever, again, because you said he can just throw money at the problem and he's a pretty healthy guy anyway. I'm sure he's going to be fine. But the problem is, is that there's a lot of healthy people out there right now that are getting very, very sick with this disease. They're getting very sick. They're whining, having to spend time in the hospital. Yeah, sure. You spun the fucking

wheel of COVID and you didn't get fucking seriously ill. But that's a fucking, that's a gamble that most people shouldn't be willing to take. No, and he's an influential person. Whether you like it or not, whether he should be or not, he shouldn't be. But he's an influential person. People listen to him. When he says things like, if you ask me, he says that because people ask him. Oh, yeah.

For insane reasons because he's not a smart guy by his own admission. And he is uneducated. He has no education whatsoever that makes him somebody you should listen to on these topics. He isn't even particularly well read. He is not that bright. Nonetheless, he's fucking influential. The thing is too, these guys go to the hospital, somebody like Joe Rogan, he's financially fine. He's fucking rich, right? You're probably not rich. Most people aren't. That's an easy probably. The restrictions on billing as a result of COVID illness are coming to an end. So what I mean by that is there were laws in place that said if you got sick and you got COVID, there were restrictions on how much

that was going to cost you, how much shit you personally as a patient ate. That's ending, Cecil, which means these massive hospital bills, they're coming. They're coming. They're yours now. They're on their way.

You end up on a fucking ventilator, you're paying that shit. That's yours. And if you can't pay that shit, we run into the fucking American, the uniquely American problem of the rich get well and the poor get dead. Yep.

Easy for fucking Joe Rogan to say. And they're going to get a lesser quality level of care. That's clearly happening all over the board. I mean, there's a reason why Joe Rogan got better and other people fucking wind up on a ventilator. Yep. Another very similar story, APnews.com,

Wisconsin lawmaker with COVID-19 on ventilator, stable, Republican, shocking, state senator from Wisconsin who opposed mask and vaccine mandates and then developed pneumonia after testing positive for COVID was in stable condition after being placed on a ventilator.

His wife says, go get vaccinated. Yep. It's almost like she's terrified looking at her fucking husband on a ventilator. 60% or so of people do not come off the ventilator.

Yep. So it's not a coin flip, man. It's worse than a coin flip. Once they put you on the ventilator, it's the likelihood is that's your last day that you're awake now. It's worse than a coin flip. Once they put you on the ventilator, the likelihood is that that's your last day that you're awake now. That's it. So, fucking anti-mask, anti-vaccine,

great, dumbass. You're fucking dying. He just held, he was just in a big room refusing to wear a mask with a bunch of other people during one of these sessions that they were having in some sort of governmental session. He fucking doesn't have his mask on and then he gets fucking pneumonia.

Yep. Dumbass. You can fucking tell it's going to happen. Like it's fucking easy to write. Like this season writes itself, Tom. This season writes itself. It's been like fucking an unbelievable level of this. It took so long to get to this point,

but the dumb people have mutated this virus into something now that is deadly to people that fucking, that very deadly to people who aren't vaccinated and can be deadly to people who are vaccinated. So they mutated this virus into something now that you just can't just fucking brush away. You're going to get this. If you get this thing, you could fucking really get fucked by it. Yeah, man. Chekhov's gun has been in act two this whole time.

Yeah. Like this is unsurprising. Like you're right. This season writes itself. We knew all this was going to end. This story is from Raw Story. Georgia cop who pushed people to take horse dewormer instead of vaccine dies from COVID-19.

This is an old man with at least two visible chins in this picture. Shocking. Dies from. Oh, yeah. You guys should take some fucking ivermectin. Why has literally no studies at all that are peer reviewed that show that it's an effective treatment, much less prevention measure for fucking COVID-19. How are you fucking getting your fucking research through memes

on ivermectin and then you just start seeing all these people, like this guy fucking took that shit and didn't do fuck all. He died. He's dead. He died.

And the other problem with Joe Rogan taking ivermectin is that boosts ivermectin. You know, he says, I took a bunch of stuff, but you know what's going to get the play is the ivermectin. That's going to be the one thing that everybody's going to go back to. They're going to say, oh, it must've been the ivermectin, not the fucking, the monoclonal antibodies, enema he got or whatever the fuck, like none of that other stuff, or just like you said,

being rich or maybe getting a small case of it. You know, like there's a lot of fucking variables that caused Joe Rogan to not die from it. But you know what? The chances are that you can die. And this guy fucking wanted to take fucking horse dewormer. He fucking died instead of it. You know, but that's, that's one of those misses that none of these people are going to pay attention to. They're going to say, whatever, man. Yeah, it doesn't count. Not it. Maybe this story from the Raw story. QAnon conspiracist dies from COVID-19. He called a hoax to the very end. How do you do that? How do you even say that through the ventilator? How can you even say that? He said, they're trying to make DeSantis look bad. Why? Because DeSantis is not going along

with the agenda. When these guys catch COVID and then they turn out okay, some of these fucking popular anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-science people, Cecil, they just, they need to start dying like this. This is a good thing because it stops the message. It's one less person pushing the bullshit. And then it's got to stop some people. Do you think this stops some people in their tracks? I mean, look at what's happening. These people that are, that we read stories recently, Tom, about people that while they were dying, were telling their family to go get fucking, go get vaccinated and their family went and got vaccinated.

This person's, this Wisconsin lawmaker's wife is telling people to go get vaccinated. So like, clearly it's changing some minds, right? It's changing a few people's minds. This last story here, this third conservative radio host who condemned vaccines dies of COVID. But the thing is, is that, is that he wound up afterwards, a couple of these conservatives afterwards, while they were very sick, were like,

no, actually I made a huge mistake. I fucking, I fucked up. I made a huge mistake. And that's why, you know, like, I'm going to be real honest. I'm going to talk about the, the very, the very base part of me wants to be satisfied with this. I want to be satisfied to say, you tempted fate and you deserve this. There's a base part of me, Tom, that very much wants to say that. But it's not there because it's just sad.

I'm just sad. And it's because they believed this stuff. They didn't just, they're not flaunting it because they're trying to be a rule breaker or they're trying to show people up. They're flaunting it because they believe it, man. And they've been lied to. These people have been lied to and they've been deceived and they've been, and the problem is, is that they're letting politics influence their health decisions. They're seeing a political point and they're using that to

influence their health decisions. And it's sad. And there's a base part of me, I'm telling you right now, there's a base part of me that wants to be satisfied when I read these stories. And I'm not, I'm actually saddened by every single one of these that I read. They are making public health statements. None of these like Rogan, Wisconsin lawmaker, Georgia cop, conservative radio host. Like the Georgia cop was on social media talking about this. So these are people that are just telling

their small group of people about this stuff. These are people who are spreading this information to other people. And I feel very saddened that they just, that they were so, that they didn't think critically enough about this one thing and it killed them. Yeah. You're such, you're a better person than I am. You just are. Because at some point, like, I, I hear what you're saying. I do. And I know that a huge amount of people have been lied to and they've been deceived, but also some of these people are the liars themselves. And some

of these people are the deceivers themselves. This information starts somewhere and there are people that know they are lying. There are people that are manipulating others. There are people that are using this for personal gain. There are people that are, others. There are people that are using this for personal gain. There are people that are using public opinion in order to gain access to power, in order to further their career or other agendas. And I don't know how to separate those people anymore, those who have been lied to and those who are doing the lying. And I look and I'm like, you know what? If you were fucking influential

and you use that influence to spread a message that causes people to die, my heart just is too hard. It's just too hard. I just can't find that. And I think I, and I, and I, I think you're probably right, but my heart's not there. Like I just, because I'm like, what if you fucking knew? What if it was good for your ratings,

man? What if it got you sponsors, man? Maybe that's why you're doing it. But I will say that the ones that have come out on their deathbed to say, yeah,

man, sad, you know, like, like if you're, if you're like, fuck, I,

I fucking fucked up and I didn't think critically about this one thing. And I let my politics influence my medical decisions and I made a huge mistake. You know, that is, I, I, I feel sad for that person, but you're right though. The people who like fucking the people who are going to just lie to like, that's why I got to admit, that's why I would have been very very satisfied if trump had died same because he was a hundred percent anti-masker a hundred percent talking about stuff that didn't work literally for political gain it was all for political gain for him so for me it's like if if he wanted if he died from that like i could not you couldn't, there's no way I could muster it here.

I'm the Glob-Glo-Gab-Galab. I love books, and this basement is a true treasure trove. I am the Glob-Glo-Gab-Galab. The Schwabble-Dabble-Wabble-Gabble-Flibble-Blabble-Blab. I'm full of Schwibble-Glibber kind. I am the yeast of thoughts and minds. Swivel, dabble, glibber, glubber, swivel, schwab, glub. So last week we read the namesake for the book,

chapter seven, The Demon Haunted World. We are reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World. If you want to read along with us, we are on chapter seven. Each previous week we've done a chapter. You can join in. You can buy this book. It's available through, I think, Barnes & Noble, a couple other places.

You could probably get it on any books. You could get it from Audible. And if you are someone who is a patron, Tom reads every chapter aloud, and we post it for patrons. This particular chapter, The Demon-Haunted World, starts out essentially talking about visions.

And people have been having visions for a long time. And for a long time, they were religiously focused, right? These were all based in religion. The visions before were demons. They were demons that would come out. They eventually, you know, they would have all these very obvious sleep paralysis or they made shit up, right? You know, somebody made something up and they talked about demons because that was the supernatural du jour for a very long time in our world.

Then, you know, and he also talks very much in this chapter about how dangerous that was because it, you know, it was very easy to accuse people of heresy. People wound up getting murdered because of it. They burned people at the stake. They did all kinds of horrible things to people

in the name of religion that Carl does not take. He certainly doesn't steer away from it. And he explains it in great detail how terrible religion was for these people. And then at a certain point in history, that shifts to aliens and the visions are very similar. And Carl sort of talks a little bit about how those visions are very similar at this point.

And his conclusion is basically, look, it wasn't demon or aliens. It was, it turns out that's a very mundane explanations for why these things happen to people. One, you know, like I said earlier, you could be lying, you could have, you know, you can certainly have that sort of waking dream, that sleep paralysis that, you know,

we've talked about hallucinations. We've talked about our own meat lying to us. All these things are much better explanations than demons or aliens. Yep. It's funny because he traces the evolution or the transformation of our own ability to fool ourselves and how the cultural narrative shapes how we think of our own experiences. So when we are living in a culture steeped in demons,

it's demons. When we're living in a culture steeped in alien mythology, it's aliens. When we're living in a culture, whatever the cultural narrative is, that's what informs the gaps in our experience we don't know how to fill, right? So when we have an experience that fills us with a feeling and we don't know how to explain it, our culture that we swim in will fill in those gaps. There is a pre-existing narrative

that allows for all of that story to be told. And then once that story kind of has its version of going viral, then that story will have a repetitive cyclical nature to it. It's funny because the same, to Cecil's point before, the same reported experience has a different narrative. So it's not that it was demons before. And now all the demons are like sleepy and aren't like harassing us anymore. And it's not that it was aliens. And then now I don't know what it is now, but like,

it's not, it's ghosts more now. I think ghosts are more the cultural zeitgeist. I think, I don't know what it is now, but like. It's not, it's ghosts more now. I think ghosts are more the cultural zeitgeist, I think. I think ghosts, there's a lot more ghost shows nowadays than there are literally anything else on any of those. So ghosts are the thing. It's like supernatural ghost thing is now the cultural zeitgeist. Whereas before, especially during our college years, Tom, it was aliens.

It was very much aliens. It very much was. And it's funny because when I was reading this, I kept thinking to myself, we have to pay attention to the narrative that we're steeped in so that we can guard ourselves against that narrative. Because that narrative is always going to subconsciously fill in the gaps for you.

And there will be gaps. There will be times where we have experiences and feelings and we aren't fully able to connect them ourselves with our rational mind. And if we are not careful, and I think that's what Carl's point here is, if we are not careful, we will think that we are living in a demon haunted world. We will think that we are living in a world full of aliens because that is what the culture is telling us. So it is essential that we not only know ourselves and question our personal experiences, but we also have to always keep at arm's length some sense of our own cultural narrative so that it doesn't, so that we can guard against its desire and our desire to fill in the gaps with it. Yeah, for sure.

It is 100%. You're right. It's very countercultural in some way. It's saying we shouldn't be following. In some ways, the whole first half of this chapter is, culturally, we fucking murdered a lot of people because we were wrong. Yeah.

And there's a, I mean, the first half of this chapter is essentially talking about all these different types of, you know, different people in the Catholic church throughout history. And they're all like Latin names and things like that. And these are all like popes. And, you know, he's talking about Augustine at a certain point.

He's talking about all these people that essentially were making comments about demons and how demons existed and how they interacted with the world and how, you know, these are our trusted sources. These are, you know, people that we looked up to back then. These are people that we thought were telling us the truth about the world.

And so there's this, you know, the culture of the world at that point thought demons were doing horrible shit. And they were murdering people by the hundreds. You know, there's a story in here where he talks about you could essentially, you know, accuse anybody of anything, essentially witchcraft. And one guy, when he finally confessed at the end, he said he wound up killing over 200 women for 20 shillings a piece. Yeah. Because there was a bounty.

Right. It's amazing, again, how that narrative also ties itself into the economic incentive structure of the culture that it's steeped in, right? So, you know, going through the whole witch stories and the witch burnings and the witch hunts, it sounds so much to me like the civil forfeiture laws that are attached to the drug war. It sounds so, so, so much like that.

If you are driving through, you know, whatever county and the sheriff pulls you over and you have $1,000 in your wallet and he thinks, well, maybe that's $1,000 from a drug deal. There are many parts of this country where they can seize your car, seize your money. You don't get convicted or even charged with anything and they take your stuff. with anything and they take your stuff. You can get, back in the day when they were doing the witch burnings, you're talking about all of your belongings become essentially a free-for-all for the people that accused you

and for the magistrates. And then, you know, they kick it. Everybody gets a kick and they divide your estate up. And so there's an incentive to create these kinds of monsters, right? There is an incentive to have villains. And I thought about that and I thought, holy shit, how much of that sounds just like the race war and the drug war that creates a narrative of villainy in order to seize property? in order to seize property. Yeah. I would be very interested too to see how Carl would think about the cult,

because we talked about this last week, the cultural zeitgeist shifting from visitation and manipulation by outside forces to deep conspiracy. Yeah. Because that's where we're at now. I know that you just struggled a few minutes ago wondering how, where this, you know, where we are in this culture now with this sort of idea of visitation. And it's because the idea of visitation, I feel like has been pushed away

and this, it's been replaced by conspiracy. Yeah, I think you're right. And there's tons of conspiracy thoughts and ideas. And I hope, and I don't remember. And so I'm excited to read the rest of the book. And I hope Carl does address conspiracy deeply, a little more deeply in the book, because I would wonder where he would be with, I wonder how this chapter would turn out if it wasn't aliens, if it was something.

Because let's be real honest, like there's a lot of harm in demons when you're in a fucking world that is religious. Right. 100%. And Carl goes to great pains to explain all the harms that can happen. But if it's aliens? Yeah. I mean, there's harm. There's clearly harm, but it's not to the same level. It's not the same sort of direct cause and effect sort of harm. The harms become more subtle and more insidious. More insidious, for sure. And they become used by other actors

to create and leverage you in other ways. For sure. And in some ways, that's better. And in other ways, it has a ways that's better. And in other ways, it has a lot more reach and a lot more spread. A lot more spread, yeah. And it can be just as dangerous. It's just not explicitly dangerous.

Right. Yeah. So next week in our book club, we are going to be reading chapter eight. And chapter eight is on the distinction between true and false visions, relatively short chapter. Uh, so, uh, join us for that and, uh, leave us your comments. We love to read them about this. So we want to thank our patrons.

Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons, Wild Matt, Karen, Nathan, Musk, Marshall, Jacob, spent my charity budget for the year. Help. Need everyone to roast the coin on

Vulgarity for Charity. You missed Vulgarity for Charity, buddy. You just came in one week too late. Ah, we'll have to do it for the next two. You just came in one week too late. Oh, we'll have to do it for the next two year version of Bulgarian for charity. And Circle. Circle. We want to thank Circle. Circle for joining up. Holy shit. And we also want to talk about the people up there pledges, Chris and I messed this up. I called him Zaid last time. And I think he said it's Zaid. Oh, I would have said Zaid. But I'm going to say it both ways. I'm going to say it both ways. Zaid, Zaid.

So you get to decide, Zaid or Zaid, how I said that. And if I said it wrong, you can up your pledge again and tell me how I said it wrong. That's a great way that I'm learning about how to make people up their pledges. But thank you so much for your generous donations. You guys are the reason why Glory Hill Studios exists. You guys are the reason why we're able to

be able to pay our employees who do a wonderful job of helping us put this show together and helping us reach out to you as a community. Without them, it would be a very difficult process and it would not be as robust and nice as it is. So thank you so much for doing that. We got a bunch of email. Kevin sends a message in and he says he's worried about sort of the abortion ban that's maybe going to happen in South Dakota now because it certainly happened in fucking Texas. And he said, would it be fair then that the parents would be able to get

a tax credit based on their conception date and not based on when the child was born? And I think that that is, I 100% think that would change the face of this law is if people started claiming an unborn child, a fetus, as a fucking, as a deduction. Yeah. So they might be able to get one whole year. So the way it works is if you have, the day the child is born, the calendar year, you get a deduction for that whole year.

So they don't go like month to month to month. So it could absolutely give a lot of people an extra year of a child tax credit or deduction on their taxes. I think the problem with that thinking is it's based in fairness. And there's nothing fair about this system. Yeah, there's nothing fair at all. You're right. No, you're 100% right.

Is it fair and logical? Absolutely. Is that 100% the reason it won't happen? Yes. Yeah. We got a message from Megan, and they're talking about COVID testing offered weekly to kids at the elementary school,

their kids at the elementary school, and they wound up having their kids tested, but some parents are shaming families who choose the testing. Yeah, so this is crazy. And they asked specifically what we would do if our kids, if my kids could get tested every week. I know a lot of districts,

they're doing weekly testing for all students. It's voluntary, but they're weekly testing for all students. They do not do that at any of the four different schools my four kids attend. But I would 100% support that. Testing is an important part of public health. Testing for infection is an important element of public health. Testing and contact tracing. So yeah, I can't imagine not being in support of that. Yeah. Got a message about seatbelts. And this is from Derek. And Derek said,

both masks and seatbelts are simple, largely unobtrusive, life-saving devices that a number of Americans would either die than use. The difference is that seatbelts only affect the wearer and masks affect other people nearby. I was talking to Tom before we started

and I told him that I started wearing a seatbelt when I was in my 20s because in Illinois for years, my years, my whole life growing up, there was no law. And so I never did it when it wasn't the law. And the only reason I started wearing a seatbelt, even after it became a law, was because of monetary incentive. I got two tickets relatively close to each other. And as a young person who didn't have a lot of funds, I realized that was a stupid thing to get in a car without a seatbelt. I never once

early on did it for safety. I did it for monetary reasons. And that's my same hope that the same reasoning will attach itself to a lot of other people in our culture when it comes to COVID. Like you were saying, Tom, when those protections go away for COVID and people start getting sick, and I might not have gotten COVID yet, but I see my brother's racking up a huge hospital bill because he's got COVID. It might convince me to go get a shot just so I don't have to deal with that particular thing happening to myself. Yeah. It's interesting how much more, that particular thing happening to myself.

Yeah, it's interesting how much more, how much less people are willing to tolerate financial risk versus they are willing to tolerate medical risk or risk. Because of your example, like you were willing to get in a car and do something unsafe, but you weren't willing to get in a car and do something unsafe to your pocketbook. And that's just, we need to recognize that element of human nature. That's just human nature and make policy decisions based on that. Yeah. We got an image from Carson and Carson

sends in this Christian soldier destroys atheist professor. It's a troll, very funny thing. We're going to post it on this week's show notes. Thank you, Carson, for sending this in. It's a troll. Very funny thing. We're going to post it on this week's show notes. Thank you, Carson, for sending this in. It's a long read, but you will recognize the tropes for sure. We got an image from Sarah and Sarah sends in a image we're going to post on this week's show notes.

This is great. It's super funny. So we're going to post it on this week's show notes. Check it out. We were not able to stream this week. Haley, again, is also very sick. And so we were not able to stream this week. Haley, again, is also very sick. And so we were not able to stream this week. We're hoping that we can stream next week.

We do have some technology in place where if Tom does have to stay home and be near home in order to take Haley to the emergency room, then he can feasibly do it as long as it doesn't coincide with, you know, clearly when we put the stream on. So check our social again next week.

And we hope that Haley starts feeling better. And we also hope that we can also put these streams on. But 100% streams are ancillary to our significant other's health. So those things go get shoved in the background when there's some important things happening at home. We apologize, but we should be back next week. We hope that she's feeling better

and we are back next week. But we just want to let everybody know that there was two weeks we just couldn't, we wound up couldn't, we just couldn't do the stream. And I just, I got a, we got a fair number of messages just offering some support. I just, I got a, we got a fair number of messages just offering some support.

I just have to say like, really, I'm really fucking grateful for that. I just am. I'm just really grateful. We got a lot of nice emails, patron messages, et cetera.

It means a lot to me. I'm really grateful to you guys. Thank you. Thank you very much for caring about my family. We got a message from Seth and Seth said that the LDS church has sent him a book, The Great Controversy. They literally sent him a paper book in the mail. My favorite part of that picture, Cecil, is the picture of

the dog in the corner as he's taking a picture of the book, the LDS church. The dog even looks like, what is this shit? Are you kidding me? Seth, you need to cut the pages out of that. And then you need to potty train your dog with the pages of that book. That's what you need to do. We got a message. This is from Brandon.

And Brandon said, after listening to your live stream where we were talking about, we actually, for some reason, during one of our live streams, someone mentioned Trappist caskets. And so Tom and I went to go look at Trappist caskets and we watched the whole video. Our video got flagged for it hilariously

for like, because their song was playing in the background. They were singing their Trappist monk songs while they were banging away on a fucking casket. But in any case, they make these artisan caskets. It's a time when I was making fun of it and kidding around. But at a certain point, one of us mentioned we should sponsor the casket. So somebody sponsors a casket. And so with this business idea, Brandon went out and bought the website, sponsormycasket.com. So I hope you do make it. I know there's nothing there right now, but now you've got to put something up there, Brandon, because the people are going to go to

sponsormycasket.com and you don't want them just to hit a nothing page. They're going to want to hit something. So you got to put something up, some sort of message. So just whatever you can think of, Brandon, I would throw it up there. But I think that's hilarious. I think it's great. I hope it works out for you. Tom and I get 10%. All right. So, uh, that is going to wrap it up for this week. We hope we will be back with a live stream next week. Uh, all your favorite places, uh, on YouTube, Twitch, uh, Facebook, and you could check our, our check our social media, maybe an hour or two beforehand. That's a great way to know whether or not we're going to be on. Uh, but you can double check there, but hope you guys come and say hi to us. Uh, come, come back and see us. We missed a couple in a row, but we're going to be on. But you can double check there, but hope you guys come and say hi to us. Come, come back and see us. We missed a couple in a row, but we're going to be

back. Hopefully this week you can come see us and hang out with us. That is going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. 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.