Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 594: Hail Satanists!

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Show Notes    

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The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole 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 political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode 594 of Cognitive Dissonance. We are creeping up, buddy. Yeah, getting close, getting close.

Getting awfully close. Huge, huge, huge, huge 600th episode. Tom, this week, I wanted to talk to you about something. So this last week, I was a weekend and I was reading the news. Like I do every day. You know, like I know you do too. You just read the news.

And I spent about a half an hour to 45 minutes every day just looking at the news. And I was about a half an hour to 45 minutes every day just looking at the news. And I was reading the news and a story came up and the headline read something like, and it was from Rolling Stone, right? So it's what I think is a reputable organization. 700,000 copy distribution on Rolling Stone. They, you know-

They have done some good journalism in the past. And they have journalism, people who clearly get paid to be journalists. These aren't like, I'm not putting in time to, you know, submit a blog post. You know what I mean? Like this is a company that hires journalists.

So the post was, waiting room full of ivermectin overdoses in Oklahoma can't service gunshot victims. Something like that. And I thought it was funny. It made me laugh. The first thing I was like, oh, that's actually really funny. Like it's a funny line.

The way it was written, it was funny. And so I thought, I'll just make a quick joke about it. And so I took a picture of it. I didn't want to post the story. To be honest, the story, the reason why I do that is just make a quick joke about it. And so I took a picture of it. I didn't want to post the story. The story, to be honest, the story, the reason why I do that is so that more people can see it. Because the way Facebook works, it's-

If you post a link. Post a link. Most of the time, nobody sees it. But if you post a picture of the story and then a link to the story or whatever, then people will- Gets more traction. People see it.

The more people see it. And I just like, I'm like, oh, it'll be funny. I want to make a joke and I want people to hear it. I don't want to make a joke to myself because I already thought it was funny. So why, why make, why make a joke to an audience of one? So I posted on Facebook and I basically said like, this is the most American headline I've ever seen or something like that. And hilariously, another guy who I follow, this James Fell guy posted pretty much the exact same thing that I did like four hours. That's really great. Pretty much the exact same thing. Like, oh, Siri, tell me what the most American thing you can imagine. And he posted this

thing. Okay. Anyway. All right. So later that day, somebody comes on my podcast, on my Facebook feed, and this is another podcaster. She pipes in and says, just so you know, that story's fake. Oh. And I said, fake. And so I go back to the story. And now instead of the story itself, the beginning of the whole story is two full paragraphs in italics that explains that a doctor claimed this, but the doctor hasn't worked for the company, this hospital for a while.

And Rolling Stone never bothered to even pick up the phone to call the hospital to find out. They didn't vet their source. They didn't vet their source. And I was actually very upset by this because unlike what we talk about where when you're just fucking with your Facebook feed and you're like, oh man, what's that? I'll share this. I essentially did what we do in the show. I found a story outside of Facebook world. I was looking for news at the time. My mind was set on looking at news.

I read the story fully before I posted it. You had a trustworthy source. I did all the things that I would normally do for this show. Right. And even making a joke about it and then posting it, right? So I make a joke and I share it. Right. Just like I did on this show.

So I did, essentially, did the show for one, for one tiny moment. And what happened was, is immediately it got fucking, within a day, I mean, it was within a day it was called out that Rolling Stone went back on it. 500 retweets. The correction tweet had 251. And it makes me furious because it makes one, it makes the story about ivermectin look bad, right? Because the story about ivermectin that we're hearing for most people is it's terrible if you overdose on it.

People are taking sometimes very large doses of this and they are overdosing and they are hurting themselves. They're taking it prophylactically instead of getting a vaccine. Some people are taking it after they get COVID and getting, you know, that's doing nothing because it's not proven as a COVID,

as an effective COVID cure. So there's all- And they're spreading a message too to other people that there is a treatment that is effective for COVID. Yeah. When in fact, this is not one of the effective treatments for COVID. So they're, in addition to the harm they're doing to themselves,

they're damaging an overall narrative that just perpetuates other people getting sicker and sicker. Yeah. So it's, but you're right. And so there's all these problems with the harm of that. But it's so frustrating that a source of journalism that you would hope would be somebody who would be, you know, I mean, and I know I'm probably going to get a message from somebody. First,

I'm going to get, I'm probably going to get a couple of messages. One will probably be something like, oh, come on, you believe that? And like, yeah, a lot of people believed it. That's not the craziest fucking headline I heard in the whole year. And if you're going to send me that message, what you're basically saying is I'm smarter than you. I'm smarter than you. How could you be so fucking stupid? You know, to all those people, don't send that message because that's a shitty, stupid message to say. It's a dumb message. It's a dumb message to be like, I'm way smarter than you.

How could you be so dumb? In the last two years, if I would have just transported to now and you were to list like 15 of the top headlines we talked about, tell me how many you would guess, right? Were actually headlines. You wouldn't be able to. That's one thing.

But also, you know, I understand there's also this idea too, that it's not just, what's implied in that headline is it's not just ivermectin overdoses. It's also these hospitals are full of COVID people. Well, right. That's why that headline would sound believable, right? Is that there are, I mean, in city after city, the reports coming in are that ICU beds

are getting more and more scarce. That these hospitals are filling to a level of capacity that is daunting the system and creating real problems. Again, I mean, again. And there are parts of this country where they're beginning to ration care. Well, you and I were talking before the show, I believe it was in Idaho. I read a story that they are beginning to ration care. There was a story I read this week about a man who had kidney stones, who was unable to secure a space in

an ICU and ended up dying. So there are, it rhymes with other things that are happening in a way that is not on its face unbelievable. Yeah. And the other problem too, I think when people push and try to make fun of you for something like that, it makes you, it certainly made me feel this,

you know, that need to dig your heels in and show that you were right at least somehow. At least somehow I was right. For sure, yeah's, it's, it's one of those things that like, I was embarrassed by, right. I was embarrassed that I shared this thing. I was embarrassed that, and I've been embarrassed on our show in the past when we've shared things that have come out to be not true. I've been embarrassed by that because what I don't want to be is somebody who is spreading false information. That's literally why I started the show. Like literally why I started the show.

Right. So like, there's no, there's no world where I would just look in the rear view mirror at that and be like, Oh no, that's fine. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm super hard on myself for that. Right. And I feel like, I feel like it, that the one thing I want to get across is, you know, I feel like I need to double check everything I do now. But I don't even know how you would double check. I feel like, I feel like one of the things that I find a corroborating cause they're like, yeah, promise like news stories. They piggyback on other news stories and slap their own credential on them. It's tough.

And what sucks is I did all the same things that I do for the show. Yeah. And so I guess one of the reasons why I want to say this too is like, there's going to be times I think guaranteed that we're going to mess up. I will be embarrassed by it.

I'll be genuinely embarrassed by it. But I know the way the news cycle works. Yeah. We're going to be embarrassed by it. It's going to happen. Rolling Stone in the writing and the lack of vetting and the poor journalism. A good source, I would not throw Rolling Stone away, right? Yeah. Because they did the thing that they're supposed to do. Now, hopefully they fired that guy. I don't know if they fired that guy, right?

But they retracted it. They did not double down. Yeah. When you look at notoriously unreliable sources of news like Epoch Times, Newsmax. Yeah. They double down. When things are shown to be wrong, they'll eliminate it, right? They'll just delete it off their website rather than- Sure. You know, rather than try to like retract it and say,

hey, we got these things wrong. This is how it happened. These corrections are important. I think, I know I have made mistakes. I mean, I do a lot of the sourcing of the stories for this show. And you and I have sat together and you've been like, this actually turns out not to be true. Yeah. Having somebody else in your corner to sort of that's trustworthy, that's intellectually honest, that can bounce things back and forth with you, I think is an important part of being a good news consumer at this point.

Yeah. I think you're right. If we're all trying to do it 100% ourselves, we will all make some mistakes. We will. The system is rigged against us in that regard because the system is rigged to create information designed to be shared.

Create a buzz. You know? Yeah. And I do think, and I was thinking about this because I did see your correction on Facebook. And then I typed a response. I deleted it because I didn't want it to sound the wrong way. I was thinking about this because I did see your correction on Facebook. And then I typed a response. I deleted it because I didn't want it to sound the wrong way. I was thinking about this. Maybe we should stop reading and sharing shares. You know what I mean? Maybe that is a bad way for us to get and

give news. And so long as the incentive, and I know that I'm not going to reach enough people to make a difference on the show, but like, so long as the incentive for journalism is to create shares, to create buzz, to have that viral movement, that disincentivizes careful journalism. It just does by its nature. And I wonder if as consumers,

we can't boycott that process and just say, I am going to remove myself from that process because I don't think that it, at least for myself, I've been thinking about this a little bit over the last couple of days. I don't know that that comports with my values. So it's like, some people don't buy meat because it doesn't comport with their values. Yeah. And I wonder if that's part of the problem is that the information ecosystem is designed to be voluminous first and accurate

second. Sure, sure. And I think you're right. I think especially when it comes to those headlines, you know, it's impossible to consume news nowadays without some sort of clickbaity headline. Yeah. All of it has clickbaity headlines. And then you get into the story and sometimes you're completely shocked. You're like, well, that doesn't really feel like, it feels like you picked the most salacious part of this to get me in here. And it's really kind of milked when I get in. Yeah. But I've, and I've

noticed that a lot, right. But those stories don't get shared. It's the, you know, it's the ones that, you know, really, I think sort of skirt that truth that, that just like with this, it skirted the truth. And the way it was also worded, I will say the way the, the way the headline was worded probably should have given me some pause anyway, because it says doctor says, and what I should have been like, well, what the fuck, who's the doctor and why? And I should have paused a little bit. It's my fault too. You know what? That's, but that's a lesson to learn. And I wouldn't think about that, but I think as a rule of thumb,

it might be wise to say, okay, well, any headline that relies in its writing on hearsay probably is not something I want to trust. Yeah, wait until it gets corroborated. Right, yeah. It also occurs to me that, you know, the social media companies

that have the incentive to create that buzz, when you said like the original had, what do you say, like 6,500 retweets. It was only on Twitter I saw. And a couple of hundred retweets on the correction. Yeah. It would be a matter of, if the goal of social media companies was to, at least in part, be a partner in truth, right? They would be really easy to say, oh, you shared this one time? I'm going to put a notification to the correction in your notifications bar. Any story that then later is retracted or has a correction, I should get a notification. Oh, you know what? All of a sudden I can reach the same number of people or many of those people.

Yeah, the same people who shared it at least. But I think it's intentional that that stuff doesn't exist. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Structurally, we could create technological elements that pull that information back and allow for some kind of correction to the machine. But it's not, the goal is the goal of churn. Sure. You know. They want ad revenue. Right. They want ad revenue and they're happy to get it. The one thing too that I noticed was a lot of people that I, when I posted this, after I posted this, a bunch of people posted and commented on it and said, I didn't go back to that story. Thank you for posting this. Yeah. And I wouldn't

have gone back to that story if someone hadn't notified this. Yeah. And I wouldn't have gone back to that story if someone hadn't notified me of that. And that's the problem with those corrections. Like I wonder if like, there's gotta be some, yeah, a better way to get, like if I click on a story, like fucking Facebook and Flipboard, they all know I clicked on it. So why can't they send me a notification? I'll get knife fucking ads for the rest of my life. Cause I looked up knives on my phone. Exactly. You know, and so the same thing. It's like, you know what I clicked on, asshole. Yep.

You know? They could just tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. Can't surveillance ever work for us? I know.

It never works for us. Get Snowden on this. Texas bites. Texas bites. Texas jump up and bite my ass. Texas bites, Texas bites, Texas jump up and bite my ass. Texas bites, Texas bites, Texas jump up and bite my ass. Texas bites, Texas bites, Texas jump up and bite my ass. P-I-T-E-A-S-S. Texas jump up and fight my ass.

Texas sucks. So this story comes from NPR.org. Fact check. Texas Governor Greg Abbott's misleading remarks on the state's abortion law. So I watched the video and listened to exactly what he said. And it's fucking awful. Cecil, do you want to just play it? Yeah, let's just play the video. I want to make sure that we don't pull this monstrous bullshit out of context.

Regarding the heartbeat pill, why force a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy to close? It doesn't require that at all because, obviously, it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion. So, for one, it doesn't provide that. That said, however, let's make something very clear. Rape is a crime. And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets. Why did he wait till now, Tom?

Cecil, why did he wait till now, Tom? Yeah. Cecil, why did he wait till now? Why? I mean, I mean, you know, thank you. Could you could you have done it before? Maybe it's such a stupid fucking thing to say that when I watched it, I was one of those like stare at the screen in your head like a dog. Right.

And he says it with that like rising cadence and conviction of i just had an idea and i'm gonna tell it to you thunderously and you shall applaud and i'm like that's your fucking moment that's your moment is well here's our plan guys now we're gonna go everybody who's a rapist or might be a rapist in the future, please raise your hand. What if- You've all been arrested. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Sorry, this is the minority report. Who feels stupid now? Tom Cruise comes walking out behind him. Sorry, you're all going to have to go with me. A bunch of bald albino ladies in a pool said you were going to rape somebody next year. They all had this weird fever dream together and they said,

you're going to rape somebody next year. I have to kill you before you do it. Wow. Oh, you got six weeks. Yeah, six weeks. Well, that's what I was going to mention was, what if your dad is the one who's raping you and you can't get to the place in time? And then

when you do, finally go get the abortion and you know because it's like you're in your first trimester at the end of it. And Billy down the street sees it. And then he sues the abortion, the place that was going to take care of it for you. Right. Because he can't sue you, right? He can't sue the woman.

No. And I don't know if he can sue the dad who raped her or not. Well, yeah, if he helps her get the abortion, he can. But, well, let's say she's getting it without his consent, right? Then she goes there. They can sue the Uber driver. They can sue the guy who opened the door, the guy who put her in the wheelchair to bring her in.

They could sue the company, the charity that she wound up getting the money from. They could sue the doctor, the fucking parking lot where they had to park. They could sue all kinds of different people. And so it disincentivizes not the person going to get the abortion. You, do I have to explain this to a governor? It disincentivizes the people giving

the abortions to give abortion. Literally, he doesn't believe this either, right? Because it's not like the, it's not like nobody's ever explained to him. Look, if I, if I get raped on, Because it's not like nobody's ever explained to them, look, if I get raped on, well, if somebody gets raped on Monday, January the 1st, they cannot go out Monday, January the 1st and take a pregnancy test and find out they're pregnant. So the clock has not started the day that you were raped. You don't have six weeks. If you had six weeks, you would have six weeks from the event to make your decision and find a provider or make your appointments. It's also not like you show up to Planned Parenthood and you're like, oh, I'd like an abortion today. It's an appointment like any other doctor's office. You go, you make an appointment, you come back for that appointment when the appointment is taking place. That's in a

normal world where things work. I don't know how it is in fucking, well, in Texas now there is no boy, but if you get fucking raped on Monday, January the 1st, you don't have six weeks. You don't, you can't even take a pregnancy test that's going to show you're pregnant for a couple of weeks. Yeah. And you might not miss, and you're processing this fucking horrible traumatic event. You might not, it might not even fucking occur to you. You might not have access to, or money or dry. There's a million reasons why you don't actually have

a six week time span. And AOC took him to task on this. Yeah, I want to read this really quick. This is her tweet. She said, she said, if Governor Abbott is anti-rape as he claims,

why doesn't he just lead the Texas state legislator to pass a law for $10,000 bounties on people who engage in or aid sexual assault? Or is he opposed because that slippery slope of vigilantism

where men could be unjustly targeted? There's a video, too, of her being like, I don't think he understands how biology works. You don't have six weeks. That's fucking insane.

And yeah, she also, she said that, too. She said, you know, most women, they wind up skipping, they wind up missing their period because of a multitude of things or nothing at all.

And that happens. That just happens. And so like the idea that you're going to measure it off of that anyway, you know, if you're going to be so fucking precise as to fucking sue somebody on how long it was, you know, six weeks, if that's your hard deadline, you need a better system than

the current system we have, which is, you know, going off the last period. There is no way to know with complete scientific surety. It's fucking ridiculous. I do love your point. Like, why do you have rapists at all?

If this was always in your power? Exactly. You're just like, eh, it's the God problem, right? Exactly. God's like, eh, I just let evil happen. I like bone cancer. Yeah, I think the bone cancer is fine. I am both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

Also, the world is full of terror. I just want to say, sometimes you need a little terror in your life. Right. he's yeah it's it's such a shitty thing to say but the the worst part is all those mouth-breathing shitheads behind him that clapping that clap oh you're gonna get all the rapists oh good get all the ones that haven't raped yet but might rape tomorrow exactly yeah get them as soon as they're born. Get them all. Get the... Hello? Mrs. Over? Yes, this is Mrs. Over.

This is Ed Macias calling from the airport. There's some trouble on your husband's flight. We don't know how serious it is yet, but Steve McCroskey thought you'd want to get down here right away. Yes, I'll be right down. I've got to go to the airport. You can let yourself out the back door. There's juice in the refrigerator.

All right, so, uh, fuck me, man. Here's the world we live in. This is BlockClubChicago.org. QAnon conspiracy theorists harass northwest side hospital that rejected unproven ivermectin treatment for covid patient these headlines cecil these headlines this is like in our neck of the woods. This is at an Amita Health in Chicago. Yeah. And so they are following the science, right? Sure. So the doctors have an obligation to follow the science, to prescribe medicines and to perform the duties of care that as closely as possible hew to best practices and the scientific, you know, findings of the medical world.

And there are problems in that system and everyone knows it. Yeah. But Ivermectin has literally no substantiated evidence of working for COVID. None. There's no reason to use it

any more than anything else. Sure. It showed initially in some small scale, like cellular trials that like huge amounts of it were effective, but lots of things in huge amounts were effective in cellular trials against COVID. There is no evidence at all in any of the human studies that have been done that ivermectin is any better than Pepsi. Sure. It's literally, there's no difference. Yeah.

So, but now people have it in their fucking heads, man. It's the Joe Rogan problem. Sure. It's literally, there's no difference. Yeah. So, but now people have it in their fucking heads, man. It's the Joe Rogan problem. Yeah. They got in their fucking heads that, well, why not try it? Yeah. It's like, well, I mean, have you ever, have you ever had a medicine that didn't have any side effects listed? I don't, the thing, I don't mean even aspirin has fucking side effects. Like you might not get any, right? Like, like my wife and I are polar opposites. You could give me, I am fairly convinced at this point that you could give me high doses of chemo.

And I'd be like, fine. I remember like taking a huge amounts of, of steroids and then going to bed. And I was telling my, my doctor and she's like, you can sleep. Like if you take it,

like when you take them, like, Oh, I take them at night. I said, can you take them at night? It doesn't bother you to sleep. Like nothing. No, my dad's the same way. Like my you take it, like when you take them, like, Oh, I take them at night. It's like, you take them at night. It doesn't bother you to sleep. Like nothing. No. My dad's the same way. Like my dad is like, give me a fucking bunch of medicine. I can't

even tell I took it. Yeah. If you like wave cough syrup, like around my house, my wife falls asleep. Yeah. Like she gets every side of it. Like some people are, but there's no drugs I've ever even heard of. They're just like, ah, there's no side effects. Yeah. Well, and what ivermectin is, is a fucking parasite control. It's for parasites. Right. And the reason why people are calling it horse dewormer, and I want to clear this up. There is a human version of ivermectin.

Yes. And I don't know exactly how close it is to the horse version or whatever, but the reason why people are going to the fucking horse barn or farm and flee to the fucking whatever big R or whatever they're going to, the reason why they're doing that is because they can't get a real prescription to it. Merck is the company that has a prescription for human doses and human, human drugs. I have no idea how close the human and the animal is,

but I read several things where there were several doctors saying, you should never ever take animal drugs, period. Because animal drugs are not controlled in the same way that human drugs are controlled. We don't pay as much attention to those drugs. Well, think about like, you've got cats. I've got cats. I've had dogs.

If you look at cat and dog food, it says not fit for human consumption. Yeah. Yeah. They take, even in the high quality stuff, a lot of times they take all the bits and bobs that, you know, we didn't pass muster for people to eat and they grind them up and feed them to our animals and our pets and stuff. They're not in the same, the levels of control are not the same. And also the dosages. Dosages are huge. When it comes to horses. Man, I'm a big guy. I ain't a fucking horse.

Exactly. Jesus. And that's the thing is people are taking, they're winding up taking these things that are made for horses. There was a woman who posted on one of these, I saw a tweet today where there was a Facebook clipping

of a woman posting on somewhere trying to tell other people how they could take the horse version. Take this many grams per hundred kilograms of your body weight. Don't take any more. Well, you heard it on Facebook. It must be good medical advice. Put it in an applesauce and take it with that. Slip it into the hospital and get it to your friend. Oh my God. Are you serious? Yeah, no, absolutely. How to get it past the hospital, Gary? Bring it into the hospital and feed it to your friend. Oh my God. Are you serious? Yeah, no, absolutely. How to get it past the hospital, Gary? Bring it into the hospital and feed it to your friend and you'll see how quickly they turn around or whatever.

But the thing is, is like, nobody's going to fucking count it if they don't turn around, right? Nobody's, there's not anybody out there who's going to be like, well, that fucking killed that person because they're already in for COVID. So, you know, whatever.

And if they get better, you're not going to blame the fucking, the treatment that they're getting that is different than this horse paste that they're ingesting with fucking applesauce. Dude, I can't even keep up anymore. Do they have to wear a hat though, Tom, that cuts their ears out? That's what I want to know. Do they have to wear the cute donkey hat? They should have to. If they don't, they should. Like the Eeyore hat or whatever, where you have to wear like the donkey hat. If you take ivermectin, I think you should have,

I think ivermectin should come with one of those hats. It should come with one of the, and Joe Rogan should have to wear a hat with his ears poking out the side. I think the hospital, if they do give it to you, should feed you with a feed bag. Feed bag. They should want to eat it with a feed bag.

And if you don't get back in your bed, they get to hit you with a crop. Seriously though, this ivermectin stuff is just, it blows me away, man. How is anybody supposed to keep up at this point with what the lunatics believe, right?

They believe that the vaccine is a bad thing to take. And one of the rationales that is off-sited is, oh, it's unproven. Oh, it's unproven. You know? I know.

And then they're like, well, but take this ivermectin. And you're like, what? And then, oh, it's unproven. Oh, it's unproven. I know. And then they're like, well, but take the cybermectin. And you're like, what? And then, oh, you got to sneak it into the hospital. So wait, the doctors at the hospital, there's a conspiracy of doctors trying not to give you effective medicines, but when you were sick, you went to the hospital in

the first place? None of it. Literally. I fucking feel like I'm heating up and ready to first place. None of it. I like, I literally, like, I fucking feel like I'm like heating up and ready to explode. None of it makes any sense. None of it, all the logical leaves make no sense. And you're right. But, but again, this is a pixie choosy thing because all the ivermectin people are now pointing to studies, like you said, in small petri dishes or whatever, where it was effective. And there, and even Joe Rogan is quoting it because again, Joe Rogan was called a fucking schmuck by a million people because he's a schmuck. And he, and he said he, he did, he did a bunch of other stuff, but tell me which one you

remember. It's the ivermectin. And so everybody's talking about how he did ivermectin and now he's feeling better. And so now he's digging his heels in because everybody says that's super irresponsible, Joe. You're a fucking, you're a voice of a lot of people, whether you like it or not, you like it. Trust me, you like it. He does love it. You are a voice of that, that speaks to a lot of people. You need to be more responsible than that. Well, in his fucking bullshit defense, he says something, oh, it is for people. I don't know why they're calling it horse. It's super disingenuous, right? He says something and I'm paraphrasing, but only a little. He says something, oh, they, they're all calling it horse pace, but it's approved for use in people too.

And the guys who figured out it was useful for people, they won a Nobel Prize in 2015. That's true. But they figured out it was useful for fucking river blindness caused by parasites and some other thing, like head lice caused by, again, which is a parasite. You can

win a Nobel Prize for curing cancer. That doesn't mean that the cancer drug cures AIDS. Yeah, sure. Like, why would you think? That's not even relevant. Lobotomy won a fucking Nobel Prize. Right, well. Fuck off.

I just think it's fucking 100% irresponsible of him to not only do what he did, but then to double down on what he did. And then to frame it in such a straw man way to be like, oh, they're calling it horse pace. They're calling it horse pace because they're making fun of you. That's why they're calling it horse pace, dude. And they're calling it horse pace because some people are using

horse pace. Of course. But seriously, they're calling it horse pace, you're right, for that reason. But then also because they want to make fun of you because they want to make fun I think everybody knows that there's a human drug for it I read the Merck website thing

on our show there's a human version of this drug we understand that yep yeah and I think in his defense too he says Merck sells it

and it's like yeah they sell it and they say don't take it for COVID I know he didn't even look at that right. Maybe on the yellow page of the phone directory.com. Ian, that's it. You're obsessed with finding this payphone. They're out there. They're all out there. I can't deal with this anymore, Ian. I quit. You can't quit. Where will you go? How will you go? That's not, don't put holes in this. I'm out. Whatever, Gary.

Go. You think I don't have contingency plans? What is that, Ian? My contingency plan. Hi, guys. When you go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY, you'll get... Ian, you're stealing my whole stick. Hey, you decided to leave, but our listeners won't be leaving the savings like 50% off almost any one item when you use code GLORY.

I don't even sound like that. Well, it sounds like when you use code GLORY, you also get a free gift for you, a free gift for them, and one you both can enjoy. You didn't even mention the six free movies. Yes, I did. When? Just now. That was me. That was me.

I don't sound like that. Hey, you're free to go whenever you want. You know what else is free? Gary, I mean, do you know what else is free? What else is free? The free shipping. Yeah, the voice is

kind of growing on me. Yeah, me too. I don't like when we fight. Me neither. For some reason, I thought of my first fight with Tyler. What? Huh? Okay,, I thought of my first fight with Tyler. What? Huh? Okay, use code GLORY at adamandeve.com. Kind of a weird ending.

I wasn't expecting it. I mean, the whole time he was him, but he thought he wasn't or something. I'd be doing more than fighting to tell you. Yeah, it's like, go at it already. You're young. Code GLORY. Are you looking for assistance with your yellow to white solid emulsion of fat globules, water, and inorganic salts? Well, you're looking for ButterHelp.com. This ad is for BetterHelp.com. Is something preventing you from achieving your goals? What interferes with your happiness?

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What does that look like to you? Is the bear? Is the guy? Yeah. Seems more game warden thing to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is the guy... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Seems more game warden thing to me. Well, it's illegal, Burton. I know that.

Oh! Woo! Yeah. Hello down there. Woo! Are you okay? Woo! Woo!

Oh, dude. Excuse me. Yeah. There. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There, fucker. Oh, jeez.

This story is actually from Fox News. Three Vermont state troopers resign after scheming to create fraudulent COVID-19 vaccination cards. And the reason I grabbed this story, Cecil, is I am concerned. This just caught my attention. I've seen a couple of stories about fraudulent COVID vaccination cards. I am really concerned that our evidence for your vaccination is so easy to create.

Like it's, I think about the one in my wallet and I'm like, I don't know shit about forgery at all, but I feel like if I were properly incentivized, I could bang that out in a weekend. Could easily get one of these somewhere. You know,

and if I worked at one of these things, these vaccination sites, or vaccination sites where they're giving them away, and I wanted to make a little money on the side, and I was unethical, you could take one of these

and sell these for a couple hundred bucks a pop because they're original cards. True. Be like, they're onical. You could take one of these and sell these for a couple hundred bucks a pop because they're original cards. True. Be like, they're on stock. You could fucking sock a few of those away

in your purse or your fucking, your front butt or whatever it is. I don't know what they call those since it's man patches. Fanny packs or whatever. Fanny patches.

I don't know what I would call those. But anyway, you could easily secrete one of those somewhere and maybe put it in your, in your prison purse or whatever and carry it out.

Nature's pocket. You can't use the front and back piece, but you can still use all the ones in the center. But, but essentially, you could probably,

if I was unethical, I could easily make money off of that, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. And if you go to like pharmacies, pharmacies have, I know you probably have to, there probably is cameras

and shit in pharmacies where you probably wouldn't want to do it in a pharmacy, but I imagine in those, because when we went to go get our fucking thing done, that's like a fucking, it's like a national guard hall with a fucking,

a bunch of tables in it that I guarantee nobody would pay attention. These things are just like sitting in a box on stock and they're handwritten. Like, yeah, you done did this on it, you know, like stamped it's it's, we really do need to get to a place, especially as mandates become a bigger and bigger part of our lives.

We really need to get to a place where the vaccination cards are more secure. There is nothing secure. I looked at this and I'm like, man, if three state troopers, that's a low bar. Admittedly, those state troopers, though, they are very good at falsifying paperwork. That is. You know what I mean? Falsifying records is in the police officer's wheelhouse. You know what I mean?

Have you looked at the McClon McDonald stuff? Are you kidding me? Look at how many people falsified their records here in Chicago when they shot a man dead in his back. Look at how many people fucking falsified their records. Not a few. And the other thing too is like,

of course a police officer did it because I mean, you see very often many police officers who feel like they are 100% above the law. I thought about that too. Like the arrogance of authority,

you know, the tremendous arrogance of authority. Sure. I don't know. Like, did they just try to like club the fucking cards to death? Like when they got,

just hit it with your baton again, see if that works. Whack it a few more times. I don't know. Handcuff it and roughly throw it into a car. Your card is white, Tom. I think mine is beige.

I think it's, but yeah, this is one of those moments where you just, you kind of hit your head. I will say though, good. Like good, catch them. Yeah. And good, you know, let's talk a little bit about the mandate, Tom.

It came out very late today. Yeah. Very late today. While you were driving over, the president gave a speech. And essentially, and I may be getting this wrong because I'm getting it from multiple sources and it's still sort of codifying itself in news stories

since why we don't have one. But essentially, the idea is that he's mandating the vaccine for all federal employees. He's also making sure that every business that is over 100 people has to have this or weekly testing. And if you don't, and people in your company don't comply, it's $14,000 per violation. Which is all, and all medical personnel. All medical personnel as well have to be. I'm fucking excited about this. And I do like, one of the quotes, and I,

again, I was just looking at an article earlier when we were eating dinner, but one of the quotes, I'll paraphrase a little bit. Biden said like, we tried to be patient. We are running out of patients. And I mean, I think, you know, the thing is like numerically, man, most of us are vaccinated. We are now, we are now in the most category. And I will raise my hand and say, I'm fucking sick of it. I am sick to death of the unvaccinated dipshits dragging this on for everyone. It's mean. It's stupid. And at some point, you have to take control back from people who cannot exercise self-control themselves. If I get a DUI, the first one I get in trouble for, but by the second or third one, I don't get to drive anymore. Yeah. Right. I think that's, I don't know how many

strikes I've ever had, but like, I know that's the rule. The richer you are, the more strikes, the more strikes, you get more strikes. Yeah. That's a genuine, true thing for sure. Not wrong. Yeah, for sure. The, the, the point being though, that at some point the state steps in and says, we gave you a shot. Yeah, sure. And you continue to prove that you cannot do this responsibly and you put other people at risk. Yeah. When you continue to put other people at risk, then you lose the option. There's no more.

This is it. This is it. You're done, dummy. And we are at a point now where I hope that this is the incentive that moves people that were lazy or that just didn't want to do it, right? They're just like, I just don't want to do it. I had a conversation with somebody today. So my work has mandated it.

Now the governor of Illinois had recently, within the last week, mandated it for all higher ed employees, faculty, staff. So anybody, faculty, staff, you have to be vaccinated if you work in higher ed in Illinois. That wasn't the case well earlier in the summer. But my company, I'm in higher ed,

they said, you have to be, period. Then they did this well earlier. Good on Liberty U. Yeah. I got, you know, yeah. Falwell's not that bad a guy, Tom. He's not that bad a guy. I love going on his boat. That's all I'm saying. I just love going on his boat once in a while. I get to rail his wife. They required this a while back. And someone sent me a message today that I work with and they said, can you talk to me for five minutes?

And I said, sure, no problem. And so I jumped on a call with them and they said, hey, so-and-so said you got the Johnson & Johnson. And this is the only person under division who's a holdout. I found out yesterday that this person is a holdout and they haven't gotten a vaccination yet. And the person said to me, hey, I heard you got the Johnson & Johnson.

What were the side effects? And I don't remember my side effects, to be perfectly know, I heard you got the Johnson & Johnson. What were the side effects? And I don't remember my side effects, to be perfectly frank. I don't remember. But I lied. And I said, oh, they're super mild.

I said, I was like, I really expected it to be really bad because I'm trying to get this person to get vaccinated. So I'm lying to him. I'm literally lying to him. I don't think yours were that bad though.

I don't remember it being bad. I remember we talked about it. I don't remember it being that bad. So when I say I'm lying, what I mean is I'm lying about the though. I don't remember it being bad. I remember we talked about it. I don't remember it being that bad. So when I say I'm lying, what I mean is I'm lying about the details. I'm not lying about the- The mild or not mild. The mild or not mild.

Because it was mild enough for me not to remember. Right, that's what I was going to say. I remember talking to you about it and it was a non-event. Yeah, but I had said, I said to this person, I said, look, I said, you know, I even took it on a Friday

expecting to have a bad weekend. And I don't remember it being bad on Sunday. I said, so I think I had aches. I said, I remember having aches and I, and I do remember having aches, but I don't. And I think I said I had a low grade fever, but I don't remember. And then the person said, oh, okay, that's cool. I, you know, I just, I, I, I just been putting it off. And then they started listing all the anecdotes on why they don't want to get it. Right. And their anecdotes are my sister got vaccinated a couple of years ago and she wound up getting very, very sick.

She had a vaccine injury from a different vaccine, something completely different. And she was up, you know, fucked up for six months. And I, you know, there's this and then this and this. And there's all these reasons, right? That if this all happened to you, it might cause you to pause a little bit. Sure.

And I get it. I understand. Yeah, same. But I remember saying to this person today, I said, look, my advice doesn't go anywhere. I don't care if you take it or whatever. I said, but look, I would throw all the anecdotes out of the window. I said, anecdotes are anecdotes. I said, but you got to follow the data. And the data shows that everybody that has this vaccine has a much better chance of surviving a hospital stay or even going to the hospital than anybody else who does not have it.

I said, that's the real data. I said, the rest of what you're hearing and what you're seeing, those might be ones off, twos off things. I said, but that's not the trend. I said, you got to follow the trend. And the person at the end of the call said, because they're going to get fired if they don't take it.

Right. I mean, they're going to get fired. They're losing, they're literally losing their job. Their boss spent a time on the phone with them to try to convince them to get this thing. And then they told them, you know, get the Johnson and maybe get the Johnson and Johnson. The funny thing is, is the person can't even find a Johnson and Johnson now because they're harder to find. But in any case- Do they want that one because they're worried about the mRNA? I think so. That's why they're doing it. And I even said that to him. I said, you know what?

The mRNA, I said, if it worries you that Johnson & Johnson is a more traditional vaccine, I said, so you should be, you know, if that bothers you, that could be something that, and I don't, I'm not going to get into a fight with the person.

I just want him to get vaccinated. I don't care how it works. Nope. And so what I did today was did my very best to try to convince somebody who was vaccine hesitant to get a vaccine.

And I think I did. Did you? And so I hope that they're going to try to get vaccinated. That's one person. Yeah. It's, you know, it's great because this is the power of a mandate, right? It's your conversation plus the pressure. Yeah. Right. Those two things in combination with one another, because I bet you wouldn't have even had that conversation. No, not at all. She was pushed to talk to me because of the Johnson and Johnson was the suggestion of her boss. Right, right. And they said,

do you know anybody who had it? Yeah. Cecil's had it. We have to do this. We have to make people literally put their money where their fucking mouth is. Yeah. And it is going to force people's hands. They're going to be upset about it. And at the end of the day, I will say, I fucking admire Biden for doing this because this is a politically

difficult thing for a president to do. I think he might be a one-term president. I think he doesn't give a fuck. I agree with you. I think he's going to be a one-term president. When I look at the big shit, I think he's just like, look, I'm fucking old.

Yeah, I think he's going to be a one-term president. And I'll be perfectly frank. I think he's kind of salt in the earth for a Democrat. I think it's going to be real tough for a Democrat to win the office after him because of the hard decisions he's making. Yeah. I don't think you're wrong. I think if he gets this $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill passed, I think if he gets the pandemic under control and then he's like, all right, that's it. I'm out. I'm not even running again. Like, that's just, I kind of think like a president probably shouldn't be able to run twice.

I've been thinking about this more and more. Like, you know what? Term limits one. Yeah. Do it right the first time. Don't take your whole first fucking go at it as essentially a campaign speech for your second go at it. That's what it is. That's what it is.

Everybody gets one because I think the incentive then would be to do second go at. Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is. Everybody gets one, because I think the incentive then would be to do it really well. Yeah. And you get one shot at making your legacy. Sure. That's it. Yeah. I bet, yeah, I bet that would change people's,

that would change everybody's mind on it. You, watching this at home, worship me. I command you, become my willing crows and live eternally. That's all for this edition of the People's Court. Oh, the sweet sublime feeling of complete obedience to your evil master.

Come, serve me, the Prince of Darkness. I command it. Serve me. Let's go. Wait one second. Obey me. Obey me. Remember. Yeah, I love everything about reading this story.

See, so this is from Boing Boing. I did find it several other places though. Spanish Bishop resigned over his love for a writer of Satan themed erotic fiction. Okay. So this is, so the bishop, it's Catholic Bishop Xavier Novell, who by the way,

is not without his own controversy, incidentally. Like he is a exorcist. He backs conversion therapy. He's been given grief by the Pope. He is not somebody without controversy, right? But he is also not somebody without a girlfriend because his girlfriend, it turns out, which you're not supposed to have as a priest,

is a woman named Sylvia Caballal. Caballal, I'm sorry. And they wrote such literary masterpieces as The Hell of Gabriel's Lust. And in the blurb for one of her works, the reader is promised a journey into sadism, madness, and lust and a struggle between good and

evil. God and Satan with a plot to shake one's values and religious beliefs. Who's the top? Who's the bottom between God and Satan? Uh, 100% God's the bottom. 100%. And not even a the bottom. 100%. And not even a power bottom. 100%.

100%. Agreed. 100%. I'm not even going to fight you on this, Tom. Neither the ex-bishop, who is now 52, nor the novelist have responded to the reports, although Religion Digital quoted him as saying, I have fallen in love and want to do things properly.

And then it ends, the story ends with, Noel is currently seeking work as an agronomist. What the what? It's like, I look it up. It's like a soil scientist. What? So like some soil scientist is like, eh, to hell with science.

I'm joining the priesthood and doing exorcisms. And then he's like, but I'll tell you what, eh, to hell with science. I'm joining the priesthood and doing exorcisms. And then he's like, but I'll tell you what, man, pussy talks. I'm out. Here's what I want to tell you. I love the way those red tight, tight pants look. What are those? Those latex pants. I love the way those look. I love the way those look when the chicks dress like demons on Halloween. Love it. I want to talk about the tweet I saw this week, though. Super funny. This last week, because there's been a lot of fighting back and forth, and we are going to stop before,

we are going to talk about this in the next story. But I did want to mention that there was a bunch of people talking about the Satanist church this week. And it's a shame Lucian Greaves blew us off because I really want to talk to somebody like a higher up in that organization, especially now with this Texas abortion bill. And we'll get to it in a second about how they're trying to change that. But a bunch of people on Twitter are talking about Satanists. And someone on Twitter was correcting another person by saying, Satanists don't believe in literal Satan. And then the

person responded by saying, well, who believes in literal Satan. And then the person responded by saying, well, who believes in literal Satan? And the Satanists responded, Christians. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Nothing.

We've said this before. Like Satanism isn't real, but if it were, it would be a denomination of Christianity. Yeah, it is. Because it has to be. Because that's what it is. That's if it was real. And we were even,

like a long time ago, we didn't know what Satanists were. We thought they were, I thought they were like literal Satanists. Like what I grew up with. Right. Satanic panic Satanists.

But they're a joke. They're a troll. They're making fun of people. Yeah. I don't want just like a person who's like a Satanist. I don't want to do that. No.

But I want to find somebody who's like in charge of like a branch or a lawyer or something. Yeah. I want to, I want to talk to somebody like that. So we'll have to find somebody. I'm just excited to see my Lord and savior Baphomet represented in such

glorious Italian stone. I do hope his eyes gaze upon me and that my allegiance is recognized. I don't know. Notice me, senpai. Notice me. So the story comes from the San Antonio Current. The Satanic Temple begins legal maneuver to skirt Texas's new abortion ban. So incidentally, the Satanic Temple is a recognized religious organization by the IRS.

They are a, so the government, and that's so smart of them because that means that they are viewed by the government as a legitimate religious or philosophical organization. Yeah. So they have established that. And that then gives them the cover to do this kind of trolling, but it's more than trolling. It's activism. It is. It is activism. Sometimes it's poking, but the poking always has a deeper, more foundational activist element.

It really does, especially when they go after, I love it when they go to places where they've hung up the Ten Commandments and they ask for a Baal statue to be put up somewhere. And then immediately those Ten Commandments come right the fuck down. Although I guess there's a photo here where I guess they fucking won

because there's a fucking big Satan statue somewhere that he's posing with. In any case. So, so let me quote right from the article. He says, this is Lucian Greaves. He says, I'm sure Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about religious liberty issues in other states, will be proud to see that Texas' robust religious liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions will prevent future abortion rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion. And that's a co-founder of Lucien Greaves.

We talked about him before. He's the co-founder of the Satanic. And I don't remember exactly what all their dictums or principles or whatever are but one of them is something along the lines of it's your body you can do what you want with it yeah and that is that is built into their religious framework sure and that religious framework is recognized at least by the irs as a legitimate religious organization smart i i feel like this won't work because good things that are sensible and have reason and logic attached to them don't work. But it fucking should.

What they're trying to do is they're trying to ask for these pills, day after pills, and I guess longer than day after pills, right? They're asking for a couple of different types of medication that are prescription only that they can give to people through the temple under this act that allows Native Americans to use some illicit,

what we would call illicit drugs. Peyote specifically, I believe. What we would call illicit drugs, but what they would call something for their own spiritual use, right? So it's a religious thing for them and we allow them to do that. The government, I don't say we,

because I think fucking fuck you, if you want to take it, take it. But the government allows them to do that. The government, I don't say we, because I don't, I think fucking fuck you if you want to take it, take it. But the government allows them to take it. Right. And so without, you know, harm, without, you know, arresting them or hurting them. We've already hurt them enough, I guess. We don't need to hurt them anymore. But this is a great way

to do it because he's framing it in that same way saying, look, this is an important ritual for all of us to have this ritual of abortion it's a very important ritual for us and i love how it's framed because it's so very much like um when the students get the bible book from their school and the mom who's a humanist calls the satan church and they deliver these these books to the to the kids that are going to be Satan books. Because you're Satan books,

if you're going to pass out church ones, and they stop passing out the church one, they stop doing it. And so in every place where they go, they either have to acquiesce to their terms and hand out a Satan book or build a Satan statue, or they back the fuck up. And these people are great at playing chicken.

They do it all the time. They do. They just play chicken with all these people and they're just like, I ain't fucking flinching. I never fucking flinch. I want you to give us the ability to give out abortion medication. That's what I want.

What's beautiful about this is it requires these assholes to say out loud what is always lurking in the background. Sure, exactly, yeah. You know, and the- Show me your hypocrisy. Exactly. Show it to me. Show it to me or go lay down. Yeah. Those are your two options. And it's such a brilliant thing. I really do love it. And you know, there's been so many headlines this week that basically say like, this could be one of the ways this falls is through this. I've saw like five or six headlines and I don't know, again, I don't know how this might actually have legs that this might have. Oh, that would be amazing. I don't, again,

I don't know how, I don't know how deep the, like, like how law talky these people are because they could be just people who are like, that makes sense to me. So whatever I, I want, what I want most is for the Texas abortion ban SB8 to be overturned. And I want that to be overturned as soon as humanly possible. So whatever does that fastest is what I want. But if that can be this, I want that extra most. You know, I want it to win this way. I want it to win this way too, where they have to overturn it because they're like,

fuck it, we're not going to do that. Yeah. We're not going to go there. And we're not going to give the Satanists And we're not going to give the Satanists the thing they want. Well, we tried to do abortion, but the Satanists wouldn't let us. And what I love is that the Satanists are pressuring them. And if it does go away

quietly, I think the Satanists would be just as happy if it goes away. Absolutely. They would be so happy that it goes away quietly. I think it's great. What a great organization. It is. Yeah. A loopy line for the spiral a square then the thinking chair arms back seat legs there our handy dandy notebook so tom this week on uh on our book club we're reading demon hunted world uh we read this week on our book club, we're reading Demon Haunted World.

We read, this week, we read the chapter on the nature, pardon me, on the distinction between true and false visions. This is chapter eight in the book. Relatively short chapter. Chapter starts out sort of talking about the environment that we're in dictates whether or not stories of supernatural visions are treated skeptically or not. So the environment is the thing that really handles that.

And even in an environment nowadays that really does shun stories of supernatural visitation, not paranormal visitation though, at least in his time, but supernatural, it sort of pushed that away. Even in those places, we are still okay with not thinking as skeptically about hypnosis. And he goes in through a long piece about false memories planted and how hypnosis pulls these things out of people and how hypnosis has shown many, many times that it's the person telling the story is implanting this in them. It's not the people remembering it. Yet, for some reason, we still think it's a thing that is good and that we should pay attention to. Doesn't hypnosis just seem like a weird defect of the mind?

Yeah. Like it just seems like a party trick that your mind can do? Yeah. And there are still people who think, oh man, hyp a party trick that your mind can do. Yeah. And like, there are still people who think, oh man, hypnosis, that's how you get to the truth. And it's like, that's like partly true. It's, it's like a seven-year-old's truth, you know, where it's all fucking mixed up. It's like truth when you're drunk, you know, it's truth and it's exaggeration. And it's like, like weird connections between things it's dream truth man yeah i i've

no idea why people still hold on to the idea that hypnosis has any value as anything other than like a part of getting to truth sure um as a parlor trick it's a silly weird defect of your brain yeah yeah it's like a blind spot yeah it's like a weird blind spot that people have some people not everybody even has it. It feels like the cognitive, like, look what I can do, you know? Yeah, yeah. So then he talks about false memories for a while.

And then he also talks about history again. This is great, because there's a lot of great history in this book. There's really a lot of great history in this book. He spends a lot of time talking about the nature of visitation when it comes to the Virgin Mary. And he talks a lot about that. And one of the things that he seems to focus on quite a bit,

which I really like, is that he talks about, especially at the end of the chapter, how sometimes it's in our best interest to lie. And the reason why we like these stories of these vegetations and why they grab hold of us and why they grab hold of the

people, especially the people who tell them, is because it makes them the center of attention. It sometimes confers wealth. It sometimes helps them, you know, it gives them self-esteem. It makes them, you know, there's all these pluses of that false story. And we like, one of the reasons why we like conspiracy theory is it makes us feel like we're part of that crew that's pulling away the layers of the onion, revealing it to everybody else. And you feel like you're an active participant in figuring something out,

which is why these grab hold too. Well, it's funny because, you know, as Sagan notes, you know, when these visions and Virgin Mary appears or whatever, their dictates are always these mundane, earthly, prosaic dictates. And a lot of times those dictates are like, and you should build me a church

and it should be over here. And it's like, oh, I have a vested interest in the land that church is on. You know, the requirements of God always seem to coincide very nicely with the person who's receiving the message. And they're always so earthly. They are.

They're always so earthly. There's never like, wow, I didn't think of that. Sure. There's no way I could have thought of that. That is a moral or other revelation that has never been found before. And they also, most of these visions and things,

if they are, oh, you guys need to change your society this way, but they're delivered to some fucking milkmaid or some fucking sheep farmer. It's never to the king, right? Like the fucking king or whatever, who's the guys in charge, like I could change. These things were happening at a time where one person, one person was primarily in control of fucking everything.

And you could change it so much by talking to the right person. Hey, just like, I'm going to come down and I'm going to find, I'm going to use the eeny, meeny, miny, moe method of divination. Which one of y'all is the important one? Is it the one that's milking the cow? I'll go over to that one. I like milk. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

It's a silly, stupid, but it's also in the cow. I'll go over to that one. I like milk. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. It's, it's a silly, stupid, but, but it's also in the best interest. He talks a lot about how very often these, these shrines would then enshrine this area, but then also bring in lots of income through travelers. And then this church would be important. And the person who saw the vision would then be an important person and all that. So it's like, there's gain. So there's gain to lying, right? There's gain to lying about the supernatural. And it's not recent. It's not Trent Baker telling you that he saw God in a hunting jacket talking about Trump. You know what I mean? Like it's not, it's not that. It is that, but it's not that. But it goes a lot farther back than that. I want to read a passage from this time because I stopped and I was just like,

motherfucker. God damn you, Carl. So, it talks about Ronald Reagan in this chapter. Ronald Reagan fucking lied about being the person who

liberated liberated Holocaust victims in Germany when he saw a movie. It's not how he saw a movie. It's not how he saw a movie and he put himself in the movie,

guys. That was our president. Basically in every movie. That was our president, folks, for eight years. Anyway, he says that Mr. Reagan told an epic story of World War II and it turns out it was the plot of a movie, A Wing and a Prayer, that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at

age nine. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. Here's the quote, guys. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of the instances in which political, military, scientific, and religious leaders are unable to distinguish facts

from vivid fiction. I don't want to live on this planet anymore. But the first thing that popped into my head after he said that about the president, Mr. Reming, I was like, Michigan Man of the Year. The first thing that popped into my head, I was like, Michigan Man of the Year. Because Michigan Man of the Year is a perfect example of this. It is. Michigan Man of the Year, Trump said he was Michigan Man of the Year.

There's no such thing as Michigan Man of the Year. Same thing as Reagan. He was never there. It's a fucking movie. With all those roles, he could be Michelin Man of the Year. There's no such thing as Michigan Man of the Year. Same thing as Reagan. There was no, he was never there. It's a fucking movie. With all those roles, he could be Michelin Man of the Year. But seriously,

it's a great thing for Trump to say because it makes him feel like he's important. Yeah. He was the, you know, the most important person

in a place for a while. It gives him, it gives him recognition. It gives him notoriety. It gives him all the things that he wants. And so it's, he's it gives him all the things that he wants and so he's happy to lie about something like that it's funny because you thought of the Michigan Man of the Year

I thought of and the story actually came up this week it's damn near 9-11 and on 9-11 Trump we know where Trump was and where he wasn't and where he was was in the New York area

where he wasn't was Yeah. And where he was, was in the New York area where he wasn't, was on, on the ground helping people out. Yeah. But he has this whole, in fact, one of the things he said is like, my building was the third tallest building in New York.

And now it's the first tallest. Yeah. He said that. Yeah. He said that. Like he, afterwards he bragged about it. I think that was on nine 11 that he said that it was right.

Like, but he now has a story that he tells about being on the ground and hiring his own crew of people to help out and donating all this money. And there's no evidence that that happened. There's no evidence at all. It's a story he tells to embellish the myth of himself. There's no evidence of it whatsoever. But you know, one of the weird things about memory is, and Carl talks about this in this same chapter. One of the weird things about memory is that we can be led to believe things that aren't true in our own memories. Yes, absolutely. And our memories are these deeply imperfect, not records of our story that we experience. And

it's very manipulatable. Sure. You know, we've talked about it. I know I say it all the time, but like the meat is imperfect and it is imperfect. It's not like there's a fucking camcorder that our eyes are just the lens for. And we just faithfully record everything

that we see and feel and hear and smell. Very much the opposite. We are really inaccurate tellers of our own story. And we can be manipulated intentionally and otherwise. And you can come to believe your own shit. And at some point, like, I do wonder how many people have come to believe a story of themselves that is not accurate. We confuse stories that we read.

We conflate parts of those with movies, with TV, with parts of personal experiences, with things we want to be true about ourselves. We are really imperfect and that's okay because that's all of us. None of us are the exception to that. That's an important part to remember is that you are not the outlier. Yeah, no. And I am not the outlier. None of that. We are all deeply imperfect, so we should pause. This is an opera. Knowing that should really be the fucking governor on your own belief in your anecdotal experience. When your anecdotal experience clearly clashes with other things you know about reality.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. reality yeah yeah yeah so next week on demon haunted world we'll be reading chapter nine and chapter nine is therapy and uh we are encouraging everyone to go buy this book so if you i want to follow along with us we're about halfway through the way maybe about a third of the way through this book right now um and we're moving our way through it we're really enjoying reading it it's a great read. So much fun. So much good stuff about history

and about skepticism in here. And we're not even to the real meat of the book yet, which is later when he gets into some real heavy skepticism. So we're super excited to read it. Buy this book. If you want to listen to Tom read it to you, you can become a patron

for as little as a dollar an episode. And Tom can read this book to you. He reads each chapter when we post it online. I do indeed. So I'd like to thank our patrons. Of course, we'd like to thank all our patrons, but we'd like to thank our newest patrons, Kyle, Matthew, Prudence Snoodle,

don't ask my name, that Zeke Guy Teresa Wild Matt Karen Nathan and Musk and the people who up their pledges

Craig thank you very much for your generous donations and if I mispronounce your name like I said last week you can up your pledge and I can and make sure you phonetically spell it out

there you go up your pledge and that way I can say it correctly we got a message this is from Michael Michael said well you phonetically spell it out. There you go. Up your pledge. And that way I can say it correctly. We got a message. This is from Michael. Michael said,

well, I totally agree that SBA is primarily squashing women's rights. I think we're failing to mention the other aspect of the abortion law is they're designed to keep poor people poor. Like every other law that screws around with the access to healthcare. And that's very true. They are made to not only discriminate

massively against women and keep women out of the workforce. Yep. access to healthcare. And that's very true. They are made to not only discriminate massively against women and keep women out of the workforce. It's also made to keep so that a lot of those houses can't be two income houses or, you know, are very difficult to get out of poverty. And then it's also specifically, you know, I mean, you know, the, the, the single mom thing, you know, when a woman becomes a single mom, it's, it single mom, it makes life a lot harder. Much, much more difficult. And so, yeah. So it's sometimes that's very often

when abortion isn't easily freely available, you seem to have a lot of single moms. Yeah, I really do think that broadly our lack of political will to expand our social safety net is in large part based on keeping those class distinctions where they're at. Exactly. Just keep the status quo. You know what? It's not going to compete with me for fucking jobs and schooling. 100%. This entire class of people, if I disenfranchise

them and hold them back from gaining access to the same institutions of power I have. Absolutely. I've got a message. This is from Perry. He sends in two images of Papa D artisans ice cream. It's a best hole in the wall ice cream. It looks like a glory hole ice cream stand. I want to go here. I want to go there too. I don't know exactly where it is, but Tom and I, maybe once everything starts to calm down, there's a couple of places we have to hit. We need to make a cognitive road trip. We do. We have to do a road trip. We have to go to Detroit to try Detroit style pizza. That's something we have to try. Yeah. We also have to hit. We need to make a Cogdiss road trip. We do. We have to do a road trip. We have to go to Detroit to try Detroit-style pizza. That's something we have to try. Yeah. We also have to go to Connecticut, I guess, is the other place.

There is supposed to be that baller pizza place. It's like the best pizza ever in Connecticut we've got to go to. And then, you know, we'll figure out some other places. We'll have to go to the Ben and Jerry's factory. And the Ben and Jerry's graveyard we've got to go to in Vermont. So there's a couple places we have to hit. We're going to have to. Cogdiss road trip the Ben and Jerry's factory. And the Ben and Jerry's graveyard. We've got to go to Vermont. So there's a couple of places we have to hit.

We're going to have to hit. Cognizant Road Trip, eventually. It's happening. One time in the future. We're at the giant party bus to do it in. If things ever got to the point where that could be a thing. How fun. God damn it.

God, I miss fun. Stupid world. I miss fun so much. The world so much, Dom. We got a message from Kendalyn and Kendalyn says, thank you for your outrage of the Supreme Court decision in Texas abortion bill. Wanted to reach out and a reminder that trans men and

non-binary folk often get erased in the discussion about abortion. Many people with uteruses, not just women, are affected by this decision. Genuinely true. Absolutely 100% true. It's not just women. It is all people that can have children. All humans that can have children are affected by this decision. You're absolutely right, Kendalyn. Got a message from, this is from, this is from MMIK or Mick, I guess. I don't know. I guess I got to go slow on the Mick. So Mick.

This is a great joke. What's an anti-vaxxer's hipster's favorite band? And it's Bon Ivermectin. That's great. And that's just fucking, it's a fucking chef kiss. I love that one so much. I wish I could use that on a citation needed at the end.

It's a really good one. It's a good pun. It's a very good pun. It's a great pun. Bon Ivermectin. That's very, very funny. We got a message from at the end. It's a really good one. It's a good pun. It's a very good pun. It's a great pun. Bon Ivermectin. That's very, very funny. We got a message from Nicolette.

She says the school board reversed their decision. So last week we talked about the school board. That was like, if students get used to eating, they'll become too spoiled or whatever. Fucking awful human beings on their, on their school board. And you could prove that they're, it's an awful human,

bunch of awful human beings on their school board. And you could prove that it's an awful human, bunch of awful human beings on their school board because they reversed their decision on 831 with a 5-4 vote, Tom. How in the world is this a 5-4 vote? Who's still like, you know what? I still don't think. After much thoughtful consideration on this issue. And when they go up to vote,

they have to push a little kid down to vote. Corey sent in a message and said, I remember before graduation, some of my peers' diplomas were held for ransom for leftover lunch money debt. That is just criminal.

That's just fucking criminal. The fact that we don't pay that for people that have graduated or whatever, like how much fucking debt? It's not a fucking casino it's not like you racked up debt doing something irresponsible you racked up debt having lunch at lunch every day it's not like it's not like you went back like a high roller every day be like

i'll take all your honey you know he got a fucking lunch every come on daddy needs a new pair of mozzarella sticks you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, you could fucking gold plate those chicken nuggets for me. Come on. He's just eating a fucking lunch. And it's probably, the thing is,

is that anybody on that plan is getting the very basic lunch that he gets. It's the, what is it? The prepaid one. And then they have an a la carte line. At least I did in my school. You don't get the a la carte line off your school lunch. You don't get off your school lunch pack.

You have to go to the other thing where they give you a- You get what you get lunch. It's the punch card lunch. Right. It's the one where they- In my high school, they gave you tickets.

You got these little like- So I was at a school lunch where they gave you tickets. So everybody else was paying with money and you got to like hold out your little green ticket and then they take your ticket from you. So at my school, everybody had to buy a ticket.

But the kids who got them free, theirs were pink. Why do they have to give out a different color? All the kids who got it free were pink. The other ones were blue. There's no reason for that. As I recall, that's how it was. See, I remember there was different colors and stuff like that.

So there was a pink and a blue. And I think it was because the ones who got them for free got them different colors. So you could fucking make fun of the kid. Because there's got to be some shame involved with getting a free lunch. There can't be just a free lunch. Yeah. There's no such thing as a free lunch, Cecil.

Yeah, no. We get to beat the shit out of you before you eat it every day. We got a message from Matt, number one. And he says, can you guys please ask every lessener in Texas to report every female Republican and their wives and daughters and aunts and nieces of every male Republican in Texas to get, basically, just

report them for this new abortion thing. The thing is is like, we've got to explain the law again. You can't, I know you're making a joke, so I don't, one, I know you're making a joke. Right. So, let me get this out of the way Ha ha. The other thing I wanted to say though, is this is this just to be the pedantic guy who I would send the email into is that the law is actually targeting the abortion clinics and the people who help facilitate abortion. So you can't,

even if we were to call on them, there wouldn't be anything to call. First off, there wouldn't be anybody to call because you're calling a lawyer. Yeah, right. There's no, you don't report them. The way the system works, and that's what's so devious about this, is it is not a I rat you out thing. It's I file suit against a party

that aided and abetted somebody who got an abortion. So there, and there are organizations which have, of their own volition, volunteered to aggregate that data in order for them to bring suit. So you've seen websites that have popped up, but those websites that have popped up are private websites.

They are not state-run. If they were state-run, then there would be state enforcement and the Supreme Court decision would have been different. Yeah. It's not state enforced. Very intentionally. And again, we're not trying to be pretentious. It's just important people understand the law. Very intentionally, this is all a matter of individuals filing individual lawsuits against other individuals. Absolutely. And it's also the person who's getting the abortion is not the target. Right. That is very clear from the law. It is a law made to scare people and providers

of abortions. Right. That is what it's made for. And that's why it's so devious, right? That's why you can't call in and say a Republican got an abortion because they don't care what they care about and what the suit you can bring. So first off, you got to get a lawyer to do it. And then you've got to, or if you're the lawyer and you want to file suit, you have to file suit against the people who helped facilitate that abortion.

So that might be the Republican who got his mistress pregnant, right? Right. That's certainly possible. And you can even just lie and say, oh, they got a mistress present. Then they have to show up at court or whatever and figure it out. So that's a possibility, right? Right. That's certainly possible. And you can even just lie and say, oh, they got a mistress present. Then they have to show up at court or whatever and figure it out. So that's a possibility, right? Right. But the women, they're not the target. But the thing is too, that it costs you money to file a lawsuit. Yeah. So again, because there's

no, there's not a hotline you call, there's not a place you report it. And then an agency pursues and prosecutes. you have to bring a suit and that's not free. Yeah. So you have to hire an attorney. You have to filing and court costs. If you're the attorney, you still have to pay that other stuff. Yeah.

So nothing is free. So. And your time's not free. So yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's just not a good, it's not, there's no good way to troll it. At least that I've seen. Right.

You can troll these like third party websites and we should. And the, those are least that I've seen. Right. You can troll these third-party websites, and we should. And those are basically ambulance chasers. Right. They're ambulance chasers for abortion. Right. Tom, this is a great message from Kale. That school lunch story is insane to think about. Schools should always provide free lunches

for the kids. The school is essentially looking after the kids for the day. Could you imagine looking after someone else's kid for a day and not feeding them? That's crazy. That is crazy. Like,

there was this like weird thing that went around in the pandemic where people were like, wow, it's not a daycare. It's like, well, but it fucking is. You drop your kids off

there in the morning, you pick them up in the afternoon and they are legally responsible for the care of those kids in the interim. They have responsibility not just to educate but to safeguard those children. If you came to my house at 9 a.m., Cecil, and you left my house at 3, do you think there's any world where I didn't offer you lunch in there? Yeah. I mean, have you ever been to my home during a meal hour and i've been like no well i'm gonna have

lunch i hope you brought your own cash bitch could you imagine doing that to somebody else's kid no that's somebody else's kid comes over and you're like okay we ordered pizza you can go play xbox for a while while we eat right would you could you imagine doing that to a child i did your parents send you with money? Yeah. Did your parents bring, because this fucking pizza cost me money. Pizza's expensive. The fuck out of here. We got a message. This is from Sarah

and Sarah says, listening to your latest episode when you discussed the topic of insurance companies refusing to pay for unvaccinated patients, your stance seemed to be in agreement with the insurance companies that these people don't deserve coverage because of their own stupidity. I had to write and say how surprised I am by this, particularly as you follow the discussion with a segment examining how right-wing media is fueled by spreading anti-vax propaganda, convincing people that vaccine is unsafe and that

the risks of coronavirus are overstated. So I wanted to talk about this email. It's a very long email that essentially talks about, well, I come from a place with universal healthcare and I feel like it's absolutely appalling that that's what the United States does is makes people pay for healthcare first off, but then to say that you hope that these financial incentives push people to get vaccinated,

that's kind of terrible as you're siding with these corporations. I agree and I would normally not side with a corporation, but I'm siding with a corporation in a sense like it's the lesser evil. There is at this point right now, a public good that needs to be done. And the public good is more people need to be vaccinated

and people are unmotivated to do it. And if individuals have to go to personal ruin through their own stupidity, and that pushes more people to do a public good, then I'm gonna, like the movie Pitch Black, where Vin Diesel's the good guy, but he's kind of the bad guy. In this case, the fucking,

the insurance company's the bad guy, but they're still kind of the good guy because they're forcing people to do something that is for public health reasons. Yeah. And I guess I would echo that a little similarly, but maybe add, because we have the system we have, which I do not support and wholeheartedly wish it was different, but we've got what we've got. And the insurance system does provide us a mechanism to create financial incentives. And to have a shitty system and to live with it

and then to have this one opportunity where that system might actually work in the favor of public health rather than what it usually does, which is to work contrary to public health. Like, yeah, fuck it, man. I'm in with the devil on this one. Just this one time,

because it will save lives. It will save lives. The net result. It's a trolley problem. Yeah, you're 100% right, Tatum. It's exactly a trolley problem and its net result is sort of a way for us to save more lives.

Because if it pushes these people to do this and get these vaccinations, it's going to save lives because it's not just one pebble in a pond. There's huge ripples that are caused by even one case of COVID. Absolutely, yep. We got a message from Greg,

and Greg says, while being anti-women surely plays a large part in bills such as this, that's overly simplistic. The Texas House seems to have five women, all of them voted for the bill. No Republicans voted against the bill, and only one Democrat voted for it. So your argument, if I understand your argument, your argument is basically, if a woman votes for it, it can't technically be 100% anti-women. And that's just not true. Yeah. The thinking there is just inaccurate. There are lots of

times where people vote against their best interests or against the best interests of a demographic that they do belong to. That happens all the time. There's a variety of reasons why that might happen. Somebody in Congress, and I don't want to speak for these women. I don't know anything about them or their motivations, but I can guess maybe politically and for their job, it is not a good thing to be the lone five outliers amongst the cast of Republicans if you want to get reelected, for example. So that could play into it. This bill also doesn't affect really affluent women. Right. Exactly. If you're wealthy, even, I mean, you don't even have to be wealthy. If you're solidly middle class, you can probably drive out of Texas and go get, so these women are almost assuredly exempt from

the most egregious harms on an individual personal level. They probably have career aspirations that voting with all of their peers would propel them to do, right? I mean, they're in this position and they're Republicans. They're probably past the birthing age. Right. That's very, very likely as well. And also there has been a narrative which has been spun around abortion, which has been spun around this idea of saving babies. And it's a bullshit idea, but there are people who believe that idea. I can sell you the wrong thing. I can sell you something for the wrong reasons and get you to buy it for the wrong reasons. It doesn't mean that my motivation has ever changed. It's just that if

it's more expedient for me to get you to believe it one way rather than the other, I'm going to use that. For sure. For sure. We got a message from Asymmetra and they said, I just had a thought. If people are going to rely on God to protect them against the coronavirus, why can't they rely on God to protect them from the vaccine? That's great. That's such a great line. I love that so much. Got a message from Aaron and Aaron sends in an image and it's a welcome to Texas sign. You're just

going to have to go to our show notes to check it out. You'll have to go to our show notes, which is episode 594. We got a message from, this is from Skip and Skip says in regards to 592 the brief discussion at the end when you're reviewing your CCL it's a CCL here

it's a concealed carry license I don't know what it is, is there a concealed pistol license? is that what that CPL is in Michigan? it says my wife and I renewed our Michigan CPL last summer and all we had to do was fill out a form online and state that we reviewed and state that we reviewed a multi-page document

of do's and don'ts. Oh, God. And then claim we fired our guns within the last six months. You don't have to fire it good, Tom. You just have to fire it. You got to love that. Why even have a license?

Super fucking amazing, let me tell you. Oh, gosh. All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week we'll be back next week come check us out on livestream we did a livestream tonight so if you want to see that livestream

you can go check it out on YouTube and on Twitch I think there's some problems with the internet Comcast sucks we'll figure it out by next week we'll be back next week 9pm central check us out

Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube and in the meantime go to those places and like us and subscribe and all that stuff. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with 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, 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

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