Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 599: Reality Calling

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

LET'S PLAY A GAME.... guess the theme of the bumpers. Show Notes    

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago 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 almost there. Oh, so close. 599. 599. We are edging that number, buddy. I'll tell you what, Tom. We get two weeks off. That's all I'm saying.

We get two weeks off. Two weeks off, Archer. That's right. We're taking a two-week vacation. But you won't even feel it. You won't even know because you guys are going to get 600 A and B over the next two weeks. I like are going to get 600 A and B over the next two weeks.

I like that we're doing 600 A and B. That has a very like floors 12 and 14 sort of feel to it. Absolutely does. I love it. I love it. I like it. It's 600.

You get it twice. You got to listen to them 20 minutes apart. Yeah. An hour and a half if you're over 40. Yeah, if you're over 40. Actually, just wait till tomorrow. Just wait. Just wait till tomorrow.

Who are you trying to impress? Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the best you get. You're over 40. Yeah, if you're over 40. Actually, just wait till tomorrow. Just wait till tomorrow. Who are you trying to impress? Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the best you get. You're over 40. You're not impressing anyone anymore. I wasn't impressing anyone to start with. I mean, you probably weren't impressing anybody in your 30s, your late 20s, your mid-20s. Definitely my teens.

I was an awkward teenager. I didn't even impress me. I'm just like, oh, gosh. God, this thing again. Jesus. I say that every morning. I turn the lights on in the bed. This thing.

Look at this thing. Do you ever walk past the mirror and you're startled by it? You're like, fuck. What happened? I thought I was better looking than that. I will, see, so I didn't even, this is a stupid story, but it's true. And I think, I didn't even know that I was short until I remember seeing a picture of me

standing next to you and our buddy Circle. And I was like, Jesus, you guys are so much taller than I am. And you were like, well, yeah, stupid. I don't know, I never thought about it. Yeah. You couldn't even ride the ride. You weren't that tall.

Hey, come over here. You know what you guys? No vote. You guys no need vote. You guys should not vote. But, but, you guys care about the future. Texas, you care about the gas prices, care about the learning kind stuff like that, you guys care about that stuff, then you guys should vote. You guys register yet? Because if you guys never register, bye.

Bye. Ciao. So this story comes from Yahoo News. Cecil. This is good news. This is a good message. I was on Trump a lot throughout his presidency for bad messaging. Yep. But this is a good message. This is the first time I'm like eye to eye.

Trump says Republicans won't vote in 2022 or 2024. Just stop there. Oh, how nice is that? Because the second part of it's not as good. Right. Unless his bogus election fraud claims are solved.

Is he going to have a final solution? What they need is ninjas. Yeah, no. With computers because ninjas are cyber ninjas,

if you will. Sure. To do a forensic audit to find 99 more votes. They got like a whole handful of microprocessors and they're just like throwing around like shurikens.

They come in and they only have like the two-toed shoes. They got like nunchuck made with like the ribbon cords between the... He got two microprocessors. He's like,

ow, this hurts my hand ow ow ow ow ow ow shit owie I don't want to be a ninja anymore yeah no

Trump here is the best part about this Tom and it's not really shown in this article but the best part about it is that Trump when he

when he talks to the people that are following him, he does so, even though he's not allowed on Twitter, in tweet format. So he essentially tweeted out a message that he can't put on Twitter. That he can't put on Twitter. What I've come to realize from that is this man has always thought in 140 characters or less. Anything more than that, that's not going to work. But yeah, genuinely, this is a small statement. Here's what he wrote

in whatever... How did he broadcast this? I forgot. It did wind up on Twitter. Oh, it's one of these statements. It did wind up on Twitter, but it's from the desk of Donald Trump. If we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020... I love that he capitalized

presidential election fraud as if it was like a movie. It's a proper noun, right? It's presidential election fraud. PEF 2020, guys. PEF 2020. Which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented. He has that

in parentheses. Republicans will not be voting in 22 or 24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do. Holy fucking narcissist much. What I love though is, I think this is 100% a message to his base that they need to break the law. This is 100% a message to the base that they need to break the law this is a hundred percent of message to the people that are in government that his base will not come out unless they break the law

unless they do something to radically change but what do they think is gonna happen even the crazy thing is that even in the places where they thought that they could do something right they still were like yeah but numbers they they just go like one after each other. And we can't do anything about it. Well, and so to calendars, motherfucker, your time has come and gone. It is almost 2022. What, genuinely, what does he think is going to happen is that someone is going to say, whoa, you're right. Whoops. Everybody, America, listen up.

Everybody get in your DeLorean. No, all at the same time. Yeah. And we all need to, on the count of three. Now, if you go before three, it's good. Don't fuck this thing up. We got to do it at the lightning strike. Yeah, right.

All right. Everybody get out their Jigawats. We need 1.21 per citizen. What? You can't do this in Texas because their power plants go down. You have to do it somewhere else. You got to go to Mexico, actually. There you 100% are relying on lightning power

in Texas, but yeah. Seriously, what do they think solving the election fraud is? What does that mean? Do they think that it's going to be like when you go to a restaurant and you get a bad steak and the chef comes out to apologize for you and be like please fuck my wife or whatever that's a hell of a that's a nice customer service well actually we haven't seen the wife actually that's liberty university but in any case you know like

it's one of those moments where they're they're fawning all over themselves to apologize. And Trump literally all he's ever had to do in his whole life is stomp his foot and people would apologize. And I think that this is the exact thing that he's waiting for. He's waiting for everybody to be like, oh, we're sorry. The world does revolve around you. Let us throw. They basically grabbed Joe Biden by his back of his belt buckle and his collar. And they do a one, a two.

Ouch, you pixies. Go through the door. Out the window. And they chuck him out. And then they call the next group in. And it's Donald Trump who's getting carried on a, what do they call those things? Like a palanquin? Like a palanquin by Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon couldn't carry a jelly bean. Are you kidding me? I guess that's very true. Steve Bannon hired a bunch of young men. There you go. If Steve Bannon can fucking walk the block under his own power, he considers that.

How did COVID miss that guy? How did COVID miss that guy? The only way COVID missed that guy is he's the, he's the originator. Like, he's the one where it all came from. He's the plague rat that did it.

I, these motherfuckers all, because powerful people just do, they all had access to the vaccine and got it the right way. immediately. You know? Yeah.

Because of course they did. Yeah. Because all these assholes who were sowing the seeds of fucking, you know, like, you think Tucker Carlson isn't vaccinated? Get the actual fuck out of here.

For Fox news has a strong vaccination policy. They have a stronger vaccination policy at the offices of Fox news than the national mandate that they bitch about. It's so amazing too, that they called that out multiple times that the, the, the white house said it out loud. Biden said it,

uh, the, the press secretary said it. So it's been,. Biden said it. The press secretary said it. So it's been pretty great. But yeah, so Donald Trump essentially wants everybody to do what he says right now. And if they don't, then he's basically threatening that he's not going to motivate his base.

Now, I will point out that he couldn't motivate his base to win in Georgia twice, not only in the general, but then in two other runoff elections, he could not motivate his base. And he even came out sullen and sulking to try to do that. He came out and did do a couple of rallies. And he did that when this bullshit had the most energy. When it had the most energy. The energy behind this nonsense is petered out. Nobody gives a shit. Sure, the diehard MAGA cultists,

yeah, they don't have anything else going for them. Right? This is like, this is their thing. This will always be their thing. They're going to die on this hill. Like, they'll still be fucking worried about this

when Trump himself is gone. Sure. You know? But I look at this and I'm like, this is it? Yeah. This is what you got?

You've got, the Republicans at this point have no message. If you read this and actually believe it, the single most important thing for Republicans to do is to vindicate the narcissism

of one sullen, angry little boy. Oh yeah. That's it. That's how it's written. Yeah. That's it. So that means they don't care

about any of these policies. They're not trying to make Americans' lives better. They're not trying to like fix the economy. They're not trying to do any of the stuff that they say they want to do. Because lately, they haven't said they want to do anything except for say no. Say no.

And that was one of the things that came out right away was they were basically saying, we're going to stall them for 24 months. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're just going to stall them for 24 months. They said the same thing with Obama. Remember that? They said it out loud.

They said it out loud. And they've said it at places where they're doing these fundraisers and people are paying exorbitant amounts of money to be there, but they record them and you can hear them say, we're just going to stall. We're just going to fucking stall. And this is why, and I know this is

controversial and it's not an easy thing, but this is honestly why I say down with the fucking filibuster because American government is broken. We can't accomplish anything. Both parties just cock block the other party. We get nothing done. Nothing gets accomplished. Even things that are overwhelmingly

popular in America. I'll say this too. Even a Trump infrastructure bill couldn't get done. No, it couldn't. And it should have gotten done because we've needed infrastructure repair a long time. And it's and it's I think I think you're right. I think it's one of those things that, you know, I don't know that the that the Republicans I I'm pretty sure a lot of Republicans disagree with them. And I think there's probably some Republicans wisening up now

if they see this, they're going to see this for the cancer that it is. It's going to eat your party up. So you've got to do something about him. And I don't, I am very interested to see what happens in 2024, you know, 2023, when they start stacking up the Republicans to go for the, you know, to see who's going to get the nomination. I'm very interested to see what happens because he could feasibly put his name in there and then you've got to see who can out-Trump Trump. Dude, you can see a couple of interesting things. He could run in 2022 for a congressional seat. He could, he could. He could run in 2024.

And I have a question, Cecil. Do you think that we will see a breakup of the Republican Party? Because it's happened before. I was reading something interesting. It happened before in history. Parties that have become this extreme have broken. Yeah.

And then a new party is formed. There's people right now that are putting up billboards against Trump that are Republicans. Yeah. That are essentially, in New York, I saw in Times Square, there was one that said, you lost, get over it or something like that.

I wonder if we'll see the Republican Party become the party of the MAGA cultist bullshit nonsense. And I wonder if we'll see a new conservative party emerge from this. I think the party that wins in this country is the centrists. If the centrists had a party and they broke, they would be able to pull all the centrist Democrats over.

And then they definitely pull, you know, clearly they'd pull the undecideds right along with them because undecideds in this political climate, they'll follow literally anything. Anyone, yeah. Yeah.

And then the people that are right now conservatives that are stuck with this far crazy right party. Yeah. They might go to the center too. You could have a, you could have a party bigger than the Democrats pretty easily.

For sure. Yeah. You know, cause you'd pull some of the Democrats over and you'd pull the others. I think you could easily do it with the centrist party. I wouldn't vote for it, but I, no,

I wouldn't either, but I think you could. Right. I think it, I think it'd be, I, and I wonder if that is what's going to happen. That might be, that might be, it might be that. And, and you know, in our, in our day and age, you know i think i think it'd be i and i wonder if that is what's going to happen that might be yeah that might be it might be that and and you know in our in our day and age you

know because we're older than i think probably you know most people that listen you know and you know when we were young the idea of a person who could cross the aisle was not a that wasn't a bad word that wasn't a bad idea that was. That was actually something that was lauded. That was a thing that was like, oh, somebody who could get things done because they can reach across the aisle and they can compromise. And you weren't a traitor if you were like,

yeah, that's a good bill, I'm voting for it. It really does feel like nowadays that there's no value to that. And the reason why there's no value to that is because the Republican Party is so reprehensible. There's no redeeming. There's nothing to salvage. And the reason why there's no value to that is because the Republican Party is so reprehensible. Yep. There's nothing to salvage. You can't even reach across the aisle

because they literally would never do anything. Even on things that benefit, clearly benefit the people that are their constituencies, they will vote against it. Hey, I want a lawyer. I am the law. Sorry, man. There's nothing I can do for you.

You brought this on yourself. I'm going to break your nose off. There's what we call a loose cannon. You brought this on yourself. I'm gonna break your nose off. It's what we call a loose cannon. We don't control her. Come on lady, I didn't do nothing. You're going down this way. God, you're frightening. It's gonna get ugly.

You are loco. Look what I found. What are you doing? I'm gonna knock your teeth out. Stay over there. What are you doing? I'm going to knock your teeth out. Stay over there.

So this story is just absolutely fucking bonkers. This is from Rolling Stone. Minneapolis police caught on video hunting activists. I couldn't believe this. Cecil showed me this article today. I could not believe this. Not because any part this article today. I could not believe this. Not because any part of this, and we'll read parts of it, but not because any part of this

struck me as untrue or unlikely, but just to have it documented and then to be reminded that this is still the America we live in now. Nothing has changed. And importantly, this is the America that people of color have always lived in and have been telling us that they have been living in for generations. Absolutely.

started in this, that the setting for this is Minneapolis during the Black Lives Matter protests right after the death of George Floyd. So this is all happening. There's a TV broadcast on every channel showing the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin. He's kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and they're showing parts of this on television. He's kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and they're showing parts of this on television. It's all over the internet. And there's a huge protest that goes on up there. In this case, they called a curfew. And so that's the setting.

Curfew's been called in Minneapolis. Yeah, curfew, by the way, an eight o'clock curfew, 8 p.m. Yeah. Yeah, so everybody's got to go back inside and stop having rights at 8 p.m. Yeah. That's what it is, right? Your right to peaceably protest is no longer in effect at 8.01 p.m. in America. Yeah. Yeah. It was the evening of May 30th, 2020, 25 days after Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. An 8 p.m. curfew was in effect, but a group of Minneapolis cops

weren't keeping the peace. They were sowing chaos. Armed with 40-millimeter, less lethal crowd control guns which fire oversized, foam-tipped rounds, officers roamed the city looking for an excuse to fire, quote, the first fuckers we see, one cop brags, we're just handling them with 40s. The officers' own body cams record them taking potshots at largely peaceful protesters, celebrating their hits with laughter and fist bumps. Cruising in an unmarked cargo van, one officer imitates Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny's cartoon nemesis, saying, be very, very quiet. We're hunting activists. What a fucking piece of garbage. A police commander used the same, a police commander. And that's the other thing. I promise

I will read this, but you read through this and you see how the entire vertical integration of this system is designed to protect the violence of the police. Yeah. Because it's the cops, then it's the police commander, later it will be the attorney, the prosecuting attorney who is part of that justice system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The entirety of the justice system is designed to fuck people of color over and to protect the police. A police commander used the same language. Tonight it was, tonight it was, we're going out hunting. Just a nice change of tempo, he said, adding, fuck these people. The extraordinary footage released last week by the lawyer of a man who

was caught up in an exchange of fire with police that night. That man, Army veteran Jaleel Stallings was exonerated by a jury in September for acting in self-defense. The footage, which was part of the evidence used in Stallings' trial, also shows Minneapolis cops making racist comments, cursing protesters and journalists, slashing the tires of parked cars, in short, acting more lawless than the crowds they were supposed to be controlling that night.

Minneapolis mayor denounced the behavior and language, but critics of the department insist the body cams capture, quote, a culture of violence and excessive force among the rank and file of the Minneapolis PD. Teresa Nelson, legal director of the ACLU of Minnesota, says she blasts the shocking level of impunity on display in the footage, underscoring the cruel irony that the police that night were brutalizing people protesting police brutality. Police brutality, yeah, yeah. And the thing is like- And they're shooting people that are,

these are just people outside after curfew. They are shooting, these are not, and I think Tom's gonna maybe read a part of this where they talk about these things. Yeah, okay, so it says here, the officers used foam tip rounds and it was extremely dangerous. They're supposed to be less than lethal than live ammunition, but they still carry a risk of severe bodily harm and death.

And they talk about them causing concussions and hurting people. And, you know, they could break the skin and they could, you know, they could damage your body. They fucking hurt. And they,

they hurt you. They, they like can physically and seriously hurt you. And these are people just out after a curfew. That's it. That's all they're doing, man. That's it, man. Yeah.

These aren't people like, I know that there's going to be people out there that'll be like, well, what were they doing? Were they like breaking into a place? No, they were like on the street, man. Yeah. These are people doing literally nothing.

And there's tapes, there's footage of it. Yeah. The body cam footage first reported by the Minnesota reformers provided to Rolling Stone by St. Paul defense lawyer, Eric Rice, who says the videos capture the cops malice toward protesters, as well as their reliance on disproportionate violence. If someone is violating curfew, Rice says they're not supposed to be shooting them without warning. It's like, no kidding. What? No shit. No kidding. Right. Yeah. What the fuck? It's a curfew violate. Do you remember violating curfew when you were a kid?

I did it all the time. All the time. When I was a kid, I did it all the time. All the time. Can you imagine? I can't imagine if somebody shot my kid because he was out after a curfew. Yeah. In one stark moment caught in a police body cam, a line of cops in the street confronts

a small group of protesters on the sidewalk, raising their less lethal arms, which resemble small shotguns. A female protester yells to the police, we're unarmed. What the fuck are we going to do to you? We're out here peacefully protesting. This is fucking America. The video then captures explosions near the protesters' feet. The cop, whose body camera is recording, then loads and fires in quick succession, three less lethal rounds. The third one connects with a targeted protester. Gotcha. The cop laughs as another approaches, giggling to fist bump him.

Great shot, adds another. The thing, they know they can get away with this because they've always got, the reason they know they can get away with this is because they always have before. This is not the first time. You don't go out and just start shooting random citizens if you have not, the entirety of your career,

been trained to believe that you can commit violence against the citizenry without action. You can get away with whatever you want. You can do whatever violence you want to somebody and there's going to be somebody who's going to cover for you. Yep. And even with the, I mean, even though these guys are fucking mic'd up,

they got a camera on, they're mic'd up, they don't give a fuck, man. They don't give a fuck. Here's the part here. It says, the mayor basically said that there was going to be

white supremacists out in the city and one officer caught on tape pooh-poohs that, pooh-poohs that threat insisting that he wants to prove the mayor wrong.

The same officer immediately remarks that he can tell the protesters in the street are predominantly white because they're not looting and fires. I want to just say there were white supremacists in the city that night. They just had badges and they just had less than lethal shotguns. Yep.

There were white supremacists. Yeah. 100%. These guys. These dudes. Yep. So this too. In the footage, our officers armed with less lethal launchers can be seen crowded in an unmarked white cargo van.

The van was equipped with police lights, Rice says, but the officers didn't use them. As cops can be heard explaining, they're explaining what they're doing. A van was the lead vehicle in a caravan of other marked cars, and the cops wanted to use that stealth to their advantage. At one point, an officer in the van asks for the trailing black and whites, the patrol cars, to stay far behind so we can utilize 40s. They can shoot them. Stay away so the people won't know that this is a police van and we can shoot people while they're not expecting it.

Yeah. They're sucker punching people with bullets, dude. And in the next paragraph, essentially, a dude just walking with takeout gets shot, and they're just like, go home. They shot him, and he's like, what the fuck? And then the actual encounter happens where

they, without warning, shoot. They open fire with less than lethal rounds against this guy without any announcement of who they were. Right. So, the army vet who's black believes he was under attack by white supremacists who Mayor Fry warned could be in town stirring up trouble that night. They were. And they were. And they were just shooting at him a moment ago. He fired back at the unmarked van three times with his legally registered and carried

pistol. The rounds did not hit any of the officers, but the police can be seen cowering in the van as they shot out shots fired. The van then halts. I love how that's written though too. Right? They're cowering. I think this is, you know, you can clearly tell there's a line. Yeah, there's a little bit of.

I will say there's a little commentary in here, but it's absolutely true. You know what I mean? Like, because they were the bullies, right? This is the moment that the bully gets called out and they're like, fuck. Yep. I didn't expect you to have the same level of fucking

firepower that I brought to this. Right. I'm just out, I'm here to fuck you up, not the other way around. I would never, yeah, so that's what happened. The van then halts and cops storm out, identifying themselves to Stallings for the first time. Stallings lays on the ground to surrender to the cops who can be seen beating him,

but he managed to get arrested without suffering life-threatening violence. Stallings was later charged with eight counts, including attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault. Despite the mitigating video evidence in the case, the charging attorney still wanted to throw the book at Stallings.

How the fuck? Are you serious? Like, this dude sits down, some fucking fuckface lawyer, he sits down, he sees this, and he goes, no, yeah, that guy's in the wrong. Well, the thing is that that guy, his job is to be part of the justice department and to work with the cops. He's under intense pressure to be on their side all the time to bring convictions and to make sure that the cops are always vindicated a hundred percent of the time. There's nothing impartial about a prosecuting attorney.

Yeah. There's not, they work for the same fucking government that fucking buys these guys the 40s and the unmarked vans. Sure, sure. It's fucking ridiculous. And then after that, essentially what happens is this guy goes and goes to trial.

He decides to go with a jury trial instead. And they wanted him to cop a plea for 13 years. 13 years, man. And he said, no, I want to get a trial. And when he got a trial, it took him three hours with a lunch break to come back and say, no, he's fucking not guilty. Self-defense. Get him out of here. Now he's going to pursue a civil case. Good for him. And he should. Good for him. And I hope he fucking sues the pants off him. Again, we have such shitty laws in this country. we have to rely on the civil court system to punish people in this country. We have such terrible

laws that don't punish people who do bad things. And what happens is we wind up with... And these are like things that are really important to society. Being able to trust a police officer is really important to society. And these people can

fucking face fuck that thrust, that trust whenever they want, and they get away with it every single time. Well, and where's all you fucking constitutional fucking Second Amendment bangers all the time, right? Here we have your First Amendment rights being absolutely trampled on. Absolutely trampled on. Yeah. Your right, your right to peaceably protest is every bit as important as your right to own

a fucking machine gun or whatever nonsense you fucking idiots want. Right? Yeah. But instead, these guys, what about all the guys

who got shot with these fucking 40s? They should all be able to sue. They should all be able to. Yeah. These cops, it's not that Stallings should be exonerated

and found not guilty. The cops that shot him need to go to fucking prison. They're never. Every assault that they did that night. And they're not disciplined. They weren't disciplined. It's not even discipline. Think about that.

You didn't even have a bad day at work. Yeah. You didn't even have a bad day at work. Discipline to them is a couple of weeks off. Right. With pay. Right. It's pathetic.

But even still, none of them even got that. And I'm fucking sick of the way we, you know, you hear it all the time with the fucking cops is like, oh, well, they got fired from their job. That's their punishment. Wait a minute. If I drive down the road

and I shoot somebody I'm not supposed to shoot, because if you fire that guy from his fucking job, and these guys didn't even get fired, right? But we hear it from time to time. But let's just say. Let's say. If I, then that's a tacit acknowledgement that they shouldn't have fucking done that.

Yeah. Well, look, man, if I drive down the road and shoot somebody with a fucking 40 millimeter less than lethal round, I go to prison for assault with a deadly weapon. Yeah, man. Why don't they? They weren't allowed to do it.

I wasn't allowed to do it. Get the fuck out of here with this double standard bullshit. It's inequity and it's bullshit. I think one of the ways that you fix this is with citizen review boards making sure that the citizens that review them are able to pass down

real punishment. I hope that's banishment from all law enforcement would be what I would say is some way in which to make that happen. And then bankrupt, absolutely bankrupt through civil suits, those unions. You know, you take away qualified immunity and then bankrupt them. I'm normally a huge fan of unions.

I think unions do a lot of good, but the police union wields too much power. And every single mayor in the country is terrified of them. Yeah, they're terrified of them. You know, it occurs to me that we don't license the cops. Yeah. We should, there should be, I mean, you could,

and we don't because the cops don't want us to, right? It makes all the sense in the world to just be like, you know, why don't I need a license to be a fucking cosmetologist? You need a license to carry a gun. I need a license to carry a gun. A concealed gun You need a license to carry a gun. I need a license to carry a gun.

A concealed gun in Illinois. In Illinois, at least. Yeah, right. You need a license to perform many jobs. Do you want to be a fucking massage therapist? You need a fucking license. You need a commercial driver's license to drive a truck. But you don't have to have any kind of licensure to be a cop.

No. That's insane. Yeah. We should have a federally required license. You should have to pass a certain amount of tests, background checks, et cetera. You go through the process. The state can control the work to get to the federal testing.

But then if the citizen review board says, you know what, asshole, you're driving around shooting innocent fucking people with a fucking gun, your license is revoked. It's revoked. Get out of here. And that's it. Now we don't have to create any kind of blacklist. Where's your license is revoked. It's revoked. Get out of here. And that's it. Now we don't have to create any kind of blacklist. Where's your license?

You can't even apply for this job without a fucking be a cop license. Yeah, right. It's an easy fix, man. And you could get rid of all the people that are in it for the violence, in it for the sadism, in it to hurt people, in it to push people around, all the bullies,

all the bad people. I know what the all cops are bastards is the way that a lot of people refer to them. I will say, I think there's certainly a lot of them, but I am sure, I am positive there are cops out there that come into that thinking they're going to do something good. Absolutely. Thinking that they're going to do something good.

The reason why that saying exists is because they don't ever turn each other in. And when they do, they're ostracized from the place and they can't do it. That's why that saying exists because there's this brotherhood, this code that makes it so it's impossible for them to face any real consequences for their actions. Look at this story. The cops didn't turn in the other cops. Yeah, it's not like there's a cop in the back who wasn't shooting anybody that was like, I am going to fucking tape all this and I'm going to go to the media or whatever.

Right. And nobody was like, holy shit, I heard this crazy story in the fucking break room about my buddy shooting the fucking protesters out there. I'm going to go to the WAPO and tell them. Or they weren't just like, holy shit, the commander said, fuck these people. Right.

I'm going to the mayor. Right. That never happens. None of that ever happens. And that's why that saying exists, because there's that code that keeps these people together. But I'll tell you what, you turn it into an individual thing where they're not,

they don't have to do that to each other. They don't have to protect each other like that because there's no protections for people anymore. I think you change the culture. You change the culture. All right, so here we are one of the uh elephants cool thing about these guys is that they have really really really long um trunks and that's that's cool

and that's pretty much all there is to say. This is fucking amazing, though. So good. This story from the Raw story is just fucking amazing. Mike Lindell now claims he's found people as old as 850 years who voted in 2020 election, according to the report. Yeah, so he can't. He can't. Well, he's asked to produce. He's like, they live up in Niagara Falls, and I totally touched their boot. But he can't, well, he's asked to produce them. He's like, they live up in Niagara Falls and I totally touched their boot.

But he's like, he can't produce any of them. But my favorite part of this whole article is when they're like, yeah, but the United States is only 200 years old. Right. Look, the United States as a country that was founded, but it's been, but even if you go back to the first first yeah european settlers yeah it's still

not 850 850 years of 1230 it's the 13th century man 850 years ago you're looking at like gangas khan is walking yeah what the 12 yeah well we got you know he's he got his driver's license and registered to vote originally in 1231 AD in America. And, you know, strangely in South Carolina. I wouldn't know. What the fuck is, what is wrong with you? Yeah, man. 850 years ago.

And Methuselah showed up to vote. What I love is that, is that. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing though, Tom. Methuselah, you know, you're the one who believes people can be 900 years old. Right. So why don't we just be like, well, okay. Yeah. No, it makes sense. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing though, Tom. Methuselah, you know, you're the one who believes people can be 900 years old. So why don't we just be like, well, okay, yeah. No, it makes sense. Yeah.

850, that fits your, you know, that fits your life range, that lifespan range of the Bible. So why are you so upset about that, Mike? What's going on? That seems plausible right there, buddy. That's exactly what you think, right? Yeah.

It's so juicy. What the fuck? It's so amazing. But he's such a he and also it's just one of those things where you're just like one what record goes back 850 years right like like what what are you looking at that shows that somebody was born where they come in and they're just like oh yeah you were born at the beginning of the previous millennium sure here's your voter right sure man you know yeah 400 years before the battle of hast previous millennium. Sure, here's your voter idea. Sure, man.

You know. Yeah, 400 years before the Battle of Hastings. Like, get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of here. What is wrong with you? But it's one of those things where they seem to think, because again, none of these people know how you vote. None of these people know how it's,

there's a validation process. None of these people know how any of that works. No. They don't understand it. The thing is, Mike Lindell has never once been a voting judge. No. Right, yeah, right. If he was, he would be like, okay, no, Trump told me.

But he probably still wouldn't, but he at least should, right? Right. The other thing with voter fraud is that the only way for voter fraud to be effective is if a small cabal of people can change an existing pool of already cast votes. It makes no sense at all to the idea that you've got to incorporate hundreds of thousands of individual voters. Voting fraud the other way is the way to do it. Right. Like if I could. Destroy records.

Right. Exactly. Add ballots. Throw ballots out. Throw ballots out. Change votes. Change votes in a computer system. That would be the way to do it.

But you've got to be able to do that in bulk. Everything that has to happen has to happen in bulk. Everything that has to happen has to happen in bulk. Their fucking fraud relies on like onesie twosie participation. You know, I only can ever vote once. Maybe, let's say Cecil, that I could drive around even though we both know it's literally impossible.

But let's say I could spend my whole day driving around voting. How many times could I still vote? Let's just say you could vote ten times. What fucking difference would that make? If it's one person, you'd have to have

thousands of people that have to be working in concert. No one said anything. Nobody took a video. Nobody did a TikTok that day. I mean, get out of here. Even in the closest elections

that are decided by 10, 11,000 votes, you'd have to have 10 people. You'd have to have a thousand people voting 10 times. That's insane to think that that's happening. You're insane if you think that's happening. The thing is though, he's the kid who's caught in the lie now. Oh, I know.

And there's all these people, every one of these QAnon guys, all these voter fraud guys, they're all caught in this lie. They've been making stuff up as they've been going along. But at a certain point, it's like, okay, now you got to show us your cards eventually.

You got to show us your cards. And they're just like, man, my cards are so good. So good. Are you sure you don't want to fold? Hey, call. Are you sure you don't want to fold? Call. Are you sure you don't want to fold? Hey, call. Are you sure you don't want to fold? Call. Are you sure you don't want to fold? Call.

You should fold. Call. You should fold. Call. Call. But seriously, this is reality. That's what they're doing. Calling. That's literally what is happening in every one of these people. Specifically, we're talking about QAnon because every one of these guys are like, oh, the mass arrests are coming.

And there's Q people who are like, holy shit, tapping their watch. Right. Waiting. And they've been waiting for years. They waited through

the entire Trump presidency. It's like the fucking Trump thing we talked about. He's still like, well, we got to figure this out. Motherfucker, that ship has sailed. It's all sailed.

What are you thinking? Literally, tell me how this is supposed to work? Everybody dance! Yeah! My anus is bleeding! For the love of God And all that is holy My goodness

I'm bleeding So this story comes into raw Marjorie Taylor Greene rants That Fauci won't prescribe ivermectin Even though it won a Nobel Peace Prize. What I love, my favorite line from this article is when the raw story says, in fact, ivermectin did not win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Rather, scientists William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work showing that ivermectin can be effective in treating against infections caused by roundworm parasites. I just love that it's just so perfect because everybody's been saying that, right? Like that's the term. And you're like, no, but they, but technically I love that. They're well,

actually, that's totally what Ross actually. Yeah. Oh my God. It's amazing. It's amazing. But you know, the thing is,

is like, she says to in this, it's deeply irresponsible for the Biden administration, the CDC, Dr. Fauci, and any of these doctors to be advising people not to prescribe it. I love that she could fucking say that and not have her own head shoot

right up her own ass. Like, it's the dumbest thing that, you know, you're the least qualified person in the world. You don't even understand exactly how or why the medicine you're touting got was selected. The people who used it were selected to get a Nobel prize. You don't even understand that at all. And then you're saying, well, they should be able to prescribe it. And there's tons of people out there, Tom, this is not a small phenomenon.

There's a ton of people in hospitals all over the different things. Screaming for it. Screaming for it. Cecil, she is saying that it is irresponsible for doctors to advise patients on what medicines to take. That's what she said.

That is what she said. That's what a doctor's job is. Who else is supposed to advise on that? Why else is there medicine? Why would you get anything by prescription? I can't believe we've got to this point.

What is happening? Would you think like you could ask Marjorie Taylor Greene what's happening with your catalytic converter? Right. Would you think that you could ask

Marjorie Taylor Greene what's happening with your, you know, your roof leak? Right. Hey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, my fucking Photoshop keeps crashing.

What do I do? Or, you know, I seem to be having problems with the soap dispenser in my faucet. Right. I don't even expect her to be able to troubleshoot that, let alone the human body.

Right? The human body, Tom. I know. And then to say it's irresponsible for doctors to advise their patients? Yeah. We should all just be making all of our own medicine decisions based on Dr. fucking Google.

The most irresponsible person is her in this entire thing. You know, I can't imagine that there can't be something that comes out within the next, it's got to, in the next 10 years, there has to be something that muzzles people for these horrible disservices to public health. There has to be something. Because it can't go on like this. Because it can't go on like this.

We're in this situation now that we're still in. We're still in the quagmire of this fucking pandemic because of assholes who will not listen to public health that think personal freedom is more important than public health. And we're dealing with this on a national level. Yeah. COVID cases are going down. I did see that. Like they're still going down. They're still on a

downturn, but man, how many people had to die for that? Yeah. Well, 1807 today. Yeah. That's the number today. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, it's going down, but like, we're still nine 11ing every other day. It's still 80,000 and change new people getting sick every single day. And that's just here in the States that like this kind of propagandist nonsense gets exported out and becomes international culture too. Yeah. And it's, it's toxic as fuck. And it's killing people in places that don't have access to the vaccine.

Right. And who will at some point get access to the vaccine, but have now had how many months or years of disinformation sewn into their cultural systems? Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we solving problems with these amazing technologies only to be like, no, I don't want it. No, I don't want it. You big spoiled baby dumbass. It's insane to me.

And there's so many people out there that are, that are right now talking about, you know, they're on Facebook now and then they're having these, these real sort of tantrums about public health. And, you know, I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a healthcare worker and having to deal with somebody who's screaming at you that you're killing them or you're doing something wrong

or they need this. And they're coming in. Could you do it? Do you think you could do it? No, because they're coming in and trying, like, I get mad when my boss micromanages me, Tom. Yeah. I couldn't imagine.

I couldn't imagine, like, a client micromanages me, Tom. Yeah. I couldn't imagine. I couldn't imagine, like, a client micromanaging. You know what I mean? Like, especially about something that they have no idea what they're talking about. Dude, I couldn't. I'm too nuclear option, like, with ungrateful people. I'd be like, fine, I'm not treating you. Yeah. Fuck you then.

Enjoy dying. Hard pass. Right. You know what? I can walk out the door. I got fucking two legs and I'm not sick. Oh man. Come on down to Cleveland town.

Everyone under construction since 1868. See our river that catches on fire. Buy a house for the price of a VCR. Our main export is crippling depression. Could be worse though. At least we're not Detroit. We're not Detroit.

So this is just a quick dunk though, Tom. This is an extension of Marjorie Taylor Greene here. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to celebrate Columbus Day but failed miserably. This is from LGBTQ Nation. And I just think we need to read this tweet. Can you read that

tweet, Tom? I can. Happy Columbus Day. Columbus Day. Columbus Day. Maybe she's doing Columbo. It's Columbo. It was this day so many years ago when Columbo asked the Native Americans,

pardon me, ma'am. Just one more question, ma'am. Just Native Americans pardon me ma'am just one more question ma'am just one more question can you just answer one more question for me Columbus Day she spells it wrong she spells it horribly wrong and then she deleted the tweet but somebody got it and they shared it all over the internet and it's

fucking delicious and she's so like again all these people of course you know course, you know, are screaming, you know, all the right-wingers are screaming Happy Columbus Day.

Right. They don't care about this. They just, all they want to do is own the libs, right? Because the libs are like, fuck that guy.

He's a jackass. We don't need to celebrate that shit. And fucking dude, we knew, you knew about Columbus. Hell, isn't it Zinn who wrote about him in-

People's History of the United States? I mean, I read that shit forever ago. I'm pretty sure Zinn wrote about it. Yeah. But I knew about it forever. Right. Almost my whole life, I was never, I mean, in school, like as a young person, maybe.

But the moment I became semi-cognizant, I knew he was a fucking degenerate. Like you knew he was shitty. You knew he was an asshole. You knew he fucking, he committed essentially genocide. Yep. And to keep celebrating it

over and over and over again, especially when we're doing this thing where we're like looking through history and being like, not you, not you, not you. Rightly so. We should be looking through history and being like this person someone we should look up to and this person isn't yeah the in my kids school i think this is hilarious they put out a thing saying like happy columbus day slash indigenous people's day

and i thought he did slash them. Right. Yeah. I thought like, that's kind of fucked up, man. That's like happy, like Hitler and Jewish heritage day. Like maybe, maybe we don't combine those days. Like a bad idea.

Right. Yeah. Maybe we don't squash those two together. Oh man. Maybe we just stop saying Columbus day. Yeah. Maybe it's not worth celebrating. Like you said, it's not worth celebrating people who were reviled in their own time.

Sure. I was having this argument with somebody online. They're like, you can't judge people by today's standards. And I do think that we shouldn't judge people by our standards today. But I do think that there are some things which were always objectively wrong. Sure. They were just objectively wrong. And when you look at some of like, when you look at like Washington, Washington wrestled himself with the idea of owning slavery. Sure. His contemporaries called out slavery as deeply morally problematic. So when we look at Washington, we don't have to look through the lens of 2021 to say Washington's ownership of slavery was an irreconcilably bad thing, an immoral action that he knew it. His contemporaries knew and called it out.

He knew it. His contemporaries knew it and called it out. Columbus, it's not like people didn't know that like enslaving and murdering people was a bad call. Sure, right. They fucking knew it. Yeah. Like they knew it. And Columbus wasn't loved.

Yeah. He was not a beloved character back in his day. Like if you read the histories of him, he was kind of a fucking toolbox. The problem is, is these people want to dunk on, on anybody that's a minority, anybody that's a marginalized group. They want to dunk on them. Yeah. And that is these people want to dunk on anybody that's a minority, anybody that's a marginalized group. They want to dunk on them. And that's what they want to do. They want to do

it in part, too, because they enjoy the trolling aspect. Like, oh, does it hurt your fee fees or whatever? Yeah. And the thing is, it doesn't hurt me, but man, I'm not indigenous though. Exactly. Fuck you. You know, like, you know, that's such a privileged, shitty thing to say.

It is. It's such a, but they're all just fucking assholes and she's one of them. She is. Well, she plays to that set.

Yeah. All the time. How are you gentlemen? All your books don't belong to us. Tom, this book is heating up. It is.

Demon Haunted World. So we just finished chapter 13. It's not chapter 12A or 14A. It is Obsessed with Reality. And Tom, this chapter is fucking money. It is so amazing. It's really good.

The really sort of short of it is he's talking about, he talks about many different things in here that he weaves a narrative with. But he's basically talking about how, you know, skepticism is a good thing. Skepticism should be a good thing. And here's a great example. And one of the narratives that runs through it is the Carlos, amazing Carlos or whatever it is. I forget the guy's name or what they call them, the Carlos. But if you've watched James Randi's documentary, the man who he is in a relationship with, he, years ago, years and years and years ago,

was, Randi coached him to be basically a fraud, a fake. Right. And he coached him to go out and pretend he was this mystic. But also I thought somebody who was like a channeler, like channeling like a spirit. And the stuff that they put together in this packet was all made up. So they made a whole press packet.

It's all made up. They had at a certain point had the guy walk out on stage at a Penn & Teller show so they could cheer him and they used that as part of the tape for his press kit. And they did a whole press kit. And then they decided that they would take him to Australia.

And they used Australia in 60 Minutes, the counterpart of the United States news program, 60 Minutes, as a way to advertise him. And people ate it up. They thought that the due diligence was done by this 60 minutes. They thought they never really tried to even bother to check any of the stuff.

And most of the stuff that he put out, you could easily find that it was a fake and it was phony if you were to look. If you were to do a little bit of due diligence as a journalist, you would find that it was faked. Right. Yeah, there was nothing behind it. You would know and you would be able to find the clues that were even left to do it.

But the journalist ate it up, and then Randy came out and said it was a fake. And the guy came out and said it was a fake. He said, I've been playing you. I've been playing you for this whole time. And the journalists were super pissed about it. They were super upset. And so that's the main part of the chapter. That's what this whole chapter is really about. And it's crazy because they received so much criticism. And the chapter's title, Obsessed with Reality, is actually like an insult that somebody used. Oh, you guys are obsessed with reality. Think about how wonderful it would be to live in a world now obsessed with reality. I know, I know.

Tom. Or even tangentially related to reality, Cecil. I've got to read these couple of paragraphs though, because when I read them, they absolutely jumped off the page as, again, a moment of prescience by Carl Sagan into now. He's talking about, at this point, he's talking about Carlos

and he's talking about their reaction to Carlos. So he's talking about the media's reaction to Carlos. He said, but what worries me is that a Carlos will come along with bigger fish to fry, attractive, commanding, patriotic, exuding leadership. All of us long for a competent uncorrupt charismatic leader We will leap at the opportunity to support to believe to feel good Most reporters editors and producers swept up with the rest of us

Will shy away from real skeptical scrutiny. He won't be selling you prayers or crystals or tears Perhaps he'll just be selling you war or a scapegoat or a much more all-encompassing bundle of beliefs than Carlos. Whatever it is, it will be accompanied with the warnings about the dangers of skepticism. Yeah. Fucking yikes, dude. The only thing he got wrong, honestly,

Charismatic. Yeah, is that he set the bar too high. He set the bar too high. He didn't even have to have any of that stuff. You didn't have to be most of that. All he had to do was do this, and I'm going to read this last bit because this is also very much tied in with that,

and it reminds me a lot of Trump. Skeptical scrutiny is not only the toolkit for rooting out bunkum and cruelty that prey on those least able to protect themselves and most in need of our compassion, people offered little other hope. It is also a timely reminder that the mass rallies, radios, and television,

the print media, electronic marketing, and mail order technology permit other kinds of lies to be injected into the body politic. To take advantage of the frustrated, the unwary, the defenseless in a society riddled with political ills that are being treated

ineffectively, if at all. And tell me that doesn't fucking scream Rust Belt to you. Tell me that doesn't scream fucking Rust Belt. The disaffected that get promised. And with modern technology get promised. And with modern technology, you get promised. Yep. He knew it. He saw it. I mean, he saw it all day. Yep. All day. All you need is the consumer. Yeah. And they will absolutely buy. Yeah. They will absolutely buy. And it doesn't matter if

the product is any good. It doesn't matter if the product is fucking cancerous. If the consumer has been neglected long enough, they'll buy. And wow. I mean, Cecil, I felt the same way. I read that and I was like, this chapter, for real, the last three chapters that we have read in this book, we should fucking photocopy them and hand them out.

They're the book. They're the book. They're what you and I remember. Tom and I were talking about this before. I don't really remember the first 10 chapters. I don't really remember them. I vaguely remember that they were alien when I started rereading them,

but it wasn't something that stuck with me. Each one of these chapters has stuck with me. And each one of these, they stuck with me enough. Although I will say, you know, they stuck with me enough. Although I will say, and I mentioned this to you earlier, Tom, I'm very surprised that Randy and Sagan were, they knew each other. Like I never really, and I know I've read this book in the past. So I had that information. That information was available to me. Right. But I read this before I really knew who Randy was. See, same thing. And that's why you didn't remember. So that's why I didn't

remember that they knew each other. Same. I learned about Randy from my interactions with the skeptical world years after I read this book. Right. So I read this book and this book, this book did put me on the right path, but what really did shake me out of it was, you know, Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, learning, you know, listening to old stuff that I used to listen to that I was blown away that I used to listen to and be like, Art Bell's terrible.

What was I thinking? But, you know, there's this, I learned more about Randy and who Randy was from Skeptic's Guide than I ever remembered from this book. And so for me, finding out that they knew each other and that Carl Sagan is sort of touting Randy here and saying, wow, this guy really did a thing that is something that we should really pay attention to,

really made me feel like, wow, there's some worlds colliding here that I didn't know really did. And maybe I'm just ignorant, but I just didn't know that they really intersected. I felt the same way. And I know exactly why I didn't remember it. It's not the kind of thing I would remember. My brain would be like, what my brain would process from that chapter is the message of the chapter,

not the people and the anecdotes. You wouldn't remember the names. I'm terrible with names too. I would just forget them. In books, I just memorize what they look like. I don't even try to pronounce them. I don't even try to pronounce some names. I'm terrible with names too. I would just forget them. In books, I just memorize what they look like. I don't even try to pronounce them. I don't even try to pronounce some names. Same thing. And a lot of times, if the anecdote proves the point, fast forward for me two years, I'll remember the point. I don't remember the anecdote. So I remember thematically the whole idea when reading this chapter and being like, well, the media is not doing due diligence. They

are not checking this stuff. They are easily fooled. They are feeding information to the public that has been fed to them whole cloth without any fact checking. And that's something I remember carrying with me. Sure. The anecdote that proved the point, I just didn't remember it. Yeah. You know? But it was, for me, it was one of those things that was a nice little nugget to find out. Cause I, it's something I just forgot. Cause you're like, well,

that guy's part of my world or was. Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, like, and the thing is, is the things that we do seem to be both sort of based on the trajectory of

both of these people, but not sort of in conjunction. And I just thought that was kind of cool. Yeah. Um, wow. This chapter, This chapter though, man, this book is so good.

These last three chapters just absolutely manna from heaven. Just fucking feed me this baby. That's all I'm saying. Like inject this into my veins. It's so good. But next chapter is chapter 14, Anti-Science.

Again, looking like, maybe it's a regular size chapter, but still that's the next one, chapter 14. So join us for our Cognizant Book Club. You can buy this book in many different places. You can buy the audible version of this. And you can also, if you want, you can become a patron on a per episode basis.

And Tom, we post these before we even record during the week. So we post them on like Monday, Tuesday or something. Tom reads the whole chapter. And then we post that chapter for our patrons so they can listen to it instead of read along if they choose to do so. so come along, join us in this wonderful book that we're reading.

Carl's Carl Sagan's demon haunted world chapter 14, anti-science. Uh, but I got to say, it's not next week and it's not the next week because we are going to have all that stuff's pre-recorded

because Tom and I are going away, but it's our 600th episode in the next two weeks. So read chapter 14. The assignment, guys, is not chapter 14 for next week. You guys can have a long weekend to read it.

We'll come back in November. It's Friday. There's no homework. Yeah, in November, we'll come back. We'll read 14. So we'll probably do a little recap that day and then we'll jump

right into it. So I want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons.

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Generous, generous, generous donations. We could not do the show without you. We're coming up on 600 episodes. We have not had patrons the whole time, but the show has grown and has two employees and it needs your funds in order to function we have bills that we have to

pay, we pay salaries, these things they're not free and so we thank you so much, every single person who's our patron, we thank you so much and if you wanted to be a patron, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash dissonance pod or dissonancepod.com and you can become a patron

on a per episode basis and patrons get a lot of great stuff. They get, Tom writes notes to his boys and a blog and he reads them aloud. His dangerous letters to his sons. He reads those aloud. They're very short bits of audio, but people really do love them. They really do enjoy them.

And then Tom also reads aloud Demon Haunted World. Each chapter has been read aloud. And you get the live stream every week. So the live stream gets turned into audio and you get to listen to that as well on your podcast feed. And if you want, you can listen to Ian's commercials too. So we got a little bit of email we want to talk about here. We got a message from Lincoln. And Lincoln says, it's been about a year and a half since I found your joint project

Citation Needed when I was looking and listening to podcasts for the first time. Funny enough, they were looking for citations needed. Hilariously guys, every week or so, our citation needed email will get hit with, hey, Adam and Nima, I would love to have this guest on your show. And I communicated with them via Twitter and I sent them a message and said, hey, we get your email all the time. Can I have an email to forward it to you? They're like, yeah, it's citationsneededcontact at gmail.com or something like that. And so I forward their email

that we get from CitationPod all the time to them because citationpod at gmail.com is us. Right. And within three or four weeks after starting our podcast, they started a podcast. Yeah. And so it just was like,

there's nothing we can do. No. We've sort of been, we've sort of, at a certain point, the dollop donated to our show because they thought- They thought we were the other

guys. We gave it back. We did. We gave the money to Citations Needed because the dollop thought we were them and donated $10 a show. And we were like, man, the dollop likes us. We can't believe it. And then they were like, hey, you should come on

our show. And they were just like, no, we don't know who you are. We don't know who you are. We don't know who you are. And then they canceled their patronage and then we contacted Citations Needed and gave them the money right away because it'd be rude to keep it. We're not going to keep someone's money

if they want to give them to us. But anyway, at the bottom of this email, Lincoln says, Lincoln talks about Gen Z and how Gen Z really is, at least among their peers and friends, very not literate when it comes to the internet. And with messaging and with social media and understanding news sources and things like that. And Tom and I were talking about this beforehand, but Gen Z and younger, they were given a tool that they were never really taught well how to use. And I think that that's the real issue is that, is that, you know, maybe we came up in an

era where we still had that bit of skepticism because it was a new thing for us. Right. So there's always that leeriness of something new and you've developed different tools and you're handed this new thing. Like, ah, but yeah, Gen Z. I mean, one of the things that LinkedIn says here is we've been groomed our whole life to be interested in these services. Even though the person making the video could be someone with no expertise in the topic at issue, they are now the authority. Yeah. And you see it all the time.

You see it on all these different channels all the time where there's just some rando saying something and you're like oh like at least on our show i'll say or you'll say this story comes from the new york times right you know this story comes from rolling stone there's always notes you can check it back and you can always go back because we we we footnote every single episode you want to read it uh ian's terrible about putting the links in sometimes i mean let's be real fucking honest i'm gonna write that down for his let's be real we footnote every single episode you want to read. Ian's terrible about putting the links in sometimes. I mean, let's be real fucking honest here. I'm going to write that down for his review again. Let's be real honest.

But, but sometimes, you know, like once in a while when Ian remembers, those are in the show notes. Jesus Christ, Ian. And then we can,

you know, you can go back and check that work and it's not our work. We're talking about it. We're, we're, you know, we're not, we're not here to present it.

We're not here to present it as if it was our work. Cause it's not, but these people on TikTok, there's nothing. No, it's context free, man. It's context free, man. It's context free. Yeah. We got a message from Joseph.

Joseph says, basically, I tried to fucking shut my Facebook off before. And you, seriously, it's fucking like trying to swim out of a riptide. I've deactivated my Facebook account two or three times for different reasons. And yeah, it's not easy. I always have to,

ironically, I have to Google how to deactivate my Facebook account to find out how to do it. And I'm never 100% sure it's done. I actually tried to deactivate. I've tried to delete it. Yeah. And you just can't.

You can always come back to it. You can always come back to it. They didn't to it. You can always come back to it. You can always come back. Kaya sends in a message talking about pro-anorexia sites. Wow. Pro-anorexia or pro-anathinspo sites have been around on message boards for a while. Many of them are linked to healthy

eating or fitspo pages. I know that wasn't the main point of the story, but if someone has used these sites when I was deep in my eating disorder, it's a bit of a special interest. But the people who find these pages tend to be obsessed. More obsessed is more clicks, more ad exposure. So yeah, sites are hesitant to take these extremist pages down

lest they lose a few more cents. That is so disturbing. There's absolutely no discretion paid to what these places will host because they'll host shit to make money. There's absolutely no discretion paid to what these places will host because they'll host shit to make money. Tom, we got a message from a PhD in pharmacology, and they told us something interesting about patenting medicine. You can patent three things about a drug.

One, the actual chemical structure. Two, the drug formulation, all the other stuff added to it in the pill. Three, the use slash indication. The goal for each company is to be able to patent all three. However, the benefit to being able to patent the use is to be able to reward the researchers and companies who repurpose drugs whose structural patent has already expired. It's a lot cheaper to bring an old drug to market with new indications than it is to start from scratch all over again with a new molecule. If ivermectin actually worked for COVID, it would be trivial to be able to patent it for treating

COVID, i.e. patent the new use. A company as big as Merck employs enough lawyers to figure that out on their own. Additionally, any change in the drug formulation needed to optimize treatment for COVID would allow for yet another patent. Jesus, man. So you see this quite a bit with companies reformulating a drug,

either combining with another drug commonly used with it for ease of use or creating an extended release version to extend patent benefits. There's also evidence the actual drug structure anybody can look at by Googling and see it's obviously not similar at all to ivermectin. That is fascinating, fascinating information.

Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I'm so happy that I read that because it's one of those things that like, you kind of know, like you kind of have an idea. And I said it last time, like, how the fuck would you patent?

Like, how would you patent if it's the same fucking thing? That seems impossible, but I'm so happy that someone listens and says, you're absolutely right. Here's why. Right. And I think that that's wonderful.

So thank you so much for sending that in. I've got a message. And this is from Liz and Liz talks about Mormons and soaking. This issue will not go away. But basically Liz says, it's been a Mormon urban legend for years. And every time it circles back around, you have people coming out out of the woodwork to swear up and down is true. I promise you it's a, it's not a real cultural thing for Mormon teens. There's a long email that follows this that says basically, no,

that's not how this works. They don't believe in loopholes. That's a stupid fucking thing to think, but we hear it all the time. And, and, and there's all these urban legends that follow the Mormon church around because it's small enough where

not everybody knows about it and it still has that sort of mystery to everyone else outside. Yeah. Yeah. The cult-like nature of Mormonism. Sure. Yeah. So, that is going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to tune in next week

for our 600th episode. 600th episode. And we will be off for the next two live streams. So next Thursday and the following Thursday, we will not be doing a live stream. However,

we'll be back on the 4th. So we would love if people would come back for season two. Season two. Season two grand, what do they call those? The series premiere.

Series premiere is season two. Season two, the quickening. The quickening. The slowening. what do they call those the series premiere series premiere is season two season two the quickening the quickening the slowening on November 4th at

9 p.m. central come check us out November 4th but we're going to be off for a couple weeks but we we will be back listen to our two

episode 600 show and 601 we'll be releasing that following week and and we'll be seeing you then week and, uh, and, and we'll be seeing you then, but we were going to take a couple weeks off. Uh,

but 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 couched in scientician, double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupuncture waiting, pressurized stereogram, pyramidal, 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 in towers, tarot cards Psychic healing, crystal balls Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens Church churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your signs. nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any

information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butt hurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you