Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 614: Fully Stocked

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

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 614. We should raise a glass, Cecil, and toast the retirement of Stephen Breyer. Cheers. I'm so fucking glad he didn't try to wait it out.

Yeah, I'm glad too. 83 years old, that's a fucking ass clencher yeah that is and i and and it looks like they're planning on a woman of color yep is what their plan is and you know at this point 50 gets them in that's it so they just they got to get i mean the thing is like the republicans destroyed the filibuster for supreme court nominees. Right. So here we are in a position where we will use the filibuster break that the Republicans insisted upon because Supreme Court nominations

never used to be like this. Supreme Court nominations were like, Stephen Breyer, he was nominated 87 votes. Yeah. 87 votes in the Senate. Very typical. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 97. Yeah. 87 votes in the Senate. Very typical. 97. Yeah.

Something like that. That's, that's because the way that this used to work is, Hey, are you qualified? Yeah. It was always that. Might not be my guy, but like,

look in fairness, they're fucking qualified. Yeah. And now it's, it's just a partisan thing. Now it's all straight up fucking garbage just a straight up fucking garbage partisan. And the worst part is that like, they're never going to vote for your guy,

but the people they put up are genuinely awful people. I know. You know, like the people that they're putting up are garbage people. You know, Amy Coney Barrett doesn't have enough experience. She's a hardline anti-abortionist. You know what I mean? Like all this stuff.

And then you talk about Brett Kavanaugh, all this stuff that comes up from his past, how he's just bad at what he does gorsuch you can argue i mean he's a shitty dude you could argue that that guy's qualified but like like there was people that that could have easily been put in when uh when scalia died we were at we were we could have flipped this court five four we were we had to wait then it was 5-4 yep now it's gonna now it's 6-3 right so the court is 6-3 the whole thing is so fucking infuriating because like Merrick Garland is absolutely qualified 100% qualified Merrick Garland is just I mean he's kicking himself for taking the AG job I don't know man they weren't gonna put him in anyway no he was no way. There was no way they were going to put him in. I think he was an olive branch.

He's kind of not. He was as uncontroversial as should have been possible. Right. But he never even got an opportunity to have a hearing. He never even got the fucking opportunity. The thing is, the court, if we had been better about strategy, and we should be the ones in a fucking 6-3 right now. We really should.

RBG fucking, I mean, I love RBG, but she fucking overplayed her hand. She did. She assumed that Trump wasn't going to win. She assumed Hillary was going to win. Obama thought the same thing. You know what I mean? That's why I don't think they pushed it as hard

as they should have. Absolutely. When that time came, because there was, fucking Scalia died in February, man. I know. He died in February. It is goddamn ridiculous

that they were able to block a Supreme Court nominee in fucking February on the thinnest of possible grounds. And that didn't get pushed on pushed harder it didn't that didn't they didn't fucking sue i know there's got to be some mechanism but then and then a hundred percent as soon as rbg died during an election year they went back exactly on what they absolutely hundred percent back on what they said so this this whole supreme court issue of nominees has become so fucking fractured and partisan and just emblematic of the deep fissures and brokenness in American politics. And it's such a powerful branch of our government. It's so powerful. And part of the reason it's so powerful is it still

functions. Unlike the entire legislative branch, the judicial branch still renders decisions they still function they hear cases they render decisions in a relatively timely fashion they're a functioning branch of the court and to be honest that's why the executive branch is so important too because the executive branch does control a lot of what happens in the united states absolutely through policy through other things that don't have to go through legislation. And so you're right. The legislation has been in gridlock since we were in high school.

Yep. But it's now starting to get to the point where there hasn't been any real progress for a very long time. We are talking about when, before Biden was elected, we're talking about you get one thing, you get to do a thing and that's it. And so that's where we're at in that procedure but you're right the the

court still here is so many cases a year and what they do shapes the future of the nation what they say shapes the future of how we deal with these things yeah this is it's once it's there it's precedent yeah man i i was thinking about the courts today and I was thinking like, like what, one of the functions of the courts is they are sort of America's cartographers. They draw the map, they draw the boundaries. Yeah. And then we all live within these boundaries. Yeah, it's a good way to look at it.

And when you reshape the map, when you reshape the boundaries, fundamental shifts occur in our politics and our social circumstances. I mean, look at like the Oberfeld decision and making gay marriage legal across the... Big social change can happen. Roe v. Wade. Yeah. Big social... And Roe v. Wade is so important. And I know we don't have to tell our listeners this, but it's so important because it's not just about abortion. Abortion women's rights abortions is about access for women to the workforce that's what it's about it's about getting women out of the fucking home and into the fucking workforce yeah that is a massive massive part of the um you know system of equality that roe v wade tries to tries to ensconce in the system. When you pull

that away, you're not just talking about abortion. We're really talking about what do we want socially, financially, educationally for 51% of the people that live in this country? It's a big fucking decision. What do we want for the majority minority? Right. I fucking A, man. Fucking A. It's fucking crazy. Speaking of crazy, here's a story from Rolling Stone. We're going to read most of it because it's just,

you just, you just, one of these days, you got to hear it. I'm a full anti-vaxxer now. How the conspiracists are winning over fresh converts. When thousands of protesters gathered on the national mall on Sunday morning

to protest COVID vaccine mandates, they did so, they insisted, to preserve personal freedoms. No more mandates, they shouted as they marched, serpentine and coiled like the snakes on the do not step on snack flags hoisted above their heads. This is not about vaccine or anti-vax. J.P. Sears, a comedian known for spreading conspiracy theories through sarcastic comedy, told the crowd. It was, he asserted, as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, quote, a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Gotta love it when a white guy compares their movement to Martin Luther King's movement. Thank you. Can we have a rule? It's amazing how many

basic rules this one story is going to break. Because if there's like, if there's any rule, it should be like white people don't quote MLK. Yeah. That's not your guy. Yeah. And also, don't throw out the specter of Nazi Germany to make a comparison. Keep that away from them. Yeah.

These are basic things. This is like, don't fart at the dinner table, man. It's super easy. Don't shit on a plate. Like, yeah. Like, you can put your elbows on the man. It's super easy. Don't shit on a plate. Like, yeah, like, you can put your elbows on the table. It's okay. You're among friends. Yeah. But don't let her fucking rip in the middle of the

fucking second course. Don't lift your leg up and then pull the rip cord. Right. Don't ask the waiter to pull your finger. Holy shit. That would be amazing, though. Dude. That waiter gets a big tip. You fart so hard, you blow his apron. But it was very much about vaccines.

Children's Health Defense Fund, the political wing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vax organization, hosted the event. Kennedy, who has been vocally spreading false claims about vaccine safety for decades, addressed the crowd to offer unsubstantiated warnings of the COVID-19 vaccine's dangers. So did several doctors wearing their physician whites.

Yep. Man, that shit makes me mad. Like when they wear, I just call it what it is, when they wear the fucking finery and costume of their profession in order to fool people into seeing the uniform and adopting the gravitas from that, people see that shit and they hear

the message less. Because they're more impressed by who the message is coming from. It's fucking maddening. That's unbelievable. What I don't understand is they're fighting against mandates, but that mandate that was

for OSHA got thrown away. So what's the mandate? I mean, like there's mask stuff. Like sometimes like certain places won't let you, like many places in Chicago. And then like there is some places that won't let you in if you don't have a vaccine card. But that's what they're, that's now,

I think that is what they're considering the mandate. They're mixing up. See, these are the same assholes who don't understand the difference between free speech as a down from on high through law and a private company's decision to not let you into their store or their theater or whatever

unless you're vaccinated. The second one is not a fucking mandate. It's not. Because you don't have to go there. It's not like a place you have to be at. If it was the library, that's a different story, right? That's a public building.

That's a different story. We can have a different argument, a different conversation about that. But if it's fucking Joe's Crab Shack or whatever, they get to make

their own decisions on whether or not you get to walk in there and eat their fucking crab. That's their decision. That's it. Aren't you guys, the guys that always scream

that people should be able to fucking not sell cakes to gays? Yep. Like aren't you those same people? These are the same people that want a gun store should be able to fucking not sell cakes to gays? Like, aren't you those same people? These are the same people that want a gun store to be able to sell any gun to you. Yeah. Right.

Right. They want all the personal freedoms as long as they're the personal freedoms they want to have. Right. But they don't want, you know, because if they own the store and they're like, yeah, I own this store and I had, you know, I'm suffering, I fucking have cancer and I'm in the middle of my chemotherapy treatment. So in my store, I have to make sure that everybody who comes in is masked and masked, right? Because I want to run my store. It's how I pay my bills, but I got to keep myself safe. Anybody who said, no, you don't have a right to do that. They would be like, and I think rightfully so they would be saying,

whoa, wait a minute. This is personal private property. It's a private business. It's a free enterprise, capitalism, buzzword, buzzword. I get to do this. And in that sense, I totally fucking agree. We do have, and I think it's a good thing. We do have a lot of personal freedom in terms of how we live our lives and run our businesses. Mandates are not the same thing as a personal business owner's decision. And it doesn't adversely affect you. I went to the theater the other day. Haley and I went and saw a play. We went to the theater. Everybody there had to be masked up over the nose too. And they were checking, masked and vaxxed in order for you to go. And that's the

reason I was willing to go. They sent like very strict policy. I was like, great, very strict policy. I'm willing to go. I would be unwilling to go otherwise, but that's a private theater. They have the right to make that decision. On the train, on the, on the commuter train, there's people who don't wear masks at all. And it literally says it and they say it before you get in. They just don't do it. They just don't wear their mask. They just don't do it. So they just like sit there and just breathe the whole time. Jesus.

And just be like, I want you to not breathe. I can make that happen. Right? I can make that happen. Yep. Yeah. Just turn the lights off

on the train for one minute. I can make that happen. But it's- It'd be a fucking murder on the commuter express. But they specifically will push their boundaries on every chance they get.

There's so many people now that are doing this, you know, mask under my chin. I got my mask on. It's on my chin. And they put it under their chin. It fucking makes me want to fucking strangle them. It makes me crazy.

It's like, it's like, just, just look, it's not doing anything. It's not uncomfortable. What's the worst thing that it's possibly doing to you? What's the fucking big deal?

Yeah. It's like, I sit down and it's not the most comfortable thing in the world but it's not like it's not a fucking ball gag you're walking around with it's not like it's like we said hey man to stop the spread of fucking you know covid everyone's got to walk around with a fucking eight inch butt plug in their ass all day you gotta walk in choking on a dildo or whatever yeah yeah man like oh we gotta cut off your fucking left ear otherwise it's just like it's a relatively straightforward piece of clothing you know what i mean it's not a big deal i think that you know we've seen a lot of the toxic masculinity shit on

it though yeah it's a lot remember what like with like rogan where he's like yeah he's talking to bill burr you being like a little bitch or whatever is what he said or something because you're wearing a mask and it's that toxic masculinity that makes you, you, you're obviously weak. You're wearing the mask, but it's, but they don't realize you're wearing it to protect them.

Like that's, that's what it's for. It's everybody there that's wearing a mask is protecting the people that they're not breathing on. I know they don't understand that it's, it's, it's actually, if you want to get there,

it's paternalistic. Yeah. If you want, if you want to get there, if they, if you, if, if what's going to motivate you is your own toxic masculinity, then think of it as being paternalistic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Think about it in terms of how much control do you have. Yeah. Right? That you're able to. Also, like, if you want to do the toxic masculinity thing, be like, yeah, I can do uncomfortable things. Yeah, right. And I can do them stoically.

Yeah. I can wear a mask and not even give a shit. It doesn't bother me that I'm a little sweaty under here. And I've got fucking a little bit harder time, you know, doing heavy work outside or whatever. Just fucking own it. Yeah.

We just sold it wrong. We sold the whole thing wrong. It's like, but this fucking nonsense. Should have sold, should have sold the, the erectile dysfunction. Should have sold that.

Should have sold the erectile dysfunction because that's sold that. Should have sold the erectile dysfunction because that's another thing that would have really teed off on their toxic masculinity is the erectile dysfunction. The amount of numbers of people that are just like, my dick's a useless dick

because I had long COVID. We should. We really should. We really should have been. We really, really, really, really should have played up that angle. We really should have played up that angle, but it's too late.

It's too late for that now. Like the narrative is slipped past us. Especially because they would say, oh, you're lying to me. Right. And he'd be like, fine, get me hard. The rhetoric took an extremist turn as the speakers addressed the crowd.

Kennedy called the mandates, quote, a coup d'etat to democracy, unquote, and compared vaccine passports to slavery. Quote, even in Hitler's Germany, you could hide, end quote. Yikes. Kennedy said, referring to Anne Frank's ultimately unsuccessful

flight from the Nazis. Motherfucker, you're not Anne Frank. Yikes. Anne Frank was stuck in an attic. Holy shit, dude. You're outside complaining how are you i love these people that are like my life is really hard right also there's no indication that my life is hard at all no shit no shit man i'm sorry robert f kennedy jr did you have to fucking go through puberty living alone in an attic with the fucking threat of extermination if somebody saw the barest sliver of light peek out from one of your

fucking closed up windows is that the same thing as you couldn't drink your drink inside the starbucks that's the same thing it's the same thing absolutely god damn and they you know what they what they'll say is they'll acknowledge that they're not the same like it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Absolutely. God damn. And they, you know, what they, what they'll say is they'll acknowledge that they're not the same. Like it's the first step. Yeah. I know. It's the first step.

Nobody did. What the fuck? What are you talking about? It's the first step. Eventually you won't be able to eat your food in Starbucks either. Right. You won't even be able to go through the drive-thru. They won't even let you in Starbucks.

What? What? Well, you're going to get a frap of chips. This isn't America if I can't get a frap. Fucking assholes. I hope all these fucking people, Cecil genuinely, with all

of my heart, all these fucking idiots that go to this fucking anti-vax, anti-mat, and they stand up here and they speak and they scare people away from the only technological answer that we possibly can. I fucking hope these guys have a change of heart, man. I hope they get sick.

I really do. And I hope it scares the shit out of them. I really fucking do. And I really hope that these people get sick and their families get sick and somebody gets fucking real sick and they get real fucking scared. And then they fucking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands in front of everybody else in six months. And I don't give a shit how broken he is to do this. I don't. I don't care if he is a fucking faintest sliver

of his former self, as long as he has that fucking come to fucking Jesus moment. As long as he has that fucking Saul to Paul moment and he stands in front of a fucking crowd and says, I was wrong. Like I want that for the fucking Mercola and fucking Kennedy

and Sears and all these motherfuckers. Something has to break in them in order, because they're shilling. They're all making cash, man. And, you know, what was it? 2,000 deaths yesterday? Something like that? That's not a small amount of deaths. That's not a small amount of deaths.

We would be looking, imagine if there was, you know, 2,000 deaths other than that, like 2,000 gun deaths a day or something like that. Like that would be a- We still wouldn't care. We still wouldn't care. Picking up an issue. I guess you're right.

I guess you're right. You know, I picked the wrong issue. Right. I picked the wrong issue. I should have picked something else, something else that's not as freeze speech, shooty shooty, which are the two main things that are the biggest,

the biggest, the biggest wedge issues on the right. But what we have is we have a, a group of people that wanna, that, that are still dying. They're still every day. There's brand new groups of people like Herman Cain is Herman Cain award.

It's still getting brand new entries all the time. People that are still fighting against the vaccine and then posting their last post on Facebook and then dying. And this isn't a disease that the anti-vaccinated do very well against. They keep dying, man. When they get it, they don't do very well against it. And then there's a better chance of getting long-term symptoms. It's not...

It's so funny because you're just like, the answer is right there. We're so lucky that COVID-19 happened at a time technologically when we were able to develop. That's part of what makes me nuts is we're so lucky. If this fucking

nightmare had hit us 10 years ago even 20 years ago probably because mrna is a little you know but i wonder if we'd be able to do it as quickly you're right no you know we wouldn't have been because like the the computers have gotten faster for sequencing shit you know what i mean like there's just like it hit us and we fucking bam like we just reacted we just fucking reacted reacted. We reacted so fast that it's kind of a fucking miracle. Yeah. And I wonder if maybe that's part of what freaks people out. Yeah.

But I also just know, I just know that there is a group of people for whom vaccines as a category, they're skeptical of. They're like distrustful of vaccines as a category of medicine in ways that they're not distrustful of vaccines as a category of medicine in ways that they're not distrustful of any other category of medicine. Yeah. Yeah. You know, these guys would take insulin. Yeah. They are. Yeah. Right. There's so many other things that are that, you know, they, they get their legs set. They would, you know, they would take high blood pressure. They probably take Tylenol and Advil and whatever all the time.

And a lot of these people, if they had cancer, they would listen to the person who's going to tell them what they need to do to try to slow that cancer down too. They would go take antibiotics if they had a fucking bacterial infection. And we know that they listen to the COVID doctors once they get very sick. Once they get very sick, they go to the hospital. We're not finding, we're not opening up houses like it's the plague

and finding a bunch of dying. Sure, you are, but it's not like, these people are dying in a hospital because they're going to the hospital to die. Everything is fine until it's not. And I am very firm in my beliefs until it's really on the line. It's like a reversal.

There's no anti-vaxxers in foxholes. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, there's no anti-vaxxers on a fucking vent. Yeah. Yeah. So these fucking idiots. I say that, but that's probably not true.

I'm sure there's some. I know and I'm going to get a bunch of messages that say that's not true. I'm sure there are. I'm sure there's plenty of people. And in fact, many of these people, even until they die,

don't, they don't think, they don't think that COVID's a real thing. But they are still in the hospital. Again, it's just like, like there's a dissonance. I don't understand how you're still in the hospital.

If you don't think COVID's a real thing. Yeah. Why did you go to, why go there? Why? Yeah. If you don't trust doctors, why did you seek out doctors?

It's fucking, like, look, here's the thing. I don't trust which doctors did you seek out doctors it's fucking like look here's the thing i don't trust witch doctors right there are which there there are genuine witch doctors out there right i don't think they know anything that's useful to me yeah so if i get sick i've never been like paging through the fucking phone book looking for w you know what i mean you haven't you haven't gone through all this to do this to do this right and worked your way to which doctor right i will never work my way to which doctor. Yeah. I'll never work my way to crystal ball.

I've never gone to the Reiki guy. I'll never go to the chiropractor. I'll never go to, there's a million things I won't do. It's, and it, it's amazing to me that this same group of much aligned, much maligned physicians are immediately sought after. Yeah. You know, when it's anything but vaccination. Yeah. When the chips are on the line when it's anything but vaccination. Yeah, when the chips are on the line,

it's, oh no, yeah, absolutely. When it's anything but vaccination, they're 100%. They just go to it. Yeah, absolutely. But vaccines, we're just like, I don't know. I don't trust it. I don't trust it. It's pretty straightforward how it works, and I really don't know why the fuck people don't trust it. Poison the well on these, man.

They really did a great job on this. Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vax podcaster who spoke at the rally, invoked the Nuremberg trials to threaten Dr. Fauci and the press, a sentiment also made clear on many of the signs in the crowd. The rally's permit had predicted 20,000 attendees, a much smaller, mostly maskless crowd gathered on Sunday, filling in from the Lincoln Memorial only to the closest edge of the reflecting pool. Even so, those who made the trek to Washington on a bitter January afternoon proved this point.

The anti-vax movement has migrated from the fringes to the mainstreams due to the many who joined its ranks since the pandemic began. And now by drilling down on vaccine mandates, the longstanding movement is recruiting new allies. And now by drilling down on vaccine mandates, the longstanding movement is recruiting new allies. There's part of this, I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but there's part of this that just jumps out at me too. I met many more who are new to the movement, like Stephen, a teacher from Santa Cruz, California, who carried a teachers against mandates sign. He and his children were traditionally vaccinated, he said, but his faith in vaccines changed during the pandemic. And I think this is fascinating. He cites Kennedy's latest book, The Real Anthony Fauci, as key to that conversion. Quote, I'm a full anti-vaxxer now, he says, end quote. Like Liz, he trusts Children's Health Defense

for information. A neighbor he trusts had turned him on to it. Most of the rest of his news comes from conspiracy-adjacent podcasts. That's a great way to put it. The Joe Rogan Experience, No Agenda, and Highwire, whose host, Big Tree, spoke at the rally. These people are seeking out, and we've talked about this issue. It's such an important issue. I think it's the most important issue of our time. People are seeking out information because we have an information glut. We have an overload of easily available,

and information is not even the right word, but information. And people are confused and uneducated and unable to source good information from bad. And so they're doing a lot of work. Admittedly, these people are putting in a lot of time and energy and hours. And the results are exclusively bad results if you don't. It's the garbage in, garbage out, right? But the garbage is bad information. And there's so much information out there. There's an enormous, limitless amount of information.

And there's all these folks. Joe Rogan is a great example, who are, and I think conspiracy adjacent is the right word, they're conspiracy adjacent. Maybe he's not the one saying it out loud, although sometimes he is. But more importantly, he's willing to get guests on and spend hours with them. And it feels to these people who don't, you know, maybe they've not spent the time and the energy really thinking about the idea of thinking, maybe not developing skeptical tools for critical thinking. How is that different in their mind

from the New York Times, right? Or how is that different from, you know, other well-vetted sources? We got in our email recently, we got somebody who sent us and I think it was very well-intentioned. They sent us a YouTube link. And I immediately responded,

I was like, do you have anything that's not YouTube? Because I'm not going to, I won't even look at a YouTube link. Yeah. If I'm going to have a conversation about whether something is real. But I think that's a really unusual stance to take. I think a lot of people be like,

yeah, I'll click on that. I'll listen to that podcast. Yeah. Guys, I'll tell you what, the fucking bar to have a podcast is a fucking internet connection and a fucking headset mic. Yeah. That's the bar. That's listen to that podcast. Guys, I'll tell you what, the fucking bar to have a podcast is a fucking internet connection and a fucking headset mic. That's the bar. That's the bar, yeah.

There's no bigger bar. And, you know, in particular, this particular message you're talking about, we got a message about ivermectin. Someone said, please educate yourself on ivermectin, and they included a link. And I did click on the link to see who did it. And then I looked up who they were. And they used a discredited study about ivermectin

and they talked about it on their YouTube channel. And the study confuses correlation with causation, right? That's what the study does. And it's been since discredited and it's not a real study. And the other thing that you've got to pay attention to is why is everybody using one study for ivermectin? Why is there only one study? If results are repeatable,

then they're repeatable by everyone. And so what you do is you have 20 studies that all show the effectiveness of ivermectin. Thank you, yes. Not one study that says it might be effective against this antiviral thing that's going on. Not one thing. There should be repeatable results.

That's what science is all about. It's about repeatable results. And if you can't repeat them, then one study that came out last year that no one has since been able to repeat is not useful. That's not a useful thing to look at. And so I looked at that and I was like, oh, well, that's not a useful thing to look at. And so I looked at that and I was like, oh, well, that's not somebody I need to,

that's not a person I'm going to watch their YouTube if that's who they are, if that's what they're looking to. You know, and then, and then, you know, you've got to be able to present something that is from a scientific journal

or at least someone like this, at least adjacent where someone has read it, understands it, and has reported on it in a very extensive way. And it's not, we're not getting that. What you're getting is Joe Rogan being like, well, maybe. And well, maybe is not research. Well, maybe is not anything. Well, maybe is the guy who doesn't know what he's talking about.

And let's be, let me be as clear as I possibly can be. Real science is not done on YouTube. No. Real science is not—science does not need to take its case to the people. Like, when science has to sell its case to the people, that's not science anymore. You should be suspicious of the guy who is on the fucking YouTubes, standing in front of his fucking camera in his living room or in his office, you should worry immediately. What's your agenda? Why aren't you, why aren't you busy doing science? Why isn't your paper in fucking whatever the journal is or

whatever. Yeah. Right. Whatever the journal of your expertise is, you know, that you are spending your time being the fucking lone wolf in the room, that tells me immediately that's not how science is done. Because procedurally, to your point, it's not how science is done. Science experiments are done, papers are written, they are peer reviewed, and they are repeated. If you skip any of those steps and go to the people and say, let's debate, that's not science anymore. You're not doing science when you have to sell me

on your fucking YouTube channel. Nobody doing real science has to fucking go to YouTube. They publish in journals because they're serious fucking scientists. It's always disingenuous. It is always. I'm not saying that they won't be interviewed

by somebody credible. There are credible people on YouTube that do interviews. But when it's the scientists themselves, no. 100%, no, absolutely not. 100%, absolutely not. If you're doing good science, you publish the science, it gets in a journal, it gets peer-reviewed, then it gets repeated. Then that repeat gets peer-reviewed and a consensus begins to emerge. And then we, as lay people who are not in that industry, get to have some understanding. Anything less than that process, your error correcting machinery is not functioning. It makes me crazy. But these

people, and I feel bad for them, like I really do. They're going to these, they're going to fucking, you know, children'shealthdefense.com. They're going to, you know, this podcast, they're going to that podcast and they're going to these places because they are hungry for information. They wouldn't be spending all this time and energy if they weren't hungry for this information, but they just, they don't know how to suss out the difference between what's interesting and what's true. And we need to know that difference. And if we don't, this shit happens, man. It's an information ecosystem problem. Yes. It's not a science problem. No. It's definitely 100% that where you're getting

your news from, where you're learning from. Joe Rogan has proven there's no consequences to him giving you false information. There's no consequences. No place is going to take him off. He does his own media. He's his own production company. Nobody can say, yeah, it's distributed through Spotify, but they have no power over him. And they've proven that.

In fact, they've sided with him over other people. They sided with him this week over Neil Young. Neil Young was like, all right, take all my shit off if you want't take Joe Rogan off. And I read that and I was like, bye, Neil Young. Yeah, they're like, yeah, no, bye, Neil. Because like, what are you going to make money off of? That's a money decision, you know? Yeah, it was really

kind of sweet, actually. Like, Neil Young was like, flexing. And it's like, Spotify's like, look, man, you're not selling a lot of new records. Yeah. You're not exactly young. I just, well, I just, I mean, you got to expect that that's going to happen.

But you know, they're not going to, there's nobody, there's no pressure on Joe Rogan to change what he's doing. No. There's no pressure. He's getting rich with this. And if he says something incorrect, non-factual, if he gives you bad information,

there's no repercussions. He doesn't have anything that happens to him. And he hides behind that all the time with like, I'm just a guy asking questions, you know? And like, yeah, alright, but you've got a listenership in the millions and that means you have some responsibility. He has responsibility to those people, but

those people don't feel he does. Right. Honey, where are you? In the bedroom, sweetie. What a party that was. So many people I've never met before. What are you doing? Sweetie, I'm reading the instructions from AdamandEve.com. Instructions for what? To ignite our Valentine's Day.

So I've got gasoline and a blowtorch. I'm not sure where that goes. Um, honey? Okay, here's the next line. How are you planning to spice up things in the bedroom this Valentine's season? So that's where I think the fire comes in. This is a Valentine's seasoning, so I've got some sexy seasonings. No, honey.

Some asafoetida. Because of ass? Right. Common. No, cumin or cumin if you're pretentious. Anus. Well, both are brown stars, I guess. Ambergris.

What, from a whale? A sperm whale. There it is. There she blows. You wish. And some Ross El Hanout for your Ross El Dugout. Okay, check, please. Well, when you go to adamandeve.com and select almost any one item,

which I don't know how to, how do I do that? Like, select three quarters of an item or six eighths of an item? Or 12 sixteenths? Please. Well, I'll get 50% percent off but i want the whole item oh my god honey just read the rest of it here's the next slide but that's not all when you select your one item you will get a free valentine's lovers kit that includes an item for him him who a special toy for her i, who is that? And something you'll both enjoy. Okay, honey, so we gotta invite friends. Finally. And the lover's kid includes

six free movies for our viewing pleasure. How can they afford that to license six movies? That has to be a lot of money and intellectual property rights, not to mention staffing and craft services. Where are we gonna fit all these people? Honey. Plus free shipping? No wonder there's a supply chain crisis with all these free ships out there.

No, shipping. And, sweetie, we have to go to adamandeve.com and use offer code GLORY. That's G-L-O-R-Y, GLORY, because without it, there will be no free Valentine's stuff. If we don't do this, it will ruin Valentine's Day for everyone, sweetie. Okay, okay, honey. Will you feel better if we go to adamandeve.com right now? How can I, sweetie? This is the 50s.

There's no internet. I don't know how to end this. Me neither. Okay, I'll figure out how to use code glory at adamandeve.com. Okay. In the meantime,

grab those spices. You're going to do some cumin lingus. And I'll give you my Sichuan pipi corn. Stop talking. I'm not going to worry. That's why I never make fun of Polish people. They're the most intelligent people in the world, aren't they?

Takes a schmuck like you to believe that. Are there any Polish people here at all? No? See that? They couldn't find the building. They couldn't find the building. That's not nice to say. I'm sure there are Polish people here. They just don't find the bill. That's not nice to say. I'm sure there are Polish people there.

They just don't understand the question. See, that's the kind of a joke I find obnoxious. I just wanted to see how low you are at the left of the left. The left of the joke like that. It's really disgusting to make fun of Polish people. By the way, did you hear about the Polish accountant who was an embezzler? Ran away with the accounts payable. a Polish accountant who was an embezzler ran away with the accounts payable.

This story comes from ctvnews.k. Polish church says it's wrong to ask if abuse victim is gay. This is astonishing. This story is from Warsaw, Poland. Poland's Catholic bishops have strongly criticized a local diocese for asking a court to determine whether a man who was sexually abused as a child by a priest is gay and whether the sexual contact may have been consequently pleasurable for him. Jesus fucking yikes. What? So like, by extension, if a woman is heterosexual and is raped by a man, it might have been pleasure so you can't do anything about it.

Holy shit. That's what you're saying, church? It's the worst thing you could possibly say. But this is on brand, though. They blame the victim all the time. Yes. And this is 100% blaming the victim.

Again, what it is is it's alleviating blame from the person. You're not technically blaming the victim here. What you're doing is alleviatingating blame from the person. You're not technically blaming the victim here. What you're doing is alleviating the blame from the person who should have the blame by saying that maybe they did a good thing. That maybe there's no blame at all.

Maybe I tripped. I accidentally slipped my dick in you and got you pregnant, but that's a good thing. That's a good thing because you love your baby. Well, yeah, because babies are good. Babies are a good thing. Yeah, like this is a kid too. This is a fucking kid. It literally makes no difference.

The kid cannot consent. Yeah. That's the end of the whole story. I don't understand why there's pushback on this, right? We know children cannot consent. We already admit this with legal deals. They can't buy a car. They can't buy a house.

They're not allowed to do that. We don't let them vote. We don't let them drink. There's all kinds of things that we forbid children to do, right? That the defense in this case would even bring that up is so abhorrent. It's so abhorrent. And the crazy thing is it's so abhorrent that even the other Catholics were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're like, what the what? Bridge too far. Oh, shit. Like, we're,. Shit. Like, we're fine sweeping some things under the rug, but this is a little much.

Like, this looks bad. Hey, this looks bad for us, okay? Yeah. This is a funny. I love that they're finally realizing that some things can look bad. Just like, whoa, whoa. This is not on brand.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. What we're supposed to do is settle out of court. Yeah. And then move. And then send the priest somewhere else so we could do it again. Did you not get the fucking kids playbook? Ridiculous. We don't see like

did they like it? Like that's the did you like it defense? Oh yeah. Holy shit. Well yeah. And I think you know as Germans we're sort of overcompensating. I think. Have you ever seen, you know, German pornography? You know, you watch it, you're like, this is crazy. Like, what the f*** is this?

This is people having sex and since they're shitting on each other? And since they're having sex again? It's disgusting. It's like, I know. Like, can you even remember, remember like any other crazy thing we did as a country? I don't, you know, once you've seen this, it's like, that's pretty much it for us on, you know, terms of the deep end, you know, that's kind of as far as we really went, you know. This story is from The Guardian. Ending religion lessons in schools leads to

overall decline in belief, but not morals. This is a German study, and it's pretty much what it sounds like. So it turns out when you don't indoctrinate children in school, nothing bad happens. Yeah. Literally nothing. There's no ill effect. Well, it's because they're learning those morals from their everyday life with interaction with others. Right. Right. You know, we learn the social contract and the way and how to behave in groups at a very young age.

We're socialized at a very young age. It doesn't necessarily have to be religious socialization. It could be any kind of socialization. You know, it doesn't change anything. And so one of the things that I learned that I read today was there's a lot of people that are nuns, right? So they talk about the nuns, N-O-N-E-S.

The nuns is the largest growing group of non-religious people, meaning they're not religious at all and they've never really been religious, right? So those are the nuns. But there's a growing group of people out there called the duns. That means they're dusting their hands off and walking away from religion they're calling themselves the

duns meaning i quit religion and there's a lot of people in our audience that are done i myself am a done i was i was religious you technically are a done even though you probably were raised more like a nun because you never really believed, but you still, but you still were, I had a faith tradition. You had a faith tradition. So there's a lot of people, especially, you know, in this, in this segment of society that are done, they had that religious indoctrination and now they realize that it can be damaging. It can be, you know, lots of things about it can be damaging in fact. And, and so they're leaving it. They're walking away from it. There's a toxicity to it. We just talked about a story where someone was talking about, you know, sexual, sexual predators in the Catholic church.

That's a toxic aspect, the toxic aspect where literally every single religion feels like a patriarchy. And in this articles in particular, they talk about how once these things go away, the opportunities for women grow in large ways. Once we start to take this stuff away and we start saying, no, patriarchy is dumb. Then we start saying, oh, opportunities for women start to move forward and they start to grow. So this is only, I mean,

this was the stuff I thought we would be doing 15 years ago. This is the stuff I thought we'd be talking about. I know. Where people would look at this and say, wow, you can still be moral. You don't have to have a sky daddy and you can still, and society gets better. Yep. It's so funny because I was reading this and I was thinking, you know, part of the reason is because with very, very few exceptions,

morality is not actually terribly complicated. It's really not. It's really not terribly complicated. It's super easy. You know, if you set aside, you know,

the philosophy of ethics and really, I was thinking about this today, like a lot of the reason is like the philosophy of ethics tries to find out these sort of underpinnings,

the sort of things that undergird our moral decisions. But in terms of just living your life in a moral or ethical way, most of life is not terribly morally complicated. The right thing to do is usually fairly straightforward with some rare exceptions. There's no need for this like overarching rubric to come from the top. And the thing is like a lot of this shit that comes from religion actually makes real ethics and real morals more difficult rather than less. Yeah. And more complicated and more fraught and less ultimately moral. Look at the way every religion deals with sex and sexuality. Yeah.

None of them do a good job. None that I'm aware of. Yeah. Maybe there are some. I'm sure there are some. But none of the big ones. Well. None of the big ones do a good job. None that I'm aware of. Yeah. Maybe there are some. I'm sure there's some, but none of the big ones, none of the big ones do a good job. Think about,

think about this. Sometimes the sexuality is super prudish, right? Where it's super prudish. And sometimes it's at a point where the, when you get into like some of those cults where it's to the point where it's damaging to those abusive. And so you're in this weird place where the sweet spot

seems to be no religion. Yeah, right. Well, because again, then that turns every sexual moral decision into a personal decision that really only, the only morality around sex is how that sexual action interacts with the people that are involved in it right but when you try to like take this sort of broad view and put these moralistic uh you know ideas from on high they're always meant to control people religions all of whether it's like the cult with the fucking polygamy shit and all that all that is it's a it's control yeah that is a hundred percent every time it's always about control right well if i have to teach you how to be a reporter, Ali, I'll do that later. Why don't you do that later, Jim?

I think the lady expressed herself. And you're not here. You're there. Is there any question you'd like me to ask her? No, I'll give you lessons on how to become a reporter later on. I'll give you some lessons on how to be an editor because I was your boss once. Yeah, you were and are no longer. How did that happen? Well, I don't know. Here's Ernest Build aaron abel de milo this story comes from huffpo and it's amazing

gop representative claims without irony that no president has attacked the press more than biden that's amazing that is so amazing because what the whole time Trump was in office, he was like, they're the enemy of the people. People who would wear press badges at his get togethers would get attacked. They had to clear them out sometimes because they literally would get beat up by people. Did he praise a guy who got body slammed?

Yeah, yeah. The guy who body slammed the reporter or whatever. Yeah, like it's awful. But what happened with Biden was a guy asked a bad faith question. Yes. A guy specifically asked a bad faith question. Does it all the time.

He asked a bad faith question and then it was over. They were leaving and Biden's mic was still on. And he's like, yeah, we should have more inflation, you stupid son of a bitch or something like that. Right. It was very similar. Yeah. but here's what happened with biden as soon as he found out that it was a hot mic and people knew he got on the phone and he apologized to that guy because that's what adults do right he knew and don't get me wrong like like you could think whatever you want but other people

know what he was thinking and so he thought nope, nope, I've got to do this. I'll be a man. There's a lot of reasons. I, I'm not, I'm not a huge super, I'm not a super fan of Biden. Right.

Okay. But I respect the fact that somebody is going to stop and be like, I'm an adult. I'm the bigger man. I'm going to reach out. I'm sorry. I messed up. I shouldn't have done that.

And he apologized to him. And the guy accepted his apology. Yup. And later joked about it. Yup. Peter Doocy, who I do not like. I think he is a bad faith reporter he's a fox guy and his questions are always these like when did you stop beating your wife they're all the same question yeah so you know there are all these bullshit bad faith questions and like he got called out and it

was actually like i thought it was kind of funny but the republicans are we're talking about trump who for four years called them all the lamestream media the enemy of the people who did nothing when during the protest when reporters were shot with fucking pepper guns and fucking beaten and arrested he didn't step in

do you remember one of the first press conferences when that guy kept on trying to ask a question and he's like no you're fake news no shut up you're fake news no ask a question and he's like, no, you're fake news. No, shut up. You're fake news. No, no, no, no. And he's like yelling at him and stuff. And then he like talked around him and he's like, get him out of here.

And he's like talking about like throwing people out. He's the worst. He was the worst when it came to things like that. Wasn't his like wrestling thing that he tweeted where he was like beating up reporters? Yeah, beating up reporters. What the fuck? What are you even on what the fuck is i mean the only thing that explains this is this is a representative from indiana yeah indiana so yeah i know there's some good ones in here though too

because they they they the the tweet replies to this show trump standing next to uh he's still so he's this one shows Trump with his Bible where he cleared out the entire group of protesters where he had to do his photo shoot with the Bible in front of a church and then it's got the quote from him while he's in the bus

that leaked right before his going to go on a debate stage. Right before he was ultimately elected. I know it was like two weeks before he was elected but right before he went on the debate stage that night. And that quote where he's like, just grab him by the pussy. The inside edition. Yeah, the inside edition.

But there's so, I mean, there's so many great, you know, call them, this one says, we were literally called the enemy of the people by the former president. And thanks to that, one of his fans ran up to me and yelled, you are ISIS, just because I was wearing a CNN hoodie. So yeah, delete your whole account, Jim.

Yeah, here's one. These people should be executed. They are scumbags. They are truly the enemy of the people. They should be executed. Yeah. That's the difference. Someone's calling him a son of a bitch

because he asked that bad faith question. And then apologized. And then apologized for it. I just, I mean, like. It's done, man. It's just a done issue. It's amazing to me how they can always play the victim. Like they can always play the victim and always forget how bad they were before.

Scientists are now saying that the Great Chicago Flood of 1992 would not have been a problem had it only happened during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This story comes from the Chicago Tribune, Cecil. It's a home story. Pritzker, that's our governor, vetoes proposal to pay COVID-19 sick leave to all school employees, says only fully vaccinated should be compensated. Yeah, they initially wanted to give a bill that said all teachers, doesn't matter,

those teachers, the employees, if they're sick, they get full, doesn't matter. Those teachers, the employees, if they're sick, they get full. They get paid. They get paid. And he was like, no. No, that's because those people, he figured those people would get sick. And they just milked the system.

And that's, isn't that what you Republicans don't want? Yeah. You want a welfare state? Is that what you want? You seem like you're always bitching about it. Like, you know, it's fine if you're fucking poor. You have to go do if you piss hot, you can't have food stamps this month. Right.

But if you if you fucking don't take the vaccine, like, oh, no, you're taking my freedoms away. Well, you know, this could affect white people. Yeah, that's the problem. That's really the problem. This could affect Cecil. This could affect white people. Yeah, that's the problem. That's really it, right? That's really the problem. This could affect, Cecil, this could affect white people that aren't poor. It could affect the white person. So, God forbid.

Yeah. God forbid. Good on fucking Pritzker for vetoing that. I like this. I like this. I'm happy. No, absolutely not. We should make it difficult to be unvaccinated.

And here is what he's doing. There's so many places in this state where you drive where people say Pritzker sucks. They have these- Yeah, all have these, it's not even, it's not even really time to put out your big signs yet. We're not even at that point. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, this was like two years ago,

people were putting these signs out that said Pritzker sucks. Pritzker knows he's not going to get these people to vote for him. He knows a hundred percent they're not going to vote for him. What he needs to do is stand for his, stand for what he thinks is right. And you know what? As bad as other states have been, our state has been pretty good when it's come to COVID. It really has. It's been good. And our numbers show it. The numbers show it. The rollouts of vaccines have been pretty seamless. The chances to, you know, to places to get vaccines have been good. He's been very, he's, he's constantly paying attention to the numbers and the swells and

pay and, and issuing things that basically say whether or not you should or shouldn't have a mask. They've been very on top of this since the very beginning and his, you know, I was not a fan. He's a billionaire. He just shat a whole fucking like 500 fucking million dollars of stupid shit into his fucking own campaign. The guy, I'm not a huge fan of his. And I certainly wasn't going into this.

But the way he's handled COVID, he's convinced me that I think he's a good leader. He wants to be there, too. Like, that's the other thing, man. It's COVID. If I was a leader at this point i'd be like man the private sector looks amazing right now guy like this isn't in for the money that's no he's not in for the connection he's not in for the money he's in it because he wants to do this and i gotta say like like i was not i i have been for the longest time voting green party in illinois for years i've been

voting green party because i'm not I'm not convinced that either one... The Democrats in Illinois are a fucking horror show. You know. Voting for Blagojevich or voting for whoever else doesn't matter. Voting for Quinn versus Brown, literally didn't matter. It literally didn't matter.

No. Those were not chances. Those were not votes that were going to change anything. Illinois' politics have been a horror show. And this is the first one in a long time. I've been like, I'll vote for him. I'll vote for him next time. And I didn't vote for him the first time.

Yeah. And to be fair, like, I think he's handled. Or maybe I did. Maybe I did vote for him. I voted for him because I always vote. I think I maybe did vote for him this time. But this was like the first time in a long time. I really didn't like the guy was in.

The rounder guy who was the incumbent I did not like. No, he was terrible. He was terrible. Terrible governor. The criticism I have for Pritzker right now, though, is that he, during the beginning phases, during the beginning, he created these phases

of the pandemic where things would be open and closed, and they had these threshold numbers. And we seem to have, during Omicron, abandoned that whole thing. And I don't like that. If those was a good idea then, I think that they're a good idea now.

And if they are not a good idea anymore, we should be told why this is not a good idea anymore. But instead it's like, well, we have this like metrics driven approach. I liked that. You know, he would give these, he would have these press conferences where he would seed most of the floor to scientists. Yeah.

And he, right. It was very metrics driven. And I liked that. But I think that it's different when there was, the population that we have, the vaccination numbers that we have might've changed the calculus on those too. Yeah.

That's a possibility. Maybe. I just don't feel like that's been as transparent. Yeah. I am right now independently, financially independently, I am saying to so many people who said that this was going to be a con artist game,

that this was going to be a scammer game. Hey, you're going to lose all your money. My wife still doesn't believe in me. So this story comes from Reuters. U.S. speaker pelosi's stock trades attract growing following online there is a movement um and there is a bill pending to restrict and i think it's it's fucking i can't even believe it's already not law to restrict people in congress from trading individual stocks right right which which is

important to say individual stocks so that means that they can't buy and sell shares. Well, they can right now, but the bill would prohibit them from being able to buy and sell shares of individual stocks because they might be privy to shit. Yeah. That affects, you know, they are privy to shit. Hold on though. There's a 2012 law makes it illegal for lawmakers to use information in their work in Congress for personal gain. Right. Oh, sorry. Now I feel stupid. And it's 2012. So before then, there wasn't anything. I know, but also... What was the Wild

West? What was happening in there before 2012? The law in 2012 has no teeth. How would you prove it? Why bought this stock? Why did you buy this stock? You could just say, well, I looked at the fucking performance metrics of the company and i had faith that they would improve based on these you know like you would have to demonstrate that they were specifically tired it's fucking garbage man this is bullshit that they get to do this it is bullshit and the fact

is is that some of these people especially pelosi she's married to somebody who's like a hedge fund manager or something. Right. So she's trading shit all the time. You know, these, these guys want to buy and sell some big fucking index funds or like, fine, who cares? Like, that's fine. Some big aggregated fund. If you, you'll give your money to Fidelity and you don't talk to the guy. Right. Yeah. Right. Fine. Yeah. No problem. I'll buy some fucking Vanguard funds, whatever? Fucking fine. But you're buying and trading individual stocks. There's no way you're not influenced even with the best of intentions. And I don't believe you have them. I know. But even if I did, there's no way that you have access to all of this information about how the fucking country is working. And you're also allowed to buy and sell individual stock. Get the fuck out of here. What's unreal is like, there's a way to easily get rich. It's a way to easily get rich. You're on a committee. These are closed door meetings

where you're on these small committees and you get a chance to hear some really important information that could change things. I mean, some of the people who were involved in some of this COVID early discussions, when COVID was coming up, several senators dumped a bunch of stock in different things because they thought for sure COVID was going to change how we live. And it did. And they made a lot of money because they dumped those stocks well before they fucking tanked. And so these people are, they're profiting off the knowledge that they have from their job. It's essentially insider trading. It's fucking corrupt as shit, man. It's essentially insider trading. And so, you know, we don't allow other people to do that. We shouldn't allow you to do that. If you have

some kind of manager for your money, you know, you should just be able to walk up and be like, this is my money. You do it. I will not speak to you until I'm out of the office. You just handle all my funds. And then you just let your money manager handle it. And you don't fucking call and be like, I want to get a bunch of fucking Tesla because we're going to be approving this lithium. Right. You should be like, yeah, look,

I'm looking for some like high risk funds. I want to balance 75, 25 on stocks and bonds. Big, broad strokes. Sure. No problem. But like individual fucking funds or stocks get the fuck out of here. They know all kinds of shit behind closed doors.

They know who's about to get a big contract. They know if that infrastructure bill includes money for a fucking bridge that's going to use 86 trillion tons of steel. Or tariffs are going to be up or down or whatever. Trade deals and everything.

There's so much they know. These economic little boards that they're on, these people talk about all kinds of stuff. And they understand emerging technologies and things that we'll never get a chance to see. They'll see it way in advance. They have so many legs up because they're privy to information that we're not.

And the fact that they're able to leverage that information to make money is appalling. I cannot believe that we aren't already there. It should 100% be a thing. Holy shit. So, Tom, we finished the book. We did. We finished Demon Haunted World, Real Patriots Have Questions. Chapter 25 was what we read today. Really interesting chapter. Very, it's the free speech chapter.

It is. It felt to me like one of those things where, again, you stop and you say, it feels like something written in a different time yep especially when we're talking about things when it comes to free speech and it comes to you know the sort of ideas of uh you know he even talks about what that big that there's sort of a broad strokes um how we trade away our freedom for our security you You know, that whole idea of freedom for security. And he sort of talks about it in a way that I don't necessarily agree with. I think

that there is sometimes we need to trade our freedoms for security. I'm one who's pretty much anti-gun. I think we should absolutely trade away those freedoms for some security. I'm happy to do that. I'm happy to trade away many of the things that we have. Speed limits, the perfect example, right? I'm trading away freedom for security. We do it all the time.

I think Carl also looks at some of our founding fathers in a sort of glassy-eyed way that I don't know that I agree with, but I think I really do feel like this is one of those chapters that it

had a lot of heart. It really had the DNA of what I think a lot of this conversation should have. But I'm not sure I 100% agree, you know. Yeah, I feel like the chapter, I did agree with most of the chapter, if I take it in the context of the time it was written. I think that's a very important way to think about it. And I think the problem is that Carl Sagan wrote this in a world that had not yet experienced any of the new media that we have now.

Right. And I don't know that he necessarily would—I don't know where he would fall on that free speech boundary in terms of whether or not everybody should have access to the Twitter bullhorn. Yeah. Because that's a private company. And so, you know, in the sense that, so looking back and getting in the time machine and going back into the nineties, and we've talked about this before, I, one of the things he says, like, you know, some version of, you know, the antidote to bad speech is better speech. He says something very similar to that. And in the broadest possible sense, I agree. But in very specific cases, it becomes way more fucking nuanced, right? So

do I think the government should be censoring speech? I don't think the government should be censoring speech. I strongly feel the government should not be censoring speech. I do not equate Twitter kicking you off of fucking Twitter with censoring free speech because they're not the same thing. Government does not have, I don't think government should have a right to step in and say, Tom, you can't say that. I think Twitter has a right to say that free thing you don't fucking pay for.

We're taking it away from you because you misused it. In the nineties, when this is written, you know, it's, I think it's easier to say, I disagree wholeheartedly with the Nazis,

but I don't feel like I should, they, they, I can't be the one to silence them. You know, I think it's easy in the 90s to say that

because there's no newspaper that's going to pick them up. There's no TV station that's going to pick them up. There's no talk radio station that's going to pick them up. There's nobody there that's going to, that's going to, there's no threat of broadcast. There's no newspaper that's going to pick them up. There's no TV station that's going to pick them up. There's no talk radio station that's going to pick them up. There's nobody there that's going to- There's no threat of broadcast. They're not going to get broadcast wide audience.

And if they do, they're going to be oddities, right? They're going to be made fun of because the editor, the person who's going to craft that message is going to craft the message to make them look like fuck-ups, right? You'll see them on Donahue, but they're going to get into a fight, right? They're going to look ridiculous. They're going to look stupid. With stage lights on their dumb fucking

grand poobah costumes. Or on their fucking big, fucking ugly bald heads. And they're going to be fighting each other or fighting someone else or, you know, whatever. And you're going to be like, what a fucking clown that guy is. Nazism is stupid.

And so there's always somebody there to craft the message what a fucking clown that guy is. Nazism is stupid. And so there's always somebody there to craft the message a little bit around that. So it's easy, I think, for Carl in that time to be like, you know, Nazis, I don't, you know, he's not saying Nazis aren't bad, but he's saying like, you know, they should have a right to their speech. And like you said, you know, when it comes to the government, they should have a right to their speech. But when it comes to like, whether or not some of these things are damaging, especially when we're talking about like Facebook, right? Where, you know, these people put up these really insidious things that trick people in there and then they convert them to their way of thinking. That's really, that's devious. That's, it's

horrible. And like, you're tricking normal people into becoming radicalized. Yeah, well, I mean, look at, and it's through fucking metrics and it's through psychology and it's through, and it's also pushed by Facebook to try to build their numbers. So it's all just really bad. It's all through manipulation.

It's all through manipulation. It's all through straight. One of the, there's key differences, I think that this chapter doesn't, and it's not his fault, it didn't exist. It didn't exist at the time.

There's no way he could have, he could have foreseen and addressed it, but it's really important to talk about. You know, back in the dark stalking around a house. They look fucking stupid under those bright lights, right? You look like a fucking asshole. You don't look sinister. Yeah. You know, when you're surrounded by everybody who's not wearing a fucking— You look like somebody's elderly dad.

Yes. You're like, you're an asshole. You're an idiot. So, in some sense, the media of olden times shone a light on things. And new media really has a lot more dark recesses. Yeah.

But it also allows those dark recesses to broadcast into the other dark recesses. And it creates movements out of isolated assholes, like the incel movement, right? The incels, we've talked about them before. The incels are a horrible group of misogynists.

The incels would have been absolutely made fun of on like Donahue or whatever back in the day. He'd have had a couple people on and been like, I deserve sex because I'm a man. They'd be like,

you're an idiot. Get the fuck out. Everybody would have jeered at him. Everybody would have jeered at him and then they'd have been thrown out. And they would not have been able to find a thousand other people like them. They'd have gone out of the parking lot, they'd have gotten in their car,

and they'd have driven home to not fuck anyone. That's what they would have done, right? But now there's their ability to broadcast and reach out and connect in this way that didn't exist before is it's an entirely new thing. And I don't know that the idea that the best cure for bad speech is more speech or better speech. I don't know that it applies the same way anymore.

It's become more complicated. It requires a much more nuanced examination of how that speech is being used. Right. What that speech's intent is for. Yeah. What kind of broadcast mediums

are being offered for that. It just gets way more fucking complicated than it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago, it's simple. It's more complicated, Tom, than it was 10 years ago. Yeah, vastly so. Because when we first started this podcast, I was very much on the side of free speech. Yeah. I remember

being very much on the side of free speech. In fact, even before Trump, right, I think even as Trump was being elected, I was still pretty much on the side of free speech. In fact, even before Trump, right? I think even as Trump was being elected, I was still pretty much on the side. But then I saw how insidious things can turn. I feel like I had a different view on free speech, even just a few years ago. I mean, I certainly did.

I remember having a conversation with you during the Arab Spring. Yeah. And I remember how excited you and I both were that this democratization of media was allowing for people to connect in exactly the way I'm scared of now. Yeah. Right. But we watched it take hold and we watched something like the Arab Spring, which turned into a disaster and didn't really help anybody. But it looked like it was going to for a while. It looked like it could have.

It looked like it could have. It made us really hopeful for a while, like really intensely hopeful. It was a beautiful thing for a hot minute. And I remember singing the praises of this new technology because it hadn't yet matured into its sort of final form.

And I don't know that we're the final form. We're not there yet. But we're like three bosses in and it's gotten rough. Wait until you get the Tesla chip in your head. Right. Whatever. So yeah, I think it's more nuanced. It's more complicated.

And I think it requires this sort of, I mean, for me, I think of it all the time and I think of it all the time as something that requires a constant re-examination and vigilance. Yeah, for sure. Constant, constant. For sure.

Because it's always going to change, man. And that's, as long as it always changes, you can't ever take it for granted. Yeah. So next week, we're going to talk about the book as a whole. So we will talk about the book as a whole. And then we're going to take a little break

while, because Tom's going to be reading our book, the book that we're finishing. So Tom's going to be reading that. So we're going to have that in production. And while that's happening, we're going to take a break from Tag This Book Club, but we'll be back to do another book because we had so much fun doing this book. We're going to talk about all that stuff next week. So we'll talk about the book itself. And then we're also going to talk about maybe how we're going to handle the next book next week. So we'd like to thank our patrons.

Of course, we'd like to thank all our patrons. We'd like to thank our newest patrons, Robert, Perseus, John, Michaela, Scott, and people who upped their pledges, the future Mrs. Enright. Gross. Brutal. Thank you so much for your generous donations we truly appreciate it we did ian's

commercial review tonight on the live stream is two hours long it was awesome a bunch of his commercials watched him had some internet troubles it's a lot of fun go check it out on youtube or on twitch uh you can go check it out now uh so go see which one won we played them both in their entirety the two that won uh that were first won. We played them both in their entirety. The two that won that were first and second, we played them both in their entirety. They're both amazing. A lot of his commercials are really good. So go check it out.

And not all of them are good. I mean, to be fair, most of them are very bad. Most of them are terrible, but some are okay. So some are worth listening to. No, but seriously, they're pretty amazing. They're amazing. And the stuff he did for us over the years, we sort of played it and we had a lot of fun.

So check it out. Next week on the stream, we're going to be doing an AMA. Check out Patreon for the question. We're going to post the questions this week. So we're going to post the thing this week. So you can post a question there. And we're also going to do it on the fans of Facebook,

our fans of Cognizant on the Facebook. We're going to have a question there. We're going to take a lot of the Patreon questions, but we might take a few from the Facebook one. So be sure to get your question in this week. We're going to do it next Thursday night at 9 p.m. Central. Got a message, and this is, I don't want to read

this person's name because, you know, this is personal, but they said their stepfather died last October from nebulizing hydrogen peroxide. That's so... It was a COVID preventative and trashed their lungs so they could barely breathe and refused medical care and died. Wow. That's terrible.

I'm so sorry for you. That's so fucking tragic. Got a message from Eric and Eric says mansion doing what he's doing. Makes sense. Uh, his approval rating is 60% and Biden is thirties in West Virginia. So he, uh, he definitely doesn't not sure what cinema is doing, but mansion, his approval rating is 60% and Biden is 30s in West Virginia so he definitely is not sure what Sinema is doing

but Manchin if his approval rating is that high then yeah I guess I mean from what I'm hearing from the outside we're hearing about these organizations that are reaching out to him but we're not hearing about his base and that's one thing that I think might you know that might change I know that this is ridiculous but

I'm just I just want to say one more time, I'm fucking floored by people who would rather keep a job they don't need because he's fucking rich. Yeah. Keep a job they don't need instead of doing the right thing. Yeah. That's fucking craven.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. We got a message. This is from Chris and he says, I always thought we had a severe problem with social media. And after listening to the last episode, I noticed that many of the stories you covered can be traced back to our immaturity towards social media.

And he basically says, we really haven't matured enough as a society to handle social media. Honestly, he says he'd be fine with making most forms of it illegal until we progressed. You're never putting that lighting back in the bottle. It's not going to happen. What needs to happen is, is we need to train young people on how to use it. We need to

train young people on how to understand it, how to use it and how to use the rest of the internet properly so that they can, they can learn for themselves and understand the best ways to critically approach these things. You're never going to do a good job, I think, trying to put the genie back in the bottle here. No, no, you're not. And as much as we do, we do need to do that for young people. And there needs to be some outreach to people that have aged into it.

Everybody needs to go into and use social media with a plan. The days where you could just download something and start playing with it and it was innocuous, those days are over and gone. So social media in your mind should come with a plan

on how you intend to use it. Just like going like, there's nothing wrong with going to Vegas. Yeah. But you should have a plan on how much you're willing to lose. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. We got a message. They didn't leave a name, but they said that they wanted to let us know that they have a correction. The dumb woman that caught COVID on purpose was Czech, not Polish. Thank you for the correction.

Those are different places in the world. Oh, this is from Matt, and Matt says, he's telling us that the people who are afraid of the vaccine aren't afraid of the virus because it's a hoax. What they're afraid of is people shedding the vaccine, not the virus. The vaccine is shedding off vaccinated people and it's going to vaccinate them, causing them to be sterile. So they're worried.

I didn't realize this. I had always thought that they were saying shedding. You're shedding the virus. Virus. Because you got part of the virus in you. You're shedding the vaccine. But they're saying you're shedding the vaccine. Talk about a, just a tragic misunderstanding on

how the world works. Yeah, I mean that has no relationship to reality at all. Nothing. Zero. Zero. No relationship to reality. What? Also, like, that would be fucking amazing if it made people sterile. Yeah.

These guys think you can be made sterile so easily. I know. You have to go through some difficulty to be made sterile. If it was so easy,

we would just be like, oh, cool, just give them the mRNA vaccine instead of going through surgery. Yeah. Like, you would have to get

your fucking nuts cut. There's no shot that renders you sterile. It's so stupid. It's such a silly thing. Got a message. This is from Courtney. And Courtney says, thanks for all you do.

I was watching the local Richmond, Virginia morning news on CBS last weekend. And they interviewed an absolute psychopath disguised as an older white man in a blazer. He was there with his lobbying group, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, and they shared his top legislative priorities. Top priority is to repeal the ban on guns

in places of worship, preschools, and daycares. What the hell? How is that anybody's top priority? Give your kid like a fucking lunchbox, a Lunchable, and a fucking 45 to go to school. Got a message. This is from Daniel.

He said, where did the crying guy clips come from in last week's segments? That was Jordan Peterson that was put in. So you got to understand, sometimes Ian, actually all the time, Ian just finds things that amuses him

and puts them in as the clips. Like when I used to do the show, I used to try to find things that would sort of match the segment that was coming up, but Ian doesn't do that. Ian just finds something that he likes and then he puts it in as a bumper.

And I've talked to him about it, but he doesn't care. So it doesn't change. So last week he was mad at Jordan Peterson. So he found a bunch of weepy Jordan Peterson clips, which don't get me wrong, were hilarious. They were great.

They had nothing to do with anything. No, they don't. They're just weepy Jordan Peterson clips. I love that the bumpers give us an opportunity to see like, what's grinding Ian's gears. Yeah, what's grinding Ian's gears.

Yeah. All right. So that is going to wrap it up for this week. Remember, next week, we're going to be talking about the final, the final, basically talking about the final, uh,

the final, basically talking about the book, uh, in its entirety, demon haunted world. It's an entirety as, uh, our Cognizant book club.

And we are also going to be doing an AMA on our live stream. So be sure to get your question in, uh, and come join us for our AMA at 9 PM central time. Uh, you can go to Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook,

but that is going to wrap it up for this week. We can go to Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook. But that is going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician,

double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, freeidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens mosques, and synagogues,

temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. expose your sides, thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

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