Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 626: Childish Things by Dave Warnock

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Thank you to our guest Dave Warnock for joining us! Find out more about Dave here:       Show Notes    

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and cecil yeah we are joined today by a very special guest who we have not had on the show in over three years but what three and a half, but what, three and a half years. It's like three and a half years. Yeah. Dave Warnock. Welcome back to the show, my friend. Hey guys. Good to be here, man. I miss you guys. Hi. Now, hold on a second now. So people who don't remember, maybe they haven't heard that show. You came on a while back. Yep. Tell, tell the people who you are, if they, if they don't remember exactly who you might be. Well, yes. Um, I have discovered that there are a few people out there that don't know who I am.

I can't believe it. Yeah. I don't understand. But a little over three years ago, I was diagnosed with ALS. I've been an atheist. I was an evangelical charismatic Christian for three and a half decades. A pastor many of those years. Are there any introverted charismatic Christians? That seems like... They're afraid to speak in tongues in front of everybody else. They're like socially awkward charismatic Christians. Yeah, there are actually.

Charismatic is kind of a weird word. it's not what you think of it when you think of charismatic you think of somebody who's who's really you know out there but it's simply a term that evangelicals use to identify people who believes in the gifts of the holy spirit and things like that so that was my that was the framework i came from hold on are the gifts frankincense and myrrh is that what the gifts are what about okay at least those three yes is one of the gifts charisma no it's just like do they have to roll oh no it's like the lion they put a thing on you you get a courage medal and that's how it works that's how it is okay we figured it out okay got it so anyway i was diagnosed with als in 2019 and i started talking about living and dying and and uh started

an organization called dying out loud and and uh you you guys we did your podcast um gosh right at almost the beginning of all that i was doing all the podcasts and youtube shows and traveling and speaking and um still doing it three years later, I just finished. Well, COVID shut down a lot of that shit. Sure, I imagine. It just came from the American Atheist Conference. I gave the final talk on Sunday, Easter Sunday morning. I gave an atheist sermon.

How'd it go? Hold on a second. I want to hear about that before we talk about your new book. So tell us how that went. My talk or the conference? Well, before we talk about your new book. So tell us how that went. My talk or the conference? Well, let's talk about your talk first, and then we'll talk about the conference. Well, I got a standing ovation.

I guess that's a good thing, right? I opened with a scripture, the scripture that my book is based on out of 1 Corinthians or 1 Corinthians, as the former guy says. I forgot about that one. I love the Bible, read it all the time. Let me quote from one first Corinthians. I'm going to hold it upside down. Motherfuckers ever read a word of it, right? No, no, no. Yeah. And then at one point I said, it's Easter. God damn it.

Show a little respect. And so that was the kind of message it was. That's great. And the conference was good, clearly. Right. I hear everybody had a great time down there. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a, it was a great time and got to see some old friends and meet some new friends. And so, yeah, it was a good time. So let's talk about this new project. You wrote a memoir. Tell us about it. Tell us why you wrote it. Well, I had quite a story to tell. And everyone writes a memoir. I guess everyone thinks they have a story to tell.

And all of us do have a story. Some are more interesting than others. And I just decided I needed to get my story down on paper with the journey that I had into and out of evangelicalism and then the diagnosis of ALS kind of putting a twist on my story at the end with a terminal disease, you know, catching up to me late in life. And so I just, I wanted to get it out there and I wanted to tell it and I did. And so I'm really happy with it. It came out really well. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback. Um, incredible, really incredible feedback. Everyone that reads it says they can't put it down. It's they laugh, they cry, they are moved, all those things. So I have to say, you know, objectively, it's the best book ever.

That's why we love having you on. You're so humble, Dave. That's why we love having you on you're so humble dave that's why it's really a toss-up between his hum humility and modesty i don't know which one which one wins yeah yes my next book is going to be called humility and how i attained it in three easy steps so does the book go into does the book go into like your time as a as like an evangelical like oh yeah it covers covers my whole story from when i got saved if you will in in 1973 i was a jesus freak and now how old were you when you got saved i was 18 so i wasn't raised in it but i came into it as a teenager okay so i know we talked about, but it's been three and a half years. So I'm always, I'm fucking fascinated by that transition, like into religion.

I'm more fascinated by that than the transition out of religion, I guess, because I can't identify with the transition into, but I certainly can out of. So you're 17. Were you Christian at all? Were you like nominally culturally Christian? No, wasn't raised in a Christian home at all. My brother, a year older, went to college, got caught up in the Jesus movement. It was a thing in the seventies. It was kind of like a hit the hippie movement with Jesus attached to it. And it was a thing that, that was kind of sweeping the country. Sex, drugs, and crucifixes. Is that the? Well, we didn't do sex. We just did the crucifixes.

This sounds terrible. It's literally like the best part, Dave. I know. We've got the best part. What do you have in the way of chastity and repentance? I'm really... I've been having too good a time. I'm 17. I've got to stop the fun.

You know what appeals to 17 year old boys there is some sex in the there is some sex in the book if you you know your your viewers might want to might want to look into it there's a bunch of pearls guys yeah there are no pictures no pictures that's fair yeah so yeah it covers all of that. And my time as pastor and and losing family members and best friend dying and things like that happening to me through the years. And basically just as I look back, as I wrote it, I was basically reliving my life. And I realized that all those years God was supposed to be there and he never was. He never showed up. He was never involved. And I lived the God I believed in was those years God was supposed to be there, and he never was. He never showed up. He was never involved, and I lived.

The God I believed in was a God who was present, who was involved, who was active, who answered prayer. Yeah, and meanwhile, you're doing all the fucking heavy lifting. I'm doing everything, and that's when I realized late in life, I said, wait a minute. This is a one-way dysfunctional relationship. I'm out. And that's kind of it.

So, yeah, that's kind of it, you know, it's, uh, it was, so yeah, that's the story basically. Um, and, and yeah, it, like I said, it came out really well. I'm really pleased with it. I got some preaching when you gave up faith, like, were you still actively involved in preaching as your day-to-day livelihood or. No, I got fired from my last preaching job. Cause I was too independent. Wait, for real? Yeah, I did. I didn't even know you could get fired from being, I got fired from my last preaching job because I was too independent. Wait, for real? Yeah, I did. I didn't even know you could get fired from being, I guess like.

You can't from a Catholic priest. You could do literally anything as a priest. Yeah, they're pushing that envelope. I mean, they really, yeah. I mean, even sexual abuse is not fireable. They'll just move you to another parish if you're a priest. But no, I got fired. And then a couple of years later, I was really examining my faith and what I believed and why and came up.

It just really came up short. We talked about that before. That's not uncommon. There's lots of deconversion stories out there. But anyway, that's, yeah. So when you got your ALS diagnosis, did that force, were you at all tempted to reconsider your faith? No. No, not for a second tempted to reconsider your faith? No. No, not for a second.

No, not for a nanosecond. Once I was done with faith, it was, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Yeah, I can't see how you would. You can't re-believe something like that. You know, it's like, it'd be like trying to re-believe in Santa Claus, you know, that you just can't. you know that you just can't and even though that i was i'm facing a terminal illness there was no sense nothing no part of me that that thought okay maybe you know okay god just kidding about the atheism thing let's let's talk you know well but that's such a common like thing that the christians you know well wait till something happens you know no atheism foxholes deathbed

confessions yeah yeah or not confessions conversions confessions conversions yeah and it doesn't happen yeah it's total bullshit yeah it does not confessions, conversions. Confessions is good. Conversions, yeah. And it doesn't happen. That's bullshit. Yeah, it's total bullshit. Yeah, it does not happen. It's a straw man that they make, and it's not a real thing. And I've done hundreds of shows since we talked. I've traveled and spoke, and I've got my own show now, and I do it every Monday night. It's a live YouTube live stream show, and I've had callers.

I have callers on that. It's a live YouTube live stream show, and I've had callers. I have callers on that, and that's one of the more common questions I get is, you know, did you consider returning to faith, or are you afraid of dying, or what do you think happens after you die? You know, I've talked about that for the last three and a half years, and there's nothing changes. It is what it is. Did you reconsider reconnecting with the people that you lost through your faith deconversion?

Well, I've always tried to maintain. I have reconnected with one of my daughters. The other one still is disconnected from me by her choice. I never removed myself from anybody in my life. If friends and family cut me off, that was on them, not me. I've always maintained the posture that if you can accept me for who I am, then we can do life together. We can be friends. We may not disagree. We may not agree on everything, but I'm not going to cut you out of my life and say we can no longer be friends. And so some, one of my daughters in

the last year and a half has started reconnecting with me. And I'm seeing some of my grandkids again a couple of times. I went years without seeing them, though. And I don't know why she did. I haven't changed. I'm as out there in public as I've ever been. I'm as anti-evangelical as ever. And her and her husband lead a church in Florida. So if, you know, like I said, if they can be OK with who I am and not ask me to be someone different or to act differently around them, then then I'm OK with that.

So I'm curious, do they have and if this too personal, it's fine. But do they have relationships with any other nonreligious people or people of different faiths other than Christianity? Or do you think it was just, it was too close when you lost your faith and left your faith that they couldn't, you know, it's such a direct challenge. Yeah, I think the posture they adopted at that point was, and they were in a church that promoted a kind of shunning so that their position was that if they continued to embrace me and and accept me as their father then they were essentially embracing my atheism and their position was that i needed to repent and return to god and i i couldn't do that and i told him that but i i don't know what's changed changed in the five or six years since they had that

position. But I'm, like I said, I'm as public and vocal as I've ever been in my life in terms of how I view evangelicalism and the dangers it poses to this country. And sometimes you live a little life and you learn that everything's not black and white and that there's gray and that there's nuance and perhaps they've they've seen that i don't know is shunning i didn't i you said i just i'm latched on to that now i'm just curious like i didn't know shunning was a feature of evangelicalism yeah the more fundamentalist the group is the more they're prone to something like that um because they have a very strict set of guidelines in terms of what you can and can't do in order to be okay. You typically think of shunning as the more far-right evangelical or fundamentalist groups, and there are evangelical groups that

are fundamentalist enough to practice that. But it's usually a small group, and it's usually led by a real controlling, manipulative, narcissistic pastor, which is what they had and what I was a part of at that point. When you lost your religion, how long had you been in, uh, in like in the evangelical movement? Three and a half decades. Okay. Is that all? 36, 37 years. Yeah.

So 37 years. So, and, and how long ago was that from now? Like how long ago did you become? That was 2011. So it's about 12 years. So you hadn't had much contact with your daughter in,

in that long in like 10 years? No. Holy shit. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And there's a lot about that in the book. Um, cause I, I go into great detail as to what happened and, and, and how that went and how that affected me. It was a very dark time for a few years. And then I realized, I realized I was letting that experience write my story. And I had, I had to come to a place where I let that go in essence. And, and basically the way I put it is I took the pen back and began to write my own story. And, and I basically said, I'm going to finish my own fucking story and I'm not going to let anyone else or any circumstance write my story.

or any circumstance write my story. And it's just a place I had to come to. You can't live in that place of sadness and depression. It'll eat you up. And I had to just let them go, basically. And one of my daughters is still gone. I can't, you know, I reach out every now and then. I don't hear anything back. But I can't let that consume me.

I have to live my life. It's the only life I have. So you're looking back on these three plus decades as an evangelical. I'm sure you wrote a lot about it. When you were revisiting it in your head and you're writing this, do you have fond memories of that time? When you're reminiscing about it and writing it, were you happy and did that feel good to reminisce about it? It felt odd, to be honest with you, because I was putting myself, I really kind of got back into the scenes, if you will, um, and put myself in, in the present day, you know, as I walked through those years.

as I walked through those years. And it was a bit surreal because I really let myself experience the things and have the conversations and feel what I felt then. So yeah, to the degree that it was enjoyable then, I felt like, I looked at it, I looked back at it as though I was reliving it. And I remember thinking, this is good. This is what I should be doing. This is God's will. And so I enjoyed it from that standpoint. But at the same time as I'm writing it, it was a bit traumatic because, spoiler alert, I knew how the story ended. I was reliving it, but still I knew where this was going. And so there was a lot of trauma there in terms, I mean, there were times I just had to quit writing and go sit and just think and ponder and process what I was reliving. And there were

times it was emotional. I mean, if I was recreating a scene that, that was laden with emotion, I would, I mean, I wrote every day. I went every day to a coffee shop near here and spent about two to three hours a day writing. And I would be, my voice, my hands don't work very well, so I can't really type. So I'd be voiced to texting. And every now and then somebody in the coffee shop would overhear me i tried to get away from them but i i mean i'd be crying you know not bawling but you know crying and there was emotion there and i'd look up and i'd see someone looking at me like holy shit what's going on there then you hold up your coffee cup it's empty it's empty no one will help me

i've got ALS, goddammit. Somebody help me. Okay, be honest. You've been milking the fuck out of this. Let's be honest. Come on, man. Oh, I play that. I play that fucking card every day.

Oh, yeah. It's the only card I got, man. It's it. I've worn it out. I've worn it out. Hey, if you got a shitty card, you still got to play the fucking card. You got the card, man. I've worn it out. I've worn it out. If you got a shitty car and you still got to play the fucking car. I was at this conference and I had a lot of friends there and people that knew me and my partner was there, but when she wasn't around and I needed something,

I'd just say, Hey, can you give me a cup of coffee? And everybody is, you know, the thing I've found is that's beautiful is that I've got so many people in my life now that, you know, who know my story and follow me and have been what they would say inspired by me. And I don't use that word lightly because I've just heard from so many. And they want to help. They want to do anything for me. And to not let them is to take something away from them. And I've had to learn that because it's not easy to let people do stuff for me. I've been independent my whole life.

But when someone wants to do something as simple as get a drink for me or help me with my food or take me somewhere, I have to let them do that because it's me giving them a gift, if you will, if that makes any sense. And so it's been a learning process for me when we travel. I've got a guy here in Charlotte, a retired guy who followed my work and just reached out and said, what can I do for you? I want to help. And so he's become my personal Uber. When we're catching the flight, we're flying out Saturday to Houston to speak at an oasis there. And he said, he comes and gets us at the house and takes us to the airport, come back, just anything he can do. He wants to do. And there are dozens, hundreds of people like that, uh, around the country, literally that, you know, if you're ever here, I want to buy you a drink. I want to buy you a meal, stay at our house. It's just, it's just overwhelming and beautiful what I've experienced in these three years doing this and the people

I've met and the connections that are truly, truly beautiful. All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask a totally unfair question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Compare, now that you've been a part of the secular community for a while, and really not just a secular person, but really involved in a community of secular people. Right. Compare that with the community of evangelicals. In terms of just, yeah, just give me some thoughts on how they compare. I'll tell you what the biggest difference is, and I'll share it by expressing what a friend of mine told us. We went on a vacation with some friends,

some atheist friends recently, and one of them, they're from Missouri, and one of them has been an atheist for a long time. The husband and the wife didn't deconvert with him, but has kind of gotten connected with us as a group of friends and has gotten to know us. And it's been at several getaways with us and has started to see these atheists as, as she puts it, better people, because she says, it's the only people I'm ever around where I don't feel judged. And the biggest difference between the atheist community or the secular community and the Christian community is Christians have a set of rules of guidelines that you have to adhere to

and live by. And if you don't, then you're going to be scolded or shunned or corrected or whatever the terminology that would use is. There's not a sense of that in a secular community. It truly is you do you and I'll do me. It's a free thinking kind of world. There is no dogma to adhere to. So that's the biggest difference I've experienced in the Christian world. You're always on edge, making sure you measure up to the standards that are imposed by whatever group you're a part of. So did your politics change when you deconverted? No, 180 degrees. Yep.

Really? Yeah, I would imagine it had to, right? Yeah. Was that hard? Because in that world, in that world, you kind of have... So you're like a Mitt Romney voter or something? Hold on a second. No, in that world, you have to be a conservative. You know, know you have to yeah because were you anti-abortion and all that like yes yes anti-abortion anti-gay all the things that i strongly advocate for now but no i shifted i mean i just you have to believe certain things if you're gonna live in that world and get along with everybody, because there's no free thinking. There's groupthink. And so, yeah, I was compassionate toward LGBTQ, but I didn't embrace their quote unquote sin. I felt like abortion was wrong. And

so those are ideas that I flipped on 180 degrees. I don't, yeah, all of my politics shifted. So this is something I want to poke at a little bit out of curiosity. So obviously then your values changed, right? So if your politics shift, then that's a shift in your values. So do you think that you were held back by religion from pursuing and understanding your own personally held and decided values? A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.

A hundred percent. I've said many times I'm a much more moral person now as an atheist than I was as a Christian. And what I mean by that specifically is I don't look at people as good or bad, good or evil, right or wrong, black or white. Everyone is a human doing the best they can to get along in this world. Whereas before there was judgment attached to someone's behavior or how they viewed things if they didn't line up with my worldview. And that's not a moral position. That's a very judgmental position to hold. And I've told people, I had an evangelical

Christian on my show and it broke my heart because at the end of the show, I told him, you are a better person than your theology. And many Christians are that way. Their theology is holding them back from being a better version of themselves. Yeah, and that's what I was thinking about when you were describing that. Like you had to – your values were probably always this and this box of, and then you couldn't get access to it. Yeah. They were held back.

Exactly. I couldn't access the better, the better humanity. I couldn't access the better part of me. So I feel like I'm a much better person now because I don't hold those judgments. Well, it's also just a difference between being handed something and making a decision on your own, whether or not you think something is morally correct. That's a good point. That's a huge difference.

Like, you know, like when you just hear the priest here say this is wrong and then you just internalize it, you didn't do any moral thinking. Right. You just listened. You're just lining up with the group and obeying. Exactly. That's not a moral position. Yeah. And, but when you thought about it, you considered it, you might've changed your point, your mind on certain things.

And, and that that's made you a better person and it's made you, you know, the other thing too, is that that's transferable so much easier than just being told something, right? Being able to explain a moral position to somebody is so much easier to like, to convince them and to, you know, to gather around. It's just a different, it's a different approach. Um, so. Yeah. Well, and, and to that point, um, and I talked about this at the conference, uh, in my talk and, and I called the talk, put it, putting away childish things that kind of played off my book title the book title basically comes from a scripture and like we said before in one corinthians when i was a child when i was a child i spoke and thought and and behaved like a child but when i became a man i put away

childish things that's what i think i did when i let go of christianity is is i put away childish think childish things and immature thinking but But I talked about that at the conference and I pushed a little bit at the secular community because I see us do it in the atheist world as well. I see us do it in the secular world where we are handed some ideas or some thoughts or some dogma even. You can be dogmatic as an atheist, just like you can as a Christian. And I see people do that and then they cancel or block or shut people out who don't line up exactly with their frame of thinking or their line of thought. And we can't do that. We need to be free thinkers. We need to allow people to come to a conclusion. And if they don't agree on a particular particular point as long as it's not some you know like sexual assault kind of thing or or something that's a major deal breaker like racism

isn't is it like somebody's a racist there's no communication you can't communicate with races exactly i can't i can't align with them but if there's a point we disagree on i don't have to you out as a person and say we can never be be friends. And not only that, I can never, I can never connect with somebody that's associated with you. That's happening too much in the secular community. And we need to, we need to address that, I think. And so I talked about that. I think Seth, Seth Andrews, he was there and he kind of tweeted and put out some things on my talk the next day, and he's gotten a lot of blowback. And there's a lot of discussion going on about this kind of thing. Well, you know, I think it's fine to set up boundaries.

I think setting up boundaries is fine. And there are some hard issues that you just don't want to have a conversation about, right? I mean, clearly, like, you don't want to—I'm not going to have a conversation with somebody who denies trans rights. Right. Like that's that's not a conversation anybody wants to have. But I do understand your point. Like, you know, like we need to we need to get into nuance and we need to have conversations where people might disagree on a certain point with us. And I don't think that that's a bad thing at all. And everything can't be a hill to die on. Yeah. And we're we're we dig our heels in everything is a litmus test everything's black and white and that's the thing i was saying it's a binary thinking that does damage it's the black

and white thinking where there's no nuance and there's no gray and we need to be trying to find the gray now if i come to a place with someone where i can't find the gray and there's just like you said a place where we can't agree then i'm going to just move on and disagree but i don't have to uh you know say this is the hill i'm going to die on it and say well this is not something we can agree on so when you're doing these talks you're traveling all over the country what are you talking about what is what are your you know give me give me some ideas about what you're traveling and talking about well the the the dying out loud message, if you will, it kind of distilled into really more about living out loud and making the most of the moments that we have in this world that we have only one life. There's a quote that I got early on. It's from a poem and it says, you have two lives.

The second begins when you realize you only have one. ends when you realize you only have one. And the point of that is that coming from an evangelical framework where this world was just a prelude to the real world, that this is a dress rehearsal for eternal life, that's bullshit. And we know that this, well, as far as we know, this is the only life we have. And so what I talk about is, I've alluded to it before, writing your own story, not letting other people dictate what your life looks like. If you're not happy with the course your life is taking, it's on you to change it. Take the pen away from whoever's writing your story and write your own fucking story. Make the most of the moments because that's all we have.

Those are the kind of things I talk about. Living, not being afraid to die. People ask me all the time, are you afraid to die? And the reality is when I die, I will cease to exist. But I won't be aware that I cease to exist. I'll go to sleep and I won't wake up. But I won't be aware that I didn't wake up. And there's really nothing to be afraid of there. What I'm afraid of

is not grabbing all the moments that are available to me and not living my best life. So those are a lot of the things that I do talk about. And then more lately, putting away childish thinking, which is immature, binary, black and white thinking. So you're in this unique position where you had this very strong, very deeply held faith tradition for 30 plus years. And I wonder, do you think, and I speculate if I realize, but do you think that you would be more afraid to die if you believed in heaven and hell? If you had any inkling, oh shit, maybe I'll go to hell. Yeah. And what I've found as I've been doing this for over three years now is that the Christians that I encounter

are more afraid of death and more concerned about it than the atheists. Yeah. And I don't know all the reasons for that. It's a bit puzzling to me, but one of the ideas is what you just alluded to is what if I got it wrong? What if I didn't choose the right God or choose the right religion or say the right prayer in the right way? What if I mess up right before I die and I'm forgiven? A lot of those things. I've said many times that dealing with a terminal illness as an atheist is way better than dealing with it as a Christian, because I don't have to factor God into it. I don't have to ask, well, where's God in this?

What's God did about this? Is he going to heal me? Is this judgment? Is there sin in my life? None of those questions come into play. It is just thing that happened. Period. Yeah.

As a, as a religious person, you probably got to have some sort of job like reflection when yeah you get that it'll fuck you up why me yeah yeah yeah how did this happen to me yeah people you know when they say are you upset that it that you got als and my uh my response is who am i to think that i shouldn't i mean mean, a certain number of people every year are diagnosed with this and other diseases. And it's just a random chaotic world. And it happened to happen to me. If I was to be angry that I was the one that got it, there would be some assumption in me that I didn't deserve this, that I'm somehow above this or better than this. And who am I to say that? That's a bullshit response. this or better than this. And who am I to say that? That's, that's a bullshit response. Yeah. Did you, did you think there was, when you were a believer, did you believe in an actual hell? Like that you would, that people die and they actually go and they're tortured for all of eternity? I sure didn't want to, but it was a part of my theology. And again, But it was a part of my theology. And again, like the LGBTQ issues and abortion and some of these key theology points, they were troublesome. And I actually I let go of the idea of a literal hell quite a bit before I let go of faith altogether.

go of faith altogether. It was one of those things that I just came to the conclusion, kind of secretly, that this can't be real. But the problem with that is, if you throw hell out, you kind of got to throw heaven out, because it's talked about together. And if you start throwing all that stuff out, what are you going to hang on to and why? So it starts falling apart when some of these key points become too problematic to continue to embrace yeah i just you know i i think about the idea of of dying and and like we don't we don't have to wrestle with and it's such a it's such a gift that we don't have to wrestle with that binary question of whether or not because then then you start trying to imagine like oh fuck like what if i did something wrong and i'm going to be tortured you start to imagine these torture

or you start to even imagine like god what what if i go to heaven it's boring you know like i don't understand an idea i wouldn't want to live in eternity trust me it would be yeah the heaven is described in in scripture and and christian theology is one of the most boring things I can think of. The idea of eternity is terrifying. It's like, yeah, even if it's a fucking crispy cream, it sounds awful. Even if you're having donuts every morning, playing

golf all day, and having bourbon and cigars every night, every single day, seriously? Right. And the hell thing, being afraid all the time of hell is a feature of religion, not a bug, right? That's in religion to keep you in line. Right. So it's a control fact. Exactly. So the fact that you were afraid of that sort of thing, thinking about that sort of thing, and maybe if you had contracted this before and would have been thinking about

that sort of thing, that would have maybe changed, you know what I mean? Like that's cause it's literally ingrained in there. It's what they use to control you. It's how they do it. So, you know,

of course you're going to be thinking, maybe I didn't say or say this prayer, right? Cause God is a fickle God. At least the ones that they tell us about is like, that's a fickle God. You can piss him off just by looking the wrong way yeah yeah he's a jealous yeah he's a jealous petty asshole honestly it's it's interesting too because when you talk to like like i've talked to religious people and i've had them say things like god isn't god isn't like loki

he's not trying to trick you. And I always want to say to them, but that's not what your book says. Like your book, it definitely portrays your God as someone who is trying to trick humanity into not believing it. So, you know, like, what is it? You can't just pick one. And they can never really answer that question. Oh, it's the whole thing's a setup i mean from the garden of eden on down you know don't eat from this tree you'll die wait did you just put me here and you gave me this tree but i don't know good and evil yet so what's there's a secret question yeah it's a it's like a it's like a fucking bad relationship

where like your girlfriend is always testing you you know like sending a friend over to like god's yeah right you know it's like it's fucking crazy it's crazy it's fucking crazy town bullshit does this dress make me look fat god damn it i can't win this god i can't win uh that's amazing that's amazing so uh now when you were writing this book did you think it was gonna it was gonna be the thing that a lot of people were gonna be able to connect with you like when you sat down to write it i mean what was your purpose what was your audience there well i i said that i i wrote it mainly for me i needed to get it out. I wanted to have that thing that I left behind that anyone, anywhere, anytime could read. I wanted to take the, it took me a couple of years of really hard work and I wanted to go back through and process everything and make sure I didn't leave anything on the table as I come to the end of my life. I wanted to make sure that I finished well, if you will. And I knew when I finished it that it was good.

I knew that we had, I had a woman who's a professor of English literature. She helped me write it. And we really crafted a good book. And I was really, I knew I didn't want to write something. I mean, I'll just be honest. People have given me their memoir book and I was really, I knew I didn't want to write something. I mean, I, I'll just be honest. People have given me their memoirs and I read them and they're so shit, you know, and, and just not good. And I didn't want to write a shitty book. And so I didn't know that it would have the impact it has. Immediately I started getting feedback. Like, you know, know, I read it in two days.

I couldn't put it down. I cried my way through it. I listened to it. I listened to the audio for 12 straight hours. I couldn't stop. You know, those kind of things started coming all over and over again. I thought, oh, shit, I've really touched a nerve here and really helped people process their own journeys. And even people who didn't

go through evangelicalism just said, it's just a damn good book. It's a great story. And so I really, it was better than I'd hoped, honestly. And Seth wrote a blurb for it. Daryl Ray wrote a blurb, Dan Barker, and said really good things. That helped me have some confidence when I heard back from them that, okay, we've done a good thing here. Did you, did you find it like at the end, was it the catharsis that you wanted when you started out to write it? Yeah. Yeah, it was. I really, um, when I, when I finally finished it and it was, I knew it was done and I, I closed the last thing, I thought, man, this felt good to relive this and to know that I did my – one thing is it helped me to realize I did my best.

There's a quote I heard a while back that – it's been attributed to Maya Angelou. I'm not sure if she said it or not, but it says, do the best you can do until you know better. And then when you know better, do better. And it helped me to remember that all of those years I gave to that lie was me doing the best I could. And that's all we can do. Right. It's the best we can do. What a great way to look back on that and not be resentful, right? And to not resent. Yeah, regretful or resentful. Yeah. And, and, but I I've regret is too costly of emotion to live with and resentment is too costly and about what am I, what am I leaving? You know, I could, I could hit by a bus tomorrow and what have I done? What have I left behind? What, what physically and tangibly and not. 607 podcast, man. Yeah. Yeah. But, but that's, that's part of the reason, you know, like I, I, like I have always for a long, long time, like i yeah like i have always for a long long time i've had a burning need to leave some kind of a mark because like you i fully recognize like at any moment there's nothing special about me i

could get hit by a refrigerator from the sky who fucking knows you know right and and uh so this book and the the work that you're doing do you think of it in legacy terms? I kind of do. I don't get up every day and think, what am I doing for my legacy today? But as I look at the body of work, like you guys would with your podcast and the things you've been doing for so long. Yeah, I can't help but acknowledge that it is a legacy and that it's always going to be there. And anybody down the road years from now can pick it up and it'll be something that is a bit of me that's left behind. And so that's a good feeling. It is. It's a good thing to know that, you know, it's not like I don't want to be forgotten because, you know, at some point we're all forgotten.

And the reality is I won't, you know, again, I won't be aware. You won't know. Nobody's thinking of me. Nobody's thinking of me. We're not going to be thinking about this shit. So, so it's not nothing I can do anything about afterwards, but it, it does feel good to feel like you're leaving some quality work on the table that somebody can benefit from down the road. Do you think your legacy is stronger because you left faith than it would have been if you had stayed as a pastor? Oh, yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and I, cause I wasn't

talking about the right things. I was again, doing the best I could, but I wasn't doing the right things in life that truly help people. And even if sometimes you can think you're helping someone and you're doing damage. And in large part, I did that. But on the on the other side of that, on this side of faith, when I'm when I'm talking to people about life and death and the things in life that matter, I feel like I'm truly helping them instead of just spitting words out into the air. And the irony of all of that is that I feel like my legacy is actually improved or benefits because I got diagnosed with ALS. And that's a real mindfuck because I'd rather not have ALS. But the fact that I've been able to turn it around into something useful,

it feels good there. And I feel like that never would have really happened if I hadn't got diagnosed. So it's kind of weird to think about it. So I don't. Dave, what's the name of the book again and where can people buy it? Childish Things, a memoir. I'll try to hold it up. All of my hands don't work very well. It's a picture of me and my mom circa 1958.

Let me see if I can pick it up. There we go. There we go. That's a great picture. That's a wonderful photo. Yeah. That's awesome. And so I asked my mom, she's, my mom's an evangelical Christian and she's disturbed by my atheism, but she wanted to read the book. And I asked her, are you okay with that picture on the front? And I said, she said, yes. I said, well, it shows what a

beautiful lady you are. And she says, yeah, thank you. So yeah, it's a great, great picture for a memoir, but it's on Amazon in all the formats, audiobook, Kindle, paperback, hardback. People can write me if they want a signed copy. I do that. Um, it takes a while because it just takes a while cause we're traveling a lot, but they can write me at Dave out loud at gmail.com or go on the website, uh, daveoutloud.com and they can find all the things there. We'll make sure, we'll make sure to include all that in the show notes. What's the, uh, what's the YouTube show you're doing now?

Tell us about that real quick. It's called that GD show and it stands for genevieve and dave she's my co-host or you could say that goddamn show that's where my mind went yeah we're okay with that that's where your mind went i know it's a it's a live stream uh every monday night we're going we've been doing it 7 p.m eastern it's going to 9 p.m. Eastern starting in May. And we have guests on. We do conversational kind of shows, different topics. Like I said, we're doing an abortion show. I've got Mandina coming on to do Black Nonbelievers soon. We try to do topical conversations. We take calls from viewers if they want to call in.

So it's just something that, um, is a little bit different and I'm very, very happy with it. It's going well. That sounds great. Excellent. We will put a link to that and this week show notes to Dave. Thank you so much for joining us. We really do appreciate it, man. Thanks so much. Great to see you guys again. Great to see you, Dave. Appreciate it, man. Thanks so much. Great to see you guys again. Great to see you, Dave.

Okay. So Tom, yes, sir. Before we continue on with the show, I want to tell you about a story. So I go out to my mailbox. I'm now living, not in Chicago, not in downtown Chicago. I live in the suburbs now and I go out to my mailbox and I got a hand. I'm not going to hold this up, in the suburbs now and I go out to my mailbox and I got a hand. I'm not going to hold this up, but it's, it's clearly written by hand, right? And I don't know if you're getting any of these, but there's some companies out there.

They're doing this thing where they make their font look like it's handwritten. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you've gotten any of these. I have. Yeah. Like advertisements and shit.

Immediately I thought, Oh, this is a hundred percent garbage. This is going to be garbage because somebody hand wrote this. I'm like, this is... But they probably didn't. It's probably printed. And that's what I thought when I walked away from the mailbox.

So I come in and I look and it's got my first name and last name. So it's addressed to... My last name is Cicerello. And it's spelled correctly, right? So it's got my first and last name on it. And it's from someone... I'm going to tell you their first name. It's from Alexis. And it's from the town that is two two towns north of here okay so um so they they sent

me this letter and i open it up and it's an actual handwritten letter i could see it's like on like notebook paper and like three ring binder wide exactly notebook with a binder thing in it and now i initially uh thought it might have been a child, but I don't know if it's a child or not because most people don't handwrite things today anyway and they're not in practice. So it may just be, handwriting genuinely is terrible

now that we have keyboards on everything. So it doesn't, you don't need it. Has your handwriting gotten worse over the years? Mine is atrocious. So here it is. My last name's Cicerello. So it starts, Dear Mr. C cicerello so it starts dear mr cicerello mr mr honorific yeah i am writing to invite you to a very special event oh nice that

will be attended by millions of people millions all around the world seems crowded it's the of Jesus's death. Oh my, where are we attending? And then it says, do we all have to go? I don't know. I mean, it seems like it'd be a long line at the funeral. You got invited.

You got to get those guys though, to carry Jesus who are like, boom. Oh yeah. You know, those guys, those dancers, those dancer guys,

right? That's who you need. If, if you outlive boom. Oh, yeah. You know, those guys. Those dancers. Those dancer guys, right? That's who you need. If you outlive me. Yeah. Do I have to fly you to like wherever? I'll fly to Africa or wherever. Because it's Africa somewhere. I don't know where. Fly them in if you got to. It's like Sierra Leone or something. I just want

I want Dancy Coffin. Dude. Can you do that for me? We can sacred pledge Dancy Coffin. Now, is it Dancy Coffin or can it just be a single like really good dancer with the urn? Okay, that's acceptable? We can sacred pledge. I'll dance. Now is it, is it dancing coffin or can it just be a single, like really good dancer with the urn? Okay. That's acceptable. Okay.

All right. If, okay. But if he has to break dance, I was going to say, I want, I want somebody just kicking some fucking sick feet up in the air. Like,

all right. Okay. So you get, you got invited to Jesus. The anniversary of Jesus's death. And it says, if you would like to attend, attend a call. And there's a if you would like to attend, attend a call.

And there's a phone number on here. To attend the anniversary of Jesus' death. Sincerely. And the person's first name is Alexis. Alexis. What? And I initially thought this was like, mom made somebody write this, but I have no idea. And I did not call the number.

Oh, I would have called it. Really? I would have called it. I would have been mean. I don't want to get somebody's phone number that's a real person. I think this is the line for their church. That's what I think it is.

Yeah, probably. Should I call it now? Yeah, call it now. Let's see what it is. It's 847. It's a recording. I'm curious. I'm so curious.

Thank you for calling Jehovah's Witnesses. This is Thomas speaking. How may I help you? Oh, I'm sorry. I've got the wrong number. Forgive me. Jehovah's Witnesses, buddy. You got Jehovah'd.

You got Jehovah'd. So it's like the hotline for the Jehovah's Witnesses. It's the hotline for Jehovah's Witnesses. It's not Alexis. No, that was definitely not Alexis. That was Joseph. Oh, you could go to one of those squat little I kind of feel like I want to call them and be like,

you guys sent the message to an atheist. Why would you do that? They're like, we don't believe in atheism. But I don't believe in you. We're mutually not here. That's mutually assured destruction right there. Kabah! I realize you believe in you. And we're mutually not here. That's mutually assured destruction right there. I realize I got you. You got Jehovah.

I got witnessed. Witness me. Have you ever seen that Fury Road? No. There's a great part. I can't tell you the part, but there's a great part when the people,

they take what seems to be ether that's like spray paint and they spray it on their teeth and they scream, witness me, and then they blow themselves up. And so we just got witness. We got witness. Didn't have to spray paint.

I wonder, I wonder if they're going to come like door knocking. They better not. They better not. We have, we have signs on our thing that's like don't fucking knock on my door.

Just leave me alone. Yeah, don't knock on my door. Have you ever had people do the knock and knock? No, not, not one, not since we put the signs up. We haven't.

We've actually had people walk up to our thing, look at the sign, and then leave. I have never been in any home I've ever owned ever. I have never had anyone come try to convert me or tell me the good news. Oh, I'm just talking about like salesmen or whatever because they don't do that. Oh, yeah, no.

I get those. I get random. No, we don't get it anymore. I've seen people come up, look at the thing, walk away yeah have you but have you ever been like like has anyone tried to like witness to you or anything like never i've never been approached i've never been approached by anybody who's a mormon and i've never been approached by anybody who's uh now in chicago on the street all the time and i would just say i don't have time for you and i just walk right past them. So I don't,

but I, but I don't, I've never had, I've never had a person walk up, yeah, knock on the door or just people handing out, there's Buddhists down there who try to hand you jewelry.

There's, I mean, there's a myriad. There's a scam for you to pay money. There's a myriad of people though that are trying to, or they'll hand you pamphlets. I've seen Buddhists

trying to hand you pamphlets too. Cause I know like the, that was like a shtick, the oh, who the fuck did it? The Moonies, I think, they hand you, like, flowers and stuff, and then now you've taken something, you feel obligated

for reciprocation when they ask you for money. Oh, nice. Yeah. They try to leverage that rule of reciprocation. You just gotta maintain high or high eye contact and say no, and then put the flower behind your ear. Put the flower like right in your pocket. Right behind your ear. Oh, yeah.

Like Jesus, pull it down, put your hair down over the flower and then just walk away. Just bite the head off the flower and look him right in the eye while you crunch it. Darren and I have a policy with Old Glory Insurance that covers us in case we're attacked by robots. They're everywhere. I don't even know why the scientists make them. This story comes from Christianity Today, healthcare sharing ministry, Charity. Which is just such a shit name.

It's such a shit name, Charity. It seems like, it sounds like when two celebrities are dating and they slam two words together. It does sound like that. Like Bennifer or something. Like Charity. It's so fucking lazy, poor man. It's very, very together. It does sound like that. Like Bennifer or something. Like Charity. It's so fucking lazy

poor Mantell. It's very, very lazy. Exactly. That's it. It's lazy poor Mantell. So fucking lazy. It's like a portage Mantell. You gotta carry your canoe with you. It's like a Portland Mantell. Fucking hippie ass Mantell. So

Charity leaves 10,000 families with millions in unpaid bills fucking yikes so we've we've talked about these like christian not insurance insurance scams before absolutely and so just if you're not familiar with them what they do is they look exactly like insurance they build themselves almost as such yeah they use every word other than the word insurance. So they, they promise a series of benefits. They outline what those benefits are. They use words like coverage. They,

which they don't mean, which, which nothing is covered. They say things like dependence, like all the words and the verbiage that you're used to seeing around insurance. But what they really are is a big aggregator of other people's fucking money, which also is insurance.

And then they sit on it and never pay anything. So it's just like insurance with religion, but also no insurance regulators, right? It's not like insurance in the sense that they, they, they try to get out of every single claim. They were saying something like they pay 15, on the dollar for claims. And the difference, we've talked about

this because fundamentally you run into the same problem with this that you run into with, say, church-run schools or church-run daycare, right? Is that if there's an insurance company out there, they are regulated by the insurance industry and by insurance commissioners in the states that they operate in. There's multiple regulators. There's so many regulators around insurance. Yeah. If you're some religious organization, and specifically you're a religious charity, you get to do with your money as you see fit. Yeah, there's no regulators. And that's it. Exactly, yeah. And you get to do with your money as you see fit. Yeah. There's no regulators. And that's it.

Exactly. Yeah. And you get around all these other things. They don't have any of that regulation. And yeah, absolutely. And there's, and there's the one thing that you have is a ton of religious people left

holding the bag thinking they were going to get something and they bought into it because there's a smiling faith believer on the other side, looking at them and saying, I love you. I want to help you. Yep. And that's what it is. And that's all it is. They're fleecing the flock, man.

And they fleeced the fuck out of them. Yeah. They fleeced them so hard that they had to go bankrupt in order to cover all, like to get out from underneath all these claims. And I want to read what this guy says. And this is a member of the board who, after they decided to go bankrupt, this is what he said. Oh my God, I know.

He said, as a Christian, I felt it was not right to leave our members hanging like that. I can't tell you how many times since then I have sobbed about all those tens of thousands of families who are without means to pay their medical bills for many of them I'm sure it destroyed their lives and I just wonder if they can just go to their fucking lender the medical lender and be like I have this bucket of CEO tears right what will that buy me is there any way that this gets me out of crushing medical bankruptcy no okay yeah what

the that and a fucking that and two dollars will get you some soup somewhere i don't give a fuck how sad you are no no and the bullshit thing is he gets to feel sad say he's sorry in the general direction of the sky and he gets to be a morally upstanding citizen. I'm so sorry that this is how this works. I'm sorry that this is a worked out this way. I say that from the mansion I built from you. Precisely. Yeah. Tens of thousands of families. And the other thing that makes me fucking insane about this is that this is tens of thousands of families who are seeking to get insurance sort of like off the grid. Right. So there's a lot of people that get insurance from their work. Yeah. And then there's a lot of people who don't get insurance from work for a variety of other reasons. And we have

a really great system where they can go and log in and get insurance that covers them and that they can understand and they can find different and that's fucking Obamacare. Yeah. Right. So like we built that and the right shit on it and the right is full of these religious people. And instead they created this other worse thing. And then they shit all their money into the worst thing. Cause like, I don't trust that government, but I sure do trust Jeebus. Yeah. And now look, they're fucking broke. They're broke. They're broke.

And they're going to bankrupt how many of their followers. These people that are, you know, these are the religious people that are following this and they're going to bankrupt how many of them? Tens of thousands. And all they're going to be is sorry for it. And you know what? Everybody eats shit, right? Because, you know, if you're shit, right? Because you know,

if you're a hospital, yep. Yes. That's what you didn't get. Absolutely. Right. And pay. Absolutely.

Right. Right. And then your bill goes up and my bill goes up and I got to pay all these other costs because that money's got to come from somewhere. They have to pay that doctor. Right. That doctor has to get paid. That MRI machine has to get like all All the facilities and all the people.

And doctors on down to anybody who works. The electrician that sets everything up. The janitor. The receptionist. The person who works on their phone system. The server guy. All of them have to get paid. And they got to get paid somehow.

And they get paid because they work on people and they collect that money. Well, that money is not coming from anywhere. Those people went in with an idea that they were going to have their medical bills paid because they paid into this charity bullshit. And then they walk away with nothing. And then, and they're stuck and they're going to go bankrupt and they're not going to be able to collect that money. And those people are going to suffer because of it.

And the hospitals are going to suffer. And we in turn not going to be able to collect that money. And those people are going to suffer because of it. And the hospitals are going to suffer. And we in turn are going to, we all suffer. It's, it's so ironic that the people involved here that are spending the money on charity, they're operating in good faith, right?

They're operating in a faith in good faith. Yes. And they, they are the ones left eating the shit. Yep. And then that shit cascades and ripples. And I'm just when I when I think about this, it's like this is such an American thing because it is a broken system that is connected to another broken system. Yeah. And when those systems that do not serve the public collapse and combine on one another. It's like this fucking rolling dynamo of bullshit.

Yes. And money spent on nothing. And this is, we spend more money per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world on healthcare and insurance. We spend more. This is a bad system. And we fix it with worse systems.

And then religion is worse than insurance. And there's also, you can tell from this, a rugged individualist idea about how great it is for me because I'm off that grid. Because I'm not doing things that they're trying to get me to do. This is the health insurance they don't want you to know do. This is the, this is the health insurance. They don't want you to know about. This is what the let's go. Brandon set. Yeah,

this is what, this is what those people who believe that, you know, a little bit of apple cider vinegar will cure you. Yep. Those are those same people that are going to wind up holding the bag when their kids fucking arm broken. They're like,

sorry, arms are pre-existing conditions. I mean, he had an arm before it broke. Come on. He couldn't have broken it. He was just waving that thing around like a wacky waving inflatable arm. Oh, I'm sorry.

It says here he was on a playground. Oh, sorry. Playgrounds are excluded. Your kid has to live in this bubble. I'm sorry. We only cover incidents that happen in church in a pew city. See, that's the problem. The rest of this book is written in code.

God. I hate books. Sister, it comes to the new civil rights movement. Christo fascism in a nutshell. I can't. pinpoint this right. Perfectly. Yes, they did perfectly.

DeSantis mocked for banning nearly half of all math books claiming CRT indoctrination. So CRT is critical race theory and they're going, they're fucking going book banning bonkers. Yeah, they are going, they're fucking going book banning bonkers. Yeah. They are going, Florida is absolutely like on the vanguard of intentional illiteracy.

And like biting hands that feed you like Disney. Thank you. Holy shit. There's literally no reason to be in Florida except for Disney. I saw today too, that this thing that's happening with disney which is disney kind of has its own little county right so disney is like a disney self-governed it's like

a self-governing disney county and it's so that they can do all the things without having to reach out to the counties to do any of this extra work right so like they maintain their roads and they they have their own cop police and whatever because they because they're so big you can't expect you know that sort of service so they just do it on their own and there's sort of a self-governing little area down there to their own magical kingdom but here's the thing though if you suddenly take that away from them it's billions of dollars in taxpayer money to then fund all the things that they need yeah then fund all the things that they need. Yeah, right. So all the things that they need, they got to start tapping in the local counties around there.

And those counties are going to have to fork over billions of dollars in order to keep that running down there. Yeah. And if you're Disney and you get your fucking britches in a twist, like you could relocate. It would be a big deal. Don't get me wrong. it would be a lot of money enormously big deal but if you're getting fucked you're you're a company that has so much money yep and you just start you could you could maybe even leverage you know how they always get people to like get them to come you could maybe even leverage with one of those sunshine states

to help to say for your relocation for the relocation and we'll move there yep and then suddenly shops somewhere the fuck suddenly disney is in you know phoenix yeah phoenix or it's in you know maybe it's closer to this side maybe it's in north carolina now or something or in georgia you know it's in a different place where they say look we're going to self-govern ourselves man this is biting the fucking hand that feeds you amazing you pissing off like one of the largest employers and one of the largest income generators you're the ones who want to capitalism guys yep you're the ones who love capitalism that's capitalism but you know even more than that you guys are the ones that insisted insist you into the fucking supreme court and insisted that corporations are people with a right to conscience there you go yeah you guys made that

happen you guys fucking you guys made hobby lobby a thing you guys made citizens united a thing the fucking right wants corporations to act on conscience as long as it's their conscience it's their conscience well now disney is acting on their conscience point tom and it's their conscience. As long as it's their conscience. Well, now Disney is acting on their conscience. That's a great point, Tom. And it's like, whoa, wait a minute. Now we're going to fucking penalize you? Yeah, that's a great point. I wonder if they could go to like, watch McCall and be like, no, man, I'm allowed to do what I want.

You can't do that. Yeah. But I think what they're doing instead is they're just like, these people 100% weaponize their office to attack other people. That's what Trump did when he was in office he weaponized anything he could to hurt other people desantis is the exact same way he weaponizes that office to go after people that make him mad yep

and 100 he just does all that that i mean this is explicitly retributive yeah like there's nothing exactly it's out loud in everything. It's crazy. And then they're talking about math books. Oh, yeah. Math books. And they won't release the math books. They're not releasing.

That's the thing. It's like, and people are like, really? How the fuck are math books full of critical race theory? And it's like, ah, they just are. And they're not releasing the fucking math at least at least as of when I looked at it a day or two ago you can't say gay so they can't do binomial factoring oh

that's the reason non-binary numbers everything has to be computer programmed because they can't do any non-binary anything they can't say gay oh it's amazing to me. It's so funny.

They're so knickers in a twist. And they are so fucking control. That's so big government. Man, it's the biggest government. It's the biggest government. How do you look yourself in the face as a Republican who's like, I'm a big, big britches swinging free government type. And you're like, look at, they want to take books away from people.

They want to take so many books. They want to, they want to make it so you can't say things. So you can't, I mean, it's like unbelievable. Man, the, the banning books thing has grown wildly out of proportion, like wildly. Like I'll tell you from, from our local school, like just personally, like our local school is looking at like the Facebook page for the high school that one of my kids attends. And like there was like a book of poetry, like feminist poetry. And there was like pages in it that discuss their fairly explicit poems about sexuality. Yeah.

And like, but this isn't a high school. Yeah. A high school should have high school should have mature material. Yes, absolutely. Also like, it's not like people are like, Whoa,

let's pass around that book of feminist poetry. Like people aren't, they're so, this is all fake. It's all manufactured, but the parents have bought into it. And they're all over these fucking Facebook pages. And they're trying to go to get on.

And this is where it's problematic. They're trying to get on the city pages. They're trying to go to get out. And this is where it's problematic. They're trying to get on the city councils and they're trying to get on the school boards and they will gain seats. Yeah. And they will start taking books out of classrooms and literature. And I know that like I'm biased here, but like literature fucking matters. Like the stories we tell, the narratives that we have, the things that we hold dear about who we are as people.

We write that shit down. I'm with you. And I hate English majors. I fucking hate them. So I'm with you. No, but I'm with you, though. I'm like with you. I'm not a literature guy.

Like I took one fucking elective class in college, right? I didn't have a literature background, but I recognize how important it is. And especially transgressive, like deep, sometimes provocative material is necessary. It is necessary. And it's necessary to help young humans grow up into adult humans. Absolutely. All the things I had to like go through on my own to like become an adult, the things that pushed me and the things that for me were those things that were provocative and that shoved me in a position that made me think. And those things fucking matter. And if you start plucking all that shit out of there, you got a giant idiot circle that only

agrees with you. And there's nothing in there that could stop. You know, how many people, and I may be wrong on this, but is there like a huge, huge thing on the right or on the left to like stop books? Do we have a thing? No, I've never heard of it on the left. Never, ever heard of it. I mean, even like Mein Kampf,

I don't hear anybody being like, you need to ban, if a copy of Mein Kampf is in a school library, it's for archival purposes to understand what's in it. I want people to read Mein Kampf to understand the mindset that went in it. I would love a class that taught something critical about that book. I don't think you should ban it. Don't take it away from people so they can never experience it or never understand it and always keep it away from them. There's no way to contend with it. If you forget

history, you're doomed to fucking repeat it, man. Getting rid of material about sex and sexuality does not make sex and sexuality disappear. It doesn't go away. Getting rid of difficult material does not mean we don't have to contend with difficult issues. One thing that literature does better, I think, than anything else is it allows us

to see through other people's eyes and we build empathy and understanding about ourselves and about people that we are not like and about like lives we did not live and about times we did not experience. And if we reduce our ability to see through other people's eyes, we become less empathetic. We become less knowledgeable. We become less human. Like we tell stories for a reason. Storytelling traditions are part of what create humanity. Like we, the idea that you would want to reduce exposure to those few people who are still interested in seeking out poetry and literature right makes me fucking sick it's disgusting crazy and i can't believe that it's

that you know like it's something we grew up with i don't know if you remember this sort of thing you might be a little too young but the soviet union when i was a kid this was what you were told they were doing yes yes this was the story of communism. This was the story of that. I was told my whole life that the United States doesn't do this. We don't do that shit. We respect that people should be able to look at difficult material and learn it

and learn about it and understand it. Yep, yep. And I know that wasn't true because I know the education I got didn't include the Tulsa riots. It didn't include the, you know, the hard parts about history. It included a lot of daughters of the Confederacy fucking bullshit that I was taught growing up. So I understand that that wasn't true. Right. I get that it wasn't true, but I thought it was at least an ideal that we believed in.

Right. Yeah. And that's important. Right. That's important. And I do think that like, depending on the school, depending on the teacher, it can at least be true. You're right. But it can't be true if we, if we explicitly remove those materials. Yeah. It's so funny to, to, to live and start building a world that is, it is so similar to dystopian literature.

It's just so fucking ironic. You know, like Fahrenheit 451. Like this is not dissimilar. This is like, this is it. Like maybe the TV is not a wall TV. Instead it's your fucking phone. There's literally like almost no other difference at this point. There are book burnings.

Yeah. They are removing ideas from your kid. And the thing is too too if you're a parent you should want this material because you should want your kids to come to you and say let's have a con this should be jumping off points yeah for conversations you want to have with your kids yeah that otherwise you might not have an ability to start it's fucking essential yeah so I'd like to thank our patrons of course I'd like to thank all our patrons but we'd like to thank our newest patrons

Teresa or Tressa is that Tressa? I'm gonna go Tressa Tressa Jager Operation Shame John Roberts into supporting us on Patreon, Clank Trucking, and Ben.

Thank you so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate it. Glory Hole Studios appreciates it. And of course, our two employees that work diligently to make sure the podcast gets to you and there's funny memes in your Facebook feed, they thank you as well. They do. And they won't thank you if we have

to fire them because we have no patrons. Which we won't do. So thank you so much. We really do truly appreciate it. You guys are the wheels on the bus that makes this whole thing go round and round. Got a little bit of messages we want to cover.

We got a message from Andy who tells us about truffle fries and how they might be a Pacific Northwest thing. No, they're totally here too. The truffle fries are a big deal down here. They normally take a nice, some kind of French fry. It depends

on what kind of place you're in. They will normally douse them in truffle oil, which I find personally a little overpowering and not very appetizing. Yeah, we were talking about this a minute ago. I love, I mean, I fucking love mushrooms. I love mushrooms more than most people possible. But I don't dig truffles, man.

It's got this dirt scent. And it's an earthiness that's just beyond the regular mushroom. I can't do it. There's a pungency to truffle smell in oil that really turns me off. When they dilute it in that oil or they diffuse it in that oil, it really accentuates a flavor, a smell actually, a scent that is really unpleasant for me. And so I have to kind of choke it down if I'm eating it.

And I, I, I actually, when my wife goes out, she doesn't even order it anymore because it can overpower a whole table. Yeah. It's, it's too much.

It's just, it's not for me. I, I, I, I understand. What'd you like? I do understand the,

the, the draw of it, but it's just one of those things that's just not for me. Yeah, I thought I was going to love truffle oil. Because like I said, mushrooms are my fucking jam. Sure, yeah. But no. We got a message from a disgruntled UPS-er.

UPS-er. UPS-er. UPS-er. And they said, just so you know, you know, that the job may have paid, UPS may have paid quite well back then, but they haven't really upped the wages since then.

Shocking. At least from what we're looking at here, the wages upped very little in the 20 years that has been you and I were probably in the market for that job. Yeah, man. And it's still, from her description, a fucking rough place to work. Yeah, a rough place to work.

They don't care about you. Really rough place to work. They care. And this was very much the tone that we saw, that I saw. I worked for UPS very briefly. And it was the tone that I saw was the driver was the position you wanted to get to. Oh, really? You wanted to get into

that driver position because that was the good money. They had a good union. And those were the people with the real power. The other people were like... Like the loaders and pickers? They were the blood in the gears, man.

They were the blood in the gears that make it roll. And they were going to pay you, at least back then, this was a much higher wage back then, disgruntled UPS. It was a much higher wage in comparison. So yeah, I mean,

they were paying you well, but you had to fucking work for it and you weren't going to work there for a long time. Tom, we got a couple of messages about male birth control. It was a very sort of a denim conversation last week,

but a bunch of people sent in messages and I know you want to know what to address. Yeah. So I want to correct myself. So, um, yeah, I had to read through several articles and it's funny because, um, in my lame defense, but many of the articles that you read about this are written in a really slanted way. So you actually have to dig, um, into better quality journalism to really get a sense of what happened. I made the claim that male birth control was stopped, or research into clinical trials were stopped because men complained about the side effects. That is not accurate.

In fact, and they dropped out of the study. That's not accurate. Some men did drop out of the study, but not a significant number by comparison to other clinical studies. They were stopped by safety review boards who decided that the side effects did not outweigh the potential benefits. Right. So it wasn't worth going through it.

It was the boards. And I also minimized those side effects, which I said it was like, oh, it was acne and mood swing changes and libido increase. And I minim minimize them because several articles I read minimize them. But I will tell you that when I looked into it, the acne that is described is severe and persistent and scarring and that the mood changes include depression, severe depression and suicide. Wow. So like, it's not like, you know, they got a little testy and had a zit,

which is how I made it sound. So yeah, I was wrong. Yeah. I just want to say that. You know, the thing is, is like, sometimes journalism has its own slant on this. Yeah. And the headlines for articles that I saw on this topic

were exactly as you described. Men drop out of this study because of the side effects. That's what the headlines were. And it doesn't get the full effect of they were stopped because the side effects were severe and the boards were the ones that looked at it and said that's too severe. It's too severe. And then they compare that to the potential upside, right? So like if the side effects were as described a moment ago, but it was to treat cancer, maybe they would continue it, right?

But it's to treat something that's like really a lifestyle choice. Yeah, right. And the woman's problem. I mean, let's be real honest. Right. That's what it is. And that's one of those things too. Someone else had mentioned or sent in a message about how, you know, I mean, let's be real honest. Right. That's what it is. And that's one of those things too, someone else had mentioned or sent in a message

about how, you know, I mean, while there are many responsible guys who do that and would absolutely use this thing, would women automatically trust that the guy did it if they're the ones who have to deal with that burden? Yeah. And that's a tough thing too, right? It is.

You would probably almost certainly have to be in a very committed relationship where you trust your partner explicitly to do the things that wouldn't wind up with the, because they, there's, like we talked last time, there's no skin in the game. And so, you know what I mean? Like, so there could be someone who says,

yeah, don't worry, baby, I'm on the pill. Right, right. Which is, and I've heard that claim a bunch of times. And I guess I've always, I have never imagined a world where a couple is having sex and it's like not a committed relationship. And the guy is like, don't worry, I'm on the pill. And then they have- But people can be very convincing.

Right, right. And they can lie. And so- I've always thought of this as like, man, like every party involved should protect themselves and their interests. Sure. So like, I don't want to impregnate somebody because I don't want the financial burden. Exactly.

Sure. And so someone might do it for that reason. And the other thing too, is like, like I say, like you're in a committed marriage or something like that. Right. It's a great. That makes sense. It's a great thing to have there.

Right. So I did want to address that because that was a brought up. Right. So I did want to address it. Absolutely. So Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy, but we got an image about Alex Jones.

And this is from Seth. We're going to put it on this week's show notes. We did not talk about Alex Jones's bankruptcy on this week's show, but we're kind of saving it for when Knowledge Void comes on so we can gibber with them about it. But anyway, this is great.

We got a long voicemail from Susan. You can leave voicemails for us. Remember, I want to remind people, 25, 30 seconds is the sweet spot. If you can give me a 25-second voicemail, a 30-second voicemail, and keep it brief, I may play your voicemail on the show. Now we have that option. If you go give me a 25-second voicemail, a 30-second voicemail, and keep it brief, I may play your voicemail on the show.

Now we have that option. If you go to our website, there's a little microphone in the corner. When you go to our website, you click it, and you can leave us a voicemail. You can also, if you don't want to type something, just leave us voicemails. And you can leave an up to two-minute voicemail.

Right. Now, don't expect that if you leave us a two-minute voicemail, I can't give you two minutes of the show. But I just want to encourage people. And we got a message. This is from Susan. And Susan is a union rep and someone who helps promote unions in Texas. And they told us all about the struggles that they have because state laws and local laws really do hamstring unions from organizing. Yeah, they rip the teeth right out of it. She said they can't even go on strike.

Yeah. Like the, you know, the strongest option in the union arsenal. Yeah. And it's pulled out from underneath them. Can't even use it. Thank you, Susan, for sending that. And if you want to do a voicemail, remember, you can do it. And if you want to maybe get it on the show, make sure it's brief.

Make sure it's to the point. And make sure that you record it in a good environment. I was going to say, yeah, don can do it. And if you want to maybe get it on the show, make sure it's brief, make sure it's to the point and make sure that you record it in a good environment. I was going to say, yeah, don't, don't record it on the street, like hailing a cab. Yeah, that would be, you know, that would, we probably won't play that, but I'm just saying you might get a voicemail in the future. Who knows? You might get your voicemail in. Tom, this is a union comment. This is from Glenn talking about Kansas city and the, the Frito-Lay workers there and how difficult their strike stuff was, the stuff they had to do to just even get...

Yeah. It's crazy. It said the reasons for the strike per the union were that employees were working as many as 12-hour days, seven days a week under mandatory overtime, which employees often referred to as suicide shifts. Wages had been stagnant for 15 years, and the new contract only promises a low merit-based

increase of up to 2%. Yikes. Some union members said their wages had only increased 77 cents per hour in the last 12 years. Yikes. Yeah, we fucking need worker protections. We need worker protections like this guy who says, sincerely, a unionized

three-day workweek Canadian. What the fuck glenn that hurts glenn glenn can can you hire me for the other day like just hire me for one of your days yeah and then you adopt me glenn and then i i have to live with you i don't i do eat a lot so you'll have to buy a lot of food that will definitely you will definitely have to go to the store quite a bit and And, but other than that, I mean, you got me,

right? That's, that's a benefit, right? Is it? No, I don't think it is. No.

Tom, this is a message about marginal tax rates. And I think two people sent this in, but this one is from Bryce in NYC. So thank you so much.

And I, I know I said on the last show and I want to correct I know I said on the last show, and I want to correct myself. I said on the last show, and I was wrong, that wealthy people use charitable contributions

to change their tax burden by moving themselves into a different tax bracket. That's inaccurate. I thought that that was the case. I had actually read that, but that's just inaccurate. It's not true.

I did a bunch of reading today because I was trying to figure out, well, how does it work? Yeah. And I read several articles and it's fucking complicated. It often involves donating things other than money,

but donating appreciable assets. And that shit gets fairly complicated, fairly swiftly, more complicated in the email section of the show. Yeah. But I do want to make sure to be corrected. I was mistaken about that.

That is not how charitable contributions benefit the wealthy. There are many ways wealthy people use charitable contributions, including by the way, setting up, I will say, including setting up charitable foundations that they funnel money into that never actually do any charitable work.

That's fucking crazy. I was reading several articles today about like tax havens, charitable tax havens, where they set up these foundations and they're 501c3s and then like they just don't really ever do it. Some of them don't even have like a website.

They don't even have a fucking email address. They're just on paper. I will say if there's any very rich billionaires listening, I will happily chair one of these fake organizations for you. I will go to the bank for you. I'm pretty cheap. 10%. I'm pretty cheap. I'll take 10%. If you give me enough money, you go into a different tax bracket. I'm just saying. Got a message. And this is from Brent. and a bunch of people commented about this right after we covered this story last week about this woman who got baptized by a police officer

and then wasn't able to sue the guy who filmed it, but was able to sue the person who did the actual baptizing. And this guy was like a rough and tumble, beat the shit out of a bunch of people, cop, who had always had run-ins with whatever that governing body is that governs the police, internal affairs division

or whatever. Anyway, the woman who was suing is dead. She is dead. They don't know what happened. They don't know what happened. So,

wow. There you go. That's weird. That's not at all suspicious. If you're feeling suspicious, crazy, you should think long and... No. It's fucking. That's not at all suspicious. If you're feeling suspicious. Crazy. You should think long and... No, it's fucking so suspicious.

It's super suspicious. I hope they find out what happened. Yeah. But that is fucking crazy, right? Man, hopefully it's not foul play. Hopefully it's just a coincidence. God, what a terrible thing if that was foul play. Ugh.

And be sure this week, you got to be sure this week to check out the Thinking Atheist YouTube page because on the Thinking Atheist YouTube page, and I'm not sure if it went to his actual podcast yet or not, but he interviewed us on his show,

The Thinking Atheist. Great time. Seth Andrews did, and we had a great time and talked about our book. Our book is called The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit, and it is available on Amazon.

It's also available as a download MP3 audiobook read by Tom, myself, and Michael Marshall on our website. So you can go check it out

and buy it and you can buy it there or you can buy it on YouTube. But he interviewed us about the book and it went, I thought it went great. Go check that interview out.

Go over and look at Seth's video because it turned out, I thought, turned out really good. It did. It was great. A lot of fun.

So that is going to wrap it up for our showroom. We want to thank Dave Warnock. Great guy. Who just wrote a memoir, Childish Things. It's on Amazon. You can pick it up.

And Dave also has a YouTube, YouTube video series called That GD Show. And it's a call-in show. We'll link to it on this week's show notes. We want to thank Dave for coming on. YouTube video series called That GD Show. And it's a call-in show. We'll link to it on this week's show notes. We want to thank Dave for coming on. A wonderful guest and just a really wonderful guy to talk to.

Check his book out. It's on Amazon. We'll have links on this week's show. Also, we did a video podcast with Dave, so you can check Dave out on the video. We actually did a whole video. So that's on YouTube. Remember, we're begging people and bothering people and shoving people and making people go over to YouTube to subscribe. We're getting closer to that 10K mark. Come on. Which is really pathetic,

but we really just want to get over that hump. So if you haven't subscribed on YouTube, please go over. And you know, chances are, if you haven't subscribed on YouTube, you haven't checked these videos out and we're doing, I think, pretty good videos. So go check it out. Yeah, if you like this show, you will like the video. You'll probably like the video. And you could give an up thumb

and then comment to say, hey guys, I like the video. And those are great comments to get. They are. So thank you. All right, that's 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, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. 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.

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