Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 632: Aaron Rabinowitz: Anti-Vax Convention

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Show Notes Thanks to Aaron Rabinowitz for joining us - get him out at      

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory old 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 a 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 632 of Cognitive Dissonance. And Cecil, we have a guest. We have a guest.

We have a guest. We are joined by Aaron Robby. Should I use your whole name? You do the whole thing now, right? We do the whole thing now. It has been Robby for like five years now, I think. Okay, we are joined by either Aaron Robby or Aaron Rabinowitz. Depends on how much you feel like typing into a search.

It's true. It's true. That is, that is our, yeah. From Embrace the Void. From Embrace the Void and Philosophers in Space. Philosophers in Space. Welcome. Thank you all.

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. I recently read a book about bullshit. And then I went to a book about bullshit. Um, and then I, I went to a thing about bullshit and it seemed like it was, they went together well. So I'm glad to have a little chat about it. So we will. Yeah. So let's talk about this. So, so you just got back from an anti-vax convention. Tell us about what it was and give us the broad strokes about what they were, what the whole plan was going to be when, when you like, what, what's the, what's, you know,

like what's their, what's their elevator pitch? Yeah. And to be clear, I did not in fact physically attend an anti-vaxxer convention because I care about myself and my loved ones. I was going to say, that's fucking insane. Right. That's insane. Right. That's like the AR our 15 sportsman's club or something not gonna do it um marsh and them go to those things sometimes wearing masks and i'm like that's a lot of faith in that mask uh no this was the it's called the better way conference convention whatever in bath england um which is named after some special magic-y baths that, of course, don't do what they say they do.

I love that. Could they have picked a better place? Oh, very deliberately. They talked about why they picked it. It was a ridiculous list of woo reasons. So, basically, what happened was I just wrapped up the semester and I was screwing around

on Twitter and there was flyers going around for this conference that had on it like Brett Weinstein and Majeed Nawaz, a lot of these IDW types who've been on Rogan and stuff recently. Wait, define IDW for anyone that doesn't. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. The intellectual dark web. Oh. I can give you like five or six different words that mean people who think the mainstream media is lying to you and have some alternative solution involving some levels

of symbolism and or pretending that, you know, feelings don't matter or something, right? Like the heterodox, the, you know, how many names do we have to have for these folks?

A dark MAGA is the new one. We just came across that a couple of weeks ago. Dark Madison Cawthorn was pulling out the dark MAGA. Dark MAGA, yeah. Yeah, you got to play the black deck if you're going to play dark MAGA. Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Otherwise you don't. All right, so you went to the intellectual. Yeah, well, it's a deeply unfair kind of conspiracism trick where they come up with a bunch of names and shell corporations, and then you try to explain the names and shell corporations,

and then people are like, you sound like a conspiracy theorist. What is this fine math of, why do I care about, you know, InfoWars or any of this stuff? Yeah, so it's not a fair game that we're playing. But yeah, this convention was, these folks, you know, InfoWars or any of this stuff. Yeah, so it's not a fair game that we're playing. But yeah, this convention was these folks, you know, were doing this thing, and

I messaged Marsh because it's over in England, so it's on his turf. And they were doing a different convention that you shouldn't attend in person that weekend. So they were like, we'll front you the 40

you know fake uh uk bucks that it takes to get a student pass virtually to go watch this thing and yeah so because i'm a as i said i'm a philosopher in between semesters my time is So, I watched. You're like, I can't see a hammer. Was this convention sponsored by PaxLivid? Because if not, that's a missed opportunity. This convention was sponsored by a range of people. We could talk a lot about the sponsors. And again, it'll sound like conspiracism again. But one of the commercials at the beginning that looped in every day before the videos

was a, you know, it was basically frequency medication. So it was like, you wear a bracelet kind of situation. Oh gosh, yeah.

You know, the frequencies. And like, there was literally a guy in it saying, I don't know how it works, but it works. And then like,

they end with a- That's in the commercial? That's an amazing pitch. That's in the commercial? It's a great pitch, yeah. You just need to do is, you need to do that with every commercial. That's in the commercial? Yeah. You just need to do that with every medicine. You just need to get

an average guy just talking about medicine and just be like, I don't know how it works, but my cancer is gone or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. I would love it if like,

but that shouldn't be in your, like, can you imagine if like a car commercial, you just had like some GM guy like in a white lab coat. He's like this car. We don't know how it works.

Yeah. Put gas in it. It goes. It goes. In a normal medicine commercial, right? You'd have the normal person being like, I don't know how it works, but it works. And then you'd have the scientist being like, here's how it works. Right.

And they'd have a little graphic of viruses being killed by circular balls. And then there's a number of doctors that recommend it versus a number that don't. Yeah, sure. And there's 40 minutes of disclaimers about the side effects. Right. Instead, it ends with a quote from Einstein that says,

the medicine of the future will be frequency medicine. That's your theory. Neat, neat. So I got to ask, before you continue, this was a hybrid event. So you were watching and people were in a room participating. So there was like cameras that they were then broadcasting to the world. Okay, so I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't just all like a video. to the world.

But you, okay. So I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't just all like a video. It was, they were just recording this for external audiences to make an extra buck. I see.

Some number of people who I don't, I haven't gotten a final head count because I don't think anybody actually cared enough to do one technically. But like, some amount of people

filled into a room to have a conversation about how none of them were vaccinated. That absolutely really for sure happened. And folks like Brett Weinstein and some other scientists who believe in vaccinations, except for the COVID ones, went and sat in that room with them and were like, yeah, science, medicine, boy, I don't know.

Let our listeners know who brett weinstein stein is i am only vaguely familiar with him i i thought he was like a he's the ivermectin guy he's a but he but before he was the ivermectin guy he was the guy who got kicked out of his position as a professor the evergreen guy yes that's correct yeah correct. Yeah. Same guy. So, yeah. And like, it's tricky with this stuff. So, you know, there was 25 hours

of content total. I watched all of it at 2x speed. I didn't watch it in real time because I have limits. And, you know, so like, that's a lot of data to parse.

So you could do it by like talking about each figure. You can do it by, you know, like beams. There's all different ways. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there are lots of different ways that we could go through this. But yeah, who is Brett Weinstein? So Brett Weinstein is one of the two brothers

Weinstein who are both terrible for different reasons, but mostly narcissism. And he was working at Evergreen and started a disagree. He pushed back on their work. They were doing these days, instead of all of the people of color leaving,

then the white people dealing with that reality, they flipped it and were like, white people, we encourage you not to come to campus. And it'll be our campus for the day. And we'll have activities for our people and were like white people we encourage you not to come to campus and like it'll be our campus for the day and we'll have activities for our people and stuff like that right you could certainly debate the value of that but he like got involved made a whole big thing of it and then like was there on campus and they protested him and it became a whole thing and then eventually he and his wife left um Yeah. They both had tenure,

but at least he had a tenure track position, I think. And so they left. And since then, he started the Dark Horse podcast. He's one of the founders of this intellectual dark web group. Yeah, yeah, okay. According to the Barry Weiss article in which they're all standing in bushes and taking weird pictures,

which is, you should check out those pictures. They're pretty funny. Oh my God. Yeah, so he's, like, part of this group. And, you know, they're doing all the, like, heterodoxy, like, pushing back on the social justice-y kind of stuff. And then the pandemic comes along. And, like, all, like, many of them, to varying degrees, spiral off into one kind of conservative,

you know, like, one kind of empiricism or another, basically. And he is one of, so it's, like, kind of empiricism or another, basically. And he is one of, so it's like, the important thing to understand about this convention is it looks, you know, on its surface like medical, you know, convention. Just like talking about various science-y, medicine-y issues, right? If you read the

homepage, no proper nouns, no description of what any of this stuff is actually supposed to be about. But if you watch it, at first, it's playing as like, we're worried about the COVID stuff, right? This is welcome all our newcomers, recent pandemic-concerned individuals. We're going to talk about how these vaccines were rushed out and the disease isn't as bad as it seems and stuff like that. But underneath that— Can I pause real quick?

The vaccine rush out piece, I love how that is for the right. I love, first of all, how the alternative would be to, what, slow play the vaccine at a time of crisis? Like, I was rushed out. Well, yeah, I mean, you rush when...

Like, if my house is on fire, I don't walk mosey or amble. I fucking run. Like, there are times when rushing is an appropriate goddamn response. They use that terminology as if to suggest that somehow that is an inappropriate response. response and then hilariously the right gets to have both the uh credibility of warp speed and the sort of dubiousness of rushing yeah and you're like what just these are obviously mutually exclusive intellectual paths right right how are you taking them both and they're just like because we are dark web yeah i mean as mean, as the authors of the Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit,

you understand perfectly. Choosing both is just the standard move. Yeah, for sure. One of the organizers of this convention was also at the Stop the Steal rally, for example, Del Bigtree. No! Yeah.

They were hosting a... He was at an anti-vaxxer you know health freedom sovereignty convention at the rally roger stone was one of the other speakers at his event they were there when the building was actually stormed the speaker on stage at the time was like praising them for storming the thing like Like they were full on MAGA, but also the vaccine is evil, even though, as you said, it's Trump who rolled it out.

This happens a lot with these folks. They also are like Elon Musk is the best, but also he's creating microchips that we're going to put in our brains to hack us. Right. And also I would never drive an electric car. Yeah, right. These guys are like, these assholes are rolling coal. Right. And also, I would never drive an electric car. Yeah, right. These guys are like,

these assholes are rolling coal. They're fucking, they're blowing Elon Musk so hard, their fucking mascara's running and they're like, I'd never have an electric car, though.

NASA's bullshit, but space travel. I hear what you're saying. This one, you know, the weird thing about this convention is because it's medical, alternative medicine woo.

And also, I think because of changes in culture in terms of increased support for indigenous alternative ways of knowing stuff amongst the woke communities, there was a lot of natural indigenous medicine-y stuff at this convention. Oh, interesting. Like what? And like a lot of talk specifically about colonial oppression of marginalized communities. Really? Using, you know, Tuskegee, you know, polio vaccine stuff, all sorts of like legit, like this is, you know, all conspiracy theorists do this.

They take legitimate concerns and like wrap a bunch of stuff around them. And this is one of the things that they're getting really, I think, put together on as a community in terms of how to make this argument that the prevention of using of certain kinds of medicines or stuff is part of colonialism and we need to decolonize medicine. And I think I'm really concerned that they're going to find an audience for

that in like the lefty ish, woke ish territory. Well, well, one of the things that, that, I mean, I think some people seem to forget is that,

you know, the alternative, the anti-vax crowd sprung from the left. I mean, that alternative medicine, new agey stuff really was sort of a left leaning thing when it first started to, you know, started to come into the national attention. Yeah. But I think the thing, I think the issue is, is that they can easily attach themselves to things that

I think people really care about. And that's, and that's a way to get in that. That's a way to sort of get under the radar if you attach it to something someone cares about or someone feels like there's an issue there that is really important you can sort of slip under the radar and that brings up a question i want to ask you when you were listening to this did you feel like it was a sophisticated bit of disinformation or do you feel like it was just like dumb memes and people that you like if you were smart enough and you walked in the room there wasn't a chance you were going to change your mind um that's yeah so i guess i would say if you showed up for like the first half of it you'd probably there'd be a higher risk that you

could get sucked in especially if you're like one of these like COVID vaccine anti-vaxxers coming from like the bread. You know, you have these like two contingents, broadly speaking, the full-on anti-vaxxers and the COVID anti-vaxxers, right? COVID anti-vaxxers are the ones who are more popular right now, like Weinstein and Malone and stuff. And like, if you're getting brought in via them and you watch their stuff

and you could be not in any risk of sliding towards full-on anti-vaxxerism. There was a pretty big argument at the end of the first day in particular where Del Bigtree, who's the guy who was at the Stop the Steal,

he's the guy who produced Andrew Wakefield's anti-vaxxer movie. Oh my God. Oh, so he's invested. Yeah. He's like the godfather. He's the central anti-vaxxer figure, except for now it's Joe Rogan. But he basically surprised, ambushed them on stage. He had all of the first day people come out, which was all the headliners.

And he was like, how many of you actually think vaccines are still an important thing for the future of our like Better Way, you know, group. And it was only like Weinstein and Malone and this other guy, Vanderbosch, who raised their hands

and this one other person doesn't matter. And they, and then he like started attacking them personally. Really? Yeah, he was like, well, what about this fact? He did a series of the, did you know that vaccines murdered my dog kind of stuff. And then he was calling them up by name, pressuring them to be like, look, if you think that there's a problem with COVID stuff,

you should also think there's a problem, especially if you're like on the conspiracy side of things. And like this, you know, I could go forever about the nuances of all of their slightly different anti-vaxxer positions, but Big Tree's right that like for most of them,

if they took their views seriously, they would have to expand it beyond just the COVID stuff. Were you just chanting to yourself, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight? I mean, because I would be. I would be like, yeah, no. You guys need to eat yourself alive on stage.

Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. At one point, Van Der Bosch, who has basically said we should stop using all COVID vaccines because he's worried about a super COVID variant emerging from the use of the vaccines. From the vaccines. Yeah, it's not a scientific thing COVID variant emerging from the use of the vaccines. It's not a scientific thing, but anyway. It's a Voltron.

What? Wait a minute. I'm sorry. I know you're trying to make a larger point. Moderna is the legs, and then the Johnson & Johnson is the torso. And then Pfizer arms. What's the head? Oh. AstraZeneca. Sputnik. Oh, okay. The head is Klaus. Oh, okay. No, the head is

Klaus Schwab, actually. What just... What? There's going to be a super COVID? I like that at least they believe in COVID. At least this group believes in COVID. Thankfully,

there's at least that... I'm trying to search for a positive here aaron robbie yeah or aaron rabinowitz however you'd like to be you know whatever you're going by these days i at least there's a foundation to be at this point at least they all believe in covid man yeah that's not a given anymore have disagreements about like how big a deal it actually is but yes they actually do think it exists and is real and like you know here's the thing big tree does think that the measles exist and are real he just thinks that like a measles epidemic is less bad than the vaccine side effects basically like i'm not kidding at one, it got so bad that, like,

Bosch was like, if you go down this road of, like, boycotting all vaccines, you will cause an epidemic. And Big Cheese's response was like, well, yeah, but, like, if you look at the death rates for measles, it's actually not that bad. But, okay, so what we are currently at, people are vaccinated, and the world seems fine

we're not even there though we have actually already fallen below herd immunity on vaccinations but that's an important that's a good point but i guess let me let me let me roll my comment back we were up until a total era of complete insensibility took hold and somehow will not lessen its grip. We had for a long period of time, fairly strong measles vaccination rates across not just America, but the world. The world has done a fairly good job of holding measles back. Now, I haven't read every history book out there, but I don't think there's been any mass die-offs as a result. Yeah, so if you want to pick the choose-your-own-conspiracism adventure, your options in response there are,

A, it hasn't happened yet, but it's about to in any moment. That's your end-of-the-world-is-not-acquired-next-week-calendar-wrong situation. Or, it's happening and you just don't know it's happening. There's no calendar wrong situation or Herald camping argument. It's happening. And you just don't know what's happening. People are dying in large numbers, but you're not aware of it. It's being hidden from you,

but you have now they're dying in large numbers, but you've never met any of them. I know people that have died of COVID, right? Like, yeah. Right. I know two people that have died of COVID, like two people in my family ish have died of COVID, right? Like, here's the thing. Yeah, and then they, yeah. Right. Like, I know two people that have died of COVID.

Like, two people in my family-ish have died of COVID. COVID has killed, like, what, 1%, less than 1%, you know? So, like, when you hit that 1% figure, you are very likely to know somebody who's died of that thing. And it always cracks me up when these guys are like, ah, it's happening, but we don't know it. It's like, well, but literally, I've never met anyone who died of the fucking measles vaccine so it cannot be happening in that kind of profusion so you're clearly an advanced level

player here so i'm not going to pivot i don't know about that the vaccines aren't actually killing people they're suing something else oh i gotcha oh yeah they're they're doing something else. Oh, I gotcha. They're sterilizing people, so it's like people are going to stop having kids. Thank God. Or altering your genes so you're more docile. There was a lot of talk of biohacking and if not just full-on chip implants

like messing with your genes and stuff because the transhuman globalists are going to do it to control you or something like that. How do you pay attention for longer than 30 seconds? I don't know how you did 25 hours. I cannot imagine. 12 and a half hours, please.

When somebody says something like that, my brain just goes... Thank you. You know those windows that cloud up automatically? It's like that. And and they can just turn it. It's like that. I'm just,

and then you could just say whatever you want for the next 24 and a half hours. And I wouldn't hear a preacher. Yeah, exactly. It's like, Hey, Jesus said, I'm just like,

yeah, I don't care. I've done, I've done, I'm over, you know, hats off to you, man,

for good. I mean, first of all, clearly it's not an, it's not a virtue it's a vice and second you know um you guys of course obviously since he wrote the intro to your book about all of this um you know marsh's be reasonable is i think it's called reasonably skeptical yeah just be reasonably skeptical right right that's right you're reasonably skeptically atheist um you know for folks who aren't familiar for some reason if you haven't already like at least

tried to watch it or try to listen to it you know it's him talking to these sorts of individuals that he finds at these kind of conventions and things most people i would say on average rate it somewhere around i can't fucking listen to this Marsh I love you but I can't this is horrifying I'm on the other end of the spectrum where like when I found out that Be Reasonable existed I binged the entire back catalog instantly kind of like I just I don't know

I love it it's fucking fascinating to me you know at some points you get depressed or angry or like you get into a very weird headspace in a like Hunter S. Thompson-y kind of like what is reality, gonzo journalism over the course of it, basically. But like, it's also, I think, really fascinating to me because, you know, there is a lot of genuine concerns. There's a lot of real problems that these people are pointing to and they're often coming to this from that kind of place. And so

I think it's valuable to try to understand that stuff and to try to help protect people from sliding into these places or being taken advantage of because they've had a life crisis or something like that. I also think it's valuable to find out what's the next talking points that they're trotting out. It's monkeypox

obviously. And, you know, like that sort of stuff I think is useful. And I think it's useful also to help reporters, right? Because I'm going to like write this article. I'm going to be like, look, one of the organizers is not Del Bigtree. It's this lady, Dr. Tess Lowry, who like looks like a COVID anti-vaxxer on the outside, does mostly focus on COVID denialism kind of stuff. But at the conference, when Big Tree

ambushed them all and asked them, do they believe in vaccinations? She didn't raise her hand. And when the debating about that was happening, she was like, I think that we should take a precautionary approach and wait to use vaccines, all vaccines, until we've done double-blind placebo studies, essentially. So it's not as

bad as big trees. I know that the vaccines are worse than measles, but it is essentially in function the same position. And I think if people are going to interview these folks, if they're going to talk about them, they need to know and not get suckered into that layers of normalizing that allows this to seem okay to some people. Well, I'm sorry. Who is the audience? This is the question that I am, because you're describing you are the audience for Be Reasonable, right? And there's a reason you are the audience for Be Reasonable. So there's this conference and there are the speakers and I get it. I get their positions.

Who are they talking to? Who is the audience here? Right. So I would say there's a couple of audiences. And I mean that in two ways. Who's the audience in terms of who's physically there and who's the audience in terms of, obviously they're creating a piece of tape or a piece of marketing to live past this conference. So who is that audience? Are they the same? Yeah, I would say there's a couple of audiences. So in the room, and again, you get sort of a couple of shots of them, but it's hard to tell. And factoring in that this is in Bath, England, so the demographics are probably not hugely in favor

of diversity. I would say you probably have a higher than average diversity rating for this community. I would say it's higher than atheist conventions, for example. That's a pretty low bar for diversity.

But yes, it's a mix of a couple of things. And it's the history that I talked about with the colonialism towards communities of color. It's the history of abuse being, you know, not taken seriously by doctors and like all of the stuff that goes into books like Invisible Women and things like that. That, you know, that if, you know, again, everybody likes to pretend their demographics are better than they are. So they had a lot of people, a lot of diversity up on the stage on those two fronts in particular. But I would say it's probably likely that the audience is closer to who's on stage than at a usual convention when it comes to those kinds of things.

So those are your audience. And in the room, you probably have a majority of people who are probably closer to the anti-vaxxer camp, I would guess. If you're there, you're more than likely already sort of inner circle in that sense. And for those people, it's about showing them that there's like a new energy to their old, you know, this longstanding movement by bringing in these big name American COVID folks.

And also, of course, selling a bunch of stuff. There was a lot of talk of like silent auctions and fundraising and selling books and things like that. So like, yeah, you know, I'm sure they're all also true believers, but there's certainly some money being thrown around here. But I also think it's more important that the audience, the are to some extent skeptical of COVID vaccines or lockdowns or mandates or something in that recent sphere and have listened to Dark Horse podcast or something and aren't going to the convention in person, but have probably heard Brett Weinstein promoting it on the show or something like that and buy a virtual ticket and have a virtual in to a community where then some percentage of

them agree with Del Bigtree that like, I should go farther with this, right? I should go farther down this rabbit hole. I wrote an article for Skeptic Mag about the problem of they, where it's like once you believe that there's a big enough they that has enough power, you can't say no to other conspiracy theories because all of them are equally plausible if someone's hiding the countervailing evidence from you and has the ability to do so on a large enough scale, right? You have a basic epistemic problem where it's like, if there's a government-sized entity

preventing us from knowing things, they could be preventing us from knowing basically anything. And that's the vibe you get from this stuff. And so that's something i was curious about i was wondering how that intellectual dark web stuff weaved itself in here but it sounds like they just whitewash the wall and be like any conspiracies are allowed and they are all allowed because they really do all intermesh and so i think that might have answered my question but that is how the dark web stuff connects right Is that it's all just sort of connected

in that sort of overarching anything's possible way. Like in a grand unified sense. In a grand unified way, basically. Right, right. Very, very, yeah. Well, I do think you are, yeah, you are really seeing a convergence of, you know, what would you call them?

Neo-bircher. It's like a bunch of different anti-governmental groups, including the IDW folks, because like they're starting people were like Jordan Peterson or freaking out about, you know, trans laws. So like there's an anti-governmental energy that's tying all of these things together. There's also weird complications around capitalism, sort of, where it's like a lot of the legitimate problems they raise are like, yeah, American capitalism is kind of fucked.

And like the American medical system is kind of horrifying and it's producing, you know, horrible incentives for these companies. And they're right. But then they turn around and they're like, and that's why we should privatize the NHS. Yeah, right.

They haven't learned the lesson, right? And they probably wouldn't call themselves anti-capitalist, even though that's like the most coherent argument that they're sort of putting forward. There's also like fear of the mainstream media is a common theme between the IDW and these folks. So like, and I would say it's weird, right? There's a lot of wokeness at this convention because of the indigenous colonial alternative stuff,

but they're also kind of attacking the same entities that the IDW are always accusing of being captured by wokeness. They just kind of frame it differently. They say they're captured by pharma instead, basically. Oh. So talk about this. There's a section I'd really like you to focus on this. Reclaiming and revolutionizing media

was one of the pieces. So there's like, they split it up into maybe five different sections, and this was one of those sections. Can you talk a little bit about what that was about? Because this sounds like very much right on that intellectual dark web right up that alley yeah pretty much yeah this was pretty much their day for like here's how you start your own conspiracism podcast and like i'm not i wish i was kidding it was really like conspiratism

you know YouTube 101 kind of stuff oh my god I'm trying to get I've got the speaker list here up in a second they have this guy

Campbell is his last name but I always get his name first name wrong because I immediately start going through the more interesting Campbells

like Bruce or Joseph or you know etc you get the idea soup tomato he so like or Joseph or, you know, et cetera. You get the idea. Soup. Right.

Tomato. So like, yeah, he's incredibly boring, but he has these folks on to do these kinds of things. But yeah, so that day was hosted by Brett. Of course. Because again, right, he's doing this new media kind of thing. But it was also the interesting part of that day besides the like, so there's one really funny bit where at the beginning of the day when they're usually doing their looping commercials,

another one of which was like the weird Austrian guy who's paying for a lot of this and who like clearly has a volcano lair. They were, they added a new video, which was like, it was, it was basically a PSA about here's how the media is brainwashing you. And so it was like, they were showing a normal PSA and then they were pausing it and being like,

see how they're making eye contact with you. That's a control mechanism. What? Right. Yeah. Wait a minute. In a video? Wait a minute.

Hold the fucking phone. They are making eye contact with me. That's how Skype calls work. Wait a minute. In a video? Wait a minute. Hold the fucking phone. They are making eye contact with me in a video. That's how Skype calls work. Well, you know, like they're looking straight on at the camera or like they have a... No, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aaron, please don't misunderstand. I get what you're saying.

But also, you are not making eye contact with anyone over a fucking video you're just looking at a thing Aaron right now I am dominating I have hard eye contact do you see it do you see it hard eye contact I take my fucking glasses off so I can eyeball you a little harder I think I'm looking at you I'm not

sure I have my glasses off what and yet and yet I'm not sure. I have my glasses off. What? And yet, and yet, Dr. John Campbell, who is one of the people who still manages to be on YouTube despite being in this group, essentially then in his talk was like, here's the things you do to seem personable. Look directly into the camera. Hard eye contact. You know, look right in the eye hold their neck down there was there was not there was not good coordination on some of these things i feel like everyone knew what was going on but

you um every once in a while give him a little slap across the jaw uh but that day that day was pretty wild because brett was hosting along with tess lowry the like she's technically the other organizer but like she barely exists compared to big tree but big tree was one of the speakers um and like you know as i said there was an argument on the first day and it got a little testy and they've continued to make jokes about it that would have been pretty awkward over the next couple of conversations. Right?

Well, that's good. So, Brett is the host now. So, he's switched positions with Big Tree. So, he's trying to give it back to him a little bit, but Big Tree's much better

at this than Brett is. So, Big Tree fucking rolls him hard, basically. What happens? It sounds like a fucking train wreck. It's so funny.

And I haven't gotten into the tech stuff. Remind me, before we run out of time, I have to talk about, I'll give you my type five on how to do tech properly. You know, Big Tree gets up and gives his talk that Brett introduces him for.

And it's straight up, Andrew Wakefield is the most brilliant scientist of his generation. I'm not paraphrasing here. I'm quoting here. Wait, excuse me. Yeah. First,

you got to get 12 people and that's your sample size. 12. That's how you do science, bitches. All right. So you get a thing of eggs and each egg represents one of your sample size. That's science. Not the big thing of it.

Can't we get a baker's dozen worth of people? No, come on now that's ridiculous don't waste your whole day doing your science yeah and the reason it was on the media day is because Big Tree's whole point about this was here's how

I tricked Tribeca into putting Vaxxed on their program via Robert De Niro and then when they cancelled it, I got big and all of this got... And that's genuinely why Vaxxed is the most well-known movie, is because of all of that media. So he was basically like...

He was teaching Streisand Effect, is what he was doing. He was there like, here's how you get them. Do some fucked up shit. And then when they report on you, you're winning because you're being reported on. So like we're losing right now because we're talking about these people, which is not totally untrue, right? Yeah. I mean, like that's the Trump thing. That's what Trump did. He just said outrageous

shit all the time. And then he was constantly in front of everybody's face forever. Well, yeah. I know you're about to make a much more important point than the question I'm going to ask you, but I do want to ask you the question anyway. So, you know, just thinking back to when anti-vax movement was more nascent, it had sort of like demonstrably less credible or at least less credentialed people standing on the stage. You had Jenny McCarthy, right? Right. Who, you know, isn't really got any credentials. She's not a scientist.

She's just a celebrity. There's a Jenny McCarthy connection here, by the way, but yes, continue. But, you know, now you've got a whole host of people who have legitimate medical credentials. For all of their many myriad faults, and they can be enumerated until the end of the show, Weinstein and

Malone do have some credibility in the COVID sphere around being doctors, don't they? Am I mistaken? Am I thinking of two different guys? None of these people have credibility. No, but I'm saying, not credibility, credentialing. Don't they have medical credentials? No, Weinstein doesn't.

Yeah, you're thinking of Malone and McCullough. Oh, I'm sorry. That is who I'm thinking of, Malone mccullough yeah and then they were both there they were both part of this nonsense that is i got weinstein mixed up i'm sorry mccullough was there virtually yeah malone was there in person and was part of the like clusterfuck that happened on the first day in particular and yeah they both have something vaguely approaching like credentials in this neighborhood, but they're heavily overstated. So, for example, everyone will make clear to you over and over and over again. I think it's Malone that like he's the one who helped invent the mRNA vaccine.

And that's why he knows what he's talking about here. Not true. Not a correct story. He did not invent the vaccine. Other people, you know, did more work. Right. story. He did not invent the vaccine. Other people did more work. There's a lot of that popping up of your background. But he's not

a celebrity, right? I guess that's my point. He's not Del Bigtree, who's literally just a TV producer. Right, exactly. And there's a danger there. There's a danger around this credibility. Before, what we's a danger around this credibility. Before what we had was celebrity turning into credibility.

Now we have credibility turning into celebrity. And that seems much more dangerous of a directionality as far as the transaction of information is concerned. Yeah, if the credibility was genuine, it turning into celebrity might not be a bad thing. But in this situation, absolutely. It's a huge, it's a huge problem. And I really do, you know,

we'll see how this plays out, but I worry that what we're seeing is a resurgence of the credibility that the anti-vaxxer stuff had to some extent before Wakefield was like fully, thoroughly disgraced where it was like, yes, it was still a little marginal relative to that, but there was, I would believe, I feel there was a period of like, it was gaining traction and it was like, yes, it was still a little marginal relative to that. But there was, I would believe, I feel there was a period of like,

it was gaining traction. And it was like, it was harder for people to push back on it a little bit because the like science hadn't been debunked yet. And I do feel like a fair number of people got suckered in at that moment. And I think we're at another moment where that could be, we could be at high risk of that happening because of folks like Weinstein and they know it. Like they absolutely, um, are aware that the, the podcasting world and stuff and YouTube are the future for their movement. Like the most referenced person at this thing was, was Joe Rogan. Every person, it was like,

every person gave thanks for St. Rogan. He was the reason that we were safely able to do any of these things. He really, really has done a lot of damage in terms of making all of this look respectable again.

And it's really bad. I'm not a doctor, but yeah. And it's crazy too because he did it all just by being like, what? I'm just asking questions. He's the just asking question guy. And that's, it's really bad. And it's crazy too. I'm not a doctor, but yeah. And it's crazy too, because he did it all just by being like, what, I'm just asking questions. He's the just asking question guy. And that shows you how dangerous that mindset is, right? That just asking questions mindset. You know, if you're not going to ask good questions

and you're not going to push, then you're essentially just giving someone your gigantic platform to say whatever they want. And it's the same thing that happened with that Rubin guy. It's, you know, like they just open their platform up to these people where under the guise of I'm having a conversation. And it's a fucking, it's a bad faith conversation. It's funny because as you said that, I was thinking about when we promoted our book on your show, Aaron, and you asked us hard questions about our book. It was not a complete puff piece at all.

You were like, hey, I'm going to push you on some of these things. Even said, I agree with you. I'm still going to push you on these things. Because you know how to ask hard questions. You know how to ask good questions. because you know how to ask hard questions. You know how to ask good questions. You would not, and neither would Cecil and I,

would not have somebody on our show that I'm not able to ask good questions. If I don't feel qualified to engage a conversation, I'm going to say, you know what? I'm not the right guy to interview that guy. I literally lack the qualification or the intellectual firepower to engage in a conversation at that level. And you got to know that about yourself.

The just asking questions guys are fucking dangerous because they know they don't have the qualifications. Yeah. They laugh about it. They acknowledge it out loud and they do it anyway because it gets some clicks and views and it gets them a hundred million dollars contracts with Spotify. Maybe we should ask questions. I think we should ask more questions.

Now that you know, the pitch at the end really sold me. I know. I was like, it's all worked up. I'm like, I'm a hundred million short of that. A lot of money. Yeah. And so, yeah, two things there for you. One for each of y'all, right?

We did get to chat about your book and it was a lot of fun. And I actually went back and, you know, I didn't fully reread it, but I went back through the chapters in preparation for our conversation and I can say, bingo, I got all of them. Yeah. Like literally the whole list, every chapter we can go through and like, it was at this convention. It was all there. You guys nailed all the key points. Um, but also on the jacking off front, um, a year ago, a little over a year ago now, I wrote a skeptic, again, like your book, every skeptic mag article I wrote has been present at this convention too. I wrote one called Cheap Talk Skepticism, which was about, you know, essentially the jacking off

problem and that like, there are these people like Rogan who make a living, you know, asking questions where they will not suffer the consequences of it being treated like an open question. And guess who I picked as the people to give my examples in that paper? Noas and Weinstein, right? Because it was right during, it was just when they were spiraling from, because Noas also got into the like, the election stuff as well. He did, yeah. He was all over the place on a lot of things. Cause Nawaz also got into the like election, the election stuff as well. Like he did.

Yeah. He was, he was all over the place on a lot of things. So yeah, these are, you know, here we are a year later. And like,

what I was worried about is the case, right? What you were saying is true. Yeah. And, and, and this is, this is a good example to like,

Nawaz is a good example of, he was a vocal atheist like 10 years ago, maybe seven or eight years ago. And he was on a bunch of shows and a vocal atheist like 10 years ago, maybe seven or eight years ago. And he was on a bunch of shows and a vocal atheist. And that shows you like how easy it is to be an atheist, right? How easy it is to be that, like in that mindset and still be a giant fuck up, right? Like that guy is still a gigantic fuck up, but people gave him the benefit of the doubt because he got one question, right. And they gave him that benefit of the doubt. Just so you know, he's He's thanking God again, by the way.

Yeah. Just so you know. He's back to thanking God. Oh, yeah. Well, good for him. Good for him. Yeah. No, that's a perfect fucking Ouroboros.

He's his own fucking human centipede. He's going to suck his own ass. Yeah. The thing is, like, once you sell out, like, once you take that first big fucking sellout check, like, why not take the second one? Yeah. I mean, Ruben's going to be there soon. And that guy who wrote that conceptual penis paper,

he's like working for people that are like religious. Ruben's going to divorce his husband and marry a woman at some point if the fucking money's right. The money's good. The money's right. Yeah, I'm surprised that James Lindsay wasn't at this convention.

It was interesting what wasn't at this convention. He was too busy doing like sword katas or axe things. Yeah, he was doing things or whatever tomahawks for sure slow fat motion there's a thing I've been noticing more and more now where they will cite QAnon as like well

we're not a QAnon convention or they'll make jokes about how like the news is going to try to paint us as a QAnon convention and stuff and it's sort of like they use the term as like this is the far end boogeyman and we're not that bad and like partly that's part just not true because a bunch of these people are like q and honors but also like it's not actually true and it's not continually true yeah i mean it's not factually true. And it's not continually true. Yeah.

I mean, it's not any different than Alex Jones being like, I'm not a QAnon-er and here's Roger Stone to chat about things. Like it's, they're, they're pretending to be different, you know, the same way they do the same thing with their orgs as well. They all have like,

you know, the world council for health and the like bland name kind of thing. And it just, it's all a big, it's a big show to create the kind of false ecosystem vibe, right? Where it's like, this is a healthy thriving ecosystem, even though every one of the, you know, the same thing as like the free speech guys,

where it's like all of these boards are the same five people. And they're all Sam Harris for some reason. Look, I'm not queuingon, but the earth is flat. Right, right. Yeah, all right. So I'm going to have you rate it here for a second. So out of 10, right? So let's say 10 is horribly dangerous.

One is innocuous. I'm a random guy without any movement back or forth on vaccines, I walk into this conference. How dangerous is this conference? Hmm. High school education. Yeah, I'd put it

at like a seven, I think. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's scary. Seven for content, you know, like, but it's, it's, it's getting dragged down. Like it would be closer to like an eight or a nine if you hadn't had to like sit through the tech side of things because that would give us the tech side.

Let's do this tech side thing. Okay. There, there are several things that we can discuss here, right? You all have been to conventions, you know how conventions work, right?

Um, you usually, you know, you have, they normally take us to the door and tell us to leave. You know, that's fine. Yeah. We know how conventions work, right? You usually, you know, you have- Yeah, we get kicked out of them. They normally take us to the door and they tell us to leave. You know, that's fine. Sometimes the police show up and tell you

we know how it works. We know how it works, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, sure. Right. You usually have, you know, five. I'm sure a lot of those folks were at this convention, now that you mentioned it.

A lot of overlap with the Mrs. No, the Mrs. Crowd, I imagine. They, you know, usually you'd have, you'd have a panel of like four people or something. And then like five or six other speakers over the course of a day or something, right? Like that was in an hour at minimum, right? They were having 14 to 20 people in an afternoon. Each of them doing 10 minute talks. Like it was an open mic night, my friends.

I don't think they turned anybody away. It's like a TikTok convention. Oh my god. It's worse. It's like a bad poetry week. They didn't have control over their own slides, though. It gets way worse.

They're all constantly like, I'm running out of time. Next slide, please. And the poor fucking tech people have to click through their slides. And some of these fuckers were like, I've got a rapid slide thing coming up here. And they were like,

one word, next slide, one word, next slide. And I'm like, Oh my God. They couldn't give them a clicker so they own their own thing. They don't have a clicker. So they own their own clicker. Those things are like $18.

Seriously. Like that's unbelievable. I've done so much public speaking. I would never let someone else run my slides. Never in a thousand years. I remember if it was also for the in-person people, I think it was, but it was mostly a problem for the ones who were Skyped in. And there I'm like, I don't understand.

It's so much worse. Tom, I would rather go to the bathroom and have someone else hold my dick than control my slides. I would rather walk in and be like, I unzip and hold my hands over my head. Nope. And then you aim for me

before I give someone control of my slides. Absolutely. It's 2022, motherfuckers. Holy shit. That's 2022, motherfuckers. Holy shit. That's just wonderfully inexcusable. That's amazing. Please tell them you're not going to have control of your slides, so have it max two

to three slides, not 30 to 40 slides. That's the best. If they just have useless single word slides and they're just packed full of slides. Why would you do that? So amazing. Why would you prepare a presentation you don't control?

So you have it rehearsed with somebody you trust. And then, and then do this one word. What that one word, one word thing is annoying anyway. Yeah, for sure. Like that's right.

Like you should be hit right in the face. Whatever is available. Yeah. I mean, like you should be hit right in the face with whatever is available. Yeah. I mean, pie or whatever. Yeah. Like a chair, a shepherd's crook should pull you off.

Oh my God. Like a vaudeville thing. Um, back in my Aaron Rabby days, I, you're still there. We met, we introduced you that.

So you're still there. So I would do over higher lighting work in theaters, including for conferences sometimes so i did lighting for nexus for a few years which is the skeptics conference in new york for folks who are not familiar it's the skeptics universe we know we know what ian cheats on us with them yeah yeah it's a conference that we've never been invited to yeah we've never been invited well that's a lot it's fine it's fine it's fine i got onto a panel at one point

at least um but i met marsh there in person one year while I was typing it. Yeah. I say big league, you guys, very often. So give me this one little thing, right? Big league us literally any moment of the day? Are you kidding me? Anyway, so you're doing lighting,

you're saying. I do lights. And like, you couldn't fucking pay me enough to run lights for a convention like this even before the clicker thing, right? Like,

bad enough that you're not going to give me hazard pay for being in a room full of people who are not vaccinated. Yeah, right. I have to pay attention

to them enough to hear when they say next slide. I would have quit. I would have quit midway through. I would have quit midway through. Motherfuckers were making jokes about like, oh, I guess the tech people are getting a little

tired. Try to stick with me here, folks. And I'm like, you motherfuckers are lucky the lights did not just turn off. Like, I would have pulled the power. I would have walked away from the board. You would have been fucked. Yeah, it was a disaster.

The mics were a disaster. People, you would have been fucked. Yeah, it was a disaster. The mics were a disaster. The host would hand off to somebody and then it was like a person on a screen and they were talking and we had to listen to the heavy breathing of the host because their mic never got turned down. Or they had conversations with other people

off stage. You know what is saving us? Aaron, I am not even kidding stage. You know what is saving us? Aaron, Aaron, I am not even kidding. Do you know what is saving democracy and civilization is fucking incompetence. It is because if these motherfuckers were 12% more competent, if they were a little slicker,

a little less fucking just, and they don't need to be a lot it's not a lot they're right there they're on the cusp but they're so fucking incompetent that there is still a segment of the population's like i'm not listening to this shit look i i i'm used to slick slickly produced highly edited material That's what the rest of my life looks like. This clown shoe ass motherfucker bullshit. I'm out. It's crazy to me too, that you're this far into the pandemic and they're still fucking up hybrid shit.

Yeah, man. And you're like, come on, man. Come on, everybody's got this down now. My dad could do this. I hate to tell you that one doesn't surprise me in the least, especially given the like age ranges of the people who are Skyping in at various points.

Like fair. Yeah. I, there's a lot of people who still haven't figured out how to mute themselves on zoom. And I don't, I can't explain why, but it does appear to continue to be a thing.

And yeah, you know, conspiracism is easy mode, right? Like I could be a, a very successful conspiracy theorist. This is what, you know, like, you often are thinking, like, I could break bad with just, like, a Mad Libs and, like, a D20.

And I would be set. Like, it's too fucking easy. And there is still, I think you're right, a silver lining hope that, like, these people are so incompetent that after this little event, they're going to, like, spread back out to their narcissistic fiefdoms and like continue to do their own separate nonsense. And there won't be any solid organizing because they'll not convince the

convinced, you know, like how much of this is preaching to choirs, you know? I mean, I think the biggest concern, as I said, as I said,

is the like conversion from one, like the outer choir to the inner choir, where it's like you go from the COVID anti-vaxxer to the full-on anti-vaxxer i would say there's a percentage of the people who probably got sucked in at this convention in that way virtually it seems like that's that's my biggest concern but i don't think right they're like immediately pulling in other people but again that's not exactly what it's for, right? What they then do is go back out to their podcasts and their Rogans and stuff, and they go to Rogan's audience and they say slightly nicer, cleaner versions of the things they were saying. They put their masks back on

and hide their power levels again, and they recruit more outer church people. And then they do another convention and do the early cycle recruitment. And they amplify and solidify. That's really the problem. Yeah. I do think that we're in an ironic age where we are on the cusp of tremendous technological medical breakthroughs with regard to vaccination. And at the same time, I am absolutely convinced that over the next five years, vaccinations of all types will drop as a result of the COVID vaccine disinformation. So we're in this divergent space where the technology will allow us to vaccinate ourselves against a host of, you know, cancers and diseases that have been the scourge of humanity for for millennia and at the same time there will be an enormous

number of people are like you know what i'm good yeah i like getting thrush you know yeah actually um you know i talked about the book natural with uh with um the author on embrace the void and one of the really good points he brings up in that book was the reason you see a resurgence of natural birth is because unnatural birth has been so successful. Like it is, it is so successfully reduced in mortality and childbirth mortality that like people can fuck around and find out and still survive.

Right. Like that's different than it used to be. And so it's a similar situation, right? More people can fuck around and find out in the world where, you know, vaccines have been largely successful up to a point, right? And then bad things start to happen. So I do think that is, you know, it's a big piece of it.

And to the solidifying point, you all were curious about the new media one. One of the big talking points was the great thing about us, you know, a situation like this is we can all meet each other and then we can leave and go on each other's podcast a bunch. And we just keep having each other on each other's podcasts over and over and over again.

And it'll give, you know, the impression of a community and y'all wouldn't know anything about that sort of experience. So like, yeah, it's a model, right? It's a model. It worked. And it'll give the impression of a community and y'all wouldn't know anything about that sort of experience. So like, yeah. It's a model, right? It's a model.

It worked. Wow. Well, I'm kidding. Low blow. That's all I'm saying. Low blow. That's all I'm saying. No, come on.

I feel like y'all are promoting a vaccine or anything. I just want to say, we're thankful that someone can sit through this stuff and pay attention enough and then bring that news back to all the rest of us. Because I know there's a lot of people out there that know that this stuff is dangerous, but they just don't know how dangerous or how it is dangerous. And I think you're doing really good work here. And I know that you said you're going to be coming out with an article about this as well. said you're going to be coming out with an article about this as well?

Yeah, we're going to do one, probably a couple of articles in the UK Skeptic Mag since they paid the ticket and whatnot. The first one's going to be just kind of laying a lot of this stuff out, similar to what we've been discussing but in more depth and like tying together

more of the concerns and like laying out some more of the conspiracism that we haven't gotten to. I have lists of things and then like other articles are going to be things about like the weird problems of discussing antisemitism in this area because, uh, fun fact, big trees, anti-vaxxer stuff is, is funded by a Jewish billionaire. So that complicates the picture a little bit. Connected to the like orthodox folks who don't want to get back to it. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And then like an article, there was a weird thing that

surprised me. I wrote an article a little while ago about transhumanism in the gender critical turf kind of world and how they were worried about it. And the argument form for anti-trans stuff is. And the argument form for anti-trans stuff is identical to the argument form for the anti-vaxxer stuff. It is literally the same corporations and government entities

and Klaus Schwab using technology to control us. But for some reason at this convention, nobody mentioned transgender stuff on the stage. Wow. No jokes that I caught, no throwaway lines as far as I can remember. I don't know why. I would guess the large number of people

in the space are in the turf world, but it was weird that they didn't explicitly discuss the overlap. But how they talked about victims of vaccination is identical to how those folks talk about detransitioners. For example, it was shot for shot the same. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you so

much for coming on today. Can you tell us, uh, our listeners, if they were going to find your, your work, where would they look? Yeah. So you can find me compulsively on Twitter at ETV pod. So you can find me compulsively on Twitter at ETV pod. You can find my conspiracy theory and other kinds of writings at the UK skeptic mag. Again, very explicitly, not the Michael Schirmer dumpster fire. I always have to make that clear.

Got a clue. Man can make that clear. Absolutely. Yeah. And then the podcasts are embrace the void and philosophers in space. You know,, I have conspiracism folks on to talk about these kinds of things on Embrace the Void, so check

that out. And we've also been doing some stuff on Preppers over on Philosophers in Space. So there's been a lot of overlap recently. It's all coming together just like the conspiracies. What is it with you humans? Always blaming me. I never make any of you do anything.

That's not true. You trick us into sin, damnation. You have to be. Otherwise. So this story comes from deadstate.org. Tell evangelist Kenneth Copelandxas shooter was demon possessed so blame the devil not him all right well let's hear what let's hear it let's hear this shit leprechaun has to say here god is he a gaunt motherfucker he's terrifying look at that guy that's a guy who steals money from people you just look at him and you're like

no man that's a dude who steals money like there's no just look at him and you're like, no, man, that's a dude who steals money. Like, there's no way. You don't ever come to me with that look, with the look he has on his face. You don't ever come to me with that look if you're not stealing money from someone. I guarantee it. Look at that. He's serious. You guys, I know if you're listening and not watching, Kenneth Copeland looks terrible.

He does not look credible at all. He's got crazy eyes, but he's also got crazy dead eyes. Like his eyes look fucking lifeless and dead. He looks like instead of like a little kid asking can I have some more? He's just doing that with

boats now. Can I have some more? And he wants another jet and another boat. So here we go. A stiff wind could blow this guy away forever. If you put a string on him, you could fly him like a kite. This is Kenneth Copeland. Here we go. Well, Brother Copeland, why do bad things happen to good people? people. Because a demon possessed young man decided

he just wanted to kill a bunch of people. That helps. That helps. You know, when you say like, why do good things happen to bad people? It makes it sound like the violence and suffering is arbitrary. But then when you say, well, because a

demon just felt like it, that makes it seem way less arbitrary. But then when you say, well, because a demon just felt like it, that makes it seem way less arbitrary. I like, like, why do we want to live in a world where people get these outs, these easy outs, where it's not you.

It's not, it's this demon that did it. It's not this kid that did it. It's this demon that did it. Like, like this person, you know, they're dead now, right? They're dead now. So it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't matter. But if they, what they caught a couple of them recently, they caught the Buffalo, Buffalo one they caught. And then they,

they, they sentenced another one that they caught like last year that just, they just got sentenced. And there's been so many shootings. I literally don't even remember which one it is because there's a shooting. There was a shooting. I came home tonight from work. And my wife said, did you hear about the shooting? And I said, the one in Wisconsin? She's like, no, the one in Tulsa. Yeah. Because there was one in Wisconsin at a funeral later in the afternoon today.

I didn't hear about that one. And then there was one in Tulsa yesterday. And so there's one every few moments in this country. Right. There's a lot of demons. The problem is these people like to... Why would you want to give somebody like that an out? It doesn't make sense.

I don't get it. I don't understand it. But again, it's real easy to look at something like this that we don't understand. And they do this with everything they don't understand. Right. And they point to it and say, I don't understand what And they do this with everything they don't understand. Right. And they point to it and say, I don't understand what that is.

So it's gotta be supernatural. And that gives whatever kind of dumb ass theory I brought to the table, a piece of validity. Well, and it's like, you know, one of the central problems that Christianity has never been able to face and face well is the problem of evil. The central problem ethically of like evil is a problem that Christianity has never been able to reconcile themselves with any,

a benevolent, omnipotent God and the problem of evil. And so they're weird, like his get out of jail card. And I think his question is wrong, by the way. His question actually supposes some, hidden in his question is a little bit of Eastern mythology, right? Because what he's asking is why bad things happen to good people. And that supposes in the question that if bad things happen to bad people, that that would have a different moral justification. Sure. That's only true with a karmic balance, and karma is an Eastern mythology thing.

In a Christian worldview, here on on earth in the earthly plane that shouldn't matter right so like because all your justice is meted out yeah it's all after it's all after so it's already kind of muddy like he muddies it before he begins because he doesn't know his ass from a fucking hole doesn't even know his own stuff right it's his own stuff so and then he's and then he's like well i'm gonna have to explain the problem of evil and the problem of evil he's like, well, I'm going to have to explain the problem of evil. And the problem of evil, he's like, well, it's demons. And it's like, okay, but then you just, who made the demons? You know what I mean? It's like if I said, hey, Cecil, when you come over to my house, everything should be fine, by the way.

Everything should be fine. But if you come over to my house, my rabid dogs that I keep in my house might maul you to death. I just want to let you know. And then you would ask me, why do you keep rabid dogs that maul people in your house? And I would have to answer that question because I could easily not have them. You could. And in this case, you Frankenstein those dogs together. Right. I gave them the rabies. You gave them the rabies. You gave them the rabies and you stitched them from nothing

to be something. Yes. Yeah, because there was nothing. And then you made something and the something you made was pure evil. Right. What does that make you? So it doesn't help.

Yeah. This is an attempt to answer the question of evil problem, but all he does is say, well, it's evil personified, you see, and that's the problem. And you're like, that doesn't help at all, you stupid motherfucker. Find it somewhere by faith. Move over into that area where you begin to say, I'm not holding this against him.

I'm holding this, I'm holding devil, I'm holding the devil responsible for this. Well, I don't believe there is a devil. Well, if you don't believe it by now, I don't know what it'll take to convince you. No, I believe there's people. I believe people buy guns and shoot people with guns. I believe that because you can see the people.

And they shoot people with fucking guns. They like, they fucking live stream. They're murderers. Like the devil isn't, the devil never pops up. Yeah, it's never, it's never like this, this, this episode sponsored by the devil. And then it pops up in the corner. This mass shooting sponsored by Beelzebub. Beelzebub, maker of fine mass shootings everywhere. And flies on your lips. This book, this holy Bible

is record of his defeat by Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who went to hell so you and I don't have to go. What I love is like, what I love too is, I read a lot of the Bible. It's not a record of his defeat. It barely mentions the devil. It barely mentions the devil, if it mentions the devil at all. And also like in Revelation, doesn't the devil play a fairly significant role? Doesn't he like win the arm wrestling competition? doesn't the devil play a fairly significant role? Win the arm wrestling competition.

And also like, if I defeated you, why are you still possessing people who murder other people? There are 20 dead kids, 20 dead children that would not have been dead if not for the defeated devil. This is your worldview, not mine. The defeated devil murdered 20 children. That's not defeated man if like

mike tyson comes out of retirement and punches me in the face right and i fall over dead because that's what would fucking happen a hundred percent absolutely a hundred he didn't even come out of retirement he's to come out of a lazy bad absolutely right the only thing you can hope for is that he misses and touches your beard because he can't tell where your chin is. That's the only thing you can hope for. That's why I have a long beard just in case of the Mike Tyson factor. Yeah, that's it.

That's the only reason I have him. It's stealth. It's stealth chin. Absolutely. That's what it is. It's stealth chin. My chin actually goes up, but you can't tell because of my beard. I can't be like, as I'm laying there dead beard i can't be like as i'm laying there dead

i can't be like but you were retired so it didn't count somehow yeah what what i want to i want to talk a little bit about the uh that shooting that happened there's been so many since but i want to talk about the texas one um really one of the big things that they talk about when they want to talk about prevention is they talk about these, these adding of funds to make sure that schools are more and more militarized. I know. And this did not help. We didn't talk about it much last episode cause it was all sort of emerging,

but genuinely this, this, this, they had their own police force. They had their own police force and they were waiting outside the door, unsure whether or not to go in for 20 minutes. They were standing outside these doors, not going in. It's, they had all the resources they needed to make sure that, you know,

like the good guy with a gun can do the good guy with a gun stuff. And they didn't do it And they didn't do it because they didn't do it because that's stupid. Well, also these things take minutes to unfold. The thing is with high capacity magazines and semi-automatic rifles, like the massacre of unarmed civilians

takes two minutes, three minutes. Yeah. Three minutes. It takes no time. So even if the good guys with the guns show up as often as the case in five, six, seven minutes, that's more often the case, eight minutes. It doesn't matter.

The damage is done. We're going to turn our fucking schools into a goddamn green zone. Yeah. You know, and it's still not going to change it because we have a problem that takes no time. It's a snap of a finger. It's a blink of an eye

to cause chaos and murder and mayhem. It's just, the problem is we've made murder too easy. Ohio just changed their laws and Governor DeWine just was like, I'm super happy to sign this into a law. It just happened yesterday, I think. They changed their laws and Governor DeWine just was like, I'm super happy to sign this into from like 700 hours to like 24 or 25 hours. And I looked at it.

It's like 12 hours of classroom instruction, like two hours of some bullshit, two hours of some other bullshit, et cetera, et cetera. And then you're going to have teachers in the school packing heat. This is not a solution. We're just adding guns on a, it's like, do you remember that fucking Onion article where it's like, fuck it, we're doing five blades,

put one in the handle. You know, it's like just adding more guns doesn't add any solution to the problem. Yeah, it's less safe. And I saw a commercial, a PSA, that was about gun control. And it showed this guy walk into a, he storms

into his work and they're like, Billy, you can't go back there. And he's got a muzzleloader. And he holds the muzzleloader up and one guy's like, no, no, no. And he shoots and it's smoothbore so it misses the guy. And then everybody gets up and runs and he pulls the gun and he bites the thing and he starts

running and he starts to tamp it and it says, our guns have changed. So should our laws. Fuck yeah, man. And that's like, right. But you know, you can't, you can walk in with a muzzle loader into one of those places and you'll get off a shot a minute if you get off more than one shot. Because if you shoot one time with a muzzle loader and there's a bunch of people around, they're probably going to jump you. You know what I mean? Like you don't have any more gun. Like that's it. It's like one shot and then it's over. And even if you had like 16 pistols on you, you know what I mean?

Like, like you can't do the kind of damage that these people can do in, in seconds. They can do that kind of damage. They constantly turn out this thing where it's like, well, you know, somebody who's determined enough can still do it. It's like, yeah, probably, but let's make it as hard as possible make it let's make it why are we smooth why are we greasing the wheels for murder make it hard yeah we just make this as annoying as possible because we already know that means reduction reduces the overall it works like circumstance of events or a number of events like just why would we want to make it easy on people and then it's like i got t i got a teenage boy

at home like i'm not making it i know he's probably fucking his girlfriend right but i'm not making it easy on him i'm not like leaving him home alone for hours well and and just in canada the other day they they they looks like they're gonna pass a law where they're gonna have some serious restrictions on guns they're looking at us and they're like, no, man, we're not going down that road. So, you know, something's got to change. Something's got to change or else you're just going to,

like this last week, you're just going to have a new one every day. All the time. Every single day. So I want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons.

We want to thank our newest patrons, Dylan, Skept to thank all our patrons. I want to thank our newest patrons, Dylan, Skeptical Wonder, Michael, Christopher, Vivian, Natasha, Dan, Mockingbird Nation, and Georgie. And the people who upped their pledges, Elle, Becker, Gail, Gary, and Pillar. Thank you so much for your generous donations. Your donations make sure that Ian and Sarah have salaries

and that we can buy bourbon to drink on the stream. And you bought us pizza tonight. So thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate all of you guys. And if you're a listener to the show and you have been for some time and you're not a patron, really would encourage you and ask you just head on over to patreon.com

and become a patron of our show. We'd really appreciate you. Got a message, a bunch of messages this week. I want to start before we get into the individual messages and talk about sort of a, you know,

sort of an overarching feeling that I got from last week's episode. So last week's episode, there was a lot of feedback about our conversation about the two guys who said they were going to hunt LGBT people in Arizona, I think it was.

It was. And so we had a conversation about it, and some people offered some criticism. And I want to say right away, I recognize that sometimes when I'm talking about a story, my privilege gets in the way. And I recognize that. And sometimes, in particular in this one, I didn't feel threatened by these guys. And so I may have passed them off as not threatening because I'm not the target, number one, and I'm not particularly threatened by them. Right. You know, there's a lot of things

in the world that might be, might be very threatening to other people that aren't threatening to me and they weren't threatening to me. And so I recognize that. And I think I can do a better job in the future of making sure that I recognize that other people may be threatened by them. That's the first thing. And I want to start the conversation there because I think that there's always chance for people that are allies to learn and to grow

and to be better allies. And I think that that's a true thing and that we should always try to strive to be the best ally that we can be. And I might not have been the best ally that I was. I could be last week by, in some ways, downplaying the threat that they might have. Sure, yeah, same.

But I also want to encourage people, if you're going to try to help me be a better ally, that I want to make one thing clear and one thing an absolute must. You have to listen to everything I say before you comment on it. So before you come to me and you complain about how I did something, I am going to actually actively ask you to listen to everything I said in the segment before you complain about it. I got a lot of people saying,

you are letting those people off too easy. That was the comment that many people said. Now, I will recognize that I might not have taken them as seriously as I needed to, but I did not let that, I did not, my comments were, it was hate speech and that the police should visit them. And while I wasn't sure whether or not they were being truthful, the conversation itself was bigger than those two guys. It was about the idea of maybe trolling as a way to get attention

and not meaning something. It wasn't about them in particular. It was about a concept. And specifically, if you listen to my comments, I was basically saying they need to be visited by the police and that what they are saying

is hate speech. I don't think I pulled off the gas on how I thought they should be treated. So I just want you to listen to everything I say before you comment to me because you're making it sound like I'm acting in bad faith. Yeah, I would echo that sentiment that it's important, I think, if we want to build community. And I think that that's I think, if we want to build community. And I think that that's what we do. We want to build community. I want to be a good listener, a good and active listener.

And I would only ask that the same reciprocation is offered in good faith with best intentions being assumed on both sides. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. assumed on both sides. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. There's never been a point in our history where we thought

it would be funny for someone who was LGBT to be hurt. Right. You shouldn't expect that that's the case now. And again, you know, there's a reason we chose

to talk about that story. Right? These stories are selected through the course of the week by Cecil and I to talk about because we want to paint a picture for our audience about why this is something that is worth talking about.

And it wasn't just, we didn't talk about the story to say, here's a story that you shouldn't pay attention to. Yeah, exactly. We brought it on the show to say, here's a story. And I actually think no matter how serious they are, they should be taken seriously. And we said that. And that was the overarching point.

Yeah. So, you know, again, we will hear you with trust and good faith and good intentions. We just ask that the reciprocation is in reverse. Please do that for us. I want to be the best ally I can be. You can help me be that. You just got to trust me. Right.

We got a message from Natalie, and Natalie sends a long message about several things, but she mentions growing up as, you know, solidly millennial, but certainly grows up like an ex, like we talked about Gen X last time. And definitely latchkey. And she says, on another occasion,

my friends and I snuck into a tuberculosis sanitarium that was condemned in 1982 and was full of asbestos. I love it. I'll tell you what, man. I snuck into so many of those like broken down buildings. So many of them as a kid.

Like there was a ton of them when the city I lived in that I grew up in, there was a ton of them because there was industry there that was just gone. And these were factories, four or five story factories. We would climb in and go up. And those places are not well maintained. Super dangerous. And there's water damage and the floors are falling out. Super dangerous. And you're just like running around playing fucking whatever. Whatever, whatever as a little kid. Yeah. Man, I remember, I remember, this is a totally different, but I remember being like 18 or 19. And one of the guys that I was hanging out with, his mom worked at a REMAX, like the

real estate company, you know, the realtors. And he stole his mom's keys to the REMAX office. Shut the fuck up. And we went to the REMAX office in the middle of the night, two in the morning. And we played like freeze tag, jumping on people's desks, jumping over cubicles, papers everywhere, jumping. Like, did you clean it up? No, we were 18.

We just, we just fucking ran around the Remax office. You trashed the Remax office? Fucking shit up. Cause we're 18. Is there a statute of limitations on trashing a Remax? I hope, please be expired. We got a message from Char,

and Char says, Char talked to talked about a potential someone who we should pay attention to and actually Tom and I might be reaching out and see if we could get this person as a guest because they're a gun violence researcher but they say that Camp Quest Michigan

is looking for people to help like volunteers to help Camp Quest Michigan so here's what I'm going to say if you're interested in helping Camp Quest Michigan send us a message and we'll send you to Char. We'll be like, hey, here's a couple people that wanted to maybe volunteer at Camp Quest Michigan, and we'll hook you up with this person who can help you volunteer at Camp Quest. Camp Quest, we've talked about Camp Quest many times. We've raised money for Camp Quest. We've had people on this show from Camp Quest. It sounds like an awesome organization.

I've never heard anything other than wonderful things. So if you're interested, if you're in the Midwest and you're interested in volunteering at Camp Quest in Michigan, send us an email and we'll connect you to Char. Got a message from Jennifer. And Jennifer wanted to let us know that there's a comedian. I'm not going to say their name, but they say that they're basically on Facebook

and they pretend to be far right, but they're not far right. But the people who are far right come and give the page a like. They don't spend enough time to recognize that it's satire, but the things are so close to what they're saying anyway,

it doesn't matter. So even if it does step over, you might actually just be pushing the Overton window over. I know. It's like we... Because satire is difficult now. It's impossible now because the absurd is the actual.

Yeah. And we were talking about this just before we were reading the email. I genuinely don't think the Colbert Report is a possible show anymore. I think if you were to try to have that show now, it would not work. It wouldn't work. You're right. It would not work.

Got a message from Dan and Dan said, hey, you know, I heard your episode and Esme, someone was, we were asking, Esme had called last week and asked if someone, if we can maybe put somebody in her car to take. There was nobody Esme.

I don't know if you're listening this week, but there was nobody who reached out to us. Nobody reached out to us. But they said, you know, hey, I was thinking of maybe starting a GoFundMe to help, you know, maybe raise help with gas or do something like that. I just want to say, Dan, there wasn't anybody there, but I will say, save your pennies. 666 is coming up in January. Tom and I are going

to do something big for it. We want to do an abortion fundraiser specifically for it. So save your pennies between now and then, uh, because we really then, because we really want to make a difference if we can. Got a message from Kyle. By the way, Kyle's nickname is Dream Killer. That's amazing. Here it is. You aren't getting a freestyle machine. Dream Killer Kyle says that you're not allowed to get these things

because basically Coke doesn't sell them and doesn't allow people to have them. You just can't just have one. No. I bet you fucking, I bet you Jeff Bezos can have one, Kyle. I bet you fucking Bill Gates could have one, Kyle. Why can't I have one?

You're a dream killer, Kyle. You ruined everything. How am I going to get fatter? God damn it. Think of all the soda we could- Seriously though, it makes sense. I would just be making suicides.

It makes sense though because like these things making suicides. It makes sense, though, because these things are... They're enormous proprietary machines. And your name is on it. Your name is on it. And if your name's on it, you want to tune it up right. And he's saying, basically,

these things are... They're difficult machines to tune up, and you've got to... There's people who come out and do this work, so... It actually sounds like they're actually fairly high-tech and fairly precision machinery

that has to be maintained by the company and is leased and blah, blah, blah. All I can hear is, I feel sad that I can't make suicides in the studio. Got a message from Chris and a bunch of other people. Turns out that the spinning

blade hand thing is from the Disney's Black Hole. Yeah, I remember. Maximillion is the name of the thing, I guess. I don't think I've ever seen it. I don't think I've ever seen it. That's why I was like blanking

because I've never seen the black hole. I saw the shit. I've seen the glory hole, but I've never seen the black hole. You don't want Maximillion on the other side.

I don't want the black on the other side. Yeah. You turn your sausage into a into a charcuterie tray. Sa other side. Yeah. It's like a lawnmower. Turn your sausage into a, into a charcuterie tray. Into un-cased sausage. Yeah.

We got a bunch of messages from a ton of people. I thought we were pretty clear when we mentioned it. We know who Hemant is and we know his blog. We didn't realize that they went over to a new place called Only Sky. We knew that they left Patheos, but we didn't, we weren't sure what it was called. That is the new place. We got a ton of messages about it, but people were also being like, Hey,

you should check out Hemant's blog. You should find out who he is. We know he's been on the show. He's been on our show. So we know who Hemant is. How many stories from the friendly atheist? He lives, he lives far enough where I could throw a rock and probably hit him from where I'm at. He's in the town adjacent to my, he lives in the same town my stepdaughter went to school in. We know who he is. We know who he is. So yeah, but yeah, thank you everybody for letting us know about Only Sky.

It's a reference to John Lennon. And it's, I guess that the rift erupted when they were saying, you got to be nice to people who are of religion. And they were just like, we can't. We'll just do our own thing. We can't do that. And even,

and Hemant is very forgiving. He is. He is a very forgiving guy. And, and even he couldn't withstand that. He was like, no, got a message from Brian.

And Brian says, Hey, just want to let you know that you don't have to go all the way to California. Mexico's laws are very supportive of abortion rights. And that is true. And, and as long as it stays that way, great, you know. Man.

Got a message from Scott. And Scott sent in this fucking image that I talked about on his live stream a while back. Guys, I'm going to put this image on this week's show notes. I can't even really describe this image, except for to say there's so many guns, it's almost impossible to pay attention to. There's so many guns in this photo.

And it's a family. It's a family of four, it looks like, with a child that maybe could be between three and seven years old. And then another one that's probably either preteen or teen. And then an adult couple. And there's enough guns here

to free one of those large cities in Ukraine. This is what is wrong. This is what... Also, I have to note that the dude looks old as fuck. Yeah. And that girl that is like leaning on him, like, that's a young lady. Yeah. That's a real young lady.

That looks like an old man with a million guns and a child bride in the middle of the South, man. It really does. That's what it looks like. It really does. Tom, we're getting a life update. We haven't talked for a while. How's Haley's health? Yeah, so thank you very much for asking.

I know we haven't talked about this in a while, and I appreciate the concern. It's a slow road, but we're on the upswing. So we're hoping that life will begin to return to something approaching normal in the next six to 12 months. I appreciate all the well wishes. Thank you guys so much.

We're moving in the right direction. We're not there yet, but we're heading finally on an uphill direction. Haley and Tom came over to our house the other night and we had an evening hanging out. But, you know, it's something that hasn't happened in a long time. Yeah.

Because Haley's health wasn't really up to that. And so that's a nice, it's a nice change of pace and it's a good sign. It is. It was really nice. I think it was our first social outing since last July. Yeah. It's been a long time.

So it was really nice. We got a message. This is from Carolyn. And Carolyn is on the organizing committee of Skeptical Con 2022. So Skeptical Con is happening July 16th and 17th. It's going to be in California. People you may recognize, Stephen Novella, Bill Nye,

they're going to be speaking there. So we're going to put links on this week's show notes. You can check it out. You can go there. It looks like there's also going to be maybe a hybrid version, but we're going to put links on this week's show notes if you want to check out SkepticalCon 2022, it looks like it'll be a good time. If you live out there, if you want to travel out there, it looks like it's going to be great. We got a message. This

is from Seth and Seth sent in an image. And this image is to try to trick people to pick something up to get into a conversation about Jesus and to see a conversation about Jesus, we're going to, it's really sneaky. We're going to put it on this week's show notes. You can check it out. Really super duper sneaky. I'll tell you what, man. They do that with the dollar bills

where they tuck it and shit. It's fucking crazy, man. Pay attention because you wouldn't care if we told you what we were talking about in the first place. You would literally

throw this shit away if we didn't trick you into fucking reading it. All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We want to thank Aaron Rabinowitz for joining us. You can catch his work at Embrace the Void, and you can also listen to him with Thomas Smith on

Philosophers in Space. Be sure to listen to Tom's new podcast. Dear Old Dads. Tom's coming out with a new podcast this week. This week. This week. This week. It's literally released on Friday.

If you're listening to this, it's available. It's already out. It's called Dear Old Dads and it's going to be great. People that are, that think about being better dads

and better men, I think you're going to have a really good show there with Eli and with Thomas and with you. I think you guys have a lot to talk about.

It should be a very interesting show for parents and for people who are just interested in what you guys have to think. And it finally answers the question, what are white men interested in? What do white men care? I mean, God, Tom. Where will white men have our voice finally? What will happen? 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, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan sales pitch late night

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Atlantis dolphins truthers birthersthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness,

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