Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 64: InKredulous

Episode Date: September 10, 2012

Special thanks to Andy from Merseyside Skeptics and the  podcast. Look for us on a future episode InKredulous.  Clips: Clint Eastwood at the RNC, Holy Grail, Vikings fight song Visit our Website at for more info.

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. So, Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you made when you were running for election? And how do you handle it? I mean what do you say to people? Do you just, you know, I know people were wondering.

You don't have it, okay. Well I know even some of the people in your own party were very disappointed when you didn't close Gitmo. And I thought, well I think closing Gitmo, why close that? We've spent so much money on it. But I thought maybe it's an excuse. What do you mean, shut up? I thought it was just because somebody had the stupid idea

of trying terrorists in downtown New York City. Maybe that would work. We're going to have to have a little chat about that. And then I just wondered, all these promises. I just wondered, all these promises, and then I wondered about, you know, when the, what? What do you want me to tell Romney? I can't tell him to do that. I can't do that to himself. You're crazy.

You're absolutely crazy. 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. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. political and there is no welcome matt this is episode 64 of cognitive dissonance and we have andy from the incredulous podcast as well as mercyside skeptics on our show i'm so sorry in advance andy i'm just so sorry i just feel like i need to apologize from the fucking outset that you have to waste your time being on our show after putting so much preparation into our appearance on Incredulous

and then being on our half-assed ad hoc program. I appreciate your apology. It's accepted. It's recognized, validated, and fully accepted. So the first story we're going to talk about comes from Huffington Post. And this is a story about Mark Craddock, Christian sect doctor. That's not a honorific in front of doctor. That's for fucking sure. You know, at some point it's like, wouldn't you just rather be doctor?

You know, and somebody's like, oh, are you doctor? No, I'm Christian sect doctor. Oh, back of the bus. Banned for prescribing gay cure drug used for castration. Again, this article falls into the you need to go back to journalism school headline writing class camp. This is an Australian doctor and member of a conservative Christian sect who has been banned from practicing medicine after prescribing a teenager chemical castration to cure the gay. Well, it will certainly cure his desire for any sex. And also means that this doctor is a complete shithead.

Andy, what are your thoughts? Well, I read this article with the usual amount of disbelief. And I don't know why I'm surprised every fucking time an article like this comes up these this doctor belongs to a religious cult called the exclusive brethren christian fellowship it doesn't sound like a cult at all either you know what i mean like that doesn't sound like a cult name at all no well i think it's a little bit awkward to say so i'm just going to refer to them as the exclusive twats.

Exclusive twats? There aren't many doctors in this cult. Do you know why there aren't many doctors in this cult? Because they don't believe in science? Because they're not allowed to be doctors. There are strict rules governing what you can and can't do, and belonging to professional associations and attending university are both banned. So it's tricky to be a doctor,

and the only ones that there are tend to be old having qualified before those rules came into force are you serious you can't attend university yeah i'm serious yeah somebody's sitting around making up a set of rules oh you know who we've got to get rid of we just can't anybody's smart i mean let's just throw and if you're if and what about if you're not, you know, he didn't attend college? No, professional associations too. Fuck it. I don't want anybody accidentally smart getting in.

I want to make sure that I structure an organization to be as fucking dumbo stupid as possible on every fucking level from the organizational structure forward. Bravo, exclusive brethren with religion i find that that's the only satisfactory way to guarantee a long-term future yeah that's how they deal with the cult for sure this is craig hoyle the chap's name is craig hoyle and he was 18 years old this story is four years old by the way but it's just come into the press again because the doctor concerns uh been struck off as we call it here in UK, but he's had his license revoked. He realized he was gay at about 18 and he came out. And some very, very strange occurrences ensued, including the one central to this story.

But starting with the personal intervention of a guy called Bruce Hale, who's a fucking moron and the leader of the exclusive twat. who's a fucking moron and the leader of the exclusive twat. Now, according to Craig, this guy specifically is the one who suggested the medical intervention that's at the heart of this story. And he sent him to this dingbat doctor called Mark Craddock, who prescribed a year-long course of a drug called Ciprostat. Now, one effect of this drug is the suppression of libido via the regulation of testosterone and for this reason it's been used for the chemical castration of sex offenders so guys i just want you to dwell on that for a moment the doctor prescribed an

intervention to suppress libido the symptoms that the doctor had been presented with were, I am gay. Now, from that starting point, for the doctor to write the prescription, he'd first have to agree that being gay is a diagnosable condition, then decided it needed something, and then settle upon Ciprostat as the answer. And it just blows my mind. The Catholic Church, the exclusive tw twats also they don't think that

being gay is sinful but the actual behavior is sinful and here you have the doctor making a moral judgment about the potential behavior of his patient and prescribing heavyweight drugs to suppress the sinful behavior in other words to kill the sinful behavior. In other words, to kill the sexual behavior, first kill the sexual urges. And this has got fuck all to do with medicine. The doctor's just abusing a vulnerable patient to pursue a religious agenda. How long did the consultation last, guys?

Have a guess. I'm going to guess 15 minutes. That's a good guess. 10 minutes. During which there was no examination. Well, how do you examine the game? You know, if that's the diagnosis, I actually would be more appalled if there was an examination. Right.

Like, well, you know, I listened to his heartbeat. I took his blood pressure. We did that little reflex with the knee thing. And then I looked in his gay. And then I was like, oh, OK, well, I can see there's some gay in like, what? No. I mean, why would you do an examination before equating somebody with a child molester? Yeah. I mean, that's definitely the way you've got to go. You got to play that out that way. And that's it. Exactly. Right. Like that's the, and that's the standpoint that a lot of people

have, especially here in the States, when you hear that constantly, they're like, you know, the reason why everybody's so against homosexual marriage in the United States is because they keep on bringing pedophilia into the conversation. They keep on trying to say, oh, well, you know, it leads to pedophilia or it leads to bestiality. It leads to what they call deviant sexual behavior. And you're just like, no, it's natural sexual behavior to be homosexual. Now, it's fine to call pedophilia deviant, because that's something, you know,

that you can't endorse because the person isn't a consenting adult. But, you know, when you start talking about homosexuality, you're, you're, you're trying to conflate things that just don't fit together. And they do it all the time. At least they do it over here. I don't fit together and they do it all the time at least they do it over here i don't know if they try to bring it into the conversation in the in the uk yeah um there is a massive argument over here about uh about gay marriage and this question of family values we don't see so much of the um of the sort of gateway argument where um you know allowing gayness um is a is a gateway to all sorts of other deviant behavior, which somewhat suggests that homosexuality is deviant. It does. Absolutely does.

Which, of course, it is not. So we don't hear so much of that. But I always get the feeling that it's in the background of some of these religious arguments. And in particular, the Catholic Church and the Church of England are united in their stance against gay marriage, and gays in general, to be absolutely fair. How do you unite against gay marriage and not really be saying, well, I'm pro-gay, I'm definitely on the side of the homosexual community. I don't want them to get married and have the additional rights that come with that,

but I'm definitely for the gay community. I'm for putting them back in the closet and i'm for shaming them and i'm for you know calling them uh deviants and equating them with pedophiles that's what i'm for i'm for that well they're also for um treating gayness with um with this drug now this drug is really quite dangerous, in fact. There are lots of side effects. So the non-condition that they're treating with this drug opens up the patient, or victim in this case, to a whole range of side effects, including liver damage, carcinoma, jaundice, hepatitis, all sorts of stuff.

And if by any chance he was to be in a position where he was to father a child, then there's a very good chance that fetus would be malformed as well. Oh, my gosh. So there are massive consequential side effects to do with this treatment, which is not a treatment. It's a fucking abuse it's absolutely abuse vulnerable teenager at a very important part of his life when he's realizing his sexuality and he's coming to terms with it to the degree that he came out to the the leaders of

his sect and then to his family now when he told his family he's got seven or eight brothers and sisters when he told his family they took the siblings away because they didn't want him him involved with the siblings anymore so they put him on a heavyweight drug then they rob him of his family support next thing he he moves out and he runs away to christ church and they rob him of his family support. Next thing, he moves out and he runs away to Christchurch and they track him the fuck down and they take control of him again and they send him to somewhere called North Island and then on to Australia where he has a meeting with this dick at the head of the organisation.

I can't remember his name. What was it? Bruce fucking Dick. and um i mean this is unbelievable absolutely unbelievable 18 year old man was treated like this over a period of two years after coming out he was drugged ostracized separated from his family he ran away um he was really they took control of it. Just unbelievable. Unbelievable. And finally, Craig took control of the situation the only way he could, by contacting the media. And that's when it all kicked off, really. Yeah. Yeah. That's the best way to do it, right? Yeah, definitely.

This drug is made for, you know, like you're releasing all the side effects. All those are less than what this drug is made for, which is prostate cancer, right? Yes, exactly. You know, like you're willing to take those risks when, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, all of these awful things could happen to me if I take this drug, but it's better than having prostate cancer. Yes. And this, you know, but when you don't have that, all those side effects, that's, that's all you get. You don't, you don't get anything but the side effects out of it.

It really does nothing except for the bad side effects. Well, that's, I thought the same thing. It's like, oh, man, I don't want to have a rich and satisfying sex life with a consenting adult. Where's something with horrible side effects I can take to damage my body and libido? Also, you know, looking at this article, too, they said that the exclusive brethren, quote, believe strongly in the traditional family unit. Really?

Because, like, in my traditional family unit really because like in my traditional family unit we don't fucking ostracize people like that's something how can you possibly say like well i believe in family unless my family member happens to be somebody i don't like unless i happen to you know like republican you know and then he's like well i've got to ostracize him because I love family so much. I want to damage somebody wholly. Like I want to just crush their fragile fucking spirit underneath the heel of my familial oppression for love. It's for love. I think it's interesting that when the news program were investigating the story, they took Craig around to interview various people concerned,

including the Dr. Craddock. And they confronted him effectively on the doorstep with the question, you know, what do you think you were doing prescribing Ciprostat? Do you know what the side effects are? Did he know what the side effects are? I'm going to guess no. No.

Of course not. He didn't know what the side effects are i'm gonna guess no no of course he didn't know what the side effects were i got it i think i think he was struggling to remember the uh the uh what the drug was for in the first place he argued that uh craig had asked for it himself oh yeah you just walk in and ask for a really specific drug right yeah but i wanted to i wanted to say that this turned into farce immediately after that, because after that doorstepping of the doctor, word obviously got out, and the news crew were stalked by members of the exclusive TWATS. There was this procession of cars following them around Sydney, and trying to block their way and force them off the road. And the crew got footage of all of this this which demonstrates the stupidity of these people doesn't it if you're going to stalk somebody and behave like a dick the last thing you do is do it

in front of cameras that are going to go on national television i just say but again this is an organization that's built itself to be stupid like so that's not surprising at all they behaved they you know they did this poorly well i mean that's kind of their thing you know, they did this poorly. Well, I mean, that's kind of their thing, you know, like it's a, it's a group. They're not really book learners. Yeah. It's not, not a bunch of thought thinkers in that group there. Yeah, no, no. So we'll have Andy from Incredulous on at the end of the show. We have, we actually have some points he needs to tally in the meantime. So we put him off on the side. We had a whole bunch of backlogged points and he's really good at tallying that sort of thing.

So we're going to have him back to talk about Incredulous and the Merseyside Skeptics later on. But until then, if you're new to the show, you're going to talk about now is from the jerusalem post which i read regularly i actually get the jerusalem post uh in my front yard. They throw a whole post. They just nail it into the ground. It's a bunch of Hasidic Jews actually just flinging out their car at me. It's pretty awesome. The little tuxedos are exciting.

Here's a story I ran. Zionists spread homosexuality to control the world. You don't understand controlling the world very well i ran how the fuck is homosexuality going to control the world at what point is at what point is there an evil scientist like rubbing his hands together in his evil layer like ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I will make the same gender, have sex with the same gender. And then. Profit. Control the world.

Like, what? No. You couldn't gain control of a whole Starbucks. Yeah. I think it's very interesting. Yeah, I think it's very interesting. They say in this article, it also ridiculed conservative Judaism for accepting gay rabbis and urged Western governments to stop people from engaging in gay and therefore immoral actions and provide medical treatment for homosexuals in order to stop their conduct. What, like castration pills?

Right. Yeah. Is that what they're supposed to provide? Although Iran has a pretty good like stop being gay program where they hang you for being gay. Yeah. I mean, it cures the gayness. It is 100% effective. The gayness is, it's fucking pulled right out of your body with the rest of your life force. Right.

With your spinal cord. Yeah. As it, from the, yeah. That's, you know, at some point you've just got to concede like you just got to look at iran and be like oh i ran iran's like iran's like your crazy neighbor right who's like his yard's full of like fucking dandelions and he mummer you know mumbles to himself and he hoards newspapers you know and like he's got like 46 cats and at some point it's it it goes from from being like kind of crazy to almost endearingly crazy,

where you just look over and you're like, that's just Iran. Pay no attention. Iran's out there mowing their lawn in their underwear again. What are you going to do? There's nothing you can do. You almost want to pinch Iran's cheeks a little bit and be like, oh, Iran. You guys are so cute with your little bigotry. I like this part of the article, too, because it says the Iranian report also attacked Hollywood

for depicting gays in a positive terms in the in the silver screen. You know, you got to wonder if you go into a PG movie over in Iran, if like PG stands for partial guillotining. Maybe they think it means pretty gay. Yeah, or partially gay. Actually, it's punishing gay. You know what I mean? That's what it should be. You know, the article blasted Israel for promoting demonstrations for gay rights and decried

Tel Aviv as the gay paradise on Earth. as the gay paradise on earth. Yeah, that conservative fucking Jewish culture is definitely the gay paradise on earth, Iran. Tel Aviv has nothing on San Francisco. Right. Nothing whatsoever. Look at that. You're like, hmm, I've not been to Tel Aviv,

but I'm guessing that's actually not the gay paradise. Yeah, yeah. Probably not going to be the case. And what do they do? You know, I think there is a great sort of read between the lines bit in this article, Tom. I'm going to read directly from it again. It says he added that the text legitimizes the execution of gays in Iran.

They have made a text not only to ridicule the West, but to also provide a reason why Iran executes gays. So they get a chance to – because being gay is like then pro-Israel in a way. So they have this way to execute you. Now they can say when people come and be like, we don't have gays in Iran. What we have is Zionists and they deserve to die. Right. Well, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. It's part of that whole idea

of attacking the decadent Western culture and lumping. Wow, that's an interesting idea. I hadn't considered that. It's really a good way to make homosexuality treasonous. That's exactly it.

Even the middle-of- of the road people in Iran will be like, well, fuck that. You know, those people deserve to die. Right. Well, they were just gay. No, they were really pro-Israel. Wow. That's awful. Can you imagine too how terrible it would be to be a homosexual in Iran?

Oh, my gosh. You're born, you come into your sexual being, you realize that you are a homosexual. You can't express that at all. There's no affirmations in your culture of homosexuality. You have to try to go through this fucking mummer's farce of not even dating women, but getting married and and you know having this whole shenanigans and and no matter how pro-iran you might be you have to know in the back of your head somewhere that if you were to express your yourself that it would be an act of treason that like you your yourself is always it can be at odds with yourself in this point.

Like, you can experience such tremendous cognitive dissonance. I have to think this is a recipe for mental illness and disease and unease and depression like crazy. Yeah. Like crazy for those poor people who have the misfortune of being born in Israel. I mean, in Iran, rather, you know, and being homosexual. Fuck that noise. Yeah, the only thing worse than being, you know, a male homosexual is being a woman homosexual, I guess, in Iran. Right, because you're the double whammy of being a woman in Iran.

Yeah, you're in Iran. You can't get any, you know, they just recently made a law that allowed, it was sort of like affirmative action for men in college over there. Basically, like, we have to keep the split 50-50. There's no way more women can go to school than men. And it's just like, you know, that's just endemic of whatever goes on over there in the Muslim nations while they treat women as second-class citizens. It happens no matter where you go I mean they're poisoning the wells in Afghanistan for crying out loud I'm not a witch

I'm not a witch But you are dressed as one They dressed me up like this And this isn't my nose It's a false one Well we did do the nose The nose? And the hat

But she's a witch Did you dress her up like this? No The nose. The nose? And the hat. But she's a witch! Yeah! We burn her! Did you dress her up like this? No! No! No! Yes. Yes.

A bit. A bit. A bit. What makes you think she's a witch? Well, she turned me into a newt. A newt. Got better. So this story is from ColumbiaReports.com.

And what is Columbia Report? Burned witches. Yeah, sure. It's mostly just burned. It's actually like when you open up your Columbia Reports newspaper, which I know we all do, and you turn to the burned witches section. It's like D3 when you're unfolding your newspaper. Right, right.

D3, when you're unfolding your newspaper. Right, right. A woman from northwestern Colombia, Antigua, I'm probably horribly mispronouncing that and we'll get beat up for it, has been murdered, specifically burned, for being a witch. Or as we like to call it, for being. For being. Because witches are not fucking real. Yeah. You know, only you can prevent witch fires, Tom. This message is brought to you by Smokey the Inquisitor.

You know what I mean? Smokey the Inquisitor. Really, truly. Like, the thing in this article I'm going to redirect from the article says, according to the police, no objects indicating the woman was practicing witchcraft were found in her home. Yeah, they also fucking didn't find a spaceship in her garage either. You know, the only thing I can think is that maybe they looked through her computer and found, like, spells she ordered from eBay. eBay.

You know? Maybe she'd bought some hexes and spells on eBay. You know, I think a lot of that stuff moved over to Etsy because it's homemade. Etsy, yeah, exactly. At some point, like when your culture begins to resemble a Monty Python skit, you have to sort of stop and be like, whoa, whoa. That wasn't a prophetic vision of the future. Yeah. That was satirical.

Yeah. You know, maybe we shouldn't. And isn't there any moment of clarity where somebody's like, burn the witch. And somebody's like, well, are we really sure she was a witch? Are we sure we want to do this? Is this the thing we want to do today? Can't we just have a campfire and make some s'mores? Like, that would be more delicious.

Yeah, we need s'more witches. S'more witches. S'mores like that would be more delicious yeah we need s'more witches what a fucking horrible thing to have happen you know and then there's no evidence of her practicing what would the evidence of practicing magic look like yeah like oh there's magic in this box like wait what no like we opened that, it was full of magic. It says they found the body beaten to death after the murderers drenched her. Afterwards, the murderers drenched her lifeless body with gasoline and set fire to it.

You know, she's beaten to death. So, you know, somebody's got to know who, especially if it's a group of people, right? Somebody's got to know who did it. But, you know, I'm not reading in this article. It's very short, but I'm not reading in this article. It's like so-and-so is in custody.

You know, this is the sort of thing that communities hide. They're like, oh, we got to, you know, protect our witch killing community. Right. What is the value in that? I have no idea. And you're exactly right. This is the only thing that can happen when a community condones it. Because it's not like...

I'm looking out my window in suburban Illinois and thinking, like, if there was somebody being beaten in the fucking town square and burned, that shit doesn't fly. It just does not fly. But there has to be a community that says,

A, we have a supernatural worldview. We don't value a naturalistic worldview. We have a supernatural worldview. We believe in magic. We believe in witches and wizards and fucking who knows what. You know, and we believe these things are real and we have to take action. And, I mean, I look at this and I think, you know, as much as anything else, this is an educational problem. Yeah, absolutely.

These people need to be – they need to be provided with better educational resources so they can understand, so they can come to the point – and not like Kentucky education, right? Not like – I mean, I'm talking about like a real education. They need to be given an education where they don't have to believe in magic. Because magic is inconsistent with the reality of their world already. It should be easy to dispel. You see what I did there? Yeah, dispel. I saw that.

It should be easy to dispel. Yeah. And then you have to beat less people to death. Like it's a win-win. You have less charred corpses around right yeah and that's the other thing who's who gets stuck with the cleanup right yeah like after the fucking great throbbing mob erection is over you know and this you've burned her and you got this husk of a woman in the middle of the whatever and you're like okay well that's done i'm going home

yeah so am i wait who's gonna stick around and clean up the corpse? We got a great stinky corpse here. It's a deliciously roasted corpse. So we'd like to remind people to donate to our Doctors Without Borders widget, which is our donation drive is called Apocalypse Without Borders. drive is called Apocalypse Without Borders. As of this morning, Tom, we had $1,345. That does not include the money that Tom and I are going to donate in October, which is going to be

$200. Remember that you can get a free t-shirt if you're the highest donor. Right now, I'm pretty sure that $105 is the highest, although I'm not quite sure. I'd have to read some names, but maybe you should just pay attention to how much you donated.

I'll tell you what would be the highest. $200. That would definitely be the highest. That's the highest out there. But still, you know, I'm impressed by the generosity of the listeners. I really am. This is going to be great when we write that check to Doctors Without Borders. I can't wait to do it.

So far it's been going really well. So thank you very much. And we're going to, you know, if you're not familiar with what Apocalypse Without Borders is, I'm going to play you a clip right now to tell you a little bit about the donation drive. I'm feeling pretty safe. It's the end of the world. As you know it, it's the end of the world. The year 2012. Some say the last year ever. You could accept the fact that this city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportion.

What do you mean, biblical? What do you mean, this Old Testament, Mr. Mayor? Real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together.

Mass hysteria. It is this certain future catastrophe that we here at Cognitive Dissonance want to prepare for. And so we give you your Cognitive Dissonance First Annual Charity Drive to prepare for the inevitable Armageddon. Hereafter known as the Apocalypse Without Borders. From now until December 22nd, 2012,

we will hold a charity drive and count on the goodwill of all our listeners to give money to the noble and secular cause of Doctors Without Borders. You've never looked at the heavens. Everything in the heavens is here. Moving as the heavens move. The Great Conjunction is the end of the world.

Giving is easy. Simply go to the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. On the left side of the page is a button. Click it and donate to your heart's content. Doctors Without Borders provides emergency medical care to millions of people caught in crises each year in more than 60 countries around the world. This will certainly be a busy year for them. Help contribute before Late. Wait, what am I laughing for? So Cecil, this story is kind of awesome.

One at some point has to admire Chuck Norris. You know, you just have to go, bravo. This is from Huffington Post. Chuck Norris, Obama's re-election will bring 1,000 years of darkness. No, we won't be forced to watch Chuck Norris movies. Chuck, that's not, that's unlikely to actually happen. Of course, he's actually quoting something from an old Reagan speech, which was insane then.

People have used that as an excuse, like, oh, well, you know, he's just quoting Reagan. Like, oh, okay, well, you know he's just he's quoting reagan like oh okay well you know that was some bullshit before so quoting bullshit doesn't make something less bullshit right it just makes you not coming up with your own bullshit he's not smart enough to come up with his own stupid shit he's got a pill for somebody else's stupid shit you know what did bring on a thousand years of darkness, Tom? Religion. Yeah, that's actually not been good.

There's something that's brought on a thousand years of darkness. But, you know, hey, let's just forget about that, evangelical Christians that need to get out there and vote. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to scare the shit out of you. I'm not going to talk about how great fucking Mitt Romney is. I'm not even going to say how good. I might not even mention his name. I might just tell you how bad it's going to be under Obama.

And you could look back on the four previous years on how fucking fucking meteors have been falling out of the sky from God, blowing up half of the United States. The raptures happened. Didn't we? Didn't Obama bring in the rapture, Tom? We've had like three raptures. Three raptures already in Obama's administration. It's rapture again. Yeah.

It's been rapture-tastic. Like he's a, he's on like the fifth Kardashian or whatever of his, of his elect, of his presidency. No, but really like, like all he does is just scare tactics. You know, your rhetoric is balls when you get up there and just say, you know, it's going to be worse. It's going to be scary. It's going to be worse. And you're like, well, we have four fucking years as a test here. Let's look back. How bad has it been? What the fuck is God? What is going to bring in the thousand years of darkness?

What could he do? What kind of political capital do you need to bring in a thousand years of darkness? Well, that's the other thing. It's like we can't get anything accomplished. You couldn't even accomplish a thousand years of darkness, right? It'd be like, well, we're going to filibuster this for a thousand years. Best we can do is four and a half minutes of darkness. That's the best we can do.

We got, you know, this is not like a bad horror movie. It's not 30 days a night. Vampires aren't going to descend upon America. Chuck Norris would just beat them up anyway. I mean, come on. It's true. He would just fucking roundhouse kick all the vampires back into... It's such a stupid fucking thing to say.

It says, if we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack. Now, how does that work? You say, if we look to history, but then you provide no context or history. Then you say we're under attack, but then you follow it up with we're at a tipping point wait how are we under attack we're at a tipping point and quite possibly our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don't change the course in which our country is headed that horrifyingly convoluted nonsense has no actual meaning right all it is like you said is just it's a fucking haunted house of rhetoric.

Sure. You just walk around being like, ah, you know, jump scare, jump scare. Socialize medicine. Right. Here are some words that might make you feel afraid. Like, wait, what? You haven't said anything, Chuck. And I have to say, that's what you need to stick to.

Saying things is not your strong suit. Unless it's a Walker, Texas Ranger script. You know what I mean? Like then you could say whatever you want. But what this really is though, think about the audience, Tom. This is evangelicals. This sort of shit, you know, these are the people who think there are real demons in the world. And they have to fight these demons.

So this sort of thing is perfect for them. So what he's saying is, I mean, he's really motivating a base. He's saying 30 million people stayed home. 30 million voting people stayed home last time. I am. And what he's trying to say with this, you know, read between the lines. And this is like, it's cool to vote for a Mormon is what he's really trying to say. in this is like, it's cool to vote for a Mormon is what he's really trying to say. It's okay to vote for a Mormon because a Mormon is more like you than a black person.

Well, that's something that keeps striking me too, is that that issue doesn't, isn't playing a more central role in this election, right? In most elections, it's lately in the last, you know, 15, 20 years or so. It's been such a big fucking deal. I got it. You know, Christian values, Christian this, Christian that. You know, here you've got the Democrat who is a Christian. Right. You know, they made a great big fucking deal about it in the first election about him going to this church.

Yeah. You know, that Reverend Jeremiah Wright being kind of, you know, maybe crazy and saying some sort of nutty shit. But like that was a Christian church, you know, and that you would think that would play well against the Mormon whose beliefs are so fantastically different than the standard evangelical narrative. But, you know, the evangelicals at this point are so invested in the Republican cause, in the Republican Party, that they basically are saying, by not distancing themselves from Romney, from this person who doesn't have the same faith tradition that they have, they basically said, okay, it doesn't matter. That actually never mattered. What matters is that we get somebody

in office who's not a Democrat that we can control. Because at the end of the day, what you think personally means less than our ability to steer the party. So just get them in the door, and we'll grab the reins when you're done. And that's, and because otherwise otherwise I can't see how the evangelicals could possibly get behind somebody who has a whole separate set of gospels and books. Sure. He's got a whole – he's like fucking – you're a level 10. He's like a level 15. He's got the next level spellbook. But there's like no issue being made of that at all.

And not that I want there to be an issue made of that. But I'm it's so it's so evidential of the hypocrisy. Exactly. And Tom, I mean, think about it this way. Like when when fucking Barack Obama ran, all you could hear, the only thing that you heard was he was a Muslim. I mean, you heard it all over the place to the point where fucking McCain is having town hall meetings telling old fucking crazy ladies that it's not the case. You know, it was it was ubiquitous. And now it's not even out there. People are just like, whatever, because I fucking dare you to call him a Muslim now.

I double dog dare you to call him a Muslim now because suddenly you're going to bring the Mormon thing up to the fore. So, of course, the fucking, you know, the Republicards, they're like, oh, I'm not going to say that. That's just opening the fucking door to fucking a whole can of worms we do not want to fucking delve into. Right. You know, at some point that reveals the magic underwear. Right. You know. Absolutely.

This isn't even the emperor has no clothes. It's like a wet T-shirt contest for him. We're going to get in trouble for the magic. You know, really, the magic underwear thing is something

of a misnomer. You know, it's a joke. It's meant to be amusing. You know, you take it or leave it. So we're going to take a break

and give you all the information that you need to contact the show. And we'll be back in just a moment with Andy from Incredulous. Want to contact Cognitive Dissonance? Visit them on Facebook. You can find the link at the website DissonancePod.com or type it in the Facebook search bar.

Be sure to follow the guys on Twitter. Their handle is at Dissonance underscore pod. The guys also post to Google Plus now too, so check them out there. And if you'd like to email them, you can do so at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. You can also leave a comment on the blog at their webpage or give them a call at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. And to everyone who listens, shares, retweets, or rates the show, Cognitive Dissonance

would like to cordially thank you for all of your fucking support. See, so this next story is from Right Wing Watch. I love this. I love this video so much. This is a video from this Rick Joyner, and he's got a daily program called prophetic

perspective on current events which i would think you'd pick a different name just because that is difficult to say you know how does that go welcome back to the prophetic perspective on you gotta have to pause yeah you gotta call it the PPCE, I think. And there's this sort of joke, like God hates amputees, right? And the Hitchens actually has brought this up in a variety of debates and stuff, and I've seen it. It's also very amusing because there's this idea that God heals. Oh, God heals. I had cancer and then I didn't have cancer. And that was God who, never mind that I got the cancer, but then, you know, healed the cancer.

So God gets a lot of credit for the healing of invisible diseases. But, you know, the point has been made several times, like, well, what about amputees? You know, where's the regrown limbs? And so this guy's got an answer, Cecil. That he does. They exist, Tom. People have gotten their limbs regrown. According to this guy, he witnessed, he was there, he witnessed through the power of prayer,

his friend whose index finger or his ring finger was chopped off and it grew back. But Cecil, it didn't grow all the way back. No, no, no. Because, like, they stopped praying? And, like, they got distracted by, like, a shiny? Yeah, like somebody had coins they pulled out of their pocket. So they stopped praying? How does that work?

I don't know. The only way to find out is to make a phone call, Cecil. Yeah, absolutely. We got to make a call to Hillbilly God. All right, go ahead, Tom. All right, let me go ahead and dial. Oh, yeah, hello, this is God. Yeah, hey, got a quick question for you.

You know, you're pretty good at curing the cancer, right? Oh, yeah, I cure it all the time. Do you also give the cancer? Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be able to cure it if I didn't give it to him. You got me there. You got me there. So what about amputees?

Oh, well, you see, I hate amputees. I mean, that's really, I really just, I find body disfigurement of all kinds vulgar. That's really – I really just – I find body disfigurement of all kinds vulgar. And so when I chop the limbs off of these people, I just – I don't try to save them. One time I did. There's a gentleman who was in the room named Rick Joyner. He was there a-praying, and they asked me real, real nice-like. They said, hey, will you get this guy's finger back? He stuffed it in a lawnmower, and he wants to get his finger back.

And you chose somebody's finger rather than, like, all those kids who've stepped on landmines? Like, you just—you picked a finger? Really? I mean, why the finger instead of all of the thousands of disfigured children? Well, you know, it's because Rick asked so nice. Oh, you got to ask, I see. That's why. It's not about what I can and can't do, young man.

What it's about is what I want to do and how I feel about doing it. And you got to be real, real nice like. You got to basically bake me a pie, a pecan pie. Really, I love a good pecan pie, especially if there's a little maple in there. I'm a big fan. Now, if I make you the pie, should I send that with my Santa Claus letters? Like, should I mail that off? Like, because heaven, I imagine here, now correct me if I, heaven's near the North Pole, right?

It's like right by the top there. By the top. I love the top. The idea of the top the idea of the top you're on a big speck of dust floating through the space but you're at the top of that speck of dust I don't think hillbilly God really knows

I don't think he knows at all no it turns out I love that it's just a tiny get almost to the end but then we got distracted it's just a tiny almost to the end but then we got distracted it's like God's like taking a shit he's like

we were constipated with prayer almost had it we were like right there like a little bit left wow what a powerful God he withdrew most but not all eventually of a finger if like a hundred people ask real nice yeah which really didn't happen period you know what i mean like like let's just get into the fact that it did not fucking happen period isn't that funny because if you're gonna make up a story to prove the existence of your deity. I'm not kidding.

And then you make up a weak sauce story. You're like. It's not even like. It's not like, oh, yeah, the person was a fucking, you know, a quadruple amputee and they grew fucking. They grew limbs and wings. Right. I was going to say the same thing. Like, you know, if you're going to just make shit up, be like, I prayed to God and my car flew. Yeah.

Like, oh, wow. I turned the person into a turtle for crying out loud. Yeah. Fucking Koopa Troopa. Koopa Troopa. See, so this story was sent to us by a listener. This is from deadspin.com. And this story is pretty spectacular. This is a letter that a football player, Baltimore Ravens linebacker, Brendan Ayanbendezu, he had come out in support of gay marriage.

And there was some backlash by a dipshit. There was a letter from Maryland State Delegate Emmet C. Burns Jr. There was a letter from Maryland State Delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. urging, I know, right, urging the organization to inhibit such expressions from their employee. Basically saying, hey, you know, they shouldn't say things I disagree with. Right. Not allowed to. That's not their right. My right is bigger than their right. Yeah.

And Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Cluies, he penned a response which Cecil, I think, deserves to be read. Yeah, go ahead. Dear Emmett C. Burns Jr., I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland state government. Your vitriolic hatred and bigotry make me ashamed and disgusted to think that you are in any way responsible for shaping policy at any level. The views you espouse

neglect to consider several fundamental key points, which I will outline in great detail. You may want to hire an intern to help you with the longer words. Boom! One. As I suspect you have not read the Constitution, I would like to remind you with the longer words boom one as i suspect you have not read the constitution i would like to remind you that the very first the very first amendment in this founding document deals with

the freedom of speech particularly the abridgment of said freedom by using your position as an elected official when referring to your constituents so as to implicitly threaten the Ravens organization to state that the Ravens should inhibit such expressions from your employees. More specifically, Brendan Ion Bandehu, not only are you clearly violating the First Amendment, you also come across as a narcissistic from understain. What on earth would possess you to be so mind-bogglingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person's right to speech.

To call that hypocritical would do a disservice to the word. Mind fucking obscenely hypocritical starts to approach it a little bit. Awesome. Two. Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment, and excitement. Holy fucking shitballs. Did you seriously just say that as someone who's, quote, deeply involved in government

task forces on the legacy of slavery in Maryland, unquote? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington, Jackie Robinson? Have you not heard of Kenny Washington, Jackie Robinson? As recently as 1962, the NFL still had segregation, which was only done away with by brave athletes and coaches daring to speak their mind and do the right thing. And you're going to say that political views, quote, have no place in sport, end quote? have no place in sport, end quote, I can't even begin to fathom the cognitive dissonance that must be coursing through your rapidly addled mind right now. The mental gymnastics your brain has to torturously contort itself through to make such a preposterous statement

are surely worthy of an Olympic gold medal. The Russian judge gives you a 10 for beautiful oppressionism. Three. This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy

even though they may believe in something different than you or act different than you? How does gay marriage in any way, shape, or form affect your life? If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you'll start thinking about penis?

Oh, shit! Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action. Will all of your friends suddenly turn gay and refuse to come to your Sunday ticket grill outs? Unlikely, since gay people enjoy watching football too. I can assure you that gay people getting married will have no effect on your life.

They won't come into your house and steal your children. They won't magically turn you into a lustful cock monster. They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90% of our population. Rights like social security benefits, child tax credits, family and medical leave to take care of loved ones, and Cobra health care for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged american citizens just like everyone else with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that that entails do the civil rights struggles

of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you in closing i would like to say that i hope this letter in some small way causes you to reflect upon the magnitude of the colossal foot-in-mouth clusterfuck you so brazenly unleashed on a man whose only crime was speaking out for something he believed in. Best of luck in the next election. I'm fairly certain you might need it. P.S. I've also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage, so you can take your I-know-of-no-other-NFL-player Ayan Bandejo is doing and shove it in your closed minded, totally lacking in empathy pie hole and choke on it. Asshole.

Bravo. Bravo. I love this letter. Yeah, it's kind of perfect. First off, you got to admit, you know, a guy in the NFL knows how to talk smack. Right. He does a good job, although he's a punter. So, I mean, a guy in the NFL knows how to talk smack, you know, he does a good job, although he's a punter. So, I mean, he probably only gets like six chances a game to talk smack. But still, he he does a great job in this letter of just destroying all the arguments

and being funny when he does it. Yeah, it's it's pretty spectacularly awesome. I mean, it's just it's just really terrific. And the idea that some state delegate would possibly say, hey, you guys need to censor the free speech of your players? For real? This is the kind of thing that, this is the response that the world should have to that nonsense.

Like, this guy should be just mocked unmercifully. And to see somebody do it with such aplomb and vigor is exciting. So we're back again with Andy from Incredulous and also the Merseyside Skeptics. Andy, if our listener – and you do say Andy. It's not Andi, right? That's not how you pronounce it. It's not Andi as in Gandhi. It's Andi as in handy.

So tell our – if they've never heard Incred. So tell our listeners, if they've never heard Incredulous, tell our listeners about the show. So Incredulous is yet another attempt from the Merseyside Skeptics to satirize the bullshit that surrounds us. So Incredulous is a panel show where I invite reputable, knowledgeable guests on.

I made an exception for you guys. Thank you so much for that. You're welcome. And it's in the form of a panel show. So in the UK, that would be like, have I got news for you? And I think in America, it's generally compared to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me or some show like that. Some pretend show that we made up that doesn't exist.

But also there's a little bit of QI in there because we try and reveal interesting stuff as we go along. So it's been running for a couple of years and we've only managed 15 episodes in that time because you guys know how difficult it is to find the time to do this stuff. And I take my hat off to you for doing it every week, but I can't do that. So we do every sort of,

it's coming out now about every six weeks, I'd say. You know, we do it by being bad husbands and, you know, for me, a bad father. So that helps. I'm able to do that and produce Incredulous on an irregular basis as well. Yeah, I will say, I will say that there's been some, you've had some amazing guests on your show.

Yeah. You know, in one particular episode, you've had George Trabb, Stephen Novella, and John Ronson all on the same show. That's got to be pretty amazing. Who's been your favorite guest besides us? Oh, well, I've got to – thanks for the loaded question. Besides you guys. Well, one of my regular contributors, I mean, all my guests are amazing, and I'm always humbled by how much time people are willing to put into this.

But, I mean, I love George, and I love all of my panelists, but probably the most regular contributor is Brian Thompson of Amateur Scientist Industries. He is such a funny and unpredictable guy. You know Brian? No, no we don't. Well, he used to produce the Amateur Scientist podcast and he's kind of morphed that into another one called

Quit. Quit It, I think it's called. I did listen to an episode with him on it. Yes, he's a very funny guy. Yeah. He is. I mean, he's not as funny as us, but he's funny.. Yes, he's a very funny guy. Yeah. He is. I mean, he's not as funny as us, but he's funny. I mean, he's all right, you know. Comparisons are moot anyway.

Nobody's interested in those. You were compartmentally the most funny people from America on the program we just recorded. Compartmentally? I love it. You're the most funny people

we've recorded today. Yeah. Correct. Not through today, but actually in this 24-hour time span. All of those things. So I think that I'd probably choose Brian, but, I mean, Gio's amazing, and he's so knowledgeable about everything. Oh, yeah.

You know, it's just great. It's really great. We're very lucky and the episode you mentioned um was recorded live at the qed conference in manchester i'm a co-organizer of that conference and it's happened we've done it twice now and we've got the 2013 dates have just been announced for the weekend of the 13th and 14th of april and we're all very excited that that's going to go ahead again. And that's sort of a skeptical convention, I suppose you'd call it. We invite interesting speakers.

We have a main stage. We have a breakout room. We had about 400 attendees last year. And we're expecting a similar number this year, or at least hoping for a similar number this year, because we've already budgeted the spend. So if they don't show up, we're in trouble. That's about a quarter the size of Tam. That's pretty big. That's a very big. Yeah, we're very, very pleased with it. And one of the things that we deliberately did was we've organized it in such a way that we're keeping the actual cost

of attendance down. I think last year, the cost of attending for both days, including a massive party on the Saturday night, was only £89. Oh, that's like 500 American dollars, but that's probably pretty reasonable for those. I'm staggered by your ability to work out the currency. That's an exact figure, actually. It's a moment by moment inversion. I could tell by the two zeros. It's amazing.

It's amazing how that just rounded right up. Yeah, it's really great. And Merseyside Skeptics and Manchester Skeptics collaborate to create that event. Yeah, I think we had the other person who runs it, Mike Hall, on our show before. Oh, yeah, Mike. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's my colleague. So you run this show, Incredulous, which really does focus a lot on the guests.

Do you find it that this sort of fit your personality well? Because we had a guy by the name of Patrick Redmond on a long time ago. Yeah, from Birmingham. Birmingham, yeah. He's a great guy. Really great, very funny guy. You know, he reminded me like you except for he was funnier. But, you know, like he had –

It's not difficult. He had – seriously though, he really had he reminded me like you, except for he was funnier. But, you know, like he had. It's not difficult. He had. Seriously, though, he really had this attitude that was like, I just want people to talk on my show and have a good time. And I just get a chance to listen to him. That's why I do this. You spend a lot of time letting the people who are on your show really, really sort of talk and have a good time. And you fill in. But is that frustrating for

you or is that something that you really like to do there's two there's two sides to that actually i mean you're absolutely right your description of how i try to run the show is accurate and i do try to make it all about the guests and not about me but i mean i do and i do like joining in with the fun right right um but there's also some paranoia in there because i mean before the before before the show you know i always get very very nervous about the material i've prepared about the rounds i've prepared whether they're creative and interesting enough and there's all sorts of of shit i go through personally before actually recording so actually when we get to the recording and and actually i don't have to do that much um you know it's actually quite a relief by

that stage so for me it's all about the preparation and just letting people do whatever they're going to do and have a great time doing you know when i'm nervous before you know being on like being on incredulous i was a little nervous i just have two cans of spray paint right before the show and then i feel like i'm ready to go you know that explains everything that explains everything you you do a very good job of doing that uh playing the host and doing a lot of the preparation and and putting the the uh the pieces together um now was was the wait wait don't tell me and uh what's the name of the british version of that the uh because everything's american first and then british version you see how that works of course

the uh yeah well it wouldn't work that way if I was editing your show. But there's a show in the UK. We've got quite a few of these types of programs. There's one called Mock the Week, and there's one called Have I Got News for You. There's a number of sort of satirical current events shows on the radio, on Radio 4. We have the News Quiz, which is exactly the same format as the others I've mentioned. And they're all great shows with fantastic comedians

and people appearing on them. And that's, you know, I just love getting really funny people who are quite relaxed about themselves on the show and just hear what's going to happen next. See, and the best we can come up with is, are you smarter than a fifth grader? Well, dude. You know, and most of the time going to happen next. See, and the best we can come up with is, are you smarter than a fifth grader? Well, dude. And most of the time the answer is no.

I was going to compare it to, because it's funny, they have like, he's like, oh, we have like six or seven of these news shows. Like we have ridiculousness on MTV. Like that's what we have. We have some ex-skater who watches viral videos with three morons and they make really stupid fucking completely contrived jokes about them i mean it kind of sounds like our show but you know a little less sophisticated but with more media so we could let's talk about the merseyside skeptics the merseyside skeptics um we hear a lot

about them it's funny because they're a pretty large group how how big is the merseyside skeptics and what kind of things do you guys do well merseyside skeptics um i mean in in the uk there is um uh like like in the states there's a skeptics in the pub movement and most science skeptics when it was formed was probably about the 13th or 14th that formed in the uk um and it is quite a large group in the sense that um that uh you know we get some really really cool cool speakers to our monthly talks. And quite a few people turn up. A crowd of 100 isn't that unusual, which is pretty good for that type of an event. Yeah.

But in terms of being big organizationally, the board of the Merseyside Skeptics comprises about seven people, I think, with all different roles. But the reason that Merseyside Skeptics are big is because we've done some big things, really. I mean, one of the very first ones was one that I was involved in, and we call ourselves the three men in the pub, and that's Marsh, Mike, and myself.

We sat down in the pub, and we decided to do a homeopathic overdose. And we said to ourselves, OK, well, what's the biggest we could make this? What's the biggest we could make this? And what we did in the end was create a campaign called the 1023 campaign. I don't know if you guys heard about it. I have heard about it. Please tell our listeners about it. So 1023 was an attempt to – it was a public communication attempt around homeopathy where we wanted what

we've always found is that when you explain homeopathy to people they immediately go bullshit immediately up until the point where you don't if you haven't if they haven't had it explained to them they're quite happy to be neutral about it and say well you know live and let live and so on and so forth as soon as you explain it to them gone so we this was a public engagement exercise which we did via the mechanism of a stunt and the stunt was uh the famous you know randy made this famous i suppose the homeopathic overdose but what we did that i think was the the clever thing is that at that time um there were probably 23 skeptics in the pub groups in the UK and we recruited all of them and all of the skeptics in the pub groups around the country with a couple of exceptions

participated in a mass overdose on a particular day at a particular time many of them built additional activism around it such as doing it outside boots boots is a big pharmacy over here um doing it outside boots doing it inside boots uh getting various press coverage and everything it it was a really really fantastic um experience to be involved in it and we timed it to coincide with some work that was happening in in government where they were assessing the validity of homeopathy and we changed the date of our stunt to coincide with the outcome of that particular um that particular research uh which which came out negatively for homeopathy as it happened so we actually achieved quite a few in national and international headlines for our um for our attempt which was unbelievable and fantastic and stimulated in a big way by Martin Robbins,

who did a great PR job for us. But, yeah, it was very, very successful insofar as the amount of column inches we managed both on radio, in newspapers, on the net, and so on and so forth. Very pleased with it. Did it have an effect on government opinion at all? We think that um the way that i would put that i mean everybody's entitled to their opinion i wouldn't say that there's a direct effect no i would say that in combination with a variety of things that were

going on and continue to go on around homeopathy as a contributor to that overall effort i definitely think that we we had an effect i definitely do but i'll tell you what was the unexpected outcome which is perhaps even cooler is that all of the skeptics in the pub groups in the uk worked together on something and as a result of that skeptics in the pub started talking to each other and so on and so forth and lots of connections and relationships were formed we've now got well over 50 skeptics in the pub groups in the uk i think it's in fact i think it's more than 60 or 70 now um so i think it was a great stimulus for that as well why do you think homeopathy has such a hold like in the

uk it's i mean we have our we have so much crazy here in the states so much crazy homeopathy just has no toehold here i mean it has no real it's not really a thing here so much but in the uk it seems to be i mean it really has some some ground and i don't i just am baffled by that me too me too what is it about the what do you do you have any ideas and what is it is it a cultural is there something cultural there that says like okay you know i can understand where this sort of uh this this particular belief nestles nicely within our our sort of cultural matrix or is it just it just happens to be your brand of crazy i don't think we have um um i don't think we have more i think the reason we have an affinity to it is purely geography to be honest because um homeopathy was born in Germany 200 years ago.

Now, Germany's just across the water from us. We've engaged with them a couple of times in the past, as you may be aware. And, you know, we're... It's such a British thing to say. We've engaged with them a few times.

Yeah, we've engaged with Wadikoshis, too. Yes. Not quite as successful. No, we've engaged with Walakoshis too. Yes. Not quite as successful. No, definitely not as successful. So I think that, you know, we're in Europe. You know, many of the, in France, homeopathy has a really big toehold in many of the mainland European countries. And, you know, that's the case over here as well.

And unfortunately, we have Prince Charles, who's a massive advocate of homeopathy and you know through through overt and apparently covert means he manages to keep homeopathic hospitals open and you know he's able to lobby apparently without restraint as much as he wants with whomsoever he wants to lobby for pro-homeopathy agendas. And we've got some fabulous heroes of homeopathy in the UK. Edzard Ernst is a massive hero of homeopathy and has stood up to Prince Charles on a number of occasions. So I think we're winning the battle, I've got to be honest. Like I say, when you explain it to people,

they immediately say bullshit. So all we've got to do is keep working on that and keep getting them to understand what it is and what it isn't, and they'll call bullshit by themselves. So public engagement is the key. I had no idea there were homeopathic hospitals. That's crazy. Well, we did have five.

We've only got two now, I think, is the number. And that's in large part due to the government research. There was one closed down in Bristol, and after the government report came out, two more have closed. Wow. So, you know, there's a few wins, quite a few wins. That's good. I mean, five to two, but two is still too many.

Absolutely, yeah. But, you know, we continue fighting, and there's some amazing sceptical work going on from across the country on this. You know, people like Andy Lewis over at the Quackometer, you know, just people all over the UK are fighting. They're always on the alert. They're looking for stories. They're always, you know, fighting back when stuff gets into the press. You know, we're working hard on it, and I wouldn't say we're winning, but we're certainly making progress.

If our listeners were going to try to find Incredulous, how would they do it? They would type Incredulous into anything, apart from Word. How would you... Typewriters. It's spelled a little different. Yeah, it's spelled with a K. Okay, fair enough. So it's K-I-N... No, it's not.

It's I-N-K Regulus. And it's delicious. You should give it's not. It's I-N-K Regulus. And it's delicious. You should give it a try. It's a wonderful show, and we recommend it. Thanks so much for coming on our show, Andy, and letting us destroy your show today. We really appreciate it.

You're welcome. I hope you have 30 seconds worth of material you can actually use. So first things first, Tom, before we get into the email, Balls from Australia generously donated $100 and said we had to refrain from hostess Twinkies for two weeks. We didn't eat any hostess treats for two weeks. And now, Tom, I don't know about you, but I have one in front of me right now. Do you have one?

I do, indeed. That is the... I will mention, by the way, that this expires on September 19th of 2015. Oh, you look at my... I want to bring up that when I went to buy these Twinkies, which I don't like,

I had to buy a box of ten of these things. And as a fat man with sponge cake in front of me, unfortunately, I lack the willpower to even abstain from things I don't enjoy eating. So although I don't like them, I am certain to eat all 10 of them. So that's kind of horrifying.

Mine just say best by October 6th, and then it doesn't even have a year. Yeah, because the year doesn't matter. At some point, you're just like, oh, well, I'm not sure when these were manufactured. That's the best part. I don't know when they were made. All right, so mine is open, and it's a very dry little cake with some stuff in there. Hostess is not sending us any money, by the way.

No, we are not sponsored by the hostess corporation. I've got my wretched little penis-shaped cake in my hand here. Here's to you. Balls. Thank you for letting us eat a wang here. Oh, that's dry. That's not a good thing to eat. You know what it tastes like?

Oh, yeah. Greasy sugar. It tastes like being poor. Oh, no. Oh, my God. No, I can't eat any more of that. That's not a thing I'm going to eat. This is an insult to snacks everywhere.

Oh, it's so dry. How could it be dry? It's got a creamy filling, too. You know, and the thing is, it's kind of got this off flavor of like rancid oil on mine. And that's not good. Oh, that's a disgusting little. I need a drink. This is cheap. That's not good.

I'm not going to eat the rest of that. Man, I got to eat nine more of them. Well, thank you, Balls, for donating to Apocalypse Without Borders. We appreciate it. We appreciate everybody who's donated. And we're climbing up. We're getting – I'm hopeful we break two grand, Tom. I really think it's possible.

Our listeners are generous folks, and I can't wait to see that number break the 2,000 mark. Yeah. And without our contribution. I want to point out that for that $100, I ate something which stained a clear plastic wrapper. That is in the temple that is my body now. Yeah. All right. So we got a voicemail. Let me play this voicemail for for you.

This voicemail is from Susie. And then Tom is going to read it. And then we're going to talk about her her questions afterwards. Hi, guys. My name is Susie. I live in Prattville, Alabama. I wanted to call and say hi from, oh, maybe the 10 atheists in this state. I just had a question, and, well, I'm sure you're going to bring it up, but I wanted to see what your thoughts were on the official democratic platform adding back the word God and the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And also, I'm kind of a new listener, so you may have covered this in the past,

but do you think that we will ever actually have an atheist president or a good representation of atheists within government? And I guess that's all. Keep up the awesome, awesome work, and you're keeping me sane during long, arduous hours at work. So thanks, guys. Bye. So Google Voice likes Susie a little bit, at least, because it got a couple of this right. Hi, guys. My name is Susie. I live in Prattville, Alabama. I want to call and say hi from old. I want to call and say hi from old.

Maybe the 10A. T? S? As in the state. I just had a question, and well, I'm sure you're going to bring it up, but I wanted to see what your thoughts were on the official Democratic platform adding back to work, God, and the recognition of Jerusalem at the capital of Israel. And also, I'm trying to do with our Save Me a Cover. This is in the past. But do you think that we will ever actually have an ATS president or a good representation of ACS within government? And I guess that's all.

Keep up the possible work at Your Keeping Me Sane during long, arduous hours at work. Thanks, guys. Bye. So thank you, Susie, for calling in. We appreciate it. Remember that if you would like to call us up and leave a short, you know, minute and a half at the maximum voicemail message, you're more than welcome to do so. Remember that long distance rates apply and you can reach us at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. So Susie, to answer your questions, what the Democratic Party is doing right now, I think, is trying to get that religious vote back that they probably lost early on when Barack Obama ran.

And they're trying to get that back because they think, I think that they can show that, you know, if they show Romney as a Mormon or they try to show that he's, you know, different, he's different than most people in the United States, you know, religiously, then they can have a better swing with the middle of the road people that really, you know, they're independent. They don't vote one way or the other. They just vote based on where they see it right now. And we're thinking if, you know, with the middle of the road vote, I think they're going to have a better chance with those people if they're religious. I think that's what they're thinking right now. I disagree with it. I think, you know, we've made some strong pushes in the last four years to try to be a little more secular. And I think going backwards is a bad thing. Absolutely a bad thing. I think it's awful.

And we've talked about it several times on this show. We, Tom and I both don't think that an atheist, an open atheist, at least now, could be popularly elected to the presidency. Now, we do think that there are examples of very small places where atheists are being elected. A few more here and there. You know, a good example would be Sean Faircloth was elected, and he was an atheist. There's an open atheist in the House right now. So state government, it's a lot more likely. Local government, probably way more likely. We're talking federal government, it's a big deal, and it's tough.

It's very tough, I think, to be in federal government unless you're from an ultra-liberal part of the country and get voted in. And I think you really only have, you know, at this point, senators, congressmen, those types of people. We got a couple of emails from Esme. We want to talk about the Christian Mingle email. Esme has some funny – a little funny bits about Christian Mingle. She says, how the hell does some online dating website know what God is telling me to do? I love that you have to log in to find out what God is telling you to do. Well, God actually speaks HTML. A lot of people don't know that.

He speaks in code. I love this. ChristianMingle.com, first thing, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. That is from Psalms 37.4. I've delighted myself a lot in my life. I delight myself on something of a regular basis. And I'm not sure that God's been very happy about that process. No, no. God doesn't like it when you delight yourself. That's for sure. That's why he created – that's why he coded, hand-coded ChristianMingle.com via dictation.

So thank you for sending that in, Esme. It made us laugh. We got an email from Andy, and Andy tells a funny story about driving a limo. he tells a funny story about driving a limo. Yeah, he says he was, I chauffeur for a living and my company owner allowed people to bring their kids to work one day last week. My son's three and a half and a huge Power Rangers fan. He's such a Power Rangers fan that I took an old black bed sheet and made him his own ninja outfit.

He wears it all the time, karate chopping and kicking everything in sight. Back to the chauffeuring job, I got to take my son to work with me for a pickup at the airport to take a couple of pilots to their hotel. My son and I were waiting in the terminal, and lo and behold, a Muslim family emerges from the crowd. Two women in full burqas. Without missing a beat, my son screams at the top of his lungs, as only a three-year-old can, Without missing a beat, my son screams at the top of his lungs as only a three-year-old can, Look, Dad, ninjas! As he ran up to the women, acting like he was a ninja himself.

That is spectacular. That is awesome. I love that story. Thank you very much for sharing it. That gave me a laugh. That was very funny. We got an email from Haven. We got an email from Haven. Haven had listened to all of our back catalog and had a lot of great things to say.

Haven left an iTunes review this week as well as a few other people. We just cracked 300 iTunes reviews. So we want to thank everybody who rates us on iTunes. Remember that if you do rate us on iTunes, it winds up lifting us up in the stats a little bit over there. The more ratings you have as well as the more downloads people will notice our podcast more. So we thank everybody for doing that. We got an email on PodFeed this week. We got a rating on PodFeed

this week, Tom. The rating just gave us two stars and said confusing. So I think we're confusing to some people. Although they didn't really elaborate. They just said it's two stars confusing. I think if you're confused, you're doing listening wrong. I don't know how you can – What's confusing?

Yeah, I don't know what's confusing. Evidently, maybe they're having conflicting thoughts. Maybe they're having their own cognitive dissonance. But we wanted to thank Haven for sending in a nice, long, great email. And we appreciate you listening. Tom, we should read part of Wally's email here. Absolutely. He says, a quick thought on the argument from design.

If we are intelligently designed, doesn't that mean I should be masturbating more? I mean, the designer put my hands right there. And my Johnson is shaped almost perfectly for a firm but gentle grip. Almost like a Ray Comfort banana. The head prevents any unauthorized grip slippage. It just seems to me that God, in her infinite wisdom, wants us to crank more out. I think it's true. That seems accurate.

I've been doing it the entire show while we're talking. It's true. That seems accurate. I've been doing it the entire show while we're talking. So we want to thank Andy from Incredulous for coming on our show and for inviting us onto his show. Now, his show is going to be produced, we hope. He says he hopes within the next week. But he said he's going to go on holiday.

I don't know what that means. I think he goes away for a while or maybe they close down the U.K. or something. I'm not sure. But he's going to go on holiday, he said, for a week. So we might not be up right away. But keep checking. And you can always find Skeptics with a K as well, as well as Incredulous. And you can listen to all their back catalog

at mercysideskeptics, that's one word,.org.uk. Now, you can always search for Mercyside Skeptics, or you can search for Incredulous, and it starts with a K. Pardon me. You can search for Incredulous and it starts with a K. You can search with Incredulous and it has a K in it instead of a C and you can find their podcast. So we're going to leave you as usual with the Skeptics' Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.

It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

The statements made on this program do not express the views or opinions of anybody, not even the host. Any resemblance to coherent thoughts or ideas is purely accidental. Cecil and Tom are committed to minimizing all such misunderstandings. Thank you.