Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 644: Dr. Alice Howarth - QED

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Thank you to Dr. Alice Howarth for joining us today!        Show Notes   Try not to die of cringe impossible challenge  

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago and beyond This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode 644. And we are joined today by Dr. Alice. And we asked Dr. Alice, how do you want to be introduced?

She said, oh, I don't know. And then she's like, well, Merseyside Skeptics. And then Skeptic Magazine. And also QED. So just a few projects, Cecil. And I do want to point out I pronounced that properly. You raise your hand way too often to do stuff, to volunteer for stuff.

Basically. You've got it. You've got to do the, it's like sitting in the airplane and everyone's walking by and you don't want them to sit there. You've got to avert your gaze when they call for volunteers.

Get silent. Tie a shoe. You've just got to get good at picking up your phone at the right time. Right. And look at... Oh, man. Really important text. I got to take this.

I got to take this call. Hang on a minute. I know my screen is blank. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much. We appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. It was wonderful to meet you in person.

What was it? Five, six years ago? Oh my God, so long. It must have been ages ago because it wasn't the last QED because I wasn't there. It was the one before. Yeah.

It's been a while. It's six years. I think it was- Are you guys coming this year? Oh, we can't make it this year. Can't do it this year. This has been a tough year for us, but we are planning on coming back to QED eventually.

Oh, absolutely. Of all the conventions that we've ever been to, I think QED sets the highest bar for not only content, stuff that you can really dig your teeth into, amazing speakers, fun nights to hang out, but just the atmosphere there that we had, I could not tell you how much fun I had.

Yeah. The city was fun. The people were fun. Great time. Everyone was welcoming. Just the atmosphere there that we had, I could not tell you how much fun I had. Yeah. The city was fun. The people were fun. Great time. Everyone was welcoming. We had such a wonderful time. And it was kind of thrown together at the last minute,

but we had a blast out there. It was really great. Oh, that's great to hear. Always good to hear good feedback about QED. Yeah. So you guys have got to be excited because this is like, I mean, this is the return. This is the triumphant return. We've got to get it right this time to make sure that everybody, although to be fair, it's been so long coming that it could be terrible and people would love it, right?

Low bar, low bar, no. It will not be terrible. I promise it won't be terrible. Yeah, I feel like COVID has set a nice low standard. Like everyone's just going to show up in their pajamas, like blinking heavily after crawling out of the dark and into the sunlight. People have forgotten how to do social lives. People have forgotten what it's like to be in the real world.

So it'll be fun. A bunch of nerds in a room apply alcohol, failure to have communicated socially for two years or more what could possibly go wrong oh it's a recipe

for success this feels like from like H.G. Wells like time machine it feels just like all of a sudden like the dudes

from like underground just like crawl their way out you know I forgot what they were called Morlocks there it is the Morlocks just like crawl their way out, you know? And they're just shots or whatever. Yeah, I forgot what they were called. Morlocks. There it is.

The Morlocks just like emerge into the sunlight, you know? Over, under, how many undressed people in the bar by the end of the night? What's your bet? What's your bet? Because you know it's going to happen, right? We probably are going to have to keep our eye on that. If there is any nakedness, we may have to ask people to at least return their clothes.

We can't. I feel like Heath is a solid one. It has to be comfortable for all of our guests. I mean, with Heath and Eli there, though, guaranteed someone's getting their shirt taken off. Guaranteed. And then immediately put back on by a crowd of onlookers. We'll get to the lineup of QED a little later.

But we're so happy to have you here, Dr. Alice, to talk about some stuff. We want to talk a little bit about Britain's COVID response. When COVID hit, Tom and I, of course, we live pretty far apart from each other. And when COVID hit, neither of us wanted to get each other sick. So we started, you know, recording from home and talking to each other a lot that way. And we just decided not to talk about COVID like at all on the show.

We were like, you know what? After the first handful of weeks. It's too much. Every week is a new COVID story. We just gave up. We were doing, you know, like- You can't keep up to date, right? Yeah, well, that and our response

was so comically bad and terrifying that it was one of those things that like, like you're watching the world slip away. So you think, you know what? Maybe we shouldn't talk about this. Let's let other people deal with how bad this is. So we just decided instead, you know, we're going to do man bite dog stories for like a whole year. We just, we just fucked around.

We found the dumbest stories you could find, you know, and we ran with them. But we're curious, you know, from a perspective of, you know, rating it a one to 10 response, you were, you know, in the middle of the UK during this. What do you think the UK did to try to stop COVID, to try to help its citizens deal with that? What do you think their response was? Not enough. to try to stop COVID, to try to help its citizens deal with that? What was,

what do you think their response was? Not enough. Not quick enough, not fast enough, not bold enough. We had loads of problems and we had the same thing, right? That we were recording a podcast and we always record in Marsh's back room. Marsh, you've had on the show before, everybody in Skepticism knows Marsh. We were recording in his back office, the three of us were Skeptics with a K and we all got COVID before the first lockdown in the UK. Because by that point,

there was so much COVID already in the country and the UK government was in such denial that it was kind of refusing to do anything in terms of action i think eventually they started to cancel some big public events but but far too late there was a massive race uh horse race event very early on in the pandemic that definitely should have been canceled i remember that yeah yeah and they were they were saying like sorry but I just want to clarify one quick question. Weren't they like initially just like, we're going to do herd immunity.

We're cool with herd immunity. Herd immunity, that's the solution. It's not that bad a disease. We'll just all get it and then we'll all be fine, which scientifically is just not how it works with these kinds of things, right? Scientifically, you want immunity because the vulnerable people need protecting. And if you're just going to let it rip through your nation, then those vulnerable people are not protected. I love the idea that it is a radical notion to suggest that not getting sick is superior to getting sick. It's remarkable.

Why can't you just say that out loud? You're just like, hey, which would be better? To get sick? Yeah. That's over here. Or to, now hear me out, not get sick. And people are like, no, there's a hefty debate. There's actually something to weigh on both sides of that.

You're like, what the fuck? No, there's not. When the horse race was going on, could you bet on COVID to win or just place? something away on both sides of that you're like yeah what the fuck no there's not when when the horse race was going on could you bet on covid to win or just place it's gonna win the triple right oh it's just bonkers i don't know if it's the same for you guys but in the uk like there's this big pride around going up to work when you're sick. Like you're like dying in your office. And that's supposed to prove that you're really dedicated to your job. And it's like, you're getting everybody else sick.

It's worse. It's awful. It's terrible here. I will say this though. In the last two years after COVID, I have noticed many people in my social circle, in my work circle that have called off and done things like, I'm sorry, I got a scratchy throat. I'm sorry, I got sniffles today. I'm just not going to come. We can talk on the phone or whatever. That was not a thing, not for your

social circle even. So if you had a cough at home, you'd be like, I'm still going to go out to the bar. Or if you had the sniffles or you've maybe had a little bit of a headache, you'd be like, ah, I'm still going to go out to the bar. Or if you had, you know, the sniffles or you've maybe had a little bit of a, like a headache, you'd be like, yeah, I'm going to say, if you starting to feel sick, you got a cold, you're still going to go out with your friends to dinner. I, I recently, very recently, I was going over to a friend's house and he called, he sent me a message in the morning. He said, you know what? My wife and I aren't feeling well today. We're just going to skip the thing tonight. You know, and they weren't, they said, I got a, I got a scratchy throat is what he said. He had COVID.

Right. He canceled. He had COVID. No one else got COVID. He had, he and his wife dealt with COVID and then it was over. And like, I think that the last couple of years have taught people at least in my social circle and my work,

which is higher ed, which is totally not work, by the way, that is not the same as regular, like grind, grind, my work, which is higher ed, which is totally not work, by the way, that is not the same as regular like grind, grind, grind work, but it has taught people in my, in my work that I literally just had to put out a missive to my employees the other day to stay home. If you like, I'm, I'm like, I manage a group of people and I've got managers underneath me and they've got employees underneath them. So it's a fairly large group of people. At the beginning of this, I sent everybody home. There's only about eight or nine people

that are in the office out of like a hundred. And so everybody has been home and they're going to stay home. And I closed my office and sublet it and it's all that. But every once in a while, they still have to get together in these small groups for meetings. And just like two weeks ago,

one of my managers came in to meet with another manager and she's like, oh, it's just allergy. It wasn't allergies. It was COVID. And she gave the other girl COVID. And I had to send out another message like, look, the boss, that's me, says stay home. But it's so built into our culture that even when the authority is like, stay home, it's cool. I don't want you to come to work when you're sick. They're just like, I should probably come to work when I'm sick. You're like, no. Is it still bad there? So we've just come out of quite a bad wave. We've had a bunch and I had it for a second time just a couple of months ago. So you can definitely catch it twice. So we we were really fortunate at the beginning that we like we all got it and then we went into these lockdowns and we were all reasonably okay we didn't get really really sick

and then this second time around I just got it and a few other people I know and it was quite bad I think this variant's quite bad but that peak is now dropping and we're like oh it's dropping it's it's gone down to less than one in 15 people has COVID. It's unreal. There's still a lot of COVID around. Right. And we're now in the position where the government guidelines are, we recommend you stay home if you think you've got COVID,

but we don't require it. You can go into work if you've got COVID. You can't tell if you've got COVID because you can't get any free tests anymore. They've removed the testing system entirely. So you now have to buy tests if you want to do tests. So there's a bunch of people who are like, well, I've got a scratchy throat, but I can't stay away from work because I don't know if it's COVID. And there's no government guidance to say that I should stay home if I think I've got COVID, really. It's just bonkers. What was your vaccine rollout like? Is there vaccines available?

Are people getting multiple jabs? So that's the one thing we did. Well, there's a couple of things we did really well in the pandemic response. One was that there was this furlough scheme. there was this furlough scheme. So very early on when we went into those first nationwide lockdowns, people who could work from home or couldn't work from home but didn't need to be working could go into this furlough scheme and they would get something like 80% of their salary would be covered and then their employers could just top up the rest. So that was one good thing, one good pandemic response response and the other was we were

shit hot at vaccines we rolled out the vaccines really quickly our vaccine uptake rate was really high there was obviously a lot of reluctance and there is an anti-vax issue in the UK as I think there is everywhere in response but pretty much you know everybody I know has been triple vaxxed already. We've had two vaccinations within close succession and then a third booster. And I think we're now at a point where we're rolling out a fourth jab to people in vulnerable populations, elderly. We did that here. So vaccines we're doing great at, but everything else. Vaccines we're doing great at, but everything else.

Yeah, yeah. What is the NHS's take on the role of, let's say, Reiki, for example, in the treatment of COVID? I have been reading a little bit about that. How is their homeopathic response? I mean, obviously, COVID is exacerbated by imbalanced magic energies. Definitely, definitely. I'm not saying it causes it, but it makes it worse. You wear a proper jade amulet, you're okay. I think that's why we got more sick the second time

around, right? Because we're just, we're railing against the alternative medicine so much. Our chakras are out of line. We got really sick from COVID. It's our own fault, really. So, yeah, nhs is currently at or has been recently advertising for reiki practitioners to work more in hospices and end-of-life care actually rather than covid and what's remarkable about the nhs is obviously there are little pockets of woo within the nhs that are major major problems and that we've been working as

skeptical activists for years to try and bring down those numbers of things like that that are available to patients on the NHS because it offers that legitimacy to things that just don't work. When it comes to COVID though, I think the NHS has been pretty hot apart from struggling with, you know, there being far too many cases for them to handle. They've been evidence led most of the way. And we've been very quickly shifting how we treat patients and trying to change how. So there was this thing fairly early on that we realised that actually it was really important for patients with COVID, particularly very strongly on their lungs, to be laid flat. So they were laid flat, I think, laid on the fronts to help them breathe for longer and keep them off ventilators as long as possible. And then not long after that, we introduced these steroid treatments that we know help quite well for people with COVID. So actually,

not too much woo in the COVID response. That's terrific. And I actually, I really admire so many of the people who work in the COVID response. That's terrific. And I actually, I really admire so many of the people who work in the NHS who've had this onslaught of anti-vaxxers coming in and telling, and COVID deniers coming, gone into the hospitals and complained at them for following treatment and said that their relative doesn't have COVID and that they shouldn't be on a ventilator

and all of these things that may ultimately lead their family member to die. And the NHS staff have had to deal with that. They haven't paid any extra to deal with that abuse from people, are overworked and underpaid and exhausted from running, working through loads of shifts when half their colleagues have got COVID as well.

Yeah, right, yeah. What about ivermectin? We had a big problem with ivermectin here in the States. People foregoing treatment from real doctors, finding either, I don't want to call it black market, but you know what I mean? Like ivermectin that was prescribed to someone else that they're doling out to other people or some types of veterinary versions of ivermectin that they were taking instead of going to the hospital. People continuing to get sick thinking that that was going to help them. Was ivermectin a big deal in the UK as much as it was here?

It was definitely a thing. We had that little wave of ivermectin and the same with hydroxychloroquine, right? There was this wave of it being really popular and everybody talking about it. It seems to have disappeared. I've not heard anybody talking about it more recently, but then I think it's become a lot easier to be a COVID denier now that we're pretending COVID doesn't exist. Oh, no. Let's get back to normal and let's not do any pests. So people can say, oh, well, I've got a cough,

I've got a tickle, but it's just flu or it's just a cold or it's just allergies or whatever. And so they're not even thinking about taking alternative treatments for COVID because they don't believe they've got COVID half the time. Right, yeah. Why do I do an alternative treatment for something that isn't real?

Like the CDC's new guidance was just a shruggy emoji. Yeah. That was the... It's like... I'll do what I want. And this is it, right? That we've got no guidance on how to protect ourselves from COVID.

So we're just, we've gone, in the UK, certainly, we've gone back to normal. People are not wearing masks in shops or on public transport or anything. They're socialising pretty much exactly as they were before, going to clubs, going to parties and things like that. It's everywhere. And I hold my hands up.

I'm doing the same. I'm not wearing masks in shops anymore because you're the only person wearing a mask and it feels really uncomfortable. I do occasionally pop one on, but it kind of feels like there's no point anymore because it's just everywhere, which doesn't follow the science at all. Yeah. If no one's participating, it's really difficult. I will say like I live outside of Chicago, which is a pretty major city. And when I travel to downtown, I get on a, what they call a Metro train here, which is like a big sort of train that that's a commuter train that travels downtown. And there's,

you know, many, many cars. And I would say about 25% of the people are, are masked about Jesus, only a 25% of the people are masked. I'm one of those people. And then when I get, when I get on the L train downtown, which is the smaller commuter train that travels on a elevated track in Chicago, that's about maybe 35 to 40% of the people are masked. It's a little higher percentage, but it's not enough to protect people. We're at virtually zero here. If I'm on a commuter train, if it's in, I try not to travel at busy times because I think that's, that's actually now, now people aren't taking that much care. That's the safest way to, to avoid getting it is just to avoid people as best you can. But if I do occasionally have to get on a very busy train, I'll wear a mask for that reason. And there might be three or four

people in the carriage wearing, wearing a mask, even if a mask, even if it's full to burst in. Yeah, that's in Liverpool. I think I went to London a few weeks, a few months ago, and that was a little higher, actually. But there's more people there. Right, right. It's funny because I work in my basement. I'm very isolated. My life is just very very very locked down and isolated

for a bunch of reasons but my kids i took i took the kids to like the first day of school tour you know walk around get your schedule and like my family was wearing masks and we were the only i think i think we might have been the only people in that high school. The high school that the kids go to is huge. It is a massive high school. It is probably a few thousand kids. Yeah, a couple grand, right? And there's no way that any of them are wearing masks at all. And so I'm looking at that and I'm like,

God, we haven't gotten it. And it's fucking everywhere right now. And school has started. And I know school just started this week. And I'm like, it's fucking everywhere right now. And like school has started. And I know school just started this week. And I'm like, come on, like the Omicron variant vaccines should be rolling out here within like four to five weeks. And I'm like, just not enough time. Please don't bring this home. Like, I don't leave my house.

You know, and this is the thing is that it's, it has got to a point where it's everywhere. And I get one thing I get incredibly frustrated with is seeing people who will complain online or will brag online. Oh, I haven't, I haven't had it yet. And, and, and therefore I'm doing everything right. And it's like, you can do everything right. And you can get it like, and the last time I got it, I was doing everything right. I've only been less careful about masking since the last time I had it because I kind of feel like what's the point? But I'm also very, very lucky that I've had it twice and not had long COVID effects because that's scary, the fact that you can be sick for a very long period of time afterwards.

What I've been reading about long COVID is that vaccines really do help with the long COVID effects. That might be something that you might know a little bit about. Do you know a little bit about the long COVID effects and if vaccines will help protect you? So I think there's evidence that vaccines can help. They don't prevent it entirely. So if you are vaccinated and you get COVID, the COVID is less likely to be super severe and you are less likely to get long COVID. So getting vaccinated is obviously very, very important, but you are still at risk of getting long COVID. And because so many people are getting infected, that means so many people are at risk of long COVID. And then as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of an idea of who's more likely to get it other than people with pre-existing health conditions,

which is fucking everybody, right? Everybody's got pre-existing health conditions. so i have read some some interesting stuff on one way to prevent it to try and prevent it is if you get covid do fucking nothing relax i have read the same thing do like as little as possible and then do less than that um for as long as possible until you're fully recovered because if you try to go back to doing normal stuff too soon, you're at greater risk of getting long COVID. So, but not everybody has the luxury to be able to take 10 days off with COVID to make sure they don't infect anybody and then rest for another two.

Like it took me a month to recover from COVID last time. Oh my gosh. And I was fortunate that I could do nothing for a month. But obviously many, many people can't. Which means the people most at risk of COVID are the poor people who need to go out and work and can't switch off because they're on the breadline. Yeah, it turns out that also working from home

is also a very privileged thing that lots of people just can't partake in. They just can't do because they're in a position at work where they have to be at a place. Like you can't be a work-from-home mechanic. You know what I mean? You've got to go to work. You've got to do that. You got to go to places. Cable guys have to, yeah, service job has to go there. The supermarket, they can't ring you up from home. You know, they've got to be in this place. And so it's a very privileged thing to think, you know, everybody can just work from home. Nobody,

I don't know, it's a small percentage of the popular workforce that can work from home. And then also, you're right. The people who have to turn around very quickly and go back to work are almost always people in poverty. It's the worst. And it really is just, it's a disease that's just going to impact them

way more than it impacts anyone else. It's just, it's a terrible thing. And that work ethic insanity that we were talking about before plays into that as well. Like here in the States, the standard like vacation package that you get in a good job with benefits. So like a lot of jobs don't have any paid vacation, but the standard opening vacation package you get is two weeks off a year. So like, if you use all of your vacation being sick, you bought two, you got two weeks off. So that's your time off. And after that, it's like coming out of your pocket. And

that's if you're lucky enough to have paid vacation. Chances are. And also too, coming out of your pocket is only if your boss will let you. Right. Cause some of them would just be like, look, you come back to work or that's it. Yeah. You might be able to take FMLA, but FMLA is unpaid. Yeah, but if you're moving packages around or something, you're working hard. Like you said, working afterwards can be really detrimental. So that's terrible. Yeah.

When it comes to vaccines, in the United States, we did okay, but there was a huge, there's been, I think, for many years, an anti-vax population here. They were relatively quiet, I think, you know, small groups of people, you know, you'd see little bursts of measles in certain places where the soccer moms forced their kids not to get measles shots. And then there'd be like little bursts of it, but it wasn't as bad as what we saw during COVID. Did you guys have leading up to, in the UK, did you have leading up to COVID

a strong anti-vax community and did they get stronger when COVID hit? Yeah, so we're pretty much the same, right? That I think there is an anti-vax population here. Thank you very much, Andrew Wakefield. He was our fucking problem. What a fucking dick. Fuck that guy.

One guy, man. and so i am in that generation where they vaxxed us for mmr like at uni as well to catch anybody who wasn't vaxxed right as as kids because it was right in that in that little um that generation of people where there were a load of people who didn't get vaccinated but a lot of that anti-vax sentiment had it hadn't gone away at all it It definitely still existed. And especially in areas where there's people coming from different countries. So I think in particular, Italy has got quite a high anti-vax population. And obviously if you're in an area that has a bunch of Italians move into the area, then the children at schools can have low vaccination rates because of different conspiracy theories and beliefs of different cultures.

But we definitely had an issue with anti-vaxxers, but much smaller by comparison until the COVID pandemic. But I think a big chunk of that is the conspiracy theory movement has just been growing for the last probably 15 years. And it was just bubbling to the surface right before the pandemic. And then the pandemic hits and we're having people locked down and having their rights really infringed in lots of ways. If you're not allowed to leave your house, that is, your rights have been infringed, whether, you know, it's for the greater good,

but it still affects your right to freedom. And so the conspiracy theories just spiraled out of control during the pandemic. That's so terrible. And you're right. It really was sort of like everything sort of building up to one sort of perfect, you know, just all it took was one match to light that all on fire sort of perfect, you know, just all it took

was one match to light that all on fire. And, and it, you know, it all hit at the wrong time, you know, hilariously enough, maybe six months before the pandemic, Tom and I were talking about how terrible it would be to have Donald Trump as the president when a pandemic hits or something big like that. We said it on the show. Can you imagine if something like that happens with this chuckle fucking charge? And then it was the leadership side here in the States was, and I don't want to exaggerate, but it was as bad as it could have been. I don't actually think that it could have been worse at a leadership level here in the States.

Did you encounter, because I mean like Trump openly like shit on vaccines and said insane stuff about sunlight and bleach and took his mask off as a show of like dominance and alpha maleness or fucking whatever he was doing. Did you guys have the same like leadership doubts or leadership sowing of discord? We had leadership sowing of discord and doubts, not around vaccines, actually. So Boris Johnson, as much as I hate him in every single way, he is terrible, just awful. As bad as Britain could

have got for our pandemic response and didn't turn up to the first bunch of Cobra meetings for the emergency meetings when the pandemic first kicked off. He probably had a hair appointment. He was on holiday for the first two. That's so insane.

That is so Boris though. I mean that's so Boris. Come on. That should be a show. That's so insane. That is so Boris, though. I mean, that's so Boris. Come on. That should be a show. That's so Boris. But because his pandemic response was so behind and they really didn't want to go into lockdowns and destroy the economy in the way that lockdowns were predicted to do, they put all their eggs in the vaccine basket. So we were

shit hot on vaccines and the messaging around vaccines was go get your vaccine. And they were really good on that. Less good on other messaging. So right at the beginning of the pandemic, Boris Johnson is wandering around shaking hands with people and acting like this is a reasonable thing to do. And then of course got COVID I was just really sick. He's asking people for a drink of their Coke. He's just like, what is happening, man? I mean, our guy literally said, this is nothing. It'll disappear like magic.

Like, he said, like, one day this will just disappear like magic. He's like, it'll just go away. Like, you don't know anything. You literally are the stupidest person. And we picked you out of everybody in the United States. We said, that's our guy. That's it.

It's terrifying. We have 370 million choices and that's the one. All right, let's talk about QED. Let's talk about QED. Let's talk about something that might be a lot. And it's got to be a lot of fun. Tell us about this year's QED. Is it first time back?

Like you said before, it's first time back in a while. So what's planned? Well, we have got, I'm so excited for our lineup this year. And this is my first year on the organizing committee. So I'm so like, this has been the event that I live for. It's my favorite event of the year. I love going to, now I get to be part of the organizing committee and help give ideas for speakers. So we've got some great speakers. We've got the Gam Guys coming to do a God Awful Movies episode live on the main stage, which will be amazing. We've got Professor Chris Jackson, who is a geologist who's going to come and talk to us. He's done the Christmas science lectures in the UK. So that means you're a big deal.

If you're on the Royal Society Christmas lectures, you're a big deal in the UK. We've got Aaron Rabinowitz from Embrace the Void is doing a panel for us, which is really exciting, alongside a few other people. What boring thing is Aaron going to talk about? What boring thing is Aaron going to talk about? What boring thing is Aaron going to talk about?

I'm teasing. The nature of bullshit, an academic exploration of the... We've got this exciting panel on conspiracy theories, basically, which has got Ara Benowitz on, Michael Marshall is on that, we've got Rachel Schreyer

from the BBC's disinformation team on health. It's going to be an amazing panel. There's somebody else on that panel who I now can't remember, but that's going to be amazing. That sounds awesome. That sounds amazing. We've got to do conspiracy theories, right? Absolutely. We've got Azaraza from the US who's coming to talk about cancer. Fern Riddell, who is a historian here in the UK. She talks about suffrage and the history of sex and sex toys and things like that. That'd the skeptics with a k group is going to do a live show there is that true so there'll be a skeptics with a k live show there will also be an incredulous incredulous life oh that's so nice the last uh qed must have been the last episode yeah you know you gotta dust it off once in while. And he's furiously writing his questions now. He's like, I've only had like 50 years to do.

Think about it. Q89. Incredulous episode nine is going to be great. So, serious inquiries only. Thomas Smith's going to be there doing a show. That's good. That's great. Oh, that's awesome.

That's very great. And Lindsay Osterman. So that'll be brilliant. We've got a bunch of great stuff. Oh, we've got somebody called Emma Sullivan Bissett who talks about, in fact, she's the other person on the conspiracy panel.

She is going to be talking about aliens and type of things like that, but she also, she researches why people believe all sorts of odd beliefs. So I think she's going to be brilliant for, for that panel as well. It's, it's a great lineup. I'm so excited.

The last time I was there, I had my booklet and I had put so many check marks and stuff I wanted to go. There's no way you could go to everything because there's stuff up against one another. There's overlap. So you just can't do it all. But the programming that you guys put on is just amazing. And I'm so excited for you guys.

Can you tell people if they were going to try to get tickets or if they're going to try to travel there? Can you tell them a little information about that? Yeah. So it's in Manchester at the Piccadilly Hotel, the weekend of the 28th of October, 28th, 29th and 30th of October. We've got like a Skeptic Camp event being hosted by the Skeptics in the Pub Online crowd doing that's a free event on the Friday as well, which is great. You can get tickets and they're £120 or £80 if you're a student and you can get them from qdcon.org. Alice, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so happy you could make it onto the show.

We look forward to hopefully having you again. If anything blows up in Britain, we're going to send you a message. You got to come back on and talk about it. You got to talk with us again. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks so much for having me. Cheers. Helmet, what's going on?

Sanders, what's going on? It's MegaMate. She's gone from suck to blow. What? They're getting all their air back. Do something. Do something. Do something.

I'm breathing. I'm breathing. Air. Air. This story comes from Rolling Stone. Herschel Walker bashes new climate law. Don't we have enough trees? Tom, he really says that too.

He really does. Like, here's the thing. I know that very often political reporting is about a soundbite. It's about pulling out and teasing out a click-baity headline. Yes. So that you can hear somebody say something. And then very often, you and I will be looking at something and we'll say, yeah, I mean, he kind of says that, but it's in the context of what he says.

This is his actual point. Like, this is literally Tom. Tom. Yes. Tom. Yeah. This is his actual point. Like, this is literally Tom. Tom. Yes. Tom. Yeah. This is the whole point. This is it, guys.

This is the pinnacle of his argumentation. This is where we're at. He thinks we have enough trees. I don't want to, I don't want to, let me read it. You should read

what he has to say. Because it's here. I got to read a bunch of stuff. All right. Here we go. Discussing the Inflation Reduction Act recently signed into law. I'm going to interrupt myself. Discussing is a generous fucking verb in this paragraph.

When you say discussing. Discussing. Yeah. Discussing. Discussing. Has an eruditeness right to it it implies it feels like there's a back and forth and there's meaty arguments on both yeah you know we're gonna sit down we're really gonna lie hash this one out okay no this is this is the level of

discussion discussing the inflation reduction act recently signed into law by President Biden, which included the largest environmental investment in American history, Walker argued on Sunday that Democrats, quote, continue to try to fool you that they are helping you out, but they're not. A lot of money is going to trees. No, that's not what he said. A lot of money, it's going to trees. Don't we have enough trees around here? Yeah. Yeah. And he's referring to a portion of this where they're going to plant new trees. Yeah.

Carbon capture. Carbon capture by foliage, trees, fucking natural resources is the most efficient way that we have to do carbon capture, right? Maybe in the future. We will figure out a different thing. I guarantee. I guarantee we will figure out a new way to carbon capture. Maybe in the future,

we will have great big carbon capture machinery. We have a natural device right now that we can plant en masse and create a carbon capture circuit. It's cheap as fucking hell, and you end up with nothing more offensive than a tree. Right. What fucking blows

my mind is people objecting to trees. He doesn't have an argument, though. Trees. Oh, I don't want to plant fucking trees. Then I'm going to have to look at all these goddamn trees everywhere. These fucking eyesore trees. Don't make me look at a fucking maple.

Oh, shit. What is that, a fucking squirrel up in that thing? My whole day is shot. Oh, goddamn Robin. Fuck. It's a tree. Yeah. Why are you mad that we have a world with more trees?

The thing is, he knows he needs to be against it. Right. But he's not smart enough to know how to be against it. No. Right. And this is, I think, a problem, not just of Kershaw Walker, who is genuinely, I think he has some sort of syndrome from playing hockey. Like, hockey.

He didn't play hockey. He played football. I think he has a syndrome from playing football that has hurt his brain in a way that makes him deficient. There's no other explanation. I can't, if you listen to him talk, he doesn't sound right. Yeah, man. Like, there are some other quotes in this article and i want to i want to grab a couple of quotes to buttress your point right in july walker left meteorologists

scratching their heads when he claimed that the green new deal would result in america's quote good air deciding to float over to china's bad air China's bad air would then move over to our good airspace, which would force America to clean that back up. It's just, there's, and then he says, he also says about evolution, at one time science said man came from apes. Did it not? If that's true, why are there still apes?

Think about it. We did. Yeah, it. We did. Yeah, man, we did. And, and, and it's not an ape.

So, and, and come from, and that's not how evolution works. You literally got every element of that wrong. In any case, here's the thing. Yeah.

He knows what he needs to be against. Right. He is recognized and his handlers have, and he has handlers. He has people who keep money from him. Of course he does. He has, and his handlers have, and he has handlers. Of course he does. He has people who keep him away from my students. Of course he does. He has, he's been sort of pointed at, these are the things that we need to oppose.

Like, this is easy, right? You can teach a little child. You can teach a child to oppose things. Like, it's like, it's very easy to instill that. Right. It's understanding why you oppose them. Right. And then coming up with good arguments for the opposite. that. Right. It's understanding why you oppose them. Right. And then coming up with good arguments for the opposite. Yep. Right. For, well, I don't think that's a good idea. And

here's why it's bad. And here's why this is good. Yeah. Those are two things that you could do easily. None of this here. You know what? What it really comes down to is economy. Right. Right. The reason why they don't want to do any green stuff is an economic reason. They cannot do, there's nothing to do with the environment that at this point they can argue because all their arguments have been stripped away. And they're not even really arguing that anymore. They used to, but now they're not. And they're not even arguing with it. Now their argument essentially is, well, who knows if climate change won't be a good thing? Yeah.

That's their argument now. And their other argument is like, look, it's not worth it financially to fix it. Exactly. Right? Like, we know what's happening. We probably think we're part of the cause. But you know what? It's not going to be so bad that it is worth the cost.

They're playing a risk-benefit analysis game. Yeah. But Herschel Walker's not playing that game. No that it is worth the cost. They're doing like a, they're playing a risk benefit analysis game, but Herschel Walker's not playing that game. He doesn't know what to eat. He doesn't know what to say. Don't we have enough trees? Like, no. Yeah.

No, we don't. No, we don't. We don't have enough trees. No, we don't have enough trees. Asked and fucking answered Herschel Walker.

It's easy. This guy's running against Raphael Warnock. Yeah. I, I, if this is a close race, if he wins, if he wins, Cecil, I don't even know what to do in America anymore. They're saying that it might be close enough for a runoff.

I can't. I couldn't imagine that, but that'd be insane. I cannot. We live in a world you can't satirize anymore. Like, this guy doesn't know how anything works. How anything works at all.

This is not, and here's the thing, though. Like, even though Herschel Walker is somebody who I said might have some serious problems mentally. Right. There's a possibility that he has some serious problems. He's about average when you think about some of the other dumb shit that some of these other people say. Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong, man. It's not that it's like so shocking. I could easily imagine

somebody like Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz saying something very similar. Yeah, man, 100%. Who was that guy who fucking brought the snowball in the Congress

and was like, there's still snow. James Inhofe. There's still snow. He like whips a fucking, like a snowball at fucking Mitt Romney. You're like, okay. No, get asked and answered.

You're an idiot. You're a dumb person. And so I don't think that their arguments would be any much more sophisticated than that. But I think that, you know, really we've got to understand that it's all about economy. And if you stifle this economy by doing something, you know, really we've got to understand that, that it's all about economy. And if you,

and if you stifle this economy by doing something, you know, like green, they think that other economies won't do that. And they're just going to pollute willy nilly and then get all the money because then they can create things without regulation and all those other things. And so that, that's their argument. I mean, literally, that's their argument. It's fucking the argument. But the thing is, that's a bad argument because it basically means that it shows you that the fucking

profit system is the path of least resistance. Yeah, man. It shows you that the profit system is a bad system that we follow and that when we strip mine our economy and strip mine our economy and strip mine our literal world, we're doing damage that cannot be undone.

Yeah, 100%. And they don't get that. They say it out loud, but they don't get it. Right. And you're just like, yeah, man, like Dallas, this last week, you needed a RAF, not a car. Yeah. I mean, the only thing the science has been wrong about in terms of climate change is they've gotten it wrong in the sense that they were too conservative.

The speed of it. Things have gotten worse faster, not worse. And the effects, the other thing that science has gotten wrong is that for a long time, there was a narrative that the richest nations would be spared some of the worst effects. Yeah. That the worst effects, and I'm not saying,

let me make sure I phrase this properly. I do still believe that it is true that poorer nations will eat more shit than rich nations. Yes, and I think that's true.

So please make sure that I'm not misunderstood. Yeah, I think that's true. And that is, there are many reasons for that, but I think that a corollary bad argument was that we would be spared, the rich privileged nations would be spared, and that all the shit would be eaten by like Somalia at all. Right. That we are coming to

understand. I hope that, no, we will still eat shit. Yeah. We can just stop it or mitigate it or try to slow it down. It's just that on a comparative basis, it's like, it's like saying like, well, you know, I'm not going to get killed if you shoot me. All right. But I'll still get hurt very badly if I'm shot. Yeah. And it's like, all right, well, I mean, both both are bad just one is worse and i think that for a long time people are like i just won't get shot at all yeah i just won't take any damage at all that's not the reality we're i think moving into yeah and i think we need to discard that idea fuckers like herschel walker who are like don't we have enough trees no we don't have enough trees man we need a lot more trees you know in fucking brazil

they're bulldozing rainforest at a rate that is staggering and jaw-dropping to consider man plant more fucking trees wherever you holy shit dude yeah what the fuck you don't and if the argument is like it's not worth the money then say out loud yeah say what you fucking mean what i fucking hate is they won't say what they fucking mean. They won't say it. And then they've convinced their entire party that whatever we want is bad. So it doesn't matter what their party wants. It's all about just being anti what our party wants. And so they don't have to have a good reason. They could just say something stupid like, well, yeah, electric cars. I wouldn't trust those. Right, exactly. And you'd be like, well, so they don't have to have a good reason yeah they could just say something stupid like well

yeah electric cars i wouldn't trust those yeah right exactly and you'd be like well why not well and who knows dude i mean the i don't know this isn't where you're going but like do you you probably don't because you're like a decent fucking person that doesn't waste their fucking time but like do you ever look at like reels or anything like that? Like online, like Instagram reels? I don't.

So like when I look at Facebook, I like, I can't make it go away. So if I look at Facebook, it always has this banner of reels. I do get a banner of reels and I normally scroll way past it. And like,

it's so funny because I've never clicked follow. I've never clicked like, I've never clicked anything. But every once in a while, I will scroll past them or I'll watch one, but I never interacted with it. But just by clicking on it and watching it, the algorithm learns what you've clicked on, right? So even if you've not like interacted meaningfully. So now what, incidentally, I think this is really funny. What, what the reels on Facebook on the banner thinks i want to watch are fast cars great white sharks and fighting videos

and like to some degree it's not wrong sure because if i'm scrolling because you like i'm like sharks are cool and like it'll catch my attention it's fun like mma i'm like dude that guy because it's seven seconds, right? Or whatever. Seven second knockout, yeah. So anyway,

and I kind of do like cars. I do like cars. Like I'm not like a big fucking gearhead, but I like cars, you know? And so like, every once in a while, this is my long way into this,

every once in a while, I'll see this, like I'll see one of these videos that I say like something like, Model S Plaid goes zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds. And I'm like, that's a really cool achievement frank i think the fucking electric cars are amazing and i'll click on it i'll watch it and

then i i made the mistake of clicking on i wonder what people say about this like to me i'm like i'm blown away by how baller that is right that is like zero to 60 times it's the fastest production car in the world in a four-door sedan. Yeah. That's amazing to me. And I click on it. And you know what the comments are, man? My burp-a-durp gas car sounds so much cooler. Where's the engine noise? Doesn't sound awesome enough.

It's all this, like, toxic masculinity doesn't sound tough enough. No, it sounds like a pussy mobile. Weak as fuck. Right? Enjoy being weak as fuck. And you're No, it sounds like a pussy mobile. Weak as fuck. Right? Enjoy being weak as fuck. And you're like, it's objectively better. It's so much better.

And I just think it's analogous to your point. It's like, you don't have a point. Yeah. All you can do is bitch that it doesn't perform in the demonstrative way

that you need to be able to see it in order for you to get your fucking boner up. Yeah. And they've been taught that they need to oppose these things. Even though some of these things might be in their best interest. Yeah. Even though like, like we were saying, like a world with more trees and electric cars means you have like a prettier landscape, cleaner air, and a better vehicle. And we're just like, I don't want things to get better if it means you win.

Exactly. That's exactly. What? That is exactly it though. That is exactly it. And this week, California just came out. I saw this.

With a huge, you know, basically saying like by 2035 or something. No more gas cars. No more gas cars. And they're a huge economy. We talked about this in the past.

This is why Trump was trying to go after them when he was president. And they were trying to push for more economical cars, gas mileage, more gas mileage, more gallons, you know, miles per gallon. And he was pushing back and saying, no, you can't do that. And they're like, fuck off.

We'll do what we want. We're the fifth largest economy in the world. And we'll do anything we want. We're a state, eat my ass. And so they decided to do it. And now they're in a position where they can change the entire world by just making a couple decisions on how they're going to regulate their own state, because it's such a large economy. And they're right now, and this is the best way to change this. This is 100% the best way to change it. It's not a federal policy, so it doesn't have to be monitored or

regulated or passed through Congress or any of that stuff. It goes through a state level that is so powerful that it has to change for the entire globe. And that's going to make whipples around the globe and can feasibly wipe out the gas motor. Yep. Eventually. It's, and it's so funny because this backs the fucking right wing dick wads into a corner,

right? Cause if you're a states rights guy, if you're like, yeah, man, who knows if you're fucking pulling your fucking monster dick out in Texas talking about fucking school books. Yeah.

Right. And you're like, Hey man, here in Texas, we decide what all the fucking school curriculum books look like. Texas, one of the biggest states in the country. We basically make fucking fucking educational books the way, you know. Yeah. All right.

Well, great. Here in California, what we do is we say electric cars or eat my ass. Yeah. That's what we say over here. And it's it really forces them into a position that's like impossible to get out. It's a fucking checkmate. Here's what it is.

It's a fucking checkmate. Here's what it is. And this is for all the idiots who comment on our page and on our posts and they don't understand what cognitive dissonance is. This is an example of cognitive dissonance. Okay. They have to hold two separate ideas at the same time

and it causes them great pain to do so. They have to be simultaneously stage straight, but then simultaneously anti-green and it hurts their brain. And they don't know what they do is they just go anti-green because it's easier. It's an easier let. So they'll let one go.

But that's what cognitive, I know that so many people love to come on our page and be like, you're the real cognitive dissonance. You guys are so confused. It's not confused, okay? Understand what it is. I'm Stanley Johnson. I've got a great family.

I've got a four bedroom house and a great community. Like my car? It's new. I even belong to the local golf club. How do I do it? I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. I can barely pay my finance charges. Somebody help me.

All right, so we would be remiss if we didn't talk about this. This is a great big goddamn story. It is, it's big. This story comes from The Independent. Also, fucking everywhere. You can find it anywhere. The right thing to do. Biden announces student debt relief for millions of borrowers.

Borrowers who took out federal loans to pay for college are eligible up to $10,000 in relief. Pell Grant recipients could see as much as $20,000 in debt cancellation. There's some caveats to that based on income. Yeah. But generally speaking, this is a significant amount of debt relief that is being done at the stroke of a pen. There's some worry that the Supreme Court will overturn this based on saying like, Biden does not have the authority to do it. And so there might be some legal challenges to his authority to actually accomplish this. Sure, sure. And that's, yeah, and that's

starting to come out now. Hopefully he has the legal authority to do it.. Sure, sure. And that's, yeah, and that's starting to come out now. Yeah. Hopefully he has the legal authority to do it. We will see, you know, they like to really stick their thumb into a lot of pies. They do. So, you know, it could be that, that they might just, you know,

very partisanly make this decision that they say, no, he doesn't have the ability to do it. And it could, you know, I will say though, that's the second time that the Supreme Court would shoot themselves in the foot in a huge way before an election.

Right before the, I thought the same thing. It's like, you guys want to go out on a limb on the right and say, hey, we're the party that means you can't get an abortion and you owe 10 grand more than you thought you did. Yeah. Vote for derp-a-derp. Like, I don't know how you,

because every single attack ad then is, you know, they don't want you, they don't want you to have freedom of your own body. Right. And they're making you pay back all these loans that colleges wound up extorting. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many ways that you can run this.

You know, college has changed over the years in expense. Back before Reagan, when people started to go to school, it was a lot less expensive. And one of the major reasons why it was less expensive was because school was subsidized by the government. And that's every school, right? As time went on, the Republicans started whittling away more and more and more at that money. And so that money started coming more and more and more out of

our own pockets. So you needed to take out larger and larger and larger loans. And it's not just a matter of inflation. It is a matter of whole dollars of your income, hours that you would have to work to pay something like that back. They've done several of these infographics that show going to school in the 70s, you could pay for it with a couple of summers working. Yeah. Going to school now, it's tens of thousands of dollars.

You can't pay for it. You cannot pay for it that way. You can't work your way through school anymore. It's impossible. No. It's too expensive. And it's because they've taken all this money out, this money that used to be part of the higher ed system

through grants to pay for, to help all students go to school and to help subsidize the costs of these institutions of higher learning. They took all that, a lot of it away. And so now we're in this position where school has to get paid for. These people need living incomes.

And working in higher ed is not- You're not getting rich. You're not getting rich. You're not living high on the hog. You know, in fact, I've worked in higher ed for 20 years. And my income is a third of what my wife makes. I make a third of what my wife makes. She makes an immense amount of money in comparison to what I make, but I was able to put us through school. I was able to, you know, there's other things that

come with that. I'm able to do, you know, have nights off and weekends off to work on other projects. So there's a good give and take with that. But the amount of money I make there is insignificant in comparison to a private sector job. So it's not like everybody at a higher ed institution is raking in the job. No, not even close. You make the decision to work there. In fact, I still have student loan debt and my student loan debt is,

is, might be written off because I have worked for a nonprofit for over 20 years. There is like a actual loophole that if you work for public, like a, like a nonprofit for a long time and you show that you paid the amount of money that you paid, you could then get your student loan debt taken away. Well, I had to literally finance the entirety of my school when I went to school on my shoulders. Yeah, I got grants. I got Pell grants. I got all these other things, but I had to finance that myself. And I still carry that debt. Like I still carry that debt today. This is decades after I graduated. So think, and I'm a guy who has means and I've been paying this whole time. I've been paying, I've been paying time and time, like for the, all the time when I first got, when I first graduated, I was paying interest only because that was all I could afford. So for years, I was paying interest only because that was all I could afford. That's all you could do. Yeah. And the balance just never goes down. For years, I was paying interest only. And then,

you know, maybe 10 years ago, I started paying on the principal. But it was, it took that long to get to that point in my life where I had enough money to actually start. But I was literally paying hundreds of dollars a month in interest payment. And never touching the principal. Never touched the principal. Never touching. That's not, I am not a unique case. No. I'm a pretty average case. There's 20, they were saying 20 million people just woke up and they don't have that debt hanging over them anymore. Man, that's enormous. I read a couple of, I might get some of these numbers wrong, but they are generally close. So, you know So from a couple of articles I read about this, the cost of a four-year degree, a college tuition, has gone up 300% in the last 25 years.

100% makes sense. Makes sense. The rise in inflation of wages is 177.8%. Now, when the cost of education outstrips the inflation by almost two to one, it means that every year that goes by, the value of an education is lessened. creating an impossible disparity at a time when that is so essential to have an educated workforce as the world becomes more complicated and more technical and more specialized. But if the cost of education continues to outstrip the pace of inflation and the pace of wage growth in two-to-one terms, then people start to look at that and say, an education actually won't pay itself back. An education may or may not be worth doing. It also means that people have less inclination to take a chance on an education and say, you know, I'm going to do this because

I love it. I'm going to do it because it's important to me. I'm going to do this because this makes me a better version of myself. That math doesn't make sense anymore. In the 90s, when I went to school, because I'm a million, in the 90s, when I went to school, I went to school for an English degree without a second fucking thought because I loved English and that's what I wanted to do. And I thought I was going to teach, but I had no worries. It never even occurred to me genuinely that my education was inextricably tied to the idea of getting a job. Like I wanted an education because an education was a de facto valuable thing to have, to grow as a person, to be a better version of who you are. That is, I think, still very much true,

but we don't get to think in those terms, those sort of like quasi-romantic terms about what an education means for you as an individual when education costs continue to grow at a rate this disproportionate to the rest of all the other costs and the other monies coming in. It's ridiculous. Now we have this like very utilitarian view of education. Yeah. And that is, I think, just an inherently bad thing. It is. And I know that like maybe we'll get some pushback on that, but I just genuinely think that it is inherently bad. It's bad for progress.

It is. It's bad for progress because when you look at all the progressive times in history, you look at the times when people had the leisure time and the will to learn new things and take those chances, like the Enlightenment. You look at the Greeks. You look at all those moments in history when people were pushing the boundaries of intellectualism. Those were all parts of history

where people chased those dreams, where people pursued that art. In the times when it was lean, and you didn't have a lot of that during the fucking, like the dirt bowl or whatever. Right.

The dust bowl. Yeah. He didn't have that. What you, he didn't have that in the depression. You didn't have that at that time. You had to, you have to,

you have to have that social surplus where you, you know, where people can decide to, it's not going to ruin my life if I do this. That's why universal basic income is such a big deal. That's why universal basic income is such a big

deal. That's why universal basic income could change our world for the better because it would allow people maybe a possibility of having that idea of leisure thinking, which automatically creates progress for the human race. It does. It's like, you cannot be, I'll tell you a boring story. So I don't believe that you can be a very high quality problem solver when you are under the gun all day, right? I don't believe that that is generally speaking possible. I think that if we strip away education to nothing more than a glorified version

of a trade school, you know? And I'm not shitting on trade schools. No, no. So I don't want anyone to think I'm thinking that. I understand. But I'm saying that like, we have had a different view of a college and university education.

We've had a different idea of what a liberal arts education meant. It meant that you went to school and you got your degree in computer science, but you also took all these other classes that weren't just computer science. Rounded your education. And why do you do that? Because I think we understand that there's a value to your point to rounding out your education, making you a better thinker, making you a more

robust lateral thinker, making you a better problem solver. When I was, I've had a couple of different types of jobs in my life. So at the job that I had before than what I had now, you'll remember I worked like fucking crazy. You worked 17 hours a day. And the level of work that I did, I was constantly solving these repetitive problems. The problems became, over time, the same question, the same solution, the same question, the same solution.

The thing is that they came in so fast and furious that I was constantly under the gun, constantly stressed, never able to take a step back. And there was a moment in my life where I thought, I think this job is making me stupid. I can't think anymore. All I can do is solve the same series of repetitive problems. And then I got a job where I have some time to think. And I realized, man, I actually can come up with a lot of really good solutions if I have an opportunity to breathe and see and think. And it's made my ability to act in the same profession, in the same field. I am a vastly more efficient worker. I'm a vastly more sharp, but I don't work as hard.

Like we trade off. There's a trade-off between volume and creativity. Most of the time, most of us can't do both. And we are shitting on ourselves if we are insisting on volume at the sake of creativity. We're not going to solve the big problems we are faced with. And I think that education, the way that it's being sort of incentivized and financed, it's rewarding a volume-based economy and a volume-based worker. And it's being pressed by business owners who continue to push and continue to foster a grind economy.

Yes, yes, yes. And so for them, it makes sense to minimize those parts of the degree, because what they do want is college to be a trade school. Yeah, man. What they do want is for you to not have that breath. What they do want is for you to, you know, not think about unionizing. Yeah. To not think about-

To not have any perspective or history, man. To not have any of that stuff. And they want to try to do that. It makes sense to the bottom line. It makes sense to the quarterly profit. It makes very much sense to demonize school to make it look like that. I want to talk for a second

about the hypocrites coming out that are fighting against this because there's a lot of people that are fighting against it for many different reasons. But specifically, Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder.

I don't know if you remember who Steven Crowder is. Is he the gun guy? He's the jackass who has a fucking gun on him the whole time. Yeah, and we're in his own studio. Like, what if somebody breaks into my podcast studio?

And I got to shoot him. What if somebody comes down to my basement? I was like, whatever, dude. In any case. I'm unsafe everywhere I go. It's like, Jesus. All right, you paranoid freak. That guy's such a frail dude.

But in any case, that guy and Ben Shapiro both posted sort of anti-paying stuff. Of course they did. But then people went and found their PPP loans that were forgiven. So $70,000 for Crowder and I think 50 for Shapiro. They both applied for it. Fucking liars, liars.

And they got it. And then they got it forgiven by the government because the government- Of course they did. And this is the thing is like, there's a couple of answers to this. One, if you're just a schmo, just a schmo, right? Like a regular schmo and you're upset about this and you have debt, then just refuse it. Right? Like if you're, if you have this debt, if you, and you're genuinely opposed to it, then, then write a letter to the government and say, I oppose this.

I am going to pay this back. You have that option, right? You have that option. Don't take the forgiveness. Don't take it, right? But the problem is that you will. You will because everybody will. You're a liar.

It's not like you're morally opposed to this. You're going to do it. You're just going to do it. And that's the thing. And the other people who are hypocrites, you know, there's so many different, and Biden even said this while he was, after he signed this and someone asked him the question and he said, well, is it fair that, you know, corporations get billions in tax cuts and you don't get to see that? You don't get to see that either there's plenty of money all around this is

here's the thing that i want to tell everybody this is your money i know it's your money right this isn't the government doesn't there's this isn't fiat this isn't somebody who's saying this was someone else's money and they get these are federal loans where does the federal government get its money it gets it from you it gets it money? It gets it from you. It gets it from me. It gets it from all of us. This is our money. We can make these decisions with our money. And we decided to do it this way. Sometimes we make the decision to buy a stupid fucking plane that nobody uses. Sometimes we make the decision to send large amounts of troops over to a place that we then pull them back from. So we make these decisions with our money and we're making this one now.

Yeah. And it's like there are there are two there are two points to that that I want to emphasize. One is like those fuckers who are always opposed to entitlements always take the entitlement. Yeah, fucking A they do. Because of course you do. With me it's different. It's not a matter because like if you're willing to take the entitlement, it, fucking A they do. Because of course you do. Yeah, with me it's different. It's not a matter, because like,

if you're willing to take the entitlement, it's not a principle. Yeah. You do not stand on principle. Yeah. So now we have to say, all right, if principle isn't the thing,

now let's talk about practicality. Yeah. And as soon as we move things away from principle and into pragmatism, then we have to say, you know what, every dollar we invest in education

returns more than $1 back. Fucking A. So fuck you running. Yeah. You're always lying. You're always lying. You're every, just always. Yeah.

Always, you're lying, right? Lying. Yeah. It's lies. It's fucking bullshit. The other thing is like, there is a better uses argument. And I started off with like,

I acknowledge, I think there are better uses for this same volume of money, but we don't have access to those uses. Again, pragmatism. This was done with the signature of one person making a decision. It's the president. We can't get those other things done. Do I think it would be better overall? I think it would be better if everybody got to go to college for free. That's what I fucking think. I think actually would be better overall? I think it would be better if everybody got to go to college for free. That's what I fucking think. I think actually every dollar invested in education returns more than a dollar.

It's good money spent. I think we live in a highly specialized, educationally required world, and it would just make sense to educate as many human beings in our planet as fucking possible. So if you're asking me is there better uses, yeah, I think we should use that money and a lot more. I don't think anybody should pay for college. That's fucking ridiculous, but that's not going to happen. Pragmatism requires that we look at the world we fucking live in and what is actually possible. So don't like, I'm, I can't, that better uses bullshit, fuck your better uses. Do you think it would have gotten done? Do you live in a world where we have like more than like the barest, slimmest fucking margin of Democrat? We have 50. We need the fucking vice president to swing in and like swooping like Tarzan and vote.

Would never go through. It has to be done this way. And this is the other thing too. Whenever you're cleaning up a mess, it's never pretty. It's never a great use of money, right? It's not a great use of money when you have to spend money to clean something up. You know, when your fucking sump pump goes out and your fucking basement's flooded,

you got to spend the money. It sucks, but you got to spend the money to fix that problem. This is a problem fixer. It is. This is fixing problems for millions of people across the nation. Millions of people woke up today with $10,000 or $20,000 less in debt. And that changes their whole perspective on how they spend, on what they spend,

on how they put away for their future, on how they pay for their own children's colleges and educations. It changes so much. It's not glamorous money. It's not glamorous money. It's not a big facility where people can go to school for free.

It's cleaning up a shitty mess that was made by Republicans 30 years ago when Reagan got in, 40 years ago when Reagan got in office. That's what it is. So we'd like to thank our patrons. Of course,

we'd like to thank all our patrons. We'd like to thank our newest patron, Chase. Thank you very much, Chase. Thank you, Chase. We appreciate it.

We want to encourage anybody who missed the book club. So we just recorded the book club this last week, another hour. We finished Rise of the Warrior Cop. And we talked about it. Terrific book. It was a great book. We talk about it.

We basically give it about a two-hour review. There's one from earlier last month and one from this month. And we finished the book. And we spent a lot of time sort of going over what it talks about and the implications of what it talks about. Some real good discussion, I thought. I think some really good discussions. Really cool.

If you're interested in it, you can go to patreon.com slash dissonancepod or you can go to dissonancepod.com and there's a link for the patron there. So you can become a patron on a per episode basis and you get access to that episode that's only for patrons. And we want to thank you patrons for being patrons

and for helping fund these other little things that we get to thank you patrons for being patrons and for helping fund these other little things that we get to do once in a while, sort of branch out and do something different. We're going to be starting a new book this upcoming month. We're going to be talking to the patrons

specifically to figure out exactly what we're going to be covering. Yeah, patrons get, you get a lot for being a patron. You get to support Ian's shitty baby. So let's think about that. Absolutely. If you love Ian and his shitty baby,

like you certainly, like you get to put food in his shitty baby's mouth. But think about that. If you love Ian and his shitty baby, you certainly get to put food in his shitty baby's mouth. But also you get our book club, and you get input onto what we read. So we really do pay attention to that. That's a smallish group of people compared to the overall group.

So you get real input into the direction of those shows. And you get to hear those shows. Other people don't get to hear them. So it's exclusive for you guys. So we got a voicemail that we do want to play. It's really good. It is. It's really good.

Yeah, it makes a great point. Hi, guys. I want to thank you for continuing to cover the January 6th hearings. I know it's in everyone's minds still, but I think we should keep it there. It's especially important for me to have everyone not forget about that day because I was there. And at early in the morning down by

the White House, and I actually got locked in my building that I was working at, because people were trying to break in and pound on the doors and climb the walls. And I was locked there in my building for like three hours before I was able to be escorted out by police and able to leave the city. So it's definitely something that is not a great memory. And I think it's important that we all still remember how really, really traumatic and terrible that day was for a lot of reasons. Thanks for the show. I enjoy listening to it. Yeah, that sounds genuinely terrifying.

Yeah, man. I think there's a point there that there's a genuine human cost to the... Yeah. Yeah, there's a price to be paid for the people that are... They're just sort of stuck, man. They're not...

It's not like a war between warring sides that all chose to show up on this battlefield. When this sort of shit happens, it's like those who attack and those who are traumatized. And the bystanders and the people who were just like there. Yeah. Difficult, difficult day.

We didn't get a lot of email this week, so we're not going to read much email, but we do want to thank Alice for coming on the show. How great was she? Dr. Alice, she's smart, funny, really great person. We met her, like, we talked about it five years ago when we went to QED, and

she was great to meet in person. She was funny and clever and great to be around, and it was fun to talk to her again five years later. And we hope to have her on the show again. If you're interested in going to QED, you can go to the show notes and you can look at all the links for QED there.

The GAM guys will be there. The Puzzle and the Thunderstorm guys will be there. Thomas Smith is going to be there with his show. Lindsay, his co-host, is going to be joining him for a Serious Inquiries only. They're doing a parenting panel there. They are. It's going to be two ladies that I don't

know, and then Thomas Smith and Eli from the Dear Old Dads podcast that Tom is part of. And so there's a lot going on. Main stage, God awful movies, and then Skeptics with a K is going to be there. It's going to be a great event. It's going to be a great time. It's the best skeptic event. It is. And if I

could have made it this year, I was actually trying. Tom and I talked about it. We did. I was planning on trying to make it, but it's just a little too hard this year to make. But we want to encourage anybody who's going to go, have fun, take photos, send them to us. We're super excited to help promote it.

So check it out. If you're in the area or even if you're not, I know people from the States fly over there because it's that good. Yeah, it's terrific. So that is going to wrap it up for this week. We are going to leave you like we always do with the skeptic screen. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit, couched in scientician, double bubble toil and trouble,

pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. 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, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody.

Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you.