Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 682: Michael Marshall - 15 Minute Cities

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

USE PROMO CODE COGDISS at Manscaped! Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code COGDISS at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod A Partner's Perspective - Benzotired     Michael Marshall!    

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. 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, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 682. And we will be talking a little later in this episode to Mike Marshall. We had a great conversation with Mike Marshall. You know why we did?

15-minute cities? Every conversation with Mike Marshall is a great conversation. Very true. Very true. Yeah, yeah. Great guy. But before we talk to Mike Marshall, we've got to talk about last week, we chit-chatted a little bit. Trump had been indicted. He'd been indicted.

And the next step is the step that followed. Trump has now been arrested. Did you watch any of that stuff? I saw it. No, I didn't watch it. I saw pictures. I saw, I read articles. I didn't watch it.

Did you watch it? I didn't. I just watched. So I watched the read articles. I didn't watch it. Did you watch it? Did you watch him get? I just watched, so I watched the clips that were played on TV. Yeah. So really the clips are just him

sort of just like pouting, sitting in the room full of a bunch of lawyers. Yeah. He's not saying anything. Yeah. He didn't say anything.

Like anything at all. Not saying anything. So he's just, but he was arrested. But he sure is saying stuff on social media though. He sure is. And it's funny because at his arraignment,

the judge that's overseeing the case admonished him ahead of time. He said like, look, and she had a stack of like printed out like true things and socializing and whatever. I printed out the internet.

I know, right? Like fucking Alex Jones style. Thanks, Alex. Were they spread across her whole desk? I did my research of printing out this job. Let me tell you something about Donald Trump. The internet says the frogs are gay. The internet can't lie.

It can't do it. But like like yeah the the judge said look you've already pulled some crazy shit we all know we have a stack of shit that tells us you fucking already pulled some crazy shit i basically said like don't do that yeah don't fucking do that don't incite don't doite your followers to violence. Don't, you know, don't fucking. And what does he do? Trump immediately. Yeah.

Immediately. He's like, all right, you know, I'm just going to quietly sit here like the fucking arrested douchebag asshole that he is. Yeah. Fuck. Quiet in front of everybody. I love so much. I love. I will say the pictures that I saw. Nothing in the world makes me love. I can't love so much. I will say the pictures that I saw, nothing

in the world makes me love. I can't love anything more than seeing Trump in a position where he has no power and authority. None. None whatsoever. Where he is put in his fucking place. Where he can't grandstand. Where he can't talk over the top of somebody.

Where he can't fucking interrupt. Where he has to sit there and actually be subject to authority. Cecil, this is a guy who has not, he has lived his whole life, not subject to authority. Tom, I want to show you this picture of Trump.

This is my favorite shit. So that is the greatest people at home. I just called this up. I searched for, I searched for Trump. Image. What did I search called this up. I searched for Trump image. What did I search for? I don't know. Trump artist rendering. This is terrific.

And the picture of Trump in this court, it's like when you go to a caricature, he looks like the fucking Grinch. He looks like the fucking Grinch. He's going to steal Christmas. Someone was like, his heart is two sizes too small. And he looks like the fucking Grinch.

They made his eyebrows crazy. They made him frowny. They made his hair goofy. They had this guy behind him with a giant neck. They got a whole, this whole thing is the best. I will say, I don't know where you go to school to be a courtroom sketch artist.

Yeah. But it's like, it's its own medium. It is. It really is. Like anything else. You're right. It really is its own artist. Like, yeah, exactly.

It's like its own style. Yeah, right. Yeah, thank you. It looks, you see something like, oh, that's clearly a courtroom sketch. That's nothing else. That's nothing else. I don't, part of me wonders about like the, you know, the grad student taking art classes and they're like, all right,

I got to do an installation at the fucking Met. And it's like, I got to pay the bills. I'm going to be a courtroom sketch artist. I would 100% go to a courtroom sketch gallery. Oh my God. I would go in a second. Are you kidding me? Seriously, if there's an installation. If there's a listener who knows of one, let me know because I'll go in a second. Here's the thing. I kind of love that. What I think

is so funny about this entire thing though is this doesn't need to exist. This exists because when you go to places that are like federal court, you can't have a camera in there. So they have to have some dude who draws it. But you don't need this here. This is a guy who's just caricaturizing Trump for fun.

That's true. I didn't think about that. Because we have video. You have video. You have frowny face video. Holy shit, you're right. Someone just literally made this. And you're like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen.

There's some sketch artist who's like, no, no, I will have my time. I will have my moment. But this is one of the three that was permitted during the hearing. So they permitted three to be there. I love it. And this is the best.

Seriously, check out this Guardian article. We'll link it. It's so good, guys. It's the best. It's so good. It's so fucking good. And it's going to be on the next cover of The New Yorker. I subscribe to The New Yorker. Frame it. I cannot. I am. It's going to be on the next cover of The New Yorker. Yeah. I subscribe to The New Yorker. Frame it.

I cannot. I am. It's going to be. I'm bringing it to the studio. The worst, the very worst part of all this is when I was watching the coverage, there's, you know, a lot of speculation on what's happening. And I can't break down the legal aspect of any of this. I don't know enough about any of this stuff.

The broad strokes are, it basically becomes a felony because he lied to try to get in office. Like, that's really kind of the broad strokes of this is that, you know, the reason why these are felonies,

these lying, these sort of misreporting fraud is that there's a reason is because he used it for a big reason, right? He used it for a big deal. Falsifying business records becomes a felony when the falsification of those business records

is in service of another crime. Yeah, and the difficult part for me to understand is, is that a crime? You know, because again, nobody's been tried for it before, so you don't know like what the crime is. The toughest part about all this is that you won't find anything

out until december i know man december man the wheels of justice turn slow day it's april it's the first week in april man and and what sucks is there's now going to be eight months of opportunity for trump to use this to like drum up support, to fundraise, to bilk his fund. He'll make millions. Trump will make millions and millions of dollars. Sure, he already has. On this.

He already had. Before he was even indicted, he went to his followers immediately when he supposedly got wind of it. What was so funny is I read a story this week that said he was actually surprised when the indictment came down so funny is I read a story this week that said he was actually surprised when the indictment came down. Oh, I read a similar story.

He was surprised, which tells me he was literally capitalizing on that because he was the one who announced it, right? He's the one who brought it to everybody's attention. So even in his mind, he didn't think it was going to happen. And he was the one who was surprised. So that means that you know he was grifting you.

You know he was planning to grift you if that's the case. And that's the story that comes out. Yeah, man. A, B, G. Always be grifting. That's it, man. Always be grifting. It's orange coffee.

Coffee is for grifters. Orange coffee. It's really gross. Really disgusting. Saw an image from Ann Coulter Ann Coulter is very anti-Trump And she's anti-Trump because she thinks he's a loser And one of the things

Because of how often he loses And one of the things that she says And I don't disagree Is that the left is going to Make it so Trump is the next nominee They're going to do the best they can To it so Trump is the next nominee. They're going to do the best they can to try to make Trump the next nominee. And she thinks that that will lose them

the next election for sure. Lose the Republicans? Lose the Republicans the next election. And so she is saying, you're being tricked by the Democrats if you keep supporting Trump. And that's her sort of, I don't disagree with that at all. And I, and, and I think like, you know, yeah,

of course you're being tricked. You're being tricked by Trump first off, but if anybody else is going to push him, you know, they did the same thing here. I don't know if you remember in Illinois, that fucking guy who was Bailey or whatever from downstate, that fucking, was it Bailey or the different guy? What's the guy's name bailey was your is bailey your mayor or was bailey the bailey is our mayor of aurora who's the other guy that he was he was running i don't even know he's some random farmer i know that weird dude from some fucking random farmer that i don't even know our governor was running against him i literally don't even know his name right right because he was never gonna win and the reason why i don't know his name is because he was a super tremperper and he won the he won the primary. Yeah. And he won the primary, but mainly because, you know, there they put a person in there to run against him who was like a moderate Republican. Yeah. And they were just like, no, man, that those days are gone. Gone. And they had a literal crazy person running

for the governorship here in Illinois. And they're like, no, he got his fucking face kicked in. He lost so bad. So, so, so, so bad. I agree with that take from Coulter. I would rather, in 24, I'd rather be running against

Trump than DeSantis. I think so too. All day and twice on Sunday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Trump is just a fucking mess. And one of the ways you know this is that Trump called on his supporters to come out in support of him. Oh, I know. And journalists outnumbered his supporters. Nothing.

There's fucking crickets out there. Yeah, there's nothing. You've got a handful, like demographically speaking, you've got a handful of total fucking wackadoos who, like he was right. He said like, you know, when he said I could shoot somebody in the fucking center of Fifth Avenue,

I wouldn't lose a single vote. He said it in 2015. Not true. But there is a handful of people that he could shoot somebody right now and he wouldn't lose their vote. There are people that are just, they love him.

They have aligned, we talked about this last episode, they've aligned their personalities to Trump. Right. And so they can't extricate themselves from that because to do that requires too much unraveling and too much like, so there's no going back.

And that's kind of what we've talked about before that I think it's totally fine to be excited about a political candidate that I think it's totally fine to be excited about a political candidate. I think it's totally fine to be like, I like what this person stands for. They seem like a good person. I am excited to try to get them into office, but I am not signing on to be their best friend. Yeah. This person does not become fucking family to me. Yeah. I don't have to give give blood and bone marrow to this, but like, I just, I want to hire them for this job. Yeah. They seem like they would do a good job. That's

how we should think about it. It's the, um, do you remember when W was running? One of the mantras you heard all the time is like, seems like a good guy you'd want to have a beer with. And it's like, you're never having a beer with him. I remember that. He's not asking. He's not out there being like, who'd like to have a beer with me? Raise your hand. We'll have beers. I remember that. He's not asking that. He's not out there being like, who'd like to have a beer with me? Raise your hand and we'll have beers. I remember that. But people have this like weird, crazy parasocial relationship with Trump that only goes in one

direction because that's how all those relationships go. Here's the fucking news scoop. He despises you. Hates him. He fucking hates all those people. He only hangs out with them to get their vote. That's it. Like he doesn't fucking care about you. And he's proven time and time again,

he doesn't care about most of the people because of the, look at the policies he enacts. And you're like, okay, well, he clearly doesn't care about you because he wants to take away, he wants to give away, basically make you pay all your fair share and extra

and then give tons of tax cuts to rich people. To the ultra wealthy. Yeah, because that's what he is. Yeah, yeah. Those are his buddies. There's a story that you posted, and this is in line with what you were saying. This is from The Independent, and it's, Eric Trump roasted for hallucinating as he claims tens and tens of

thousands came out in support of his father. And the best line is tens of tens and they crossed out thousands. And it was like, it's such a great, like this person, I'm going to put it up on the big screen here. So good. Eric Trump had tweeted this and the person just put, he said, we got off the plane and you could see tens of tens and he crossed out a thousand. So it just says tens of tens of people and he's like, fixed it. And you're like, perfect. That's perfect. Because when you see the images, it's way more reporters than anybody else. I did see a Trump contingent out there, but again, you're in the middle of a city where there's tons of people that are anti-Trump. They hate him in New York. And there was huge, a huge flag on the ground that just said

Trump always lies. And like this person, like I tried to the funniest shit I saw all week was this person comes out, sees the flag there. They're in Trump gear. They walk out to try to pull the flag away. Tom, do you know where they tried to pull the flag away while they were standing

up? Dude, I... And I was just like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you that stupid? Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, you're that stupid. If you own a MAGA hat, yes. Yeah. Seriously, if you own a MAGA hat, it's like... You are a fucking

both-legs-one-hole-of-underwear guy. That's what you are. Why is this weird piece of fabric on the side? Why does this fit like a skirt? Because you're crazy. Yeah. Because you're an insane person. I fucking love it.

I saw, and I don't know if it's true, and I don't care. It just made me laugh this week. I saw images of people flying the, the Trump flag. Let's go Brandon. The let's go Brandon flag at half mass.

Half mass. So good. Oh my God. I don't even know if it's true. So good. But also like. I love it. I fucking love it.

Please do it. Fly your fucking weird flag at half mass. And fly at half mass forever. Yes. From now on. How wonderful is that? Oh God. I love it so much.

I love how like, you know, the other thing, and I saw Rapoport did a video on this and I thought it was great because he makes a good point that I've been thinking about, which is at the heart, like, nobody is, the denials from the right are all about not whether or not he fucked Stormy Daniels and not whether or not he fucked Katie McDougal and not whether or not, they're not denying these things. No. Trump has denied them. Yeah. But everybody on the right, they're not like, they're not saying like, these are just drummed

up bullshit and it never really happened. Nobody's defending him on that. No. Nobody is defending him on the facts, right? What they're saying is like, yeah, it doesn't even matter. That's really the heart of what they're saying is like, yeah, it doesn't even matter. That's really the heart of what they're saying. It's like, you shouldn't indict him

because he's a president. These are inconsequential finance things and this is a left-wing hit job. What they're not saying is Trump didn't fuck a porn star and a Playboy model while he was married to Melania

while she was pregnant with their fucking son and then try to like, they she was pregnant with their fucking son, and then try to like pass. They're not denying any of the like egregious ethical violations at all. Because they know it's true. They know he's a pig. One of the things that I saw

and that has been gaining a lot of traction on the right too is if it can happen to him, it can happen to you. And I'm like, what are you talking about? If I sleep with a porn star and then pay her with campaign money and run for president and win, and then they find that out and then they convict me, then yeah, I guess it could happen. Yeah, right. But like the amount of things that have to fall into such a weird alternate universe for that to be possible is it's's so, and it's the same thing, they somehow

can tap into this party and make them feel vulnerable in that case. They make them feel vulnerable to these unfounded attacks that could happen to you. Look at what happens with taxes all the time. Look at how they treat all these people who are like,

well, when they start taxing, they're going to come for your money. And you're like, no, they're never going to come for your money. You make $20,000 a year. They will give you money at the end of the year. They will give you an earned income tax credit at the end of the year because you are under the poverty line. Like, do you not understand? They're not coming for your money. They're not coming for you. They are not trying to raise your taxes. You're not on anyone's radar. No. Like these guys, like there is a contingent that he's tapped into that is so, you're absolutely, they're so convinced that there's a personal connection. The big government is this awful, big, giant thing. But also the big government is simultaneously this great big and this big scary.

But also it knows you personally. It does. It knows you personally. And it's going to knock on your door. And they're going to show up and demand your guns. And they're going to show up and demand your tax money. And it's like, no. You misunderstand how any of this works.

You aren't important. Nobody knows your name. Nobody cares. Nobody knows what guns you own. Nobody, you make, most of everybody makes so little money that you're off the fucking radar. The big money is where it matters, right? The big money players.

And everybody knows the big money players because we write tax code specifically to advantage them. If you're on the right. Nobody gives a shit about you. Some fucking, you know, regular Joe working a regular Joe job, making regular Joe money. No one gives a fuck about you. I want to mention two big wins.

But in Chicago, Brandon Johnson, progressive, like real true progressive, beat Paul Vallis for the mayor of Chicago. Paul Vallis was just a Republican in a fucking DNC outfit. You read what Paul Vallis was for and you're just like, oh great, more police. That sounds awesome. They did such a great job. I love too that some of the commercials and some of the things that they were playing show like literal like a bunch of people breaking windows and going crazy during the George

Floyd thing. Now we watched what happened when that happened. The cops kicking it off and then they start going a little crazy. People are breaking windows. There's a little looting going on and stuff like that. And they're interviewing, they're using this as a political commercial against Brandon Johnson. And they're interviewing Brandon Johnson and they're interviewing, they're using this as a political commercial against Brandon Johnson.

And they're interviewing Brandon Johnson. They're like, and now we're hearing that you want to defund the police. Can you talk about that? And this stuff is happening behind him, right, on this thing. Yeah, to paint the worst picture. And I'm just like, hey, man, what was funding the police doing for stopping any of that? What was funding the police doing for stopping any of that? What was funding the police? How is funding the police even better going to stop that?

It'll never stop that. It'll never stop random violence like that. There's no way it does that. In fact, the more police you get out there, the more they're just going to watch it happen or kick it off themselves, right? Especially when it comes to, I will say, kick it off themselves, right?

Especially when it comes to, I will say, the city of Chicago has had a surge in crime, property crime and violent crime since the pandemic. Yeah. That's been- But they have not defunded the police.

They've not defunded the police. They've not defunded the police at all. Absolutely. So, you know, like a lot of people across the country want to say, that's what happens when you defund the police.

Like, nobody did it. Nobody defunded the police. They never did it. Yeah. Nobody's defunded the police. There's a very pro-police person in there in Lori Lightfoot. Yeah. So there was no defunding. So don't, that's bullshit.

That's a lie. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's not, but you know, Lori Lightfoot was a disastrous mayor. Sure. She was an absolutely disastrous mayor. And she didn't get along with the, like, she had historic clashes with the police union. Like, when she tried to get them all to be vaccinated they didn't want to get vaccinated she pushed she lost like she

tried to stare down two different barrels she tried to stare down the barrel of the teachers union and failed failed she tried to stare down the barrel of the uh police union and failed and those are the two in chicago those are the two biggest power brokers yeah sure in the city of chicago she was an absolute failure of a mayor. So like, absolutely glad she's gone. A thousand percent glad she's gone. She did not do good things for the city of Chicago. I really hope Brandon Johnson does good things for the city of Chicago. I think he will. We need something substantive to change in Chicago. It's a beautiful, wonderful city

that I think is at something of a worrisome inflection point. And like, I don't want to see the city become a less safe place. And it has become since the last three years, like crime has dramatically increased in the city, property and violent crime have both dramatically increased in the city. So like if Brandon Johnson's solutions to this problem are to address the roots of crime rather than just to go beat the shit out of people, that to me, let's give that a whirl. Because Chicago has a long history of police black sites and John Birch torturing the shit out of people and the shooting of Laquan McDonald and the cover-up afterwards. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on. What you have with Chicago is poor funding of the CTA.

Oh, for sure. Which you absolutely need to reinvest in in a huge way. And that changes, you know, once you allow for travel between places and you make it safe, it's a game changer. That's what happened in New York. When they made it safe to travel around, it changed everything. It does. And so, you know, I've been in Chicago a lot. I lived in Chicago for many years. And while there is an uptick in violence, there's

also an uptick in violence across the country, right? That's not just Chicago, that's across the country. So the pandemic has changed a lot about how people are reacting violently in different situations. So that's not just a Chicago problem. The numbers in Chicago are big, but they're big everywhere. Big cities across the country are experiencing the same things that Chicago are experiencing. The solution to that does not seem to be add more police officers who don't do anything about anything. And when it, when it, when it turns out what they're going to do is cover shit up or just fucking make a shit ton of overtime money and not do anything.

Well, you know, the thing is like, I would be okay with police who are present and helpful, police who are present and helpful, right? Like we need to reconsider the role of police. Yeah, sure. Like if the role of police is to show up after the fact, to beat the shit out of people, to put fear and intimidation out on the streets, and that has historically been the role of police,

then like that's a fucking disaster. It's a useless thing. It's a useless thing. That's a goddamn disaster. We don't know. City needs that. Not Chicago, not New York, not LA, not St. Louis. There's not a city in the world that needs that. And that is the model for policing that America has had for generations. Brandon Johnson wants to take some roles away from the police and turn it into, you know,

more caseworkers going out and doing things that they're asking the police to do. And I think, you know, when you talk about that defunding of the police, that's the thing that needs to happen. And he has that vision. Now, is he going to accomplish anything? I don't know.

I don't know either. Right? That's a difficult thing. They're going to have to raise taxes. That's going to be real tough on the people there. And it's going to make it really hard for maybe him to get a second term. You know, that's always another problem. So he has an uphill road and it sucks because he's a progressive.

And if he fails, even though everything's against him, being a progressive fails. And that's the problem. So I really, really hope he does well. Dude, that's so frustrating because it's like, there's this like, well, we gave it a shot and it didn't work.

And it's like, but you didn't give it a shot. Yeah. You didn't do, like, yes, you elected the guy, but then you cock block him at every fucking turn. Yeah, he wasn't able to do anything.

And then it's like, well, did any progressive policies actually get implemented? No. But we gave progressivism a shot. That's exactly what happens with fucking... But you didn't. fucking turn. Yeah. And then it's like, well, did any progressive policies actually get implemented? No. But we gave progressivism a shot. That's exactly what happens with fucking...

But you didn't. Yeah, that's exactly how, that's why we elect Republicans to presidency every like eight years because it's like... Because we just get

all fed up. Ah, nothing changes. Other good news. Wisconsin? Wisconsin. Did you see that guy's concession speech?

I read his bitchy concession speech. Let me just play, let me play this for you. I want to play this for our audience. And it's not a long clip, but I just want to play like how fucking ridiculous this dude is.

This is the guy who lost. Oh, concede. If there's somebody legitimate to concede to. So this is the Supreme Court race that was in Wisconsin. He lost to a progressive, which hopefully protects birth control,

and protects abortion, and also might be able to do some gerrymandering removal. So we'll see what happens, but it's a big deal. Here's this guy. Tell me, Tom, if he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's like a villain who owns a mall in a movie.

Tell me if that's what he doesn't feel like. Oh, God. Okay. All right. And it brings me no joy to say this. I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede. This was the most deeply deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign I have ever seen run for the courts. It was truly beneath contempt.

You lost so bad. Dude, he got stomped. He's so fucking sad. Tell me he doesn't look like a guy who owns a mall in a movie. He does. He looks like in a movie with like a cat and dog protagonist. Yes. He feels like the guy who would like, with like a cat and dog protagonist. Yes.

He feels like the guy who would be, they would like dump the paint on him from like, they'd somehow get into some hijinks. They dump paint on him. There's a hundred percent is like, he's a caricature of a villain. He seems like a guy who's going to shut down the local radio station. You bet.

You know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You kids with your rock and roll music. You kids can't dance in this town. Yeah, I am for real. You know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You kids with your rock and roll music. You kids can't dance in this town.

Yeah, I am for real. I'm canceling your dance. When I saw this, I was like, oh, you're so sad. Yep. You are so sad and it makes,

it gives me joy. It brings me so much joy to see you angry about this. I love it. I love it because now he's not only a loser,

but he's a loser in Wisconsin. So this episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our newest sponsor, Cecil. We have a brand new sponsor and that sponsor is Manscaped. So we actually got sent, we were alerted that we were going to be sponsored by Manscaped. They were kind enough to send us their package 4.0. It includes the lawnmower. I love the names of the stuff that they send over. The lawnmower 4.0, the weed whacker ear and nose hair trimmer.

I used the lawnmower today. You used it today? I used it today. It works real fucking well, dude. It's real good. It's real good. So I've had a lot of these shavers before. Yeah.

And as a guy who grows hair literally everywhere and has for very long, I have very thick hair and I'm Italian, so I get a lot of hair in lots of different places. I used it today and I will say it did an excellent job of cutting. And one of the things that you're always worried about when you have these these razors is you know if you're using one that like you might also use on your hair or might also use on your beard you're like a little like they they kind of look like they're gonna bite you oh yeah this one no problems whatsoever really smooth really easy to use and it worked like a charm yeah man i i will say as somebody when they when they reached out to us to be a sponsor of the show, as

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Using code Glory at checkout. Good human. This job is killing me. Sounds like a good Friday. What? Nothing. Uh, use code Glory. glory at checkout good human this job is killing me sounds like a good friday what nothing uh here's the glory So we are joined by Michael Marshall of the Merseyside Skeptics. He is part of a show called Skeptics of the K, Be Reasonably Skeptical. And he is the editor of the Skeptic UK. And that's one of the reasons why we brought you on today, Mike.

We wanted to talk about your recent article, 15 Minute Cities, and the pushback against these 15 Minute Cities, and specifically the conspiracy theories that bleed out because these 15 Minute Cities are in the media right now. So welcome to the show. Welcome, Michael. And we would like to hear, but we want to set the ground rules really early on this entire thing. We don't want to misrepresent what a 15-minute city is. So if you could tell us what that means, because in the United States, it means literally nothing. Can I pause real quick? I appreciate you setting the stage real quick, but I think there is some flavor or context that when I read this article,

I immediately knew I wanted to offer to the audience if you haven't read it. And that is just the very first paragraph of the skeptic. If I can just read it real quick. Oh, go ahead, read it aloud. Yeah, absolutely. I think not only does it kind of articulate your point right from the article,

but, and I think more importantly for me, it is the most British paragraph I've ever read in my entire life. Admittedly. There is nothing more British than this. This essentially is an afternoon tea encapsulated in a single paragraph. It's great. So this is from Michael Marshall, your excellent article from The Skeptic. Was it difficult, by the way, to get yourself published in that editorial board and everything? We'll skip that. Yeah. I grew up in a little village in the northeast of England,

built around a colliery. Don't know what that is. My grandpa on my mom's side, Jack, had nine children. Ian, can you put a little bit of Irish folk music under this, please? Oh, that would be good. Go ahead. To really emphasize how English it is, let's stick some Irish folk music underneath. Well, the English aren't creative enough to have their own music, so we got to go with something creative. That's true. A colliery is a coal mine, by the way.

His and his weren't sure. It's a mining town is what I'm expressing. It's not fancy. It's a mining town. My grandfather was a miner. So Jack had nine children, and as a result, he worked three jobs. Down the village, coal mine, or colliery, for those who don't know, not that they know. A 10-minute walk from his house until it closed in the 1960s.

At the betting shop, that's a thing, I guess, a five-minute walk from his house and at the local working men's club. None of these things, by the way, are things. Here. Also five minutes from his house. He would cook the weekly Sunday roast each week with vegetables bought from the green grocers

on the high street. Five minutes from his front door and meat from the butchers another minute or so away. And I just, I read that and I love it because none of that translates to America at all. At all, at all.

And like, other than your like prepositions, like there's not a noun in there that I can identify with whatsoever. I will mention too, I thought it was adorable. And one of the pushes that you might want to consider for the Skeptic UK is having you with an empty bowl, sort of smudge a little bit, something on you and just ask for some more, if you could. I think that would be the absolute

best way for you to push. So anyway, we've made fun of England enough. I have to do that just a touch, right? I won't. Yeah, yeah. That's all I won't to be honest the quaintness is sort of something I was trying to get across here because like when I talk about greengrocers and butchers that's kind of what village life used to be and then as I mentioned in the article you know big supermarkets

and your big kind of chains came along and wiped out all that independent stuff so now you can no longer easily walk to a store in the tiny little village I grew up in and get all of the things you need to live day by day. You've got to get in a car and drive 20 minutes to get to the big store. And that kind of, the reason I set it up that way is the whole point of this concept of a 15 minute city is everything that you would need to live on a daily basis should be within about 15 minutes walk of where you currently live so that you don't have

to rely on your own individual transport to get somewhere. You don't have to get in a car and produce carbon emissions and take the unhealthy kind of route of driving somewhere. You can just walk those places. And at the crux of it, that is what the whole idea of the 15-minute city is. That, I think, puts in context the pushback, which is very unreasonable. Because what they'll say is, and we can come into what the conspiracy theory about a 15-minute city is, but even those who are at the least conspiratorial end, about a 15-minute city is, but even those who are at the least conspiratorial end,

their objections to this concept of having your doctor and your school and your shops within 50 minutes walk of your life, one of the pushbacks they have is, well, I didn't vote for this. I never voted for you to make me stay.

I never voted for convenience, God damn it. I never voted for... What? But this thing is, we never voted for that to damn it I never voted for what? but this thing is we never voted for that to go away in the first place right

that was how our lives were just developed for centuries of civilization is that you because you didn't have the ability to travel a large distance very quickly and conveniently

so everything was nearby and it was only when the big chain stores and the big businesses came along and set up out of town and drove all of the smaller places out of business that it forced us to change the way that we live to go now drive to the mall to get stuff rather than to the local high street. So no one voted for that way of life to go away in the first place. And now people are up in arms at suggestions

that that kind of structure of living space should come back without taking some kind of referendum on it. So I think that's kind of an interesting pushback that the idea is getting. And now from the article, one of the things that I thought was interesting. So I had to laugh because I didn't know anything about the 15-minute city concept until I read this article, right? And I went into it genuinely thinking this would be about having things be a 15-minute drive from your house. And what a, like, how awesome that would be. Like, here in suburban America, a 15-minute drive. If I could get to my work in 15 minutes, if I could get to my doctor in 15, and I'm talking about drive time,

that would be a massive improvement over what we have. A 15-minute walk for me in the suburbs will not take me out of my subdivision. So in 15 minutes, I can't make it to a single place that has a cash register in a 15-minute walk. I can't either. I can't either. There's no way to walk 15 minutes out of housing where I'm at. Maybe if I fucking hustle, I could get to the fucking pharmacy. Yeah. But I would have to power walk. I had those swingy hips. I don't have that. I'll bust something. So a 15-minute drive would be an enormous improvement in America. I've never worked, until the pandemic when I now work from home, I have never worked a 15-minute drive from home. I have always worked at least a 40-minute to an hour drive commute.

And that's pretty standard. The standard drive commute here in America is over 40 minutes now. Yeah, it's over. It's almost an hour. And now in the city, I used to live, and for many years, for almost 20 years, I lived downtown Chicago. And so in downtown Chicago, 15 minutes, you can get almost anything you need in a 15 minute walk from where I lived, from where I was specific. But that is very privileged, right? I lived in a very privileged area of the city

that allowed for that sort of thing. There are many places in Chicago, and this brings up another concept of food deserts, right? Here in the States, we have this thing called the food desert where you're in the city, you're in Chicago, there's 3.5 million people that live there. And of those 3.5 million people,

maybe 15 or 20 of the neighborhoods are well-planned out, have all the necessities nearby, also have a big box store that you can walk to, et cetera, et cetera. But then there's another 45 little neighborhoods that are in lower income areas that have none of those things. And they require a long L ride or a long car ride or an extremely long walk to get to any place that has any of those things. They don't have post offices, they don't have libraries, and they don't have food. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so this is the thing really is that that privilege is a central kind of idea to it, that there is a huge privilege in being able to live somewhere at the moment that's set up that

way. Because as you say, for so many people, it's just not set up that way. And there's also a huge privilege in what Tom is describing where, okay, you have to be able to drive to get places, but that means you have to be able to drive. That means you have to have access to a car. You have to have been able to learn to do that. You have to be able-bodied enough to be able to operate a vehicle, which not everyone is going to be able to. So there is barriers put in place that make that structure of living so much harder for people who don't have access to the kind of cash you would need to be able to purchase an automobile and then be able to drive and stuff. So it's baking all of this privilege in and making life structurally difficult for people who don't have

access to those kind of resources. And the concept of a 50-minute city, as it's on paper from the various kind of think tanks that are outlining it, is to try and take all of that reliance on privilege away. And in doing so, you strengthen communities, you support your local economy because you're giving money to the store down the road rather than the big chain out of town. And you reduce emissions so you're better protecting the environment. So theoretically, it has these knock-on consequences that would be very positive. And so you'd think it'd be very difficult to disagree with this concept. You think it'd be

very difficult to find this a run to the hills in fear kind of idea? I don't though, because if you grossly misrepresent the idea, it's very easy. It's super easy. It is very easy then to cherry pick all of the, all of the negatives. And the point I want to make is the article that you wrote. And by the way, I mean, again, amazing job by the editors sneaking that one through the goalpost. But the article that you wrote for the magazine that you publish that really described the idea that if you need to work outside of, so if you just happen to have a job and it's outside of your town, the draconian requirement is that you take something called a ring road. Now, we don't have ring roads here in the States, right? We kind of do. I mean, 294 is a ring road. It goes around the city.

But it goes around the city like 40 miles away from the city. Right. Yeah. And we don't have that ring road concept that rings around local municipalities. Where your moat was, we don't have that. Yeah. Well,

it basically is, it basically is where the moat was because the, the big city, well, the, the, the city that's been in the headlines and caused the big furor amongst the conspiracist crowd for this 15 minute city idea is Oxford.

And Oxford is a very, very, very old city. It was designed to have horses going around in it. So the furthest you can get is where you can get on a horse. And so the streets are structured narrowly and with a lot of twists to it. They're not designed for cars. And so many, especially British cities and British towns, weren't designed for cars because we've been living here for so long. Now, obviously, that's a little bit different for parts of the US where the buildup of those

places has come after, to some degree, a level of automobility knocking around. And so you can build your cities with the car in mind, whereas the cities we're talking about were built with horses in mind. And they're a total pain to get around by car. You try and get around, it just takes forever because the city just can't handle it. And so that's why we have this concept of a ring road. And one of the things I mentioned in the article, and it's one of the videos that I picked out when I was going through the various conspiracist channels that I monitor, was quite a famous right-wing contrarian asshole called Kirti Hopkins, who just jumps on any right-wing bandwagon and takes the worst possible position

in order to try and make a name for herself and things. And she was drawing out how you get from one part of Oxford to another without taking the route that is now banned. And she says, you have to come out of the city and go all the way around and come back in. It's like, you're drawing the ring road. You don't need to do this on a piece of paper.

And that already has this on. You're describing the concept of a ring road. And your ring road was faster. Like admittedly, I can look on the thing. It's the way I looked at this. It's faster by bike. The maps you have explain two routes, a route or two points, a route at one part of Oxford to another part. It's 22 minutes by bike. It's 19 minutes by car if you take the ring road, but it's like almost 30 minutes by car if you go through the center of the city. And it's the same. I mean, there are cities like this in the United States. Like I said, though, the ring road is farther out. So Indianapolis is another example of a city that is interstates all the way around the outside. And it's almost always much faster just

to bypass that entire city and go around. It's actually much better just to bypass Indiana altogether. But if you have to bypass the city, it's easier too. That ring road is Ohio and then you skip down. You go down to Kentucky and back over to Iowa and then you can go keep going. But that's the ring road around Indiana. Yeah. But I really like the objections, Marsh. So the idea is like, hey, people should have a quality. We should build our cities in an intentional way, right? So part of what I read through your article is that, hey, this is Britain. This place has been around for a real long time. Our cities were structured, as you said, in this sort of medieval sort of fashion because they just were.

And so that's probably no longer conducive to a 21st century way of life without some intentional city planning elements. So let's put our minds to building cities that work better for everybody so that they really meet the needs of the citizenry. That is kind of what I read out of this 15-minute concept. they really meet the needs of the citizenry. That is kind of what I read out of this 15-minute concept. And the fucking 5G anti-COVID lockdown nuts who have, you know, they've lost the argument of dystopian mindfuck at every turn, right?

So they first predicted, and you point this out in your well-written article, heavily vetted through your publishers, they point out that... You don't get paid to publish it. It is a freebie. Do you put that on your CV or do you just leave it off?

Like, is it on your CV? It would be on the CV. No, I'm just teasing you to tease you. You point this out in your article that they've lost at every turn so they had you know oh the 5g is gonna it's gonna brain everybody everyone's brain is gonna melt and we're all it's all gonna be scanners you know and then oh the covid lockdown the you know the uh citizenry is gonna be locked down forever and it's gonna be you know some fascist dictator mind fuck for

for life and none of these things happen none of these things come to fruition and so this in your mind this is the next step right now we got to be upset because you have to save three minutes by driving on the ring road and that's how they'll really get you they'll really get you by making it more convenient to walk to the local colliery or wherever you fucking work in england and England and get into a pharmacy without having to get in a car or have to drive three minutes less to get out of town. This is the great worry.

And obviously, they can't state the actual plans of a 15-minute city honestly and have people be as worried and terrified as they want them to be. So they have to kind of exaggerate it to a ludicrous degree. And so what they will say is, for you to drive from northeast Oxford to southwest Oxford, you won't be allowed to do that unless you pay X amount of money.

You know, they're going to fine you for ever leaving your district in Oxford, which is never what's on the cards. You know, they're saying you can't drive that route through Oxford too many times or they'll start fining you because they want to try and disincentivise it so that you take the route around. But what the conspiracists are saying is, no, no, that's just the start. But what they'll then do is they'll say, once you're in your zone, you're never allowed to leave your zone.

You've got 15 minutes, you've got what you need, so why would you even want to go to the other part of Oxford? Why would you even want to see your family who live on the other side of town? You'll be banned from seeing your family is what they'll say from this. And they'll try and paint this as a, this is a Hunger Games type existence

that the Hunger Games was deliberately released in order to prepare us for the idea of being separated into zones. I hadn't thought of that, but that's an excellent point. I don't know that I can. I mean, but Marsh, just to play devil's advocate a little bit, isn't it true, though, that if I make up a different and more scary argument that you have very little to counter that with?

Like if I imagine a series of proposals that you and nobody else are proposing, then obviously that's much more terrifying. That is absolutely terrifying, yeah. And what's really, it's funny and it's also interesting, is I've been watching on the various Telegram channels that I'm in, videos of people going to their local county council meetings and yelling at them about this whole idea and talking about the New World order and the World Economic Forum

and how Klaus Schwab is trying to redesign how we get from one part of Oxford to another or one part of Canterbury to another. And what strikes me about it is, these are local council meetings. They're incredibly small. They're normally incredibly boring. But this is the playbook that we're seeing from America

turning up to your school board meetings and turning up to your local council and shouting at people there. It's exactly that. It's incredibly effective for spreading that kind of paranoiac right-wing agenda because you end up yelling at confused local bureaucrats who were just there to sign off where people can park and to deal with parking legislation and how often the bins get emptied, you know, when's garbage day? That's kind of what they're there for. And then suddenly they're being accused of being a tool of the new world order and they've got no idea what to do with that. Well, and you mentioned earlier,

we didn't vote initially to change the way cities are and now they're saying we didn't vote to change it back to basically how it was before. But how often do you really vote on the minutiae of city planning? I mean, very infrequently, do you get a ballot option for you to actually vote on? It's not like they come to me every time they want to put up a new streetlight near me and they say, hey, we're going to put up a new streetlight, you know, oh, we're going to change this road to one way, et cetera. And, you know, like they point out all

the time that, oh, they're taking away these rights. And you're like, you don't have a lot of rights when it comes to where your car goes anyway. Like you, you have to decide, they have to maintain the road. They have to decide which way it goes. If it's a one-way street, you know, whether or not they're going to close it down for festivals, et cetera, or just close it down and turn it. You know, when I was in Europe, they have entire streets that are just pedestrian only zones where like, you know, like, like you just walk across. There's literally no cars. There's a big block off where they just used to have a street.

They're like, fuck that. It's a pedestrian zone now. We don't have anything like that, you know, by us. You know, they never shut down roads once in a while. Actually, during COVID, I take that back in the city. They did to put tables outside for restaurants so people could actually eat outside because they were losing so much business. But I don't know if that's gone back to where it was before, but you know, it was, it was amazing to be in Chicago at that time because you just walked

down the street, you'd be like, holy shit, they cut this, they shut this whole road down. And yet it's mind blowing in the States when something like that happens. But really, genuinely, you don't have a lot of decision-making when it comes to that. But they seem to think you have all this decision-making and that this is part of the conspiracy, that they are taking away your rights. And you mentioned in the article that you have sovereign citizen type people there now too. Yeah. That blew my mind. How the fuck did we end up giving you sovereign citizens? I mean, that feels uniquely American. sovereign citizens. I mean, that feels uniquely American.

Right? Isn't the whole concept of the sovereign citizen, doesn't it rely on like our system of poorly understood jurisprudence? Yeah. Well, I don't know. So we'd also call it

like freemen of the land here. And I think it just as much applies. They'll go back to things like the Magna Carta. Oh my God, what? Well, yeah. So during COVID, there were quite a lot of people. If we go back all the way to Hammurabi,

we really have to go back to the original set of written code. What? The Magna Carta? The Magna Carta is a transformer, right? Am I right on this? But it was mad. So during COVID, during lockdown, you had businesses who were refusing to be shut down.

And then it went viral in the UK that you could put a sign up in your window saying that you're obeying the Magna Carta and not the current laws. And therefore they can't shut you down. People went to court to find. Yeah, no, they absolutely did. And what was pointed out was like,

okay, yes, the Magna Carta does grant some rights, but it grants those rights to feudal landlords in a very short period of time, in like the 15th century. So yes, if you're one of them, then COVID lockdowns don't apply to you. But again, you follow the law. If you ride around on your steed

with your coin purse at your side, then like maybe things, what the fuck? If you go back and read the Magna, no one's reading the fucking Magna Carta unless you're in history class. Are you fucking kidding me? And no one who tried to get out of COVID lockdowns by referencing the Magna Carta

has read it. They've clearly not read it because it's very clearly nothing to do with them. So we do have that kind of soft set freedom of land type of thing. And so you get people saying, well, this 15 minute city idea, you can't prevent me from traveling. It's like one of the things in Sovereign Citizen is that you're allowed to freely travel.

And that's where you get the fork getting pulled over by the police for speeding and saying, well, you know, I don't subscribe to the laws and therefore you can't stop me from traveling. And it's the same kind of idea that they're trying to rely on. Yeah, exactly.

And even like... And even like car and yeah, sure. And again, like no one is preventing anyone from traveling. They're just saying, you have to use this road rather than that road, which is... Or cycle. Functionally.

Or take public transport. But even if you're like, even if you're fucking top gear all day, right? Like even if you're like masturbating over the car constantly, you still can get in your car with this scheme and you can go any place that you want to go. You can achieve location to location no matter what without paying any fines ever.

You just have to take the ring road rather than the local city streets unless but you get a hundred exceptions a year exactly you get a hundred exceptions you can otherwise and that is really like if i'm driving a car i can't just go the wrong way down a one-way street because i have right of free travel i can't just be like right to free travel exactly I can't just be like, right of free travel. Exactly. I shall go down the one-way street sideways and diagonally. Because once there was an old document written by horseback or fucking whatever, you can't do that. Nobody is suggesting that we get rid of one-way streets or that you go the wrong way on a roundabout just because,

well, I'm allowed to turn left at the roundabout rather than right or whatever. It's probably, I got that backwards in your case. Like, for fuck's sake, it doesn't seem any different. I would get it if it was like, and it's not, I would get it if it was what they're proposing is going to happen, right? Something, something, seven steps, Kevin Bacon, and now I'm locked down in district nine, right? Like, okay, that wouldn't be cool. But that would have no economic advantage for anyone. The world that they posit creates economic disadvantage for the elites, not economic advantage for the elites. So even if you have a worldview that posits the most evil

intentions of elitist oligarchs, the world that they are positing would not advantage those people. Am I wrong here? No, no, you're absolutely right. Now, what the conspiracy theorists will say, they'll say a couple of things to that. One is that they'll say, well, there's an economic disadvantage to locking people down here in your local areas. It's going to particularly disadvantage local shops and therefore drive people towards online things like Amazon. So if you could no longer, so if the local shops shut down because they're getting less footfall, because there's less people moving around generally, maybe that won't be sustainable for them. And you'll be forced to go online and have Amazon delivery drivers. Now, obviously, that's stupid because your local shops are more likely to fare better if the big supermarket out

of town is getting less custom because you're going to walk to your local shop rather than go all the way there. So obviously, this is going to have an economic benefit to local shops, or at least the one that could be argued on the detail at that level. It's not going to be an obvious disadvantage. And the other thing they'll say is, well, where this will be advantageous to the elites is in data. Because once you're trapped in your little 15-minute zone, that will be tied up to a surveillance state, whereas if you leave that zone, it'll be marked against you. You'll be forced to use digital currency, which means they can track every single thing that you're spending. And if you do leave your zone, they will remove some of that currency.

And if you do things, if you buy stuff they don't like, if you buy too much alcohol or you buy cigarettes or you buy whatever, then they'll mark you down and you'll have less money. So they'll actually remove it by harvesting all of your data and then selling that data on to companies. And what that all misses is your data is already being sold to companies. We're past the point of data saturation where this is not going to be a massive new impediment on your life. I mean, I'm against it and we should really stop it. But the idea that 15-minute cities will allow for

greater data collection, I think is just incredibly naive. Everything you do is being pretty much tracked online all the time anyway. You can say, well, if you're using digital currency, they can tell what you're spending it on. But how often do you tap your card or use chip and pin or something anyway? How often are you using internet banking? So that's already recorded somewhere. And sure, it's secure. But if they wanted to get at that, they would erode the security rather than stopping you moving around. So I think there's like a lot of,

they haven't fully thought through what world they think is coming. They'll say about the surveillance state. And this is something I'll point out in the article. There's a video showing people walking around their local area. And in real time, the cameras are tracking their face and referring to a database and pulling up data

about who they are and where they are. And it's like, this is what 15-minute cities will allow. It's like, mate, that's already possible. Like they do that in China. They don't need you in a 15-minute zone to do that. What you're arguing then is that the technology's there, but the problem is scalability. Like the database can't be big enough.

It's nonsense. Once that tracking technology's there, but the problem is scalability. The database can't be big enough. It's nonsense. Once that tracking ability is there, it doesn't matter whether you're 15 minutes or 15 hours from where you live. It just has to talk to a database. So yeah, it's just naive, I think. And I think you point out in the article, and I would be remiss not to say the same thing, that I do and have concerns about a about about enabling a surveillance state a la china right like that is a legitimate thing just to raise your hand and say i have legitimate concerns and many of them about the promotion of a surveillance state by the government like i think that that is a but that is an entirely second and core it's not even a corollary it's an entirely second and separate argument from's not even a corollary. It's an entirely second and separate

argument from this 15 minute city concept. And also, you know, one thing that strikes me is right now here in the States, at least we don't have anything like a 15 minute city, unless you're very privileged and very lucky. And also in many parts of the United States, at least, a 15-minute walking city would be unpleasant in parts of the, because of the weather, right? So if you live in Minnesota, six months out of the year, you don't want to walk outside for 15 minutes. It can be very dangerous to be outside in February in fucking St. Clair, Minnesota for 15 minutes, right?

But if you are in a place where that is a safe and reasonable thing for you to be able to do, you're getting something for the trade-off, right? The trade-off is here. I got to take the ring road. Okay. Well, maybe I don't want to take the ring road. Cause I enjoy being stuck in traffic. I love being stuffed in traffic. It makes me horny. I don't know, but like, I want to have the right of free travel i i'm a freeman of the land or whatever but right now like we don't get anything out of all this inconvenience you don't get anything out of all this inconvenience all you get is the inconvenience of it yes if you build your city the other way yes there might be some give and take because

rarely does anything work without give and take. But you get something out of it. I get like is I mean, I assume that the weather in the UK is conducive to this kind of lifestyle. Well, sort of. It can be. I mean, it's going to it rains an awful lot, but it's not we never have blistering heat and we never have absolutely freezing cold. So it's so insanely that we can't function. So yeah, we're much more temperate. One of the things that struck me is that it seems like the COVID misinfo people really do have a captive audience when it comes to this particular conspiracy. What do you think the crossovers are when it comes to that? What's the crossovers that allow them, either the grifters to reach out or the COVID people to really latch on

to something like this? So I think the crossover is, there's just sort of two axes of it. One, I think, is in the deep-seated mistrust of the government and the deep-seated mistrust of authority and the deep-seated mistrust of anybody trying to give you advice on

how you should be living your life and give you kind of recommendations on your life. And obviously we saw that during COVID, partly because the government was lying to us in lots of ways, not the ways that the COVID conspiracists think, but they were having parties behind the scenes and giving contracts to their mates and various things like that. And that's completely eroded trust in official narratives. And once you completely eroded trust in official narrative. And once you've eroded that trust on one topic, it's really easy to just switch that over to another topic. So I think that's already there.

And what we see as well from the protests is lots of the people who turn up to those 15-minute city protests were the same people who were turning up to COVID protests. And so they met each other then and they formed communities. And now this is the community. This is the way you get to see the people that you know again. So I think there's that kind of alternative community that we've seen lots of times. Protesting hobbyists. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And also conspiracism hobbyists. So I think that's, and that's the other axis is that the reason it's so easy to onboard them into this next thing is because they're all set up

in the same online networks that they were using for COVID. And this is how I found out about the 15-minute city stuff is because I joined COVID anti-vax stuff to monitor it during the height of the pandemic. And I've just watched them shifting their narrative as they introduce the next fear

to keep people hooked. And some of those people are doing it in a grifterish way. You know, you get people like Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson and GB News and various other things in the UK which are fueling this kind of right-wing paranoia. And other sides of it, I think, are people doing it

because they genuinely do fear it themselves, but because they haven't got this, they haven't really got a good ability to understand proportionality of their fear. But they've got this big platform now. And if they've got a big audience and a big Telegram channel where thousands and thousands of people

listen to them all the time, they have to keep feeding that beast. Even on a subconscious level, they've been sort of audience captured because they want to keep up that level of attention and acclaim. And so they find the next thing to worry about possibly lifted from

a grifter's telegram channel and spread it out from there. So we have this kind of incredibly effective disinformation spreading network out there. It's a great dissemination tool. And you just need to plug in a different set of nouns and the same fear dressed up a little differently. And it's going to go out to the same people with the same level of fervor. Sure. You know, that's a fascinating concept that I had never considered.

It's kind of blowing my mind right now, like in real time. Like for years, these people have gotten online and made friends and made connections and they've shared, not just like, I guess, and I don't know why I didn't think about this because it's so obvious in retrospect, but they go on and they make these like real social connections. They create these real genuine social relationships.

They're not just sharing conspiratorial bullshit. They're sharing, you know, their lives with their kids and their, you know, events of the soccer game and like fucking baking recipes because they're making real connections. baking recipes because they're making real connections. And then when these things fall apart, when the 5G doesn't turn our brains into scanners and when the government doesn't like turn us all into, you know, fascist, you know, cogs in the, in the 1984 Orwellian machine, like if they let that go, do they lose their social circle? Do they lose the people they've come to love and connect with every day? And so it never occurred to me that you've got with, like to combat this,

you have to not only combat like the facts that they are revolving around, but we have to also think about how do we allow these people to maintain the social connections, the online social connections that have become so important to them on a personal level without them having to revolve around this madness infrastructure.

Yeah. And it may not even be to maintain those social connections, but to find social connections that they can value. And so this takes me back to when I was spending time looking for- If we had 15-minute cities, though, people would connect more in person. Yeah, exactly. They'd have a better local community in person. That's the deep irony of this. Yeah. And so it takes me back to when I was hanging around the flat earth movement. And what I would see in the flat earth movement is you say you're a flat earther and then your friends and family are like, okay, this guy's gone crazy. I want to spend less time talking to him. So you spend more, once you're in that community, you spend more and more of your time in that community because they're the

only ones who'll still talk to you. And there is a driver towards isolation. And we see that again and again through conspiracy theory. Even to a point where we talk about plugging in the different nouns, one of the drivers of the conspiracy theory around 15-minute cities is the same as the driver that was, you know, the COVID is fake and the vaccine is evil. There is a printed conspiracist newspaper in the UK called The Light, The Light Paper, which was set up during the pandemic to spread the other side of the story that you won't see in the mainstream news about the pandemic, how it's all fake, how the vaccine's evil. It was set up by a guy called Darren Nesbitt, who I know because I interviewed him when he was the UK's leading flat earther. I saw him at the Flat Earth Conference speaking there. So you've got the flat earth conspiracy community, the

conspiracy network. You plug in some different nouns, you end up being QAnon. You plug in different nouns, you become COVID conspiracists, and then 15-Minute City. So there's an inbuilt system for keeping you on the train, and it's really difficult to get you off the train. And one of the only ways I think you can get people off that train

is to give them connections and society and community in their life that isn't about that. Yeah. And we were fortunate we were able to see that with one of the guys who set up the anti-vax group in Liverpool during the pandemic, who I started talking to after I gave a talk about the anti-vax movement and his anti-vax movement in particular. And he figured out who I was because I got outed in the Telegram channel that I was in, which was a little bit worrying because it's filled with white supremacists and Nazis. So I didn't want them knowing who I was. But he reached out to me

and said, well, now that we know who you are, what have you got to say for yourself? And I talked to him for like about a month and he watched my talk and he left the movement. And now he comes to our local skeptics group. No kidding. He gave a talk at our local skeptics group on Thursday night about what it was like to come out. And he talked about exactly this. How great is that? He was seeing, and he's the loveliest guy and he's just a guy. And he talked about, he was struggling with various different things in his life at the

time. He spent far too long online. He was seeing people saying stuff that felt persuasive at the time. So he spent all his time talking to them. And it was only through being able to forge bonds and friendships with people and starting to see like me, for example, as a friend that he was just, he was able to share these kinds of concerns with that I managed to get him out. And if it wasn't for that, and if people keep treating him like a conspiracy theorist and shutting him off, he might still be in that space.

Did you point him over to be reasonably skeptical in order for him to do that? Well, to be honest, he does listen to the show and stuff. I did think about interviewing him on Be Reasonable, but I think it's hard because he no longer believes in that stuff. And so it's quite hard to have a conversation about what someone used to believe. Yeah, sure. I would imagine so, yeah. Yeah, but I think that journey is really interesting because the other thing he was explaining was he was one of the admins of the Telegram channels that were spreading this misinformation.

And what he was seeing was a load of fake accounts and bots trying to push ivermectin and try to spread hate and things automatically. And he spent a lot of his time setting up filters to automatically kick those bots out. But what he said was he spent so long fighting the bots that he didn't see the radicalization of the people whose names he knew, the people who he'd met through this, whose house he'd go to and whose kids he'd meet. Like when he met them and when he left the movement, they were so much more extreme

in that intervening period. They got worse and worse. But because he was fighting the fake accounts, he didn't see what was happening to the real people. But it's that thing, if you cut people off from society and lead them only to speak to other people who are outside of society,

you leave one community to join a flat earth community or an anti-vax community, and the guy in that community starts spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, do you have the strength to leave that community as well? Because if you do, where do you go? How many communities can you afford to leave? Yeah, for sure.

I think it's difficult. You mentioned too in your article that someone came to one of your talks while you were speaking and shouted you down. Did that happen? Yeah, that was Glasgow Skeptics. That was fun. I think it was like Glasgow Skeptics, they had like an anniversary event. It was like their 100th talk or something like that. And they invited me along and they had a really full room and there was like 80 or 100 people there or

something like that. I thought, wow, this is, it's nice to have such a good turnout. And I give a talk on the White Rose anti-vaccination kind of vandalism movement, which was what was springing up during the pandemic. And there was a few things early in the talk that normally when I deliver those lines in front of crowds, they get like a chuckle here or a positive reaction there. And it was just nothing. Oh, this is interesting. Yikes. Yeah. Well, yeah.

oh this is interesting and it got to the end and I was like okay Q&A time and they were like okay so I've got a question for you because someone just launched into this long thing could you get to the question? He said well you've been talking for long enough I think it's my turn to talk now I was like that's not how Q&A works

you don't understand this and it turns out there was like 15 or 20 of the audience who'd come from the same group. They denied they were from the same group. But they all got in the same tiny car as they drove away. So that kind of gives it away. More than that, they denied they were from the same group. And then they all stood outside and handed out copies of the light paper

in front of a banner that they'd brought with the name of their group on it. Clearly. Spontaneous. Yeah. And the fun thing was they were handing out copies of the light paper in front of a banner that they'd brought with the name of their group on it. Clearly. Spontaneous. And the fun thing was, they were handing out copies of the light paper and it was a copy. It was the same issue that I'd brought as a prop to show how bad it was.

So I was on stage. Did you sign them? Look how much bullshit is in this newspaper. You should have signed them. You should have signed them, buddy. Fantastic. Oh, man. Fantastic.

Yeah. So it was a fascinatingly hostile crowd until we all finished and went upstairs for a drink and suddenly they were nice as pie because they weren't shouting at someone on a stage they were sat in a small kind of round tables having drinks and suddenly they become a lot more polite

it's not a grandstanding thing in front of each other anymore it's just a conversation it really is something I want to talk really quickly about the grifter end of this, because it seems like, you know, with the sovereign citizen, but then also with the sort of environmentalism push that we're seeing nowadays, we're also seeing a lot of references towards communism, socialism, towards that sort of like anti-capitalism idea. And one of the grifters here in the States, James Lindsay, I was walking, he's walking through our airport in Chicago, O'Hare Airport. And he just, like, this was like five weeks ago,

because Twitter is an absolute cesspit now. I don't know if people know, but like they have a, you have to click who you follow because now it just auto sets you on for you. And for you turns out for us is Nazis and shitty people. So it's like, great. I don't ever want to see any of this stuff, but I have to in order to click over. But, you know, I was scrolling through, not realizing which tab I was on.

And I was on the for you tab and he scrolls up and he took a picture of the UN sustainability development goals. Now, I had known about these for years. I guess they really redesigned them around 2015, 2016. So they've been out, these specific goals have been out for at least eight years. And I just want to read, he mentions that they're communism.

So I just want to read them to everybody so they know what the sustainability development goals are from the UN. And they're very short. So here they are. All right, comrade. No poverty. There's a lot of red on this page, I will admit. One, no poverty. Two, zero hunger. Three, good health and well-being. Four, quality education. Five, gender equality, six, clean water and sanitation. Goal seven is affordable and clean energy. Eight is decent work and economic growth. Nine is industry innovation of infrastructure. That means nothing.

10, reduced inequalities. 11, sustainable communities and cities. 12, responsible consumption and production. 13, climate action action, 14 life below water, 15 life on land, 16 peace, justice, and strong institutions, and 17 partnerships for the goals. Now, the other important thing to mention is that this is done by the UN, so it has literally nothing to do with anything. Everyone ignores the UN the entire time of its existence. Nobody does anything based on what they suggest.

So it's literally a waste of time. Yet for some reason, this really irked his, I mean, and I saw this get retweeted thousands of times to his followers who he sort of posed this as like, this is the next step towards socialism. Yeah. And it's obviously, it's, it's obviously it's, it's ludicrous. You know, the idea of when you stand up to the, the tyranny of clean water and

sanitation, you know, this is a ludicrous thing to pretend to be upset about. But ironically, this, this is virtue signaling. This is what, what James Lindsay is doing there is virtue signaling because there's no way he actually disagrees with some of the things on here. And there's no way he genuinely has just come across those things because, as you say, they've been out for a long time. For a guy who considers himself to be so kind of steeped in the expert in what Marxism looks like, there's no way he's only just come across these and linked it to Marxism. There's no way at all. But he wants to signal to his new audience, the audience he's had for the last four or five years or whatever it is, that he disagrees with all of the bad guys that they do.

And it's because his audience is made up of Christian nationalists because that's where his money is. That's where he gets the brightest butter. Yeah, absolutely. But it is true that the idea, so they're all going to move on to climate stuff next. And they have done for a while. 50 Minute City is obviously the start of that. But I think we wrote in The Skeptic, I think maybe a year, maybe a year and a half ago, that all of the conspiracy theorists around COVID were moving on to climate change as the next thing. Because COVID was always going to be a limited time thing. It might have lasted six months,

it might last six years. It's not going to last 60 years, six months. It might last six years. It's not going to last 60 years. It's not going to last 600 years. Whereas climate change is going to be with us for a long time. And so you've got the big bad guy that you can be pointing at forever. There's no way that we're going

to have solved climate change and you can move on. So it's a sustainable grift, ironically enough. That's great. It's a green grift. What a great, that's a green grift. a great It's a green grift

Yeah It's a 15 minute grift For sure Marsh If people were going to Find your shows On the internet Where would they look?

So the place to look is Merseysideskeptics.org.uk Where you can find Skeptics with a K And you can find Be Reasonable Which I took like a year off Sure

But it's back now I interviewed some Virus deniers For the previous episode I've got some interesting interviews lined up. I've got hopefully some really big interviews coming up that I can't talk about, but I'm excited to the point of being almost nervous about how big they are. So hopefully those will come in. David Icke. It's not David Icke. I won't counter. You don't dare.

I won't count it. You don't dare. There's some good stuff coming. And if you're interested in this article and other articles, you can go to skeptic.org.uk and see all the stuff that we're publishing there. And if you go there,

you'll see this little button saying write for us. We're really interested in new voices and people who've got stuff to say. So if you think you've got an interesting story to tell or an interesting analysis in something, then by all means, anybody go there,

including you guys. You guys, you know, you've got a good take on the world. We'd be really interested to hear your thoughts. So yeah, go to skeptic.org.uk for sure. We're too lazy. You can laugh, I mean it. Can I get a column like this really grinds my gears and just have like a regular column?

I just... Pick the right topics and I'm all ears. Marsh, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. We do, man. You're great. Thanks a lot, guys. It's been a blast. It's always great. Always great, man. Hey guys, Tom here. I just want to let you guys know that Haley and I, my wife Haley and I, guested on a really great show the other day called Benzo Tired. It's called B-E-N-Z-O-T-I-R-E-D. We were episode number 30. And I'm letting you guys know because it's a real personal episode. I know a lot of people we've mentioned on the show before some of the health struggles that

my wife has had. This show kind of addresses a lot of that. And it's also just a real important topic for us personally. So would love it if you guys would head over and give that episode a listen. Would mean a lot to both Haley and myself. I also think it's just real good information for everybody to have. Again, that podcast, guys, it's Benzotired, B-E-N-Z-O-T-I-R-E-D. And that's episode number 30, Haley and Tom, A Partner's Perspective. So do me a favor, please head over and give that a listen. You can find it on Spotify and Google Play. I think that's a relatively new show. So I think that's the only places that the guy has it out there. Also just a great show and a great host and a really great interview.

So thanks a lot, guys. So I want to thank Michael Marshall from the Merseyside Skeptics and Skeptics of the K and Be Reasonably Skeptical. Thank you so much for coming on today. Great conversation as always. And we'll leave links in the show notes so you can find him places.

This upcoming week is our long form article. Tom read the long form to $2 patrons and you will get, everybody is going to be able to hear the discussion that we have over this long form article. You're interested in getting either of those things as a patron,

you can always go to patreon.com slash dissonancepod or dissonancepod.com to become a patron on a per episode basis. We love our patrons. Thank you so much. We're going topod or dissidentspod.com to become a patron on a per episode basis. We love our patrons. Thank you so much. We're going to catch you guys next time. We're going to leave you like you always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.

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