Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 736: Rudy Loses, Prince Charles and Homeopathy

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Show Notes

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. There is a Christmas tree, though, because it's a Christmas episode. It is a Christmas tree though because it's a Christmas episode.

It is a Christmas motherfucking episode. Merry Christmas, Tom. How are you? I am, does this episode come out on Christmas Day? It does, on Christmas Day.

It comes out on Christmas Day. For everybody, it'll be Christmas Day. Wide release. Wide release. It's Christmas Day. Probably Christmas Eve or maybe before.

Well, drink up some horrible eggnog if you're a bad person. Eggnog's bad for you. You know, relax with your lousy relatives, open some gifts. No, I'm kidding. To getting together. Were you a traveler? Yeah, we always went up to my, my dad's family was up in Grand Rapids. We lived in Chicago when I was a kid. And my dad's family was up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was about a three, three and a half hour drive, depending. And so we would travel on Christmas day or Christmas Eve

often. We would travel up and spend time with my dad's cousins. Basically like everybody up there is aunt and uncle. Like when everybody is like, but they're all my dad's cousins or second cousins. Yeah. None of them were my aunts and uncles, but yeah, I hated it. I hated it. You're sleeping in somebody else's bed. You're also traveling on Christmas and you know, that's a commodity you don't realize as a kid, but as an adult, you're like, I don't, I only get a couple of days off for this. Yeah. I don't want to spend a full day in a car. And that's what my thought was when I was an adult. And I used to have to visit two houses. I used to visit my in-laws and my own house and to travel between them.

And one lived mid-state, one lived a little higher up, but I'd be in the car all day. And then finally, like one year, I was just like, no, we're just going to do one place. We go to a place and then we come home and that's it. That's because that's always, I don't know. I just hated spending Christmas in a car. So if you're in a car right now, Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. We hope that we can brighten your travel for a few moments because there's some good news. There is some good news. So this story comes from the New York Times. Trump is disqualified from the 2024 ballot according to a Colorado Supreme Court ruling. Now, this will certainly get pushed up

to the United States Supreme Court. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So this is by no means definitive. And I will say that I've read a number of articles that say this could be like a 7-0 decision against this. Yeah. So the likelihood of this standing seems low. This is not going to pass.

This will, this will- He'll be on the ballot in 24. He'll be on the ballot. He will, don't think that this is the, this is the method in which he doesn't run. What's going to happen is that they're probably going to do something like they're, they're,

I, I predict their decision will be something like the, that we want the American people to decide this. Not, this is not for courts to decide. This is for the American people to decide, which I think is a giant fucking cop-out, if you ask me.

It is. If that's the reasoning, that is, and I read a bunch of shit, like Slate had an article about like, you know, why this should get rejected and all this stuff.

And like, but look, man, the 14th Amendment is not unclear. Seems pretty clear. It's super fucking plain language clear. I know that people will say like, that like all the amendments written from the Reconstruction era

really are meant to reference specifically, but like it doesn't specifically reference, right? And like, if you're going to make the argument that the Second Amendment is like ye olde, but applies to fucking machine guns and fucking battle toads or whatever else people want to have. Fucking A.

I don't think we can be like... Rocket launchers and shit. Yeah, get the fuck out of here. You could clear the snow in your front yard with a flamethrower because, Merc, I'm allowed to have as many lightsabers as I want. How can I be a Jedi warrior without a lightsaber? I want one of those fucking...

I want one of those guys, I want one of those guys who dresses in all the camo to get Darth Maul's double saber and like cut his own leg off. That's what I want. See, that's so bad. Have you seen,

this is a total aside, but have you seen the videos of the people who've made lightsabers? Oh, yeah. I've seen some like real lightsabers where they're cutting.

Yeah, it's fucking wild. It's insanity. They're like, this is like scary, dangerous. They're like molten hot, whatever, and they're like cutting through shit. I'm like, absolutely not. It's like this like focused plasma beam. Absolutely not. They're just like pushing it through like a metal door and shit.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Motherfucker. That is amazing in a movie. That looks awesome in a movie. You know what also is awesome in movies is zombies. Don't recreate those either. Tons of stuff.

At a certain point, you got to stop. You just got to stop yourself and be like, none of these in real life. There's some guy in a virology lab right now or some shit like trying to make the 28 days later. Zombie movies are the best. Look, I killed a man in the whole world. I killed the whole world.

Really, genuinely, this Trump thing is a decision by a court to say, look, you don't, you can't come on the ballot because you participated in insurrection. And really genuinely the, the way it's written is to say that, that it's very clear that they are, while they don't list the office of the presidency, they're clearly saying anybody in high office. They're clearly saying these people that are in high office. And I think one of the things that came out right away today, and this is something I didn't get a chance to put in the notes, but these people on the Supreme Court are already receiving death threats. So they're already getting death threats for this. receiving death threats.

So they're already getting death threats for this. And it seems so predictable, but it also says so much about your side when the first thing that happens

after something like this is death threats. Yeah, absolutely. When was the last time you thought a death threat? Now, don't get me wrong. There's a difference between being happy

someone died and a death threat. There's a big difference between that. If you don't know the difference between that, just go away. Like, you clearly want to start a dumb fight. But genuinely, I don't think I've ever made a death threat. There's a big difference between that. If you don't know the difference between that, just go away. Like, you clearly want

to start a dumb fight. But genuinely, I don't think I've ever made a death threat to anybody. A death threat? I've never made a death threat to anybody.

That's a crazy person thing to do. It is. First of all, you're tipping your hand. You never make a threat, right? Surprise attack.

Surprise attack. It's like every time it should be pocket sand, right? Pocket sand. Pocket sand. Pocket sand. That's what it should be pocket sand, right? Pocket sand. Pocket sand. Pocket sand. That's what it should be.

You're right, Tom. You're tipping your hand. Absolutely. That's the big problem with a death threat. You're 100% right. You don't want to tip your hand. Jeez. You're an amateur if you're doing threats.

Well, let me leave this trail of breadcrumbs from the crime. Like, what the fuck? That's not how anyone should crime at all. But what it is, what it is, is it's a fluff. They're not going to do anything. They're not doing anything. They just want to fluff. But here's the thing.

That's an actionable fluff, baby. You do that to a Supreme Court justice, I wouldn't be surprised if you're going to have a felony on your ass. Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent. And like the thing that it does do, the death threats, even though they're very rarely followed up with any action, what they do is they create a chilling effect, right?

Yeah. And that's exactly what is very likely to happen here. And I will say with all sincerity that I don't want Trump to lose the election because he didn't get on the ballot. I do think that if there's going to be a real civil war, that's how we get, that's how, yeah. No, I don't think you're wrong. If the courts decide that he can't be on the ballot and people are not allowed to vote for him, the optics for that are just so spectacularly bad.

They're unrecoverably bad. But what are the consequences then, right? Like, here's a man who stands in front of every, and I agree with you, right? Yeah, I know, I know. But I'm asking you, like, when do I get a consequence? When is there one fucking consequence

for, there have been a few, but when is there something for this? Because we both watched him stand in front of everybody like a fucking yokel with his buddy

with two different fucking DC villain hats on. Yeah. And then Rudy Giuliani getting up there and a bunch of other people tuning up that crowd and him saying,

you got to fight like hell. You won't have a country anymore. Yeah. And then they march their ass over and they stay fucking storm the Capitol. Where is your consequences for that? Because if it isn't getting off the ballot, what is it? Yeah. And Cecil, that's the problem, right?

Is that we're in this insane space. And I know I say it all the time. We're in this just insane space that I can't even understand how we're here. But I mean it. That somehow there is nothing disqualifying. It doesn't seem to be anything disqualifying. This is a guy who fomented an insurrection. He tried to subvert the democracy, the entire democracy of the American Republic. This is a guy who, you know, used helicopters and shit to drive protesters away so he could do a photo op.

The list of evil shit this guy has done, it would take us the whole show to list. It really would. And I'd still miss things. And none of it was disqualifying and even legally not disqualifying. This is a guy who's got 92 felony counts that he's currently

in the process of working toward trial on. And his party, he's growing in popularity. The polls are showing him widening the lead among Republicans from the other yahoos that are trying to get that seat. I don't understand any of this. I don't understand how we're in this world. I don't understand any of this. I don't understand how we're in this world. I don't understand how anybody is like pointing at that guy and being like, that's my guy. That's my guy.

Regardless of who the other side is. I like, there's a known evil here. We lived through four years of it. Plus like years of just like chaos that was defined by it. What strikes me as like impossible to even conceive of, and I don't even want to say it,

but like, were he to win in 2024 and survive the whole four years? I'm not certain that that's a likelihood, right? Because he's not in great shape and he's not a young guy. We will have 12 years of American political life defined by Trump. Defined by Trump. The entire Biden administration has been effectively defined by Trump. Defined by Trump. The entire Biden administration

has been effectively defined by Trump. Sure. They've been doing things that try to tune him down. And then they've been, you know, they've been stymied at so many different avenues because they don't have the House or they don't have the Senate. You know, they had both of them early, but both of them with a slim margin with people who were anti their policies. So, you know, you don't get an opportunity to realize the policies that you put forth. What you get a chance to do is basically cater to two different senators who are holding you hostage

and holding your policies hostage. So we haven't had an opportunity to see Biden really, really do a lot. He's done some good budgetary stuff, but genuinely we haven't seen him be able to at least start a progressive policy through legislation. We haven't really seen that.

No, we've not. And the other thing is like the news cycle doesn't get five fucking minutes to cover any of the successes of the Biden administration because all of the stories are about Trump and Trumpism. Yeah. Trump and MAGA world. Trump and MAGA hard right Republicans. The cock blocking, the Boebert's. I mean, the world has even shifted away from the

McConnell's. The attention economy has shifted away from what, you know, what we thought of as the, as the tried and stayed political monsters of yore. And now there's the fucking new Grendels, which have appeared that are like raiding the fucking Mead Hall every day. And you're like, you don't know where to fucking turn or who's armed to fucking rip off. The whole thing is like desperate. It feels so fucking desperate all the time. But we'll be 12, if he were to win, Yeah, it's 12 years. We would be 12 years

completely defined. I'm going to say, might be 16 if he lives through those four because there's a chance he might just never step down after that. Yeah, I,

you know, like, I don't think that that's entirely wrongheaded. I don't think, like, I don't think I could have said this six years ago and it would have made it,

I wouldn't have said that my whole life. I'd be like, no, you can't. It's ridiculous. But I'll tell you what, we live in a time now where if he did get elected, I don't know that we'd have any free elections anymore. Why? Because I said so.

Now go out and make yourself a friend. All right, so this story is from The Hill. Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO. It's smart. It's smart. And this is a the Hill. Congress approves bill barring any president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO. It's smart. It's smart. And this is a bipartisan bill.

Bipartisan bill. Mark Rubio. Rubio. One of the key sponsors. So you're talking about people that are, this is a Republican senator from Florida,

Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio is one of these people who was, has been, he was, he ran against Trump, but he was, he has been at least like pro his policies. Trump, but he was, he has been at

least like pro his policies. Oh yeah. He was fucking gargling his balls for a long time. But now they're putting together this thing because Trump's, you know, he is making, he's, he's hinting at the idea that, you know, there might be some change in policy with how we deal with Ukraine and other places. And they're saying, no, we're not going to leave. Like, we're going to make sure you can't just do that on your own. Like, that's not a that's not a thing the president gets to decide. If it was ever Trump's noise and rhetoric around the potential withdrawal of the United States from NATO is an absolute fucking gift to Russia. If there was ever any,

because I mean, the whole reason NATO really exists and began was to create a bulwark against the spread from the Soviet Union. And like here you've got Putin with obvious designs on territorial expansion in that region, invading a sovereign nation. And not going to want to stop after Ukraine. Has absolutely got his eyes, I'm sure, on Belarus, which is already a puppet state.

Got his eyes on other former Soviet bloc countries. And if the United States pulls out of NATO, NATO's it's that nato's gone i mean effectively nato won't matter the same way anymore and that's just a gift to putin and i think trump is ahead of the election time signaling to his russian masters help me get elected and here's what i'll try to do and how does that not feel like that it's just it's insane what What blows me away is this, the party, even, even the leaders of this party that aren't Trump are all pro-Ukraine. Most of them, many of them. I mean, yeah, sure. There's a few outliers, but most of them are.

And they're so pro-Ukraine that even people who have been following Trump forever are now passing laws to try to stop him from fucking things up if he does get reelected. Like now they're putting in the, you know, they're, they're locking up the cookie jars in all the house. It's just like, we're about to, we, we as a party are about to endorse a candidate we are afraid of, but we are also, but there's such chicken shits that they are afraid to not back him and to lose that base that he carries. He doesn't have to do it if he doesn't win. If he doesn't win and you convince everybody around you not to vote for him, he doesn't win.

And then you don't have to make these weird rules where no sane person would do this. So why do we have to make a rule for the Mad King? Why do we have to have the Mad King rule? Yes, it's exactly right. But you guys are suggesting we all vote for the mad king. Why do we have to have the mad king rule? Yes, it's exactly right. But like, you guys are suggesting we all vote for the mad king. And your guys are saying like, look, we'll put a leash on him.

We'll put a leash on him. We're going to hold him in one small room. Maybe get a different king. Look for a new guy. We don't have to have a fucking frothing at the mouth, rabies-laden king. Yeah. We don't need that.

You don't need that guy. It just goes to show how zero-sum politics have become. The game, the partisan game has become so zero-sum that the Republican Party is basically like, look, even we are going to recognize by legislation that this guy is dangerous, but it's better him than a Democrat. Welcome back to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? All right, this story is delicious. It's from TheMessenger.com. Rudy Giuliani ordered by jury

to pay nearly $150 million in defamation damages to Georgia election workers. Yeah, so this is Shea Moss and Ruby Freeman. Yep. They were the two ladies who were passing a ginger mint back and forth to each other while they were sitting there. And Rudy said that it was a USB port, a port of USBs, a whole port of them.

An entire port of USBs. Doesn't make any sense. It would be a USB drive. Learn what you're talking about, Rudy. But in any case, he said that they're passing back. And he was saying that you can clearly tell these people are up to nefarious deeds.

They are committing election fraud on camera. And he lied about it. And we know he lied about it because he admitted at the very beginning of the case that he lied about it. Yeah. And then when he lied about it, the case had a default judgment because he said, I lied about it.

And they said, okay, well, I guess we're not covering that part. Let's just figure out what the damages are. And so the whole case was based on damages after that. And he didn't participate in discovery. He refused to participate meaningfully in discovery. He essentially admitted that he lied about it. So it's like, all right, there's really no reason. And the reason why he didn't participate in discovery

is because he didn't want them to know his net worth. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. The discovery was going to be all around this portion, right? And that's why he admitted to the actual saying that he lied about them. Right. Because he didn't want to participate in anything.

He wanted to hide his assets. Because he wanted to hide his assets. Yeah. And I also just want to point out, too, that, like, not only did he talk about having them, that these two women were, like, passing back and forth a port of USB or whatever. Like a crack file.

But they, yeah, they said it in racist terms. Yeah. He specifically and intentionally couched it in explicitly fucking racist terms. Yeah. He specifically and intentionally couched it in explicitly fucking racist terms. Yeah. You know, so like,

he sought to vilify them not just for something they didn't do, but then also to vilify them racially and to do this publicly. And these women

have become unsafe living in the world. They have to get, they have to wear disguises to go out. They, the lady said in one interview, she said, I miss using my name. She can't give people her name. Now it's easy for us up here to have,

you know, not really know what it's like to live in a red state or a red part of a state. But think of how difficult it's got to be to be a woman of color who everybody literally hates. And then we just talked about it in the previous story. This is the party of death threats. Yeah. This is the party of random violence when you don't get your way. Yeah. This is that party.

So now, what awaits you in Georgia as a woman of color who is now targeted by the GOP, who has been broadcast by the highest names in the GOP? What awaits you? Well, I'll tell you what awaits you. Whatever change Rudy had in his pocket. He doesn't have $150 million, but whatever he's got, I hope they squeeze him like a fucking pomegranate when they fucking squeeze those pomegranates.

Get that juice out there. I hope they put him in one of those machines. All the black stuff will leak out of his hair. And he's just like immediately. God, Rudy juice. Rudy juice. That dude's already fucking leaking, like you said, from his head. But he's also fucking gassing out in the middle of it.

I know. He's already surprising. Could you imagine the fart that lets out if they squeeze him like that? He should cross the room. He's like, you ever like have like an elderly uncle and you go to give him a hug and you like fucking squeeze one out of him. He's a fucking, he's a human whoopie cushion. Yeah. He has a human whoopee cushion.

He also, I will say, he also doubled down publicly, I think today or yesterday. Right afterwards. Right afterwards. And was like, yeah, all those things I said were true. Yeah. Even though he lost money and claimed in the thing to say that they were, that he was false, he came out and said, no, they were actually true. Yeah.

And they immediately moved to sue him again yeah good they went to to sue him again fucking sue him forever he went into bankruptcy supposedly today was the big the big news is that he's going into bankruptcy but from what i read this isn't this doesn't get removed if that if that's yeah no so i can speak to that a little bit so um i'm not a bankruptcy lawyer but I know a little bit about it from my work. So you like a judgment. So the order of operations matters. First of all, he'll have more money and more assets. He won't be able to do a chapter seven. So chapter seven, you can do if you have a minimal amount of assets and a ton of liabilities, but very little income. He certainly is not going to qualify for a chapter seven. Chapter seven wipes out what we call unsecured debts. So like it would not wipe out anything that was the collateralized

essentially. And also like a judgment, which is what this is, a judgment is a sort of kind of a, it's to be thought of in the same way as a collateralized debt. It would be a secure judgment because it's a secure debt. It's secured by that judgment is the way to think about it. So if you have a judgment and it's issued and you can't wipe it out, like you might be able to restructure it through like a chapter 13, which is a restructure and repayment schedule, but you can't like, there's no magic wand that just is like, well, I don't have to pay it. That's not how that works. And it's fucking delicious. So like, yeah, I'm sure he'll do like a 13 or a similar restructure.

And all that means is that you put all those debts into a big pile. And then the trustee looks at how much money you make and they figure out, okay, well, it's going to take a certain amount of time and you can pay off. 700 years. And then at the end of the day,

you will pay less than what you totally owe. But you're stuck on a repayment schedule and it is fucking strict. Yeah. It is brutally strict. Like there's like very little wiggle room for you and your life at the end of it. It's a big deal. Like it's a big fucking deal. It's not like walking around scot-free.

We had said a while back. Michael scot-free. We said a while back. We said, you know, what's one good way to get people to stop doing stuff is to sue them, right? To get these people to stop lying. And it worked with Fox News. We saw that a couple weeks ago. But it's not working with him.

You can't, part of the problem is like. You can't squeeze blood from a stone. You can't squeeze it twice. Yeah. So like once he's already gone bankrupt and once he's already got the judgment against him and once he's already going to be broke as fuck, like you're kind of free at that point. You know what I mean?

Sure. Like, yeah, sue me twice. Sue me a hundred times. So it's not going to stop him. But the thing that I'm hoping that it might convince others not to do it. It's not going to stop him, but it might some other rich idiot out there,

maybe Mike Lindell or something, be like, you know what? Maybe I'll just settle. I don't want to have the Rudy treatment. Maybe I'll just settle. Yeah. Maybe I'll just settle. I'm sorry.

I did a bad thing. Can we do a couple million? I'll say I'm sorry. And then I'll mean it because I'll still have money. Right. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. I think that that would be the best course of action

because then these people who were big, loud mouths during the process would have to come out and be like, okay, no, we really fucked up. I really fucked up. I'm really sorry. Right. Unlike the, I mean, we saw two this week and it's not in the notes,

but you saw those one line apologies from Sidney Powell and Cheesebro, right? Did you see these? I did not, no. Seriously, one line and it said, I'm sorry for participating in the felonies that occurred or something. I mean, they were that, they were seriously that long.

They're that nothing. They're that nothing. That's what those written apologies were. So I don't know if they're going to- I hope they don't accept them. I hope they don't accept them. I hope that just like when you take you, when you turned your homework in and they're like,

no, that's an incomplete. So when I was a kid, one of my dad's punishments for me when I got in trouble was writing assignments. So when I would get in trouble, like let's say I like lied to my dad, I would write, and my dad would be like, all right, I'm gonna need you to write like a two-page essay on why it's wrong to lie.

And I would be like, oh shit. So instead of being grounded, I was like basically grounded until I finished my, why is it wrong to lie assignment? Or like, why is it wrong to lie assignment? Or like, why is it wrong to, you know, look at someone else's paper? In this paper, I will, the Webster's Dictionary calls lying.

But like, he would read it. And if it wasn't good enough, he'd be like, crumple, crumple. Start over. Crumple, crumple. So if it wasn't, if I like came to it, because I only did it once. That's strict child abuse. I came to it with an attitude. That is absolutely child't, if I like came to it because I only did it once, I came to it with an attitude.

That's strict child abuse. That is absolutely child abuse. Well, I came to it. I'm calling CPS on your dad. It's ridiculous. Well, I remember, I remember it was about lying and I came to it

with a shit attitude and I wrote a shit thing with a bad attitude. And he was like, no, do it again. Crumple, crumple. He's just crumpled it up

and he's like, no, absolutely not. So I kind of feel like the court should do the same thing. Crumple, crumple. Like crumpleumpled it up and he's like, no, absolutely not. So I kind of feel like the court should do the same thing. Crumple, crumple. Like crumple that fucker up. Be like, no, you know what? I'll accept your apology when I pull it out of a hat and it's not a joke. And you fucking mean it.

This isn't written in your tears. Divorce beheaded and died. Divorce beheaded survived. This story comes from Vice News. A political candidate beheaded a Satanic Temple statue. Now he faces charges. I want to show what the statue looks like.

The statue's amazing. The statue looks really funny. Look, I wouldn't behead it, but I kind of want the head. I'm going to open this in a new tab so we can actually look at it. So, guys, people who aren't watching, I got to zoom in. So it's a goat head. It's fucking great. It looks like a wreath of flowers

and a giant red cape. Is it all reflective? I don't know. It kind of looks reflective. I can't tell if it's made out of just, you know, it's probably made out of Christian tears that have been crystallized.

In any case, this guy comes in mad. He actually traveled there. He traveled there to do this. He drove several hours. He drove several hours to do this. And he knocks the thing over. And really what you're doing, first off, you can be in some serious trouble for this. Yeah.

But the other thing you're doing is just proving the point. Like they put it up there very specifically to prove their point, and you are just extra special proving that point. Well, what if I had an exclamation point on your point then? Huh? What if I bolded underlined your point for you? I will put it in red. How's that?

I will highlight her. The thing is, and then the Satanic Temple immediately fundraises off of this and now has more funds in order to do more of its outreach and more of its advocacy work. This guy breaks a thing. Now it's covered in the news story. So everybody hears about it. And like,

this is the same guy who proposed or sponsored or supported a bill. I don't remember which one to make like the defacing of a statue in the state of Iowa, a 10 year prison sentence. Now it didn't go through. Oh my gosh. It didn't go, but like hypocrite much for real. But that's not a thing you can call them on. You know, I'm done with that. I just, there's nothing you could do because here's a perfect example. This is a perfect example. You're a giant hypocrite. Even when you attack the other statue, you're a giant hypocrite even when you attack the other statue. Oh, 100%. You're

a giant hypocrite. So the rest of it, it's all just hypocrite gravy at that point. It doesn't matter. Yeah, right. It is hypocrite. Welcome to Codependence, the weekly podcast that gives you direct access to me, Maya Allen, and my sis, Sierra Miller. Every week, we give you insider access into our sisterhood and lives. Part self-help and part comedic relief, Codependence is all about letting your guard down. Expect a lot of laughs and maybe some tears as we navigate this crazy world together. Join us every Wednesday for this funny, tea-spilling, shade-throwing podcast. You really want me to shake your hand? I insist.

If you insist. This is unreal, man. Vanity Fair. Clarence Thomas scandal is somehow looking even worse. I love ProPublica so much. Now, this is for Vanity Fair. But we donate to ProPublica every month and it's money well spent because the stuff,

the journalism that they're doing is amazing. They find these, there's this communication between Clarence Thomas and someone else and this is around 2000 and he's, and this is around 2000, and he's complaining and saying, we need to get paid for our speaking engagements, and we also need to get a large raise.

He's complaining about money. And he said, you know what? If that doesn't happen, people are going to start leaving is basically what he said. And that scared the shit out of them because they knew that at a certain point, if they didn't get the kind of money that they wanted, Republicans could leave during a Democrat's term. And those Republicans vote down the same

line as they do. And so they want to make sure that they replace those seats with like-minded people or in some ways, even more farther right than they are. And so he used that as a way to say, well, if I leave, I leave. Oh, well, and then you'll be fucked. So what will you do? And so they, the lot of, after that was when he started getting courted by billionaires. After that was when a bunch of billionaires started coming up and being like, Hey, you want to go on a really, really expensive vacation that literally no one else in the world can afford? That would be amazing, wouldn't it? Why don't you go? Why don't you go two times? Do you want a brand new RV? Do you want to go up to

Alaska and drink thousand dollar bottles of wine? Sounds great. Let's get it done. Can I buy your mom's house? Can I put your kid through your nephew through college? Like, that guy with a fucking, like, he's got a name like a villain from a Dukes of Hazzard show. Like Harlan something. Harlan Crow. Seriously sounds like a villain from a dukes of hazard show like harlan harlan crow

seriously sounds like a villain from fucking justified justified sounds like a justify sounds like that guy's cousin from justified yeah he does oh look out harlan crow's back in town harlan crow comes into town and so you all boys ride out you don't want to mess with those crow boys fuck out of here the duke boys didn't stand a chance when harley i mean You don't want to mess with those Crowboys. You don't want to mess with those Crowboys. Fuck out of here. The Duke boys didn't stand a chance when Harley. I mean, like, for real, it's fucking crazy. Evil villain name.

I also want to point out that the money he was bitching about making was $173,600 a year. And this was in 2000, by the way. This was a long time ago. 23 years ago, he was bitching about making three times the median household income today. Yeah. That's what he was bitching about making. Now, I recognize that an attorney

with the years of experience and tenure that he has could in the open marketplace make more than that 173. So leave. Abso-fucking-lutely.

So fucking leave. If you don't want to do your civic fucking duty, don't do it. Don't take the job. You put your name in the fucking, in the big hat and they pulled it and it wasn't a practice. I mean this with genuine, like not hyper, not Tom's cognitive dissonance hyperbole. I mean this real sincerity.

I think if you accept a position on the Supreme Court or Congress or whatever, and you complain one time about money ever, you should be fucking fired. That's it. Sure. Just one time. And like, if you're like out at Best Buy and you're like, I don't think I can afford a new TV.

Hidden cameras. Fucking, now I'm being ridiculous. Hidden cameras should swarm in and fucking they should shoot you out of a can. I want three or four security guards to tackle you and hold you down. And then I want them to feed you dollars until you shut up. That's what I want three or four security guards to tackle you and hold you down. And then I want them to feed you dollars until you shut up. That's what I want.

But I just feel like, why'd you take this fucking job? Because what you're telling me is like, you took this job for the power. You're absolutely right. And now you want the riches too. Yeah. Fuck you forever. This is community. This is civic duty.

And you know what? Here's the thing. You were on the Supreme Court and you made decisions for, God, the guy's been on there since the 80s, right? He's been on for a fucking minute. He's been on for a long time. So since the 80s, you've had Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.

I'm pretty sure it's the 80s because it was Reagan, right, who nominated him? I don't remember, but it's been a long time. Let's look it up real quick. I thought it was Reagan because Reagan nominated somebody

that they didn't like. Because it certainly wasn't during Clinton. It had to be before Clinton assumed office in 91. Yeah. So Supreme Court, George H. Bush, preceded by Thurgood Marshall. He was 1991 was when he came in. So you're talking about 30 years, 30 plus years he's been on that court. Every opportunity to say, you know what? I had a great career. Yeah. I did a lot of work on this court. I can certainly go and leave and join any board I want. I can join and I can become a partner in any firm I want. Yeah. I can go do, write a book, do a speaking tour. I can do a million things. He can go get rich. So much fucking money. This guy could be absolutely fucking, he could, every time he cried from now on,

he could pour nickels out of his eyes. He could absolutely be as rich as he wants whenever he wants. And that goes for every single person on that court that served more than a couple of years, right? 100%. Anybody on that court. Do I think Amy Coney Barrett could do that?

Probably not. Do I think Kavanaugh could do that? Probably not. But give him 10 years and they absolutely could. They absolutely could. Their names are going to be on a lot of decisions. They're going to be writing dissents and they're going to be writing other. So they're going to be on a lot of these things and their name's going to be out there. They can make a lot of money then. I say it should be a term limit so

that they can do that, so that they have something to look forward to, to go make the money. And then they won't be as, I think, vulnerable to this sort of thing while they're in office yeah i mean this is a guy who's 74 years old he's born in 1948 this is a guy who's turning 75 years old actually like this is a guy who should step the fuck down if you're if money is this fucking important to you if the most important thing about your civic duty is how much fucking money you can make. Now's your time to leverage it, asshole. Now's your time to go. Just leverage it. Take your 30 years of monstrous, terrible service and go leverage it at Liberty University.

They'll suck your dick every day on fucking closed circuit TV. Think of all the different colleges you could teach at. You could walk into any college, any of these big colleges, and they'd immediately make you a full professor. Absolutely. You're a full professor. Absolutely. Like you're a full professor.

And then you could just, and then you could start a speaking tour, write a book. There's so much money to be made. And I mean, don't get me wrong. You don't make a lot of money as a professor, but it's a strict, it's a prestigious thing. You get money. He can get a job on these think tanks. And then you get on all these boards. Like the other thing is he gets on a bunch of boards and he's making a bunch of money and getting a ton of fucking perks being on a board somewhere.

You don't just get money doing that, right? Like you get other stuff. Like they just give you shit. They shit gifts at you all the time. Right. So he can get all these special things

and get treated like a VIP all the time. It's easy. It's fucking easy. He could easily do it. He could be on a board at any college he wanted to. Where is your God?

Where is your God now? Here lies a great man. a great man, Father! So the story comes from The Guardian. King Charles has appointed a homeopath. Why did the elite put their faith in snake oil? I think, Tom, the best is the last two paragraphs of this, if you could read this aloud. Two factors, I think, are at play. The first is that elites tend to overestimate the value of their instincts. King Charles and Cindy Crawford spend their time surrounded by suck-ups. They are themselves exceptions to the rules that govern others.

If a gut feeling leads them to thought-field therapy rather than modern medicine, they might be more inclined to believe it. And the second is something first observed by Charles Percy Snow in his famous remarks about the two cultures in the West. Ignorance of literature and the arts will exclude you from highly educated circles, but it is perfectly acceptable to have no grasp of basic science.

The second law of thermodynamics, for example, or how to define acceleration. Combine overconfidence and an ignorance of science and you get an aristocracy convinced that crushed bees and aconites are the answer to their problems. In any case, it is bad news. Alternative medicine is useless, but not always harmless. When cancer patients put their faith in tinctures and chanting can cause fatal delays to proper treatment, it needs to be resisted. I love that.

It's something I hadn't considered. It's, you know, that idea of, you know, really there is a thought that, you know, certain things are cultured, but if you don't have anything,

like that's almost like a badge of honor to not have any idea what science is, to not really follow science or to push science away and to claim that it idea what science is, to not really follow science or to push science away and to claim that it doesn't know everything. Oh, they don't know everything. These doctors don't know everything. That's actually a badge of honor to a lot of these really high-level

celebrities. For sure. There's an idea that like, that's why we call it the liberal arts. You know what I mean? It's like you go to school and you get a degree and you take a whole bunch of these sort of like general broad liberal arts classes, which I have a liberal arts. Sure. I'm a big fan of it. But I also took a ton of science classes, you know, but not because I had to though. And I recognize that I wasn't like required to take a lot of science. I was required to take relatively small amount of science classes. The idea that science is for scientists keeps us all ignorant. That is a real fucking problem. I think we should spend time on

art and literature. Absolutely. We should spend time in the lab. We should figure out how we can understand the world from a scientific standpoint. I want to say something because I think it's important. Like there is a tendency, we saw a talk about this at TAM many years ago. There is a tendency to sort of like make fun of the people who find themselves in the tinctures

world or the homeopathy world or the alternative medicine world or the Reiki world or whatever. There's a million different variations on alternative or complimentary or whatever you want to call it medicine. And like, there is a part of me that is deeply sympathetic at the patient level to that. Sure. Deeply sympathetic. So like, I don't want to attack it at the patient level. The problem is not the patient level. The problem is that this shit is getting pushed down from people who have no fucking ability to vet what they're pushing down.

King Charles doesn't know fuck all about the sciences. He should not be opining about it. He doesn't know fuck all about this. Cindy fucking Crawford? What the fuck does she know about medicine?

Nothing. These people should keep their fucking mouths shut. Yeah. They should keep, because they're going to lead people into, like this article said, like fucking like thought therapies and like, you know, energy healing, crystal balls, ball is bullshit. Well, it's bullshit. Well, one thing too is that you get a lot of these rich people who live a very charmed life and then they feel a

little sick or whatever. And then they go get like bee therapy or whatever and they feel better. And then they correlate those two, but they live a life where they're, they have no, no nutritional needs. They have no personal trainer needs. They get all the exercise they need. They, they get plenty of sleep. They're not overstressed, all these things that, you know, like you could, you could, you could add in. And then they wind up doing something and then they use that as a correlation. They go, oh, well, that was the bee thing that helped. It's like, no, you live a ridiculously charmed life. If you can blame anything on anything, you know, you're not getting cancer for all those

years is probably because you have a nutritionist and you're doing personal trainer stuff and you have no stress. Like those things in conjunction will keep you pretty cancer free because you're doing personal trainer stuff and you have no stress. Like, those things in conjunction will keep you pretty cancer-free because you're living a great life. Yeah,

and these people are not, because they're not working in heavy industry, they're not exposed to toxins in their environment, they're not exposed to heavy metals,

they're not like- They live away from everybody else. They don't have any, I mean, it's just- It's just like the whole thing is like

they're just designed to be like a fucking N of one. Yeah. And then designed to be like a fucking N of one. Yeah. And then they try to like write that N of one as if this has some like larger prescriptive value. And like there are a lot of things that modern medicine, we're not at the end point of medical history. No, absolutely not. Of course we're not.

So it's like there are things where people are like, fuck, I don't know what to do and I'm sick and it's not getting better. And that makes people desperate. Sure. And it makes them cling to things. And the real danger is like these people like, you know, King Charles and Sidney Crawford, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They promote therapies. They don't under fucking stand. They don't understand. And people who are like, Hey, I'm sick and I'm fucking tired of being sick. And nobody seems to have an answer. They're going to latch on to something. They got to find something.

And it's going to be fucking bee stings for some of these people. And we talked about it before, but many of these alternative therapies have people who genuinely have time for you. They talk to you. They seem like they care for you. And so it's easier than walking in and getting somebody who runs in the room, says, it's this, and runs out. It's way easier. I've had so many doctors in my life that have walked into a room and said, they've looked at me for 30 seconds and like, yeah,

it's this. And then they just, they literally leave. And then the person who's has to write up a script subscription to like a prescription, a prescription to, you know, physical therapy or whatever. And they leave them in the room to do the rest of that work, but like an intern or something. But man, I've had that happen to me multiple times. I can't imagine. And I've never been really sick. I've never been really sick. I've always gone and been like, man, my shoulder's kind of hurting. It's like, yeah, it's this. And then you find

out it's not that at all because they didn't look and they didn't care. Because they're just busy. They're busy people. And the same thing, I mean, when you go into an alternative place, we've talked about it before, they're like, it sounds nice. It's quiet. It's relaxed. We've talked about it before. They're like, it sounds nice. It's quiet. It's relaxed.

They take their time with you. They take their time. They talk to you for a while. They have these, and so, yeah, it feels like they care more. Yeah, well, and like, I think it's, I do think it's actually worth noting. Western medicine as a set of ideas and principles and like procedures

to get at truth is terrific. But like, as you described, the practice of medicine is far away from a lot of the science of medicine. Like, you know, you and I, you've had similar, like you go in and like, oh, my fucking shoulder hurts and they don't do the testing. They don't do the other stuff because they're busy because it's in a, this whole thing exists within a capitalist framework that makes it impossible for them to do all the things that the science of medicine should say to do.

And they got to fight with my fucking HMO. They're not going to fight with them. They know exactly what they have to do because it's not them making the decisions most of the time. It's an HMO making the decisions. The practice of medicine is in this capitalist structure where it's like seven minutes per appointment and try to

reduce the amount of testing that you order. Who knows what's going to get paid or not paid. So like, I want to just acknowledge like there are big problems with the way Western medicine is practiced, but like bee stings aren't it. You know what I mean? Like bee stings aren't it. Homeopathy ain't it. The way to get to a better solution for people is to fix the structural problems within Western medicine. Let's not have, like you should be able to fix the structural problems within Western medicine. Let's not have, you should be able to get

the same kind of appointment that you were describing from your regular doctor. Yeah. Where they walk in and they know you and they care about who you are. Have a conversation with you.

And they listen to who you are and they have more than seven fucking minutes and it's not the doctor's fault that they don't. So don't write to me if you're a doctor. I'm saying it's the structure. These are structural problems because we have built

this capitalist framework. Yeah. I can't, I can't tell you how many times I've had rushed appointments because the doctor's behind and they don't have time to talk to me. They don't have time to like, cause I have like the whole story I want to tell them. They're like, I don't want to hear your whole story. And they're like this, I just need to know this because they just want to do a thing. And you're right, it's not their fault because they are in a bad system,

a system that is a profit motive system and it makes it so they have to do as many as possible a day and they have to, and again, like I said,

they have to charge, they can only charge what they think that is going to get paid. So if they think an MRI would work on more people, they don't just do it

because the insurance company is not going to allow that. Right. Well, when I had my back surgery, I went to three different, I got three different opinions and they all said three different things. Yeah. That's the other thing is like, it's not that like there's an art to the science because like there just is. Sure. Like, so I went to three different surgeons that said three radically different things, radically different things. Like, so I went to three different surgeons that said three radically different things, radically different things. The first guy I went to wanted to do like

a crazy amount of work on my back. They want to like fuse like two or three levels and like, you know, like throw away your whole life. You're, you know, and I was like, oh my, I walked out of that appointment terrified. Like, geez, I hope I can walk next time I see this guy. Some other guy like burst in the door and was like, yeah, bada bing, bada boom, we'll zip, zap, zap, and bada baa, ha!

And like ran out. He's like, you'll be good as new, I gotta go, baa! He like ran out the door. And I'm like, that doesn't seem like it either. And I fucking went with like the baby bear, you know what I mean? Like this bed's too hard, this bed's too soft, I'll get the guy in the middle. I don't even know if that was the right call. I feel good.

But I think there's some frustration there too. But again, like none of that, none of the problems with Western medicine are the reason that non-Western medicine is good. They're just the problems of Western medicine. You know what I mean? We got to not look at these things as a binary. I think like patient-wise, people feel like, well, if there's nowhere to turn in Western medicine, I got to go somewhere. And we got to stop promoting that at the celebrity level. Yeah. Today,

we will be planting 20 million trees. And we put them in the hole. This story is from Wired. Stop planting trees, says guy who inspired world to plant a trillion trees. Just the headline doesn't match the article. The headline is so dismissive. It is.

Because this is really about greenwashing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so the guy who said, hey, we should plant some, we should plant a lot of trees. He didn't really say we should plant a lot of trees. What he did is he worked on a paper. And in that paper, the suggestion of the paper was trees can actually sequester an enormous amount of carbon. And they might be one of, forests might be one of the most powerful tools that we have to sequester atmospheric carbon. So we should work on that principle. And like people read that and were like, that guy said to plant a lot of trees. We should plant trees. And like, and then like huge like companies would be like, well, I can shit 86 million carbon units into the air if I plant 43 trees. Yeah. Sometimes they don't even do that. Sometimes they don't even bother to do

that calculation. They just say, we're planting a bunch of trees. And then they never bother to even mess with their carbon at all. Right. Yeah. Right. Because they're just like, I can basically buy myself out of carbon jail with trees. Because if I PR all the trees and say, this is my big, look at what I'm doing, everybody. Hey, look at, and the New York Times, you know, shell planted 50 million trees in this area. That's a big deal. The other thing too, is seems, it seems like you should know it when you, it as soon as you hear them say it, which is trees that exist are way more important than trees we plant. Yeah, man. And it seems like you want to just walk up to somebody and be like, of course, no kidding.

But really, this is something that I think needs to be said more often is that we need to stop with the deforestation. Stop doing things like this. He's also talking about indigenous populations, very big, a very poignant article about indigenous populations, but really talking about how we shouldn't be displacing not only these forests, but these people and like the wildlife. It also talks about how it just changes when you just plant trees in a place where maybe there weren't trees before. It changes a lot of things.

Yeah, it just, the biodiversity goes way down. Yeah, it changes so much because nothing's used to living there. So we've got to be careful to think, well, it's a carbon problem. No, it's an emissions problem is what it is. Right. It's a carbon problem

because we're shitting out a bunch of carbon, but we can slow that down, plant some trees, but also keep as much as possible. And that's what he's now saying because his plan was, and he got a bunch of people signed on and raised a ton of money to plant a trillion trees. But while that will help, it might also hurt pretty drastically. And that's a real problem that I think it's an interesting way to look at this problem as when we look at how companies try to get away with stuff. They make it look like they're doing something good. And they're doing the shittiest thing possible.

And then they're just like, but I planted some trees. Isn't that awesome? I basically poured a tanker of oil into a stream, but I planted some trees. Isn't that awesome? I basically poured a tanker oil into a stream, but I, I planted a fern next to it. I ran a whole tanker full of fucking train tankers, a whole place in Ohio or whatever, and fucking sopped the ground with chemicals.

But I planted a big tree over there. I put some poinsettias over by it. Fine. There's just some guy like what they were doing, the cleanup work. He just got some bird seedies thrown. Clean it up after this oil spill. It'll be fine.

The ocean will eat it up. It'll eat it right up. The ocean will eat it right up. A faker. A phony. Not a fraud. A base deceitful. Mr. Adams.

So the story comes from the Washington Post and also from every nightmare I have had. The rise of AI fake news is creating a misinformation super spreader. And honestly, we talked about this a long time ago. And this basically, and I don't want to exaggerate, guys.

It essentially confirms all of our worst fears. Yeah. Like all of our worst fears about the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation using AI to create like a bottomless supply of automated bullshit that is virtually indistinguishable from real news. Yeah. And that will be used by any number of actors from trolling teenagers all the way to state actors polluting the information system so badly that telling what's real and what happened and what didn't happen will become virtually impossible. You know, what we do with,

if you wanted to like open a restaurant, you have to go through a bunch of things in order to get certified so that your place is able to house food. You're able to serve food. There's a whole system that we have where the health department comes in, they look at your place, they grade you on it, and they make sure that everything is like, they'll come in and they'll like temp your chicken that's sitting out. They'll ask how long things have been out. They'll go in your fridge and make sure all your fridge stuff is. And they do a lot of checks to make sure that

you're capable and competent enough to feed the public so that they don't get sick, right? We have a system in place for that. We're going to have to create a system that allows for this when it comes to information and news. We're going to have to create a system that says, this is a valid news source. It has it on the thing. There's a red outline, a red box around it or whatever it is. This is the only way that you can do it

because if you just leave it out there for the public to have to know, they're not going to know. They're not going to know. And we're proving that they don't know because we're allowing these things to exist and we're seeing more and more often, these things are spreading just completely falsified news. In this story, they talk about Netanyahu and they say that a story about Netanyahu to try to make him out to be a bad person. Like you don't have to make

things up about Netanyahu to make him look like a fucking awful human being, right? He's an awful person. He's a genuine awful human. You don't have to do anything, but they're going to make things up about Netanyahu to make him look like a fucking awful human being, right? He's an awful person. He's a genuine awful human. You don't have to do anything. Right. But they're going to make something up to make it even worse. Yeah. And you're like, that's not necessary, but what it shows is, is that there's a malicious part of our information ecosystem out there

trying to make things up rather than relying on things that are truthful. Yeah. And I'm going to read a few things right from this article because I think this article is this like all jokes aside, I think this article is really important. And this is a lot of the stuff that we were talking about, you know, like, oh man, think about how bad this could get. And like, this is how bad it could get.

AI is making it easy for nearly anyone, whether they are part of a spy agency or a teenager in the basement, to create those outlets, producing content that is at times hard to differentiate from real news. One AI-generated article recounted a made-up story about Netanyahu's psychiatrist, alleging that he had died and left behind a note suggesting the involvement of the Israeli prime minister.

The psychiatrist appears to have been fictitious, but, and this is important, the claim was featured on an Iranian TV show and was recirculated on media sites in Arabic, English, Indonesian, and spread by users on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram. So it's not just down to the individual, like the bullshit is not like just being like blasted out into the ether, and then it's up to the individual to vet each story. These then are getting picked up by reliable news services or, in some cases, unreliable news services with state actors like the Iranian news service, right? There's further.

I want to read something about the Chinese government using this. Well-dressed AI-generated news anchors. Let me read that again. Well-dressed AI-generated news anchors are spewing pro-Chinese propaganda amplified by bot networks sympathetic to Beijing. Those aren't even real people. They're creating people that are reading news that didn't happen. So they're creating not just like, they're creating an entire news program with entire personalities telling you things, and it's all made up bullshit. It's not even just the story you can't believe, you can't believe your own eyes, right?

In Slovakia, politicians up for election found their voices had been cloned to say controversial things they had never said days before voters went to the poll. A growing number of websites with generic names such as iBusinessDay or Ireland Top News are delivering fake news made to look genuine in dozens of languages from Arabic to Thai. You know, when Cecil and I look for show notes for this show, if we stumble on a story and then it's behind a paywall, all you really have to do to find that story again is just take the headline from the paywalled story, most often, drop it into your search, search it again, and it'll be 10 different other places. Because news services

just clone each other's stories. There is very little vetting work. It's only on, I'm going to make it up, it's only on Guardian. I can't get a subscription to Guardian. Rolling Stone is a big problem. Rolling Stone. I'll find it on Reuters. I'll find it on AP. I'll find it on Yahoo. Yahoo,

right? So when the bullshit hits these places, it will proliferate and you'll see it and you'll be like, well, I don't know. Like I saw that story on Yahoo and AP and Reuters and, and all of a sudden this shit will seem real. We're going to hear things that didn't happen. It's right in this story. We're going to see

things that didn't happen, like people talking. This is going to get real tough, man. This is going to get really tough. So you have to get ahead of this. We're not ahead of it, right? We're falling far behind it very quickly. And you're going to keep falling behind it. You've got to put restrictions in place now. There's got to be something in there that restricts it now. There's got to be something in there. There's got to be people who sit around at a big table and make decisions about this right now to say, okay, this is how we try to curtail some of this. Now, I'm not saying to get rid of it because I don't think, because the fucking, you've opened Pandora's box. You're not getting rid of it. But what you can do is you can curtail our use, not our use of it, but our consumption of it by making sure everybody knows it's false.

Right. Much of the Internet nowadays is walking around, looking at things and trying to decide whether it's real or not. It's basically a fun house. When it first started, it wasn't like this. The internet wasn't like this. It was a lot of true stuff and some trolls and the trolls were

a little more obvious back then. Now, it's kind of a fun house. You walk into this area and you're like, is that real? Is this real? Is this a wall of mirrors? Is this a wall?

And you're kind of fumbling around in there. There's so often that I look at a story that comes up and I'm like, I don't know that I believe that. I will have to find that in multiple sources. Now, that's a good thing, but I'm uncommon. I'm not going to,

there's so many people that aren't going to do that. I'm uncommon. I'll do it. I'll take the time to pay attention. I was telling a story tonight when we were streaming about how I watched a video and I was maybe going to play it, but I didn't think it was real. I thought the person would, I thought it was acted out. I thought that the situation that they're doing was a post situation. So I was like, I don't think it's real. So I'm not going to play it, but I didn't think it was real. I thought the person would, I thought it was acted out. I thought that the situation that they're doing was a post situation. So I was like, I don't think it's real. So I'm not going to play it. And it might be, there's a possibility it's real. But for me, I'm, I'm basically saying that everything I cannot verify is fake. Yeah. That's my default. If it's, if I can't verify it, I don't believe it. I really strongly, I think this is time to iterate. I think that we should do two important things when it comes to news. And the first is

that we should hide from accidentally getting news. We should never accidentally get news. That means you should never doom scroll past news. And that includes memes. It includes your friends that post news stories. You got to hide all that stuff because like you're going to absorb that information. The science is clear on it. You're going to absorb that information through repetition, whether you want to or not, whether you're making conscious decisions or not.

You have to, the act of gathering news needs to be an intentional process that you undergo with sources you vetted that you go to intentionally. So like when I read the news, I read the news, I read the Wall Street Journal, I read the New York Times, and I read the Washington Post. And I try to read most of the front page of all three of those most days out of the week. I feel fairly confident in doing that. They cross-check each other very often. A lot of times the stories reference back into the same articles.

There's some diversity of view there with the Wall Street Journal being kind of thrown in. But that's an intentional, like I'm not going, I'm going right to their app. That's where I get that. Sure, you're not going to Reddit. I'm not going to Reddit. I'm not going to these aggregators. These aggregators, that shit's no good. Your doom scrolls, that shit's no good.

You've got to hide from that. You have to get away from that. If you don't do that, you're just going to see stuff, man. And then you're just down these fucking, like, information rabbit holes. And that's too hard. And it's just going to get harder. It's not like this is going to get easier. It's going to get way, way harder.

So this is going to get weird, man. And we have to, like you said, we've got to do the proactive work of nipping the shit in the bud. If we don't, we're in trouble. I think you're never going to nip it in the bud. What you've got to do is, is make it so that it can't, it can't influence you in the way it does. That's more what I mean. Like, because what you can't do is say this isn't going to exist, but what you can do is say, everything that is from a news source has this watermark on it. And there's nothing else that has that or whatever. There's a way to do that. I know there's a way for them to do this.

They can do it. And they can work with technology companies to do it. There's a way to do it so that only news is only news. And everyone knows this is only news. There's never a fake news out there that doesn't get vetted. Sure. Somebody else can share something, but that is just as reliable as somebody, somebody telling you a story on the street. It's exactly right. Yep. If somebody shares a news story, like one, don't see it.

Yeah. Like try not to see it. You're right. Try not to see it. Hide that shit. Like to the point where like, hide that person. Just be like, boom, I'm sorry, that person can't appear in my feed. Sure. That's it. You've got to hide from that stuff

so that you're not accidentally seeing bullshit because that shit will, it will pervade your mind whether you want it to or not. Well, that's going to wrap it up for our Christmas episode. What a great way to end a whole, whole, whole Merry Christmas, everybody.

We are going to be back on Thursday with a show for our patrons. So if you're a patron, you will get a after Christmas, before New Year's show, end of year show. So check that out, patrons. We made it specifically for you. We'll be back on Monday with a wide release,

but we will also be a New Year's Day episode. So have a safe New Year's. We'll catch you guys on New Year's Day as a wide release. We'll catch the patrons a little bit before then, but we're going to leave it like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, issue hypno babylon bullshit

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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.