Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 741: Pizzagate is back, so are the Measles

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

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.

Today is Thursday, January the 11th, Cecil. And I don't have any pithy intro. Well, you just launched a podcast. I did just launch a podcast. God damn it. Well, we talked about it last week. We did. We just launched Talking Ship.

Haley and I just launched Talking Ship. I've already rated it five stars. Thank you, Cecil. I appreciate that five-star rating. And if you're listening and you want to go give it a listen, you should rate it five stars as well on iTunes. Give it a five-star rating. You guys, don't be mean.

Don't be mean. That's a good key. It's a fun show with you and your wife. It is a fun show. It is, yeah. Haley and I are having a blast doing this show. We've got a bunch of them recorded. We've got, Haley is so fun to work with on this show. She's got a bunch of them recorded. We've got, Haley is so, so fun to work with

on this show. She's mapped out six months of topics. How great is that? And then she's, and it's so funny because she's like, okay,

did you read the article for this one? And I'm like, well, when are we recording it? And now you've worked with me now for years, right? So it's like, so you'll read it

16 minutes before we go on. We had to have a talk and I was like, look, look, you're the boss, but you got to give me a deadline. If you don't want,

if you don't want it done immediately before I go on to record, you've got to give me a deadline. We record citation needed. And the, the essay, the first bulk essay, the thing that we write into the thing that like the, the,

the essayist reads needs to be up by Friday night. And Tom is always up by early Saturday morning. Yes. Very early Saturday morning. Most people haven't woken up yet. So you're still with it, but you are absolutely late every single time.

You're late every single time. I still consider Friday night. I don't care what you consider. You're 100% late each time. Your vision of how days work is not how days work. That's not how days work. I believe in my heart

that 2 a.m. is still the day before. It is 100% the next day. 2 a.m. is the day before. I have a calendar as proof. But yeah, she's going to have to definitely recognize that. We had that talk. I was like, look, this is how I work. It will always get done.

But if you want it done at a time, you've got to give me a time. So we've been having a blast going through it. It's been great to listen to. And Tom, where do they find it? You can find Talking Ship basically anywhere now. So if you go to iTunes, you go to Spotify, you go on your pod catcher,

you should be able to find us pretty readily there. You can find us by searching for Talking Ship. Yeah, any of those pod catchers. And the icon is a cartoon and there's three hearts on it. So that'll be a way to recognize it. If someone's looking at it,

you can see, you'll see Tom's face. Yeah, you'll see my face. Basically, you'll see Tom's cartoon face. Yeah, yeah. There's a cartoon face and Sarah McLean, our very own Sarah McLean.

She did a great job on that. That logo is excellent. She does such a killer job. Oh, so good. It's really, really good. And the editing is high quality because Ian is doing good. Ian is doing the editing.

And he's doing a wonderful job of the editing. Ian is doing an excellent job. I've listened to these shows and they are really good. Ian's doing a great job. He's done a great job. So it's only up to us

to fuck up the content. So far, I think we've done a good job. So we really appreciate you guys listening. Yeah, check out Talking Ship. And there's going to be, if you're, also just so you know, we're going to be doing a live stream next Thursday. Actually, it'll release this Thursday. So it's the live stream this Thursday

for this release. And I will have a podcast announcement on that night. So show up. There's a podcast announcement by me that night. So definitely show up to our live stream, streaming 9 p.m. Central this Thursday. I keep saying next because it is next Thursday. It is next Thursday for us, but it's Thursday for you.

But it is this Thursday if you're listening to this. I guess what we're saying is lube up your ear holes because we're coming in. We're coming in. We're coming in. To clean, no, flush. Here it is. To conceal the source of money

as by channeling it through an intermediary. To conceal the source of money. That doesn't really help us, Michael. I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up money laundering in a dictionary. Yeah, well, you guys can both eat my ass okay so the story comes to the new york times trump received millions from foreign governments as president report fines house democrats released evidence evidence cecil not just accusations

that he took in at least 7.8 million dollars from foreign entities while in office engaging in the kind of conduct the GOP is grasping to pin on President Biden. You know, in, what would it be? Sometime in maybe around 74, 73, was it when Carter sold his peanut farm? Maybe 78, somewhere around there? Yeah, I think if I remember right, and I could be corrected easily, if I remember right, what happened is he had to put his peanut farm into a trust, and the beneficiaries and the

trustees could not be himself or his immediate family. So, because there couldn't be any conflict of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Could you imagine that today? Absolutely not! After Trump, literally, you could be a fucking, you could turn America into a casino and no one would care.

Yeah. It could be like, welcome. Like, look at Menendez. Look at that Menendez guy. The Menendez guy is like, yeah, I'll suck Qatar's actual dick. Yeah. For a gold bar or whatever. Gold bars come out of it too, which is crazy.

That's got to hurt. Jeez, tap me on the shoulder. You get a grill from that. Let me tell you. Oh, I wreck your fucking teeth. But like, yeah, Trump broke with protocol. He broke with tradition.

Yeah. And it's not just a tradition that's like a good tradition. Like there is an emoluments clause. I may be mispronouncing that. It basically says, hey, you can't take money and gifts from foreign nations.

Because that's kind of a problem. It's a fucking obvious problem. It's kind of a problem. Like, what does the word corruption, political corruption or grift even mean if it's not like, hey, I've funneled $7.8 million into my various commercial ventures

from foreign nationals that did this specifically to court my favor as a goddamn politician. Like, what the fuck, man? I want to be fair to this article because the article does mention that they talked to the Trumps and they talked to a few people.

And what happened was they responded by saying they paid all those profits away. They paid all those profits to somebody else, like to the government. They gave all the profits to the government. And then they said that China has been renting part of a building from them for many years. And so they had a defense to it. But what I think the main point of all this is is the last line of this when they're trying to go after Biden. They're trying to pin stuff on Biden. Hypocrisy literally doesn't

matter. It literally doesn't matter. Here's the thing, man. I'm 100% fine if there's corruption for you going after Biden. Clearly, there was some problems with Hunter Biden. Go after him. I don't fucking care.

Yeah. If you're in power, and here's the thing, if you find that Joe Biden is crooked, if they dig underneath and they pull one in, get rid of him. Yeah. Get rid of him.

I don't want anybody in there who's crooked. They should be, they should have the country as their first priority, themselves as the second. That should, if you want this job. That's what civil service

is. That's the job, man. You signed up for it. This is the fucking prom king. You don't just get to fucking cut ribbons and walk around. It's a real goddamn job. So if you want that job, you got to put the country first. And I don't care who you are, you have to do this.

And the problem is, is that when they find out about this stuff, and there's a clear investigation going on, the moment that the Republicans get power back, they immediately jettison the search for anything on Trump. And that's a real fucking problem. That's not just Trump's corruption problem now. That's the government's corruption problem

because they're the ones who quelled that shit. Yeah, man. Well, did you hear what Trump said? So there were arguments that were made. So Trump was like, hey, I should have absolute immunity. Oh, yeah, I saw this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you hear what he said about immunity and retirement for presidents? No. I'm going to paraphrase, but only a little bit. In fact, maybe we should look it up. But he basically said something, Cecil, to the effect of if presidents don't have immunity from prosecution after they leave office, they won't be able to enjoy their retirements and their golden years. I'm not even fucking kidding. Did you hear what his fucking lawyer argued? So I listened to this daily podcast. And if you haven't listened to this daily podcast. Like, holy shit. But there's a part where his lawyer looks at fucking three judges and says, you know,

the president should not have, while they're in office, if they are not impeached and convicted of a crime, then it should not follow them afterwards. So they basically have impunity to do literally whatever they want while in office because nothing should follow them if it doesn't raise to the level of impeachment and conviction. And he said, so they asked him this, and this lady, this judge asks him, so what if he orders SEAL Team 6 to murder somebody? And the guy, without missing a beat, and says, well, if he didn't get impeached and convicted for it, then that's what it is.

And I'm like, if he can order SEAL Team 6 to kill whoever he wants, who's going to bring him up on impeachment charges? Right? Dude, I mean, what is, what is, like, I felt like the fucking Roger Rabbit where your eyes shoot out and you're like, Thank you.

Like my brain lifted up on a spring out of my fucking head. I could not believe it was, and you know, I'm making fun of it, but it's also really chilling that there's human beings out there arguing in, bury in federal court that he should have this power. Yeah. Like you are making a joke, but also that's how dictatorships actually run. Yeah. So like it's a joke, but part of it is a joke of privilege because we've assumed that the United States is above that kind of like violent dictatorship, but we're not. We are always within a hair's breadth of violent dictatorship. The only thing keeping us from that are the handful of serious men and women who do the

work to protect us from falling into that morass. Yeah. And the thing is, like, if as a legal argument, it doesn't sound like it's going to go anywhere. Yeah, it sounds like it's going to get laughed at. It better get laughed at. What the fuck actually are you talking about? Like, that's really the sense that I got. What the fuck actually are you talking about?

Like, that's really the sense that I got. But like, if not, Cecil, if that were to actually hold, if the president enjoyed perfect immunity from all actions undertaken as president, as long as they were official actions. And that's what he said. It's like, well, you know, ordering SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival would be considered an official act because mobilizing SEAL Team 6 can only be done if you're using your authority as president. So like, holy shit. Holy shit. To actually look someone in the eye and be like, well, you got to convict and impeach him for it. If it goes somewhere, then fucking Joe Biden can just have him killed. Right. Because if that goes somewhere and that is actually what happens. Yeah. Then you have to be able to say, okay, then it would be okay. It would be legally permissible.

Yeah. I mean, it's so stupid. Like, would you want that dummy? Like, you got to just take him and just shake and just keep shaking. Like, I can't believe you would say this out loud, but that's the world we live in. That's the kind of things he's arguing. This opens up the United States to be run like a fucking cartel. Yeah.

Just seriously, like a fucking cartel. Like, hey, I'm Don Trump. You know, like this is like... It is Don Trump. It is Don Trump.

It is actually Don Trump. Like, you know, we're going to need you to leave office. No. No. No. We try to do that anyway.

I'm the commander in chief. I'll mobilize the army. Like, you could have a full takeover in a matter of days, in a matter of days with this principle. It's crazy. And the fact that the Republicans are still riding this guy after his, they're making these crazy, they should be, they should be mobilizing against him because it's a real

danger to the country. Yeah. But they don't give a shit. What they don't see, too, is that establishing all this insanity, and we've established such a precedent now for insanity, and you can't roll any of it back. Yeah, it's out the box now. And there's no guarantee in any of these circumstances,

there's no guarantee for the Republicans that a crazy Democrat will not take control, right? There's no guarantee that a crazy Democrat won't be like, I would like to be a left-wing dictator. The world has left-wing dictators. That's not a possibility. We cannot create avenues to create these legal possibilities for dictatorships. And we're just constantly edging and edging closer to it. They only see like it's politically advantageous to them now. They're always like playing this now game. And so the same thing they do with the economy, dude.

Yeah. But I want to say, eroding the confidence in the vote like they did this last election is a danger for everyone. Because guess what happens if the Republicans win? Oh, no. They've weakened the structure to make it seem like there's a lot of voting fraud. So if they win, then suddenly everybody's going to say there's, there's going to be more people, not everybody, but there will be more people that say, well, was there voter

fraud? Yeah. Well, the end result. And like, I mean, I, I'm going to sound like the conspiracy theorist now, but like, I think that a lot of this, not all of this, not even most of this, right? But I'm not saying an insignificant amount of this. A chunk of this is, I believe, the direct result of foreign interference. I don't think there's anything that points to that not being the case. I think that we've seen that they have tried to spread that kind of different disinformation and it was based around voting. Right, absolutely. And I think like both China and Russia have strongly engaged in that.

And I think the result has been exactly what you would want if you were an enemy of the United States, which is the whole country is now permanently weaker. We are not, we are not just weaker for the moment, right? When Trump's gone,

Trump will be gone. But like, we are not just weaker for the moment, right? When Trump's gone, Trump will be gone. But we are now permanently weaker because we have broken all of these rules. We have shown a flashlight on all the cracks and chinks in all of our armor for the next guy to come up and exploit and take care of. And all of that is a goddamn cancer. And we're watching, in my view, like we're participating in the destruction or damaging of our own nation at the hands of foreign collaborators. And it's weird to me to be complicit in your own destruction.

That is a weird thing to look back on from some distance and be like, stop being complicit in this. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. It makes me wild to watch. But Elaine, we have to make a promise that we're not gonna say any more mean things about each other. I have never said anything mean about you. You're a lying bitch. You're a bag of crap. You're the bag of crap. You're such a loser. Skank. Okay.

And along the same vein, the stories from Huffington Post, Trump calls on supporters to put a stop to bags of crap arriving at polling places. Now, he doesn't say whether the bags of crap are like bags of ballots. No. Or people. They're people. I'll play it for you. Because it's hard to understand when he speaks it or when it's written.

But you can tell he's definitely talking about people. Oh, okay. All right. I didn't listen to him. And we're not going to let it happen again. You should all stay in those voting booths. You should stay there and watch. And if you see bags of crap coming into the voting areas, you got to stop it.

You can't let it happen. Because these guys are crooked as hell. They know how to cheat. Maybe you're right. And they have no shame. They have no anything. They are crooked as hell. And know how to cheat. Maybe you're right. They have no shame. They have no anything. They are crooked as hell. And you can't let it happen.

So you're right. You're right. Now that I listen to it again, I guess I always presumed he was talking to a person because Trump himself is a bag of crap. He is a bag of crap.

The thing is like, you know, you know when you see it when it's you, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, yeah, you know yourself, right?

Right. Yeah. Know thyself, I guess. Well, here's how I'd grift me. I would say it when it's you, right? Yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, you know yourself, right? Right, yeah. Know thyself, I guess. Well, here's how I'd grift me. I would say it could be what you think, which is bags of stuff coming in to be other votes. But it also could easily be read. I mean, because he says something vague,

someone could certainly think, oh, is he talking about Democrats? Yeah, well, and I think that's intentional, right? I think that weasel language is intentional. What the Republicans very obviously want, though, is they want to only count the vote of the people who physically show up at the polls on election day. That's what they want, yeah.

And that leave at seven o'clock. I haven't been to a poll in four years. Yeah. Because after Pritzker came in and said, we're going to do mail-in voting. You did mail-in. I've been doing mail-in voting

every single time and I love it. And I don't want to go back. I love it. But absolutely, I don't know what it's like to go into one of those places. And to be honest,

I might actually not mail-in vote this time just to go to my local polling place to see if there is some sort of intimidation so I can call someone if there is, because that's unacceptable, right? Yeah. No, I have been voting in person mostly because it's just my habit to vote in person. And I'll be honest, I just like it. Like I like to go to a polling place. I say that with the privilege of living

in the suburbs and like going to the polls for me is not onerous. I don't wait in a line. It takes, when I was living downtown, the line was often an hour.

Yeah. So I want to recognize like when I say I like doing it, it's because I know that I live in a place and have the privilege of being able to drive there,

get out of my car, basically walk right up to a table and then vote. Yeah. When I was, when I was living in Morris, which is southwest of Chicago, I never waited.

Yeah, right. So that's how it is for me where I'm at. So like, I just want to recognize, and I just kind of like that, but I totally agree that the mail-in vote is really the way it should be done. It just is. It gives you more opportunity to read, reflect, research.

It is a better way of voting. It's great. I mean, I got to read, reflect, research. It is a better way of voting. It's great. I mean, I got to say, I've been really happy with it every time because I've spent the time online to do that work. Yeah. So, but the Republicans know that their constituency are the guys who are old school like me, who go to the polls and physically cast a ballot. So that's what they want to avoid, right?

They don't want people, they don't want to want to avoid, right? They don't want people, they don't want to count absentee ballots. They don't want to count mail-in ballots. They don't want to count ballots, you know, that are dropped off in collection boxes. They want to get rid of all those ballots because those aren't in their favor. This is just a naked attempt at voter disenfranchisement.

Yeah. So like, no matter how you read it, this is just naked voter disenfranchisement. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, there is an intimidation thing that's happening here. And I know that it was happening last election cycle, the big, last big election cycle.

This is a guy who told all of the people that were coming to his rallies to get out there and get to these places and become watchers. And becoming a watcher, a poll watcher, they do train you, but like you can also be dumb and not listen, right? You can also be a person who is there to be an instigator

because you already know what you want. If you're sending out people who are your diehard loyal fans to do something that requires integrity and even judgment, that's the wrong person for it. Yeah, man. It's genuinely the wrong person to be a judge there.

What it should be is someone who is more committed to the election being clean than the outcome of the election. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's, you've got to have people who are there to respect democracy as a process. Yeah. Rather than side necessarily

with like what they want the outcome to be. I thought like, and I just can't do it. I just don't have the time. Like I want to be a poll worker. Like I was like, God, I wish I had, if I just had enough time, I wish I could just like do whatever and be one of the guys and be at the polls

and like do that work and be a part of that system and maybe count votes. Just be a part of that for a change. I, I just can't put time to mine who is a, uh, he does election judging all the time and he's had moments where he's, he's considered calling the police on people because of the things that they do. Really? And so, you know, like, like it's an important job. Yeah. It's an important job. And the, and the poll workers need to be there to, like you say, respect that process. And there are people there that are not always forthcoming with that. They want to, they want, and he very much seeded that until, I mean, look at all those people who came out to fucking Georgia

and were screaming, oh, they're doing everything wrong. And you're like, but you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, you have no idea. You didn't listen during the train stuff. And now you have no idea what you're talking about. And you're literally doing it just to make problems.

And now some of those people, they're like going to jail. You know? So this is something that he has, that he recognized, I think, really early on, is to disrupt the voting process as much as possible. And really, that has made him, I think, to be honest, it made him an unlosable quantity, an unlosable property from the Republican Party. Because if they remove him, his first thing is going to say, the vote is rigged, don't go vote.

Oh, absolutely. And they know that not only do they have to keep him in there, but they have to keep him in there because his mouth will make it so no one votes for them ever again. You know what I was wondering earlier is like, I have always thought that the constituency, the first narrative for the 2016 election was that nobody was listening to the disaffected worker in the Rust Belt. That was the, that was, you know, who got it for Trump was the disaffected, you know, unheard voices of the workers through the Rust Belt. Maybe, maybe in 2016. Eight years later, what I feel like has happened is there has been this mass political mobilization of conspiracy theorists. And I feel like there's a lot more of them than I ever thought there were. You know, like I drive around and I see stickers on cars, the where one goes, the other goes, or where we go one, we go all, I think it is, the Q stickers.

Like I see the bumper stickers now all the time when I drive around for Q on people's cars. That's scary as shit, dude. And I like look at like the polls on how many people believe the votes were rigged in 2020. The polls are enormous. When you look at other polls about other conspiracies that are not necessarily political conspiracies, the number of people that believe that the government is hiding alien technology is over 40%. and technology is like over 40%. A part of me, what I think is like, if you tap into that conspiratorial mindset,

it's almost its own political party, its own constituency of people who are just like convinced there's something someone's lying to them about. Look at QAnon's frazzle drip stuff and how mainline Republicans have tapped into that frazzle drip stuff and how mainline Republicans have tapped into that. I mean, there's mainline Republicans who are sprouting how the Democrats

are pedophiles. Because they know it's going to get them votes. They know it's going to mobilize that group of people that you're talking about. I think probably they knew it before we did because they have better poll numbers. Yeah, man. And I feel like it's like, you've got two political parties, right? You've got the Democrats and Republicans.

And the Democrats have been fighting a political battle that's still mired in the mindset of 2015, 2014, 2013, where we were going to talk about who the next leader should be and what the shape of the country should look like and what our economic system should do for the people that live here and what our foreign policy should be, like substantive stuff, right?

And we're going to have disagreements on those issues. And what the Republicans have done instead is they've said, look, none of that's actually important. What is important is inflaming the conspirators or the conspiracy people. We need to have as many conspiracies out there as possible. So let's flood the system with conspiracies about immigration

and about immigrant, migrant workers. And let's flood the fucking information sphere with pedophile bullshit. And let's flood the information sphere with, you know, like DEI bullshit. And let's flood the information sphere because we'll catch a lot, We'll just catch a lot of nets. Anti-trans stuff. Anti-trans stuff. And like, you know, all this stuff, we'll just cast a lot of conspiratorial nets and then we'll pull them all in at the same time. And none of them really have that much in common. But what they

have in common is a mindset. It has nothing to do with politics. It has so little to do with actual politics. And it's great they have a cult leader for it. Yeah. That's perfect for them. Fuck it, dude. It's crazy. There is a martial law state in effect in Philadelphia, as in all other major cities in the country. This story comes to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Two more daycare children are infected with the measles. Here's what to know about the outbreak in Philadelphia. This is a big deal. We're starting to see more and more. I've been reading multiple stories in the news about how America is teetering now

on the edge of full-blown outbreaks in several things because of so much anti-vax propaganda. In our lifetime not long ago, measles was declared eradicated from the United States. It had been eradicated from the United States for my whole life, functionally my whole life into adulthood. You couldn't catch the measles in the United States.

It was not possible. A single measles vaccination is 93% effective against contracting the measles. A second MMR vaccine, you're supposed to get two in the series, boosts that up to 97% effective at not getting the fucking measles. We have an outstanding tool for people not to get the measles. The measles kills between one in three out of every 1,000 children that contracts the measles. That's the number. It is not a little thing to catch the measles. It's not like a mild annoyance to catch the measles. It can also have consequences if you catch the measles where you're sick for years and then you fucking die of the measles. The measles sucks.

And the measles is something like 20 times more contagious than COVID. You don't have to even be in the same room as somebody who has the measles. If somebody was in the same room that you walk into two hours later, you can catch this all from the article. You can catch the measles from walking into a room that somebody with the measles left two hours later, you can catch this all from the article. You can catch the measles from walking into a room that somebody with the measles left two hours ago. You can walk into a fucking elevator. There's no one else in the elevator and there hasn't been anyone in that elevator for two hours. You're going to get the fucking measles if you're not vaccinated. It's that fucking contagious.

And all we have to do is get a shot. And then you have nearly 100% protection. I want to show you this photo. Yeah. So look at this photo. Oh, God. But the first thing that popped into my mind was, this is the past. Yeah.

And we've allowed it to maintain its hold because somebody somewhere told you vaccines were wrong and not a doctor, right? Right. Just like your friend or your sister-in-law or your, you know, whoever the fuck, your fucking chiropractor or your, you know, your gym buddy, whoever it was told you something they heard, right? You know, it's so funny.

We talk about religion in some ways and it's like religion itself is a whole big game of who told you. Right. It's all a big game. And that's what this is. It's just a big game of who told you. None of these people are trusted people. When you think that you wouldn't go to your sister-in-law if you broke your arm. Right. Wouldn't go to your gym buddy if you broke your arm. You go to the fucking hospital if you break your arm. Do it with the rest of the health parts, right? Health care isn't perfect. Medicine isn't perfect, but it's as good as we got. It's the thing we have. We don't have anything else. We don't have laying on hands. That's bullshit. We don't have hoping in the right direction. That's bullshit. What we have is medicine. And we have, in this case, really effective medicine, really hyper-effective medicine. And we are throwing it away. And I think it was a listener years ago

who sent us a message and said, vaccines, they are a victim of their own success. And it's because you've never had to experience what measles was like is why you're not getting your kid vaccinated. But the moment you start, you're all your fucking kids

and all the kids at school and everybody everywhere has got measles. Give us 30 outbreaks of this where they take out a whole school. Give us 30 outbreaks of this and then you'll see

where people stand. I do think you'll start to see things start to rise. It's got to get bad again before people recognize it. Before people get their fucking shit together. Like we have, you're not wrong at all. Like we have gone backward.

We are weirdly like racing. Like at this point in history, for some reason, we are racing backward in time in so many ways. You know, like we rolled back abortion rights, you know, like there's fucking measles are back. I feel like a fucking crazy person. These are things we shouldn't have to think about. We should be expending our political and scientific and mental energy

on solving like the climate crisis right now. That's what we should be doing. And I don't want to hear your email, but we can do two things at once. We're not doing the other thing. We're not doing anything. We're not doing the other thing. We're not doing anything. We're not doing any of these things. So like, no, we can't. We clearly can't do any of these things.

We're just like, we're just going to live in a world that has diseases we don't need to have anymore. And like women are disenfranchised and it gets like every year is the hottest year on record. And I just look at my kids

and I mouth, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Every time I see them. I was watching a Joe Rogan thing today. Joe Rogan's out there talking. And here's a guy who is, he's got 11 million listeners to his show. Jesus Christ. And he's spreading medical misinformation all the time. He's spreading regular misinformation. We covered him a couple weeks ago where he was spreading regular just misinformation

because he didn't know any better because he didn't bother to research even though he has 11 million people a day listening to him. I'll do it off the cuff. Yeah. So he's a giant misinformation machine just like the rest of these people

that are out there with these huge audiences. I just feel like there's just so much noise out there that a regular person who might hear about Joe Rogan might think, well, this guy probably knows what he's talking about. And then there's nothing that happens to him when he does something wrong, right? He doesn't get taken off Spotify because he gives medical misinformation. No, he doesn't get taken off Spotify. They don't give a shit. They give him another check. They literally go back and they write a giant comical check

and they walk into his stupid office there or whatever and they're like, here you go, Joe. Thanks for getting a bunch of dipshits to listen to your show. I mean, there's nothing that happens to him. So we live in this really weird world where that sort of cycle

just keeps on tuning itself up. Yeah, yeah. And now there's no looking back. The fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination over the last 200 years. This story comes from the New Republic. Roger Stone plotted assassinating Democrats, according to Bombshell

Report. I wasn't able to listen to this audio. I tried to find it, and I couldn't find it. But Roger Stone says he wants to kill, to have killed a couple of senators. Yeah. And he is claiming that it's AI.

Yeah. So he's saying it's AI. That's the part I wanted to talk to you about. And really, genuinely, I think that's probably the scariest part of all this is because there's been video of him making violent threats that he's already said is AI and that's not real. And this is, that's a scary place to be

because we don't, there's enough people out there that will believe that. And I don't know anything about this audio. All I know is that it was reported, right? So I don't know if it's real or not. And I didn't get a chance to hear it. So I don't know, but there should or not. And I didn't get a chance to hear it. So I don't know, but there should be someone there

that should verify this right away because this is a serious crime. Yeah. And like, this is, it's so funny, man, because that's exactly what I seized on and wanted to talk to you about is I read this and then like at the bottom, he's like, Roger Stone says it's AI.

And I immediately was like, maybe it is. Yeah. I don't know. And like, we are now living in a world where like, it used to be something that like we were supposed to become worried about. And now it's something that's here. So like, if you hear it, it may not be true. If you see it, it may never have happened. I watched a video today on Reddit. It was about a scam where someone has taken Jennifer Aniston's voice and face

and made a scam about how she's giving away MacBooks. And it's literally a scam video of her saying, go ahead, all you have to do is go down there and just enter your information or whatever. And there's, I'm giving away 10,000 of these notebooks, these MacBooks. And it's clearly AI, you can see it. You can see that it's AI. It's

not. Yeah. Yeah. My, you know, the thing is like, we're going to get to a place pretty soon, like within a year, maybe two, where you won't be able to tell it's AI. You'll have no idea. We'll be able to watch videos of things that have never happened with people that never existed or people that do exist doing things on AI that never actually happened in places they've never been. doing things on AI that never actually happened in places they've never been. And now we have audio, and it is a, in my mind, it's a colorable defense to say, that wasn't me, that was AI. And I believe that because we had a listener send AI six months ago or longer of me saying a bunch of stuff about eggnog. And it was good, not great. If you were to make it tomorrow, it would be great, not good. If you were to make it tomorrow, it would be great, not good.

If you were to make it in six months, it would be perfect. And I know that. I know it. If it's not already perfect, I don't know. I don't play with AI voice stuff enough. I bet it's pretty fucking good, actually. So like there's songs you can listen to that like people didn't sing that sound exactly like those pop stars. I don't know how we get to truth anymore. Like what if Roger Stone did say these things, but he can say like, no, it was AI.

Is there like a watermark of some kind that like, yeah, that's what I've been saying forever is that there's gotta be something that was, that is created that every single way to create AI, unless you like write your own program or something has to, has to have some sort of watermark on it

that indicates that it is this thing there's got to be something that's created that way because if you don't do it that way

then what happens is that we'll be flooded with you know a ton of shit that is just you know unless it comes

I mean I almost feel like instead of doing it that way you need to do it like these are actual sources and the rest is all garbage. Yeah. Like these are actual sources and there's no way to fake this source. And that's the only thing you can do.

Without that watermarking, like it's crazy because like if I were to go to court, if I were to sit on a jury and without that watermarking and I listened to it and I'm like, you know what? I have reasonable doubt. Yeah. If you can make this,

because if I was the defense, I would say, look, here's Roger Stone saying, I am made out of pizza. Look at my head. It's a banana. And I would play it saying some crazy shit. And I'd be like, look, anybody can make him say anything.

And I would have to sit in that jury and I'd have to conclude that I have reasonable doubt. I will say I can pick AI out of voices most of the time. So, but I couldn't find this one. So I don't know, but I think I have a better ear for it than you. Sure. Yeah. And I think that there is a way to tell now, but I don't know, like you're right. I think that it is going to keep getting better no matter what. Right. Cause this is all brand new. There's no way it's not going to get better. But, but I think if you had somebody who listened to this,

they could tell you if it was or it wasn't. I think so. I don't think it's that good now. And the worry is like, two things are going to become very possible, and this is an example. One is that untrue things will appear to be true. But also, true things, right?

Yeah, true things. A true thing will appear to be potentially untrue. So there's a complete erosion of our trust in reality. The thing is that we don't get most of information from immediate contact, right? So like, I'll give you an example, a crazy example. I was driving once and I saw the worst accident I had ever seen. And I took a picture. And the only way for me to show somebody this accident and get them to believe this accident would be to show them this photo that I took. I would tell you the story because it's a

crazy story. It's a little gory, so I'm not going to tell it. But like, it's a crazy story. If I was to tell that story, I'd be like, whoa, that's crazy. And I'd be like, yeah, I actually took a photo. I have a photo because I didn't realize what I was to tell that story, I'd be like, whoa, that's crazy. And I'd be like, yeah, I actually took a photo. I have a photo because I didn't realize what I was looking at until I had taken the photo and then I actually felt bad about taking the photo, right?

So like, but also maybe that never happened. That could be a hundred, maybe it did happen, but you know what I'm saying? Sure. It's like, there's a total breakdown of reality

because most of everything we know, we know because we read about it somewhere, we saw a video about it, we heard about it. Almost none of it's personal experience. I have no personal experience that tells me that like the events of October 7th happened.

I have no personal experience that tells me that the events of November or September 11th happened. So like big giant events that changed the world, that like fundamentally reshaped the world. You don't know if it happened or not. Not personally. You watch that shit on fucking TV

or you read about it in a newspaper that showed you pictures of it. There's a complete erosion that's possible now. So I read this article and I'm like, wow, it's fucked up. And then it's like, he says it's AI. And I'm like, maybe it was. Maybe.

Yeah. I think you need an arbitrator or somebody to look at it and listen to it and then give it to an expert. But really, genuinely, if it is AI, I'm upset that someone would do something like that. Oh, yeah, man. I'm very upset that someone would try because that is another, you're knocking down another one of the ways in which we get information. And I really feel like if I was media-ite or whatever, I would damn sure make sure it's real before I ever did anything. 100%, man. 100%. But another thing that has happened over the course of the last eight years is there has been a purposeful and intentional erosion of the public's

trust in experts. Yeah. So like, it also doesn't matter that much if you can get an expert to say this is true or not. It also doesn't matter too, if there's a, if they get it wrong. Right. They get it wrong, they get it wrong. Nobody cares. Well, and I wonder too, if like, without the absence of like perfect digital watermarks, how much of this is like forensic science? Yeah. Without, you know, without perfect digital watermarks. But I think like right now there's almost certainly ways in which they can tell it's real and not real in the future. I don't know, because I don't know enough about it, but I have not heard anything. I've not heard anything yet that has fooled me.

So like, you know, I think that is around the corner. Right, right, right, right. And that is something that absolutely has to be thought about right now. Yeah. You can't put that off a day because it's so important to know that something is real. Yeah.

It's so important. Because like we could be led into real. Yeah. It's so important. Because like we could be led into wars. Absolutely. You know? Absolutely. If you think you're going to convince me like that, you're wrong. This story comes from Ars Technica. The key to fighting pseudoscience isn't mockery, it's empathy.

Evidence shows that shoving data in people's faces doesn't work to change minds. You know, I read through this article, Ceeson. I'm really curious what your take on it is, because the author seems to say, hey, look, I really don't swim upstream against a lot of this. They go through and they describe what pseudoscience is, and they basically say like, hey, trying to swim upstream against this is just largely ineffective. And what I do instead is I try to understand where people are coming from and what motivates them to believe in pseudoscience. And almost

always those beliefs in pseudoscience are motivated by very understandable human impulses. But I didn't feel like, at the end of the article, I knew better how to actually combat pseudoscience. Yeah, I think when I read this, what it reminded me of was a conversation

with Marsh years ago. And we had talked to Marsh about vaccines. And Marsh had said, I don't think the people who are anti-vax, for the most part, are bad people. He's like, I think what they are is people who care about children very much. And he's like, and I care about children too. people who care about children very much. And he's like, and I care about children too. And I think that there is common ground to be found between the two of us

so that we can maybe come to an understanding. And he said that to us years ago. And I really do think that there is something to that. Finding those commonalities between you and then maybe working in slowly is probably the best way to go on any of this stuff. I think, you know, I don't swim upstream with people I know that are very different politically than me.

Right. I don't bother. I just, when they're there, I don't jump into an argument with them. I don't try to fight them. I just, they'll say something off the cuff and I just walk out of the room. I don't listen to fight them. I just, they'll say something off the cuff and I just walk out of the room. I don't listen to what they have to say.

I don't know that I could have one of these conversations about both of us having something in common because it feels like we have nothing in common, you know? But the examples that this person uses, maybe, you know, when it comes to pseudoscience, I think there's a difference between pseudoscience and other things that I won't fight.

Pseudoscience definitely needs, I think you need to have a little bit of empathy. We've seen this too, when we talk about like QAnon, right? Those people who someone will come to them and try to pull them out of it. And they'll try to fight and they'll fight against it. They will fight hard against it.

And then when they won't ever want to admit they're wrong because it hurts yourself to be wrong. And so people are stuck in this cycle. And I think there's no way to just drag them out. It's like quicksand or like the idea of quicksand, right? Where the people are like, they're stuck and you can't pull. But if you like slowly pull them out,

or I guess maybe better would be like the knife on dune. It's like slow, it'll work. But if you go real fast, it'll bounce off the shield. It's a very, you know, the idea is like, if you try to like tug them out of it, it's not going to work, but you've got to massage them in some way. But when I got to the end of the article, I also didn't feel like he gave me any ammunition to do that except for empathy,

which may or may not work, but there's no real, like, I never really felt like, here's how empathy gets to the next step. It's like empathy gets you there, but then it's like, okay, but what's the next step? And he never really felt like he explained it very well. And I feel like, and I could be wrong. It's just a vague remembrance. So I could be corrected. I feel like we have seen articles that have said showing people the evidence works. I feel like there's been multiple studies

and many of them seem contradictory about like, how do you get people out of this? Maybe it's both, Tom. Maybe it's empathy and the facts. Right. But I think maybe it's empathy first and then the facts. And that might, and you know what, Cecil, that's probably it. What we know is it's not mockery. Yeah. Right. That doesn't work. Like you can't, like you can't shame somebody into anything. Shame has never been a good motivator. I know we're going to get messages that people will say, yeah, but I listened to the scathing atheist or something long ago

or us. Yeah. And that changed their mind on something. So I know we're going to get those messages. I want to correct your language just by saying

it doesn't often work. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a strategy that should be employed because of its like overall efficacy, right?

Like shame is not, shame is not how you get like help somebody lose weight, for example, right? Yeah. Right? I'm just saying like, no, man, I'll, if you get like, help somebody lose weight, for example. Right. Right. I'm just saying like, no man, shame. If you shame me, I will eat this ice cream.

Right. Do not. There's lots of things. You can't, you can't shame an alcoholic into like not being an alcoholic anymore. I mean, and again, has it ever worked? Sure. This is like broadly speaking.

Is it the thing you should do every time? I do think there's something to be said for trying to meet with somebody, build trust, establish empathy, and then show them the data. And then show them like, hey, here's another way we could think through this problem. Here's another way we could approach this

because we both ultimately want the same thing. That makes sense to me. god damn dude it's so much work and all I can think is like shouldn't the fucking public schools have done this work shouldn't the public schools have done the work of

like teaching you about the scientific method and how it fucking is just a really useful way to approach big problems about truth we have eroded our own education system and that's our fault. You know what I mean? It's our fault for our whole, our whole existence.

We've allowed people to erode the education system or in some cases have wildly ineffective methods on how to teach and get put up into huge positions and then implement that across school districts across the country. You know, there's somebody who was talking about like learning how to read. I think recently it was a podcast

or something I was listening to and again, I'm not doing the good thing here because I'm telling you what I remember or I heard. But this is a department of education thing that was adopted. Oh, there's a daily episode.

I listen to the same episode. To help people learn how to learn. of education thing that was adopted. Oh, there's a daily episode. I listened to the same episode. To help people learn how to learn. And it was a total bullshit thing. It never was real. Right. But we adopted it because it sounded real. Right.

And the person eventually was like, no, it's not real. It's not real. Didn't work. Yeah. Terrible way to teach people to read. Yeah. It was a reading thing. That's right.

Yeah. It was how to teach kids to read. And it was this like whole language model versus like a phonics model if I recall correctly. And it was like, we like the whole country

basically like adopted this program. It's like the next evolution in teaching kids to read. And it was like, ran this like grand national experiment. And it was like,

well, that doesn't, that's not really a thing. Yeah. No. That's pretty bad. That's bad. It doesn't work well at all. The other thing worked way better than we were already doing. Yeah.

We were doing it for years and years and years. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, like, my mom taught me how to read, too, and use that model. You know what I mean? The font, I mean, like, because that's how she learned how to read. They just did the things that they're supposed to do. Now I sound like an old person.

Next story. Private Epstein. In your opinion, should we drop the charges or not? This story comes from Politico. Pizzagate, QAnon, and the Epstein list. Why the far right is obsessed with sex trafficking. They interview a guy

that we had on the show. We've had him on the show. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And he talks, there's a big long article here and they basically just did a print interview with him. And it's an excellent interview because the man's very smart.

Yes, he was a great guest. And he's one of these guys who really digs into that topic. So he wrote a book called The Storm is Upon Us. And really an excellent guest on the show. You go check that episode out. But he talks a lot about where these conspiracies come from. And one of the conspiracies that really has been hot this last couple of weeks, because we're talking about pedophilia, was Jeffrey Epstein's supposed client list was supposedly going to be let out of court.

And what happened is, they just released some documents from the court. That's all that happened was there was a freedom of information request or something like that. And they got released. And these documents just went out into the world. But everybody treated them as if

this is the thing that's going to uncover all of the people who were into the world, but everybody treated them as if this is the thing that's going to uncover. Oh yeah. All of the people who were implicated and played a part in this, like, like as if he, there was a list of how many kids or whatever, each one of them did old or whatever. And all it was,

was his personal contacts. And it had nothing to do with whether or not those people were bad people or if they partook in any crime. This was a man with a wild amount of influence. People don't understand that, right? Like, like this guy, was he a creep? Absolutely. He was a creepy, creepy dude, right? Absolutely. Was this guy, every single person who taught, who was around this guy in his orbit, were they also part of this sort of creep culture? Absolutely not.

He's got hundreds of people he's in photographs with. He's constantly flying people on his jet and talking to them because he was a huge donor to a lot of these causes that these people are trying to get money for. They're courting his dough. And so the idea that somehow Jeffrey Epstein, if you went on a plane ride with him, then you somehow diddled a bunch of kids.

Yeah. Like you can't put these two things together. And so many people want to just slam this stuff together as if it's a smoking gun. And what's happening is, here's the thing, Trump's on the list, so is Clinton, so is a bunch of other people. Stephen Hawking's on the list. There's all these people and you just got to step back and say, just because they're there doesn't mean they did a thing

that's illegal. Doesn't mean anything. From the minute the Epstein shit broke, there was this really pervasive sense that I read online that like, oh, they're going to find so many others that there's just going to be this like, this tip of the iceberg, right? It was this tip of the iceberg thing. And like, then it was like, oh, well, once we

get the documents from Ghislaine Maxwell, she's going to roll over and then she's going to expose, you know, this huge cabal of pedophilic child abusers. And like, maybe that would have been the case, but until it is the case, it's not. There is like this, like rush to presuppose a conspiracy of child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse, rather than looking at the evidence and saying, well, the evidence so far is that Jeffrey Epstein was an absolute pedophile and an abuser and a

predator. And then there is reason to believe that Prince Andrew, who settled a lawsuit with a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, who was a contemporary. There is reason to believe that Prince Andrew also was a child sexual abuser, right? He settled a lawsuit with one of the abusers connected to Epstein. It was dragged into that. That's two. That's not 125. And Maxwell. And Maxwell.

That's three. And Maxwell. So, like, I'm not saying there's just one creep. I'm trying not to say that. But, like, what I am saying is, like, in all things, we should not decide the scope of things until we view the evidence for the scope of things. Sure, sure. massive cabal, this huge, giant, well-organized, well-funded group of child sex traffickers and pedophiles at the highest levels of government and at the highest levels of influence. And if that's true, there's so far literally no evidence of that, none. And it's not like

there's not a huge motivated group of people looking. There is an enormous amount of people who are looking. There is every journalistic and financial incentive possible to find this cabal and to write this story and to produce this evidence. And we know that conspiracies of size break down very quickly. Sure. And there's no evidence. And still everyone's like, no, man, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Like there's, you know, a huge, it's everybody who's ever been to the, you know, sex island or whatever it is. If they came to that island.

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Like I'll believe it when I get the evidence and I'll believe it immediately and unequivocally and without hesitation. There's evidence. Show me the evidence. I'll believe it immediately and unequivocally and without hesitation. There's evidence. Show me the evidence is what convinces me things are true.

I mean, there's been so many opportunities because so many people have been digging into this evidence. Yeah, man. And people who don't care that you're a Clinton and people who don't care that you're a Trump

and people who don't care that you happen to be, you know, one of the smartest physicists in the world and people who don't care that you happen to be, you know, the owner of Google or the founder of Google or whatever. They don't care about that stuff. They see it and they say,

okay, this person needs to be brought in here as well. They're part of this stuff. If they did something wrong, the people who got a hold of his documents would chase that stuff down and then make them, you know, make that person, crime would not pay. They would go after him because it would make sense to do. But instead what happens is they use this fabricated, he does something wrong and then it's egregious and horrible. And so then they recognize that if this person who's rich and wealthy can fail because of this thing that is horrible, if I can pin it on other people I don't like, then I can also take them down. Yep.

And that's what's happening. This is really just a way in which to try to attack people as a way to say they are the most vile people. Yeah. Because one person was really vile. Three people were really vile. Well, and like the QAnon, Pizzagate, child sex trafficking conspiracy stuff existed before Jeffrey Epstein. Sure. And the Jeffrey Epstein thing was absolutely

a gift to the sex-obsessed QAnon people because they were able to say, see, this is what we've been talking about all along. It is absolutely the case, you know, that this is just going to be the tip of the iceberg that all these wealthy, powerful people are engaging in these horrible activities. And like, it's not one person. It's at least three people that we know of. It's not none. But like the conspiracy doesn't look like or smell like or take the shape of any of this right wing conspiratorial shit. But that does not dissuade them at all.

Because the Liz Krokens of the world hold up their fucking nine fingers in glee as soon as they see that something even tangentially related to their conspiratorial bullshit has panned out. What they never do is say, hey, you know what?

There is child sexual abuse that is systemic, and it's church-wide. Yeah. Right? Like, we know. No There is child sexual abuse that is systemic, and it's churchwide, right? Like, we know. No, you're absolutely right. We absolutely, like, I will say that there is an absolute international conspiracy to engage in and hide child abusers.

Absolutely. That is a true thing. That's a true thing, man. And they call that the Catholic Church. That's a true thing. And they call that the Baptist Church. And they call that the Mormon Church. And they call that the Catholic Church. That's a true thing. And they call that the Baptist Church. Yeah. And they call that the Mormon Church. And they call that the Jehovah's Witnesses.

They call that, like, I think all of the major world religions. But the Catholic Church has done this now in a systemic way that we have documented evidence thousands, tens of thousands of pages. All over the world. International. All over the world. And somehow we're, like, not calling that out for what it is. But this is.

And the other part of this article that I out for what it is. But this is, and the other part of this article that I think is really important is near the end when they ask him, well, what's the purpose of this? Because they find out that this is nothing. Eventually that none of these things panned out. Everything's always waiting for the next piece of information. He said, yeah, that's exactly it. They want you, this is going to, this is going to falter and fizzle out in the next few weeks because nothing's going to happen with it because there's nothing in it. And then in four more weeks, there's going to be another piece of salacious information that they're going to say, oh, it's coming out. Oh, this next thing is happening. And there's always something on the horizon that they can, they can grip you with.

You know what, man, this is a soap opera. It really is. Every episode's a cliffhanger. Yeah, every single one. Everything is to be continued, dot, dot, dot. Music fades out. It's a telenovela. Yeah. All right, so that's going to wrap it up for this week. Show up on Thursday, this upcoming week,

for our live stream. We'll be live streaming on Twitch and Facebook and on YouTube. Big announcement. Also, be sure to listen to Tom's new podcast, Tom and Haley's new podcast, Talking Ship. We'll have a link in the show notes for all the places that you can download that podcast.

Go give it a listen. It's a great show. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing,

water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment, Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody.

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