Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 754: AI Laws, Biden's Memory and Billionaire Rage

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

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, March the 14th. It's Pi Day. It is Pi Day. Why don't we have, we should have gotten pizza. We should have gotten pizza today. God damn it. Damn it. It's second dinner pizza.

It's Pi Day. You know what we'll do is on Carl Sagan Day, which is in November or whatever, we can do pizza. There you go. God damn it. We'll get a pizza that day. So it's been a busy week. We last recorded the same day that Biden was giving.

That's right. His State of the Union. So we weren't able to watch it or get the reaction or know what was going on on the day that we recorded. But that State of the Union was a fucking blowout blockbuster event, I think. Yeah, from what they're saying, it was so energetic that the Republicans complained afterwards that Biden was too energetic. Yeah, and Trump was like, this is mean.

He was like truthing out like, this is mean. He's being a mean, meanie pants that's a mean, meaner set. I thought, and it might have been during the State of the Union, that true social went down. Oh, did it? From what I heard. So there was a time- God, the conspiracies around that? Now, it could have been during the Oscars too. I don't remember. It was during one of these big times that the State of the, I thought it was the State of the Union. It's one of these times,

true social went down and it was a big deal because Trump likes to be heard during these moments. Yeah. Well, that's because he wants to pull spotlight, right? Like he wants to pull attention. He can't stand not to be, you know,

constantly the center of attention. But he did post something that like he'd never seen something so like mean and like angry as this. And it's like, dude, have you been to one of your own rallies? Everything he does at his rallies is centered around media. But it's like, dude, have you been to one of your own rallies? Everything he does at his rallies

is centered around me. But it's like, he's like, I can't believe you'd wear a stupid red hat. It's like, have you seen the top of your dumb fucking head comb over bill? Have you seen your logo? I want to read a great quote from Biden. Biden says,

the issue facing our nation isn't how old you are. It's how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, and retribution are the oldest of ideas, but you can't lead America with ancient ideas. Fucking A, man. I love that. I think it's great. And it's a really great way to spin that age thing on his head, right? Because he knows everybody's going to be asking about it. Yeah. And we'll be talking about the testimony this week about what happened with that age thing. Right, with his age report.

His age, the age memory report that happened when he was talking about the document stuff. But there is this, he has this great demeanor that came off during that State of the Union that makes it seem like he was energetic and that while his body is old and he's even making jokes about it, his ideas still have some youth to them. And so that's a

good thing. I think it was really good. I want to also read one piece of this article that is the saddest shit in the world. So I want to read it. Okay. Ultimately, Americans select their candidates not on the skills required to do the job, but rather on how they perform when the cameras are turned around and the set pieces are put in motion. For instance, presidents don't spend their days debating rivals in 60-second soundbites any more than they give hour-long speeches

to joint sessions of Congress on the regular. But voters have decided it's their most efficient yardstick for fitness to do the job. And what that tells me is that we as an electorate are under-informed with how the job works. And that cannot be more evident by the people that we choose to do the job so often.

When you think about George Bush, when you think about, when I think about Donald Trump, those are people who did not know how to do that job well. And they were people that were elected very specifically George Bush, because I kind of had a beer with them. Oh, that was the, that was the line like, oh, well, oh, that's the guy I sure could see sitting down having a beer with. And the same thing with Trump. I want him because he's, he says what he thinks, which is straight shooter. He's straight shooter. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's not the same thing

as like, Hey, do they have the same kind of policies and ideals? Do they have ideas at all on how to fix problems? And it's not that Trump doesn't float ideas on how to fix problems. He floats old ideas. He floats tired ideas, hackneyed ideas, ideas that we know from experience and history don't fucking work. The State of the Union Address was full of substantive policy and other goal decisions, right? So he's talking about taking on billionaires and creating a billionaire tax. He's talking about taking on billionaires and creating a billionaire tax. He's talking about taking on certain kinds of fraudulent consumer fee structures. He's talking about very specific, actionable items that can be done in that State of the Union address.

It's not just patting himself on the back and excoriating his enemies. And that's kind of all Trump ever did. patting himself on the back and excoriating his enemies. And that's kind of all Trump ever did. Yeah. You know, Trump wanted to give giant tax cuts and had no ideas beyond that. What was his idea? What were his ideas?

Keep out the migrants. Yeah. And give everybody a bunch of tax cuts. And literally, I can't think of any other idea. Oh, replace Obamacare with a mystery, just a straight up mystery box. He didn't tell you what was in it. He said, it's going to be the best you've ever up mystery box. He didn't tell you what was in it. He said, it's going to be the best you've ever seen.

Yeah. But he never told you what was in it. And because it never existed in the first place. I want door number two. Yeah, right. I don't want whatever is in your box. It's probably a goat head. Yeah, it's exactly right.

Yeah. When somebody's like, what's in the box? Don't find out what's in the box. Whatever you do. It's not a good box. Whatever you do. Don't trust Kevin Spacey on what's in the box. You know what? what's in the box. Whatever you do. It's not a good box. Whatever you do. Don't trust Kevin Spacey on what's in the box.

You know what? You could have stopped at Spacey. Don't trust Kevin Spacey. I will say this. I think we just learned that lesson. I will say this. If you want to talk about a creepy performance though

that Katie Britt who gave the statement I want to play it. Oh my God. I read about it. Is it creepy to watch? So here's what I want to talk about more than anything.

You know, there's going to be a lot of, and if you want to, you can listen to Lawful Assembly, I think in two weeks. We already recorded it, but we'll be talking about very specifically her lies about immigrants here because she's lying about the border wall, very specifically lying about how the border wall

created this crisis where there was sex trafficking, but none of it happened in the United States and it happened many years before. And it was instantly found out by a journalist that she was lying. Like instantly within a 24 hour period, there was a journalist who had dug into this and said, she's lying. The person who she's referring to is this, and this, none of this happened in the United States. She basically just lies for the camera. But the piece that I'm going to play for you, isn't actually that part who she's referring to is this, and none of this happened in the United States. She basically just lies for the camera. But the piece that I'm going to play for you isn't actually that part where she's talking about the sex trafficking.

Well, can I add one to the sex trafficking thing? Because like, yes, absolutely, she was lying, but like crazily, and I think really grossly and immorally and like damn near illegally, like this is not the first time that Republicans have trotted out that exact same case of sex trafficking for political reasons. They've been pulling on that same thread now and that same person and using the horrors

of that person's experience now multiple times whenever it fits their narrative, even though it doesn't fit their narrative. Like you said, this is a person who was sex trafficked in Mexico. They were never sex trafficked in the United States. And it wasn't by the cartels. Yeah, right. And it was prior to the Biden administration taking power.

It was when Bush was in office. Yeah, this is a long time ago. It was a long time ago. And so that's a whole thing that is, it's a lie that they're telling very specifically to push a narrative about immigration. But I want to play a clip for you here, Tom, where she's just talking about America.

And I want you to focus when I play it, what I want you to focus on is I want you to focus on how she talks. And I want you to remember the thing we watched. You and I watched the Duggar thing. And there's an affectation to evangelicals' voices where they infantilize and somewhat sort of breathy sexualize their voice.

Oh God. And so I want you to pay attention to how she talks and then we can talk about it afterwards. So this is Katie Britt from her, what is it? Anti-State of the Union? I don't know what they call it. Response, I think. So this is Katie Britt from her, what is it, anti-state of the union? I don't know what they call it. Response, I think. So here we go. We, the people, are still in the driver's

seat. We get to decide whether our future will grow brighter or whether we'll settle for an America in decline. Well, I know which choice our children deserve, and I know the choice the Republican Party is fighting for. We are the party of hard-working parents and families, and we want to give you and your children the opportunities to thrive. And we want families to grow. It's why we strongly support continued nationwide access to in vitro fertilization. We want to help loving moms and dads bring precious life into this world. Wesley and I believe there is no greater blessing

and life than our children. And you'd be wrong. God damn, that's creepy as shit. Isn't that weird? She does absolutely take on that affectation. It feels to me, and I could be wrong. Maybe there's a different affectation that she's trying for, but it sounds to me

like that. It also sounds like she's doing a, every year, 12 puppies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like a. Fed into a gristmill. Sarah McLaughlin should be like

leaning over her shoulder like, in the arms of an angel. For only a dollar a day, you too could be a Republican shill. Like, it's. It's really weird and gross. Every year, migrants press their face up against this cage. We keep them

in a cage because we hate immigrants. And like, she also does that weird fake, like nothing I've ever seen looks as fake as that where after every phrase, her mouth settles into like what she thinks is probably a grin,

I'm sure that in her mind, that's a smile. She's reading you like a human cookbook. Right. That's so weird, man. That's like, do you ever see American Psycho? I've never seen it, no.

But I've seen clips of it. So in American Psycho, when like Jason Bateman's character is like, I think that's his name, is playing, no. Christian Bale. Christian Bale, forgive me. Christian Bale is murdering people.

He's doing it with this weird smile and like talking about like the hits of Duran Duran while he's in the middle of this like psycho murderous moment because he's so disconnected from his own message of violence. This feels like that, man. Like if she went on at the end of the year, it was like, well,

we've decided that we're going to bomb all the cities tomorrow and the women will wear red and you'll be impregnated in a home of our choosing. You'd be like, holy shit, what is happening? It sounds the same. You know, what I love too

is on the State of the Union rebuttal, they have to say that in vitro fertilization thing because they fucked up so hard on that. They fucked up so hard on that. They really fucked up. They followed we talked about it last week. They followed their logic to the logical conclusion and they fucked up. Well, and it's so funny

because what she said was something like we're the Republicans. We're the ones that are fighting to keep IVF access. It's like you're fighting yourself. Yeah. No one, your opponent is you. You have to stop yourself from punching you. Stop hitting yourself. We're fighting the good fight

to keep IVF available from the Republicans. Trying to choke themselves. It's like a bad wrestling thing where the claw's coming after the same, the old guy. I remember doing that as a kid. The claw's coming after me. As a kid,

I did that last week. What are you talking about? This is one of those things, though, that afterwards she got so much guff. If you get a chance, if people haven't seen it, the Scarlett Johansson cold open. Oh, I've not seen this. To Saturday Night Live is fucking amazing.

She dead on nails this lady. Dead on nails her. God, I can't wait. But this is one of those things, though, that this plays well with that male base, I think. Yeah. That very much wants that woman to be subservient, that wants her to listen to that thing.

She wasn't talking about herself. She's talking about how her husband finds her kids important. Yeah, I know. I thought the that thing. She wasn't talking about herself. She's talking about how her husband finds her kids important. Yeah, I know. I thought the same thing. She is the representative, but because of the value system that she is required to embody and appeal to,

she has to invoke her husband in order to gain authority for her message. Yeah, yeah. That's a real fucking weak sauce position for a woman who is one of only 500 of the most powerful people in this country. That's a real weak sauce position,

or at least it should be. The problem is that it's not because the audience that it plays to reads that as reinforcing the traditionalist message that they want the world to turn into, right? And that is kind of what she said in her messaging. She was like, hey, look, we are the America that is going to take us back in time. Yeah.

And like do these things, you know, hardworking American families and the whole time, like what's being read underneath that is white families. Sure. That's all. That's all that she's talking about. Yeah. And to blatantly lie, to get up there and blatantly lie to make your political points

with no real policy behind what you're lying about. Right. Right? The policies that you want were already offered to you. Yes. And you refused them. Yeah. So you're lying about something

literally for political points that you aren't willing to fix. Yeah. That you're just not willing to fix. Do you think that the Republican Party, I know we've talked about this before, the Republican Party has become a party where I think procedurally and pragmatically, they're just a party of obstruction. And we do know that. We've talked about that. But I wonder if they are also a party of such harsh ideologues that they have no pragmatic

machinery left in their system. Like Mitch McConnell recently bowed out. And you can call Mitch McConnell a lot of things, and I encourage you to do that. Like for the rest of his natural life, he should be heckled and called all the things that you want to heckle and call him. But I think you can't say

he wasn't a pragmatist. I think that's why he stepped down. Right. So, and I feel like the Republican party is now so beset by these insane right-wing ideologues that they cease to get anything done. They infight amongst themselves because ideologues are problematic

because if you and I share the same set of ideals without pragmatism and we're 5% apart from each other, we'll fucking kill each other because that's how ideologues work. And I think that's a huge problem with the left too. Yeah, I do too. Is that the ideologues want all the oxygen and they don't ever want to see

any kind of incremental change at all. They want it all or nothing. Yeah. And even if the tiny amount happens, they get upset about it. And that happens all the time on the left. The left has a group of people that are strictly ideologists. And when they see this, they don't think about it any other way.

They're like, it's either fucking gassed to the floor or it's nothing. Or it's nothing at all. I know. And then you're like, but there's been incremental change. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make any difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, I do agree completely because I do see we have, and you don't have to like the guy, but

objectively we have in power right now, the most progressive president in my lifetime and my father's lifetime combined. My dad was born in 1947. We've had not had a more progressive president during that time period. And yet there's so much distaste for Biden, even though it's the best we've ever had. I know that it's not perfect and there's tons of room for improvement and lots of room for criticism. But I also think we miss the mark so badly when it feels like pouting, like throwing a temper tantrum, you know, because like the fries got cold. Or you got a different, a bad color iPhone.

Right. For real. Yeah. I wanted the green, not the rose gold. That's exactly how it feels. It's like, okay, you gotta, you gotta recognize. Yeah. It's never been better.

And isn't that its own good? I mean, like, can't we build from there? I don't want to, one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to say don't complain because I think complaining changes and I really do. I really do think there is change that happens. I don't want to come across that way. Cause I do think that complaining and pushing helps make sure that you can keep recorrecting the course farther left. And that's great. And I want to see that. But what I don't want to see is people

who are all or nothing. And then nothing is the part that makes me crazy. Same. It's got to be something. It's okay if you're all in and you're still asking to keep working at the all. But the moment you're like, well, that's not enough and I'm out,

that's a problem. It would be like if you were an employee at a company at the all. Right. But the moment you're like, well, that's not enough and I'm out, that's a problem. It would be like, it'd be like if you were an employee at a company and you weren't the best employee possible. And so you're just immediately were fired.

Yeah. Rather than somebody- Yeah, yeah, right, right. Rather than somebody saying, hey, you know what? Like, you're better than every other employee that's ever had this job.

Yeah, Joe's pretty good. Right. He's just not as good as Frank or whatever. You know, or, but even still, like, I think like in Biden's case, we can say he's literally the best we've ever had. He's never had a more progressive president. Sure, sure, sure. So in that sense, I would say the best we've ever had, lots of room still for improvement. That's okay. Hey, man, this is the

best we've ever had. And the alternative is the scariest thing we've ever seen. Yeah. All right. So this story comes from Huffington Post. Mark Robinson's bizarre ramble. I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn't vote. So let me play this. It's just a short clip of him and it's actually timestamped here so we can play it

and just hear what he has to say exactly. Let's listen to him exactly say it. Idiotic guy was on stage with Canada. So it was a few days ago and asked her, what America are we going back to to make America great again? The one where women couldn't vote or black people were swinging from trees. I would say to him if I was standing in front of him, I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn't vote. Do you know why? to the America where women couldn't vote. Do you know why? Because in those days we had people who fought for real social change and they were called Republicans and they are the reason why women can

vote today. Okay. So, uh, that's his comment. That's his, that's what he had to say. Uh, one thing that, that gets messed up on this all the time, and this is something that the Republicans love to talk about is that they're the party that got rid of slavery. Right. They're the party of women's suffrage, et cetera. And that's very true. Both of those things are true, right? But what they don't talk about

is that pretty much the parties flipped at the beginning of the last century. And from that point on, they've been the other way around. That social justice- minded folks have been Democrats and the other, the people who are not social, the people who are business minded or lower tax minded have been Republicans.

That's how it switched. It switched back then. I mean, I don't have to go very far in the past to say, hey, what about all those people who were marching with tiki torches in 2017? Check their voter registration. What about all the people who just last month marched as Nazis in Tennessee?

Check their voter registration. Look at the flags that are being flown at Republican events. Check their voter registration because it's real easy to say, oh, well, back in the day, the Republicans were the ones saving the day. Where are they now? Who cares where they were? I know. I know.

And this is such a fucking bullshit answer, right? Right. Because first of all, he's trying to take he's trying to take credit as a Republican, as if Republicans of the past, to your point, have any ideological analog to their current iteration. Right. So and because they don't, that's lying. That's just straight up lying. Right. It's it's it's like not it's just objectively an untrue thing. But it is also untrue that the Republicans are the reason that women's suffrage became something. That was a bipartisan effort. It was a bipartisan effort. It was brought forth by Republicans, but it was a bipartisan effort. But it was a bipartisan effort.

So it's not like the Republicans got that done over the objections of the Democrats at the time. That was a strong bipartisan effort. It was a whole national movement. So, like, that's also just complete nonsense. And if I'm living in the America of today, which is when I'm living and I'm asking myself, which of the two parties is behind women right now? Who is standing behind? Who are the allies with women right now? Who is arm and arm with women and who is trying to strip them of their rights at every fucking corner. If you want to like write down, like who is, who is, who's the reason that like IVF got canceled for a hot minute at the very least in Alabama where they're voting. Absolutely. They're all

Republicans. The reason that we don't have a Roe versus Wade as, as law in America anymore. The reason that almost half our States in America don't have critical medical care for women is exclusively, not a little bit, but exclusively because of Republican power structure and Republican messaging. So like him saying like, yeah, Republicans are fighting for women. It's like, get there fighting women.

Yeah. Not fighting for, you're fighting them. Yeah, you're exactly right. And also to your point, nowadays, modern times, even back to when women's suffrage, you're fighting them. Yeah, you're exactly right. And also to your point, nowadays, modern times, even back to when women's suffrage, you go back then, we'll consider that modern times.

You couldn't, you can't get an amendment without bipartisan support. Right. An amendment doesn't work. Right. It's too much of the electorate needs to say yes for it not to, it can't be a party line vote to be an amendment.

It's impossible. So you're absolutely right. In order to like have for it not to, it can't be a party line vote to be an amendment. It's impossible. So you're absolutely right. In order to like have any of that stuff, it has to be bipartisan support. And the fact is, is that everybody nowadays, every single one of these people, like you say, who's fighting against women, every single one who literally would,

if they had the opportunity, do what he said, which was string people from trees. Yeah. Check their fucking voter registration. Check it, check it. See who they're registered for. See who they voted for in the fucking primary. Because I guarantee it wasn't a Democrat.

It's not. And I real quick want to read, because this guy is running for governor, right? Yeah, he was. This was when he was running for lieutenant governor and he got it. Now he's going for governor. So I want to read a couple more of the things that he's said. So he has claimed that feminism was created

by Satan. He said that men who identify as feminists are about as manly as a pair of lace panties and are weak-minded, jelly-backed men. He's routinely referred to feminists as fem-Nazis. And in one particularly colorful post, described those who support equal rights for women as sexist hairy armpit having poo poo hat wearing pinkos he said on Facebook in 2017 the only thing worse than a woman who doesn't know her place is a man who doesn't

know his this guy's not fighting for women yeah look at all that crazy shit he said half the fucking population of America he sees as less than and subservient to. So like, of course he wants to go back to when women couldn't vote. He doesn't think they should be voting now.

Yeah. I want to talk briefly about this, Tom. This is that Robert Herr who was, he happened to be the person who was investigating Biden's missing documents from the National Archives. Biden, along with Trump and a couple other people, had taken documents when they left office biden immediately uh cooperated with the department documents immediately had people

come look in his house had a long conversation with this gentleman this this robert her he didn't pack him on an airplane and fly them around the country and ask his fucking staff to move him from a bathroom to another smaller bathroom and have an IT guy like delete the camera footage of like shit getting hidden around. It's a little different. It's a little different. It's a little different. It's a little different. But in any case, it had to be investigated.

So they got a special prosecutor, this Robert Herr. But day before they're going to have this hearing, they wanted him to come in and talk about, one of the things the Republicans wanted to do was talk about a comment that he made that was picked up and was kind of the biggest part of that report was that he made it seem like Biden was not mentally cogent. He made it seem like Biden's memory was very bad and that he wasn't fit. That's how he portrayed him. Absolutely.

Very intentional. Yeah. And the report itself, when the 300 and some page report was revealed, there's tons of things in it that say that this guy actually compliments Biden, even says he has a photographic recall. He compliments Biden. And when you read the transcript, it doesn't seem like Biden is forgetting. It seems like a conversation. It doesn't seem like Biden is fumbling. Instead, it sounds like the way people talk to each other. And, uh, and, uh, one of the things that, that, that was really interesting about this was they were talking about, uh, what year was that, that your son died? Cause there's a part of this. And he says, he says, he says, uh, it tells him the exact date. And then he like oh gosh was it 2015 and I do the same thing

with like my parents yeah like my dad died and I'm like was that 2008 or 2009 I can't tell you right now off the top of my head when my mom

what year my mom died right I can't do it I just can't do it right can you tell me the year your father-in-law died I'm sorry not your father-in-law

but you know what I mean your ex's father yeah no I have no idea you don't remember I know it doesn't mean that I don't remember. No, I have no idea. You don't remember? I know. It doesn't mean that I don't remember when I found out.

It doesn't mean I don't remember the event. But you don't remember the year. But I don't remember the year. I think it was 2002. Right. Because like 20 years ago. No, maybe it was 2005. Right. I see it.

Like, look it. Right. I was part of that. I was part of your close. You were part of my life very much when that happened. Yeah. And I would have to put other parts of my life together to think about other things

that I could put in place to contextualize. I remember where I lived. So it had to be between 2004 and 2008. Yeah. And I can tell you that it was prior to Finn being born. So it was prior to 2006, 2007? I would guess. Oh, 2005.

It was 2004 or five. Look, we can't even- You're a young man. I know, 2005. It was 2004 or 5. Look, we can't even. You're a young man. I know, man. You're not a president. Yeah. Look at how hard that was for us to just figure that out. And that was a huge part of your life.

It was a big part of my life. And you and I were about to go into business together. Yes. And that event is a big part of why we put that on hold. Why we didn't. Yeah. And then event is a big part of why we put that on hold. Why we didn't. Yeah. And then the economy blew up. You and I, that was a huge thing that spun us both out of orbit.

Yeah. Right? Right. Was your ex-father-in-law dying. Yeah. And we had a huge, it was a huge part of both of our lives. Right. And I literally cannot remember when it happened.

Yeah. Same. I'm like, maybe it was 2005-ish. I don't know. And that's the problem with his question. Right? And also just like

the way we say things sometimes it's like, wow, is that 2005? Yeah. That's also an exclamation of, God, I can't believe so much time has gone by. Right?

Like, that's crazy. 2005 is, in my mind, 2005 is yesterday and so long ago. Right? That's 19 years ago or some shit like that, right?

I mean, it's 18, 19 years ago. But like, it also doesn't feel like that. So, and that's how I feel as a 46-year-old when I'm 81. How is that going to feel? It's going to feel, and so I think that sort of like natural exclamation of, wow, that is crazy how much time has gone by. I can't believe it's been that long. That's just human, man. And it shows you how much he stoked that fire, right? It shows you how much. And one of the things I want to mention too, is that the day before he resigned

from the Justice Department, and he resigned from the Justice Department because they can't control how he answers those questions. It was very specifically that the justice department has regulations on how you're supposed to act in those hearings. He resigned the day before his hearing. He wound up leaving the justice department. Yeah. He made this report very specifically so they could get soundbites for OAN. And what happened was the exact opposite because he wrote the report and everybody on there was just like talking about all the different ways in which he was essentially just trying to make this out of nothing. Trying to create a smear out of it. And it's also worth noting that the special prosecutor for this, the special investigator, rather,

I think the special prosecutor, special investigator. I'm not sure. Special counsel. Special counsel. Was appointed by the Biden administration, not by law. That didn't have to happen. Yeah. Biden cooperated so much, so much in this case that his administration approved the appointment of special counsel to investigate himself because he was trying to be as abundantly transparent as possible. A guy who was appointed by Trump too, by the way. Right, yeah. So it's not like he put his guy in charge. It's not like he said, let's not do this.

Let's not investigate it. There was no obstruction. It's just such a different scenario. Right? With Trump, when Trump gets like, hey man, where are those documents?

He had an offer. He could have done the same thing. Oh shit. I'm sorry. Have a guy come over here. Maybe they got picked up. There's a lot of chaos when you transition out.

I'm sorry. Come to Mar-a here. Maybe they got picked up. There's a lot of chaos when you transition out. I'm sorry. Come to Mar-a-Lago. Let's all look around together. And whatever you find is yours with my mea culpa. If that had happened, there's literally nothing bad that happens. It's a non-issue and a non-story. That's kind of what happened with Biden. Biden was like, oh, fuck, yeah.

Like, come over, check it out, swing it through the garage, look in my Corvette, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. You know, anything I've got, I'll sit down, I'll spend time, I'll be interviewed. It's just such a different world. And the idea that, like, we're trying to sort of, on the right, they're trying to say, hey, you're treating Trump different than you treated Biden. They're just objectively different circumstances. And they tried to paint Biden as somebody who is a criminal. Right.

And you're just like, dude, Trump is literally on trial for something way worse. Yeah. And I don't, the thing that makes me crazy is that that stuff will get play and their side will immediately tout it

and be like, oh my gosh. And then you see the difference, the very stark difference between these two cases. Yeah. If you just look at it for two seconds and then you think that side is literally the dumbest. the very stark difference between these two cases, if you just look at it for two seconds, and then you think that side is literally the dumbest.

I mean, like this is a bunch of people who like have lead poisoning. It's so bad. Yeah, like for real, it's so bad. It's so bad that you can't, it's gotten to this place where I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the state of politics that we're in right now. I've tried fad diets, powders, pills.

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Try peanut butter AIDS. Well, this story shocked me, Cecil, when you put this in the notes. This story comes from The Nation. AIDS denialism is back. We can't let it take root. Who's the face here that we're seeing? That's Eric Weinstein.

Is that his name? Yeah, that's Eric Weinstein. He's from that bullshit COVID group. Who's the lumpy guy next to him? That would be Joe motherfucking Rogan, man. Just asking questions, Joe. Crazy, crazy. It is worth saying out loud

that the two important things. One, that this messaging is coming from the same bad actor as you would expect. RFK Jr., who is the most prolific distributor of medical and vaccine-related misinformation in America. The most prolific super spreader of misinformation. most prolific super spreader of misinformation. It's coming from that Weinstein guy, Brett Weinstein, who led the intentional monetization of anti-vax bullshit at the height of the pandemic. And then most importantly, I think it's being amplified by $250 million Spotify contract, Joe just asking questions Rogan. There was a time a hot minute ago where

Joe Rogan and a bunch of the right wing guys were like, oh no, Joe's not a right wing guy. He has lots of different guests on. He's just asking questions. He just went, he's fucking fully hard right crazy. Fully hard. You can't, nobody with a good conscience at this point can possibly say that. Joe has absolutely embraced for the money, the hard right swing. There's no getting around it now. Joe Rogan has been a, he's been a introduction to bad ideas, alt-right ideas, to bad ideas, alt-right ideas, anti-feminist ideas, misogynist ideas,

manosphere ideas. 100%. For a long time, right? And I think for a long time, Joe, at the same time he was being an instigator and somebody who was talking to the Manosphere guys, talking to Jordan Peterson, talking to some of these other guys that are in that sphere,

he was also interviewing Bernie Sanders. Yeah, right. So at the same time, there was a, well, maybe he's not talking to these guys all the time, but he's talking to Bernie Sanders. And at the time, people were banging the drum and saying, Joe Rogan is introducing

a lot of people to alt-right crazy ideas. And Joe Rogan is bringing these people on his program and he's not pushing back against them. I don't know if you remember that Dave Rubin guy. Do you remember that guy?

Yeah, uh-huh. Dave Rubin, fully encompasses the right side now, but that guy was the same thing. Yes. Called himself a classical liberal, invited a bunch of bad people on his show,

and then talked to them and then never had any pushback for the things that they said. We invited a Republican on our show one time we hung up on her. Yeah. Right? So like,

it was like a five minute conversation or something. It was probably longer. I don't remember exactly how long. You can find it on our Patreon. But like, we had a conversation with her and then she said

an anti-Semitic thing and I hung up on her. Yeah. Right? So, basically, essentially, there's no way

we could do the work that he's doing. I couldn't do the work that Joe Rogan does because to sit across from somebody like this guy and to let that just go out to 250 million ears

without any pushback is, it's an egregious use of your power is what it is. Yeah. Let that just go out to 250 million ears without any pushback. It's an egregious use of your power is what it is. And it's an intense amount of power. How is it different than when Tucker Carlson interviews Putin? Yeah, it's not. Tell me how that's it. Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin as a way to amplify and boost Putin's message of Russian propaganda within the United States. That's what that's for.

When Joe Rogan has an AIDS denialist fucking viewpoint on, this is not just asking questions. AIDS is, this is settled science. This is long settled science. I was fucking floored that AIDS denialism is taking, I was floored, but I wasn't. Because we're at a place where there's measles outbreaks again, man. Like we're at a place where there's polio again.

Fucking polio, Cecil. In this article, they talk about how last week during one of his rallies, Trump had said he had come out and attacked the MMR vaccine because Trump, while he was in office, did try to pass the COVID vaccine

and did the best he could to try to warp speed that ahead and tried to claim ownership of it, right? But at the same time, he realizes his bread is buttered on the wrong side. Anti-vaxxers are who are going to be his main base. And so that's where he's at now. Trust me, Trump is fucking vaccinated every chance he gets. Absolutely.

For everything that he could possibly be vaccinated for. Yep. He's a dumb man, but he ain't stupid. Yep. Okay? He's going to get vaccinated, and he was vaccinated, and he got fucking, they sent his blood around a fucking centrifuge, and they probably fucking sacrificed a few human beings to squeeze him,

to juice him when he got COVID. Right. sacrificed a few human beings to squeeze him, to juice him when he got COVID. You know, this is a guy who 100% put his faith in medicine every chance he had. And you can't live any other way, I think, and be as old and in his shape. I don't think you can do that. No. So right now, what you have is a guy who is now lying to the American people and making comments about the MMR vaccine at his rallies. This is all on the back of a huge disinformation campaign

that is meant to, what it's meant to do is it's meant to say to you, the mainstream media isn't good. That's what it's a fight against. It's not a fight against anything that they don't care about vaccines. What they care about is getting you to hate a mainstream media, what they call a mainstream media. Right. The bizarre, disingenuous pretense

that Joe Rogan is not mainstream media when he has got a $250 million contract and reaches out and touches how many tens of millions of listeners. Higher paid than everyone in the media. And his reach is mainstream media reach. His reach is arguably better than the reach of any Fox News personality. It's like the Super Bowl every day. Right. But these guys will pretend that they are not mainstream media. Mainstream literally can't mean anything more than this, right? It's a stupid liar's idea. What it does is it gives them a false credibility of being the outsider who won't lie to you, but they are not outsiders. They're just choosing who they're inside with, you know? And all of these assholes will do the same thing if pressed, which is that they will play games with your life by encouraging you to deny that AIDS comes from HIV

and encouraging you not to vaccinate and not to get your kids vaccinated. But they do not play the same games with their own lives. They don't. When the shit hits the fan, they're the first one at the fucking hospital every single time. And you remember when all the people who were anti-vax

and they were voting for Trump, and then there are all the old people who had already been vaccinated. Right. They had already gotten vaccinated. They already had theirs, right? It's not much different. That mentality is not much different

than their same position with respect to finance, right? It's a bunch of people who already got theirs, and that's why they don't need any help, right? The same people who are now pro or anti-abortion because they're past their child-rearing years. Exactly. You know, the intention of this is always the same intent. You hit on it. I want to reinforce it. It is to erode faith in institutions. The more that they can erode America's faith in the institutions of the press, in the institutions of expertise and intellect and education, the more power

we're giving them. Because then they hold all of that power within their hands. When they erode faith in all of those fact-checking organizations, when they erode faith in the idea of independent fact, when they erode faith in the idea of who the right arbiters for truth are in a scientific world, when they can take that away and they can make that subjective, then they get to hold control of that by simply telling a different story about it.

And they get fucking paid while it's happening. They get fucking fatty banks. Yep. No, not again. Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam? I swear to God, one of these days,

I just kick this piece of shit out the window. You and me both, man. Thing is lucky I'm not armed. Piece of shit. PC load letter? The fuck does that mean? All right. A couple weeks ago, Tom. This is great.

Us two podcasters looked across the table at each other and said, we don't know how to fix AI. Yeah. And the European Union was like, well, we'll give a crack at it. We got some ideas. We'll take a crack at it. We got some ideas.

This is from CNBC. World's first major act to regulate AI passed by European lawmakers. There's some interesting ideas in here. I want to read the bullet points I found from the law itself. So the banned applications.

Recognizing the potential threat to citizens' rights and democracy posed by certain applications of AI, the co-legislators agreed to prohibit biometric characterization systems that use sensitive characteristics, such as political, religious, philosophical beliefs or sexual orientation or race,

untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCT footage to create facial recognition databases, emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions, social scoring based on social behavior

or personal characteristics, AI systems that manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will, AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people due to their age, disability,

social or economic situation. And a couple of these, like some of the facial stuff was allowed. There's some law enforcement exceptions based on that. And, you know, it's a start. This is a good start. This is a good start. If we don't do something now,

we are going to be chasing this. America likely won't do anything. I say that at the same time, though, that we did just see the House bipartisanly pass a measure to restrict TikTok so that TikTok will be forced to either close up shop in America

or be divested of its Chinese ownership. Either sell or get the fuck out. Or we're not going to allow you on our phones. Yeah. And so maybe there is a possibility that there could be a recognition that they do have to actually do something. We need to shit or get off the pot. AI is, and shame on me. When I was thinking about AI up until just this last week, so much of my thinking was about things like Dolly and ChatGPT, because

that's where a lot of the, I think a lot of the noise is kind of coming from and coming out of. And I recently this week had some training on some other AI tools that are being used in the marketing space. And they're not tools developed just for marketing. I just saw them as like how marketing people were using some of these tools. And there are so many more AI tools than I knew existed, so many more.

And they do so many more things than I had even dreamed possible. And they do it way better, Cecil, than I thought they could already do it. And I'm like, yeah, this shit's a year old. For public consumption-wise, this shit's a year old. For public consumption-wise, this shit's a year old. In four or five years, this is going to be orders of magnitude better

and stronger and more powerful. And ironically, in part because AI will help make itself better. AI will help write its own code to improve itself. That certainly is going to be happening soon. So not regulating and not trying to get in front of this now would be a terrible mistake. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think you've got to be the leader. If you're going to try to be the leader in technology, you've got to be in the leader in making sure that technology is moral and that it's following correct sort of ethical

codes. Right. And I think it's really important if you're being a hub of technology to somehow regulate that technology so it's not hurting people and it's not exploiting people. And I think this is a great step forward. And the countries of the world that want to be the tech leaders have to be the people who are the leaders in tech ethics too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I worry, obviously, I worry about our ability to do big things. This is a big law that the EU passed. It's a really big law.

I do too. I worry about it because there's just too many, too many shithead voices in the room for us to really do this sort of thing. But I'm excited. I think this is a great first step. And what I also hope is that

perhaps AI companies will recognize and more countries do this and more countries do this. So I hope that what they recognize is they need to build one product is that perhaps AI companies will recognize, and more countries do this, and more countries do this, Cecil. I hope that what they recognize is they need to build one product that adheres to this stringent set of standards and let everybody have the... It's kind of like when California is like,

hey, all the cars in California have to meet this standard. It becomes a de facto national standard. My hope is that there will be a tipping point of other countries that do similar things to the EU, that it just doesn't make sense to build two products. Great work, Rob. Great work. See if you can read this. you're fired and in case your ears are fucked get the fuck out this story comes from lgbtq nation were these guys i forgot about these guys man six westboro extremists showed up to cheer the death of a teen hundreds chased them away so this is from the oklahoma school where next benedict was beaten up.

Nex Benedict committed suicide, it turns out. I read a story. Is that what it was? It committed suicide. We talked about it, how there was a possibility that it was, it was, you know, they collapsed, but there was a possibility

they might've taken something. And that's the direct cause of the bullying. Yeah, it's a direct result of the way they were treated. This is a direct result of the day before being, and probably for months and years, being bullied. That's a direct result. It's a consequence of that.

And it's a sad, sad turn of events. And these fucksticks from the fucking Westboro Baptist Church who need to fucking crawl under a rock and go away forever, come, and then they get fucking chased away and it's the greatest thing in the history of man. It's fucking delicious, man.

It's the greatest thing ever. Way more protest, counter protesters than six protesters. They lasted 15 minutes. 15 minutes they lasted to do their stupid, shitty, mean-spirited,

nobody cares protest. You know, the Westboro Baptist Church used to make all their money by going, doing these protests. Somebody would touch them. They would sue that person. And that's how they funded themselves, their family, and their organization. So this was a money grab. The extremity of their protesting was, by and large, a money grab.

I think, if I'm not mistaken, Fred Phelps was a lawyer and several of his family members were also lawyers and they would just wait to be harassed in a way that violated law. They had it all on tape and then they just sue people and that's how they made their money. I think this was always a shitty money grab

for these folks. And I love that now it's a whopping six of them because they've had defectors from their own family. Sure, they're people left, yeah. Being like, no, we're not doing that. There's people who are making the atheist circuit for a while that were ex-parts of their group. Ex-part of this community, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

This is a shitty group of people that want to hurt people. Yeah. This is no different than the people who bullied next. No, this is the same thing. This is bullying. This is bullying people who are in a marginalized group in this country. And they got shoved out of there, yelled out of there. Somebody screamed at them, probably had a megaphone in their ear.

And they just got fucking, they just said, this isn't worth it. This isn't worth it. And they scurried home with their fucking tail between their irrelevant legs. I'm reminded of every time that some of these Nazis march in the wrong part of town. And they immediately run as fast as they can because they realize they made a huge mistake. Yep. And there's like a bunch of dudes in khakis with a tiny little brown stain on the back because they're running as fast

as they can to get in their fucking straight truck or whatever that they came there, the rider truck. The lifted rolling coal truck. No, because they come in these rider trucks. I don't know if you've seen this. Oh, they do? No. So they pull up in these straight trucks. They're like, shit, you could buy it like fucking or rent it like Penske or whatever. Like a box truck? Like a seen this. Oh, they do? No, I didn't know this. So they pull up in these straight trucks. They're like, shit, you could buy it or rent it at Penske or whatever.

Like a box truck? Like a box truck. And they all climb in the back of the box truck and then they go away. Well, I remember there was one in Philadelphia where these dudes get out

and they start marching and a bunch of people started surrounding them and they piece the fuck out of there. They got back in their little truck? They were like, I really didn't mean it

at white supremacy stuff. And they immediately got back in the truck and then they rolled the fuck out of there. They start whistling like, I really didn't mean it at White's privacy stuff. And they immediately got back in the truck and then they rolled the fuck out of there. They start whistling like, hey, is this the Black Lives Matter rally?

That one dude kind of gets left behind and has to run and chase them and shit. I mean, there's some great comedy out there where these people

are terrified because they come there with these numbers trying to intimidate. Yeah. And the strength of their position normally carries them because most people don't want to get involved. Right.

But what happens is once in a while, they'll run into some real crazy opposition, some opposition that's like, fuck you, not another inch. Right. And they run away because they're just like every other bully in the world. The moment they get confronted, they're terrified.

They're cowards. Yeah. They're fucking cowards. Tomorrow, Abbott. Tomorrow. Welcome, Abbott. Tomorrow. Welcome, Abbott. Tomorrow. Hello, Abbott. Tomorrow. Hey, Abbott. I hate that guy.

The story's from The Guardian. This is something else, man. I read this whole story waiting for the Pope to contextualize this in a way that, but it's just not like, Pope provokes outrage by saying Ukraine should raise the white flag and end the war with Russia. Pope Francis's failure to condemn Moscow as the aggressor decried as shameful and incomprehensible. Basically, Pope Francis was like, hey, you know, Ukraine really should know when they're beat. And there's no shame in quitting and raising the white flag.

And, you know, maybe less people will die. And that's not a shameful thing. No condemnation at all of Russia's violation of borders, their slaughter and shooting of civilians, the like rapes and systematic sexual violence when they take over towns. No condemnation of the missiles fired indiscriminately into Kiev and to other cities. There are bombing of

infrastructure in a blatant attempt to terrorize and starve. Trying to blow up a fucking nuclear plant. None of that is mentioned. Instead, it's like, you know, really, the Ukrainian people should just give up and just kowtow to their evil overlords i realize that i don't have a lot of authority when it comes to foreign power and foreign foreign policy i don't i don't have a lot of i don't have a like a huge depth of knowledge i'm a podcaster right i don't have a huge depth

of knowledge but i also think that people who shouldn't be offering their opinions are administrators of a giant group of celibate men. Right? So what do you do? Right. You're a guy. Now, granted, he gets in more rooms than me.

Like there's people who will talk to him more often. Probably he could probably sit down with several world leaders or whatever. But nuts and bolts, you administrate a bunch of fucking celibate dudes. Yeah. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. This is a guy who reads old books for a living. This feels

like all those priests that people go to for like family counseling and psychiatric help or psychological help, not psychiatric, psychological help and family therapy and it's like you know, marital therapy. It's like that guy's not psychiatric. Psychological help and family therapy. And it's like, you know, marital therapy. It's like, that guy's not qualified. He didn't, he's never been in a relationship

with anything but a book and God. Right, he doesn't have any personal experience and he doesn't have any educational experience. Pope motherfucking Francis' whole job is to read old books and talk to celibate men like you're talking about, and then to read books about that old book, and then to stand on a balcony and wave.

That's his thing. It's not to tell the Ukrainian people whether or not they should continue to fight for their fucking sovereignty. This is a moment of existential national crisis for the Ukrainian population. Will there still be a Ukraine in the next year or two years? I don't have that answer. I have no idea. I don't think anybody knows. I don't know. But I don't think turning to him and saying, you guys should just fucking surrender and then they'll stop bombing you. Where's the moral superiority in that? Hey, you know, everybody will stop bombing you if you surrender.

If you just give all your land to them. Yeah, sure. If I lick the boot, then maybe they'll stop kicking me. That's your fucking message. Holy shit. And you were talking earlier about the death of expertise. This is the stillborn expertise, right? Yeah.

Before there's like a death of expertise, but this is OG death of expertise, right? Like this is somebody who could have gotten and can still get, sit down with literally any world leader and he doesn't have any real qualifications. I mean, like, like I, and I understand that Pope Francis is a political figure in some ways. And I get that. But at the same time, think about what that man does for a living. We do this all that we've done this for years. You know, the moment scientific discovery or true expertise raises its head,

we've got to keep stamping it down. And this guy's been stamping it down for years and being a pretender on the stage. Yeah, well, that's because he is part of a multi-general, I mean, dozens of generational, centuries-old institution that has spent its livelihood and its existence stamping down expertise and reducing expertise and making less available rather than more available science and learning to the everyday person.

Who, like, which institution, you know, was the one that was like, you know, fighting against the heliocentric version of the universe? Which institution was trying to make sure that even their own holy book was never translated to be read by the masses? They have a long and storied tradition of fighting against enlightenment, of fighting against knowledge, of fighting against education. Yeah, like are there orders of like the Jesuits, et cetera, that give themselves over to the idea of education? Sure, absolutely. But it feels like kind of like a small arm of a larger institution that's working against that principle at bigger levels. Every time, yeah.

And the thing is like he's not a politician, but what he has is an incredible power of audience. The reason he can get in front of any of these world leaders is because he can tell those world leaders, I can get in front of all these other people. I have a power of audience and influence. He's Joe Rogan. He's Joe fucking Rogan. Joe Rogan, baby. Pope Rogan.

Pope Rogan. Feed the rich. Feed the poor. Yes. From the Daily Beast, billionaires rage about Biden's State of the Union tax proposals. So Biden proposed a minimum tax of 25% on ultra high earners over $100 million. Also proposed a tax on private jet fuel. Yeah. If you saw this, which again is essentially a billionaire tax. It's a tax against people that are ultra wealthy. Ultra, ultra wealthy.

So, you know, these are good things, but clearly the billionaire class is upset by it. And this whole article is essentially them just complaining about it. One person didn't complain about it. It's Mark Cuban, who's the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, or maybe he divested himself. I don't remember if he divested himself or not. He was, at least until recently, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, which is a basketball team, Tom,

by the way. I did. I was trying to think. I was like, that sounds Texan. What I think is so great is that they were the ones who traded for Flat Ear earth or anti-vaxxer Kyrie Irving. And then wound up, see he plays for, they got him. Yeah. He's, he's on their team. But Mark Cuban is,

is an anti-Trumper. And so he, he, at the end of the article, when they ask him about these taxes, he's like basically saying, I, I,

I don't really care or whatever. I would never vote for Trump. So what he says is like, even if I was at like Joe Biden's wake, I would vote for him over Trump. Yeah. That's very true. But the rest of these people are all, they all are upset because they want to make sure that they can.

And at one point, I think either Zuckerberg or one of these guys says something like, well, I have a bunch of art. How am I supposed to appraise it or whatever? I think that's your fucking problem. Here's the thing. It's impossible to have sympathy for the ultra wealthy paying 25% for taxes, right? Because even if I cared

how their lives turned out for them, which I don't, right? Because I don't think that you can be an ethical billionaire. And I also don't think any amount of taxation is going to change your lifestyle. And that's what I was going to say.

I'm sorry. No, no, that's okay. Is that they're going to be extremely very wealthy no matter what. If we tax them at 50, if I'm a billionaire and you tax me at 50% and I'm like,

fuck, here's $500 million. And then I go and I fucking go to the fucking ATM and I know it's not how it works. But I'm like, don't send me your email. Oh yeah, that's exactly how it works. $500 million. Yeah, it's all in it works, but I'm like, don't send me your email. I'm still worth $500 million. It's all in a-

$500 million, guys. It's all in a savings account. Right, it's all in- I've got it all in a low- To be honest, though, to be honest, even in like a shittiest savings account, you could live like a king off that.

Yeah, like, you know, people don't seem to recognize sometimes just the power of those kinds of big numbers. But if you have $500 million, a half a billion dollars, and every year it earns 2% interest, which means that you, what did you buy? Like bad CDs from like 20 years ago, like certificates, like just 2%. You still are making, oh my God. I mean, Cecil, you're still making $10 million a year in interest.

That's how much you, so if you lived, if you spent $10 million a year on your lavish lifestyle. I can't even imagine. You haven't touched your 500 million. I can't even imagine spending a couple hundred thousand. These billionaires, they don't have to do anything. No. They don't have to do, and they could walk away and just like live on like the most beautiful places forever. Yeah.

And never think about work in the rest of their life and be perfectly fine with all their assets. And they're going to complain about this. And a much more reasonable and still unbelievably modest rate of return, Cecil, which would be, let's say, a 6% rate of return on your $500 million. You got taxed. You had a billion dollars. You got taxed 50%. You only have a weeping, shitty, hardly even worth talking about $500 million. You've invested. Your investments are 6% return, terrible return. You can do better when you're that rich. 6% return. You have $30 million in income every year without touching the principal. I am fucking floored. You would have to spend, Cecil, $82,000 a day to burn through $30 million. Man, you would have to have a lot of OnlyFans accounts, I think. You know, it's just like, the people went to like, the people that are crying,

you want to hand them a calculator and say, show me how you worried about money. Yeah, show me this. Show me on the calculator where the taxes touched you. Wealth inequality is one of these things that I think is going to be the one, the one major piece of how the world changes

because it's been bad and bad and bad and getting worse since Reagan. Yeah, man. Right? It's not a lie to say that someone with a factory job could have a whole house, two cars, all these three kids. Single family. Single family. Single income family. Yeah, single income family, and they could easily get by and then have vacations and have Christmas and have all. And this is one job and it's not a work to work all day and feel like you're dead job. This is an eight hour. I go to the work and then I come home and I, you know, go hang out with people and I have a life. Right. It was, that was not a, that was not a fantasy. That was a real thing. There's people I know that went to school. There's a TikTok now where a guy's walking around and asking people who are

older, what did you pay for your first house? Ask these people what they paid for their first house, the amount of money that they paid for their first house. It's in the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, up to $100,000, right? They're paying nothing for these houses. Whereas now if you try to buy a starter home, it's a $350,000 house in this area. That's a starter. That's a, yeah, that's, and that's, I will say in this area, having just bought a house last year, I, you can't find a house for under $450,000. Yeah. Like a fixer-upper is $450,000 out here. Like you can't find it. I was trying to explain, I was talking to my dad about this, Cecil, just the other day on the phone. We were talking and he's like, you know, we were talking about, cause he used to drive a bus. And I said, you know,

out here there's a giant bus driver shortage. So a lot of times if it's too hot or too cold, the bus drivers call in and then the kids don't have bus service anymore for that day. So like they just, they canceled school because of it. You know, like they just, it's a bus driver shortage out here. It's pretty bad.

And I was talking to my dad about it. My dad drove a bus for years and years and years, 15 years or so. And I was like, yeah, well, it's because they don't fucking pay these people anything. So they're not willing to come in and do the work that you used to do

because that work sucks. Like my dad was like, yeah, it's actually a really hard, shitty job. And like, I was like, yeah, people aren't willing to come in and do the work that you used to do because that work sucks. Like my dad was like, yeah, it's actually a really hard, shitty job. And like, I was like, yeah, people aren't willing to do that job for $17.85 an hour, which is what they're paying by me. For $17, $18 an hour, they can go to Target where it's air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter and not, you know, drive around in a school bus and get every cough and cold and everything. Sure, yeah, yeah. And my dad was like, man, I never made $17 an hour. I'm like, well, dad, you've been retired a long time now. And I said, you know, I don't know that old people really understand inflation properly. You know,

we were talking about housing prices too. He's like, oh, you know, like I can't imagine, I can't believe people spending four or 500,000 on a house. And I was like, well, dad, that's, four or five hundred thousand on a house and i was like well dad that's if you adjusted for inflation you know like you got off so easy you made he's like i never made more than you know fifty thousand dollars you know when i was at the at this job or whatever and i was like yeah but like we got an inflation calculator i was like yeah you were living the same way as somebody making 135 000 like it's just how inflation works. It's a huge difference. And then I was like, and housing costs have risen faster than inflation.

Way faster. Way faster. So I was explaining to my dad, I was like, so that house that you bought costs less as a percentage of your income than everybody buying houses now. So yeah, on paper, they're making more money, more dollars are coming in,

but we have less of our actual income and buying power and spending power. It's like that. And I sent him all the math and he was like, I never thought of it that way. And I think so many people who, as they age, they get the idea of like, well, 50 grand is a lot of money.

And it's like, yeah, dad, in 1995, I would agree with you. There's a meme where there's a little child who's looking at two glasses and they're completely full. And then there's a tall glass that's skinny in the center. And they take one of the glasses and they pour it into the tall glass

and it's the same amount of liquid. And the kid points at the tall glass that they want the tall glass. And this reminds me of the same thing. It's like when you think about things in the abstract, your brain isn't good at putting these things together. Everybody's going to pick the tall glass. This happens at like, when you go to get a beer at a stadium, sometimes people will be like, get the tall one. And the tall one's like twice as much money for like an ounce more beer or something, right? And that happens all the time where people,

they think, oh, I'm getting the big one. Therefore, it's a better value. And it's not. And so, but your brain doesn't do a good job with this. It's bad at that sort of algorithmic calculation. It just doesn't know what to do.

And it does a bad job at it. And the same thing goes for this inflation stuff. Your brain isn't good at it because they remember it differently. Your memory works differently too. And I think that there is this idea like, oh, I worked every day and I did all this stuff. And you're like, no, you were just as disaffected by work as everyone else is disaffected by work. You didn't like your

job as much as everybody else didn't like your job. You also wanted to beg off and call off and not go and fuck around once in a while. You did the same thing that everybody else is doing today. You just, what you are now is judgy. That's what you are. You're in a position to judge because you're not doing it anymore. And that's the real problem. Yeah, because you've already done all of it. So you're looking back on things. You know, this is also something that I know is true for me personally. I don't want to say this is a larger truism, but I think that it may be. I know that in my life, I have a difficult time, like we were talking earlier, I have a difficult time when I look back over the long course of history, placing all the specifics

of my life in a proper, neat, and orderly timeline. What I have instead is a sort of like gestalt kind of feeling about things, which means that a lot of times when I look back at my life, I'm not looking back at a series of discrete events perfectly remembered in the right order. I'm looking back at a sort of like sense of my history as much as the truth of my history. And it's very easy and honest to recognize that the sense of our own history is often wrong. We know that about memory. We should be naturally distrustful of our sense of history, especially when it's not deeply rooted to a specific time on a timeline. It's real easy

to look back at the world and say, here's how I used to be because I have this gestalt sort of like broadcast understanding of the events of my life. But it's like, yeah, but like, you don't remember what year it was when this big thing happened, man. Right, right. You are not an accurate observer of you. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We want to let people know

that this upcoming week, normally we'd have a live stream, but we're still off YouTube. So we're not going to wrap it up for this week. We want to let people know that this upcoming week, normally we'd have a live stream, but we're still off YouTube. So we're not going to do a live stream until we're back on YouTube. We're hoping that's going to be in May sometime. So while we want to do live streams, we're not doing them because the platform doesn't want us on there and we don't want to risk a strike right now. So what we're going to do is we're going to skip it this week,

but we're going to have a patron show in a couple of weeks. So if you're a patron, you get a funny show that we do only for patrons. You can become a patron at patreon.com slash dissonancepod or dissonancepod.com and click on join, become a member and you can join our Patreon. Every level gets this whole show that we only give to patrons. It's a funny show we only give to patrons. You can join on Patreon. We'd love to have you as patrons because you help pay a couple salaries and that really does help the show. So if you think the show's worth it, if you enjoy the show,

you get a lot out of the show, help us out. Help us pay some salaries. Help pay my salary. I work for the podcast now, so we'd love to have you on. Come join us. Alright, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the 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,

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