Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 807: Kirk Cameron and Anti-Socialist Kid Shows

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

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Ontario. 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 Wednesday, November the 27th. It is the day before Thanksgiving. Cecil, I went to the grocery store this morning. Oh my God. On the day before Thanksgiving. And it did you wear a suit of armor? It was early, right? So it's, it's like that, that moment before D-day where you can just feel the the air. You walk in and there's everybody there is about ready to see some shit. They know. They know today. You can't even...

My grocery store, you literally can't even really send a cart down an aisle now because so much stuff is on the shelves. And they've packed every end cap and everything full of groceries. My God, man. So I went in this morning and you could tell, you could just, there's sort of like that sort of like tweak that, that little high pitched squeak of panic in the cashier's voice. Sure, it's fucking electricity is crackling in the air.

I went, not this morning, but I went yesterday and like midday, like my lunch break. I went, because I just had like a ham. We ordered some groceries. We're not doing a big turkey. We're doing a... Standing rib roast? No, I've got those.

I did buy, so here's the thing. I actually texted Cecil. I know. Because the grocery store by us has them at like $6 a pound. And I was like, I'll take four. It's funny, because everybody I told that yesterday, when I hung out there like, yeah, it was limit one. Oh, I got four, bro.

I bought four of them. You rolled in at the right day. Nobody stops you. Like, I don't know if it said limit one and they didn't notice it, but I was like, four sounds, because that lasts for if you wrap them up the whole class for a year. Yeah, that lasts a while.

So, but no, we're doing, we don't do turkeys anymore. I do multiple chickens. Nice. I just think chicken is easier to get cooked well personally. And then we're doing a London broil. So we'll have plenty of meat options. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving I'm doing a beef Wellington,

green beans, almond. At what time am I coming over? I didn't get my formal invite. You can come over whenever you want. You know you're welcome anytime. I'm also doing a demi-glace. So like I'm actually made the stocks. I'm gonna reduce that down and make a beautiful like demi-glace sauce for the Wellington.

I'm making green beans, almondine, and then I'm gonna do a potato daffodil. And then we bought dessert. We bought like some kind of cake or something like that. That's beautiful. I don't wanna, I mean, I could spend all day doing all that too, but I was like, nah, man, let's buy something. Yeah, I normally try to make a't wanna, I mean, I could spend all day doing all that too, but I was like, yeah, I mean, let's buy something.

Yeah. I normally try to make a pumpkin pie if I can, but this year I just decided not to, so. You know, Hailey was for a while because her stomach was really sensitive. She was eating less, she didn't go free, but she was eating less gluten in general because she was finding that her stomach

was a little sensitive. Sure. And she found a box cake mix, I can't even believe this, a gluten-free box cake mix that, she's back to gluten, like her stomach is a little bit better, we still buy that cake mix. It's so fucking good, I'm like shocked by it. Like we, it's outstanding. There's a Trader Joe's ice cream brand that was a non-dairy. And I'm not a non, I eat dairy all the time,

but I tried it once and I was like, this could be some of the best ice cream I've ever had and it's non-dairy. Sometimes you'll just run into stuff and just blow it. You blow it, you're like, what the hell happened? We do, like Haley does non-dairy, cause she's lactose intolerant. So like some of the, I've had like,

here's my experience with non-dairy ice cream. It is either fucking extraordinary or that should go in the trash. Sometimes it's really bad. So bad. Sometimes it's really bad. So, so bad. Like I feel like both oat milk and soy milk

are terrible bases for ice cream. I don't like either one. Oat milk, I don't understand, like everybody's like, oh, gotta get an oat milk latte. That's water. It's just- I like oat milk. I can't, to me it's watery and bland.

Have you had the full fat oat milk? I don't know, maybe I haven't. Where would the fat come from? Is there fat in oats? I don't know. It's called full fat oat milk. I don't know what the hell it is. I don't know either,

because it always tastes just so watery to me. I'm just like, this feels- yeah, I mean, an animal. I mean, plants can have fats. So, yeah, that's probably, you know, I mean, you get well, I mean, that's where we get oils from. So, OK, point fucking taken. Yeah, it's a stupid thing. I just in my brain, I'm like, where would it come from?

It's like from the fucking plant. Dumbass. Yeah. So, yeah, but I like full fly. I actually have changed my whole. I don't I don't really I don't drink regular milk anymore I don't drink milk, but like when I use like milk for something like I not only don't use milk I use whole milk for everything. Yeah, yeah, I'm like I'm already fat. What is this? It like moving the needle? I'm gonna go to 2% and be like, oh look at my ass. It's like are you fucking kidding me?

It's like a diet coke with your big back. Right. You know, at some point you just stop lying to yourself. You're like, no, I'm shitty forever. Now that's it. Like, I'm not in my, I'm not even in my thirties. Like my body's just like, look, we're dying slow. You've reproduced. You've done the genetic thing you were supposed to do.

No, we're going to continue cutting off things as time goes. I totally recognize like the human body, like all bodies, like, like, like we're just there to move our genetic material forward. So like, we all like laugh, oh, our bodies start breaking down to 40 or whatever. That's because you're done producing more people. Your body's like, I don't, everything extra is kind of a waste of our genetic time. I don't need anymore. This you did the thing. And after seeing society, I agree with my body. As my body breaks down, I'm like, yeah, man, good for you. I'm fine. You know, like I got arthritis in my toe now and I'm like, yeah,

fuck me. Let's sundown this whole thing. Call tonight. Like there's anti-natalists. I'm like an anti-me. Like I think I I should probably just go I should probably just go Would you tell me what's going on here and don't tell me about another bike accident What do you want to hear ma the truth? No, you don't want to hear the truth Alright, let's talk about this story from the Atlantic. The right has a blue sky problem. Since Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the platform has faced user dissatisfaction due to perceived right wing biases and worsening usability, prompting some liberals to migrate to alternatives like Blue Sky, which has gained millions of new users.

This shift risks transforming X into a conservative echo chamber. The more liberals leave X, the less value it offers to the right, both in terms of cultural relevance and in opportunities for trolling. While X retains network effects and user inertia, the growing exodus could diminish its influence and create a cycle of declining relevance as influential voices depart. What really touched me about this article was the idea that the right needs your outrage. Yeah. The right, they feed on that outrage. And what I've seen since this last election is sort of a mass unplugging, right?

There's been a huge drop off in left wing news and center news. You see CNN and MSNBC are posting really record low numbers. You're seeing people start to walk away from this, what has been a sort of battle. Gosh, it's, you know, at this point, almost eight years, right? And so you are seeing, I think, a group of people who are in a lot of ways so fed up with this, you know, constant trolling and egging on by the right.

And that's sort of what I think when we talked about this for years, that they're the party of trolling. Right. There's nothing, you can't, nothing is more apparent when you see how they interact with people on places like Axon and other places and in other places

and in policies that they create and in ways in which they talk to the media, all those things reflect that their entire political ideology has shifted to being a party of trolling. And I think there is a large group of people that at first wanted to fight against it. And now they're just like,

yeah man, I just don't want to listen to you anymore. I just don't care about what you have to say. Yeah, it feels like rage bait requires a sea to cast into. Yeah. And if like you're throwing your bait into an empty ocean, then there's nothing there anymore. There's nothing there. And pulling everybody who has any fucking sense

and sensibility out of a place like Twitter and moving them into something like blue sky or just like refusing to be in spaces. Like, you know, if there's a troll guarding the bridge and I'm just like, you can have the bridge dummy. Then what are you guarding? You're guarding nothing. I think that there's a, you know, I think that for a while in the culture war, both sides showed up and it was an asymmetrical war and it didn't play out well. And we've seen it. It just didn't play out well and asymmetrical wars often don't play out well. And I think now it's like, well, I'm just not showing up to the battlefield, man. You can have that. You can stand around in a big empty field, pointing your fucking

cannons down range, but I'm not there for you to shoot at. I'm over here. I'm doing my thing. I'm talking to people with sense. I'm here at my university. We'll talk about universities later, but I'm here at my university. I'm here with my group of colleagues. I'm here with the people that I love and care about that I share ideals with. Like you can post your rage bait and you can all get mad at the same thing, but you're not converting anyone. That's it, man.

Like, you know, like you go to church and you preach the choir, you didn't fucking accomplish anything today. For years we've been hearing, don't feed the troll. Right, for years we've been hearing it. I think a lot of us ignored that for a long time. I think we knew it, and I think it's one of those things you know and you know you shouldn't do,

but we still did it, right? You still entered into those spaces and had those conversations even though they were fruitless and wound up in a, you know, in a snit yourself, angry yourself, mad yourself because these people seemed so unmovable. And so we're in this weird space now where I think people are trying to step away from that. Does that create, Tom, a left-wing echo chamber

that never grows then? 100%, like what we're talking about. But you know, in an America that's as divided as we are in right now, I don't know that I believe in the idea of a truly independent or undecided or non-ideologically connected person. I don't know that those people are large enough in number

to like really matter so much. And I guess like, what if instead of one space where, and I don't know this, this is a genuine wondering. Like what if instead of one space where what we had was bitter acrimony? What if instead we said, all right, you've got your space, show it to the world and see how appealing it is. And we have our space, let's show this to the world and see how appealing it is. And we'll see which one

of these two is more appealing for those people that really are in that center that I kind of only half-heartedly believe exist. So if I'm trying to convince somebody, you know, hey, here's my worldview. And I've got my sort of like vision of that. It's over here on say blue sky. And you've got your vision of your worldview. It's over here on X. And I say, okay, pick one. I feel like that's an offering. That seems like actually a competitive marketplace. Instead of putting everybody in the same soup, stirring it real fast and being like, do you want to eat the slurry? Yeah.

Is it a marketplace of ideas, Tom? I think it's two marketplaces. And you're deciding which store you want to shop in. Right. And like, but I had a question that I want to ask you that occurred to me and it's, we're expanding the, the probably troll and bridge metaphor beyond the point of usefulness, but I'm glad we're going there. But I was, I was just a curse man.

I think it's actually now what would you use for the trust? Like the thing is, if you got a good trust, how many goats to move the trusses into the right position? Listen to the Brooklyn bridge episode of Citation Needed and then come back. We got a lot of bridge technology to discuss. A bunch of guys died of asphyxia. Now, when you got the bands and you're underneath the water. So no, but like when we were, we all did ignore the don't feed the trolls. I ignored it.

I know many other people ignored it. Right. And I'm wondering, like, I never felt like I was going to convince the troll. I never felt like I was going to turn the troll around. But I do think that there was an idea that these were public conversations. It's a debate. So was I trying to, was the audience the troll or was the audience the other people

sort of trying to enter the bridge? Sure. Yeah. Was I having a public debate with someone, just like say a Matt Dillahunty versus Dinesh D'Souza, let's say. And the Dinesh D'Souza followers that came to that debate are never going to believe anything Matt Dillahunty says. But when someone listens to this on the internet later on, 10 years later, they're going to maybe be in that weird middle space where

they don't know either one. And then suddenly they're convinced of Matt Dillahunty's arguments because there is no way you could convince me anyway that Dinesh D'Souza could convince anyone of anything at any time in history. But I think you're right. I think there is something to that. But I also feel like there's a flippancy to the internet

and a flippancy to comment sections, et cetera, that make it so that even if someone, even if you do have all the right answers, and let's say you stayed as calm as possible in the thing, the point is to make you mad. So if they do make you mad at all, then they can just declare victory by making you mad. You mad, bro?

You know, like that sort of thing. And so there's different rules. It just feels like there's different rules there that you wouldn't have in like a regular conversation and they would never think to do those things in a regular conversation. So I think there's a, the internet has created a weird social space for us.

It's just a weird way to interact with other human beings. It's not something we have evolved to do. It's something we have to learn how to do. And so that learning takes time and there's a learning curve. And gosh, I can't tell you the number of times that I've been contacted privately about a status I've made on whether or not that status was insulting someone. And then I've been like, no, I'm not trying to insult you, like I just made a status.

It's cool, bro. You know, like we're still, we're still chill. But the reason is, is because there's no, we've never really practiced this. Yeah, right. And so we're in this weird place with it. And so I recognize where you're, what you're saying, but I don't know that it's a one-to-one,

it's a debate stage. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? I know that's a long way to answer your question, but I don't know that it's a one-to-one debate stage. And I think it is weighted towards the troll. I do too. That's what I mean by it's an asymmetrical war.

And I think that that's like, and it's because of the format, like the format, like, you know, Marshall McLuhan, right? Like the medium is the message. Sure, yeah. I think that there's a lot of- What other McLuhan, like the medium is the message. I think that there's a lot of- What other McLuhan do you know? That's it, that's why are you calling me out publicly?

That feels, I know Postman a little better. All right, anyway. I love it. That was hurtfully true. That was hurtfully accurate. It's like when Eli says something about truth and you're like come on man you never read anything. Name on anything.

Yeah, no, call. That's a thousand percent true. I actually will call myself out. Whereas I only know McLuhan through Postman. I have never read fucking one thing from McLuhan. Not once. That's outstanding. Not, I want to be honest.

Not a single sentence except for a sentence somebody else quoted about him to analyze his stuff in a different way. I am a liar, but I still agree with it. I think there's real value there in that idea. Right? Or is it my concept of that? I know, I know.

It's funny. It's fucking true too. Like, so if the medium is reflective of the message and I think that it is, it weights, it weights the conversation in unserious ways. And it weights the conversation to your point and flipping ways. So like if you are a serious person in an unserious space, you're never, like that's fucking, you're trying to like, you're on the debate stage on a unicycle. You're doing the ministry of silly walks.

Right, yeah. And everybody's like, well, you look stupid. You're like, I'm trying. It's like, God damn it. God damn it. So like, let's take, and like think about the people who are exodus-ing. It's journalists, it's intellectuals.

You know, like- That is, that's an important piece of this. So who's over here? A bunch of non-intellectual, uninformed troll dipshits who understand the medium, but don't have a strong message. They actually don't have anything to say. What they have is to react. And if you pull out their ability to react, then they're like quoting themselves

back to themselves. They're like, you know, they're the guys who are like, did you see 40 year old Virgin? Remember when the guy said this? You know, like there's nothing there. Boops feel like sand. Yeah. Like, I do remember that. That was awesome. I, I, I, I have a one final thought on this and then we can close it up and I lost it. Was it about Marshall McLuhan? Because I only had one thing. Hold on a second. And it wasn't even mine. It wasn't even yours. I also want to point out too that being in charge of shit and running shit is hard. Yeah.

And what you're seeing now, again, I think, is they caught a car that they don't know what to do with. Mm-hmm. I think that the party that was created around this is made for attacking other things and other ideas and not about building anything. 100%. It's only about attacking things. So you will see a lot of things change in our government in the upcoming years, but all those things will be a negative.

They'll be a net negative in your life. They're gonna try to tear down institutions that existed for years. They're gonna do their best to try to change institutions that have been protecting us for years to not protect us They're gonna start they're talking about mass deportations the guy they got in there seems like he absolutely Wants to do a bunch of mass deportations does and so you're gonna see I think what these policies mean They're no longer an argument on Twitter, right? They're a real thing that you can look at data for. So on now you can talk all you want about how great a mass deportation could be on Twitter because it fires up all the people around you and it gets people to yell at you. But once you start

doing that, you tell me how great it looks in reality. You know, even on your paper, it doesn't look good, let alone to how it's going to look when it actually does. That's true. Because like the conversation now is this is what's going to happen. And it's everybody's prognosticating forward and saying, here's how I think it's going to play out. No, here's what I think it's going to play out. And one side is like, well, the data shows it'll play out this way. And the other side's like, meh. And that's pretty much the other

side. But now let's play it out. We're running the simulation. Yeah, the simulation moves a step forward. Right. Now we get get a chance to see we've thrown it all in there. The parameters are set. We hit You've talked a lot about what's gonna happen. Well, let's see. Let's watch Here's the thing is I like a lot of reality based people are gonna be They're gonna be basically saying there's a leopard on your face for a long time And look, I'll say it on the show. Like if I'm wrong and everything gets better, I want to make sure that I say I was wrong. Things are better.

I agree. I agree. I don't have any faith that that's gonna happen. I literally can't imagine that. I don't have any faith that that's gonna happen. But I want to make sure that I say it. Should we blame the government or blame society or should we blame the images on TV? Now!

Blame Canada! Blame Canada! It seems that everything's gone wrong. Send Canada Game of Loft. Blame Canada! Blame Canada! We need to form a full assault! Assault!

And this would be a perfect opportunity, Tom, for anybody to say, I think it's going to be better because because go ahead and read this story. But I will say or go ahead and introduce this story. I will say this is an opportunity for Trump to be right about something. Sure. Trump vows new Canada, Mexico, China tariffs that threaten global trade. This is a Reuters article.

President-elect Donald Trump on Monday pledged big tariffs on the United States' three largest trading partners, Canada, Mexico, and China, detailing how he will implement campaign promises that could trigger trade wars. Quote, on January 20th, as one of my many first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on all products coming into the United States and its ridiculous open borders. That's a Trump Trump Trump said that on true social. Now here's it. Here's what it could do.

Yeah, it could spur them to call us to then say, well, we don't want that to happen. So let's see if we can figure something out ahead of time. Right? So that they, he could renegotiate. It's a bluff. It's a leverage bluff. It could renegotiate a thing. Yeah.

Or they could say, cool, we just won't trade with you as much anymore. We'll send stuff to you, but you know, we're not gonna trade with you. And we're not paying those tariffs anyways. Who gives a shit? And then they just, they just start trading with other people.

They just start opening their markets to trade with other people. Cause if it's 25% here to extra to trade with us, right? They're not getting that 25%. The United States government is getting it. They have to up their prices based on that. So that's what they're going to do. And the American consumer is going to pay for it. 100%.

And so your avocados are going to go up 25% minimum, minimum 25%. And so you're all, and that includes all produce from Mexico. That includes all imports from Mexico that, you know, et cetera, et cetera, same thing with Canada. And the American people will do it, or they'll just say, well that, you know,

we were trading with America because we were saving 10% by shipping it overseas. Well, now I get, now I just, I got, I gave myself a 15% raise by starting to ship instead. And then that's what they'll do. Oh, I was thinking about this, you know, like my area of like expertise may be a strong word,

but my area of personal life experiences in real estate, I know I've talked about this before. And real estate right now, which we won't go too deeply into, but housing right now is in a crisis. There is no way around that. We are in a housing crisis. And the housing crisis that we're in is complex, but I would say that like its primary issue

is a supply issue. So we have a critically short and growing supply problem, which is wreaking havoc on affordability. And there's a lot of reasons why that it would be complicated to go into. growing supply problem, which is wreaking havoc on affordability. And there's a lot of reasons why that it would be complicated to go into. We get an enormous amount of lumber from Canada, an enormous amount of lumber.

If you think housing is expensive now, if lumber, it's not like you can just be like, well, I'll just cut down all these American trees. Like, that's not how this works. It's just not how any of this works. I think one of the ideas here is to drive more production into the United States. So in other words, it's, it's too expensive for the outside stuff. We're going to, that's going to incentivize a market to exist

that otherwise wouldn't exist. That's the local, that's the point ofize a market to exist that otherwise wouldn't exist. That's the local, that's the point of tariffs. That's the idea. That's the point of tariffs. If you, you have to create a whole new industry essentially, or create way more industry than you have now. But you can't like, you can sign an executive order on day one.

You can't get lumber permits on day one. You can't just be like, Oh,, I'll just cut down this national forest. Like that's not how any of this works. Lumber is the primary building material for any new construction home, any new construction home. In the middle of a housing crisis driven by a supply crunch, which is over a decade and a half in the making,

the idea that we would take the basic building block of housing and make it a 25% more expensive is fucking nuts. That is a nuts thing to do. Housing is, people are gonna scream, man. Yeah, it's gonna be intense. I also read, and I didn't get a chance to really look into also, I also read, and I didn't get a chance to really look into it.

I also read that there was a very specifically that the pipelines that come from the Canada feed us a lot of our gas. It goes into creating, you know, refineries that then refine our gas. And that's how we get gas is a lot. If you put a 25, what happens to gas prices? Oh yeah. Yeah, it goes through the roof. And it doesn't just go up by 25%.

No. Right? You know, and 25% right now, cause it's $4 a gallon, you're looking at, now it's $5 a gallon or more. You know what I mean? So you're looking at a very, very steep and that's just if it's 25. Who knows where it goes from there?

This is, it could, and again, it may be that in June of next year, we're doing a show and being like, it looks like they renegotiated our trade deals and our trade deals are way better now. It's a possibility. I don't know that they will do this though. I think that their call is bluff I these are these are world leaders. Yeah

Well, and like I think that one of the dangers of globalization when you pull games like this It's your you made this point before is these Countries can simply shift the output to somewhere else So I think when we had a more localized supply chain You had more localized supply chain, you had more localized leverage. But if I'm Mexico or I'm Canada, I'll say, we've got a whole world of consumers that will buy my lumber.

It's not like my lumber is only useful in America, for example, or my gas is only useful, my oil is only useful in America. I have the whole world as a potential trading partner. And especially for gas, when you consider that like, Russia's a major exporter of gas, they're under a huge embargo, there are some supply crunch issues

in certain parts of the world, they can just fucking sell to somebody else. Like I get it, we're one of the biggest importers and one of the biggest purchasers, so we have a big swing in dick. But like, I think they just have to look and say, all right, well, you're gonna hurt you more than you're gonna hurt me.

Let's both weather the storm and see how it plays out. Yeah, see what happens. Climate change, a problem so huge, how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Chianovet, climate reporter for the Toronto Star. I meet a lot of smart people doing really inspiring things in this space all the time. Small things that add up to big climate benefits. Small things, big climate, wherever you get your

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. And what was the result of the computer check of the DNA coding on those bullets? The DNA is a perfect match for Judge Joseph Dredd. The evidence has been falsified. It's impossible. I never broke the law. I am the law. This story is from Newsweek. Jack Smith leaving the option to charge Donald Trump in the law. I am the law. This story is from Newsweek. Jack Smith leaving the option to charge Donald Trump in the future. Special counsel Jack Smith left the door open for President-elect Donald Trump's federal criminal cases to be revived while dropping them ahead of Trump's return to the White House.

On Monday, Smith filed a motion to drop four felony counts against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also dropped an appeal to Trump appointed Judge Eileen Cannon's dismissal of the president-elect's classified documents case. So these were all dismissed, if I understand it right, and please correct me if I'm wrong, they were dismissed without prejudice. Without prejudice, yeah. And if they're dismissed without prejudice, as I understand it from my legal degree I got from this article from Newsweek, if they're dismissed without prejudice, it means that those can be revisited.

Sure. So he set them down. Yeah. And he's like, I'll wait this shit out. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. There's the option.

Yeah, there's an option. I feel like this article is being very generous with what's going to happen. Everybody in the United States needs to recognize that Trump will not be charged for the things that he did wrong. 100%. I think that they dragged their feet too long on some of this stuff. They they wound up getting Jack Smith and I think while Jack Smith I think was probably the right choice for a lot of reasons. I think they started too late. And I think that they should have pressured him to move faster and they should have done all that they could.

But again, I think Trump and his legal team was smart and they did the right things to try to delay it just past where they could get elected again. Yeah. Well, you know, it's very clear, if you've experienced our sort of justice system, it's very clear that with enough money, you can drag shit out for fucking effort.

For a long time. And the longer you drag shit out, the more that calculus starts to shift toward who has the money is gonna win the prize. Yeah. You know, and like in this case, there was always a ticking time bomb attached to all these cases, especially if Trump, you know, won the election. I think that's why the desperation was so severe for Trump to win. And I think we should recognize too, that once the Trump,

this Trump administration is over, I don't think that there's gonna be a real desire to resurrect these cases out of the burning cinder that is our society. You know what? I think you're right. I think when we're cave painting our history, this may not be something that we dwell on. Probably not. You know, I'm just, I'm just saying like, is this going to be the thing

that we do? You know, when, when we're like, Hey, I just ate three babies and I'm, I couldn't eat another bite. I, I don't think so. I'm actually really hungry because babies are small. They're mostly just fat. I mean, like there's like almost no real meat on it. Once you render them down, there's nothing there. I am saddened greatly that it doesn't feel like there was any justice. There was for maybe, I want to say three or four weeks, it felt like there was just a, the hammer of justice was swinging in the right direction and it felt really good. When Trump lost that case, I couldn't have been happier that he lost that case. And I think that sentencing has been pushed off.

So that sentencing is not going to happen. The case in Georgia is probably not going to go forward, even though that's not run by the Department of Justice. These Department of Justice cases are gone. And these are real cases that grand juries found that there was enough evidence to move forward with. These are, this is, there is a good deal of evidence.

And you can't, I mean, it'd be real hard to convince me that that documents case doesn't, I mean, that one seemed like an absolute slam dunk and it got, it got dismissed by a Trump appointee. So- Our next Supreme Court justice probably, he did a really great job picking people that really stuck by him. And he's that kind of guy who, who that's, that's how he deals with people is that he finds people that are closest to him and he makes sure that those people get, they benefit

from that. And they, and I think a lot of people in Washington have seen that a lot of people in the judicial branch specifically have seen that and they are definitely one hand washes the other when it comes to this stuff. So the American people lose out on justice because I think that there was serious problems with what Trump did, Trump committed crimes. I think that that is indisputable

that he committed crimes. I think that the American people lose out on holding a powerful person accountable. Do you think, remember when we played the Who Flips Next game? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah. And do you think that this dismissal and all this,

do you think that this emboldens tertiary actors from doing shit that, doing shit the next time? It's possible that it could embolden them, although I have seen that while Trump is off some of these, the other people are not. Oh, they're on the hook. They're still on the hook. So is the Fonny Willis case

moving forward with everybody but Trump? From what I think, I think they're moving forward with some of these other people. Oh, delicious. So that's important. I didn't know that. I think that's way more important. Because if you scare all the people who have to, like I think of this from like,

I'm a leader at my work, right? But I can't do anything myself, right? I can sign a paper that says, I need you to go do this, but I don't actually do the things, right? Like I've got whole teams of people that press the actual buttons in the right order to make whatever I want to have happen happen. If everybody is refusing to press those buttons, I can't get the thing I want done.

Sure. Right. So I do wonder if those people get successfully prosecuted. Does that actually handcuff the leadership? And I think it would. I hope it does. And I hope that they continue on with some of these things. I think that the Justice Department stuff won't go forward.

I think that the, you know, they dismissed that case. I thought I read that Jack Smith was maybe trying to see if he can continue on with some of that case based on the other people who were involved, but it wouldn't require a special prosecutor. It just requires the Justice Department. But that doesn't mean that Trump can't come in and immediately just say, well, that goes away too. Oh, and he will.

Yeah. So, but, but the state cases is he can't do that too. Oh, that's exciting. That's exciting. So it's possible that they might still keep these people. So we'll see. And I think that might hamstring them. It's in this case, the measles virus,

which has been engineered at a genetic level to be helpful rather than harmful. So New York Times, Kennedy's anti-vax views and friends can cause real damage. In 2019, during a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to the prime minister suggesting the measles vaccine might have caused the epidemic, despite the actual cause being traced to an infected traveler and low vaccination rates fueled by misinformation.

Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, has long been associated with discredited figures like Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree, whose claims have contributed to global vaccine skepticism and tragic public health consequences. As a potential leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy's dangerous views on vaccines and connections to pseudoscience raise serious health concerns about the future of public health. Incidentally, not incidentally, Trump is also, he declared that they're going to take apart the vaccine preparedness team. Like there's like a vaccine preparedness committee or team or

branch or whatever. I forgot what piece of, but he's basically going to be like, vaccine, no pandemic preparedness. Oh, nice.. Sorry, pandemic preparedness. He's going to just dismantle that. Because he already did that before and we, and we had a terrible pandemic. It's like George W. Bush, like for right wingers, like the original pandemic playbook was created because George W. Bush like read a book and was like, oh shit, I have a responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. Wow. It's the first time he's ever said that. Right? I know. First of all, George W. Bush was actually an avid reader. I didn't realize

this. And not just C-Spot. I would have thought like- It's crazy. Did he hire someone to just read to him? I don't know how much scratching and sniffing was involved. I suspect. He's got a history of sniffing. That's for sure. Do they have to show him the pictures when they turn the photo around? It's scratch and sniff cocaine books.

They were. I'm very excited to read this book. Oh man. Every book I read, Pablo Escobar. I didn't realize that he was ready. An absolutely voracious reader. And we saw that dismantling that caused some serious harm to the American people.

A million people died because of it. The other thing that you have to consider too is that we're on the verge of possibly a bird flu epidemic. Yeah, I know. There's a possibility, right? They're seeing some signs that it might be, and if we decide, well, let's just take all this stuff down. What happens if Trump's in there

and a bird flu epidemic hits? And it's again, you know, a respiratory illness that kills young and old. And now suddenly you're in this really horrible space where, you know, people are trying to drink infected, raw milk based on H1N1 or whatever, or, you know, because they have this stuff. And so we have, it can be a horror show

and you have a guy in Robert F. Kennedy who has, he is actively damaging, right? It's not that he doesn't know what he's doing, right? He knows way so little to be extremely damaging. And he can be very damaging in the things that he changes and the things that he approves and the things that he, even just the things he says. Even if he never does anything but talk,

let's say he keeps everything in place and all he does is shit talk vaccines the entire time, he can still do damage to this country in irreparable ways. Enormous, enormous damage. He's a, this is like, you know, like ignorant people are scary, but ignorant people don't know stuff, right? They just don't know stuff.

A guy like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only is ignorant, but then he holds an entire series of views on the things he's ignorant about, which are demonstrably untrue. He is actually one of the largest purveyors, this was measured, he's one of the largest purveyors of disinformation and misinformation around public health, just around public health in general. He's wrong about, he's scary wrong. He's frighteningly wrong about this stuff. And can you imagine, like, see, like, game, like, if there was a, if there was a bird flu epidemic, if there was an actual second pandemic,

the conspiracy theories that would float around, oh, another Trump administration, another pandemic, right? Oh my, dude, it writes itself. I know, but, but- but that's like saying, Man, Boozy Steve got another DUI. I know! HAHAHAHAHAHA And you're like, but he's Boozy Steve, man!

That's- Like, he's an incompetent boob who doesn't think that health is a thing! And then he fucking runs into the ground and there's another health crisis and people are like, Well, this is a plan, damn it. Yeah, I know! Yeah, it's planned, but from people are like, well, this is a plan. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's planned, but from the wrong people, you idiot. Like this is, like we've been warned time and time. Like there's some things where everybody says,

like it's not a matter of if, but when. You can hear the announcer voice, right? It's not a matter of if, but when. And pandemics are that. Pandemics are not a matter of if. We are not discussing reasonable people. And I'm not even saying scientifically literate people. I'm not one of those.

I'm just saying reasonable people. Reasonable people know that it is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when. That there's an entire, you cannot look at the scope of human history and be like, probably won't be another pandemic and be a serious person. That's a crazy thing to think. There's been so, so, so many of them.

They're not something we shouldn't. And they're not going to stop doing livestock. Right. Conditions continue to compress to make these things more likely. So we're just like, you know, like in the 1600s, it was less likely than it is now because of the way our food and supply chains work. So like, we're just setting our, it's like walking around in a house made entirely out of oily racks, you know, and like flicking cigarette butts around and being like, probably shouldn't plan for house fires.

My last house made out of bricks never caught on fire at all flick flick flick somebody called the fire department Oh shit boozy Steve is driving Damnit boozy Steve give boozy Steve another drink Yeah, man, it's fucking crazy Fucking crazy and and like I say even if he does nothing all he has to do is talk and he can really damage public health in irreparable ways. Oh, and in other news, this actually just hit while I was driving here.

The new hen house is gonna be guarded by Mr. Fox. They just announced that. It's actually the friend of a friend, Fox. He's his Fox Weekend. He'll bring his friends. It's different, it's different. Fox Weekend guy. Hi, boys and girls. It's your old pal, Mr. Robinson. So much has changed since we last spent some time together.

My neighborhood has gone through so much. It's gone through something called gentrification. Can you say gentrification, boys and girls? It's like a magic trick. White people pay a lot of money and then poof, all the black people are gone. So, you know, I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom.

I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom.

I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. You say gentrification, boys and girls? It's like a magic trick. White people pay a lot of money, and then poof, all the black people are gone. All right, so Tom, this is a clip I wanna play. This is Kirk Cameron launches an anti-socialism kids show. So here we go.

Just what we need. For the last couple of years, I've been reading wholesome Christian children's books in public libraries contra the drag queen story hours and hearing from parents that they don't want woke indoctrination for their kids. They don't want gay dinosaurs and trans ducks teaching their children morality. They want kids books and TV shows that are going to reinforce the stuff that parents are trying to teach their kids at home about the sanctity of life, about forgiveness,

about family, about the dangers of socialism and learning to embrace the identity God gave you. And so we wanna bring to families what we're considering a modernized version of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. We have to talk about the Mr. Rogers comparison. Sure. There's a, you guys, if you're just listening,

what he's got on screen is a fucking Sesame Street clone. Yeah. That's a different show! Totally different show. You're already wrong! That's a different fucking show! He's describing a cross between reading rainbow and fucking Sesame Street.

He's got puppets and the whole thing. And then he's like, it's like Mr. Rogers. Bro, it's not like Mr. Rogers literally at all. Like we're talking about the content, who is just like antithesis, Mr. Rogers would fucking kill himself before being compared to Kirk Cameron, but also just like you've got your comparisons wrong. You're reading books to kids with puppets. That's reading Rainbow and Sesame Street,

you stupid asshole. You stupid, stupid asshole. Here's what makes me just crazy about this is these guys, their whole existence, never bothered to do this, never bothered to go to a never bothered to go to a book, a book area to read to kids until someone they disapprove of did it. And then they said, no, absolutely not.

You won't read to my children. I'm going to go do this now instead. They never could be bothered to do this before. This is not, this is not Kirk Cameron an entire life spent reading to children. Right. This is Kirk Cameron, reactionary Kirk Cameron, doing this because he's upset that the person who's reading it isn't exactly like him.

You are white and male and you're reading to my kids. And that makes me mad. That makes me upset. That you're gonna somehow, even though all you're doing is just reading them a book and look different than me, are gonna somehow indoctrinate my children. They're just experiencing a different image

of a human being than what you portray at home. And that is the attack on this entire Christian worldview. That's because these guys see representation as exclusion. Yeah. They view representation as exclusionary rather than just another thing. Like, I double checked this before the show. I called my local public library

and did you know you don't have to go to your library for any of these things? I don't know if people know this. It seems like the people on the right have no idea that you're not actually required. There's no like minimum number of hours that you have to attend public library events. I, whoa. I know I pay for it, but I didn't have to go through.

I didn't have to go through. It blows the whole thing up. Crazy. Like also teaching kids about the dangers of social, like, like, like nothing. I'll tell you what, I've raised four fucking kids and I will tell you there is nothing kids love more than to have conversations about political economic theory. Yeah. That is just, I can't tell you how many times I've sat with Eamonn who's 10 and been like,

buddy, we're going to talk about Marxism. Let's talk about Tocqueville. Right. Yeah. I mean, get the fuck out of here. I mean, he's a budgeting libertarian. Yeah. I mean, no, he's not. He watches fucking Minecraft videos. He's not like, he's not like, oh, I think Minecraft Steve wants to, you know, share the means of production with the fucking gas. Like get the fuck out of here. What the shit is any of this? Well, and I think, I think that this again, points to the things that they want to demonize.

Yeah. Immediately, he starts talking about socialism. Immediately, he starts talking about woke ideology. What woke ideology really means is just being nice to people, right? Respecting people for who they are instead of what you want them to be. It's a real simple worldview, which just says treat people nicely, right? That's all woke ideology really boils down to,

but people, what they wanna do is they wanna say, well, that's, you know, oh my gosh, you know, you showed my kid a drag queen and therefore you're showing them what they would call a deviant lifestyle. You're showing them something that I don't want them to know exists. Well, I'm sorry, honey. There's gonna be a time where your kid's gonna be introduced

to things that you didn't wanna see them exist. Yeah, like I wanna recognize two things which I think are sort of in, maybe they might seem like they're in conflict with one another, but I think they are nonetheless true. When you raise kids, you are to a large degree making a series of constant and hopefully conscious choices about what parts of the world you want to expose them to and when,

right? So you don't expose a four-year-old kid to pornography, right? But you do understand that a 17-year-old kid with a cell phone has certainly seen pornography. There are times and places where we as parents make decisions about when we expose certain elements of society, violence, sex, complex ideas to our kids, right? Because we don't want to, if you do it too early, that's actually really damaging. It's psychologically and emotionally problematic. And if you do it not at all,

they are unprepared for the world. And so like it seems, I think, to some of the people on the right, that what they're doing is building these fences around their world to protect their kids. But that's not true. Because the operative word in what I just said was, we're deciding when, not if,

we expose kids to the truth of the world. What they wanna do is lie about what the world is. They wanna build a fence and put their kids in it like it's the fucking village by M. Night Shyamalan. And then, you know, that's essentially lying about what is in the world. When you do that, you actually lose an enormous amount of credibility. You lose all

of your credibility. It reminds me of our last episode where we covered the North Korean troops who were fighting in Ukraine and supposedly they got cell phones and were just jerking off until they had just nubs in their hands because they had access to pornography. They'd been lied to about the world. The North Korea does an excellent job of lying to their people about what the world is. It doesn't change the truth of the world. What it does is it creates a lie.

And as soon as people are exposed to reality, all of the lie stuff and the people who told those lies, they lose all their credibility. So these like right-wing parents, they're deciding if rather than when, and that's a huge difference. I totally get that you might say you might have different views

on when you wanna expose your kids to certain elements of society. Those are real conversations we should have and bring experts into. But there's no if. There is no such thing as if. The world is out there. They're gonna need to see the things

that we find unpalatable. And I don't find drag queen story hour unpalatable, but I'm just saying, we need to recognize that there's an entire world of unpalatable truths that we are not supposed to hide our kids from forever. I'll give you like an example. I have a, well, she'll be 14 in like an hour. So I have like a 14 year old stepdaughter.

And you know, she's at an age where we are beginning to have conversations about the world being a less safe place for her and about things that are unfair that she will have to do to stay safe as a girl in the world. And she'll probably end up taking like a self-defense class this year or next year, this year, almost certainly. Now, like that would not have been an appropriate conversation for her at six, right?

That would have been an inappropriate conversation for her at six. But it's in a perfectly appropriate conversation for her at 13 or 14. Not having the conversation at her at 13 or 14. Not having the conversation at all makes her less safe. It does not shield her from the harms that she may experience

because she's living in a female body. I can't fix that. I can't change all of the world and make it safe for her, but like I'm controlling the when rather than the if. Sure, sure, yeah like I'm controlling the when rather than the if. Sure, sure. Yeah. I'm terrified. Listen to me, Republican. Listen.

You are the people in history they warned us about. They warned us about people like you. Pay attention. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy.

We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy.

We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. We're losing our democracy. This story is from the New York Times. Republicans target social sciences to curb ideas they don't like. Florida has become a testing ground for conservative policies targeting woke ideologies and education, with new strategies focusing on eliminating or altering entire university courses rather than regulating individual professors. This approach, affecting programs in social sciences and beyond, has raised concerns among academic freedom advocates and critics who fear it will limit educational diversity and set a precedent for similar actions in other states. As colleges nationwide brace for the return of Donald Trump, who has pledged to combat perceived radicalism in education, this coordinated effort may signal a broader, more organized

movement to reshape higher education. It's interesting too, because you always think higher education feels like it's a little less touchable than public education, younger public education. But in some ways, they're finding ways around that to make it so that they can reach in and really damage reality-based learning, right? reality based learning, right?

You know, we talk a lot about, there's a, they'll come out with statistics constantly to say, you know, wow, these kids go off to school and they come back and they're X amount liberal and they're almost always more liberal than when they went to school, right? They go to college and they go, essentially the right thinks they go to learn to be liberal. And what they're really doing is just learning

about the world and saying, wow, I not only was encountering a great deal of diverse people who I hadn't encountered before, so I got a brand new worldview from many different facets while I attended school. I also learned about the world itself and about theories I had never learned about before. And now I'm in a totally different situation, knowledge-wise and wisdom-wise, to encounter the world. And that makes me a little more liberal.

And they think it's indoctrination when really it's just exposure to new ideas. So that's a really, really good point. One of the ways that these kids get exposed to these ideas, I've got kids in college now. So when you enroll in college, there are required courses that have nothing to do with your major. And it doesn't matter if you're getting a science.

I mean, it does matter in terms of what the requirements are, but even if you're getting like a science to go STEM degree, right? There are still gonna be certain courses that are just required, broad courses that are gonna be required. Need a couple of humanities courses, need a language course.

So, and those are based on the idea, the fundamental principle of a university education or a college education that we round out the education, that we build a well-rounded student, that we are not just a vocational training ground for a specific job. Like we'll get you there, but part of the reason it takes four years to earn an undergrad degree typically is because there's a year or two set on building out this sort of base, this rounded base. And if what I'm wondering Cecil is as the world moves

toward more and more specialization combined with this sort of like anti-woke radicalization and economic pressures that this article is describing, is the liberal arts education itself the idea of a liberal arts education fundamentally in jeopardy? I think it is. And I think it goes along with, I think, the far-rights ideology on how education should happen. I think the far right's ideology on how education should happen and I think that there are often people will talk about, especially people on the right

will talk about, you know, why do I need to know this stuff? Why should I have to learn this stuff? I mean, I can't tell you how many times you hear people say those things aren't connected, but as you just elucidated, yeah, they're connected. Like, becoming a whole thinking adult requires you to sort of encounter a general education, a sort of general look at the world, a survey look, right?

None of these are really deep dives. When you go to philosophy 101, you're not getting into a really, really, really deep philosophy class. You're doing a survey class of philosophy to talk about several different philosophers and learn about their ideas. Some of those ideas might be considered what we would consider conservative, some are liberal, et cetera.

And those, those ideas, you think about them and get a chance to talk about them and et cetera, et cetera. And that gives you a wider range. But I think that there are people on the right who don't want what they want as specialists. They don't want to have to waste their time. I want specialists in this thing. And so they don't, they don't care about, if they're a STEM degree, they say,

just teach me all the STEM classes. And that's all I ever want to do. And I think that that, I think it's a genuine mistake. I think, I think there is a, something really special about, I realized that I am a person with two degrees from a university, right? I have four degrees from colleges. I'm not a person who doesn't value education.

So I realized I am in some ways very biased about how I think that's true. But I also recognize that I went into school, you know, I went into college years before I even started. And before I took my first philosophy class, I was a religious kid who was a Republican and I went into school and suddenly I got a taste of other stuff and it wasn't that I got indoctrinated. It was just that I got, I got a chance to encounter other ideas and realize the ones I had were

weak as fuck. They were weak and they had nothing. They had nothing for me. And they weren't true. And they didn't reflect the world. And it changed who I was as a person. And I think that that happens. I don't think I'm a unique person. I think there's a lot of people that had the exact same experience I had. And that frustrates them because that's not indoctrination.

What they want is indoctrination to what they believe, period. And they don't want to hear anything about anything else. What I experienced as a university kid was, I experienced a lot of different things. A lot of, you know, I was reading, you know, far right ideologies in philosophy, as well as far left ideologies in philosophy when I was getting my degree.

So I learned a lot about the entire spectrum of politics and thinking. And I think, you know, I chose to be where I am because this is sort of the reality-based approach to the world that I chose. You know, and it's, there seems to be, cause I, you're exactly the person that the right is afraid of, right?

You converted from one of them to one of us, so to speak, right? And so you're exactly, your experience is actually exactly the experience that they are most afraid of. And I think that this ongoing project of silo building, which is what the right is working on, it is a project of silo building, is an attempt to make sure that people don't flip,

they don't switch over. But the reality I think that you have to accept if you're a reasonable person, which they will never accept, is that in order to think deeply about anything, you have to know how to think broadly. You can't understand philosophy if you don't understand science

because science, there is a philosophy that undergirds science. And I would suggest that you can't understand science if you don't understand that the scientific method is at its heart also a philosophical methodology, right? So, and you can't understand, like there's a lot of things you can't understand until we read stories about them Like through literature and see how things how the world if you want to if you want to understand history And all I read is a history book, and I never read you know like any literature about the Holocaust

I can't have actually understood the Holocaust There's a really in you know, in my, because I was studying a lot of, I went to a continental philosophy school, which studies thinkers from a long time ago, essentially ancient to, you know, till it starts becoming more modern, you know, and the modern philosophy is all like 1900s pond.

So it's like 20th century philosophy. And anything before then was mostly continental. Like there was some, what they would call modern philosophers, but there are few and far between before that point. Much of that is influenced by religion. So having religion survey courses, talking about religion and understanding what's happening in religion

and religion from a critical eye, not religion from sitting in a pew really helped me understand certain thinkers, helped me understand how they approach the world, kicker guard and things like that. Like that, it was super important for me to understand their religious view, to understand their philosophical view. And those things, I mean, it's just like you said,

you've got to understand, in order to understand something deeply, you have to understand it broadly. I wonder if our project of silo building in this sort of like specificity of expertise that we're working on won't create more, like you remember during the pandemic, how we were like, how the fuck are all these

medical doctors anti-vax? It seems antithetical to understanding science as a process, as a philosophical process and as a methodology. But if you silo people into medicine, not as something that relies on a body of science that relies itself on a philosophical underpinning of a methodology of knowing what true is and how do we get to true. If instead it becomes how do we do diagnosis? What are the,

do we memorize the pharmacology? Do we understand physiology? If you strip it of its underpinning, this how you end up with anti-vax doctors. Sure, sure. Like this process of silo building won't allow deep thinking. It won't. You'll have people who have expertise but don't understand where the expertise stems from at a level that is urgent and important. It will actually stymie creativity and further thinking. This is terrible for the world. Yeah.

Yeah. I get it. Do you think my techno folk ramp fusion is succumbing to populism? Cecil, two good news stories. Massachusetts Institute of Technology to waive tuition for families making less than $200,000 and the University of Texas System announces free tuition for students whose families earn a hundred thousand dollars or less. That's a surprise, the Texas one surprises the shit out of me because you're in a state where they,

they like hate, I think, a lot of left-leaning policies and this feels very left-leaning. Free college feels very left-leaning. Like, it would be wonderful. You know, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, theirs is all coming from private funds. It's all endowment. Like big schools like this can do this sort of thing

because they just make money off of the endowment. Right, right. So they have a huge amount of, you know, just cash stockpiled because the people that go to MIT generally turn out STEM degrees that earn them huge amounts of money. And then they donate. Feed it back into the machine, right?

So the machine self-supports and this is amazing. It's amazing. And like, this also feels like one of those stories which while it's wonderful and I love it, it just highlights the urgency of this being a national proposal. Yeah, yeah. Like, this should at the fucking very least be true

for like community college. What the shit are we doing that we're we recognize? I think sensible people and this is not most of us. It turns out, but like sensible people understand that the world becomes more complex and that expertise in different parts of the world is going to be urgent in order for us to compete globally on a financial, economic, creative, technological level. So where do we get that? But through education and whether that education is in fucking HVAC repair or in continental philosophy doesn't actually matter over much like at an individual level, but there are lesser and lesser opportunities to be really

successful in the economic system that we are in without some education beyond high school. I agree, and I think I like the model. And I think this model, to me, feels like good policy across the board. Pick a number and say, these people have to pay for school. They've benefited from our society in some way. And it's like a tax, right? You have to just pay for your kid to go to school.

That's okay, other people don't have to, but you do, right? You pick a number. I actually would like to see a more gradiated number, so it's not just this is the cutoff. It's at the cliff, right? I would like to see them say, you know, if the cliff starts at, if it's a cliff, it falls off at 100,

I'd like to see that, you know, people leading up to that have to pay some, right? And then we grade it out so it's not as bad because somebody who's, you know, a millionaire doesn't care, somebody who's making 100K a year, that might really affect them, right? You know, we do this with, we pay for, our taxes pay for public school.

It just stops once you get to university for some reason. And it didn't used to do that, right? There used to be a lot of money that went to public, to public universities and private universities, got lots of grants from the government. And it used to be that the government paid for quite a bit of education in our country. And then they stopped.

They just decided, we're not gonna do that anymore. We're gonna cut all that stuff off. I worked at a university for 22 years. And almost every year of that university, there was a comment from someone to you as a worker there to say, by the way, you should write your congressman to tell them not to cut our black, black, blah, blah, blah grants. And you should talk to them about definitely sign these petitions

that say, cause that, cause that's a huge cut in the university's budget once that stuff goes. Right. So they were, they were for many years like, look, we need this money from the government to help. And it helps subsidize the tuition. It changes so that tuition isn't as much. And that's just how it works. And I, for some reason, we as a country don't think that it's a good idea to somehow there's like, like you said, a cliff you have to fall off. Well, there's a cliff you have to fall off now for college.

There's a cliff, man. And suddenly people are not exploring colleges and you're going to see a huge brain drain in this country because people are going to leave and you're going to see a huge brain drain in this country because people are going to leave colleges teaching there because there's not work there anymore. So you're going to lose a lot of smart people who are teaching people how to be smart. Those people aren't going to be there anymore. And you're just going to see a lot of people who aren't going to go to college because

there just isn't any incentive to do it anymore because it's so prohibitively expensive. Well Linda McMahon is going to pin this down and body slam this into the ground. She's going to pile drive this. Fuck us. This is a good news story from CBS News. Texas woman known for driving strangers in need, gifted new vehicle by Philadelphia car dealer. Lynn Story, a retired Fort Worth resident known for giving free rides to neighbors in need, despite her own financial struggles, received a brand new vehicle from Philadelphia car dealer,

David Kelleher, after her story was shared on CBS Mornings. Kelleher, moved by her dedication to helping others like cancer patient April Goodwin, and blind neighbor Kevin Horrigan, not only gifted her the car, but also covered all of her expenses, including insurance and an extended warranty. That's awesome.

I think that's great. I love this. And I love too that her response to it is like, I'm going to drive more people. I love it. I think it's so great. I read this and I thought, oh, what a wonderful story.

You know, and I think too, I hope this starts becoming something that we can do more often. Cause what, you know, every week we sit down to read the news and I'm always so just like, fuck. I know. Dude, I want to tell you a funny story about that to read the news and I'm always so just like, fuck. I know. Dude, I want to tell you a funny story about that

because like Cecil and I have talked about like we're gonna have to incorporate more positive stuff in the show. But I am so mindset struck. Like I just want to acknowledge like what a piece of shit my brain is that I read this and I'm like, okay, so obviously the angle is how we lack mass transit.

Like I'm just like, you know what I mean? Like my brain immediately is like, Cecil put this in for me to criticize. Like, because that's what we've done now for 16, 17, 18 years, whatever it is. Like there's something that's just good about this. That's just good. It's good on both levels. It's just nice. And I don't want to go down a road of that. I mean, I feel like there's plenty of ways to criticize it. Oh, they're just doing it for their own good. But they saw they were on CBS this morning, so they're going to give a car so that this can go on CBS again. We get plenty of marketing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sure somebody could send a message and say, yeah, here's, it's a great business thing for them to do,

because then they could do this. And I'm like, but it could also be that the guy just wanted to help people. Right. And it could also be, and it could be both. Yeah, it's a great business thing for them to do because then they could do this and be like, but it could also be that the guy just wanted to help people. Right. And it could be both. Yeah. It could be both. I'll just say like sometimes when we're nice, there's something that we get back from that, but it doesn't mean that we should just not do the nice thing. Like I'm going to be honest, man.

I love giving Christmas gifts. I would be sad as a me to not give Christmas presents. There was a year, I will say like in I think 2016 or 2017, my life was in a little bit of chaos and I didn't get Christmas gifts for everybody. Christmas just kind of snuck up on me and I didn't give everybody that I would normally give a gift a gift. Dude, I still remember it because I'm like that sucked. That sucked, not just for the people that didn't get a gift, but I was like, I didn't get to experience the joy of giving something. Sure.

Sure. Like it's okay to like enjoy doing nice things. That's a good thing. It's all right. It's all right. Yeah. Right. And I think this is a great thing, right?

So somebody has a junker car and then they're just using a next door app. Right? So they're on this next door app. They get a chance to meet other people and these people need help. And what I read too, when I read this, I also had this part where there's a blind person who can't get their medication.

There's somebody else who they also mentioned those disabled and I'm like, why do we not have public services for these people? If there's anybody we're gonna help and protect in our society, why shouldn't it be the people who need the most help? And we're just like, nah, man, those people be fine. Damn, blind person, they can make it to the,

we just don't do anything, right? Or those services are so hard to find and the processes in order to get them are so Byzantine that they just don't bother, right? They're just like, fuck, I can't get there. I gotta get a whatever and it takes forever, et cetera, et cetera. But this person was like, yeah, sure, I'll just drive you there.

I'll just do it. I'll just do it. And then they did it. I thought too, like, you know, like if you're a retired person, I thought of my dad immediately. My dad loves to drive. I actually might mention this to him. Yeah.

Cause my dad's like, you know, he's not, like he's not disabled, but he's not real mobile anymore. He's very not mobile now. And I know most of the day he sits around and like reads a book and watches TV. He's retired, he's 77 years old. So like, I think he would actually love doing this. Like to do it.

He just likes to, like, he would love to be useful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week's show. We'll be back on Thursday. We're gonna have a goofy show for you. And that going to wrap it up for this week's show. We'll be back on Thursday. We're going to have a goofy show for you. That's going to wrap it up, but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit.

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