Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 809: Florida Bill to Ban Weather Modification

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

 

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Ontario. Today's show is brought to you by Adam and Eve.com. Go to adamandeve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY at checkout. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glorial Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Distance. 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 us, nope, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political,

and there is no welcome mat. Today is Thursday, December the 5th. I'm recording from home because we are sick as fuck over here in the courthouse. Sick again, man. Woof. Man, we got, my stepson Donovan went out to a party on Saturday night, came home Saturday night,

sick all night Saturday, Sunday morning. Hold on, hold on, we're gonna get to the bottom of this. Did he go to the Olive Garden? Ha ha, he did not, he went to, we did our Thanksgiving on Saturday, so he ate with us on Saturday, and then he went to a bonfire with friends, and then he came back in the middle of the night,

he was sick. And we're like, oh shit, we were hoping it was food poisoning, but it is not, it is, it is working its way slowly and methodically through the family. Thank God. E-coli. Dude, for real, it's bad.

So like, I have not gotten sick, but that makes me the designated cleaner-upper. Oh man. Which means I'm constantly exposed. Like I am just constantly exposed and one by one they have fallen. One by one they've fallen. I do want to read you Cecil a text that I got from Finnegan. Because Finnegan actually got sick.

Finnegan's your oldest boy. If people don't know. Finnegan's my oldest boy. Yeah. Now Finnegan is got a girlfriend and his girlfriend's name is Rome. I'm telling you that because that's relevant to the text. Because that's necessary to understand the text. So I got a message from him, he says, I'm sick.

I said, oh no, dude, I'm so sorry. So I was really hoping you'd escape it. He said, I did for a while. I had just made plans to go to dinner with Rome tomorrow and now I can't. I said, oh shit, dude, I'm so sorry. He said, yeah, I'm out for the't. I said, oh shit dude, I'm so sorry. He said, yeah, I'm out for the count. I said, oh no, my guy.

He says, this plague has taken my Rome time. It shall know the full wrath of Finnegan Danger Curry. Hell will be kind compared to me. I fucking love it. Hell will be kind. Amazing. He says that, he's the nicest fucking kid you'll ever meet. Like, the kid's 18 years old,

I've literally never seen him lose his temper one time ever. So I love it, it made me laugh. So we are recording from our respective houses so I don't spread my plague juices over to your home, Cecil. Wonderful, thank you, Tom. I appreciate you thinking of my family, too. Well, speaking of getting sick, we've got to talk about... We've got to talk about yesterday's assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare.

I'm going to pause. Did you watch... Hold on, before we start. Did you watch the actual assassination? I sure did, yeah. Did you? Yeah, and at first, I thought, when I saw it, that after he shot him, he was collecting the shells in his hand, because that's kinda what it looks like.

It looks like he's shooting, and he's kinda got his hand near the slide, and it looks like maybe he's collecting the spent cartridges to move on and not leave anything in the scene. But instead, we've found out after the fact that they were actually scrawled with the name of a book about health care. The title of the book is Three Words. And he had a word each on each one of the shells that shot that

CEO of a health industry. This was like, there is not a question about whether this was a messaged assassination. Like, he's scrolled on the casings, deny, delay, depose, which is the name of a book about the way that the healthcare industry fucks people over and denies them care. I also want to point out that United Healthcare's denial rate is the highest in the industry among the major insurance carriers. It's over 20% of their claims are denied. Just a few years ago, their denial rate was 10.9%.

It is now up over 22%. And we just covered on a long form episode, not that long ago, ways that insurance companies use shady middleman services to increase- Yeah, algorithms. Yeah, algorithms. To increase their denial rates

in order to push profits higher. Yeah. And I was thinking about this yesterday when this happened because the world is awash in a lack of sympathy and a sense of real glee. A lot of short and Freud going on right now. And I'll tell you, I fucking get it. I do too.

Like I fucking get it. And I was thinking about this, Cecil, if I was in an emergency room and there was a patient who was on the table or in the emergency room, and they needed immediate intervention or they were gonna get sicker or die, and the doctor ran over to try to help.

And instead of allowing that doctor to help, but I ran over to the doctor and I grabbed him around his waist and I pinned his arms to him and I prevented him from caring for that patient. And that patient died. I would be responsible for that. I would have a legal culpability to that death, right?

If I'm in a car and I drive you to a gas station and you go in the gas station and you shoot the clerk and rob the gas station, I get charged with murder. Sure. I don't get charged with driving the car. I get charged with fucking murder. Like in many states, it's the same,

I get the exact same sentence that you get, not even accessory. I get the same sentence in many states. When you commit murder through paperwork, it's the same fucking thing, man. And everybody in America that is tweeting and talking about this and feeling that lack of sympathy, they feel that lack of sympathy because they understand that it's not different when I hold the doctor's arms and don't let him rush to the patient to help.

It's not different when they say, yeah, because we covered a story just on the long form episode about a guy who fucking died. People die. These healthcare companies with these denials, these intentional, purposeful, profit-driven denials of coverage, that's mass murder, man. And like, I can't help but feel that when a mass

murderer gets assassinated in the street, and then that maybe sends a message to the other mass murderers out there who are also doing the same thing, like, I can't help but feel like, yeah, fucking good, because the other system where we just asked nicely not to get fucked over wasn't working. Yeah. And the other part to consider here is that we have, for a long time in this country, given over our choices in healthcare to be given to billionaires who are making record profits off of the healthcare system. We inserted an entire industry in there

to siphon money off the American people so that we can somehow all try to have healthcare, but yet pay astronomical amounts for it. And sometimes we have to deal with the denials. Like this person turned the knob on the denials up for his particular. Business and that business, he's the CEO. Look at what his profits were. Look at what his bonuses were.

The thing is like, we have this horrible system where we pretend that healthcare, which is a for-profit industry and health insurance, which is a for-profit industry, operates within a free market. But let's dispel that idea because I don't know about you or anybody else listening, but like I didn't get to pick my fucking health insurance company. That's true. I woke up, I went to work, my work says we're going to decide who the health insurance company. I don't get to pick my fucking health insurance company. That's true. I woke up, I went to work, my work says we're going to decide who the health insurance company, I don't get to pick it. They could change

it next year. How do I know that? They changed it on me last year. And the, the, all the fucking picking I get is a notice right before open enrollment that says we've picked a different fucking insurance company. Here's what's new. And then you get the fucking, here's what's new this year folder from your HR department. That is if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, you go find insurance on the ACA and at least that you pick, but you're picking like between these huge conglomerate companies, the vast majority of us still get our health insurance

default assigned to us by our employers. And when you compare denial rates by private insurance companies against denial rates by Medicare, they are two, three, four times higher. Four times as much, yep. Than the denial rates for Medicare. Medicare is the better system. But when you add in that profit motive and then you take away choice from the consumer and then you make literally nobody accountable and then you insert pharmacy benefit managers, then you insert these fucking denial of claims service people

that we talked about on a long form article just a few weeks ago, you were developing a system not of care, but of caring for profits. And it's like, you know, like when this guy fucking shot the CEO of United Health Care, my first thought was like, you know, when you see a fucking somebody stealing baby formula at CVS, no, you didn't. It's like when you see somebody shooting a fucking CEO of a fucking health insurance company, no, you didn't. Yeah, I think that was your face on that thing. I'd have been like, I never saw that guy.

I will tell you what, what everybody in New York should do is all dressed like that guy right now. Everybody in New York should all wear it. And when they pull it down, you should just say, I am Spartacus. That's how it should work. That's what you should do. Like, like, you know what? Like if the fucking CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield is nervous right now, I think that's

a good thing. I sent you an article just the other day that like Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has said that they're throttling back how much they're going to pay for anesthesia. Did you have to see? They took that back. They took that back. Did they? Yep. Well, good. I wonder why. It might be in direct in direct relation. But they tried it, man. Yeah,

they tried it. They tried it and it blew up all across. They tried to say, like just for listeners that don't know the article, they tried to say that they were only going to pay a certain quantity of time, reimburse a certain quantity of time for anesthesiologists during surgery. And what that means is not that the anesthesiologist would wake you up out of surgery. They wouldn't do that. What that means is that you could go to the doctor, yeah, think that everything was covered. You dotted all your eyes, you crossed all of your T's, you did everything you were supposed to do as a patient. And then you wake up and you get a bill. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

That's what that means in practice. And that is fucking horrible. That's devious. That is devious right there. Yeah. I remember one time when my ex was pregnant with Finnegan, she was like a high risk situation going on when they were at a hospital and they said well we got to get you over to this other part of the

hospital to do this test and we were in this hospital that was in network with a doctor that was in network and they put her in a wheelchair and they wheeled her down to a different wing of the hospital and the different wing of the hospital was part of this like maternal fetal medicine center or whatever. That part of the same physical hospital turned out to be out of network. Jesus. And so I didn't know something is happening. Like we're just like in the middle of like making a game time decision about something. Yeah.

They literally put you in a wheelchair. You think that you've chosen a hospital and a doctor that's all part of your network. And then they just wheel you over to a different wing of the same building That's and then when they bill it for you all of a sudden you're out for $5,000. That's outrageous It's fucking insane man. And you're just like how am I gonna pay it? You know, like what are you supposed to do when you're 28 years old? Yeah, and you get a bill like that It's you know, these cheapers. Three bullets is cheaper than 4000. Right, man.

Get the hell out of my yard. JT, JT, let me have this house. JT let you have my house. My shit. I want it. You're trespassing on my property. You didn't win shit. My yard. All of you. Daddy chill. What the hell is even that? Alright, so this first story comes from Huffington Post. Geraldo Rivera slaps Trump supporters with a reality check after Biden's pardon. Most dads, including this one, would do what Joe Biden did. Blood is thicker than water. He was willing to tarnish his honor and reputation to save his child who he believed was being shafted. Too bad, but it's not like he appointed him ambassador to France.

That's Geraldo Rivera's quote. What do you think about this? I'm of two minds, and I mentioned this on another show that I do. I'm of two minds. There's a part of me that very much understands why he would do something like this and part of me that sort of agrees in some ways because they have made it a big sort of campaign promise to go after Hunter Biden after they were elected. He's preventing that from continuing and he's preventing his son from staying in the public light after he's no longer president. I'm talking about President Biden.

But you know, there's a part of me that's like, he did something wrong. He should have to do something for it. I understand that there was political motivation. They had a plea deal in place. They rejected the plea deal to go to the trial and they got more time than most people would normally get in that. I understand that, but there's a part of me that's like, Hey man, I, I don't know how to get all this back in the box.

Now I understood before when there's this sort of idea that, you know, there's a moral high ground, there's a, you know, a justice sort of high ground where you can point to and be like, you can't do that. That's wrong. And I did see president Trump utilize and abuse the pardon power while he was in office before, but do two wrongs make a right here? And I'm of two minds. There's part of me that understands it completely and kind of agrees with it. And then there's another part of me that's like, man, are we really opening up a box here? Can we now criticize this government if they do this sort of stuff in the future? Well, I think I'm a, I was of two minds of this also, but I feel like I've kind of resolved

my feelings on this. So, you know, from everything that I've read and everything that I've listened to on this, I feel like it's pretty universally agreed, not only that under normal circumstances, Hunter Biden would not have gotten prison time, but he would not have even been prosecuted. Under normal circumstances, no prosecutor would have even brought the case. It's an unusual, it's a wildly unusual prosecution. Then it's a fantastically unusual rejection of the plea deal. So I feel like the justice system is already being weaponized unfairly against an individual citizen

who, like, that's unreasonable. That is just genuine, genuinely genuinely that's just unreasonable. I also feel like when you come out ahead of time and say, and I'm going to keep hurting you, I know I hurt you. I know that the thing we did is outside the normal course of, of, of, of sort of prosecutorial ethics and like the prosecutorial process. And even we're willing to accept that, but you know what? I'm going to keep hurting you after that. I feel like at some point you've got to say, all right, we're not like, fuck it.

Fuck it. I'm not letting you do that to anybody. Like not my kid and not like anybody else. And as far as like criticizing, dude, I felt the same way, but I'm like, I don't know that it does any good for us to criticize from the high ground. I'm not sure that's gotten us anywhere. I don't know that it's gotten us anywhere either, but now you're now you're definitely seeding it. I think we're saying we're on a level playing field now. Because we weren't on a level playing field before. But are we cool with broken government then?

Well, I don't know that this breaks the government. a level playing field before. But are we cool with broken government then? Well, I don't know that this breaks the government. I don't know because you have to accept too, if you accept that the rule of law matters, then you have to say that the pardoning system is part of that same rule of law. It's part of the same system of rules and everybody gets to use it at their discretion. And when Trump used it to pardon Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and weirdly Rob Blagojevich. Yeah.

Like he didn't break the law. He was within his rights to do it. Everybody said he was within his rights to do it. So for looking at a rules system, everybody here followed the rules. Sure. So like you, you kind of have to then say, okay, outside the rules system, where, from where does my outrage stem? Because it doesn't stem from the rules system. That's from where does my outrage stem? Because it doesn't stem from the rules system.

No, that's fair. I think that's a fair system. I, you know, I heard a, a, a take on this that I thought was a really interesting take and what it said was Joe Biden released a statement. So Joe Biden releases this statement. And this is actually a take from another podcast. I did a podcast host suggested as Craig, this guy I do a podcast with. They had this whole statement about Joe Biden said that it was a, you know, the system was against my son. It was weaponizing the justice

system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He said that using that language gives Trump some sort of foothold now to say that the Justice Department can be weaponized, right? So instead of saying nothing, instead of just doing it because he loves his son and saying, I love my son and I don't want to see him hurt anymore. That is why I pardoned him. That is a much better explanation than saying, I weaponize the justice department is weaponized because in some ways you're giving Trump more ammunition for the gun he's been firing at us for years. If you were to just say, I did it because I loved him and

I love him and I don't want to see him hurt. And I want to make sure he's my son and I love him and I'm stepping down and I feel like he has endured enough. That's plenty of a statement. That's there. There's no other, you know, like you said, you're not breaking any rules. It's literally within your power to do it. So who cares? Who cares what the reason is, but instead to elucidate the reason as it's a weaponized justice department really does open something up here that I think is kind of dangerous. Yeah, I think I would agree in a normal world. And I really mean this.

Where I think I struggle with that is that I don't think Trump was ever not going to just... I don't think Trump needs any other sort of outside articulation. I'm not saying Trump, I'm saying us. How do we now combat Trump who says that it's a weaponized, if Trump says it's a weaponized justice department, we say no, he's like, yeah, but Joe Biden said it was. Oh, I see what you're, I misunderstood. Yeah. So I mean, like, like at this point, I don't care what Trump does, but Trump is going to use this and now we can't use that as a way to, to now say anything

about the things that he, we can't dispute the things he's going to say because we've kind of admitted that they're true. Yeah. I don't know that we, I think, I think that we could say, well, this is, this is the problem of complicated things being more complicated truths being more difficult than simple truths. And that's what's, that's what's tough. The, the, the, the reality is that like sometimes the justice system has been weaponized, we do have to acknowledge that it has not been weaponized in its

dogged pursuit of justice when it's come after Trump, it's actually been wildly cautious, which is why it took so long and why it didn't come to fruition in time. Right, right, right. But this is the problem of true things being complicated and simple things being a better narrative. I think to some degree we have to really kind of throw, I really am coming to believe that we on the left have to take

our old playbook, put it in the shredder and shred it, then take the shreds and light them on fire, then take those ashes and blow them into the wind and then forget we ever had that playbook because it doesn't work against Trump and Trumpian politics. And I think that that, what Trump has done by winning the second time is he's shown the world that this works and this is replicable. And we have shown the world we don't have an answer for it. And so if I'm on the other side, what I'm doing now is I'm paying a lot of attention to the reality of politics as game, as game theory. And I'm saying this version of playing the game works. I'm never going to play another game. I'm saying this version of playing the game works.

I'm never gonna play another game. I'm never gonna play, things are never gonna return back to a civil normal. Because civil normal, I don't think, has shown itself to be as effective. We have to re, we have to embrace the unfortunate reality that what we've been shown is a playbook that works. And we have to find a new playbook

that works against that one. And that answer is not being right. We tried being right. Being right isn't enough. We have to do something different now. We have to be right in a different way. We have to be right in ways that are simpler, more direct, more offensive, less defensive, never defensive.

I think we've got to completely reinvent the way we're playing this, this chess. We're playing it badly. We lost, we lost twice. We won once. I have the last three times we played. I think that was an anomaly. We lost twice and we've shown the world now can see a strategy that works. And we don't have a counterdefense for it.

So coming back and saying like, well, yeah, but you know, the high ground and we were right, like all that stuff is good in a world where people cared about what was right and wrong. But we don't live in that world anymore. I really don't believe we live in that world anymore. And I climbed a mountain so tall, so high, I turned around, I could barely breathe, I was so high. And I saw all my reflection in it.

There's snow capped little hills there, so cold, where the landslide of some other natural forest brought me down. This story comes from The Guardian. Donald Trump did not win by historic landslide. It's time to nip that lie in the bud. This was a great article that really breaks down the numbers and really breaks down the way that the narrative around the Trump win of a giant overwhelming mandate and this huge landslide victory.

Like none of that is anything. He had one more electoral vote than Joe Biden won. 307 versus 306. Nobody was calling the Biden win a landslide. When Biden won, it was a squeaker. Everybody's like, woo, that's a squeaker. Like, he was one more electoral vote than the squeaker. I think too, I've been seeing, I saw Joe Rogan recently did a show and he was showing, saying basically that there's a huge red shift in

the United States. And if you do look and you compare maps between times in which there was, you know, this county went red and this county went blue, and you look at it from 2020 to now, there is a shift, and if you look, there's a lot of red, used to be blue, that's true. But I think that that, we're tricked by that image. We think red means only red, and it doesn't mean that there's a mixture of votes there, and it could be as close as the presidential election,

which was only by a little over one point, right? The final tally of popular vote was 74 million to 71 million or something like that. I mean, it was a 1.6% difference in the two scores. It wasn't 70% to 30%. a 1.6% difference in the two scores. It wasn't 70% to 30%, it was 50% to 48.6% or something. Yeah, exactly. So it's not like it's a major mandate, but if you were to color the entire country red right now,

it could be colored red. And the same thing could happen in your, you know, in the sticks somewhere where, you know, before it was blue, let's say, around a city, and now it's red, but it might only be red by a point. But when you look at the map and they show those little arrows and they show, wow, look at this big swing of red, and it's like, yeah, it's swung enough red to turn it red now by 50%.

It's not as huge a mandate as he's trying to put off. And I think one of the things that people should do from now on is when they hear somebody say something like that, they need to correct them and say, no, it was a very close election. He barely won. That is not a mandate that this is everybody in the world is a Trumper now.

What it means is, is that it was a close election and that's the end of it. Yeah, let me read it directly from the article because I think there's a few pieces of it that I just want listeners to hear. The former president's margin of victory over Harris is a minuscule 1.6 percentage points, smaller than that of every winning president since 1888,

other than two, John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Richard Nixon in 1968. An analysis in the New York Times noted last month, in fact, in the 55 presidential elections in which the popular vote winner became the president, 49 of those were won with a bigger margin than Trump in 2024. Trump won 307 electoral college votes.

That's 37 more than is needed, but it's far fewer than Bill Clinton won in 92 and 96, fewer than Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. And it's pretty similar to what Trump won in 2016, which is 304, and is only one different than what Biden won in 2020. His margin of victory in the electoral college ranks 44 out of the 60 presidential elections in 2020. His margin of victory in the Electoral College ranks 44 out of the 60 presidential elections in history. Out of the 231 votes, crucial votes in the Blue

Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, if 116,000 of those voters across those three swing states or 0.7% of the total had switched from Trump to Harris, the vice president would have won the electoral college and the presidency. That's a nail biter. That's a nail biter. It's a nail biter by any measure. And I want to, I want to correct the people who are going to say, so what you still lost. Yeah, absolutely.

So what they still lost. Nobody's arguing that. But I am saying that that doesn't mean that everybody in the country is okay with the current administration. I don't think everybody in this country wanted this current administration. And it doesn't mean that there's an overwhelming majority of people that wanted the things that Trump wanted. And I think that that's important to remember.

I mean, we had a long four years of resistance while Trump was in office before. I don't think that's going to stop now. I think people are still going to try to resist a lot of the things that he's going to try to put in place because he's either going to do it incompetently, like we've seen with his picks for many of the new secretaries and heads of departments that he's chosen. He can't find his ass with two hands because he's literally choosing nepotism all the time. And, or he's going to do something malicious. And I think that there are people there

that are going to stand up. And this, I think, proves that there is a large group of Americans that are behind them if they stand up to Trump. Jesus Christ, it's cold here in Washington, DC. And if you want to deep go to adamandneve.com and use code glory because when you do you get 50% off almost any one item of your choosing thousands of products to choose from. And then Adam and Eve loads on the

free stuff. You get one free gift for you one free gift for somebody else one free gift you both all can enjoy maybe keep you warm at night, I don't know. Hey, what'll keep you really warm at night? Six free spicy movies that'll keep you hot and not frigid and your fingers won't fall off unless you're working them hard and then maybe they, I don't know if that's physically possible, but you know, why don't you try it? Or don't. Don't have the fingers fall off. Make them warm with stuff. And then hey, free shipping. That'll keep you warm. Also, discrete shipping, I'm pretty sure. That also is pretty good. So go to adamandeve.com, use code GLORY, keep it hot like our nation's capital

in the next couple months when it burns to the ground. Thank you. Bye bye. Stay hot. Use code GLORY, adamandeve.com, bye. We're all gonna die From what I can gather Bye. TNT or Verizon, either way the service sucks and you can't hardly talk. They said there's gonna be change, well did they tell BlackRock? This story also from The Guardian. He's one of us! U.S. anti-vaxxers rejoice at the nomination of David Weldon for CDC,

the Trump and the Trump administration, when Donald Trump nominated David Weldon, a 71-year year old doctor from Florida who has long questioned the safety of vaccines to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention anti-vax activists celebrated. The move comes as the US faces increased threats from bird flu and Mpox, as well as resurgences of whooping cough, measles,

and other vaccine preventable diseases. Fucking yikes on bucks. The back end of this article for me was really where the juice lies because there's some real tangible, direct harms that can come from having an anti-vax nut job leading the goddamn centers for disease control and prevention Cecil. Yeah, man. It's right there. It says prevention.

What's the best way to prevent the fucking disease? I don't know. Go get a vaccine and don't get the disease. That's a super good way. Hey man, guess how many of my kids have had fucking measles? How many? None, because they all had fucking vaccinations. Woof. See? That's crazy, Tom. I know.

What a world we live in. How many of them have autism? None. I never saw the light go out of any of their eyes, Cecil. There are so many instances of Trump looking at various hen houses across the Americas and choosing foxes, some of them foxes and friends, to be in charge of those hen houses. It's insane to me how many people who are literally the exact opposite of what you would want in that office. He is choosing and it's choosing, he's choosing it very specifically because he wants to destroy

these institutions. He wants to destroy them from the inside out. He wants to put in people who are outsiders, who hate these organizations. You have, uh, you know, you could start naming the people when you're talking about the Doge, you're talking about, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk cutting tons of different places in the government.

And these are places that are probably gonna be the ones who regulate them, they'll cut those offices. You're talking about RFK in charge of health. You're talking about this guy in charge of the CDC. These people are very specifically made so that they can come in and disrupt these organizations. I don't know what Trump has against this stuff. I actually, I do know what Trump has against this stuff.

What he has is this huge group of people who got super pissed off mostly during his presidency, but then later on during Biden's presidency because of mask mandates and businesses closing, et cetera. And those people are still mad and they're still Trumpers and they're still on the Trump train. And so he's appeasing all those people by trying to destroy the very institutions

that kept that number as low as a million people died during his presidency. Yeah, a fucking million people, man. A million people. That's low compared to what this guy could do. If we get these anti-science fucking lunatics in charge and we get a new COVID. these anti-science fucking lunatics in charge and we get a new COVID. If COVID, like here's the thing,

like maybe people don't fully think about this. I don't know, but like COVID's still around, man. And it could fucking morph. It could like mutate. That is it. Like the flu does it, right? The reason we get worried about different flu strains is because the flu, now endemic to the world population, changes constantly.

It continues to mutate. And some of those mutations result in things like the 1918 flu pandemic, Spanish flu, that like wiped out more people than World War I, right? That's a flu. And then that goes away and then something else mutates. COVID could mutate. It's not over. This is not a thing that's over.

It's not something that's like, oh, it's just a cold now. It's not just a cold now. It still kills more people than influenza by a lot, not a little, every year. It's still a real big fucking problem and it could be a bigger problem. So it's not like it's like,

oh, what's the chances of another COVID? Like the chances of another COVID are actually greater now that we have COVID because it's constantly mutating. It's like, we're in more danger than we ever were before because these things mutate and they mutate insanely rapidly, crazily rapidly. We could also have other infections because we live in a world that basically fucking

hot boxes viruses constantly in our giant like fucking what do they call it? There's a name for them, but the way that we farm, the way that we farm, there's a name for it, but when we have these animals in these incredibly close quarters. We've got these animals basically like fucking snotting into each other's mouths all day, like passing shit back and forth and then like people walking in and out of these things. We've created an entire world that is less safe biologically, pathologically, less safe than it's ever been before. So everybody that you read that's got a fucking PhD after their name always says when, not if.

They always say that for a fucking reason. So like, yeah, a million people died on Trump's watch. And like your point, like all of the mask mandates and business shutdowns and like the fucking stay at home orders, all of that was under Trump. That was all gone by the time Joe Biden was inaugurated, all that was over. All that had been lifted. That was all lifted by January 2021. That was all lifted at that point. I'm going to read from this article because it's important. Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that was led by RFK Jr. until he left to pursue the U.S. presidency last year, said that officials like Weldon would remove

the federal law that compensates people for rare complications after vaccines rather than holding vaccine makers liable for each case, which could effectively end the production of key childhood vaccines. That would be a real risk, Reese says. If you remove liability protection from routine childhood vaccines, manufacturers may just leave the market, leaving kids without access to those vaccines.

Such a move would also make it more difficult for people to receive compensation for their very rare side effects because their claims would need to be adjudicated individually in court. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary could also replace members of the CDC's independent vaccine advisory committee and as the CDC director, Weldon could reject recommendations from those advisors. The CDC makes evidence-based recommendations for immunizations including the ones routinely given in childhood. While states aren't required to follow those recommendations, most still do.

Insurance companies are only required to cover vaccines recommended through this process, while public health departments could lose funding to administer shots to the uninsured, creating significant access issues. Weldon could also influence public messaging from the CDC about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. That's real tangible harm, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, man.

This is a big deal. I think in 20 years, you're gonna see if this stuff goes unchecked, and if these agencies fall in the wrong hands and they start pulling back some of these things and insurance companies start not paying for stuff. You're going to see some massive, massive spikes in these things that we've essentially blotted out and made it so our kids didn't have to get them.

We're going to see, I think, some major spikes in the next 20 years of measles, chickenpox, anything with the MMR, all that stuff. You're gonna see a group of people, large groups of people, are gonna be getting sick because of this. And just to remind people too, these aren't childhood diseases by necessity. They're just diseases.

Grownups can get measles. Like, immune compromised people, elderly people. Grownups can get measles. Like immune compromised people, elderly people. Like people just get measles. Just people do. It's just that we think about these things as childhood diseases because that's oftentimes the first exposure that people get to these things. But if we don't vaccinate people,

these will just be endemic diseases that float around the population. Yeah. They're not limited. Like there's no reason why somebody you who are immune compromised might get measles. Yeah. Like you as an adult, there's no, there's nothing that says this is just for kids. It has been banned by the emperor.

Cecil's stories from Newsweek. This is great. Florida introduces Bill to ban weather modification. Incidentally, Cecil, I hear they're also banning unicorns, leprechauns, and other fanciful cryptids. You're also no alligators allowed to wear monocles anymore. That is banned. Actually, the reason why they put this law in place, the reason why they put this law in place

is because there was an alligator with a monocle with a weather gun. And... He's a very fancy weather gun, that's how you could tell, it's because he had that. He's hanging out with Mr. Peanut at the beach, they both have their monocle in. He's kind of like, like alligators are scary,

but the monocle, they're kind of adorable. They are, they're kind of cute actually. Just a little piece, but the monocle. They're kind of adorable I don't know I Where changes the worst part about that is is they can't adjust it because their arms are too short I can't actually reach it. They're always trying to adjust it, but they can if it falls out there fucked It's essentially out forever. You'll never get the monocle back in your eyes I like that one chance and you got to be real, and I ask the person, be real nice, I promise I won't bite your arm off

if you put the monocle in my eye. Can you imagine like a fucking alligator at the optometrist trying to get his nose through that thing to be like, do the better or worse? You know? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh man. I can't really tell the difference.

I can't tell the difference. I can never really tell the difference. He goes into a really cold optometrist's office and falls asleep. I can't tell the difference. I can never really tell the difference. He goes into a really cold, optimist's office and falls asleep. He just torpers out. Oh, we need a heat rock, stop. Sorry, we gotta turn up the heat in here. I love banning something like,

we should have a serious piece of legislation to ban something that's not real. It's super amazing. When I read this, what I love is like they were showing like pictures of fucking like condensation in the sky and being like, oh my God, it's the chemtrails. I really hope that this goes through. I really sincerely hope this goes through because then these guys are going to like depose somebody. They're going to be like chemtrails.

There's a law against that. And they're going to, they're going to be like chemtrails. There's a war against that. And they're going to, they're going to like fucking show up and be like, see, this seems a race to somebody like flying an airplane. Wouldn't that be interesting if they, if they bring in the heads of these big airlines and sit them down in front of them to, so they can have these conversations to say, now what are you putting in our sky? Yeah. Like discovery let's go through discovery.

Ice crystals. Yes. Fucking water vapor, you stupid asshole. Do you not know how physics works? On occasion, we will drop our shit and it will turn into a meteor and break a house. But other than that, no, we don't do anything like that. I fucking, I hope so bad that this goes through so they can like sue somebody and go through a process of discovery and be like, we discovered we were stupid. Oh, that's the way discovered. Are we saying there's nothing?

Amazing. This is like, like try to like serve Bigfoot with a lawsuit. Like okay, man, go find him. I don't like, God, there's some states you're just like, please go away. Please just go away. Just go away. We need go away. Just go away We need a Bugs Bunny saw, you know, and just Bugs Bunny saw Florida right off You know that curve that they show where they show like the curve of average intelligence

You know that curve that they show? If you saw it off Florida most of that curve on the bottom would go It'd just go No, it's not there anymore. It's just not there. God, what a fucking... It's gotta be something to do with the fucking unrelenting humidity. Yeah. Like you just like wake up and you're like, yeah, I gotta fucking snorkel my air all the time.

Like it's just, it's horrible. You're constantly huffing plastic tubing because you're snorkeling your own air. Jesus Christ. Climate change, a problem so huge, how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Chiaunovet, 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 favorite podcasts. The Climate Solutions podcast is brought to you by SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at Bet MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature Bet MGM service, there's no better way to bring the

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Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'll call for your tax fraud, sir. No, no, no, we can't go in there. You're going to have the Schwartz. It's far too powerful. But sir, your ring, don't you have the Schwartz too? No, he got the upside. I got the downside.

See, there's two sides to every Schwartz. Don't you have the Schwartz too? No, he got the upside. I got the downside. See, there's two sides to every Schwartz. This story comes from the skeptic. Gray content, how mainstream journalism accidentally fueled COVID vaccine hesitancy. Factually accurate news stories with headlines or wording suggest that COVID-19 vaccines could be harmful

had nearly 50 times more impact on increasing vaccine hesitancy among Facebook users than outright lies spread by anti-vaxxer groups. This is one of the key findings of a recent study on misinformation in vaccines published in the journal Science. The authors of the paper suggest in their conclusions that instead of focusing exclusively on the accuracy of the facts they report, journalists should also consider whether the resulting narratives leave the reader with an accurate view of the world. I think that this is malpractice by journalists to get clicks.

Yes. You know, we're seeing all of these articles that are putting out these two sides of the story. You know, oh, there's two sides. There isn't. There isn't two sides when it comes to vaccines. There's not a second side. The other side is they're quiet because they probably are dead or in the hospital on a

ventilator. That's the second side. Yeah. The second side is they don't have anything to say because it's fucking Herman Cain or half of Diamond and Silk, right? That's the other side. So there isn't a second side to these things. And this isn't just one thing. This is showing what it did for COVID vaccines, but it's not talking about all the other things that, that it feels like journalism has passed on and has decided that what's going to get me the most amount of readership is if I tell

people on both sides, kind of what they want to hear. And I think that that is genuine malpractice. We shouldn't be allowing that sort of thing. And it's lazy. It's just fucking lazy. shouldn't be lowing that sort of thing. And it's lazy. It's just fucking lazy. Yeah, and I think, you know, this article does a good job of pointing out the dishonesty and the problem. We've talked about it on this show,

the problem of headlines. So in the example that they cite from the Chicago Tribune, our hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, there's a headline that is incredibly misleading. It's an incredibly misleading headline. And then the content of the article fleshes out the headline. And if you read the article,

you would be left with no real concerns. Sure. But that's bullshit because we know that the headline is the majority of what the majority of people are going to read. And then we know that people are not reading through articles. We know that headlines, like they're designed to create outrage, to create, to elicit a response, to create a click. The article gets read way less often than the headline.

And people consume way more headlines than they consume articles. So we consume a lot of headlines we never click on. And those headlines, whether we want them to or not, they occupy a space in our brain after we've consumed them. And we feel once they're repeated over and over again, we feel a truthiness around that. Yeah, yeah. So like it's bullshit, it's lying, it's bad.

Headlines are not represent, we've talked about this, headlines are not representative of the article's content. The headline is not a summation of the article's content. A headline is an advertisement. That's all that it is. And the advertisement's only goal, like any advertisement, is to get you to get to the product. It is not to tell you true things.

Advertisements are not there to tell you true things. Headlines are advertisements. Headlines are not there to tell you true things about the article's content. That's not their purpose. It used to be, it's not anymore. It's not their purpose. We used to be, it's not anymore. It's not their purpose. We gotta think differently about this stuff.

And we have told journalism accountable to it. When they do this shit, we should stop consuming them. That's all you can do as a consumer. We should stop consuming them. When you see this like really sensationalistic, clickbaity stuff, unsubscribe. get them out of your fucking life. Get it, like don't pay them money anymore. Don't allow them into your information,

personal informational ecosystem, ban them. You've got to get rid of them. Treat them like a bad ex, get rid of them. They're hurting you, they are hurting you. Yeah, yeah. I think too there's this thing that's happening where they're allowing, they're using quotes and quoting people and then not fact checking

the things that they're saying. Yeah. Right, so they're allowing these quotes to come in and they're just saying, well, look, I'm just reporting on what happened, but you're not reporting what is real. What you're doing is you're reporting on what someone said. We should never allow that sort of thing to enter.

And the problem is there's no going back. Essentially right now, we're in this world now because they allowed it with Trump. But really what you're seeing is they will say something, someone will say something that is absolutely not true or useful, right? There's nothing true to it whatsoever, but it will still get quoted.

And it will seem as if there's at least half a chance it's true. Yeah. There's a 50% chance it's true because we've convinced so many different people that debate is how things are decided. Yeah, right. Not decided through reality, right? We've tricked people into thinking that

there is something to be had between a debate, between say, someone who's arguing evolution and someone who's arguing whatever the opposite is, intelligent design, let's say. We're saying that those two things are equal. They start on equal footing, but they don't. And we're doing the same thing with journalism now. We're saying that those two things start on equal footing.

They don't start on equal footing. No, yeah. They're not starting on. Anti-vax and vaccines do not start on equal footing. They are not in the same ballpark. There has been nothing that should get you to not take a vaccine. There's nothing out there that should be convincing to you. If your doctor has offered to give you a vaccine, you should take that vaccine. There's nothing out there in the world that should convince you

otherwise. And that's not an equal footing. That's not half and half and they're treating it like that. They are. And you know, you know how you can tell how bullshit as you were talking, like, do you know how you can tell how bullshit of an idea that is, is think about the worst, most biased news source to have poisoned the airwaves in the last 40 years. Fox news and what was their original tagline? Fair and balanced. Yeah.

Because what they were trying to do was to pull away from truth and to sell you the idea, and they were successful in doing it, to sell you, the American people, the idea that truth is decided by the popular vote. That truth is decided in a popularity contest. Yes, exactly, exactly. But that's not how objective truth is.

And this article does a good job of pointing out that journalists have a responsibility to the narrative that they present and the way that that narrative shapes people's opinions about the world. You can't escape that. Maybe you as a journalist would like to be like, well, I'm just reporting the facts. No, you're not.

Yeah. You're not. Except the truth that you have a responsibility in journalism and that part of what you are doing is shaping a worldview and do it responsibly, do it accurately. Do you understand the concept of the word privacy? This story comes from NBC News. Upcoming Supreme Court decision could transform transgender health care. The Supreme Court will consider a law restricting transition related health care for minors

for the first time on Wednesday. Legal experts say the court's decision could affect access to transition related care nationwide for both minors and adults for decades to come. The key legal question the court will consider is whether a Tennessee law that bars puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery for trans minors discriminates on the basis of sex. I want to say that this is going to be a 6-3 decision, almost certainly. Almost certainly. Almost certainly.

And what they're going to do, I think, is they are going to use the same logic that they used in the Dobbs decision to say that this is really a set of questions best left up to the states to decide. And they are going to abdicate any real responsibility while still giving conservatives the win. Yeah, and they'll get a win out of it.

They'll get away. What should be, you know, we've been lied to that there's a party of small government. Right. You know, that party of small government is the Republicans. That's not true. It hasn't been true for a very long time. And I think what this does is it inserts the government

in certain states, probably what you suggest might be true. Let's presume that what happens, what you suggest happens, that it goes back to the states and the states are the ones that decide. Suddenly your state government is now in the same room with you as your doctor, your child, and you as a parent to make a decision about your child's health. That's what we're making a decision.

We're saying the government needs to be there as well. The government gets a say. And in fact, the government gets more of a say than the parents and the child and the fucking doctor. They're the ones who get that. They're the ones who get to make the decision. It's not that they're just in the room and get to voice a one vote in that group of people. They get to make the decision. It's not that they're just in the room and get to voice a one vote in that group

of people. They get to make the decision outright. And we're saying that's cool. That's what we get. We get to, we get to suddenly say that our privacy doesn't matter. And I think that, you know, like this is between parents and fucking doctors and kids stay the fuck out of it. It's not even fucking business, man. Yeah. It's amazing how much the right is interested in breaking down government's authority to regulate things like, you know, clean water and energy and air and everything that gets in the way of business. But when it comes time to influence your personal life, they've got a lot to say, winking. And the federal government does a lot of new, they got this new fucking wink wink strategy

where they just say, hey, I'm not here to make decisions. It's really a state's thing to do. This whole, like, kicking it back to the states is a way for them to hand a victory to conservatives. That's all this is. And it's cowardly and it's bullshit and it's antithetical to basic Republican principles. It certainly flies in the face of one of the key, uh, Republican sort of premises

or, or, or principles that they've held for a long time, which is the sanctity of parental rights and the rights of parents to make decisions. They say all the time, like, oh, parents should have the right to send their kid to school or not send their kid to school. The government shouldn't get involved. Parents should have the right to vaccinate their kid or not vaccinate their kid. The government shouldn't get involved. No masks or masks. Right. But all of a sudden, this one medical question, this one. It's only one medical question This one it's only one way this question. Yeah, or wait the abortion question Yeah, well any question really any question really that they get their fucking panties in a bunch of and I think I think what they're

Saying is they're not saying that that they want to take their rights away from parents They just want to take the rights away from the wrong kind of parents Yes parents that don't belong to their group. They want to strip those people of rights. And they want to strip, and by extension, they're stripping all these trans kids of rights. What they want to do is they want to, I really do feel like they want to punish trans kids and they want to punish their parents, and they're going to do the best they can. They did it with abortion and they're doing it again in this field too.

Yeah, I think this is very much the, you know, the right has been really building the in-group, out-group mentality now for a long time. And they are really putting the walls and the fences around their in-group. And they are really putting those same walls and fences by definition around their out-group. And so these are the lines that we saw in the way

that they phrased a lot of their materials and their sloganeering around the election. When you were in Georgia, you saw a tremendous amount of advertising. And that advertising really, what I think it effectively tries to do is it tries to draw an in-group, out-group line and say, here is what a real American is.

Why do I think that? Because they fucking stood on the stage and talked about real Americans. They drew in-group, out-group lines. So this is just another way for them to draw that dividing line and to separate people from their neighbors. Bumblebee, bumblebee, bumblebee, bumblebee, bumblebee,

bumblebee, focus onbee, bumblebee. Focus on the music. Think melody. So Cecil, the cutest of all bees, the bumblebee. Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in remarkable Scotland rewilding project. I learned from this article Cecil that there's like lots of species of bumblebees. I thought there was just bumblebees.

I thought that was- There's like three, right? No, I thought there was one. I thought bumblebee was its own species. It's the teddy bear of bees. It is, it's kinda cute. They're fucking adorable. Like I don't like bees.

Like I know they're necessary But they still like they fly and I'm like I resent it, but like bumblebees are like flying little teddy bears I think they're doing you six hundred times. Can a bumblebee sting? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I didn't know that They don't lose their stinger either really yeah, so they can be mean I Didn't know that I thought they were like I didn't even know that they stung people. I had no idea that a bumblebee, do they make, I almost said milk. Do they make honey? I suspect, so I think a lot of things make something like honey, but the only one that

makes it an excess is the honeybee. Huh. I've got to look this up. I think that bumble an excess is the honeybee. Huh. I gotta look this up. I think that bumblebees do make honey. They make a small amount of honey, but not enough to be collected and used by people. You're exactly right, Cecil. I think honeybees are the ones that are,

they make an excess and we can harvest their honey because you're not gonna kill the population. Huh, bumblebees do sting. They are less likely and less aggressive though, because they're the teddy bears of bees. Because they're the very sweet ones. I, years ago, like when I was a young man, I used to, I don't know, you know those pavilions

that are at like forest preserves where they have pavilions and it's sort of just like an open roof building and then they'll have trusses that run across those buildings, et cetera. I won, when I was a kid, we used to just scale up there and just go sit on the trusses, right? You just be like, you're a kid, see, you made a glue and rubber and you just climb up on top of this thing and you pull yourself up and you sit inside this trust area inside

of there. And I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to say, don't swing it bees or whatever. He's like, they'll leave you alone. If you leave them alone, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. And so my whole young life, I would try not to, to swing or swat in them, even though everything in my body is screaming. Oh yeah.

What the fuck? Cause there's like a thing in your ear that's buzzing and it's horrifying and your body just wants to react. And you... My dad was like, don't do it. You know, if you do it, they're going to aggravate him and then they'll sting you. Don't do it. And so I... Everything in my body to not do it. Well, I'm sitting up there with my friends. We're hanging out. And one of those mud daubers comes by.

That's a fucking mean ass fucking waspy thing. Those fucking big ass mean wasp motherfuckers. And if you're unfamiliar, in our area, these ones are so mean they make their house out of mud. Okay? So. Like medieval wasps. Yeah, these ones are like the hillbilly wasps.

So they're like an angry, they're half cocked, and it comes up to my face. Of course it goes right to my face, Tom. Jesus Christ. And so I'm thinking to myself, don't swat at it, don't swat at it, don't swat at it. And that goddamn thing gets right on my face, sits right on my, right under my eye. And I can see it go whoop, whoop, whoop and fucking cut my face with its stinger and then flew off. And my face for two days looked like, I looked like I had a growth on my head.

It was so bad. It was just swelled up like you wouldn't believe. I looked horrible. It closed my eye up. It stung me once and it closed my eye up. I couldn't use my eye for like a day because of it. Did you yell at your dad? Did you go home and be like, where's dad?

I told him and he's like, and he's like, ah, you probably swat. My dad used to give me the same advice. Like just stand, advice, swat at it and run away from it. Those are your thoughts. You got to do a swat while running. That's what I do. I try to do it. I look as as ridiculous as possible when there's a bee in my ear. Man, I don't want any of that shit.

Any of that flying, stinging shit like, I remember, fuck. I remember, dude, I remember I was visiting my aunt up in Michigan. She lives like in like central Michigan. And I decided I was gonna go take a walk. She lived out in the fucking deep country, like woods all over the place. Beautiful, it's beautiful out there. So I was like, oh, it's like a summer day.

I'm gonna go take a walk. Dude, I walk like 25, 30 yards down her street and I get surrounded by fucking deer fly and horse flies. I don't know if you've ever been in the woods like of like central Michigan or Minnesota and had those flies descend on you. Those things are crazy. There's like, they'll be like, yeah, I'm having hundreds of them. See, I'm not exaggerating. They just come out and then you're just fucked. Those things bite, and they hurt.

It sucks so, I ran back screaming. I don't blame you. I would run back to Illinois if that happened to me. I was screaming. They used to, these big ass fucking horseflies used to fly around her pool. And we'd be in the pool. Those are the worst. And they land on your head and bite you on your head. And so you'd always be like, who's fly?

Do you dunk your head under and like wait, you know, or they catch you on the shoulder because your shoulders are above the water. Brutal. Those things all need to die in a fire. They suck. But bumblebees are good. Bumblebees are cute. They're the teddy bears of bees.

I love them. I just looked it up. They don't have hives. They don't make hives. They make little nests, cute little nests. Interesting. Yeah. So this story's a good story too.

This is from AP News. Libraries are offering free health and wellness classes across the US. Cecil, just a week or two ago, I got my library card at my new house. Nice. I moved a year ago or so and I recently, I've been reading a lot more again lately. I've taken it back up and I was like, I got to go back to the library and get a new library

card. So I went over there and got my card. I got mine done last year. I went into the library and got a library card. My library card actually, because I applied for it online, but you have to go in and show them your ID in person. And so I did apply for it online. I got the card and then it was unusable until I actually went in and got it like started.

Oh, see, I just walked in and showed them my ID. They gave me a library card. And then the best thing is like with the app that they have. Libby and stuff. And like, you can download it right to your actual Kindle. Yeah. It's the best. Well, they have audio books too.

So they'll have audio books you can rent. They have all kinds of stuff. So it's like, library is fucking dope, man. It's so great. Library is fucking dope. And this is a great article because this article shows you all the other stuff that libraries do, man.

Libraries are fucking amazing and they're gonna probably gut them. Well, hey, this is supposed to be the good news portion of the program. This is the good news. I'm sorry, you're right, you're right, I'm sorry. Don't say true things during this part of the program. Let's talk about them gutting them

at the beginning of next show, Tom. This is good, though. There's a mobile clinic popping around these libraries. A mobile clinic is one of several health programs offered by libraries around the U.S. from tiny rural town libraries to large urban systems. They offer fitness classes, food pantries, cooking classes, conversations around loneliness and mental health, even blood pressure monitors that can be checked out just like books. I'm going to look in cooking classes.

I'm going to see if they do have cooking classes near me and the library systems near me and see if there are any and take some of them. They'll be fun to do. I will tell you this too. When I was at the library getting my library card, it was fucking adorable. I was there for a while because I liked the library. I spent so much time in the library.

Me too, as a kid, I spent so much time there. I walk into a library and I have like feelings about it. Cause I just had so many like, so many good memories and so much time there. I walk into a library and I have like feelings about it. Cause I just had so many, like so many, you know, good memories and so much time spent at the library. So I just don't have that kind of time to spend anywhere now. So, but I went in to get it and there was like, like I could hear off in the one corner when I was there, when I first got there, a class of little kids being read to, wrapping up. Oh, nice. And they're like, well, see you next week. Was it a drag queen?

I don't know if it was a drag queen or not. I don't know, maybe it was, I don't know. Maybe. But these kids were like- Doesn't matter. So excited, they were like, well, see you next week. And their little sing song kid voices, they were having their fucking enrichment.

And then I was there for a bit, and a little while later, a bus pulled up, and some folks came out of the bus who were clearly part of like a residential home for people that had like cognitive delays. And they were filing into the library for some other type of enrichment. And you could just see like in the like hour and a half

I was there, just like the intensity of services that are offered to the community. There's like little kids getting like fucking books and shit read to them. There's, you know, people with cognitive challenges and delays that are having, you know, some kind of an enrichment program all in. I'm there for like on a fucking Wednesday or something at like noon for like an hour. That's great. That's great. It's beautiful. They're beautiful places.

Yeah. And I also take back, maybe there is some federal funding for libraries that might, but I think a lot of our libraries are publicly funded locally. So I think it probably is set up locally. You have a library, some of that money goes to libraries. So hopefully many of the libraries won't see any kind of changes.

That's my hope. I'm not really quite sure exactly how they're funded, but I think probably more of my local tax dollars go to it than my federal tax dollars. So the story comes with AP. In Alaska, a pilot drops turkeys to rural homes for Thanksgiving. For the third straight year,

a resident named Esther Kime has been flying low and slow in a small plane over rural parts of South Central Alaska, dropping frozen turkeys to those who can't simply run to the grocery store. Amazing. Fucking dr- this is the most turkeys have ever flown. They've never flown like this. It's that and WKRP and Cincinnati.

It's those two. There you go. Those are the two options when they flown. I wonder if they are dropping them like frozen turkeys. Can you imagine Cecil, how much damage a frozen turkey dropped from an airplane? Even a low, even a low airplane. Airplane. No, they said there was a picture of them

doing it on this article. It looks like in this image, it kind of looks like a turkey to me when I saw the image because it's in a garbage bag. Like a live turkey it looks like. But it looks like when I saw it in the small format, when it was in a tiny little format, I was like, is that orange thing the beak? Are they just going to throw it out? I thought it was like a dark... I was like, they're just throwing it out of

there, but it's not actually. It's in a bag. They're throwing it in a garbage bag and taking it home with them. But I thought it was something else. I really... They've got to be pretty low to avoid having a turkey just splat. Yeah, just splat or something. Right? I think you're right. I mean, I know it's going to hit the snow and the snow's going to suck. They actually have to like buzz these houses so that people come out and see that they're about to get a fucking turkey bomb. Yeah, because now you're going to have a fucking wolf in the front yard.

Yeah. She also talks about how like she buys all these turkeys and just keeps them in her truck because it's cold. She doesn't have to put them in a freezer. And I'm like, how are animals not eating like your truck full of like, like you're just going to have like a, you know, come out. There's going to be a truck full of bears eating your turkey. One one really fat raccoon. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to we're going to We're going to have a long form show on Thursday that talks about how the Catholic Church does

sainthood, which is actually really crazy. So patrons will get Tom reading that article to them a couple of days before we actually release that show. But this Thursday for everybody will be that show, and then we'll be back the following Monday. But we're gonna 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. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo quasi alternative, acupun, Toil and Trouble, Pseudo-Quasi-Alternative, Acupuncturating, 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, Nuts, Shaman Healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense.

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