Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 83: Ardent Atheist

Episode Date: January 21, 2013

Special thanks to Heather Henderson and Emery Emery  of and

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The explicit tag is there for a reason. 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. This episode is 83 of Cognitive Dissonance, and we have the folks from Arden Atheist Podcast, nay, the award-winning Arden Atheist Podcast, gracing our show today. Emery and Heather, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Thanks. We can be anybody. welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks. We can be anybody. You can't prove it's us. It's very true. They can't prove it's us, actually. They can't. At any point, we could be substituted with various straw men or dolls. Dolls.

What have you. And we very likely will be. The first story I want to talk about is a story from salon.com. The title of it is pretty fucking obvious. Religion may not survive the internet. This is one of those articles that when you read it, it's a no shit article. This is a gimme for whoever at salon.com got handed this one by the editor. You know, it's one of those total no-brainers, bang it out at 12 o'clock, turn it in at 6 a.m. the next day, and call your day over. But nonetheless, I do think it makes some interesting points.

You guys had an opportunity to take a look at this article. What did you think? Well, first of all, my mouth is filled with cereal. But secondly, secondly, this, just the headline struck a note with me i've been saying that we are becoming a world not society because it's a worldwide thing we're becoming a society of critical thinkers without realizing it and the reason is i wouldn't blame just the Internet. The Internet is the engine that drives it all.

But really, it's these devices we have in our hands and our pockets that we operate with our thumbs. That's what's changing the world. Vibrators? They do have an app for that. But what I love is that at any given moment, at the instant that someone is curious about a piece of information, that information can be searched and it can be studied right there at the dinner table with these friends sitting around arguing, debating, trying to figure out whether or not the answer is a or b now

one of the things that everybody defaults to in this discussion is but the internet isn't accurate first of all the internet is more accurate than it is inaccurate that's my opinion and i think that and he's sticking to it and and i think that if we ever do any real studies on this we're going to discover that that's really really uh the case uh by that i mean more often than not when you search for something the hits that you find will give you an accurate um uh portrayal of what we think is the truth for that question uh that's important to say because truth changes over time. With more information, we get different truths.

And what's true today in many, many cases is not completely or 100% accurate tomorrow. We know how science works. That's what I'm talking about. And when you get into debates with folks about this, you can't ignore those aspects of it. But to get back to the main point, kids are sitting around wanting to know whether a potato is a tuber or whether a garbanzo is actually a bean.

Really? Yeah, absolutely. These arguments are happening all the time. Kids are sitting around arguing this? These are botanically oriented children in your world. Believe it or not, we are now, more than anything, a world of nerds. I'm sorry, man. The movie Nerds

predicted where we're headed, and we are there. Have you seen the teenagers walking around these days? I had a conversation the other night around a table where I googled on my phone what a gamma ray burst was, and then I was wrong, so I didn't tell anybody. So I was just quiet about it.

Well, my point is this. When people argue that Wikipedia can't be trusted or the Internet doesn't have accurate information, that actually, at the end of the day, with regard to my argument, doesn't matter. What's happening is there are multiple answers available when you search for something. You have to figure out, you have to figure out how to glean what's accurate and what's not.

You have to pick the one that makes sense. That, my friends, is critical thinking. Not all critical thinking ends up with the proper answer, but indeed it is critical thinking to weigh one against the other and make a decision. That's it in a nutshell. And decide you're going to go with the homeopathy. That's exactly right. So we are being incidentally trained how to think critically.

And it's really good because eventually we'll start to get more and more right. You know, before the internet, I didn't have any way to look at religion in any different way than I had been taught when I was a child. So I had no outside opinion of anyone or anything. But as soon as I found the internet, it was just like a whole new world had opened up. First of all, sex.

Lots of sex on the internet. I've noticed that too. Lots of people with different views, dissenting views, and a lot of people with questions similar to the ones I had as a young person about religion. And I just couldn't believe there were people out there that thought the same way that I thought. It was incredible to find growing up. There really isn't. was incredible to find growing up. There really isn't.

No. No? No. I think you hit on a point there that I wanted to make about this article that, you know, in order for religion to thrive, one of the key elements, I mean, the air for religion is isolation. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the internet just blows that out of the water.

You know, it does us no good to be the lone critical thinker living in fuckwit Alabama. In a cave. You know, doing nothing. But when you're the lone critical thinker living in fuckwood, Alabama. In a cave. You know, doing nothing. But when you're the lone critical thinker in fuckwood, Alabama. They changed the name. With an internet connection. They changed the name. It wasn't working.

You're not alone. They changed the name. It's mobile now. So I wanted to ask you guys, and Heather, I think maybe this question's more apt for you. you guys and heather i think maybe this this question is more apt for you um there's a part of this article they talk about uh the reasons why this this uh this is the case and they say supportive communities for people coming out of religion and do you guys get a lot of feedback for creating your show and giving non-believers a voice do you guys get a lot of feedback that say thank you an immense amount yeah yeah heather recently got well

recently it was a while back heather got a a couple of different emails along this line i'm a closeted atheist and i live in in fuckwit alabama and i and i can't thank you enough for giving me this opportunity to feel like i've got a community a place where people understand how i think and agree with me. And I can't tell my parents and I'm thinking I might want to tell my parents. Do you have any advice? That's tough too, man. It's really tough. Those are the emails that are really the ones that touch me the most because I just feel like mama H and I bring them, I tell them that they can just stick with us, you know, talk to us. You're now one of our crew.

You're now one of our family. Because if you don't have one closest to you, you might as well go with the ones that actually care and think the way you do. So I have made a ton of friends who've come to me and just said, I have nobody in my own neighborhood or in my own family to talk to. I say, well, now you're part of my family, so come on. I just send them an email and say, kill your family. No, no. What? No, no, Emery.

I don't do that? That's probably the quickest and easiest way. You're not supposed to tell people that. We had David Silverman on our show a while back from American Atheists, and he, this article talks about, you know, obviously that the internet is, internet is – religion may not survive the internet. But one of the claims he made on our show was that in – he said he promised atheist normalcy in 20 years, meaning that it will be completely normal to be an atheist. There won't be any kind of backlash. Nobody would think it would be weird at all.

Do you think that's an attainable goal? I hope so. I'd like to think so. I'll tell you. I think we're almost there already. I think it's an attainable goal? I hope so. I'd like to think so. I'll tell you, I think we're almost there already. I think it's an easy prediction. I think it's neck and neck with bisexual men. I know. Listen to them.

They think I'm crazy. I'm telling you, boys, we are not far from bisexual men being an accepted norm. Bisexual women is now an accepted norm. Sure, sure. Because they're sexy, that's why. What are you saying? What is she saying about me? I'm saying it about me, honey.

You know, I would like to see that being the case. But I'm not sure. What's striking to me is how much energy and political force the rights for homosexual movement has. And it's fractional. Percentage-wise, the number of homosexuals is a fraction of the number of atheists in this country. But I don't see the same amount of exposure. I can flip on primetime television. I can turn on Modern Family, and boom, here we've got. But where are the where

are the where are the atheist sitcoms, the atheist, you know, big energy drivers? Where's, you know, all my representatives in Congress? And I hope that you're right, but I'm not sure that I see that same kind of energy and force politically and socially behind nonbelief that I see behind, you know, the alternative, you know,, the other big social movement of acceptance of homosexuality. If you think homosexuals don't have the same exposure, you clearly haven't seen the Pride Parade. But I think that you're right about the blanket coverage that homosexuality or bisexuality gets but that isn't how things become

normal the way things become normal is quietly and they come out of fucking nowhere it's not about lobbying i i listen i love the word i love the work that silverman does. I really do. I like the work that a lot of people do. But this doesn't – what those guys are fighting for are our political rights. But our social rights are won individually. They're won by interacting with people. You know what I'm saying? Sure, but don't you think that those things are reflected in our culture? Like, for example, as homosexuality – just to get back because I just think it's a decent analogy, as homosexuality has become more acceptable, become more of a norm, you know, go back 30 years, turn on TV, you know, whatever.

The storylines don't revolve around homosexual couples. Now they do, and it's just a thing. It's not even anything people get terribly worked up about and there's several of them there but you don't have that same hey let's write a sitcom where the you know these two guys are you know openly atheist or this one character is even openly atheist or critical or you know what have you you but you but the converse you know you do have plenty of characters on television who are very openly religious and express religious viewpoints. So don't you think that the cultural, you know, tools of television and other media would reflect that normalcy if that was 20 years out? We've got the Big Bang Theory, and I think

that's just the beginning. That show, they make fun of the whole God thing in it. And I think that more TV shows will come from that. And you just inspired me, you know, to think about how I could put my mark out there in an atheistic way on, you know, on a short film or in a little television spoof. So it just takes one person saying it just like you did to make me, make one person feel creative enough to want to make that happen jim jeffries has a new show called legit i guarantee you

it will be chocked full of disbelief and non-belief i guarantee you louis ck show kind of has some of that louis ck does it does it i've not seen yeah there's a lot of shows actually that do it it's kind of peppered all over the place you know hollywood has always kind of been uh you know liberal uh liberalville and and and entertainment's always been driven by liberals that's that's what you always hear and uh you're gonna start hearing that uh more and more you're gonna start hearing the godless liberals is what is what yeah you know what i mean that's more and more what we're gonna be hearing they're gonna they're gonna that more and more you're going to start hearing the godless liberals is what – you know what I mean? That's more and more what we're going to be hearing. They're going to amend it to godless liberals.

So we are going to be interviewing Heather Henderson and Emery Emery at the end of the show. If you're new to Cognitive Dissonance, you're going to have to stick around through about 40 minutes of us fucking – I don't know, fucking – Yammering? Bumble fucking our way through news stories. But stick around, and I'll be on at the end of the show. It is altogether right to discriminate against homosexual behavior. I'm arguing that it's time that we as conservatives, that we rehabilitate the word discriminate,

that we reclaim it, that we rehabilitate the word discriminate, that we reclaim it, that we dust it off, and that we use it, and that we use it unapologetically. And I believe we need to begin to say, look, it is altogether right for a rational culture to discriminate against homosexual behavior. So this story is from christiannew Newswire.com, which I totally go to first in the morning. Get your cup of coffee, hit the Christian Newswire to really get a handle on what's going on. And Christian Newswire, by the way, is not another way to say Fox News, although it's not probably terribly far off.

This story is from, it's actually, I don't know if you noticed this, it's out of Naperville, Illinois. I know, I saw that. That's depressing since I live adjacent to Naperville, Illinois. You totally do. A-F-T-A-H A-F-T-A-H

offers resolutions for pro family advocates battling the homosexual agenda in 2013. That's the Americans for Truth and then two other letters. Against homosexuality. I'm just fucking around. And this offers 20, 20 resolutions, which seems like a lot of resolutions. It's a lot of resolutions.

I don't know that they really thought some of these through, though, because they seem like they're not really fleshed out. It's almost like they sat down and brainstormed really well, and then they just left the buzzwords on the page, and that's what they had. Yeah, this is really sloppy resolutions. I mean, we just got to go through some of these, Cecil. Sure. Number three is my favorite. Number three. This is from Christian Newswire.

Question authority. Unless it's us. Really? Yeah. Really? Question authority. Unless it's God. Don't trust elites.

Or us. Even conservatives. That's in quotes for some reason. I'm not sure why. On the homosexual issue. quotes for some reason i'm not sure why on the homosexual issue um and then their example is newt gingrich's recent capitulation urging a gop accommodation on marriage equality that's because his daughter's gay when yeah no kidding right that's because you know what that is it's because it's like well wait a minute i want to have meaningful relationships with the world and the

rest of the world doesn't buy into this anti-homosexual propaganda bullshit, including my daughter, who happens to be gay. And nude is a perfect example of people that are far on the right, that have crazy far right views. And as time goes on, you know, these people that are in office, they find out that, you know, a certain percentage of them are going to find out that they have a relative who's gay. Right. And they may change relative who's gay. Right.

And they may change their mind on this. Exactly. Just specifically because they happen to know a gay person now. It's like before they had no idea. They're like, oh, gay people are basically from Venus. Like they're not real human beings. And then suddenly they're like, oh, yeah, well, it's fucking it's an actual human being. Right.

One of my favorites here is, it says, it's number six, recognize, dismiss, and counter homosexual activists' lies and propaganda, such as defending morality is neither hate nor bigotry. And what you say is, okay, well, you know, what you're doing is you're not talking about modern morality. You're talking about biblical or Bronze Age morality. And Bronze Age morality says that slavery is totally fucking fine. Right. And you would condemn that. You would say that that's a hateful thing to do.

Sure. But somehow that – because you're saying that homosexuals shouldn't – I mean shouldn't even exist. That's not bigotry? Come exist. That's not bigotry. Come on. That's fucking bigotry. Well, of course it is. It, I mean, we've, we've talked about this a hundred times, but it's an obvious pick and choose, you know, this is, this is their, you know, well, we're talking about this as

a moral issue. It's a biblical issue. Well, really, did you beat your kids to death when they disobeyed or disrespected you? Cause that's in that same book, but nobody beats their kids to death because we'd be out of kids. We'd be generation one and done as a species. Man, I'm running through kids like crazy lately. I can't wait to have that one kid who's never disrespectful once. Yeah.

There'd be no peoples. Like we would populate the earth with nobody. It's a silly, ridiculous goddamn book. And the only way to take it seriously is to pick and choose the bullshit out of it. You know, you don't question the authority. It should just say pick and choose. I'm also a fan of number five. Get off the opponent's playing field.

It starts with restoring honest language in the debate. playing field. It starts with restoring honest language in the debate. Example, counterfeit homosexual marriage is not equal to the real deal. So the gay term marriage equality is spurious, but it doesn't tell you how it's not equal. The only way it's not equal is because you won't let it be equal. You don't want to let it into the treehouse is what you're saying. And number 14 is a perfect example of what you just talked about. It says educate a libertarian on the clear and present threat that all pro-LGBT laws, including homosexual marriage, pose to civil liberties and religious freedom. And you're like, OK, well, what are the fucking threats that they pose to civil liberties? People will have more liberty.

OK, that's not really a threat. That's not a threat? People that are religious and also gay can get married. Well, that's religious freedom, my friend. That's what that is. Like, you are not a threat at all to those things. How could you possibly even fucking equate that? I have no idea.

You know how you equate it? Fucking babble talk. Double speak bullshit. That's how you equate it. But at least they, double speak bullshit. That's how you equate it. But at least they've got 20 of them. Yeah, well, and this one here, the other one here is 16. Be a thoughtful, truly compassionate Christian. Tough, godly love.

I love that. Tough, godly love. That's like, I would imagine that's like a tagline for Brokeback Mountain, you know? What's God's safe word? Godly love requires that you uphold biblical sexual values and firmly guide your loved one away from embracing sinful, destructive, and changeable behaviors. What they're saying is deprogram your loved ones. But really, biblical sexual values include not touching your wife when she's on her period or selling your daughter into marriage or marrying the girl that you rape. You know what I mean? Like those are biblical sexual values, and we have moved past them as a culture because they are barbaric like the rest of the Bible.

They are. The Bible's sexual values cannot possibly be defended in 2013. There's no way. The Bible openly supports polygamy. I mean, it's like marriage is between one man and several women. As many as he can rope into it. How many can you buy? How many can you afford?

Right. Number 17 encourages you, though, to be a happy warrior. Be a happy warrior and understand the big picture. Defending truth is virtuous. And besides, it's not our truth. It's God's. Yeah, these are not. My only resolution for the new year was, like, don't smear a Twinkie on my body anymore.

You know what I mean? Like, that's not a lotion. I only did that once, and it was just because the dog liked it so much. You're all sick! Oh, be nice! Oh, my son doesn't stand a chance. The whole world's gone gay!

Oh my god, what's happening now? We work hard. We play hard. Everybody dance now! Cecil, this next story is from smug.com.au. The Sydney Morning Herald. Anti-gay rights to stay. I will admit that my knowledge, obviously, obviously, my knowledge of Australian politics is minimal.

Very minimal. But I am aware that the prime minister of Australia is openly atheist. And I was quite surprised to read this article that religious groups will continue to have the freedom under new rights bills to discriminate against homosexuals and others. And this is the part that kills me. Others, they deem sinners, according to the head of the Australian Christian lobby. I am surprised that this elderly Jodie Foster would do such a thing. I always thought Jodie Foster was for gay rights, you know, I had no idea. I think that this is, you know, this is one of those things that I just don't understand. And I'd love someone to try to explain to me, especially somebody who's from that area. Because when we read it from here, we read it and we're thinking, well, this doesn't sound like you're

winning at all. It sounds bad. It sounds really bad. You know, maybe it doesn't suck for you if you're straight, but man, it would suck to be a homosexual then. Because then it's just like, well, we could fucking fire you because we want to. Because you're gay. Right. Yeah. Or you're just a sinner, man. You can just decide, well, you're a sinner.

You're a dirty, filthy fucking sinner. And I'm a judgmental, religious asswad. Yeah, I'm a fucking asshole so you're fired remember that time when you woke up in the morning and you came to work well you won't be repeating that anytime soon because your ass is fired you dirty fucking sinner this seems like a good way too for the religious to just backdoor their way into hiring and firing without having to have any reason. They can basically just be like, yeah, well, he's a sinner. You're going to possibly show up and be like, well, I'm actually not a sinner.

I'm actually biblically perfect. I'm like Ned fucking Flanders. I followed all the commandments, even the ones that contradict to the other ones. Stupid, sexy Flanders. Nothing at all. Nothing at all. See, so this story is from ABC News. Rape victim could face public flogging.

Yeah. You know, you know it's bad when the president of the Maldives has called for leniency. Because your biblical laws, Sharia law, says that the victim, the victim of the rape, the I just have to use that word again. The victim of the rape can face charges of fornication, which is punishable by 100 lashes in public. I cannot imagine the horror of being like, I didn't want that to happen. Well, you should have thought of that before it happened. But I didn't want it to happen. That's terrible.

What? I did think of that. It's pretty bad. And there's a part of the article here I want to read. It says Amnesty International says that there is strong reason to believe that the girl was raped, repeatedly raped by her stepfather for years, eventually giving birth to a baby found buried on the family's property. That as fucking like wrong turn written all over it. Oh, my God. Like that shouldn't be happening anywhere else. Right.

But like Appalachian. That's the only place that something like that should be happening. What a horrifying thing. And then you wind up with, you know, like like this person could possibly be charged. What kind of message is that? And we talk about punishment and justice as sending a message all the time. That's that's brought up constantly. You know, we want to crack down on gun control. We want to we want to sentence people to longer terms because that sends a message. Well, what does this message send? This message says that it's almost like it's okay

what he did because you're punishing them equally. You're saying that the—I mean, you're not punishing them equally because she might—obviously, you know, obviously they're not going to get 100 lashes. They're going to get worse than that. But you're still punishing both parties. So you're saying to them, you're saying it's OK because you're both doing something wrong. You're removing part of the blame from him and putting it on her. She now has to shoulder part of that blame. What kind of awful system is that? her part of that plane. What kind of awful system is that? They should never have charged her in the first place because it really just sends an awful fucking message that you're a complete barbaric society. I'm baffled. You know, you said like, what kind of system? Well, the system is Sharia

law. The system is a religious system. The system is obviously a system set up to systematically disenfranchise, disempower women and to force them into the role of victimhood. That's the system. Like, the system is a religious system of gender oppression. That's the system. If convicted, the girl will be held under house arrest. House arrest? Her baby's buried in the backyard.

The house her stepfather raped her in for years? House arrest is fucking awful in this case. So she's a house arrest until she's 18 because evidently they recognize that you can't flog a 15-year-old. So they wouldn't flog her until she was 18. They'll just imprison her for three years until she turns 18. But what kind of backflip do you have to do to say, well, wait a minute, she's too young to flog, but she's still responsible for being the victim of a rape?

Like, what? What the fuck? How the fuck does that work? Like, just the idea that you're punishing the victim. It's like putting the people, you know, like, it's like if your family, you were sitting in your living room in, you know like it's it's like if your family you were sitting in your living room and you know the west side of chicago and somebody shoots through the window and kills you know your four-year-old son and the kid dies and they're just like well he was in your

care so you go to jail right like wait what i'm the victim here some asshole shot a gun outside my house i'm sorry yeah sorry i gotta put you jail. But I specifically didn't want them to do that. I had a sign out front that said don't shoot in my house. Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French.

You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. Cecil, this fucking story. ABC News, Satanists plan rally in support of Florida Governor Rick Scott. One has to think that Rick Scott fucking face-palmed big time when this happened.

You know that when Governor Rick Scott heard about this, he thought, oh, maybe I didn't think this through properly. Satanic Temple is planning its first major rally in support of Florida government. Rick Scott's signing a bill that allows for the possibility of prayer in public school. I love it. The best part about this article, Tom, I think the best part about this is how crazy the Satanists are. I had no idea. Like before I read this, I was thinking Satanists, I don't know what I thought Satanists were, but I want to read directly from the article here. It says, members of the religion believe that Satan has the compassion and wisdom of an angel, according to the religion's website. They believe that God is perfect and outside the sphere of the physical, so Satan presides over the universe as his proxy.

You believe what? Like, you might as well call Satan Xenu. Well, you know, Satanism is obviously some made-up nonsense, right? Like, it doesn't work. Well, you're using a mythology to describe another mythology. Right. That's my favorite part. It's like, in order to get to Satanism, in order to really believe in Satanism, I have to believe the Bible is an accurate thing.

Like you said before, Satanism is a subsect of Christianity. Right. And you're choosing the underdog. You're just like – you're just purposely choosing who you know is going to lose. You've read the book. You know who wins. going to lose you've read the book you know who wins it's like it's like it's like worshiping voldemort after finishing the harry potter series you're like that's a why would you do that like he doesn't come out ahead he's like the patron saint of burn victims he's all smooth and shiny

yes that's terrible this this is the greatest kind of backlash, though, to this sort of bullshit that you could imagine. It's just delightful. You know, we want prayer in schools. And you want to hear this guy stand up and be like, well, I remember when our founding fathers were Satanists. I remember when they when Anton LaVey wrote the. No, actually, I don't. I don't.

I want to read this too. It says the satanic temple embraces the free expression of religion and the satanists are happy to show their support of Rick Scott who particularly with SB98 has reaffirmed our American freedom to practice our faith openly, allowing our satanic children the freedom to pray in school. And part of me wonders if they're just trolling this guy. I don't know, but it's – I don't even care. That's the best part. I don't even care. I guess it doesn't ruin the joke if they aren't. I don't care.

But here's the thing. Like even if they're dead serious, it's such an egg on the face of assholes moment. You know? It's like, okay. I don't have anything against Satanists, man. It's cool. It's just as dumb as the Christians. It's just heads or tails. Pick a stupidity.

Sure. I don't care. It's delightful. This is spectacular, too. I can imagine the hymns that they would sing. It's all Megadeth. Do you have to sing it all slow and with a choir? You have to sing it backwards is what you have to do.

You have to play all the regular hymns backwards. It's a symphony of destruction. Take that, Governor Rick Scott. I bet he'll rethink this. I don't know. No, he won't rethink this. I don't know that this guy has ever rethought anything. To rethink it, he'd have had to have thought.

He hasn't first thought. Yeah. He didn't need to initially think it. There's no pre-thinking. This story is from the Daily Mail. I know. The Daily Mail. I know. The Daily Mail. Hooded Muslim patrol vigilantes remove alcohol from drinkers and tell women to cover up as they stalk London suburb.

This video. What the fuck? Muslim patrol? Yeah. I like that the woman is, like, wearing, like, a skirt that comes down to her knees, I think, and boots. So you barely see anything of her anywhere, and they're just like, cover up. You need to cover up. She's like, no, I'm not going to cover up.

And they just leave. Like, the one dude's, like, carrying some, you know, he's just got, like, a beer or what have you, and he's walking down. They're like, this is a Muslim area. You can't be here with this. This is a Muslim area. And the guy's like oh he like he looks surprised like oh fucking i thought i was in fucking london i didn't know about this i had no idea i fucking wandered into fucking downtown cobble i've been walking way longer than i thought shit i was a train of thought got lost and you know how that happens. You just sort of zone out, and then you're in another country. Big, like, giant fucking body of water.

Wound up in fucking Egypt. Like, what I don't get, too, is, like, well, obviously you're getting the only one side of this, right? They're not showing you any other videos where somebody just looked at them and said, fuck off, mate. You know, there's none of that. because I'm sure somebody said that to them. They just didn't put it in their little video with the hum-da-ga-ba-ga-da-ba-ga-ba-ga-ba-ga-ba-ga that's playing on in the background. It's like Sharia heavy metal. Right. I love that music in this video because it just adds an unnecessary weird element to it.

It's totally unnecessary. Part of me wonders if these guys are troll too though. Like there's part of me that wonders because when he's talking, the way he's talking, like it sounds so absurd that I can't believe somebody would actually put those words together. Yeah. Well, you know, and that was a criticism. I had seen this story earlier and that was a criticism that I had read that like, well, maybe it's not really true.

And I don't know if it's really true or not really true. It's reported in the Daily Mail. So it's got to be accurate. It's got to be accurate. I mean, this is clearly a well-vetted story. Yeah, I mean, they pride themselves on their accuracy over there. I think, too, you know, we were talking about it earlier. I don't know. Is it easier to do that in Britain and not get socked? Because I'll tell you, you wouldn't want to do

this as a Muslim in a concealed carry state in the United States. Yeah, this would not work out. Oh, no. Oh, no. As a Muslim coming up to somebody in the United States and being like, this is a Muslim area. They'd roll it like they'd call the National Garden Roll a tank up your ass. You kidding me? But, you know, when we were talking about this, the the analogous area, though, would be like the Hasidic neighborhoods in in New York. It's true. It's true. They would they definitely patrol. And like we've covered stories where they spit on people and they, you know, force women to sit on the back of the bus. And it's, you know, these insulated communities. And that seems, if this is true, that seems to be what they're trying to build here, right?

Is an insulated community within London that's based around this sort of ridiculous values. But I'm shocked that one good soccer fan would fix this whole problem. All you need is one hooligan. Right. And you guys have a ton of hooligans. Can't you get a hooligan patrol? Yeah, jeez, you have like fucking a million hooligans over there. You know what they need to do?

They have like an underclass over there they call the Chabs. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right. But they have like an underclass called the Chabs. They need to have the Chabs get into a fight with these guys and then videotape it like we do bum fights over here. Can't you just get like a bunch of like the traveler women to show up? There you go. And then they'll be insulted.

And then their traveler dudes. And their high heels and their spray tans. They'll fuck these dudes up, man. They would fuck these dudes up. I'll tell you, they do an American traveler show in the United States. They fuck each other up like every week. They're fighting, like fist fighting. These women are fist fighting each other.

It's kind of disturbing. You don't want to watch it. You feel weird. They fight at the slightest provocation. I also feel strangely aroused, but I feel more weird than aroused. It's hard to be aroused by the looks of those women on the show of the one here in the States. Yeah, this is some fucked up shit, though. This is ridiculous. In London?

Agencies of government. EPA needs to be rebuilt. There's no doubt about that. But you can't name the third one? The third agency of government. I would do away with the education, the commerce, and let's see.

I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops. Commerce, education, and the, what's the third one there? Let's see. The EPA. EPA, there you go. EPA. There you go.

No. Rick Perry, always with the good ideas, Cecil. This is from the Raw story. The picture of him here pointing up is fucking priceless, man. This is a great picture. Rick Perry, pray for help rather than passing gun laws. And I wanted to talk about this picture, too, because this looks like the moment where he thought about it. Like, oh!

Wait a minute, I have an idea! Why didn't anybody think of this first? Oh, man. He says it here. I want to read what Rick Perry said. He says, and this is from the Raw story, if Tom didn't say that already. There is an evil prowling in the world.

It shows up in our movies, video games, and online fascinations. It finds its way into vulnerable hearts and minds, he said. As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children. Well, that'll help. You know,

nobody before Newtown prayed at all for those kids. I mean, nobody in their past, they were all little secular kids. They were. Yeah, that's what they don't know. They don't report that part of the story owing to it not being accurate yeah that's what is it i mean you you hear this because he's not the only person who said this sort of nonsense and and that same thing occurs every time like

do you really think that this guy went in and was only able like all the bullets fucking deflected around the little christian kids like they're just like like all the bullets fucking deflected around the little Christian kids like they're just like splitting in two the fucking matrixing to the side that's not true it's not accurate at all well you know what what this is the same guy

who decided to pray for rain and he literally stayed on fire like this is the guy this is his problem. I actually don't want him to pray because somebody's going to come into school with a nuclear warhead. I know. Everything he prays for, the opposite happens.

Hillbilly God's up there like, uh-uh. No, no, Rick Perry. President called. He said he wanted me to nuke his school. You know, and the other thing, too, is it says here a week after the Newtown shooting, Perry said the solution to mass shootings in school was to allow teachers to carry guns.

This is this is the thought that he had. This is you know, we should let teachers carry guns. I don't know if you saw, but I saw a post today, Tom. let teachers carry guns. I don't know if you saw, but I saw a post today, Tom. It was somebody had mentioned that a school has already hired an armed guard, a retired firearms instructor as an armed guard to guard their school. And the guy, within the first week of being hired, left his unloaded gun in the bathroom unattended. unloaded gun in the bathroom unattended. Within a week.

Within a week. Within a week. You know, what kills me about that whole idea, too, is Virginia Tech had a SWAT team. Yeah. Like, they had police and a SWAT team there. Yeah. And Virginia Tech is actually more casualties than Newtown. And Virginia Tech is actually more casualties than Newtown. The Columbine had an armed guard at the school that engaged one of the shooters.

Still happened. Like Columbine still happened. Just having an armed guard is clearly not – like we know that doesn't work. We have evidence that that doesn't work. It's funny too because you hear these people – I saw a video the other day where this guy was talking about how it's our God-given right to protect ourself. And you're like, yeah, absolutely it is. But the idea that you somehow should arm everybody because it's their God-given right to protect themselves with a firearm just seems so backwards and dumb. And then they're like, OK, well, if there's a fire – if there's somebody with a firearm, they would have shot this guy or whatever. And you're like, no, there's been, there's been examples of that not working. There's a, you know, uh, when, when Gabby Gifford got shot, there was somebody who had already taken

the gun away from her and he wasn't the shooter and he had the gun in his hand. If somebody in the audience would have fucking not noticed, they could have shot the guy. You know, like I wouldn't trust myself in a situation like that to shoot the right person. So I certainly wouldn't fucking trust the fucking rest of you. Yeah, I know. And it's like that shooting in New York that happened not too long ago. Nine people were injured. They were all injured by the police. Right.

Who were shooting back. people were injured they were all injured by the police right who were shooting back it's not you know everybody doesn't become an expert marksman as soon as you fucking slap a pistol in their wrist that's not how in their hand that's not how that shit works that shooting that happened in uh in oregon in the mall there was a dude there with a fucking gun there and he didn't want to take the shot he's like i didn't have a clear shot. There's nothing. You know, what am I supposed to do? I don't have a good shot. He doesn't want to shoot innocent people.

Just putting more guns in the place that you think you don't want to have gun violence. The good thing to do is have a self-destruct button on every place. So if somebody pulls a gun, they just blow the entire place up. Oh, my God. Or you could just put the collars like the Total Recall. Yeah, Total Recall collars. What was that movie where the Sub-Zero running man. What is that movie? That's a fucking running man movie.

Running man collars on every kid in this school. Everyone gets a running man collar. There you go. A running man collar and a metal detector if you go through it and it beeps you just blow up it's like it's like logan's run your hand starts blinking and then you just fucking die you know there was that video too tom was talking about guns might as well talk about this too that that video that was going around where they the people like fucking newtown was a hoax and they're like talking about how, I watched, I watched most of the video.

I will admit that I had to shut it off eventually. Because I just, at a certain point the stupidity gets so much that I can't sit. Like I just, I get fidgety. And I mean it's just so uncritical that it hurts my brain. But some of the stuff that was in there was so, I mean, just so stupid. They're talking about the, one of my favorite parts was they're talking about how the long rifle was

used in new town and the, the corners out there talking about how the long rifle was used. Most of the kids were shot with the long rifles, what they were talking about on and on. And then they show a picture of the car because it's like they're outside with the helicopter and they're showing, and this guy finds a long gun in a, in a car because it's like they're outside with the helicopter and they're showing and this guy finds a long gun in a car and then

he fucking, Tom, he fucking racks it like a shotgun. Four or five times and gets the fucking bullets out of it and the guy in the video's like, oh, I thought the long gun was inside the building. Oh, how did it wind up back in his car? Hmm, wonder if it's a government staging operation.

No, it's a fucking shotgun he didn't use right fucking real simple solution bro you know if he would have done 10 seconds of research before he fucking you know ran over to final cut pro to place this in the fucking timeline he would have found out that he was wrong yeah and they i saw that same video you pointed me to that video it's and i knew you thing is, man, as soon as I heard about the shooting, I thought for fucking certain there's going to be a bunch of loose cannon assholes who are going to come up and say this is all a plant to spark a debate about gun control. I mean you just know it. Yeah, they said the same thing about fucking Aurora shooting six months ago. Right. Yeah, they said the same thing about fucking Aurora shooting six months ago.

Right. And it's horrifying that this tragedy occurs. this fucking cuckoo video to denigrate the sorrow and grief of, and the very public sorrow and grief of the families that had to endure this. I can't imagine. Like, they're being scolded. Like, the family on this video are being scolded for being actors because they don't appear distraught enough at every moment. Well, that's just not how grief works. Like you're just not – I mean I've lost people.

Cecil, you've lost people. Yeah. You're not not grieving because at every fucking moment you're not grieving. That's just – at some point your body is like, I need a break from this. Well, not just that, but there's a part of this video where this guy who lost his daughter is asked to come give a press conference. So he comes out and he's got this smile on his face. He's like, are we ready to go? And he kind of chuckles a little.

It looks to me like he's really fucking nervous. Right. And it's a nervous laugh. Right. Like that's, it totally looked like, you know, that one kind of try at a quick little lame joke before you go on just to give yourself some sort of confidence boost, some burst of adrenaline to try to get through this thing you're going to have to do. And then the next second, he's got to talk about his dead daughter.

So he stops and collects his thoughts and his lip quivers. They're like, oh, he's a bad actor. Fuck you for saying that. All it is is fucking, it's people who have dug through all these shitty news reports because everybody wants to be first, right? So everybody's gotta be first. They gotta be the first so they

get fucking any Tom, Dick, and Harry that was in a fucking five kilometer radius who heard a gunshot on TV. They get any jackass who happened to be anywhere near it so they could talk to him. They get a million fucking eyewitness reports that are so fucking off the wall they don't even make any sense anymore.

And then they try to stuff it all in one video and be like, see, these people can't even get their story straight. Well, that's fucking stupid. Yeah, and it's like, well, there's a lot of confusion about what really happened. Yeah, that's kind of how these things unfold. That's sort of standard procedure. Like they don't know exactly what happened. The problem isn't that there was some massive conspiracy.

The problem is, like you mentioned, it's this insatiable demand for immediacy in reporting that leads to inaccurate reporting and guesswork and, you know, interviewing, like you said, everybody on scene. Well, yeah, you're going to get a cobbled together piece of shit story because nobody's had an opportunity to pause and reflect and try to gather the facts and then report them. Instead, it's like, OK, here we are. We're at the site of this thing that just happened. Let's talk to anybody at all. Anybody, anybody. I've got a camera here.

And, you know, there's a part of this video where the woman this this woman is reporting and she says something like, I ran into the nurse from this building and she said, you know, I know I asked her if, you know, the shooters, you know, the shooters mother. And she said, yeah, she's a kindergarten student. She would never do anything like this to the students. I don't know why this kid did it or whatever. And then they come to find out that it wasn't a kindergarten teacher or whatever. I don't even know who this guy is. I'm not even going to say his name, but I don't know who he is.

And evidently that story didn't pan out. That wasn't the truth. That didn't happen. And they're like, oh, well, you know, that obviously must be a plant. No, what you did was you got an eyewitness who was coming off the scene, was grieving, and you asked them a question quickly and they answered it because maybe they were misinformed. You ever think it's like, it's like, uh, they're not even taking into the account that somebody could be even misinformed, that somebody could be misinformed because there's a million people all trying

to figure out what happened all at the same time. And you're coming out of a building where somebody shot and somebody might have told you something that you think is true and it's not true. Well, and they even said that, that nurse, that the person even said, you know, I just talked to this person who was clearly traumatized and, you know, on the edge of hysterics or something along those lines. And it's like, well, that's not exactly the time to get the most rational answers from somebody. Not only is fucking eyewitness testimony completely unreliable, but now throw in the mix that the person is hysterical.

Why would you even consider that as useful after the fact? It doesn't even make any sense. And all this video is, is a way for somebody to get fucking ad revenue on YouTube. You're exactly right. We believe we're moving into a supernatural season where if needed, God will multiply food. I have seen God multiply food more than one time when I was cooking. I mean, when my kids were little, they were always bringing their friends into the house. And I remember, you know, spooning out spaghetti or whatever, just praying in the spirit over that.

And God just made more and more and more. You know, I've seen oil multiply as I was praying for the sick. I've seen bottles of oil just fill up about a cup at a time of oil. Remember when we drove our car in Weatherford Decor? I mean, on one set of tires, we had, how many miles was it? I mean, maybe. It was a lot. Yeah, way, way beyond what could ever happen

with one set of tires. I mean, I remember one time I had a pair of shoes that I wore and wore and wore and wore, and it just, just for years, the shoes did not wear out. And I wore them years and years and years. So, you know, sometimes God is saying little epiphanies to us, little things to us. But we don't know how to listen to his voice. This story is just a video, and it is the greatest video. This is from AddictingInfo.org. Rich Christian lady says long-lasting shoes are proof of God. Cecil!

Cindy Jacobs is a treasure trove of crazy awesome. Oh, my God. Is there a more empty-headed moron? Have you ever seen a more empty headed moron than this woman like not only is she you know completely uh i mean i guess i want to say insensitive but that seems too weak uh to all the people in the world that don't have shoes and are starving like not only does she like basically you know take her pants down and squat and piss all over those people. But she basically says, you know, I prayed hard enough and I made more spaghetti.

And therefore all those people in the world that die each day because of hunger, they did not pray hard enough. Yeah, right. And, you know, what's funny is I was listening to this fucking maddening bullshit, and the first thing I thought was like when Jesus did the same thing, it was a fucking miracle. Yeah, no kidding. When it happens in your house, it's Wednesday. It's Prince Spaghetti Night. Prince Spaghetti Night, my friend. That's what – it makes the Bible.

Like it makes the fucking editorial cut of miracles when the son of God in your theology does it. It happens in your house casually. I love that she's like, I was healing the sick or whatever she says she's doing. And I look over and God was filling up oil a cup at a time. And I'm just thinking God is so weak. He's so weak. All he could do is like, well, I'm sorry. I can only measure all I have. The biggest measuring thing I have in my house

is this measuring cup. I don't have anything larger. So I give them to it a cup at a time. That's how it works. Why are you giving them oil? I would be more impressed if it was like, and then it was filling up penicillin a cup at a time. Or it was like fucking, like, it was gold. Like, suddenly my house was filled with gold bars. You know, like, there's a miracle that's worth

while. Filling up my fucking oil jar? Like, yeah, dude, I'd pay a buck twenty-nine for a fucking whole gallon of that. Yeah, right. It's, I got more oil. Okay, well, but we're still out of Tamiflu. What the fuck, you know? I don't care.

Like, I'm not asking you to fucking lube me up. I'm not sticking your ass here. What the fuck? I don't need more oil. I'm sick. Get me a thing. And I love, too, that, like, proof of god is that i drove around on bald tires for a couple years you know i it's funny because i i uh the first thing i thought was my the truck that i

had before the two cars ago i had this truck when i traded it in i traded it in with 120 000 miles on it and i shit you not it had the original tires oh my god they were slick as hell racing slicks they were terrible they were they they were shiny smooth but they never popped so i'm cheap and i never replaced them oh my gosh yeah that's what she did yeah well for years and years we rode around on those tires didn't we and you're just like, well, so what? So what? A little anomaly has happened in your life where you don't have to buy a new pair of shoes in between three years, and suddenly that's...

I've had shoes for over three years. Dude, my wife is constantly pressuring me to get rid of old shoes. It's like you've had those for 10 years. Shoes don't... I mean, like, modern shoes take a long time to wear out to really wear out to where you're like fucking soul fell off my shoe you look at this lady she's not out there fucking walking around that far i know i thought it's she's not it's like her hiking boots on the appalachian trail no you know have made it across country again you know it's like yeah i got this pair

of flats and i wear them every other week and well that's not very many fucking times as it turns out walks to her car yeah goes to the station you know like how fucking hard is it to like press your your foot on a gas pedal yeah yeah and well she's got to walk to buy a lot of spaghetti like as a person who lives in the United States, you know, unless you are living in the inner city somewhere where you have access to public transportation and it's feasible for you

not to have a car, and there's only a few urban centers in the United States where that's fucking actually possible too. You know, it's not maybe like 10, 20 cities probably. The rest of them, it's fucking improbable or, you know, it's not maybe like 10, 20 cities probably. The rest of them, it's fucking improbable or, you know, it's practically impossible. Where I used to live in

a, you know, once you get outside a certain portion of Chicagoland, it's impossible not to have a car. You have a car? You can't get places. Without a car, what are you gonna do? Wait for a bus that comes twice a day? Are you serious? Nobody does that unless you're poor.

And this lady's clearly not poor. She's making spaghetti out of nothing. And she gets free oil. Free oil for trying out love. Why don't we drill her? And her shoes never wear out. We should open up the strategic Cindy Jacobs oil reserves. All right, so we're back with Heather Henderson and Emery Emery of the Arden Atheist podcast, as well as the Skeptically Yours podcast.

I guess first, just tell us a little bit about yourselves. Well, we won an award at the podcast awards. And it's not enough that I should succeed. I heard something about that. It was a rumor somewhere. It's not enough that I should succeed, but others must fail. And I want to point out that cognitive dissonance came in, well, really nowhere. They don't have a first, second, and third.

So I want to point out that I think you guys might have taken this thing. There was a way you could have taken this and won the whole award. And that is to have had us on last year. See, the secret to winning the podcast awards apparently is to be us. Yeah, evidently. What we needed to do was kill you. Both. And then Tom would have had to cut his hair.

I would have probably gotten a little shorter. Don't forget the piercings. And then we could have then become you in some way. In some sort of doppelganger. One of you would have had to have a sex change and worn caramel-faced. Because you're really not black. Caramel-faced isn't as offensive, by the way. That sounds so delicious.

I'd have to reapply so frequently. Well, now, listen, all kidding aside, guys, I really love that three podcasts were nominated in the religion inspiration category for the podcast awards this year. I don't know how many it was

last year, but I'm told that if... Well, three non-religious podcasts. Oh, I didn't say that. Yeah. Thanks for helping me out there. What I meant was three non-religious. Three, not just non-religious, really kind of anti-religious. Yeah, yeah.

And what I like the most about it is, had I been up against WTF in the comedy category, I'd have been fucked. Because Mark Maron is the guy who put us up over a quarter million by appearing on our show, and I'm not kidding. We were scratching a couple hundred thousand, and then as soon as we had him on, we jumped into the 230s. Oh, yeah. And then we started crawling toward the quarter million a month. But Marin has a massive listenership. And if we had to compete in that category, we wouldn't ever have been. I think we might have been nominated because we do have pretty good numbers,

but I don't know. There's no way we could have beat him. I also want to point out that we asked all of our listeners to pray that we wouldn't win. Yeah. You did do that. We did. We did. And I can't honestly say how many people actually prayed that we wouldn't win.

I said, choose the God you don't believe in and pray to that God that we won't win. Atheists are lazy prayers. Yeah. They tend not to. I did get some emails that said i did pray i actually did it some people got into the spirit of the idea um but the reason that i chose to do that is because i knew that these folks these other seven podcasts that were nominated in our category they They were religious based. I knew that they just by default would be praying that their podcasts would win. And that we wouldn't. And that we wouldn't. That's exactly right. I used to be a Christian. I know how we thought. And I'm quite

sure that collectively hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people were praying that their respective podcast, which preached the word of God, would win. And I really enjoyed the idea of our folks praying that we wouldn't win. Why does that make me angry? Thinking about people praying, especially, I mean, not something trivial like a podcast, but people who get together and they pray over, say, a dying loved one or, you know, a person in the hospital or their dog or something. I think it makes you angry because you got Satan in you. I got Satan?

Yeah, you got Satan up in you. I was sitting next to both Heather and Emery when they were reading off the podcast and there was a believer behind us that had shouted out when your name was announced that they don't even believe anything is what they shouted out yeah i i uh i heard him i know exactly what he said and he said they don't even know what they believe oh yeah that was the first half of it they don't even know what they believe And then the last half was, but they sure are proud of it. Yeah. Oh, that's what he said.

I'm glad I didn't hear that. Yeah, no, I listened to the tape over and over again. And it was obvious that the guy was just angry. This was someone over my right shoulder. Now, I want to be clear about this. There was someone over my left shoulder. This was someone over my right shoulder. Now, I want to be clear about this.

There was someone over my left shoulder. And that guy was cheering for his podcast, which I think was the one right after mine. And the emcee of the event, actually, when he heard us applaud for our podcast, and then Heather and I and Cameron, and then he heard right behind us, he could see that the podcast in the list right under us had applauded. He said, you guys can duke it out right now, which was kind of funny and got a laugh. And I jumped up just playfully and put my hands up, you know, that 1960s. Fisticuffs. 1940s fisticuffs scene, you know, the whole I'll fight you in sepia. And I said, come on, buddy!

It's a Brendan Burns joke. I'll take a daguerreotype of you guys fighting at any moment. Totally stole that from Brendan Burns. So I said, come on, put him up! And he laughed, and I laughed, and I sat back down, and I put my hand out, and I reached back and I fived him. And that cat was cool.

Yeah, not all Christians are mean. Not all Christians are mean-spirited or angry jackheads. But there was one right behind me to my right that was. I don't know who he was. He was obviously with one of the shows that, what's the word? Lost. That lost. He was sitting with me.

I will say that the only person in the audience that clapped for my show was Heather. And that was because I was sitting next to her and I looked at her really guiltily. I was sort of puppy dog, like, will you please clap? And she clapped. That was the reason. Thank you, Heather, for clapping. I don't remember clapping for you. She denies it even now.

That's awesome. Now, we talked a little bit about how great your show is and how it won an award, but our listeners may have never heard your show. What is it? I think we should get back to how great it is. Okay, fair enough. No, I'm kidding. Listen, here's what we do.

We offer community and we offer comedy to those who live in the world and don't believe there's a God. Think that religion is harmful even. You don't have to think that religion is harmful to agree with us, but we do, and a lot of the folks that listen to our show do. And we offer you a place to come and talk and commune and meet and get to know each other and not be so alone. A lot of people say to me, it was, well, actually it was Mark Maron who said, does it make you happy when you take someone's faith away? Is that what you're doing with this show? He's a pretty angry cat sometimes. And I go, that's not what we do.

It's not what we try to do. It's not what we ever find out is happening. You're completely strawmanning us. Mark Maron. Mark Maron. We don't do that. What we do is we talk about what we believe in. We talk about what we don't believe in.

We talk about the harm of religion. And we do it in a comedic way because we have comics on who kind of take the piss out of each other and mess with each other. And while that's happening, there's a chat room going on with a bunch of people who follow the show

who are getting together to chat. And there's a moderator there who posts relevant links to everything that we're talking about joe swam joe swam and uh so people can come and commune and meet and it's like a bunch of regular folk that come by and then every once in a while there's some new people and then we our family just gets bigger and bigger how dare you provide a place for people to gather together for the free exchange of ideas and commune with one another. That

is un-American. And at the same time, I'll moderate it. It's terribly un-American. I'll moderate the chat and then give shout-outs to people, shout out what they're saying. And even in the show we do a segment where anyone who's been chatting on the show the previous week, I'll say their name. So that's also

another incentive to come and chat on the wall of reason, we call it. We got that from Romper Room. See, you learned something from Romper Room. Captain Kangaroo. If our listeners never heard any of your episodes, which one would you point them to as sort of an example of your show as a good example of what happens there? Oh, my. You know, that's a tough one. It really is a tough one. And I'm going to tell you the one that jumps to mind is a lot of people enjoyed the hell out of the Tim Minchin, Dave Foley episode. Now, I'm going to be honest, as a connoisseur of this kind of comedy myself, man, it really was frustrating. It was a very frustrating episode for me because Dave Foley,

that poor bastard's been through hell, first of all, and back. And he is a relatively negative cat that's struggling with some really shitty things. Bad breakup with the wife and all kinds of things. But he maintains... Sounds hilarious

so far. There's that sitcom plot you were looking for tom right there he maintains a really nice attitude though despite that but when you get into a philosophical discussion with a guy like him who's really really mired down by some some problems issues and personal demons um there there becomes this this this the world is negative kind of thing and he and mention and me man we just went round and round and round and we could not we could not connect with each other and as odd as it sounds it was fucking hilarious um i got a lot of emails about the mention episode um everybody should look up the episode with um neil degrasse tyson because we got him to say the uck word um really yeah and that's that's something that you

want to brag about i think if you want yeah that's a funny put that feather in your cap my friend that's fucking awesome if you want to facepalm yourself to death, go listen to the Deborah Wilson from MADtv episode. You will overstand yourself. See, I don't understand. I overstand. I overstand. This sounds great. Now, okay, so those are the ones that people connect to. But, like, of the people that you've had a chance to sit down and talk to,

I know that probably all your podcasts are your favorite. They're like your children you don't want to pick. But if you could pick one that was, like, one of your favorites to do just to meet somebody, what would that be? It would definitely be Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dawkins. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dawkins.

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah. Neil deGrasse Dawkins. Now, did Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dawkins. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dawkins. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yeah. Neil deGrasse Dawkins. Now, did Neil deGrasse Tyson and Dawkins, like, grease up and wrestle? That would have been... My dream. Yeah, no shit. My money's on NDT, by the way, because I think he would fight dirty, but...

Yeah, I think he could take Dawkins. I think so, too. I think anybody could take Dawkins. I think a seven-year-old could take Dawkins. Yeah. But we have Dawkins on. Dawkins is listening to this podcast. Hey, what the fuck?

Yeah, that's happening. So he was a good interview, though, Dawkins? Yeah, he was wonderful. And he couldn't stay long. He was running from place to place. We were at TAM, and he just dropped in for about 15 or 20 minutes, and he was fantastic. We had him on with Christina Rad, and it was really great.

I'll tell you another podcast you want to check out, and that is the number one and number two episode of Penn Jillette is on the first episode of Skeptically Yours, and he just is wonderful. I just gave him the mic and let him go, and he was talking about a lot of things, but the big one to me was when he was talking about

the whole sexism bullshit in the skeptic community. That was really, really fun. I was afraid he wasn't going to want to talk about it, but he did. I wasn't going to take him there, but he just went there. Now, if people were going to find you somewhere on the internet, where would they go? Well, all you have to do is search for ardent atheist.

No one else wants to call themselves that, so it's me. internet, where would they go? Well, all you have to do is search for Ardent Atheist. No one else wants to call themselves that, so it's me. Or you could just go to Ardent. You win that by default. Or you could just. Well, just wait until next year. You know, we want to win that podcast award. So we're going to be the Ardent Atheist. We're going to be ArdentAtheist.net or something.

Yes, if it was. Dot biz. Yeah. If it was in the name, boys. Good luck with that. I'll tell you. It totally was. Well, congratulations again on your victory. Well deserved.

Your podcast is great. If you want to find them, check out Art and Atheist. Check out Skeptically Yours. They're a great podcast. You guys do a great job. Thanks for coming on our show. Thank you. Thanks for having us, guys.

Good luck next year. Okay, I'm done laughing. Alright. So we got a little bit of voicemail that we want to talk about. We wound up getting, let's see, we wound up getting a voicemail from Rich. We got a

voicemail from Bob and we also got a voicemail from the king of cash, Monet. I'm going to play him for you right now. Yeah, hey, Tom. Hey, Cecil. This is Rich. I'm out here in the middle of the boonies out in South Dakota. First of all, I thought I'd let you guys know that the contact information, the number for the voicemail you guys left was 74074DOUBT.

information, the number for the voicemail you guys left was 74074 doubt. But you failed to translate those into the usual analog keypad numbers, or for those calling in from the Jewish faith who use the rotary phones. So I thought I'd leave you guys a little something. Alright, check it out.

And I'll show you what it takes these days to make me cry. A pastor in the crack said a newsman who lies about civil lives. It doesn't really matter. Got it twisted left or right. They indoctrinate the nation. Make them beg us stand in line. It seems the most important thing that you never must

forget every day when you awake is that we always face a threat. Like we needed someone there to tell us what we would and won't do. Air, food, and water. Think it ain't that hard? So won't you? Use your brain? No, you only went to mass. Fist the Romans.

Pull the joke on you. The real answer's here. Can't come in contact with entities. And meditating's weird because it don't fit my daily recipes. Won't you use your brain? I got more. Thanks, guys. Take care.

Hey, Cecil and Tom. This is Bob. I'm just calling to tell you guys that I love your podcast. I'm actually one of those people who fall asleep listening to their iPods at night. So your podcast is actually one of those ones that I listen to falling asleep every night. Sometimes I actually have dreams based on what you guys are talking about, as crazy as that might sound. So yeah, keep up the good work. Hey, Talmud Cecil, I'm the king of cash money. Long story short, I'm a product of 13 straight years of conservative and liberal Catholic education. I realized my atheism my junior

year of high school. Nevertheless, I chose a Jesuit university not because of the religious orientation, but because they offered me the most scholarship money, they offered my major, and so forth. I'm required to take 18 credit hours of theology to graduate. With all of the Catholic indoctrination, I have built up kind of an alter ego that would chime in when faced with a question or essay like a parrot on my shoulder, even though I got the grade in the past like this. It irked me that what I was spewing was bullshit. Tom, your podcast has inspired me to put what I truly believe in practice.

Atheism now holds a morality hand of cards that in this day and age trumps Catholicism as your show, in any theology really, as your show exemplifies every week. I am confident that no matter the grade I get, my integrity is preserved, which if he existed is what God would have wanted, right? Here's what I need advice on. I'm trying to start a secular student alliance here, and this is a university that never stops preaching on the importance of diversity has Muslim prayer rooms a Jewish center and a Protestant ministry I know it's

a private university and they can do what they want regarding who gets approval for a club and who's not but if you were in my shoes what would you do cheers so Tom Rich first Rich sent us a great little bit that he sent, a little bit of beat poetry that he sent along or maybe rap as the kids these days might call it.

I thought it was great. Thank you, Rich, for sending it. Rich also butt dialed us. And for three minutes, there's just silence. But at one point, there's a point where he's like, oh, my God, I got a lot of fucking shit I got to get done. So we appreciate you calling us, even though you're evidently very busy. You're very busy. You've got a lot of shit you've got to get done.

Very busy, Rich. Thank you very much for dialing us and for calling us for real. We got a call from Bob. We want to thank Bob for calling in the show. Bob falls asleep while listening to our podcast. That's fine. Tom falls asleep while making this podcast. So it kind of evens out.

I do want to say that at one point, Bob, the guy who has narcolepsy, he called and then also called while he was asleep. So there was another click and a hang up when Bob, the narcolepsy guy, called. So we want to thank Bob for calling as well. This show's so boring to him, he couldn't even make it past the beep. I don't blame him for falling asleep to our show at all. And

finally, we want to talk to the king of cash money. The king of cash money. First off, you're the king of fucking cash money. Why haven't you bought our app yet? Buy more of the apps. Yeah, buy more apps, bro. And sign up for Audible if you're the king of cash money. Sign up for Audible at our website,

dissonancepod.com. There's an Audible link right there you can sign up. And everybody who does that Audible, then they actually wind up coming back to us and asking us to do that again. So it actually helps out the show. But anyway, King of Cash Money, you're asking about a secular student alliance at your Catholic institution that you go to school, the Jesuit college that you go to school.

I – very, very similar situation to you. I am a double alum of a Catholic college, Catholic university. And I wound up getting scholarship money because I was a first generation college student and my college really wanted to try to reach out to first generation college students. So I wound up getting a lot of money in grant money that they called grant money, which really, it's not technically a scholarship because it wasn't smart enough. So they didn't give me a scholarship. They just gave me like money off my tuition to go there. But I wound up, I wound up going to a Catholic college twice, a Catholic university twice. And, and they have a

secular student alliance there. I would say, go for it. I think that you will find, I don't know what part of the country you're in, but I but I will say that the Catholic university that I went to was very understanding of other religions. And like you said, if they're trying to be diverse, they are almost certainly going to welcome you as a secular organization. And if they don't and if they give you pushback, I would start a secular organization there anyway. Just I wouldn't go through the programs and organizations office there. I wouldn't – I would just be like, OK, if you don't want me to do it here, I will still do it. I just won't get any of the funds or use any of the rooms or any of the things. But I will still have one and collect students from here to do it.

And eventually they will probably have to acquiesce to your demands. We got an email from Sonoris and Sonoris had some interesting things to say about people who go to church. Yeah, basically he's saying that we've asked how people can sit and listen to horrible things that people have said during these sermons. And his response is basically that they're not listening. So it's not even preaching to the choir. It's preaching to the fucking dead ears of the choir. I love that.

They just show up and they just unplug. They're just like thinking about what they're going to have for dinner later. It's a sitting location. I'm just at my favorite sitting location. Admittedly, I spend most of the podcast thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner later, though. So I kind of understand where they come from. Yeah, well, I mean, the other side of the conversation is not terribly scintillating.

I'm sympathetic. Every time you log on, I'm like, really? He's doing this again? He's going to try this again. You go get him. We got an email from Ken. Ken sent us a book, an anti-vaccine book, Tom. The name of a book, an anti-vaccine book, Tom.

The name of the book, Cecil, Melanie's Marvelous Measles. Very easy to write a book about Melanie's Marvelous Measles, much less marvelous to actually have the measles. The next book in the series is Fiona's Fever-Induced Blindness. That's what's going to be next, I think, right after this. Wilma's Wonderful Wake. Like Fred's Fantastic Funeral. We wound up getting an email from Nicholas.

And Nicholas is in Brisbane. Is it Brisbane or Brisbane? Boston. It's actually pronounced. Brisbane, Australia. Brisbane. I'm going to say Brisbane. I'm going to go with that.

I don't know. What the fuck? Why not? Because it sounds like they would say it nice and fast. Like, oi, I'm from Brisbane. You know, like super fast. Let me try it. Foster's.

Foster's. It's very close. So Nicholas says, he talks about the Duke of Edinburgh. And he says, he has some bullet points here that I want to read. This is about Prince Philip. Is that the same guy? I don't know. I don't know either.

Anyway. Yes, he's both the prince and the duke but not the king. I don't know what the fuck is going on. You guys got more titles. Jesus. titles. Jesus. So anyway, Prince Philip says on a trip to Australia asking some of

the indigenous Australians if they still throw spears at each other. Holy shit. After receiving a gift from a Kenyan woman asking, you're a woman, aren't you? Commenting on a fuse box at a factory in Edinburgh.

Why was he commenting on it in the first place? I know. What is he even doing near a fuse box? This guy doesn't sound like he should be buying one. It says it looks like it was installed by an Indian. And then while addressing a group of British students in China, it says if you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed.

I had no idea that George Bush was married to the queen. What a terrible human being. This is awesome. This just goes to show, like, this guy's not elected. What does he care, right? He can go around. Nothing he does makes him not the duke.

I miss this one. It says, and the guy says, I piss myself laughing at – I guess to the president of Nigeria dressed in traditional robes. You look like you're ready for bed. That's fucking awesome. Thank you, Nick, for sending that in from Brisbane. We got an email from Derek, Tom. Derek says that he loves the podcast, loves the skepticism. He's sorry we didn't win the podcast awards. Well, of the four people who were on the show today, two of them were sorry.

Right. The other two were decidedly not sorry. Not sorry at all. Yeah, well, we were sorry too. But we were happy that an atheist won. We just wished it was the other atheist show. Our atheist show. We got an email, Tom, from Robert.

And Robert talks about how he kind of grew up as somebody who's sort of crispy, sort of hippie dude with a crazy hippie family. crispy sort of hippie dude with a crazy hippie family. And he talks about all the stuff that he grew up sort of trying to figure out. And he sort of became skeptical. And then recently he talks about it. He says, but today some friends of mine started telling all their Facebook friends how the current flu vaccine would kill you, give you autism, was made entirely of aborted fetuses and mercury and didn't really work anyway. And he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

He pointed out that most of the ingredients are things that are naturally occurred in the body and that the vaccine was cultured and that the vaccine was cultured in fetal cells taken decades ago. It's not like they were freshly squeezing a toddler for each file. I love it. I think that's great. He says this same friend has over 20 tattoos, at least 12 piercings, and is an IV drug user. But the flu shot is too unnatural to be injected into our bloodstream. These sound like people I should party with. That's all I'm saying.

This is fantastic. I like, too, that he used to sell melted glacier water. Yeah, that's fucking great. As a health beverage. We just call that Lake Michigan. You don't like that? It's like that Waterboy movie with Adam Sandler where he gets the glacier water and you probably never saw that movie.

I don't remember. That's where the woman's like, foosball is the devil. Have you ever seen that movie? I've seen it, but it's been. And you don't remember it because it's not good. There's no reason to remember it. We got an email from Robert. Robert says

that this podcast makes his 1.5 hour drive bearable. And we also talked about, Robert also talked about Queen Elizabeth and the throne and who king and the queens are, and he basically corrected us. So thank you, Robert. And, Robert, I want to pronounce this right.

Robert is from Melbourne. And I'm pronouncing it right because it's the Bourne identity. Right, yeah. I mean, that's— He specifically tells us how to pronounce Melbourne, Australia. Yeah, he says he's pronounced Melbourne. So Melbourne. This guy is from Australia, guys.

It's got to be legit. It's got to be legit. It's got to be legit. Tom Paul sent us. He said, do you think long names? He's like, you like long names? Well, this one makes yours look short. And this was from last week, the fucking golf, golf, golf place or whatever that we were talking about. Paul, I do have to interject that most of the time it makes mine look short.

Comparisons are never in my favor. But this is great. This is an awesome name. I'm going to play it for the audience right now. I mean, it's a 58-character word that we're going to put a link to. It's a name of a hill. A Maori? Is that a Maori?

Is that how you say that? I don't know. Maori? Maori. Maori. Name for a hill that's in, I don't even know, fucking wherever those people are from, New Zealand. But I'm going to play the pronunciation for you now. What I like about this is that it starts out with,

Hey, motherfucker. Like, that's how it starts out. Yeah, it's, Hey, motherfucker, can you believe the length of this goddamn word just to say hell? Hey, motherfucker, I'm saying this thing. That's fucking awesome. Thank you very much for sending it. We got a comment on our blog. We don't comment on comments, but this is good enough to comment on. David says,

placenta helper makes a great meal. I can't deny that. Although the tough part about placenta helper is you've got to open up all those capsules. You've got to just open up 30 capsules. It seems like a lot of work. I was just thinking about the horrifying

little glove man that dances around for hamburgerurger Helper. Like, what's the mascot for Placenta Helper? It's like a female condom. Oh, that's disgusting and awesome. Okay, so... Dancing Speculum? You got to serve servant with forceps?

Oh, that's disgusting. Horrifying. That's awful. Send me some links about that later, though. So anyway, this is great. We got a thank you letter from Julia. Julia just wanted to thank us. She mentioned some part of our show that she really thought was great.

And we want to thank you again, Julia, for listening. Thanks for sending us email. We got, I think, this is from D, pardon me, this is from Daniel. Daniel sent us a paper on the decapitated bum and it is seriously one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read. Daniel, we would love to post this on our website uh i don't want to post it because your your first and last names our name is on it and i don't want to post it with your first and last name so if you give me the go ahead uh via email you could just send us an email and say, go ahead and publish it. I will put it as one of the tabs on our site. I will dedicate an entire tab to this particular paper.

I will print it out and then have it as a downloadable PDF. Someone has written a scientific paper about one of the episodes, and I'm just going to read the entire email here. It says, in episode 82, you asked what the caloric content of a decapitated bum was. My answer is that on average, approximately 90,305 calories, enough to meet the caloric needs of a person for 40 days. I've included my calculations in the attached document. Love the show. Greetings from Melbourne.

So thank you, Daniel, for sending that in. If you get back to us and let us know, I will post it because it's fucking awesome. I laughed until I cried. I thought it was fucking great. Thank you. Richard sent us an email and Richard sent us a link. And we had talked about this woman before in the past, this Lisa Byron. We had talked about her in the past. So it's on a previous episode. I don't know if you can – I don't know how to find it. I would just maybe look for child porn in our site.

I'm not sure. Although you probably don't want to be looking for child porn on the internet. I would just say certainly not at work. I would say that's not a good thing to do. But we want to thank you for listening. And the thing that bothers me is you spaced out the last play. So you're Richard from Warkworth in Northumberland. And I keep looking at it when I look at it because I kind of I'm not very good at reading things.

It looks like Wankworth to me. I don't know why. But when I look out of the corner of my eye, it looks like Wankworth. Maybe it's how you spaced it out I'm not sure so we want to thank Heather Henderson and Emery Emery for coming on our show you can find their podcast

The Ardent Atheist at ardentatheist.com you can find the other podcast they do Skeptically Yours at skepticallyyours.net if you have a chance check them out congratulations again Emery and Heather on your win at the Podcast Awards. We hope we fucking trample you underfoot next year. That ends another pretty boring show of cognitive distance.

We leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. as always 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 acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment Leo Pisces cancer cures, detox, reflex foot massage, death in towers

tarot cards, psychic healing crystal balls, bigfoot, yeti aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons giant worms, Atlantis dolphins, truthers, birthers witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs.

Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local Dairy Council. We'll see you next time. All right, so let's get started. You ready?

All right, let's do it. Yep. All right, you ready to record? Yep. Three, two, one. Yep. Were you recording the whole time? I was recording the whole time. You asshole.

Oh, Tom. But I'm ready to record. You're killing me. All right. I'm ready. I've been ready. I know. You've been Oh, Tom. But I'm ready to record. You're killing me. All right. I'm ready. I've been ready. You've been ready, Tom. You've been ready the whole time.

You've got to look at the plus side of this. I've got to fucking delete. How much do I have to delete now? Now it's like fucking 20 minutes of us talking about email, and I've got to delete. I'm such an asshole.