Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 890: Murder of Renee Nicole Good, Overthrowing Maduro in Venezuela

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Officials Dispute Federal Account of Fatal ICE Encounter in Minnesota - The New York Times Trump's MAGA base backs his handling of Venezuela and Maduro capture, allies say Senate to vote next week to block Trump's military action against Venezuela Elon Musk indicates he's 'going all in' on financing the GOP ahead of the midterms: 'America is toast if the radical left wins' | The Independent Pentagon to cut Sen. Mark Kelly's military retirement pay over 'seditious' video: Hegseth Denmark prime minister calls on Trump to "stop the threats" about Greenland - CBS News US discussing options to acquire Greenland including using military, White House says https://www.skeptic.org.uk/ knowrogan.com

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissanance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any of the end.

topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad? It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. Today is Thursday, January the 8th, 2026. Nostradamus, thank you for being on the show. Appreciate it. I'll tell you what, the best part about all that whole thing was, so if you missed the last week's show, I said, I asked if I had any predictions and I said, yeah, I think boots on the ground in Venezuela. we recorded it Friday, released it on Sunday and Monday, Sunday for patrons, Monday for everyone else.

And by that point, we had already put boots on the ground in Venezuela. And I want to, someone had mentioned this on their Patreon feed and I had had this joke too in my head that I was like going to predict some other things that were going to happen. Like, hey, Trump dies in office.

Sometimes cheeseburgers. Between now and time. In 20206, Trump will die in office, you know, something like that. Right. Yeah. Something like that. But I think, like the sound of it. But I think like what I love about it is, one, it's not terribly specific.

So it's a perfect prediction. Right. It's not terribly specific. It gave myself an entire year. I just got lucky that it happened the day of. But literally, I gave myself an entire year. So like those two things play into conjunction. It's not a very specific one because it's boots on the ground.

And I didn't just say, I did. I did say Venezuela, but I didn't say I said any country. It could be Venezuela. Right. But since I said Venezuela, if it had been another country, it would have also. It would have also been a hit. So there's all these, like, little things that make it. So it's a perfect hit, even though I was ready to 100% miss a bunch of misses.

Right. And I also had a wide, I had a big landing strip, right? A whole year is a long time. I like a landing strip. I know it's popular nowadays. I like a landing strip. Yeah, as long as it's cropped. As long as it is.

I'm not looking for, you know, I'm not a book. I'm not a bush pilot. You gotta go to the barber and get it lined out, right? No, but I just thought for sure. I was like, you know, this is probably something that's going to happen. But I think it's funny that it just so happened that it happened perfectly within line of our release schedule. So funny. And the most terrifying thing is that that's not the most important news this week, right?

It's like we're going to talk about it. But that's not the most important news this week. And I feel like what we need, Tom, is you and I need to start a list that every single every single week we record a show. And you and I make a decision on what the thing we're going to write down that happened this week is. And we keep a journal of 52 weeks

of what actually happened about the year. Because I guarantee you people will forget about the things that happened this week, even though they seem so momentous. So write down one most important story for the week? And then we can have an end of the year wrap up?

End of the year wrap up, where we remember the things that we actually happen. That is wildly optimistic. You're assuming that there will be an end of the year. That will have a year. I love that assumption. I like that assumption. I'm just been rooting for AI the whole time.

I'm just like, man, bring the AI. Drink all my legs. Drink it up. Drink it up with your fucking big long straw. Well, we are about to drink Venezuela's milkshake. Before we get into the things in Venezuela, time, let's really quickly say that we have Michael Marshall at the end of the show. He's going to come on to talk about the show that I do with him,

the No Rogan Experience. We're going to have him at the very end of the show. What do you think about how that all went down other than it being like a violation of international and United States law? I mean, I think it's a fucking complete nightmare. I do. I understand. I want to acknowledge that like Maduro was genuinely an illegitimate leader. He lost the last election. It seems that he has very little support among the actual people. They've lost the election from what I read badly. So he was an illegitimate leader who was maintaining. control of that country, I think, very illegally. Sure. And he was not running it well, right? And so, but like, I also want to acknowledge that we don't care about that in all the other places that had happened. So many places that happens. We don't care about the plight of, you know, Sudan. We're not in Sudan. There's a genocide going on.

250,000 people have been murdered in Sudan. We don't give a shit politically. We don't talk about it. We're not over there. We're not sending troops in. You know, like Haiti has not had a functioning government since Czech's watch. I don't remember, but it's been years. It's been years, right? And it's run by like warlords. It's run by warlords. People are being murdered in the streets. We don't care. The list goes on, right? The Taliban is in control in Afghanistan oppressing this shit out of everybody. We don't care. So we don't care that Maduro was a bad guy. So I think you have to set that entirely aside. You can't care that he was an illegitimate leader. There's lots of illegitimate leaders. You have to set that entirely aside because that's not the reason we do things. And we know it because it's never been

the reason we've done anything. We're not all these other places that are worse than Venezuela in all those, like, objective ways. It's an oil grab. It's just, I just can't see it any other way. It's a straight up oil grab. Well, it's impossible to see it any other way because he literally said it. I mean, he said it out loud. He said, we are there when we're going to start pumping that oil. And great American companies are going to be there to take that oil. He literally said it out loud. It wasn't like he said any of those things that you just said. Right. He didn't say any of that stuff.

He talked about the military for five minutes about how great they were. And then he said, and we're going to start pumping the oil. We're going to start. That's what we're doing. I mean, he literally, like, he was just like, I will play this hand open. Yeah, I know. And like, there's a lot of, I guess the reason I'm saying it is there's a lot of people online who are using these as rationales and justifications.

Oh, well, like, you know, Maduro is an illegitimate leader. He is a terrible guy. Yeah, fucking who cares? that's not the rationale that the government that did this gave to do this. What they did say in the beginning, they gave a bunch of mixed rationales throughout the course of this buildup, one of the things they said is that, oh, you know, like a lot of drugs are coming out of Venezuela.

Well, Venezuela is not a supplier of fentanyl really at all. So the drugs that like they talk about like... The drug you care about. Yeah. So we talk about like people dying. Typically the scourge that people are referring to is the opioid crisis. there is virtually no fentanyl that is moved out of or produced in Venezuela. Venezuela does transport cocaine, which is produced in Colombia in large part, but it does

transport cocaine, but it doesn't transport cocaine in large numbers to the U.S. It actually transports cocaine to Europe primarily. Venezuela is like they're not a drug supplier, they're not a drug producer. They are, they don't affect us from a drug standpoint. We gave that rationale and we started fucking shiard. shooting their boats. We just are there. Like Donald Trump is calling this the Don Roe doctrine, and I think that's actually the real juice of it, right? Is I think he believes in a sphere of influence, old school Monroe doctrine style of diplomacy by force. I think he sees the Americas as American

and ours to control and to own. I think that what this telegraphs to the rest of the world, if you're looking, is that he's going to be perfectly happy seating Eastern Europe to the sphere of influence that is Russia. I think he'll be perfectly happy seating Taiwan to China and I think we'll divide the world into thirds. Yeah, it's a risk board now. Yeah. It's a risk board and we're in the midgame.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's where it's at. I think, you know, there is this facade of power that you have when you do this sort of thing. but the thing is that power doesn't necessarily mean responsibility, right? And you go into a place like this, and it's not like the United States hasn't done this before. I don't think we've ever done it to this particular level, right?

We said it was illegal in the sense that he didn't ask anybody to do it, and he went and did it. And that's something that really is sort of charting brand new territory. We did go down to Panama, but that had congressional approval. It was a full ground. force. It's a very different thing. A couple of other instances that we talk about, but there was always, like, if you're going to talk about Saddam Hussein, well, I mean, Saddam Hussein, that was a war that was going on for a while at that point, and they had plans to go in and go after, and that was also congressionally approved.

There's all these other things, other factors. This is a very different, like, place that we're at right now. And I want to, I want people to recognize, too, that if you are on the side of, you know, I think that there's lot of cult-like thinking going on, which is if the person who you like does a thing, you need to be for it. And if the person doesn't does a thing that, that it doesn't matter if they do it, you don't like it. You won't like the thing. Right. So I try to guard myself against that. Did Donald Trump do a thing that's good? Right. My brain has to go there first and be like, look, I don't fucking, I hate the man with literally every fiber of my being. But did he do a thing that's good. And you've got to try to catch yourself sometimes because you want to shit on the

things he does because you don't like him. But I don't think this is one of those cases. I think this is one of those cases where you look at it and you say, we don't have a great track record of keeping peace anywhere. We go in, we loot places and then we leave it. We're like, fucking throw your hands in the air, walk out the door and throw the poker chips behind your shoulder as you leave and a match and then walk away. And it's just everybody grabbing. the tiny little pieces of power that are left and then it all burns down. And we've seen it happen

not just in one place, it happens all over the place. The other thing that, you know, people, it's insane to me that this is happening is, you know, we talk about, we don't want immigrants here, you don't want to have immigrants here, but if you destabilize countries

on your own continent, like on the continents that we're on, they're going to come through the Darian Gap. Like the thing that you don't want to have happens. It's going to happen. You're going to have those people. come pouring into your country if that country is desabilized. That's a real

bad place for us to be because now those people are just stuck. We've essentially destabilized their country and now they're just stuck. They can't come in because we have these really strict borders. That's really, that's tyrannical and shitty and awful and we shouldn't be acting that way on the world

stage. And like 100% agree. The other thing that if you are only self-interested, this is still a bad idea. And I was thinking about this from a similar perspective as you. What we've seen time and again is that when you create a power vacuum and you destabilize a country that with so far no modern historical exceptions, it creates a petri dish for extremism to flourish every single time. And extremism makes everybody less safe. We are less safe if we allow extremism or create the preconditions for the acceleration of extremism to flourish

in our supposed backyard. This is not how this is done. It also matters what kind of precedence we set. It matters the signals that we send, especially operating on the Great Powers theory, which is a bad theory, but I think is the theory that Trump and Putin and Xi are all operating on.

If you're operating on the Great Powers theory, what you have said is that might make right. You have demonstrated. And so you've said to Putin and you said to Xi like, hey, winky face, go ahead and grab you. your neighbors, man. It's cool. We'll condemn it or whatever, just like you condemn it, but no one's going to step in and change it. And we'll divide the world up how we want to divide the world up. And the great powers will be the great powers. And everybody else can eat our

shit. Stephen Miller, as much as came out and said it out loud. And when I say as much as he said that out loud. So it's not even like a thought I had. It's just the thought I read of Stephen Miller's. So we're getting to a place. And I want to bring this up too, because I'm curious. I felt like a fucking crazy person. Do you remember like a week ago? A week ago. Like about a week ago, there was some kerfuffle that Kiev or Ukraine supposedly sent some drones to strike Putin's house. And that was a little bit of like a scandal.

And I thought like a couple of things real quick. Like one, why is that a scandal? Russia's been trying to kill Zelensky since day one. But like Trump came out and was like, yeah, you can't do that. That's no good. Like you can't target Putin. Yeah, he was like, you absolutely can't, you can't target Putin. That's, that's too much.

That's a bridge too far. It's like, we'll kill all these other people, but this one life over here is far more valuable. But Zelensky is a proper target. And then we go and then we just kidnap the leader of another country. Like, where is the consistency? There's no moral consistency. There's no legal consistency. So what it means is like, hey, the world is now going to be a might,

makes right world. And we don't have to ask the people. When we went to Iraq, the president made a case to the people. Yeah. It was a lie. It was a lie. But at least he went through the motion. Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations and made a case. We just fucking, like Trump straight out lied to Congress. He said, yeah, we're not going to do that. And then, like, the next day, he did it. He, like, literally lied to Congress and then did it anyway. And like, Congress is like, but you lied, but no one's going to hold anybody accountable. He's in power. He's in power.

That's the problem. And I hope, it's my great hope that we see a chain shift at all in any of the legislative bodies that we have that can try to maybe curtail some of his power moving forward. Because I think, like, there's got to be something. I know that we've pushed so much up there that Unitary Executive Theory has created essentially a king. We essentially have a king now. And what we need to do is try to grab some of that power back. I think, you know, every day that there's a new fresh hell, it really is getting in office, somebody getting in office and tearing that power down away from the presidency. They have to come in and they have to say, no, we're not doing this again.

We're going to tear away this power from the presidency and we're going to put it back in other places where it belongs and you're not going to have this kind of power. Because the amount of power that he's wielding now and the way in which his entire administration is acting with impunity and, you know, doing horrible shit. I mean, let's, I mean, you could just roll back to the blowing up of boats that you don't know have any kind of contraband on them at all. Yeah. And you're just blowing them up and then going back to shoot anybody who might be a survivor. I mean, you know, I think Heath said it recently where he said the single tap was already the war crime. And then there's a double tap. That's also a war crime too, right?

So you're doubling up. And it's true, right? Like that first thing that you blew up out of the water was already a war crime. We have somebody in there who doesn't care about war crimes. They don't give a shit about war crimes. I think like, and then there's no teeth to stop him, right? There's nobody out there. What should happen is he gets called before Congress,

and Congress says, you can't do that anymore. We're actually going to get rid of you. You can't do this. We approved you, but we made a mistake. We're going to impeach you and get rid of you. And in a sane time with sane people, that would happen. But what we have is such a fight over power that so many of these people are just so sycophantic to the leader

that they won't do anything about it. And so we're in a really terrible place. You've got to tear away some of that, some of that power from that person. And if you do, I think you would have those splits opening up here and there because there wouldn't be that one leader that they all have to answer to.

There's now a less of a leader and more of a constituency that you have to think about. Yeah, I mean, that would be the return of our democracy. It would be. You know? I know, I'm like, I wouldn't like a wish on a star, but...

I mean, we have one opportunity in about 11 months. Yeah. We have one opportunity in 11 months. And if we do not seize that opportunity in 11 months, we are absolutely fucked. We are, I mean, we're in pretty bad shape as it is. Bad shape already. But we are going to be completely fucking boned. The house is an essential get.

And honestly, if you can get the Senate, I mean, that's very unlikely. But like, if you could get the Senate, fucking get that too. There's never been a time. where it has been more important to have checks and balances because we're not even bothering anymore to check with the balance. Yeah, that's not. You know? Yeah.

We're not even bothering. No, to war. Just peace forever, forever, forever. Decir to the people of the United. No to the war. No, we want a war in the Caribbean and in South America. No. No, no, war.

No, a war. No crazy gar, no No, how's it in English? Please, please, please. Yes, peace. Yes, peace. This story comes in New York Times. Officials dispute federal account of fatal ice encounter in Minnesota.

Federal officials said a woman was trying to kill agents with a car in Minneapolis. City and state officials called that account false, demanding an end to the immigration crackdown. I would say that anybody who watches the video can pretty comfortably call that claim false. Yeah, it's 100% false. I don't say there's an interesting piece in the New York Times where there's a bunch of,

this is one of those lead stories with a bunch of stories tacked on, right? So if you scroll down, you can see dozens of stories that have been written by journalists about very specific aspects of this. And one of them was, I think, had a great tagline, which was, this is a political war shack test.

So when you see it, what do you see? Yeah. And there is a large group of people online that are conservative that think that this was 100% justified because they thought that that person was trying to kill the ICE agent. If you watch the video and they do a great breakdown, I saw a New York Times one today. Yeah. And it was a great breakdown essentially shows it from the beginning well before the car pulls up, the pickup pulls up. If you're unfamiliar with this entire thing, there was a woman who was in the street in her car. she waves past a group of cars.

So one car goes past, and I think it was an ice agent car that went past, and then one just pulled up and stopped, and then wanted a woman to get out of her car. She's kind of halfway in the road, but not completely in the road. She's halfway in there,

and she was waving people past. These ice agents get out of a pickup truck. They start to walk toward her. They say, get the fuck out of the car. They try to grab the door to open it up, and she starts to leave. Now, you can tell she wants no part of this because what she does is she doesn't just pull

forward to flee, she backs up while they're standing there. You can see the wheels turn and then she starts to go. Well, there's an ice agent in front of the car that she's trying to avoid. He tries to stand in front of the car and he moves out at the last second and then he shoots her twice to the passenger window and he kills her. She dies, but she was really just trying to get away from people when she was literally just trying to wave them on. If you watch this and you don't see it as anything other than a state execution, then what you're doing is you're letting the things that that you're letting the sort of loyalty to the party replace your reason. Because it's obvious what happens when you watch the video.

It really is. And it also matters a lot what video you watch. So that same New York Times breakdown did a really good job of showing like, hey, there's another angle of this video that actually contains less visual information, but looks more like that lady is trying to run people over. And that's the video that the administration is certainly. circulating. Yeah.

So if you look at the video that the administration officially is putting out there and saying, this lady is a domestic terrorist, which is what they called her. Domestic terrorists aren't just anybody who defies the cops, by the way. Yeah. That's a whole problem. That is a problem we should all pause and think about and consider and be real fucking worried about. But like, there is purposely showing the video that contains less visual information, is further away, and is at a less clear angle.

When you watch that video, I think you could be forgiven for saying, wow, it looks like he would try that guy almost got run over by the car and he shot. If you look at the clearer video that contains much more visual information at a closer distance at a much better angle. At a higher resolution. At a much higher resolution. Resolution is a real important piece of that time because he gets lost in the car. Right. He's wearing similar clothes and he gets lost in the car.

And you think is he getting run over right now and the way in which he moves? think, oh, did he jump out of the way? Did he jump out of the way? No, when you watch it, he calmly steps over a little bit to the side. She was, if he did not move, he would not have gotten hit. He wouldn't have got hit. And that's the important piece, right? If he didn't move, would he have gotten hit?

No. Yeah. He did not have to move to avoid the car. And also, intent matter, she turned the wheels. Yeah. She wasn't trying to run him over. She was trying to get away. These people were coming at her aggressively.

Yeah. Like, she was afraid. I don't blame her for being afraid. Yeah. I don't blame her for being afraid. I think, you know, there is what you say, when you say, like, you know, they're circulating this video and that's how they're showing this to everybody. The other thing that we have to remember about this is that this is not something that is established case law where somebody is allowed to shoot at you if you're leaving. Like there's established case law that says you should not do these things.

These are bad things. You should not do that. You will lose that case. That's a bad case. And especially ICE is not allowed to do that. because ICE is not, this is not, you know, some high-speed chase bank robber, right, or something like that. Even still, I don't think that you should shoot a bank robber in the face. But at a certain point, if somebody is using their car as a weapon, I understand that, right?

Like they ran into throw cars and they almost hit a cop and whatever and maybe like, you know, in that situation. A car can absolutely be a weapon. A car can be a weapon. I get it. But in this case, the car was trying to go somewhere else. And they have various explicit rules that say, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that. This person was also, Christy Nomad said this person was involved in another scuffle before

and the person who shot was involved in a car problem before with somebody else and they were almost injured. And so they were reacting as what she's saying. And I'm like, that doesn't excuse it. That doesn't excuse it. In fact, that makes you look like an idiot for putting that person back on the street

to do that kind of work. Isn't that a tacit acknowledgement that this person's fucking trigger happy from a traumatic experience? It could also be that. that person is trigger happy. Like if you're saying, hey, this person has had a bad experience before, like, well, then they shouldn't be out doing this work.

You can either be trusted to have a gun or you cannot be trusted to have a gun. It's fucking binary. That is a big fucking deal to say, hey, you know what? You're one of the people who gets to carry around handcuffs and a gun. Yeah, I don't know, man. Why do they have guns anyway? Look, what are you doing that requires a gun? Yeah, well, I mean, they're fucking, they are a domestic federal police force, which we

are not supposed to have. Yeah. Which we have absolutely expanded their mission to include, and really, like, the detention of citizens is perfectly fine. What needs to happen. Perfectly, the Supreme Court said that's perfectly fine. What needs to happen is the next person who comes in needs to do what Donald Trump did to other organizations.

They fucking doge it. Completely disband that organization. And create something else. I'm not saying that you don't need some sort of enforcement agency that does some of those things that they do, but do what they say when they say defund the police, create a system that allows those people not to do all those jobs. Yeah. Right?

So you have actual investigators go to places to do some sorts of things instead of thugs, hired thugs with guns that think the every fucking, every problem is a nail, and I'm a fucking hammer, and my gun is the hammer. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at, look at the way, look at the way that they are recruiting for these jobs. They are recruiting for these jobs by showing people a fucking action movie. Like they are showing people videos and images and like the recruitment for ICE is all based around violence. So we are going to get people who are like, yeah, sign me up for the violence job.

I wouldn't be surprised if they use this shooting video as promotion to get people to join up. Oh, God. Yeah. I don't. Do you want to shoot a woman? Lots of dudes do. I don't think that they would be, it would be a stretch of the imagination for them to have an image of this and just it says F-A-F-O on it. Jesus Christ. Right? I mean, if I put, if I showed you right now, Tom, I wouldn't be surprised.

The DHS Twitter and it said that, would you even, would it even raise an eyebrow? Would you even think anything of it? You would be like, no, that's real. That's 100% real. You wouldn't even think to double check their Twitter. That's distressing. Yeah, I guarantee you that this, I'm not going to guarantee that they're going to use it, but I am. saying that that is not something that they wouldn't do.

Yeah, it's not, it's like, it's like, like, like, some sort of holy ground that they can't stop on. Right. Yeah. It's not like like, like, oh, that would violate our moral principles. The fucking, the, the president literally said she was, like, that was 100% justified. Yeah. Like the president came out. It wasn't just, hey, we're going to look into this. Like a normal president might do. Right. Which is, we're going to look into this. We're going to see what's going on. No, 100% totally justified. We don't care.

we're not going to, we're not even going to address it. Like, that's it. That's it. No, yeah, there will be no federally based investigation of this. Absolutely not. The state is going to try to investigate. They should arrest the shit out of that, too. They should arrest the shit out of that guy. 100%, man.

100%. And it is my, it's my contention that they need to, as soon as possible, make it so that it's, it's a law that these people can't cover their faces up. You got to make it so that. Yes, man. Because this, that is absolutely ridiculous that these people are masked and walking through our communities armed. anybody can pretend they're them

that's all like Timo fucking tactical shit they have on. Anybody can dress like that and drive around in a car and harass people. I'm surprised there isn't more fake ice people. Driving around and assaulting and kidnapping people. I'm surprised that's not a thing. I know.

I know. We are it's it is a there's an irony that is not, that is really upsetting, right? That like seven seconds ago we busted into Venezuela and we're like, you're an illegitimate leader. You're ruling this country by force.

We have to take you out of here. Right? At the same exact time that we've got a guy who has joked about running a third term, who has expanded and created an illegal federal police force to essentially do whatever he wants, that he excuses any act of violence and aggression against citizens in this country, who's tried to use our army against our own states and cities. And we're like, when it's our banana republic, then the bananas taste better. Yeah. Well, I hope that people get out and protests and do the things that, because there's a bunch of protests that popped up.

Yeah. And there'll be more coming soon to go protest and do vigils for Renee Good. And I can't, I hope that that happens. Because I think, like, don't forget this. This is the problem, right? this is the problem with so much flooding of the zone is that next week it could be a totally different thing that we're now fighting for. And, you know, it's like, like, you got to keep remembering all these things. You got to remember all these things happened. And it's an absolute

tragedy that happened and it's despicable and it's disgusting. And I hope, you know, I just wish that there was some comeuppance. Something happened to these people. There's something bad that happens to Christy Gnome because of this, that she loses, like, the worst she's going to lose her job. but that's what I would love to see happen, is that she loses her jobs. I am very deeply afraid that this will not even be a scandal. It won't even be a scandal. Won't even be a scandal. And then remember this.

The imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks. It leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. This story is from CNBC.

the Pentagon to cut Senator Mark Kelly's military retirement pay over seditious video. His seditious video was a video where he said, hey, if an order's illegal, you don't have to follow it. Which is part of the military's training. Every single person gets that train.

It's like... It's not sedition. It's like in the handbook. It's like in a fucking motivational poster in their fucking office. There's a cat that says to a branch that it's not going to take. And like it's not even that... Hang in there. in there, baby. You don't have to take the legal order.

And the thing is, like, it's not even that you don't have to. You can't. Yeah. One of the things that they train you on is that if an order is illegal and you follow that order, you can be personally liable for following an illegal order. That's why they train you on it.

Like, if you didn't have that, then you have the just following orders Nuremberg defense. That's the alternative, right? But, like, look at what we're trying to build. We are trying to say, hey, if we tell people that they are ethically and legally required to disobey an unlawful order, if we reinforce that message, then how can we be Nazis? How can we actually be Nazis?

What I think is disgusting is how much they're using the levers of government to punish people and finding creative ways in which to do it. I say, you know, like this is fire with fire stuff. If there's ever a moment you're there, you've got to do the same thing to Hagseth. You've got to take away his pension or whatever he has. Yeah. Strip him of everything he's ever done. Like remove all of his rank.

Court marshal him. Call him back into service and court martial. Whatever. Whatever you got to do. Get rid of him. Like I would genuinely put him through every ringer he put Mark Kelly through. I would do the same thing. This is a guy who's a fucking astronaut. This is a guy who's like a fucking, he's been involved in combat stuff. this is not just some asshole.

This is a, if, like, it's such a lie. All these people claimed like, like worship at the feet of the fucking military. And the thing is, is that they will only do so when it means something to them. They will only look up to those people when they can give them something,

which is, you know, and sometimes that thing is, it can make them feel like they're special, right? They're on our side. The military's on our side. So that makes them feel, like they're the ones who are controlling the military and they're the ones who the military respects because they respect them. There's a two-way street there. But if there's ever a military person that

stands up and says no, immediately they're ostracized and they're attacked by that other side. It's like you don't have unconditional love for the military. Your love is very conditional for the military. Yeah, right. And that's a, that's a big red flag that you wish the military would pay more attention to. You wish the people in the military would pay more attention to. Absolutely. The people in the, the, the people in the, the, the people in the military. It's so funny, I know we talked about this before, but it's, it's so funny that, like, the people that are actually in the military are living in a socialist environment, an entirely left-wing socialist environment, right? Where they are provided with free housing, where they are

provided with free health care, where they are provided with free jobs. Like, all of these things are centralized and providing, it is entire, being in the military is an entirely socialist activity. And yet, seem to be really aggressively buying into the propaganda that, like, they should live a socialist life and take a bullet to defend capitalism or shoot a bullet to defend capitalism, whichever one, maybe both, who knows? The idea that, like, somebody like Senator Mark Kelly coming out and making a video, they knew they couldn't get Mark Kelly on, like, they couldn't get them in front of a military tribunal. They would lose.

They couldn't. So they're just going to be like, well, it just hurts you financially because we have an administrative lever that has no checks and balances. And like, this is part of the problem of building an honor system-based government. When the people who are running it have no honor, they'll rip into and just destroy everybody. Absolutely. And they've proven time and time again that anything that is a handshake deal, like they've got a joy buzzer on.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to tell you fascists, you may be surprised. People in this world are getting organized. You're bound to lose. You fascist found a loose Hold on you fascist bound to lose Yes From the BBC

U.S. discussing options to acquire Greenland Including using the military Says the White House You know what's interesting is I was directed to the conservative section of Reddit because of a post

and I went to look at some of the things that they were talking about Greenland and they were laughing about how there's no way the United States is ever going to, we're never going to take Greenland. That's just, it's just bullshit. It's just bullshit.

And you guys ate it up. Your suckers, your idiots, if you believe that this is the case. And they're laughing about it. And they're saying, oh, look at all these bots coming in here to talk about Greenland.

It's ridiculous, et cetera. We're never going to put boots on the ground in there, et cetera. I am curious what's going to happen if that ever changes, right? Because like, the thing is that the narrative for them doesn't matter if they're wrong, right? Because they'll just change their narrative.

Yep. They'll just see a different, they'll see a different, If Trump tells them this was always a good thing for us to do, they'll just do it. They'll just believe it. It's a complete lack of critical thinking on their part, any kind of independent thought whatsoever. It's all this sort of group think. And it's hilarious because it's one of the things that they claim happens on the left.

They're like, oh, you lefties, you're all just a group think group. And it's like, dude, we can't even agree on what fucking pizza at order. Oh, I know. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Like, you get fucking 11 lefties in the room and you try to order pizza. Two of them are dead. Two of them are dead. Two of them are dead and we have 13 pizza.

Yeah. Which is great because I need two full pieces. And six of them are vegan. And I need two full pizzas. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny because like they're, they're, genuinely there's a lot of group think that they just get stuck in this, in this mode where they,

no matter what happens and you got to stop yourself. I mean, there's been plenty of times that I stop myself and be like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? And it's a person who's leading me. Yeah. And it's like, dude, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? That's bad.

There's never any room for dissent whatsoever. That tells you all you need to know about your side. It does. Like, it's also, think about this too and what this means. When you go check that phase out and all these people are like, ah, you're believing that shit. It's not. We should be able to believe what the leaders say.

I know. I said out loud. The idea that we are now living in a world that we accept where the leaders of this country sometimes say true things. and sometimes say untrue things and it's up to us to try to figure out when they're lying and when they're like just trolling all of the world

like that is an entirely insane thing to normalize. We should not normalize lying to people. What a crazy defense that is. If that were true, even if you just take that on its face, well sometimes the president just makes shit up and lies to the international community. What are you talking about?

That should be a big problem. It really should. be a bigger problem than you're treating it. That's for sure. What? Yeah. And I, and here's the thing. I don't think he's lying about it. No. I think all indications, and this is the thing, we've said it from the beginning, you should fucking believe what Trump

says, because most of the time, that's the thing he does. He's not that fucking clever. I want to read a little bit from this article. Because I actually am a little worried, we're going to try to fucking take Greenland. The White House sold the BBC that acquiring Greenland, a semi-autonomous region of fellow NATO member Denmark was a national security

priority. The statement came hours after European leaders issued a joint statement rallying behind Denmark, which has been pushing back against Trump's ambitions for the Arctic island. Trump repeated that the U.S. needed Greenland for security reasons over the weekend, prompting the Danish prime minister to warn that any attack by the U.S. to spell the end of NATO. The White House said on Tuesday, the president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal and, of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the U. the commander in chief's disposal. NATO, like, you can't attack a NATO country, man. We're part of NATO. What happens? Does Europe, the way the NATO charter reads, as I understand it, is that Europe would

be required to respond militarily. Would we go to war with Europe, or would we simply tear NATO in half and not have NATO anymore? And then what? We have Greenland, who doesn't want to be a part of America and we have to occupy it by force and it becomes, I don't know, a territory. Like, how would any of this work? Why would any of this work? Yeah. And the thing is, it's a joke to them. Right? This is a joke. Stephen Miller's wife, there's a story here. Oh my God, I know. About Stephen Miller's wife. First off, you married fucking Stephen Miller. Like, that already to me says you're probably not worth a lot, right? Like, you made a lot of real bad decisions and it was just a,

a single decision, right? But like genuinely, but anyway, I can't find the image now because the CVS changed the link. But basically the image was of Stephen Miller's wife's social media with the American flag sort of overlaid over the Greenland area. And it said soon. And it said soon on it. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, that's not funny.

It's not funny, man. That's not funny. That's not a joke. That's us saying we're going to start taking over parts of the globe. Yeah. I genuinely wonder what happens if we do go to war with them. Because what happens to us economically? Dude, economically, it could literally turn this country into a fucking wasteland.

Yeah. Who is going to want to send their child or sign up for the or lose their husband in a war for Greenland? Who wants that? Yeah. Like who wants people to die in order for America. to get Greenland. Well, nobody wants any of this. I am very afraid

that the capture of Maduro in Venezuela, and then when Trump was asked, who's going to be running Venezuela? He said, we are. Yeah. He said, we're running it. Yeah, and then later, the rest of the cabinet's like, well, no,

what we already meant was. Yeah. But like, stop that. Yeah. Stop doing that. I think there's a very real chance that we are going to acquire Greenland by hook or by crook. I hope it's, I hope we buy it. At this point, I hope that we force somehow Denmark to sell us Greenland.

I don't know how that would work. I don't think they want to sell it. They've said they don't want to. They said they fucking stop. Please respect our territorial integrity. I hope because I don't want it to come down to blood. That's what I'm afraid of. I don't want it to come to blood.

I can't see it going any other way, though. I really can't. I can't see it going any other way. And to be honest, selling it to him gets him his way. And that's the problem is that that then shows the rest of the rest of the to the world that all you have to do is threaten something enough and people will capitulate. I feel like at a certain point people have to stop doing this because it's showing. That's why the fucking FIFA guys gave him his own fucking peace prize.

I know. I know. That's why these people come over with these big gifts for him and he fucking immediately wants to fall in line and do whatever they want. It could be that they gift him Greenland so that he does something for them. It's a possibility. But that gives him what he wants through threats. That's a terrible thing to, that's a precedent that we don't want to set.

I know. I hate all of this. I, you know, like, I will say, like, the other side of the equation is like he's a doddering old man who doesn't seem to fucking have his brain together and he's got the nuclear football. Yeah. And I am afraid. Sure.

Like, I am legitimately existentially afraid at this point of what next. What next? I would not be surprised if he finished up 2028 and Greenland was a territory. I don't even know what to say, man. I don't think he's bluffing. I think we need to stop this thing where we decide he's just fucking kidding. Yeah, we're just kidding or whatever. You know, stop.

And there's nobody in the room is ever going to talk him out of it. I know. Not a single person. No. Now they're, now they're supporting it. Yeah. Now they're posting on their social media. We are joined by Michael Marshall from Skeptics of the K and co-hosts of the No Rogan experience.

Welcome to back to the show, Michael. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Always a pleasure to speak to you guys. And Tom, always nice to catch. up, Cecil, we speak all the time on our other show, but Tom, it's always over the chat with you. Oh, CISO, CISO, yeah. It's so good

to see you, Marsh, it is. It's always, I wasn't able to see you at QED this year. I know Cicel, you were able to go there. I heard it was an amazing success, like everything to do. So, yeah, it was so much fun. And you were missed. It's always, it's a shame that you couldn't come across. I know that you've been in the past and enjoyed it. And yeah, you'd have been very welcome there. But what a fun weekend that was. That's great.

Hey, so you guys have been like living on a steady diet of red pills through Joe Rogan now for, and I'm wondering like, besides the like obvious belly distension, like how was it? Like what was your 2025 spent with Joe Rogan really like? How moved were you by the arguments, by the way? Like your political shift. Did the Overton window significantly moved? What was 2025 like? What was this experience like for you guys? Yeah, I mean, the Overton window shifted, but not for us. We were watching it shift for Joe. We could just see that slide. And honestly, the thing that's really surprised me, having spent a year with Cecil doing the Rogan show, is watching Joe get more religious as well. That's been the most surprising thing, certainly in the last couple of months

of the shows that we were doing. Because he was pretty atheist to begin with. He certainly wasn't like a fan of the Bible. But the more we've listened, and especially the more we've listened to recent ones, he is heading in a religious direction. And I don't know if that's just because he's getting old, or because the people he's associating with are religious.

And so that's kind of rubbing off because he's so impressionable. But that was a surprise to me watching this guy who, like, prided himself on being this alpha male, edgy kind of guy, just become more and more of a fan of the old book there. That was, didn't see that coming. How about you, Cecil? I had a, I certainly had a sort of revelation, I think, mid-year where I realized that Joe is, I think, really susceptible and takes a lot of damage emotionally when somebody thinks he's an immoral person. And I think a lot of the things that he does reflect this. He will dig his heels in

to show you he's not a bad person. And the language that he uses very specifically when he talks about how people criticize him are in that sort of moral category. So he'll say, you're a bad person if you're an antivaxor. They'll call you something terrible like being an anti-vactor. He will use that kind of language because I think it genuinely hurts him because he thinks that he's a moral person and he wouldn't try to hurt anybody. And when people say, hey, man, you're essentially going to hurt people if you have Suzanne Humphreys on your show and she's going to basically say there's no safe vaccines. That's hurting people. And he will dig his heels in and have another anti-vactor next week with another, you know, corner case.

weird scenario. Lots of times the studies are even completely wrong that they're using, but it doesn't matter to Joe because it's proving his point. It's sort of he's moral, he's taking moral damage and then using confirmation bias to somehow make it seem like he's not as, like, in his way, as bad as the people who are calling him a, like a bad person or an anti-racistur. I think that's a really, really astute observation because I think the other thing is, like, he absolutely does want to be a nice person. He wants to be seen. He wants to be seen. is a nice person. He wants to be seen as someone who is like collegiate, who is someone who is moral, who upholds ethical standards, things like that. But he also isn't willing to do the things

that would be required in order to be moral. So in one conversation, he'll be expressing some pretty good values when he's talking to Bernie Sanders or someone like that. He'll understand how hard it is for people who are on the breadline and how hard it is for people who are even in other countries whose lives are being completely fucked up by kind of political things that are going on and why they would want to move to somewhere for a better life. He'll understand all of that. And then he won't in any way follow that through to and therefore we should be doing something to help those people. He's just, this is a bad situation. And I'd understand why people would want out of that, but won't actually do anything himself or will actively stop other people

from doing things that would make those people's lives better. So it's, it's moral, but with zero follow through at all. So I, that brings me one of the things I wanted to talk to you guys about was like my impression, and tell me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that early Joe Rogan had a wider diversity of guests with different, more diverse viewpoints. And that over the last few years, it seems like that funnel has begun to narrow. And I do get the same impression that you do that Joe Rogan doesn't really have much of a backbone, right? Like whoever is sitting in front of him, that's the opinion he also holds today. Thank you. I've always agreed. We've always been at war with Oceana, right?

Like it's, but like, and then the next guy. But I'm curious if you feel like he's really a just asking questions guy, or if over time he's intentionally beginning to narrow the funnel using his guest choices further and further right. I don't think it's intentional, but I think he's absolutely doing that. I think he is, he's a product of his own radicalization engine in many, when he was. I think early on, and we've listened to some of the early, shows, not like the super super early ones, but we've kind of dipped into the back catalog. And I think

Wali would have had a wider range of views, that would have been because he was talking to these people for other reasons. So he's talking to a comedian, and that comedian might come from a range of kind of perspectives on things. Now he'll have on comedians and actors, but when he has on people who are politicians, they're more likely to be right-wing politicians. When he has people on who are going to talk about science, they're more likely to come from an extremist pseudoscience point of you. And I think that has been possibly even a fairly gradual shift that he hasn't realized is happening. I don't think he's thinking, and over the next month, I will have 15 guests who talk about pseudoscience stuff so I can try and lead my audience in that way. I think it's about

who he's associating with and where he gets his information from. He sees people on Twitter that he thinks are making some good points and he wants to get them on the show. And the reason he's seen those people is because he's built this engine to serve him outrage and conspiracy theory and pseudoscience. And that's why he's finding new people. As far as he's concerned, he's still just finding new people and pulling him on the shore as he always has. There's a person who's interesting. Get him on the show. That's what I've always done. But he hasn't recognized that he's built this structure to, like he's built the funnel blindly, essentially. This funnel is happening, but he's being funneled along with everybody else through his guest recommendations. That's wild,

To get swept up in your own fucking funnel? Well, if you think about it, the Overton window shifts, but then Joe Rogan is part of that Overton window. Yeah. And so he's stuck. He has to take things from the window. Right. So he can't go to another drive-up.

He's got to get it from this window. And if he, and Twitter itself has shifted to the right, right? Twitter itself has already shifted. So when you think about it, you're like, of course he's going to be, continue getting more right-leaning people than left. leading people. And I think too, as he gets more of a reputation for being a right-ling person, there's going to

be less left-leaning people willing to go on his show because they're going to say, well, I don't want to validate some guy who's out there to who's basically shitting on everything I believe in. Every week I'm not there. Right. Why would I give that guy props? Why would I send any of people who

follow me to that person? I also think location might have something to do with it. He moved to studio to San Antonio. And I don't know if that from L.A. to San Antonio changed the guest profiles and the spectrum of guests that he could possibly get. And now he's stuck with the comedians that are performing at the mothership, fighters that, you know, are nearby and then a bunch of people that are sort of on

rotation that live there. And then once in a while, he'll get somebody else to come in. That is a different, you know, a different sort of person. But often on the Joe Rogan subreddit, which I do lurk on, there's so many complaints that he has the same. guest rotation constantly. I mean, most of the people are, you know, the same 10 comedians. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, we spotted he had that, he had, um, Derek from more plates, more dates on. Oh, yeah.

In the first week of December every year for like the last four years or something like that. So that guy must just have some kind of like Thanksgiving holiday or something that he does and happens to bring him close to Rogan and he pops by and pimps his wears while he's there. I love that it's around Thanksgiving time because I immediately think of dinner plates instead of, you know, I'm like, yeah, I am definitely more plates at Thanksgiving. I am more plates on more dates. Like, let's, absolutely. Get that calendar out and feed me twice, motherfucker.

More plates on more dates. Yeah. I just go to my restaurants. I thought it was just restaurant advice. Amazing. I wonder what you guys think of this too. I was thinking about Joe Rogan and like, you know, I think, and he reminds me of some people that I know that just, they just enjoy a good conspiracy theory. Like, I think they just enjoy it and they see it as harmless.

And now we have a book right here. I was just looking at it right now. Which strongly suggests that it is not harmless. But where does that book, by the way? What's it called? The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit. Where would I buy that book? It's still on Amazon.

Can you get an audio book of that? You can. But I don't know. I don't know if Ian's still maintaining this. Ian, I'll let us know if you can get an audio book of that. You might be able to on our website. I don't know. It's possible.

I have got it on the shelf behind me as well. I can get my copy out if you. Why does it look so unread? That's right. It isn't even cracked. It's cracked in places. It's cracked in places. Well, like, you know, I think there are some people that just enjoy a good story.

And I do get a feeling that, like, Joe Rogan, at least many years ago, felt like a guy who just enjoyed a good story. You know, like, he was a guy who wanted to, like, turn on ancient aliens. and like it didn't really matter if it was capital T true because it was fun. And I'm wondering, does that necessarily, does sort of following that rabbit hole shift us rightward necessarily? Because I feel like it does. I think it does when the current administration embraces conspiracy. And so the problem is, is that conspiracy used to be a, there used to be a pretty strong line between conspiracy thought and normal, rational, everyday person. going out in the world thought. And that included politics. That line is so much more blurred now,

possibly because of social media, possibly because of the internet, access to, you know, weirder information on the regular. But I think the real issue is, is that now those things are being used by political parties. Right. And most conspiracies now are sort of embroiled in politics. So you think about some of the conspiracies we covered this week on this week's show, like one of them happens to be the, the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania. There's conspiracies around his house and how he kept it and how he was able to get close to Trump and shoot him, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's conspiracies around Epstein. And that's also embroiled in politics. So I think like a lot of this stuff has to do

with politics now because the current group that's in power really embraces conspiracy as a way to help influence people. Sure. Yeah. I mean, even that conversation that happened in the show, that's with J.D. Vance, as Vance was running for vice president, it's like two weeks or a week before the election. And I think partly, you're right that Joe is just a guy who likes conspiracy theories. He likes a good story. He likes that kind of thing. And I think the thing is he's had a long time where it's been very well known that that's what his biases are towards. And in that time, not only has his reputation for that grown, but also the size and impact and weight of his platform has grown. And so you've got people who will recognize, if I can sell this

guy a good conspiracy narrative around the talking point I want him to ingest, he's going to take it on board and he's going to keep repeating it to people as well. So I think even on that show with Vance, Vance is indulging in conspiracy theory in it. Vance is actually bringing up conspiracy theories and joining in on those with Joe. And I think that's because he knows that's how you get Joe completely on board, as if he wasn't already completely on board with Vance by that point. But yeah, so I think people recognize here is the biggest podcast platform in the world, run by a guy who wants to hear conspiracy theory. So if I give him a juicy enough conspiracy theory,

I'm getting on there, I'm getting under his skin, I'm going to change the way he thinks and what facts he accepts are true and what he spreads around to his audience. It's just a massive vector for misinformation when you recognize there's such flaws in his kind of filters like that. So do me a favor, guys, speculate wildly for me. How much of Joe Rogan's guest list and shift

and ideology is really, like, intentional. And how much of it is, to your point, like you were just talking about, how much of it is he's just a useful idiot? And people see him as a, like a big human bullhorn. 95% is, it's just how it is, basically. It's just how it is. It's not deliberate.

The 5% of deliberate is when we covered Trump going on there, where it was really clear that Rogan was pushing a different narrative to what he actually had. I was thinking about that, yeah. Yeah, like, Rogan. went into that conversation fully on board with Trump, wanting to pretend that he wasn't so that he could see himself, he could portray himself being swayed by what a great and powerful orator and storyteller

and things that Trump was. And when you watch the actual episode, Trump is a shambles in it and Rogan is doing so much cover of him. That was deliberate. I think there's an element of that with Vance too. But most of the rest of it, I think is him just being a useful idiot. And that's why he ends up repeating Vladimir Putin's propaganda at times, because he doesn't need to be paid to parrot Russian propaganda like Tim Poulas.

He'll do it willingly if you feed him it the right way. Yeah, if you give him the right story, he will do it himself. I think the useful idiot part is really important when we talk about the billionaires that manipulate him. Because there's so many very rich people that come on his show and then they manipulate things that they're involved in to try to sort of change the populist opinion about the things that they're involved in. CFPB with Mark Andresen, terms of service when it comes to Mark Zuckerberg, how Twitter's changing the world when it comes to Elon Musk.

These are all really rich people that are talking about these giant platforms and things that they have and ways in which to manipulate the market and manipulate us and take money away from us. And they come on with very slick stories to convince Rogan and Rogan has no... He's not a good interrogator,

so he has no idea how to navigate those waters. So he gets bold over and he just gets immediately caught by stories, right? These stories, Mark Andreessen is a perfect example because all he had to do is tell a couple stories about how somebody's getting fucked over and leave out really important pieces of those stories. And Joe is 100% on board.

Joe is ready to pass the blunt to be like, whoa, man, that's crazy. Do you think it's possible for there to be a version of a Joe Rogan that emerges that isn't ideologically right, wing and aligned with these billionaire interests. Because I'll tip my hand. I don't. I don't think that it's possible.

But I'm curious what you think. You mean for Rogan himself or someone to come along and be a Rogan-like character that has the same kind of influence, the same kind of reach? Because I'm trying to ask questions and not just do my own thing. But like it occurs to me that like part of the problem here is that in order to become as powerful, have the kind of reach that he has, there's a certain amount of like capitulation to these powers and sort of like, you know, agreeing to platform.

And these guys are the ones with the money. So, you know, if I want money myself and I align myself with the moneyed interests and all the moneyed interests are these right-wing billionaire technocratic oligarchs, is there a possibility to have the same kind of influence? that isn't right wing? And does that like mean that the entire space at that level

is necessarily poisoned? Yeah, it's interesting. Instinctively, I think I agree with you. But then I find myself, I gave myself pause because we don't have to go that far back before Rogan and the biggest media figures

who had a huge amount of autonomy and a huge amount of power were people like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen, things like that, you know, people in that kind of space who were on the, on the left-hand side of the aisle, but had a huge amount of sway. Like, Oprah's Book Club could make or break a book, and she very clearly was coming from a more

liberal perspective. That has shifted as the media landscape has shifted. I think right now, I can't see a way that you could be on the left of centre and have that kind of power under the current media landscape. Now, if this was to carry on forever, if there was a stasis in terms of how the media was structured, then I don't see a way forward. I just would be, I'd have some reservations about saying it'll never happen because I think the media is always going to shift and we don't know what the next kind of shift in the funding structure and the shift in the kind of the power structures are. But under the current power structures, absolutely not. And that's because nobody in charge of those platforms has any impetus, has any reason to do anything around controlling misinformation. So of course, the worst misinformation is going to flourish and the worst misinformation is always going to lean more towards a further right way.

wing perspective because you don't really give a shit about hurting people on the right. You don't give a shit who you hurt. And that's not true of the left. So I think right now, the current systems we have optimized for right wing outrage. I think we'd have to change those systems before we could redress the balance. You have to change the media itself. And I think that's why every day I've been uploading the communist manifesto to AI. And so my hope is that eventually the next form of media, which is going to be AI media, that will take over. And it'll be all. But all you got back was car marks in a bikini So it didn't really help anybody at all

Hot by the way Hot. And we allowed to So obviously there's a little side track on that The range of horrible people Using Grok to deep fake women Who put their pictures online into bikinis Is absolutely abhorrent

And it's all Elon Musk's fault Is it moral for us to set up a bot That would automatically share any Elon Like have any Elon Musk image on Twitter Responded to Grok saying Put him in a bikini Like, could we just have every single Elon Musk image photoshopped into a bikini automatically buy his machine

until he stops that machine doing it? That would be amazing. I don't know. I think so. Yeah, it's a fight fire with more fire morality. There's got to be something in there, right? Yeah, I love the idea of like, well, we got to do something to clean up grok.

Like, man, all I need is one pair. We just have to get him to switch it off. I just need one pair of wire cutters. I know, man. That's all I need. Just give me one pair of wire cutters. And I'll go after Elon Musk with him. I'll leave his computer alone.

just take him apart with wire cutters. Which wire do you cut in Elon Musk first? That's the question. You know, like fucking... The ketamine support line. Yeah. Well, there's no point taking it south of the border because he's already done all the damage

in procreation that he's going to do. I mean, half of America is now populated by Muskbots. So I don't think the same we can do by giving him an involuntary vasectomy. Final question. What are you guys looking forward to most for 2026 for No Rogan? I think the break There's going to be a break in July

I thought that was a softball There was this long pause man We do a break in July We do season So we have a break in July Is it exhausting? Is this show just Is it emotionally exhausting for me?

I get up I get up on Monday morning Normally I start everything on Monday And that show doesn't leave my hands Until It would be late Friday afternoon. So it's a full week-long process before that show is released. And often, sometimes depending on the research that has to be done, it can be a full week and a half before the show is released.

So there's a lot that goes into it. Each episode is dozens of hours of work. And not just by me, by both of us, right? So it's not like, it's not like I just put in a, like, we both put in an intense amount of work into the show. And the problem is, is that there's never really any moment where you're like, man, this is really good, this is really good podcasting. It's never really good. Like, I haven't run into any show. I'm talking about Joe's show. Oh, oh, Joe's show.

Listen to it. Oh, right. Yeah. This isn't good podcasting. It's bad. Like, I don't, it's rare. Once in a great while, I may smile. Like, that's the best it can do.

And it's, and so it's like, imagine if you have to just sit down every week. And I, and kudos to the God, a whole movie guys, because they do it every week. They sit down and they watch really bad cinema. but once in a while, I've been on that show three or four times, been like, I didn't really hate this movie. I'm like, oh, my God, it's okay. It's fine. Like, there's never a moment.

I'm like, I didn't hate this episode. And most of those I'm like, I hate this episode. I need a carous on it. So I think, I think that's true. I think what I would say, what I am looking forward, I do find it is a tricky thing to do to sit and listen to quite so much Rogan and to be thinking critically the whole time and also like in this kind of analytical way of like, well, that last minute or so was what they said,

did it pass a threshold of being working, worthwhile including, and how can we look at this episode and see what the storyline of this episode is? We can't cover every single thing that they say. So where's the beats? Where's the storyline? That can be quite exhausting. But what I am looking forward to is the moments that we've had over the last year, where we can piece together what's been happening in the most influential media space, one of the most influential alternative media spaces in the world. You can see the dots being joined. You can see when people go on and use this in order to smuggling narratives about government efficiency in order to cut funding here and cut spending there and to sort of like take away

the safety nets. And when when you see those moments of the sausage being made and it's like, it's like you're watching, when you get someone quite manipulative on Rogan, it's like you're watching the magic trick being done in front of the child and you just saw them palm the ball and the child can't see it. That's what can happen when we're watching people go on Rogan and use that. And I get excited for those moments. Like I just saw the trick that you're pulling. I just saw the slight of hand that you're doing or I just saw how you're being misleading and manipulative about this fact. Those are the things I'm looking forward to because there will always be those moments where somebody is either pulling the wool over Joe's eyes or Joe was

regurgitating wool that was already pulled over his eyes, if you want to mix my metaphors in that kind of way, from where he's seen it elsewhere. So those are the moments I'm looking forward to over the next series for sure. I think if I'm going to be honest, I think some of the best stuff and the more interesting stuff for me to find out is the origin and the change. sort of the shifting of his thought. And you get an opportunity to see it because he's recording it, right? So for instance, over the break,

I listened to an episode that happened directly after January 6th. So literally the next day, he's recording with someone and they talk about January 6th and the episode itself isn't worth doing on the show because there's not enough to cover. But you can tell that Joe's initial,

the way he feels about it initially is it's a really horrible thing. and we know how he feels about it now because we listen to a recent episode where he basically said they were all FBI actors on January 6th. Jesus Christ. It was FBI that basically kicked it all off.

They were the ones who are essentially to blame for the entire thing. So we know his thought has shifted. Where did that happen? And I think that's the fun part is sort of piecing those together, listening to those shows and finding that moment where Joe says,

oh, I talk to that person and that person convinced him. And we found one or two of those moments this last season. I want to keep doing that, where he changed on COVID. Because he was different on COVID in the very beginning. He was later, how does that work? And so those are the interesting things to sort of see who was the guests that influenced him

and who helped change his mind on these pieces. Would you be on his show? If he found out about your show and said, I'd like you guys to come on. Would you come on? No, I wouldn't go on. No, I don't think so. I think before I was doing this show, I would have been willing, but, yeah, maybe you'd be welcome to.

I think the thing is there's no, there's no version of us going on, that won't be him feeling personally attacked and therefore going on the attack in doing so. And whenever Rogan's in that space where he's needing to be incredibly defensive, especially where, as Cecil mentioned, where he can feel physically wounded by someone thinking he's a bad person, that is not going to be a good space to walk into because he's not going to be open and receptive to criticism in that kind of way. Yeah, but you're really good at it.

You used to have be reasonably skeptical. And that was... Well, the problem is that that very specific show would just have Rogan talking shit. the entire time and Marsh wouldn't jump in and then they'd feel like,

right, yeah. I mean, that's his show. So that's the thing is like, at least with that show would be reasonable,

I wasn't the story. And so I could examine what the, what they were saying. Whereas the problem is if we went on Rogan, we'd be the story. And so we'd have to be

defending ourselves from a attack rather than trying to actually explore things. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I'm not going to say never because it would be great

for our show to go on there. I also wonder too, like if it would be a better way to have it on a neutral ground. Like if he wanted to do it and you did it on a different show where there was some sort of moderator who could shut him up, that would be different. But if it's, if it's where there's a group of people. And I'll tell you right now, if I ever had an opportunity to talk to him, I would try to be as empathetic as possible. Oh yeah. And I think that would, that would be the way in which I would

want to try to communicate with him. Because I don't think he's an awful shitty person. No, I think he has a lot of awful shitty views. Right. But I think there, there is something there because I've seen pieces of him revealed of the 2016 Joe Rogan who seemed mostly fine. Yeah. I mean, yeah, was he edgy and shitty, but so was I. Like, I mean, go back and listen to some of those old cog disses. We were kind of assholes in a lot of ways. So, like, were people more edgy back then?

Yeah, because it was funnier on the internet. Now it's not as funny because there's like a guy in the fucking White House is doing it all. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we saw actually in the last series that he's still capable of that when he talked to Maria Vanzella.

and she was very, very skilled at being positive towards him, rewarding his empathy and sort of leading him into conversations by framing things in a way that emphasized his compassion around stuff. And he was capable of doing that. And there were moments where he still bristle, but he was a different human being when talking to her. So it is possible. But she didn't go in there with him thinking, well, she said all this shit about me and I'm now having myself. That's a big difference with us. That's the tricky thing. different ones.

So that's... One final, final. Who would win in a push-up contest? R. FK Jr. or Joe Rogan? Joe Rogan. 100% Joe Rogan. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan. He's like 15 years younger. Okay, yeah, that's true. He's like, I mean, they're both older, but he's like 15 years younger. And R.K. Jr. can only do like five push-ups. Oh, really? I've seen him...

No, he's ripped out, but he's gassed. He gets gassed way too quick. Because he's, like, on a cocktail of things. I kind of want to fight RFK Jr. I think, yeah. I think he'd take it. It'd be fun. I think you could take it.

It'd be fun. Marsh, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, a pleasure. You let people know where they can find your work. So you can go to noroggan.com to hear the norogan experience. You can go to sceptic.org.com for the magazine that I edit.

And you've got to merge at sceptics.org. com for Skeptych through the K podcast. And across all those spaces, you'll find stuff that I'm doing. And you could find them on citation needed on occasion, too. Yes, you're a frequent, frequent citation needed guests. I just come on to shit on national legends.

National old legends. Check that show out. It was really funny. Marsh, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much, buddy. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us.

And thank you to Michael Marshall of Skeptics with the K, the Skeptic U.K. magazine and the No Rogan experience for joining us. You can find all the links to all his work in the show notes. Big thanks to Marsh. And Marshall will also be joining us

this upcoming Thursday for the last bit of ROS for Vulgarity for Charity. Now, what I really love about this is that we actually got it done. We did, right? Like first year in a long time. Lots of times, we're running into like September. Yeah. We're still doing roast. This time we got through it all. So it's all done. It's all wrapped up in a bow. It's going to be out this Thursday. We're still going to do a funny show around it. But we will have us, a large portion of that is going to be Michael Marshall joining us on our funny show for a roast session. So you're going to want to catch that this upcoming Thursday, and we're going back next Monday. We're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed.

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