Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 897: Cottage Pill Empire and Long Bath Showdown

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

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 topic that makes

the news makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome Matt. Today is Thursday. February the, I'm going to go with 12th. I think it's somewhere around the 12th. Yeah. I'll just, I'm spitballing. I think seven plus five is still 12. Who needs to know. Who knows? We don't, you know what? They're changing educational standards so quick around here. I'm not sure that that's going to be the case. What is common core say? Do you remember when that was the biggest thing? Oh, my God. Can we go back to when we were arguing about how we learned? When Common Core was like the thing, this is the fucking Marxist math that's going to take over the world.

The people who got like fucking so butt hurt because they changed the way their kids learn math. I just want to go back to a time of Common Core and Jade Helm. That's what I want to go back to. Jade Helm! That's what I want to go back to FEMA camps. I want to go back. There's so many like little, like, hilarious moments of our history that we were just like, God, that's so stupid. And then you're like, you come up to today.

And you look at the news and you think, how did we get here? Yeah. So innocent. It was such an innocent time, Cecil. Such an innocent time. I want to go back to when you and I first heard about QAnon and we're like, this shit, this crazy niche, wacky, what is wacky, crazy bullshit. Or when we were watching Sarah Palin introduced Donald Trump.

And we thought, oh, this is so genius. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump. all together. We had just such a great moment. What happened to Sarah Palin? Oh, no. Like, she was like a... Is she dead now? I have no idea. She was like a political thing.

And then she just like disappeared. Did Alaska swallow her up? That's what happens to a lot of vice presidential candidates. That's true, actually. Like genuinely, as soon as you get to be vice president and then you don't go any or run for vice president. After that, it's like, that's it. Is it a gift?

No? I think it is. I mean, think about all the failed vice presidents that you can think of, all the ones that are failed. Like, where'd they go? Sometimes they go back to Congress, right? Or the Senate. So, like, Tim Cain is still in the Senate. He ran with Hillary.

Did he, though? Maybe. Does anybody even remember Tim Cate? I remember when Tim Cade was like, Hillary announced her running mate. And they were like, Tim Cain. And I was like, who? Yeah. And I'm fairly plugged in.

Yeah. So like, I'm not saying, like, if time doesn't know, nobody knows. And I'm not saying that. But I am saying, who? Yeah. It was my first response. For sure, for sure. It was kind of like when Mike Johnson was made the speaker of the house.

You're like, who the fuck is Mike Johnson? And then you get a chance to see all the purity ball videos come right. But I'm trying to think. So it was, it was when Hillary ran, it was Tim Kane. Then when. Well, Mike Pence is nobody now. Mike Pence was on the ballot. it though for the second term with the supposed second term with Trump, but then they failed.

Right. Now, Mike Pence is gone. Yeah. Just gone, gone. He's been swallowed up and he tried to run last time against in the primary and he failed out very quickly in the primary last time around. He's a dead political figure. And then, so it was Biden and Harris.

Right. Harris tried to run. Failed. Do you think that she, I don't think she's going to be the frontrunner coming out. She's not, she's not polling well even now. I think she's done. I think she's done, done. I think with the notable exception of Trump who fucking set that all aside,

I think if you try and fail to win the presidency, you have failed with a big capital F and there's no do over. Yeah. Like America's already said no. Yeah. Very rarely is it like, well, what about with an extra glass of wine? You know? Well, I'll tell you.

Yeah, we're with like a bottle ever clear with Trump's right. Man. We are drinking. We're doing fucking strong. Straight Malort Shooters is where we're at right now. He's like a fucking closing time two. Which is like actually a negative seven. Closing time two.

That is a fucking negative seven. Yeah, it's a negative seven. You're like, you really got to be into it. You got to be deep into it. Like I got to close. I don't want this so much. I have to close my eyes and close your eyes. And if Trump's it, I'll close my eyes forever.

Right. Honey, bring me my blind and stick. All right. This story comes to the New Republic. FEMA can't say, watch out for ice in storm warnings for fear of memes. The emergency disaster agency isn't allowed to give a proper storm warning thanks to ice. And they actually got a memo out that said, don't use the word ice because it will be memed on us. Someone will meme it.

Yeah. And they will send it back to us. So do not say ice when you send out warnings. You need to be like icy weather or something like that. Well, and delightfully and appropriately, that has actually stopped all the memes. Now there's no, that's how successful it was. There's no memes anymore. And there's no news stories about it.

Yeah. What did it say to, hey guys, turns out there's been a little bad press about this. Let's ask FEMA to not tell people when ice is accumulating on. the roads because they're going to point out that ice is accumulating on the roads. Can you can you look at two inches of ice is an inch and a half more than they usually sport. Sorry, man. Oh, gosh. I guess in many ways in wintry weather, ice can kill your wife.

Oh, shit. No, but, but, you know, one of the things that that really makes me insane. about this administration. There's so many things that make me crazy. And really, genuinely, this is a low-level thing. Right.

But it's one of those things that when you hear it, you think, what the fuck is? So they don't have any self-awareness. Oh, no. Not at all. Any time ever, except for when they realize

they're going to be made fun of and then they put the stop to, and then they will not send out a proper message to people. Like, you're going to have to, like, run it through chat, GPT or ask for one of the 35 or 65 Inuit words for ice instead. You've got to pick something else out.

So, yeah, it's just a fucking, it's, but this is the one thing. This is where they're focusing their energy. Yeah, man. Hey, look, we could solve the problem or, you know, we could just like not say the problem. That's their thing. It's like, here's my thing. I don't, here, like, there's a gap for me in my understanding of the world. and I've never been able to bridge it.

And it's now and it's for other issues too. Because like, I can't understand how they don't think of themselves as the bad guys. You know? Like, when I think of like, like, if you think of Star Wars, right, like, they know they're the bad guys, right? Look at Darth Vader.

Nobody's like, that guy seems chill. That guy does not seem chill, right? Like, if you watch, like, Hitler screaming from a balcony, like, you've got to be like, yeah, I'm on the hate side, right? Like I am, we call it the dark side over here. Like, yeah, that guy is fucking fury. The spittle is leaping out of his mouth and raining down upon us. We're the bad guys.

I mean, we kind of know we're the bad guys, right? But we're okay with being, do they think they're the bad guys? I feel like, do they know? I think there should be a magic mirror that you stand in front of. Oh my God, I want this mirror. And it grades your outfit. So if you come in and you are in Timu Body Armor, with a face mask on

covering your identity and it just so happens to be an American flag and you have a helmet on, et cetera, and you stand in front of it. The magic mirror should look at you and say go drown yourself. Yeah, right, yeah, right.

Take a short swim, yeah. Take a long walk off a short fear. I feel that that should be what, there should be a device that allows us to look at ourselves and something objective looks back at us and says, change it. You're the bad guy. Fix something in your life to not be one of these guys.

Like, I'm right there with you. Like, I would love to stand in front of a mirror and be like, mirror, mirror on the wall. Am I a bad guy or what? And then the mirror is like, yeah, man, you suck and here's why. And I'd be like, oh, my God, I didn't even know. Like, you know? Like, because, like, we probably don't know. Like, I'm probably wrong about important things.

And I don't know it. Or I would try to fix those important things. But then when I would see these guys, I'm like, they got to know. They got to know. So I have a business idea, though. You prompted a business idea. Okay. I think we should start a company selling body armor to ice.

Except it doesn't work. It's bad body armor. It looks like good body armor. It is the same weight as good body. Because the thing with body armor is you can't like go out and shoot it to test it as soon as it. It's like a bike helmet, right? If I crash, I'm not allowed to use that helmet anymore. Okay.

I got to go get a new helmet. Yeah, yeah. So you got to hope that the helmet you bought fucking worked. And it wasn't a defective helmet out of the factory. You're not going to know until you crack your beating against something. Sure, sure. We should just sell bad quality, like low quality body armor to ice. Like have it like all branded and ice on it or whatever.

And it's like stuffed with like old Chinese newspapers instead of Kevlar or whatever. It's body armor stuffed with axe body spray. It just so it shoots It blows up Nobody can smell the difference Between a shot Yeah No come on

They don't smell that good No I don't smell a lot No It's like what is the scent of traitor Like is that What is the scent of being a fucking traitor?

I don't know It certainly doesn't smell like Mexican food Because they get kicked out of there Oh my God I watched the video It's at the daytime Where a guy was

They were walking out of a out of a coffee shop or something. And it's all ice guys. And they're getting fucking berated by this group of people. They're getting yelled at. Get the fuck out of here. Get the fucking one dude

runs up this guy's ice coffee. And fucking knocks it out of his pants. And it's fucking splashes everywhere. And he looks at the guy and then he just walks into his car. And I was like, yeah. Fuck you. You get an ice coffee.

Oh, God. But he didn't get his hot spit. Oh, so amazing. He didn't get his hot spit. So amazing. dude's face. Did you see the Saturday night live cold open with ice? Is it the woman?

No, no. It's just this last week. Oh my God, Cecil. It's so fucking funny. It is fucking perfect. I'll have to watch it. It's basically like Tom Holman addressing a bunch of ice guys. And he's like, he's like, hey, you know, like, we're going to do it.

Does anybody have any questions? And like, one of them is like, how come all the food in this town tastes like spit? There's one that's making the rounds that. a Saturday Night Live that's making the rounds. And it's a woman, a mom, who's confessing to her kids that maybe her Trump vote was wrong. Oh my God.

But she's doing it in a very... And she said, I feel like perhaps he doesn't always tell the truth. And then all the kids are like, well, we fucking told you that. And then she's like, I want to fucking confess. Will you leave me alone?

And then they're arguing back and forth. It's so fucking funny. Oh, my God. And it's really well done. because she keeps doing another well I feel like you know it's really funny you should check it out I will check it out very very funny

this this story is from LBC First off let's put it on the big screen that guy 100% looks like he is a drug empire making pills from his cottage tell me tell me if you were to fucking ask 35 AIs to draw you a picture

of a guy who makes pills in a cottage that's not the guy that they would draw I feel like this is the most follow your dreams story I know drink big

man this is elderly lottery winner uses jackpot to build 288 million pound drug empire making pills from his cottage oh gosh

this guy won millions of dollars in a lottery jackpot and was like awesome I'm going to sell pills out of my fucking cottage.

That's what I'm doing. I'm turning my 11 million into 280 million. He could return on investment. It's a great return on investment. He is the danger. That's amazing. This is a guy who just has the

entrepreneurial spirit to put $11 million in lottery ways into a pill empire. Tom. These are the heroes we need. This is what we need. I love his mug shot or whatever this is because he's kind of smirking.

It's like, yeah, whatever. First off, he's like 100. So he looks at he's, yeah, I live my life. It's like Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad and he reaches up with his bloody hand to pat the crystal methinator or whatever it is. I did good work. There we go. So long, everybody. This was all worth it.

I got machine gun to death. But it's fine. This is always how it's going to turn out. The end of Breaking Bad could feasibly be a dream sequence, too. I saw a very compelling argument that it's actually a dream sequence. But then they made that second movie, so it can't be. Because that was a movie? They made a movie afterwards.

You didn't watch the movie? No. Jesse's movie afterwards? No, I didn't know what existed until right now. Go check it out. Jesse's movie. So there's a movie that takes place right after Breaking Bad, and it's Jesse trying to get out of the business and leave. Oh, wow.

And so it's a full hour and a half movie of Pinky's. trying to figure out a way to get out of the, because now he's a criminal, and he's responsible for an empire, and he doesn't have an empire, because it all got taken by the, whatever, he doesn't have any money, whatever. So he's got to figure out a way to get out.

And so it's a whole episode, how to extricate himself. And it's actually really good. I thought it was like a great capstone because the end can be fine with him just driving away crying, right? That's an awesome ending. But it's also, I don't think it ruins it.

I think it's a good capstone. a lot of times if a show has a good ending and they're like, and here's the movie, you're like, there was no need. You just, that's a money grab, you know, not a story continuing. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like that for Serenity, for Firefly.

No, because Serenity didn't have a proper ending. It just got caught off. Yeah. I also felt like for Deadwood, I felt like the movie was necessary too. Although, maybe not, because the, let me take that back. I think I was disappointed when Deadwood ended because I just wanted more Deadwood. Sure.

but when I rewatched it like maybe five, six years ago, maybe a little longer, I was like, no, it's actually bad ending. It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. Okay.

When I watched the movie, I was like, I think we're just kind of going through the characters and being like, hey, everybody gets a cameo. And I'm like, everybody gets a cameo and then like they sort of tell you how things wound up.

You and I disagree on that movie. I liked it. Did you? Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was worth watching. Okay. Mainly because I thought it was worth watching. I just didn't know what it added to the whole.

Yeah, maybe not. But I think, I think in the end, like I wanted another moment with those people. I wanted one more moment with them. I agree with that because I loved that series. Holy shit. Texas Public Radio.

This is a sentence I don't even want to say out loud. Saying the sentence out loud makes me want to throw up. Trump floats Cruz. Ted Cruz guys for Supreme Court. I have to read what he says about Ted Cruz because literally nobody has said these words about Ted Cruz. Quote, he's a brilliant legal. mind. He's a brilliant man. If I nominate him for the United States Supreme Court, I'll get

100% of the vote. The Democrats will vote for him because they want him to get the hell out. And the Republicans will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out too. You're so close. You're so close. God. Could you imagine what, I mean, what a... Ted Cruz for human Supreme Court justice. Can I tell you, though, like, I don't know how heavy those gavels are. But I'm not convinced that he would be able to wield a gavel. I'm not convinced.

God, no. I feel like he'd be like, it's really heavy. Can I get one made on a ball so much? I'll take a 3D printed one that's hollow, please. I'll fill it up with my tears. Clarence, can you bang the gavel for me? And while you're done, can you bang my wife?

Here's my Lisa Simpson impression. It sounds just like my Marge Simpson impression. God, I love, I know it's old as fuck, but sometimes there's like a, like, is that the cringiest thing that will ever be produced? I think so. If you're unfamiliar with what Tom's referring to, is he was being interviewed when he was one of the clown car people

who was involved in the, and I can't say that anymore, clown car primary because the Democrats had a clown car primary recently too. But I think, well, they didn't have one. Well, Biden

the last time they bothered to have one. But they had a clown car primary and he was one of those people and he was on one of these shows. They said, well, we hear you do Simpsons impressions, Mr. Cruz. Can you give us one of your Simpsons professions? He's like, excellent.

And you're like, dude, you just, it's the same voice. He did it. I don't think it did it. There's no change. Excellent. And then they said, can you do a Marge Simpson? He's like, Marge Simpson says this. It's so, it's so fucking gringy, dude.

It doesn't, he literally just says the things they say, but doesn't change his voice. Yes. It's wild. It's just, it's not Simpson's impressions. It's Simpson's quotes. It's quote. He says, just smithers. Blandly offered by Ted Cruz.

Smithers. It's fucking wild. Have a cow, dude. Unbelievable. Unreal. Ted Cruz for Supreme Court. He's never even been a judge. Yeah, I don't, does that matter?

I don't think the rest of them have been judges. Do you think the qualifications matter to Trump? I don't think that they matter at all. Could you imagine, though? So that would be Amy Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch. and then Cruz. So of us, you know, a large voting block would then be nominated by Trump.

And it could be if he could convince them, if like let's say that we don't get a hold of the House at all and the Senate or whatever, he might be able to convince Alito. Yeah. That would be five. But I thought, and correct me where I'm wrong here, I thought both sides were the same

and it didn't matter who you voted for. Should be. Yeah, both sides. Yeah, I thought that was the case. I thought that was the case. I thought both sides. I thought both sides were the same, and it doesn't matter who you vote for, and they're all the same anyway, and they're all a bunch of, no. So maybe it does matter. Maybe actually generationally matters.

If you could, if you were in there, if I were in there, and there was an inkling that I got a hold of the Senate for the next two years after this. Oh. And you get a hold of the Senate before they can run this, run the table on this. And then they have to, let's say Alito, Alito cashes out. Right. Thomas, you know, gets cancer and dies. Oh, say it again, though. Thomas gets cancer and dies.

Oh, gosh, I'm so hard. Asophageal cancer is going forward. Oh, what hurts them most? I don't know. Whatever one is most painful. Yeah, something that is billionaire friends can't buy away. Oh, my God, yes. But in any case, one of those people has a, like has to leave for some reason, maybe death.

Those, then I would do exactly what Mitch McConnell did. I would have 100% say, we're not doing it. We're just going to, we're not going to do it. we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it. We're not going to vote. We're not going to vote. And just keep it open all the whole time.

I would do it the whole two years. I would say the whole two. If it happened a second into me being the speaker of the house or the head of the Senate, I would be like, yeah. Sure. Yeah, that's never happening. 100% not going to happen for a vote. It's going to be the next vote.

It's going to be the next vote. We're going to make sure it's the next vote. Yep. Never going to. It's not on the calendar. Yeah. Put it on my calendar. Did you look at my calendar?

I got to go. And what's crazy is, is the Republicans knew when they did that to Obama. They knew what kind of dynamite stick that is. Yeah. Right? They knew if we don't get out and vote, we're going to lose this seat. Yeah. And they did.

Imagine, imagine, like, a couple of things with Ted Cruz. Like, first of all, as an alien life form, are we even sure how long he'll live? Yeah, he could be a, you say generational. It could be multi-generational. It could, yeah. I mean, this could be. I mean, I assume he's just some sort of protoplasmic mass. I don't know that ages or not.

But as protoplasmic masses go, will he not try to consume his fellow members of the Supreme Court? God damn it, Ted Trump, stop trying to slime over me and absorb me. There's one guy with his foot on his chest. He's got a Lido by the arms and he's trying to pull him out of Ted Cruz. I think that. I was hungry. I didn't like the salad barnet. Yeah, that's also...

Oh, the other thing that you have to understand, too, is Texas, once in a while, has some bad weather and Ted Cruz leaves. Washington, D.C. has bad weather all the time. Maybe he'll just never be right. He's going to be zooming in from Cancun a lot for these core cases. The stories from the Daily Dot. Representative Nancy Mace made aides, upvote her in Reddit. Who's hotter posts?

A former staffer alleges. So Nancy Mays is, I'm going to put it on the screen here so we can look at the things that they're talking about. Evidently Nancy Mace made her staff go find all these Reddit posts. And so there's Reddit posts that'll say female politicians in swimsuits and bikinis. And then Nancy Mace and the Nancy Mace best rack in D.C. What the fuck. And then she made her aides go to their type comments about how hot she was. And fucking updo it.

And then updo it. I just want to say to conservative men, you can find naked women on the internet. You don't need to do this. It's not, you know, imagine like your Nancy Mace, right? And you're like, hey, instead of being like, hey, I really should not be objectified. I'm a serious lawmaker. And instead she's like, hey, if you're going to objectify me, I want to win. What?

She'll mention being in the halls of power, one of the 500 most powers. And you're like, well, I want to make sure they know I'm hot too. I won the wet t-shirt contest. Hey, Nancy, we're not doing that in Congress. Dude, there should be a wet t-shirt contest and no one has, no one can sit out. Nobody. Nobody. I want to see Mitch McConnell

in a wet shirt because I think he'll die. Do you think his moves are black? I just, I don't mean like, I mean like rotting. It was like rotting black is what I mean. That's what you mean.

I don't mean anything racist. I don't mean anything racist. I just hope he's dying. Yes, that's what I mean. I hope that like it's necrotic because that's the thing. Oh gosh. I just,

here's the thing is, in the past, wasn't there a president who gave a speech? beach without a code on and then he died from a cold afterwards. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He gave his inauguration address. I think it was Harrison. There's a, there's a story where we covered in the last week's show about Mitch McConnell and how he's in hospital now. But in that story, they talk about how there's all these people above like 80 years old. There's a bunch of people above 80 years old.

What's your odds that if you did a wet t-shirt contest, those people wouldn't cash out. Dude. I mean, because that's a, at that age, at that age, like high 80s, you're looking at every single staircase as a possible death. Oh, absolutely. This is, I have to go upstairs. I may die today.

That's the kind of thing that you're looking at, you know? Okay, hear me out. A couple of quick things. One, should there be a congressional snow shoveling competition? It has to be for time. Right. I don't know. It's not for upboats.

It's not for upboats. It's for time. Yeah. It's like a cross-fit challenge. Drive way for time. Yeah. Drive way for time. You make it.

You make them to it. Here's the other one that I wanted to show people. Well, real quick. Also, within the Senate right now, do you think they have the fucking thermostat turned way up? Like, I don't feel like. Like, if you walk in, you're just, you're just sweating. You're just like 83 degrees. You're constantly pulling your collar away because you can't stand it.

Right. It's like, like you go visit. Like, I remember going to visit like, I remember going to visit like, elderly relatives and like just because there's circulation or what I'd be like it's fucking like a hundred and seven in here it's a goddamn Finnish sauna in your house and you've got an Afghan on right like I'm like this is 100% at this point that's the Senate that is a hundred percent care you walk you know those kids in school nowadays are bringing blankets with them you know how they're

yeah yeah yeah yeah it's everywhere wait until those Gen Zers or whatever get to be 100 and they're in the Senate they're gonna show them dude they're 30 fucking pelt on them as they walk in. Gen Z, Congress is going to show up and be sworn in wearing crocks. You know, like, just be like, dude, their broccoli hair is going to be all of it. It would be amazing. We're just teasing.

Don't send us an email. I want to say this, though. This one's my favorite. What politician is hotter, Nancy Macer, Lauren Pooper? What I want to have to do is be like, okay, now we're going to have a hand job. Oh, we need to go to different musical. and then play musical chairs. Because you've got to see who's going to win.

You got to see who's going to win. Who's got the technique? Who's going to have to call in the relief jacker? My arm's out. I'm sorry. It's going down. Oh, she's got a cramp. God, it's so funny.

She's going down. That's not allowed. Why on earth would you be, would you turn to anybody and say, we're going to dig to fight this with a second of your attention? Right. How fucking. insanely regressive is this for her to be like, I, rather than being like horrified that like rather than being a serious person with thoughts and opinions and ideas and power,

like instead of like being like horrified that that's where we have stooped to and being like, fucking take this shit down. Like we're not going to dignify this. Instead she's like, well, I want to win. I want to be the hot one. I don't have to lower it over. I wonder if you would, if you just see it and you're just so competitive. you've got to win everything.

Okay, now I can feel that. Like, I can feel that. Like, I take it all back because there is a part of me that would be like, but there's a competition. And I'm in it. I want to win. I can't know. Win it.

I mean, I don't want to enter it. But if I'm entered, it's from Politico. This is a little piece of good news. Portugal's conservatives back left-wing candidate to avoid a far-right president. Center-right leaders are taking pains to publicly reject the ultra-nationalist contender ahead of the country's February 8th vote. This is the way.

It'll never happen. I know, but when you read this, you think, oh, is that strategic voting? Yeah, right. But like, this is... What is happening? I know we could strategically vote for... You had to...

We had an option. Yeah. Vote for fascism or strategically vote out of fascism. And we were like, we were that guy with the beads of sweat looking at two buttons. Yeah. Yeah.

And we didn't press either button so nobody wins, right? Yeah. If you don't choose a button, you still lose. It turns out. Choice is still going to be made. Turns out you still lose. And it's funny because I see this sort of thing happening today in a lot of other mentions of the what's happening in our current government.

So for instance, you know, ICE funding or something else will happen. And there'll be a small select group of Democrats that joined with the, and then they'll be like, fuck the Democrats. And you say, well, those are individuals in purple states or purple areas that made very specific decisions on this stuff. Should you get rid of them? Yeah, absolutely. You should.

Absolutely. Yeah. But to say, fuck the Democrats, that's astroturfing by the right to say, don't ever listen to anything that Democrats are saying. Look, here's the thing, man. if another party came along and was able to oust the Democrats as the far left

and then also take with them the presidency time and time. Fucking, I'm with you. I'll 100% abandon in a second because I think the Democrats are centrist for the most part. I really do think most of them are centrist. I think on occasion you get one or two of them that's far the left but most of them are pretty center.

I'd love to see a left. But what I saw last time was this isn't good enough for me from certain people, said, I don't think that Kamala Harris is good enough for me. That's fine, right, for you to say that. Sure, yeah, right. But then to not do anything afterwards,

and then we're still stuck in the exact same two-party system now, two years into, a year into this presidency, probably all the way until the midterms, right? There's not going to be some sort of magical new party that's going to pop up. And there's not going to, and there hasn't been any grassroots push for that party. So where are, what is, like, like, it's a complaint, complain, complain, ahead of time, and then silence for a year.

until we start talking about midterms and then they start talking about again. You're like, dude, what the fuck you? Like, you didn't say anything yet. And the reason why is because it's mostly astroturfed and then you're convinced by it. You get outraged by it because you see it like, yeah, fuck those guys.

And now you're mad about it. You're going to be mad about it for 11 months. Yeah, the propaganda worked. I did. That's it. And the thing is like, we know because the data is in that a lot of that propaganda comes to us from like foreign countries, right?

Like a lot of the like intent of a lot of this like election interference from China and from Russia was to basically motivate people not to fucking vote. They want to break the system. They want to like break our systems down. It's to their advantage. The weaker we are, the less cohesive we are. Our enemies gain from that.

So like it worked. It just, that's the thing. It worked. Rather than recognizing like, oh, well, there's two choices. I have to make one. This one is unpalatable. And this one is a threat. to life limb existential crisis.

Well, I'll take the unpalatable one. And then we'll try to fix it from there. But we can't obviously let, you know, it's like if you're driving a car and in front of you is a fucking log truck. And off to the right is a copse of trees and your brakes fail. And you can only go left or right. You don't go into the log truck, right? That's worse.

The copes of trees, not ideal. It's not a giant pillow, right? A giant pillow would be better. I'm team giant pillow. But that's not on the road, man. You don't have an option? That wasn't on the road. So you steer into the fucking copes of trees,

and I don't know why this is so hard to understand. It's hard to understand. We're driving into a log truck. But the problem is, is that around that log truck are 500 signs from somebody out of the country being like, log truck's better now. Yeah, right. Or like, there's a bunch of signs like, logs and copes of trees, it's all wood. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

It's all the same. what, man, it's all the same. Nothing ever changes. And you're like, there's a big difference. There was always a big difference. All right. This is from UPI. 150 year old bottle of alcohol found in Utah tasted by experts. I love that they find this 150 year old bottle of booze and like, well, we got a drink. I love to. Do you think they handed it back and forth, like, you go first? I would go first. Yeah, I would too. I would be like, yeah, let's try this. Absolutely. It turns out to be a beer. Yeah.

It's a beer and then they said that they're going to try to like re-engineer it because they have some of the yeast, obviously, and then all this stuff that they can sort of re-engineer and see what happens. I was shocked to learn it was beer because I would have thought wrongly that the alcohol volume for beer would be too low to hold it for that many years. I would have assumed that like, well, can't be that airtight, right? But evidently it was so perfectly airtight that like even with the relatively low A.B. be via beer, no other air or contaminants or anything were able to get in there. Because there are some bacteria and other things that could spoil it, you know, at those kind of alcohol levels. I thought it was going to be a higher alcohol product. What did, what, have you ever had any, what was the,

have you ever, and I know you don't drink alcohol anymore, but when you were drinking, what was the, was there any, ever anything you tried that was like really old or really expensive? I, no. I, I, really, I've tried some like scotches that were very expensive. I'm not much of a scotch drinker. I think some of those were pretty old, like 20, 25 years, somewhere in that range. I don't think, because I'm not a scotch drinker, I don't think I could appreciate the quality. Sure. Like for me. And I'm also, I was never much of like, I like, I like wine, but I have never been able to develop a palette, probably didn't drink enough of it, to like really feel comfortable saying, oh, I really feel like I know the differences between the different styles and you know. Sure, sure.

I did very much with beer and I recognize that that's a exposure thing. You know, when I first started drinking beer, I couldn't tell the difference. You know, Pilsner and a lager, you know, et cetera. So that's just a me thing. What about you? Yeah, I mean, I've always been able to tell the difference between the different types of varietals of wine and then different beers and things like that. And it's something I really like to do, like, you know, pick out the very specific thing.

But I think ports are probably some pretty easy to get to a large, like a high age at a lower cost price point. You can get us an older port for not as an unbelievable amount of money. But I've tried some older wines too. I'm not the type of person though that thinks that just because something's

older expensive, it's therefore better. There's oftentimes I think there is the sort of lower level that I am where I can choose which wines I like can, you know, vary in range between certain amount, dollar amounts and find different and better stuff. But at a certain point, the really, really high-end, very subtle stuff is probably lost on me until I get to a range that I might be able to appreciate it. Right. And I just don't.

Like, I just don't, like, nothing. I remember multiple times, you know, ordering really expensive for anniversary stuff. We'll order, like, an expensive glass of wine or we've ordered Don Perri-on before in the past and things like that. I never think, like, I've had once, Dom Perri-on when I was with my wife for, like, I think, our 20th or maybe our 15th anniversary, we ordered it. And we drank it. I was like, yeah, it's pretty good.

And I taste it. I was like, yeah, it's not for me. I'm like, it's okay, but it's fine. Yeah. There's a fucking a champagne that we get that's like, you know, $25 or $30 a bottle that we get on occasion. That's amazing.

It tastes wonderful. Yeah. In comparison to, like, the Dom is, like, a very specific. flavor. Yeah. You know, and like I've only had it once, but I remember thinking myself, I was like, I'll never drink this again if I can avoid it. Like, I would never, I would never pay that kind of money to drink it, you know. And so it's interesting to see there's sort of like, I wonder if it's, I wonder if it is just name stuff. Dude, I think a huge amount of it is. And I think there's a lot of,

like, there's been a bunch of like blind taste testing and stuff like that that for a lot of different, for vodkas for wines. They've done this a million times for wine. So I've seen a number of studies for wine where they'll take a cheap, you know, supermarket bottle of wine. It's like an $8, $10, $12 bottle of wine, something like that.

They'll put a label on it. They'll take a very nice, expensive bottle of wine. And then they'll just like blind test people. And the labels will be, you know, swapped out. And people will ascribe a much higher value to the experience of drinking what they perceive as a more expensive product. And it's like, yeah, that was a fucking $8 bottle of wine.

Like, this is not, our perceptions very often of what we like are just so skewed by the marketing around stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the same thing is true, like, the same thing is true in the audio world. I just read something the other day, this is kind of like my little nerd hobby. But, like, it's always been a joke that, like, speakerwire all sounds the same. It just all sounds the same. And people, like, still vehemently argue about it. And there's nothing to all.

argue about. They've done test Cecil where they've passed the signal through a banana and you can't hear the difference. Wow. Through a banana. You can't hear the difference. They've done like so many double blind studies and like all these

fucking cables, you can't hear the fucking difference. It's just, it's way beyond the limits of human hearing. So wire is the same as expensive wire. Same as expensive wire. As long as it like connects properly and isn't going to oxidize, it's all the same shit. But people are still like, yeah, but I want this big-ass, thick, you know, ultra-plated.

I think that there is something to having a nice-looking wire if it's going to be exposed, though. Sure. I would want to have an aesthetic choice that is perfectly fine. But if it's behind a wall, like, what would you care? Dude, you cannot, yeah. Like, if the question is like, which wire should you buy, it's like, well, you should buy something that you need for your system, right?

Like, does it, does it have a good, does it maintain a good proper connection? You know, is it going to oxidize over time? Like, these are, like, pretty basic things that most wires, are going to pass the test for. So, but yeah, like, other than that, like, it's all nothing. Same thing is true of, like, a lot of this, like, alcohol. It's like, you can't tell.

If you can't tell you just being like, oh, then just be comfortable being like, yeah, I bought it because it was fancy. And I wanted to feel fancy. It's okay to want to feel fancy. I love supermarket wine. Yeah. I love it.

I love buying. Manajitua is an awesome wine. I remember that one. That's an awesome wine. Yeah. It's fucking. It's like a menagerie wine. It's like a monajorie.

It's like a bottle. Yeah. It's fucking great. People like that two-buck that they sell it to, I don't know, it's two bucks anymore, but it was at Trader Joe's for a long time. Oh, Trader Joe's supposed to have like good stuff. It's cheap. It's cheap. I've been at home to cook with.

I have zero, which is a wine that has, it's like a zero A-B-V wine. Oh, wow. So just like zero-A-B-V beers, you can buy zero-A-B-V wines. And I don't know that I would drink it to sit and drink it. I tried it. It's fine. It does not taste. it doesn't have all the same mouth feel.

Like the mouth feel is gone. But it cooks perfectly. Sure. Again from UPI, man balances ladder on his chin for painful 19 minutes. I thought the pain would be on his chin. But he's actually like,

it fucking really hurts your low back. Yeah, he was saying, you say, this is something you've got to really train up for. And he said, like, if you do it and your form and whatever isn't good, he's like, let me see what he said. If I increase the weight or duration too aggressively, I risk straining my lower back. and being forced to take weeks or even months off.

And I read that. I'm like, you're going to fuck up your back. You're back, man. So you can balance a ladder on your face more than the other guy balanced the ladder on his face. And then he goes to do the Guinness World Record. And he's a 10-time Guinness World Record. This is a person who just picks random shit and says,

I'm going to get real good at that. And he puts it on his face. He puts the ladder on his face. And then they didn't start the time. Right, yeah. He lost two seconds because they fucked up the timing on it. They fucked it up on him. Here's the thing, David Rush, nobody knows who you are and this doesn't matter. You're going to, like, does matter.

You're going to blow out a fucking vertebra? It matters in his heart. It matters in his heart so much. It's like, but it's like, I'm going to get famous. You can't be famous if nobody knows who you are, man. That's not how fame works, dude. It is true. What are you doing?

It is true. Like, I just like, as somebody who's had two fucking spinal surgery, you know what I would not do? Anything to fuck up my spine, man? Do you think there's anything at all that you could do that you could get a world record for? No. Nothing? Nothing. Me?

Yeah. No. I'm a piece of shit. There's nothing anybody would want to write down that I can do the most good at. I think if there's anything I could do. I don't think there is anything I could do that would be even close to remarkable when it comes to world record.

That's what no. Like I couldn't. Like, I always think somebody has everything unique about it, but maybe your uniqueness is that you just suck at everything. I think that's it. I think that's it. My propensity for bad luck. Like, is that a thing? I wonder if you could have most tragedies. Yeah. Come, get in touch. Get in touch. These are the things that have gone wrong recently. If you don't have enough, make a few more.

Here are my first world problems. I don't like using the New York Post, but Oh God. Hospital evacuated after 8-inch World War I Artillery Shell discovered in patients' butt. Did they discover it? Were they like doing like a regular physical?

Were they doing like a regular physical? I love that one discovered here. They're just like they got the magnifying glass out there. They're taking their staphoscope and they're putting it on different parts and like, what's this? I love in that scenario because maybe the guy was also startled. What? I didn't.

What? Huh? What? I want to put it on the big screen. I need a banana for scale. I don't know how big that is. I don't either. Also, also, I know this isn't the one, but I hope it didn't have rust on it.

That's all I'm asking. The picture Cecil is showing is of a terrifyingly corroded and crusty looking world. Dude, World War I was 100 plus years ago. And somebody's like, I'm sticking that up my ass. Yeah, this is not the one that was in his ass. No. It says similar. It says similar.

So it's important to point that out. Also, this looks like it came out of someone's ass rather than went into something's ass. Because it's all brown and lumpy. I want to read a part of this article because toward the end. Toward the end, Tom. Hey, whoa, way, hey. That's where they discovered it. They also had a call.

And an article calls it the bums. The Bum Squad. It's so good. They called the Bum Squad. He stuffed it all the way up in his hurt locker. It was unclear how the antique ordinance ended up in the man's posterior. It is not unclear. There's only one way it ended up up his ass.

So in the documents it just says, whoops. imagine the thought process where like presumably this is something you have laying about your house yeah right sure and you're like oh i got this like uh unexploded piece of artillery from a hundred plus years ago one you shouldn't have that dude it really feels like a dangerous thing to have in your house that's not a safe thing to have around don't have that around hey fucking PSA, the more you know, don't keep bombs in your house or in your ass. In your ass. Well, he was looking for bang.

Look, I get sometimes the mood just strikes you funny. Does it? But like, are you that? Like, if the mood strikes you're like, I definitely got to just have a bomb up my ass. I wonder if there's... You got to go to the hospital, man. I wonder if there's other people who maybe clean this. thing out and turned it into a fleshlight.

There we go. You can fuck it now. We put a flared. We took the, look, we took the munitions on it. We put a flared base on it. Safer in two ways. Saper in two ways. We made a cleared flared base for you. And we put a ponytail on it.

Can you imagine, Cecil, that at some point, this thing was like manufactured. And somebody was like holding this brand new shiny piece of like, or an to like, this will teach you, you German bastards or whatever. This thing is going to fuck someone up. Right?

Fuck you. Can you imagine like some, like, I sometimes wish I have this like idea in my mind that like I kind of wish you could just have a machine or a fucking magic mirror or something and just know the full story of an item and just watch it. Like even like stuff I've lost in the past like I wish I could fucking just know where that went in. how it got there, you know? And I wish there was like a, like a fucking iPad you could watch where the, the maker of this particular shell got to be like, you know, in a hundred years, this is going to go up some dude's ass. Do you have to strap him in a clockwork orange-like chair so he can watch all the footage?

Also from UPI, Capi Bara named Prune wins Long Bath Showdown. That's so fucking adorable, Tom. This is what we need in the world right now. They're so cute. This adorable little animal and animals all across Japan who take part in the long bath contest, which this Capyboro won, one hour, 45 minutes and 18 seconds in the bath. And then they test, they basically try to coax them into a bath. Yep. A nice, soothing, warm bath that they could sit in for as long as they can.

And then they measure it across Japan. God, could you imagine living in a country where that was a thing? that you were paying attention to today. I will tell you this. I'm going to Japan, and I bet I can outlast this Cappy Barra. Oh my God, dude. This Cappibara,

just, you stay there for like an hour and 23 minutes. If you put me in a nice warm bath, I'll stay there for a week. There's a scene in one of the hitchhiker's guidebooks where one of the characters spends, I think, decades in a bath. Literally spends decades in the bath. All right, that's going to wrap it up for,

our goofy show this week. We'll be back on Monday with the full show. We're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, terror cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards,

wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. thrust your hands bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Preds, all under the handle at DissinancePod.

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