Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 92: Michael Marshall

Episode Date: March 25, 2013

Special thanks to Marsh for joining us. Visit his projects: News:

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Stephanie claims that she is often visited by aliens who help to guide her through life. Not only does she claim aliens sneak into her room at night, she also says that she has sex with them and has out-of-this-world orgasms. My group, I call them Team Spirit, at night she also says that she has sex with them and has out of this world orgasms my group

i call them team spirit and um we have a ufo uh flying saucer yeah and we've got a photo no it's not a photo it's a picture i drew this is a drawing that you've done and this is this is the ufo that you went yeah sure um and um we go off to planets within our own solar system, but also to way out into the solar system. Do you go in mind or do you go in body? In mind, because it happens when my physical body is asleep, but my spirit will then leave. Could it be a dream?

I mean, would that be what most people call dreaming? be a dream I mean would that be what most people call dreaming a dream is a friendly way of letting you know what you've been doing without scaring you so so the different species let's let's talk about them that there's different beings you say that there are cat people reptilians yeah are they all but they're all part of they're not part of the same race, so these are separate? No, they're very separate, but they do come from the same, the solar system that they come from, which is within the Canis Major. Who is Ian, the octopus man? Yeah, he's an octopus man, he stays quite close to me, sort of like a spirit kind of boyfriend but not really boy I don't call it boyfriend just a spirit good spirit friend and he happens to be from the octopus race I mean all of them indulging insects

but particularly the cat people are extremely highly charged sexually you, and it's part of our culture, the cat people culture. 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. I am on. All right. Okay, excellent. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad.

It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 92 of Cognitive Dissonance. And, you know, actually, Cecil, I'm having some technical problems. Do you know how to turn on the subtitles for Mike Marshall while we do this? I don't. I'm not that good with Skype.

I've been trying here. I'm just randomly hitting control and all of my keyboard. I'm hoping that he's just going to text his entire thing to us the entire time so we can understand him. Well, if you turn the video on, I'll just do sign language interpretation

all the way through, and you guys can watch me doing it that way. Is that what you call it? Sign language interpretation? There'll be two signs I'll be using frequently throughout the course of the conversation, essentially. So as you may have surmised, we have Mike Marshall. We'll just call him Mike Marsh some more, because that's what we have done in the past. We've done in the past, yeah. I get many variants on my name.

It's kind of my own fault for going by this kind of convoluted nickname of Marsh. I've had people going with Mike Marsh, Michael Marsh. They tend to get the Marsh bit as a surname. I've had the Daily Telegraph call me Malcolm Marshall. That's fantastic. You need to keep that one. That was a swing and a miss. That's a keeper, my friend.

I'm calling you Malcolm Marshmallow because it sounds more delicious. So we have Mike Marsh on from, and this is the part that I love. I love when we have a guest on. You're like, yeah, we've got a guest from, and if I was on a show, I'd be like, we have a guest from Cognitive Dissonance. Okay, well, that's a waste of your time, but I'm still here. Mike Marsh is a guest from Skeptics with a K. QED, Be Reasonable, The Bad PR Blog. Is there anything else?

Is there something in the skeptical community that you actually don't do? Because it might be easier for us at this point. I do the 1023 campaign as well, which has kind of gone quiet over the last couple of years. Oh, my fucking God. Are you serious? It's ridiculous. How do you have time for all this shit? I genuinely don't know.

I mean, well, at the height of the 1023 campaign the second year around when we had 70 cities in 30 countries all taking part in an overdose at the same time I was working about seven hours a day on that on top of my normal job. What? I was kind of working, well,

I was working from about six till about one in the morning with about half hour for something to eat. Well, six till about two in the morning, I think, with about half hour for something to eat for about a month. And that really broke my entire mind. It was just useless for about two, three months afterwards. If anybody asked me to do anything, I just stared at them in a kind of grumpy way and almost fell asleep in the pub a couple of times, the skeptics in the pub that we do here in Liverpool.

So that was not an edifying moment in my own personal history, but it was worth it in the end. Sort of, in a way. Sort of, in a way. That's a ringing endorsement of your efforts. So the first story we're going to talk about actually comes from, I think, your favorite news source, Mike Marshmallow. This is from The Daily Mail. And even the title of this, I have sex with aliens who sneak into my room

at night. Psychic appears on live TV claiming to have out-of-this-world orgasms with octopus men and cat people. Well, I'm sold. I believe this. This seems reasonable. I've seen this Japanimation film.

I think this is out of that box of too crazy to have been made up. If you're going to make it up, you're going to stop at any one of those lines of the sentence and think, that's fine. That's probably enough now to get some coverage. You've got to wonder about Martha DeLacy, the woman who was the writer. I hesitate to use the word reporter. The writer for this excrement on the Daily Mail. You know, she's given this assignment by her editor. It's like, all right, you've got to cover this woman.

She was on the show called This Morning. You've just got to watch a show and interview her. And she didn't even do that. She basically just summarized a television program. Like if you read this article, it's just summarizing something somebody saw on television. This is her journalistic assignment. This is what the Daily Mail does. And actually, oddly enough, Martha DeLacy, I follow her career quite closely as one of the writers on the Daily Mail, because what listeners might not know is that I get every single headline from the Daily Mail RSS to me. And I wade through them every day looking for stories that are not real stories.

And the Daily Mail, you'd imagine there's quite a lot of stuff in there that isn't real stories. everything that is written by um a small uh coterie of uh of writers for the daily mail martha de lacy uh bianca london who does about nine stories a day sometimes uh there's a couple of paid by the word is it like the charles dickens version of the uh holy shit nine stories a day i've seen i've seen her do between seven and nine martha lacy also i've seen to do uh between seven nine there's lucy water store There's a couple of others. But essentially, how this whole thing works and how the Daily Mail works is they will print anything

because they just want you to start looking at the site and clicks and adverts and that kind of thing. So if you email them a press release, they will often put it up there because they put about

300 stories a day up. And it's always through a very small number of writers who will put up most of the crap. And I looked up, Bianca London, I looked up, she's London, I looked up,

she's a year out of university and is now in the Daily Mail for the last year or so, writing, you know, between seven and nine stories a day, hundreds of stories in a month. And it's just to try and fill the papers to get in there. So I think Martha de Lacy, this is bog standard of her. And I would imagine, and I could be speculating here, but I imagine most of this story probably came from press release put out by This Morning, the TV show anyway, just to try and promote this one woman. So I don't think the Daily Mail have had much of a hand in any of this story because I don't think the Daily Mail have much of a hand in writing any of their stories. Well, if nothing else, it's got some beautiful graphics. I mean, it's got some beautiful. if you've got to have first of all if if you haven't navigated at this point if you're not listening to this show in front of a computer if you get a chance to click on this link if you go

to dissonancepod.com and you actually click on our links for the show um this one is fucking worth it because there is a picture on here of the interviewee you know it's it's this uh stephanie cohen um and she has a picture of your standard gray alien, you know, like everybody has seen ever since the book fucking Communion came out, whatever. And then underneath it is her version of the spaceship, which apparently shits rainbows as it's powered. It's fucking Roy G. Biv powered. It looks like an igloo that's shitting rainbows.

I like the schematic that she has here. It's very detailed. Highly technical. Yeah. You can tell she was an engineer in a past life. I mean, if you look at this, it's amazing. And this whole article is based around her basically having sexy dreams. And that's the whole thing.

Like, it's just this woman has fucking sex dreams about weird shit. And she's on TV about it. When I have sex dreams about weird shit, I don't even want to tell my wife about them. When was the last time you had a sex dream about an octopus man? Because I love the fact that we've got a picture of the great alien. And as you say, it's a totally fucking bog standard great alien. There's nothing remarkable going on there. But the story's about cat people and octopus.

Draw one of those fuckers. I want to see the octopus man who's called Ian, which must have been a tricky baptism, essentially. You've got this octopus baby. You look at it. Well, he just screams Ian to me. He's definitely an Ian. You baptise the baby.

You put him in the font. He just swims around because he suddenly feels at home. He's trying to take lids off the jars. You put him in a font that's not saltwater. He's like, oh, this isn't good. I'm going to fucking die in here. Quickly dying. He's not at pressure either, so he immediately dies.

I love this part of the article with the octopus person because she says, he stays close to me, kind of a spirit boyfriend, but I don't call him my boyfriend. He's more of a good spirit friend who happens to be from the octopus race. And what she wanted to say is he's kind of like a friend with a many tentacle benefit. You know what I mean? Like that sort of – He's moving in. He puts like one tentacle around her shoulders, you know, like yawning.

Yeah, yawning with all the toms. Yeah. The other part of this too, where she's talking about cats, because she's like, they're cat people as well. I mean, there's all these different races. They're just hanging out. I mean, there's all these different races that are just hanging out. But it says, this woman explained, my cat grandmother is sitting on the sofa over there doing her knitting.

And I'm wondering how the fuck any cat can do anything but play with a ball of yarn. Like, that's the only thing. Like, what the fuck? How much knitting could she possibly get done when there's a ball of yarn there? I love, too, that, like, all the aliens are basically modeled after earth creatures there's like variations on earth creatures that's an octopus person that's a cat person that's a dog dog we weren't real creative about that one but everyone's gotta have pets so right it seems reasonable this is team spirit that's what she calls them in this article it's team Team Spirit. Does she need to give them a team name? I did wonder why she decided

to brand this crazy sex dream that she's got. You think if you're going to give them a team name and they've traveled interstellar space to fucking sit on a fucking morning television show and knit. Like, that's what they've done. They have conquered the various challenges of interstellar

space travel to fucking knit invisibly on TV. That's what they've done. They have conquered the various challenges of interstellar space travel to fucking knit invisibly on TV. Maybe that's why they came, is that just balls of yarn are really hard to come by on other planets. It's like, you know, you travel, they're probably buying in bulk. When they bought enough balls of yarn, they'll fuck off back to, you know, beta six or wherever they're from. It's like, because you don't want to have to buy groceries every couple of days. You want to try and do one big shop a month. And they're just doing that. You've got to stock up, man.

You've got to stock up. Now, I've got to ask because Tom and I are always intrigued by the culture differences between, you know, we speak relatively the same language. Yeah. And we have very different cultures, I think. And I don't know what kind of show this is that would showcase something like this. Now, I'm not saying that America is better and that we have a better TV program

because we're going to have somebody like, we're going to have something on a show over here that's like, I'm fucking my uncle uncle or this is my 75th paternity test. And I still can't figure out who the fuck the father is. Or Dr. Oz is trying to sell us like Kinzio tape or whatever on. You know, I mean, like so that we have our our own subset of really bad, really stupid television. But this I mean, I can't imagine this getting airtime here. Well, this is the weird thing, because normally this morning,

it's just a standard kind of morning chat show. People come on and plug whatever book they're selling or whatever TV show is coming on, and people have your standard phone in. But they've done a supernatural week, and they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. They had David Icke on there, who is one of my favorite human beings on the planet, David Icke. He's a boundless supply of bullshit. It's amazing. He's just limitless.

His mouth and his mind is in perpetual motion for bullshit, essentially. My ears are burning. My ears are burning. The other thing they had was they had a guy who was in Coronation Street, which is like the longest running soap opera over here. And he's been in it the whole time. Ken Barlow is the name of his character. And the guy in real life is pretty much a whack job.

And normally his whack jobbery is around his pets can talk to him. He's got a psychic and his spirits and Stonehenge and all this kind of bullshit. But I'm sure on the show, he actually said that victims of sexual abuse deserved it. For what they've done in past lives. And he's had to kind of come back and really, really step back from that point of view subsequently. That is outrageous. I can't believe

they have something called Coronation Street. That's outrageous. No, that's crazy, man. I think the thing is, though, I see this woman and she's on – I mean she's getting airtime somehow. Like first off, you have to find this woman. I have no idea how – like does she have her own PR person? Like how does she get this story out to the world? But then they find her and they bring her on and they have a skeptic sitting next to her basically says, look, you know, these are these are explainable phenomena.

And then she fails in her test. I guess she was supposed to like like tell us what was inside a briefcase. Like suddenly she's like the TSA. Like I don't even know what's happening. But she's supposed to she's supposed to figure this sort of stuff out. So they did have some sort of at least I mean, I guess I've got to give them props for the idea that they're at least trying to test her in some way. Yeah, I mean, that would have been the skeptic they had on there was Chris French, who I know quite well. I'm quite good friends with Chris French.

We do, for the last two years, we've done a similar kind of test of psychics here in the UK. So on Halloween last year, we had two psychics come and be tested. It was me, it was Chris, and it was Simon Singh, another really big skeptic over here. But I haven't spoken to Chris since he was on this show, and I really want to pick it up with him. So next time I see him, I do want to have a good chat about exactly how this whole thing came about. I imagine the test is probably Chris's idea.

I don't think the presenter, Philip Schofield, is smart enough to come up with that kind of test himself. You know, I like that when she gets called out on the show, you know, like, hey, couldn't it be a dream? Isn't that what most people just call dreaming? Her reply is, a dream is a friendly way of letting you know what you've been doing without scaring you. What?

That's, what? How do you explain nightmares then? Well, a nightmare is, you know, a non-friendly way of letting you know what you've been doing while scaring you just because, hey, sometimes fuck you. What kind of fucking horse shit is this? It's awesome. I love this fucking article because it's just crazy start to finish.

It's got all of the crazy in there. Absolutely. Every every bit of it. And then Chris apparently was suggesting that she suggesting that this woman actually suffers from persistent arousal disorder, which makes her feel like she's having sex in her sleep. And that's actually what's behind all this, which doesn't then explain all the octopus things, I don't think.

We need more explanation behind that. I feel like we've started to scratch the surface, but we need to really dig to find where the octopus and the cats come in. That's just based on a sexy trip she took as a kid to the aquarium. We've all been there. We've all been there. We've all been there.

So we're going to be back at the end of the show with Michael Marshall from the Merseyside Skeptics who does Bad PR blog. He does Be Reasonable podcast as well as Skeptics with a K podcast. And we're going to have him back on for an interview later on in the show. K podcast. And we're going to have him back on for an interview

later on in the show. But until then, we're going to cover some news items here, just Tom and I. Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord, open hearts. So this story is from the Moral Compass blog, which I strongly suspect I will be visiting again. This story is pretty awful. It's a story about a nine-year-old daughter of Pastor Mark Hopper. Hooper? Hopper? Hooper? The pastor of Cobb Street Baptist Church in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania, starved his daughter over homework.

Instead of being a 65-pound or thereabouts young lady, she was a 31-pound young lady because her father, the pastor, starved her for not finishing her math homework. It seems like a reasonable thing to do. I don't know this is a fact, but doesn't the brain need calories to function? I'm going to guess. I don't know this is a fact, but doesn't the brain need calories to function? I'm going to guess. I mean, don't you need a food in order for the brain to be like, hey, I'd like to do a thing. Like you can't imagine starving someone and then getting smarter from it. That's very unlikely to work. It's like two plus two equals cheeseburger.

I don't care. You're trying to do your homework. You're fucking gnawing on the cat at that point. You don't care. You try to do your homework. You got to, you're fucking gnawing on the cat at that point. You don't care at all. Like stop chewing on your pencil. It's the only thing I'll be eating in a week. My body's learned to digest the cellulose in the pencil

because it's the only calories I can get. I mean, this, you know, obviously this is crazy, right? Obviously this is crazy and it's cruel. It's just fucking inhumane. But the part of this article that struck me is, and I'm probably going to take some shit, so I'm going to have to finish the whole thing here, is that this girl was homeschooled. And I don't have a problem with homeschooling on its own. Um, but most

homeschooling is religious homeschooling. And one of the problems with homeschooling and one of the problems with religious homeschooling is it doesn't, it, it, it isolates the child and it provides an opportunity for this shit to occur. This could not, this sort of abuse could not have occurred with a little girl who then woke up every morning at 730, hopped on a school bus and went to a school where there would be some kind of fucking responsible oversight. Right. If you're in the fourth grade, which is where she would be, right, somewhere around fourth

grade, and you're 31 pounds, I think the teachers at that point and the administration have to look out for you as a as a human being. They have to stop being your educator and start worrying about you as somebody who is being physically abused. Right. And, you know, these these kids get put in these situations by these fucking fucking religious nuts. And we put all these procedures in place to protect their religious beliefs, to make sure to enshrine forever their ability to be as fucking religiously crazy as they want to be. And that's fine for the grownups.

That's okay. The adults, you want to fucking handle snakes and fucking juggle alligators. I don't give a shit. Like, whatever. You know what I mean? I'm starting a juggling alligator church, by the way. They got to be smallish. Like, whatever. You know what I mean? I'm starting a juggling alligator church, by the way. They got to be smallish.

I mean, you can't do, like, you can really do, like, three bowling ball sized alligators. Like, that's the max. You can't do, like, the nine footers. It's juggling caiman, actually, is what you've got to do. Juggling caiman. The hard part is the flaming caiman because they're real wet when you get them out. You've got to put them on fire. And there's, like, a chainsaw you mix in the group.

You know, you're like juggling the two and then you throw the chainsaw in there. Right. You know, like these fucking poor kids. There's nobody. There's nobody there. Like you can. You could conceivably have a kid and nobody would ever know. I mean, seriously, you could fucking have a person and that person would be under the protections of nobody at all and i'm not like well you know the big government or whatever has to step in and make sure that everybody does their job but at some point

somebody has to when you're not feeding your fucking fourth grader because like i've got a fucking kindergartner who weighs 40 pounds yeah you know, like 40, 45 pounds is normal for a kindergarten kid. 31 pounds for a fucking fourth grader? It's only possible in these hyper-insulated religious communities. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like the thing that bothers me I think the most about this is that unless they were keeping her fucking flowers in the attic style in like a little tiny room where they're throwing her fish heads.

She had to interact with other fucking people somewhere. You know, how dare you see a child that's this fucking malnourished? Because guess what? That's not that fucking hard to pick up when she's half the weight of everybody else in her fucking grade and be like, that kid's malnourished. Something's wrong. Because I'll tell you what, I have nieces and nephews. And if I went to any one of their houses and they were being physically abused, if I saw bruises on them, if I saw something like that on them, I would question the parents. And if I didn't get a

satisfactory answer, I don't care if you're fucking a blood relative, I am calling DCFS on this innocent child. Because you know what? Our relationship isn't as important as the possible future of this child's life. This child's psyche is in danger. This child's entire future is in danger. I mean, what kind of fucking disorders is she going to have just from this particular bout of malnutrition she's had? You know, we don't have to deal with this in this country very often, but you know, we only have to deal with it when it's abuse, right? It's not like an everyday thing over here where somebody is physically malnourished, but when it's abuse, you know, we only have to deal with it when it's abuse, right? It's not like an everyday thing over here where somebody is physically malnourished. But when it's abuse, you have to deal with it.

Well, what kind of developmental problems physically and mentally is she going to have because of this? This is an awful thing to do to a human being, and I'm really upset. You know, you can't be a pastor and not take your kid to fucking church. Yeah, and that's the thing. I'm sure that he did. Either that or they hid the existence. Because people would wonder, like, where's your kid? Home.

Home, schooled. Been home for like 10 years. Chained to a wall. We don't really let that one out. She's juggling alligators. We got her training. She's juggling alligators. She's training for, you know, to come on the stage in a couple years.

She's going to be our chief alligator juggler. Hello, my baby. Hello, my baby. Hello, my dog. We'll lose more kids that way. Fucking the youth fellowship of this church isn't what it used to be. What I'd love to see is you have the guy who's got two alligators, one in each hand and one just on his head, just like this one just sticking right up out of his head.

Tail wagging gently in the breeze. Spinning in a death roll. There has to be that day, too, where you're juggling balls, and then you move up to foam alligators, and then somebody's like, all right, I think you're ready. You're ready. Here's the reggae. Just reach in there. Reach in there?

Yeah, just reach in there, grab an alligator. Fucking, why do you even have these? First they have to sedate the alligators, Tom. First they sedate them. Then later on they take more and more of the sedation away. And then you're juggling, writhing, crazy, snapping alligators. Yeah, they get them real cold is what they do. They put them in the refrigerator.

So you've got like a fridge full of cold, sluggish alligators. Cold, slow alligators. Just like, fuck, that's not. And the alligators. Cold, slow alligators. Just like, fuck. That's not. And the alligators have fucking terrible motion sickness. You know? They're not made for that shit. They're puking up half fishermen right there. They're just like, bleh.

You got to cover them in Dramamine patches. Lord, the day is at hand. We are in the last days. You are Jehovah God. So this story is from TheRawStory.com and it's Michelle Bachman who is back? I don't know.

It's my Christian duty to repeal Obamacare before it literally kills kids. Literally. Anytime somebody says literally, you just take them less seriously than before. Like as soon as somebody's like, it will literally be juggling alligators. Yeah.

No, no, no. That's well, Obamacare hasn't even had a chance to do a thing yet. Right. Like, not really. Like, it doesn't really come into full force until 2014. But evidently kids are going to be killed. And it is her Christian duty to stop the wholesale slaughter. I actually, when I was reading stories about Obamacare, I remember where it said that in 2014, they're just going to kill all the kids.

Yeah, well, they're going to put them in death camps. It's death camps. They're going to be run by pastors who don't feed them. Since it's a death camp for kids, it's actually death camp for cutie. It's just going to have... I like that band. We're going to get an email. Hey, man.

I don't know about this woman. We've got plenty of stories on her. There's somebody who posts on our Facebook page. I think his name is Ben. And Ben has normally had some really great comments. But one of the things that Ben said was, why is why are we even taking this woman seriously? And I've got to say, you know, I don't know that that's the right approach. She is a democratically elected congresswoman. This is someone who we have to take seriously. Yes, her mouth breathing, idiot voting block put her in there. Would she be voted in the country and

anywhere else in the country? Maybe, maybe not. You know, I'm sure that there are places that she would be voted in and other places in the country. So we've got to take her somewhat seriously. She has the capability of being on committees to make huge decisions based on legislation that can then get passed by the rest of the people in Congress. So she has some very serious power. So we need to pay attention to her. I recognize that what you might be saying is this woman is not smart enough for anyone to pay attention to. And I will wholeheartedly agree with you. But I think the position that she has herself in, we have to pay attention to her. Well, you know, you're right, because she's

more powerful than you and she's more powerful than I am. Whether we want that to be true or not, it is true. Like she wields an incredible amount of power as a as a member of Congress. And you can't I mean, she gets to fucking say things like she is. She is definitionally she's a voice like she is a representative of peoples. That's her fucking job. And, you know, in this article, she says, listen to this fucking nonsense. And I try to think try to actually pinpoint where she says something in this. And I believe as part of my duty as a believer in Christ and what he has done for me that we should do for the least of those who are in our midst, that my personal belief and my personal conviction, and that's what I want our government to create the space so that we can help people. Because I'll guarantee you one thing, Mr. Speaker.

This doesn't help people. That's a guarantee in lieu of facts. What are you saying? No, she's guaranteeing something. Yeah. But she doesn't have any facts to back it up. She's not even being specific about how. No.

Like, this is going to cause harm. Well, how is it going to cause harm? Well, listen, as a Christian woman, we've got to create space for government. We like, well, don't. Fuck, that's meaningless jargon. It's doublespeak. There's nothing to what she has to say. I mean, I had the exact same thing quoted.

You know what I mean? I'm looking at this article, and I have it highlighted, too, because it's a nonsense statement. It's what people say to hear themselves talk. Right. It's jabberwocky, dude. It is. It's fucking jabberwocky. It totally is.

It's plus brillig in the shit. Fucking A it is. I mean, like fucking the vorpal sword is in this motherfucker right now. I mean, we, you really seriously, I mean, I can't imagine someone would say that, but the, you know, the other thing too is, okay, let's just presume that what you're saying is true, that this thing doesn't help people. Let me tell you why it's not going to help people. Because when it went through fucking legislation, everybody pulled all the goddamn teeth out of it, right? So that's the thing is you fucking hamstrung this thing from the very beginning by making it less and less and less what it should be,

and now you're going to complain about what it's doing. She's basically saying, well, people won't have medical coverage. Well, the reason why is because they were giving outs from other from these other portions of the bill. So the idea, you know, the idea that this is going to be hurting people, the only people it's going to be hurting are the lobbyists who are telling you it's going to hurt people. Right. You know, and up in this article, she talks about how this is we're here because we're saying let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. And I can't help but think like senior citizens have Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah.

A government run health care. Yeah. And they fucking love it. By and large, it's an untouchable government program because fucking senior citizens love it. Yeah. They have like we have socialized medicine for a tiny fraction of our population. Right. For our senior citizens. Yeah.

And we're it's an untouchable government program because the fucking people who have it are thrilled. They love it. And they went and they're the voting bloc. So you can't take it away from them. So the people with the most with probably with the largest voice in this country are the elderly. The people that are at least on their way to getting this or already have this have the largest vote. So you can't go against them.

You can't say to them, well, we're going to take that away because you won't get fucking voted in. Like if you have to do it after you get in office. And again, these people want to get elected again. So they want especially the Congress people would never fucking choose to do this. They would never choose to be like, oh, we're going to take away Medicaid now. They'll never get voted back in. And then the next people that they vote in would run on a platform of I will fucking reinstate it. So they would get voted in.

So there's this fucking catch-22, so they can't ever do anything with it. And the fact is, is that we don't pay enough taxes to really cover it. with it. And the fact is, is that we don't pay enough taxes to really cover it. We we are a country that keeps running in a deficit because we want to keep these programs to keep these guys voting. But we also don't want to charge them the money that it costs to actually run this goddamn program. And so you're you're basically stuck with, you know, fuck the poor. All you get to do is just be old in this country and you get some semblance of money from the from the government in this form of Social Security and and you get free medical care. And it's like, well, if you can make it to that age, good for you. Yeah, we'll take care of you then.

You know, it'll be nice is if you vote, if they should just take a vote and be like, all right, you know, if you're pro socialized, if you're for socialized medicine, great. If you're not, that's fine. socialize, if you're for socialized medicine, great. If you're not, that's fine. We won't pursue it as a national policy, and you individually waive your right to Medicare and Medicaid. You really don't like it that much, that's fine. You're off the

fucking roster. You hear all these fucking yahoos yammer-jammering about how they can't have the government giving away fucking free healthcare, and it's socialism, but everybody still takes it. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, they all still take it.

So fine. Yeah. You're going to fucking yammer jammer and fucking run your goddamn gums about how you don't want it. Then just fucking wave your right to it. I want to talk to you about this too. This is, this is something that really bothers me because she's using language that I don't think she should be allowed to use.

She says, let's not do that. Let's love people. Let's care about people. Let's repeal it now while we can. And you're like, how exactly is this caring about people? Because basically what you're creating is more underinsured people, more medically bankrupt people, more people that have that can't get fucking, they can't even leave their shitty job because they have insurance. And then they have to leave somewhere. Maybe, especially if they're going to become entrepreneurial, they're going to have to get insurance on their own. They can't get it because of pre-existing conditions, keep people locked down at their job. You know, that's not loving people. That's not respecting people's, you know, we talk about this all the time, Tom, you and I,

and this is something that you bring up constantly, that the reason why this fails is because health should not be something that we insure. It should just be a right. It's just a human right to being healthy. And I totally agree in this case because she's basically saying let's love people. Well, the only really way to love people, the only really way to treat people correctly is to take this out of the private insurance company's hands and make it a fucking universal health care.

I love these people so much. Fuck them. I want them to be medically bankrupt. How many medical bankruptcies are there in the United States before all this stuff was put in? I think, and I could be mistaken, but I remember reading not too long ago that it might be the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. You know, and that's the other thing. It's like you hear these fucking people, the same fucking assholes talk about bankruptcy laws and how we got to tighten down bankruptcy laws.

And it's too easy for these people just to shirk their financial responsibilities and declare bankruptcy and wipe out all their debt. And it's killing the system. And, you know, well, OK, but, you know, one of the leading causes, if not the leading cause, is our fucking immoral and inept and financially unviable health care system. Right. That's what's, you know, so everything becomes more robust when people aren't struggling every day to get by. So any way that you can that you can work to help alleviate people's desperate struggle against poverty. You know, that's there. There are no countries where everybody's struggling desperately on the fucking cusp of poverty

that are doing well. Like you don't you don't look around and be like, hey, let's and look, look internationally. Who's using the United States health care system as a model? Is anybody using it as a model? No, nobody's fucking using it as a model because it's a bad system. It doesn't work. It's not caring. Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. This story is from why not news dot com. Egyptian trend matchmakers offer veiled devout wives. Matchmaking service providers taking advantage of rise in number of single Egyptian women use religious slogans to seduce clients. This this is this is like a dating website for buying women. Yeah. Like, that's what it is.

It's like and it's buying veiled women. What other product do you buy where you fucking throw a fucking mattress cover over the top of it first? You know, can you imagine going to the auto dealership and being like, I would like to buy a car. We have many fine cars for you to choose from. Can I see one? No. What? I think it's like, let's make a deal.

You know what I mean? Like you have the one woman and she's standing there and you're like, okay, well, here she is. And you get a chance to see her, they'll unveil her. You know, you get a chance to see her face in the, with the Monty Hall problem though. I wonder, you know, because in the Monty Hall problem, there's a, there's a thing under door number one that you know. And then there's the other ones that you don't know. And it's always more advantageous, I think, to take the ones you don't know because of the way it's set up, because they take a door away. So the way it's set up,

the mathematics of it is, you know, it's better to choose the other or the last one. You have one woman who, take her veil off, okay, get the chance to see her. Now you can have this other woman. Is it more advantageous to take the one with the veil on or the one you know? I think this is like the Monty Hall Arabic problem we have going on in Egypt right now.

All I know is the whole time you're sitting there, no whammies, no whammies, no whammies, no whammies, no whammies. Go! I think it would be awesome if they pull open door number two and it's a goat in a veil. It's a goat. And then the guy's like, I'll take the goat It's a goat. And then, like, the guy's like, eh, I'll take the goat. Yeah, goat. Hey, I got the goat.

You win some, you win some, if you know what I mean. Hey, oh, hey, oh. Yeah, I love, too, that they're, like, they're just, I mean, they're paying to get into this database is basically that they pay

15 addiction pounds, which is roughly $3, to access a database. However, they must also prove good intentions in searching for a veiled wife. In return, he will be offered a list of names with some backgrounds to choose from. According to his choice, the office will form a profile of his desired match, and the search will begin. So basically it's like, it's like islammingle.com. It is.

It's just as silly. Like it's just as fucking silly as Christian Mingle too. It's like, let's, let's, you're already in Egypt. Everybody is pretty much already Islamic. I mean the vast majority. And it's not like it's going to be difficult to find. Like, it's like, oh, I'm in Egypt. How do I find a good Islamic wife? I don't know.

Find a woman in Egypt. Right. Then, you know, see if you match. I don't know. This just seems like a way to buy women. Like, you look at this in the way that it's being advertised and the way that it's, you know, the way the culture works. It seems like, you know, veiled women for marriage, marriage for the devout. Call now is one of the slogans.

And it it just has this sort of. I'm getting a woman like it's not like, hey, women and men, you should. This is a place online where you guys can meet. Instead, it's like I am a dude. I am going to the site to get a woman. It's not like, hey, women and men, this is a place online where you guys can meet. Instead, it's like, I am a dude. I am going to the site to get a woman. It's not the other way around. It's not like women can go to the site and find a guy. Instead, it's like, you can come on our site and you can be a commodity on our site and people can go and click on you and then you can be owned.

And the whole time, it's like, no whammies, come on. What I feel like is I just feel like I would be jaded because I watched Popeye when I was a kid. And there was a skit on Popeye where there's the woman with the really beautiful eyes and she has the veil. And they take the veil off and there's that haggard face with like no teeth or whatever, I'd be so afraid to be like, oh man, she's got beautiful eyes, but what's underneath the veil? There's nothing like meeting a woman and not knowing anything about her. Like really, we live in a culture now that allows us a chance to really get to know the person you're going to be married to. And I'm feeling like, you know, we had a lot of divorces.

The divorce trend was up high and I don't know where it is now. I'm sure there's somebody that's going to tell us, though, that, you know, I don't know where the divorce trend is. But I tend to believe that as we become more free as a society, divorce will either slowly start to eliminate itself because people will be happy with their choices or divorce won't be such a big deal because it'll be the idea of it is more like, well, we did that for a while and now we're moving on and there's no stigma attached to it. That's the thing, man. I don't think divorce, and this may be a little unpopular, but I don't think that divorce is an inherently bad thing. I don't, I don't think, I don't think divorce is maybe a little unpopular, but I don't think that divorce is inherently bad. I don't think so either. It's not a bad thing. It's like you got married because you had, you know, like you met somebody

and you fell in love and you had these strong feelings and you know, you thought it was going to work out and then it didn't later. And your life changed and you change as people and your relationship evolves. And then you get divorced and you give it another whirl. It's like we've got this this idea that divorce is inherently this negative thing. It's actually not. It's a freedom. Yeah. I mean, divorce is honestly it is a freedom for both parties. It's a freedom to say, hey, you know, we got married and it didn't work. And instead of living together unhappily instead of just fucking sniping and bickering and being two fucking miserable unhappy sons of bitches living in the same

goddamn house together instead there's a mechanism for us to you know legally and and hopefully sometimes even amicably part ways and say hey this worked or it didn't work you know now we're gonna move on to another part of our life it It actually seems to me like as our life expectancy continues to grow, divorce just makes sense. You know, that sounds terrible, but you know what I mean? No, sure. Who the fuck at 25 is going to say, yeah, the next 75 years of my life, I'll be the same and you'll be the same. You know, this thing that we're working on right now will continue to work in 60, 70, 80 years. Who knows? You know, people are going to live, you know, longer and longer.

So you cut that bullshit out of it. Like, well, we got to cut divorce rates down. I don't I don't really see that as being necessarily a good. So in lieu of a break today, we want to talk a little bit about our trip to TAM and possible help from the audience. Now, we've always gotten a lot of emails saying that people would like to support the show. And we just implemented a couple things to have people help us if they want to. We want to go to TAM this year. Both Tom and I are planning on going.

Tom has already bought his ticket, and I am going to buy mine in the next week. And we're hoping for other money that we've been using from the show to help pay and subsidize those costs. But there's still going to be a gap. And so what Tom and I have done is set up a—and it wasn't our idea initially. We actually had a listener suggested to us, a person by the name of Dana sent us an email and said that they would like to donate to us. And so Tom and I talked about it, and we decided to put a donate button on our website. So we put a donate button on DissonancePod.com. There's two donate buttons, actually.

The first one is to help us fund our trip to TAM. So if you're interested in pitching a little money at the show and you think it's worth it, go there and spend some money. We can take donations of any denomination, and it's through PayPal. So all you have to do is just go to the site and click, and you can donate. You don't have to be a PayPal member to do it. And then the other thing is we decided to help defer some of the costs the show, because the show does cost money. We have to pay for website space and podcast space each month. If you'd like to donate

to the show itself, to keep the show running, you can donate to the show maintenance fund, which is right underneath it. So you can donate there. And we're also going to have in the next week, we're going to put a post on Facebook and on Twitter, and also on our website. And the next week, we are going to have a brand new shirt.

And that shirt is going to be available. And we're going to see a significant amount of money from that shirt. Yeah, and the shirt, I saw the proofs. The shirt is going to be awesome. Like the shirt is really going to be a great shirt. So if you're interested in supporting the show and a lot of people have expressed that interest, there's a lot of ways to do so now. Yeah, and the shirt itself is going to be, I think, 30 for men, 35 for women, but we're going to see a significant portion of that money.

So if you're interested in supporting the show and you want to get a thing, it's kind of like one of those PBS things, right? Right. We have no subscription options where you can just donate some money, but if you want to get a thing, you could basically buy the fucking tote bag. So we'll send you the tote bag. Actually, the indie merch will send you the tote bag. And who are we kidding anyway? It all just goes into the chicken wing fucking fund. I know. That's all it is. So this story is from Advocate.com. Gay Somali teen stoned to death, village forced to watch.

You know, this is just one of those fucking unbelievably awful, awful fucking stories about religious asshats just behaving like goddamned animals. They buried a man up to his chest and assaulted him with rocks because, you know, you wouldn't want him to fight back while you're fucking stoning him to death. So you got to bury him first. What strikes me about this article, though, is it says, quote, we investigated and this man did what Muslims shouldn't do. And as a result, he will be stoned to death.

And the one that killed somebody will be shot because homosexuality is more punishable in Islam. The judge is alleged to have said. Oh, gosh. You have fucking ruined your society. Oh, my gosh. When your judge is like, that guy that had consenting sex with that other dude. We are going to have to murder that guy in an unbelievably barbaric and horrifying way. The murderer?

Yeah. Eh, not so bad. Not so bad. I love the image here with all these fucking jagoffs with their fucking faces covered. Yeah. You know, you're like, aren't you proud of what you did? They look pretty brave, their big guy. Isn't this something that you're proud of?

Because, I mean, you're obviously following God's law. Take the fucking masks off, man. Like, what's going on? I guess you could see pictures of this, too, if you wanted to. I didn't click on them. But evidently this other website has some graphic pictures of people being stoned to death. So if you're interested in that, if that's a thing that you like to see, you can always follow this to this website and then click on the link at the bottom of the page. The thing that I was sort of just shocked about in this article was – I'm going to read directly from it.

It says, a gay teenager in Somalia was reportedly stoned to death as punishment for being gay by Islamic rebels while villagers were forced to watch. And I can't help but think like, you know, what a barbaric thing to do to a group of people. It's like, you know, it's like rubbing your dog's nose in shit. You know what I mean? Like it's that sort of idea that like you did something wrong. Someone did something wrong in this case, and now in our eyes it's not wrong, but they did something wrong, we think. And now we're going to punish the people for it in some way.

It's just such a fucking backwards, stupid, barbaric thing to do to people. Like, not only are you being a fucking a tribal moron by killing this person, you're inflicting that that psychological damage on everybody else there by making them watch this person die. Well, I mean, and all that does, I mean, obviously, all that's going to do is just continue to accelerate this culture of violence and continue to perpetuate the culture of violence. You know, when when you've got, you know, kids in the in the in somebody has to throw these rocks. Right. it to grow up in a culture or how traumatized must you be by growing up in a culture so violent that your response to a situation is, well, let's dig a fucking hole, stick a man in it and

whip fucking rocks at his head until they die. When, when you can, when you can get there, when, when you can say, I'll pick up that rock and chuck it. Like you have forfeit your membership to human society. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, like the thing is, is like you're forcing these people to watch this because you want to intimidate them with your violence. You want to intimidate them into doing the right thing.

How in the world does your God benefit from that? Like what is the, what's the benefit from that? Like, I mean, you're the all powerful deity sitting up there and you're thinking, you know, it's a good thing that they force those people to watch because now they'll be so afraid of the human component of this that they won't do the wrong thing. Well, don't you want them to choose the right and wrong thing without any fucking pressure from the outside? Don't you want to choose the best people to be rewarded? And the best people aren't chosen because of risk of reward and punishment. They're chosen because they're naturally good people. You know, and every time you see that is there's like there's a there's a tacit implication there that we are wrong and we know it. And the only way we can communicate our

message is through this violence, because our ideas will not win. We're not going to win the war of ideas. We have to win a war of intimidation instead. Absolutely. I totally agree. And it also shows the impotency of Allah. I mean, complete impotency. I mean, like, kill this guy. I mean, jeez, if you can kill, you don't have to fucking

use these human beings to throw stones at him for a half an hour. Because you know you're not fucking getting clipped on the noggin the first fucking hit. Well, I thought that the point of the church was to worship God, and the boy fucking was just incidental. No, it's just the other way around. The point of the church is the boy fucking. All the other stuff is just busy work. This story comes from HuffingtonPost.com.

Cardinal Wilford Fox Napier suggests pedophilia not a crime, but an illness. And what bothers me particularly about this article is his quote. Now, don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible, like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take that position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged. That's the moral high ground. Really, really standing atop that fucking great moral hill there. He's a South African cardinal.

And and, you know, the stuff that he has to say, I think, is just kind of useless. I mean, it's like, you know, what you're saying is that these people are sick. Okay. I think the rest of the world agrees with you. Right. You're saying it's not a crime. And I think what you're saying is I would like to alleviate the burden that we have on ourselves of turning these people in for criminal proceedings. Well, okay. Maybe it's let's, let's, let's just use your worldview. Let's just take away the rest of the people's judgment all over the world who think that adults should make better decisions and not exploit children, right? That's what we think. I think as a society, we all agree that exploiting children for our own vices in this case is a bad thing and should be punished.

But let's just presume that in your worldview, that's not something we punish. Okay. But do we treat it at least? Because what happens is, is these priests get fucking shuffled around like cards and it doesn't matter who they get dealt to. You didn't make any fucking special, you didn't make any special, what's the word I'm looking for? Accommodations. You didn't make any special, what's the word I'm looking for, accommodations. You didn't make any special accommodations for these people once they show up at these places. You do in very few occasions. But then they wind up getting released, basically released to general population a few months later, a few years later, and they're back with kids again.

So the idea is like you're taking somebody who has an eating disorder and you're making them live in the fucking food pantry. You know what I mean? Like you're basically surrounding them with children, asking them to do the same thing again. And then you hear these priests that are indoctrinated into this. They wind up abusing these children, seeing older priests abuse these children. They fall into the same level of abuse that the senior priests do. You look at what happened in Ireland and different places.

So, you know, the idea here is not, you know, even if you are right that it's not a crime, which I disagree with because they think that as an adult you're supposed to be able to make decisions that do not harm innocents. But even if I fucking believe you, you still didn't do anything about it. Well, that's the thing. It's like, okay, you can at least identify them to your community. It's like, okay, you can at least identify them to your community. I mean, the absolute bare minimum would be to alert the community.

Hey, guys, just letting you know, you know, Father fucking Francis or whatever, he's got some bad touch around the kids. So keep your kids away from him. He's sick. He's not a well man. We don't want to turn him in. We don't want him to live behind bars because we've got a fucking insane worldview that somehow decides that he's not responsible for his actions, primarily just because he's a priest. You know, let's let's call that what it is, too.

If if this wasn't a problem within the church, if this wasn't an ongoing scandal that seems to never end because they won't just do the right thing and have a zero tolerance policy and start turning these people into the police, if they if they would do that, all would be well. Right. Like, oh, it would be easy. It's an easy. This is an easy problem to fix. This is an easy problem to fix. They treat this, I'm off on a tangent, but they treat this like it's this intractable, complex, difficult issue that we've just, God, we just, you know, it takes a lot of effort. We've got to have these fucking committees and we all got to get together and we got to figure out what to do. No other organization has that problem. Yeah. Because if any other organization, if you find out that your boss is a pedophile or that your subordinate or that your colleague is a pedophile, you call the cops, you have them arrested. There are mechanisms in place for that.

Every society has them. Every society. The only institution that seems to struggle with what to do is the goddamn churches. There's no struggle here. There's no difficulty. There's no, this is not a hard question. This isn't something that takes a lot of mulling over

and fucking beard scratching. It just doesn't. You're not spending hours as the thinker leaning forward on your fucking fist, wondering what can happen. You just don't tolerate it. I mean, it's really fucking simple. And I hope there is sort of

a change in direction here, and these older priests start to die out and start taking this sort of feeling of entitlement away with them. Because it is this old boys club that can't be touched. They're the untouchables. You can't prosecute them. I mean,

they're touchables. I mean, they're touchables. But the thing is that they're not mean, well, they're touchables. They're touchables? That's the thing. But the thing is that they're not – they are specifically not able to be prosecuted in this way. And they're always free from prosecution. Well, they're not free from persecution because they consistently get called out on it. But they definitely are free from prosecution. And I think that that's, you know, that's certainly, you know, one of the things that we need to, we need to pay attention to a little more often. So we're back at the end of the show with Michael Marshall from many different things.

I'm not even going to name them, but I'm going to start with Be Reasonable because that's the latest endeavor that you've taken on. This is a brand new podcast. It's got two episodes that I've taken on. This is a brand new podcast. It's got two episodes that I've listened to. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Be Reasonable and what it's about? Yeah, sure. So I used to do a different show called Righteous Indignation a little while ago,

and that show kind of came to an end. But one part of it that we really wanted to continue were the interviews that we did. Because what we did on that show was we interviewed people that we disagreed with, but we spoke to them in a way that was polite and respectful and allowed them to explain why they think these things that are wrong. And we had a few kind of fairly big interviews with psychics and all sorts of things, really.

And so we wanted to bring that back. So we've got this new show, Be Reasonable, which, as you say, we're two episodes in. And it's really a chance to hear from people that ordinarily we'd never speak to. Or ordinarily, if we did speak to them, we'd be debating them. We'd be looking to try and counteract them. We'd be looking to try and shout them down and be arseholes to them. And it's a chance to just say, well, actually, these people, many of them will genuinely believe the stuff that they're saying. So let's hear them out and, you

know, be fairly polite but firm when it comes to them making a claim, but allow them to really let us kind of probe the depth of their argument a little bit. Because I always think when you, I really love speaking to people I disagree with because I can go out and find someone I agree with dead easy. You know, I can pick up the phone and find someone who's going to agree with me on any subject that I want to pick up most of the time. That's why I have friends. So I don't really learn that much from speaking to people I completely agree with, but I don't often get the chance to speak to people I disagree with. And, you know, you can understand someone's argument much better and find out better ways of counteracting it if you get as much

information about what they're thinking as possible. So this is a chance really to gather that information and to also let people we disagree with know that skeptics aren't all assholes who are going to tell them that they're wrong and, you know, going to start yelling evidence at them constantly. But we're able to have grown up adult conversations, really. That's amazing. I mean, really, because I couldn't do it. I would yell evidence at them the entire time. But seriously, I think this is a good idea.

I really do think it's a great thing to try to find other people's viewpoints and that sort of thing. And especially, like you say, you get a chance to learn about their arguments in depth because you get a chance to hear sort of what they really believe. And you do give them an opportunity to showcase in the two episodes that have been produced. Both of them have you and your co-host. Who's your co-host? It's Hayley Stevens, who I used to do Writers' Indignation with. She's a really great skeptic in the UK.

Okay, so you and Hayley really give the people the stand there. You talk for very short amounts of time in these podcasts, relatively, compared to the guests. The guests mostly have the floor. You ask a few questions. Now, are a lot of these questions prepared ahead of time, or are you asking questions

on the fly in this? It's kind of a 50-50, really. We've got a few questions that we know where we want to go, so we've got a lot of the questions outlined, but really we try and hear what the guest is saying and try and respond to that. And, you know, maybe we're still finding the feet a little bit with the show, and I'm sure

with future interviews we'll be able to do that on the fly. But what I really want to do is have like an open discussion based on the topics we're talking about, and that's how we've done it in the past. We're pushing outside of our comfort zone a little bit. I mean, the second episode, which is the latest one that was out prior to this show, with the members of the Flat Earth Society, with a guy who's one of the prominent members

of the Flat Earth Society, I had no idea previously that they were a real thing, and that they actually exist. But as soon as I found out they existed, I thought they were just the coolest thing of all time. I had to speak to them, because it's so fucking cool that they believe the world is flat. Against all the evidence, they believe the world

is flat, and I think they really believe it. I think there are probably many members of the society who don't really believe it, but I think the guy I was speaking to did. But they've got all these really weird views, like you consider from the mainstream, that gravity doesn't exist, but we are accelerating upwards

at the speed of gravity, which kind of emulates the same effects. And, you know, some people believe that the world is an infinite plane in all directions, completely flat. How can you not want to speak to these people? How can you not want to get a conversation with them? From listening to both of them, that one was a little harder to listen to because it felt like the person was really just using, uh, he was just really falling back on argumentation and not using any sort of evidence. He would say that the evidence I've heard leads me to believe this, but he never really presented any of that evidence. He was just using ways in which to argue to sort of prove his point. And there was a lot of times that I was getting frustrated.

I had to shut it off a couple times because I was getting frustrated with his answers. I had to shut it off a couple times because I was getting frustrated with his answers. I thought that the other one that she did with the woman who does the vision through feeling was to approach it while she's not approaching it in a very – in like a hyper-skeptical way. She at least has some mindset that says she would like to see it at least fleshed out if not disproven. And I think you're right. And I think that maybe the difference between the way that those two interviews went was the support network and the structure around each of the people I was speaking to. So for Anita Eikonnen, the psychic in the first one, I know that she was very much, she did her own thing. And she might know some people who agree with her, but by and large, she has convinced herself and she does her own thing individually. has convinced herself and she does her own thing individually. Whereas with Michael from the Flat Earth Society,

that by and large is an online forum, which has an awful lot of debate. So I'd imagine, I'll just purely speculate, that the reason that Michael was falling back on argumentative techniques rather than evidentiary techniques is because an online debate, a forum, he probably has these conversations an awful lot with people and you just get the down pat ways of answering questions i mean we've actually got the new episode coming out uh pretty soon it might it's

either this week or next week depending when this show goes out um where we speak to a guy called duncan lunan about his belief that uh two children that were found in the middle uh in the i think it's about the 15th century something around that kind of time uh they were green from head to toe and spoke in a language no one understood. And he believes they were alien hybrids, human-alien hybrids that were beamed here from another planet. Conventional wisdom tends to have them as being Flemish with jaundice. But he believes the alien thing.

And one of the reasons he believes the alien thing is the chances, because they were taken to nobility when they were found, and the chances that the noblemen they were taken to nobility when they were found, and the chances that the noblemen they were taken to wouldn't speak Flemish were very small. So it's the alien hybrid thing. Right. That's got to be. You've crossed some things out here. And this is from the 15th century?

Something in that kind. I can't remember the exact timeline, but in that kind of area, yeah. So maybe 15th, 16th century. You can find out when you listen to the show when it comes out. Oh, that's awesome. I can't wait to hear it. How hard is it to get guests for this show? I mean, do people shy away if you send them messages?

Are they like, no, I'm not interested in talking to somebody who's going to be skeptical about what I think? Some do do that. Others are quite interested. I mean, we've got a couple of guests lined up that we just need to work through. We've had a few people saying

that they just have no interest at all. There was one lady that I really, really badly wanted to speak to and she just was having none of it. She is a Sparomancer. A what? An Sparomancer. She's somebody who tells the future using asparagus. No. This is the greatest thing I've ever

heard. Are you fucking serious? Yeah, she's an asparagus diviner. And I can't tell. I don't know. I's an asparagus diviner. And I can't tell, I don't know, I do not know where to start, but it would have been fucking cool to speak to her, but she just did not want to speak to skeptics. That is both a, that is a delicious, antioxidant rich form

of future dowsing. Although your urine, after you figure out what, like, I predict my urine will stink. Yeah. That is my prediction. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much the only thing you can predict from eating asparagus is that you're going to have an interesting time at the urinal later on.

Asparagus? Now, when you do this sort of thing, you've got to have in the back of your head, I mean, unless you're, well, maybe you don't, but when I'm listening, there's parts that I kind of want to laugh at. Now, are you stifling any laughter at all? Because I think it's a natural reaction that we have when we hear something absurd that we want to laugh at it.

I'm not sure, actually. I don't think in either the interview or any of the interviews you've had so far we're actually stifling any laughter. But I think that's because when you're in the conversation with somebody and they are expressing that they really genuinely believe something that is absurd, it doesn't seem – it's not as funny when you're in the conversation because it's just – it's fascinating. And you want to try and find out why they believe it and you want to try and probe them. So you're more thinking about what question you can ask to try and draw a bit more information out of them. leave it and you want to try and probe them so you're more thinking about what question you can ask to try and draw a bit more information out of them um i'd imagine there are times listening

back to stuff that i have found it a bit more amusing um more so with interviews we did on on righteous indignation where we did this this interview section the new podcast is basically just the interview section from ri and one of the interviews we did on that show was with a um uh police psychic she said she worked with the police her name on that show was with a police psychic. She said she worked with the police. Her name was Vicky Monroe, a spirit messenger. And first off the interview, you know, we're asking her questions about how would you do this? And she's totally reasonable.

You know, I would never get involved in a case unless I was asked. I think it's really immoral to just throw out information. I always make sure people are really prepared for stuff. I don't want to get involved where I'm not wanted, all this kind of stuff. And you think, okay, she's really reasonable. And then she said, and you know, I don't even have to be in the same room. I can do readings for people over Skype. And I said, oh, well, you know, we're on Skype now. Would you mind? And she kind of hesitated a bit. And then she said, actually, yeah, I'll give you a reading. So I said, well, do you want to do a reading for me or for Hayley? And she said, well, I'll do it for the two of you because

I sense you're next to each other. No, wait, wait, wait. No, you sat opposite each other. I said, well, I'm in Liverpool and Hilly's in Bristol. So there's about 200 miles between us right now. And it just went downhill from there. And that was a hard one not to laugh at because she was bringing out names. So I've got an Elizabeth.

I don't know an Elizabeth. Okay, maybe it was someone you went to school with. Well, who's giving you this? Oh, I've got um an elizabeth i don't know elizabeth okay maybe it was someone you went to school with well who who's giving you this oh i've got your grandma here what's her name she's not telling me okay but she is telling you the name of someone i might have gone to school with but he's gonna tell you her name memory but no it doesn't know her own name yeah exactly so in the in the interview you know i threw up notepad and scribbled down every name that came up and at the back end of the interview i i took her back through all the names she'd mentioned and there was about 25 names and she hadn't really well she's she didn't seem

like she'd really clocked on to the fact that she was throwing out so many names so i think she does believe that she's real and was trying to justify at the end of it well you know i told you about the whole grandma thing uh yeah so that was a really interesting one and there were a few moments there where i had to stifle laughter where it was just going nowhere because when you know about cold reading you can there are certain techniques you can use to block a cold reader by making sure you're not proffering any any further information right by making sure you ask clarification questions before saying yes to anything so she was saying i'm getting a a black dog I was saying, is this for me or is this for Hayley? Oh, Hayley, right. Is this now?

Is it dead? Is it alive? Is this Hayley's dog? Is it someone else's dog? What kind of energy are you getting for it? Because that'll help us narrow down where it is. I love the idea that it's an alive dog. It's like calling her on the phone. It's an live dog with a cell phone who's making a collect call. That's great. I think that's really good, too, because I've never really thought about how to counteract them like that. Because I always watch it on television, and I'm always like, they always ask the most obvious questions that are so open-ended. They'll say something like to a 60-year-old person, did your mother pass? And you're just like, well, fucking no. She's the world's

oldest person. You know what I mean? Of course she's dead. So there's some really obvious things, but I've never really thought about how to counteract that, and I think that's really a great way to do it, is to just ask those clarification questions. Yeah, have you ever had a reading? Never, never.

I would recommend anyone do it. I mean, it might cost you, I guess, what, $10, $15, maybe $20 here, something like that, but I think it's money well spent to have at least one palm reading or a psychic reading or something like that. I try and see as many as I can as cheaply as I can.

So if there's a free show on, for example, there's quite a lot of spiritualist churches here in the UK. Do you guys have spiritualist churches here in the UK. Do you guys have spiritualist churches? I guess you must do. I don't even know what that is. It's the religion of spiritualism

which says that there is a God and there is an afterlife and certain people on earth can contact the afterlife. So if you come along to the church, we'll sing a couple of hymns and then we'll get a medium up on stage who will talk to your dead loved ones. No, we do not have that. The Baptists would not stand for that.

Yeah, that's not a... That British invasion has not made it over here yet. I think it was originally American. I don't know the history. I think it was originally American. I'm sure it came from the Fox sisters. It may have originated here, but it was probably fucking tarred and feathered

and run out on a rail. To be honest, I would have no idea what all the churches are, but this is the very first time I've ever, ever heard of it. It's horrible and macabre. I went along to a spiritualist church here in Liverpool and saw some amazing things. One of which was this fairly old lady was on stage.

She was very grandmotherly and a great auntie in her persona, the way she interacted with people. And she was doing a reading for someone and she was quite decent. She was quite accurate. And then she started to lose a bit of accuracy. I don't know if she got distracted or whether she had a bad cough or something because you know how old ladies they've got tissues just stuffed everywhere handkerchiefs in every

fucking orifice of their clothing so she pulled some tissues out from up her sleeve and she went to either cough or blow her nose so she opened them up she looked at the tissues, she closed it up, she put it back up her sleeve and she was very accurate after that I just saw you fucking read your notes and no one here got that

but you just read your notes, I one here got that but you just read your notes i saw that and it cost me about three quid to see this and the other thing that was absolutely amazing i've had altercations and it's a it's a way long story that i can't really go into uh in the course of this interview i'm sure but if you look up um joe power who's a psychic here in liverpool and uh the interactions that i've had with him. Essentially, I had a conversation with him once that very quickly descended to a point where he called me a paedophile. What? Yeah, it was people like you make me sick,

you sit in front of your computer until 3 o'clock in the morning, festering away, plotting to bring down people like me in exactly the same way that paedophiles plot to kidnap and rape children. Not that I've told this story many times that I've got the court down. In exactly the same way. Yes, they are analogous. So this became a big thing for our group. And it ended up in The Guardian. And he ended up telling the police that I'd been making death threats about him.

And all this kind of really crazy stuff. If you Google Joe Power, I think our website is the second search that comes up for him now. So he's getting fucked off the back of all the publicity this has gotten us. So I went along to Spirituous Church and looked across the row that I was sat in and sat against the wall with a notepad was Joe Pala. Taking notes. Awkward.

Because he had a show in Liverpool about a fortnight later. And the kind of people who go along to a cheap Spirituous Church reading might be the kind of people who go along to a psychic reading. What a clever dude. If you only get one of those right, you fucking nailed it. You're amazing. Because if you can see a reading happen, you recognize one person, you throw out something really obscure that came up last time

and they think it's amazing. But we know you were just sat in the corner taking notes. Oh, that's so smart, man. Gosh, I mean, it's devious as fuck, but it's smart. I mean, that's really smart. I did look up for the pedantic people in our audience who are going to send us messages about how we don't understand church and spiritualist church. It did start here in the United States, and it still has a following in the United States. So don't send your messages because we don't want to know.

Okay, so I want to talk about Bad Pete PR blog before we let you go here. Now, what's going on with that? What is this about? Okay, this is my main obsession, I would say. And it's grown into an obsession over the last couple of years. People don't tend to realize how much of the news is just made up, isn't made up by the writer. Right.

So what I try and do, I'm trying to think of how best to really explain this. There was a study from Cardiff University in 2008, which showed that if you take the top five newspapers in the uk and look at where each of those stories came from uh 80 of them came from either uh the public relations industry or um the press agencies like news uh the press association that kind of thing so even the best journalism doesn't often verbatim will take from other sources so you can actually spot stories in

the newspaper and within a little bit of digging find the original press release put out by the company that wanted to get this particular angle across and you can put it through a little um a website called uh journalism.com you put in the press release and it will show you all the newspaper articles that used verbatim copy from this press release. So you can sometimes, I found stories that were 100% taken from a press release. So not a word was changed with a journalist name at the top. And the reason for this is because as businessmen increasingly owned newspapers over the last sort of 15, 20 years, and as revenues are down, you start sacking journalists, but you make journalists that you've got left write more. So the journalists haven't got the time to write their own stories. You know,

they haven't got the time to pick up the phone and call the psychic lady who's having sex with octopus aliens. So you just print the press release that you get. So you just write up what you saw on a video because it's just much quicker. So what I do on a blog I've got called bad-pr.tumblr.com and it's on Tumblr because I'm too lazy and too stupid to get a better CMS, essentially. Since the start of the year, I've been taking one story from the news and tracking it back to the original press release and demonstrating the angles that are being put out there.

And some of them are really pretty obvious and pretty transparent when you really see it. So, for example, right about Christmas time, there was a lot of stories, mostly in the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, so big newspapers here, but not as grown up as The Guardian or The Times. It's kind of your next level down. And there's lots of stories about how it's insufferable over Christmas to be around the in-laws.

And most couples fight because they're with the mother-in-law and you've got no space and couples aren't having sex over Christmas because they're sort of squashed on beds in family's houses. And there was about six or seven stories all saying being around your family is a fucking nightmare at Christmas.

And they were all put out by a hotel chain. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So there was there was uh the best the biggest thing i wrote uh recently the most the most kind of interesting thing was this was again i think it came out in january there was a lot of stories in the british news uh summer last year there was a couple of stories about how women under the age of 30 are three times as likely to have sex with a stranger if they're on holiday. Girls apparently just go crazy when they're on holiday and they're just going to fuck a stranger, essentially. But at the same time, right about the same time in different newspapers,

were stories saying that if you stay in England during the summer, because the summer is so wet and miserable and kind of depressing, nobody feels like having sex. So there was this whole story, this storyline across a couple of different newspapers, a couple of different articles saying, go abroad and you'll have sex with a stranger. You'll get laid if you go abroad. And this was put out by a website called mistravel.com, which is a travel dating website where generous members can sign up if they want a travel companion and attractive members can sign up if they want a free holiday.

What? And men get to pay women to go on holiday with them. And this was advertised with stories saying, you know, if women go on holiday, they are going to sleep with a stranger, yeah? Oh my gosh, that's amazing. I thought at first it was like the Tourism Board of India was putting this out. But it turns out this is even worse. Well, what gets even worse and what was quite remarkable is this website is run by a guy called Brandon Wade.

And he runs a couple of other sites. There's another site called whatsyourprice.com, which is an auction dating site. So generous members get to bid on which girl they want to take out. And the one who bids the most gets to take the girl. It's a fucking cattle market, essentially. It's a cattle auction. And the one who bids the most gets to take the go. It's a fucking cattle market, essentially.

You know, it's a cattle auction. And then there's another one called Seeking Arrangement, which is a sugar daddy dating site where sugar daddies can find sugar babies to pamper. And it's, so I started looking, because I saw his name coming up in the press more and more. And there's those three names of the websites and Brandoway coming up a lot. So I looked through the British press.

I spent a couple of hours on Google finding everywhere I could to try and pull up stories from these three sources over 2012. And I managed to find that there were 49 stories put out by this one guy throughout his, through these three websites that made it into the national press, 30 of which were in the Daily Mail in 2012. And basically his business model is prostitution. I mean, and that's fine if, you know, prostitution, absolutely fine if you go into it with your eyes open, but if you're selling it by saying

women like to have sex on holidays, says a website trying to send men, trying to get men to take strangers on holidays, you know, that I think is a bit disingenuous. There's an awful lot of trickery involved there. So at the same time as the Daily Mail was printing these 30 adverts for what is basically a prostitution service,

they also ran a massively high-profile anti-pornography campaign with headlines saying, a victory for decency, when the Prime Minister says he'll review whether pornography can be allowed into people's homes automatically or whether you'd have to sign up to opt into it. So they ran this big thing, you know, the Daily Mail, we've won it for decency, at the same time as they were publishing 30 adverts for what is essentially a prostitution site. Absolutely amazing. The best thing Brandon Ware didn't get published was in July.

I think it was July, yeah. For PR, you hook on to stories that are in the press. So if you know it's around Valentine's Day, you put anything out that's around Valentine's Day and you're going to get published. And I wrote an article for The Guardian recently on Valentine's Day, just looking at all the companies that had used Valentine's Day to get published and i wrote an article for the guardian recently around valentine on valentine's day just looking at all the companies that had used valentine's day to get published there was something like 30 or something

crazy like that but brandon wade in july wrote an article that uh wrote a press release that didn't get published that said in the event of a dark night massacre who would you want by your side on a first date why and it was essentially saying about how uh during the dark knight massacre um so many like five men lost their lives to save their girlfriends but if you were on a first date uh going with somebody who was generous but not necessarily too wealthy uh might mean the difference between life and death oh my so this is a guy who saw a gunman go into a cinema and kill a lot of strangers and thought i can advertise my pseudo pseudo-prostitution websites off the back of this. I can get traffic off the back of this. And that one didn't get published,

but 49 other of its stories made in the national press in the UK last year. My God, that is just the height of cynicism. I just, to use a massacre, I'd be like, I can make some money off of this. I guess when you run What's Your Price, though, I mean, it's not terribly shocking that you might stoop to some, wow, that's pretty incredible. So this is the world that I inhabit.

And the more you start digging, the more you see this stuff absolutely everywhere. So if your listeners want to check out bad-pr.tumblr.com, or if you stick a link in the show notes, there's at least one story every day so far this year. It goes back past that, but I've been trying to be a bit disciplined and get at least a story a day up, and I haven't missed a day yet this year. But I've got about, it's just a case of finding the time. I've got 50 stories just lined up, ready to write up.

And I find, I think if you look through the Daily Mail each day, you'll find at least seven stories that jump out at you as being in this kind of way. And then you can start looking beyond that and find that most of the rest of them will be too. I used to work for a PR firm, and I was an administrative assistant, so I didn't write the stories. But what I did was I faxed those stories to all the major newspapers. So they would write a story, some jackass out of college with a college degree would just sit in a small office and write a story about a product. And then I would fax that product story to hundreds of newspapers because that's when faxes still existed, I guess. I don't know.

But you'd fax it over to these places, and they would then – we would then clip and buy these papers to show the the the people that were paying us money that we were getting their story this story about their product in these places because it's free advertising that's exactly it and i think not only is it free advertising um but it's also much more effective than advertising i think it's devious because it's saying like it's a true story when it's written by some joker who doesn't have any idea about truth. It doesn't care about truth, actually. In fact, it doesn't care about objectivity of the product at all. In fact, what they do care about is selling this product.

So it's really just a salesman's pitch. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I saw one. I've actually just got my sight up in front of me now, just flicking through recent stories. And there was one in the Daily Mail on the 20th of February. Having an affair is better for weight loss than going on a diet.

I read that one. I did see that one on yours, yeah. My wife just lost a bunch of weight, too. This is just concerning. Well, maybe she signed up for the website Undercover Lovers, which it was advertising. Maybe, maybe, I don't know.

So now I want to ask you too about QED. That's coming up. It's sold out. That's exciting, huh? It did. It sold out very quickly. So for the first time, it sold out in I think about two months or something. And it is coming up in an offensively short amount of time.

120 days or so. But we're almost there. We're almost ready. And the good thing about that is we've got Mike Hall. I think you've had Mike on the show in the past. Yeah, president of the MSS. Absolute wonder. Complete marvel that he is.

An absolute powerhouse of skepticism, really. And he's doing a lot of, he's part of the organizational team as well. So my job is basically done by this point. And it's all on Mike's logistical shoulders. So I'm'm a lot more relaxed than he is but he is not sleeping anymore which which is normal for him so uh i think over the first two the first qed uh he hadn't slept or more than like two hours a night or something stupidly crazy for about a week and he didn't sleep over the weekend essentially walking around trying to make sure he got got so tired, he developed a limp. Oh, my goodness.

You don't normally insomnia yourself into a limp. That takes real effort. You got to want it, I bet, man. My goodness. So, Mike, we've already talked about several of the places, but give our listeners an idea of all the places they can find you and find your work on the internet. Well, I guess if you start with MerseysideSkeptics.org.uk,

that's where you can get Skeptics with a K, the podcast, Be Reasonable's there. There's also another podcast, Incredulous, which you guys have been kind enough to be on a couple of times and always been a blast with you guys on there. There's my Bad PR blog, bad-pr.tumblr.com. And that's probably the best place to really find interesting stuff that I do because you can't buy tickets for QED.

So I don't even need to give you a QED address because you're not coming. You're just not coming. Maybe next year we might allow you. We'll see from there. Well, Mike, it was absolutely wonderful having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. And, you know, it was absolutely wonderful having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. And you know what?

It's actually quite interesting because I didn't know how well I'd adjust to speaking to you guys because you sound a lot slower than you normally do when I listen to you because I listen to podcasts at one and a half speed. But what that does is it makes you think that people are so much quicker and so much smarter than they actually are? His mind moves so quickly. He's just got a jork in there. He's just lightning fast. It's interesting hearing you guys at regular speed. You basically listen to

us and now you're actually encountering us in the Matrix. You're able to slow down these bullets and dodge. No problem. I'm broadcasting in bullet time right now. He's listening at one and a half speed and we're still only half fast that's the problem he's like fuck I'm gonna be on this show no problem

I'll fucking school these fuckers well thanks again Mike oh cheers it was a pleasure guys so we got some voicemail and some email but first I wanted to talk about a show I just went to on Friday night. I went to – in Chicago, and I know all over the country they are playing it. Trey Parker and Matt Stone with someone else wrote a Broadway musical called Book of Mormon.

And I went the other night to the show and had an absolute blast start to finish. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. The tickets are expensive, so we spent a good amount of money to go. When I posted this to Facebook, a bunch of people commented and were like, yeah, that's a little too expensive for me. And it's true. It's an expensive show to go to,

but I fucking hate musicals and I can't evaluate someone's musical talent, but it was a blast to see. It was a musical, so keep that in mind. But I laughed start to finish, thought it was hilarious, and I thought there were some really great parts about this show that really highlight, I think, what their plan was when they wrote it to try to, I think, make people realize the absurdity of religion. It's not just a bashing of Mormonism. I think they use Mormonism as an example to allow people to feel okay with laughing about how ridiculous religion can be. And then sometimes that will make people reflect on how

ridiculous their own religion is. There's a great part with Julia Sweeney. Julia Sweeney did a thing a long time ago where she talks about how she – the reason why she started losing her faith was because she was visited by Mormons who gave her a Bible, a Mormon Bible. She read it and said, that's ridiculous, but then started thinking, well, how ridiculous is my own religion? And that made her think some more. So that's, I think, one of the things that it does really well. It's fucking raunchy as fuck. I mean it is just raw and filthy and funny and I mean it really is

it really was worth the money and it really was funny and I think that at the end of the show I don't want to ruin anything and I don't want to explain any of the parts but at the end of the show there's a really great bit too where they say where they're sort of talking about well if you're going to make something up at least make something up that doesn't subjugate people that doesn't

injure people that doesn't put people in power over others. Instead, you're making things up that help people. And why not just turn to our own literature and our own fiction and things like that to help empower us and then just view the world through a different viewpoint where we're not trying to hurt each other. And I think that there's some really cool messages in it. And I think it was really well done. So if you have an opportunity to see it, I would highly recommend it. I think it's really, really worthwhile. And I think it's a great way to show the absurdity of religion through using through comedy. I think I show the absurdity of religion through comedy, through that lens. And I think that that's so important.

And it's something that I think Tom and I try and fail to do on many occasions. Miserably. Yeah, miserably. But I think they do it well. So if you want to see somebody do it well, go see Book of Mormon if you have the money. To be fair, we could do it as well if we had the budget. Yeah. Well. And not as well.

And the writers. Yeah. Yes. I will use my budget to hire writers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well. And not as well. And the writers. Yeah. Yes. I will use my budget to hire writers. Exactly. Yeah. And buy Bird. Yeah.

So we did get some voicemail. We want to play the two voicemails for you now. We did only get two this week. Cecil, what up with the tattoo sleeve comment? I've been loving you like a brother for how long now and then you pull that shit oh dude what is up with that

anyway as someone who's been listening to your show since the beginning and as the tattoo sleeve on both arms actually I'm still a little bit out of shape but I'm going to give you a pass on that one. You guys are amazing.

You're awesome. Love you lots. We enjoyed that last show. That was awesome. And, you know, just for the record, your hillbilly God blows away hillbilly Jesus. No offense to that guy. Thanks again. Ciao.

1.2 billion Catholics in the world, and their leaders have to vote five times to decide who God is telling them to make the pope. Limited democracy. Am I the only one that thinks that's kind of funny? Love to hear your thoughts. So we want to talk about voting on the pope, Tom. We mentioned this last week. It's like, yeah, it's democratically elected pope through infallibility ballot. And again, I just I find it really amusing that if your guy doesn't win, you're as wrong as possible.

God is not on your side. You didn't just pick the wrong guy. It's not like, yeah, I chose the wrong sports team. It's like God chose the other people. Well, it's five. God did. Well, it's five times, too. It's like, is God conflicted the first four?

He's just like, I'm not really. I don't know. I can't make up my mind. Give me a longer span of time. So thanks for the voicemail, though. We appreciate it. I also got called out a little on calling tattoo sleeves ugly. First off, you should not care what some random fucking idiot on the internet thinks about your own personal body art.

That's something that you should never care about. But I had to laugh out loud when I heard it. I could tell there's sort of a joking tone to that voicemail where the guy's like, oh, you asshole. You know, you can sort of that I hate tattoo sleeves is because I have only seen, I think, maybe one or two in the history of all of them I've seen where the art is actually good for an extended period of time. I think that tattoos lose their edge after a certain period of time, and it just looks all blurry and weird. And most of the time, tattoo sleeves don't have anything in common with each other. So you just see, like, somebody's got a fucking bicycle, and then there's a picture of Johnny Cash, and then there's a fucking, you know, and they got like a Santa's sleigh on their forearm. And you're like, what the fuck is happening?

And it's like you've got to ask them questions, and I don't like to talk to people. So for me, that's not a conversation starter. I would never, like, start a conversation. The only sleeve, a tattoo sleeve I ever saw that I thought was really cool was it looked like there was, like, gears inside of there. But I think it was done relatively recently. Like, those gears get all fuzzy and weird after like 10 years. You look like you have just a big blotch of shit on your arm.

Cecil also hates kittens. I do. Puppies. I do. And the elderly. And babies. Just throwing that out there. Babies.

I fucking loathe babies. Babies. Holy shit. Babies with tattoo sleeves I fucking completely hate. Babies with tattoo sleeves? Those don't age well. By the time you're in preschool, that shit's all stretched out.

Right, right. So, just to give you a minute, that's awesome. All right, so we recorded something. It's like a mural on the Hindenburg. It's like tattooing Silly Putty.

You know what I mean? You just stretch that shit out. We got an email from Andrewid who says that he enjoys the show, and he said that we should check out The Scathing Atheist. Recently, we actually checked it out. I listened to a couple episodes. It's a really funny show. So if you want to find a show, I think that's sort of news oriented and it's really well scripted.

I think, you know, sometimes people try to script shows and it doesn't turn out as funny. But I think that this particular show turned out is really quite funny. I mean, I laughed out loud a couple times when I was listening to the episode. So they do a great job of writing ahead of time and making things funny. So if you're interested in scathing atheists, we just recorded a promo for them. We did, and I think we botched it. We totally ruined it. So that episode will be ruined.

Take that. He also says in his email, blessed be the homebrew. Yeah. And see how you and I have both homebrewed beer. I appreciate that because it needs all the fucking help it can get. Let me tell you, our bottles explode. Let me tell you. Stu sent us a book idea.

Yeah, Stu's book idea is awesome. What to expect when you're beheading. That's awesome. I fucking love that. Way to go, Stu. Thank you, Stu. That's great. Tom, Matthew has a kinship with you now.

Oh, man, I feel you. He says, Tom, quote, I said a sports. I have never felt closer to a person I've never met speaking to me through headphones. Matthew, I feel you, man. It's tough to be one of the I mean, I do like like UFC. There are actually some sport, but the traditional sports I have no interest in. And that puts you in a tough spot. One thing I've learned is just respond to everything with a question or tell them, yeah,

it's all about the coaching. Yeah. It works every fucking time. Yeah, all about the coaching works every time. It's the Socratic method of sports. It totally is. It totally is. And if you get bogged down, I've always found you can always, always rely on, hey, we just

got to keep everybody healthy. Yeah, keep everybody healthy is good. There's 20 minutes of diatribe at that point that you can just let them go off on. You can go grab a beer and let them go. Yeah, and the people who are saying, well, just tell them you don't like sports. Yeah, well, these are people you don't want to have to explain that. You don't have to have that long a conversation with them. No, I'm talking about like the FedEx guy.

Yeah, exactly. Who do you got for the big game? I don't know. Who do you got? I haven't decided yet. What do you think? What do you think? Yeah big game? I don't know. Who have you got? I haven't decided yet. What do you think? What do you think? I'm not sure.

So we got an email from Ted who says he's coming from the country between two testicles. This is another email we got from Sweden, and it says, so no excuses if you show up because basically there's two fans waiting for us in Sweden. Tom and I decided today when we talked that if you guys reach critical mass of all the people in Sweden listening, we'll visit. We'll definitely visit. I want all of you to show up at the airport, though, with a song. Welcome in. That's awesome.

We got a great clip from Preston that we're going to use in future episodes for Religious on Religious Violence. I'll play it for you now. I like you and have no reason not to. I like you and have no reason not to. Hey, did you hear about that magic baby that was born in Bethlehem? That's great. Thank you, Preston. It's from The Family Guy, and we will play it in the future

whenever we have some funny religious on religious violence. So thank you. So we were talking last week, Tom, about the T-shirt in South Africa, and Mike is the person who got the T-shirt, but he did not order the T-shirt. No, the T-shirt actually came from his daughter, Ashley, who is living in London. And he asked that we give Ashley a shout-out. Holla. I was going to say something, but that is the best shout-out we could have for Ashley.

So, Ashley, thank you for sending your father a shirt. And if you'd like to buy your father a $30 shirt in the future, we will be able to – that shirt will donate even more money to the podcast. So it's going to be coming up in the next week, Ashley. So keep your eye on our Cognitive Dissonance shirts. And, Ashley, you might want to sport a Cognitive Dissonance shirt yourself. You know, being in London, lots of people over there, they enjoy things. I do hear things are big in London, lots of people over there, they, you know, they, they enjoy things. So I do hear things are big in London. They like things over there.

They're huge on it. Um, we want to, we, we did want to mention, and because we had a couple of donations already, we wanted to thank Dana and Jacob for their, their generous donations already. Uh, remember that you can donate to the podcast at our website, dissonancepod.com. It's on the main page. You can either donate to our TAM expense fund, or you can donate to the maintenance fund. All that money goes directly to supporting us. So thank you in advance. Yeah, we had Murph send us an email. It looks like he's going, he got one of the tickets to QED. Yeah, he said if Marsh gets out of line, he can take care of business for us. I think Marsh was well within line, but if you want to beat him up, just beat him up.

I'm not going to stop you. We got our own good fellow over there. We got people. Go get your fucking shine box, Tommy. It's fucking awesome, man. We got an email from Jacob, and Jacob says, Hey, Cecil and Tom, I loved Everyone's a Critic, your movie review podcast. But basically, they're looking for a smart, snarky, eloquent movie review podcast, preferably with a nerd bent.

I don't know where to look. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts. Any podcasts I listen to nowadays really has to do with me doing research for the show because sometimes I don't find out about podcasts until late and things like that. So I have to, especially if we're interviewing someone, I want to make sure that I understand their body of work too. So I'm spending a lot of time, any free time, I'll listen to George's podcast. Yeah. I listen to George's podcast all the time. Um, I don't listen to George's podcast. I listen to George's podcast. Yeah, I listen to George's podcast all the time. I don't listen to Skeptic's Guide anymore, but I listened to it when George was on. So I listen to George's stuff, and then really I don't listen to a lot of other stuff unless we're doing an interview.

I'll catch Thomas and the Bible. I'll actually watch Thomas and the Bible's show, though, on Ustream rather than listen to it. So I do listen to a few, but I don't listen to any movie review ones. But I will say that the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe forum does have a portion to it. So I do listen to a few, but I don't listen to any new movie review ones. But I will say that the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe forum does have a portion on it. So you have to go sign up for the Skeptic's Guide

to the Universe forum, which is, I think, sguforums.com. I'm not sure. But if you go there, you can click on a podcast down at the bottom. It's near the bottom.

And there's a thread. There's a thread with us that you could talk about our show in there. But then there's also a thread that's like, what podcasts are we listening to but then there's also a thread that's like, what podcasts are we listening to is one of the threads and it's like stickied at the top of the forum.

And then you can ask people, hey, I'm looking for a movie review podcast in there and a bunch of people will reply. I know there's people who listen to the show right away who will reply too. So that might be a good place to start. Other forums might be interested. You might want to try there too.

We want to thank Michael Marshall for coming on the show this time. Michael co-hosts the podcast Be Reasonable. He's also the writer of the Bad PR blog, and he also co-hosts Skeptics with a K. We're going to link to all that stuff in the show notes this time at dissonancepod.com. You can check him out all over. He works with Merseyside Skeptics. He also does Incredulous over there.

So check out all the links so you can find Mike all over the internet. We are going to finish up the show today here with, I think, probably one of the best, I don't know, translation things we've ever done. And we didn't do anything. We just got it sent to us. We did nothing. Which is usually the best way for us to succeed, by the way. Absolutely the best way for us to succeed, by the way. Absolutely the best way. But Camillia sends us this translation of the Skeptic's Creed into Norwegian.

So we are going to play for you. She wanted us to send it through Google Translate. But we don't really have a way in which to do that. So we didn't do that. Because, again, that would also require work on our part. But we also think that sending it through Google Translate would take it away from all the work that she did. And we think it sounds wonderful.

It's awesome. So we're going to play it this week. We are going to end with the Skeptic's Creed as we do normally, but this time it is in Norwegian, for your pleasure. And we'll talk to you next week. This is the Skeptic's Creed, translated to Norwegian. synsforurende, pyramidalfri energihellbreding. Utvannet, nedadgående spiral, innholdsløs, salgstaktikk, senkveld, infodukkeholdning,

løve, fisker, kreftkur, refleksologisk fotmassasje, døden og tårnet tarokort. Psykisk hellbredelse, krystalkuler, Bigfoot, jetty, utenomjordisk vesen, kirker, moskéer, synagoger, templer, drager, gigantiske ormer.

Atlantis, delfiner, trutherer og birtherer, hekser, trollmenn og vaksinefornektere. Sjamanske, helberedere, evangelister, konspiratorisk dobbeltprat, stigmata, tullsnakk. Gjør deg sårbar. Støt frem dine hender, blodige, beviselige. Tvil, selv på dette. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Oh, for Christ's sakes, Tom. Hold on. Let me see where it stopped. Okay.

So you stopped with the sign language. You still have the sign language piece, all that stuff. Well, I didn't say anything during that piece. Oh, well, perfect. So let's go. So that's fine. All right. There we go.

Are you essentially saying that the show works better when you don't say anything, Tom? The show works much better when I don't say anything. Totally smooth. For every hour that we record, I record an extra two just in the hope that Cecil will have to put me in for some part of it.