The Scathing Atheist - 470: My Favourite Marsh Edition

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

On this week’s episode: Marsh classes up the pod with some Anglican charm ... We learn all about a man who started off as an investment banker and GOT WORSE ... And kids in Florida were learning too much in school so the GOP fixed it. --- Important show links: To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ Eli's article -- "I am the ghost that haunts The Drovers Inn, and Brian Eggo owes me an apology": https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/02/i-am-the-ghost-that-haunts-the-drovers-inn-and-brian-eggo-owes-me-an-apology/ --- Headlines: Florida passes homophobic bill to ban discussion of sexual orientation in primary schools: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60326418 https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/13/us/dont-say-gay-bill-florida-lgbtq-youth-cec/index.html Supreme Court won't block vaccine mandate in NYC: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-wont-block-vaccine-mandate-nyc-teachers-rcna15977 Jacob Rees-Mogg urged to correct morning after pill remark: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60267025 Christian conservatives are lived after Zillow showed two Black women together in an ad: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/02/christian-conservatives-livid-zillow-showed-two-black-women-together-ad/ There’s nothing to claims that Covid vaccines cause HIV – but that won’t stop them spreading: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2022/02/theres-nothing-to-claims-that-covid-vaccines-cause-hiv-but-that-wont-stop-them-spreading/ A Catholic priest resigned in an absurd scandal involving invalid baptisms: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/a-catholic-priest-just-resigned-in-a-scandal-involving-invalid-baptisms/

Warning, this podcast contains swearing and dick jokes, albeit in a charming British accent. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Allbirds, Stamps.com, and by Greg Locke's Dunkin' Donuts order. Greg Locke's Dunkin' Donuts order, 10 creams, 22 sugars, and probably some cum he doesn't know about. And now, The scathing atheist. Well, hello, just me, Ang Rang. And as sure as I name my characters, Tazard Butterford and Gwel Calong, we did in fact

evolve from Chilty, Gunky, Cram. It's Thursday. It's February 17th. And did our show just become continental? Yeah, it did. It's Thursday. It's February 17th. And did our show just become continental? Yeah, it did. I'm Michael Marshall. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Ethan Wright.

And from Joe Rogan's New Jersey. How dare you? Ann Arbor, Michigan. And that island next to the European Union. This is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Marsh classes up the pod with some Anglican charm. I'll introduce you to a man who started off as an investment banker and got work. You will.

And kids in Florida were learning too much in school, so the GOP fixed it. So that's nice. But first, the Eliatron. The professor and sociologist Maury Schwartz used to tell a joke to begin all of his classes, and it goes like this. There's this wave bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air until he notices the other waves in front of him crashing against the shore. My God, this is terrible, the wave says.

Look what's going to happen to me. Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave looking grim and it says to him, why do you look so sad? And the first wave says, you don't understand. We're all going to crash. All of us waves are going to be nothing. Isn't that terrible? And the second wave says, no, you don't understand. You're not a wave. You're part of the ocean. Now, I tell you that joke because when it comes to death, most atheists think we don't have a competitive answer to religion. But I would argue that, in fact, we do. But like all other answers atheism has for its religious equivalence,

it requires a shift in viewpoint. Take, for example, community. I know that might seem like a strange thing to bring up in defense of religion, But in reality, it's one of its only real benefits, right? Gathering once a week or more with people to, you know, laugh and eat and sing songs and talk about big ideas has all kinds of benefits. And for years, religious apologists used that to defend the idea that, you know, even if religion isn't true, it's useful. But of course, as gathering became easier and easier to do in secular settings, we realized that you can laugh and eat and talk about big ideas and sing songs without invisible commandments from God. And in fact, it's recommendable. Me and a group of magicians, we meet up every single week at the same bar in Midtown Manhattan, and we have been for 11 years. The difference is nobody asks for 10%

of our income, and nobody gets kicked out for being gay. In fact, one of our youngest members, a 17-year-old girl, came out to us as gay this year before she came out to her parents because she knew she could take to a corner booth with one of the older queer members of the group to talk about her worries and fears. She knew she could show us pictures of her new girlfriend without sideways glances. She knew she was safe and accepted there because religion doesn't own community. They just also happen to do it.

And this is true of literally all the defenses of religion, right? If you look at their so-called benefits from a different angle, the secular equivalent is obviously superior, right? If you look at their so-called benefits from a different angle, the secular equivalent is obviously superior, right? We've got charities that do in fact have to tell you what they're doing with their money and aren't allowed to hold it back from whoever the fuck their God told them to hate 2,000 years ago. If you're into hallucinations and ecstasy, can I recommend good old-fashioned drugs, which asks nothing of you but to drink enough water? recommend good old-fashioned drugs, which asks nothing of you but to drink enough water. Over and over again, the secular equivalent is so obviously superior to the religious version, it's laughable. Except when it comes to the afterlife, right? Because even well-meaning,

well-educated atheists will admit we don't have a better version of an afterlife to offer because, admit we don't have a better version of an afterlife to offer because, after all, how can you offer a real equivalent to a lie? But again, with a shift in perspective, I would argue that not only can we offer a better afterlife, but we must. So first things first out of the way, they're not offering something real either. And it's easy to forget that because of how culture views promises of the afterlife, but it does actually matter. If I promise you a hundred bucks, I'm never going to give you and Steve promises you nothing.

We are both still very much giving you nothing. The happiness and the ease and the comfort and the relief that you might feel about my promise is not a good thing. And it certainly doesn't make my lie defensible. And even if it were real, the slightest bit of thought about these so-called afterlives reveals them to be absurd at best and near instantly hellacious at worst. I mean, nobody wants to do anything forever. Oh, you like candy and orgasms? How about candy and orgasms forever, for infinity,

for 10,000,000 lifetimes? Doesn't that sound fun? No, it sounds insane. It sounds like being cursed by a genie. And it certainly doesn't sound like paradise. No, what the afterlife offers people, what everyone is really on board with from Ray Comfort to Ray Lean Down at the Piggly Wiggly is the continuation of consciousness. We end up talking to a lot of new atheists. And by that, I mean new to atheism, not necessarily young. And what a lot of people can't get over is this idea that the themness of them is just going to stop. But as I point out to them, you lose consciousness every night when you go to bed, right? You don't wake up screaming, my God, my God, my consciousness, how I missed the ability to think about what I want for breakfast.

No, you were asleep. We don't sit around weeping for the lost memory of what we had for lunch last Tuesday, and yet the loss of our memories at death keeps us up at night. I mean, I know it's kept me up at night. But what if, like charity, community, and bliss, a shift in perspective eases that worry? What if what matters is not our thinking being in the here and now, but the fact that we thought and were at all? Because small as it sounds, I've got good news for you. You exist. No matter how good or bad a person you might imagine yourself to be,

no matter if you die tomorrow or in a hundred years. It is undeniable that you made up a part of this world and you always will have. The things you do, be they small or tremendous, will have been done. And nothing as inconsequential as death is ever going to change that or make it matter less. That's true of everyone who has ever lived, and it will be true of everyone who ever lives. That's the meaning of life so far as any life has ever had meaning. Religion will promise you a wave that goes on and on forever and ever, and that's a lie that honestly, you wouldn't want to be true,

even if it could be. But I've got good news. You're part of the ocean. They're talking about you, Jesus. Interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the peanut butter and jelly

to my milk straight from the carton, Michael Marshall and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to satiate and slake? Am I the peanut butter there? Inexplicably popular in America, barely tolerated in the rest of the world. I take it, to be honest. Yeah, and I'm pretty much only enjoyed by Heath as the milk jug. So, yeah, this track. I'm the milk jug.

I like all of them. I'm the jelly. Oh, because everybody likes me. That's well, sure. jug. So yeah, this tracks. I'm the milk jug. I like all of them. I'm the jelly. Oh, because everybody likes me. That's, well, sure. Yep. That's what I meant. Uh-huh. Wait, people don't like

peanut butter everywhere else? No. That's here only? It's not wildly popular. Peanut butter's the best. I've maybe bought two jars of it in my entire life.

Are you serious? I ate a jar today. That's insane. Okay. We're going to circle back to that today. That's insane. Okay. We're going to circle back to that later. That's crazy. I mean, I'll blow your mind when you start talking about jelly. In our lead story tonight,

nobody likes peanut butter except the US, apparently. I don't know how that happened. It's like the best food. Something about jelly, too. We'll get back to it. In our other lead story tonight, the state of Florida is the sad little penis of America in every way.

This applies in terms of geography, the way it looks on a map, in terms of politics, culture, just about everything they do. They're the dragging anchor against progress at every moment in their gross little area of swamp crotch and tactical sunglasses are you saying your penis is a dragging anchor

against progress and has tactical sunglasses yes i am march i didn't yes yes i was and they continued acting in that official capacity down in florida as our sad little anchor penis with a new bigot law that recently passed in both the state house and the state Senate. The Republicans behind the bill haven't mangled an acronym yet for the title. So right now it's just called HB 1557 and it would make it illegal for any public school to allow discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity. Critics are calling it the don't say gay law, because that's obviously how it's going to be used by homophobic teachers and administrators in the state of Florida. No, no, this is great.

So it means that the kids can get stuffed into lockers by their bullies and then back into closets by their teachers. Yeah, exactly. People, it's 2022. Are they going to redact the family tree of kids with two married dads? What the fuck are they thinking? They are. Yes, that's what it's going to be like that. They're going to have books and it's like, oh, yeah, that's just a mom and a dad.

That's regular. But two men as two dads, that would be a problem. And they're not going to they're not going to hear the problem with that. So here's the exact wording of HB 1557. A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels. So usually that means anyone 11 years old and under, but they continued from there. They may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner

that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students. That's the end of the quote. So the teachers of Florida are going to be in charge of deciding whether the human identity of a student is age appropriate for that student to be talking about.

The thing is, we had exactly this in the 1990s and we called it Section 28. So does this mean Florida is just going on like a retro British vibe? Before you know it, there'll all be pogs and poll tax riots. And to be honest, I assume you just invite me on this show to bring some British culture deep cuts. So pogs and poll tax riots. And, you know, to be honest, I assume you just invite me on this show to bring some British culture deep cuts.

So pogs and poll tax riots. If there's any podcast where you can safely talk about pogs, it is this one, sir. It is this one. Are pogs originally British? Is that a British thing?

Is that where it started? No, they came from here. They came from there. They came from there. But it was a very nice, it was a big thing in the 90s. You guys got into it in the 90s too?

Cool. Yeah, big way, big way. Whatever, you all hate peanut butter. Fuck you. So this new bill is just the latest in a series of bigot laws out of Florida to stop kids from learning about anything other than apparently cishet white stuff.

That's all they're allowed to learn. The one we talked about last time was the STOP WOKE Act. That's a mangled acronym, by the way. It stands for Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees. So stop woke mangled. And the basic idea was banning critical race theory. The bill is almost as offensive as that acronym. And to make it worse,

the Stop Woke Act added a clause that gave parents a really easy way to sue their school district if a kid learned some liberal propaganda, like how the Civil War had a good team and a bad team, for example. Seriously, that would be against the rules there. Because, you know, that's offensive to white people to say that. Just like, you know, that's offensive to white people to say that. Just like, you know, teaching about the Holocaust is offensive to kids of German origin. So we don't teach that. So just like that. Well, this new bill about sexual orientation and gender identity does the same thing with the lawsuits.

parents, Florida parents can go to a judge, a Florida judge, and get injunctive relief if a teacher talks about gender or sexuality, or if the teacher fails to prevent kids from talking about gender or sexuality in the classroom. And the school would have to pay the legal fees if that injunction gets granted. Right. So no conversations at all about sexuality are allowed. So I assume that also means talking about like heterosexual stuff, because otherwise the whole law would just look like bigotry. Sure would.

Yeah. Yeah. On the plus side, though, health class, 45 minutes for the whole year now. They really trimmed that bad boy down. It's just. All right. So this is so fucking gross. Let's be perfectly clear

about what the Florida Republicans are getting at without saying it outright in the bill. They have a bunch of transphobic parents who refuse to acknowledge the gender identity of their kids and refuse to use desired pronouns. And those people wanted a law

that would make it illegal for a teacher to affirm the trans identity of a student, their child, who they are being assholes to and giant bigots to. Right, which in turn kills queer kids, right? They want to murder queer kids by legally flashing the lights

of the kindergarten classroom. That's what they're hoping for. That's not hyperbole. Statistically, what Eli just said is factually true. Yes. So you're probably thinking, why does the Republican Party of Florida hate freedom? I thought freedom was like their whole thing.

Well, it is until it isn't. They love to talk about freedom and gumption and power move dynamics and fucking leg day. But their other big thing that Florida Republicans don't like to talk about is they're all consuming crippling fear about society, leaving them behind to die slowly in a tepid pool of their own crotch sweat down in Florida. So that's what we're seeing. They have their shitty little area where they can still cling to power for a little bit longer. And they're going to make a bunch of bigot rules like a Nazi eight-year-old with a tree fort, the goddamn state. That's what

Florida is right now. But the tree fort thing is perfect. You know, they can just put up a sign saying no girls allowed, and then we can sue them under their own laws for being suspiciously keen of male or any company. It's fine. Everybody. Hold on. It's confusing. He made a good point. I think, fuck, are we kicked out of our own fort? Do we have to leave it? And in an asshole of day news, not enough people voted for Hillary Clinton. And so now the highest court in America is a magic eight ball with mostly bad answers. It is your fault. You should feel bad if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.

And since it's going to be that way until Joe Biden packs the court or someone brave Cavanaugh, I'm pleased to announce that we got a temporary good result this week as the Supreme Court refused to block New York City's vaccine mandate for teachers. OK, so I guess it's normally Noah who asks Andrew whether it's okay to speculate about... You know, it's actually really fun to see it from this side, to see how the show gets made. You know, you see all the ins and outs, the cog turn.

And we're back. Sorry about all that beeping. It was like technical difficulties. I don't know. Something happened and there were beeps, whatever. Eli, you were talking about um the supreme court of alive people that weren't threatened at all yeah the mandate which went into effect this valentine's day was a love letter of sorts to the children of nyc saying hey kiddos you don't have to learn

from people who know less about science than you regardless of what grade you're in and as has been the case with all mandates and as will be the case with all mandates going forward, the vast, vast majority of NYC teachers who were hoping this objection would succeed will now go and get the shot.

And those who won't should not be teachers. That's correct. So that's a good thing, too. This is a win, win, win, win, win, people. Oh, yeah. The vaccine definitely has this bonus use of finding out, you know, who is too stupid to be responsible for my kids.

It's a useful test for that. That is. Also, who can we trick into drinking pee? There's lots of good, useful tests here, Marsh. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Now, I should point out that this stupid fucking idiotic fight isn't over.

This was just like them trying to stop it before it went into effect. And given how the court has ruled on vaccine mandates to date, I'd say there's a pretty good chance this mandate doesn't succeed in the long run. But it's 2022, and I'll take idiots getting an unpaid vacation where I can get it.

I'll probably get paid. And in plan B for Doubter Jake news, it's pretty rare here in the UK for the religious beliefs of our politicians to come up, other than in the ongoing saga that is Northern Irish politics. But we won't talk about that because we never talk about that. But down in London and in the House of Parliament, we tend not to have many religious lawmaker attempts at theocracy stories. It doesn't really come up that often. And that may not be for want of trying, because especially in the case of conservative MP, minister for Victorian nostalgia,

and man who makes Eli's British character seem downright believable, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Yeah. Plus he looks like Slenderman's court appointed attorney. So he really does. He looks ridiculous. I looked him up again he's so silly he looks like uh like like john oliver is a kiebler elf at the same time a little bit yeah or they put john

oliver into that kind of stretchy mikey tv thing from willie wonka right yeah exactly also by the way i had to look up up minister for Victorian nostalgia because I thought that was fascinating. It's actually not a real thing. Everybody American. That was a joke Marsh was making. They don't have that. It's not a real thing yet, but we'll see how Brexit Britain goes in a couple of years. Exactly.

Johnson gets caught having another secret meeting. They'll fucking create that office by next week. So for American listeners who don't really follow UK politics too closely, Jacob Rees-Mogg is essentially the kind of, he's got all the white bread religiosity of Mike Pence, but he's more old fashioned with it. He's kind of Mike Penny farthing, essentially, is what he is. And he's currently the leader of the House of Commons,

which is a role that gives him the responsibility for scheduling what gets put up for parliamentary debate. And when he was asked to schedule time for debate on the cost of the morning after pill, Rhys Mogg, who is a staunch Catholic, completely refused, explaining that they couldn't, quote, expect him to speak in favor of abortifacients. What? Okay. To be fair, Jacob, I don't expect you to ride in a car that doesn't start with a crank, brother. But you do that. Also, wouldn't a good Catholic speak, you know, against abortifacients? Wouldn't that be an opportunity to be a good?

He's a bad Catholic is what I'm saying. He's a bad everything. Essentially, he's bad at all things. And he's subsequently been warned for misleading the House because, for one thing, the morning after pill doesn't induce abortion. It's not an abortifacient, except in the rhetoric from anti-abortion groups. And

perhaps it would have been fine if he'd just realized that he'd made a mistake in the heat of the moment. And so he'd taken corrective action promptly the next morning to avoid any unwanted outcomes and everything, like some sort of political plan B. But he didn't do that. And instead, he's been called on to correct the official record. But nobody's holding their breath for that to actually happen. Then

he's going to actually admit he was wrong or admit he was misleading because the entire concept of consequences was apparently one of the many things that died of COVID-19. Yeah, but it's OK. The CDC and Boris Johnson have assured us that consequences are an acceptable loss. We got to all... Okay. Can't live in fear. I feel like the CDC would like to distance themselves

from Boris Johnson really quick when they get put in the same sentence right next to him like that. So you might think that it's bad enough that Rees-Mogg was trying to riff her his way out of hosting a debate in parliament on how to make reproductive health care more affordable and accessible, given that he's already been on the record for years as being completely opposed to abortion, even, he says, in cases of rape and incest. However, he isn't actually so opposed

to these pills when it comes to selling them, given that he's invested five million pounds in Calbe Pharma, a company that sells abortion pills in Indonesia. Huh. Interesting. But, you know, all the anti-choice work that he does in the UK, that's like a carbon offset for unwanted fetuses, right? Like, I feel like that can't... He's in the, you know, the black or the red or whatever you want to call it, which is the good one in this case.

It's hard to say. The thing about Rhys Mulgorg is he's got six children, the most recent of which was born in 2017 and is named Sixtus. Get the fuck out of here. Absolutely true. He's named Sixtus. And when you've got so many children

that you've got to resort to numbering them, maybe you've got to rethink your position on contraception. Or stop letting J. jk rowling name your kids via the epilogues of her books yeah i think there's a all right well we're almost to a kid named atis so i'm looking forward to that either way hey all birds this is your fucking segue harry potter and atis we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsor all birds loo loo loo getting ready, Lou, getting ready to jog stuff. Getting ready to jog stuff is my favorite stuff.

Oh, hey, did I hear you were doing jog stuff? But it's pouring with rain outside. I know it is. But these new shoes I got from Allbirds keep me warm and dry in all kinds of weather. Oh, really? What are they called? Oh, the name is not important. I'm sure if you just got on the Allbirds website, you'll find the name.

It's all good. No, no, come on. I love jog stuffies. Come on. Maybe I want to buy a pair. Fine. Okay. So they're called the, um, the Woldasher Mizzle. Good evening, traveler. Is that seriously him? I'm going to turn you into a ferret. Yeah, him? I'm going to turn you into a ferret.

Yeah, sorry. I'm going to turn you into a ferret, man. So my friend was asking about the shoes. Marsh, meet the Woldasher Mizzle, the entity or whatever. He's like a magical creature. I'm not really sure, but he appears when I say. I'm from the High Court of the Fey, you f***ing podcaster. Oh, I don't know what he is. Yeah, that. Right yeah that right right i mean i'm just wondering about the shoes though yes of course

the wool dasher missile all birds weather repellent performance running shoe it's the first shoe of its kind it's sustainably made from natural materials with a low environmental impact on the planet yeah so um uh my you could say it it now. You can say, I'm here. I'm going to tie the board like a foot and a half. It doesn't matter. My wool dasher mizzles are comfortable and stylish for a night out, but they make it easy to work out in any kind of weather. Plus,

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That's A-L-L-B-I-R-D-S dot com. All right, well, thanks, Wool Dasher Mizzle. I guess I'll see you around. Yep, see you, Marsh. Wait, you know him? Oh, yeah, yeah. He was the undersecretary for Shropshire for a while. Oh, yeah.

Okay. British politics is weird. It is. It is, yeah. Shropshire is a real place? It is. It is also a real place. Got it.

Like Slough. Just like Slough. Okay. Telford. And we're back next up in headlines in zillage people news a new zillow advertisement shows two black women sitting on a couch together and you know what that means what are the guys talking about it's the newest the greatest christian freak out that's right. The television showed gay people existing, which means it was time for the fracturally named one million moms

to chime on in. They described the content of the ad as, quote, two women playfully and lovingly stroking, caressing and tickling each other's hands, end quote, which I'm going to go ahead and say is the most gay longing we've ever seen a Christian

pack into a sentence on this podcast. And we cover Steve Anderson on a regular basis. And the thing is, they never even mentioned the way that the ad shows at length the woman very centrally stroking a dog, which I guess means one million moms

are officially OK with hot woman on dog action. Bitches get scritches or something like that. That's a good title. The group goes on to say, this commercial promotes same-sex relationships and the LGBTQ agenda.

One Million Moms continues to stand up for biblical truth, which is very clear in Romans 1, 26 through 27 about this particular type of sexual perversion, end quote.

For those unfamiliar, that's the passage that talked about how mad God is about all the scissoring. Yeah. So that verse from Romans doesn't mention anything about hand stuff, though. But I will say there is a Bible verse about Jesus Christ getting his stigmata wounds finger banged by all his dude bro friends. I'm just saying that was in the Bible. Yeah, where was they do that? Where was that Super Bowl commercial? It's very sexual.

Yeah, the group complaint concludes, quote, there's concern about the way this advertisement is pushing the LGBTQ agenda. But an even greater concern is that the commercial is airing when children are likely watching television, end quote. Which is stupid, but it's also inaccurate since the ad ran last year. They're just complaining about it now. So, yeah, Monica, Cole, of course, and the one million Karens. Unless your kids are watching TV in the past, at which point it might be too late to do anything about that in the future. I think they're safe from the lustful finger stroking

that's keeping you up at night, girl. But you know, kudos to them at least for being into hand stuff because foot fetishes, they're just so mainstream these days. It's basically a cliche. I'm proud of them for owning their hand fetish. Yeah. You know what? It's just boring at this point. And in inoculation news, as the world has passed more than 10 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered, and yet somehow the global population hasn't dropped by 10 billion, there's been a fair bit of confusion among the Bill Gates is personally trying to kill you with a vaccine crowd. Sure. There's nothing more likely to take the momentum out of a global movement warning about an oncoming genocide than when that genocide doesn't happen. Like, not even a little bit.

Yet. You say that now, Marsh, but before you know it, a cold Spanish soup is knocking at your door. Exactly. So if you thought all of that would give the anti-vaxxers pause for thought, you've forgotten that thought really isn't part of their skill set. Which is why conspiracy social media has been a light of late with the next big fear. The COVID-19 vaccines give you AIDS.

What the fuck is happening? Is this a continuation of the COVID vaccine turns you gay? Because I called this. I did call this. Did 10 billion people get AIDS recently? Because that would need to have happened, right? Again, the thought isn't part of their skill set. Sorry. Yep. I heard it. Yep. Got it. This whole latest pivot away from reality came last week as the UK recognized National HIV

Testing Week, which is an initiative aimed at raising awareness and encouraging people to find out their HIV status to try and tackle the spread of HIV. But given that familiarity with public health measures also isn't really part of the anti-vax skill set. No. For a lot of these COVID conspiracists, this was the first they'd ever heard of HIV Testing Week,

which meant it must be a brand new thing just invented as a tool for the New World Order or something like that. I mean, if I never heard about that, is the standard for something being a tool of the New World Order? Pretty much everything except the Boots meal deal is going to be a tool of the New World Order. The Boots meal deal? What? Trust me, Heath, English listeners loved it. Sick burn. Oh, yeah. Rolling in the aisles. Okay. Yeah. I can hear Marsh rolling. So I just want to be clear though about this theory. They think the new world order gave us all AIDS in the vaccine, but then they accidentally did an AIDS testing week

and they were like, fuck, that's going to alert them of our thing? Yes. Or they deliberately did it in order to make people realize they've got it because step three profit. I'm not sure. It's really hard to tell. Oh, if you look at the AIDS, it's like the cat. It's like the Schrodinger's cat.

Quantum AIDS. Yeah. Yeah. All of this paranoia and fear is actually based on two articles that absolutely proved that the COVID-19 vaccine was deliberately engineered

in order to give you AIDS, as long as you didn't do anything silly like actually read the articles at all. They both concerned a letter to The Lancet from October 2020, which warned that one of the COVID-19 vaccine technologies that was under development

in October 2020 might produce a false positive on an HIV test, which could then scare some people unnecessarily. And then another vaccine that was under development at the time could potentially maybe have made you more susceptible to contracting HIV if you got the vaccine and then did any of the things

that exposed you to HIV afterwards. You hear that, Steve? I got the new vaccine. So no sharing needles this week. I take my health seriously, okay? Okay, well, but if I give you AIDS, it's probably a false positive. Did you even read the article? It's probably not real. Just think it through. So there's only a few problems with the anti-vaxxers logic here.

One of them is that getting a false positive on an HIV test obviously isn't the same thing as contracting HIV. That's what false means. Those are different. At the false positive. I was confused about that. Yes. The other problem is that making you possibly maybe a bit more susceptible to contracting HIV, again, isn't the same as actually giving you HIV. And then, and this is probably more significant of all, none of the vaccines that went into production were based on either of these technologies because of the whole false positive thing and the susceptibility to HIV.

We didn't even make them. We didn't use them. It is not even wrong. Amazing. It's null. The truth value is null. Not even wrong. That's correct.

But still being scared of a vaccine that nobody has ever been given makes about as much sense as being scared of a vaccine that 5 billion people have been given and have been completely fine with. Cool. Got it. All right. Wow. All right. We got one more story. We have, in fact, one of my favorite stories ever. It doesn't involve the slow agonizing death of my enemies or the sexual failures of Ben Shapiro, but it's still right up there.

It's one of my favorite stories. It's about people believing in something that's really stupid and taking it way too fucking seriously. Sorry. Okay. Everybody knows what religion is. That's the whole, I guess. It's a very specific version of what I just said, and it's delightful. A Catholic priest found out he was saying the magic spell slightly wrong during his career of performing baptisms, which means all those baptisms technically don't count. So he had to resign in disgrace. He did. Because the magic didn't work. Wow.

I mean, who knew resignigning disgrace was even an option for Catholic priests? There's going to be several thousand priests who are going to be so red-faced when they realize that was an option.

Just a toddler at the gates of hell. Yeah, it turns out it's Adomine Patre not Adomine Patrice. So, yeah,

get on in there, you scamp. Sorry about that. Okay. So, here's how a whole bunch of fake farcical aquatic ceremonies happened. Father Andres Arango started serving at St. Gregory Church in Arizona in 2017,

and part of his job is baptizing people. In Catholicism, you're not a real Christian until you get baptized. A real priest has to sprinkle you with real holy water and they have to say the real spell. Now, Father Arango, he'd say, we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But in the real spell, the priest has to say, I baptize you, not we baptize you. Wow. That is way too close to the joke I wrote. It is more of a subtle mistake.

Yeah. But I get it. I get it. People get really pissy about the whole I, we thing at religious ceremonies, you know, as my wedding vows can attest. We do really kill the vibe of the whole day. I'm accidentally in a polycule. It's the royal we. Or were you into it? No, it's the royal we. Well, somehow Father Arango's mistake got reported back to the Vatican congregation

for the doctrine of faith. That's the thing they have. They have like secret shoppers or something, and they tell this Vatican congregation about mistakes. So the magic spell compliance department that they apparently have wrote a letter to St. Gregory Church explaining that their secret chopper told them, and, you know, Arango has to leave now. According to the letter from Bishop Thomas

Olmsted, quote, the issue with using we is that it's not the community that baptizes a person. Rather, it is Christ and him alone who presides at all of the sacrament. And so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes, end quote. Wait, wait, wait. The I baptize you bit is meant to be Christ. Is the I not the priest? That's correct. So Jesus is just like this massive credit hog, just taking kind of every one of the baptisms that's happening everywhere.

That's what's happening. Standing outside of a club, getting in a bouncer's face. Do you know who my father is? Do you know who my father is? So Father Arango ran away crying and cut his tongue out with a letter opener. Or maybe he just left and he stopped at the TGI Fridays to fill out an application. Either way, that's not the end of the story. Because religion is fucking insane. Sure is.

All those baptisms don't technically count. Which means a whole bunch of people are technically not Christian because of this. So if they die, they're technically going to a lake of fire for all of eternity. Yep. That is the problem. The church could, I guess, be held legally liable for that. Yeah.

Whatever that means, yes. So now the diocese has, seriously, this is real, they have like a magical SWAT team getting in touch with all the affected people as fast as they can. Like they just learned about having herpes and they have to call everyone really quick. But the thing is, are we sure it isn't

that they've just learned they've got herpes and got to call everyone real quick. But the thing is, are we sure it isn't that they've just learned they've got herpes and got to call everyone real quick? This whole botched baptism thing is just a cover story because let's face it, which of these things is more likely? It's definitely the herpes thing. Yeah. Don't be fooled by the adults in the mix. Everyone was a kid when he got his hands on him. I'm going with herpes. I'm going with herpes. Okay. We don't know for sure. So here's what I'm thinking would be a super mean thing that nobody, we should not do this. I'm saying we don't do this. We do not start leaving anonymous tips for the Vatican about magical spells that were slightly technically wrong.

We don't do that. Because they would have to spend enormous amounts of time and energy dealing with that. And that would be, we should not do that. That would be mean and wrong. Oh my God, we found Noah's calling when the podcast goes under professional Catholic ceremony pedant. We got you a backup, buddy.

Happy anniversary. And on that note, we're going to wrap up the headlines. Marsh, Eli, either one of you, you want to exclaim something? Usually I do. Exclaim something here? Marsh, go for it. I fall badly under pressure.

Okay. All right. Well, we're going to give Marsh a couple minutes to listen to a little bit of rocky music, get psyched up for the next segment, and we'll take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, Stamps.com. Right. So then you enter it into the computer and schedule your pickup. Right.

And then the owl comes to get it? No, no, man. The postman comes. Who's not an owl? Nobody involved is an owl. Hey, guys, what you talking about? Oh, I was just explaining stamps.com to Marsh. He's a little used to how things are done over in England, I guess.

So it's like a lot of owl-based stuff. Sure. But Heath, what's stamps.com? Stamps.com lets you print official postage right from your computer and saves you money in the process. So you can spend less time at the post office and more time making your customers happy.

And Heath told me that you don't even need to bribe Mr. Winston to let you to the post box. Is that true? Yes. Who's Mr. Winston? Come on, like you don't know Mr. Winston. Okay, just moving right past it. So, Stamps.com lets you get discounts you can't find anywhere else,

like up to 40% off USPS rates and 76% off UPS. All you need is a computer and a standard printer. No special supplies or equipment. No print spindle. No print spindle. No print spindle. Nope. Stop overpaying for shipping with stamps.com. Sign up with the promo code SCATHING for a special offer that includes a four-week trial,

free postage, and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, and enter the code SCATHING. Thanks, Heath. So that means there's no more saltwater taffies for you, Miss Ringbottom. Marsh, is that actually how the British Post Office works or are you just messing with us?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's... It is? I feel like you're saying it is. Or is he? Yep. So do we have to get taffy? Hi. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Enright. And I'm Michael Marshall. Here to tell you about our third sponsor this week, not CBD bullshit. God, okay, here we go, here we go. That's right. Right here in this third ad spot is where we could be advertising CBD bullshit for just so much money, but we're not. That's right, we could. But thanks to some people, we aren't doing that because they'll

yell at us and make it illegal to be gay in Britain. Right. For the last time, that is not what homeopathy means. So yeah, enjoy this third ad break filled with not CBD bullshit and their money. Thanks to bullies who shall remain nameless. All right. You know what? I'll tell you what.

You can sell all the CBD bullshit you want at your merch table at QED later this year. Really? I mean, you know what? I'll tell you what You can sell all the CBD bullshit you want At your merch table at QED later this year Really? I mean, you can try I feel like it's a trap, though Oh, it's absolutely a trap Still gonna try, though As our very own Noah and Lucinda Lusion

Celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary Heath and I were forced to figure out How to entertain you in their absence And after several company meetings Where Heath and I were forced to figure out how to entertain you in their absence. And after several company meetings where Heath and I's ideas were cruelly rejected, our very own Michael Marshall offered to sub in on the show and keep us in line.

Now, we consider ourselves to be asshole connoisseurs here at Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC, but Michael Marshall, like that rare cinephile aware of a renamed print of Bay of Blood, has some asshole deep cuts that we just had to share with you. So without further ado,

we are pleased to present Hoompsed Bullshit Is It? Really? Hoompsed? Well, is that why you hijacked the intro that I was going to do? Because you wanted to do Hoompsed Bullshit Is It? Yeah. Also, Noah works really hard on the segment titles, and I had to punish him for taking a vacation somehow, you know?

And to be fair, he could have gone with Asshole Connoisseurs, and I'm pretty sure that's already copyrighted by at least five different companies of DVD producers. All right. Buying that and directing it to Marsha's Wikipedia page. God damn it. You guys go ahead and start the thing. I'll just do this in the background.

Fantastic. So, Marsh, before we get into your hoompsed selection, maybe you can give us a little background. Just set the stage. Would you say the world right now is good at knowing true things? What's the epistemology situation in 2022 in the world? Okay, well,

if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that pseudoscience these days is neither discrete nor discreet in that it pours out of the biggest social media channels and podcast platforms like sewage to an open sluice and its stream of effluence spreads

and sprays everywhere indiscriminately. Sure. And they're literally doing pee too, right? Well, yeah, exactly. And gone are the days when your average anti-vaxxer would look askance at people who thought 9-11 was an inside job. And when the guy who was cleaning out your chakras wouldn't then casually segue to a list of things he dislikes about the Jews. Sure. Marsh, he lives in Michigan. He's lucky if the guy cleaning out his ears doesn't tell him how much he hates the Jews. Yeah, okay. Melissa Caron needed a job. I was being nice. I was being a job creator. So while there's a lot of value in picking out a particular strand of pseudoscience and then finding out just how bullshit is it,

I think it's also useful to bear in mind that while the borders between one woo idea and another idea are well and truly down, there's as much value in understanding the people who are trying to open the fecal floodgates and why they're doing that. So with that in mind, I thought I'd look at who out there is giving society a reverse enema in that they're actively trying to fill it with more shit. And to start things off, I want to talk about someone who started off as an investment banker hooked on heroin and then went downhill from there. Yikes. Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about the smirk emoji having a midlife crisis, Brian Rose. Okay, well, what's a Brian Rose? So according to Rose's telling of his backstory, he graduated from MIT and immediately took up a job as an advanced trader on Wall Street.

And he was handling $100 million worth of investments at the age of 22. I don't think there's a position called advanced trade. Like there's not beginner trader at Goldman Sachs. Yeah, there's intermediate. So he's a beginner at 20. You got to wrestle. Intermediate at 21.

That's not accurate. A green belt trader. And then you get an advanced trader. He claims that he's made millions in personal wealth before giving up that entire lifestyle variously because he, quote, realized how corrupt the system was

for the average investor or because he became addicted to alcohol how corrupt the system was for the average investor, or because he became addicted to alcohol and heroin and hid a personal law. Okay. One or the other. Idiot. Should have moved to Georgia and started a podcast with his married friends.

That's the way. It's not. I was handling way more than $100 million worth of investments. It doesn't even make sense. If all of this seems a bit remarkable, dramatic, unverifiable, it's because like so much of Brian's success story, we've only got Brian's word for it.

And Brian's entire business model gives him motivation to exaggerate stuff. Okay, you know what? I think he's lying. I think he is making up a bunch of the stuff already that you said, and there will be a bunch more after this. Yeah, and you sitting there under the USbel laws are free to think that, Heath.

You are absolutely free to think that. So you disagree, Marsh? You're saying you disagree. What we do know. You think it's true, everything he said, legally, according to the lawyers. For absolute certainty, we know for sure is that by 2011, he'd moved from the U.S. to the U.K. He bought himself a pinstripe suit, a red tie, a British passport, and he'd set up the London

Real YouTube channel. And given how many bullshit peddlers don't bother with the suit thing, that obviously put him ahead of the game. Okay, I see his angle here. And do not forget about that tie. That is the most important thing that he owns based on everything I've seen him do. Absolutely. And okay, this is going to sound like the most minor of gripes I could possibly level

at Brian Rawls, but I cannot let it pass, right? Brian Rawls is described as a podcaster because he's got a YouTube channel in which he interviews people on camera and then posts his videos to his YouTube channel. No. Which isn't a podcast. That's a video series. Yeah, fuck you. Yeah, if I can see your lips move while you're spouting bullshit, you're not a podcast. You're a video. I know it's a small hill to die on. Yeah, real podcasters

don't show up on camera like vampires and the people who write Taylor Swift's music. How dare you? Tay-Tay, you're going to go after Tay-Tay. We're in a fight. I hate you. You don't want to get the wrong side of after Tay-Tay. We're in a fight. I hate you.

You don't want to get the wrong side of it. Look what happened to the guy from Blur. See? He did exactly that. Never mind. True story. So whatever London Real is, it's undeniably prolific because since 2011, Rose has posted more than 8,500 videos, which are mostly snippets from longer interviews he's done. So he'll sit down with a guest for like an hour or so, and then he chops it into six or500 videos, which are mostly slippers from longer interviews he's done. So he'll sit down with a guest for like an hour or so, and then he chops it into six or seven videos, which he gives each of them eye-catching titles and a big picture to go on the front of it, and then he

posts this kind of accompanying commentary video, usually of Brian walking through a park, talking about how great he is. I've seen a few of these. They're so bad. It's like he made dating videos to attract himself into masturbating with himself. That's what those videos look like. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get to his breakdancing videos and his shadowboxing

videos. And that's exactly that. He swipes left on himself and it's really depressing. Then he's got a podcast feed which spits out an episode every single day. But some of those episodes are like 70 seconds long, and they're just adverts for his various businesses and projects and stuff. Wow. Retracted. Yeah. It's like if this show cut every few sentences up and then released them as separate episodes and then boasted about how many shows have been made, that's exactly what he's doing, basically.

Yeah. Guys, those are TikToks. Get your platform right. You can have a TikTok. Exactly. And among Rawls' interviewees are a veritable who's who of bro culture and toxic masculinity. It's all boxers and wrestlers and MMA fighters and athletes and rappers and comedians and cryptocurrency promoters and financial advisors and very, very, very occasionally women. Really? Yeah. In a whole year across 2,000 videos, Raw's only interviewed three women. Three out of 2,000.

Okay. Yeah. The actor Priyanka Chopra. What? He interviewed the psychotherapist Esther Perel and his grandma. Those are the three women. Okay.

But to be fair, grandma was one of his toughest interviews. She put him in a chokehold and everything. She called him a fraud. How the fuck did he get Priyanka Chopra? That bothers me. That bothers me a lot. Also, in fairness, I'm guessing he lined up other women, though.

Not just those three. But then he started talking about the blockchain and they're like, I have to leave. But I contractually have to leave. I'm leaving. Absolutely. So he's got these interview videos and then he intersperses those with these self-aggrandizing monologues, his workout videos, his clips of him shadowboxing,

his clips of him doing the world's slowest, saddest breakdancing. Videos of him rapping exactly as you'd imagine a 50-year-old former investment banker might rap. It's all very, since the divorce, I'm actually doing better than ever. That's the vibe you get. If a YouTube channel could offer to show me a few BJJ moves back at his place, it's Brian Rose's YouTube channel. His channel is everything an asshole dude bro ever said to a woman's ear from way too close? Like in that meme, he's just yelling and she hates it.

She's staring out into the nothingness. Yeah, it's absolutely that. It really, really is. And much of that early output was kind of bland and uncontroversial. But he did start flirting with pseudoscience and misinformation. So he interviewed people about The Secret. He drank his own piss. What?

He talked to Jordan Peterson, a men's right activist and a climate change denier. Oh, God. That's a sentence that works with or without the Oxford comma, just to be clear. Yep.

And he is Stalin and Hitler also. Yep. And some people have questioned whether Rawls inflates his view counts and his subscriber counts with bought followers in order to contribute to his all-important air of success. And sadly, I lack the technical skills to prove those people wrong. I don't believe you.

Well, okay. He allegedly has 2.06 million subscribers to his YouTube channel when I checked. And I also checked his interview with international superstar actor Priyanka Chopra. That video has about 7,100 views. Those are two data points. You decide what that means. You decide. All right.

So Marsh, can you tell us how a guy like that rose to prominence? Please don't. This is why I do the segue questions. Don't you hijack the intro and now you're doing the segue. That's right. Yeah. Rose got it.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a phone. So some of Rose's interviews did get him a lot more attention. So in 2019, he interviewed none other than David Icke, who told him that 9-11 was a plot hatched by the state of Israel, that a large group of ultra Zionists in America were responsible for the cover up, and that there is a, quote, hidden hand of, quote, ultra Zionist extremists who run the world through a series of shadowy organizations. You know, it's pretty standard Icke stuff.

Sure. Sorry, Marsh. Now that we're actually reading the book, way too many of those sentences made sense for it to be standard Ike. Summarized Ike. And too few of them were in meme format. What does he think the medium Zionists are doing? Because he thinks there's a class called Ultra that did this big conspiracy. The medium ones were like, let's not, we shouldn't do that. We'll just.

Just smaller scale stuff. Like pranks. They disrupt things. Yeah, they hide stuff that you're looking for. So your day just gets a little bit shitty. We'll do cheese. It's that kind of stuff. Yeah, a lot of 4G.

This video with Ike, it caused a bit of controversy, which Rose clearly really enjoyed. And so in April 2020, he had David Icke back on the show to talk about how COVID's this big hoax and how all the symptoms of COVID are actually caused by 5G because the government needs to kill people so they can fill the new mortuaries

that they've built in order to respond to COVID. Okay, so he thinks the government invented the 5G. No, okay, yeah, sorry. I don't know why I tried to think it through with a question. Marsh, go ahead. What we do know is that the interview reached literally tens of thousands of live viewers before YouTube eventually pulled it. And Rawls claimed

after the interview that he wasn't endorsing Ike's bullshit. He was merely hearing out alternative views. He loves that phrase about, I don't agree with the things you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. He loves that kind of thing. Sure't agree with the things you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. He loves that kind of thing. And it's an excuse that is somewhat undermined by the fact that Rawls finished that interview with David Icke by shaking Icke's hand and saying that Icke had, quote, amazing knowledge and amazing perspectives about what's going on.

He was just doing his job, not agreeing or disagreeing with the anti-Semite. Cool. Cool. Yeah, that's historically a cool thing. Yeah, like if Rawls did disagree with anything Ike said, he did an amazing job of hiding it. Yeah, you know, it's like how your conversations on Be Reasonable are polite and good-natured,

but you've never ended an episode with, well, you've made some amazing points, Leo the Lion. AIDS probably is a parasite. All right, Marsh. So in terrible internet circles, I understand that Rose is kind of known as a free speech warrior. Can you tell us a little bit about how that happened? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So when this whole interview with Ike was removed by YouTube, Rose smelled opportunity in that hugely lucrative, help me, I'm being silenced market that we see all these days. Sure. He decided he'd create his own streaming platform with hookers and antisemitism called Digital Freedom TV. Dude, get cocaine. That's the best part. Stupid. And all he needed in order to create Digital Freedom TV was $100,000 to set it up, which was a bit confusing because it very clearly already existed because he showed it off as part of the fundraising appeal.

So you'd think, I really need to raise money to be able to build a brand new home would be a less convincing sales pitch when delivered from the balcony of your brand new home. From that house. Yeah. But it didn't stop him apparently raising $100,000 in a single day, according to Brian Rawls. Asterisk. Yeah. If you believe his figures, Rawls is a bit like the second largest theme park in France

in that everywhere you look, there's a huge asterisk. Listener, if I can pull back the curtain a bit, Marsh has so little faith in my ability to know what an asterisk is that he put an example in brackets in our script. What I'm saying is he's filling in for Noah just fine. Yikes. Right. I mean, just to be clear, that was a park asterisk joke. I wasn't assuming you were illiterate.

I was assuming you were uncultured. Okay. Well, turns out both are true. Eli did not know about park asterisks. But more importantly, he thought the not know about park asterisks, but more importantly, he thought the letter X was an asterisk. Oh, yeah, we're getting lost in the weeds here. Marsh is telling us about a very important person

from Guns N' Roses. You put the letter X in parentheses, and Eli thought that was a visual representation of an asterisk that you couldn't type. Yeah, there's no other way. How else would you get an asterisk? It's impossible. It's impossible.

When did he come out with Wild Horses, Marsh? Stay on subject. Okay, okay. So Rawls reckons he raised $100,000 to build the already built website. And then he reckons he raised a further $100,000 in order to upload a second interview that he recorded with David Icke.

You might be wondering why he needed $100,000 to upload a video he'd recorded to a platform he'd built. That he already built, yep. Yeah, the answer is free speech. Sorry, yep. Got it. Hey, just in case that's valid, if we hit our latest Patreon goal, we'll have Marshawn scathing.

I'll talk about Brian Rose, yeah, for sure. So that was all free speech, as was the $200,000 he wanted before he'd upload the interviews he'd recorded with Andrew Wakefield, Robin F. Kennedy, Judy Miskovich, Alex Jones, Cheryl Tenpenny.

Why so many anti-vaxxers, you might wonder? Free speech. God, I know all those names and it's terrifying. Like, okay, Alex Jones, Andrew Wakefield, but I knew Sherry Tenpenny. That bothers me. I just want to be clear, though.

What he did was free speech ransom. Yes. If you don't pay him enough, he won't allow that free speech. Bring the free speech to the drop point. Give me Bitcoin. I'll bring a bag full of David Icke. That's not where his fundraising stopped. So the next thing he needed was $200,000 a month to keep his website running, which is a lot.

Plus, he needed an extra $200,000 to add, quote, decentralized blockchain ledger technology to his website, which would be absolutely clear. That's not. Isn't a thing you can meaningfully add to a video streaming site. That's nonsense. Which is presumably why he didn't do that, but kept the money, if there ever was the money, asterisk.

It's impossible. You just try to fudge those videos. You try. Side note, apropos of nothing, if our Patreon goes over $1 million, we will make this show 100% gluten-free. 100%. Hey, it's already a third vegan, people. Come on, we're almost there.

Well, you cheat sometimes. I don't. Yeah, you do. You cheat. You cheat. On your wife. You have what? That's why she left you.

You have a belt made of leather right now on you. I do not! Heath cut all this. So Brian Rose, he's got all that extra money. He didn't spend that $200,000 on adding decentralized blockchain ledger technology, nor did he spend the extra $250,000 he'd go on to say that he raised

in order to develop an app to allow people to watch his interviews on their phone. Because two years later, there is no app. He also claims he crowdfunded $250,000 to allow him to bring a court against YouTube in the European Court of Human Rights. A case that never got filed because it makes no sense

and would have zero hope of success because that's not what the European Court of Human Rights is for. Just YouTube sitting in jail in The Hague. Oh, what am I in for? Yeah, deplatforming. It's actually a war crime. You can't. It's Geneva Convention.

Look, it's not that I'm paying super close attention to the European Court of Human Rights or anything, but it seems like they spend a lot of time these days telling bigots, no, you don't get to go here.

And so it was Rosa's Digital Freedom Platform that proudly hosted the world premiere of the sequel to the anti-vax film, Plandemic, in August 2020. We covered it on GAM. And for a man who repeatedly claims he isn't an anti-vaxxer, Rose seems to spend more time talking to anti-vaxxers than I do. By the end of 2020, he'd uploaded 57 interviews to Digital Freedom Platform TV, all of which were a mix of anti-vaxxers,

COVID-19 misinformation sources, or people warning that wokeness and cancel culture were coming for your kids. Well, I mean, if you measure by time, yes, mostly anti-vaxxers, but by area on the screen, tie knots. It is tie knots. What is the knot he is tying?

It's bananas. It's bigger than his face. A double Windsor. Yeah. It's like every morning he wakes up with the courage to hang himself and then just,

no, it's a necktie. But I believe in you, Brian. I believe in you, buddy. You won't do it. Do it. You won't. Do it. You were saying, Marsh.

You were saying, you. You were saying, you were trying to avoid being any part of the audio. Go on, Marsh. And we're back. Sorry, there's a bunch of beeps or something again. I don't know what happened.

It's happening. Andrew's like Yeah, while we're still talking about these very much still alive Brian Rawls currently. But honestly, the cast list for Digital Freedom Platform TV

reads like a to-do list for essentially this Whom's Bullshit Is It segment. You've got Andrew Wakefield. You've got Mickey Willis, Candace Owen, Alex Jones, James Lindsay, Dolores Cahill, Charney Kirk, Dennis Prager. They're all there. God.

Never thought I'd find myself thinking Dennis Prager deserves better company. But here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Jesus, he does. He is by far the most reasonable person in that list for the first time ever anybody's said that sentence. Wow. And despite him claiming to raise literally more than a million dollars of monthly upkeep fees, Rawls stopped adding any new content to the Digital Freedom Platform TV in November 2020, three months after it had launched, until last month when he sat down

for the sixth time now with David Icke for a live stream four hour misinformation marathon where Icke went back through all of his greatest hits

while Rose just nodded and smiled and egged him on. Eli, look into my heart. Two words. Icke tackular.

Yes! We are watching that. Are you kidding? For a million bucks a year, I'll fuck him for a four-hour live stream, let alone review it. That live stream might get stopped by YouTube, but the one that Rawls and Ike did

was not stopped by YouTube this time. It went out to a full audience of around 7,500 viewers. Although, the next day, Rawls sent an email to everybody saying it was watched by a live audience of 1.1 million people. Wasn't it like millions of people

in the subscribers? Yeah, which I assume means that there was 7,500 people on YouTube and the other circa 1.1 million people were watching on Raw's own platform where only he gets to see the stats. Again, asterisk. All right.

So from there, correct me if I'm wrong, he runs for mayor of London? He absolutely runs for mayor of London. Yeah, absolutely. In the midst of all this controversy with the Ike interviews and the pandemic premiere, Brian Rawls made the next logical step, which is to run for mayor of London.

Sure. And naturally, crowdsourced the funding for his campaign. Got it. Once again, he was quickly caught in controversy in order to boost his profile, get himself in the headlines, get himself in front of people. And so in January 2021,

Brian and six of his staff were fined for breaching lockdown regulations while out campaigning. Yeah, here in the United States, we punish you for breaking lockdowns by spending half a million dollars on hospital resources to keep you alive. So I get it. I get it. I mean, here we punish lockdowns by electing you into office and keeping you there and keeping you a very high F in the rolling back pandemic. Yeah. So Brian got fined for this breach of lockdown rules. And it came while he was touring London on his, quote, digital battle bus, where he'd essentially drive to a different part of London, sit in his bus and record YouTube videos and Instagram live stream.

Yeah, technically, the bus is a blockchain distributed ledger technology bus of that. Brian would actually later claim that this whole thing was he was targeted and arrested for his political beliefs, which is obviously bullshit because for one, he wasn't actually arrested. And two, at most he got was a fine and being told to stop being a dickhead in the middle of a pandemic. But yet all of this made the papers and then he used that media coverage to bolster his free speech warrior persona that he cultivated throughout his campaign. And when soliciting Dhanush, the fucking worst. We couldn't do it on GAM, but my favorite video from this period is that he has parked over a crosswalk

or something. I'm not clear what it is. And the British cop is just like, just move the bus. And he's like, why? Why do I need it? And he's just like, because it's on a crosswalk. And it is ten minutes of glorious unintentional comedy. Yeah, it's one step away from, am I being detained?

I don't have enough Bitcoin to pay for the moving transaction across the... Running his wrists into the cop. You're arresting me! You're arresting... I'm not arresting you. Just back your bus up six inches. So as has become a running theme with Brian Rawls, we have no idea how much money he made

in donations while he was running for office, nor how much money he spent on his campaigning. He claimed in the press to have spent £1 million trying to run for mayor. It was the first £1 million mayoral run. But that's almost certainly bullshit because, one, it's Brian Rose, so he's definitely exaggerating. But also, two, if he wasn't exaggerating, he'd have just admitted to spending more than double the £420,000 spending cap

that's in place for the London mayoral election. He'd have just admitted to an election fraud or an election violation. You guys have spending caps? Yeah, the spending caps. Why do you hate freedom? They're so low. They're so, so low. It's amazing. If you're running for just local office, it's like 50 grand. That's as much. Why do you hate peanut butter and freedom is my combo question. Go ahead. I genuinely don't know whether Brian Rose would even have one million dollars to spend on it or one million pounds to spend on his campaign because he hasn't filed any company accounts

since 2019. His annual accounts have not gone in for two and a bit years now. Okay, but he lost, right? He's not the mayor of London as far as I know. No, he's not. No, absolutely not. So he was bragging about spending

huge money on losing, right? I don't think he knows what that means, how bragging works. The Republican Party should sue him. That's their thing. He doesn't know what direction to lie in. It's amazing.

He doesn't. Well, throughout the campaign, though, he was talking himself up as having a real chance of winning the election and reinventing London. He was promising all these different things he could do,

massive changes to housing and transport that were absolutely not within the power of a mayor. It's not something he could do. Doesn't sound like mayor stuff, no. Yeah, no, he promised that he'd build more houses in the first year than London has built in more than a decade on land that didn't actually belong to the government. So it wasn't even possible. He proudly declared himself in second place in the runnings. And it's because he was at one point second favorite in the betting markets that he later admitted he'd manipulated by putting a bet on himself in order to shorten his odds. What? I don't think he knows how that works either. Well, no. So the bookies that he was running with were taking their odds based on backing, essentially, as to where people had placed their backing. And because he put some sizable bets down,

the bookies shortened the rods. Oh, sure. But that's not accomplishing anything positive for him. But he doesn't understand how that works. So you would think that. But what it did accomplish

was for him to spend all of his time in his videos saying, I'm in second place for the Mayola race, so please give me more money. And also to email interviewees like Steven Pinker to say, I'm second favorite and I'm closing the gap to winning.

So do you really want to have your videos removed from my YouTube channel just because I'm promoting COVID denialists and anti-vaxxers? Okay, withdrawn. He nailed it. Yeah. Look, I know you're mad at me, but according to political analyst Fanduel.com, I'm really up and coming.

So when the election day finally came around in mid-2021, and after all of Brian Rose's campaigning and bragging, he won 31,111 votes. Is that a lot? It was just a mere 980,000 shy of winning the election. So he lost by a gnat's breath. He took 1.2% of the vote share, which is a figure that was so low,

he didn't even get his deposit back for running. So close. Brian Rose got 3,000 more votes than a candidate called Count Binface, who was a joke candidate who claimed to be a 6,000-year-old alien and whose manifesto genuinely included pledges to prevent any shop from charging

more than £1 for a croissant and a manifesto promise to move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at his local pub to a quote more sensible location okay honestly honestly marsh post johnson i think you guys should give count bin face a try get wacky with it oh absolutely absolutely so he beat david eich,000 votes. That's a solid showing. So what does Brian Rose get from all this? What does he win? So you could argue that the whole point of Brian Rose's run for mayor wasn't actually to win, but instead to project this air of success and achievement and legitimacy

that he could then convert into YouTube subscriptions or to signups for his suite of questionable self-improvement courses. Because on top of having this digital platform TV crowdfunding income, Brian Rose also has these other interesting sources of income, like the London Real Academy, which is an online learning business that offers several self-improvement courses, like his business accelerator course for would-be entrepreneurs, or his life accelerator course for self-betterment. Sorry, the life accelerator? Death? The life accelerator course for self-betterment. Sorry, the life accelerator,

death, life accelerator, old age. Yeah. Or you've got his broadcast yourself course, which is a course on how to learn to podcast, which in many ways is the opposite of self-improvement. Hey, only physically, mentally and spiritually, Mark. Financially. Financially. Yeah. And spiritually, Mark. Financially. Financially, yeah. The promotional materials for the podcasting course talk about how one day you think about starting a podcast. And then before you know it,

you're sat down having a two-hour conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's laughing at your jokes. But to the best of my research ability, Brian Rawls has never interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay. Hallucinating an interview during which you apparently try out your stand-up and you kill it instead of actually asking questions to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That's amazing. He's the asshole with a statement instead of a question at his own Q&A show. He absolutely is. You're absolutely right. The worst. So like, you guys have been podcasters for a while now. I can only assume that you also got your start on an eight-week how-to course, where the first week was, why do you want to start a podcast?

And then the second week was entirely dedicated to which microphones to buy. Microphones, yeah. Weeks three through eight, blockchain. Yep, that's the whole thing. I mean, as someone who spent the first year of his podcasting career with his mic literally pointed at his desk, I feel like I teach the course in the same way a workplace safety poster teaches. Yeah, it's been this long since the last microphone-related incident. Yeah, absolutely.

So for all of this incredible podcasting insight, students on the course pay between $3,000 and $15,000, depending on which tier they go for. And part of the course involves you writing about your experiences on the course and putting those glowing reviews out on review sites as part of your activity diary, which gets checked regularly by the course conveners to make sure you're filling in your activity diary, which is why the internet is filled with glowing five-star reviews for Rose's courses,

as well as literally dozens of complaints on websites like ScamGuard. Sure. Okay. Does ScamGuard have a you-deserved-it category? Because I feel like it should. One of Rose's former students, when she was talking to one of the newspapers about this,

described the course as diabolical because she said, when she said, I want to leave the course, according to her, they wouldn about this, described the course as diabolical because when she said, I want to leave the course, according to her, they wouldn't let her quit the course at all. And she only managed to get any of her money back by going through her credit card company and explaining to them that she'd been missold

and that it was a scam. Look, I had to join the Church of Latter-day Saints and get them to cancel Brian Rose for me. His is ridiculous. Now I'm a Mormon though, and I can't cancel that. It's the worst. There are 15 students, right? Who pay $15,000 for his inner circle course, which promises in the brochure, regular one-to-one sessions with Brian. And according to those 15 independent people in more than six months of being on the

course, they'd had less than half an hour each with him, cumulatively. Okay, just to clarify, because I can't emphasize this enough, podcast listener, for $15,000, not only will we teach you to podcast, you can fuck Heath. You can take your time. Or go fast.

As you fuck Heath and learn to podcast. Yep, whatever you want. Is this legal? We're back. We're back. Sorry about those pieces. Go ahead, Marsh. There's even a Facebook group that's entirely dedicated to former students trying to get their

money back from him, who've all said that they felt that they were in a vulnerable position and that they saw Rosa's courses as a way out of the financial hole that they were in. Okay. I'm really trying to have sympathy. These people spent 15 grand as a way out of their financial hole. They spent 15 grand as a way out of their financial hole. They had 15 grand. Got to spend money to spend money. Got it. They didn't necessarily have 15 grand.

They found 15 grand wherever they found it, whether that's borrowing and all sorts of stuff like that. You could stand on a pile of 15 grand and get out of a hole. But what? and get out of a hole. But what? So as well as all of this, Brian, you also use his London Real presence to get fans to sign up to the affiliate investment courses

from Agora Financial. And they sell stock trading systems and other forms of investment products that promise to make you rich fast. They're the kind of investment products that you'd sometimes get cold calls about telling you they'll make you vast amounts of money with their investment advice. I'm sure we've all had those phone calls.

Sure. Yeah. Eli, like twice a day is how I get those calls. Hey. Yep. Had that short of Tesla go from like three years ago. Hey. Really great. Marsh, you were saying. I was saying. I was saying. Over a period of two years, Brian Rose and his London Real Academy wrote 122

articles for Agora Financial. Wow. What level of podcast did Agora Financial sign up for? And what we do know about Agora Financial is that in February 2021, they and several of their affiliates agreed to pay more than $2 million to settle federal trade commission charges that were saying that they'd tricked seniors into buying pamphlets, newsletters, and other publications that falsely promised a cure for type 2 diabetes or promoted a phony plan to help them cash in on a government-affiliated check program. Okay, so they definitely did that for more than $2 million worth of damage and settled for two. That's what happened.

Yeah, they were very happy to settle for $2 million. That's what we absolutely know is true. And what we know from the Bureau of Consumer Protection is that Agora, quote, preyed primarily on older consumers with false or unsubstantiated claims about curing diabetes

and free money from the government. I mean, look, falling for fake diabetes cures is one thing, but free money from the government? Get your head out of your ass, people. You should know better. Unless you're a church.

And then there's the financial advisors that Brian Rose promotes, like Tika Tiwari, who Brian called my good friend who was voted the number one most trusted expert in cryptocurrency by an independent poll of 130,000 analysts, which Brian says is why I buy

everything Tika recommends. That's the dumbest poll. It is, it is. But the thing about Tika recommends. That's the dumbest poll. It is, it is. But the thing about Tika Tiwari, Brian Rawls' good friend who Brian buys everything Tika recommends, is that on the 9th of May, 2005, Tika Tiwari was struck off

by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and barred from ever acting as a broker or otherwise associating with a broker dealer firm, which is an odd thing not to mention about the guy you're promoting as the number one most trusted expert in cryptocurrency. Well, I don't know. That should really go at the top of the CV for a crypto expert. That's a good study. I got deplatformed by finance. That's a winner. By the financial regulators. I feel like being the most trusted crypto expert

should be like being the most honest three-card money dealer, right? It's still not a good thing. Absolutely not. And then there's Jeff Brown, who is described by Rawls as, quote, a Silicon Valley legend who, quote, helps regular folks

learn how to profit from the top tech stocks. All the stuff that Jeff Brown does with Ryan Rawls is talking about these time delay stocks that you buy them, and then they will definitely 100% come to fruition in this certain amount of time. And you will definitely make money because they are set on a timer to make money at a certain point. Ah, it's a profit fuse. Yeah, I've heard of that. I remember studying that in economics class. But in October 2013, Jeff Brown was barred by the U.S. to cue his exchange commission

from ever acting as a broker or investment advisor or otherwise associating with firms that sell securities or provide investment advice to the public. And we know why that is, because in August 2011, he pled guilty to conspiracy

to commit mail fraud, having defrauded investors and obtained money and property by means of materially false and misleading statements. He pled guilty to that. I mean, given the scams that Rose and his friends have pulled off so far, I assume he made $8 million by sending old people an envelope

that said, fill this with cash and send it back, please. Yeah, yeah. The Peter Popov scam. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And all of this was actually published in an article for the UK newspaper, The Mirror, in 2021,

after I tipped journalists off to some of the stuff that I'd seen. Wait, seriously? Yeah. Nice work. Yeah. But, well, it was nice work. And then the article mysteriously disappeared quite quickly. Some would say it's because Brian and his lawyers had been in touch with the newspaper.

But that would be a very weird move for a guy so completely committed to free speech. Huh. Well, it sounds like you could sue him for war crimes in the European Court of Human Rights, Marsh. Yeah, the crowd funder starts here. $250,000

and I promise I will do that. I promise I will do that. So now Brian Rawls is busy running his decentralized finance academy, explaining to people how to invest

in cryptocurrency and promising, quote, the keys to a $9 trillion marketplace. And a four-week course at the DeFi Academy costs $2,467. Okay, I actually looked this up. DeFi is decentralized finance. And according to Brian Rose, it's a blockchain-based form of finance that's growing at, quote,

quantum levels and it's going to be quote the greatest dislocation of wealth in human history okay so you know only 2500 to learn about that maybe he means it's quantum in the sense that when you look for your money it won't be there because i believe that yeah yeah but you will at least be able to see how fast you lost it. So that's good. And your cat's dead for some reason. Your bank account might be a dead cat. Yeah.

So this is a business that he's currently pushing very, very persistently. In January alone, he sent out at least 55 email campaigns to get people to sign up. And I know that because I signed up for his Brian for Mayor campaign while he was running for mayor, which very quickly got wrapped into his mailing list for all of his other business ventures, as if the run for office was like little more than a stunt to find more people he could promote his get rich quick schemes to. That's what it feels like. So 55 emails in January alone. And then his sixth interview, the most recent one with David Icke, was just littered with adverts for the DeFi Academy.

Anybody who signed up to watch it were quickly added to this mailing list and sent all these daily emails about the DeFi Academy. In fact, given the overview of Rose's various business interests, it's kind of hard not to view most of his online activities and free speech champion rhetoric as essentially a sales pipeline. Where the products are his pricey self-improvement courses and his questionable investment connections. And then to sell those products, he needs to get as many people as possible to see him, impress them with a vision of success that he projects, and then whittle them down to the people who are just persuaded enough to spend thousands of pounds for some of his reflected glory. Okay. So given everything you just told us, how would you describe Brian Rose more generally? Like anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist, rabid octuple Windsor

activist? What would you say is top line title? Yeah. So I don't know if it's fair per se to call Brian Rose an anti-vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist, but I think it's definitely fair to say he's willing to play one on YouTube and that he's willing to give space to pretty much anyone to air their worst health advice as long as he can use that to bolster his reputation as a passionate defender of free speech

as long as that speech doesn't involve any criticism about the stuff that he's selling. Alright, well, with another asshole in the books, I am doing the outro. I'm in charge when Noah dies. Thank right. Well, with another asshole in the books. I'm doing the outro too. That's cool. I am doing the outro. Awesome.

I'm in charge when Noah dies. Yep. Thank you. Nope. All right. Andrew? Well, that's not. With another asshole in the books and Heath and I with a lot more

business ideas to try out, we'll thank Marsh for subbing in this week and we'll see you next time on Whompsed Bullshit Is It? I'm in charge when that happens. I'm in charge when Noah dies. I'm in charge when that happens.

Please keep me boomy. I, this voice counts. Boomy is, I'm the charge when that happens. I'm in charge when no one dies. I'm in charge when that happens. Please keep me boomy. I, this voice counts. Boomy is, I'm the boomier one. This counts. We will keep doing this forever. I will not stop playing this game. I went in on boomy voice. Boomy voice.

I am in charge. Don't give, Morgan, if you give Marsh the fucking boomy voice, I'll kill myself. Before we slice the roast beast tonight, I wanted to give you a heads up about all the different places you can find us that aren't these shows. I recently wrote a very silly piece for The Skeptic

called I Am the Ghost That Haunts the Drovers Inn, and Brian Eggo owes me an apology, for which you'll find a link in the show notes, or you can just Google I Am the Ghost That Haunts the Drovers Inn. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode

of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time next Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. We also play D&D on our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

We also play D&D on our half-sister's brother's cousin show, D&D Minus. And hey, even if you don't play D&D, give that one a shot. It's really silly fun, and I think you'll like it even if you don't play. I also want to thank Heath Enright for reaching the high shelf of comedy each and every week, Michael Marshall for hitting a home run on his very first at-bat, Lucinda Lusions for making Noah take a vacation at gunpoint. And of course, Noah Lusions for believing her when she said that gun is loaded. I also want to thank Ayn Rand for providing the Farnsworth quote this week. Weird use of our time machine, I know, but we're committed

to the bit. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's new patrons, which Noah went over with me again about how to look him up, and then I forgot again, and then I figured it would be better for me to skip it and have him do it next week than for me to mess up your name or compliment your genitals wrong. Together, these unnamed heroes gave us money for

drugs, scotch, and my baby, respectively. If you'd like to give us money, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad free version of every episode. Or you can make a one time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathing atheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but you misheard me just now, and you're afraid you'd be supporting giving drugs and scotch to my baby, you can leave us a five star review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts or tell your friends about the show.

Seriously, that second one is like 90% of how we get new listeners. So do that, please. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson handles

our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music used in this episode, which was used with his permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll wrote all the music used in this episode, which was used with his permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingatheist.com. I like that you give us some spiel into the five count.

No goes into the five count cold. Yeah, right away. Sometimes I'm not quite ready. You warmed us up. It was nice. There's a little bit of five count foreplay going on. You know, just the tip. Teasing.

Morgan comes too. I was about to say, oh, Morgan. And then I forgot. I didn't tell you. But Morgan comes to Matreon too. Right. He comes to Matreon. That makes sense.

Because we were talking about five count foreplay. Just the tip. And then Morgan comes too. And I thought, well, you know, I mean, he's in the right business for it. If that's his thing, he's absolutely in the right business. You guys will be sharing a bet. Yeah, Morgan can drive here as long as we clear off the terrorists

from that bridge by the time May comes around. He's in Toronto. I think Trudeau is going to do it with a bulldozer any day now. The question is, how do we get Ayn Rand and Melania into the same shed? They have to show up in the same place.

Oh, that's going to happen. You have to. It's done. Okay. I'm very happy. It's like the first time with Melania again. Just get manscaped in manly bands. Yeah.

Melania. She's taking a very thin shit. Very long, very thin shit. Very long, very thin shit. I don't even know if that was the first one. That bit's missing on me and now I'm confused. In one of the early Melania sketches, she specifically takes a very long, very thin shit as part of it. Gotcha.

I would have heard that, but it wouldn't have stuck in my mind quite as much as you guys in writing it, I imagine. When you're that deep into your own law, the world building is just remarkable. It's easy to sit outside

and get mad at Stephen King for writing a 90 book series that all connects to each other. Fourth time they ask you to make an evil lamp. You're like, you know what? Podcastiverse How many alcoholic writers can there be in men? Right?

He's clean now, right? Is he sober? I think he's not on pills anymore I mean, he's an expert fiction writer So there's really no way for us to know He's good He is what he is all right i'm just you know wondering how much day drinking i should be doing right now okay

here we go i'm a lot like stephen king pretty much the same but i've always said the same guy i think you undershot that order in terms i cream and sugar. I think I actually did, yeah. I think he has more cream and sugar and probably cum than you said. Yeah, way more cum. Way more cum. Why do they all gather in the back to make my coffee? Somebody always yells, I win, and then they hand me a cup. I don't know.

Nope, nope. That was bad they hand me a cup. I don't know. Ah! Nope. Nope. That was bad. That was a bad ah. Marsh, you made me nervous. Yeah. Don't blow this in front of Marsh.

You look stupid in front of Marsh. That's why we don't get invited to QED anymore. We have to just show up. Weird cousins. I said ah, it's Thursday like a fucking child. Yeah, we've actually had a QEDA every one of the last two years. They just hide it from specifically us. That's fair.

And third ad here. What's this one? This is our third sponsor this week. Have you not read this one, Heath? We don't have a third sponsor this week, Eli. Oh, we have a third sponsor. Are you sure? Where would it go in the Just read this one, Heath? We don't have a third sponsor this week, Eli. Oh, we have a third sponsor. Are you sure?

Mm-hmm. Where would it go in the show? Just read the lines, Heath. That's up to the editor to figure out. Morgan? Is this going to be... Put this in in the middle. Is this Coupon Craig all over again?

This is not Coupon Craig. I'm spiting a different cast member this time. Okay, so this is additional ad that doesn't really fit into the schedule that we have for the show I don't know where we'll put it but it's a thing we're going to do apparently Morgan great

correct yes that means we're invited to QED that's official you heard that right that's right he dictately passively built into what he said

he read the line I wrote fell out I'm just going to have to talk to the rest of the board a second He read the line I wrote, fell out. I'm just going to have to talk to the rest of the board a second. I'll be right back. Just turns to a mirror, shakes his head at himself. It's not looking good, guys. It's not looking good.

Ducks behind the counter, pops back up. I'm the manager. No. Hello. We could make water bottles. I was talking to our merch guy because he wants us to do water bottles. He gets really good deals. We could make water bottles

with Marsha's face on them that says, Marsha's cancer-curing CBD water. Okay. Give them out. That's fantastic. I feel like you definitely need my consent

to start putting my face on your merch. We definitely do not. Read the skit. You already said it. That's a contract. Andrew? Lock it in.

Andrew? Morgan? And Marsh, you all good? You're on record? You're consciously doing the foreplay thing now. If you...

I just... So, if we... Ha! What? I didn't... Stupid. Stupid. Okay, let's count to five together everyone likes to consider it

whole teeth it's a positive I start one we never clicked in and out of Zencaster is it really recording? it is recording so it's just straight recording this whole time?

yeah give the patrons Marsh teaching you how jam works Morgan Morgan you know what to do Morgan

save that 75 minutes of Heath learning what a jam is it's gold yeah where Eli's audio line is suspiciously flat

as he does not care about pretty much any of that stuff I tried to chime in I tried to chime in did you line is suspiciously flat as he does not care about pretty much any of that stuff. I tried to chime in. I tried to chime in. Did you? Been seven years. The preceding podcast is a production of Puzzle & Thunderstorm LLC.

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