# Is it fair to call them stupid?

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 5 Jan 2026, 1 h 12 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69291093/podcast852_callthemstupid2.mp3

RELEASING A DAY EARLY. Beyond the bigotry, how much of today's MAGA movement represents more than ignorance. Are the rest of us paying for American stupidity? Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because.
[0:22] Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 4: Take the risk of thinking, feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 4: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 4: Well. We all knew that Venezuela was on Trump's literal radar.
[1:02] Speaker 4: Call me naive. I did not have US bombs Venezuela
[1:07] Speaker 4: and abduct's president Maduro and his wife to stand twil
[1:10] Speaker 4: and American courts while Trump goes after land and oil
[1:14] Speaker 4: on the global stage. I did not have that on
[1:16] Speaker 4: my twenty twenty six BINGO card, at least for January. Now,
[1:20] Speaker 4: of course, I'm not a foreign policy expert. Most of
[1:24] Speaker 4: us aren't, but I think we do know this. Whatever's
[1:26] Speaker 4: going on, no matter how awful President Madeiro has ever been,
[1:31] Speaker 4: and we know he's been awful if he needed to
[1:34] Speaker 4: be removed and prosecuted for the heinous deeds that he
[1:37] Speaker 4: has done. Donald Trump is not doing what he is
[1:42] Speaker 4: doing for the benefit of Venezuelans. This is not a
[1:46] Speaker 4: human rights campaign. I got a friend or an associate
[1:50] Speaker 4: rather from Venezuela living in the United States, and she
[1:54] Speaker 4: was all over Facebook and cheering Madeiro was gone. He
[1:57] Speaker 4: has caused so much suffering. He's out of there. That's
[2:01] Speaker 4: what's important. He needed to be removed. And it was
[2:04] Speaker 4: a very emotional day for her.
[2:06] Speaker 3: Now.
[2:06] Speaker 4: I don't know where she falls in terms of Trump,
[2:09] Speaker 4: but her focus was on the fact that a tyrants
[2:12] Speaker 4: and a corrupt drug smuggling piece of garbage was gone.
[2:16] Speaker 4: He was out of there, and she was glad. And
[2:19] Speaker 4: she actually admitted, you know, if the motive is oil, ah, fine,
[2:23] Speaker 4: I don't care. Whatever it takes to get the guy gone.
[2:26] Speaker 4: That's what I want. And I'm sitting here thinking, how
[2:30] Speaker 4: can motive not matter? How can the strategies not matter,
[2:34] Speaker 4: How can the legalities not matter? Where is the consideration?
[2:40] Speaker 4: Donald Trump has been salivating over this idea. He loves conquest.
[2:46] Speaker 4: He wants to go in, he wants to take land
[2:49] Speaker 4: and resources for himself, because that's what history's badasses have done.
[2:54] Speaker 4: I mean, he wants to annex Canada and Greenland. Why
[3:00] Speaker 4: history's most powerful figures usually horrible figures. They were conquerors.
[3:06] Speaker 4: They just went in and took what they wanted. How
[3:08] Speaker 4: many kings and dictators and tyrants pointed to another part
[3:12] Speaker 4: of the world and said mine, right mine, that's mine.
[3:17] Speaker 4: And for those who might think this is not about
[3:21] Speaker 4: oil and conquest, Katie Miller, the wife of Homeland Security
[3:26] Speaker 4: Director Stephen Miller, just posted online a map image of Venezuela.
[3:32] Speaker 4: But it's totally stamped over with the red, white, and blue,
[3:36] Speaker 4: the stars and stripes of the American flag from border
[3:39] Speaker 4: to border. Now our president, the untethered manchild, who only
[3:46] Speaker 4: knows predation, grievance, and grift. He has activated one of
[3:51] Speaker 4: the planet's largest military machines and is using it as
[3:56] Speaker 4: a penis in larger Anybody remember back when Obama was
[4:03] Speaker 4: president This was October twenty twelve. Trump goes online and
[4:07] Speaker 4: he tweets these words he said quote. Now that Obama's
[4:11] Speaker 4: poll numbers are in a tailspin, watch for him to
[4:14] Speaker 4: launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
[4:20] Speaker 4: That tweet aged well, Trump's approval ratings right now are
[4:25] Speaker 4: in the thirties, like among the lowest of any president
[4:29] Speaker 4: in history, and in the thirties. Right after his November victory,
[4:34] Speaker 4: this last presidential victory for term number two, Donald Trump
[4:38] Speaker 4: said from the podium these words. He said, I'm not
[4:40] Speaker 4: going to start wars. I'm going to stop wars. By
[4:45] Speaker 4: the way, Donald Trump said over thirty times publicly that
[4:49] Speaker 4: he would end the Ukraine War on day one. How
[4:53] Speaker 4: many freaking days has it been? Day one? Ukraine will
[4:58] Speaker 4: be solved, no problem. So here we are, and Trump
[5:01] Speaker 4: is saying it out loud. He's saying words like we
[5:03] Speaker 4: will run Venezuela. The thinking is he'll do it until
[5:07] Speaker 4: there is a proper transition, which I think means that
[5:11] Speaker 4: despite the fact that Maduro's allies are actually running the government,
[5:16] Speaker 4: still we're not running the government right now. Trump does
[5:19] Speaker 4: want to. He wants a puppett or an extension of
[5:21] Speaker 4: the United States. And of course there's all of that oil.
[5:25] Speaker 4: Donald Trump says that we, the United States, are going
[5:28] Speaker 4: to take control of all of Venezuela's oil reserves, placing
[5:34] Speaker 4: American oil companies in key positions. By the way, oil
[5:38] Speaker 4: and gas companies they donated four hundred and fifty million
[5:43] Speaker 4: dollars to get Trump elected in twenty twenty four. How
[5:47] Speaker 4: can you look at that and not see one hand
[5:50] Speaker 4: washing the other. And this whole situation is just so kinetic.
[5:54] Speaker 4: It's evolving or devolving every second. Who knows how much
[5:58] Speaker 4: will have happened by the time you are listen to
[6:00] Speaker 4: this monologue. But beyond at all, beyond the geopolitics, anybody,
[6:05] Speaker 4: anybody with a functioning prefrontal cortex, realizes that the man
[6:11] Speaker 4: who has turned a part of the planet into his
[6:13] Speaker 4: own army man's sandbox is so dangerous. He is the
[6:19] Speaker 4: most immature, adult, impulsive, ignorant, and volatile guy in this hemisphere.
[6:26] Speaker 4: At least he knows nothing. He's not well read, he
[6:29] Speaker 4: doesn't understand the world. He doesn't know anything really about anything.
[6:33] Speaker 4: I mentioned to Greenland Donald Trump wants to take ownership
[6:37] Speaker 4: of Greenland, and he said, just recently, the United States
[6:42] Speaker 4: we had boats at Greenland three hundred years ago. Uh,
[6:47] Speaker 4: the United States didn't exist three hundred years ago. This
[6:52] Speaker 4: is the same guy, by the way, rememberd he was
[6:54] Speaker 4: talking about how the American forces were taking over the
[6:57] Speaker 4: airports during the War of n Dependence. Oh yeah, eighteenth
[7:04] Speaker 4: century airports.
[7:06] Speaker 3: Right.
[7:06] Speaker 4: This is the guy who was running American military policy.
[7:11] Speaker 4: He claims he has ended. I think now it's up
[7:14] Speaker 4: to eight wars. I've ended eight wars in places which
[7:18] Speaker 4: there's still a lot of conflict. I think sometimes he's
[7:21] Speaker 4: talking about negotiations, de escalations, truces, partial truces, you know,
[7:26] Speaker 4: and these things are still in flux. And many of
[7:28] Speaker 4: these conflicts are still in conflict. I mean we've got Israel, Hamas, Rwanda, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc.
[7:37] Speaker 4: The man who is in charge of where the missiles
[7:40] Speaker 4: are going to be dropped and upon whom is the
[7:44] Speaker 4: man who keeps boasting that he aced a dementious screening.
[7:49] Speaker 4: So the guy who was bombing a foreign nation thinks
[7:53] Speaker 4: he's a genius because he can draw a clock. Oh,
[8:02] Speaker 4: I swear to you now, who looks at Donald Trump
[8:05] Speaker 4: and says military genius Commander bone Spurs avoiding the Vietnam
[8:12] Speaker 4: Draft no fewer than five times five deferments, and for generations,
[8:18] Speaker 4: nobody in his immediate family has served in any branch
[8:22] Speaker 4: of the US Armed forces. So how thick do you
[8:26] Speaker 4: have to be to not see the problem, and yes,
[8:28] Speaker 4: many things can be true. At the same time, Maduro
[8:32] Speaker 4: is garbage, his regime garbage. His removal and a better
[8:37] Speaker 4: replacement is a worthy goal. But he is being removed
[8:42] Speaker 4: by the same guy who just pardoned the Honduran president
[8:46] Speaker 4: who had been found guilty of smuggling four hundred tons
[8:49] Speaker 4: of cocaine into the US. That guy was pardoned by Trump.
[8:54] Speaker 4: He went scott free. Meanwhile, there are these claims by
[8:58] Speaker 4: Trump that Venezuela is a major trafficker of cocaine and
[9:02] Speaker 4: fentanyl to the United States. That is demonstrably not true.
[9:06] Speaker 4: The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes says there's
[9:10] Speaker 4: no evidence of any significant level of fentanyl being brought
[9:14] Speaker 4: in from Venezuela. It's primarily brought in from Mexico. Venezuela
[9:20] Speaker 4: also not one of the primary traffickers of cocaine into
[9:24] Speaker 4: this country. So when Trump shoots missiles into, you know,
[9:28] Speaker 4: Venezuelan boats, and he says with no evidence that you know,
[9:32] Speaker 4: for every boat that goes down, for every three of
[9:34] Speaker 4: these boat driving smugglers that we killed, twenty five thousand
[9:38] Speaker 4: American lives are saved. And knowing it is even logistically
[9:43] Speaker 4: impossible for those boats to have reached our borders. I
[9:47] Speaker 4: think it was twenty refuelings. It would take for one
[9:51] Speaker 4: of these boats to even reach us with whatever was
[9:55] Speaker 4: on board. You see the problem, but MAGA does not
[9:59] Speaker 4: see the problem. They're just right now on Fox News.
[10:02] Speaker 4: They're cheering the removal of a Venezuelan dear leader, and
[10:07] Speaker 4: at the same time they're working to establish Donald Trump
[10:11] Speaker 4: as America's dear leader. And while you and I are
[10:15] Speaker 4: pointing and saying, hey, wait, you know, look at this.
[10:18] Speaker 4: This man just has a desire for conquest. There's the
[10:21] Speaker 4: gleeful othering of and threatening of anybody who isn't a white, conservative,
[10:27] Speaker 4: native born Christian Trump lover, especially if you have brown
[10:31] Speaker 4: skin or born in a foreign nation. The escalations on
[10:34] Speaker 4: the world stage, major players Russia, China, et cetera, all
[10:38] Speaker 4: ramping up for who knows what the hell's gonna happen next,
[10:42] Speaker 4: and Trump cult doesn't know, or they don't care, or
[10:47] Speaker 4: maybe they just like the idea. You know, it's time
[10:50] Speaker 4: that we make the world into us. We know that
[10:54] Speaker 4: human beings are a human for veteran worse, we've always
[10:58] Speaker 4: been impulsive emotional primates. We can be very reductive in
[11:03] Speaker 4: our thinking. We're reactionary in terms of who we might
[11:06] Speaker 4: accept or reject, love or hate, protect or kill what
[11:10] Speaker 4: we you know, what, we give, what we take. But
[11:12] Speaker 4: there are still I hope, I think, in fact, I
[11:15] Speaker 4: know there are still those among us who have reason
[11:20] Speaker 4: and logic and a beating human heart and can fairly
[11:25] Speaker 4: assess and address events like this, determining and deciding whether
[11:29] Speaker 4: it's logical, whether it's moral, whether it's good or bad. Right,
[11:33] Speaker 4: And those who watch Donald Trump and say, ah, you know,
[11:37] Speaker 4: I'm glad Maduro's gone. I just don't care. You're essentially saying, hey,
[11:42] Speaker 4: you know the chimp with the machine gun shooting bullets
[11:45] Speaker 4: in every direction and hits a bad guy. Hey, we
[11:48] Speaker 4: should give that chimp more ammunition. That's a problem. This
[11:54] Speaker 4: is where we are, and the whole thing is just
[11:58] Speaker 4: another reason that I've on myself in a very very
[12:02] Speaker 4: cynical place. I may have started a book. The cliche
[12:10] Speaker 4: goes like this. I just sat down and started typing,
[12:15] Speaker 4: and before I knew it, that's how this kind of
[12:18] Speaker 4: thing goes. I was going to make it a social
[12:21] Speaker 4: media post, and then I thought, well, it'll be a
[12:23] Speaker 4: substack article. But I just kept typing. I don't know
[12:27] Speaker 4: what it's going to be. I met about eight thousand
[12:29] Speaker 4: words and I can't stop. And it is avent, it's
[12:35] Speaker 4: a vent, and it's I think your work, how you
[12:41] Speaker 4: express yourself, very much, is a marker for where you
[12:45] Speaker 4: are in your mind and heart at that time in
[12:47] Speaker 4: your life. And I am a roller coaster, right I
[12:53] Speaker 4: go up and down, and I've got my sort of
[12:55] Speaker 4: middles as well. I've got my days of optimism and
[12:59] Speaker 4: I've got my day where I think people are fucking stupid.
[13:04] Speaker 4: Like the species, with a few exceptions, people are idiots,
[13:10] Speaker 4: and the rest of us get dragged into whatever bad
[13:14] Speaker 4: shit scenario they decide as a majority that we're going
[13:18] Speaker 4: to go into. We just were tethered to them. Many
[13:22] Speaker 4: of us are looking for ways to cut that tether,
[13:26] Speaker 4: which for some is meant they're getting out of the
[13:28] Speaker 4: United States because holy shit. And it's not popular among
[13:34] Speaker 4: many progressive circles to use words like dumb or stupid
[13:40] Speaker 4: and I don't care, ignorance I get. And there are intelligence,
[13:46] Speaker 4: super genius people who have believed and done stupid stuff.
[13:52] Speaker 4: I wrote a whole book called Christianity made me talk
[13:56] Speaker 4: like an idiot, and I went through example of how
[14:00] Speaker 4: many people who are not dumb people can be conditioned,
[14:04] Speaker 4: preconditioned and doctrineded whatever to do and say dumb stuff.
[14:09] Speaker 4: Dear Lord, we asked that you bless this food, nourish
[14:13] Speaker 4: it to our bodies, and our bodies to your service.
[14:16] Speaker 4: That's kind of a stupid thing to say, because of course,
[14:19] Speaker 4: the nutritional value of what you just blessed has not
[14:23] Speaker 4: changed one iota. Lord, we asked that while Bob's in
[14:27] Speaker 4: the hospital, you help the medicine to do its work.
[14:31] Speaker 4: Help the medicine to heal Bob. Is a stupid thing
[14:35] Speaker 4: to understand where it comes from. In many ways, those
[14:38] Speaker 4: who are desperate for hope and have been programmed by
[14:41] Speaker 4: their faith many times are taught to speak in this way.
[14:45] Speaker 4: It's a dumb ass prayer. Lord, we asked that you
[14:49] Speaker 4: help the chemo to cure him. Is a stupid ass
[14:53] Speaker 4: thing to stand and I stand by it. I stand
[14:57] Speaker 4: by our age of conspiracy culture. Sometimes you see something
[15:04] Speaker 4: and you're like, okay, I can I can I get it.
[15:08] Speaker 4: I understand you can be misled, you can be misguided.
[15:12] Speaker 4: And then there were other people, and you can spill
[15:14] Speaker 4: for them, you can spin for them, you can write down,
[15:18] Speaker 4: you can speak, you can sing to them the craziest,
[15:22] Speaker 4: most easily refutable, most irredeemably stupid story in the universe,
[15:28] Speaker 4: and they will just look at you, slobbery and going, oh, yeah,
[15:31] Speaker 4: that makes perfect sense to me. Stupid, that's just stupid.
[15:37] Speaker 4: We all know somebody, we all know somebody who they're
[15:40] Speaker 4: not operating just from ignorance. If they come to a
[15:43] Speaker 4: fork in the road, and the left says prudence and
[15:47] Speaker 4: wisdom and a good outcome. Left is the choice that
[15:51] Speaker 4: you should make. And here's all the reasons why it's obvious.
[15:54] Speaker 4: The road is wide. Just turn left and you will
[15:57] Speaker 4: be fine. Oh look, here's right. Right leads a few
[16:01] Speaker 4: steps to the end of a cliff. At the bottom
[16:03] Speaker 4: of the cliff, there are poisoned spikes, and then animals
[16:06] Speaker 4: will come and gnash whatever is left of you. Don't
[16:09] Speaker 4: go right. And we all know someone who's like, you
[16:12] Speaker 4: know what, I'm kind of feeling right today, And then
[16:17] Speaker 4: these people will often drag the rest of us around
[16:20] Speaker 4: with them, especially in groups of stupid. What do you
[16:30] Speaker 4: do with people who are as dull as a sack
[16:33] Speaker 4: of wet mice, and they vote, they raise children, they
[16:43] Speaker 4: influence the culture. They are de facto ambassadors for this
[16:48] Speaker 4: country to the rest of the world, and of course
[16:51] Speaker 4: the rest of the world sees that we've all apparently
[16:55] Speaker 4: gone crazy. And I was in a conversation recently with
[16:59] Speaker 4: someone who didn't chastise me, but it was like, what
[17:02] Speaker 4: do we do with these people?
[17:03] Speaker 5: Then?
[17:05] Speaker 4: Do we give up on them? How are we going
[17:08] Speaker 4: to share this world together if we can't continue to
[17:10] Speaker 4: engage in the hopes that they will one day break
[17:13] Speaker 4: out of that cocoon and emerge into better ideas. On
[17:16] Speaker 4: the surface, I understand it, but this is the where
[17:20] Speaker 4: I'm at as I'm typing away. Trump cult has had
[17:24] Speaker 4: ten years and don't tell me they're locked in a
[17:28] Speaker 4: disinformation sila. If your ass is locked onto Fox News
[17:33] Speaker 4: and that is your only conduit for the world and
[17:35] Speaker 4: you haven't been able to hear the screeches of grift,
[17:39] Speaker 4: corruption and cruelty that are coming down from the halls
[17:42] Speaker 4: of power, that's not my problem. That is your fault.
[17:47] Speaker 4: So in my mind, in my gut, rather you're either
[17:51] Speaker 4: too ridiculously thick to figure it out, or you kind
[17:57] Speaker 4: of like it? What else is there? A great example
[18:02] Speaker 4: is the No King's protest seven million people. It's estimated
[18:06] Speaker 4: even more than that, protesting in the streets free expression.
[18:10] Speaker 4: I was among the protesters in Tulsa. In the wake
[18:14] Speaker 4: of that October eighteenth, twenty twenty five, global protest, Donald
[18:18] Speaker 4: Trump posted officially on his site, posted an AI video
[18:24] Speaker 4: of himself wearing a crown flying a jet dropping shit
[18:28] Speaker 4: bombs on American protesters. Now, don't tell me MAGA didn't
[18:36] Speaker 4: know that happened. Don't tell me. And if they didn't know,
[18:40] Speaker 4: what does that mean? They're not even following Trump on
[18:42] Speaker 4: truth social I thought you were a true believer. I
[18:47] Speaker 4: thought you were a real patriot who wanted Trump to win,
[18:50] Speaker 4: and you knew everything about him. So if you're ignorant,
[18:53] Speaker 4: you're an idiot. And if you like it, you're a
[18:56] Speaker 4: bigot and a cruel person and probably still an idiot.
[19:00] Speaker 4: What do I do with that information? I don't know.
[19:04] Speaker 4: I've been wrestling with it. You go through the people
[19:06] Speaker 4: who were intelligent who did really dumb things. Steve Jobs,
[19:10] Speaker 4: co founder of Apple, No one can tell me that
[19:13] Speaker 4: he wasn't really really intelligent. He died of pancreatic cancer
[19:18] Speaker 4: far too early because he first decided he was going
[19:21] Speaker 4: to go treat it with acupuncture and kale. Are you
[19:26] Speaker 4: shitting me? Isaac Newton used to think you could turn
[19:31] Speaker 4: lead into gold. Now he wasn't an idiot, but it's
[19:34] Speaker 4: an idiotic thing. I mean, maybe that was a product
[19:36] Speaker 4: of his time. Do I give him the ignorance of
[19:39] Speaker 4: the culture, the fact that he wasn't yet part of
[19:41] Speaker 4: the knowledge economy, I don't know. I go back and
[19:44] Speaker 4: forth on that smart people can believe and do dumb stuff,
[19:48] Speaker 4: But there's a whole other category for people who they
[19:51] Speaker 4: are as dumb as a box of hair, and they
[19:55] Speaker 4: are destroying everything around us. And because there's so many
[20:01] Speaker 4: of them, they're a demographic. So I'm pissed. Is it
[20:08] Speaker 4: a good thing to write when you're pissed? Should you
[20:12] Speaker 4: maybe publish a book when you're pissed? I don't know. Well,
[20:16] Speaker 4: I regret it if it does eventually go out and
[20:20] Speaker 4: six months passes and I calm myself down and think,
[20:24] Speaker 4: oh shit, now it's out in the ether. I was wrong.
[20:27] Speaker 4: What am I going to do? Does it matter? This
[20:30] Speaker 4: is kind of where I'm out, This is where I'm
[20:33] Speaker 4: at your calls are next. I'm looking forward to finding
[20:38] Speaker 4: out what you want to talk about. Hang on before
[20:46] Speaker 4: I get to the switchboard. The event that's coming up
[20:50] Speaker 4: March seventh and Tulsa with Forrest Falci, got Sick Gibbon
[20:53] Speaker 4: and myself. Tickets are going fast for that sucker. It's
[20:56] Speaker 4: going to be a ball. We're doing kind of a
[20:58] Speaker 4: short formal presentation each of us at the beginning, and
[21:01] Speaker 4: we're gonna give some stuff away, We're gonna play some games,
[21:04] Speaker 4: we're gonna have some fun, do a ton of audience participation.
[21:07] Speaker 4: It's going to be a three hour roller coaster ride
[21:11] Speaker 4: and we would love to have you there. Tickets are
[21:13] Speaker 4: going fast. Just browse on over to the website Seth
[21:16] Speaker 4: Andrews dot com slash Events and you will see it
[21:20] Speaker 4: listed right there, Seth Andrews dot com Slash Events. A
[21:27] Speaker 4: po piri of calls, I'm sure today. By the way,
[21:31] Speaker 4: po piri is one of those words that I used
[21:33] Speaker 4: to mispronounce. I posted recently on Facebook that people who
[21:37] Speaker 4: read often accumulate a lot of mispronounced words, and it
[21:41] Speaker 4: was funny because it made me think, oh, yeah, there
[21:44] Speaker 4: had been a lot. It's not that I'm a great reader,
[21:47] Speaker 4: but I thought, well, let me ask the audience kind
[21:51] Speaker 4: of some of the words that they used to get
[21:53] Speaker 4: wrong because they read them first in print. Let me
[21:56] Speaker 4: pull up this, let me pull this up real fast.
[22:01] Speaker 4: We've got time cast aspersions, exponentially, caveat, minutia, banal, epitome,
[22:15] Speaker 4: Jeff the name Jeff, but not with a J. That's
[22:19] Speaker 4: a really good one. Fatigue, larynx, hyperbole, camas is it
[22:26] Speaker 4: camus or camus? C A m what's a camus or camas?
[22:30] Speaker 4: C A m u S. I don't know what that is.
[22:32] Speaker 4: Posthumous q q u e u e keene waw macobb
[22:39] Speaker 4: m A c I b r E m A c
[22:42] Speaker 4: A don't call me m A c A b r
[22:46] Speaker 4: e self deprecating instead of self depreciating. I've made that mistake.
[22:52] Speaker 4: Conch albeit or albeit secreted. Oh, there's so many good ones. Anyway.
[22:59] Speaker 4: That's kind of what I've been doing lately. What would
[23:01] Speaker 4: you like to talk about? Wanda is dialing in Wanda?
[23:05] Speaker 4: Are you there?
[23:07] Speaker 6: Hello?
[23:08] Speaker 4: Hi? Willam, Mike can what's going on.
[23:11] Speaker 2: Home with the flu?
[23:13] Speaker 3: So?
[23:14] Speaker 6: Thinking about healthcare and problems in healthcare. This is my
[23:17] Speaker 6: second bout of flu in three weeks, so caught it twice.
[23:21] Speaker 2: Lucky.
[23:21] Speaker 4: Mean, I'm so sorry to hear that.
[23:23] Speaker 6: Yeah, I came across you said I thank you. When
[23:26] Speaker 6: I was listening to you, you said something about supplements.
[23:29] Speaker 6: There's a great video arm supplements on the more Perfect
[23:32] Speaker 6: Union channel. Anybody wants to know the history of that.
[23:35] Speaker 7: That's nuts.
[23:37] Speaker 6: But yeah, just complaining about the health care industry and
[23:40] Speaker 6: how convoluted and costly and stupid it is rant all
[23:45] Speaker 6: you want.
[23:45] Speaker 4: Natalie and I had this conversation earlier. Her insurance is
[23:49] Speaker 4: changing this year, so we have to go through all
[23:53] Speaker 4: that and the sign ups and all of that stuff.
[23:55] Speaker 4: When we were talking about what it's like to live
[23:57] Speaker 4: in a developed country like the United States, where even
[24:01] Speaker 4: when you pay hundreds of dollars a month in premiums,
[24:05] Speaker 4: one major medical event can destroy your life. It's just
[24:11] Speaker 4: so freaking stupid. And then you see the higher ups
[24:15] Speaker 4: in major insurance companies, et cetera, who are making millions
[24:20] Speaker 4: upon millions of dollars, and then you become even more enraged.
[24:24] Speaker 6: Right, Oh, absolutely. My mother she died of a heart
[24:28] Speaker 6: attack at age sixty four, and my father was self employed,
[24:35] Speaker 6: so she had pretty sketchy healthcare up to almost about
[24:39] Speaker 6: two years before she passed, and I'm pretty sure if
[24:44] Speaker 6: she had they had had decent health care, she probably
[24:46] Speaker 6: would be allowed today. She it was dodgy. She went
[24:49] Speaker 6: to the doctor when she had to, She didn't go
[24:51] Speaker 6: for regular checkups. She didn't do it even when she
[24:54] Speaker 6: thought something was going on.
[24:55] Speaker 7: She couldn't afford it.
[24:56] Speaker 6: Their premiums went up from three hundred dollars a month
[25:00] Speaker 6: nine hundred dollars a month. And that's when they let
[25:03] Speaker 6: it go. And they just decided to chance it and
[25:05] Speaker 6: pay out a pocket if they needed to. And they're
[25:08] Speaker 6: in their late fifties and they did this. And my
[25:12] Speaker 6: dad was a veteran. He's you know, he always had
[25:14] Speaker 6: veteran benefits. He was able to do that. And then
[25:18] Speaker 6: we're also Cherokee, so we have, you know, Indian health
[25:21] Speaker 6: services available to us, but my mom wasn't. And so
[25:25] Speaker 6: there she is, fifty nine years old, she loses her
[25:28] Speaker 6: whatever little health insurance they had. I don't remember what
[25:30] Speaker 6: it was like now because this was the early two thousands.
[25:33] Speaker 6: She's been gone almost twenty years, but I'm pretty sure
[25:36] Speaker 6: she had a massive heart attack when not and just
[25:38] Speaker 6: went and was gone in like thirty minutes and real.
[25:42] Speaker 4: Fast, if you would. I heard you say Indian healthcare,
[25:46] Speaker 4: and I know several people who have Native American heritage
[25:49] Speaker 4: who do benefit. Do you still call it Indian healthcare?
[25:52] Speaker 6: Most people do, because it's kind of that's kind of
[25:55] Speaker 6: the way it's been thought of.
[25:56] Speaker 4: Nice. I was just curious if I was saying it
[25:59] Speaker 4: wrong to think of how I've phrased it in the past.
[26:02] Speaker 4: But I think normally when you say Indian, people are like,
[26:05] Speaker 4: are they from India? No, they're Native American, and then
[26:07] Speaker 4: that correction comes in. I'm sure you've heard that one, right.
[26:10] Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I'm a Native oke so and I've worked
[26:13] Speaker 6: for Cherokee Nation and so you know, I call it
[26:15] Speaker 6: Cherokee Healthcare services.
[26:17] Speaker 7: But most people don't.
[26:18] Speaker 6: Really recognize that as well as they do Indian healthcare.
[26:21] Speaker 4: So there's been a big thing back and forth between
[26:24] Speaker 4: the Native American tribes in Oklahoma and the governor over
[26:28] Speaker 4: land and sovereignty. Yes, yeah, that's been crazy. I'm not
[26:32] Speaker 4: a fan of Governor Kevin Stitt. Wanda. I'm sure you
[26:36] Speaker 4: probably are neither.
[26:37] Speaker 6: Am I. Well, did you hear about you know, because
[26:42] Speaker 6: he claims to be Cherokee. Did you hear the history
[26:45] Speaker 6: on that.
[26:46] Speaker 4: No, I did not.
[26:47] Speaker 6: There is evidence. I read an article about it. There's
[26:50] Speaker 6: a newsletter called Indian Country. So they're trying they claim
[26:54] Speaker 6: to that, I guess, And they did an investigation into it.
[26:58] Speaker 6: And apparently his ancestort his way onto the Dolls rule
[27:02] Speaker 6: and that's how he got his Cherokee heritage.
[27:05] Speaker 4: Well that's convenient.
[27:07] Speaker 6: Yeah, Apparently there was a lot of them that married
[27:09] Speaker 6: Cherokee women or other Native women and then bought their
[27:13] Speaker 6: way onto the rules, and so they're able to claim that.
[27:16] Speaker 6: Apparently he just flat out I think I don't even
[27:18] Speaker 6: think they were he married, there was any Native there
[27:21] Speaker 6: at all. He just bought his way onto the rules
[27:23] Speaker 6: so he could get buy and get an allotment. But
[27:26] Speaker 6: that's you know, Oklahoma history, and which is a normally mess.
[27:29] Speaker 4: The good news for twenty twenty six, Wanda is that
[27:32] Speaker 4: Ryan Walters is no longer our Superintendent of Public Instruction.
[27:37] Speaker 4: He has gone away. He's gone. Oh it's just like
[27:42] Speaker 4: sweet sweet nectar.
[27:48] Speaker 6: So it sounds like the Yeah, it sounds like the
[27:51] Speaker 6: new guys trying to undo a lot of what he did.
[27:54] Speaker 4: Yeah, the new guy comes in and he just says, no,
[27:57] Speaker 4: we're not doing that. No, we're not doing that. No,
[28:00] Speaker 4: I'm scratching that out. This is a bunch of horseshit.
[28:02] Speaker 4: And then Ryan Walters is off in the wings somewhere
[28:05] Speaker 4: and he is having the tantrum of his life. He
[28:08] Speaker 4: is just so mad, and I am here for it, Wanda,
[28:12] Speaker 4: I'm here. Let him just simmer in his own juice.
[28:16] Speaker 4: Let him sit over there and bang his fists and
[28:18] Speaker 4: furrow his brow and bitch about the injustice of it.
[28:22] Speaker 4: All that to me gives me. It's a it's just
[28:26] Speaker 4: a little bit of goodness to keep me going into
[28:29] Speaker 4: twenty twenty six. You get some soup and rest and
[28:32] Speaker 4: take care of yourself, okay.
[28:34] Speaker 2: Will do all right, We'll see you. It'll Pylty in March.
[28:38] Speaker 4: Well, if you you know, if you need help getting in,
[28:40] Speaker 4: you call me or you email me and I'll take
[28:42] Speaker 4: care of you. Okay, all right, I'll see it. And
[28:46] Speaker 4: he called that good deserves special consideration. Darcy is dialing
[28:52] Speaker 4: in from area code six one nine. Darcy, are you
[28:57] Speaker 4: with us? Hi, sir, glad you're here. Let's talk. What's
[29:00] Speaker 4: on your mind?
[29:02] Speaker 7: I read this morning the Legacy Media such as CBS, CNN.
[29:07] Speaker 7: Those kinds of folks are changing their tactics on reporting
[29:12] Speaker 7: to you know, we all know to acquis to President
[29:16] Speaker 7: Trump by not following the elite, the educated experts, relying
[29:24] Speaker 7: more on the common man's point of view. And I'm sorry,
[29:28] Speaker 7: but I don't want to hear from the common man.
[29:31] Speaker 7: I want to hear from the experts. If they're saying
[29:36] Speaker 7: stuff that I don't understand because it's above my understanding.
[29:39] Speaker 2: Then I'm learning.
[29:41] Speaker 7: I'm not learning from the guy that doesn't have a
[29:44] Speaker 7: high school education, that thinks the world is flat and
[29:47] Speaker 7: all these batchit crazy ideas that are out there. I
[29:52] Speaker 7: want to hear from the experts, and I don't. I
[29:54] Speaker 7: think this trend of trying to follow some common denomination
[30:00] Speaker 7: is dangerous and stupid in so many ways. My dad
[30:05] Speaker 7: was a journalist and he's spinning in his grave right now.
[30:10] Speaker 4: CBS News obviously in hot water after at the last
[30:12] Speaker 4: second it yanked, it spiked a sixty minutes report about
[30:17] Speaker 4: the atrocities that have been going on with deportations and
[30:20] Speaker 4: ice and the prison in El Salvador, and it's horrifying,
[30:23] Speaker 4: right So it's about to go out and at the
[30:29] Speaker 4: last second, the new editor in chief of CBS News
[30:33] Speaker 4: comes in and says, Nope, I don't feel like the
[30:36] Speaker 4: White House has had enough opportunity to be able to
[30:39] Speaker 4: weigh in. Well, the White House was not going to
[30:41] Speaker 4: weigh in. I think this is part of the strategy.
[30:43] Speaker 4: So they sit on their hands, and then Barry White says, oh,
[30:47] Speaker 4: I'm just going to pull the plug because we need
[30:49] Speaker 4: to be fair. And the journalists at sixty minutes are saying,
[30:53] Speaker 4: we fact checked everything, we reached out, we went through
[30:55] Speaker 4: all the proper channels, and we did it right, and
[30:58] Speaker 4: they're pissed. Well, the package, including that segment already had
[31:03] Speaker 4: gone out to Canada for release and so so in
[31:07] Speaker 4: Canada it was sent out and then it went viral
[31:11] Speaker 4: on the internet. So the word leaked is not a
[31:13] Speaker 4: correct term. But we had to we had to rely
[31:17] Speaker 4: on Canada to show us a report that was censored
[31:20] Speaker 4: by the head honcho at CBS News. And now they
[31:23] Speaker 4: have a new evening anchor who is promising, Hey, we
[31:26] Speaker 4: aren't going just to listen to the and actually use
[31:30] Speaker 4: the word experts. He said, he said, we're going to,
[31:34] Speaker 4: you know, focus on the people. And I had the
[31:36] Speaker 4: same thought that you had. Do we really want the
[31:39] Speaker 4: tictokification of news? Do we want everybody with an opinion
[31:44] Speaker 4: to become that new story? And then what kind of
[31:48] Speaker 4: crazy batshittery in corruption does this new methodology open up
[31:53] Speaker 4: at the highest levels of quote unquote journalism. Most of
[31:57] Speaker 4: American media is owned, I believe by six companies. So
[32:02] Speaker 4: if CBS and let's call it CNN, and the New
[32:07] Speaker 4: York Post and all these other the Washington Post owned
[32:11] Speaker 4: by Jeff Bezos, et cetera. If all the major players
[32:14] Speaker 4: are owned by the brolgarchs, the conspiracy theorists that corrupt
[32:18] Speaker 4: in people with other interest what do the rest of
[32:21] Speaker 4: us do go to? Substack? Is that all we have left?
[32:23] Speaker 4: I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on any
[32:26] Speaker 4: of that?
[32:26] Speaker 7: Yeah? Well, one of the things that people don't realize
[32:29] Speaker 7: about journalism. A lot of the people don't realize is
[32:32] Speaker 7: that a journalist, a true journalist, making a report needs
[32:37] Speaker 7: to source their sources and it goes through a process
[32:41] Speaker 7: whereby the editor, which was what my dad's job was,
[32:45] Speaker 7: make sure that they have, you know, more than one
[32:48] Speaker 7: source for a particular item or fact or things like that.
[32:52] Speaker 7: And then if they do publish something and they get
[32:55] Speaker 7: it wrong. They publish a retraction or correction saying hey,
[32:59] Speaker 7: we know this particular thing or this was found later
[33:03] Speaker 7: to be untrue, and people think, well, that means that
[33:07] Speaker 7: they're dishonest. Well, no, that means they're being honest.
[33:11] Speaker 2: It's like the.
[33:12] Speaker 7: Scientific method, having put out a paper and being peer
[33:15] Speaker 7: reviewed and then having to make corrections afterwards.
[33:19] Speaker 5: It's part of the processes.
[33:20] Speaker 7: How we learn and how we report on the facts.
[33:23] Speaker 7: And I'm sorry these guys that substack, you know, going
[33:27] Speaker 7: to Minnesota and trying to find fraud amongst the Somalias
[33:31] Speaker 7: who are running a daycare haven't gone through that process.
[33:36] Speaker 2: You know.
[33:36] Speaker 7: They're just clickbait, putting out something with some sketchy video
[33:40] Speaker 7: and saying, oh, look we found fraud. Well no, you
[33:43] Speaker 7: shouldn't find jack. And this is what's being pawned off
[33:47] Speaker 7: as journalism or reporting these days, and it's really pretty pathetic.
[33:52] Speaker 4: Okay for those who don't know what we're talking about.
[33:54] Speaker 4: Real fast on the daycare thing. There's this guy whose
[33:57] Speaker 4: name is Nick Shirley. He is a conservative online influencer.
[34:02] Speaker 4: There's your first red flag and he goes viral online.
[34:06] Speaker 4: He's got this video that shows him and a guy
[34:08] Speaker 4: pounding on the doors of childcare centers in Somali communities
[34:14] Speaker 4: in Minnesota, and he is ostensibly looking for evidence of
[34:18] Speaker 4: financial fraud, and he says stuff like, we have uncovered
[34:22] Speaker 4: over one hundred and ten million dollars of fraud in
[34:25] Speaker 4: one day. And it turns out after the fact that
[34:30] Speaker 4: there were Republican lawmakers that had actually given this guy
[34:35] Speaker 4: a list of centers to target, but that didn't make
[34:38] Speaker 4: any difference. The facts didn't make any difference. By the way,
[34:41] Speaker 4: no fraud was ever discovered, No fraud has been discovered.
[34:45] Speaker 4: It's business as usual. All this shit's been debunked. But
[34:49] Speaker 4: of course Newsmax and OAANN and even Fox News and
[34:53] Speaker 4: the right wing online culture has run with this and
[34:59] Speaker 4: now at official channels. He got Jim O'Neill over at
[35:02] Speaker 4: the Department of Health and Human Services, he's the deputy secretary.
[35:05] Speaker 4: He goes public and he says, ah, the blatant fraud
[35:09] Speaker 4: that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the
[35:12] Speaker 4: country will be dealt with. We are going to combat
[35:17] Speaker 4: all of this illegality. And again, at even a cursory glance,
[35:21] Speaker 4: by real investigators. The whole thing is just bullshit. It's
[35:25] Speaker 4: absolute crap. It's fiction. But this guy, Nick Shirley is
[35:30] Speaker 4: being treated by many of the right wingers as a
[35:34] Speaker 4: legitimate investigative journalist. So that's what we're talking about. I'm
[35:40] Speaker 4: reminded of back when Jesse Ventura, the professional wrestler I
[35:46] Speaker 4: can't remember. I think this was after he was governor
[35:48] Speaker 4: of Minnesota. He got a television show where he was
[35:52] Speaker 4: supposed to be uncovering a lot of governmental secrets and
[35:56] Speaker 4: he went to some I think a military establish which
[36:01] Speaker 4: was locked up and had security measures and whatever. Jessevan
[36:05] Speaker 4: Toura walks up to a door of the place with
[36:09] Speaker 4: a crew in tow and he demands He's like, we
[36:13] Speaker 4: demand as the people to be able to come in
[36:15] Speaker 4: and see what you're doing in there, and of course
[36:18] Speaker 4: they're not. They're like, get out of here. We're not
[36:20] Speaker 4: going to just let you in your massive security risk.
[36:23] Speaker 4: We don't know what you're doing. There are protocols. And
[36:26] Speaker 4: then he immediately goes back to the lot and he's
[36:28] Speaker 4: like the fact that they didn't allow us in tells
[36:31] Speaker 4: us that there's something seriously wrong going on in the
[36:35] Speaker 4: United States government. And I'm like, no, I think it's
[36:37] Speaker 4: that you didn't get your ass on the schedule. You know,
[36:42] Speaker 4: are there untoward things happening in our government?
[36:44] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[36:45] Speaker 4: Does the military have secrets, some of them sketchy? Hell? Yes.
[36:48] Speaker 4: Do you simply walk up to Area fifty one and
[36:52] Speaker 4: when you're turned away say this is proof that the
[36:55] Speaker 4: lizard people are here? I think, not, Darcy, that's just me.
[37:00] Speaker 2: I work for the government.
[37:01] Speaker 7: One of my jobs was to do inspections. And every
[37:05] Speaker 7: place that I did an inspection, they had a right
[37:07] Speaker 7: to turn me away. They had a right to say no,
[37:09] Speaker 7: you're not coming in.
[37:11] Speaker 2: And I had to get a warrant.
[37:12] Speaker 7: That's just the way things work, checks and balance.
[37:15] Speaker 4: Otherwise, anybody anywhere could claim credentials and be given access
[37:20] Speaker 4: to places where they might endanger others.
[37:23] Speaker 7: And people would try to impersonate an inspector with some
[37:27] Speaker 7: bogus credentials, and we every once in a while we
[37:30] Speaker 7: hear about. They'd call us and say is this really you, guys,
[37:33] Speaker 7: And we say, uh no, that's you. Don't let that
[37:37] Speaker 7: person in.
[37:38] Speaker 4: Here's the one thing I'm watching. And I mentioned substack.
[37:42] Speaker 4: It's not just because I published a tiny, tiny, humble
[37:45] Speaker 4: little hole in the Wall article myself from time to time.
[37:48] Speaker 4: But I have seen Heathercox, Richardson and others who are
[37:53] Speaker 4: moving to these freestanding platforms to get the word out,
[37:57] Speaker 4: and many of them are really starting to get noticed.
[38:00] Speaker 4: And I do wonder if the oligarchy driven media machine
[38:05] Speaker 4: is going to, you know, even as people a lot
[38:08] Speaker 4: of people are going off into the disinformation silos. I
[38:11] Speaker 4: do wonder if, like the journalists who were ousted from
[38:15] Speaker 4: the White House briefing room, those types of people are
[38:18] Speaker 4: going to say, fine, if you're going to corporatize everything
[38:22] Speaker 4: and decide that the big billionaires are going to determine
[38:25] Speaker 4: what is news, we're going to be journalists over here.
[38:28] Speaker 4: And I do wonder if maybe those grassroots things will
[38:32] Speaker 4: take off and become something else. So I'm going to
[38:34] Speaker 4: be watching independent journalists in that way. We shall see
[38:38] Speaker 4: what happens.
[38:39] Speaker 7: Okay, Yeah, I'm following a couple myself, and you know,
[38:42] Speaker 7: I do have to recognize that they don't have the
[38:45] Speaker 7: same editorial oversight that the legacy media has, and so
[38:50] Speaker 7: a lot of what they're saying is opinion. But as
[38:53] Speaker 7: long as it's clear that that's what they're doing, is
[38:55] Speaker 7: there these are these folks's opinion, then sure it's fine.
[39:00] Speaker 4: But it isn't that Box and Friends and Sean Hannity
[39:03] Speaker 4: and even Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow. I mean, most
[39:07] Speaker 4: of what is being broadcast at the highest levels is
[39:10] Speaker 4: imbued with opinion.
[39:12] Speaker 7: Don't you think, well, yeah, everybody has a bias. You
[39:16] Speaker 7: can't deny that. You know that you might have a
[39:19] Speaker 7: particular bias. And there's a difference between reporting on facts
[39:22] Speaker 7: and reporting on opinion. And certainly what you report on
[39:27] Speaker 7: might be colored by your biases. Like we're going to
[39:31] Speaker 7: cover this story because we think this is important versus
[39:34] Speaker 7: that story. So I mean, that's why it's important to
[39:37] Speaker 7: have a wide curricula of sources that you look at,
[39:41] Speaker 7: that you don't rely on just one type of reporting
[39:44] Speaker 7: or one or one source as a consumer that you
[39:47] Speaker 7: were looking at a variety of angles for a particular story.
[39:52] Speaker 7: But I do want to rely on experts. I do
[39:55] Speaker 7: want to rely on people who are experts in their
[39:58] Speaker 7: fields versus man on the street.
[40:01] Speaker 4: I think that's super smart. With RFK Junior and the
[40:05] Speaker 4: National Institutes of Health and the war on the CDC,
[40:07] Speaker 4: et cetera, there's a war on expertise and a sowing
[40:10] Speaker 4: of distrust of experts and science and scientific processes and
[40:15] Speaker 4: reasonings and findings and facts do matter. So yes, we
[40:20] Speaker 4: want experts. Please call the experts, and enough of this
[40:23] Speaker 4: equal time bullshit. We don't bring somebody in who is
[40:27] Speaker 4: an astrophysicist or a planetary scientist and say, you know what,
[40:31] Speaker 4: we need to give fifty to fifty opportunity to the
[40:34] Speaker 4: guy who thinks the Earth is a disc. You know,
[40:37] Speaker 4: it doesn't work. That's not how equal time works. That's
[40:40] Speaker 4: not how fairness works. And Darcy, you're amazing, and thank
[40:44] Speaker 4: you for calling and being a part of today's conversation.
[40:47] Speaker 7: Thank you day.
[40:49] Speaker 4: You bet we'll see you later. I mean, how do
[40:53] Speaker 4: we get here? This is maybe back to stupid. How
[40:56] Speaker 4: does someone say, you know what, if someone's an expert,
[41:00] Speaker 4: I doubt them seriously. Well doubt's fine. We don't let
[41:06] Speaker 4: degree bongerers show up and we're like, well, you've got
[41:09] Speaker 4: a PhD or whatever, so therefore you are correct. That's
[41:13] Speaker 4: not how facts work. But we do know that people
[41:17] Speaker 4: who have higher education and experience in many certain fields,
[41:22] Speaker 4: they are largely much more informed. They swim in those waters.
[41:26] Speaker 4: And more importantly even than that, is there are other
[41:29] Speaker 4: experts in that field who are keeping them in check.
[41:32] Speaker 4: How many times does somebody with a fancy degree come
[41:35] Speaker 4: forward and they made a crazy Andrew Wakefield kind of claim,
[41:41] Speaker 4: and who swarmed upon them with refutations to whatever study
[41:45] Speaker 4: they published? It was experts in the field. You know,
[41:48] Speaker 4: when you look at doctor Stephen Meyer at the Discovery Institute,
[41:52] Speaker 4: who is an intelligent design proponent, you know where you
[41:55] Speaker 4: don't see that guy. You don't see him in peer
[41:58] Speaker 4: review because if he was to submit any of these
[42:01] Speaker 4: bullshit papers, everybody's like, well, this is not scientific. Our
[42:06] Speaker 4: peers have reviewed your work and it's a big steamy
[42:10] Speaker 4: pile of horseshit. That's how it works. So we don't
[42:15] Speaker 4: argue from authority. We don't argue because somebody's got a
[42:18] Speaker 4: specific degree or a pedigree, But we do say there
[42:22] Speaker 4: are experts in fields, and there are other experts who
[42:25] Speaker 4: keep them in check, and then they provide a way
[42:27] Speaker 4: for you and I on more of a civilian level
[42:31] Speaker 4: to participate in science in a way in which we
[42:34] Speaker 4: can digest. It is imperfect, but that's how we roll. Mean, really,
[42:40] Speaker 4: is Steven Meyer, are you shitting me, Michael bhe PhD
[42:46] Speaker 4: really demski PhD No, No, And it's scientists, experts that
[42:53] Speaker 4: have kept them in check. But I want the experts
[42:57] Speaker 4: involved first. I don't want somebody at freedom dot Eagle
[43:01] Speaker 4: dot net who has been reading some Reddit shit poster
[43:06] Speaker 4: about the latest Q drop conspiracy telling me that that's
[43:10] Speaker 4: news and the world needs to know about it. That's
[43:13] Speaker 4: common people reporting right now, and I want there. I
[43:17] Speaker 4: don't want there. Let's not do that. So many more
[43:22] Speaker 4: calls to come stand by here in the new year.
[43:33] Speaker 4: If you would like to support the show by becoming
[43:35] Speaker 4: a patron, your support is so appreciated. Patreon dot com,
[43:40] Speaker 4: slash Seth Andrews David, Thanks for your patients, David, and welcome.
[43:48] Speaker 4: Are you there.
[43:49] Speaker 8: I wanted to know if you have seen it all
[43:52] Speaker 8: on YouTube. Christopher Hitchens resurrected.
[43:57] Speaker 4: Christopher Hitchens resurrected what's.
[44:00] Speaker 8: That obviously AI and so it's kind of an AI
[44:05] Speaker 8: animation of Christopher Hitchens in Heaven of All Places, sitting
[44:10] Speaker 8: in an easy chair with a little table next to
[44:13] Speaker 8: it with Crown Royal. I think he's got a glass
[44:16] Speaker 8: of that, but the clouds are floating by but he'll,
[44:21] Speaker 8: I say he, Ai, he will expound and brilliantly and
[44:26] Speaker 8: in the voice and in the vocabulary of Christopher Hitchens.
[44:32] Speaker 8: I keep telling myself, obviously this is not him, but
[44:36] Speaker 8: this is pretty damn good Ai. Whoever created it, and
[44:40] Speaker 8: the commentary is spot on.
[44:43] Speaker 5: You would appreciate.
[44:44] Speaker 8: It because he takes out after not only Trump but
[44:48] Speaker 8: his minions and the frauds and phonies that are polluting
[44:53] Speaker 8: now our national political scene. And it really is entertaining.
[44:57] Speaker 8: Christopher Hitchins resurrected.
[45:00] Speaker 4: All right, Well, I'm not opposed to stopping by and
[45:03] Speaker 4: taking a look, so thanks for letting me know about it.
[45:06] Speaker 8: It's usually an eight to twelve minute thing, and it's
[45:10] Speaker 8: pretty entertaining, and in small bites like your short videos
[45:14] Speaker 8: on YouTube, and always leave and leaves me asking for more.
[45:18] Speaker 8: I've got two of your books on my shelf and
[45:20] Speaker 8: I'm a big fan. Like I say, I hope to
[45:23] Speaker 8: see you live sometime.
[45:25] Speaker 5: Well, honored David, I am getting up there, but I
[45:28] Speaker 5: hope I got a few more years.
[45:30] Speaker 4: Well me too, And if we ever in the same
[45:33] Speaker 4: zip code, I hope I get to shake your hand.
[45:35] Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, maybe I will.
[45:38] Speaker 8: I don't know if i'll sing to you, maybe I'll
[45:40] Speaker 8: recite to you what I've done to this song, America
[45:43] Speaker 8: the Beautiful, written by Catherine Lee Bates in eighteen ninety five.
[45:48] Speaker 8: You know the song Oh Beautiful for spacious guys. I
[45:51] Speaker 8: do oh Beautiful for spatious guys, for amber waves of grain.
[45:54] Speaker 8: I won't read that version or even try to sing it,
[45:58] Speaker 8: but I had to alter a little bit. Do we
[46:01] Speaker 8: have time for me to go through the two verses?
[46:04] Speaker 4: If you have two verses?
[46:05] Speaker 5: Yeah, all right.
[46:07] Speaker 8: It was once America the Beautiful, Now America the lamentable,
[46:13] Speaker 8: Oh pitiful, for shameless lies, for maga waves of pain,
[46:17] Speaker 8: for lawless, hateful tyrannies. Above all, power gain America America.
[46:24] Speaker 8: Trump shed's disgrace on the his fascist strain, no longer
[46:29] Speaker 8: staying our proud democracy. 'tis noble to resist a king
[46:35] Speaker 8: and heed our founder's words that we the people rightly reign,
[46:40] Speaker 8: not autocratic turds. America America, reclaim your honored name with liberty, equality,
[46:50] Speaker 8: stand once again in fame.
[46:54] Speaker 4: And the crowd applaud you, David. Thanks so much for
[46:57] Speaker 4: the call. Be safe out there, Okay.
[46:59] Speaker 5: Yes, sir. A pleasure to talk to you, thank you.
[47:02] Speaker 4: Thank you. We'll see you, Okay. So I'm gonna have
[47:06] Speaker 4: to weigh in on this AI and Christopher Hitchins thing.
[47:11] Speaker 4: I think it's sorry, David. I think it's immoral. I
[47:17] Speaker 4: don't want to hear a synthetic approximation of what AI
[47:23] Speaker 4: thinks or Clay doesn't think, but decides in that way,
[47:27] Speaker 4: for lack of a better word, Christopher Hitchens would say
[47:31] Speaker 4: about the current climate. Because unless Christopher Hitchins, who drew
[47:36] Speaker 4: breath and his mind was absolutely brilliant and brilliantly unique,
[47:40] Speaker 4: unless he says it, there's no way to attach any
[47:44] Speaker 4: real meaning to the words that comes out of AI's mouth.
[47:48] Speaker 4: That's a problem. Secondly, I don't want a fake hitch
[47:53] Speaker 4: I don't want a fake I don't want to watch
[47:56] Speaker 4: something that takes me into a place where it feels
[48:00] Speaker 4: like him, especially when there is so much actual hitch
[48:05] Speaker 4: that has been written and posted and the videos I
[48:08] Speaker 4: pull up Hitchins debates and speeches on YouTube all the time.
[48:12] Speaker 4: He is decades worth of work that's still relevant today. Thirdly,
[48:18] Speaker 4: I think, how would I feel if, whether I'm alive
[48:22] Speaker 4: or dead, somewhere AI took my face and my voice
[48:27] Speaker 4: and had me saying things that I didn't actually say,
[48:31] Speaker 4: expressing thoughts, opinions, ideas, claims, etc. That I may or
[48:35] Speaker 4: may not have actually held for myself. And how would
[48:39] Speaker 4: someone else know the difference? I think it blurs the
[48:41] Speaker 4: line between the real and the fake. I don't think
[48:44] Speaker 4: Christopher Hitchins would have agreed to have his likeness, his voice,
[48:48] Speaker 4: his representation, his person used in this way. Anyone, anywhere,
[48:56] Speaker 4: for any reason, is at risk of being duplicated. We're
[49:01] Speaker 4: seeing a version of these in Hollywood. You know, actors
[49:06] Speaker 4: and actresses are banding together to say we need legal
[49:11] Speaker 4: protection because what prevents a filmmaker from saying, you know what,
[49:17] Speaker 4: I can't afford to pay Scarlet Johanson fifteen to twenty
[49:21] Speaker 4: million dollars, but I share with like Scarlett Johansen to
[49:25] Speaker 4: star in this movie. Let's just generate a Scarlet Johansson
[49:30] Speaker 4: and it'll look like her, and it'll sound like her,
[49:33] Speaker 4: and it'll move like her. Nah, that is not what
[49:36] Speaker 4: I want AI to do for us. I don't want
[49:40] Speaker 4: AI to replace the creators, you know, the artists and
[49:45] Speaker 4: the thinkers and the writers and the doers, the human
[49:49] Speaker 4: element of being human. I don't want AI doing that,
[49:52] Speaker 4: and I don't want it confusing everybody else. I think
[49:57] Speaker 4: AI should help to make people's lives better and to
[50:00] Speaker 4: help make the work of creators somewhat easier when possible
[50:06] Speaker 4: or appropriate. So I can't support an AI Hitchins. And
[50:12] Speaker 4: in my own heart, I don't want an Ai Hitchins.
[50:14] Speaker 4: I want the real guy. I miss Christopher Hitchins, his
[50:17] Speaker 4: unique voice, his unique person, his attitude, his intelligence, his
[50:23] Speaker 4: amazing encyclopedic recall, his sense of humor. Who he was
[50:28] Speaker 4: is a person, which I don't think a machine is.
[50:31] Speaker 4: Just it doesn't do it for me. And there are
[50:34] Speaker 4: some who are going to say, well, you're just a
[50:37] Speaker 4: you're past your prime, you're a luddee. It's going to
[50:39] Speaker 4: happen anyway, so embrace it. Do I need to embrace it?
[50:45] Speaker 4: Some people say there's an AI bubble that's about to burst.
[50:48] Speaker 4: A shit ton of people with billions of dollars have
[50:51] Speaker 4: invested in what many are considering to be an unsustainable proposition.
[50:56] Speaker 4: At this level, they're not making the money back, so
[50:59] Speaker 4: they're saying there's going to be a big crash. There
[51:03] Speaker 4: are again those conversations about energy usage and I'm sick
[51:07] Speaker 4: and tired of freaking every platform on the planet asking
[51:11] Speaker 4: me if I want to AI this, and I go
[51:15] Speaker 4: to Google. I don't want the AI answer. That place
[51:18] Speaker 4: is a muck who knows what you're getting back. I
[51:23] Speaker 4: want actual sourcing for the questions that I am asking,
[51:27] Speaker 4: and I want sources that check those sources. I'm not
[51:31] Speaker 4: going to look at it in chat GPT and take
[51:33] Speaker 4: that as gospel. Pardon the expression. That's not how research
[51:37] Speaker 4: is done. I pulled up the streaming software today. Fine,
[51:43] Speaker 4: thank you for the streaming software. This allows us all
[51:46] Speaker 4: to connect. First thing it wants to do. Would you
[51:49] Speaker 4: like AI to approximate this or to change that? Would
[51:53] Speaker 4: you like to duplicate your voice? You're shitting me. You
[51:57] Speaker 4: know what if I produce anything in audio or video form.
[52:02] Speaker 4: In fact, I'm thinking about putting an action whatever book
[52:05] Speaker 4: comes out of me next, if ever, it's going to
[52:08] Speaker 4: start with none of this was written by AI. None
[52:11] Speaker 4: of it was edited by AI. The audiobook will not
[52:15] Speaker 4: be voiced by AI. Why the fuck what? I want
[52:18] Speaker 4: a machine to articulate what I want to say. I
[52:22] Speaker 4: know what the words are, I know what the intent is,
[52:25] Speaker 4: I know how I want to say it. Why would
[52:27] Speaker 4: I give that up so AI could sound like me? None, No, No,
[52:32] Speaker 4: I do know I'm not doing that. Didn't mean to
[52:35] Speaker 4: go off on that tangent. This is a conversation. You're
[52:41] Speaker 4: listening to a podcast. Do you really want a synthetic
[52:44] Speaker 4: seth Andrews saying whatever? So that you're like, well, I
[52:47] Speaker 4: wonder if that's what he really thinks. It sounds like
[52:50] Speaker 4: something he would think. You know, it sure does sound
[52:53] Speaker 4: like him. In fact, it sounds exactly like him. How
[52:55] Speaker 4: would we know if it wasn't him? Do I want
[52:58] Speaker 4: to live in that world? I wouldn't want that with you.
[53:00] Speaker 4: I want the flesh and blood you. I want the
[53:02] Speaker 4: human you, the three dimensional you. That's what I want. Sorry, David,
[53:06] Speaker 4: I just totally I wasn't trying to kick you in
[53:08] Speaker 4: the teeth because I would be curious to see how
[53:13] Speaker 4: close the Hitchens channel gets. But I can pretty much,
[53:18] Speaker 4: Garran damn to you, Christopher Hitchins would not want that. Huh,
[53:25] Speaker 4: Philip is dialing in? Philip? Are humans stillwater? Oklahoma? Is
[53:29] Speaker 4: that what I'm reading?
[53:30] Speaker 3: Yes, I am.
[53:32] Speaker 5: I've been here now for six months.
[53:35] Speaker 4: Still Water's really changed, Not that anybody really cares, but
[53:37] Speaker 4: it used to be you know, of course it's a
[53:39] Speaker 4: college town with Oklahoma State University, but boy, that place
[53:43] Speaker 4: is boomed. There's a ton of stuff in still Water
[53:46] Speaker 4: these days.
[53:47] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I've moved here to go to OSU.
[53:51] Speaker 3: But a lot of the people who have lived your
[53:53] Speaker 3: older lives have told me how much it has changes.
[53:55] Speaker 4: Like, really, where did you move here from.
[53:59] Speaker 3: Gallatinton See, which is north of Nashville.
[54:01] Speaker 4: Okay, sir, you're you're used to the Trump flags. You're
[54:06] Speaker 4: used to being in Maga Land, is there?
[54:08] Speaker 3: I get that. Yeah, okay, yeah, but they're an overdrop
[54:11] Speaker 3: over there because they have the Trump superstores. I passed
[54:15] Speaker 3: one on my ways from Delaware to Austin.
[54:19] Speaker 4: What's it Trump's superstore? What is that?
[54:23] Speaker 3: I don't know. I've only heard about him on the internet.
[54:26] Speaker 3: Is a place where you just buy a whole bunch
[54:28] Speaker 3: of Trump merchandise, like Trump flags and bumper stickers, and
[54:32] Speaker 3: I guess you buy a figurine or a barboard cutout
[54:36] Speaker 3: of Donald Trump. They go nuts about Donald Trump.
[54:40] Speaker 4: People in the chatter like the OSU is not the
[54:43] Speaker 4: ou that has been the subject of national controversy, And yes,
[54:47] Speaker 4: you're correct, that where he's talking about Oklahoma State, not OU,
[54:50] Speaker 4: and I will talk about the OU controversy after this call.
[54:54] Speaker 4: The quality of the actual education and the culture that
[54:57] Speaker 4: surrounds you in the state of Oklahoma. Maybe too different conversations.
[55:01] Speaker 4: I'm just glad you're not at Oh you, Philip. I
[55:03] Speaker 4: do appreciate your call. I wish you the best with college,
[55:07] Speaker 4: and I'm going to move on to the next callege.
[55:09] Speaker 3: Okay, okay, well, thank you very much for having me on.
[55:12] Speaker 4: Appreciate it. All right, since we're talking about it, let
[55:15] Speaker 4: me give you the details on this Oklahoma University controversy.
[55:19] Speaker 4: It's just such a great representation of where we are
[55:23] Speaker 4: today as a culture, especially in Oklahoma, which is currently
[55:27] Speaker 4: ranked fiftieth fiftieth out of fifty in education in the
[55:32] Speaker 4: United States. So the short version goes like this, There's
[55:36] Speaker 4: a psychology class that is taught by a transgender OU
[55:40] Speaker 4: graduate instructor named mel Kirth, and the students in this
[55:45] Speaker 4: psychology class were asked to write their own essay commenting
[55:49] Speaker 4: on a paper that came out in twenty thirteen. The
[55:53] Speaker 4: paper was not about transgenderism. It was about bullying in
[55:58] Speaker 4: middle schools. The research based article was titled relations among
[56:03] Speaker 4: gender typicality, peer relations and mental health during early adolescence. Well,
[56:10] Speaker 4: Samantha full Necki turned something in that was so unbelievably
[56:14] Speaker 4: jaw droppingly bad that she was given a zero. I
[56:20] Speaker 4: mean not that she got zero. F you have failed.
[56:24] Speaker 4: And before mel Kirth gave out the failing grade, mel
[56:28] Speaker 4: let another instructor or graduate instructor review it just to
[56:33] Speaker 4: check and make sure, and they were like, oh, hell yeah,
[56:35] Speaker 4: this is absolutely horrible. Zero. Now this is a psychology
[56:39] Speaker 4: student in Oklahoma. Let me read you just a little
[56:43] Speaker 4: bit of what Samantha Fullnecki turned into. The teacher quote.
[56:49] Speaker 4: This article was very thought provoking and caused me to
[56:52] Speaker 4: thoroughly evaluate the idea of gender and the role it
[56:56] Speaker 4: plays in our society. The article discussed peers using teasing
[57:01] Speaker 4: as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not
[57:04] Speaker 4: necessarily see this as a problem. God made male and
[57:09] Speaker 4: female and made us differently from each other on purpose
[57:13] Speaker 4: and for a purpose. God is very intentional with what
[57:17] Speaker 4: he makes, and I believe trying to change that would
[57:21] Speaker 4: only do more harm. Gender roles and tendency should not
[57:25] Speaker 4: be considered stereotypes. Women naturally want to do womanly things
[57:30] Speaker 4: because God created us with those womanly desires in our arts.
[57:35] Speaker 4: The same goes for men. God created men in the
[57:38] Speaker 4: image of his courage and strength, and he created women
[57:43] Speaker 4: in the image of his beauty. He intentionally created women
[57:47] Speaker 4: differently than men, and we should live our lives with
[57:51] Speaker 4: that in mind. And then Samantha goes on and on
[57:55] Speaker 4: about what she thinks and how she feels, and what
[57:57] Speaker 4: her interpretation of the Bible is and what yahweh. She
[58:00] Speaker 4: doesn't say yahweh, but the biblical God right. And then
[58:04] Speaker 4: she says this, I do not think men and women
[58:06] Speaker 4: are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. I strongly
[58:10] Speaker 4: disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance
[58:14] Speaker 4: of diverse gender expressions could improve student's confidence society. Pushing
[58:19] Speaker 4: the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should
[58:23] Speaker 4: be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely
[58:28] Speaker 4: harms American youth. The final line says this, I live
[58:33] Speaker 4: my life based on this truth and firmly believe that
[58:37] Speaker 4: there would be less gender issues and insecurities and children.
[58:41] Speaker 4: By the way, that should be fewer gender issues and
[58:44] Speaker 4: insecurities and children if they were raised knowing that they
[58:47] Speaker 4: do not belong to themselves, but they belong to the Lord.
[58:52] Speaker 4: You see what I'm talking about. And the paper itself
[58:54] Speaker 4: is luded with grammatical errors, sentence structure errors, reasoning errors,
[59:00] Speaker 4: and just freaking punctuation errors. F you have failed, Samantha
[59:06] Speaker 4: then apparently contacts the governor's office, which is of course
[59:11] Speaker 4: the first thing you do when you fail at college
[59:14] Speaker 4: paper you contact the government. And now she's being paraded
[59:18] Speaker 4: around to some sort of religious liberty martyr and the
[59:22] Speaker 4: instructor has filed litigation to be reinstated after being fired
[59:29] Speaker 4: by OU. That's right. Somebody fails a test, this state
[59:34] Speaker 4: punishes the instructor. This is where we are. Let's do
[59:41] Speaker 4: two to one zero.
[59:43] Speaker 3: Hi.
[59:44] Speaker 4: What's your name?
[59:45] Speaker 2: God, It's Clay calling from Texas.
[59:47] Speaker 4: I do is sef' Well what's on your mind?
[59:49] Speaker 3: Well?
[59:50] Speaker 2: First, I just want to say that I could hear
[59:52] Speaker 2: the emotion in your boys talking about Kitch and that's
[59:56] Speaker 2: really the best, most beautiful test that we could give
[59:59] Speaker 2: this one. It was our friend. And also that correlates
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: to what I'm calling about today. You know, earlier you
[1:00:06] Speaker 2: had asked, you know, how did we get here? I
[1:00:08] Speaker 2: personally just had to just attach myself from my best
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: friend of thirty years a couple of days ago. And
[1:00:16] Speaker 2: it ended with him like, you're a fucking bigot, dude,
[1:00:20] Speaker 2: you know, because he had spoke, we had spoke about
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: bad money before. Let me give backstory. First, I grew
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: up in the industrialized corner of Indiana backs up right
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: to the rural section of it, so there was a
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: lot of and I'm also fifty one, so there was
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: a lot a lot of casual bigotry that just existed there.
[1:00:44] Speaker 2: And of course I was up edgy, you know, rush
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: limbad ditt ahead when I was in my twenties. But
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: as soon as Trump came onto the scene, I was like, no,
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: I ain't. I ain't down with this, you know, like
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: all that stuff. I talked about freedom and liberty like
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: I meant you guys apparently didn't. And so I have
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: slowly become I'm you know, I'm a social democrat, like
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: I love Zara, you know. But this friend, he would
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: say things and I'd be like, you know, I'm not
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: okay with that, dude, you know, like, dude, I'm not
[1:01:16] Speaker 2: an okay person to say the N word around anymore.
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: And stuff like that, you know, but I have such
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: a close connection to this guy that I hung on
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: and when he would say things like that, I'd be like, yeah, no,
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: you know, because he was not like this back then.
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: That's the point. And going to get to it was
[1:01:35] Speaker 2: always I would back down and I would try to
[1:01:38] Speaker 2: accommodate his feelings or accommodate Well, no you're not you know, no,
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: it's not okay to knock down the White House. And
[1:01:46] Speaker 2: then so this because we had he's it was a
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: text where he's like, you know, I just this is bullshit.
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: I got that immigrant play in the super Bowl halftime.
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: You know, that's just it. It's disrespectful to Americans, you know. Yeah.
[1:02:05] Speaker 2: And I was like, he's a fucking American.
[1:02:08] Speaker 5: You know what.
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: Why he also has money problems? I was like, you
[1:02:11] Speaker 2: know what, why you go join ICE will give you
[1:02:13] Speaker 2: a fifty thousand dollars signing bonus and you can go
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: terrorize for other people? Then fuck you? And uh the
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: reason I responded that way is because I'm just I'm done.
[1:02:26] Speaker 2: You know. I can't have a conversation with you about
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: this because you always say the most bigoted shit, because
[1:02:33] Speaker 2: Fox News turns your dad into an asshole. He turns
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: you into an even bigger asshole. That's how we got here.
[1:02:41] Speaker 4: I hear your frustration. So yeah, all right, Well, anything
[1:02:48] Speaker 4: else you want to offer up you sort of venting frustration,
[1:02:51] Speaker 4: anything else that's on your mind before I move on.
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: Well, as much as it's venting frustration, it's just part
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: of the conversation. I appreciate you letting me monologue there too.
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: I'm not as angry as I sound. I just kind.
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: But it's a similar experience that you've had. I'm sure
[1:03:09] Speaker 2: you know I've heard you talk about your upbringing and
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: your deconstruction. Yeah, so it's just I mean, that's where
[1:03:15] Speaker 2: the war on expertise came from. You know, they can't
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: see the forest through the trees.
[1:03:21] Speaker 8: You know.
[1:03:21] Speaker 2: It's I just I don't get it. But at the
[1:03:23] Speaker 2: same time, I'm like a lot of us.
[1:03:25] Speaker 5: It's like we're done.
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: We're just done.
[1:03:28] Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of people are there. I read John
[1:03:30] Speaker 4: Pamelobits online is like they've had ten years, they have
[1:03:34] Speaker 4: figured it out. They're not good people. We're out And
[1:03:36] Speaker 4: that's a pretty hard line. But I think he echoes
[1:03:39] Speaker 4: your frustrations. So you're welcome to Colin can ch had
[1:03:43] Speaker 4: any time, my friend. I hope the new year is
[1:03:45] Speaker 4: good to you.
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: Okay, I hope it's good to you too. And my
[1:03:49] Speaker 2: heart goes out to you on your continued motion for
[1:03:52] Speaker 2: your friend Chris. Oh well, thank you, Seth. Have a
[1:03:55] Speaker 2: great day.
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:03:56] Speaker 4: Thanks, well. I first of all, he would have hated
[1:03:59] Speaker 4: to be called Chris. He would always correct people and
[1:04:02] Speaker 4: say it's Christopher. Secondly, I never met him. We weren't friends.
[1:04:05] Speaker 4: He didn't know me from Adam. That is a regret
[1:04:08] Speaker 4: I will carry with me to my grave because it
[1:04:10] Speaker 4: was one of his debate videos that altered the trajectory
[1:04:14] Speaker 4: of my life. I'm telling you it was a seismic moment.
[1:04:20] Speaker 4: One click of one YouTube videos propelled me into a
[1:04:25] Speaker 4: whole new direction. I mean, I cannot overstate it, and
[1:04:29] Speaker 4: I always wanted to be able to. I've had dreams.
[1:04:32] Speaker 4: I had a dream once that we were at some
[1:04:35] Speaker 4: event and I scored like a dinner. Like after the
[1:04:42] Speaker 4: conference was over, Hitch and I were sitting at a
[1:04:45] Speaker 4: table and he was treating me like a peer, like, yeah,
[1:04:49] Speaker 4: this Oxford graduate, genius mind and all that. I mean,
[1:04:53] Speaker 4: I'm not saying it was perfect, but I mean the
[1:04:54] Speaker 4: guy was next level and we're just sitting here and
[1:04:57] Speaker 4: I was able to say all the things I've always
[1:04:59] Speaker 4: wanted to say. It was on this date back in
[1:05:02] Speaker 4: two thousand and eight, and I knew who you were,
[1:05:04] Speaker 4: but I didn't know much about you. And I clicked
[1:05:06] Speaker 4: on this video and that debate with the Rabbi Shmooley
[1:05:09] Speaker 4: Botiek in New York at the ninety second Street Why
[1:05:12] Speaker 4: made me think about things and ways I'd never had before.
[1:05:16] Speaker 4: And you know, I don't know if i'd be doing
[1:05:18] Speaker 4: the work I'm doing the way I'm doing it. I
[1:05:20] Speaker 4: don't know if i'd be who I am today if
[1:05:22] Speaker 4: I hadn't heard your voice, and you know, if you
[1:05:24] Speaker 4: hadn't kind of rattled my cage. I just wanted to
[1:05:27] Speaker 4: thank you. And he was like, oh, my goodness, thank
[1:05:30] Speaker 4: you so much. And then he sort of like dialed
[1:05:32] Speaker 4: in and focused in on me, and he was eye
[1:05:35] Speaker 4: to eye and he was like, well, tell me what
[1:05:37] Speaker 4: you were like growing up, and he was a sponge.
[1:05:41] Speaker 4: Tell me about your upbringing. What did you really believe? Wow,
[1:05:44] Speaker 4: when did your doubts start? Oh, that's amazing. Tell me
[1:05:47] Speaker 4: more about the community that you're a part of. And
[1:05:49] Speaker 4: I was just sitting here, just thinking how did I
[1:05:51] Speaker 4: get here? How did I end up in this chair?
[1:05:54] Speaker 4: I finally get the chance to tell Hitch all the
[1:05:57] Speaker 4: stuff I wanted to tell him, and I woke up, shit,
[1:06:00] Speaker 4: oh my god, to the fact that it wasn't real. Oh.
[1:06:05] Speaker 4: It was just the biggest, biggest buzz kill. It was
[1:06:08] Speaker 4: like falling down a clip. No. But I was able
[1:06:12] Speaker 4: to say it. I was able to say the words.
[1:06:16] Speaker 4: Some people don't like the word fan because it is
[1:06:18] Speaker 4: the root of or it's derived from fanatic and so.
[1:06:23] Speaker 4: And someone says I'm a fan. Some people get weird
[1:06:25] Speaker 4: about that. But I don't see it as worship. When
[1:06:29] Speaker 4: someone says I'm a fan. Necessarily, I don't think you're
[1:06:32] Speaker 4: better than me. I don't think that you have more
[1:06:35] Speaker 4: value than me. Are you smarter? Are you not smarter?
[1:06:40] Speaker 4: He was smarter. But you know, if I say I'm
[1:06:42] Speaker 4: a fan, and there have been such kind people who
[1:06:46] Speaker 4: will be part of this community, and they listen to
[1:06:48] Speaker 4: the shows and that watch the speeches, and they read
[1:06:50] Speaker 4: the books, and they come out at an event and
[1:06:51] Speaker 4: they're like, we're big fans. And you know, I used
[1:06:53] Speaker 4: to blanch a little bit at that, but what I'm
[1:06:56] Speaker 4: hearing instead is not I'm fanatical about your work. It
[1:07:01] Speaker 4: spoke to me at a time when I needed it
[1:07:04] Speaker 4: or wanted it. It was something that we enjoyed, that
[1:07:08] Speaker 4: I enjoy it made my life better. I've benefited in
[1:07:11] Speaker 4: a certain way and gravitated here, and I'm expressing gratitude
[1:07:17] Speaker 4: for that. You know, it's just an expression of goodwill.
[1:07:20] Speaker 4: And that's tremendously flattering and humbling. So instead of saying, well,
[1:07:24] Speaker 4: I don't need a fan. I'm not a big star.
[1:07:26] Speaker 4: But that's not the point that they're trying to make.
[1:07:28] Speaker 4: What they're trying to say is it benefits me. It
[1:07:31] Speaker 4: means something. I enjoy it, and thank you. Well that's
[1:07:35] Speaker 4: an amazing sentiment. And so their correct response is simply
[1:07:39] Speaker 4: thank you. And so if I'd had the chance to
[1:07:42] Speaker 4: meet Christopher Hitchins, I would say I'm a fan. I'm
[1:07:46] Speaker 4: a borderline fanatical some of his stuff. I mean, when
[1:07:51] Speaker 4: I read hitch twenty two, I was like, Wow, you know,
[1:07:54] Speaker 4: God is not great. You know it's a good book,
[1:07:57] Speaker 4: but you're like, this is a freaking smart guy. There
[1:08:01] Speaker 4: is on YouTube a seven hour compilation of just Hitch
[1:08:10] Speaker 4: and I appreciate the fact that even in the debates
[1:08:14] Speaker 4: like the one he did at Preston Wood Megachurch before
[1:08:18] Speaker 4: he died, and I think they included the part of
[1:08:20] Speaker 4: the Google it was a speech at Google authors at Google.
[1:08:27] Speaker 4: There was another series of debates that he did with
[1:08:30] Speaker 4: all of these Christian apologists. Well, I've listened to those
[1:08:34] Speaker 4: and I've watched those, and the apologists are bringing the
[1:08:37] Speaker 4: same old song and dance to the table. And I
[1:08:40] Speaker 4: have a hard time now getting through the apologist section
[1:08:44] Speaker 4: of a debate video because I want to stick my
[1:08:48] Speaker 4: head through a concrete wall. But what this particular video is.
[1:08:54] Speaker 4: I wish I had a link handy, I'd put it
[1:08:55] Speaker 4: in the chat, but you can just probably YouTube search it.
[1:08:59] Speaker 4: Christopher Hitchen seven hour. It's a compilation where they just
[1:09:02] Speaker 4: took his sections of the debate and then his sections
[1:09:06] Speaker 4: of his speeches. Some people would call that cheating. It
[1:09:09] Speaker 4: would be cheating if religious apologies brought something new to
[1:09:12] Speaker 4: the table that we haven't heard. But trust me, there
[1:09:15] Speaker 4: is nothing new under the sun. These people have been
[1:09:18] Speaker 4: singing that they've been parroting the same bullshit forever, And
[1:09:23] Speaker 4: I'm more interested in Hitch's contribution to that conversation, which
[1:09:28] Speaker 4: was more intelligent, more well researched, better defended, more logical. Right,
[1:09:33] Speaker 4: So seven hour and I'll just play in the background.
[1:09:37] Speaker 4: If I'm building Halloween decorations, if I'm putting together a
[1:09:41] Speaker 4: Halloween roller ghoster out of PVC pipe, in the background,
[1:09:46] Speaker 4: you might hear seven hours a hitch just doing his thing.
[1:09:50] Speaker 4: I feel like in some way it kind of makes
[1:09:52] Speaker 4: me smarter. Does that make any sense?
[1:09:55] Speaker 3: Like?
[1:09:55] Speaker 4: I didn't know that I downloaded the audiobook called Essays
[1:10:02] Speaker 4: from Christopher Hitchins. Is that what it's called. It's a
[1:10:04] Speaker 4: series of essays. Let me double check this hang On
[1:10:08] Speaker 4: arguably by Christopher Hitchins, which is a series of essays
[1:10:12] Speaker 4: that he published in publications like Slate and Vanity Fair, etc.
[1:10:16] Speaker 4: New York Times. And he's commenting on everything. He's talking
[1:10:21] Speaker 4: about Hitler, he's talking about the situation in various parts,
[1:10:26] Speaker 4: very specific parts of the Middle East, Islam and women.
[1:10:30] Speaker 4: He's talking about American democracy and the Clinton's and he
[1:10:35] Speaker 4: was not a fan of the Clintons, neither of I.
[1:10:36] Speaker 4: But he went through all of the and it's like
[1:10:40] Speaker 4: thirteen hours of Christopher Hitchin's writings read narrated by Simon
[1:10:48] Speaker 4: Prebble that came out I believe after his hitches death.
[1:10:51] Speaker 4: Obviously he wasn't able to voice it himself, but Simon
[1:10:53] Speaker 4: Prebble does a tremendous job narrating hitches words. I'm listening
[1:10:58] Speaker 4: to that and I feel like I'm my knowledge base
[1:11:02] Speaker 4: has increased. I know more now than I knew before
[1:11:06] Speaker 4: I hit play a half an hour ago. Then I
[1:11:08] Speaker 4: feel dumber because I'm reminded of how much I do
[1:11:11] Speaker 4: not know. I did not mean for this to go
[1:11:13] Speaker 4: off the rails into a hitch fest, but that's the
[1:11:17] Speaker 4: nature of a popirie type of show where you never
[1:11:22] Speaker 4: know what you were going to get. I have got
[1:11:25] Speaker 4: to go, Love you guys, be safe, Happy New Year,
[1:11:31] Speaker 4: and we shall do it again soon.
[1:11:33] Speaker 2: Okay.
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