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