SIO86: Emotion is Critical to Reasoning

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 86 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Okay, I need to talk to you for a minute about today's episode and the next episode and my show in general. Very quickly. Has become a bit obvious lately this whole myth information debacle did take over the podcast for a while and it that's probably because it took over my life for a while still to some degree has And I've seen some messages to the effect of, hey, stop it with the Sargon stuff, that's a little inside baseball, you know, enough of this. And actually, I do agree, but the one thing and the piece of information maybe you don't have is that I'm receiving constant trolling and harassment online now.

0:01:18 Thomas: So, in some sense, I get it. You want to hear the show that you've always heard. I do too. I want to get back to doing the show you've You've always heard, and I'm going to, I absolutely am going to. So I hope you won't be turned off by thinking from now on forever. My show is going to be this discussion of myth con and social justice. That's not how it's going to Be. There are going to be things I'm going to talk about, but I want to get back to talking about science. I want to get back to talking about philosophy. I want to talk about other things. I want to talk to more interesting people.

0:01:50 Thomas: Thinking about as regards that inside baseball comment, and and absolutely no offense to the commenter, I'm not going to reveal who it is, I I get where you're coming from, and I don't mean this as like a a major slap back onto you, but one problem that so many people online have had, mainly women, people of color, but but everybody to some extent, and one thing that became clear. And one thing that is a reason that I believe, one of the reasons I got a lot of support coming out of this myth information thing was. There are people who have been trying to exist online in some capacity, be it Twitter, be it YouTube, be whatever it is, and get constant harassment from these same people, who are self-described shitlords, by the way.

0:02:35 Thomas: I don't call them shitlords as even a dismissive insult. They wear that badge proudly. I get tweeted from them, and they have shitlord in their description, so that's not even really name calling, it's just accurate. And And as I've said, I mean, I've avoided this YouTube world and avoided too serious involvement in Twitter oftentimes. Sometimes I get into it, but I had never been actively engaged with like a throng of trolls on Twitter before. And so I kind of ignored it. But what happened was when myth information happened, all this came to the fore. Like, all this was, oh, these are these people, you know, this is the comment section of YouTube in conference form. And a lot of women and other people who had been getting this harassment and had been ignored.

0:03:23 Thomas: Emailed me and messaged me and were like, thank you for not ignoring it anymore. And so that's why I want to come back to this inside baseball comment. It's a little tough, when this has dominated my life now, my online life, my social media has been somewhat useless now, I mean, I'm I'm reclaiming it, but it's it's ridiculous, and I don't think I'm getting a tenth of what some of these prominent women have gotten. Rebecca Watson, Zoe Quinn, you know, I don't think I've gotten but a tiny fraction of that hatred and anger. But this is why this has never been about ideas. Take a look at some of the comments I'm getting. Actually, I haven't bothered with them because it's on my old channel. So this is on my Atheistically Speaking YouTube channel, which is not connected to my current show. It's not advertised in any way.

0:04:10 Thomas: And these people are so dedicated to what I think is virtue signaling, by the way. They like to talk shit on virtue signaling, and then they proceed to do that very same thing. They're just signaling different virtues. Look at these comments on just the video of Eli driving, which is hilarious, by the way, it's one of the funniest things ever, they're just totally unrelated to anything, nothing. Check this out. "You're a fucking idiot, dude." "You got fucked up." "Virtue signaling dickhead." Those were three different comments. Let's see. "Thomas looks like the typical pale, weak, inbred white boy." And "you're the worst person imaginable, Thomas." And again, all of those are coming from a channel that doesn't exist anymore, on a video that is years old, that has nothing to do with anything.

0:04:57 Thomas: That's the level of dedication these psychopaths have toward making someone feel bad. Their goal is to make someone feel that. It's not as though that's a side effect of an argument, or that's part of their intellectual pursuit, and maybe they toss out an insult or a joke or a burn here and there, which is all something that is going to happen, I understand that.

Their goal is to seek me out on every possible thing they can, get them on every unrelated thing, with a goal of saying shitty things to make a person feel bad. That is sociopathic behavior, in my opinion, that is there is, there's no justification for that. And meanwhile, all we do is put the burden on the victims to not be affected by it, or to ignore it, or to log off, or whatever.

And it's one thing when you live in a world where we're doing everything we can to socially disincentivize that behavior, when the, clearly, you know, people intervene if they witness it, if we're living in a society where we're doing what we can to get rid of it, we're policing it, we're making sure people don't harass, we're making sure social media companies are making sure people don't harass, and then there's still some level of it, and you want to say, okay, in a certain sense, in the same way that we need to lock our cars every day because, you know, what there's criminals out there, I guess there's certain things you need to do to try to protect yourself from this.

It's It's one thing if that's where we are, but that's not where we are. These people are being given platforms and, and their behavior is being extolled as virtuous by a large chunk of our population, and it's horrific. So, back to that critique, which I do accept.

0:06:40 Thomas: There's two senses in which I take it. In one sense, to be receiving the volume of crap that I am, to want to talk about it and try to address and fix the problem, and then having someone say, come on, man, too inside baseball and this stuff, in In one sense I'm a little offended by that, and it and it, honestly, it, it's a, it feels insensitive to me to have someone say that. But in another sense, you're actually right, I can't sit here and do a whole podcast on my hurt feelings and my trolling and every day, every week day and day, you know, that's not going to work, it's not gonna be interesting, and I do want to cover other stuff, so, I you know, I'm of two minds there, I get it, but also I just want to emphasize how big of a problem this is, something that I tried to ignore because I didn't want to live in that world.

0:07:30 Thomas: Not because I thought it wasn't a problem, but because I just didn't want to operate in that disgusting world because I hate it. And you know what? It does affect me. I'll admit it right now. It does. In fact, that's the number one. Oh, don't let the trolls know you got to me. Well, fuck that. You know, it does bother me. It bothers me. I don't like it. No one likes it. NO ONE LIKES IT. Why are we making a virtue out of laughing off disgusting psychotic behavior? Why is that our virtue? Now, I live with it. I've coped with it mainly because they're all stupid. Every everybody doing it is a stupid person. A high percentage of Sargon's followers are stupid people. Not all of them. There are some that somehow ignore how awful he is and sometimes and latch on to certain political points he makes, even though I disagree with them at least I can say they're operating on some intellectual level, but most of them aren't.

0:08:23 Thomas: Most of them are there for ownage, they're there to post comments on years old videos having nothing to do with anything in the name of what intellectual pursuit, what great intellectual ideals. But no, most of them are stupid, and I will, I will live. And I will cope with it. That's, I'm just speaking for myself, it sucks, but I will live. What I'm doing is, anyone on Twitter who says something stupid that's just an ownage thing, that's not an argument, is getting muted. And all they are doing to me right now is, yes, they are bothering me, but they are also making me have to just mute a bunch of people. I'm just muting and then you're in silence forever and you're never going to get to me. So that's how that'll work. It's still awful psychotic behavior and it shouldn't be on me to have to deal with it. Shouldn't be any abuse victim of any kind to have to deal with it, we shouldn't be putting the onus on victims in this case, but I'll do it.

0:09:16 Thomas: But I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't hurt me, just like I'm going to not pretend that I have to not get emotional. I'm not gonna pretend being unemotional is some great virtue. It's not. Sorry, it's not, and you know what? That's a perfect transition to today's episode. So, I have say, here's the compromise I'm have to make with you guys.

There is one more episode that needs to be done on MythCon, and that is the interview that Eli and I did with with Brian and Dimitri, I believe it was, and not Sean, because Sean is a fucking coward. We were going to have a conversation with Sean and Brian, two main organizers of MythCon. I know there's a lot of people involved, but they were the main ones. They were the ones doing the interview with Callie.

They were ones who just did an interview with Steven Knight, the Godless Spellchecker. So they're all good to do certain interviews, but Sean was not able to do this one, despite the fact that we scheduled it weeks in advance, and he was part of the scheduling, and he said on Twitter that he offered us a time, that kind of thing.

0:10:12 Thomas: He's a coward, he didn't show up, but we did an interview, it was awful, it was a mess. I don't even want to post it, but I have to post because everybody is asking me about it, and I think, I mean, Eli was great as usual, I think it's worth it just to hear Eli, but it's gonna be Monday's episode and it's going to be crap. It's also way too long, so it went for, despite the fact that I had a hard out to get to, I kept pleading to try to end it, but there was just too much they and Eli needed to say, so, it went for two, nearly two and a half hours. I will try to put up the unedited on Patreon as soon as I can, and then I can't decide if I'm going to edit it because I don't, it is important to me to not misrepresent anybody, I don't want to be accused of making that them look bad or something.

0:11:03 Thomas: I mainly just don't want it to be so long. Like, that's the only thing I care about is it not being so long, so I'm gonna have to see, and maybe patrons can give me some feedback on, like, if there's a good neutral way to do that. Otherwise, we'll just have to have a two and a half hour terrible episode. So all this is to say that I'm going to do some voicemails today, that I haven't done voicemail in a very long time, and I heard from a lot of people, a few people right after MythCon, a few people in the weeks after, and a few people more recently. I want to get those messages heard because I think they're valuable. So, so that will be covered. Monday will be the episode with the MythCon organizers. Two of them, not Sean, but two of them. And then I want to move on.

0:11:48 Thomas: So that's kind of my compromise with you guys. I want to get on to bigger and better topics. And I want to start that today because I want to talk about some real science, some actual science. And this was inspired by a comic, an XKCD comic that I saw because Aaron Rabi posted, of course of Embrace the Void podcast, a really good podcast, really brilliant guy, he posted this comic that, I thought, absolutely nailed it and therefore XKCd deserves all the credit.

It's very simple, I can just read it to you. It says, We wouldn't have all these problems if people just learned to be more logical and science-driven instead of relying on feelings. Someone else says, Oh, what study are you basing that on? And then he replies, It just seems obvious. I mean, look at the crap these idiots believe.

It's so brilliant, it's succinct, and I think it's right on, and it got me thinking, and of course I've heard of some of this science before, but what I did was I enlisted the help of my wife, Lydia, who, in addition to being brilliant, supportive, And the best, and an incredible mom, also has a master's in experimental psychology, so she's a little better at doing this research than I am, to say the least.

And And so I asked her to research this idea of emotions and how they interact with logic, because there is a straw man out there, it's sort of the Spock straw man, a straw Spock or a Spock man, I don't know, one or the other, and it is that in order to reason well, we need to be devoid of emotion, and it's an attractive idea, and I think it dates back to, you know, I, I don't know, Plato, Stoicism, that kind of thing.

And it feels right. It's something that actually, oddly enough, it intuitively feels like it should be true. But actually, you realize when you think about it, there's no study that tells you this.

0:13:36 Thomas: There's no, it's not actually based on any science. And so I wanted to take a look at that. And I'm going to give you sort of the results of what we found. It turns out there's a very interesting case study that tells us a ton. A man suffered a brain injury, which it turns out inhibited his emotions. So it's essentially exactly the question we're looking at. And what happened was his life was pretty much ruined because of it. He wasn't able to make decisions properly at all. UCLA neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found this case study, he calls the patient Elliot, I guess not his real name, but there's a good write up of this in nymag.com, I'll link the article, here I can read a little bit of it.

0:14:22 Thomas: When he met Damasio, Elliot was still a pleasant, charming, and well aware of the day's news and the area of business that he worked in. He also still had a fantastic memory for his life story. But at the same time, his life had fallen apart. Any projects he did on the job were either left incomplete or had to be corrected, eventually leading to the loss of his job. He got involved in a money-making scheme with a shady character that ended up in bankruptcy. He got divorced, then married again to someone his family strongly disapproved of, and divorced again. By this time, his referring doctors sent him to Damasio. He was living with a sibling and as a final blow was denied disability assistance. The docs wanted to know if Elliot had a real disease, so that's why they sent him to Damasio. Damasio recounts, since for all the world to see, Elliot was an intelligent, skilled, and able-bodied man who ought to come to his senses and return to work.

0:15:15 Thomas: Several professionals had declared that his mental faculties were intact, meaning that at the very best, Elliot was lazy, and at worst, a malingerer. So, long story short, after, so this guy had a brain tumor, he had it removed, part of his brain was damaged as a result, he no longer was able to feel emotions really, and despite the fact that he, he passed with flying colors every test, like his IQ was still high, his memory was high, everything people could measure in in normal tests was fine, they figured it out with a test involving images that are normally gruesome, bloody, that kind of thing, he, know he didn't have a reaction to those, that's how he determined, determined the part of his brain was damaged. And so what they think happened, what Damasio says, is that emotions are key to decision-making.

0:16:03 Thomas: So this guy, Elliot, this patient, he could line up all kinds of options logically. He could come up with all the options. He gives an example of organizing his folders at work or something. He could come up with all the options logically, date and time, sort by date and time, sort by name, sort by whatever topic or something, but he just could not decide between them because emotions are a key way of, like, labeling our decisions, and they're actually critical to decision making. Now I want to step back here and say that it is absolutely true that one can become too emotional in ways that ruin your decision making as well. So you can be too angry at someone. Juries can be shown pictures of victims that are so bad and so gruesome that it tips the jury in favor of conviction when really the evidence wasn't very good.

0:16:56 Thomas: So don't get me wrong. It is certainly true that our emotions can lead us astray. Absolutely. And we have to be careful with that. But here the critical flaw is, though, that some people take that to mean that we need to get rid of emotions to make decisions. So And as that case study shows, and as other science backs up, that actually isn't true. We just need to find the right balance of emotion. So I suppose to just use the jury example, yes you don't want too overly graphic photos and video and audio and all that, that might be so emotionally charged as to muddy the waters in that direction, but you also wouldn't want it the other way, you wouldn't it to be no information about the victim whatsoever, No descriptions of what happened because they would be too gruesome. You do need the details to some degree, you just don't want them to be too emotionally leading.

0:17:46 Thomas: Charged. There's another really interesting study that Lydia came across from Duke University. It's actually very recent. It's a little hard to explain and, again, I'm not an experimental psychologist so I'll do my best. It involves the fact that people have thought that poor decision making is usually due to emotion, So, the example they give is a typical experiment where you change the framing of a question like a gambling question. So, here's the situation.

If we give you $20 in house money, would you rather keep half of the $20 for certain or flip a coin heads you keep 20, tailies you lose 20? In that scenario, most people choose option one, which is keep the 20. And then you give them, you give, not the same people, but you know how experiments work, you give lots, a large group of people these different choices. And then you check the results. So another framing is you lose half of the 20 for sure, or you flip a coin, heads you keep 20, tails you lose all 20. In this scenario, most everybody chooses the second option. So they choose the gambling. And if you were able to listen to that very closely, you would recognize it's actually the same. So it's the exact same scenario.

All that changed was the wording, which was keep half of 20 for the first example, but it was lose half 20 for second example. So I think this is all, that's old news. That kind of question, that kind of science, I think is pretty old news What this study looked at was most people have taken for granted almost that the problem there, like the thing people were doing wrong is they were having an emotional reaction to losing money So the theory was, well, when we gave them the option to keep half the money that felt good, so they did it. When we gave him the option of losing half the amount that felt bad, it was sort of an emotional choice. So they resisted that. And that's when they took the gamble option.

But through a really ingenious and complicated experiment, what they were able to ask these questions and compare an fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging thing, you know fMRI, it's really cool, you can see the picture of the brain while it's thinking and all that, they were able to compare and they found that what was happening while this choice was being made was not actually an emotional reaction, it was similar to a brain being at rest, so their theory is that it's a mental shortcut, so what is actually happening in some of these irrational decisions is it's not an emotional feeling.

0:20:14 Thomas: It's not like, oh, I don't want to lose a feeling kind of thing. It is a mental shortcut that we have set up that makes that bad decision for us. The shortcut being, don't lose money, you know, it's a way of our brain kind of saving power, essentially, so it's not, it's, it's seeing the, the key word, taking a mental shortcut, and that's what's actually going on, it is really, it seems to be a pretty landmark study actually. The point of all this is that emotion is important, and the right balance of emotion is important. You know, I actually read all, it's probably been a year or more, but I read all of Paul Bloom's book Against Empathy, and a lot of people wanted me to. It's a book that actually the shitlord community tends to recommend because they don't like empathy.

0:20:58 Thomas: Actually didn't even end up talking about it, I don't think, unless I'm remembering incorrectly. I'm pretty sure I didn't, I meant to do it as an episode, but after reading it, it seemed to be honestly not even interesting enough to do a full episode on, because I think all it is is a catchy title and then essentially word games. I mean, there are tons of good examples in the book, and it's a worthwhile book to read, because he does point out that empathy certainly fails us. It It certainly fails. And no question, we have empathetic reactions that are not gauged properly. They're directed at the wrong things, the wrong groups, the wrong nation, you know, in groups, out groups, whatever it is. There's plenty of problems with empathy. But in the book, his entire solution is for compassion, which, when you get down to it, is just empathy plus thinking a little bit, you know, it's like it's just properly gauged empathy.

0:21:54 Thomas: The answer isn't no empathy and that is the critical error these trolls and these shit lords are making and they really believe this. They believe that anyone who shows empathy is weak, they're illogical, anyone who show emotion is going to be making bad decisions and they're wrong. The answer isn't no emotions, but just proper emotions, a proper balance of emotions, a properly directed empathy. Because imagine if Paul Bloom had written the book for compassion. Would anyone have bought it? I mean, for compassion, yeah, we should all have compassion. These trolls would not be referencing it. But because he chose a very powerful, a very charged title like Against Empathy, he sold a lot of books. And again, I'm not saying it's a horrible book. Look, I do think that he pretty much walks it back and he, it's word games essentially.

0:22:40 Thomas: It's knowledge that empathy doesn't always serve us properly, which is of course true. Our empathy can be misdirected all the time, as I said. But it's that combined with, okay, here's the answer, which is compassion, because we know that a complete lack of empathy is awful. That causes terrible problems. We know that a lack of emotion causes terrible problems that ruined a guy's life when he no longer was able to feel emotion. That isn't the answer and that's what I want to say. If I were to summarize a good portion, not all of, of course, but a good portion of the shitlord mentality, it would go something like this. It would go that people who are suffering in this country, in my opinion, people who are suffering often have emotional reactions to it because they're suffering. And white people, and this is my opinion again, white men in general tend to have it, tend to, not everybody, tends to have a better time, an easier time in this country.

0:23:34 Thomas: Tends to. So there's privilege there. There's white privilege there that white men are in particular blind to. And when someone is suffering, they have an emotional reaction because they're suffering. And it's very easy for someone who's not suffering. And look, let's take race out of it. Let's just say someone who is in a good position in society and someone who was not. Someone who was marginalized. Someone whose family was was destroyed by a drug arrest that was nonsense because drug laws are terrible.

And you know what? We can switch the races and genders all you want. It doesn't matter. We'll just talk in general, and then we'll find that the numbers tend to go a certain way. But that's okay. Let's talk in general. Someone who is in a good position like that is, is naturally going to look at someone who's suffering and having an emotional reaction and think, well, you clearly, you're not rational, whatever you're doing is not rational, you're being too emotional, I'm the Emotional one because I'm just neutral and I'm, I'm able to just keep calm and rationalize my way through all this. And, and in my opinion, that's a small microcosm, that doesn't cover everything, but that's a small, small micro-cosm of what's going on.

And in terms of what I dealt with, with these arguments I've been having lately in the debate I had, what I find most interesting, and also a little funny in a weird way about it, is that the minute the conversation changes, this switches on a dime. So when I'm talking about feminism, Black Lives Matter, I'm being too emotional, I am virtue signaling, etc., etc. Well, I would argue that when people applauded for Sargon's tweet of sexual harassment, but when I merely read it, they applauded. That was virtue signaling. They're blind to their own virtue signaling, and the minute it changed over to white men, the topic of white men.

0:25:16 Thomas: They had all the MRA, typical MRA questions. What about college? Not enough white men in college. What about this? What about that? Then all of a sudden, the conversation has now changed, so then we're having a different argument. So when it serves them, it's not about empathy, that cool logic. It's not About Identity Politics, none of that. But then when we start to talk about white men, oh, wait, identity does matter. Look at how white men are doing. And it has to be one or the other. And for me, personally, I am on the side of identity being a key ingredient to how we interact in the world and how society treats us. Our identity, unfortunately, I wish it were true. I wish It were not true. True. I wish that everybody of any identity, of any race, creed, you name it, whatever demographic condition, whatever belief system, I wish they were all treated exactly equally by society.

0:26:08 Thomas: But you know what? They're not. And my position is consistent. My position is that identity does matter. And then I want to look at the numbers. Then I want to know, okay, which identities are being marginalized in our society. For example, which identities are being killed at vastly disproportionate rates by police? Which identities are imprisoned in vastly disproportionate rates by the police? And by the way, when you come at me with an MRA argument of, well, in this particular demographic, uh, group or job or whatever, white men have it bad, I can say, oh, you know what? Let's look into that. Let's find a way to solve that. Because yeah, maybe there are some places. I am open to that possibility. Maybe there are places where there's discrimination against white men.

0:26:55 Thomas: From the numbers that I've seen, from all the data I've looked at, that's not the problem. That is not what's out. You may be able to find an edge case and sure, we can look for a solution for that. But you've got a bunch of blatant, disgusting, horrible examples staring you right in the face that you are trying to ignore.

0:27:15 Clip: It's time to check the voicemail, and of course if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 916-750-4746. Let's check out this week's messages. Music

0:27:34 Voicemail: Hi Thomas, this is Jordan. I just watched yours and Sargon of Akkad, whatever the fuck his name is. I watched your little debate or whatever you want to call it and you did the best you could. The audience was ridiculous. I can't believe this happened. I was so wrong.

0:28:04 Voicemail: I of far gone and I didn't know what the fuck he was saying, and everybody said it was controversial and everything, and I was like, you know, you're overreacting. And I listened to this shit and everyone was right, so I'm just so pissed, just so piss off at what happened. And I apologize to everybody who I thought was overreacting because you were all right, all of you were right. So, uh, you did the best you could, shitty situation. Hopefully this never fucking happens again. So, uh, good job up there, Thomas. Like I said, you are the very best of us. Thank you for coming.

0:28:46 Thomas: That message was just after the event, so it sounds like Jordan was there based on the description, as well, because the video wasn't available for at least like a week afterward. I just want to play it because I think it's an interesting reaction. Yeah, we, we didn't listen, a lot of us didn't listen. I had my reasons for going, as I've laid out several times. It wasn't because I thought it was going to be some great debate where, you know, reason would win the day. It was because I didn't want him to be unchallenged on stage. But I've already belabored that point, but I think a A lot of people with very informed, valid opinions on what a shit show this would be were right and were ignored by a lot of the community.

0:29:33 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, I'm going to try to keep this one brief, but I just wanted to leave you a message after the whole Mythicist Milwaukee just happened, so I'm leaving this message right afterward. I wasn't there, but, um, I saw some, I heard about some of the things that went down online, and, um, I saw that you, certainly the crowd was pretty explicitly hostile, and I saw you were getting some hostility online as well. So I just wanted to say, and it was really important for me, I just wanted you to know that while you're probably right now getting inundated with the sarcoons, I guess, I wanted you to know that I feel like women are watching this.

0:30:22 Voicemail: I certainly know that I'm not alone in this. I see you. I feel like we see you, we see that you care, care you care, that you were part of a movement that has become maybe at worst hostile, increasingly hostile, um, at best unwelcoming, um, to women, um, you know, certainly there are some women that totally agree with their point of view, um, that's true, and some of them were, were at that event, but I'm talking about women who still, you know, still want to talk about or care about misogyny in our, our culture at all. I mean, even tepidly want to bring up any concerns whatsoever. I think I'm a pretty moderate and reasonable person.

0:31:08 Voicemail: I don't think I am some extreme, angry, unreasonable person, but do I feel like society still has room to improve? Do I still feel like there are ways in which men and women are socialized, that there are things that we can still talk about, There are things that can be improved or discussed. Yes, and I certainly feel like the current iteration of the supposed skeptic movement doesn't feel like a very welcoming place to discuss these things, even as reasonable and rational as I think that I am. And of course, I mean, there's also just an increase in anti-intellectualism of all different kinds, but that's sort of another topic.

0:31:53 Voicemail: But the point is that I certainly see what you're doing, and I know that I'm not alone. There are other women that I've talked to online, at least, that have talked about your show. And we see you, and we see that you care about us, and you're sticking up for us, and you're putting yourself out there and getting a lot of shit, it seems like. And in some cases, you also get a lot of support, of course. But my point is that what you're doing is not going unnoticed.

0:32:22 Thomas: So thank you so much. The voicemail actually got cut off there, but I think the point was made, and all I can say is that I really, really hope to live up to those words that are far kinder than I could really imagine. Seriously, I think as I've said it before, but I want to say it again, as awful as that was, what would have been worse is coming home, getting on the computer and realizing that I let down all of you, that I let down everybody who was counting on me to try to stand up to this bully and to try to make sure I made it clear to at least anyone who would listen that this isn't the movement we want and this behavior is unacceptable. It would have been far worse to me to Dave Rubin that interview and then come home and realize what I'd done.

0:33:11 Thomas: That would have been far worse. So thank you for saying that. I also wanted to play this message because what you said, one thing you said made so much sense, and it's something that frustrates me to no end, because most of the feminists in my life, if not all of them, if not all of them, the women in my life who are feminists, and I think pretty much every woman in my life is a feminist, I hope, they want such basic things. They want such basic equality, like to be believed when they tell us that someone is harassing or has assaulted or has raped them. They wanna be believed. The system as it's set up, as you've seen with Harvey Weinstein, you need just an abundance of witnesses before anyone takes it seriously.

0:34:00 Thomas: I don't really like the term rape culture because I think it is so easily strawmanned, but there is something that I think the term, rape culture, does describe very well. And it's a culture of looking the other way. It's a culture of the men in Harvey Weinstein's life not saying anything. And the women who do try to say something being silenced or not being believed or being told this is just how showbiz works. This is how it is. There's a very real culture there. You know how many women it took for us to believe the stuff about Bill Cosby. It had been out forever when Hannibal Buress did his stand-up bit about it. He, it wasn't like he was a private investigator that had discovered the stuff that no one knew. It was out there. It took a man to do a joke about it to really, like, start the ball rolling for us to really look at this person. And then now, I, it would be amazing if anyone one still believes that Bill Cosby is innocent. I mean, just dozens and dozens of women coming forward.

But people like Carl take all of this, and there's so much more. There's so much more that I'm just scratching the surface of what the feminists that I know in my life talk about and what's important to them. Just scratching the service. They take all of that. They throw that away.

0:35:34 Thomas: They ignore it because they found someone online who was yelling. They found a feminist woman online who had blue hair or some crap and was yelling, and and he doesn't like how she's yelling, or maybe she said something wrong, or you know what, maybe he found a bad example of a feminist, maybe he's found someone who's not very smart, who says stupid stuff. He can mock them, and he can call the entire movement, which I read, he can call every feminist, feminism a mental disease that every feminist has. All because he can find some cherry-picked examples and he can draw this ridiculous hyperbolic story about how it's trying to take over your entire life. All of that, that is why to me he's a status quo warrior. It's a tactic to divert away from real problems.

0:36:30 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, this is Gothic Intellect from YouTube. I was just calling to let you know I have already made a few videos about Sargon of Akkad being a real life troll and a Trump supporter, even though he actively tries to deny it. Anyway, I just wanted to let know that from a black woman living in Southern California, thank you, thank so much for calling him out. Sargon and his fanboys are anti-intellectual hypocrites who basically view women and minorities to be the problem of America. And it also goes to show that people only support YouTube and content creators who basically regurgitate their beliefs that they already have. I mean, look at Dave Rubin and his selling out journey.

0:37:16 Voicemail: Anyway, thank you so much for your podcast. You and Eli are my favorite SAWs, and I hope you have a great day. Bye.

0:37:23 Thomas: So much. That's gothic intellectual if you want to check out her channel. I appreciate the message of support. I think it's valuable. I just wanted to play it. There's not anything I need to add to it. I really appreciate you saying that. I'm doing my best. Check out her channel if you'd like. A lot of people on YouTube are trying to create a corner that's not shitlordery. There are plenty of people out there. I am going to be speaking to some of them coming up. Again, I, it's not going to be about MythCon. I want it to be more positive, uh, and more expansive. You know, I don't want to limit, limit it to that, but there are people trying to carve out a kind of a caring sort of environment at YouTube. Uh, and, or at least, and by the way, it's, it has to be all hugs and teddy bears and stuff, you know, just not trying for ownage.

0:38:14 Thomas: I don't even, you know, like, it's fine if you want to argue, you, things get heated, even an occasional insult is thrown out, maybe, like, that's, it's, I'm not saying there's no place for that, you know, or that can't exist. But the culture that's on there is not even close to that. It's so far beyond the pale, it's chasing down these videos I made that are, as I played for you in the beginning, right, or I said, I read the comments for you, you, in the beginning. These comments on videos that are not related to anything, it's writing at me time and time again. I wouldn't even rape you. I would never even rape you. Okay. They're very funny, everybody. Great. You're so clever. It's useless. It is useless. The only goal of it is to make someone feel bad. And I can't believe in an adult world that that is something I have to say, hey, you're a horrible person if your value is simply making someone feel bad over and above everything else. That's awful.

0:39:20 Voicemail: Hey Tom, the idea that Sargon tries to substantiate his, "I wouldn't even rate you" comment because of the fact that that British MP was supposedly being somehow censorious is ridiculous, because he's by no means an ally of free speech. He totally does not mention any of the horrible things Trump has said in relation to it. He's started petitions to ban gender studies completely in America. He's also started petitions to take measures against a professor who just made a joke on Twitter about white genocide. He also tried to de-platform Anita Sarkeesian at VidCon after she called him a shithead. You know, and that just really flies in the face of the freedom of expression that he supposedly endorses. So, yeah, just wanted to say that. Love the podcast, and later.

0:40:14 Thomas: Thank you. Yes, this is actually something that I pointed out in the debate. I talked about his ban on social justice courses in college, somewhat a non-expert deciding what I can read or what I can study in college. And you know what his great response to that was? You know what his intellectual response to was? That I used the word ban and he used the word suspend. So he wanted to suspend all these courses. But since I said ban, that was his gotcha. And then he never addressed it. And I said in the debate, that's your argument that I use ban instead of suspend. That's it. That's all you have. That's all your responses. And to my memory, that WAS all his response was. But it's, again, another example of them switching on a dime, just like with the white identity politics.

0:41:04 Thomas: Identity politics is so bad. Identity politics is so bad. Oh, wait, white men. And then all of a sudden it's not. Just like that. It was censorship is so bad. Censorship is so bad. Oh, wait, social justice courses. No, get rid of them. Because that's just how it works for them. It really is. It switches on and on. Because in his mind, they're poisoning the whole, like, minds. They're poisoning minds everywhere. And it's something he has to stop. And it's alarming. And It just, it backs up. It reiterates the point I've made ages ago. The study that was done, people go to free speech when they know their ideas are awful. Racists use free speech as a defense for racist ideas. And then when you ask those same people, hey, is it okay if people should criticize the president?

0:41:50 Thomas: No. Is it okay? If people should criticise police? No, you can't use your speech to criticise police. Oh, wait, what about free speech? Well, it turns out that's a tactic people go to when they know their ideas are awful. And they want to be able to justify they They want to still be able to speak. Now, that example, as I've said many times, doesn't mean free speech is a bad thing. I think free speech Is a great thing. I support freedom of speech. But that freedom of speech is a very limited thing. There's no, it just means government can't intervene and stop people from speaking. I A great boo line in the debate was when I said de-platforming is not censorship. Well, it's not. De-platform isn't censorship. After I said that, did we have a hearty debate about it? Did we have nice disagreement exchange of ideas? No, I was booed and mocked and that was the end of that.

0:42:37 Thomas: But it's not censorship. If you de-platformed every one of a given belief system from every single platform in the country, then yeah, you'd have some freedom of speech issues. If the government de-platformed, then, yeah, some freedom speech issues, but let's put it the other way around. Let's say a venue finds out that someone they invited, a venue or an organization, they find out someone they invited has some views they didn't know about. Let's, let's say they've, they've said some awful things about, I don't know, child pornography, for example. When you de-platform, did you censor him? Was that censorship? Or are you obligated by the first amendment? You are locked into that booking. You cannot de-platform them, de-platform that person.

0:43:22 Thomas: You are legally, otherwise it's, it's it's censorship. No, of course not. You have a free speech right as well. You have a First Amendment right to use your platform how you want and to invite or disinvite whoever you want. We all have rights. All the rights are there. Everyone's got rights. It's about what the right decision to do is. It is about what the ethical thing to do it. And platforming awful people who tweet sexual harassment is awful. Deplatforming them is Is the right thing to do. It's not censorship.

0:43:58 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, this is a Patreon supporter and I'm sure you're getting a lot of messages, don't know if you'll hear them all, just wanted to share the fact that what you did with Sargon was great and I'm sure it was awful in the moment and I am sorry you had to go through that and that a lot of people are telling you that it wasn't great, but a lot people I've showed it to and talked to about it are on your side, and we're all rooting for you, and you made the right choice to call them out and not back away from that. So thanks, man. Keep it up.

0:44:28 Thomas: Thanks. Not much I can say to that. I appreciate that comment. I appreciated that voicemail. Just wanted to play it because I got a ton of these. I'm not playing all of them, but I got ton. And now I've got some from more, I won't say Sargon supporters, but people maybe more toward that end of the spectrum. And guess what? I'm open to those ideas. I am open to counterideas. I'm not open to sexually harassing women or endorsing that in any way. That's what I'm NOT open. Congratulations. I AM NOT open to that! That's an idea I am not open to. What I am open to are all the other bullshit about like identity politics, whatever, we can debate that all day, that's not hard. So, so with that said, let's go to the next voicemail.

0:45:08 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, this is Josh Mendez from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm just calling to say I listened to your most recent podcast about Sargon's Persecution Complex. A lot of you at Metcon actually saw the live video. I thought you did have a lot of great points and did beat in a lot of the intellectual argument despite all the chanting and ridiculousness going on there. But I just wanted to ask you about, just because I think we should move on from the whole Sargon, I'm saying, because I think he is a little ridiculous, although I do think he is addressing a real issue in our society today where there is white identity politics raising up in our culture right now. And I think it's a result of, you know, colleges and whatnot, and the intellectual thinkers is tending to kind of shame white men.

0:46:05 Voicemail: And I think shame is a bad thing on all ends. Like, I left religion to escape shame, but now I'm seeing our secular movements start to shame people. And of course, I think it's the fringes on both sides. I think the SJWs, fringers, shame people, and I think white identitarian politics people shame people too. And I feel we should get rid of all that shame. But I would love to hear you talk about that concept about religious-type shaming within the secular movement and whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think some shame can be a good shame. You know, it can apply to certain social levers to make people treat each other better. But at the same time, you kind of end up falling into the old religious trap of just shaming people for not being part of our religious think group and the kind of style that I was raised in, in that religion.

0:47:02 Voicemail: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Hope to meet you sometime. Have a great day. Talk to you later. Bye.

0:47:08 Thomas: Hey, thank you for the voicemail, and there you go. I mean, I don't, again, I don′t mean to characterize that this call was like a Sargon supporter, didn't mean that at all. But you make some points that you think he's tapping into something valid. So let's talk about that. Let's discuss that. The biggest point I want to make here is this false notion that white identity politics are somehow new, and this is something that even Sam Harris is falling into and people like that. The idea that what has happened is social justice and Black Lives Matter have gone too far, they've allowed different groups to gain social currency by identifying a certain way, you know, this whole oppression Olympics thing, and therefore, inevitably, white people are going to have to follow suit.

0:47:55 Thomas: And that's why you're getting white identity politics. That is an ahistorical bullshit way to look at it. What's The truth was that white politics predated all of it. White identity politics was all of politics. White male identity politics kept women from voting. Kept women- Have you seen those campaign posters? They tried to keep women from vote. White white identity politics, tried to keep segregation, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, is the quote. I mean, this idea that that's somehow white identity, politics is a response to all this other identity politics. That's just not true. And so I sort of reject the premise of your question that there's this white shaming and that's happening in universities.

0:48:42 Thomas: And then as a result, people are voting for Trump. No. What happened was we elected a black man president of the country in 2008. That's what happened. And then what you saw was the most absurd, disgusting racism in response to him. Doesn't mean every single person who disagreed with Obama was a racist. That is not what I am saying. But Fox News and various other outlets started peddling disgusting racist conspiracy theories that, for example, he wasn't born in this country. Can you take a second and realize how disgusting that is? We just elected the person who was the main proponent of the idea that President Obama wasn't born in this country. Why? I don't know what's different about Obama versus all the other presidents. I'm not sure about that one.

0:49:37 Thomas: Even after he released his birth certificate, it still continued, it's still continued. There was Obama as a Muslim. I'm pretty sure my parents bought into that one. I'm sure if I were to ask them right now, they would say Obama was a Muslim, at a minimum they would not say he was a Christian, despite the fact that he, as every other politician pretty much these days, has referenced scripture, gone to church, said Christianity is important to them. Despite all that, nah, he's a Muslim. Hmm, I wonder what's different about that president that would cause that kind of rumor. Now, this is just the beginning. There is so much there. And they worked for eight years. The Republican Congress worked for, well, not eight, I guess six, starting in 2010.

0:50:27 Thomas: So six years, the Republican Congress work to make sure he could not achieve anything. It was unprecedented what they did to Obama during his presidency, the kinds of resistance they put up. They would not allow anything to happen. They did not want him to achieve anything.

And this election of Trump, among many other factors, I think the biggest one is that racist backlash, and people try to point at the numbers and they say, like, well, wait a minute, he didn't, Trump didn't get as many white voters as Romney or something like that, and what, what I cannot believe people are missing is Trump isn't Romney. They elected a piece of garbage. So a piece of garbage was able to get as roughly close to as many votes as an actual candidate. That's where the racism comes in. So I've seen that argument a lot of places, by the way. Oh, well, it turns out there wasn't a big white backlash because he didn't get quite as many white voters as Romney. Yeah, but he was terrible. If a disgusting, completely unqualified, idiotic, sexist, misogynist with a tape where he's bragging about sexual assault, all all that, and he gets slightly more votes, I think, than Romney, then that tells you something. Some of that is party politics.

That's true. Some of it is partisan politics. Some of is, well, I'm a Republican. I will die before I'll let a Democrat get in. I mean, you could argue there's some element of racism inherent in Republicanism, but, you know, I'll give you that one.

0:52:04 Thomas: There's some elements of partisan politics there. But it's not 100%. It's nowhere near 100%. For that man, for Trump, as awful as he is, as inexperienced and clueless as he is, to have won and to be the primary motivator of this birther campaign tells you all you need to know. The point of all this is that, okay, sure, let's point to some extreme college examples of progressives and say they're bad. Fine. What Fox News has done is an orchestrated and years long, if not decades long at this point, campaign to paint a boogeyman out of colleges, and particularly now when their president is awful.

0:52:49 Thomas: They don't have the big bad Obama in the White House anymore. They've had to have another victim. They've got to have a new president. They've have another straw man to point to. And they are making hay out of anything that happens on college campuses. It should be so insignificant to us when there's a minor scuffle at a college campus out of the tens of thousands, out of however many million students there are, when one group gets a little too progressive, it, it should not make the news. When Brett Weinstein, when that whole thing happened, it's not a coincidence the channels that wanted him, the channel was Fox News. They wanted to paint their picture. So when we talk about this white shaming, I think there's a very concerted effort that dates back as long as the country does that is actually a white identity politics and a resistance to other groups infringing on their privilege.

0:53:46 Thomas: So that's how I view that. Now, having said that, you and I can agree, and you didn't give me any examples, so I don't have that to work with, but you and can agree that, sure, there are progressives who go too far.

And going back to the MythCon debate, this is a place where I absolutely got Sargon, in my opinion, was he made some plea that progressives are driving people toward the KKK, or toward being in these racist groups, and it's like, wait a minute, a moment ago, everything was about individual responsibility. Don't those people have a responsibility to not be racists? What in the world, how inconsistent is that?

I look at the problem and I look at the history, and my conclusion is, okay, it's more on white people to not be overly sensitive. That's my conclusion. And I especially, caller, as you said that you enjoyed my episode about Sargon's overreaction, where Where I demonstrated the white victimhood that happens, the white overreaction that happens. Doesn't mean it's all the time, doesn't mean it's everything, it's very significant, and I have found it to be a very significant pattern. So here's what I want: if you want to show me an example of where people are shaming white people too much, we can discuss individual examples, and I can say, yeah, okay, maybe that person tactically shouldn't say that, and then we can all hold hands and be happy. But I'm going to take the problem in historical context, and I'm going to realize that this same tone policing has happened for however long. The same arguments were made about the civil rights movement, the law and order candidate. It's the same patterns, and I don't see it as incumbent upon victims

0:55:31 Thomas: And incumbent upon people who are marginalized to act exactly perfectly so that then white people will listen to them. I see it as incumbent upon white people to start listening. That's what I see.

0:55:51 Voicemail: Hey Tom, my name's Andrew, heard your Friday show about Sargon of Akkad, or Thursday show, and got me fired up, and decided not to call, but when I heard Monday's show I really wanted to call. You kept using the term status quo warrior, and I feel like that's really wrong, and if anyone's the incrementalist, it's you. I feel we need to make the left liberal again, we need go further. When you talk about the rate of black people in prison, you touch on the issue. It's horrible, but the issue is to legalize drugs. It's to fix the private prison system. It's To Go Further. We need to go further left, and I don't know how to convince you, but I think that the problem we have now is a lack of liberalism.

0:56:39 Voicemail: We need To Go Farther. We need TO Go Stronger. We need to go more libertarian and more liberal. We need rights for everyone, and it's better if we don't do it by race. If we say, hey, private prison system is wrong, these drug crimes are wrong, these laws are insane, and we just reduce them across the board, it helps everyone. And I think that when Sargon's not trolling, that's what he's getting at. We need you to expand rights for Everyone. I'm not sure if you're listening to this, but I'd love to hear your take. Bye.

0:57:12 Thomas: Thanks again for a respectful call. I'm happy to have that conversation. So, this is again sensitivity and over sensitivity. First off, no one is arguing that we want to relax drug laws, but only for black people. No one is making that argument. If you find me someone making that argument, I will say that is a crazy person. No one is saying that sentences should be one way for black people and another way for white people. That's absurd. However, there are a lot of drug laws that were purposefully written as to go one way for white people, another way, for black a worse way, for black people, and those are, those are a little rare, there's not as much these days outright bigotry in the, in the written laws. It's the enforcement, and it's the over policing, that is disproportionately affecting black people. What is the problem in your mind with calling that out? Now, first off, I guess, I guess I'll go back to your question. I believe that you, so I agree with a lot of what you're saying.

0:58:10 Thomas: I actually I don't know why you think I disagree that we should go further left. I want us to be way further left. I absolutely do. It's so I'm not sure where that's coming from. But when you seem to call me the status quo warrior, maybe because I don't know if I'm if I had to guess because it's not clear from your call. If I had to guess, it would be because I support Hilary, who is more maybe viewed as a centrist or something. But no, I firmly disagree. Sargon is the status quo warrior because he wants to shoot down every possible solution that I have that are actually for everybody. I don't want more rights for a particular group. I do want everybody to have the same rights and opportunities. The problem is they don't. You can say on paper they do.

0:58:56 Thomas: Congratulations. That's paper. In In reality, people born in certain places in our country have it way worse. People born certain colors in our country have it way worse. And I don't see why you have this desire to ignore that. It's like, it's like, I don't know where that need comes from. Where is the need coming from in your mind for me to not say, is it from Mark Lilla? This sounds like that Mark Lilla stuff that I kind of covered. Is there some need that you have for me to not point out how inherently racist the system is for what? Because I might make some white people uncomfortable? I don't, why, why is that what you care about? Why is that what you care about versus the injustice that's happening to people of color?

0:59:41 Thomas: I don't know. Here's another possibility. You and I could get rid of all these drug laws. I don't know about full legalization, by the way. That's a separate debate. Separate debate. We could have that debate. Let's say we come to a solution, and of course we agree we want this to happen across the board, because no, I don't want there to be, despite the really idiotic straw man question. Someone asked me if my solution to the over policing of black people and the disproportionate number of black people in prison is I wanted police officers. This was what they, this is what they really believe. They said, so do you want police officers who witnessed black people doing a crime to not arrest them? No, of course not. That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard. What I want is for them to not disproportionately search black people, despite the fact that white people have a higher hit rate when you search them.

1:00:33 Thomas: I want it to be fair. I I want us to do our best to fight the bias that is inherent in us and inherent in the system. I want to do not over police. There's so many places, but prosecutorial discretion, that's a big place, that is a big place where it happens, 95%, 95% of all prosecutors in this country are white, 95%. Are you going to tell me that that has no effect on how sentences are dished out, on how settlements are agreed to? Do. That has no effect because I think it has a very real effect. I think oftentimes white kids who do drugs are looked at as, okay, they slipped up. No big deal. We don't want to ruin their whole life. Black kids who do drums, oh, they were trying to sell. Yeah, we got to prosecute this. You don't think that ever happens?

1:01:19 Thomas: You don't think that's not a big factor? There's no law that we can agree to that will fix all of that. Now, I started to say, I'll go back to it, we could agree on some drug laws that would be better, but there's no guarantee that would fix the problem because whatever laws are on the books, police could still over police and could still show inherent bias and could still mass incarcerate black men. It really could still happen. I don't think drug crime is all of of it. It's a chunk of it I don't think it's all of it So I guess my question back to you would be, what is this need of yours, despite the evidence that we see that people of different identities are treated differently in our country, what does this need to frame it in a neutral way, what has that accomplished to you?

1:02:09 Thomas: Does it make white people feel better? Well, if your appeal is to people of color and people who are suffering to speak slightly differently to make white people comfortable, can you see why that's seen as frustrating? And furthermore, can you also see, I think the Kaepernick thing is a perfect example, how it's never enough. This is always framed as, well, okay, protest, fine, but you know what, don't do it in the street. Okay, well then, Kaeperick kneels. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's too far. Don't protest. You can't protest that way because of the flag. It's never enought. It's just another status quo warrior stall tactic.

1:02:55 Thomas: I want to give a warning for this voicemail. I just want to play one of the haters just to give you an idea of the mighty intellects that are trolling me now. So here you go.

1:03:08 Voicemail: Hey there, Thomas, how you doing? I just want you to know, you know, coming from a 41-year-old man who is educated and all that, the fact that you claim to be a victim after you call people racist, misogynist, Nazi, whatever bullshit you come up with, is just fucking ironic, you piece of fucking garbage. Garbage, you know, it's, it's just people like you that are just so disgusting that you can't have a fucking argument, you can't talk with people, you just call them names. So here's your name calling, you fucking piece of shit, you fucking peace of human garbage. I'm not going to call you racist, you fucking white piece of, you know, I'm not going to, you misogynist, you fucking woman-hating piece of, it's this, it's ironic that you fucking think you're some type of fucking victim. Unbelievable. Go fuck yourself.

1:04:01 Thomas: This is where I want to put out a call. If anyone is willing to possibly have to subject themselves to the Sargon debate again, possibly multiple times, could you take account of how many times I called him a name versus how many times he called me a name? Because my memory is not perfect. Of course, it's not perfect! My memory is, I did say, because you're awful in relation to the tweet, and I stand by that. He's awful for that, and that's fine. Okay, count that as one for me. Then I remember him calling me racist a bunch of times, like a million times. And I don't remember calling him a racist. I could imagine I called him a misogynist, but I don't remember doing so. So if anyone wants to go through that, get back to me.

1:04:48 Thomas: And I would be curious as to who the name caller was in that debate. Who the person who called me racist was several times in that debate. And I would point you, oh thoughtful caller, to the fact that after the point where I said he was awful for that tweet, because yeah, that's awful, we actually did have extended debate. It wasn't name calling. We had extended debate, I got called some names, but I also pointed out a bunch of stuff about how he doesn't care about all the discrepancies in policing and Black Lives Matter and all that. That. And you know what? We had a long, a long semi at times intellectual debate. It was still awful because of the audience and because Sargon is not really a critical thinker. He's someone who wants to bully. He wants to interrupt me in mid-sentence to make fun of two words I put together incorrectly.

1:05:39 Thomas: That's not intellectual. Christopher Hitchens would not do that. He would would not stop someone two words in when they misspoke and mock them for it. There's not an intellectual pursuit. So thanks for the call, dude. You sound like a great guy. All right, it is time to thank my patrons who really are the reason I can even do this. Thank you so much. I don't, I am fortunate. Hey, in all this trolling and bullshit, I really am fortunate. And there are other people who aren't like me. I am privileged. I have a platform, listenership, people who support me. I can't tell you how thankful I am for that. There are so many people who don't have those assets, who are marginalized, who try to speak up online and are shouted down.

1:06:24 Thomas: It's disgusting. But And I thing it is my duty, and my responsiblity to try and speak up, and to try make the movement and this online space slightly better if possible, I'm doing my best, and it is thanks to support like you that this is happening. Supporters like Windy Atlantic Canuck, Susan, Alicia Ann, Sarah Pichelis, Eli Youngs, Catherine Koldhoff, Hillary Hilary, Jay Green, Josh Asselstine, Revan, Billy Fleming, Elizabeth Ocon, Jephalopod, and Slam Nasty are my new patrons this week. Thank you guys so Thank you so much for supporting the show. It would not happen without you. That's patreon.com slash seriouspod if you'd like to support and remember you're going to get that early MythCon interview and it's worth it for Eli.

1:07:15 Thomas: It really is. Eli was great and it’s worth it, you know, they give their perspective and you're gonna hear where they're coming from and that's important and then we can move on. You're going hear that early on Patreon. I'm going to try to edit it for everybody else because it's just too long but I don't know. It may end up that I just, I don't want to miss it representing anybody. I really don't. I want to be fair. I care about being fair. So maybe I can't edit it. I'll take a look, see what I can do. But that's where you can find that somewhat soon. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting. I will see you on Monday.