SIO54: Ishmael of Angry Black Rant on Appropriation, Bill Maher and More

Back for the severalith time is Ishmael from Angry Black Rant! Lots of listeners requested this interview and Ish was kind enough to oblige. We discuss cultural appropriation, the Bill Maher situation, and more race-related issues in today’s discourse. It’s always fun talking with Ishmael, but it’s also very real and revealing as well!

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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SIO53: What Is Postmodernism? With Aaron Rabi

What the Gender Studies Hoax and Jordan B. Peterson’s pronoun mania both have in common is the bogeyman of postmodernism. It seems to be conventional wisdom that postmodernism is manifestly crazy. But how substantive is that criticism in reality? I’ve invited a philosopher, Aaron Rabi, to give us a bit of a lesson on what postmodernism is and perhaps where the criticisms are accurate and where they fall short.

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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SIO52: Democrats Should Be Happy About the Special Elections

Please share this podcast with any Democrat you witness losing their mind about the special election results. In reality, the trend is very, very positive for Democrats going into 2018 elections. I go into why. After that, we have a lengthy and most excellent voicemail segment. Listen in!

Our Brand Is Worse Than TrumpAnti-Pelosi Republican Ad; Lots of Info On Special Elections At Ballotpedia

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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SIO51: Andrew Torrez on Manslaughter: Philando Castile and Michelle Carter

In the same weekend, a teen found guilty of manslaughter for convincing her boyfriend to commit suicide, and a police officer found NOT guilty after shooting and killing Philando Castile. It has left many wondering, how did this happen? This demands expert analysis, so I’ve brought in the big guns in Andrew Torrez, resident law expert at the Opening Arguments Podcast to help us understand the situation!

Philando Castile; Michelle Carter; Andrew’s Case

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SIO50: Michael Shermer on Evergreen and Gender Studies

Back for a second time is Michael Shermer! He’s the editor of Skeptic Magazine and has been a very prominent voice in the community for decades. After our last conversation, a couple of things happened. One was the gender studies hoax, which was explained and endorsed by his magazine. The other was the Evergreen incident, which Shermer tweeted about and wanted to know my thoughts on. We discussed both of these at length!

Refer to my earlier episode on Evergreen for those references

Faculty of color say they are receiving death threats; President disappointed in protesters, may discipline; Weinstein second Tucker Carlson appearance; Sokal’s response to the gender studies hoax; Feminist glaciology TED talk.

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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SIO49: The Pro-Truth Pledge, with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Joining me this week for interview Monday is Dr. Gleb Tsipursky! Gleb is an expert in decision sciences, focusing on politics and business. In the wake of the 2016 election, Gleb has decided to focus on fighting against fake news and misinformation in our politics. That’s why he has created the Truth Pledge, which he tells us all about in the interview. His insight is very valuable and is another in the series on how to change minds and where to focus our efforts.

Make sure you take the Pro-Truth Pledge! https://www.protruthpledge.org/

Research links: http://intentionalinsights.org/how-can-facts-trump-ideology/

http://intentionalinsights.org/how-behavioral-science-can-help-truth-triumph-over-baseless-accusations/

http://intentionalinsights.org/the-brain-science-of-political-deception-in-the-2016-election/

Link to Gleb’s bio: http://glebtsipursky.com/about/

 

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SIO48: What’s Really Going On at Evergreen College?

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to embark on a fact-finding mission regarding the Brett Weinstein/Evergreen College fiasco. It took an incredible amount of digging to find anything beyond the same few talking points that have exploded across conservative media in the past few weeks, but the deeper story is a little more complicated and worthy of our attention. As usual, the easy way out is to filter the facts so they comport to a narrative we want, but I do my best to investigate the facts from a neutral standpoint.

What I found might surprise you! Here are links:

Tucker Carlson InterviewEmail Exchange; Cooper Point Journal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Weinstein View on Equity PolicyDemographics of Professors; Detainment of Black Students; President Letter on Trigger Warnings; President Response to Demands; Letter from 50 FacultyProfessor Solidarity with StudentsProf Setting Record Straight.

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SIO47: Conversation with a Critic on Bill C-16

It is immensely important to me that I do my best to engage with those who disagree, and in that spirit I present a conversation with someone who argued a lot with me on Twitter about Jordan B. Peterson and Canadian bill C-16. This conversation took place on May 4th, but with a lot of Trump news and some key interviews I kept the interview as patron only. Lots of listeners have requested its release though, and I think it’s also an inspiring and useful dialogue to hear. So at long last, I give you my conversation with @PithyJoe on the merits of bill C-16.

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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SIO46: AHCA – The Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight

After a few small points about the last couple episodes on the hoax paper, we’re back to normal here on commentary Thursday! Today’s main topic is the CBO score on the new incarnation of the evil AHCA bill. AHCA is, in my opinion, the most important political scandal currently happening. After that is a very difficult voicemail segment, in that there are 3 tough questions with no easy answers. But those are the most important kind!

Links:

CBO Score on AHCA 2; NPR Breakdown on CBO ScoreIn Depth Uproxx Article on the Burrito Truck; Google Doc on Portland Appropriation; Academic Paper on Cultural Appropriation

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SIO45: James Lindsay, Co-Author of the ‘Conceptual Penis’ Hoax Paper

Last week you heard Eli Bosnick’s side of why the ‘Conceptual Penis’ hoax paper was disingenuous and unskeptical, and today I speak with one of the paper’s authors, James Lindsay. James has been a previous guest on the show; he’s been someone I have always admired for his intellectual rigor and willingness to back up what he believes and to have the tough conversations. For that much I really, really respect him coming on. But I can’t hide my opinion on this hoax. I think it was garbage and it was latched onto unskeptically by people who fancy themselves critical thinkers. I challenge James on the paper and we get to hear his side of it.

Today’s episode is actually 2 in 1, because after the conversation I reminded James to send me the links corroborating his arguments. When I received them, I was appalled that each description of the scholarly articles he sent was a lazy and ideologically motivated strawman. As such, I emailed him a heads up that I would be going in depth into his sources and describing exactly how he (or maybe Real Peer Review, if that was his source) is either intentionally or just ignorantly misunderstanding these abstracts. I’m incredibly disappointed at this dishonest or careless behavior. If you are going to waltz into a field that ISN’T your expertise and claim that the bulk of it is bunk, it is incumbent upon you to do the research and know what you’re talking about. For the sake of transparency, I will paste word for word the sources email James sent me:

“Hi Thomas,

In all the fuss, I can’t remember what I was supposed to send you, but I’ll give it a try.
Curing erectile dysfunction reinforces hegemonic masculinity: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1097184X00003001004 (we cited this paper in ours)
Fat men’s penises might not exist, social construction: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460716640734
Male lactation can exist through social construction: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2916660
Pregnancy shouldn’t be associated with femininity: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10894160.2012.653766
Wikipedia shouldn’t demand sources because sexism: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461515000547
STEM syllabi are sexist because focus on facts: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=tqr
Feminists see themselves as activists to infect other fields of study with ideological biases, compare themselves favorably to viruses like HIV and ebola: http://hipatiapress.com/hpjournals/index.php/generos/article/viewFile/1983/1624#page=78
Meanwhile, almost 15000 kids a year are graduating from such programs: https://datausa.io/profile/cip/05/

 

Those are all the papers. In the later half of the episode I discuss the research I did on all of them and how atrocious James’s descriptions were.

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