AS298: The Best Podcast Ever, Part 1

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 298, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Wow, well, how do I introduce what you're about to hear? I would say the first thing would be, if you decide to listen on, do so realizing that there is a lot of profanity in this episode. It's not very typical of my show, but this was not a very typical episode of my show. Back when I was tweeting a lot about the election and sort of the aftermath and my thoughts, I I ran into two listeners, Dustin Dark and Mike, who were, I don't know how to put it, I, I thought they were a little more Trump supporters, turns out they actually weren't Trump supporters.

0:01:18 Thomas: But they both expressed feelings that the left was kind of overreacting, and that the, basically, we, we disagreed in a number of ways, and my thinking was, in the wake of all this stuff about the bubble, and the fact that everybody's getting their news from only the sources they like and we need to understand the other side, all that stuff, stuff that I actually do value on this show, understanding both sides. I do value that. I wanted to attempt to have them on.

It didn't go well. In fact, it went really, really, really badly. And there are a number of reasons for that that I'll get to. First off, I want to say I hesitate to even do this, but in case anyone wants to hear the train wreck that is the full recording, it's way too long. I think it's over two hours. Uh, it'll be on Patreon. I'll just, I'll throw it up there. I don't even really recommend you listen to it, but I, I think, I think some people will want to. They'll want to gain a full understanding of it. Um, and you can find that on patreon.com/atheist, atheist. What you're about to hear is the first part of it that was, was actually my first ever guest edited show. I want to thank Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance for doing the edit.

I have to trust Cecil's editing fingers. I hope he did well. I listened to it. It sounded good to me, but I don't have a clear memory of everything that was said. So I don't know. Maybe it made me sound worse than I don't realize. Who knows? We'll see. Professional competition. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you so much, Cecil, for doing this.

0:02:56 Thomas: Tom and Cecil wanted to hear how this went. And actually, I don't know why, but Cecil offered if I sent the full thing to him early that he would edit for me. And I said, wow, I have so much going on. I will take you up on that in a heartbeat. No one ever offered to edit something for me because I will let you do it. Let that be a lesson to you, Cecil. But no, truly, thank you so much, Cecil, for helping me out with this. It really made a big difference with everything I have going on on opening arguments this week. It was really difficult to squeeze everything in, so thank you. So this is the first part. It involves empathy, it involves a lot of what Eli wanted to talk about, and I'll just go into it. I'll let you hear it. I think there's some valuable stuff in here.

0:03:43 Thomas: It's not all valuable, but there's an interesting attempt to take two people who were previously, or even four people, I guess, if you count all, all four of us were previously arguing a lot on Facebook and to try to resolve it over these heated issues, over things like how bad Trump really is and is Hillary just as bad, all that kind of stuff, those arguments, and to trying to bridge that gap. This was our attempt. However that went, I'll do some brief commenting after this one. The last thing I'll say is that I named this part one, but I do not know that I will publish part two. I'm not sure. Part two, Cecil edited a part two, but it's pretty rough, and I'm not, and he said that as well.

0:04:29 Thomas: I mean, that's not a critique of Cecil's editing skills. That's a critique of the conversation. Let me know in the comments. Let me know if you want to hear part two. I'll just leave it to you. That, and especially if you're a patron, you listen to the whole thing.

0:04:46 Thomas: Let I just, I just don't know anymore. I really don't. I know it went terribly. I don't, it's hard for me to know what's going to be interesting for people to listen to. Maybe it is really interesting. Maybe it's terribly boring to people. It's just really, this is one of those things where I just Don't Know. So you can vote yay or nay. It's not going to make me feel bad if everybody says, no, this is terrible. I don't want to hear more of this. I am happy to move on to another episode next week. But if people want to hear part two, then I will post part two. So let me know your feelings. Comment, Facebook, email, Twitter, wherever it is, and Patreon especially. I'll kind of take stock of it. So thank you so much for listening. And here we go. The best podcast ever. Kind of going with the Sam Harris joke there. Here's part one.

0:05:59 Thomas: Joining me right now are three gentlemen, one you

0:06:04 Thomas Or Eli: Will know and two you will not. First off is Eli.

0:06:08 Thomas: Eli, you don't really need to introduce yourself, I don't think, but say hi and whatever

0:06:13 Thomas Or Eli: You want to say.

0:06:14 Guests: Hi Thomas, thanks for having me.

0:06:15 Thomas Or Eli: Thank

0:06:16 Thomas: You for coming on to this adventure, wherever this may take us. And my other two guests are Michael.

0:06:23 Thomas Or Eli: How you doing, Michael?

0:06:24 Guests: Um, Mike, you might have heard Thomas referred me as the long black cock. I'm also the talking wallflower if you want to look me up. Um, random guest on random shows, and general asshole. Alright

0:06:38 Thomas Or Eli: Alright. All right.

0:06:38 Thomas: And then Dustin, how are you doing?

0:06:41 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah.

0:06:41 Guests: Man, um, I'm Dustin Dark. Um, I pretty much just kind of troll Facebook, and that's how I ended up here. Um, there's a tiny little spat on your Facebook, um and um... Yeah, I mean, I guess that's it, right?

0:06:55 Thomas Or Eli: So let me just say real quickly what I'm doing here and why we're recording this.

0:07:02 Thomas: For me, a lot was said after the election of

0:07:07 Thomas Or Eli: Donald Trump about, I mean, there's been think piece after think piece about what went wrong. I've given my opinions. One thing that's been written about a lot is the so-called, like, news bubble trouble, uh, that everybody's in, and honestly, this is kind of my attempt to break that a little bit.

0:07:22 Thomas: Dustin, did you vote Trump, or did you support Trump?

0:07:25 Guests: No, no, no. I don't support Trump. You know, I don't necessarily appreciate the bashing of Trump supporters that's happened.

0:07:25 Thomas Or Eli: Okay. Okay. Okay.

0:07:37 Thomas: So this kind of came up because you guys both responded to one or two of my statuses, I think, where so I don't think either of you it sounds like neither of you voted for Trump, so I'm not speaking

0:07:48 Thomas Or Eli: To Trump voters. Unfortunately, I kind of thought I was, but oh well.

0:07:51 Thomas: But you you certainly don't seem to be you seem to to have differing opinions from Eli So that's kind of what my efforts were here. We disagree about a lot, and there's a lot of kind of animosity

0:07:57 Thomas Or Eli: And me on that.

0:08:07 Thomas Or Eli: In what we've been talking about so far, and I'm going to see what we can do here to talk about issues and see if that actually happens.

0:08:15 Thomas: So I think I'm gonna let Eli start us off here.

0:08:19 Thomas Or Eli: Eli, what do you think? Thank you, this

0:08:21 Guests: So, well, I'm obviously very interested to hear what Michael and Dustin have to say. I think going over not necessarily anything long, but the basics of the Facebook post. But I want to say a realization I had yesterday, and this is what I'm really interested in discussing with Michael and Dustin today, because I want it to be proven wrong. So you guys don't follow me on Facebook anymore, I don't think, or maybe you never did. Oh, okay. I know that, Dustin, at one point you and I had interacted on Facebook. Michael, I wasn't sure if we had – or if you had ever followed me. I knew we had interacted. But so yesterday I had the worst conversation I've ever had in my life YouTube.

0:09:07 Guests: Me and Andrew went on this YouTube show. I'm getting to a point, I promise, with these two YouTube atheists. And for two hours, these people demonstrated complete and total ignorance about every subject they spoke about. And, and, and I really did my best to explain it. And I've been told in the past that I'm good at explaining those things. I'm, I'm good at communicating some of the social justice ideas. And I had Andrew with me to talk about the law. And Andrew was, you know, citing things and talking about the law with these people. And it just, nothing stuck.

Nothing stuck. And afterwards, it was a live stream, uh, and it literally the conversation ended with me going, this was a bad conversation, this went badly, and then we hung up. I mean, it ended with a someone in the chat calling me a kike. It's it was not a good talk. And and I got off the phone, and it was a live stream, and I got a call from Tom from Cognitive Dissonance, and and he said to me something that kept me up literally until six in the morning, and it's been circling in my mind ever since.

He said he said, the problem is you're you're too nice. You're trying to appeal to people's empathy. Uh, and we, we talked a little bit more about the conversation, sort of talked about the ideas that had been discussed, because Tom and I don't agree a hundred percent on, on all that stuff, but we respect each other enough to like

0:10:37 Eli: Really, really have that conversation in some really difficult ways.

0:10:40 Guests: Um, but, but that word empathy stuck in my brain and I, I had an epiphany, which is what I want to talk to you about, which is that I don't think it's possible to change people's mind about these subjects without empathy. You know, there's a great phrase on the right, and again, been going through my head all day, uh, which is the facts don't care about your feelings. Have you guys heard this? It's it's like, facts don't care about your feelings, and it's usually accompanied by like a racist meme or something, right? Well, I've seen it on I've see it in on the left too. Oh, yeah.

0:11:45 Guests: With their fellow human beings. And so when I talked about anti-discrimination law, and when I talked about and

0:11:52 Eli: This came up last night, so just for context, and I'll bring this to our conversation and what we're going to

0:11:57 Guests: Talk about talked about the abuse hurled at certain liberals on the left and why they choose to use blockbots and block people the way they do. The lack of empathy made it impossible for them to absorb that information. And I think we're in a really interesting perspective, because in the two Facebook posts that I've seen from you guys, I don't think either of you would say it's unfair of me to categorize as some very, very largely unempathetic language.

0:12:31 Guests: And Dustin, I'm going to start with you. I'm gonna start with you on this, right? So this is on Thomas's status. Day seven, finally watched Trump victory speech and Hillary concession. Still heartbroken. It's so clear which side of compassion love. And then Chris Falk comments, heartbroken? Wow.

0:12:49 Eli: And you comment below that, he cried about it two episodes if you want to listen. And then Thomas says, I love it, guys.

0:12:57 Guests: Keep perfectly fitting the stereotype of asshole and sensitive white men who aren't concerned about the groups. Trump is legitimately threatening. Keep up the good work. And then Matthew says, quit breaking his heart, assholes. And you say, no, I care. I'm mixed race and I'm mistaken for Mexican all the time. I was held as illegal in 2010.

0:13:18 Thomas Or Eli: Is Dustin by the way? So, yeah.

0:13:19 Guests: Yeah, that's me. Yeah. Sorry. Had to prove my citizenship before I was allowed to make bail on a bogus, disturbing the peace charge when I called for help after an assault and robbery. I'm one of those groups you cried for. I already live in Republican land, so I'm not really scared. And then later you say and this this is what boggled my mind. You're right.

0:13:38 Eli: Crying into a microphone definitely fixed the problem.

0:13:42 Guests: It wasn't a cringe fest to listen to a grown man cry on my behalf at all. Now, I got to admit, and this is where I think this conversation can be useful, because I've presented facts about the subjects that we're about to discuss dozens of times, maybe hundreds if I'm including the private conversations. But that's, I think, a core difference, is when I heard Thomas move to tears by the thought of what it's like to be that scared, to be that afraid, and to feel that way. It broke me in two, to hear one of my closest friends, someone who I've only met in person once or or twice, but to hear him be that vulnerable and that human. And Dustin, that didn't happen for you. And if that didnít happen for you, I donít know that Iím ever going to give you data thatís going to convince you to care about those people. I donít think if I had perfect information from on high about the damage Trumpís about to do to women and minorities like yourself and minorities he's unlike yourself.

0:14:59 Guests: It would matter if that moment of empathy isn't possible for you. And this has really been what's going through my head is I think the

0:15:09 Eli: Thing about trolling, and it's interesting, you both have sort of used troll terms.

0:15:13 Guests: You actually use the word trolling. So I'm using you first. And Michael, you've sort of used the word overall asshole, which I think you and you use the term trolling on the Facebook post as well. I think the problem is technology has devoid our generation of empathy. And I don't actually think it's possible to teach people who don't care about the consequences. That's the realization I've had over the last 24 hours. And I'm really interested, as people who I've sort of projected this onto, what your thoughts are.

0:15:48 Guests: Because, Dustin, I mean, and again, I'm sure you're a great dude.

0:15:51 Eli: Like, honestly, you probably are.

0:15:53 Guests: But like, you understand how, from my perspective, that's monstrous. And from the people listening, that's a monstrous thing to say. And I want to understand. I want to understand because the only conclusion I can reach is that you are a broken person who cannot empathize. And to introduce facts to you would be as ridiculous as trying to teach you in a language you don't speak. So I want you to tell me where this dialogue comes from. And where these feelings come from and bring me into your world so that at the very least, I don't want to be right all the time.

0:16:34 Guests: I'm happy to be wrong. I happen to be an asshole. I just want to know how to connect. Because if Thomas crying at the thought of his wife in Trump's America didn't reach you, how the fuck am I going to? Right up front, when the commenting started, said that he was heartbroken. And the The guy didn't understand that Thomas was heartbroken or why or I guess Thomas's stance on this. Right. So the reason that I put, you know, he cried a couple episodes ago, you give it a listen. I assumed he did not understand why you were that upset. He didn't know that he didn't stand your position. Surely you intended for people to listen to this. You recorded it. You put it out there. So, like, it's – and everyone got really offended by me saying, like Hey, man, he's really upset about this He cried about it Not in so many words Of course, I'm on a small phone I'm typing on Facebook You know, and real short there

0:17:23 Thomas Or Eli: Absolutely. Are

0:17:38 Thomas: You gonna argue that we misinterpreted what very clearly looked like I don't know if I want to call it sarcasm, but looked like kind of a mocking way that you said that? Are you are you going to argue that we misinterpret that?

0:17:49 Guests: No, no, no I'm not going to argue that I'm going to agree that right up front, my intention wasn't to, like, start shit.

0:17:52 Thomas Or Eli: Okay. That's Fine, I don't care, whatever. That's

0:17:57 Guests: I definitely don't have the same emotional reaction that you did, and I think there may be a few words for that. I don't know. Maybe we can hash that out. You know, I listen to these podcasts when I'm at work, so I probably don't get all of everything, so please correct me here. You, you, you cry, and and I get that you're upset, man, and I'm not thrilled about Trump and Jeff Sessions, one of his worst picks, is coming right out of my state. He's been fucking up our shit for a long time, um, I don't think it's the end of the world, right? I, I, you know, well I'm really trying to express this, man, like, I, I think that's quite an overreaction, and and I, I do empathize, but like, where I come from and the way I grew up, like, crying doesn't get you anything, it doesn't accomplish anything, like, I get being upset, and I get the worries, I don't understand. Oh

0:18:28 Thomas Or Eli: Fine, I mean, it Doesn't accomplish him?

0:18:52 Thomas: Do you have any idea how many people messaged me and said thank you so much for that recording, recording, like, I what it accomplished is is showing empathy for

0:18:56 Thomas Or Eli: Doing

0:18:56 Guests: Right. Oh, okay, I'm not telling you not to cry, man, I, I'm not telling anyone not to do that, like, I and I also said in that post that you skipped around. Well, it doesn't accomplish anything. Okay, to me, what that came across as was like, look, this band had an emotional reaction, maybe you should check it out. Okay, okay, I understand that the wording may not have been the best, but we can't have the best fucking wording for everything.

0:19:02 Thomas Or Eli: No, you Just said it doesn't accomplish anything. I mean, for one, but

0:19:29 Guests: That we say, man.

0:19:29 Thomas Or Eli: That's that's not

0:19:30 Thomas: See, he's not standing by that's why I asked him if if we he's gonna stand by, or try to say that we misinterpret that, he later called it cringeworthy and said some other thing, I don't

0:19:40 Guests: Oh, no, no. It is French-worthy.

0:19:40 Thomas Or Eli: Think, Dustin was yeah. Yeah.

0:19:43 Guests: French is completely fucking subjectional, dude. When I see somebody do something... It's an emotional reaction in itself.

0:19:43 Thomas Or Eli: Look,

0:19:51 Guests: Like, you know...

0:19:51 Thomas Or Eli: What Hold on, hold hold on, let's figure out what we're arguing here.

0:19:54 Thomas: I don't give a shit if you guys cringed at my crime.

0:19:57 Thomas Or Eli: I do not care. Like, I really do not. So, if that is all we are arguing about, that is fine. I

0:19:59 Guests: No, I actually want to kind of circle back to a lot of the things that Eli said there. You know, I think that he drew that that I'm not an empathetic person, I'm incapable of empathy, uh, based on a few a few Facebook comments there, man, and I think that's a big problem. What's going on, man? Like, you that's throwing a pretty big assumption as to, like, I'm borderline sociopath, like, I, I can't empathize, that's pretty fucked up. Empathy is like a mirror reflection, uh, you know, it's it's, you know, the best we can really do is put ourselves in that situation, and and that's that's really the base of empathy, am I wrong? Uh, so like, it's kind of subjective to your life experiences.

0:20:42 Eli: I need to push you on this point, Dustin, I want you to answer a very simple question, because I'm

0:20:47 Guests: Reading down The whole Facebook post now, and I can read the whole thing out loud if people need me to. Are you making fun of Thomas for crying on this Facebook post? I'm I'm not making fun enough Thomas it's

0:20:59 Thomas Or Eli: Think you certainly were. I mean, it was very easy to interpret it that way.

0:21:03 Thomas: So if you want to back down from that now, you do not have

0:21:06 Guests: Well, it's easy to know, it's easy to interpret it that way, but I, like, I know, Dustin, we're not good friends, but we come across each other on Facebook, okay, and I understand the way that I read his comment was this man got super emotional, and for me personally it's awkward listening to or seeing a man get emotional because we've been fucking socially constructed that men can't exhibit these emotions. That's the way that came across to me. This, this entire post, this post literally has the words, "Nah, I was good." You literally said we could make fun of you if we want to, right? Which I'm not even making fun

0:21:06 Thomas Or Eli: To though.

0:21:51 Guests: Of him there, like, that's that was what I was saying, like, he even said we can make fun on him. I didn't understand why everyone was getting so upset at me, to be honest, man.

0:21:58 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah, you know what?

0:21:58 Guests: Like, you, you did the point, yeah, because the point's about empathy.

0:21:58 Thomas Or Eli: I accept that. I

0:22:03 Eli: Here's the next textbook, because I just want a straight answer here.

0:22:06 Guests: I'm not going to dance around this and then pretend that my CNN links will convince you, right? I'm not going to pretend that like, oh, this moment of human connection doesn't matter. But let's go PLC numbers, because that's what's going to flip people around. I don't believe it. I don't believe it anymore. I've done this for two years, and I no longer believe it, I want to talk to a human being. So this is the next thing you wrote on the Facebook post, look, man, cry all you want. I seriously don't care. Someone has to hold their shit together. Men or women. I don't.

0:22:45 Guests: I appreciate you bashing masculine perspectives, enforcing your We need criers and we need people who think crying is ridiculous. I do not appreciate you policing my speech, but that is okay. Carry on my jet. Now, look, Dustin, I went to NYU.

0:22:50 Eli: Femininity onto others.

0:23:05 Eli: I graduated with a BFA in drama, which means I'm not super smart, but I did go to a pretty good

0:23:10 Guests: School. When I read that, using my reading comprehension, I read someone who is very clearly communicating a non-empathetic point of view. Is that an empathetic point of view, Dustin? Dude, not giving a fuck about somebody's personal fucking emotions doesn't mean- Is the definition of empathy. No. Is the literal fucking definition. It is actually, no, no, wait, wait, wait, it is actually the definition of empathy. Take a moment, square with me, square with, I will Google this moment, I will Google this right now, I will Google empathy and I will read you the, take a breath, take, take a breathe, man, all right. So Dustin, while he Googles empathy and figures out empathy, the, understand the ability to understand or share the feelings of another. Just because you understand why somebody is being emotional doesn't necessarily mean you need to share those feelings. He flat out said that he gets it, dude, I, but it's not, you just read a definition and then said the opposite of the, this is what I'm talking about, no, no, no, you can understand

0:23:29 Thomas Or Eli: Want

0:24:18 Guests: You can comprehend something, you can comprehend something without, without agreeing to it. This is exactly what I'm talking about. There are no facts that will change your mind because it does not matter if you're wrong, Dustin. It's such a simple question. Look at how much time we've already spent pretending you didn't make fun of Thomas. I've said so many terrible things about so many horrible people and I never ever have to lie about it, Dustin.

Dustin, we are not lying, buddy, like, like, first of all, please, please stop yelling at me over Skype. First of all, you know, and here's the thing, man, a lot of people came at me real hostile on that Facebook and I came back a little bit hostile, right?

You know what, it's so fucking, what, man, and he's like, oh, you're not reading other people's comments, when I say, like, don't believe my masculinity, I'm not replying to Thomas, I'm replying it to a guy that accused me of policing gender roles, right, when what I was really saying, and I explained later in the post, right, um, was that when I said it's cringy to hear a grown man cry, I meant that, like, a tenderness and innocence of a child, right, someone that hasn't really seen some heavy fucking shit going down or worry where are they sleeping tomorrow or what are they fucking eating today, like, that's, that's what I'm talking about, man, and, like, when I've been in those situations, when shit really goes down, when I am arrested because I'm brown, right, my reaction isn't to cry, okay, and, and I, if yours is, that's fucking fantastic, man, Thomas

0:25:47 Thomas: To correct that because again, I do NOT cry about myself. I almost never have cried about myself.

0:25:54 Thomas Or Eli: I cry when I, I'm very empathetic and I see what my they went through.

0:25:59 Thomas: Wife and other women, particularly, not to say it was isolated to them, but in particular, what Yeah, it's, if my wife is heartbroken, I am heartbroken.

0:26:09 Thomas Or Eli: Like, I can't, I mean, that's just how I am. And yeah, yeah, it's... Well,

0:26:12 Guests: I, I get you crying with your, your wife, man, you know, like, I, I, I don't understand you, like, recording it and sharing it, but it helped people, and I tell you what, you helped me understand, and I appreciate that, like, I don't get those emails, hold on, let me finish, I don't get those emails, man, and I really appreciate you sharing that perspective, um, you know, like, I was, I was there talking about me, and I, I explained before this whole conversation started, like, you know, I started drinking like 10 a.m. that day, uh, not that I'm excusing, I'm saying, like, I'm, I'm not David Smalley, like, I was drinking, uh, and, and on Facebook, Facebook, did I get snarky? Yes, I did. Did I get attitude? Yes. Did a lot of people? Yes, that's Facebook, and that's, like, and by the way, when I say that I'm a troll, what I mean is I like to engage in conversations, and when you push people, they defend themselves better. They bring more sources and they actually engage in conversation more.

0:27:04 Thomas Or Eli: That is something we should talk about.

0:27:06 Thomas: Well, I mean, Michael, Mike, you wanted to jump in.

0:27:08 Thomas Or Eli: Go ahead, say what you were going to say. Okay.

0:27:09 Guests: The only thing that I was going to say is is that you can empathize with someone. You can understand why they feel the way they do and fucking disagree with it. You can feel cringy at a grown man crying because we've been fucking conditioned to feel cringing at agrown man crying. But that doesn't mean that you don't understand why the fuck he's crying, man. Like, I listen to everything. I listen a fucking Cogdiss, atheistically speaking, scathing atheist. All of them. I listen to fucking Eli coming on the Gaytheist Manifesto and all that shit. And I find a lot of it cringy, and I disagree with a lot of it, and I can still listen to it and empathize and understand where everybody's coming from.

0:27:55 Guests: Just because you don't agree with somebody doesn't mean you don't have empathy for them. I empathize with fucking ISIS, because I understand where they're coming from, but they're fucking wrong. I'm not saying Thomas is wrong, Thomas was completely right, Thomas had all the reason in the world to fucking cry, worrying about his wife, with all the crap that everybody's been saying about what's going to happen when Trump gets elected, and it's the same fucking bullshit in a mirror that everybody was saying when Obama got elected, it's fucking fear, among, I, I get it, I, I understand where you're coming from.

0:28:32 Thomas Or Eli: Okay. So, that so let's get toward the issues. What do you think, Eli, do you want to try to get to the issues? Yeah.

0:28:40 Guests: I I just, I want to take a moment now, right, because we're all on Skype, I want, I want to all take a moment, and I want us all to recognize how different this moment in the conversation is. Dustin, you just demonstrated true empathy, right, towards there at the end. Now, look, you were mad at me at first, and as well you should be. I shouted at you, all right? I absolutely understand why you were angry with me. But at the end there, that was a demonstration of true empathy. And I believe I can communicate with that person, right?

I believe that I can present you with information and we can change each other's mind. But I can't change the mind of the person who wrote the words they did on Facebook. And when you say things like, well, you know, that's Facebook. Dustin, we're all human beings on the other side of Facebook. Like, I'm just a guy with a pug and a wife. There's no great separational divide. It all goes to my phone. It all go to my life. And it all went to Thomas's brain. He had to read someone making fun of him for crying, right? This is the world

0:29:08 Thomas Or Eli: I agree Yeah.

0:29:29 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah.

0:29:49 Thomas: I, I would really like to dispel the notion that, uh, that's one of the things I was going to get to, that trolling somehow accomplishes anything, I really, Dustin, I really

0:29:57 Guests: You have created. You made the world. And look, Dustin, you're obviously an empathetic guy. Look how well you just spoke. Look what you did. Understood. But you made the world a worse place, Dustin. You made it a darker, meaner place. And you didn't even mean it. You didn't mean it, you didn' even really fucking care. And you chose to strike at someone's fucking heart. And we don't have to talk about you, Dustin, we can bring this to the larger idea of trolling. The day after the scathing atheist post-Trump episode came out, someone tweeted at me that my wife's, because I talked about my wife crying, that my My wife's tears were enough to keep them laughing. Someone tweeted that at me. Can you imagine someone saying that to my fucking face? I can imagine you saying that about someone on Escaping Atheist.

0:29:57 Thomas Or Eli: Don't think it does.

0:30:49 Guests: Absolutely not. You are out of your mind. I have never said anything. I can agree with him, though, dude. I guess rape puppies, but not lick tears. Like, okay. Yeah, absolutely. I can see you, Eli. I can say that. Laughing at some fucking whacked out far right right wing Christian crying over Obama being elected or crying over Clinton being elected and being like, this is why I live, because these people are fucking insane. I can see that, that's, yes, I would also laugh at someone, I laugh at the, that viral video of the girl who cries over the fact that she can't pet every cat, right? If what you're saying is that Thomas's reasons for crying are as invalid as the people who wept when Obama got elected. We can go over the facts there.

0:31:32 Thomas Or Eli: Well,

0:31:44 Eli: We, we can pretend that we all don't know the difference between what it would be like if Hillary got

0:31:49 Guests: Elected and Trump got elected. No one here is a Trump supporter.

0:31:52 Thomas: But you do, are you get, you are making that false equivalence.

0:31:55 Guests: I'm not going to disagree with you that he is going to run a fucking muck. I do not agree with you. Comparison of like, well, you would make fun of a Trump supporter doesn't hold up at all. Okay, you would make phone a fucking Pat Robertson, a piece broke down crying because some random person got elected that was against his ideals. Yes, because the reason would be, okay, that's just justification, dude. No, no, I'm not agreeing with this troll that came on some fucking YouTube comment section or some fucking podcast comment section. I'm not agreeing with them. I'm not saying they're right in what they said, but I am saying you would do the same fucking thing. It's totally different, it's a totally different justification. It's the same action with a different justification, Michael. The justification, okay, but Michael, I would also make fun of someone who dropped their ice cream and shat their pants and then began to weep about it, right?

0:31:56 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah.

0:32:55 Guests: I would make fun of that person, too. I would joke about that. Do you see the difference between that and Thomas? Do you understand that causality matters, right, it does matter whether or not you're making fun of someone. I've already stated that. Okay, so, you know, I want to, I wanna remind you that we're not the guys that, you know, told you they would sustain themselves off of your wife's tears, you You know, like, and, and like, I think a lot of the problem here is like this junk, this junk to characterize what somebody is, uh, to the very core, like they don't have fucking emotions and empathize with people off of a couple of fucking comments on Facebook, man. Like I, you know, people, people are a lot more complex than that. And like, you're not saying you're more complex.

0:33:41 Guests: In fact, I just said that you demonstrated incredible empathy, incredible understanding, but you wrote those words and you made the world the worst place and I made the road a worse place. I made it from the worst case break

0:33:54 Thomas Or Eli: I have to agree with that, I gotta say. Yeah.

0:33:56 Guests: It down for me, okay. So, so I, I want to be very, very clear here at the beginning, because look, I will really do this with you, I really will, right, this is a genuine moment. I'm not bullshitting, not being condescending, I don't care if you, okay, again, like this is what, what I'm talking about, it's about a lack of empathy. We cannot, there are no facts I can present to you if you don't care. I'm listening, Eli. I'm, I'm 100, man, Dustin, do you understand, do you not, do you truly not understand how you're making fun of Thomas crying and opening himself up in that place of vulnerability made at least Thomas's world a worse place and made my world a worst. Because I watched one of my close friends do something incredibly vulnerable, incredibly raw, live on the air for us to feel, for us, to show us his heart and to see that shit on in a way that you've just admitted you did not even mean.

0:33:56 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah Okay.

0:34:57 Guests: You don't understand how that makes the world a worse place you don't think that makes the WORLD a worse PLACE? You didn't cut down a tree, you didn't shit in a two-year-old's lunch sack man, but you made the world the WORST PLACE.

0:35:12 Guests: Okay, I hurt somebody's feelings. Yeah, which, by the way, I want to step back one more second here, like, I didn't like go to a random fucking Facebook and and start stuff. Like, uh, you both of you guys have chosen a life in the public life and you have these skeptic debate and argue, uh, shows, you invited people to comment on you crying and on your shows, and I did that, and now I'm, you know, I've been yelled at and called, you know, uh, an unempathetic person, and I had to yell back at you to, uh, you know, get you to see that I am not a soulless, you know, bastard. No.

0:35:52 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah, let me, let me go with that, Dustin, so, yeah, I, I, I get it, I think that, uh, that that what you're saying now is true, but I agree with Eli, and one of

0:36:02 Thomas: My biggest problems with, uh, the internet today and the lack of empathy, and I think both of you guys should talk about this, it really does make the world a worse place. Like, I'm not saying, and I don't, and it is an incremental thing, just as no one Trump voter

0:36:15 Thomas Or Eli: Elected Trump, no one troll ruins the world, but this, this, this place that called the internet, that's full of a bunch of people who just, just you, it's the alt-right. I mean, look at what they're doing.

0:36:28 Thomas: It's a bunch of people who don't care about anyone's feelings. They think it's funny to say really mean shit in a targeted way. Eli does this on a entertainment show before we go with the false equivalents.

0:36:40 Thomas: He does this On an entertainment show for laughs that people decide to tune into. That's different than finding people on social media and targeting them.

0:36:49 Guests: Man, like it's, it's a, it's, okay, I think you're, I think invited me to comment on your stuff, like most, most of the discussions, and by the way, I want to clarify, I want, me by trolling, like, I, I like to have a conversation, some more productive than others, most of them are in, like, you know, political groups and things like that, man, uh, but you, you invited me too, to comment, you invited me, make fun of you if I wanted to, which, which I kind of poked at you a little bit there, I mean, I, I could have bugged a lot harder but I didn't, uh, you know, like, I mean, uh, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, Thomas, I, I did not intend to hurt your feeling. Well, then how did I fucking make the world worse if I if I heard it so

0:37:22 Thomas Or Eli: You didn't, you didn't hurt my feelings. I actually don't even care. I really don't. Um, but, and while I would say that if your definition of trolling is very specific and you're using that word in a way that means you go and try to like make little comments on conversations that aren't just horrible, personal, like kill yourself insults, that's fine. I don't think that's really what I'm talking about, but what you did do, I will say what you didn' do by, by making making fun of my show of empathy for, for women who

0:37:52 Thomas: Are hurting at this time, is signal, even if this was not what was in your heart, it may very well be, is signaled that you don't care about them.

0:38:00 Thomas Or Eli: And for all the women listening and the men too, men too messaged me and said they really appreciated that because they were feeling the same way. For all of them who saw that comment and saw that exchange, they saw, oh, great.

0:38:14 Thomas Or Eli: I'm reminded there's someone who doesn't care care about my pain, uh, and, and mocks it. You know, that, that does make the world a worse place. Well,

0:38:21 Guests: You mean exactly like when other, I don't know, podcasters with a few thousand listeners flat out say that they don't give, give a fuck about blank person because they happen to fall under blank category. I won't be specific because I don't want to start shit, but... I mean, be specific, Mike. Don't dance around anything. If you have something to say, say it. No, I'm not going to be specific because I don't wanna start a whole nother conversation that's gonna fucking devolve us again.

0:38:51 Thomas Or Eli: That's fine. I don't, uh. You're saying me or Eli has said that, that's, you

0:38:52 Thomas: I mean, if

0:38:55 Guests: No, no, you haven't. You haven't, no. To a degree, yes, Eli, but I'm talking about Eli. I'm saying when there's certain podcasters in the the atheist community, that flat out say that somebody's opinion or somebody's feelings don't matter because of their race or gender, are they doing the same damage as Dustin here? I don't know. I have Dustin here. I want to understand Dustin. I wanna have a conversation with Dustin. All I'm asking is, is it the same fucking impact? I'm not using a hypothetical. I'm using a realist refusing to state names because I don't want to start a fucking shit storm either say it or don't. Mike, that's my point. Man.

0:39:41 Thomas Or Eli: Can, you could just start all the shit terms you want. I do not care.

0:39:44 Thomas: If you're not, uh, actually addressing Eli or I, I do really see that it's

0:39:49 Thomas Or Eli: Relevant because we're not. You know? Like, it's, but can

0:39:50 Guests: Okay. Then. I'll address Eli and I, when you make fun of fucking, when you made fun of cis white males or whatever, do you not think that's just as damaging as Dustin making fun of somebody, doing something that makes most people uncomfortable? Are you talking about my comedy show?

0:40:13 Guests: Are you talking about- It's a joke, so it doesn't count. But words matter, right? This is the shitstorm I didn't want to start, dude. This is- I'm going to start it. I did not want to star. Start it. Is this the whole thing here? Yeah, literally, this level of intellectual dishonesty

0:40:29 Eli: About the difference between the things I say, because like on my show, Scathing Atheist, I pretended to dig up and fuck Phyllis Schlafly's dead body.

0:40:38 Guests: Yeah, I know. That's not nice. Listen, my point is, is Dustin's comment just as damaging as categorizing an entire group of people based on their race and sex? Yes or no? First of all, I didn't do that.

0:40:57 Eli: Or if you're talking about it as a joke, it's an entirely different thing.

0:41:01 Guests: And everyone, including you— It's a joke. So it's a different thing now. Yes, absolutely.

0:41:08 Thomas Or Eli: You get, okay.

0:41:09 Thomas: If we're going to have this conversation, you need to give some example

0:41:11 Guests: Yeah. You have to be specific.

0:41:12 Thomas Or Eli: That works for Eli, because we're talking about a tangible thing with Dustin, it yeah,

0:41:14 Guests: Right. Because I want to be clear, if I wrote a specific non-joke comment saying on Phyllis Schlafly's memorial page, I am going to fuck the dead body of your mother who has just passed away, that is a horrible, terrible thing to say. And if I did it, I should have been ashamed of myself. Self, I would leave it on my comedy show, right? Because everyone who comes to my comedy show, and here's the sketch I wrote where I, they understand that it's a joke. They understand that it is a joke, right? Right. And I wouldn't only empathize with somebody if you understand perfectly where they're coming from.

I think everything that we've just talked about for like, what, the past fucking 15 minutes, has been a partial understanding and a complete fucking analysis of somebody based off of a couple of comments, and I do not agree directly. I did not agree with Dustin. Michael, we've asked Dustin directly, he's admitted he was making fun of Thomas, it's not a misinterpretation, it's- It's not. It's not. We asked, and he said yes. But how is that any worse than what I would call comedy trolling? Because that's what most comedy is. Comedy is generally fucking offensive.

0:42:42 Guests: How does that make it a worse place when you have people that are listening to you and taking everything that you say to heart, fucking Pat Robertson's jowls and fucking slop bucket asshole being a fucking dick? You make fun of them. You make, make fun of fucking Michelle Bachman, you make fun of Michael, do you really not understand the difference between commenting on someone's personal Facebook and the jokes someone makes on a comedy show?

0:43:08 Eli: Do you, do you really not understand the difference between- No, I understand.

0:43:11 Guests: What I want to know first of all, what I want to know is, how- I thought that Facebook was connected to his, I thought that Facebook page was connected to the whole shows and all that, man, um,

0:43:21 Thomas Or Eli: No. I do have to admit, uh, that, yeah, that is for my podcast, I mean that is kind of

0:43:22 Guests: Okay. Okay so like I want to draw like a pretty clear line here, that I didn't like, just like walk up to some, you know, random asshole and start making fun of like, you you- you invite comments, you, you have a podcast where you have celebrity, it's about expressing opinions, it's not expressing emotions. I expressed my own emotions about your emotions, and we have come to pretty much understanding about that. You think that I've made the world a worse place because of my emotions, I think that yours helped some people, I admit, but, um, I, you know, it made me feel kind of icky, uh, and and I'm sorry about that, um, let's let's look

0:43:27 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah no that's okay I I

0:43:58 Guests: Let's go on, let's

0:43:58 Thomas Or Eli: Get by the way, by the way, I gave a trigger warning, so people didn't utilize the trigger warning, yeah yeah

0:44:01 Guests: Yeah, no, dude, I wasn't triggered. I wasn't triggered. Like, and let's go on. That's also, like, you did this whole, like, all poor baby, are you triggered? Do you need, like a safe space? And like, I want to draw, like a clear thing, like I did not say you should not have said this. I did NOT say, how dare you? I did Not say that I was traumatized or I need to run away or please don't talk about these things or anything like that. So like, I wasn't doing that. And I felt like that was pretty pointed too, so like, you straight up, you made fun of me man you you made fun of pretty quickly so like I made fun back and you know, I'm sorry, feelings were hurt.

0:44:05 Thomas Or Eli: Yeah.

0:44:31 Thomas Or Eli: I was, I was giving it back to you, yeah yeah that's fine Yeah.

0:44:55 Thomas: Well, if you're still listening, I'm gonna give you some very honest thoughts on this one. Thank you, everyone. First thing is first, I gotta be a little, I'm questioning Cecil's decision-making skills here, I, sorry, Cecil, I actually apologized to Dustin right after that, right after what you just heard, because I did make fun of him, and I, you know, people may think this is, you you know, disingenuous. I assure you it's not. I conditioned it on whether or not he really was intending to mock me or not. Like, if he really wasn't intending to mock and I just mistook what he said, I'm happy to apologize. I'm really sorry if I mistook what Dustin said in that exchange.

0:45:42 Thomas: Eli and I didn't read it that way, and I think most people didn't as well. But I mean, I suppose if... I don't know. Anyway, that's up to you to decide. So if I misinterpreted that, I am sorry. Here's what I want to say, and this is, apologies to Mike, I think Mike threw us off in a lot of ways that were not productive, and there's different reasons for that, I would say that I think this was two different conversations, at least two. I think there was a conversation we could have had with Dustin, and then there's a separate conversation we we could have had with Mike about totally different things that Mike kept trying to bring in. And I don't blame him because we invited him here and that apparently was what he wanted to talk about. So I don't claim I'm not, you know, don't, don't blame me, Mike.

0:46:28 Thomas: You wanted to, you wanted to talk about the ways that, uh, that you thought the left was being hypocritical or Eli was being hypocritic, whatever it is. But, but I thought that Eli and Dustin and I were, we're actually getting to some level of understanding. And that actually is interesting to me. I have to say I kind of like Dustin. I mean, after I was very mad at him, I was, you know, and I made fun of him a little bit back on Facebook and we exchanged some words. But during this recording, there was never a time when I was, I don't think I ever got mad at Dustin. You'll see in, maybe I'll eat my words, but in in part two, if it becomes available to you. I got incredibly mad at Mike, but I don't really think...

0:47:14 Thomas: I think Dustin and I actually were able to communicate. And so chalk that down to whatever you want. Maybe our text-based, you know, social media ways of communicating these days are just not doing us enough justice. They're not getting done what we need to get done, whatever the case may be. Dustin is someone I would talk to again, Mike, I would again with some conditions, with some different topics outlined, maybe, like, specifics that we wanted to stick to, and, again, as you'll see if you listen to the full episode, after this, really, it really goes off the rails, really goes off the rails. So, and it's repetitive, and it's boring, I just, the full version is not good, that's, if you have a lot of time, and you're masochistic, and you're a patron of mine, feel free to listen to the full version, but but yeah, I wouldn't recommend it.

0:48:08 Thomas: So, those are my thoughts, I actually think if we, it would have been Eli, me, and Dustin, or Eli, uh, me and Mike, we could have had maybe a more productive thing, and that's my fault for not really knowing ahead of time what, I, I didn't realize what we wanted to talk about would be so divergent, I thought we'd be able to agree on, or at least agree on what we were trying to discuss, and it didn't turn out that way, so, my apologies for that. That. But this was my attempt. Once again, let me know if you want to hear part two or let me know if you don't want to hear part two, both, you know, so I can kind of gauge it. If I get a lot of no's, I'm just going to move on. I'm happy to just move on and I hope I didn't waste your time. Though I think this particular episode, I think there's some valuable stuff in there actually, I really do.

0:48:54 Thomas: So let me know what you think. Comment anywhere that find comments or places are sold. I don't know. And thank you as always for listening to the show. And if you, again, if you want that full version, patreon.com/atheist is where you can find it. And I'll see you guys next week.