SIO46: AHCA - The Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 46. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, after what feels like a bit of a hiatus in terms of the commentary Thursdays here, we're back to a pretty normal commentary Thursday. I've got some great stuff to talk to you about. The CBO score, I didn't get to address that. I think it's very important. I do not want to miss that. And The CBO score came out for the new version of the American Health Care Act, and I want to talk about that. I think it's the most important issue, maybe, in politics right now, I really do, and I'm going to tell you why. And then I have some great voicemails, really top stuff, only three of them because they're big, I don't want to take too long, but I'm going talk about cultural appropriation, something I've never, to memory, I've ever addressed, I got some thoughts on that.

0:01:18 Thomas: And then also a couple other really thoughtful, important voicemails. So super excited about this episode. Before I do that, I just need to tie up a couple loose ends about the last episode with James and the hoax paper and all that. I just want to about a couple things that I'm hearing just to address it while I can. But I'm not going to spend too much time on it.

0:01:46 Thomas: So I want to thank you guys for the overwhelming response to Monday's episode. Really, just thank you so much, everybody who just had really nice things to say about the episode. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. It really drives the show as well as the people who pledged in response. Thank you so much for your support. I want to say not that this is what determines whether someone is right or wrong, so not that I'm using this as reasoning for my position, but for moral encouragement and to kind of reinforce, like, am I crazy or not? Not every email I received in support was from like a PhD or from, you know, someone in academia, thoughtful, long emails giving me details and, oh, they'll look at this and check this out.

0:02:33 Thomas: And the only, the couple voices that disagreed with me were just people on Twitter being like, "Yeah, you're wrong." So, I mean, I didn't really hear any good counter arguments. I'm going to go over something I heard to clarify, but that, that helped me in my, I, in terms of confidence, because I heard from so many of my brilliant listeners, really, it is so cool. I'm going to call someone out in particular, and like that is Alan, who sent me an email. I don't want to use your full name, just in case. But he said he is just starting a neuroscience PhD. I feel like the good guys were on my side in this one, just from my limited interactions. But anyway, starting in neuroscience PhD, and he said that he, prior to my episode, he would have probably come down on the other side because people tend to just look at abstracts and then not even really fully comprehend what they are and never read the real paper and not really consider it.

0:03:24 Thomas: But what Alan did, first off, he told me about Sci-Hub. Thank you. I know about about Sci-Hub now. It's a place where you can get journals, a lot of papers for free. And he also, a lot people also offered to get me access to full journals in the future. Thank you so much. I may take you up on that. Really appreciate it. But anyway, what Alan said was, hey, I've got access to these full papers. So I looked, he said he like read all of these papers that I talked about at the end of the episode. I would be amazed if he read all them because it was a lot, but maybe he did. He sent me some key parts about like, hey, you were right. Like, here's the and I'm blown away because I was just going off the abstract. I could have been wrong. But the reason I did that was we both James and I were just going out the abstract, so I felt like it was fair to just offer the counterpoints. And I think you guys, for the most part, agreed.

0:04:10 Thomas: But he read through the full papers and like, for example, the alligator paper where James represented it as alligators teach about misogyny or whatever, some stupid thing like that. But what he said was, what Allen said is, and here's an example from the paper of what it was talking about in the abstract, where the family like assigned roles of mom and dad to smaller and larger gorillas, just based on size, even though they were both male gorillas. And I mean, this isn't a science paper. This is not a hard science thing, but it's an essay. Most of these things are essays, and pretty much all the ones I read, they had an interesting, fascinating thesis statement, which is, wow, these families go in and they say, yeah, that's the mom gorilla, that is the dad gorilla, because these gender roles are so ingrained, even though they are both male gorillas, and that is interesting, something to think about, and I am sure the paper went on and on about that, and he said it was interesting.

0:05:04 Thomas: So only real counter I heard, again, from angry people on Twitter was, oh, Mr. Anti-Strawman, you kept saying James didn't want this to exist. He didn't want this paper to exist, but he never said that. Well, I can defend this. I don't think this is a straw man at all, and I think I would be able to say it in a way that James would agree, which is not something you could say, By the way, for when James summarized the papers so badly, I suppose we're skipping right past that and we're holding me to more account. By the way, who should the burden be on when someone is trying to take down an entire field that they are not an expert in? But anyway, taking that on board, the reason I said he wouldn't want these to exist is he presented a list of papers that he, by his words, were manifestly ridiculous. That should, he said, gender studies needs a house cleaning.

0:05:50 Thomas: And that very, maybe he didn't use the exact words that I used, but then you're just trying to deflect away from the actual point at hand, which is he said that it needs to be a housecleaning. He presented these papers as manifestly ridiculous, like so ridiculous on their face, he didn't even need to say really why they were ridiculous. Do you think it's a straw man of me to say he doesn't think those are worthy of pursuit to say, he doesn't think this study or this essay should exist because that's exactly what he's saying. When he says this field is full of crap and needs a house cleaning, he's saying this shouldn't have been published. That's not even, that's not, even like that far removed from what his literal words were. I just, I didn't even, there was just an interpretation, like a very very direct interpretation of what he said. So that's not a straw man.

0:06:36 Thomas: And then the point where I went the most hard, where I would say I took the most interpretation of what he was saying, was when I said, in order to share that YouTube video of the feminist glaciology lady and share that in a mocking way, you really have to have a disregard for women. I will also back that up, and maybe I should have qualified, or you were just not thinking carefully. But James is a careful thinker. So I'm not going to go around uh spreading the idea that James just doesn't consider stuff and doesn't read stuff, and that I, I mean, I could, but I feel like that would be just as slanderous as, as anything else, so I will qualify, either he didn't think about it and shared it stupidly without watching it, which I don't think could possibly be true of James, but, or he saw a video on a feminist approach to glaciology, which, look, I'm not going to endorse every word of that paper or video.

0:07:33 Thomas: Like, yeah, there's some stuff in there that's kind of, kind of touchy feely, like, whatever. I don't, it's not, but it's not really a science paper. It's talking about, that it's starting a conversation on why women were not included in science.

And the big point it makes, which is interesting, is that one of the first arguments over glaciers when they first were kind of discovered and being talked about was settled by which explorer was more manly, like, that's how people decided which, which person was right, and it's interesting, so it's, it's making interesting points, maybe you don't agree with all of them, that's fine, but to see the end of the video, and I'll link it again, because some people, it was linked, but there were so many links in the last episode, some people didn't find it, I'll like it again, the video, in the end where she, she pleads with us in a way, and she says, "Look, I'm scared." She said, "I am scared because I got so much abuse for this and I didn't know what to do, and I don't want to show people that this really hurt me, but I'm scared."

0:08:29 Thomas: To see a video where a woman is telling you that she is scared and to share it with complete disregard and to say, "Look, they gave these morons a video," I think his tweet was, "They gave these people a TED Talk," to share it in a mocking way, to encourage and continue in her abuse online, you've got to have a disregard. You've gotta have a regard for her feelings and her plight and the harassment women get online.

It would be a different story if he said, "I think some of this story is wrong, but I don't encourage continued mockery and harassment of her." Sure, different story. That's not what he did, and that's not what everybody online is doing, and it's, I hadn't, that the end of that video, that TED video, I mean really it brought a tear to my eye because it was just, it was, it was this woman, like this smart, you know, intelligent, insightful, woman, talking about the fact that she was scared, and the disregard for that is just shocking to me, it really is. I'm encouraged, I, I have to think there's a lot of people I'm not hearing from, I've got to think that, especially with the big names like Sam Harris and Shermer and everybody behind this, I've got to think there's a ton of people out there who are not in with me. I've got to think that.

But also, I'm just so, I suppose I really turned from totally cynical and pessimistic about it to, once I got the response I did, you know, from all you guys letting me know, like, "Wow, yeah, no, this is, I can't believe these people are not being skeptics." You know, it really encouraged me. And I think that, we don't need to abandon the movement necessarily. Because in my darkest times of this, I was worried, like, do we need to just find a new name or something?

0:10:12 Thomas: Not that that even works. But I don't think so. I think we can just really keep trying to get the message across that, you know, this kind of stuff won't fly in the skeptic movement. And maybe, I don't know, it's going to take years, you know, because honestly, my influence, it pales in comparison to Sam Harris and Shermer. Not so much, you know, Bogosian and James, they don't have that big of a reach, but Shermer and Harris, I mean, Harris has a huge reach, and he deserves it. I love Harris's work, but it's gonna take some time to all compete with that in any real way. But I guess in some ways I don't really have to, because, you know, people link me that, Stargate Universe, no, no, Skeptic's Guide to the Universe also came out the same way as I did on this. And they're a huge podcast. They're a gigantic podcast. So that's great.

0:10:57 Thomas: I mean, maybe I don't even need to think about it. Maybe there's already enough people reaching what I think is the actual skeptical, right thinking conclusion on this, so that's good. That's great, that's right, that's enough what I'm talking about last show's topic. I just wanted to address those few things. Let's get on to some, let's talk about the CBO score. This is very important. So one thing I heard that I think makes so much sense, and I believe it was on the Vox podcast, The Weeds. Want to give credit where it's due. But one thing that makes so many sense to me is that I heard a lot of people say, I think in this whole Trump nonsense, people are getting really carried away with what might be like a scandal, you know, with what might be with the Russia thing, what might come to light with that? What can we do there?

0:11:43 Thomas: And I really am convinced by this. I think that the most egregious thing happening is right in plain sight. It's this healthcare bill. It really is because I, someone made the point that like, yeah, people think like hidden information is by definition going to be more damning, you know, like it's going to be, Ooh, we find out, uh, someone had a conversation with a Russian and it could be that, that if something illegal was done, maybe that's a quick ticket impeachment thing. But, but as I illustrated a few episodes ago, impeachment is so unlikely and it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely. And 2018, the odds that we're getting the House back and the Senate back, and the odds that we are going to have 67 senators willing to vote on this, I mean, very, very low odds.

0:12:30 Thomas: But what is right in front of us, what is out in the open for everyone to see is the American Health Care Act. And another point that I think is right on is that it is not fair to even call this a health care bill. This is not a health care bill. It's just not. I'll tell you why. It all it does is take away money from health care and spend it on tax cuts for the rich. Now, you might think that is like a liberal. Oh, that's a liberal talking point way of saying what's happening. No, I'll go through the details and that is literally what it's doing. Well, let me ask you this. If there was a bill, let's say don't where there's no name to it. We don't know what it is. There's just a bill. Here's what it does. It takes money away from bridges and roads and it uses that money to repeal a tax on the rich.

0:13:20 Thomas: Would you call that an infrastructure bill? Would you say, oh, let's check out this infrastructure bill. No, you're just defunding something. You're just taking away from health care. You would call that, that's a tax cut. That's called, here's a tax cut. Now, how do we pay for it? Well, we defund some stuff. Now there's a, there's a sprinkling of things here and there in the American healthcare act that Republicans are putting in there, honestly, in just an attempt to make it seem more like they're doing something when really there, there there's just virtually nothing there. They're, they're taking away 800 plus billion dollars from Medicaid. Something that as my video covered the other week that Trump promised he'd never do. They're taking away money for that. And they're using that money to pay for a tax cut.

0:14:07 Thomas: It is not a healthcare bill. You just wouldn't call it a healthcare bill. Call it a tax-cut bill. This is right out in the open and this is a foundation of Trump's campaigning. This is a core political promise. This does not. Oh, he said one thing here. Big deal. He contradicted himself. This This is, people vote on this. When I had Dr. Price on, and I want, I'm tempted to try to get him back on to talk to him about this. I might. Let me know what you think about that idea. Maybe it's suicidal. But when I asked him, do you think Trump will have a healthcare bill that lowers premiums and ensures more people? He said, oh, of course. Of course he will. Of course. Of course, he could figure out how to do something that's literally not possible. Of course it's possible. Of course this is something that I don't think is going to fly.

0:14:53 Thomas: And this is, this is all we need. I mean, forget if Trump were a perfect legal, not back channeling, not weird, not, you know, it was just a normal president, but did this to health insurance and tried to get away with it. I think he would be in deep shit and we need to make sure he's in deep ship. So let's talk about the CBO score. You may remember from the first CBO that $24 million would lose health insurance. Well, guess what? Good news, guys. The revision which they passed before the CBO was even out. I know a lot of you probably know this, but this is important because this is the campaign issue for the next however many years, especially especially if spaghetti monster forbid this gets through the Senate, which will be a disaster for human lives.

0:15:43 Thomas: This really will cost human lives, I really hope that doesn't happen, I really do, but even let's hope and be optimistic and say it's not going to pass, we still are able to campaign for 2018, 2020, whenever that these callous Republicans in the House passed this bill, like even though it didn't, if it doesn't become law, this needs to be the issue because this is atrocious. So that 24 million turned into 23 million. Oh, good. Problem solved.

0:16:15 Thomas: So instead of 23, 24 million people losing their health insurance, it's only 23 million, so problem solved there. Good thing you passed it already before knowing this from the CBO. This is dishonest. It's shady. It's everything. This is horrible. It really is. And there's You know, I can guarantee this. If I get Dr. Price on here to talk about this, you know his defense will be, and some people, some pundits already doing this. The defense will be, ah, CBO, biased. CBO just, they don't know, they got Obamacare wrong. They don't understand what they're talking about. Well, listeners, loyal listeners to Serious Inquiries Only will remember a few episodes back when the last time I talked about the CBO where I talked about what the CBO got right and wrong about Obam, Obamacare. One of their assumptions was a little off.

0:17:02 Thomas: So they missed on a prediction, but it was sort of compensated elsewhere. So they thought more people would be insured through the markets and fewer would be insured through Medicare or Medicaid, I forget which, and it flopped. So the overall number ended up pretty close. And by the way, the CBO was closer than anybody else. It's not like we all knew the truth that was going to happen and the Cbo was wrong. No, the CBO was closer than anybody else and the CBO again is led by a Republican, a Republican nominated the head of the CBO. It's a nonpartisan organization. There are a bunch of economists who want to get this stuff right. So this is not some anti-Trump conspiracy. And by the way, if you want to say, because experts can be wrong, of course, it doesn't mean the CBO is going to be 100% right.

0:17:49 Thomas: If you disagree with the CBO, if you have what you think is better prediction, the onus is on you to say why, to prove, okay, here's my argument. Here's what they're getting wrong. You need to do that. And you have a lot of work to do because you got to outwork an office of people whose job this is. Doesn't mean it's impossible, but that's what you have to do. A chart that I've made the art for this particular podcast episode, and it's the estimated share of US residents under 65 who are uninsured. It has showed that since the marketplace enrollment happened in 2013, the uninsured rate has dropped tremendously. It's gone from 16.6% to 10.4%. And the projection is existing law would carry that, that 10.4 would become 10.0.

0:18:35 Thomas: So it's not going to go down that much. So that's not great. I mean, there's things we could do to fix that, but it's staying around the same, going down a little bit in the next 10 years. Under the ACA, under this new bill, it would increase to 18.2%. So it would go higher than it has been since on this chart. So if since at least I think about 1997 looks like because it covers 30 years, so it will be higher than it's been in that long. And you'd have to do work to prove why they are wrong, because no one can deny that this bill cuts $834 billion from Medicaid. How would you propose that that doesn't mean people will be uninsured? It just, it's not, you can't say that. And there's some little tricks in here that you need to watch out for because Republicans, A, I think some of them are trying to sell it on the fact that this would reduce the federal deficit?

0:19:28 Thomas: Well, sure, when you cut $834 billion from health care and more for different things, yeah, okay, sure it reduces the deficit by $119 billion. But if we were just trying to reduce the deficit, there's other stuff we can do. This is supposed to be a health care bill. This is not a deficit reduction bill. We can do different things to do that. Other tricks in here, premiums will go down, I believe. So that might be something they try to sell you on. Here's the trick with that. Premiums are going down because all the unhealthiest people who can't afford insurance are out of the market. So when the highest cost people are forced to leave the market, which i.e. like die or, or not have health coverage and just do, I don't know, go bankrupt, do whatever.

0:20:15 Thomas: So when they leave, yeah, it makes it a little cheaper for everybody else. Makes it cheaper for me, a youngish, I'm just getting older every day, but a young ish, healthy guy, makes it cheaper. For me, when an older person living in a rough area where there's not a lot of options for health care, when they are forced out of the market, sure, I profit. Yeah. Great. Great for me. So that's the way premiums go down. That's a trick. And also, there's another component to that, which is people will be forced to buy because the regulations are relaxed, they will be able to buy, and insurance companies will be able to sell crappier and crappyer plans that don't actually cover you for anything really, and they are barely even called insurance. Like, they, technically the CBO is like, we're not sure if this can even be considered health insurance. So yeah, sure, when you sell a bunch of those, that'll decrease premiums.

0:21:05 Thomas: So those are the tricks to look out for when, when, if anyone is trying to sell this bill, uh, because it's a pile of shit. It really is. It's insulting. It's horrifying. It, it's, it's an attack on human health in this country. It really is negative. And do we know why this is? Yes, we know why, because all Paul Ryan wants to do and all the Freedom Caucus wants to do is reduce taxes on rich people. They want to cut taxes for the rich. That's what they want to do. They have tricked an idiot president into thinking that this is a healthcare plan when really it's just a tax cut. And again, now I'll show the evidence why this is not some liberal conspiracy storyline. This is a tax cuts for the poor. This is not a tax, for the tax cut for the rich, because when you look at the chart, and I will link the CBO report, is on page three of the official CBO report, which I will link.

0:21:52 Thomas: There is a breakdown of the budget impact on this. As they do for any bill, they're saying, okay, here's what's going to decrease our budget. So as in we're cutting costs, here is what's going to increase our budget, net effect of the budget. So it's pretty simple. It's all laid out. There's only five things and they can pretty much be combined, really, but I'll go through the five things. So, it's simple as this. Medicaid. $834 billion. So that's, that's what's decreasing our cost. So that's in the, and then also there's another thing, tax credits and selected coverage provisions. Uh, that's also decreasing the cost because it's reducing subsidies for non-group health insurance. So that's also cutting health insurance, so it's cutting subsidies for certain groups in health insurance and then here's what's increasing our cost.

0:22:41 Thomas: So you would say, so those two things are the only thing on that side of the ledger, those are the only thing that are decreasing our cost and that is cutting an immense amount, cutting a trillion dollars from health coverage, essentially. Actually. Here's the other side of the ledger. Patient and state stability fund grants. So there's a little bit of spending here, and this is $117 billion, and that is to reduce premiums. That's what they're trying to do to reduce premiums. It's a pittance, but it's something they can sprinkle in there to make it look like, oh, no, we're trying. We're trying to make health coverage work. And then $210 billion that we're spending by not collecting penalty payments from people who are uninsured. So that's a little complicated. I went over it last time. I don't think I want to repeat, but in short, we're changing the individual mandate.

0:23:28 Thomas: It still kind of is a mandate, but not really. It's just a worse version of an individual mandate. So we actually cost us money because we're not going to collect as much money from that. And those are $117 billion, $210 billion. Here's the bulk of the rest of the cost of this bill. Repeal or delay of taxes on high-income people, fees imposed on manufacturers, and excise taxes enacted under the ACA, modification of various tax preferences for medical care. It's a tax cut. This is a tax-cut bill. It is outlined there, right there. That is the entirety. You're saving money by cutting a trillion from people's health care and you're spending that money on tax cuts. That's as simple as that. It's not, this is, I just really, I mean, we, I can't believe Republicans could go through with this because this is going to be the easiest campaign ad.

0:24:15 Thomas: It was going to be the easiest campaign ad. Donald Trump promised to give you coverage. Here's what he did. Cut taxes on the rich. You know what? Donald Trump didn't promise you cutting taxes on the rich. President Paul Ryan might promise you that if he ran, Donald Trump didn't. It is absolutely disgusting and Republicans are digging their own grave. And I don't want them to. And Democrats I'm hearing are like, we would rather people not die. Like, go ahead and keep your political capital. I would gladly trade the ability to use an attack ad to elect a Democrat. I would trade that for people not dying of easily curable diseases and disorders and whatever ever because they can't afford healthcare. I would gladly make that trade. We could campaign on some other issue.

0:25:01 Thomas: All right. Sorry. I mean I, I get heated on this because it is just, it's so insulting and it just, it's just so dishonest too. I mean, it really is. I mean it would be one thing. It would be one thing again, if it was president Paul Ryan, if Paul Ryan had run this campaign and said, you know what? We got to cut taxes and the country voted him in. That would be one thing I would disagree, but it would be like, all right, well, the country voted on a guy who said we need to cut taxes on the rich. Well, I mean that's the will of the people, but it is so such an insult. It is such an insult. It's so disgusting to have someone have run on a promises of everything, of milk and honey, of more insurance for everybody. I'll have all the insurance they could possibly want. And we're not cutting taxes on the rich. That's not happening. They need to pay more taxes, he said in a tweet that I highlighted in my video that I made.

0:25:48 Thomas: And then just doing a bait and switch and subbing that in for a different agenda that the country didn't vote for. It is sickening. All right. Enough rant on that. But really, this is going to be the key issue going forward. It it's really important. It's vitally important. So that's why I wanted to spend a little rant time on that. But let's get to an excellent voicemail segment that I'm excited for. Here you go. All

0:26:12 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

0:26:32 Voicemail: Hi Thomas, my name is Andy. I was wanting to hear your thoughts on cultural appropriation. I tend to think that most of the time it's bullshit. I know that's kind of an unpopular opinion among liberals, but I just want to know what you think about it. Love the show. I like it a lot. It's awesome. Thank you very much.

0:26:52 Thomas: Right. Well, this is not so much a voicemail as an opportunity to launch into a big, big topic. I can't, I'm not going to cover 100% of this topic. What I'm going to do is I'm going to say a few things. First off, I am going to, I can give my opinion on, but I don't intend this as the end-all, be-all or be-I'll-end-all whichever, and I'm open to learning on this. I'm opened to comments on this, I'm opening to other voices on the show. If you have a guest idea or if you want to leave a voicemail giving your opinion, I am open to that. I do not mean for this to be the end of a discussion. I want to make that very clear, so I'll give you some thoughts because I've never talked I don't want to shy away from tough topics.

0:27:40 Thomas: I think it's a bit of a minefield, but I'm going to take a crack at it here. But this is in no way meant to be me explaining things to you. This is just my thoughts and I'm open to continuing the conversation further. The first thing to say that I think is appropriate for a lot of what I talk about on here is there's no cause. There's some quote that's like, there's no cause so good that you can't find a fool following it, or something like that. I think my dad told me that once back in the day. But that's true. I mean, there is just no cause so pure that you don't find idiots on either side. There are people, frankly, sorry to be insulting, there are people who are are reactionary, not very bright, who are emotional, angry, on either side. There are people who are going to say incredibly stupid things on either side, I think this is one of those times where I want to say that I do not believe it is possible, nor wise, nor accurate to render a decision on cultural appropriation as a thing.

0:28:38 Thomas: I think that it's too broad of a thing to say good, bad, fine, okay, it's not. I think from what I'm looking at, I've done a lot of research, and I think this is coming up because there recently was an incident where there was a taco truck thing in Portland, and I'm going to go into the details a little bit about it, but I think that's why it's flared up recently. That's the most recent big story I've seen. These women eventually closed their taco truck because, well, I'll go into it, but they were white, long story short. But I think you need to take this on a case-by-case basis. And I also, I asked Eli about this just because I know he has looked into a lot of this stuff more than I have often. I want to get his thoughts before I, you know, say anything stupid or anything. And what he said, and I think is true after researching it, because never trust anything Eli says.

0:29:25 Thomas: You always got to research. No, never trust anything anyone says. You always got to research for yourself. But he said that it started started out as an academic term that probably didn't really even mean what we think it means now. And a lot of reactionary people took it to mean anytime a white person has dreadlocks that they're, you stealing from black people and need to be called out for it. Now, you might even agree with that. I don't. So that's it. So if we're going case by case basis and you give me the example of can a white person wear dreadlocks? I would say, of course. Of course they can. Of course they can. It's a hairstyle. It is my view that it is just because you can talk about the fact that, sure, there's all kinds of oppression in our society, these historical oppression.

0:30:10 Thomas: And yes, of course, white people are the benefit of vast privilege and all that. I don't see how you convert that into, therefore, this individual cannot choose to do what they want with their looks in a way that is not outwardly like insulting or anything. So on that case, I would say, no, that's absurd. If you're going nuts over someone having dreadlocks, it's a hairstyle. Who, that's another weird thing about all this. A lot of the things that are being culturally appropriated. Now, I don't know the history of dreadlocks. But a lot of these things, a lot of these foods, a lot of these whatever it is, this art, the knowledge goes back to sometime in the 1800s, and then we just cancel it and we say whoever owned it at that time owns it now, when it's probably not really true. If you look at a lot of the history of this stuff, it probably was stolen and restolen and stolen and restolen, so it's a little weird to talk about it in that way.

0:30:59 Thomas: By the way, I want to say, if I want to tackle this for later, and this is something you guys are interested in, there is a paper in an academic journal that I found using my newly acquired research skills here that I think that it's like 300 pages long. So I didn't read it in preparation for this. That would take me a long time to read. But it could be something I could do because it looks really interesting. It looks like it's from 1998, I think it is, and takes a look at the issues and hypotheticals. And that could be something to look into.

So I think Eli's right that it is something that started in academia and it's taken a life of its own that maybe a lot of reactionary people are latching onto. And I wouldn't agree with, I don't think I agree with fully either side, like not even close. I think that's more so than on any issue I've seen. This is one place where I can find people on either side that I'm like, I don't agree with that. You know? So once again, going case by case, now let's look at a different case. So let's look at the Washington Redskins.

0:31:57 Thomas: Now, Eli argues, and he might be right, that that's not so much appropriation as just racism. If you're, and I think you might be, that might get confused with racism. It merely, this is not, oh, I'm borrowing something from your culture, you know, and this is, I'm making a racist representation of you and, and having it be my mask. I mean, that might just be out and out racism if we're getting technical about it. I think they should drop that name. Seems insulting to me. I'm amazed that that could even be controversial. So there you have it on on that issue. But so here's where I think case by case is important, you know, because I think as much as I think a white person can wear dreads if they want, there's certainly a valid concern. And one thing I would say, if you are a fellow white person like me, who, when you hear this stuff, as is often the case, like Christian privilege, like white privilege, whenyou hear someone fighting against your privilege, I think there's a gut reaction of like, oh, hold on, hold on.

0:32:53 Thomas: I'm not doing anything wrong here. I'm not racist. I'm not, you know. And I think that white people owe it to people of color and marginalized groups to at least fight that impulse, to at last hear it out, to not knee-jerk react like it's absurd that you would ever change your behavior. So I, white people owe it to the rest of the world, at least in this country, the rest of this country, I suppose, to consider these things carefully. And maybe you'll still come out one side or the other, I don't know, but at least think it over. And while you're thinking it over, but here's what happened with this taco truck. So a couple of young white girls went down to Mexico somewhere and they, I mean, here's where this gets a little weird. Here's a quote. "I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did."

0:33:45 Thomas: They told us the basic ingredients and we saw them moving and stretching the dough, similar to how pizza makers do it before rolling it out with rolling pins. They wouldn't tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look. We learned quickly it isn't quite that easy. There's more to it. But so these women were, the sensationalist, I suppose, I anti-regressive left side of this was, oh, you forced these people to close a burrito truck. And I think when you look at this, there's a little more to it than that, in that with that quote I just read, I mean, I look at, this is not so much about cultural appropriation. This is not, whether or not this burrito place should be boycotted to me is not really equal to is cultural appropriation okay.

0:34:37 Thomas: Let me explain why. So I think this is more of a PR thing. I think that, I think it is, it is true that when you do an interview and you use language that really makes it sound like you stole a recipe from a bunch of of color who who didn't want you to steal their recipe, and then you literally like drove back to Portland with that knowledge and opened a restaurant or a truck to profit off of their intellectual property. I mean, that to me, I, that doesn't really even need to be called cultural appropriation. I mean, that's, that's it's, it's technically probably not against the law, because especially because it was in Mexico, who knows? I don't know. We can ask Andrew Torrez about that. But even if it's totally legal, that's very questionable ethics.

0:35:24 Thomas: And that's something where if you do an interview and you say that, I'm not going to be heartbroken that people want to boycott your burrito truck. And boycott it, they did, and the burrito truck closed. So that's more about bad PR and insensitivity to me. And there's an element of appropriation for sure. But I mean, you can imagine ways they could have gone about that that would have been fine. You could imagine them talking about it like, yeah, we went down and learned everything we could, we observed, and we came back and we wanted to do a tribute to them and their beautiful culture and share what we learned. And we had to put a spin on it ourselves. Here we go. I mean, I don't think people would have been as mad if the language were different. I really don't. And furthermore, you know what else they could have done?

0:36:10 Thomas: They could have asked these women like, could we franchise this? Could we buy this recipe so that you're profiting? Could we give you a cut, you know, if we go and sell your idea? Can we send you some money from time to time? You know, can we work out a business idea? So this is just kind of bad ethics and bad PR for me. It does open up this idea of cultural appropriation. There's legitimate issues. And I think on a case-by-case basis, there's certainly going to be times when I think, whoa, that's not appropriate. That's appropriate. That is appropriation, it's inappropriate appropriation, and I'm going to be right there with anyone who wants to boycott a place in this situation, because there's a concern in Portland, like there's in the culture, there's a concern, the Portland culture there.

0:36:59 Thomas: There's this document that was circulated where they talked about the fact that, look, here's what happens, I mean, these white people go and they observe how people of color and marginalized communities are making food, and they kind of take that knowledge, they make a white version staffed by white people of the restaurant, and they, they make a profit, while the people of color who sort of, they sort of are more directly in ownership of this knowledge, and it's their custom, it's their culture, they are left to not make any money in communities where white people don't want to go because they're too scary. You know, there's legitimate concern there for sure. And a list was circulated of, hey, if you don't want to culturally appropriate, here's some restaurants you can go to that are actually founded by or significantly staffed by people of color who are responsible and who kind of own this culture.

0:37:51 Thomas: And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I think I don't want to be kind imperialistic in what I'm doing and just only allowing white people to profit off of this knowledge. It seems to be a totally reasonable concern to me, and something that you might want to do to just be a more ethical person. And if you go to Coachella in a headdress, again, I got this one from Eli, but that's not so much cultural appropriation as it is. I mean, it kind of is, but it's also just being racist and using a sort of a stereotypical representation of another culture as your style. I mean, I don't want you to be arrested for it, by any means, but I mean, it's just something that's not really, it's not cool, you know, it's a little, it just, don't. You can just easily not do it, you now.

0:38:37 Thomas: So I think I don't have time to go further down this rabbit hole of cultural appropriation, but I think it's an interesting issue. It's something that I really, again, just to summarize, my overall view is case by case. I really do think I'm not going to sit here and say good or bad, you know, for the thing as a whole. I'm Not. I think there's concerns, you don't want to be like kind of an imperialist, just going and stealing people's knowledge and then profiting when they can't profit on it. You know, of course, that to me seems like a no brainer, this burrito stand thing. I think it was fully appropriate for people to not want to patronize a place, to not want to give money to a place to want to be vocal against the play. That's using your First Amendment right to say, hey, this sounds like you stole from some people.

0:39:24 Thomas: You know, this, this doesn't sound cool at all. I think that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, I'm sure we could find a bunch of examples of, you know, if you're harassing a white girl for having dreads, that's just a personal little style choice. I mean, that is not like a... I think it is very difficult for me to be sympathetic. Now, I want to finish this topic, again, by saying I am open to changing my mind on this.

I encourage you, if you are someone with a different view, send me a voicemail, send me an email, give me a guest recommendation, whatever it is. I want this to be the start of a conversation. I don't want this to be the last word, but that's my view, because I was asked, that's what I'm going to do, as they currently stand, and it was interesting looking into this, I want to read that academic paper, gonna take me quite a while to get into, but just because it's I have a lot to do and reading time is tough, but it seems interesting, and there's my thoughts on it. I hope I either, I hope I either offended everybody or nobody, that's mine, that's, that's

0:40:29 Voicemail: Hey, my name is Yesero, I'm calling from Louisville, Kentucky, just listened to the episode you had with Mr. Shermer, and kind of wanted to make a comment related to Murray and his recent discussion with Sam Harris. I listened to episodes of Waking Up along with a coworker of mine, she tends to be far more on the conservative side, we alternate between like Harris and Hannity's radio show, so as fun as you'd imagine, but we kind of got to Murray's episode. And I feel it's important to mention that we're both black, and she was kind of horrified by this. Like, it kind of confirmed a lot of what conservative intellectuals say, like atheists or eugenicists and Nazis and everything like that.

0:41:15 Voicemail: And it kindof leads me to wonder, how much should we continue championing academic atheism, I suppose, for lack of a better word? Not that I'm saying, like, Harris is racist or anything, but it just seems that he's, like. Picking up all these additional causes. And this was definitely an instance where. I feel that he alienated someone who. I mean, she didn't vote for Trump is the thing. Like, she was definitely moving left. And now he's just kind of blowing that up. I don't know what else to say. Really enjoy the show. Keep up the good work. Have a nice day.

0:41:54 Thomas: Boy, Yesero, thank you for the call. This is a tough one. I don't feel like I should even be qualified to help you with this. I'm going to give you my thoughts, but that's a tough situation. I want to not, I'm having a hard time with this Sam Harris.

0:41:54 Voicemail: Thank you.

0:42:19 Thomas: I really do. I want, there's been, there was a, there was a Vox, I think it was Vox. There's a Vox article that was like, this is garbage science. Look, they're peddling racism. And I was like oh, thank God. Thank God. Like I want that to be true. I think every liberal wants that to be true, but then I read it and I was like well shoot, you know, they actually didn't really address the points that they made and they didn't, they kind of straw manned a few arguments here and there and I don't know about the Charles Murray stuff. Stuff. I'm still, I really, I'm, I suspect the guy's probably racially motivated. Uh, I don't, I'm not a fan of it. I don'T want that work to be true. I DON'T really, you know, but, but at the same time, I'M, I'M not good at just accepting what I want to be TRUE. Like, I, I need to be confident in it.

0:43:05 Thomas: And I, and I'm not saying either way. I'm saying I, I still, I need to read the book and I need to do a bunch of work and I need to, you know, I need to look into a bunch of stuff. So I want to dodge that part of it for now. I hope that you won't be too upset with me. If we were just to be agnostic about Charles Murray's work, I would say that, first off, maybe an issue is representing Sam Harris as the left. Because you framed it as, you know, sometimes we'll listen to Hannity and sometimes we're listening to Harris, which is such an interesting, that's an interesting experience right there. But maybe the, I don't know if this fixes your problem, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have sold Harris as like the left point of view. You know what I mean?

0:43:50 Thomas: So like if you were doing Hannity, maybe on the other side, you do keeping it 1600 or it's now renamed Pod Save America or something, you know, that would be like, here's the right wing and here's the left wing. So that's why I mean, it's a, I would say that that's a bit of a false dichotomy. So I wouldn't want, I don't know if this is possible, but I would represent Sam Harris as Sam Harris, you know, as an atheist. My point is, I would hope that wouldn't drive her more right just because someone in atheism has a certain opinion. Now, if someone who represents Democrats or leftists in general has that opinion, that might be a different story. You know, you can make a judgment about the left because of So it. But that's my first thought. But secondly, as far as the whole thing, I mean, I have to say it really depends on the results of what I find about this Charles Murray thing.

0:44:39 Thomas: I mean if, if I do a whole bunch of digging and I find that his science is sound, I don't know how mad I could be at Harris. I mean, yeah, in some sense it's a topic that maybe you should just shy away from, but if the point of his show was to say, I people judge this guy's work through not actually reading it. And if it's true that it was as bad as they make it out to be, I can't blame Harris for wanting to have him on the show and say, wow, your reputation got tarnished even though your science was sound. So I don't know. I don't know what the correct answer is. I really, tyranny. Regret for sure that that would drive her to the right, you know, I just don't, I don't think that makes sense. I think the left largely doesn't, doesn't view that that way at all.

0:45:25 Thomas: So I don't think he represents the left in that way. It's, it's the left that's writing the Vox pieces saying that he's a racist. So I don't know. That's a tough one. I don't know what to say about that. That's a really – I think that voicing your opinion about Sam Harris is fine, and I don't know that you can eliminate any sort of support for academic atheism because of it. And I will say also that a recent Sam Harris – the most recent Sam Harrison episode was incredibly good because the interview was great. The person he talked to wrote a book called On. And it was such a good interview that I went and bought the audio book. And it's a historian talking about different examples of tyranny, and that's the kind of kind of thing. Like I can't blame people for wanting to ditch Sam Harris because of some of the things he said, but I don't ever, you know, I haven't yet because he does do a lot of interesting work.

0:46:19 Thomas: He does talk to a lot interesting people. And I think, I think you're, you're missing out on it a little bit if you just ditch him. But at the same time, I get that that's, I really disagree with a lot that he said. So I understand the impulse. Um, so that's a tough one. I wish I had a better answer for you. I do. I'm, I'm sorry that I'm coming up a little short on this voicemail, but I thought it was an important thing to have said on the show. And thank you for leaving that voicem mail for me and for the audience. So thanks for that. You, Sarah, I hope you'll keep, uh, keep listening and maybe you can come back at me with your thoughts.

0:46:57 Voicemail: Hi Thomas, this is Felicia Entwistle again. I wanted to voice my response to the hoax gender studies paper by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay. And I want to do this as a woman, as someone who's been a leader in atheist activism and a proud skeptic. I've experienced a lot of instances for this directed at me personally, and I've seen many more involving many women in the movement. This hoax took it upon itself to deny the experiences of women completely. The study and understanding of how gender is expressed culturally and biologically to them deserves only scorn and disdain. Women are hated by religion and discarded by the secular movement. Not a single woman was even asked about the hoax. They didn't bring a woman in on their joke.

0:47:44 Voicemail: Our experiences to these authors are clearly illegitimate and can only be defined through their, air quotes, superior logic. And when I say they disregard the experiences of women, I mean all women. Trans women are women. End of discussion. Yet they do not only have to fight for legitimacy like all women, but they have to fight for their legitimacy as being women, as being legitimate women. This hoax and its publication in Skeptic Magazine is just another example that the atheist and skeptical movement doesn't want and has betrayed the women involved. Thank you.

0:48:24 Thomas: Hey, thanks, Felicia, for calling. It's very important to me to get your voice in on this show and to get that perspective heard because, yeah, they didn't, you know, consult even anyone in gender studies. I forget just women. I mean, that would be great, too, of course, but they didn't even just consult someone in the field and ask them, you know, or talk, even talk to them about it. And so the only thing I suppose I want to phrase is kind of a question for you, Felicia, which is, is fair to paint gender studies and women as the same thing, to kind of count it as the same thing? And the only reason I say so, I'm not trying to let them off the hook because I do think that what they did was very callous. And I think that it's certainly something they did in the wrong way.

0:49:10 Thomas: It threatens trans people who are the, it threatens a lot of vulnerable people who are kind of the focus of this area of study, certainly. And I agree with all that, but I think if James were here, I think what he would say is I don't think he would agree with your interpretation, of course. And, and we can, you know, maybe he'd be wrong about himself or maybe you'd be, you'd be right. I don't know, but think he would say this, this is not an attack on women. And he would say there is meaningless jargon in this field and there's postmodernist nonsense in this field, I'm not attacking women, I'm attacking just stuff that means nothing. And it would be, you know, we could look at that, it would certainly be an argument of whether you can say, well, no, the fact that you're attacking this field is an attack on women for such and such reason. We can argue about that, but I just, I feel like I do at least need to state that I think he would not be okay with that representation, certainly.

0:50:10 Thomas: I don't know. I just don't want to be totally unfair to him in that regard. But I largely do agree with you that it takes, it certainly takes a disregard for feminism and for the details of this field. It takes a disregard of that to be able to publish this hoax the way they did. It really does. And you're right about that. And I will say for the record, I very much want your voice included in the skeptic movement. And I think there's a little bit of reason for optimism again, as I said in the beginning of the show, that of course you wouldn't have heard before you called. So I'll mention it again, but I think the response has been pretty good on this. I think there's going to be a lot of atheist dude bros out there who are tweeting at me and a lot of Sam Harris followers who are going to follow his, his toe, his line on this, of course, and that, that kind of sucks, but but there's so much cause for optimism on this front because of the thoughtful response I got.

0:51:06 Thomas: Just so many people writing thoughtful emails of, hey, I agree with this. I'm an academic. I know what this is about. You know, like that's just not how you conduct research. That's not how you prove a point like that. And there's skeptics guy to the universe, huge podcast. There's very bad wizards. They're pretty big podcasts. They've had Sam Harris on the Show. There are leaders. There is Phil Torres. There is me. I don't have as much influence as those, you know, those, those two podcasts. Are a lot of people who get it. There are a lot of other people who want your voice heard, Felicia, and I certainly include myself in that. Thank you so much for the voicemail. Call back anytime. And I'm very lucky to have you as a listener. So thank you so much. And thank you guys for some great voicemails.

0:51:52 Thomas: Boy, those were tough. Those are three incredibly tough voicemails because they're not easy issues. And that's great, though. I'm so happy for my listenership. I really, in closing for this week, I just, it's something I could say. I mean, I am so happy. For the listenership I have and the thoughtful questions and voicemail I got. So thank you guys so much.

0:52:25 Thomas: And now it's time to thank my new patrons. Thank you so much to Edgar Gomez, Bahul Upadhyaya, that's a tough one, Colin Armstrong, Josh Leyshon, and Tyler Wright, Matt McMahon, John Brownell, Ryan Phelps, Jimmy Green, Jerry Ozbun, thank you, Katherine Block, Olle Dencker, Dinosaur Repair Man, Derek Soetemans, Andrew Pierce, Christopher Arguin, Mediocre Mr. Micah, Brad Kalmanson, Ludditeevilstepfatherinlaw, that's it, Sarah McPike, and Randall Gaz. Thank you guys for the pledges. Really, that support means a ton. I think that the best way that we all can move skepticism forward to a time when the dude bros don't rule is to support the people who are doing good work.

0:53:20 Thomas: I don't just mean me, of course. I mean anyone out there who you think is being really skeptical and has got the right ideas and is approaching things in an empathetic and skeptical way, I encourage you to support them. So thank you so much for the support you've given me. I can't thank you enough. So I also want to thank my top patrons. They are Travis Peterson, Matt Garrett, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Matthew Maxson of Adi Atheist Friends, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, John Bodley, Esquire, Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Loves Jenny, Robin, The Zika Baby That Lived, Marcel, The Netsack, Heathen, Abseon, Beth Deitch, Ryan Gardner, Sarah McPike, Ian Rezano, Jonathan Moyet, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer of Reason Real Estate, Hunter Ash, and Sammy.

0:54:10 Thomas: Thank you, guys. You really do make the show happen. Would not happen without you. And with that said, that's it for this week. Boy, what a week. What a last couple of weeks. Got some great interviews coming up for you guys. Always expanding our horizon horizons and being skeptical together and investigating the world. I love it. Thanks for allowing me to do it, and I'll see you next week.