SIO58: Yes, Call Out Assholes (Including me, if you see it that way)

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to episode number 58 of Serious Inquiries Only with your host Thomas Smith. Alright, today as promised, amazing voicemails to get to. I love doing these shows, there's some really good topics and including, by the way, tune in later, stay tuned rather, because there's an incredibly critical voicemail of the show and I'm gonna take it on, I'm going to play it in its entirety and respond good counter-argument worth considering, and I think I have found my way navigating through it, and I'm excited to get to that, but it's a harsh message. You should hear it. Also, as promised, Peter Boghossian has, in fact, gone insane, so I did promise I would cover that a little bit.

0:01:15 Thomas: I'm not going to spend too much time on it, don't worry, but there are some tweets and comments he's made that are ridiculous, sexist, disgusting, and in a way it's good he's finally just being outward about it and showing his true colors. So we're going to cover that very briefly and then get to some excellent calls and messages.

0:01:39 Thomas: I go on a little adventure, I wanted to tell about a counter argument I hear from a vocal minority of people. A lot of people, and this applies blanket across the board, this isn't just on an individual level. Whenever you or me or any of us, we all, anyone, whenever we're criticizing visible atheists in the community in any way, in anyway, be it Sam Harris, be whoever, you know, whoever it is, you get people who chime in, hey, stop doing this. Stop the infighting. Stop the inflighting. Focus on what we have in common, the movement we need. We believe in secularism. We believe in atheism, we can't detract from that by infighting. And I was thinking about that. I was reflecting on that.

0:02:24 Thomas: And it just strikes me how horrifically bad of an argument that is. I mean, imagine if Republicans did that right now. And they are, in fact. You would not want your opponents engaging in this behavior. Every Republican in Congress virtually right now is doing this with Trump. Look, we cannot call attention to how big of an asshole he is. We can't criticize him. We're all Republicans here. We have a common goal of conservatism.

And to critique one of our own is to distract from our greater goal. Would you want that? Is that a good principle? Do you want better Muslims? What about Muslims regarding maybe there's an imam who's getting a little heated in their rhetoric, who is saying things, being an asshole, is going toward an extremist route. Out. Would you want Muslims to say, guys, look, don't criticize jihadists. Don't criticize extremists. We're all Muslims here. Sure. We, we disagree on 5%. You know, some people think that jihad should be about killing people and others think it should, you know, it's a spiritual thing, but that's, that's a, that small potatoes. I mean, that's a minor, we agree on most things. Don't infight. Let's focus on the greater commonality that all Muslims share. Would you want that? Would you endorse that logic? Because that is the logic you're using. Now, we can argue to the degree, if you're critiquing an individual person, you can feel free to argue that critique is unwarranted, your facts are wrong. Feel free. That's all fair game, of course.

0:03:57 Thomas: But having the meta discussion ahead of time and saying, no matter what the argument is against said atheist, no matter what the facts are, you can't do this. You shouldn't do this because you're distracting from our movement, you're pulling us off course. That's fallacious. That's bad behavior. That behavior I would not want to see in any other group. Also tweeted the other day, imagine what we could all accomplish if we stopped infighting and we and we unblocked everyone and just focused on what we agree on as atheists. And my response to that is, well, we would accomplish about exactly what we're already accomplishing. You can do two things at once, it's not hard. And you know what occurred to me is this is a very interesting thought I just had, the to me anyway, the uh, secular movement, the atheist movement, the biggest barrier, barrier to secularism, the biggest barrier to actual church-state separation is the Republican Party.

0:04:52 Thomas: So really, on that front, liberal podcasts are doing more than just an atheist podcast to galvanize people, to motivate people against violations of the separation of church and state. In reality, they are the ones who are fighting the most for that. And by the way, platforms who who are consistently echoing the narrative of the regressive left is the biggest problem we face, they are playing into the Fox News narrative on that. They are playing in to anti-Democrat sentiment. And for that matter, they might actually be hindering the secular movement. So if you took a generic podcast that was, or any venue, YouTube channel, whatever it may be, that was sure, It was an atheist thing, it was a secular thing, but constantly critiquing the left and empowering the right, they are actually, they are the problem working against secularism, because the right wing is the biggest threat to church state separation. It's just a fact, Republicans are the ones violating church state state separation constantly. So that's another argument I thought of, I think it's, I think it's very interesting.

If we're going to talk about how to accomplish things for atheism or for secularism, let's talk about that, let's talk about enabling the right wing. So with all that being said, Peter Boghossian, someone I've critiqued mostly on social media, I've talked about a little bit on the show, but on social media, I do like to point out when he's being a total hypocrite, having written a book about reaching the other side, about changing minds, and then tweeting insane, inflammatory things about people who disagree with him, I've pointed out the hypocrisy there.

0:06:31 Thomas: He's reached a new level on that. And I just want to point out, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, I want to point it out just so it's all out there. I want to make sure this information is out there and you can do what you want with it. But this was just incredibly alarming to me. First I'm going to play a little clip from a recent podcast appearance of his and you can hear, I think, where his thought process is going here.

0:06:53 Clip: For whatever reason, they're angry, maybe it's a sexual strategy, I don't know. How'd you get sexual on that? What do you mean a sexual strategy? I think a lot of this stuff, I think a lot of beta men use Regressive leftism is a strategy to get laid.

0:07:12 Clip: Whoa. Yeah. You know what's crazy? I just had a name pop into my head when you said that. I did too. I don't want to say him on air but I'm going to mouth it to you. Hold on a second. We both thought of the same person. The same two people. We both have the same two people come to mind. That's terrifying. I don't know if I can air that, but that's terrifying. Yeah, don't air that. I did not. Don't air that because I don't want to give them attention. Like, don't say their names because I don't want to give them attention.

0:07:36 Thomas: So there you have it. Anyone who disagrees with him, anyone who's on what he labels as the regressive left, is only doing so to get laid. That's reaching across the aisle. That's changing minds right there, and that was followed by a series of tweets, which I think are even worse. Here's the first tweet. "Why is it that nearly every male who's a third wave intersectional feminist is physically feeble and has terrible body habitus?" The first thing I want to point out is I shared this on my Facebook wall and promptly got about 30 men who were like, "Hi, I'm a third way feminist and I'm in better shape than Peter Boghossian." That's hilarious because that shows not only this is a ridiculous thing to say, it's also just false. And it's also, that's great skeptical behavior of making a snap judgment based on a personal observation, which, by the way, I then provide 30 more counter examples of personal observation.

0:08:29 Thomas: So there you go. That's step one of how that's stupid. But think about how sexist that is, think about what that implies, what that means. It means that, okay, I understand why women would be third wave intersectional feminists, because, you know, they're women, they don't know any better, but any man who would do it, they would have to be feminine, they have to have to want to get laid in order to think something so stupid. Can you believe how sexist that tweet is? That is the subtext of that tweet. That is what you're assuming when you're tweeting something that ridiculous. And then, by the way, here's my favorite part. We get to the victim mentality. Final, final tweet I'm going to go over. Victim mentality. His next tweet was, by the way, Peter Rogozian, this is his tweet.

0:09:17 Thomas: Me, the sky is blue. Twitter, fuck you, racist, bigot, right-winger, idiot, misogynist, Maga, cuck, end quote. Yes, the sky is blue. Yes, tweeting that third wave intersectional feminists are weak and have horrible body habitus, that is equivalent to just saying the sky is blue. What a victim, what a pathetic victim. What a pathetic victim mentality. Oh, all I'm trying to do is say the sky is blue and everyone's yelling at me. It's, it's, really. This is from the, by the way, the anti-regressive left side. This is from the anti-triggered snowflake side. That's how triggered you are by anyone disagreeing with you. I think it's high time we stopped taking Peter Boghossian seriously.

0:10:02 Thomas: As any sort of skeptic or leader, I think we already had reached that time, but if we hadn't already, now I believe we have. Tweet was, my body habitus tweet was a reference to what evolutionary biologists term sneaky fucker theory, End end quote. And you heard in the audio clip him reference beta males. So his theory is that everyone who is a third wave intersectional feminist, which, by the way, that just means you're a feminist. It means you care about third wave means that people with women of color matter as well. And also trans women matter like that's what the third third wave part is. I mean, there's... there's controversy. There's these labels are weak. Of course, they are overbroad. They're misused. But essentially, it's feminism. Third wave feminism is feminism, how you and I would know it. I did a little bit of reading on this, and you're going to find third-wave feminists, second-wave feminist, any feminist, you're gonna find feminists in there that you disagree with that are saying outlandish things, but that doesn't negate the entire movement.

0:10:59 Thomas: But anyway, scientific theory here is that anyone endorsing feminism in this way is, uh, they're doing so to get laid. Sneaky fucker theory is that it is that there are beta males who are not strong enough to get laid on their own merits, so they have to wait till the alphas are out fighting and then they sneak in and reproduce with a female. By the way, this is not a theory of humans, so he's misapplying it. It's a theory of, there's like deer and then like certain primates, but anyway, whatever. This is his theory, and that's what it's in reference to. So that level of sexism, can you imagine thinking along those lines, because I think it's disgusting, I think it's ugly, it's horrible. But don't worry, there's an apology here, let's read it.

0:11:46 Thomas: So he quotes the Habitus tweet and he says... This was not meant as a scientific conclusion. It was a personal observation and a question. It was not meant to hurt people's feelings. Oh great, so if I say, why is it that everyone named Peter Boghossian is a giant asshole, ugly, disfigured, horrible, if I say something like that, it's okay, it's just a personal observation. It was not meant to hurt people's feelings. You can just tweet whatever you want, like, say, all people who believe X are weak. And have bad bodies and all that. You could just say it because it's just a personal observation. It's not meant to hurt people's feelings. So no harm done, everyone. All right. Well, that's all the time I want to spend on that ugly, disgusting behavior. I hope that people don't take him seriously anymore as long as he's down this track of any regressive lefties are beta males. Anyone who's on the other side of this are beta males. It's absurd. It's sexist. It's stupid.

0:12:44 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

0:13:04 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas. My name is Susan. I live in El Paso, Texas. I've called before, but I was really struck by your second interview, which I finally had a chance to listen to, and I'm calling you today on the day that Celandro Castile, this murderer, was acquitted. And I've mentioned before, I'm the mother of two children who are half white and half black. I lived in an area with a lot of people of color, and And I find this kind of thing terrifying. And one of the things that Michael Shermer went on about is how he's tired of, you know, identity politics. Well, I find that very interesting considering how identity politics is constantly in the face of people who are people of color.

0:13:52 Voicemail: I'm a white lady, and I see what people of color face because I live around them, with them. I talk to them. I listen to what they have to say. Identity politics is such a dismissal of the problems that people face because of their skin color. Should we be in a post-racial society? Hell yes. I wish we were, but we're not. And if we don't have a way to talk about it, and if we don't have words to describe what's going on, then those kinds of problems and conversations will never happen. They'll be shut down and they won't exist. I love Michael Shermer. He's one of the people that helped me become a skeptic, but I find his attitudes on racial identity to be very problematic, and I wonder how skeptical he's really being with these kinds kinds of things.

0:14:46 Voicemail: So I really appreciate that you have been able to interview him. And it's great to hear other people's perspective. I don't think Michael Schroeder is a bad guy. I just don't think he gets it. And I think there's a lot of other people out there that don't get it either. And it is really tragic because people of color are actually treated differently than white people. And it breaks my heart and scares me to death in some ways, since I have a black son and they're one of the most targeted groups. So keep up with the good work, Thomas. And that's all I had to say and just keep being awesome. Take care. Bye-bye.

0:15:21 Thomas: Susan, excellent voicemail. And it was so excellent, by the way, that Susan actually has another one later because it's been a little while since I've checked the voicemail. Sorry, everybody. I'm actually going to play two voicemails from Susan. So look out for another one later. Both incredibly excellent. I think, Susan, your perspective is really unique. Being in an interracial marriage and having biracial children, that really must give you a perspective on what they experience that I don't have, that's really fascinating. And I think you're right on in terms of identity politics. I think it's a really easy way to dismiss social justice. And I think it's also, it's just inaccurate. One thing I keep seeing people, people, I should make another one of those choosing memes where it's like, is identity politics killing liberalism or did black people just vote for Obama because he's black?

0:16:14 Thomas: Because you can't both be true. A lot of people accuse Obama of playing identity politics. "He's just that. We all voted for him because he's a black guy." But at the same time, he won the shit out of elections. So maybe that is a way to win elections. So that's an interesting contradiction there. But also it's just not true, because another reason it's not true is that Trump won on white identity politics.

So you can certainly make an argument that, quote unquote, identity politics is bad, but you have to be fair about it. You have to look at white identity politics and anyone else's identity politics and take that into account, and you cannot say that it's losing for either side, because both sides utilize it and both sides win here and there. One side has to win, so, but by definition, so in my view, the problem with constantly talking about identity politics is I think there's this faux that I think is dangerous for white people to think about.

I think it is it doesn't mean that objectivity can't exist in principle, but I think we need to be very wary about thinking about the good old days as a time before identity politics. Politics, because really, when there's only one group in control and they aren't listening to any other groups, yeah, you can pretend that there's no identity politics and your politics is somehow pure in that way, but that's because you weren't listening to people of color who were fighting for their rights and their lives. So it's, it's something to be wary of, and I don't think it's, I don't think it's useful to say identity politics is killing any left or right, really.

0:18:00 Thomas: I mean, unless you want to be fair and tackle both white and other identity politics, because it exists all around. But there are nuances there. Like, I mean, I do disagree with saying anyone is wrong, right or wrong, because of the color of their skin, despite the fact that a lot of people still don't understand. They still think that's what whitesplaining means. It means you're wrong no matter what because you spoke and you're white. That's not what it means. If people are using it that way, they're misusing it. But anyway, so, I mean, there are nuances there. If we could, strictly speaking, rigidly define identity politics to mean... I only care about people of my skin color or demographic group. Then I would agree in principle that it's a bad thing.

0:18:49 Thomas: But what the problem is, people on the right and in the new center use identity politics to mean, when essentially Black Lives Matter, like whenever a group is fighting for their rights that are tied to their identity, that's used as a derogative and called identity politics. So that's the danger. So, fine line there, a lot of nuances, but thanks for the call, and I can't wait to get to your other one as well. On to the next caller.

0:19:21 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, it's David at TheRamblingBlog.com. I'm just calling because Ruben tweeted recently that apparently Mother Jones is libelous for calling him alt-right, and, you know, I used to be a Rubenite, follow everything he said, and I realized he was just a bunch of talking points, and all of a sudden, now that people disagree with him, all of the sudden he's trying to silence free speech, which is kind of ironic given his whole brand of, you know, free speech on campus. So I'm just wondering if you've seen that, what your thoughts are on that. Take care, Thomas.

0:19:57 Thomas: I did see that. I think it's hilarious. I think that he... Here's the thing about Dave Rubin. I've said it before. I'll say it again. He constantly echoes a couple of things. When someone calls him right-wing or conservative, he says, I believe in gay marriage. I believe in marijuana for, you know, for everybody. I don't know. It's legalized marijuana. I believe in... Let's see. What are the other ones he gives? I think he accepts climate change. He gives a couple of token beliefs and that's fine. See, I don't want to...

0:20:31 Thomas: He may very well think of himself as in the middle. He may very well have some liberal-ish views. However, all those views he described, that also falls under libertarian. I think he's mostly libertarian for the most part. But whatever, what you can argue about and not have to do any mind reading is what goes on on his show. And what goes on on his show and his Twitter account is he constantly voices the Trump opinion. Constantly.

Just the other day, Donald Trump Jr., do you know what his defense of this whole fiasco was? Which, by the way, listen to opening arguments tomorrow to find out more on the Donald Trump Jr. thing. Dave Rubin's centrist tweet on this was, the person Donald Trump Jr. met with never had any Hillary info and didn't intend to give it to him, which, we Can talk about the legal ins and outs, and I'm sure Andrew will, but that is a terrible argument. I mean, and my tweet back was, sure, the undercover officer never had any drugs or slash illegal child porn slash whatever and never intended to sell it, so there, no crime. Um, no, that's not how it works.

He fully, Donald Trump Jr. responded to an email fully, within minutes, by the way, it's funny, fully intending to collude with Russia to get dirt on his political, uh, enemy, that, I mean, for Rubin to think he's anything but a right wing platform, I don't know what to say, it's hard, I don't remember, for him to, by the way, I just found out too, he's funded, he says one-fifth of his budget, which, that's actually still quite a bit, and he knows what the real number is, by Koch Brothers money, so, and that's public, that's not a conspiracy theory thing, he confirmed it in a tweet, he said, "Oh, we're proud of that, it's only one-fifth of our revenue," though, so that's another thing to keep in mind about Rubin, but anyway,

0:22:17 Thomas: Yeah, he did, he tried, he wanted to sue, he threatened to sue that someone would lump him in with alt-right. And Mother Jones didn't back down, I'm glad. I tweeted at the guy just for fun and said, hey, because I had talked to Andrew about this, hey, he has no case, don't backdown, etc., etc. I don't know if he saw it, but I did just for the fun. And, yeah, it's funny that the minute the principle is the other way, the minute we're talking about something else, free speech doesn't really matter anymore, more, the rules go out the window, and some part of that could be that people just don't know libel laws very well, like they don't understand them, but it is certainly curious how quickly that free speech thing went out the windows.

0:23:08 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas. My name is James. I just finished listening to episode 52. You had a caller call, I think her name was Katie. She had talked about a couple of things. But she mentioned sort of in passing a linguistic term, African American Vernacular English, saying that people have kind of gotten on her about it, which is kind of a little bit off. Your response, I think, was assuming that you know anything about the term comes off a little anti-intellectual, kind of in a similar vein to the conceptual penis debacle, I think, though not to that extent, obviously, which is kind of a sacrilegious thing for me to say. So, you know, I have a huge amount of respect for you.

0:23:56 Voicemail: So I'm just going to assume that you've never heard the term before. African-American Vernacular English, that's a lot of words to say, is a dialect of English, and that's all it is. It's no different than Southern American English, your manner of speaking. It's just a manner of speaking in that sense. You know, it's got its own grammatical structure, word pronunciations, all kinds of stuff that make it different from, like, general American English. Which is the one that people tend to use kind of in official. I'm not really good at describing it. I'm going to email you a link to a video, which will do a much better job. But, yeah, I just thought it would kind of need to go a little bit more in depth on that. So love the show. Keep it up. Bye.

0:24:36 Thomas: Hey James, I think we might have a bit of a misunderstanding on our hands, so I'm gonna, I went back on that episode and I listened to what I said, I wrote it down, I want to clarify, I think you might have misunderstood what I was saying, so Katie in the voicemail said that they were told not to use certain words because it was African-American vernacular English, so take everything I say as not directed toward African-American vernacular English, but it was meant to be, and I apologize, I probably didn't communicate this a hundred percent clearly. It was meant to be directed toward anyone who would tell a white person, no, you can't use this language. Here's what I said. Here is the quote.

0:25:21 Thomas: The language thing is interesting. That seems to be a little more problematic to me. This way that we would purposefully enforce segregation of our language in a way when it comes to an entire vernacular like dot, dot, that seems problematic to me. I wouldn't want to enforce segregation in our society in that way. I would want to drive a wedge in communication between groups. I think we should just let language evolve where it does. And then I said, after that, I said that's just my initial thoughts. I'm open to arguments either way on that. So, even if you did misunderstand, I would hope the part at the end would make it so you wouldn't call it anti-intellectual. But anyway, that's what I I was referring to. I wasn't referring to having a different dialect being something that is segregation or like enforced segregation in our society.

0:26:09 Thomas: I would say if Katie says a phrase and then some other person says that, you can't use that. That's what I, I think that's problematic. You can't us that because that language, unless we're talking about the N word, by the way, I'm fine with that one word belonging to someone else. I don't need that word.

0:26:30 Thomas: I like a dialect, and if someone just uses it because they heard it, they absorbed it, they're using it in good faith. I don't want to tell that person you can't do that. Doesn't that seem divisive? Doesn't it seem really divisive to say, no, only people of a certain race can have this dialect. You can't speak like that. I didn't, I don't know. So that's, that's what the comment was directed toward. I hope we had a misunderstanding. If we didn't call back, let me know. I watched that video. Very excellent video. I'm going to link it in the show notes. Thank you so much, James, for sending that very interesting video talking about the dialect itself, how it evolved, how people think of these things sloppily, like people think of it as just slang or being wrong, like talking incorrectly, and frankly, it very much enlightened me on some things, so I really appreciate...

0:27:32 Thomas: Thanks for the call.

0:27:51 Voicemail: Hi Thomas, this is Andy from Michigan. I just finished listening to the episode with Ishmael Brown, and the thing that I'm having a hard time getting around, and I'll admit, you can probably tell from my voice, I am extremely white, so I just want to get that out in the open, the thing about cultural appropriation, in particular with Kylie Jenner and her hair, is Ishmael was talking about black women who got fired from their jobs for having that hairstyle, and then, you know, Kylie Jenner comes around and she gets praised for being brave, which, you know, I think is dumb. But I don't think that you can compare your typical working class black woman with Kylie Jenner. And I'm not saying that Kylie Jenner is above the working class Black woman in any way.

0:28:40 Voicemail: I'm nicht sagen das überhaupt. Aber was ich sage, dass sie ein Celebrit ist. Sie kann das. Do that. And what I want to know is, are these instances where working class black women are getting fired for having cornrows, but white women in that same office are getting praised? Because then in that instance, yeah, I can see that there's something really, really wrong there. But if it's company policy not to have your hair in a certain way, then shouldn't that at the very least be respected? I don't know. If for some reason I'm just not seeing a crucial point to this, I want want to know. You know, I'm willing to change my mind, but I'm still just not convinced. So, anyway, great show. Love a lot. Keep up the good work. Thank you very much.

0:29:23 Thomas: Andy, I love this call because I appreciate so much you disagree, but you came on and you said, I want to know if I'm missing something. I, and that is such an admirable way to come on, I, I do think you're missing something, I'm gonna do my best to make the case, but you know, in the end if we still disagree, I, I just, I love that you are doing so in the way you're doing it, it's a really cool call, by the way. To get So, here's what I think, I, here's what I think you're missing. And feel free to, again, you can call back or respond if you want. But what Ishmael was complaining about, and what a lot of black people have complained about with this specific issue of Kylie Jenner and cornrows is, first off, it's not really even fair to do the comparison you said, which is, are white people not getting fired and black people are?

0:30:13 Thomas: Because Firing people for cornrows disproportionately affects black women because cornrows are a, I have it actually from a quote, I have a good article, it is BuzzFeed, but it actually is a good breakdown of what happened, so I'm going to link it, and it's by a black author. And she wrote, cornrows are a popular protective style among black women, used to prevent the ends of their hair from becoming split or damaged. So it's actually, my understanding is, I'm not a black woman, but my understanding is it's actually, like was said there, it's sort of a protective style and therefore more black women do it for that reason. It's sort of a health upkeep, like a hair upkeep.

0:31:06 Thomas: That's why when Kylie Jenner does it and she's celebrated, it's a bit of a slap in the face when black women who have to do it to protect their hair are fired or critiqued for it. Furthermore, here's what it says in this article that you can check it out too. Now, I don't think Kylie Jenner used this hashtag, I want to be clear, I don't think she used it, but she posted this on the same day that a hashtag was trending, which was hashtag white girls do it better, and a lot of people commented on her post saying white girls do it better, and that was, the, I suppose, the meaning a lot of people...

0:31:51 Thomas: Took from it, which was, here is someone that, that may or may not be her fault, I don't know how much she knew about it, or it was a tweet, sorry, an Instagram post about that. So I want to be very clear on that. But it was jumped on as that. And someone criticized her and she responded, so I want to read this because this puts even more context to it. Amandla Stenberg commented, "When you appropriate black features and culture but fail to use your position of power to help black Americans by directing attention toward your wigs instead of police brutality or racism, hashtag white girls do it better," and Kylie responded, "Mad if I don't, mad if I do, go hang with Jaden or something," reference to Jaden Smith, which, what a, what a racially insensitive tweet.

0:32:40 Thomas: Go hang with another black person. So and that's important because that critique of her, by the way, by this Amandla person, that critique was... Oh, this is funny, I just noticed, I sort of, my eyes kind of twitched and I misread it. The name is actually Amandla Stenberg, so I thought I read it as Amanda Lastenberg. But anyway, notice what Amandla said there, uh, rather, notice what she didn't say. She didn't say, you are not allowed to use this hairstyle because you're white. She did not say that. She said, when you do this and draw attention to yourself and appropriate black culture, but don't use it to help direct attention toward police brutality or racism or whatever it may be.

0:33:25 Thomas: When you do it in this way and the white girls do a better way, that's a problem. That's when it becomes a problem. It's not just having a hairstyle. It's the way she went about it. And by the way, her response, which I think was pretty horrendous, go hang with Jaden or something. I mean, that's ridiculous. So that should put a little more context to the situation. Of course, let me know if you still disagree. I do appreciate the sort of the tenor of your call and keep them coming, everybody.

0:33:58 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, it's Oscar again. I just wanted to briefly address CJ's opinion and his opinions of it. There's a subset of opinions and dual claims about reality and so therefore can be false or for The term interpretation, but you know, that's just my interpretation and definitely could be wrong, so who knows, maybe no interpretation is invalid, but may still be misguided. It, anyways, in regards to white-explaining, so I'm white, my parents are both white, I grew up in the country, only white, kind of surrounded by the shadow of an indigenous genocide, but still being a millennial and through just sort of the exposure brings for most of my childhood and adolescence, I kind of thought racism was like done with.

I mean, like, I've got two immediate siblings, one that's like of African descent, one was Asian descent, my friend groups have always been pretty multicultural, but it's still took me a while to really realise how the problem racism is. So my point is that I think Weinstein believes, as I did when I was younger, that on the whole racism is over, it's really only a world view that white persons do, no fault of their own,

0:35:28 Voicemail: We've been raised in a world that doesn't really notice. So we can slide our minds into a reality where everyone is just a politics Scene, so last century, that's bullshit and ignorant, and call someone, or to call out someone as white-explaining, which I think you should never stop saying, "bro flakes," as you put it, that gave me a good laugh. It's not to invalidate their message or them as a person, once in a while you might be surprised what you see

0:36:09 Thomas: Oscar, thank you for the call. I did feel obligated to include your call because it was an international call and if you were charged for that, which I don't know how it works, this is Google Voice, so I would assume that it's like normal phone, maybe a charge is applied, but it's also a voicemail, so anyway, let me know if, by the way, let me know if you get charged for this, Oscar, because people ask me like, hey, can I call internationally?

It looks like you can. I can't answer whether or not you got charged for that, so that would be useful information to me. Anyway, Oscar, great call. I think that that whitesplained whitesplaining properly. No, I'm just kidding. I think you broke down whitesplaining well. I mean, it really is.

This is ongoing and it's true that maybe I should avoid the word because so many people, I'm still getting comments by the way, I'm blown away, how many different people, hey, I can't believe you would use the term whitesplaining, it's bigoted against white people, I can't believe you'd turn it, over and over, no matter how many times I try to clarify,

0:37:07 Thomas: No, I'm not saying you're wrong because you're white, I'm saying that your whiteness has led to your experience and the way you might say something is, is whitesplaining, if you explain to a person of color why you know better about something that they actually know better about, it's a very, it's a very specific thing, like, you know, hopefully we should all go most of our lives without whitesplaining, even though, if you're a white person, by the way, if you're a white person, you might think, oh, it's just any time you explain something as a white person. No, that's not how it works. If I explain, I don't know, some concept in science, but I'm white, that's not whitesplaining. If I explain my opinion on something, but I'm also white, that's not whitesplaining.

0:37:56 Thomas: It's whitesplaining if I'm talking over People of color who know better about something than I do. That's what's why. Same goes for mansplaining. If I talk over women who are trying to speak about feminism, for example, I say, no, no, no, that's not feminism. Let me tell you what feminism is. That's mansplaining.

And I I think it is possibly a problem that people misinterpret it so much, and people misuse it by the way, but if we're going to throw out the word whitesplaining, we also have to throw it regressive left, because you know what? Everyone misuses the term regressive-left, it's meant to mean a specific subset of people who are protecting jihadists by shielding all Muslims from criticism, that was how the term was invented by Majid Nawaz, it has now been applied to basically anyone you don't like. Like anyone, anyone on the left who you don't like is pretty much regressive left. So I would, I would love if we could just see the demise of both those terms. If we, if there's some treaty where it's like, okay, we'll give you white splaining. I'll get rid of that. You give us a regressive left, get rid of that on SJW and that kind of thing. Uh, that would be fine, but that's, that's not how these things work. Unfortunately.

I mean, these, these words, they have good means they have meanings that are correct. That means that are precise and accurate it and they get misused. I mean, that's how a lot of languages. So I'm good with still using the word whitesplaining for now, I think. But I don't know. Maybe when I'm debating someone I know rejects the term, maybe I'll try to use more descriptive language and not shorthand.

0:39:31 Thomas: Oh, and there's a later call, actually, the whopper of a call I referenced in the beginning of the show, that refers to the opinion thing again. Look, I don't, legally speaking, Andrew mentioned this on the show, legally speaking, from a freedom of speech standpoint, an opinion can't be wrong. An opinion can't be false. However, he's also said that if you say, my opinion is that Hillary murdered, like you can't cheat the system by saying my opinion before everything. So, it's not magic. The word opinion isn't magical. It doesn't get you to a place where anything you say can't be refuted. I've never seen so much debate over nothing. Like, maybe I misspoke semantically. Please tell me why this matters. An His opinion can be wrong.

0:40:17 Thomas: I mean, if you're saying my opinion that an opinion can be wrong is wrong, then you are saying my opinion is right. Like, there's no, it can be wrong, I don't care if you want to say, no, you have to say it's actually misled or it's factually, like, I don... you're just playing word games, I don't care. An opinion can't be wrong, my opinion is that the world is flat, is wrong.

My opinion, and, and I think Oscar said it pretty well when he said, if there's, there there's a sub branch of opinions that are based on facts, that can be defeasible, I suppose, or can be falsifiable, that might be one way of putting it. But I don't know what opinion doesn't ultimately reduce to facts.

I would say the only kind, there might be a kind, there might be a kind of, like, well, in my opinion is that vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate ice cream, okay, that can't be wrong, your opinion that, that subjective thing is, is such that can't be wrong, you're right. But But you can also have an opinion that Trump was just as bad as Hillary, Hillary's just as bad as Trump.

0:41:17 Thomas: Well, that's wrong, I'll just prove it, watch me make the case to just prove. Are we really so worried about not saying that opinion is wrong, or if your opinion is church and state ought not to be separated, are you worried about me saying that opinion's wrong? No, no, you need to say that that opinion factually incorrect. Who cares, you know what I mean, we know what each other means, that's the goal in this, lots of Twitter ink was spilled on this. I admit I do not understand why, it seems like just a little nothing semantic argument that has no impact on the actual argument, so I don't get it. If you think I'm still missing something, if you think my opinion is wrong on that, feel free to let me know. But yeah, I don't get it, so weird, that was a bizarre thing.

0:42:11 Voicemail: Hi, I just listened to your episode 55. This is Susan. I think a really great way to describe white privilege is I see it every day. I'm white. My kids are half African American, half white, which makes them black in our culture. Her. I, as a little girl, was punched in the stomach when I was 12 years old. And I fell down and I was having trouble getting home. And a police officer, you know, came up to me and drove me home. I remember feeling safe and secure because he helped me. As a mom to my kids who are now 14 and 12, my son is 12, the same age Tamir Rice was shot, I believe. I'm scared to have them talk to the police, and that shows the complete divide that we have in our country.

0:42:59 Voicemail: It's something that, as a white person, I was completely unaware of, and a lot of white people are unaware of what people of color go through and how completely different their lives are, how we live in the same country, and yet we have completely different experiences. There is a lot fragility, I think, in being offended over, you know, whitesplaining. I think white people are upset about having to think about race. You know, we really wanted to believe that we had licked it and we had taken care of it. I mean, that's what I was taught when I was a kid, that, you know, you look at people, you'd be colorblind, you don't judge people based on race, and unfortunately that's not what really happens in this world. That's just my experience. Great show, and keep it up.

0:43:44 Voicemail: Keep talking. You know? Maybe we'll all get somewhere someday. Understanding. Thanks. Bye.

0:43:51 Thomas: And thanks for the second voicemail. I know at that point Susan didn't know that her first one was going to be played, so a little bit of duplication, but I wanted to play that one because there's also some great comments in there as well, Susan, so thanks so much. I think what I said for the first one still applies, I think your voicemails stands fantastically by itself, so I don't really even have much to add to it, so thanks for for the call. Thanks for lending your perspective to this.

0:44:24 Voicemail: Hey, just commenting on your white-splaining issue there, I kind of liken it to the word thug, I think a lot of people kind of, at least old people throw that term out when they see a lot of people, you know, acting in a certain way and it generally has a racial connotation, so, you know, I kinda think of it the same way, you know, white-splaining thug might necessarily not mean you're talking about black people in general, but when you say that, a lot people are going to think that's what you're saying and that's what you mean. So it's better not to use the word because it's not pushing your opinion further because it is really just stopping at that word. So, you know, that's just kind of my take on it. I don't agree with a lot of things you say, but I do appreciate you giving people time to voice their opinions and everything. Thank you.

0:45:07 Thomas: Hey, anonymous color. Thanks so much for the call, I really appreciate you saying that you disagree a lot, but you still want to listen and discuss things. I love that. I look at it the same way, I'm very grateful if I still am able to maintain a diversity of opinion in my listeners.

I'm sure I am, because people aren't single-minded, people have lots of different views, and I don't flatter myself that somehow me taking certain lines on things is going to convince my audience like sheep or something. So I'm really glad to have diversity of thought here. So when it comes to thug being, and I think I understand you correctly, in the context of you saying you tend to disagree with me, I think you were saying that using white-splaining is akin to using thug.

I hope I didn't misinterpret, but going with that interpretation, I don't know that I really see it that way. So thug is is a problematic word. I'm going to link an article that with an interview with kind of a linguist on it.

It's something, it's a problem because people have been using it as sort of a substitute for the N word, like a politically correct N word, and that's why it becomes a problem when you describe, you know, protesters, demonstrators as a bunch of thugs, you're, you're dismissing their cause, is particularly if you're describing like Black Lives Matter, exclusively black people that way, you're dismissing their cause in in a way that's sort of a dog whistle, racially charged way.

So now, I suppose you can make a kind of argument about that with whitesplaining, which is people are using whitesplaining as a way to signal that white people's opinions don't matter, but the problem is the context really matters.

0:46:49 Thomas: We live in a society where white voices are always heard. They're always heard. It's never, we're not in danger of losing the white perspective on things, and we are in danger of not listening to the black perspective on things all the time, and I mean, it's that context that matters. If you want to try to reject that context, you're free to do so.

If you want to try to argue with it, you're free to do so, but that's where I'm coming from, that's why I see it as whitesplaining is a good way to call out, in my opinion, when white people are speaking over black people in a way that minimizes what they're saying, especially about issues where they know better. So that's why I don't really see it as equivalent. I think I see the argument you're trying to make.

I mean, if we lived in a society that was like somehow 50-50, you know, in terms of racial experience, like there's not really a, you know, of course there aren't only two races, but there's a, if there's a, just a I did Purge Day and all I got away with Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

0:48:51 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas. My name is Chidi. I'm calling from somewhere in Jersey. Yeah, I listened to your recent podcast with regard to the Evergreen situation featuring CJ. I do feel like CJ got the better of you. He had to teach you what an opinion was, which I feel is a shame.

I find it interesting, as a black woman myself, I've been black for quite a few years now, why it is that you kept insisting that the professor, professor, voicing his opinion was born of the fact that he was white.

I, I don't understand how you don't see that as somehow inflammatory, how you don't see it as wrong, how is that not wrong to you, because number one, unless you have mind reading capabilities, or you know, like some intimate information about this guy that we don't know, it seems like a very extraordinary claim to make with such little information. It's not why you're not like a theist again, but anyway, I just find it interesting what you would say, I guess, like if the guy were black and he had the same opinion, would it be born of self-hatred? Would that be implying that black people can't have an opinion other than what the collective decided? Um, is everything a univariate issue? You, so that if someone may disagree with the collective and who is black, it must be that they're self-hating or they're like ignorant. I just don't know, and I feel it's disgusting and it's unfair that black people aren't looked at as individuals. We should only have one accepted opinion, and if any of us, if anybody should deviate from it, then

0:50:39 Voicemail: There must be something wrong with that particular black person. Or if a person that is not of color should deviate from a minority, from the opinion of a minority organization, that person is motivated by evil and racism. I think that is, I mean, it's getting old, and people are getting fucking tired of it. Even black people are getting tired of it, bro. Like, I don't know how this show goes on. I mean, it's not extraordinary in any way, it was sent to me by a black person who does share in my view, who would also be, I guess, a minority black with regard to the collective, and I think it's a shame that we can't treat people as individuals that can formulate their

0:51:27 Thomas: Alright, well, very confrontational call, but I appreciate it. I appreciate the honesty and the opinion. I think that it might be a little tough because I don't know how well part of what you were saying was communicated, so I don't want to do any mind reading, but I'm going to attempt to take what you meant, and if I misinterpret you, I apologize, but you said, how could I say that the professor voicing his opinion was born of the fact that he's white?

And how I don't see that that's wrong, was your wording. I don't know that that is a real... Is that a good description of what I said? Because I said he whitesplained. So there's a lot going on in here. Let me get back to that. There's a lot going in this call that I think is really fascinating. I think there is a huge tension and a difficult one to navigate between the fact that black people, because they are a minority in this country and because they've been oppressed, because of the history going on, they have had to coalesce and they share a lot of views. But that doesn't mean that they are monolith. And I think you're right, Chidi, to say that, I mean, certainly any black individual, any individual has the right to form their own opinions and views, of course.

And oftentimes, I think black people are looked at as this monolith and that's, it's a hard thing to navigate because at the same time, there's also the Fox News, which what I look at is kind of a gimmick, which is find one black guy that thinks black people Are the real racists. And then, And, you know, trump them up as representative of a bigger group than they are represented by. So it's there's a tension there.

0:53:04 Thomas: And I, and I do agree that it's difficult. Like, you can't, you don't get to just say all black people think one thing, but they. Let me use an analogy for specifically the Evergreen situation. I look at it like, let's think of climate science. You can find a few climate scientists that have a different view on global warming being man-made, they exist. But here's how I look at it with respect to Weinstein. His opinion in my, the reason I called it whitesplaining, I can't believe how much we've had to go back and forth on this, but I think it's important because apparently, you know, we all disagree on this, and I think we need to talk it out and do our best to reach some common ground and work it out.

0:53:49 Thomas: So I don't tire of it. Apologies if any listeners are, but I call it whitesplaining because I think he took an organization, a committee that had done all kinds of work on both the equity policy and The day of absence. There's all kinds of context to the day of absence. The fact that there were white power posters on the thing, the fact that Trump was elected, like all the racial tensions, all this stuff, the fact that an unarmed black person was killed in the town. They took all that context. There's a committee that's people of color. By the way, I don't know that it's all people of color. There could very well be plenty of white allies on that committee. So it could be a diverse committee and they decided we're gonna we're gonna switch around the day of absence. It'll be a thing we can do to show solidarity to people of color this year specifically.

0:54:35 Thomas: Now, For Weinstein is free to disagree with that, but what he needs to do is go about it the right way. He needs to go to the committee meetings, if it's so important to him. He needs to email the organizer. As, by the way, the organizer said, like, you don't need to do this formal protest, you just don't have to do the event. Like, it wasn't enough for him to disagree and to just not participate or maybe for him to actually give feedback, participate with the committee. No, he had to do a visible, he had to utilize his advantage as a white professor to send out an email of authority and say, no, you're doing it wrong. I know better. That's why it's whitesplaining. It doesn't mean he's not allowed to have his opinion. And now here's the part where it gets tricky because you asked the question, interesting question to examine.

0:55:23 Thomas: What if he was black? How would that change things? Okay, well, here's where I think the climate change analogy analogy is significant. Because if you have a consensus of a group of people, and I know this isn't science, and that's fair. Like, we're not dealing with science here, but it's an analogy. I think it works. If you have A group of scientists, climate scientists, who all say 99.7 of them or whatever, even if it's just a high, it doesn't even have to be that many. It could be 90% of just significant majority. And they say global warming is man-made. And then you have a non-climate scientist, somebody who just doesn't know anything about it, waded into it, and just said, no, you're wrong. It's not man-made. It's the sun. It's whatever it is.

0:56:09 Thomas: I am able to say, I'm sorry, I am going to go with the expert consensus. Your view is not born of the fact that you actually are an expert. You're just spouting off about something you don't know about. Now, here's the thing. Now, again, going with this analogy, you ask, what if it was a black person who had this? So, then I will ask, okay, what about a climate scientist who said global warming is not man-made? I think you treat the claim differently. If a person of color had said, hey, I'm not comfortable with this day of absence. First of all, I still think they should go through the committee. I still Think they should Go through a more polite channel, like talk to the organizer, interact with the students, go to a meeting if they really care about it. But all that aside, you treat their opinion differently because they do have relevant experience.

0:56:55 Thomas: And you say, okay, I'm going to consider this a little differently because, like, you approach a scientist who is making a claim about climate change and has like data and experience to back it up differently than you do your uncle who just says, no, climate science is fake. Like, you just do. I mean, there's context to people's opinions, and I think that's a legitimate analogy here, despite the fact that we're not dealing with hard science. What makes what Day of Absence was about was showing solidarity for people of color, and the, by definition, the people who have the best opinion, the most informed opinion from their experience on that is going to be people of color. It's something weird to me about saying, no, no, I'll tell you how I'm an ally. You can't tell me how to be an ally.

0:57:41 Thomas: It's interesting. Here's another thing that's interesting about the Evergreen Day of Absence thing, because there's another contradiction here, because Chidi said, can't we treat everybody as individuals? And yes, however, if you want to look at the Day of Absence from that perspective, then asking black people to leave campus is exactly the same as asking white people to leave campus. It's the same thing, because they're all individuals.

You're still telling a group of people to leave, and you're still telling individuals who have those characteristics to leave campus. So why was he okay with the first one and not the second one, if in fact we all should be treated as individuals and not as groups? I think that shows the contradictory nature of it. And you're still volunteering either way, either, even if You're a person of color, maybe you're someone like Chidi who has a different view, that so that the original Day of Absence, which, by the way, Evergreen professor Brett Weinstein was fine with, that original Day of Absence would have still put Chidi in the exact same position that a white person is in with a new formulation. So why is that okay? And the truth is, I'm not really okay with either of the exaggerated caricatures of it.

I'm not okay with saying white people leave campus or else, and I'm not okay with black people leave campus or else. I am okay, however, with a program that's like, hey, we're going to flip where the programming is. It's such a nothing deal. And that's where the white fragility comes in. It's that's just like when Christians freak out if someone says happy holidays.

0:59:16 Thomas: If I say happy holidays and a Christian freaks out, it's because of their Christian privilege. That is not, it is not anti-Christian for me to say that. It's not bigoted against Christians. It's simply pointing out that the overreaction to what is an absolute nothing deal, this day of absence is a nothing deal. It's programming for students, as I said, I was an RA. Our programs were nothing. Thing. You put them on, five people show up. Nobody cares. It's not a big deal. For it to be switched on the day of absence should be a nothing deal. His white fragility made it into a gigantic attack. And it's the same thing I would say if a Christian reacts to you saying happy holidays and launches a war on Christmas narrative. It is the same thing.

1:00:02 Thomas: That is Christian fragility. That's Christian persecution complex. It, it's very similar to me. It doesn't mean I'm bigoted against Christians. I actually invited Chidi to email me and potentially talk on Skype because I think it's, I think it is fascinating though to talk about sort of a tokenism kind of thing when it comes to black people, like we just assume that they all think the same thing, and I do think there's a really difficult, it's a difficult, nuanced balance to strike there, and it's an interesting topic, so I might, let me know, listeners, if you're interested in that potential conversation, I think it could be interesting, but I reached out, she emailed, we haven't gone any further than that, but it might be an interesting conversation to set up, so let me, let me know what you think about that idea.

1:00:51 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas, it's Michael Schaefer here, wanted to respond to your blog post and your recording of "Whoever I Don't Like is Ruining the Atheist Movement," I thought it was a very cogent, well-crafted response to David Smalley's "How the Aggressive Left is Killing the Atheist Movement," personally, this whole thing looks to me like some of those figures of the past in the atheist movement are trying to hold on to an audience, it is a fracturous audience, audience, because atheism is a weak thing to bond around. New voices coming up like yourself are less interested, like you said, in just atheism for atheism's sake. We've seen it before, and we are moving towards the intersection of atheism and humanism and social justice, where those that had been around before seem to be losing some audience, having a hard time taking up new audience.

1:01:50 Voicemail: It seems right now they're picking up the banner of anti-SJW because that's the low-hanging fruit. If it wasn't, then how would we see Ruben and Gad Saad's YouTube views be so high? It's low-hänging fruit. So the atheist community maybe just isn't really a community except when we're fighting church-state separation issues and that sort of thing. Maybe we need to identify the subgroups. Smalley wants to be reasonableness, but I kind of think that's bullshit, because social justice and humanist causes are reasonable. Skeptic isn't the greatest word, now that Skeptic magazine is penis-up squirterly. So, for those of us on the side of humanity, something.

1:02:37 Voicemail: SJWAs, human atheists, I don't know, something other than the regressive left. And maybe in keeping with the general SJW ideals of equality, we don't have prominent leaders. But if we did, I'd dominate you and Eli, and maybe the two of you can figure out how this social justice atheism movement should be branded. Keep fighting. Thanks, Thomas. Take care.

1:03:03 Thomas: Michael, thank you so much, for your voice mail and your support in general, really appreciate it. Yeah, this is probably a bigger topic, we're very low on time, I think I could do a whole show on this. It might be an interesting conversation to have with someone like Eli, because I go back and forth too, do we need another name for the movement? But I just, I mean, some of what you said, I'm thinking too, like, are we a movement? How much does it matter that we're a movement? I feel like some people who complain about like, hey, we need to all stick together. We need to focus, stop infighting. I feel what they really mean is they want you to still listen to their podcast or go to their conference. Because what does it come down to really? What needs to happen for there to be more church-state separation? Well, we all need to vote liberals in, for the most part.

1:03:50 Thomas: I mean, we don't need to vot in people who are secular. That doesn't require a podcast to do. I mean, you could say maybe if a podcast is rallying people, encouraging voting, that's something I do. So, I mean you can encourage voting on any podcast, you know, you can focus on it a little bit here and there. So like what, I may be donating to certain organizations, I encourage donation to say FFRF, I encouraged donation to any secular charities, maybe doing pledge drives to secular charities, sure that's something. Thing. But my point is, infighting doesn't really stop that. If we splinter into different groups, we can all still donate to strictly secular charities. It's not like I'm donating to the SJW separation of church and state charity and you're donating.

1:04:40 Thomas: I don't really think that exists. And by the way, even if it did, we can argue about the practicality of, you know, is two two charities with half the money, each as effective as one charity with the whole amount of money. There's a certain point at which that could get absurd if you're talking about such a small amount of money, it wouldn't help. But does that really make a difference even if we did splinter off into different charities? So I just don't think, I haven't heard a good argument as to what really is being lost if and when we, you know, social justice minded atheists want to talk about social justice. I've only seen that as a tactic to try to silence people. I mean, that's really, I haven't seen, and point me to it, guys. You can make the argument you want on the voicemail, call me, whatever.

1:05:26 Thomas: If you have a good argument for why social justice atheists shouldn't be allowed to pursue social justice aims more so than atheism, I, I hasn't heard it. I don't know what we're losing by doing that. So that's my take on it. I don't know that we need a new name. But I could go either way. I'm vacillating on that. I could see it maybe helping, but also I've tended to think recently that just we disagree. Everybody disagrees on so much. There's so little that atheists really have in common in some ways that I'm fine to be labeled as an atheist, but I don't even care if I'm in or out of the movement. I am going to do what I'm going to which is I'm going to try to point out reasonable arguments. I mean, try to advocate for For the politicians, I think we should vote in.

1:06:12 Thomas: I'm going to try, you know, I'm going to do what I'm going to be doing. I'm sure that most of you are like me. I don't think, you know, we're all just a bunch of independent minded people who are going to reason how we reason. I just don't, I don't think there's any real threat of anything being lost there. So that's what I think. I mean, there's more to it. And certainly, Michael, I think there are advantages to having a different name. Oh, and by the way, part of your message was a little bit cut off. I don't know what that was. Sorry about that. I promise it wasn't me. Me, it was that way from Google Voice. But anyway, having a new name, there could be advantages, bringing more visibility to it maybe, so I go either way on that. But thanks for the call. Thanks everyone for the great calls for For this voicemail segment. It was fantastic. I enjoyed it a lot.

1:07:01 Thomas: It is time to thank my wonderful, amazing, new patrons, who paid, pledged over at patreon.com/seriouspod, thank you guys so much, thank, you, Jim Ramsay, Thomas Swords, Caleb Lackey, Connor Palmer, Sam Donow, Nick McCollam, Jess Blake, Joseph Joseph Quillen, ullrich fischer, Bryan Schilligo, Joshua Macdonald, Corey Johnston, and Ísólfur Jónsson. Thank you so much. I'm probably pronouncing that terribly, but thank you for the pledge regardless. And if you ever want to add a little bit of like phonetic pronunciation for me, I will definitely utilize it. If you can add it in your name, that's really, really cool. If you email me it, I... We'll hopefully remember it, but it's hard. I've got a lot on my mind.

1:07:46 Thomas: It's hard to remember every single one of those, so I'll do my best. But anyway, thank you for pledging in any case, and now I've got to thank my all-time greats, my Hall of Fame patrons, and they are... Garrett Brian Gairford, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger, cases one in 30 minutes or your pizza's free, Metcalf, Matthew Maxson, of Odd Atheist Friends, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, John Bodley, Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Lives, Jenny Robin, the Zika baby that lived, Marcel, I want to have the funniest Patreon name, Comrade Heath Enwright is an ally of the proletariat, the net-sec heathen, Absion, Beth Deitch, Sarah McPike, Sammy, Clayton Hart, Chas Wallace, read some effing Terry Pratchett, Luke Boucher, Dan Griffith, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Michael Rops, Michael Schaefer of the previous voicemail and of Reason Real Estate, and Hunter Ash.

1:08:40 Thomas: Thank you guys really for making the show happen. I appreciate it so much. Very excited to bring you an interview with Alix Jules on Monday. Wow, really cool guy. We could have gone on at length and we, we, uh, it was such a good conversation. I can't wait for you to hear it. I won't spoil it anymore. And I also need to remind you guys that I will be at that inciting incident 100th show in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you're around on Friday in that area, uh come hang out. It'll be really fun. A lot of cool people there. I'm excited to see some of you to see my podcast buds hang out with Eli Eli Bosnick, stuff like that. Andrew Torrez. Oh, it's going to be fun. Anyway, thanks for listening and I will see you next week.