SIO82: The Mythinformation Shitshow

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and Welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 82 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. First and foremost, I need to warn you that this episode will contain profanity. It will also contain discussions of sexual assault. Mentions of sexual assault rather. It will contain stuff like that. Not because I wanted to, but because... Any objective coverage of One Sargon of Akkad or What Happened at Mythicist Milwaukee necessarily needs to include such things, otherwise it is incomplete. So there's your heads up. If you don't feel up to it, feel free to pass, and I'm sorry. But here we go.

I need to talk about Mythicist Milwaukee, the Myth Information Conference, what happened. There's too much, way, way too much to talk about. I'm having a hard time even figuring out how to prioritize what to tell you, but I'm going to do my best. I would like to point out I had an amazing conversation with Tom of Cognitive Dissonance who was part of the VIP party little altercation thing. It was really good. I wanted to put it up for patrons. It's up there on Patreon.com slash SeriousPod. I wanted make sure to give back to all the new patrons and the existing patrons who play pledged. Thank you guys so much. It was a, it

0:01:49 Thomas: Should be a real episode, but I had Tom on the phone. The quality wasn't as good. We'll try to hook up at a later date, but for, in the meantime, that is well worth checking out. Tom has some really good insights on, on kind of his view of what's going on with these YouTubers and the conference and what he was trying to do when he confronted Sargon, all that stuff. It's excellent. I love Tom. I loved Cognitive Dissonance. It was really fun. Okay. With that said, uh, here's my breakdown of the Myth Information fiasco. Full decision behind why I went, why I initially agreed, why I questioned, and then ultimately decided to go through with my commitment.

Well, Myth Information is a conference I spoke at last year. My memories of last year's conference were some of my happiest that I have, which makes this all the more heartbreaking. Last year, I did my talk on the Bible. Having finished the Thomas and the Bible podcast, it took over six years to go through the entire Bible. I made what I thought was a really funny talk. It was a hit, actually. It was kind of a surprise hit. It got voted the second best, I believe, second only to the headliner debate, which was Bart Ehrman and Price on Jesus' mythicism.

So, second only to that, I was very proud. And so, as time went on, I I was kind of saddened when I wasn't contacted to come back. I figured, you know, I'd have a good chance of being able to come back to the conference and maybe do a different talk, cover some other ground, have a great time. Have a good time again with some cool people. I wasn't contacted. And the first iteration of the lineup came out. I was not a part of it. This is from my memory, but I'm pretty sure this is right on. They constantly were revising things. I'll grant that. I don't know that they were

0:03:50 Thomas: For sure finalized with the guest list, but initially they had a lineup and included Dave Rubin. It didn't include me. So what happened then was my view from people I've heard from in the organization was that there was kind of a split going on where there were some more social justice oriented people within Mythicist Milwaukee, or if not social justice, people who in general don't support this kind of new center anti-left stuff. And they were a little dismayed at the lineup. It seemed to be very right-wing or new center anti-left centric. And some people suggested, actually somebody asked me who I would recommend to like be a social justice debater for Rubin.

And I said, look, I don't have time to help you with your conference that I wasn't invited to. It's a little disappointing that I was not invited and you went in favor of Dave Rubin, somebody that I have been very critical of. As such, I will debate him if you want me to. Otherwise, have fun with your Conference. That was essentially my response as I remember it. What happened was they ultimately did want me do it. They asked me, they made the offer, or do you want to be interviewed by Dave Rubin? I said, absolutely. I jump at the chance to try to challenge that guy. I

0:05:10 Thomas: Accepted it and that was solidified. I believe that lasted very short. I mentioned it. You can go back in my episodes. I mentioned It at the time. I don't remember what episode, but it lasted about a week until Dave Rubin dropped out due to the scheduling conflict. And I will note that when Dave Rubin agreed to do this, I decided, okay, I'm going to stop tweeting at Dave Rubin because my tweets have been getting more and more antagonistic toward him.

Not as much back then, but yes, I mean, I would argue with him. I would say he was wrong about stuff. And when he had agreed to have this conversation, I said, you know what? Okay, that's awesome that he did that. I tweeted publicly. I'm looking forward to talking to Dave Rubin. I'm look forward to him following through on his promise to actually talk to somebody from the left for once. And I didn't tweet at him after that. That was where I left it, assuming our conversation would happen then. And I was going to approach it that way. Well, when the news broke very quickly that he had dropped out, that's when I decided, OK, now I will go back to my usual tweeting stuff at Dave Rubin when I think he's full of shit. And I did so. But then the sort of, the, because my travel and stay was already booked, because I was already kind of committed and it was in my calendar. Then the question was, who will be Rubin's replacement? Replacement.

0:06:30 Thomas: I personally don't know when Shoe on Head and Armored Skeptic were invited. I wasn't paying enough attention to know if they were there before me or after me, so I just want to throw that in there. But Sargon was suggested as an alternative. And this is where I believe my responsibility begins, my mistake begins, because I had just heard the name Sargon. I knew nothing about him. I had heard Sargon of Akkad. I know basically he was a Dave Rubin type that was kind kind of anti-identity politics, that sort of thing, anti-left in some ways, but I really had no idea. And given that I am very busy recording five episodes of stuff a week and researching a lot for my show, keeping up with all that, I just said, okay, that sounds good.

I'll go ahead and I'll do that. I will follow through with that. That's my mistake. I didn't research. I didn't know we lived in a world personally where a sexual harasser would be invited on stage. I I just, I, I believed and, and naively, and I was wrong. I believe that Mythicist Milwaukee, I just never, it never occurred to me to think, hmm, let me check if they invited a sexual harasser on stage with me. I, it just didn't occur to me. So, then, again, schedules and timing being what it is, this was sort of left for a while, it was just, for months,

0:07:51 Thomas: By the way, it just kind of there, this would happen, nothing, you know, my plan was to start research somewhere, I don't know, a week or two before, because I do in-depth research for every week of my podcast, I figured I would get to this when I was scheduled to, when I'm closer to it, and, so, for a few months, nothing happened, at least that I noticed, and apologies if anyone, anyone was out there campaigning against this like six months ago and I didn't notice.

I apologize. Don't mean to say you weren't, but I hadn't taken notice of anything yet. Until, you know, a few months back when all this, the heavy protesting of Sargon started and I was made aware of some of the awful things he said and I looked a little more into it because I was just really surprised and shocked and angry that this was the person I was going to talk to and it was really disgusting. And this whole thing proceeded to blow up until, as you guys know this, I mean, Aaron Raw dropped out. He was merely going to be a special guest. He wasn't speaking or anything. He dropped out. And then Seth Andrews had decided he would still go. He was going to try to challenge them.

And then he looked a little more into Sargon and Shoe on the Head or whoever these people are. And he came to the conclusion that, oh, wait, no, these are terrible people with terrible ideas. I'm not participating in this. That was a quick

0:09:11 Thomas: Weekend for Seth. He had a quick change of heart and he dropped out as well. And that's when I really was, for a good few hours, truly uncertain of what I wanted to do. I asked a lot of people, a lot people that I trust, I posted a bit on Facebook, I read so many opinions on this, because I wanted to, I wanted input, I want my friends input, I thought about it good and hard, it was very close, I wanted to drop out, but there were a few things that were crucial to making this decision, and one was, in general, I just don't want to punish people for my mistakes, it's my mistake that I wasn't well researched on Sargon, on.

I made the commitment. The travel was booked. The hotel was booked, and for whatever reason, I feel like that means something. As much as some people might think, well, okay, the organization deserves it, I don't feel like I should be causing that harm to someone for my mistake. It was my mistake, I didn't look into it. And secondly, I pictured, here's what I pictured. Here was my calculus going into this. I thought, okay, last year's conference was totally regular. I mean, it was, there was no reason to think it was any sort of alt-right or conservative or alt-light or whatever the word you want to use. It seemed like a pretty reasonable conference. It was great. I had a good time. Lots of good people.

0:10:32 Thomas: I figured, okay. This year's audience I'm thinking will be somewhat the same as that. Plus, you know, however many Sargon people there, I'm sure there will be Sargon fans, but. But I thought for the most part, I'd be working with a base audience of skeptics and people who are already, you know, planning on attending regardless, because it was a pretty good attendance last year. And my thinking was, here's what I do not want to have happen. I don't want Sargon to go up there on stage unchallenged or perhaps interviewed by someone far more sympathetic. I don't think I'm the only person in the world who would have interviewed him the way that I think is appropriate, but I did not trust the organization to find a suitable replacement.

I would have had no control over that. They could have found someone to give him a softball interview or he might have talked by himself. He would be unchallenged on stage. He would have this legitimacy. He would look like just another intellectual who was opining on Black Lives Matter and identity politics and the usual stuff. And it would hide the fact that in actuality, he's a misogynist and he's a sexual harasser and he yells at feminists all day and says, every feminist has a fucking mental illness. It's a quote, roughly speaking, something like the words might be in the wrong order, but that is the quote and

0:11:52 Thomas: Stuff like that. I did not want that to be hidden from passersby, from just people who were there for a conference. So that was what I thought. I thought, you know, I need to make sure these people know what he is. So those were the two things that were strongly urging me to go do this. But this was stressful as hell because I anticipated I am going to have to go there and tell a person, you know, in an interpersonal way, in a way that's public, in front of an audience, I'm going to be very confrontational, I am gonna have to give him the appropriate amount of opprobrium for what he said because what he has said is horrible.

0:12:32 Thomas: If you don't know it by now, here's this was the most egregious example I saw of something that he said. It by no means is exhaustive. There's plenty of horrible things he said, and maybe there are worse things, but this was what had stuck out to me as particularly egregious. There was a female member of parliament who started a campaign, was part of I think three, to start a campaign to try to end online bullying. So for that crime in Sargon's eyes, for the crime of wanting to try to end online bullying, Sargon tweeted at her, to her, not about, not to the world, to her, I wouldn't even rape you.

That is a horrible thing to say. It's an unacceptable thing to say. I don't know why I need to be saying this. Frankly, I would think that should be obvious. Oh and she was very public that she was a victim of sexual assault. So a victim of sexual assault, female MP tries to start an online bullying campaign to end online bullying or to fight online bullying. And for that, that's what Sargon's response was. Implying by the way, I wouldn't even rape you implies that, you know, maybe if she were a little better looking, then that would reach the level where where Sargon would rape her. This is why it's disgusting. Frankly,

0:13:53 Thomas: I don't know why I'm wasting my time with this, but just because so many of his supporters keep trying to give the line of, "No, it wasn't a rape threat," it was, the point was to make, to say it was not a rape threat, and that her campaign was going to censor even very safe, you know, wholesome things like, "I wouldn't even rape you," that kind of, that's the defense, it wasn't rape, but first of all, first off, I've not referred to it as a rape threat, and I, some people are, and I actually think that's, that is wrong, it is sexual harassment. It is using rape as a tool. It's using her sexual trauma as a tool to beat her down for trying to do this tiny thing to make the world a little bit better. It's disgusting.

0:14:33 Thomas: It's sexual harassment. Yes, technically it is not a rape threat. Probably. Several reasons why this defense is idiotic. First off, if that were true, he would have tweeted, I won't rape you or no one's going to rape you, or I would never rape anyone. That would have been his tweet. It wouldn't be, I wouldn't even That's far different.

And even if he made a mistake, let's say, okay, he meant to say I wouldn't rape you, it was a typo, it's a slip of the finger, something, he would have apologized if he recognized how awful the thing he said was and said, sorry, I was trying to make this point that it was an anti-rape threat. There was no such apology. Other thing that Sargon and his followers are doing is a post hoc rationalization for why, okay, maybe this was bad, but she deserved it. There's a couple of things they say. One, they say, oh, Jess Phillips, she laughed about male suicide.

She laughed at it. This comes from a video in which in a hearing she was in, she was, there was actually another, I think, member of parliament was testifying that they need an international men's day because there's all these men's problems. Problems. During that, he happened to say that something like, to the effect, you can look up the video of, you know, men get to have a say. She chuckled at the idea that men hadn't had a say in a committee in which she is the only woman. She Chuckled at that. It's true. She chuckled after

0:15:54 Thomas: The hearing when it was her time, not even after the hearing, after he was done testifying, she made clear, she said, I want to clarify. I was chuckling at the the idea that a man hadn't had the chance, that men haven't had the chance to have their say. I take these issues seriously. I care about men's issues. She said that.

[0:16:11] You have to excuse me for laughing that the idea that men don't have the opportunity to ask questions in this place is a frankly laughable thing. As

0:16:17 Clip: I say, as this, as the only woman on this committee, it seems like every day to me is Well, I wasn't making that

[0:16:23] point. I wasn't making the point that men don't have an opportunity to ask. I was talking about men's issues. There's a very big difference between men raising issues and the raising of men's issues. But one could raise men's issues in any single one of the question sessions.

[0:16:38] So, men's health, absolutely. So, prostate counseling, that could be raised in men's questions, couldn't it? Very clear. She's very clear. I wasn't laughing at that. I was laughing that men hadn't had a say.

0:16:49 Thomas: That's it. But no, because these people need a post hoc rationalization for treating a woman terribly, this is one element of it, and they paint this as she laughed about male suicide. She laughed at it. No, that's absurd. You're being a child if you're misrepresenting her like that.

The other thing they do is to say, and what Sargon, I think, has said is her campaign is going to censor people, so she is using her power that way, and so therefore it's okay to harass her because from a place of power she's going to sensor me. Hey, let me look at the Reclaim the Internet campaign about page, which is the campaign we are talking about. Here are the goals, here's what it's doing. This website also sets out the challenge and asks for new ideas and action in five different areas. One, the role of police and prosecutors and where threats and harassment become crimes. Two, the responsibility of social media and publishing platforms. Three, the roll of organizations and employers. Four, the rule for individuals, including support for victims and taking on the trolls. Five, empowering and educating the next generation. I don't see a platform of censorship. I don't see anything about this that's going to take away the internet from anybody. That is another post hoc rationalization. It's a way of making her so extremely bad that any awful behavior toward her is acceptable. And that is a misogynistic

0:18:09 Thomas: Tool. That is a tool that he uses and his followers use constantly. It was used against me in the entire debate. I'll get to that in a minute. And I want to also note, keep a pin in this. I had this ready for the debate. I was ready to talk about Jess Phillips. I was already to talk about the justification. This was going to be the very first thing I challenged him on because it is important to me to make clear how unacceptable this is. In addition, I had extensively researched him and I have pages, five pages of notes, actually. I ended up not being able to use almost all of them.

I had five pages of notes on feminism, Black Lives Matter, his view on the election. I have all kinds of contradictions I had identified in his views. I'm going to see if I can talk about some of that later just because otherwise it was a waste of time. But I had all that, didn't get to use it. So, the day of the the event, the night before, by the way, there's a little party at the main donor's house that happened last year as well. I avoided Sargon like the plague because I am a very straightforward person. I do not like pretending things. I don't like pretending that I don't find someone reprehensible. I like being honest, and I find Sargon so reprehensible to interact with

0:19:30 Thomas: Him and to carry on a normal conversation as though, oh, we're just a couple of guys and then online we're a different thing. I find that to be bullshit. I find it to be a way that people get away with this kind of thing. I do not think, my opinion is, and I hope that some people will agree with me and I will fight for this opinion.

I believe our online interactions and our online world shouldn't be fundamentally different from how we would treat people in person. It should not be. I know that for a lot of people it is. It should not be that way. And when he tweeted that what he did, he was doing that. He was him. He was on his phone or his computer. He had his hand on a device. It went straight to her. She saw it as a person. There's no fundamental difference, despite what people are trying to argue with me on Facebook. They're trying to say, oh, there's no way that just bits and boops and bleeps and blops on a screen. That cannot be harassment, someone said, to which I said, well, a thought experiment. Let's say at your place of work, you send an email with sexually explicit stuff to a co-worker, uninvited email without her consent.

Do you think HR will accept the argument that, well, these are just bits? These are bits on a screen that doesn't, it cannot be harassment. Do you think they will accept the argument that well, she could walk away, she could delete the email. That's just not how

0:20:50 Thomas: The world works. It doesn't work that way anywhere else, but your little slime pit shit lord corner of the internet. And I hope someday it doesn't works that way there either. But anyway, back to the night before. I avoided him. I didn't even speak to him. I considered it a pretty much successful night because of that. Had a good time. Talked to some people. Argued with people extensively who were making MRA arguments at me. So that's interesting. I'm not saying they were MRAs.

I don't want to mislabel everybody, but that that I found that concerning. If we want to keep a pin in this later, there's gonna be lots of pins you're keeping. But I found that a little concerning. I argued with several people who were using very typical men's rights talking points that I've covered a little bit previously. That look, it's actually white men and men who are more abused. I found that disturbing and telling, like, "Oh, OK, now this explains, explains why you would see fit to invite this person." So back to that later, the next day, though, in the green room, I was unable to avoid Sargon. I was forced to talk to him a little bit.

I did my best to just keep it short and not, not, I mean, not unfriendly, but but not, you know, not friendly. And I also need to tell you that the morning of this event, when I went into the greenroom, when I, I got there, I was in one of the worst states of mind I could possibly be in.

0:22:10 Thomas: I was dreading this, absolutely dreading it, because I knew I was going to have to go in front of an audience that would likely have a lot of Sargon supporters and stick to my principles and defend what I believe in, in a way that would be very confrontational and would likely make Sargon angry, make the audience angry. And I knew there was a good chance this wasn't going to go well. Here's what I also knew. When I went to this event, when I went to the green room, etc., for anyone I met, for anyone I saw, I had no way of knowing, is this a friendly person or is this a person who cheers online abuse?

Is this a friendly person or are you a friend? Or is this a person who hates my guts? Who blames me for everything they think every SJW has done? Who cheers on sexual harassment, online abuse, rape jokes? Who thinks it's funny. Is that the person I'm meeting? I was incredibly anxious and I was incredibly reticent to talk to anyone, to meet anyone. Imagine just not knowing if anyone you're meeting hates you and supports these disgusting, cruel things. It was not fun. It was unpleasant. And as such, there were some people who tried to talk to me, who introduced themselves before the event, and I I was not very friendly and

0:23:31 Thomas: I apologize. I just couldn't, it was, I hope you'll understand where I was coming from. I did a Facebook post about it. It seems as though I was a little rude to some people. And I really, from the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry. I don't, my goal was not to be rude. I'm really sorry. It just was so hard to know who I was going to be talking to. I don'T know anyone by sight.

I know when you come up to me, you know you, but I don't know you. So that was awful. And prior, so when Sargon talked to me, I introduced myself. I decided, okay, I will be cordial. I said, hi, I'm Thomas. Shook his hand. I'm Sargon. We talked just a little bit about, I tried to give him some info about the format. I didn't even want to tell him that I was ambushing him, or sorry, I didn t even want to ambush him. I told him, here's what I plan to do. I had thought actually that the Mythicist Milwaukee people had filled him in on what I had said was roughly my plan, which was, I want to talk about the things you've said that pissed people off that made them want to de-platform you. And then we can move on to, and I told him, I want To talk about feminism, black lives matter a little bit about the election, that kind of thing.

Uh, he was like, well, yeah, yeah. Okay. He didn't really want to talk about the election. I said, okay, well, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. Uh whatever. That's the basic plan. And before this, uh, during this, some, at some point that the, you know, the timeline's a little messy. It was very stressful. I don't have perfect memory of it, but at some he said in his introduction early on, And he's like, you know, I'm really a nice guy.

0:24:51 Thomas: And I refused to buy into that bullshit because I know exactly who he is. And I said, well, something like, well we'll see, uh, you know, and, and I, he was, he was stunned by that. But that was very important to me because I've seen him go on Dave Rubin. I've see him go other platforms where people just decide to treat him as a nice guy, to not call him out for what he does. He can be, oh sure, he can be very cordial, he could be very pleasant when someone gives him a nice positive interview and doesn't actually call him on anything he does, he's very pleasant. What a swell guy he is. Someone pointed out on my Facebook, I'm a nice guys is something no nice guy ever has had to say.

0:25:32 Thomas: And I agree with that. I've never, I will never, you will never hear me billing myself. You know, I'm really a nice guy. And I don't know that I am. I might not be a nice man. I was, I just admitted I was very rude before this thing. I might Not be a Nice Guy. It's for other people to decide if they think I'm a nice guy. It is for other People to decide. I don't know. I bet you I'm rude sometimes.

I'm not at all perfect. I do my best. I believe what I believe in. But I will Never lead off and tell somebody I am a nice guy. I wonder why he feels compelled to do so. Not be at all important, but unfortunately they are because there is a misinformation campaign, there are people just making stuff up, there are people accusing me of stuff that isn't true. The interview was scheduled for 50 minutes, that was what was given to me, that was what I was slotted to do, and that was fine until the day of, I find out, oh no, it's now 80 minutes, and the time has changed, etc., etc., and you know what, I rolled with the punches.

I said, "Okay, fine," they asked me, uh, "We want to make sure to do a Q&A." I said, "Okay, I will stop, I will make sure, I'll keep my eye on the clock." There was even a stage clock. I said, "Look, there's a stage clock, I will keep my eye on that clock, and with 20 minutes to go, I will do a Q&A." And I said with at least 20 minutes to go. Maybe it will be earlier, but I will make sure we do a Q&A 20 minutes. And

0:26:52 Thomas: I was told right before I went on, "Okay, you are going until 2:40. That is when the thing is done." I said, "All right, at 2:20, I will, we'll make sure to start the Q&A." So, we get to introductions. I am introduced. I walk out to a very light smattering of applause because most of the people whose hearts are in the right place didn't want to go to this. They didn't wanna give their money to it. Some people did.

You know, I respect your decision either way on that because, frankly, I didn't wanted to be alone there, but who knows? Maybe it would've been better. I don't know. It wouldn't have been better for me. For me personally, I would've rather had more people there, but that's just me personally. For the greater good, I don't know. So, I don't blame anyone either way for that decision. But long story short, I had a few people there. They were in the back. And then Sargon had an army of alt-light self-described shitlords. There were several MAGA hats. There was a Kekistani flag. There were a lot. They were all in the front. They were all as close as they could get to me, to the stage, to Sargon. They were loud. After my smattering of applause, Sargon was introduced and the place erupted. That was the first sign that possibly my previous

0:28:12 Thomas: Moral calculus was off. The audience I had imagined that would be, you know, largely normal atheists didn't know much about this disgusting shitlord YouTube world. And then some shitlords. Shitlords, turns out that was not what it was. It was, based on the round of applause in the beginning, it would be hard to imagine it wasn't 80% in favor of him. That doesn't mean 80% shitlords. That means 80% favor of Him and a strong, strong and loud presence of out and out shitlords self-described who were very obnoxious. So right away, that put me even worse off because because I felt, okay, great.

Despite the fact that I wanted to make sure to expose this guy and what he has said, I am now worried that when I do, I don't know how much support I will have. I do not know. I really, I was worried. And sure enough, I started off, I still start off politely enough. Those who have said that it was my fault for starting off angry and yelling at the crowd and getting them riled up, you are factually incorrect. That is not what happened. Well, you can make your own judgment. Listen to how I started the question. This is not the very beginning of the debate. This was probably maybe a

0:29:33 Thomas: Minute in. It's very soon, but not the VERY beginning. Here is me starting the question about this tweet.

0:30:04 Thomas: Listen. I said, let me finish the quote, I will by all means give you a chance to have your say. And I intended to do that. My intention and what I did was not listen to what you said, you fucker, and yell at him and yell yell at the crowd. My plan was, and I want to emphasize this, my plan was to read the quote and give him a chance to explain, to give him the chance. Maybe he would apologize.

Maybe he would say, okay, well, here's the, that's, maybe he would give me the bullshit about that's out of context. Here's what it really meant. Maybe you would, that I wanted to give him that chance. And I did. You heard me say, I will give you the chance to explain. Tell me how that is starting off angry and starting off off confrontational. I said, let me read the quote, which we all know is, is bad. Bad. I'm not bringing up something. I am not surprising him with something no one had any idea about. We all know this was going to be... I told him we were going to talk about this. We were going talk about why people didn't want him here. And I wanted to give him his say. And then here you can hear what happened.

0:31:49 Thomas: I should have noted that the official video isn't out yet. I'd hoped it would be. It isn't out. I have had to rely on bad cell phone videos. That is the end of that one. I'm going to switch to another one that's actually a little better quality and resume from that same spot.

[0:32:05] Finally, you have signaled to the women in the movement, you do not give a shit about using rape as a threat to bully somebody. That's what you have signaled. That's the point. And the whole point of it was to demonstrate that I would say, I won't do something, and you will say, that's a threat. Oh, it's just a coincidence that you said rape. It's a coincidence. You didn't say, I want to murder her, I want to... Go through all the crimes. Arson, I want to... It's a coincidence. No, it's entirely deliberate. Because she's a victim of sexual assault. You can use her

[0:32:46] previous trauma as a cudgel to bully her. It has nothing to do with her trauma. And you know what she does, right? She was parading around saying, look, I think I get all these rape threats, and therefore I want to control the internet. And she's an MP, so it's not like she's powerless, right? All right, that video cuts off. One day there will be full video. I think they're charging for it. It'll be up to you if you care enough to buy it. Hopefully it won't be much. But anyway, here's what happened from my view there. When I read that tweet, again, I thought there would be an explanation. I thought I thought there would be, if anything, I thought, okay, there's going to be some reaction in the crowd because it's such an awful thing to say. Never did I dream, and this was me. I was wrong. This is my fault. I didn't anticipate this. Never did I dream that I would hear the explosive approval that I heard.

0:33:46 Thomas: It was riotous. It was obnoxious. It was in my face. It was right in front. It was, I never dreamed that I would hear that. And yes, I was outraged by it. I was made angry by it, I was disgusted by it I, I contemplated in that moment when that happened, I contemplated leaving. I, and this threw me off and I did not perform at my best in this debate. Hands down, you can find plenty to critique. I'm about to critique myself in a second. I didn't perform that well, but. But it is incorrect to say that I started angry. What happened was I read and I said I would give him a chance to explain.

He said, yep. And the audience burst into applause. And that is disgusting. And from that moment on, I no longer cared about this audience. I know there are good people in it. This was disgusting. It was embarrassing. This was to think that the organizers wanted this, that they wanted a conference conference where someone would, would have a tweet read like that, that you wouldn't even rape them. And there would be applause. Afterward, I talked to multiple women who left, who had to leave, who didn't know anything about this and had to leave when they heard this because they were scared. They were fucking scared. So that's when I went on the offensive toward the audience and the organizers. It

0:35:06 Thomas: Wasn't my intention when I started. It actually wasn't my intention to do that until I heard them do that. And if you want to blame me, if you want to say that I should have remained completely stoic and calm, and And some people are saying this. Sargon supporters and sycophants are saying the minute he got angry, he lost. You're free to say that. You have a different value system than I do. This is a major theme that I want to talk about. I've learned from these people, the value system of this YouTube, this particular sect of YouTube people is remaining calm in the face of horrible stuff said. That's their highest value. You.

Your biggest transgression is if you show emotion, sadness, anger when someone is saying awful stuff towards you. That's when you've lost. You've gotten owned. You're gotten destroyed when you do that. And as such, there are people who have said that I needed to remain completely stoic. I needed to remain completely calm. I needed to do that to show the audience that I could have a level-headed discussion. In a way, you are right. I could've done that. I couldve done that and it would've gone better for me. It would've done better for the event and the organizers. And great, that would've been a great gift to me and the organizers, that things would've stayed calm.

But my value system is different than yours. Getting emotional does not disqualify someone from having an opinion. And this is what is so unbelievably backwards about these quote-unquote skeptics, people who think they honor logic and rationality. Logic and rationality does not mean no emotion. Furthermore, if your view is that no matter what I said, no matter what I was saying for the, by the way, this is a couple minutes in, we talked for 80 minutes. Minutes. If your view is, no matter what I said during that 80 minutes, no matter what point I made, because I got mad, I lost, that is the most illogical thing in the world. Statement X is

0:37:07 Thomas: Statement X. It doesn't matter the emotional content, the emotional feeling behind statement X, that doesn't make it wrong or right. That is the Most Illogical Thing. When you think you're being rational, when you think your being Spock-like and saying, well, yes, if you've gotten angry, you've lost. You are being the opposite of that. You are being irrational. You are showing an inability to listen to someone if they have a certain emotional content behind what they're saying. And in my value system, what I set out to do was show victims of sexual abuse, show victims of harassment that this is not acceptable, and to show atheists who were not familiar with this, to show anyone there who was not familiar Sargon that this tweet is not acceptable.

I would have been ready to accept some sort of apology or explanation. Explanation, we could have had that discussion. The minute the crowd cheered for that tweet, that discussion was made impossible, and you heard in that clip, Sargon actually did start doing that apologetics, and this is a mistake I made, he started going into the apologetics of, oh, she wants to control me, and frankly, I was so rattled by the disgusting behavior I had just witnessed that I didn't pick that up, I didn't pick that discussion up, because you know what, it didn't matter, because they cheered before, they cheered regardless of what he was about to

0:38:27 Thomas: Say. They cheared the mere content of the tweet. And once again, if this were some misunderstanding, the response would be not, yeah, fuck you, because he went on to say, that's not in the recording, I just realized, he went on to say, I do not care, I do not care about your feelings about this tweet, I do not care that people think it's a he did not care, he did not care, and if this were some misunderstanding, if he were a person with empathy at all, he would have stopped the crowd and said, you know what, no, no no, that was a misunderstanding, I I did go too far.

I still stand. You know, he could have even still stood by partially. He could have said, you know, I just want to make clear. I didn't mean to say I wouldn't even rape you. I meant to say like I wouldn't rape. He could've. But no, that was not done at all. In his mind, anything you could say to that person, Jess Phillips, is justified because she's so evil. Said it a million times. I'll say it a Million more times. I didn't perform at My best at this. There could have been plenty. I'm not the next Christopher Hitchens. I'm sorry. I never claimed to be I don't claim to be some expert debater.

I do my best people listen if they want to, you know, you feel free to provide me feedback. I don't really care on this particular one because this was extreme. This is a disgusting person. I debated I'm Not doing this again, but in general, you When I do a show, when I do a debate, I'm open for feedback.

0:39:48 Thomas: I don't pretend that I'm some expert at it. But there are points that I actually made that were pretty good over the course of this. There were some things I didn't do as well, but there were some Things that were pretty good, and it did not matter. Because when you plan a conference, when you make this the focus of your conference, this is the audience you get. You get an audience that does not care about intellectual arguments. They did not care. The whole idea that, oh, battle of ideas, this will be a good discussion. No, they didn't. They jeered me. They yelled at me. They interrupted me. I wasn't able to make an argument. And furthermore, Sargon did the same thing.

0:40:28 Thomas: He interrupted me constantly, constantly. There was one point, and you can see it. There's one point where, again, when the full video comes out, there's one point when I started to answer something and I said, I just mixed up my words and I said, you can't enforce a law. And then I went back and said, what I was going to say was there's no law you can make that will properly address something. That was what I Was trying to say.

So I said you can enforce a law and then I went back and I said there's no law and and he interrupted and said you can't enforce the law, started laughing, ridiculed me for those few words. I had said what and I say hold on. On. I'm trying to say, and he said, why, why would I let you finish when it started with you can't enforce a law? Which, by the way, already there are laws you can enforce. There are actually laws that are difficult to enforce. So even in and of itself, that was wrong. He stopped the entire thing. He ridiculed me. The audience laughed. And I said to him, I, I mixed up my words.

You're going, is this, and I said, to the audience, I believe, if I have my memory right, this is a point where I said, the audience, is this the kind of intellectual level you celebrate, celebrate, where I misspeak and then he analyzes that and ridicules me for misspeaking? And at that point, it was so egregious, at that point, that he said, "Oh, you misspoke, okay, I'll let you go," but that was intellectual, the level intellectual engagement that you were, that's one small microcosm. This isn't a battle of ideas.

0:41:49 Thomas: This is ownage. This a culture that thinks if you dominate someone, if you make them mad, if make them upset, you've won. That is the most irrational thing I can imagine. Imagine. I think the fundamental misunderstanding that this YouTube Shitlord community has, I think, my theory, and I've been thinking a lot about this, there's a lot to it, but a portion of my theory is that what they've celebrated in atheism are a couple of things. They've taken a couple of things and they've made them holy. They've made them just absolutely the highest quality values. Use, they've made owning someone and ridiculing them, they've made remaining stoic, no matter what, remaining unemotional no matter, and making someone else angry, they've taken those things, they've distilled them from, some, I don't know, it started, I think it started with debates or with videos that they would make.

And I had so many people, by the way, tell me, "Oh, I used to love Sargon, I used to love these people when they made fun of religious people, I used to love them for that, but once they started doing the same same thing to feminists," who actually don't enjoy it very much. But that's the value system. The value system isn't make an intellectual argument, evaluate it, prove it right or wrong. It isn't. They don't, they did not listen. I'll give you more examples and you can hear it if you ever listen. They did not want me to speak. They did not

0:43:09 Thomas: Let me speak. He did not. Let me speak there were times when he said, I don't care what you're going to say. So don't just don't bother with it. As though that so that that's the level of intellectual engagement we have. When your highest value is not getting angry when horrible shit is said, a A fucking toaster could attain your highest value. If that's all it is, if it's just not getting mad, not getting triggered, not not getting sad, not being emotional, an object can do that. My values are making the world a better place, making a good argument, being caring, Thank you for hearing. Being compassionate.

0:43:49 Thomas: I mean, plenty of things. A fucking toaster cannot attain my highest values, but this is why this community, this YouTube community, is not worthwhile. It is not worth platforming. I'll give you another example. The next thing I did actually was read a second quote that I wanted to make sure to get out there, and it is from a video entitled, Feminism is a Mental Illness. This was actually the quote I referenced earlier. Here's the actual wording, quote, fuck you feminists, this is fucking insane, this actually the nail in the coffin to prove that feminism is a mental disease and anyone who is a feminist has that disease, end quote.

And I just want to point out the other part of it, there's two two parts. There's if you get angry or sad or mad, you lose. And the other part of it is they ignore when their side gets mad. So when Sargon rages over nothing, as he's doing in this video, when he's triggered and raging over feminism, that's fine. But if I get angry at him being a sexual harasser, that is me losing. That's ownage. I got owned. Is some of the tens of thousands of tweets I've gotten about this was, I Got Owned, Igotthisiswhatever, cringeworthywhatever. And it is a kind of Group hallucination. When they all decide that I got owned because

0:45:09 Thomas: I merely am showing some emotion, when they all decided and agree on that, they reinforce each other on that. It makes them feel good to say, oh, yeah, I agree. Look at this. Look, pathetic. Oh, they yell that it's not that is uninteresting to me, by the way. It's not valuable. That is not valuable to me. I do not value. I don't share your value system. So by your definition of me getting mad means I lost.

Well, I have my own value system, my value system is when I stood up for the most most vulnerable in our society. When I stood up for people who've been sexually abused. And then I later hear from all kinds of people who have contacted me and said, I'm a rape survivor. I cannot believe what I heard in that audience. That, that, that was me winning in my own way. I'm not perfect. I didn't do a perfect job. I'm not a fucking hero. I've doing the bare minimum, by the way, nobody should be calling me a hero and they aren't really, but some people think I'm getting hero worshipped. Well, yeah, people are congratulating me and it's sad. This should have required no congratulation. This should be the bare minimum. But anyway, I at least count that as a personal victory that I stuck to my values.

I did not cower in the face of this disgusting audience and this disgusting man. I did not Dave Rubin this interview and say, well, you're not such a, oh, you're not such a bad guy. That's how he starts every interview. Oh, yeah. Well, you're not some racist. You're not some sex. I didn't do that.

0:46:29 Thomas: No, I didn't because I have a different set of values. But anyway, back to this quote. That was a little bit of a sidebar. But in this video where he said that quote that I just read, you know what the thing he was raging about, which was the nail in the coffin to prove that feminism is a mental disease and anyone who's a feminist has that disease? It was a petition to classify the men's rights movement as a terrorist group.

This happened after that one guy, Elliot Roger, I think killed some people and MRAs were celebrating him. So some people filed a position using the government, the whitehouse.gov, that old initiative Obama had, where if you got a hundred thousand, then he would address it. I think it was. And this petition, I Googled it. It had, it went nowhere. It went roughly 4,000 signatures, 4,000. And this was enough for him to say, quote, Feminism is a mental disease and anyone who is a feminist has that disease, end quote. From this sample size, he's making, how anti-intellectual is that? Don't you people, you YouTubers, don't you value intellectual ability? Don't you value logic and reason? That's the most illogical, triggered bullshit I've ever heard. Just for fun, I had this as a gotcha, though no one cared. I googled and there's a change.org petition to classify feminism as a terrorist group. And that petition has 13,000 signatures. And when I said

0:47:49 Thomas: That, I got an unironic cheer from the crowd that Sargon claimed was a joke. We disagree. They cheered. The Sargon Sykovins cheered at the idea of feminism being classified as a terrorist group. I think they agree with that, some of them agree with it unironically, and they didn't realize the hypocrisy of what they were just doing. One more example, I think, again, this could never end. This was 80 minutes. I could analyze it forever. But one more example of the anti-intellectualism and just how much we should not value this as a discussion of ideas. It wasn't a worthwhile discussion of ideas. It will never be because it's just hatred. It's just hatred of feminism.

It is hatred of SJWs. It is blind hatred with a few buzzwords behind it. But here's another, what I would call I mean, I call it a gotcha, but what I thought was going to be a very good point. I thought of something I thought was interesting that I identified well, there is a bunch, but for this in particular, when it comes to Sargon and feminism, he has a stock answer of first and second wave feminism, okay, those were good, third wave and intersectionality, now those are just awful, and he simultaneously holds the view that we need to be looked at as individuals and the problem with me and my ilk is that

0:49:09 Thomas: We are collectivists and we're trying to punish other people or be racist against certain individuals in order to benefit a group and we need to treat everyone as individual. And so when I looked into intersectionality, now I am not an expert in intersectionality. I should not be the one. I just want to emphasize I'm not an expert. I shouldn't be the ones teaching someone about it. But I did some research.

I did some reading and I wanted to know what the definition was because from what I had seen, I was very skeptical that Sargon even knew what it is. Just to explain to you guys, if, in case you don't know, because I wasn't too terribly familiar with the actual, you know, the textbook definition, intersectionality is the idea that our identities are a very rich, complicated intersection of different, uh, different identities, so we're not just men and women, you know, it's and that was that was maybe a a flaw, maybe a an oversight of second wave feminism, according to some this is very, you know, opinionated but. But according to some, a flaw in second wave feminism was that it didn't account enough for the different experiences of black women, of poor women, that it just lumped men and women kind of together and it didn't look at these other dynamics. And the insight, which I think is a brilliant one, of intersectionality is, no, we're a product of many things. There are many ways that

0:50:30 Thomas: I'm not just a man. I'm not even just a white man. I'm a man, I'm a white male, I'm an hetero, I'm cis hetero. I come from a pretty relatively poor background, not dirt poor, but not well off background. And, you know, women aren't all the same, obviously, and white women aren't all the same, and people of color aren't all the same. They're different. A black wealthy woman's experience is going to be different than a poor white woman's experience. And intersectionality is a way of saying, yeah, we're a product of many layers of identity. And it occurred to me that, wait a minute, if his whole thing is we ought to be looked at as individuals and not these groups, and yet he explicitly rejects intersectionality, which makes us more individual.

It is it is, by definition, true that if you take second wave feminism and you compare it with which, which, by some accounts, lumps men and women into these categories and treats women more the same regardless of their other characteristics and you look at, and and you apply intersectionality to that, it actually makes you more individual. It makes us able to account for more aspects of your identity. And that was what I was going to bring up. I thought it was a good point. I was I couldn't talk about anti-intellectual. I could not even make this point. I was not allowed to make this point.

0:51:50 Thomas: I started out, here's how it went in real life. And you can, again, you can listen to it, but here's my memory of it. I asked him, what is your definition of feminism? Could you define feminism? Feminism, booze, jeers, whatever. But he, I think he made some attempt at defining feminism. I think he said something like, well, originally he was trying to seek women's rights, but now it's some bullshit like totalitarian, you know, he exaggerated. I just said, okay, whatever, I'll take that first definition.

Now, would you mind defining what is intersectionality? Because I, you know, I wanted to make sure we knew what these terms meant before I tried to make this point because otherwise it would, there's no point. You have to define your terms if If you're going to have a discussion, I would think that would be a bedrock of having a logical discussion is being able to define your terms. And I said, can you define intersectionality for me? And he gave the most nonsense answer I've ever heard. He said, it's a system of control. It's a totalitarian system that seeks to control you at every level of government. It was paranoid nonsense. And I thought, well, hold on. That's your opinion of it. Could we start with a definition? Definition, and he did the same thing again.

And I said to him, I was like, well, would you like, can I define it? Because, you know, we need to get this definition. This is my memory. Again, this is not going to be 100% accurate. This Is my memory of how it went. Can I define it then? Because we need something for the Boos and Jeers.

0:53:11 Thomas: And he said, I did. I said, you're refusing to define it. He said, I did define it, and I would just like to imagine if this were an atheist and a Christian debate, and imagine if the atheist had asked the a Christian, hey, could you define atheism just so I know we're talking about the same thing? Because it's very similar. This is very analogous. A lot of Christians think atheism is baby eating. They think it's some weird, like we worship the devil. Can I get, can we agree on a definition of terms? And imagine if the Christian had then said, atheism is a baby eating system of control that seeks to eradicate, you know, had gone off on that tangent. You would say, well, that's your your opinion of what it does?

0:53:51 Thomas: Can you give me a definition? And inevitably you would try to reach toward, you know, it's a rejection and belief of God's. You would get towards something of an agreement on what the definition of a term is. When I told him he hadn't defined intersectionality and I said, "Kent, let me just define it." I said intersectionality is such and such, and it actually makes you more individual than second wave feminism. And at which point I was booed beyond belief. I was interrupted and booed to where I couldn't even define a word. They were booing my attempt to define my terms.

I wish I had audio of this one because this was where I was so frustrated at the very idea that this was anything like a debate, like this was like a discussion. Like this was, oh, let the best idea win. You are booing me trying to even get my definition out. You're booing trying to ask my question. You were interrupting me when I'm even trying to set up a premise, premise. One place where I didn't do well was because I was blindsided by something. When I talked about the harassment, the tweets, the sexual harassment, his case was, and this is a big theme for Sargon, his case was somebody over there that I don't know, some SJW that may or may not be associated with me, someone did

0:55:12 Thomas: Something, therefore he can do whatever he wants. That is the fundamental defense that he had. That for this is a major point for being such an individualist and for being so against collectivism, I was repeatedly blamed for everything anyone on my side had done. And I want to note that I did not do the same for him. I blamed him for what he had said. I blamed the audience for what they had cheered. I blamed The Organizers for what THEY had facilitated. Never once would you have heard, if you were there, would you've heard me use the words, well your side does this, therefore you're to blame, or whatever. I never once tried to justify anything on the basis of someone over on your side did it.

I never did. He did that repeatedly. He kept saying, well, your side, does this. This is your side. They do. This is what they do, Thomas. This is what they do. And, and I tried to say as much as I could, though it was, again, difficult with a going against the crowd and a belligerent asshole. Hole, I tried to say, I I didn't do that. I'm talking to you, it's you and me, it's you and I. One example was, apparently, one of the organizer's wives had cried at some point during when this campaign against platforming them happened. So he brought that up as though I don't care when that happens. I only care

0:56:32 Thomas: When someone on my side cries or something. I was blindsided. I did not. I don't remember clearly how I answered, to be honest with you, because I didn't know that happened. I didn't know the story. I think I might've said, what, what was the story? Or I might have said, you know, I didn't, that wasn't me. I don't endorse that. And if I had that person here, I would say I don't endorse that, you know, like if they were being harassed.

Upon finding out the story, it's total bullshit. The way he was using it. What happened was one of the organizer's wives is actually Catholic. She's not even really a part of the thing. She just helps out, you Know, to help her husband. And And my understanding is that while people were calling the organizers names, she cried because of this. Now, I want to emphasize that I don't agree with calling the organizers Nazis, calling them alt-right. Well, alt-right's arguable, but calling them Nazis, certainly, white supremacists, certainly. I disagree with that. And to be honest with you guys, that caused me a lot of trouble on stage. Maybe you don't care. That's fine. It's up to you. But in my opinion, if our side could do a better job of trying to be precise in our criticism. And a lot of people are. A lot of people are, I want to emphasize that. But there are some key people who are not precise. They are very exaggerated. They are very hyperbolic. They called

0:57:52 Thomas: The entire organization and everybody in it white supremacists, which made it very uncomfortable for me because the easy answer for them is, well, I'm Mexican. Well, I am Latino. It's not all white people in this organization. It's a very easy answer for them to say, I'm not even a white person. Why are you accusing me of white supremacy? And then I have to answer for it when I'm on that stage. So I don't know if you care or not, people who do that.

But if you would take that plea from me, please be more precise. By all means, criticize. Please be more precise. Say you're enabling white nationalism. Say you're enabling this. Or if you're criticizing someone who does have alt-right views, fine, make your case. But when you call all of the organization Nazis, it makes it very tough for someone to defend the protests. So, had I known the context of the situation, I would have said this. I would've said, well, that woman was not targeted. I am against targeting someone, sexually harassing them, using abuse, sexual abuse, as a cudgel to beat them down with. And if someone cries because someone else is being called a white nationalist, that is just not the same thing, that's fundamentally different. And once again, it is Sargon using whatever the worst example he can think of is. So in his view, he looks at the whole other side, which, by the way, just for you listening, if there's any Sargon supporters listening, most

0:59:13 Thomas: Feminists are just women, mainly, who want equality in the way that Sargon described he was okay with. They want wage equality, they want all these things. Most people I hear from, that I've gotten the messages from, are like, "Well, I'm a feminist because I was a victim of sexual assault and no one believed me, or I wasn't able to do anything about it, or just because I'm the victim of a sexual assault, and I want this to stop, this toxic misogyny." I mean, they're very basic things, that's most feminists.

But Sargon's able to take a group, aka feminists, that's the group he's looking at, he's able to say, "Oh, I can take this, this massive group, this diverse group of people with plenty of different interests, of different opinions on stuff. If I can find someone on the far spectrum who has done something bad, therefore anything I do to any individual in that group is justified," that is his reasoning. And guess what? That's collectivist. That's bullshit. That is finding a justification for what you really want to do is you want to be awful. You want to cause people pain. You want to say shitty things to people and get away with it. So you're justifying it. It's not a real reason.

So when the full version comes out, I would love to do a sizzle reel, a highlight cut of how many times he told me, "This is your people, this what they do, this your people, this is what they do." And also, I was called a racist several times.

1:00:33 Thomas: He called me a racist over and over. The crowd called me racist, they jeered me when he said it. For 80 minutes this happened. So it's funny for the side that thinks the other side is the one calling people racist. I never once called him a racist, I did not, because that wasn't important. What was important is what someone else did that I'm to blame for. So that was just absolute hypocrisy.

I suppose to get to the end of things I actually was able to kind of cover, and then we can talk about a few things I wanted to bring up, even though, wow, we're way over time already, really, but the last thing I was able, finally I was to get a section on Black Lives Matter, and I, this was important to me, I made sure I'm gonna get to this, so I saw the time and I skipped a bunch of stuff, I was just like, you know what, whatever, I'm going to skip it, even thought I have some good research on it, and I know I have good data on this. I had done a lot of research. I have great data. So I asked him if he supported it, and he said, no, it's a collectivist group, something, something. And so I laid out these statistics.

I laid out so many things that I had found. One I've brought up before on this show, black men, 6.5% of the population, 40% of the prison population. I asked about this. Is that okay with you? How do you view that? Are you happy with that? And his answer is literally, this is not a summary, this is literally his answer. It's because of the crime rate,

1:01:54 Thomas: Black men are responsible. It is individual responsibility. They are the ones that are the problem. To which I swooped in and had all these statistics ready. Okay, they're over-policed, I have studies on unconscious bias in police officers. Did you know that fewer than one in three black people killed by police are even suspected of a crime? So crime rate is not an explanation for why more black men get killed and arrested. Black people are stopped more in San Francisco, though black people accounted for far less than 15% of all stops in 2015, they accounted for 42% of non-consent searches following stops. And this proved unwarranted. Of all people searched without consent, black and Hispanic people had the lowest hit rates.

In 2015, whites searched without consent were found to be carrying contraband nearly at two times the rate of blacks. In Chicago, black and Hispanic drivers are searched four times as often as white drivers. In Illinois, white drivers are 50% more likely to have contraband in their car than black drivers. This was a stat that blew my mind that I didn't get a chance to bring up. When you talk about, because his excuse for why black men are shot. More is the crime rate. Nine out of 10 off-duty officers killed by police since 1985. That's not 10 total. That is nine-tenths. Sorry. 90% of off-duty officers killed by police since 1985 are black or Latino.

1:03:15 Thomas: 90%. So, this isn't a problem of all of their criminals, their hoodlums. This is off-duty officers. People view black people differently. There is bias and how police view black and Latino people in this country. I further made the case. 95% of prosecutors in this country are white. 95%. Prosecutorial discretion is a large source of this bias. When they find a white man who has smoked a joint or whatever, they say, made a mistake. When it's a black kid, he's a drug dealer. This is what drives that discrepancy. It's not black people are criminals, which is literally what Sargon believes, that the crime rate is responsible for the discrepancy. Again, Sargons and his fans displayed a complete lack of regard for logic, for argument, for reason, because he started yelling at me, because I asked him, is this okay with you? Are these, are you fine with this? Do you have any solutions for this? And he said, no, he didn't. He had no solution, but my solutions are terrible. He was yelling, by the way. Well, that's an excuse. He can be mad. He didn't lose. When I get mad, I lose.

But disregarding that, he was yelling at me, Thomas, your solutions are terrible. Your solutions on this are authoritarian, terrible. Yelling at me. And I said, what are my, I haven't given you my solutions. I haven, what, how do you know my solution? Your side solutions are terrible. He repeated.

1:04:36 Thomas: I said, do you know my solutions on this? Do you what I would propose? He said, oh yes, I know what your side proposes, they're terrible. And I said, tell me. Tell me what my solution is to this. And he said, well, I don't know. In normal circumstances, in front of a normal audience, that would have been an incredible gotcha moment. He said, my solutions are terrible. I asked him, what are my solutions? He said I don't know. That's literally what happened.

I cannot wait to have the tape of that one. They didn't care. They did not care that someone was yelling at me for solutions that I had not even offered. You know why? Because there isn't anything behind the curtain. Behind all of this is just anger. It's just hatred. It is justified by a couple of facts and figures and buzzwords that they can find, but the main motivator is anger. They don't like social justice. They don't like being pushed, being shown their privilege. They're mad. They are angry above everything else. Now, at this point, something happened, and I didn't handle it well, but something happened that made me incredibly frustrated. Sometime during this, when I thought I was actually making progress, I was finally having a good debate. And I was doing well on Black Lives Matter. You know why? Because he has an awful position, it's incredibly easy to poke holes in. So, at some point during this, one of the organizers came up and interrupted and stopped and said, "We're going to go to the Q&A." Now, remember,

1:05:56 Thomas: In the beginning when I said I agreed to 20 minutes of Q&A, and I told them I would do 20 minutes of Q&A. This was, by my memory, we can check the tape, something like 30 minutes early. So, sorry, 15 minutes early, so like 30, 35 minutes to go. So, this was before I agreed, and I was finally doing better. It frustrated me to no end that someone would do this.

I don't know why this person did this, and I, and I was mad, and I barked at him. I said, "I'll do it when I'm, I'm ready to do it." I have since called and apologized to that person, because that was embarrassing for him. It wasn't his fault, necessarily. Maybe someone told him to do it. It was in the heat of a moment of a crowd that was jeering at me and awful toward me. I finally thought I was getting somewhere and they tried to do the Q&A before I agreed. I had my eye on the clock. I was not going to miss that. I knew with 20 minutes to go that I would do the q&a. He tried to do it 30, 40 minutes to go.

So as that went on, at about 20 minutes, we did the Q&A, and then the other thing that happened that people are ridiculing me for is once the clock hit 2:40, actually more precisely by my clock, it was 2:42, we had done some audience Q&As, which largely consisted of people asking me, telling me that I'm racist because I want to try to fight racism, so even though I established there is

1:07:17 Thomas: Bigotry, there is discrimination in these numbers, when I say, okay, well, if there's a tie between two qualified people, let's prioritize the one whose group is being discriminated against, that's racist against white people. That's the thrust of their claim. I'm racist against White people. This same argument would have applied in 1968, whenever the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act, the argument that, well no, things are legally equal, so we can't do this because it would be discrimination, it would have applied forever ago. It was a point that I tried to make, was drowned out, was not able to get through. But anyway, someone asked a question, it finished at 2:42, I saw that I was done, I was past my time that I needed to be there, I said goodbye and I left. I left abruptly, I left urgently, I didn't want to spend another minute in front of an audience who cheered sexual assault. I was overwhelmed, I was mad, I was very upset because of how things had gone and how the audience had yelled and interrupted. It was horrific.

1:08:23 Thomas: So I left, and, you know, that gave people an unnecessary weapon against me. I should have stayed. Now, it's incorrect to say that I was required to stay, it is incorrect to say that was so unprofessional you let, well, okay, what's unprofessional was changing the event from 50 to 80 minutes without telling me until literally the minute before I went on stage. That's unprofessional. For me to leave after my required time, after being yelled at by an audience that they didn't control. No one made any effort to control this yelling. They made some slight effort, but it did nothing. That's not unprofessional. That is reasonable. But regardless, I shouldn't have given people that easy weapon against me of saying, look at that, he went away. But at the same time, I did not want to be there anymore. I did want to not be around these people for a little bit. Just to give you an example, one of the questioners, as a preamble to their question, and you can catch this when the video comes out, they said, just for the record, Sargon, I would rape that sweet, sweet man pussy of yours.

1:09:27 Thomas: So that's the level, just letting you guys know, that's a level of intellectual ability we're dealing with. That's the battle of ideas right there. We want to have that. So, perhaps that was a reason I did not want to be around these people anymore. As for the other thing people are talking about, the confrontation with Tom, we talked about that in the bonus content. Check it out. I in no way put Tom up to that. He has a bigger podcast than I do. If anything, I would be his lackey. It makes no sense. He just shares my opinion of awful misogynists and that we ought to try to confront them when we can. And, uh, Sargon happened to be, we were, Tom's girlfriend smokes.

1:10:08 Thomas: We're on the smoking patio, uh Sargon and his posse of, of sycophantic, uh young white men were worshiping him and he walked over and Tom engaged him. I wanted nothing to do with him. I have no interest in speaking to Sargon. He's a piece of shit. Uh, he, he has nothing interesting to say. I had no interest talking to him, but Tom wanted to be provocative, wanted to challenge him. And I don't blame him because he wanted to try to get under Sargon's skin. And for the record, I was not drunk. Some people are saying that I was non-drunk. That was the start of my second drink.

And it takes a lot more than that to get me anywhere near drunk. But I was very much uninterested for most of the conversation until Sargon put his hand in his cigarette in Haley's face, which made me pretty angry. So I ended up saying some things I regret. Nothing too crazy, but I said something like, wow, I'm surprised you didn't get your ass kicked for that because it was disgusting. He was dismissive and misogynistic toward Haley. He called her names. He didn't care about her opinion in any way. He waved a cigarette in her face and I found it reprehensible.

I'm not proud of that. I wish that video weren't on the internet. I don't think it's valuable really, though I do think it'S funny to see how well Tom stood his own in just being calm. Tom did a great job of just being, there was no chance of any

1:11:28 Thomas: Danger. There was no violence. Tom just very calmly asked him questions and the security, the organizers had security escort Tom out. I was not kicked out. I went with Tom to say goodbye to him because I hadn't seen him in a long time in Haley. And then I came back and was at the party. Talked to many Sargon supporters for hours into the night, actually. Boy, I see we're something like 70 minutes in and I have, there's so much I haven't even gotten to.

There's so much that I was going to argue with him about, so many notes I had. I guess let me know if you want to hear that later on. I mean, it's good stuff. I think it was good points I was going to make, but this is a really long episode and I haven't even gotten to the crux of what I need to say. So I guess I'll put that off, but long story short, I had a lot more. Need to get to a message to these organizers. But first, I need to talk about kind of my conclusions. Initially, I was incredibly upset after the debate. I thought I had let people down in a lot of ways. I was disappointed with myself. It was traumatic. Hearing people cheer for sexual harassment is awful. And if it's your view that I'm somehow weak for finding that awful, I'm weak for having compassion

1:12:48 Thomas: And emotion when I hear something terrible like that, fine. I'm weak by your definition. I do not care about your definition, it is not important to me. What's important to me are my values. But I want to emphasize that that I'm not trying to get pity, but this was really hard. That was a, that was one of the worst days I've ever had. It was awful. It was, it was awful, it was a horrible experience. And in the despair of that, I, I tweeted, or I think I deleted Twitter. I Facebooked some things, um, then I Facebooked I was wrong to come essentially. That was what I Facebook that I was wrong to, come to this other people were right. Right.

1:13:28 Thomas: And I've since maybe changed my mind back and I'll tell you why. I initially thought I was wrong to go because in my calculus, once again, going back to that, my vision was that there'd be pretty much a normal audience and then some Sargon people. What it felt like after the debate was I just appeared and was owned by Sargon in front of Sargon support. Because you can't win in that atmosphere. You cannot win against sycophants. I don't care who you are. I really, I mean, you cannot, when people jeer you for when you're trying to ask a question, when they jeer, you, you can't, you know, you're not going to be able to win.

I mean the only way I could have won was just by stopping and saying, I'm not going to do this until everybody is, is quiet. There's no point, you know, I, and, and that's something I could have done. It would have been annoying to just sit there and wait. I wouldn't have gotten my say. And it's possible that Sargon would have seized that and just talk the entire time. If I just refuse to talk until the audience want to interrupt me, so that could have gone badly.

There just is, no there's no way to win. But if you remember, my goal was, what if there are people who don't know who Sargon is? I don't want him to appear normal. I don't want him to appear as some intellectual hero to them or or even just acceptable because I want people to know what he's done. Well, I went to a to a bar and grill. I

1:14:49 Thomas: Got a big hamburger. I was starving and I told people on Facebook where I was and slowly but surely some, I dunno, 15, 20 people came to give me support. It was one of the kindest things anyone's ever done. It really meant a lot. I was in a very bad place and people made me feel a lot better.

And after talking to them and after talking to many people at the VIP party and after receiving all kinds of messages of, hey, and there's a range of them. There was, I didn't know who this guy was. I came to see you. He was awful. He's disgusting. Okay, I count that as somewhat of a win, but they were already a fan of me. So, you know, they probably would have felt that way. Way. I also got the, yeah, I'm just an atheist. I came here. I didn't know anything about this movement. I talked to a girl for a while who knew nothing about the atheism movement. And she was, she came up to me essentially with, what the fuck just happened? What, what in the world was that? You know, that, that is what I came there to do.

I did not want anyone who was not unfamiliar to to be under the mistaken impression that Sargon was just another intellectual, and I heard from a lot of people who said that. I even heard from from past Sargon fans who said, you know, I used to subscribe to him and I regret that. I do, I didn't know kind of how bad he was. I didn't know that he would cheer and

1:16:09 Thomas: He would encourage cheer and you would stand by those comments in that way, it was disgusting, and honestly, you have to, you have to factor that in. He would have been there unchallenged. Now, this is not the same as saying it is good that this event happened. I don't think that could possibly be true, and I certainly, there's no justification for putting on this event. If you are the organizers, you were wrong to do this. You can hide all you want behind, well, the debate, the ideas, no. You held an event where people cheered sexual harassment and women fucking left and felt horrible. And there are tweets, Eli retweeted a message of someone saying, as a rape survivor, I will never forgive you for this. I don't even want to be a part of the movement anymore. That's what you did if you're an organizer. That's What You Encouraged. You got the conference you wanted.

But for my choice, for my decision, in a world where this conference was happening with or without me, I mean, you can accuse me of trying to make myself feel better and fine, but with how many people I heard from whose minds I changed or at least alerted to the fact of how bad Sargon was, it may have been worth it.

It may have actually, I didn't think so initially, but once the messages started coming in, once the personal conversations happened, it's possible that I did some good. I don't know. Maybe I'm just telling myself that but it's it's I think it

1:17:29 Thomas: Might be true But now I want to say something to the Mythicist Milwaukee people. First off, I know there are good people in the group. I know there are. But your group is under the control of people who have some really bad ideas. When you invite people like this to your conference, you get the crowd you want. You get a crowd of people who cheer for sexual harassment and boo trying to define a word or even phrase a question. This is not worthwhile. I want to also point out the rest of the event was fine. The rest of conference would have been very interesting.

One of the most heartbreaking things about this was that after our debate, the nonsense, sense, all of the, like the bulk of the audience who were just Sargon sycophants left. And the the debate between Azran Omani and Faisal Syed Al Matar, that would have been a very interesting debate. Now, I apologize, I was done with that event for the night, so I didn't see it. Apologize for that. But for that audience, when you put on a conference like this, you weren't getting a bunch of people engaged in these debates and everything. You got people who were there for a shit show, and they watched the shit show and they loved the shit show, and then they left, and

1:18:49 Thomas: And and all the great content afterward, most of them didn't even stay for that. Can you possibly be happy with what you did? I know you sold a lot of tickets, and you sold a lot tickets once it became a controversy because shitlords stick together and they are really afraid of being silenced because they know their ideas are terrible, and they know as soon as people start recognizing they're terrible, they've got to band together into their little tight-knit group where sexual harassment is okay. And if there's enough of them together in that little tight-knit group supporting each other and supporting their head shitlords, then they feel like they're okay. So here's what I want to say. This happened.

1:19:29 Thomas: We've got some options. We can put it behind us. You can issue an apology. As an organization, you can realize whoever is currently making the decisions, I'm not going to single people out, whoever's currently making these decisions, you can recognize that you fucked up. You made a bad decision. You got exactly the conference that we thought you were going to get. And this can never happen again.

And If there's an apology, if there's a recognition of what happened, if there's it's clear change in direction and a change in leadership, I will be happy to work with you again. I know you might find that odd. You might find it funny because you're probably thinking we don't want anything to do with you, Thomas. You called us out. Yeah, I did call you out, but I recognize that the organization is multifaceted. There's multiple people in it. If there is a change and leadership and good people take over and try to atone for what's happened, I'm more than happy to try to... Forgive and forget and heal this wound. I'm more than happy to do that. This conference and this group are not successful in the future. I'm going to try to convince people not to go. I'm gonna convince people to not agree to speak there in the first place. I What you did was NOT acceptable. I've struggled with so many people I've talked to to try to convince them that, no, this is

1:20:50 Thomas: Not okay. And it's really hard. And all I can say is, if you are someone who thinks this is acceptable, who thinks this behavior, this tweeting toward women in this way, this sexual harassment, or anyone, by the way, men or women, but we're talking about this specific If you think that is acceptable, you aren't valuing the right things.

You aren't putting enough weight on people's feelings, on the trauma that people face, on How that makes women feel, how that makes everyone feel when someone at your conference has done that and they are applauded. You are just not putting the proper weight to that. I don't know how to get you to do that. Believe me, I've been trying. If I had the perfect answer, I would have convinced a lot more people. I don't know how many ways to say, don't be a fucking asshole. But apparently I have to say it.

So, recognize that you have overlooked that, you have not valued that enough, and realize you made a mistake and change. And furthermore, what I encourage you to do, if you are a part of the Mythicist Milwaukee group, and if this isn't happening, if there is no change in direction, by all means, try to make one happen. Try to make a change in leadership happen. If that does not happen, I encourage you to leave the group very publicly. Leave the group, very publicly, make a statement, explain why this is unacceptable. And you know what? If you want to start another group, you're

1:22:10 Thomas: Going to have a hell of a lot of help. I will help you. Email me. Talk to me. I will support you because this isn't acceptable. If you still don't understand that this isn't acceptable, you don't have to take my word for it because I know you can just say, oh, Thomas, he's an SJW. Who cares? We sold, we sold tickets, right? We sold a bunch of tickets. Okay. If you want to have this convention again, I can't stop you.

I cannot stop you from having this convention. Again, but here's what I can tell you. This will not be an atheist convention. This will be a shitlord convention. I'm going to make sure, and here is my advice. When this happens, if this, if they don't change and they do this again next year, here's my advice, because what they're going to have to do, because they've alienated everybody, which I'll get to in a minute, what they're gonna have to is double down on shitlords, and you will get shitlords, and you'll get people who hate the Left so much that they're willing to play into the shitlord, you know, freedom of speech, we ought to be able to argue about it. That's what you will get.

You'll have a conference full of shitlords and people who will hate the Left enough to ignore their morals and ignore the shitty things these shitlords do and just say, well, well, we ought to allow anybody because freedom of speech. We ought to have anybody because freedom of speech, that's what your conference will be. It will not be an atheist conference, and again, if you don't take me seriously, here's a list of some of the top people that you have alienated, Mythicist Milwaukee, Arne Ra,

1:23:30 Thomas: Seth fucking Andrews, Matt Dillahunty, David fucking Silverman, David Silverman is, I believe, a conservative, or at least identifies as libertarian, conservative, this is not an SJW problem, those four names right there account for a hell of a lot of of mainstream atheist viewership, listenership. Arne Ra, Seth Andrews, Matt Dillahunty, David Silverman. Those are incredibly large names in atheism. And you know what? They're not SJWs. This is not a list of Steve Shives. Sorry, Steve. But it's not. This is mainstream. These are people with consciences.

1:24:11 Thomas: These people that realize this behavior is reprehensible. I know you don't agree, Mythicist Milwaukee. I don't know you see it that way. Somehow you think, oh, it's things, people say stuff. People make jokes. No, this is not okay. If your opinion was people make jokes and I don't agree with everything Sargon says, that was okay-ish. I still disagree, but that was an okay thing to think prior to going into it. When you heard them cheer the sexual harassment, that your jaw should have dropped. Because under your theory, well, mistakes were made, things are said. When I questioned him on this, he should have apologized, offered a correction. No, it was applause. They like it. They They like sexual harassment.

They're in favor of it. All of the Twitter people arguing with me about this have shitlord on their profile. They don't hide it. You've also alienated Eli Heath and Noah of Godawful Movies, Scathing Atheist, The Skeptocrat, and they have a fuck ton of listeners. That is a large group of listeners right there. You've also, needless to say, alienated Tom and Cecil of Cognitive Dissonance. They have a fuck ton of listeners, far, these, these people have far more followership than I do. I'm not even including myself. I am not saying I'm going to stop you. I am saying this isn't going to work because you have lost everybody. You have lost damn near everybody. Michael Marshall, Mike Hall of

1:25:31 Thomas: Skeptics with a K, Andy Wilson from Incredulous, these are big names, these people with big followers, you've lost them, it's over, you are done, there needs to be a change in leadership, or you need to burn the fucking thing to the ground, or, you're just a shitlord group, if you want to be shitlord, I can't stop you, it is the first amendment, you can have your shitlord conventions, I get it, Sargon has a following, I've never argued that he didn't have a following. You can put on shitlord conventions. It won't be atheist conventions, though.

Just for fun, I made a Facebook post to ask how many people, major atheists or not, skeptics, humanists, just anybody with a podcast or an organization, uh, agrees at least at the bare minimum that Mythicist Milwaukee was wrong to platform a sexual harasser. And I've compiled a very incomplete list, a very imperfect list, and I want to first emphasize that I was on purpose looking for kind of non-typical SJWs because I know these people don't care about SJW. If I say me and Steve Shives and Kristi Winters aren't going to your conference, you don't give a shit. I get it. But it's important to emphasize, I want thank all you people on the SJ side, on the side who from the beginning were pointing out that this was awful, were raising awareness about

1:27:00 Thomas: Thank you, guys. You were saying what was right. You did a great job. I can't name everybody. Steve Shives, Kristi Winters, PZ Myers, plenty of people. Too many to name. I apologize. I shouldn't have even tried because I'm going to forget everybody. But you guys were right from the beginning. You deserve the most praise. Now, here's some more people, and again, this is an imperfect list. This is something I started, I had no idea how much it would explode.

It's still going, people are still adding names to it. I had to just pick a time and stop, and I only wanted to speak for people who publicly said so. I didn't want to make sure I was speaking out of turn. Here's another list of people you have alienated, Mythicist Milwaukee. Here is podcast or bloggers category. Skeptic Brett, Atheists on High, Trav Mamone, The Podunk Polymath, The Skeptaholic, The Phil Ferguson Show, According to Matthew, Trolling with Logic, Positively Doubtful Podcast, Doubted with Dolemor, Haley Stevens, Skeptoholic, Polyogia, Aetheist Talk, The Godless Revolution Podcast, Reason Revolution, Utah Outcast, Secular Yacking, Aethiest Talk, Cellar Door Skeptics, Irreverent Skeptix Podcast, Odd Atheist Friend Podcast, Doubting Dogma, Women Beyond Belief, and there are so many more. Those were the ones I picked as of the time of recording. That's how many you've alienated. Organizations, the Pittsburgh Free Thought Community, Sun Coast Skeptics, the Humanist Community of Space Coast, Riverside Atheists and Free Thinkers, Lehigh Value Humanists, BC Humanist Association, Patica Free Thinkers, Glasgow Skeptics, Long Island Atheists, Atheists

1:28:21 Thomas: Of Utah, Be Secular Normal, Normalized Atheism, Kansas City Skeptic Society, Shift to Reason Conference, Tri-State for Free Thinkers, Free Thinkers Around Redlands, Inland Empire Pire, Atheists and Agnostics, Gateway to Reason. Again, I had to stop. It was still exploding. It'll be a longer list tomorrow and the next day and the next day. You fucked up. These people all know it. It was unacceptable. You need to change. Do it and do it fast. And here's my advice, if next year they haven't changed, I'm sure a lot of good people will have left the group, but if this group decides, nope, sorry, we want to be a shitlord convention, guys, everybody, let's let it be a shitlord convention.

1:29:02 Thomas: I will not be participating. No one else on the social justice or even just the mainstream atheist side should participate. Let it be a shitlord convention. I'll tell you what, they won't sell that many tickets. They sold a lot of tickets to this one when it became a controversy. So my advice is, and this is my opinion, but I really think this is the best way to handle it. Let it be shitlord convention.

If you find any names that you think are more mainstream, let's let's do our best to make sure no one is like ignorantly going into this without knowing. Let's make sure good people, people who aren't sexual harassers, don't go into this thing. But if they come out with their guest list and it's all shitlords and Michael Shermer or something like that, or you've got Jordan B Peterson, whatever, let's let them have their fucking shitlord convention, because with no controversy they will sell no goddamn tickets. And even if they do, it'll be all shitlord tickets, it will be a shitlord convention, and we can just say, fuck you, you're not a part of this movement, you are a part of the shitlord movement. Alright, well, I've gone on very long. There's plenty more I could say. A couple more odds and ends.

First off, I forgot to bring up the example when I talk about how on edge I was. And at the after party, there's a point where I listened. This is 100% true. I listened very calmly and respectfully to someone for about four or five minutes. They took an immense amount

1:30:23 Thomas: Of my time relative to how many people were trying to talk to me, and I was trying to visit with Tom and Haley, who I haven't seen in a very long time. And, uh, I, but I patiently waited. I listened, I listened. Uh, we kind of went back and forth on some stuff until he said, "I hate everything about you," but, and then I left, because fuck that. And that's the kind of thing that I faced. I would never tell a person, an individual who I don't know, "I've, I hate everything about you." So that's why perhaps I was a little hesitant to want to meet people.

Another thing I just remembered, there's another really big moment I had in the debate, or it wasn't so much me as Sargon's incompetence, that, of course, I got no credit for because the audience was his sycophants. I brought up some resume tests, and we could talk more about this at a later date, but some resume studies. There's strong evidence and numerous of these studies where women's, women's names or people of color's names resumes get far fewer calls, and it takes more of them to get a call back, that kind of thing, and his answer, and this really just tips his hand, absolutely, his answer said, "Oh, well, maybe there was something on the resume that, you know, led the women to be less picked," to which I said, "Do you know

1:31:43 Thomas: How studies work? The resumes were identical. The resumes were identical. It's two identical resumes. All that changed was the name. He even doubled down and said it again. And it absolutely tipped his hand that he doesn't, whatever, he has his conclusion. His conclusion is that women and people of color are not as good at everything. And that's why they're so underrepresented everywhere. And that would have been a big moment in any other debate, I believe. Maybe. But we weren't at a real exchange of ideas. We weren't having a real debate. It was a waste of time debate. Alright, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your support.

The support of everybody has meant so much, especially the bigger audience you have. It really is important to... These people are thriving on our silence. They really are. They're thriving on our silence. And if you have a platform, if you're somebody out there with an atheist platform, a skeptic platform, and you give the old spiel of, you know, I don't get involved in drama, you know. I'm going to stay out of this. Just spare a sentence. Spare one sentence. Forget me. I don't care about being involved personally. Just one sentence for, you know, I strongly believe we should not sexually harass women online. Just a couple words, because honestly, these people are more in number than you think. They're in our movement. They're at your

1:33:03 Thomas: Conferences. This was different because they were empowered. There's a big group of them. But in normal conferences, they're there. And if you are being silent. You are saying to everybody that profiting off of them as your listenership, your readership, whatever, is more important to you than making a stand for women or for any sexual harassment victims. So that's my plea to anyone with a platform out there. Thank you to the people who have come out strong. It's stupid. This isn't a debate we should be having. This debate should be settled, but it's not, and we need to react to the world we live in. That being said, I've got way too many patrons to thank.

You have blown me away with your kindness. I was in a really bad spot and I have to tell you, I mean, your kindness has just blown me away. I need to thank everybody. I have made a pledge. This is part of the benefits. I'm going to thank every new patron and I'm gonna do it. It's going to be a long list, but fuck it. We're here. We are here in minute 90 something anyway. Here we go. A science enthusiast, Andy, Cody Wynn, Jason Kennedy. Ben Johnston, Faye Matthews, Anna, Embrace the Void, Steven Dymek, Nicholas Sanders, Jonathan Angle, Atheist on High Podcast, Marissa Alexa McCool, Ari Stillman, David Walker, Sarah, Jared McKinnon, Andrew Rowe, Emma, Heather G. Peters, Jackie Janosko, Megan Nugent,

1:34:23 Thomas: Fat Girl Ballet, Amanda Cathy, Vic Wang, Matthew Laird, Liz Statten, ProChoice on almost all things, including lying cats, just Amanda Lynn, Shebear Melee, Andrew Wood, Autistic Adventures of TNT, POTUS Supports Dead Puerto Ricans, Jeven Maggie Watkins, Leonie Hilliard, Christopher Neff, Heath Enwright's Erotic Eyebrows, Boots and Cats and Boots And Cats and boots and cats, Ksenia Vranjevic, sorry, Jay Bradford, Puckett, Daniel Swenson, Nate Sheets, Christopher Horton, Steve Shives, John Brockman, Bill Green, Marissa Alexa McCool, and Bethany Futrell. Jeez, you guys, thank you so much. John Funk, Mitch Downey, Christian Jeffery, Thenatopsis, Don E. Stevens, Michael McElroy, Jake Shelton. And finally, thank you. Thank you. All right, you tricked me. That's their patron name.

Tom McMillan, Dan Wheatley, Donna Tuforello, Angie Mansfield, Sojo, Jonathan Jerry, Ted Meadows, Ian Maloney, Natalie Kirk, Thomas, Xavier Garza, G. Ron Sanderson, Jeff Barnes, Time Trip, Timothy Brown, Kenna Turvo, Eric Ripley, Purple Bacon Taco, Fox Navarro, Richard, Utah Outcasts, Me, Mice and Manna, I think, Sarah Pekeles, Julie Dickinson, Kelton Lewis, Shane Phillips, Ian Neely, Tim Megan, Peter, Matt Kemp, Evra Oliver-Canel, Jake Dutton, Justin Woodruff, Being Jim Davis, Sunil C., Robert Woods, Dr. Cam Winters, thank you, Kristi, big shout out to Kristi for all her help, and Steve Shives, and everybody who helped me prep, thank-you so much, I'm sure I'm forgetting people, yeah, Sunny Buns, Katie Pritchard, Questionable Sources, John Bartlett, Max, Joel Hagaman, Axel, Desecrator, John Copeland, Tim Clifford, Clinton Murphy, Haley. Really? Still going. Thank you for being part of the movement. We need you. Easton Clemons, Patrick Razgunoi, Christian Christina Randall, Joseph Kubal, Opening Arguments, Zach A., Doreen, Don Gwynn, Third Amendment Truther, Gretchen Meter, Betty, Julia Olsen Spataro, Taman Mac Domhale, Scott Chambers, Ignore,

1:36:24 Thomas: Igor Reznik, Nate Crawford, Patrick Hager, Dorian Pond, Satanic Nightjar, Nicholas J., Skradsky, Brian Guarino, Cone Man the Bong-barian, okay, Felicia Entwistle, thanks Felicia, April Book, Sean, Mike Montoya, Liam App- Appleby, Canaan Ut, ByTheLake23, Jeremiah Traeger, Simo Hetanen, Christian, Jesse Hoffner, Donal Brennan, Samantha Tracy, Patrick Bracken, Jeremy Pieper, Tim Anthro, Emily Gallus, MotherIsNotPleased, Dylan Moore, Kevin Stanton, Yara Kadulina, Chad Eckerd, AJ Brantley, Justin, Desiree Lynn Ward, Mike Paps, and Melina Reyna, wow, wow, and wow, I'm blown away, thank you guys so much, I promise to keep fighting for you, this show can continue, I want to keep finding a way to get through, and, and here's another thing I wanted to say, I don't know if anyone's still listening through all that, but if you are, there has got to be a way to engage these people, but this was not it.

I don't, I don't think we can afford to ignore these people. I don't think we can. Others disagree with me. Somehow we need to be making efforts to reach these people, but we need We need to do so in a way that's far more productive than this.

It needs to be subtle content on YouTube where they are doing our best to undermine some of their arguments as gently as we can. It does not mean putting the biggest shitlord in the world on stage in front of a group of howling shitlords. That is not how we reach these shitlords. It is not. There is a way. I'm thinking about working on something. I'm thinking about doing a video to try to make some attempt to find common ground and bridge a gap. I don't, I might not be the right person to do it because once they slime you, it feels like you're slimed for life.

1:38:25 Thomas: But I don't know. I might give that a try. At any rate, your support is what will keep me going. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Listening, really, I am just blown away. And just know that I will always stand by my principles. Something I know I'm going on forever, but something I just thought of. This was bad. This was an awful experience for me personally. But then I just realized something. I just, I just in my mind, I did the experiment, the thought experiment where what if I had softballed this guy, kissed his ass like Dave Rubin, let him appear to be legitimate, and then gone back and seen and pleased his fans, by the way, pleased his crowd for For the short-term gain of not being ridiculed by the crowd, what if I had done that, and then imagine the disappointment that people I know who are victims of sexual harassment, sexual assault, people I know in the movement who I'd let down.

That would be so much worse. It would be so much worse to let down those people just for some short-term relief. So it was an awful thing, it, it really was traumatic for me in a lot of ways, but, but the alternative would have been so much worse, and I stuck to my principles, and that's something that you can count on me to do when it comes to something as simple as, as this. You can always count on me for that. Thank you so much for listening.

1:39:45 Thomas: I'll see you next time.