SIO151: Dire Political Predictions; Listener Voicemail

Transcript

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

[0:00:04] You're listening to Serious Inquiries Only.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 151, coming right back at you. A little back

[0:00:34] -to-back action.

0:00:36 Thomas: Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. And I've got some stuff to talk about today. As I mentioned, this is going to be a voicemail episode. I've got some good emails to read. I have a few voicemails, you know, a surprising number of them this month included things like, oh, don't play this on the show, but I wanted to tell you this. So there's like three or four of those. So I didn't have as many as I thought, but I have a few really good ones related to the recent episodes and a few really good emails. But I also realized I have

[0:01:07] a little bit of a little bit of a diatribe to do, kind of. I don't know if that's the best word, but something something happened in my mind the other day, the other week, that really depressed me. I came to some realizations about United States politics, and I'm going to share them with you, and they're depressing. So we'll have to see what you think. So that's what I'm going to talk about. I'll tackle that first, and then we'll get to some voicemails. So you guys know, I've mentioned before, and if you haven't heard, I haven't been paying attention to politics for all that long, relatively speaking. Actually, not even relatively speaking, like just not that long, because I've talked about it before, but I grew up in a Fox News household. I was Republican for quite a long while.

0:01:53 Thomas: Republican, but by the way, also a little apathetic. I've never been terribly political until the last four or five years or something, if it's even been that, four years at least. But anyway, it wasn't terribly political, but going to college and being around liberal people who were really smart, and also, as I've said, hearing that every single well-respected atheist back in 2008 through 2010, when I started paying attention to that, every single one of them were liberal. And the fact that all of those smart people would just say like, as though it was even a question like, yeah, of course we're all on the left and the right is terrible. Those were the days, huh?

Anyway, that began my slow progression toward realizing that most of what I thought I knew based on my Fox News upbringing was just BS. And it took a while. And then once it's, it's, it's honestly, it's a lot like deconverting from religion. It's an awful lot lot like that because you have a whole worldview and you have a whole set of facts that you find out like, oh, wait a minute, you know, and once you start questioning it and then you realize, you know, the biggest thing for me was climate change. I mean, realizing just how massive of a problem it is and just how desperately Fox News has, I mean, it's one of the most harmful things that in

0:03:13 Thomas: A long list and a huge list of harmful things Fox News has done, maybe what will ultimately end up being the most harmful is contributing to an entire party being able to deny a catastrophic issue. You know, long term, this could be the most harmful thing that's ever happened. I mean, if we're not able to address it and the planet is ruined, I mean, it doesn't get much more high stakes than that, to be frank. Frank. But anyway, in that period of time, when I was kind of in the middle, I was kind of figuring myself out and it really shook my confidence of what I thought I knew. So I just didn't pay attention.

I got kind of apathetic and I took on an attitude of like, well, nobody can really know. These issues are too complicated. I think it was a very convenient way to manage my cognitive dissonance, which is to say, well, I can't outright, I can't outright say that conservatives are wrong or that liberals are right. I wasn't I wasn't there yet, you know, because it's a long process of completely reversing your beliefs. And so my middle ground for a while was like, well, things are too complicated for anybody to really know for sure. You know, it's just how can we, we don't have all the information as a public and, you know, these issues, that kind of thing. And I think it very much was a way to manage that cognitive dissonance.

0:04:34 Thomas: All this is to say, I'm sorry if this isn't terribly interesting, but all All of it is to say that I wasn't paying attention to politics for this time, really, because of that apathy that I had and that kind of, because I was dealing with completely changing my worldview, you know, until, I don't know, 2014 or 15, you know, coming up, sort of my memory of it is not a little bit before the 2016 election, like before that was even getting going. I remember starting to get engaged, starting to realize what was going on and paying

[0:05:09] attention. And then, you know, a year after that, I remember starting the 2016 primary process. So I'm guessing 2014 sometime around then. So I really am a newbie, but you know, I study a lot and I listen to a lot and I read a lot of books and stuff like that. And one thing that happened the other day after I was listening to the podcast, The Wilderness, I think it was that. And actually, I think it was also, there was a Washington Post series. It was essentially two things at the same time that were talking about midterms and election history. And when I heard a lot about what happened in 2010, something clicked for me, and it's depressed me beyond belief.

Now, I guarantee you, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I don't hear people talk about this in specifically the terms I'm going going to talk about it in. So that's why I'm going to add this to the conversation. And I'm curious what you guys think. I am very, very, very, very worried about our future, but not for the reasons that you might think. Because yes, Trump is a catastrophe. And yes, we still have to face the fact that 35 to 40% of people in this country just have alternate facts. And that's all there. And I'm intensely worried about that. But now I am incredibly worried about liberals and liberal voters. Now I knew from research and from being alive and back when I

0:06:35 Thomas: Did that episode on the history of Obamacare, now I knew that 2010 was bad for Democrats. I knew that it was a bad, you know, we lost a bit. I didn't know just how bad. And now that I've fit this into a broader framework, it worries me immensely. Because I think if you're like me, and maybe if you're kind of an optimistic liberal, which I at times have flirted with being, believe it or not, I think you're probably picturing something like this.

[0:07:04] You're picturing, okay, yes, everything is awful right now, but Trump was a wake-up call and Democrat voters seem incredibly motivated. And maybe we got that blue wave coming. And I'm excited about that too. Too. Maybe 2018 coming up, and let's see, the midterms are in about, what is it, three months

[0:07:24] or so.

0:07:25 Thomas: Maybe we're going to shock the country. Maybe we're going to do so well that we even take back the Senate. I mean, that's virtually impossible, but who knows? Like, if you want to be optimistic, you can think this stuff is so bad with

[0:07:37] Trump that it's going to hopefully depress conservative voters and motivate liberal voters. And then maybe even think, well, maybe maybe we'll get some more bombshells on Trump and Russia, because if you've seen Trump's tweets about the rigged witch hunt, they're going up. Things seem to really be hitting the fan. You got Manafort on trial and in jail currently while he's on trial. You got Cohen potentially flipping all kinds of things that seem like, all right, maybe there's going to be consequences.

And for a second, I've been a little excited about this and I've thought, okay, at least if we take the House in 2018, then we've got some accountability for Trump and going forward, we can take back the presidency in 2020 and the energy is going to be so built up from how bad things were that that'll take us hopefully toward a brighter future of better policy, see. And the left seems to actually be less afraid of being super progressive. So that's even good if you're progressive, you know, it's like abolish ICE, Medicare for all, things that I'd be totally fine with for the most part, or just massively reform ICE. But these are things that I'm not saying this is all going to happen, but I'm saying that in my more optimistic days, this is what I could consider like the best case scenario. And it's possible. It's certainly not

0:09:00 Thomas: Impossible. Possible. And then I learn about 2010. And to talk about that, I got to go back to 2008, because as I, again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but just to review and to put it into context, 2008, George

[0:09:14] W. Bush is leaving office having done catastrophically bad things, having killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, having essentially led the economy into meltdown. The economy was crashing as we spoke there in 2008. I mean, maybe it was, maybe one problem here is that it was a little early to know for sure that the economy was crashing until Obama unfortunately took power and kind of got some of the blame for that. But anyway, he tanked the economy, or it tanked under his watch. And I'm looking at his approval rating, and in October '08, so just as he, you know, just just as Obama was about to be elected, Bush's approval rating was 25 and his disapproval was 70, looks like 72. I'm looking at a graph, apologies.

And keep in mind after 9-11, it shot up to 90% approval, like one of the highest ever. And you just look at this graph and it tanks all the way down, down, down. And it looks like it upticked a little bit back from that low. So that was the all-time low. And then, you know, the approval rating ticked up to a healthy 35, you know. So Bush left office, you know, when Obama was sworn in, Bush had 35 approval and a disapproval of 60, 62, something like that. I mean, think about how

0:10:41 Thomas: Crazy that is. I mean, we think of Trump as one of the most hated presidents ever, and he is, and he's still still sitting on, you know, what, 40, 42, 43. He's gone as low as 37 or so, but somewhere in that range. And as bad as Trump is, and he is very bad, I don't want to for a second, I don't think you would, anybody who knows me would think I would ever make excuses for him. As bad as he is, and as bad as he potentially could be going forward, has he yet done anything quite as bad as the Iraq Iraq War and killing hundreds of thousands of people and destabilizing

[0:11:16] the region and leading to, you know, ISIS and all that. Has he done anything quite that bad? I'd argue probably not that bad yet. I mean, he certainly has the potential and he's done horrendous stuff and the Supreme Court is going to screw us over. But that stuff is kind of par for the course for Republicans, you know? You know, so like if a normal Republican, if Jeb or somebody was in there nominating Kavanaugh and getting to ruin our court, he'd probably have a positive rating. So in terms of catastrophically bad stuff that leads to a bad approval rating, even among Republicans, you know, somewhat, I would say that Bush has done or had done at that time even more to be horrendous.

I mean, his approval rating got so so low, 25 at one point. Incredibly bad. Leave's office is probably one of the worst presidents ever. It's just, it's a disaster all around. And two effing years later, two effing years later, after Obama had to use a ton of political capital, and this is a period I'm very interested in. I've been listening to and reading a lot about the period of 2008, 2010, and from the perspective of the Obama administration, you know, there's, I think there's some cartoonish misrepresentation of what Obama did. And there's also some criticism of that he wasn't liberal enough and

0:12:43 Thomas: They could have just forced through Obamacare and all that. And yeah, okay. In retrospect, it probably would have been, it would have made sense for him to just brute strength everything through and not care at all about working with Republicans. In retrospect, he should, he should have done that. It would have been better if he did that. But I can't honestly really blame him for not knowing that politics had changed and that the Republican Party was irretrievable. I can't really blame him for not knowing the future in that respect. Maybe you can, personally, I can.

He wanted to try to do things the way things should be done and the way things used to be done, which is if you're going to pass massive, massive, you know, reform of the the healthcare system, that you need to involve half of the country and not just do it because your half of the country was in power. I, you know, again, in retrospect, shouldn't have even bothered because Republicans were irretrievably lost at that point, but I don't blame him that much for not having known. And then people also blame him for not fighting hard enough for single payer. Fine, you know, but all that aside, what Obama did was use a tremendous amount of political capital and essentially have to burn it, you know, just burn capital to save the economy, which was tanking, absolutely tanking. And he had to burn all this capital

0:14:04 Thomas: To bail out the economy. And he did. Obama saved the economy. The administration saved the economy. And if you look at the chart, you know, he was responsible for taking us through that bottom that we hit that was just massive, massive economic decline and bringing us up to where we are now. And again, this is in raw terms. I'm not going to talk about inequality, which has gotten worse. Yes, of course, that's gotten worse. But broadly speaking, in the strength of our economy, in the stock market and all that, he bailed us out. And he passed Obamacare, which now has a positive approval rating, and I think people realize was a good idea, even if not perfect, and even if it should be expanded upon. So he did those things in that two years. And two two years after Republicans in George W. Bush ruined the world,

[0:14:56] like essentially tanked the world in a way that's worse than even now, I think, to be honest with you. The Iraq War, two wars, in fact, another, we got the Afghanistan War, you got the economy tanking,

[0:15:10] you know, you got just rubble that Republicans left us in. Two years later, two measly years years later, not only do Democrats lose seats, because, okay, maybe you figure it seems to be a trend that you lose a few seats, you know, in the first midterm after your president. It's not as though Democrats just lost a few seats. And again, keep in mind, 2010 was the advent of of red map. So this is pre-red map. This is Democrats losing catastrophically. Democrats lost and Republicans gained record numbers, record numbers in 2010, the most since like the 30s, and even more than 1994, which was in itself

[0:16:02] had been a record swing after two years of Clinton and really after two years of Rush Limbaugh and stuff like that. So two years after George W. Bush leaves his 25% approval rating, essentially, and ruin the world and it's in rubble, everything's in ruins. Two years later, it's not as though Democrats just kind of lost. They lost catastrophically. They lost across the board, everywhere in states. And you all know this history. They lost in states where Democrats just didn't vote on statewide elections. And that allowed Republicans to take control of just this insane number of state governing bodies and gerrymander and use red map to ruin everything. Everything. But what I hadn't really yet considered was just how depressing and pathetic it is that a mere two years of Obama led

[0:17:00] to that.

0:17:01 Thomas: Democrats couldn't keep excited for two damn years. They couldn't keep at least maintaining the bare minimum of support that Obama would need in Congress to be able to do anything. If Obama had Congress his entire eight years, if Obama had majorities in both houses, think of the world we could be living in. I mean, he wasn't allowed to do anything. He could have expanded. After 2012, he could have expanded Obamacare. Maybe he could have taken another look at single payer or the public option or something. Think of what he could have done. But instead, after two measly years in which he actually accomplished a hell hell of a lot.

But I guess Democrats and liberal voters thought, oh, well, he didn't fix everything instantly. He didn't wave a magic wand and we're all flying, driving, flying cars or flying, driving one or the other and living in space or whatever people, I don't know what people's idea of what he was going to do in two years going from the rock bottom to where we were. Two years, it's not as though, again, Democrats lost a few seats. Democrats lost catastrophically. Republicans gained record numbers in two effing years. And I think you might see where I'm going with this. I just, I didn't know, I guess, again, I knew kind of these facts, but I hadn't put

0:18:21 Thomas: It all quite into context of just how pathetic that was, just how sad it is that liberal voters, and I'm sorry, I blame the voters. I'm blaming the voters because it's not even as though Obama Obama was a huge problem. Obama was still a favorite to win in 2012, even then. It wasn't as though in 2010, people were like, well, this guy's finished. I mean, maybe some people did, but his approval rating was still good, had recovered from lows. And he, of course, went on to win pretty easily in 2012. So it's not as though Obama was really the problem. It's the voters. We were able to keep excited for one damn election. And then two years later is like, nah, nah, everything wasn't fixed instantly. And so nobody voted. And there's the other side of it too, which is that Republicans were able to be incredibly motivated by misinformation and racism and all those things. And that's true. But here's where I'm going with this. If you haven't figured it out already, now I am deeply worried about our future. I think that it's, I'm going to make some predictions. Here's predictions.

You guys can hold me to them. I think in the midterms coming up in three months, right? Yeah, it's August now. You know, in around three months, I believe we will take back the House. I believe Democrats will just barely take back the House. We will have to overcompensate for gerrymandering.

0:19:41 Thomas: I think we'll win by quite a few percentage points, but we'll barely take the House back. That's my current prediction. Hold me to that. I don't think we'll take back the Senate. I think it's too hard. Maybe we'll, you know, we'll flip a seat or whatever. And that'll be good. You know, taking back the House is good because then we get control of committees that can investigate

[0:20:00] investigate Trump and all that kind of thing.

0:20:02 Thomas: And I even think we will win in 2020. I believe that we will probably take some Senate seats. We'll probably take back the Senate, and I think we'll maintain the House, and I think we'll probably win the presidency in 2020, if I had to guess. You know, I mean, there's a lot that can happen. But in my heart of hearts, I actually think that will happen. Now, we need to act as though it's not going to happen, because frankly, Trump could be reelected. I mean, all it takes is an ounce of complicity on our, complacency is what I meant to say, an ounce of complacency on our part. And he can be reelected, but I don't, I kind of don't think he will. Don't tell anybody, but I don't think he will

[0:20:42] get reelected. And at that point, I believe we will be in a very analogous situation to 2008, where we'll have some inspirational president. I actually think we'll probably elect a really progressive, maybe hopefully a young, but somebody we're excited about in 2008. I mean, might not be literally someone as amazing as Obama, but it'll be somebody that we can be excited about. And then what will happen? I am incredibly worried that without Trump as an anchor dragging them down, Republicans will do exactly what they've already done. They will get whipped up into a frenzy as they did with Obama in 2008. There will be something, you know, analogous to of the Tea Party, but it doesn't even need to be another party at this point. It can just be Republican hatred of liberals. And what if we just get wiped back out again in 2022?

0:21:36 Thomas: Is there any reason why that wouldn't happen? I'm incredibly worried. You know, I know it's, who knows? There's so many variables, obviously. It's the future. We have no idea. But is there any reason why that wouldn't just happen? Like, it really feels like that's what's going to to happen. It feels like liberal voters cannot maintain what we need to, the level of turnout and all that, that we need to. And yes, we can blame other people for it. You know, we can say, okay, Republicans suppress the vote and they do, and they're doing, they're doing crap like that with the voter rolls right now. But I could, was that an excuse in 2010? I mean, deep down, seriously, is that an excuse?

We had just, in 2008, Democrats were somehow able to overcome those barriers, to vote in Obama in a landslide, to take 60 seats in the Senate, to make massive gains in the House. And then two years later, when, after two years of Democrats, by the way, being in control, two years later, somehow we weren't able to vote. Two years. Do you really think that was voter suppression? Do you really think that was, you know, it was pre-Red Map, so it wasn't gerrymandering. I mean, there might've been a little bit of gerrymandering, of course, but it wasn't like the systemic, horrendously unconstitutional gerrymandering that's happening right now. Do you really think we can blame other people or is the blame on ourselves? Do you really

0:22:57 Thomas: Think we can blame some politician for not inspiring us enough?

0:23:02 Thomas: That's what I hear from a lot whenever I get mad that people don't vote. And by the way, I want to say I'm mad at myself too. I didn't vote in 2010. This is me. I'm not over here casting judgment. I was still going through my transformation process, so I was still kind of a weird centrist. And yes, I didn't vote in 2010. I'm mad at me. You know, I don't have anybody to blame but myself. And going forward, anyone who doesn't vote in the midterms, doesn't vote coming up here in three months, doesn't vote, unless you've physically been prevented by some sort of voter registration bullshit, which it's possible you have, in which case I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the Republicans.

But short of that being your personal excuse, we need to take responsibility and not let this happen again, because it really feels like this is what's going to happen. Chisel these predictions in stone, because I will be more than happy to be proven wrong. But I'm immensely worried. I was so blown away and stunned by going back and reviewing these facts and putting it into context and seeing how a president who is even 10 points, at least more unpopular than Trump is right now, two years later, Republicans take back just record numbers. I mean, that is depressing because

0:24:23 Thomas: I think that that can and will be very analogous to 2020 and 2022. So that's my spiel. I'm depressed about it. I hope I'm wrong. Tell me why you think I might be wrong. Wrong. But, you know, it's, again, it's all the more reason that we need to vote in every election. We need to vote in local elections. We need to vote in state elections. We need to vote in the midterms and, of course, the presidency. We cannot be just complacent and think that if we get Trump out and get, you know, Elizabeth Warren or somebody in, then everything's fixed. We just can't do it. And we also can't expect Elizabeth Warren to fix everything in two years.

We have to give our Democrat leaders the support in Congress to be able to do things. It's just, it's the weirdest thing. There's so much of this that I'm seeing where essentially liberal voters that I've seen, again, hashtag not all, but I'll see ostensibly liberal voters who are liberal, but are mad at Democrats for never having the power to fix anything, but they're not voting. You know, So, it's like, we're mad at, you know, we got Republicans who want to just ruin the world in every way and make everything worse. And then we've got another party who, if we don't give the power to do anything about it, can't do anything about it. If they don't have the numbers, we cannot be

0:25:43 Thomas: Mad at Democrats right now for Kavanaugh. There's nothing they can do right now. All we can be mad at

[0:25:51] is ourselves.

0:25:53 Thomas: We didn't recognize the facts on the ground. We didn't recognize how vital it would be, even, and again, even if you hated Hillary, fine, don't vote for Hillary. Vote in Democratic congressional candidates. You don't have an excuse to not do that. You don't have the same Hillary, all establishment, blah, blah, blah. You don't have those excuses for 2014, by the way, may have been ultimately the most critical midterm that we we screwed up. Because in 2014, if we had been able to take back Congress, we could have stopped so much. We could have, did you know, you probably do know this, that when the Russia stuff started happening, Obama wanted to get some sort of statement from Congress, but McConnell shut it down.

You know, imagine potentially the different world we could be living in if that had happened. By the way, he would have had a Supreme Court justice through. And by the way, he might have have even nominated somebody, you probably would have nominated somebody more liberal than Merrick Garland. I mean, 2014 was huge and we blew it. And 2016 was huge and we blew it. 2018, I don't think we're going to blow it. 2020, maybe we won't blow it. 2022, I think we're going to blow it. That's my prediction. And I'm depressed and upset about it, but maybe this will be different. Maybe, you know,

0:27:13 Thomas: Enough time has passed. It'll be a younger generation of voters. Maybe they'll they'll be more excited. Maybe it's a better coalition. I don't know. I would love to be wrong. Please, dear God, let me be wrong. But I'm worried that I'm not.

0:27:28 Thomas: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 916-750-4746.

[0:27:41] Let's check out this week's messages.

0:27:48 Thomas: All right. First voicemail is actually an email. I wish it was a voicemail. Please use the voicemail, everybody. But this was an email that I want to read. I'm not going to share the name because I don't want to shame this person. But the subject line, admittedly clickbaity, was why the Me Too movement makes me sad. And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but here's, I think, I guess the crucial part.

This person says, when I hear that comments about personal appearance make women in the workplace feel uncomfortable, I sometimes want to shout, you're going about it the wrong way. We're just going to create a more alienated, sexually repressed society where only people of the same sex can merely compliment one another. I understand that if Bob can say to Alice, "Is that dress new? It looks good on you." It's going to be very difficult to stop Chuck from piping in, "Yeah, you look real nice in that little dress." I would love to live in a more communal society where help and affection is more freely given and received without making people uncomfortable, but I don't know if we can have it. I can just hope we have to walk in the proverbial 40 years in the desert to wait for a generation that knew no sexual harassment to get there, and that's why the Me Too movement makes me sad. Yeah, I gotta be honest, I'm mystified by this sort of sentiment, and I think it's out there a lot, actually.

0:29:08 Thomas: It's basically, and sorry to insult you with a comparison, emailer, but this is basically Tucker Carlson every night. You know, I just saw that, I think it was on the latest, Last Week Tonight, where he played some clips of Tucker Carlson saying, like, men can't even, you know, whatever. This, this is entirely overreaction to me. I mean, it's entirely, I just don't even know what to say. First off, if the cost of women not being sexually harassed all the time or put in horrible situations where they don't know whether they can say no because, you know, it's somebody above them who's asking them out on a date or, you know, any number of these things, leveraging power in the the workplace to try to get sex, all that kind of stuff.

If the cost of trying to end all that is that we can't compliment each other physically in the workplace, it's just not that big of a cost to be honest with you. I don't know. I mean, I don't remember how many times in my career in, I'll just think of the latest office that I worked in from 2000, what, 12 to 16 or something like that. I don't know that I could probably count on one hand or zero hands the number of times that I needed to. And by the way, not to say that I, you

0:30:29 Thomas: Know, this was a workplace with a lot of young, cute people that I found attractive and, you know, would have enjoyed flirting with, except we're at work. So there's no need to do that. You know, you can survive not doing that. And by the way, that's talking worst case scenario for you, emailer. Like if the worst case is we have to just don't even do it, just don't do it, that's still not bad. Like it really is not that bad. And it's frankly a little frustrating to hear a bunch of Tucker Carlson's complaining about how this men are just so scared they're living in a state of terror. You know, it's like, oh, really? Because women have had to live in a state of terror for way worse reasons than this for quite a while. But one thing I've seen that, like, I'm slightly sympathetic to is the fact that people have said, look, it's tough to meet people already. You know, you tend to meet people where you work. And that's,

[0:31:25] it seems, I don't know, it seems somehow too restrictive to say that you never can be interested in anyone you work with. And, you know, I have some sympathy for that kind of thing, because I don't want to live in some sexually repressive society that would, you know, make it impossible to where you could ever be interested in some people that, and imagine if you have an all-consuming job where you're just there 24 hours a day, you know, you don't have any other options. But the truth is, even if that were the case, even if it's just, it's so important, you've You've got a co-worker that you're just, you're very interested in, you've got no other options, you know, whatever, whatever, you can still attempt to do things in a way that's totally fine.

And A, it can't be somebody under, like, it's not good to, it's never going to be a good idea to try to engage in a relationship with somebody in your direct, you know, under your direct employ, under your supervision, that kind of thing. Because the balance of power just may, that's something that I don't think can work. It's not a good idea. But I mean, if we're just talking to coworker and equal, you know, that kind of thing, just or somebody in a different department or something where that's not even a question, you can quite easily try to make your interests known or invite

0:32:47 Thomas: Them to something not at work or, you know, any number of things that are totally fine that aren't going to get you thrown in Me Too prison, which, by the way, doesn't exist, that are fine. I mean, it's just such a small thing. And to be worried about this tiny minor inconvenience in a time where finally rapists and serial sexual harassers and really disgusting creeps are finally maybe being paid attention to and facing some consequences, it's just, it's so frustrating, in my opinion. It just really is. And it's not even worth saying.

0:33:28 Thomas: It's not worth talking about the cost of being maybe worried about paying someone a physical compliment. It's just, it's nothing. So honestly, if you want my advice, and I'm specifically, I'm not mentioning who you are because I don't, I'm not trying to shame you, but between you and I, emailer, just stop worrying about this. It's stupid, to be frank. I mean, it just really is that you can still go about your life in a way that's going to work. And that's going to be acceptable. And that will, by the way, still even allow for some workplace romance to potentially happen if you go about it the right way. That's my opinion, but I'm just another dude. Now I've got another email from Christine Garum, who gave her permission to have her name be attached to it. And so I'm going to, to give her credit. And I gotta give a bit of a content warning. This is somewhat disturbing email about her past sexual assaults. Hey Thomas, I just listened to the portion of the voicemail response episode where you talked about Lisa's voicemail.

I wanted to add something that neither of you necessarily brought up about affirmative consent, no means no, and Me Too, and that certainly Amy and Heidi don't seem to understand. There's always a lot of talk surrounding nuanced cases like Aziz Ansari's thing and a few other recent public Me Too moments about why a woman didn't say no, wherein people immediately jumped to she was afraid to say no, or she felt

0:34:49 Thomas: She was in danger, or the complete opposite, she was in no danger, she could have said no with no consequences, that kind of thing. From my personal experience, this narrative with its ridiculous danger or no danger dichotomy misses a much more important factor. It's not just that we might be scared to say no, it's that the world has taught us that saying no doesn't actually work. Saying no isn't a dichotomy between dangerous to our health and super easy with no consequences. Sometimes it's just completely pointless.

For my own part, that's exactly why, in one out of three times I was raped, I didn't respond with a firm and blatant no. I've been raped three separate times by three separate men. God, I'm so sorry to hear that. The first time was coercive, wherein I feared being kicked out if I didn't give the man sex, so while I did initially say no, I relented because it wasn't working and there were implied consequences. I was homeless, somewhere to sleep was a big deal. Deal. The second time was physical and violent, and I said no so many times I lost count, and he still didn't stop.

In fact, he said, "That's right, tell me how you don't like it." My saying no actually turned him on. It encouraged him. So by the time number three came along, consensual one night stand, the following morning was rape. I had learned that lesson that saying no didn't work or solve anything so well that

0:36:09 Thomas: I just gave up and let him get it over with so I could be allowed to leave. I said and did plenty of things that fairly blatantly said no for me, like physically pushing him away and trying to exit the apartment, just like the girl with the Z's did. There's a point at which it becomes clear that saying no is totally useless.

The point for me was when he pushed my face into the couch to shut me up so he didn't have to feel uncomfortable raping me. The guy didn't respond to physical rejection, attempts to leave or being told, "I can't, I've really got to get to work." What makes Amy and Heidi believe that saying the word no would have changed anything? Saying no is way less powerful than Amy and Heidi seem to believe it is. I think maybe they are coming from a place of privilege in that they occupy a space in the world where the society is a lot more progressed. They are criticizing a largely hypothetical consequences of affirmative consent as as measurement for moral sexual behavior, but we are still in a place where even no means no hasn't caught on in society or in the courts. I just think they aren't experiencing the same world I inhabit. And this is why affirmative consent is so important.

You talk all the time about moving the Overton window by going a lot further left and making the right catch up to the middle. This is exactly where that matters most. We don't even have no means no down. If we move the conversation and perhaps the law to affirmative consent, we

0:37:30 Thomas: Will have moved that window. It's still

[0:37:32] socially acceptable to force sex on someone who has said no, the actual word or through pretty obvious versions of it. And that doesn't even touch the Brock Turners of the world claiming they have a right to rape because someone can't say no. Affirmative consent, whatever its possible consequences, is what we must embrace if we were to progress at all from this point. Anyway, I'm I'm really emotional over what Amy said in the episode and what Heidi has said since and once wrote. The victim blaming always hurts more coming from other women.

And I know this probably sounds rambling, but my point, if I can cut it down a bit, is that it's not about women's agency and knowing what we don't want. We know what we don't want, just like Amy said, but it doesn't matter because the kind of men who rape and sexually harass and assault don't care. There's all this pushback about how we girls need to say no, but out here in reality, that's like suggesting we, we deflect bullets with coffee filters. It's still entirely up to the guy whether to accept that no or not. So I'm not sure why Amy and Heidi put the useless word up on a pedestal while simultaneously trashing affirmative consent, which at least gets us girls a small reprieve from being solely responsible for whether a sexual activity is consensual or criminal. I don't know why it's hard for them to be happy about the first time in history someone suggested maybe guys are capable of telling that crying and pushing you away means no, even if the word isn't said. P.S. After the Twitter thing, I read everything

0:38:58 Thomas: That Heidi's name in a Google search brought up. I'm referring to things she wrote, not things written about her. And she is absolutely a victim blamer and a misogyny apologist. And I don't like her one bit. I think you're right to rescind the invitation to your show. Thank you for sharing that, Christine. I'm so sorry about everything you've gone through. And I think you put it really well. And I don't really even want I don't want to mansplain anything about it. I think I'll just let that stand where it is. So thank you for the email. I really appreciate you trusting me with that and letting me share it with the audience. All right, now I've got some voicemails related to the Psy

[0:39:32] episodes. Episodes. Hi Thomas, this is uh Covey. I'm a student at Berkeley. In regards to your Psy episodes, I have two things to say that I think might be interesting. First, the idea that it's bad for a single paper to be wrong about a somewhat subtle point is, I think, an unrealistic bar. It uh actually really great, I mean, the first episode, uh, that you were taking a single paper so seriously, but then I realized why in the second episode.

I think that it's reasonable to expect that a paper making a provocative claim might be wrong, and if the community at large hasn't really had a chance to respond, I think that that, you know, maybe the system isn't really broken until a bunch of people are wrong rather than just,

[0:40:12] you know, the paper author and perhaps a few reviewers. And then the second thing is, you know, when I first heard the results of the original paper, I thought, you know, that assuming there's no irregularities, you know, assuming that the results are as presented, there's kind of two explanations.

The first one is the one in which the universe is tuned for human consciousness in some way, so that's kind of the explanation you focused on, you know, that there's something with quantum or whatever that, you know, consciousness is built as a universe. And then the second one, this is what I lean to as, you know, a materialist, is that, you know, there's some way to transmit emotions that isn't exactly related to human consciousness. It's like we can transmit emotions by speaking. We can also do

[0:40:52] it via some unseen mode and, you know, I don't know, some sort of locked-in ability over time. But anyway, something like that that doesn't break materialism. But, you know, it turns out, I think, ironically enough, that in the second episode that uh the first explanation is correct. I think the universe of these experiments was tuned for humans, I mean, by the experimenters, in the sense that they like introduced the Downer's fallacy, which is a human bias, and uh that's what these subjects were picking up on. So I mean, no real point, I just thought it was interesting that, you know, kind of the non-materialistic explanation was correct, even though there was ultimately, anyway, thanks, I hope this makes it on the show. I love the show.

0:41:31 Thomas: Thanks. Yeah, thanks for the voicemail. I will say I don't think that's the non-materialist explanation, but I see what you're saying. I think we've got some other answers to that question, but I think that's maybe a good point, and maybe that's something that comes from my not being a scientist, and I really have enjoyed and appreciated this process of kind of learning more about what peer review means and what we should think about it, what non-experts should think about it. And I'm getting the indication from not just you, but from other people who have commented and called that it's, you know, one peer-reviewed paper doesn't necessarily mean what I thought it would.

I think I, yeah, I guess I thought that if this paper is total nonsense and past peer review, that that's got to be a problem with peer review, but perhaps the model could be slightly modified to say that if going forward one peer-reviewed paper doesn't mean quite what I thought it would, then it doesn't mean necessarily that peer review is broken or that a given journal is broken, but that it takes a little more to be worried. I could understand that. That might be a good working

[0:42:46] Model going forward. Hey, Thomas, this is Hausdorff. I just listened to your two episodes about ESP. I've just finished the second one. And I got to say, for myself, I thought that both episodes were great and incredibly fascinating. But I wanted to call in because you had mentioned in the second episode that you got a lot of pushback on the first one. And I kind of wanted to air my thoughts on that. It sounded like some people actually thought you shouldn't have done the episode at all, and I really, really disagree. First is something that was actually mentioned in the first episode, which is when you made the analogy to the paper that detected something going faster than the speed

[0:43:26] of light. Something happened, they measure something, and we've got to go try to find out what that is. Now, it's not necessarily going to be what they think it is in the ESP thing. I find it incredibly unlikely that they actually found ESP, But there's always the chance that they found something. It could even be something amazing, some phenomenon that we never knew existed. Like, that's possible. Do I think it's likely? No. But it could be, and it's worth finding out. So I think digging into these things is definitely worth our time. But there's another reason that actually this whole couple episodes that you aired, it reminded me of this thing that I heard from

[0:44:06] A Wu practitioner years ago. He said something like, and he was doing some ESP thing probably. I can't even remember it so long. But he said something like, look, I'm totally interested in talking to skeptics, but a lot of people who say they're skeptics are cynics, and I have no interest in talking to them. And I think as skeptics, we have to make sure that we don't become that cynic, that person who says, oh, you went through all the peer review process and you followed our rules. Oh, but it's ESP, so screw you, go away, I don't want to even talk to you. We shouldn't be that person, we should be willing to get in there, look through the details, and find out what went wrong, what

[0:44:47] Went right, and really what we've got going on, and that's what you did in the second episode, and there's a lot of really interesting stuff there, and I loved at the end she even talked about how we could go further and really dig into the details, which I think would be a really fascinating thing as well. So, uh, oh, I guess one more thing I wanted to say is one of the, the reasons that I like to sort of be skeptical.

And I want to teach other people how to be skeptical. And if they believe in this stuff, and we just dismiss it out of hand, we're never going to bring them on board. We're never going to show them how and why they're wrong if we just dismiss it. But if we break it down, maybe we will. And I think that's always worth doing. So thank you. Got cut

[0:45:27] off right at the last second there. But thank you so much, Hausdorff, for that voicemail. You know, I agree. I agree. I think I agree with pretty much all that. You know, I really enjoyed these episodes and I know a lot of people did too. You know what else I really enjoyed is how many brilliant people I heard from. And it's so funny. I talk about it a lot, but you know, certain episodes I'll hear from the squeaky wheels, you know, I'll hear from the loudest people or the most negative people or whatever, or maybe positive people. But this was an episode I did where while I did hear from some people who were very negative on it and you know, okay, okay, that's fine. I also heard from so many brilliant people. One of them, one of them being Lindsay, of course, Lindsay emailed

[0:46:06] and, and shared some stuff and then was gracious enough to come on the show, which was awesome.

0:46:12 Thomas: But I also heard from a neuroscientist who had a really long email. I mean, it was incredibly, it was too long, but I read most of it. It was a book, but he was talking about how the way perception works, you know, it just, it just doesn't make sense, the mechanism described in the paper, just all kinds of fascinating stuff that I, you know, it's created a lot of really brilliant content. For one, I think the follow-up episode with Lindsay was phenomenal.

That's one of my favorite episodes I've ever done. I just learned so much, and it was so clear, you know, I loved it. But also, I'm going to hopefully record with this neuroscientist at some point. We're kind of making plans. And also, I've heard from people people in the voicemail and people in the comments that are just really smart, academically minded people who, you know, are pointing out why this study was flawed or also why the peer review or the journal might be flawed. And it's just been really fun. So thanks to everyone who has reacted in the way Hausdorff did or similarly, or even if you reacted a little more negatively, but stuck it out, you know, I thank you for that. And it's been really enjoyable able to hear from some really smart people. So it's

[0:47:20] Why I love doing the show. And thank you. Hi, Thomas. This is Nick from California. I'm also a research psychologist in the area of cognitive psychology. I just wanted to call in to briefly answer the question about how you can sort of trust in science, so to speak, even if things can make it through peer review that aren't true. And my answer to that is pretty short, is just you have to really wait, unfortunately. You really need to have independent replication from several different labs, and consensus emerging within a subfield of a discipline really can signal

[0:48:00] That that finding is likely true, or at least has good evidence behind it. And I would say that this is especially true in psychology and nutrition science, and, to some extent, medical science, when you're dealing with people, they're inherently what we would call very noisy, a lot of individual differences. And that needs to be cut through with a lot of statistics in order to see the signal. And also there's a lot of problems with statistics sometimes showing a signal that isn't there. So basically, just again, as the field does, does the field as a whole sort of view psi evidence positively over

[0:48:40] years and years? And the answer generally is no, but that could change. And that would be really cool if it did. I just, it's very unlikely. All right, Thomas, keep doing awesome work. Take care. Bye. Hey, thanks. Yeah, right in line with two callers ago, what that person was saying as well, I think, waiting and seeing. And to be fair, you know, this is why I am still proud of the episode I did with Jesse and Aaron, because honestly, that's what Jesse and Aaron said. You know, Jesse said many times, you know, I want to wait to hear from the field on this, but this is, you know, interesting results. Results. And while I think Jesse, again, as I said, I think he pays a little too much credence to some of the non-materialist potential explanations, but in the end, Jesse responded brilliantly.

He listened to the episode with Lindsay, and I posted on Facebook, I reposted his comment, and he just said, oh, wow, great job. That's all great. Thanks for outlining why the weakness is in the study. And he just accepts it and moves on. In my mind, I think that's pretty good skepticism. You know, nothing, no, no, like personal insulted reaction. No, no, nothing. Just, oh, okay. Thanks for, as a direct expert, a relevant, you know, expert who works directly with this kind of thing in Lindsay comes on and educates us about it and good, well done. So I, in my opinion, I think everybody came out great here. I think ultimately ultimately, Jesse had the right response and

0:50:12 Thomas: The right reaction to Lindsay's debunking, in my opinion. So, yeah, but that's, I've also learned a tremendous amount through this, and that's why I'm so happy with it. I mean, I guess waiting and seeing is the appropriate thing. You know, next time there's one paper that passes peer review, and again, no matter what it's talking about, no matter, it doesn't matter if it's Psy or some other claim about diet, maybe, maybe, or something like that. Like, one peer-reviewed paper maybe doesn't quite mean what I thought it meant. And a number of peer-reviewed papers and consensus within a sub branch, as this caller was telling us, sounds like that means, that's what we need to look for more. So, not throwing all of science out with the bathwater of one bad peer-reviewed paper is attainable there. So thank you so much. I love that voicemail. And thanks for educating me on it. And then finally,

[0:51:09] I had a voicemail I just want to tell you briefly about. I had a voicemail from someone, I can't say anything, I'm going to be very vague, but I got a voicemail message from someone, from a listener who works in

[0:51:21] intelligence.

0:51:22 Thomas: And this person called right right after the Trump-Putin summit. And essentially, again, there's not a whole lot of content to this other than I found it fascinating and I wanted to relate it to you, which was this person said that people in intelligence are incredibly flabbergasted right now at what happened, at the fact that they work so incredibly hard to try to do good work and to give good information, you know, feed it up the chain and help ultimately as high up as the president make good decisions.

And then to see the president standing up there with a rival, somebody who has attacked us and attacked our elections and say, and stand with that leader over the U.S. intelligence services was distressing to intelligence officers. And I could totally see why that would be distressing. And so I just wanted to share that little thing with you, even though I really can't, you know, this person and can't go into specifics and I can't either, and not that this person even really told me much more than that, but I just want to be absolutely careful not to jeopardize that person at all. But that was kind of a raw phone call after that,

0:52:42 Thomas: And I appreciated it. It was really interesting, and I just wanted to tell you guys. So yeah, I could imagine how hard that would be for people who, frankly, put their lives on the line in some of these situations to get this intelligence and to see our president just go, nah, I don't trust it. I trust this guy, this guy who attacked us. Wow. Heartbreaking stuff. If you are, if you consider yourself at all patriotic, which I don't really, but still, even if you, even if you want to kind of be on the team of America over the team of Russia. So yeah, interesting stuff. Thank you guys so much for your voicemails, your emails.

I love these shows. I've enjoyed the hell out of this last week. I've learned so much through these last few episodes. I hope you have too. And I've got some good interviews coming down the pike. And yeah, I'm excited. So thank you for listening. As usual, if you want to help the show continue, go to SeriousPod.com/support or Patreon.com/SeriousPod and support the show. You get bonus episodes and you get the satisfaction of making the podcast happen. Because without you, I mean, without you supporters, it would not exist. So thank you to those who support the show and make it happen. And I hope you enjoy those bonus shows. All right, I will see you next

[0:54:01] week.