DOD66: When Your Partner Believes Weird Things

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's just nodding along and checking its watch. I'm Tom Curry, I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Hello, Tom Curry.

0:00:39 Thomas: Barfing noises.

0:00:41 Tom: Oh, brother, I am sorry. Sorry, your Father's Day sounds horrific, Thomas Smith. We're just coming off of Father's day and you're stuck with some kind of virus or food poisoning. And just so listeners know, Eli and I were both of the mind that you should take today off. And Thomas Smith, ever the trooper, said, nay, nay I shan't.

0:00:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:02 Tom: I shant take the day off.

0:01:02 Eli: No, exactly.

0:01:02 Thomas: I'm going to do you one better. I might do you like 12 better. I'm not even going to launch into the whole story, which I think is pretty funny, but I'm not going to. Cause then I'll do that. And then I will be talking for like 40 minutes and then we'll be like, Oh yeah, we didn't do the episode. I am not going do that to you. So yeah, I had a hell of a story. You'll never hear it. It is the hell of a story. Yesterday I actually I actually do have a a really funny part of it for the after if nobody had a thing yeah hey

0:01:18 Tom: I we could, going to say, we could have, We can have like, uh, the digressions be a bigger part of the after show. So, um, but speaking of digressons, I do want to take a minute. Um, recently moved, I know I mentioned this before, I just recent moved into a new house and the house is new construction, which means that there was no yard when we took possession of the house, there was just dirt that we were just living in the fucking dust bowl, because it's also, as opposed to you in California, Thomas, here in Chicago it is uncharacteristically dry this year.

So we've had very little rain, rain. It's dry as hell. So we are living in the fucking dust bowl is what we were living in until they got the sod in and the grass seed blanket down. And then they put that stuff down last week and I now, gentlemen, I have, people have asked me many times on this show and others, they say, "Tom, you sound very busy. You got a lot of stuff going on, but what are your hobbies?" And I've never been able to answer that question until now. And I can tell you guys, my new hobby is, is watering goddamn lawn.

That's all I do now. I manage sprinklers. I am a sprinkler manager. I feel like I'm like the golf course attendee or the guy who's like running the tarps out onto the field when it rains. I'm the opposite of that. Like me and my neighbors, all we do all day is we wave at each other. "Hey man, how you doing?" "Hey man, how you doing, man?" And then we fucking move sprinklers

0:01:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:44 Tom: Around. That's what we do for 14 hours. I hate it. When

0:02:44 Thomas: That's my nightmare. Should we do the thing where we like definitely what he's going through by making really obvious suggestions? Hey, but what about automatic sprinklers, Tom? Um, there's no way you've thought of any of that.

0:02:52 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've never thought of that. Yeah, you can't, yeah, I don't have enough water pressure with two spigots to have enough sprinklers, even though I sit on a relatively smallish plot, to cover the whole area. So it's like, it's not the timing, it's that I just have to move the sprinklers around to make sure that I have coverage I don't think it's that bad. But when you break one spigot into four, it's

0:03:13 Eli: Why does your water pressure suck?

0:03:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. How many football fields are we talking here? Like,

0:03:21 Eli: I was going to say, either you have a tremendous yard or your water -pressure sucks and you're not like calling a plumber.

0:03:22 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:22 Tom: Not a big – it's just a regular suburban house. No, that's the thing. It's like the water pressure appears to be fine. It's just that when you brake it from one spigt into four spigots, it doesn't, like, push out enough water to each of the four spiggots to, like. Get those – the sprinklers I have are the chugga -chugga sprinklers. You know what I'm talking about?

0:03:46 Eli: Yeah, of course. Chugga-

0:03:47 Thomas: Oh yeah. I have those. They were, um, us trying to carry my kids to barf in the toilet through, through the house.

0:03:47 Eli: Chugga, yeah. Thomas,

0:03:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:03:56 Thomas: Exactly. I'm, I'm relating to the story.

0:03:56 Eli: Thomas, you promised not to tell us about your

0:04:00 Thomas: I'm relate. No, this is relates. I'm bonding here.

0:03:55 Tom: Yeah, chugga -chugga Yeah, right, yeah

0:04:00 Eli: Family being sick.

0:04:03 Thomas: Here, I'm adding in my experience with sprinklers.

0:04:03 Tom: So, the stakes Are like, weirdly Very high, because like, everyone Is like, okay, this is brand new sod And if you overwater it It'll die, and if you underwater it It'll dye And it's like, very expensive I can't afford to do this again Like, the sod that was put there, I have a 30 year Financed mortgage on, right? Like, I can't re -sod the front. So I've got this, like, really high -stakes game of, like water balloons that I'm playing with my yard all day, every day. And it's, like so much work and terrifying at the same time.

0:04:17 Eli: It'll die, yeah. Yep. Yep.

0:04:30 Thomas: Wow.

0:04:34 Eli: And yeah, and if you mess it up, no matter what else happens to your beautiful home, everyone will be like, "Oh, do you live in that garbage house down the street that just has the bare rock? You should plant some grass, man." And you're like, "Oh, no, I tried, but I failed because my water pressure was too low." It felt very, um, penis related.

0:04:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:57 Eli: It was really tough for me, and they're like, "I don't know what to tell you, your house is bad." Wait,

0:04:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:47 Tom: Yeah! Yeah, could not hate doing this more than I hate doing it. And then the best part is we fully intend to rip all of this us out within the next couple of years and do different stuff with our landscaping. So it's also this like ridiculously temporary situation.

0:05:15 Thomas: Are Are you the villain from a 90s kids cartoon?

0:05:19 Eli: Why are you ripping it out and replacing it with something different? I

0:05:21 Thomas: Because it'll make the animals die. I don't know. The hearts of the children. It's good.

0:05:24 Eli: Was gonna say, what, are you the villain, the unseen hands and Water Ship Down? That's

0:05:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:29 Tom: Well, I don't want, here's the thing. I don'T want a yard. I hate yards. I want as much patio. When I say rip it, I mean like most, like I want the maximum amount of patio that the village will will allow me to have. I don't want any grass. If I don, if they could tell me by ordinance or whatever, that I don'T have to have one blade of grass, I 'LL just live on a concrete pad and be very happy with it. I

0:05:30 Thomas: Oh, man, man, that

0:05:50 Eli: What my neighbors did, yeah.

0:05:51 Thomas: Is such a sign of the different temp we live in, because, like, lawn is I'm dying because it's so hot, if we have concrete, my kids will go out and there'll just be like a black burn thing where they were, like, the minute they walk out on concrete, yeah.

0:05:52 Eli: My neighbors. Psychosis. I,

0:06:04 Tom: But your kids are young. They still play outside. My kids don'T go play in the yard.

0:06:07 Thomas: Until they die of heat exhaustion. Yeah.

0:06:09 Tom: Yeah. Once your kids get to 12, 13, they DON'T play inthe yard. Like there's, they have no interest in, like, playing in the, the yard is now just a thing to maintain. And well,

0:06:09 Eli: Tom,

0:06:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:06:18 Eli: Can I say that your, your desire for a cemented back area of your house versus a grass yard is the first most psychotic thing you've expressed on this show? It surpasses the fact that you can't see your exes anymore by a large margin.

0:06:30 Tom: I want a pool back there as well, so I just

0:06:33 Thomas: I don't know, I I want to go with you on that joke, but boy, I don't know if that cracks the top 15.

0:06:42 Tom: I can't, I, we, what we really want is a pool in the backyard with a patio so that's, that's what we realmente want and so you the problem is I got a jelly of the month club instead, so I don't know if that's gonna be be sufficient, so

0:06:44 Thomas: Yeah, me too. And we'll never have it. $10 billion.

0:06:55 Eli: No, that won't do it. Uh, the house, when we bought it, they had an illegal pool, they got a rogue pool man to put a above ground pool in, in, you know, 1945, when you just, like, winked and both agreed you weren't, like, a communist or whatever. So on the city's condition, one of the many cities conditions of us moving in was that we had to take out the pool, and what was really nice, because the people we bought the house from, they were really lovely, they were like, "Hey, it's really expensive to get rid of of an above ground pool, we're gonna do this for free for you for buying our house," which was lovely, but all the grass under where the pool had been for 800 years was dead, so there's just a perfect square of death in my yard, it's like a mini crop circle, and whenever I have anyone over, I'll be like, "Yeah, there used to be a pool there," and they're like, "Oh, cool, I thought maybe you had been visited by aliens and not mentioned it. I'm glad you've glad you brought this up to us.

0:07:50 Tom: Right.

0:07:49 Thomas: Yeah? No, I think this is a hell of a cover -up story for the bodies he buried back there, the unmarked graves are

0:08:00 Eli: Oh, are you kidding? Lush. My yard would be lush with human flesh to feed on.

0:08:04 Tom: Yeah,

0:08:05 Thomas: Acknowledge the fact that, like, the city set conditions on Eli specifically moving in, they're like, "We gotta meet sorry, the council has got it first."

0:08:10 Tom: Right, yeah, yeah,

0:08:10 Eli: So many, so many conditions. They were like you gotta get rid of the asbestos and I was like, what if I don't breathe that deep? They were Like, nope, you still gotta do it.

0:08:17 Thomas: Off, can you wear regular clothes, do you mind, is that a condition as the city that we

0:08:21 Eli: Yeah, no, that one they that one, they yielded.

0:08:23 Tom: Can you get shoes that have laces, I would feel a little uncomfortable with this. Velcro at your age? Yeah, why, did you as the buyer, have to do all this? That's insane.

0:08:28 Thomas: Good question, yeah.

0:08:27 Eli: No, they gave up both of those. But no, we had to get rid of the asbestos, we had to change the electrical panel, install a brand new one, that's a great question, that's great question.

0:08:38 Tom: That is insane.

0:08:39 Eli: I didn't, I don't know, well,

0:08:40 Tom: These would all be conditions that would that would fall on the cellar here in a state that's not New Jersey.

0:08:42 Thomas: To sell, wouldn't it, yeah,

0:08:46 Eli: Why don't you just jump in your time machine and ask those questions before I bought my house, Tom, that's what I have to say to you. Anyways, we didn't get ridof the asbesto, it's still around, but it's cozy, it's nice, it, there's, I get an itchy throat sometimes, but it is, it is nice, nice and cozy.

0:08:56 Thomas: Yeah,

0:09:01 Tom: Speaking of things which are potentially cancer causing, is this a good time to jump into the auto ads?

0:09:08 Eli: Hey, hey, listener, we're sorry there are auto-ads on our podcast, but Thomas, Thomas needs to live. Now, it seems like maybe this disease is going to do him in, and after he dies, me and Tom will thoughtfully, carefully remove the auto-ads in his memory. But until that day, you can get rid of the ads, kill Thomas in a different way, by going to patreon.com/dearolddads. You'll get an extended version of every episode with a little parenting story at the end of almost all of the episodes, and we do a monthly bonus. This monthly bonus, we made fun of someone who likes Jordan Peterson, and what more fun can you have than doing that? Patreon.com/ D-Roll Dads.

So we got a listener message here, uh, I imagine 99% of the people listening know this, but all of our separate shows, the shows that we came to, to this show from, are shows about skepticism, we're all skeptics, atheists, we talk about untrue things and their harms, uh, as the majority to the majority of our, uh, and we got a question that's kind of a little bit of a crossover between parenting and skepticism, and I thought this would be a good one for our show.

So the listener asked that I not say their name, but they did give me permission to read their message to us verbatim. So I have copied and pasted it into our notes. Just as you're listening along and you hear me reading someone's words, I do have permission to do that. To read these out loud. So here we go. Hello, gents. Partially a parenting question and partially a skepticism one. Three question marks.

My wife and I have two kids, six and 11, and generally agree on pretty much everything parenting-related. She's a fantastic mom and an incredible partner, but she's a firm believer in homeopathy. This

0:09:26 Thomas: Oh, god,

0:09:50 Tom: All

0:10:52 Eli: Has only been a conflict one or two times when it comes to parenting, but she posts about it online, talks about it socially, etc. To make matters worse, her sister was severely misdiagnosed and from medical malpractice, so the few times we have touched on the subject, she brings up her sister and I feel like I can't respond. Bond. Any advice? Should I let this go? Love the show.

0:10:52 Thomas: Whoo,

0:11:14 Tom: So that's the circumstances the end of that question changed that whole question, so I, I, I'm curious because for me, you know, when you have an an experience, and I can, I can raise my hand in my own family and say, when you have an experience that does radically shake your, um, of the practice, the clinical practice of medicine, that's a big deal. And that's tough thing in your household, but especially when it hits home because of, you know, personal experience, that it's, it's very tough to say, well, you know, the, the the clinical practices of medicine is really a problem. But, you, you know, I still have this sort of larger, broader principled acceptance of the scientific method. And as a result, like, that's, that's all very difficult to square. That becomes very, very difficult. So that's a, that's a much more specific question than I thought we were going going to go to, yeah,

0:11:15 Thomas: I think don't know how medical malpractice works, but I assume someone, as some part of that, some, like, I dunno, a doctor, a panel of doctors, would have to go in and say, like, "Oh yeah, here's what went wrong in that process," in the report where they, like, somebody didn't give you enough bullshit water that isn't medicine. Is that what they, now, like, yeah, you needed water pills that aren't anything, and that's why why you had this horrible outcome, yeah, okay, I mean, maybe I would consider, like, if a bunch of doctors told me that, but I kind of, I just have this feeling that, like, whatever that was is not in any way connected to homeopathy.

0:12:23 Eli: Yeah.

0:12:34 Eli: Yeah, I yeah.

0:12:40 Thomas: I don't know why I just kind of have this feeling yeah,

0:12:24 Tom: Oh, yeah, totally agree with that, yeah, yeah,

0:12:44 Eli: Well, and Thomas actually makes what I think is a really important point, right? Which is when someone goes through something bad that is related to something that's not bullshit, shit uh, impulse, so much of the time is to say, "Oh my gosh, I am here to listen to you, I am here to validate your experience, therefore if maybe you need to cross the lines of truth a little bit," um, can be understanding, I could be accepting of that, I want you to get over this thing, and I don't want you feel invalidated, but, but the point that Thomas makes that's really great is the, the problem there was not that someone needed bullshit, right, and all bullshit is gonna do is deeply harm that loved one, right?

And and I'm, I'm really glad to hear from this listener that it's never particularly come up, that it's not like a big deal in the family. But you know, there's something that, uh, Tom says actually that I, when I was just a listener and a fan of Cogdis, was the background of my computer screen for a little while. Thank you, Tom. Which is, that bullshit has no room for the truth, right? Which is that there is no coexisting with bullshit. Bullshit does not move politely out of the way when it's time for real medicine to come along. And the problem with that, and again, completely validating your wife's sister's experience, like whatever she's been through, we don't even know what it is. And this is not about out negating that, but the problem is that when you try to coexist with bullshit, when push comes to shove, bullshit always insists on winning.

0:13:08 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:13:47 Tom: I I would add that sometimes, here's a difficult thing, I think for everyone to understand, but that because there are no good answers doesn't make bad answers better, right? That's, it's easy for me to say when I'm not in crisis. And I do think that it is a really different experience. And I can say from personal experience, a really different experience to be in crisis and feel like there is nowhere to turn and to accept that there is nowhere. There is nowhere where to turn. And sometimes that's just what's true, right? Is that no one is here to help and that there is not going to be help and there is not going to be an answer.

We have this unfortunate kind of, and I think it's very understandable, but we sort of get the sense that we are at the end point of history and there should be an answer to everything and that we just need to find it. And then the reality is that for many ailments, problems and maladies, there is no good answer. All the answers are bad answers. But just because all the answers are bad answers does not make this other category of bad answers better.

0:14:26 Thomas: Exactly yeah I

0:14:26 Eli: Absolutely absolutely

0:15:24 Tom: Doesn't. It doesn' t, you know, and

0:15:26 Thomas: Think people cannot handle being on the wrong end of statistics ever, like, like I I yeah like well, who win the lottery are not like, well, this shouldn't have happened, I'm gonna give it back, because there's no way people who, who on the receiving end of that kind of bad luck are like, holy shit, the world is wrong, something must be fixed, you know what I mean? Like, it's, that's not a good analogy, but the point is there, think people are perfectly comfortable with other people suffering bad outcomes, like we all know that. That even due to the vaccines, you know, there are some people, like some small number of people who might have a reaction who, and we seem to be comfortable for the most part, except for the fear of COVID denier being like, yeah, no, that really sucks, but I'm still getting the vaccine because it's what's better for your health. Like smart thing to do is still do the thing that's better for you on average. But

0:15:26 Eli: Yeah yeah yeah yeah

0:15:32 Tom: Who can? Yeah, yeah,

0:16:16 Thomas: Like once it happens to them, they're like, well, no, that must, that can't be what happened, now that happened to me, that's something, the whole system's broken, there's no way. Yeah.

0:16:25 Tom: I think the like of our decisions when it comes to this kind of stuff, all of our decisions have to be informed 100%. They should be. They shouldn't be informed by the statistics. And our hope every time we do that is that we're going to land, like you said, we're gonna land on the right side of that number curve. Right. I will say that psychologically and emotionally, we only get this one shot. And when you find yourself on, when you find yourself eating shit and looking at a long-term prospect of eating shit that might not get better, I do think I want to extend a real hand of comfort and understanding and say, I get how people want to carry around fucking magic rocks to keep the tigers away.

0:16:38 Thomas: Yeah yeah oh for sure yeah

0:17:06 Tom: I wrote whole book with Cecil about how I do honestly believe that bullshit is additive and that bullshit is problematic, in even in small doses, but I also

0:17:06 Thomas: What

0:17:06 Eli: Yeah

0:17:16 Thomas: About with a bunch of water and just enough to where there's, the bullshit is barely molecularly detectable

0:17:21 Eli: And

0:17:17 Tom: Absolutely yeah but it's it's not even a dose, right? Yeah, so yeah, 100, but I, but I also have an incredible amount of empathy and understanding, because when you find your back against the wall and you turn around, you're like, well, everyone just shrugs at you on, that's a real different place to to live at in.

0:17:23 Thomas: Yeah I get want to pushback slightly, because so often what's happening, I say almost every time that I've experienced this, what's happening is not someone being like, well, I had this really, really horrible experience and therefore I do not believe in this particular type of medicine because of this. All the while you and I are acknowledging like, yeah, you got fucking unlucky. Like that's in the, we all know that. That's in the numbers. Every ad for medication has 4,600. Hundred. Here's what might happen. All of those are because that happened. It's like at least one fucking unlucky dude. And happening is not that person saying, so therefore I'm just going to not do that anymore and just take the chance, what's having is, oh no, I'm now an advocate for worse things for everyone's kids and my kids. And I'm going to make bad outcomes happen for other people because I'm going to use this horrible conception of how stats work to advocate for negative outcomes for people.

0:18:29 Eli: And to to yes, and something that Tom was saying earlier that I'm so glad we got to, because as I was reading this message I was like, oh, I really want to make sure we emphasize empathy, right? And and one of the things that is so important in the empathetic experience is that there is empathy and kindness in correction. Right.

0:18:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:51 Eli: And like, look, my, my products, not a great example of this. Um, but like, if you look at the people, um, like Thomas's work over on SAO and some of Tom and Cecil's work, although they tend to be a little bit more in my, in my barrel apples. Um. But like work, like the stuff Marsh does over on Be Reasonable. It's funny.

We as skeptics and sorry, I know I'm being a little in community and referencing other shows and things that we do, But if you're not aware, Michael Marshall does an incredible show called Be Reasonable, where he interviews people with beliefs outside the mainstream is the term that he uses. And one of the things that I deeply admire about Marsh is like, yeah, I listen to that to hate on Leo the lion. But he has incredibly respectful and empathetic conversations with people without ever denying their experience.

And he had a recent episode, which I just fucking adored. And I'm not going to remember the person's name, but she's an anti -vaxxer. Basically, And she had a family member who was either severely vaccine injured or she believes them to be severely vaccine injured. And watching him navigate that conversation in that episode with that empathy, with that kindness, but while not giving, right, without giving space to harmful beliefs, right, without without providing that other bad answer, like Thomas was just mentioning, is is so, so good, like such a such a great lesson that we should all strive to learn

0:18:54 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:20:17 Eli: From.

0:20:17 Thomas: Can only blame my ADHD for the fact that I keep every time Marsha's show is mentioned, I'm like, oh, fuck, I don't have that subscribed to my new phone. And then I like forget I got it. I'm doing that right now. A because Marsha is amazing. You're totally right. But B, here's here's my view. Again, I're not obviously I'm not against empathy. That would be an insane book for somebody named Paul Bloom to write. But or whatever the the fuck that was.

0:20:38 Eli: Classic Thomas, known for his lack of empathy, that's what they always say, yeah

0:20:42 Thomas: Yeah. But, but I, uh, strongly believe in taking a complete picture of things because let me give you another side of the coin. Uh, Eli, probably more than me, I would say, but, but me as well, I am on certain medications for mental health that are life -saving. Like, I think maybe that's an overstatement for, well, maybe not for, Eli. I know you've said that. I don't want to speak for you, butI know you said something like that before. And And I would say for me, like I could probably still live, but like a shitty life, you know, like, so, but here's, here's the other side of the empathy when just the more complete picture of empathy, when you and I, Eli, or anybody else like us have to sit there and listen to somebody talk about how, oh no, you actually, those are all, those were all a scam and they're, and they'RE, and THEY'RE advocating for people like us or people who are kids, kids, by the way, who might need meds like we do, they're advocating for those people to suffer.

And I'm sorry, you don't get, if you've suffered a wrong, yes, you get empathy. Of course you get empathy that you don'T get licensed to hurt other people. You just DON'T. And so

0:21:05 Eli: Absolutely yeah

0:21:44 Thomas: You DON'T have to obviously be like super mean about it, but as you said, Tom, empathetic in offering that kind of correction is necessary. And it actually is necessary to prevent harm to innocent people in the process. Because things like anti -vaxxers have a massive negative impact on our health as a society. I don't think I need to even fucking say that. I think it's all in the charts and graphs from the last three years.

0:21:44 Eli: Yeah

0:21:59 Tom: Yeah I, I, and I feel differently, I, I think we have to be, I think with medicine in particular, and I know that we were going to talk more broadly about like just when you're, when holds like kind of, you know, bad ideas or whatever, how do you react to that? But I, I, I will, will say I feel very differently.

I think with medicine that, without sounding overly conspiratorial, there is a long and recent and current history of bad malfeasance among the pharmaceutical industry that we need to be aware of and that we needs to be careful with. I mean, the scandal with Johnson & Johnson and Risperidol looms large and recent in our history. The scandal with opioids and the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma looms larger and very recent.

There are not one or two or five or ten examples of medications which were absolutely marketed and sold and tested despite having known and terrifying problems with those medications and that there were real and actual cover-ups. That's not conspiratorial, that's mean, and that's not even like, oh, that's something that happened like way long ago and we fixed it, we haven't fixed these problems, you

0:23:27 Tom: Know And the same is true of you know, medical devices that continue to be made, manufactured, offered, and installed into people with known, with known problems that are absolutely hidden and then somebody just writes a check and it goes away. Like, that's real stuff too. So I think it's, I think with medicine it's more difficult. It's like there's a big difference between the science of medicine and the clinical practice of medicine. And that's why I'm always trying to be careful when I use my language.

The science of Medicine and the Clinical Practice of Medicine are wildly different. When you read a scientific journal and a scientific study and you say, well, the journals and the studies say this, that doesn't really matter too much. You have to compare with what is clinically offered and what is the clinical Practice. And if the Clinical practice diverges from the study, which is very often the case, then the reality for people isn't that they fell on the shit end of the statistical bar graph.

It's that a system itself failed systemically to offer quality care to people and people have a responsibility to themselves and those they love to be very dubious and skeptical of an industry with motives that don't protect them yes

0:23:26 Eli: But right I mean, so there's a couple of things to that. The first is just to repeat Thomas's point, which is that like, while those things are very true to varying extents. While there is really a problem with pharma, or we could use not pharma as an example. There are really problems with GMO seed patents, anything that you'd care to take a brand of bullshit about. Point that thomas made earlier that I want to emphasize is while those problems are very real very valid and exist the answer to them is never bullshit and in fact bullshit Makes it worse, right? And that's really hard, especially when we're trying to be empathetic, because Tom's absolutely right, right? Like, and this is something skepticism talks about all the time. You know we've had amazing speakers at QED and even at American Atheist this year.

There was a wonderful speaker who talked about the problem of pharma as it interacts with, you know, a secular worldview, like absolutely brilliant, brilliant, Brilliant stuff. Um, the problem is So, often when someone is talking about those problems, it is merely a sales pitch for bullshit. So it's, it's one of those things where you almost need to be careful about talking about truth claims about those things, because Because how much might you validate someone is using those true things to harm people, right? Like the way that we talk about, you know, vaccine side effects, right, when we talk about vaccine side affects, there are real damages to certain vaccines, and people have had life -changing, life -destroying, I would say, side effects to vaccines, but 99 % of the time when someone tells you about that, it's because they're selling you don't take vaccines

0:25:15 Tom: Yes.

0:25:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:26:23 Eli: Right

0:26:24 Thomas: And there's no no between the clinical and the blah, blah, blah. What happened is we take the COVID vaccine and hundreds of thousands of lives are safe. That's what happens. There's no, I wouldn't answer any like for example, if somebody came at me with any of those problems, you just mentioned Tom, like, somebody came at me with that example of OxyContin, my answer would not be, well, no, you see the practice of medicine is pristine and it's never wrong. I'd be like, oh, yeah, no. That's totally terrible. But what Eli points out that's totally right is these things are almost never used, almost never used as these are the examples in and of themselves.

No one's ever like, well you see how they pushed Oxycontin or whatever and that was bad and discussion. No, it's usually when we're dealing with this kind of thing, talking about the bullshit, we're we're dealing with, did you see how they pushed that? Yeah. So what aren't they telling you about the vaccine? And it's like, no, I'm sorry. I, I not going to go with you on that. Like I get, there's no connection between those two things, you know, like there's No real logical connection there.

0:26:34 Tom: Yeah.

0:27:19 Eli: And Definitely does still fall under the statistical outliers category, right? What, there's, you're a reason why what happened with OxyContin gets documentaries and books and, you matter how many personal anecdotes about bad experience with medicine we have, that doesn't change the truth that the vast, vast majority of the time, a medical practitioner is going to be correct. And vous, the listening audience, are going to be incorrect.

And we can't let the uncertainty of of medical practice scare us away from that any more than we can, you know, the Toyota seatbelt conspiracy, which is, you know, we recently did an episode, an anti -Scientology episode over on GAM, where we talked about psychiatry. And of course, the Scientologists got their hands on it. And we got a million absolutely insane emails.

But one of the ones that we got was a person who basically said, well, how do you respond to all these crises that have taken place in medicine? And the example that I always give is, I think it's Toyota, but someone will correct me and tell me exactly what it was. But at one point, an automobile manufacturer made faulty seatbelts knowingly in the U.S. And it killed truly thousands of people. Right.

They were just like, yep, these things snap off and you go flying right through the windshield. Right? That is terrible. And those people should be in jail. And it is a result of a terrible capitalist system that allowed them to happen. But I wouldn't caution people when buying a car to be wary or even mindful of the fact that there have been multiple instances of car companies making less safe cars for money. Does that make sense? Yeah.

0:29:01 Tom: But I think the better, the analogy I would go to, just to make sure I'm not misunderstood, is by that same analogy, my recommendation would be not, don't buy cars, right. I'm not saying that, or like, don't, but, but I would say, if you're going to buy a car and you're interested in the safety on it, like, don't just trust what Toyota says. Look up third party independent reviews of it, because

0:29:22 Thomas: I wanna try to bring it back topic to of what do we do when people are spouting the bullshit, because, how Tom, how would you, how do you respond when somebody uses those claims to then advocate for just actual bullshit that's harmful for people? Yeah.

0:29:36 Eli: Like anti -vax right

0:29:37 Tom: Yeah. So I, I, I think the thing to do is to remind them that one conclusion doesn't lead to another unless the conclusion actually leads to the next conclusion. Right? So if somebody were to say to me, Tom, I know that you have some misgivings around the use of you for certain. And I would say, yes, I absolutely do. Well, what, doesn't that mean that you should be distrustful of vaccines? I would say, no, absolutely not. Those two things are not necessarily related to one another. And let's take a look at these two things as separate, because medicine is not monolithic either. You to take a more nuanced approach with people. Sure, my cat's jumping on my goddamn desk.

0:29:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:14 Tom: It's Very Destructive I Know

0:30:14 Thomas: There's been a Lot of Cats been It's been it's Been cute though, I think It's, that's fine. Yeah.

0:30:17 Tom: He's Losing his fucking mind. Hey, I'm gonna kick him out of here. Hang on. Jesus.

0:30:21 Eli: A he's a big anti -vaxxer we've been trying not to expose it but Tom's cat's a huge anti -vaxxer and really the reason for this episode I that's why I didn't say the listener's name it is Tom's cat it

0:30:22 Thomas: Yeah. The Cat was, was trying to say feline AIDS was done by The government. Dude.

0:30:35 Eli: Was Leo the lion oh it's all coming

0:30:38 Thomas: Okay. You said Leo the lion. Wasn't that the one that was shot by that dentist? Who's Leo the Lion? Remember who's the one that was a lion shot by a dentist in 10 years ago?

0:30:38 Eli: Together no no Leo Leo the lion there was

0:30:49 Tom: Oh, Yeah, Cecil the lion. It

0:30:51 Thomas: Oh,

0:30:49 Eli: A dentist Cecil the lion yeah

0:30:52 Thomas: Cecil. Okay, sorry.

0:30:53 Eli: No.

0:30:53 Thomas: I got my mixed up my lions.

0:30:53 Tom: Was Cecil lion it was Cecil the lion that one's easy for me to remember.

0:30:55 Eli: No.

0:30:55 Thomas: Yeah. Okay? What's Leo? The lion? I don't know what that is.

0:30:57 Tom: Oh,

0:30:57 Eli: Leo Lion is the greatest episode of Be Reasonable that has ever been or will ever be.

0:31:04 Thomas: Oh my God. I gotta get get

0:31:05 Eli: He's a guy in India who believes that the AIDS virus is caused by a parasite that men get from eating other men's poop, which is something that all homosexuals do. And for I will say the first time in Be Reasonable history, Marsh is just like, what, man?

0:31:05 Thomas: This. I got to get, okay.

0:31:15 Tom: My god. All.

0:31:16 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, of course.

0:31:26 Tom: Right, right. So I'm going to give an answer that's probably going to be very unsatisfying. I think it's really really fucking hard to change people's minds, and I think it's really really really hard to change people minds, particularly with respect to their bodies and their health. I don't think it's impossible. But if you ask like how I would answer it, the first thing, the very first thing I would try to do is try to find and meet them at the place that they're at, to understand why they think the things that they think. And then I would trying to ask them questions and get them to understand that one conclusion does not lead past itself, necessarily, and interrogate that. And I would keep in the back of my head that the likelihood of this actually working is less than 5%.

0:32:12 Thomas: Yeah. But like, okay, let's draw this scenario where your partner doesn't want to vaccinate your kids and you do, because and God knows you'd want to try to do everything you could to talk your partner out of that if if that was you, but there would be a point where I would draw a line. I would say, okay, I, I empathetic for your situation, of course, but like, we're not doing that to our kids. I'm going to literally put my foot down and insist that we go with medical science and protect our kids, and that's A tough, I don't know. That's, that's what I was looking forward to trying to talk about because I don't know that I have a good answer for that particular Problem.

0:32:37 Tom: Yeah.

0:32:44 Eli: Yeah, that's that's the a tough question for me. And I'm glad you brought it up, Thomas, because like like Tom says, and like the back of my computer said for a little while, like bullshit doesn't make room for the truth. Right. Right. So while there's no conflict right now, and the listener says this in their question, right, like it's not like every time the kids fall down, she's running up with some arnica to, you know, stuff it in their face.

But like the truth of the matter is, and I experienced this and I don't think my mom would be too horrified by this, but I had an incident when I was a teenager where I was very sick and mom wanted me to be treated by homeopaths. And my father may or may not have snuck me to Western medicine. I think she would probably disagree with that coloring of the situation. But that is the question that I'm very interested in, rather than the intellectual one, which I think is valid and a worthy conversation, but is when push comes to shove, how do we negotiate when our partner has X bad beliefs and we've sort of run out of room to negotiate?

0:33:25 Tom: All bad answer to that is like if your kid's in danger, because if you if you're what we're positing here is like is like not harmless. Right. Your kid is actually in active danger. And I think you.

0:33:59 Eli: Sure

0:33:56 Thomas: Yeah. Well, and Eli's point is it might always be not harmless eventually because there's no room for bullshit kind of thing. So it's like, where do you start pushing back?

0:34:03 Eli: Yeah.

0:34:03 Tom: Right. Yeah, and I I agree. Right, because tomorrow your kid could develop a condition. Condition, right? And so I think you have to have a sit down and say, look, I hear you that you like this homeopathy stuff, but if our kid gets sick, we're taking the kid to a fucking doctor. We're taking a kid to Cleveland Clinic. We'll get a new fucking vaccine. We've taken our kid to where, and if that is going to be a deal breaker in this relationship, then that's a deal breaker in our relationship. We'll have to go and get custody. Today.

0:34:30 Thomas: Yeah. Well, and I imagine, okay, I know nothing about this and I know this system is not, is historically notoriously not great, but I would imagine assuming you were conducting yourself as a co -parent in the best possible manner, that that would be something, you know, maybe a court would have sympathy with like, hey, you I wants my kids treated with, you now, medicine and this person wants them treated with not medicine.

0:34:53 Tom: Yeah, unless the judge is a homie path too. Right.

0:34:55 Thomas: I know.

0:34:56 Tom: Because That's Yeah.

0:34:56 Thomas: No, there's no guarantee.

0:34:57 Tom: There's No Guarantee On That, yeah.

0:34:57 Thomas: That's why there's no room. Yeah.

0:34:55 Eli: There There's Actually some very interesting law surrounding this, and, you know, give your baby a full bottle of Tylenol, don't take us as experts, but um my family and I actually don't think I'm allowed to tell I'm

0:34:59 Tom: Sure.

0:35:07 Thomas: I don't know. I want to make sure people know you're not saying to give their baby a full bottle.

0:35:11 Eli: Saying give your baby. No, because here's the thing, here's the thing, Thomas, and I've said it before, I'll say it again, if anyone ever wants me to be right about anything on this show, it's over, it's fucking over, I can barely maintain my own sanity and health, and the idea that anyone would take my words as seriously, that's what you do it for, I'm just here to tell you about the lawn murders that I've ordered, um, but uh been a situation in my family where that happened, where basically there was a hard line disagreement about medicine, medicine, um, the dad in that scenario was like, yep, I'm taking the kid to get vaccinated, and the mom really didn't want it to happen, and because of the way the laws were constructed in that particular state, and again, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, so please don't quote me, uh, could just sign the paper, permission slip, and the kid got the medical treatment they wanted, so you might not necessarily need to have that fight, but whether, I think what the listener is is asking is like how much is it worth having that fight now versus is

0:35:35 Thomas: A great callback.

0:36:01 Thomas: Oh, nice. Good.

0:36:03 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:36:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:14 Eli: Is it because right, but to

0:36:14 Thomas: Waiting until it's a catastrophe.

0:36:16 Tom: Would have that fight before I agreed to have kids with somebody, like that yeah if

0:36:20 Thomas: Yeah, but it doesn't, you know, that kind of stuff. You don't always, you know?

0:36:22 Eli: Change people

0:36:22 Tom: You can yeah no I mean, but I'm just saying, like, if you can't, I would, like, if you're, if you're, this is like pre-it, but like I would consider that a deal breaker, yeah. I would say if you're dating somebody like and you want to have kids with somebody, this should be deal, deal breaker stuff.

0:36:23 Thomas: Yeah,

0:36:23 Eli: Go through stuff relax

0:36:31 Thomas: Yeah, it's a good point, yeah, that's a good point, if you're gonna, if you're making the conscious decision to have kids, which, you know, doesn't, isn't how it goes all the time, but like, yeah, maybe make sure

0:36:43 Tom: Yeah.

0:36:44 Eli: Thomas, we get it, you don't like condoms, Thomas.

0:36:48 Thomas: I was, I was referring to Tom actually, but yeah.

0:36:51 Eli: Thomas, condoms feel weird, Smith over here has to slip in his personal agenda, I

0:36:55 Thomas: I was just giving acknowledgement to Tom, but okay, sure, we wanted kid, we were trying to have kids, we just didn't in that exact moment know it was happening per se, um Um, so the point is, I don't think so. I thought Tom said his kids were not at play. Anyway, um, Tom, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

0:37:10 Eli: I think Tom could say the same thing.

0:37:20 Thomas: Um, but anyway, the point ist, yeah, no, I think Tom, you make an excellent point. I think if you're going to make a decision that big, you better, you up like, okay, what are some of the key medical decisions? By the way, um. Not a small item on that list. Oh my God. I'm so tired. Okay. This is the. Okay. Okay. This is the funny, I am so fucking tired. My mind went to the word crucifixion, like crucifiction. Are you going to crucify

0:37:12 Tom: No, were not planned. No. No, not planned.

0:37:44 Thomas: Your baby?

0:37:44 Eli: Are you going to crucify your baby? Yeah. Because look, his hands will look weird if you don't crucify him. And look, I'm Jewish and I really value my Jewish identity.

0:37:45 Thomas: Yeah. But no, what's the one where you crucify the other kids will make fun of the hands of your kid.

0:37:55 Tom: If you're not crucified. Yeah.

0:37:57 Thomas: If the doesn't have holes in it, what is the, I'm so tired. I was up all night barfing.

0:38:01 Tom: Circumcision.

0:38:00 Eli: Hear it feels better if you do. You don't have holes in your hands.

0:38:04 Tom: Circumcision is what.

0:38:08 Eli: Circumcision.

0:38:06 Thomas: Yeah. They'll talk. No circumcision.

0:38:08 Eli: Speak.

0:38:09 Thomas: That was, oh, man, that was a big one.

0:38:09 Tom: Circumcession. Yeah.

0:38:10 Thomas: Because, yeah, oh,

0:38:09 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. The only the only hard opinion we have on this show, aside from don't hit your kids, is don't mutilate your baby's penis.

0:38:19 Thomas: Is that, oh, we, three, three out of three on that? I wasn't sure I've yeah oh, good.

0:38:21 Eli: Are three out of three. Yes, it is

0:38:22 Thomas: Okay. And

0:38:23 Eli: The only time we've ever just as a show universally.

0:38:24 Thomas: We'll lose 400 listeners, they'll be fine, no big deal.

0:38:27 Eli: It's OK.

0:38:27 Thomas: I, I'll take it. It's the same with hitting, and it's something actually that's a good one, because that is the case where I think people might be persuadable, and I, I actually don't want to, because I know that this was me, like, I was thinking, like, yeah, no, I would just crucify, I would just circumcise my kid. Cause that like, that's what I am. And I don't, you know, like,

0:38:48 Eli: This is canon forever. I refuse to refer to it as circumcision on our show. It will only be called crucifixion no matter what.

0:38:52 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:57 Thomas: And so, wait, the part I want to make is if you are someone who is going to advocate for something like that, I would actually encourage not doing the extremist, shameful language. And maybe it's the kind of thing where all approaches work, I don't know, but I know with me, I resented that a little bit. I, I resent, and I'm speaking as someone who came to the decision and the realization, oh yeah, no, never mind, that's a bad idea to crucify my baby. I, statements like how it's exactly the same as female genital mutilation. All that, that's just, just don't do, because then you lose, for those people, they lost credibility in my mind. I'm like, well, that's not true.

I know, maybe in extreme cases, maybe, but like, it's not true. Like, like, it just isn't, so don't make, like, that, doesn't, trying to go overboard, at least for me, and this is, I think, relevant to the topic, because it's like, how do you, you know, argue about or discuss or figure out those kind of contrary views that you might have with your partner. I will say, for me, in that debate, it wasn't those extremist language, that, that kind of stuff, those arguments just turned me off. And but despite those, I, you eventually was persuaded by more, you thoughtful, know, um, fucking hyperbolic statements about it, you know, and that actually was what got to me personally. I just wanted to say that. Yeah.

0:39:25 Tom: Oh, it's no good. Yeah.

0:39:37 Tom: Right, right.

0:39:38 Eli: Yeah.

0:40:09 Eli: Yeah. And something that I really love about this episode, and I hate praising a podcast episode we're currently doing, but something thatI love aboutthis episode that I honestly didn't expect, because I kind of thought we were just going to dunk on the sugar pills and water, is the need for empathy, right? And something that Tom has brought up, I think, really, really well, is that we do need to understand other people's lived experience, that we do need do validate and empathize with where people's hesitations might be coming from. And Tom, like you said, meet them where they are.

Now, that said, it's weird because we doing a podcast, statistically speaking, should probably do the mean mockery thing, because mockery culture is very influential as to people's opinions. Right. I, I've told the story other places, but I, what undone from 9-11 trutherism, because Noah thought, I also thought Zeitgeist was bullshit and went on a big rant in front of me, even though it was like my favorite movie, but because I admired Noah so much, I then looked up all that stuff instead of confronting him there, whereas I think if Noah and I had already been friends, instead of just like casual co-workers, if he had been like, you're a fucking idiot, which, let's be real, Noah, he absolutely would have, uh,

0:40:54 Thomas: Yeah, yes

0:40:55 Tom: Right, yeah yeah

0:41:26 Eli: I I think it

0:41:26 Thomas: He probably still is now he's like, I need to make sure that

0:41:28 Eli: Yeah I know he's

0:41:28 Tom: He's doing he's saying that he's gonna chime in, he's gonna send us an email right now.

0:41:29 Eli: Absolutely

0:41:30 Thomas: Yeah he would never listen to the show, but if he did, he'd be like, I live

0:41:31 Tom: Yeah no

0:41:33 Eli: Lister lister Noah L writes in, uh, Eli, you're a fucking idea, yeah no, there it is, I got it, oh, yeah and

0:41:36 Tom: Yeah yeah

0:41:38 Thomas: Yeah crucial in that formula, though, was you knowing and having a rapport and relationship with Noah, though, because if he's just some guy and he's yelling at you, that's not gonna work. Right?

0:41:48 Tom: Guess I would add, or like, yes and, that, and say that, like, for, like, when you are persuading someone, one of the key things to do is to know that person well enough to know what moves them emotionally. It doesn't matter so much what you're trying to persuade someone. I was trying to persuade, and maybe emotionally is not the right word, because if I was tried to persuade Thomas about something, I would use a very different tactic than if I were going to try to persuade a coworker or another friend of mine. You have to know, if the question really is, how do I accomplish this goal persuasively? I think the most important thing to know is to know what is going to move, what kinds of arguments, what kind of points of connection are going to move somebody and move the needle for somebody. Because it's not the same, which is why one-time advice isn't good. Like, one-size-fits-all, here's how to have that conversation. It's not really valuable. It is like, well, who are we converting here? How are we talking to them? It is not the same answer for every person.

0:41:48 Thomas: Oh, True, I have to bring it, it's a quick example, but just happened to me, so I kind of want to bring it up. I have was having someone, and just in case this person ever hears this, I want to make extra clear that this person fucking rules and they're amazing. But with particular thing, I was having someone do some creative work for me.

And Tom, speaking exactly to your point of knowing who you're, or with, or like how they think or maybe how, how to argue or to how to persuade them, um, thing that is really a turnoff for me is there's a way people argue, uh, that for me it's just the opposite of effective, which is when they want you to go to their conclusion, they will bring up a bunch of arguments for it that they're only bringing up because they want that conclusion, to try to explain it.

Was like, it was an artistic choice thing. And I was like, no, I think it should be this. I'm pretty, like, solid, it should be this. And this person, who is the artist, of course, who I will defer to on these decisions, was like, well, no, for the composition of the thing, it needs to be a certain way, and I'm like, oh, okay, well, if the composition demands, like, I don't know fucking shit about that.

So if it's like something in art school is like, yeah, it's got to be for the colors or for the whatever, fine, I will totally defer. And then they proceed to try to add, like, four or more reasons why it should be that way that are, like, disagree with my take on the, like, concept. And it's like, well,

0:44:13 Thomas: No, that, now you're, now you're doing it worse, because now I, now yeah well now what I see is, well, you just want this conclusion and you're trying to find everything, even though you wouldn't have argued those things otherwise, you know what I mean. So it does the opposite, it's the opposite for me, like, for me I'm like trying to distill it down to, like, what is the the decision, and kind of, as best we can, what are the variables here, and, and when I see people throw in a bunch of like bad reasons just to try to, like, you know, uh, guild the lily, or whatever, that makes me, like, think they're being less genuine about what their

0:44:13 Eli: Now I'm digging in right absolutely

0:44:16 Tom: Right.

0:44:45 Eli: Absolutely

0:44:45 Thomas: Position is, I

0:44:47 Eli: Yeah, and, and, you know, we talked about this a little on the, on the fighting episode, but I think it is relevant here, is you do have to be able to know what changes your partner's mind, right? And, I look, I don't want to project onto this poor listener who we've, who we have done such a far-reaching conversation about their very, very basic question, but, like, you gotta know what is going to change your mind. All, Anna and I don't have disagreements like this, but I know how I would approach this kind of difficult conversation. Tom knows how he would approach this difficult kind of conversation if he had to have it with Haley, and Thomas knows how he would reproach it with Lydia, and I think those are three wildly different approaches, probably.

0:45:23 Thomas: Was Really worried about this one, but it didn't go at all the direction that I thought it would go, because I genuinely, I want to just throw this out there, because my meta show is me and Lydia talking about the show after we listened to the show. And I genuinely, this is one where I don't know because you folks obviously know me. I have strong opinions. And I just don't, I could not tell you if there's anything like this. Now, Lydia has always been an She was raised born, an atheist, like with, and not an atheist just without any religion. So she's always been science -y. She's all, you Know, I've never, we've never had tension over beliefs like that.

But like, if she had any of those beliefs, I'm not sure I would know because like I and that was an interesting thing I wanted to like I don't have a good answer for I don'T KNOW THAT THAT'S GOOD LIKE I THINK SHE WOULD BE PRETTY HESITANT TO BRING UP ANY OPINION THAT WENT AGAINST ANY SORT OF SCIENTIFIC THING AND THAT COULD BE BECAUSE SHE ENTIRELY AGREES WITH ME AND SCIENCE NOT ME BUT LIKE ENTIRELY HOLDS THOSE POSITIONS BUT LIKE I MIGHT NOT BE THAT AND I WOULDN'T HAVE A GOOD ANSWER FOR IF THAT

0:45:38 Eli: Mm-hmm. Oh,

0:46:30 Thomas: WERE TRUE FOLLOW -UP EPISODE

0:46:30 Eli: Follow -up episode, Lydia's a 9-11 truther, and they've just never talked about it.

0:46:33 Tom: Yes but

0:46:35 Thomas: She's like actually when we got the vaccines I pretended I just did hey can you make it look like I'm getting it and so my husband sees

0:46:41 Eli: Right, are you ready For a teaser? And I literally, I will not announce this on air because it's not, it's not Anna who believes the bullshit. I have a bullshit belief that Anna and I still, okay, still very, very rarely fight about. Now, I will be clear, I am wrong, and it is one of the most universally agreed to be silly beliefs ever.

0:46:42 Thomas: Yeah

0:47:03 Eli: But I want to, how dare you, Tom, how dare are you, sir? How dare you? I quit the podcast, I quit them, but you've ruined my career here, sir. You've ruined me. All right, well, that was just a bunch of beeps and hisses, you all heard nothing, which means I have a question for you guys. Gentlemen, what does the little mermaid wear? Seashells. She outgrew her b -shells all

0:47:03 Tom: So what no way no way

0:47:45 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

0:48:25 Thomas: Oh oh, I'm not barfing, just burping.

0:48:28 Eli: It barf, barf.

0:48:28 Thomas: Just

0:48:29 Eli: Right now, on the air.