Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Religion War, by Scott Adams (with Matt Lieb)
Aired: 2023-09-19
Duration: 01:22:51


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (14:44) ===

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[00:01:45]  Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, legally the only podcast that you're allowed to listen to under the terms of the New World Orders fucking International Monetary Fund, Bilderberg group, whatever.
[00:02:04]  You know, that's it.
[00:02:05]  That's the law.
[00:02:06]  So hate that Bildeberg group.
[00:02:08]  Oh, see, I don't actually have a bit ready for this.
[00:02:12]  Matt Lee, how are we doing today, Matt?
[00:02:16]  Oh, I'm doing great.
[00:02:17]  I am right now hidden in my bedroom because my baby is asleep on the other side of the house, and I don't want to wake her up with all of the loud noises that I intend to make.
[00:02:31]  That is fair.
[00:02:32]  Now, Matt, you are, if folks are not aware, if our listeners aren't aware, you are the host of a number of podcasts, including a Sopranos podcast called Pod Yourself a Gun.
[00:02:45]  That's right.
[00:02:46]  And a The Wire podcast called Pod Yourself the Wire.
[00:02:50]  Yes, which you can find on a feed called Pod Yourself a Gun.
[00:02:53]  It's nice and confusing.
[00:02:55]  If you see Tony Soprano's face in the logo, you know it's a show about the wire.
[00:03:01]  That's extremely clear.
[00:03:02]  Now, Matt, both of those titles are obviously a reference to the intro music for the Sopranos.
[00:03:08]  That's right.
[00:03:10]  Which the refrain is something like, woke up this morning, got yourself a gun.
[00:03:14]  That's right.
[00:03:15]  Now, guys, what are we doing today?
[00:03:19]  Do we have another Scott Adams book?
[00:03:22]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:22]  Not all that long ago.
[00:03:24]  We did our deep dive into Scott Adams.
[00:03:26]  We talked about the life of this man.
[00:03:28]  And he's got a couple of books that he wrote that he considers to be, he thinks that his cartoons in time will be forgotten.
[00:03:36]  But generations from now, his novels are what people will remember of him.
[00:03:41]  He said this.
[00:03:41]  He's got on the record about this.
[00:03:43]  Are these graphic novels of Dilbert that we're calling books, or are these just words, no cartoons?
[00:03:49]  Yeah, they're just words, and they're real short.
[00:03:52]  He says they're real short because he wanted something that a person could read in an afternoon, which is a fine goal for a book.
[00:04:00]  Normally, I consider brevity to be an example of skill and craft.
[00:04:06]  But in this case, it just means he didn't tell a story.
[00:04:09]  Right.
[00:04:11]  I love starting off a book with the idea of like, no, shorter, shorter, better.
[00:04:16]  Shorter, good.
[00:04:17]  Less words, more read fast.
[00:04:19]  Yeah, I'm going to publish like a big 300-page book with a fancy title like The Origin of Mankind.
[00:04:25]  And it's just going to have two words in it.
[00:04:27]  Just fuck it on page one, empty space the rest of the time.
[00:04:30]  Yeah.
[00:04:31]  And then like a dick in the middle of it.
[00:04:32]  And you have to search for the dick.
[00:04:34]  And then when you find it, you win.
[00:04:36]  Yeah.
[00:04:36]  And it's a whole book for like, yeah, you can, you can just like say you finished it in a day and have it out on your desk when people walk by and be like, finish this one.
[00:04:44]  Who boy?
[00:04:46]  I've been busy.
[00:04:47]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:48]  Oh, me?
[00:04:48]  I've just been reading all these books here.
[00:04:50]  You have a whole fucking shelf filled with them.
[00:04:52]  People are opening them up and there's nothing in them except for that dick that they find and then they feel like they won.
[00:04:58]  Yeah, you find the dick, you email it to us and you make a sacred pledge never to tell anyone that there's not an actual book in there.
[00:05:05]  Exactly.
[00:05:06]  Yeah.
[00:05:06]  It's like Santa Claus.
[00:05:08]  We all do it and we all benefit.
[00:05:09]  So Matt, he wrote these books, The Religion War being the one that we're going to talk about today.
[00:05:15]  And they're terrible.
[00:05:16]  And I went back and forth, should we do a book episode about this?
[00:05:21]  Because another podcast I really like quite a lot, House of Decline, H-A-U-S, has done, got over both these books with the lovely Rory Blank as the guest.
[00:05:34]  And there was one other podcast that did at least one of these books.
[00:05:37]  So we're not breaking totally new ground here.
[00:05:40]  And I got kind of like self-conscious about that.
[00:05:44]  And then you know what I said, Matt?
[00:05:46]  What'd you say?
[00:05:46]  I said, who gives a fuck?
[00:05:48]  Dude, that's how I live.
[00:05:50]  That's what I decided.
[00:05:51]  As someone who does TV rewatch podcasts of 20-year-old shows.
[00:05:55]  Exactly.
[00:05:56]  No.
[00:05:57]  Doesn't matter.
[00:05:58]  People need the content.
[00:06:00]  They want more.
[00:06:02]  This is all, we all have a moral right and a moral duty to access Scott Adams' terrible books for free because they're available for free on the Internet Archive.
[00:06:12]  Don't ever spend money on these.
[00:06:14]  We are not.
[00:06:15]  Do not.
[00:06:15]  No.
[00:06:16]  And that's what we're going to do.
[00:06:18]  I love it.
[00:06:18]  That's great.
[00:06:19]  You know, this is nice for me because it's not a Nazi.
[00:06:22]  Well, okay, let me take that back.
[00:06:24]  I'm going to rewind that a little bit.
[00:06:26]  It's not that it's not a Nazi.
[00:06:27]  It's that it's not a guy who was in the Nazi party in Germany in the 30s and 40s.
[00:06:36]  And that's nice for me.
[00:06:38]  Yeah.
[00:06:38]  Now, Scott would have loved to be a Nazi.
[00:06:43]  Don't get me wrong.
[00:06:44]  But tragically, I mean, he probably would have been like Phipps, the cartoonist who did the illustrations for Dare Sturmer if he'd gotten the chance because modern Dilbert's not all that far off.
[00:06:56]  Yeah, it's mostly just Dog Birch looking around for some Laban's realm.
[00:07:00]  Yeah.
[00:07:02]  He would have used the ill-gotten Nazi gold to build a swimming pool shaped like Dilbert's head instead of just using the money that he got from Dilbert to make a swimming pool shaped like Dilbert's head.
[00:07:14]  Wait, he has a swimming pool shaped like Dilbert's head.
[00:07:18]  That's what he did.
[00:07:19]  Matt, if you look that up, you might find something you don't want to find.
[00:07:23]  So what I'm going to tell you is, you know, sometimes it's good to just have faith in this.
[00:07:28]  These are like, this is like, you know, how the Holy Spirit, the Catholics don't want to tell you what it is, but you got to, you got to think it's really just a big deal.
[00:07:36]  Yeah, it's a big deal.
[00:07:38]  Yeah, it's like, this is like the Holy Spirit.
[00:07:40]  The Dilbert Head swimming pool in Scott Adams' backyard is the Holy Spirit of making fun of Scott Adams.
[00:07:46]  And you just have to accept it into your life.
[00:07:47]  I believe it.
[00:07:48]  I believe it's an article of faith that he has this.
[00:07:51]  Dilbert hair shaped swimming pool.
[00:07:54]  He does have a tower in the back of his house shaped like Dilbert's head.
[00:07:58]  Anyway, now I should note here that the religion war is actually the second book in the series, but chronologically it happens before the second book.
[00:08:09]  We're going to read them in order, which will be my first step towards correcting Scott Adams's numerous mistakes.
[00:08:14]  Oh my God.
[00:08:15]  So you're telling me now I was assuming this was non-fiction.
[00:08:20]  You know, it is.
[00:08:22]  Okay.
[00:08:23]  Wait, is this non-fiction or is this a novel?
[00:08:27]  Well, Scott actually has a lot to say about that.
[00:08:31]  In his first book, he's like, you know, I don't know whether I should call this fiction or non-fiction because fiction, you know, like this is this is based on like characters and stories that didn't actually happen, but it's kind of non-fiction because it has an impact on the reader.
[00:08:48]  And I was like, that is not the definition between fiction and non-fiction.
[00:08:52]  The Lord of the Rings impacted a lot of people.
[00:08:55]  And we did not have a War of the Ring.
[00:08:57]  I've checked.
[00:08:59]  Listen, if there had been, I would have been firmly on the side of Sauraman.
[00:09:04]  He seems like he takes care of his workers.
[00:09:07]  They have menus.
[00:09:09]  That implies restaurants.
[00:09:11]  That's true.
[00:09:11]  They have menus.
[00:09:12]  Yeah.
[00:09:13]  And sometimes meat is back on the menu.
[00:09:15]  Yeah.
[00:09:15]  Yeah.
[00:09:16]  Which also means that presumably there are vegan and vegetarian options.
[00:09:20]  I love that.
[00:09:21]  Yeah, that's important.
[00:09:23]  Yeah.
[00:09:23]  All right.
[00:09:24]  So let's finally start the introduction to this terrible book that we're reading because I needed a week to not write a script about a Nazi.
[00:09:32]  So The Religion War, this is his little intro, the prologue.
[00:09:36]  The religion war is a different kind of book.
[00:09:39]  It's written in traditional fiction form with a plot.
[00:09:41]  Yes, a plot in parentheses involving the smartest man in the world trying to stop a pending war between Christian and Muslim forces.
[00:09:48]  The story takes you forward to a few decades to imagine where our current delusions about reality might lead us.
[00:09:54]  And in the end, it poses some questions that I think you'll enjoy rolling around in your head and jabbering about with friends while sipping a beverage.
[00:10:01]  It's not a I'm sorry.
[00:10:03]  Are they trying to is he trying to sell the reader on the book they've already purchased?
[00:10:07]  Yes.
[00:10:08]  Yes, he is.
[00:10:09]  And he's trying to tell you.
[00:10:10]  Oh, you're really going to like this book.
[00:10:13]  That was, I think, the opening to Blood Meridian.
[00:10:16]  Yeah.
[00:10:16]  Yeah.
[00:10:17]  Cormac McCarthy was like, boy, I hope you enjoy the story of the judge, a psychopathic demiurge character fucking ranting about how he wants to murder birds.
[00:10:31]  Yeah.
[00:10:32]  That's great.
[00:10:33]  Good.
[00:10:33]  Yeah, you know, have a good time.
[00:10:34]  Roll some questions about this around in your mouth with your friends while sipping a tasty beverage.
[00:10:40]  Yes.
[00:10:41]  Get your favorite treat.
[00:10:43]  Sit down and start reading this piece of shit.
[00:10:46]  And then ask your friends, hey, you read that fucking thing.
[00:10:50]  That'll be fun.
[00:10:52]  It does tell you the difference between, you know, Cormac McCarthy is like the platonic ideal of like a real author and then Scott Adams as Scott Adams.
[00:11:00]  And like Scott's like, I hope you enjoy my book.
[00:11:03]  Please sip it while like discuss it with your friends sipping a tea.
[00:11:08]  And Cormac McCarthy is like, if you were to walk up to him on the street when he was alive and say, I'm interested in reading your book, his response would have been to pull a handgun.
[00:11:17]  Like, yeah, that's, that's like a real fucking artist.
[00:11:20]  Like a real artist.
[00:11:21]  Yeah.
[00:11:24]  Here's the prologue.
[00:11:26]  In the year 2007, a brilliant and charismatic leader named Alzhe began his rise to power in the Palestinian territories.
[00:11:33]  He was the architect of the 20-year plan for eliminating Israel.
[00:11:37]  Now, let me tell you what this plan is, Matt.
[00:11:40]  The 20-year plan for eliminating Israel is that we all kind of like calmly, actually, you know what?
[00:11:46]  I can scroll down to the chapter where he talks this all out.
[00:11:50]  Because this is low-key.
[00:11:51]  So a couple of things you should note.
[00:11:52]  You know how the Islam includes both Sunni and Shia, right?
[00:11:57]  You know how like there's different kinds, kind of like, you know, how there's Catholics and Protestants and Christianity.
[00:12:02]  Yeah.
[00:12:03]  Scott doesn't know that.
[00:12:05]  So everyone's like Iran, you know, Palestine.
[00:12:09]  It's all this Iraq.
[00:12:10]  They're all the same.
[00:12:11]  They're all in there together with like the Turks.
[00:12:15]  And they're, they're in the basics of this is that like, yeah, he, he destroys Israel and kills all of the Jews and then builds a caliphate.
[00:12:24]  And they launch like a low-key terrorist war with all of the Christian states.
[00:12:29]  Yeah.
[00:12:30]  And so this Christian alliance builds up using NATO as a background.
[00:12:35]  And they have this like constant low-key war with the Muslims where the Muslims do terrorist attacks, but they're special terrorist attacks.
[00:12:43]  They're real careful not to get too big, like 9-11, so that they have to respond.
[00:12:48]  And then the Christians sail around gigantic aircraft carriers, kind of like occasionally killing people.
[00:12:55]  It's kind of unclear what their role in the war is.
[00:12:58]  And there's a number of things that get glossed over in this, including the Christian forces are made up of NATO, and the second largest army in NATO is a Muslim army in the real world.
[00:13:08]  Scott didn't Google that.
[00:13:11]  He actually learned just the other day that Turkey is a country.
[00:13:17]  I love this.
[00:13:18]  I love the mini 9-11s thing.
[00:13:21]  It's like, hey, we don't want to get it too big.
[00:13:24]  It reminds me of the famous question, would you rather be killed by a horse-sized 9-11 or a thousand duckling-size 9-11s?
[00:13:36]  And I think the duckling-sized ones is the way to go.
[00:13:40]  Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:13:43]  There's so much that's going on there, including like Scott's talking about how this is, you know, his presumption of how things will continue with like the madness of the present era.
[00:13:52]  And he's writing this kind of in the, not that long after the invasion of Iraq and the post-9-11 era.
[00:13:58]  Yeah, I assume this must have come out like, you know, 2004 or something because he's like, this takes place in the year 2007.
[00:14:05]  Yeah.
[00:14:06]  And I mean, well, that's when that's when the destruction of Israel starts, you know?
[00:14:11]  Yeah.
[00:14:13]  So there's a degree to which I understand why that's the focus.
[00:14:17]  But it's also very much like, you know, if you pay attention to America, the idea that like there could be this giant caliphate that's constantly doing low-level terrorist attacks against us and we wouldn't lose our minds.
[00:14:31]  Like they don't have to kill a lot of people.
[00:14:32]  They don't have to kill anyone.
[00:14:34]  It has to be all that, all we need is like a TikTok to go viral, making people think the Muslims have poisoned the water and like 40% of the country will be ready to do a genocide.

=== Viral Misinformation Fears (06:13) ===

[00:14:44]  Yes, yes.
[00:14:46]  I love in his America, we show restraint.
[00:14:50]  Yeah.
[00:14:51]  He really does.
[00:14:52]  There's this mix of like zero faith and way too much faith in the country.
[00:14:56]  That's that's utterly fascinating.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:59]  So chapter one is old man.
[00:15:03]  So okay, yeah, you get this, you get this guy, Alzi, and he kills all of the Jews by basically convincing Israel to give Palestinians civil rights.
[00:15:13]  And then they vote themselves into power and then they kill.
[00:15:15]  And they're the only trick in the book.
[00:15:17]  Yeah.
[00:15:19]  Gaining legal equality is a prelude to genocide.
[00:15:23]  Yeah.
[00:15:24]  Step one to white genocide is always wiping out the Jews.
[00:15:30]  That's cool.
[00:15:30]  Yeah, it's good stuff.
[00:15:31]  Historically always been the case.
[00:15:34]  This architect of the 20-year genocide plan then makes a big old caliphate and everybody's happy and he starts this low-level war.
[00:15:42]  And then on the other side, on the NATO Christian side, but let's pretend Turkey's not a country.
[00:15:47]  We have General Horatio Cruz, who's the guy running the Christian Alliance.
[00:15:53]  And now we're in 2040 and the war is kind of hitting a fever pitch.
[00:15:56]  So the first proper chapter is Old Man.
[00:16:00]  And I think this is going to introduce the Avatar, who we'll meet again in the second book we're going to read in this series, who's the smartest man in the world, right?
[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  And he's so good at thinking through things that he's basically a wizard.
[00:16:14]  But he doesn't have spells.
[00:16:15]  He just is smart enough that he can confound and flummox people.
[00:16:20]  I love being a fiction writer.
[00:16:22]  It was just like, all right, it's going to be a story about a real smart guy.
[00:16:26]  Yeah.
[00:16:27]  Real, real, real smart.
[00:16:28]  Yeah.
[00:16:28]  His superpower, big brain smarts.
[00:16:32]  There's a lot of versions of this.
[00:16:34]  And like better artists than Scott do it too.
[00:16:36]  Whenever you have a look at a TV show, where the premise of the TV show is the main character is like the best author around or the best musician.
[00:16:43]  And anytime it's time, we just got this with like, at least The Weekend is a pop star on this Terrible The Idol show.
[00:16:50]  But like still, it was a little, I'm thinking.
[00:16:53]  I'm still so surprised you watched the entire sequence.
[00:16:57]  I heard it was terrible.
[00:16:58]  I heard it was the worst show I've ever seen.
[00:17:00]  It's the worst show I've ever seen.
[00:17:01]  And like the worst show I've ever seen.
[00:17:03]  But the weekend can't act.
[00:17:05]  It was so.
[00:17:06]  He's not a good actor, but none of it worked well.
[00:17:10]  I enjoyed every minute of it.
[00:17:12]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:13]  I watched it and, you know, I was just really impressed with how they managed to make being horny sound lame.
[00:17:25]  Like, it was, it was like, you know what it felt like to me is that Sam Levinson grew up only watching porn hub premium.
[00:17:37]  Absolutely.
[00:17:38]  And so he doesn't know about X videos.
[00:17:40]  So the things that he thinks are hot are like very glossy, very shiny.
[00:17:45]  And I was like, no, this guy doesn't, he doesn't get what hot is.
[00:17:49]  He just thinks this is hot.
[00:17:51]  It's like it was written by a dude who like was raised, like homeschooled as a kid, like raised in a strict Christian household.
[00:17:58]  Yeah.
[00:17:58]  But like from the beginning was a little bit of a bad boy and found out how to get around the internet blockers.
[00:18:03]  So he had access to like, to like one partially censored porn website, but thinks he's really, he's like really worldly about, he's like, look, guys.
[00:18:12]  And then he's like sitting at a table with like a bunch of halliwah people.
[00:18:15]  All right.
[00:18:16]  So picture this.
[00:18:17]  She walks in the room and her skirt up above her knee.
[00:18:22]  You can see, you can see all the knee folds on this bitch.
[00:18:26]  Dozens of knee folds.
[00:18:28]  It's folding like crazy around that knee.
[00:18:31]  She's sweaty always.
[00:18:35]  She's a shiny, sweaty hot lady.
[00:18:37]  What's sad is they're like, he was not always supposed to be on the project and the original project sounded really great.
[00:18:44]  It was supposed to be.
[00:18:45]  It was supposed to be really, really great.
[00:18:46]  Instead, we got fucking Lily Rose Depp smoking cigarettes and the weekend being unwilling to be horny and bad at being horny.
[00:18:56]  So good.
[00:18:57]  So you get the thing that is relevant about The Weekend's terrible TV show and this terrible book is that they both feature someone who's supposed to be the best at something.
[00:19:07]  And then they try to show it.
[00:19:08]  And it's like, so at the end of The Idol, like this character who's this like sleazy cult leader type, we see him like put on a show to convince these execs to like fund a tour.
[00:19:19]  And it's supposed to be like, wow, this is the hottest, coolest music thing ever.
[00:19:25]  All these guys.
[00:19:26]  And it just is like a bunch of like drug-addled weirdos gyrating around a room that's like dark and the music's kind of off.
[00:19:34]  And it's like, I don't want to see this.
[00:19:36]  Like, I've been to a lot of awkward, drugged up parties where people gyrate weirdly in a dark room.
[00:19:42]  And this is not a good example of that.
[00:19:46]  You're a music executive stadium.
[00:19:48]  The idea you would sit around and watch the whole performance is the most insane thing I've ever seen.
[00:19:56]  It was a hybrid of what Robert just said, which is like a weird party with people on drugs gyroidic and also like a middle schooler's performing arts camp recital.
[00:20:06]  It was, and they were like, let's put this in a stadium.
[00:20:11]  That's the end of the show.
[00:20:13]  Also, the woman is the villain all on hand.
[00:20:19]  The women made sense.
[00:20:20]  So, like, done.
[00:20:22]  And I mean, it's one of those things.
[00:20:23]  You can have all sorts of stupid shit in your plot.
[00:20:25]  But if you're telling us this person is the best at something and then you have them do it on screen and it sucks ass.
[00:20:31]  Right.
[00:20:31]  It's the same thing with Scott.
[00:20:32]  If you're telling us this guy's a super genius and then we actually see him try to be a genius and we're like, oh, you're just a guy who's roughly as smart as Scott Adams.
[00:20:41]  And that's not impressive.
[00:20:43]  In no way is that impressive.
[00:20:45]  He's the smartest man on earth.
[00:20:47]  He is a cartoonist.
[00:20:49]  He writes cartoons about guy in an office.
[00:20:52]  Sits on a hot tub.
[00:20:54]  Bill Bert.

=== Tommy Wizo Luck (03:14) ===

[00:20:58]  Oh, man.
[00:20:58]  That's great.
[00:20:59]  I love this stuff.
[00:21:00]  Fun stuff.
[00:21:01]  This has not been a long advertisement for the idol, but it is time for an ad break.
[00:21:06]  Ah, you know what?
[00:21:08]  The weekend will.
[00:21:10]  No, I don't want to say anything bad about the weekend.
[00:21:13]  I feel bad enough for him.
[00:21:15]  Listen to some ads.
[00:21:16]  Forget that he had a TV show.
[00:21:18]  Forget that rat tail that for some reason.
[00:21:21]  God, he doesn't have a rat tail that he elected to have.
[00:21:26]  I love it.
[00:21:27]  He's like, he's like somehow worse than Tommy Wizo, and I wish that AI could replace him with Tommy Wizo.
[00:21:34]  Yeah.
[00:21:41]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:21:45]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:21:49]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:21:51]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:21:55]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:21:59]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:22:02]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:22:04]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:22:09]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:22:11]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:22:13]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:22:15]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:22:18]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:22:20]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:22:22]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:22:27]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:22:28]  Trust me, babe.
[00:22:29]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:22:39]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:22:45]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:22:49]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:22:55]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:23:04]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:23:10]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:23:13]  He related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:23:16]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:23:18]  That's so funny.
[00:23:19]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:23:27]  Say you love me.
[00:23:30]  You know I.
[00:23:32]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:39]  What's up, everyone?
[00:23:40]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:23:41]  Next guest, you know, from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:23:49]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:23:50]  Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:23:55]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:24:00]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:24:03]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:24:04]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:24:07]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.

=== Military Power Confusion (15:59) ===

[00:24:12]  Yeah.
[00:24:12]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:24:15]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:24:17]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:24:25]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:24:28]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:24:35]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:24:37]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:24:38]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:24:39]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:50]  And we're back.
[00:24:51]  We're back.
[00:24:52]  And we've actually all come around and decided that the weekend having a rat tail is an is a mark of character, right?
[00:24:59]  You know?
[00:25:00]  Yeah.
[00:25:00]  Yeah.
[00:25:00]  It's like when a hot actor agrees to like wear a bundle exactly seven pounds and wear a fake nose so that they can pretend to be the ugly version of themselves before they get hot.
[00:25:10]  Yeah.
[00:25:11]  Yeah.
[00:25:12]  It's really brave.
[00:25:13]  Yeah, courageous.
[00:25:14]  Yeah, to be ugly for, you know, a little bit.
[00:25:18]  Yeah.
[00:25:18]  Damn.
[00:25:19]  Yeah.
[00:25:19]  Good stuff.
[00:25:21]  Anyway, let's start this book, actually.
[00:25:24]  So it begins, chapter one is old man, and there's an old man in the lobby, and he wants to talk to General Cruz, the Christian leader, who is described as a reddish rhino of a man, which is a little more creative than Ben Shapiro's bear of a man.
[00:25:37]  I'll give him that.
[00:25:38]  Yeah, reddish rhino is pretty good.
[00:25:40]  There's a, I don't, is he, it feels like an anti-Irish slur, but I'll.
[00:25:46]  Yeah, it is an anti-Irish slur.
[00:25:48]  That's a low-key Scott Adams trait.
[00:25:51]  Cruz used his eyes the same way he used everything else, like weapons.
[00:25:55]  Lieutenant Ben Waters.
[00:25:58]  Good.
[00:25:59]  No notes.
[00:26:00]  No notes.
[00:26:01]  Scott nailed it.
[00:26:04]  Crushing it.
[00:26:04]  High five yourself, Scott.
[00:26:06]  Lieutenant Ben Waters suddenly found himself in the crosshairs.
[00:26:10]  It wasn't the first time Waters had seen that look, that sort of look from a man who killed people for a living.
[00:26:14]  It would reduce most people to stuttering.
[00:26:16]  Waters viewed it as information, nothing more.
[00:26:19]  Cruz had handpicked Waters from a thousand candidates, not because of his test scores or his combat record, both unremarkable.
[00:26:25]  It certainly wasn't Waters' personality.
[00:26:27]  No, it was his social media posts that had a lot of questionable things to say about Palestinians.
[00:26:34]  There was something else.
[00:26:35]  At the age of eight, Ben Waters used the family shotgun to kill both of his parents.
[00:26:40]  It was a small town, and the neighbors agreed.
[00:26:42]  Ben saved his younger brother from an unimaginable fate.
[00:26:46]  No charges were filed.
[00:26:47]  Since then, the area of Ben Waters' brain that makes a person feel alive was a catastrophe of molecules.
[00:26:53]  He never suffered from shame, offense.
[00:26:56]  Okay, so what's going on here is he picked this guy.
[00:26:59]  This general Cruz is worried he might get too powerful.
[00:27:02]  So he has this guy standing next to him with a gun at all times to kill Cruz if he becomes like crazy with power, which is like potentially a fun idea if you're introducing like your idea of this world where like the leaders always followed by this guy who's supposed to kill him if he goes mad with power.
[00:27:17]  But the introduction of this character, he doesn't explain, Scott doesn't explain why this guy's parents had to die.
[00:27:23]  Just an unimaginable fate.
[00:27:24]  There's no like, you're left to assume it was probably like molestation.
[00:27:29]  It's actually sensitive.
[00:27:30]  I'm sure there's a good reason for it.
[00:27:32]  Every time someone kills their parents, I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty much always on the side of the kid because I'm like, there's a reason.
[00:27:40]  You don't just kill your parents.
[00:27:42]  So, you know.
[00:27:43]  You know, even that would have been better writing if we had just learned that this guy's attitude was like, I'm just always going to side with the kid who kills their parents.
[00:27:50]  I just assume I don't know what went on.
[00:27:53]  I didn't listen.
[00:27:54]  I didn't do any digging.
[00:27:56]  I just figured kid killed his parents.
[00:27:58]  Probably cool.
[00:27:59]  If my kid killed me, like, listen, I don't know why, but I get, I get the need to do this.
[00:28:07]  We all want to kill our parents.
[00:28:08]  We're just not brave enough.
[00:28:09]  Yeah, Freud said a lot about that, which is why I support legalizing cocaine because that'll let more kids kill their parents.
[00:28:18]  I don't know why we're going down this road.
[00:28:21]  So this old man is here and he wants to talk to the general.
[00:28:25]  So Waters tells him the old man started talking to the guards and five minutes later they left.
[00:28:29]  They didn't say why.
[00:28:31]  Call the Marines off the roof.
[00:28:33]  If the old fool won't leave, shoot him.
[00:28:35]  Yes, sir, said Waters, in a way that revealed he knew it wasn't a workable plan because the Scott Adams insert is able to talk the army down from shooting him for invading what is effectively the Pentagon.
[00:28:47]  The whole world are fools, muttered Cruz, while using a ruler to drag a battle platform from the Indian Ocean.
[00:28:53]  Map makers were a frustrated group.
[00:28:55]  The old notion of a country was meaningless.
[00:28:57]  Al-Z dominated the entire Islamic world.
[00:28:59]  Governments existed under his rule in a fashion to keep the water running, to remove garbage, and to run indoctrination centers for children.
[00:29:06]  But the real worst thing.
[00:29:07]  The worst part about Muslims, dude, is open borders.
[00:29:11]  You know, they just want to go to the Middle East and completely erase these borders that we totally made up in 1917.
[00:29:21]  You know, fucking bullshit, dog.
[00:29:23]  It is, it's yet another example of this like thing you get with a specific kind of like, and this is like particular, you get this with like weirdo Christian folks, right-wingers who hate Muslims, but you get it also with like atheists who hate Muslims, especially in this period, where they're like, they have this attitude that like, well, the entire Muslim world is just always angry at America and at secularism.
[00:29:46]  They're just always pissed at it, right?
[00:29:49]  Whereas, I don't know, again, you spend a lot of time in the Middle East.
[00:29:52]  And one of the things you learn is that the people who live there are like the people everywhere else.
[00:29:56]  They are mostly angry at the folks who live right next to them, right?
[00:30:00]  It's just like Texas and Oklahoma.
[00:30:01]  That's everywhere in the world.
[00:30:03]  That's everywhere I've ever been.
[00:30:04]  Yes.
[00:30:05]  Yes.
[00:30:07]  Anyway, not to flatten politics too much, but people are generally pissed at their neighbors because that's who you rub up against.
[00:30:16]  But in this, all of the Muslims, presumably Arabs and Persians and Kurds, everybody all together, you know, anyone who's just kind of in that region of the world is all a Muslim and they're all backing the guy who killed all of the Jews.
[00:30:31]  Yep.
[00:30:32]  That's good.
[00:30:34]  Yeah.
[00:30:34]  So there's no countries anymore.
[00:30:36]  And in the Christian part of the world, there was still a pretense that civilian governments ruled their respective countries.
[00:30:41]  In reality, Cruz had the power to redraw boundaries and remove so-called leaders with a word.
[00:30:46]  He didn't need military power to get his way, although it was available if it suited him.
[00:30:50]  Cruz was widely believed to be the only person who could stop the terror of Alzheim No one felt it was a good idea to distract him.
[00:30:57]  The atheists in the smaller religions were lying low, supporting the Christian power base and enjoying safety and numbers.
[00:31:03]  The most enthusiastic supporters of the Christians were the Jews who had escaped Israel after all.
[00:31:09]  So that's good.
[00:31:10]  Thank you.
[00:31:11]  No, I'm glad he wrote me in there.
[00:31:13]  Yeah, no, you guys got stuck in there.
[00:31:16]  You got to mention.
[00:31:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:18]  Thank you.
[00:31:18]  Thank you for, you know, I like that Scott Adams.
[00:31:22]  And he's like, by the way, in this future, the Jews finally show some respect.
[00:31:27]  They finally show some gratefulness for Christian America for helping you with this thing I invented.
[00:31:35]  I am now picturing if Scott had gotten the made-for-TV movie version of this while the narration goes on.
[00:31:41]  It just like cuts to a guy in like a bagel shop, like saluting with a bagel at the camera.
[00:31:50]  Just walks into a bagel shop, standing ovation by all the Hasidic Jews in there.
[00:31:57]  Yeah.
[00:31:57]  Turns to the camera and he goes, You're welcome, the Jews, and then walks away without paying for his bagel.
[00:32:04]  Now, look, when people, when authors whose thing is not writing about military stuff write about fantasy future military stuff, it's usually bad, which is fine.
[00:32:17]  But, you know, I wouldn't normally criticize someone for this, but I am going to criticize Scott Adams because he's, I hate him.
[00:32:23]  So here's his description of the weapon system that the Christians have developed in order to fight what appears to just kind of be a constant low-level suicide bombing using drones campaign, which is what the Muslims.
[00:32:36]  So that your enemy is every couple of days, they kill like three people with a drone bomb, right?
[00:32:42]  Like that's the, that's the, the opposing side, right?
[00:32:45]  So here's what they've built to counteract that.
[00:32:48]  Battle platforms were a recent addition to Cruz's arsenal.
[00:32:51]  They were the size of cities floating on the ocean, vastly more powerful than the aircraft carriers they replaced.
[00:32:57]  The platforms could be assembled in days, ringed by destroyers and monitored by an umbrella of satellites.
[00:33:02]  Nothing could penetrate their perimeters thanks to NATO's technical breakthrough of forced particle beams that could slice through incoming metal like a hot poker on a cobweb.
[00:33:10]  The rest of the world, which was mostly Alzheim's territories and a sprinkling of non-aligned powers, used conventional missiles that were no match for the particle beam defense grid.
[00:33:19]  Now, here's the thing.
[00:33:21]  Here's the thing.
[00:33:21]  A couple of things.
[00:33:22]  For one thing, maybe it is realistic that this is fundamentally a weapon system that would be no use in the war that they're fighting.
[00:33:28]  That's not what Scott, he wants us to think this is cool, but like it is like useless for fighting like a low-level terror campaign that's just a bunch of mild terrorist attacks, right?
[00:33:38]  For a lot of, I mean, for one thing, like, he's like, they're even more powerful than aircraft carriers.
[00:33:43]  Well, yeah, but the enemy just has like some drones with grenades.
[00:33:47]  Like aircraft carriers are fine for that, you know?
[00:33:49]  Like, you don't need, but also, well, why, why are you, how is this supposed to help?
[00:33:55]  Like, how is how is controlling the ocean supposed to help when your enemy is not opposing you in a direct military manner?
[00:34:01]  Why is this useful?
[00:34:02]  Yeah, I am, I am generally confused also as to like the amount of, listen, the amount of people it sounds like that Alzheim is killing is that he's doing an occasional terrorist attack every couple of days, killing a couple people.
[00:34:20]  Yeah.
[00:34:20]  And the entire world is like, oh man, we got to fucking wipe these fools off the map because literally a billion people have a murder rate of three per day.
[00:34:34]  Yeah.
[00:34:34]  That's pretty good.
[00:34:35]  I'm just honestly, man, that's better than we're doing right now.
[00:34:39]  That's not bad.
[00:34:40]  Americans kill a lot more Americans than these guys.
[00:34:44]  It's a little bit more.
[00:34:46]  I do want to know, like, yeah, we, we shoot, I don't know, like 35,000, something like that of us get shot to death each year in this country, at least.
[00:34:52]  Like, are they, are they breaking those numbers?
[00:34:55]  Is Alzhe's campaign even doing that many Americans?
[00:34:58]  Yeah.
[00:35:00]  Anyway, fascinating question.
[00:35:02]  So Cruz has accepted that he's going to have to kill all 2 billion Muslims to win this war.
[00:35:07]  I mean, you know, you got to do what you got to do.
[00:35:10]  I will give it to Scott.
[00:35:11]  That's fine.
[00:35:11]  Like, that's a bad thing to do.
[00:35:13]  But in terms of characterizing this dude as a bad guy, which he is.
[00:35:16]  This guy's not the hero.
[00:35:17]  I'll give Scott that.
[00:35:18]  That's fine.
[00:35:20]  The tall wooden doors of Cruz's war room opened to a stream of military advisors, admirals and generals.
[00:35:26]  There were 25 of them, one from each of the dominant NATO countries.
[00:35:29]  So what about Turkey?
[00:35:30]  The Muslim majority got Turkey.
[00:35:31]  Don't worry about Turkey.
[00:35:33]  Stop mentioning Turkey.
[00:35:36]  Shut the fuck up.
[00:35:37]  He just doesn't know.
[00:35:39]  They had no decision-making power.
[00:35:41]  Cruz had the monopoly on that, but they were useful in maintaining the illusion that NATO enjoyed some sort of democratic input.
[00:35:47]  It was thin fiction, the sort of war that a wartime population was happy to accept.
[00:35:52]  The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States had become overdressed advisors, symbolic and useless.
[00:35:57]  The NATO generals were more loyal to Cruz than their own civilian governments in times of extreme danger.
[00:36:03]  And again, they're trying to be like everyone's disloyal to Cruz because he's the only guy who can beat this man.
[00:36:08]  But like, we're not, it's not ever established what he did to earn that.
[00:36:11]  Like, there's a vague mention of battlefield victories.
[00:36:14]  But all he talks about the Muslims doing is carrying out terrorist attacks, which where are the battlefield victories?
[00:36:22]  What's the fighting that this guy's so hard about popular for doing?
[00:36:25]  He's the best of the best.
[00:36:27]  You know, when he was doing battles, doesn't matter where, you know, he was best at it.
[00:36:34]  It's okay.
[00:36:36]  You could establish this early on by being like when he was a captain in the field, you know, or he was on like an embassy duty.
[00:36:43]  He stops a terrorist attack, right?
[00:36:45]  And like, yeah, something, but like, no, we don't, we don't get that.
[00:36:49]  Scott has this like, it's okay, whatever.
[00:36:52]  Cruz gets angry that they're not murdering this old man who has somehow gotten through his defenses and demanding to talk.
[00:36:57]  So he grabs an M16.
[00:37:00]  He flips off the safety.
[00:37:02]  So at least Scott knows that guns have safeties.
[00:37:05]  I guess we're good there.
[00:37:06]  You did a little research for this, all right?
[00:37:08]  Yeah, little bastard.
[00:37:11]  He's up to something, Cruz muttered, watching the floor indicators.
[00:37:14]  Is he just sitting in a waiting room right now?
[00:37:16]  Yeah, he's in his big meeting room with all of his generals.
[00:37:19]  It's one of those like Black Sabbath moments.
[00:37:21]  They're all gathered in their masses, you know?
[00:37:23]  Yeah.
[00:37:23]  And this old man in the waiting room just kind of going, I'm just waiting to see the general.
[00:37:28]  He's breaking his way through all of the layers of security that NATO has put up by just like being a smart old man and talking his way through.
[00:37:38]  We don't need to hear or see any of this, obviously.
[00:37:41]  The point is, he's getting through every single defense of the entire Christian world army.
[00:37:46]  Okay.
[00:37:46]  Yeah.
[00:37:47]  This is just this guy being frustrated that nobody is able to stop this old man by murdering him.
[00:37:53]  Or just like holding him.
[00:37:56]  You know, like what cops would actually do if like a crazy old man was at a military base.
[00:38:01]  Probably just like tase him, you know, put his hands behind his back.
[00:38:05]  But he's really, he's really smart, I assume.
[00:38:07]  Yeah, this doesn't make much sense either.
[00:38:10]  So he decides he's going to flee because someone in the room that he's just been in is leaking war plans.
[00:38:19]  We're not told why.
[00:38:21]  The general is going to flee?
[00:38:22]  Yeah, the general's going to leave.
[00:38:24]  Yeah, he's going to bounce.
[00:38:26]  Someone on my staff, someone in that room, is leaking war plans.
[00:38:29]  We're going to put some distance between that old man and me because the smell's wrong.
[00:38:32]  Once command and control is secured, I'll deal with the leak and the old man.
[00:38:36]  Get the car.
[00:38:37]  And then we're informed that he has a portable device that lets him fire a missile at wherever he wants to, launched from a site in South Dakota that fewer than a dozen people on earth knew about.
[00:38:49]  Cool.
[00:38:50]  So there we go.
[00:38:51]  I guess that's, yeah, he's going to murder all these guys in order to secure absolute power, even though he already has absolute power.
[00:38:57]  I've got an app that'll blow up any McDonald's in a thousand mile radius.
[00:39:01]  Cool.
[00:39:03]  Yeah.
[00:39:04]  Why are we needed?
[00:39:06]  Yeah, it's good stuff.
[00:39:08]  How do you plan to explain it to the world?
[00:39:10]  Waters, his assistant who murdered his parrots, asks.
[00:39:14]  I won't have to explain anything.
[00:39:16]  The world will assume it was an attack from one of Alzheim's fanatics.
[00:39:19]  Oh, hundreds of buildings had blown up in the past two years alone.
[00:39:24]  The military had stopped analyzing the remains of each explosion long ago, assuming correctly that they were all the work of Alz.
[00:39:32]  No one would request an inquiry about this blast because Alcy would be the universally presumed perpetrator.
[00:39:39]  Really tight ship they're running over in NATO.
[00:39:42]  Whenever a building blows up, we assume it's this guy.
[00:39:45]  We don't do anything about it, you know?
[00:39:48]  Yeah, that's cool.
[00:39:50]  Yeah.
[00:39:51]  Let's try the next chapter here.
[00:39:52]  Horatio Cruz takes over NATO.
[00:39:54]  Okay, interrogation.
[00:39:56]  So they've captured the Avatar.
[00:39:58]  And we finally get a description of this old man who's been slowly talking his way through the NATO defenses.
[00:40:04]  The avatar was 62 years old, but could have been mistaken for 90, gaunt, clad in a threadbare delivery man's outfit from an earlier time.

=== Captured The Avatar (02:50) ===

[00:40:11]  His silver gray hair was short and untamed.
[00:40:14]  Look at a picture of Scott Adams, and I think we'll see why that's important.
[00:40:18]  A red plaid blanket covered his shoulders, clutched tight in front.
[00:40:21]  30 years ago, as a package delivery man, he met the prior avatar, from whom he learned the secrets that brought him to the fifth level of awareness.
[00:40:29]  But it took a terrible toll on his water.
[00:40:31]  He learned the way.
[00:40:34]  Humans are not genetically equipped to handle this kind of knowledge, and he was no exception.
[00:40:38]  The awareness aged him prematurely.
[00:40:40]  He understood too much about reality.
[00:40:42]  And with that knowledge came an overwhelming responsibility and an incalculable stress that spread to every cell of his body.
[00:40:48]  That's why Scott needs the Dilbert swimming pool.
[00:40:50]  You know, it's the only way to know too much.
[00:40:53]  He knows that.
[00:40:53]  Reduce his incalculable shelf.
[00:40:55]  He's got to do, you know, he's got to do the backstroke in order to untense his shoulders from, you know, knowing who runs things.
[00:41:04]  You know what I mean?
[00:41:05]  He's rich.
[00:41:07]  He looks poor, but the avatar's got a fuckload of money.
[00:41:10]  He has his own Victorian home in San Francisco, so that's pretty nice.
[00:41:14]  He got most of his money from the previous avatar, but he also invests money because he's so good at knowing patterns.
[00:41:22]  Scott is really giving us a lot about himself here.
[00:41:24]  Yes, no, he's describing himself.
[00:41:26]  I think you're going to have to explain to me what you mean by avatar here.
[00:41:30]  I mean, like, this is...
[00:41:33]  What is what are we talking about here?
[00:41:36]  Well, the avatar is this line of the smartest people in the world who pass on their knowledge about reality, which is mostly weird little brain tricks that Scott Adams picked up that he that he like affirmations and shit.
[00:41:51]  Right, right.
[00:41:52]  Okay.
[00:41:52]  It's all the shit from Scott Adams' terrible business.
[00:41:55]  It's a diplomatic James Cameron thing.
[00:41:57]  No, I figured not that.
[00:41:59]  It's automatic about Big Jim.
[00:42:01]  Big Jimmy.
[00:42:03]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:42:04]  So what matters is Scott Adams in describing the Avatar is describing himself.
[00:42:13]  And it's beautiful.
[00:42:14]  He was painfully lonely.
[00:42:16]  The last Avatar hadn't advised him to avoid personal relationships.
[00:42:20]  It was just obvious that he had to.
[00:42:23]  No one could understand the pressures he endured.
[00:42:26]  He could no longer talk to normal people without leaving them changed in some way.
[00:42:31]  It was so very lonely.
[00:42:34]  He's just so smart.
[00:42:37]  He was the most divorced, smartest divorced man in the world.
[00:42:42]  The only thing larger than the NATO battle platforms was the amount of divorced in this one man's art.
[00:42:50]  You know who else is divorced?
[00:42:52]  Matt.
[00:42:54]  The sponsors of this podcast.
[00:42:56]  Every single one of them was left by their wives for good reason.
[00:43:00]  And very much for good reason.

=== Divorced Mastermind (14:59) ===

[00:43:02]  We're really proud of their.
[00:43:04]  I don't know why I'm continuing to go on about this.
[00:43:06]  Anyway, yeah.
[00:43:08]  Why don't you divorce us and listen to these ads?
[00:43:19]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:43:23]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:43:26]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:43:29]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:43:32]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:43:36]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:43:40]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:43:42]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:43:47]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:43:49]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:43:50]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:43:53]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:43:56]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:43:57]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:44:00]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:44:04]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:44:06]  Trust me, babe.
[00:44:07]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:44:16]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:44:22]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:44:27]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:44:32]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:44:42]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:44:47]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:44:50]  He related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:44:53]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:44:55]  That's so funny.
[00:44:56]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:45:05]  Say you love me.
[00:45:08]  You know I.
[00:45:09]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:45:17]  What's up, everyone?
[00:45:18]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:45:19]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:45:26]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:45:30]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:45:33]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:45:38]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:45:40]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:45:42]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:45:45]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:45:49]  Yeah.
[00:45:50]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:53]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:54]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:46:03]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:46:05]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:46:11]  Just hang in there.
[00:46:12]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:46:14]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:46:15]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:46:17]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:46:28]  We're back!
[00:46:29]  And we're, you know, divorced as hell.
[00:46:33]  Super divorced.
[00:46:34]  That's what Scott was trying to avoid by hiding as the avatar.
[00:46:39]  And now his divorced energy has been passed on to us.
[00:46:43]  I have a race car bed.
[00:46:45]  Matt, you're really into pickleball.
[00:46:49]  Yeah, it's just been a calamity over here.
[00:46:51]  That's right.
[00:46:51]  I like to take over various tennis courts and say, hey, fuck you.
[00:46:54]  I'm divorced.
[00:46:56]  And then play pickleball.
[00:46:57]  Sophie's dressing like one of those guys from a 90s movie who like moves in with the main character who's super divorced's ex and is like, you know, I don't know.
[00:47:09]  I'm thinking actually of the movie Hot Rod here.
[00:47:11]  Whatever.
[00:47:11]  That's a great.
[00:47:12]  Yeah, great movie.
[00:47:13]  Anyway, well off topic.
[00:47:16]  Back to the avatar.
[00:47:17]  No ordinary person could understand what it was like to be an avatar.
[00:47:21]  Even when he did talk to people, when it was absolutely necessary, he was still utterly alone.
[00:47:25]  He felt as though he was one short gasp from insanity.
[00:47:29]  Most of the time, he felt certain that he had a special role to play, that he was chosen, that he alone could save the world from upcoming destruction.
[00:47:36]  Other times he felt he must surely be mad because only insane people think like that.
[00:47:40]  And they, as did he, have no capacity to know which category they really belong to.
[00:47:47]  That's so smart.
[00:47:48]  That's so smart.
[00:47:49]  How'd you think of that?
[00:47:52]  You know, to the guy who's convinced he's the smartest person in the world writing a story about the smartest person in the world.
[00:47:59]  This is my favorite genre of novel.
[00:48:02]  And you get a lot of, I think when people like make fun of Scott, a lot of like, wow, this guy really should have gone to therapy.
[00:48:07]  I don't think that's the answer for Scott.
[00:48:09]  I think what Scott needed was like a normal, a full-time job that didn't pay him $700 million where like he had to, he had to like strive for something with a group of other people and like be confronted sometimes with the limits of his own capability and his shortcomings and work with other people to seal those up.
[00:48:30]  That really would have been good for Scott.
[00:48:32]  In a just timeline, in a just society, he would have been a middle manager who's only making a handful of people's life hell.
[00:48:41]  Yeah.
[00:48:42]  As opposed to what he became.
[00:48:44]  I think like, honestly, if you make Scott work in like, I don't know, like a road work crew, right?
[00:48:49]  Where he's getting out there every day.
[00:48:51]  He's doing something hard, but it's also something every day you can see like, oh, we finished paving this chunk of road.
[00:48:56]  And like, that's some progress.
[00:48:57]  People are going to use this, right?
[00:48:59]  And you're out with other people.
[00:49:00]  They're going to call you on your bullshit when you say insane things.
[00:49:04]  Yeah.
[00:49:04]  Like, you know, he would have, he would, he wouldn't have a pool shaped like Dobert's head, but I think in his soul, he'd be a happier man.
[00:49:12]  No, he would have just a bunch of affirmations on his wall that just says, you know, work will set you free.
[00:49:20]  I think work would have set Scott free.
[00:49:21]  That's all I'm saying.
[00:49:23]  Occasionally, a broken face.
[00:49:24]  Sometimes work sets you free.
[00:49:26]  Look, I don't know why we're going there.
[00:49:30]  Throw the baby out with the bathwater sometimes.
[00:49:33]  Yeah, right.
[00:49:33]  Yeah.
[00:49:34]  Okay.
[00:49:35]  So the avatar's got to look for, among other things.
[00:49:38]  And by the way, he's supposed to be in an interrogation room here.
[00:49:41]  That hasn't been introduced.
[00:49:42]  We're just learning about the avatar again here.
[00:49:45]  So he's looking for his replacement because he's going to die.
[00:49:49]  He's old.
[00:49:51]  He doesn't know whether or not it's fair for him to pass it down to somebody.
[00:49:55]  And then, yeah, finally we get actually back to the story.
[00:49:58]  I'm sorry, really, I am, said the avatar.
[00:50:01]  Cuffed the wall in I-Wing.
[00:50:02]  For what?
[00:50:03]  Getting caught?
[00:50:04]  Growled the thick-necked interrogator with an oversized forehead and stubby fingers as he moved his card full of pain tools nearer his subject.
[00:50:12]  I'm sorry for what I have to do.
[00:50:14]  This will end quickly if you tell me everything, said the interrogator.
[00:50:18]  That's why I'm here.
[00:50:19]  Where do you think you got the pain tools?
[00:50:21]  Yeah.
[00:50:22]  I do kind of want to know more about these pain drives, these pain tools.
[00:50:25]  I want to know what they are, you know?
[00:50:27]  Yeah.
[00:50:28]  Seem like fun.
[00:50:29]  He's like, that's why I'm here to tell you everything, which, you know, is what the avatar is about to do to get out of this interrogation thing.
[00:50:36]  Yeah.
[00:50:36]  He's going to use smarts.
[00:50:38]  Yeah, he's going to use his smarts.
[00:50:39]  Before I turn your guts into jam, how about you tell me, this is the interrogator.
[00:50:44]  How about you tell me everything I need to know?
[00:50:45]  It's a little courtesy I like to extend to my guests.
[00:50:47]  Nobody has ever taken me up on the offer, but I feel it's only fair to put it out there.
[00:50:51]  Jesus, this interrogator is like, this is so much worse than torturing a man.
[00:50:56]  Let's say you figure out what questions I need to ask and then you just answer them.
[00:50:59]  If you make me ask the obvious questions over and over, I'm going to get tired.
[00:51:02]  And that makes me cranky.
[00:51:04]  You don't want that.
[00:51:05]  Very well, replied the avatar.
[00:51:06]  And again, I'm truly, okay, so he's doing this thing where like the torture is like, you're going to tell me everything or I'm going to kill you.
[00:51:12]  And the avatar clearly is going to like do some brain jujitsu that destroys this man.
[00:51:18]  But it just keeps going on for several pages of him being like, all right, I'm about to do my brain jujitsu.
[00:51:23]  I want to do it.
[00:51:24]  I'm gonna do it.
[00:51:25]  I'm gonna do so much smart that you're gonna be like, wow.
[00:51:29]  Yeah.
[00:51:30]  So a page and a half goes by.
[00:51:32]  Tell me something brilliant, old man, mocked the interrogator.
[00:51:35]  Convince me you're the smartest man in the world and I'll let you go.
[00:51:39]  I don't think the smartest man in the world would believe that you're sincere.
[00:51:42]  The interrogator flashed an executioner's grin and turned up the voltage.
[00:51:46]  He moved the electric paddles towards the old man's chest.
[00:51:49]  This is just to get your attention.
[00:51:50]  Do me a favor and don't die right away.
[00:51:53]  Who is Patrick? asked the avatar.
[00:51:55]  The interrogator froze for a moment, then quick-boiled.
[00:51:58]  How do you know my brother?
[00:51:59]  What bullshit is this?
[00:52:00]  What else do you know about me?
[00:52:01]  The old man looked into the eyes of his interrogator and took a deep breath.
[00:52:05]  I know that you were raised Catholic, but as an adult, you pick and choose the parts you want to believe.
[00:52:09]  You think it's okay to hurt people as long as it's in the interest of the greater good.
[00:52:13]  You convinced yourself that you'd still go to heaven so long as you accept Jesus before you die.
[00:52:17]  You were treated unkindly as a child, especially by the older boys and by the better athletes.
[00:52:22]  You don't sleep much because every time you close your eyes, you see your victims and you hear their voices just before you drift off to sleep and it pulls you back into restlessness.
[00:52:30]  Sometimes you try to stop the voices by drinking.
[00:52:32]  The drinking works to an extent, but it has ruined your relationships.
[00:52:35]  The interrogator dropped the paddles and stepped away from the old man.
[00:52:39]  What shoots himself in the head?
[00:52:41]  Kills himself.
[00:52:43]  So he just, and now the avatar explains that he did a cold read, which, like, that's not even a good read.
[00:52:50]  That's whatever.
[00:52:51]  Sorry, that's also not something that's smart.
[00:52:53]  That's all, that's literally just something con man blue.
[00:52:57]  I have to assume that the reason why he guessed Patrick, which this dude reacted strongly to, is because he's Catholic and every Catholic man has a Patrick in their life.
[00:53:07]  Of course.
[00:53:07]  Yeah.
[00:53:09]  Very simple.
[00:53:10]  Very simple.
[00:53:11]  Also, like, half of the Catholics are, I don't know, like, living in Latin America.
[00:53:15]  Like, I don't know how many Patrick Patricio, maybe.
[00:53:19]  I love the idea of it was like a, it was, you know, Officer Weinstein, and he just looks at him and he goes, like, tell me about Rachel.
[00:53:26]  It's like, Ray, how do you know it?
[00:53:28]  These same people in my extended family.
[00:53:31]  How did you know her name?
[00:53:32]  How did you know Rachel?
[00:53:36]  Of course.
[00:53:37]  Oh, it's cool.
[00:53:38]  So here's Scott.
[00:53:38]  I also love that he's like basically, you know, he's like, he's kind of modeling it after every smart guy character you've seen in fucking any family.
[00:53:48]  I'll do a fucking cold reading, right?
[00:53:50]  Yes.
[00:53:50]  Yeah, it's, it's, it's remarkable.
[00:53:53]  As opposed to, I think, a fun version of this character, when he's every time he's in like a situation and he's got to boil someone's brain, it's just a Ponzi scheme.
[00:54:02]  He just gets him to invest in a Ponzi scheme.
[00:54:04]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:54:05]  He just starts explaining crypto.
[00:54:07]  Five minutes later, he gives him 40,000.
[00:54:09]  You're like chained up in a fucking dungeon.
[00:54:13]  What are you getting as a return on your 401k right now?
[00:54:16]  What if I were to tell you I could double your money in under six months?
[00:54:20]  And all I'm going to need is a check for 20 grand.
[00:54:24]  And a picture of your feet for feetpicks.com.
[00:54:29]  Here's Scott explaining cold reading.
[00:54:32]  For centuries, phony psychics have used a version of the cold read to dupe gullible customers.
[00:54:37]  It's nothing but good observations combined with educated guesses and generalities, like that a Catholic man has a Patrick in there.
[00:54:44]  Exactly.
[00:54:44]  You know, seems like so much more.
[00:54:47]  Yeah.
[00:54:48]  Yeah.
[00:54:49]  But it seems like so much more to the person hearing it.
[00:54:51]  Some fake psychics were unusually skilled at noticing clues from a person's appearance or mannerisms and making guesses that sounded uncannily accurate.
[00:54:59]  The avatar was the best of the best, able to recognize patterns so subtle that even the most skilled phony psychic would have found it amazing.
[00:55:07]  Today's situation was especially easy.
[00:55:10]  The interrogator was clearly Irish.
[00:55:12]  Someone in his family was probably named Patrick.
[00:55:16]  By the way, he's Irish because earlier the avatar notices that he has a drinker's nose.
[00:55:21]  That's literally how it's so good.
[00:55:23]  I love this.
[00:55:24]  I love this.
[00:55:26]  And like, listen, I knew that the Dilbert guy was like racist.
[00:55:30]  He's outwardly racist, but I like that he's like old-timey racist.
[00:55:34]  I do, you know what?
[00:55:35]  You know what's progressive about this is that we start with the idea that all Muslims everywhere secretly just want to wipe out the Jews, which is very racist.
[00:55:45]  But then we move on to the idea that like every drunk Irishman loves a Patrick.
[00:55:51]  That's facts.
[00:55:52]  You can't get through that.
[00:55:54]  Yeah, no, that's fucking ironclad fact right there, dude.
[00:55:58]  Seductive.
[00:55:58]  That destroys this man, right?
[00:56:00]  That's how the avatar gets out, right?
[00:56:03]  We don't need to continue on here.
[00:56:05]  He's ruined every day.
[00:56:08]  You see your dog and you want to get you in a fight, right?
[00:56:11]  Every day you're masturbating.
[00:56:13]  Jesus Christ.
[00:56:15]  How did you know this?
[00:56:16]  How could you possibly have known that every time I masturbate, I cry?
[00:56:24]  Good.
[00:56:25]  That's good stuff.
[00:56:26]  We're going to move along a little bit because I want to get to kind of the crux of this book.
[00:56:29]  Because the basic idea here is that the avatar is working to stop a cataclysmic, apocalyptic, you know, nuclear exchange type deal between the Christians and the Muslims.
[00:56:40]  And the best way to do that is to get everyone to stop believing in religion at once.
[00:56:44]  Because obviously, this is another, like, you know, Scott has this interest, this fun mix of like Christian conservative stuff, but he's not a Christian.
[00:56:52]  He's like coming out of the internet atheist community.
[00:56:55]  So he has this fundamental belief that like the cause of all of the problems is that all of these people believe these irrational religions, right?
[00:57:01]  Which is, by the way, mostly bullshit.
[00:57:05]  Like the cause of it is that even when you look at like Christians here who are pushing these bullshit laws, they're not, they're not largely doing it because like they're irrational Christians.
[00:57:14]  They're doing it because like certain types of people make them fundamentally uncomfortable because they're racists and they would be racist about something if Christianity wasn't the justification.
[00:57:24]  100%.
[00:57:25]  In fact, like that's what I noticed about the kind of evolution of the internet atheists because I remember back when I used to be like, I'm a proud atheist or whatever.
[00:57:34]  And it was completely in reaction to like, you know, conservative Christians and everything else.
[00:57:41]  And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, this seems like a very interesting front for people to just say some anti-Muslim shit.
[00:57:51]  Yeah.
[00:57:51]  Like it became just a way to be Islamophobic without saying you're Islamophobe.
[00:57:58]  I hate all religion, but I only talk about Islam.

=== Secret Master Persuader (02:01) ===

[00:58:01]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:58:02]  It's that same, like that old stand-up thing where it's like, I'm racist against everybody.
[00:58:06]  It's like, yeah, but there's only two slurs you use, man.
[00:58:10]  Although, to be fair for Scott, as the trailblazer, he is, he really, that's the first, that's the first, like, that's like, that's like a degree of racism against the Irish that like the British in the 1970s would have been like, well, this is a little bit inappropriate.
[00:58:27]  Sorry, Cornelius.
[00:58:28]  I apologize.
[00:58:29]  I promise never to do an English accent again.
[00:58:32]  And here I am.
[00:58:32]  Oh, here I flicked it up on you.
[00:58:34]  That's what it sounds like.
[00:58:36]  So Scott, obviously, the only thing that can resolve this conflict between, because it's a conflict between these two irrational religions, as opposed to like a conflict between there's like bombings and like people's families have been killed and they're pissed about that.
[00:58:50]  Anyway, it's an irrational religious conflict.
[00:58:53]  Right, right, right.
[00:58:54]  It has nothing to do with colonialism or imperialism.
[00:58:57]  That's just words that people use to mask the fact that it's about religion.
[00:59:01]  So if he can just get everyone to stop being religious all at once, you know.
[00:59:06]  And Scott has all these weird ideas about like persuaders and influencers.
[00:59:12]  And to be for one thing that I think Scott is a little bit ahead of the curve on, he has been really obsessed with the idea of like influencers and connectors and shit since the early 2000s.
[00:59:23]  He's got a few years on most folks on this.
[00:59:25]  So, his like obsession with Trump as a master persuader, because he believes Trump is like a messianic figure who's so good at persuading.
[00:59:32]  He's going to like usher in a new age of human evolution by teaching us all persuasion tricks.
[00:59:37]  That's why Scott wrote his terrible book, Win Bigley.
[00:59:41]  So, his attitude here, the avatar is kind of like moving through the world and the major characters of this conflict, looking for like the influencer, this one person who, because of their network of social ties, right, could get an idea out in a way that will cascade sort of algorithmically and then convince the whole world overnight to stop being religious.

=== Trump Messianic Obsession (02:00) ===

[01:00:03]  That's that's the plot of this book, right?
[01:00:05]  Yeah, and he fights, he's gonna find this person at this cafe.
[01:00:09]  So, we're gonna get a-they're gonna start a YouTube channel, and that'll do it.
[01:00:13]  That is kind of why he does his YouTube, is he secretly thinks he's he's the master persuader, and if he can just like tell the right joke to people, it'll change the world.
[01:00:22]  Yeah, if they would just stop throttling me in the algorithm, everyone would be smart like me.
[01:00:28]  Yeah, that's that's why he's gotta, he's gotta really saddle up to Elon Musk finally, finally.
[01:00:34]  So, the avatar rolls up in front of this cafe.
[01:00:38]  Uh, he had never felt a pattern like this as the hydro cap, that's a hydro-powered cab, pulled away.
[01:00:44]  The avatar stood on the sidewalk trying to get a lock on the pattern, but he had failed.
[01:00:48]  His stomach growled, and the avatar smiled, realizing his hunger must have been clogging his intuition.
[01:00:53]  But now the pattern was gone, softening to a vibration.
[01:00:56]  Patterns did that sometimes, rising and falling for no apparent reason.
[01:01:00]  The avatar walked towards a restaurant next to the building, Stacy's Cafe.
[01:01:04]  It was the oldest business on the block, looking out of a place nestled in the modern architecture of the San Francisco metropolitan area.
[01:01:11]  The avatar entered and was greeted by a bartender from behind a large oval bar.
[01:01:15]  Hi, can I help you?
[01:01:16]  One for lunch.
[01:01:17]  We're closed behind three, between three and five.
[01:01:19]  Can you come back at five?
[01:01:20]  A pink-haired woman in her 60s on the other side of the room interrupted the avatar's response.
[01:01:25]  She was waving a half-eaten plate of food at the chef and getting agitated.
[01:01:28]  Look at this presentation.
[01:01:30]  This is crap.
[01:01:30]  My name is on this business, and you want to serve crap.
[01:01:33]  If people want crap, they can make it at home.
[01:01:35]  The chef's eyes were locked in a death stare with the pink-haired woman as she dramatically slapped the dish on the table.
[01:01:40]  I want you to care about this place as much as I do.
[01:01:42]  If you don't, I can replace your ass tomorrow.
[01:01:44]  The pink-haired woman harumped and turned away, then turned back with an afterthought.
[01:01:48]  That reminds me, she said in a softer voice that seemed as though she was channeling an entirely different person.
[01:01:53]  Have you written down all your recipes so I can fire you at any time I want?
[01:01:57]  Almost.
[01:01:57]  I have a few more to do, said the chef.
[01:01:59]  Very good.
[01:02:00]  Give me a hug.
[01:02:02]  What the fuck?

=== Prime Influencer Virus (16:02) ===

[01:02:03]  Is this the bear?
[01:02:05]  Yeah, it's kind of the bear.
[01:02:06]  Yeah, I don't know.
[01:02:07]  I think it's just that, like, she's this woman who's in this.
[01:02:12]  This is supposed to be charming, that she like moves between.
[01:02:15]  Give me the hang and attack.
[01:02:16]  Oh, this is like a fun, sassy thing.
[01:02:18]  Yeah, she's supposed to be fun and sassy.
[01:02:21]  So she decides to order for him because everyone should eat, she believes, the food that she likes, which is a vegetable crouté.
[01:02:31]  So Stacy made hand signals to the bartender, who was still wiping water spots off the bar glasses.
[01:02:36]  He nodded and started to pour a Chardonnay.
[01:02:37]  Stacy pulled out a chair and sat down across from the avatar.
[01:02:40]  I think I have a headache or a tumor or something.
[01:02:42]  I gained two pounds this week and my hair is falling out in clumps.
[01:02:45]  And I have gas.
[01:02:46]  Don't say I didn't warn you.
[01:02:47]  Thank you for the warning.
[01:02:48]  I don't know how I do this job every day.
[01:02:50]  I'm going to quit.
[01:02:51]  I swear I am.
[01:02:52]  Except it wouldn't work because I own the place.
[01:02:53]  I'd fire myself if I could, but I don't want to pay the unemployment benefits to myself.
[01:02:58]  Hey, God, this is just such a great character.
[01:03:01]  He is fun.
[01:03:03]  Yeah, we get along and she and the avatar start talking about modern politics, right?
[01:03:08]  To be clear, these guys, they're both in their mid-60s, right?
[01:03:13]  Yes, yes.
[01:03:14]  They're both old people and they're both kind of Scott Adams.
[01:03:17]  Okay.
[01:03:18]  That's important here.
[01:03:20]  The avatar tells her that he's trying to figure out how to stop a war.
[01:03:23]  And she's like, How can a guy like you stop a war?
[01:03:25]  You couldn't even feed yourself until I decided to have pity on your ass.
[01:03:28]  And you dress like a hobo on crack.
[01:03:30]  What's up with that?
[01:03:31]  Would it be okay if I answered the first question?
[01:03:33]  Stacey laughed.
[01:03:34]  Okay, if you do a good job on that, I'll let the other ones slide.
[01:03:37]  Go.
[01:03:37]  Think of humanity as a giant software program.
[01:03:40]  Our bodies are the hardware and our ideas are the software.
[01:03:43]  Sometimes the software gets a virus.
[01:03:46]  What are you talking about?
[01:03:47]  Religious misinterpretation.
[01:03:48]  What do you possibly mean?
[01:03:50]  I have never heard this concept before.
[01:03:52]  You must be the smartest man in the world.
[01:03:55]  Religions are a virus in our computer programming, right?
[01:04:01]  Yeah.
[01:04:02]  I guess this is sort of a very boomer attitude towards the internet where it's just like, well, the computer's always got a virus on it, right?
[01:04:08]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:10]  Click the links that infect your Alta Vista.
[01:04:14]  My McAfee software every day tells me about new virus.
[01:04:19]  I keep buying more of it.
[01:04:20]  More viruses keep coming.
[01:04:22]  I buy a new McAfee every day.
[01:04:24]  I buy three new McAfees and now one virus.
[01:04:30]  I got a Muslim virus.
[01:04:32]  I got Jew virus.
[01:04:34]  I got Irish virus.
[01:04:36]  It is also, yeah, he is low-key being like, yes, all like Islam is a virus, you know?
[01:04:42]  Yeah.
[01:04:43]  To be fair, he's saying Christianity is a virus too, but I'm not less concerned about that.
[01:04:48]  Yes, this is all just a way of like just how you get to, therefore, we must eradicate blanks.
[01:04:55]  Yeah.
[01:04:55]  No, and the biggest virus of all is being Irish, you know?
[01:04:59]  That's really what Scott's getting at.
[01:05:02]  I love this.
[01:05:04]  There's so much more anti-Irish racism in this than I expected.
[01:05:08]  So great.
[01:05:09]  It's written by Bill the Brown.
[01:05:10]  He's Irish, so he must know a Patrick.
[01:05:12]  Yeah.
[01:05:15]  He must just know.
[01:05:16]  He must love a Patrick.
[01:05:18]  No, no, he loves a Patrick in the family.
[01:05:21]  Yeah.
[01:05:21]  That is clear from his heart.
[01:05:25]  Yeah, from his drinkers' nose that he loves a Patrick.
[01:05:30]  That's really quite amazing.
[01:05:33]  So in this next part, he's talking with this lady about how he's going to, and he explains his concept of a prime influencer.
[01:05:41]  I'm looking for the reboot button, metaphorically speaking.
[01:05:44]  I'm looking for the one person who is connected to everyone else in a chain of influence, the prime influencer.
[01:05:49]  That is why I am visiting today.
[01:05:51]  So like that's that's the thing.
[01:05:54]  Everyone's connected to this person.
[01:05:55]  And by the way, it turns out to be this pink-eared lady, right?
[01:06:00]  Yeah.
[01:06:01]  It's her.
[01:06:01]  It's Stacey.
[01:06:03]  I thought, you know.
[01:06:04]  And she's like, I don't believe in this because people never change their mind.
[01:06:07]  You don't believe people can change their opinions?
[01:06:09]  Asked the avatar.
[01:06:10]  Come on.
[01:06:11]  Who buys books written by conservatives, conservatives?
[01:06:13]  Who writes books written by liberals, liberals?
[01:06:16]  People only listen to what they want to hear.
[01:06:17]  Nobody changes anyone's mind.
[01:06:19]  Even if the argument is very good, hasn't happened.
[01:06:21]  Never will.
[01:06:22]  The avatar sat back in his seat, adjusting his napkin on his lap.
[01:06:26]  I can see why you would have that view.
[01:06:27]  But in reality, everyone knows one person who could change his opinion on a particular topic.
[01:06:32]  Usually a different person for each topic.
[01:06:34]  It's not the argument or the logic that matters to people, but the source.
[01:06:37]  Humans are driven by examples, by role models, not by logic.
[01:06:41]  So you're saying someone can make me a devil worshiper even if I didn't want to be?
[01:06:45]  That's nutty.
[01:06:46]  A year ago, you would have said that no one could convince you to wear pink-tinted hair, but you seem to have embraced the trend enthusiastically.
[01:06:53]  Okay.
[01:06:53]  So Scott's, Scott's, this lady is like, nobody changes their mind.
[01:06:57]  And Scott's like, no, no, no, that's nuts.
[01:06:59]  Everyone can have their mind changed by one person who's their specific influencer and can hack their brain on it.
[01:07:05]  That's right.
[01:07:06]  Yeah.
[01:07:07]  If their favorite podcaster tells them, then they will change their minds.
[01:07:11]  That is, I mean, that is how the world works.
[01:07:14]  That's true.
[01:07:14]  That's how we sell ads.
[01:07:16]  You know, Joe Rogan has convinced me to eat nothing but raw liver.
[01:07:20]  Yeah, I love that this is all just him going on a quest to find the Joe Rogan.
[01:07:25]  He's looking for the Joe Rogan.
[01:07:27]  That is what he believes, though, right?
[01:07:28]  Like when Trump comes out, he's convinced that Trump is this prime influencer, which is like that.
[01:07:34]  By the way, this is another thing that like these weird online atheist types all did, which is they all found a way to reinvent religion for themselves, right?
[01:07:43]  They gave up, they don't believe the Jesus that the Christians believe in, but they did like have to invent another Jesus for themselves.
[01:07:50]  Like Scott's, yeah, exactly.
[01:07:52]  One way or the other, they all do it, right?
[01:07:54]  Yes.
[01:07:54]  Not all atheists, but all of these weird internet atheists that Scott is, right?
[01:07:58]  Yes.
[01:07:59]  I'm not saying this is a general trait of atheists.
[01:08:01]  It's about specific assholes.
[01:08:04]  Yes.
[01:08:04]  Yes.
[01:08:05]  Like I'm an atheist.
[01:08:07]  I am an atheist.
[01:08:08]  I just don't say it because then I'll be subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I don't want.
[01:08:12]  Well, and it's, it's also like, you know, we were talking about how like you've got people who will like use religion as the justification for like why I want to kill certain people.
[01:08:20]  But the real thing is that like they just hate certain people, right?
[01:08:23]  Like the religion rarely is the thing that inspires it purely.
[01:08:27]  It's like something else that comes out that may, but and it's the same thing.
[01:08:32]  You've got all these sort of folks who started out as being like lefties in the early 2000s, like Jimmy Dore and whatnot.
[01:08:39]  And they're all preaching like hard right shit right now.
[01:08:42]  And they're all super racist and they're all really anti-trans and whatnot.
[01:08:46]  And it's because like, yeah, what matters isn't actually, it's like whether or not you're a giant piece of shit, you know, I think is primarily the thing.
[01:08:56]  And people will, people will rap if you're a big piece of shit and you hate people, you know, if you're inclined to pretend you're to be like left-wing or whatever, then you'll find some reason why communism wants to kill all the trans people or like force them to detransition or whatever.
[01:09:09]  And if you're a Christian, you use Christianity for that.
[01:09:11]  But I think it's just like, you know, some people are fucking assholes.
[01:09:15]  And Scott Adams, an asshole, right?
[01:09:18]  So he's going to get rid of religion and the Irish, one presumes.
[01:09:23]  The Avatar decided to test her light of thinking with an argument that was common, albeit flawed.
[01:09:28]  If God exists, he must be smart to design the world so perfectly.
[01:09:31]  Everything is in perfect balance.
[01:09:32]  If any of our natural laws were altered in the least, life would be unsustainable.
[01:09:36]  Only an omnipotent genius could create such a perfect balance in the laws of physics.
[01:09:40]  Physics schmizzix.
[01:09:41]  If God is so smart, why do you fart?
[01:09:44]  The avatar waited for the rest of the argument, but there was none.
[01:09:47]  The two strangers stared at each other for a moment before being overcome with a wave of laughter that brought them all to tears.
[01:09:54]  So yeah, that's love writing, writing, getting a real good laugh.
[01:09:59]  Got a real big laugh on the joke.
[01:10:01]  Yeah, very funny.
[01:10:02]  So I'm going to spoil the rest of this book for you.
[01:10:05]  That winds up being the key to destroying religion, right?
[01:10:09]  Is that this woman is the prime influencer?
[01:10:13]  And by getting her to like tell this joke to people, it spreads to everyone else in the world.
[01:10:19]  And then they give up Christianity and Islam and they give up their wars.
[01:10:25]  And I'm going to switch ahead to him explaining all this.
[01:10:31]  The major religions changed after the war.
[01:10:33]  Modernized was the word used most often for the disintegration of primitive beliefs.
[01:10:37]  The free flow of ideas caused dangerous religious thoughts to perish under the weight of common sense.
[01:10:41]  Most notably, the idea that God was limited by a human personality with human wants and human intelligence evaporated.
[01:10:47]  Now the mental health profession handled people who believed that God was talking to them directly.
[01:10:51]  The voting public never got a chance to elect such people, whether they were charismatic or not.
[01:10:56]  Religions came to be seen as traditions that lent flavor to holidays and encouraged good behavior, nothing more.
[01:11:01]  The public didn't know who had said it first, but it was the most powerful question in human history.
[01:11:05]  In nine words, it overturned centuries of tortured logic and magical thinking.
[01:11:09]  It pushed superstition into a cage and gave common sense room to maneuver.
[01:11:13]  The cause of the religion war sprung from one colossal religious misunderstanding, that God thinks like humans, except smarter, and that we people can comprehend his intent.
[01:11:22]  That crippling misunderstanding was swept away in a single wave of clarity.
[01:11:25]  The question was translated into thousands of languages, published billions of times.
[01:11:29]  In English, it was, if God is so smart, why do you fart?
[01:11:32]  Right.
[01:11:33]  Again, it's this like, we just have to puncture religion with a funny fucking logical puzzle and then it'll go away.
[01:11:43]  It's just this trap around people's brains.
[01:11:45]  It's not that like people want land or resources and have been fighting over them and so are angry about like the history of conflicts between peoples and are able to use sort of religion or politics to kind of justify continuing them.
[01:11:59]  It's not that people are like greedy.
[01:12:01]  It's not that people get like scared about folks who live far away from them.
[01:12:05]  It's not any of that shit.
[01:12:06]  It's that their minds have been enraptured by religion and you can get common sense to maneuver if you tell a smart joke.
[01:12:13]  It's like honestly the most fucking like buttoned up fucking elitist.
[01:12:20]  It's got like smatterings of liberalism in there, especially circa around this time and just and just a sort of ignorance that was so prevalent at the time was basically that everyone in the Middle East, they're all just fucking stupid and angry.
[01:12:41]  And so they all believe in this like magic spaghetti monster.
[01:12:45]  And so, you know, they're at war because the spaghetti monster says so.
[01:12:49]  And it's like a way to completely ignore literally any history that has happened within that region.
[01:12:55]  And, you know, it's, it's great.
[01:12:58]  It's, you know, I love when the stupidest man in the world writes himself as the smartest man in the world.
[01:13:04]  It is, it, it is very fun.
[01:13:05]  Because again, it doesn't take all that much like to learn that the reality is more complicated, right?
[01:13:13]  I remember one of the big moments for me of like, you know, just going into fucking Iraq and talking to people in camps and stuff, a bunch of whom had been ISIS supporters kind of early in ISIS's reign was them explaining like, well, you know, we supported them because the cops under the old government for like religious sectarian reasons had punished and abused our family.
[01:13:34]  And they like, yeah, they killed my brother.
[01:13:36]  They killed my uncle.
[01:13:37]  They tortured, you know, my dad.
[01:13:39]  So when ISIS came and they said that they were, you know, getting rid of these shitty ass police, we were like, maybe this will be better.
[01:13:45]  It's not like the Iraqi government was anything to write home about.
[01:13:48]  Like we think, and then it turned out they sucked.
[01:13:50]  So now we're fighting.
[01:13:51]  And it's like, yeah, look, there's always, you know, there are brainwashed fucking extremists out there in a variety of ways.
[01:13:58]  But the vast majority of people's motivations make sense, even if they're bad, even if they're doing bad things.
[01:14:03]  Yes.
[01:14:03]  They make sense, right?
[01:14:04]  It's like the Nazis.
[01:14:05]  The Nazis didn't get like enthralled by Hitler magically.
[01:14:09]  They wanted other people's shit.
[01:14:12]  Yes.
[01:14:13]  Yeah.
[01:14:13]  That's why they did it.
[01:14:15]  Very human reasons.
[01:14:17]  And, you know, like the, I think we have a tendency to take every kind of like villain or anyone who's in opposition to whatever, you know, the fucking American cultural hegemon has to say and go like, oh, it's because they are all fanatical.
[01:14:37]  They must be crazy to believe that we in any way could be an enemy.
[01:14:44]  And I think just in general, it's like, oh, you have to understand how absolutely fucking regular people are and, you know, how villainy is not necessarily this thing that comes from like, oh, everyone's a psychopath.
[01:14:59]  It's like, no, it's actually much more simple.
[01:15:02]  And that makes it 10 times as like complicated and scary sometimes, you know?
[01:15:09]  But yeah, I'm like, I'm just like getting flashbacks to me like in college and just being like an atheist and just being like fucking like, yeah, man, fucking, I'm so smart.
[01:15:23]  I don't even, I don't even believe in God.
[01:15:26]  You know, fuck yeah, dude.
[01:15:28]  It's interesting.
[01:15:29]  Because I'm a genius.
[01:15:30]  Yeah, the idea that like you're, you're both saying that like, look at these, look at these silly religious people who are like. denying sort of the, you know, they've gotten their minds washed and they can't understand like the true complexity of reality.
[01:15:46]  But also everyone does things for one reason, right?
[01:15:49]  Like every all of the Muslims have one motivation and it's kill all the Jews.
[01:15:53]  And if you kill all the Jews, then all of the Muslims support you, right?
[01:15:56]  All of the Irish have one motivation and it's their friend Patrick.
[01:16:00]  It's their friend Patrick.
[01:16:01]  And, you know, just chugging down a nice fucking Guinness after a hard day's work of beating your wife.
[01:16:10]  So, you know, look, take the wisdom of Scott Adams with you into the world is, I think, what we're trying to say here.
[01:16:15]  Absolutely.
[01:16:16]  And the next time you see a man with a drinker's nose, tell him about his love and Patrick.
[01:16:24]  Ask him about Patrick.
[01:16:25]  Anyone who shatter his mind.
[01:16:30]  I'm like, I am low-key impressed at the way he went after the white ethnics in this.
[01:16:36]  You know, there was a time when Scott Adams was cool.
[01:16:41]  You know, when he would just go after the Irish.
[01:16:44]  Oh, my God.
[01:16:46]  I am looking forward to, I assume in the sequel to this, he finds a way to destroy St. Patrick's Day.
[01:16:53]  Yeah.
[01:16:53]  Yeah.
[01:16:55]  Turned out all the snakes we needed to get rid of were these goddamn Irish.
[01:17:00]  You get a lot about his thought process because Scott is, I think, a fundamentally pretty and curious person.
[01:17:06]  And so he doesn't do, like, he didn't know that like Sunni and Shia exist as divisions of Islam.
[01:17:14]  Didn't even do the basic research to the second largest army in NATO is like a majority Muslim nation.
[01:17:21]  And he's just like decided, okay, well, what's something a guy could notice?
[01:17:26]  Well, if you can notice if somebody's got like a red nose because they're drinking a bunch.
[01:17:30]  Okay, who drinks a lot?
[01:17:32]  Irish people.
[01:17:33]  What's an Irish name?
[01:17:34]  St. Patrick's Day.
[01:17:36]  Patrick.
[01:17:36]  Boom.
[01:17:37]  Boom.
[01:17:38]  Got it.
[01:17:38]  I just got a whole fucking plot to a story.
[01:17:41]  It's so funny.
[01:17:43]  He's just like taking his calendar and he's marking down.
[01:17:46]  I need three hours to write this.
[01:17:49]  Because this for sure was stream of consciousness.
[01:17:52]  This guy is not putting a lot of thought on it.
[01:17:55]  I think he just used the like talk to text app and just was like mumbling.
[01:18:00]  Dang this bad boy out.
[01:18:03]  Well, Matt.
[01:18:04]  God bless him.

=== Irish Religion Jokes (02:45) ===

[01:18:05]  You got anything to plug here?
[01:18:07]  Oh, man.
[01:18:08]  Well, I'm writing a book about the scourge of the Irish.
[01:18:14]  No, actually, I do, you know, this wire podcast, the Wire Rewatch podcast.
[01:18:19]  Pod Yourself on Gun is the name of the feed.
[01:18:23]  And it is essentially a show where we denigrate Irish Americans in the form of McNulty.
[01:18:32]  So, you know, if you're sitting here.
[01:18:35]  Really all of the wire is a behind the bastards on McNulty.
[01:18:39]  It really is.
[01:18:40]  It's behind one specific bastard, Jimmy McNulty, and his grubby little Irish wiener.
[01:18:48]  And yeah, so check that out.
[01:18:51]  Check out the frontcast.
[01:18:53]  It's a show where we talk about, you know, everything except for the wire.
[01:18:58]  A lot of fun I do at Vince Bancini.
[01:19:01]  All right.
[01:19:02]  I almost forgot.
[01:19:03]  If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area or any of the surrounding areas, on Tuesday, October 17th at 8 p.m. specifically, my wife Francesca Fiorentini and I are going to be headlining the San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club.
[01:19:19]  So yeah, please come out to that.
[01:19:21]  It is a Tuesday at 8 p.m., October 17th.
[01:19:26]  Borette Voice My Wife and I are going to be co-headlining.
[01:19:30]  There's going to be some other great comedians coming out.
[01:19:32]  It's going to be a lot of fun.
[01:19:33]  You can get your tickets at punchlinecomedyclub.com.
[01:19:39]  And yeah, October 17th, please come out.
[01:19:43]  It's going to be so good.
[01:19:45]  I swear to God.
[01:19:46]  I mean, at the very least, you're going to get to see my wife and I kiss like live on stage.
[01:19:54]  It's a sex show.
[01:19:55]  Anyways, come out to that.
[01:19:57]  Man, I'm so glad I remembered to say this.
[01:19:59]  Otherwise, I'd have to record this audio later and then send it to you and have you figure out a place to put it in the edit.
[01:20:06]  And that would just sound weird.
[01:20:10]  Anyways, thank you for having me on for, you know, to talk about something light like, you know, the Irish and how religion, bad, you know, smart people are influenced by some douchebag they see online.
[01:20:29]  Yeah.
[01:20:30]  And check out more of Scott Adams in our upcoming podcast with Scott.
[01:20:35]  I don't know.
[01:20:36]  I don't want to make any more like anti-Irish kind of jokes.
[01:20:39]  So we're done.
[01:20:40]  We're just done with the episode.
[01:20:41]  There you go.
[01:20:41]  Just so everyone knows I love Irish people.
[01:20:43]  Everything that you're doing Scott bad.
[01:20:45]  Irish people.
[01:20:46]  You're angry at Scott for being racist, which is why I'm stopping the bit.
[01:20:50]  Yep.

=== Ending Anti-Irish Bit (01:59) ===

[01:20:51]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[01:20:54]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[01:21:10]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:21:18]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:21:21]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:21:23]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:21:25]  We always say that.
[01:21:27]  Trust your girlfriends.
[01:21:30]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:21:31]  Trust me, babe.
[01:21:32]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:21:42]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[01:21:45]  How could this ever happen in City Hall?
[01:21:47]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:21:49]  A shocking public murder.
[01:21:50]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:21:56]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[01:21:58]  Those are shots.
[01:22:00]  A tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[01:22:07]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:22:17]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[01:22:21]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[01:22:25]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[01:22:32]  An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
[01:22:35]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[01:22:38]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[01:22:47]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:22:50]  Guaranteed human.