GabCast Bellgab.com - 14 September, 2016

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Sept. 14, 2016 - GabCast Bellgab.com

01:53:50

14 September, 2016

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	This is the Gabcast, a podcast about BellGab.com.
	Call us now.
	573-837-4948.
	That number again, 573-837-4948.
	And now, here's the gap cast.
	Okay.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	I'm MV.
	Luca Parcelli's here with me.
	Hi, everyone.
	It's Luca Parcelli.
	Did you expect someone else?
	And it's certainly a pleasure to have Luca.
	If you want to be on the show tonight, the number to call is going to be 573-837-4948.
	573-837-4948.
	And actually, this was just very impromptu.
	And so, you know, if you want to jump in, you can just go ahead and call us on Skype and we'll bring you on the show.
	You can call the phone number or for those of you who are already added to the appropriate Skype account, which is going to be, well, if you wanted to search, well, if you, I forgot, search for ufoship.com.
	Yeah, that's the, my goodness, how do you contact this show?
	We've only been doing it for 43 years.
	Anyway, hi, Luca Parcelli.
	It's really interesting just to sit down in front of a microphone and chat with somebody you've never talked to before and say, let's just do a gab cast because you were going to do your own show tonight and people were accusing you, not in a negative way.
	It was sort of tongue-in-cheek.
	Hey, he's doing pirate gabcasts out there.
	And then I saw you were going to do one tonight, so I thought, well, what the hell?
	Why not just do a gabcast?
	I kind of felt like doing it.
	So why not doing it?
	Or why not do it?
	I say.
	After two Jack and Cokes, I'll do a lot of things, ladies and gentlemen.
	And that's all it takes.
	I'm very low alcohol tolerance, that of three-year-old girl Max.
	I mean, I get drunk very quickly.
	So I will stop at a certain point.
	We'll determine what that point is somewhere along the way.
	When we were, before we came on, you were talking about something, and I said to you, Luca, just hold that thought.
	Don't say anything else.
	We'll start the show off with that.
	What was the subject?
	Do you recall?
	I do remember being only a glass and a half of water.
	Oh, my.
	I think I'm pretty sober right now.
	Well, first of all, I'll just say thanks a lot, MV.
	And this is a great impromptu gap cast.
	So let's just go on about this.
	This is actually a Skype call.
	And I think I sound probably a lot different than what my normal show sounds like because I have to use Google Hangouts to call in blog talk radio.
	So I sound pretty long.
	That's probably what it sounds like.
	And now we have the wonder of Skype.
	It's updated.
	It's not going to interrupt me with any sort of messages to update.
	And I think we're good to go now.
	So hi, everyone.
	And that was the topic, actually, was Google Hangouts.
	It's a piece of shit or the future.
	When it initially broke, I thought Google Hangouts was just amazing.
	And this might actually give Google's second attempt at a social network some hope of survival.
	But, you know, everybody just sort of shrugged.
	Oh, hum.
	It was shortly thereafter, I think, the ability to use Skype on your Facebook page came about.
	So people didn't really care too terribly much.
	And it just went away.
	I mean, I'm surprised it's still even there.
	I'm surprised that Hangouts even exists.
	I mean, because it was such a core chunk of that whole Google Plus thing that nobody wants or cares about or wants to be involved with.
	Remember that phase YouTube went through where they tried to force you, if you wanted to comment under any of the videos, you had to directly link your comments to a Google Plus profile.
	Remember that?
	I do.
	I do remember that actually.
	It was horrible.
	It was absolutely horrible, and it took out a lot of the fun because a lot of the fun of reading YouTube comments was reading the trolls.
	And then, of course, if it's tied to your Google Plus account, the trolls didn't necessarily go away, but that was sort of lessened, I suppose.
	I think, anyway.
	And it was terrible.
	And I hate Google Plus.
	As a matter of fact, the website I'm on right now, it says follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and RSS.
	So I guess they're still around in some capacity.
	Let me ask you, though, I don't remember when Google Voice became Google Hangouts, or was it Google Chat, GChat?
	This is part of the schizophrenic direction of Google.
	I mean, I still have an app on my phone called Google Voice.
	And it still looks, I'd say, exactly as it did, what, in 2012, 2011?
	I mean, it has not evolved at all.
	And you keep hearing them talk about how they're going to, well, you know, we think Google Voice is going to become part of Hangouts.
	And that just doesn't really, they don't quite pull the trigger on it.
	And I've been saying for like four years, Google Voice is going away in the next year.
	You know, I just, every year I think this is the last year Google Voice is going to exist out there in the ether.
	I mean, it's a great product in a lot of ways.
	One of the most unsung benefits of it is that you can go out and buy one of these OB 100 boxes.
	That's OBI 100.
	And it'll allow you to, it's ridiculous how easy this is to set up.
	You go set up a free Google Voice account.
	They give you a phone number.
	That's a regular phone number that anybody on a POTS phone can pick up and dial.
	They'll get you.
	And as a result of that, you can then connect it to this OB 100 box and you'll have a traditional home phone sitting there for free.
	You don't pay anything.
	You can call anywhere in North America.
	Isn't that just tits?
	Completely.
	You pay one time for that box, which I guess you can probably get one for 30, 35 bucks.
	And you have like really solid voicemail through Google Voice.
	You have all the benefits that come along with that.
	It's pretty good stuff.
	I love Google Voice, but I just wish that I wouldn't be thinking every year is the last.
	You know, they work on so much bullcrap that nobody cares about that doesn't impact or affect anybody in any way.
	And then something like Google Voice that so many people could really get a lot out of if it were developed more.
	And I mean, the app is a piece of shit.
	Every time you want to play a voicemail, somebody left you.
	And by the way, this has been the case on multiple revisions of Android across multiple Android phones.
	This has been the case, that when you play a voicemail, you have to press the play button two to three times.
	You'll press play.
	It begins playing the message.
	Oh, about a second and it stops.
	And then you have to press play again.
	And maybe it'll continue and play the whole message now.
	Or, oh, maybe it'll stop.
	And then, I mean, that has been the case for like five years with that pile of shit app.
	And this is Google.
	I mean, my God, they have limitless resources at their disposal.
	Are you going to do this thing or are you not?
	I don't understand it.
	I don't think I've ever used the Google Voice app.
	I used an app called TalkTone, I think.
	And I guess it ties to your Google account.
	And I made a couple calls through there, mostly for Craigslist, because I'm not going to give my cell phone number out to some crank caller.
	However, the user experience was so pathetic.
	You don't really get the notifications.
	If someone leaves you a voicemail, it's either garbled.
	Or, as you said, actually, I had a similar problem with that, where it would play for a few seconds and stop as if it's buffering.
	And then when you push it again, it stops.
	Who knows?
	It's a similar problem, I guess, through all of the Google Voice applications.
	Sorry, I was muted.
	Anyway, if you want to call the show, 573-837-4948.
	Let's see.
	Retcufs, I'm not ever sure how to pronounce that.
	If I'm pronouncing it correctly, says I'm low energy.
	I would agree with that.
	I'm pretty low energy tonight.
	So what?
	I mean, that's not always a pejorative thing to say.
	Right now, I'm in a completely dark room.
	Things that shouldn't be disclosed are happening right now.
	No, I'm kidding.
	But it is a very dark room.
	I'm just sort of chilled out here, you know, in front of the computer screen talking into the microphone.
	Yeah, very low energy, almost NPR in nature.
	And the time now is 9.04 on the West Coast here at NPR.
	So let me ask you something.
	You're a Bellgab user.
	What do you think about people logging in with their social media identities?
	Think that's a good deal?
	You know, I have to be honest.
	This is the second time I've been asked that.
	When I was on the Jazz Cast about a month ago, I was asked this, and I had absolutely nothing to contribute.
	And I apologize for that.
	Wow.
	So I'm really, you know, I'm just digging back into the past for material.
	Does anybody have a newspaper from two weeks ago?
	Because I need to do some show prep, some real legitimate show prep.
	Well, I mean.
	Yeah, let's talk about the headlines from two weeks ago.
	What was the headlines?
	I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	I mean, I will say this.
	The reason that people are now able to log in with all those different account types is because I was on, you know, that BOINK project that you install on your computer if you want to do SETI at home?
	Yes, I'm familiar with that.
	Well, they have a forum for pretty much every project.
	You can go there and see what people involved with it have to say.
	And I'm reading one of these forums and I see something I really want to respond to.
	And so I'm thinking to myself, you know, there is no way I'm going to sit here and create an account just to say this one little stupid thing that I want to say in response to what I'm reading here.
	I'm just not going to do it.
	It's not worth the time and the effort.
	You know how many websites want you to log in for this, that, or the other thing?
	It's just mind-numbing.
	And so I thought to myself, well, if I'm having that experience on some other forum, then, yeah, it's probably something that people experience at Bellgab too.
	And if you already have a Twitter account and you don't care if it gets spread around in different locations, why not?
	Or, I mean, if you're feeling really saucy, your Facebook account, can you imagine logging into Bellgab with your Facebook account?
	What adult you'd have to be?
	Ouch.
	I don't know about that.
	If you're using your real name on Facebook, I mean, you better not come on the forum and say something that or do something that draws negative attention your way.
	If you're going to go and use your actual Facebook profile as your introduction to a random group of people, that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
	Unless your Facebook profile doesn't really identify you.
	Now, would this finally solve the mystery of who Bobo 17 is if all of a sudden Art Bell's login was used to activate the Bobo 17 account?
	I think Bobo 17 is the one.
	I have no proof of it.
	That's just what I think.
	Okay.
	Doesn't matter.
	I mean, what do you think?
	Who do you think Bobo is?
	I don't know.
	I vacillate.
	Come on, commit to something.
	What are you for?
	I know.
	I'm so non-committal here, MV, tonight.
	I'm thinking it's Rekov.
	I don't know.
	Really?
	That seems reasonable.
	I mean, he's in the chat room calling me low energy.
	And so I think really...
	The biggest question is, did he spell it correctly?
	As far as what he's capable of, I think the horizon's pretty wide.
	I'd keep an eye on him.
	How often are you using Bellgab, Luca?
	I mean, do you post on the forum beyond just saying, hey, I'm going to do this podcast thing?
	I do.
	Every now and then I'll throw up something to Art Bell or the Gabcast.
	Or I think I was talking on the Windows 10 board a couple weeks ago, just talking about Linux, actually.
	I don't go on very much.
	I really just sort of use it as a way to see, wait, when's the next Bell Gab?
	Or I'm sorry, when's the next Gabcast, to be honest.
	And I just kind of see what's going on with these people that are characters.
	And I'm finding out that I really like them the more I really interact with them.
	You all are fine.
	Listen, listen to Jazz Munda in the chat room.
	You need a professional podcaster to help you hit me.
	You need a professional podcaster to help you hit me.
	You know, I'm not really sure that I appreciate that, Envy, because I really like Jazz.
	Jazz is a very good idea.
	He is a deplorable person.
	Oh, no.
	This is where we break, MV.
	That's certainly.
	He has routinely sent me photographs that I thought were questionable, and I'd like something done about.
	I'm Michael Van Deven.
	If you want to be on the show tonight, the number to call is 573-837-4948.
	573-837-4948.
	You know what?
	While we're in this NPR sort of vibe here, why don't we talk about the evolution of women's studies classes on university campuses over the last 40 years?
	What do you think about that?
	Oh, God.
	You know that I work on a university campus.
	No.
	Do you care to say what it was that you, your expertise?
	What did you teach?
	Actually, I can tell you right now, I'm a sign language interpreter.
	So I work in a college setting, in a university setting, and I work for the FCC.
	Can I stop you right there?
	I am sure that more often than you would like, when you tell people you're a sign language interpreter, they immediately mention to you the Nelson Mandela funeral, don't they?
	And they say, what do you think about that?
	Don't they say that to you?
	During the time, yeah, it lasted about six months.
	There are three things.
	There are three stock answers you get when, or three stock questions, I should say.
	Oh, you know what?
	I took American Sign Language in high school.
	Is this, you know, is this cool?
	Like, look at me.
	And then they start throwing their hands around and I don't understand what they're saying.
	They will mention the Nelson Mandela funeral, or they will also say something like, well, I like to watch songs on YouTube of ASL students signing songs.
	And it's really difficult to understand really from a non-interpreter, but if you're in the deaf community, no one watches YouTube videos of ASL students signing songs because they're unintelligible, first of all.
	No deaf person really gives a shit about music, and there's just no point.
	Do you think that's really true, that no deaf person cares about music?
	I have a hard time believing that to be the case.
	And you see, this is why I use the fake name, you see.
	So I will not be blacklisted in the community.
	Blacklisted?
	Oh, and that would never happen to you in this environment.
	Don't worry.
	I mean, seriously, I mean, like, I think deaf people feel the vibration of music.
	Like, for instance, you see people, I hear Limbaugh all the time talk about how he is still able to enjoy music through his cochlear implant, although the cochlear implant, the audio it produces, produces something that could be comparable to AM radio only at a lower sample rate, even worse than AM radio.
	But because he remembers that music, he's able to enjoy it.
	His brain's able to fill in the bits.
	Although, someone who's deaf from birth, I guess what you're saying, that I have no authority to say isn't true.
	Well, I think you bring up a great point because I had heard Limbaugh talking about that too.
	I guess it's about the content.
	Obviously, they can feel the vibrations and they can see the spectacle on stage, but the content, really?
	So people will come up and say, there's a sign language interpreter at my church, and they sign celebrate, Jesus, celebrate.
	Celebrate, Jesus, celebrate.
	And if you just look at those words on a screen, that's basically what you're getting when you get an interpretation.
	Most songs really mean nothing if you just pull apart the words and you have to interpret it into a visual language that doesn't have the same English metaphors and idioms.
	And it's just – there's just something missing out of the entire process.
	You know, people – There's a Jack Beecher advertisement that just blocked everything I was doing.
	Hold on.
	People watching these videos of deaf people signing various forms of music.
	The people who are able to hear, but they're watching these videos repeatedly, repeatedly, on and on.
	They catch every new one that comes along.
	At a certain point, a little bit of, I don't know, there has to be a smidge of, I'm really glad I'm not deaf, that they start thinking to themselves.
	Maybe there's a hint of voyeurism there.
	I don't know.
	How did we get on this topic again?
	I'm sorry.
	Music?
	People like to see others who have an affliction that they don't have.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Oh, I see.
	Come on.
	No, yeah, absolutely.
	No, I would agree with you with that.
	I would agree.
	I would agree.
	We now have reached a moment of consensus on this broadcast tonight.
	And I think that's a good point for anybody who wants to call in to call in.
	And that number would be 573-837-4948.
	Luca, your show that you were going to do tonight, but you instead agreed to do the Gabcast.
	What do you normally do on your show?
	I mean, what would you normally be doing right about this time?
	Because you were planning to start about 45 minutes ago.
	At about this point in your show, what would you have been around to?
	Well, actually, it would have been over because I only have 25 minutes on my blog talk radio.
	Oh, they limit the amount of time you can actually broadcast.
	Yeah, they do.
	So it's got to be a very quick in and out, right?
	Not a lot of time there.
	But then again, you can really sculpt what you're trying to say with more clarity.
	It's just like, hey, here's a couple things that I was reading on the news.
	And, hey, call in.
	And then Sheffist calls in, and A.K. Willie calls in.
	And then it just kind of goes from there, right?
	I love the way Sheffist calls all start.
	It's just sort of got this sound to it, like, hey, it's a Shaffist.
	Like, if I had a phone to talk into and do the voice, it might sound more legit.
	He's like, hey, it's Shaffist.
	I mean, it's just every one of them starts.
	Hey, this is Sheffist.
	And then he carries.
	And then whatever happens from that moment, it happens.
	But there's a certain something about that that I like.
	It has a ring to it.
	There's a charm.
	There's a charm in Sheffist, for sure.
	Can I actually go back?
	can be really mean though did you see the stuff he was saying about why was you were on that show when he called in and he was saying the stuff about tiger lily weren't you Yeah, it was.
	Why was he saying that stuff?
	Do they have like a beef that goes back or something?
	What is it?
	You're a man.
	I don't know.
	Does anybody know?
	I would be, I would like to be a prize.
	I mean, that's gossipy, right?
	This is a gossipy sort of show.
	It really is.
	Someone call the show and refresh us here of the Tiger Lily show.
	Yeah, I mean, because there has to be some backstory.
	Where did that come from?
	It was just out of nowhere.
	What do they say that he said that I don't, I didn't, I shouldn't even repeat what he said, actually, because it could be perceived as an attack by me.
	And I wouldn't want that perception to be out there.
	You don't want to trigger him, that's for sure.
	No, I mean, he wouldn't be triggered.
	I mean, she might be triggered if she thought that I were attacking her by repeating what he said.
	He said nasty things.
	I would just like to know if there was some public backstory to that or a backstory that was made public.
	I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	There are so many little subplots and just interconnected things happening on Belgab that I am totally out of the loop on.
	I can't begin to tell you.
	So can we go back real quick to the original question that you asked me, and that was about university campuses?
	Oh, yes.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	Let's just kind of pull it back to reality here for a moment.
	And that was, it's disturbing, I think, what's going on on university campuses.
	I was there today, and there was this protest about this.
	I haven't even been following the news fully.
	It's some pipeline in Dakota.
	And there's a bunch of, you know, 18 and 19-year-olds, and they're all holding signs, and they're yelling at you because I'm a staff member at a university, and I have some control over some goddamn pipeline in another state.
	And they're saying, you need to care about this, and to distribute pamphlets.
	And it happens in classes, too, where there's some point of view that's been going around on social media.
	And all of a sudden, everyone in class gravitates towards that topic, and it becomes a distraction.
	And that's, in my opinion, one of the things that's going on on university campuses.
	It's exciting stuff.
	I think you were talking specifically about feminism, though.
	I don't remember.
	I have a short-term memory problem.
	No, I said, let's take some time because I sound like an NPR announcer tonight and go over the evolution of women's studies courses in universities over the last 40 years.
	I think that would be an acceptable.
	I think that would be a proper subject for the listeners of Belgab, which, by the way, I asked you earlier what you do on Belgab beyond just occasionally mentioning your podcast.
	And the reason is because I want to know what you think about what's going on.
	I mean, I'm not really up on a lot of the gossipy what's happening on Belgab stuff or what is it people are talking about right now.
	They're talking a lot about politics.
	I know there's a lot of that going on, but I just, at a certain point, I have to tune out of that.
	I just, you know, nobody is interested in being convinced of anything by anybody.
	Everything eventually makes its way to personal insults and attacks.
	I mean, what's the point?
	It's like an exercise in just raising your blood pressure.
	You just wake up one day.
	I'm going to turn on this machine that raises my blood pressure as I stare at it, you know, and in unpredictable ways as you're just arguing back and forth or even just reading some of the politics stuff, things I see people say.
	I just think to myself as I read it about the futility of arguing with this person about their point of view on whatever the particular subject happens to be.
	Nobody is listening to anybody.
	Nobody.
	It's futility manifest to argue on a forum about policy.
	I mean, I love seeing it happen.
	It's page views for me.
	That's great.
	And it's my personal choice whether I want to read it or not.
	And everybody else can make that personal choice themselves.
	You know, we all get in and out of certain things from time to time.
	Do you pay any attention to the politics threads on Belgab or what do you hip to that's going on over there right now?
	Anything at all?
	I think there's some interesting stuff happening in the Hillary Clinton, on the Hillary Clinton board, and in the politics in general, I think.
	But you're right.
	I'm not looking to be convinced.
	I'm looking to be entertained.
	And I think that's one of the issues now: the news is so full of this BS.
	And they're trying to convince you, but it's not working.
	So the thing that they have to do is just you have to find entertainment in it.
	And I get bored of it pretty quickly.
	Well, there's also the angle that people, in addition to looking for whatever entertainment value, they also are looking for validation.
	I don't think people are subjecting themselves to a whole lot of stuff that they're not ideologically aligned with.
	That's just the vibe I get out there, you know, from people of both stripes, people who support Trump, people who support Hillary.
	I mean, it's just like a flock movement.
	You know, a firecracker goes off, and just the way a flock of birds shift mechanically in midair.
	It's sort of like that type of thing.
	It's analogous to that, the way talking points are filtered out to people to consider.
	As you said, what people see on Facebook, if they happen to be of a certain demographic, really affects what it is that they give a shit to think about for that day, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So, yeah.
	If you want to be on the show tonight, 573-837-4948-573-837-4948.
	I think that you mentioned the Hillary thing.
	I'm glad you mentioned that because people are talking about how she came out of Chelsea's apartment, and people are saying that some people are saying it's a body double.
	But I saw two videos today on Twitter, and I posted both of them in the Hillary Clinton thread, both of which demonstrate just how just to what degree you can distort somebody's face, depending upon what lens you choose to use to photograph them or film them.
	I mean, you can really distort somebody's proportions.
	I mean, when you look at each comparison, they start with one lens and they finally, at the end of the video, you wouldn't recognize the face as being the person you saw at the beginning of the video.
	So to say, well, I've got this video that the mainstream media produced for me to view, and it shows Hillary looking like that.
	Oh, hey, I have this other video produced by the mainstream media for my consideration, and in that one, she looks like that.
	That's the one where she's fainting.
	Well, it gives, you know, I mean, there's a lot of complexity to why two things may not look identical in two totally separate videos.
	Filmed by two totally separate devices, I'm sure, filmed by totally different people under totally different lighting circumstances.
	I mean, hell, look at what you can do with just a phone now.
	You don't need a complete camera rig anymore.
	You can take a smartphone and just snap a...
	They make real lenses.
	You can snap onto the face of your phone, your iPhone, your S7, your Note.
	And you can have a legit lens on your phone.
	You could, like, for instance, with the S6, you could put that thing in 4K mode.
	And if you had all those proper lenses at your disposal, you could make a movie.
	My point in droning on about that is just to say there's a lot of diversity in what devices people are recording video with and taking pictures with.
	It's just hard to believe anything anymore.
	Photographically.
	Everything feels manipulated or like subjective.
	Yeah, I would agree.
	And that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before the show started about any sort of anomaly that is documented and broadcast on the internet, right?
	YouTube, etc.
	We're talking about UFOs or anything that's paranormal or anything that sort of sparks conspiracy theory like the body double or the hole in Hillary Clinton's tongue.
	I think that's really odd.
	What part exactly?
	The hole in her tongue.
	I think, oh my God, what's the STD that you get blotches all over your skin?
	And I'm drawing a blank right now on it.
	I don't know why.
	So am I.
	It starts with an S, and it's really old.
	Al Capone allegedly died of it.
	Syphilis, thank you.
	Oh my God, I hate it when that happens.
	Again, years and years of drug abuse, ladies and gentlemen, don't do drugs.
	Syphilis, I have seen people say, will, in the course of its treatment, possibly leave you with a hole in your tongue like that.
	And I've seen people out there suggesting that perhaps Bill Clinton brought syphilis home to Hillary and she had to be treated for it.
	But I'm no medical professional.
	I have no idea what really could be gleaned from photos of Hillary's tongue looking like that, but man, that is, it's so random and weird.
	I mean, I don't think it's made up because it's just so random.
	I mean, where would that come from?
	Who would just make that up and say, hey, here's a, let's, I've got an idea.
	I'm going to create a photo of Hillary that makes it appear as though she's got a hole in her tongue.
	Has there been further validation of the tongue hole beyond just a couple of pictures?
	I could only find maybe two pictures of that max.
	You're right.
	And it lasted in the alternative news cycle for just a blip, and it was gone.
	Once again, the mainstream media being controlled.
	Well, I'm not, don't get me wrong.
	I'm certain that she's very unhealthy, but I just thought that was so random that I actually believed it.
	And maybe I still do.
	I don't know.
	Maybe it's true she had a hole in her tongue.
	Maybe she didn't.
	Maybe it was all made up.
	But, I mean, it just seems so random to me for someone to suggest that she had a hole in her tongue that it must be true.
	I can't see that not being true.
	That was very interesting.
	But I would think that once that came out, you'd see just an onslaught of people doing everything they could to get pictures of her tongue going forward.
	And I don't think I've seen that.
	Unless a giant chasm in your tongue is repairable to the point where it's just not visible anymore and nobody cares.
	Maybe that's what happened.
	I don't know.
	I have no idea.
	It seems to me that would be reparable pretty quickly, right?
	I mean, the tongue, I believe the cells replenish themselves very quickly on the tongue, so it seems like a pretty easy place to heal.
	So maybe it was just something temporary.
	Maybe she has tongue cancer of some kind from all those years of smoking and she just got something yanked out, right?
	Who knows?
	Was she a smoker?
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	I thought you were laying out factual.
	You sounded very authoritative, and I believed you.
	The only thing you could have done to sound more legitimate, you could have presented it in a British accent, but I believed you.
	My name is Shredney Vashta, and I just want to say that Hillary Clinton possibly has tongue cancer.
	I find him to be one of the most pleasant people you could be in the company of when I'm talking to him.
	And when I read his posts, oh my God, it's just like acid melting your face.
	You're like, man, I just don't.
	I don't know.
	I don't want to end up on that side of his keyboard.
	Let's be friends.
	How about that?
	He's so pleasant on the show, though.
	I love when he's on the Gabcast.
	I think he's done it twice thus far.
	He's an all right dude.
	He's an absolute gentleman.
	Absolute gentleman.
	Until you get on his bad side.
	And if you know, my avatar is a picture of a rabbit.
	My Skype is also a picture of a rabbit.
	And I have a rabbit.
	And Shredney had sent me a picture of a bunny suicide, I think.
	And then he sent me a YouTube clip from that movie with Michael Douglas where – I forgot who it was.
	It was a chair in stone.
	Puts the family rabbit in a – Fatal Attraction.
	That's it.
	I'm sorry, I'm kind of running out of time.
	Was it Sharon Stone?
	I don't think it was Sharon Stone.
	Was it?
	I mean, I know it was Michael Douglas.
	Yeah, I don't think it was Sharon Stone, though.
	You might have that mixed up with the one where she spread her legs and has basic instinct.
	Yeah, basic instinct.
	I think that's what you're thinking of.
	Never mind.
	I'll just stay quiet now.
	Well, you can't do that.
	We're doing a talk show here.
	Oh, yeah, I forgot.
	See?
	Anyway, carry on.
	I'm just not.
	Oh, yeah.
	We were talking about Shredney being a gentleman.
	Yeah, I think that he's a wonderful person to do a show with and a great intellect as well.
	He has a certain, to me, a certain Christopher Hitchens appeal.
	I wouldn't start an argument with Christopher Hitchens in front of, you know, in front of 3,000 people.
	Unless I was profoundly confident in my position.
	You know, why put yourself through the torment?
	Things might go well, but they might not.
	Who knows?
	You're going to find out.
	Just stick your toe in the pool and see what happens.
	Maybe not.
	I can't believe Mr. Hitchens has been gone for as long as he has.
	Were you a fan, obviously, of his videos or his books?
	I love the way that he attacked religion equally.
	He didn't allow his assessment of religion to be tempered by political correctness or social norm.
	He attacked Islam.
	He attacked Christianity.
	He attacked religion as a concept, not, oh, well, these precepts in this religion, those precepts in that religion.
	He just looked at the whole thing as bullcrap, and he attacked it all equally.
	And I think in academia, that's kind of hard to find.
	When people are critiquing religion, they seem, I think, to be disproportionately pleased by the idea of attacking Christianity.
	I don't see a lot of people in academia that criticize Islam.
	And there are a lot of reasons for that.
	I mean, people are afraid of being called racist.
	People are afraid of whatever it is that whatever the scarlet letter of our times is.
	I mean, in a lot of ways, some of these labels that people are afraid of, we really are looking at the scarlet letter of our times.
	People didn't want to be called communists in the 50s.
	Arthur Miller wrote a whole book about it called The Crucible.
	It was, you know, about the Salem witch trials, as everybody knows.
	But, I mean, it was supposed to be an analogy to what was happening at that time.
	I mean, people, every generation has some sort of horrible label that people don't want to be painted with.
	And if you get painted with it, it could be professionally harmful.
	Bad things could happen to you.
	And so I think that whatever the mood is right now that causes academia, when academia is criticizing religion to shy away from criticizing Islam, that might pass in five years.
	It may never pass.
	It may pass in 30 years.
	There will be a new something you're not supposed to criticize or a new label you do not want applied to you.
	I think any religion, any religion, they're really belief systems.
	It's not just limited to people get stuck on the supernatural aspect of it.
	Who are you to tell this guy he can't believe in this supernatural man in the sky?
	Who are you to tell him?
	I'm not telling him he can't, but at the same time, there's so much more to every religion than just simply their belief in a supernatural phenomenon.
	There's a total living system that goes along with every religion.
	In Islam, it tells you how to handle money.
	It tells you how divorce is to be handled.
	It tells you how to bathe.
	It tells you when to bathe.
	It tells you what type of clothing to wear.
	It tells you how to conduct war.
	It tells you when to collect interest.
	I mean, how to eat, what to eat, when to eat.
	It's a total system of living beyond just simply religion, as is the case with every religion.
	And so I think that they're all on the table as subject to criticism.
	Every religion is subject to criticism because they go so far beyond just simply the supernatural aspect of it.
	They affect a nation's politics.
	They affect a nation's economy.
	They affect its position in the global economy or in global politics.
	So these are all things that are up for legitimate criticism.
	And that's what I loved about Christopher Hitchens.
	He criticized everything.
	And by the way, his last words were something on the order of like he said capitalism and then he said something else.
	There was one other word he said.
	His last word is dying word capitalism.
	Something he muttered and he died.
	I think of esophageal cancer.
	Yeah, that's the case.
	I had followed Hitchens' career and I have read most of his books that he published, as well as numerous articles that he published on Slate or Vanity Fair.
	And he really was just one of those literary figures that I think kind of comes around every now and then.
	And I really like how he tied religion to, I believe he said that religion is the source of all dictatorship on this planet.
	And you're absolutely right.
	Because a religion, it's not just a belief in some spiritual being.
	It's not just a belief in an afterlife.
	It dominates every aspect of your life, your behavior, how you conduct yourself, and how you treat other people of different religions.
	So I'm looking up the last words of Christopher Hitchens, MV, and it's capitalism, period, downfall, period.
	Yeah, there it is.
	Yep.
	Yeah, I knew there was another word in there.
	I couldn't remember it.
	I'll just have to make an association.
	Okay, think of that movie about Hitler and the bunker.
	Der Untergung.
	Exactly.
	Okay, downfall.
	Okay, got it.
	The association's made.
	I won't forget now.
	See, that's how you do that.
	These little mind tricks.
	You can remember anything.
	Associations.
	The best captioning job in the history of the internet.
	Downfall, everyone.
	Thank you.
	Have you watched the movie like a legitimate watch from beginning to end other than just in the context of the Hitler meme videos?
	Absolutely not.
	Oh, my.
	I probably have seen maybe two hours, two hours of fake Hitler videos from Downfall, but I've never actually watched the movie.
	I really, really recommend it.
	I mean, it's just a striking movie.
	I think it's probably in my top 10 all-time favorite.
	It's got everything that a movie should have.
	I mean, you do really get immersed in it to the point where you feel like you are viewing an historical record of what it is that occurred in the bunker in the final 12 days of Hitler's life.
	It's really a great movie.
	They focus a lot on Ava Braun.
	And then as time has gone on, I mean, it was years and years ago that I saw that movie.
	But as time has gone on, I've seen more and more references.
	I've seen more and more instances and documentaries or things I read about World War II where they mention an event that occurred that's portrayed in that movie.
	And I see very little deviation from what it is that history actually says happened in the bunker.
	So if you'd like to be really, really entertained and at the same time see something that's probably not entirely accurate, but probably does a better job than a lot of movies would, given the subject matter, then watch The Downfall.
	Der Untergung.
	It's the video that everybody took those Hitler clips from and they did the translations.
	And really, I mean, you get to a point where it can be a pain in the butt to watch a movie that's entirely subtitled because you can't look away.
	You are going to miss things if you look away.
	So you have to actually be actively reading and considering what it is that's in front of your face.
	But the movie's so good, you just eventually get immersed in it.
	You forget you're reading.
	It's just a great film.
	So, yeah, Der Untergung.
	Torrent it today.
	Torrent it.
	You know, it's funny that you mentioned that because I always have the captions on.
	I wonder if any other person does that.
	I always have the captions on for anything that I watch, and I've gotten so used to it, I actually rely on them.
	Not that I have no hearing loss of any kind, but especially watching Game of Thrones as these crazy long names come up.
	I like to actually see the word and how it's spelled.
	I feel like I'm able to retain a lot more of the places, characters, and situations.
	Just my little five cents there.
	Here you go, everyone.
	Turn on your captions, huh?
	Yeah, I have found that I actually benefit a lot from watching things that are captioned.
	But in my case, I think I really do have legitimate hearing loss.
	Just playing drums for years, listening to loud music for years.
	At a certain point in a former life that now just seems, I can't believe I did all that.
	I drove a truck all over the country and driving, I did that for a couple of years.
	And that's really bad for your ears.
	A lot of people don't realize that job is actually not good for your long-term prognosis when it comes to hearing.
	And is that due to the engine?
	Is that due to the ambient noise?
	Everything.
	I mean, the engine, street sound, environmental sounds, you know, just driving through cities, the tires rolling on the ground.
	It's all of that ambient sound.
	But I don't think it's the sound itself that's so much the problem, as is the fact that it's just unending.
	Your hearing mechanisms tend to be rather resilient, but it's the continued exposure to something that I have heard actually really does the damage when it comes to hearing.
	It doesn't even have to be something you would perceive as loud.
	It's just the ongoing, there's that sound never stopping.
	You know, that little bone inside there has to vibrate whether it's something you want to hear or not.
	You know, that bone doesn't only vibrate when it's something you care to listen to.
	You know, it's constantly doing that because it's got to produce some sort of a representation of how the air around you is vibrating.
	So you can hear shit when you do want to hear.
	And if there's just if you're working in a factory and not using headphones, or you're driving a truck, there's just this constant, ambient, droning, dynamically wide sound that your ears just get pounded with constantly.
	I've seen guys who've worked in factories for 30 years and they, for whatever reason, won't wear earplugs.
	They can't hear shit.
	They're just, they cannot hear a damn thing.
	So.
	Hey, it's called job security, Mr. Van Diven.
	Just saying.
	You better use those headphones, those earplugs out there, or you'll be next watching YouTube videos of people signing, no longer saying to yourself, I'm glad I'm not deaf.
	You'll no longer be able to say those words to yourself.
	So not to change the topic here.
	No, go right ahead.
	Do whatever you want, please.
	No, this is a beautiful transition here, in my opinion.
	Thank you for setting that up.
	So I went to the fair recently, and they had the bodies in motion exhibit where they took cadavers and they kind of plasticized them and then they kind of pulled them apart so you can see a human being just deconstructed.
	Have you seen yeah, it's a traveling presentation, and I think it's called bodies.
	It goes all over the country.
	They inject it with some sort of a silicon something or other.
	I don't know.
	It turns basically a liver into a rubbery thing that you could slap somebody in the face with.
	It's wild.
	Yeah, have you actually seen one in person?
	No, no, I haven't.
	I'm sure it's quite something.
	It was definitely worth the $5, let me tell you.
	That's not a lot to see that.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's pretty cheap.
	I'd pay $5.
	Yeah, why not?
	And they, of course, had, you're specifically talking about the ears.
	Well, they basically cut open a skull, and you can see all of the ossicles, the bones in the ear.
	And it's amazing just how tiny and how fragile all of that is when it's deconstructed, when it's not just a picture on a screen or something.
	And then they have the exhibit where they show someone who's a smoker, someone who's a drinker with psoriasis.
	And you walk out of that exhibit after about an hour, and you just think to yourself, if I step on a nail, if I get a virus or a bug, I'm going to die because the body is so fragile.
	You really think you'll die if you step on a nail?
	I don't think you're that fragile.
	I'm exaggerating.
	Are you immuno.
	Is this information about yourself you'd like to release to the Belgab audience?
	Is Luca Parcelli immunocompromised?
	I'm actually not in a closet.
	It's a tent, and I have oxygen fed to me, and I have a nurse.
	What's your T cell count?
	About 4,000?
	That sounds good to me.
	That sounds like a lot of T cells.
	If someone comes up to me and says, hey, I've got 4,000 T cells.
	What am I going to say?
	That's not enough?
	It sounds like an appropriate amount.
	Let's look it up, huh?
	What's a normal T cell count?
	Are you looking that up?
	Because if you are, I'll just await the presentation of the information.
	You did a pretty good job with the Christopher Hitchens thing.
	I mean, this is a pretty good—you seem on the ball with that, actually.
	This is a good approach.
	I just sit back and wait while Luca does all the research on the fly for the show.
	And we just roll with it.
	A normal range for CD4 is 500 to 1,500.
	So I'm incredibly healthy, actually.
	Can you have too many T cells?
	I mean, what would that be indicative of?
	I don't know.
	Would you have some sort of an autoimmune disorder where are there different, I guess there are different, differently marked T cells that attack different things, right?
	I'm guessing so.
	Yeah, the C D4 and C D8, I guess.
	Yeah.
	Fascinating stuff here.
	You know, you're a professor.
	Do you remember taking an anatomy and physiology class?
	Yes.
	You know, the thing that I've talked about this on podcasts before, but I was, I found protein synthesis to be one of the most fascinating things.
	It's got to be one of the biggest miracles in terms of what it is that's happening inside every cell.
	I guess almost every cell of your body all the time.
	Just the way that works.
	You should go on YouTube.
	I'm not even going to try to explain it, but everybody should go on YouTube and find a really good high-quality animation of what it is that's happening inside your cells during protein synthesis.
	It's just insane to consider the fact that we're even able to wake up every morning.
	I mean, that that all continues working properly.
	That's insane.
	I mean, the fragility of it all.
	And to think that, you know, I just saw a story yesterday about a World War II vet who's 107 years old, so, and he looks great.
	They were singing to him, I guess, at the airport or whatever.
	So these processes have been happening in every cell of his body for 107 years plus.
	All this protein synthesis with all the chemicals he's been exposed to over his life, sun rays that have burned the nuclei of his skin cells.
	I mean, just all the horrible things we're exposed to, the additives we eat, preservatives.
	And yet, the delicacy of that process has, it can last that long.
	I mean, the fact that we wake up at all, never mind 107 years into the future, is amazing.
	That's my point.
	Thank you.
	I think it's a great point.
	I mean, in the morning, I have a hard time zipping my zipper, right?
	But then, of course, you think about that happening over the entire strand of RNA, right?
	It's basically just a long zipper assembling nucleotides, and that's happening in the body, you know, 10,000.
	I don't even have a number.
	Every second, it's happening.
	I believe it's called mRNA.
	mRNA.
	You're right.
	It's been a while since I took anatomy, but messenger RNA.
	And then there's the other kind.
	It's transfer.
	Transfer RNA?
	I have no idea.
	But the end product when the amino acids are formed is called a polypeptide chain.
	And that's the protein.
	And all these different amino acids, I mean, I think there's like 20 of them.
	And they just get like stuck in these long chains.
	Just, it happens.
	It just happens.
	And if the chain isn't created in the correct order, then oh shit, you got a messed up protein.
	Hope that doesn't kill you somehow.
	I hope you didn't need that protein.
	You know, when your body breaks down, that's what's happened.
	And I would say probably every single case, some cell has started failing to synthesize proteins the way it's supposed to.
	I think everything in our degenerative process as we got older could probably be traced to that.
	I mean, the complexity of that process.
	And there's brain cells are breaking down.
	I mean, this stuff is water-soluble meat.
	I mean, just the idea that that guy's 107 years old and he made it through World War II.
	Can you imagine how much bull crap they sprayed this guy with during the war?
	I mean, it's amazing we live.
	That's my point.
	That's my broader point.
	It is amazing we continue to live.
	And that is exactly, thanks for tying it up there.
	It's exactly the point of seeing a human body deconstructed: you just have this great appreciation for, you know, regardless of your religion or spiritual beliefs.
	You just have to understand that this is this crazy, not magical, I'm not going to say magical because we do understand a lot of it.
	It's just a wondrous process, the human body.
	We're only here for a short time, too, which is demonstrated with 100.
	107 years old?
	I'm sorry, I'm starting to feel like I'm just chatting with you.
	No, it's great.
	That's exactly what it is.
	No, that's exactly what we should be doing.
	Yeah, he's 107 years old.
	He's a World War II vet, and he's sitting there listening to all these.
	He's a black guy.
	And my perception is, based on statistics I'm having thrown at me constantly, is that black men don't tend to live as long.
	Whatever the reasons for that, that's all an entirely separate discussion.
	But, I mean, to see a black man 107 years old, served in World War II, as good as he looked.
	He looked amazing.
	He could have passed for 80.
	I've seen 80-year-olds that look a lot worse than this guy.
	It was just amazing.
	You know, the human body, resilient thing.
	Your bodies.
	You're mentioning of the bodies thing.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	You go ahead and I'll come back to this in a minute.
	What are you going to say?
	I was just saying I looked him up here on Google search, and he looks great.
	Doesn't he?
	That was the first thing that struck me.
	Wow.
	Yeah, that was the first thing that hit me.
	Wow, look at that guy.
	Looks amazing.
	And I'll bet you if you asked him what he did, he's just a lucky DNA lottery winner.
	He'll probably tell you about all the horrible things he ate that he wasn't supposed to eat.
	He probably smoked at some point in his life.
	Everybody did back then.
	It's really amazing.
	Your mentioning of that bodies exhibit that's traveling all the time made me remember to mention that actually pretty soon I'm going to be having my friend on, I guess I'll do it as like a Michael Van Devens radio train wreck type show.
	I've got a buddy who is a, he works in the death industry.
	His dad's a former coroner, and I think he was the coroner for like 20 years.
	And my friend, his son, the coroner's son, grew up in a funeral home from the time he was born until just recently.
	He's now, what, 25?
	Maybe 26.
	His entire life, for 25 years until just a few months ago, he lived in a funeral home.
	And he's just had death around him his entire life, utterly and completely unfazed by the concept of death.
	When you're talking to him about the embalming process or accident scenes he's come upon, whatever it is pertaining to things that you would expect somebody in that position to deal with, he has such a nonchalant, business-like, matter-of-fact way of talking about it.
	He's not in shock at all.
	I would think that if I worked in the death industry and I just saw all of the horrible, crazy ways people die unexpectedly in a lot of cases, it might make me a little neurotic.
	I might turn into some sort of a Woody Allen figure.
	You know, you just realize, my God, people are really dying in a lot of crazy ways they never saw coming.
	But it doesn't seem to bother him at all.
	Although he's, you know, I don't know.
	I think in some ways he actually does seem like somebody who grew up around death his entire life.
	He does have a certain darkness about him.
	I slept in that funeral home one night.
	Actually, two nights I slept in that funeral home.
	One night I slept in this little room where they have all these little figurines.
	I guess you'd call them Hummels, really.
	I think that's what they were.
	And a lot of things were alleged to have happened in this room.
	Women seen walking around in there who had no business being in that room, who then suddenly disappeared, nobody could find.
	And one of the pictures hanging on one of these little figurines is supposedly of this woman that's been seen walking around in that room.
	I slept in that room one night, and my friend told me, now, listen, and that room is immediately adjacent to the main walkway on the interior of the funeral home.
	You know, as people are coming in, this is the main drag that everybody's going to walk down.
	This room is immediately adjacent to that.
	And before I went to sleep, he told me, listen, at about three in the morning, maybe 3:30, there's going to be a lot of activity in this hallway.
	And I just sort of accepted that, and I began the process of going to sleep in that room, but I did not sleep even for a moment.
	Exactly as he described.
	3, 3:30 in the morning, you start hearing little pings and dings and creaks on the floor, a shuffling sound, just noises that really, I'm not stupid.
	They have no business being there.
	This funeral home has so much.
	I hate to sound like I'm on the Ghost Hunters show because they use certain terminologies and they repeat certain things that are just dumb, in my opinion.
	But I'll take the chance of sounding like one of them.
	The place just has an energy to it.
	You know, you just feel something coming off of it.
	It goes all the way back to the 1800s.
	I think 1840s, this place became a funeral home.
	And it was just continually built upon, built upon, added to.
	And they've seen full-bodied apparitions walking up and down the hallway.
	Just a lot of really weird things happen.
	There was a sleep paralysis experience that he had, my friend had.
	You know, and you sort of like when you're friends with somebody who lives in that sort of an environment, you come to fear the idea of it all a lot less.
	Like we play, I play drums.
	My friend, he plays guitar.
	And from time to time, we'll get together and play.
	And a lot of those instances, we would set our equipment up, our instruments up in the chapel of this funeral home.
	And one night I'm walking down the main drag and I turn left and oh, hey, there's a dead person on a cart.
	Just like, where would you normally ever be where that happens to you?
	I mean, whoever just happens to be somewhere in their life at any point where that occurs, unless you've been in war or something where death is inherently associated with it.
	But, you know, I'm just like, oh, I think I'll go right.
	Oh, hey, dead body.
	Had I gone left?
	No dead body.
	It's just when you see that, when you encounter that, you do, on a certain level, start to get used to it.
	I mean, when you're looking from the outside in at a funeral director or, you know, that entire scene, and you know, people in many instances live in these funeral homes, and you're like, how can they, how can they live in there?
	That just seems undoable to me.
	I can kind of understand it.
	You know, when you're in that environment a lot, as I was because he's my friend, you do sort of come to understand it and really on a certain level not feel bothered by it.
	Hi, you're on the air.
	Hi there.
	Who's this?
	Hi, Juan.
	I don't think we've ever talked.
	How are you?
	Have you?
	Oh, that's cool.
	Well, I hope you're having a good night.
	What sort of things do you say when you call into Heather's show?
	He's referring to Midnight in the Desert.
	Does she like it when you call?
	Do you feel like you're viewed as a positive contribution to the show?
	You think they go over her head?
	Give me an example of a brilliant question that you think went over some heads.
	Just the first thing that comes to mind when I ask that question.
	Isn't that sort of the old, maybe we're living inside somebody else's simulation discussion?
	So you don't consider time to be a dimension?
	I thought time was the third dimension.
	I want to live in a two-dimensional universe.
	I think it'd be much simpler.
	Everybody would just look like South Park cutouts.
	I'm sorry, I interrupted.
	What did you say?
	Tell me more.
	What about it?
	But you said that you believe that we live in a two-dimensional universe because of this?
	Okay.
	So you don't really believe we, like you and I, are living in a two-dimensional universe.
	Or do you?
	Okay, so if take the for the pro side of that argument, if someone were to believe that we live in a two-dimensional universe, what would be the reason to believe that?
	Oh, so you're saying those those two those building blocks are not multi-dimensional.
	Yeah, but that still doesn't put the bow tie on why somebody would argue we live in a two-dimensional universe.
	I don't understand.
	I really want to know.
	I mean, if that's a point of view that somebody out there has, I want to know why they have it.
	Well, that's interesting, but I'm not sure it solves any problems for me any more than somebody saying the universe is a sphere and we, and as a part of this universe, you are on the interior of that sphere.
	I mean, that doesn't really explain anything to me either.
	Uh-huh.
	What do you think that if that hacking were to occur, how do you think it would manifest itself?
	Some people might say that the onset of the nuclear age represented that hacking.
	That was the hacking.
	You think so?
	Perhaps so.
	I mean, like, I consider myself a deep expert.
	Throw anything at me.
	Go ahead.
	As information.
	We can use that information in ways that the universe didn't intend us to use it.
	The universe being, I guess you would say, the laws of physics.
	Laws with quotation marks around the word laws.
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't see any reason to doubt that assertion.
	That's a good question.
	Well, it's not changing.
	No, no, it's not changing the laws of physics, that's for sure.
	But just as biological sentient beings, all the odds are against us in terms of us arriving at that capability to manipulate atomic structures and how they interact with one another.
	And so if that happens, I think that represents definitely at least a seminal event, for sure.
	It might not represent the hacking.
	I think it could, but it's definitely at the very least it's a seminal event.
	Right.
	Luca, do you have any thoughts on any of the things that Juan Cena has been talking about here?
	I'm just thinking about the video game No Man's Sky, and that's what I'm thinking about here.
	Just kind of pulling apart information in the form of bites traveling to the center of the universe.
	That's basically what I'm envisioning right now as you're talking about hacking the universe.
	Well, I wish I had that image to draw upon.
	I have not played the game.
	And neither have I. I've just seen the backlash.
	Go ahead, Luca.
	I mean, Juan.
	So basically, though, you've just sort of given us a taste of what it is that you bring to Heather's show.
	And I think that was a very interesting discussion.
	I think that it's possible somebody could misunderstand you and not realize just how interesting a discussion you might be bringing to the table.
	But once it's given some consideration, yeah, that's an interesting discussion.
	So does it go over well when you call?
	How often do you call?
	In other words, are you referring to the famous photograph of the Loch Ness monster?
	Are you saying, did that photograph accidentally capture a rod?
	Or are you saying, literally, if you could locate the Loch Ness monster right now, you would find a rod.
	Is that what you mean?
	Like, if we get in a boat, we scuba dive.
	If we locate the Loch Ness monster's physical location, if he in fact exists, are you saying that would in fact be a rod?
	Or are you saying that the famous photograph of the Loch Ness monster happens to have simply captured a rod and that it's a photographic anomaly?
	Which are you saying?
	Wow.
	That's mind-blown.
	I guess perhaps I am poorly versed in how a rod is defined.
	I mean, is there a physiology to it?
	Is it what is a rod?
	Is it a shapeshifter?
	Can a rod be anything it wants to be?
	You know, the thing that annoys me about rods is that the entire discussion stems, I think, as far as I can see, from a series of photographs people have taken that contain anomalies, and they're not really, I don't even think they're very interesting anomalies.
	When I see photos that are purported to have rods in them, it never looks like anything to me that's of particular interest or that's particularly anomalous when you imagine just exactly what can happen when you move a camera in certain ways as you're taking pictures.
	I mean, there's probably other better evidence than just a few pictures I saw on a website in 1998, but you get my point.
	Well, who's to doubt that?
	Who could tell you you're wrong?
	Nobody could tell you you're not wrong.
	I mean, there has to be so much about the universe we're surrounded by that we have absolutely no idea of, no perception of whatsoever.
	So who's to say you're wrong?
	I don't know.
	You know, when you, there are a lot of documentaries out there where scientists get together and they try to imagine what might exist on an alien planet.
	You know, it's going to be affected by the gravity force on the surface of the planet based on how big the planet is or how much mass it has, I guess.
	Its distance from the sun, the speed at which it revolves around the sun, the speed at which it rotates, if it rotates, how many moons does it have?
	Does it have any moons at all?
	How big are they?
	How close are they?
	What speed do they travel at?
	I mean, all of these random things are going to totally go into what evolutionary path biological life is going to take as it exists in this environment.
	And so they imagine totally non-carbon based life forms, like entire seas where the sea itself is a life form, a non-carbon based life form.
	And like animals are, these are all animations and stuff.
	But my point is, it's not totally crazy to say non-carbon-based life forms may exist in the universe somewhere.
	I mean, a lot of people believe that was that I never could get into deep space.
	I love The Next Generation so much.
	Not a crazy fan of the original series, but Deep Space Nine came along and it just had a certain feel to it that I didn't like.
	And you're talking about the shapeshifter guy.
	He could become anything he wanted to become based on what?
	They were called the Changelings.
	That's the race.
	I don't like that name.
	Well, I'm aware of the shapeshifter, but nevertheless, I never got into Deep Space Nine.
	Not the best series.
	I don't know.
	You know what I think probably turned me off were the token attempts to bring along the fans of the next generation by including Jean-Luc Picard in a scene in the conference room with the captain.
	What's the captain's name in Deep Space Nine?
	I forgot.
	Luca, do you know?
	What's the Deep Space Nine captain?
	I can look it up.
	Yeah, he's very good at looking those things up for us as we wait.
	I just felt like it was a token attempt.
	It was so transparent.
	Okay, we get it.
	You've got this new series now.
	You're hoping that the next generation fans will all hop over and follow this.
	But you know what?
	It really was.
	You know, when Gene Roddenberry died and Rick Berman took over producing The Next Generation, I think that he felt a certain obligation to try and maintain an approach.
	And when the Deep Space Nine came along, I think everybody sort of cleansed themselves of that restriction and just did whatever it was they wanted to do all those years, but they just couldn't because maybe it might not be accepted.
	I don't know.
	Just Cisco.
	Yeah, Captain Cisco.
	It just had a feel to it I didn't like.
	Never got into it.
	Couldn't invest in the characters.
	I felt like the shapeshifter, you know, we get the formulaic thing that's going on here, okay?
	Spock is data, is the shapeshifter is, I'm sure, enterprise and whatever else that's come subsequent to that, they all have their SPO.
	You know, they all have their data.
	It's like, okay, we're tired of it.
	Stop.
	And I think that actually the next generation got a little better in some ways when Gene Roddenberry was no longer in the picture.
	That's sacrilege.
	You can't say that, but I think that.
	I would like to know in the future portrayed by Star Trek where, you know, all of these people are going to Starfleet.
	They're doing what they do.
	And they aren't getting paid to do it because this is no longer in any way a capitalistic economy, supposedly.
	So I get that you could explain somebody's motivation to join Starfleet with, well, but, you know, you're going to get to do all that space traveling, and it's going to be really groovy and just so interesting.
	You're not going to have to worry about room or board.
	It's a position of prestige.
	You're going to have everything you need.
	You won't get paid, but look at what you're going to do.
	You're going to go to different dimensions.
	You're going to encounter the Borg.
	You're going to help prevent political disasters within the Klingon Empire.
	It's going to be amazing, the things you're going to do.
	So no, I'm not going to pay you because if you don't want to do this, a million other people definitely want to do this.
	Okay, I understand that explanation.
	But then we have all the people on the ground who never go up in a starship.
	They're like working inside the Federation halls.
	Maybe they shuffle papers or they're bureaucrats or whatever it is they do.
	Why do those people come to work every day?
	I mean, what are they getting out of the headache that comes along with it?
	I don't understand.
	That's where the whole future vision for Star Trek sort of lost it with me.
	In a post-scarcity society.
	Oh, well, you know what?
	That is, well, replicators could entirely, fundamentally transform every single facet of our lives, couldn't they?
	Think of all the oil that's no longer going to be required to manufacture plastics.
	You're just going to be able to use energy to make syringes or medical tubes, whatever.
	Every single piece of plastic around you is made of, it's a derivative of oil.
	So think of all just that.
	You know, we no longer have any reason for anybody to have a foothold or to be meddling in the Middle East because there's no longer an oil concern there.
	A lot of things would change with replicators.
	A lot of businesses would die immediately.
	So there goes, I guess that would explain the downfall of capitalistic pursuit.
	I mean, not only are you not buying anything, but you're also not getting paid anything.
	But that's okay because you don't have to buy anything.
	You can replicate a house.
	It's utterly, completely the infancy of 3D printing, though.
	And when you talk about that, you're talking about probably the most predominant form of 3D printer, which is the one where you've got the big spool of plastic that gets fed into a hopper-type system and it just pulls the spool.
	And that's what actually is used as the material to form the three-dimensional object.
	And yeah, those are pretty good, but they're going to have to come out with something that's just fundamentally different that doesn't use this system at all.
	And I know those systems exist.
	They have really amazing laser-driven systems where you just have this big giant vat and it's filled with a powder.
	And these lasers just at certain angles and the X and the Y axis of these two lasers, wherever they cross, it burns this powder material and it becomes a hardened plastic or whatever the material is.
	I don't know what the end material is, but they make entire objects, large objects, extremely complex objects.
	And the key to their quality is not just the material they're made from, but also the resolution at which these objects are produced.
	That's the important thing.
	It's the resolution.
	You know, how many times does the head have to squeeze the plastic out to make a one-inch square?
	You know, to make that one-inch square, if that head actually needs to go around 900 times instead of 500 times, then that means the square is a more accurate representation of whatever object you decided to reproduce.
	But they can only get so good with that.
	I'd like to thank everybody for tuning into the Futurist Hour, helping you as Americans understand what the future holds for all of us.
	That's why we do this show every week.
	The Futurist, brought to you by ufoship.com, where, by the way, there's a menu containing a link that says e-cigs.
	If you click on that e-cigs link and then you go there and you buy anything, bellgab.com basically gets the money.
	That's basically what happens.
	So if you're not prone to donating to things, but you're not against the idea of buying an actual product where you get something tangibly in exchange for money spent, I think that's the better way to go anyway.
	Begging for money or handing people money, just here's money.
	I don't know.
	It's nice, but I think it would be much better if people could get a tangible product in exchange for whatever money it is they fork out.
	And this is a great way to go about that.
	Amazing flavors, high quality.
	You would have to say that in many ways, the products offered there are comparable.
	You could say it's the iPhone of the e-cig slash vape industry.
	Extremely high commitment to quality.
	Lots of flavors.
	My personal favorite happens to be green tea menthol.
	I don't even like menthol, but it's just such a beautifully crisp, interesting taste.
	It's just amazing.
	You know, one thing I will say I'm getting sick of, though, are all of these people who cannot record a YouTube video without clouds of vapor rolling out of their face.
	Aren't these people the biggest assholes ever?
	It just is insufferable.
	Who?
	I don't know who that is.
	Who's Craig James?
	Yeah, see?
	Yeah, in general, I don't pay any attention.
	Was it factual?
	Is he under investigation by law enforcement?
	I mean, has there been a conclusion to that storyline?
	Well, the fact that we're talking about it right now means there must have been some blowback as a result of this.
	Was there?
	Is it?
	I mean, a meme that says you basically are a prostitute killer.
	Imagine that floating out around there about you.
	Yeah, go ahead, Luca.
	I'm so sorry.
	Hold on, hold on, Juan.
	Let Luca jump in here.
	Go ahead, Luca.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I didn't.
	No, you're not.
	Go ahead.
	Craig James, SMU meme, and it's him as the most interesting man in the world with the dosekis.
	And it says, I don't always kill five hookers at SMU, but when I do, I kill five hookers at SMU.
	Is that the meme that you're talking about?
	Is there evidence of this?
	You're aware of the meme, Juan, so you must know if there's respectable evidence of this or not.
	Brig in the chat room said AI will be doing that stuff, MV.
	I wish I knew what it was she was talking about.
	Or I wish I knew what I was talking about when she typed that.
	That's one of the downsides to this is we have this delay.
	I think Jezmunder and I timed it out to something like 32 seconds.
	It's considerable.
	So then if I see what you typed at the top of the chat window, because I should have been watching more closely, and then you add the 30 seconds to that, I have no clue what it is that I said.
	Anyway, Luca, what do you want to talk about?
	Is there anything you want to jump to?
	What's on your mind?
	Well, I'm trying to think of what we were talking about before the show started.
	I mean, we were on...
	Well, we were on the dead bodies.
	I mean, was there anywhere in that regard you wanted to go that we didn't go?
	I think I had a feeling that you had something more to say about that.
	Not offhand, actually.
	No.
	Okay, well, thank you for listening to the gabcast, everybody.
	I do want to see the bodies exhibit.
	I see billboards for it everywhere.
	But I have listened to interviews with people who actually work for the exhibit describing how it is exactly that they do this to these bodies.
	It's just pretty messed up, actually.
	But it's probably the best form of human preservation that's ever existed on this planet and the history of human preservation upon death.
	I mean, there's a long history of different approaches to that, some better than others.
	And I would say that based on the photos I've seen of these things, the billboards I see, the realism of it all, I mean, these bodies are just perfectly preserved.
	And that's something that I did look up after I got home.
	There's some controversy, actually, about where the bodies come from, because they all look of sort of a shock.
	Really?
	That's creepy.
	I mean, I wasn't creeped out by the dead bodies, but if it seems that they're all coming from some impoverished country full of brown people, that I find a little off-putting.
	Well, there's more.
	I believe there were 55 bodies or something like that, and they were taken from parts of Mongolia, China, Russia.
	Homeless people.
	Oh, no.
	People who were just picked up bodies that were collected, and the coroner actually sold them to this company.
	And that was sort of one of the controversies about this particular exhibit.
	Wow.
	I had never heard this.
	So they went into all these shady countries where they don't have to worry about what someone has determined will happen with their body upon death.
	And they say, hey, here's a couple Ben Franklins.
	Just give us this body.
	What are you doing?
	Take the money.
	What do you nuts?
	Could you imagine this happening in the United States where a small company was going to the coroner's office of various large cities and saying, hey, do you have any John Does or Jane Does that you want to sell us?
	I could see that happening in a coroner's office here.
	And the reason why is because a coroner, I think we are probably the only industrialized nation.
	I'm not an expert on this.
	I have no idea if I'm correct to say it.
	But we've got to be one of the only industrialized nations with a coroner system.
	Anybody can run for coroner.
	You do not need to have any level of expertise.
	I used to be a 911 dispatcher, and the coroner in this county used to occasionally come into the dispatching office and chat me up.
	And I can remember listening to this guy.
	This guy was so country.
	You just would never guess that this guy is the man who's going to determine the cause of death or determine whether somebody died under suspicious circumstances anytime someone in this county dies.
	I mean, that is a crazy amount of responsibility.
	And anybody can do it.
	All you have to do is win an election.
	People don't realize that.
	Whereas if there's a medical examiner in charge of what's happening in a county, that's an actual professional.
	The term medical examiner implies a certain level of credential.
	Whereas a coroner can just be anybody.
	I could be the coroner in my county right now.
	And everybody would be cool with it.
	I mean, as long as I know how to smile properly and I've got the right connections and everybody's, you know, hey, he's coroner groovy.
	You know, as long as everybody feels all right about it, hey, that's all it takes.
	I mean, it is a very political position.
	Now, my friend whose dad was the coroner also ran a mortuary service.
	So I would say at least he had that level of professionalism behind him, that level of credential behind him.
	But it does not make him a forensic pathologist.
	He's not Cyril Wecht.
	He's not Michael Biden.
	Yet it is his determination as to whether a person committed suicide or they were murdered, whether it's an unnatural death, a natural death.
	The coroner is a huge chunk of where someone's death goes once they're scraped off the floor.
	Does it become an investigation or does everybody go home and just have a good night?
	The coroner, an elected position, has a huge, probably bigger than any other individual involved in the death process, a huge role in determining whether someone is going to look more deeply into your death or not.
	Unless your county has a medical examiner again.
	But a lot don't.
	And I don't know if this is a regional thing.
	I don't know if you'll find a higher number of coroners in, say, the Midwest than you will on the coast.
	If I were to find that that's the case, I wouldn't at all be surprised.
	I doubt anyone in California is referred to as a coroner.
	I doubt there are any counties in California that have coroners.
	I doubt there are counties in New York State that have coroners.
	They're probably all medical examiners.
	And you can get on YouTube and watch video after video of incidents where an investigation of somebody's death would have gone entirely in a different direction had the investigating authority been an actual medical professional.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Actually, I live in Los Angeles County, and it is the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiners.
	However, back in the old days, during the times of the Quincy ME, I believe it was called the coroner's office, even though he was a medical examiner.
	So the term has changed.
	The office has changed names, but you're right, it's a medical examiner, and that's how we do things here in California.
	I'm looking at the money.
	Juan Cena says I heathered him.
	No, she got that from me.
	That's my thing.
	She's MVing you when she hangs up on you.
	Go ahead, Luca.
	Oh, I'm so sorry.
	So this is now a verb now?
	A heather?
	Well, he says that I heathered him because I don't say, okay, well, it was a swell time, and you make sure you keep in touch with your grandma and have a great night over there.
	You know, I just hang up.
	Okay, we're done.
	See, and you had no idea that I had done that.
	The show just moves on.
	See?
	There doesn't need to be a speed bump where everybody says goodbye.
	We love Juan Cena.
	He had a great call, and everybody's happy with it.
	The cadavers were traced to a Russian medical examiner who was convicted last year of illegally selling the bodies of homeless people, prisoners, and indigent hospital patients.
	So he was convicted of a crime at least.
	Yes.
	The Medical Academy of Von Hagen's Lab in Heidelberg, Germany.
	But he had gotten them from places in the Far East.
	Nice.
	Yeah, that's creepy.
	I mean, if you're going to go see the exhibit, you want to imagine that, okay, I see a dead body riding a bicycle right now, but I'm guessing that the guy who used to own this dead body, the man that this dead body used to be, probably wanted and loved the idea of himself living, being preserved for eternity.
	I mean, just the level of immortality that would come along with this relative to how most people die.
	Wow, great.
	Yeah, make me a part of the body exhibit.
	But no, in reality, he was on the floor of an alley in Bangkok.
	That's where he came from, and he really would just like to go home.
	He has no idea where he is right now.
	He doesn't know what the hell happened.
	That's not the image you want as you're looking at the bodies exhibit.
	You don't want to think that, I mean, by patronizing that, it's almost as though you're going to Thailand and spending money on the sex trade.
	I mean, it's akin to that.
	It's like you're a Thailand sex tourist if you go see the bodies exhibit.
	Human trafficking.
	So what I'm saying is, Luca Parcelli is a human trafficker.
	If you didn't have an opinion of him as a bell gabber before, I hope you'll take that into consideration.
	I'm Michael Van Deeven.
	Well, let's just say that had I read this article found on NPR, by the way.
	I know we started the show as an NPR broadcast.
	If I had read this before I went to the exhibit, I probably would have thought twice.
	Although it does have a lot of value, I'll be honest.
	No matter where, no matter where the bodies came from, human trafficking does have its perks and benefits.
	I'm Luca Parcelli.
	Hey, if it's consenting adults on both sides, I think you can be as trafficked as you want to be.
	I really do.
	As long as it's full consent on both sides.
	But, you know, the term trafficking, that's a very pejorative term.
	So when you hear that, you don't necessarily assume consent is universal in the situation.
	No, not at all.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Go ahead.
	I was just saying, especially with these bodies, I feel like this is something that's a little odd maybe, but they didn't shave.
	So they have like fuzz.
	They have a five o'clock shadow, right?
	And there's like a little fuzz on their chin and their eyebrows still have the hair.
	And they don't really, they didn't clean them up before they pulled their skin off.
	It's kind of strange.
	I don't know how to explain it really, but they didn't clean the bodies very well, it seems, before they preserved them.
	Their fingernails are dirty.
	They're long.
	Their hair is kind of unkempt, whatever hair they have on their face.
	And it's just not a very flattering image.
	And now if you see that exhibit again, you will know that the facial hair that you're looking at is just the result of the fact that that guy could not afford a razor.
	He didn't have a razor.
	It wasn't a conscious choice to grow facial hair.
	My God, it changes the context of everything.
	Are you going to go to the bodies exhibit again, Luca?
	They're going to have to totally retool, aren't they?
	They're going to retool.
	They probably would.
	I'll be honest.
	I would too.
	I would too.
	Absolutely.
	I don't care.
	Yeah, one other thing I'll say is that I was amazed at how many parents brought their children to see this exhibit.
	I think the youngest I saw was about five or six walking, not in a stroller, but just walking around with their parents looking at all the bodies and pointing.
	And a father picking up his daughter and saying, look at the heart here in this glass case.
	And I didn't quite know how to feel about that.
	What age do you think would be appropriate to bring your daughters to see the bodies exhibit?
	That's a tough.
	Well, since this is my first go as a parent, I'll know when the moment comes, you know, but I haven't been through that full experiential thing of parenthood yet.
	So when I get to that point, you know, you make these, and every kid is different.
	Every kid has a different personality.
	You hear parents say, you love all your kids, you just love them differently because there are different things about each of those kids.
	So I don't know.
	I guess I'll just know when the moment comes, but I will say that my oldest daughter, who is going to be four in about three days, she's in Morocco right now with my wife, her mom, visiting family.
	And she just had her first real exposure to death.
	She saw a little because they just had the Islamic holiday of Eid, and so they slaughter a sheep.
	And she saw the sheep very shortly after it had been slaughtered.
	It's a pretty gruesome process, really.
	I mean, hopefully the person slaughtering the sheep knows what they're doing and they hit the right veins and the sheep dies quickly.
	But every single household in the Islamic world on this holiday, and there's not just one Eid, I don't think.
	I think there's at least one more at some point in the year.
	I have no idea what it is.
	Maybe it's the solstice that determines it.
	I have no idea.
	I guess when's the first day of fall?
	When does that start?
	September 1st, right, when the pumpkin spice latte arrives at Starbucks.
	I don't know.
	I'm sure it's tied to something like it's probably somehow synchronized with the same night that Muhammad saw a blackbird fly across the moon as he stared at the sky.
	And that is what told him to take his sword and pursue the deliverance of Islam to the deep corners of the world.
	I mean, there's probably some symbolism that says, okay, this is why these holidays start on this date.
	Because like Eid and Ramadan, all those things, I don't think any of that stuff happens on the same date.
	It's all dependent on a variety of factors, I believe.
	And so anyway, long story short, my little four-year-old daughter, cutest little thing ever.
	She saw this little baby sheep shortly after it had been slaughtered.
	I hope its death was quick.
	And it really upset her at first.
	But then my wife explained to her that, yes, but we're going to eat this.
	That's why.
	They killed him so that we could eat this and you're going to like it.
	It's going to be so tasty.
	And, you know, she was made to understand the process.
	She was made to understand for the first time.
	I mean, most kids have eaten plenty of meat by the time they're almost four years old, but they have no idea really what it is they're eating, where it came from, the whole concept.
	They don't get that.
	So that's a really, that's a moment for her, you know, just that first real exposure to death.
	And I'm not sure that it was necessarily planned to happen, but it just happened that she saw this little dead sheep shortly after it had been slaughtered.
	It really upset her at first, but I think when she had everything explained to her and she understood that there's a purpose to all of this, and then doubly when she actually tasted how great it was, I'm sure any feelings of negativity toward the whole scene probably melted away rather fast.
	But so I guess that's an example of, it's kind of related to your question.
	I mean.
	No, I think that that's a great answer.
	And I'm actually looking up Eid right now.
	I made the mistake of looking it up on Google images and I saw a sheep being ripped apart just nuts.
	It's lovely.
	And the kids throughout the Islamic world, think of the feelings that weld up within you the night of Christmas Eve as you're lying in bed, imagining what awaits you in the morning.
	Every person who's lived knows that feeling, at least if you lived.
	You get my point.
	I mean, okay, I understand not every human being in the world celebrates Christmas.
	Please don't email me to inform me of that.
	But those who do, you all know the feeling the night before you're lying in bed, the anticipation.
	I'm telling you, the kids in the Islamic world have that exact feeling about this holiday where the family buys a sheep and daddy slaughters it by slicing its neck and bleeding it out.
	That is viewed with the same level of revelry, anticipation, euphoria, all those same feelings.
	That is their Christmas Eve or their Christmas morning is killing that sheep.
	And that just is another example of something you can point to and say anyone who thinks that the Islamic world and the Western world are going to understand one another eventually is an idiot because there's not an American walking around who could relate to the euphoria of waking up the next morning and slaughtering a sheep.
	No Westerner, unless they're steeped in that culture for some reason, but I'm talking about like a white guy like me, you know, the type of Westerner people imagine.
	I mean, you can't make them understand that feeling.
	You can't make them understand that holiday or the emotional significance it has.
	But the level of significance, it does exist for them, just as your feelings about Christmas would exist for you, but they could never relate to that.
	They would equally be incapable of relating.
	And so when you see these fundamental differences that are just so anathema, I mean, think about that.
	You get up and slaughter a sheep.
	You slice its neck And the blood gushes out everywhere.
	There's 99% of the people who are Christian Westerners listening to a description of that event I don't think could relate to that or understand how they view that with the level of excitement they do.
	And you see things like that and you just know we are never going to figure out our differences.
	Right, yeah.
	And it seems to me here, I'm reading that men, women, and children dress in their finest clothing to go to Education.
	It's a big deal.
	It's a very big deal.
	And it seems like it's a form, it's a demonstration of affluence, too.
	It says right here in Pakistan alone, 10 million animals are slaughtered on the days, the two days, and it costs $3 billion in U.S. dollars or so.
	Yeah, you're right.
	It's a big deal.
	I'm learning about it right now as we're talking.
	My wife really must look like Warren Buffett in Morocco right now because she's bought a lot of sheep, a lot of sheeps for a lot of poor people.
	And that's because it is such a big deal that for a family not to have a sheep, for a family not to be able to afford a sheep that they can slaughter that morning, oh my God, that's a huge ordeal.
	That's a really bad problem.
	You're going to have a lot of upset people.
	And that's just probably one of the worst indicators of your current circumstance in life.
	If your family was not able to get a sheep for Eid.
	So she's bought a lot of sheeps for a lot of people.
	I'll bet you they probably think she's just absolutely loaded.
	And you're right, because there is a, there's a certain level of, it's an indicator of status in some ways.
	How big is your sheep?
	What's it look like?
	Okay, well, the more you spent, the nicer the sheep is going to be.
	Everybody can see you walking down the street with a huge sheep and that looks really healthy and it's really good, a perfect specimen that says something about you.
	So, yeah, waking up that morning having no sheep whose throat you can so just callously slit.
	I don't think they're callous about it.
	I mean, they say some Quranic verses and they understand the significance of taking its life, but they are still going to take it.
	But every single thing gets used.
	They eat all the meat.
	The skin gets used for something.
	They cook the head.
	They cook the head.
	I could probably post this video of my mother-in-law cooking a sheep's dead head directly on coals in this thing.
	And then they eat it.
	It's so disgusting.
	It's so disgusting.
	It's a charred head.
	And they're going to eat this thing.
	I guess they eat the brain.
	There's meat inside there, you know, around the jaws, and I'm sure they, uh, uh.
	So what you're saying probably is that those PETA videos that go around American campuses, they're probably not as effective in the Islamic world, right?
	Those.
	Those videos narrated by Alec Baldwin where it's like, and now you see the sheep.
	Its throat is slit and it's left to dangle on the chain for two minutes here.
	And this is terrible.
	We need to consider vegetarianism here for the health of the planet and for humanity and such.
	Well, I think the average Islamist might not be so sympathetic toward that sheep because that's just a yearly thing they do and they're so used to it and desensitized to what a Westerner might see as the horror of the event.
	But that does not necessarily mean that they would be okay with somebody torturing a cat, let's say.
	So I don't think that even though they did grow up in that culture, and even though they're slashing open a sheep's throat once or twice a year, I think they'd probably, I don't know, I think the average Islamist is probably not okay with animal abuse necessarily any more so than an American would be.
	I mean, I see a lot of, but I see a lot of neglect of animals over there.
	I mean, there are just tons of stray cats everywhere, stray dogs, getting no treatment for anything of any kind.
	But then again, maybe that could be said about any urban environment.
	I mean, anytime I'm in that country, I'm in a totally urban area with just trash and decay everywhere.
	When I'm in Morocco, I see a lot of most people who would go to a country like that, if they're going to go on vacation or whatever, they're going to go to the places that are for them, places that the country expects them to go visit.
	You know, most Westerners go to a country like that and they don't walk around in a shanty town, the maze of a shantytown.
	That's kind of something that a lot of people have never experienced.
	It's interesting to walk through a neighborhood knowing that if you accidentally move your head the wrong way, your head could be chopped off by 10 sheets hanging off the corner of somebody's little whatever you call it that they're living in.
	It's just a different world.
	It really is.
	It's amazing.
	We're never going to relate to each other.
	We're so different.
	And I would like to thank everybody for tuning in to this evening's edition of Foreign Policy Perspectives with Belgabs MV and Luca Parsilli.
	Yes, one person who's never left the country and has very little international perspective.
	I don't even have a passport, so what can I say?
	You should get one because even if you don't plan to go anywhere, just so that if you ever need to go somewhere, you can.
	There's no process you have to wait for.
	I mean, if you have a passport, I mean, you may never use it, but it serves as another form of ID.
	A passport allows you to leave the country anytime you want.
	Without a passport, you are imprisoned.
	And I think just on the principle of that whole matter, it just feels good to have a passport, I think, even if you don't plan to go anywhere.
	Yeah, you know what sounds so strange to me is my parents immigrated here from the Netherlands, and my grandparents brought them over when they were about 10, 11.
	And my family from the moment, I was raised with the belief that you just, you don't leave the country.
	There's no reason to.
	This is the best place that there is.
	And that's persisted even into my adulthood.
	It's a little odd to think about now.
	But they've had to, you know, they've had to find out.
	I'm surprised to hear this.
	You sound like I would expect you to be, I mean, being a university professor, I would expect that to have been a part of your life experience.
	World travel.
	World travel.
	No, not so much, actually.
	It's interesting to think about now, because as I said, my parents, they came here and they, you know, we have our culture.
	And I live in California, so there's so much of it here.
	I really just haven't felt the need to travel very much.
	I actually never went to the east coast of the United States until about four years ago.
	Wow.
	How about that?
	Yeah, right, exactly.
	It's kind of a new thing for me traveling.
	I suppose I should, though, as everyone else leaves the country, the Lena Dunhams of the world and the Amy Schumers come January 20th of next year, right?
	Well, I mean, I guess that depends on who the next president's going to be.
	I mean, I would expect, having said that, you seem to believe Donald Trump's going to be the next president.
	I believe so.
	Why?
	I believe so.
	Why?
	Well, because of the poll numbers and because there's an October surprise coming out pretty soon here.
	Julian Assange is going to have his data dump.
	And because Hillary is, I believe, one of the worst Democratic candidates, definitely in my voting lifetime.
	And I think that it's very likely as unpalatable as Donald Trump is to the average American, allegedly.
	I think that's just purely it.
	It's alleged.
	It's crap.
	Exactly.
	That's what I'm saying.
	There are other candidates from whom to select.
	And he's doing, what, 47%?
	His wall was 30%, everybody remember.
	Or was it 26%?
	Or his ceiling.
	That was his ceiling.
	26%, his wall.
	Freudian slip.
	Yeah, and he has just defied expectations in many ways.
	And I think that this concept of a landslide election in favor of any Democrat has been completely foolish, and it will be foolish.
	And I think that this is a competitive race still.
	But I think at the end of the day, in a month, it'll be changing.
	You know, what's odd is I've been watching the I started paying attention to politics when I was 13 years old and I'm 36 now.
	So I have pretty much, from the beginning, I've been watching the Clintons for a long time.
	And I've had just nothing but negative feelings for Hillary for a long time.
	I view her in such a negative light.
	And it's not because of the fact that she's a Democrat or any of that.
	I mean, there are plenty of Democrats that I've liked over the years.
	I may not agree with everything they say, but maybe attitudinally I've liked a lot of them or whatever.
	So I'm not incapable of considering somebody's humanity based on what political party it is they say they belong to or what their core beliefs happen to be.
	That's not really necessarily going to stop me from liking somebody either.
	But with all the negativity I harbor for her, it was weird when I heard the other night when I saw on my phone the news about her almost passing out at the 9-11 deal memorial.
	I didn't see that until probably five or six hours after it happened, maybe several hours after it happened.
	That's when I saw it.
	And I found myself feeling bad for her and hoping, well, golly, I really, I hope she's going to be okay.
	You know, I found myself feeling that way.
	And it's maybe it's something indicative of our natural state psychologically when we have an adversary or somebody we have assigned in our own mind that title to, and we're presented with the idea that that adversary could entirely be removed from a picture and no longer be a factor.
	It's a bit of a shock, you know?
	I mean, it's like in that moment, you do kind of come to realize, well, I don't want anybody to die, really.
	And people may argue, people who feel very strongly one way or the other about Hillary Clinton might point to circumstances she's been involved in that could be said to have killed people.
	Okay, but that's not for me to prosecute.
	You know, that's for your God, whatever you believe in, if you believe in that, the ultimate judgment.
	Or it's for the legal system to judge.
	And beyond that, I have no control over the situation.
	But I don't really necessarily want political adversaries to die.
	I think that, like, I got upset when Margaret Thatcher died and I saw people who didn't like her.
	Ding dong, the witch is dead.
	I would be equally off-put by people doing something of that nature if Hillary Clinton were to drop dead tomorrow.
	It's just, it's very low rent as I see it.
	I would agree with you, too.
	I don't wish for her death, but I do wish for her to sort of go away politically and to be out of the news cycle.
	And, you know, I am not a Democrat, and I don't really care for a lot of their policies, but ultimately, I don't want them to win.
	I don't know if that makes any sense.
	I don't wish any ill.
	I don't want to see that kind of vitriol that comes with the political season.
	And it's like the Phantom of the Opera, right?
	You are meant to fear the Phantom and think that he is a powerful being.
	And then at the very end, when the mask is off and he's just this pathetic creature, you don't wish ill of the Phantom, right?
	You want him to just sort of go away and leave Christine alone.
	Dorothy pitied the wizard after she managed to peek behind the curtain.
	Yes.
	Another great literary example, right?
	An easy picking, though.
	I mean, I grabbed low-hanging fruit on that one.
	But I'll still take the credit.
	Thank you.
	That's great.
	Okay, well, I think it's one o'clock in the morning here.
	It's 11 p.m. where you are, right?
	You're Pacific time, right?
	Yes, that's true.
	Got to work in the morning.
	I was only expecting that 25-minute little chat there, but I really appreciate the chance to be on the gabcast and just talk with you.
	So you do what people have been referring to as a pirated gabcast.
	Where can people hear your pirated gabcast?
	Do you have a thread of your own relating to your podcast on Bell Gab?
	I do not.
	Well, go create one.
	Why not?
	Everybody else has one.
	Why shouldn't you?
	I will do that today, absolutely.
	Okay.
	Is there a URL you can give anybody?
	Well, verbally?
	Not yet, but one day I will, and I'll post it on the Luca Parcelli portion of the Gab, the Bell.
	I don't know what this was.
	I mean, it was just people chit-chatting, having conversations over Skype.
	I mean, it was a gabcast in some regards, but, you know, every show doesn't have to be the same.
	Okay, everybody have a good night.
	Thanks, Luca Parcelli.
	Thank you to Juan Cena for calling in.
	And to everybody in the chat room listening.
	Have a good night.
	Bye-bye.

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