 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on the WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, January 3rd, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, at 4.00, down to 5. And as usual, we have Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat. Should all acquaintance be forgot? Does that mean you're trying to forget people? It sounds like it does. All your acquaintances. It seems like a weird thing. Why would you want to do that? To start the year off. Anyway, there you go. Our guests today are Dot Fire, Boudreau, Dread Pirate Higgs, George. Do they leave anybody out? I think they got everybody. Scott. Nice. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. If you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, why are you just not? There are several atheists and free thinking groups here in Knoxville with, and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show breaks. Also, did you know that there's a streaming atheist call in video show broadcasting here in Knoxville? It has been for over 10 years. Did you know that one? So, start of the new year, I picked up all the old episodes of the show, and I can be honest with you. A lot of people give it a hard time, but I think it comes out pretty good. Yeah, it was weird when Wonder Woman came out with her like gold armor, but HBO Max made a good call and just released it. It's a fun watch. Keep watching it. You're going to be good. It's a fun ride. Yeah, it is good, but it's not Wonder Woman. But anyway, we'll tell you more about how the details, about how you can listen to it and watch it, interact with it actually after the mid-show break. If you'd like to interact with us during this show, go to Facebook and search for our digital free thought radio hour page, and then you can use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. What do you have for us today? Hey, today we're going to be talking about New Year's resolutions, or really how we're going to improve ourselves in 2021. But before we get into it, I want to fill it up to our own Dred Pirate Hicks with our weekly invocation. All right, and thank you for the first invocation of the year. Quab be my captain, I shall not want. He maketh me to float in salt water. He stireth me through glassy seas. He filleth my bowl. He stireth me through the straits of noodliness for goodness sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking. Forever. Forever and ever. Robin. Robin. Okay, so what we were going to be talking about was, hey, what plans that we have on improving ourselves for the new year. But it's been a week since I've seen you guys. We actually had a terrorist attack in Nashville. Yeah. Crocker exploded. Thankfully, not many people were killed. I don't think, I'm not sure if anyone were, but it was just some severe injuries. But the power got knocked out at a 5G tower or something like that. So all cellular, all Wi-Fi, if you had AT&T was out for me while on Christmas break. And let me tell you something. You realize how few activities you can actually do in your home when there's no internet cable. It's like, I guess I could read a book. No, that's right. I have a Kindle and that's connected to the Wi-Fi because I don't have access to my books. I guess I'll play some video games. No, they have DRM. I'm locked out of them. I can't watch TV. No, it's like, okay. So all these boxes that glow do nothing. I guess I'll go outside and throw a ball. That's the only thing I can do. But that was my, that was the first start of my holiday. I would like to go around and see how everyone else was enjoying their holidays too. We'll start with Larry. How you been? Larry, it's been a while. Oh, you did have a lot of instruments around the house. You could play them. I sure did. I sure did. You know, you're right. I did have a lot of fun with making some music in fact. Yeah. Our internet was fine. So we played games and just watched TV and did whatever we wanted to do. I do have a guitar over here, but I didn't pick it up. I rarely do anymore. It's an acoustic guitar and it doesn't take me long for my fingers to get sore. Five minutes. Yeah. But I need to work on that. But other than that, it was all good. Good, good. Good holidays. Did you get anything good that you wanted? Nice. Yep. Isn't it great when you just buy your own gifts? Isn't that like the best thing ever? Oh, yeah. For sure. Udro, we'll throw it up to you. How was your holiday? It was nice. I made a huge list of things I wanted to get done and I got two of them done. Check off two. Yeah. So the best thing about that. What's that? I was saying like the best thing about a list like that is at the bottom you should just put have a chill time, dude. And that way you always get three things off the list no matter what. That's right. Play video games crossed off. Yeah. Yeah. If I ever make a list like that, my first one would just be make a list number one and then number 10 is have a chill time, dude. And I knock off the first one and then. And then go to the last one. What else did you do? What else did you do? How was your family? Family's good. Did a lot of gaming on the Xbox. And that was fun. But yeah, it didn't didn't get to share it with the family. We did a zoom Christmas. Okay. We didn't get to see anyone in person, which, you know, trying to, trying to stay safe. So. Right. Yeah. It's more of a mellow time. I am looking forward to like the idea of like the anticipation, the double anticipation and finally getting to see your family and friends again. I'm looking forward to that. So it's like, I'm just carrying it forward. It's not like it's over. It was just one of those things I'm looking more excited for. Scott. Doubt. Fire. Dub. Shine. In the house. He's got the little shadow going on. I love it. What's going on? How was your holiday? Man, it was really relaxing. You know, it was like chilling out with the family and. You know, just taking it easy and. Just doing stuff around the house, keeping busy, staying out of public, you know, this is one of those times when you want to be part of the solution rather than the problem. So you don't want to be. Right. And out and. Trying to make a big deal about things as you usually would. So in this case. I just took it. Took the opportunity to chill. You know, it was a good holiday. You know, and it was nice. Things change. Things change. You got to change with it. Absolutely. That's true. And it's going to be a theme of today's show too. I would been running nonstop since January because we've been making, you know, filtration media for everybody. And so like this is last two weeks for the first time I had extended time off and there was a period where I didn't know what to do with myself, but then I realized this is nice. Just waking up and being like, I'm going to check my emails. Let's just do what I need to get done to stay calm. And it was been really good on my health. Dread pirate Higgs. He's got the hat. Does it glow in the dark though? That's the question. That's the real question. Well, what does it light up? That's the real question. Well, it light up on time and on cue. Here's the moment of truth. Podcast listeners are going like, what's going on? He's, he's frantically fumbling through his hair to see if you can make that hat light up. It's only going to take, it won't take up too much more airtime. Oh, it's not worth it. With highlights. Nice. How are you doing? You're looking forward to a new class session pretty soon. Are you getting ready? That's coming up on the 28th. Unfortunately. Well, I don't know. Well, I guess we'll see what the, what the. I don't know what the other uptake is, but they, they put it in a leisure and recreation. I dunno, I thought it might have been better under a different sort of like business leadership or something, right? But we'll see how it, we'll see how it goes. I asked them, I did ask them to consider changing putting it into something, you know, people will tend to look at more, just to get it out there, but we'll see how it goes. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, of course, I've got the court case also coming up in the first week of February. So that's to have it out with the human rights tribunal for discrimination and not wanting to take on my case. Right, Mike, I mean, would you... Tell us a little bit about that case for a moment. Yeah. You got time? Yeah, go for it. All right. So I filed a complaint with the human rights tribunal against our provincial motor vehicle insurer, ICBC Insurance Corporation, British Columbia, because they wouldn't allow me to wear my tricorn, my religious headgear, in my driver's license photograph. Of course, I've got my federal Firearms Acquisition license, where they allowed me to wear it after I argued that it was my religious headgear. And that was not an issue. But ICBC has been put on my big fuss. So when I filed the complaint against the human rights tribunal, they refused to even listen to it. They said, well, you're a pastor, faring, you mock other religions, you wear a colonnader on your head, so go away. And I said, well, you're the human rights tribunal, and these are my human rights. And under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada, that's your job to defend that, regardless of whether you like what I have to say or not. So I am now, like I said, I'm taking them to Supreme Court here in Canada on the first week of February to have the case heard before I'm a pastor. Right, one of the things that you might wanna keep in mind is it's not the government's position to decide which religion is valid and which religion is not. Absolutely. That would be the thing that would take you through. I've got a milk stool argument for this whole thing. So I got three very strong legs upon which to stand this. And the least of which is if I had gone into ICBC wearing a turban that a friend of mine who's a Sikh had properly attired me with, what would they say? Would they take pause to say, you're not a Sikh? Would they question that? And then how would they test my veracity? It seems to me that it's really, it is almost an implicit discrimination where it can be assumed that if you're brown and you're wearing a turban, sure, we'll take your photo with your turban on. But man, if you're a white guy, that would be a whole different story, I believe. So I think that's one of the legs that this thing stands on. So nice. At least from here, you can pass as a Sikh. I got too many friends from Pakistan that would be like, no, no, no, no. Doesn't count here, doesn't count here. George, I would like to catch up on you, how you've been over the last couple of weeks and how's your holiday? Well, I've been great. I've been really good. But the one thing, I have ADD and one of the things that I have trouble with is staying focused when trying to do arithmetic. So it's show and tell time. This is a genuine Chinese calculator made by a Chinese company called Osalo. Oh, it looks like Casio. Well, it may. This is a very nice calculator, well built. Now, I think we're coming on to a new generation of Chinese brand name products that are actually quite good. Oh yeah, definitely. This calculator is almost unique because it's a replay calculator so that when my mind wanders while I'm entering numbers, this machine will remember the sequence and I can play back the sequence and correct my errors. So it's not the only one of its type. And it is so. Did you get that for Christmas or Hanukkah? Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah, adjust yourself. Sure. And it is so humanely conceived that for a backup battery, it has a AAA cell instead of some obscure, you know, a cotton battery that's soldered into it. This is a considerate product. I'm very pleased with this thing. Not bad. So I can tell you, if we're going to be talking about the best things we got, maybe we can do a quick round table on this one too. Okay. Best things we got on Christmas, or at least for holidays, gifts to ourselves. Hopefully another one in my family will watch this because they'll immediately start picking up the phone about tarot! Drama. I don't need any extra phone calls but I did get myself a massage chair. And I think that's like the coolest thing I've ever gotten. I have this little nook where I used to record SE videos in my living room. And it was this big open area that's just like walking and had like the lights and all this stuff on. But I found out that it's a lot easier to just record videos in my office in this room. And so I had this big abandoned area in my living room that I just didn't do anything with. And I'm like, maybe I should turn this into like, I don't know, like reading a nook or like a library, something like that. And I'm like, what if I turn into like a meditation center? Like had like a weird little meditation ball. And I'm like, I don't want to have to like work. I just want a place where I can zonk out. What's the best thing I can get to zonk out? I'm like a massage chair. So I got one on Amazon and it was the craziest thing they shipped over to my house ever. Got it through my door. I didn't measure the dimensions of my door to begin with. I highly recommend you do that. But when I did get it and I put it in, I got in and I'm like, this is the best thing ever. It's the best thing ever. And the convenience of getting massages like as many times as you want throughout the day, middle of the night, no problems, no COVID worries. It's just the best thing ever. And I think that's the, that's my MVP for at least this year. Things I spent my money on. Butcher, I'm going to fill out at you. Did you have something that you were happy that you got? Physical, physical, worldly good. What do you got? Don't get me family. Right. Yeah, mine's not as elaborate as yours, but my wife did get me a Yeti tumbler like a, like a little, you know, not quite for coffee, but like a shorter one for, you know, I'm a diet coke drinker. So I, I fill it up with ice, you know, the afternoon and it's less, you know, well into the evening. It's pretty nice. So very, very cool. That's kind of cool. And he's a man of his drinks too. You're like sitting right in front of your bar, aren't you? You're like, you take a considerable, you take, consider a care of the liquids you put into your body. I do. I like, I like some of these brown liquids, you know, here and there. Okay, cool. Doubtfire. You mind telling me like, what's something that if you did get a worldly good or a worldly possession that you enjoyed a lot, a gift that you're like, Hey, for me or from someone from me, for me, I enjoy this. What was it? What's something that you were like? No, it's going to be some hardware, some nice, some musical equipment, man. Some really good sound stations or keyboards or drum programming machines. I'm trying to get some hardware equipment built back up. So that's like one of my goals. And I've started doing that this holiday. So I got a few pieces. So I'm just kind of building my little army over here and getting ready to do some damage. Make sure you don't run out of XLR cables. That's always the worst thing. Oh yeah. I got this new thing and nothing to connect it to. What? Exactly. Who makes mail to mail? What? It doesn't make sense. Make cables, ox cables here. Yeah, yeah. Larry, I'll throw it out at you. Is there anything that you had gotten that you're having? Yeah, I got several things that I really enjoyed. Sheila gave me a new set of speakers. I bought mine. I mean, I broke mine. Oh, well, those things. They're lighted. Yeah. And I'm enjoying those. She got me a pair of pajamas. I've never had pajamas before. But it's been so cold lately that they're really comfortable. I enjoy them. So you can't have that conversation without telling me what's on the pajamas. What's the pattern on the pajamas? Oh, it's just plain. Plain red. Sheila, what are you doing? You could have made them wear anything. But I did get myself an SDR, which is a software-defined radio. I'm a ham radio guy. And you hook it up to your computer and it lets you monitor the different frequencies and stuff. But it came in and never worked. So that was disappointing. It was broken from receipt. So I had to order another one. But it's all good. Very good. So just for everyone to know, there's a really strong ham radio community in Knoxville. And there's meetings for radios. And there's constantly people chattering back and forth on that station. So if you are into ham radios, Knoxville is the place to be if you're in Tennessee. It's like one of those. The group is called RAC, R-A-C-K. Yeah, they're RAC. Radio amateur community of Knoxville. And what is this device you're talking about, Larry? Oh, it's a software-defined radio. It looks like a thumb drive. You plug it into a USB port and hook an antenna up to it. And it receives on all the bands that the antenna will support. Very cool. You can't transmit with it. But it's pretty cool just to sit at your desk and monitor the bands. How much does it cost? Well, that one costs about $35. Oh, wow. Man, that's not bad. That's not bad. So that replaces my whole old Holy Crafters radio. Except it doesn't transmit. Yeah, well, these are my Holy Crafters. Did you know that there are places online that you can just go using your browser that will hook you up directly to receivers all over the world and you can monitor them, though, have frequencies just with your browser. No, I didn't. This is random information, but there's also a website you can go to that you'll call that will call somebody who will call whoever you're calling, who wanna call, who will speak for you for whatever you type in because you're calling them as a deaf person and they will just call whoever you need to talk to as a speaking person who's reading whatever text you write again. And it's a real person. I'd like to make a statement for all the younger youngsters out there who have their phone and say, I have a phone, what do I need a ham radio for? Well, if the grid ever went down, like in Nashville, the grid went down, all you need is a car battery and then you can transmit literally around the world with the right equipment or the ham radio equipment with a car battery. That's so important because when the cellular and wifi were both out, I had no way of checking the news. I had no way of calling family members. I didn't know what was available, what wasn't. If there was like a state of emergency, should I stay indoors or should I just wait? Cause this is a 15 minute problem. And if the grid did go down, Tennessee and most states have a ham radio, a network that will go into action and be able to transmit messages. We have one here in Grand Forks, in fact. Ooh, nice. Speaking of Forks, what else did you got that you were really happy about, Jared Pirke? Oh, look at that. Okay, so you might want to explain what the listeners are watching right now. Okay, that's my new Corsair keyboard and multifunction gaming mouse. It's a very, very fancy keyboard and mouse. It glows in the dark with so many colors. It's great distraction. I have that same keyboard. I love it. It's clicky. It's clicky, right? It's clicky. Oh, okay. All right. Oh, look, Larry's also holding up his glow in the dark, multi-color strobing mouse. Oh, which one's that? Is that a mega? It's G Force. Oh, G Force. Yeah. And I have a G Force keyboard as well. I don't know if you can see it or not, but. Oh, yeah. Look at all you nerds. Look at all you nerds. Now I know what not to get cause it's not cool anymore. Sorry, that's a bad word. I beg your pardon. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm working on that. Speaking of things I'm working on, I want to talk about today about the nature of self-improvement for at least for 2021. And I said to myself at the beginning of 2021, even if things don't change socially, politically, climate-wise, all that stuff, I can change. And I think there's power in that and visualizing myself as a better person growing through time. And it does draw from my secular worldview because I don't surprise guys. I'm an atheist. I don't believe that there's a God controlling everything. I don't think there's greater purpose in the universe, but I do believe that there is a purpose that we can give ourselves. And I find that to be so much more worthwhile when I can give meaning to my own life. And when I look at the, when I look at every animal on earth, every single organism is trying to do its best to do something a little bit different next generation, a little bit better or next season. Get kids that look a little bit more stronger or a little bit more brown to live in this brown area. And it's just a trial and error. Everything's just trying to do its best to not stay stationary and find some way to improve their chances, have a better quality of life. And I'm like, I'm inspired by this. What can I do for 2021 to make myself a better person? And I think what we can do when we come back from that half of this show is just do a roundtable discussion on things that we're planning on doing to improve ourselves for this year. Cause I think if there's ever a time to learn from a year, it was 2020, but that's behind us now. We're here now and we're gonna figure out what we're planning on doing to get better. We're at the bottom of the half hour, Larry, why, or top, yeah, bottom of half hour. Larry, why don't you take us out and we'll come right back. Okay. This has been the digital free thought radio hour, first half, we're on WOZO radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM, WOZO radio. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio, 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Dr. Five, today is Sunday, December, I'm sorry, January 3rd, 2021. Yes. Let's talk about the atheist free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK. Founded in 2002, we're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members now, and we have a weekly Zoom meeting during COVID. Well, you can find us online on Facebook or at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Or you can go to Meetup or Google and search for Knoxville Atheist, it's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to Meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one! Start one! Right, another large free thinking group here in Knoxville, the rationalists of East Tennessee, R-E-T. They are also on Facebook. Or you can go to rationalist.org and click on Upcoming Events to find out what they're up to. Earlier in the show, we said we talked about Knoxville Atheist TV or slash video show. Well, it's called, well, it used to be called Free Thought Forum. Knoxville and there are a lot of videos on YouTube under that name, Free Thought Forum, Knoxville. But it has morphed to a YouTube streaming service or channel and you can find there new ones under Free Thought, Free Thinkers United, coalition of Knoxville. You can find all kinds of archives under Free Thought, just go looking for it. Also, if you're interested in getting involved in the TV or the radio shows, just come to an ASK meeting, ASK Facebook page, R-E-T Facebook page and talk to us about it. You can be our next co-host or guest. With us today on the show are Wombat, Dreadpire Higgs, George Dotpire and Boudreaux. Welcome all. Where do you want to pick up Wombat? So I wanted to talk about my two favorite ingredients, which are of course salt and pepper. If you guys aren't familiar with it, let me throw some bars at you. You add them to a little dish, you put them into your air fryer and you pop it out and you get something delicious. So good. What a fan. What a mighty good fan. Very cool. So we're going to go over comments from fans of the show and also our Reddit page. Directly from our Reddit show, we have Dotus, I'm sorry, directly from our YouTube channel. We have Dotus Trading Room who wants to wish us all a merry and happy and safe holidays or whatever you consider to be your holidays or not. Isn't that like the classic way how at atheists we'd be like, hey, happy holidays or not your holidays or whatever you consider to be your holidays. Whatever you celebrate, yep. It's not a big deal either way. We did get a question from Scott posted to our Reddit on r slash street epistemology. He wanted to know, has anyone here successfully helped a COVID denier or any other type of conspiracy theorists or nationalists with SE or through conversation? And what are your tips for doing that? Dredd, I know that's a big question, but I want to throw it out at you since you also have done SE. Have you- Well, I was typing when you asked the question, so I didn't actually catch it. So I'll wait for someone else to speak and then come back to me. Nope, you are not getting off the hot seat that easy. So Dredd, there's the question for you again. Have you ever used conversation to help a COVID denier or someone who's a conspiracy theorist get over their DACA or shortsightedness? Well, I've certainly had discussions about vaccinations. So in a roundabout way, I've approached the topic. And I've certainly had some people sort of test my waters as it were by asking me almost directly, do you think this COVID thing is real? And so I always come back with a science-based answer and a caution for anyone asking that question to evaluate best on the best evidence available. So, yes. Nice, nice, nice. Boudre, I'll throw it out at you since you've had some experience with this. Yeah, yeah, I guess not strictly SE, but maybe partially kind of subliminally SE because of all the great stuff you guys do. But on two separate occasions, I've had at least recently people ask me about vaccines. In one context, it was vaccines like flu vaccine. Like, yeah, you really, do you do this to your kids? I was another parent asking if he should give his kids flu vaccine. And on another occasion, it was a lady asked, afraid of getting the COVID vaccine saying, no, I'm gonna wait until a lot more people get it and safe. And in both occasions, I had a very, very simple response that made them both think, I think, at least they reacted like that, they clicked. And I was like, so yeah, this vaccine, I'm not really sure. You should give this vaccine to my kids. I'm like, don't ask me, ask your pediatrician. What would they say? Go with that, go with that advice. And then the other person asked me, he's like, yeah, the son of this guy who I clean his house said that the vaccine's probably gonna give you belts palsy. So I'm a little afraid. Again, don't talk to the son of the guy that you clean his house. Talk to your doctor. Oh, my doctor says I should get it. And I was like, well, what do you think? What do you think you should go with? So I don't know if it changed their minds, but it made them think. Very good, I like that. And now Chad's calling me. Hey, Chad, get on the line. Very cool. Larry, I'll throw this at you. Ask an atheist table if you were to meet a COVID denier. Like how would you approach that? Oh, you know me, I'm not so much in the essay, although it should be. It's a very valid use of argumentation. But I just generally go at it and say, I've known people who had it. I've known people whose friends have had it. I know that it exists. I know that for the results that we could get from practicing safe measures, it's very worth doing, even if you think that it may be a hoax. I mean, there's a chance it may be a hoax. Maybe a chance that there isn't, but it wear a mask. I mean, that's all that it takes for a while. You know, wear a mask for a while when you're in public and it will help out. And if that's all you're out, and it's not like costing you money, costing you friends, just wear a mask and give the benefit of the doubt to the people who might die from it. Right. So I had a pretty similar outlook at the start of this too. I was saying like, we're still a lot of data that we're gathering to determine how severe this thing is. But regardless of how obscure or scary or like just nebulous things are at the moment, let's take the precautions because it's just like wearing a seatbelt. You know, like you don't know if you're gonna get in a car accident today, but you're gonna put your seatbelt anyway, right? Take the precautions in the event that something happens. Does it really take that much time out of your day to wash your hands maybe a second or a third time? Does it take that much time to cover up your face? And when you're in a public environment, think about the people who could get sick. Who aren't you? These are the things I should be thinking. One other point was, since this has happened, and I've been wearing a mask and washing my hands all the time, I haven't got a cold. I haven't got a flu. Yeah, same year. It's been a year now without a cold or a flu. Yeah, it's nuts. I mean, that right there is benefit enough to warrant wearing a mask. Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing how healthy you are when you actually start taking care of yourself in terms of like, you know, public hygiene. But I think now we know, obviously, from the data that we have that America's doing a terrible job worldwide with regard to the COVID. The worst. And not America as in Canada. I'm not even throwing dread pirates country in it. It's just USA. USA. And just Tennessee and just Knoxville. We're the worst. Yeah, and cross one state border, cross like one highway, and it's just a horror show of people who are like, hey, I don't need to wear no mask. I wear my mask like this. America is the best for me. My presidents are like this, freedom. And I'm like, we have such a terrible administration that has not been supporting. Right, did not get any kind of message across. Sends so many cross signal messages saying inject bleach in yourself. Oh, it's so bad, so bad. So hopefully we'll have a better time now. But it's only two weeks to go, isn't it? Less. I was wanting to tell the message. 20th, isn't it? 17 days, 41 hours or something like that. There's a countdown. Is there a countdown board somewhere? Oh, absolutely. Oh, gosh, you know, there are. Oh, man, I have a new York right in Times Square. Oh, I would love it. I would love it. Anyway, though, Scott Williamson, we're going to throw the question out to you. How would you deal with a COVID denier? Is there a conversational set of questions that you would use? It doesn't have to be SE, but what would you ask? Yeah, it's funny, because I've had this conversation, especially where I work, because like I told you, I work in a hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital all for 2020. And I'm going to start working at Sacred Heart. But yeah, it's really weird, because we work in a hospital. We work in COVID units. We see people going to the hospital. We see the influx of patients. But, you know, really weird thing about IT people, I've come to realize, is he have a lot of conspiracy theory, IT people. I've never seen a group of people. Oh, they're the most conspiracy theory people out there. IT guys. They really are. They love IT guys, man. Oh, yeah. They love it. They're nothing but on those channels all day long, dude. And they know how to get access to all the channels, and they're just getting bits and data, and they're like, I know what's going on. And they love to feel smart and superior. Oh, yes, they do. I was in IT for a while, so I know. I'm not here. Oh, OK, no. I was IT for two years. I was IT all my undergraduate. I did that as my part-time job. I was IT. Oh, OK. OK. I know. Yeah, so they came at me, of course. And they actually talked to me as if I'm assuming I'm agreeing with them. You know, like, you know, this Coke thing is really crazy. And it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, just say, look, man, I appeal to science, myself, the consensus of science. And this is the deal. And really, one of the, and I said, you know, and one of the arguments that I would put forth is that, you know, you always go to a second and third opinion if something's wrong with you. So, right? And they're like, yeah, so great. So you go to professionals in a given field to get second advice, whether it be to fix your car or, you know, whether you've got some kind of sickness or whatever, you go to a doctor. So you appeal to the professionals yourself. But for some reason, in this area right here, you don't want to appeal to the professionals. I do. I want to be consistent with that. So that kind of makes them think. But one of the weird thing was one of the guys, we had a religious discussion one time at break. And he was, you know, coming forth with that, you know, I can't even think of the name of it. But it's an argument that, you know, why, you know, believe in God because why risk it? You're going to go to hell. Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager. There you go. There you go. And I simply use the same tactic on him about COVID. Like, well, if COVID isn't real, then you've got nothing to lose. Anyways, either way, if you wear the mask, social distance, you're not losing anything. But if you take the precautions just in case it may be real, you're protected. So either way, you're going to come out ahead on that, right? Right. And so that's your logic for everything else. So why not apply it consistently? And that seemed to make sense to him. I also like the idea of having standards of information to inform your actions. Because there was the idea of like, hey, man, just get a sock, wrap it around your face. That's a covering. You'll be good. But like for guys who are in filtration, like we know like efficiency in very thin fabrics is you might as well not be wearing anything at all. So like, what's the best kind of fabric you can wear? What's the best kind of materials that are good for this? This N95 mask that you're wearing for four hours isn't rated for that long to be worn. Those are worn for doctors in this clinical, sterile environment and thrown away as a biohazard because they just get gunked up. They aren't meant to be walking through the aisles of Walmart. So like, what can we make to make someone be safe for an extended period of time in a pedestrian environment? Like we were asking some hard questions that made us really uncomfortable because we're like, but I like this mask or like, this is much more breathable or like, what are you saying? Everyone's unsafe. It's like, yes. What kind of standards can we do to improve the basic lifetime? And we've been giving that information out as part of our company. And so like if you go to a, I went to Marco's Pizza. They, it's a pizza company in Tennessee. I'm sure they're all over the place too. But they have a box of cashier which is a bunch of face masks. You're free to take as many as you want and walk out. The filtration efficiency in just those handout masks are insanely better than they were like a couple of years ago or a beginning of last two years ago. And I think it's just from the fact that everyone's working hard to improve PPE in general. And I just think that's an amazing thing. George, I wanna throw it out at you one more time. What's something that you would say to a client are a COVID or a vaccine or a denier? Yeah. Well, it's been on my mind. I have been extremely unsuccessful with any kind of logic talking about anything here, you know, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga. So there's something either wrong with me or wrong with the other people that I haven't figured out, which a neighbor of mine had a stance put in his arteries a couple of years ago. So I have an imaginary conversation with him in which I say, when you needed stets put into your arteries, did you go to your car mechanic to have them done? Did you go to your minister to have him put the stents in your arteries? Sure. Somehow I don't think this would get across to him. So I've been listening in particular to what Scott and Larry have just said because I like what you said. You see, the reason I'm saying this is because I have been around medical professionals recently who have been deniers. Yep, okay. I was in the hospital last Tuesday and I spotted four people on staff, actually five people on staff, including one doctor who was not wearing a mask. Wow. And my own doctor, I'm firing my doctor. Yeah, okay. I mean, it's come down. It has just come down to that. Yeah, go for it. I just am so, I'm finding myself so emotionally opposed to the man that I can't stand being in his presence. And I've gotten myself another doctor. I think, I mean, I'm gonna see him in a couple of weeks and I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to that. This is the only doctor here who was not a Republican. You know what? I'm gonna tell you something. That sounds like a good way for you to improve your 2021. I think you just gave me a good way to get it. Well, we're gonna get to that topic soon, right? We're gonna get to it now because we only got eight minutes left. Okay, let me tell you my plan then. Yeah, give me it. I'm gonna jump to this topic. The most important thing in my life right now is to know myself, is to get to know what my own automatic behavior is and to be able to deal with that. And to me, this is profound because I believe we are all really walking automatons, victims of our own early programming and programming we picked up during life. And so at this late age, that's my goal. Nice, very cool. Boudreau, what's your plan for self-improvement in 2021? So we don't really call it a New Year's resolution, but I think that's laid out, but sure. Yeah, it's unfortunate though, so it doesn't matter what I pick because I always give it up for Lent anyway. So it's, sorry, Catholic joke. Mine's pretty typical, maybe boring, but we're gonna try to do it a fun way. I wanna lose little LBs this year. And a fun way to do it, I've found is this thing called an eight week challenge. It's like a sheet you print out and every week you score points for doing healthy habits, drinking water, fruits and vegetables, exercise. And you do it as a group and you email the group each week. It's a perfect COVID social distance thing. So, hey, if anyone wants info on it or wants to jump on, I'll send you the link and you can join us. But it's been successful in the past for me, so. I'm gonna do it again. I'll throw out another tip for you because it seems like it'd be right up your alley. If you got a VR headset, you'd be able to, I mean, dance, play laser tag. There's so many free games. There's a game called Rec Room, which is literally just volleyball, ping pong, basketball, whatever you want. And you're playing with real people who also have headsets on. And they're just, yeah, I'm quarantining too. I'm quarantining too. And I think the last thing I did was a game of paintball with just a bunch of adults, kids everywhere, all socially distanced for one miles away from each other. But I'm in my room hiding behind a stack of barrels, shooting some kid who's like, who's hitting me? I'm like, yeah, take that. And I'm working up a swim at the same time too. And you have the perfect environment for it. Moving on. Doubtfire, plan for self-improvement. The reason why I don't like New Year's Resolution is it seems like it's tight just the new year. I want something that you're gonna do extended. What's your continued step forward as a progression of a human being? What's your- Yeah, so that I was about to say that, that years, trying to separate it into years is kind of arbitrary and it's kind of not very authentic because years are things that we humans construct. And, you know, but there's a quote by Evan Thomas Thompson, I think his name is. He's a philosophy of mine professor at the University of British Columbia. And I like one of his quotes and I'm gonna read it. It says, just like Buddhists argue that nothing is constant, everything changes through time. You have a constantly changing stream of consciousness. And from a neuroscience perspective, the brain and body is constantly in flux. There is nothing that corresponds to the sense that there is an unchanging self. So this is a constant thing. It's not just this year, I'm gonna change. No, you're constantly in flux, constantly changing. And I think that from that perspective, I'm just gonna embrace that change and understand that, you know what, my desires change, my outlooks change, my attitudes change all the time. And they're caused by things that I may not even be aware of, but they do happen. What I kind of realized to myself, I want to really just focus in on things that make me happy, like the music stuff. I got a little joke about water. Jesus walks into a bar with his disciples in order of 12 waters and looks over at the disciples and winks. That's where I don't get it. On the empathetic atheist channel, YouTube channel, it premiered last night, so you wanna check it out? Check it out. I was debating a preacher or a theist or whoever he was, Matt. And so there's a couple of things I wanna do and change and just focus on those things that are fun and meaningful to me, so. Nice, very cool. Dredd, that was amazing, Scott, by the way. I appreciate you sharing that. Dredd, what's your way you're gonna improve yourself if you're starting? Before I talk about myself, I just wanted to share a comment by our streaming viewer here. Sure, what a fan. Loma has said he lost weight in 2020, but my physical abilities are lacking, so I've been working on that. Also working on including SE questions into my conversation. Nice. So that's a great direction of moving. As a quick little distraction, best three SE questions, in my opinion, are what do you mean by that? Just ask them what they mean. They have a chance for them to phrase it in their own words. It does a lot of good. Second one, how can we test that? How can we test that? Let's make it a group project where we both figure out how you arrived at this conclusion, okay? Make sure it's we. How can we test that? And then the last question is, how reliable is that test? If you just ask those three questions, man, you get to some great ground and you don't have to think about, well, what analogy should I use? Should I use the tic-tac? Should I use the aardvark analogy? Should I use Lamborghini? It's like, no, no, no. Just, hey, man, what do you mean by that? How can we test that? What do we do if the person is not receptive to those two? Conversation takes two people. If they're not receptive, there's nothing you can do. You can't force it. But if you can keep it a positive conversation and I think asking someone what they mean by something is a positive way to get deeper into their epistemology, it's totally gonna work for you. But don't force something that's not receptive. That's just you harassing somebody. We don't wanna do that. We don't wanna be the proselytizers. Let the Christians do that. Jeff Fier, what do you got? So, of course, this upcoming course I'm teaching has got me right into the material. So, I'm going through the textbook, breaking up into lessons, the content that I wanna focus on. So, becoming a better critical thinker myself is my goal in trying to share that with other people. It only helps the whole process to be better at it myself. Nice. Nice. Okay. I would say for at least my input for 2021, there's a really dumb question that I read on the internet of what you should ask on a first date on whether or not you appreciate the mind or the body first. And that's such a funny question. Because that's the question where it's like, everyone's just gonna say mind because they wanna seem like they're deep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the thing is, and this is why I was irking me when I was at the grocery store today, it's like the mind is the product of the body, right? It is an emergent property of the brain. It's a product of your flesh. And the better you take care of your body, the better your mind will benefit as a result. And so, that's something that I've noticed on me. It's not just about exercising, it's about the mental state that I'm in. Like, am I exercising too much? Am I just distracting myself procrastinating from something else? So, what I wanna do this year is work on an aspect of just letting go of things that have been bothering me, emotional baggage, and let that be a part of my curriculum towards improving my body. Like, releasing stress and things that I don't have control of and things I shouldn't be holding on to. Cause I think towards that will make me a better bodyful person and a mindful person in both of those regards. Larry, what do you have as something you'll improve and you can take out the show? Well, I hope to get back into writing some more. I do a lot of debating online, but it's all paragraphs, you know, one-on-one. And I've been doing some of that on Zoom as well. But I'd like to write some more articles for my blog. I've let it, well, other than that, I lost my job during COVID. I'm 70 years old. It wasn't much of a job to begin with, it was just extra income. And I'd like to get another job. I'm actively looking for that. So, writing, getting a job, going forward, trying to just generally improve. Nice. And we'll see how it goes. Yeah. We're down at the top of the, we're up at the top of the hour now. It's like, this is my wrong man. Yeah, it's confusing. He was like, what? Yeah. My content, if the user, listener, fan would like to find it, is at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for Radio Show Archives, Atheist Songs, and many articles on the subject of atheism. My book is called Atheism, What's It All About? It's available on Amazon. If you have any questions for the show, send them to askanatheistatknocksvilleatheist.org, and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religion, then go online and look for recovering from religion.org. They'll help you with your issues. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. And that's about it. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio R for another week. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.