 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, September 26th, 2021. And I'm a Larry Rhodes or Outer, sorry, Doubter Five. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. I've been spending all morning looking for a disc golf gift disc. And the only thing I have to show for it is mosquito bite. Well, that's positive, I guess. Our guest today, our Dred Pirate Higgs. Hello, Dred. Oh, hey there. George Brown, the second and a half. Boudreaux, hello. Welcome all the way from. You're from Canada too, aren't you? No, England. Yeah. And John Richards, the John Richards from England. John Richards. Welcome all. Hello, hi. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. Wombat, what are we going to be talking about today? What's your topic? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. We're going to be talking about narcissism today. I'm talking about narcissism today. Okay. But before we get into it or narcissistic disorder, George will be introducing the topic. Before we get into it, we're going to throw it up to Rowan Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. Oh, hey there then. Our noodley lord who art in a colander, al dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy soft be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we put up with those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the noodles and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. We got to have the hand symbol. I think there's worthwhile to have the hand signal. What was it? What was it? It's this. Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. All right, guys, we're going to be talking about narcissism today. I know it's a topic George has been really excited about. So George, would you like to introduce the topic today? Yes. I guess give me about three minutes. Okay. I got in. Excuse me. I stumbled. I was bumbling around on the web one day and I stumbled upon a psychologist named George Simon. And George Simon is a rather interesting guy because when I think about the locations where great psychologists would be, I think about Vienna, New York, LA, Boston, Chicago, London, you know, places like that. George Simon hangs out in some places like Arkansas. He's a practicing Roman Catholic. He has written a patriotic song, which I think is awful. I don't know what else to say about him except, oh yeah, people who I regard as practitioners of Wu like to interview him. But he has a very interesting take upon how this field of psychology has dealt with people who are on the part of the psychological disorder spectrum called cluster B, which includes narcissists, in other words, people with narcissistic personality disorder, people with borderline personality disorder, people with antisocial personality disorder. And there is a fourth one that I keep forgetting that sort of goes in and out of my mind. But these people are very interesting because regardless of how they got that way, they tend to make the rest of us miserable. That's what they have in common. George, I'm going to have to ask the question just to play my own George card. What is narcissism? What are you talking about? Well, okay, let me first start by saying what narcissism kind of is and isn't. It's okay. We have the legend of narcissists, you know, the guy who was looking at his own reflection in the water digging himself. Well, that's only a tiny piece of it. What we find in the characteristics of narcissists that I jotted down this morning are grandiosity, need for recognition and admiration, disdain and lack of empathy for other people, a sense of personal superiority. This is a person who establishes abusive power and control over others. He has a fragile ego. He's intolerant of criticism, belittles other people. And I want to add the word seductive. Now, narcissists, according to people who know more than I do, they tend to be more male than female. Borderline personality disorder tend to be more female than male. But there's a lot of crossover in all of these. And there are crossovers between the characteristics. And I'm not going to say any more about that because I could go on for the whole hour of the show and I won't. You guys need to talk to. So these anyway, these are the characteristics of that I jotted down this morning of narcissists. And one of the, see what Simon, George Simon, the psychologist identifiers, a problem that psychologists have had in the psychology community of how they've dealt with narcissists. So the narcissist dictator walks into the psychologist's office and he says, Doc, I was going to kill 30,000 people today but I only killed 25,000. Hey, you got to help me. I'm off my game. And the psychologist says, that's good. I can help you with that. Now, let's talk about your childhood and off they go. And what Simon is saying, hey, look, these guys are ruining the world for the rest of us. We got to look at that. And that's where I came in. Okay. So the people who I've been listening to a lot are George Simon, a woman named Romani Darvasala, and Sam Vakdon, who is a narcissist himself. These are all psychologists and they're on YouTube. And let me recommend them to you guys for opening. How did he himself as a narcissist? He did, yes. He says, I know it from the inside. I know this disorder because I am one. So could you say the name of the disorder one more time? One more time. It's called narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder. So let me end by just saying some of the people who exemplify all this, I think. Okay. Oh, this is all filtered through me and I am not an expert. Okay. But maybe a tell of the hunt. Alexander the Great. I'm forgetting. Who am I forgetting? What was his name? Napoleon. No, I forgot about Napoleon. Great. Dread pirate. Hitler of course. Now, who are the narcissists of today? The big time guys. Okay. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. A fellow in the US who shall be nameless for the moment. Oh, he named him. Victor Orben in Hungary. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Alexander Lukashenko in Belorosa. And we've got a newcomer. Nayep Bukele in El Salvador. And the Guardian did a feature on him just today. Check him out guys. How about Putin? I don't know about Putin. You don't know about Putin? Well, I don't know about Putin as a narcissist because his personality to me is veiled. You know, I don't know enough about him. I can't say. I can't help with the actions. How about, I'd say it's at least in line with actions. I may not know. I may not have ever had a beer with him, but I can tell from like the amount of obstacles I'd have to jump over just to have a beer with him. Guys probably. Well, yeah, I mean, he's certainly intolerant of opposition. There you go. You know that. Yeah. I'd like to throw this out to Dred Pirate. Dred Pirate. What was your thoughts? Well, I was just going to George indicated that more men than women are narcissistic. And I've got a stat here. 75.0 5% for the general population in the U.S. are afflicted with up to 75% of those being men. So it's heavily weighted towards men. Do you say 75% 75% of those. 0.5% got it who are who are afflicted in the general population. So, George, look like you had something on your mind. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I was talking with a friend of mine who has worked in the field of executive placements. So he a very high echelon of HR and he pointed out, he said, he said, not all narcissists are destructive. And he named Bill Gates. And who's that guy at Apple? Who's that guy at Apple? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, you know, as narcissists. And he felt that they contributed something good to the world. Let's see what other people have on this. Absolutely. Do you know narcissists? What's your opinion on narcissists? How would you define it the same way? Yeah, I guess I define it the same way. And growing up, I remember my brother and I tended to really look at people and kind of grade them on a conceded scale. I think that kind of ties in nice. I remember growing up to me like the most unbecoming thing of a friend, you know, on teenager age or whatever was someone who's conceded. And I think that ties into that. At least that was kind of the lens I viewed narcissism through. So I tried really hard to be humble and to not brag. And I think to George's point about the good narcissists, I think there's a limit to it because I think if you, as I progressed in math and engineering and such, I realized there's an advantage to having confidence and being proud of your skills. So there's a nice balance there. You've got to be humble but confident. And yeah, that's probably a slippery slope if you gain recognition for doing well and you just kind of go down that road of narcissism. Maybe there's a path there. I don't know. I'm interested about this conceded scale. Did it work on a one to seven as well? That's as annoying as non decimal other skills that you love so much. You know, we haven't argued about this yet, but one to six is a much better scale than one to 10 because you look at our clock and it breaks a lot more. Yeah. No, we never really broke it down to a number. It was really more binary. I think it was like that person's conceded. That person isn't. Oh wow. Okay. I did have a similar scale called holes and hills, where I would consider people are either a hole or a hill. And it's like if I have love and I throw it at a person and there are a hill that level go to the top of the hill and roll back down and I'll get some love back. So it's like I give and I get back. And that's really good to know that there are people who can throw some love at and they'll always come back, but then there are people who are holes where you throw it in and it's gone. And it's like the time you invest in them, the money you might give them, the help you might give them. It's just into a hole. They have it. And it's like at a certain point you have to value the love that you can offer. I like that. That's good analogy. Yeah. So it's an opportunity for a bit of racism here. Opportunity for racism. Praise that way. Hold on. I'm sorry. I was laughing through the sentence. What were you saying? Go for it. Other such things as black holes. That's great. Dread pirate. What do you have? Yeah. I call people like that the holes. I call them emotional vampires. Yeah. Because they tend just to suck your energy and drain you. Yep. I recently essentially wrote off a friendship I'd had for years with a narcissist just because he had just taken it one step too far. And it actually cost me a job. Wow. Yeah. And I had mentioned this before that I was a president for a community foundation and then stepped down to actually be the administrative assistant. And he was on that board. He had joined a couple of years ago. And man, he just put some pretty serious criticism to me and I was relieved of my duties. Wow. Yeah. It was because of him. And I found out and I essentially said this is where you can take yourself and bye-bye. Yeah. Well, John. Yeah. I think what we've established is that narcissists prioritize number one. Yeah. And taking it right back to narcissists who looked at himself in the puddle. I think there's a technological implication here because what we've done with this is we've given people opportunities not just to look at themselves but to snap it, save it for posterity. So the selfie has enabled narcissists to out themselves and going on that I suspect there's a majority of them that are female. Okay. I got that's you have so many good points there. I would say like one technology does enable narcissists to be more narcissistic. It does seem to enable that. There are people who definitely don't like technology. But I definitely think that if you're a narcissist and you have access to the internet, you have all the tools you need to fall into your own echo chamber, right? And a back facing camera. And a back facing camera. And I do think that there are female narcissists that we don't give as much attention to. Though I don't want to go around pointing out disorders and other people. I don't want to start that habit. Larry, what do you think about the topic so far? Narcissists, do you think they exist? What do you think about the definition? Do you have examples? Definitely. I mean, you can't spend the last four years in America without learning that word and knowing what it means. But if there are conservatives or GOP people listening to this podcast and may think that it's not Trump is not a narcissist. Well, I have Mary Trump, who is a political psychologist. And she wrote a book about her uncle. Wow. Oh, yeah. The president, Trump, called too much. President. Never enough. Too much. Never enough. And she called him a pristine case. A poster boy, basically, for a narcissist syndrome. I think if you build a giant black obelisk in the middle of New York with your name in it in gold, and then this is my headquarters, it's like, oh my gosh, it's like almost prototypical megalomaniac or megalomaniac. Yeah. Evil. But again, I mean, you could do that. You could do that, but still help people like Bill Gates and who else that you mentioned a minute ago. But if you're a black or if you're a hole and all you do is just take and never give, that's a problem. So I want to touch on something that I think George said, and I think it's very important because we obviously don't like jerks when we don't like interacting with holes. Yet, enough of us liked it so much that we elected one as president for four years. Right. So there is a seductive quality behind narcissists that they allude and evoke. Why is that? Where does it come from? And why do we feel generally feel attracted to people who are narcissists? Larry, what's up? I think a lot of us, I mean, in a lot of the cages in America, we're building a nation of narcissists. I was reading online this morning on Facebook where a guy says, he posted, he says, why do so many people like Trump and vote for him? And one of the persons who responded says, well, he says what we're thinking. So I mean, you would have to think that they have to agree with his points or they wouldn't put him in office. They wouldn't vote for him. They must be thinking a lot like him. Here's me and it terrifies me because I don't think, I never thought it's a single thing that guy said. And so I'm just wondering, right? There must be people who have pent up thoughts that they feel like maybe they can't say that here's a guy who's saying them very loudly and they're like, finally, the guy who my inhibitions are telling me not to say these things out loud for the betterment of society. I want to hire that guy as the leader in charge of everybody's like, that guy has no inhibitions. That's going to be a terrible situation. Yeah. You're doing a better job than this guy already. Oh, well, one possible explanation might be that because their main concern is themselves, they tend to be successful, conspicuously successful. And that can be seen to be admirable by the rest of us. There you go. Well, you know, what's funny is he's not that successful. He was born into a family of millionaires and he'd given a huge stake when he was young to play with. But he's lost business after business. So he'd gone bankrupt after bankrupt for the entire history of his business career. So compared to... He manages to spin it, though, doesn't he? Oh, yeah, certainly. And I think that's really what it is. I think people don't care about the books that he keeps. They care more about the cover or the lifestyle that he lives. That is a very sad truth, isn't it? More of us will vote for the reality TV star than the bloke who knows what he's up to. But anyway, having lowered the standard of this show by exhibiting racism, I... No, that's not racism. That's a good joke. We can have a live discussion. I don't want to miss the opportunity to do a bit of sexism, too. I'd like to speculate whether there's such a thing as female holes. Okay. I'm going there. We're finally going out of the gutter this time. I want to talk about seductiveness. I think we might touch on something, Eric. Let me know if I'm on the right track. We may not be... I think in America, it's very easy to be self-conscious because we do nothing but laud successful people. People who have merited awards or sort of authority. That's the only people on TV, the sports stars, the gold medalists. We don't care about second place. We only focus on A's, the 4.0 GPAs, the best colleges. And when you're born, you're raised in a society where excellence is the standard and anything else is forgotten about. And so that can lead to a lot of self-consciousness. And so what you look for are people that you can look up to, our idolatry or role models. And it tends to be that people will pick just successful people without necessarily picking kind people or empathetic people. They'll be like, hey, I like the Michael Jordan. Without realizing Michael Jordan is kind of a crazy dude who's like an extreme gambler and ultra competitive. But that's what got him to the number one spot in the NBA. But it's also a terrible human being kind of aspect. Eric, I would like to see, does that track or do you think I'm thinking a little too narcissistically or nihilistically probably a better phrase? No, I think it tracks. And yeah, we reward people with those qualities. And you're right. We don't have a metric for goodness, empathy. It's true. There's no good award. Yeah. May I speak? Yeah. Okay. You know, the couple of things I forgot to mention that aren't on the list, but I think we need to think about. One is a phenomenon called narcissistic rage. And the other one is something we've definitely seen out of our fearless leader, which is the motivation of revenge. I mean, this is a vengeful person. And the mind control over other people, it fascinates me too. And the abuse that they withstand from these people. So it's like, I look at who in the world would want to work for Donald Trump. And yet they get in line to do it. You know, they want to do it. They must know that he's going to toss them to the curb. It's just a matter of when. Why do they do it? I don't know. The self-destructive behavior where people self-destructive dread? What's up? Well, I would like to suggest that certainly the God of the Bible is the biggest narcissist of all. And so, you know, it probably isn't really surprising that people like Trump do get a following because they're lured by their subsistence on the greatest narcissist of all. Right. And I think that's a great point. It's a great point, Fred, because if you do look at the Bible, like even the Ten Commandments are basically, I'm the number one person. Don't bang my wife. Don't think about banging my wife. Not only am I awesome, but you can't use anything about me. That's not awesome because I'm awesome. All right. Now let's go into the main rules. I did the first four. All right. Don't steal. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Don't bang my wife. It's in the Bible twice. It's two commandments. Yeah. Don't bang my wife and don't think about banging my wife. There are two separate commandments in the Ten Commandments about leaving people's wives alone. And then it's like, I don't even know. I don't even know how to describe it. It's not even don't bang my husband. It's like, who cares what women think? It's more like, just don't bang my wife. All right. You know, I'm talking to the people that matter, the straight white males or the straight Hebrew males or whatever we want to call it. All right, guys. I think we're at the bottom of the half hour. Worship me. Worship me. I was just going to say before we go to the break, in Islam, you can't even draw. There's a commandment. Don't draw a picture of me. Well, that's Mohammed. That would be the example of blasphemy, at least for God's figure. He's just taking more to an extreme, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That's the prophet. Okay. This is the digital free thought radio hour 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, Knoxville. Hello, and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five, and this is WOZO radio, 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, September 26, 2021. Let's talk for a minute about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. Founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly Zoom meetings during COVID. But we are again meeting in person at Barley's Tap Room in Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City out on the patio every Tuesday evening between like 5.30 and 8. So after work on Tuesdays, come down to Barley's and meet other atheists. You can find us online in Facebook, meetup.com or at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. You can just Google Knoxville Atheist and that matters just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. All right. Where do you want to pick up? We're talking about how John's kids are pronouncing it water now and what he does in those kinds of situations. I thought it was really great. So what do you do when your kids are like, do you want to water that? I would like a bottle of water, please, Father. Exactly. There's a T in that. Yes. You've been watching too many YouTube videos made by Americans. Subscribe to more English people. Like this one. Yes, or mine. Come to that. Hey, there you go. There you go. George, throwing out the topic to you. We don't like narcissists, but yet they exist. Why? What's up with that? Well, narcissistic personality disorder, of course, has its origins in brutal mistreatment of the practitioner in childhood. So he's been traumatized by somebody in his family. And in the case of Donald Trump, I mean, or she. Yes, absolutely. I don't have examples of female narcissists. No, I don't want to start throwing out diagnoses on people I've never met or stuff like that. But I can say there's definitely examples. And is it always a childhood trauma or is it could just be a complete lack of... I think it is. I think the psychologists say, you know, that there is. You know, in the case of Trump, I know that, I mean, they've been talking about his father, Fred, being abusive to him as a child. And that he... I'm going to put this out there, this is my own, that his mother was very weak. He got no protection from his mother against his father, because I think his mother was equally abused by Fred. Well, he also, according to Mary, Trump's book, Donald Trump had an older brother, I can't remember his name, but he was the one who was supposed to be groomed for success, but he never could measure up to Fred's standard of success. And Fred eventually ground him down to the point where he committed suicide. It's a hell of a book. I highly recommend it. Well... Let me throw this out. I think there might even be an evolutionary desire for, or preference for, narcissists over otherwise. I have a kind of a... I'm going to be very careful with my description of this, at least as far as, like, even radio goes. But when you make a baby, right, you don't just have one sphermosa traveling, and it's just like, I'm going to make a baby. And he has a little briefcase on a little hat, and he's just looking for the egg. You've got thousands and thousands and thousands of cells all traveling, all competing against each other, and only one of them is going to fertilize that egg. Only one of them is going to actually make a zygote. And that one can't be nice to all the other ones. That one has to think, hey, I may not be the fastest, I may not be the smartest, I may not be the most successful, but I'm going to win. And I'll do it if I have to jump over this person. I'll do it if I've got to smack my tail into this guy. I'm going to be the one. And that's the one that becomes us. And every single person on this call, and every single person on this planet, is the result of that one sperm being like, nobody else matters except for me. That's how we got here. I think that's a pretty big case of anthropomorphization. It's true. We are the result of that. We are the result of that. It's not like it's a logic. I would hate to take my sperm things. We are literally there. You are the sperm that was like, screw everybody else. I'm here first. That's the society that like, if that's the, if that is the result of how we come about, like if that's the programmed nature of like how we come about, I could explain a lot of things about just like, we only care about number one. I think Richard Dawkins might have something to say about that. Yes. Well, the gametes are like the inter, intergeneration between the somatic organisms. And I don't think that they have to sort of intellectual capability. Here's the alternative. Here's the alternative. Because you can just as easily build a model and evolution where cells are collaboratively working together towards getting what the best cell traveling its genetic information to an egg. And we do have examples of cells that do collaborate and many other functionalities to maintain homeostasis and life as we know it, but it's only when sex is involved that it's everyone for themselves. This is the path that works evolutionarily. We don't change it because the ones that have don't succeed in nature. It's only the ones that have this giant competition where the weaker, slower cells don't make it to the egg. And the faster ones do. And I think there's, there's a really interesting facet, not maybe on an intellectual perspective, but on the idea of we don't have a collaborative system to get to the egg. It's just whatever gets there first, whatever's the best one gets it. And that's kind of like how we think about in society. It's like, hey, we don't, we don't offer 14 gold medals. We only offer one for the best and we don't care really about the other. Who is the second person that landed on the moon? We kind of know. Third, we have no idea. First, we always know. We make, we'll name libraries after them. We'll name both kids after them, but that's it. I think we do have mentality reflects that very personally, whether it's kind of called causal. I can definitely say not the case, but correlation. Absolutely. Dred, what do you think? Well, I just think there's a problem with describing agency or awareness in, in that context. I don't, I don't think it works that way. I would never argue that, but I'm clearly making a correlation that seems pretty self-evident, whether it's causal or not, because we don't have evidence to prove either way. I'm not saying I think what a sperm is, but I will say this. We have a society that cares number one. Clearly. And we have an evolutionary system that makes people that only cares about one person only. And we could just as easily have a society where it's like, hey, you know, this sperm system isn't working out so well. Why don't we try to figure out the best kind of genes and the gesture that it's like, no, no, and now you're talking about programming people or eugenics and all these other more dangerous things. Well, let's just keep it as this system as it is. It's like, have we ever thought about like the system that actually makes people is very much like a lottery just based on like, the best one. But even the best one from looking at nature can lead to a lot of physical defects or narcissistic personality disorder or more inclinations to other kind of mental diseases. Yet we stick to a system that is like this. I think it's an interesting topic. Let's move past the agency thing and think about that. I think it's an interesting topic. Well, yeah, you don't have to attribute agency to sperms in order to get the scenario you've painted because you can attribute the agency to the vehicle that provides the sperms, the adult organism and those that succeed and therefore have the most opportunity to fertilize eggs, other ones that tread on the other's faces more. Is that the case? Well, it's not so much the case in the human species, but if you look at some of the other species, take lions for example. I would say you could make a strong case that the chief lion, the head of the lion herd is a narcissist because not only does he gather himself a collection of females, but if he arrives at them and they're already pregnant, he kills their puppies. Interesting. So that's a biological strategy that works for lions. Not only lions, but pretty much all primate apes, chimpanzees, bovines or in the wild you get dog groups. The alpha male gets the females and the sperm and it's because they're aggressive, it's because they provide... They don't necessarily kill all the species offspring though. No, not necessarily. In fact, many of them can be persuaded to foster the offspring of others because there is this sort of tribalism because your genetics is closely related to those of your near kin. So you want to help those out as well because they're a quarter you. And we'll think about all the children that Genghis Khan is supposed to have. Hundreds of children. We're all probably descendants. You can speak for yourself. Boudreaux, Boudreaux, Boudreaux. Yeah, so kind of since we're going down this road and I'm not sure where we are on being able to say the word on the radio or not, but I understand there are primates that have spoon-shaped organs that actually scoop out others' sperm and put their own... There's a narcissism that way beyond... Biological, yeah. That's a very interesting point because, again, evolution isn't about agency, right? Whether it's sperm traveling through a canal or the shape of a genetic genital, it's no agency behind it. It's just trial and error on whatever's the most successful seems to work. But it's not necessarily the best thing that works. It's just whatever worked at that time that did take success. And it could even be to the detriment of a species because many times evolution will go to a place where it's just dead-end and many species die out. So, Dreypar, what do you think? Yeah, no, I agree. I just... When you were talking about sperm, it was almost like it was a race. And sperm, of course, aren't competing with each other because they're not aware of each other. So it's not like they're in a foot race trying to get to the finish line. It's a Sunday morning and I know everyone's really excited. We just had black holes and let that go. Let's understand that there's a tone to the show that's very light. We don't have agency in evolution. We don't have agencies in cells. However, we do have correlations to how society seems to dictate how it values success. Where it almost comes at no cost or it could come at the detriment of a species as a whole or it could elect essentially a tyrant for four years and deal with that collectively as a group. Consequences included. Why do we keep doing this? And I look at even evolution and it seems like we have it complicit in almost this non-thinking process that has this system that is like, this isn't even the best system when we choose it or when we behave like it or even in nature. Yet it still seems to exist. It seems like narcissism, even in both the agency and the non-agency sense, is almost ubiquitous. We would do something to try to fine-tune it out of our dialogue and at least out of our beings. I'm going to go to George because he had the question first. Well, for one thing, I think that these narcissists who are the leaders of countries have one thing in common. Which is filter. Who's helping? They have one thing in common which is that they're pretty effective entertainers. They can grab our attention and hold it. That's a euphemism. Like a minister. Like a southern minister. They like an audience. Yes, that's right. They want to be admired. They like an audience. John. I was stuck on this evolutionary thing because pretty much any mode of life strategy that you could imagine exists in nature, including birds that can shut off their oviducts so that no further sperm can get in while still allowing further copulation with other mates. And spiders where the female, having had sex, then eats the male. Black widows are good for that. Yeah, yeah. So there's any peculiarity you can imagine. Nature has already thought of it. Yeah. It's always experimenting. It's sort of like the state of where nature is now is all these peculiarities. But think of all the ones that didn't work that is like the dead. Yeah. So like there's really no plan in evolution. It's just doing what works best. And I see in evolution a system that may not necessarily be the best way for us to behave in a culture. And if evolution correlates to whatever's the most successful thing, we'll just try it as whatever. You know, if it fails, you know, it's like maybe that's not the best way to dictate how we should treat people and how we put people in power. Maybe there should be more thought behind it. And maybe we can have more control other than just this very basic system. Dred, what do you think? I was just going to say when we're talking about the different types of species, you know, this time of year up here in Canada and BC anyway, for the last two weeks, we've been dealing with a massive number of aphids. And I don't know if you're familiar with the life cycle of aphids, but of course I've done entomology for the last 20 years. So I know a little bit about it. And aphids for most of their life clone themselves. So they're all females. They're all soft-bodied insects that have these little prongs off the back end of them called cornicals. And clones grow like droplets of dew from these cornicals. And again, they're just reproducing clones of themselves for most of their lifetime. Without interactions with other aphids, they can do it like native and dark and make multiple aphids. That's right. It's called parthenogenesis. It's a time that we're here now. All the winged aphids, they're flying around and that's when they're engaged in sexual reproduction. So for the great part of the year, they're just engaged in cloning and feeding themselves and then only at a certain period of time do they actually engage in sexual reproduction in order to mix the genes up a bit. I just say that it's going to be interesting. I don't know, it has nothing to do with narcissism. It does have something to do with virgin birth, though. And it's important to notice that although cloning has been discovered very recently to occur occasionally in fish, it's never been observed in mammals and even if it did happen the offspring would have to be a girl. Okay. That makes sense, of course. What I will suggest is it touches on what Eric was or Boudreau was alluding to earlier, that we have measures and awards for success, but nearly as many for empathy or for being good and I think there's more that we can add to our criteria when it comes to determining leaders than just how successful you are or how much do you know or how much can you convince people that you know so that we can actually have more better metara... What's what I'm looking for? Metocracy? A higher standard of meritocracy, right? Than just, hey, this guy had a rich dad and now he's running for president, let's elect this guy because he's only one of the two options that we got. That's crazy. George, what do you got? Well, I think that media has caused a big change in focus. I don't have a word for what I want to describe, so give me a moment here. Before we had phonograph records, we didn't have radio, we didn't have phonograph records, we had a whole bunch of musicians who worked in little towns all around the world and then the phonograph record came in and people stopped making their own music a lot and started playing records. It caused the beginning of a star system where one person is the star and everybody else is simply out of business. Which I think radio and television have intensified this phenomenon and the internet has just made an explosion of it. Although it has also permitted people to come in from the sides more easily. There was also the movies, of course, they had a big star system, but also the discotheque because many years ago I was in a band and we got booked to play around about until discogs became popular and of course they're much cheaper and the quality of the music is even better. I don't know what a discotheque is can someone keep me updated on that? It's the nightclub where instead of having a live band you have one person who plays records. Yes, and he's put all these editions on the work. It's like a place to go that has a jukebox basically. No, that's a person. Yeah, a person. Basic jukebox. There's an art to it, right? You're choosing what song to... Yeah. It's a jukebox with an agent. It's basically a sperm is what we're saying. Okay, great. Can you speak up, Ty? I'm trying to... I'm just going to say, hey, we're probably near the end of the show. We may want to start winding up right about now. Boudreau, it's been a while since we've seen you. What have you been up to and what should we check out before the week's over? Well, I haven't mentioned Sam Harris the whole show, so Ricky Gervais and Sam Harris have seen two of Absolutely Mental. Absolutely Mental. Good stuff. It is hilarious. It's so good. It's so enjoyable. There's something about the comedian, Ricky Gervais that brings out another side of Sam that you don't get to hear. Like the entertaining side. Well, the light side. You joke a lot of times, Ty. Sam Harris is always pretty serious. He's very serious. You see him with Ricky and it's just like you hear him swear more and yeah. It is. It's really good stuff. They're a good pair. I'll put the link in. I'll leave you guys with a comment of irony in that we're talking about narcissism and at the end of the show, we're invariably going to tell everybody and see more of us on video in YouTube and click here and subscribe and like and we kind of narcissists to whatever. Yeah. The fine line. Yeah, I would say I consider narcissism sort of like salt. It's like everybody needs a little bit of salt. But once you add too much, if you ruin the whole pot and it's the same thing with like humor or in my head, I don't even go as far as saying racism. It's good to be able to laugh at racist jokes. It's not good to be able to be the one that's only making only racist jokes. Oh, it's that one guy who only makes racist jokes. He's too salty. But I want to be able to appreciate good comedy. Give me a little bit of dash. That's all I'm asking for. I find a lot of things in proportion are okay because they help society foster. I don't want to be an absolutist on either side. I want to at least be open to it. Everything in moderation. Well, I'm let's chat. I'm on YouTube. You can find me, hit that subscribe button. If you want to, if you don't want to, it's all good. It's all great. I got a job myself. I got a day job. It's pretty good. Let's see. Jon Richards, where can we find your stuff at? At Freethought Productions. And not only do I do the weekly Global Atheist news, which is a review of how religion impacts humanity over the previous seven days. But I also do Freethought Ally, which I interview a guest. And some of you guys have very kindly been my guests. But last night I had a fantastic guest. A young ex-Muslim young girl who's Pakistani-Brit and she's campaigning for human rights and female rights because of course Islam is probably the most misogynistic of the religions and she's escaped from it, which is very brave. So come and take a look at Freethought Ally with Norea Khan and she has her own channel called Holy Humanist. So I'd like to promote that as well. Very cool. Very cool. Let's see. We'll throw it up to our own. Wait, George Brown, you have a closing joke. I'm going to save it for you. I'm going to save it for you. Oh no, no. I can't say the word. Okay, okay. I can't say the word. Not on FM, huh? Not on FM. Well, I want to throw out just for a moment that I've been looking at the effects of cluster B personality disordered people in my own life and the effects that they've had on me. And I want to throw that out to the rest of you as a suggestion to take a look and see how have you been affected by people like this and what we're going to do to take the world back from people like this because I think we are at the verge of losing the whole planet and it's time to take control. How are we going to do it? Good questions to ask. Dred, where can we find your stuff at? Well, I'm live streaming this right now, Sunday morning, starting at 8 AM on the YouTube channel MindPirate M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E and we've got three people on. Scott Kahler, hello, Loma. And Dada's Trading Room he's in there all right. And I just wanted to plug a book that I'm reading. It's called Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer just for a quote in there. If religion lays anxiety it cures only a small part of the disease it creates. So that's my latest little treat. That rings true. Very good. Okay, and let's see did we get everybody? Yeah, that's everybody. Okay, that's the end of the show. Wait, no! Where are we going, Larry? Where are we all going, Larry? Well, according to all the religions of the world, everybody is going to some other religions hell. So there's that. Remember, this show is available on Apple iTunes, Pocketcasts, Amazon and podcasts everywhere just search for digital free thought radio hour. My own content is found on digitalfreethought.com. There's my book. Thank you, Fred Pirate. Be sure to click on the blog button when you do go to digitalfreethought.com for a radio show, archives, atheist songs and many articles on the subject. The book I mentioned is Atheism, What's It All About? It's available on Amazon. You can find my YouTube channel by searching for Daughter 5 or Larry Rhodes. You can send questions to the show by sending them to askanatheist at Knoxville Atheist.org. If you're watching this on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the digital free thought radio hour. Like I said, everybody's 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. We'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody. That's the whole show. I just want to throw out, you guys are all hills to me. So thank you so much. Thank you. You too. Hills. Do you want to do the joke? Do you want to do the joke? Anyway, do the joke because I'm streaming it. It'll be on my channel. I want to share with you an old Yiddish proverb. When the penis rises the brain flies out the window. Sounds right. Definitely not a radio, but yeah, that was great. That was great. John, great humor throughout the show. I really appreciate it. Where is our guy from Buffalo, New York? Where is our guy from Buffalo, New York? Where is our guy from Buffalo, New York? Where is our guy from Buffalo, New York? I think he tends to forget. Sometimes I'll text him and remind him. My wife and kids went to his house to go play outside. Eric, that's the cleanest I've ever seen. You're dead, by the way. That is like really clean. Right here? I do have a narcissism joke I could throw out there. Yesterday I knew I was going to have a crappy day because I woke up with a hard-on and tripped over the rug and then pole vaulted out the window. Credit to my dad. I have a confession to make. I used to be conceded, but now I'm perfect. I should have looked at some narcissism jokes. Yeah, really. I gotta start looking things up. These are good ones. Have a good week, guys. Thanks, everybody. See you later.