 Hello and welcome to the digital free thought. I'm sorry. I've got a frog in my thumb. Okay. Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour and WOZO radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, November 19th, Sunday before Thanksgiving. I'm Larry Rhodes or a DJ doubter five and as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Just add water. Okay. Sounds like something a biologist would say. And with this special guest today is Keith Semple. Welcome. Greetings. Great to be on with you guys. Digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only nonbeliever in your town, well, you're just not here in the middle of the Bible. Well, Knoxville, we have a group of over 1000 of us, actually 1100. Now we're the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after mid the mid show break. So stick around. Wombat, what's the topic today? Oh, we got a battery of them, including oxygen deprivation, near death experiences and the scariest of them all blind taste test studies with Coca Cola. But we'll get all of it. We'll get all that we'll get all of it. One thing at a time. First thing I want to do is get through my favorite part of today's show. And that's catching up with everybody. I'd love to see how everyone has been and just see the general vibe before we get into the meat and potatoes at the show. One of the things I'm excited about is I've been playing a video game called Baldur's Gate been loving it. And honestly, it's been one of the things where I'm really truly I go to work and then I come back home from work. I go work out and then I get back in front of my computer and I'm just excited to jump back into this fantasy land and just have a couple of hours before nine o'clock. Before I get too tired and like start making really bad decisions and then coming back to it the next day. But like in a really, really healthy way. I think it's just an incredible playground that they set up. I've always said that for video games, they keep making things bigger and wider and more expansive and larger, more levels, more detail. But it's not so much that I want a bigger orange. I just want to taste your orange. I just want like an orange that's like sticky and has like a good flavor. If it's really tiny, I just want a good orange, like a good orange slice even full of content. Yes. No, well, not so much full of content. I don't want the Ubisoft approach where they just keep loading it. I just want quality like from every corner of looking at it. And when I play Baldur's Gate, regardless of whatever I do, whether it's just exploring some weird mountain, going to a different part of my map, having conversations with my members, having cool dialogues or just sorting my inventory and just reading some of the descriptions for things. I'm always rewarded with my experience by the time that I'm done and I never feel like I waste time. I laugh. I feel sick with some of the decisions I've made that I dread. There's things that I look forward to. It's just a really fun time to enjoy. And so, yeah, that's my that's my fun thing. Larry, I would love to catch up with you. How you been? Don't just say go to your games and and more video games. This is not the video game show. I'm just being I'm just being ironic. I'm afraid it is. How you been? Oh, good. No, I've been playing computer games specifically Starfield. But I really don't have much choice these days because my knee has been giving me such trouble. In fact, in two days, actually, tomorrow, I get knee replacement surgery. So that's going to be fun for the next six, eight weeks. I won't be riding my motorcycle or any of that stuff. And is this your first step to becoming a cyborg? Yeah, I asked them to put new pneumatics in it, you know, so I could jump higher runs faster. That type of thing wouldn't wouldn't even entertain the topic. No, have they even said like, hey, we can put little gravings on the metal before we put it in your body? Like if they ever find your body just be like, this is where my soul is located or like here, please, please. Put some arrows, put some mystic runes on it or something like that. No, I didn't think about that. Maybe when I go in for surgery, I'll tell them to. Okay, okay, okay. Pretty simple. Good to hear from you again. How are you guys? Thank you so much for being on the show. It's good to be back. Yeah, welcome. How have been the shows and how's been the family? We've been great. I feel bad now talking about my weekend because Larry's talked about his bum knee and I had a fantastic weekend there. I had to, I did a show in Miami on Friday and a show here in Chicago land on Saturday night. So I had a bit of a whirlwind weekend. Are you a magician or something? What kind of show? That's it, yeah. I performed actually with the lead singer of NXS on Friday night. He found me by a mutual friend that knows me in the area and he's doing this thing called rock and roll team building. It's like a huge big corporate event workshop type thing and we were doing a, basically a showcase down in Miami. So we flew me down and we practiced for an evening and then did the whole day Friday and then I literally finished on the stage at 5.30. Got in the taxi and was back at the airport at 6.30 and was on the flight back home and got up and did the show Saturday. And then obviously that was only a few hours ago and now I'm up with you guys. So it's been a real fun weekend. What did you do about the language barrier? Irish and American. Funny enough, actually. Funny enough, Kieran Gribbin is the guy who I was with and he's actually Northern Irish. So it was really funny because we were talking to each other and a few times people were just down there with blank looks on their faces because I didn't realize I just dropped right back into full on broad. Like full broad Norton air and like, you know, I'm like talking so fast. Like nobody can understand a word I'm saying. Like they're just looking at us and they're like, oh yeah, I should probably still kind of soften that a little bit even though I'm with another Northern Irish guy. Have you seen enough of America to where cities start to blend to each other? Where when you like are in Miami or Chicago and another city like, where am I again? I forget. Like just show me where the Walgreens is because I know there will be a CVS right across the street. Just show me where the target like walk to the target. I've never been to this city. I know where the target, but I know exactly where I need to go to just like get the thing that can get right out. Like you ever. That's exact. Yeah. Have you ever. Exactly. Especially sorry. Go ahead Larry. Have you ever confused Sioux Falls or Sioux City? Oh yeah. I think that's the least of what that guy's confused. I haven't done that before unless I did it on purpose as a joke. You know, I haven't said the wrong place yet, but you know, it's only a matter of time. Everybody does it right. Sure. Sure. Sure. Where's the most exotic place in America that you've been help me help me out. Maybe that'll be a really good place for me. America has exotic places. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, I would say so. Exotic. Whoa. This is not like any of the major big cities. Las Vegas. You'd say Las Vegas. Okay. Okay. Well, maybe you keep. Actually, it would be something you'd never think like I actually thought that Colorado, because it actually has some decent terrain was nothing like any other place. Like basically you would when we first got there, we went up on like a high rise parking garage, you know, or whatever you guys call them. And I was looking around and no matter where you look, there was there was no horizon, right? Because it was mountains. So like you could not see the distance because there was a big mountain in your way. And that's what I'm used to at home. So like that, that was very nice. And then Utah of all places was like my dream place to go to because I wanted to go to the Salt Lakes my entire life since I saw like them doing the Brit trying to break the speed records on there. And I was like, oh, I got to go see that. So it's really weird what I'm interested in. And I'd already gone with my dad back when I was a kid to do the whole, you know, Grand Canyon stuff and all that. So I've seen that already where that would have been top of my list. Anything that's sciency and like, I want to go learn, you know, that was my, you know, that's what appeals to me. So yeah. Good. Going to. Okay. So keep that a question for you. So you wanted to Colorado, Colorado known for its high elevation. Do you have any issues with oxygen deprivation while you're up there? It's segue. I was working on it myself. I like what you did there. You know what? Not that I'm aware of, but then again, I have been an athlete, you know, for most of my life, like I've played pretty high level tennis. So like, you can't really do that, you know, two, three, four arm long matches unless you're able to have a big lung capacity. Like I don't really notice it. Even when I was singing there in Denver and Boulder, I didn't notice it at all. If you know what I mean, but I'm sure some people did. I think my bass player did. I think Brian noticed that he mentioned it to me a couple of times. He's like, Oh, it's a little hard on the old lungs. You know, but I heard it's mostly something that happens to you while you go to sleep. Maybe is that, is that it? Did he have hallucinations? Maybe. Well, he might actually have a little bit of sleep apnea, which I guess is a thing that my old, well, he's not my old roadie. He still works for me from time to time, but my old roadie, you know, has the CPAP machine and everything. And sometimes you can literally not breathe quite a few times throughout the night. Very true. But it's funny because sleep deprivation fascinates me. Because it's also, in my opinion, the same similar thing as to what happens people who have near death experiences because they go, Oh, I'm, I'm experiencing this. Well, I wonder why your brain's got like a 60% less oxygen than it normally does. And never trust, you would never trust anything that was running at 40% capacity. Why do you trust your brain? It's like, Oh, everything else I've seen my whole life at 100% is not right. But everything that I just saw in for the two minutes, my blood oxygen level was too low. Oh, that's the truth. You know, like, you know, you can recreate that scenario with drugs. I mean, basically by, you know, taking, if you're given certain certain substances, you can recreate that simply because of the, you know, it's a purely chemical thing. Things are shutting down. Your brain's going, wait, what can I switch off to keep maintaining a level of, of cognizance, you know, and then people wake up and go, Oh, everything I saw was so accurate. I'm like, Oh, you might want to rethink that. Yeah. Before we get to layer, I just want to say, so it sounds like you're saying there's a connection between oxygen deprivation, sleep apnea and some of the religious experiences that have been told as like revelations that happen while people are unconscious, right? Near conscience. Yeah, for sure. I mean, just, just look at the, the whole 60s thing with LSD, right? As an example, you know, the Catholic church did their best to not, you know, like to basically make, try to not have anybody take any kind of drugs because they were, the people were reporting instances that were actually like religious iconography. Essentially the things that people thought they'd saw that were meant to be religious were actually just things that people naturally experience on psilocybin and these different chemicals, right? It's just basically brain states that you can initiate by taking the right chemical. And it's like, Oh, but we can't have people thinking that that you can get to that heavenly so-called state by, you know, so. Yeah. Larry, what do you got? Oh, I was just going to mention it. You got Tyrone with your background in biology. I know that the brain manufacturers a lot. I mean, it fills in the gaps if it doesn't have the input that it needs for something it may just, you know, manufacture things like you have a blind spot, both of your eyes have blind spots in them that the brain constantly fills in with with tertiary data that it gets from the sides of the blind spot. When you're going to sleep, not only are you losing consciousness, but your brain is shifting from a state of being able to have a lot of input, you know, from, from your hearing in your site and all this other stuff to a state of not having any input. Now, when you're dreaming, you know that the brain is just supplying all this input. But what about in between that that's a state like when you're going under and the doctors on the surgery table, or if you're going under just going to sleep. A lot of times you'll imagine things happen. You'll hear voices, you'll hear sounds, you know, things like that because the brain is basically trying to fill in the input that it's not getting. Right. So I also want to extend. So my background is in biochemistry. I have HD in it and it's not a brain, it's not a brain surgery degree, but it does give me some impression that our brains are very reliant on reception from external sources largely through chemical input. And the cool thing is if I were to hold up like a blue pen or green pen, I got a green pen in front of me right in front of the camera for our radio listeners. I have light from my light sources in my room. The light is composed of small particles called photons. They'll bounce off the pen. They'll go into my eye. My eye has light receptors that will like trigger and say, oh, I think it's this much of this color, this much of this color. I'm going to combine them together and send that input to my brain. My brain's responsible for the high cognitive function where we'll take that information and say, OK, it's this color and it's this shape. I'm going to put some cognition together and say it's a pen and that impression of a pen, right? So like I am taking patterns from my past. I'm taking the most up-to-date information I can get from my body parts and I'm coming to conclusions. I might be wrong, right? Like my brain might come up with the wrong conclusion, but it's largely just trying to work with whatever it can. The consequence of that is I'm working with what I'm informed by and if I'm misinformed or if I'm in a state where my brain can't necessarily make the best connections because I've impaired it or introduced additional, I would say, chemicals or states of mind, my ability to like look at this and say, oh, it's a dragon. It's the same pen. But now I'm like, oh, no, it's a snake. Oh, no, it's a cucumber. Oh, no, it's a pickle. And it goes back to what Keith was saying. It's why would I trust my brain when it's in that much of a state? The weird thing is if I'm in a weird state and I'm not aware of it, then how can I even be aware that I can't trust my brain, right? Because now I'm in this double, double-bladed or what's the right word for it? Double-edged. Double-edged storage where I don't know what I don't know and I don't know who I can trust, even if it's myself. My brain has become its own worst witness and I need to rely on it and connect thoughts for me. Larry, what do you think about that? Well, yeah, think about goat sightings and monster sightings. They always seem to take place at dusk when your brain doesn't have the input or at night. And you're possible. Your brain state is in a state of fear and a lot of times there are at least tension and trepidation so that it may force input to take certain shapes in other for its evolutionary role in trying to save your life so that you'll get the heck out of there if it even thinks that it's something that might be dangerous so it will project it and you will basically see what isn't there. That's what's ironic about the evolutionary process. The evolutionary process actually caused the ability to believe in imaginary things easier because it's the old adage of there's two guys and they hear a bush rustle. The people like us three, we were dead because we would go and investigate the bush rustling. Unless it was wind. Right, but we'd be going to investigate the bush rustling going I am curious about the world. The other people just ran the other way and didn't even stop to think what it could be. Whereas you know the Neil deGrasse Tyson's of the world would have been dead by the time they were five because they would have gone their brain would have lit up with all these chemicals saying go and check this out. It's ironic that that's led to basically an entire race of people then basically human race that are susceptible to that so easily and because they fill in the blanks like you were saying Larry and they fill in the blanks of the rest of the story and that's the other thing actually that I think that's true for me is memory and I've studied memory recently a lot and memory is so unreliable. Yeah, so unreliable that it's not like you even you know like what do they call it? Banana firsthand. First-hand accounts. Yeah, I witness accounts that's the word I was quoting in trials are notoriously. Yeah, but sometimes that's all you have so you have to rely on it. Right, but it's notoriously you know like they've done studies basically where they've tested that and it proves basically that they'll show a group of people you know an event and they'll all recall it completely some people will even get the like the color of the skin of the person that they saw wrong like that big of a change you know. You're speaking to the choir here because I love I love the idea that you know you just went to Miami you just went back to Chicago and you're probably wearing a colored shirt let's say it was a blue shirt right you could probably reconstruct every single memory that you had last weekend and just make your shirt red or green like if you really wanted to you can just sit down and say I'm just going to pretend I had a blue hat on the entire time and you'll your brain's like great I love blue hats here's the memory here's the lighting here's the people you talk to and action because that's how your memory works your memory is a is a theatrical event of your brain just piecing together what it feels would fit a model of what happened in the past but is not in any way an accurate representation or an objective recalling of the past events and we don't have the capacity to be able to do that but we do have the capacity to be very confident with a reconstruction that our brain is capable of making and if you think you have a perfect memory just pretend like you did something or this earlier morning at what we're wearing a different color shirt or had a mustache or had yellow socks on you can make just as convincing a memory as you did otherwise like there's nothing stopping you from that and again it's just your brain doing what it does best taking information but piecing it together in a way that makes you feel happy confident and comfortable so that you can move on with the rest of your life and find more resources to eat eat stay safe stay warm and if you're lucky procreate and move your genes on to the next society because at the end of the day evolution isn't a guided process we just it is a it is a expansive trial and error where we try to just do what we can to get to the next step with no end goal insight we're just trying to get to the next step and so the idea that a society that doesn't cultivate good critical thinkers isn't as important as one that survives and move to just move on to the next generation is totally what evolution is all about it's just get to the next step yeah but you guys make a society and if you're lucky maybe you have some scientists but we have to keep in mind that evolution has no goal I mean other than the preservation maybe of the chromosome but there's no mind out there thinking I need to preserve my chromosome it's just how evolution works it's more or less a mechanical process mechanical physical process of how organisms relate to their environment yeah you can replace the word evolution change because change doesn't have a goal it's just changing there may have been a perfect human being in the past that was absolutely critically the best being for its environment and then next generation it changes anyway well that's what happened to our the pre-humans you know they were they weren't quite human but in the environment change and pushed us toward what we are now I was just gonna say that I love that example by Stephen Fry when you're talking about it not be a guided process is like I'm like all these people in there you know the religious they'll talk about look at the trees and look at you know our wonderful ability to regenerate and these type of things right and I'm like yeah but Stephen Fry he goes yeah but what about the larva that's only job is to burrow its way into a child's eyeball so that it can just eat it so that it can basically eat the inside of your eyeball so that it can procreate to you know are to live on and do it again you know or whatever excrete out of you and go and do it again like there was no mind there's no guidance that could ever have gone you know what you know what I think we need you know is these micro organisms like let's let's make these tiny things and there'll be the smallest living creatures but they can do the most damage of anything out there a virus let's make a virus like nobody know in any way caring being whatever can even consider conceiving something like that you know yeah so it's one of those things where I get very frustrated whenever I meet somebody who is religious and also I mean I think it's still step forward they're religious and they believe in evolution yeah but I mean it's still a good step but it's like now do the cognitive work to get of why this part is the ridiculous part the compartmentalizing their place absolutely I would also say it makes sense that someone would look at the world and say that this seems like it's been built with some intention because that's again what your brain does you as a person build things and operate with intentions your actions are based off some sort of intent that you come up with first and then try to impact on the world and so when you see things in the world particularly if you live in a city where things have been planned out by person in the past and you're like wow this city this street goes exactly to my house and back to my job and back to my house again it's like yeah because someone put them there but when you go out okay these coyotes that are attacking this school bus full of children there has to be a plan behind that too right it's like no not necessarily because these is not the design that you are pointing at is simply just you trying to assume that there's been a construct or an intent behind everything that you see in the universe including every single animal that exists in every single force of nature that we can observe but the fact is we don't have a we have no reason to believe that those intents exist because we'd have no reason to believe in a grand intentor who put those actions into place and until we have a good reason to believe an intentor a means that we can test it we are essentially looking at a process that's that seems to be not necessarily cruel but wholly uninterested in protecting the vulnerable the weak protecting those protecting those that protection it is very much a cruel and uncaring world out there and we are very fortunate to be able to survive in the states that we are right now but Keith along with what you said with boring holes viruses diseases you know like infestations parasites like there are things that just exist where you think man like it would be so great if I had none of these things here our quality of life would be so much higher but that's not the goal of evolution again the goal of the evolution is just change Larry a lot of people think of how successful humans are in the world yeah we're we pretty much checking control of our environment which is good we can kind of control the way that we go in the future but we've only been around for 150,000 years the cockroach has been around for millions of years million I guess 500 million years a long times not only that but you think about termites there are less on the earth than humans by times 11 by weight by weight by weight I mean how successful are they we never even think about them except as an occasional pest yeah yeah it's funny we're talking about this because my my next weeks podcast so my last one of my first season is is wrapping up see so episode 10 and it's all about evolution I basically just do like a what would you call it an idiot's guide to you know and I always think about like I have already quoted Stephen Fry I always think about the quote from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has to be the best quote for explaining how silly it is to think that everything's designed for us is the whole you know the puddle you've heard of the right puddle quote where he's like the puddle becomes sentient and goes oh this this hole is so perfectly it must have been designed for me and as he's contemplating this he's evaporating you know right before he evaporates he goes oh I get it it's brilliant I love the example I got we need to take a break it's bottom of the hour this is the digital free thought radio hour and woz radio 103.9 LPF I'm here in Knoxville Tennessee we'll be right back after this short break welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour I'm doubter five and we're on woz radio 103.9 FM here LP FM sorry in Knoxville Tennessee let's just take a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville ASK was founded in 2002 we're in our 21st year now and we have over 1100 members we have weekly in-person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at barley's taproom in pizzeria looks for us inside at the high-top tables or for its pretty weather outside on the deck you can find us online in Facebook meetup.com or at our website KnoxvilleAtheist.org you can just Google Knoxville atheists it's just that simple by the way if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one that's right one that where do you want to pick up all right so how about we wrap up our thoughts from the first half of the show and then we can get into some blind taste tests which I mean by I will get into more detail but the idea that your brain is an impressionable squishy thing in your body and it's not just when I say it's in your body a lot of us like to say here's your brain and point at their head that is true you do have a thing called a brain in there but your brain is connected to almost every other part of your body through your central nervous system it's connected to your eyes where it receives eye information your your taste buds where it gets taste information your nose all the way down to your gut where it gets a bunch of hormones that are being produced down there to you if you're a guy at testies where you'll get additional hormones that will trigger more muscle inflection and strengthen rest of your body down to your toes to inform when you stubbed your toe which was weird because whenever I get hit in the balls it's an immediate thing but whenever I get stuck in my toe it's like oh this is going to hurt in like seven seconds dang it I hate it when I stubbed my toe we're what we're why are different Tyrone it's the opposite for me if I get kicked in the if I get kicked in the nuts there's that like seven seconds and then you fall oh it's it's that it's that three seconds where you know it's gonna I thought that happened to every guy I must be different is that pre-delay where you're like this is going to really oh there it is so okay so brains are different yeah that's another thing to brains are different so wait wait I just I do want to labor the point so you're saying when you stub your toe it's an immediate pain sensation oh goodness yes like it's like the the the the speed between stub and swear word is almost instantaneous that's surprising further away from your brain than your your your your sexual organs your balls that's weird though I thought that was every guy's experience no I was to have that delay reaction between my mind further away from my brain that's that is I hope that's not something you're gonna have to talk to your doctor about like hey when I get hit here I get down here is that a problem no he'll probably just say no that's because that's that's where your brain is yeah yeah yeah okay yeah your brain's different your brain is impressionable and I loved what Keith had said why do you not trust your brain where that 100% you know you wouldn't trust anything else at 100% so you know don't don't come to grand conclusions honestly here's my here's my takeaway don't be 100% about anything because you never know when your brain isn't working right and you could never know and it's never good to be a lot of logic logic dictates that at the end of the day like we shouldn't you can if you say you're 100% sure and I think I mean that's pedantics of course I mean you can be pretty 100% sure that the sun is gonna rise in the morning but you actually still can't be 100% sure that it will happen because there's a day it won't so you know so and and this idea of you know when somebody says to me like well are you one of these like you know a theist that you know is 100% sure like how can you be 100% and I'm like not 100% sure that God doesn't exist but I'm as close as you can get with enough nines at the end of the decimal point but it is we're not talking knowledge when we're talking atheism we're talking belief now I don't know that there's any guys not we're talking about knowledge here and that is agnosticism but I don't believe in any guys so that's atheisms I am an atheist agnostic atheists I don't know I don't believe yeah but I think we would all from what I can gather would probably in our heads would be okay to say no on an argument because we wouldn't have proof but we'd be okay to say to ourselves we're pretty pretty sure there is no God I'm comfortable saying I'm comfortable saying there's no God in the same sense that I believe you would say that there is a God in which they do all the time so therefore I reserve the right to hold the counter position and my opinion would be like you know in certain circles when I understand that people understand the context of how I'm speaking I can say certain things without having to go through the the multiple onion skin layers of defining every term that I mean because I'm in a culture that already understands what I'm saying so I get what Larry's saying I also get what you're saying Keith too because like when you talk out with the public particularly on a podcast and you're worried about people taking snippets of what you're saying out of context to bolster their aims and further misinformation for other people I can understand the need to be clear is just a consequence of a very terrible communication system because even though we are using words we are making sounds and we are assuming you understand what I'm thinking just based on the sounds that I'm saying so even if I explain myself with full intricate clarity I'm hoping that you understand what I'm saying based on the sounds that I'm coming up with my mouth it's a very weird system convenient in some senses hopefully not in others though speaking of weird comments that you can make we did get some from our comment from our commenters I wanted to go over a couple of them thank you guys so much for leaving the comment this comment came from Exvangelical Carol 100% I agree with you guys thank you so much for making this post that was from our show give me a reason from our show God's leadership qualities which was one month ago we got a comment that said you guys had mentioned that so you guys had talked about how we pay taxes to help having good health care system and free schools don't you know that Christians also pray for that too and what did you explain why you're laughing I mean we understand but go ahead okay so I'm and again I read it so I make sure I don't say anything rude but the idea is God's leadership qualities we had talked about potentially how it's important for people to have health care and like take care of ourselves and give us good guidance and rules but we never really get those leadership qualities from God God's just like maybe some rules and disappears and we have to do the best with some arbitrary rule system with a bunch of trap doors and consequences with physics phenomena but the idea of us wanting to have good health care and free education we pay taxes to be able to support that and what the commenter has mentioned is that well don't you know Christians also pray for that too well yeah but praying for it it's like how do you feel like you're doing something without actually doing something sure we pay taxes and they use for all kinds of different things that you know I don't approve of and you don't approve of a lot of people don't but as a society we're a very rich society we should be able to take care of our citizens and we are not we are letting them flounder in their old age in their destitution if they have no if they're what crippled I mean we have we have some you know the veterans too but I mean we we have very little safety net in their society so which therefore we're failing our own citizens yeah I just remember the first time I ever had a sorry go ahead Tyrone oh no I was just saying Keith came all the way from a place that had a good health care to to wonderful terrible USA to fly him claims and he's like do I get a parachute is like no you don't get a parachute or anything like that yeah that's what I was going to say is my first experience of the American health system was I had a bad hot dog I think it was I had got I was on a hurry to a show and actually no it was earlier in the day I thought I'll just have a quick oh there's like a little hot dog joint it gave me food poisoning and I was feeling bad and worse as the day went on and by the time I got to the stage I was like I don't know if I can do the show ran out the back and like projectile vomited everything that I had all over the place and then I started having balshians I was that sick like it was really wet and my two roadies are holding me down so I didn't like bite my tongue or smash my head it was really creepy I ended up you know waking up in the hospital and a few days later I got a seven thousand dollar bill in the in the thing it was for the ambulance and for the three or four hours that I was in their care right and of course I didn't even know at the time I was so fresh off the boat I didn't know I needed health insurance do you know I mean I heard of it of course but it wasn't like the sort of thing you jump off the boat and go okay let's get my health insurance in order who should I be calling right and it caused me so much money I was like oh my goodness like how can people sleep welcome to America it's a lot of people get shot and they're like call an Uber call 911 get an Uber it's true yeah Larry well healthcare is a huge part of it but the real thing that really grabs me is education system not only do we not fund it sometimes when we fund it we take half of the funds and give them to religious schools in the form of vouchers we are we're basically cutting the legs out from under our education system and I would like to quote at this point Sam Seabourn from West Wing have you ever watched that series he said yeah education is the silver bullet education is everything we don't need little changes we need gigantic monumental changes schools should be palaces the competition for best teachers should be fierce they should be taking making six figure salaries schools should be incredibly expensive for the government but absolutely free of charge for its citizens just like national defense and I couldn't agree more I mean it is the silver bullet so the good side of that is if we had more high quality education a lot of the problems that come with developing a good healthcare system or at least observing in how to improve and modify the one that we have now could be more strategically implemented because we'd have a society that would care about more long term benefits and quality of care for people that don't necessarily just look like them but people who don't look like them people who have very different states and if I've never been in the military but I've gone through college and I understand that there are people who've been veterans and there's these issues that are going on outside my country then I might care more about how can we take care of our veterans more like just by being break the value of college for me was in part learning new things but meeting different kinds of people and working with them in a collaborative atmosphere towards a single goal towards improving ourselves intellectually so Larry go ahead yeah just answer your listener they have been praying for that for how long and what are the results that's what I'm saying Larry leave him alone it's okay it's okay thank you for the comments keep leaving comments don't mind Larry go ahead Keith I was just going to say get off my lawn I was just going to say that you talk about it was brilliant because you sort of alluded a little bit to other countries ways they do things and to me the the what's the word I'm looking for there's a word and I'm just blanking on it banana there it is see bananas again you've got it right twice in one it's America's inability I'll use my own words to think outside the box and buy the box I mean their own country so what I mean is like if I was running a country tomorrow and this is why I said this am I allowed to talk about the big orange elephant in the room I mean capital T we really shouldn't okay well I'll not let's just say that I was talking on a previous part about how I would choose my daughter right now that you just met there briefly that 10 years old to run the country more efficiently and I didn't mean that hyperbolically I meant that really like literally because the first thing she would do is come to me or come to somebody she trusts and say I need to make a decision about this that they're asking me who do I talk to and I would say I would go talk to is this on you know climate change and how we can best do that let's talk to the main guys at NASA and the main guys at this and this and this and get the consensus and go with that and you will probably be on the right path and my point was is that healthcare there are some countries that are doing it right yeah and yes it costs them cost them a lot of their GDP but you know what because their citizens are not fearing for their lives on a basis of what happens if I get sick they also quite often if they've got that they've also got some set of some sort of free health free education they are also putting more money back into the economy as healthy educated citizens that are not worried about you know you know some kind of serious illness because they know what will be taken care of if we could just look outside if Americans could look outside and go I'll take the German idea of this I'll take the British version of this I'll take the Scandinavian Scandinavian let's just take all the bloody Scandinavian stuff if you pretty much take it you'll be good you know I just wish they could look outside but because of that American elitism thing where they think they're the greatest country in the world at all times they don't it doesn't process that they can have better ideas elsewhere and of course the further right you go the more that feeling increases and the less you would ever take advice from someone else if that makes sense I agree I would also say you know Scandinavia has some really really cool stuff in terms of efficiency and work culture too I learned a lot from them but I'd also say I think there's an advantageous point from a capitalistic society and outlook to have people be misinformed or uninformed and work hard regardless right because or even undereducated right because then you've locked in what do you call it a voting pool and the more educated we see this every single time the more educated people become the less likely they are to vote for people wearing red hats right and you don't have to look anywhere more than like our state which is my state's Tennessee Larry also lives in Tennessee a wide swath of rural areas from east to west across Tennessee however the most populous locations in the major cities Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga they tend to be incredibly liberal and you can notice by just looking at the license plate because in America in Tennessee if you do not believe in God your license plate starts with letters and if you believe in God your license plate starts with numbers that's a choice you can make here in Tennessee to have a God we trust on your license plate or not and the reason why is because there's a cosmetic option for when you register for your license plates that asks hey we have the state license plate that says just the standard text but if you want the in we believe in God or God in God we trust if you want that on your license plate you can get the version that starts with numbers it looks the same but it's from a state perspective different enough that's not going to be a big deal and you can click this button and get that license plate so all the people who believe in God will get those and when you drive around especially in rural areas it's like numbers numbers numbers numbers but as soon as I'm like driving up to a bigger town it goes or even in a Kroger parking lot it goes directly from lighter lighter lighter lighter lighter lighter and it's more populous like there's like 10 maybe 100 times more people living in the bigger cities or in these smaller cities and by virtue of the fact that they're interacting with different kinds of people all the time they're going to better schools they have these higher paying jobs and it's trickling out into the rural areas and causing change but as that happens more and more those rural areas become more impacted by the different ideas different cultures and they stop being as conservative as they originally were so if you are a person who banks on people not being liberal and being conservative it's in your best interest to make sure that these people stay far apart from each other as much as possible staying in their low paying sectors as much as possible populate as much as possible because you got to refill that you got to refill that pool and ideally not get as educated so you'll make different priorities you'll say we need to bomb these people because that's good rather than I need to educate the people who are my voting electorate there's a lot of other ties to it but I do see and maybe it's just me doom and glooming but I do see a very concerted interest in keeping people not educated as a factor of staying in control if I have control Keith, what do you got? That's a good point Lara, you had something? No, go ahead I was just going to say I find that to be a really strong point against religion too actually is the idea of the greatest populated areas are generally highly liberal and I would always use that with arguments with family members here and stuff that I argue with not going to go into detail but it's basically like isn't there something doesn't that set alarm bells off in a conservative person's mind that wait a minute these people that are living together in close proximity and there's a gay person there's a black person there's a white person there's an Asian person and they all end up loving each other and going like what's that happening on the corner oh there's two dudes making out anyway I was talking there's absolutely no reaction to the other anymore and it's this fear of the other is gone and when fear of the other is gone look what you get you get utopias or at least you would have closer to utopias if the other stuff like education and healthcare and stuff was also taken care of too right so I use that as an argument of like hey look conservatism does not work because it all it leads to is us and them thinking it's all it ever leads to is there's this tribe and this tribe obviously the tribe doesn't fit anymore in our societies but it kind of still is the word tribe if you think about it it's still people like to belong to something and think that the people that aren't like me are somehow evil or less worthy or are just inherently bad that doesn't happen in cities or at least you know the percentage of that thinking is minimal yeah and it's always surprising to me how much of that dividing line between conservatism and liberalism is marked by religion mainly I guess because religions wanted the old way they don't want change their laws and morals and values are all set in concrete which makes them conservative defines the word conservative at that point imagine you were talking to somebody oh sorry go ahead oh no go ahead finish up it's just because it's like when you talk to somebody when you see somebody like I don't know if you're let's say the current speaker of the house and you hear him talk he sounds like he literally walked out of 1955 like he's currently in 1955 and that's too liberal for him and you think about if it was 1955 right now that somebody that's say in their 60s at that point some young kid in 1955 who's listening to Elvis or whatever thinks that person's going oh I wish 1900 it was better than you know everything was better than a conservative frame of mind whereas I think it gets everything is better tomorrow if we work toward it give up on prayer well we're getting close to the end of the show we had a pretty extended show break I think we have enough time for a couple of rounds of did this come from God a tyrant or a disney movie princess go for it a blind taste study and I'm going to throw out quotes I'm going to go back and forth between Larry and Keith and I'd love to see how you guys rack up whether or not these quotes that I'm giving you came from a god which could be from any biblical text a human tyrant that existed in history or a disney movie princess alright and we'll probably do this as a close up and we'll keep the score up going for whoever else comes into the show but Larry you're first are you ready remember your options are god, human tyrant or disney movie princess you ready alright here's your quote one day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do things you've always wanted to do it now what are my options disney princess god or what tyrant or disney movie princess one day you'll wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted do it now princess actually it was a tyrant it was a good try that was from Stalin no it was Stalin Keith you're ready for your quote remember your options are god, tyrant or disney movie princess here's your quote in my father's house there are many mansions if it weren't so i would have told you give him the easy one i'm pretty sure that's a jesus quote i think oh he got it that is a jesus quote in my father's house are many mansions if it weren't so i would have told you do you think that's just how he said it at the time i would have told you if there was yeah my dad has a lot of mansions he's pretty cool he's an astronaut and a rock star i would have told you that how do you have mansions inside a house that's the word larry here's your next one are you ready okay it is not good that man should be alone i'll make a helper fit for him oh that was god oh he got it good job good job larry garden of eden keith character of man is not clear to you look at his friends when the character of a man is not clear to you look at his friends i'm gonna say human tyrant oh it's disney princess so close it came from the movie malon good job though good job good job oh i haven't seen that one that's why i'm gonna say you know what it's a good point it's a good point made but oh well yeah larry here's our last round i think you guys are tied right now okay you guys ready yeah uh the next one is a little bit okay here here all right here we go it is not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change um tyrant yeah so i am getting mine from uh a website that is called chat gbt and it has listed charles darwin that's a human tyrant really oh my goodness just there because i was thinking that was darwin but i i just process elimination all right all right key simple here we go you ready all right when the winds of change blow some people build walls and others build windmills what are you thinking give me your mental gymnastics is i mean when the winds of change blow some people build walls and others build windmills that's i mean it doesn't sound like something the tyrant would say okay it sounds like something a good person would say so i'm gonna say disney princess good job hey i'm glad it took so much like thinking it's like did that come from god because it sounded like it came from a good which disney princess was it that is a that's pocahontas again haven't seen it so okay okay these are the classics it made sense it makes i love how it was like wait a second that sounds like it's a good person so it couldn't be god i'm gonna have to go for disney make sense well not not that disney started out by a good person either we're gonna go down that road we're we're at the end of the show but i'll say this will keep the scores going layer yet to our guests key simple you're at to we'll try to maintain this and have larry on the chopping block for next time thank you so much larry why don't you take us out uh no final words keith when are you showing coming up next time oh um again i'll try to get on with you guys and maybe once a month i'll talk about your website sure anytime but i was talking about when you're gonna perform again or all that so the cool the cool thing today is all i want to mention is my bass player text to me while we're in the middle i'm gonna put it in the text and he just said by the way dude did you know that today is the fifth anniversary of our live blu-ray dvd um and i just wanted to put so i put the i put the thing in there it was our first live we recorded the whole thing on a you know steady cams and our you know roman cameras and all this stuff and um it we did our entire first album live from start to finish and put it put it on blu-ray dvd so okay that's all i care about today i just hope you're having the time of your life with all this this sounds like you your your passions are finally into fruition where they are affecting other people they're having a huge impact and you're getting a lot of that out as well you're traveling the world you have a beautiful family like you're you're rocking it dude and i'm so glad that you spend some time in your awesome life with us on this show where we can continue to lambass and and and uh what is the right word for blaspheme together yeah you might you might not believe me but this is as much fun for me as what i was just doing a few hours ago on stage in front of a couple hundred people i love this just as much so we'll keep it up thank you guys absolutely keep it up time where can we find your stuff i'm on let's chat on youtube um i've i've made an announcement to the people that i work with that i have this youtube channel they all wanted to see it uh the thing is i imagine that there will be fluctuations of my subscribers based off like the views though the thing is i want the people who don't subscribe or the people who unsubscribe to know that they're still interacting with a person who has uh who's non-religious who is you know like not a white southerner in Tennessee it has nothing but kindness and love in his heart and willing to work with other people and have positive impacts on the society so even if you unsubscribe you're still dealing with me on a daily day basis so stay subscribed and continue to have uh an ear open to some of the conversations that were happening on this show because i guarantee you they'll help you broaden your perspectives sounds good just to remind you you can find this show on podcasts everywhere you can find it on youtube uh just search for digital free thought radio hour and if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe uh mike my main content can be found at digital free thought dot com be sure to click on the log button for our radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject my youtube channel is at doubter five and you can find my book atheism what's it all about on amazon 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 night at seven o'clock on biozio radio here in Knoxville say bye everybody bye everybody bye guys