 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio hour. Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio. 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, January 2nd, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, you're a doubt or five. As usual, we have our co-host on the line with us. Hello on that. Hello and welcome to 2022. I'm happy. Yep. Yep. Another whole year to get on the better side. I'll put it that way. I know, right? Yeah. Our guests today are George from Buffalo. He's going to be joining us here shortly. Boudreaux from Kentucky. Hello and welcome. We've got Red Pirate Higgs. The John Richards. And George Brown, two and a half from Brooklyn is out sick. And he will be out for a couple of three weeks. We wish him the best and hopefully feel better soon and come back with us in here maybe next month. 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 religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in town, why are you just not? In Knoxville, we have a group of over a thousand of us. We'll tell you more about that particular group, but look for a group in your time. You never know. You might find one. Wamba, what are we going to be talking about today? What's our time? Today we're talking about things that are not my problem and why we make it so easy to ignore the plight of other people. Yeah. And specifically, what do we even mean by the other? Right. Yeah. But before you remind me of what the Hitchockers guide to the galaxy. He says, we don't want them to watch us or see what we're doing. So I'm going to put a spell on him. It's not my problem. Spell. So when they look at us, they think that's not my problem. Yeah. Yeah. I actually had a fun time reading through those books, but we got a lot of topics to go over today. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, we'll throw it up there on Dread Pirate Hicks for our weekly invocation. All right. Our noodley Lord, who art in a colander. I'll taunt a be thy noodles, thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into Cui Tuism, but deliver some carbs for thine are the noodles and the sauces and the grog or never, never. Guys, it's been a really great start to the year for me at least. I feel so more relaxed after a year of not paying attention to cable news. My stress is just so much lower than it used to be. And it's not so much stress where it was like, hey, I'm ignoring cable news because I don't know what crazy stuff the president's saying and I don't want to. I know he's saying crazy stuff, but I'm just not paying attention to it. Now I know he's not. I know I know we have a president that's just boring as hell and not saying anything crazy whatsoever. And I can gladly ignore it and come back like a year later and be like anything crazy. No, it was everything's normal. I'm like, huh, after four years and potentially eight of having men have to deal with that. It's just so nice to be like, I don't have to, I don't have to pay attention to White House. It's four years of having a loose cannon on a deck of a ship. That stuff is not my problem. But we can go into more bases. Boudreau looking forward to the start of the new year. Anything that you want to mention since you're a family man and how'd you spend the ball drop? Well, I guess as with most recent years, I'm usually in bed for a night anyway. Maybe you're too. Yeah, I'm too lame. But I will say over the break, the family and we made a point to watch all of the Tom Holland Spider-Man's. Oh, we hadn't watched Homecoming and Far From Home. And then yesterday we went to the theater and saw the newest one. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. I got to be honest with you. I liked it too. I liked it more than the second one, but I still love the homecoming probably my favorite one. Oh, really? Yeah. It was a spectacle, the latest movie. And there might be spoilers, but like it was just a spectacle seeing what I was seeing. I was just like, I would never have believed I would have seen this in a movie. And it was well done. I left more excited than I came in. So, you know, I rarely have those kinds of me feelings. George, from all the way from Buffalo, how's your start to the new year and anything of highlights that you want to bring up? No, not really. Not terribly exciting, but we had good family activities. But beyond that, didn't do much. Went ice skating with my granddaughter. Hey, that's awesome. That's awesome. Is it cold or did you go to a rink? To a rink. Ah, okay. Okay. Not bad. Well, hey, you know, keep it up. Family time. You know, when I was a kid, birthdays were awesome until I crossed 30. And it's just like, I know what this is. I've done 30 of these already. Come on. Just keep them going. Just keep them going, guys. John Richards, start to the new year. Resolutions, anything like that you want to talk about? Well, there's a number of things. Since we had this preamble before we started transmitting, I didn't think of these things. And I thought the three of them since then. Go for it. Go for it. But just a quick update. We had a great Christmas. I spent most of it trying to get over my latest bout of COVID, which I finally escaped from it. More or less. I'm pretty much back to normal. So is this the second time you've gotten it? Yeah. Yeah. It's very popular. I'm back towards always great. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about, because I do a lot of amusement on the social media sites. And so we were chatting about the new year. And they were talking about it being 2022 AD. And I pointed out that we don't use that anymore. Right. Because this is a theist Facebook group that I'm in. Sure. Sure. Sure. What is the CSC now? Is that the proper CSC? Yeah. Yeah. I'm in error. Yeah. And then CE was equivalent for AD. And that sparked off a big argument because they pointed out that we're still using the same date. It's still Jesus's time. So we had a lot of fun about that. And then I floated a post which you mentioned Spider-Man. So I put up, what's the difference between Jesus and Spider-Man? You know, they both have mysterious origins. And they both have amazing locomotion skills. And they do good works. Somebody else pointed out that we never see them both together. So I've had a bit of fun on the internet. I also ran into an atheist in your great country. Okay. And he wants to start a group like this. Interesting. Yeah. So you should apply to join the digital free thought radio hour chat room. You know, you bring up a weird moment in my post-grad life. I was in a lab and there was a lady who was talking very excited about Bethlehem and Jerusalem and her trip to like Israel. And she was just, you know, and when I looked from her, she was just like a normal looking white girl. So I was just like, you seem really excited about going there. Like, why are you so excited? And she's like, that's where Jesus was. At that point, I was already an atheist. I was just like, oh, yeah, that's right. Like in my head, it didn't, the two bullet points didn't have a line across each other. And she saw that when I said, I was like, oh, yeah. Okay. It's like, she's just like, you're one of them. Anyway, that was me. Dred. Yeah. New years. You, I know you came back from the wilderness. You've been back Cougars left and right. You've been a movie star shooting, jumping out of planes. What's going on with you? How does it start to a new year? Well, not too bad. I put myself on the scale this morning and I have lost a total of 40 pounds since October 5th. Powerful. Powerful. I'm on that trip with my friend. And that, and that the 10 days that I was at the ranch there, it was a pound a day. I was, it's minus 38 up there. Right. Okay. So, you know, working outside your, I mean, just to stay warm, you're, you're cooking at, you know, 3,000 calories a day. So if you're just eating your regular 2,000 or 2,500 instead, it's not hard to, to have that weight just kind of melt away as it were. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Literally melt away. Yeah. Literally. You want to come back. John, what's up? What we have here is a new slimming technique. Go and live in a freezer. Yeah. I'm curious. Did your body big budget adjust? That is to say, did you say have the same extent of hunger? Yeah. No, I pretty much kept to the same routine. I ate lots of eggs because those were all supplied. So farm, farm fresh eggs off the ranch. They also provided beef, pork, and chicken. And they actually cooked us a goose dinner. The first I've ever had for Christmas. Yeah. They cooked us a nice goose. So yeah, it was all around pretty good. But you thought you were taking in the same number of calories? Yeah. Yeah. So that's a dramatic increase to your workload to still, you know, bring that off with the same number of calories. That's, that's an extra. But I never, I never fell hungry. Yeah. You know, I take the little snack bars, you know, granola bars and stuff with me. Much of the time I spent in a, a side by side, a gator doing patrols. Okay. So it was heated. So it wasn't like I was, you know, in minus 38 all the time, but certainly it was a lot more activity than. Now I got the weirdest question around doing a radio show. If this is feel free. If you can't, if you can't answer this, that's fine. So what is the biggest threat on a movie set that you're gardening against? Is it like paparazzi or crazy fans that might show up or like actual cameras? So this wasn't a film related one. This, this was a different thing. Family, right? Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Family with relatives and sort of the discord that's going on amongst them because they're so fricking wealthy. And it's, you know, I mean, it just demonstrates that at that level, it's a curse to be rich. You know what I mean? Because everyone wants what you have and, you know, talk about porch pyres, man. Holy crap. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I can't imagine how rich, so like Will Smith's son, Jaden Smith was lamenting about how he can't just walk into a Walmart and get like a, like a PlayStation if you wanted a PlayStation, like you would have to have to pay someone to buy something if you didn't have that kind of payment. I mean, you just like, at a certain point there's just so many numbers in your bank account that you can't do things anymore. And it's just like, I wish I could just like, that's why a lot of people just like trucking, just live in Australia and just pretend, like, every shooting pellets like, no, I'm one of you guys. It's like, yeah. Crikey. Crikey. That's me. I was always here. The black Scottsman. That's who I am. Larry left and check in on you. Well, that's better than the last two anyway, and nowhere to go but up pretty well. You're right, I know where at least some of those pounds went. I did gain a few pounds over the Christmas, but hopefully they'll go away, only a few. While I've been wanting to play, I'm a gamer, been a gamer forever. I've been wanting to play virtual reality games forever, and I finally gave myself an Oculus Quest for Christmas. And I got Half-Life Alex, and I've been spending a lot of time in the virtual reality, and I highly recommend it to everybody. If you wanted me to, I could go on the rest of the show about how great it is. So I do want to ask, that was your first VR game, Half-Life Alex? No, my first one, I had to work out how to play it on my computer because you got to load it on your computer, start it on your computer, play it on your, and I wanted to get into some of the game before that, and I went into Resident Evil 4. So I've got that on my computer too, as well. That was your first experience in VR, Resident Evil? Well, that is jumping straight into the fire. That is jumping straight into the fire. Those are scary games. So a lot of people don't realize this, but horror games are a very popular genre, but it's one thing to play a horror game where it's in front of your screen, and you know you're a person sitting in your living room with a control in your hands, and you can feel the couch underneath you. It's an entirely different experience when the guy with the chainsaw standing behind you, and you turn around, and he's like, yeah, I'm here. The big reveal for me was, they're as big as I am. I'm six foot two. My turn around, there's this guy, and he's there in the room, and I'm there with him. He's just tall as I am, and he's got a chainsaw. No, it's something else. It is. Horror games would never be something that happens to your first time out here. I have a lottery strenght player. Boudreau, what's up? I'm blown away because we played, my wife and I played Resident Evil in early 2000 when it came out on a really tiny, well, probably big CRT for the time. And I mean, I remember playing that game with the lights on, and both of us sitting there with controller, and I mean, I was throwing out of my seat, and dogs were jumping out of, and I mean, it's frightening, and I can't imagine what it's like in VR. What's an Oculus worth? Like, how much did it cost? It's like 300 right now. Well, let's start at 300. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, it really isn't too bad. The only issue is if you are anti-Facebook, there was a period of time where you had to have a Facebook account to use the Oculus Rift. Now they took that away because there was enough consumer complaints. So there's really no excuse, and I say support VR, try it out. Some of my favorite games, there's a game called Dance Central for VR, and it's one thing to dance with a character on your screen, and it's another thing to be in a club surrounded by people cheering you on, and there's a coach dancer right in front of you, and you're just making her or his moves, and it's like there's eye contact, and you're like, whoa, this is really bizarre, and they may get a little too close to you, and you're like, oh, you're a little too close to me, I'm going to back up, and it's so bizarre. One thing I wanted to say about a scary game, Half-Life, Alex, much more scary than the other one, I can't remember. Well, Resident Evil, the scariest thing I've watched was this morning with my daughter when we watched Encanto. Oh, that's not a scary movie though, right? Well, what was scary about it was the quality of the reality, you know, it's moved on enormously from the days of Yogi Bear. You know what, you touched on something very good, because way back when, when it was just toy story and everything was plastic toys, I could accept that, but then around Ratatouille, when they had the furry mice on a person's head cooking food, you're like, no, my brain's like, no, I don't want that, that actually kind of grosses me out a little bit, because they look too real, they don't look like little puppets anymore, they look like real things, and that Holy crap. All right, guys, we're going to be talking today about justification of abuse against the other and a bunch of other quick topics. I think we can knock out a couple before we go into the half of the show. So here's my thing, I tend to care about the things that I care about. Isn't that weird? And when bad things happen to the things that I don't care about, whether they are other groups of people or other groups of religions that I have no awareness of or anything like that, I kind of comfortably allow that in my ignorant space, because I know I can't care about everything, and I would be inundated with nothing but worrying anxiety if I ever tried to. So I have to pick my battles, and the ones that I bet pick on are like the singular topics in my life that I wake up to, and those are the ones that I keep track of. And so I will pay attention to them with such laser focus that I just don't care about, you know, the abuse that happens to the other, but sometimes the abuse that happens to the other is so much more monumental and may even, you know, trickle down to impact me. And so I know, for example, not to jump into the biggest topics first, but like the Taliban taking over Afghanistan again, I have family that's in Pakistan and I worry about them. I don't want them to have to suffer that same thing, because they have college education, they're female, and I don't want them to be their country to be targeted next and then lose opportunities. That would be a huge thing that I'd be constantly worried about. But it's easy enough in my day-to-day life to just ignore that that ever happened in the first place, that I can take the suffering of entire country or a populace of women from an entire country and just ignore it. And it's scary how easy I can do it. And I wonder if any of you guys felt that it was easy for you to ignore abuse against other people, and why are we outfitted for that, if possible? I'm going to throw the question up to Dredd. What do you think? Actually, I don't find it easy to kind of let it go. And that's probably just a part of my nature and my personality is that if I see what I think is wrong or people being wrong, I come to their defense. And it's just kind of like an automatic thing. And it doesn't matter what it is. And it doesn't matter who it is. And it doesn't matter what the odds are. Yeah, if it's wrong, it's wrong, from my point of view. And I got to get behind it. I mean, that's really the essence of why I'm a Pasta Varian. George. Yeah, but Dredd, then how do you select who you give aid to? What the starving people of which country do you prefer? I guess that's a good question. I mean, I don't give money to whatever the groups are that try to support that. I think a lot of the time, most of the money is eaten up in administration, so that for every dollar that I might send to one of these causes, 95 cents is eaten up in the administration of trying to deliver the program. So I mean, if I could go there, I would be a different thing, right? But generally, it's what I can have, what I believe I can offer that will have an impact. So if it's a cause for which I couldn't make a dent, then it's best in my own mind to support those things that I can make a dent, given whatever talents or skills I might have to lend to it. Before we dig further into Dredd's POV, I would like to hear from everyone. George, how would you tackle that question of like, do you find it easy to not necessarily ignore but bypass the plight of particularly others so you can focus on current topics that you have? I'm afraid I'm guilty of doing it automatically. I mean, we're bombarded with these obvious needs of people desperate to continue to survive. And I don't know how I handle it. We do contribute to some causes, but you can't contribute to them all. And I don't know how to handle the disparity, the choice. I don't know how it happens. Well, one thing is my wife and I decide these things together. And sometimes she has a sense for that. For example, I worry about the plight of American Indians, particularly the desert Indians that live so poorly. And I like to contribute to them with things like food baskets and stoves, you know, heating stoves and that sort of thing. But she doesn't. So we have to compromise on that. So that's the only method I know of. Okay. I see something in your back wall there. It looks like a day of American art piece. Yeah, it's several things. It's a bow and arrow and a blow gun and then a picture. I sort of put that together myself. But I like to go down to Cherokee Country and visit them. And that's where I got some of those things. And those are weapons, but they're weapons to stun animals, which will later be clubbed to be eaten and preyed over. So it's a little different than military type weapons. Right, right. Let's see. But it is a real dilemma. You know, how do you pick your charity? I think that's a good question. And it's definitely something I'm going to touch back to because I definitely now see a spectrum between Dred, you and myself. And I would love to see John Richards. How do you weigh on this? Is it something automatic? I do. It's a very difficult one, isn't it? Because no, very few individuals, I'm thinking of some of the multi-billionaires, could have it in their power to actually solve some of these problems. The rest of us have to do what we can with our mega resources. And I subscribe to two charities. One is a cancer charity because my first wife died of cancer. And I subscribe to that ever since. And the other one is UNICEF, the Children's Fund for Worldwide, part of the UN. So that's what I do. And I can't do anymore. And that sort of limits my exposure and appeases my conscience because I do that every month. But I wanted to talk about somebody else I met on the Internet who has suffered from this abuse for 50 years by being in the Word of God sect. I don't know if you know that, it's one of the prosperity gospel jobs. And this person has been taught that everything comes from Jesus. You don't need medication. And her friend, similarly indoctrinated, watched a cancer grow for three years, refused all offers of medical assistance and calling an ambulance and everything, and eventually died from it in a hospice. And the survivor has naturally got survivor's remorse because she's thinking, she's now an atheist, but she's thinking, had I got out of that abusive system 50 years ago, I might have been able to do more and save this person who is no longer with us. Yeah, when you look at religion as something that is a disease in its own right, and as an atheist, particularly when that advocates for critical thinking, you look at a world that's by person, like innumerable billions of people that desperately need what you feel like is your help, right? And who isn't dying from religion today? Has there any, has a day passed since in the last couple of millennia where someone hasn't died for some sort of religious or obfuscation of medicine or some higher confidence in something that's not rational whatsoever? It's baffling. And I feel like I couldn't process the amount of help that's needed on a day-to-day basis. It literally beyond me, but not to tip my hat. Boudreau, do you feel like the plight of others is, and I think we have seven minutes before we get to the bottom of the half, but Boudreau, do you feel like the plight of others, particularly ones that aren't in your circle, is something you automatically ignore or something that is easy for you to ignore or help me fill out that sentence? Yeah. So, well, similar to others here, it's difficult for sure. But I think it's also kind of sane a little bit to, I mean, you could drive yourself crazy and not sleep at night. And I mean, because there's so much to worry about and for good reason. Right. And, you know, since I haven't mentioned Sam Harris yet, it's about time. I think we talked about this last time I was on the show with givewell.org and trying to automate the way you give so that John said he gives every month. Any way you can automate that process, so you don't have to gear up all the passion to do it every month. You just decide you're going to give and just automate it, set it up to where you always give. And I think sitting down green with a wife or a partner, whatever is like George was saying, make those decisions kind of clear-headed and ready and then just kind of automate it. I think that that's maybe my way of kind of combating this because, and I guess to George's point, I know I want to give as much as I can to the best charities where that charity per dollar figure is the best. Kristen, on the other hand, my wife likes to give locally so that we can kind of see things happening and give, and I like that. I think a mixture of both is kind of where we've arrived. You know, we like to give to NPR. We like to give to, I like to give to CFI, which is the Center for Inquiry, which kind of helps folks in Afghanistan escape. Wow, that's wonderful. I think I might have mentioned Kiva last time I was on, which is the, it gives non-interest or no-interest loans to countries for startups and whatnot. And Pastaferians are actually a head of the Mormons in having shots Mormons. Yeah, exactly. I think it's over $4 million that Pastaferians have given towards this Kiva no-interest loans program. But they get for spending all that money on their underwear, you know? They have to get that special underwear. Larry, how do you feel about the subject and feel free to take us out after your response? But like, applied about it, do you find it easy to ignore? Do you find it difficult? Is it something automatically that you do? Or is it something that you... Well, of course, it's harder to ignore when you when you see it. A lot of times society seems to attend to hide it from us so that we're not that aware of it. But of course, when you do see it, you feel like you need to do something. I have given myself, I've given through work, but I'm with dread about the waste of money through the overhead of charities. However, there are good ones, doctors without borders. I believe Red Cross is a good one. You see them actively working in the field on many disasters. You can give back personally to your society. I was a big brother, big brothers, big sisters. My younger, my little brother is now about 45. But I still talk to him. I know where he lives and we correspond through Facebook. So we haven't lost touch. But the subject really is how easy it is to ignore or harm the other. Right. Simply because they are the other. Maybe we can get into that in the second half. But I'll go ahead and text and break. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. We're on WOZO Radio, one of 3.9 LP FM 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 Freethought Radio Hour. I'm Doubter Five and we're on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville for just a moment. ASK was founded in 2002. This means we're just starting on our 20th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's old city at the Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria downtown in Knoxville. To look for us inside at the high top table, we're usually the loudest, happiest group there. We also have a virtual meeting every Tuesday evening. It's a Zoom meeting and you can email us if you'd like to be a part of that. We'll send you an invitation. Send the email to askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let'schatseatgmail.com. You can find us online at facebook, meetup.com or Knoxvilleatheist.org or just google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one, start one. Mom, where do you want to pick up? Touching off on the subjects of what we left off and the idea of abuse. So, John Richards, would you like to start the convo? Yeah, well, what we've done is we sort of morphed the topic into charity and then the Mormons were mentioned. And I thought you might like this news item because the richest man in Utah has just submitted his resignation to the Mormon church, claiming it is actively and currently doing harm in the world. Like most churches, most religions. Yes. I wonder what his severance package was. He's actually, he's got five billion pounds apparently, but he's written the milletto, which has been leaked to the public. And it says, I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women's rights, civil rights, and racial equality, and LGBTQ plus rights. And before we jump in as atheists, like, yeah, that's true. It's like, hey, basically most religions are there. It's not just Mormonism. Every single religion in the world. Well, he was a keen Mormon, you see, so he's focused on them. Sure. And we say, we've been on him for getting out of a bad club, a bad situation. He's left the church and he says his former faith should be doing more to help the world and its members with its wealth. Instead, I think the church has exploited its members and their need for hope to build temples, shopping malls, cattle ranches, fund investment funds and own mortgage backed society, the securities, rather than alleviating human suffering in or out of the church. Now that's, that's a good transformation, isn't it? And it makes me think, because unfortunately, a lot of society misvalues things, you know, we will pay a lot of money for triperies, you know, entertainment and entertainers and not enough necessities for real needs. So it just misspent money very much. What I would say, and I'm going to, I'm going to fill in your topic with the misuse of money. And then along with Dread Pirates, you know, points where it's like, hey, if there's a problem somewhere, I want to solve it. I feel like I feel the same tenor of dissatisfaction with the way how big corporations, big charities misuse their money in terms of like actually helping those in need, especially religion, which is essentially just selling false hope. Like the big problem is the thing that you're selling, not the things that you tell on top of that. But also there's, there's a very appealing point that George and Boudreaux and Larry are bringing up and that there's so much stuff in the world that I could not possibly put them all on my radar at once. And one of the most troubling things that someone with empathy has to do is decide where to focus their attention, knowing that some things are going to be in the blind spots, just out of necessity. Or else everyone would be penniless and tired and losing a pound a day. Because it'd be working so hard. I will say this and then we'll get to Dread. My, my points are, I think while money has its obvious values, there are a lot of other things that we can contribute that do have like a one-to-one offering. One big one is blood. If there's a blood drive near you and if you can get to it, it's a fantastic thing to give because it does help people and it's not the sort of thing that someone puts in their back pocket and uses to buy Mercedes with or something like that. It's going to go to a good place or it's going to be used for good reasons. Either separating plasma and getting more data out or at least having a backlog or storage in the event that something does bad happen, they can, they can quickly use it. The second thing would be your time. And so I volunteered a animal shelter. And I find that it's a lot easy for me to know that I can't help every single dog in that shelter or all the shelters in my town. There's multiple in our city. But if I take, you know, two hours out of my day and I'm inclined to do that, maybe there's someone else in this world or someone else in the city who will also do the same thing too. And I can foster that sort of collective attitude by me doing it, that enough people will be able to help take care of the dogs that are in kennels and give attention to the cats. My time and my money and my blood are like the three things that I can give. But if you have, if you have qualms about the money, think about your blood that you got. Think about your time because there's so many other things you could do with that time. I just wanted to ask. Dred, what's up? Well, I was, I mentioned earlier, I listened to a skeptic guide to the universe. It's a podcast with Dr. Steven Nevella and Klan. But one of the, one of the subjects was about the COVID vaccine. And that for, I guess a number I had been put to it that for 57 billion dollars, everyone can be vaccinated who want, wanted to be vaccinated. Currently the world is about 54% vaccinated, which of course is a long way from herd immunity globally. But you think about Bezos and Elon Musk and all these billionaires that with a bat of the eye could easily help support a fund that would go towards vaccinating people around the world. And that's certainly a worthwhile cause that I would throw some money at. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. I totally hear you. And before I'm a boss of Microsoft is doing quite a good job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not only that, but how do I put this? It's not the famous billionaires that I have a problem with because they tend to be under so much scrutiny that they do actually have a very good presence in a number of different communities and startups and charities. It's the nameless billionaires that are like the ones who gave George Lucas $2 million or $2 billion. We want Star Wars. Don't ask us what our names are. The people who own the Marvel movies. Like there's like these four people who own Marvel that nobody knows the names for, who like our son and Kevin Feige and just like, who are these people? It's like, they paid money so that we don't say their names. It's like, oh, those are the scary guys. Like those are the ones that I'd love to see more involved in charity, but who knows who they are? Right. But like Joe's Bezos, like those guys, they're, they offer so much in logistics and community that in that case, in that case, I'll give a name check to Bill Gates because I didn't mention it before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bill Gates also one of the like most charitable, the Melinda Bill Gates Foundation. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Golden rice. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. Uh, Bujo, I'd like to throw a question out at you. So is it possible, and I'm gonna throw this out, is it possible to actually care very much about the plight of a person, but not do any sort of activity to stop it in the, in the same, in the same place? Like, could you, like, man, I feel really bad about injustice. And yes, I know they're being like North Korea. I know that I know they're in a terrible situation, but I can't do anything about it. End of the story. I got other stuff to deal about it. Like, can you have those two mind states and activity states hand in hand? Or is there a logical irrational thing going on there? Again, I think it comes down to, to sanity. I mean, I don't, I would fear if I, if I went down that path. I mean, there's so many things. When, where do you stop? Where do you stop caring? Yeah. You, um, yeah, and, and I think the other thing that's important, too, is, is to break away from this idea of anonymity. You know, like giving, giving anonymously is not helpful. Take credit for it. Because if you take credit for it, other people are going to see you do that. And they're going to, they're going to want to do it, too. And, and, and that's the one thing where you, you really should be proud to, proud to brag about. I love that idea. Yeah. They call that, they call that reciprocal altruism. Yeah. Right. I dig it. Sam Harris fan over here. Look at this guy. It's like when Pasifarians donate and they're like, Pasifarians do the most. It's like, maybe that's right. Well, it's higher the Mormons to pick it up and next, you know, we have a competition where the only good thing that happens is the people who need get more. That's right. It's the tight. It's the tide that lifts everyone's boat. Right. I love it. A little competitive altruism. I love that. I love it. I love it. George, I got a question for you. So it's a biology question about caring for the strife of others. You know, spiders, they got to eat bugs. And I feel bad about those bugs, but I also feel bad about starving spiders. Like it seems like there's not a way for me to care about everything because some things are going to need to be sacrificed in the process of, you know, existence. Like I, if I became a vegan, I'm going to be eating plants and I feel bad for the plants. I wonder if plants had feelings. They probably, I don't want to be eating either. Like where is it, is it reasonable to draw lines of, well, I'm not going to care about this or I care about it, but I'm still doing it anyway, even though I know it's causing some degree of harm because I need to survive as well. Like do you, is it okay to draw lines like that? Well, if you want to talk in a biological sense, you can't fight evolution. You can't fight survival of the fittest. So it makes those things really unreasonable to talk about. Right. Yeah. And I would go a step further and say, these are things based on the questions of morals, right? It's not a question of biology because we all have to live, we all have to eat, we all have to die. And that's, you know, you can't change that. But when it comes to the human condition and a moral standpoint, those are things that we can sort of do something about. You know, I think about justice. If something is unjust, that's what I will spend my time trying to help with. But you know, Undress on a moral ground that deals with human condition. But not like, I'm not going to talk about like, what blade of grass am I going to step on when I walk outside? Like that's, that's not something I can care about. I have to focus on these bigger topics and maybe we have a better impact if I focus on strictly. The two can cross over, you shouldn't step on the spider. Yeah, right. And you shouldn't kick puppies. Depending on what the spider is, and if it's in my house or not. John Richards. I'm a speciesist. Okay. I think we should, I think we should respect all the other life forms and our best to look after them. But I still think that humans come first at the top. Yeah. My view. There's a hierarchy of needs, right? Don't, don't you find it easier to like the hairy spiders after all, they're more furry than the bored ones, aren't they? The word is Glabras. Like the Black Widow is Glabras. It has no hair. Glabras? Glabras. G-L-A-B-R-O-U-S. Glabras. Larry, you're shaking your head. What's going on here? It means basically hairy. And of course in the plant world, most plants have hairs or bichomes as they're called. And so, yeah, okay. I don't like the spiders that are her sweet, her suit. So Larry has been playing a lot of Half-Life. He doesn't want to see another headcrab again. He doesn't want to see another giant spider. Larry, I do have a question for you. So like the idea that we could ignore the problems of the others. So like obviously, you know, as atheists, we can look at religion and be like, wow, you know, you are subjugating people, you're misinforming people, and it's causing actual harm. Now, I'm going to throw this out in a weird way. But like religion isn't the only thing that's separating people in the world. We have like economic barriers. We have racial barriers. And I'm just wondering like, as an atheist, why are you dedicating all this time to one thing when you couldn't be dedicating it to all these other problems that are separating humanity? Like you are picking one together. What's I mean, you can you can spread your efforts around so much that none of the efforts in any particular direction are doing any good. So yeah, you have you have to pick your battles, pick your wars and your causes and and do what you know, where your passion takes you, I guess. So I think that looking at everything, religion has caused, I mean, so much damage and harm and continues to do for thousands of years. And now even that it's something that I have chosen to shine light on, if nothing else, simply and illuminate the harm that religion does. And it's totally manmade. What is very simple for me, all the other things are real, you know, well, there's real disease, there's real droughts, there's real starvation, but religion isn't right. It's the one thing we literally could get rid of overnight if we want to be like, okay, now what's the next thing that we got? Oh, that's a complicated problem. All right. All right. Well, now that we're not paying money to this, we can actually fix this. I can totally hear that. It seems like the despite the fact that it's just ingrained, it is the least necessary and yet one of the most harmful causes a separation of humanity. Do we dare consider climate change here? Oh, yeah. Let me tell you something. While I am fully proponent of climate change, and this is probably a little bit more off topic, but I also feel like we have an overpopulation problem hidden as a climate change problem. And I think a lot of the things that we're doing. Well, nature will take care of that. Yeah. Essentially, like the world isn't going anywhere. It's us. That happens. It's like, oh, climate change has gone away and humanity has gone with it. It used to be problem solved. 90% of the species. Earth is going through a fever right now and it's going to figure it out. Boudreau, it's gone through them before and it came through. Fine. The species die off. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, uh, Boudreau, what's up with you? So I had, I had a point on a earlier topic, but then the idea of eliminating all religion came up and I'd love to see if someone could do the math. I know religions do, do good. They, they generate money and they feed, feed the hungry and don't, I'm not going to pretend like they do zero good. But if you sold every church, all the property, all the land, all the stuff, the jets, everything, you took sold everything that was part of religion and use that money to help how much good could you do? But that brings me to my other point though, because there's another top piece that we didn't point out here and Dredd's going to call me out on Sam Harris's and again, but there is, there's the idea of earning to give too. Like there's, there is, uh, there's logic behind someone, you know, doing some great work inventing something to make a lot of money so that they can give, right? There's, because that's an idea too. You don't want to just have a low paying job and give half your salary. You want a huge paying job and give 80% yourself. I was, I was listening to Sam, Sam Harris's podcast, I listened to that regularly and he recently had, and I can't remember the guy's last name, but it's Sam something and he's the youngest. I think he's 29. He's a multi-billionaire and he made his money in cryptocurrency, but his objective right from graduation was to earn enough money to give it all away. And that's what he's been doing. And it's a, if you have a chance to check out some of Sam's podcasts, it was a cryptocurrency. It was just a couple of weeks ago, um, but this, and I wish I could remember his name, but, uh, yeah, very, very good talk about what it is to earn to give. Right. You know, speaking of cryptocurrency, it reminded me like if we did get religious, rid of religion overnight, it's going to be a huge power vacuum. And I feel like in the next thing, in terms of man-made things that, that theoretically don't have any value, but we give a lot of value to, it seems a prime target to be like, Oh, and, and here's our new thing. That's like all praise dogecoin. Um, guys, we're getting close to the end. So how about we get final words from everybody? And if you'd like to also show your New Year's resolutions, um, go ahead. Mine would be, you know, you got more than money to give blood and your time. And if there's a shelter in need, dog shelter, animal shelter, see if you can't coordinate some time to go over there. You would actually find it a very enjoyable experience. The dogs would love you absolutely well. And I found it to be a really nice way to get in a lot of steps and it fits into my weight loss goals for this year as well. Uh, Dred. Hey, while I've got, uh, I'm planning on losing 20 more pounds. So that's, that's my resolution. Hopefully I can do that in a month or a month and a half. A couple more. I'm heading up, uh, to the ranch again on the ninth for another 10 day rotation. And apparently this is a gig that's probably going to go on for at least a year, maybe two years. So, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to summer and spring and, you know, the non-winter seasons, because minus 38 is it's tough. Okay. John Richards, some news resolutions and final thoughts on the show. Yeah, sure. Well, you'll be pleased to hear that here in the UK, some of the religions are fizzling out painlessly. And if you want, you can buy a church and I know several that have been sold and one is now an eye hospital, which is a far better use. So some of them have been, some of them have been turned into schools and, and such like my daughter goes to a school that was formerly a convent, not anymore. So it is happening in, uh, some parts of Europe. But, uh, yeah, my newest resolution is to provide a safe haven in an internet of fear. We'll get into that when we do some flags. I love it. I love it. That's, that's why I'm working on free thought dot city slash Kickstarter. George Buffalo. And we'll get more into those plugs at the very end. But George, last new year's resolutions, if you have any in our final thoughts on the show. Well, I've just finally officially retired from the university. And so what I like, congratulations. Congratulations. It is something to be happy about because I've had about a year of acclimating. It's not a sudden shock. What are you going to do now? Sure. I'd like to, I'd like to find a place for myself. Maybe in writing, I still give lectures occasionally on the subject of climate change. And maybe I'll get more involved in that. That is educating people about climate change or bringing them to the reality of it. Right. Because that brings us closer to maybe adapting at least mitigating maybe. Nice. I love it. Boudreau, final words and new year's resolutions. My new year's resolution, it never matters because I always end up giving it up for Lent. So cycle of, no, uh, too quick things, uh, kind of fun for me is I, I, I, I go to a, uh, place to work out a gym called Orange Theory and they've got treadmills there. Wait a second. That's the name of your band, isn't it? Yeah. Orange Whip was the band. Yeah. No, I, I just love Orange, I guess. Yeah. Orange Whip was the, was the band. Uh, Orange Theory, it's a very different kind of workout studio, but that treadmills there, uh, then in the new studio, studio go to 15 miles an hour. And I'm working my way up there and I hit 13 and a half, uh, uh, last week. So it was kind of fun. Wow. Wow. So your goal is to get up to 15 miles an hour on the treadmill? Yep. Like for 30 seconds. It's not. Hey, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. But, but the last thing I'll quickly say, and, and George knows this, this story, um, but again, a good chance to brag about doing, doing something good. Um, my wife, one at the university, two things this year, uh, just from filling out surveys, one for getting vaccinated and one for just filling out a survey. One of them is a MacBook. Like, like a, like a, and we're PC people. Yeah. Speaking of religions, let's talk about Apple. But, but we're not politically correct, but we're, uh, you know, Windows PC people. So I was like, well, what are we going to do with a MacBook? I mean, right? Well, so what she did is she wrapped it up and for Christmas, she gave it to George's granddaughter, our niece, who's going off to college next year. Oh, nice. Um, and who really needed one. Um, she also won $100 gift card to, to Barnes and Noble. And so she gave that to the other niece. They got these huge gifts and we pretty much put on the, on the card, uh, you know, from us and karma because I don't know, I felt like we were just paying it forward. I love it. I love it. That's great. Larry, uh, New Year's resolutions, final thoughts, and then we'll go into bloods. I don't have any, I made a resolution several years ago, not to make any more resolutions. And you're doing well. Hey, listen, did you finish Resident Evil and VR? Did you finish that game? Did you actually go? No, no, I've only started. Okay. I hope you make it to the end of Half-Life Alex. I got spoilers for you otherwise, but yeah. Oh, I definitely will. It's worthwhile. Can I ask a quick question before we leave? Oh, we're doing some plugs. How is George Brown doing? Well, yeah, we'll inform you after the end of the show. Uh, plugs will be Dread Pirate first. What's going on? Okay. Uh, you can find my stuff at Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. That's my YouTube channel. I now have 100 subscribers. Thank you very much everyone. But now I found out that, uh, I have to wait until YouTube invites me to customize my channel. I don't just get to do it. So make your junk email filter. That's all. Oh, yeah. Well, there you go. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that's where you can find me. I do this, uh, stream this when I'm on, uh, 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. So come check it out. All that's automatic, by the way. There's no guy at YouTube who just pushes the button every single time someone gets subscribed. It's in your email inbox. I guarantee it. John Richards, anything you'd like to plug? Well, I've remembered that I actually wrote a book too. Oh, jeez. Okay. I've kept quiet about this, but it's the second book I've written on the theme of religion. Oh, wait a second. Show me the names of who wrote that book. Well, there's a lot of names on there. Yeah, yeah. Well, the author is my pseudonym, Elliot George. Ah. There's another George. What is it? The dreadful consequences of thinking like a theist? Also, why is your pseudonym just another? Yeah, it's a name. Like at the end of the day, it's not like any. It's not like you named yourself thunder stick thunder hammer. It's like, Oh, it's it's it's Pete. Brian. It's like you've put two first names as you're. Oh, I'm really going to forget right now. You may have heard of George Elliot, which is the pseudonym of a woman called Mary Evans. And she wrote a book but couldn't get it published because she was female. This is, you know, tip of the hat. Yeah. What I've done is I've taken George Elliot and switched it around. Yeah. It's a transparent pseudonym. Your actual name is two first names, too. Just saying. Yes, yes. Yeah. The forward. I don't know if you can see that. The forward is by Alex O'Connor, Cosmic Skeptic. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You wrote a long forward. But I really want to plug. I really want to plug Freethought.city slash Kickstarter because we've got this Kickstarter running and we've recently dropped yesterday. In fact, we dropped. That's a new word for launched or released a song by Richard Dawkins. That was awesome. Awesome song. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I shared it. I shared it through the Pastafarian Network. So it's a noodle network, the noodle network. Please, please share. He wrote the lyrics and my colleague in Australia wrote the music and I made the video. Yeah. So very well done. Very well done. Larry, anything you'd like to plug before we head out and go for it. Well, let's just say if you want to watch my YouTube channel, I have a lot of resources on their atheism resources. I search for Douter 5 or Larry Rhodes. I do have a book on Amazon as well and congratulations, John, on getting your book out. That's great. Excellent. That was 2017, a long time ago. My book is called Atheism What's It All About and you can find out on Amazon. If you have any questions for this show, you can send them to askanatheist.noxvilleatheist.org or let'schatse at gmail.com and we'll answer my future shows. Thank you for joining us on Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, you can find this show on Apple iTunes, Pocketcast, Amazon, podcasts everywhere really. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. And if you're watching this show on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. 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 week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Robin.