on this. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 20th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. It's me the Wombat. It is and Dred Pirate Higgs is with us today. Welcome Dred. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a top radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, post-deferianism 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 your town, well you're just not a bet on it. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us and we're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break, so be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to do a Meetings of the Minds or at least talk about what it would be like to meet some of the greatest minds and religious bodies in a one-on-one interview maybe on a talk show or something like that. Sort of like what they did with that show that you referenced. What was the name of that show again, Larry? It was Steve Martin's Meeting of the Minds. It was done back in the 60s I think. Steve Allen. Yeah, so I thought that'd be an interesting thing to go through. What happens if you have the likes of Charles Darwin, followed by God, followed by Jesus, followed by blind spaghetti monster, all sitting doing talks and figuring out what has come about with the things that they may have discovered or presented to humanity and how would they react to advancements that have been made or recent revelations if you will. But before we get into that, let's call that the meat and potatoes today's show. I would like to start with our own invocation now that we have our noodley pasta pirate representative here. Dre, would you mind leading us? Not at all. Our noodley lord working on a colander, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run nice, soft 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 ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. The nine are the meatballs and the noodles and the grog, whatever and ever. Hey, Dred, how have you been? Working like a dog, man. I could tell. I could tell they made you get rid of the beard. Well, yeah, that's actually been a while. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I just have to be able to wear a respirator. Yeah, yeah. Working on the oil and gas industry here. So you have the respirator face look right now. Like it's like, I got rid of the fist, but they let me keep this. I'm still keeping this. Yeah, yeah. Believe me, I look like, I look like 30% of all the guys here. Okay. Just by virtue of that fact. How has been the work and how's the fire situation recently? I know a lot of smokes. Well, yeah, it's not too bad. Actually, where I live, my Western Canada. Yeah, yeah, Western Canada.  Right, right, right. You know, if you are young, if you are young, say like 30s and you have some disposable income, invest in a good respirator mask. You don't necessarily need the cartridges right now, but similar to how everyone was hoarding face masks and they were suddenly off the market and like 10 times worth of price. And the things that you could get were substandard and quality because they were just making them in bulk to basically make a profit. It's always good to just have a good respirator on hand. It's one of those really valuable PPEs that you don't want to compensate or compromise on quality, particularly in a rush of an emergency. And you never know when there might be a big fire or some weird climate change or deal that causes you to absolutely need one. My two cents. Dread or you can pray. That's always a good option too. Much more, much more cheaper, much more available, but effective, we'll find out. Well, Larry Rhodes would love to catch up on you. How you been?  I'm sorry?  Yeah, I did. I mean, I met with Eric yesterday, Boudreau from Kentucky. He came down to pick up Tesla. Nice. Yeah. So we have a dealership here in Knoxville. So we got together for lunch with his parents. I mean, his wife and his father. So it was a good meal, a good company. Yeah, I'm surprised there's not one in Louisville or Versailles or in any of the other areas in Kentucky. It's Knoxville. Knoxville is the home of Teslas. Don't knock Tennessee. It has so many big cities. Yeah, and the big cities are blue. I remember that. True. The rest of it is rural red. It is. The big cities are blue. And not only that, but like most everybody in Tennessee is really, really nice. Like even it's just a really, really nice state to be in and no sales tax. So people. Wait, wait, wait. What? What? No, no state. So no state, no state tax in Tennessee. Income tax. No state income tax. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No state. Yeah. If you buy a lot of stuff, you're going to be taxed. Sure. All right. Got it. But when it comes to turning in your taxes, it's no default, like 20%, 30% out of your paycheck. You're like, what? That makes no sense. The federal government already took what they wanted. All right. John Richards. Hello, John. Welcome. We have a show today. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm late guys. I've been collecting the family from the airport. They've just got from their homes. Okay. Okay. I'm glad that England also calls them the airport too and not like the ferry floaters or something like that or like another term that I would have to learn as an American. Nice to see you, Dredd. And surviving the fires too. Truth. Yeah. But you want the bad news. Okay. Sure. Spain, Spain beat England. No, in what? Football. Three different sports we just said. Soccer, football and cricket. It's one of those three. One of those three. Okay. The mystery is still out you guys. Women's World Cup football. Condolences. Okay. I didn't even know we had a women's football team. That's amazing. So like they have a lot. You have a US women's football team and it's quite good. Are they kickers on the team? Surprisingly. Okay. Okay. That's wonderful. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Field goal kicker. They got the quarterback and everything like that. It's wonderful. Water boy. No. Water girl. Excuse you, Dredd. Water girl. Yeah. John Richards, how have you been? Cheer man. Cheer man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cheer person. Yeah. Yeah. John Richards, how have you been? What's going on with you? I've been fine. Thank you. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Today's topic, John, is meeting of the minds. You remember that old show from the 60s and 70s? Steve Allen, the meeting of the minds. And he had people on there that would like play historical figures and talk to each other. I'm not sure that it aired over here. Okay. I'll put the link in the chat. You can check it out. And for those listening, I've got the link down below or I will have. Yeah. I'm aware of Steve Allen, but not that particularly sure. I did see in the chat there. So he basically hosts late night talks with actors pretending to be historical figures. Cleopatra as well. Stuff like that. And I was wondering what if we can make that real, which we can't, but let's just pretend we could. And instead of having the likes of Cleopatra, we had Charles Darwin or Jesus or Muhammad or even the flying spaghetti monsters sit across and talk about, hey, it's 2025, 2030 sometime in the future. Let's talk about all, let's talk with the father of evolution about all the advancements we've made since his initial discovery. I'd love to know how those members in his conversations would react to built on revelations after the point of their discovery. Some would actually be pretty open to it. For example, if you were to bring this up to Charles and say, hey, we found these things called germs. They're like tiny little animals and they evolve very quickly or because they rapidly produced Larry. What do you think? And he would be interested in knowing that we found the mechanism for evolution. He did not know what the mechanism was. Right. Exactly. Yeah. He'd be like, wait, wait, is that in me too? It's like, yeah, it's in every cell. In fact, some cells even have multiple of them in every living thing on Earth. Yeah. Like it's really cool. This is like, it's like evolution. Awesome. But we also found like some things don't take a long time to evolve. Some things evolve very quickly. Like even large animals, we call it punctuated equilibria. And there's like this environmental nature nurture.  And we actually use it to make better medicine for people, just based on like what their body types are and where they come from. Like we can look at someone's historical family record and recognize that they're at more risk for heart failure or different kinds of cancer, just based on like their genetic profile of how much melanin is in their skin or how much they work, like going at Larry, going for it. I was just going to say, we could also say how we could also show how closely we are related to other animals. Like we can see how close what our nearest evolutionary cousin is. I like the Bonobo ape or other apes and prove it. He would have loved that. He would have loved it because he'd be like, man, everybody gave you a hard time about this. I knew this was going to go somewhere. I'm so glad you guys kept working on it. He would be open to hearing about all the things that spell off from his original idea. Exactly. And medicines based on it, whole theories of medicine. And of course, he was aware of artificial selection because they did quite a lot of breeding back in those days. He knew that happened. Right. But the idea was, he wouldn't be so personally offended that we found out more things. I don't know. And that he was wrong on some other aspects that we just lacked clarity on, because he didn't know the tools or the mechanics, but he did have the observations. Right. And so the idea that we kept working on it would be like, he'd be open to it. What do you think, Dred? I was going to say too that I'm sure he would be impressed by the fact that the model that has been generated through the theory of evolution has been applied to other non-biological systems. Correct. So evolution is present in many different aspects of reality, not just strictly biology. Like, iterative changes based on what the environment is selective towards has been a consequence of culture, how music is developed, politics. Algorithms, yeah. We make AI now sort of like based on this iterative process. And he's like, what's AI? You're blowing my mind right now. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. There's this great Jesus app in the future. But going in later. Speaking of Jesus, isn't he part of our round table? He is. He is. But he's coming up. I want to do one more scientist first before we start the Jesus bandwagon. If we rock Galileo in and he's like, hey, I made some telescopes. And I have you guys figured out how to make refracted light more effective at seeing past Jupiter or Mars or anything like that. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, great. So there's like, there's an extra planet. It's like, dude, there's like six, there's probably like 10 extra planets. And we have classification for planets now. And we have planets that used to be planets, but we have to change the system of nomenclature just because there's so many of them. So now everyone's like, how many planets are there? It's like, there might be a lot of planets, guys. And we know the things. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Can you imagine the moons like Jupiter has 72 moons and 72 Saturn is about as many. So I mean, he knew that Jupiter had like four moons. Yeah. Yeah. And but to 72, like now, that is a very specific number. And it reminds me of a number of virgins for some reason. Maybe that's why it's stuck in my mind. All those terrorists are going to Jupiter. Oh, man. So the Heather O Moon. I think what would be really great to show Galileo is that picture of the deep space telescopic image of basically just here's one segment space at high exposure. And all of these dots are galaxy. And he's like, what in the world is a galaxy? It's like, oh, boy, do I have things to tell you. And I can't imagine. I imagine it would be like world shaking from. But to think that this is the this is the path that we went on since his initial discovery would both be like uplifting and wreck and a reckoning for him in that, oh, we're way smaller than I thought we were. It's like true. But we've been using your method to be able to figure out more stuff about reality, which has been really useful. And we've been working on this. We have come to know the cosmos. Yeah, we've come to know the cosmos is like, oh, wow, I feel so small, but I'm happy that you guys weren't working at this. Using his technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, really interesting. Okay. So in some aspects, I wouldn't think he would have the ego to be like, well, that's wrong because there's only Jupiter. It can only be Jupiter. You guys are wrong. Like something's wrong with your machines. Like no, I think he would just be open to the idea that this is science advancement. Thank you guys for keep working on this. I'm not happy about the result because I'd love to think that we are more special than this, but I'm actually more fascinated with what can come up with the future. Like my idea, what the universe is, it was actually small and not so much myself, but you're exploring something far bigger or grander than I could ever think is fantastic. It's interesting, though, that people have never come to the notion or the realization that they're smaller. They've never set out that way. They've never set out to be smaller or less important. It was always a function of the discovery that made them change their mind about it. Natural human ego centrism. Yeah. Would Galileo say, just wait till I tell the pope. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So we can have some religious people come in. I would like to remind people that we have some listener comments that we'll get to in the second half of the show, but say we bring in Jesus now. All right. So Jesus comes in, he sits down, and what could we potentially present to Jesus with regard to something that would show that, hey, some of the things that you were talking about, we were continuing to work on? I'll leave it up open to the round table. Larry, I saw you move your hand. What do you got? No, I was waving back to the little person. Larry called improv, improv and what do you got? What do you got for Jesus? I don't really have a lot of questions for Jesus. I would tell him that a lot of people have either misinterpreted or reconstructed his messages so that they call themselves Christians, although they do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught. But they're called the far right now. It's chosen people. What are you talking about? Yeah, I guess. It's like, I personally think he would be very surprised at what happened, at what happened. That was never the intention, right? Some of the things you read about him, like give up all your wealth because the end is coming imminently. But it was going to happen anytime. You're probably saying this is 2,000 years after I left? Really? Yeah. And you've got more stuff than ever. What are billionaires? What is this? John Richards. So like they can afford four goats? I'm being pestered. The kids are back. Yeah, I was going to say about Jesus, would he believe that in his homeland, the Jews and the Arabs are still fighting and they haven't got Christianity yet? So there's an idea that I have in the back of my hand of Jesus would love that there's still conflict on earth because one, that's what he spoke to. He foresaw this, right? And he wouldn't want the word to be a complete world peace because that's what heaven's for, right? So the fact that there's still conflict, that there's still billionaires, that there's still unbalances in wealth, and that there's still people who are fighting is all part of the plan as far as like what he did. What he provided was a path for salvation, not so much the solution for all strife and conflict on earth, right? And so he could sit back and be like, good, good, good.  I'm glad my death has even more meaning now that there's even all of these further injustices out in the universe. Larry, what do you think? Well, yeah, I think the point you made off camera before was a really good point in that he would be amazed at how many splintered religions come from his words. There are literally thousands of Christian religions out there, but he might look around and see somebody wearing a crucifix with him on it. Oh, yeah. I think it went on a lot of other things. What's this?    Yeah, yeah.  He's like, no crucifix, no crucifix, just flipping through. It's like, all these have crucifixes.  I hate these so much. Don't people realize that? It's like, ooh, could have been a good person, but I had that bracelet with the cross on it.  I'm not about those. For those who don't know, a crucifix is a cross with Jesus on it, where a cross is just a cross. Right. So there is a difference. One's cheaper to make, so guess which one's more popular. Dred Pirate Higgs, it looks like you're holding back. Anything you can tell to Jesus as he sits smugly, just being like, there's problems. Hey, solve for X. Solve for a hex? Solve for X, like algebra. Solve for X, okay. Solve for X, just that it would be so beyond his ability, given the time, right? They didn't have math. They didn't, you know, he's a carpenter, right? So he's trying to figure out the sides of a thing. So, you know, one side is two X. Right, right, right. He may not know algebra as well. He wouldn't be able to do it. You don't think he'd be able to do it? I feel like a dad would not be able to do it. I feel like Jesus' dad, John, would actually be able to solve for X, because he probably makes good tables, whereas as a carpenter, he can actually probably like, okay, how much wood do I need to fit inside this building? Jesus, come over here. Let me show you how to do math. No, I'm busy dying for your sins. These teenagers are teaching these preachers the rabbis. I don't know what's up with this generation. I don't know how to raise kids. I just, I make tables. I make tables. John Richards, anything you want to say to Jesus? He's getting off pretty much scot-free right now. This is crazy. Yeah, if I could meet him, I would ask him when he's actually coming back. Jesus says I'm back now. And by the way, I expect there to be bifurcations because there's only one true path to me. And it's easier. It's going to be hard to make. I made it deliberately hard to follow my word. It's like passing a camel through an eye of a needle. I didn't say it was like passing a beach ball through a giant hoop in the air. No, I made this deliberately hard on purpose because this life is a trial. Did you not understand that? Didn't I say that in your book? Well, he was referring to rich people. I'm talking to everybody. I'm talking to everybody. No one, everyone, all your values mean nothing. The only one true value is me and my path to utter salvation. Anyone else going to say anything? Or am I off scot-free? What are you going to do, right? Interesting, interesting. So like, none of the natures of what we've learned better about philosophy or anything what we've learned about how law or how to better treat people or that the diversification of life not only applies to people but also cultures. And there are a lot of different valid points of view and we can work better with it. That we have systems where we've shown that women who have access to education can actually substantially improve the environments that they're in for everybody. That people of different colors or different backgrounds can actually get educations and have more influential positions in government. This idea of a tribalistic one chosen person is not a good system for setting up for anything. I don't think he'd have the references to deal with it. What's that? Sorry. Go ahead, John. As I say, those weren't his policies, were they? He didn't, according to what we know about him. He didn't insist on any of the things you've just listed. So I would actually say like he's made comments where what belongs to Caesar belongs to Caesar. If you got to pay taxes, pay taxes. I'm not here to overwrite the laws that exist. I'm here to present my one path to salvation. However, with such an influential figure that clearly his influence has affected not only government in America as we have today, but like the multitude of lives who sacrificed themselves for his messages and stories, he had a wonderful opportunity to enhance our culture by saying, hey, listen, if you stop slavery or if you just said, don't own people as property and keep up with what you're doing, we could have had a much better system. Why continue the corruption? Why play part of it if you had such an influence on people to begin with? Larry, what was your thought? I agree with what you were saying. I think good points all. However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he tried to bring compassion and empathy to a world sorely lacking in it. And it's a good message. Most of his messages were good. But I would tell him that in the 2000 years since his last visit, with all the advances we have had in science and biology and medicine and electronics and all that, we've never found any evidence that there was a soul or an afterlife. And how did he come to that conclusion and make him consider the fact that maybe he was wrong in his most emphatic or number one of statements about the path of the afterlife is through me. So I think that there's a way more reliable way to the truth than that is true because we know scientific methodology, not just faith, spiritualism. Now, here's the part where I start thinking Jesus will get off this chair a little bit and lean forward it and be like, what do you mean I have messages about peace and how to love everybody? That's not what I'm about. If you read Matthew 10, it's don't think I've come here to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace. He says it twice. I'm here to be a sword. I'm here to set men against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughter-in-laws against mother-in-laws. I am here to make sure that there will be foes within households. I'm here to bring the fire.  I will go into churches or synagogues and start knocking down things and being like, you guys need to start worshiping me towards your path to worshiping my father. That's a good point.  For people who are cherry picking the Bible, anybody can pick what they want to out of it.  They're going to pick another portion. Do not call each other sinners if you have sinned yourself, etc. He's stuck up for the little person and the downtrodden, etc. But there are words in the Bible that will support whatever view you have, which makes it a Rorschach test. He said, of course, that he endorsed the Old Testament. Every God in total. I'd ask him why. Why did you endorse the Old Testament? Have you read it? Is the argument then that he just has bad propaganda guys or his marketing team wasn't very effective, but he's perfect? It's like, listen, guys, I'm telling you from the beginning, I was perfect from the get go. If my market, if my human mortal marketing team couldn't get the message across, that's that should be expected. They're not as perfect as I am. I have to work with what I can. You know, when you, when you work with other people, you have to expect a lower degree of quality. It just is what it is. It's the nature of marketing and management. Sorry about that. He never, he never wrote anything down. So I never wrote anything down. That's right. Send your complaints to Matthew, Luke and John.  Oh, that's that's fire. That's fire. And how does that square up with meeting, you know, like being the end of prophecy, like being the line of David? Joseph was the line of David, but he wasn't your father. So you're, you know, I love the way they try to trace his lineage through David. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  So there are actually two of them. Yeah. Larry, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. I'll get it out. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have over 1000 members nearly 1100. Now we have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or for the pretty weather outside on the deck. You can find us online at Facebook meetup.com or at our website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist is 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. Star one. That's right. Well, I'm about where do you want to pick up? I think my takeaway is if we brought Jesus on the show, it'd be really hard press to show him anything that he'd be genuinely excited for as far as development. It would largely just be, Hey, you didn't get my message right. I'm still perfect. I'm not wrong about anything and any problems that you see with the way how the message was delivered was either someone else's fault or your problem, but not me. I'm good and keep trying because I'm the one true path and see you later, guys. Gets up, walks out the door, you know, like we could talk about slavery. We can talk about abuse against women. Yeah, Mike drop or flies out the open window nearby. Even if we make the point that, Hey, the material that you provided us to be able to understand what you're about is dramatic is absolutely objectively contradictory even with itself. Like we keep doing that. Well, that's not my problem. That's my, I had different people have to, I had to show it to different people and they just wrote their interpretations and different people are imperfect and just, it's their problem. I'm, I'm the path. It's like, well, how do we, how do we know what follows?  The fact that I'm here, it's the same message I've been giving for 10,000 years, the message that's in this book that's completely in Congress with itself. It's not my problem. That's that way. I had people write that so that you can understand it. Jesus out. Jeff, my job walks out. So for like Galileo, Charles Darwin, I think there would be some deeper appreciations for some of the, the newer revelation that we found out, but with Jesus, it's the same story, same brand.  Oh, we shouldn't have slaves. Oh my gosh, geez, I should have been more clear about that. I should have taken like one moment to just explain, Hey, don't have slaves or don't have people or here's a website or I'll talk about some sort of technology that exists in clear enough terms that we can absolutely know objectively that I know what I'm talking about in the future rather than scrolls and demons and dragons. We no longer have any lepers and the mental illness, the craziness is not right. Or instead of the instructions for like how to, I don't know, damn figs. Instead, just hey, that magical healing thing that you're doing. Can you just write the steps for that in a book so that we can have that as like a means for medicine for us? Like how do we, how do we effectively do that? How can we effectively treat it? How can you help people not suffer? Things like that. Your job is to suffer. I like dredge point. He wants a mouth swab. That way we can find out. Oh, yeah. And that's the chromosome or not? Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's see. Let's get a mouth swab. Can we at least get that figure that out? Because otherwise it's it's actually parthenogenesis, right? Right. Right. Right. And you should be a girl. Right. Where's your mitochondria from? Where's your mitochondria? And he should be a boy. Yeah. I want to see what your genes look like, man. All right. All right. Next guest. You know him. You love him. He's made out of noodles and he's ready to canoodle. It's the fine spaghetti monster. All right. Everybody comes down from the ceiling in a big pile or just like one big plop of noodles fills up the chair. Then the meatballs come one after the other. They land and then he's just like points like, yeah, it's that. The meatballs have to drop, right? Dred, I don't want to speak for your God. I would like to hear your. So, you know, recent advancements that we found out, like posthumariums would love to have more support in trying to figure out how to get their pictures even in driver's license. It doesn't seem like from a from a spiritual side that they're getting the assistance that, you know, Jesus and and the likes of God are giving to their followers. What's up with that? Why aren't you supporting your followers more? You know, you know, because I guess it's you have to, you know, almost meet the definition of delusional under the diagnostic manual. What's that manual called? The DMT, the psychological one. Yeah, the CD, Cadbury's dairy milk. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, there is a definition of delusional in there that, you know, very well defines everyone who fervently believes in whatever God they happen to. Yeah. And just because pastafarians are not as, you know, fervent, we're not taken as seriously. But, you know, the idea is that it's it's as good an explanation as any and any supernatural, you know, if we can embrace the idea that there are some unknowable elements or aspects to the universe. That we can, you know, celebrate in that way. Sure. Celebrate our own ignorance, in fact. And just kind of poke fun at our tendency to take ourselves so seriously that we exclude the possibility of becoming aware. Are you saying to better understanding, right? As flying spaghetti monster, are you saying then that you don't mind not winning right now? That is absolutely correct. Okay. Okay. Is it a race for you at all? Because if I be honest with you, like the Jesus, the West Barrow Baptist Church people, even the, you know, the more obscure, you know, Christian denominations, they have more or less a complete latchhold on this, like, trophy of privilege. Well, you have to consider, as flying spaghetti monster was drunk in the creation of the universe to start with, so he doesn't remember much. That's why it's a, that's why it's a mess, right? Okay. It's not, you're saying it's not your fault or you're saying it is your fault? Yeah. It is fault. But it's squarely on me, for sure. Okay. Okay. Okay. You took some responsibility for that. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. But, you know, people do have the beer volcano and the stripper factory to look forward to in the afterlife. Sure. I would say this though, we happen to know a lot more about pasta now than we did, perhaps even back then. We know these things about gluten. We know about carbohydrates, excessive carbohydrates in the body, producing more fatty residues and veins, leading to more cardiac failure. We know people are dramatically allergic to allergens that might be present in starches, like it's gluten, as I referred to before, I believe it's protein actually. And, you know, just the idea of a good proper diet is actually more protein based. And that the way how we've structured a food pyramid that's sold in America is entirely manufactured by corn lobbies and wheat dairy people paying politicians. So you need more carbs. You need more carbs. This pasta dependency that we have is completely counter to a healthy lifestyle.  So like these are two additional forms of carbs. Why are you trying to poison us all? Yeah, you know what you're saying, Ty. The spaghetti monster is evil. It sounds like it's not a balanced meal or breakfast. So if I had nothing but pasta and beer, like that's a problem. If you've got meatball and you've got your protein, you've got your vegetables because there's your tomatoes and your mushrooms. Which are, you know, it's very nutritious, but you have to do everything in moderation, right? And you can't just eat spaghetti. You've got to change it up. There's lasagna. The shape is different. And usually you have a salad too.  That's a well balanced meal. It may be a good bed for your body, but this body is temporary. He's wanting us to go ahead and enjoy this life, eat all the pasta and whatever we need to have our heart attack and move on to the next life. Yeah, but is that reliable? He's thinking of us all the time. Larry, is that reliable? And my taxpayer dollar is paying for your stints in your heart, you know? Like if we all go out and get heart attack. It's all temporary. Don't worry about that. Oh, we're going to start a religious war on this show right now. Look what you're doing. Give us some clarity here. John, I need to know more about the spaghetti monster after life. So you didn't know. So it's pretty straightforward. It's, you know, there's a beer volcano and it's much like earth, but there's a beer volcano.  Yeah.  It's that's not the way it looks. So I see. So it's like, and unlimited pasta. It doesn't sound kid friendly. For like, for like sober asexuals, it also seems like it's going to be a pretty hard sell. What, what, what is this? What is this flying spaghetti monster?  What's going on? Like give it, give us, you're letting us down. Not only that, but you're saying you don't want to win. We like winners. You're getting left and right. What's going on? What's going on? This is messed up. It's not a race to the top.  Right. Okay. What's this about? So you dry pasta farion is for, for 30 days. And if you're not fully happy, your God, your old God will likely to take you back. So. Okay. Okay. I did you have any conversations with Jesus in the back room? And what was your opinion of him at all? And he was, he was fried. He was, he was. I don't know what to add back in Israel for, you know, hallucinogenic plants, but I think he was on. What were your thoughts on Charles Darwin and Galileo? Good guys. Good guys. You could hang out with them a little bit. Okay. Well, you're just trying to penetrate the enigma of, of what, you know, what the flying spaghetti monster is and how it all happened. You think about now, that around the event horizon of a black hole, matter going in undergoes a process called spaghettification. Yep. So anything leave in this world is, or this universe, this reality is going to be spaghettified. So that, that is the end. So. Yeah. Yeah, I, my, my only concern would be as, as we wrap up the show, I'd love to see more gods admit that they were, they were lacking in their capability of effectively communicating with their followers because it leads to a lot of confusion. And even when it comes down to, Hey, it's your fault because you, I, I chose these people to write these books. It's like, well, if that was your plan and you're, you were all knowing to begin with, you could have done a better job. And if it came down to this, you knew the amount of suffering that came out as a result. You should have wrote it yourself or given us better tools because we have better tools now. And if you had just given us better tools to come up with a better story, rather than forcing it then at the moment, we would have been a lot better off. And I wonder for like these flying spaghetti monster, you know, we may not win the race and fevrancy, but what I am representing is an appreciation for ignorance and, and pursuits for science. And I think more gods can learn from me in that respect. No, I don't have all the answers, but that's also something that I advocate as well. So how amazing would it be to just have a more lenient god that's willing to say, I don't know at some times, doesn't make you any weaker, doesn't make you any less for God. And yeah, now that you learn more about diets, hey, don't force yourself to eat gluten. If you don't, if you can't handle gluten, we'll make gluten free pasta. That's a new technology too, but I'm going to support pasta because I think it's cool. And you have to eat it every meal. No, everything should be in moderation. If you got, if you need to drink water, you can drink water. If you want to drink beer, you can drink beer. And if you want to discuss strippers, we can make a stripper that could be exciting for anybody, anytime, anywhere, you make even kid friendly. I don't know. Don't delve too deep into that. There's the way how I'm framing it. I'm just saying I'm here to make people feel appreciative and ask and wonder. And I think that could be a good thing. You know, ultimately, pasta farion isn't too, does not have to be examined too closely. It just doesn't hold up to it. It doesn't need to. Right. It's just the way it is, especially since the the object of pasta farionism themselves says, how did you create the universe? I don't know. I was drunk. Right. Guys, we got the wrong guy. Got some listener comments that I'd love to go through. So I typically categorize the comments for the show in, hey, that's a nice little feedback. And they're typically like one sentence such as like, hey, I love the show. And so Apollo 11 says, hey, I love the show. I think it's brilliant. Love your content. So thank you very much for those constant feedbacks. And we really appreciate that Apollo 11. Then we get our other ones, which I like to call the quibbly nibblers, which are just people who have umbrage with some of the statements that we've made and would and not necessarily would love clarification, but just make a statement of why we're wrong and then move on with the rest of their lives. So old seer 7610. John Riches, I'm going to throw this one out to you first, because you, I believe, made a comment that made someone angry in the last episode with regard to how the universe was created. His comment he has as John Richard's colon, biblical creation is not the creation of the material universe. The things of creation are metaphors for spiritual nature, not material nature. So over time and experience, old seers have actually found that the spiritual interpretations are correct. And therefore material and correct creation is incorrect. And so the idea is, and this is why not to paraphrase, but I believe you had made a mention that God created the universe and was doing so jokingly, but those who follow these old seers advice is would say that the Bible's creation is talking about spiritual creation, not material creation. So you can't apply science to this. So get off their, get off their backs. Well, first of all, I'm very glad that this person agrees with me that the material world has not been created. Okay. Okay. And, and now if he's claiming that the spiritual world has been created, then I now want some evidence for the existence of the spiritual world. Oh, interesting, interesting, interesting. Jed Pyrite, what do you think? How does he know what they were writing for? He does a follow up. Who told him that the way he's looking at it is the correct way? Well, Jed Pyrite, here's your follow up comment from the same person, old seer7610 says, listen, there's only two distinctly opposing understandings of biblical creation. There are no other possible. The universe contains only two things that everything can be derived from. Material nature and spiritual nature. Therefore, it must be spiritual creation. No other interpretations are possible, but these two is as he says. Right, right. And as we pointed out before, that's a false dichotomy, right? It is a false dichotomy, but if he can point to spiritual things, and he can point to material things, then therefore there must be only two possible processes to create them. Show me your evidence of spiritual. Right, right. This proves spiritual things. He's pointing and he said it in a YouTube comment. That's evidence. You asked for evidence, he provided it. I made a YouTube comment that said spiritual evidence exists. That's my evidence. That's proof. He has a pretty low bar. There's my problem. That's my problem. It's not so much the evidence is there. It's the lack of qualifying evidence. My standard of evidence is much higher than the YouTube comments and the book and what your pastor said once. Like Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And that is a very extraordinary thing. I just wonder what it leaves us with because we're still left with a material universe. So like we still have the question of what created that. And that seems to be the one that we care about and interact with on a more regular basis. Larry, this is a question for you. I like it's by Andre Christian 1529. I'm swear I'm not making these up, but they seem to always have a Christian start and a number in the background. But either way, I like all of your ending remarks. This is for a comment when we were talking about the roles of women and men when we were talking about biology and previous episodes.  That's actually very incorrect. We absolutely think of our women being more precious than rubies. And then you make some quotes or citations to Holy Bible facts and real Christian faith facts. Real men of God could never overpower our women. We have we all have specific orders that creates harmony in the home and outside of the home. Bless. Yeah, that's why it took you about 100 years after the country was formed 120 something years to give them the vote to allow them any kind of equality. Your Bible still says they can't teach in church. Should have no leadership positions. That just it's just false. What you're saying is false. You may put them on a pedestal, but you can heck you can put a pet on a pedestal. Yeah. And in fact, it's an objectification. Yeah. It's not valuing them as people, but as objects. Yeah. So like I can value someone as a ruby, but it's still way less than I would if I value them as a people as a person. A personhood is like the highest standard of value that I put into a person. It's like, oh, I value like my favorite trading card in my Pokemon binder back from third grade. It's like, oh, I don't want to be that. I want to be a person. I want to be able to vote and have my own autonomy and have rights and stuff like that. I don't need to be your favorite thing. I would rather just be a person that you know, you know, John Rich is any comments on that? No, I think you said everything I was going to say. Okay. Okay. Okay. Those were the listener comments from the show. Thank you so much to our guests today. We had Charles Darwin. We had Galileo. We had Jesus. We had some pasta people. Hopefully inspired some thinking from your own part. Larry, before we close out the show, I'm going to do a quick ground table. John Richers, anything that you'd like to plug before next week? Or yeah, I've got some update news for our latest event. You remember in June, we staged changing minds in changing times in London. And the videos of that are now almost completely uploaded to the public on our channel, which is Atheism UK channel on YouTube. There's one more to go, which is where I present Richard Dawkins with an award. And he has a chat with Lawrence Krause. And we auction an oil painting of Christopher Hitchens. That will become publicly viewable on Wednesday. But the hot news is that we're doing another one. I think I've told you about that, which is at the end of September in the Midlands, near Birmingham. And tickets are selling. We've sold a quarter of the capacity already. And Richard Dawkins has just lately joined in. And initially he wasn't going to be part of it this time, but he's commissioned us to record an episode of his latest venture, which is the Poetry of Science. He's got a new podcast and channel that's called Poetry of Science, in which he interviews people. And we're going to record, we're going to do a Dawkins at that event. Very cool. Very cool. Well, I'm happy for you guys. That's awesome. And keep us updated, because I'd love to know how the results of a show like that.  Because you have your hands in everything. What else is on your plate? Well, we have finally got a lawyer, a proponent, to push us forward. And we have a number of legal points to argue. And we're going to fire a cannonball across the bow of the ICBC, and the Ministry for Public Safety. Just saying, cease and desist. Let this guy do it. It doesn't affect the license or the integrity, just being dicks. Stopping. And I agree. That's where we're at. And as much as possible, every week, I have been recording short sermons or benedictions, which I then upload onto my channel, just so that the activity there is regular, and there's always new content. Fantastic. I'm glad to play a part of that, because you're using my corporate account in order to do that, and I support it. Thank you. You're more than welcome.  And I read it, and I'm like, Dread Pirate Higgs has joined my Zoom channel. I'm like, keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Do what you got to do. Don't get mine pirate at mine pirate on YouTube. Check it out. Nice. Wonderful. Wonderful. All right. For me, hey, so Larry did go out, have fun with Boudreaux and Buffalo Bill. I went out. I did some rock climbing and had some fun, and frankly, needing new places. My whole thing is treat yourself. Enjoy yourself. We're in a really great time for summer. And before it gets too dark too soon, and we start closing our doors, or some new pandemic comes around the corner, find a good way to treat yourself well and enjoy good moments from this year. Because we're about to enter a new political cycle. I don't know if you guys knew about that, but once that happens, it's hard to even keep your TV or new channels or internet feeds on without finding something to be depressed about. So remember these good times. Make some good memories. That would be my recommendation for this week. Larry, feel free to take us out. One thing I'd like to say is listeners, if you have any, I mean, what do you think of our meeting of the minds format? This is what historical people would you like us to have on future shows? I think I like it. I think it's a good idea. It creates a lot of good questions, a lot of thought. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button on it for a radio show, archives, atheists, songs, and many articles on the subject. My YouTube channel handle is at doubter five. You can find my book, Atheism What's It All About on Amazon. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, and many people do, you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org. 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. Next Wednesday night at seven o'clock. Say bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody. See you later, guys.


Cooper Union, What's Happening with Human Rights Around the World on ThinkTech Live, Broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Moana, New York, KS. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper. And the title of today's episode is the IPCC and Hawaii, What We Face Now, Climate Change Already Apparent in the Pacific, and joining me today is Chip Fletcher, Chairperson of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission, and also as Climate Scientist at University of Hawaii. Chip, thank you so much for making time. Thank you, Josh. This is an important issue, and I appreciate you bringing attention to it. No, the IPCC Working Group 3 just released its report giving an updated global assessment of climate change and mitigation process and pledges. Chip, could you share some of your initial impressions of the content of that significant study? Yeah, so this latest IPCC report is the third. The first came out in August of last year, and it reported on new modeling of climate change and impacts. The second report came out in February of this year, and it focused exclusively on impacts and adaptation. And this third report was a focus on mitigation. And the big message from this report was that our emissions, our greenhouse gas emissions, need to peak no later than three years from now, 2025. And then engage in a precipitous decline, passing through 48 percent declining emissions at the end of this decade by 2030, and then essentially reaching zero emissions or net zero emissions by mid-century. And unfortunately, projections of continued use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions around the world are indicating that rather than peaking in 2025 and declining, we're looking at a seven to 15 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the course of this entire decade. So while awareness of climate change is actually growing, we see rapidly deploying forms of renewable energy. The truth is that we are opening up the use of fossil fuels faster than we are deploying clean energy. So unfortunately, society is on completely the wrong trajectory here. Now, in those 17 chapters of the Working Group Three report, it does assess the mitigation of climate change. It examines the sources of global mission and explains developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts, but it is quite clear. It's now or it's really not really or never for our planet going forward. Yeah, it's now or never for stopping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is the agreed to scientifically legitimate threshold below which we need to keep warming in order to maintain some semblance of a safe world. If we as appears to be the case, if we continue to increase our emissions over the course of the next several years, perhaps over the rest of this decade, we are going to be on a course to two degrees Celsius. The second report, which came out in February, tells us that not only will two degrees Celsius bring extreme weather events, deepening drought, expanding drought, expanding flooding and intense rainfall events, accelerated sea level rise and more powerful, more rapidly increasing hurricanes and other forms of storms, but it's also going to affect the natural world. And we will see a declining capacity of the ocean to absorb our carbon dioxide emissions, declining capacity of the terrestrial biome to continue to absorb our carbon dioxide emissions.  Nature is the source of our resources that we rely on that keep us alive. And we are at the same time that climate change is threatening natural resources. We are using natural resources in ways that are just not sustainable as an amazingly consumptive society. So there are there are multiple impacts that are taking place now. And the report number two and report number three for the first time in the IPCC series clearly links biodiversity loss with human impacts of climate change. And so now we're seeing that nature is being drawn into the equation here, and it's no longer just about socioeconomic impacts. It's it's about impacts to the natural world as well. No, and it reminds me of a talk I was just attending this morning. There's the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is getting ready to meet next week and we had Sami Reindeer herders talking really about that social contract between reindeer herders and the natural environment of one takes care of the other. And we've sort of had that contract broken. And the global commons, of course, now is at stake as we go forward if we're not able to reestablish that balance and recognize that relationship of reciprocity with nature that you raised earlier. That's exactly right. Societies that preceded Western modern socioeconomic methods of of manufacturing and resource exploitation knew how to live with nature in a way that was sustainable, that had a reciprocal relationship with nature. It wasn't just exploitative, it was regenerative. And this is part of the transformational nature of human society that needs to take place. We need to transform not only in the sources of our energy, but in our relationship to the land. And when I say land, I mean the air, the ocean and and the earth itself, the land. So agriculture, which is the largest single sector source for greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture has to fundamentally change. We need to get away from deep furrows, open soil agriculture and get into agriculture that doesn't plow the soil open, release the carbon to oxidize with the air and produce carbon dioxide. We need to use cover crops. We need to increase the amount of plant based food that is in our diet, getting away from meat, which has been shown again and again. The more meat you eat, the greater your chance of getting cancer. And we need to get away from these concentrated animal farming operations. These are these are especially dangerous for humanity. Concentrated animal farming operations create an environment where the natural selection pressures that keep the pathogenesis of viruses and bacteria suppressed are removed. In nature, a virus or a bacteria cannot continue if it is especially virulent, if it kills its host. And so, you know, we see that natural pressure to reduce the pathogenesis of viruses in nature, but in a concentrated animal feeding operation, you are pulling out the dead animals, chickens, turkeys, pigs, cattle and replacing them with living animals. So there is no pressure for a virus to become less dangerous. In fact, they become more deadly. So these are breeding grounds that skirt the laws of evolution or rather they create their own evolutionary system for a form of food that is actually not healthy for us. And we see widespread deforestation taking place largely in southern hemisphere tropical countries, which are still biodiverse. Deforestation involving clearing of forests, setting of fires, open soil agriculture to grow soy, soy to grow corn to feed these to feed these cattle. So the global food system is broken in many ways from a disease, medical climate change and resource intensive use point of view. And that's just one example of, you know, five or six general sectors of human endeavor that need to transform. No, I appreciate that and that's what's also so encouraging because you're connecting not just the science but thinking of climate justice in the entire planet because it will take a holistic perspective that's rooted in human rights, that's taking care of biodiversity, that's understanding which systems are broken and how to change them. And when you started talking about some of those points, I think the climate solutions we have at our fingertips today come from and belong to the multitudes of humanity that are doing those actions. That can actually, we still have the knowledge. We have farmers, we have indigenous knowledge holders. We have engineers, educators, foresters, healthcare workers, many more that understand that we have the solutions and what we're trying to look at is bringing those solutions to scale to then save humanity and more importantly, recognize the fragility of the earth we inhabit today. That's absolutely well, very well said. The use of resources is as dangerous a global crisis as climate change. In fact, we have five simultaneous overlapping global crises that make a planetary emergency. We have climate change, we have biodiversity loss. We've entered the era of pandemics, one reason being climate change and biodiversity loss, which has expanded vector zones, which has released pathogens. We have an era of human inequity where colonialism has taken on a new form in the shape of exploiting natural resources from still developing nations in order to feed the ravenous consumption of largely northern hemisphere developed nations. And we have pollution. We all know about plastic pollution, but there are more insidious forms of pollution as well. So taken all together, these five global crises constitute a planetary emergency and they're all coming together right now. This is the decade in which humanity is at an inflection point. Are we going to transform or are we going to sink under the weight of resource, loss, poison, disease, and unlivable climate that we have set loose across the planet? It's true. It's the time. It's really the decade of action. And we do have international instruments. We do have the Paris Agreement that the countries agree to, though when we're both there, most recently in Glasgow, we know the political leaders do not have the moral courage. We also have the sustainable development goals or the 2030 agenda. So these frameworks at least provide some ways of what we need to do and put all of the issues into one public policy to address the global comments. One thing we have to do is shift from terrifying to transforming. But I think you did offer some hope when you also made the connections because we can be cleaner and greener. And also one of the exciting points with where we're at today in this decade is it's affordable, healthier and renewable exists now. So it's it's almost making all the wrong decisions to harm, not only ourselves with our personal help on those five, but also the entire balance of livelihood and living on the planet that we call home. We are at the doorstep of either a miserable future or one that will be truly beautiful. We need to fall back in love with planet Earth. We need to embrace Indigenous values and we need to fall in love with each other. We can't we must resist this human urge to fight and instead realize that resilience is about unity and cohesiveness in our society. So by helping each other and by redefining what our future is going to look like, there is every reason to be confident and optimistic that we will create a planet that we will be proud to leave our children and grandchildren. And we are slowly making progress in that direction. Awareness is spreading. We are making progress. The problem is today's level of progress would have been great 20 years ago. We need to accelerate. The house is not only on fire, it has been burning and it's collapsing in around us. It's true and unfortunately the way people are sort of taking in the pace that we're pursuing to protect our planet is as if someone has a match. We are not thinking of it that it is at that point that you're saying in our house is on fire but the important point like you said is we can extinguish that flame with love as Malama Honua talked about to protect each other, to take care of each other and our planet and to reship the way that we see ourselves and also our island home. One of the ways that we can look at doing that or when I look at the IPC's latest report, it really does drill home harder than ever before that urgency to put the brakes on the climate change, to change course and the fact that humanity has the capacity to do so. And I guess the question we have to get everyone to ask is why aren't we? And that's not for you, the scientists, but for humanity to really ponder that and think about which direction we want to take as you're sharing. We can build that bridge, a beautiful place, and describe I remember 2020, 2021, 2022, and I remember the shift that we took and it is important, right? It's a harmful hegemony but the good news is it is being challenged by people with proximity to the problems facing our planet. This is one of the reasons why I'm deeply appreciative of living in Hawaii. There are a few places in the world that I think have the capacity to thrive even as we are failing to meet these challenges with the speed that is necessary. And I think Hawaii is one of these places. We have the cultural background to love the land, aloha aina, to love one another, aloha for not only our neighbors but our community at large and for visitors. And it is through realizing that loving our ecosystem and loving our community, we can promote innovation, rapid transformation in our energy systems. There are amazing opportunities in new technology which can provide Hawaii with the sustainability that we need as global trade begins to experience the shocks related to climate. I believe that by the time we get to mid-century, Hawaii is going to be increasingly cut off from this regular lifeline of container ships and airplanes. I think that we will still have tourism. There will still be societies, wealthy societies around the world, even as much of the world, three to four billion people are suffering and are displaced. Wealthy societies will still want to come to Hawaii. I think that we have the capacity to continue to embrace them. And this brings up the issue of aviation and jet fuel. So, you know, what does clean aviation look like? Eventually, we may have hydrogen or battery-powered aviation, but that's at least a decade away, maybe more. And in the meantime, we can make synthetic fuel from pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, combining it with green hydrogen, and you make a hydrocarbon that can make jet B. While you burn that fuel, the carbon goes back into the atmosphere, it doesn't lead to a permanent sequestration of carbon, but it does reduce our carbon footprint, and it prevents us from having to burn more fossil fuels. And it allows us to sever the lifeline from the containers, from the tankers that come in, that are now coming in from Alaska and elsewhere in the world, and used to come in from Russia and Libya. So, you know, that's just one example of where Hawaii can pivot to use technology, embrace technology, provided that we accelerate our solutions to these challenges that will come with becoming more and more isolated. I think isolation is a benefit. Nations that share borders are going to be under increased stress from climate migrants, and border areas are likely to become conflict zones. Hawaii, because of its isolation, I think has a unique geographic opportunity to thrive, to be a lifeboat society, to be a thriving, sustainable, and resilient community. So I think we have a lot going for us here. Yeah, it reminds me of just two events this week. One was this weekend at Kukukui watershed above Honolua Bay, and I was there with elected officials, visitors who are coming in Malihini, as well as Kama Aina and Kanaka Mali, who are really the stewards of that important space, really one of the largest untouched and spoiled spaces above Lahaina and above Honolua. And we did a tree planting of really planting canoes of important koa, but also mamake for health, and seeing everyone come together there, you could see that that is what people want to do. Even when tourists come, that's the experience they're desiring to have, to really get to know the place. And then, of course, even yesterday at SITAR, at the brand new SIFL Center at Shamanut, Hawaii being a hub, really a space not where people come now and see us as a tourism destination to play golf or forget their problems and escape from their stress of capitalism, but as a hub where they can come be inspired in our islands and return where they are with ideas for what can be done taking in a way that we're a hub. And you can see that too with Pacific biodiesel and the different examples you were sharing, that people are being innovative. So we could be this hub that people come to get inspired and then return, but more importantly, we keep taking action in our daily lives to empower our well-being and make sure that everyone is improving with their health by the actions that we're taking on a daily basis. That was really well said, Josh. This idea that we will save ourselves by showing the world how to do it, and if we can get the rest of the world to embrace some of these sustainable and resilient practices that will assist in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, assist in changing the global food economy, and some of these other planetary crises that are taking place, I think that's a very legitimate thing. And casting tourism in the light of an instructive opportunity for the rest of the world to come and see what it means to thrive even under conditions of difficulty is a great way to look at it. Yeah, it might be when they arrive, even once they get here in the local flights, we have that technology, you're saying the flights between that are 20, 30 minutes, you could say this is the fuel that was used, it exists, and then encourage them to take actions, but also this is the food grown on the roof here of this hotel, the food grown at this farm, and really show them the living models in a way. One thing we do in my classes is look at a voluntary university review, a VUR, and then a voluntary local review and see the promising practice of what exists today with that, and then what are the small, simple steps we can take where we're failing to then scale up and have the youth be the solutionaries going forward. Yeah, you know, the second report that came out in February says that this model of adaptation and mitigation really is a false separation and that we need to bring these together under what's what they're terming climate resilient development. So that, for instance, if you're going to build a building, you not only make it adapted to perhaps hurricane storm surge or high winds or intense heat events or sea level rise, but you also make it negative in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps a rooftop garden or green walls, you build everything, including adaption, including mitigation into this building. And that is climate resilient development. And that applies across the spectrum of human activities, that same concept. And I think that defines this pivot point that we can take that will protect us in a dangerous future and also limit the continuous growth of that future. And that's a great point because I've been assisting Tuvalu at the Pacific Island Forum and also at the Climate Cops negotiations. And it's always been every adaptation action that is possible and every mitigation, but knowing that they're not creating the lion's share of the challenges that we're looking at. And so that's really important too, because that's that 1.5. If we do the 1.5, then the people of Tuvalu, Kiribati and Pacific Island nations who are already facing climate change and having to move villages and look at those issues will be at least hopefully spared of worse scenarios that you know could exist if we don't do that pivot as you described earlier. I am afraid that we may have already set in motion certain irreversible planetary systems. The West Antarctic ice sheet continues to send us bad news. We just saw in East Antarctica the very rapid collapse of a floating ice shelf in front of the Conger Glacier. We saw temperatures in East Antarctica that were a full 70 degrees above normal, unbelievable. We see slowing of the overturning current in the North Atlantic. We see continuous thawing of permafrost, coral reef systems unfortunately are continuing to suffer with these marine heat waves. Marine heat waves are growing in frequency and in extent. So we really do need to adapt to a dangerous world and you know all of that has happened with only about one degree Celsius of warming. Imagine what two will do and in fact we are on track to see three degrees Celsius of warming based on the policies that have been publicly announced in the world's nations. At three degrees Celsius of warming we are basically looking at one fifth of Earth's land surface in becoming unlivable, adopting or having the same characteristics as the deep Sahara desert has today. And that includes all of India, Southeast Asia, all across the Middle East and North Africa, Central America, and huge parts of South America. So we have said in motion, I'm very worried some irreversible effects that we need to we really need to prepare for. Absolutely. We have to ignite the imagination and the IPCC report isn't something that everyone loves to read and get their fresh copy. They're not like oh I can't wait. Just come out. It's not like Coachella but maybe literature and film has been able to change people's perspective either ministry for the future book by Kim Stanley Robinson or the most recent Don't Look Up film. Do you see any hope with that film getting people to shift their perspective and understanding that we can be more resilient going forward? Yeah that film had a big impact but unfortunately you know films come they peak and then they go and people we need another one to follow right on to that and then another after that. But I think it made a big impact. I think it proved the genre of climate change Hollywood blockbusters if you will. I'm waiting to see the next one. Yeah no we had last night for our 22nd annual ecological ethics activism justice. We showed that in politics and film class and then had the five actions people could take afterwards. So I agree it was stunning to see the scientists it was it was humorous but then it was also a very somber note where unlike most American films it always ends great for America. It was one with people in a small circle holding hands and seeing what matters most to them and as you pointed out earlier today I don't hope we see and begin to love one another and love our home and be able to make that pivot to protect our planet and have a future that all of our children will be able to thrive and live and rekindle that love for the most precious planet we have and our only one. We can do it. All right. That's the way we'll end it then. We will do it. We can do it. Thank you so much Chip and look forward to our next meeting. Mahalo. Thank you Josh take care. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Much to everyone's surprise, Alabama did it. They go undefeated. They win the national championship. Let's break down the celebration. This one's brought to you by DraftKings. Number four, Robinson jumps up with his buddy. His buddy tumbles over. Now he's kind of hurt. He gets jumped on by number 22, says bring him down, says you're not celebrating with us Robinson. He passes him off to number 94, keeps him down, and then he's got another teammate, and they're just pinning him down. You're not allowed to celebrate. Stay on the ground. Get out of here. Meanwhile, everyone wants Sabin to celebrate. They're very fond of their coach. They pour Gatorade all over him. Beautiful Gatorade pour, but Sabin's a pro. He's got the windbreaker on. It's water-resistant. He's done it before. He's barely phased. Number 69, Dickerson, classic. Pick Sabin up. I'll bring it to the opposing coach. Let's go celebrate. Kind of carries him for a long time. Sabin's like, all right, dude. All right, put me down. Meanwhile, number 75 in the corner here, just being sad, get out of here, man. You're bringing the whole mood down.  Don't just watch there and soak yourself in the sadness or do whatever you want. He drops Sabin off. Sabin's like, where's the coach? You didn't drop me off by the other coach. Now he's got shake random players' hands. Like, bad job by number 69 there. He thought he was getting a ride straight to the coach. He did it. It looks beautiful out at night. And then we got number 22, Harris. He's going to a little celebrate.  Harris had a great interview before this game. I'll play the audio for you right now. A reporter who spent time writing an article on Harrison High School asks a question but doesn't let him know who he is. It's really funny. What do you recall about your first hurdle at Antioch? And what kind of sparked the habit? What got you doing that? Why do you enjoy that? Oh, this is Ron from San Francisco. Is that Ron from San Francisco Chronicles? Can you hear me, Ron? Yes, sir, it is me. What's up, man? Say nothing about that. What's up with that? Hey, Ron, don't act fake now, Ron. But, um... Harris also has a point. This dude spent a lot of time with him. Like wrote like six chapter story about his entire life. He clearly spent a lot of time. Don't be fake, Ron. Let him know who you are. Anyway, back to the celebration. We got confetti angels being made here. Number 47 plops down. He's going to make some confetti angels. Then his buddy comes in. He tumbles over. Now he's going to make some front facing confetti angels. You don't see that a lot at all. He's like, yeah, you're right. This is wrong. Flips over, gets in the proper technique. And then he's going to start just kind of dumping some on his face here. Like, let's see how this feels. No, I don't like it. Throws him in the air. Meanwhile, we have another dead player over here just not celebrating at all. Oh, boop! Alive. Came alive. Undertaker style. What else did I have that I wanted to talk about? Oh, leatherwood. Just a little bit of trouble with the hat. Trying to fit it on the head there. Goes backwards, doesn't fit. Goes sideways, kind of jams it on. Kind of like Yomiko with a brim now. And then this dude's texting, checking the social, sending me a sign like, hey, coach is on the podium. Ah! This one was brought to you by DraftKings. Here's what you do. You download DraftKings. You use promo code Johnboy when you sign up for the app.  And next year, you just make a rookie Alabama squad. Wide receivers. Wherever they get drafted, choose them. Team up. You win. Alabama football, baby. Roll tide.