Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, March 17th. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ doubter five. And as usual, we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, it's me the Wombat. Cool. Digital free thought radio hours to 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 you're the only non believer in your town, well, you're just not a guaranteed. You're in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible belt. We have a group of over 1100 of us where the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK and we'll tell you more about us after the mid show breaks and be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's your topic today? What would Mr. Rogers do? And the reason why I bring that up is I want to do a comparison of potentially better figures for Christianity than just the ones, the stock ones we get from the Bible, because I guarantee you that there are better ones. And I don't think there's a better example of representing healthy values that align with what's purported in Christianity, modern Christianity as how we should conduct ourselves in society than what Mr. Rogers has demonstrated in his lifetime in his television show, I think it's called Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, but Fred Rogers himself, great guy, advocate for education, music, learning, and also proudly Christian. And I think it's a good thing to note that even as atheists, we can recognize good Christians along with really, really terrible ones, because what we really just want is what everybody wants, a nice, healthy life where everybody can work with each other and improve everyone's standard. So that's my topic for the show. But before we jump into it, Larry, I heard you've been doing some gaming. Let's talk about some gaming. Let's Oh, yeah, I've been playing crisis recently. Crisis. Not the original crisis. No, no, this is where the memes see our Y. S. I. S. And it takes place in New York and you're fighting aliens. Okay. But that's the original. The original was also called crisis with C. R. Y. Yeah, but it was on a tropical island. So it's not the same game. So this is industrial New York crisis where the aliens are like, Hey, get off the sidewalk. I'm walking over here. I'm walking over here. Yeah, more like killing over here. I'm killing over here. Okay. And also it's Earth had just gotten some kind of super bug that killed most of the population, which was probably sent to Earth by the aliens to decimate the population before they started. But anyway, interesting shooting up game. First person shooter. Larry, you're on your third first person exploration shooting mechanic game. Is that typically your start? Yeah, because you did Starfield, which is first person run around, shoot, shoot, shoot, right? Metro run around, shoot, shoot, shoot, but scary. And then all crisis around shoot, shoot, shoot. You're forgetting. You're forgetting doom. Do you play? What is the same thing? That's first person shooter. It's yeah, so I aliens generally. So you like Wolfenstein you play Wolfenstein way, way, way back in the beginning. That was like the first first person shooter. Yeah, it was almost 2d, but it was third person. Would you say it's your cup of tea then? Yeah, it's my main thing right now. My main thing is first person shooters out in a wide open world where you can just go wherever you want and do what you want. So parents pay attention. Don't let your kids play first person shooters. They'll turn it to atheists like Larry lifelong atheists. It's going to ruin your kids. No, it's just good fun. And we were stopped talking about for the game before the show that most wives don't like their husbands playing computer games much, but that's the thing. I mean, you know where they are all the time. They're right there in the house with you and with the kids. And it's, you know, it's not out getting in trouble and not doing stuff you shouldn't be doing.  Maybe it's a mix of the both because my favorite games are simulation games. I like simulator games because they had to do stuff in real life, right? Yeah. And so things I'm doing right now is learning how to play fly a drone. And this controller is really interesting. So like compared to I'm holding up two different controllers for radio listeners. This is the next box controller has two joysticks. It's got buttons on both sides. A drone controller just has the joysticks, right? Because when you're flying, you don't really pushing buttons. You're just changing your pitch yaw throttle and and I've never used the very much. But it's it's a different way of holding the joysticks. And it's a radio frequency and you can do simulations on your computer with the actual joystick where you dial in the the flight dynamics of the drone that you're going to fly with and you just do virtual space, try to get as many rounds in as possible. So that instead of thinking about what you need to do, it's all muscle memory. And then the fun part is when you actually set up at a park and you try flying and in your head, you're like, I know what to do. But now I know crashes are expensive. Now I know if I if I can't pick up myself up off the ground and I don't break my drone, I still have to get up and walk 3000 feet out to this thing and pick it up and bring it back home. So like the pressure is on a different level until you just get more and more used to it and more confident with it. Though I did go out yesterday to fly at a park nearby. And what was funny was I'm flying around at a park. There's a bunch of kids, everyone's having picnics, but I'm like maybe 350 feet up in the air, right? And so you can barely hear it. It sounds like a really angry hornet, like maybe 20 yards away. But people will be like, Oh, what's going on there? And the kids will be like looking at it, staring at it. I can see with my camera, but I'm not focused on recording people. I'm just focusing on like, practicing my flips and tumbles.  Sure.  And I'm like, Oh, that's cool kid with your parents. I try not to talk to kids. But their mom was there, like nearby, nearby, like kids that just came up from like a picnic blanket and then walked up to me and they're like, Hey, can I try that? I was like, Oh, you got to be a licensed pilot to fly, which is true. In the state of America, for the drone of my weight class, you have to have a license likewise, you have to also have to take a test. You have to take a certification test and you have to be licensed, which costs money, right? So like those two things compounded. When I told that to the kids, they were a little disappointed about 11 hold the drone and they could see like how heavy it was and they could like touch it and stuff like that. That's fine with me. And one of the moms who was there was like, Oh, thanks for letting my kids like, you know, learn about this. And that was cool. The other mom though was like, so you can just record wherever whenever you want, wherever you want, you can just do you can just record anywhere. And so like, here's I took this very tactfully because I my impression was I'm not here to like argue or anything like that. But in a public space, there's no expectation of privacy. So if you go out to public and you put a blanket out in the middle of the grass, it's no different than a car drove by with a dash cam or someone took a picture on their cell phone or someone popped open a laptop to do some work, like everything has cameras, you've been recorded so many times once you left your house, there's no expectation of privacy outside. So like that I didn't bring that up. But I did say, Hey, if you'd like to take the certification yourself, it's called the trust certification. It's issued by the Federal Aviation Agency, and it'll tell you all the rules and you can get yourself certified. And it'll explain to you the different classes and drones and how what you what you're allowed to record and what not to record. And then I just went back to keep flying. But it was funny because when I told her she can take the trust certification, she pulls out a giant phone from her pocket, which I know has GPS has a microphone has multiple cameras on both sites. And probably her credit card information and her call history, and you know, whatever website browsers that she was using at the time, and maybe even a Facebook account that has which is tracking every single thing about her. Yeah, I'm just saying like, don't be worried. My problem is the problem is mine. Mine's just a cell phone with wings. And then on top of that, a lot of people love an omnipresent God, which always blows my mind because it seems like we have a natural disposition to want not want to be surveilled. But when it comes to God, we want him everywhere at all times watching everything. Yeah, recording every single thing.  Right.  Yeah, yeah, like just what is it?  Like that's a problem even in your head. It's not even an action like that is the ultimate don't think about strawberries moment where you're just like, oh, no, I'm in trouble. But I didn't want to extend this to, you know, we do have role models that we could base our life on to be more godly even if we were being constantly surveilled by God, because what Christians will tell you is we'll just be like Jesus. What would Jesus do in a situation like this? And I thought to myself, why are we thinking about Jesus?   Like he's not playing by the same rules that I'm playing by. So how could I why would I want to be like him? What I want to have a more closer to an actual human experience and still see the good values that a lot of people before Christianity has a monopoly on. And I found a great example of this. Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers from the television show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood is in my opinion, one of the best people to have existed. Religious or non-religious, like he's not going to probably get any award from any of the major bodies because I don't pay attention to like Nobel Prize laureates or like who becomes a saint or anything like that. But in my book, Mr. Rogers is a top drawer kind of guy. And I came up with a list of reasons why I believe that. And I want to compare them to a similarly composed objective list with using chat GPT to see, you know, what stands up from what would Mr. Rogers do versus what would Jesus do? And maybe we can talk about on the show. Does that sound cool to you? Works for me. All right. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I ran a question through chat GPT basically saying, hey, give me the top 10 things that Mr. Rogers was known for. Or let me see. Let me tell you the exact question. Ten remarkable things that Jesus did in his life versus ten remarkable things that Fred Rogers did in his life. And Mr. Rogers, number one, promoted kindness and empathy. And if you were to ask me what the two cornerstones of any religion should be, it should be what they say it is. Yes. The lip service. Yes. It should. Yes, dude. Absolutely. It is lip service because it should be not.  Or this is who your your authority figures are. Or this is what you shouldn't do. Or these are the rules of our club. Or this is how much money you need to give us once a month. It's you should be kind and empathetic. And through his iconic television show, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Fred Rogers promoted kindness, empathy and understanding among children and adults alike. And if you were to ask me what's something that the current generation of kids, the current generation, I'm here with my whipper snapper suspenders on. We're both on our we're just like, you know, problem with kids today. It's a lack of kindness and empathy. And I can see that both in kids and adults as well. In fact, I've been on a rabbit hole of watching Uber videos, dashcams from Uber drivers, just the worst people get in their car. Just the worst people like I'm not masking or like I want to change. I'm not paying you money. It's like you signed the app. It's like I'm canceling the ride if you're going to be rude to me. It's like I want you to speed like people who walk into someone else's car and assume that they're their butler. That's just the most insane thing. And I think to myself, man, I do not want to subject myself to interaction society if I ever deal with toxic people like that. We need more kindness and empathy. What do you think, Larry? Oh, absolutely. And we do we do see it an awful lot in there in our society. We live a pretty darn good life. We have the world is full of plenty if we just realize it. But what gets me is the people, the religious people who claim to own the own morality and truth are often immoral and and and lie constantly, especially about their religion and about the opposition.  Right. And why would they do that if they own the truth? If the ever everything that they do is all about the truth of the Bible and and morality and all that, too, it just it just hypocritical to me. Yeah. The narrative has become so tribalistic that we that most people don't care how bad their leaders are or how bad their narrative is, as long as it's their narrative. Yeah. Right.  That way, after people get into the religion, you can say, see, we're good to each other because our God said to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like we were never good to each other back in the days of Egypt or before Christianity, before Judaism. Right. Like the baseline, the very true baseline for society should be don't go out of your way to be mean to each other. You don't have to be good. We're not making that a obligation. It's good if you are good, but don't be mean to each other. And if you have that, you have basically a state where if everybody follows that rule, you have people who aren't necessarily contributing, but aren't holding down society. And then the rare instances where people are taking on additional work and drive to be extra good that averages towards slightly good without having to punish people who aren't being good because you shouldn't be, in my mind, obligated to do good because at that point, you're being voluntarily told to be good. You're not actually volunteering for it. Well, in a self-rewarding activity, I mean, if you do good, then the old thing about karma, people will see you as good and see you as treating people fairly and that will come back to you in many ways. Three people, mean or evil, and you reap the rewards for it from your actions. It's as simple as that. You want to live in a good world, be good. Right. Long term, if you care about your surroundings and the neighborhoods you're in, you can begin to look at different ones who are following the role of, well, I don't have to be good, but the ones who are good, the ones who are contributing, they actually make their society a lot better. They have better roles, they have better teachers. I want to live there and I'm willing to contribute to society that takes pay tax. And they have a better future, too, contributing to the next generations. I think we can objectively see, even if we didn't ask or force people to be kind and empathetic, that being kind and empathetic or promoting it is actually a really good way of moving forward. And what I love about Mr. Rogers is he's not pointing at the camera and saying, you need to be kind, you need to be empathetic, I am your God or I'm the son of your God and I'm teaching you to do this. Or it's the holy word from this book. Yeah, it was literally that. It was promoting kindness and empathy. Like I'm going to be kind and empathetic on my show. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to be caring of people who are different than me. And I'm going to show you the benefits that I'm reaping as a reward from that. And I think that's a good practice for you to follow as well.  And I found that so good. I always found Mr. Rogers is a good teacher in the true sense where he demonstrates what he was teaching rather than just literally expousing it as an authority figure to his followers, right? I never got that feeling from him. So go to the flip side when I go to Jesus Christ. His is his first thing. So if Mr. Rogers promoted kindness and empathy, the one remarkable thing, first remarkable thing from chat, you'll be as my objective source. Jesus taught love and compassion. Jesus preached messages of love, compassion and forgiveness, emphasizing the importance of treating others with kindness and empathy. So while it's similar, I have a problem with the teaching aspect because Jesus very much is not meeting you one to one like how Mr. Rogers is where he's like, here's my home. I'm going to put my shoes on.  Maybe I'll make some juice. You want you. I can't give you juice because this is just a TV show. This is a set kids, but you want to talk about like sharing or divorce or something like that. Like we can look and talk some hard topics. Jesus, by the way, is like, let me stand on top of a mound. All of you sit down there. I hope you like fish's bread. And this is I'm going to explain to you like my sermon where I'm talking about like how cool my dad is. And I'm going to talk about that for a while. And now I'm going to talk about how cool I am and why you got to be my friend because the only path to heaven is through me. And and you know, while it's told that it's love and compassion, honestly, a lot of the stories that Jesus told were about how families would be separating and that he was a sword to split sons and fathers apart in their own households and and how rich people would have a hard time getting in heaven and not. And his his hidden message was there on the reward side.  Right. You do it to achieve a reward in the next life. Right. You're doing it for a carrot. Right. And that's a little disingenuous. I guess the real reason you should be good is to be good and make a better society. I mean, it's and that's something we can see in this this world, no matter which next world comes. Well put. Well put. Yeah. The the value of being good is that it improves the surroundings and the people that who will live in your environment, not so that you can get into heaven, not so that you can sit to the right side of Jesus and watch his, you know, brand new car and and hang out with his dad with his video game, his PlayStation nine or whatever. It's like, who cares about that? It's about the world that we're in right now that matters. And I feel like Mr. Rogers' emphasis is be good for the sake of good so that you can improve and improve the world that you're in. Whereas in the life you live, you know, just just day to day life. Yeah. And Jesus has no message on any of that. He's just like, this is your path. This is the scheme. This is how we're going to get the heaven, guys. Pick up some trash. It'll count for Jesus points. Trust me. That's the only reason why you need to do it. Yeah. Like what about to take care of other people? It's like, we don't care about other people. We're the chosen people. Right.  You know, Jesus has unconditional love for you. Well, unless you until you break in some some sins or unless you do something he doesn't want you to do, then, you know, your reward is a lot of eternity of pain, torture. Yeah. It's just it is fully conditional. Yes. And what gets me is he preaches, you know, love and compassion. But it comes right down to it. And they ask him what I need to do to get into heaven. Right. Remember what he said? Follow the Ten Commandments. That has nothing to do with love and command and compassion. It has everything to do with obedience. Right. And there are other problems too, where he's like, you know, there are some terrible laws that exist. What do you think about that? Well, what Caesar's is Caesar's and what's God is God. It's like, don't separate those rules. You could just be like, hey, slavery is a bad thing. We shouldn't be doing this. You know, there's a lot of things that are going on back there that I can talk about on YouTube, but I can use it to transition to our next topic, because if we still have some time, I want to bring up that Mr. Rogers, number three on this list is he addressed important topics. He fearlessly addressed important and sometimes difficult topics on a show such as death, divorce and disability. And this helped children navigate these issues with honesty and compassion. And I remember when there was a plane crash and people died and I didn't understand why that was a bad thing. Like I understand that planes. This is when you were a Christian. This is when I was a Christian and a child, like when I was maybe like seven. And I remember and I remember there was a plane crash and it was talked about in Mr. Rogers TV show. And I thought to myself like, whoa, planes crash because they're machines, but there are people inside them. I didn't understand that. And then the concept of the show he explained like, you know, about like, like in a sense national tragedies. But he talked about in a way that I wasn't scared from how he was talking about it and that I understood the sense of loss that came with it. And then he even made a book that was like essentially about like how to like talk to your kids about like bad things that happen in the world. Just thought that was so good to have an adult willing to communicate with me in a way that like I could appreciate that didn't feel like I was being talked down to. I seen that clip again on YouTube, but it's still really good. Here's what Jesus does. Jesus will on his third on his list is heal the sick and disabled. He performed numerous miracles, including healing the sick, blind, deaf and disabled, demonstrating compassion and divine power. And my issue with this comparison is that Mr. Rogers will talk about disability and divorce and and death and normalize them with respect to those who have died, those who have gone through a divorce like my parents or those who have a disability that the cat necessarily get them healed. Whereas Jesus in his mind, it was world view and demonstrated in this book would be like, oh, you're blind. Bob, you're not blind anymore. Ha ha. What about the thousand other blind people that are behind us? What about blindness in general? And he just your clock blindness in the yeah. No, no, no. I just want to do this for the magic trick. OK. So like for people who are disabled and deaf, like the stigma that comes with them being incapable or needing to be healed sticks. Whereas with Mr. Rogers, you talk about disability, people who don't have legs or arms and demonstrate that they're still capable and that they're still people like. I feel like that is something that needs to be expressed with demonstration and through Mr. Rogers efforts compared to what Jesus did. And I just find it really what gets me about Jesus.  Yeah, they were dead. They were dead for days. He brought them back. And that's the end of the story. Nobody asked them what it was like to be dead where they went.  They never address any of that from the people that they brought back from the dead. I mean, why not? Because they've got nothing to say. Right.  Right. So like it's a question of what I've been better off with Mr. Rogers approach, where he talks about death and in a in a sensible way and explains what happens and why, you know, you shouldn't be afraid of it, but it is a part of life compared to imagine if Jesus did that once. He's just like, let me just talk about that for a little bit. Like it's not something to be worried about your entire life for. But it's a part of life.  Right. And then Jesus is like, no, don't worry about that. It doesn't. It doesn't exist. It's just a change of address when you die, you're going to hang out with me. If you're good. And if you give me a little bit of money, if you worship me, it's the only thing I'm asking for. Just listen to what I say, give me a little bit of your money and worship me. It's that simple. Yeah. Yeah. We've got to remember that for my dad before Jesus, there was no heaven or hell.  Right. It's just why wasn't it mentioned before? Did the Jewish people not know anything about heaven or hell? Matter of fact, Jewish people today, I understand, don't really believe in heaven or hell. They just believe you kind of cease to exist. If you're a Jewish person and have a want to mention something about that, please leave a comment. Sure. Sure. Sure. OK, I think we're near the bottom of the half hour, right? We are. All right, let's do a quick break. OK, this is the digital free thought radio hour. I'm W. O. Z. O. Radio 103.9 L. P. F. M. Here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W. O. Z. O. Radio 103.9 L. P. F. M. Here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a minute to talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 22nd year. We have over 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. You can find us online and Facebook meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville and you still need to go to meetup.com and do a search for an Atheist group in your town, don't find one. Start one. Right, one that what do you want to pick up? I really want to go back to this list of Mr. Rogers and what he's done in his life remarkably that can be used to set an example for Christians and atheists alike versus Jesus and what he's done to set examples for the same crop people. And what I'm finding more often than not is that Mr. Rogers is a better representation slash mentor slash kind demonstration of good values that I think we should really try to exemplify in our current society compared to what Jesus Christ did with his entire time here. And I will just say this as simple. One of my as a simple fact, one of my best and favorite memories from his show is that he would always start a show with that piano song, right? Mm hmm. I'll do a full intro of the little model town, you know, did it, and it's like a long intro. I want to compare and contrast how his show starts to compare to any kid show starts these days where it's just quick cuts, quick cuts. Here's here's Alexander. He's a superhero and he could turn into this.  Show the entire plot line. You only have 30 seconds to do this, guys. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Sell toys, sell toys. You can do this. Make it happen. And whereas Mr. Rogers is like a steady four minute like song more like extended song. And we're not doing normal things like changing your shoes. But I know. Close up on a door. You open up the door. He starts singing and it's just like there's an old man singing on TV and he's not singing fast. It's a pretty slow song. There's not a lot of accompaniment with it.  And you're like, what's going on? He's tying shoes. We've been doing the show for like six minutes and there's an old man singing, tying his shoes. He wasn't that old. He looked like he was about 45, you know, or 40. He really wasn't gray hair or anything. How do we sell this to kids? How do we sell this to kids? We got it like G.I. Joe's next up in the next half hour block. How do we compete with Spider-Man? People don't realize that really young kids want stability. They want safety.  Yeah, he he was. He had a show for very young children, you know, pre kindergarten.  We want all this action and mayhem. Have you seen Paw Patrol? Have you seen like Peppa Pig like episodes that are only like five minutes long because they know kids have to like they're going to lose their attention span very quickly. You have to like keep it entertained. You have to sell toys. You got to like have them with cartoons. It's got to be colorful. Whereas Mr. Rogers like I'm tying my shoes and if the song this is the thing that blew my mind if he's still singing in the song ends, won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please? Won't you please? Won't you please be my neighbor? And he's still tying his shoes. He's going to keep tying his shoes. He doesn't rush.  Yeah, I'm just going to finish tying my shoes before he starts the show. And he wasn't. Oh, it's so relaxing. He wasn't just an actor either. He created the show. Right. He's composed the music. He was the producer and the head writer, Mr. Rogers. So it was his show and he conceived it and made it happen. Right. Just the way he wanted. And I just love that he could teach patience, you know, because one of the main things I feel like, again, here I am on my porch that, you know, we I feel are lacking as a society is patience. All the habits, all the hobbies that we have stress sort of like a yellow or a you got to do this now or times running out or this is a limited deal or everything stressing on time being a limited resource. Whereas to watch a full episode of Mr. Rogers is sort of an expectation or setting up the expectation things are going to take some time, but it's totally fine. They'll be worth it. Let's just relax and watch and you mentioned before the show that he was honest about everything he did. He talked about the puppets being puppets. You know, nothing was unexplained or left to the imagination other than just the story that he was telling. Correct. But Jesus was all about the magic. And he was a hero figure in the old traditional sense of a hero in the story. Right.   But Jesus is also the ultimate by now, not later, marketer, because his whole idea was within your lifetime, the Kingdom of Heaven is going to come down, right? So I'm your last chance right now. Start worshiping me right now. I'm right here. You're here. Make this happen or I'm going to go, right? I'm not going to be here forever and your opportunity is going to go away, guys. And they've been saying that the end of the world is nine or two thousand years now. Yeah, get a clue. Right. It's not. It's not. He's not teaching patients. He's not teaching honesty, right? Because, like, as you said, Larry, it's like it's been two thousand years and he's still playing hide and seek, apparently. Not only that, but I also feel like one of the cool things Mr. Rogers did was he went behind the curtain like he shows you. Hey, this is the piano that's playing when I when I when I sing. There's a lady who plays it, but I can also know how to play music, too. But she of course plays some music, Linda, and she plays the music. He went to the actors who happens in his make-believe town. He went to that studio set, which is right next to his show. And he's like, these are actors, but they're also my friends. And we do this show where we pretend that we are on the stage. I'm just being honest with you like this is a puppet. This is a trolley. I can I control it with these two buttons. You can see me doing in the show. It's not like it's a magical thinking trolley. I don't want you to be concerned with the concept of magic. Like reality already is cool enough. And I'm like, that's so cool. Like I can appreciate that mindset. And remember, Mr. Rogers is a Christian, right? So like I can appreciate that mindset, that honesty from a Christian minded person that can still enable me, even with my secular mindset now, to still respect that show so genuinely, because it's not intrusive on my viewpoints of reality, because he's being honest, right? And he's keeping largely his dogma away from being force fed to me as a child. I just thought that was so good.  It's like, dude, I know your dad's the God. It's like, yeah, my dad's God. So what are you going to do about it? That's literally his entire motif, his entire show to the point where people get so annoyed. I'm like, can we kill Jesus, please? Can we kill this guy? It's like, my dad's God.   Let's crucify. I was like, is that the fastest way we can kill people? Fine, whatever. All right, go for it. Anyway, all right. So other thing that Mr. Rogers did was as you had discussed, he had that piano music. So he promoted music and the arts. He integrated music, art and creativity into his programming, recognizing the importance of fostering imagination and emotional expression. And I thought that is cool. It would be nice to hear from Jesus.  And you should be really proud that you were able to create this. And this is like a joint effort came from a lot of different minds putting together and you made something really beautiful. The beauty was always about God. And the only time I've ever seen Jesus relax and have a good time was when he was making wine for his buddies or hanging out in the desert. But like it was never time to appreciate the humanity. And but about the only story that really could show compassion is the one where they were stoning this woman or were going to. And he said, you know, that the first one who has no sin cast the first stone, but that was really about obedience. It was about a sin. It was about a lot of things it should have been about compassion, you know, an empathy for the woman, but it wasn't. And that's that's an opportunity missed. Yeah, there's other missed opportunities, too. I think there's is Jesus, the one who came up with the Good Samaritan story. I don't know. I think it was terrible because I know I don't think it was. So so was that I knew was in the New Testament. I'm going to assume. All right, OK, so if that's not the case, then that's fine.  It's like, yeah, boo, right? Yeah. Well, here's a story about a good one. It's like, whoa, isn't this story kind of generalizing and a little bit racist? No, just put it in the Bible. It's totally fine. But the other one would be like when the lady comes to Jesus to like pour oil on his feet and like all the guys around him are like, this lady doesn't deserve to be around you. She's a woman or like she's beneath us. And I'm like, whoa, these are the people that Jesus is hanging out with 24 seven. But Jesus is like, no, no, no, I will let her wash my feet. That's like, OK, hold on a second. I don't know if this is necessarily even a good thing. I'm like, oh, he's so nice. He let the lady clean his feet with the precious oils. That's that's so progressive. Like, would you like to sit down? Kind of a lesson. Yeah, like lady, would you like to?  He's like, any of you guys can wash my feet anytime you want to. No, it's like I feel like Jesus was always there to keep the stratification of humanity in place, right? Like God, and now there's a new layer, which is me. And then there's my followers who are immediately below me. And then there's everybody else. So if you want to upgrade, you got to follow me because I'll put you into this new cast of people who are my followers, which gets you closer to God. But like Jesus was not about respecting the diversity of people and different minds around the world. And, you know, Mr. Rogers, he had different people of different face, different colors, different genders on his show all the time. Different puppets. I mean, like different animals. That was the whole that was the whole concept of the make-believe word verse, but then you'd also go out to industries where he's like talked to men and women working in plants and be like, hey, this is how fruit cups are made. This is how milk is is gathered from cows.  You never got that you never got the expression that Jesus ever really appreciated humanity. But I only ever got that from Mr. Rogers. And I feel like because of that, I would always listen to what Mr. Rogers would tell me what to do over Jesus, which is like this alien guy. OK, I do want to give props to Jesus for confronting injustice and hypocrisy. It does say in this list that Jesus fearlessly confronted religious hypocrisy, corruption and injustice, challenging authority and speaking truth to power. That's what it got says from chat. You do you have any comments on that, Larry? Who is talking truth to power? This is a remarkable thing that Jesus did. Oh, going to chat to confronting injustice and hypocrisy. He challenged religious hypocrisy, corruption and injustice, challenged authority and spoke. Well, what he did was he challenged the old religion to set up a new religion. I mean, he has his own authority. You know, he was he was establishing a new one. He had his challenge, the old one to do it. And as far as speaking truth, the power was a truth when he was just, I mean, first of all, we need to take a step back. Sure. I don't know if Jesus actually existed or not, but we do know the stories exist. And as far as I'm concerned, that's all they are. I mean, no more than you would believe that Mohammed split the moon into and flew to heaven on a winged horse. Why do you? Not by those stories, but by the stories about Jesus. Right. I mean, they're magic hero stories. They're just stories in a book written by preachers who want you to believe so that you can they can control you, put you in the pew and get your money. Right. If I told you a story with a magical orange and a talking goat, people would be like, that's a fairy tale. But if I say a magical apple and a talking snake, people are like, no, that's real. That actually happened somewhere. It's like it's it's it's not the fact that it's an apple or an orange or a talking goat or a talking snake. It's the fact that this is fairy tales. We have nothing to compare it to in reality. Hey, red red pirate. Higgs came in. Welcome for dread. Ahoy. Ahoy. Ahoy. Hope you work contrasting Mr. Rogers and Jesus Christ, you got to throw you cold into it. Yeah, I know you're out on the cold right now. But did you did you ever have any experience with watching Mr. Rogers? A neighborhood? No, no. OK, it's not Canadian, not a Canadian. Oh, OK. So am I late? What's up? Am I late? Yeah, a little bit. Fifty minutes. It's only 50 minutes in the hour, so it's OK. Fine, you're fine. You're fine. We appreciate the spirit of it. But yeah, yeah. Just doing some real work. This is a time change. Yeah, yeah. Dread, you're doing real work. Don't worry about it. But the great thing is I feel like we have a better champion for how to behave and it can even be a Christian who does so rather than using Jesus because I feel like we have better role models already that exist. And as Jerry, I'm sorry, as Larry said, we don't know if Jesus actually existed. We know there's stories that exist. But we do know Mr. Rogers exists and we have videos of him and we have books by him. And we have music by him and we have speeches by him. And we have congressional transcripts from him. And they're all awesome. And I'm saying like, why are we wasting time with the stories from Jesus when we already have a much better in color and color version of a guy who's already espousing really good values that we should just be listening to anyway. Like no magic involved, no magic needed. Like we already got it. Like just put this book away and be like, this is a great neighborhood. If you do this and listen to this guy and do what this guy says and still call this Christianity, we would literally be better off and Christianity would be in a better light. We already have a better role model. We should do as Mr. Rogers does, not to be Rogers entity. Yeah, like there's no ambiguity behind it. There's no ambiguity to it. It's like we know that guy was the thing and he and we agree. I as an atheist agree with almost everything that was said on the show. There's no controversy. There's no cancel. There's no requirement to throw reality out the window. Yeah, like I'm totally fine. It's like if someone had on their bumper sticker, a picture of Mr. Rogers instead of like a cross or something in my mind, I'm not thinking, oh, that guy's just like inhibiting education, science, reality, teaching his kids the wrong way to be like, if it was just picture, Mr. Rogers is like, I do what Mr. Rogers did. I'd be like, oh, that's a cool parent. Nice. I love Mr. Rogers, too. I'm an atheist. I love that show. Everybody would love that show. It'd be great. Another bumper sticker would be good would be would you like to be my neighbor? Bam. Excellent. Down on a shirt, Dredd. Wonderful. All right. I'm going to do a quick break to see if we had comments. We did have a couple of comments. Oh, Dredd, would you like to plug anything? Well, I'm still continuing to do my weekly short sermons on my YouTube channel, Mind Pirate and my MPP. Sermons? Sermons? What about? Oh, about everything. Like I just did one about Ardbark Appreciation Day. Oh, cool. Sometimes I just base my sermons off of the Pastafarity calendar. So, like every day has is some kind of a day in Pastafarianism. So it turned out that last Friday was Ardbark Appreciation Day. And recently I did one on International Women's Day. That was a good one. Did you do Pi Day? I did Pi Day, but I didn't get it up. So I've got it now. It's in the can. So next year on Pi Day, I will release it. Well, that's Pi, not PiE. No, I understand. No, for the listeners. Yeah, 3-1-4. So I have two questions, two comments that I'm formatting into a question. One is from the episode, I'm calling God's Bluff. And the question is related to how to talk to your parents and essentially call their bluff if required sometimes. But this question is I'm going to give to Larry. Larry, the commenter is ElectricalCrab9286. They say that my mom's telling my siblings that dinosaurs never existed. What should I tell her? I thought some of my siblings that dinosaurs never existed. As soon as for a religious reason, my mom is telling my siblings. That's the only dynamic. We have all kinds of evidence. I mean, how do you explain the fossils that we have, the fossil record of dinosaurs if they never existed? And a lot of Christians will say, well, Satan put them there to confuse us and make us not believe in the Word of God in the history. But I mean, which is better to believe that it occurred naturally that these lived and there's a deep history of time or magic. So that's your options there. What people haven't been reasoned into, they cannot be reasoned out of. They can't. I disagree. Well, I like that. OK. Yeah. Because I can't remember who said that, but I thought it was Christians. I think you said it, but I mean, we all were. I was, you know, I was a believer and so was Wombat. And I believe you were one time, weren't you? So we were reasoned out of it. It takes time and it takes a long time. Yeah. And it takes a lot of good arguments, a lot of good rationale, but it happens. And what I hear from this person's perspective is that no one's invested that time in the mom, but also it's a willingness to. If I was unwilling to change my mind, I wouldn't have changed my mind. It took a deep appreciation for knowing that I cared about what was true and what was actually false for me to change. And all the reason in the world won't affect that unless I'm a willing participant in that process. And I think if you have those two, it is feasible. It is feasible. Dredd, my next question is Jonathan Swift. OK. Dredd, this is a good question for you, I think. OK. This is asked by, this is just a more extended comment, but from Driplo Callis who asks, hey, is it OK for me to privately wear a cross while I'm an atheist? I have a necklace nearly a decade old and I occasionally wear it and look in the mirror for sentimental value. I'm no longer a Christian. But after learning how toxic religion is, I am now questioning if it is inappropriate to have the sentimental trinket towards any or any any sentimental trinket towards any religious object. Is it OK to privately wear a cross while an atheist is the thing? Right. And of course, why not? Because I mean symbols are symbols. They just represent things.  You know, if it doesn't mean Christianity to you, then so what? Right. Or if it wants, if you just wanted to remind you of the time you were a Christian and how maybe you left the fold, there's a lot of reasons that you would have.  You have a lot of sentimentality about the past.  I love that idea. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I kind of did that. Yeah, there's a lot of joy.  Right. It was an Indian symbol, I think. Long time ago. Exactly. Western Indian. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's a hard sell to a political figure being like, it's not for Nazis. Like, could we agree that it's now for Nazis? Can we say they did enough to claim that? And maybe you just like don't wear that while you say, please elect me official because you're going to attract attention. There was a symbol that the Nazis war was iron cross. Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember that. The iron cross. It was very popular after the war in the fifties and sixties when a biker gang said some other people would wear it. And it used to really tear off my dad who was a World War II veteran. I had, I actually had a copy of Red Year Kipling's The Jungle Book and it was a hundred years old and embossed on the front cover was a picture of an elephant and the file plot cross. The one cross was the Nazi symbol. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. And that was, you know, I think it was published in 18, you know, towards the end of the century there long before Nazis were around. Ever picked it up. Yeah. All right. Here's my last question. This one goes to the layer before we close the show. Yeah, I need to. The technical finalist asks, is there such a thing as an atheist society? Is there one? Well, yeah, I started, you know, it's just kind of a club you started here in Knoxville. We started the Atheist Society of Knoxville. And that was 22 years ago and we're doing pretty well. It's now a non-profit. So, you know, we have an Atheist Society live and well in the Bible Belt. So, yes, do that. Okay, cool. That's it for me. Thank you guys for coming to the show. Feel free to check out or leave a comment. Frank O'Counting says, looking good, tight. We appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers. Anything else? Mind pirate. Dread pirate, would you like to plug in? I'm good. I'm just so sorry I missed the largest part of the show. You're Canadian. You do not have to be sorry. It's all good. It's all good. Yeah, I was late last week, you know, but I got in in time. Yeah, we're in this weird time. We're a week before, yeah. When the time changed. All right, Larry, what do you got? What do you got for? I signed up. Oh, I think we all agree that souls were real. That's what we missed Dread. And that we're ready. Good to close the show. Is that right? Souls are real. You never read that accurate. Yeah, perfect. All right. You can find this show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for digital free thought radio hour. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. And be sure to click on the blog button for the radio show archives, atheist 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?  The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock here on W O Z O radio. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye man. All right. Let's do it real quick. Our newly lord who art in a colander I'll dente be thy noodles. Thy blood be run, 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 cuss against us. Lead us not to ketoism but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the meatballs and the sauces and the grog. Whatever and ever. Robin. All right.


Hi, today I'm going to be talking about the Chennai flood map, which is a map that we built in the winter of 2015 when there was large scale flooding in Chennai. So using custom tools, some failed experimentation and lots of heart, we built this project in under two days. We were pretty fascinated by how useful the project turned out to be and how simple it was to actually build it. So I'm going to be talking about the entire process of how this was done. This is also the first public tool that was built by civilians, for civilians during an urban natural disaster in India. Also, my name is Aruna. I work as an infrastructure engineer at Mapbox in their Bangalore office. So Mapbox is a company built custom libraries and tools for anybody to be able to integrate maps and map-based services such as search and routing into their product. So all of our base geographical data comes from this project called the OpenStreetMap project, which is a super large open crowdsourced aggregated geospatial database. And this particular crowdsourced aspect is really significant. So I find maps extremely beautiful. And for me, this beauty is heightened by the truth, the scale, and the diversity of the data that makes up a map. So any visual that you're really seeing on the map, like the most beautiful street networks, actually exists somewhere out there. And because of this diversity and scale of data, this human aspect of collecting the data, as well as the distributed aspect of collecting the data is really significant, even in today's term, times of deep learning and computer vision. And they played a pretty significant part as we build the Chennai flood map. So before I get into the computing, some context and some storytelling. So the city of Chennai is a coastal city that lies in the southeast of India. It is also historically one of the four large metropolitan cities in the country. And it has a population density that's comparable to New York. In 2015, Chennai housed about 10 million people. In that very year, Chennai was ravaged by large scale flooding. And these floods left many citizens displaced and made evacuation and aid necessary. And because of the lack of good information systems through which the government could communicate with the citizens, it also made access to data such as when was the flood reaching peak levels? And how do I access the safe roads? Or where are the flood relief centers? Access to this sort of information was also really hard. And back then, about 362 kilometers away from Chennai in the Bangalore office of Mapbox, we had this tradition of running hack days, right? So where we would all focus our energies on using custom libraries and tools that may or may not be related to the work we did at Mapbox. But we would focus on actively building small research prototypes or like little projects where we could experiment using technology. At this time, a friend of mine at The Wire, which is an Indian media outlet, was putting together this map, which is based off of a Google Map base map. And he was trying to collect data about waterlogged roads, roadblocks, and safe roads. So because of the limited tooling around Google Maps, I found the design of this app pretty clunky, like because you would want to see streets, but you're actually, the streets themselves are represented as points. And further, because of the proprietary nature of the tooling and the data associated with Google Maps, the license around the data that you're adding is a little ambiguous. To fix all of these problems, I decided to make my own version of the flood map. And what happened was, we decided that we would use a very simple interface where someone would select or deselect a road to mark it as flooded or not flooded. So a friend of mine from work, Arun and I decided to join together and do this. He decided to go ahead and design the base map, whereas I designed the map interface. And we built a very hacky prototype in about half a day as hack days usually go. A week after this, we realized that some other folks who were crowd sourcing data for nonprofit agencies on the field, they were crowd sourcing data about the flood relief centers. They found out that these tools were actually very, very useful. So this reinvigorated our earlier efforts around building the flood map. And we decided to go ahead and build it to fruition. So the app itself had to be super simple and universal in usage. So the only element of interactivity that we wanted to add was the simple process of selecting and deselecting the street to add this metadata of whether it was flooded or not flooded. And after this, we also decided that there were two components to designing this whole project, which was the map design and the map interface. So if you think of a map, it's kind of similar to a really nicely layered chocolate cake, the base layer of the map is just the base data that's coming from some sort of geographic data set, which in our case was open street map. And on top of this base map, you can actually add additional data to make your visualization richer and to like provide more information through your map. So in our case, these additional layers of the cake came from satellite data that was provided by the United Nations through this data set called Unit R, and it contains data about floods and water logging, et cetera. And the second set of data sets we used came from the satellites run by the Indian Space Research Organization, which were also collecting data about water logging and elevation, et cetera, in the city of Chennai. So we picked this base map, custom styled it to our specifications and then added more of this raster data set on top of the map. To design the map itself, we used Mapbox Studio, which is an interactive editor that allows you to layer your data on top of the map, and it does this using a very visual interface so literally anybody can design the map. And once you've designed the map, every map can be identified using a custom ID and an access token that identifies the creator. But this map is static, right? So to add any layers of interactivity to the map, you need to use this library called Mapbox GLJS. So Mapbox GLJS is an open-source library and it allows you to add many, many layers of interactivity to your map. In the case of the Chennai flood map, we mostly added three different kinds of interactivity, and I have some examples to show you what that looks like. So one of these is the fly to location. So you can click a button and it'll actually fly to that particular location, which is pretty cool. The second one is runtime styling. So as and when the user is using the map, they can actually style certain specific data on the map to their own specification if you provide this feature. And the third was very significant for the Chennai flood map, which was that you could access features under the mouse pointer. So in our case, whenever someone would click a street, we would know the exact street that they had clicked and we would add an additional metadata to this feature that would say whether the street was flooded or not. So because we were adding this additional metadata, it brought this complication of using, like setting up our own backend, right? And to start off with, we were extremely pessimistic about how much this app would be used because we weren't doing any PR for it. So we actually set up a Hetzner box with a very simple Django server that would serve and retrieve requests based on whoever was adding features to the map. But then everything blew up and we were getting so many requests that our Hetzner box kept crashing and we had to figure out a solution. And what we realized was at that point, there was a feature from Mapbox called the Dataset API, which had not been released yet, but because we were working in the company, like someone told us, oh, you should probably use the Dataset API. And the Dataset API allows you to create, modify, and delete datasets on the fly. And you don't have to set up your own server because all of this is taken care of by Mapbox on the cloud. And at the end, we put together all of this on a very simple HTML5 JavaScript base and hosted it using GitHub Pages. The app was widely used during peak flooding, there were about 350,000 people who were using the app and during the entire course of the floods, over 600,000 people used the map. I think this was also possible because Chennai is an urban city, so the access that an average person has to a smartphone is pretty high. And further, the fact that this was a web app but was still usable on a phone, I think also made a difference. So ever since the project was built in 2015, it's had several spinoffs. Last year, in 2017, there were a couple of floods in Houston and in Peru. And notably, during both these times, there were folks that decided to fork the flood map and release it out there to the public. Yeah, and that brings me to the end of my talk. I don't have any demos of the map here so that you can go and look at it. The map is available on GitHub. All the code is open source. I really hope that this sort of excites you and hopefully convinces you of the fact that even really small tools when put out there can be really useful. So thank you. Thank you.


All right, cyber traders, welcome on back here this Thursday, September 8th, it's been a nice market day and a much more active day trade day here at least this Thursday compared to yesterday. Great to see students like Michael, Roger, Andre. Great to see all of us rejoining us live here in the cyber group room and great to see all of us back on social media, Facebook Live, YouTube. So I just said before, right? Like it's been a much more active market day today, not just because we've had the crazy pixie stock from pre-market. No, but there's been a bunch of different trades that have been moving on up very nicely, whether it be because of the market moving up or otherwise for news of its own. So right now we have one of those stocks on the screen here, Ruby. Now, this one ended up kind of just taking over by storm, right? I mean, it ended up just popping right after the market opened up. We did not have this on the pre-market or morning watch listed. It wasn't looking that great in pre-market there, but ended up making a beautiful move afterwards and we were able to take full advantage of this trade. I think Fausto was really early to the draw on this one after the market opened up from there. Grant was calling it out off of a dollar and eight cents.  I saw Kathleen get 14 cents on this. She was in from 108. I saw John get 16 cents. He was in from even earlier off of 96 cents. So, you know, it just goes to show it. I mean, A, like a lot of different things here. But A, no, we were on top of this early. Ended up catching the majority of this move. And then, you know, B, otherwise, this is still holding a really strong heading into this time of the day here, right? You still have resistance off of that 150. There is a pretty decent sized order here, but I'd still expect 150 to be the bigger of the two levels. So, you know, between 146, 150. But otherwise, Ruby, we'll just go ahead and put this right on the top of our list here so far. Now, Jeff, otherwise, with the great call out inside the cyber group room here, one of the other trades that are still moving up right now, ended up making a big squeeze after the market opened up. I'll tell you what, the reason why my day yesterday sucked so bad was because I was expecting this exact move just yesterday. So, I was kind of like drawn into the possibility of the breakout hire here yesterday. And I ended up taking a few losses on this stock and alongside other trades. Yesterday, all together, it wasn't really my best performance. But hey, it doesn't mean that I'm an insane person for thinking that, right? Look what happened today, obviously. This stock was coming off of, you know, phase three clinical trial news from Tuesday. We were talking about this. Ray, right away here, I don't know if Ray S, one of our gold students, is in this trade right now, but it made a squeeze from the market open. We were following it all throughout the day. Even as a short, remember, we were calling out the historical resistance off of 1675 to 1685. That, you know, range, well, that held damn nicely and that led to a beautiful drop. Great short as it was along from the morning, but ended up bouncing from 16. I ended up getting out on the last half of that short position. I was in from 1682 short and I got out on the last half of my position as it was moving up here. So, I just got out to take the money. But then I flipped my script and I said, well, you know, hey, if this is gonna hold over the VWAP and if it holds support off of 1630, that's what I was most recently calling out on this trade throughout the early afternoon. Now, I was saying that we could find some good S, some good support at 1630. I wrote that at 1247 Eastern time there in the chat. So, it's saying that it held support perfectly right from that point, ended up leading to the next leg up here on this trade. I ended up taking half my position out. I believe it was at 1669. And then I kept the second half. So, I'm still in on the second half of this trade, Jeff. Anyone in on this ISEE trade right now with me? Maybe Jeff, maybe Ray, a couple of us otherwise from the chat board. Let me know if you're currently in on this stock, ISEE. I'll put this on our watch list as well alongside the Ruby trade. I did not trade really Ruby as much. I was all about the ISEE today. Well, if there's a lot more though, if you're not in, Jeff says, no, it's all right. Let's see if there's more room here if it could hold over 17 or maybe break under and right back over that price. But for right now, we're looking really good on this stock. Now, aside from that, we did end up trading the Pixie trade. This thing was like a crazy run-up in pre-market, ended up holding the support line here at like 1650-ish, 1658, but made the huge run-up after. You knew that this was gonna dump off at some point, folks. I mean, for as much as this ran up in pre-market, it was up over like 120%. So ended up making a big pullback after a pop from the market open. And there's a couple of plays where we could have scalped it. I did miss out on really the only part of this that I wanted to jump into. I think it was right here. I was looking to jump in. I jumped in, I jumped out fast. And I said, even on 100 shares, I was still in on the ISEE trade and just trying to figure that out still. And I don't wanna juggle too many bowling pins in the air at the same time. So unfortunately, I was correct with looking for support here. I just wasn't in it when it ran up. But yeah, ended up dropping right back down. It's not really doing much of anything here at this point, the Pixie trade. Don't get stuck trying to hold on to a stock like this, folks. Just remember, look at all these trades that we've had from the last month or so. HKD, look at where it's at now. AMTD, look at where it's at now. INDO, MGAM, my platform's gonna freeze up from going through this so fast. MEGL, you name it, right? Don't get stuck holding. Now at that though, you know, maybe tomorrow, next week, some point, maybe possibly who knows, Pixie could be a good day trade again. For right now though, we're gonna scratch it. I'll tell you the AMLX, I thought was gonna make a decent bounce throughout the morning. I was looking for it right off of 28. And then it ended up breaking below there a little bit and just chopped around there for a little while. So I moved on from it pretty early afterwards, but yeah, I mean, right now it's still kind of chopping around. It's like teasing us here for the most part. So if it ends up making a bigger move here during this meeting, I'll call it out. I'll possibly put it on our list there, but we'll look to see if there's anything moving better right now at this time.  Or otherwise, you know, again, we have an ISCE trade. We have Ruby, both of those are incredible so far. All right, let's see what else we got here folks. We had the blue apron trade. I'll skip to that there briefly. Blue apron still grinding on up. Keyword there would be grinding on up because, you know, ended up just popping before, made a good squeeze at first. But, you know, aside from the steady trend, it's been like chugging away. It's not really making the most volatile pop that you'd wanna have. I mean, this has a very liquid book. So it's very tradable for most of us here. I'm gonna put this on our watch list for right now. We ended up doing really well on blue apron back from yesterday and just really over the last month at this point, on and off, variously. Normally, this has had a thinner book when it's made these plays here, these squeezes up. So it's actually a lot more refreshing for me to see, you know, at least the tighter spread, more orders out there. Some icebergs here at 775 and 780. So, you know, it looks like a good trade so far. We have Lyft. We had called out Lyft earlier from the morning from the initial pop after the market opened. It's been really moving well, better across the afternoon in my opinion compared to like even here, you know, a steady trend, but much like the other one, they're the blue apron. It's like chugging along. You know, it's gonna make a bit of a pullback at some point. So ended up doing so, but led to a cleaner bounce. And you know, right now, I guess you can say that momentum died off briefly, but for right now, I have no problem putting that Lyft trade on our list. All right, let's see what else we got here, folks. Across the gainer side here, of course, with the market moving up, perhaps a bit of a move back up on Bitcoin. And with that, we have like all these Bitcoin mining affiliates like Hutt and Riot. Mara a little bit lower. I know one of us had called out Riot earlier. Hey, it's, you know, moving up pretty nicely, right? This is where at least my experience can come in handy, folks. And if I'm wrong today, it would be a very rare occasion for me to be wrong with the following here. I'm wrong a lot, but with this, the following I'm about to say, it's very, very little that I'm wrong on this. So these crypto miners, Riot, Mara, Hutt, we'll look at in a moment, if they're up this 12, 13% at this point in the day, it's very rare that they really continue to accelerate higher. Is it possible it moves up to like 750, 755 from this point? Maybe, but you know, normally these stocks don't make that big run, you know, into the close. You see this go from here up to eight or higher. You know, I'm not expecting that on this. So, you know, for right now, it looks like a beautiful chart, beautiful intraday chart. Don't get me wrong.  We'll check in on that if need be. But you know, those for right now, good looking charts, but I'm not expecting a whole lot more left on those trades. If they do give it to us, then we'll call it out should it pop over 750, but let's see if there's anything with a better chance of making that pop. SLQT, it's at the highs. It's at the highs right now. It's actually breaking multi-day highs here, day over day. The issue on this is that it's just got some bigger orders for it to try and cut through if it really wants to make that continuated pop like you're just talking about. So, you know, this one's not like a Bitcoin stock, whatever, but at least as far as I know. But, you know, it's just the heavy liquidity on the ask here that makes me think that it's not gonna give us as good of a shot. Now, on the other side of that, we have Nerve. Nerve has a pretty thin book and it's still holding strong near the high. So, you know, that gives it much less volume to cut through if it wants to make that clean pop. But this is almost too illiquid here. I mean, we've seen this trade much better volume on the ordered book, just namely over the last two, three weeks. So, you know, again, I'll write this down for the side list, but I'll come back to it at the end if I need to. All right, so with that, I think that just about wraps up the gainer's side for right now, folks. There could be one or two more that I may be forgetting, which actually, I will jump to those and actually right now. Viru, I just went break even on this trade during the meeting. Like as we started the meeting, I ended up just getting stopped out right at my own entry price at 12.57. I tried to make this squeeze up here. I was calling out 100 plus thousand share print that got filled right off of 12.55. And once it broke under and back over that price, I jumped in long, ran up pretty nicely. But again, it didn't make that big move that you would want to see. You know, if it makes that move coming up, I feel like I have time from this point forward. So I ended up getting stopped out right at my entry price. Actually, when it started to squeak up here a little bit when I started the meeting, I was like, I hope this doesn't really move without me, but I didn't really miss out on too much sense. So, you know, Viru is still at the highest here. It's just a little sluggish right now. I'll put this on our main list, though. We're very familiar with this trade. It's shortable. So if this breaks below 12.55, this could provide us a nice short opportunity. So just be on the lookout for that. A little shake here on the S&P and the spy. I could see that just from my five minute chart. You know, a spy dropping right from 400.  It's not too surprising. All right, so let's hop over to the loser's list right now see if there's anything looking just as good. You know, from that side, I wouldn't expect for there to be a whole lot on the loser's side on a day like today, aside from inverse ETFs perhaps. I know Michael was calling out Dave and Buster's play. So, you know, obviously I'll take a look at that. It's a stock that we've done well on more from the beginning of the pandemic, right? But otherwise today, coming off bad earnings from the post market yesterday, led to a big drop after the market opened up. You know, the order book is a tiny bit thin but it seems like the spread's controllable, right? You know, two cents, three cents spread here and there. You know, maybe a tiny bit more if it opens up but it's making a good trend down to that 38 again. I like this trade as a short. We'll see. You know, just trade on smaller shares. It's not the least expensive stock that we normally look for. So, you know, it's not the most expensive either but just given the thinner liquidity I personally would be trading a little less shares on this probably a half size position at first. All right, what else we got? What else we got here folks? Again, I wouldn't expect for there to be a whole lot on the loser side here, right? Familiar name, good old CSIQ. Good old friend CSIQ here. Ended up making a nice drop off after the open. Not a whole lot to it there. There never really was a whole lot to CSIQ. I felt like, yeah, it was like a trade back like eight years ago. But Carol, I'm very unfortunate news being posted in our trading room right now, Queen Elizabeth. It seems like I'm just getting chat from one of our members here saying that she just unfortunately passed away. So, obviously that's something that could potentially affect the markets. That's not the first thing I think about when I think about Queen Elizabeth, right? But of course here we're doing this meeting. God bless, right? You know, with that, you know, we'll see what happens across the afternoon. But, you know, that's very unfortunate to hear, Carol. Hi, all right, folks. You know, hey, let me know if there's anything else, you know, left or right, up or down that you want me to look at here. Michael says, array making a big shake. Let me go from top to bottom actually first. From John saying, TDCX. Nah, that's not tradable. Array making a big shake. It is, it's down, you know, that near 5%. That's right at the lows. You know, it's a good stock to consider. It is pretty liquid as well. You know, good spreads at least. And it's liquid enough. You know what, Mike, I like this one. We'll put this on our main list here. We just get to the social media streams, Facebook Live, YouTube, see if there's any comments from there. Got one chat here on stock AERC and that's a former runner too. So we'll take a look at the daily chart more than anything. Ah, I mean, it looks like a thin traded stock, not just from the order book, but it was really spotty across the afternoon. You know, trying to make a move up right now. What I like about this, if anything, it's trading over a million shares at this point. It's up decent, you know, cheap stock. The spread is not bad. You know, the order book is, it will be a little thin, but it's a good spread for right now. Former runner AERC. We ended up doing really well on this stock, not back from July or August, back from early June, ended up seeing the stock pop from like four up to like 25 near 30. So, you know, looking at it right now where it stands, it's hard to ignore it. All right, folks, that just about wraps it up for me here. I believe, I gotta jump onto a coaching call with one of our students here coming up at the top of the hour. Otherwise, I know that Rich will be on the mic himself here inside the trading room at the top of the hour at 3 p.m. Eastern time. All right, for all of us on social media, Facebook Live, YouTube, I appreciate you folks sticking with us each and every day for myself, each and every afternoon. Any questions that you have, feel free to forward over to Josh at ctutrading.com.  If you have any questions, let me know. If you're interested in joining our live trading room, that is, of course, for all of us on YouTube, Facebook Live, just go right down to the link on the yellow banner below right there at the stream to get yourself started. But for all of us otherwise, I'll be in the chapel where at least I'll be trading with one of our students, Roger from 3 to 330. Hopefully we catch a nice runner here, whether it be on AERC or any of the others we have on our list so far. But no, I'll keep the commentary going through the chat board. Rich will be on the mic coming up at 3 p.m. Talk to you soon. Come a Cyber Group member today. Just click the link below and receive all these amazing products and a world of knowledge for just nine dollars.


Look at this dirt. Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Where's a go? We're gonna do Cheerios, okay? You guys see, here you go. You guys eat. What's going on? Is it? Is it frozen Cheerios? April fools, I got you boys. All right everyone, that was fun. I decided to bump up April fools day to give you a little inspiration in these tough times to maybe do something fun out there. So frozen cereal, it worked, it worked. All right, heading out for the run. Yes, I'm going to the track where I'm gonna do the run to raise money for those in need, those that need help. So we're heading out here. I gotta scope out the track and actually I gotta make sure it's open. So also it is a dirt track. I'm trying to open my gate here. I gotta, it's a dirt track. So the reason I want that is just to be a little easier on the legs, depending on how long I go. All right, and thank you all for the encouragement and support in yesterday's vlog. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this, helping others. All right, if you haven't seen that vlog, go check it out, upper right hand corner. Okay, here we go. Is it open? Is this track open? I need a track for those laps. Okay, here we go. Well, it's open. Okay, this is good news and look at this dirt. Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about, nice and soft. Okay, it looks open, obviously it is open. Perfect, perfect. Oh my goodness. It's open, the dirt is soft and we're gonna help people keep a roof over their heads. I'll get you the dates and the details very soon.  So I'm putting the hat on in the studio for today's time. Okay, so just to recap real quick before we dive into the taper and talking about the time trial from Sunday is that yesterday's vlog, which is why I went to the track today just to make sure it's open for raising money to help people who have lost their job because of the coronavirus, because of COVID-19 and are struggling to pay their rent.  And so the emails are coming in. So if you are in that situation, you lost your job and you might lose where you're gonna live, email me. There's my email, we wanna help. And on that note, I'm blown away down in the comments from yesterday's vlog, also on Twitter, you all wanna help. It's overwhelming, frankly, because I was confident we would raise $1,500 to help one person. But it seems like we might raise a lot, lot more than $1,500. So this is good, this is exciting. But it also means, and thank you for her, I forget who brought it up. A couple of people brought it up as far as making sure everything is in place on the financial side. And yes, the taxes side, okay? Someone, oh my gosh, someone offered to pay the taxes for the money that comes in. He said, okay, I'll cover the, he said, I'll cover $1,500. It's just amazing in the taxes. Well, I believe there's a way that we don't have to pay taxes. For example, and we'll talk to our accountant, True Love and I, but if you are an accountant and you have some information or some insight into gifting money, from what I understand and the research that I've done in the past and just earlier today is that an individual can give another individual $15,000 and it cannot be taxed, okay? As a gift, all right, a gift. Individual to individual. Remember, I'm not a business. I'm not a nonprofit. I'm just a person, right? Trying to help someone. So, same for you. If you support when I'm running around the track and we're not, just so you know, we're not gonna do it through Super Chat, we're gonna do it, most likely it's gonna be PayPal, Venmo. I know many of you have used Venmo, Google, anyway. But we gotta, I just gotta get the details all ironed. As you can probably tell, I'm the pie in the sky, big idea kind of guy and you guys are keeping me accountable to the details. So, thank you out there. We're gonna make it happen but just gotta iron out all of those details. All right, sound good. Okay, today's run 13 miles, 805 a mile. How do my legs feel after the time trial? I must say compared to the 23 miler in the Alpha Flies from two weeks ago, I'm not nearly as sore compared to, and that was at 540 a mile compared to 508 a mile for 13 miles like my legs. So, adaptation, right? We always talking about adaptation to the training and absorbing the training. So, it appears my legs adapted well off of that 23 mile long run for the 13 mile time trial on Sunday. And I'm not, I'm a little, I would say I'm, like I was very sore after the 23 mile run after the 13 miler, I'm probably 50% less sore. My legs are tired, they're sore but they're not, I can still go out and do the miles, do the volume that I wanna do this week, which on that note kicks off the taper, okay? So, this is exciting. So, actually, let's pull it out, here we go. So, yes, April 19th, it's happening. In fact, a shout out to, real quick, Wolf Creek Race Management in Pennsylvania. Wolf Creek Race Management, they emailed me, this gentleman, Andrew emailed me, shout out to Andrew and he said, listen Seth, we wanna help put on your virtual races, okay? So, he, like, I've never done a personally a virtual race. So, Andrew and Wolf Creek Race Management in PA is helping me set up all the details, which I'm hoping is gonna be available for all of you to sign up on, what is today? Today's Tuesday, I would say no later than life. You know, let's say next Monday, by the latest, as far as, well, yeah. Anyway, just bear with me as I work out the details with, there's a lot going on right now with, between the raising the money for the gifting for people that need help and then the virtual races, this is exciting times for the more global running. So, here we are, we are at the, right here in the taper. So, 90 miles, okay, so how I like to taper for the Homburg Marathon in quotes, which I just heard has been rescheduled for September 13th, hmm, hmm. Maybe I could drop down to the half marathon. Would they let that happen? I don't know, all right. So, here we go, so here's the taper, three weeks out from race day, April 19th, and so I like to do 90, so I will do 90, 65 to 75 will be this week, next week, and then race week, what I like to do is 20 to 30 miles, depending on how my legs feel before race day. So, usually a marathon is on Sunday, so the six days leading up to race day, I like to do that 20 to 30 mile, anywhere from four to six miles a day, roughly. Just nice and easy doing strides, getting the legs nice and fresh. So, we're in taper mode, although obviously with running around the track to gift money and raise money for those that need it is going to take precedence because it's way more important than, it's way more important than a virtual time trial marathon, even though I love what we're gonna be doing with that, but obviously keeping people in their homes is way more important, okay? So, there you go, marathon training week 12 is the taper, and thanks for helping me and making this happen. Like, oh gosh, it's just a lot going on, there's a lot going on. So, you all rock, that is it for today, gonna call it, go in, help mama with homeschooling, because that is our new reality right now, right? So, all right, I will toss it back to yesterday's vlog where I explain in more detail the lapping and the raising the money and helping others. And again, make sure you email me if you are in a really tough situation right now, okay? See beauty, work hard, and love each other. You guys are the best, see you tomorrow.


Welcome in everybody to MLB whip around on Amber Theo Harris alongside our MLB insider JP Marosi and a man who caught over 1800 major league games AJ Przenski. That's good for six all the all time by the way. So congratulations Yeah, that's really tough on the knees. I could imagine not knees are good. It's tougher on the brain Yeah, we can vouch for that. All right tonight's headlines one of the best closers in baseball is no longer A free agent agreeing to a deal with the Cubs the Dodgers going for their eighth straight win But a disturbing trend continued against the diamondbacks and through all the injuries the resilient Astros go for their sixth straight When in a perfect six and a record against the Mariners But the big story of the day as Ken Rosenthal first reported the Cubs are in agreement with free agent closer Craig Kimberle on a three year 43 million dollar deal the 31-year-old will likely spend a few weeks making Minor league appearances before he is ready for the bigs now This is clearly a need for the Cubs right now whose bullpen ranks dead last in the NL It walks for nine and strikeouts to walk ratio They also are near the bottom of the league and saves and blown saves So JP I know other teams were involved lots of rumors, but the cubbies got them Well the twins amber I was told tonight they were comfortable to go with two years for Kimberle, but not to three That's why the Cubs end up winning out the Phillies of course that's of interest as well They've got some bullpen concerns with a number of injured relievers, too But the reason why this made sense for the Cubs is not just for this year as you mentioned the three-year deal Getting that additional security for them for the future because Pedro Schroep who just got back from the injured list He's a free agent after this year as is Steve Seasheck. This is a multi-year play for a team AJ that right now they don't have a single picture on their active roster Originally drafted and developed by the Cubs. They've had to pull guys from all over the major leagues This is only the latest addition to their roster So does this make the final piece of the puzzle for the Cubs complete to pull away in the division? We keep saying the Cubs are the best team in this division We keep saying they're better than the Brewers we keep saying they're better than the Cardinals the Pirates the Reds But they're missing something with us. Is this the final piece? I think so But we keep waiting for them to have that 10 out of 12 winning streak to pull away 17 out of 20 like the Dodgers have done the Astros have done and the Cubs haven't done it now Why people will say the pitching? Well, the pitching hasn't been that bad The starters have been actually pretty good the bullpen other than the walks been pretty good the offense pretty good The only thing that they have is they can't hit with runners in scoring position and that comes and goes But for a veteran laden team like the Cubs you would expect it to be better They've had all these streaks of 0 for 25 0 for 26 and as a veteran team you expect them to do that And if they start hitting with runners in scoring position with the rest of their team I think they are gonna run away with this division a little bit because of the questions with the other teams But is this the final piece? Yeah shot in the arm though, right? You know what it does It gives the team that's sitting there the players are sitting there saying oh, we're kind of languishing not really pulling away Oh, we got Craig Kimball every single guy in that clubhouse had a smile on their face when they heard this Whenever it leaked through the clubhouse in the dugout I think their game was going on when Rosenthal broke this but it just gives them a smile and a jolt of adrenaline like oh Our team is going for it. We wanted a couple years ago. We're back and we're going for it Well one thing at AJ they don't have that athleticism that we usually see from a Joe Madden team Joe loves to have guys It's really defensively they can move around the diamond. Yes, but the base running on this team is lacking One of the worst teams at baseball in terms of second to home first to third They don't really do those types of things. That's what that's the point I mean Brian's not fast Contreras bias can run a little bit, but right Hayward's okay He's not really sure workers not going anywhere right They don't have the speed guys They can't run and that's the point so when you think about it if they're not hitting home runs If they're not gonna hit with men in scoring position and if they're not gonna really run the bases that well They're waiting for the homer would certainly welcome the baseball in 2019 But that's one of the reasons why AJ they haven't really been able to I think take the next step of being a really Dynamic run scoring team like you need to have in October Yeah, the Cubbies came into the night tied with the Brewers for the lead in the National League Central


It's like one of the most old and traditional sales techniques.  And if you start mirroring an anxious person who's like talking fast and like you just up the anxiety in the room, I'm like, no, do not do that. If you're like talking with a crackhead, you need to like lean like that. I don't study NLP, but I do try to pay attention to people because at the end of the day, you know what I realized?