Okay, so hi everyone. Good afternoon. It's great to see such a full room a bit intimidating. I must say but I'll do my best So I'll be presenting this paper. We're working on with Anna de la O and Cecilia Rossell all political scientists So go easy on the indigeneity questions, please So I guess the motivation for this is what motivates this whole conference, right? Like despite the fact that we've had significance at advances in the region in several fronts including political economic and social We still see large inequality gaps in several dimensions And scholars have been pointing out to a possible fragmentation of the so-called social contract And pointing to this increasing trend of opting out from public services to private services as a possible Sort of explanation of this So in this paper, we're gonna focus on education as one of these public services And as this graph shows Latin America is actually the region with the highest levels of Private school enrollment rates across the world. This is also increasing. Thus, you know further furthering the gap with higher income countries so what we do in this paper we sort of Engaged with three questions. The first one is sort of where is this happening in the region? Is this Happening everywhere in the same levels or is there some variation and we're gonna use household surveys to sort of tap into this question Then we ask why this is happening. So why are parents choosing to sell send their children to private schools instead? For this we mostly rely on very rich existing literature There has many suggestive answers for this and then finally we ask okay What are the consequences for the social contract right and we have simply suggestive descriptive evidence that? using public opinion services on this So throughout the paper we engage with three main arguments The first one is this idea by Albert Hishman of this distinction between exiting or using your voice Instead so the idea of exit is you know parents are probably dissatisfied with the quality of public schooling So they decide to those that can afford it of course decide to move to public services instead instead of using their voice so remaining in the public system and Demanding for changes and improvements in the quality of the schooling now This is especially problematic if those that are leaving public services are those that not only have more Economic power, but political power as well right so what happens then is that those that are remaining in the public system are children? Not only of lower income receiving in theory lower quality schooling But whose parents also have less resources to voice, you know their demands and and again demand for improvements in the quality of schooling The second is also this idea of this this fiscal trap that Leopoldo Ferguson explained very much nicely yesterday in in a talk where you know if also people are leaving the system They're not using public schooling anymore So they may be maybe less predisposed to continue collaborating or in this case paying taxes to finance these services They're not they're not using them anymore. So you know why do I still need to pay for things? I don't use and Then finally we also engage with the theory of social affinity or contact theory that has been referenced a lot throughout the conference actually is just this broad idea that Having interaction with out groups or people that are different from you either, you know religious nationality social economic groups Having greater interaction can lead to many positive effects, you know less prejudice more empathy And eventually a higher predisposition to collaborate for you know increasing the welfare of those groups as well So for the first question on where is this happening in the region? Again, we're going to use Households harmonized house household service provided by the IDV for seven countries Roughly in the 2000 2018 period So what we see here is just you know We're just plotting the trends of private school enrollment for school-aged children Across these seven countries Although there is a generalized, you know upper trend the levels are not the same throughout all countries, right? so in the case of Mexico for instance, it's clearly flat so in Mexico there doesn't seem to have been this, you know opting out Trend the case of Peru is the most evident one where there's a very sort of pronounced Increased trend in private school enrollment in the last 20 years And then countries sort of in the middle where there has been increased but not as pronounced And then there's also differences in levels, right? So Argentina is the country among these that has the highest levels of private school enrollment around 30 percent And Peru has reached those levels recently But this also speaks to the difference in offers of private schooling, right? So in Argentina, for instance a large majority of kids that attend private schools are attending subsidized religious schools So which makes tuition fees much more modest and accessible by lower-income households And in Peru there has been an increase in the low fee private schools Which I mean the name perfectly describes what these are schools that are again lower fees accessible for low-income households But then they may not be providing this sort of improvement in the quality of Education necessarily, but we still see households deciding to move out of the public system nonetheless So in terms of sort of what are some correlates or determinants or what which are those households that are opting out Income obviously the most intuitive one that we look at first and again, although there's always a positive association with income The level at which income starts mattering varies across countries, right? So in Argentina again We see children from households in the first say even the second desal have Comparatively speaking high rates of private school enrollments, right? Whereas in Mexico this sort of increase in private school enrollment does it begin? Up until like Income that cell eight or nine, right? That's when we see the jump before that it doesn't really happen All right, then again other countries in the middle where it's more in the income that cell five or six where we actually start seeing this increase And again the big case of Peru here the blue line is 2018 the red line is 2002 we see also there have been some changes over time They do again the most obvious one where income plays a much more important role nowadays than it did almost 20 years ago We also explore some other correlates, but for a sake of time. I'm not going to show them obviously The level of education of the head of the household matters and the direction we'd expect things like occupational categories Urban rural and this is mostly an urban phenomenon Formality also matters even keeping constant these these other variables When the head of household is a formal worker, we also see higher rates of private school enrollment Now on the second question on why this is happening Again turning to the literature. There are basically two big arguments about this perhaps the first one that comes to mind is that This idea that public schools have worse quality of education less access to resources or technology or to better salaries for teachers etc and The second one and here the work of Leopoldo Ferruz and collaborators and Maria Jose Alvarez Which they presented yesterday for for the case of Colombia is a great illustration of this non-instructional dimension, right? So parents are deciding to move to private schools because they have access to Social network social capital or some more, you know non tangible like status symbols that they can access through private school And so again the work of Leopoldo Ferruz and much recommended his book is on sale and the first floor So we can talk about commission later And and then perhaps a third thing that could fit on on either of these is the fact that Private school sometimes offer just longer school days So instead of a four-hour day It's an eight-hour day or even more days of school throughout the years right when they're in countries that have you know Strikes for public teachers private schools don't have this issue and that may also be a reason driving these Changes now and sort of to tap a little bit into the second idea of non-instructional dimension We always don't have much data on this book with our household surveys What we did is constructed this segregation index at Duncan segregation in this well much used in the literature and Basically what we're measuring is what is the proportion of poor students that would have to move from public to private schools? So that the proportion of this population is Homogeneous across these two types of schools right so the closer to one this measure is the more segregated the system is so the more the Poor are in public and the non-poor aren't in private So we construct this for Subnational units in each country so department or states that's the lowest we could go ideally we'd have this at say the neighborhood level But the data only allows us to do this So here we're plotting on the x-axis the segregation index for 2014 and the private school enrollment for 2018 Obviously, there's an association between these two because private school enrollment rates goes into the measure of the index So there's obviously a mechanic association which we'd expect them to be related But by lagging segregation for for a few years We we sort of try to break that relationship up a little bit and again as we'd expect in what we see is in context of higher segregation we also see higher rates of private school enrollment and then we we we regress We have a regression where we're predicting private school enrollment rates and we interact Income with these segregation rates and even though in general again, we see this positive trend so in context of Greater segregation the role of income is more pronounced for that decision to leave public schools or in other words Where there's low segregation or where there's a better mix of poor and non-poor students in in schools Then income is not such an important sort of the determinants of this decision of where you're sending your school your kid Okay, and then finally with this last question of Does this matter for the the social contract? So for this we're turning to public opinion data Latino Ironman through 2011 and La Pop 2016 both surveys include a question Of whether the respondents attended private school back in the day So we're going to be looking at adults comparing adults that attended private versus public schools When they were younger not at parents who decide to send their children to private or public schools now of course, there's huge problems degenerative problems here and We can't really make any causal claims Simply descriptive with this observational data we have but we hope that at least by the fact that this is so the treatment happened a Long time ago it was not sort of in the control of these adults, right? It's a decision that was made for them when they were younger by their parents So there there's that So what we see then is first what we compare is Opinions about the quality of public education In these two groups again adults that attended public or private schools when they were younger And what we see is sort of a negative association here So those that attended private schools tend to have worse Evaluations of public school systems just that the quality in general is worse and the teachers in the public system Don't have the tools or the knowledge to teach kids appropriately And then sort of in line with this idea of the fiscal trap sort of that all people that aren't using these systems Maybe less predisposed to to collaborate We only have one question that is somewhat suggestive of this So they ask people whether they think sort of in a spectrum of who is responsible for paying for public schools Either the state or the family and we see that those adults that attended private school tend to Say that the family is more responsible for this So perhaps some sort of suggestion that this shouldn't be paid with public funds that we're all contributing to And then finally, I think perhaps most interesting with in line with this contact theory The bulk of this literature is mostly say about raised or in non-school settings There's little that talks about interaction with other social economic groups in a school setting But there's at least two very important papers here one from londonio velez this year was actually Evaluating a program here from from Colombia called Serpilopaga Which basically the state would give scholarships to low-income students to attend Universities like like this one where we're in now and she does find that actually Hiring comes students when they have this increased interaction with low-income students They're predispositioned to collaborate with redistribution and support redistribution increases Sort of their ideas about income distributions also improve And then another paper from India, which is actually for school-aged children again a similar initiative where lower-income students are introduced to Sort of high-income or elite schools and we see that these students as they belong to these more mixed Social economic groups increase their pro-social behavior Altruistic behavior right there for instance more willing to stay after school to raise money for poor kids and things like that So What we could do is we just simply Again regressed private school with these two classic questions on support for redistribution So the most important one is this question on do you think the state should implement strong policies to reduce inequality? This date actually comes from La Pop and we only have three three countries that that included this question So it would be nice to have this in the future So so again just Chile Ecuador in in Uruguay, but we see again those that attended private schools tend to have lower support of state redistributive efforts So finally just to wrap up so basically what we try to do in this paper is simply give sort of an Idea of where this opting out is happening in public schooling Why this may be the case and again some suggestions of what are the consequences for? redistributive behaviors We are extending this to health as well So and I mean our very basic preliminary evidence At least in this last aspect suggests that the effects are not as strong This is I mean this this makes sense right your interaction with the health system is much less frequent and intense Then then your interaction with the school system and also as we've learned throughout this conference your your experiences in those Formative years can have huge consequences in the future including for political attitudes, but nonetheless interesting to to compare How opting out from different services works? Yes, that's all. Thank you very much


SpaceX have crushed a Falcon 9 into a bridge. Is the damage really that bad? The UK's first orbital launch has just gotten a little bit closer and China's space station is about to get bigger. This is Monday's Tomorrow Space News. I was talking last week about the new deal with Roscosmos to fly a Russian cosmonaut on SpaceX's Crew 5 mission to the ISS, which was fantastic news. However, the mission has just been pushed by a few following damage to the brand-new booster in transport. There currently isn't any imagery which has been leaked, so we can't show you the damage. However, we are being told that the damage done is just a scratched interstage, which should be easily repairable. This is a rough visualization that I've made to try and explain how it probably happened, but this is just based off what I've been told and some imaginative speculation. The launch date has only shifted from an early September date to a late September date, which in the grand scheme of things isn't a lot of time. Ironically, this incident also took place near Blue Origin's launch facility in Texas, although obviously the incident is completely unrelated. Sticking to Texas, the last seven days have been busy for Ship 24. It's been performing several spin-prime tests, which is when the turbopumps of the engine or engines are spun up without an actual ignition. Well, an ignition isn't planned after what happened to Booster 7. The first test of this week took place on Monday, which was followed by this first test on Wednesday, this second test on Wednesday, this first test on Thursday where just one engine was tested, and then this second test on Thursday where two engines were tested. Ship 25's payload base section has been rolled out of 10-3, showing that the construction of this ship is still progressing, whilst its sibling has been testing out on the sub-orbital pad. Liquid oxygen tank section of Ship 25 has also been rolling with it ending up in the high bay. Time to talk about the boosters. Well, B7 has been stuck in high bay 2 for engine inspections, so B7.1 will have to make it do. It's been testing near the orbital pad, with it being filled up with cryogenic liquid nitrogen, and then having the big ropes pulled down, simulating the different aerodynamic loads experienced by a vehicle during flight. A couple of days later, B7.1 was tested again when we heard a pop. What is probably Booster 10's aft sleeve has been flipped over in preparation for the dome inside to be fitted, which happened just a short while later. Oh look, we've had another raptor delivery. Well, actually no. Although it may look like that, this is one of three raptors which have been removed from the underside of Booster 7 and taken into tent 1, presumably for better inspections. We have actually had some new raptors delivered over the past week. Here you can see them being rolled in on a forklift. Not really a short while later, however, some older raptors were taken away, most likely because of Booster 7's boom. Remember this random building that was being constructed near the SPMT yard only a few weeks ago? Well, we think we may have found its purpose. The Starlink V2 satellite loader was rolled into there on Tuesday, meaning it could be a Starlink clean room. Let me know what you think in the comments. Star Factory has also seen some progress with siding covering a significant portion of the building now. Following B7's boom, the legs of the Orbiter Launch Mount were charred and a team has been spotted stripping paint off the legs as well. This is so a new coat can be applied just to tidy the place up a bit. Virgin Orbit and Spaceport Corn will have submitted their assessment of environmental effects as they're getting ready for the first launch to orbit ever from UK soil. The assessment is somewhat comparable to the environmental assessment SpaceX had to fulfill for Starship operations in Boca Chica. The Civil Aviation Authority, who deal with aviation and spaceflight regulations here in the UK, have launched a public consultation where anyone can provide their views on the assessment that Virgin and Spaceport Corn will have created. If you want to read through the 158-page PDF document, that is readily available at the link in the description, but the synopsis on the consultation web page should be good enough for most of us. That states that Virgin Orbit are planning to perform two launches a year from Spaceport Cornwall until the year 2030. It's only two, but it's a lot better than zero, which it has been since the beginning of time for the United Kingdom. Whilst Virgin Orbit need an operator license, Spaceport Cornwall need a spaceport license, and both are required for this launch agreement to work. Don't let the name trick you, though. This isn't a brand-new facility. Cornwall Airport Newquay has been around since the 1930s in different guises, starting off as a civilian airfield before being acquired by the RAF when World War II broke out. You can currently fly into here as a paying passenger with airlines such as Air Lingus, British Airways, EasyJet, Eurowings and Logan Air, all flying here from various European destinations. Soon, however, Low Earth Orbit may just be on the departure screens whilst you're waiting in the terminal. Step aside SpaceX and Blue Origin, there's another rocket in town that can propulsively land itself. It is slightly smaller, but it's still really exciting nonetheless. Joe Barnard, founder of BPS Space, has been working towards this goal since 2015, and he's finally been able to stick the landing, learning the required skills along the way. It's a fantastic example that you can do anything if you put your mind to it, and it's a massive goal accomplished. We'll be talking about this developing story more over the coming weeks as the footage is yet to be released to the public. What we do have footage of, however, are the launches from the past week, which we'll take a look at in space traffic. We're back to Vandenberg for another starring launch, this being the second mission of Shell 3. Lifting off at 1739 UTC on July 22nd, the booster supporting this mission was B107-1. Lifting off marked the fastest turnaround time of Sleek 4 East ever, halving the previous record of 22 days to 11 days, 16 hours and 0 minutes. After sending the second stage on its way to deliver the 46 satellites to their initial 338x232km, 97.66° orbit, B107-1, touchdown on, of course, I still love you. This flight beat the record set last year for the most SpaceX flights within a year, being the 32nd, only halfway through July. Next up we have the flight of a brand new space station segment called Wenschen. This is the first of two laboratory modules, and it's the first expansion of the modular station since the core module, Tyane, launched last year. Being a massive payload weighing in at 22.5 metric tons, it needed a massive rocket, which is why the Long March 5B was chosen for this mission. It launched at 0620 UTC on the 24th of July from Launch Complex 1 and the Wenchang Satellite Room Center on Hainan Islands in China. I'd keep looking up over the next few days though, as just like with Tyane, China has left the 21 ton Long March 5B stage in orbit, and they've not actively de-orbited it. Trust me when I say it won't make a good all-normant. The same day at 1338 UTC, Falcon 9B1062 launched from LC-39A for the Styling Group 425 mission. On board were 53 Styling Satellites, which have been delivered to their initial 338x232km 53.22 degree low Earth orbit. Expectedly, the booster successfully touched down on the drone ship a shortfall of Gravitas, marking the 33rd SpaceX flight of the year so far. These Styling flights can get a bit repetitive sometimes, but it's always nice to have some insane records being shattered. Wenchang has not only departed Earth, it's also arrived at station, docking to the forward ports on the Tyane core module at 1913 UTC, also on July 24th. It'll soon be moved over to the left-hand side port by the robotic arm. It's a rare week this week. It's going to be quiet. The only launch is scheduled at the maiden flight of Landspaces 2K2, Gunning to be the first methane-powered rocket into orbit, and Antipodean Adventure on an electron from here. As we get into August, however, things should get a little more exciting. Tomorrow wouldn't be possible without these people on your screen, the citizens of tomorrow who contribute financially to the show. The different tiers provide different perks, ranging from seeing space news scripts as they're being written, exclusive Discord channels and everyone gets access to the pre- and post-tomorrow live hangouts. At the extreme top of the list, we have Neurostream, who gets access to our internal Office 365 backend in return for their incredible support. If you want to join, head to youtube.com forward slash TMRO forward slash join, or click the join button below. It's the end of this episode of the news, but make sure you keep your eyes peeled on the tomorrow channel, as space weather will hopefully be coming your way sometime this week. Due to the unavailability of Jamie and Dutta, there will be no live show this week, but I'll be back next Monday with another week of updates. That's all for now, thank you for watching and goodbye.


We can't find the driver of that Porsche, but I've got a funny feeling he's getting the haircut coming here Alan, you're the driver of that Porsche parked out there. I'm getting the winners haircut here Will it help? Yeah, we should keep you know, you get a bit hot under the helmet So if you have less hair, it's just a weird tip for the other drivers You'll be a bit quicker. Now, mate, I've spent the last week with your brother He tells a lot of lies as well. He does an incredible amount of lies. It makes me look quite good man Yeah, so you've had a good week. Yeah, we did. Yeah, now you're driving a Porsche as well Tell me about this Porsche. Well, you know what that target's like It's sort of a rally for pussies all on the tarmac and this is the proper stuff on the gravel So it's a proper Porsche 1973 You know when they made real Porsches, they're cool ones. Now tell me about the Porsche on Shingle Obviously good on tarmac, but a little more tricky to drive on Shingle Yeah, drive it from the rear, steer it from the rear, put the power down and it's very Quick out of the corners for a good traction. Fantastic rally car. I'll show these escorts what to do


And this process will help us to start the very difficult process of proper reconciliation, restitution, bringing together of everyone that must have in one form or the other been affected by either the police or any of our citizens that must have been wronged by one form or the other. Welcome back to the Breakfast and Plus TV Africa as we focus on the end-sales report from Lagos State and what's next. You know we have joining us at being at Komalafei is the co-convener coalition for revolution. Good morning to you Mr. Komalafei many thanks for joining us on the breakfast this morning. All right let's indeed examine the end-sales report from Lagos and of course what's next. We understand that you addressed a press conference yesterday and indeed you made some certain demands and in as much as Nigerians are awaiting the white paper to be released by the Lagos State Governor Babajdi Somolul you actually made some demands can you just run us through them. Thank you very much. What we did actually was to re-opern the recommendations of the end-sales panel which was set by the Lagos State government that is into what actually happened in the legislative gates on the night of October 20th year 2020. So we deem it fit to re-opern the recommendations of the panel in a vicious attack that the reports of the panel were subjected to by spokespersons and apologists of the state government. I need to be recalled that the panel actually was set by the state government the panel members were unpicked by the state government. As all the men and women judge we have eminent legal practitioners we have their entire deputy inspector general police and so on so forth. So what we will least expect but that will come into a no-animous position and we will always expect that anybody least of all spokespersons of the state government will come out to come out to disparage the recommendations of the panel just because they feel that the panel forms its conscience. Members of the panel found their conscience and affirmed the facts as was revealed to them by the testimonies of those who came before the panel to testify under oath about what actually happened that night. Among other things the panel recommended the panel affirmed that the army had no business being in the throat gates on the night of October 20th because the protests had been peaceful all that came out to testify about the protests have found to be far from extremely peaceful very well organized protest members made sure the protest ground was always clean they made sure they protected themselves against attacks of talks that were often unleashed on them they arrested some of these talks and handed them over to the police and according to the testimony of the general attack we also testified under oath protestors even fraternized with members of the security forces deployed there they shared drinks according to him and so on so forth. All right Mr come on the fair. So given the peaceful atmosphere the panel found that there was no reason for the army to be there in the first instance. All right Mr come on the fair if I have to boat in at this particular instance in as much as we have seen the leaked report or allegedly leaked report which was unsigned what value can we really place on that report in as much as there were recommendations from this leaked report and the Lagos state government is yet to release a white paper should we place so much value on that report? Well the truth of the matter is that nobody has actually come out to say the panel report was false or that the recommendation contendia are invalid. Neither the panel members who are still very much around nor even the sports fighters of the state government have come out to say that what has been released was in the public domain right now is false rather they have been attacking the content of the panel report. So which means that the content is now was in contention I mean sorry the report is now was in contention where they are quarrelling with the far reaching conclusions and recommendations of the panel. So I don't think there is any nobody has come out to say oh that panel that is not our report. The panel has not come out to say oh that what is circulating is not what has been submitted. Even the lawyer to the state government has not come out to say that all the copies circulating is not what is in the opposition rather he came out to attack the contents of the report. He came out to attack the testings of the panel members he made very wide allegations against the panel members even going as far as alleging that he collected rights you know. So definitely what we have now is not in contention by anybody so we have we have no reason to doubt that what we have in the public domain now represents the the main elements of the NSAS primary force and that's how it should be because the report belongs to the public it's not the private document of anybody or even the state government. But you would also and I would also want to ask shouldn't we be concerned about the fact that the report is not signed I mean it has no signature on it shouldn't that be a concern? Well indication what we have had in the public domain actually was let out possibly to ensure that the contents will be protected. We all agree that what we have in public domain is not official yet. We all await the government white paper on the report. What the government white paper does is not to rewrite the report is just to express the opinion of the government on the report and to state what they will do or will not do about it. So we are with the white paper but signed or unsigned what is very clear is that nobody has come out to deny that that report represents the main elements of what has been submitted as the outcome of the NSAS panel. Nobody has come out to dispute that rather we have several attempts to discredit it So I'd like to ask what happens if you know the leaked report I mean and the white paper because we're counting down eight days before we get the white paper what happens if there's no correlation between the leaked report and the white paper? Well I've said it before the panel members are alive as a matter of fact Barristar Eboni Agade Borua who has been particularly single was particularly singled out by Barristar Uoni Koko for attack in his response to the circulating reports. I've come out to say that I mean the report is in the procession of every panel member and that Eboni Agade states to make everything not just the report but even the proceedings the text of the proceedings day by day throughout the whole year it will make it available to the public So the panel members are alive if the government now refuses to make available the report then of course we have everything to call the panel members to avail us the official content of the report and we also have every reason as citizens of this country to call on the legal state government to come out officially with the report if they say they want subgradings on sign then let them come out with the one that is signed and let's have the soap or white paper and then we will know how to respond. All right thank you for that Mr. Agade Borua but yet again in the wake of all of this the white paper yet to be released that we are seeing lots of threats and of course people or star witness being macheteed you know what does this really tell the white paper is yet to be released and the the senior lawyer there Agade Borua is saying that if anything happens to him the legal state government should be held responsible so what do we expect to see in the next coming days if the senior lawyer is actually claiming that he has been threatened and the star witness is being macheteed. Yeah we'll expand the white paper to reflect likely what the questions and the Nigerian public has been subjected to since the report has been circulating uh they've tried everything to discredit the report and they've tried everything to even cast suspensions on the persons or the panel members so we expect that the so-called white paper who are following that being uh like some would be commented uh barista Ooni Koko has actually given us the content of the white paper uh by his uh wide reaching allegations and attacks on the report so um it will be a pleasant surprise if the white paper affirms the logical reasonable conclusions of the report which flows directly from the testimony standard before the panel it will be a pleasant surprise but it will not be it will not be shocking to not be a surprise at all to anybody if it's otherwise uh if the white paper comes out to disparate the report or to try to discredit the report it will also not be a surprise and the basic team will be for all Nigerians and I'm saying this with every sense of responsibility all Nigerians to actually be concerned about what the levels of government will have to say about this report with white paper and to respond accordingly because once our state air our basic liberties as citizens of this country to assemble to associate and to freely protest when we have reasons to do so uh citizens of we all deplore those who are raising up enhanced against the government and people of Nigeria we all deplore the state of insecurity in the country but at the same time we have found our right as citizens to express our display throughout any time and to express such through peaceful means including peaceful protest oh okay so yeah so if the white paper takes anything away from these basic liberties which were violently you know violated on the night of October 2020 then all Nigerians who have every right to come out in unison uh to express their views about whatever the legal state government has to say okay uh let's talk about the constitution of the entire panel there are arguments that you can't be a george in your own case I mean a person of interest so yes it's it's it has to do with the fact that the Lagos state government or the Lagos state governor has been pointed directly has been involved in all of this and why should a panel be constituted by the Lagos state government and the report been submitted to the same Lagos state government what are your thoughts yeah that's that's actually part of the contradiction of this colonial legacy actually uh constituent panels writing white papers uh while some of the little tricks of the british uh when we were under their colonial rule uh it was a method of pacification it was a method of suppressing popular dissent against uh renewals public policies so it was perpetrated by the british our post-colonial governments have inherited this culture and they have perpetrated it so it's grossly unfair you constituted an allegation has been made against the government about its conduct especially at the leikito gate and its conduct generally in responding to the answers protest because we know that even before the night of october 20 uh government thoughts have been unleashed on protesters uh so what happened on the night of october 20 was actually a logical culmination of the vicious attack the vicious protesters is who protesters were subjected to over subjected to all over the country including labels uh so we were expect that some kind of impartial body made up of civil society and other public institutions uh who are dedicated over this kind of affair but we've had a situation where the state government apparently in response to popular clamo constituted a panel and in constituting this panel they did not consult with anybody in their wisdom they picked the members of the panel and swore their hands with clear terms of reference this part the panel sat for better part of 12 months a whole year receiving testimonies from interest from those who are involved in the case uh including the protest starts including the armed personnel that were deployed there including the representatives of the government itself and so on so forth witnesses this was summoned some came some especially from the government side refused to come and now after a whole year of all their efforts we have a report and the single government is setting up the right uh there's a so-called uh committee again to review what was done in the whole year within the two weeks i mean you see how uh how does it begin to make sense so what was done in the whole year will now be reviewed within one week by the same government and before even the two weeks we elapsed representatives of the government including their leading council uh out disparaging the report so uh that was to tell the this sheer illogicality i don't want to say stupidity of the whole process so doesn't it bring that doesn't it mean doesn't matter even then i won't go this far i won't go this far there's a report and we expect that uh the report we made available on the basis of the report that government will take very reasonable actions and what are the demands released those who are in prison as we talk there are hundreds of Nigerians who are illegally arrested during the protest after the protest who are still in jail one year after they are not able to call even if they were did anything the law required that they they should have their day in court this report increasing in their hundreds they have not been brought to court they are not being released we expect that to have closure on this matter these people will be released they will be rehabilitated we expect that those who are killed their families will be compensated adequately so that there will be closure there will be justice and then we can then say we want to move on that uh anything short of this really uh will be an affirmation of injustice anything short of this and it will be a call for people to return back to the barricades so invariably now you are saying that there might be a counter-protest if uh this enclosure is not actually gotten because you have indeed said that you are boldly aligning with the recommendations of the panel and of course again you said that the Lagos state government cannot appropriate and reprobate reprobate in his own case so exactly invariably now do you see anything coming out of all of this uh you mentioned that uh disciplinary actions should be taken to left and corner s obela major general godwin umelu who refused to honor the summons of the panel in order to frustrate the investigation would we see all of these uh uh people who were indicted in this by this pascalapada would you see any of them being brought to to book as it were well we will expect that uh if two ladies is a democracy we expect that these people has public officers paid with public funds uh ostensibly working on behalf of the public uh will be heard accountable we expect that they will be brought to book for the enough crime they were alleged to have committed and they will go and they will be in court we are not saying that they should that we are not the penitent who just disables anybody but they are saying that they should be removed from their whatever position they are holding right now and they should be brought through the court of law to answer for their alleged crimes that is not too much to ask for last year we had the case of judge floyd in the united states of america immediately the police officers concerned were arrested you know and they are they are being caught and as we speak now uh uh the inducted police officers are in jail so that's what we expect in the democracy uh even when the soldiers were willing us we had occasions like this when uh public officers had to be dismissed uh even by the military government so uh we will expect that the reasonable recommendations of the panel that those who are responsible for the mass murder that have been likely should be brought to book right and uh should they show up they are being caught all right thank you so much uh it's uh bingo uh come a lot for he is the co-convener uh coalition for uh revolution we must say a very big thank you to you for your input concerning uh the ansar's report of legal state as we await the white paper from the state government thank you once again thank you thank you very much all right all right still uh the breakfast and plus tv africa will take a very quick break and then we'll come back to a will go to our final discussion which is the attack on passengers on the kaduna abuja highway yesterday stay with us


103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We are recording this on Sunday morning, July 25th, 2021. This episode is brought to you by Crunch Munch. Crunch Munch, the delicious sponge for your crunch. Do you want a crunch? Do you want a munch? Then get a box of Crunch Munch. And a local Crunch Munch is fired near you. The advertisers represented in this show, not necessarily those... Sarah Belief or Sarah Lacka Belief. Other serials are available. Yeah, other guests today are the John Richards. Hello, John. Hello. We're away from England. George Brown from Athens, Tennessee. And the Wombat, I mean, the Doubtfire, sorry. Again, also from England. Is that right? Doubtfire? No, I'm in Pensacola, Florida right now. Oh, Florida, Florida. Okay. I don't know why I was thinking that. Anyway, the Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. Wombat, what's on your plate today? Hey, I wanted to do some listener feedback from the last month. Thank you guys so much for commenting on the show. But before we get into it, I want to go over a quick little super fast. No one's even going to recognize it's happening. It's going to be light speed super fast. No one's going to realize some of everyone's lives in the next two minutes. Okay, John, Richard, go, go, go, go. Life story. What do you got? You can see my house behind me here. That's a line. Looks like a castle. Would you want to live in a castle, John? Is that that's the Duke of Norfolk's pan? Yeah. No, no, no, my life, I've been getting increased. I've been live streamed. I've been all over the place. I've been sure have. Yeah, I've been on atheism UK live stream. I've been on my own free thought hour live stream. I've been on Harris Lee Harris Sultan live stream. And now I'm on this great live stream. And guess what? I've got no one in it. What? You got another one in what? How many? Well, it's just a meeting in a minute. So I don't want to rock the boat. But you had told us this last week that there was rumors on the horizon of a presidency in your future. Like how's that turning out? Are we on the rails for that? Are you getting the castle set up for it as you're crowned in the mail box? What's going on? I am the president-elect of atheism UK. But you don't tell anybody yet. I'm still the vice president until August the 7th. Okay. Nice. Nice. Nice. You just told millions of our listeners. Millions and millions of people. Well, he's gambling that, you know, Americans don't count. That's how it works. Okay. That's how it works. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, congratulations. That sounds like real a real, real big fun time. Speaking of which, what was he some of your responsibilities compared to where you're at right now? Well, yeah, I have to, I have to give lead now and progress the direction and the size and the effect of the organization. So you're bringing the muffins now to the, you could put it like that. Yes. Yeah. We prefer crump. We prefer crump. Crumpets, crumpets, crumpets, crumpets. There we go. Crumpets and biscuits. All right. Scott Williams all the way in Florida. It's been good to see you again. How have you been? And thanks again for all the help with the music. I dropped some draft tracks of a music thing that I've been working on. I finally am at the point where I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.  I finally am at the point where I'm ready to start laying down vocals. So this show is going to be really good for getting my pitch up, because sometimes it goes so long without speaking, but now I have to like get the chops up. Scott, got questions for you. When you're making music, do you got vocals in mind already or do they just come naturally as part of the process? Like how much of the idea of the song is, is available to you at the very start? For me, the track at first so it's all about the music and the track and the arrangement and then if I feel like the track lends itself to a vocal like maybe it sounds like oh I could hear a vocal on this song so then I'll go back and rearrange it or get with a vocalist who can come with some ideas and put it down and say oh I know how to arrange this song now we need to put this part there and this part there and then we can kind of so it's all a creative process through the whole thing you know it really is I love that part I love when you can hear the thing that needs to be in the song that's not there and then it's just a question on how can I construct it so that what's in my head is now what everybody else hears I love that let me ask you a question when you make a track when you make a track do you start with the drums or do you start with the melody drums first for me I'm a drums first guy like I hear everything I want to put the why is that everybody I'll ask that question they answer the same way and I'm the same way what is that I don't hear the melody until the drums comes out like I might have an idea once I lay down the drums it's like oh here's yeah but it also says the beat for the entire track I mean for the entire song yeah speaking of which you play guitar have you been have you had chance like now like enjoy some of the finer outdoors and indoors hobbies that you may not have had now that COVID is hopefully not as bad in Tennessee I mean it's still bad let me let me refer to more time with your hobbies oh yeah a little I did a couple of Askin atheist tables this week and it's been very slow because I go out in the middle of the afternoon and people are working yeah it's also really hot right now too and it's really hot I got two people come by and talk to me it came by and talked to me and both of them were atheists so you know it was nice to be able to tell them about the atheist society of Knoxville and let them know they're not alone that's but I haven't had the bike out all week hardly picked up my guitar but you know I do play my games and I get on Facebook and you know same old same old pretty much not bad not bad I will tell you this I've been playing some disc golf and I've had opportunities to talk to a lot of different guys we had a tournament again yesterday I got second place on my card but it was all terrible scores none of the scores are good right I think I was like 10 over par no one in our group was good but I got second place so I'll take it I did get a new iPhone though oh good good cool cool I'm up to 12 the now nice nice nice I was saying like some of the guys that I'm talking to clearly have Christian backgrounds like they'll have crosses drawn on their discs but it is nice to be able to choose when to engage in those kinds of conversations or not because it's nice just to be out with people first so I'm gonna enjoy that ahead of time before I start you know tackling the and what is your beliefs and why do you believe them I just want to enjoy just being outside with you right George Brown your latency is looking so good recently what's been going on with you well I've been engaged in a couple of pursuits you know one of them is I have dipped my toe in the waters of telehealth medicine okay and it's it's it's a very interesting landscape out there there are a number of competing services I call them platforms these are these are competing companies that offer the complete package of telehealth medicine and so one of them has given me a link to a service which tests my internet connection better than the other services and the name of the service is speed of dot me okay speed of is one word and me is just me and it tells you not only your throughput speed but also your latency and that was what was killing my quality on this show yeah weeks I didn't mind the George Brown present power program presentation every day I didn't mind that I didn't mind it I was coming to enjoy it was becoming like a special little charming moment of talking to you slow well all I had to do to fix this was to reboot the router nice just to to pull it up pull it out of its power in other words take the plug out of the wall socket wait about a half a minute half a minute and put the plug back in and like magic here I am synchronized over to have you at full speed how about yeah how about we full speed going to some listener comments and questions that we've been having sure last month how's that for a transition guys I'm going to uh I don't know if I should share my screening or if I should just do them based off of how we've had them so we'll probably do a mix of both but first thing first we got a lot of comments that are fun and I love the fun comments we got eight comments from the last week show we typically at about eight or 10 and uh from last week's episode which was geez no it was all about hey double standards are annoying not only dangerous but annoying we got some funny ones from a KM who says ah your notifications triggered me I must be arguing with strangers on the internet too much too much mentions of double standards are causing people to be freaking out also uh Jei Hoi says uh he's she she mentioned specifically a point in the conversation where we're talking about prime minister is not giving real answers she says much like prime minister questions are called prime minister answers I don't understand quite what that meant but I totally understand the idea that answers can oftentimes just be questions from political people like they they tend not to give straightforward answers right yeah they're worth questions yeah yeah we get those two I'm glad it's not just us um here's another one this is silly it's it's a silly one it's not a mean one it's directed our own John Richards I've got a step oh I'm going to say this in a British accent oh I've got to stand it don't answer your freaking phone while on the podcast so guts it to be a Brit right now sorry world and apology yeah move on all right and then the last one is a bunch of ones from uh data straighter who's been a frequent reply or in commenter for the show uh first when he asked a while back ago is um what isn't it a waste of time to discuss whether or not to worship imaginary beings and maybe just make sure I'm getting this question right we'll throw it a Larry first isn't it a waste of time to discuss about whether or not worse to worship imaginary beings like isn't it a Larry what are you not a waste of time to discuss it obviously we have this this show that discusses it um but the thing about is religion does real harm in the world has for thousands of years if we don't talk about it and just ignore it it will just go on unchecked we can't have that anymore I mean it's cost us too dearly as societies uh going down through the ages and we we need to bring some fresh air to it explain some fresh air to it I like it John Richards what's the value of talking about uh whether or not we should worship imaginary beings exactly what Larry says in fact every week I do a report a review of the harm mostly the harm that religion has done around the world it's called global atheist news and there is so much harm mostly in countries like let me name some of the bad boys there's Pakistan there's Iraq there's Nigeria there's Israel there's Afghanistan Nigeria is the double whammy because it's like very Christian and very Islamic both yeah both of them right next to each other and fighting with each other it's crazy but yeah yeah yeah exactly and so if you look at global atheist news you'll see why we talk about you know defending atheism as as a lot of people like to call it even though we haven't got a god to you know to worship it's preventing the the damage that's being caused by worshipers of a god and a recent example comes from Israel where one of the big rabbis big chief rabbi was even pronouncing that we shouldn't do education because they've got a new government in Israel no education whatsoever or just for not women like how how bad is it what's the crazy isn't it because he of course is boasting that he went to school and never got a certificate at all wow and that's that's something for him to be proud of apparently i am terrified by the anti-intellectual leg of christian right or religious groups because they don't want to foster critical thinking but at the same time they want to foster stagnation in education and i find that incredibly one dangerous and two popular for people who don't want to put in the work to ask themselves questions or learn new things because it is a struggle it isn't it's a clue isn't it when religious leaders love ignorance yeah they love dumb people george what do you got oh it in but the truth will set you free to a large extent it will to be honest with you knowing the truth to an extent but also knowing how to find the truth that's that's the map that's the real yeah the main thing i came away from college with was an ability to research because that's what they make you do from freshman on you know they give you tasks and you have to go research it and come back write papers think about it right and once you get through college that's a skill that you hopefully will exercise for the rest of your life exactly what i love about my job is we often get new instruments brought into our laboratory i don't know what this instrument is but i can tell you if you give me like two days i can tell you everything about it if i can research it like i can take the time to learn well enough to operate something and teach other people how to do the same thing too and that's the that's what i think will set people free the ability to think critically and find good answers from bad ones scott i'm going to throw this up at you is it a waste of time to talk about whether or not we should worship about imaginary beings no i think it's a good um exploration uh and it's a good way for people to reflect gives people an opportunity to reflect on something they may not even uh think about um i and of course i agree with what everybody's saying here it's it's kind of obvious and even i think a lot of religious people have told me the same thing that you know religion has been anti science and you know it can be taken to an extreme and and here's the problem i think here's the challenge is that there's this thing in psychology called magical thinking and magical thinking isn't something you necessarily pick up from your parents or learn from society magical thinking they said even happens with children as they come to a certain age they start this magical thinking without any sort of prompting or believe it or not so the thing is that this sort of thinking is kind of ingrained in humans and a lot of researchers of mind and you know especially on the topic of religion and things of that nature spirituality this sort of stuff emerges from that part of our brain that is just magical thinking and it says that it's normal actually normal for people to have magical thinking but on the other hand i know that people can train themselves out of that and sort of approach the world with more skepticism and more reasonableness and it profits us to do that it does so the challenge i guess is trying to get people to see a value and to do that in the first place if this is a feeling that's ingrained in us and i mean i think we all have experience you know magical thinking or religious at one point or whatever the case may be so it takes a special i think a character and training and just the willingness to to to go out on a ledge and challenge yourself in that regard so Scott can you give us an example or maybe define what magical thinking is and how you're using it yeah so magical thinking for example is when a child clings to an invisible friend to talk to or a blanket for security somehow the blanket provides this supernatural protection and so this kind of stuff starts there and as an adult as an adult it could be you know the belief in god the belief in a higher power or miracles yeah it's like they can't explain something so it's got to be god it's got to be a miracle it's yep a lot of it springs from argument from ignorance you know they don't have an answer so therefore it has to be whatever they fill in the blank with and it seems to be more and more of that these days yeah it's like a need to know it's like people people feel like they're going through life in a with a blind spot if they admit they don't know the answer to certain questions right and in fact i think it's the opposite they're thinking they know is the blind spot that's it oh that's so good let's get the teacher factory ready to go because that is a good one it's got wonderful john you had posted some links that we can share in our comment thread do you want to talk about them yeah well it's a setup in all over the internet recently and the last one i've posted there is on sultan's house of sin youtube channel which is um it's owned by harris sultan who styles himself the harris sultan he's done my trick you know because when you when you get yourself a moniker and you can either have your name with a load of numbers on the end or you can stick lee in front of it and do it that way so so that's that's a show that he put out earlier today all right folks this is harris sultan and you're watching sultan's house of sin i get it i get it i get it that's that's that that is a funny i always forget it here it is i can hear it i can hear it it's going on right now great great great so i'm glad i'm glad you got it i'm glad i'm glad we can hear it and uh we'll definitely recommend those links at the bottom i would say this though we are gonna talk about something that i think can transition really well into george's questions that our own george brown the second and one half he wanted to know how can we coexist with christians as atheists in a society that seems to be dominated by believers and i'd like i'd like to start off that with something a bit controversial i feel like for the large part we feel like we have the illness of trying to sell um atheism or at least rational thinking to people when really we don't have to i don't think most people who are believers use their spiritualism to guide themselves in moments of crises i i actually find that they have a double standard where it's if they see someone who's sick on tv i'll pray for you if they see someone that's sick on the road asking for food oh i'll pray for that guy if they're hungry they go to the hot they go to the grocery store or they make themselves some food oh that guy's sick i'll pray for him that person across the street sick i'll pray for them i'm sick i'm going to a doctor i'm gonna ask for a sit in my theme i'm gonna hope that he's prescribed me for 250 milligrams if he does i'm going to a second doctor because i'm really really freaked out right now i need science to help me the only ones that i'm worried about are the anti-vaxxers those seem to be ones that seem to be absolutely in denial but for the most part i feel like most people recognize the rational approach and may after the fact process it as oh god gave me the doctors well god gave me the medicine so i'll use that and i feel like if they just were to get rid of that double standard they'd realize i actually do like rational answers more than the spiritual john what do you got well that's typified isn't it by the leaders of religious countries highly religious countries who they tell their their congregations their populations their voters to believe because that's you know that's what they want they're giving them the popularity thing in order to be elected but then when they get sick what do they do they go to the uk or to the usa they helicopter out yep yeah it's some of them some of them never come back it's mother teresa basically in a in a nutshell uh george brown you want to weigh on this oh boy i don't know where to start i mean coming from a jewish background i'm an outsider right from the get-go and then being an atheist it's like i'm a double outsider no you're an insider from the get-go you never went outside that's that's the thing about you we all dragged out we finally worked our way back in your you just made a nice little hotel where you were it was perfect okay he's he's saying that um i was raised an atheist which i was but i come from a jewish background and if nothing else culturally and and so one way or the other you know i'm aware that some people believe that i killed their lord you know and do i have to be afraid of that person or not i i i don't know um but it's it's become now that i'm living in the bible belt it it's on my mind it's like um i got i confess i've become a little bit paranoid oh wow i never thought about it that way but you know it's like i went to the senior center yesterday to pick up some meals some some lunches i'm on a lunch program with the senior center and so every friday i go and pick up some frozen dinners and in in the bag of food was a christian magazine you know in the bag of the food that you got at the center oh he's got the magazine okay okay well i don't know i think no it's not it's a public uh it's a public agency in fact wow then you need to contact the freedom from religion foundation sometimes i get magazines in the mail that are christian that are like sports stuff so it's like ways to shoot elk buck christian american flag rifle christianity i'm like what is this weird magazine throw it away yeah when you said this this was a public center did you mean a government sponsored center or just um i believe it is a government sponsored center and we got a problem that's a problem let's connect with larry and and and get them to to realize i mean the government one should not be in the process of selecting religions to promote right but the thing was that it's it's it's it's not obvious from looking at the cover of the magazine that it's a christian magazine sure uh as long as it actually was that's a problem oh yeah and i think that feeds into your point george like what do atheists do in a society that's dominated by spiritual believers is like to a point you got to put your foot down and my book it's in when governments or universities included start citing with specific deities and start issuing promotion or propaganda for that when it should be either evenly handed or none at all and you can't do it evenly so just don't do it at all it's guaranteed it's going to be a problem scott do you have opinions on that what do you think yeah i think it's a problem if if um when the government's promoting a religion um in any capacity you know that that's just that's just a violation of church and state i think so it's just a legal issue but it's just so ingrained in our society that christianity is the main religion right that they kind of count on people not really caring about it because it's so ingrained and it's such a blurry idea of christianity because john would be much more aware of from his history protestants and non-prostitutes whereas in america it's just christian but it's a soon protestant and even when you ask what kind of christian well uh piscical Methodist Seventh Day Adventist uh Lutheran Methodist South Strait South Street Baptist North Street Baptist First Street Northwest Baptist like there are not they don't all agree with each other and there's reasons why there's churches literally right outside my door there's four churches side by side by side side by side by side on the same street they don't all agree but all no who knows what they're i think one of them is an lds so like it is one of those things where it's important for people to realize that christianity doesn't mean one group of people anymore it is so substantially by fact by bifurcated that it's not you can't say it's all one same team they're not all cheering for the same people what's up george go for it well um yeah i mean it is so universal especially here where i live um i don't hang out at the senior center i i just don't feel like i have very much in common with these people but they you know one of the things that they do is they get together and they sing oh what do they sing they sing protestant hymns so you know it's like for me do i want to sing onward christian soldiers oh my god right right right hey john what the hell are they fighting what does the matter with these people john there's a senior center near me and their favorite song is stair lift to heaven stair lift oh my god we get that hey how about we head out on that one that was good larry why don't you take us up for the break okay this is the digital free thought radio hour on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m here in noxville tennessee and we'll be right back after this short break 103.9 f m w o z o radio noxville welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m right here in noxville tennessee uh this again is uh july 25th sunday morning we're recording at that time let's talk about the atheist society of noxville or ask founded in 2002 we're in our 19th year ask has over a thousand members and we have weekly zoom meetings during covid but we've also started meeting in person downtown in the old city in noxville at barley's taproom in pizzeria every tuesday evening around 5 30 day so come out and join us uh you can also find us online at meetup.com noxvilleatheist.org or just google noxville atheist it's just that simple by the way if you don't live in noxville you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one now one back where you want to pick up so we were talking about the deliciousness of crunch and munch do you have a snack that you need to munch do you have a need to crunch then get crunch and munch now and crunch and munch failure is all crunch and munch i think it's i just think it's precious that uh jan riches thought that this was an american cereal it might as well be right at the end of the day oh okay it's even worse than there's no nutritional milk associated with it it's just sugar and corn at the end of the day uh hey we're talking about listener feedback questions today uh one of the quick ones that i wanted to go through was one provided to us by our own uh where are you uh scott caler who said isn't it funny how all arguments tend to follow godwin's law and godwin's law was brought up in uh our podcast when we were talking about a puddle shaped hole just for me and we were talking about how people twist narratives to make sure that their perspective is always the one that's on top and anything that gets challenged with that becomes very very very defensive and very chaotic for them and they tend to bring up what we refer to as godwin's law uh nazis as like a contrast to show that they're right and godwin's law if anyone wasn't aware it means that it's the uh idea that the longer an argument goes on the higher the likelihood that someone brings up idol Hitler or nazis and i thought that i got a cover on that yeah um yeah it's it's likely that the more you disagree with somebody the more likely is you're gonna bring up how they compare to nazism but with christian nationalism the way it is in in uh america today and it's proliferating and it's wide ranging um it's people throw out godwin's law even though it's pertinent i mean uh the comment that you make in comparison you make to the nazis and christian nationalism is pertinent and they grow out throw out the godwin's law just to seem to invalidate your comment when it doesn't all the time invalidated right you know the way how i see it is a lot of people make arguments that use tired uh fallacious formats but that doesn't necessarily mean that the argument's fallacious so it's the same way when someone uses an argument for authority it's like if you are actually citing an authority on a particular topic and you say this guy said this or this lady said that and she would know because she's there or she studied it that's a good citation even if someone says well that's just an argument for authority you're just saying it's true because that person said it's true it's like yeah but that person knows it's true there's a difference between an argument from authority and an argument from expertise uh an authority figure that claims to be able to make a judgments on something uh just from his authority not necessarily i mean like a president making a decision call on something you know it's nothing about i hear an authoritative thing but an expertise is like going to a geneticist to talk about medicine you know he does have the expertise and the wherewithal to make good decisions on that and am i getting i was just saying expertise is authority on the subject that's what i mean but i told him what you mean yeah yeah larry what were you doing i was just going to make a point that uh nazism was actually christian nationalism in germany at the time because it was a christian movement hitler himself said it was a christian movement so we need to be very aware of the christian nationalism that's going on here in america and i wanted to just throw out it's also typically brought up as a argument for morality while we're an argument to appeal to emotions when someone brings up nazis because we tend to tend to agree that nazis are bad so if i can pull up nazis then now i have this really good contrast that's the worst thing that we all agree on that makes my idea not look nearly as bad and now we can all switch to mnchip ice cream because it's the best ice cream right or else you're a nazi right like we all agree mnchip the best one right that's how those arguments tend to like slide and it did not say that coming here's one last one dot us trading room brought up the idea that he is particularly irked when people bring up that sweden is an atheistic country he looked up some data and he found some percentages and actually found some more atheistic countries like the shek republic or even china i have no problem with data i love data i think the point with that i was saying is uh i i lived in a one of the biggest cities in sweden gothenberg there's like there's some big cities but there's only nine million people in sweden and so living in the big city next to a campus working as a scientist i was most likely surrounded by just you know out and out atheists whereas the much rural areas where there are fewer people but more spread out probably very religious that makes sense but in the area that i was exposed to when i lived there for about a year and a half mostly atheists also i don't mind that there are christians in sweden what i wanted to call out was the idea that ezea who we're speaking to was very quick to jump on statistical data to purport that sweden is not as atheistic as it seemed whereas when it came to his end of one experiment of him talking to a god he was like willing to believe it regardless of whatever it was saying and realizing that he didn't necessarily have a good criteria to know for a fact that that voice was jesus like he seemed to be like i will take this face value for jesus voice in my head and for anyone else making any weird statistical in misinformation i will quickly shut that down with a stop pile of data i just wish he had that same standard of evidence for everything that was the main takeaway anyway we're going to lead up to our own george brown for our last question of the day george you want to summarize what you're asking us well i asked the question are we all sheep in the religions of facebook and google now you're gonna have to elaborate on that my friend what do you mean by that okay um what i've found these are proprietary platforms these are private businesses that have in effect become languages of their own virtually governments of their own we are all members of these organizations i'm not by the way i i confess that i'm i'm a hypocrite because there is one google service that i do use and that is youtube so i'm guilty however however in order to participate in this society in in a way it's like i must be a member of facebook i must agree to have facebook tracking me throughout my life and i refuse to do that so uh and i pay a big price for that because if um if i want to be notified for instance about what's happening in this meeting right here i have to be a facebook member because the communication is done exclusively through messenger which is a facebook product and i have to be a member of facebook in order to use it and the alternative would be google google mail which is like uh google also a surveillance engine you know and and so i found i found alternatives for everything that that google offers except for um youtube which is vital for what i'm going through in my life right now um there's no way i can avoid it facebook if i want to go to a yard sale it's facebook or nothing so i feel a dilemma in my own life you know there's a sufi teaching story about this but i'm not going to get into that right now it's like something has become so culturally popular that you can escape it and at the same time it's also in the same way how god is tracking your your your your deeds if you can say it so is google and facebook for their own profit in the same way that most religions do so for their profit or at least claim to but still make a very good profit anyway uh john richards do you feel like we can classify google and facebook as a religion and uh are you subject to their their teachings oh well i'm sorry but yes i'm i'm a victim of both of those organizations but the thing is the difference between them and god is their surveillance works you know it's like cctv cameras they're real and god looking down on us and keeping our morals pure isn't so that was it's worse to be so it's at least effective and observable and testable i can tell you this i am if you want to you can go to google's adsense page which is google's profile of who it thinks you are and how it targets its ads towards you and it's literally a 50 page bunch of icons that says we think you are a 34 year old male we think you live in this part of the country we think you're right-handed we think you like this these are your favorite bands and you can say yes or no and and to to fine tune your ad preferences but it starts off with a pretty good profile of who it thinks you are just based on how long you are hovering over links when you are clicking what you're clicking what you chose to look at what you chose not to look at how long you watch youtube videos and how you fit into each of the demographics google has found out things about me that i hadn't realized that i knew about myself and it'll be like yeah it's just like this guy's gonna like this golf videos and i'm like i'm not gonna like this golf that's the dumbest thing next thing you know i'm watching four five hour long disc golf videos i'm buying the discs i'm like google you you found it out about me i don't know how you figure this out but this is great they're wonderful yeah so it says i like honey but sometimes it's a little who are they who are they selling that information to adverts most likely most likely in of us anyway anyway but yeah john what's up john what's up the funny thing is sometimes they offer you an opportunity to reject an ad and if you if you do that they come back with a question what was wrong with it and the options that that they offer do not include it's an ad that's what's wrong with it yeah yeah scott have you whether oh go for it george there there i i've recently heard a saying which i think is really true if you are not paying on the internet you are the product that's being offered for sale and in other words having worked in the software industry myself it's very obvious that it costs a tremendous amount of money to provide these free services that are so seductive to us that we automatically get sucked in as if they're a religion john let me throw this out at you are you saying then that google and facebook are not a religion by virtue of the fact that they are effective at what they do no no i'm saying that they're not a religion because they're not an ideology it's not it's the same as people who say that atheism is a religion it's not it's not an ideology there are no values and principles associated with it no you know there's a really good point to it it is up to the market and so i would say and we're going to scott is as soon as a better product comes on the market that does better what google does or does better than what facebook does people will gravitate to that and that'll be the next big thing similar to how it was with yahoo or or myspace or friendster if you guys remember those the next one that does it better that's when we're going to go to scott what do you think yeah i think in that case from just tell um uh dovetailing off what you just said there in a way it does have ideals it has an agenda and then it bases its ideals around what's consistent with its agenda so for example like a few weeks ago um i was watching uh two guys you know kind of debate about this very subject right and i think one guy was more of a liberal progressive person and his point was that you know yeah they're you know they're kind of um you know basing all this stuff on advertising what makes you money but the good thing is that at least now we have somebody that can kind of control the language you know that you know we can be politically correct in our language and if not they'll ban you from their platform and that's a good thing because then when you control people's speech you kind of control the way they think and then you can get them to kind of think correctly instead of incorrectly and so yeah and so the opponent of course was saying well that's not a good thing at all because we don't want big corporation telling us how to think right and so that's the the real debate right there it's like these guys have an ideology they want you to think a certain way speak a certain way because that's what makes it money they don't make a lot of money um if people get to say what they want because then it offends most of their you know uh people that support them so it's it's a big it's a big um controversy on that end of it what about the political powers that we offer um i want to get larry's feedback and then we can go to john larry do you think uh google and facebook may have too much political swing i know a lot of religious groups do uh do you like this i think that they do however i'm not sure that they have much of their own innate political stance um to push what the problem is that once you use them the you you you set up your own filters apparently uh you like this and you don't like that they show you more of this and less of that so you end up in a google or facebook bubble that reinforces your preconceived notions and your personal validations uh basically the religion that that you adhere to when you use those services are the ones of your own making yeah that's good point that that's the main problem but um i don't love that either one uh tend to do much on the way of limiting free speech uh it's just that uh we go where we hear the speech we want to hear right right right and then it's a big place john richards what's your feed in oh i'm glad you think that uh we need a new social media platform because the current ones are uh unsatisfactory in some way or other yeah uh because commercial warning i'm starting one oh listen talk to me i'm listening it's called free thought city it's not live at the moment but the crowdfunding campaign launches on august 7 very cool and what will make it better compared to what we already got okay good question well for a start you won't be able to access it until you have flashed your charge card we're only going to think well the point about this the point about this is we're only going to take one dollar of it at the basic level and that's one dollar a year so we're not interested in the money side of it at that stage what we're interested in is getting your contact details because once we've got those in a secure file you know according to the protection of data laws and so on once we've got those we we we have no anonymity we will not permit people to join our social media site anonymously and we have no multiple identity because our software will spot anyone who tries to sign up with some of the same criteria as we've already got on our proper accounts exactly yeah okay we'll call i like that so you're you're trying to eliminate trolls if i hear you right not only that no because on sign up on becoming a citizen having gone through the the gateway of registration people will be given a number of stars was social behavior star rating oh man this is all my right flags and if they violate any of the criteria the rules of the show they will lose stars and they can't can i buy indulgence can i buy indulgences from you could i buy multiple could i have credit multiple credit cards that i could come down to one star can i buy five more four more stars no no just go out guys it's a it's a great plan for six more dollars you can get six stars and then you can go ahead as much as you want sounds sounds like it's going to be an interesting ride and i think i'll join i'll join hey george you got george on that's that was on listen guys i do and in terms of like social groups george you might enjoy the idea that a lot of people show your same sentiments with the idea of google and facebook being a bit too nosy and doing unknown things that are uncomfortable with your data and then also known things that are just like outright no i didn't sign up for that so there's browsers that are available to you that are made by the people who who who are actively trying to give freedom back to the end user one that i would recommend that i'm using right now is called brave browser it's brave the there's two things that i like about it one everything is no ads it natively blocks all ads so like no youtube ads no pop-up ads no nothing like that there aren't any ads period but you can't click a button to toggle on ads and if you do it every single time you get an ad you get paid money they give you a little bit of cryptocurrency that goes into a wallet that's not tied to any of your personal information and they basically say anytime you want to cash out this money you can it's we are allowing the advertisers basically to pay you to show you ads and so you get maybe about 30 cents a day with enough internet use that's not a lot but it's more than i was getting with google and then kind of stacks up i don't i don't i just have my i'd rather not have ads but brave browser very good with that and the second thing is they don't track your information it's really really nice george brown what do you got i also want to mention that if any of you are geekly or oriented you can get off the train completely or mostly by switching your operating system to one or another version of linux right which is what i'm coming at you with right this moment i like um what's that i like you like a buntu i i'm i'm using a variant of ubuntu which is called mint and the reason why i use it is because it is the most commonly used version of linux and therefore the most widely supported by its members that's great although i have to caution you i said geekly oriented because um it is a wild west show it's it's technically very complex and was hard for me to learn and still hard for me to learn and i am good with computers yeah so it's not as popular as mint but it's a lot easier to use it basically looks like a phone scott what do you have i was just going to ask him you know how are you going to get likes if you're not on any of these platforms and you guys like right you guys love me don't you yeah yeah yeah i'd also get a thumbs up yes get a heart speaking of things that we like i do like bunches and i do like the punch things but i also love crunch and munch this show was brought to you by crunch and munch if you got a crunch if you got a munch crunch munch supports all of our political views all of our political opinions you can find them right at crunch munch dot com get your crunch munch at your crunch and munch distributor previously was a comedy routine we do not advertise on this station george frown what would you recommend we check out before next week well check out linux i mean if you're geekly oriented you see i keep saying geekly orient because uh it's a wild west show it's democracy in action and because of that it's pandemonium it's just completely um i said a wild west show i i guess um musselini make the trains run on time this is the opposite what i do like about linux is you can put it all in one flash drive plug it into your computer and side load it as a separate os from a usb stick so you don't even have to really install it on your computer you can side load it and run an entire operating system off a drive that stays consistent based on wherever that usb is connected to very very very powerful stuff i'd highly recommend you check it out john richards what do you recommend we check out before next week well i've got three addresses one is free thought productions which is my channel on youtube then there is um the harris sultan's site which is called sultan's house of sin and then there is atheism you play and uh all of those are good sites to get to see for atheists nice and then future down the road in october you got free thought central right free thought city free city which launches on august 7th not october august 7th august 7th oh that's coming up then that's coming up like next week two weeks from now nice scott what's something that you would recommend that we check out before next week my friend oh man um i would check out uh dub shrine dot band camp dot sure why not why not shameless plug it's good music on there so yeah absolutely check it out thank you yeah all right and uh you can find me let's chat i post these videos once a week i'm probably doing some more asl vids i'm feeling more in the mood to uh take some of the rust off my sign language i'm looking forward to that uh larry so apparently crunch munch has taken away our sponsorship they i just got a little notice so i apologize about the crunch munch things they are no longer for the show i can tell you my honest feelings that i don't like them anymore i'm not i have never i completely disregard all the crunch munch i i i condemn them and i don't want anything else to do with them for the rest of the show but i still have the lingering question of what is atheism and what it's all about can you help me out with that oh yes i have a book called atheism what's it all about oh wow yeah how about that what a coincidence and it's available on amazon so uh if you don't know about atheism want to know about it check it out my own content is found online at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click the blog button for radio show archives atheist songs and articles on the subject uh you can find my youtube channel by searching for doubler five or larry rhodes if you have any questions for the show send them by email to ask an atheist at maxfullatheist.org if you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind and some people definitely do you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe this has been the digital freethought radio hour remember that 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 will see you next week say bye everybody bye the voice in my head that told me atheism is true