on this computer, the OZO radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, January. I'm sorry. Yes, it is January 29th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Doubter five. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Hey, I'm the Wombat. What's up? Everything, all of us. Guests today are Dred Piratig from Western Canada. Lou Jo, all the way from Kentucky. Hello, and John Richards from London. Well, South of London, I believe England. South Coast. Sounds good. London's that way in the north. Fifty miles. Well, that way doesn't work real well on the radio, but otherwise. Digital Freethought Radio Hours, a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. If you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, I'm betting you're just not here in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us and that's just one town. We're the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. And if you'll stick around till after the break, we'll tell you more about it than Wombat. What's our topic today? OK, and I'm saying this as input from the questions, but why don't Christians jump off a cliff and then like it's not a it's in. And then it's more of a thoughtful answer of like, hey, why don't they actually do that after life is better? But listen, we can get into it. We can get into it. Hey, what's up, dad? Five, I see I see you. I was going to answer the question, but he's excited, he's excited. But before we get too excited, let's go into our weekly invocation and then check on everyone's doing. And then we can jump into the meat. All right, our noodley Lord, who art in a calendar, I'll daunte 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 who cuss against us and feed us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs for the meatballs and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever, Rob and guys, it's been a really, really nice Saturday, first sunny weekend day in this whole month, got it out of our system. And now we're back to the doom and gloom of the the return of winter. So we'll have probably two more snows where we're at right now.  But for us, it's like, oh, it'd be nice if we could have something other than overcast and ice falling out on the ground or why I need rum in my blood to keep the snow and in the freeze. Right. So let's do a check in before we ask the question about why Christians don't why don't they just jump off a cliff and fall into the greater theme of today's questions, which is cognitive dissonance. Dred, how you been? I've been well, actually, just in this last week, I've been contacted by our our prophet, Bobby Henderson. Nice. And we're moving forward with the expressions of interest for a developer of a app for pastafarians. And it's one of these things that you strictly opt in anonymity. But you can identify amongst other pastafarians like signal or and what is this app called? Please give me the best name ever. Well, well, I'm not the one that's going to come up with the name myself. So that's still under consideration. And it depends, I guess, on what its ultimate functionality is. But it'll have something to do with the like noodles or something. Is it pastafarians? Pastafarians. I don't know. At least put it on the list, at least put it on the list. Boudreau. Yeah, that's that's a little hard to get around the tongue there. So I'm sure. Pastafarians is, I always thought, OK, all right, all right. That's fair. That's fair. Boudreau, speaking of things to get hard across the lips. How have you been, my friend? Boudreau, hard to spell, too. I've been well. I've been I've moved my exercise schedule around. I've moved my exercise schedule around to be able to join today and excited to be here. Yeah, good to see you, man. Welcome. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. OK, OK, OK, very cool to have you. Let us know.  What's the the latest movie that you've actually gone see? Well, just last night, I watched you people. Nice. It was really, really entertaining. Yeah, I saw the ad for that. But we were going to go see Avatar in the theater and just got busy. So again, so we may still do that. But other than that, I can't think the last movie I saw. Yeah, here's my thing. I just recently saw a Suburbicon based on recommendation. Yeah, I told you guys about that. Same vein as you people, but also not because the the the racial commentary tree is in the backdrop. It colors what is much more, in my opinion, of really, really fascinating dark comedy in the foreground. And when I saw that movie, I was like, this is really good because it's it's taking for granted how people were back there by just saying, hey, everyone's racist, but bad stuff is going to happen. Don't worry because it more or less everyone is. It was so good. And it never was like called out or pointed out was like a bad thing. It was what it is. But here's this other story that's in this world. And so when I saw it, I thought, what a great depiction of it because, you know, it out so often things get so melodromatic melodramatic. And there's like has to be some cool thing where there's one white neighbor who's here to help out and all this stuff's like, no, it's not about them. It's about these terrible, this terrible family. And when I when I went to see the reviews, what I was unfortunate to find out was like, nobody got the joke or nobody like like that, right? Right. Right. And so there's nothing more frustrating than watching a good movie that you think is good and then finding out that nobody else like that movie. And I think that's how cult followings begin. And so yes, absolutely. There's a whole realm of them. And and to believe it or not, Blue Joe has a whole wallpaper at Pantheon of like all of the cult movies were like hangover. It came out. Nobody liked it, but the people who liked it did like it and they supported it and they kept coming up with new ones and stuff like that. So that that's how you start religions. That's how you start cults. Great show to talk about that. John Richards. You've been. Well, that sounds like Star Trek, which was a flop in the beginning and then developed into a cult anyway. Yeah. Anyway, I've been fine, which is, you know, I like to wake up every morning and so far it's successful. But I made a lovely a UK atheism UK podcast this morning because we have some issues going over here. And one of our friends has been de-platformed because he got an item onto the agenda of one of our local committees for religious education and and it was about assemblies because a 1944 law in this country and bear in mind that we were not a second country constitutionally.  Yeah, this anachronistic law specifies that at school every pupil has to meet once a day. All of them together in an assembly and have a Christian religious worship. And of course, most of the schools ignore this, but nonetheless it's on the statute book and we're campaigning to get rid of it. Good. Good for you. Yeah, yeah, good luck. Well, it was just like in Canada. It was only in 1978 that blasphemy laws were taken off the books. Yeah, yeah. Right. I don't like this. You know, in a non in a non religious sense, I also like to see Pledge of Allegiances just go away to in America. Yeah, there's no real need for that. You can't force somebody to make a pledge. It's coercion. There wouldn't stand up anyway. Exactly. Like let's let's think about what that actually means. Dr doubt or five. Since we hate America, how you been? We hate America. No, we don't. I'm fine. I got a new graphics card so that I could play Star Citizen better and it's working fine. Okay. I've got a new in what do you call it? Devotee in dread. He's yeah, playing it now too. Oh, really awesome starships. So you guys are like space engineers together then? More like combators. Okay. Okay. Okay. Soldiers, power makers, pilots. Nice anyway, a lot of fun. Cool. Man, that's awesome. So who would imagine when you were born, you'd be virtual simulated space pirate or a computer programmer because I was born in 1950. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Think of this world.  All right. We're going to go into some listener comments. The aspect of today's show or the general theme is cognitive dissonance. And we talked about in discord, what questions would you guys have for a group of atheists or for religious people? And the first question that we had was why don't religious people just jump off a cliff? Pause, pause, pause. Actually, that's a really good point because they believe the afterlife is better than the life that we're in right now. So why don't they jump off a cliff? Doubter five. You're excited. So let go for it. Go for it. Well, it would make sense. Yes, of course, but the church found out pretty early on that that's not a good idea. So they made it a sin. Okay.    So how about presumably you could help your friend by pushing them off the cliff? Yeah. Well, that's the thing. You don't see them like just ignoring safety though.  But they don't do that. Do they they seem to know better at some level. Well, help me out. My mom's job witness. She doesn't accept blood transfusions and that could actually go to save her life. Is that considered one of those loop holes where it's like, oh, I need a blood transfusion. If I don't get one, I go to the afterlife where I will party with God and Jesus forever. Yeah, I don't have an answer for that. I don't I don't know why they would do that. There's nothing in the Bible that I know, of course, they could probably tell you why they don't according to the holy scriptures. But to me, it makes no sense. Pujo, what's that? So I had to pull up the the book on my on my app but but why there is no God simple responses to 20 common arguments for the existence of God. It's by Armin Navabi. I don't know if anyone's ever read it. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, if I recall and correct me if I'm wrong here, John, the kind of the intro to the book was him. I think he's Muslim and he was talking about how he jumped off the roof of a building to try to commit suicide because he was so terrified of not getting into heaven and that there is a loophole in in their religion that if you're under the age of 13 or whatever it was 14, you'd automatically go to arrive a good place and he didn't he didn't die and recovered and then, you know, found his way toward atheism and wrote an excellent book. But it is to me, that's that's frightening and yeah, yeah. I mean, that's another thing. Even in a mainstream Christianity in America, there's a there's a common belief that if you're below like seven years old, that you automatically go to heaven and Andrea Yates took that to the logical conclusion and killed five of her children in one afternoon, correct? Yeah, you're talking about that.  That's it. And Catholics, of course, have an answer to unbaptized babies, you know, they go to the guff or whatever it's called some. Actually, that's been abolished. Yeah. Yeah. I understand, but they nevertheless had come up with something, right? But they did. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. This word was talking about Andrea Yates as well. They're bringing that up as an example of a woman who drowned all five of her children in the bathtub in the bathtub one afternoon just to make sure that they would go to heaven. Just they do that loophole, right?  Dred, there's another comment. Oh, it's actually to me. Jovo witnesses don't accept blood because they they are told that humans must not sustain their life with another creature's blood, which includes other people. And that's why it's unholy. I'd like to get the scriptural references on that. If they're listening and would it matter? No, I'd like to look it up and see what the actual wording is. Okay. And what's funny is I was talking to a Christian earlier this week on Facebook and I quoted a scripture to her and she said, well, you can't take it literally. That would pretty much end of the conversation. That's great. That's so great. I mean, like I should I should not take God's on hearing word for it. Oh, that should go to a human to interpret it. Yeah, we live in a weird zany twilight zone. It really is. John Richards.  Well, Dred's right. They made it a sin. And probably or was that you Larry and probably because they don't want to reduce their congregation. They want to expand it. It's a business. It's right. It is. Yeah, but what I think we should add to this conversation. The fact that heaven is actually a gay club in Charing Cross London and I've not been there again. I club. Yes, but I've not been there, but I think that it might not be so unreal as they like to imagine. But the interesting thing here is what is and what isn't suicide because one of you raised the point that you could deny medication. And whilst you wouldn't actually be positive, yeah, while you wouldn't actually be positively killing yourself, you would be sort of negatively killing yourself. So is that is that suicide or is that just, you know, allowing nature's way? Suicide by negligence. Yeah. Well, is it suicide by negligence? Okay. That's there must be smoking cigarettes. Eating poorly. Yeah, not exercising. I would love to see the kangaroo. I'd love to see the the afterward eating ABC special where it's just courtroom in heaven where they're just like, yeah, you're here, but did you kind of kill yourself? Did you conspire to commit suicide? There's a thing here and then go through the pearly gates. Well, it's a very gray area. Now you've raised all sorts of things like not taking enough exercise. So discord is asking. Do you guys think that like not wearing your safety belt or taking medicine seat belt seat belt seat belt or taking medicine count as ways to increase your chances to go into heaven and why aren't those taken more often? And maybe that's why anti-vaxxing is so. I was going to say, I was going to say that. Yeah. That isn't anti-vaxxing. It's just like not wearing a seat belt and then isn't that passively exposing yourself to which by virtue of that would be suicide by negligence. Let's go. As the resident traffic engineer on the call, I have to step in and say, we've actually demonstrated that people that don't wear their seat belt actually incur a burden, a cost on society by. I'm sure it's the same thing with motorcycles and helmets and helmets. Yeah. And then and then you could make the same argument with vaccines to, you know, yes, fewer people vaccinated. So that it's so that one that one's tricky. Wow, there maybe they're trying to get more people into to die prematurely. Yeah, I was good. If I may add to Boudreau's comment, a part of that anti-vaxxing, which is a real thing that you can see is how it overburdened the hospitals and that's what they were, that's what they were afraid of. And of course, people who don't vax and have been hospital straining the system costing everybody who needs more people sick. Yeah. And those who really need the services don't get them because it's clogged up with all these other people. Yeah. So here's an interesting thing because if we're going down this suicide by negligence route, there's a number of avenues. Isn't there? I mean, there's not eating well. There's not taking enough exercise. There's smoking. There's drinking excessively and so on and so forth. Is it possible that there's a cumulative effect? How many of these, how many of these negligencies adds up to one suicide? Right. Great comment, John. It should be charted on an Excel spreadsheet. True.  He knew he was going to do it. He knew he was a plan and he did it anyway. That's the example of meditated, premeditated suicide. Yeah, it's willful negligence. Yes. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Okay. Guys, are we getting close to the end of the break? Dartify, what do you think? No, we still got another good five minutes for the break. All right. I got a good comment from the plug who says Christianity. This is a comment as feedback to John Richards is in fact the business you can tell because they don't have a single package deal. It's always a subscription service. You can't just do a one-stop payment and be like, I'm done.  You have to go to church. He says it's literally called service. He's right. It's a service. But the Bible tells you in 1 Peter 3 15 that you got to go out and spread the word. I mean, it's a you got to do it if you're talking about things you have to do for the Bible. Right. Yeah. Right. It's not a God will do it for you. Okay. What I want is for the governments to recognize and it's a business and start taxing them. Yes. Absolutely. They're all parasites on the rest of society. We have to support them through our taxes. Yeah, right. Good comment on that. There's private schools that are often filled with rich people who benefit other rich people because the schools get property taxes that go to that school. Whereas poor neighborhoods do not. Poor neighborhoods are loaded with churches that don't pay property taxes. And so they are essentially in money sink for education. Yeah, it's worse in other countries in countries like Nigeria, which desperately needs some welfare and education in hospitals and the only rich people in there are the pastors, you know, right? Yeah, and don't forget that the vouchers for religious schools take directly take government money from the regular schools, public schools to fund religious schools. And so that's a that's a money sink from from our educational and tithing. So if you tax 10% of a poor community, they're paychecks. That's money that goes literally nowhere. I think it goes back to feeling false hope. Joe Pire, what do you got? Well, I was going to say that that happens a lot in Canada. That's a big portion of the public purse for education goes towards religious or schools with religious programming like Christians and Islam Islamic schools. And also now I can't remember where I was going to say but I'll add on to that.  Is it or is it contributing to only to other Christians? Right? Because you have a building that only satisfies the needs of the people who go to it. And meanwhile, everyone else that needs that property tax or that money or that funding or that support system, don't get it unless they subscribe to your dogma or they build another church down the street and suck more money from the community. Yeah, well, it's it's an icon from medieval days to to to the present, you know, certain neighborhoods the nicest building is the church, right? It flows from the community to the church with bells. You know, it hoards the money or built the church or whatever. And then when you go when when they need money, they come to you, but when you need money, they tell you to go to God. Right. Yeah. Oh, you know, it's a great moment. So dialed. So here in the UK, we have laws against discrimination. So what I would like to see is those laws being extended to the usage of faith buildings so that if on Monday they have a Christian meeting in their hall on Tuesday, they've got to have a Muslim one on Wednesday, they've got to have a Jewish one. And that applies to all of the different or or secular ones that could open it as a community club certain days of the week. Yes. Payback, you know, they say about McDonald's that McDonald's is not in the business of selling hamburgers and fries. They're in the real estate business. That's what that's what religions are when it comes to that thing. They're not saving souls. They're selling they're collecting real estate. That's it. They're cold. Yep. They're they're making that money. That's what we do. Well, we don't sell it was generally so. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, are we getting close to the bottom? Yep. All right. Let's get that right. Okay. This is digital free thought radio. R and W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Thank you everybody. 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 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. We were founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and we have over thousand members. We also have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taft Room in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables over its pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday in Zoom meeting. If you'd like to join us, email us for details at askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can also find us online on Facebook, meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist. That'll take you there. Just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to a meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. One bet where you will pick up. Hey, we're going to go more into the cognitive dissonance. Well, but first let's check in with Boudreaux Boudreaux. You know, not to pick on you with your Catholic background, but did you ever have a favorite Catholic saint? The people want to know. Yes. And why is it St. Lucy? Okay. That was the question. Yeah. So, uh, you thought I paid attention way more, uh, when I was in Catholic, Catholic, uh, Catholic church service and then some Wednesday night Catholic after school things. I wasn't, I wasn't paying attention. We call it CCD. I forget what it stood for. But since I'm a good steward of the internet, I Google searched my favorite saint, which is going to be St. Agatha. Okay. Because apparently she's the patron saint of breast cancer patients, martyrs, rape victims and others. So, so how is it a saint? They didn't even know about breast cancer. Did they? You can make new saints, right? Like that's how it works with the Catholic church. You can just like make new ones, but there's one for breast cancer. That's good. Well, this one apparently, um, St. Agatha also invoked against earthquakes, natural disasters and fires, which to me makes it sound like she's like a bad guy in a video game. So I'm going to say Agatha. Okay. Okay. Now it's on the list. Thank you guys. Clark says, thank you. John Richards got a question for you.  I would love to know why are there religious scientists? So here's the actual question for real though. If there's any scientists who are religious, I'd like to know how they think the universe started and how that ties in with their beliefs. Why are there religious scientists in the first place? That's a question that's always puzzle. It's just. Go ahead. If you are a scientist, you are working day by day, looking for evidence. And there is no evidence for any God whatsoever that's come to my attention anyway. And we've been looking for two and a half thousand years or so. So longer in that. Yeah, indeed.  Do they have one of those at the door to their scientific establishment? So that once they've walked through that, they're cleaned of the need to seek evidence. Oh man. Wouldn't that be great? I would love that in the future to just be like, here's a, here's a scanning device that just clears you of all unneeded dogma in your brain. Use you from like all these really bad ideas. You go through it and you're like, hey, Ryan Seacrest is a pretty good host. You know, just like, this is okay. Yeah. Because I think something like that must happen. They've got this double personality. On the one hand. Partitioning. Compartmentalizing. Exactly. It was, what was it called? Non-overmapping. Magisteria. That's the one. Yeah. What happens? They've got this compartment in their brain, which works on Sundays. Yeah. Yeah. From Mondays to Fridays, that one switched off. And the other one switched on the rational one. And you can, I think it was a Steven J. Gould that came up with that. Yeah. Yeah.  A very interesting way to look at it.  You can see them talk.  And they'll tell you, they'll list off a number of criteria that are all very well substantiated. Well, research, not absolutely sure, but altogether make it such that they've met the, the claim of why are there tectonics and like very well evidence. And then you say, like, so then if you have all this evidence for this, why do you believe in a God and then switch? Well, back when I was in third grade, my had a sore stomach and I asked my mom to give me a prayer and it went away and not prove God exists to me. I'm just like, whoa, look at that. Look at that. A little firing search. That are five. It looks like you want to go for a thread. Well, I was going to say, you know, talking about calibration because that's what we often do. And, and so cratic examination is to calibrate confidence and beliefs. Yes. And, you know, sometimes like you were saying an example of the tectonic plates where you could have that conversation with someone and then ask them, well, what is your confidence that that is in fact the case? Well, you know, 95% that's kind of what the evidence is. Correct.  Right. How could I lower your confidence by one percent? Absolutely. Yeah, it's a bizarre situation. So you're closed minded on it. No, I'm not closed minded. I'm just, we'll never change my mind about it. I'll hear things like that. But listen, what you were saying before, John Richards, it was really interesting because you had this idea of scientist jobs or finding evidence and they haven't found evidence for God. The thing is they found evidence for God. It's just not enough evidence to support a God claim. They have terrible antidotes, antidotes, my bad. Don't don't don't arrest me, John Richards. I'm sorry for pronouncing the C and antidote, but they have, you know, personal experience. They have arguments from comfort. They have a book of claims that they believe are true. They have arguments from authority. All of these things do not add up to any worthwhile belief or demonstration of a God existing. Yet they've reduced their criteria to, to a second standard where they will use that to confirm that a God exists. Whereas for everything else, they have a completely different standard. And so essentially they're operating on a double standard. They found evidence, but they're willing to believe it on that low standard. What do you think? So they, so they leave their laboratory and then bar lows right down to ankle height. Correct. Correct. Yeah, it's really frustrating. Hey, what gets me is when, when, and I did this myself when I was believer or getting close to non-believe, you know, give me a sign. And anything that out of the ordinary that happens is quote a sign from God and not only just a sign from God, but like sign from that particular God, which supports that particular religion. Like I asked one guy, I told him I was an atheist and he couldn't believe it.  He said, well, one day I asked for a sign and everything, every number I looked at had sevens in it.  So that was good enough for him. Right. Yeah. It's just, it's so shame. It's just not a phone call. It's like, oh, I'm God. I, I, I zip by the way I exist. That would be at least better than I found a seven. Yeah. Going by that reasoning, obviously 007 is God. Okay. Dread. There you go. Yeah. I was going to say that like in, in for, for Pasifarians or for myself as a Pasifarian anyway, my, my, my Pasifarianism is, is based on the idea that there are unknowable aspects to existence that I will never, ever have a solution for. And it's serves kind of like as an avatar or as a placeholder where I can celebrate those things without, without conflict. You know what I mean? Sure. So do I believe in a literal flying spaghetti monster? Well, probably not, but you know, you think about quantum entanglement and string theory and, and the, you know, the, the forms of matter inside a neutron star, which are related to forms of pasta. These are all really just as good an explanation as any, right, those things that will never understand fully. I see. That's where I, that's where I place myself. Pasifarianism is a avatar for a celebration of the unknown and complex. And, and it is a shrinking unknown because we are figuring things out, but it's so vast that it's like, Hey, we'll be here for a while. This unknown things. Let's just have some pasta and enjoy the fact that there's going to be some things we won't ever figure out. Isn't that cool though? Isn't that actually interesting? I like that a lot as a, as an approach to it. Boudreaux, I saw your hand. What's up? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. How you, um, uh, summarize that Pasifarianism. That's, that's a good. Yeah. So, um, Neil, Neil deGrasse Tyson did a, um, I saw it on a YouTube video. I'm not sure if it was a lecture or what it was, but he basically, he turned the question. A lot of people look at, uh, religiosity compared to, uh, degrees, you know, in education and there are, there are, um, um, you know, X percentage of religious people with people with bachelor's degrees, let's say, and the, the, the, the percentage kind of drops as you get to, you know, higher levels, levels of education, you get into masters and PhD and, and it drops even most significantly when you get into the real harder sciences, um, you know, astrophysics and, and so on. And so, you know, people have said for, for years, you know, the more advanced degree, the more advanced scientist, uh, uh, again in the hard science, nothing, nothing against the other scientists, but I think it stands to reason that there's different type of thinking that goes into some of these hard sciences and right. And those ones naturally would, would, um, reject the God. What Neil deGrasse Tyson did was he looked at the interesting pieces. Let's look at the actual religious people that have these advanced degrees. Those are the people worth talking to, studying, interviewing.  And because you still believe in a God, those are the, those are the interesting people. So I don't know if there's been a follow up to it, but I'm, I would be really curious too. And you probably see it tie in your, in your, uh, uh, work and field. But yeah, you're, you're surrounded by, and I see it sometimes too. And on, on campus and engineering, it's like, you know, the, the, it surprises me to see someone with a PhD in advanced degree and still, you know, right. Well, the most famous example of this, of course, is Francis Collins. Yes. He was, um, key person in the human genome project, wasn't he? Yeah. He was a pure scientist. No. No, go ahead. He was a pure scientist who had a revelation when he saw a frozen waterfall. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That made him become a Christian. Yeah. Wow. Really? And convinced him a hundred percent. I can show him a bunch of waterfalls right now. You can go on Google. Yeah. Did he have Google images back then? Here's an idea though. I think we've, now we've got chat GPT. Yeah. We should ask it. We should ask it. Why are there religious scientists? Ah, yeah, I can do this next meeting. We'll do a chat GPT where we will generate 50 or 10 questions for the show. Ask 10 questions that will stump atheists. How about that? We'll ask chat GPT to go back to us and see what we can feel them. So that this is a new chat box program or something? Yeah. Oh, it's an AI. It's, it's state of the art AI. It is. And it's called what? Chat GPT. It's a step forward. So a quick sidebar, there's things called Turing tests, which is like a really fun. They actually make a, they actually make a competition where you can see on YouTube people competing against each other with robots that they produce that are made to trick other people that they're actually people or a chat robot. And we've, since 2012 have made a chat bot that can actually more than 50% of the time actually convince people that they're actually talking to an actual human being companies have been buying those programs and use them for their like customer service operations. Like when you go on Amazon and you think you're talking to a person, maybe from like India or somewhere, it's actually just a robot that's like using the fact that it's foreign to cover up some of the grammatical mistakes that it's making, but it's still just fixing stuff for you automatically. And then finally they have an open AI, which is basically, Hey, anybody can use this. You can go on. It's, it's partially owned by Google or sponsored by it, but there are $29 billion owned privately owned distribution of open software. You can go on chat, GPT, log in and play around with this computer that will write song lyrics for you poetry on very, very short prompts. My friend from work said, write a poem about our job, posted it and we got like this epic Odyssey of like everyone about our job, the nature of the work that we do. And it's all in lyrical sense. I'm like, this is scary. This is actually very well. Very scary.  They could just take. We're going to get some better writers for shows. Most shows are really bad. There's only like one or two good shows. We all know that. Right.  When you go there, you have to type in and then give it back in text. However, if you go to YouTube, you can find a lot of videos where they have taken the text and run it through an emulator of a person, you know, who's talking the lines and doing the speech instead of, so you don't have to read all that stuff. And they also have videos where they have one GPT or one AI talking to another that way. So the conversation is very interesting. What's really fun. There's a cool point where some of those videos, the two robots are talking to each other and the other robot's like, are you a chatbot? And the other one's like, yeah, are you a chatbot? It's like, oh, we're both chatbots. It's like, this is. It is getting, it is getting really scary. It started back in the Victorian times when they had things called automatons where little manicule men, figures, like robots, but hidden inside.  Answered all their questions. But then, of course, more recently, we have had the D-Pack Chopra generator. And chat GPT seems to be the grown-up version of that, but it is amazing. And I'm sure it would pass the Turing test. And in fact, they have given it some exams. He's done some exams and he's passed. Not top of the class, but he's got middling results, middling grades in, I forget which subject areas. They can create exams too. You can ask it to create a homework assignment. Let me make this out as well. There's high school teams now that can design chatbots that can break the Turing test or get through it. And that's only through iterative studies of people working together and not praying or relying on a gut to fix it, but using skills in software engineering and human understanding to improve and teach better generations more adequately so they can more effectively meet these like bars. We are so excited in science because we're constantly coming up with new things. And this is an example of a new thing brought about through the scientific method. Whereas religion is still hashing out the same 40 or six stories, 46 stories, you know, 52 stories, I'm sorry, or sometimes they reuse and we all know that pastors don't always have a new story to tell, but it's the same yearly worth of stories every single time. It's dyad and hopefully as a global community we are understanding that and moving away from religiosity and moving towards this new exciting stuff that science keeps coming up with because we need more people to contribute to that. More women, females, foreign people, everyone doing it improves it because that's the way how we get better at stuff with just all these new hands and minds working together on these new projects. I feel like that is the stuff. While scary in some aspects, all new technology was scary. I mean, I remember when we first got our first microwave, that was terrifying. We're like, what in the world? It's not even hot and it's making you hot. What's going on? And it wasn't called a microwave, it was called a radar range. Yeah, but remember how scary it was when you got like HD cameras for the first time you're like, wait a second, that's what people see when they see me. I don't like this. We always had these big swings, but in the end it always tends to improve because we make the quality of life better. I feel like stuff like this could really improve a lot of things. So, yay science and go ahead, Boudreau. Just real quick to tap on what you're saying. Yeah, remember there was a time, I don't remember it, but people wouldn't get into an elevator unless it had an elevator operator. Oh, yeah. I don't remember that, but I'm aware of that. Yes. They just stood there and said things like ladies underwear. Men's wear for fall. So I wanted to say that I want to plug because yesterday I had this fantastic guest on Freethorn Hour, very brilliant philosopher type who we started to talk about the developments in AI and his opinion is like I tend to agree with him that the Turing test is too linguistic because it would eliminate our own infants as being conscious. Just because they can't speak yet.  So there you go. Next question for chat GPT have you ever had an idea? Have you ever had an original idea? Yeah, we may have to define original because they can definitely come up with things that are essentially novel just through brute force right in the same way that a human being can come up with a new song. They can come up with like a new poem. You know, they wouldn't be able to sit there and say, I was thinking about the nature of time and I developed this new theory about space and the space time continuum or something like that. I mean, that's not going to happen. Oh, you that's the last words by listen, I can tell you not GPT but there's another AI program that I'd like for you guys to check out after this where essentially a prompt and it will make art for you. I started to say Go ahead, Dredd. They already create new songs that the art that didn't exist, stories that didn't exist. They're they're, you know, you're saying they don't say that I'm thinking because that's all they do. They think they don't do anything else but they pretty much just want to put something here hopefully so like we have this idea of what thinking is that humans do and we have it the pedestal but it's actually a fairly mathematical process that could be processed and emulated very well to where the things where it's like it could be so efficient that you don't have to think or express it as well. I was thinking of a new plan. It's like, no, here's 40 new plants that I just came up with. Like, these are all awesome. I'm coming. Every millisecond comparison, comparing and producing, which is all things that computers do will. Yeah. Exactly. That was the point I was going to make is like, you know, all these chat boxes rely on prompts to do the things that they do. What would be really interesting is if you woke up one morning and there was this new piece of work that had not been prompted in any way shape or form and then that being the responsibility of an AI. Well, would argue with that. That's not even free will because none of my thoughts are in a weird way anyway. And you think about all the art, the original creations, like on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Well, they were prompted by the church. You know, Michelangelo painted this, painted that, the of the scenes we want. So, you know, those are original compositions, but he did them after being prompted. True enough. What do you got? So your free will come out always, always sparks ideas for me. Of course, it'd be really interesting to quiz a chatbot to say come up, give me a random movie. And they could very easily tap into a movie database and pick a movie at random. Don't you think that it would be pretty obvious if you if you asked for, you know, 10 random movies from from us from humans, even us on the call versus a chatbot wouldn't you get a very different sampling of movies? I mean, I would argue that. Yeah, I'd argue the chatbot would be even more random than mine because my would just definitely be more random but our our picks our picks because we're like a free will I think would be they would they would all kind of like tie to they would be recent movies or they would be really popular movies or they would be Marvel movies. Yep, marbles that really appeal to you. Right. I am not going to I'm not going to suggest a movie I've never heard of. Right. I can't I can't that won't that one but the chatbot might so I bet if you did some kind of a distribution of like the popularity or the star rating or whatever or the gross income the gross whatever the movie collected, I guarantee that the chatbot would have a much lower score on popularity or whatever versus so there's your turning test right there. Just ask ask him for a random movie. I mean it used to be would say you can never be a human being with at chess because chess is this you know really abstract sort of conversation between two very brilliant forward thinkers who can like plan things ahead. It's like no like there's a there's a way to meticulously design objectives in chess to where you can say I think these moves are better and I'm going to just try to make the best move each time and now we have computers on my phone that can beat me or grandmasters right and that's really useful to train grandmasters so like it didn't ruin chess just made people better at chess players because now there's a higher standard I feel like chatbot and like these art programs are just going to do the same thing they'll inspire more things from people but they'll also make people understand that the way how we understand things can be understood and that is a very useful thing because now we don't rely on mysticism or religion or spiritualism to explain that to us now we know the process and we can now find the best process to educate children and train ourselves at new cool things that we want to learn like this is a benefit if we just understand that everything we do in here can be fairly well understood and if anything done better and I think that's a cool thing. John Richards I think you had a comment. Yeah it's you've moved on sorry sorry buddy. It's about these illustrator programs because a friend of mine is a drummer in a heavy metal band and he uses it to design their album covers and it's so fascinating how many you put in a few prompts and like you know I don't know a devil's fork or something and it comes up with 40 different examples in three seconds and he spends hours through into the early morning trying to decide which one of these wonderful designs is the best. Right right. I'll throw one last thing up before we close the show I enjoy drawing and the fact that there's a computer that can make art doesn't take away the value that I put into the practice of drawing in the same way that there are people who love writing and the fact that there's a program that can write poems to doesn't take away any joy that that person can get from it I just think we are going to evolve to where we appreciate the things that we love to do more versus doing them to necessarily gain or profit or a notoriety or an audience or things like that when we have robots capable of doing routine tasks for us and that expansion of routine expands then more people will have more time to enjoy the things that they love to do because we have the basic needs being met through automation I think that is generally a really good goal the improvement of society through letting robots do what they want to do and then it's a question of what can we do to make the robots enjoy what they're doing before the robot wars start alright guys Dred Pirate you can find me on youtube at mind pirate m-i-n-d-p-y r-a-t-e I livestreamed this at 7 a.m. on Sunday mornings and later do the views on the news at 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings p-s-t Dred Pirate one little last note I would say you should always plug your show to the A.I. r-a-t-e it's right there for you something that you'd recommend we check out before next week oh what I recommend I was going to recommend to the A.I. people to program their bots to sort movies by a box office results and then randomly select from there so then we now they can pass the turn test so I think we solve that problem so my my random little thing is they make vacuum robots now that have little A.I.s guys in them that will now instead of just smearing dog poop all over your carpet like look at it and be like hey I think that's dog poop it's a amorphous shape I'm going to put that into my category catalog and use my neural network to recognize what everything's are in your home well you could get that you could not get that I just don't have a dog it saved me get a cat with a litter box you'll solve yourself a lot of problems John Richards what's up does it come out with a little dustpan brush and scoop up like the Jetsons right yeah it vaporizes it vaporizes my robot has lasers on it it's kind of interesting John yeah free thought channel that's where to go I strongly recommend this for free thought our chat I had yesterday with Alan Colcun and yes views on the news later on today and the sad news is that one of our panelists Frank Lovell is no longer with us he's with the newly one yeah sorry to hear that are five anything you'd like to close out the show with well yeah we're getting back to the subject originally was cognitive dissonance and irrational dichotomies of thought I on my website digitalfreethought.com if you click on the blog button I have an article there called irrational dichotomies of religious thought and I recommend if you'd like to know more about that to go there and read that what else my I have a book on atheism that's available on Amazon thank you dread for holding it up I appreciate that it's called atheism what's it all about and I take the articles from my website and put them in the book so it's a book of articles about subject to atheism my youtube is at doubter five I have a lot of content on there as well as animated remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday night at 6 o'clock on WOZO radio say bye everybody bye everybody later


I'm Abdi Mehfar from Iran. I was a Ph.D. Fellow in the fields of coastal engineering from the University of Tuente and IHE Delphi Institute for Water Education. Wetlands play an important role in terms of the ecosystems and services that provide a lot of goods and services to him and well-being. So, it's kind of very important environmental assets around the world and very important to know that most of the wetlands around the world have been degraded over the last decades due to a lot of reasons either by natural or anthropogenic factors. We see in many parts of the world that wetlands are suffering from degradation or loss. And I think second of February as an international day for wetlands can highlight the role of wetlands and the importance of these habitats to human well-being and also to other services that people can benefit from them.


Ever heard the old phrase, strike when the iron is hot? Well, it's never been hotter than now. All this month at Appalachian Wireless, you can get the Samsung GS6 or the GS6 Edge for just one penny when you send them for service. The Galaxy S6, normally 49.99, now just a penny. The Galaxy S6 Edge, normally 99.99, now just a penny. Strike now while supplies last. Better service, bigger savings, serving you for the last 25 years at Appalachian Wireless. The Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce hosted its monthly lunch in Thursday and welcomed special guest Hank Phillips. Phillips is president and CEO of the Kentucky Travel Industry Association and spoke to members about the economic impact of tourism in Kentucky and especially Eastern Kentucky. It's important that everyone in town, no matter what their business is, understand how important tourism is as far as economic activity and jobs and generating tax revenue and everybody has a stake in tourism. Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Jacob Colley says it's always important to have statewide officials address Eastern Kentucky. I think it's a positive outlook and it's important for our business community to recognize how important tourism is to the rest of our economy and how it can have some significant impact on job growth and economic outcomes. When Phillips normally addresses crowds, he gives them positive and negative feedback and tips on how to improve. However, Thursday, it was all positive. I have never encountered anyone who has been in this community and has experienced whether it's your restaurants, whether it's your festivals, whether it's places like Dream Stables and the zip lining and the various other things that are here. I have only heard travelers, visitors come away from here saying, wow, that place is awesome. The tourism assets here are especially for cities the size of Pikeville are as good or better than just about anywhere else in the state. The Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce will welcome US Senator Mitch McConnell at its next membership luncheon. Reporting in Pikeville for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.


Now we are going to talk about molecular orbital theory for a very simple system dihydrogen molecular cation H2 plus why H2 plus because it has one electron. Now there are two approaches to bonding in valence bond theory what we do is we essentially extend Lewis electron dot model and we retain this concept of overlap of atomic orbitals and sharing of electron pairs is just that we write it in the language of quantum mechanics and it really works fine for many systems what it cannot handle is delocalization and it gives us very limited access to excited states and it can talk about singlet and triplet state of dihydrogen for example but there are many states that are not accessible. As we will see molecular orbital theory can give us access to many more things. So, in MOT what we do is we consider the electrons to move in the joint field of nuclei I will show you the Hamiltonian shortly. We try to find solutions for H2 plus and when you try to find solutions for this Hamiltonian for H2 plus we use some approximation method we use what is called linear combination of atomic orbitals. Good thing about MOT is that it is a general theory it can easily handle delocalization it does not necessarily have to be restricted to two centers but problem is it is a bit too general as we will see when we talk about H2 as simple as H2 it overdoes things and it over emphasizes the ionic structure. To start with let us write the Hamiltonian for H2 plus the one electron molecule of ours. So, this is a sort of an extension of hydrogen atom like hydrogen atom this also has one electron only the only additional thing here is that it has a second nucleus. So, we can write the Hamiltonian without much hassle first we write the kinetic energy term of the first nucleus HA then we write the kinetic energy term of the second nucleus H B then we write the kinetic energy term of the lone electron that is there we have this electron is attracted by both the nuclei. So, there will be two attractive potential energy terms and finally there is inter nuclear repulsion. Now before proceeding further inter nuclear repulsion can be a potential problem fortunately that is taken care of by this very elegant approximation proposed by Born and Oppenheimer. Now when you say Born and Oppenheimer if you are not someone who is studying science you think of something else you think of Manhattan project where atom bomb was made Oppenheimer was actually the overall in charge of this Manhattan project. But Born and Oppenheimer did many good things individually and together they proposed this approximation which says that this big fat nuclei cannot move as fast as this quick fast electron. So, nuclei are stationary with respect to electrons of course, I have put it in a very watered down almost scandalous manner, but this is what it essentially means it is okay if we understand that for now. We can consider the nuclei to be stationary with respect to the electrons. So, the moment we do that we get to ignore the kinetic energy terms in the Hamiltonian that is a great relief. Moreover, we can consider this last term to be constant. So, essentially we can work with these three terms kinetic energy of electron and potential energy for attraction of the electrons to with the two nuclei and I can take the last part as a constant. So, for different values of R I can set up this Hamiltonian and I can try to find solution and actually using elliptical polar coordinates it is possible to find solution. Those solutions are there in some specialized books not in the books that we study for this course and we are not interested in getting it in it also. You know why because what is the point you do it this is your Hamiltonian fine you solve it and you use spherical polar coordinates to solve it exactly. But what happens if you add one more electron it is no longer solvable because then you are going to have electron-electron repulsion which will mess things up completely. So, why get into all that trouble and people have got into all that trouble as I said they are actually available in some high level textbooks also on internet, but we are not going to get into that we are going to use a simpler approach utilizing certain things that we have generated already hydrogen atom wave functions orbitals. We are going to use linear sums of these orbitals to find approximate solutions. Our interest here is to find electron distribution and energy to do that one common way of doing it somehow I never correct typos that are there for a long time. So, it is not functional it is functions. So, if you want to generate some function a common approach is to take a linear combination of appropriate orthonormal functions it is not even required to take orthonormal functions, but it is better if you take them that makes life a little simpler and what is the meaning of appropriate we will elaborate in a minute. So, here to generate this polycentric one electron wave function I want to essentially take a linear combination of atomic orbitals. See atomic orbitals are they form an orthonormal set is not it and this sort of makes sense because well actually they were generated by considering the motion of electron in the field of at least one nucleus all we have here is that we have two nuclei together. So, in some parts or maybe in large parts the molecule orbital should resemble some atomic orbital or the other or a linear combination it sort of makes sense. And but then whenever I say these students are usually not happy and they say that you are giving some hand waving argument and all and I agree with that. So, let me just take this a little further this is the combination that we are going to use linear combination of two 1s one wave functions one for atom A one for atom B. Now, what I want to show you is this let us take a little break from there and talk about a general phenomenon what do you see what do you see here perhaps you see an elephant that is drawn by maybe a 3 year or 4 year old kid, but the shape of elephant is discernible you see an elephant. Now, this elephant was actually not drawn by any 3 or 4 year old kid. This is a figure taken from a legitimate research paper published as recently as 2010 in American Journal of Physics. How was this generated? So, it is a plot you can see you have x axis and y axis I have tried I tried my best to hide x and y I did hide x, but y was not hidden all that efficiently. So, what these guys did was that they expressed x and y in terms of some parameter t which they call time and so they decided some value of time t for that they worked out x and y. So, for that they got this function for more detail feel free to read this paper it is available freely on internet. So, what I am trying to show is that by using who would think that you can generate an elephant using some functions actually you can and the elephant does not have to be as rudimentary as this one you can draw better elephant also. And again if you go to this website I did not really check it out myself, but I think you get to plot different things try your hand at using different functions this is a more convincing elephant right. This elephant is drawn by maybe a 5 year or 6 year old kid again use generating functions. So, if you can generate an elephant using some mathematical function I should be able to generate the electron distribution also. To be honest I do not even need to use orbitals I can use Gaussian functions and exponential functions and stuff like that and that is what is done in higher level theories. But at least to start we are going to use wave functions. So, this is what you should be looking like at this point should be thing that does all this make sense all right I generate this function and maybe I can find a solution for energy using that Hamiltonian operator. But is that solution right does it make sense at all and here we have a saving race in the form of variation method variation theorem which says that if you calculate energy using some guess function guess function means a function that you have cooked up you call that epsilon 0 phi actually this is called functional epsilon 0 phi minus the actual energy E 0 is always going to be greater than equal to 0 or in other words you get an always get an upper bound to the actual energy if you use some function that you have cooked up. So, whatever function I get I will never do better than the best the energy I calculate will only approach the actual energy from higher energy side it will never cross it and become low. So, it is okay if I use a large number of functions the energy calculation will never be wrong the electron distribution can go wrong if you use 2 orbit functions that is why it makes sense to use atomic orbitals at least to start with. This is a very rudimentary introduction to this topic you might be wondering why it is called variation theorem that is because you actually this gives rise to this is also called the upper limit theorem. It is utilized in variation method where you play around with the contributions of these different functions and you see what is the best value of energy you can get and you have the assurance that it will never be less than the actual value of energy. So, this is where we are we have molecular orbitals we have given you some kind of an argument to say that this is not absolute nonsense we generate the molecular orbitals by linear combinations of these s orbitals. What do I do next? Let us see what your square of this molecular orbital is why am I calling it molecular orbital because it is a molecular wave function and this molecule has only one electron.  So, I might even say s a s b or even I might say a and b they are all one and the same please bear with me. Now, see there is no logical reason to think that c 1 and c 2 should have different magnitudes in this expression for energy for probability density there is no reason why a should contribute more or less than b. So, c 1 square must be equal to c 2 square which implies that c 1 can be plus minus c 2. So, when c 1 equal to c 2 I call it c a when c 1 equal to minus c 2 I call it c b actually this is an ill conceived nomenclature it would have been better to call the first one c b it would have been better to call the second one c a you will see why I am saying this. So, this is the first wave function I take the plus combination. So, psi 1 is c a multiplied by 1 s a plus 1 s b the other one is 1 s a minus 1 s b multiplied by c b how do I proceed now the usual way I want to normalize I want to see what is the expectation value of energy and so on and so forth. But before that let me tell you this that this is called a bonding orbital 1 s a plus 1 s b and this is called an anti bonding orbital again I will take a range check on why this is called bonding why it is called anti bonding later on you can sort of guess but do you see why I said that this coefficient naming was ill conceived psi bonding is c a multiplied by 1 s a plus 1 s b psi anti bonding is c b multiplied by 1 s a plus 1 s b if I had only interchanged a and b then it would have been better bonding b anti bonding a would have been easier to remember but when then Ali Iyakhtay asked so we just leave with this. So, we have obtained two kinds of molecular orbitals bonding and anti bonding great this is where we are so far if I plot them this is what you get when they are at equilibrium bond distance there is some overlap of the orbitals. So, in this region you see they actually add in regions where a has some value of psi but b does not have too much then it is practically a here it is practically b. So, when you add them up for psi plus or psi 1 you get this kind of a profile these are the contour diagrams this is a profile like a circus tent and here you see this kind of a profile where you get a node. So, in bonding orbital the wave function has no node in anti bonding orbital you do have a node if you take psi square then you see you get this more well defined circus tent here as the profile here you have two separate circus tents it is not circus tents two separate tents two people who want their own individual tents that kind of a function is there. So, now the rudimentary discussion that is there in most textbooks is that here you end up increasing electron density between the two nuclei. So, they act as cement effectively here you end up decreasing electron density if you just plotted the wave functions they would have had some more electron density between the two nuclei that is why this is anti bonding energy associated with anti bonding should be more energy associated with bonding should be less this is okay but it is not the last word. So, for now we can live with it but there is more to it than what meets the eye. All right now let us try to do our favorite exercise let us try to normalize and here I want you to do the normalization yourself I am sure at this point you will be able to do it. So, please stop the video maybe after the next one this is what you want to get stop the video do the normalization yourself okay this is what you get Ca square multiplied by integral 1sa square plus integral 1sb square plus integral 1sa 1sb plus integral 1sb 1sa okay these as we know are one because the s orbitals are individually normalized what about these two these are not zero okay these are quantities that come up when we do valence bond theory treatment as well the only difference is that for valence bond theory we cannot work with H2 plus we have to work with H2 because it requires to center to electron so what is this integral this is called overlap integral they are the same first of all this sequence does not matter it is called overlap integral why is it called overlap integral this is something that we study when we study valence bond theory as well but here let us state it independently these are the contours of the two 1s orbitals okay what happens to the value of the integral when they are like this very far apart practically there is no overlap so there is no point in space where 1sa and 1sb simultaneously have some nonzero value so their product is zero when the distance is large and integral is also zero what happens when they move closer as overlap increases say in this region let us say that contours denote significant values of psi in this region of overlap both 1sa and 1sb will have significant value product will have significant value so when you integrate the value of the integral is going to increase and as they come closer and closer the value is also going to increase to a saturation something like this and this as is worked out using elliptical coordinates in Macquarie and Sammons book this can be written in terms of the inter nuclear distance capital R this is the functional form which we do not have to remember let we should understand the shape of the curve it is like this initially zero at very large R then it increases to a saturation value okay of course if this is zero that means what they will both be together saturation value what should it be you work out yourself these are normalized orbitals so if capital R is equal to zero this is your exercise please work out what is the value of the overlap integral when capital R is equal to zero and this is what I have shown for 2 1s orbitals you might as well work it out for say s and p orbitals p and p orbitals in different orientations so on and so forth this is your overlap integral which plays a very very important role in bonding now let us go a little further ahead this is what it is I have written the first two terms each of this is 1 add up to 2 second two terms each of these is overlap integrals add up to 2s so this is the condition I get from normalization c square is equal to well 1 equal to c square multiplied by 2 plus 2s now I do not know if you had stopped the video if you would have reached it here if you did not have a prior knowledge of s but well now you know what it is so ca turns out to be 1 by root over 2 plus 2s similarly you can work out yourself this time cb the coefficients for the anti-bonding orbital turns out to be 1 by root over 2 minus 2s so now we have the wave functions completely defined with these what we can try to do is that we can try to find the values of the energies and remember the best we can do now is we can try to find expectation values of the energies


George Bruno with the 21 Report. We're at the 21 Summit in Orlando, Florida, and I'm having a conversation with Mr. Tanner Guzzi. Welcome to the show. Thanks, George. Good to be back. So how'd it go for the past four days? It was a whirlwind, especially because with it being the summit, there was a whole lot of basically Zach and I got to kind of run our own party over here with the Patriarch event, which was a lot of fun. But the new blood that came in, the old blood that came back, both from speakers and attendees, it's really fun to just see things continue, continue to elevate. Yeah. How do you think the three stages work? It's the first time we ever had three stages. I loved it because the energy in each one felt very different. As I got a chance to be in each of the three different rooms, it felt almost like you were entering into an entirely different conference as you went through each one of them. And in a lot of ways, they were very complimentary. You could see how what was going on with 22 mirrored, what was going on in 21, but it was specific to different audiences. And then everything that was going on with 21, the main event as opposed to the Patriarch was stuff that was more generalized as far as male self-development. And then Patriarch was, how do we take this and apply it to fathers and families? And so the energy was awesome. It was fun to get to see all three of them put together. The only downside is that we as speakers, we didn't get to see everybody speak. We didn't get to hang out with all of our friends the way that we wanted to. But I think it's a sacrifice worth making because I think it's so much better for the attendees to get to pick and choose and kind of play your own adventure and do stuff that way. That was one of the things I just had a conversation with Jack Donovan in here. And he said for the first time, he actually got a chance to enjoy the entire thing rather than being on the whole time. Yeah. Because he got to come as just a guest instead of being part of one of the stages or being a speaker or anything else. And he just got to absorb it, which I'm a little jealous of. Yeah. Who was the surprising speaker for you? I think the one that really comes to mind for me, there's two. One was Michael Foster just because having been involved with this event for so long and seeing where it was when I first came in and then how it was in 2017.  And it's not for everybody in the audience and that's fine. But the fact that Anthony is willing to say, I don't care. Come in and talk as long as you're trying to help men be better. And if that's the channel that you're doing it, then do it. And the fact that it did resonate with so many men in the audience was really awesome. The other one was Jeff Putnam, who's the one who kind of closed us out on Sunday. And man, his story, I'm not crying. You're crying. Like his story was pretty insane as far as the sacrifices that he's made or how much of a low point he was at, especially because I think a lot of people when they see what we're trying to do with men and you get your stereotypical, this is the guy who's into the hemisphere and it's the basement, willing nerd or the sad sack or whatever else. And it feels like, one, most of the men, the vast majority of the men who I've seen over the years of these conferences are not like that. But two, you get men who are like that and they're not they're not trapped that way. Jeff was homeless. He was he was having to sling a sledgehammer to break up concrete chunks to try and provide for a family that didn't want anything to do with them because he was he was a failure. He was a failure period by every definition of the word. But he stepped out of it. He improved and it wasn't just pretend and it wasn't just superficial. And he's now better off than most men in the country because he put in the work and he adapted these he adopted all these principles that we talked about here in these conferences and it works. So it was really cool to get to see his whole journey and his whole progression. And he's not a professional speaker. No, he's not going from city to city to city to conferences. No, I think it's probably one of his first gigs ever. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Overall, did it work? Did the whole conference work? It was risky. Socrates said we dared to make it work. Yeah, I think it did. Especially as we got a chance to talk to more of the women in 22 and to realize that and I understand the marketing. I understand the way why it was done the way that it was and the risk and everything else like that. And then to see how much of the the content and the the desire for what was actually going to be produced within 22 and same thing within 21. You know, you use this inflammatory language because it's Barnum and Bailey. You need to be able to get that to get the audience in and to get them to come and do things and to generate that kind of buzz.  He wants families to be good families. He really does want women to be great. He wants men to be great. He wants us to be able to embrace our complimentary nature and the fact that he allows us as speakers and as presenters and as audience members to be able to embrace that and do that as opposed to just feeding into the misogyny or the misundry or any of these other things that the world tries to throw at us. There's there's genuine intent there and so it worked because the intent was there and then he let the rest of us to kind of pick up that ball and run with it. Interesting. Yeah. I was talking with one of the female attendees last night and towards the end of the talk, I just put my hand out and shook her hand and said, thank you for coming. She goes, this is amazing. I said, you know, and I thought she was talking about the event. She was talking about the handshake and the way that I was addressing her. She says, every man that I met this weekend shook my hand with intent. And I quote that shook my hand with intent, made eye contact with me. She says, I felt like I was shaking the hands of men all weekend. She goes, I'm not used to that. That's wild. That's awesome. That's such a perfect little encapsulation of what it is that we're trying to do because obviously this is not a handshaking conference, you know, but that's so indicative and representative of the bigger thing. And it's trying to make men live up to what our full potential is, help women live up to what their full potential is and help society realize that the complimentary nature of that is better for everybody. And she got to experience that throughout the whole conference and then it got encapsulated in that whole concept of a handshake. Amazing. That's a win. It is. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I was talking to Jennifer Molesky who was sitting in this chair right before you. And I said, who stands out in your mind? Who did you enjoy talking to as far as other speakers? She said, Coach Greg Adams. Now, whoever would have thought that those two would be sitting next to each other and actually enjoying conversation with each other? I didn't expect that. Both very polarizing in their own right. 100%. Yeah. 100%.  We talked about this last week, like whatever dude. Okay. Whatever. Sorry, I lost your approval, Mr. Random Monster. Yeah, exactly. I should have checked with you first. Yeah. Is there a such thing as a man turning in his man card? I would say yes. There is. You can absolutely, masculinity is something that has to be built and it has to be maintained, which means it can be given up. You can do that.   And if I don't do it that way, I've given up my man card.  I think so too. Do you feel that when you spoke to the ladies at the 22 convention, did you have to go easy on them? Did you do red pill light? Or did you tell them the truth? Did you have to modify for ladies? Well, my experience with 22 is a little different because I didn't present or speak as a normal speaker. My wife and I did a question and answer. And so in a way, no, because I would say that the truth that we try and espouse, the way that I try and talk about things, I don't go for the shock factor anyway. I try to be articulate and I try to express truth and do it in a way that's palatable for people. And then what was awesome was that she was able to back up those same truths and do it in a way that it came from her perspective and her experience. And so it wasn't a watering down, but it was kind of a jab and a cross approach where they got to experience it from both of us. But no, I would say no, I didn't water it down or have to really modify. Could you give the same type of talk that you gave to the ladies? Could you give that talk on the 21 stage? Do you think? I don't think so. I think that you have to meet people where they are. I don't think that I can talk to my four-year-old daughter the same way that I can talk to my eight-year-old daughter. I don't think that I can talk to some of our close friends that we're connected with as couples the same way that we talk to other people that are in our neighborhood or go to church with us or things like that. And I think one of the responsibilities of being a truth teller is being able to convey that core truth. It's the same truth, but conveyed in a way that your audience is receptive to hearing it. So no, I don't think that I could have given my patriarch keynote presentation on the main 21 stage the same way, nor could I have given it in 22 the same way, nor do I think that I should have. I think it's socially obtuse to think that you can or that you should because that goes back to this idea of we're all equal and we're all the same in a very unrealistic kind of way. We're all equal in value, but it should be in a complementary way, and I think you should lean into what those differences are. Do you think you conducted yourself any different because your wife was present? Not as far as... I'm not saying that to trap you because I didn't see a difference. You were very congruent. It wasn't like when you're here on your own, and your wife was like, it's not like... No, the only thing that I would say is... Boys weekend out. Can't wait to get away. No, the only thing that was different was that I spent more time with her as opposed to hanging out with the other speakers. I was in bed earlier or stuff like that, and I don't even know if that's because she was here or if that's because I was in charge of MCing and I had multiple presentations to give and stuff like that or if it's because I'm older and the idea of staying out till four in the morning does not appeal to me or anything else like that. So there were changes. I just don't know if my wife is causal or correlated. Yeah, okay. Yeah, excellent. Last night, you and I were talking. I said, boy, I love your hair. It's long. I'm so used to that shaved head kind of thing that I've seen for a couple years now and that you come back with this main texture and dimension.  What was your answer to me? I'm not using anything. I've, man, this is this is interesting admission. I have fallen into weird health Twitter where I'm mouth taping to breathe better at night so I can sleep and I'm experienced because I love experimenting with things and I love the idea of it's boring to think that scientific labs and study and research has the answers to all things. I think we miss out on a lot of experimental nature of reality in their ways to just try things like that. And so one of the things I've been playing with is I haven't been shampooing my hair for a little over a month to see if my natural oils will come back and how healthy my hair is or anything else like that. And you combine that with the fact that I live in the dry desert and then all of a sudden injected into all this humidity and this is what we get now. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. So what is the purpose of not shampooing your hair and I'm not condemning it because I'm really I'm a firm believer and our bodies do naturally create everything that we need to look and feel good if we feed them properly. And my temptation is like for instance I know with beard care people say should I use beard wash or this product or that product and we both know people that have beard product companies yes people that we that we like and respect and so forth. And when I tell people I wash my beard once a week blasphemy sir exactly yeah and I said why would you want to strip what I call God's conditioner God's beard oil every hair follicle has its own little oil producing factory right with it yeah and every well every hair follicle in your body has an oil sack connected with it yeah so what the shine that I'm seeing bouncing off your hair that's Tanner Guzzi right that's the real deal that's not something that I got in a bottle yeah yeah and that's kind of the whole approach is we look at so many of so many things especially related to health that rather than getting back to the source you know rather than teaching us to breathe with our mouths closed and getting our jaws to grow the way that they're supposed to we take out teeth and we put in braces and we straighten the teeth in the smaller cavity that's created or rather than dealing with the fact that we are hormonally imbalanced because of all the different things that we're exposed to we just inject exogenous testosterone into ourselves or there's all these things that we do that just put band-aids on the solution or on the problem or it creates a new problem and it's a cascading effect yeah and I do think that there's this natural fallacy of the further you go back to nature then all of a sudden everything's better I think that there's a fallacy to that idea but what I'm willing to do is experiment and see what if this works and maybe it does maybe it doesn't but I'm willing to experiment with it and we'll we'll come to our own conclusions from there okay yeah how long will you do that I don't know until it gets the point that I either realize it does work or gets the point where it's starting to smell bad or something so far it's good so far it's good how do you know when it's working the fact that it does okay normally when my hair is this long it's this big poofy fro weird thing because it's all dried out because like a shampoo every day like you're supposed to and it doesn't it doesn't fall it doesn't do and I look like councilman jam from parks and recreation which is a terrible reference but that's about as as accurate as it gets so I don't I don't know what does work looks like up until this point it does work and doesn't work means it smells bad or it turns green or my kids are commenting on how I've got bugs in there or something else like that but until that point I guess it works are you doing the same thing with your beard yeah yep okay yeah excellent still trimming them still getting cuts doing things regularly you know it's not let's be a complete barbarian but experimenting okay that's interesting you're always there's something always happening you're trying something I remember one year you posted a picture of you with your face beaten and a black eye or something I'm like yep what is he doing now and I'm thinking you got in the ring yep a boxing ring yep and you're not a boxer nope you trained did it give you new respect for people like John Fitch oh absolutely absolutely I can't wait to get back in again even though I even though I got the crap kicked out of me yeah because not only did it give me a new respect for guys like John or Ed Latimore or these other guys it woke up something in me that wasn't there before same thing this year I uh it was Trath once I did a half Iron Man I've been watching that now and I'm like here's another thing he's doing right and so it'll be something new well maybe I think it'll be boxing again next year I would love to do a full Iron Man but we've got a new baby on the way and the amount of time and training and everything else like that but maybe it's BJJ maybe it's full boxing again but that's one of the things is I spent my entire life succeeding modestly better than modestly without ever having to try because I've been blessed with natural intelligence and I'm articulate and I can just talk my way into or out of whatever I want yes I was that kid who was a B B plus student and I didn't even bother to go to school or do anything else you can just kind of slide by and then as an adult and especially with responsibility of kids and family I realized how good it feels to try at things and to put myself out of my comfort zone and to have to lead from the front and do it that way and in a lot of ways how good it feels to fail and to realize that you're not as fragile as you think you are when you fail and you can learn different things about yourself from your failures and from your successes and so it is it's what's the next thing that scares me what's the next thing that puts me outside of my comfort zone what's the next thing that's going to require growth in an arena in which I'm uncomfortable growing and let's do that yeah yeah I was talking with Jack Donovan earlier you don't have to give anything away but apparently you inspired him to do something that made him pivot some writing that he's doing or something some kind of what how that happened man Jack and I it's been really fun and this is another thing that I can attribute to 21 because like a lot of the viewers like a lot of the people within our community you read the way of men and it that just resonates and Jack is someone that I've looked up to for a long time I love the way that he writes I love the way that he approaches masculinity I love his unapologetic nature in his aesthetics and his earnestness in his instagram posts and things like that there's something about Jack and his his sincerity that in a world of irony or apathy or anything else it's incredibly refreshing and I remember the first year that we spoke together I was kind of fanboying a little bit it's like oh I get to talk to Jack and we ended up one night spending like seven hours in conversation and every year since then that we've been together we just spend all this time most of the conference is spent between us talking together or we've done road trips up through his neighborhood and you know we've gone to lunch with him and he's met my wife and my kids or he's come down to where we are and we've had opportunities to meet so we've gotten to be friends over the years and what's fun is we find out that even though we come from very opposed ideas as far as you know I'm a I'm a member of the church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he was at one point a priest in the church of Satan and he used to be part of an occult pagan group and now he's starting this other kind of religious approach and these should be diametrically opposed but when it comes down to the underlying principles of these things we can find that we have a lot of common ground and so as he and I have talked unapologetically from where we come from these different directions then we've both been able to build each other up as far as well okay that idea makes sense in this context that makes sense in this context and then it builds and it grows from there so I'm very humbled by the fact that his new his new book that he's working on that I can see things that are a direct result of conversations that we've had over the years and that I've been able to be a part of helping him develop that it's been it's been fun and I can't wait to see how we continue to help each other develop and grow excellent what is next for Tanner Guzzi another kid okay yep number five that's the big thing on that's the big thing on the list but honestly it's more of a continuation of a push for I still love doing the style stuff I had six of my one-on-one clients I've had even more of my group coaching clients who have been here and I love seeing the progress that they make and the fact that these are the best dressed men in the room every single time we're here I love the style stuff it's a blast and I love the opportunity to do that and I'm feeling more and more of a calling and this pull it's like there's this this string attached to my chest that's pulling me out of make families aspirational let men know how awesome intentional fatherhood is how great it is to accept the responsibility of leading your family how much more love and satisfaction you can get in your marriage how much more satisfaction and love you can have with your children how much better their lives will be how much better your your wife's life will be how much better your own personal life will be and I hope that what's next for Tanner is that I'm this average guy because I'm surrounded by all these other aspirational fathers it's what I love being around guys like Zach Small because he makes me feel normal and makes me realize that I'm weak in some other other arenas in which he's strong and then I have to step up my game so it's continuing to push more and more for great intentional godly fathers what speaker has grown the most we're not all experts we all admit that we have vulnerabilities and weaknesses that's one of the things that I think is the hallmark of a lot of the speakers most of us is that we're just not we're not all superheroes right okay who has shown the most growth over the years that you have seen whose message is just like wow now that was okay yeah well it's fun to think about that because I think about you know I think about stuff like where where you and I are where we came in because I was the close guy and you were the beard guy and that's not what people come to hear us talk about anymore you know you think about guys like Zach who came in and he was talking more not hypothetically but a little bit more philosophically and and kind of ambitiously about what it was to be a father but he's not working a nine to five anymore yeah he's built a business and he's led his family and he's doing all these other things and so I would say I there's not one in particular that I can put my finger on but there are very few speakers who have been here with us especially since kind of this this big 2017 when we started bringing in guys like Zach like you like Ed and Alexander and all these other speakers Jack and others there are very few who are still talking about what it was that they were originally here to talk about because they've already they've already built that row of bricks in their lives and they're continuing to build the next one and the next one and the next one and that's what I love and that's that's one of the changes that we've seen within the conference that I love is that the speakers that do just want to talk about the same old have fallen off they've fallen away because the audience and the men here that are a part of 21 it doesn't mean that we've abandoned those things that we were talking about and we needed before we still need those things but that layer is laid it's time to build the next one and build the next one on top of that and so I love that the caliber of speakers are men that continue to do that and you see it in in so many of them so we are evolving as well yeah we better be I would be a waste for Anthony for me for everybody else if I were given the same presentation that I gave in 2017 or in 2016 yeah what a joke what kind of what kind of a man would I be if I stagnated at at that one level I had a good time talking with Jeff Putnam yesterday and it was kind of I only knew him from Twitter and then meeting him in person was very interesting and then talking to him in depth about what you had talked about the homelessness and so forth and how he grew and it was you know poop or get off the pot yep yeah a lot of times we have to get back into a corner before we make a rough decision to we're going to make it yep failure is not an option absolutely as far as your family is concerned you have a child coming number five number five number five do you raise child number five differently than you raise child number one yeah how do you not you know better and they're in a different position what are you going to do differently I don't know we'll figure it out as we go how are you different now now that five is on the way than when one is on the way what has fatherhood done to you as a man I am not as neurotic as I used to be I'm not as uptight about things which is not to say that I'm not uptight and I don't still like things to be a certain way and have expectations and stuff like that because I do and hopefully by the time number seven comes around that's improved even more so yes but I'm more of that that steady rock that the waves of the emotion of my children and the chaos of the world and everything else can break against instead of pulling under because I've done enough reps to realize what it feels like to have those waves crash against me yeah and so I am I'm more stable I'm more sturdy I'm more rooted and more grounded and I'm trying to build and become even more of that rooted and grounded a conversation with Tanner Gosey thank you sir thanks George