Pimp was the character and Bun was the vocalist, the rapper. I'll put money on Bun B today against any rapper out there. Like Bun is my guy when it comes to me. You'll put him against Jay-Z? All day long. Wipe him off the floor. You put him against Jay-Z, wipe him off the floor. You know that. You know that. Not even close. How do you feel? Okay, so Jay-Z, okay, hold me. You got $25,000. All day. And you got to bet your money on Jay-Z or Bun B going into this booth to do a new creative song today. Who do you put that $25,000? Bun, all day. Wipe him off the floor. You got to explain that to me. So, we on Boss Talk 101, 101. Here we go.  How did you end up even in the midst of it and embracing it? So, there was this place called Southwest Wholesale. Yeah, for sure. And they were writing our backyard. Okay. You know, I was with a group called Thugs of Another Kind. It was me and two other white guys. How old were you? This was right when I was 18. Okay.  Like, what are you gonna be mad at? Like, mom didn't give me my allowance this week, bro. Like, I can't go get my shoes, but no on, you know, on the real, so we put out that one album and that album didn't do well commercially, but we were able to sell 5,000 units out of the trunk of our car. Wow. Which led us to know that, hey listen, if you hustle, you can make money on those. And so, at that time, we were blessed to follow Kiki on tour, but who introduced me to screw was Hawk. Okay. I had met Hawk and after, you know, the idea of the country rap tune came about, our first instant reaction was, well, we gotta get Pimpsy and Bun B on it. Wow. At that time, they had just got off a big pimping and, you know, Mama Monroe, she was all about her business and her babies were getting 25 a piece and that just wasn't in my budget at that time. I was more than happy of sold everything I had just to, you know, get them on a bar, you know, whatever, right? But at the time, it just wasn't in our budget and so, you know, we respected Mama Monroe and Pimp and Bun and the obvious next choice was Hawk. He just had that country draw. He spoke country. He talked country. He walked country. And so, when we got big Hawk on the song, he introduced me to basically everybody in the club, Pokey and DJ Screw and everybody. And so, that's how the country rap tune ended up coming about. It was basically because of Hawk. You should best kill secret uncut and raw. On this country western rap, they tend to dust and draw.  So, he's the one that indoctrinated the whole thing. This is his thing, right? I just got the blessing. All right. That was it. You know, I had a long, long, you know, sessions with Pimp learning how to produce, learning music theory from Pimp C, which is mind-blowing. You know, here this guy was so talented at his craft, he studied other greats. Like, he would tell me about the Beatles and how they would do a, you know, a hook and then a short verse, eight bars and then another hook and then another short verse. He's like, toe down. Don't do 16s no more. You need to do 12s and eights. Bring back that hook back in. And this was a guy that, this was my run DMC, you know? My brother grew up on run DMC. I grew up on UGK. Right. It's crazy that you say that because we just had Bun on and Bun said that when they did the get throw, he only prepared for 12 bars when Jay-Z wrapped. It makes sense when you say that. And then you look back at the big pimping, Pimp C only did eight bars on that song. So what you're saying lines up with exactly what he told you. And if you were in the industry at the time and you got to hear the Bun B verse before Pimp got on it, Bun B actually had a longer verse on there if I'm not mistaken. And I think Jay-Z went back and he added the Pamela, Anderson Lee and all of that after the Bun verse, right? Okay. Kind of you go back and have to put another verse on this now. It's just too much. And then when Pimp C came on the song, it was just a rap. Pimp was the character and Bun was the vocalist, the rapper. I'll put money on Bun B today against any rapper out there. Like Bun is my guy when it comes. You'll put him against Jay-Z? All day long. Wipe him off the floor. You put him against Star Flakes? You know that. You know that. Not even close. How do you feel? Okay, so Jay-Z, okay, hold me. You got $25,000. All day. And you got to bet your money on Jay-Z or Bun B going into this booth to do a new creative song today. Who do you put that 25? Bun, all day. Why? You got to explain that to him. So we had one of the first all digital studios in Houston. This is circa 2000, 2001. Bun blessed me by doing an E40 record at my studio, which gave me one of my first gold records. I've seen Bun go rap a verse that he was featured on. The other guys had already laid their verses. After they hear Bun, hey man, erase that. I need to go rewrite this. Multiple times. Wow. Multiple times. The way that Bun is able to articulate his vocabulary and words was just unseen and unprecedented back then and still today. Well, it's Bun B, bitch, and I'm the king of moving chickens, not them finger licking. Stickin' niggas that be trickin', you need a swift kickin'. Mm-hmm. What would you say about Scarface? Because a lot of people say that he's one of the best. Get all niggas, remain vile, remain vile, hold the kippers, remain vile, remain vile, niggas trapped with full fives and ain't smite. So, Scarface, I hold him in a different light. I hold him as a founding father. Okay. Where Bun B was more of my, I don't wanna say my peer, because he's not, you know, we're not that close, but he was a lot closer to me than the Scarface music that I had grown up on. Go PD, they gettin' some way if they see me. My nigga, that's how these G's be. We three, me, C, M, S, O, P, Z. You know, Scarface, when you talk about Texas rap, Scarface is at the top. Today must be my lucky day.  Almost everybody's list. But when I'm talking about just playing, lyricists, time and time again, consistency, consistency at Bun. I can't really make that argument with you because I'm so Texas. Like, I don't know, man. Scarface is a storyteller. Bun is a lyricist. So you're right. They do rap two different types of rap, but face hard too many. Don't give a- Get it up for the invincible.  What you mean wrong? Face hard too many. Mary Jane is still on my playlist to this day, right? No doubt. But you go listen to Outkast's Tough Guy. Tough Guy. We took him for back in the pistol, the jack in dismissal, the stack in my crystal, now my torpedo sleep, I'm cracking your missile. Where he talks about called Tommy, I'm the messiah. Just the way he flips that pattern and that cadence, the whole thing, just I'll put that verse against anybody's verse. Like, he's one of the coldest MCs out there. Man, I agree. When it come to Bumbi, man, like I said, I grew up on that. I'm a PMC. That's my greatest of all time. And it don't matter about what you do. If he come in that room to rap with you, when PMC was doing it, and it's gonna be something he gonna do that's gonna steal the show every time. And listen, though, I just... Did you hear what I just said? You may do whatever, just like when he pull up with the mink with Jaina. He gonna always steal the show. TV ain't got no temperature.


It's Saturday, February 13th, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason. I'm DJ Grothi. For Good Reason is the radio show and the podcast produced in association with the James Randy Educational Foundation, an international nonprofit whose mission is to advance critical thinking about the paranormal, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. Before we get to this week's guest, I want to let you, our listeners, know that this upcoming week registration is opening for the amazing meeting in Vegas. The next TAM, the next amazing meeting, which is July 8th through 11th, is the largest event of its kind in the world, and I want to let the cat out of the bag a little. The staff at the JRF are telling me, and I believe them, that this is the best lineup of speakers and the best program in TAM's history. We have more workshops, some incredible shows lined up, a great list of confirmed speakers and panels, so keep your eyes on randy.org, and be sure to join us in Vegas this year for the next amazing meeting. Also, stay tuned for an exciting announcement about TAM at the end of this episode. I'm happy that my guest this week is Richard Dawkins, who, until his retirement in 2008, was professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University. And he's the founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He's the recipient of a number of awards for his writing on science, including the Royal Society of Literature Award and the LA Times Literary Prize. He's also been awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Award for the furtherance of the public understanding of science. In a number of polls, he's been named Britain's leading public intellectual and one of the top few public intellectuals in the world. He's the author of a number of critically acclaimed books, such as The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow, one of my favorites, The Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale, of course, The God Delusion, and his new best-selling book, The Greatest Show on Earth. Richard Dawkins, welcome to For Good Reason. Great to talk to you again. I'm delighted to be here. Richard, before we get into anything, I want to heartily thank you and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science for the generous initial underwriting support for this show. I think these podcasts are new ways to reach new people, reach out for science and critical thinking, and I really appreciate your foundation helping make this show happen. Well, I'm very pleased about that. I think podcasts are very valuable as well. And I'm delighted to be able to help the Randy Foundation. Well, thanks again. Today, Richard, is Darwin Day. Happy Darwin Day. And to you too. It is the 201st anniversary of Darwin's birth all over the world. People are celebrating today as kind of a secular holiday, a science holiday. I have plans myself tonight. The St. Louis Skeptical Society. We're putting on kind of a party. Do you have any special plans yourself? No special plans. I think we'll just drink to the memory of the great man. Right, The Great Man.  It's clear to me that you're in love with this great man, with Darwin, his ideas. Let me ask you, why Darwin, Richard? Why not equally be a champion of, say, Newton or Einstein or Galileo? You seem to have a special regard for Darwin. Is it something about his personality that you get reading his books? Or is it just that his idea more than the others is more powerful? What? I don't want to get into the business of ranking these great men of science. I don't want to say Darwin is a greater scientist than Newton or Einstein or Galileo. I think it's probably true to say that Darwin revolutionized the way ordinary people think about themselves, their life and the world more than any other. Einstein probably revolutionized the way scientists think about the world more than anybody else. But Darwin probably was the most subversive in the sense that he changed the way ordinary people think in the most revolutionary way. He changed our view of our place in the universe, our understanding of who we are, much like Freud might have changed our understanding in other ways, even if he's more discredited than these days. Or Galileo and Newton changed the way we saw the place of the world in the universe. But somehow I think the Darwinian achievement cut to the bone more. It really did make people feel we are just animals like any other animals. We are apes. We belong in in the great parade of living things. We're not special. Right. And in fact, I think that recasting of ourselves is one of the reasons people are so scared about evolution's implications. Seems to me that intelligent design people, they're not just so up in arms about evolution because of its atheistic implications, but because they're afraid that if we're just animals, if we're just apes, like you just said, then there's no reason to be humane or to be good. As you've engaged those cultural competitors with this new book, have you been able to see maybe empathize that that's the real fear? I think you probably said a lot that I think that probably true. In Victorian times, I think people thought it was a bit kind of undignified to be to be relegated to being apes. But I think you're probably right that nowadays, one of the problems people have is that they feel if we're just animals, then there's no reason to be good. We might as well just, you know, have a wonderful time and be selfish and horrible and and just sort of vicious as some people imagine nonhuman animals are. But the truth is that the great apes, for instance, are often more humane than people. Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't bank too heavily on that. That might be true, but no, both is probably not true of common chimpanzees. But in any case, it doesn't matter because we can be as good or as bad as we want to. And let's try and be good. It doesn't matter whether other species are or are not more wicked than we are. That isn't where we get our morals from anyway. So the big fear about evolution is the fear of moral decay. But you say that that fear is is misplaced. Because we can kind of figure out our morality, whether or not it's derived or informed by evolution. Yes. I mean, I don't want to say that that we don't get any part of our morality from our evolutionary history. I'm sure we do. But the way to understand that would not be to look at what other species do like common chimpanzees or baboons or bonobos and say, well, that's what they do. So that must be what we do as well. It's rather more that we would get it from evolutionary principles. I think we probably can make a rather good evolutionary case for where we get the basis of our morals from. But then it gets refined and developed in in cultural history by by philosophers, by lawyers, etc. And by just people thinking and and and talking. Right. Secular ethics gives us the justifications, the reasons for our moral behavior. Evolution doesn't tell us this is the way it should be. It may describe how it is, but not it may describe how it is. And it may it may give us some clue as to where we get some of our our moral inclinations from your last mega bestseller, the God delusion. We've spoken about it a few times on my previous show. In that book, while you touched on evolution, you really focused actually on demolishing belief in God, which you've argued, I think persuasively, can be harmful. Richard, did you get such a backlash from that book?  Is that why you followed it up with this new book, this powerhouse on evolution, like you're getting back to basics? I wouldn't like to accept, I think, that I was getting out of my own subject. I mean, I do think perhaps unfashionably that the question of whether a supernatural gods exist is a scientific question. And I think it's a question that should be answered in the negative. But I don't think it's outside the field of science. I think that it really is in the field of science because it's a scientific question, whether the universe was created by an intelligence or war was not. I think that is a scientific question. So I don't think that I stepped outside my own field. Some people have said that I stepped into another person's field, namely theology, but I wouldn't accept that theology is a field at all. I don't think there is a legitimate subject of theology that's worth studying. And when you say the God claim is a scientific claim, you're in fact going against the prevailing view among many scientists that say, oh, religions over there, science is over here and never the twain shall meet. I am going against that. I don't think that's very rational. I think it's politically expedient. And I suspect that's why many of our scientific colleagues go along with that, because they want to appease religious apologists, the religious lobby, by saying you don't have to be afraid of science. Science is OK. Science is compatible with your religious belief. So you can feel good about science. I think that's politically why they do it. But actually, I don't have very much time for that view that science is over here and religion is over there and never the twain shall meet. Right. Even in the rationalist world, the rationalist community, you've been pilloried for daining to criticize religion from a scientific vantage. Some people say, well, you're out of bounds. Other people just say the way you do it is wrong. It's not seductive enough. You know, the whole framing wars, the debates on on the blogs, you it seems like you're just hopscotching over all of that. You're saying, yes, I don't really. I mean, I sometimes worry a little bit about the problem of being diplomatic. And there are times when I can be persuaded by some of my colleagues that it would be better for, for example, for the cause of getting proper science education in American schools. If people like me and PZ Meyers and Jerry Coyne and others were a bit nicer to religious people. But I think it's OK if some people are like that, but I really do passionately care about what's true, what's true about the world, what's true about the universe. And I'm not one who is going to compromise on that for the sake of of of some kind of political expediency. Others can do that and maybe they're politically wise to do it. But I can't go along with that. I care too much about the truth. I do interested in the truth. It really is an interesting question, whether there is a supernatural guiding intelligence in the universe. It's an interesting question. Not one to be swept aside as nothing to do with science. Oh, that's religion. It has no connection with science. As we've discussed previously for you, the evolution creation is in battle is less important, or at least for the purposes of your last book, it was less important than the God question. Has your sense of priorities shifted with this new book? Or actually, I think what I'm hearing you say is that both of these books are two important aspects of the same exact argument. Yes, I think that's true. I mean, it is the case that in the latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, I don't actually attack God. And so, I mean, to that extent, I've shifted. But I haven't really shifted my own ground. I've simply shifted the topic of conversation, which is the evidence that evolution is a fact. Whereas the previous book, The God Delusion, was is there any evidence for a supernatural creator? Indeed, also, is there any evidence against such a claim that God exists? Oh, well, if you're going to ask that question, then, of course, there's no evidence, there's no absolutely conclusive evidence that all sorts of potential things don't exist, we like fairies and so on. But the onus is on those who want to believe in something outlandish, like a fairy or a god, to provide some positive evidence. There's an infinite number of things that you can't strictly speaking disprove. But you don't even bother to disprove fairies and goblins and leprechauns and things. And the same could be said to be true of God, or gods. What I was getting at, though, is that a contrast I see in your arguments and some of your colleagues called the new atheists from the old atheism arguments is that you used science and kind of evidence from science to argue for atheism or against God belief. So you weren't just using old philosophy arguments, right? You some of you have actually marshaled kinds of scientific arguments against the God claim. Yes, I'd be surprised if you didn't find the equivalent of such arguments in such writers as Bertrand Russell. Victor Stenger, who's a very interesting writer and could be called one of the new atheists, a physicist, he actually goes further than I would and says you can actually make a positive case for evidence against the existence of God. He's who I was thinking of. One of my last interviews as yet unerred on my last show, Point of Inquiry, was exactly on that point, so it's on my mind, yeah. Yes, okay. In greatest show on earth, you're not only Darwin's biggest advocate, you're also on the offensive against intelligent design creationism. You liken ideas to Holocaust deniers. So for you people who disagree with you about lies origins, they're not just incorrect, they're also denialists. Can't they just have a different view and you leave it at that or must they be denialists? Well, I mean, you could say the same thing of Holocaust deniers as well. You could say they just have a different point of view, but both these deniers are flying in the face of massive quantities of evidence. I've been a bit taken aback by the hostility that that comparison has aroused. It's as though people are saying that by comparing evolution deniers to Holocaust deniers, I'm saying that they are Nazis, that they are motivated by a sinister political agenda. Instead, you're just saying they're denying history. Exactly, they're both denying history. The quantity of evidence that you have to deny is about as strong for the case of Holocaust deniers and for the case of evolution deniers. Wow. So tell me how someone believing something that we think is nonsense about life's origins, someone believing intelligent design, creationism, whatever flavor of it, how does it really matter? I understand why you personally would be up in arms about it because you're a big booster of evolution. You're maybe the world's leading advocate of that view, but it doesn't really impact my neighbor's life in a day to day sort of way. If someone he knows believes in creationism versus evolution. I guess that's true. You could say the same thing about believing the earth is flat. You can lead a moderately successful life as a street sweeper or a dustbin empty or something, believing that the world is flat because you never have to go outside your hometown. But if you ever found yourself needing to go to Australia, you would be in trouble. But it's perfectly true that you don't actually need to understand about evolution in order to be born, get educated somewhat, get married, have children and die. And that's the end of it. But it's such a waste of a life, it's so tragic, it's so sad to be born into a world and not understand, firstly, that it's round, and secondly, not understand where life came from, why you exist, the astonishing, wonderful facts of the evolution of life, the fact that we're surrounded by plants that give us sustenance by herbivorous animals that eat the plants, by carnivorous animals that eat the herbivorous animals, by all these different species, they've all come into being by the same process, evolution by Darwinian natural selection. It's a mind-numbing fact, it's a beautiful fact. And what a tragedy to go to your grave without understanding it. Although as I say, you can, if you like, muddle along through a boring little life without understanding that, just as you can without understanding that the earth is round. I hear you really arguing, not only about the importance of the truth of evolution, but that if you don't believe in it, your life's going to be diminished. You're kind of making an existential argument there. That's right, I mean, it would be like never appreciating music or never appreciating a good sunset.  I think your tone in greatest show on earth, let's see if you agree with me, I think it's a little different than in the God delusion. You said already you don't attack the belief in God in greatest show on earth, but there are still atheistic complications for Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection that you go into in greatest show on earth. While you pull no punches in how wrong-headed the arguments of the intelligent design folks are, would you say that, are you less stridently atheistic or is that just not a topic that comes up? Well, I don't actually think I was strident in either of the books. I like to think it's humorous actually, but I'd like to think that the God delusion is a funny book rather than a strident book. Well, when I agree with you, of course, I'm biased. It was a great read, but... I mean, I think there's a difference between poking fun at people's silly beliefs and being strident about them. And I think I poke fun in a fairly robust way, I suppose, but I think that even the God delusion should not properly be described as strident. There's a fair degree of sarcasm there, a fair degree of what I hope is humor, perhaps a sharp-edged humor, but it gets strident. I consider myself strident. I guess it depends on your definition of the term, but it sounds like you would not want to be considered strident, as if strident somehow meant close-minded or unthinkingly belligerent or something like that. Well, I think it's sort of, it's got an implication of being rather loud. It's got an implication of being kind of yelling at the top of your voice.  I would say Dinesh D'Souza is strident. I'd say people who adopt that kind of preachy manner of speaking who believe that by yelling the loudest, you can win a debate. That I think is strident, but somebody who uses wit and sarcasm like, say, Christopher Hitchens, he's not strident. When he uses strong language and he's a devastating debater because he's got such caustic wit, but that isn't strident. Even as witty and soft-spoken as you might be, you're rather loud just by virtue of the fact that you have the largest megaphone out there.  So you come out with a polemic or an argument for one view versus another view. At least you can get why people might say, oh my gosh, Richard Dawkins is being strident again. Well, it's not my fault if my books sell very well, but I don't think I shout loud. I like to think that I put my arguments clearly. It's true that there are some people who even mistake clarity for stridentcy. And they're so used to mealy-mouthed obfuscation that even clarity sounds strident or even offensive. I wanna talk a little bit more about Greatest Show on Earth. Who's the main audience for it? I really don't see it being read in Bible school, although when I was in Bible college, I did read your books, other books, kind of on a know thy enemy basis. Do you think you're gonna change minds? Are you gonna convert intelligent design creationists into Darwinians? Or are you mainly just going after the fence sitters, folks who aren't hostile to science but haven't thought much about evolution before? I think realistically, it's the latter. I think realistically I'm not likely to convince people who are real died in the world creationists, but it's only because they're not gonna read it. And I mean, I've met this over and over again that there's a certain type of closed mind that is afraid to read a book which is at all likely to convert them. But I think there is a very, very large constituency of fence sitters who probably show up in some of the alarming statistics of 40% of United States and Gallup polls believing in young earth creationism. I think a great many of that 40% probably haven't really thought about it very much and might not resist a book which attempts to change their mind. And so I think it's those fence sitters that I really want to reach. And also people who are not fence sitters who are opposed to creationism but perhaps need a bit of a brush up on what the arguments are because they may have forgotten them or even may never have known them. That's what I loved most about the book. I know a lot of rationalist types, people who are in the organized atheist or skeptic or humanist movements, right? Who might not be up on the science. Not that they take the science as faith claims so they know enough about it to be persuaded but they're not steeped in it. This book is an entree into that. Couple more questions on the book. What would you say is the strongest argument against creationism? Give me just one, the one big argument that if you had just a few minutes at a cocktail party and you wanted to wallop a cultural competitor what would that argument be? I suppose it would probably be the comparative study of molecular genetics because that has now become so enormously detailed since Darwin's time, well really since Watson and Crick because every living creature contains within every one of itself a massive database of digital information which is written in the same language, the same machine language as the digital information in every other living creature and where the actual details of the genes themselves are very often so alike that you can actually trace the same gene through different animals, different plants, the same gene but with minor differences. So you can actually count the number of minor differences that separate any species from any other species for any particular gene, you can do the same thing for lots and lots of genes. When you do that, you find a very elegant, a very beautiful hierarchical pattern, a branching tree pattern which can only intelligently be attributed to a family tree. It's a family tree, it's a pedigree, that's the only sensible explanation and it is so detailed, the evidence just piles on massive amounts of evidence, piling on massive more amounts of evidence and it is just utterly convincing, the more you look at it, the more convincing it becomes and that of course is just one kind of evidence and then you look at the geographical distribution, you look at the fossil record, you look at comparative anatomy, it all adds up in a totally convincing way, if only you sit down and look at the evidence. That's what's amazing about Darwin coming up with the theory in that he didn't even have the evidence from molecular biology, he didn't have these new lines of evidence and yet he saw what really no one else maybe Alfred Russell Wallace accepted saw. Yes, I mean, that really is just to say that although the molecular evidence is the most powerful evidence, even without the molecular evidence, the evidence is extremely powerful as Darwin showed. So he had the evidence from comparative anatomy, he had the evidence from geographical distribution which was particularly persuasive to him. He also had the evidence from domestication which I do quite a bit about in The Greatest Show on Earth as well. So I think what that is telling us is that the fact that Darwin could come up with such a convincing case even without molecular evidence shows that now we've got the molecular evidence which is the most convincing evidence there is. How much more convincing is the whole story? Last question, Richard, you were contrasting comparing the God delusion with The Greatest Show on Earth and suggesting they're two sides of the same argument. Would you settle for everyone believing in evolution if they also believed in God or do you think it's important to really be all in? Like to follow what I think are the implications of evolution and give up God belief completely which is more important, I guess I'm asking. That's a very penetrating question because I think that does get to the heart of the political argument. We were talking about earlier there are many of my colleagues especially in America who would quite clearly settle for they're quite happy about people believing in God. What they really, really want is to get evolution properly taught in the schools. And that of course is immensely important and it really breaks my heart to think of children being denied this very, very important truth about the fact of evolution. Nevertheless, I do think that it's only a part of the truth and I don't think that I would actually go along with them. I think the National Academy for example has more or less said this. I don't think I'd go along with them in saying that that is so important that we can forget about the what I think of as the larger battle of whether there is any kind of supernaturalism going on in the universe at all. I do think that supernaturalism is a betrayal of science. And that's a larger question than the particular question important of that is about evolution. So to finish up before we say goodbye I want to announce for our listeners and I'm very grateful to you for this. You have agreed to be the keynote speaker for the next amazing meeting in Vegas this next July 8th through 11th, TAM 8. Yes, I look forward to that very much. We're very excited as well. Thank you Richard for joining me on For Good Reason. I really enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed it very much too, thank you. And now the honest liar considers the high price of nothing. Here's Jamie Ian Swiss. How much would you pay for nothing? Recently I've been thinking about homeopathy because on January 30th, skeptics in the United Kingdom, America, Australia and New Zealand gathered in the world's funniest attempted suicide. Okay, normally attempted suicide isn't funny but in this case it's hilarious. Because all these skeptics around the world tried to kill themselves with overdoses of homeopathic remedies. Now that's funny. Why is it funny? Because since no one died from the attempt which I suppose is a good thing for everyone except the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths a representative of the council later admitted publicly that, quote there's not one molecule of the original substance remaining, close quote in the dilute forms of these remedies that you buy over the counter. Whatever it is, whatever the dilutant is is the only thing you're buying whether the dilutant is water or alcohol or sugar that's what you're buying. Eventually the result is so dilute it is indistinguishable from the dilutant. Now we didn't just discover this the other day. In 1842 physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote an essay entitled Homeopathy and it's kindred delusions of very good choice of words. As the honest liar I'm interested in deception and in homeopathy though it's sometimes hard to tell the deceivers from the deceived. Is it the manufacturers? Is it the doctors? Is it the pharmacists who sell these things? Do they know or do they not know that they're selling nothing? Do they tell their customers? Are they willing to tell their customers? And it's only in this contemporary Western world of people with too much education, too much money, too much good health and too much spare time in their hands where those same people are more eager to believe that their doctors and pharmaceutical suppliers are the enemy and that the useless con man homeopathic profiteers and alternative healers at their local yoga parlor are somehow their real friends. Now homeopathy is one of the most scientifically studied alternative medicines in the history of the world certainly in the history of modern science and I will leave it to other sources to provide you with the details of the mathematics of the procedures for dilution of the magical shaking of the notion that like cures like all the mystery magical voodoo that describes and defines homeopathy but no matter which aspect of homeopathy you are examining, the bottom line is it is magic. It's not the kind of magic I do where something actually happens. It's a delusion, it's wishful thinking. It is in fact epistemological hedonism. You know, if it feels good, believe it. It is obscenely expensive. It is a waste. It is a tragic loss of resources to all of humanity and let someone say it plainly now, okay? I'll say it plainly. It is downright idiotic. Perhaps you think I exaggerate. Perhaps I am merely unkind. Well, consider this item that came across my desk recently for a product called Nelson's Noctura, a homeopathic remedy for insomnia. Reading from the website, it says, a bad night's sleep is often the result of stress. A refreshing natural night's sleep will help reduce that stress. Wait a minute, let me get this prescription right. So in other words, these experts recommend that getting a good night's sleep instead of a bad night's sleep will then reduce your stress. Well, WTFF, here's the best part. This is a medication for the relief of insomnia. What does it say? Does not cause drowsiness. What? Does not cause drowsiness. You're trying to get some sleep but this will not cause drowsiness.  People like to ask, what's the harm? What's the harm in homeopathy if it's just water or sugar pills? What's the harm if that's what folks want, if it offers a little comfort? Well, putting aside the cases of people who abandon conventional medicines, you know, that's medicine that works in place of ineffectual alternative therapies, put that aside, just think about what else you could do. What else you could do with your time, do with your brain, do with your valuable human resources instead of investing them in literally nothing. How many schools could we build? How many libraries could we keep open a few hours longer each week? How many children could we feed? Write your own list of whatever it is that you value with the energy, the time, the resources wasted on nothing. And those aren't the only costs. There's also, of course, the money. So, how much would you pay for nothing? Well, a 2009 report tells us that Americans spend $3 billion a year on homeopathy. That's right, $3 billion a year on nothing. Isn't there something we could do with that money? And isn't something better than nothing? This is Jamie Ian Swiss, and I am The Honest Liar. Thank you for listening to this episode of For Good Reason. For updates throughout the week, find us on Twitter and on Facebook. To get involved with an online conversation about this episode yourself, join the discussion at forgoodreason.org. Views expressed on For Good Reason don't necessarily reflect the views of the James Randy Educational Foundation. Questions and comments on today's show can be sent to infoatforgoodreason.org. For Good Reason is produced by Thomas Donnelly and recorded from St. Louis, Missouri. For Good Reason's music is composed for us by Emmy Award-nominated Gary Stockdale. Contributors to today's show included Jamie Ian Swiss and Christina Stevens. I'm your host, DJ Grovey.


She says, what do you see? What do you see with these people? I say, oh they're just adorable. They're just like two big teddy bears and they're just so adorable. They're just like, if I could tell you what their heart is telling me, it's just telling me love me, adore me just as I am. You know, just accept me, just for who I am. You know, don't buy the mask. Don't put any faith whatsoever in the mask. This is what everyone we meet is calling out. That inside they're like this little child that's like saying, please just love me. I'm suffocating because I don't have enough love. I want to soak it in. And what a joy for me. I show up and it's like, I know my task is just to love. No judgment whatsoever. No sense of trying to talk to them. Because it was just, it was like feeling she needed to get in the metaphysics of overeating and why you overeat and what, you know, try to kind of get in the lecture and everything. But she, she had the feeling there was no opening for that. Like, they just looked at her like shocked if she would have even mentioned weight or diet drink or whatever, they would have been horrified. Like, what is she doing in our house, you know? And so, but it was a good experience. Again, for personal, I sit down and talk. I said, no, it's, we just, we just were told by Jesus in the Beatitudes, judge not. You know, we don't have to try to figure out this scheme. We just come back to those three steps of forgiveness. Start off with your projection. She was, she was feeling, you know, that she had a lot of conditioning about weight and what that meant to be overweight and, and suffering, you know, all of her beliefs and suffering. All that was going on in her mind and she was projecting it onto them that they were seemingly playing the part, acting it out. As if they trained for the part. She got that. Oh, curse is coming. That's just Janet now. She put in another extra 50, 60 pounds. Kind of like Robert De Niro did for the boxing movie. You know, Jack Dempsey, he had to put on all this extra weight. Robert De Niro had to put on a big belly, you know, for, for this boxing movie. He thought, do weight training, but it's almost like they're just, we're all part of the setup. And then they said, can we turn up the wheezing? You could do that, you know, for her. It's really cranking up there. And then, and then she'll really get in touch with her beliefs about health. About what health is. She had to forgive all of her beliefs and concepts on health and open up to the, to the Jesus Christ definition of health, which is inner peace. That's how Jesus defines health, inner peace. That's true. That's true. Judgement, yes. It's when the cosmos was, when the big bang soon to happen and the cosmos was projected out. It was, it was healed instantaneously. It was, it wasn't even a, it wasn't. That's how Mormon took the Holy Spirit to handle the belief in separation. It was just, it was simultaneously handled. That's why the third step is, oh believe me, the Holy Spirit's not struggling with, with the forgiveness. As soon as it's offered over, it's gone, instantaneously. It's like a, it's like a little bead of water hitting a hot frying pan. It's, you know, it's gone. It's dissolved. It's evaporated. The instant that drop of water hits that hot frying pan, it's gone. So, so that's important to realize in the sense that if there must be some kind of judgment and the ego invented judgment of taking the cosmic explosion of images, we could say, the cosmos and then making hierarchies, arranging the images into preferences or constellations based on judgment. You know, that's what judgment is. It's to make a hierarchy of illusions. Thereby, completely wiping out the idea that it's all one illusion. It's just, that's what preferences and judgments do. They make a hierarchy of what is all the same. So then Jesus comes along and he seemed to not buy into that hierarchy. The lame could walk. The blind could see. What do we got here? Palsy, no problem. Leprosy, no problem. Oh, here's one that has demons. It's got demons in it. No problem. Good part. We have a cold. We have, you know, epilepsy. It just doesn't matter what the problem seemed to be to Christ. They were all the same. They were all the same illusion, ego. And he had overcome the belief in the ego. So that's why it didn't really matter. Even that one story of the woman who comes up and she just touches the hem of his garment from behind. He goes, oh, who touched me? And she's made whole. Just from touching the hem of his garment because he's just radiating the sense of all, of oneness and love and innocence. And there is no problem that can enter into that. So what a great coffin. When you think about, this is the calling of your life, is to just join with that same essence, that same Christ mind. What a great calling. You couldn't possibly have a higher calling than to do that. And forgiveness is the process we're working with. It's simply not, you're not just denying the reactions that happen.  The reactions that seem to happen would what be what we would call in psychotherapy the presenting problem. The therapist always listens to the patient give the presenting problem. And usually it's through invitation. Tell me about yourself. The therapist. Open-ended questions. Open-ended questions. Tell me about yourself. And then come the presenting problems. And there may be quite a lot of presenting problems. And when you're working with the patient, you never go for the jugular. You know, if they seem to have like a major issue with their mother or their father. You know, you could work on other issues and have some gains where they start to loosen from those hurts and grievances to come towards the central problem. It's the same with us when we're working with people. If you go for the ego, if you go for the jugular, it's like that clip we saw called The Thaw when some of you might now see the whole movie but Captain Janeway basically tries to remove the environment from the ego. He tries to take away the whole artificial environment. And it's fine until the ego notices that it's happening. And then it's like a red alert.  So the Holy Spirit has to work very carefully with the mind in dismantling and dispelling this ego starting with the presenting problems, bringing it back. And Suze is right. Jesus had just come here and said, this world is an illusion. Good afternoon, good evening. He just disappeared. It wouldn't have made much of a murmur. A couple of people just went, is a crazy man here. And it was an apparition. He was just here for a couple of minutes and he said this crazy thing. The world is an illusion. Then he said, good afternoon, good evening and good night. He took a bow and poofy was gone. Okay, what do you have for dinner? It's like, no, Jesus took three years of public ministry to really say there's something here at the core that we've got to get at. Why would he have told all those caribals? Why would it have been so patiently to sit with people at their dinner time and go when they came into the fields to relax in a friendly, respectful way, say, talk about these things. And even when he did that, it was still deep. I mean, it was deep for the apostles. Most of them were fishermen and they're not used to getting into such deep metaphysics. And he was telling lots of caribals to try to make it as understandable as possible. And that's what I've tried to do with my life. I just tell the caribals, respond to people as they question, you know, kind of meet them right where they're at as best as I can, and then keep coming at it from different angles and then publish it to the world. Put it all over the internet. Oh, I hear YouTube's hot. Okay, good, I'll start doing YouTube's or MySpace or they give you free space on there.


Hello everyone and welcome to one of two Jurassic World to Game videos today because not only do we have a new creature that's you know we're gonna do the tournament video but in today's video we're checking out the new freaking boss and this boss is also just been released last week in Jurassic World alive as a raid boss but here we go in freaking Jurassic World the game they haven't forgotten about it they forgot about us so we are able to take this guy on and what's really good about these boss battles now is that the damage you know you unlock DNA as as you sort of progress but it carries over so if I did a trillion damage in one battle it would constantly go normally you'd be like oh I'd do a little bit and then I'll save and that'll be it not this however so I'm really looking forward to it it's imperative suit just and it's imperative that we win so I mean really we want flyers flyers our best um now it does have the 2,700 health which means that we need well we need about that much to kill it obviously but at the same time I think that's probably okay but we'll go we'll go with something like that shall we shan't we yes we will we might end up speeding oh no there it is oh it's baby smooth I'm so used to the way it looks and what's we call in Jurassic World alive which has a lot more detail but here he's he's kind of smoothened out I assume that's because they are using the same model um or it's a very similar one so it doesn't matter what we really do here all I want is basically DNA because the way this game is oh are we okay pause and oh pause okay a little bit of a glitch there the way this game is like and the way the tournament's laid out is I mean we could try to get everything like we could try and get you know they use so many reserves do so many blockages uh clear out the pipes you know all that lovely jazz um or we could just go for like loads of attack um and I think we need to get it to level eight uh in order to do something in particular how now how's it gonna get up does it I kind of want it to go oh it's just like reverse the animation is this the first time we've had a crocodile boss I don't think it is I feel like we've had uh a crocodile boss before um so one two three four and let's go for that uh oh and it's dead again yeah we need to get it to like I said level eight in order for us to get super DNA I think it's like 50 or something if we get level eight or at least it used to be I don't know anymore I just think I play this game it's true I do I played a lot actually um well I try to I try I try to like every day I like how the hell's not going on that's brilliant I try every day to um like get the pack because if you do all the missions and you get the pack you're like 200 bucks ish um every day and that that really does build up also I realize in this game there there's like an offer to buy something and it's it's just like oh yeah he 150 quid yeah please it's like 150 quid for 40 bucks what the fuck oh could you imagine wow 40 000 bucks I think it is uh or something like maybe not 40 000 probably an excess but just the fact that this game has something that you could just you know 150 quid gone just like that in an app game terrifying oh my god but anyway I digress oh it's a spinny spin it's a spin right it is the dragon uh well I think we're just going to keep on going sorry I've not long had lunch so excuse me I would make a funny do the ha ha funnies and then put on the echo but you guys can't hear the echo I can't there's no echo because I've got my mic set up so when I'm recording a video I have a this one and then just underneath it is my streaming mic so depending if I want to go on a stream or if I want to actually record a video and have good quality audio we didn't just have to record the audio for a video and a stream we can easily switch over to that one and have the effects and stuff uh because I mean I was trying to I was recording videos with the streaming mic and it was making this weird popping sound I had no idea why I was doing it I tried everything try switching the cable try switching like I could only assume that it's something to do with my mixer and I'm not spending hundreds to replace the mix sorry not to go to happen um so we are on level six actually oh sorry stage six of of it and we're doing really well is it even increasing much oh wow we're whittling it down by one each time I don't mind and the thing is I need DNA and there isn't really a great way to get DNA in this game oh god it killed it the dragon bleh it died um all right I think that was an all-out attack right so I could pretty much just go for that I think maybe one oh you fucky right so we want to do as much damage as we can right so if it goes for like four attack um okay it doesn't go for anything because I kind of want to just do as much as I can here uh one two three well that'll be all right even if blocks for two yeah which it does you've always got a factor and then we can just go for an all-out attack when it goes for the most amount of attack just to do as much damage as possible because remember the more attacks you stack on top of each other the higher the multiplier goes so the more damage we end up dealing so that was four out of six so he's got two block which means that we can do like 26,000 damage as long as the only box or two which it does sweet and I think that all counts it's not how much you take off of it's like the total I think even if the excessive damage I've done just don't know so we should be sad nice and comfy and just be getting lots and lots of DNA hopefully anyway I don't know we'll find out you're definitely gonna kill me now though I think four is probably enough I'd be surprised oh actually it was very close Imperator zoot just now oh what a lovely crocodile so wait we're into 72,000 oh no never mind I was wrong so well I mean we did some of those missions I guess but really the damage is what you want because look at this 200 300 400 very good how about 750 very good 10,000 heck yeah and he just keeps going and going and going it's beautiful um so I will just have a quick look here oh it's reached level seven okay so you know there's some decent amount of uh super DNA already collected uh what I will do is because I haven't actually just done the rounds here in our first video of today oh we haven't had two oh my god is it going to be three videos today or should I save it I don't know we could upgrade that but it would be okay I did have a look at the trades but they were all naff unless we've got some new ones we do have custom trades so this is the only way that you know without selling dinosaurs that we can get DNA and that's to sell decorations for uh DNA so we could click a John Hammond click the name we get 250 250 which I guess it's all right or we click decoration click John Hammond and click loyalty points and get 250 loyalty points um and I really don't know which one's better I always think that loyalty points are better just because then what I can do is I can go in here and if I want to I can click solar greenhouse and I can get 500 DNA there and not only that I get some you know I get some other rewards I might get books I also got 190 back from that it was 2000 but even then what's that 10 10 trades less than that to get it and you get basically one off so let's say with nine trades eight yeah so I don't know I feel like you do get DNA doing that whereas you don't get VIP points just doing though oh who's in me what's it's what you're called um the DNA you don't get VIPs from doing the DNA so we're gonna we're gonna continue because we're gonna just want to see how much damage we can do to this thing um so we're gonna go into pterosaurs again I kind of don't want to do my best one oh you know we we could do actually we could do metrophodon metrophodon because we just buy back because I think we've got at least four recharges um so again what's really good about this is I think it's still only two hits to kill it at level eight um and you get a lot of DNA like 1500 DNA isn't something to be sniffed at but that's that's a decent amount of DNA um and then I mean I've never maxed it I think I've only ever maxed the missions once just to see what happened when we got 89 out of 89 and it was like congratulations you did it you can't get any more so it's like oh okay so there's no point um and I don't know if there's a limit to just doing the damage dealing one so you could probably keep on going and get thousands of DNA thousands absolutely thousands um and I mean the type of game that this is it doesn't really selling a dinosaur is never a good thing never a good thing because you get half your DNA back unless you know selling a dinosaur unless you don't need it it's good I suppose but even then it's like oh well you sell it you're gonna lose 50 percent it's probably what Ludia took in to Dressable of the live with the boosts I suppose like oh where'd it go oh there it is it's back right let's go for that and then four reserves so we only do 3,000 damage here instead of 18,000 which I was really hoping so you kind of you kind of do want to get its health higher um that's probably why they haven't increased its health too much so it's about 3,000 to start with and now it's 5,000 so even then it's only the what like 5,000 a hit uh so yeah there's another 5,000 so that's probably got us the 1,500 DNA which is pretty decent level 11 so now it's 5,900 and it could kill me if it wants to and it has and have a dosy right so now we want to want to survive for as long as possible and do as much damage for as much as possible so he's only got one block so one two doesn't kill him factor in the one block and then I'm gonna block once in case he only has four attacks which he does okay so that's another 6,000 is it so it must be like 500 each each time it goes so this should be 6,400 right something like that let's have a look yeah so it gets about like 500 each time oh and it went for one okay so it can only block for two oh it could block for three I suppose so one two doesn't kill it three does factor in two and then two block oh it's gonna five oh I don't know I'm kind of hoping we survive I don't know if we survive four hits though I really don't think so can we survive four hits uh yes we we could do actually we could survive four hits um oh okay okay um right so let's play it safe here oh I don't know that's gonna be a lot but I think I can still survive four hits I think I can oh it goes for one okay so it's got three um so one two and then my may as well just you know try this oh okay okay watch it go for seven now knowing that I don't have three block oh never mind oh it's slowly whittling me down oh I don't like it no no no no so well now we can go for four reserves and three block um yeah I'm kind of curious how is there must be a way for us to use our boss battle creatures right in this oh god oh okay okay okay was that an all-out attack I think that might have been I'm gonna factor in one just in case factor in one just in case here um and hopefully we survive the next round and then we can just go for all-out attack and just do as much damage as possible I think there is some way of us attacking other bosses with us but I think it's only in the the selection I don't think we could do it in here it's a different type of battle oh perfect right okay let's just do as much damage as we can maybe we'll get like 3000 dna for this yeah we do boom seven thousand so we got seven five five let's do like four so 20 thousand damage we've done right surely that's two extra levels it's gotta be it's gotta be we got to level 15 now oh it goes for six all right next to its mouth it's a horny bugger so yeah we did even more 88000 this time so we needed to do 50 000 to get to that and then odds 2000 next time so hopefully that counts towards it yes it did right yeah okay fair enough I was gonna say because we just got 50 000 and then didn't just get unless it continues each time it's 50 like that's 66 000 damage we've done is everything so far I don't think that's how that works maybe this I don't know anyway we got a code 19 to do it's interrupt level 40 right James come on let's do this let's get as much dna from this as possible code 19s are great for this because I saw a comment in my live stream the other day and there was something like beavers max up right rodent why why would anybody want to do that when you've got so many freaking carnivals you do not need that no no no no no no no all right okay okay we're doing good we're doing good oh yes look at the dna dna is good yes yes okay we just have to make one at the bottom one at the bottom and we got hundreds of dna yes how many how much was that yeah you know six eight six hundred and eighty I'll take that as well as 10 10 super dna sweet all right okay claim that there we go we did a code 19 I think you have to do it twice is just once okay do we just get VIP points for that I didn't think that was its price okay we reached level 10 of the boss oh is there more is there more than level 10 no there isn't oh interesting okay well we definitely need to do it once more because I want even more dna because that's what this is all about it's just about harvesting dna that's what we need so um there's actually do one attack of eight points for 200 which is actually pretty decent so uh I will just do terraces again I will put in uh lupoxera and then that'll do I think that's good it is costing me like five bucks per we're getting thousands of dna out of this um like if I had a trade that was uh trade five bucks for 20 000 dna I'd do it or if it was if it was the other way around though 20 000 dna for five bucks I wouldn't do it so actually this does work out um and this game's definitely about trying to find those transactions that work because the game does everything that's power to make you lose resources like oh you want to sell something you only get half for it oh you want to do this bell don't get any books for it but yeah it costs books to enter like it's really sneaky little ways um so I want to get to eight I want to get to eight let's see let's see oh oh so we only need four and then I'll go for two block okay preferably I don't want to go for eight on the metrophodon because that will leave it completely open yes yes the lord gods have smiled out of my favorite 200 here we come there you go 200 dna so was that worth five bucks already I think so I think you'll find it because what's great about this is if we just get his his level of really high then we can put in some really weak creatures and then just put in metrophodon in once and just do eight like eight attacks work and it'll do max it'll you know we could do a hundred thousand damage to it if you wanted to so right that's you don't oh it just survives wow interesting uh I'll go for that I don't know what it had and yeah it definitely had some block okay oh oh oh oh oh no no no no oh dear whoops it is well then metrophodon was completely wasted it would seem all right may as well just do that and do max damage to it that's eight thousand yeah eight thousand so eight thousand seven thousand it's not enough it's not enough to get the next one unfortunately you really need to be careful really need to be careful yeah just kill me no he's so close personal space please this is the 2020s we're all like personal space now um right so we got that 200 okay um we're a little bit the 2000 dna like if I if I would what could I sell for 2000 dna um what do I have extra so if I was to sell a concaveinator which is a vip creature it's it's five thousand dna and that's a really good dinosaur so 2000 just shows you ho ho yes it's very good so we'll do one more and we can definitely buy back uh this guy so we'll go into trondons uh I got three recovery so we'll use one um um and then we'll just put in these guys yeah and then put you in last sweet okay right now you can probably kill me in two hits so I'm gonna have to go for a block off the bat and then I'll go for tweezers and then we'll see where we're at we'll see where we're at here with lovely blue eyes hmm okay okay going interesting it's still good because we I mean even like a you know zalmonodon at level 10 could still do max damage to it okay that's fine I think you might have one or two block again too stupid to look and pay attention as a one two three four kills a factor in one right it's probably got one block and it does have one block so we so we paid five bucks for two thousands in a year five bucks for 200 in the last one this'll be five bucks for two thousand so 10 bucks for 2200 yes please I'll definitely do that uh oh okay uh one two three four one two and then a reserve in case it went for two bucks and another max damage look at that it was like a claw and it's going for the eyes eyes boss level 19 right 9000 okay yes you can you can kill me in like three yes now now the good news is we do so much damage the only two attacks have to go through the chances of me actually doing even more damage next round is like next to none and yeah it would have had eight attacks so even if I blocked the five it probably would have killed me in that next hit how much would it have had how much attack or damage for 1100 or it has is it either going up oh am I not even going up so yeah it probably would have been able to kill me oh yeah we whooper well at least you did something this time metaphor don't we need more of those that's all we need the dna for is more of those they're amazing so that was 90 that's the most damage I've ever done 93 um so I don't know why it's thank you and then we how much do we need oh but it's 3000 3000 dna I mean it lasts for four days and how quickly do we get uh zal monodon back or whatever it is let's have a look let's go for flyers two days so you could technically you're in with a good chance of getting a 3000 dna for free pretty much so we're gonna end this episode here because we're just focusing on you know the the new boss sort of thing and join us in another episode where we're gonna focus on doing the entire tournament hold on I can edit it the entire tournament see I can do it it just takes more editing I can't be bothered uh of the second on the one the water whatever it is we've enjoyed this video leave like until next time I'll see you cuties later oh bye