This week we are joined by third time guest Ronn Bauman in the luxious trailer studios. We had a long and animated conversation about conspiracy theories. If anything, we barely scratched the surface of our contempt for people who buy into them. We probably should have focused on one at a time but Ronn has to head on to the Carolina Renaissance Festival so we could only record one episode. After that conversation, we came up with a new way to do five questions for third time guests.
P.S: If you think the government was involved in 9/11, this episode is probably not for you.
Show notes below the fold:
The post on Tim’s blog that Ron refers to is this one.
Ron mentions this article in Cracked about 7 reasons the world looks worse than it really is.
Here is the Cracked takedown of the 9/11 Truther movement.
You can find Ronn online at comichacksguide.com or at tortugatwins.com!
I would love it if you asked “what is your favorite conspiracy theory” as a bonus to the 5 questions. But not on every show, just like every 3rd show, and it will become a conspiracy as to when you ask the question. Maybe because there are only 3 hosts..or because deaths always happen in 3’s…or the holy trinity…or because Half-life 3 has not been released, and therefore…Hitler.
Does this mean Gabe Newell is responsible for 9/11?
Regarding Iraq – as someone who was paying close attention during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, it was immediately evident that the justification was being packaged and sold to the American public. You could practically see the White House launching trial balloons labelled “Bringing democracy to the Middle East” and “Nuclear yellowcake” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” which latter was the one they finally settled on.
It was transparent. If conspiracies are supposed to be secret, it really failed as a conspiracy. It was much more like the entire nation was a three year old trying to persuade himself that nobody would notice if all the cookies got eaten when those cookies were gonna get eaten no matter what.
By the way the page header to this Episode reads “Epsidoe”
No it dossn’t. What makes you think that? Clearly this is a government cover-up!
I loved this episode, and I totally agree with y’all on most every-thing, but I take pause at the idea that all alternative medicine is hooey. A *lot* of it is, I grant you, but I think there is al-so a lot to be said for certain areas of it, such as Chinese medicine. I bloody adore science, but it is not a quick process to figure out how to conduct studies, conduct them, repeat them many times to confirm results, tweak hypotheses, etc. I try to keep up on research for things like massage and shiatsu (since those are my fields), and the fact is that there is not a ton of reliable data on it simply be-cause studies have not been done, and those that have been often have major flaws in their procedures. We know that a few forms of alternative medicine work for many people, but in most cases we don’t know why yet. Yet, I think, is the operative term. Much like many things in Western medicine, such as some allopathic drugs that are on the market. Personally, I think the key is to use both Western and alternative medicine as needed. Chinese medicine isn’t likely to keep your hernia from rupturing, but neither is Western medicine particularly good at actually treating (as opposed to masking) chronic soft tissue pain with-out cutting that tissue out. I would love to do even more research and talk to all of you more in depth about the not-as-hooey, possibly viable sides of alternative medicine! 😀
Keep up the great work, love the podcast!