Pause for Parrots

The guys use a Mother Jones article as a launching point for a dive deep into the proliferation of conspiracy theories in motherhood facebook groups. They examine why those communities have been especially primed for this kind of thinking and a deeper causality behind conspiracy theorizing as a whole.

Read the article here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/09/the-terrifying-story-of-how-qanon-infiltrated-moms-groups/

Stories this week include a woman with covid that almost got cremated alive, some horrible examples of anti-democratic lawmakers in Missouri and Missippi, the GOP's new efforts to whitewash the Capitol insurrection, and a story about how Bill and Melinda Gates' divorce might be connected to his relationship with Jeffery Epstein.

This week's longform episode centers around new reporting by the Wall Street Journal that offers further credibility to the idea that the coronavirus pandemic was born in a lab. The guys discuss the implications of the reporting, why it's taken so long for the media to pick up on this story, what it means for our understanding of the last year, and why reasonable consideration now needs to be given to some more conspiratorial ideas about the virus.

The guys get into some stories from the week, like the Republican gubernatorial candidate that got outshined by a big fuckin' bear, the continued trouble of the Capitol Police, and a report that claims job growth is up 10x under Joe Biden.

The guys have a conversation about The Council for Inclusive Capitalism, an extremely ironic Vatican sponsored movement to "make the world fairer, more inclusive, and sustainable", led by the very companies that helped make the world that way in the first place.

The guys dig into some stories from the past week, like the left's reaction to Tim Scott's "America's Not Racist" speech, why a federal ban on menthol cigarettes is dumb and bad, and how the CIA is co-opting intersectionalism and woke politics in a new recruitment ad.

The guys take a deep dive into psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration and make a case for how the model could be applied to an understanding of American social and political evolution.

The guys continue the conversation on policing with a story about how the Chauvin conviction has lessened pressure on legislators to reform the police, talk about a huge breakthrough in a malaria vaccine, and get into some wild facts about American private military presence in the Middle East.

In the aftermath of the Chauvin conviction, the guys have a conversation about the hypocrisy of politicians championing justice while supporting legislation that continues to harm disadvantaged communities, make a case for why the State will continue to be ineffective at solving the problems it created in the first place, and examine ways to create change outside of the system.

The guys get into some headlines from the week, including a long conversation about recent UFO disclosures and their ties to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, more Republican-led punitive legislation - this time for Major League Baseball - and an update on the story from last week about a BLM co-founder going on a property buying spree. Oh and the microchip conspiracy theorists may have been on to something??