Serious Inquiries Only

Got a great voicemail episode for you fine folks! There were a lot of really excellent calls this month. Please keep them coming for next month! This week's topics include: doing business with conservatives, robots taking all the jobs, FGM laws in the US, the QED mental health panel, meditation, and how I stopped being a conservative!

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Bryce Blankenagel is an expert on all things Mormon, and he brings history to life in brilliant narrative form. He joins us today to bring to our attention a somewhat frightening strain of fundamentalist Mormonism he has observed, which is making its way online in social media hashtag form. And be sure to check out Bryce's work over on The Naked Mormonism Podcast, The Glass Box Podcast, and My Book of Mormon!

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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The panel with Kristi Winters and Chantelle Boduel continues! Since our recording, BuzzFeed has put out an excellent article with another accuser and also some more info on the first few. I highly recommend reading it. If you haven't heard part 1 of our discussion, definitely listen to that first!

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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I'm joined by Chantelle Boduel and Kristi Winters as the nation's favorite astrophysicist and host of the reboot of Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson, has been accused of sexual harassment by (at the time of recording) 3 women (and 1 more shortly after recording, see here.) The oldest accusation is of a horrifying date rape in college, the other two involve a woman who says he touched her inappropriately and an assistant who has an alarming story of Tyson attempting to seduce her. We go over the facts, Tyson's response, and discuss how we feel about the accusations and work our way through some deeper #metoo issues.

HuffPo article on deeper history of 1st accuser; Tyson's statement; Patheos article

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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And some listener email. Some topics: climate change is going to kill us; simply being 'not a Republican' is more than enough; comparing Obama and Trump on the border; Avenatti the liberal version of Trump; listener not voting for Democrats because they are too cozy with Islam; and mansplaining mansplaining mansplaining!

Tear gas fact check; Trump's border crisis

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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Johannes Breuer is the co-author of a study which looked into the relationship between sexist attitudes and video game playing. To be as precise as possible and not misrepresent it, here is what they found in their words: "We found that the amount of overall video game use at time 1 was not predictive of sexist attitudes/beliefs about gender roles at time 2 (i.e., 2 years later) and that (sexist) beliefs about gender roles at time 1 were equally not predictive of video game use at time 2 (for sample of German players aged 14 and older)." So that's the bland tl;dr version, but we talk through the study, methodology, and what the implications are. We also talk a lot about what this study does NOT show, which is equally important and is easy to lose track of sometimes.

Here are the links to the book chapters where Johannes's work is featured, and here's a good writeup on the original study.

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Really proud to have been a small part of this excellent panel at QED! The discussion centers around mental health challenges, de-stigmatization, communication, and which treatments actually work.

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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The moment we waited 2 years for finally happened. I talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

October was a great month for my voice inbox! I was very happy about that until I realized it's probably because the news was so bad... But still, some amazing calls this month, topics ranging from #metoo stories probably Kavanaugh inspired, to Elizabeth Warren, to voter suppression, and third parties. Thank you so much and keep the calls coming!

Leave Thomas a voicemail! (916) 750-4746, remember short and to the point!

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For comments, email [email protected]