Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Tim Minchin Live - Part 1

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Tim Minchin Live - Part 1 · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day humans! Welcome to the safe space for unsafe conversations. This is your refuge from the
• 0:07
  black and white world of right wing blowards and left wing complainers. This is the place beyond
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  the echo chamber of your social media feed and the partisan mainstream press. It's a place without
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  good guys and bad guys where the only thing that's banned is taking offense at a true statement.
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  And I suppose black and white world views as well are not welcome here. There are no taboos,
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  there are only good arguments and bad arguments. I'm here to sniff them out. Change doesn't happen
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  in an echo chamber friends. Welcome to uncomfortable conversations.
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  Today's show is one of the quirkiest and most original and most fascinating so far. Let me explain
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  what's going on here. When I moved from the US to Australia, back to Australia, it was the very
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  end of 2017 and I had two newborn twins and a somewhat stalled former podcast which many of you
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  will have been fans of called We The People Live which had had a very successful run in the
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  United States and which gradually fell apart under the burden of being a new father and moving
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  to the outside of the world and taking on a new job at ABC Radio in Sydney. And one of the final
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  horrors that I recorded for that show, not knowing at the time that it was going to be final
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  because I didn't realize that my life was going to be as complicated in 2018 as it turned out to be
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  was a live event with the one and only Tim mentioned. We gathered at the Giant Dwarf Theatre in
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  December of 2018 just before Christmas to a sold out show, a packed house and Tim and I
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  chatted and Tim performed my favorite song of his. It's called White Wine and the Sun. It's a
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  Christmas ode about a person who is living abroad as many young Australians do when they go and
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  do a stint in the US or UK or Europe and spend the Christmas over there dreaming in a sort of
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  reverie of their summary Christmas back home as they freeze on a distant English aisle. It's
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  incredibly moving and he totally brought it home at the live event. If you don't know Tim by name,
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  he's a difficult person to explain. He's a musician and comedian. He calls himself sort of a
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  minstrel in a sense in the best possible way. He's most known for musical comedy. So he
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  wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Matilda based on the Royal Dahl book which opened
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  in Stratford upon Avon in 2010 and went on to become one of the most critically acclaimed and
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  popularly successful musicals of the past 20 years. 185 awards, 16 for Best Musical,
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  at 17 Olivier's, five Tonys and had a fantastic run on the West End and also on Broadway.
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  His less successful musical was Groundhog Day at the musical which despite a short run did win
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  the Olivier award and was nominated for the Tony. But he's so much more than that. He graces the
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  small screen in Australia a lot. He exploded onto the scene originally at the Melbourne International
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  Comedy Festival in 2005 and then at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. American audiences might
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  remember him from California Cation and he has countless hit musical albums and comedy albums
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  including a kids song when I grow up which has a beautiful picture book to accompany at which my
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  kids absolutely adore. So I won't keep raving. I will allow you to enjoy my conversation live in front
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  of a packed house in the middle of summer in Sydney just before Christmas in 2018. Needless to say
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  this is during the Trump administration. It's a different era. It's a different time. A lot of this
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  might be dated but the subjects and the topics and the things that he's digging his mind into.
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  His incredible creative mind. Timeless as always please enjoy. Oh this will be in two parts as well.
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  We'll release the first half this week and the second half next week. So you get to enjoy that
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  or you get to bear a grudge against me for making you wait either way up to you. If you want to be
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  happy in life one I just enjoy getting to instead of being disappointed that you only get half.
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  Glass is half full ladies and gentlemen please enjoy my conversation live with Tim mentioned.
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  Please welcome the one and only Tim mentioned Tim.
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  What do you do Tim mentioned? What do you write on the customs card as your occupation when you
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  entering a country? I just see I just checked that I don't have holes in my jeans. The audience is
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  right there. Right there. Right there in my in my crotchal area. I write musician. You write
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  musician. I write musician. I consider myself a musician. Is that ostentatious? I mean my ostentatious
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  you are a musician. It's just so many other things. You're like a little octopus one of whose tentacles
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  is musician. Yeah yeah and if you chopped it off it would grow back. There's a slightly better musician.
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  We should try. I say musician just because it makes because otherwise they ask too many questions
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  and it seems ridiculous. And is that what what like eight-year-old Tim mentioned would have wanted to
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  have been doing? I wouldn't have dreamt of it. I just didn't. Not until I sort of already was one
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  did I consider that I could be one. Just because I wasn't brought up in a family where you thought
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  that was an option. Not not that anyone was repressing the idea I just didn't. I thought I like
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  playing music but they'll have to be a job. Right. Because also Perth you know there's not like
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  there's lots of people who are just musicians. Yeah. Well there are I just didn't see them.
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  Hiding in bars. At what point then when you're becoming a musician do you realize actually I can
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  sort of talk about things as well and I can make jokes and I can make people laugh and maybe there's
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  some sort of maybe there's an octopus in this. Yeah yeah. The cephalopodic nature of my
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  career came to me like a sinking feeling. I think I always did. You know I was a musician but I
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  always wrote wordy quirky overly didactic silly songs from when I was very young and I always
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  liked doing school plays and I wrote music for theatre before I that was very early that didn't
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  come with Matilda or I was writing music for theatre at 1716 for youth theatre and local plumber
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  and was it any good? Yeah it's all right yeah yeah yeah the first musical I wrote a musical version
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  of love's love's loss that had songs you know that have proper good melodies although the
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  music the lyrics were John Dunes and William Shakespeare so it says you're working with good
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  stuff not bad material yeah trouble with the Elizabethans if they go A B B A and I just go fuck
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  that just straighten it up so it could be a pop throw in his head yeah that's right but it was
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  that that sort of the story of my career is that I spent my 20s doing everything to know
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  particular success partly because I refused to specialise it's a high high level gamble to go
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  you know what I I didn't refuse to specialise because I thought I was good at everything I
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  didn't specialise because I didn't think I was good enough at any of them yeah right I thought
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  I was taking off my beautiful jacket because we were talking before the show about whether or not
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  I should out smart yeah so I haven't I've been doing this show and I haven't had my hair and my
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  hair isn't I'm wearing a beanie because I'm an asshole basically I'm gonna get too hot in my
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  hair it's just a mess but your hair is a part your hair is a part of the great one it's my
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  octopus arm the great cuttlefish I'm gonna go through as many cephalopods as I can think of tonight
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  cuttlefish octopus I don't know I mean this would become a competition exactly so you we were
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  we were talking earlier about the sort of stages in one's life and how you might you know when
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  you're young your 20s is just interminable it goes for a long time you feel like you're
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  going to be 30 and then your 30s are sort of a coherent cohesive unit of time and now that you
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  in your 40s you're like okay I've only got a few few units yeah we were just talking about how
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  a decade in your 40s a decade now feels like a unit suddenly you go oh shit running out of units
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  so 40 to 50s a unit I have to figure out what to do with and I'm stumbling very quickly to
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  what's halfway through it yeah right so to the little squid yeah what does what does
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  being in your 40s now look like to 20 something Tim well I would be extraordinarily excited by
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  what happened I mean I would I would there there's no I'm very very lucky to put it mildly there's no
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  lotto win or that I literally can't think of career-wise my marriage is a sham and I hate my
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  my children of fucking off the rails but I'm career-wise 12 and 10 they're just like putting it up
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  their arms the I career wise I can't imagine I think I've got the best career of anyone I in
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  the world I mean I just get to again it's not really you call it a career it's not really a career
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  no it's a series of basically I've I've got this sort of piece of paper in my mind and down the left
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  is a bunch of boxes and and and they're all described they describe things that I got rejected for
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  in my 20s and I'm just going back and ticker and I just go oh yeah it didn't want me to write
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  me down writing a musical now I didn't want me to be an actor acting now it really is just a sort of
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  it's I've literally I've just been out of go through and so do whatever I thought thought
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  would be fun but are there any is there anyone who bullied you in year 8 who'd like me to send
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  some photos of you in successful places to like with you and me look at my man that's right I'm
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  with fucking zeps with sets a giant didn't see that come on did you get it I think this is plastic I
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  got a plastic plastic glass drinking eight dollar bottle of wine out of a plastic glass who's a bully
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  now daddy McGee why do you hate Irish Catholics why do you think I wasn't I don't I have no
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  bullied backstory might my ambition to there's no doubt I have it like I'll show them but there's
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  just no them no no there was no one said you know and anyway it's so fucking dumb you know people go
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  oh my teachers said I'd never make it that I showed them it's like it's so stupid because you
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  should be like thank you for saying I never make it because that's the thing that put a bug up my
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  ass or it's absurd also why are you listening to the teacher in the first place yeah that's right
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  why is that like actually think about that teacher's life and what they achieved in their life no
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  offense against teachers they're extremely important Catholics and teachers he hates
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  old pastor patty McGee I never liked him no but you know what I mean like we I think when we're young
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  we we we absorb so much negativity from people who actually have no standing to give it to us
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  or or or they might have been right you know that that that you know like so so if a teacher says to
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  100 kids over their career and I bet they never said you'll never make anything of yourself no
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  no teacher said that since 1942 you haven't met old fatty McGee yeah that it's very unlikely
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  since fatty McGee that anyone that what what the kid heard was you'll never make it but what the
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  teacher probably said is zeps with this attitude you're going nowhere and that's exactly what a
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  teacher should bloody say because you're probably had a bad attitude I did have a bad attitude
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  that was a little smart ass and that's and that and so that they're good those teachers and whether
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  or not they have standing to you know whether they have a foot to stand on in terms of lecturing
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  people getting somewhere although I think as a teacher they're probably the most important people
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  in the world um along with Catholics um I'm just healing I'm healing the wounds um but uh but
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  they you know it's fine that a teacher told you weren't good at something because there's two
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  responses you can have as you grow older one is to go you know what oh right I'm going to concentrate
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  on this or you can go I'll show you and both of them are good and there's no point sort of
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  that's great that's all good stuff that's all can I can I just you all to the five you can I
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  just ask one of my fans to clip the bit where Tim just said zeps with that attitude you'll get nowhere
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  and you have not just taken that out of context you have no yeah that's good yeah we like uh
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  mention claims zeps will never get anywhere with that attitude and then zeps die the next time
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  exactly horror police question invention exactly yeah I hope you don't die
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  city I hope you let it broke his heart he never recovered from that walked out of the theater
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  into the rain no one ever saw him again poor old zeps all right a song about you
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  I'll just use the same old chords I'll sell it for charity some beyond blue or something
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  the whole song will just be about how I really never made it yeah yeah with that attitude yeah yeah
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  how your death was the only thing you did that was impressive
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  like the song can be called he finally got it right yeah that's right nailed it the ballad of zeps
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  uh speaking of joking about politically incorrect things
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  uh speaking of segues the guy who invented it fell off a cliff on a segway is that apocryphal or true
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  I believe it's true but that's a different kind of segway than a segway
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  segues a segues on the they're all they're all ways to smoothly hover from one thing to the next
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  hmm was this a metaphorical linguistic device and one is a highly convenient mode of transportation
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  unless you drive it all over the top of the cliff in which case famously a fact yeah good way
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  to go though if you own if you're the major investor in the segway it's if you're gonna die early
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  die ironically that's why yeah yeah yeah also if someone's going to be killed by your stupid
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  transportation device thereby tanking your company you might as well put yourself out of your
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  misery and not have to face the music so it's best that it's you that's a quite circular sort of
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  argument that better not to die and not tank your company can I greatly disagree about that
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  speaking of politically incorrect things to joke about um we were we were talking earlier about
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  the kind of risks and dangers of doing things like this because you're never quite sure in the
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  current climate whether you're going to tread on some kind of a land mine or or trigger a tripwire
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  and that every week or every month we see some poor public figure uh being haranged and beaten
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  down on Twitter for putting their their foot in their mouth um about some some area in which they're
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  supposed to be a politically correct orthodoxy do you feel liberated to say everything that you
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  would want to say in public no I'm very happy to remain iconoclastic about the things I have
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  established myself as being iconoclastic about like I none of this stuff makes me worried
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  that you know the the enemies I've already established I'm proud of I I don't mind if Andrew
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  Bolt writes another column about me and I don't I don't although I try not to say his name sorry um
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  I don't mind fatty McGee fatty McGee I'll show him um I don't I don't I don't mind if I get death threats
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  from whatever I so that's all fine I don't I don't feel like there's any political correctness
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  gone mad I think that's kind of a 90s description of and it's slightly more complicated than that
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  I find it hard to talk about the things that my tribe I guess progressives hold as sort of sacred
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  I'm very cautious at the moment about certain topics because I kind of want to say some stuff
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  about it but it's just not worth it and I don't I'm not totally sure about them so maybe it's
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  working perfectly maybe it's making people like me not have big opinions on stuff that they're not
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  really sure about anyway I do think it's a huge pity across all the entire political spectrum
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  regardless of skin color or gender or sexual preference or anything I think it's a pity
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  if our tendency to take things out of context which is inevitable in social media times and hold them
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  up as exemplars of a poor opinion that seems not a good way to move forward to me because if
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  if everyone if everyone in this room even the most no one's born woke right especially because
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  you can't be born woke because woke changes right changes incredibly rapidly these days you know
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  and so I feel like I have been awakened in the last 20 years since going to an all-boys private
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  school in Perth, West Australia I was I was brought up by a beautiful family but you know I've
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  learnt so much and and some are publicly some of it in a way that made me feel sick that I'd
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  got it wrong but me as a straight white cisgendered male with power and a voice going through those
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  journeys and being allowed to go through them and go and share that is not a negative thing in the
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  world maybe we've got too many straight white male voices but it's not a negative thing so I think
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  it's a pity taking away the straight white male and I say for anyone if they are they find
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  themselves not feeling like they can joke not that I'm saying that I think everyone should be
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  out of it you want more racist humor and to know exactly right I'm pretty you know I have people
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  go I like your stuff it's not PC how about PC fucking PC gone mad and I go mate you're talking to
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  the wrong person I am completely PC so I think political correctness is a good thing what I do is
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  try and use language that isn't used in everyday life to undermine powerful people that's what PC
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  is about is protecting less powerful people however it depends on your definition of PC yes that's
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  exactly right and what you know is making it to boo to call people a racial epithet then that's
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  great yeah but if what you're saying is that it's impossible to have a conversation about the
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  parameters of satire or humor if you're a white male because you don't have the lived experience
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  of being a transgender black woman then that's a problem and that's what PC that's what I think
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  the credits of PC CPC bleeding into but that's not what they're talking about the people who talk
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  about PC gone mad generally just going why can't I call my well friend a well getting more well sure
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  that would be a stupid position to hold and and you're right that Andrew Bolt holds it yeah
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  I mean and that's the other but my concern is just to drop my my concern is that
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  that we're seeing a cleavage in culture where where where people who do want to have a somewhat
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  more vibrant and rembunctious and freewheeling debate about some of these issues on the left
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  are feeling so cowed that they have the conversation that we've just been having for the past four
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  minutes yeah and that seeds the territory to it to the Andrew bolts of the world so you end up with
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  only two camps there's either bigots who are using the scare the boogie man of political correctness
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  to defend their own indefensible bigotry and they've got everyone else pretending that we're all
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  completely 100 percent on board with anything as long as it is as long as it adheres to the orthodoxy
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  of a certain set of beliefs that you have to have on the left and there's no fun at the edges of
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  that left anymore so we actually we actually see the ground I actually I think that's perfect
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  they put it's it's it the danger is that the only people going you progressives are a bit mad
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  are the far right instead we progressives should be going we progressives are a bit mad and that's
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  actually what I want to do a bit of in the next couple of years is try and find a way without losing
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  humour without getting too nervous and accepting that it will get me shit from people I love from
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  the people who used to love me I wanted to say we're a bit cray cray sometimes and what we're cray
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  cray about is not the end game we're and I want to say and we're right we're still in the right
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  progressiveism is still inevitably we're going to look back and we're going to say no we were right
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  we're just going to be careful we don't fuck ourselves because while where you have to understand
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  you don't have to you you may want to consider as I'm sure everyone in this room has one has to
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  consider what it would have been like sitting on your farm in the Midwest of America watching the
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  blue states focus on whether a person who was biologically born a male can go into a woman's
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  toilet which if you've read a lot about trans politics is very important and interesting
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  and it's the cutting edge of you know having made such incredible progress in the last 10 years
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  with LGBT rights and stuff that you know with the trans part of that collection of letters is
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  this sort of cutting edge of that we're trying to move it forward and stuff but if you haven't
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  read all that literature it you just look fucking mad to them we look fucking mad and we just have
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  to take care of our discourse to make sure we don't our ethical position and I'm I'm I have
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  been accused of this is when I did my still call Australia homophobic I upset people who just
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  haven't had the same lived experiences I have and that's fine I was happy to upset them but
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  but they're right to be upset to be called a homophobic come when when you haven't had
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  loads of gay friends like they have a different lived experience and I think it's important
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  progressives extend their empathy not just to kids on Nauru not just to to trans people not just to
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  our queer friends or people of color but to the hardest thing is to extend our empathy to people who
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  just to fucking people who haven't read the books we've read you know and that's hard because they're
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  you're angry at them without driving off a cliff that's a nice segue to sort of the state of
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  politics at the moment oh look at the hair he's taken off his beanie and now his fantastic
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  mop and on my shirt's coming off me it's going to be that kind of night yeah
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  that that that brings us sort of to like there seems to be a moot we seem to be at a moment in
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  the world where things are a little bit wobbly and a rye it's a little bit like what you were
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  saying about the empathy thing which I think is really important because there's a you know if
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  you attribute any level of the rise of the right in Europe to concerns about immigration for
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  example and about the integration of Muslim communities in poor working class suburbs of
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  Paris and Brussels and London if that has anything to do with the rise of the right then you also
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  have to lay some blame at our feet as progressives well our colleagues over there for never having
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  been able to articulate or accept any articulation of concern about immigration or about terrorism
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  without immediately branding people as being xenophobes Islamophobes fascists and racists so I
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  wonder what you think is actually happening I really don't haven't read enough I mean do you
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  think something's changing or do you think this is just well there's a couple of things what's
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  the fallacy where we always think we're at the end times I mean you there's a fallacy fallacy
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  about that though everyone's like oh everyone always thinks the world's coming into an end and
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  I'm like yeah but when it does when it is coming to an end you don't want to be like the one who
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  went oh it's probably just another one of those it's like no there will come a time when it is
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  all going to shit and we don't want to miss it just because the bad shits happen before and by
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  the way the the world has gone to shit a couple of times in the last century you know so
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  you shouldn't let your guard down I think the internet places all global politics in a very
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  unusual I don't think the presumption that what is happening in the world post digital technology
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  I don't think history can act as a good metaphor I think the minute we had all the knowledge in
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  the world at our fingertips that you could hack well to talk like Johan Harari you know that you
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  can be hacked you can now be hacked right the idea that we should use the past as an analogue for
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  now is very very worrying to me because of climate change AI and you know nuclear proliferation these
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  this is the other thing I'm worried about with progressivism even though I personally attached
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  to identity politics and the fight for you know people who have been disadvantaged none of it matters
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  as much as climate change or AI because we won't be allowed to fight for our trans friends
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  if the world breaks and I think I have pretty serious digital phobia I think I think it's not
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  that I think it might be the emancipation of all people it might be the beginning of the fixing
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  of humanity but it might not be and I don't think we can just assume it'll all work itself out
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  digital technology has thrown the rule book out I think I could talk a lot about that but I
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  probably wouldn't really know what I'm talking about I'll guide you into safer ground where you
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  will know what you're talking about on the same subject because let's pull back from apocalyptic
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  visions about official intelligence I don't think it's about singularity and robots taking over
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  I think it's actually AI as in a Russian computer knows how to make you vote a certain way yeah yeah
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  that's the hacking I'm talking about now someone pinning a computer into the back of your
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  skull while you're asleep which has also happened but only to you
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  what about the real the reality that we all live with every single day which is that we have
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  supercomputers in our pockets that the apps that we use on those supercomputers are designed
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  by Whizbang 22 year olds on skateboards in corporate parks in in Palo Alto California
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  whose sole mission in life is to maximize the time that we spend on those apps time on site is
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  the main yardstick of measurement and that what encourages you to spend a lot of time on Facebook
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  or Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat is something that is going to stir your emotions and things that
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  stir your emotions tend to be negative or they tend to be outrageous or they tend to
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  pander to you they tend to bring out all of the kind of worst things in you and yeah the other
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  the other day I was meeting a friend to go and see a movie and my phone was out of battery was dead
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  and he was late and I'm standing there outside the cinema on the footpath and I was like
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  what the fuck do I do now like what did we do before we had I just stand here like an idiot looking
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  at passes by gazing at the fucking clouds where's my Instagram and what's amazing is that that's
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  amazing that you have to spend seven minutes without being able to contact somebody without being
• 30:18
  able to do it it was fucking hard to him you don't understand okay it's difficult out here
• 30:23
  you and your ivory tower you know I am on the street for seven yeah you and your fancy batteries
• 30:29
  yeah I mean everyone's having these conversations and there seems to be no functional way to change
• 30:41
  well how do you manage it as a human being as a creator badly what I seem to have gone I
• 30:49
  seem to have come peaked I've sort of stopped I've taken Facebook off my phone so I don't look
• 30:55
  at that anymore I've started looking at Instagram to kind of replace it but Instagram bore me
• 31:00
  because this is pictures as shit what I want is the is the discourse is the argument that's why
• 31:07
  Twitter is my baby but it's it is exactly what you say it's a hell pit of anxiety because we're not
• 31:17
  we haven't really evolved to take on the problems of the planet it's really bad for our mental
• 31:21
  health and I think it's really bad for us my really really do I think it's really really bad for
• 31:29
  humans to this comes back to empathy again we this idea that we should extend our empathy infinitely
• 31:40
  I think is lovely but it might not be pragmatically very good for us I think we need to manage our
• 31:47
  empathy I don't really have any solution but it does it distresses me a lot yes on the one hand
• 31:54
  it it creates toxic conversations on the other hand just the fact of not getting bored I'm starting
• 31:59
  to feel like there's a virtue in boredom and that actually creativity gets fostered in those moments
• 32:04
  where you are just looking at the clouds and not looking at what other people are arguing about
• 32:08
  yeah the only way I can be creative is to give myself a deadline that will be impossible if I don't
• 32:12
  fucking do it you know but I've always been like that I've if it wasn't this so if it wasn't
• 32:17
  Twitter I'd be procrastinating some other way but I used to procrastinate by playing the piano
• 32:22
  which worked out fine yeah exactly why I can play piano is because I didn't like doing other stuff
• 32:30
  but I yeah look I don't know we just have to wait and see how it all turns out in 10 years
• 32:38
  because the progress we've made because of our ability to communicate and because otherwise
• 32:42
  repressed voices have been able to rise up without having to get permission from multinationals
• 32:48
  or leadership this is all good stuff I just I just think we have to be aware that it's uncharted
• 32:58
  and you know having kids and it's two it just makes my brain explode I don't really have a clear
• 33:06
  set of ideas about it except that I think it's very easy as progressives to you end up with a
• 33:15
  curated feed of people talking about the ideas that make you feel almost passionate as you
• 33:20
  mentioned and you can you can forget that there's a big world out there with a lot of stuff going
• 33:29
  on and that your particular brand of identity politics is not necessarily the only thing that
• 33:33
  matters but maybe it's the only thing that matters to you and maybe that's fine and maybe I just
• 33:38
  need to stop reading Twitter and getting a distorted view of what progressives are doing I mean
• 33:42
  maybe we are doing pretty well on climate change in the last five years it has it does feel like
• 33:48
  we're winning for the first time in ready yeah I think so okay not not not the battle against climate
• 33:55
  change but I think more I think more people believe the fucking science then don't I mean you would
• 34:02
  hope that 100% of people would believe science because it's science no but they don't because they're
• 34:09
  people half of America are conspiracy theorists genuine died in the fucking wall conspiracy theorists
• 34:19
  half of the cunts whether it's climate change or or the Jews or the moon landing or fake news
• 34:28
  about half I don't get me started on the Jewish conspiracy to the million on the moon
• 34:32
  bullshit yeah what why is that and maybe maybe we can sort of segue our way towards towards
• 34:40
  questions here by getting your thought even you think a lot about atheism you think a lot about
• 34:44
  reason and and science and religiosity why is so much of the world still enamored of fantastical
• 34:53
  beliefs I think it's all connected I think if you look if you click through god forbid on someone
• 34:59
  who's a trump a flag waving trump supporter there's two things that's always in the twitter bio one's
• 35:04
  a fucking American football or baseball team and the other is Jesus so this is a little thought I
• 35:13
  have you know I don't spend on my life thinking about religion I that that's kind of my my
• 35:19
  interest in that intersected with my comedy career and that's what I got known for and that's
• 35:22
  fine I mean mostly the last ten years are spent writing children's musicals but but I'm very very
• 35:28
  interested in why we believe crazy stuff or why we believe anything and it's a bottomless
• 35:36
  and very interesting rabbit hole but I do think that people that america being a very
• 35:45
  country full of Christians I think it's a country primed so when you're a very religious person you
• 35:54
  are you are a master at ironing out your cognitive dissonance right so so when when you live in a
• 36:01
  world where stuff drops and people don't do magic but you need to believe that two thousand years
• 36:06
  ago that was a person that did do magic and that they they are love what you're doing is every day
• 36:13
  you're just you're just managing your cognitive dissonance because your brain's going there's no
• 36:18
  magic but there is with Jesus he's in my heart and you're doing it all day every day from childhood
• 36:23
  and you get very good at believing what is clearly not so so when trump comes into office and he's
• 36:29
  clearly a buffoon you are fucking all over that shit because he's a Republican president who says
• 36:37
  you're going to keep your guns and you're like believing that that fucking bumbling asshole is a
• 36:42
  genius I can do that I believe Jesus is in my heart you know so I do think there's a connection
• 36:55
  I think they are masters at being able to look at a thing and believing the opposite
• 37:00
  and there might be fucking brilliant lovely intelligent people in all other ways but they've been
• 37:08
  primed to manage their cognitive dissonance well what what what what were you saying earlier
• 37:11
  about extending our empathy towards people who we disagree with politically I feel sorry for the
• 37:17
  fuckers I want to send them books and stuff just a book airlift just drop them from planes
• 37:34
  with little wee umbrellas yeah have them falling raining down on Texas I would like to know if anyone's
• 37:40
  I actually studying this thing this idea that really just said he primed you to be good at
• 37:45
  managing your cognitive dissonance and has outcomes beyond religiosity in the rest of your life I
• 37:51
  know I think they are but I think there's also another component just to get to get wonky here
• 37:56
  which is that religiosity also trains you to think in terms of paternalistic kind of god figures and
• 38:05
  so it encourages a sort of it enables you to not flex the muscle of total self-reliance and
• 38:13
  independence and so then when a godlike figure comes along and says that they're going to fix
• 38:17
  everything yeah I mean he literally you know Trump literally during the campaign said I alone
• 38:22
  can fix it yeah then you're more susceptible to believing that that's possible and he does look
• 38:27
  like a god he does he's physically he's donorious pectoral muscles yeah you have a
• 38:35
  riding a horse like Putin yeah his little penis chipped off like a marble marble tiny little
• 38:43
  mushroom headed cock poor little man let's uh such a horror show
• 38:55
  that concludes your initial installment of my live show with Tim mentioned next week the second
• 39:00
  half of our conversation live just before christmas 2018 at giant dwarf see you then