The Scathing Atheist - 545: Sound of Barbenheimer Freedom Edition
Episode Date: July 27, 2023On this week’s episode: The sound of freedom is apparently just lying ... We learn that it's only okay to become death when you're fully clothed ... And we care about Barbie more than child sex traf...ficking, like the future atheists want. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: scathingnews@gmail.com To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Headlines: Sound of Freedom producer says the movie security team rescued 200 trafficked kids irl: https://www.christianpost.com/news/sound-of-freedom-producer-says-200-kids-rescued-during-filming.html Trump hosts screening party at Bedminster: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/20/donald-trump-sounds-of-freedom-screening-golf-course-qanon Bigots have a series of freakouts about Barbie movie: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-throwing-temper-tantrums-over-barbie_n_64bd7fbce4b093f07cb51775 Hindus are mad that Oppenheimer says words from their book while naked: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/24/media/india-oppenheimer-backlash-hindu-right-intl-hnk/index.html New Information Platform Seeks to Create Family Friendly Digital Town Square: https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech/new-social-media-platform-seeks-to-create-family-friendly-digital-town-square-4631773
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Warning, this episode contains so much profanity, we even started swearing in British, like
a bunch of wankers, bellends, and knopsacks.
This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by MySheetsRock and by the
new presentation software for American history teachers in Florida.
White PowerPoint.
White PowerPoint.
Lots of good people on both slides.
And now, The scathing atheist.
Well, hello there. It's Thursday.
It's July 27th.
And it's Cross Atlantic Communication Day.
Right, or as Marsh would call it, the new world.
No, no, it's a fad I'm telling you, it'll never catch on, never catch on.
I'm Michael Marshall.
I'm Eli Bosnick.
I'm Heath Enright.
And from John Travolta's New Jersey, Kim Cattrall's Liverpool, and Iggy Pop's Ann Arbor, this is The Scathing Atheist.
Oh, this week's episode, the sound of freedom is apparently just lying.
9,000 school kids will be sent to Coventry by the Christians.
And we care about Barbie more than child sex trafficking,
like the future atheists want.
But first, the Eliatride. so we got a letter from a christian in our p.o box this week like a handwritten one with a pencil
which i'll admit isn't a terribly common occurrence don't get me wrong we get all
kinds of cool stuff from listeners.
Folks send us books they wrote, gifts, the stuff they made while they listened to our show. But
Christians, they usually stick to email. Anyway, my letter writer told us that he had listened to
the show. No, he had not. And that he considered us to be honest and open to debate. See, told you
he hadn't listened to the show. And if we could answer
one simple question, we could prove to him that evolution was real.
Now, I hate to disappoint you, but no, we couldn't. His so-called question was just the usual
Christian misunderstanding of evolution wrapped in a barely discernible question mark. But it did make me think of a Facebook post
that gets shared from time to time in atheist and science groups. You've probably seen it. It's from
a group called Christians Against Science, which is kind of worthy of a diatribe all on its own.
And the post reads, quote, The Earth is 4,000 years old. Change my mind. And the first comment on that post replies,
the half-life of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years. It decays into radium-226, which in turn decays
into radon-222. Radon-222 becomes polonium-210, which finally decays into a stable, nuclide lead.
The existence of lead as an element disproves the 4,000-year-old myth.
And look, for the sake of the pedants and the chemists in our audience,
I'll point out that that's actually not exactly true scientifically.
Like, not all lead comes from uranium-238.
I mean, it does, but it's not in that
order. Specifics are boring. But the point, generally speaking, stands. Anyone can buy
themselves a bit of polonium-210 and 280 days later, give or take a couple days, thank you,
pettance, they end up with right? They can monitor it. They can
test it. Hell, they can watch it happen under an atomic microscope. It's boring, but the point is
they could. And this is true all the way up the chain of radiological decay, right? There are no
missing links, no need for meta-analysis or an advanced understanding of mathematics.
It is actually, observably there.
And look, I bring this up not because I think if I pointed this out to the author of that letter,
he would throw his hands in the air and start fucking his fishing buddies like he's always dreamed of.
But as atheists, we're often told by theists that the path to non-belief is down the
road of just a few cleverly answered apologetics. But that isn't true, right? The existence of lead
is just another piece of evidence that wherever that mystical intellectual place they keep telling us we can get them to is we're here. We're surrounded by it,
right? And I'm not an idiot, right? If filling in the God of the gaps worked, we'd have done away
with religion right about when nobody sailed off the edge of the earth. But it is worth remembering
that evidence for the non-existence of God isn't just in clever places theists demand we put it. It's everywhere.
Morally, philosophically, logically, wherever you turn with enough inquiry, you will find evidence
of the failure of the God hypothesis. And too often we, as atheists, waste our time pretending otherwise because theists tell us to. Look, I stopped
believing in God because Carl Sagan reminded me that this planet had thousands of confident
religions, right? That was it. That was the crack in the dam. And honestly, the rest was just
paperwork, right? And I'm lucky in a thousand ways that I got to deconvert the way I did,
right? I didn't risk my family or community to do it. I actually found a community that not only welcomed me, but gave me a platform.
And now that platform has grown to the point that Christians who haven't listened to my podcast
send me letters telling me that I could change their mind with one simple trick.
And look, I'm not going to write that Christian back. I know the only
reason that he wrote me a handwritten letter
was so that I would take the time to write him back.
But if I did,
it only seems fair
to tell him that the answers he seeks
are right there at the tip of his
pencil.
They're talking about you, Jesus.
I interrupt this broadcast and bring you
a special news bulletin.
Joining me for headlines tonight are the Vodka and Kahlua to my cream,
Michael Marshall and Eli Bosnick gentlemen.
Are you ready to Caucasian?
I guess.
I mean,
it's a podcast where we laugh at our own jokes.
Heath.
We've already hit Caucasian.
Yeah.
And I'm from the North of England.
I haven't seen the sun in 16 years and my spice rack consists of nothing but salt.
So yeah,
I'm ready to call it.
Yeah.
All right.
Got it.
We're all set.
Perfect.
The white Russian.
And speaking of white guys, let's segue to Sheetz.
They're going to love this.
For a quick word from our sponsor, My Sheetz Rock, a very diverse and woke company, I'm
sure.
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You don't? What? No,
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Ah, I see. Yeah, the family quilt, it's mostly like potato sack, kind of Hessian. Although,
I do think there's some wedding dress in there somewhere as well.
That's right, Keith.
My Sheets Rock sent us a set to try, and they quickly became my favorite sheets.
In fact, since then, Anna and I have bought two more sets.
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And we're back in our lead story tonight.
I'm going to miss you, my sheets rock.
In our lead story tonight.
How do you fuck up being against child sex trafficking?
It's so easy
to get that right.
But as you already know,
if you're a long-time listener,
every headline we do
can start with
the Christian right
ruins everything.
And I guess
if you're a new listener,
that might sound hyperbolic,
but they managed
to fuck up
being anti-child
sex trafficking.
They did that
badly somehow. And the latest example is the
QAnon stoking Christian movie, Sound of Freedom, that hit theaters this month. And while it's
technically not official QAnon material, it sits upon a throne of lies inside a castle of lies
held up by an intricate system of trusses that are in fact liars who lie.
The main plot of the movie is made up. It's supposed to be based on a true story,
but that part's made up. The group the movie is based on is highly questionable. There's a very
silly conspiracy theory surrounding the movie tickets, and the producers are claiming the movie also happened in real life while they were
shooting the movie all such very obvious lying throughout yeah this is less of a walks like a
duck quacks like a duck situation and more of a the director has given several direct interviews
in which he proclaims to be a duck situation. Right, yeah. Seven interviews that were explicitly about why he explicitly has a cocked,
grouchy penis
and why he's slathered in hoisin sauce.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely correct.
So the movie is loosely based on the story
of Tim Ballard,
a former Homeland Security agent
who founded a vigilante strike force team
called Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR.
The group claims they go around the world rescuing victims of child sex trafficking.
Ballard is also a devout Mormon and a devout QAnon lunatic, not surprisingly.
And Jim Caviezel, who plays Ballard in the movie, is also a QAnon lunatic.
So they made the plot as close as they could to, you know,
rescuing kids from a pizza dungeon right before Hillary murder-eat-fucks-them in some order.
But they didn't want to be directly QAnon the movie quite so obviously,
so they move it from Washington, D.C. to Columbia, district of, it's very subtle.
And yes, spoiler, they win because fucking Jesus or something.
And yes, it is very much on the docket for God awful movies.
Oh, yeah, it is.
We had a lot of folks wondering why we didn't do this one while it was in theaters.
And people, sometimes a movie just needs to be a live show.
Stay tuned, everyone.
Stay tuned.
So, so much looking forward to that.
So the vigilante strike force team
is, first of all,
very possibly not that at all.
And very possibly
making this problem worse
to whatever extent they actually do
any of the things they say they do.
For example,
they've been criticized for
broadcasting the victims
of human trafficking without regard for those people's privacy.
Jeez.
Seems like you can just do your raid without the bonus content for your fucking vlog, but apparently not.
Yep.
Also, despite what OUR claims, a bunch of their so-called operatives are not people with experience in the military or law enforcement or special ops or any of that stuff.
According to Vice News,
a bunch of them are just real estate bros
doing like dive rolls for the camera
for absolutely no reason
because they get excited about that.
Vice also found out that during a failed mission in Haiti,
Ballard was certain the team was going to find a missing kid
because Ballard got a tip from a psychic in Utah.
Her name is Janet, by the way.
These people are the fucking worst.
They also they take credit for literally anything.
Like they took credit for one rescue operation because they supplied some of the money that bought some of the trained police dogs that worked on some of the mission.
And therefore, this was an all you on some of the mission. And therefore,
this was an all you are collaboration with the police. Nonsense. Also, Ballard stood in Congress
telling about how all you are rescued a victim called Liliana, even though she actually had
already rescued herself years before she ever met all you are. He still took credit for that.
She rescued herself. She got herself out of the situation. Right. And keep in mind that this group's own story is that they roll heavily armed into sovereign nations to pursue extrajudicial justice.
Which, even if they did do those things, and to be clear, they do not, that is called an invasion.
They are doing hobby invasions of other countries.
Badly and maybe lying about a
bunch of them. Yes. And while we're evaluating the truth of Tim Ballard and his team, it's worth
mentioning that he did an interview with Jordan Peterson last week. So already not great for truth
value stuff. And during that appearance, Ballard claimed that his team just recently raided a so-called baby factory
somewhere in West Africa where kids were sold for satanic ritual abuse and organ harvesting.
Because, you know, the organs of kids have the best adrenochrome for Illuminati getting high
at parties. That's a real QAnon thing that they believe. That guy rolls into sovereign nations with a machine gun, people.
With a machine gun.
Yikes.
And, you know, it's a bit rich for a Mormon guy to criticize anyone for being a baby factory.
That's the first thing I'm going to say here.
Very good point.
But also purely from an organ harvesting perspective, using babies, it just makes so little sense.
Thank you. harvesting perspective, using babies, it just makes so little sense. It's like when restaurants
serve you baby carrots, like, okay, they're sweeter, but you need way more of them to fill
you up. Just wait until it's a full carrot. Yeah. It's like the veal of the Illuminati
hormone Coke party thing. Exactly. Yeah. Weird. And speaking of insane liars, Tim Ballard actually
advised Donald Trump on the issue of ridiculous QAnon stuff in 2019 while Trump was in office.
And of course, Trump was claiming the advisory position was all about child sex trafficking and nothing else.
But there's a zero percent chance of having a single conversation with Tim Ballard that doesn't end with a Jewish lizard alien at the top of a Rico chart with
yarn and pushpins everywhere.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that relationship with Trump is apparently still going.
And the 37 times indicted felon, Donald Trump, hosted a screening of Sound of Freedom last
week at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Minster, New Jersey Golf Club.
The liar-themed guest list included Carrie Lake, Jack Posobiec, and Steve Bannon.
This all happened, by the way, 30 miles from Eli's house.
Yes, it did.
Okay, why does everything bad always happen
about half an hour or so away from Eli's house?
We had this screening.
We had the crypto scammer.
We've got the Supreme Court judge
who lives worryingly close to you.
But Eli, we did warn you
not to buy a property on a hell mouth.
That was advice we did try to give.
It doesn't matter how good the prices are.
You just don't do it.
Get it on the bounce of that hell mouth probably.
Exactly.
I caught my house on the bounce.
So here's the latest lie
from the Sound of Freedom people.
During a recent interview,
the producer of the movie
told a story about
how Jim Caviezel's wife
was responsible
for saving a bunch of kids
from real-life human traffickers
in Cartagena, Colombia.
Her name is Carrie.
By the way,
Carrie Caviezel.
She doesn't get named
for the entire article in the Christian Post, so we're going to give her a way, Carrie Caviezel. She doesn't get named for the entire article in the Christian Post.
So we're going to give her a name.
Carrie Caviezel, The Wish-Granting Weasel is the name of my new children's book, by the way, if anyone is interested.
Excellent. Yeah, her name is Carrie Caviezel.
So it all started when Jim wanted to shoot this movie in Columbia.
But Carrie had seen Narcos on Netflix and she was scared and didn't want Jim to go.
But then Tim Ballard said he knew 30 ex-Navy SEALs who could run security and Carrie's fear
was allayed at that point. Right. Because she's a gullible moron. Right. Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. Then one day during the movie shoot, a bunch of those ex-Navy SEALs were gone from the set all of a
sudden. And it turns out they were saving kids from human trafficking exactly like in the movie,
but in real life. So cool. Well, yeah, apparently that's the story. The Navy SEALs were just walking
around Cartagena that day and somebody was like, kids but like i'm assuming in spanish and the
seals were like no way this is so cool this is perfect for promoting the movie say yes say yes
and we'll do something and they busted the trafficking ring in the story saving more than
200 kids right and and he's not being vague by the way that's what the fucking article yeah it
says more than 200 more than two. You round about 200 child sex
trafficking victims. I feel like you do a
head count when you're fucking saving
child sex trafficking. Ah, fucking ballpark, whatever.
Yeah, I mean, bear in mind, he is a Mormon.
They stopped counting child sex trafficking victims
at 13, you know, otherwise known as
a Duggars Dozen. Oh,
yikes. Okay.
That seemed
like a very obvious lie, that whole story.
So I did a quick Google, assuming that kind of thing might pop up in the news somewhere if it actually happened, right?
I found the Christian Post article that I was already looking at.
I found an article from the journalism team at movieguide.com with a link to their source.
Their source was the article at the Christian Post.
And I found another article
in the National Catholic Register
with no sources listed.
And I found a self-proclaimed
Christian journalist on Twitter
who just repeated the story
with no sources.
What's so amazing about this lie
is that it's very obvious that, like,
they all went out for beers
or they had fucking water slide tickets
on the day and they were like oh shit
Carrie Caviezel the wish granting weasel is going to
be so mad at us what is she like
so she won't be mad at us child
sex travel yeah we'll just say that even
though that's what the movies yeah it'll be like a super
cool coincidence and it worked on
Carrie Caviezel so they were like this is great
let's repeat this for adults
so it's either that or there genuinely was a child sex trafficking ring that they stumbled. So they were like, this is great. Let's repeat this for adults. So it's either that
or there genuinely was
a child sex trafficking ring
that they stumbled on
while they were there.
Like their fucking
murder she wrote
and everywhere they go,
they just happen to stumble
onto the one thing
that they do.
It could be that either.
Okay.
Well, they should shoot a movie
like half hour from Eli's house
just based on like
the stats we have.
All right.
Well, that brings us
to my favorite part.
And that would be when idiots have a meltdown because they don't know how anything works. just based on like the stats we have. All right, well, that brings us to my favorite part.
And that would be when idiots have a meltdown because they don't know how anything works.
So the movie is doing way too well in theaters
with over $100 million in box office already.
Not happy about that.
But a bunch of that money came from a promotion
by Angel Studios called Pay It Forward Ticket Sales.
They allowed people to buy extra tickets
for someone who might not be able to afford it. They allowed people to buy extra tickets for someone
who might not be able to afford it, and then people could theoretically claim the free seat
at a future showing. This led to a bunch of sales for empty seats. And we know that because QAnon
lunatics are idiots and had a giant freakout when they saw empty theaters, but they couldn't buy
seats on their ticket app. So, we got a long series of
QAnon detectives putting up
their shocking expose
video about the Illuminati
pedophile cartel trying to
sabotage this extremely important
movie. Right. By buying tickets
for it. It's the perfect crime.
Yeah. It's either that or
all those empty seats and empty theaters
where moviegoers who got abducted and sex trafficked.
Oh my God, this is bigger than we thought.
No, I knew it.
They thought AMC was in on it too.
They thought AMC was like, fuck it.
They thought AMC took the movie and put it in their theaters
and then fucked with a few of the theaters
by like messing with the AC or something.
Yeah.
Next up in headlines.
Sometimes you eat the Barbie. Sometimes, well, the AC or something. Yeah. Next up in headlines. Sometimes you eat the Barbie.
Sometimes, well, the Barbie eats you.
And sometimes you have a public image based on your powerful, resilient manliness that you think you have.
And then you get triggered by the independent spirit of a doll in a movie.
And you end up losing a fight that your opponent doesn't even know about.
in a movie and you end up losing a fight that your opponent doesn't even know about.
And that all happens for the whole world to see on the internet because you're an idiot who put it there on purpose. Well, that stuff happened to several Christian right lunatics and also a
Jewish right lunatic, thanks to the highly successful release of the Barbie movie in
theaters last week. It's weird that I constantly find myself saying, eh, I guess I'm not really looking forward to the culture, but the backlash is going
to be amazing. Oh, man. All right. So the freak out roster includes Charlie Kirk, Ted Cruz and
Ben Shapiro. So let's start with the most important thing, making fun of their physical appearances
because they're bad.
They're bad looking people that are bad.
I mean, Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro
both look like Pinocchios
that didn't quite make it to real boy status.
And Ted Cruz looks like a Jepetophile.
So I can see why this movie about dolls
really hits so hard for them.
Jepetophile.
Jepetophile is fantastic.
And he does.
The thing is,
Ted Cruz,
he's got a beard now.
And you know that
joke about some
people with beards
that they look the
same if you rotate
their heads 180
degrees?
Well, somehow for
Ted Cruz, it also
works if you only
rotate him 90
degrees or like any
other number of
degrees.
Yeah, exactly.
Perfect 360 degree
rotational symmetry.
It's like a Wolverine
at hospice.
It's just not
exactly.
Escherian.
Yeah, and Ben Shapiro,
he looks like one of those
inflatable man dolls
you can get.
But instead of being made
for a bachelorette party,
he was made for a funeral party.
And then Charlie Kirk
is the same thing,
but was made for a Nazi party.
For a Nazi party.
There you go.
Charlie Kirk looks like
the archenemy
of a serial mascot, right?
Like he just ate
like some Keebler elves that he hunted in a hedge maze or something.
I don't know.
He's really happy about it.
He's terrifying.
So for anyone who's not familiar, Charlie Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA,
a Christian right propaganda mill that travels the country going to schools to infect children
with those ideas.
These are the groomers we need to
worry about right there. Turning point USA. And naturally, Kirk is a bigot who called for a boycott
of Barbie because the movie is, quote, trans propaganda that is in this hyper feminine,
ultra pink. Don't say propaganda again. Propaganda thing. But it's really been taken over by the trans mafia, end quote.
To be clear,
because that attempted word talking
was fucking insane,
the trans propaganda
from the trans mafia
was a reference to
one of the characters in the movie
being played by Hari Neff,
who happens to be trans.
That's it.
Right, which is amazing
because it puts the right in this amazing catch-22 because who happens to be trans. That's it. Right. Which is amazing because it puts the right
in this amazing Catch-22
because they have to be like stupid women
in their empowerment.
Except for that lady
who isn't a lady.
She's just
empowering them.
Okay. Fuck, they're serpentining
on me. They're serpentining.
And I'm sorry, what is the
trans mafia? Is it like La Cosa
Nostra slash Nostril?
Or I guess La Cosa Laurel?
Maybe? I mean, that's
Italian pronoun humor. It's niche, but
I'm doing it. Well done.
There's a vocab student out there loving that
one, Marge. Bravo, brava.
Yeah, so next up,
we have Ted Cruz.
Is he a fragile Christian man
who's afraid of a doll? No, of course not.
He has a very serious
geopolitical motivation for
not liking the movie. It's not about
feminism being scary. It's about
maritime oil
contracts and a cartography dispute
between Vietnam and China.
Apparently, that's really why he's complaining about the movie.
Apparently, the movie shows a map for like two seconds that shows a dashed line
indicating sort of ownership of part of the South China Sea by China.
But that line is disputed by Vietnam.
So according to Ted Cruz, the movie is, quote, Chinese communist propaganda.
But according to the production company, quote, it it's a childlike crayon drawing. What the
fuck are you talking about? And approximate quote, the first part, exact quote. OK,
but that's amazing because it means Ted Cruz turned to his office of what I can only imagine
are deeply suicidal
interns and was like, I need a takedown of the Barbie movie because we're in hell and I'm the
devil. But I need it to be one that people will take seriously, y'all. OK, none of this
surface level stuff. And the thing is, first of all, the point isn't even stupid. It's just
completely wrong because the map that they're talking about, I put a picture in the show notes
here. It's got Asia rotated to 90 degrees. So that dotted line isn't separating China and Vietnam.
It's separating parts of the Arctic Ocean, right? That's the top of Asia there.
They're so stupid. I hadn't seen this yet. This is perfect. They're so dumb. Wow.
The same map has got England as being bigger than all of Europe. So it also must be British
propaganda, apparently. Also, it entirely omits
the Middle East
and it includes
a giant turtle
occupying East Mongolia.
So I can't wait to see
who else Ted Cruz
will pretend to side with there.
It's like an anti-woke
like double Mercator
projection map,
like extra anti-woke.
So we also got a freak out
from Ginger Gates, by the way,
who intentionally got married to Matt Gates.
That's who that is.
She's a grown-up,
but I just thought I should add that she's a grown-up.
She actually is.
Okay.
I'm so glad you clarified that
because I just assumed that Matt Gates
had like a series of wives
that he'd named after each of the Spice Girls,
presumably just as a roundabout way
of justifying the Baby Spice one.
There it is.
Yup.
He's the worst.
So apparently Ginger Gates
had a problem with the depiction
of Ken in the movie,
specifically his hormone levels.
She found him to have, quote,
disappointingly low T,
not enough testosterone
in his character arc.
She had a line for how much it would
be and she was disappointed by it.
She also added, quote,
the 2023 Barbie movie
unfortunately neglects to
address any notion of faith or
family and tries to normalize the idea
that men and women can't
collaborate positively.
Yuck. End quote.
I'm sorry, lady.
The only way Ryan motherfucking Gosling
is lower T than her husband
is if T stands for touching kids.
Okay?
There it is.
Yeah, come on.
Ryan, you didn't like Ryan Gosling?
Oh, you don't find
Ryan Gosling desirable?
You didn't find him
to be an attractive man
in that movie?
Okay.
Okay.
All right. Alright, well that
brings us, of course,
to Benny Shaps.
He released a 43
minute angry snit video
about how much he hated
Barbie, which he saw
approximately three years after being told
by his wife that a wet vagina is a disease and
proudly believing her and making a video about it.
That's the timeline in his life. In the Barbie video, he spent most of the time complaining
about the political message of wokeness that was way too heavy handed for him. And then in his
video, he lit a Barbie doll on fire during his even handed nuanced video about the political
message he wanted to put out. Watch it.
Watch it.
It's anti-Semitic propaganda.
Watching him.
I'll say it right now.
I don't care.
COVID didn't attack Benny Shapps somehow.
I don't know how, but COVID didn't go after him.
That's what RFK Jr. said.
And in Heimer news, if he's going to do a story about Barbie,
it's only fitting I do a story about oppenheimer because well done you know for some reason culture has decided to pair an important and groundbreaking
film about an american figurehead nay the very soul of the american question itself
with christopher nolan's oppenheimer but don't worry this week people are offended by oppenheimer
for a much dumber reason than I am.
Namely, Hindus are offended because a character in the movie quotes the Bhagavad Gita during a sex scene.
Okay, whereas you're just annoyed that they cast Cillian Murphy as the Jewish guy when you were right there.
Although, that said, of course they cast the Irish guy as the bomb maker.
It makes sense.
It's typecasting if you think about it.
Now I'm just picturing myself playing Oppenheimer.
It's just an hour longer because I've got
to stop and pant at the top of all those
stairs in New Mexico.
Okay, so first off,
big thanks to Andy for sending us
this story with the subject line
Offendenheimer
to scathingnews at gmail.com. I had a good laugh
there. Pence of the none of them Mike variety are headed your way. Anyway, if you haven't seen the
movie yet, they absolutely love the now I am become death quote that Oppenheimer is so famous
for. They say it roughly 900 times in the film, as if they were hoping it would get Samuel L. Jackson on board for the project.
Now, to be fair to the film, Oppenheimer was a polyglot,
and one of the languages he spoke and read was Sanskrit.
But apparently, nobody's ever discussed their holy book with their privates exposed,
because people are losing their minds over the fact that again one of the scenes in the
movie oppenheimer says the now i am become death quote like in between bone sessions apparently
listen people are doing that with atlas shrugged with their genitals thank you yes exactly so the
hindu nationalist baharita janata party called the film a, quote, disturbing attack on Hinduism
and accused it of being, quote,
part of a larger conspiracy
by anti-Hindu forces, end quote.
What?
Well, you know, it's a compliment to Killian
that he was part of a large conspiracy
because some people can only muster a small,
you know, a petite perfidy at best.
Sure.
Also, I feel like Hinduism
is just trying to get
attention like a little brother here.
You know what I mean? Like, Islam and Judaism have the
big rivalry, and then Hinduism tries
to jump in. They're like, we didn't like... Shut
the fuck up! Shut up! Nobody
cares. You have way more people than Judaism.
Doesn't matter. Shut up. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead
and say middle child for sure. Yeah, middle child.
Middle child. Yeah, absolutely.
But that's not all. India's information commissioner, Uday Murakar, called the scene a, quote, direct assault on the
religious beliefs of a billion tolerant Hindus, liking it to, quote, waging a war on the Hindu
community. And he added, we believe that if you remove this scene and do the necessary changes
to win the hearts of Hindus,
it will go a long way to establish your credentials as a sensitized human being
and gift you the friendship of billions of nice people. End quote.
Yeah, but who wants the friendship of billions of people? I can't even reliably remember the
birthdays of the dozen or so people that I actually like. I don't want a billion friends.
Yeah. Okay. Maybe Killian can do some naked Bible reading
to make the Christian people mad too.
Like, I hope this becomes a thing
where you just like do a very solemn,
naked quoting of things that you hate.
And that becomes like the way to go after stuff.
Certainly an audio book I would pay for.
So I obviously don't need to tell our audience
that this is extremely silly.
And I'm relieved to say that
except for those billion super nice people,
nobody seems to be taking this complaint seriously.
But Uday, if you're listening, and we know you are, he's a huge fan of the show.
Maybe stop being offended by the words from your own holy books,
proximity to a penis, and you could establish your credentials as a sensible human and i don't know win the
friendship of killian murphy i don't know what i'm doing here and finally this week in fun gone to a
better place news when the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists when they got kicked off
youtube it was inevitable that they were going to seek sanctuary in the shadier corners of the
internet like when you lift a log and then you watch all the wood lice scurry around to find It was inevitable that they were going to seek sanctuary in the shadier corners of the internet.
Like when you lift a log and then you watch all the woodlice scurry around to find new pockets of darkness.
And if you really want to see the really hardcore anti-vax idiocy these days,
and you don't have a Spotify account or access to Joe Rogan, you've got to look to these alternative video platforms, places like Rumble or BitChute or Odyssey.com.
video platforms, places like Rumble or BitChute or Odyssey.com.
Yeah, like Telegram.
Good for spreading a pandemic or buying drugs and getting caught by Eli right away.
Being like, why are you on Telegram?
Are you buying drugs?
That's true.
Yep.
No, it's look, I'm just saying there's only one reason anyone's on Snapchat and that's to cheat on their spouse.
And there's only one reason to be on Telegram and it's because you're buying drugs.
Okay.
We all know it. You're not there for the content fun fact i only heard of odyssey.com
that last time because i accidentally stumbled upon the badly shot and even worsely titled video
saving scotland against vaccine genocide crash the farmer party which documents the time at a q a
that a dozen anti-vaxxers decided to gate crash my talk for the Glasgow
skeptics.
Only for them to be completely let down by the fact that I didn't sacrifice
any babies live on stage or anything like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's sad for them.
I feel like you need to have like a realistic baby prop behind the podium
just in case this ever happens again.
Just carry it with me at whole time. You might get side
tackled, but totally worth it.
That's such a good video at that point.
Highly recommend our audience. Link in the show
notes. Highly recommend you watching that video.
And I also recommend that those people
establish a fucking
dress code.
It looks like the unhoused are holding
a rally about not enough people being
willing to buy big issue.
What the fuck?
Come on.
Still, the thing is, if you glance at the white nationalist tinged recommendations on
any of those platforms, it's pretty clear that these aren't places for the faint of
heart, which is why I was so pleased to receive, posted through the door of the house in which
I live, a flyer for for a quote, all new video platform
promising positive entertainment that's free from violent, erotic, criminal or harmful content
and beneficial to people of all ages. They're flyering for a website, flyering for a website.
So clearly what had happened is my local conspiracy theorist was going door to door,
spreading the good word about this new platform, which is called Ganjing World.
So obviously I thought, I've got to check this place out.
Looking at it, I can see what makes Ganjing World so popular.
It's got a very YouTube feel to it.
It's got a huge amount of content, just like YouTube.
In fact, a lot like YouTube, because Ganjing World
seems to just lift thousands of videos from YouTube wholesale at a time and then republish
them to their own platform, which is why almost every video you come across on there has a big,
splashy YouTube thumbnail, but like three views maximum. It's also why you'll see channels drop
20 videos on the same day and then nothing for nine months.
And then another 20 appear because they're just going through and batch uploading them.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
So I checked it out for myself, Marsh.
First three videos for me.
Disney loses billions by going woke.
And then the truth about waterproof stickers.
Everything you need to know.
OK.
And then OMG new New Evidence on Bidens.
So good start.
Good start.
All right.
I don't know what this says, but mine were way more targeted.
They were Girl Gives Cupcakes to Garbage Man, but six months later, he returns with a surprise.
What?
Did you watch that?
What's the surprise?
I did not watch that.
Nice try, Hong Kong.
Eight minimalist habits for a clutter-free home.
Fair criticism.
Yeah, good.
And how to believe in yourself, even if no one else does.
All right. That one was your own video that you were doing for Danjing World?
For me.
There's also something else curious about this platform.
If you're on the homepage, I don't know if you guys noticed it.
If you hit refresh, you get a whole new set of recommended videos.
But there's one video that doesn't change.
It's always in the same place every single time you refresh.
And it's a video message from Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong.
And that's because this new, clean, family-friendly video sharing platform is owned by the Falun Gong cult,
the anti-vaccine
and anti-evolution cult
behind the far-right publication,
the Epoch Times.
Yeah, they also have
the Shen Yun dance crew.
That's them, right?
Yeah, that dance crew.
They do like anti-evolution,
anti-gay, anti-atheist
dance performances
with those themes of bigotry
somehow in the dancing.
And that leader guy, Lee Hang-ji,
he says he can levitate
and walk through walls.
Yes, he does.
Maybe we'll get a video of that
on his world.
Can I say, can I say,
for a cult diversified portfolio,
they got dance through.
It's true.
In fact, the Epoch Times actually published an article back in 2022 announcing the launch of Ganjing World, praising it as the family friendly digital town square.
is run by a cult who believe that homosexuality is a deviancy that they say is
as bad as organized crime
and that races should be kept segregated
in order to get into their own separate
but equal heavens. I can't say
which particular town square they're
trying to emulate, but I can tell you it's
definitely not one from this century.
Well, I mean, neither is America
though. We're not from this century
either, so plenty of town squares around
here like the one
you just described right he's gonna try that in a small town am i right huh jason aldean reference
the race yep topical nicely done nice all right well that is gonna do it for the headlines marsh
eli thanks as always marsh you want to do jumanji j Jumanji. When we come back, Marsh is going to fraud whisper another liar.
So I was watching something on YouTube the other day,
and the next video in the queue was James Heidrich and James Randi.
So, of course, I watched it.
If you haven't seen this before, it's delightful.
James Heidrich is a professional fraud who claims to have telekinetic powers,
and he's dressed like a pilgrim ninja for some reason, showing off his ability to turn a page in a book without touching it.
Spoiler, he blows on it and it moves because of the air.
And then James Randi comes out and pours some foam pellets near the book and offers $10,000 if Heydrich can do it again. And Heydrich
really tries for a second
to do it again with like magic,
I guess, in his head. It's the fucking best. Of course,
he doesn't do it. Well, if you
want that sort of thing in
podcast form, the answer is be
reasonable with Michael Marshall.
And we're also lucky enough to get the
occasional special report like
that from Marsh right here on Scathing in a segment we call Who's Woo?
So, Marsh, what kind of fraud are you going to be wrangling today?
Well, in previous editions of Who's Woo, I've sort of largely focused on people whose claim to expertise has been completely illegitimate right across the board. You know, we've talked about characters from such useless areas as wellness influencers, free speech grifters, faith healers,
and doctors of osteopathy. You know, I've said it before, I'll say it again, your medical degree
shouldn't include the name of a form of quackery if you want to be taken seriously.
Right. Or we start doing this with all the technical professions, right? I'm a licensed electrician and a 9-11 truther.
I'm a Christian person with a job.
Right, exactly.
Still, while all of those assholes have been worthy inclusions in the Who's Who Hall of
Fim, we could say at least in what we might call their defense, at least they were making
the most of what little they had.
They had no credibility to begin with,
so they had none to lose. But the same cannot be said for today's entry to Who's Who,
because today I want to tell you about Dr. Asim Malhotra. So Asim Malhotra was born in New Delhi,
India in 1977, but he moved to the UK before his first birthday. And it was when his father got a
job at a hospital here in my home city of Liverpool.
His dad would go on to be the vice president of the British Medical Association. And he received
an honor from the queen for his longstanding service to the NHS. And his mom actually worked
her whole career as a GP for the NHS. So it's kind of little surprise that Malhotra followed
in their footsteps and qualified, in his case, as a consultant cardiologist.
You know, so far, so good.
Okay.
I mean, look, I'm not here to shit on dad
or any other professional's record,
but if dad started in 1977
and was there for a while,
I can think of one fairly large blot on his resume.
Okay, I'm just saying.
I think the CIA did that only here in the US,
Eli, right?
Didn't they?
Oh, okay.
No, they got them.
So British doctors, it was cool.
So in fact, Malhotra, he was a rising star in his early career.
In 2013, he was named one of the 50 top medical pioneers from ethnic minority backgrounds
for his campaigns against junk food and high sugar diets.
He became the science director of an anti-sugar charity,
and he was named by the Evening Standard
as one of the 10 brightest stars working in science and tech.
So, you know, so far, so very good.
Sorry, Marsh, I know this isn't really the point,
but I feel like you just told me that awards for medical practice
have a whites and colored league in Britain.
Is that?
Well, okay, his anti-sugar campaign was separate but equal.
I get it. I get it.
I get it, right?
But actually, through all of this and through his rising star and his sudden rush to fame,
people should maybe have looked a little closer at all of his pioneering media advocacy and
his high profile campaigning because there was some signs that something was amiss.
For example, in 2017, he appeared all across the media promoting his book,
The Pioppi Diet, which told people to take four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil every day
and to avoid all carbohydrates and anything flour-based. This is the Pioppi Diet. It was
named after a village in southern Italy, which was said to be the birthplace of the Mediterranean
diet. But even if the Mediterranean diet. But, you know,
even if the Mediterranean diet
was actually as good for you
as Quack's claim,
it bore very little resemblance
to what Malhotra was promoting.
Because Italy, it's fair to say,
is not a country that eschews
flour or carbs.
Yeah.
His version takes the food pyramid
of the Mediterranean diet
and yanks out a giant block
from the bottom
like he's trying to lose it Jenga.
And then apparently he pours olive oil into that hole.
Like, I love the sound of that last thing I said,
but it's not stable just, you know,
in terms of a structure.
Yeah, you've got the olive oil,
you've got no bread to dip in it.
This is very, very simple.
Exactly, yeah.
So in fact, the actual dietary experts
at the British Dietetic Association,
they read his book and they concluded, quote,
that the authors may be the only people in the history of the planet
who've been to Italy and come back with a diet named after an Italian village
that excludes pasta, rice and bread, but includes coconuts.
Okay. I mean, he could grip it by the husk, right?
The BDA also pointed out that the book encourages people to starve themselves for 24 hours at a time every week.
And they named Malhotra's diet as, quote, one of the five worst celeb diets of 2018.
So, you know, it just sort of seems like Malhotra just can't help but appear on lists.
Okay, so the celebrity diets get to be of any race.
Interesting.
The UK integrated their worst of lists,
but not the best of?
I'm trying to figure out what direction
the bigotry is going here, Mark.
Exactly. Thank you, Heath.
We're going to crack this one.
I'm glad you guys are focusing on the important stuff here.
Malhotra's diet, to be honest,
it didn't end with the POP diet.
So in 2019, he wrote in the Independent newspaper about the death of his mother,
claiming that her premature and painful death at the age of 68
was due to her strict adherence to a vegetarian diet,
which he claims is dangerously lacking in nutrients and protein.
Thank you. I'm wasting away over here.
I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times.
Was she getting enough nectar?
Because that's a bottom pyramid staple, I think, right?
You need it.
You need it.
And then we can come to Malhotra's views on cholesterol.
So generally speaking, too much saturated fats in your diet are considered to be bad
for your heart.
Unless you are Dr. Asim Malhotra, a qualified cardiologist who stands pretty much alone
in his field in claiming that large
quantities of saturated fats are actually the key to a healthy diet. What? Malhotra is known to take
his coffee with a tablespoon of butter and coconut oil. Okay. The bullet coffee thing. Is that one of
those? Yeah. It's a marginally worse crime against coffee than Eli's Starbucks order.
Okay. Well, let's just say any Starbucks order that doesn't start with,
you're going to want to take your 15 after you write this down
is better than mine, Marsh, right?
It's a low bar.
Wait, so you're saying coffee full of butter, the bullet coffee thing,
it doesn't like remind your body about fat conceptually
so it can burn other fat?
Because I was promised it was that.
It was like, you know, giving a shirt sniff to a bloodhound
when there's a jailbreak,
but with like fat in my body.
That's what somebody told me, right?
Before they told me the Fed is a Ponzi scheme.
You're calling Tim Ferriss a liar, Marshall?
Are you calling Tim Ferriss a liar?
Okay, no, I heard it.
I heard it.
So in 2017, Malhotra wrote
in the British Journal of Sports Medicine
that saturated fat doesn't clog the arteries even at all, not remotely, which prompted a searing rebuke from Public Health England, the government body tasked with reducing health inequality.
article in the Times calling Public Health England a front group for the processed food industry in a response that would just epitomize his way of dealing with any legitimate criticism.
Yeah. And also severely confused the definition of what people were talking about
when they said big Twinkie. So, you know, it was bad all around.
Wait, what are people talking about when they say big Twinkie?
Don't move.
What's happening?
Marsh, don't move.
You have to tell me.
Is it a sex thing?
I feel like it's a sex thing.
It's always a sex thing.
I never know the sex things.
So through all of this, through all of this, Malhotra was building a brand and he was building
a media resume.
Even though he was a consultant cardiologist at his own private clinic, Malhotra became
the go-to voice for essentially any newspaper article or TV slot that was looking to promote the latest
fad dietary claim and looking for a veneer of credibility with which to sell it.
His website described him, quote, as one of the most influential and effective campaigning doctors
in the world on issues that affect obesity, heart disease, and population health. And that he's not
just a cardiologist, but a man who wants to change the world one meal at a time by not just rocking
the system, but by rebuilding it. One easy payment of $9.99 at a time, right? Okay, my website says
a lot of things about me. Also, if you're planning to change the world one anything at a time, that's dumb.
And you're lying.
Absolutely lying.
Yeah, it's not how anything would work.
Exactly.
It's like thus far, Malhotra's had the air of man with an overinflated sense of his own
importance.
And at this point, he's now hurtling towards an event that would come to define the direction
of his career, as it did for so many egocentric health contrarians, COVID-19.
Because by August 2020, not that far into the pandemic,
he'd actually rushed out a book called the 21-Day Immunity Plan,
which claimed that anyone could protect themselves from COVID
by optimizing their metabolism through Malhotra's specific fad diet.
And look, it's true that some of the
factors that put people at risk of a severe complication from COVID, things like diabetes
or heart disease, they can be helped by a good diet. But it's obviously complete bullshit to
then claim that diet alone is sufficient to protect you from COVID. It's bad enough for
anybody to be making that claim. but it's particularly galling to see
that claim coming from a media darling consultant cardiologist. Right. Claiming that a diet could
keep you safe from COVID is like saying the problem with Heath's 93 Ford hatchback is that
he's not putting premium gas in it. It's a 2005. I've been putting a tablespoon of crude oil with the gas because it reminds the engine
about the origin. Obviously, yeah. The paleo fuel diet. So, of course, there is a highly effective
and completely safe way to protect, or pretty much completely safe way to protect yourself
from catching COVID. You get vaccinated. So what did the good doctor make of the vaccine?
Well, you might be surprised to hear that he was actually in favor of the vaccine when it was released in november 2020 he said that
vaccines are the safest of all drugs and then you won't be surprised to hear that he quickly changed
his mind and he started to become one of the most visible and influential anti-vaxxers in the
entirety of the uk there it is and i feel like he's not going to spread the pandemic one person at a time. It's going to be more people at a time when he does bad shit,
right? Yeah. So in September 2022, he published a paper titled Curing the Pandemic of Misinformation
on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Through Real Evidence-Based Medicine, which he said had implications
for every human being on the planet and was perhaps the most important work of his career so far.
Okay.
If you have to say real in your title of a science thing,
I don't like it already.
I feel like that's bad.
It's not ideal.
And given that much of his career so far had been to tell people
that statins don't work and that Italians don't eat pasta,
it's probably not saying much to say that this is the highlight of his career.
Sure. Yeah. And as someone who's much to say that this is the highlight of his career. Sure.
Yeah.
And as someone who's been to a lot of one-man shows,
I can assure you that
this is my most important work so far.
Always a bad sign.
Always bad.
Oh, hello.
You smoking a cigarette?
Yeah.
Smoking a cigarette.
Cool.
Tell us about cardiology now.
So this paper was very quickly picked up
by all the most obvious vaccine deniers
and COVID minimizers around.
And the video that he released
to announce the publishing of the paper
got more than a million views within a few days.
Because, you know,
how legitimate can a scientific paper be
if it doesn't come with its own unboxing video like this?
Yeah, well, I liked the whispered ASMR version better myself,
but I like that he's diversifying. Okay, well, I liked the whispered ASMR version better myself, but I like that he's diversifying.
Okay, Marsh, question.
Did that make him the best anti-vaxxer of color in the UK or the worst doctor in like
the open flight of the people?
This is a great question.
What's the award scenario there?
How did it affect his ranking of the races?
Yeah, it's an open question.
The figures are still being worked out.
Yeah, the stats will be worked out in payroll. Yeah, it's an open question. The figures are still being worked out. Yeah, the stats will be worked out in payroll.
Okay, it's tricky.
So in this video,
he proudly proclaimed
that his paper had survived
a rigorous and long peer-reviewed process,
which is a kind of weird thing
to boast about,
given that is the baseline
for all scientific papers.
Yeah, my podcast was just accepted by iTunes.
Maybe you've heard of it.
But the thing is, this paper...
It's in New York.
This paper is not actually a study or an experiment
or even a meta-analysis.
It's a narrative review.
You know, it has no method section
describing how they conducted the review.
It's got no outline of how or why
Malhotra went about the review either.
It essentially is as rigorous as
stuff I could find that agrees with me.
That's kind of the rigor that's in this paper.
And in this paper, he claims to reluctantly demonstrate
that mRNA vaccines carry a risk of heart complications
that are being knowingly underreported.
Reluctantly.
You know, the heart complications they don't want you to know about.
Yeah.
Which is weird because everybody's dumb uncle who eventually died of COVID
was very
versed in those risks, right?
Really. Yeah. Also,
good rule of thumb. If you claim to have
data that demonstrates with
a flowery adverb, like
reluctantly demonstrate, no, you don't.
And it's the opposite of whatever you just
said. It pains me to have to say
this, but... Yeah, exactly.
Especially if it reluctantly demonstrates the thing you were looking to try and demonstrate. Yeah, exactly.
Still, it is a paper about the COVID-19 vaccine that is published in a peer-reviewed journal,
specifically the Journal of Insulin Resistance. That feels unrelated.
And to be clear, scientific journals don't usually have titles designed to like
throw you off the scent. They tend to be pretty root one. So normally in the Journal of Insulin Resistance,
you'd expect to find studies about insulin resistance,
not about COVID-19 vaccine.
So it's objectively weird to find
a COVID-19 anti-vax paper in there.
They reluctantly did that way off topic.
Yeah, and that is exactly the kind of oddity
you might want to take up with the editor
of the Journal of Insulin Resistance,
a cardiologist by the name of Asim Malhotri. Come on. Maybe you've heard of him.
I see. So this is less my podcast made it onto iTunes and more my podcast made it onto my iPhone.
I got it. Yeah. Still, the fact that he somehow managed to get a paper published in a journal
he edits and got it past a peer review board that he sits on.
That was plenty enough for the anti-vax crowd, especially with his large media profile and his emotive storytelling.
So, for example, he appeared on Fox News to explain that his own father died as a result of the mRNA vaccine, which he claims caused a rapid acceleration of coronary artery disease in his father.
which he claims caused a rapid acceleration of coronary artery disease in his father.
Okay, it wasn't refusing to take statins on the advice of his son or like his Crisco latte every morning on the advice of his son.
It's definitely the vaccine that did that with the coronary artery disease?
Yeah, exactly.
And it's not even just on Fox News that he makes that claim.
That claim about his dad dying as a result of the vaccine,
that's in the paper that he published.
He used the death of his own father as what he refers to as a result of the vaccine, that's in the paper that he published. He used the death of his own father
as what he refers to as a case study
in how evil the vaccine is.
And then he had the balls to say in this study
that there was no conflict of interest
anywhere in the paper.
Yeah, I mean, even if his claim was true,
and it's not,
that would be like having Inigo Montoya
fill out a quarterly review for the six-fingered man.
Yeah, exactly. And when you think
about it, Malhotra's had some pretty
rotten luck, right? Because his mom
died as a result of the thing he was
already making a name for himself writing about.
And now his dad has died
as a result of another thing he was getting
loads of attention for campaigning about. That's terrible.
Yeah, that is terrible. I sure hope his
kids don't get famous
for writing about
shitting yourself to death
in public or something.
These kids want to come on
Citation Needed
and talk about a tragedy.
I don't know if we can
figure something out.
And Malhotra,
he just evidently thrives
on the attention.
Since publishing this paper,
he's been interviewed by
Joe Rogan,
Russell Brand,
Tucker Carlson,
Del Bigtree,
Rob F. Kennedy Jr., Brett Weinstein, Neil Oliver,
Steve Kirsch,
basically every prominent anti-vaxxer around.
In fact, I honestly think
the only interview that he's ducked so far
since publishing that paper
is with me when I invite him to be reasonable.
Oh, but that list is something.
I'm surprised it doesn't include
like lemon juice and paper cuts
and people who stand at the bottom of escalators.
I'm so sad by how many I know from the list.
Like, yeah, there's a few famous ones.
I know the like obscure ones.
I know I can picture Del Bigtree right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fuck.
So when NHS guidance was changed to recommend a wider use of statins in the UK,
the BBC actually invited
Dr. Asim Al-Hotran, consultant cardiologist, live on air to give his expert misguided response.
And of course, he immediately pivoted the interview to sharing vaccine misinformation
about how all the real stuff that's going on with people's hearts is to do with COVID and
the vaccine. It's all about the vaccine here, causing a wave of complaints to the BBC
who should have known better
than to invite an anti-vaxxer on air
to talk about anything in the first place.
Sure.
Yeah, especially when your excuse is,
yes, but we invited him on
to be wrong about something else.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, we invited a literal dragon,
but we said fire only
during the killing that you would do.
And then he did other homicidal. It's not, we said fire only during the killing that you would do, and then he did other homicidal
shit. It's not, we said fire only.
Yeah, that response, Eli,
is literally the response the BBC
gave me when I complained about
Malhotra, and I had to point out, you shouldn't
have been on air about statins. He's wrong
about statins, and any other cardiologist
would tell you that. So you just don't want us
to have any wrong people on our news
program. Is that what you're saying?
Exactly.
What can you be wrong about now?
Nothing.
What?
This is crazy.
You sound insane.
But yeah, the BBC did invite him on
because of Asim Al-Hotra's job title,
because of his media profile,
and because his polished delivery
makes him particularly persuasive,
especially to people looking
for a reason to be persuaded.
You know, he gives them
that permission structure and his influence reaches to some pretty worrying places so when the Tory MP
Andrew Bridgen stood up in parliament in October 2022 and warned of a big scary study that proves
vaccines are evil it was Malhotra who'd given him that study and all of his talking points and
continues to do so as Bridgen got further and further radicalized,
he talked more and more about his ongoing conversations
with cardiologist Dr. Asim Malhotra.
And his Twitter feed has increasingly become
like an Asim Malhotra fan cam.
This is way more influence than any anti-vaxxer should have.
And we shouldn't be able to have sitting politicians
get red-pilled by charismatic, egotistical,
and completely wayward anti-medicine doctors.
Yeah, this feels like someone said, I wish politicians would listen to scientists, but
they were like holding a monkey's paw while they did it.
Absolutely.
And so for taking all the legitimacy of his actual medical title and training, and then
using it to peddle vaccine denialism,
self-enriching fad diet books, and self-aggrandizing crusades, all the while radicalizing the most
paranoid in society and in parliament, Dr. Asim Ahotra is a more than worthy inclusion in Who's
Woo. All right, looking forward to the next one. Ooh, maybe Joe Rogan, maybe RFK Jr.
That'd be cool.
Well, you know, assuming COVID was not engineered to skip the Jewish people.
We would probably tell about that.
Maybe one of those two.
Oh, you'll have to wait and see who it is.
All right.
And that's all the Blasphemy we've got for you tonight.
But we're back in 10,022 minutes with more.
If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show,
The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday.
An even newer episode of our sister show's
hot friend, Godawful Movies,
debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday.
And an even newer episode
of our half-sister show, Citation Needed,
debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.
Big thanks to Marsh and Eli,
and of course to all the new Patreon donors
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you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingatheist. Wow.
Man, that's too bad.
That's too bad. That's too bad, man. That's too bad. That's too bad.
That's too bad, man.
That's too bad.
Wow.
Unfortunate.
Well, thank you.
You see,
What the fuck are you doing right now?
I'm doing a great fucking improv.
You're going to love it.
Anyways, to answer your question, Mark.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Just come in regular.
Come in regular.
Cary Caviezel.
This is so weird.
I mean, I can tell what you do,
but it's in a big block of heat
of his stories.
He could naturally be the one
to question that.
That's right.