Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So let’s square the strange.

Pascual Romero: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange. I’m your co-host Pascual Romero. With me are two other co-hosts.

BR: That would be Ben Radford.

Celestia Ward: And this is Celestia I’m here for today as well.

PR: And as we teased last week, we have Celestia here to talk about the GMO documentary, what was the name of that again?

CW: It’s called Food Evolution.

PR: Great, and you got to see a special screening of it, correct?

CW: Yes, I wouldn’t call it a sneak preview because the way they’ve released the movie, they’re doing a bunch of screenings across the nation.

0:01:10
And I got to see one of the early ones, it was like the second or third, in Las Vegas for the meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists.

PR: That sounds awesome.

CW: Yeah, it’s a group of like 17,000 scientists involved in the food industry.

PR: Great, awesome. What better audience to watch that movie with? And I guess David Wolf wasn’t there.

0:01:33
CW: No.

PR: Or Food Babe.

CW: Yeah, they had special metal detectors to make sure that, yeah.

BR: The woo detectors.

CW: Yes, the woo detectors.

BR: Look for the tinfoil hats.

PR: There’s a picture of food babe at the door with a big circle with a line through it. Anyway.

BR: If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. I have bad news for anyone who believes that. Anyway, let’s get right into it. Ben, what are you skeptical of this week?

BR: So this week I was thinking about the circumstances that the public thinks are bizarre and strange. In terms of like, what is the nature of a mystery?

0:02:09
And it occurred to me that there’s lots of things that are inherently implausible, that are just hard to believe happen. Conjoined twins, right? It’s hard to believe that people were born with two heads. That has happened. It’s incredibly rare, but it’s a real thing. It is, you know, it’s… Although I sort of wonder, you know, maybe several hundred years ago whether people would have believed that was actually just a rumor. I mean, today, of course, it’s a medical condition.

0:02:45
CW: Yeah, we have a much broader selection. Now that we see news from all over the world, we can see 10 situations of conjoined twins a year. I don’t know what the numbers are, but.

BR: Very, but yeah, but it’s not something, so that’s, I guess what I find interesting is examining why things, why certain events are so implausible to the average person that they engender conspiracy theories, for example.

0:03:13
And I was thinking about this recently. A while back there was a cargo tanker that collided with an American warship, as you guys may recall.

CW: I remember that, yes.

PR: Yeah, yeah. Those Japanese waters, right?

BR: Yes, yes. And it was interesting because it’s so bizarre. I mean, these weren’t war games. It’s not like a Japanese fighter pilot was buzzing too close to one of ours.

0:03:44
This was an American warship that you would think would be heavily fortified. They’d be scanning the skies and the seas for miles around. You can’t sneak up on them. That’s why they’re called warships.

CW: And the ocean is big. The ocean is very big. It’s a very large place.

PR: The largest place on Earth.

BR: There is none larger in fact. But when that story came out, I remember very clearly people were just gobsmacked.

0:04:10
Yeah. I like using that word. But they were just shocked.

PR: Flabbergasted.

BR: There you go. How could this possibly happen? And I thought of other incidences that are seemingly as unlikely. For example, every now and then, there will be someone that manages to get through the security surrounding the White House, scale the gates and run into the White House. In fact, there was a case just a few months back where somebody managed to get inside the doors and wandered around for three or four or five minutes or something before they were taken down. And again, it’s just so, it boggles the mind. Like how does that happen? Right? This is one of, if not the most highly protected pieces of property in the world.

0:05:03
This is not some podunk, you know. If there’s anywhere where that is just not plausible, it’s there. Anyway, so it just, again, there’s all these cases. Another one is, for example, the Malaysian Airlines 370 that disappeared in March 2014. You had another example where the common question is, hold it, this is 2014. How does an airplane disappear?

0:05:34
No seriously, how physically, as a practical matter, can an airplane just vanish?

CW: The ocean’s big.

BR: Right, the ocean’s big, but with modern tracking technology and GPS and satellites, it’s almost literally inconceivable that these things can happen in the modern age, and yet they do.

0:05:59
And so that’s what I find interesting is you look at these cases and what is it that makes an event so unusual as to generate conspiracy theories? And I think that one of the answers is that it depends on, in a lot of these cases, what what baffles people is not understanding the circumstances. They just are like, you know, a plane disappears. Impossible.  Someone gets in the White House and scrawls in the wall. Impossible. This couldn’t happen.  But in fact, what we often find is that when you begin digging into it, when you go beyond the superficial headlines, like there are factors that when you put them together show exactly how this happened.

0:06:57
For example, in one of my books, I talk about how in many ways, a mystery is simply an event taken out of context. So the way that I approach a mystery is, okay, this seems bizarre, this seems impossible, but when you begin piecing together, when you’re doing the research, when you’re investigating, when you’re interviewing people, oftentimes it’s like a jigsaw puzzle and you’re putting these pieces together and inevitably when you solve the mystery, that is a process of putting the context to it.

CW: Are you talking about the odds of something happening? Like, okay, this is a thing that happens very rarely, but it happens, and people just don’t understand how odds work.

0:07:44
If you have a one in a million thing, it’s going to happen one out of every million times. Or are you talking about a different sort of context that something is out of place?

BR: Well, it’s both. I mean, so for example, to use the common example among skeptics where you’re thinking about a friend and they happen to call. And like, wow, this is amazing. I hadn’t thought about you in years and I suddenly think about an old friend and the next person that calls is that person and there must be some sort of psychic connection. In that case, of course, part of the explanation is a lack of understanding about statistics. You know, you have to not just think about all the times when the person you know you were thinking about called, but all the times when they didn’t call and you were thinking about them. And then you forgot you were thinking about them.

0:08:41
And other times when you were thinking about them and they never called.

CW: My keys were in the last place I looked.

BR: It’s funny how that works. So in some cases, it is exactly what you said. It’s a misunderstanding of statistics and just randomness. To me, it would be like the chances of me winning millions of dollars in lottery, the chances of me winning are astronomical, just almost certainly not going to happen. The chances of someone winning is near certainty.

0:09:15
And so again, it depends on how you frame it. But typically, the sort of mystery I’m talking about, like for example, you have something mysterious happens. And oh, this is so bizarre. This person seemed to vanish from camping. And we saw them and 20 seconds later, they were gone. And over and over again, you see these mysteries that are these sort of headline-making, bizarre thing, crazy thing happen. And then it was like, well, hold on here. So when you start researching it, you’re like, okay, when exactly did you last see him?

0:09:53
Oh, well, it wasn’t really 20 minutes early. It was like the previous day. And well, you know, he was, as it turns out, he was suicidal. And well, you know, they actually have traces of, I mean, just, as you piece it together, you find the context here.

CW: So it’s like an onion skin. It appears there’s this kernel of mysteriousness, but it’s layered with all these circumstances that make it quite mundane.

0:10:18
Or, I mean, another example would be like when Michael Jackson died.

CW: Michael Jackson died?

BR: Michael Jackson, sorry.

CW: Oh, spoilers guys.

BR: Breaking news on Squaring the Strain. No, but what I’m going with that is, I remember being shocked by it. I mean, I was never a huge Michael Jackson fan, but I was like, I find this hard to believe.

0:10:42
Or an even better example is Princess Diana. You have a globally known figure, much beloved, who apparently died in a car accident.

CW: What are the odds it was just a car accident?

BR: Yeah. Right, right. It’s just, I remember thinking, I’ve never heard of royalty dying in a car accident.

0:11:01
I mean, they might die at 101, you know, falling down stairs at Buckingham Palace. They don’t die in a Paris tunnel.  You know, it was just so, like, it’s just beyond me.

CW: People die in car accidents all the time.  But because there’s the inflated situation of Princess Diana being Princess Diana, we do have a million conspiracy theories about that.

0:11:23
CW: That’s interesting.

BR: Well, but again, it’s another case of where the headline mystery is just, again, it’s almost literally inconceivable. Who would think that Princess Diana would die in a car accident? It’s just of all the possible… Or again, Michael Jackson dying of a drug overdose. When he didn’t… I mean, you might expect that from Stone Temple Pilots or a band that’s known for drug abuse, but Michael Jackson didn’t have a known history of drug abuse.

0:11:52
CW: I’ve seen this example in the medical field. I mean, not personally, I’m not a doctor, but when somebody is diagnosed with, say, for example, cancer, you get all these statistics for, okay, this is this type of cancer, and in this percentage of cases, you have people surviving another five years, in this percentage you have this, and then you have a small percentage of people where it just, it resolves on its own. The cancer just spontaneously goes into remission.

0:12:18
But when you have that person where you’re like, I had such and such cancer, and then it just went away, it’s a miracle. Well, it’s a miracle that happens 2.5% of the time and your doctor tells you that. But when it happens to you or to your loved one, it’s because you prayed, it’s because you changed your diet to a completely vegan, you know, super foods, you know, craze diet. You pin it on something.

0:12:44
That’s why my cancer disappeared.

BR: No, that’s a great example. And I think, again, it goes back to, I guess my point is that I think a lot of times mysteries are created not just by a lack of information but a lack of understanding the context. You know understanding iatrogenic illnesses, you know ones that get better on their own. Understanding you know that in the case of Princess Diana, you know she’s being chased by paparazzi. Her driver was apparently intoxicated.

0:13:18
There’s other factors that when you have all the information, when you piece them together, it’s like, yeah, that kind of does make sense in retrospect. But at the time, it’s like, well, this is … I think that’s one of the reasons why, particularly in the case of Princess Diana’s death, it generated lots of conspiracy theories. You know, conspiracy theories about her relationship with Dodi Al-Fayed, the idea that maybe MI5 or MI6 tried to get her killed. It just was such an implausible event.

CW: Strange.

0:13:54
BR: Yeah.

CW: It seems strange, but you’re squaring it so well.

BR: Thank you. Thank you. I think the same sort of thing sometimes happens in the case, it’s basically like anomaly hunting. Same thing you see with Bigfoot, or with ghost hunting. They see something that in a certain context or mindset is bizarre, and unusual, and mysterious. But then when you actually start piecing together the events, well, actually it’s not.

CW: You were mentioning security, the security detail at the White House and how everybody assumes they’re a super crack team.

0:14:28
You know, you see on TV, nobody could get even two feet up the wall of the White House on the average TV show or movie about the White House. But if you’ve ever sat down and watched a movie or a TV show about something with a person who’s in that field, like if you watch a medical drama with a doctor and they’re like, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong. Or, you know, I’ve watched an action movie with a stunt man and he just couldn’t even get into it because he saw all the flaws, because he knows the business.

0:14:56
And you were mentioning the cargo ship thing. I’d be curious to hear from somebody who works in cargo shipping, are there only certain routes because of the currents that they have to go along, so it really is kind of like a super highway and crashing into another vehicle can happen. I’d want to know from the expert before I said, wow, this is really, really out of bounds, crazy, extraordinary.

0:15:16
PR: That reminds me of a big one and one that kind of gets, I’ve gotten in a lot of arguments over and it’s 9-11 and the way the towers collapse. And at one point in my life, and this is, I read a lot of engineering reports about it and things. And at one point in my life, I even was in school for architecture, as a matter of fact, and studied a little bit about structural engineering and things like that. And when you know the nature of support beams and how they’re suspended on a building, you pretty quickly understand, you know, how a building like that falls down, because it’s got a center core structure, and the floors basically act as heavy plates, and they compress down on each other and create what the collapse we saw, which is actually a very good indication of good structural design, because that did not tip the buildings over onto other buildings.

0:16:23
without getting too much into that whole rabbit hole, it’s just the fact of the matter is that, people to this day still are like, how is this possible? It’s statistically unlikely. It’s like, well, first off from an engineering standpoint, it is very believable.

BR: In fact, it’s not, but go ahead.

PR: Yeah, it’s not statistically unlikely. What was statistically unlikely is two planes flying into them.

0:16:48
It was an intentional act that was done that, you know, so nothing was really outside of the realm of odds.

CW: I mean, we didn’t see headlines saying engineers baffled.

BR: Yeah, no, there’s never collapse of tower. No, I was going to say that’s a great point. I’m glad you brought that up. The other thing to keep in mind here, and this, this plays right to that. And I just, I just thought about this is that, is it, I think there was also an assumption that what happened was planned. That is, what happened was expected to happen. What I’m getting at is the idea is that, oh well, how would bin Laden have known XYZ? He didn’t have to know that.

0:17:28
CW: He opened up an engineering book.

BR: But even then, just because that’s what happened does not logically imply that was what was designed to happen.

CW: Oh, placing intent where there might have been absolutely none.

BR: And again, it’s a lack of context. It’s like, well, this whole thing collapsed on itself. How could he have perfectly gauged it so that would happen? We don’t know that he did.

0:17:51
Maybe his entire goal was just to blow it into the-

CW: Sometimes you just throw two planes at a building and you see what sticks.

BR: And you see what happens.

PR: Quite literally. And these were large planes filled with fuel. I mean, they hadn’t been up in the air that long, so they really had a lot of fuel in them.

CW: I do remember reading that that was part of their research. They wanted to make sure they got flights that had just taken off for very long transcontinental flights and had a lot of fuel in them.

0:18:17
PR: Yeah, again, the point is just that this is something where people are ascribing odds to it that don’t take in account any of the other factors.

CW: They do this retroactively too. People who have no concept of engineering or material science or the history of engineering look at the pyramids and they say, what are the odds what are the odds that ancient Egyptians would know how to build these structures? It’s so bizarre I’m willing to believe the History Channel’s version of aliens coming down and helping us with this.

0:18:49
PR: My favorite argument is the guy who’s baffled that they’re on on perfect cardinal directions I’m just like, you know humans have known North since ee could communicate with each other. This is absolutely not one bit surprising that they knew how to put something on the north-south line.

CW: Well, you know, I think a good a good skeptical just lesson here is think of what you’re good at. Think of the job that you do. And think of the dumb-ass questions that you get from people. I worked as a copy editor for almost a decade, and I still do occasionally.

0:19:23
And I get people going, oh yeah, you’re a copy editor. You know, I was reading a book the other day and I found a typo. What are the odds? I mean, that’s so bizarre. It got into the final book. And I’m like, I have never seen a book that doesn’t have a typo left in it. It’s just way too expensive to catch everything that gets introduced and you’re gonna find one years later. There’s no such thing. It’s like a kitchen, it’s like a commercial kitchen without a roach. It doesn’t exist. There’s one hiding somewhere. And it always blows my mind when they think it’s so strange and bizarre that there’s a typo in a finished book. And so apply your knowledge of what you do to something else.

0:19:59
Like, well, okay, well this seems really strange to me that these two ships crashed in the middle of the ocean, but maybe I should ask somebody who works in that field before I think it’s supernaturally unlikely.

BR: Hey, Squaring The Strange fans. Word around the campfire, that is, unconfirmed rumor, is that patrons are loving their Skepticrates. Hold on, what’s a Skepticrate, Pascual?

0:20:33
PR: The Skepticrate is a special bonus gift our $5 and up patrons get once per month. And what are the details of the Skepticrate, Celestia?

CW: The rumors are true, people are loving their Skepticrates. For anybody subscribing at a $5 or over level, once a month we will send out to you a Skepti-Krate. Now, it’s not actually a wooden crate containing live chupacabras or anything like that. We can’t quite afford that yet, but we’ll send you at least three items that have something to do with skepticism, one of our recent episodes, or something from the personal collection of one of our lovely hosts. So keep an eye out for your goodies and sign up at patreon.com.

PR: So, Celestia was our woman on the street this week.

0:21:26
She got…

CW: That sounds bad. That sounds really bad. Don’t put it that way.

PR: She was our lady of the street… Our lady of the… Never mind.

CW: Fresh from the pavement of Sin City, Nevada.

PR: But she was our field reporter this week in watching a documentary on GMO called Food Evolution and you got to see a screening, well I guess technically a special screening because you were joined by a lot of food scientists.

CW: Yes.

PR: So let’s go ahead and get right into it. Talk about the experience of going to see the movie?

0:22:02
CW: Well, I was lucky enough to, I do know a few people, so I made a couple calls and was able to score a last minute pass in to see as a member of the press. Because I will be writing this up, I actually am working on right now a comic, sort of a film review in comic form that will be in an upcoming issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

BR: I’ve heard of that magazine.

CW: I’ve heard it’s run by good people.

BR: It’s all right.

CW: Okay. So yes, the folks at Skeptical Inquirer were, sounded intrigued by that idea.

0:22:33
So I’m working on that now. And of course, in order to do a review of a movie, you have to see the movie. And I was able to get into the meeting in Las Vegas. And it was great. I had to get there super early in the morning, which is sometimes hard for me. But there I was at like 7.30 in the morning in the press room and we had been told that, oh well, the president and the CEO were gonna give a talk and then we’re gonna see the movie.

0:22:59
And what they meant was the president of IFT and the CEO of IFT are gonna come sit at your table while you have coffee and chat with you.

PR: Cool.

BR: All right.

CW: So there were like about five reporters, myself, and the president is a fellow named Dr. John Coupland. He’s got a background in chemistry and he’s a professor of food science at Penn State. Really nice guy. The CEO, her name is Christy Tarantino-Dean and her background is more in administrating to large groups, so she doesn’t have a food science background in particular, but she’s more of a group management person.

0:23:34
And they were both really nice. They explained, they had a bunch of, we all had a bunch of questions. And honestly, the refrain that I kept hearing was, we gave the director, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, complete creative control over this. They do not consider themselves an industry group. They identify as a non-profit scientific society of professionals in industry, academia, and government engaged in food science. And yes, that’s right from their website. But they’ve got enemies that call them a trade group and a front group for corporations and insinuate that there’s some sort of cabal because they believe in science.

0:24:12
So they’re well aware of the fact that wading into the controversy might not be a super easy thing to do. And I kind of asked the question, I said, no, how do you guys feel about the fact that it’s all about the controversy about GMOs and the anti-GMO sentiment? And you know, I can’t speak for what was going on in their heads, but they kind of, you know, had that strange smile of somebody who has gotten that question and they knew they’re going to get it like a bunch of times. And they said, we do not get involved in the politics of things. The president, Dr. Coupland said, he’s like, we were just dealing with the FDA on another matter and we refused to take a position as to whether or not you have a label for healthy food versus non-healthy food because scientifically you can’t say that.

0:25:01
And we only step in in matters of education where you want to educate the public about the science of something. And they said they let the director have the reins. They chose Scott Hamilton out of a bunch of different people. And he’s done other work. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his documentary The Garden, which is about an urban farm in LA, which is something a lot of anti-GMO people probably watched. And so they gave him complete control. And they started out thinking, okay, well, we could have a movie about, you know, Scott Hamilton was thinking he could make it about food waste, or, you know, the general idea was to have it about the food challenges facing society today. And he saw the GMO thing and he said, I just, I had to do that.

0:25:53
As he got into it, he’s like, this is what the movie has to be about. And so IFT, I think, kind of gritted their teeth and said, you go for it, we gave you total complete control. And he produced a really wonderful movie.

BR: So can you sort of give us an overview of what, you sort of talked about the preamble to it, but what sort of things did they cover?

CW: Well, oddly enough, the science kind of takes a back seat. He has made a movie that is above and beyond everything else. It tells the human story behind a lot of the GMO science and the GMO tech, the need for the GMO technology.

0:26:31
PR: Okay, that’s smart.

CW: And what has resulted is a very persuasive piece.

PR: Cool.

CW: I’ve read through a bunch of the other reviews. By the way, this movie right now, right now as we’re recording, it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. You can’t say that about many movies, but I don’t think it’s going to last because there’s only six reviews up right now. But it’s got a, all the reviewers are saying this is a persuasive movie.

0:26:54
If you have somebody who’s on the fence about GMO technology, which quite frankly, it’s a contentious subject, even within the skeptical community. You know, I can’t even begin to list off the friends of mine who try to avoid GMOs and they’re nervous about them. But it is a persuasive piece that shows you the benefits and tries to sort of strip away some of the fear-based things you’ve been said, even subconsciously. There were parts where, you know, it’s going to make you tear up in places. He’s really good at telling a human story and bringing you into the narrative.

0:27:29
And as a skeptic, sometimes you’re like, ah, that’s not the way to tell a story. You just want to present the facts and let people decide. But I’m sorry, as a human being, we process information better if we have a story attached to it.

PR: Yeah, I think that it strikes me, you know, and I haven’t seen it yet and I look forward to seeing it now but you know it strikes me as the a really smart move to bring someone in who knows how to convey… you know a good a good emotional case for something. Because that’s the big thing. And I really just try to avoid the debate a lot because there comes a point where I know I’ve given them all the data I can and there’s no point in repeating myself.

0:28:19
BR: Giving them two more studies is not gonna change their mind.

PR: Yeah, and the other thing is, I mean, I really think that in most arguments with a person who disagrees with you strongly on something it’s really the moral argument almost becomes the most important one to make. And that becomes a tricky one in the world of skepticism because sometimes the moral idea isn’t necessarily in line with the factual data and you know that’s a minefield you know we navigate and that’s sort of what gave rise to humanism.

CW: The moral argument, after you watch this movie there are pieces, there are segments in the movie where you start realizing the moral side might not be the side you think it is and they do a great job of sort of piecing together arguments from both sides. They do try to, they give a lot of airtime to the anti side. Granted there’s a lot of footage that makes the anti’s look really bad, but they’re hanging themselves with their own words there.

0:29:23
They didn’t dub in any fake voices, these are people actually saying stuff like you, they have Zen Honeycut of moms across America, actually saying, you know, “I would believe something from a mother over a scientist any day of the week”. It’s like, aw, geez, really? And so, but what they try and put forth is that the moral argument, the argument that people believe is the moral, virtuous, stick with nature, preserve the ecosystem, that might not necessarily be the side you think it is. They take us down to some banana fields in Uganda and we see people who are literally facing starvation because their staple crop, the banana, is being ravished by the banana wilt and then you see people who have brought in this other species of banana that they’ve they’ve transgenically put in a gene from sweet pepper and it resists banana wilt.

0:30:18
And they had this brilliant, wonderful woman, Dr. Emma Naluyima Muguruwa, and when we meet her in the movie, she’s trying to help farmers with their organic farming, and by the end of it she’s like, I’ve started a school trying to educate people about GMO and trying to convince the government that they should let in GMO, and you do see these people gain some traction and change some minds. And the whole movie shows you a series of people changing their minds about GMO. And that, as a person who’s been trying to get my, you know, people I know to change their minds for years, that gave me tremendous hope to see, we see Bill Nye change his mind during the course of this movie.

0:31:03
We see the representatives in Uganda are changing their minds. We see the people in Hawaii over the rainbow paypaya. The movie opens with GMOs completely banned in Hawaii. And then by the end of it we see the papaya being allowed in, grandfathered in, because it was the only way to save the crop.

PR: And so, you know, you were talking about, you know, a lot of mines changed and stuff. Has there been a strong reaction to this yet? Have you seen any backlash?

0:31:41
CW: Yes. I did see the backlash. A friend of mine, Carl Haravon Mogul, who is a plant scientist, he was actually personally attacked in one of the backlashes. And there was an article that showed up in Huffington Post and also in a couple of other places by Stacey Malkin. And she wrote a very long thing, and I was very saddened to see it in a venue as large as the Huffington Post.

0:32:12
Because a lot of eyes are on that.

PR: Sadly, I’m not terribly surprised.

CW: Well, she points to a lot of things, but it’s the same old story. Now, the number one criticism is, this is just propaganda from Monsanto and from the industry. And I kind of take a little bit of hope from that because propaganda is designed to change people’s minds. And I think they’re recognizing the fact that unlike a lot of educational videos, this one has the power to change the minds.

0:32:43
You don’t have to have a degree in plant biology to understand the movie. And you will have your heartstrings tugged upon and and and unlike a lot of actual propaganda which you can see on natural news and other sites, unlike actual propaganda this movie doesn’t take facts and twist them around and misrepresent a study and quote from things that have been retracted and and pull in sample sizes of three for a study about something. The science is there, but it really, the human story and the information that’s going to actually change people’s minds takes the front seat.

BR: So is it fair to say that some or much of the reaction that you were talking about is based at least loosely on conspiracy theory?

CW: Loosely?

BR: Well, I mean, look, I have friends who are pro-organic, anti-GMO, and they’re not, they don’t take that position necessarily because they endorse conspiracy theories about it. They just, you know, they buy into the naturalistic fallacy, and there’s lots of other reasons to be concerned about it, at least to their mind. But for example, the example you gave was about Monsanto and the idea that well it’s all we can’t trust anything they’re saying because you know this is it which is essentially it’s certainly a logical fallacy yeah but in some ways it’s also a conspiracy theory it’s like it’s you know it’s big you know big shill all that sort of thing so is is did you see much of that?

0:34:22
CW: What I saw and I watched a 13-minute video starring Mike Adams I actually suffered through that for you guys 13 is you’re never gonna get by and he it was it most it was conspiracy theory and and and a whole lot of just just kind of left field stuff like he took a good you know two minutes and said now we should really pray for these people cuz there their evil and they’re trying to poison all of humanity just for the sake of money.

0:34:55
And ironically, as he’s saying this, that these people are doing these horrendous things for money, it’s all about money, right next to the video there’s like eight ads for the things that he’s selling. And then a 30-second special about the Mike Adams, the health ranger store where you can buy all of his safe, clean, raw products.

BR: Detoxing products, one and all.

CW: Yeah, so I mean, there’s a lot of ways to call hypocrisy here in terms of, well, the organic industry. And Stephanie Malkin, the journalist I was mentioning before, she is funded by industries that profit off of the fear of GMOs.

0:35:34
Her funding right now comes from the Organic Consumers Association, and she’s gotten funding from a ton of places that are definitely hooked into the whole organic, she’s a shill for big organic.

BR: They got something to sell, sure.

CW: And she’s claiming all these other people are shills, but none of the criticisms I have seen attack the science. None of them are saying, oh, well, they claim that this biological process is happening and it’s completely wrong.

0:36:04
No, at one point, Stacey Malkin spends a lot of time criticizing the fact that there’s a logo in the background for one of the scenes. I don’t even remember seeing this logo, but there’s a logo in the background for the American Council on Science and Health. And that was manipulative on the part of the filmmakers because that’s really a corporate front group and da da da da da. I looked it up. They describe themselves as a pro-science consumer advocacy group. And they’re a non-profit 501c3 and if you’re actually a corporate front group good luck getting a 501c3 status. And they’ve they’ve done horrible things like like endorsing seat belt laws. And trying to warn the public of the dangers of smoking.

0:36:52
This is, you know, and seriously you’re going to spend three paragraphs talking about a logo in the background of a scene? That’s the way you’re critiquing this film? You got anything better?

PR: Yeah, it’s always the, you know, the telltale sign of a really flimsy argument is being pedantic about the wrong things.

CW: I was waiting for the Illuminati to be brought in somehow.

PR: That’s kind of interesting. I know a big thing with some of the criticisms of GMOs. There are a lot of these false ideas about them leading to disease and cancer and all these things. And it seems like those arguments have sort of simmered down as our friend who spoke about a logo for three paragraphs pointed out.

0:37:47
It’s given rise to, you know, one, kind of that conspiratorial thing, and two, something that I almost in hindsight wish we would have brought up with Andrew when we did the legal skepticism episode, but is the litigious, you know, quote unquote litigious nature of Monsanto and how they sue little farmers and things like that. And one of the things I always remember, you know, looking into the story of them suing some innocent little farmer and winning. And that was the big thing because they won. And that’s, you know, so now you’re putting the court system in with Monsanto, you know, not just…

BR: It’s all rigged.

0:38:24
PR: Yeah, it’s all rigged and you know and it turned out like you know one case I think it was a Canadian farmer. He said that pollen from another And then Monsanto said okay well, let’s just test that claim because we don’t sue people who accidentally get our seeds in their crops And then they found that 95% of his crops carried Monsanto genetically modified seeds and and they said that that is literally impossible. That 95% of the crops would have been cross-pollinated.

CW: That would be strange.

PR: Yeah, that would be very strange.

0:38:58
CW: All the people in the industry would find that strange. And it’s so improbable that, of course, they found in favor of Monsanto. And it was, again, because 95% of his canola, and this isn’t just a neighboring crop. I believe it was a ways, like a mile or two away. So they’re saying that in order for something to get that much penetration, it would have had to have been like every other plant in the crop would have had to have been a Monsanto plant and then they cross pollinated.

CW: That’s how dangerous and strong they are.

0:39:32
PR: But all that aside, I think that you get to the truth of most of these claims and this is like outside of the argument in favor of GMOs. This is a corporation and what they do has nothing to do with whether or not GMOs are good or bad. This is just about corn being pollinated.

CW: Well, that’s the whole corporate structure in the fact that, you know, they do a lot of man on the street interviews in the movie. You see people asking questions and it opens with a bunch of really rabid, aggressive, anti-GMO protesters. And they all have the reasons you were you were saying it’s not just it’s not just people who think this is a conspiracy there people I don’t I don’t think he will living organisms should be able to be patented well guess what that really beautiful organic rose that you just bought you know at the flower market some little old lady up in Maine has patented that variety of rose. All organic crops are patented you know they go into they go into…

BR: Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn is patented.

0:40:27
CW: Yes, people have been patenting different types of plants for ages. And people, since there have been patents, and people have been manipulating the genetics, they go into this too, the fact that there is no such thing as a non-manipulated food item today. You know, unless you’re going to go out and eat something you literally find while you’re hiking, which I don’t recommend. There’s some mushrooms that can kill you. They show you what corn used to look like. They show you what broccoli used to look like. And they show you that organic farming uses a lot of techniques that if people were well aware of how everything works, they’d be just as nervous. Organic farming in the US, you can stick a non-GMO label on there, even if you’re mutating the DNA through use of chemicals, through use of radiation, you know, and farmers used to do this, you know, lay the seeds out in the sun for 10 days, bake them, grow them all, see if you get one that’s really unusually mutated and is stronger, and then you take that one, you take cuttings of it.

0:41:32
So human beings throughout agriculture have been altering the food strains that we eat. And it’s necessary. And herbicides and herbicides and pesticides. That is a big thing that they cover in the movie. They talk about the misunderstanding of certain studies and the misrepresentation of certain studies and the fact that there’s a big difference between poundage and toxicity.

0:42:02
Glyphosate is one of the most hated materials around. You hear people, you know, and you hear people saying, well, our food, they’re just genetically engineering it so they can drench it in glyphosate. And if you look at the study, yes, there’s actually, pound-wise, there’s more glyphosate out there. But the toxicity level is so low that we’re in an age of farming now where the toxicity levels are lower than they ever have been.

0:42:27
And that’s what food scientists, that’s their goal. And the refrain in this movie constantly was, we have the same goals. And that’s the only way you can really meet in the middle is once you realize, we have the same goals. We want to feed people healthy food that is good for the environment, that doesn’t require slashing and burning the rest of the rainforest so we can feed a faction of the population with organic farming methods. That’s what would need to happen. One of the scientists that plays a big role in this movie, Dr. Allison Van Eenennaam, she’s got like a Swedish last name or something, it’s hard to say. E-E-N-E-N-N-A-A-M, Eenennaam. She said that when they approached her to be on this movie, she was very reluctant because every documentary that’s been made about food, when they rope in a food scientist, they just want, oh, sign this release and now we’re going to demonize you and make you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about and only show 10 seconds of what you said and then superimpose a giant skull and crossbones over your face.

0:43:33
BR: Put little CGI horns on you.

CW: Yes. Speaking of propaganda. Yeah. And they didn’t have any of that. I didn’t see anybody superimpose the skull and crossbones. They weren’t saying organic farming is going to kill you. In fact, they profiled an organic farmer that’s married to a biochemist who works in GMO. Talk about meeting of the minds. They get along.

0:43:54
CW: Hey Squares and hey strangers. Celestia here and I’ve got another skeptical fortune cookie to crack open. Let’s see. No man was ever wise by chance. This is short but it contains a tall philosophical order. It’s from Lucius Aeneas Seneca, also known as Seneca the Younger, one of the later Stoic philosophers. Stoicism concentrated on formalistic logic, ethics, and understanding of the natural world, and the avoidance of errors caused by emotions, desires, or fear. Seneca lived in ancient Rome during the first century and served as tutor and advisor to the Emperor Nero. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the time and place, he became entangled in a political conspiracy and was eventually ordered by Nero to take his own life. During his tenure, he was accused of hypocrisy by those who claimed his lavish lifestyle went directly against his teachings, but Seneca was looked on favorably afterwards by the early Christian Church, and some medieval Christians believed he had been converted to the faith by St.

0:45:06
Paul. Other historians have claimed that the charges against Seneca were written by his enemies, who surely exaggerated circumstances. Regardless of how big the divide between his teachings and his practice actually may have been, Seneca produced lasting work. This concise dictum, no man was ever wise by chance, challenges us to do more than just live our lives and think ourselves wise once we’ve lived long enough. Rather, you should examine every experience, be an active participant in your own learning.

0:45:39
Don’t believe you are inherently wise already. It’s something that must be earned. Nor can you leave your wisdom to chance. Rather, you must root it out, harvest it from your life bit by bit. Examine everything as thoroughly as you can, because right answers come to those who put in the work. In other words, be skeptical. Now, let’s get you back to Ben and Pascual.

CW: So I would really encourage you guys and everybody else listening out there, when it comes out, when it’s available, or if there’s a screening in your area, bring some friends.

0:46:19
I mean, this is, like I said, it’s a contentious area, even in the skeptic community. You’re going to know skeptics who don’t necessarily understand GMO. They may have seen things like the Seralini study. They may have absorbed this stuff without even looking into it. You guys remember the Seralini study, right?

PR: Yeah, there was a study about toxicity that got retracted, I think, right? And then republished or something?

CW: It was retracted, well, see, they wanna tell you it was republished.

0:46:49
It was republished in a pay-for-play journal. How do they score journals? It’s like from a zero to an impact score of zero. This thing had, but he used, Cerelini, he was this French researcher who fed rats GMO feed and tried to link it to tumors. Well, he had used a very small sample size of rats that were predisposed to getting tumors. And even beyond that he had allowed the tumors to grow to such a size where, you know, they have ethics involved even when you’re dealing with just, you know, smaller order mammals like rats. You’re allowed to have a rat, you know, grow a tumor up to a certain size before you have to put it down out of just humane, you know, consequences. But he let these rats get tumors the size of Buicks, so they looked terrible and awful. And then he took all these close-up pictures of these poor little rats.

0:47:40
And of course, that went around all over. It’s the crime that spawned a thousand memes. And it’s a powerful image. You think, oh, GMO, I don’t wanna get a tumor like that rat. Well, tell you what, don’t buy rats that are prone to tumors. Don’t let them develop tumors that get, any, I’ve owned rats as pets before. If my pet rat got a tumor like that, I would have probably had her put down.

0:48:06
It was horrible. But have you guys had any discussions with friends of yours over GMO foods that you think could benefit from taking them to this movie later?

PR: I’ve had a number of discussions, especially with a lot of my California friends when the debate over food labeling was becoming a real big thing out there because California, I think it was LA in particular, was really pushing for food labeling, GMO labeling.

0:48:32
For those who aren’t familiar, it’s just basically saying that they want anything with GMOs to be labeled as containing GMOs. And which is a very tricky premise to begin with because where you make that distinction is not black and white. And like we were talking about, people have been modifying organisms through breeding and through different methods to create mutations. And that is genetic modification at its core.

0:49:03
And I was always arguing with them in the sense that, I didn’t see the reason for it because I felt like it demonized foods that there was no scientific basis for the demonization. Well, we just want to label it so people know and people will get scared off of it.

CW: You got to understand crowd behavior and public health and how it works. And that’s been a constant refrain. Well, if you’re so in love with GMO, why aren’t you OK with labeling it? You just, you know, show off that it’s GMO.

0:49:30
Well, yeah, one of the situations with GMO food technology is it does allow for things to be grown cheaper and in greater quantities. And as a result, you have a lot of produce and vegetables and healthy things that people need to eat available at a lower price. So you have…

BR: That’s ridiculous! I object!

CW: You have people better able to feed their families a healthy variety of produce. With GMOs, now if suddenly you stick labels on stuff that contains GMO, somebody who might be making a more healthy choice for their children goes, oh, I don’t really have the budget for, oh, the only thing I can afford is the GMO stuff.

0:50:11
They just, you know, in small ways that add up, they will gradually just stop buying things that they should be buying because they’re afraid that the healthy food is actually not healthy. It creates this stigma attached to food that should have no stigma. And I should bring up that, I’ve been party to a lot of discussions on a particular Facebook page, I should really pimp here. Stefan Niederbach, he runs a site called GMO LOL.

PR: Oh, that’s a great page.

CW: I drew the profile picture for that.

0:50:45
PR: Oh, really? I didn’t know that.

CW: They had a generic purple cow for a long time. I ran into Stefan at a skeptic event. It was great because I was like, I’ve read your article, I love your stuff, I love Jim. Then he found out who I was and he’s like, you drew Frankenfruit, I love Frankenfruit.

BR: It’s a big skeptic lovefest.

CW: Yeah, we had a little mutual admiration fest. I talked to him later and he was like, I’ve always wanted to do a purple cow with a microscope. I was like, I can do that. Yeah, and I he knew my stuff from I had drawn a mascot for bio fortified org Which was Frankenfood just a happy little corncob with glasses on. And yeah, and and the other guys if you’re looking into more information on GMOs, I urge you to check out GMO lol it’s not always you know safe for work there’s you know there’s a lot of memes there’s a little bit of snark people are there for the lulz but you also have a ton of farmers and people in the industry and people who know if you have a question on there go check the comments there’s a lot of really smart people who are in the field who will answer most everything. And then of course biofortified.org talking about how to strengthen the food that we have.

0:52:07
I’m using the word strengthen because fortify means strengthen. So that was reading how they got their name at one point. And then also the Genetic Literacy Project. Check them out online. The Genetic Literacy Project churns out a bunch of good educational articles on how to familiarize yourself with what GMO actually is. And the problems with labeling, there are so many problems that people don’t even think about with labeling. It’s going to differ from state to state. It’s going to add a significant increase to the cost of everything because if you have to label everything, and we already have something in place.

0:52:40
We have that damn little butterfly that says non-GMO, which I, by the way, try to avoid.

PR: I was just thinking about that too because I’m like, you know, from the organic industry’s standpoint they gain more from touting no GMO than they do from just being a default. So I kind of find it interesting. And the way I, I don’t know how likely this is to happen, but if I were a company that dealt in GMOs like Monsanto or you know a company that used a lot of GMOs in my products, I would, the second I saw a case like this you know come up in the second I’d see a labeling standard be applied, I would simply challenge it to the point that we’d have to loosen the, or not necessarily loosen, but broaden the category. I’m like, okay, if you’re going to say that this has GMOs in it, this banana is nothing like an organic banana. We have to, it’s been modified for thousands of years.

0:53:53
CW: These banana plants have been cloned, sir!

CW: One of the things that has blown my mind is if you look at it, you were talking about context earlier, Ben. I want everybody to change their context for a little while and think about some common criticisms of the corporate structure like Monsanto or GMO patents. Monsanto, the criticism is, why should we trust them with our food? They used to be a chemical company, they produce Agent Orange, and it’s true, Monsanto was a different company back then, I mean they’ve merged and had different things change, but let’s look at that and hypothetically let’s say that’s completely 100% true. Well, okay, well wait a second, none of the people who are working for Monsanto now, who are alive and working for them now, were alive and working for them then.

0:54:52
That was like two generations ago. We don’t have any World War II, you know, people around anymore. So we’ve got a company that used to make money, that used to be their lifeblood, again, hypothetically, because it’s real contentious, as to how much that’s actually, applicably true.

0:55:09
Let’s say that it is. Okay, well, you’ve got, well, that’s turning swords into plowshares quite literally. They’re instead of making weapons and chemical agents, they have turned their scientists to instead feeding the world. Why isn’t this a good thing? And if you look at other applications of food science, like the whole pink slime thing where there’s ways that you can technically strip off a ton of extra protein and meat off of a carcass, and you use like vaporized ammonia to help get the bacteria off so that you can have a lot more food come out of each slaughtered animal.

0:55:48
And, oh, this is horrible, and, ah, it’s so gross, I can’t believe they’re doing that. I’m sorry, I’ve heard these noble stories of the brave Native Americans who used every piece of every buffalo they hunted, and it’s all noble when it’s told in a context like that. But when it’s scientists figuring out how to use every part of the animal that’s slaughtered, somehow it’s not noble. Somehow it’s corporate greed.

PR: Actually to go back to the point about Monsanto making Agent Orange at one time, Lamborghini started out making tractors and if you told me right now John Deere is going to make the fastest supercar in the world, I’d laugh and think that was ridiculous. But in hindsight, there’s no denying that Lamborghini makes one of the fastest cars in the world and most sought after collector’s cars ever and did make tractors. The fact that they made tractors, sure, it’s a little more related than Agent Orange and plants, but seem to have nothing to do with what they’re doing now.

0:56:47
BR: I’ve often found that a lot of these people, they have their, of course, they have their access to grind. And I remember one time I was looking up Miracle Grow, and I was looking, I was trying to ask some question about it. And I came across several really vehement anti-Miracle Grow posts and blogs. And there was one, and it was by a company somewhere I think in Ohio and the title was why we will never use Miracle-Gro. It’s like to our customers we want you to know why we’re taking a stand against Miracle-Gro. Okay. And I was like all right whatever I don’t have a dog in the fight whatever so I was reading it and apparently this goes back to the fact that at some point Miracle-Gro the company that the produces that don’t know the top my head I had pled guilty to fraud or something.

0:57:39
Well, and I was like, you know, and it was interesting, so I, this is a couple years back, and I was looking at it, and this wasn’t part of any research investigation, I was just sort of cruising around. And then I looked at some of the other products that that company was selling that was taking this principled stand against Miracle-Gro.

0:58:00
And there were other ones where there was like ConAgra, which was fine for violating antitrust laws. And I wonder if they do banking with Wells Fargo, which was also found guilty of criminal conduct. I mean, so I was like, hold on, where do we draw the line here? You’re taking the stand against Miracle Group because they did something bad like and Which of all the companies you work with you know say you know do you work with an

0:58:34
Apple do you use uber cuz you know there’s some problems uber in terms of the conduct of the coming there’s…

CW: And if you look in the background you’re gonna find something that that actually was going on in that That 13 minute video by Mike Adams That that was another stance that the people criticizing food evolution went to pretty immediately they’re teaming up with such and such and apparently somebody involved with the movie had some domestic violence Situation with his ex-wife some argument or something so of course Mike Adams used the word wife beater like ten times And they’re teaming up with wife beaters And he called Neil deGrasse Tyson which by the way Neil deGrasse Tyson narrates this movie, which is Enough to see it. His gravitas is amazing.

0:59:18
So Mike Adams called Neil deGrasse Tyson a race traitor for being in this movie. Now let me unpack this, if I can here, because this is the argument Mike Adams used. GMOs cost less money to buy. They’re less expensive than organic produce. So therefore, the people who buy more GMOs are poor people, therefore black, therefore Neil deGrasse Tyson is a race traitor by advancing GMOs because they’re going to mainly poison the poor population, which is mostly black. How do you unpack that? How many things are wrong with that statement? I don’t even know where to start.

PR: Mike Adams is white. That’s the number one problem with…

1:00:06
CW: I don’t think being white is his main problem.

PR: Well… Yeah, it’s like to accuse someone of being a race traitor… I mean, there’s so much wrong… I mean, the nuance is infinite here, but… For a white guy to tell a black guy he’s being a race traitor… That is… that is kind of… That’s bold.

BR: To be fair, I mean, it’s, you know, I almost appreciate that fact because what it does is it lays bare the extent to which he’s willing to go. If you’ve got to dig that deep, if you’ve got to pull this out of your ass, then really you’ve got no argument. You’re done, dude. Go home.

1:00:47
CW: Don’t forget, they also showed that logo in the background of that one scene.

BR: Mike Adams, delete your account!

PR: Jesus, the second Mike Adams is calling Neil deGrasse Tyson a race traitor, you don’t need to explain yourself. You are just an a**hole. And technically that’s a pretty racist thing to do. I mean, you really are not the right person to be accusing someone of being a traitor to their own race.

1:01:13
It is so mind-boggling to me. I’m like, that guy really deserves a punch in the face.

BR: And, you know, and I mean, I have no idea what he’s talking about, with wife beaters isn’t that, but I can tell you this. You don’t want me looking into the background and the past of your films producers. I know I’m serious. You don’t want me looking back because I will find dirt that you will not like. You’re an investigator. I guarantee it. So this whole, this whole guilt by association thing, don’t go down that road, dude. Don’t get me started.

1:01:43
PR: That’s another one of those arguments, like the logo in the background, where your argument is so bad that all you can do is come up with these vague ideas about, oh, because someone has a criminal record. Hey, I’ve worked in film with hundreds of crew members and and I guarantee some of them probably have done some pretty terrible things in their lifetimes. Any workplace you’ve ever stepped into will have that. I don’t mean that you know…

CW: Human beings! If you work with human beings long enough you’re gonna work with some that have shady pasts.

PR: Yeah that may very well have happened and that guy might probably have some issues that he needs to work out. But what does that have to do with your point?

1:02:28
CW: Yeah, either the information in the film is true and well presented or it isn’t. Whether or not the guy who’s the clipper clapper, you know, holding the mic or whatever, whether or not one of the producers, whatever you, whether he’s a stamp collector, whether he’s into fetishes involving marshmallow fluff, it It should have no bearing on the quality of stuff in the movie.

BR: We all know that our listeners know that and I think probably Mike Adams knows that. But I’m serious. I mean, that’s it’s I always appreciate when racists and idiots Exactly where we come from save us the trouble digging through it.

CW: Well, yeah, sometimes, my brother is a lawyer, and I remember telling him one situation that somebody I knew was going through, and he just said, and I’m bringing up the fact that he was a lawyer because he can parse out, like, okay, if that’s your argument, if that’s the strength of your argument, you’re in big trouble.

1:03:29
And I just told him this one situation that a guy had told me about. He goes, that’s his side of it? I was like, yeah, that’s his side of it. He goes, I am only hearing his side and I don’t believe him. And that’s a problem. If hearing your side, I mean, you’d have been better off just not saying anything cause you’re implicating yourself. If your argument is that bad.

PR: I wish, I wish I could just, I should just get the video downloaded and dub it over and then just be like, I’m going to make my case in three points. Point one I’m racist. Point two I don’t know what I’m talking about. Point three I’m not gonna talk about the actual facts in this documentary. Checkmate GMO.

1:04:13
CW: He also, oh god, this is turning into an episode where we just have fun at the expense of Mike Adams.

PR: I do that all day.

CW: He was comparing GMOs to thalidomide. Because of course everybody who eats GMOs gets flippers. Do you have flippers? I have flippers. Which is a terrible comparison. You’re really reaching when you say GMOs are as bad as thalidomide. And he was lamenting the quote, I wrote this down, scientific monopoly on truth. Think about that. Press that down. The scientific monopoly on truth.

BR: How dare science have a monopoly on truth? I object, sir.

CW: Just because I don’t do science-y things and I don’t follow the scientific method and I pull things out of my butt, that doesn’t give you the right to say what I’m saying is not true.

1:05:05
The scientists are claiming a monopoly on truth. Of all the ways to put it.

BR: Somebody needs a nap.

PR: That’s amazing, man. I really, I kind of applaud the guy for just, I mean, I would be so embarrassed to say that stuff. And not just like in the cognitive dissonance sense, but like, just if I were a really, really uneducated, you know, non worldly person, I would just be embarrassed to for those words to come out of my mouth. And yeah, just a monopoly on truth.

CW: Well, I feel like I’m recommending both videos for different reasons. See Food Evolution. You will get a lot out of it.

1:05:49
And if you want to, see the 13-minute video by Mike Adams that will take you through poisoning the earth, the scientific monopoly on truth, the fact that there’s a logo in the background, and Neil deGrasse Tyson is a race traitor.

PR: Put a fork in that documentary, he really cooked them.

BR: I got nothing else to say.

PR: Yeah, I think we’re good. If you do end up going to see that video, find it hosted on someone else’s YouTube account. Don’t give him the plays.

CW: Yeah, I felt guilty adding to his clicks and views, but I did it for you guys. But yeah, go see FoodEvolutionMovie.com, check out if there’s any screenings coming to you, and sign up for one, and hopefully they’ll be announcing soon where they’re going to be hosting the online version of the movie.

PR: We would like to thank our sponsor-level patrons, Amy Freshour-Kelly and Dr. Angela Mattke. If you’d like to find out what that is and how to become one, head over to patreon.com forward slash squaringthestrange.

1:06:55
Patronage starts at just a buck, and there are a lot of perks and bonus content just for our patrons.

BR: If you’d like to lend your moral support, you can head over to iTunes and give us a review. Every five star review gets us a little more visibility on the iTunes podcast charts and brings a smile to Pascual’s face.

BR: Well, it sounds like a great film. I’m a documentary fan, as both of you know, and how can we find out more about it?

1:07:30
CW: I should have led with that. Right now the film is kind of going across the country with various screenings and you can look up foodevolutionmovie.com and find out there’s a few more screenings like the end of the summer into the fall and then in and if you don’t see your city on there enter your name and your location and they have a little form there where you can try and organize a screening or you can suggest a screening. I know I myself, I talked to the Center for Science and Wonder in Las Vegas and they’re going to set up a screening now. So we’re going to have another screening in Las Vegas. If you live there, go to the Center of Science and Wonder. It’s a great place and they screen a lot of early documentaries. I’m going to be lining one up. I’m not sure when, it’s in the works. And then in the fall, they’re going to be releasing the movie on some sort of online platform. They have not announced which one yet. When I saw this movie they were in the process of negotiating which way they’d go.

1:08:35
PR: And that about does it for us this week. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to come back next week when we talk about outrage. See ya.