Episode 226: Unraveling Time Traveling (with Barry Lam and Christina Hoff Sommers)

In science and ethics.

Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. Please fry I don't know how to teach. I'm a professor. The great us has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Who are you? Who are you?

A very bad man I'm a very good man good man.

They think deep.

Thoughts and with no more brains than you have pay no attention to that man anybody can have a brain.

You'Re.

A very bad man I'm a very good man just a very bad wizard welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamela Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, today's the last day of Hanukkah. Where are all my presents?

They must have gotten lost in the mail. It was eight days of socks, various socks in different colors, mostly blue. But you'll get them.

I mean, I'm hoping because I got a couple from my family, but I just go to the mailbox every day.

Kind of aren't you one of those Jews who loves Christmas?

No. I don't love Christmas. Really? I mean, I enjoy it because I've always spent it with Jen's family and I get along with everybody with a goy side. I do. Yeah. But get along with their sisters, their husbands and yeah. Have really for so long that that's what I associate Christmas with.

Right. You know what my gift is to you? It's allowing the intro segment to be taken up by you talking to your stepmother without me.

That's the gift. That's a poison pill. Yeah. So it's a very bad wizards guest. Bonanzas. Coming up in the first segment, we have Christina Hoff Summers. My stepmother recently retired from the American Enterprise Institute, so she won't be a part of any new wars that they're trying to start.

Yeah, we'll see how much is really intrinsically motivated and how much was just AEI instructions.

Yeah, right. Exactly. I think we've already I mean, she's been retired for, like, six months now, so we already know it was her, by the way, for that segment. So it was drunken Thanksgiving debate, as usual. She comes in hot. I come in a bit annoyed because I had tried to set up the tech so that we both had our own microphones and I couldn't figure out how to do it. And it took me a long little we're in different places when the segment begins. In the second segment, we have Barry Lamb coming on the podcast to talk about the main topic will be Primer, the movie Primer by Shane Carruth. And then we also talk about David Lewis and his new series on his new season of Hi Fi Nation, which features a bunch of episodes on David Lewis. So that's what's coming up. Then let's go to my segment with Christina. All right. Welcome to our very special Thanksgiving episode segment, where we drink too much, get into fights, but not like debates, where we're trying to score points. Not for you.

I'm scoring points and he's drunk. I'm sober. Let's go. Go.

Okay. One of us is not trying to score points in debates. The other one is trying to destroy me with their I love him, but they're ratted.

And no one more than your listeners understands the problems that I face while being adorable, charming, and in every way lovable. You are deeply, deeply misguided. So we'll set everything straight, but I'm thinking that by now what's the year? I can't remember. 2021 You now have seen the light, and you acknowledge that I've been right all along on whatever it is we debated about.

Okay, well, so you could see we're in two different places also, my stepmother and I. Number one, we've all been drinking, but I've been trying to set something up tech wise, which I wasn't able to do successfully. So now we're sharing one mic, and so there's going to be a person.

Arranges the setup at the last minute. If you had only planned this before, this would have been over by now, but never.

Okay, she's a little more hyped up than I am right now, but we have a format for this show.

We never had that before.

I know.

I think they're going to like it. I think it's an improvement. I'm not sure.

Okay, so the format it's not like a fully fleshed out format. We haven't even really fully talked about it. But the idea is we're going to bring up a bunch of topics that you have to express a certain level of belief in. It'll make more sense when we're actually doing it. That's how we're going to attack this. But before we get to that oh, shit, she's just left now before she's getting more champagne. Before we get to the really kind of interesting formatted part of the segment, I want to just say, like, nothing.

To do with the format for my followers and the sympathetics that follow him. I had nothing to do with it. Go.

We actually had, probably for the first time, a kind of stereotypical Thanksgiving debate.

Argument, and I took a course on how to cope with difficult relatives during the holiday season, and I was ready. And yet we exploded in anger, and it didn't go well.

Yeah. So there was a lot of kind of casual racism thrown around by Christina.

But I will say, as he defines it, I will say that you once had a doubt about preferential policies. You're supporting systemic racism, therefore, you're written out of the human race. Canceled. I was canceled.

I will say you weren't canceled because you were talking them pretty much the whole time. With some support from a friend of mine from high school and high school.

A major thinker we won't say his name because we don't want to ruin his career.

I don't know if he would consider himself a major thinker at all, but.

A good source for weed and other.

Things, but really, I kind of stayed out of it. Not as much as my brother stayed out of it, but I stayed out of it.

David. David.

Yes.

What is your explanation? Because you didn't say a goddamn thing and I wanted some backup because I took a course.

But are you asking me about that or about my silence during the Black Lives Matter debate?

Yeah.

Well, I'm not as passionate as either of you. No one confuses me for the Stephen A. Smith of the family right there's. You're the alt right. He's a Bernie Bro. And I'm, like most of America, I would have voted for Youngkin if I could have.

Wait a minute.

Which one was you? I think the oh, yeah. Junkin. He was the Republican. Well, of course you would have.

Yeah, because the other guy is a jerk.

He's a corporate bought Democrat.

In your analogy. He supports the no, actually, he would have been fine, but he was just such an unlikable nerd that no one could vote for him. And the Democrats are going to be destroyed if they don't become more likable. And you know what? I don't want that. Because I don't wish to have Donald Trump return to the presidency because he will destroy the country.

Well, if the only thing that will prevent that is Democrats becoming more likable, then I think we're definitely having another Donald Trump presidency.

We're ruined. So who would have thought?

So Christina is in that lane for now of being anti Trump, like you're one of a rhino. But I kind of stayed out of that for the most part. Not as much as my brother. I would just come in every so often and yell about something, but then I would leave. But it was my wife, Jen, who was really going, like, toe to toe with you, and so maybe she should.

Really have control of your wife. I mean, that's what came out this weekend. I mean, just saying, can you rein her in?

I'd never have been able to do that.

Your daughter didn't say a word.

That's not true. She actually fought the good fight for a bit. But you were loud.

Loud? I was quiet. I was reasonable. And I had my outline of how to deal with relatives. Socialist, communist sympathizing, anti American, neolists.

All right, so that was what happened before. The really well formatted part of the segment. And it gives a picture. Yeah. And then actually, for actual Thanksgiving, everything was fine. It's not like we didn't snipe at each other, but