Podcasts/ONRC-Ep296

Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Ep. 296 - Ross and Carrie Meet Lucien: Satanic Companion Edition
July 12, 2021
Ross and Carrie chat with Lucien Greaves, co-founder and spokesperson of The Satanic Temple, about the organization’s beliefs, its work fighting pseudoscience, and how exactly one comes to found a religion.
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/oh-no-ross-and-carrie/ross-and-carrie-meet-lucien-satanic-companion-edition/

Transcript

[WIP]

Unknown Speaker 0:08 Hello, welcome to owner Ross and carry the show where we don't just report on fringe science spirituality claims of the paranormal. No way we take pride ourselves, man.

Unknown Speaker 0:17 That's right when they make the claims we show up so you don't have to. I'm Ross Boucher and I'm Carrie Poppy. And I'm back. Sorry, I was gone last week. Hey, welcome back. Thank you. Good to see you.

Unknown Speaker 0:28 I was taking a class at Harvard heard of it. Fancy? Yeah. No big deal.

Unknown Speaker 0:32 What was your class about?

Unknown Speaker 0:33 It was called pseudoscience and mental health.

Unknown Speaker 0:35 That sounds related to our podcast?

Unknown Speaker 0:38 Yes. Oh, my God. I loved it. The professor was Dr. Cynthia Meyers Berg. She was fantastic. Highly recommend.

Unknown Speaker 0:45 Now you said that the professor was good. But the only thing that you told me about the class other than that was just that occasionally people would say some disprovable things. That's true there. They should have known a little better about

Unknown Speaker 0:58 maybe, yeah, there were like two or three people who I was like, I'm glad you're here. Yeah. Okay. You're the intended audience. Gotcha. But no, it was so good. It was so informative. And yeah, I really felt like I got an even better grasp of the situation.

Unknown Speaker 1:14 Fantastic. Which speaking of that will be kind of relevant to this episode. And the interview that you are about to hear yes, none other than Lucian, grieves, Lucian, grieves friend of mine and the co founder and CO discoverer of the satanic Satanic Temple. Yeah, we've been wanting to talk to him for a long time. And we're really excited to share this interview with you. We talk about a lot of things, Church State separation, much issues that Lucian is always intimately involved with. But we also talked to him kind of following up with our Bob Larson series, and looking at issues of possession and also the science around recovered memory. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Yep. So let this be a notification that these topics will come up. Yeah, during this interview.

Unknown Speaker 2:05 Yeah. So he, he gets into a whole bunch of stuff here. And we couldn't fact check every possible thing, though. He's a piece of very reputable source. But there are a few things that I just want to say I don't know about at all. And those include, like the Church of Satan, he mentions them as distinct from the Satanic Temple. I know nothing about the Church of Satan.

Unknown Speaker 2:29 Lucian is a super smart guy, he's got a fun attitude, just know that maybe his way of expressing things wouldn't always be necessarily the way we do on owner Ross and Kerry. But that's his approach. He's got a good approach.

Unknown Speaker 2:41 Yeah, one of the things I love about wishes, he's obsessed with a lot of the same subjects I'm obsessed with, and is able to catalog sources in his head in a way that blows me away. Like he can just name for you the most recent study that's been peer reviewed, on repressed memory, just ask him, he'll just know. It's pretty wild. So though, those parts of the conversation we both know a little more about? Yeah, so recovered memories. And

Unknown Speaker 3:11 me because I really don't Oh,

Unknown Speaker 3:13 no. I met you. And I know more about that than about, say, the Church of Satan. Oh, gotcha. Um, so those parts of the conversation were a little more informed on. But yeah, Lucian does take a different tone than we do. One of the things I wrote down as I was listening to this again, because we recorded this a couple months ago. Yeah, a while ago, yeah. And I was listening to the audio, just like, what did we talk about? And when I did, I wrote, he said, intellectually insulting supernatural beliefs as a phrase when he was just talking about religion at large. So you know, that's a different tone than we would take. But you know, the point is, if that's the kind of thing that you don't feel like doing today, don't feel like listening to yeah, this ain't your episode.

Unknown Speaker 3:56 And again, we talk about issues that we've gotten a lot of feedback from listeners about when it comes to repressed memory. We understand these are tricky topics. And we don't purport to be speaking to any specific cases,

Unknown Speaker 4:10 except when we do them. Right. So at least

Unknown Speaker 4:13 let us acknowledge here that these are complicated topics best done with a qualified therapist.

Unknown Speaker 4:19 And even within that world, there are some problems with licensure. Yeah, Lucian, we'll get into that situation is really complex, and I'm not sure what the solution is right now. But the first step is obviously going to be to understand the problem

Unknown Speaker 4:33 what the solution Yeah. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 4:36 shit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like it.

Unknown Speaker 4:38 So if that's a difficult topic to traipse into, we totally understand if you want to skip that, but we're very interested in hearing Lucians a reaction to some of these issues because he has dealt with Bob Larson and the Satanic Panic. You'll notice that we mentioned a lot the McMartin case. Yeah, and we jumped into that with quite a bit of familiarity. If you're not too familiar with it. There was a preschool that was accused of just horrendous acts in the early 1980s. That they had been abusing children. And the claims got carried away. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 5:13 it was very far fetched claims. So it was that they were abusing children sexually and otherwise in underground tunnels, traveling them to other churches far away to participate in satanic rituals, sacrificing

Unknown Speaker 5:27 animals, yeah, taking kids up in airplanes with clowns. Yeah. So all of this came down to questioning, can you just believe everything? Children are saying, are they being coerced into saying things? Are they leading the witness in how they're prepping children for these testimonies? So all of this is really tricky, squishy stuff. Yep. So just know that we'll be referring to that case. If you're looking for a dramatized version of the story, just as a kind of a quick overview of the rough timeline and events, there's a movie called indictment, the McMartin trial with none other than James Woods, playing the the main lawyer in the in the case, yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 6:09 think that if there's one takeaway from the sorts of stories, it's that you can't just ask yourself, whether someone is lying. That's not the only question someone can remember can be completely sincere, be feeling very strong emotional feelings about what they remember and still be wrong about what happens, right,

Unknown Speaker 6:28 and child or adult. And this comes up in the interview. But we talked about how how difficult it can be to ascribe blame in such situations, because oftentimes, even the therapist maybe is doing the wrong thing, but not realizing is doing it out of good motives. So, you know, keep an open mind on that conversation. And hopefully, this gives you some good food for thought we also

Unknown Speaker 6:49 mentioned New York Magazine. Yes. So I think this comes up a little void of context. So just to give folks the context, there was an article that came out of New York Magazine and the cut, which is its website, that was about the false memory syndrome Foundation, which is was an organization founded by parents who had been accused of abusing their children, those parents claims that they hadn't, and that their kids, some of them adults, some young had been manipulated, consciously or unconsciously by therapists or other parents, etc. To have these memories. So again, genuine memories of things that didn't happen. That was the claim of the parents. Obviously, you get into a sticky situation there, right? Yeah. When you form an organization like that, very likely, you're going to have

Unknown Speaker 7:43 can set things up for motivated reasoning. Sure. But you're also probably

Unknown Speaker 7:47 going to get people who are innocent and people who aren't, that's probably going to happen. That's also going to happen with nearly anything you could set up right. Like you're going to get people who are there for the for the wrong reasons to use a phrase when the bachelor

Unknown Speaker 7:59 and people who are guilty of abuse and other criminality, they will try to use this as a tool to cast out on people who are trying to see them brought to justice. Yeah, that's a problem.

Unknown Speaker 8:11 Yep. That's a that's a real fallout of a real problem, you know, because false memories also a reality. So anyway, that will come up here. And the article in question, the New York Magazine article was written by a journalist named Katie Heaney. And she really tore apart the false memory syndrome Foundation, really, I think, tried to paint them as a group of abusers, who all had bad motives and also painted the people who founded it as abusers. It's such a more complex story than that. And so I wrote a letter to New York Magazine saying, like, Hey, I don't think this was great journalistic work, because at least let's hear you know, more of the details of the story. It's at the very least complex, and they didn't print that story. And then in the wake of that, I found out that there were a bunch of very well written well reasoned letters, many from experts, or people who had been mentioned in the piece who wrote in and said, What the heck happened here and print those either. So I ended up printing all of them in a medium piece. So if anyone wants to do this deep dive that's out there as well,

Unknown Speaker 9:24 which includes a piece by Lucien Greaves. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 9:26 he wrote a great letter. Okay, well, hopefully

Unknown Speaker 9:28 that set some context or this wide ranging discussion to come on. We're very happy to introduce you to Lucian grieves

Unknown Speaker 9:37 Ross. I'm so excited to introduce you finally to my friend, Lucian. I feel like this has been a long time coming.

Unknown Speaker 9:43 Yeah, you don't have to be over zoom. You're on the east coast, but really great to meet you.

Doug Misicko 9:48 Lucian. Nice to meet you. It has been a long time in coming.

Unknown Speaker 9:51 What is the history? How do you know each other? There we go. That's my first question.

Doug Misicko 9:55 I don't know we've known each other for over a week now. So I don't don't remember at all.

Unknown Speaker 10:02 That's how far back your memory goes.

Unknown Speaker 10:04 Yeah, pretty much.

Unknown Speaker 10:06 Well, I'll recover the memory of how we met all it met. I was one of those people who thought that the Satanic Temple was a group of sort of cheeky activists who used the cloak of religion in order to poke fun at religious exemption in the US. And while I think there's an element of that, I thought that was sort of the whole bag,

Unknown Speaker 10:28 sort of a Flying Spaghetti Monster group. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 10:32 So I went and saw the movie, Hail Satan with my friend Jude, who very much grew up during the Satanic Panic. And afterward, she turned to me and she said, I can't believe

Unknown Speaker 10:42 it. This whole time, I thought that Satanists were evil,

Unknown Speaker 10:46 like, in her 50s, and very, very sweet. And that really struck me I was like, Oh, wow, like this. This is actually like a very effective technique that they've that they've used here. And I had already sort of grown in my admiration for Lucian through that movie. So afterward, I wrote to Lucia, I think on Twitter, and we just started talking mostly about repressed memory, which we both had this this deep fascination with. And so then we ended up texting and just, you know, becoming friends. And then he came to San Diego, which is not too far from us to record an album, salsa musician, and down there and hung out. Okay, proper friends.

Unknown Speaker 11:27 Well, this is cool. We've already touched on some of these issues that I know we're gonna have to disambiguate. I'm sure Lucian you start every conversation this way. But maybe you can sort of explain for our listeners who maybe think Satanism is evil, what the difference is between the Satanic Temple that you co founded, versus the Church of Satan and sort of when you got founded and what your main names are,

Doug Misicko 11:48 right? Well, I think first and foremost, people need to realize we're a non theistic religion. We don't espouse supernaturalism we don't venerate Satan as a actual literal deity, but as a literary construct and icon of the ultimate rebel against tyranny. The differences between us and the Church of Satan are pretty extreme. Some people see us as being very similar core values, and that that could really be true, you know, Satanism, both in the context of the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple are considered lefthand path religions where it's not about subjugating yourself to a higher power but improving yourself as an individual. Beyond that, the differences are pretty severe in that the Church of Satan takes a very authoritarian autocratic perspective of that, that the dominant individual should lord over the unwashed uneducated masses and they aspire to build a kind of police state, even though they say they're a political they have their very political agenda is very, very explicitly laid out. And they also still talk quite a bit about practicing magic. And even though it's gone quite out of fashion, at least in satanist circles to speak about supernaturalism they will say that they do not believe in magic in a supernatural sense. However, magic can work some kind of supernormal powers that are on yet explained by science interests. So it's just supernaturalism by a different kind of Samantha's work. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 13:37 so you say still, so the Church of Satan was founded in the 60s by Anton LeVey. They're still active. Do you ever interact with them skirmish with them?

Doug Misicko 13:47 Oh, yeah, I mean, they're not active except for as a Twitter account, essentially, you know, they still have a website where they'll charge people over $200 for a membership card, but they don't have a physical property dedicated to what they do. They don't congregate, they don't involve themselves in anything. And they also hold up their lack of activity as some kind of noble virtue, because they don't get involved in politics, because religion has no place in politics. You know, they talk all about all the things they don't do, and they get very upset when the Satanic Temple does do anything, because it's not the proper place of Satanists to do anything at all, according to them. That's I think, is just more justification for why they aren't actually active than anything else. So I think what you're getting from me is a sense of fuck them.

Unknown Speaker 14:39 Okay, I'm glad we could boil it down.

Unknown Speaker 14:43 So why start a religion? Why religion and not a philosophy or club or a political group or anything else? Well, I

Doug Misicko 14:51 had an affinity for Satanism, of course, well before the Satanic Temple. It wasn't one of those things where I was sitting around and thought, Well, how do we how do we go about these Church State issues and just come up with the idea of starting a religion and then arbitrarily choosing which one, the whole kind of non theistic satanic thing was very much my thing for many years before founding the Satanic Temple, but it was also not something I was willing to put out publicly to kind of possibly destroy my public reputation and bring harm to myself, unless there's some kind of greater purpose for that. And at the point where we were starting the Satanic Temple, that greater purpose was there, you know, we were starting an organization for an organizational purpose for specific goals. So if it weren't for that kind of political activism, we felt was really necessary for an alternative religion to claim equal access in areas where Christian nationalists were trying to beat down the doors to put up their monuments or their prescriptions or whatever else, you know, at that point, then coming out publicly as a Satanist, you know, made sense. It was serving a greater purpose. But it was also something that, you know, I knew I had to be in for the long haul, because I was really aware of all the things that had happened during the Satanic Panic. People look back at the prankster like things we did at the inception of the Satanic Temple. And they were funny, but they were also horrific to me, because I didn't take any of it lightly. You know, I didn't take it lightly at all, that my image was on the news being associated with this. And just knowing that whole history of people's lives being absolutely destroyed on mere allegations of Satanism, people who had no attachment, anything satanic whatsoever. So I knew that there was a lot of a lot of rough terrain to be to be traveled there. But I have to say after like, eight years, this has played out. I think, in a best case scenario, fashion is to the kind of, you know, as opposed to the pessimistic fatalistic view I had going into it.

Unknown Speaker 17:03 Yeah, it's not too often that we get to talk to a founder and discoverer of a religion. And so

Doug Misicko 17:09 there's a lot of startups but they don't last very long.

Unknown Speaker 17:11 Exactly. And it sounds like you know, you did this conscientiously knowing Satanism carries a lot of baggage, especially with a religious said that even in conversations with people like us, you'd have to do a lot of sort of explaining and defining of terms. You also mentioned another aspect, which is safety. Is there anything that you have to do to protect yourself or your identity from a lot of people who probably hate you?

Doug Misicko 17:36 Yeah, from the very beginning, there were always people posting bizarre things online making really outrageous claims and claims of the type that if one were to take them seriously, I would fully be deserving of getting shot or otherwise taken out eating babies, right? Yeah, right, human sacrifice, all that kind of thing. And really trying to undermine the entire fabric of civilization and having the power to do so in some people's minds. But the kind of outrage we get waxes and wanes, you know, depending on how much we're in the news, and also depending on election cycles, just before the presidential election are months before the presidential election, actually, there was one week I'd have to look back and see which week it was but it was the week I think where the paid trolls and everything else started really appearing online trying to put out formative false information about that would persuade the election one way or the other. In

Unknown Speaker 18:42 2016 or 2020.

Doug Misicko 18:45 No 2020 2016 I wasn't as aware of these things. I don't think anybody was aware of like the troll farms and things like that. And I even then didn't have as much of a feel for the kind of environment of my Twitter feed I think in 2016 You know, randomly would pop on there whatever. But I've gotten to the point by 2020 where you know I have a consistent base of people who comment on my things and everything and it's usually pretty peaceful you know every so often there's some asshole pops on and sides to troll or whatever but one week all the sudden in my feeds were you know all these bizarre Q anon things popping up all these allegations after things I would say. And talking heads of the conservative camp, even some high profile ones who you know, are just just anonymous trolls or whatever started talking about our bathroom at Monument which we had had offered to put alongside of 10 commandments monument first in Oklahoma and then an Arkansas and you see that story, the hail satan documentary, but a way to put it right. But when, when the BLM protests were, were breaking out after the George Floyd murder and this was part of the run up to the 2020 election, it became real popular for conservative talking heads to say, well, if these icons to our American heritage in history, meaning Confederate memorials were to be torn down, then you know, this bathroom, that monument should be torn down as well, there were usually pictures accompanying this, you know, it'd be like two pictures, a picture of BLM protesters tearing down a Confederate Memorial and then below it, they would show a picture of the bathroom at Monument saying this should be torn down to. And that was kind of harrowing. Because our Baphomet monument is not on public property right now. It's on private property. It's in our headquarters and somebody's savvy enough to look it up and figure out where it is. But somebody stupid enough might not realize the real difference there. You know, and there's a real fear that somebody, at least in that time frame, I mean, anytime they could come, but specially then we really felt on high alert that somebody was bound to feel they had the justification of some patriotic majority to come and burn our place down and, and I was staying at the headquarters at the time locked down for the for the pandemic. So I spent many a night just watching the cameras.

Unknown Speaker 21:19 I bet. Wow. So with the bathroom, that statue that reminds me of something you said earlier in this conversation. You were you were saying that early in the development of the Satanic Temple. You think you use the word pranks? What were some of the things that felt more like pranks?

Doug Misicko 21:35 Yeah, at the beginning, like I said, it was really harrowing, to the very idea of being recognized publicly as a Satanist. And I felt like, in some ways, I was really throwing my life away, like, in the Google universe, you know, I'll never live that out, you know, what else am I gonna do for a job or whatever, I couldn't publicly out myself as a Satanist for like six months and move into normalcy thereafter, you know, it's something that was gonna follow me forever. And we knew, we had no idea how well this would work out. So in a way, allowing some of our presentation to be prankster ish, helped in the chi in a little way mitigate that, you know, like, if people wanted to look at it as a prank, it seemed a little less dangerous, too. So even though it's important that people know that we're not in that we have our own affirmative values and everything else. And that harrowing time, it was easier to do things like advocate for Governor Rick Scott in Florida, where you see at the beginning of the hail satan documentary, we pulled this prankster ish type activism, where we went to the capital of Florida, to honor Rick Scott who is an asshole. You know, he's, he's a he was a conservative asshole governor, and he was pushing for this religious liberty bill to put prayer in schools. And we thought, well, you know, Satanists can give invocations or do whatever satanic practice in school to so you know, in that was surely an unintended consequence of what Rick Scott was doing. But we wanted to get everybody to realize that and we did that by claiming that we were honoring Rick Scott, we wouldn't do that any more. Because I just really don't like to take that kind of that backdoor of pretending where we're on the side of somebody that we're not things are hard enough to parse and in the fake news environment that, you know, we decided really quite early on that we didn't want to disingenuously present ourselves for anything.

Unknown Speaker 23:38 Yeah, it seems like originally, the idea was something more along the lines of, if you're going to have religious exemption, then we're going to sort of poke holes in that idea by saying, okay, then exempt us, too. So now, what do you think of religious exemption laws?

Doug Misicko 23:54 I think so long is it's accounted for that it respects pluralism and that the government remains neutral regarding viewpoint, then I don't see anything wrong with it. Honestly, I think if they approach it that way, that there should be some kind of recourse for religious people to claim that certain government mandates are too restrictive against their beliefs. I mean, if it's some kind of fairly arbitrary prohibition, or requirement, and it's something that people feel fundamentally violates their sense of identity based on the community they're in, I think they should be able to make that argument. And I don't think there's any problem with people being able to make that argument, unless, of course, the courts are treating one religious viewpoint differently from others. And horrifically, we find when we're in the courts, I think that we're very clearly being treated differently than other religious organizations. And right now, we have litigation in play against abortion restrictions. Previously, we've gotten to court regarding In vocations, you know, when City Council's or other public meetings will allow for prayers beforehand, they can't discriminate against viewpoint either. So we'll have chapters or other members of the Satanic Temple offering to give these invocations. And they'll say no, you know, we'll sue in this happened in Arizona, and happened in Boston to in Boston, we're still in litigation with and we went into litigation in, in Arizona. And you know, contrary to what we thought, based on all the precedent in Arizona, they really tried to question our religious authenticity, which on the face of it, I think, is outrageous, when you consider some of the religious liberty claims brought forth by self professed Christians and how even the very notion that some of these beliefs they subscribe to are somehow attached to Christianity at all. I mean, at what point did anybody ever justify from the Bible, the anti abortion stance? And when they do, it's really tenuous and unconvincing. Right? And yet we get into the courtroom and they're saying, well, there's nothing in your beliefs or in your tenants that demand that somebody get an abortion, therefore, you know, us imposing state mandated religious materials, it state that a fetus is an individual human life that you're committing murder is no imposition upon your religious viewpoint, even though it directly contradicts it. You know, and I just feel like if it were reversed, you know, if a Christian were making the claim, I mean, think of Hobby Lobby. I mean, they never asked, is there any legitimacy to the idea that a corporation can hold a religious belief or that they have the right to impose it upon employees? Or that there's anything within the Christian belief system that would say anything about insuring people for certain contraceptives? Oh, those are huge question marks that they never explored. But then when you when you get the Satanic Temple in the in the courtroom, all of a sudden, these questions are very relevant,

Unknown Speaker 26:56 though, I still hear you arguing from the position of if you're going to give these exemptions to them, you need to treat us equally. I'm trying to get you one level below that, too. But are the exemptions good? Like because we do have things like religious exemptions for vaccines? So what the for in your mind? Would the better outcome be that religious exemptions are sort of weakened in American political life? Or is it simply we should have religious exemption? It's a good thing, but we need to also respect minor religions?

Doug Misicko 27:30 Well, it depends on the exemption. Right, I don't think there should be an exemption from vaccination, because that doesn't only affect the religious population in question, right? I mean, it's, it's that whole libertarian ideal of your right to swing your fist ends at somebody else's face. And I believe that that's part of the question involved when it comes to vaccination or any of these things? I mean, I think there should be a

Unknown Speaker 27:57 but maybe for like, conscientious objection to participation and war, would you give

Doug Misicko 28:03 those types of things, I think, are open questions, right. I think like, I think the government should have a burden of proof to say that this is it doesn't just affect the religious community claiming exemption. Right. And at the point where it does, I think they can claim they have a legitimate interest in in reining that in, it's very easy for me to think of cases in which exemption shouldn't be respected. And very few Honestly, I feel like it should. But I do think that, you know, the argument should be made, some people have, you know, there might be some obscure religious viewpoints that we don't realize are being imposed upon by certain mandates or whatever. And I just feel like the argument should be made, you know, or, or somebody should have recourse in those in that regard. Like, say, peyote rights, you know, like they, they classify different narcotics, and they claim there's a government interest in regulating them or banning them outright. But there's, you know, certain populations have been using these sacraments for a long time. And I do feel like I should be able to make the argument that the government has no right to tell them that they can't,

Unknown Speaker 29:11 yeah, also because it sounds dope.

Unknown Speaker 29:14 Right? Yeah. In that case, maybe there is an underlying argument for more universal applicability of that, you know, like, maybe more people should be able to recreationally even use some of these substances, but at least let's get a toehold for these people who have been doing it.

Doug Misicko 29:29 Well, I think that kind of gets to the bigger question of what's the religion then? And why aren't your deeply held beliefs considered religious values? And why do some people insist that only if you subscribe to intellectually insulting, supernatural beliefs are your values worth protecting? And that's the argument we're often making when people make a claim that because we're non theistic, we can also authentically be a religion, but that's also to say that these deeply held values that we have, are less worthy of any type of protection for the mere fact that we're not going around saying that we're speaking directly with some kind of Satan and corporeal form that appears from ether every now and again or something ridiculous like that. Why would somebody like that have elevated rights over somebody who lives somewhere more grounded in reality?

Unknown Speaker 30:22 I mean, it would also preclude things like secular Buddhism, secular Judaism, you're not the only secular religion out there. Right? So if that phrase even makes sense,

Doug Misicko 30:32 no, no, it does it. And there are a lot of there are already a lot of non theistic religious groups. I sometimes feel like people like to pretend that we're unique, who's so as to marginalize us right now to act like this is just kind of a one off the cuff idea. Yeah. And that it's not worth really considering.

Unknown Speaker 30:55 So you're, you're making the point that, sure, religion should be a protected class in certain applications. But there should be equal protections for those who don't subscribe to religion as traditionally understood or defined by much of the American public.

Doug Misicko 31:11 Yeah. And what we're seeing now, with this generations long rise of Christian nationalism, trying to enact a theocratic coup, in the United States, and broadly, more broadly worldwide, is that they're redefining terminology, like religious liberty to mean the exclusive rights for Christianity on the public grounds. It started out with these arguments for pluralism. And now I think even with just since the Satanic Temple has manifested and start fighting these battles, we're seeing the project Blitz, Christian nationalists, moving towards arguments of heritage in history, in trying to claim that there's a unique status for Christian monuments in the Christian religion based upon the heritage of the United States that they have a right to preference. And we haven't seen very strong arguments for that yet. But I feel like part of what is going to happen now, because we are fighting these battles, and other people are learning to see the issues in this way, is that the courts are going to have to make this determination and I don't know, I feel like it'll go very much against everything that this nation was premised upon, for them to give exclusive status to a Christian religion. But then again, Trump did install a lot of unqualified ignorant federal judges. Yeah, very little care for what precedent is or what the law actually have repercussions? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it'll be interesting to see, as you're describing

Unknown Speaker 32:45 these actions, I've just exhausted for you, because it's a lot of work to well be a spokesperson for this to constantly be trying to tease apart these ideas of freedom. And what is religion? Also, you're talking about legal action? That's a lot of work. And, you know, I'd be curious to know how many lawsuits you're fielding at any given time. Also, I'm sure you run into standing issues, wherever you're bringing this, you have to have the local chapters and involvement. I mean, is this your full time job? But how much work is this? How many people have to be involved? And do you get exhausted?

Doug Misicko 33:21 Yeah, no, I get exhausted all the time. And I feel that, you know, more recently, my productive output is fall and because of it, you know, because there's, there's only so much outrage you can feel before you just start getting exhausted, you know, and it's certainly not lucrative, you know, me and Matt, my business partner, Malcolm co founded the Satanic Temple. And neither of us take a salary from it, though we could, you know, legally, we're allowed that and I don't think anybody would have room to complain. But we also put so much money into these lawsuits and everything that we're doing that neither of us wants to do that we've put our own money, a lot of it into a lot of this stuff, especially when we don't you know, when the slack needs to be picked up. It's all prohibitively expensive these these lawsuits and everything that we do, and we don't charge for membership. We don't charge any type of registration fees or annual fees to our chapters or anything else. There's no There's no pay to play. Within the Satanic Temple, I make my money based off of the individual projects, I do my Patreon account working on writing, I'll be you know, making money from the music I put out and stuff like that. But those are all my own projects, all the money for the Satanic Temple goes into Satanic Temple projects. And what can be exhausting about that is to also see people online claiming based upon nothing, that this is all just some kind of money making scheme. You know, literally anything I could have done would have been more lucrative than this, you know, and I don't expect a metal for that or anything but I would at least expect people to acknowledge that, that I'm not a con man trying to rip them off when it's very, very clear on record that I'm not drawing any income from it fair.

Unknown Speaker 35:18 So one of the other things that you that your group does activism wise, is kind of what brought us here to this conversation. So let's talk about gray faction. What is gray faction and did it grow up alongside the Satanic Temple come before the Satanic Temple? Tell us about the connection there?

Doug Misicko 35:37 Well, yeah, gray faction is the segment of the Satanic Temple that takes on pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and especially Satanic Panic. conspiracist mythology, which is also tied in with pseudoscience directly into pseudoscience related to notions of repressed memories and dissociative identity disorder recovered memories of abuse, because that was really the evidentiary basis for the Satanic Panic in the 80s and 90s. These recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse that were supposed to be taking place that people had recalled under hypnosis, sodium avatar interviews, guided imagery sessions, that type of thing. And now what we find, of course, is that this these types of tactics of recovering supposedly, repressed memories are horrifically unreliable, and are the same techniques that cause people to recall being abducted by aliens or having past lives or any other things that are really unsubstantiated by anything else. false memory creation is what we find. And this was a topic near and dear to me well before the Satanic Temple, part of I think what was really formative to me when I was younger, that brought me to Satanism was being aware of the Satanic Panic, but being too young to realize just how ridiculous this moral panic was, you're hearing these voices of authority on daytime talk show saying that there's this kind of a cult mafia, you know, using mobile crematoriums and sacrificing infants and they're all over the place. You know, they're in every community, you just don't see them. And they're working towards a One World Takeover. You know, when he's installing this kind of massive satanic empire and enslaving the rest of the population. It was, you know, the foundational basis for Q anon. And I think part of the problem we have now with Q anon is because we never really confronted the entrenched conspiracist narratives that arose during the Satanic Panic to the point that the foundational conspiracy theory that kicked off Q and on pizza gate was very similar to the McMartin preschool mythology from back in the 80s, in the McMartin case was one in which there was a preschool in California, in a neighborhood small house. But nonetheless, there's this legend that they had these massive tunnels underneath the house where they were killing I think they were reporting giraffes even and elephants, horses and flying kids to different locations during the day only to get them back on time for the parents pick them up where they were being harassed and abused by different celebrities, including Chuck Norris, he was pointed out that guy can do everything. Yeah, no. So Well, what happened was is one of the defense attorneys asked one of the children to just pick out any of the people in the lineup because they had done this before. And the kids had picked some people out who then became implicated and the defense was trying to prove like, look, these kids are trying to work with you here. They're going to they're going to pick out anybody so anyways, a kid pointed out Chuck Norris, you know, you just put a list together people they knew couldn't possibly have anything do with any of it. But however, the conspiracy theorists took this as evidence that the high profile celebrities actually were in on this. Chuck Norris was ever prosecuted. But you saw the same mythology pop up again with pizza gate, this idea that these tunnels underground and you could also see if you checked out the deep kind of research posts and boards for q&a that they would reference this old bullshit I think about

Unknown Speaker 39:31 the connection between the tunnels underground with the McMartin case versus the basement at the the pizza shop at ping pong. Yeah, right. And Chuck Norris contrasted with now Tom Hanks somehow involved in the Wayfair conspiracy, that he's buying children online or something like that.

Doug Misicko 39:49 Yeah. But what's interesting about the idea of the tunnels under McMartin was that there were no tunnels under McMartin. For one thing. There was a deranged, former F Big giant who decided to find the tunnels under McMartin. So they cracked the open the concrete floor not doing anything to explain how they would have gotten through the concrete in normal circumstances,

Unknown Speaker 40:12 right? Where's the bookshelf that you tilt to get in

Doug Misicko 40:15 there? Right. And he started, he started digging in, according to him that it was loose dirt, you know, it had been filled in. And he was discerning enough to consider like, where are these tunnels had been and was just kind of digging them out again. And there were no borders to these tunnels, you know, it's just all dirt. Despite that, you know, if you look online, you'll see like pictures of presion sewers and stuff like that, you know, large brick tunnels and stuff like that. But that wasn't even the claim. Further, the tunnels he dug out, were like 30 inches by 48 inches or something. No way, you know, you'd have to crawl through. Definitely. And there was certainly no way they were sacrificing large animals or anything like that. It was just the idea that there were tunnels need to be defended. And then they found debris, and they were saying that kind of

Unknown Speaker 41:07 the smoking gun was right. Like a Cheeto bag or something. Yeah, right.

Doug Misicko 41:11 Oh, no. But it was it was worse than that. Because after after the FBI agent got some spineless archaeologist to sign off and say that there have been pre existing tunnels. And by the FBI agents own telling of the story, it took him like 30 days of pressuring this archaeologist to sign off and say that the tunnels were pre existing, because of the debris. Somebody responsible, took a look at this debris they were talking about made dated at all, within a certain time period, at which they could say, with a high level of certainty, that this was trash that people buried. And it had been that it was trash that dated from a time when there wasn't trash pickup in the neighborhood. And it was common practice, to dig a hole, bury your trash after you filled it up, dig another hole and bury your trash, you know, and of course, there was like random items set, you know, pulled under the house or whatever, you know, that they were trying to say also proved that this was this was it but you will expect that kind of debris, right, the the bulk of the debris, you know, the piles they were finding were very trash. But however, to this day, you'll still see people, especially within an organization, like the International Society for the Study of trauma, dissociation, which still talks about satanic ritual abuse still stands by this method of therapy in which you recover memories of repressed abuse and entreat dissociative identity disorder. They all often say as kind of a signal as to what their beliefs are. It's kind of the Shibboleth of the of the recovered memory industry to say, however, there were tunnels under McMartin why and that's their way, that's their way of indicating that they believe the conspiracy theories without getting much deeper into it. Yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's, that's how they indicate to each other where they stand, you know, just

Unknown Speaker 43:10 asking questions, right. But it's interesting, you've made the case that you know, that there was this big Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s. It was sort of a fad of sorts it got on Geraldo, and all of that, but then it didn't just fade away and become a small thing where say, we run into Bob Larson, who still is very much singing this tune and holding a flame for the Satanic Panic. But you're saying it's leached out and become even broader as a societal problem in other related ways? Well,

Doug Misicko 43:39 the end of the Satanic Panic is marked around 1995. And to hear some of the academics talk about the Satanic Panic, you would think that this moral panic was isolated to this discrete time period where it had a distinct beginning, you know, usually considered the publication of Michelle remembers, which was this recovered memory testimony of a woman who went in for therapy under a Catholic psychiatrist to use hypnosis to, you know, bring forth these memories that she had been abused by none other than Satan himself, right. And they took it, even though it had the supernatural elements to it. It was taken seriously as a story. Some people go back a little further to the kinds of things that kind of inspired Michelle remembers, like Mike Warren keys the Satan seller can completely deep. Yeah, yeah. But the idea that it ended in 1995 Comes Around the time where gherardo was willing to say he thought the he was wrong and that the recovered memory movement was a bunch of shit. And there were lawsuits being instigated against some of the therapists who had brought people into therapy and the people who recovered from this therapy felt that they had been led to believe false narratives false autobiographical narratives of satanic ritual abuse that had done them great harm. And so at that point, you had much less going on in the media insofar as promoting this idea. You were much less likely to see people recovering memories of abuse, and then taking those recovered memories into the courtroom and trying to get remediation subtype based on that. But that didn't that it still happens. Yeah, it still happens. It's just kind of the conspiracist narrative changed, right? You still have therapists doing these things. But they'll often say that you can't get justice in the courts. The Satanic movement is just too entrenched. You know, you have judges and law enforcement and journalists all in on this now, you're not going to find that justice is just going to ruin your life. Yeah. And I think the greatest outrage of all of this, it makes it different than the Salem Witch Trials were at least like after a year or so, you know, there was a lot of remorse. And people tried to address the things that led this to happen. We never really addressed these things with the Satanic Panic. In organizations like the ISS, TD, still do everything they can to still promote these horrific ideas that still absolutely destroy lives.

Unknown Speaker 46:21 I'm curious to know kind of how you counter these groups, these movements, these conferences, I'm also interested just in the gray faction itself. First of all, I want to thank you for spelling it with an E. That's my preferred spelling of gray. And why kind of separate that out? Is it just sort of a focus group and interest group within the Satanic Temple? Or is it just for people who want to focus on that effort,

Doug Misicko 46:44 the Satanic Temple is in every way, kind of like the anti cult, you know, and we give people a lot of a lot of room for differing opinion, right? As long as it kind of boils down to these core ethics we have. But we don't demand that anybody take a point of view of ours, based simply on authority. And for some people, the gray faction issues we explore our or new territory, you know, they don't have a background with it, it might not be something they're entirely interested in. And they might not feel confident, looking at some of these issues. And just saying based on what they know, which might not be much that there's anything wrong with recovered memory therapies or that dissociative identity disorder is a socio cognitive construct, rather than naturally occurring disorder based on the trauma model that those who advocate for it put forward. And we don't ask that people go through that level of research to become a Satanist. Right, so that's why gray faction is separate from the rest of the Satanic Temple. Because, you know, we

Unknown Speaker 48:00 said that there's no space to dwell where you don't necessarily sign on to that. Is it gray? Because it's a gray area? Are there other? Are there factions of other colors?

Doug Misicko 48:08 No, I saw some weird conspiracy theory. At one point online where somebody was saying we're clearly called gray faction based on some Scientology thing. And people have tried to make the argument that great faction is like his Scientologist and in the way that it's like anti psychiatry or whatever, which is just clearly wrong. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But also, it just started being called gray faction. Because earlier on there was this idea that we were just going to make these different colored patches with our logo that would indicate different campaigns, you know, so if you were working with the reproductive rights campaign or whatever, and there's like a purple patch or whatever. And we didn't have a name for what we were doing with the gray faction stuff but there was the question of what color should the patches be? And I was just kind of like well, I guess these are brain issues, so why not? You know why not? Gray? Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, so for lack of any other word we just naturally started calling it the gray faction and it just it stock probably a real letdown as far as the story

Unknown Speaker 49:20 associated with maybe the gray matter of the brain. Yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker 49:23 we'll stop everything boys. Yeah, bullies. I'm here to talk about bras sorry.

Unknown Speaker 49:28 Oh, this is so Carrie talking about bras. Probably gonna tell me about your fourth law.

Unknown Speaker 49:34 No, you're so close. It's crazy. No, I was I was gonna tell you about third love Oh, that's better. My first love being my left but my second love is my right boob and my third love being together. Exactly. Ross. What do you do for me time

Unknown Speaker 49:51 I like to well I like to read I consider that my me time. Definitely. And that now I've take I used to never take back But now I will take a bath. Oh, love it and I will read in the bath. I do that. Hey, I love about I was never a bath person. Oh man I laughed at Bath people yeah like that's what I do those bath people who takes baths

Unknown Speaker 50:16 I take more baths and showers

Unknown Speaker 50:18 interesting Okay. Something to know about me what do you do for me time Carrie?

Unknown Speaker 50:24 Oh thank you for asking. I like playing the banjo I like reading I like petting my dog and my cat Oh yeah, I like hanging out with Drew make it out sometime to ghire young love Yeah, and I love I just fucking love wearing a bra. I guess that's why I'm talking about Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you know there's nothing more sacred than me time Ross there isn't nothing more sacred you heard it here I'm saying it just because I feel like it and certainly not because it's written out in front of me there is nothing more sacred than me time. And third loves Limited Edition summer styles are designed with tropical inspired colors, vacation ready designs and breezy feelings that whisk you away to your own personal paradise.

Unknown Speaker 51:12 This is the right time of the year for that. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 51:14 it's me time baby just wrapping back around. Oh, also watching every show in the Bachelor franchise. Okay, yeah, that's also me time actually, it's me and drew time Drew and I watch all the bachelor shows and we bet on them for every episode.

Unknown Speaker 51:29 We're like, sounds so Carrie and Drew, this

Unknown Speaker 51:33 person's going to get kicked off. And if I'm right, you have to put $5 in our honeymoon fund and then he's like, Okay, I think they're gonna stay but she's gonna say that this guy's here for the wrong reasons. I'm right. You have to put $5 in the honeymoon fund

Unknown Speaker 51:46 when I came here tonight. Jared Carrie we're telling you the story about betting how many packages Carrie had received from the post office and how many of them had a debate over how to tell this story? What was the purpose of the box so how many boxes were purposely devoted to books and how many books total were there? Drew ended up being spot on oh

Unknown Speaker 52:08 my god seven boxes with 12 bucks incredible. That's crazy. Anyway, I had to put $10 in our honeymoon fund as a result

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Unknown Speaker 56:17 I want to hear more about like the activist work that gray faction does but I just have to name drop this. My cousin's went to McMartin preschool. And they, you're both you're both nodding in shock for the listener. Their, their mouths are gaping, they're waving their voice.

Unknown Speaker 56:37 I realized like yeah, people wouldn't hear wouldn't hear my mouth being open.

Unknown Speaker 56:41 Yeah, so it was a couple years before the big scandal happened. And I asked my mom about this and she said, Yeah, you know, they didn't experience anything weird. And I asked her the years and like I say it was a couple years before and she said yeah, but you know as before all that and I was like, okay, yes, it was a couple years before but was there a sudden point where the McMartin is just decided, like we're Satan is now he abused children and underground tunnels in massive rituals and you know, bring giraffes under there and stuff. But I just went there for the first time I went to the site of the McMartin preschool and it is now a laundromat.

Doug Misicko 57:21 Oh, yeah. No, they were bulldozing it at the time. Ted Gunderson former FBI guy was digging out the tunnels he he bought like a month of time just to do that. But no, I've never been there one of my long time gray faction comrades either Sarah or shall we sorry for not remembering which one got me. McMartin preschool class of 83 t shirt, which is, you know, depending on where you wear it, that's considered really tasteless. I love it.

Unknown Speaker 57:51 Is it real? No, it can't be. You know what it would be to smell. But that is also the year I was born. So okay, so what does gray faction do to to counter all of this pseudoscience, as you put it,

Doug Misicko 58:07 it's really difficult. This is one of the more difficult approaches because you know, it is really trying to confront some entrenched ideas. misinterpretations of psychiatry, and science that are prevalent in culture in the Satanic Temple itself has these kinds of protest standards in which we don't like to do things that are merely meant to raise consciousness, because so many activists only do that now and don't put anything substantial behind their protests. And people have lost a sense of the difference between protest and activism where they just kind of preference protest where they go out wave signs in grandstand, their outrage, oftentimes without any proposal as to how to do things better, or any demands for

Unknown Speaker 58:55 criticism of the Occupy movement was basically that

Doug Misicko 58:59 right? Yeah, well, and I have criticisms of the of the March for Science and the Women's March just based on the fact and not because I'm anti science or anti woman, but it's just that you have people who are you, I'm giving signs, and they weren't asking for anything specifically. So by the next day, no, politicians are called to account and in response to any of this, there were no petitions being put forward. There was no model legislation being imposed. So it was just easy for people to go out feel like they got something done. And there's something to be said for that. You build up some momentum. You build up some energy, but you need to do some it's a part of the equation. Yeah. But with gray faction, it's very difficult because sometimes we don't know what else to do, but let people know that this is happening. So a lot of what we do is investigate these things. I got issue reports about them. Try to make people aware of how insane this particular fringe segment, particularly the isst which I mentioned, the International Society for the Study of trauma and dissociation are. And we've been writing letters to licensing boards and other consumer commissions in different states, trying to prevent the istd from being allowed to give out continuing education units at their conferences, because they, they give out continuing education units when they're doing lectures talking about Illuminati mind control, satanic ritual abuse,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:29 you attend this lecture as a nurse or practitioner therapist, and now you've taken care of this important licensing requirement that you continue to educate yourself,

Doug Misicko 1:00:39 right. And we've also gone to a lot of different licensing boards just reporting some of the insane ideas being propagated by some of the people that are licensing, because if you take a reading of some of the standards that the professionals have, that we take, they really don't have any rights to propagate conspiracy theories under the authority of their licensing. So far, we haven't had much luck in getting the licensing boards to agree and I think that's simply out of laziness. They don't typically deal with this. They typically don't respond to complaints about therapists or clinical psychologist unless unless they're fucking a client's that seems to be the only thing they're interested in right now. And I think what it will take is just getting enough outrage honestly getting more and more people to recognize what's wrong with what's going on here. And it's becoming more and more clear that they can't simply ignore these complaints because people are paying attention. And that's what we're working on.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:42 So you haven't seen anybody actually lose their license because of this malpractice or even because of this, how are

Doug Misicko 1:01:48 we had, we had some bit of luck in Canada, the United States has been terrible. I sent Carrie a whole report I had written up some years ago about a woman named Ellen lachter who is the chair of the ISS TDs own ritual abuse mind control special interest group who had consulted with a woman who ultimately murdered her own eight year old autistic child because she felt that he wasn't autistic. That actually what appeared to be autism was a manifestation of the trauma he had suffered at the hands of unseen Satanists, and she was very delusional, very deranged. By her own admission, she had observed the satanists abusing this child, and she had been with the child essentially his entire life. But still, she claimed that at the time, she was killing him that she was preserving him from further abuse at the hands of a satanic cult. And to us the outrage was is that she had sought the help of professionals. And that one of those professionals was Ellen lachter, who openly propagates these notions of satanic ritual abuse and other really delusional unhinged ideas. And our thinking was that perhaps, if she had found competent professional help, somebody might have tried to disabuse her of her illusions before she murdered her kid. And that Ellen lacquer should be called to account for that. Anyways, we set that set that's very well documented and detailed report it to California, the California Board of Consumer Affairs, or whatever it is that that deals with these types of things, outlining all the deranged ideas that Ellen lachter advocates for and that she gives lectures about everything. About nine months later, they sent us an unsigned letter that said, no rules were violated, and we can essentially fuck off. And that was about it. But in Canada, there is a woman named Allison Miller, who was also propagating these very bizarre ideas of satanic ritual abuse. I think also Illuminati, witchcraft, and just all its various conspiracist mythologies, really unhinged over the top. And to their credit in Canada. They said they're going to open up an investigation, they're going to have some kind of hearing or whatever. But instead of going through that Allison Miller just abdicated her license and said she was yeah, she was gonna step down and step away, all the while getting very angry and saying it had nothing to do with what we had done,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:25 but that that pressure was integral to that outcome. So that's why

Doug Misicko 1:04:29 it seems I looked as though that was all it was. That's what caused her to give up her license.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:35 I'm curious, where do you go for scientific information to kind of fuel the gray factions? Efforts? Do you work with any particular researchers or specialists?

Doug Misicko 1:04:47 There have been a lot of journal articles? There's a lot of discussion. The memory issue has been scientifically established for a long time now. There's a false controversy surrounding it. This The idea that the notion of false memories is a very tenuous idea or that it's impossible to create false memories of trauma, which is shown to be absolutely false. You can have false memories of trauma. And like I've talked to people, personally, I've done a lot of interviews with people who've been subjected to this kind of therapy, a lot of them retractors, who came to realize they held false memories of satanic abuse that never happened. You know, some people who still believe that these things are taking place when I, when I was unknown, and still able to go to conferences for these people and talk about these things was very clear, you know, that people who had false memories of being abducted by aliens, you know, they, they could have very traumatic memories of this. And in fact, they did a study at Harvard, Richard McNally. In his his group they did they were testing the psycho physiological responding in script driven imagery for people who had undergone real verifiable traumas, like, say, wartime trauma, and people who had false memory traumas. And these particularly were traumatic memories of alien abduction. Now, I mean, the first thing we have to accept here is that the alien abduction trauma memories, yeah, right. Yeah, there wasn't like real investigation as to whether there was evidence that these people were kidnapped by aliens, but

Unknown Speaker 1:06:23 at least you have to pick your narrative, you know, or either believe in aliens, or they believe in sameness.

Doug Misicko 1:06:29 But just starting out, admitting that I just believe that people weren't abducted by aliens, right? These are false memories, well, given for this conversation, right? That yeah, that's the given there. They were measuring like, you know, electrical resistance and other physiological memory markers of trauma, and finding that people who were reading these kinds of scripts that would talk about their war, trauma and trauma or whatever, had identical psychophysiological responses to recalling that kind of trauma is people recalling these narratives of alien abduction. So if you have traumatic false memories, it will act like a real trauma. Right? Yeah. And so something

Unknown Speaker 1:07:09 really significant that it right, no, it's the same bodily responses,

Doug Misicko 1:07:13 right. And that, that makes it all the more important that we understand this issue, because it's not benign, you know, to have people recalling these memories, they like to make this argument, you know, people in the ISS TD, like, Oh, we're, we're just kind of working with what the clients give us. And the truth doesn't really matter, you know, and the the kind of narrative, everybody's giving them just happens to be, you know, something they, they've built their practice around, right. Like, it's no coincidence that people who are obsessed with alien abduction, always, you know, seem to get people to recall those narratives, and they put them under hypnosis, you know, and the istd therapists aren't innocent in the fact that, you know, they just happen to get all these people giving them narratives of satanic ritual abuse, or Illuminati crimes, or whatever else. But we have to realize that giving people this kind of autobiographical narrative is extremely harmful. And you can't say that it's just a narrative that helps them to work through whatever their real problems are, and that there is no harm in somehow, you know, validating these narratives, even if they're not true, because it is harmful. And, you know, I think that's a very important element to realize there. But to the question of, what kind of studies and what kind of research, just the body of work that you can see from both sides to I don't want people to think I just look at one side of this and have taken that, but I can see the deficiencies and the ISS TDs research and their deficiencies are glaring, and many to the point where it's hard to believe that they even believe the kind of ideas they're putting forward at the point where you're claiming that people can have hundreds or more of discrete personalities that you're bringing forth in therapeutic sessions. And yet, there is no real, longitudinal long term studies, tracking the lives of these personalities or even having somebody I mean, why wouldn't you have somebody in a couple years later who had a couple 100 personalities and seeing if you can even get those personalities to be recalled with any real fidelity, you know, to see if they've progressed, you know, there's this idea that somebody can have all these personalities of different ages or whatever, and yet, I never see a journal article saying, we followed up with this personality years later to see where it's at. I mean, it seems very obvious to me that people go into the office. You know, the therapeutic context in this setting where they're recalling these things. And it seems to me, they're probably coming up with these narratives on the fly, and nobody's doing anything to figure out anything otherwise. And just like, research regarding alien abduction, you'll see a lot of retrospective analysis, you know, retrospective surveys where I assess TD researchers, as I think they, you know, is kind of a misnomer. But they will call themselves, they'll take people who believe already, that they had recovered memories of abuse, they'll ask them a series of questions about the nature of that abuse, or whatever else, then they'll quantify it, make it sound very sciency. And say that, well, this proves that this phenomenon is real. And I've juxtapose this with surveys done by you follow Jesus who study alien abduction in the book, do the same thing, like, you know, has this ever happened to you in the middle of the night, you know, just multiple choice like about the form their alien abduction is taken. And then they'll say, like, well, 69% of respondents picked B over over A through E, and therefore, this is very significant. It's just not, it's just not that that's a way of making it look like you have something without having anything at all. And now what's really popular is to take brain scans and say, Well, look at this, people with dissociative identity disorder, or repressed memories, have these unique kind of neurological markers in their, in their fMRI or whatever, that shows that this is a real phenomenon. It To Me nothing could be more dishonest, because if they think that that's any part of the argument, they are, they have no place being in this argument at all. Because it's not really a question of whether dissociative identity disorder exists for people who feel that they have it or people who suffer it. It's very real. But the question is, where did it come from? Is it of the socio cognitive model? Is it kind of a role that they've been placed into? And that's not to say they're acting, but it's to say that it's given them a context to express their melees right?

Unknown Speaker 1:12:21 Gnosis or right, right possession,

Doug Misicko 1:12:25 right? Or is it the trauma model? Right? Did they experience a series of traumas in their youth that were repressed and therefore cause them to have di D, I look at things from the sociocognitive model, you know, the istd supports the supports the trauma model, and brain scans do absolutely nothing to tell us the origins of this condition. And I do think, you know, that a lot of the people advocating for the proof of these of these brain scans, they know better, you know, they're just simply being dishonest. And it's a dishonesty that carries over, I think, to that whole fiasco, we saw recently with New York Magazine, where instead of confronting the problematic issues with the recovered memory theory, they instead attack the notion of false memories, without even discussing a bizarre notions that have been manifested through recovered memory therapies regarding satanic ritual abuse or whatever else.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:32 Yeah, it seems like a common tactic is also to reduce it to Why would this patient be lying? Right? Why would this patient adopt a narrative that's actually very hard to live through? And I always think, well, people decide they have cancer when they don't people decide all sorts of things that are painful to live through, but they just seem to make sense to them. We don't only pick our truths based on whether they're nice.

Doug Misicko 1:13:56 Well, it's so ludicrously dishonest. So they then put it on the client, like we're accusing the client of lying. Well, it's as though we're just attacking the client where, you know, in my mind, the client is being abused by the therapy, if you're if you're convincing somebody who comes into your office, that they have a whole history of abuse that they've never suffered in, oftentimes, this abuse, these narratives of abuse are attached to their friends and family. It was tragic when I went to some of these conferences to hear people talking about how they thought they had a loving family. And then they learned in the course of therapy that they were intergenerational Satanists who had abused them all along, and now you're seeing them in these cult like support groups, and they've cut themselves off from the family network that probably actually really did love and care for them. Like I said, there's nothing benign about this at all and to say that our approach to this is an assault upon the people being abused by the by the therapy is an outrage.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:01 Yeah, I mean, I agree that it's abusive, but it does bring to mind another question, which is, can't abuse sometimes itself be unintentional. And I'm wondering if some of these recovered memory therapists probably think that what they're doing is true, right? They probably think this is real and that they're helping these people. It's sort of it becomes sort of a stack of, you know, it's like, I don't know who to blame it, just the blame trail goes back into infinity probably back to Freud. And where where does the buck stop?

Doug Misicko 1:15:36 It's hard to say some of some of the prominent characters I see in the ISS TD, I feel are irredeemably dishonest. And I've grown to really love them, I have to admit, because when I see somebody like Michael Salter, who was also head of the ritual abuse, Mind Control, special interest group, intentionally covering up his beliefs, you know, not openly speaking about his beliefs and satanic ritual abuse. And in fact, you know, gray faction was in receipt of a bunch of kind of internal discussions from the ISS TD, where they've decided now to rename the ritual abuse, Mind Control special interest group to kind of conceal their conspiracist beliefs from review boards for fear of gray faction, which I'm proud to say, because I have

Unknown Speaker 1:16:34 openly said it's because of you by name. Yeah, yeah,

Doug Misicko 1:16:38 yeah, no, I'm proud of that. But it was because, you know, we've been reaching out to the boards that approve continuing education units, and the one that had approved them for continuing education units, ask them to stop doing mind control lectures, but outrageously enough, they just told their membership and their speakers that they needed to keep mind control out of the titles of the lectures, but they could still talk about whatever they want. And when I see that kind of dishonesty, I get really angry. But then you have guys like, Neil brick, and the istd, who's a therapist in Massachusetts. And he seems like he's legitimately deranged. This guy talks about how he recovered memories of being this Illuminati super soldier. And he and Ellen lachter are really upset by the notion that the istd would change the name of the ritual abuse, Mind Control, special interest group, because they feel like this is a real issue and that people need to be made aware of this conspiracy. And I feel like I disagree with everything they're saying. But at least they seem to believe in it. Right. At least they seem to think it's defensible, at least they seem to think that they have the evidence for this and that it should be put out there. I really hate the guys who are like, alright, let's let's keep quiet about this, but still do what we're doing. Because that feels a lot more to me. Like it's just a failure to admit they're wrong when they know they are and keep their career kind of going forward, regardless of who it hurts.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:15 So, to other people we've recently reported on our people, I think you're pretty familiar with Bob Larson and Jerry Moon Godsey. Have you run into them? I know you've run into them with gray factions work? What What comes to your mind when you hear those two names?

Doug Misicko 1:18:30 Well, possession and possession I think is not far off from the question of dissociative identity disorder. And you will see people you know, in the ISS, TD camp, there's a guy, Randy little knob novelette out of Texas, who was directly quoted saying that dissociative identity disorder is just kind of the Western culture name for possession states. And I think that's more accurate than they would care to admit. And in fact, the rise in popularity of the idea of multiple personality disorders, just what you know, dissociative identity disorder used to be called in the course of Satanic Panic, they renamed it to kind of kind of try to remove it from that, that moral panic that kind of served to discredit it for some time. It's kind of dangerous for them, I think, to draw that association, because, you know, people who claim to be possessed or feel that they're possessed aren't aren't willing necessarily to say that they suffered a series of abuses in their childhood that they had forgotten, right. And possession is one of those things also where I don't think people who feel that they are possessed are lying about it either. You know, it's also something in the socio cognitive model where they have a framework a pre existing one, it's there's a good deal of role enactment, you know, on the unconscious level, not to say acting, not to say pretending but It's certainly a way in which people can express their melees based upon a certain map set forward for them by the culture that they're in. Right. And I think understanding possession can help you understand better the notion of dissociative identity disorder. And I think there's more similarities between guys like Bob Larson people in the istd than they would realize. And I think that kind of gray area and overlap would be mu Ghazi. Is that how your Z? Yeah, we've got C Yeah. Because when Godsey I think was actually part of the ISS, TD, you know, dealing with both D from them. Right, right. But he works. But he works on both D ID and possession in some, some of them view these as distinct from one another, and others view them is just kind of one in the same and overlapping.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:52 For any, for any of our listeners who may not remember the name Jerry mun Godsey that was the therapist that we talked about who had us color in our brains as paper diagrams with crayons. And then he diagnosed US based on the colors that we chose to fill in the maps of our brains.

Doug Misicko 1:21:10 Now when he asked you do this, were you just in your own environment with your own Kranz or

Unknown Speaker 1:21:18 he brought us boxes of crayons? And

Doug Misicko 1:21:22 I would have been curious as if the crowns were ordered in any color scheme in the box. I think that would okay. It was

Unknown Speaker 1:21:28 a big. Yeah, they weren't. There was

Unknown Speaker 1:21:32 no box, certainly more colors were available. You know, like when I would go searching for a particular color. Sometimes I had to sift through a little bit but there were a lot of Kranz

Doug Misicko 1:21:40 okay, I would think that possibly even the color of the room and other factors would might have some kind of effect on what color you choose for coloring the brain. And I highly doubt he's explored any of those things.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:54 Oh, my goodness, it's so uncontrolled pollution in every way. He's even said in interviews, he's just admitted that green is the possession color. And Brown is the lesbian color. It's just like, yeah, anyone could just have listened to one of your interviews, and then come into your office and use that color. And you'd say, ah, clearly a lesbo. Or

Unknown Speaker 1:22:13 what I had, I had a lot of pink in some

Unknown Speaker 1:22:17 brain that one. He thought

Unknown Speaker 1:22:19 that I was gay because it's pretty clear. I had put a lot of rainbow light colors and pink in my brain. Oh, and I filled out the shape of a phallus. That's right. That's important. I shouldn't leave that out. Have you had any personal interaction with Bob has? Has he tried to confront you? Or is he made commentary about you?

Doug Misicko 1:22:39 He has made commentary about us. I don't even quite remember what that commentary was. And I don't know to what degree I acknowledged it. Because, you know, in the Satanic Temple, there's differing feelings about what's funny and what isn't when it comes to Satanic Panic material. And some people have a read about her affection fine line. Yeah. There's a lot of people who have a lot more affection for Bob Larson than I ever could. I do not think he was benign. I do not think he's funny. I do not have any sympathy for him. I do like that man.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:18 Do you think he's sincere?

Doug Misicko 1:23:19 I think he's, I think that's always a difficult question for any of these guys, because I referred earlier to the former FBI man who dug up the tunnels at McMartin. And his name was Ted Gunderson. And I think, some kind of biography of him needs to be done. I talked about writing one with a friend journalist of mine, Lenny Flatley. Maybe we'll get to that sometime, because I requested his FBI file after he died. And there's quite a story there, you know, oh, cool. Yeah, he actually was was high ranking. Before he died. I wasn't sure. I thought, Okay, this guy was probably mopping the floors and, you know, in DC, and it made a big conflated into something it wasn't but no, he had direct correspondence from Hoover all the way up to like Webster, I think, was a special agent in charge. And it really made you wonder about the legitimacy of a lot of his investigations, you know, especially he had, he was very much part of the Red Scare, you know, and he had

Unknown Speaker 1:24:22 checks. Oh, interesting to contemplate maybe a continuity between that.

Doug Misicko 1:24:26 Yeah, it didn't seem like there was a turning point where he went insane. Like he was insane as soon as he left the FBI and migrated over to private investigation was finding Satanists everywhere. And he was finding communists everywhere during his time in the FBI and was part of, you know, investigating Martin Luther King and stuff like that. So I feel like there's a real, a real story that kind of cuts to the heart of conspiracist, American culture to be told with

Unknown Speaker 1:24:54 it's amazing how the cause celeb of one person can become a national obsession. Yeah,

Doug Misicko 1:24:59 but But before this digression gets to a point where people are like, What the hell does that have to do with anything he said, it was, before Ted Gunderson died, I had felt he was a real con man like that, oh, he would, that his whole thing was just going around doing lectures talking about Satanists getting paid for it. And he would always have these ladies around him who were supposed to be mind controlled, and there's kind of tails that he was trying to get sex from them or whatever, it's okay. And it seemed like he was running his own weird, kind of like coffee environment type thing. And I called him, you know, I spoke to him a couple times before he died and 2012 or something like that. So I had some discussions with him. And in the course of actually talking with him, you know, he'd say, these ludicrous things. And looking into his past at the time, I got his FBI file. And he had also done some things that were very counterproductive, I think, to his ends if he didn't actually believe in them. But at the same time, he was saying and doing things that he knew weren't true, also. And it was like kind of through Ted Gunderson that I kind of gave up, in some cases on trying to parse out whether they're a con man, or whether they're absolutely delusional, because I think it's not always clear, I think there's an interplay, you know, between just deception and self deception, you know, and that people can really invest themselves in a deceptive narrative to the point where they engage in enough thought avoidance and cognitive dissonance and justification that they become a believer, you know, and they're willing to lie. A lot of times, I think, to support a greater truth. And I would see that also with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, I went to support groups for people who claim to have been abducted by aliens just to talk to them and understand where they're coming from. And it was interesting to me to talk to some people, and they would start describing standard sleep paralysis, you know, and I wouldn't push back to hard, but I would tell them, you know, I'd say like, well, you know, if you talk to a skeptic, they would tell you, and then I would start telling them right now, right, right. Not necessarily, right. But I would start, I would start telling them these things. And it was interesting to me to feel like, they were giving me a true account of their experience at first. But when there was pushback, they were clearly willing to lie. To to avoid having to confront that cognitive dissonance, and then I would start hearing stories about the better evidence, you know, like this, one guy started telling me after he described sleep paralysis, and I started explaining this to him. He then said, Well, you know, they left behind this kind of glowing slime on the surfaces. And like, I can't speak about it, because some secret group of scientists or whatever, are still investigating this and like, you know, spoke about it. Yeah, that kind of thing. It's, uh, you know, and then I was thinking like, Okay, well, that's kind of full of shit, isn't it? And why wouldn't you lead with that one rather than?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:10 Question? Yeah. Drop some huge thing at the end there. Yeah. So okay, so you've talked to a bunch of people who have gone through recovered memory therapy or went to a therapist to diagnose them with Cid, and now believes that they don't have it? Is it your impression that most of those people did come to believe they had some other diagnosis that better explain their experience? Or did they come into these therapeutic settings with sort of banal complaints and came out with much more severe complaints?

Doug Misicko 1:28:43 Well, distressingly enough to me, the retractors, who are willing to talk to me and that I've talked to, most of them went in with benign problems to begin with, you know, I spoke to one who went to call in Ross, who's a real over the top quack and should be in prison. I think he's got a body count behind him. But he's also a past president of the ISS TD. They still take him seriously. He's always there annually. And I was speaking to battery trackers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She had originally gone to him because she was trying to extend her medical leave from work because she was working, had a child and was going to school at the same time. And she was under a lot of stress. And she had something completely unrelated to some kind of psychiatric issue. But she unfortunately got caught up with Ross, who diagnosed her with multiple personalities ended up grossly over medicating her she became an inpatient really damaged her family relationships and her overall life. And that's kind of common, I think, for the retractor stories I hear and the reason that's really disturbing to me I think that people with more serious issues like say, rapid cycling, bipolar disorder, and being taught that this is a byproduct of having been abused sexually as children, in ways they never knew about, but only know about now is horrific to me, because it indicates to me that, you know, I assume that's happening quite a bit. But these people just might be less likely to ever be retractors, or to ever see the air and the therapy that they had suffered. And I think that's, you know, just goes back to can't express enough how outrageous it is that this still goes on, in that it's still sanctioned by

Unknown Speaker 1:30:44 and then you're also nation. Yeah. And then you're also never getting to the root of whatever the real complaint was, because I have talked to people who were diagnosed with Cid later came to fines, finds a hope and therapeutic help in a borderline diagnosis, which is at least you know, a more scientific diagnosis. And so when they were presenting as alters, they were flooding they were they were having these enormous emotional reactions that were completely intolerable. And when handed this narrative, Will, you're becoming this other person, that was, in the moment, a helpful way to avoid that pain, and become someone else, but it's still, in their minds was still an avoidance technique. And as we know, from all of behavioral science, avoidance deepens your problems, and to add new problems to deal with instead of ever getting to the root. And yeah, so So do you think have you talked to anyone, like I've talked to anyone who had borderline or bipolar and now they're like, Ah, now I understand where this was really coming from?

Doug Misicko 1:31:55 I don't think so. And that's, it's that that's why I say it's really distressing, because I feel like the people who are more likely to realize that this was bullshit, or people who, you know, went in for these benign problems, and are probably more likely to recall that their problems were benign, when they went in, you know, once they get off the medication or whatever. Think of how convincing it can be if you have extreme fluctuating emotional states, when you have a therapist asking you to name those specific states. And then, you know, every time you you revisit that, it's going to reaffirm that for you, right? But think of the notion for a moment that you have repressed memories of abuse that are sequestered to a certain part of your mind, that fracture often to different personalities. That's one thing. But why would those different states even if they might just manifest themselves intermittently, and have different kind of emotional characteristics? Why would they name themselves something different from what the outside environment is referring to them? It's as though this these names are supposed to have some intrinsic meaning, right? Like, if I'm to pop into consciousness, all of a sudden, in everybody's calling me, Lucian. Why would I say no, I'm Bill, you know, clearly this is being made up in the therapeutic environment in the therapeutic setting. And this is yet just another one of those basic things that you don't see covered in the literature, from the perspective of those who advocate for the trauma model of dissociative identity disorder, along with like I said, no real follow up on these personalities, especially, you know, somebody has hundreds of them, whether they, whether they're maintained or whatever else, there's just such a lack of any real thoughtful research that would validate any of this. And now like I've said, of course, they're just they feel that if they just assault the idea of false memories enough in claim that it's part of an agenda to deny that abuse happens, then they're in the clear,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:06 so what can people do to change all those people are listening and are like, Oh, my God, this is a huge problem. I had no idea about is there anything they can do to support gray factions work?

Doug Misicko 1:34:16 Yeah, just check out great Gray faction.org. And as mentioned earlier, it's gray with an E and gray faction.org Kind of keeps people up to date on whether we're doing letter writing campaigns or petitions or, or whatever, and just becoming aware of the issues more and more to

Unknown Speaker 1:34:36 raise that awareness. Yeah, no, in this in this case,

Doug Misicko 1:34:39 that's, that is really a thing because everybody knows the narrative of repressed memories, right? And that's also what makes it so ludicrous. This idea that, you know, there's no leading in the sessions when people ask always, do you think there's anything in your past that may have contributed to this and it's like, We know where that's going. Right. So you can't say that any of this isn't leading to begin with. But previously, when the false memory syndrome foundation still existed, and before the Satanic Temple existed, there was a real reticence to confront, you know, the bizarre narratives of satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction, even on our side of the argument, the skeptical side, because they like to confront the scientific claims, and leave the crazy shit out of it, you know. And, you know, I'd never went for that, because I feel like, lay people can better understand that these claims of satanic ritual abuse, alien abduction, they're insane. And they're, they can they know, without being, you know, PhDs that if some fundamental theory of your therapy is leading you to these beliefs, there's something wrong with your theory, right? So we do everything to kind of explain that and show people like, Okay, if you're getting from A to B, to say that there's a satanic conspiracy, in the same way you're getting from A to B to say that this person has di, D, there's something wrong there, you know, and you need to look at what's going on. You know, there was, you know, in the false memory syndrome, absurdity. Yeah. The false memory syndrome foundation tactic was always, like I said, to do the journal articles and everything, but at this point that science is settled. Like I said, it's a cultural battle. Now, it's just a battle of getting people to realize what organizations like the ISS TD are about, to get people upset about that into demand that these licensing boards and other oversight agencies recognize this and stop it from happening.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:50 Okay, I have a few questions for you illusion that I've never gotten to ask you. Oh, but Ross, did you have anything else about great faction you want to ask? No, no, I'll let you go. Okay, cool. Solution. Okay. Real quick things I've never gotten to ask you. What safeguards have you put into TST to make sure you don't go off the rails and become a cult leader? Big sweat. He's drinking coffee. Oh, yeah, he's taking his donkeys.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:16 For toffee. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 1:37:19 fuck up. So So Dario, idea, that would be the thing in this conversation that would get such a rise out of you. Okay.

Doug Misicko 1:37:27 So, so safeguards against being a cult? Well, I mean, one of those safeguards is, like I was saying about gray faction, like, we don't a lot, we don't ask anybody to take anything upon authority, you know, it, exclusive to having evidence for it, we don't ask people to sign on to, you know, the positions that gray faction takes or any others for that matter. And we also, you know, never asked people to not affiliate with any other people, right? We don't have that kind of structure in place where it's like, you know, you're not with us anymore, and therefore, nobody can talk to you. We've had people leave the Satanic Temple and outrage and still continue on with friendships with other people in the Satanic Temple, you know, is acrimonious, is the relationships with other people might be or anything like that. And just, you know, I think every bit of our philosophy runs against that kind of insular cult like thinking, you know, we're very much about free inquiry and exploration. And, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:38:36 it's kind of written into your seven. Yeah,

Doug Misicko 1:38:39 exactly. It's, it's in the code. Right.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:42 I'm curious, did you I assume you at least co wrote those tenets? Are those your creation?

Doug Misicko 1:38:48 Yeah, Malcolm and I co authored those tenants, correct?

Unknown Speaker 1:38:51 Calm, which can be found at the Satanic Temple calm.

Doug Misicko 1:38:54 Right. And, you know, there's kind of a, there's been criticisms about our tenants about how they're kind of like, to humanistic and to to unobjectionable, and it not obscure, and, and unique enough to be considered, you know, satanic. But if we're to follow a philosophy, I think of free inquiry and using science as an arbiter of truth claims to find the best way to order our ethics and and conceive of the common good. There's going to come to be a convergence point, right, where there's going to be, hopefully some kind of general consensus about what those ethics are, and we shouldn't shy away from that. And that's another way I think, in which, you know, the Satanic Temple can't become a cult is that we do demand evidence for any of the things we put forward and, and put forward as our ethics and, you know, written into our tenants is a tenant that pretty much states that the tenants are open revision based upon based upon evidence,

Unknown Speaker 1:40:03 and can someone overrule you?

Doug Misicko 1:40:07 In in what way like, I'm like,

Unknown Speaker 1:40:12 that's just knowing that the human brain is so fallible and I don't expect this to happen. But what if you wake up one morning and you're like, No, actually, I take it back. I am God. Is there anybody who can say, oh sudo Aleutians out to lunch? He's, he's sidelined now?

Doug Misicko 1:40:30 Well, I think ultimately, we would like to have some kind of board structure that would do that in right now, we have a similar kind of board structure, but more, but if you look at the legal construct of the Satanic Temple, it's kind of an honor system, because at the end of it, you know, Malcolm, and I own it. So we have ultimate veto power over anything. But we also don't claim voting rights when we have a council that votes upon things that chapters can or can't do, and things like that.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:06 Now's your chance to declare yourself God.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:10 Right. So

Unknown Speaker 1:41:12 on our podcast,

Doug Misicko 1:41:16 no. So So I guess that's the answer, you know, like, ostensibly on paper, you know, we're owners, but we run it on the, you know, on this board structure, but we have to account for the fact that we're going to pass on right, and we don't want to pass on auto credit. Oh, yeah. I'm surprised I haven't yet.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:40 How many chapters do you have? How does one find their local Satanic Temple?

Doug Misicko 1:41:44 Oh, go to the satanic temple.com. And there's a there's a part on the drop down menu that shows you where all the active chapters are now. And I don't even know what that number is right, though. No, come worldwide. We have a good number of of chapters. And currently we have a bunch of interest out of Spain because Spain apparently just got the hail satan documentary.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:07 Ooh, there's one in Santa Cruz, California. That's my hometown. Hey, there's a lot of little blue dots on the map. Oh, and one in the United Kingdom. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:15 I mean, Satan's right in the name Satan. groose. Has anyone

Unknown Speaker 1:42:18 ever tried to exercise you as Bob Larson got ahold of you? Because if not, if you ever need one, we're trained in his methods.

Doug Misicko 1:42:26 Not nobody's come up to me personally and tried to lay hands on me or, or anything like that. And that wouldn't go well. But

Unknown Speaker 1:42:38 we've done a lot of bodies unviewable. Yeah.

Doug Misicko 1:42:41 Yeah. But we've done a lot of events where Catholic protesters have shown up and have thrown holy water and cast spells and things like that literally cast aspersions on you cast spells, or, or whatever you want. I mean, what else is it when they do that? Amazing.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:58 Okay, I have two more questions. One, what is the least accurate thing on your Wikipedia page?

Doug Misicko 1:43:03 No, I haven't looked. I don't get me started on that. I'm not going to start looking at that. That's it. That's just a you know, a downward spiral and the frustration and outrage looked at that. Fair enough.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:17 Yeah. Okay. And what's your favorite color? You can't say black?

Doug Misicko 1:43:21 I'm gonna have to go with something. Something really gay to color my brain in with I think. I think some of the deep lavenders I think are my favorite. Oh, that's nice.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:31 Yeah, yeah. That's lovely.

Doug Misicko 1:43:36 What where does that fall though? If I would color my brain in color.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:40 Great question. And thank you for allowing me to do this visual. I think we'll have to turn to Jerry Moon God sees new coloring book. I got

Unknown Speaker 1:43:52 a pewter coloring book. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:55 Ross doesn't even know about this. Gentleman. Godsey has released a coloring book. It's pretty strange. Family you can color in and it will mean something about you.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:07 Specially lavender. The deep lavender.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:11 Yeah. Oh yeah. Here's one where the colors are described but not colored in and then you color them. Oh, it's

Unknown Speaker 1:44:19 like your test duck. That makes me just want to color the green one pink and the yellow ones.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:26 Oh, and did you know this Lucian jurymen Godsey is colorblind.

Doug Misicko 1:44:32 Oh, yeah, I think it was you who told me that? Okay. I remember that. It gives me a fresh laugh. Maybe that makes him feel impervious somehow.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:45 Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, maybe there's a there's an motive there

Unknown Speaker 1:44:50 single blinding. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:56 Oh, well. Thank you so much, Leisha, for giving us your time, so generously. And thank you for the work you've done and the amazing amount of information that you have coalesced into your brain you it feels like we could talk to you about this all day and not get to the bottom of it. So thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:11 Well, anytime

Unknown Speaker 1:45:13 and we could have used all this time just to talk about kind of the activism aspect, the 10 commandments, all kinds of things bafflement, I wanted to drill into that some more. So, yeah, thanks for thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

Doug Misicko 1:45:26 Well, I'm happy to be back anytime. So with that again, Sunday. Thanks a lot.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:31 That sounds great. And for anybody again, who wants to support your work? How best should they do that?

Doug Misicko 1:45:37 Oh, you can find me on Twitter at Lucian grieves. But I have a Patreon account. I think you best just look at the link to that in my bio, because I think my materials considered like 18 and over and impossible to find on your own. If you're searching Patreon, so check it out.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:54 Yeah, Lucia has a great podcast. Genuinely, I'm not saying x is here in front of me. It's really good. Excellent. Thanks again. Thank you. Well, Whoa,

Unknown Speaker 1:46:04 that was fun. He blew my mind a few times. Yeah. Very smart, man. Yeah, it was nice to finally meet him. Yeah. After hearing so much about Lucien. And that's it for our show. Yeah, our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton, our administrative managers in Kramer

Unknown Speaker 1:46:19 You can support this and all our episodes by going to maximum fund.org forward slash join j o i n.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:26 You can also support us by telling a friend by leaving a positive review. All of that really helps us lets people know that we're legit spreads the word. We appreciate that. You can also buy a jumbotron maximum fund.org/jumbotron

Unknown Speaker 1:46:42 You can follow us on social media. If that's your back. We're on Twitter at oh no podcast

Unknown Speaker 1:46:47 and facebook@facebook.com slash on rock. Oh NRAC. The worst company? That's right. Second Facebook

Unknown Speaker 1:46:56 saga. We know like you vote we're dependent on you. We haven't moved our stuff yet. He should. Also we're taking a

Unknown Speaker 1:47:04 week off. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:05 It's birthday season. So

Unknown Speaker 1:47:07 it's evening blotters birthday, July

Unknown Speaker 1:47:10 13. What what?

Unknown Speaker 1:47:12 That's right, which is weird coincidence, Kerry's birthday, less, less momentous.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:17 Oh my gosh, I didn't even think of that.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:19 Yeah, your birthday is coming up.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:20 Whoa, cuz when I hear July 13, I just think evening blotters birthday.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:24 We've also both got Oral Surgery happening. Yes. Karis was planned in advance mind snuck up. But we'll be telling you some fun stories about that soon when we're back,

Unknown Speaker 1:47:36 Ross is finally lost enough wisdom that he's about as dumb as I am.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:41 Now. Everybody will know exactly what happened. If they haven't had their wisdom removed.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:46 Yeah. Whereas I may come

Unknown Speaker 1:47:49 back with a lower voice. Because apparently that happens to some xx individuals who get this surgery.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:56 Interesting. Well, that'll affect our album of Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:01 No. Doctor did actually tell me like, for some, some women say that their voice gets a little less nasal, a little lower. And I was like, not a problem. Okay, I find fewer emails a year. Yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 1:48:16 fine.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:17 What if we end up sounding exactly alike? would be incredible. What if people started saying like, I used to be able to tell Ross and carry a bar.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:27 But now when he says I'm Gary Bobby. I'm like, probably.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:33 I can't tell. Is she doing a bit? I don't know. Um, well, we'll see how we all come out of this.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:39 Hopefully all alive. But yeah, we'll be we'll be gone next week. But we'll see you again the following week.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:44 Yeah. Well, we'll be back in time to celebrate your birthday coming up. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:47 ralien holiday. That's right. So thank you, everybody. Great to have you for another week. Hope you enjoyed this. And happy birthday evening. Yes. Happy Birthday evening. And Happy anniversary to Ian. Yeah, he got married on my birthday. Everybody's just piling on your birthday. No, I welcome it. Okay. Just want to bask in your halo. And remember,

Doug Misicko 1:49:09 and remember, you don't know shit about fuck.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:26 Manners now, definition, rules of etiquette designed not to judge others, but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:35 Hello, internet. I'm your husband host Travis McElroy,

Unknown Speaker 1:49:38 and I'm your wife host Teresa McElroy.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:40 Every week on swimmers we take a look at a topic that has to do with society or manners. We talk about the history of it. We take a look at how it applies to everyday life. And we take some of your questions. And sometimes we do a biography about a really cool person that had an impact on how we view etiquette. So join us every Friday and listen to manners on maximum fun.org or wherever podcasts are found

Unknown Speaker 1:50:04 manners manners get it maximum fun.org comedy and culture artists owned audience supported