S6 E1: 100 Seconds to Midnight: 2nd Podversary: The Great Dilemma

0:00 I really do a number on my skin. Labs are horrible environments. They can be dry or overly humid, hot or really cold. And if you're working in a biolab, you take a shower every day, and sometimes if you're moving in and out of those labs, you're taking two or three showers a day. Then there are the things that we all do. We all expose ourselves to weather toxins in the air, and of course we age. We can't avoid it, but there's something we can all do about it. I've started using the anti line from a company called Codex. Your skin is the barrier between you and the outside world, and if it's not healthy, you can find yourself with problems like psoriasis, chopping, and the dreaded zits.

0:51 Codex helps replace the nutrients that we all lose in our everyday exposure. By combining Chilean Matupi tribal knowledge and modern biot technology, Codex has created a line of skincare products that have restored my skin tone and have reduced some of the fine lines on my face and the dark circles under my eyes. These products aren't heavy or greasy either. They feel natural, so I don't mind adding them into my skincare routine. Codex is offering twenty percent off any of their products for those who visit www. Codex labscorp dot com and use promo code cause of Death twenty at checkout. Go to the website and look at the research they've done. It's amazing. They'll make it really easy to find products that match your skin type. I love the anti line. Not only have I noticed changes in my own skin, but others have two. Go visit wwwcodexlabscorp dot com and check out their products, then use promo code cause of Death twenty at checkout for twenty percent off your order. A good skincare roteam cannot only help keep that barrier healthy, but it can also boost your confidence. Go to Codex and experience the difference that great skincare can make.

2:15 If you like weird and strange history, then I have the podcast for you. My name is Brenda and I'm the host of Horrifying History. Are you Into the Dark Side of History? Horrifying History tells you about the side of history that people don't normally talk about. We talk about the tales of haunted places, infamous true crimes, cursed items, and unsolved mysteries, and then we look into the science and documentation to see where does the truth actually lie. Want to get spooky with us? Get your Horrifying History fixed by subscribing to Horrifying History, which you can find on any major podcast provider which the occult extremist beliefs murder. Tune into Rogue Darkness each Friday and join host Raven as I uncover horrific crimes committed under the misconceptions and misunderstandings of witchcraft and other belief systems. I'll cover a wide range of crimes involving ritualistic killings and extremist beliefs to cult persuasion and supposed possession, anything and everything that borders the line of horrifying. There's always three sides to a story. Side A side B, and then the truth. Let's uncover the truth together and explore the darkness of mankind, one crime at a time, available wherever you get your podcast

3:45 fixed simply by searching Rogue Darkness. I have a real problem with artificial sweeteners. I get headaches, I get lethargic, and I get brain fog if I ingest just a little of the stuff. So when fit aid contacted me about sponsoring Cause of Death one hundred seconds to midnight. That was one of the first things I looked into. I was really surprised to see that their products contain no sucralose, no aspartame, and no ace k. I reluctantly agreed to try fit Aid, thinking that they would probably taste terrible, and again I was pleasantly surprised to find that the flavors are amazing mango, sorbet, peach, mandarin, BlackBerry, pineapple, and my absolute favorite, raspberry hibiscus. The clean caffeine from two hundred milligrams of green Tea extract keep me from getting the post coffee jitters too, and it doesn't bother my stomach like soda does. I recently started working at again and the bcaa's glucosamine electrolytes turmeric, omega threes and vitamins B, C, DCRE and E really help with recovery from an intense pilates session. If you'd like to try fit Aid, I have a deal for you. You can get forty percent off your first order of twenty four cans delivered right to your door, plus free shipping.

5:15 Just go to Www. Drink fita dot com slash cause of Death Again. That's www. Drink fita dot com slash cause of Death for forty percent off your first order of twenty four cans of fit Aid. Dark Cast Network, Come on over to the dark Side. We're really nice people once you get past the true crime and scary science. Hello, and welcome to Cause of Death one hundred seconds to Midnight. I'm your host, Jackie Moranti. In every episode, I struggle with questions. I research topics carefully, and I try to find solutions. This is something that I call the great dilemma.

6:06 The questions, the answers, and the solutions. They don't come easy. I study them from several angles, and sometimes I don't like the results. It's ninety seconds to midnight, and the questions that sometimes have no answers or don't lead to any solutions at all keep me up at night. How do unicorns give birth? This is my second podversary. I've been in your ears and hopefully in your head for two years now, and I thought it important that you know about the things that go into each subject. I talk about whether it be an infectious disease that has the potential to kill millions, if unleashed on the population or a global crisis that looms over us. I'm not creative enough to come up with a title for the way that I think on my own. The Great Dilemma has its background in the Catholic Church. The down and dirty definition is saving an individual member of a community as opposed to saving a whole community, the good of the many as opposed to the good of the few. Now I'm not Catholic. I'm not even particularly religious.

7:23 I like Easter. That is about as close to organized religion as I get. But the idea of the Great Dilemma in Catholicism does reflect the Great dilemma that I have when I explore the questions for each episode. Bear with me while I explain. I do have a point, I promise. The abbreviated version of the Great Dilemma in the Catholic Church began before there was a Catholic Church. Jesus showed love towards his disciples, even though these guys were severely flawed. They fought, they were stubborn, they were boastful, cowardly, and they didn't really accept his goals. He tolerated these boneheads even when they failed him. In his hour of need. Now fast forward a generation, the Church finds a way to kick out the troublemakers. The New Testament talks about excommunication. The offender is confronted by one witness, then several, and finally the church itself runs the mount of town on a rail. Jesus believed that you should forgive someone seventy times seven times before letting them go. The Catholic Church got it down to three strikes and you're out the dilemma, and the church continued throughout the ages. Eventually they began to judge people for capital crimes, even giving the sentence of execution. Murder, counterfeiting, attacks on the crown, betraying the nation, and heresy were the major crimes of the time. Then there came other religions. As other denominations came on board,

8:58 the church fragmented and its seeing that the Catholic Church faced a new challenge. Jesus's prayer at the Last Supper wouldn't ever come to fruition. May they all be one as we are one, John seventeen twenty one. In the case of the Catholic Church, the dilemma was how do they love unconditionally without accepting people who threaten the survival of the church. So what does this have to do with the price of shade? And an apple orchard is running a five case some kind of rap thing. Each subject that I talk about each episode, each thought is something that's very important to me. There are so many subjects, so many episodes, and so many thoughts that I've had to make a list, and that list grows day by day with more questions, more answers, more research, and more episodes. Jesus surrounded himself with people who were considered savory, sex workers, tax collectors, murderers, people who would later be excommunicated from the church for their crimes if they weren't just sentenced to death by the church. The church has also turned away people who are different different cultures, ethnic backgrounds, income statuses, political affiliations, sexual orientations, and religions. Most churches have become homogeneous in the people that they choose to welcome into their church. They want people who are like them. They like

10:33 people who shop at the same stores, make the same amount of money, speak the same language, marry the same kind of people, and live in the same ping houses. Truthfully, most people are like that. Breaking out of their own surroundings. Those comfortable talks about the same things is scary. It forces us to open our minds and realize that, whether we like it or not, other people with different ideas and ways of thinking do exist in our world. And this brings us to the thoughts that I have when I'm making episodes. Our platypus is made of spare parts. What is the plural of platypus? Wait? I know that it's platypuses or platypodes. When I was working on my very first episode on the HIV AIDS pandemic, I had to put myself in the place of a generation of people who lived through that pandemic and saw the destruction firsthand. That was hard. During that pandemic, I was about as far removed from the LGBTQ community as I could be.

11:43 I was a straight kid living on a ranch in rural Colorado. Honestly, I didn't even know what AIDS was. No one told me anything about it. I didn't begin to understand until my uncle died of AIDS and my mother tried to explain it to me. I still didn't understand. Of course, she didn't explain it well because she didn't understand it either. But to me, it didn't matter how my uncle Clarence died. All that mattered was that I loved him. My uncle Clarence was a gay man who lived in California in the eighties. You'd think that would be the best place to be, right, California was fairly accepting of the LGBTQ culture. You would be absolutely wrong. My uncle lived in Huntington Beach, not San Francisco, and he taught grade school. He would have been run out on a rail, never worked in schools again, and probably would have been branded as a pedophile if he had come out. While I was writing that episode, I thought about my uncle Clarence a lot. I didn't begin to understand what he fast until I was much older, and I didn't begin to truly understand how he died until I started working in the labs. When I did the first episode on the HIV AIDS pandemic, I didn't understand anything more than the mechanism of disease.

13:16 I tried to think about it from every angle, every side, but all I saw was the unfairness and the suffering. Let's fast forward to my first podversary. That was my second episode on the HIV AIDS pandemic, I brought in three men who were gay and lived through that pandemic. I mostly just sat by and let them tell their stories, and that conversation was a real eye opener. It answered a lot of those questions that I had asked over and over, and it helped me to know the actual struggles of the people who were there. How do dragons blow out cantles? In some of my earlier episodes, I spoke a little bit about universal healthcare. I know that we need it. Healthcare debt is one of the leading causes of homelessness in the US. People die because they can't afford to see a doctor.

14:16 Hospitals can turn people away if they don't have insurance, and insurance doesn't cover everything. I can't come up with a good solution to this, no matter how many angles I come at it from. I think about federal funding, state funding, taxes an oversight. I think about whether this would be fair for everyone, or if the rich would still buy better healthcare, they may still get better healthcare than the poor. Then my mind goes to preferential healthcare. We saw this during the height of the COVID pandemic, there weren't enough ventilators to go around, so medical professionals had to choose who got one and who would die. Say there was one person in their sixties who never drank, smoked, or used drugs and seemed very healthy otherwise, then say there was a twenty year old who had a history of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and led some kind of high risk lifestyle. Who would get the vent Was it the one with the most money, the one who was older but healthier, or the younger one who has longer to live and be productive in society. When the same thing happens in the future, who should get the ventilator or the liver or even be seen by a doctor? And who should make that decision? Should there be a protocol for that? Tough questions?

15:46 Right? What if it was happening to you or one of the people you loved. If you're driving your canoe down the railroad shocks and the wheels fall off, how many pancakes does it to make a doghouse. Let's take a break to hear from our sponsors, and we'll come back to ask more tough questions. Are you a true crime advocate? Are you passionate about uncovering the truth and bringing justice to victims. Do you love the paranormal and spooky tales, then you don't want to miss the True Crime and Paranormal Podcast Festival in Austin, Texas. It'll be going on from August twenty fifth to the twenty seventh in twenty twenty three. This festival features panel discussions, workshops, live podcasts, all focusing on ethics and advocacy in the true crime sphere. Get your tickets now at www dot Truecrime Podcast Festival dot com and join us in Austin for an unforgettable experience. Don't miss out on the chance to connect with other advocates and take your passion for true crime and paranormal to the next level.

17:03 Use code Consequences at checkout for fifteen percent off the ticket price. That's Truecrime Podcast Festival dot Com with promo Code Consequences at checkout for fifteen percent off the ticket price. Special guests will include Julie Murray, Tera Newell, and Call your Landry to name a few. I'll be there representing another podcast that I'm involved with, True Consequences. Come by and meet Eric Carter, Landein and I. We would love to meet you. I recently started doing a twenty eight day Wapilates workout challenge, and after two years of doing nothing more than running to the door to get my door dash, I was feeling it all over. Then I found fit Aid. Fit aid gives me a little boost anytime I need it and helps with post workout recovery. The blend of vitamins B complex, C, D three and E plus bcaa's turmeric and electrolytes are just what I need, not only to get through today's workout, but to be energized enough to do it again tomorrow. As a bonus, fit aid Energy contains two hundred milligrams of clean caffeine from green tea extract, not the synthetic caffeine derived from urea. There's no aspertame, sucralose, or ace k. It's always naturally sweetened and comes in four great flavors mango, sorbet,

18:37 BlackBerry, pineapple, peach, mandarin, and my absolute favorite, raspberry hibiscus. Visit www drink fita dot com slash cause of Death to get forty percent off plus free shipping on your first order of twenty four cans of fit aid Energy today that's www. Drinkfita dot com, slash cause of Death for forty percent off and free shipping on your first order of fit Aid Energy. Are oranges called oranges because oranges are orange? Or is orange called orange because oranges are orange? One of my favorite episodes is the Global Water Crisis.

19:22 In that episode, I talk about several countries that are running out of water and thus running out of food. I talked about Sudan, Africa, and Mexico, and when I got to the States, I talked about the water crisis on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, and I talked about Flint, Michigan. My daughter got so mad at me that she stopped listening to my show. She said to me, you didn't find a solution. You didn't tell us how to stop it. You always tell us how to stop it. Well, in that case, I couldn't give any solutions. There are no solutions for any of the places I talked about in that episode. It's too late. We can only conserve the water that we have in places where water still exists, and to do that, we all need to be aware and conserve the water that we have. And that's a challenge that was my favorite episode because it demonstrated that there is not always more. At some point we are going to run out of resources. We need to turn things around before like the Navajo Nation or Flint, Michigan, it's too late. If handcuffs are used on ankles, are they still considered handcuffs? I also did an episode on global homelessness. I'm not done with that topic, by the way, that was just the beginning. In that episode, I gave a

20:52 brief introduction to the causes of homelessness. I thought about those causes and I started coming at each one from every angle. How do we stop domestic violence? How do we keep kids from getting kicked out of their homes because they come out as gay. How do we deal with the mental health crisis? How do we deal with drug addiction? Who should bear the economic burden of caring for the homeless? Is it worth it to do anything? What effect does homelessness have on society and what effect does it have on communities. There is a couple in Arizona who own a sandwich shop. They've owned that shop for decades and it's a very popular place to eat, or at least it was about a year ago. One of the largest homeless camps in Arizona formed across the street from their shop. These people are older and this little restaurant was supposed to be their retirement nest egg, but now they can't sell out and get what they put into it. The price of real estate in the area has plummeted because of the homeless camp across the street. No one will even buy the shop because of the trouble that surrounds the camp. People vandalize the shop at night and they fight outside during the day when customers are in the store. They ask people for money or food, and they break windows.

22:19 The owner of the shop told a story about how one of the dumpsters was lit on fire one night and when the fire department came to put it out, they found a baby in the dumpster that couldn't have been more than a week old. The child was dead. So what can and should be done about homelessness? If we house these people, should they be obligated to receive mental and physical care, should they be forced to receive drug treatment, should they get a job, go to school? And who should be responsible for overseeing all of that? How can you tell when it's time to tune your bagpipe. Many states now have legalized marijuana, and now legalization is being voted on federally. But is it really a good thing? And how far should we go? Should we legalize everything in tax it? Would the government make more money that way? Where would these taxes go if we legalized all drugs? What would it mean for crime? Would the cartels just stop doing business or would they focus more on running guns and human trafficking? Should we legalize fentanyl, spice, bathsots, and trank And where would these things be manufactured? Would a reputable pharmaceutical company take this on It's doubtful because they would

23:49 be responsible for overdoses. Every time someone died of an overdose, they would soothe that pharma. And who would to oversee the manufacturing? Currently the marijuana industry is in the hands of the Department of Agriculture. The oversight for other drugs would have to fall with the FDA or the DA. But would they be able to shift gears and create protocol and audit that kind of trade? Would that ever become an honest trade? What would it mean for our already severely inadequate mental healthcare system? Would the murder rate rise or fall? What about car accidents. What kind of economic burden would it create, especially in the healthcare system. And the one thing that I always come back to is the drug trade a victimless crime. I argue that it's not, and legalization would only exacerbate the problems. What happened to Old Zealand. I haven't broached economic disparity yet, but that's one that is on the top of my list right now. In America, people are having to choose to either pay rent or eat. Wages are so disproportionately low that it comes down to that people live without heat, ac or water, and these are basic necessities. So

25:26 what can be done? Do we force people who are better off to pay higher wages? Do we force them to pay higher taxes? Should we? They're not going to do anything voluntarily. They don't even see the suffering of the lower classes. Now, let's widen that circle. Is fair trade really fair? Yes, there are children working on coffee plantations in South America for ten cents a day, But what if those children didn't have those tents ends? Do their families depend on that? If we took those ten cents away, would they try to find another way to make ten cents? Would they go mule drugs for the cartels instead? Would they run guns? Would they become sex workers? Is that ten cents? The difference between whether they eat or not? Roll that around in your head for a little while. Child labor and cheap labor is a problem, and it creates more problems. But would those problems be tenfold if they didn't have those jobs? Do fish get thirsty? This is the first episode of season six. This entire season, I'll be talking about environmental conservation, and mostly I'll be talking about wildlife.

26:53 I've already started cranking out questions. I'm thinking about human encroachment on wild lamp What does that mean for the future of both people and animals? How does it affect ecosystems when there are too many people moving into the country. What happens to the animals? Should they be shot and forgotten, poisoned, trapped and moved? Is humanity dependent on these ecosystems? Do we favor humanity over these wild lands? If one goes down, do they both go down? How do we stop ruining it? And who should be responsible for that?

27:37 There are no easy answers. People moved to the country and the first thing they want is a Walmart. Then they want convenience stores, then industrialization. They want to bring all the amenities of the city into the country. They want all the things that they were trying to get away from in the place that they went to get away from them. But they think we can build up better, we can improve the way things are done. We can have a factory in a rural area and still respect wildlife and the ecosystems. And if we can't, they'll find another place to go. It never works that way. Do hummingbirds hum because they don't know the words? The doomsday clock originated with the threat of nuclear disaster, and we're on the verge of that today. The cold ware never really stopped. It just got quieter, and it seems as if everyone has at least one or two nukes in a silo somewhere. What can be done to stop that? Who can be trusted to police the elimination of nuclear missiles? Does this mean that we should stop building nuclear power plants as well? How do we stop despots from building them and using them? Can the leaders of many countries come together to cease nuclear armament.

29:04 Who will be the first to throw the switch, push the button or shout the command, and will that be done on purpose? Who will be the first to disarm? The Board of Atomic Scientists have been asking these questions for seventy years, and they haven't come up with great answers. If you pamper a cow, do you get spoiled milk? This is how cause of Death one hundred seconds to Midnight was born. I was asking these questions long before I started the podcast. These are important questions, They're necessary questions.

29:47 The answers to these questions could make the difference between life and death of an ecosystem or humanity itself. I'm hoping that this episode spurs some disc on the Facebook page or the Facebook group. I want to hear your questions, your thoughts. Maybe together we can come up with solutions. Maybe we'll all just have more questions. I feel like there are answers and solutions out there, but the problems are so big and we are all so overwhelmed by them. I try to make things personal on this show. I want to make these topics real so you can feel them like they're happening to you right now.

30:34 I want you to put yourself in these stories. I tell feel that history and understand what's going on. I also want you to know that I have no agenda for this podcast. I don't intend to push my ideas or thoughts on you in any way. I just want you to think about the things that I talk about and see where they lead you. I want you to think deeper than the surface and ask those hard questions and look for answers. It's ninety seconds to midnight, and the answers are getting harder and harder to come by. Solutions don't seem imminent, and people don't want to ask the hard questions to change the way that the world is headed. But there is hope because at least one person is asking the questions and that person is encouraging others to do the same. How old do I have to be before I understand what's going on? Please take a look at the show notes for ways that you can support Cause of Death one hundred seconds to midnight. There are links to all the ways you can contact me, support the show, and visit the websites of my sponsors. I do want to stir up some conversation, so visit the Facebook page, the Facebook group, or follow me on Twitter so that you can join the conversation. My dog is going to be taking this season off from the reels that I post. Never Fear Joe the Tortoise has a bunch of friends who will be the faces of Cause of Death

32:05 one hundred seconds to midnight while Sweet Pete is taking a well deserved break. You can always contact me on the website at www dot cause of Death one hundred sex dot net, or you can email me at Jackie at cause of Death one hundred sex dot net. There is a subscription only episode coming out on logical Fallacies. I had intended to have that out much sooner, and I'm sorry that it hasn't come out much sooner. I'll also see you in two weeks when we look at our first wildlife disease, chronic wasting disease in wild ruminants. Until then, come talk to me on Facebook and Twitter.

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