4th Quarter 2015
Episode 712, 713, 714, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719

Note: The first episode shown during the Fourth Quarter 2015 was the actual broadcast of episode #711 on September 21, 2015 (originally scheduled for September 14, 2015).

Episode #712: Side Stepping
First Broadcast: 9/28/15
Repeated: 12/7/15
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump doesn't contradict a supporter's bigoted remarks about Muslims and President Obama. Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson says Muslims aren't fit to hold the office of President, and he wouldn't want a Muslim to be President. Perhaps the Republican voters don't mind a candidate who shares their ignorant views, but for the rest of us: Maybe we could use a much saner candidate for President? (No surprise there, I think.)

Episode #713: Poly-Sauced
First Broadcast: 10/12/15
It's now October, so as @midnight once said, "chill out on all the pumpkin shit." We debate the differences between pumpkin and pumpkin spice, then extoll the virtues of various barbecue sauces before we move on to our main topic: The asinine proposition by Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson that, when confronted with a shooter wielding an automatic weapon, people should "rush" the shooter, on the grounds that "he can't get us all." This is a stupid idea for many reasons, but perhaps the most obvious one is that you can't outrun a bullet. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that someone who endorses beliefs of extreme scientific illiteracy would also endorse a crackpot idea like that, or the idea that the answer to mass shootings is more guns, not less. I'm continually surprised that someone like that is considered a serious candidate for President, though. I guess it's just further proof of how batshit crazy the Republicans have become lately. What else is new?

Episode #714: Clear This Air
First Broadcast: 10/19/15
Climate change is real. Global warming is causing the sea levels to rise. No less an authority than the U.S. Navy considers climate change to be "a threat to our national security." Why, then, do none of the Republican Presidential candidates agree with these facts? Why is China making more progress in transitioning to more renewable sources of energy than the United States? Is the current sex imbalance in China worse than the imbalance that existed in the Soviet Union after the end of World War II? What happens when you get too many men in one place? Too many questions! I'm sure there are some answers around here somewhere...

Episode #715: Tesseract
First Broadcast: 10/26/15
The Mets have made it into the World Series! What is the fourth dimension? Can space really be warped to shorten a journey? Is time travel still impossible? What do we think of Back To The Future II now that it's all in the past? Can I stumble through explaining quantum particles any worse than I already did? Tune in and find out!

Episode #716: Nobody Really Likes It
First Broadcast: 11/9/15
After briefly discussing the utter collapse of the Mets in Game 5 of the World Series, we discuss the unseasonably warm weather, the ridiculous whining complaints by several Republican Presidential candidates about their debate questions being too hard, the fact that fantasy football is not an inconsequential industry in this country, and how absolutely no Republicans anywhere complained when George W. Bush was fed one of the most softball questions of his Presidency on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq: "How is your faith guiding you?" And has President Obama asked anyone in Congress for permission to put American troops in Syria to fight ISIL? I always seem to have more questions than I can answer, I think...

Episode #717: Parry Back and Forth
First Broadcast: 11/16/15
Repeated: 2/1/16
Watching the Republican Presidential candidates debate on November 10th was yet another exercise in masochism for someone like me who values actual facts in discourse. For example, Ben Carson was wrong when he said "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Marco Rubio was wrong when he said "Welders make more money than philosophers." Ted Cruz was wrong when he said "The Obama economy is a disaster." Donald Trump was wrong when he implied that the U.S. military was not "bigger, better, stronger" than any other country's. I could go on, but why dwell on how none of these people know what they're talking about? Surely, I'll have plenty more opportunities to do that in the next year or so...

Episode #718: Give Them A Whole Ghost Town
First Attempted Broadcast: 11/23/15
First Actual Broadcast: 11/30/15
After a lifetime of sleeping late, Descartes was suddenly forced to start waking up early, and he died a few months later. A few hundred years later, on November 13, 2015, some dickheads murdered over 100 people in Paris, causing all the Republican Presidential candidates and the governors of most of the 50 states to completely freak out over Syrian refugees who want to enter the United States to escape the violence from the Assad government, Daesh, and the Syrian Civil War in general. Despite the fact that all the Republicans running for President claim to be Christians, they all seem to have completely disregarded all of Matthew 25, specifically Matthew 25:45:

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Maybe it's too much to hope for more tolerance to break out at this point, but there's no harm in trying.

Episode #719: The Bitter End
First Broadcast: 12/14/15
We start by commemorating this very episode, the last episode that will be submitted on videotape to Manhattan Neighborhood Network. From this point on, all programs will be submitted to MNN as digital files, effectively ending an era that began with the start of our program itself back in 1994, when we were submitting episodes on Umatic cassette until 2001, when we swtiched to the Mini-DV format. From there, we veer off into the madness that is the Republican Presidential campaign: specifically, the anti-Muslim remarks by Donald Trump that have made him popular among Republicans and White Supremacists alike; facts that certainly aren't hindered by Trump's ambivalence to his being compared with Hitler (or you-know-who). Will Trump continue to spew untruths and propaganda against Muslims, Black people, and others, happily dragging the GOP down to certain defeat in November? Or will everyone come to their senses and stop making my head hurt? Don't ask me, I just work here.

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