In the nineteenth episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle interview the Babylon Bee's creator, founder, and part-owner, the elusive Adam Ford. Adam is also known for his comics at Adam4D.com, and as the founder of the new news site Disrn.com and the Adam Ford Newsletter. Many readers have claimed the Babylon Bee changed after Adam sold the Babylon Bee. Adam absolutely destroys Kyle and Ethan, reads hate mail, talks about how he came to faith, as well as what he is up to these days. This is Adam's first podcast interview ever, so buckle up and get ready to be part of history. Show outline with links... Story 1 - In Reboot Film, Bibleman Goes Back In Time To Stop Satan From Planting Dinosaur Fossils In The Earth Story 2 - Ellen Outed As Conservative After She Treats Others With Respect Story 3 - Survey Finds More People Would Support Impeachment If They Knew What Crime Trump Was Supposed To Have Committed Adam Ford Interview Hate mail is included in the interview Subscriber exclusive portion - Kyle and Ethan discuss some classic Babylon Bee stories Story 4 - Holy Spirit Unable To Move Through Congregation As Fog Machine Breaks The first article Kyle ever sent to Adam. Story 5 - Police Calm Millennial Protesters By Handing Out Participation Trophies Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
With jokes so biblical, you'll cry ha ha hallelujah.
You're listening to the Babylon Beach with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
I am Kyle Mann, and I'm here with my friend Hollywood.
Hollywood, what are you talking about?
That's what we're calling you now.
Name-dropping Hollywood friends all the time.
Name-dropping.
I'm just talking about reality that I live in.
I don't remember.
Was this something that happened on the podcast?
Oh, yeah, it did.
I think with Kellen Erskine, you name dropped.
Who's a way big name dropper than I am?
He's like, oh, yeah, Robin Lee.
Yeah, me and Jeff Dunham.
He was hanging out with Jeff Dunham's puppets the other day.
And is this how he talks?
And me, and I'm riding around on my bike.
I'm just kidding.
We love him.
That's a good time.
Who else did he name drop?
He name drops so many people because he's comedy.
Yeah.
Well, even to us privately, he's like, oh, yeah, Norm McDonald.
Oh, well, that wasn't private like that.
That wasn't more nasally.
That wasn't privately.
That was on the recorded portion that we lost.
I remember the Norman.
Oh, yeah.
But he also privately.
But also.
Yeah.
And if you guys missed that podcast, I've had a lot of people message me and tell me it was the funniest one so far.
It was very funny.
It's really funny.
It's like three comedians walk into a room.
It helped that we had a professional comedian on the podcast, a guy who's like been doing it for years.
But yeah, it was a funny podcast.
Don't miss the last podcast with Kellen Erskine.
You might be like, who's that guy?
If you don't know about stand-up comics, but he's so funny.
We did have a few people who reprimanded us for having a Latter-day Saint on our podcast.
You ever saw that?
Got a couple responses that email.
They're like sending us all these scriptures.
Oh, really?
I didn't see it.
Yeah.
How dare this person is.
Seth has some customer service people took over the emails.
Yeah.
And so sometimes I don't see it.
I just happen to catch it.
Someone will, you know, someone will read it before I get to it and then I don't see it.
Clearly, because we had a Latter-day Saint on our show, we completely conform and agree with all things.
Yeah.
We have become the Babylon B Latter-day Saint.
I just did my first temple ceremony.
Oh, really?
At the LDS.
At the temple.
The hot tub temple?
I don't know.
What was that?
I don't know.
Oh, that was in the subscriber portion.
Ethan immediately said, we're going to reveal what's going on in the hot tub temple.
And I was like, what?
I don't know.
It was random then.
It was random now.
We could get to why you're calling me Hollywood because I'm kind of proud of myself.
I hung out with Henry Winkler and signing autographs this weekend.
Okay, Hollywood.
There we go.
That's my name drop.
You're allowed to name drop him, though, because you actually illustrated his book.
Yeah, you guys should get it.
Which is a New York Times bestseller.
That's right.
And if it's bestseller for two weeks in a row, then I get a little bit more money and I need it.
So go buy it.
It's called Alien Superstar.
Henry Winkler and his writing partner, Lynn Oliver, wrote it, and I did all the drawings, like 50 drawings in there by me.
And I got to go to Barnes ⁇ Noble and sign books with Henry Winkler and hang out with him.
And my kids came with me.
And they had no idea who this guy was.
My 13-year-old daughter is just like staring at her book the whole time.
I'm like, I'm so bored.
Dude, we're hanging out with Henry Winkler.
So I assume people just walked right past him and went right to you.
And nobody was even talking to him.
Anybody there knew who I was?
Like literally anybody.
I thought there might be one.
Nobody brought X Cop comics to get signed.
There might be some people there who knew about Axe Cop, but they probably didn't make the connection that I was Axe Cop guy.
Because they were probably thinking like, oh, that Axe Cop guy is successful.
He wouldn't be taking these little gigs drawn pictures for kids' books.
But you all got to make money somehow.
But you would.
You ready for some stories of the week?
Let's do it.
Where's my button?
I have a button.
You always ruin these tricks.
I know.
I haven't learned how to do this.
I got to get the hang of this.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
Oh, he Kyle just pointed me because he wants me to do the next story of the week, but I'm not even ready because I was trying to do the last thing.
And the reason I pointed at you is I lost the whole document.
It was the Bible Man story.
I did it too.
It crashed on me.
Bible Man.
Oh, Bible Man.
We did the Bible Man reboot.
So we've been doing these reboot stories.
None of them are true, just like all our other articles.
What?
I thought they were true.
But I've been doing these Photoshops that take way too long compared to the amount of shares they get.
It's a labor of love.
Even though I didn't really grow up watching any of these, but it's still fun reimagining.
So we did Bible Man.
Yeah, it was Cage playing Bible Man.
In reboot film, Bible Man goes back in time to stop Satan from planting dinosaur fossils in the earth.
And my favorite part of this one was Photoshopping Satan riding a pterodactyl.
Yeah, there was a very serious.
I walked into the office yesterday and Ethan was working on this Photoshop and he's talking to our assistant Dan.
And he's like, can you find a guy who maybe looks like Satan and he looks like he's holding a pitchfork up like he's about to throw it?
Maybe he's writing something.
You always try to find the stocking.
I got to put him on a pterodactyl.
So I'm like, I'll search for a pterodactyl.
You search for Satan.
I'll search for a pterodactyl.
This is what we get paid to do.
And he's like, can you find a pitchfork that looks like it's, you know, someone's holding it?
It was kind of amazing.
Yeah, it's great, great dialogue.
But you know what?
What else has great dialogue?
Have you ever actually watched Bible Man?
I never actually have.
I never have.
Let's listen to the intro.
You can talk over this if you want to.
This is the origin.
Miles Peterson, a man who had it all.
Wealth, status, and success.
Still, something was lacking.
Miserable, alone, spirit-beaten.
Bill Spederson gave up.
Then, in his darkest hour, the words of a single book began to change his life.
And at last, Miles Peterson felt the burning desire to know God.
Inspired by the word of God and equipped with unyielding faith, Miles pledged to fight evil in the name of God as Bible Man.
Whoa!
Look at the lasers.
Bible lasers.
This is great.
Especially because I can't see anything.
Yeah, it was pure audio.
Waste belt of truth.
Waste belt of truth.
Is that Judas Priest?
It's like Rob Halford.
Add more lasers.
This is the song for Judge Dredd Powering.
That sound.
I love that.
All the old 90s shows.
It's still quiet.
Yeah.
Choir.
We need more reverb.
No, I love the idea that they're in the studio and the guy's listening to it.
You know, he probably has a bit of a mullet.
And he's like, hey, can you get more lasers on there?
Yeah.
Do we go into like a beat?
He's like, no, just random.
I wanted to sound like the AK-47 laser gun.
Lightning.
More lightning.
Yeah.
I like it.
That's actually a really dark origin story for this kid's hero.
What was his dark?
He just had a...
It's like he had money and fame and power and sex and drugs.
They say sex?
They didn't say it, but it's implied.
Wait, I got to hear this again.
He didn't say sex.
Miles Peterson, a man who had it all.
Wealth, status, success.
Success.
Success.
Something was lacking.
That's it.
That's the most generic words ever.
He had everything, but he was missing something.
But then he found it in a book.
And the book, if you look at in the intro, you can see it's on YouTube.
It's a giant Bible.
Like it's massive.
And the word Holy Bible is written in very like almost like when you see like a very happy comic sans.
Like the way that they write words on Easter.
Like if you buy a package of egg dye for your eggs, the title, the font they would choose, that was like the halt, the holy Bible font.
Sorry, that took a long time to get that out.
You know, it makes a joke work is like extending it well beyond sometimes.
The attention span.
Should we do another one?
Another story?
Let's do it.
Is that enough?
I don't know.
On that one?
That was probably too much.
I feel like we do too much.
No, I feel like we never do enough.
Let's keep talking about biome.
Story number two.
How about you take this one, Kyle?
You got your document now?
Ellen outed as conservative after she treats others with respect.
So we came out.
Yeah, she was hanging out with George.
I can't say his name.
George?
One of the Georges rhymes with smush cush.
But she's in hot water for making these controversial comments.
So you guys judge for yourself.
Here's the thing.
I'm friends with George Bush.
In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share the same beliefs that I have.
We're all different.
And I think that we've forgotten that that's okay, that we're all different.
For instance, I wish people wouldn't wear fur.
I don't like it, but I'm friends with people who wear fur.
And I'm friends with people who are furry, as a matter of fact.
I have friends who should tweeze more.
And I have, but just because I don't agree with someone on everything doesn't mean that I'm not going to be friends with them.
When I say be kind to one another, I don't mean only the people that think the same way that you do.
I mean be kind to everyone.
Doesn't matter.
All right.
So Kenneth is.
Disgusting.
How does she have a TV show with disgusting thoughts like that?
That's horrible.
And she's in polite society.
What kind of country is this where you should add an H to the beginning of her name and then take off the EN at the end?
And just be hell?
L.
We should write a Babylon B article like that.
Oh, that would be clever.
Yeah.
But anyway, this just shows me that there's like a divide right now is different than like what we were talking about in the uh with Peter Bogoshan and James Lindsay.
And I can't remember which episode that was.
How the culture war is shifting.
Culture War 2.0.
It is the people that want to tribalize into this.
Like it's almost like free speech versus anti-free speech.
I don't know how you divide it, but it's different because I mean, I think that we would disagree with Ellen on so much, but that basic thing, we agree on that for sure.
Yeah, like being able to being able to have friends outside of your own point of view.
I mean, it's insane to me that that's controversial at all.
But it's super controversial right now.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird to me.
It's weird and dumb.
Well, and if you follow this controversy at all, it's like, you know, you first see the first I heard about it.
It's like, you know, backlash at Ellen's comments.
I'm like, oh, what'd she say?
Yeah.
And I didn't watch it.
I'm going to go listen to it.
That's the basic thing she said.
Well, yeah, you should be nice to people.
What?
So, yeah.
It's like there's this thing that you can't, we can't progress past stuff if we're all nice or something.
I feel like that's the attitude.
Like, George Bush is a horrible war monger criminal.
And he should be hated by everybody.
Like that's going to progress us into some new, I don't know.
I don't know what the trying to get into the head of a person who's upset by this.
Yeah, like they think that there's going to be these horrible consequences.
To them, it's always normalized.
They need to be shamed out of, I think that's it.
Like they think that those people need to not be accepted.
They think if you're nice to someone, you're normalizing and accepting whatever they believe or whatever.
I guess that's another thing that like when you are, when you live in the church, you live in the Christian life, it's so normal to be friends with and respect people that you don't agree with on very core things.
This is so normal.
And we've talked about this before, but how the left has become such a religion.
Like you feel like this is the kind of thing the left would have or the religious fundamentalists would have said like 50 years ago.
It's like, you can't talk.
You're talking to that person, you know, but they're gay or, you know, but they're, you know, they're, they're not a Christian.
How could you talk to that person?
And now it's like with George W. Bush, nobody on the right is saying, why is, why is George W. Bush talking to Ellen?
It also shows a real lack of confidence in your views.
I think that's a very popular in cults to not allow their members to become actual friends with people outside of their views.
Yeah.
You can't have real friends.
You can you can minister to them, but you can't actually like them and be their friend.
And to me, that shows a real weakness of like, if you really believe your beliefs, you're confident enough in them, then you don't have to be afraid to be friends with somebody and treat them like a human if they don't agree with you.
If you're super insecure about it, then yeah, protect yourself.
Yeah, unless they're not a real human, like George W. Bush.
Oh, yeah.
Just a walking cesspool with legs.
Well, yeah, because you walk and you have legs.
How does a cesspool walk?
It's like knees, legs.
But how do the legs attach to the cesspool?
It might just kind of slough.
What is a cesspool?
I actually don't know.
It's just something people use.
I assume it's a cesspool.
What is cess?
Hold on.
Assistant.
Google Cesspool.
Google Cess.
What's a cesspool?
I assume it's like a septic.
Oh, yeah, it's a cesspit.
It's a bunch of poop.
He tells us it's an underground container for the storage of liquid waste.
So it's like a septic tank, an underground septic tank.
That would be hard to walk if you're underground.
They'd have to rise up.
Yeah, so if it's a container, you could actually, it could actually have legs.
Okay.
Ethan, can you Photoshop a cesspool with legs, please?
Sure.
All right.
Next story.
Survey finds more people would support impeachment if they knew what crime Trump was supposed to have committed.
I know I would.
But crime did.
Well, he talked to Ukraine president, obviously, and he said stuff.
I wasn't ready to talk about this.
I wrote this and I was like, it's just this frustration of like all these people have been screaming about impeachment for years.
Yeah.
You know, and it's like, whatever the latest thing is, you know, it's like, oh, Ukraine, now it's Ukraine.
You know, we're supposed to, it's like they, I used this joke in an article this week, but it's like they use the ML, the MIB flashy thing, you know, the neuralizer, and they hold it up and say, everybody, look at this.
Yeah, yeah.
You just forgot about the Russian collusion controversy.
Now it's time to move on to Ukraine.
You know, screaming, like, I don't, I don't know.
I'm sure he did some seedy stuff, you know.
But you look at all the crazy things other presidents have done.
I'm like, I don't really, I don't know.
They want us to feel like it's like way above and beyond and be really outraged about it.
And I'm just not.
I just can't.
I'm not saying he didn't do anything wrong or whatever.
I'm just saying I don't care.
It's just like the thing on the list of things that we've been told we have to freak out about.
Right.
Because it feels like what they, when somebody tries to explain to you how you should be so upset about Trump, they offer like the first two-thirds of the explanation, or maybe even the first third, and then the last two, like third or two-thirds is them waving their hand at you, like come on, right?
Nodding.
They're like, you get it?
Outrageous.
Now you're mad, right?
Like you fill in the blanks, right?
Fill in the blanks.
I don't got to finish this.
You get it.
Yeah.
But I don't get it.
No, I don't.
Yeah.
It's like you talk to the Ukrainian president and asked them to investigate Joe Biden.
And then they stare at you.
Yeah.
And you're like, they stare at you and nod.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
Okay.
I guess I'm mad about that.
I think they fill all the rest of that in with Trump derangement.
Maybe for me, it's my contrarianism.
You know, it's like if I'm supposed to be mad about something, I'm like, wait a minute.
You're trying to trick me, aren't you?
That is how I am too.
If everybody's outraged about something, I'm like, immediately, my first thing is to go like, well, let's see what the, what's the other side?
Anything, if something seems absurd, I want to, I want to figure it out.
Because obviously, often things aren't just absurd because they're absurd, right?
There's two sides to every story, anyway.
Or three.
This is a or four?
Yeah, many.
How many sides?
Like if it's a cube, there'd be six sides to that story.
I don't, I'm not a cubist.
But do you associate with people who are known cubists?
You can't even have a conversation with a cubist.
Is Cuba good and junior a cubist?
Wow.
Probably smokes cubist cigars.
We should smoke Cuban cigars.
Cubist?
Cuban?
With Dan to celebrate him joining us.
You've been trying.
So this week, we have a special guest.
We get to interview Adam Ford.
I wish I had a good effect to put on your voice for that.
I got nothing.
You got nothing.
But yeah.
Some music.
I could do the Bible Man song again.
I don't know.
With more lasers.
Or we could do my son saying, How dare you?
That's great.
Yeah, Adam Ford founded the Babylon B. We're going to talk to him right now.
Presenting an exclusive Babylon B interview.
Holy cow, we're here.
We are in the studio live with the legend.
A life-size cardboard cutout of Adam Ford sitting on a sock puppet with a little goatee.
Wait, does Adam Ford have a goatee?
He used to have a beard.
Did you shave, Adam?
Yeah, I shaved a while ago, much to my own shame.
I apologize for admitting that, but I've been clean shaving for a while.
Lost all your superpowers.
You shave every day?
Seems like a lot of work.
Every two days.
I'm ahead of the curve.
Ahead of the curve.
You guys will be shaving here pretty soon.
That's what happens when you stop writing satire.
I know.
You start cleaning yourself, taking showers.
Lost all my powers.
I got weak.
I really was no longer a Calvinist.
It was from the funk I was in from the Babylon B getting utterly ruined after I stopped running it.
Yeah, it's really sad how far the site has fallen since the days of Adam Ford.
I know.
That's like Babylon.
It's not even Babylon B anymore.
It's like Babylon D minus.
Like C minus D plus.
He's been holding that one.
I just thought of that.
No.
I didn't realize drinking my cup.
No, you didn't.
Sure.
So, yeah, so you called to berate us.
And because everybody says that this site was so great back when Adam Ford was running things.
No politics.
There's no politics.
Clearly.
Yeah.
Clearly, you hate us.
And now I shave every two days and I wear sackcloth.
And it's terrible.
Do you scrape away your boils with pottery?
No.
No, I leave them there.
No.
Okay.
Suffer.
Yeah.
So, for anybody who doesn't know, Adam Ford founded the Babylon B all those years ago, three years ago, three and a half years ago.
He's the godfather of the Babylon B.
And so, we're going to talk to him and ask him what kind of what's he up to.
Yeah, what's he doing now?
What's this guy?
He's very mysterious.
We're going to get the whole origin story.
Kind of like the Joker movie.
This is like the Adam movie.
And Adam would be played by Joaquin Phoenix.
Joaquin Phoenix.
I've seen very few pictures of Adam.
I've seen the back of his head.
I've seen him on what we're Facebook friends.
I've seen pictures of you.
You look like a nice guy.
Oh, thanks.
You know what's funny is that this is actually Adam paid me to act like I'm Adam Ford and do this interview.
Oh, you're an avatar.
I was wondering how he got you.
Yeah.
Pretty much.
He's got anxiety and stuff.
He doesn't like this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's there.
He's doing like the holding up cue cards for you right now in a dark corner.
Frantically scribbling.
Don't say that.
With his big beard, his big beard hanging down, you know.
Yeah.
Covered in hair.
It's like a prophet.
Prophet of old.
Tissue boxes on his feet.
Yeah.
Looking like Howard Hughes.
Come in with the milk.
Come in with the milk.
He's got the foil blanket, the aluminum foil blanket to protect him from all the.
I love that movie, by the way.
I don't know what movie we're talking about.
The aviator.
Oh, yeah.
It's Howard Hughes.
Yeah.
So you didn't get my come in with the milk reference because that was a good one.
No, I was playing along.
Brutal.
Like, yeah, he drinks milk too.
He's got tissue boxes on his feet.
Ethan shook his head.
He shook his head at me when you said that.
Like, I don't know what he's talking about.
Brutal.
So this is a hard-hitting interview.
Oh, what?
So why the heck did you create the Babylon B, Adam?
Yeah.
Start there.
So that Seth could buy it and you guys could ruin it, basically?
Wow.
Well, thanks.
That's brutal.
I created the Babylon B because it was one of those ideas that just wouldn't let go of me.
So I have lots of ideas.
I'm an idea person.
And I had that one for a really long time.
And eventually I just kind of had to acquiesce and do it.
You know what I mean?
And I think a big part of it was through the Obama years and the Obergefell years, seeing how, like, following the Onion, like, you know, most people did back then, not so much anymore, but,
And seeing how, like, just how effective they were at speaking into the situation and make like they would crack these jokes and just run these just piercing satirical news pieces, and it would make me think like man, that's good, like that, that makes me like want to believe what they believe, or that makes me wish that I was on that side, or whatever, whatever.
And I thought man, we have nothing like that.
Like, we have nothing like that.
And so eventually I just I just did it.
Nice wow um, yeah.
Follow-up question, no, that's it all right.
Well, it's good talking to you.
Yeah, all right, see you guys.
But so how did you and Kyle get connected?
Let's go there.
People kind of know this story.
I mean, Kyle's told many times in this show that he submitted content to you and I want to hear the Adam Forward point of view on this meeting of friends.
Well, it was a god thing, is the short answer, and i've said that a number of times.
It was definitely a god thing.
But the whole Babylon Bee was, you know, and um, with Kyle it was like.
It becomes more apparent how much of a god thing it was.
The more like, the further you get from it when you look back at it.
Because so, when I launched, so I created the Babylon BE I, I literally I registered the domain literally two weeks before we launched, so it was a two-week thing.
I like hardly slept, I drank a bunch of coffee, I built the thing, I recruited a few people and in the little um, the little launch article.
You know like the article, so we populated it with I don't know like 15 or however many articles on launch day.
And then the launch article which, since we never talked about politics, so it definitely did not feature an image of Barack Obama crying uh in that article.
It was like you know, we're accepting uh reader submissions, because I thought well, this will be something that people will think is cool and people will want to like, get on board with and, you know, see if they can do it.
And so lots of people did so.
After I don't know like three or four or five days I don't remember how long it was I had to take the link down and everything because I had, I had there were more emails than I could possibly read, but one of the first ones was from this Kyle Man dude and it was good.
I don't remember what the first one was that he sent me, but it was like oh, great.
And so i'm thinking, oh man, most of these submissions are going to be good.
You know they weren't, but they definitely weren't.
But so, you know, I just emailed him back and I was like oh, this is really good, i'm going to run this.
Uh, you know, send me another one if you'd like.
And he did, and I was like wow, this is really good.
And uh, he just kept sending stuff and I kept running them.
And then I, and then I was like uh, he had like the first, the first like other than the launch, the first actually story that just on its own merit, like went viral was, was the Kyle Man Special and it was like the Holy Spirit Fog Machine one.
Yeah, it was fantastic.
And I was like okay, here we go.
And so Kyle was really instrumental in, in early on, developing the voice of the Bee and making the Bee into what it is, because I created the bee and I launched the Be, but it was more I, I I knew there was, there was a void out there that there was that, that there was a need for something like it, but I I really did think it would be more of like a side project when I launched it, you know.
So I hadn't put a whole ton of thought into it and and all that.
I just tried to.
You know, you just go in there and you just experiment and see what works and see what doesn't.
And Kyle, just like worked right from the go and he, he really was instrumental in developing the whole the bee like as, as everyone knows it now he's tearing up over here.
I really like this is my favorite interview so far.
He has his Adam Ford pajamas that he wears.
Yeah, i'm actually, I actually am wearing an Adam Ford shirt right now.
Are you really which one?
The theology nerd?
I always imagine that Kyle was like like the guy that constantly emails you all the time, like my dude.
Well, he followed me closely back then apparently because like, when we launched, He was the first one, one of the first ones to email in.
And now it's like, now I'm like, oh my gosh.
I'm telling my wife, oh my gosh, Kyle invited me to come do it to a podcast on the Babylon V. Kyle is like this big, this big Christian superstar now.
Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?
I'm so nervous.
Oh my gosh.
How the turntable.
Think about it.
Kyle's working with two of the greatest webcomic artists on the internet today.
Oh my goodness, Chris.
Adam Ford, Adam Ford and Ax Cop.
Wow.
Right here.
He's the sandwich.
Yeah.
It's true.
Yeah.
You know what's funny about Adam is he's like this.
He's a shadowy figure who like changes.
He's got a different voice, though.
He needs to talk like James Earl Jones or something.
I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking he like changes all of Christianity.
But like you just hiding in the shadows and like you haven't built like a platform of like, I am Adam Ford and I am a celebrity and you should all worship me and you go speak at conferences and crap.
No, no.
You know, you're just like, you just like create these properties and send them out there.
Then you're like, bam, I'm out.
And you drop the mic.
Yeah, I've always been very, um, I've always been very the whole idea of being like a known person, an internet celebrity or whatever dumb thing you want to call it.
It's always been very not appealing to me.
And partly because it is appealing to me, you know, like, and Kyle knows this because I've lectured him numerous times.
When I sold the B to Seth and we were in the process of Kyle taking over, I was like, Kyle, you're just going to have to listen to me lecture you right now about the, about the dangers of seeking to be a famous Christian celebrity and blah, blah, blah.
Just because I've seen, you know, we all want that.
Like we want to be, we want to be really liked and we want to be, you know, followed and we want to be have power.
And, but how many times have we seen that be people's downfall?
I mean, now more than ever, you know, that's, it's, it's just something that, you know, I don't really trust myself with all that too much.
Is that?
I mean, is that part of the reason that you, that you sold the B or is it, was it mostly the censorship thing you've talked about?
Yeah, that was a big part of the reason.
Yeah.
And I mean, there was so many reasons.
There was tons of reasons, but that was sort of one of the reasons.
Yeah.
I mean, I've always been just kind of, you know, it's just kind of the idea of everywhere I go, people wanted to talk to me about the B and stuff.
Like I never, I don't know.
That just, it makes me uncomfortable.
I don't know.
It's just partly because I have anxiety and all this junk and it's just kind of weird to me.
It's not, it's not a comfortable situation for me to be in, you know?
So that was a part of it.
Yeah.
So I'm curious, just like your the Adam Ford story.
Like, cause I remember I found one of the few interviews with you on the internet and saw that you had, you'd come to faith later in life.
Yeah.
You aren't a youth group conversion.
No.
Was that the world interview?
I can't remember.
I can't remember what it was.
It was about the Babylon B, but I was just curious about that.
Like, I think that's fascinating because it's, you know, it's unique for people to.
I mean, even I came to Christ in like in high school.
Yeah.
A lot of kids, you know, they're like, oh, I don't really remember.
I might have been six, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it was probably that world interview because I did a couple interviews when I launched the B just to try to, you know, I don't know, to get publicity for the B or whatever.
And I've done a couple since.
This is my very first podcast ever, though, for the record.
Wow.
Thank you.
Yeah, ever.
An honor.
Honor, sir.
Yeah, no, I didn't.
I grew up in a home that was not Christian.
And I was a staunch atheist by high school.
And I was, you know, I just thought that I just agreed with what you're told, which is that atheists are smart.
You know, if you're smart, you're an atheist.
If you're dumb, then you're religious.
Like, it's just what you're told by culture and at school and by people.
You know what I'm talking about.
And so I was just like, yeah, I'm smart.
You know, I'm smart.
I'm an atheist.
You know, there's no God.
And I read a lot of stuff.
I was very nihilistic.
I read, I don't know, I've always been a big reader.
And even when I was a young high schooler, I was reading Nietzsche and all this kind of dark sort of nihilistic stuff.
And I loved it.
Yeah, we were all reading Nietzsche in high school.
What's that?
That was really popular.
That was really popular when I was in high school.
I was just hanging out reading Nietzsche.
Wasn't always.
That wasn't when I was in high school.
How old are you?
No, it was a joke.
Oh, sorry.
I thought you were being serious.
A really good joke, too, because you explained it.
Good job, Ethan.
Sorry, continue.
You know, I'm disappointed.
Your voice is not cracking as much as I was hoping it would during this interview.
I've been practicing using putting more air behind my voice.
I realize that I project more and there's less.
And I also, I just refinished recording a really long audio book.
So I've been talking warmed up.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's funny.
This isn't about me.
Where the heck was I?
High school reading Nietzsche.
Nietzsche.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I was just really into being an atheist and just kind of being a contrarian and getting in trouble.
I was a big troublemaker.
I was, I did a lot of bad things when I was younger.
And I got in a lot of trouble at school and all this and all that.
And, you know, through a, through a crazy series of events that, you know, did not involve like a tragedy or anything like that.
It would take a long time to tell the whole series of events, but God basically, you know, reached out and got me.
So my experience taught me to be reformed before I knew what that word meant or to have to place a high priority on the sovereignty of God before I knew what any of that meant.
Or I didn't know anything about theology.
I didn't know anything about anything.
But I knew none of it made sense when it happened.
And so I was about 21 and everything just started changing in my life through a few people who were talking to me.
And I became a Christian.
It was sort of a radical conversion and I started reading the Bible every day and all these things.
It was kind of like I was shocked and I felt betrayed and everything else when I would read these things, all these things I had been told were true.
And I would read apologetics and I would read, you know, like C.S. Lewis was big for me when I was in my little conversion stage and Tim Keller.
And I was like, well, wait a minute, this isn't so cut and dry.
This isn't so obvious as all these people tell me that it is, that naturalism is the only thing that's real and there's no such thing as a spiritual life and Jesus didn't really exist and all this stuff.
And it kind of went from there, man.
Yeah, that's cool.
So, but you're not a Calvinist anymore because you shaved your beard.
No, man.
Does reform imply Calvinism?
I'm still confused by what reform is.
No, Calvinism, Calvinist would actually be a more accurate description of me because I'm not like classically reformed.
Yeah, reformed has a bunch of, I don't know.
It's got a bunch of baggage with it.
I feel like everybody knows, but me.
It means a lot of more things than just being Calvinist.
Calvinist implies like soteriologically you hold to a Calvinistic view, basically.
And it's very more loosey-goosey.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, I know we have one of the main things.
I feel like a lot of people are going to want to hear this interview, and there's going to be all these questions that they would ask the podcast.
They'd be yelling at their stereo right now.
And we probably glossed past them because we get to talk to Adam all the time.
But not on voice.
I don't think people care that much.
We never voice.
Well, yeah, we do have what you have going on right now.
Oh, yes.
Let's talk about that.
I just launched a news outlet.
It's called Discern.
It's spelled D-I-S-R-N.
And it's doing very well.
And it's only about two weeks old.
And it's keeping me extremely busy.
Yeah, I like it.
I get the newsletter every day and I caught up on the news.
Nice little bite size.
I know the people behind this.
I'm like, oh, these are good guys.
You know, it's like very simple.
That's something you're good at.
You're going to keep things simple.
Yes.
I respect that.
So Seth and I never told you this, but got together and talked about what things we could do together after the B transaction.
He and I have become good friends.
And we settled on this news thing.
And I've been running Christian Daily Reporter for some time now, a couple years.
And we thought, what if we made a news outlet that instead of just being like a drudge style page of links, it actually summarizes the news story in a smart way, in a succinct way, and also leaves you there with a link to something longer, to an AP article or whatever, if you want to read more than just the crucial details.
And so, man, we worked a long time.
Mostly I worked a long time, but we worked a long time before Discern launched and it launched a couple weeks ago.
We've got a little staff and things are going well.
We've got a great little team.
And we're going to be, we're newsletter-centric.
And so I've got my newsletter also, which is called the Adam Ford newsletter, which since you asked, you can sign up for at adamfordnewsletter.com.
And I send it every day, Monday through Friday.
And it's just kind of my little, you know, it was a more natural segue than you'd think from satire to real news.
I was so immersed in the news cycle already.
And I just kind of offer a little summary of the six or eight most important news items that have happened in the last 24 hours and my take on it.
You know, I offer my little take on most of it with a little bit of humor and irreverence mixed in there.
And it's great.
People are loving it.
Yeah, I get that too.
I dig it.
I really do like it.
Very enjoyable.
You're a very enjoyable guy.
Oh, thanks.
Like your take on things.
I like that you explain the news with emojis.
You know what?
I used to be anti-emoji until I started.
I kind of embraced them and then I read a little bit about them and then I considered it.
And there's, it's kind of, it sounds dumb to say it, but there, there's a level of communication that you can portray using emojis that you can't just with mere words.
It's almost like facial expressions when you're talking in person, you know?
Like, I can't see you guys right now.
You know, I can't see how you guys are shaking your head and looking at each other about how dumb this interview is, but I, you know, I could feel it, but I can't see it.
But, but, like, with emojis, you know, you can kind of convey that sort of facial expression thing.
So I embraced them and I thought, you know what?
I'm an emoji guy now.
I'm cool with it.
Yeah, I don't, I don't really follow a lot of news sites because it's depressing.
I get it only for Kyle.
I get that all the time.
I only get enough.
Go ahead.
I only get enough information to like write B stories.
Yeah.
And then I'm done.
And yeah, so to be able to follow Discern, it's actually kind of nice because now that's like my, that's my whole thing is just Discern.
That's my, that's my only news site that I follow on my social media.
Very simple.
Thank you.
That's simple.
That's about it.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And simple is what we're going for.
And I learned, you know, a while ago with running CDR the importance of, you know, you report on the things that matter on the weighty things, the consequential things, but also mixing in just some good news and like some interesting stuff.
And that's maybe not consequential, but is, you know, sort of uplifting and interesting, you know.
One thing I noticed when I'm trying to find information for Babylon VPs is like so few news articles will even tell you like the basic facts of where something happened, when it happened, you know, who said it, whatever.
They'll, they'll jump right into the hot takes.
So I pull up, I'll pull up like a CNN piece and there'll be a thousand words.
And I'm like, you didn't even tell me like where this campaign stop was, where this happened, you know, and that's all I need for my piece.
Like, I need to, where's the city at?
And I look for you need factually accurate satire.
It's crazy.
It's like nobody just, nobody just does a summary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what we do.
We do a summary.
And so, you know, I'm a conservative.
I'm a Christian.
I, it's, I've never tried to hide that.
I've, that's what I am.
And, but we don't do so.
We have opinion pieces sometimes, but we're not opinion news.
So we don't have headlines with cap capitals, you know, and exclamation points.
And we're not doing what like Daily Wire is doing, which, God bless them, you know, I love the Daily Wire, but we sad.
You could, yeah, never mind.
Uh, so we don't you could tell that we're a conservative site by what we or we're a conservative focused site where we are serving Christian and conservative readers by the topics that we choose to cover.
But the topics that we cover, the stories that we cover, we cover in a very objective way.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
And well, that's another area that you see bias creep into news sites is not just what they cover and how they cover it, but what they don't cover.
Yeah.
You know, right.
I mean, what do you skip over?
Like when you see it, like, nah, we're skipping that one.
Like Kardashian.
No, they're all about the whole front page of discernment now is Kardashian.
Oh, because she's been kind of an unexpected news topic for a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
I can't think of any other.
You know, you can only cover so many.
So I read, you know, hundreds of news articles a day and you can't cover all of them, you know.
So you just choose to cover what you think people like us would want to know about.
So, you know, I've been swimming in the news every single day all day for years now.
And so I have a pretty good idea of what I want to know about, what people like me want to know about.
And that's the kind of stuff we cover.
Yeah, I think one thing you guys do that a lot of others, the news sites do, like you'll on, you'll find stories that might have kind of gone under the radar in the mainstream media.
You know, we try to do that for sure.
The Bershing doctor guy that had like a thousand babies in his trunk or whatever.
That's brutal, man.
How is that not?
I tweeted that.
How is that not a national news story?
That's insane.
2,411 preserved.
I mean, this is kind of grim.
Maybe we won't talk about it so we don't have to have a disclaimer at the beginning of your B podcast.
That's the sad thing is how like it's like, oh, yeah.
I mean, just it, it, it should be more shocking than it is.
It should be incredibly shocking.
Over 2,400, the remains of over 2,400 pre-born babies that the guy kept in his, on his property, in his house, and in the trunk of his Mercedes-Benz, and people don't even report on it.
What's he doing with?
It's like, what is he doing with these things?
Yeah.
Got like a, is it a weird hobby?
I'm trying to imagine.
Yeah, you could say that.
Sarah's got a weird habit.
Definitely.
Like, what's the analogous?
Like, if another medical practitioner, like, they got like jar, like a dentist with jars of teeth lining his house or something, like, nobody knew, hey, you had all my teeth in here.
No, that would be decisively less grim than what this would be less, less grim, but like, people, it's almost like people freak out more or something because we're things are just so turned upside down.
I know, right?
So, it's a, it's, it's reminiscent of a serial killer that collects trophies.
Sorry to be so on the nose, but it's just my way.
Imagine if it were like, you know what?
I haven't seen this espoused anywhere.
It may have been, and I haven't said this yet, but it just came to mind.
Imagine if it were a veterinarian, you know, that kept all these bodies of all these baby dogs or something like that.
2,400 of them, and they found that.
Oh, my gosh.
You guarantee you that'd be front page news on CNN.
Yeah, that'd be weird too.
It would be weird.
So we have, we do have some hate mail here.
Do you want to like?
Yeah, dude, let's do it.
Try to dive into that.
Let's do some hate mail.
So you want to do the hate mail in this section?
Wait, do we get the I Miss Adam Ford song while Adam Ford's on the podcast?
Listen to this.
I really miss Adam Ford.
Miss Adam Ford.
He interrupted his own jingle.
I didn't know it was a song, man.
Wow.
Well, I guess you haven't listened in a while.
Wow, sad.
That's we got it auto-tuned.
Well, I don't listen to a whole lot of stuff because I don't have enough downtime in my life to listen to things.
But the last full one I listened to was with that.
What was her name?
Kira?
Oh, Kira.
Yeah, people like that one a lot.
Dude, she was sharp.
She was super sharp.
I really enjoyed that interview a lot.
Yeah, we got to get her back.
She's so good.
She was very sharp.
Yeah, I liked her.
She was cool.
All right.
Shout out to Kira.
So before we get jump into this hate mail, I'll just say we're doing some I Miss Adam Ford hate mail.
Yes.
We found a few Twitter comments and email and stuff.
People saying that they miss Adam.
So let me just ask first, Adam, before we jump into this, what, I mean, how do you feel when you see people say stuff like this?
Like, I miss Adam Ford.
And Seth and Kyle ruin the site.
I think that person has a good human shoulders.
They know what they're talking about.
They can see with clear eyes what's definitely happened.
And I, you know, I DM them and offer to buy them a coffee.
That's beautiful.
You know, it's funny to me is that we did, we did the transition before we announced the transition.
Like we transitioned from Adam to me and Seth running it before we announced it.
I don't know, it was a month or two later or something.
That was by design.
That was strategic.
We got all this.
Things have really changed.
That's exactly why I did that, Kyle, because not only so that you could say that to people, but so that, you know, a month before we announced the transition, Kyle was already running it.
And so if we start getting all these emails about something that's way different, well, then we know we got to tweak something, but we didn't.
It's It's also funny to me that, like, you're kind of a super political person.
Yeah, probably more political than either of us are.
Yeah, definitely.
I think at least before I started doing the Babylon B, I didn't care about politics at all.
And Adam was more into that, you know.
Especially, I mean, if you look, if you read your comics, you were always addressing cultural war issues.
Yeah.
Politics and other stuff.
I mean, just the fact you're running a news site now and you're voluntarily digging through all these news stories.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Jumping on that grenade for us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know what?
It's not easy.
And, you know, to what you just said, Kyle, when we launched, when I launched the B, we had, I don't know, I counted it when I was when I went on Twitter and started yelling at people because someone said something about how I didn't like the B anymore or something like that.
There was what, 17 or 18 articles populating the site on the day that we launched, and like eight of them were explicitly political.
Yeah, I was just looking through them the other day.
It's like you have Bernie Sanders burning a businessman, immolating a businessman on stage at a rally.
You have like Bill Clinton talking about, you know, trying to lead young female voters.
You had all these, it was a bunch of political stuff.
It always has been.
I wonder if part of that is that what kind of stuff went viral more at the beginning?
Was it the church stuff that was more viral at the beginning?
I think so.
I think that might be what happened.
Like our audience has shifted over time to where a lot of the church jokes have been played out, like a lot of the worship leader ones and stuff.
Yeah, you can't make jokes about worship.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, that's definitely part of it.
You know, the culture, the Christian culture jokes, there's only so many of them.
And, you know, you use them up in the first year, but politics is just the gift that keeps on giving, especially these days, you know?
Yeah.
And those ones get shared so much more.
I mean, I just, that's something I've noticed since I've come on.
Especially if it's like something that's going on right now and it's in the Twitter sphere, you know.
Well, current events, you know, that's that's that's the thing that's ever green.
There's always new current events and there's always new things to have opinions about.
And especially these days, politics is the new entertainment.
I mean, it, I think, a lot because a big reason is because of Trump and just, you know, how crazy things are.
But I read that, for instance, the Mueller hearing had higher ratings than the Game of Thrones series season, no, series finale.
So Game of Thrones is like one of the, you know, the most popular shows ever.
The very last Game of Thrones episode ever.
The Mueller hearings had more viewers.
How many people streamed the Mueller hearings, though?
I have no idea, but I know that it was not as many as Game of Thrones, which is crazy.
I mean, it's just kind of crazy to think about.
And it's sort of an illustration of the way things are now.
You know, and that's one thing about, there's this thing about, you know, should Christians really be involved in politics and this and that?
And one of my answers to that now is if Christians are going to be involved in anything, you know, politics are what everyone's involved in now.
Yeah, it's weird to just like not have an opinion on things that are make clear statements about, you know, especially things like abortion, but all this stuff.
It says something about what your belief about humanity is and about what mankind is and what our, what the point of life is.
Like there's so it goes deep to just stand back and say, you know, I'm an opinion on it.
Yeah.
I always find that a little, I, I, I feel like the person's either protecting themselves or, you know, it's just, I find, I find that bizarre when the person is a professing person of faith and they have no opinion, which is pretty rare to find.
Maybe I just think their boss is listening or something.
I don't know.
Who knows?
Like, you could offend people is what they say, you know.
But if you've ever, if you've ever had an opinion about anything of any consequence, then you're going to, people are going to disagree with you.
You know, it's just life.
So, how about some hate mail?
Dig in.
Let's do this hate mail.
Yeah.
Okay.
Dramatic reading from me.
Oh, yeah, we could do dramatic readings.
Well, I'll read this first one.
Dramatic reading.
This is all caps.
Adam Ford, please come back.
Babylon B has moved from witty sarcasm to just plain snarky.
Hashtag snarky.
Oh, I'm a hashtag too.
Hashtag snarky.
Snarky is hashtag snarky.
I think this was a comment on Twitter.
God bless that.
They added the hashtag snarky.
He's just going to love all this.
It's wonderful.
People say this.
Do you think we've gotten snarkier since you left?
Are we more snarky than you are?
I'm not really sure what snarky means.
I don't even know.
I mean, you're more terrible, definitely, than when I was there.
A lot worse.
You're the gold standard.
You're canon.
We are apocrypha.
You're terrible.
You ruined it.
But anyways, go to the next one before I get mad.
All right.
Here's one.
We want you to get mad.
I started scheduling a few posts on Sundays.
Oh, Kyle.
I try to schedule them like in the afternoon, like after church.
Oh, you were scheduling a few, but then you started scheduling a good thousand.
Let the listener understand.
When Adam Ford was running the Babylon B, there was never, ever a single post ever on Sundays.
And that's the truth.
I feel like there was a day we did one.
No, there wasn't.
There wasn't.
So, well, that's because you're reformed.
Hardcore sabbatarian.
Definitely not.
So I, so I've been scheduling a few like in the afternoon.
Of course you have, Kyle.
And I just know, I'll just note that I never, uh, I never lift a finger, you know?
I just schedule them in advance on Friday.
Friday, yeah.
So this guy says this guy posted on our Facebook, I think.
Adam Ford never posted on Sunday.
You have broken the Sabbath.
Gather the stones.
I think they're being a little funny, but yeah.
Yeah, I think because when I do the Instagram posts and I at least, when I schedule those out, I don't post any politics on Sunday.
I only do church style humor.
That's like my little way of like acknowledging the Sabbath.
I'm like, at least we're not going to do any like Clinton, you know, sex pervert jokes.
Oh, that's, I save those for Sunday.
No, I'm just kidding.
So you only skewer God's people on the Sabbath.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, exactly.
That's correct.
What's next here?
We got.
Yeah, that one wasn't so juicy.
Come on, give me a good one.
That wasn't very juicy.
Okay.
Okay, here we go.
I am afraid that you have lost Adam Ford's original vision for this web page.
That's a good one.
I like this one.
Wait, did it say web page?
Web page, yeah.
For this web page.
For this blog, your blog spot.
Was this a Facebook message or an email?
I think this was a, I think this was a, I think it was an email.
Sounds like an email.
How's the punctuation?
Is there any?
Have we?
It's pretty good.
They capitalized your name.
Wow.
Not too bad.
Okay.
But do you think, have we lost your original vision?
Have we gone?
You've lost everything.
What is the most un-Adam Ford story you've seen that you've been like, oh, gosh, I would not have done that?
Straight up.
Just tell us.
Gary Busey as McGee and me.
Definitely like Gary.
You know what?
I have no idea what McGee and Me is.
I saw that and I thought that's a sweet photo.
Yeah, because you became a Christian when you were 21.
Even when...
Even when Adam was running the site, I would send him these little Christian culture jokes and he's like, I have no idea.
That has to be hard.
Yeah, because like, what's McGee?
He knows all this Christian culture.
What's McGee?
And that's like a thing for me.
Like, I know certain parts of Christian culture that Kyle doesn't know.
So, I'll try to pitch jokes about things that I know about like young life and stuff.
Yeah, he doesn't get them, so you just don't make it through.
So, I don't even know how he got jokes through you.
You just have eventually had to trust him.
So, that's one of the part of the whole how it was a God thing is that I, like we talked about, I came to faith later in life.
And Kyle grew up in the church.
And so, I have zero experience with like youth Christian culture.
So, my oldest child is 10 now.
And so, I'm starting to learn some of the stuff.
He just turned 10.
But, you know, three years ago, I had no idea about any of this stuff.
And so, Kyle, he like he knew all that stuff and could make good jokes about it.
And I was more plugged into like the politics and current events and stuff.
And I could make good jokes about that.
And that's how we kind of played off each other.
You know, fit like a glove.
Yeah, it worked.
And it's fascinating.
Like whoever just said, yeah, at some point.
And it was a beautiful thing.
It was, it was a, because I'm, I'm a naturally kind of untrusting person, you know, to my, it's not, I'm not saying that's a virtuous thing.
It's not, but at some point, it was like, you know, he'd send me some joke and I would just be like, I have no clue what this is, but I'm going to run it.
And it would kill.
You know, it's sort of like with like Star Wars and stuff.
I don't, I've never seen Star Wars.
I don't, I don't like superhero movies, but he'd send me these jokes and I'd run them and they'd kill.
I don't even know what it was.
Yeah, I would send him and I would say, just trust me, Adam.
Yeah.
Star Wars joke is hilarious.
Just trust.
So, you know, if there was a, if there was a story about sports or like, you know, the mafia or the godfather or something, I would write those and because he had no idea.
You're into the mafia.
Sports, mafia, and the godfather.
Yeah, right.
Yep.
I haven't, you know, Jordan Peterson jokes, stuff like that.
Yeah, you did do the first Babyloni Jordan Peterson joke.
Yeah, that reminds me too.
I've heard you, so you guys make fun of Ethan's crackly voice.
And I've heard you say, Kyle, that you have like a Kermit voice.
Yeah, Kermit the Frog.
Wow, definitely.
But you should call it Jordan Peterson voice because he has the same voice.
He has the Kermit thing going.
Yeah.
So henceforth, you should say you have a Jordan Peterson voice.
You're still an adolescent teen girl voice.
I'm the fast food.
You don't have drive-through guy on The Simpsons.
What am I?
Am I the stuffed up nose voice?
You sound like you sound like a dude, just like a normal dude.
Do I really?
Cool.
Yeah.
Like a guy who'd be like, hey, bro, want to buy this love seat?
Welcome to the furniture story.
Is that what you've got?
That's a normal guy.
You got an Alex Jones vibe going on.
I do.
He does that content-wise sometimes.
Oh, hey, now.
Hey, you're fascination with the news.
Like, I could see you.
I'm always feeling you're in danger.
You got to like watch out.
Just don't get too deep into it.
I don't want you to become the next Alex Jones.
Yeah, be careful.
I am not going to become the next Alex Jones, but I am hoping to have a regular podcast at some point in the near future.
All right.
So come to find out running a news outlet is fairly labor intensive.
So my podcast isn't going to be out as soon as I was hoping it would be, but in the near future, I'm hoping to launch a podcast and I have everything ready to do it.
I just have to do it.
He's ready.
You're testing out your equipment with us right now, really.
Right?
I helped you out.
You definitely helped me out.
Yeah, definitely.
So our next one.
Where are we at here?
Where are we at?
That was the vision.
So here's one.
Back when Adam Ford started BB, it was very enjoyable Christian satire, but the guy he sold it to has turned it into right-wing clickbait.
Dang it.
It's your uncle who is always posting rants on Facebook.
Right-wing clickbait for your uncle.
This is all that would be a good Tagline, Babylon B.
Oh, yeah.
Right-wing clickbait for your uncle, who is always posting rants on Facebook.
Man, you guys totally ruined it.
This is all Seth's fault.
Why isn't he on this podcast with us?
We'll grill him later.
This is all Seth's fault.
That's hilarious.
That was a good one.
I like that.
All right, we get one more.
It's a simple one.
Basically, it's almost like the condensed.
This is a summary of everything.
Once Adam Ford sold the Babylon B. Once Adam Ford sold the Babylon B, it went downhill.
Yeah, it's true.
It's true.
I like the idea that there's this magical moment.
Like the Babylon B is this holy Christian satire, perfect and perfect and inerrant.
And then, like, as soon as you sign the papers, the front page is just covered in like, praise Donald Trump and Obama is the Antichrist.
So through many years of creating content for the internets, one of the many things that I've learned is that people really, really, really like to complain.
You know, a lot of people do, not all people.
Some people are very grateful and some people are very appreciative of the work you put into things and all that.
But some people, man, it's just their nature.
They really like to complain and all they need is an excuse, you know?
So had we never, ever, had we never announced that I had sold the site and that Kyle Mann was now running it, had that never been announced, you know, it would have been a different excuse to email in and complain about, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
It was really probably a story that rubbed them the wrong way.
So they felt like emailing.
But just this, the sale of the site, the transferring of it from me to Seth is just, it just provides a nice excuse, you know?
Yeah, Adam and I discovered early on that like leftist Twitter hated us.
I mean, leftist like progressive, progressive Christian Twitter hated us very early.
Oh, yeah, they were ready.
Well, I had some hate followers from my comics that followed me over to the Babylon B.
And so they, you know, for a while there, they were, yeah, that.
Yeah, I found there seems to be some Christian bloggers and tweeter type people who I think they resent.
I think they really want to be popular on Twitter and get tons of followers.
And they're trying to be that snarky Christian voice and it makes them mad that you're getting that or that the Babylon Babylon B got it.
Oh, yeah.
There was a lot of jealousy, I think, when the Babylon B got big.
Yeah, definitely.
A lot of that.
There still is, you know.
I mean, we'll not discuss specifics.
Let's leave it at that.
Yeah.
Kyle and I will, though, privately.
What are the weirdest, like, I don't know, just some of the, because going viral, viral is crazy.
Like, you're suddenly, because you're out in, are you in like the boonies?
No.
Going what to what was crazy?
I took my headphones off for a sec.
Oh, sorry.
I'm just saying, like, because you're, you're in Midwest where you're like, you don't have to be specific.
I'm in Metro Detroit.
No, I'm in a very populated area.
The city I live in has about 100,000 people.
What's your address?
It's not massive.
Yeah, exact address.
But just the weirdness of the video.
My exact address is P.O. Box 87044.
But then to create something on the internet that goes, which you probably had with your comic before, but something that goes viral.
Like suddenly, it feels like suddenly the internet notices you, right?
Yeah.
I had it happen with Axe Cop.
Yeah.
Are there any weird, interesting stories from that experience?
If you reached out to you or just that, I've got a lot of stories, most of which I wouldn't want to relive, you know, but I had, you know, I had a lot of readers from my webcomic and that kind of, that blew up sort of unexpectedly also.
And I launched the B just on my webcomic.
you know, I, I, on my webcomics site that I haven't, I haven't drawn comics in a long time now, but back then I was drawing a couple a week and I just posted on there.
I just created this site.
Hey, come check it out.
And just the nature of the comics that I drew and the nature of the bee, you know, they can provoke sort of strong reactions from people.
And yeah, I've had, you know, I've had my share of, I don't know, I've had a few death threats.
I've had a few, I've had a couple you might call stalkers.
I've had, I've had stuff like that.
By and large, though, I've had a lot more mainly brothers and sisters in Christ who will email me and just with the most amazing emails that just they're such a blessing in my life.
I still get them all the time, you know, from the new stuff I'm doing.
And it's every day, you know, it's, it's just really something that keeps me going and feeds my soul.
And just to know that that stuff I'm doing is of value to people who love Jesus like I do.
And it's something that in their life is very valuable and that helps them, you know.
So yeah, I have some crazy stories, but you know, I don't want to talk about it.
Yeah, no worries.
Well, I think it's fascinating.
I mean, you came to faith later in life.
And I think that's one thing.
And you're also, you have a very unique mind.
Oh, that these things have converged to create, you know, you did.
One thing that happens in Christian culture is that we are embedded in Christian culture.
Yeah.
So it's hard for us to think outside that box.
And I think that's been something that God has used you to do is that you think outside of the box a lot.
And you also, you look at Christian culture for kind of the silly thing that it is.
And I think that's one thing the Babylon Bee has been great at doing is just kind of poking fun at the sacred cows.
And I've said before, earlier, I said that when Kyle and I first linked up that he had grown up in the church and so he knew all the youth stuff and that I was more focused on current events.
But when I've said that before, the way I've said it, which is probably more correct, is that he grew up in the church.
And so he knew all the stuff about being a young person in the church.
And I came to the church from outside the church.
So I had a different perspective with which to view the church, which is like you said, you know, I don't know how like unique it is or whatever.
There's other people like me.
But yeah, it gives you a different, definitely a different, like when you come from the outside and you come into church and Christian culture, literally knowing nothing, you know, and then you just look around.
I've got a Bible that I'm reading every day and I'm listening to a Bible teacher on the radio every day, which was Jay Vernon McGee, actually.
That was just, I just turned on my radio.
You know, someone told me there was a Christian, Christian station here in Metro Detroit.
So I turned it on and I found out he was on at 11, started listening to him every day, studying the Bible every day.
And then you go into church culture and it's just kind of, it was just, you know, there was some unexpected things.
And so, yeah, it definitely gives you a different, a different sort of perspective than growing up in that.
And just that's all just normal, you know?
So I try not to be overly critical, but it does give you a, you know, sort of a gad fly sort of perspective or something like that.
Yeah, that's something I like about it is that it creates a way to bring up some of these things that are kind of silly in church without, because it, but to, to say it in church or to say it to somebody's face or to say it in that way, like that'd be kind of mean to just be like, hey, you know, man, that's, that worship leader's got some real skinny jeans going on.
To make it on this website, it's not directed at any specific person.
We're just laughing at the idea.
Yeah.
I like it.
I've always loved that about it.
Thanks.
Yeah.
And that's the thing about, you know, no matter what, you know, people's perspective has been, the B was created, has always been, has always existed for the purpose of speaking truth into the culture.
That was the reason that I created the Babylon B.
It wasn't just, I love, you know, comedy and humor, but for me personally, creating humor just for humor's sake, I don't, I don't, I don't get satisfaction out of that.
I want humor is maybe the most effective medium that exists for communicating truth.
And if you can communicate truth in a way that's that's succinct and real and authentic, but wrap it in humor, people will allow you to say things to them that they never would normally allow you to say.
You know, they'll allow you to speak truth to them.
When normally, if you just tried to say it straightforwardly, it would be like, whoa, bro, you know, what are you talking about?
But if you can wrap it in humor and then you can both laugh about it, it's different.
It's totally different.
I used to know a bunch of quotes about that, about wrapping truth in humor, but I have forgotten them.
We'll look them up and have James Earl Jones read them.
There you go.
Right here.
Well, we got anything else here?
I'm kind of surprised we didn't argue about libertarian stuff, Kyle.
But, you know, we'll do that.
Kyle's the hardcore libertarian.
Yeah.
What's that?
I'm, yeah.
I, uh, I, I, I, I am the resident lib.
I know that.
That's why I said I'm surprised we didn't argue about libertarian stuff.
That was the big when Adam handed off the Babylon B. He's like, he's like, please don't turn this into just like Ron Paul's personal blog.
Yeah.
And I've meet my Lord and see.
I think I've done a pretty decent job of not, I mean, I do my, I get my libertarian jabs in once.
Yeah.
But you, you dance once in a while, but it's all right.
I even said that to Seth.
I'm like, Seth, Kyle's great, man.
This and that.
He's awesome.
But like, don't let him get too crazy on the libertarian stuff.
Yeah, I do all these articles on like legalizing weed.
And Ron Paul is God.
No, you can't name that.
Amen.
I mean, libertarians, man, they love that guy.
Oh, man.
We got to get him on.
The thing about libertarians, they never exit the cage stage ever.
The cage stage?
It's just the stage.
It's just the whole thing.
It's the cage life.
You don't know what the cage.
He doesn't know what the cage stage is.
He doesn't know what the cage stage is and he's fired.
There's people listening that don't know too, and I'm their voice.
No, we're going to leave it as that then.
If you don't know, then you don't know.
You'll have to Google it.
Cage stage.
So is that like when you explain English?
No, it doesn't have to do with Nicholas Cage.
It's when somebody doesn't know your Johnny Kaye Calvinistic reference, and so you put them in a cage and don't let them talk.
Wow.
Really?
No.
No.
What's a Calvinistic reference?
It's like a Calvinism thing.
So you get, you get upset.
So when people convert, when people convert to Calvinism, they're like crazy about it.
Right.
And so I'm annoying.
Was it RC Sproul that coined that, Adam?
I forget.
I don't know who it was.
It may have been RC Sproul Jr., or at least he popularized it, I believe.
Yeah, and they say that people that convert to Calvinism need to be put in a cage for a good year because they won't shut out their stage.
To just cool off.
And that's libertarian.
Libertarians never exit that stage ever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a lot of people.
That's like CrossFit people.
Yeah.
CrossFit libertarians, vegans, and first-year Calvinists, basically.
Which all 13-year-olds need.
My daughter's 13.
Yeah, they need a cage stage for sure.
For like six years.
Okay.
All right, cool.
Did we do, are we done?
Did we do it?
I think we didn't write a bunch of questions out.
Just kind of decided we'd freestyle this.
We're freestyle.
I didn't even think about it beforehand, I just thought we'd go in there and just freestyle.
Yeah, let the holy spirit lead.
Holy spirit led us here and it's beautiful.
Yeah, that was fun.
Well Adam, I want to thank you for creating the Babylon Bee, for being you.
We love doing this job.
We get to sit here all day.
We can't believe it's our job.
We're like i'm photoshopping Bible Man, the Batman costume.
Uh, with my pleasure, shopping Satan, you are a writing a territory.
You're a wizard at photoshop.
You're like amazing.
And i'm sorry if I just cut you off there it's kind of a little quiet in my phones if you were talking.
But I want to thank you guys because you are absolutely killing it at the Bee.
I mean, you know, when you go into something like like selling something like the Babylon Bee.
So you know, Seth and I met, you know he flew up here and we we hung out for a day and I we talked a bunch of times but, like I said, you know that little, you know I, I kind of, by nature, I don't trust people and and I just like wow, something's not you.
There's only so much you can know before you go into a transaction like that.
You know, and then you just have to kind of trust a bit and man, it's gone.
It has gone better than I could have imagined.
Seth has been great at being the owner slash ceo and you guys are absolutely killing it at the BE and i'm very grateful myself um, still being part owner of the bee.
And just, you know i've made, I create it's like my baby, you know you just there's this like little, it's just kind of you know you make something and it's it's important to you know, so it there's things that are not quantifiable, that that I care about that and i'm very appreciative to how well you guys are about how, how well you guys are doing so, thank you.
Yeah, you uh, you push the Babylon bee out of your body and then we uh, we're raising it now, we're nursing it and no no no, that just ruined the moment there totally a lot.
The whole perception that Adam Ford has like left the Babylon behind, like it's kind of it's not realistic.
I mean, you're on, we're all on slack together all the time.
I mean we talk all the time.
So I should do, I should talk more in there, though people sometimes will be like oh, you still you uh, you still part owner of.
And i'm like yeah, and they're like oh, so you still like write stories all the time and stuff.
And i'm like no, like they're like oh, i'm like I, I could you know if I wanted to.
I'm just busy.
And they kind of look at me, like you you're, you're able to write stories for the Babylon BEE and you just don't do it.
Like are you crazy?
I should try to do more of that.
You should sell that.
You could actually sell that.
Sell what.
You put a submission thing on your site like, pay me a thousand dollars to submit your Babylon BEE article and I will submit in my name yeah, using my authority.
There's so many people that want to to publish their articles in the Babyl YEAH well hey, the subscribers get a chance to do that right, and that's another group of people I should thank are those subscribers because oh yeah, how wonderful to have so many people supporting.
You know your work that they could, they could, they could ingest it for free if they Wanted to, they could.
And they believe in it, so they choose to support it.
And so, thank you to all of you people.
We really appreciate it.
Did I just provide a perfect segue to go into the subscribers?
Perfect.
When Adam was thinking about selling the site, he was telling me, He's like, Look, I've never asked for money from readers.
You know, that's something that we could definitely move the Babylon B to the next level.
And it totally has.
It's been, it's been like even hiring Ethan, something we would not have been able to do, you know, without subscribers.
So, thank you.
And another benefit that subscribers get is a full podcast.
So, we're going to go into some extra stories for our subscribers and for everybody else.
If you want to do that, you can go to BabylonB.com/slash plans and sign up, and then you can get the full podcast.
And if even if you don't do that, we appreciate you listening and go ahead and give us a review on iTunes if you want to.
A five-star review, that is.
We love them.
Read them all.
We love them.
Before I leave, let me remind all of the listeners: get your news at discern.com.
That's D-I-S-R-N.com.
Sign up for the Adam Ford newsletter, adamfordnewsletter.com.
Bam.
That'll all be in the show notes as well.
But mostly, sign up for the Babylon Bee with money.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Adam.
Thank you very much, fellas, for having me.
Thanks for your great work.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.