This is the Babylon Bee weekly news podcast for the week of 2/19/2020. In this episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle discuss the week's big stories such as the collapse of the Yang campaign, the bipartisan aversion toward the ascendent Bloomberg, and how the 56k modem sound makes us salivate for the internet. The guys then discuss the books that made an impact upon them which means C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.R.R. Tolkien all feature heavily. Kyle also tells you which overrated books shouldn't be considered literary classics. In the subscriber portion, Kyle and Ethan talk more books, feuding Star Wars clubs in high school, and how Paw Patrol is dismantling the State. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Show Outline Introduction - Kyle and Ethan talk about the origin of "This ain't it, chief," talk about all the great feedback we got from the Valentine's episode featuring the Bee wives, and then dive into the week's top stories. Story 1 - Yang Campaign Collapses After It's Revealed $1,000/Mo Giveaway Would Be Paid For With $1,000/Mo Tax Increase Yang suspended Presidential campaign aspirations after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire NEWSWEEK: 72 percent of Democratic primary voters plan on voting for the party's nominee even if their first choice doesn't prevail in the primaries. But only about half of both Sanders and Yang's supporters agreed that they would support any second choice. Story 2 - Bloomberg Stops By Daytona 500 To Hand Out Speeding Tickets Donald Trump did a flyover of the Daytona 500 in Air Force One Did a pace lap in "The Beast"- the presidential limo NASCAR fans seems to love it, blue checks and media types rushed out their hot takes labeling it as problematic Story 3 - Struggling Biden Campaign Now Offering One Month Of Free AOL For Rally Attendance (Babylon Bee Subscriber Phil VanKlinken contributed to this report) Support for Joe Biden in Iowa and New Hampshire didn't materialize and if he doesn't pull out a win in South Carolina, he is basically done. His numbers there are under strain too. Topic of the Week - Novels or non-fiction books that made us the men we are now. In this special topic the guys are just talkin' about books! The Hobbit/ Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Moby Dick by Herman Melville Mere Christianity/ Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis Heretics/ Orthodoxy/ In Defense of Sanity/ The Ball and the Cross by G.K. Chesterton Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan Misery/ Dark Tower/ The Shining and other Stephen King novels David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep Dune by Frank Herbert H.P Lovecraft books 1984/ Animal Farm by George Orwell The BFG and other books by Roald Dahl Love Mail/Hate Mail - We received one of the most touching love mails ever and we got a short hate mail that we have Dave DeAndrea dramatically read. Paid-subscriber portion (Starts at 01:08:27) Kyle and Ethan talk even more books and Kyle tells a crazy story about the Star Wars clubs at school going all Westside Story. Story 1 - In New Paw Patrol Episode, Pups Round Up Commies Around Adventure Bay Leftist prof says Paw Patrol is propaganda for "capitalist system that (re)produces inequalities and causes environmental harms" "I'll start with the depiction of the state. Mayor Humdinger and Mayor Goodway — kind of the representatives of the state or the government — are portrayed negatively. Mayor Humdinger is portrayed as unethical or corrupt. Mayor Goodway as hysterical, bumbling, incompetent." "I would argue that the Paw Patrol, as a private corporation, is used to help provide basic social services in the Adventure Bay community. That's problematic in that the Paw Patrol creators are sending this message that we can't depend on the state to provide these services." Story 2 - New Political Bible Adds (R) Or (D) After Each Character's Name Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
Defeating Satan by saying, this ain't it, Chief.
You're listening to the Babylon Bee with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee News Show with Kyle Mann.
That's the voice you're hearing in your ear canals dripping in there like gravy right now.
Like mashed potatoes.
Like mashed potatoes.
And only subscribers would understand that.
That's a reference.
That's a good way to start the show is just referencing things no one will understand.
I'm trying to get people to subscribe, Ethan.
Don't you want to bring home the bread and the cheddar?
This ain't it, Chief.
This is it.
This is it, Chief.
This is it, Chief.
We need a more positive.
Where does that come from?
This ain't it.
I don't know.
How does people act like they've just ended the conversation when they post that?
This ain't it.
Because it has that like, no.
You just stopped talking about it.
I was just like, I'm so cool.
I like the guy like cracking his fingers and tapping it.
This ain't it.
And they're like rolling their eyes.
And then he logs off.
Yeah.
My work here is done.
But where'd that come from?
I don't know.
Dan.
Do you research where this ain't it, Chief, came from?
We would probably know if we had our wives with us because they knew a lot of things that we didn't know.
I don't think they'd know that.
They wouldn't care.
They would say, why are you guys wasting time on it?
They wouldn't even know what we're talking about.
Okay, so according to Know Your Meme, This Ain't It, Chief, is a slang phrase used in forums as a way to tell the poster that the thing they posted isn't as cool as they think.
And the origin became popular in the summer of 2018.
From like alien or something, like aliens biting some guy.
He's like, this ain't it, Chief.
So it says an early example was posted on the meme page SunnysideUp on July 1st, and it shows like a picture with a headline.
The headline says, move over rompers, lace shorts are the newest guys' fashion.
And someone commented, this ain't it, Chief.
This is a dead end.
Yeah.
I thought it would be more interesting than this.
I like that there's like a researcher of memes.
The first known reference to this ain't it, Chief.
I would have thought there had been something more interesting.
Yeah.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, that one scene with a bully.
I never seen it.
Actually, Charles Dickens coined this.
Yeah.
There's usually something like that where it's way earlier than you thought.
Yeah, like after the Beetle is like being horrible and Oliver stands up and says, this ain't it, Chief.
Right.
Well, sorry, everybody, that our wives aren't with us today.
Yeah, we got a lot of good feedback, and it made us feel terrible that now you're just going to hear us.
But you can look forward to it every year.
We will have our wives return.
That's right.
For the Valentine's Day podcast.
That was fun.
And our wives are now drunk with power.
You want to take over the show.
My wife listened to the podcast for the first time when she was on it.
And then she goes, this is actually pretty good.
My father-in-law listened to it.
He's like, you're like a whole different person when you're on that thing.
Because I'm pretty much like a very introverted, quiet person in general.
You sound bright, clean, and articulate when you're on the Babylon B podcast.
Yeah, I save all my energy for the podcast.
And then once it's over, I'm back to like yours.
It's done.
From Win of the Pooh.
Yeah.
Well, everybody, this is the podcast where we cover the news, and we do that by reading Babylon B headlines.
And then we do a topic of the week.
And this week we're going to talk about books.
Books that shaped our feeble little minds into weird things that they are now.
Sorry.
You look like you want me to expand on that.
They have paper in them.
They're thick.
They have hard covers generally.
I set them up.
Ethan knocks them down.
Yeah.
That's how this is.
We're going to talk about books.
And then I just look at you.
Go on about books, Ethan.
That's right, Kyle.
Webster's dictionary defines books as.
I'm just kidding.
But yeah, it's going to be fun.
Whenever you talk about them, I start thinking about what am I going to say?
What books am I going to talk about?
Because I didn't write it down.
I didn't write it down either.
We're going to find out when we get there.
And we're going to figure it out.
All right.
So it'll be a lot of fun.
But for now, let's talk about the weekly news.
Some things happened this week.
Let's see what they were.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
Well, I have some bad news, everybody.
Everybody's favorite Democratic candidate has dropped out of the race.
Marianne Williamson?
Everybody's second favorite candidate has dropped out of the race.
And that is Andrew Yang.
Ah, dang.
Dang, Yang.
Sorry.
Stop.
How far did we get into this story before you did a dang yang joke?
Five seconds.
So the Babylon B reported that the Yang campaign collapsed after it was revealed that the $1,000 a month giveaway he was offering would actually be paid for with a $1,000 a month tax increase.
Hmm.
Want, wah, wah.
That's true, though, right?
Sad trombone.
Hey, you talked over my want, want, wah.
Sorry.
Wah, wah.
Well, I guess some people were saying that his it was going to be paid for with some.
He had some crazy plan to like, I don't know, corporate earnings that wouldn't be paid out of taxes.
But every time I hear that, I'm like, it's coming out of taxes.
Even if you get it from a corporation, eventually you're going to be paying more for it.
I thought he gave a certain amount of people $1,000 at a debate.
I didn't know he was going to give everybody in the world $1,000.
Well, that's what that was like.
Not the world, but the United States.
Well, maybe the world, too.
The Democrats love everybody.
It's true.
Was he open borders?
And I know a lot of them are open borders.
I don't know.
It's weird to want to be the president of an area and then want to open borders because make it.
I want to be president of everybody.
Yeah.
Does that mean, yeah, I guess that's just saying you want to be complete totalitarian.
I'm going to create such a great utopia that everyone from the world is going to flood our country.
Yeah, Yang.
The $1,000 thing was basically his version of UBI, which is universal basic income.
So I think a couple of countries have tried some kind of a similar program, and it's basically because you are alive, because you are a citizen of this country, you get paid a certain amount of money a month just to because you are a thing that exists.
Just for breathing?
I really broke down on the description of that at the end there.
That was rough.
But yeah, just for existing, you get money.
Like, hey, Ethan, you woke up this morning.
Great job, buddy.
Oh, thanks.
Here you go.
Thousand bucks.
Thank you.
Now, doesn't it have an effect on things?
Like, if everybody knows everybody already has a thousand bucks, do they just kind of adjust the prices to that?
That's a good point.
I don't know.
I don't know what the effects have been economically.
I am not an economist.
Me either.
An economist.
One time, Thomas Soule was like, you don't want to know what happened if you gave everybody a million dollars, if a million dollars dropped on everybody's doorstep.
Well, you know, and what do you explain it, and I can't remember what he said.
So I remember thinking, I got to remember this.
This is a really important thing to remember.
And I just, I've gone.
Yeah, you could see it on a smaller scale with things like college tuition because basically the government gives everybody all these loans up.
Anybody can get a loan to go to college.
Here you go.
And then the prices go up.
So I'm sure, as with everything, it's like the more extreme you go, the crazier the effects are.
So if you're giving somebody a small amount a month, it's not going to have as big of an effect.
And actually, I think a lot of conservatives would probably support the UBI if it were to replace all the welfare programs.
You say, instead of all this crazy Medicare, Medi-Cal, I'm moving my hands in a circular motion, so you're supposed to continue adding on to what I'm saying.
Oh, yeah.
Social Security, all the entitlement programs.
You say, we replace all the entitlement programs.
Everybody gets this amount of money.
Just get a thousand bucks a month.
I think people would say, well, it's not, I'd rather that the government doesn't give any money.
But if they're going to be side for like a few months and then suddenly be like, we need $1,000 plus this.
Ponies.
Vermont Supreme offers ponies.
Three ponies.
Dan, you look pensive.
Like you want to say something.
I just really want $1,000.
Dan's mind is swimming on the bottom.
I'm occupied.
I'm kind of sad that he dropped out.
I didn't agree with UBI or, but what I did appreciate about Andrew Yang is that it seemed like of the Democratic candidates, he seemed like a human being that would talk to you and wouldn't, you know.
If you're a Republican or a conservative, it seemed like he would make an attempt to like, hey, let's talk about this issue.
Yeah, it could have been Andrew Yang.
Like, that should have been his slogan.
Not a robot.
He sat in the very chair I sat in when we interviewed Dave Rubin.
Oh, yeah.
Andrew Yang, not a communist.
Yeah.
Andrew Yang, I will not punch you in the face.
I don't know.
I'm just trying to spitball some slogans for him that could have worked.
I kept trying to think of Yang Gang jokes.
I know, and Dang Gang.
The Dang Yang Gang.
The old Dang Yang Gang.
Orangutang.
Orangutang Gang Yang.
I don't know.
Yeah, like they're this street gang.
Like leaving heads on people's beds and stuff.
Yang gang.
Distributing $1,000.
Or they're like walking down the street snapping their fingers to the beat.
Like they're in West Side Story.
Oh, no, here comes the Yang Gang.
Yeah, I think it was unfortunate that he got kind of tied in with that $1,000 a month thing was his main thing.
Because I do think he had some stuff going on.
Yeah, I never really heard much bad about him until that hit, and it was like, oh, that seems like kind of goofy.
Yeah, because you know what would end up being in addition to all the entitlement programs, and then it would just go up, and then it would just get worse.
So anyway, rest in peace, Yang.
Rest in peace.
Rest in peace.
Everyone pour a 40 out.
A 40 of grape juice out for the Yang gang.
Drink some tang.
Say some slang.
Pour out some tang.
And sharpen your fang.
He went out with a bang.
And watch Ninja Turtles because there's a bad guy named Krang.
All right, that's it.
I'm cutting you off.
So where do his supporters go now that he's not in the race?
I don't know.
Oh, yeah.
Because that was one of the things I was saying.
I don't know that he was that much of a player.
I mean, he was at 1% or, you know.
I don't know.
Man, 1%er.
I bet everybody was excited.
I think we had some numbers on this, but I think everybody that was super excited about Yang probably isn't excited about anybody else.
Because it was like with Ron Paul, like people were all excited.
I am a Ron Paul fan.
And then it's like, I'm not going to, if he drops out, I'm not going to support anybody else.
Sorry, Yang Gang.
Yeah.
They were the guys with the blue hats on Twitter, right?
I think anybody who has a blue hat in their handle was a Yang guy.
Was it?
Is that what the blue hat was?
I think so.
Remember when he was like squirting whipped cream in these guys' mouths while they're just bending on the ground before him?
What was the point of that?
What's funny is his lawyer, somebody's right next to him, and he's like, when he goes for the second guy, the guy kind of holds him.
He's like, I think the optics are bad on this.
You can see the guy stopping him.
And he's just lost in the moment.
This is kind of connected to nothing, but remember when Ralph Northam was giving that speech apologizing for the blackface photo, and he was talking about how he used to do it.
He used to dress up as Michael Jackson and moonwalk, and then he looks around, and they're like, Can you still moonwalk?
And he looks around like he's about to do it, and his wife grabs him by the shoulder or whatever.
She gives him a look and shakes her head, and he looks back.
He's like, No, I'm not going to do it right now.
And when a reporter inquired if he could still moonwalk, the governor seemed to want to try.
Are you still able to moonwalk?
Inappropriate circumstances.
My wife says, inappropriate circumstances.
Can you still do the tap dance?
So, Yang, maybe if you hadn't done the whipped cream thing, you'd still be in, but we're going to miss him.
Whipped cream ruined him.
Uh-huh.
Now, this just in.
Donald Trump did a flyover of the Daytona 500 in Air Force One.
And so this is NASCAR-related, apparently.
Yes.
You might say that Daytona 500 is NASCAR related.
Yes.
NASCAR is a day.
That's a Daytona thing.
NASCAR thing.
Is that like the Super Bowl of NASCAR?
Sure.
We'll go with that.
So clearly, I'm not the key demographic for this.
But anyway, our headline was the Bloomberg, Bloomberg, stops by Daytona 500 to hand out speeding tickets.
Because he's a jerk.
He likes to hand out tickets, apparently.
We definitely need the parentheses at the end of each of our headlines.
Because he is a jerk.
Because he's an idiot.
Yeah, Bloomberg is the chief moral legislator.
He likes passing all these laws where you can't drink sodas.
Yeah.
I was going to go somewhere with that, but I forgot.
It was straws or sodas.
He doesn't like sugary drinks, right?
I'm sure he banned straws.
I don't know.
But yeah, the sodas was the thing.
He was like, to stop obesity, you can only drink a 12-ounce or 16-ounce or something like that.
And no free refills?
Million-dollar refills.
Like his whole plan is spoiled when someone just goes back for a second.
Yeah.
Nope.
Yeah, so what would be the liberal equivalent to if a Democrat candidate went out and pandered this heavily to his base?
Because I don't know that Trump gained a single vote from doing this.
It's a long-standing tradition, though, because presidents are always going to World Series games, basketball.
Do they go to NASCAR?
I think so.
Even Bush went to NASCAR.
I just saw this discussion on Twitter between Democrats.
I thought that was an interesting question.
What would be the equivalent on the left side?
Yeah.
I was thinking Grateful Dead concert at Ben and Jerry's shop opening.
Bernie Sanders parachutes in with a parachute made from rainbows.
I was about to say rainbows.
They're on the same wavelength here.
Big rainbow parachute going into the Ben and Jerry's opening.
But that's not really a big event.
Yeah, it'd have to be like the big.
What's the big?
It's just Hollywood.
Yeah, I guess.
Oscars.
Yeah, they do kind of do stuff like that, I guess.
Yeah, going to the opening of some crazy movie or something, maybe?
Hamilton.
Hamilton.
Didn't one of the guys get run out of Hamilton?
Mike Pants.
They all started lecturing him from the stage.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's awesome.
Yeah, Dan had mentioned lighting up the White House with the rainbow.
Oh, yeah.
That's kind of pandering.
Yeah.
Right?
Is that pandering?
I guess.
Virtue signaling.
Virtue signaling.
So Trump is NASCAR signaling.
Yeah.
I think it's kind of cool.
He gets a little limo driver.
It doesn't bother me at all.
It actually kind of confuses me why it bothers.
Yeah, this is what we always talk about: is that the same thing the president's been doing for decades.
Trump does it and it's like, why this is a problem?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't get it.
People have a real visceral reaction to NASCAR.
But he's so trumped, though.
Like, just driving around the limo or around the.
I mean, I'm sure he's sitting in the back.
Flyover, too.
Like.
I like the idea that maybe this wasn't scheduled, the plane, and it's flying over, and Trump's like, hey, let's buzz him.
Yeah.
He's knocking on the pilot.
Does he throw stuff out of the plane like fried chicken or anything?
They love airdrop.
Some MAGA hats.
I'm never going to say MAGA. MAGA. MAGA. MAGA. MAGA. MAGA.
So you ever watch NASCAR?
Not a big NASCAR guy.
You look like you.
I don't get it.
Yeah, I just look fat.
That's not what I said.
But I don't get one.
You look white with the beard.
And you could be a NASCAR.
I had friends that were because I grew up around sand dunes.
So everybody was into buggies and stuff.
So they were really into racing and they worked on cars.
I didn't get it.
Once it's around one time, I've got the gist of it.
And then it just keeps happening.
Oh, they're going again.
Yeah.
That happened to me.
I took my son.
First, we went to Monster Trucks and had a blast.
The next year, we went to Motocross.
And when, like, five minutes in, we were bored out of our minds.
Because they're just going around in a circle.
It's cool they go on the jumps over and over again, but it's like they do it so much that it's like walking.
It's like watching a person walk.
It makes a person jumping on a motorcycle as mundane as somebody walking on the sidewalk.
Yeah.
Exhausting.
I've seen a few races just on TV and we'd sit down and watch it for a few hours.
And yeah, okay.
Like hours.
Yeah.
Those are long races.
Wow.
But, you know.
Just fast forward it.
Record it, fast-forward it.
Yeah.
I could never get into it myself.
People like it.
I think it's cool.
And you can have it.
If you like it, I want you to enjoy it.
I think it's cool.
I think there's probably a lot more to it than we see.
Because any sport you get into, it's.
I was this way with baseball for a long time.
I didn't get it.
And I had a friend, Paul, you know, my friend Paul.
And he said, no, there's a lot going on in baseball that you don't see.
Because I'm like, oh, they're just standing there.
He's like, you got to watch the strategy.
You got to watch how the players are shifting.
And I'm like, whoa.
And it's this whole world that opens up.
And I'm sure it's the same thing with NASCAR.
Yeah, I think the boxing.
I got into it.
Oh, really?
I was sitting for a while and suddenly boxing matches where I watched tons of them.
I watched all the original, like, famous matches and stuff.
Because I had done some sparring and gotten to what's going through your head.
And I just got punched.
What's going through your head is the other guy's fist.
Yeah.
Actually, this happened to me with Adam Ford.
When I visited his house in Michigan, he's like, hey, we're going to watch the fight, UFC fight.
And I'd never really watched one before.
And so we sit down and he's explaining, oh, this guy, you got to know this guy's record.
He's coming into this and that, and this guy and that.
And you're just like, whoa, I just thought they just went in and punched each other.
I didn't know there was a whole thing to him.
Anyway.
Next story.
Well, Biden is in trouble.
Uh-oh.
Biden is in trouble because he's not getting a lot of turnout at these caucuses.
But he has a plan.
You know what his plan is?
The Biden campaign is now offering one month of free AOL in exchange for rally attendance.
Sweet.
That's a good idea.
That comes on a CD.
It comes on a CD or flappy disk, your choice.
This Babylon B subscriber, Phil Van Klinken, submitted this idea.
Van Klinken.
Phil Van Klinken.
What does that sound like?
He's my favorite president.
Van Klinken.
He served a good eight years.
And Klinken did.
Yeah.
So now that we've mocked our subscribers, what were you going to say?
I just don't know anything about AOL.
I was never part of it.
You didn't have AOL?
I didn't.
So you didn't have the.
Wait, when you dialed up, did it still do the beep?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like all these demons.
Yeah, it starts off pleasant enough, and then it just descends into the apocalypse.
But we probably have this mental response to it.
Like, oh, the internet is coming.
And then there's a weird beep, beep.
Well, it's like, yeah.
But the funny thing is, like, to us at the time, it sounded like the sound of technology.
Like, to us, it was like.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
It's like you had this positive mental response to it.
It was like a robot awakening.
Yeah.
It's like a monkey if they played a screeching demon noise and then dropped a little food pellet or something.
That was like, that's like for us.
We hear the screeching noise.
We know the internet is coming.
Yeah.
And eventually you'd hear the screeching noise and then you'd be like, huh, internet.
Yeah.
Right.
I'm lost in this analogy.
Well, you know, they would do mental conditioning, like Pavlovian responses.
Like you hear a noise and then you know the food's coming.
Well, to me, it's like you're just proud of it.
Like, because it's new, it's like, ah, the entire World Wide Web is opening before our ears.
But then now that's boring, it's like, okay, we don't need the sound anymore.
It's really loud.
So they just stopped the sound.
Remember how weird it was at first to be like, wait, we'll be online all the time?
Like, you won't connect and then.
Yeah, I know.
I had friends that got, I think it was DSL was one of the early.
Like you would get DSL and it was, you know, I think my AOL modem was 56K or whatever.
And they're getting like.
Yeah, I remember when like a phone.
256K.
Slow reload.
Whatever.
Wow.
Yeah.
That was a revolutionary video when you could watch video and just click and watch it.
We used to like when we got excited, you know, we want to watch something on E-Bomb's World or whatever.
We would just download the video and save it to our hard drive.
And you take like an hour.
Now I have the video saved in my hard drive.
And my friends would come over.
I'm like, have you seen all the funny videos I've collected across the internet?
I have dozens.
I have literally dozens.
My friend was obsessive about recording, like getting movies off of like Kazam or Kazaw.
Yeah.
Kazakh.
Kazah.
But half the time he'd get these bootlegged ones where somebody's filming it from inside of the theater from their coat.
Oh, yeah.
But he'd still, out of pride, he'd still watch it.
Like, I got this movie.
Yeah.
He's like, what?
You don't want in on this?
You want to watch this right now?
I got it earlier.
It's not even in theaters yet or whatever.
I'm like, I don't want to watch some guy's coat video.
I had a friend that was big on, like, like that.
He was big on Pirate Bay, and he would.
Yeah, he would just download movies and he's like, I got this new movie.
And you're like, do you want to watch it?
And he's like, no, I don't really have any new interest in it.
But I just download all the movies that come out.
Yeah.
My dad did that at Blockbuster.
He had that five, you always have five DVDs at a time, you know?
Oh, yeah.
And you can go in and swap them out anytime.
So he would just come home and just record all of them into a library.
Did I already tell this story?
I don't think so.
So he had this message.
Is there any urine involved?
No, you haven't.
But he got all these movies that he didn't even know what they were.
He just, it became such an obsession that he had this huge, he was trying to copy the entire store to his house.
Five DVDs at a time.
And he had them in these hilarious categories because it wasn't like the normal categories they have there where it's like action, drama.
It's like Dila.
And then that's like all the girl movies.
But then there's like.
Dela?
That's his wife's name.
My stepmom.
And then there's, you know, he'd have like Western or whatever.
Then he had Seagal.
And it's just like all Steven Seagal movies.
A true connoisseur.
Yeah.
At Nicole Buster.
But there'd be these like really bad movies.
Like, dad, do you know what this movie is?
He's like, oh, I don't know.
I just go to the next one on the shelf and copy it.
How much money is spent on blank DVDs?
Anyway, that's that story.
That is that story.
My dad's a character.
Yeah.
We need an episode centered on Ethan's dad.
Yeah, we should.
The episode.
Oh, we did do Father's.
We did do a Father episode.
He's getting pretty old, so.
Yeah, so it's kind of amazing.
Like, I think over the fall, I was thinking about who would win the Democratic nomination, and I couldn't see any way that anyone other than Biden would win just because he's such a powerhouse in terms of he was the vice president.
But I never got that.
Nobody really cared about him then.
Yeah, I guess nobody's passionate about him.
It's just, well, I guess it's Biden.
It felt like that.
It is amazing.
I felt like into politics, you get who he is.
But if you go out into normal people on the street, you know, who's Joe Biden?
It's amazing how few people know who he is.
Was it that he wasn't in that diner where that guy didn't know who he was?
Did you show me that, Dan?
Probably.
I think he was standing there, and he's like, I'm Joe Biden.
He's like, who?
He goes, I was the vice president for eight years.
I'm going to make sure I'm not messing this up, but I think that's what happened.
And the guy was like, okay, cool.
And he just goes back to watching his TV at the diner.
It's awesome.
Yeah, I don't know.
It just feels like one of those things that some of these other guys, I don't see like Buddhajig is like this mayor of a small town.
And he's going to be the guy.
I don't know.
I don't get it.
Our last two presidents, I felt that way at the beginning.
That's true.
That's true.
Like when I first saw Obama, I was like, it's not ever going to happen.
He has this weird middle name, Hussein.
And Obama sounds like Osama.
And like, it doesn't.
Who is this guy?
Like, it's just so weird.
And then now it's hard to believe you.
I mean, it makes sense now, looking back.
Yeah.
And then Trump, you know, yeah, yeah, right.
Like, he'd ever be president.
Yeah, I totally felt exactly.
So now the moment I feel that thing about somebody, like Buddha Judge, I immediately go, oh, no, he's going to be president because he's got a weird name and he's weird looking and it doesn't make sense.
It does not make sense.
People who vote.
He's not that weird looking, but people who vote are weird.
Weirdos.
Buddhajej.
But I don't want to have to say that.
Can you imagine a future where we have to say Buddha Jej a lot?
Where we have to say President Pete Buddhaj.
Buddhaj.
Former mayor of Buddha Bended.
Can we just change the pronunciation of something like Buddha Geg or something, make it easier?
I think when I first saw it, I thought Buttergeig or something.
But a geig.
That's what it looks like.
Booty.
Just call him no.
That's a good joke.
We should do a joke about how his name sounds like Booty.
Yeah, let's do it.
Looks like Booty.
He could have his own song.
Jennifer Lopez song.
Does she have a Booty song?
I don't know.
She's known for stuff.
Wow.
Why don't we talk about books?
Let's do it.
And now, the Babylon Bees Topic of the Week.
Books.
Yep.
So readable.
So readable.
So white with words.
White.
Wow.
What's true?
There's no books of black pages.
It's messed up.
Maybe there are.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Maybe like a children's picture book with a page.
It's like said at night time.
The dark stars.
It would be a black page.
White text.
So what was the first book that you read?
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, at an early age, just picture pictures.
Hungry, hungry caterpillar.
Hungry.
Yeah, something like that.
I developed a real extreme love for reading in like the third and fourth grade and discovered the concept of the novel.
And it was just, I was, I would, it was like to the point where I was just in my room, I'd go home, do homework, go to my room, and read for six hours novels.
Wow.
Like, just, I was obsessed.
And it was not like that.
Really?
Yeah.
What was yours?
I did read.
I read some, but I just never, I never got the bug.
Like, I wouldn't read full series.
I wouldn't read it.
But I read some, like, I read the Hardy Boys.
I read a lot of Hardy Boys, yeah.
I read some Stephen King.
I remember I read Misery, and I can't remember what else.
I read a little bit of Neil Gaiman.
Is it Gaiman or Gaiman?
I don't know.
Wasn't allowed.
Wasn't allowed.
Oh, yeah, you weren't literally those.
Jurassic Park.
Although I do need to come back to Stephen King because I want to talk a little bit about it.
But yeah, so like through high school and stuff, and it wasn't until out of high school, when suddenly reading was purely my choice, suddenly I started diving into a lot of it was when I got into apologetics, philosophy, a lot of that stuff.
C.S. Lewis, which led to the G.K. Chesterton bug.
G.K. Chesterton.
It's going to get happening a lot this topic.
So many times.
But then the thing that really got me a bug for fiction, because I actually hadn't read a lot of fiction in my life, was reading to my kids.
I started reading all these books that I'd always intended to read, but for some reason I never read a lot of fiction novels.
And now I read them like crazy to my kids.
So the interesting thing to me about books is that often if I return to an old book, I can remember what I was going through in my life when I read that book.
Yeah, that's true.
Or where I was, where I was sitting when I read it.
That's some albums to music.
It happens to me with music a lot too.
Some with movies and video games, but more, I think more, well, music, probably equally so.
You can listen to an album and remember.
So it's interesting to me because I feel like it really is tied in with development and embracing your values, creating your values, you know, or discovering the values that are out there, I guess, as Chesterton would say.
GK Chesterton.
Discovering objective truth.
That might have been my first time getting Chesterton.
So what do we do?
We're doing like our.
Yeah, why don't we top five, or does it matter how top, we'll just kind of go off on books for a while?
Yeah, we could talk about our favorites.
This could be fiction or non-fiction?
Just books that impacted us.
You can see we planned this out a lot.
Let's do anything you want, although mine will be more fiction.
Okay.
Because I like fiction better.
Mine will probably mostly be fiction.
I like fake things more than real things.
Well, yeah, I'm not going to go in any particular order, but let me talk about the best book ever written, Lord of the Rings.
Okay.
I've still never read the third one.
Okay, and I want to use this to talk about, because you talked about how you've discovered reading for pleasure when you were older.
And I do think that school a lot of times ruins kids for reading.
Yeah.
Because they pick horrible books.
I hated literature classes and stuff because, you know, this whole like, what is the, I specifically remember like freshman year of high school talking about the Scarlet Letter.
I think it was a Scarlet Letter.
And there was some rosebush the author was describing.
You know, we had to write like a five-page essay on what the rosebush represents.
And it's like, I don't, I don't know, and I don't care.
And I don't, you know, I don't know.
I feel like, I feel like schools do a very bad job of telling kids, like, you can read this book and enjoy it because it's a very good story.
Yeah.
You know, you don't have to stop and analyze everything.
That really made me hate reading for a while.
Yeah, I don't know what it was.
I mean, I think part of it is I just didn't like being told what to do.
So, if you tell me this is the book you're going to read, then you really don't want to.
That's absolutely part of it.
Like, you must read this book.
You know, okay.
It would be awesome if it would just here's a list of approved books.
Yeah.
You pick one.
And there was some of that where they would say, like, here's a hundred books to pick from for your report and pick one that sounds interesting.
But they always pick from.
I feel like a lot of the books that are considered classics now are not.
Like, should not be on that list because they're not good books.
And I think a lot of times they're picked for their pictures.
What are some of your hot takes?
Books that should not be classics.
Yeah, Great Gatsby.
I remember I didn't want to read that.
Have you read it?
Yeah, I had to read it in freshman year of high school or something.
I don't feel like I have the authority to say that.
It's bold.
Yeah, Great Gatsby for sure.
You would call it the mediocre Gatsby.
The two-star out of five Gatsby.
Oh, what's the guy that wrote?
It wasn't a novel, I don't think, but he wrote about the wilderness all the time.
Hemingway?
Was it Hemingway?
Ernest Hemingway?
Walden.
Emerson.
Yeah, that guy.
Ralph Waldo.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
And he would just write this whole 300-page book collections of his musings in the forest.
It's like existentialist volume.
He's just like, oh, my God.
Please kill me.
Please take me out to this forest and let a tree fall on top of me.
Horrible.
That I may be devoured by weasels.
So this is your hot take for today, guys.
Those are bad.
All right.
I actually like Moby Dick.
Yeah.
Moby Dick's pretty good.
I just finished Moby Dick.
I got like a file.
I have trouble finishing it as well.
My audiobook died on me and I lost my place.
I like it until he gets to that one chapter where he starts describing whales.
Yeah, there's certain chapters where it's purely educational, and you're like, no, maybe I should have got the abridged version.
And I've heard people say, I've heard people say that all the information in there is wrong as well.
He just made it up.
It's fan fiction.
Whaling fanfiction.
The fascinating thing about Moby Dick, if you don't know this, is that the author never became famous for it.
Yeah, which is.
He was still working at Ellis Island as just working in the museum or there and whatever the just working.
Normal job.
Some guy.
But yeah, that's a manly book.
Like you read that and you feel manly reading it.
It's good.
Yeah, you just want to go out and kill the whale or something.
It feels very much like an old pirate sitting there telling you a story.
It's like really.
Yeah.
It's good.
I agree.
I was trying to look up some other classics, but I can't think of any more at the moment.
So let me go back to Lord of the Rings.
Okay.
So we had a teacher, I think it was in sixth grade, that all of a sudden out of nowhere goes, he's a total nerd, and he goes, we're going to read The Hobbit.
And it's like, it's not on.
I don't know if this is common.
So tell me, listeners, if this is common, but for someone to be like, we're reading The Lord of the Rings in elementary school seemed, or middle school, I guess.
It doesn't seem like that's very commonly assigned.
Like, it's not in that list of classic novels, even though it is a classic novel.
I don't remember if we did or not.
I don't think we did.
And it was a total nerd thing, and he like would go through every chapter.
And you could tell that he loved this book.
Yeah.
He was super excited by this book.
And we had to go into the history of Middle Earth.
And it was like this whole world opened up for me.
So I went to the library, and I think this was kind of by accident, but I saw another cool fantasy book.
I want to read some fantasy.
So I checked out The Two Towers, which is the second book of Lord of the Rings.
Oh, so you just did the first book?
No.
Or did you The Hobbit?
The Hobbit, which is the prequel.
Okay, yeah.
So then I go check out the second book.
So I skipped Fellowship of the Room entirely.
I didn't know it was part of the same series.
I check out Two Towers, and it starts out with the scene of Boromir.
Been killed by these arrows, and he's lying on the tree.
And Legolas and Aragorn and stuff are trying to figure out what to do next.
And so it was very confusing, but it was actually a really dramatic way to start it.
Like, oh, this guy got killed, and they're trying this party splitting up, and they're trying to go out.
So then later, I learned that there were more books.
So then I went back and got fellowship, reread Through Towers, and then read Return of the King.
And it just fell in love.
And every time I read Lord of the Rings, I feel like I'm returning to this land of Middle-earth.
Like it's this fantasy land that exists somewhere that I go to.
And I hang out and I smoke pipeweed with Bilbo and Frodo and stuff.
Yeah, I think I had for some reason resisted Tolkien for like most of my life.
I don't know why.
I always had a weird, I don't know why I thought I wouldn't like it.
But when I find everybody that I like likes it, so people of good taste like it.
So I finally read The Hobbit to my kids.
I read it to myself first.
I was like, this is not just good.
I don't know.
It's a book you get lost in.
I think that's what Tolkien does is he brings you into a world and you're lost in it.
And you remember it and you want to go back there after you're done.
Yes, exactly.
And so I really wanted to take my kids there.
So you said I was a family vacation to Middle-earth.
Yeah, and I was amazed how much they dug it when I read it to him.
And I did think that if they sat there and tried to read it to themselves, I don't know if it would have had the same impact.
It's like when we read it out loud together, it was a really special.
That was one of the most special books I read out loud to my kids.
I can't wait to read it to my other two.
So that's in one of my books for sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I love how every time I reread Lord of the Rings, I come up with something new.
I come out with new observations and a new focus.
So this last time that I reread it about a year ago, I noticed that Tolkien often, one of the main themes that he hits on is this passage of time and how this world that he's describing, within the Lord of the Rings book, the events that happen are such a small part of the overall history of Middle-earth.
And so when they get to Tom Bombadil, he's this kind of eternal creature who's been there since the beginning.
He talks and he's got this great monologue or soliloquy or whatever you want to call it, where he talks, he goes on about all the empires that have risen and fallen.
And he doesn't care about Sauron.
He's like, ah, Sauron's going to Sauron will fall.
Don't worry about him.
It's like, he doesn't want to get involved because he's just like, oh, he's just another one of these evil creatures that comes along and they get defeated.
They fade away.
And it was actually really encouraging to me because we get stuck in this mindset of like, you know, whatever evil we're facing now.
We hear this in politics a lot.
Like, this is an unprecedented time and this will.
Yeah, this is an unprecedented time for our republic.
And this is the worst time we are facing.
Election is the most important election of our lifetime.
Babylon B article, right?
This may be.
And so to go, you know what?
Take a deep breath and step back.
Be Tom Bombadil.
Be Tom Bombadil, everybody.
And if you would just watch the movies, you wouldn't know who that is.
So read the books.
All right, your pick.
What book are you thinking of in your head right now, sir?
Well, another book that had a huge impact on me was Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
I feel like that's like everybody who says that, but that was a book that I read a gazillion times.
I actually recorded the audiobook for myself.
Really?
So I would learn it better.
So I like recorded, I would record a few chapters at a time, and then I'd listen to it while I worked.
You would say the word.
I'd read it out loud.
You read it out loud to yourself.
Yeah.
Like on a cassette?
Or was this?
What did I use?
I think it may have been a cassette.
Eight tracks.
This was on a vinyl record.
This would be like 2000-ish.
Gramophone.
So I can't remember what I was using at that time.
But yeah, that's cool.
Record it and listen to it, read it.
I did have cassettes.
I remember when I had cassettes I rented from the library, maybe.
It had, I can't remember what it was, like some guy who played The Beast and Beauty and the Beast.
Peter, some fancy British guy.
Peter Beast.
But yeah, I mean, just and that's one reason I know the first half of the books much better than the second half.
But all those basic concepts.
If I remember that the last chapter was like forgettable.
And then he started talking about evolution and all this stuff.
I remember the very end being really interesting because he was talking about art and creativity and stuff.
I remember being kind of fascinated by that last part.
It really made sense to me.
But yeah, just a lot of the basic concepts of why is there a God.
It really, the basic arguments of Mere Christianity really have stuck with me.
I really don't doubt.
I just, I have no doubt about there being a God almost ever.
Like some people find it very hard to believe.
I think the stuff I struggle with more is in the details is when I get more struggly.
It's like, how do you know these details?
How do you know it's exactly this or whatever?
But like the idea that there is a God, that he's moral and that he's involved in our lives in some way.
Those basics, he lays them out so well that five.
I don't know.
Anyway, Mere Christianity is a good book.
In conclusion.
In conclusion.
Yeah, I'll just chime in that my grandpa died when I was 13, like just before my 13th birthday.
And we were, you know, ransacking the library at his house, and I got a copy of Mere Christianity after he passed away.
And I read it.
Ransacking.
Yeah, whatever the word is.
I mean, we were allowed.
He said, you guys want any books that grandpa had?
And so I took Mere Christianity and also Haw Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth, which didn't have quite as much of an impact.
But Mere Christianity.
And I remember being in my room reading Mere Christianity, and it was very similar.
Just like, wow, there are great philosophical moral arguments for the existence of God and for Christ and what he did.
It was amazing to me.
I still use, in my head, I still think about the logical arguments that Lewis used because they're so good.
The analogies he makes are perfect.
And what's great about it is it's not just cerebral, like, here are proofs that there is God, but it's like how you live your Christian life.
And, you know, there was a lot of stuff in there about Christian living specifically.
I think that was the book where he used the analogy of the piano, and he talked about how every human act is amoral.
It's just like keys on a piano.
And so you can, like, there's a time and place for everything, but you have to follow sheet music.
And so you can't just hit everything at the same time.
So he's talking about how people will overemphasize one thing.
Right.
And that's like someone slamming the key over and over again.
You know, and it's like, that's not time for that.
Yeah.
That's basically an argument, basically, an argument about moderation.
But, you know, just I think about that a lot.
Yeah, I always go back to Lewis.
I think this is a Mere Christianity, but he definitely wrote it.
Because Lewis was one of those authors I got so into.
I read so many of his stuff.
That might not even be what it's in.
But yeah, if you look at creation from the perspective of a character in a story.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the idea of things we that the moment somebody says we should know this about God.
It's like, would a character in a story know that about their author?
Like they're exactly.
Their authors all around them.
It's in everything that they are in, but they beside, except for the author's face and the author's voice.
Like the author exists all around them, but he's outside of it.
Right.
He's all he's all of it, but he's not in it.
It's uh, I don't know.
So I find those analogies endlessly fascinating.
And also with the decisions that when I think about writing stories, when you think about the decisions God has made that you get, you know, confused about or whatever, from the perspective of the characters in the book, you go, why would the author ever put us through this?
Why would the author ever do this?
Why would this chapter exist?
But as a storyteller, you understand that there's, you know, be a boring book.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it gives you a good sense of humility in your place.
Yeah.
He's like, I demand that I know this from God.
It's like, yeah, and stories are about transformation.
The characters can never transform to become what they're going to become if they don't go through these things.
But I guess I do have to say that it was Lewis that led me to Chesterton.
And I'll never forget the day.
Okay, here it goes.
JK Chesterton.
You're getting sick of it.
Well, stop mentioning Chesterton.
But I read Orthodoxy for the first time.
Actually, no, I may have read Heretics First because he wrote the book Heretics First, which is him taking on all these different ideas of his time.
And he's kind of jokingly called them all heretics.
I mean, he means they are heretical ideas, but he's in his joking, jovial Chesterton way.
So after he wrote that book, you know, then people are always like, well, then what is your big idea?
If they're all heretics, what's, you know, so he wrote Orthodoxy, and that's kind of his statement of faith, why he believes what he believes.
And Orthodoxy is, you know, one thing that's nice about Lewis is he's very original in the way he makes his arguments.
Chesterton is like that times a thousand.
Like, he just is such an original voice.
Nobody could imitate it.
Well, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like he's making arguments.
Right.
Feels like he is just genuinely thinking out loud about things and writing them.
Right, right.
Well, it's a different style.
Well, I mean, we've read also, we've been reading a lot of his essays that aren't quite as straightforward as some of his essays, and Orthodoxy are a little more because the whole book's about a certain topic.
Sure, it's a little easier to follow, kind of, but he's still, he's a different style of writing.
I could never get through Orthodoxy.
I've tried a few times.
I've been enjoying when we've been meeting up and reading In Defense of Sanity because it is more piecemeal.
Yeah.
Oh, let's think about that.
So maybe once I've accustomed my brain to you do have to accustom yourself to the way he thinks and talks because he'll refer to things.
For instance, madmen or cycles and circles.
Like you'll start to realize he'll refer to these things a lot and you'll go, oh, I get that idea now.
And he keeps bringing it up.
Yeah.
But yeah, he speaks in a language.
But I think the thing that Chester really blew my mind about was wonder.
Like he really talks about wonder, your place in the world, how fascinating this life is, how little we know.
Really basic ideas, but he writes about it so beautifully.
I don't think I've ever recovered from that.
It's changed my view of life.
Looking from a humble place, choosing to be the pygmy, looking at life through a microscope instead of a telescope.
Yeah.
I like when we read Chesterton, how it seems like he's high all the time.
Yeah, there are certain ones who are really sound.
I think when that cheese essay.
That one's just awesome.
It's great.
He's talking about cheese and his whole.
I don't know if he has a point, but he's talking about cheese.
Yeah.
And all the great poets have never seen it.
That makes a whole analogy.
How everywhere you go, everyone has their own cheese.
And it's like a special, unique thing that you're tasting their culture.
And he's talking about how sad it is that that's going away.
Everything else, you know, how he talked about how he wanted to murder the waiter who tried to give him biscuits with his cheese, because it basically means crackers.
Because he was talking about how the bread is original and the cheese is original.
And now they just want this packaged stuff.
If he tasted like American cheese, he'd probably lose his mind.
He'd want to murder somebody.
He'd just immediately catch fire and explode.
Yeah, so what I love about him is there was that essay where he was talking about painting his ceiling, and he wakes up in the morning, he looks at this blank ceiling, and he's like, I need to put chalk on the end of my broom and paintbrushes, yeah.
Paintbrushes and paint my ceiling.
And he'll talk about how he's talking to his wife about this.
He's like, we're going to paint the ceiling.
And I like how just how disruptive he would have been.
And I don't know if he actually said these things out loud.
But in that cheese essay, yeah, he's talking about how he's all ranting at the waiter about cheese.
And do you even put any thought into your cheese?
You dare to offer me biscuits?
No, he is almost every time we read him, at least at one point in almost every essay, we all laugh out loud.
Like they're genuinely funny stuff, Chesterton says.
It's still funny today.
The waiter brought me cheese indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces.
And it is the awful fact that instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits.
Biscuits to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides.
Biscuits to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread.
I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms.
I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom humanity had joined.
Like, can you imagine serving?
I just imagine that this waiter like serving this guy also biscuits and cheese.
Yeah, there's that one where he talks about this giant speech he gives this guy who can't get his drawer open.
Oh, yeah.
Just think.
Just think of all the comedy that you're involved in here.
Imagine that you are in a battle with a demon or something like that.
The war for the evil.
You will no longer be frustrated.
You'll shout with glory.
Yeah, and I've appreciated you, Ethan, for reintroducing me to Chesterton because I did try to read Orthodoxy around the same.
After I read Mere Christianity, everybody said, oh, you need to read Orthodoxy.
And I tried to read it.
I know it.
It's a different way of thinking.
It's not.
But I totally recommend if you are interested in Chesterton, it's really good for reading out loud and discussing because it really helps to digest it with other people, especially someone who's already read some.
Maybe we'll get those Chesterton recordings on here sometime when we do those readings.
Another book that influenced me greatly was Pilgrim's Progress.
I don't know if you ever read it.
I started, I never got into it.
Super good.
It was a similar thing, I think, where I picked up a copy for a quarter of a thrift store and it just blew my mind.
One of those things that really inspired me.
What else?
What else we got?
What did I answer on Twitter?
What did I put on Twitter?
Oh, yeah, so this all came from a Twitter thread that I don't.
Who started this Twitter thing?
I got invited.
It's one of those ones where you invite to see what books they like.
So we all started posting our novels that shaped us, which is an interesting question because it's not the same as your favorite novels.
Because my favorite novels would actually be different than the novels that shaped me as it's at a certain time in your life.
So I'm actually a huge Stephen King fan, and I've read almost everything he's ever written, but only over the last two years.
Wow.
It's a lot of reading.
And then I just burned out and stopped reading him entirely.
Well, basically, because I had finished everything he'd written except the bad stuff.
Because I read the Dark Tower series, which is basically his crowning achievement.
I've tried multiple times to get into that.
So the first book is great.
The second book is great.
The third book is great.
The fourth book is.
I've heard so everybody else tells me the first book is hard to get through.
Really, I loved it.
It's just like it's actually a collection of short stories.
So it's just this gunslinger that's chasing this weird wizard guy through the floor through the desert.
And it's just like, it's not very well connected.
But I wish books had a little summary at the end of each chapter.
Like, this is what you need to do.
This is what just happened.
I need that.
But the second and third books are crazy.
It basically becomes this whole thing of like all universe.
It's a multiverse.
Everything's connected.
So he's jumping back and forth in time, and characters are coming from other franchises.
Characters are coming from like Star Wars and Harry Potter and all this stuff.
I don't even know if he's allowed to do legally, but things are coming in that this whole multiverse is coming together.
But then the last book is horrible, and there's this giant spider in a diaper that has a face of a baby and it's being cared for by a robot.
And I did not know it was happening, and I stopped reading it.
So I was kind of disappointed that it was allowed at the end.
But anyway, I really do like, I mean, Stephen King, he says crazy political things on Twitter, and he's kind of a controversial.
That's the weird thing about him is that he's such a good writer on Twitter.
He's really bad at tweeting.
He's so unoriginal and uninteresting.
He sounds like a 13-year-old.
But what I do like about his stuff is there really is this very real, like, it's like humans kind of searching for meaning and just trying, like, it's kind of like how far can a human go?
What lengths can you push a human to and have them retain sanity and retain their humanness?
You know, and I he explores that topic a lot.
And obviously, not from a Christian perspective, but I think there's a lot to be learned from stuff like that.
So, Stephen King.
Totally.
My favorite would be probably be one of his Dark Tower books or The Shining, maybe Misery.
I only recently started reading Charles Dickens, and it's probably only because this is the first one that I really, really dug into.
Though I love both Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.
I really got into David Copperfield.
I think probably because I didn't expect to.
I thought it was going to be boring, but I was so wrapped up in those characters.
And I think that what well, part of the experience is I did mostly audiobook, and there's an excellent audiobook version of it.
Richard Armitage, the guy that plays the Hot Hobbit.
The Hot?
Who's the Hot Hobbit?
Remember the good-looking Hobbit from the Hobbit movies?
The King one?
Thorin?
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
He's the good-looking Hobbit.
He's not the good-looking Hobbit.
He's attractive, though.
It's just weird.
Thorin Oakenshield.
Because if you look at other Hobbit artists, he looks like Daily Strybert with giant noses and ears and stuff, but he may.
But he's not the one who actually gets involved in the romantic love triangle with the elephants too.
Okay.
Yeah, I don't know.
Forbidden Love.
Those movies were a blur for me.
Thorin Oakenshield.
Yeah, he's the Oakenshield guy.
But anyway, he read it and he does this amazing.
He does all the voices so well.
Like really well acted.
That's great.
Highly recommended this when he does the voice of the Fisherman guy and he has this emotion behind it.
It's so good.
Yeah, I think that what that awoke in me was that how much character does drive story?
Because stuff happens in Charles Dickens, but his characters are just so rich that you just want to be around them and hear them interact.
Yeah.
Yeah, I really enjoyed Stephen King's own writing when he talks about how a lot of times he just puts his characters in situations, starts running the chapter, and it's like, I don't know what's going to happen.
We're going to let the characters bounce off each other and see what happens.
So it is interesting, that character-driven element.
I always thought people sketched out novels and just kind of went like, this happens, this happens, this happens.
To see your character actually drive it is interesting.
Yeah, that's the hardest thing for me when I try to write.
I do tend to focus on plot.
And my characters become very, I don't know, just basic.
Very possumy.
Possumy, yeah.
Or I don't know really who they are.
You know, like they are generic is like the right word.
They're just not.
They're not fleshed out.
And I don't know how you flesh a character out before you start writing it.
I don't know if that's just, you just got to jump and start writing them or what.
But yeah, so Dickens, I get it.
I get why he's so popular.
Now that I've read a couple of his books, I've tried a few times, and I actually like it, but I just haven't finished it.
So I'm going to have to.
The weird thing about them is they're written in a time where each chapter would come out every week or whatever in a newspaper.
So to read them all back to back is kind of exhausting.
It's not really meant.
That's not how they're meant to be read, yeah.
But I really do think they're meant.
I read Oliver Twist Out Loud to my son, and it reads out loud very well.
It's a very fun book to read out loud.
I'll throw in there screw tape letters.
That was a huge impact on me.
Later in life, but I really enjoyed some sci-fi like Dune, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Those were just amazing to me.
H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors.
Now I've read almost everything he's ever written.
And again, that's something I just discovered recently.
I've read just the one with the fish people.
Yeah.
Insmith.
Insmith.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just one, I mean, it's one more Chesterton book, but The Ball on the Cross.
G.K. Chesterton.
If we're going to talk fiction, because he wrote fiction as well.
Setting the record here.
The Ball on the Cross is awesome.
It's about an atheist and a Catholic, and they want to have a duel to the death about the existence of God and how they've insulted each other's beliefs.
But all of society is trying to stop them because they care more about just not fighting or just not, you know, not getting so much.
Just be polite.
Polite society is just trying to stop them.
So yeah, it's like a buddy comedy.
And they keep interacting with different philosophies throughout the book while they're being chased by the cops and all of society.
It's such a great concept.
And I love it.
It amazed me how cinematically it was written, like this chase sequence.
Chase sequence, chase sequence after chase sequence.
Yeah.
They've kind of naturally seen each other.
Very British comedy, yeah.
I could imagine it being like an Edgar Wright film if he was a Christian.
Who is that?
He did like Hot Fuzz, Sean of the Dead.
Gotcha. 1984.
Anything dystopian you like?
I read 1984 more recently, a few years ago.
A lot of it didn't stick with me.
A lot of these more complicated books don't stick with me.
I don't understand.
Again, these are the things like this list of books.
Like if these had been assigned to me in high school or something, maybe I wouldn't have liked them because they were assigned to me.
But at the same time, it's like, why didn't they assign these?
You'd have all these kids super interested in reading.
Yeah, 1984, I think, obviously just so insightful.
Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is also great.
And an hour-long read or whatever.
Yeah, it's so short.
You can just barrel through it, which is awesome.
Yeah.
I mean, the Rolled Doll books had a big impact on me.
Just made me excited about reading books to my kids.
So I think I've talked about that plenty in the past.
But he's an author that excites me.
And it's just because seeing the way my kids' eyes started to glow as I read to them.
And I remember especially when I finished the BFG, the way that the ending was just, they were just like, there's this kind of mind-blown thing going on.
It's sad for it to be over, kind of thing.
Yeah.
I'll just say that I think one thing that I learned was just that it's okay to enjoy a book just for a good narrative.
And I think God really does really did give us literature as a gift in itself.
We've talked about this before how Christians tend to think a story has to directly point to Christ.
Right.
Yeah.
It has to be like a Bible story.
Yeah.
I mean, I read a lot of Frank Peretti growing up.
It has to be fireproof.
Yeah.
I mean, I read a lot of Frank Peretti growing up where he does, you know, specifically set in a church thing, or there's specifically demons attacking.
And he's a great writer, and some of those books are good, obviously.
But I think I have been able to expand more recently and go, oh, narrative is something that God has given us.
And stories, God gave us stories, and that makes us human in a way that the animals don't enjoy stories.
There's a line in Stephen King's It, which I thought was one of his worst books, but there's a line in the beginning where he says, there's a teacher character, a writer, a Bill character, I think, and he's talking about how he's teaching a class or something.
And it's kind of like that thing where there's a war in the school going on between the people who want to read real literature and the people who just want to read monster stories or whatever.
His character likes the monster stories or something.
When he says something like, can't a story just be a story?
Can't it just be a good story?
Because I think in the class they wanted to analyze, well, the monster represents this and that.
It's like, can it just be a good monster story?
And obviously it was Stephen King just speaking through his character.
But I have come to appreciate that perspective that I can just watch a good read a good monster story or a good horror story or a good fantasy and be like, wow, that's cool.
Yeah, the whole idea that narrative makes just why do humans want to tell stories?
I think we're going to talk to Brian Goodow about this coming up.
Yeah, this is a big preview for that.
But yeah, to me, there's something very theological just in the idea that we thrive on story.
And we see meaning in a sequence of events.
Yeah.
Where an animal would just say, I ate, I slept, I pooped.
And we see meaning there.
I don't even know if they'd say that.
They'd just be like, I currently am hungry.
Yeah, for sure.
What would a bear say about what would a bear?
A bearative.
I say we save one more book each for the subscriber portion.
Okay, I will talk about.
Don't say what it's going to be.
It's a surprise.
I will talk about a series of my life where I read like maybe 50 novels.
50 Shades of Gray.
50 Shades of Gray.
No.
About 40 to 50 novels, and I'll tell you what they are.
That's going to be long.
Well, it'll be short.
Okay.
All right.
And we'll read some more news stories.
Let's do hate mail.
Oh, yeah.
Hate mail.
Are we doing Love Mail first or hate mail?
Do you want to do Love Mail first?
Yeah, let's do Love Mail first.
Love Mail, baby.
Well, all of us of the Babylon Bee, we're extremely touched to have received an email from somebody whose name I do not know.
I figure you have the email.
It's not because I have a new phone, and my front app is not logging in.
Okay.
We received an email from a lady named Dawn, and she told us that one year ago, her spouse of 17 years passed away.
She said he was 40, 41.
Yeah, 41 years old, I believe.
And kind of said, believe it or not, one of the things that got me through this tough year was the Babylon Bee podcast.
and that's one of those things where i'm like really the babylon jaw just kind of hit the floor when somebody yeah like like what i like us just talking about the news in a silly way help somebody like this And it's like, not that I think we deserve that praise, but it was just, it was interesting to me that and encouraging to us that God used the Babylon Bee podcast in that way.
God used just us trying to chill out about the news to help her help her out a little bit.
You got some of that.
Yeah, I have the email here.
You want to read a bit of it, maybe?
Yeah, she said, when you cry every day, the only way you can deal with life is to try to find humor in everything.
Then I discovered the new Babylon Bee podcast.
You guys were a lifeline.
I could still keep up with what was going on, but through the lens of humor and absurdity.
I can't tell you how hard my 14-year-old son and I would laugh at the dramatic readings of Hate Mail, which we really miss, by the way.
And you have no idea how much we needed something to laugh at.
I know you are probably tempted sometimes to wonder if running a satire website really matters, but I can tell you firsthand that you are doing God's work.
The world needs someone to make them laugh and also show them how stupid and silly the people who desire to rule them really are.
So thank you for your part in helping me through the worst year of my life.
That's from Dawn.
Wow.
But yeah, I think that's an email that we all kind of.
Like, Dawn, I don't know if she's even had her.
Has she been replied to yet?
Yeah, I replied.
Or is this the reply?
I replied.
It took us a few days because we just kind of all sat around it in silence.
We were all sitting there in silence, like, who wants to reply?
Like, none of us felt worthy.
Should we do a special episode for her?
Should we like send her a fruit basket?
But Dawn, thank you so much.
It's, I don't know.
I think all of us just, we think about what that would be like to have that horrible thing happen that you've had to go through.
And it's un there's just like me and Kyle just sat there and talked about like, I don't know, I can't even pre-plan what I would do.
I can't even think about it.
I can't go there mentally.
Right.
And I think God gives you the grace when it happens, you know.
Yeah.
And I can't begin to imagine if one of my family members, something like that were to happen.
I mean.
But the idea that we could have any kind of help through that, that is a blessing to us just for you to tell us that.
Thank you.
God bless you.
And listeners, keep Dawn in your prayers.
Yeah.
And because Don has specifically requested some hate mail.
Let's do some hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
It's such a beautiful auto tip.
It gets better every time a week.
We do need to get Dave to do a dramatic reading.
Okay.
Because Don has requested it.
Okay.
So let's do that.
What's the email?
Okay.
Y'all are an abomination spreading your trash.
Y'all.
Why not spread truth and love?
Wow.
Poignant.
See, that one could use a Dave reading.
So, Don, there's your Dave reading.
We're going to do a Dave reading?
Are we going to do like a Southern?
Like a Southern fiery preacher?
Y'all are an abomination.
Because there are word abominations in there.
We've got to have like a Southern.
It gets very kind of meaningful at the end.
Why not spread truth?
And love.
We could just throw Kubai on at the end.
So it's like apocalyptic or screaming.
Why not tooth and love?
Kumbaya.
Something like that.
Well, instead of us imitating it, let's just see what Dave does.
Here it is.
Yes.
Y'all are an abomination spreading your trash.
Why not spread truth and love?
Kumbaya.
All right, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in.
Yeah, we're going to be up on our subscriber portion with even more meandering nonsense.
But on top of that, we'll talk about some new books or a couple more books and a couple more news stories.
The rest of this podcast is in our super exclusive premium subscriber lounge.
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dillon for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Dave D'Andrea, the voice of the Babylon Bee, reminding you to sleep fully clothed and armed in case of a home invasion.