This is the Babylon Bee weekly news podcast for the week of 4/29/2020. In this episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk about the biggest stories of the week like Kim Jong Un being Un-dead, doctor Trump talking about disinfectant being used to clean the body, and the oppression of the American people under this lockdown being so bad that Trump has to tell the governors to "let my people go!" This episode is a must listen for the 'Go Down Donald' music track alone which we spent way too much time on. They also talk about why staring at a TV isn't church. In the subscriber portion, subscribers get to listen to Kyle and Ethan dig into the mail bag where they find an audio file sent to us by a subscriber! They talk about worship songs or worship leader habits that really bug them and answer other deep questions from subscribers. Send your emails to podcast@babylonbee.com and maybe we will answer you in our next Mailbag segment! If you are hurting financially right now, check out our $100,000 COVID relief fund set up by Seth Dillon which you can find out more about by contacting us at our website. If you need financial help contact us! Also donate if you are able to chip in to help! Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Show Outline Introduction - Kyle and Ethan talk about waterslides and hotdogs and shampoo. Stuff That's Good - Kyle: H.P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, The Festival, Rats in the Walls, The Hound Ethan: Like Trees Walking Podcast These Things Are Weird - Ontario woman's life saved by breast implant that deflected bullet Dirt bikers make use of sand-covered skate park in California Oregon man drove to 11 different Wendy's restaurants twice in 1 day to stock up on free nuggets, report says Woman 'wakes up in a body bag after mistakenly being declared dead' Stories of the Week Story 1 - North Korea Reports Kim Jong Un Is 'Most Alive Person In Universe' NBC's Katy Tur tweeted then quickly deleted a tweet saying he was brain dead Conflicting rumors were circulating that the North Korean dictator had to have heart surgery to put a stent put in and that he was either dead or in a vegitative state Liberals started thirsting for a woman dictator in his sister Kim Yo Jong North Korea is going to get a woman leader before the US? LET THAT SINK IN PEOPLE Other countries that beat the US to a woman leader Kyle reads a very real and not fake at all statement from the People's Republic Of North Korea Story 2 - Trump Threatens More Plagues Unless State Governors Let His People Go Trump wants to start recommending phases of opening up the economy. But California, Oregon & Washington Announce Western States Pact in which they will only open up their states when SCIENCE says to. Kyle and Ethan hit the guitar and banjo for a new version of an old classic, Let My People Go. (Begins at 00:29:11) Go down Donald, way down in Michigan Tell old Whitmer to let my people go When buyin' guns and seeds was banned (Let my people go) Oppressed so hard they could not stand (Let My people go) "Go down , Donald way down in Cali Land Tell old Gavin to let the skaters go" (LET THE SKATERS GO) So Trump spoke to the press and there decreed (Let My people go) But CNN -wouldn't air the feed (Let My people go) Yes the protesters said, "come down (COME DOWN), Donald, (DONALD) way (WAY) down (DOWN) at the Bass Pro" BASS PRO Tell those governors to let them buy ammo (LET THEM BUY AMMO) Trump said, "If you want to end the quarantine, (Why not give bleach a go?) Hit em with hydroxychloroquine (Let the Clorox flow!") God, The Lord said, "Go down, (GO DOWN) Donald,(DONALD) way (WAY) down (DOWN) to America" Tell Dem TELL DEM governors GOVERNORS to let My people go Tell Dem TELL DEM governors GOVERNORS let My people go Story 3 - Trump Says To Drink Lots Of Water, Media Reports He Told Everyone To Drown Themselves Trump seemed to be pontificating before the press about things he was discussing with his experts about in coming up with possible treatments to defeat coronavirus. The corporate press immediately reported that Trump was advising the public to drink bleach and disinfectants and blue checks and Democrats jumped over it. Topic of the Week - Why go to church? With most people streaming church services, is there a reason to go back? Why should Christians have fellowship in person? Broader cultural effects of religion and church attendance Hebrews 10:25 - And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42) - Most of these things are not very zoom-friendly Church as performance versus church as participation in the body If you're just there to see a cool concert and speech, then really there is no difference between attending and streaming. The consumerism mindset, church as a product Communion, baptism, church discipline Also need to consider that you go to church to serve others not just to receive a message or receive service yourself Plus, pastors who preach on a live stream are really flat and two-dimensional. They aren't very responsive. It's like talking to a wall. Hate Mail- Get rid of that Mullet guy!! Paid-subscriber portion (Starts at 01:08:22) Mailbag! - We get a audio clip from a fan and an email. Subscribers, please send you emails and short audio files to our mailbag at podcast@babylonbee.com so Kyle and Ethan can answer your questions or talk about the things you want to hear about. Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, we bring you up-to-the-minute factual inaccuracy and a heavy dose of moral truth with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
This is the Babylon Bee.
Fake news you can trust.
Greetings, weary travelers.
Yes.
You have come to the nice tavern of the Babylon Bee.
And in front of you stand two bartenders.
One of them looks kind of like Thor.
Is that me?
Yeah.
And the other one looks kind of like Tony Stark.
But both of them are like the Walmart brand.
Poor, very, very poor man's version.
Of those things.
I mean, I'm, what would I be?
The king size?
I don't know what you call that.
I wasn't going to say that.
Yeah.
No, you're such a nice guy.
But.
It's just not the first thing.
Maybe you see like my eyes and my beard, you think Thor, but that's about all I got.
That's Thor.
If we wanted to do like the buddy Halloween costume thing, I think we could do a good.
I like it.
Because people expect and they accept the generic brand look when you're on Halloween.
The generic brand, what?
Like, you know, if you're black and you dress up as Captain America, it's like we accept that, you know, even if you don't look like I'm fat and I dress like Captain America is black now because of the.
Yeah.
Because he passed on the shield at the end.
As he has been in the comics, I think, sometimes.
But yeah, except even if you don't look like the...
Anyway, so you walk into this tavern and we're sitting here and we greet you.
So roll for initiative.
What?
Yeah, see, Ethan has no idea what I'm doing.
So lost.
I feel like you're doing some kind of hobbit thing right now.
I think I lost my voice.
We were singing earlier.
It was a Dungeons and Dragons reference.
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, welcome.
This is the Babylon Bee podcast.
We do this every week and we talk about the news and why it's so important and why you need to listen to it all the time.
We mostly consume so much news.
You need news to be like a fire hose.
We go over the news and kind of go, what's stupid about this we can laugh at?
That's more accurate, yes.
So that's what this is.
We are Babylon Bee writers, creators, Photoshoppers.
We do a lot of the funny stuff on the Babylon Bee and we just talk.
It's like you're hanging out with the writers.
So this weekend, my wife had a great idea.
Oh, yeah.
It was hot as it started to get hot here.
And our air conditioner is broken, which is terrible.
And she went...
Wait, that's horrible.
Yes.
And so she went and rented one of those giant jump houses with the water slide attached.
I'm going to call it a jump house.
We call it that bounce house.
That's what I usually call it.
My brain is not firing on all cylinders today.
But she rented one of those because they can't rent them out for parties right now.
Yeah.
So it's a great idea.
So she saw a place.
She's like, pull up there.
We pull up.
She talks to the guy.
She gets it for like 99 bucks.
This giant thing with the water slide attached.
We had it for three days.
So the kids were just out of our hair in the backyard for like three days.
It's a great idea.
I'm stealing that idea.
Yeah.
We'll invite you guys over next time.
I didn't want to get in trouble with the authorities.
I'd like to take it in my front yard and invite the entire neighborhood.
It's kind of a big red flag, right?
You would think the cops would see it.
There's been a helicopter circling our neighborhood every evening.
It flies around in circles, and I think they shout at people if they're at the park.
Wow.
So it's like a big like, you there.
Yeah.
Go home.
Fun detected.
Yeah.
Please cease and desist.
You children frolicking in the soccer field.
This is a no-frolicking zone.
So.
Well, we just have had like one series of insanity after the next.
Like I think I mentioned on a different one of our interviews.
It's probably going to come up later, but Eliza tried to eat like multiple packages of hot chocolate powder and made her vomit.
I think it was kind of like the cinnamon challenge.
She just started vomiting and like dusting chocolate dust everywhere.
Calvin this morning, two-year-old, while he was taking a bath, got a hold of a, you know, he's very rarely unsupervised in the bath because he's, you know, we can hear him screaming and stuff and playing in there.
But he managed to open an entire brand new bottle of shampoo and dump the entire thing over his, on his forehead.
So his entire body was like a slug, just like a thick inch layer of like shampoo over his entire face.
So it just would not come out of his eyes.
My wife's having to, you know, bad kids hate having water in their eyes.
Just a one image, just a small drop of shampoo.
Oh, God.
And this was a full on as if like, you know, like a bronosaurus had hawked Lugie on his head.
He's just in a bath of acid.
Yeah.
And he was doing the loudest banshee wail.
It's insane.
Oh, yeah.
Didn't you tell Lila Rose?
Didn't you tell Lila Rose that story?
Yeah, I told Lila Rose that story.
Because we interviewed Lila Rose.
It's not up yet.
But we interviewed Lila Rose and Ethan went into detail about his some of the harder days we had with the kids.
It was a very struggly text, struggly text.
Is that a good word?
My wife sent me.
She's having a bad day with the kids.
When we interview people, we're just like, come sit down while we tell you stories about our lives.
She was talking about how she had her first kid and how he's like, oh, it's not that hard so far.
And people are like, oh, they struggle with wanting to get mad at a kid or how you're like, oh, I don't want to shake this baby or whatever.
I'm like, there's moments where you want to shake the baby.
Wow.
Isolate that, Dan.
I also played back.
Not saying you shake the baby, but I understand.
You understand the impulse.
I also played back to Michael Brown interview, and there's a lengthy story you told about dog poop on your windshield.
Oh, yeah.
I forgot about that.
Ethan's stories.
Although some of the most common feedback we get from listeners is more Ethan's stories.
You got to collect your life stories.
People like that.
And we're also having to train ourselves to look at these cameras now, which I'm very bad.
But I think this works, right?
If we're talking to each other, we don't necessarily need to.
Hi, listeners.
Hey.
Yeah, so we're going to be doing this for real.
Next week is the real release of the video podcast.
So it's getting real.
It's getting nervous.
We're getting scared.
I don't know why people want to see us, but we're going to do it.
Get people what they want.
Are absolutely going to do it.
We also wanted to mention before we get started here that if you are hurting financially right now, Seth Dillon, our CEO, has graciously launched a $100,000 COVID-19 relief fund.
He's making it rain on the B subscribers.
And he's just holding up the stack and going, throwing dollar bills at him.
Rap music is playing.
Dollar bills, y'all.
Dollar, dollar bills, dollar, dollar bills.
And there's women that are shooting out champagne on the crowd.
But they're fully clothed.
They're fully clothed.
And it's not champagne.
It's Martinelli's.
Yeah.
And it's a Tesla that he's driving, not like a giant.
Yeah.
Like it doesn't have hydraulics and stuff.
Yeah.
I think Tesla's, they're not even like the rich person's thing anymore.
They're not.
Well, now they're a lot more common.
Because he's seeing him driving all the time.
See him a cyber truck.
Is that out?
Does anybody have that?
I asked him if he was going to pre-order it.
No.
And he said he didn't think so.
Sad.
Sad.
Maybe he'll get us a company cyber truck.
Company cyber truck.
Yeah.
Seth, if you're listening.
I don't know how often you're going to be able to do that.
He listens.
So we can say anything we want about Seth and he won't.
I don't know if he listens.
I have no idea.
Okay.
It's good.
Ike likes it that way.
Anyway, you can contact us at our website, and there's a little contact form on there if you need help.
And we've also had a lot of people donate to the fund.
And so he originally put in $100,000, and I think like some $40,000 extra dollars have been donated, but something like that.
Pretty awesome.
One good deed just explodes.
Yeah.
We should make a movie about that.
It's like a good deed virus.
Yeah, we should make a movie about it where if you pay it, then it goes forward.
That's a good idea.
It's like instead of eating a bat, and then that gets spread everywhere.
It's like you take some money out of your wallet.
You barf out goodness.
Yeah.
And then it like if you throw the bat behind you, get out your wallet.
It's like you eat the gospel and then you barf up the gospel on other people.
You can sneeze the gospel into people's faces.
And you can see the gospel dripping off the end of their nose and they're like trying to.
And then you infect them and they infect someone else and they lick someone's face with the gospel.
Sometimes people have the face mask of unbelief on.
And you have to rip off their face mask and cough into their mouth.
Directly in.
If you hold their nostrils.
Can't even talk.
You know why you can't talk is because we've just recorded a song that you're going to hear later in this episode.
I went a little wild at the end there.
I don't think I've sang like that in about five years.
And Ethan was trying my own, like, I don't know.
I was doing like credence or something.
Very bluegrassy, meets Louis Armstrong.
It was something.
I damaged my throat, I think.
And I just want to say that it's totally possible that it's a complete and total disaster.
Yeah.
Good chance.
So.
Speaking of that, let's get out of the show.
But now, this week's edition of stuff that's good.
I am all out of stuff that's good.
I have nothing else that I like.
Nothing that you like.
I do feel like.
No, we don't need to do it every episode.
I do feel like I love so many things, and then I get to this end.
I'm like, I want to have the perfect thing.
Yeah, it's pressure.
We could do it monthly rather than weekly.
No, that's good.
Okay.
As long as I accept I can do something real specific, you know, just this thing, check it out.
So I'm going to talk about H.P. Lovecraft.
Okay.
Who's a pulp and horror writer from the 1910s, 20s, 30s?
Yeah, he made Cthulhu.
He created the ancient god, Cthulhu, and the whole mythology around that.
Like octopus god.
Yeah, that lives in the depths of the sea.
Some cult is trying to bring him back to devour humanity.
So H.P. Lovecraft fascinates me because he's like a hardcore atheist.
And he had bought into the whole materialistic thing of that era.
He was kind of like the opposite of a G.K. Chesterton from that time.
I'm sure Chesterton was writing against everything that he believed.
Chesterton wrote about him.
I think they lived in the same time, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I want to say he definitely did with other sci-fi writers at that time, but I'm pretty sure he did.
So Lovecraft was pretty unsuccessful in his life.
I mean, he managed to sell his stuff to a lot of the weird science magazines and all those weird fiction or whatever.
But he was, you know, he died alone and unloved.
And what fascinates me about him is that he has this total atheistic worldview.
And that's really what makes his horror work: that there are these ancient gods who don't care about you and they just want to kill you and you're insignificant.
And they don't care if you live or die.
It's just, hey, there's Earth.
Let's destroy it.
Why not?
And it makes the horror work.
And I think that's the foundation of modern horror.
And there's something really terrifying about this idea that you are insignificant and your life has no meaning and no purpose.
And his whole thing was that.
I think it's beautiful.
It is beautiful.
And his whole thing was that if you think about that, you'll go insane.
And so his characters are always like, you know, they're just living their little lives.
If you really think about what life actually is in his worldview, you'll go insane.
Exactly.
His worldview is so nihilistic that It makes for great horror writing because it's this idea that at the Mountains of Madness, I say, if you if you want to start reading H.P. Lovecraft, at the Mountains of Madness is his most famous.
It's one of his longer novels, novellas.
Do you recommend starting with one of his longest things?
I do because it's still pretty short.
Okay.
I've only read The Inn's Mouth, Innsmouth.
That's a really good one, too.
The Fish People.
That's a really good one, too.
I would say that one's one of the better ones to start with, also.
I wanted to grab the, he has this quote in the beginning of a book.
In the beginning of his books, I'm trying to help you.
In the beginning of Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu, which is his most famous work, or one of his most famous works.
And he says, The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
So his whole thing was like his whole thing.
People say what was not meant.
What wasn't wasn't meant.
Yeah, that's true.
But his whole thing was that if you were to just go out and see how meaningless your life is, you would go insane.
And so that's what happens to all his characters in his books.
Spoiler alert.
Anyway, so if you like, if you're a fan of modern horror at all, you need to go back to the guy who really founded it.
And it's H.P. Lovecraft.
And it's just fascinating.
As someone who doesn't share his worldview, I like reading someone who has a completely different worldview than me.
Yeah.
You know, it's very interesting.
That's the best way to experience someone else's worldview, like through great art.
Absolutely.
Do it well.
Yeah.
Do it passionately.
For mine, I'm going to recommend something a lot more straightforward.
It's a podcast.
We have had Mike Nelson on the show before, the man from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Riff Tracks.
He has a podcast with his pastor called Like Trees Walking.
Every episode they take on some matter of apologetics or something, a question, and they discuss it.
And then they also do funny, silly stuff.
But it's a good, fun, it's pretty short podcast compared to others.
You know, it's like 15, 20 minutes, I think.
And we're just looking for another good podcast where people talk about theology and stuff in a fun, kind of a fun, interesting way.
It's kind of unique in that sense that it's a pastor who's his pastor's pretty funny guy too, a little younger, and then Mike's very funny guy.
And yeah.
So like Trees Walking.
Check it out.
How much did he pay you to finish?
I love Mike.
I love Mike.
Even though he doesn't always come on our podcast on my other one.
Audio Mullet.
Sad.
Yeah.
So he's got another podcast that he actually goes on.
He has two other podcasts that he actually makes money on.
Oh, I see.
And that's why he's too busy for us most of the time.
For audio mullet.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sad.
Well, he's been on a lot because of the quarantine.
He's been on a lot.
So, in fact, we just did an insane episode because we're so tired of talking about COVID-19.
We're like, let's just do the dumbest episode ever.
And we just went on.
I like it.
Just did really dumb.
A lot of poop stories.
That can be found on iTunes.
This has been stuff that's good.
This news is weird.
Ontario woman's life saved by breast implant, the deflected bullet.
This is real.
Oh, did I just jump into without explaining what this is?
No, we never, we didn't really explain.
Well, this is our weird screen.
These are actual things that happen.
Yeah, we just been finding some weird news from the week.
A breast implant deflected a bullet.
Yes.
That's, I don't know what to add to that.
Like, did the bullet bounce back into the guy who shot it?
You would think.
I'm pretty sure that's how that works.
It was definitely like a Looney Tunes.
Yeah.
That'd be crazy slow-mo video that I would not watch.
Shouldn't envision it.
Yeah.
Shouldn't picture that.
Picturing that.
Dirt bikers make use of sand-covered skate park in California.
This is fantastic.
Yeah, this makes me so happy.
So the government dumped a bunch of sand in the skate park.
He has a big skate park down like Santa Monica.
Because the skaters were like, screw the quarantine.
We're skating.
They just dumped a bunch of sand in there.
Like, what a bunch of punks.
That's that's what a jerk does.
Like when you're like building your sand castle and some jerk kid walks over and starts dumping sand in there, like you know, ruining your fun.
Just kicking it over.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
So they just, yeah, they filled it with sand.
So who shows up?
Bunch of dirt bikers.
You know what they say when life gives you dirt.
So what are they going to do next?
They're going to fill that in with water.
Yeah, which will turn into mud.
So then you'll have dirt buddies.
You have people out there with their four-wheel drive.
Yeah, dug bikes.
So then they'll put some snow on it.
Yeah, you get the snowboarders.
And then the snowboarders will come.
And then that'll melt into water.
Put that into water, get some surfers out there, some air, whatever, jet skis.
And then they'll freeze it.
Oh, yeah, you get some ice skating.
You get some ice skaters to come out.
It's basically like there was an old woman who swallowed a fly.
Yeah.
Like if you give them out.
They keep on trying to do it.
It'd be a good book for your kids.
That's fantastic.
Oregon man drove to 11 different Wendy's restaurants twice in one day to stock up on free nuggets.
I don't know the context.
Wendy's was offering free nuggets.
Yeah, Wendy's recently announced it would be giving away free chicken nuggets to help out community.
Ooh, I'm playing this a lot.
During the coronavirus pandemic.
Oh.
So he just went to 11 different, did it say how far of a trip that was?
His Twitter name is Squeezy Jibs.
Oh, did he do it like on?
And so he posted, times is tough.
So when I heard Wendy's was giving out free four-piece nugs today, I knew I had to hustle.
I hit every flowerbed, Wendy's, twice within 17 miles across two states.
Took five hours, but now we're eating free for a week.
What'd it do?
Wait, so how many.
So he got four at each Wendy's?
Four nuggets at each Wendy's?
That's so far to go for four nuggets.
You're going to think the gas is not somehow worth it.
Well, he said 17 miles, so I guess it would be worth it, but technically.
So 11 different Wendy's twice.
But five hours, you work a minimum wage job for five hours.
So I'm just trying to do the math on the nuggets.
Four times 11 is 44 times 2 is 88.
So 88 nuggets.
Nuggets in one day.
What does a 20-piece nugget cost at McDonald's?
Like $10, $5 or something?
It's just ground up all of the chicken.
It's everything.
It's got their eyes, got their wallet, it's got everything.
Their keys are in there.
The shoes they were wearing when they said they were wearing the whole thing.
The mace they were trying to spray at their attacker.
Maybe an unfortunate chicken worker who fell into the hard hat.
And then finally, a woman wakes up in a body bag after mistakenly being declared dead.
This is a crazy one.
So this really happened.
She was, I think she went in for a checkup where they brought her in.
I read it briefly.
In para voice.
A few days ago.
But the doctor declared her dead.
I guess she was actually in the funeral home.
They were preparing the service and everything.
And she was in a body bag and she started to woke up.
So I don't know how that mistake gets made.
So this is real nightmare fuel.
Yeah, this is something you would also so happy.
It's both.
That's why it's so fascinating because it's the most horrible thing that can happen and the happiest that they came back.
They're alive.
Yeah.
Right?
For the family.
Can you imagine going through that grief thinking your wife is gone and dead forever?
And then all of a sudden she's just coming out of the body.
Like, why'd you guys do this?
The thing that messed it up is the next time she dies, you would think, oh, joke again.
Yeah.
Classic Karen.
All right.
Yeah, you're just kind of nudging the bag.
All right.
Well, we get it.
We get it.
It was funny the first time.
Yeah, that'd be some delayed mourning.
Like three weeks later, you think she's not coming back?
This is getting dark.
Sad, not good.
Yeah.
Let's talk about this family.
I'm happy for them.
Well, let's talk about real stories from the Babylon B. Let's do it.
Real, not real stories.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
There's been a lot of speculation about the health of Kim Jong-un ranging from those who say he's critically ill to others who claim he has already died.
The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea of Korea responded by releasing a statement saying that Kim Jong-un is the most alive person in the universe.
Wow.
That settles that.
He is the most alive person in the universe.
Yeah, more alive than anything else.
We measure that, I wonder.
Lifeometer.
That's all.
Yeah, just life.
HP points.
NBC's Katie Tur tweeted out saying North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is brain dead, according to two U.S. officials.
He recently had cardiac surgery and slipped into a coma, according to one U.S. current and one former U.S. official.
NBC News confirms and adds to the CNN scoop from me.
And she lists a few other reporters there.
And then she quickly deleted this tweet because apparently it was not confirmed.
Oh, man.
Saddie, I wonder where the two U.S. officials and how do you hear?
Like, where are they standing by a water cooler talking?
Yeah, apparently it's been going around.
And then South Korea said, no, he's fine.
Then North Korea released a report.
More alive.
And then since we wrote the story, North Korea released a letter from him saying, here's a letter from him.
See, he's like, oh, a letter?
Oh, really?
You don't have that in these notes, do we?
But I guess his sister is going to be taking over, which is really embarrassing for the USA because, as Tom Deangora, whoever that guy is, said on Twitter, he said, North Korea is going to have a woman leader before the United States of America.
Let that sink in.
I like how when people say that, we're supposed to sit there and just let the knowledge flow over our heads.
Just play really sad music.
And we're supposed to bask in the knowledge.
Why are we so evil?
We're more evil than North Korea at this point.
This hatred for myself is just growing slowly.
Like the heart of the Grinch.
I am letting that sink in.
North Korea may have a woman leader before the U.S. There's some other countries that have beat the U.S. to having a woman leader.
Yeah, for instance, Narnia had the White Witch.
That's true.
She was scary looking.
Stunning and brave.
Westeros.
I don't know what that is.
Had Queen Cersei Lannister.
Do you know that?
Geographically.
It's basically England flipped upside down.
That's how he drew the map for Westeros.
Game of Thrones.
Yeah.
You shouldn't watch it.
England had Bloody Mary.
True.
Was that a real person?
Yeah, she was named after the beverage.
Okay.
So she had like celery sticking out of her head and she cried tomato juice.
Hey, if you squint at her, she kind of looks like a Bloody Mary.
If you say her name three times in the mirror in the bathroom, in the dark, she appears.
And Kansyua Bloody Mary.
Yeah.
And you have a party.
Wonderland had the Queen of Hearts.
I think that's what she was.
She's supposed to shop.
Oh, no.
Off with your head.
I don't know that that made any sense that whole movie.
Yeah, it didn't.
I read the book and I did not understand a word of it.
It was fun, though.
I loved it.
I think it was just real silly.
Yeah.
I read all of them, both my kids twice.
Because do two different types of kids.
Kevin James and his wife.
What?
In King of Queens?
Oh, wait, Sarah, I think I stole yours.
You sure did.
They butchered it.
Yeah, Kevin James's wife in King of Queens, she ruled.
She's a queen.
Well, she ruled him.
Okay.
So Kevin James is braver than the United States.
There's also the ocean, Ursula.
Oh, that's that's yeah.
But what about Triton?
Is he above Ursula?
Well, he became that little wormy thing, remember?
And she took his crown.
Okay, so it was just brief.
So for a brief time.
That's what's happening in North Korea right now.
Basically, Kim Jong-un has been turned into the little.
He's a little wormy guy.
Yeah.
Because she's Ursula.
Because Kim Yo-jong, I think is her name.
Kim Jong.
She wanted to get a singing voice.
Okay.
So she could go to South Korea and woo a major.
They do that in North Korea.
If you live in North Korea and you watch their specific broadcast, anytime Kim Jong-un talks, they have a voice actor like Dave D'Andrea speaking in place of his voice so that they all think he has this rich, deep, godlike voice.
We should do this.
Yeah.
We should write a script.
Kim Jong-un.
We should write a script for me to mouth.
And for Dave D. Both sound like Dave D'Andrea.
We were both arguing about who has the better voice.
If we had thought of that earlier, we could have done it.
Hogwarts had Dolores Umbridge.
What about he who shall not be well?
I don't know.
I didn't read that far.
He's not a woman and he never took over the highest school.
But who's the highest?
Who's the highest in authority in Hogwarts?
It was.
That old wizard guy.
No, he died, right?
Okay, so in the fifth book.
Is that a spoiler a little?
It is, but it's like, what, 10 years old, 15 years old?
Yeah.
So in the fifth book, she took over the school and he went away because he was not famous because I've never heard of her.
Israel showed how stunning and brave they were with Jezebel.
Oh, man.
Forgot about her.
The feminist news outlet.
No, no, no, no.
She was named after the feminist news outlet.
Oh, okay.
So her fans were fans.
Yeah.
So here's the official statement that the Babylon Bee reported was released from North Korea.
We need like the North Korean anthem playing in the background.
Absolutely.
Dan, add the North Korean anthem in the background in post.
Do it in post.
We'll do it live.
We'll do it live.
American fake news says Supreme Leader is dead, but we found that he was more alive than anyone ever in history.
If he lies in a still vegetative state, it is only because he is stuffed so full of life, like someone who has eaten a big meal and needs time to properly digest all that life.
So much life.
Such great life.
Think of the most alive thing ever.
A rambunctious toddler, a blooming flower, an angry bear, pulsing, teeming with life.
That is the very essence of our supreme leader.
Doctors were amazed at how alive he is.
Most alive person ever.
He even ran a 50-mile marathon in under 12 seconds.
And after that, our great and glorious leader flapped his wings and flew to the sun, bringing down sunbeams from the heavens that our people might have the gift of fire.
All hail, the glorious, and most definitely living, Kim Jong-un.
Oh, you sounded so North Korean.
I was not doing an accent.
I was just trying to be like official and like fake-sounding statement.
Got it.
It was good.
Okay.
Next story.
Next story.
President Trump stood before governors this week in the midst of the continued lockdown, shouting at them with, let my people go.
He also had a giant beard.
So I guess Trump was saying that we should be opening parts of the economy and stop making them build pyramids.
Yeah, because a lot of the governors were saying that you had to build bricks with no straw.
And they were whipping you for building the pyramids.
Sacrificing people.
I can't remember what.
Because obviously we're making a joke that Trump is Moses.
Yeah, thanks.
But I can't think of what were the bad things.
Why did Moses and them run away?
They're being slaves, right?
That's no fun.
Why did Moses and them run away?
You mean, why did they say this happen?
Yeah, because it was bad.
Pharaoh's just a bad thing.
Yeah, it was getting worse.
And we're trying to see the details of that.
Like, what's Pharaoh's specificity?
He said no straw, no straw for the bricks.
Because they, at some points, they look back and were like, maybe it wasn't so bad in Egypt.
Right.
We had meals.
Yeah.
We have food.
There were pyramids.
You think people will do that today?
They'll look back like, you know what?
The quarantine wasn't so bad.
Maybe we can go back to that.
Well, we already do that with our sin.
It's true.
So if only I could go back.
I had it so much better before I was following Jesus.
Yeah.
You see how I spiritualize that and turn it into a gospel moment?
Back when I was just watching all those R-rated movies.
Yeah.
That was definitely the depth of your depravity watching R-rated movies.
Watching R-rated movies and smoking crack.
Although Governor Newsom has resisted Moses Trump and said, no, me in the Western states, we will only open when science says we can't.
On all capital letters.
When science.
Science.
That's what he tweeted out in big capital letters.
We believe in science.
We want to do it.
I like him more and more every day.
That Gavin Newsom.
Oh, man.
So Trump has threatened more plagues unless the state governors let his people go.
I feel like we should write a hymn about this.
Plague of Mats.
We should write a gospel, like maybe an old spiritual.
Spiritual.
Yeah.
What do you think?
Yeah, let my people go.
Okay.
You ready?
Let's do it.
Get out the guitar and the banjo.
All right, we'll sing it.
Go down, Donald, way down in Michigan.
Tell Waymer.
Let my people go.
When buying guns and seeds was fanned, let my people go.
Oppressed so hard they could not stand.
Let my people go.
Go down, go down.
Donald, way down in Cali land.
Tell us to let the skaters go.
Let the shadows go.
So Trump spoke to the press and they decreed: Let my people go.
But see it wouldn't let them feed it.
And let my people go.
Come down.
Come down.
Donald, Donald.
We need a lesson.
Let's go.
Tell us, governors to let them buy.
Just in face to say, if you want to win the quarantine, why not give each other go?
Hit them with the Droxacora Queen.
Let the chlorus flow.
Go down.
Go down.
Donald, Donald.
We need a sea forever.
They're on the free hole and bring it to the body.
Tell them.
Tell them.
To let my people go.
Tell them.
To let my people go.
His mask is so stupid.
Well, I'm moved to tears.
Shaken.
Stirred.
Not stirred.
Just shaking.
Yeah, that was, yeah.
That was our first attempt of the song, really.
We've never really sang it.
Yeah, we both know that we play guitars and stuff.
We did imagine where I sang it over a karaoke.
Karaoke track.
We've never tried singing together.
It was weird.
It was a little awkward.
But it was fun.
I got to get the banjo out, play a few chords.
I had to put the skinny jeans on to hit those screaming notes.
Yeah.
And you recorded me belting out my lyrics.
Yeah, I don't know how much of that is going to make it on there.
Ethan decided to record like a filler track where he was just going to fill it.
He was saying little ad-libs.
Ad-lib fills after the lines.
Donald Trump.
Land of the free and the home of the brave.
That kind of stuff.
So maybe we'll give you some of those as bonus content, subscribers, at the end of the episode.
All right, let's move on to our next story.
Yes.
At a recent press conference, President Trump advised the country to drink lots of water.
Sounds fine.
But various media outlets ran with the story reporting that Trump had encouraged people to drown themselves to death.
Can you drown yourself not to death?
Doesn't drowning imply death?
Couldn't you drown yourself?
You start to drown.
Yeah, and then you don't complete it.
It's like a kamikazu pilot that grazes a ship.
That's a good joke.
You should write a TV show that has the joke in it.
I should write that.
Yeah, so I guess Trump talks a lot about internal use.
So they had this press conference.
Probably people by now have heard this, but if you've heard all the stuff about Trump telling people to inject Lysol, you might not have heard the actual quote, what he actually said.
But he had a doctor on who was talking about things are actually killing the virus really well.
Like sunlight is like the best thing.
It just knocks it out.
I get like a weird hair in my face here.
You sound like Trump right now.
Sunlight knocks it out.
Not to write out.
It's a bad guy.
Punching Batman.
Sounds like Batman.
Yeah.
Then there's disinfectants and things like that.
So then Trump went up and he tried to, like, say...
He's trying to get people hope, but he's trying to say...
I think we have the quote here.
Can you read the quote?
I would like to hear Ethan read this quote.
So I'm going to ask Bill.
I can't do Donald Trump.
He's a Batman villain now.
Bill Bryan, under Secretary of Science and Technology.
I can't do it.
That sounds like Cartman or something.
The first time I've been disappointed by an Ethan voice.
I'm not good at Trump.
I don't know what to do.
Don't do Trump.
You can just do his like.
Question that probably some of you are thinking of it.
You're totally into that world.
If you're totally into that world, it's so hard to read his voice not as him, which I will find to be, which I find to be very interesting.
So supposing when we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think he said that hasn't been checked.
But if you're going to test it, and then I said, supposing you brought the light into the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.
I think you said you're going to test that too.
Sound interesting.
And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute.
And is there a way that they can do something like that by injection inside almost a cleaning?
It's funny.
Because you see, it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.
So it'd be interesting to check that out so that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.
So we'll see.
But the powerful concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that's pretty powerful.
But so that's what he said.
The guy to say that Trump is telling people to inject Lysol.
Trump says, drink, please.
He was just thinking out loud, really, like, About, is there a way for these external remedies to be made internal in some way?
Apparently, some actually they're actually, I didn't know.
Maybe it's not a great idea to wonder out loud.
Yeah, at a press conference in front of everybody.
And the way he says it sounds interesting.
Like none of them thought of it, like he thought of it.
It's like if we were to just sit here and start talking about rocket science.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I wonder if there's some way that you could fly a rocket.
Like, how could you get to the other side of the universe?
Like, maybe, maybe there's some way you could just take the space and just kind of like jump over it like a ramp.
Like, if they could take that ramp, like a ramp on your skateboard and you take it and put like a million microwaves inside of a bigger microwave and then microwave those and then they exploded.
Because you already have the microwave.
And if you could take that and put it on the ship.
Yeah.
That same thing, but the microwave.
And full of aluminum, all of them.
So it's very interesting.
You're going to have to give the rocket scientists.
Yeah, we need doctors on this.
But it's very promising.
But that's the frustrating thing.
Like, yeah, Trump, he's a dope.
He talks dumb.
He says such dumb things.
But like, I hate having to come to defend him because they can't just say that.
Wow, it was kind of dumb when he said what it's like.
He's telling people to inject themselves with Lysol.
And all these organizations are releasing statements.
Do not drink, please.
Come on.
Yeah, I don't get it.
It's just surrounded by dumbness.
That would be funny to see if Obama said this back in the day, what the conservatives would have done.
Get some treatment.
And, of course, if it wasn't on his teleprompter, he wouldn't have said it.
Hey, this is like a radio show from 2000.
No, I'm just.
We were talking about Obama.
Yeah, he's talking about how dumb Obama is.
Obama.
Yeah.
So, yeah, the corporate press immediately reported that Trump was advising the public to drink bleach, disinfectants, and all the blue checks jumped on it.
And here we went with it.
Just reminds me, yeah.
If Trump were to say the most innocuous thing.
Do I use the word innocuous right?
I got to find out.
Yeah, that sounds right.
He's harmless, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, not harmful.
I've said it a few times on the podcast, and in my head, I said, I need to make sure that I'm using that word correctly.
Sounds smart.
But, you know, yeah, Trump says drink water.
He's trying to drown himself.
You're all going to go drown yourselves.
Trump says, eat apples.
They're good for you.
Yeah.
Trump tells everybody.
These guys are sexist.
Choke on apples.
Because they go back to the Garden of Eden, which is sexist.
Here's why.
So that kind of thing is what we're looking at here.
And it always amazes me how Trump can do something really dumb.
Like say this really dumb statement.
Yeah.
What are you even talking about?
And then somehow the other side does something even dumber.
Yeah.
They all really react as you'd expect, I guess.
Just a perpetual dumb contest.
And we just sit here.
Our nation is a dumb contest.
It is.
And you know who loses?
Everybody.
Everybody.
But we also kind of win because we're having fun.
And we're in America.
Land of the free and home of the brave.
Yeah.
Land of the free and home of the brave.
Free at the home of the brave.
I need a little more vibrato in there.
I had the energy when we did it earlier.
Well, we're going to go on to our topic of the week where we're going to discuss church and why you should go to it.
That's right.
Because with all this staring into cameras at each other, it's garbage.
Eventually you can go to it anyway.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's go.
And now, the Babylon Bees Topic of the Week.
Well, people have been sitting in their living rooms staring at their TV, streaming their church services.
I know for us, like we got our worship leader just sits there staring into a camera like he's being held hostage and he just sings like he's doing a like a selfie YouTube.
Does he do it like from his house or something?
I think he might be at the church.
But he's just sitting there staring at us.
Yeah, and he'll talk to you like he sees you.
But uh, and then our pastor does it, he talks.
He's not on the stage, he's just kind of in a little, he has a little, they have a little box next to him, and he just talks.
We do that, we we do that in the, but they do the whole service, like they set up the whole stage, and then like as though there's people there.
I go to a really small church, so kids are pretty good for a small church, but it's where when the worship leader is like, uh, everybody, let's stand up now.
He doesn't and I look over at my kids and I'm like, you don't have to do that, like at church, no, at oh, he says this on the live stream now that we're all doing the remote service stand up at though, everybody put your hands together, huh?
Nope, not doing it, yeah, I don't do it anyway when I'm there, so I'm gonna- Are you the family that sits while everybody else stands?
And you guys are like, no, we're too cool.
I will go with the flow.
I've said I'm gonna go with the floor if that's what everybody does.
I'm not gonna be the weirdest.
Do kids sit or do you make them stand?
They tend to stand.
I think if they're being grumpy and they just want to sit, I'll say, come on.
My older kids have hit that age where they never want to stand, and I'm just like, I was like that too, so whatever.
I get it.
I kind of want to play stand, but also at the same time, you have to pick your fights because any fight you pick with your kids, it could be taken.
You had to go all the way extreme, like to where you're both holding guns at each other.
You got to decide what hills to dine on, man.
Yeah.
So you're just in a perpetual battle with your children.
It's like World War I where the trenches are just slowly moving back and forth.
You really got to pick.
Like, you know what?
You can have this one.
Yep.
You can sit there.
You take that.
You look like a jerk anyway.
You're the one, only one sitting at church.
You want to be a jerk?
Fine.
Jerk.
But yeah, it got me thinking, like, what is this going to look like when we return?
And I'm wondering how many people are just going to say, you know what?
I'm streaming church anyway.
You think people are going to say that?
I think a lot.
I think people are going to come back very, I'm kind of excited for it because I think we'll have taken for granted what it meant for us to all get together in person.
That's my hope.
I think the people that were already part of the church and were really committed are very excited to go back.
But I do feel like there's this outer, you always have this crowd, right?
That's just there just for whatever reason, community.
Maybe they're not really committed.
I feel like maybe if they haven't gone to church for three months, they're going to, it's just going to become a habit.
I think a lot of people are going to go, eh.
What do you think are the main reasons people go to church?
Because there's multiple reasons, right?
Some people have a real conviction that the Bible tells them this is just part of their faith.
You have to do it.
I think there's some people that it's like it's a community.
It's like a friend group.
They don't have friends anywhere else.
If they didn't go there, they wouldn't have anything.
There's definitely a group of people that go to church because it's a tradition or, yeah, it's just a social club.
And I mean that in a good way and a bad way because I think there's a bad motivation.
It's just, oh, let's go hang out.
But I think it's also a way that God has given us community and he has given us a social life because that's what we need.
And so if you're getting that fulfilled at church and then you hear that gospel and now you become committed, you know, you believe the gospel.
I think that's, I think that's a good thing.
Yeah, when I was really looking for a church when I moved down here, that was something I kind of, you start realizing what it is you're looking for.
And I realized that, you know, good teaching is pretty easy to find nowadays because of podcasts and things like that.
And it's nice if you can find a church with good teaching.
But I realized that community, like, that's really what church is for me.
And so that was what I prioritized when I really felt I had found like a group of people I really felt good about and felt like I was dealing with.
I agree with the caveat that if the teaching is bad, like anti-medical to the gospel.
But I do think he's not a great public speaker.
Right.
We do overemphasize that.
Like I need a, I need a preacher who's as good as John Piper.
And if he's not, and the problem is right now, we live in a culture where you can listen to the very best preachers on a podcast.
Yeah.
And then you go here to your preacher and you're like, eh, you know, it's not as good as these guys.
Yeah.
We're always comparing them to those people who are like, you know, very famous preachers.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I think there are a lot of reasons to go to church.
But I guess the specific question is: why go in person versus sitting on your couch and watching a screen?
What's the difference?
Is there a difference?
Does it matter?
I never did the streaming thing before this.
Yeah.
And it's weird to me that we've said church is non-essential, you know, Home Depot essential.
And there's this weird division.
It is really weird.
I was trying to think of what G.K. Chesterton would say about this.
Yeah.
Like, I would really like to know.
Music stores are closed.
Is music essential or non-essential?
Yeah.
You know, bookstores are closed.
Are they essential or not?
It's fascinating.
It brings out the values of our culture.
Like, I feel like that's more essential than food, but maybe that's impractical.
I don't know.
Well, that's why, I mean, so many of the big, big issues are very physical issues.
Like climate change is literally like things that will happen to the external world.
Or everyone's into like their health.
Maybe we're like health nuts.
Like, oh, you know, essential oils and vitamins.
And we don't, we, we put all this stuff in a category because it's science, it's physical, and our culture is way more wrapped up in that stuff.
Spiritual is your own personal thing.
And I think that's why we gravitate towards that because we live in this postmodern time where we can't really tell somebody about their spirituality, but we can tell them about their outward health.
We can tell them about the climate.
And so we gravitate towards that.
And I think there's something lost there where we pretend the spiritual is just a thing we're making up as we go along, and each of us kind of makes it up as we go along.
And that's like exactly what I believe in the Old Testament.
Each lived according to what they found to be right and wrong or whatever, how that I just butchered.
Yeah, exactly like that.
But that was what they basically everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
In his own eyes, nailed it.
He went to seminary, so I did not go to seminary.
He went to seminary.
He went to a Bible church.
I mean, a Bible school.
Something like that.
More than me.
I was like in young life.
Which is, yeah, not a.
No.
It doesn't count.
They didn't teach me most of the stuff I know.
So, I mean, we can point you at some of the proof texts.
Hebrews 10, 25.
Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another.
And all the more as you see today approaching.
Acts 2 has one of the early descriptions of the early church, and it says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
And if you look at all those elements, they're hard to do over Zoom.
They're hard to do over the phone, and they're hard to do if you're staring at a screen.
Yeah.
I mean, if in an emergency is something you need to do, and there's people who are sick and ill and have to stay home, and so technology is cool.
We can do that kind of stuff.
So, biblically, as I have heard people argue, that they say the Bible doesn't really tell us to go to church, it just says to hang out with other Christians.
So, what do you think?
You think we have to go to, we actually are supposed to go to Sunday morning church?
If we don't, we're breaking the Bible's rules.
Yeah, but I wouldn't put it like it's very simple.
Like, that's like 12-year-old logic.
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily talk a lot about the relationship between gospel and law and how that all works.
I do think that as Christians, it is our duty and it is our delight to go to church.
Yeah, it's weird because I really didn't like church as a kid.
I really, really did not like it.
And even as an adult, like, I it is that I chose to go back, and I did find that I, when I tried to stop going, that I couldn't stop.
Like I just, it became an important part of my life.
But I think that there's just a lot of things about Christians are, it's just, I don't know, the group fascinates me.
Like people that are willing to meet together every week to celebrate and to talk about and to treat faith and spirituality and God like a tangible real life thing that we all share between us.
Like it's important to be around that, I think.
Because you don't get that anywhere else.
And so yeah.
I think you should do it.
Yeah.
And I think it's even how we're framing it is you have to go to church.
And I think go to church is different than be the church.
You know, I'm sure that's a book or something already.
Yeah.
Don't go to church.
Be the church.
I can see the inspirational Eurigram meme already.
Be there because you're part of it.
Exactly.
And so I think in the American kind of consumeristic model of church, we see church as a performance.
Yeah.
We see it as they need to put on a good concert for us.
The public speaker guy needs to put on a funny, give a public, funny sermon that we can all laugh at and give.
Motivational speech.
Yeah, motivational speech, and it really relates to me.
What did I get out of this sermon?
What is my worship experience like?
And I think that is completely alien to the New Testament concept of a church.
It's something that you go and you serve.
And so I think that's part of it too.
Yes, you can get a lot of the same experience as sitting on your couch staring at the screen, but then you're robbing the church body of your service because you're sitting on the couch eating Cheetos in your underwear.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
I went to a huge church a few years ago for just a couple of months.
We were in a transitional phase.
So we just kind of went to a big old mega church for a while.
And it was very strange.
They had this massive cafe, and you could slip into the cafe, order yourself a nice panini.
They had the full espresso machine with all the different coffees.
So you'd get yourself a cinnamon latte and a panini, go sit down on a couch and watch the service that was happening in the next building on a big screen TV and never talk to anybody.
And that's literally what we would do.
We usually went in the service, not in the cafe.
But we never talked to anybody at the church ever and we were there for three months.
Wow.
And it's actually what we needed at the time because we just, we were moving and we needed somewhere we didn't want to plug in anywhere.
But it was this weird, like, here is a product.
And they were cool with that.
They were cool with you just hanging out.
And to me, it was like, man.
And I could never have met the pastor.
He was too famous too.
That's bizarre.
I've never been to a church like that.
You know, I'm going to schedule, if you want to meet the pastor, it's like, well, meet with his secretary and you can meet with the underpastors.
And maybe eventually you get a meeting with him if you schedule it a few months out.
Wow.
It's like, what is a command for a pastor?
A pastor's supposed to shepherd the flock.
How are you supposed to do that if you've never met him?
So I think there is a size issue that happens with some of these churches.
But yeah, so that's where a lot of this comes from, I think, is that we don't have a good idea of what a New Testament church was supposed to be.
Yeah, one of my coolest church experiences was actually back when I had kind of stopped going to church.
I went through kind of a crisis of faith.
I think I've talked a few times about this where I went to, when I left Young Life, I went through kind of a dark spell where I started questioning everything.
I started looking for answers to all those questions.
I stopped going to church for a while.
And a very old church in town was kind of dying out.
It was almost all old people at the church.
It was a Christian Missionary Alliance church.
So it was part of a church franchise, or we call that a denomination.
And the leadership had sent this new guy to town to try to revive it.
And long story short, he basically failed, but it was mainly that the old, all the old fogies in the church hated him, the new guy, and they all left.
And there was like maybe like three or four families left with this church building.
But I loved him.
He was this guy named Scott Rockwell.
He would come to the coffee shop, and this is when I was in a rock band, and all of us in the band loved Scott Rockwell.
He'd show up and we'd talk about, we'd read C.S. Lewis together or something.
And we'd start.
where it was just the four of us reading it, but by the time we were done with the chapter, almost the entire coffee shop had joined in and was reading chapters along and discussing C.S. Lewis.
They were atheists.
There were people of other faiths.
He had this ability to have conversations and get people into it.
And he just was such a genuine guy.
We ended up moving the church to the basement because there just wasn't enough of us for the sanctuary.
And so we met every morning in the basement at more of a coffee house type setting.
It was really intimate.
It was such a small group.
It almost felt like a small group.
I mean, that's where the term comes from, small group.
Hey, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
And, you know, and he just sat at one of the tables and talked when he did a sermon or whatever, and we just sang a cappella.
But I knew and loved the people in that group so well.
And we would all go barbecue after every time.
And I just loved that.
I loved that, having that closeness and smallness of church.
So that was, I got spoiled by that.
Even though there's probably people who go to like big fancy churches that that sounds horrible to.
But I moved from there to bigger cities.
I moved to Portland and stuff.
And that was when I started discovering these big churches with like, you know, discovering like the worship singers that have like that, you know, that hairdo where it's like smeared down on the front and it's like a duck's butt in the back and like they're like dyed hair black and they're like eat like goth emo looking sure and they sing like super high.
I was like all the churches had worship leaders like that at that time.
And I hated it.
And they were just laser lights.
And I have not found a church experience like that one since then, but I do enjoy the church that I've found now.
Pretty small.
My wife was pretty well plugged into it when I met her.
She went through a very bad time when they helped her out.
So, yep, that's it.
That's the guy.
I don't know if we can put that up on the.
That's Phil Wickham.
Okay, that's a real guy.
I thought you were just looking at the hairdo.
He's like the most of the duck butt, though.
He's the ultimate.
Remember that, like, look with the hair like this, like he has.
Yeah.
But then in the back, I would go, like, like you got out of bed and just left it.
It's like they just combed the front and forgot about the back.
I do that a lot.
I hate that hairdo.
just forget about the back I don't think you have like no I know I just You forget.
I do forget.
People that purposely try to make it.
They purposely forget.
It's like they went fluff, fluff, fluff, and then they...
It's the worst hairdo on earth.
Yeah, it's interesting because I've kind of run the gamut of churches.
I've been at, I grew up in a massive church.
I did like church plants.
Church of Satan.
I went to the church of Satan to infiltrate it and then destroy it.
Convert everybody.
You can convert everybody.
Once I converted them, I moved back.
I've been to very small churches.
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess I've been to dining churches.
Church of Elvis.
Church of Elvis, Church of...
Everything.
Yeah.
All of that stuff.
Yeah, it's stories.
Thanks for ruining my continue.
point no but I just the whole gamut Yeah, and it's, I think there are pros and cons to the different sizes and styles and all of that.
Yeah.
You know, there's different church philosophies and how it's supposed to be run and all that.
But, you know, yeah, I think ultimately you're right.
In the end, it is a community and it's built on a truth.
It's built on the resurrection.
It's built on the truth of the gospel.
And yeah, I think it's important.
And there's so much built into being part of a church body that is so healthy for us.
Especially, that's another thing I discovered when I moved from my small town to a bigger city.
People find other people that are exactly like them, and that's who all they hang out with.
Right, right.
In a church, that very rarely happens.
You meet old people, you have kids around, you have soccer moms, so you may be like this artsy type person like I was.
I think if I hung out only with artists and animators and stuff, my type of people, I would have that low view they have of like the soccer mom and the or the I don't know, a business type guy, you know, guys, just people they never interact with.
They just see them from, it's really kind of the way the KKK is about other races.
They've never met them half the time, you know.
At church, and also diversity, a lot of the churches I've gone to, they are way more diverse by accident without any attempt at being diverse than when they try to organize it and make it happen.
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And diversity of politics.
I've never been to a church where everybody politically agrees and everything.
Oh, absolutely.
Even diversity of theology, we all disagree on very important things.
A lot of times you'll get in debates in a small group and some will have some crazy idea.
So when I was pastoring a church, there was a lot of old people.
Was your church, the church of Hilarity?
Yes.
That were so sweet, right?
Super sweet people.
And then you'd get on Facebook and there would be this, like one lady would be posting about Trump is destroying this country and his demons and just all cap letters.
And you go and she's like, oh, I baked a casserole for everybody.
And, you know, then you had other people that would get mad at her and comment on her posts.
And so these two church ladies are screaming at each other online.
And then you're talking to them, hey, maybe chill out a bit on the Facebook posts.
That's the weird thing about Tays.
You get to see people's church personality and you see the outside of church on Facebook personality, which is a different personality.
And line just brings something else.
So C.S. Lewis wrote about going to church.
And I remember this is one of my favorite things that he wrote.
He says, when I first became a Christian, I thought that I could do it on my own by retiring to my rooms and reading theology.
And I wouldn't go to the churches and gospel halls.
And then he says about how he went to church.
He didn't like the music.
He didn't like all the stuff.
And he says, I dislike very much their hymns, which I consider to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music.
But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it.
I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education.
And then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.
I realized that the hymns, which were just sixth-rate music, were nevertheless being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic side boots in the opposite pew.
And then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots.
It gets you out of your solitary conceit.
Wow.
I like this idea that I'm there and I'm like, man, these people are doing so much more for the kingdom of God than I am.
Even if they're just coming and setting up chairs and, you know, having this serpent's heart.
Yeah, and you never meet more.
I mean, you will definitely meet fake people at church.
There's a strange magnet, the magnet for fake people.
I think that there are a lot of people that are fake and outside that are very broken inside that need that and need us and need people.
Yeah, that's just people, man.
But yeah, it's just people.
In fact, maybe it's just more glaring in church because of the space that it is.
But also, you'll never find more humble and real people in church than I've found.
I mean, it's almost like, I mean, the closest I've found is if you go to like a, you know, I've been to OA meetings a couple of times.
I struggle with my weight.
There's people that are broken there and at the end of their rope.
And even those meetings, there's a lot of people that's going through the motions.
But church really is a meeting place for people that are a bit broken and they admit it.
They admit it that we don't know how to do this life on our own.
We're no good on our own.
We need each other.
We need God.
Like, what a great set of things to just already know about each other on the, you know, when you get together.
Have that all out of the way.
Most people you meet, that's not the prerequisites, you know.
And you meet really special people.
You may not even become their friend, but you'll meet little old ladies.
Yeah.
People you would never meet in any other circumstance.
You know, these sweet people with amazing hearts.
It's good to be around that.
It's good for your kids to be around it.
I like Toooth Church as the place where it's like the last place where you it where it's okay to not have anything figured out.
Yeah, and to not be cool.
That's going to be like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the other thing.
Struggling is encouraged.
Like, it's okay to have questions.
It's okay to be all screwed up and be like, I have no idea how this works.
And it's okay to not be cool.
That's one thing I really like about church.
And that's something that resonates the wrong way about churches that are trying to be too hard to be cool.
It's one of the few places where it's just like, you know, nobody's worried about being cool.
We know we can't sing, but we're singing.
And that's one thing I'll add just kind of as we wrap this up.
The one thing I miss a ton is not being in that room where there's 100 people, whatever, singing.
Yeah.
Hearing the people sing around you.
You know, I hate like a third of the songs.
Me too.
But it doesn't matter, right?
Because it's like, and I always found I was a huge jerk about that because I was like, ah, this song isn't theologically.
Or the music is terrible.
Oh, well, you know, it's like, well, all these people are worshiping and you're sitting here complaining.
So shut up.
And you see people who are going through like cancer and all of these things that are just horrible.
And I'm like, my life's pretty good compared with some of the things they're going through.
They're singing their hearts out.
And it's like, that is such an encouragement and a conviction for us.
And that's, yeah, there's a whole because that's another thing.
There's a whole gamut of people, all spectrum that go to church.
It's just, it's not one personality type.
And so you get that.
You get the people that are really into really poppy songs and you get people that want some.
There's all sorts of musical tastes and just and church has room for all of them.
That's what I love about it.
Let this be the conclusion of the matter.
Go to church.
Indeed.
So what, hate mail?
Yes.
I really miss Adam Ford.
So we had mentioned how Ethan accidentally uploaded his audio mullet podcast, and the hate mail continues to pour in.
So he uploaded it to our stream, our feed by mistake.
And so some people downloaded the audio mullet.
It's the same basic sign-in.
It's just a different sign-in name.
So he logged into the same account.
Everything looks the same.
Yeah, I just wasn't paying attention to the name, the sign-in name.
I'm sorry.
So we got an angry email.
And he says, call him piano guy.
Sure.
He says that.
I don't know who the guest was on your mullet show, but he's going to spoil your brand.
That might be Doug.
I think it's Doug.
It's got to be Doug Tenaple.
I think we replaced Kyle with Doug.
You guys have a sort of innocent, high schooly humor, which is more or less like mine.
But whoever this guy is comes across as vulgar, angry, violent, and loves talking about cigars and liquor, which may be things you enjoy, but which are going to spoil your brand.
Hey, the thing is, I agree with this guy.
Yeah.
Like, Doug is Doug is brash.
He's off his brand.
He's off-brand for us.
Yeah.
He's different from us.
Although he wasn't like that when he came on our show.
Yeah, he was pretty tame when he came on the show.
And we actually tried to get him to record some rants for our show.
Yeah, because we liked some of his rants.
And we couldn't get him mad enough, which is weird.
He says, did I say spoil your brand enough times?
We heard that constantly working on Veggie Tales.
Constant note on this.
This is off-brand.
And it became like so, I guess, so sick to hear it.
It was real off-brand.
Yeah.
So then he gives us some suggestions for podcast guests, and then he says, but please prepare for these interviews.
Some of your interviews sound embarrassingly like those old Chris Farley sketches on SNL.
If you need someone to research guests and come up with questions, let me know.
Hey, agreed.
We actually.
It's almost like it's not really hate mail.
It's more like criticism.
Constructive criticism mail.
Yeah.
We need a soundbite for that.
Like maybe the sound of hammer, like a jackhammer.
I don't know.
Constructive criticism.
Constructive criticism.
Construction, right?
Like hammer.
You can do better.
Constructive criticism.
So we agree.
And actually, when we first did our very first interview, which I can't remember, was it Ali Beth?
Yeah, it was Ali Beth.
Ali Bethi.
And we said, what are we going to do?
We said, let's do it like Chris Farley.
Yeah, let's know.
We wanted to emulate that is the goal of our interviews.
We asked her almost all stupid questions, right?
And then we realized that was a bit much, so we started dialing it back.
But we still like to mix in really stupid questions.
Sometimes they are unintentionally stupid.
Like when I said you got any good stories the first time, I was being completely sincere.
And now it's become a joke because I realize how dumb that sounds just to ask somebody that in the middle of the interview.
Got any good stories?
But I love the purity of heart and the innocence from which that question arises because you're just trying to get to interview.
We want you to say something cool.
Yeah.
Please.
I know you've lived a lot of interesting things.
We just are trying to get you to tell those stories.
So just tell your best few.
Everyone's got a few stories.
If you're all sitting around, you got some stories.
Give us the stories.
Yeah.
What's he going to do?
Speaking of giving us stories, if you have any Carmen stories, email those to podcast at BabylonB.com.
We've gotten a few.
We have a few.
We're trying to rack up a bunch of stuff.
Yeah, we're going to rack up a bunch and have a do a whole show.
We want to do some analysis on his music videos.
And if we maybe get an interview with someone close to Carmen.
I got to find an interview with somebody that knows him.
So anybody just, yeah, let us know if you know anybody in the music industry, Christian music industry, who might have worked with him.
You know, somebody who had to serve him.
What do you think he ordered on a big platter in his green room?
Some kind of little brine shrimp.
And I don't know.
He probably had a very specific gusher flavor that he liked.
Specific gusher.
Like it was gushers, but it was a very specific kind.
Or like a very specific.
They're discontinued, and you have to get them from Mexico or something.
Yeah.
Or something that's still kind of living a little bit.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm imagining Ursula Ursula's eating those weird worms and stuff.
I'm just thinking about Ursula.
Yeah.
This is my head.
Well, this is the end of the Babylon Bee podcast if you're a freeloader.
Yep.
So pony up some bucks and you can join the Babylon Bee subscriber lounge where we're going to answer questions from the mailbag today.
Yeah, and if you're a subscriber, the last couple episodes and some of the interviews are now available to be watched.
So you can see this on video.
Right now, you can see our hideous faces.
You can see our beautiful faces.
Yeah.
So the rest of you, the first episode of this on video is going to be next week.
I believe.
Or it'll be the interview.
I think the video.
The news show.
The news show.
We'll call it right now.
The news show will be the first official video episode.
Until then, this has been Babylon Bee Fake News You Can Trust.
And I'm Kyle Mann.
And I'm Ethan Nicole.
The rest of this podcast is in our super exclusive premium subscriber lounge.
If you're not a Babylon Bee subscriber, go to BabylonB.com/slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Access to our headline forum.
20% off the items in the Babylon Bee store, a gift and more.
Please drop us a review on iTunes and share the podcast with a friend.
Feedback and love mail go to podcast at Babylonbee.com.
Follow Ethan at AxeCop and Kyle at the underscore Kyle underscore man on Twitter.
The rest of this podcast is in our super exclusive premium subscriber lounge.
If you're not a Babylon Bee subscriber, go to BabylonB.com slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Access to our headline forum, 20% off the items in the Babylon Bee store, a gift and more.
Please drop us a review on iTunes and share the podcast with a friend.
Feedback and love mail go to podcast at Babylonbee.com.
Follow Ethan at AxeCop and Kyle at the underscore Kyle underscore man on Twitter.
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 go forth and punch Satan Repeatedly in the ribs.