This is The Babylon Bee 2020 Thanksgiving Special. Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans. Check out the new Babylon Bee book: The Sacred Texts Of The Babylon Bee. It makes a great Christmas gift! Check out the new Axe Cop video game coming out Thanksgiving 2020! Watch Kyle and Ethan react to their first time playing here! In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan don't talk about the week's top stories. They are joined by the rest of the studio Bee crew, Matthew McDavid, Dan Coats, and Patrick Green, to have a Thanksgiving feast and talk about gratitude, interesting facts about the history of Thanksgiving, and how Kyle sees himself as Tom Bombadil. In the subscriber portion, the dinner guests break into a meeting of the Chestertonians by reading The Philosophy of Gratitude by G.K. Chesterton. Also mentioned on the podcast: This article is what producer Dan had in mind about the first socialist thanksgiving: The Great Thanksgiving Hoax.
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.
Hello, everyone.
You can't tell right now, but I'm smiling because I'm wearing a mask.
This is Thanksgiving.
But this year, Thanksgiving is a little different than other years because of the pandemic.
Our governor has said that we can't meet together.
We have to cancel Thanksgiving.
We have to wear masks.
All kinds of rules.
And of course, we at the Babylon Bee have paid close attention to our governor's orders.
Because of this, this year for Thanksgiving, we decided that we're going to pack the entire crew into this little room and get as close together as possible.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Thanksgiving special.
So let's do our customary toast that we came up with.
We stole from the Bible.
We can steal it from the Bible, right?
Respect everyone.
Love the brethren.
Fear God.
Honor the enemy.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Dan, you're spilling coffee everywhere.
All right, you guys.
Let's pray and we'll dig in.
All right.
Dear God, you've given us a lot to be thankful for this year, even though it's 2020 and we got a lot of crazy stuff going on.
We thank you for all the good things in our lives.
We thank you for giving us cool jobs where we get to tell jokes and maybe communicate some truth.
Thank you for turkey.
Thank you for food.
Thank you for non-alcoholic beverages that we get to enjoy together.
In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.
Amen.
All right.
Cheers.
Cheers.
You want to cheers again?
You were holding up the gun.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Love God.
Guys, guys, too loud.
Too loud.
Whisper, whisper.
Yeah, so we can't sing, right?
I don't think we'll sing.
You can sing.
You have to sing below speaking level.
It's going to be hard for you.
I like to.
What did you say?
It was like a little girl in a horror movie or something.
It's going to merge.
It is here.
Eat some turkey with some cheer.
So should we introduce who's at the table?
Yeah, okay.
So who are these guys?
I'm Kyle, editor-in-chief of Babylon Bee.
This is Ethan.
Creative Director.
Whatever that is.
Yeah.
Make us creative.
Producer Dan.
I produce the podcast.
Yeah, he's always back there doing stuff.
And our favorite, Kacklin Patty.
Patrick.
Which is my whole job.
It's just laughing.
That's why we hired you.
Yeah, if all of a sudden you found the Babylon Bee podcast turned into like friends, a big gang theory or something.
It's Kacklin Patty.
The majority of reviews like him.
We get some hate, but it's funny.
Yeah, it's fun to hit the scene.
I love the comments where they're attributing it to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, Dance laughed at like thinking that Dan has changed overnight.
I'll change overnight, Dan.
We're all Dan now.
Dan, fix that.
Dan?
Dan just started taking some nude hallucinogens or something and became a whole different guy.
And I'm Matt.
Matt.
Can I say your last name?
Matthew McDavid.
Matthew McDavid.
The beautiful set, which I think this is the first time we'll see it with all the images and everything completely true on the internet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ta-da!
Well done, sir.
Thank you.
Matt set this all up.
It was his vision.
You're going to see the subscriber lounge after this, I think.
No?
Are we doing that today?
No, I think it's just the meal today.
We're going to play the XCOP video game.
Oh, there it is.
We are trying to get that out tomorrow, right?
Because the game releases tomorrow.
Yeah.
There you go.
That's the subscriber line.
Oh, that'll be the subscriber portion.
Love it.
No, because we need to release the public link when you're all smoking.
Anyway, you get to see it all.
It's cool.
You're going to see the goal out soon.
I feel bad for this sound of chewing in people's heads.
And fix that.
It's going to be like an ASMR video or something.
10 hours of chewing.
How long do you think?
Well, yeah.
I didn't have anything to say.
You're supposed to go around the table and say what you're thankful for.
This is true.
Oh.
Did I ever tell my dead possum story?
I think so, but you tell a lot of stories.
It's like my only Thanksgiving story.
Is this a good dinner table conversation, or is this more of a dessert conversation?
I just really liked possums when I was a kid.
I'd never seen a real one.
I'd only seen them in books.
We went out to see the family at this cabin in Oregon, go Washington.
And on the way out there, I saw a dead possum in the road.
And I was so excited.
I was like seven or eight.
So we got to the Thanksgiving table.
They had everybody do a prayer where everybody thanked God around a circle.
Everybody's like, thank you for our country.
This may our free, the greatest country on earth.
And then we're like, thank you, the Lord Jesus, for the salvation for dying for us.
And it gets to me, I go, I thank you that I saw a dead possum in the road.
And I said it probably with more sincerity than anybody else.
Tears in your eyes.
Yeah, genuine gratitude.
I'm going to write a book about this.
Awesome.
Fantastic.
Well, I'm thankful for the Babylon B, man.
Me and Dan were, and we've told this story before, but me and Dan were beating our brains out working construction on the supply side of the construction industry.
So if you've ever been in a sales job, it's very high pressure, high stress, you know, time-oriented, getting calls in the middle of the night, like, oh, the pipe blew, and we need the repair coupling now, or else everything's going to explode.
And it's just constant nightmares.
You know, you'd wake up in the middle of the night, I forgot to load the truck with blah, blah, blah, you know, that kind of stuff.
And I mean, you know, I really am thankful that God kind of ordained things that I would get this gig because I don't really, there's probably people that are a lot funnier than me that could have gotten it.
But I mean, just the way it worked out, you know, I was on Facebook at work.
That's what it should be.
Work what it should be.
Work was so fulfilling writing Babylon B articles while you're supposed to be working.
No, I, well, yeah, okay.
That's old news now.
That's supposed to fire now.
I can't go fired no more.
You can't get fired again.
They're going to want their own point back.
And yeah, I mean, I saw Adam's post.
You know, we're launching the Babylon Bee, and it was like, I don't know, it really felt like this is, I can't believe this doesn't already exist.
You know, this satire, dry satire that doesn't hate Christians, you know, might as well make fun of Christians a little bit from within.
I was like, I don't know.
I was loved at first sight for me.
So I'm definitely thankful for my life.
I told my wife last night, I'm like, our life is amazing.
We have stress, we have things we deal with, and we're just like, oh man, how are we going to deal with this?
And raising three boys.
But we sat outside last night by the fire.
And we had a fire pit, and we just threw a log on there, and we sat out there.
I'm just looking up at the stars.
Like, man.
Life is good.
What's the Chesterton thing at the end of heretics where he says that we look at the world and we have to defend it now?
And I don't know.
Like I look at the world as being good.
I don't know.
The world is good.
Originally good, not just ultimately good.
That's Chesterton.
There are good things in the world.
Oh, and yeah, we don't want you to have to work too much.
God's creative.
So you don't have to throw the Chesterton sound-wise.
Yeah, you can just do it now.
Our goal here is you can just point to it.
Yeah, we can hold it.
Oh, no, no, Chester.
It's never going back.
It'll go back.
It's never going back.
Now there's a hole.
That's our continuity.
Most of the time.
Poor Matt.
You spent so much time getting all those up.
I know.
I just saved Dan time.
That was perfect.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just a trade.
That's true.
In payroll, it evens out.
You'll find the nail there in the brick.
Well, I'm thankful for the bee for a couple of reasons.
I think one thing is, I mean, I'm at an age where it's, you don't expect to meet like really good friends and the people that you're like, you know, they're going to be like friends for life click with.
Yeah.
You know, you just kind of accept, you know, your old friends are the people you're going to carry on with.
So I know you guys are going to be my best friends for life.
If we had biscuits, we'd break them together.
Yes.
Our families hang out.
Families love each other.
So that's one.
And then the other thing is I always thought that I would have to pick.
I'm a guy who was born with a lot of random talents.
I can't throw a basketball.
I can't, you know, there's a lot of things I can't do, but anything artsy and creative, I seem to just have a knack for it.
And I love all those things.
And I can't do it for all of them for a career.
Usually I have to pick one.
At the B, I get to exercise all those things.
I get to sing.
I get to write.
I get to make jokes.
I get to write scripts.
I get to draw.
I get to do animation.
I can do comics if I want to.
I get to do some Photoshops.
I get to just lay out books.
I can just run the gamut of the things that I'm good at.
And I don't know if I could find another job where I could do that.
So I feel like I love that the B brings out all the best qualities of me.
And I get to do podcasts and talk and be in front of a camera.
And just all those things I never thought I'd be doing.
I like half those things.
Well, more than half those things are mentioned.
They're just things you made up as part of your job distribution.
I just added them.
Like, you can't do that at a construction job.
Be like, by the way, I'm going to be making some cartoons.
They're not going to be able to do it.
I'll just do it.
Oh, man.
Well, we like you too, Ethan.
Keep you around.
Well, the Babylon Bee really saved my butt because per science, I have a business outside of here, and it's a gathering place.
People come and enjoy themselves, kind of family entertainment.
Big place here in Southern California.
It's a strip club.
No, I'm just kidding.
I thought it would be a good stand.
Family entertainment.
Yeah.
You know, something for everybody.
And so, anyways, it got shut down.
And so we're trying not to become a statistic over there.
Shut down, lockdown.
Lockdown-wise, yeah.
So, and so it's been a bit of a struggle.
And we don't have a great internet over there.
And so everyone was saying, you need to go online.
You need to go online.
And I like the brick and mortar thing.
I haven't been the online guy.
And then Ethan and I, we've been smoking at a cigar shop, right?
And I've known you for a long time, Kyle.
And you guys took us in.
You took my company in and let us borrow the old office, little space, high-speed internet.
You had all the tech.
You have these cameras and such, and let me come in, turn it into a little painting studio and do our painting events online.
And it really got us through, I think, what I hope is the worst of it.
And yeah, as we navigate reopening now, but that was a lot of fun.
And so when you guys were moving into this place, I got the itch, just like these unrealized talents like podcasting and our animation and all of this, all this, this is like a place that all that can come to life.
I feel like, man, we could really build something really cool.
And that was a lot of fun.
So thanks, guys.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
You know, the studio is awesome because of you being on board.
We all moved into this building.
It would have been a white room.
I mean, I was like pulling my hair out thinking, like, I know we need to make this great.
Yeah.
Like, we just didn't have the bandwidth.
You didn't like that desk that we came in with that setup?
Yeah.
We all had giant lawyer desks and like huge three-ton.
This officer used to be in a company.
So it's all like we said, lawyer.
It may still be.
Yeah.
In Pasadena.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Somewhere in California.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know.
So anyway, what I'm saying is like, we moved in here.
This whole set, the lounge set, it was all just a dream of like, hey, one day we're going to make something awesome.
Yeah, we didn't think it'd be like in a month or two.
Yeah.
Well, and I sketched out this floor plan when we came in and I was thinking, okay, we'll do a lounge here.
We'll do the set here.
Oh, this will work.
And I'm like, and I go on Amazon, I'm Googling like cloth backgrounds for podcasts.
Yeah.
And yeah, I am so glad we didn't go that route.
Yeah.
Because this is pretty great.
Yeah.
This is pretty great.
Very cool.
Dan, Patrick, any gratitude thoughts?
Are you guys thankful for anything?
Nothing, nothing at all.
No, I think I'm thankful for the B too.
I remember when I saw the posting online, I thought it was crazy the B was even near me.
And then when I came to it, I interviewed with Ethan.
And I remember during the interview, I made, I think I referenced adaptation, the movie, and Ethan hadn't seen it.
And I was like, oh, no, I think it's over.
And I left leaving going, I don't think I got it, guys.
I referenced the movie, didn't know.
I mean, at least you didn't reference like a Star Wars.
Yeah, you'd be completely lost.
Thank you for your time.
I tend to give people the first impression that I don't like them.
I found out.
They're hard interviewers.
I think I wasn't sure.
Yeah, I just was unsure.
I was just like, I just think it didn't work.
And then I got the call and I was just like, oh, wow.
Because it was like, it's cool just seeing the job.
You can't imagine how bad all the other guys were.
I know.
I'll be back.
Yeah, because no, it's, I mean, I feel bad saying it too, because it's like 2020 has been bad for so many people, but for me, it's been so good.
It's like, you know, getting this job has been nice.
Because, yeah, it's like Ethan's saying, it's like doing so many different things has been really cool to do.
Yeah, you're not just giving like a little checklist of things to do.
Like you get to creatively, especially me, especially me.
Very orange, creative director.
We all take ownership of our jobs.
Did you audition Patrick's laugh when he came in?
That was a bonus.
That was a bonus.
I think I was being very, I was trying to be very quiet in there.
And I was skeptical.
I was not a Patrick laugh believer.
They say me, but I'm like, no, no, shh.
I wanted to do that.
And I was like, I don't know, man.
Here's Patrick laughing.
Shouldn't we be quiet behind the scenes?
And then everyone started loving it.
And so now I allow myself to laugh.
No, not everybody.
Some hate male.
Yeah, I think it was like the Michael Malice was my first one.
And I think I just thought it was funny.
I didn't know how this reacted because I was like looking around.
I was like, Dan was laughing.
I was like, I guess I can laugh.
Dan might have been chuckling.
Yeah, Dan was like just chuckling.
My chuckles a few octaves lower.
For sure.
Yeah, there's like zero people who know me who are surprised at all.
Like laughing loudly in the background.
It's nice that we can see you guys now because you're right over on the desks.
It used to be that we would see the back, a reflection of the back of Dan's head through glass.
Through glass, in a glass window, yeah, a glass door thing.
You're like, Dan, Dan.
And if you thought it was funny, you'd see him like shaking.
Sometimes doing this.
A lot of this.
Yeah.
I thought it was good because it's like it kind of helps everyone feel like a joke landed, I guess.
Haven't we had some comments about the background laughter on a podcast is the new studio audience?
Someone said that.
I was at California.
Call Erskine said that.
So I think that's something special.
So we're going to get the applause lights.
We're going to get the awe.
Can we get any pie?
We should have gotten pie.
I guess we should make it.
What is the open, get a spoon out?
Just pure pumpkin.
All eat out of the same can.
Just to.
I can get you some cookies out of the cupboard.
No.
That's over.
Apologies for our audio listeners.
There's a can of pumpkin.
Yeah.
We need to like thing for the blind.
Our audio listeners are so confused.
What's going on right now?
Ethan holds a can of pumpkin aloft.
We'll get to that.
There's a comedy album like that one time where I was like listening to it and this guy came on the screen.
It was just like, hey, this guy, he did this really funny move where he kind of did something in the audience and just went back.
The comedy album was so weird.
Well, I'm definitely grateful for the Babylon Bee giving me a job and basically getting me off the street.
And you drove as a delivery driver.
Off the street.
Literally.
Literally.
But I mean, I basically get to work with my friends every day.
And we get to make content that, you know, has Jesus in it and isn't ashamed of Jesus and talks to things that are going on in the culture that it seems like other people tell you you can't talk about these things in the culture.
And we have a platform and a podcast where we can talk to anybody, talk to everybody, get different views, get different people, not be ashamed of Jesus, talk about what's going on in the world when you have things on Twitter that say, oh, this has been fact-checked and you can't talk about this.
So being able to just talk about things is like a huge, like a place of sanity, I guess.
Are you defending sanity?
Jay Chester.
Where's the plaque?
No, no, no.
That guy reminded me.
Just makes Dan sad.
Oh, and we get to meet really awesome people.
True.
Yeah.
Every week is like, oh, here's a comedian.
When we went to Dave Rubin's studio, like, I'm in Dave Rubin's studio.
This is amazing.
Just the idea, like two years ago, if I ever thought, hey, you'd be interviewing people that are like on YouTube.
And I never thought I'd be in that kind of a position.
So it's really cool.
Yeah, I was just telling Dan how last year I was painting a theater set, listening to Bridget Fettese on Joe Rogan.
Oh, no way.
Like meeting her.
It's kind of like a mind trip for me.
Bridget Fettese is going to be on next week or something soon.
Timing wise.
Oh, I guess she's been on, though.
That's true.
Yeah.
But only audio, right?
Yep.
Actually, the first guest in our lounge.
Yes.
Very nice.
Very festive right now.
Christmas tree.
Yeah.
So I'm wearing the Christmas sweater today.
This is from RefTunes, our friend at Reft Tunes, the Calvin John Calvin saying, no one is righteous, no, not one.
It has a good bad list on it.
Everybody's on the bad list.
Jesus.
I miss that story that much.
Well, I didn't mean for everybody to say the Babylon Bee.
We got the memo.
Do you want to work hair longer?
But seriously, sincere.
Grateful for the Babylon B, of course.
And grateful to God and all the viewers and all the subscribers.
Grateful to God that we have jobs at all.
Grateful that we have our families and whatever relative health and blessings that we have right now.
I mean, like in Christ, we have everything to be thankful for for sure.
I think we were talking yesterday about Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, and he's talking about his daughter's health issues.
And at the end, he kind of gives this inspiring story about how that came out of the health issues.
And then he goes, things are good.
I think the book ends on all.
He says, things are good for now.
It's like foreboding, but in the sense, I do love the realism of like, I am very grateful that things are okay for now.
I mean, things could go to heck next year.
Right now.
It's the very second earthquake.
It's like, we have no idea.
I have a G.K. Chesterton essay we can read.
Maybe we want to read it and pass it around.
On gratitude.
I also got some Thanksgiving fun facts.
And we have some fun facts about Thanksgiving.
Chesterton talks about, it's a little, it's of his essays, it was a little earlier, so I think it's a little dense and he's still kind of refining his writing style.
But he kind of talks about how if you're mad about anything, it's only because you have things to be grateful for that exist.
Like if you ever are like, oh, I don't have this, he's like, that's just because of the miracle that things actually exist and you love them.
And he has this great thing about how you get horrified when you walk into a room and see a dead body.
Like, oh, this is horrifying.
He's like, but shouldn't you just be shocked in joy when you see a live person?
Like you walk in and like, there's a man here.
And then the end of the, maybe we won't read the whole thing, I don't know, but at the end of the essay, he basically says, like, you ask someone to pass you the mustard and you're grateful for the mustard.
And then he says, but you never think about like, there is a being next to me that knows what I mean when I say pass the mustard and automatically reaches out.
And he's like, and then he says we should build statues to the man who passed the mustard throughout the land.
Are these all spoilers?
It's basically a spoiler.
I don't know if we'll read the whole essay.
It's kind of big, but it's kind of like a sunrise thing.
We just take it for granted.
The sun goes up, the sun goes down every day.
It just seems normal.
But like, we just never stop and think like the miracle that the sun rises every day.
And how like I think in that essay that I'm thinking of, he kind of talks about like God being like a child.
Do it again.
Orthodoxy.
Yeah, it's more orthodoxy.
He says, do it again.
Like, he's delighted that the sun's coming up.
He says, our father's like a child and is young, and it is we who have grown old.
Yeah.
We don't like the repetition.
And we assume that the sun will rise.
Oh, it's a scientific process.
He's like, why isn't it God just saying, do it again every morning?
And he's still delighted by it.
I think there's What would otherwise be a considered foolishness to the world that we Christians have the ability to lose everything and still find every reason to be joyful?
Even in the midst of the pandemic and having to manage, like, here we're shutting down.
How do we reinvent ourselves with my company?
And granted, God is good.
And this would have never happened for me.
Getting this company, sitting down at this table, and eating food with you all would never have happened had not the pandemic happened.
It reminds me of Romans 8:28: that God works all things together for good for those called according to his purpose.
And that's something I try to teach my kids: that to trust in that, no matter the calamity, like Jordan Peterson would say, suffering.
I do appreciate that realism.
But that even, even in the midst of any degree of suffering, like losing the business that my family has built for the last nine years, I could lose everything and still be impoverished on the street and have every reason to be joyful because my home is in heaven.
It's just a matter of time.
And I could find reasons to be good today.
I either do a prayer with my daughter every night or I read her a proverb and explain it to her.
Last night we read, All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast.
Idea that if your heart's cheerful, that's like your, I mean, you still need food, though.
The message probably says a cheerful heart is like a giant piece of pizza.
It's like a supreme pizza from dominoes.
The message has some great funny translations that I remember, like where it says, These hard times are small potatoes compared to the good times that are coming.
Yeah.
Would the Israelites have said a street guard?
This is how you talk in the street, not the streets in his small potato.
There's some proverb that says truckloads.
Like God's bringing truckloads of blessings.
I'm like, I don't think they want to say truckloads.
Yeah, he likes pie in the sky by and by a lot.
He uses that a lot in the message.
Yeah.
That's just called pie in the sky by and by.
I don't even know what that means.
What does that mean?
I mean, by lofty, like stuff that, yeah, don't worry about it.
I don't know.
I thought about it.
My pie in the sky.
Yeah, I don't get what by and by means.
Bye and by.
It's like the Uber dynamic translation philosophy.
Feed by just in rhymes.
That's sounds nice.
And trans by and gay.
I don't know what wow.
B-Y-E.
Yeah.
Now, now, let's try not to tell the one conservative joke.
Thanksgiving meal.
A feast of jokes.
So, what are these Thanksgiving facts that you have?
You want facts?
Maybe we'll save Chesterton for a subscriber portion.
Okay.
We're going to be a little shorter today just because we all need to get home to our families and start our weekend.
Got to bake a pie.
Bye-bye.
You're opening your next Coke.
I don't want to get Kyle in troublesome drinking.
Have we been sanitized in the bathroom every 15 minutes?
Because I have everybody wrote their addresses down in the address book.
You're correct.
Let's hear some Thanksgiving facts while Kyle goes cheap.
Yeah, make sure you keep the recorder on, Kyle.
My wife has a recorder on.
You're going to be recording.
I'm going to hit mute.
Classic.
I'm going to hit mute.
Dan's going to have a fun recording.
Should be good.
All right.
Thanksgiving facts.
Oh, I love the Bible.
Yeah, close that.
Get back.
Get rid of that.
There are no facts.
Thanksgiving facts of the Bible.
The first Thanksgiving was actually three days.
Oh.
So, what are we waiting for?
No, the three-day feast.
It's not just a one-day thing.
It should be three days.
Like with the natives?
Yeah.
Okay.
I didn't know that.
Maybe not natives.
Oh, this one.
Colonists and Native Americans may not have had turkey at their feast.
But they did it.
It was in 1621.
They don't know if it was even on the menu, but they did have, we know they had venison, duck, goose, oysters, lobster, eel, and fish.
That sounds everything better than turkey.
Yeah.
We should have all that.
Yeah.
When did turkey become the thing then?
I know.
That might be.
No, maybe it's not.
I don't know.
I feel like Thanksgiving's a lie now.
Thomas Jefferson did not like Thanksgiving.
He refused to declare it a holiday because it involved prayer and he said he believed in the separated church and stayed there.
Oops.
Jefferson.
It involved prayer reflection.
Didn't he also cut up the New Testament?
Yeah.
He cut his Bible.
The Jefferson Bible.
Yeah.
Cut out the parts that he didn't think were real or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The lyrics.
It has God in it.
All the red letters are out.
Sorry.
The lyrical genius behind the hit song Mary Had a Little Lamb is also responsible for Thanksgiving becoming a national holiday.
She apparently, her name is Sarah Josepha Hale.
Josepha.
I don't know.
Josarah.
She convinced Abraham Lincoln after 17 years of the respect of women.
Thank you, Sarah.
So I'm not going to.
Some extra soda here, probably.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway.
Lincoln wrote the proclamation in 1863, earning her the name the mother of Thanksgiving.
Wow.
Americans prepare 46 million turkeys for Thanksgiving each year.
46 million.
I wonder if that's up or down this year.
Yeah.
If everybody's eating alone, it would be up.
Yeah, they're not going to have to eat as much, right?
Well, everybody has to make their own turkey.
Yeah.
More than that.
Interesting.
Maybe.
That's just crazy.
Like, what is that the population of?
America?
Like, close to 400 million now.
Like, 300 million.
America's 400 million.
Yeah.
So it's like a quarter of them.
No.
So 46 million turkeys easy?
46 million.
Turkey for every four people.
That sounds about right.
One for every 10, right?
46 million?
46 million.
Yeah, but there's like 340 million, right?
Yeah.
I'm not good at math.
I don't know why.
I'm trying to be like, I'm going to try.
What's a country that has 46 million people?
It's like eating that country in turkeys.
Like the state of California.
How many people are in California?
46.
40 million.
Okay, yeah.
It's like eating California in turkey.
California works.
So every person in California works turkey.
They get eaten every year.
The turkeys makes you think.
There it is right here.
Really funny.
I keep my mouth shut.
The turkeys pardoned by the president go on to live fulfilling lives.
Do they?
What is that?
So the first apartments and who is the very first president to pardon a turkey?
Yeah.
Herbert Hoover.
Coolidge.
You're half right, actually.
Herbert.
Herbert.
Is there another Herbert?
I'm sure there is.
There's another Herbert.
Herbert and Hoop and I feel like I've read this.
That's why.
H.W.
Oh, oh.
Yeah, it's that recent.
Really?
In our lifetime, yeah.
No way.
What a good one.
He pardoned the first turkey in 1989.
After he noticed the 50-pound bird at his official Thanksgiving proclamation, he looked a little nervous.
Every president has upheld the tradition ever since, but what happens to that lucky bird that lives to squawk another day?
In 2005 and 2009, the turkeys went to Disneyland and Disney World Parks to serve as Grand Marshal in the annual Thanksgiving parades.
I don't think they really would appreciate the teacups and they wanted like the turkey legs and they were like, they're a grand marshal.
They get like a medal.
Wow.
Helping the whole time.
Turkeys are kind of actually named after the country turkey.
No, the turkey does not really hail from the country turkey.
During the reign of the Ottoman Empire, a bird called the guinea fowl, which bears a striking resemblance to the American turkey, was imported to Europe from its native North Africa because the birds came from Turkish lands.
Europeans called them the turkey cock and the turkey hen.
To the turkey cock.
Fear brethren.
Fear the turkeys, brethren.
When settlers in the Americas began sending similar-looking birds back to Europe, the name really stuck, except for they just took off the last word.
Sad.
Reserve that for the children.
That was probably a good choice.
Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for plumbers.
I read that online, too.
Yeah.
They call it Brown Friday.
I'm sure it's true.
Thanks to all the food.
Yeah, thanks to all the food we eat on Thanksgiving and all the house guests stressing out.
The plumbing system gets overtaxed.
Rotaruder reports that kitchen drains, garbage disposals, and toilets require more attention the day after Thanksgiving than any other day.
Before you have to join the legions playing a hefty holiday bill paying, you may want to remind your kitchen cleanup crew to scrape the plates before washing.
Garbage disposal.
You're just sticking entire turkey bones and turkey legs down.
This should be fine.
Garbage disposal.
You know about the wishbone.
How old do you think the wishbone tradition is?
This is my last fact.
1946.
That's a good guess.
It's a good guess.
1617.
Actually, I don't even have it here.
You don't have it on here?
1901, Bob?
Way back before any of that.
Breaking wishbones to grant secret wishes isn't an American original.
The tradition was inherited from the British, who got it from the Romans, who adopted it from the Etruscans.
I don't know if that is Etruscan.
They got it from the aliens.
Who believed way back?
They believed that birds had oracle powers.
When birds died, they would keep the wishbone and stroke it as they made wishes, which isn't too far off from what we do today.
What?
We don't stroke it.
That's pretty far off.
That fact is foul.
No.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no, no.
We have to redeem that before we end this segment.
I didn't realize paganism in our Thanksgiving holiday.
This is shocking.
Not good.
Not good.
We always did the wishbone.
We were so excited about it.
My kids are like, what?
It's slimy.
You got to let it dry.
You let it dry and then do it like the next day.
Oh, because, yeah, before it's just like, yeah, it's all gummy.
Get no wishes.
It doesn't work.
There you have it.
Well, those were very interesting stories.
Fascinating.
Thank you.
Thank you for that flagging.
You're welcome.
Yes.
i heard a story about the first thanksgiving um charlie brown uh thanksgiving special well that but also but like when the when the settlers came to america they had like a socialist system set up where they were having like a communal stock of all of their supplies and all their food and the governor would kind of how'd that work out for them And they all had to work hard, but they didn't get to keep what they made.
And so basically the whole first Thanksgiving was everyone was starving to death and the Indians came and like helped them.
And I think, like, part of the letters of the governor, he was like, let everyone work hard and keep what they make.
You know, next Thanksgiving was a little better, I think.
We're trying the first one this year.
That was a lot of the lists I looked at for fun facts.
All of them had a Thanksgiving isn't a completely happy holiday.
And then have this whole thing about the genocide of the Native Americans.
And they're always like, the Europeans came and wiped the Indians out by bringing a plague.
Which I guess you have to believe that they passed out blankets with or that they on purpose brought it.
Like, are you just saying they brought it on purpose, or...?
Hmm.
The, uh...
Yeah, apparently all that comes from, there's, like, one letter where a general says, Ah, man, if you could just put some smallpox in these blankets.
These Indians are driving me crazy kind of thing.
But it was taken to mean that that is an actual military tactic.
There's no evidence that anybody participates.
Like when you tell a joke on Twitter and they like that jacket, wish I could hang that guy with his necktie.
This guy plotted murder.
Cancel.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of bad stuff happened, but there isn't a lot of evidence for it.
Complete genocide, as far as I know.
So, one of the things I love about listening to the two of you on the podcast is that I find it very comforting because I just get this image of two old guys sitting on a porch laughing as the world.
Two very old guys.
As the world.
Laughing as the world.
There's something that.
So speak into that.
What gives you the ability to not let the news of the day just down you?
There's nothing you can do about it.
I don't know.
I was talking before.
Or I guess that's the thing I can do.
That's the one thing I can do.
I can make a joke about it.
Yeah.
I think humor definitely helps you cope.
You know, you can't take it too seriously, or the jokes aren't funny.
I was talking before that I feel like I want to embody Tom Bombadil.
Tom Bombadil had his little.
You want to ruin Lord of the Rings?
That's what you spoiled.
Tom Bombadil.
How dare you, Sarah?
That's me.
He was getting around.
I've just heard people complain about it.
He was so great.
He's got his little property and he just lives this happy little life.
And they talk to him about Sauron and they say, Sauron's going to destroy the world.
And it reminds me of the people that are like, Trump is going to destroy our democracy.
And he's like, meh, I like my little land here.
And he's just like, good luck.
And I, you know, and the reason is because he's basically been around since the creation of Middle Earth.
And so he just goes, I've seen tyrants come and go.
And Sauron will fade away.
You know, so I think when we have the eschatological triumph, like we know we're going to win in the end.
You know, things could go bad for the next 500 years and we still win.
So I can have comfort in that.
I can joke about it.
I think it does give Christian satire some more hope and peace.
You know?
Yeah, I think I've come to realize the best thing you can do in most situations is whatever you do well.
It's not just like, so you think there's like the generic reaction to the situation, like, this guy is outraging us.
We should ride in the streets.
But I don't know.
We all have an individual reaction to things that God made us each unique.
And mine is usually to make a joke.
Or to make, you know, to do something creative.
Or, I mean, I don't feel driven to join a mob and react in that way.
Sometimes you feel like singing.
Yeah.
But kill your parents.
What?
We want you to sing quieter.
That's actually the worst thing.
A little lower.
A little lower.
Normal speaking.
That's a good one.
Sneaking down a dark hole in the middle.
No louder than a whisper.
Just want to obey the rules.
So that's one of the good things I really like about the Goblin B is that it's not, like you said, it's not joining a mob and destroying.
You're actually trying to create something.
Trying to build something.
Trying to make a culture.
Trying to.
You're making stuff.
Yeah.
You're right.
I just poured all over my belly.
Coca-Cola.
I mean, yeah, Coca-Cola.
Brewbeard.
Sorry, Kyle.
We're going to pile busted.
Dave DeAndrea.
Coffee.
Remember all those old Disney cartoons where the guys would be like getting drunk in the cartoon?
Yeah.
And so they're like, oh my gosh.
It's like Dumbo.
Dumbo was like part of the movie.
Like end of the movie was just them getting drunk.
Yeah.
So did I interrupt Dan?
Yeah, did you get interrupted or you didn't?
I don't remember.
No.
Sorry.
It's all good.
Do you let's move to the subscriber portion where we're going to read G.K. Chesterton's essay together?
Yeah.
All right.
Let's do it.
Any parting thoughts for our friends?
Fear God.
Honor the.
Respect everyone.
Respect the brethren.
Love the brother.
Love the brethren.
Fear God.
Honor the king.
Respect women.
Respect.
They're not excluded.
Respect everyone.
Yeah, the brethren.
They're generic terms.
That's true.
Cistern.
Brethren Cistern.
The Cistern sounds like a gross name.
Babylon B viewers said, listeners, we are thankful for you.
Yes, we are.
Enjoy time with your families.
Give thanks to God.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Be blessed.
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