In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to stand up comedian, Erica Rhodes. They talk about the state of comedy, one line summaries of classic books, and ghost stories. Erica has performed stand up comedy all around the country and has a stand up album, Sad Lemon. She has appeared on Modern Family, New Girl, and many other shows. Erica appears on many podcasts and chooses to subvert expectations by writing on her blog, instead of having her own podcast. Topics Discussed Coffee and Mormons Writing blogs over podcasts Non-Binary politically Comedy for a lone wolf Free thinking has bad connotations Game stop could be Russians Blog about father Erica Rhodes Blog Post Kyle's origin Kyle's tattoo Ghosts Woody Allen Erica's mom being oblivious to ghosts Ethan's ghost story Kyle's ghost story Surviving Death Erica's dad Subscriber Portion Ethan's trip to Norway Bombing story Hostage situation Growing up Episcopalian Fleabag Ethan and Kyle interviewing skills Practicing for Gina Therapy with Erica Rhodes
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee interview show.
Comedy.
Yeah.
Women.
Laughter.
They go together like peanut butter and brisket.
Why are you roping me into your misogyny, Kyle?
I didn't say peanut butter and brisket was bad.
Reading your own sexism into that, really.
No.
Yeah.
So Erica Rhodes is a female comedian.
Yeah, stand-up comic.
A comedian.
I put a working comedian.
Isn't that sexist now to make that distinction?
Oh, maybe they don't do that anymore.
Sorry, Erica.
I don't know.
So Erica is a Southern California comic.
So we started trying to get more comedians in here.
And she came in just to talk about being a comedian.
She's done stuff on dry bar comedy, a bunch of stand-up stuff.
She was on a show called Bring the Funny, where it was like a competitive stand-up comic show.
Jeff Foxworthy was one of the judges.
And yeah, we've been kind of Twitter friends for a while.
So she came in.
It was a fun talk.
We talked about ghosts.
I told my dog ghost story.
I think each of us had a creative talk.
Yeah.
We talked about her dad was a really interesting, funny guy.
Yeah, the most fantastic thing is her father did one-sentence summaries of a bunch of classic books.
Yeah.
And they're very, very funny.
They're really funny.
So we got to go through that list.
That was hilarious.
Yeah.
So anyways, it was a really fun conversation.
Very entertaining.
And a nice break from talking a whole bunch of politics and stuff.
Yeah.
So join us for Erica Rhodes.
Oh, here she comes.
Check out Erica Rhodes' stuff online with the caveat that, you know, she's a stand-up comic.
Why is that a caveat?
I would just like...
You know, there might be some stuff that you're...
The Babylon Bee does not necessarily endorse.
We don't necessarily endorse every joke she makes.
You know what, though?
I think we should change your shirts before she comes in.
Yeah, let's change our outfits and end the table.
Let's do it.
Here we go.
Let's go.
Yeah, but if you swear at it, the right amount of swearing is great because we have a voiceover guy that comes over your voice and just says a random word like donkey or corpuses.
Oh, so I should try to swear.
People actually like it when we get a few swears in there.
Or even like borderline Christian swears.
Yeah, even you say hacksaw.
Because we do the full kind of G-rated.
Like I really think it's funny.
Cool.
Okay, you got it.
Timer's starting.
Yeah.
All right.
I feel like that was good content, though.
So decide when to break into it.
We record an intro ahead of time or we introduce you.
So you've been introduced.
We don't have to sit here and read your Wikipedia page.
Good.
That's so boring, isn't it?
Well, we found that we would do that and it was very awkward because we would introduce them and they were sitting here.
And then we would like pronounce their name wrong.
It's better to do it after we talked.
And then we say, oh, this is really funny because we've talked about this.
We would read things in their Wikipedia.
Maybe they don't want to do your homework is what you're saying.
Yeah, we don't do any homework.
Because it's wrong.
You're using the internet to do your homework.
I did watch your entire dry bar.
Whoa, thanks.
That's more prep than I do for most guests.
It's pretty good.
I hope it wasn't too painful.
No, it was great.
Oh, thanks.
So was that dry bar?
Do you perform in front of a bunch of Mormons?
We do.
They're lovely Mormons.
Do they do any kind of like, like, do they have a sermon first or anything?
No, but I think they serve popcorn and candy, and so they're very wired off sugar.
Do they offer caffeinated food at all, or is it purely food?
I mean, it's just sugar.
They just, they, yeah, I don't think that they're allowed.
Are they allowed to have caffeine?
They can't have coffee, right?
Usually you could never be Mormon.
That's the deal breaker.
But they like hot cocoa, and isn't there caffeine and chocolate?
They probably get like decaffeinated.
Maybe there's the right.
There's no, oh, I guess you're right, natural, though.
Well, no, but there's natural, I mean, caffeine is natural.
I'm going to Google it.
From the beans.
Not that science caffeine.
Decaffeinated hot chocolate.
But they have caffeine.
It sounds awful.
We had Kellen, and he went, we went and got our coffees, and he got a hot cocoa, which is so cute to say hot cocoa and cocoa.
But he didn't say a decaffeinated hot cocoa or anything.
Can you text him?
Yeah.
Later.
No, text him right now and ask him if tell him I say hi.
We did New Faces together in Canada.
You did what?
Montreal.
What's that?
New Faces.
It's like the big festival where you audition five times before you get in.
Yeah, it was the one in the show on Amazon about people getting to that.
Yes.
And he and I were in the same class.
New face class.
Nice.
Big deal.
And like class, like same level of comic, like heavy.
Well, same year that we went to.
Oh, gotcha.
Okay.
I thought it was like there was like.
I was trying to just give it like, you know, sort of.
Same class.
Gotcha.
Same year.
All right.
Understood.
Yes.
I asked him, do you only drink decaf hot cocoa?
Poor Kellen.
The Erica Rhodes interview where we're talking about Kellen Erskine the whole time.
That's what I like.
I like coming on shows where they talk about other comics.
Yeah.
So I found you on Twitter.
I think I can't remember who followed who first, but we're blue checks, you know, so we're kind of elite.
Yeah, we kind of matter more.
Yeah.
Okay, so you did dry bar.
You did a bunch of stuff on your notes.
You couldn't memorize this.
I have your whole career memorized.
Prairie Home Companion.
There you go.
You were the voice of Gerilyn Garrison Keillor's conscience.
I did, yeah.
I did other things.
You never listened to the show?
Listened to the show.
I couldn't remember as a listener.
Oh, you didn't even know what kind of show it was?
I'm embarrassed.
I hear about it a lot.
You're in radio, technically, kind of.
Kind of.
He doesn't understand what podcasts are, so it's okay.
I never planned to do a podcast.
It just happened.
No one plans to do a podcast.
Nobody woke up and was like, you know what?
My dream is to do a podcast.
Are you one of the only comedians that doesn't have a podcast?
Yes.
I'm too busy doing other people's.
It's like exhausting.
I don't know how people do theirs and then other people's and then theirs.
I've decided to go the opposite direction by writing blogs because that's my version of a podcast.
Yeah, you do good blogs.
Thanks.
I've been enjoying doing it, which is a nice feeling when you just enjoy slaying for the doing of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's kind of a new.
It's kind of like hipster.
It's like, you know, it's like people that make a homebrew beer or whatever.
Like writing a blog now is kind of doing some old school.
Yeah, that's, I feel the same way.
Like, I like, I like old school things.
Artists and blogging.
I'm not a modern, I'm not that great at being in this century.
Yeah.
We consider ourselves pre-modern in our thought.
Right?
So we're pretty well either pretty hipster.
Yeah.
Well, we were talking about that.
So that's where we're talking about.
You can't say you're not something.
You can't say you are something.
Can't say you're not not something.
So you were saying talking about trying to be apolitical and how I'm trying to be non-binary politically.
Right.
I don't want to identify as political in any capacity.
And people don't respect pronouns on them.
I can't understand that.
People can't.
Apparently not being political is the new radical.
Right.
Or it's just code.
It's a stance.
It's dog whistle.
Yeah, it's something.
I don't know.
They find a way to be, to think that's bad too.
Yeah.
But I just don't, I don't know.
I'm not like a group person.
I don't like, I've never, I did comedy because I'm not a group person.
All these comics were like, I want to be in the group.
I want to, well, I thought we were doing this because we're lone wolves.
Yeah.
You know, we're loners.
We're hiding out in our basements, not sure who we are.
Suddenly now we all have to take a stance and be like, you know, representing a political party, which is all corruption.
It's like, to me, it's just the opposite of comedy.
Like the old school comics weren't like, they did their own thing.
They, they, you know, they challenged both sides.
So I don't understand this taking one side over the other as a comic because then you're alienating half the country or half your audience, your potential audience.
Yeah.
Comics feel like it's like an anti-establishment thing.
And now it's like, think.
And now it's the opposite.
Now it's like establishment.
Like I thought it was anti-establishment.
That's what I, that was my impression of comedy is I don't want to, I don't like labels.
I don't like rules.
And suddenly it's like comics being like, you're not following the rules.
Yeah.
And it's like, wait, I thought we were the people who were challenging the rules.
You know, we're supposed to be questioning everything.
We're supposed to be questioning both sides all the time.
And as soon as you decide, oh, I'm only going to question one side.
Well, that doesn't seem free.
That's not a free thinker.
Even free thinking, I guess, has bad connotations now.
You can't be.
It's an alt-right dog whistle is what it is.
Yeah, you can't be aware of that.
There's a lot of alt-right dog whistles.
What was the word I used?
Oh, I was quoting an article in a tweet that was about, that said something like, elite, was it elite?
Elite Hollywood or something?
I think it was the word elite.
The word elite.
The racist dog whistle.
That's also.
That's a dog whistle.
You can't say elite.
I heard you use that white.
Somebody said, and I had this whole back and forth with this guy.
I was like, I'm sorry.
I was quoting this article so you can take it up with that writer because I didn't use the word elite.
It was on Daily Wire.
Yeah, that's why.
Huge dog with a storm whistle.
Like a dog foghorn.
Well, I was quoting an article from Stormfront.
I heard you on a podcast use the term virtue signal.
I was like, oh, that's a dog whistle.
Yep.
I actually haven't heard dog whistle as much as I have heard like those other words.
Yes, some other words.
Coding.
What did I say?
Yeah, there's another.
Yeah, because you'll hear that like classical liberal, classical liberalism.
They'll say that's code for alt-right.
Yeah.
Everything's all right.
Code for all-right.
The alt-right has an insane, like Russians would be jealous of the code system that the alt-right has developed.
Do Russians have good codes?
I assume they do, I guess.
Because they got all these spies.
You got to have good codes if you got good spies.
Okay.
I don't know.
Well, the Russians used to have good spies, and then the Cold War ended.
Oh.
And that was kind of the end of the.
They don't have spies anymore.
Why do I feel like they still have to do it?
How they do all the collusion stuff.
That's good points.
I feel like those guys at GameStop look like Russian spies.
Don't they?
The ones that work there are the guys who are hanging out with.
There's a big guy, the main guy.
There's a main guy.
He's a good-looking Russian-looking guy.
GameStop.
I was like, he's a really good guy.
Like the manager of GameStop.
Yeah, the GameStop kids, you know?
Okay.
One of them.
One of them, Sven or something.
Look it up.
Google it.
What are you talking about?
What are you doing?
Are you still on the coffee question?
I'm Googling GameStop.
Oh, yeah.
Did Kellen reply to me?
There's a delay to the Googling.
Yeah.
He did.
Oh, he did?
That was quick.
I'm bad at texting.
He says, random text.
Do you drink?
Did you guys see?
Oh, that comedian.
He says yes with a splash of non-alcoholic whiskey.
But now we don't know if he's being serious.
He's funny.
He is.
Tell him I say hi.
Okay.
I'm telling him, you got to talk to her.
And then he'll be like, who is it?
Who's that?
Erica Rhodes from your JFL class says hi.
He'll be like, from your JFL class.
That sounds like an obscene name.
Just say from your JFL group.
JFL group.
From your JFL group.
Says hi.
Okay.
He'll get it.
See, it keeps autocorrecting me.
Am I the only one without a screen in front of me?
No, I filled up.
I'm doing this.
Am I the only professional?
Oh, I have this screen too.
I'm texting because you told me to.
Okay, true.
Good point.
Kyle can look at you.
I told you to.
He hasn't once yet.
I'm typing the text that she told me to type.
She is on right now, I'm telling you.
I'm giving you context.
We've been waiting.
There we go.
All right.
We've been texting.
So, yeah.
Okay.
Dog whistles.
And Russian codes.
Yeah, moving on.
Yeah.
All right.
Now let's just jump.
So you have a blog and you wrote a blog about ghosts.
Oh, yeah.
That's like your top blog.
I just remember you wrote that.
No, my top blog was Men and Coffee.
Okay, I haven't read that one.
That was fun.
You want to talk about that one or the ghost one?
The coffee, men and coffee.
Well, yeah, the men and coffee.
Well, I don't know.
I don't really care which one we talk about.
I'm just interested in.
We are the interviewers.
We can pick.
Why don't you pick which one?
Why don't you take control?
Okay, you have this story.
It's a sad story.
It's a sad story.
Is that the only one you read?
No, I've read like three.
You have?
That's pretty good.
All right.
You had a really sweet one about your father.
You shared a list of your dad had this list of, he wrote like this list of summations of movies in like a sentence.
No, they were books.
Oh, books.
That's right.
Books, not movies.
He's like, I only saw the movies.
Yeah.
So they're like novels.
Yeah.
So then he had like, he wrote like a one-sentence summary of every book that he read.
Yeah.
And he read like 73 novels.
And he's a funny guy.
He's funny.
Yeah, because he had MS. So he, you know, towards the end of his life, couldn't do much.
So the only thing he could do was read.
And so he made like a list of all the classics and he read like 73 of the best classics.
And then he wrote like one synopsis, one funny line synopsis of each.
Do you remember any of those off the top of your head?
I got to find it.
Do you have this one?
Is this on the internet reminder?
Do you have your dad?
Naturally.
It's called Dean's List.
Okay.
And you can look on, it's under meet on medium.
I found it.
He had some really, I liked the Anna Corena one, Anna, but now I'm forgetting.
It probably helps if you've read the book to get the joke.
Yeah, yeah, some of them.
Oh, for sure.
And then I feel like one of his last jokes on me was getting me to read Billy Bud.
I was like, which book would you recommend?
And he said, Billy Bud.
I don't know if you guys ever tried to read Melville.
I've been learning how to read again.
Yeah.
I read half of Moby Dick.
I love Moby Dick until it gets to the chapter that he just talks about whales.
Yeah, it gets definitely abridged.
No, he gets like to the middle and then he just starts writing like a dictionary, like an encyclopedia page on whales.
Oh, I've heard about the wheels.
There's like two or three chapters.
He just is like the great sperm whale.
And he goes on for like three pages about it.
And about the oil that they use to light the lamps and everything and how the industry of whaling.
Yeah, Melville's tricky.
So I feel like it was a joke to get me to read Billy Bud because it's equally taxing.
It's boring.
Have you read Billy Bud?
Did you finish it?
I was an English major, so like should we tag Patrick?
So you'd like that list.
You'd like that list.
Tag team.
Come on, Patrick.
He's a good laugher.
Yeah, he's our laugher.
He's a laugh track.
Yeah, you need that.
Yeah.
In addition to a bunch of things.
I feel so funny with him around.
It actually made us feel a lot funnier when we brought him on.
That's great.
Helps a lot.
Like, listen to that.
Did I tell you my wife yesterday said she's like, I felt really funny on the podcast?
We had our wives on the podcast.
Yeah, it's like he should do, he should just come to my shows a lot.
Yeah, you can make money on them.
Exchange numbers.
You have to pay for the, there's certain like substances you have to give him to get him like this.
Oh, what did he get?
What did he have before this?
It's like caffeinated hot cocoa.
It's a good laugh.
That's all you need is one good one.
Crime and punishment.
Yeah, what's that one?
Russian decay among peasants, rags, alcohol, and axe murdering.
I don't know how accurate that is.
I've never read Crimea.
I've never read it.
It's pretty accurate.
Makes it sound good.
Don Quixote, employer-employee relationship tested by adventures.
Try to find Anna Karenina if you can.
Anna Korean.
I might have passed it.
There are a couple where he hated the book, and the line is something like, I just can't, I don't know how they found it.
I don't even know how to read this.
Be careful what you wish, Iboratskya for Ilovich.
Be careful what you.
It's like, be careful what you wish for, but he just like adds Russian suffixes to the words.
But I think that's like one of the names in it.
Then he did Shakespeare, too.
He read all the Shakespeare plays twice.
Wow.
Yeah.
Pretty, pretty smart guy.
Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Don't bring enchanted goats that can count to 15th century Paris.
Pride and Prejudice.
Too bad there's no glass ceilings for Elizabeth to break.
I love this guy.
These are good read out loud, actually.
Yeah, these are good.
Fantastic.
Kyle's dry.
Yeah, yeah, you have a good reading style.
The Brothers Karamazov.
Drunks, Death, and Decay.
Typical Russian novel fare.
He tried to read that one.
That's hard on him.
Too many names.
Yeah, it's like five names, and they're really complicated names.
Frankenstein, monster fails to manage decomposition odor.
Really reduces it to its essence.
Yeah, exactly.
Dracula, vampire advantage, immortality.
Disadvantage, limited liquid diet.
That's great.
Oh, he's brutal on sense and sensibility.
Yeah, I don't think you like that one.
The reader should have the sense and sensibility to avoid reading this inferior Austin work.
Wow.
He could have been like a big book critic.
Yeah.
Do you have a Twitter?
That's very tweetable.
Yeah.
No.
It would have been a great one.
I wish he had tweeted.
He even wrote a memoir.
Wow.
Yeah.
Tales from, I think, what was it?
What did a CP he was a CPA?
So something like, oh gosh, I forget, but one of his, one of his titles was Tales from a Crip or something.
He would call him, you know, he was not PC with himself because he could make fun of himself calling himself a crip.
Just a good for nothing crip.
Yeah, I've thought about that.
Like, you know, first it's when you're young, thinking, writing a memoir, you know, what, you know, what's so important about my life?
But then as you get old, I think like, you know, your kids don't have that much interest in you when they're young and they're discovering everything.
But like when you've passed on, suddenly they miss you and to have that to go back to.
I know, I still have it.
I have to read it.
I was struggling with Billy Budd first, but maybe I should go to his memoir first.
But he's really, he's a really funny guy.
So even looking at, he used to write like essays, even as a CPA, like he would write like these really funny essays about, you know, being a CPA and he's up like teaching accounting lessons that are in this funny, funny way.
And so I was looking at them and I was like, oh my gosh, like my dad was a comic and I just didn't really get that.
You know, he was like a comedian, but like in his own weird way.
Yeah.
So that's cool.
Kind of cool.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by those people that are natural comics, even though they're in a very cerebral profession or just, you know, Kyle was just in construction before the Babylon B.
He just started submitting articles.
Wow.
But he has that like, you know, he doesn't have the comic thing.
What do you mean, the comic thing?
Or even the comic, the creative person thing, because I've always been, I'm going to make cartoons and comics and like, I'm going to be funny.
What does Kyle say?
And he's just, I don't know.
He came straight from that, like, I'm making a paycheck.
I'm doing my work.
And then maybe he does have a creative.
Oh, he does.
Oh, okay.
It's a different.
It's a different, I don't know what it is, that like weird, angsty, you know, you know how comics are.
Oh, you're saying he's too happy to be a trip?
Yeah, he's so happy and positive and easy to do.
People think I am too, but that just means a facade.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's all an ass.
It's a shield to protect us.
It is a shield.
Our wounded hearts or something.
I don't know.
See?
He's got it.
Our wounded hearts.
Yeah.
That's the name of my emo band album.
Wounded hearts.
You have a tattoo that says always?
Yeah.
What do you think?
I want to hear what you take that is.
You're always going to have that tattoo.
It's an ironic statement about tattoos.
Yeah, it's basically about, that's like I had a joke about someone getting a tattoo that said, wait, what was the tattoo?
I used to have a tattoo joke that a guy, that somebody got a tattoo.
Shoot, I'm forgetting what the tattoo said.
But it was a joke.
Jericho Rhodes tattoo joke.
No, but I think I forgot.
I forgot it was in addition to another tattoo joke.
But man, I hate when you can't remember your own jokes in the right moment.
Always, because the tattoo is something like, oh.
I hate that feeling, forgetting your own joke.
But anyway, so what does your always actually mean?
It's the feminine hygiene product.
No, that was my guess.
No, not really.
It's a Harry Potter thing.
I don't even know always was a feminine hygiene product.
Really?
Really?
Always?
It looks just like that.
Wait, what was the actual answer?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, wow.
See, but it's a lowercase a.
Yeah.
Yeah, lowercase A.
I was showing off my tattoo, and he's like, oh, yeah, like the feminine hygiene product.
Oh, man.
What was it really?
It's a Harry Potter thing.
Harry Potter.
My wife has the other half of the line or something.
Yeah, so I just tell people, I just tell people it's the pets.
Your wife has the other half of the line?
What is the other half of the line?
Oh, man.
Now you're pushing.
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
That is amazingly.
I think it's after all this time.
But it's not sometimes.
That is the perfect summation of husband and wife.
Sometimes.
He has always like.
That's like on Caribbean Enthusiasm.
You never initiate.
I'm always open.
I'm like 7-Eleven.
You're sometimes I'm always.
Oh, I see what you're talking about.
Yeah, I get it now.
Code.
Okay.
Russians.
I got it.
I got it.
We got it.
We got that.
I got it because that's where my mind went.
That's yeah.
That's where the ghosts.
Tell us about ghosts.
No, I want to know again.
I'm still trying to remember my tattoo joke.
This is going to drive me.
You'll come back as you're talking about ghosts.
If you remember it, just stop talking about what you're talking about.
I'm going to go ahead and tattoo.
Because I want to hear ghosts.
Because I want to hear, I want to drum up theological.
Dan will suddenly be like, theologically, that's not correct.
Oh, is this about ghosts because of God?
Yeah.
Yeah, God.
You can't believe in ghosts and God?
Is that true?
You can, yeah.
Well, you can.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
I'm curious.
I don't even know where the isn't Jesus.
Wasn't Jesus a ghost at some point?
Holy ghost.
Yeah, the Holy Ghost.
Well, he's not, but they're one.
He's different than the other ones.
They're Trinity.
That's correct.
You guys are just saying words.
You're just like Trinity, Jesus.
Is the Bible?
See, I always show my ignorance.
So someone's like, oh, I saw a ghost of an old man's head floating in a lighthouse.
Does the Bible say that's not true, or does that really happen?
It does say that King Saul talked to the dead, summoned the dead and talked to them.
Okay.
See?
So your story, this isn't actually funny.
This is sad.
You had neighbors.
You're going to say it in a funny way.
Am I going to say it funny?
Totally off yourself.
I can feel.
I feel it.
I knew it.
This was actually a funny, what do you call it?
Anecdote.
Anecdote.
Thanks.
I always forget words.
I have to tell that word too.
Right?
The word, the right word doesn't come.
Okay, so anecdote.
My mom read the Woody Allen book, you know, his autobiography.
Okay.
And she's like, honey, I just realized you're just like Woody Allen.
You and Woody Allen have something very in common.
And I was like, that we both play music?
Nope.
That we both, you know, did comedy first.
Nope.
You both had neighbors who committed suicide twice.
Wow, that is specific.
I mean, it is.
He had two neighbors commit suicide, and I also had two neighbors who committed suicide in different apartments.
So this is different.
Technically, I had three because two were a couple.
Right.
So you had a, because that's the crazy part: you had a couple that committed suicide, like Rome and Juliet style, right?
Yes, they committed suicide in their garage by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Wow.
And yeah.
And you saw like I saw his ghosts because they were there for three days before they were found.
Wow.
And at one point, I came out of my house and he, the guy, was just standing in front of his door, just expressionless.
And I went, oh, sorry, I didn't see you there.
Like, cause it just caught me off guard.
And he didn't even flinch or like, he didn't, like, say, oh, I'm sorry.
He just, he was just standing there.
And this is before after they were found.
Well, that's what I'm, I don't, I can't quite remember because it had been days that they weren't found.
And in my memory, I was like, I don't remember when that was, but it feels like it was after the day that they killed themselves.
Wow.
But it could have been the day that he was like.
It could have been the day that he decided, but I don't remember.
It was a long time ago.
So what do you think?
Dan, your theological thoughts.
But then, well, somebody told me that like people who do believe in ghosts think that the body tends to hang around if nobody finds the body, that the ghost will kind of like let people know, you know.
Guys.
Yeah.
He's standing there.
What's going on back there?
You might want to check.
That's what all the lights flipping on and off is.
Hold up, guys.
Anybody smell something funny?
Yeah.
So if you got like the weird thing where like a light's going off in your house or like something's shaking around, it's just there's probably a dead body in the wall somewhere.
That's the one that never got discovered.
Well, that was the other thing.
When my dad died, I kept feeling like there were signs and my mom was like totally oblivious.
Like at one point I said, mom, is the garage like flashing light normal?
And she's like, oh, probably.
And then the TV went on upstairs randomly.
And I was like, mom, does the TV go on sometimes upstairs like by itself?
And she was like, yeah, yeah, that happens sometimes.
And I was like, I'm like, mom, you're missing the signs.
Like, dad is trying to talk to you.
And at one point, there were three bunnies.
Like, we had, we had, my dad's best friend also died like a couple months before my dad.
It was really hard on my dad.
And then another family friend, like a couple of years ago, died.
And we used to all do Thanksgiving together.
And so it's sort of like those three men were always there for Thanksgiving.
And on Thanksgiving, when my mom and I went on a walk, we came home and there were three bunnies like on our front, in our front yard.
And I was like, it's, I kind of joked, like, it's Uncle Bill, Dad, and Newell.
And my mom just totally ignored it.
And then later I was like, mom, remember when there were three bunnies?
Like, I'm pretty sure like that was them.
And she's like, I don't remember that.
I was like, mom, you're not looking.
Meanwhile, she goes to church like five times a week.
She's like looking for signs at church.
And I'm like, mom, they're right in your front yard.
Have I shared my dog ghost story on this podcast?
I don't think so.
Really?
I haven't?
I think I would remember a dog ghost story.
Okay.
I think I, okay, this is because I'm curious because I have my own.
That's one thing I was curious about, like your thoughts about what you think happens with ghosts and stuff.
And then when you have this experience like that, does it cause you to rethink?
Or do you just kind of go, well, I just don't know.
I've always believed in ghosts.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Yeah, I've always felt like very, I've always been very sensitive to like other things.
Okay.
Okay, so here's the weird experience I had.
I used to, when I first moved to LA, I rented a very small house up in Kagle Canyon.
I don't know if you know where that is.
Kinda.
And just rented this room from this old couple, very sweet little old couple.
And they had just, they had little tiny dogs.
And they had one little tiny dog that was the worst creature on earth.
It was a Manchester Terrier, which is like a Doberman pincher that's about this big, but has the same attitude, little pointy ears.
And she'd give it this bling all over its chest so that it would like rattle.
And it would just march around the kitchen table and stare at everybody with hate and evil in its eyes.
It only liked her.
So it would just bark at me and act like it wanted to kill me all the time.
And I hated this dog.
I wanted to die.
One night I have this dream.
This dog's name is Chuck.
Chuck comes running in.
Oh, no, I come home and Chuck comes running up to me, sweetest dog on earth.
Starts licking my face, snuggling me.
I'm like, Chuck, hi, what's going on here?
And it's like suddenly I had this sweet moment with Chuck.
I wake up, I walk out of my room, and Karen, the woman who owns Chuck and loves Chuck, is crying.
And she says, We had no idea, but Chuck had this horrible disease.
He had been in horrible pain.
And I had to put him down.
I took him in for a regular checkup, and I had to just put him down.
So like while he was being put down in the vet lab, he visited me.
Weird.
Isn't that weird?
And made peace with you.
And he made peace.
It's like he was saying, like, listen, I just had really bad, like, you know.
It's like I had bad karmic energy.
And now it's, now I feel like, yeah.
And you don't need to feel guilty about how you treated me.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, I get it.
I would have hated me too.
I was a jerk.
Oh, that's interesting.
I do believe that can happen.
I think, do dogs have ghosts, Dan?
I have another crazy story about a dog, which is that we have this sort of family, kind of like a cousin, and he has this dog, and they live in Minnesota.
And the dog never barks.
And when my grandfather died at this certain time, the dog started barking, barking, barking.
And the next morning, he found out that at the exact time the dog was barking, my grandfather died.
Well, it happened again.
The dog was barking one night.
And the next day, his name's Lon.
He woke up and said, asked, you know, called a family member and said, did anything happen to anyone in the family?
Because the dog was barking.
And that was when my dad died.
Oh, wow.
So this dog had like some weird six sense.
The harbinger of just new.
Barky death.
I think dogs are kind of weirdly connected to some other thing.
It does sound like they're saying death when they bark.
Can you tell me that?
Not all of them.
Can you defend that statement?
Just the big ones.
The little yappy ones.
We don't take anything they say seriously.
That's true.
You die.
Somebody dies and they're like, shut up.
It's different if a dog is always barking versus if a dog never barks and then suddenly barks.
That's kind of weird.
I know they have those dogs that can detect cancer, right?
They got that.
Oh, yeah.
They have dogs who can find bombs and all sorts of things.
Yeah.
Cancer bombs.
Both.
Those are the really specialized ones.
I don't know what's happening.
Do you have any ghost stories, Kyle?
My wife has one she tells, and it always freaks me out.
And she always tells it to me right as I'm going to bed.
She's like, remember that time?
She repeatedly tells it to you?
She's just like, remember that time?
And I'm like, why are you telling me this?
And then I can't sleep.
But when she was growing up, they had bought a house from, you know, it was like an old lady had died in it.
And so one day they hear someone running up and down the stairs.
And then the phone rings like that.
That's like a loony tune.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is good.
Good sound effect.
Maybe Kyle's into sound effects.
I'm just mean to get up a full flight of stairs that fast.
That's like bugs.
Yeah, that's how I picture it.
It's hard to do that sound effect.
They're just running.
I can't do it.
Now I can't do it now.
Sorry.
Anyway.
Yeah.
And then the phone rings and they pick it up and it's like their own number.
And it's this lady and she starts like cussing them out.
And like, she's on him.
And it's the same number.
Wait, I'm suffering.
It's coming from inside the frickin'.
It's coming from inside.
How's that connected to the stairs?
It was like at the same time they hear someone running the stairs.
There's nobody there.
Oh, they just heard this.
They just heard someone running up and down the stairs.
Oh, weird.
And then the phone rings from the house and it's like this old lady yelling at them and cussing them out.
Weird.
Oh, and so they think it was the woman that used to live there.
Right.
Did she like that they're living there?
Did she fall down the stairs when she died?
Probably.
I'm going to go.
She's falling down.
She's probably falling on the stairs on the phone repeatedly.
I hated dying this way.
It sucked.
Watch your step.
Just over and over again for eternity.
Maybe it was her dog.
She had a dog that was running.
Maybe the dog ghost running.
The dog ghost.
I had a ghost in my hotel in Cleveland once, and they actually said that that hotel was haunted.
It feels very haunted.
And in the hotel room, you know how some lights have sensors on them?
So if you walk by, they turn on.
Well, I was in bed and it kept going on and off and on and off.
It was so creepy.
Like the only way is someone was walking by.
When I was growing up, I lived in my garage as a teenager had, you know, Nirvana posters all over the place.
Oh, cool.
And over in the corner, I'd have this light.
This light would go off and on in the corner.
You couldn't see the bulb.
I just knew there's a light back there.
And I was like, oh, I guess I had a lamp back there or something.
So it finally went because it kept bothering me one night.
I went to get it and I went and it was, there was a light back there, but it was not plugged in and there was no light bulb in it.
And I couldn't wear it.
But I remember I told my friend that it was happening.
And when he saw it happen, he like freaked out.
Because it happened when he was there.
And I guess that's like for me, like, I don't get why that's scary as much as it is weird.
He was scared.
You know, like some people just freak out, like the little thing.
Like if a ghost, that's all a ghost is going to do.
It's not that scary.
I've been obsessed with the show on Netflix called Surviving Death.
Oh, yeah, I watched it.
Have you seen it?
It's really fascinating.
You've got to watch more than one.
Yeah.
It gets like the whole, I mean, some of it you're like, oh, I don't really believe that.
But just all these scientists who are really skeptical are all like, we just don't know what happens.
Yeah.
There's crazy death stories, right?
I mean, the one with the person that floats, like they go out of the hospital, they see a shoe on the roof or something that like only nobody would know is up there.
Oh, I don't remember that one.
I just remember the woman who was getting some operation done.
And she had, she was like, they said she was declared dead for like, I don't know.
Like brain dead, right?
Yeah, for like a couple minutes.
And she said she floated above and could name all the tools they were using on her.
Right.
And specific.
Yeah, specific things they were doing.
And they were like, there's no way she would know any of that.
Really strange.
She just googled it, probably.
Yeah.
Frequently.
While she was dead.
When my dad, this is interesting.
So, so, you know, I know some people are religious here.
And I don't know who.
I don't know who.
But so I just think it's funny that my dad, he was pretty agnostic his whole life.
My mom's religious, but my dad was not.
And he, and so my mom would ask him things like, do you think the angels are going to come and take you away?
And he would say, no, that's fake news.
And then the day before he died, he goes, where am I?
And I said, you're at home.
Where do you think you should be?
And he goes, heaven.
And I was like, oh, now you believe?
Suddenly?
Oh, that's kind of like a damn thing.
Yeah.
I was like, wow, nice timing.
You don't waste a second before.
It's just like, talk about the last minute, you know, procrastinator.
I'm going to believe in heaven now.
That's like Darwin.
No.
That's not true.
He didn't really do that.
That's the big thing.
Oh, that's the big own that all the Christians do on the atheist.
Darwin converted, but not true.
Oh, did he convert?
Oh, really?
I'm not sure that it's just Snope said it was.
I thought it was interesting.
And then he kept doing this thing where he would look up.
He kept looking up, and he kept, he couldn't really talk at the very end, but he kept saying, wow, like he was looking at something amazing.
And I kept saying, like, what are you seeing?
Like, it looks like you're just hypnotized by something beautiful.
And then I found out that Steve Jobs, when he died, had a similar thing.
Like, apparently, his last words were, wow.
And my dad kept saying, like, wow.
It's like, so you must be seeing something, you know, up there.
Yeah.
I don't know what it is, but you know.
Maybe he saw Steve Jobs.
Yes.
Steve Jobs came and took him away.
Floating turtlenecked head.
Kyle is a comic.
You underestimate Kyle.
Kyle's one of the funniest guys I know.
Yeah, just because he's Kyle, don't.
No, that's what I'm saying.
That's what's he makes it like we all like comedian people act like oh, this is giant long struggle to the point that you finally have that joke and then Kyle's just like construction construction joke.
It's funny, it's just natural.
Sometimes it's just ingrained in people.
My dad was like that too, just naturally funny.
Like said the funniest stuff just, you know, by accident.
That's how I write my jokes.
Yeah, he's just like a, just by accident, staggering around bumping into things.
If Kyla would, if Kyle would apply himself, I'm sure he could do it.
Well yeah, maybe he gets you know, he's also a very hard word if he would just commit, you know, just commit to one thing in his life besides the always tattoo.
I'm ashamed that I never just put it together that that's just.
It's so perfect.
It's a tattoo that says always.
I told my wife I'm gonna do like a Harry Potter symbol near it specify.
My next guess was Walmart, because they're like always yeah, always low price.
They use always on everything.
You could do a Walmart logo yeah, or something.
But I'll put parentheses, not the pads.
So we're, gonna move into our subscriber portion.
Yeah, Erica's gonna tell us about her worst time bombing yeah and, and she's gonna tell us if she has any cool stories.
She's gonna reveal all the dirty secrets of all the comics in Hollywood.
And being raised Episcopalian.
Yeah, you can't even pronounce it Episcopalian.
It sounds like a diet.
I'm on the Episcopalian diet.
Episcopalian, it's Pelian.
No no, that's what you just said.
That's how you said when you said it, Paleon Palian, Episcopalian.
I, I think I I waffle on the a or the e in the Palian, so I want to go in between.
Where are you from originally?
Pacific, northwest Oregon.
Oh, I was like you can't say the where?
Oh, organ small town Oregon, Coos Bay.
Oh nice, Oregon.
Uh, Lakeside small town.
I lived on Bonneville road.
What was the address?
565 565, I don't live there now.
So, but does your mom live there?
No, but she is living Lakeside.
What do we do during the subscribe?
People live there.
We just, we just told you it's the same.
Yeah, we just talk more.
It's just more, but it's non-you searchable.
So oh, this part is a special part.
Yeah, it's for the subscribers part.
Oh okay, so this is where we I get it.
That's why you're like we get down, deep down into the real dirt.
You got to really make them think, oh, they're going to sit.
Yeah, like they're only getting the good stuff.
Yeah correct okay, now I get it.
Yeah, you guys get it.
Here we go.
Goodbye coming up next for Babylon, be subscribers.
I promised the people that you would tell us a bombing story, so you have to bombing story.
I bombed this week really.
Well, good thing you're in the subscriber portion, or you would have missed the Norway story.
Oh, Jeff was really nice.
Jeff trustworthy.
I did work with him.
We're getting to the really good stuff for subscribers.
He got really deep.
Enjoying this hard-hitting interview?
Become a Babylon Bee subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation.
Go to BabylonB.com/slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.