THE BEE WEEKLY: Explain The Joke, Poor Wizards, And A Surprise For Dan
The Atlantic tries to make The Babylon Bee's Kyle Mann explain why the joke is funny on this episode of The Bee Weekly. Kyle and Ethan are joined by Eli Chance and The Bee's own Bettina to dramatically reenact an encounter in which a barely awake Kyle was put on the spot to explain the joke and to give a defense against the accusation that Jesus would not want Christians to mock wokeness for a living. There's weird news like how shocking it is how little wizards earn in New Zealand and The Bee Team surprises Dan. As always, there is glorious hate mail. Eli Chance is a comedy writer and performer. Check out some of his work on YouTube. Be sure to pre-order The Babylon Bee Guide To Wokeness which is dropping on November 2. Kyle, Ethan, and Eli find out what the kids are saying these days and how "bomb" is not lit and is pretty sus. Then they break down this week's weird news. The Bee's own Bettina is brought in to dramatically reenact Kyle's interview with The Atlantic. The Bee Team surprises Dan with a sweet gift and then this week's hate mail is a lengthy saga of The Babylon Bee not noticing this person who kept sending us messages for months. In this week's subscriber lounge, Kyle, Ethan, Eli, and Dan read bonus hate mail, questions from subscribers about Harrowing Hell and killing Hitler, and then Eli and Dan both answer The Next Ten Questions. Subscribe or click Join on YouTube to watch it all!
There is now a World Cup for keeping a balloon off the ground and it's already more popular in America than soccer.
A butcher in Wisconsin has created sausage with candy corn inside making it the healthiest meal in Wisconsin.
Animal Control in San Francisco found nearly 100 rattlesnakes under a home.
They were presumably hiding from all the needles and poop in the streets.
An elementary school in Seattle has canceled Halloween in the name of equity, which means they ruin the holiday for black kids, white kids, and gay kids.
A couple in Canada moved by floating their dream house across the bay on a boat.
Or as they say, oops.
Christ Church New Zealand has fired the town wizard after realizing their town isn't called Wizard Church.
A store in Kentucky has set the Guinness World Record for largest pocket knife.
Now they just need to invent the world's largest pocket to keep the knife in.
Because otherwise, where are you going to put?
All this and more on the Bee Weekly.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Babylon Bee Weekly.
Today we're joined by Eli Chance.
Hey, fellas, good to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, welcome.
Thank you.
So Eli is a sketch comedy guy, actor.
He does YouTube shorts stuff.
We'll throw some links down in the notes.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you have any other way you want to introduce yourself.
He wears green hats.
Oh, no, that's exactly how I introduce myself to everybody.
So I appreciate you staying in line with that.
It's good for my branding.
He's taking over my youth pastor vibe today with beanie.
Yeah, I thought about that.
Yeah, last week you guys talked about the youth pastor having the full beard and the connection.
And I just wanted to bring that full energy here.
I thought about bleaching my tips, but it was too late.
It's like the reluctant lumberjack look.
I guess I'll be a lumberjack.
Yeah, yeah.
Lumberjack that still ties his shoes.
Do I really have to cut down trees?
It's so cold out there.
Hey guys, look what we got in our office.
Look at this.
The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness has arrived and it's coming out November 2nd.
So go pre-order it on Amazon and check it out.
And we'll drop some commercials on this podcast as well.
So you're constantly just getting reminded to buy it.
So hover your finger over that 10-second skip button.
It's always amazing to me how much better these things look in person.
It's bigger, bigger.
You're like, oh, it'll do a lot of work.
That was a lot of work.
It's just fantastic.
That binding is really impressive.
It's great binding.
Looking at that binding.
Solid spine.
It's perfect bound right there.
It smells really good, too.
Yeah.
Fresh.
The smell of a fresh book.
Yeah.
All right.
So I commented question, or I asked our readers to send us mail to tell us whether or not bomb was still a thing.
And not the bomb or the bomb, but I was aware that the bomb was not a thing.
I was wondering if you'd say, it was.
These are some bomb tacos.
Or like these tacos are bomb.
But you don't use the article the.
I know that that's out.
And specifically, we requested our young viewers and listeners.
And we got a lot of emails about this.
We probably got more emails about this than we've ever gotten about anything else ever.
So we picked some that we got and let's see what we got.
Dear Kyle, I am 17 years old.
It is not cool to say bomb anymore.
You are very lame.
Sincerely, Josiah.
I wasn't saying that I said it.
I was just saying, I was wondering, okay, Josiah.
I was amazed to find out lame is still a word they use because I thought that was lame.
Because isn't that an NPC to say lame?
Because that's making fun of people that are in crutches.
I don't think they make legs.
You can't walk.
We used to say gay instead of lame.
That's what we would have said.
Yeah, that's 90s.
That really describes so much, too.
It was more than just the definition.
Lame to me, I don't know.
Lame, whenever I hear that, I think of TGI Friday.
The ABC lineup and 80s sitcoms.
And I don't know.
Lame just doesn't seem like it's in the vernacular.
Yeah.
Maybe it's back.
Lame is back.
But you're talking about gay when you're saying that described more than the thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's what people don't understand when you say something's gay.
You're not saying like this thing is literally two men.
It's not going on the count, sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
What you're saying.
It's the other kind of sky.
It's just gay.
It's just gay.
It's just a thing.
It's what it is.
Yeah.
Now that we use that now.
Here's one from Tyler.
My name is Tyler Tate from North Carolina.
I'm 14.
I listened to you guys to my dad.
And Kyle, you'd be capping if you think bomb is still used by us young buccaneers.
You'd be capping?
Yeah, capping?
Here's one from Aiden.
As a youth myself, I'm appalled to hear the word bomb on a public platform.
In today's society, that word is insensitive to those who identify as the bomb.
You need to respect their pronouns.
I have a very close friend whose pronouns are he, him, the bomb.
Instead, try to be more inclusive language, like big explodey thing or boomer.
This kid's trying to up-joke us.
Yeah.
Okay, so here's one.
This is from William of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 14.
He says, 20 years ago, you would say, this pasta is the bomb.
This is poor.
Today, you would say, this pasta is fire.
Acceptable.
Fire is a general term for something good or awesome.
I hope this answered your question.
So are they getting more subtle now?
Because bomb is way more intense than fire.
Boom.
Like, this is the bomb.
Like, what's better than the bomb?
It explodes.
Yeah, what would be better?
What would be more intense than bomb?
Like, black hole or something?
Yeah, like, what's the most energy?
Like a volcanic.
Yeah, this is the volcano.
This is straight up volcanic, bro.
Agent Orange, you know, bring one back from the.
This is napalm.
Yeah.
Napalm.
It'll stay with you for a while.
This is like mustard gas.
My flesh is melting off my skeleton, bro.
Yeah, they're going backwards.
This is fire.
This is like embers.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is a lightly toasted marshmallow.
Micah says, I just turned 18 this year and I was homeschooled, so I probably don't know anything relevant, but I believe bomb refers to something positive.
Thanks, Micah.
He's catching up.
Here's another one.
He says he'll be 17.
I did not know bomb.com was a slang word until you mentioned it on the podcast.
Busson is the modern day equivalent of bomb.
Busson?
No cap, you're out of touch.
That's low-key kind of sus.
Don't be a sussy baka.
You need to glow up and wear something bougie.
You need the drip.
You need a new fit.
You need to flex.
Some lit kicks or some Gucci would make me even more of a Kyle Stan.
No homo.
Is this guy freestyling?
Switchfoot merch is close, but no cigar.
I would recommend Yeezys and Kanye merch if you're trying to finesse Gen Z into liking to Bee's boomer humor.
Sincerely, no cap.
No cap is his name, or that's just a case.
No, then he says his name, but he doesn't want us to say his name.
Okay, wait, wait, what's no cap?
Yeah, what's the cap thing?
No cap means no lie.
Like straight up, no lie.
No cap.
I thought that meant like you're really boldly setting your drink down without putting the cap back on.
That's dangerously.
No cap.
These are the most bustin' tacos I've ever had.
It just doesn't sound right.
It's busting, yeah.
Cleaning tables, putting all the dishes into a bus cart.
Well, we got more.
There's like way more, but that's enough of that, I think.
So bomb.
Those are some bomb posts, man.
That was totally the bomb.
I love that segment.
Very bomb.
Bomb.gov.
Straight up bombing.
All right.
Well, our next interview is coming out.
Michael J. Kruger.
Now, we had this guy.
He's the president of Reform Theological Seminary.
Very smart man.
And he has the Ten Commandments of Progressive Christianity.
We went over those.
He's a scholar.
A scholar.
Very scholarly.
He knows all about canonization, which is like what books they put in the Bible and why.
But then, so he has a book about preparing your to go to college and how you're going to get like attacked by all these atheist professors.
Kevin Sorbo is going to try to convert Sorbo to atheism.
And so we played a little game with him called Root Beer Pong, where all the cups had a category of question under them.
I believe it was theology root beer pong was the official.
So a lot of theological questions, but we also have some deeply personal questions and questions about monkeys.
Depending on which solo cup he's operating.
He's giving us these like scholarly answers, and we're just throwing beer.
Like, this is what this is college.
We're trying to give him the college.
And then we also did a deep dive on theological references in The Simpsons.
He's a big Simpsons fan.
So don't miss it.
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That's fantastic because I have a product that meets that exact need that you just articulated right then.
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Buy this book so that you won't get canceled.
You can order it today.
This news is weird.
Hey, there's now a World Cup for keeping a balloon from touching the ground.
Inspired by a series of viral videos and organized by a Barcelona soccer player, the inaugural Balloon World Cup took place in Spain on Thursday.
So you have to hit the balloon up.
It could go a long time.
You score points if your opponent fails to prevent it from touching the ground.
I'm done with this.
This is cool.
What's the longest they've gone?
I don't know if they're going for like world records.
You know, I used to play this game actually with my dad during summer breaks.
Everybody does it, right?
Yeah.
But, you know, he never told me that this could have been a career path.
This is something that I could really excel at.
So I feel kind of betrayed a little bit, but I was quite good.
I don't like bragging much.
You should try out.
I've been thinking about it.
I'm looking at the screenshot here.
I haven't seen the video, but they actually set up couches and stuff.
Yeah.
Oh, it's like playing in your living room.
Yeah, the environment.
Yeah, the environment is the important part because you can catch a coffee table to the knee, which, you know.
Yeah.
But how does it end?
Because if you get a lot of people in the balloon, from the video, it looks like it's one-on-one.
So they have one person from each team goes up and they play.
Okay.
And then a whole circle of people and just that would just go forever.
I feel like that's more interesting, you know, if it was more of like a tag in kind of thing where you had to, you know, tag in at specific points, strategic points.
Or if there's a bunch of needles on the screen.
I see how it works.
See, you can see how that could.
Oh, they're running around.
But they have to hit it up, but then you can hit it light or like throw it over a table and then the guy's got to dive under the bottom.
They don't sit on the couch, but they set up a living room.
No, I don't have to sit here on the couch.
Yeah, it's supposed to.
They're like obstacles.
Oh, and he hits it away from the guy.
So they're not helping each other.
Right.
Okay.
So there's not, is there like a specific balloon tie?
Is there a specific balloon title?
I thought it was them versus the balloon.
Yeah, I don't think you can use like the balloon shape like a giraffe.
You have to use like a.
Can you blow?
I bet blowing is illegal.
What?
Oh, man, this is fantastic.
Hey, a butcher in Wisconsin has created a pork sausage with candy corn in it.
He's like, what do I do with all this candy corn?
It's so gross.
I'll stick it in a sausage.
Two butchers.
So it took two guys to think of this.
And the Madison-based Jennifer Street Market have done the unthinkable, marrying the super sugary orange and yellow candy corn with their bratwurst.
The result?
A surprisingly popular seasonal treat.
Really?
Is it surprisingly?
Is it?
I'm just glad that specifically bratwurst.
This sounds like a dad joke where I'd be sitting with my kids and be like, hey, I'm going to go make a giant sausage full of candy corn.
Actually, I'm just going to go number two.
Get it?
Yeah.
I got it.
That was good.
That was good.
I like how you said it took two people to come up with this.
Like one butcher's like, okay, I'm thinking brat worst, and you just say the first thing that comes to your mind.
Bratwurst.
You have to have an idea.
You have to have an ideas man and the guy that can actually execute it, you know, to the fullest.
They're selling twice as fast as traditional brats.
It's not brats, it's brats, right?
And this in a store that offers other unusual flavors, like a brandy old-fashioned and a bacon onion cheddar.
That, I mean, I thought they meant other unusual flavors like, I don't know, marshmallow.
Yeah.
Licorice.
Sounds more unusual.
I like when they always say twice as fast as traditional brats.
Curolina.
We sold three of the traditional brats.
We sold six.
Doubling the sale.
Animal Control in San Francisco found nearly 100 rattlesnakes living under a house.
Man, oh man.
Which it says on October 2nd, Al Wolf, the director of the Sonoma County Reptile Rescue, responded to a resident's call about a rattlesnake den underneath her home.
I wonder how frantic that call was.
You know, that's not something you do nonchalantly.
That's something that you whenever you guys get a chance, come out here.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe there's some rattlesnakes.
You must be able to hear all that rattling.
I'm getting an image of this guy, the director of the Sonoma County Reptile Rescue.
His name is Al Wolf.
Yeah.
And it says he shows up and he gets a whiff of the unmistakable special smell of rattlesnake denotation.
He's like, oh, yeah, that smells like some rattlesnake.
It reminds me of Trevor.
What's our character, Trevor Gudge?
Is that the hunting character?
Yeah, he's like sniffing the colour.
He takes a little sample of the grass.
Yeah.
Some rattlesnakes have been pooping right here.
For sure, I know that smell.
I know that smell anywhere.
For sure, Owl Wolf has braids, right?
That's definitely.
At least one.
If you can distinguish rattlesnake poop smell, you're spending the time to braid your hair.
He tastes it.
It's true.
Those animal control people shamelessly will taste poop.
Like they're on the trail and they can taste it and they're like, oh yeah, that's a jackal.
Jackal poop.
Do you think that the homeowners were forced to move because they had built their house on stolen rattlesnake land?
Protected status?
Probably.
I just imagine the lady sitting in the middle of a pit like Indiana Jones.
Like, I hate snakes with a torch.
They have to be snakes.
Yeah.
A torch on the phone.
Whenever you can get over here.
And also, if you've ignored hundreds of rattlesnakes under your house, what else have you been neglecting?
You know, it doesn't start with that.
Hey, so a Seattle Elementary School has canceled Halloween celebrations because of equity.
Good for them.
Because the Seattle Public School said that black males do not celebrate the holiday.
And more generally, students of color feel very marginalized by the holiday.
Really?
Yeah.
This is something you wouldn't know if you just lived life and celebrated Halloween.
Like, did any of you ever experience this that black kids didn't celebrate?
I don't know.
No.
I mean, it's like constantly.
Is it enough?
Because I feel bad for the ones that like it.
Yeah, that's true, right?
Yeah.
It's weird.
I mean, the only people who didn't celebrate Halloween growing up for me was like Jehovah's Witnesses and weird Christians.
Yeah.
Sorry, weird Christians.
Harvest.
Did you have a lot of harvest festivals and trickers?
We did a Hallelujah Festival.
That's good.
That's really clever, right?
Yeah.
You got the hall, the hall.
Yeah.
Their statement is Halloween events create a situation where some students must be excluded for their beliefs, financial status, or life experience.
Costume parties often become an uncomfortable event for many children, and they distract students and staff from learning.
Large events create changes in schedules with loud noises and levels and crowds.
Some students experience overstimulation, while others must deal with complex feelings of exclusion.
It's uncomfortable and upsetting for kids.
Isn't the whole point of school to teach kids to deal with feelings like, or actually, they just described life?
Like they have to, they must deal.
Oh, no, they must deal with being uncomfortable in a situation.
Yeah, social situation.
Do you know what's going to happen when you grow up?
That well, they live on the internet, so that I guess that's part of it, right?
Like the idea of meeting people in real life and hanging out with them is kind of like this antiquated idea.
Yeah.
Oh, it's the old-fashioned it also feels like a brazen attack on the witchcraft community.
You know what I mean?
Totally.
Yeah, the Satan community.
Yeah, for sure.
It's weird.
They have one day.
Like in the 80s and 90s, when the right was really kind of powerful and they were canceling Halloween all the time and all like everything satanic, DD, metal, everything.
It's like the left now is they're canceling Halloween.
They're that, yeah.
They're that now.
They're capped.
Well, they're like anti-yeah, and they're anti-like Harry Potter now, too, which is wonderful.
A Canadian couple used boats to float their dream hoose.
That's how they say house.
Hoose.
Half a mile across a bay.
Do they really say hoose?
Hoose.
Oh, we're going to go back to the hoose.
Well, you can tell my wife watches all those remodeling shows.
Whenever they say, hey, let's check out the new hoose.
You know, okay.
This is filmed in Canada.
Because they say the word moose so much.
Yeah.
And they say A a lot.
We know that.
E.
And a Canadian couple took the unusual step of pushing their two-story house into the bay of islands to move it about six-tenths of a mile to their new property.
They strapped barrels to the bottom of the house.
That sounds fake.
That sounds amazing.
It took about eight hours with the help of a dozen boats.
Oh, so they had help and boats.
So is this like a this must be like a mobile home of some kind?
So they couldn't move it over land because of all the obstacles.
Oh, it's not a mobile home.
The owner said the operation took place because she had always admired the random two-story house from its original plot of land in her town, and she had been shocked to learn that the owner was planning to redevelop the plot and tear down the house.
The hoose.
How's it a random house?
It sounds like it was just generated by like a Minecraft map or something.
The house.
This was like the plot of a terrible Pixar movie.
Yeah.
It landed there.
Yeah, they should have used balloons.
The house sustained water damage from the trip, but they cut some holes in the bottom of it and drained the water out.
They're living in a mobile home while they wait for their new home to be habitable.
Yeah, you can see the pictures of it moving and it's like halfway underwater.
I'm like, this did not work as well.
As they had thought.
Needed more barrels.
Christchurch New Zealand will no longer pay their wizard $16,000 salary after 23 years on the payroll.
No way.
There's two things.
Wizards have a job.
I didn't know that.
Two, they get crappy pay.
Yeah, that's the going rate for wizardry.
How many years of school is wizardry?
We also don't know, you know, COVID's hit every industry pretty hard.
I would have expected the wizardry profession to be absolved of that, but nobody's safe.
Well, one of the main groups that's not getting vaxed are PhDs, right?
And I assume a wizard got to have some kind of PhD level.
Well, I mean, shouldn't a wizard have an exemption from a COVID vaccine anyway?
I mean, that's what wizardry is.
Nobody.
Protection.
Nobody should have an exemption.
The Christchurch City Council will stop paying the wizard $16,000 a year after more than two decades on the public payroll.
No loyalty whatsoever.
The council's contract with the wizard.
They have a contract.
Wow.
I love this description.
It's a contract.
Called for him to provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch.
What are wizard-like services?
You know, anything in like there's a Wizard of Oz where there's like a village that has their wizard and then the wizard, who's actually a humbug wizard, comes and like, they're like, who's the real wizard?
And they like do things like make pigs appear and things like that.
And so I don't know if that's what he has to do, make like six tiny pigs appear out of his pockets.
I wonder if the wizardry world is highly competitive.
You know, if these guys are just having wizard battles in the middle of the town square.
At $16,000 a year, it might not be that competitive.
I don't know.
Man, that might be the high end, though.
That might be the head wizard, you know?
Over his 23 years in the payroll, they've paid him $368,000.
$23, he made $368,000 in 23 years.
And it makes it sound like a lot of money, but that's 23 years.
He said he's going to keep up his regular appearances at Christchurch's Art Center, chatting to tourists and locals.
Does he have a pointy hat?
Has to.
He has to.
Is there a picture of him on here?
I don't know.
Oh, yeah, he's got a big old beard.
Unless that's a stock photo they threw in there.
Is he rocking with a staff as well?
He's got the staff.
The full Gandalf?
He basically looks like Gandalf.
Yeah, looks like Gandalf.
Come on.
They can pay him more than $16,000 a year for that.
That's an insult to wizards everywhere.
No respect.
This guy did like eight years of Hogwarts.
Trying to think of a good Gandalf pun, and it's not coming to me.
He's probably still paying off his wizard student loans.
That's true.
From Hogwarts.
A Kentucky store earned a Guinness record for the world's largest pocket knife.
A dubious honor.
To be sure.
Is somebody like wearing these giant pants?
Like, I need a bigger pocket knife for these pants.
I mean, at this point, what's the definition of pocket knife?
If it's that big, it's 34 feet.
So a folding knife?
Is that more what we're talking here?
And at some point, isn't it a sword?
What makes it a knife?
And is it 34 feet folded or unfolded?
I'm going to assume unfolded.
Because I would measure a pocket knife by folded, because that's how you decide to fit in your pocket.
I guess, yeah, when you're buying one, you'd look, oh, it's a three-inch.
Does it expand out to 68?
And in a world where the bomb to describe something doesn't work, why are we still giving Guinness so much of our entertainment value?
It's true.
You know what I mean?
It's like, you know, Guinness are books you read in the library when you're trying to kill time.
I kind of agree with you, and I think that's part of my issue with the Guinness record now, is it was a thing just to be like, here's this quirky book with weird stuff.
And now anybody can get a Guinness record, and it just doesn't have this.
It's probably a lot easier at the internet.
You just submit it online.
Yeah.
A lot of it, I feel like, is, you know, people use it for publicity stunts, obviously, like Kentucky.
But, you know, I've seen them use Guinness to promote movies or, you know, that kind of stuff.
It's interesting.
They don't mention it here, but they actually beat two Guinness World Records, one for the world's largest pocket knife, and then the other one for the world's worst pocket knife.
All right.
Well, that was the weird news.
Now, you may have caught it this week.
Maybe you didn't.
Kyle was interviewed by The Atlantic.
And I don't know.
You could set the stage here.
I think you said you had just woken up.
And I don't think you realize you're being interviewed by a pretty far-left publication.
A pretty far-left, pretty large magazine.
Pretty large, really.
Big deal.
Realize it.
Yeah, no, our publisher for this book that you should buy sets up all these interviews.
And it's like, I get a phone call and I'm like, hello?
And they're like, oh, you're on with blah, blah, blah in the morning crew.
And I'm like, oh, yeah.
Hey, you know, I should look at the calendar, but I don't.
And so I woke up at like 8.57, which is pretty late.
And then I had an interview at 9.
And this lady calls me and I'm like, hello?
She's like, what's up with the Atlantic?
And, you know, we got an interview scheduled.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
And it didn't really register with me that this was the Atlantic.
So I get like a few questions in and I'm like, is this the liberal Atlantic?
And I'm like Googling it.
I'm like, oh, okay, yeah.
And yeah.
But this interview had kind of the elements of almost that Jordan Peterson Kathy Newman interview where it was just so telling and hilarious to hear the questions you were being asked.
And then the way you decided to answer them.
I almost felt like this was art.
And so we have printed up scripts.
We're going to do a reenactment of this interview.
I will be Emma Green.
Now, you said Emma Green is a nice lady.
Yeah.
Set the record straight on Emma Green because there's people attacking her online.
Other than the couple of, yeah, you guys will see the funny.
She's trying to ask some tough questions.
She's trying to pin you down, you know, which I think that's good for an interview.
Yeah.
Other than the couple of questions that you guys might laugh at, I thought it was actually a pretty good interview, one of the better ones I've done.
And then it came out and everybody on the right was like, oh, my insane, these questions.
And I'm like, oh, I didn't see it like that, but I guess.
So I'll be Emma, and Eli is going to play Kyle, and then Kyle is going to play Kyle's Inner Monologue.
We should have Bettina play Emma.
Oh, yeah.
Bettina, you want to play Emma?
She said, okay.
Yeah, do it.
We have an open chair.
Kyle Mann versus The Atlantic.
You're now joining us for our production of The Atlantic versus Kyle Mann.
Kyle Mann has just woken up from his slumber only two minutes ago when he receives a phone call from noted journalist Emma Green.
Emma Green is ready to give Kyle the interview of his lifetime, asking him some of the hardest questions he will ever face.
Let's begin.
Starring Bettina as Emma Green and Eli as Kyle Mann.
So Kyle, who is the audience of the Babylon Bee?
I'm always amazed when we get emails from overseas missionaries who are underground and can't reveal where they are being like, hey, you guys are keeping us sane.
The boomers love us.
We got the boomer humor market locked down.
Fact check.
True.
We have no shame about being loved by boomers.
Why would you not care about it?
Are you proud about that or a little ashamed?
Gen Z humor sucks.
So I'm cool to be called Boomer Humor.
And every time I go and do a speaking engagement, there are a lot of college students who are maybe the only conservative in their class.
In a lot of areas, being conservative is punk rock, you know?
For them, it's like, you guys are writing comedy that doesn't hate me.
It's a little oversight.
It's like they found their underground cabal of secret comedians who agree with them.
I like to point out that the boomers gave us Calvin and Hobbes and the far side, Seinfeld.
All the best comedy.
All the best comedy.
And Gen Zers gave us like, oh, here's a girl who lip syncs to Trump on TikTok.
Yeah.
It's hilarious.
You might have said that in there.
I didn't.
I wanted to.
I forgot about it.
It sounds like your audience is more likely to be a red dot in a sea of blue than the red dot in a deep red territory.
Yeah, that's a lot of it.
We've got a large audience in Texas and the South too, but most of us are in Southern California.
For us, life is being that red dot.
Do people ever pitch headlines that are too offensive for you to publish?
Yeah, for sure.
All the time.
And we know there's a lot of people.
He's more excited than I was.
He's a lot of people.
It's all a joke that can be misinterpreted.
As an editor, I have to think along those lines.
Like, I know exactly what Lefty Twitter is going to say as soon as we publish that.
Are you scared of Lefty Twitter?
They've hated us for being a little bit more.
Why would you be scared of Lefty Twitter?
It doesn't really matter that much.
But at the same time, we want to be careful.
I guess if you have a job.
I want to make it easy for them.
Like you work at Walmart.
You'd be scared of Lefty Twitter.
AOC accidentally strangles herself with her shoelaces.
And then we put in the headline, because she is so stupid.
We're making fun of stupid boomer jokes about Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
We've reposted it to Twitter a few times.
Every time Lefty Twitter is correct, the real joke is just that she's so stupid.
I can't believe they wrote this joke.
It's not even funny.
And every single time we say we apologize for this joke, we just want to clarify that this joke is that she strangled herself tying her shoes because she's so stupid.
And then they get mad at that.
It's hilarious.
I like me talking about how our own joke is, you know, how funny it is.
You guys read an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claiming that Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general, Kwasim Soleimani, was killed in an American strike.
What makes this funny?
I know that's the worst question to ask someone who writes jokes.
It's funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half mess.
You get it?
But that's what I'm saying.
Besides, it's just saying it's a joke again.
What makes it funny?
Do you want me to explain the joke to you?
Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad about it.
If you don't know why that face was there, you're excited.
Why not?
The audience fed that sugar.
I could tell she was.
The funniest part is that it facts.
Democrats would do that.
That's a real honor.
It sounds like this is a Supreme Court and pornography thing.
You know, or you know when you see it, you either laugh or you don't.
And if you're in...
Like the Supreme Court famously described.
I don't category.
We can't help you.
But I want to ask about the fact-check-checking part.
I don't think the reason Snopes fact-checked it was because it was so plausible.
I think it's because it was being shared millions of times.
Why was it?
What if people did really believe it?
Because people believe it.
Do you worry about that, regardless of how many times you make it clear that you're a satire publication?
Not really.
Comedy has been mistaken for reality for years.
Did I come off like a jackass?
Right for Facebook.
To be honest.
What makes the comedy work is that when someone's scrolling through their news feed and they read a Babylon B headline, they're not prepared to laugh.
They're prepared to consume a news article or an editorial or an op-ed.
Then they do a double take and go, wait a minute.
Does that impose any ethical responsibility, dude?
Not any more than any other comedian who's Joe Nuts.
I'm not taking for reality.
Does SNL bear responsibility because people think Sarah Pele says she could see Russia?
You feel like you get slammed for it more because you lean conservative?
We absolutely do.
I don't want to sound like we're so persecuted.
We have a popular website that's done very well.
Balance, balance.
We've seen this time and again with fact-checkers who accuse us of intentionally muddying the waters and spreading misinformation versus the way they would fact check other sites.
I leave it up to the people to determine if it's political or not.
I leave it up to you.
At what point did you realize you were talking about it?
I want to talk about one of the drawings in your new book.
One at the beginning of chapter two, which is about race.
It has three little stick figures, one that's peach color that says bad, and one next to it that's gray that says better.
And then one on the right says it's best.
That one's black.
Why do you think that's funny?
Well, it's funny.
It's because being peach is not good.
Being gray is better, and being black is best.
Right, but you're not just talking about stick figures.
You're making a joke about progressives think about the hierarchy of race.
I'm not going to sit here and deconstruct and explain every joke to you.
It's making me sound more like a flower bed.
In order to mock something, make fun of this.
It sees me that you're skin colored matters and setting up a hierarchy of the oppressed versus oppressor class.
If you really don't get the joke, I can't help you.
It was not combative.
You were saying before that you think part of what makes jokes work is they tend to hold a seat of truth.
Do you think the mentality you're describing is actually true to progressives in America?
Absolutely.
Obviously, not everybody on the left thinks like that.
What satire does takes this extreme position, exaggerates, and stretches it to the point of absurdity.
There are crazy racists on the far right, and there are crazy racists on the far left.
To find the humor, you have to play on those fringes.
If we said, well, there's some nuance here, you're not making a joke anymore.
Now you're just writing a think piece.
Do you see your role as a comedian as standing up and fighting the left?
Not particularly.
I don't see us as cultural.
I'm so chill.
Cavalier.
Whatever.
We could have come out with another one that makes jokes that Trump is bad and the right is racist.
Nobody would know who the heck we were, who we were because there's already 100 sites doing that.
For us to be the one site that punches the other way is where we really found our audience.
You have to make fun of yourselves.
We do that fairly often.
It's just that there's this huge need and desire for people to mock the left.
Every single late-night show is run by a liberal.
They're all saying the same jokes every night.
Why not joke in the other direction?
So you're describing a marketing operation.
That's the weird thing to me is like there's any part of you that honestly believes that vocality is fury in your book needs to be oppressed and made ridiculous.
Build your own satire.
Absolutely.
What satire does well is it deconstructs something.
It exposes.
It's treading something.
Wokeness is a very easy target for us.
It's self-erring.
It's specific here.
And we believe it worthy of being mocked.
Do you feel like your work at the Babylon Bee helps you live out what you see as the image of Jesus in the Bible?
Sure.
The Jesus who is flipping over tables and calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers.
There's a long pattern in the Bible of prophets and preachers who mock folly.
My hope is that we can do something similar to that.
What would Jesus be?
I think what you're really asking is, what is a Christian about mockery?
There's a place for that in the Bible, but I do think there is a danger to it.
Just being completely honest and vulnerable with you, there's a level where you have to stop yourself and say, I'm really vulnerable.
I just want to expose myself.
This isn't good for my soul.
Take a deep breath, step back, and write some church jokes or some silly jokes about husbands and wives of everyday life.
Headlines weren't good.
I don't want to be online looking at stuff and saying, that person is on the right team and this person is on the wrong team.
Writing too much satire will put you in that mode.
There's a big difference between prophetic voice and mockery.
Isaiah's a pretty humorless dude.
Incorrect.
Jesus calls out those who are powerful and strong, like in the Sermon on the Mount, but that doesn't feel the same as taking a side and vulnerable.
Who do you think Jesus is?
And do you think he'd take on the same targets Jesus does?
Well, for one thing, Isaiah is funny.
He mocks sinners who worship idols, everybody from the poor to the rich.
But I reject the punch down, punch up.
That's my explanation of Isaiah.
The main litmus test of comedy is, is it funny?
We're going to continue to make fun of people, no matter if it's seen as punching up or punching down.
Would Jesus joke about the things that the Babylon bee jokes about?
I think Jesus would make fun of the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States.
I think he would call to repentance the LGBTQ community.
I think he'd make fun of major corporations.
I think he'd make fun of universities.
The real irony right now is that the left controls a ton of cultural institutions and still thinks they're oppressed.
Jesus was here to call sinners to repentance.
Jesus wasn't a socialist, nor was he a Republican.
He wasn't there to get Facebook traffic.
He would not have had a Facebook account, that's for sure.
How do you check in with yourself about whether the work you're doing is Christ-like?
C.S. Lewis wrote in the abolition of Lewis.
Getting serious.
We can't keep on seeing through things forever.
The whole point of seeing through something is seeing through it.
You put your glasses on.
There are things worthy of mockery, but there's also things not worthy of mockery.
We're trying to deconstruct things to get people to see something else.
Why don't we make fun of Trump all the time?
Why don't we make fun of Biden all the time?
Why don't we make fun of the American political time?
It's because there's no hope.
Why do we make fun of them?
To me, I think that's why the left is so upset when you make fun of progressive beliefs.
The left believes they're going to create utopia on earth throughout the world.
They stole this from you.
It's me or you.
They believe that in some way politics will save them.
We don't believe that that's what's going to save the world.
We have a hope that goes beyond this music.
We want to point that out.
That is where we see satire fitting into a biblical worldview.
Let's mock people who hold cultural power and let's communicate truth to a culture that many times does not believe in an objective universal truth any longer.
Now, that's doing for my soul.
That's something each writer has to evaluate on their own.
Insane.
Inscene.
Very cool.
Uncanny.
You saw two Kyles in front of you filming.
You know, a lot of people, you don't know this, but I actually the last week I've been working method and I've just been portraying you in my everyday life just to get into the zone of that.
You know.
Okay.
Playing board games, eating fish tacos.
Yes.
Trying to think what else.
Ballast point.
A little ballast point.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
You've been doing it all.
So any final comments on the experience of, I mean, this thing got shared by like, I mean, Fox News was sharing it.
It was just everywhere.
It was funny to hear someone else say my words.
Yeah, I bet.
I don't like the way that he could emphasize different things.
No, and again, you know, I just want to say I have no ill will towards Emma Green.
I thought she did a fine job.
You know, I think there was this sense where they had this, they're in this kind of leftist bubble where they think it makes sense to say, explain this joke.
You know, like in their, like probably in her mind, in her offices, that's going to get her like high fives or something.
Like, you know, like owning the, I don't know, you know.
Yeah, I wonder if she thought you had an answer for like, would Jesus be this way?
Yeah.
Because in their mind, they have their version of Jesus is the socialist who only punches up and he's super nice.
And also they have their character of what they think Christians think Jesus is.
Like the Ned Flanders Jesus.
So anytime you're anything that's not like that, you think, is that Christ-like?
Yeah.
Well, if you read the actual Bible rather than the cartoon Jesus, everybody kind of pins on everybody.
But yeah, you know, if you're a conservative out there and you're like dogpiling on Emma Green, like, don't you want civil discussion in this country?
Isn't that what we always talk about?
Like, we talk about it.
It was great.
It was a great conversation.
I loved it.
So more of these.
More of this.
It's way better than you get on the right wing.
They're like, oh, remember that time you guys said that thing about Joe Biden?
It's so funny.
Classic.
It's classic.
Classic.
Interview was the bomb.
I got to admit.com.
Never got capped.
All right.
Well, we got another segment coming up here.
Well, what's in the notes here?
You know what?
Actually, we're going to completely not do these notes because we have secret notes that we've been hiding from the staff, mostly one staff member.
See, the Babom B, we've been doing this podcast for a while.
There's people behind the scenes here who don't always get a lot of recognition.
And who better to do this first with?
To surprise one of our staff, bring them on that you get to know them, give them a little gift for the work they do than our third employee ever after Kyle than me, Dan Coates.
We would like to have you join us on the podcast today.
He's already shaking his head.
He's already shaking his head.
So now we need to pressure him.
Dan, Everybody's doing it, Dan.
Come on, Dan.
He needs to sit in.
You won't get fancy.
He has to take Bettina's chair, but yeah.
You won't get your fancy present.
We got you.
Bettina, yeah, we all pitched in to get you a very fancy present.
All right.
And to pressure you to be on camera.
He's like huffing.
It's a very.
We've got a very fun segment for you, Dan.
It's very tailored to you and your tastes.
You can also call him Dan Coates.
Can also be known as Dank Oates.
Dank Oats.
Dank Oats.
Oh, man.
Because he smells like dank oats when he wakes up after three days of not showering.
Dank oats.
I smell a rapper name.
You know my shower schedule.
I guess that's the natural showering schedule of most guys.
Three, four days?
Three days?
Yeah.
That's about right.
How are the mic levels, Pat?
You're good.
Yeah.
He's all business.
He goes right to my mic level.
You guys are forcing me to do it.
All right.
Well, yeah, how do we want to start here?
My little story of Dan becoming part of this staff.
I mean, that was, you guys go way back.
You're old friends.
Yeah, we'll give you a little history of Dan Coates.
He and I grew up high school together.
You were a grade higher than me, right?
One grade up.
And he kind of knew my brother, and I knew you a little bit.
And then I think after high school is when we more started hanging out and doing stuff.
And then he and I ended up in the same soul-sucking construction sales job for how long did we work in that San Diego office?
Five or six years together?
Four, I think.
Okay.
Yeah, I think I was there.
Five, six years.
And so I abandoned ship to come to the Babylon Beat.
Dan just abandoned ship with no plan, really.
I had to quit, and then I ended up just driving for Amazon packages.
Which sucked more soul.
Yeah, Amazon was pretty soul-sucking too, wasn't it?
It was just long hours, lots of physical.
It was strenuous, but like the other job was killing me.
So emotionally.
Yeah, I was dead inside.
It's funny, you always think like for any amount of, for a high amount of money, I could do any job, you know, but it's like you get there and you're like, no.
Like, this is just killing me, and it doesn't matter how much money I am.
The highest paying job I've had was one of the most soul-sucking.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just crazy.
Writing veggie taps.
Veggie tanks.
I knew that was coming.
But Dan is...
Hey, Dan.
We also got to mention it's his nine-year anniversary today.
It is.
And it just so happened because wait, it is?
Wasn't it?
Oh, maybe it was when you were, because I was messaging your wife.
I thought you said, is it today?
It's today.
Oh, today.
And his birthday was two days ago.
His birthday was two days ago.
And the main reason, one of the things that got us through this was that you just moved.
So it's kind of a housewarming, moving gift.
So it all just kind of converged.
It's like, this is like Dan Coates week.
So we're going to present you next gift basket, but we have more stuff for you in this.
But just to kind of put this on the table here.
Wow.
I have no idea what's in this.
You guys are going to make me cry.
Okay, that'd be good.
That'll get the YouTube views up.
Wow.
Dan Coates brought to the floor.
Oh, and for your child.
It's a fat fox.
I told you you had a $25 limit, Bettina.
We can't give a woman the credit card, guys.
Goodness gracious.
This is so cool.
Thank you so much.
So you have some dry goods, a blanket.
Wow.
I think the best thing's probably going to be in this envelope family will not starve in the winter.
Don't feel like you have to read anything out loud.
All right.
All right.
Cool.
I mean that sincerely.
And can you still see Dan?
I have to be up there the whole time.
Yeah, if that thing's too big, we can't.
Oh, you guys are the best.
Oh, you guys are really the best.
Thank you.
Everybody pitched in.
Wow.
I don't know where it ended up, but he moved his finger and saw the other zero, and that's what I was.
I appreciate that.
Thank you guys.
So, Kyle, okay, so we're going to first do rapid-fire icebreakers just to get to know Dan.
You guys need to get to know Dan Coates.
We also need to play out a little clip of him dancing.
Yeah, that needs to be.
Throw that in there.
Can that just be in the corner the whole time?
The whole time?
Yeah.
Loop it.
I used that gift today.
That's a fantastic gift.
So Dan came on and was like, we needed like an assistant, somebody to do whatever else we needed because we were like starting to do podcasts and all this stuff.
And it was just two of us working in your garage.
We got the office, like, we're ready for a third employee.
So he started off as just kind of like what you would call an assistant, just somebody just whatever.
Well, we thought, like, yeah, he would sit next to us while we wrote and he would like take notes.
That was like our emails or something or whatever.
Yeah, just don't get our email.
And I could handle that.
Yeah.
He quickly became basically the producer of the podcast.
Yeah.
I mean, he's the guy that gets all our guests lined up.
He does all the emailing, scheduling.
He's editing the videos.
So Dan quickly learned and took over.
And that's been the thing with this show: I didn't know what I was doing editing podcasts.
So I taught him what I could from what I had learned doing it.
And then he took that.
And now he didn't know what he was doing.
Was teaching.
We did get a lot of very critical emails.
Yeah.
This is the blind leading the blind.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
That's biblical.
Yeah.
Done.
So those critical emails were good, though, because I'd really take them to heart.
I'd be like, man, I suck at this.
Dan takes people very hard.
Yeah, Dan does take criticism hardware.
Only negative criticism.
Hey, let's change this one thing.
And he goes, I'm sorry.
I failed you my entire life.
He gets our little Tonto blade.
I only met Dan today, but I want to.
I was just sitting there.
Well, I want to officially come out and piggyback on your gift.
So, you know, I hope that means a lot to you.
Yeah, it does.
Don't throw anything in there.
If you got any cash in your pockets, you can just throw it in there.
I mean, how about you read him the rapid-fire icebreakers?
Let's do that.
That sounds like fun.
Wait, he was still looking in his pockets for cash.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, don't stop him.
It took me that long to realize I didn't have any.
He's got a leftover slice of pepperoni in his beard.
There you go.
You never know.
Does he have the dandog?
I sent it to him, I think.
Oh, did you get it?
It's not on the main doc because it was secret.
That's right.
That's right.
Secret Dan dog.
Secret Dan.
All right, Dan.
You ready for these rapid-fire questions?
Sure.
Go!
First crush on a fictional girl.
Wait, when?
First crush on a fictional girl.
Fictional?
Mine was Ramona Quimby.
You know, cartoon.
Sure.
The question made sense to me.
I wrote.
Who was yours?
You have one?
Wendy from Peter Pitt.
I wrote letters to Ramona Quimby as if she was real.
I'm a Nancy Drew man.
I understand that.
Old Saint.
Maybe, maybe the Zelda cartoon.
The princess.
Yeah, the princess.
Excuse me, princess.
Maybe.
Excuse me.
I'm trying to remember that far back.
Who is your favorite child?
The Stumpingham?
Favorite child?
He has one that I personally have.
Can it be spiritual or is it answer how you want?
Biological.
Like the Christ child?
You can't say Jesus.
Okay.
We're trying to get to know you.
I'm just trying to get you to talk about yourself.
I have one daughter, Amelia.
So she would be my favorite child.
Okay.
Who's your favorite wife?
We're ready for that one.
Yeah.
Dan's our Latter-day Saint.
I have one wife currently.
Her name is Chandra.
So she would be my favorite wife.
Convenient.
Yeah.
What do you think about Catholicism?
Do you like it?
I am a Patrick's Clapper.
Yeah.
I'm a Reformed Catholic, so I like it.
Oh, okay.
Interesting.
Top five board games.
Oh, man.
On the spot.
You can change it later.
It's not legally binding.
We'll post it.
It's not legally binding.
Three months down the road.
Dan has changed his top five board games.
He just like the notes.
We're going to do Tigris and Euphrates, Babylonia, Lost Cities, Castles of Burgundy, and Agricola.
Let's just go with that.
All right.
It feels like you thought about that on the way in.
I'm just whatever's coming rapid fire.
What was the worst thing you've ever had to edit out of the Babylon B podcast?
Oh.
That you can say.
See that one?
I can't divulge that.
Is there any code language?
Mostly it's just editing out all the second commandment violations.
So or third commandments.
Not from us, but from the guests, right?
Yeah, third commandment violations, all the porpoises.
The worst edits have been when you have to delete the entire episode.
Yeah.
Those are the ones that hurt.
Yeah.
How many times has that happened?
That happened a lot.
I think three now.
Whoa.
Three.
Oh, man.
I think you're right.
I think it's been three.
Is that from content or just from like file currently?
Mostly from the guests being uncomfortable.
And what's crazy is that every single time, the person's been totally chill the whole interview.
Oh, you're going to go.
Oh, that was so great.
Thanks so much, guys.
And then they call my cell phone 10 minutes later.
Don't air that episode.
I'm like, oh.
It's the internet.
We don't air things.
Yeah.
Just weird.
Good to know there's a fail safe.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, Dan.
I'm going to stop giving out my phone number.
That's what I need to do.
We have one more thing to do with you, Dan.
Oh.
This is a game.
It's a quiz.
Oh, also, we want to ask them the second 10 questions.
Oh, yeah.
We have two more things to do with you.
We could do that in the subscriber portion here if we're going too late.
Yeah.
We have a game for you.
This is called, is this a quote from a board game rulebook or a quote from a theologian?
And name the board game or theologian.
Okay.
Are we ready?
Once he wins.
He's already won.
Yeah, I don't know what else.
If you lose, we take this back.
We take one item for everyone you get wrong.
All right.
All right.
Here's the first one.
Like rooms and fields, all of a player's pastures must be orthogonally adjacent.
Board game or theologian?
Sounds very social justice.
Board game.
Which game?
Say it again.
Like rooms and fields, all of a player's pastures must be orthogonally adjacent.
Is that agricola?
It is.
I would have pronounced that agricola.
Sounds like a very angry soft drink.
It's like a hipster soda.
I drink agricola.
Gets me so aggro.
All right, you want to do the next one?
Any non-ordinance fire attack 02020.3 traced through an intervening hindrance will have its FP reduced by an amount equal to the number listed in that train's LOS column of the train chart.
It's a board game.
Thus saith the Lord.
And it's combat commander.
Wow.
Nailed it.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Two for two.
You get the next one for.
No one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God.
As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.
Clue?
I think that's a theologian.
I think you're right.
Which one?
Is it sprawl?
Wow.
It is.
Three for three.
Wow, he's on a roll.
He's keeping that gift basket.
All right.
Fourth one here.
If you don't say Uno and another player catches you with just one card before the next player begins their turn, you must pick four more cards from the draw pile.
The theologian?
Sorry, that's a quote from Battleship.
Oh.
So it's from Uno.
I'm just joking.
That was theologian.
That's Frank Uno.
We'll give you that one.
Four for four.
If a unit cannot retreat, is forced to retreat off the limits of the battlefield or would be pushed back onto a C-Hex, one figure must be removed from the unit for each retreat move that cannot be completed.
Board game memoir 44.
Incredible.
I was trying to pull pretty obscure ones, man.
What a sniper.
Oh, this one's a trauma.
Keep in this basket, guys.
Start calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous.
Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is.
Okay, so it's neither a board game nor a theologian.
Joel Osteen?
Wow!
I nailed it.
It's incredible.
All right.
You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender.
You can play as a male or female character without gaining any special benefits or hindrances.
Think about how your character does or does not conform to the broader culture's expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior.
Dungeons and Dragons.
Do you know which edition?
It's going to be.
Is there an edition past five?
No.
Yeah, it's fifth edition, right?
Wow, incredible.
He names the edition.
The crowd goes wild.
I thought that was the question we were going to have to take the olive oil out of the basket for.
I thought it was Rob Bell.
Joel Osteen again.
Joel Osteen.
All right.
Get ready.
I wish God would give me a Holy Ghost machine gun.
I'll blow your head off.
That would be a sweet board game.
But that's going to be Benny Henn.
Wow.
Amazing.
This is incredible.
Some are devoured by beasts, some by fire, while some perish by shipwreck or by drowning.
So that their bodies decay into liquid.
Before you leave the house, you need to make up your mind that you're going to stay positive, enjoy the day no matter what comes your way.
This is a trick question.
This is a tricky one.
Say that all again?
Some are devoured by beasts, some by fire.
While some perish by shipwreck or by drowning, so that their bodies decay into liquid.
Before you leave the house, you need to make up your mind that you're going to stay positive and enjoy the day no matter what comes your way.
I don't think that's a board game, but I have no idea what that is.
Can you guess?
Can you make any guess?
Yeah, we can have a hybrid.
It's half a quote from one theologian and half a quote from another.
Oh, is this?
Oh, it's a Twitter account.
It's the Augustine.
Augustine.
It's half Joel Osteen, half Augustine.
That's right.
Can you guess which half was Augustine and which half was August?
No.
Good job.
Hey, finally.
I think Kyle's up.
Of course, there are thousands of horror stories illustrating why hazardous goods should not be transported in normal containers.
We give only the example of James Skip Fairweather, who decided to transport several tons of plutonium and used fruit crates.
Upon landing, he lost both arms and one leg to a mob of angry environmentalists.
So that's a board game.
Yes.
Is it Galaxy Trucker?
It is.
10 for 10.
That was really incredible.
Take this.
Have my eye on those shells.
Wow.
Is that the first person who's gotten an entire quiz right on the Babylon Bee podcast?
Do I get another basket?
No.
We were just prepared to take stuff from you.
Yeah.
This sounds like a Guinness thing.
Hey, quick fun fact.
Is this a Guinness World Record?
It is a Guinness record.
Quick fun fact, he was known as Farmer Dan as a child because he woke up at sunrise.
His grandma claims that the very first word he said as a baby was idea while pointing at his head.
Which sounds very damn like that would freak you out.
Your baby did that.
It had never talked, then it's like, ow, boo.
That's what you mean.
What's the idea?
Kill him with fire.
Like it's been thinking for a year and then it has an idea.
His wife says she doesn't make enchiladas anymore because he thinks all sauces are too spicy.
Without exception?
Or is that her?
I just had some scorpion pepper and ghost pepper and what's the other one there?
Carolina Carolina Reaper.
I've been putting little dots on my burritos in the morning.
So maybe it's just my wife.
I think that that's a part of marriage is you try to become too predictive of the other person.
Yeah, he hates that stuff.
Dude, then you just never get it again because you had a bad reaction one time.
Okay, so the story behind that, though, is that when we first got married, she did make enchiladas and she put the can of hot sauce all over it and she's like, don't worry, it's mild.
And then I ate it and it was clearly not.
I went to the trash can and it said like very hot jalapeno something.
So that's a story.
That's a sticking point of the message.
That story's going to follow you for a while, I think.
We also got a message from Drew.
This is one of his memories.
Your brother.
Maybe it'll make sense to you guys.
He's a video game.
I remember us fighting at the end of Link to the Past when I was like four or five and he was a first grader.
It's like I was trying to tell him he had to light all the candles before popping Gannon with the silver arrows.
And he thought you just had to see enough of him.
And we got so mad at each other.
Dad hollered at us to turn off the game and stop fighting.
That's the only silly thing I can think of at the time.
We fought over Zelda yelled at.
Yeah, we got that Super Nintendo.
I think I was in starting second grade, and we probably played that thing for like a solid year, just non-stop.
Those are good times.
Yeah.
All right.
Do we want to rapidify all of the top 10 questions or move that to the subscriber portion?
Let's move to the subscriber portion so we can do the train.
Oh, because we got hate mail.
We'll get the train set set up.
Train set.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, the train set.
Hey, Dan, you get to sit here until we finish.
Yeah, you're in the episode of the video.
I'm in now.
Wow.
That's a high honor.
You get to join us for hate mail.
And we love you.
And thank you for being such a great part of the Babylon Bee.
Yes.
Thank you.
All of that.
No homo.
No homo.
Maybe a bit of homo.
Maybe a little smidge.
A little dab will do you.
Oh man, we got the best hate mail.
Hey, I bet you've been itching and wondering about becoming a subscriber to the Babylon Bee podcast.
I mean, we're always prodding and poking you to do it.
Well, here's another poke: 10% off.
How's that sound?
Just enter the code podcast next time you go to that BabylonB.com backslash plans page.
You go there, backslash plans.
You put in P-O-D-C-A-S-T.
10% off a whole year of Babylon Bee bliss.
We'll see you there.
I miss Adam Ford.
Okay, so we have a guy named Matthew who has hated us for a very long time, and he just regularly sends us messages.
And we never even noticed.
He was in our Instagram, right?
So like we never checked our Instagram message off.
And someone was going through the message and said, hey, this guy's been sending us an angry message without responses.
Yeah, like just talking to a wall.
It starts back in 2020, in September, and he just keeps going.
I guess we can take turns.
So here's how he starts.
Last September, your account is burning garbage.
October 7th, 2020.
Hi.
Reminder that your account is total trash.
October 22nd at 5:30 p.m.
I hate your account.
And he gets, I want to say too that he gets more creative as it goes.
We're pretty impressed.
I feel like we've cultivated something in him.
December 12th, hello.
Your account is total garbage.
Cordially, me.
February 24th, 10:57 p.m.
Good evening, Babylon Bee.
It has been brought to my attention that I have a message to share with you once more.
Tis that time of the year.
Thou art repugnant, repulsive filth.
Thank you, me.
He took it back to the King James for that one.
Wow.
May 28th, 8:43 a.m.
So he's up early for this.
He's got his cup of coffee.
He's slaying.
Hi, Babylon B. Congrats on yet another successful day of being the worst.
Few can pull, few can pull of, which I think is supposed to be off, a feat as repugnant as you have.
Your Tucker, Carlson, Ben Shapiro, capital storming rhetoric is unflattering and embarrassing.
However, I must commend you on your impressive capacity for bull fake news.
Sincerely, I hate the ever-living snuff of you.
Me.
The juxtaposition of the polite tone and what he's saying just makes it heart sing.
Pure art.
June 17th, 7 a.m.
Got up early for this one.
The Babylon Bee sucks.
Oh, then another message that day.
The writer is very clever or very, very clearly an insecure piece of Projects his own inadequacies on the world in an attempt to make himself feel marginally better.
September 14th, 9:34 p.m.
Up late for this one.
Hey, Babylon Bee.
Here's another reminder that your comedy, much like the U.S., is much like the U.S., poor to the point of being incomparable to any other OECD nation.
Sincerely, go eat a sack of bees.
What's an OECD nation?
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
I'm so American.
I don't even know what that is.
And finally, finally, the grand conclusion so far of this saga at 10:21 a.m. on that same day, September 14th.
How does it feel to write less clever bubblegum rapper jokes for a living?
What era is he referring to bubblegum?
Is he like the rapper jokes?
Are we getting angry?
Boomer haymail?
It's an old soul.
He looks good.
We got some good comment generators from this, right?
These are now on the Babylon Bee comment generator.
I love Go Eat a Sack of Bees.
Go Easy Sack of Bees.
He's on the screen.
Sincerely, brand new.
Sincerely, Go Eat a Sack of Bees.
Sincerely.
All right, we're going to move into our subscriber lounge.
We're going to get some more dirt on Eli.
Yeah, you're going to know Eli better, get a little more.
So the second 10 questions at Dan, first 10 questions at Eli.
We got a whole thing.
That's going to be fun.
We got some bonus haymail.
We're going to have a lot of fun as love mail.
All kinds of fun stuff.
You can click that join button if you're on YouTube and you want to just get that, or you can go to BabylonB.com/slash plans and get the full package and become a true subscriber.
Get to be on the headline forum.
I'm sure you've seen the ads.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Do you have money for the jar, Ethan?
I have a dollar, I think, in my wallet.
Is the Heresey jar up there?
Something similar that this reminds me of is the Kamala Harris.
I don't know if you guys saw the Souls to the Poles video that they're playing in church for the Poles.
Yeah, which is like, come on.
You could do better than that.
So how many children will die because the body count's going to be on this one?
Yeah, because we're going to have your cheap laugh.
Zero.
The answer is zero, Thomas.
Please, my guess is.
They go to space in a car.
Oh, yeah.
In a supra, I think.
And it's ludicrous and Tyrese.
Wondering what they'll say next?
The rest of this podcast is in our super exclusive premium subscriber lounge.
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.