Why Atheism is Dead | A Bee Interview with Eric Metaxas
On The Babylon Interview Show, Eric Metaxas talks to Adam and Ethan about why Atheism is now dead, becoming a comedy writer, and Dave Chappelle's latest controversy. Eric's latest book 'Is Atheism Dead?' responds to the "Is God Dead?" question by revealing new evidence that supports Christianity more than Atheism. Eric first gained fame for being the keynote speaker at the National prayer breakfast. He has written many biographies including his most famous, Bonhoeffer. Eric currently hosts the nationally syndicated radio program the 'Eric Metaxas Radio Show.' Adam and Ethan find out Eric's journey into becoming a national bestselling author. They find out about the Ex-Lax commercial that started Eric's career. Ethan and Eric connect on both having worked on VeggieTales. Adam finds out how the Yale Humor magazine helped shape Eric. Eric shares how the media narrative of him going from an intellectual to a Trump supporter is wrong and what he thinks about the whole situation. Adam and Ethan find out the story behind Eric's Trump children's books. In the Subscriber Portion, Adam and Ethan play a game with Eric to see if he can say good things about some of the worst people in our current society. Eric talks about his new book 'Is Atheism Dead' and how he stumbled into an extraordinary topic. Adam and Ethan ask Eric the ever great 10 questions and get one of the best punching stories.
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.
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 B bliss.
We'll see you there.
Oh, wow.
Hello there.
We have quite a guest today.
And because the guest was so crazy, Kyle couldn't handle it.
I'm here today.
This is my first time sitting in on a guest interview.
Yeah, so Adam sat in on this interview with Eric Metaxas.
Now, if you know Eric Metaxas, the man is a brilliant biography writer, radio host.
He can actually sing pretty good.
He's recently become a Trump extremist.
And we talked about that today.
Yeah.
And he's got a new book out called Is Atheism Dead?
Right.
He's asking that question, which obviously it's been dead since it started.
Yeah.
And if you're not real familiar with him, so he started out as a Christian author.
He wrote biographies of Wilberforce and a biography of Martin Luther.
Von Hoffer was the biggest one, I'd say.
And then, yeah, he sort of became a very outspoken and prominent Trump supporter.
So he sort of speaks at churches about these biographies he's written and theological issues.
And then he also tells you that the election was stolen.
He's going to put Trump.
But he's generally known for, well, he started out.
He got known for like this prayer breakfast.
He talked about abortion and prayed about it right in front of the president of Obama at the time.
Did he dress as a clown as he talked about abortion?
No.
Wow, that was Cecily Strong's thing, I guess.
And then I guess he punched a guy in a bike.
He talks about that?
Yeah.
I didn't know about that.
You can watch the video and make your own decision.
Of him, did he punch the guy?
Did he not punch the guy?
He's a very funny guy, and he was actually surprisingly less funny than I expected.
He didn't say that before.
Not like that.
It was more that he would.
Watch this interview.
He's not that funny.
Not that.
He was funny, but we try to set him up for a joke and he'd go super serious on it.
Yeah.
Because there were other times that we asked him serious questions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't mean that.
Yeah.
He's funny.
But when I expected it, he doesn't like to do what you expect him to do.
No, expecting.
He's punching a guy on a bike.
No way.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Without further ado, we get into a lot with Eric Metaxas.
It was a really fun conversation.
I'm a fan of Eric Metaxas.
I think he's brilliant and hilarious.
And after this intro, I'll never be welcome on the interview show again.
Exactly.
And so here it is.
Oh, here we are at the Babylon B interview show, and we have a very special guest, Mr. Eric Metaxas, in person at the Babylon B. Not literally in person, but yeah.
Not literally.
It is literally in person, isn't it?
Well, I guess technically that would be true.
Or off to a good song.
You want to be literal.
You want to be literal about the word literally.
Yeah.
Have you noticed people like, you know, I'm an English major writer, so when people misspeak and say literally, it's like, you know, we literally blew up.
You know, it's like, no, no, that's the whole point.
You didn't literally blow up.
You blew up.
The numbers blew up, but that's not literally.
But no, I actually, I got to confess, I am literally here.
Well, speaking of literally blowing up, great transition.
You've written books about Martin Luther, Dietrich Donhofer, William Wilberforce.
And you also wrote a commercial for X-Lax.
Can you tell us about that commercial?
I did write a commercial.
Actually, this is not insignificant in a way.
It is totally true that I, during the worst periods of my life, I had to take a job as a copywriter for gray advertising.
So if you think advertising is cool, like anybody in the advertising business who thinks it's kind of cool, they think, yes, but if you sell out, you go to gray advertising.
Like they do the stuff that no one else will do, like X-Lax.
And so I was working with an ad director who was so evil seeming to me that I asked if I could be switched.
And they say, yeah, well, Swiggy was serious to Mark Schwatke.
He does, you know, pharmaceutical, blah, blah, blah, he was a really cool guy.
And my first assignment was X-Lax.
And the X-Lax thing, it's so weird because some commercials, like it's so, they kind of write themselves.
Like they tell you what they want.
And they just need someone physically to like be there and to say, like, okay, I wrote this.
But so they had this whole thing.
You know, somebody comes home with a bag of groceries.
Hey, mom, you see, you got your X-Lax, you know, blah, blah, blah.
So I wrote that.
But the point is, do they ask their parents?
Hey, I see you got your X-Lax.
It was Seldie.
No, no, it was sis.
Like a slice of life.
I remember pay sis.
So you got your XLAX.
But here's the key to the whole thing.
The key to the whole thing is that at that time, X-Lax was either being sued or something because it was such a powerful laxative.
Let me say that again.
Powerful.
It was such a devastatingly powerful laxative that it sometimes gave people unbelievable cramps and this and that.
So they were moving over to an herbal formula, which of course couldn't be nearly as effective, right?
So the commercial that I did for X-Lax was the last actual X-Lax commercial.
After that, they switched over and it became X-Lax in quotes because the brand.
So for 90 years, they had this formula.
I wrote the last X-Lax commercial.
Wow.
What an honor.
Glory to God.
Yeah.
Now, in your Wilberforce book, you talk about how he felt called by God to sort of become a politician and end the slave trade.
Did you feel called by God to write this X-Lax commercial?
Well, it's interesting because the answer is no.
Yeah, no, it was a horrible year.
I was, I mean, it's like I have to go back in time to explain that I was, you know, my parents are, you know, European immigrants.
So they came here.
They're working class European immigrants.
So to get to go to a place like Yale and to be an English major and to want to be a writer, like sort of doesn't make sense, right?
And so it was very difficult for me.
It wasn't really working out.
I wrote a lot of comedy.
I was the editor of the Yale Humor Magazine.
And at age 25, I had this unbelievable born-again experience.
And I don't want to go into the details, but I was in a cave with some Susquatches for like two weeks and time stopped.
But that's the only part that's not true.
So I had an amazing experience.
And I knew I still wanted to be a writer, but I still kind of floundered in this or that.
I wrote a little bit for Veggie Tales.
I worked for Chuck Colson.
I did this.
I did that.
But just as I was getting married, I realized like, I need a job job.
And somehow, freakishly, I got a job as a copywriter at Gray Advertising.
And it was absolutely awful.
And I knew that I didn't want to be there very long.
And after that, I went to work for Chuck Coulson and stuff.
But the idea that I spent a year in New York advertising, it was no fun.
And if you've ever wanted to know if you weren't called to do something, you do something like that and you just go, this is agony.
I don't even care.
I don't even want to be successful in this.
Let me out.
So the Lord let me out.
I had a similar feeling when I was writing Veggie Tales.
What the?
You went from Veggie Tales to wanting to write for XLAX.
Yeah, exactly.
So you went from Veggie Tales to X Lax?
No, I mean, you know, you did.
You decided you told me.
I could have written both.
How can we tie this all together?
We can't.
I wrote Veggie Tales for three years, and that was the only thing I did.
A new episode.
We wrote a new one every week.
Yeah, but here's the key.
At a certain point.
I worked for Veggie Tales for two years, and they were so poorly managed that they didn't use me at all.
Like, I wrote a ton of stuff that they never produced.
It was really, it's kind of why they went in the tank because they're paying me well to do nothing.
And so I only ended up writing half of Lila Kindly Viking.
The only thing I did was the Hamlet Omelette parody.
And Mike Naraki, aka Larry the Cucumber, let me be the voice of the narrator on the Esther video.
And I wrote some books and stuff for them.
But we've got to move on.
You say you wrote for the Yale Humor Magazine?
I was the editor of the Yale Humor Magazine, The Yale Record.
Yeah, Michael Gerber, you mentioned, followed me years later.
And I never thought I'd be a comedy writer.
I mean, when I was a kid growing up, I'd watch TV.
I'd watch the Dean Martin Roast or whatever.
And I had an affinity for it, huge affinity, but I never thought I would go write this because I didn't live in a world where people could even think about something like that.
And so when I got to Yale, I happened, I think I got there really early because I transferred in and I got there like the first day you could get there and there was almost no one there.
And the people that I was hanging out with were like, yeah, we were on the humor magazine.
I said, what?
I want to do that.
So I sort of learned how to write comedy because everybody thinks they can write comedy because they laugh at jokes.
But it's kind of like everybody thinks they can write a kid's book, but it's not so easy.
So that's where I got my beginning, my, you know, where I started writing comedy.
And then eventually, you know, I wrote a bunch of pieces that the New York Times Magazine bought.
I sold a humor piece to the New Yorker like, I don't know, five years ago.
And I, you know, I've always wanted to write the pieces that Woody Allen and before him, S.J. Perlman.
And, you know, they used to call them casuals or Benchley, you know, the stuff that nobody does anymore, really, except sometimes you guys do.
So it's, but yeah, writing comedy was really something I always, you know, I wanted to be a serious novelist, you know, like Thomas Pynchon or John Cheever or John Updike or something.
And I also wanted to be a writer of goofy comedy.
And normally those things don't go together.
But you know what?
Normally Greeks don't marry Germans.
And, you know, I just, here I am.
When you were at Yale, was there like the political kind of pressure?
Oh, my God.
It was already a Marxist training camp when I was there in the 80s.
It really was.
I mean, it was, I mean, if you're in the humanities.
Yeah.
You know, if you're like a jock or an econ major, you could have avoided that.
But if you're like an English major, you know, Derrida was on campus.
I actually walked Derrida.
I wrote a poem about walking Derrida across Calhoun College Quad.
It's now been named RuPaul Quad or Caitlin Jenner Quad or something.
It was, you know, there was deconstruction and critical theory and all that had already come there.
And basically, it was extremely politically correct.
And I, coming from a working class normal background, you know, going to church on Sunday, whatever, I was like, what's this?
I guess this is how the elites think.
So I kind of drank the Kool-Aid.
And I never became like seriously liberal or whatever, but I was, you know, I certainly wasn't any kind of a conservative or Christian.
I was just kind of drifting along.
But it was very much the case there.
In my memoir that I came out earlier this year called Fish Out of Water, I write about that, about a few instances of where you realize that this is the way you're supposed to think now.
And how it was kind of, you know, it was an interesting moment to suddenly be that young kid realizing like, oh, we don't think this way at home, but I guess we're supposed to think this way now.
And of course, wonderfully now the entire country is that way.
Thank goodness it all worked out.
Well, I have to ask, because you said that you were friends with Larry David at one point.
Yes.
I had dinner in his apartment.
When I was writing these humor pieces, the Atlantic Monthly published a couple of them.
And there was a humor reading.
This was like 1987.
And somebody got me to do a humor reading with Ross Chast's husband.
You know, Ros Chast, the New Yorker cartoonist, whatever.
Her husband did some stuff.
And there was somebody else, I can't remember, but I was one of these like two or three people who in a basement in New York did a comedy reading.
And this friend of mine that I met at one of these writers colonies says, you got to meet my friend Larry.
He will love you.
He'll love you.
And he's so funny.
He's so funny.
This is before he became famous, like right before.
So he came and he loved what I did, like the humor pieces.
I think these humor pieces are on my website, EricMontaxis.com, EricMontaxis.com.
EricMontaxis.com.
But the humor pieces are still there.
So anyway, so we became friends and he really loved what I was doing.
And he connected me with his manager, whom he eventually married.
And she was only taking like, she had him, she had Chris Elliott.
You know, like, really, I was like, I've made it now.
And then I became a born-again Christian and I threw it all in the garbage.
I burned all of that with my ELO albums and all that satanic stuff.
Humor is of the devil.
No, I never really overtly turned away from it.
I just kind of drifted away.
So Larry and I became friends.
I remember he had a dinner party in his apartment and like the actual Kramer came in.
But at the time, I didn't realize he was the actual Kramer.
Did you know he was racist?
That's a funny question.
That's a funny question.
I would kill to meet Michael Richards.
I just love that man so much.
But yeah, so I think when I became like a conservative Jesus freak, Larry David probably had problems with that, which is a pity because, of course, I'm right.
But it's interesting how I tried to write for Seinfeld, and he loved what we wrote with a friend Carl Tiedemann, who had originally written for Letterman.
And we wrote some stuff that I know that if they had produced it, it would be like, like it was really that good.
And I can show it to you sometime.
But, you know, they didn't really need more writing and stuff.
But Larry David was very, very complimentary of what we did.
So I didn't end up writing for Seinfeld.
And I never was elected president of the United States.
But, you know, if people want to say that I was, that's fine with me.
It's cool.
Because, you know, we can be in America.
You can be whoever you want to be.
There's nothing to stop you.
No one can question that.
No one can question whether you were elected or maybe not or whatever you did.
God bless America.
If you can keep it.
If you can keep it.
Just plugging.
I'm helping you plug your books.
Thank you very much.
So, okay.
So I want to try to talk to you about this.
I'm going to start noticing that.
I want to try to talk about this topic.
And it's kind of that elephant in the room, but I want to talk about it from a perspective of somebody who I feel like I'm in the same boat.
You're going to love my answer.
Go ahead.
Yeah, it's going to be great.
So you know, the narrative about Eric Metaxas is that he's gone from this intellectual Christian guy, and now he's this right-wing spoke mouthpiece.
I sold out, man.
Yeah, sold out.
I needed bread, man, and I sold out.
So I'd love to hear the Eric Metaxas side of that story.
And also, but also because we make humor at the Babylon B.
We also make things online.
And it feels like in the climate that we're in, you're almost forced into preaching in the choir.
Yeah.
But that's kind of the point.
And should we fight that or is it a fight worth giving up?
Or like, I want to kind of get into that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, look, I live this every day, and I hate you for bringing it up.
But seriously, no, no, no kidding.
Look, first of all, most of what people perceive we know is idiocy.
Like, you know, people say, Eric was the intellectual Christian.
They don't know anything about me.
What did they do?
They watched Socrates in the City and they read my Bonhoeffer book.
And so you think you know me because of that?
You know, as Walt Whitman said, I am large.
I contain multitudes.
I mean, I'm a complicated, strange guy.
I've written tons of humor.
I've written 30 children's books.
I've written biographies.
I mean, I'm eclectic or scattered or whatever you want to call it.
I went to Yale.
I live in Manhattan.
But I was raised by working class European immigrants whom I love and treasure.
And I grew up among working class people.
So I didn't become a globalist, Yale-educated elitist like Barack Obama or like all those people.
But I know how they think.
And, you know, if I'm given an opportunity to be friends with somebody on the other side of an issue, I treasure that.
But what's happened in this country in the last like five or so years is that there are people saying, no, unless you agree with me, I'm going to cancel you.
And that probably started with the gay thing when people said, like, I identify as this.
And I don't care if you love me.
You have to tell me what I'm doing is good.
And you'd be like, listen, I'm a Christian.
I believe what the Bible says.
I can love you.
I don't have to agree with you.
Exactly.
But I can't affirm what I think is wrong, right?
So if somebody says, oh, I'm sleeping with my girlfriend, I can't say like, that's awesome.
I'm going to say, if it comes up, I wish you wouldn't do that.
That's not going to be good for you or for her.
But if the person says, I identify as a fornicator or identify as whatever, suddenly you've been canceled.
You have to shut up and go away.
So that idea kind of crept into the culture.
I don't know how, but it got to the point where if you showed sympathy for the other side, when Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, I guess both of them had kind of cute moments with Trump while he was running for president, it was as if they had said, Heil Hitler, kill the Jews and blacks.
And you thought, wait a minute, they were just being polite.
They never said they agreed with him or they would vote for him.
That's what we've done in America from the beginning of time.
Like we never played this game.
So suddenly something happened.
And so I was naive because, first of all, I was a radio host.
And I'm trying to speak to everybody, to liberals, conservatives, whatever.
So I thought, since I'm kind of a public figure as a result of the radio program, I would have to say that I'm pro-Republican stuff.
Like I believe in life.
I believe in this.
I believe in that, whatever.
So to me, the idea that Trump comes the nominee and you go like, okay, whether I love him or not, I'm for him.
But people acted like there was some magical third choice that I refused to accept, like not voting so that Hillary Clinton could come in and usher in the end times.
And I said, I don't get that.
I mean, Trump is for this.
He's for this.
We'll see how good he is.
But like, I can't even imagine.
But the most bizarre thing happened, and it's interesting sitting here talking to you all that it revolves around comedy writing.
When Trump was running, and I didn't know where I stood really, but he said some stuff.
I watched him on the stump a couple times and I began to have almost like a slight affection for him because some of his stuff was so funny.
I said, I've never seen anybody on the stump be this funny.
Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
He was in an interview with somebody.
Remember, he'd made some mistake from the Bible.
And so some, I think CNN interviewer is like sitting down with him and is like, so, you know, Mr. Trump, so, you know, you said you read the Bible.
And it's funny that they're really serious about this.
Like, who thinks he reads the Bible, right?
So they say, you say you've read the Bible.
And he says, so which Testament do you prefer?
Now, could anybody dream of a stupider question?
Like, it's the world's stupidest question.
But he asks it, he goes, which Testament do you find yourself preferring?
And Trump, with a level of genius that we've never seen in public life, says, I think I'd probably say, you know, about even.
And I said, I don't know where he came up with that, but that is freaking genius.
I'd say about even.
He says it so badly.
I just like.
Because you could unpack that theologically a thousand ways.
It's just the funniest thing.
But anyway, it was around that time that I got the idea of writing a humor piece of, you know, because he was tweeting out of Trump Bible verses, right?
So Bible verses that he gets wrong in a kind of Trumpian way, right?
So, you know, a good woman who can find, I found three.
Hashtag Trump, you know, or a man, you know, will leave his parents and cleave to his wife for a season.
You know, hashtag Trump Bible verses.
So I came up with a ton of these because I'm conversant in the scripture and in the kind of queen, I grew up in Queens, New York, so the kind of Trumpy way of thinking and stuff.
But also as a comedy writer, I could kind of intuit his voice.
And so I began almost writing these in his voice, like the way you'd write for Jackie Mason or for Bob Hope or whatever.
You kind of get their voice and their way of thinking.
So I wrote all this stuff.
And as I was writing these, ostensibly making fun of him, I found myself developing a strange affection for his humor and for his way of speaking.
And I sold that piece to the New Yorker magazine.
And as a result of that, I kind of changed from just saying I'm going to vote for him to saying, I really like this guy.
And people can look up the Trump Bible stuff at EricMontaxis.com.
EricMontexis.com.
And did I mention my website?
EricMontaxis.com.
But the point is, as I wrote that, I find this effective.
And I realized it comes from my working class background.
In other words, this is a guy.
I grew up among these people.
They are not racists.
They are good people, but they don't talk like the people who went to Yale with me.
And when the cultural elite, the cognicenti, start saying that unless you talk this way, you're a racist or you're this or you're that, I just want to say to them, shame on you.
That's disgusting.
That's un-American.
These people are the salt of the earth.
I know them.
I love them.
I would die for them.
These are my friends and my relatives.
And for you to vilify them and say that if they like Trump, they are bigots or they're this or that or they don't like brown people, like this stupid stuff, I reacted to that.
It really, it made me angry in the same way that when I was writing Wilberforce, I was angry against the slave traders.
Injustice makes me angry.
And I saw this injustice being done in the country.
And the funny thing is, I mean, I wrote a 600-page biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is all about, you know, trying to, you know, giving your life for the Jews of Europe, right?
Somebody who had been a friend, a journalist, wrote a piece effectively saying that my support for Trump made me out to be an anti-Semite, a secret anti-Semite.
And I thought, the world has gone crazy.
You can't have a meaningful conversation anymore.
I mean, I don't care what you think of Trump.
He picked three Supreme Court justices who actually value the Constitution.
That's a pretty good accomplishment.
And imagine if Hillary Clinton had picked three Supreme Court justices, we would all be, you know, in the American gulag probably today.
So I will never understand this.
And people have tried to mischaracterize me.
And I think I've almost leaned into it.
I've said, like, I don't care.
If you want to be that way, if you want to be that shallow and that cancely, that's an ugly word, but I've just coined it.
Write that down.
I just coined it.
If you want to be that cancelly, I don't know what to do.
And so I think half the time I'll even tweet stuff just to guess, to troll people, because you can't even crack a joke.
I mean, many times I've said stuff, giving speeches or wherever, clearly as a joke, and some pious journalist has quoted it as though I said it seriously.
So we've gone through the looking glass.
It's madness.
And if, you know, I think anybody who reads what I write, I mean, the new book that I have called, Is Atheism Dead?
And the book that just came out in February, which is a literary memoir of my life and my coming to faith.
And where can people order these books?
EricMetaxis.com.
Let me mention, by the way, if you don't mind, let me mention my website, EricMetaxis.com.
But I just thought to myself, I thought to myself, we're living in such weird times.
But the more people who would lean toward Trump were attacked, the more upset I got because I said, look, I know I'm against racism and I'm against whatever you would accuse me of.
So you can accuse me of those things, but the fact that you're accusing like the unwashed people who created this country and saying that they're this and they're that, it just feels really dark to me and I'm not going to stand for it.
And sometimes I felt myself becoming like a little bit of a voice for those people.
And I literally thought, listen, if Bonhoeffer can give his life for what he believes in, I can give up my career or the well-wishes of some woke ex-vangelical in Wheaton or something like that.
I mean, I just believe that I'm at a point in life where I really have to worry about what God thinks of what I do and what I say.
That's all I can care about.
And there are going to be people who are going to get what I'm trying to do and there are people who won't.
And all I can say is, I know that I stand before God and I know that I care what he thinks.
If you aren't convinced of that, I can't help you.
But I know that those, I mean, people who really know me know that.
So we are living through bizarre times.
And I think, you know, Ethan, what you were just saying, like, you know, you try, you want to, you want to have friends on both sides, but can we do that?
I think there are good people with whom you can still be friends and disagree.
And I go out of my way to be friends with them.
But there are other people that unless you say what they want to say, and God bless Dave Chappelle for telling them that they can pee up a rope.
He's not going to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do you think of that?
It feels like Dave Chappelle's like the last comedian and he's getting it right now.
I mean, I don't even know what you make of Dave Chappelle now.
He was beloved by all, and now he's.
But then it's also the conservative embrace is interesting because it feels like there's so many things he says that you'd think they'd not be so crazy about.
But see, this is the beauty of it.
And doesn't it tell you it's kind of like Solomon and the baby?
Like, you want to know who's the good one, who's the real mother?
You'll find out.
This is the one that says, no, no, no, don't cut the baby in half.
You take the baby.
That reveals the heart of the mother.
I really believe at this point, you see who is sane and who is insane.
You see who has sold their soul.
I will stand with Dave Chappelle.
I will stand with Naomi Wolf.
She was in my class at Yale.
And my whole show was canceled from YouTube because I had her on.
She is a lifelong liberal Democrat, super feminist, but she understands the horror of vaccine passports and stuff.
So she's speaking about this.
I had her on my program a couple of times.
Because of that, I was canceled.
But I would gladly go to the death camps with those people rather than survive like those who in Germany said, you know what, I don't want to lose my job.
So if a few Jews disappear, I'm going to keep my mouth shut.
Everything will be fine.
I have written books about people who did the opposite of that.
So I have to live it.
And it might look weird, but I'm not responsible for what everybody thinks.
As a Christian, you know God's always there for you.
But sometimes things in this life can feel downright overwhelming and you just need to talk to someone.
That's right.
That's why the online counselors at faithfulcounseling.com are there for you.
Connect with a professional Christian counselor in a safe and private online environment.
It's so convenient.
It is.
And it's nice that you can talk to someone who shares your faith and values.
People that specialize in depression, stress, anxiety, relationships, crisis of faith issues.
You're not going to get that with an atheist counselor.
I'll tell you what.
Right.
And you just four communication modes, text, chat, phone, and video.
You can start communication under 24 hours.
Desktop, mobile, web, Android.
Man, they got everything.
There's financial aid available for those who qualify.
It's affordable, faith-based.
So check it out.
You can go to faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B and you'll get 10% off your first month at that URL.
Yeah, why not get started today?
Go to faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. What was that again?
Oh, that's right.
It was faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. Simply fill out a questionnaire to help them assess your needs and get matched with a counselor that you're going to love.
10% off.
Check it out.
Check it.
Yeah, I feel like just, you know, because when I think about the question I brought up with you, even in my own life, I started off as a comic artist making animation that was beloved by so many people.
I had friends on Nick Offerman did the voice, huge comedians of our time loved me.
I got reached out to by all these people.
And I get the same criticism.
They see Babylon B and they go, oh, what's become of Ethan?
They think that I've gone through this transformation.
Like, no, that's been me the whole time.
But think how insulting and stupid it is.
Right.
What's become of you?
Literally nothing.
You're exactly who you were.
The question is, what's become of them?
That they judge you by one thing or that they don't have the intellectual expansiveness to write.
And it's amazing.
What I found, because working in Hollywood, like when I was at Ellen and Conan and stuff and personal friends, it's even more so, like as much as cancel culture is a problem, where it really like hurts and is difficult to comprehend is when it's people you know personally, people that knew you.
And it's like you say, like you were saying, if somebody calls you racist or says, you know, you don't like brown people.
It's like they could have known you for years, know that you will work with black and brown people and Jewish people and gay people.
They will know that you can get along with these people.
They know your sense of humor.
They know your heart.
But then you say one political thing that they disagree with, and that changes their, they throw out everything else they know about you, and it's now you're a racist.
Well, now you're a home person.
There's two things to say, I think, that I want to say about this.
Number one, it kind of shows that it's a spiritual issue.
Something weird is going on because it makes no logical sense, number one.
Number two, isn't this precisely what happened in Germany under the Nazis?
You had people, they knew each other forever.
If you dared to criticize it, it's pure fear.
They will throw you.
They are throwing you under the bus.
They're throwing you out of the sled to the wolves to save themselves.
What is more horrifying than that?
That they will not stand with you.
They will not defend you.
So those who do become my heroes and best friends.
And that's why anybody who's out there, I want to stand with them.
And by the way, Francis Chan, I did a thing with him, Mike Bickel and Francis Chan.
We were at IHOP in Kansas City.
And, you know, we differ on a number of things, but he said, I'm going to stand with you.
And I know that I'm going to inherit all your enemies.
That's what it's all about.
If people had done that in Germany in the 30s, none of that would have ever happened.
But people made these foolish, selfish decisions.
And one by one, they were picked off and the Nazis took power.
That's how evil works.
And it's happening in our time.
And this is why I've been going everywhere I say to the church in particular, wake up now.
Because Bonhoeffer was saying, wake up now.
And they said, yeah, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.
By the time they woke up, they had no power.
We have a lot of freedom in America.
And again, this is not about comparing ourselves to Bonhoeffer.
It's the principle.
You've never seen it illustrated more clearly than in Germany in the 30s, that they had a measure of freedom and power, not just the church, but all kinds of people.
But they were outmaneuvered into saying, take him, take him, take him.
So it's the famous Martin Niemuller poem, right?
You know, when they came for the whatever, the socialists, I didn't speak up because I was not a socialist.
When they came for the communists, we've all got to stand together.
It's an American value.
It's certainly a Christian value that we stand together.
We're sinners.
We're broken.
But we support each other.
We stand together even in our disagreements.
That's what America has been all about.
That's the beauty of this nation.
So the fact that ironically liberals have become Marxist soldiers and have pulled in evangelicals, some evangelicals and some rhinos and people all across the spectrum in Hollywood, like it's an amazing moment we're living through.
So when you see somebody like Dave Chappelle or anybody stand up, you're thinking like, wow, now I know what that guy is made of.
I didn't want to know what all these other people were made of.
I thought they were my friends.
So it's a clarifying moment.
But I believe the Lord stands with us as we stand with him and for truth and whatever.
And at the end of the day, the older you get, the more you realize, like, that's all I can care about.
And I'm a fool to care about anything else.
So let's just say these are interesting times.
Yeah.
And I think another great thing about what Dave Chappelle is doing is it takes a stand, like you said, before it kind of progresses to that horrible point in culture.
But it also shows that that power that these people are gaining, they don't, like when you see someone like Dave Chappelle stand up like that, I think everyone knows that this is probably a very small but powerful and loud community of people that are tearing everyone down.
And when you do actually stand up to them, it exposes that their power isn't, you know, indestructible.
By the way, that happened with Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty.
I don't know if you remember that.
Like he made some statement or whatever, like, and they just came after him like, you know, and I thought to myself, what did he do?
He has a biblical view of sexuality, so he needs to be canceled.
Well, thank the Lord that Duck Dynasty by that point was making enough money for somebody that they weren't able to take it down.
And I really believe that's the difference between America and Nazi Germany is we still have a few pockets that, you know, we're not going down.
Freedom, there's still enough freedom.
We're going to be loud.
I mean, we're basically, maybe Charlie Kirk or somebody coined the term anti-fragile.
Like the more you become, the more you attack us, the more we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what you have gone way too far.
I think this morning I was on Dave Rubin's podcast or show or whatever.
And I said, this is like, you know, when Merrick Garland comes after parents, it's like, this is like the Stamp Act of 1765.
Now you've ticked us off.
Now, King George, you're going to get it.
Now you're going to get a revolution.
You went too far.
You went too far.
So a lot of these politicians, a lot of these folks, they're just going a little too far.
And it's like, now you made everybody angry.
And we're not going to put up with it.
So I think ultimately plays in our favor.
And ultimately, it's God's plan to wake us up because we have been sleepwalking.
And we need to be shaken and to understand what's at stake.
America doesn't keep itself to plug my book if you can keep it available at encryptiontext.com and also at mystore.com, mystore.com.
Use the code, Eric.
Thank you.
One thing I found out when I think about your Wilberforce book was that he was seen as kind of a loony religious guy.
He was part of a religious sect that was seen as kind of the nutty Pentecostal types, I guess.
And that made me think, like, does it take somebody who is okay being seen that way to make real change, to fight fashions?
But the flip side of that is how do you do that without actually becoming a crazy person who actually is just kind of part of some loony movement that's completely wrong?
Well, it's a tough one.
It's kind of funny because I think that is the point, is that you have to be careful not to be totally reactive.
And I think sometimes I've been reactive and you don't want to really be reactive.
But I mean, look, reacting is part of the reality of how these things happen.
But I do think, look at somebody like Wilberforce.
Wilberforce, and this is, again, gets back to Solomon and the baby.
Wilberforce actually cared about the African slaves.
So he's thinking like, you know, the rest of these people can go to hell.
I'm going to stand up for the African slaves.
God appointed me to stand up for the African slaves.
And if you want to throw me out or you want to make, I mean, he would have been prime minister if he hadn't taken this on.
But he thought to himself, like, I don't care.
I want what God wants.
And I really think that this is just the story of every human life.
get to choose, will I do the right thing or will I go with the flow?
We see in history a lot of people just will, most people will go with the flow.
God forbid we're one of those people.
Well, I would like to read some of these Trump Bible verses since I got them on the screen.
I don't know if I can read them.
I want to read them.
Okay, you're going to do them in your...
You're going to read some of them?
Yeah, yeah.
I only want to do the ones that I consider still funny.
Okay.
And Jesus went out into the desert, but he should have invested in hotels there.
I mean, I'm killing it in Vegas.
A lot of money.
See, that's not funny to me anymore.
Some of these are very topical from the time.
He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, silence, be still.
But Jorge Ramos kept talking and talking.
Now, you don't remember, he was, see?
You see how that's not funny anymore?
That dated, that love covers a multitude of sins, sure, but you'd be nuts not to get a prenup.
I mean, come on.
You know, a lot of these, and afterward, Joshua, son of none, died at the age of 110, full of years, and with a prostate the size of Shechem and Gilgal combined.
All right.
But a lot of these, you know, were referring to stuff that was funny, like right then.
Topical, yeah.
But some of these are not.
Anyway, whatever.
But it's at ericontax.com, ericbontax.com.
Yeah, so it is funny, though, that here I am writing a humor piece for the New Yorker, which they loved because I guess they criticized Trump.
But it was in writing this that I found him somehow charming as a character.
And, you know, I've since met him, and I think he really does love America.
And you got to understand, I mean, you guys understand this somewhat because you worked in the show business, but at places like Yale and Manhattan, loving America is something that tacky people do.
Loving America or loving God or whatever, like that's tacky middle American stuff.
They sneer at it.
And so people who aren't educated enough to go to places like Yale or Manhattan, whatever, they aspire to that level of elite sneering.
And so they're trying to outdo each other.
You know, who hates Trump more or whatever.
And I think, you know, just the fact that he interacts with working class people.
I mean, again, this is the great irony is that there was a time when liberals were the champions of the working class.
Okay.
When Montgomery Burns was oppressing the miners, you know, that's Simpson's reference.
You know, when all the captains of industry had no virtue and were crushing the poor workers, thank God we had unions and that kind of stuff come up.
But it's 100 years later, and now the people who talk about caring for the poor or for blacks in reality don't.
They care about what their friends think of them.
Because if you actually cared about the urban poor, you would preach against socialist policies and big government till the day you died.
So we're living in weird times.
But I see Trump as somebody who just kind of, he saw problems, he wanted to solve them.
And the idea that, oh, he's so declasse, we're going to sneer at him.
We're going to use our cultural bona fides to make anyone who associates with him feel like scum.
That itself is so un-American.
And so yeah, so the liberals have become the party of the elites.
And those Republicans who aren't rhinos, and there's just a handful of them, have become the champions of the working class.
And so I really believe that if we fight, America has a future.
But we really have to fight, and we have to understand that it's going to, you have to pay a price.
But we've paid prices, and you realize you can't outgive God.
Whatever you give, he's going to give you more.
Well, you were so inspired by Trump that you made some children's books about Trump.
Actually, now here's the funny thing.
The three children's books available at mystore.com with the code Eric.
The three children's books didn't start out as children's books.
Because I've done so much comedy writing, I have a really, really good friend.
His name is Tim Raglan, lives in Kansas.
And Tim Raglan and I have done all these children's books together.
And he was the one that originally, when I was still sneering at Trump, said, no, no, no, watch him on the stump.
I think he's the real deal, whatever, okay?
So when I decided, you know, I'm going to vote for Trump or whatever, I said to my friend Tim, we need to write a children's book, but really an adult comedy book in the shape of a children's book, in the form.
And so we came up with Donald Drains the Swamp, a caveman named Donald who sees a problem.
There's a swamp, and he figures out how to drain it and he drains it and all the people cheer because they're connected back with, you know, the king was in the middle of this island in the middle of the swamp and he only talked to the swamp creatures and whatever, you know, so it's like this parable.
But it was really intended for adults.
Now, I know about this because I've written 30 children's books and I've written a lot of humor, but my most popular children's book is called It's Time to Sleep My Love, illustrated by Nancy Tillman, like million seller, whatever, huge children.
She's really famous illustrator.
So I wrote this poem, lullaby, called It's Time to Sleep My Love, and she illustrated it.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that somebody parodied it, and I know you probably know the parody.
It's called Go the F to Sleep.
And that is a direct parody of my children's book, It's Time to Sleep My Love, right?
So I just thought there's this genre out there where people are doing children's books that are clearly intended at adults, especially if you've got political humor and stuff.
Kids aren't going to get, you know, who are the swamp creatures.
Why does one swamp creature look like Brennan and the other one looks like the turtle looks like Mitch McConnell?
Although, to be perfectly honest, to be fair, all turtles look like Mitch McConnell.
So it's not any kind of great trick.
But the bottom line is I intended it, we intended it as a humor book.
But so many people, when we did the second one, Donald and the fake, sorry, Donald Builds the Wall, people were reporting on it like it's a children's book or whatever.
But also, so many people who bought it loved it for their kids.
They said, I read it to my kids.
It's his favorite book.
And I thought, you know what?
It does work on both levels because it is a very, these are three simple parables of basic common sense stuff that working class people get and intellectuals don't.
And like borders, you know.
And so it's sort of funny that now, you know, if somebody says these are children's books, I always have to say, yeah, but at the same time, I realize how they can be seen as children's books because so many people are buying them as children's books.
But we originally did not intend them as actual children's books.
There's something really meta about that that's hurting my head.
So maybe we should move on.
Well, instead of moving on, what we'd like to do is we want to throw some ideas at you and try to come up with some more children's book ideas for some other political figures.
I think we could do that.
Okay, you got this?
Yeah.
All right, let's see what the next.
How about Dr. Fauci's Beaglet story?
Stop it.
Now, you know something?
It's like, I'll laugh at almost anything, but the gruesomeness of that and the evil of Fauci, like, it really stopped me.
It really freaked me out because we are, I have talked, I think it was on Dave Rubin's podcast this morning.
I was saying, like, you know, we're living in weird times where Nazi parallels, unfortunately, are real.
Like, if you talk about we made a vaccine and we used children that were murdered, and you say, I have a religious objection.
And somebody says, well, you can't.
We don't want to hear your religious objection.
Children were murdered and we use this and we're going to force you to get this or lose your job.
I said, well, okay, what if it was murdered Jews from Auschwitz and we got this great new drug?
Will you take it?
And you say, I have a moral problem with that.
Trust me when I tell you, there are people that would say, look, the person's already dead.
Get over it.
But then there are other weird people who still have moral qualms.
when I see I didn't mean to get triggered but when I see I think kids would love that book Beagle Experiments it's like well okay we better move on man You can call the Poke Little Puppies or anything.
How about AOC?
You got a good book for AOC?
By the way, the man who should be the next mayor of New York, Curtis Sleewa, have you followed him?
I'm not.
He's like a living cartoon character.
He makes Trump look like Walter Mondale.
And he would be the greatest mayor.
This is Curtis Slewa.
He would be the greatest mayor.
And whenever, since he's a New Yorker, whenever he refers to all AOC, he calls her all out crazy.
And I thought, that's about it.
Like, there's nothing, I could never be witty about her because she actually she's featured in the Donald the Caveman books as an angry little girl.
Is that too on the nose?
Not crying by a fence or anything.
How about Andrew Cuomo being charged with groping a woman in his mansion?
I think you guys need to help me come up with these.
I thought the other one I could do the very handsy caterpillar.
The very handsy caterpillar.
I just do a full-on cap and underpants redo.
Wow.
It's like, yeah, Andy Copsophile.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Wow.
How about Joe Biden and his dementia?
How about Andrew Copperfield?
Andrew Copperfield.
Did you hear that joke that that's what George W. Bush?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, let's not go there.
We used to Joe Biden's dementia.
Wow.
This is so dark.
I want to go into the fetal position and crack jokes from there.
Politics with Willie Brown.
Listen, sleeping your way to the middle is a tried and trude American tradition.
Actually, the very idea that Kamala Harris was chosen literally because she's a black woman.
Like, we know that, okay?
And then you think she's, you know, the idea, I think there are a lot of people that would say, like, so is she really black?
Like, she's Indian.
She married a white guy.
Like, the whole race thing has become so preposterous that it really is about what you say.
Like, you say I'm black, I identify as black.
It doesn't matter what you look like.
It doesn't matter what your background is from.
I mean, Obama was raised by a white mother, raised by his white grandparents.
And his father, you know, was not the children of the great-great-grandchildren of slaves, but is like an actual African intellectual, like Marxist intellectual.
So like these terms become so, you know, racial terms really become racist.
Like you start realizing like we're forcing people to think in categories that, you know, it takes a real effort.
The people that are claiming to fight racism are increasing tribalism by saying that every single person.
Yeah.
How about the January 6th riot?
I tell you, I've had moments of wittiness in my life, and these are none of them.
They made them hard on purpose.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, this is like the fact that there are people in jail right now as a result of what happened there and the gaslighting narrative of the left, like it's gotten so dark that it's just hard for me to take in.
In other words, I've always felt like, yes, I disagree with certain people.
I'll disagree with Pelosi.
I'll disagree with that.
But I never thought that they could be really, really wicked and that they could harm people actively and put forward narratives that are lies on top of lies.
I mean, it really is, it's hard for me to take in that they're still pushing this.
And there was a joke in there somewhere if you listened very carefully.
But what would the title of the children's book be?
This, January 6th Riot.
I got it.
Dogpile on the Babbitt.
Yeah, exactly.
Is there anything funny here?
Worse than 9-11.
Worse than 9-11.
A little bit of a lighter.
Protesters following Kirsten Sinema in the bathroom.
Oh, okay.
Now, literally a week ago, the American Spectator published an entire humor piece I wrote about this.
And it's lobbyists' bathroom etiquette.
Loaded with jokes.
It's at the American Spectator.
But I can see that if it didn't make its way to you guys, it didn't get a lot of, didn't get a lot of play.
But I thought it was some really good stuff.
It's at the American Spectator.
No, American Greatness.
Sorry, American Greatness published it.
And it's all about how now that, you know, Maxine Waters has insisted that we need to get in people's faces.
And this is, you know, you got to do your patriotic duty.
And if you're going to follow them into the bathroom, here's how you need to behave.
And so I wish I could remember some of the jokes, but man, they're funny.
I had a few title ideas on that one, Where the Woke Things Are?
Haroly and the Purple Hair Dye?
Or The Diary of Some Wimpy Kids.
I just wish I had, I wish you had given these to me yesterday so I could come up with at least one.
You're busy guys.
It's funny.
But I enjoy you reacting in horror to each one as it comes.
Oh, I know, I know.
I'm sure it's enjoyable.
Yep, yep, yep.
All right, Biden's Afghan with Afghanistan withdrawal.
Oh, Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Now, actually, what I keep saying about this is not that people just go on and on about how horrible it is and how humiliating it is.
Like, okay, that's for sure that's true.
But I'm still unable to process how even if you are like the most wicked or the most incompetent person on the planet, why would you have done what happened there?
Like, it makes no sense.
$85 billion of equipment.
I think the only explanation, genuinely, is that he made a deal with China, which is so dark, so evil, but I can't, like, none of it makes sense.
I mean, I've talked to so many people trying to understand how something like this could happen.
I mean, incompetence, even incompetence can't achieve the level of horror of what happened there.
But now let's go to some jokes.
Biden's Afghan withdrawal.
I was thinking, you know, in Dr. Seuss, he has, oh, the places you'll go could be, oh, the places you will be forced to stay.
Oh.
Oh, the places you'll be abandoned.
All right, well, let's go Gavin Newsom for the last one.
And, you know, he's got a lot of homelessness, a lot of people pooping everywhere in California.
If you go to Santa Monica, you're probably going to step in some.
Any good poop jokes?
Horton hears a poop?
No.
It's just, yeah, it's kind of like you can't write comedy in real time like this, at least I can't.
But the things that are happening, you guys have to face this at the Babylon B. You must have talked about it.
I think that things are so crazy.
How do you joke about it?
I mean, five years ago, I mean, they're basically now telling us that if you don't believe a rooster can lay an egg, you're a bigot.
Yeah.
Like in America, like this is, you know, like if Kim Jong-un was forcing people to believe those things, you'd say, well, yeah, that's what they do.
That's what satanic Marxist dictators do.
But the idea in America that this has happened, I read a piece yesterday, something about, you know, pronouns and stuff.
And I thought if you ever wanted to know how quickly things could deteriorate, I mean, no one would dream, none of us could have dreamt that people could be fired for using wrong pronouns.
Like it sounds like a joke.
Yeah, which are actually the correct projections, which are the biologically.
But I always go back to 1968 and the Columbia University president letting the students take over his office.
I kind of look back at that, like that was the first moment of gutlessness in these culture wars.
In other words, anyone with any spine would have said to these spoiled, rich, elite students, if you didn't get out of here in a nanosecond, you'll be expelled, arrested.
There are people who have come here from working class backgrounds who wanted to get an education.
I don't know who you are, but like get out of here before I turn around or your day is done.
But they all flinched.
They all, and it's the same dynamic.
The elites, because you have to be a liberal elite to buy into this madness.
They thought, well, I'm kind of guilty.
I'm the university president.
They're just poor students trying to be heard.
And so there's no thought for the people actually trying to get an education.
And a tiny group of radicals were able to get away with this.
So if you're the head of a corporation and you don't stand against this, if you're the head of the NBA or the NFL or whatever, none of them seems to have the guts to stand against this stuff.
They could do it in a second, but they don't have the guts.
And so when you want to know, how did all those Jews get murdered?
This is how.
Leaders with power said, I'm going to look away for five minutes.
I want to keep my job.
I don't want Alice Sharpton to come after me.
I don't want anybody to come after me and call me a racist.
I don't want somebody.
So basically, it's the leaders of America's corporations.
And what we need to do, and I think it's happening slowly, is wake up and come after them and basically say, okay, if you're going to be that kind of a corporation, I will go anywhere but to your store.
And that, which is why I say to people, go to mystore.com.
You know, if you want to buy my book, my books from a place that an American hero will get the profits, you go to mystore.com.
You can buy my books and use the code Eric.
And you're not helping Amazon destroy America.
You know, I don't know what to say.
And send Captain Kirk to space.
What's that?
And send Captain Kirk.
No, but I mean, it's kind of like we have to find, I don't mean to single out Amazon.
It's just that there's so many of these corporations that they are using their money, like Facebook, like Zuckerberg, to bring America down.
They think they're doing good.
We know they think they're doing good, but they're not.
And so those of us who think differently have to be practical and have to start thinking, where can I spend my money so that it doesn't hurt America, so that the poor aren't destroyed by socialism, so that my children don't have to wear masks.
I mean, when I see five-year-olds wearing masks on the playground, it just makes me wax murderous.
I just can't get over that these poor kids.
You know, they're going to have mommy and daddy issues.
Believe me, when they get older, there's going to be a lot of satire, a lot of bitter novels written about having to go through this.
Hey, you, do you want to be woke?
I know I do.
I wake up every morning thinking, I really want to be woke.
That's fantastic because I have a product that meets that exact need that you just articulated right then.
It's a new book called The Babylon De Guides Awokeness, and it teaches you how to be woke.
My entire life, I've asked myself, how are these kids these days getting so woke?
And I know that there's got to be an instruction book out there, but there isn't until now.
Now there is.
Because this book teaches you how to be woke so you won't get canceled, so Twitter mobs won't come after you and ruin your life.
You get to know how to choose your pronouns, your gender.
Buy this book so that you won't get canceled.
You can order it today.
Well, I think something you mentioned earlier that sparked something when you were talking about the leaders of the corporations and stuff that don't have the guts to stand up to these people.
What's interesting about it, I found this a lot working in the entertainment industry, is that they're people who are slightly on the left or maybe moderate on the left, but they're afraid of the people further to the left.
Always keep getting pushed further and further.
And that's why I think you're right that, you know, people who are on the center are on the right.
Everyone needs to stand up to them.
And what's great about these other platforms, whether it's my store or whether you see, you know, even like Dave Chappelle and people continuing to just push through and have their career and maintain their platform, people need to see that you can stand up to them.
Because I know people in the, like producers and heads of agencies in Hollywood and stuff, there are people who, yeah, they're generally Democrat voters, you know, and they might believe that, but they don't like the woke crowd.
They don't like cancel culture, but they're also afraid of it.
So they keep it.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
That's why I never thought I'd say this, but thank God for Bill Maher.
Yes.
Thank God to some extent for Jerry Seinfeld.
There are a number of people who have said things, and I really believe that America is strong enough that enough of us, I mean, you can almost see the tide beginning to turn with a few of these folks.
And so it's not over.
But we really do have to fight.
I mean, to think that America is at stake.
There's not like an America waiting in the wings.
There's China waiting in the wings.
So I think that you guys have done such a mind-blowing job using comedy, brilliant comedy, let me say, brilliant, amazing comedy.
I really, as somebody who has wanted to work at the highest level of comedy and I'm a judge of comedy writing, I've been in awe of what you guys have pulled off.
And I've been cheering like crazy from the sidelines.
If I had money, I would invest.
Even if I don't have money, I will invest anyway, I think, because you guys are amazing.
And we should, yeah, we should do a TV program together.
Do something.
Yeah, we got it.
Do something.
I think we will.
All right.
Well, we are going to absorb that into our egos.
And then we're going to do our subscriber portion.
Just a few more questions for Eric, including the 10 questions we always ask.
Uh-oh.
And the rest of you, I guess you're going to leave.
But you could join us on the YouTube videos.
For the next 20 minutes, you're dead to us.
Do you understand?
Right.
Dead to us.
But just for the next 20 minutes.
You can subscribe, though, and invest in the Babylon B. Right.
He just like invest in the Babylon B. Go to BabylonB.com slash plans and join the full way.
Or on YouTube, if you're lazy, you just click join right there and just get the extra videos.
So there you go.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Have you ever punched anyone been punched?
Yeah.
And I've never punched anyone.
All right.
Although I have, but I can explain.
Never got to be dead.
Not at all.
Okay, I will tell you, no joke, I didn't mean to write this book.
I have absolutely never been as excited about a book.
Never.
Obama's coming down the line, and I took out my phone to get a selfie with the president.
And Joe Biden insisted 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 Dillon for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Dave D'Andrea, the voice of the Babylon Babylon B.