The Bee Weekly: Our New World Of Soaring Gas Prices And Movies Not As Good As The Phantom Menace
This week The Babylon Bee discusses how insane gas prices are. Biden seems to think it's entirely Russia's fault but we know he's just being modest. Kyle, Adam, and Jarret also discuss their personal top ten Sci-Fi films (but no one picks The Last Jedi? Weird.) We also sit down with Carl Trueman, the author of a very thick book called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. He now has a shorter, more approachable book covering the same ground called Strange New World. You can pre-order Dr. Carl Trueman's new book Strange New World now For the much larger book, check out The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution This episode is also brought to you by Daily Nouri This episode is brought to you by Private Internet Access
Gas prices are skyrocketing, but if this makes you mad, you can just buy an electric car.
A massive brawl broke out at a Mexican soccer game.
In other words, it was a typical soccer game.
Vladimir Putin has been stripped of his position in the International Judo Federation, and Steven Seagal keeps making fun of him.
Police have busted a plan to sell fake Super Bowl rings.
You can tell the fake ones because they say Cleveland Browns on them.
We talked to Professor Carl Truman about our two favorite topics, politics and sex.
We talk about our top 10 sci-fi movies, and some of them might not be Star Trek, right, Adam?
Because you made a rule that it couldn't be Star Trek.
All this and morons.
The B weekly.
What the heck, guys?
How did you even afford to make it here today?
Yeah, I drive like an hour.
So I drive like an hour to get here, and my parents are in the studio today.
They road tripped out here from Pennsylvania.
Oh, so they drove out here, and then while they were driving across country, the gas prices have gone up as high as they've ever been.
Oh, man.
It's just like constantly.
I think they're stuck here now.
Yeah, there's no way to get back.
I think I spent $50 driving to Dana Point yesterday and back.
$50.
It's just ridiculous.
That is ridiculous.
It's insane.
To fill my tank the other day, I think it cost close to $120.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Dang.
But as George Tekai says, Teke.
Oh, I can't bring up Star Trek, but there you go.
But you can talk about George Take.
But he says you should just do it as a sacrifice to help in the war effort.
In this war effort?
That's what he says.
In the war against the Romulans.
Which war?
Yeah, which one are we talking about?
We didn't make it two minutes with that.
You brought up George Teke right away.
What he said on Twitter.
I didn't invite fault.
I didn't even know what was going there.
Biden is now banning Russian oil and gas imports, which would help with the prices, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's not good.
Yeah, I wish we had some way of getting gas here.
And then, like, yeah, oil under our nation, we could just drill it up.
Yeah.
That'd be good.
That's so sad.
Keith Buttigig has a solution, though.
He does.
Keith Buttigig says just go buy yourself an electric car.
You can't afford $7 gas, but you can go buy a Tesla.
With all the fuel prices, plugging in an electric car isn't going to be any cheaper, right?
Because doesn't the energy price still, like your energy bill is going to go way up?
Well, you still have to kind of get the electric energy from somewhere.
And maybe I'm not very smart, but isn't like everything that's being produced takes gasoline and fuel and oil to make.
Well, the price of everything goes up, not just gasoline.
It's wood burning.
And it's weird as they say they don't want to work back towards energy independence or open up the Keystone pipeline because it wouldn't alleviate anything immediately.
And it's like, so why not start now?
Yeah, so do we have to do that?
Five years from now with some other country that like we then it won't be a problem.
It wouldn't help you right now.
And why can't we have like a transition period, you know, if we're going to do that?
Like why don't why don't they think about a transition period?
That's my thing.
Yeah.
We could be trans gasoline.
Trans.
That's true.
Isn't that good?
That's like a like a what is it?
What do you call those cars?
They're like a hybrid?
Hybrid.
Oh, yeah, why can't I think of it?
I'm just trying to think of the word.
That's stupid.
I'm having word retrieval problems.
It's a good thing you're hosting a podcast.
I know.
Let's go to our banger of the week.
Banger of the week.
So our top shared story this week was actually not political at all.
Isn't that great?
Study finds 100% of men would eat any fruit given to them by a naked woman.
A Bible joke that actually killed.
Finally found a good Christian joke about naked women.
About naked women.
I think that was the key.
We just had to say the word naked woman on the headlines.
It was the best one.
I saw that one.
I showed it to my wife and I said, this is absolutely true.
Yeah.
This is a true statement.
Yeah.
So you would eat any fruit given to you by a naked woman?
Well, yeah, I like how in the article it says not just fruit, but anything.
Like it doesn't have to be like edible at all.
Here's some Windex.
Here's some drain-up.
Yeah, maybe the forbidden fruit was horrible.
Maybe it was completely disgusting and rotten, but.
Yeah.
He didn't notice.
I wasn't really paying attention to the fruit, to be honest with you.
But our bomb of the week was also a Christian joke.
Bomb of the week.
Scholars discover introductory notes to Paul's epistles that dismiss the children to youth ministry so the adults could hear the message.
It's a great idea.
It's just a long time.
It's a long walk.
This was Dan's joke.
I like Dan.
Dan, is this your first ball of the week?
I like the joke.
I just, yeah, it's a great joke.
It is a good joke.
Paul, I like the line here.
Paul, an apostle of God to the little children ages 12 and under, set apart for separate services in the children's wing.
Depart from the presence of the adults so that we may focus on the message without being hindered by the toils and tribulations of parenthood.
That's fantastic.
Well, if you want more Babylon B content, we're going to try something new this week.
We have something called, I don't know exactly what we're going to call it long term, but right now we're going to call it Babylon B Radio, and you're going to get some Babylon B stories delivered right into your ear canals by Austin Robertson.
So let's go to that.
Factually inaccurate.
Morally correct.
This is Babylon B Radio.
Our top story.
President Joe Biden has announced that the U.S. will be banning all oil and gas from Russia.
The president stated that this should not be a cause for any panic and not to worry about gas prices, while he got in what appeared to be a heavy war rig.
Come on, folks, don't be ridiculous.
Gas prices are nothing to worry about.
You've been watching too much news if you think we're about to be in some kind of apocalyptic fuel crisis.
And who needs Russian oil anyway?
I think we're doing just fine, aren't we, boys?
Biden slapped his 30-foot oil tanker, causing his Secret Servicemen to rev their engines and shout wildly.
Journalists report the president then embarked from the White House along with his train of road warriors driving their menacing-looking souped-up monster cars and dirt bikes.
We ride, men, to glory.
We live, we die, we live again.
In a related story, President Biden also addressed claims that he's responsible for America's higher gas prices.
Biden refuted those claims, stating that he's not responsible.
Unless, of course, the prices go way down.
Conservative critics have pointed out that there are several actions the president could take right now, such as allowing more offshore drilling, removing restrictions, and promoting pipeline projects.
But Press Secretary Gensaki has already debunked them, explaining that even if they did all that, greedy gas companies would just keep setting the prices high.
With mask mandates going away around the country, many progressives are feeling lost, confused, and frustrated.
According to sources, the nation's progressives will move forward in a maskless world by electing to just wear t-shirts that say, I am a good person.
Self-identified progressive Mortimer Snodgrass said, During COVID, my mask became an outward symbol of my superior empathy, goodness, and my knowledge of Dr. Fauci's daily briefings.
I'm happy we have these shirts to let the world know that we are one of the good people.
Snodgrass then turned to throw dog poop at a passing Trump supporter in a MAGA hat.
The shirts will be sold by Nike and skillfully made by Uyghur slaves in China.
They will sell for $500, with 20% of the proceeds donated to Greta Thunberg's organization, School Strike for Climate, and another 20% donated to AOC's re-election to help her defeat capitalism.
Nike will also make a special edition t-shirt, especially for conservatives that say, I'm a bad person.
Itching to get back in the spotlight, Dr. Anthony Fauci has agreed to box Jake Paul at Caesar's Palace.
He hopes that by going 12 rounds with the social media personality, he'll be able to regain some lost relevancy.
Win or lose, people will be talking about me, and that's exactly what I need right now.
I'm training hard, but I figure even if I get knocked out cold in the first few minutes, I'll at least get an interview with Colbert.
Hey, Colbay, old buddy, call me.
ESPN senior boxing writer Dan Raphael asked Dr. Fauci how he's preparing for the fight.
You know, that's a great question.
I've been walking around the mall most mornings.
It encourages positive blood flow.
And since I don't have to pretend masks do anything anymore, I can walk mask-free.
It's been very relaxing.
Thank you.
When asked by one reporter if Fauci thought he even stands a chance, you know, it's just too soon to tell.
The secret elite group I belong to didn't think I could bring the entire world to a screeching halt with the virus I manufactured in my Wuhan lab.
But I showed them, don't underestimate me.
Anything is possible if you follow the science.
At publishing time, Dr. Fauci broke his leg after stepping off an escalator.
The fight has been delayed by two weeks, at which point the boxing commission will reassess.
A double-blind study conducted by angel scientists has confirmed that 100% of men would eat any fruit given to them by a naked woman.
The study seems to suggest that the fall of Adam and Eve was unavoidable.
The angel Gabriel, who led the study, said the results were conclusive, even in cases where it wasn't fruit or even edible.
All the males gratefully accepted every single object offered and ate it with a dumb look on their face.
Researchers say the results should serve to humble any man who thinks he would have made a different decision than Adam.
Women around the world started to gloat upon hearing the news.
That is until Gabriel revealed they also conducted a study showing that 100% of women can be tricked by a talking snake.
Now you're up to date on the only news that matters.
Find more fake news you can trust at BabylonBee.com.
Until next time, this is Austin Robertson, the voice of the Babylon Bee.
So long.
It's time for the weekly news with Adam Jetzer.
Several polls show that Joe Biden got an approval bump after his State of the Union address last week.
And an approval bump is when Biden does a good job, so Hunter does a little cocaine to celebrate.
Soda bump is.
To protest the invasion of Ukraine, Pepsi, Koch, McDonald's, and Starbucks have all closed their stores and pulled their products from Russia.
Experts warned that without access to Starbucks, McDonald's, and soda, the Russian army could become the strongest and healthiest the world has ever known.
And to show her support for Ukraine, Hillary Clinton has vowed to stop importing dossiers from Russia.
Vladimir Putin has been stripped of all his positions in the International Judo Federation.
He's also been removed as president of the International Gay Horseback Riding Association.
Some elderly people who have trouble walking are being evacuated from Ukraine in wheelbarrows.
And some Americans have started pushing each other around in wheelbarrows to save money on gas.
Gas prices in parts of Los Angeles have passed $7 a gallon.
It's all part of the Democrats' plan to make sure all the people they've driven to homelessness can't afford to live in their car either.
But not to worry, Joe Biden has a solution and has already announced a plan to get rid of $7 a gallon gas with $10 a gallon gas.
During a Mexican soccer game, 26 fans were injured after a massive fight broke out in the stands.
Thankfully, we don't have massive soccer fights like that here in America because 26 people have never showed up for a soccer game.
WNBA star Brittany Griner is being detained in Russia after being caught with marijuana at an airport.
So apparently, there is a such thing as a WNBA star.
A Quinnipiac poll found that Republicans were more likely to say they would stay and fight if America were attacked.
Republicans will, however, flee California if a homeless person poops on the sidewalk.
As a way to funnel money to Ukrainian civilians, people around the world have been booking Airbnbs in Ukraine, then not using them.
Said one Ukrainian Airbnb owner, this is great for our country, but terrible for my hidden camera sex tape business.
The Batman made $130 million in its opening weekend, and he's already a billionaire.
So once again, the rich get richer.
That's so sad.
In order to finally prove the British royal family isn't racist against black people, Queen Elizabeth met with Justin Trudeau this week.
Oh, no.
Shaquille O'Neal celebrated his 50th birthday this week in Miami.
There was a party and a large cake where he blew out the telephone poles.
Police in Kansas busted a plan to sell $345,000 worth of fake Patrick Mahome Super Bowl rings that were made in China.
That's bullcrap.
You're telling me all three of my one-of-a-kind Patrick Mahomey Super Bowl rings are fake?
The new incoming president of CNN has signaled that he wants to tone down the rhetoric against rival Fox News.
He reportedly wants a truce saying we can join forces and spread lies and misinformation together.
Together.
We're better together.
A new study found that gay conversion therapy is harmful to LGBTQ people.
Conversion therapy is the controversial practice of trying to cure gay boys by showing them the 1998 movie Wild Things.
Police in Bolivia discovered a sophisticated cocaine production lab inside a national park, which shouldn't be surprising since it's called Big Cocaine Lab National Park.
A police chief in Fort Lauderdale, Florida was fired for hiring and promoting minorities based purely on their skin color.
Uh-oh, said Joe Biden.
That's it for the weekly news.
If you want to see more, check out the canceled news on my YouTube channel and come see me live this Friday and Saturday at the Fort Wayne Comedy Club in Indiana.
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Thank you, Adam.
That's always my favorite part of the podcast.
Of course it is.
Now, what do we have next here?
Oh, we're going to do our top 10 sci-fi movies.
Yeah, why the heck not?
I love sci-fi movies.
Sounds like anything.
We're all sci-fi fans, right?
Yeah.
Top 10 sci-fi movies.
So we're going to count these down backwards from 10 to 1.
I didn't spend a lot of time exactly getting where I want them in the list.
But I think my number one's right, and I think it generally goes down from there.
So we'll see.
Cool.
We'll see how it goes.
My number 10.
And you guys told me no Star Treks.
And we did still, you know, there's no Star Trek.
I did not include Star Trek either.
Okay.
Yeah.
Number 10 is Kroll.
Kroll.
And I will defend this with my now.
Which Kroll?
There's two.
No, there's not.
Yeah, there is.
There's a newer one.
There's a new one.
No, they never made another Kroll.
It was like 2000.
No, that's Cole.
Oh, is that really?
That's the difference.
That's a different one.
They never made another Kroll.
I have not seen Kroll or Cole.
Are we doing each of our lists?
Are we each?
We'll each do our number 10 first.
So this is my Kroll.
It's horrible.
It's wonderful.
It's a B movie.
It's so bad it's good, but it's also just kind of a really fun sci-fi movie.
Cool.
Cool.
At number 10, I put the fifth element.
Oh, okay.
I've never seen it.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's a classic.
Always hear good things.
You know, fifth element was one that I had put on my list, but it's number 10.
I actually am doing, what was I going to do on number 10?
Army of Darkness.
I don't think I've seen that one.
I've never seen that.
Oh, it's great.
We've got to check it out.
All right, I will.
My number nine is Serenity, which is the Firefly movie.
Right.
Oh, okay.
It is a little bit of a B movie, and you do have to, you should watch Firefly first.
Right.
But all that being said, it's fun.
It's something they don't really make anymore in terms of like big budget sci-fi movies that look B-movie and fun.
Yeah.
Good stuff.
Serenity.
With Nathan Fillion.
Yes.
I went for a very big blockbuster for number nine, but I went with Independence Day.
Oh, I really enjoyed that movie.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I used to love that movie.
Did anybody see the reboot?
I never saw it.
I never watched it and watched it.
It looked horrible.
Yes.
That was good.
But my number nine, I had Firefly, the whole series.
Oh, the series.
Yeah.
So actually, I really liked that.
So you broke the rules of sci-fi movies, but we'll accept it.
Yeah.
Nathan Fillion, same thing.
Joss Whedon.
I love Firefly.
I just watched it for the first time.
Wonderful.
Yeah.
It really is good.
We're going to number eight.
My number eight is Arrival.
I really liked Arrival.
I was mixed on that.
Jamie Adams.
I found it slow, but I like.
Yeah.
I found it slow, and I really like the way the flash forwards and all that.
Yeah, it was good.
It was definitely cool.
Yeah.
At number eight, I put Starship Troopers.
Oh, dude.
We saw that like four times in the theater.
It's such a rewatchable movie.
It's just a fun, it's so campy.
Oh, yeah.
It's great.
It's one of those where I read the book and I watched the movie.
Yeah.
And they both have a completely different message.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Heinlein.
The movie is mocking what he was writing in the original book.
That's right.
No, I totally had the same experience.
And then Rash X Roughnecks.
Yeah.
Yeah, I totally love that.
That's good.
Okay, so my number eight is going to be Minority Report.
Oh, it's higher on my list.
It's a game one.
Yeah, I like that one.
I really like that movie.
And the short story it's based on is fantastic.
You're both great.
Number seven for me is Interstellar.
Also good.
It's very heady.
It's a thinker.
I liked it a lot.
I was mixed on the ending.
I was like, it's a great thing.
Time travel things always kind of.
I'm like, that doesn't make any sense.
But I thought it was really well done.
It's great.
It's time for me to take my shout out.
Seven, I put Event Horizon.
I've still never seen it.
I watched Event Horizon.
My wife gets really freaked out by that.
It's a creepy.
It's evil horror.
It's like a sci-fi horror, like weird psychological threat.
Like satanic stuff.
It's like a ship basically goes through a portal to a hell dimension and comes back like possessed.
But it's a really good movie.
I enjoyed it.
You know, that's dark.
It's a dark movie, but it's good.
It's not an uncommon theme.
Yeah.
It's actually something that's happened a lot.
Okay, so number seven for me is going to be Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
You like the movie?
I love the book.
Didn't like the movie.
I like the book and the movie.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, I think they're both good.
It was okay.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It was funny still.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Terrible choice.
My number six is going to be Blade Runner.
Love Blade Runner.
The old one.
I like 2049, but the original.
I got you.
At number six, I put The Matrix, the original Matrix.
The only Matrix that has been made in my opinion.
The only Matrix.
The only Matrix movie there is.
You know what I'm Divided on in the very end when he flies away like Superman?
I always felt like the movie should have ended five seconds before Rage Against the Machine.
The Rage Against the Machine song as he flies away.
I just watched that movie for the first time.
I introduced it to my 13-year-old.
I was just blown away at just how well it's shot.
I mean, everything, every shot is amazing.
It's just a great movie.
I watched it with Liam.
You know that scene where they're like cutting one of the probes out of the guy's stomach?
My mom has pretty much only walked in when that scene is on.
So she has forever referred to Matrix as the movie with the goop in it.
Not inaccurate.
Not inaccurate.
She says it's like goop.
By goop, you mean amniotic fluid.
Yeah, I know we're getting off track, but has anybody seen the Matrix, the new one?
No, I didn't.
I kind of refused.
Yeah.
I didn't watch it.
Boycounting.
What are we on?
Six.
Number six, Inception.
Oh.
Oh, yeah.
That's a good movie.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of that as sci-fi.
I do love that movie.
It's a great movie.
It's a great movie.
A little long.
Very cool.
Nolan's always long.
Yeah.
My number five, we've already talked about it, Minority Report.
Yeah.
Classic movie.
That's a really good movie.
My number five, one of my all-time favorites, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
You know, that counts.
Time Travel.
Oh, yeah.
We just watched that with my 13-year-old, too.
I love that movie.
Introduce that to your kids.
That's a great one.
Yeah, for some reason, when I say sci-fi, I have a block and I don't include comedy.
See, it's a comedy, and I was debating at one point whether to put Men in Black on here because it's like it's fun, you know, but I thought about Men in Black and I thought about Spaceballs.
Oh, yeah, Spaceball is a good one, too.
Cool.
Spaceballs is great.
I would say, okay, my number five, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Okay, yeah.
I've never seen that.
I've only embarrassing, but I've only seen the feminist reboots.
The Furry Road.
Yeah, which Furry Road.
That's something different.
That went straight to DVD.
But Fury Road, I like quite a bit.
Yeah.
It's a good one.
My number four, we already talked about it, The Matrix.
Nice.
My number four, Ex Machina.
Oh, that's a cool one.
It's like they build an artificial intelligence robot and it kind of tries to outsmart them.
They're in this compound.
It's Alex Garland.
I really like that movie a lot.
So Alex Garland is the director.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it has Poe Dameron.
Yeah, it's his name.
Yeah, who is fantastic?
He's good at the movie.
I'm going to have to watch that.
Put it on my list.
Yeah, that guy's pretty cool.
So get it with Vidangelo.
If you have a hard time with nudity, yeah.
I don't have a hard time with nudity.
I love it.
That's why I need VidAngel.
That's why we need Vidangel.
I know.
I understand that.
Yeah, let's see.
I think my number, what is it for?
Number four is going to be Blade Runner.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I love Blade Runner, the original.
That's another one that I watched way after.
I watched it a few years ago for the first time, and it just still holds up.
Fantastic.
Totally.
Totally.
We're on to our number three picks, and my number three pick is Dune, the new one.
Oh, okay.
Oh, really?
I haven't seen it.
Fantastic.
One of the best movies I've seen in the last five to ten years.
Now, that is interesting coming from you.
I heard it wasn't that great.
So I'm excited to see it.
I've heard very mixed things about it.
That makes me excited.
It's a big epic sci-fi, and I love big sci-fi.
Well, it's a good concept.
And I read the book, and I had just finished reading the book, and it all, you know, it all fits in.
I read those years ago, so I'm trying to, I got to get back into it.
Yeah, yeah.
At number three, I put one.
People are mixed on this one.
It's another Alex Garland movie, Annihilation.
I love that movie.
You like that?
I loved Annihilation.
I have it under my list on sci-fi movies that are garbage.
Oh, really?
And I wrote Annihilation.
Isn't that kind of feminist propaganda?
But see, I've heard both things.
I know people that love it.
I know people that hate it.
I love it.
Okay, so to be fair, I watched it and I thought the premise was really intriguing.
And then when it's like the feminist girls, like all get their girl power, and they're like, we're going to do this together, I stopped watching it.
I didn't find, other than having female leads, I didn't find that it was like heavy-handed.
And it's like, I thought that one scene where they're like, we're going to do this.
We're girl power.
I could have done without that.
Maybe it got better.
I feel like knowing Natalie Portman's sort of stance on things, it sort of colors everything she does.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I like that one.
So we're on number three?
Three, yeah.
Okay.
You forget what number we're on every day.
I don't have it written down.
Okay, so Star Wars.
But the episode six.
Star Wars episode six.
Revenge of the Sith.
No, I'm sorry.
I'm a dumb.
Return of the Jedi.
Did you say it by the title?
Like everyone said, okay, Return of the Jedi.
No, no, I think if you're a purist, you just say, yeah.
Episode six.
I respect that pick, especially because everybody doesn't like it one because of the Ewoks and all stuff.
No, I love the Ewoks.
I think they're great.
They're great.
All right, we're on number two, Jarrett.
We're on number two this round, and my pick is Alien.
It's a great call.
Oh, good call.
Good call.
I like all the alien movies to some extent.
That one is the best.
I always liked Aliens better.
I like Aliens, but it's no Alien.
And I even like the new ones.
I like Covenant and those.
I like those.
Yeah, they get worse, but Alien is fantastic.
I put a Star Wars movie at number two: Empire Strikes Back.
Oh, very cool.
Good pick.
I like it.
Number two for me is going to be Donnie Darko.
That's a little too hipster for me.
Nah, dude, that's a good one.
Time Travel, very interesting.
There's that creepy rabbit guy.
Yeah.
Love it.
Okay.
All right.
Fascinating stuff.
Another terrible pick.
Okay, now we're on number one.
Number one, best sci-fi movies of all time.
My favorite sci-fi movie of all time is Star Wars in New Hope.
Nice.
I watch that one every time, and I know people say, oh, that one's not as good.
It gets better with Empire.
Star Wars and New Hope.
Classic Heroes Journey.
Love it.
Good call.
See, I didn't go with a Spacer Alien one.
I went number one, Jurassic Park.
Yeah, you know what?
I think they're not a sci-fi, but it is.
I think that's the best sci-fi movie.
You know, that's such a good movie.
It's a great movie.
Yeah.
Really holds up.
Okay, so my number one, which is going to maybe surprise you, is District 9.
That's a great movie.
That surprises me, but it also is a great movie.
I think it's a great movie.
Very interesting.
Great acting.
You know, I only watched it once when it came out and never watched it again, but I always remember it being great.
It holds up, Maine.
All right.
So not a terrible pick from you this time, Jared.
And I had a couple honorable mentions written down just as bonus stuff here.
Robot Jocks.
I remember that.
I like that one.
It's terrible.
It's a terrible B movie, but it's also awesome.
I love the concept.
It's like, war is a thing of the past.
Instead, we have two giant robots fight for this terror movie.
And whoever wins.
Whoever wins takes the territory.
And I just, I love that someone made a whole movie out of that great school idea.
Prometheus.
I like Prometheus despite having some massive flaws.
I like John Carter.
If he doesn't see John Carter, it's totally worth watching, but it's like big budget and yet some really cheesy stuff.
I love it.
Short Circuit is a comedy, but I love short circuit.
RoboCop.
Battleship.
And I'm surprised nobody picked Terminator 2.
Oh.
See, I respect Terminator.
I think it's a great movie.
It's just not one of my personal.
It's a fantastic movie.
It's just, for my taste, it wasn't one of those.
It's exactly how I felt.
I've only seen it like once.
So I remember seeing it.
One of my friends were the twins in the scene with their nuclear bomb when they were kids.
And so I always remember like, anyway, but I just really liked that.
Did they actually nuke them for the scene?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was rough.
It was rough.
Yeah, that's not good.
And then I have sci-fi movies that are garbage, and Annihilation is the only one I came up with.
Really, that was the only one.
That's the only one I felt.
See, I have an honorable mention one because I think this movie sucks because of their performances.
The acting was so bad, but it was such a good movie.
Otherwise, it was Valerian.
Did you see Valerian?
I never saw the City of the Thousands.
No, no, that's the one where the two young people.
Yeah, it's that lady.
As far as the story goes, it's a great movie.
But the casting in it is just terrible.
It's this guy, Dane DeHaan, and then one of those model actresses.
Yeah, the model actress lady that's in the fairy thing with Orlando Bloom.
Cara Delavine.
That's right.
And they're kind of just like, and the performances are so corny and weird in it, it takes away from the movie.
But if you actually look at the scenes and the sort of plot and stuff, it's very cool.
It's a fantastic.
It's a very cool story.
Okay, the crap one was with Tom Hanks, Cloud, the Cloud Atlas.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that was for me the dumbest movie ever made.
Yeah, I just think that was awful.
Just awful.
Peace out.
It's a turd.
Even worse than the movies you put on your list.
Yeah.
No, I mean, even worse.
Man, it takes some real quality taste to have my taste.
I just want you to know.
All right.
Well, now we're going to talk to Carl Truman.
And he's a smart guy.
Dan's going to jump in the seat with me.
And we're going to chat with Carl Truman about what did we even talk about, Danny?
It was too heady.
It was too philosophical for me, but he's a super smart guy.
Sex and politics.
Sex and politics.
Yeah, kind of like the gender identity stuff and the politics of self and what it means to have an identity.
You can pre-order Carl Truman's new book, Strange New World Now, where he talks about a lot of the stuff that everybody's dealing with.
Super timely and an interesting topic.
Let's talk to him.
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And now for another interview on the Fee Weekly.
All right, well, are you going to get us banned from YouTube?
Is that what's going to happen here?
You're pretty controversial, right?
We can certainly give it a try.
I was only banned for like two and a half minutes or something in the end.
But yeah, maybe.
I have guys on YouTube commenting, making money out of trashing me on YouTube.
It's kind of funny that I'm the woke guy they're trashing on YouTube who gets banned by YouTube.
So it's well, I mean, are there any areas of your study or research or things that you've posted that have generated the most controversy?
It's hard to choose, really.
I think quite a lot of stuff.
Oddly, I think the stuff that gets most traction is whenever I dare to suggest that not everybody who voted for Donald Trump did so with enthusiasm.
That tends to get most enthusiastic.
The Never Trumpers really hate that.
They really hate that.
So, but on the other stuff, it's the usual suspects.
Whenever you touch race, of course, that's a live wire.
If you mention race, you can expect to be hit from all sides almost simultaneously.
Yeah, well, the Trump thing is interesting because there is this narrative that everybody who voted for Donald Trump 100% agrees with everything that he's ever said.
That, you know, anything he said that's been kind of off color or has been deemed as racist.
Everybody who voted for Trump is a racist and agrees with all of that.
Where the narrative that I've seen personally, and I know this is anecdotal, is that a lot of us just kind of went like, well, he's better than the other guy and held our noses and voted.
That's very much it.
I mean, and I've said to I don't have a vote, which is a great privilege, I think, at the moment as a resident alien.
But I've said to people, you know, if I if I lived in if I had to vote in 2020, I'd have held my nose and voted Trump.
If I lived in Vermont or Texas, I'd have written in Queen Elizabeth II.
Yeah, I did.
Pennsylvania's a swing state.
Every vote counts.
But in a state where my vote didn't count, I'd have just written in the queen, I think, at that point.
Right.
Well, now that you've gotten us banned from YouTube, you got a good question there, Dan, about a time machine.
So, yeah, we had this little icebreaker question that we thought was very fitting.
So, let's say you have a license to kill and you have a time machine.
You've got a gun and three bullets, and you're in a room.
You find yourself in a room with Rousseau, Nietzsche, Marx, and the romantic poet Percy Shelley.
Which bad ideas are you taking out to save the world?
So, I can take out three of them.
Only three.
Well, I'd certainly take out Marx.
Let's take out Marx.
He would shoot Marx three times.
Yeah.
There was Marx.
Who are the other three?
We got Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Percy Shelley, the romantic poet.
Yeah, probably got to go for Rousseau.
I mean, it's completely bonkers stuff, this idea that man is born free and everywhere is in chains, very problematic.
Then it's tough because I'm not philosophically with either Nietzsche or Shelley, but I love reading their stuff.
So I think maybe it's got to be bye-bye, Percy, at that point.
If I've got to make a choice, it's farewell, Percy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if I could bring Nietzsche forward in the time machine, I would want him to, he's the only person I would say, you need a Twitter account because you will do it fantastically well.
So yeah, let's keep Nietzsche, but make him a Twitter guru in the 21st century.
Yeah, there's a lot of those historical figures that I think, you know, if only they had a Twitter account.
You know, GK Chesterton, if he had a Twitter account, that would be wonderful.
Yeah.
Oscar Wilde would be another one.
Yeah.
Born too soon.
Born too soon.
Maybe they're lucky, though, not to have Twitter.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So you wrote a book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and now you have a smaller book that's kind of like covers the same ground, but it's more approachable called Strange New World.
And I'm just wondering, this is like the Dan intelligence level.
You read this one and I read this one.
Is that what you're saying?
For the small one, too.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a good one.
All right.
If you wait long enough, we'll have the graphic novel out for you.
Do it all in pictures.
Can I wait for the movie?
Yeah.
So you kind of bring up this issue of the modern self.
And I'm wondering what does that mean when you say the modern self?
We kind of place a value on being your authentic who you are nowadays.
Is that what you mean by the modern self?
Yeah.
So behind the book was really the question I was wrestling with a number of questions.
One of them was: is there anything that holds together the kind of chaos we're seeing unfolding in society at the moment?
Is there anything that makes sense of the LGBTQ movement?
Yeah.
The huge levels of anxiety among teenagers, the crisis in institutions.
Are all of these discrete phenomena, or is there something that binds them together?
And I came to the conclusion that what binds them together is a reconceptualization of what it means to be a human being, a new understanding of what it means to be the self that's been percolating for some centuries now, but has suddenly gained tremendous speed and traction in the last five, 10, 15 years.
And what I mean by the self is how we think of our identity, what we think is the real us.
If you were to go back to the Middle Ages and to chat to one of my ancestors in rural England, they would no doubt have told you their identity was all bound up with their geographical location, the family networks into which they were born, the rank which they held in society.
Their identity would have been predominantly defined by externals and given to them.
It wouldn't be something they could think up for themselves.
It was something they were born into and had to learn to be.
Today, we have this idea that the self is really that bundle of feelings that lurks within us, which is often we certainly, the way we imagine it, in an antagonistic relationship to externals, to family, to institutions.
I was watching the news just last night about the so-called don't say gay bill in Florida.
And they were interviewing one of the gay activists who is pushing against this bill that would limit the teaching of LGBTQ stuff to very small children.
And he said, this is going to stop children from being their authentic selves.
And I turned to my wife and I said, I absolutely nailed it, didn't I?
My book nailed it.
This guy is a quintessential example of what I'm talking about.
This conception of the self is.
Do you do that a lot?
You just turn to your wife and say, I told you so.
I do.
And she rolls her eyes.
One thing you need to know about my wife is she's never read anything I've ever written either.
So she entirely dependent upon me to tell her what my audience are.
But that captured beautifully, in a way, that modern sense of self where kids are who they feel themselves to be.
They're defined by their desires, by their inner feelings, not by the broader framework of society into which they are placed.
I also wanted to get at why all this seems to have happened so quickly.
A lot of people are very perturbed at the speed we went from, say, gay marriage to Caitlin Jenner, transgenderism.
Why is this stuff happened so quickly?
And again, I think the background to that is this notion of the self has been building up and been put in place over many centuries.
What we're now seeing in some ways is the last dominoes falling in a rather dramatic and in many ways traumatic way in terms of our society and culture.
Yeah, it's super interesting.
I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis's evolution of man, where he talks about the objectivity of beauty and the nature of being and the nature of meaning and finding external realities.
And even then, even in that age, he was talking about how the whole thing was triggered by the school textbook that told children, like, look at a waterfall.
It's your opinion whether it's beautiful or not.
Right.
You know, and this idea that if you have a challenge or a problem in your life, you need to look and say, how do I need to change myself to orient myself to the external realities versus, I know I'm explaining this to you and you already know, but versus looking at, you know, looking at yourself and saying, no, the world needs to conform to me, you know, and how applicable is that to us today when we see kids dealing with things like the LGBTQ movement.
Oh, I mean, very much so.
And it goes down to the broader question of the role of institutions.
When I was educated in the 70s and 80s, the role I went to a very traditional, it was what you would call a public school, what back home would call a state school.
It was government funded.
It was not a private school, but it was very traditional.
And the purpose of education was to take you as a little savage and train you to be a civilized human being, train you to be a member of society by knocking the rough edges off.
It's why teen sports were very important because you were being trained not to be an individual, but to be part of a team.
Today, we tend to see education as a means of getting out of the way so that the child can grow into the outwardly into the person they already are inwardly.
That's a somewhat simplistic description, but not a misleading one, I don't think.
And we think of other institutions that way.
Any institution that represents a form of external authority that's telling us how we have to be, we tend to press against that because we've been taught and the culture presses in us this idea that we are most authentic when that inner person that we really are is allowed to express him or herself in the way they choose externally.
So, your point, I think, is absolutely correct there.
Yes.
You got it absolutely correct from Dr. Carl Truman.
That's great.
I've noticed a difference just in my own lifetime.
So, when I was a kid, The Little Mermaid came out.
And I'm thinking of like Disney movies, culture.
A big theme in Disney movies is the whole follow-your-heart thing.
And when I was a kid, they had the little mermaid and she would follow her heart and she ran into trouble.
She didn't listen to her dad and she ran into trouble.
Her dad had to come save her.
Her dad has to come save her at the end of the movie.
And now they have like movies like Moana, where it's like, my dad's wrong.
I'm going to go do what I want and follow my heart.
And then she ends up being right and saves the world.
And that has taken on a somewhat sinister form on the internet, places like YouTube and TikTok, where particularly a lot of young girls are being tutored to become transgender through precisely that kind of logic.
Everything your parents tells you is wrong.
Your parents are the enemy.
You need to find a way to manipulate your parents in order for them to affirm what you want to affirm about your life.
So what Disney presents as in some ways a harmless plotline that can be entertaining is taking on a very sinister shape in the world around us where parental authority is really being supplanted and school authority as well as being supplanted by new media, which is pitched by very intention, I think, as a way of attenuating those old kind of traditional lines of authority.
Yeah, and you talk about how the institutions are kind of propping this up.
And that was a terrifying, we talked to Abigail Schreier, who wrote the irreversible damage book, about how, you know, you can't talk to your teen about this stuff and then say, well, we'll just take you to, you know, a psychiatrist or we'll take you to a school and they'll help sort it out because they are affirming this.
You know, they don't have that traditional set of values where they say, no, we're going to take these savage instincts and make you into a civilized person.
They affirm that savagery within them.
They do.
And a lot of schools, of course, are adopting a very adversarial approach towards parents.
The school district that I was in in Philadelphia before I moved to Western Pennsylvania, it was one of the first school districts, if not the first in Pennsylvania, to introduce trans legislation within the school.
And I wrote a letter to the school board to protest this because one of the things they said there was, if a child comes out as trans at school, the school is under an obligation to tell the parents.
I pointed out the obvious that the school was thereby arrogating to itself the right to know who the child really was and by its own logic, denying that to parents, creating an immediately adversarial situation between parents and children.
This is happening across the country.
And I think a lot of parents, perhaps now, slowly starting to wake up to it.
We're seeing some pushback in certain areas, but parents are the enemy in all of this.
They are really being cast in a villainous light.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just read about a school district in Escondido right near here that Told the staff to address a student by their transgender pronouns and specifically says in this email, don't send any material home with those pronouns.
Tell the parents that they're still the birth gender.
Now, that's terrifying.
That is terrifying.
And it indicates how far things have gone.
And I think a lot of parents are unaware of this.
But as I say, consciousness is beginning to rise.
And we're beginning to see something of a pushback against it, but it is very, very sinister.
Very sinister indeed.
You have this concept of cultural amnesia.
You want to talk about that?
What is it that we've forgotten as a culture?
Yeah, cultural amnesia is a phrase I use really to refer to, well, it's not what you typically think of as amnesia.
We tend to think of amnesia as a state that creeps up on people and in which they're rather passive.
I get bashed on the head and I forget a whole heap of stuff.
It's something that happens to me.
The form of cultural amnesia I'm talking about in the book is very intentional.
It's the erasure of the past.
It's the demonizing of the past.
It's the elimination of the past as a source of wisdom.
We all know that every nation has a somewhat mixed past.
We're all sinners.
The history of no nation is a history of unmitigated happiness and light.
But the attitude that's emerged, first of all, I think, within educational institutions and now more broadly within the culture over the last 20, 30, 40 years has been one that tends to see the past as a whole as something that needs to be overcome or repudiated.
You'll notice the use of a phrase one occasionally hears on TV, they'll say, you need to be on the right side of history in this debate.
Well, typically, whenever that phrase is used, it's very interesting that the right side of history involves the repudiation of the historic position.
So being on the right side of history in gay marriage was rejecting the historic tradition on marriage.
Being on the right side of history on gender is rejecting the historic position on the important distinction between the males and the female sex grounded in biology.
And that speaks to an era where really history is something to be overcome.
It's not something to learn from.
It's something to be overcome.
It's something to be consciously erased.
Just think of a biblical example: when Ahab becomes king, if you remember when Ahab becomes king, we're told Ahab becomes king.
And the next thing we hear is that Jericho has been rebuilt.
And when Jericho was destroyed, of course, the ground is cursed, and the people of Israel are told never build Jericho again.
The whole point is the wasteland that was Jericho is to be there as a reminder.
The rebuilding of Jericho, that's an act of cultural amnesia.
That's under Ahab's reign, the identity, the historic identity of the people of Israel is sort of being erased.
That's kind of what we're doing today.
Think of the founding of the United States.
Is it 1776 or is it 1619?
The details of the debate are interesting.
The fact that there is a debate is absolutely fascinating because it shows that there is a contested myth of origin for the nation.
In other words, the history of the nation is being sort of erased at this particular point.
And that's what I mean by cultural amnesia, that general cultural tendency, which has numerous causes, but manifests itself really as a rejection of the past, a conscious rejection of the past as a source of wisdom and identity.
It's like the last Jedi.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So episode eight, the last Jedi comes out.
They take everything that was good about Star Wars, and then they just, nah, we'll do the opposite, right?
I despise Star Wars.
I'm pretty.
What about Starbucks?
Yeah, I'm more of a Godfather one and two man myself.
So this is like Godfather 3?
I guess so.
It's still a decent movie, Godfather, except for the gnocchi scene.
I think the gnockey scene is unpardonable.
But other than that, the movies, the movie, at least in the director's rearrangement, isn't too bad.
That was one smart guy.
And I wasn't just talking about Dan.
Carl Truman was smart too.
We're going to go to some hate mail now, and you can hear the rest of that interview in the subscriber exclusive experience.
I really miss Adam Ford.
This is some hate mail.
Somebody named Diet Dr. Mario on Twitter, which I think is just a great name.
Also, well done.
We had an article.
The Batman delivers a solid superhero entry, but fails to comment on the hardships of trans lives in war-torn Ukraine.
That was our review of The Batman.
That's right.
One star.
And here was his comment.
Conservative satire is literally only funny in the sense that it's so horrendously unfunny that it's funny that people think it's funny.
That's a pretty good burn.
I think he thinks it's funny.
Is that what it is?
I think that's where it gets to me.
But he's laughing at us, but not with us.
He says it is funny, though.
Yeah.
So it did.
It did make him laugh.
Oh, it's funny, but here's why.
And then he goes on, like, what is the article saying?
What's the critique?
Are they pretending to be liberals rating a movie?
Or do they not think that trans people still have it extra hard during a war?
What's the message?
I think it's probably the second one, actually.
We don't have a lot easier for them.
If you like our hate mail, we have some bonus hate mail coming up in the subscriber lounge.
You can hear the rest of the interview with Carl Truman, classic Babylon B stories of the week, and some subscriber headlines.
We ready?
Let's do it.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
I'm in a different seat because Garrett took my seat and I was too introverted.
They're such a bully.
I know.
What if Trump refuses to leave the office?
And also, what if he grows 50 feet tall and shoots lasers out of the guys?
Let's actually leave office, not leave the office, which makes the joke make more sense.
No, it's all good.
It was funnier when he used to leave the office.
Looks like you can't handle the main chair.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, that's probably true.
This has been another edition of the Be Weekly from the dedicated team of certified fake news journalists you can trust here at the Babylon Bee.
Reminding you that someone out there knows something about Carmen.