The Bee Weekly: FreedomFest and The Best Video Games Ever
Enjoy an 82% discount and 3 months free with the most trusted VPN provider, Private Internet Access at our link: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/offer/TheBabylonBee_v12qjfi This week at The Babylon Bee, the guys review their crazy weekend in Las Vegas at FreedomFest because what happens in Vegas echoes in eternity. They also talk about good Samaritans who use guns and run into burning buildings, repent of not knowing the fish slapping dance, and discuss the top ten greatest video games of all time. Travis is back with a vengeance this episode. This episode is also brought to you by these sponsors bringing you Fake News You Can Trust: BetterHelp: http://betterhelp.com/babylonbee My Patriot Supply: http://preparewithbee.com ABIDE app: http://abide.co/babylon Allegiance Gold: http://allegiancegold.com/bee The Babylon Bee crew also talks about the news of the week like Brandon Falls being a historical landmark now, NPR deciding to open up a brand new disinformation wing, and Joe Biden wandering around the Middle East asking for Jafar. There's also more Sizzler facts, a Weakly News with Claire filling in for Adam, and Bee Radio with Austin Robertson. Kyle sits down with Andrew Crapuchettes, from Red Balloon, who is trying to connect freedom-loving employers with people who just want to work without compromising their beliefs and values. Last but not least, the guys at The Babylon Bee set in stone their top ten video games of all time.
We hit up Freedom Fest this week at the holiest city on earth, Las Vegas.
NPR creates a disinformation team to combat disinformation from their own news reports.
Dr. Fauci has announced that he's thinking about maybe retiring by the time Biden's term ends.
Well, bye.
We interview the founder and CEO of Red Balloon, a company that helps workers find employment at anti-woke businesses.
But what does that have to do with balloons?
Are you winning, son?
We talk about our favorite video games for all you boomers out there.
All this and more on the Bee Weekly.
Hey, friends, you never want to get caught off guard.
And of course, there's a lot of things going on in the world.
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I'm here talking with Brandon.
This is me, Brandon.
I'm Travis.
That's who he is.
This is the Bee Weekly where we talk about stuff that happens on the week.
You get to hang out with the Babylon Bee writers.
So that's always a great time.
I'm Kyle.
Did I already say that?
I'm Kyle.
And we're going to do the Bee Weekly now.
We want to make an announcement, everybody.
You've enjoyed the Bee Weekly for the last couple years.
And sadly, all good things have to come to an end.
The Bee Weekly is not ending.
But we are going to begin putting it on a separate YouTube channel.
So there will be a YouTube channel called the Babylon Bee Podcast where you can get all our podcast content.
While the main Babylon Bee channel will be reserved for hilarious sketches and the like.
So be on the lookout for that soon.
And we'll have an announcement video and all that.
And we'll post the link to the new channel so that you'll be able to subscribe and continue getting the great podcast content that you have come to love and know and also enjoy.
And yeah.
So cool.
Does that sound cool?
It sounds fantastic.
Have you subscribed to the new podcast?
I actually have.
I'm one of the first four subscribers.
One of the first four subscribers.
You are the fourth subscriber because last time I checked there were three.
False.
Wait.
I think you were in the first subscribe.
I am the first three.
Bettino was number four.
Got it.
Okay.
Let's get these numbers correct.
Brandon, have you subscribed to the new?
Well, wow.
Tragic.
So this was an exciting week because we got to go to Freedom Fest in Las Vegas.
I had to give a couple of presentations and it was an insane time.
And at the end, I was thinking and I was like, that was one of the best weekends in my life.
Yeah, I'm glad I was there.
And Travis was not present.
It was pretty cool.
I mean, we got to snag interviews with the absolutely legend John Cleese.
We also got an interview with Senator Rand Paul, which should be coming out soon.
Probably out before this comes out.
Yeah, for the plebeians.
But yeah, Adam Ford, the founder of the Babylon Bee, had messaged me and he said, were you starstruck to talk to Rand Paul?
And I was like, no, but I was to talk to John Cleese.
What a weird world, man.
I was like, John Cleese, like, I couldn't even, you know, I ended up having dinner with Senator Rand Paul and he was a really nice guy.
But I was like, the amount of starstruckness was way more talking to John Cleese for me.
We love you, Senator Paul.
Oh, so you didn't get to have dinner with John Cleese?
I did not have dinner with John Cleese, but it was really crazy.
I gave a talk on stage, and I had done a panel with John Cleese's daughter, who's a stand-up comedian, earlier in the day.
And I look out and I see John Cleese sitting in the crowd, you know, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, you know.
And then later on, I gave a talk that was just me, and I come, and he was coming on next.
So I was like, I opened for John Cleese, right?
And so I come off stage, and he's just standing there, like, you know, because he's about to come on and I'm going off backstage.
And he just shakes my hand and he just starts talking.
And he says, you know, your voice is too low.
It's too low.
You know, your mouth is opening, but the voice is low.
And I'm very old.
I'm quite old.
And I could not understand everything you were saying.
But I really want to know more about this book that you've written.
And then on the stage, they're like, oh, John Cleese.
And he's still talking to me.
And they run over and they grab him and they have to drag him on stage.
So he does what he wants.
So, yeah, that was before we interviewed him.
And so I was a little more chill for the interview.
I'm like, okay, he's an amazingly nice guy.
Until he threw you off your game when he opened up the interview by stealing your note cards.
And I was laughing so hard.
I just, it was like I was in a Monty Python sketch at that point.
But go check out the John Cleese interview on our YouTube channel as well as the Rand Paul interview.
And you guys wandered the convention hall and got a ton of people to answer the 10 questions.
We did.
We wandered the convention hall.
We asked the 10 questions to random just attendees of the conference and to some of the people that were showing their various freedom wears, I suppose, running their freedom booths.
I think that's what they call them.
And that's also coming out pretty soon.
It's going to be on Friday.
Oh, awesome.
Which is actually today for the plebeians and Thursday for subscribers.
If you want to get the podcast a day early, you got to subscribe.
You got to pay the price.
Did you do anything cool like interview John Cleese this weekend?
I had a cold.
Oh.
So that was good.
But that meant I got to play a lot more Elden Ring.
Well, we'll talk about that later.
Could be Dog.
Maybe, if that makes your list.
We also talked to Andrew Krapuchets.
Got to be careful with that name of Red Balloon.
And he's a CEO of this company Red Balloon that tries to connect non-woke employees with non-woke employers.
So it's like employee freedom and all that, which is great.
We got Sizzler Facts this week.
We got B-Radio.
We got weekly news, but no Adam Yenser.
Sad.
He's off gallivanting about the country doing comedy shows.
Did you give him time off?
No, he's still writing and stuff.
But, you know.
Okay.
So.
So what's in the news this week?
Hey, NPR decided to open up a brand new disinformation team.
And I loved the nuclear ratio on this tweet from Casey Murrell of NPR.
He says, some great company news.
We're launching a disinformation team.
Why did they think that would be great?
Like, did they think they would be welcomed with open arms?
It'd be like just a few months after the absolute demise of the Ministry of Truth, we decided that everyone's going to embrace this idea of us being the arbiters of what is truth.
Well, it seems obvious to me that because the government couldn't officially get away with it, they're like, well, NPR can do it.
Which is also funded by the government.
And it's worth noting that when the Hunter Biden laptop story came out in October of 2020, they put out a statement saying, why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the Hunter Biden story?
Well, we don't want to waste your time on stories that are not really stories.
We don't want to waste the listeners and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions.
So they're great.
Well qualified to run the disinformation team, I think.
Focusing on the stories that really matter.
That's right.
And I find the idea of a disinformation team with journalists just weird because if you're a journalist, technically you're already doing that.
You're trying to, here's the truth.
Let's report on it.
In theory.
I find the fact.
I agree with you, and I find the fact-checking paradigm kind of strange that they have to do this like true-false dichotomy rating on everything.
Because real journalism has nuance to it.
You're like saying, well, okay, there's a mixture of things going on in this story, and you just present the facts.
But when you're a fact-checker like Snopes, you have to slap this big true label or this big false label on things.
And it leads to bizarre things like labeling satire as false or labeling a politician's statement as true, even though it's clearly mixed with some falsehoods.
I think everyone's just trying to chase the idea of the Nintendo official seal of quality to put on the games.
I believe that is in their mission statement.
So that's just, that's what NPR wants.
The majority of companies have that in their mission statement.
Our quality must emulate that of.
So what was the deal with the Nintendo seal of quality?
It was supposed to say that Nintendo has approved because there was like pirated games coming, not pirated, but there was bootleg, like third-party games coming out.
Just third-party game.
Bootleg.
It was basically Nintendo saying.
I just say bootleg.
We wish we had developed this.
Go ahead and buy it.
But because there was some kind of authorization process to go to Nintendo and get their blessing.
And if you didn't do that.
Or behind-the-scenes payment, possibly.
Or you paid for the seal or something.
Because I will tell you, I've played some games that had the Nintendo official seal of quality and they were not very good.
Well, I want to get the official Nintendo seal of quality tattooed on myself.
And then forever I won't be able to say I've got to do it.
Is there a Nintendo editor that we could consult about this?
Because I would like to get to the heart of the matter as well.
We'd have to get Shiguru Mayamoto.
Okay.
But we have gotten Joshua.
I think he's Korean.
And Elon Musk, so we could probably get him too.
Or Chinese.
So a 22-year-old citizen who did not have a carry permit, but it was legal to carry under constitutional carry law in an Indiana mall food court stopped a mass shooter, ended up killing three, but probably would have killed a lot more if it weren't for this absolute giga chad.
That police officer looks like Mike Tyson a little bit.
He looks like White Tyson.
White Tyson?
He kind of looks like Kingpin in the Marvel.
I can see Kingpin, but Kingpin also looks like White Tyson.
So I guess I'll explain that.
That's not important.
The important thing is this guy shot a bad guy, which I was reliably informed never happens.
Yeah.
That's true.
His guns are never used for good.
He took out the mall shooter in 15 seconds and landed eight out of 10 shots.
If you've never gone to the shooting range before, that's pretty incredible.
A moving target at range.
15 seconds.
15 seconds, 8 to 10 shots.
And the police chief called him a good Samaritan, and then that turned into a bunch of discussion and memes about what a good Samaritan is.
Well, is that because everyone hates Samaritans?
I think so.
It's just tricky because we have this.
The only thing that makes the news, obviously, is the absolute tragedies that everyone, everyone condemns.
And realistically speaking, everyone that's saved, the millions of incidents that are resolved by the right person being in the right place at the right time with a firearm.
Millions.
Like, vastly outweighs the number of deaths.
Like, not necessarily where somebody actually gets shot, but a deterrent, like a guard is there or a police officer.
And like, even in the worst case scenario, when I'm actually able to have a reasonable conversation with someone, I'll say, you know, a lot of these gun deaths are suicides.
A lot of them are gang violence, which you probably won't be involved in.
But let's just add those to the total gun deaths.
Let's add suicides.
Let's add gang violence and multiply it by 10.
And we still don't come close to the number of incidents that are prevented.
There's just so many more incidents where guns save lives and we just can't acknowledge those.
It's an interesting case, too, just that whenever they put up a number there and say there's this many gun deaths, 30,000, whatever the number is, of gun deaths in the U.S. every year, they want you to think that many people are being randomly shot in a mass shooting.
And it's the same thing when they label mass shootings.
You know, this is a mass shooting when it's a gang drive-by in Chicago, you know, or an angry ex-lover that shows up to the house, you know, with a gun.
It's like, yes, technically there's a shooting.
Yes, technically more than X number of people were shot.
But they try to do that to conflate.
So you think like every mall and every theater and every school in the country, you know, there's hundreds of these that happen.
But if you actually narrow it down to what we think of as a mass shooting, there's been very few, relatively speaking, over the last five to ten years.
I just hate how much we have to talk about this because it's just this constant narrative that's being pushed against this freedom that we have of actually being able to protect ourselves and not having to rely on.
But it's bad logic.
It's the same thing they do with abortion.
They take the edge case and say, oh, the rapes, you know, rapes, the incest, and then they use that to justify this.
And so they take the edge case of the mass shooting and say, that's all of this.
And you're like, well, no, it's a very small percentage of what's going on.
I think that's the unfortunate thing about it.
You're taking those cases and you're making it about your political agenda rather than focusing on, oh, this is a legitimate problem that everyone agrees is a problem.
And so no one actually ever talks about real solutions.
But I mean, as far as whatever solutions that we have, what we do know can work is preventative.
Like when we have criminals locked up, why is it that one side is fighting to keep them locked up and the other side's fighting to let them go?
That is something that will work.
I mean, we have many criminals that go back and perform additional crimes after they're let out of jail.
This is like statistically verifiable.
Why is it that one side's fighting to keep them in?
One side's fighting to let them out.
I think I'm also concerned that no one's invented bulletproof skin yet.
Yeah, that is a tragedy.
In other hero news, this 25-year-old pizza delivery driver saved a bunch of kids from a burning house.
25-year-old pizza delivery man runs in a burning house, saves four children who tell him another might be in the house.
He goes back in, finds the girl, jumps out a window with her, and carries her to a cop.
And the whole thing was captured on body cam.
That's hot.
I like how it says 25-year-old man, but that profile picture is.
Picture is not 25-year.
It's just the visual discrepancy.
The 25-year-old pizza.
Yeah, 25-year-old man.
It's a 25-year-old man who's worked for the overnight.
So it's a delivery man that delivers 25-year-old pizza.
He's very late.
Probably because he's saving people from fires all the time.
So Whoopi Goldberg said this week that plenty of states violating women's rights is the same as Saudi Arabia.
Whoopee Goldberg also said that the Holocaust wasn't about race.
So that's what they're saying.
There's that.
So, you know, she said he didn't have to go to Saudi Arabia, however, to find a country that's violating human rights or a country that's opposing women because plenty of states that we live in are doing the same thing.
Remove protecting rights from women, just allowing them control over their bodies.
I just want to say, you know, I think maybe part of the problem that we have is our own hands are quite dirty quite often.
That's a great Whoopee Goldberg impression.
I just challenged her.
She's just like, you know, Saudi Arabia.
Pretty much the same thing.
Yeah, control over their bodies.
If only there was a movement that was trying to entirely eradicate certain bodies.
So President Joe Biden fell off of his bike once that we are aware of.
Oh, not just once, but yeah.
Yeah.
And the location where he fell off of his bike is now known as Brandon Falls.
It is a historical landmark on Google Maps.
As a member of the Brandon community, I'm starting to resent this.
I'm starting to resent the fact that he's referred to as Brandon and sullying our good name.
Google has now deleted this landmark quite sadly.
I think someone needs, we need to fund a crowdfund like a plaque that can go up at that spot.
I guarantee there will be one within a year.
I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I have been to the parking spot in Indio where Jimmy Swaggart was arrested with a prostitute, and there is a plaque above the parking space.
That's really.
And I just think that's wonderful.
I like more plaques for things that are not of that much significance.
Well, this is of significance, I think.
Yeah.
Well, it deserves its own little square.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just a different kind of significance.
It's not like, oh, this is where the Boston Tea Party happened.
Huge historical moment, part of the American Revolution that led into it.
Well, it's why we don't like tea.
Explanations with Travis.
That's why we don't like tea.
By the way, you might have seen Travis from our segment, Travis's Game Corner.
And you need to go back and watch Travis' video game corner if you have not.
I don't remember what episode it was in, so just go watch all of them until you get to it.
Moderna's CEO walked away from the company with a $926 million retirement plan.
I wonder where he got that much money.
I wonder where Moderna made that much money.
That's pretty cool.
Crowdfunding.
And here's a self-owned from Robert Reich, who has a smug look on his face.
And he says, in 2021, he said, you know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime?
That's how all healthcare could be.
And then just this week he tweeted, the federal government gave Moderna $2.5 billion to develop a COVID vaccine.
Meanwhile, Moderna's CEO just walked away from the company with a billion-dollar golden parachute.
This is what oligarchy looks like.
Interesting.
So like it makes it sound like the Pfizer or the Moderna CEO literally took half of the money that they were getting.
2.5 billion.
Like he took like half of it.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Oh, that's awesome.
So Fauci is about to retire at the end of Biden's term, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he might be kicked out of power and that he's an octogenarian.
Nothing to do with any of that.
I think he just realized that this was.
This is what he said.
He said, it's becoming more and more difficult to get people to listen because even the people who are compliant want this behind them.
What I try to convince them of with my communication method is we're not asking you to dramatically alter your lifestyle.
We're not asking you to really interfere with what you do with your life.
We're just asking you to consider some simple, doable mitigation methods.
I don't think anything that he was recommending were simple and non-interfering.
Stay home from school and stay home from work.
Yeah, shut down the entire economy for...
They don't really interfere with what you want to do with your life, Travis!
Well, I mean, they don't interfere with what Patton Oswald wants to do with his life.
It's Fudruckers.
Oh, man.
You know what?
I love Fudruggers, and now it's gone because of the pandemic.
I just hope that his retirement ceremony, he's retiring in front of a pedestal, and behind him is a painting of himself posing in front of another painting of himself.
I would enjoy that very much.
So we had a banger of the week this week at the Babylon B. Treasure in Heaven is great, but it's not going to buy you a tank of gas.
So let's take a moment to briefly review the current state of our economy and the global effect the war between Russia and Ukraine has had.
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Or you can visit allegiancegold.com/slash B. That's B-E-E.
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Or visit allegiancegold.com slash B-E-E.
Banger of the week.
Disaster in Saudi Arabia as Biden keeps asking to meet Jafar.
And it's a good little picture of him talking to one of the Saudi Arabia people.
Well, so did he find him?
Jafar?
Yeah.
I don't think Jafar is real.
I'm sure there's someone named Jafar, though.
I don't know.
Is Jafar a real name?
I assume.
I want to know what Travis's thought process is right now.
Please continue.
I could see the wheels turning.
I don't know.
I didn't write this article, but sometimes when I see a good headline, I'm like, oh, I wish I wrote that one.
And then I would have wasted way too much time pitching this alternate universe where he finds Jafar and Jafar is like, I don't know anything about Lamp.
Give us your headline pitch for this.
No, no, the headline's fine.
That's the article.
Oh, the article that gets written.
I like the headline pitch where he actually finds Jafar.
And what did he say?
Where is Lamp?
Where is Lamp?
What did you say or something like that?
I didn't say it exactly like that.
Where is Lamp?
Why is that?
No, and then the Jafar.
I love Lamp.
Jafar is like, I don't have any Lamp, guy.
I just want to see a documentary or a feature film narrative called Travis Woodside and the Hunt for Jafar.
That would make an extra.
Can we get a photoshop of Jafar with a speech bubble that says, I don't have any Lamp guy.
Thank you.
Talking to Travis.
Talking to me, apparently.
So here's our bomb of the week.
Bomb of the week.
After spending a month teaching for movie clips, church wonders why nobody studies their Bible.
And there's a great little picture of a pastor in front of a Jesus Love and Thunder sermon presentation slide.
I like this article.
I love that picture, too.
It's a great picture.
Jesus, Love, and Thunder is a great idea.
What's the worst movie clip you've seen used in church?
Growing up, we saw a lot of Braveheart.
We saw a lot of like Saving Private Ryan.
I'm trying to think Lord of the Rings.
I've seen a few movie sermons, but not a whole lot.
I don't think I ever had the experience of the church where it's like at the movies sermon series.
But that's a big thing.
Like during the summer, they'll preach the summer months on the big blockbusters of the Bible.
I know it is.
I went to a church and for sermons, for a few sermon series, they just showed like clips from the movie Lion, and they didn't have any tie-in to scripture or anything.
Like they were just, I felt like it was just kind of like a promotional campaign.
Like they were just promoting the movie.
And so.
Yeah.
When this article came out, my friend texted me and he said that literally his church is doing an at the movies series.
And the sermon last week was basically, Jesus is the greatest showman.
That's amazing.
I used to go to a Baptist church and they showed a taxi driver for the depravity of man.
And that was kind of weird.
I don't know if you're serious and I don't care.
We're going to Sizzler Facts.
23 weeks ago, we debuted a new feature to the podcast called Sizzler Facts.
Now, Sizzler isn't as popular as it once was.
The chain has diminished rapidly in recent years, thanks in part to the COVID pandemic.
Shame.
Sizzler is still alive and well in Puerto Rico.
The Puerto Rican Sizzler, located in the city of San Juan, was once a storehouse used to smuggle slaves to America.
It was the basically like no, wait, that's the opposite of what I was thinking.
Never mind.
I was going to say it was like the underground railroad of choices, but now I realize that they were importing slaves.
So it's the opposite of the underground railroad.
It's from America, not from America.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, it's also an underground railroad.
That's not just going the other direction.
So it wasn't a good thing.
It was a bad thing.
The above-ground railroad.
I said that.
The reverse above-ground railroad of.
Well, it's okay.
Sizzler wasn't doing it, though, right?
I don't think so.
I mean, they are occupying the building, so one could say that they're complicit in the crimes that once took place there.
This has been Sizzler Facts.
Now it's time for Sizzler Commons.
Sizzler Commons.
This is from Jim Lubug.
He says.
That's not a name.
Lubke.
He said, you had a news article about Justice Kavanaugh in a steakhouse, and you failed to tie that into Sizzler Facts.
I'm disappointed in you.
And so is Kevin Sorbo.
Sad.
From Name That Variant, I live in Olympia, Washington, and when I heard the weird Sizzler, the weird Sizzler, I immediately thought, I haven't been to Sizzler in a long time.
I think I'll ask my buddy where the nearest one is.
And then on, you guys mentioned Lakewood, which is 10 minutes from my house.
I'm seriously creeped out.
Confirmation of God's providence and Calvinism, for sure.
God using Sizzler for his purposes.
That's great.
Yeah.
He uses all Sizzlers for the good of those who love him.
That's in scripture.
That is in the Bible.
Another Brick in the Pa says, I live in the Sizzler dead zone.
It's difficult at times, but we manage to live much the same way as you.
The differences are subtle.
The sun doesn't feel as warm or shine quite as bright.
The Sizzler dead zone is a vacuum of joy.
Hope of a new Sizzler is all that keeps us going.
But it is a hollow hope that brings only a deeper despair.
My only wish is for those of you outside of the SDZ to take stock of your lives and thank God for your access to medium quality buffet food at affordable prices.
Medium quality.
I don't think that's right.
Still.
Well, you have to forgive another Brick in the Powell because another Brick in the Powell loves and the Sizzler did Zoe.
So wouldn't be aware of the current quality of Sizzler.
That's true.
I guess that makes sense.
This has been Sizzler Commons.
It is time for B Radio with Austin Robertson.
Consume this content now.
Factually inaccurate.
Morally correct.
This is Babylon B Radio.
Our top story.
After months of saying that he has no control over the price of gas, President Joe Biden is taking credit as prices dip by two cents.
To highlight this monumental achievement, Biden has been placing, I did that, stickers on gas pumps everywhere he goes.
Look, folks, this is two cents that we're talking about here.
Do you think this kind of thing happens on its own?
Malarkey, read the stickers.
I did that.
And remember, Putin makes prices go up.
Biden makes prices go down.
Repeat line.
End of speech.
Biden continued explaining that to achieve this, all he had to do was empty out our entire military's fuel supply.
He assured Americans that our military didn't really need it anyway.
Biden, I did that.
Stickers have also been spotted on high food prices, empty shelves, lines of unvaccinated troops being discharged, and the overrun southern border.
In a bold move to address the nation's financial woes, Biden has officially called on the American economy to stop being bad.
Pundits immediately lauded the president's brilliant plan, with MSNBC heralding it as the most transformative economic initiative since the New Deal.
Following a heroic protest at the Supreme Court, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent the better part of three hours sitting in an invisible police car with her wrists bound by invisible handcuffs, waiting to be taken to an invisible jail.
After being threatened with an invisible gun, I was thrown on the ground by invisible police.
They've kept me stuffed in this invisible squad car for hours.
Fascists.
When I get out of this invisible slammer, I'm going to make them pay every last invisible one of them.
Several members of Congress were reportedly arrested outside of the Supreme Court where they were protesting the court ruling that Congress had to actually show up for work.
Sources say AOC has already obtained her first prison tattoo, which is invisible, and is subsisting well thus far on invisible prison food.
She has reportedly kept herself in solitary confinement inside an invisible box, but she does come out to weep outside her own invisible prison cell if she thinks anyone with a camera is nearby.
AOC has generously offered to donate her invisible handcuffs to be displayed in the Smithsonian in commemoration of her bravery.
At airtime, AOC is still being held after her high-profile arrest as Capitol Police have confirmed they misplaced the invisible key for her invisible handcuffs.
Officers found the invisible handcuffs back at the station and realized no one had ever actually handcuffed AOC.
They're currently taking bets to see how long she'll stand there until she figures it out.
After hearing about Alex Stein's public applauding of Hispanic hindquarters, Senator Ted Cruz walked back and forth in front of him, hoping to score a compliment on his own butt.
Oh no, I dropped my binder again, said Cruz, slowly bending over in front of Stein.
Clumsy me, it's just this big Latino backside sometimes throws me off balance.
Better do some lunges to keep it informed.
Although a confident man, Mr. Cruz admitted to reporters that even he sometimes needs a little physical affirmation.
It's nice to have the votes of millions of Texans, but sometimes you just want to know that you can still get cat called by a construction crew.
Believe it or not, these hips used to salsa like Shakira back in my Harvard days.
Stein made headlines recently after loudly applauding Representative Ocasio-Cortez's posterior as she walked up Capitol steps.
Look at that big ass.
Look at that big, juicy booty.
An enraged AOC called police five times before tearfully telling her Twitter followers that no one should suffer such vile harassment when trying to do their job.
She then directed all of her followers to go scream violent threats at Justice Kavanaugh while he tried to eat dinner with his family.
In response to an armed private citizen bravely stopping a mass shooting at an Indiana mall, the Uvalde Police Department in Texas issued a statement of condemnation criticizing the citizen for not waiting outside for an hour.
The owners of Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana also criticized the armed citizen for carrying a concealed handgun because doing so is against the mall's code of conduct.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has invited the Good Samaritan to Texas to replace the entire Uvalde Police Department.
Fake and deceitful nurses inside a local crisis pregnancy center have reportedly just tricked another innocent woman into not killing her own baby.
According to sources, the duplicitous volunteers at the clinic celebrated with shouting and high-fives all around as the woman left.
Witnesses say the loathsome deceptive clinic uses smoke and mirror tactics, such as letting moms listen to the baby's heartbeat and showing them images of the baby's face and wiggling hands.
Is unbelievable how deplorable these clinics can be.
Said Senator Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken advocate for baby killing.
We have to shut down these sham clinics now.
What's next?
Beautiful babies growing up in a loving home raised by a man and woman that love them?
The horror.
Other disturbing accounts state that the volunteers even prayed with the woman, gave her prenatal vitamins, free diapers, clothes, bottles, a car seat, pacifiers, swaddles, and a multitude of other resources that can be freely accessed at any time.
The Crisis Pregnancy Center staff openly stated that they hope to do this again and again to as many women as possible, and that they are just getting started.
Freshly transitioned to a woman, Leslie Robers tasted the sweet thrill of womanhood this week as she absolutely smashed her car into a curb.
You sure feel like a woman now.
Better take the car into a macaque now, get taken advantage of.
This is great.
Previously noticed Bob, the newly minted Leslie, had grown tired of deciding where to go eat and being comfortable at ambient temperatures.
I just wasn't living my truth, she said as she turned down the thermostat.
Now I can take 100 blankets with me everywhere I go and have completely preposterous mood swings.
Wait, did I just close the garage door on the truck?
I'm such a woman.
Sources say Leslie spent the remainder of the day making one sandwich after another, reveling in the joys of femininity.
After learning how to do that turban thing women do with towels on their heads after taking a shower, Leslie then added 17 more throw pillows to the bed.
After Leslie turned down a high-level appointment in the Biden administration, Victoria's Secret then called to offer her a modeling gig.
Safety officials have confirmed that the rickety-looking collapsible roller coaster at your local town carnival, which is currently being operated by Toothless Meth Addict, is probably fine.
We spoke with an official-looking man in a bikini inspector t-shirt who is missing several fingers from his right hand.
Looks pretty safe to me.
I mean, these rides drive all over the country, operate every night, have to be set up and taken down by unfrained teenagers several times each week.
I'm sure they build them pretty sturdy to be able to stand up to all that.
Gummy Joe, the ride operator, confirmed that the ride's safety record is unparalleled.
I ain't never seen no kid get hurt on this hit coaster.
I mean, last month the cars flew off the track and into a nearby lake.
But fortunately, the seatbelts failed and the kids were thrown clear.
At airtime, someone who looked vaguely like a health inspector confirmed that the corn dogs from the sketchy-looking food trailer are probably fine too.
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.
Today's episode is sponsored by Private Internet Access, America's number one virtual private network, or VPN.
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Jesus can still see you if you're looking at pornography, though.
So don't do that.
Oh, that was great.
Connected.
I like that.
That's part worth the talking.
That was the highlight.
Now it's time for weekly news with Adam Jenser.
Zfillin.
It's time for the weekly news with Adam Jenser.
Hi, I'm Adam Zfillin.
President Biden returned from a trip in the Middle East where he tried to convince Saudi Arabia's leader to increase oil production.
Biden claims to be an expert on oil since many of his closest childhood friends are now oil.
Several members of Congress, including AOC and Ilan Omar, were arrested while protesting outside of the Supreme Court.
Somehow, Ilan Omar used her one phone call from jail to call both her husband and her brother.
AOC was accused of faking being handcuffed because she stood with her arms behind her back while getting arrested.
The Capitol Police are placing bets on whether AOC will realize she isn't handcuffed and has been free to go the entire time.
A black family claims that the Rosita character on Sesame Place refused to high-five their daughters due to racism.
What's even more racist is that Rosita portrays Mexicans as ugly green monsters.
A mass shooter at a mall in Indiana was killed by an armed bystander named Elon Dicken.
And henceforth, Open Carry will be known as Dicken Around.
In the only good argument to date for being pro-choice, Michigan's football coach has come out as pro-life.
The U.S. Attorney's Office announced that it will not prosecute the comedy writers of the late night show with Stephen Colbert, who are arrested outside of the Capitol.
Instead, comedians will be cruelly sentenced to keep writing for Colbert.
After refusing to take responsibility for high record gas prices, the Biden administration is now claiming credit for a 50-cent drop.
Biden even put down his own, I did that, sticker on a local gas pump, which was still over $4 a gallon.
The UK is experiencing a record-breaking heat wave and had its hottest day ever on Tuesday, hitting 40.3 degrees, which I'm told is pretty hot in Celsius numbers.
To provide relief, Prince Andrew invited all the neighborhood kids over to use his pool.
The January 6th committee demanded that the Secret Service turn over text messages from the Capitol riot, but the agency was only able to provide a single text exchange.
It says, yes, I'm driving, but I can text because Trump's holding the wheel.
As his lawsuit with Twitter continues, Elon Musk was photographed shirtless on board a yacht on vacation.
In a tragic case of mistaken identity, he was speared by Captain Ahab.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got married in Las Vegas this weekend, seven years after Lopez divorced Mark Antony and four years after Mark Affleck divorced Matt Damon.
Chelsea Handler and Joe Coyer announced that they've ended their relationship.
Both said that the most important quality in a partner is having a sense of humor, so they'll have to keep looking.
Transgender swimmer Leah Thomas has been nominated for the NCAA's Woman of the Year Award and for the NCAA's 462nd Man of the Year Award.
This has been the weekly news, and I'm Travis.
Oh, that was great, Adam Jenser.
Classic Adam Jenser's filling.
So at this point, we are going to talk about our John Cleese interview.
There was a moment in the John Cleese interview where he says, have you ever seen the fish slapping dance?
And Jared and I both kind of looked at each other and were just kind of like taken aback and didn't know what to say.
Now, in retrospect, I believe I had seen the fish slapping dance, but in the moment with the Shekinah Glory, you know, you're sitting there with John Cleese.
There's a little bit of, like, I don't quite remember that one.
Here, C. Jar's back there.
Oh, because I said Shekinah Glory for John.
I will put...
Where's all the money?
Oh, there's money in there.
Yeah, I'll have to put some money on it.
It's right above the John Cleese book.
Oh, nice.
So we had a comment from Nicola Franzoni who said, My opinion about Babylon Bee has gone south.
You really don't know the fish slapping dance.
In all caps.
So I'd like to apologize to all the Monty Python fans for not recalling the fish slapping dance.
So we're going to go ahead and watch the brief clip of the fish slapping dance.
It'll be funnier without audio.
It's still funny.
Fun fact, Michael Palin is my favorite python.
I want to know, like...
Is that a Nazi fish?
I would, like, want to know how they pitched this idea.
That...
I think that's one of the interesting things.
And I know you couldn't get too much involved in a 10-minute interview, but it just makes me wonder, like, in a writer's room.
And like, he said, like, during the Ministry of Silly Walk, oh, Terry Jones wrote that.
I'm like, how did he pitch that even?
Did he just start walking around funny around the room and everyone laughed at him?
I can see Ministry of Silly Walks being able to be pitched as a concept because you can say very serious office setting, very serious situations, but every time we'd like pace the room, we're in these crazy walks.
And I could see that being funny.
We were just watching Silly Walks before the interview.
And the contrast between what he's saying, he's like, no, you have to understand, you know, and he gets up and he's like starts pacing the room like you would in an office.
But he's just like, I just love the contrast of how flat their voices are, how dry it is, versus them going crazy around the room.
But yeah, the fish slapping dance.
But again, it's a very short segment as part of it, once you have an established sketch comedy brand and you can just, like, we probably couldn't get away with just throwing that up on our YouTube channel.
Not certainly not isolated by itself.
But if you had a 30-minute sketch show, you could get away with a transitional sketch where, like, we're just going to slap each other with fishes.
So the question is: did they have all of their other segments already produced and they just needed a 23-second?
We need 20 seconds.
What can we do in 2020?
Well, we got this old fish slapping.
But I also just love how that's what he glommed onto.
Like, that was the one that he felt like he needed to mention in that particular moment.
Yeah, I often think of like an old joke that I wrote on the B like years ago, and I'm like, man, that was my favorite joke.
Nobody else liked it.
Nobody else remembers it.
But it's, you know, the one that sticks with you.
So I love that comedy.
And I think what he said in the interview was, I love it because it's so hilarious and absolutely meaningless.
You know, and there is something to that absurdity that just lets you go.
Now that's funny.
Someone is getting slapped with a fish.
Yeah.
Well, there was like a longer version of that sketch almost where it's called Confuse a Cat and the cat's just not moving.
So they're like, oh, we need to confuse this cat.
So they put on this whole stage production.
It's the weirdest thing.
And I watched it with my daughter and she was just laughing hysterically.
I did go back and watch that where John Cleese like does a whole like mini documentary on the history of fish slapping.
And did you see this?
No, I can see that.
It's years later, I think, and he's like going back and reminiscing over the, and he's showing the different fish you use for the fish slapping dance.
You know, some people like the little oily ones.
Others go for the classic.
You know, and he's like.
I like when you take something that simple and ultimately meaningless and then just stretch it out as long as possible.
Yeah.
I think heft is the most important criteria when choosing this.
If you're trying to win, can you fish?
You could just, I mean, if you can't make decisions well, you just spin the wheel of fish.
Well, that depends on what the point of the fish slapping dance is.
Like, is the...
Very tasty.
Sure.
Is the point that you're trying to defeat the other person or are you dancing?
So it's a dance.
So tiny fish are good.
There is some reciprocal play in which fish you need to choose.
Also, I know a lot of people were criticizing the altar call at the end of the John Cleese interview.
And we would just like to, on the record, state that, along with John Cleese, we also at the Babylon Bee fully condemn burning people at the stake.
I know that was his primary contention with Christianity, was people being burned at the stake.
And we would like to state for the record that you should not burn people at the stake.
You should weigh them against a duck.
So John Cleese had a lot of interesting thoughts on wokeness and sensitivity and comedy.
His daughter had a lot of thoughts about that on the panel as well.
And I know we were there with a few other interviews, and some of them were really grilling him on trying to get the, you know, the soundbite and wokeness.
But he kind of struck me as a guy that was a little, you know, he comments on that stuff, but he really likes comedy for the sake of comedy.
And I thought that was really interesting.
But he's against the wokeness and the sensitivity just because it's bad for comedy.
Yeah.
You know, and that's the sense that I got.
So it was really interesting.
Go check out the John Cleese interview if you haven't.
Don't watch any of the other guys who got an interview with John Cleese.
Ours was the best interview.
And now we're going to talk to Red Balloon CEO Andrew Krapu Schetz, who has this company that's trying to pair people who are pro-freedom with employers that are pro-freedom.
It's kind of interesting.
He has employers sign a pledge that they won't like force you to get a vaccine, that you can make your own personal choices and the company doesn't care.
It's like, let's just do good work together.
And that's pretty cool.
So let's talk to him now.
And come on, Mr. Krapu Schetz.
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You can support the Babylon Bee podcast and get 25% off by going to A-B-I-D-E dot CO slash Babylon, where you can download the Abide app and get 25% off your premium subscription.
And now for another interview on the Bee Weekly.
All right, thanks for coming on, Andrew.
How you doing?
Better now because I'm talking to you.
That's what everybody should say, but nobody ever does, which is really tragic.
So, Red Balloon, is this non-woke LinkedIn?
Is that what this is?
Well, somewhat, although if you look at my head, it looks a little bit like a balloon.
And if it's hot enough.
Oh, yeah.
So you're the mascot.
Yeah, I'm kind of a mascot.
I love Red Bloom.
I was a tech CEO like a year ago, and my board decided I was a little too conservative and Christian for their liking.
And so I found myself delightfully unemployed and thought, what should I do with my time besides golf or Pinochle or whatever?
So I started Red Balloon.
And it's called Red Balloon because if you have ever been on a hot air balloon, it's a little bit terrifying and a lot bit fun.
Kind of like looking for a new job in red, well, everyone's going to red states or red versions of blue states or red companies, companies that actually allow you to be free.
And so I thought, great, I will start a job board called redballoon.work because dot com sounds like communists and we don't like communists.
So no communists allowed on red balloon.
That's it.
And we like working.
So red balloon.work, look, it's just employment matchmaking for conservatives.
And if you are an employer out there and you think, you know, I wish I didn't have those employees that are snowflakes in the HR department whining about every little thing.
And I wish I just had people who wanted to work, Red Balloon might be a good solution for you.
And if you're an employee out there and you're tired of being at the big woke company and I hear horrible stories, horrific stories about big woke companies and what you have to go through in your DEI training and your CRT training, maybe it's time for you to do something at work that gets you fired and then go find a new job at redballoon.work.
There's a lot of opportunities out there if you want to get fired.
It's a lot easier than you think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So your story of getting fired for having conservative beliefs, a lot of times we talk to people that do get fired like that, but it's kind of like they won't say that.
They won't say that you're fired for your political beliefs.
They'll kind of go like, you know what, we went with someone else.
But was it explicit in your case or what's the story there?
I had my board say to me, look, you are welcome to be a CEO who is a Christian, you know, call it on the weekends, but we, you are not allowed to be a Christian CEO.
That felt pretty explicit.
I mean, I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Pretty straightforward.
Yeah.
Yeah, awesome.
So are you still in California or did you bail?
No, I'm actually an early adopter of getting out of the People's Republic of California.
So I've been up here in beautiful Idaho for 20 years.
I live on 60 acres, 10 minutes from my office.
Great.
I have five children and three massive dogs living the good life.
Yeah, I don't think that's legal in California anymore.
Any of that.
Yeah.
The dogs, you can have as many dogs as you want in California.
It's all those children.
It's the children that aren't allowed, yeah.
But I don't think 60 acres are available anywhere in California.
So no.
No.
At least not.
But I can see 100 miles from my front porch.
So I have to compensate somewhere.
So you mentioned the stories that you've been hearing.
What are some of the craziest things you've heard from people out there in the woke corporate world?
The woke corporate world.
So I'll even give some names.
I'll name names.
Yes.
Let's do this episode of the Babylon Deep.
So Microsoft, I talked to an executive at Microtsoft, Microtoft, Microsoft, and she had an American flag on her Zoom background or her team's background as it is, because that's their product.
So they have to use it.
And she was told to take that down because that was a white supremacy logo or sign or whatever, right?
And she's like, what kind of country do we live in?
But then she had a coworker, and this is where it gets a little bit dark.
She had a coworker had a picture of a black man being lynched.
And the caption said, a good man died at your hands today, right?
Right out of that CRT playbook.
And so, and not only was that tolerated, it was celebrated at Microsoft.
Great.
Fantastic.
Let's make every white person feel horrible because of bad things that might have happened in our country that clearly all of their relatives did.
So those kind of things, I talked to a lady at Beloit, and she had just gone through her inclusivity training and her justice training.
So she'd already done her D and her I.
She needed an E still.
Yeah.
Yeah, she's needed an E. She'd already done her D and her E.
And so she was doing her IRJ.
And then the instructor gets up and says, hey, guess what?
Would be really, we hate those unvaccinated people, don't we?
Don't we all wish that someone would go, they would all go to an island and die together.
Right.
And the reality is that this is an American saying this to another American.
Wish all the unvaccinated people would go to an island and die together and in a corporate training.
And so this lady kind of says, This is probably my moment.
As I said earlier, it's a lot easier to get fired than you think.
She's like, it's probably time.
So she raises her hand and says, Yeah, I'm not going to get the job.
And she said that the room's just dead silent because the instructor thought, Hey, we all agree.
We all think this kind of thing, right?
It's going to be just fine.
And then for this person to say, No, I'm not going to get the jab, and that's wrong.
It's not inclusive at all.
And then this is a cool part of the story: two other people in the room raise their hand and say, Yeah, guess what?
I'm not going to either.
Now, you talk about the lady standing up and then other people stand up with her.
Is that the feel that you get?
Is that these corporations, this is all coming from woke people taking over HR departments?
And probably there's a majority of people who, you know, if there was actual free discussion, would stand up for this kind of stuff, but people are just too scared because they don't want to get their jobs.
Or what's your take on that?
Yeah, no, it's not, it's not cool to be conservative anymore.
So I have a podcast now.
It's called The Courageous Economy.
I've never thought of myself as a podcast person, not that I'm judging podcast people.
No, it's okay.
You can judge us.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm judging podcast people.
They're the worst.
And so now I'm one of them.
The courageous economy, because I started hearing these stories of people like, you have to be courageous to be a public conservative anymore.
It's just not okay to say these things.
And so at Red Balloon, we had this campaign over the month of June.
We wanted people to come out conservative because I thought, well, if you can actually live your beliefs out loud in the month of June, it would be a really good thing.
And it was really simple things.
We encourage people like, if you go to work, don't lie about your weekend, right?
And we think, well, what are you talking about?
Well, if someone says, how was your weekend?
And you had a glorious day at church with your family and a potluck, go ahead and say that.
See how it goes.
And so I actually had dozens of stories of people who are connected to RedBalloon.work coming out conservative in the month of June.
One of them was at Disney.
He is no longer at Disney.
And he said, it really is fun to be tard and feather.
Thanks for the advice, Andrew.
Awesome.
All right.
Well, redballoon.work.
So you want both employers to sign up and people who are out there looking for a job.
Maybe they got canceled.
Maybe they got beliefs that aren't popular.
And both of those can go interact with your website.
Yep, absolutely.
Every employer who is on redballoon.org has signed a pledge that they think the Constitution still matters, that a medical procedure like a vaccine is a good decision for the employee to make, not the HR department, and that they're going to respect the freedoms of their current and future employees and not decide to turn into a political activism woke cesspool.
So that's what the employer signed.
The employees are all signing something that says, look, I'm just going to bring value to my employer.
I'm going to wake up every day thinking about how do I drive profits and values for my employer.
So it's been super gratifying.
We have employers like Moms for America or Children's Health Defense or MetaShare have had huge amounts of success hiring people off redballoon.work because the reality is it's hard to screen and filter for wokeness or for worldview or for cultural fit.
And all of the people on redballoon.work are a good culture fit.
You know they are, partly because one of our screening mechanisms is we have a video game on redballoon.work called pronoun landmines based on a true story.
And so if you go and play pronoun landmines and you're a self-respecting liberal, you will not like yourself afterwards.
So don't do it.
Awesome.
Sounds radical and dangerous.
I love it.
Now, do you mind if we take a few minutes here to ask you the 10 questions that we ask every podcast guest?
I will give you nine questions quickly.
The 10 questions.
All right.
The first one is: Have you met Carmen?
I have not met Carmen.
Tragic.
And I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring it up again.
Okay.
Well, we'll do it.
Number two, are you a Calvinist or an Arminian?
I am a Calvinist.
I actually go to Christ Church here in Moscow, Idaho.
Doug Wilson is my.
Oh, that explains it.
Now it's all coming together.
Number three.
Number three, you get to add one book to the Bible.
What is it?
Add one book to the Bible?
The book of Andrew.
The book of Andrew.
Okay.
I mean, why did all the other apostles get a seriously?
Not fair.
Cigars or pipes?
I'm a non-smoker, which is a little embarrassing at times.
I know.
A lot of people have judged me.
I love my whiskey, but I've never gotten around to smoking.
I was raised kind of a fundamentalist homeschool.
You get to hang out with any three people living or dead.
Who are they?
And you can't pick Jesus.
I would like to hang out with Napoleon because he was short like I am and he conquered the known world.
I would like to hang out with Genghis Khan.
He also conquered the known world and probably was short, although we don't really know.
Also, he did nasty things to people, and I think that's interesting.
So your two criteria for people to hang out with is height and having taken over the world.
And then probably the Apostle Paul.
I mean, the dude was wicked, smart, and he probably was short.
He was probably short.
You see, I've got a theme here of short people and took over the known world with the gospel.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
So conquerors, three different conquerors, all of them short.
The best people.
Well, you might have spoiled this one already, but whiskey or beer?
Oh, man.
I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity drinker.
And so I have a whiskey.
If you ever make it up to Idaho, and this is an open invitation for anyone who's listening and can find me, I have 70 different whiskeys, none of which, most of which you're not going to find at the store in my house.
So some really extravagant stuff.
So just come up to Idaho and I might even share.
All made in your bathtub.
Correct.
What would be the first thing you would do as president?
I would shut down the Department of Education.
Perfect.
Question number eight.
Have you ever punched anyone or been punched?
I was a boxing instructor for quite a few years.
What about outside the ring?
Outside the ring?
I mean, face.
Does it have to be face?
No, any kind of punch is fine.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Lots of punching.
I have three sons.
And if you say, here's my theory: we live in a great Christian community, and there's not a lot of bullies here.
And so as a father, you kind of need to fill in the gaps in your kids' education that they can't experience in school because they go to a classical Christian school.
And so I try and kind of fill that gap of bully when I can, just so that they have a rounder education.
Wonderful.
Now, you said we only get nine questions.
So here's.
You can go with 10.
Okay.
Well, I was just going to put nine and ten into one.
One concert, any band in history, who do you go see?
And also, will you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior right now?
I didn't hear your second question because I was thinking about the first one.
Okay.
Can't process two questions at one time.
This is going to sound like a total homeskirt school nerd, but I would have loved to see Tchaikovsky play the piano when he was in his heyday and his hands that just wouldn't quit.
Great.
Awesome.
And do you accept Jesus?
What was my 10th question?
It's really the 9.5.
Will you come forward and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior right now?
Given that I've already accepted him, and it's a great question, I don't feel like I need to accept him again.
So I'm in good shape.
Sad.
All right.
Well, thanks.
Thanks for joining us and thanks for playing along, Andrew.
Really appreciate it.
Everybody, go check out redballoon.work.
Whether you're an employer who wants to find some people that are pro-freedom or you're an employee looking for a pro-freedom employer.
Thanks so much, Andrew.
Well, everyone, it's time for another Babylon B top 10 segment.
These have been rather popular.
We have done the top 10 comedy shows.
We did top 10 cartoons.
And now to show you how mature we are, we're doing our top 10 video games and we're joined by producer Dan as well.
Travis is still here.
So, Travis, why don't you start us off with your number 10 top video game of all time?
Of all time.
So, these are sometimes, just for context, these are sometimes they're games that have a personal meaning to us.
Not necessarily, we're saying that these are the 10 best ever.
They are our 10 favorites.
Mine are the best 10 ever.
Well, mine is the definitive list, true.
But go ahead.
But Travis is speaking from his own personal.
Yeah, this is just my subject.
Travis's are wrong, but they are his opinion.
Number 10 is Elden Ring.
Wrong.
As we said, wrong.
So good.
It's, you know, it's fresh on the mind, but I love it.
Did you like the Dark Souls games?
I did.
Never beat a single one of them.
But enjoyed them.
Yes, but I beat Bloodborne.
I did enjoy Elden Ring, but how many quests did you complete without looking at a guide?
There are no quests.
Sad.
All right.
Well, nice pick.
My number 10 is Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, which was a fantastic real-time strategy game.
I played the crap out of it.
My parents banned me from playing it anymore because I would get home from school and play it for eight hours and then go to bed.
It also has a great script.
It does have a great script.
That opening scene with the president going, we're supposed to be allies, you maniac.
I don't give a nickel about your legacy.
I still have lines from memories.
Gina Carano was in Red Alert 3, by the way.
Oh, that's right.
She was.
Next week, Travis recites the entire script.
I'll do this quote from your book or Red Alert 2.
That will be the next one.
My number 10 is a, unfortunately, this one kind of went under the radar, but it's Beyond Good and Evil.
Always wanted to try it, never got to it.
It was a fantastic little game that combined espionage with action and photography.
That's pretty much your life anyway.
Pretty much, especially the espionage part.
And you're a woman.
Don't respond.
And unfortunately, Beyond Good and Evil 2 seems like it will never come out.
Was that a bungee game?
Remind me.
It was an Ubisoft.
Oh.
Is it Ubisoft or Ubisoft?
I believe.
It's French, so it's like U Basol.
Ubisoft.
The FTS.
Dan, what is your number 10?
Number 10 for me on this very prestigious list is Rocket League.
Now, Rocket League is fast-paced.
It's the only sports game on my list, and it made it just because of how insane it is.
You're in these rocket cars.
You've played Rocket League, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I don't need to explain it that much, but like just the idea that you can go up in your car, jump off a wall, do like a 360-loop spiral, hit a soccer ball, an oversized soccer ball, and smash it into a goal.
If real-life soccer was like Rocket League, I would watch real-life soccer.
Probably, yes, but I think there would be a lot of deaths involved in that.
One of my favorite sports games, also, but not as good as NFL Quarterback Club 98.
Oh, yeah.
There's just something about the precision of the controls of like how you can just jump, spin, bump things at certain angles.
It's like it's just geometry.
It's amazing.
I wish I was better at Rocket League.
I do like watching highlight videos on YouTube of people that do insane wobbling and passes and goals.
I like how you describe it as a sport game, though.
It's a sport.
I mean, technically, but it's not a real sport.
It is.
Well, soccer isn't a real sport.
I'm not defending soccer.
I normally don't like sports games.
This one made my list.
What's your number nine, Travis?
Number nine is The Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask.
Ooh, controversial choice.
Is it?
I think Majora's Mask is a bit divisive among fans.
I don't see the problem with it.
I don't know why people.
I like it.
I think the timed thing was a little.
I felt like you needed to buy the strategy guide to get all the masks.
I disagree, but I'm a big proponent of anything type me.
Yeah, I think that's the thing.
It had that Groundhog Day style going for it, and it did it well.
But I mean, you're right.
If you really wanted to get everything, you'd probably lose your mind.
And I think it has such a cool tone as well.
Just the foreboding end of the world moon coming up.
Yeah, the only thing I didn't like about it was it came out after Ocara of Time.
And Ocara at a time had, what, like eight dungeons or something?
And then this one had four.
And I was like, well, lame.
My number nine is Doom Eternal, which is the most recent Doom game.
And it's one of the games that's just one of the best shooter games.
I love how you actually have to charge forward to attack if you're going to survive an encounter.
It's brutally difficult and a ton of fun.
It sounds like Elden Ring.
Like Elden Ring, but good.
Correct.
My number nine is Half-Life 2.
And this is a three-fer because it includes Half-Life 2, Part 1 and Half-Life 2, Part 2, which is the most confusing names of three videos.
Half-two one?
No, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2.
Part 1, episode 1, and Half-Life 2.
Episode 2.
And then episode 3, which never came out.
But just the ability, the fact that it's linear, but it doesn't feel linear, that moving through the map actually moves the story along, and you don't have to solve every puzzle the way that they intend to.
Like, just the physics engine allows for a lot of creativity, and it's just one of those games.
You took the words out of my mouth.
And does that include all of the mods of it?
You know, like Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat.
I never played a lot of mods for Half-Life 2, so I can't speak to that.
I will speak to that later.
All right.
Number nine for me, Super Metroid.
Nice.
One of the classic, just 2D scrolling games.
I mean, just it's puzzly.
Like, you're just trying to get through this big giant dungeon, and it's incredible.
Super Metroid, great pick.
Yeah, I like it when Metroid can crawl.
Oh, yeah, and you can do so many things.
You can turn into a ball.
You can shoot missiles.
It's sweet.
I want Travis' comments to just be followed by an awkward silence.
And then we go, okay, number eight.
I like when Metroid can crawl.
Isn't it Samus, not Metroid?
Did you say that?
Yeah, it is Samus.
Did you say Metroid?
I like the phrase.
The kids are always like, oh, it's Metroid, right?
Metroid is a strong male protagonist, and that's what I appreciate about this.
Along with Zelda.
What is your number eight?
Number eight for me is Half-Life 2.
Pretty much the exact same reasons as Brandon, but just Half-Life 2.
Because episode 1 and Episode 2, adding them together, that's cheating.
So you're just picking the first one?
Yes.
The original.
Another great pick.
My number 8 is Metroid Prime for the GameCube, which was one of the few first-person shooters that really works for me on console because of the way that they did the targeting system.
It's just a beautiful world to explore.
The soundtrack is amazing.
I loved the novelty of having the visor.
And when you go into the frozen area, it freezes over and you see sweat form.
Rain effects on it.
Yes.
And you see Metroid's face, his eyes reflected in the visor.
He had kind of feminine eyes, but I admit to being fairly attracted to Metroid as a male.
But he displayed strong masculine qualities.
So it forgives the eyes.
I never quite enjoyed all the other Metroid Primes, but one was amazing.
One was fantastic.
That's on my honorable mentions list.
My number eight.
We're on eight.
Yeah.
Yes.
The Portal series.
One of them.
Okay, Portal 2.
Are you happy?
You happy?
I am happy.
I'm actually replaying Portal 2 on the Steam Deck right now.
I just love it.
Absolutely.
Portal 2 obviously capitalized on the success of everything they did right in Portal, but added the story element, greatly expanded the puzzle variety, and was atmospheric to a T.
Well, what a great surprise Portal was when it came in the orange box, and it was just a bonus that was thrown in, and it was arguably the coolest thing in the box.
That was just great.
Yeah.
All right.
Now you're thinking with Portals.
Number eight is StarCraft.
So if you're going to play one real-time strategy game, it's got to be StarCraft.
Just the way that they made it, like a rock, paper, scissors, everything can beat something, but then something else can beat it.
And you're doing this in real time.
The graphics, the setting, everything's awesome.
Are you primarily a multiplayer or single-player?
I would play multiplayer, but a lot of it was co-op.
We would team up against like six bots.
Gotcha.
Oh, man.
Are you a Zerg Rush fan?
Favorite faction?
Oh, man.
I always picked Taryn.
I like the cool spaceships and vehicles.
You like the colonizers.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
What's your number seven?
Number seven is Resident Evil Uno, the original.
In Spanish.
Yes.
In Spanish.
Only in Spanish.
And not the remake, even though I really like that one too.
But the original was just, there was nothing like it at the time.
And even though it was difficult to play, with the so-called tank controls and the camera angles that were made up and demonstrate what the characters looked like walking around nobody can see that because you're back, but that's awesome.
Thank you, Travis.
So Resident Resident Evil 4 was the only one that I really loved in the series, but I did like because it controlled better.
Probably it was the first one I played.
Honestly, I thought the physical inventory was a really interesting system where you actually have to physically play the tetris game, which is how it is when you're trying to fit things into a backpack.
My number seven is the Elder Scrolls 3, Morrow Wind.
I've always enjoyed the Elder Scrolls series.
Morrow Wind, to me, was the one that uh, when I booted that up on my Pc and I walked outside of the after you make your character, you walk outside of the little prison thing and i'm like I can go anywhere.
There was like a moment of.
There's a few gaming moments to me that like define my video gaming career, and walking outside that first town in Morrow Wind was one of those.
I think I would have liked Morrow Wind more when it first came out if I played it on pc, because I played on the Xbox and I was like, why are?
Why isn't my axe hitting anybody?
It's just, you know, because it's an Rpg.
Um, and then they fixed that in oblivion yeah, even though it's not either, and the graphics were probably really bad on the console as well.
Yes, all right, mine next on my list is Dr Mario.
Oh, great pick, which is?
I mean, it's a classic that will stand the test of time until eternity, i'm absolutely certain better than Tetris.
yes yes but the music's not as good i quite love The music in Dr. Dr. Mario's.
I know fever is really good, but come on.
Come on, Trans.
I really love Dr. Mario, but I really don't like playing with Brandon.
Yeah, it is not fair.
It's not fair.
We got the NES Classic.
What's it called?
NES the Mini NES little thing that had all the games on it.
And I thought we'd play Original Zelda and Mario.
It basically became a dedicated Dr. Mario machine in my house.
Well, I felt bad one day because I was walking in.
I walked in on you and Dan playing Tetris, playing Dr. Mario, and it just slipped out of me.
I was like, I said something really snarky like, why aren't you guys playing well?
I was like, why are you so bad at that?
Or something like that.
Yeah, you're like the, I don't even see the Matrix code anymore.
I just see Pill.
I just see Pill.
I just see Pill, personally.
And I like that Dr. Mario can crawl.
Yeah.
All right.
Number seven, TIE Fighter.
Oh, great.
No, I was really into flight simulators as a kid.
You know, the geeky kid with his PC and the joystick.
Out of all of them, TIE Fighter was the funnest.
It was just Star Wars.
I was a big Star Wars nerd.
But what set TIE Fighter apart was the idea of having your own career as a TIE Fighter pilot.
You start as a cadet.
Yeah, and then you come back from the mission, you survive, you get your medal.
And I'm trying to remember.
I think it had permadeath.
I think if you died, you just had to start over.
I don't know.
I do, what I did like about TIE Fighter is that it was, at the time, all the Star Wars games were very scripted.
There was like Rogue Squadron, not Rogue Squadron, Rogue.
Rebel Assault.
Rumble Assault, where it was just on a path and you kind of flew in that path.
I like the TIE Fighter.
Every ship has stats.
You could go blow up the Capital ship if you want.
Theoretically, right?
Like everything was just like a sandbox world of like I'm flying around and I'm actually in the Star Wars world.
Yeah, X-Wing came first, but I think TIE Fighter was a step above it.
TIE Fighter was awesome.
Yes, agreed.
Number six, Metal Gear Solid.
I think for kind of for similar reasons as Resident Evil, it was just a really cinematic experience back when cutscenes were like, wow, that's cool.
And now it's like, skip, skip.
But at the time, it was really interesting.
You couldn't skip them.
You couldn't skip them.
And you didn't want to.
Can you reenact some of the espionage tactics?
Can you show us how.
No, I'm not going to do that.
Just for the rest of your list, you have to reenact it.
I tried to play it at a friend's house and the graphics were so wonky to me, I never got into it.
But I did end up replaying the GameCube between snakes, which was awesome.
Yes, it was.
It's a phenomenal game.
And it did interesting things like with Psycho Mantis and it was reading your memory card and telling you what games you played.
The bit where you have to actually swap the controllers around.
Do you remember that?
And then the bit where there's a code and it says in the game, look on the box.
And you're like, what are you talking about?
It's on the secondhand.
I know.
It's on the back of the game case.
I called a friend and I was like, I called Spidey.
And he was like, he's like, oh, it's on the back of the case.
And then I had to call a friend to ask because I had no idea what was going on.
Yeah, it did a lot of cool ideas that you can't even do now because no one buys physical games.
That's true.
Is that the game?
I'm trying to remember.
Did that have like that one cutscene where you had to mash X like a crazy person?
Because you're being tortured?
Yeah.
And if you didn't do it, you would get one ending.
And if you could do it, you would get another ending.
I was always annoyed because I could never get the other ending.
Was that the beginning of the contextual action?
Judges?
Maybe.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the one we had to mention.
We'll fact-checked in after the show.
My number six is Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Trigger.
Chrono?
Chrono.
I don't know.
It's a great game.
It's Chrono.
Chrono.
Mine is Chrono Trigger.
And this game I played later in life.
I played it on the Nintendo DS.
And I absolutely fell in love with it.
I don't typically like JRPGs.
This one captured my heart.
I really like it when Chrono crawls.
And Chrono can crawl.
Yeah.
And it's got a robot.
Fantastic soundtrack.
Characters that die depending on the choices you make.
Five or six different endings.
A great storyline.
I actually think games like Mass Effect 2 stole everything that made Chrono Trigger great and just put it in the modern day.
But yeah, Chrono Trigger.
All right.
My number six is Fallout 3.
Are you happy, Travis?
Yeah.
I chose a number.
Instead of saying Fallout Series.
The entire Fallout 3.
I know a lot.
It's a post-apocalyptic video game.
Kyle and I were chatting about this.
I know a lot of people prefer New Vegas.
I just loved the urban setting of 3, the fact that they had reinvented the Fallout series for the 3D landscape.
The amount of buildings that you could go into and just explore the lore and just kind of discover what happened through this dilapidated wasteland.
I would say it was one of the great transitions from a 2D game to a 3D game.
Fallout 3.
Yes.
And it was a very interesting combat mechanic system that was really cool.
With a combination of obviously the RPG elements and action elements.
Yeah.
Just an ability at any time make it a turn-based thing.
We're like, I'm going to choose what I'm going to do exactly.
That's really cool.
That's genius.
With wisdom, because you only have a certain amount of points.
Number six, Super Mario Bros. 3.
Good pick.
Out of all of the 2D Mario games, that is the best.
People argue Super Mario World, not even close.
Super Mario Bros. 3.
I agree with that.
It did everything Super Mario World did as an 8-bit game and better.
Yeah.
And Tanuki.
And Tanuki.
Yeah, that's always the thing.
I assume that's a Japanese thing.
I like the boot.
Why is the raccoon making him fly?
I like the boot.
The boot is underrated.
The giant boot he gets?
Yeah.
Tanuki is OP.
And it was such a massive game.
You had eight worlds with however many levels each world, and it's theoretically possible for you to just sit down and just beat it.
It's amazing that it's on the same system as the original Super Mario Bros.
It is.
Right.
Which is just this linear, you know, very little colors, very little texture.
And you consume our other three, and they have like a whole overworld and an inventory and all these insane concepts.
Yeah.
Also, the movie The Wizard, we have to thank for that as a really giant advertisement.
Number five, Silent Hill 2.
Are you a PlayStation kid?
No.
No.
I was a Silent Hill kid.
Okay.
Just me and my homies kicking back with some Silent Hill.
Can you crawl in that game?
You cannot crawl in that game, but you can stick your hand in holes.
Look out for our list coming up soon of top 10 crawling video games.
Followed by top 10 hand-in-hole video games.
I won't act out how they move because you move pretty much the same as Resident Evil in that game.
That's the main problem with it.
It's like, okay, it's difficult to play, but superb story.
Awesome.
My number five is Left 4 Dead 2, which I have long something like 800 Steam hours on because I get the whole family together.
Me, my two older boys, and my wife.
That's a perfect party for Left 4 Dead, and we just play the crap out of it.
So the thing is, you could also multiply those hours by four, essentially.
3,200 hours.
Yes.
I could have accomplished many things other than grabbing peels.
Peels.
Grabbing peels.
That's what he says.
Did you have like John Piper in the back of your brain?
Like a seashell thing?
Like 800.
Wasted.
You're wasting your life.
My number five is Knights of the Old Republic.
Great pick.
And it's one of the few games that I've played more than two times.
Your thoughts on Codor 2?
Garbage.
Absolute garbage.
But a better lightsaber crafting system than the first one.
It's too bad we don't have a lightsaber expert that could come and talk to us.
Dan, what's your number?
Number five, The Legend of Zelda, the original from NES.
And the reason why I picked it is I think it was the first game that came with a battery and the cartridge so that you could actually save your file.
And it was just, it was like, maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's the first open world game where it just drops you in.
You go into the cave, the guy gives you the sword.
Here, it's dangerous to go alone.
Take this.
And then it doesn't tell you anything of what you're supposed to do.
You're like, what am I supposed to do?
Are you even forced to go in that cave?
No, I mean, you technically know.
You could just walk away and not have a sword.
Yeah.
Which is so cool.
And I think everything that you need to play is on the game box or they give you a little map inside the game box.
And it's like, there's eight dungeons.
Go.
And it's just incredible.
It's just amazing.
It was the Elden Ring of its time.
But good.
But also quality.
And I think every Zelda game that came after it, it obviously built on that.
Yeah, they became a little more linear and gated, like where it was like, you're going to do this dungeon next.
You're going to do this dungeon next.
But the original was just free-for-all.
Go figure it out.
Yep.
What's your number four, Travis?
Number four is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Which is.
Stop making those noises.
I'm interested.
He's having a moment.
I just burped right into the map.
I know that's going to be on some other lists here, so I won't.
Anyway, fantastic game.
What is the crawling mechanics like in Breath of the Wild?
Actually, I don't think you can crawl in that one either.
You can crouch and do like a stealth walk.
You can also surf on your shield.
You can also surf on your shield.
Would you like to explain every mechanic of the game?
You can also hold a shield aloft.
So when you're climbing up mountains and you turn the camera a little bit, it kind of looks like you're crawling.
That's true.
It's a vertical crawl.
It's a vertical crawl.
It's true, vertical crawl.
My number four is Super Smash Brothers Melee.
My favorite of the Smash Brothers series, thousands of hours long.
Is that the second one?
It is.
It is the second game.
There's an N64 one, which is kind of the slow, clunky one.
And then Melee was like the one that made it super fast.
I still think it's like the fastest of the Smash Brothers games.
I actually had a lunch hour at school.
The period right before lunch hour, I had a drama class.
The period right after lunch, I was a TA.
And then my seventh period was off, or my sixth period, whatever it is, was off.
My drama teacher was not actually a drama teacher.
He was a water polo coach.
My TA class that was four, there was actually no class scheduled.
So I was in an empty room by myself.
So I basically had the second half of my day, my last semester in high school, that I had nothing to do.
Well, the calculus class that was going on at the same time, the teacher, they had already done the test or whatever, the end of the year test.
So they were done for the last like two months of school year.
So he let them bring in Super Smash Brothers, melee, and a GameCube.
So I would just go in there and play Smash Brothers for about three hours at the end of every school day.
My number four was Pokemon Blue.
Another good pick.
Pokemon Blue.
It's the one that started it all.
And of course, Blue is the one that I chose.
Red was better.
Of course.
Wrong.
Incorrect.
It had Squirtle on the cover.
And Blastoise.
Blastoise.
I'm sorry.
Actually.
Actually, it's Blastoise.
And I don't have to explain to you guys what Pokemon means.
What does Pokemon mean to you?
Pokemon to me means love.
So in high school, I had two periods.
Dan, what is your number four?
Number four, FTL.
Ah.
Faster than light.
Jinx.
You guys both just say, ah, faster than light.
It's so amazingly good.
The narrative of like, you have these crew members in this spaceship, and you've got to get from here to here.
And you want to go to as many places as you can to get more stuff, to upgrade stuff.
But there's also a timer.
If you wait too long, you're going to lose.
But it's almost like assess your risk.
You've got to figure out if you can go for it, you go for it.
It's like Star Trek.
You're trying to get shields.
You're trying to get guns.
You're trying to make sure your crew's alive.
And then all of a sudden, everyone's dead.
It's just so good.
It's great.
I love it.
I do like it.
Everyone's dead.
It's so good.
Yeah.
It's just like life.
It's just one of those games where you're trying to take care of everything and you start caring about your crew and all of a sudden some alien species hijacking your ship and blowing up cabins and the air pressure is leaving and it's good.
Quick asides, FTL versus Galaxy Trucker.
I played FTL first and when I played Galaxy Trucker the board game, I was like, holy crap, this is like FTL on the tabletop.
And that's part of the reason I love Galaxy Trucker.
I have never played Galaxy Trucker.
Well, you must play Galaxy Trucker.
Galaxy Trucker, if you have multiple people and they are all into board games.
If you're all by yourself, FTL.
FTL is a great game.
What is your number three, sir?
Number three is Super Mario 64.
Woohoo!
Is Chris Pratt in the room?
Wow, that sounded just like him.
That's a good pick.
It was the first 3D Mario.
Speaking of 2D to 3D transitions, another one that did it well.
You know, I played it recently on the remake on the Switch, and I felt like it didn't age as well as I had remembered.
I think part of that's just because Super Mario Odyssey is out, and that's just so fresh.
But I do like it.
I do like Mario 64.
But what it did for the genre at the time.
But there are certain ones that I go back and play, and I'm like, this holds up.
I've always felt that way about Mario 64 until my most recent replay.
Maybe it was just Odyssey.
It was on my, that made it to my honorable mentions.
I like 64.
I like 64.
I felt bad it didn't make it to my top 10.
My number three is Half-Life 2, but not for the reasons these guys said.
Oh.
Moving on.
I agree with you guys.
I hated your reasons.
No, I'm just kidding.
Half-Life 2 was the last game, I think the last game that I lined up for outside the game store.
And you didn't even need to because it was just unlocked on Steam.
I got the CD and I put it in, and it's like, great, you're unlocked.
It obviously brought us Steam.
I mean, it was the first game that required Steam or whatever.
And that was awesome.
But Half-Life 2 was rad.
And I did get into all the mods and stuff for it.
All right.
My number three is Breath of the Wild.
Good pick.
It's a fantastic game that Dan is in the middle of playing right now.
And I think it was, I was like 75 hours in before I even beat the first dungeon proper.
I was having fun just fishing with bombs and throwing bombs at pigs.
Mostly things that have to do with bombs.
That was right.
Great pick.
Great pick.
Dan, number three.
Number three, SimCity.
OG.
OG.
It was like the first game I played that was like, I could simulate an entire city.
It's so fantastic.
I can't control the cover.
I was able to simulate a city.
Yeah.
When I think of PC gaming in the early 90s, that was it.
I think I did 3000.
Sim City 3000 was that a thousand was good.
I think I quite enjoyed that.
Yeah, I could think of later games in the series that obviously would probably hold up better today, but that's just a classic game.
It changed so much of what PC gaming was at the time.
Yes.
Great pick.
My number two game is Goldeneye.
End of statement.
No, you cannot crawl on GoldenEye.
No, you can't.
But you can crouch and slide around.
That's true.
You can crouch and slide around, and it looks like you're on a wax floor.
Or if you pick odd job, you don't have to crouch.
But you can.
For more discussion on GoldenEye, check out Travis's video game form.
That was one of the first games where it was like four people up all night on a console.
On a console, and you're just duking it out.
It was so good.
We didn't even care about the score to the point where it was like we would play where if somebody dies, like you get shot, whatever, you just the next person swap the control.
That was just, we didn't even care.
It was just I think it just did a lot for the genre on console.
But even though it was actually very poorly made in some ways, like guys, enemies clipping through the doors and you could shoot them through the doors.
Push the N64 to its absolute limit.
To its absolute limit.
And what is the proper way to play GoldenEye?
Because there is a proper way, and that is Proximity Minds complex.
No.
Fox only, Final Destination.
My number two is the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.
You guys have already mentioned it.
We talk about defining gaming moments, walking out of that first cave and looking out at the world.
And I know they do kind of gate it where you have to beat that great plateau, but looking out and going, that's Death Mountain.
I can walk there from here was just an incredible moment for me.
I also like the deteriorating weapons system.
I know some people don't like that, but what I like about it is it forces you to consider the risk before you go into a battle and not just go, I'm just going to go slaughter everything.
It's like classic DD.
You have to go in and go, Am I going to get more out of this encounter than I am, yeah, just to walk away?
So you can actually just avoid stuff, which I think is a legitimate strategy in classic RPGs and more so in Breath of the Wild.
I don't mind deteriorating weapons.
I think Breath of the Wild's greatest flaw is climbing in the rain.
And it's always raining.
I think that is the greatest flaw.
Well, that's my favorite.
Climbed in the rain.
Yeah.
Have you ever climbed in the rain?
Oh, well, no.
I will crawl in the rain.
My number two is The Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening.
Game Boy.
That's a good bit.
That was one of the first, I think it's one of the first games I purchased on Game Boy and played multiple times.
Despite the, I mean, obviously, very limited capabilities graphically, told a story, had a fantastic soundtrack, and introduced so many new elements of gameplay that I had never seen before, such as the claw game.
And the fishing game.
And the weirdness of like Mario characters showing up.
Oh, yeah.
I am amazed at how much they pushed the Game Boy to its limits with both that game and Pokemon and how deep some of those things were when you just had, what was the screen?
It's like 60 by 3 pixels or something.
I mean, it was so tiny.
The Eagle Tower dungeon.
Can we talk about the Eagle Tower dungeon?
Is that the one with the steel balls?
That was the one.
I was playing that dungeon.
I was very, I loved the remake on the Switch, and I was excited to introduce it to my cousin, who is much younger.
He was, I think, 13 at the time.
And I gave it to him to borrow.
And every time I would see him play it, he was just playing the claw game, just the claw game over and over again.
He was like, I don't know where to go, but this is fun.
My favorite thing about Link's Awakening is this one NPC that just says, you are one cold ombre.
And that just makes you laugh for some reason.
Can you look at the camera and say that?
You are one cold ombre.
Dan, what is your number two?
My number two, Sid Meier's Civilization.
I feel like the original.
Well, I'll say the original for my list.
At the time, there was nothing like that.
And Sid Meyer is kind of like one of my video game design heroes.
He's such a cool guy to read about.
At the time, it was like there was nothing that would simulate all the whole sweep of human history of building a city, putting settlers out, raising armies, having pikemen fight tanks.
I mean, it was such a cool idea for a game.
And the wackiness of it.
You have Gandhi launching nukes at you.
And I mean, it was so cool.
As he does.
Now, the later iterations of it, and I was looking back at the first one, and it's amazing how much of that core game is still intact, even in the five and six.
It's still the same game, but they just added better graphics.
They added more things you could do, but it's still that same basic game, and it's wonderful.
The first one I played was Civilization 2, and I got very addicted to it.
It was the just one more turn phenomenon, and Alpha Centauri, also.
That was just incredible.
Good pick.
All right, we're on to our number one of all time.
Number one is The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.
Excellent.
Obviously, a 2D to 3D transition that was done very well, and it just had a really good, wholesome fantasy story.
And you don't see stories like that anymore.
It's true.
Good pick.
Better than Tolkien.
No, I'm kidding.
I was with you until then.
My number one is The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.
Similar reasons.
And again, you want to talk about defining gaming moments, walking out into Hyrule Field for the first time.
Absolutely.
We were talking about this game on the playground before it came out.
My friend was telling me, you have to, he's like, it's an entire world.
You walk out and you can walk around the entire planet and get back to the, like, like the rumors that were going around about this game.
He's like, you have to eat to survive.
Like, you have to kill the chickens and cook them or you will die.
And we were just like, and so it wasn't quite that.
But it was still like going out into Hyrule Field.
And, you know, and it was, it was, you know, you could buy the strategy guy, but it was still the age when you went on the playground and were like, I can't beat the, you know, your friends are telling you, you got to bomb this rock in Hyrule Field.
And then you go down, there's a piece of heart down there.
And then you run home and you try to beat everybody else, your siblings to the system so you can try it out.
And Ocarina of Time.
Yes.
My number one is The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.
Boy, Dan's going to feel left out if he didn't pick it.
Absolutely.
I mean, the amount of detail, the amount of emotion, the soundtrack.
I remember flipping through pages of Nintendo Power prior to the game's release and seeing those chunky, blocky graphics and thinking, this is so real.
This is so real.
How far we have come as a generation just from the 8-bit era.
How far we've come.
And yeah, I.
Well, and it's amazing that just a few years before it was LinkedIn to the past.
You know, and to go from that graphically to Ocarina of Christianity.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Huge.
And large polygons that room large.
She's got these huge.
Love them.
Love those huge Latina polygons.
I distanced myself from that portion of the conversation.
Dan, what was your number one?
Number one, Legend of Zelda.
He's going to say LinkedIn to the Past.
Watch this.
Breath of the Wild.
Oh, I didn't realize you hadn't listed it yet.
I thought you'd already listed it.
So I was having a hard time writing my list of top 10 games.
And it very quickly became like, here's a list of like Zelda video games.
And I didn't want to do that.
So I kind of picked Breath of the Wild as the ultimate 3D Zelda experience.
It harkens back to what the first game was.
It's open world, and you just do it.
I tried to pick representative games for series.
I did feel bad not putting Half-Life 1 on there, but putting Half-Life 2.
But for Zelda, I had to allow myself to Ocarina and Breath of the Wild.
We were discussing this a little bit, but the thing is, it's not like a Borderlands where basically one and two and three are all just kind of iterations on top of each other.
But the various Zelda games, they're all very unique all in their own right.
It's true.
Yeah.
It's true.
I agree with that.
Hence, my top three picks all being Zelda games.
Anybody have any honorable mentions?
I do.
You do.
Travis's, a lot of Travis' list was on my honorable mentions.
The classics, GoldenEye, Smash Brothers, Mario Kart 64.
Absolutely.
I got Halo Combat Evolved on the PC.
Portal 2, Lynx Awakening, Pokemon Red and Blue, Mass Effect 2, Kingdom Rush, Super Mario Bros. 3, Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast, Unreal Tournament, and Fallout New Vegas.
I listed as my honorable mentions.
And I'm sure I could come up with 100 more.
100 more.
One of my honorable mentions would have been Skyrim, so the newest Elder Scrolls.
But I like Fallout as well, but I'm just more like Marwin, but bad.
What I like about Skyrim is that if you enter my house in Skyrim, it's entirely filled with meat and cheese that I've collected throughout the lands.
Just like your real house.
Just like in real life.
Correct.
I just did not like the bland world of Skyrim compared to Marwin.
You were like going under giant mushrooms and crazy.
Marwin has a better world.
I just think Skyrim plays better.
Like, oh, look, Snow.
And look, more snow.
I like snow, though.
That's true.
If you like snow, maybe you like Marwin.
I also think Yoshi's Island was one of the best side-scrollers on the Super Nintendo system.
That's very underrated.
And my final underlooked one that possibly no one here has ever played or even heard of, Space Station Silicon Valley on the Nintendo 6.
I played this.
It's a fantastic game where you play a microchip that can jump from robotic animal to robotic animal and inherit their powers.
It was an early GTA because it was done by Rockstar Games.
And you were basically like trying to hijack different animals.
And then it was like, how do I get through here?
Oh, I need to be a kangaroo.
And then you have to go find the kangaroo and jump into him.
And I played a ton of that.
Fantastic game.
I think it was flawed, but the concept was awesome.
How much of it has to do with Neuralink, you think?
It was the entire basis of the Neural Game.
Elon Musk got the idea for Neuralink from Space Station.
All right.
Well, this has been the end of our top video game segments.
So go play all of those games.
Every single one of them.
All the time.
Except for Elden Ring.
Now let's go to Hate Mail.
Now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp.
Hey, everyone here at the Babylon B.
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That means maybe you don't spend so much time just doom scrolling on Twitter and reading all the news.
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That's how your brain works.
How we care for our minds affects how we experience life.
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I really miss Adam Ford.
Who do you hate?
Whom do you hate?
Is Hatemail.
All right, so here I tweeted out an article.
AOC sits in invisible police car awaiting transport to invisible jail.
And it was a dumb Photoshop of not Elon Musk, what's her name?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sitting in an invisible chair on the street.
And this guy said, it would be crazy being an editor-in-chief and having no one on staff know how to Photoshop at all.
And he goes, like, half this job is writing a good joke, which you cannot.
And then the other half is Photoshop, which you are bad at too.
It's wild.
I still can't get over how they were being arrested and they're putting their hands behind their back.
Like, why would you pretend to be cuffed?
Like, I don't get that.
And then she puts her hand up.
Yeah, like, what?
The whole thing's stupid.
It's just awesome.
But, like, you notice the news media, like CNN or MSNBC, like, that's their photo.
From the front.
Why?
She knows.
She knows optics.
They totally planned that out completely.
And they probably called the news media ahead of time.
We're going to get arrested, take some pictures.
Awesome.
So, just as a quick reminder, the podcast is going to be moving to the new YouTube channel, which is just the Babylon B podcast.
Not the Babylon B, the Babylon B podcast.
So if you want sketches, stay where you're at.
If you want to keep up with the podcast, you got to go over to the new channel, the Babylon Bee Podcast on YouTube.
All right.
Well, thanks for joining us on the Be Weekly.
Stay tuned if you're a subscriber because we have even more content coming your way, including bonus hate mail and subscriber headlines.
And we're going to list our hundred more video game honorable mentions.
Got my list ready.
Actually, Doom.
That was an honorable mention.
Super Mario Kart, Doom.
Super Mario Kart and Doom.
Yeah.
Can Doom crawl?
Doom cannot crawl, but the demons in your heart can.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
I always feel bad when I looked at some of my old Bibles because I would highlight just phrases that I thought sounded funny.
All the fat belongs to the Lord.
Like I would just highlight that, and I'd look back and be like, oh, fuck.
Any band, any concert, who do you go see?
I would go see the Jews at the temple.
I'm curious, like, what the original Psalms sounded like.