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Ep. 32 - The Teenage Quest for Net Nanny's Neglected Nudity - w/ Mr. Beard
67 Plays4 years ago
This week we're joined by sketch comic, musician, and TikTok sensation, Mr. Beard! We cover everything from his homeschool co-op, waiting tables for LA's stuffiest rich pricks, and the long road to social media prominence. This might be the most we've laughed during an episode, and I think you're going to, too!
Subscribe to Mr. Beard on TikTok (@mrbeard), Instagram (@mrbeardofficial), and YouTube for all sorts of hilarious videos! Here is one of our favorites to get you started: https://youtu.be/grxbo7W3NR4
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Transcript
Teenage Curiosity and Restricted Materials
00:00:00
Speaker
You're not gonna stifle a teenage boy's disgusting impulses and like if you if you remove all normal Material they're gonna find something that's gonna be weird and scary. It's gonna be weird. Yeah absolutely I didn't know I was into this and then you're gonna end up with some weird kinky
00:00:23
Speaker
post pubescent boy living in your house. Exactly. And forever. That's the guy that messages April about photoshopping her into a picture where she's 80 feet tall and stomping on you. It's like, I thought that was completely normal. That's all I could find on the internet. It seems like whatever it was into, the message board on that website was active. On the message board I found, yeah.
Meet the Hosts: Casey and Sam
00:01:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grown Up Christian. I'm Casey. And I'm Sam. And can I start us off with like some current events? Yup. Did you hear about the two dudes that broke into a Walgreens and stole a bunch of Cialis? I did not. What? Yeah, the cops put out an APB for two hardened criminals. Oh my God. Fuck you dude.
00:01:40
Speaker
That took you a minute. Yeah. Shut up, dude. That's insane. I think I'm quitting. I'm quitting the podcast. I don't know if I want to do this, dude. Nobody tells street jokes anymore. Why was that sitting at the front of your mind to kick this off with? Did you hear that earlier and you're like, this is where we need to go? Yeah. If I'm being honest, I wrote that down in my phone as an intro topic.
00:02:07
Speaker
Oh my God. Okay. I mean, but did you just hear that joke recently? Like, yeah, I think I heard Craig Fitzsimmons tell it. You, Craig Fitzsimmons, you, you popped a Cialis like 15 minutes before this intro and you were like, Oh, that reminds me of a joke that I learned in high school.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah. I guess I don't know if I really understand how Cialis works. So like if you populate like one of those or a Viagra or something, are you just strutting around with your kickstand out? Yeah. Okay. This reminds me of
Pranks and Pills: A Small-Town Tale
00:02:40
Speaker
a story. So I had a friend who worked overnight at a convenience store.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I used to just go hang out with him there for like all night. He lived across the street from that convenience store. So I would hang out with him till I got too tired. And then I would go like to his house and fall asleep until he got off work, whatever. And he says it was just kind of small town. He knew a lot of people in the town. So one of the times I was hanging out with him, there are a few people that he knew had gone in to just get something. They ended up hanging out for a couple of hours.
00:03:12
Speaker
I don't know if you're really supposed to loiter like that, but it was just me, maybe two other guys, and then my friend who's working. But it's like two, three in the morning. You barely get anybody showing up. People maybe would pump gas. I actually think they might turn the gas off. But there's not a lot people are buying at that time of night. Maybe cigarettes if they work the night shift, but it's dead. And someone's like, oh, I have a great idea.
00:03:37
Speaker
one beat. It's like they had the Viagra whatever over the counter. It was like whatever they over the counter dick pills were and they're like, we should all, we should all take one of these pills. And then first one to pop a boner loses. And I was like, this does not sound like for me. I wasn't that kind of a guy.
00:03:55
Speaker
so everyone does it i didn't i think they might have thought i did it's possible i put it in my mouth and then just like took it out and threw it on the floor and then was like uh okay also you guys are idiots because these don't make you pop a boner first like it just makes it so when you get a boner it doesn't
00:04:15
Speaker
It's just not going to stop. You're stuck with that for four hours. But my friend who was working did it too, so he's just like, what was his plan of action for the night? To just stand behind the counter with a raging boner for four hours while people came in to buy cigarettes at 2 AM? It's so stupid.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, so you dared to say no. Yeah, I said no, I did. I stood on my ground as a Christian. I had no business taking those pills anywhere.
Cloning Ethics: Dolly the Sheep and Beyond
00:04:45
Speaker
So something that crossed my mind this week, unrelated to dick pills was, do you remember? I don't remember what year it was. I should have looked it up before we jumped on here. But do you remember when the whole like cloning of Dolly the sheep was going on? Yeah, that had to be in the 90s.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking it up while we talk. That was a hotly contested item. From 96 to 2003. So I'm wondering if I remember the conversation being sparked when Dolly died. Because 90, I don't know what the average life expectancy for a sheep is. But if she lived from 96 to 2003, seven years feels
00:05:30
Speaker
Not long for a sheep, but I don't know. Are you a farmer? Do you know farmers that we can call right now? I don't know anything about sheep, but that seems par for the course, you know? Hmm. Like that sounds sheeply of around 11 to 12 years, but Dolly lived six and a half. Oh, so they, they crossed some wires when they were, they were, you know, putting her together.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, maybe but all the I mean, the way that I mean, I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but cloning is just like you pretty much duplicate it. So what I remember specifically about that was how talks about cloning and how that is like inherently against God's plan. Like what, what's next? Like that was it felt dangerous and scary, like pretty soon you'll just be able to clone humans. Do clones people have souls? Tons of conversations around that. Yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker
And so when Dolly died early, it was like, this is what happens when men try to do, sorry, people. They're women scientists, everybody. Come on. And they're as much to blame as the men. But it's like, oh, they
00:06:37
Speaker
when you try to clone and duplicate god's design even if it's the same it's not gonna work out and you'll die early so then there was a lot of concern about like if you clone a human will they then like diet will they like diet thirty or forty or like live short lives and have health complications.
00:06:56
Speaker
Didn't, am I mistaken, but didn't, did Dolly have like an extra leg? I feel like there was one of those cloning deals where like the sheep kind of had like this extra sort of like small leg that just sort of hung. I don't think so. Oh, barely. She was euthanized because she had progressive lung disease and severe arthritis. Oh, soulless and a smoker. Yeah.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that being a very controversial thing. And I specifically remember some talks about how like, maybe this is where the Antichrist comes from. Like maybe the Antichrist will rise up as you know, a clone with no soul that will be used as a tool of Satan.
00:07:40
Speaker
That's super interesting because why would Satan need someone who is soulless when Satan has millions of humans in his clutches already? I don't know. Why would Satan, you know, use a doll to murder people? It's nonsensical, but it makes for a fun movie, you know?
Cloning Debate: Twins and Ethics
00:08:01
Speaker
Child's Play was great.
00:08:03
Speaker
So, but with Dolly, I mean, one of the things, so I don't actually recall a whole lot of antichrist conversation around Dolly. It was more around like the, but there were, I even, I bet outside of Christian circles, even there was conversations around the ethics of cloning.
00:08:21
Speaker
There's gotta be there was always like this weird misunderstanding of it too which i was part of at the time but then when you think about it and you hear more about also like one of them was like oh you're duplicating a person and then the soul question is definitely particularly religious but it's like.
00:08:38
Speaker
Well, if you clone those people, are they inherently the same? Will they be the same? But then you're like, yeah, but that's what twin like twins. Have you ever heard of twins? That's a clone essentially, isn't it? No. They're not genetically like identical. They just have similar look, right? I know. I laughed at you and now I don't know.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think like part of it is just what why, you know, we were doing some on the fly research here. We're going to look really dumb on this episode. And that's fine because we're not scientists. I got a fucking Bible degree. So if you don't like my science knowledge, that's your problem. I'm all for I'm figuring, you know, working on stuff like that if they, you know, if there's a practical application, but like, don't we need less people, not more? Yeah, well,
00:09:34
Speaker
I don't know. You're getting your wish. This is like the what, the lowest birth rate we've had in a long time? Yeah, that's fine.
00:09:42
Speaker
Uh, real quick part of those statistics, identical. Yeah. Come on, man. What the heck? I'm going to impregnate you in your sleep. Um, identical twins have the same DNA as each other. Wow. Really? But different from their parents. So, but they are the same. So they, they have the same DNA. So if you are a twin and one of them murders somebody,
00:10:08
Speaker
but they both cover for each other with an alibi. I mean, who's to say, right? You can't commit that
Media Misconceptions and Conspiracy Theories
00:10:15
Speaker
shit. I'm surprised we don't see more murdering twins on the loose. Yeah, if one twin murders someone, will their genetic material, will forensics find the same genetic material regardless of which twin it was? I would think so.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely the plot of a movie. I just don't know which one. You know what I am interested in clones for is, did you ever see that movie The Island with Scar Joe? Yeah. Wait, was that? Grow me some new organs. That's all. That's what I want. What's this? Who else is in that? Ewan McGregor? Was it? Oh, yeah, that's what it was. I do. I think I fell asleep during that movie, so I don't really remember it too well. OK, would you? How about this pet cloning? That'd be dope, right?
00:11:01
Speaker
Oh yeah, we've had this conversation quite a few times at our house. Like if we could clone our cat Milo, like we would probably spend way too much money on that.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah. Now, but what's weird about it is like twins being an example, right? Same DNA, but they're not the same. Like they don't turn out the same. There's like, they might be on a wavelength or some shit where they can like have those cool twin thoughts or whatever, but they're not exactly like, even when the same, like it's like nature versus nurture or whatever, like, but they don't turn out the same. So even if you could clone your pet, I mean, would they really, wouldn't it be the same?
00:11:40
Speaker
Was it? I don't know. Would your pet be the antichrist potentially? Oh, that's. You've thrown something new here. Yeah. Deep cut. I feel like antichrist talk was always like kind of lingering around my community. Like there was a lot of speculation about who the antichrist might be or what they might want or where they might come from.
00:12:02
Speaker
I can tell you what they always wanted, socialism. Yeah, world peace, unity, and socialism. Yes, all things inherently against Jesus Christ. You know the Nazi stands for National Socialist Party.
00:12:20
Speaker
How many times have you heard that argument? Never. I never heard that. Oh, are you kidding me? No, I'm really not. Oh, man, you need more. Your family talk to us more, Glenn Beck. Yeah, I didn't. I feel like my conservative indoctrination stopped at Rush Limbaugh was the guy. Yeah. Rush Limbaugh in the car.
00:12:42
Speaker
when I was a young'un, and some Sean Hannity, okay, yeah, then some Sean Hannity, but not when it was just Hannity's show, but back when Fox News had a slight degree of integrity, and they had Hannity in combs. I think we talked about that a little bit before. Yeah, I think so. But back when they pretended to care about what other people thought, that was fun.
00:13:09
Speaker
You had to at least pay homage to the idea of fair and balanced to use it as a slogan.
00:13:15
Speaker
Right. Do they have anything else that was like fair and balanced other than Sean and Andy and I don't know. I mean, it's the first thing I don't even know. I feel like they had they've always had like a couple of somewhat liberal people hanging around. But, you know, never in the spotlight, like their their conservative pundits were.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. It was lip service. We all knew it at the time. I remember the amount of times I remember people making fun of Combs was just like, oh, look at this fucking idiot. It's like, hell yeah, he's so dumb. He was there. That must have been why he eventually left. He was probably just like, I'm so fucking sick of being made fun of all the time.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, just getting hit by that, you know, Mac truck that is Sean Hannity on a rant like every day or the whoever the guests are. I don't know. Yeah, either way, I feel like in terms of.
00:14:16
Speaker
When it came to the Antichrist, I know that there was a ton of people that thought that Barack Obama was the Antichrist. Yeah. I heard that speculation quite a bit. There was a couple of YouTube videos made about that. A couple.
00:14:37
Speaker
I don't think there's anyone like so in my lifetime, the only politician I can think because one of the things was, um, it was, uh, like a new world order, right? That's what we're like, as you mentioned, world peace, but it didn't actually mean world peace. It just meant like, uh, one of the signs of the times, I remember being a, um, a universal currency.
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, yep, that was a big one. So we'll switch to like the euro. Everyone's like, oh, I could probably switch to the euro since that's already like pretty big. That didn't pan out. No, I mean, there is no nothing even close to a universe. Oh, no, here we go. Crypto is the universal currency, right? That'll be it. I hope so because I really need that to come back.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, how much are you down now? How much are you down? I don't want to talk about that. You don't want to get into your finances. It was all going so well until it wasn't. And now I'm just, I'm just, you know, sinking slowly into the icy depths.
00:15:43
Speaker
Don't pull out, man. Don't pull out. This is the time to get into it. We've talked about this plenty of times just ourselves. I'm realizing more and more as time goes on why I'm not someone who's built for financial success because I don't take risks. I don't invest. I don't know how to.
00:16:06
Speaker
And when people are like, I can help you out with that, I'm like, Oh, man, that'd be awesome. Definitely. Like, yeah, give me a call sometime. Yeah, I will. I'll take you up on that. And then I don't. So that's the that's what it means to be a person who's like, just going, I mean, you're just gonna default to your salary to get you by for the rest of your life. That's a terrible idea.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah.
Financial Fears and Investments
00:16:29
Speaker
I mean, I'm kind of just paying lip service to the idea of being like an investor in some form or another. Cause same thing. Like I've had a bunch of people will be like, Oh yeah. You know, if you ever want some, uh, want me to talk you through some things and stuff, I'm like.
00:16:43
Speaker
I kind of just want to pretend to be interested in the idea. I'm not really interested to the point of doing research. I don't want to read. I just want to buy some magic stocks and make money. The only hope for me being wealthy someday is just to pull in enough money that it accumulates faster than I can spend it. Yeah, that'd be nice, wouldn't it?
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, but see, I just don't think it's for me. Like I waste my money on the demos. Like I bought I spent $15 on a bag of popcorn this week. I mean, that's fine. I mean, that's a lot of money for that. Would you go to the movies? I mean, that's a lot of money. No, no, no. So you ever see that boom chicka pop popcorn at the store? Nope. Well, around Christmas, they had like this frosted sugar cookie flavor and it was
00:17:37
Speaker
The best. The best thing there is. That sounds awful. No, it was great. And then they canceled it after Christmas like idiots. And so now I'm buying like a two-year-old bag off eBay that's probably stale. And it was only $7, but then it's like $8 shipping. This is why I won't have money ever. Because you spend it on popcorn. That's an interesting reason for your poverty.
00:18:05
Speaker
I don't know, like, I don't know how much money I spent on this shirt, but I'm sure it wasn't a reasonable amount. Probably not. If, if you guys remember like, what was it last year when that Ted Bundy documentary came out that it was really good. Everybody was obsessed with it for a while.
00:18:21
Speaker
Well, at the very
Ted Bundy Interview and Criminal Narratives
00:18:22
Speaker
end. Everyone got horny for Ted Bundy for a minute. They really did. It was like all these people talking about how handsome he was and how charming. And it's like, I don't know that that's really it. Like I think he would have probably given you the creeps. You just couldn't put your finger on what was wrong with him. Like there's a difference between being that and being like charming. Yeah. A little note. If you, if you feel yourself intensely pitying a man, just don't, just don't help him. Like
00:18:53
Speaker
No one has a real injury. Don't help anyone load their sailboat. Don't help them put a couch in the back of their van. If he's holding his knee with five bags of groceries around him in a deserted parking lot, that's not the guy you want to help. He'll figure it out.
00:19:10
Speaker
You're not helping an angel that was secretly sent by God to make you feel better about yourself. You just need to watch out. The only way to be safe in this world is to assume that everyone who looks injured is a necrophiliac.
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. I mean, I don't really know. That's how I've operated. That's why I'm here safe and sound. I'm almost to a point of comfort with you where I don't view you as a necrophiliac, but I'm still reviewing the evidence.
00:19:43
Speaker
I mean, your shirt is, you can finish explaining why you're wearing the shirt you're wearing. Oh, yeah. I'm not completely convinced that you're, you know, a safe one either. Well, so at the end of the documentary where they're talking, you know, the execution date is approaching and people are like tailgating and grilling hot dogs and playing catch with the old pigskin out front of the prison waiting for him to get fried.
00:20:10
Speaker
They were wearing these, they were selling these shirts in the parking lot that said, uh, burn Bundy burn. And, uh, it shows it's like a cartoon of Bundy getting electrocuted in the chair. And it says, Bundy's last charge in life. And I saw the teacher. I'm like, man, I wonder if anybody still makes one of those and they do. And I ordered one. And that's you making light of the death penalty. I'm going to have to get Shane Claiborne back on here.
00:20:37
Speaker
If Shane Claiborne sticks up for Ted Bundy, I'm definitely not letting him, you know, mold my guns into a hoe or anything like that. Well, you are very upset with him for doing that. You made that very clear. I always think it's funny though, like we're talking about serial killers, like so many serial killers. They're the most manipulative people. Yeah. Well, maybe not the most, but they're very manipulative people. That gets you back in pastors, we know. Yeah.
00:21:07
Speaker
they lie at every opportunity and a serial killer on death row is you just assume that anything he says is him trying to shift the blame away from himself, right? And so when Ted Bundy does an interview with Dr. James Dobson, old Jimmy Dee and says, all of this that I did, everything that I did was because of pornography.
00:21:31
Speaker
You can't just take that and run with it. You can't just take that as gospel like Ted Bundy. He said that a major influence in what happened in his life was pornography. It's like, yeah, of course he did. He was looking for any way to not be responsible for the things that he did. Are you kidding about an interview with Dobson?
00:21:54
Speaker
No. What? Absolutely. He he did like right before his execution. Like, I don't know how long before. But yeah, he did an interview with Dr. Dobson. How the fuck do I feel like I need to keep calling him doctor? Because he's like, I mean, why do you not call Dr. Phil just Phil? I don't know. It just well, I do. I have immense respect for Dr. Phil. Dude, Dr. Dobson did an interview with Ted Bundy.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. You can watch it on YouTube. Okay. Right here. Second video that pops up. Serial killer Ted Bunny describes the dangers of pornography. No fucking way.
00:22:38
Speaker
And then they'll like, you know, one of these, uh, one of these dudes that's murdered, like 24 women, you know, professes to be a Christian and talks about being born again and redeemed and stuff like that two days before he, you know, they carry out this death sentence or whatever. And they're like, even in the, you know, at the end, we all have to reckon with what we've done. And Ted saw the light. Yeah. It's like, that's not a compelling story. Like you shouldn't, he's not a good mascot for you guys.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there's like this tradition of picking bad mascots. I remember once when they picked Donald Trump as their mascot, the baby Christian. It's like, hey, I mean, that's the guy you want to like hit your cart to? That's fine. That's weird. And oh, you'll also lose millions of people who are just like, oh, I get it now. This is a joke.
00:23:35
Speaker
I'm less sick of your liberal nonsense. You know, fashion, Sean Hannity, fashion, you know, mine, mine Fuhrer. That's why I got
Guest Introduction: Ryan Beard, TikTok Influencer
00:23:45
Speaker
into this. I just want to be able to speak by truth, man. You can speak your truth about guns and watching serial killers burn and hating Shane Claiborne. That's fine. Speak your truth, bro. Let's we're here together. I love you, Shane. Oh, my God. Okay. Well,
00:24:03
Speaker
I think it's probably about time to introduce our guest. So excited. Yeah, this was a blast. Ryan Beard. Ryan Beard. If you don't know who he is, you fucked up. Ryan Beard has a million followers on TikTok. I'm not really on TikTok still. We keep pretending like we're trying to figure it out and we haven't.
00:24:24
Speaker
He's got a pretty good YouTube following. He's got a lot of followers on Instagram and he makes hilarious videos. We've shared a few of them here and there. And he, you know, the videos that he makes, it's satirical. He'll often make fun of aspects of Christian culture. Some of the videos that we've shared was one called Boomer I'm Not Okay.
00:24:48
Speaker
And his other one where I don't know what the name of it is, but he just kind of plays piano. Like he's closing out youth group and he's talking about how premarital sex is sus. And so we've shared those two videos from him and he's just absolutely hilarious. He was on America's Got Talent. That was new to me and we get into that a little bit in the episode. And we had just a great time talking to him. Very, very funny guy.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, you should definitely follow him on whatever social media channel you you know, you use the most Um, it's just a lot of he does a lot of funny things kind of related to the subjects we touch on on this show Recently with all of it the modestest hottest stuff going on. Yeah, he did a song about the slogan and
00:25:38
Speaker
It's so good. You should just go watch it. I won't tell you about it. But we had a blast talking to Mr. Beard, and I think you're going to have a blast listen to it. So enjoy our conversation with Ryan Beard. Hey, everybody. We are back with our guest, the incredible Mr. Ryan Beard. Ryan, I was introduced to your Instagram page and your YouTube page.
00:26:07
Speaker
And I was like, why does he call it Mr. Beard? Like he doesn't have a beard. And it took way too long for me to realize that that is actually your name.
00:26:16
Speaker
That's my real name. Yeah, I understand that that's confusing. I've made a few jokes here and there about like why I don't have a beard, but it's mainly just because I can't grow. I feel like I would like to try it, but I I just grow peach fuzz on my face basically. So I'm in that boat. Like I let mine grow for like a week the other day and just continued to go to work. And everybody looked at me like I was insane.
00:26:41
Speaker
Like I looked like, you know. Sam, did you shave your pubes before your wedding? Like for the inaugural bang? Casey, I actually do not remember. You know what's funny, man? This is an interesting way to start the episode. Weigh in on this, Ryan. I don't remember the first time. I was a late bloomer to the whole, I mean, so Casey and I didn't have sex until we were married. Yeah, late bloomer to pubes. No, I got pubes at probably a normal age.
00:27:11
Speaker
I didn't. I don't recall ever. I don't recall when I first trimmed them. And I don't even know if I did before getting married. I really can't remember that at all. I might have even been in my head about it being like, Are you supposed to do this? Is this a weird thing to do?
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, I was never taught about whether or not I should or not. And I've only I there was one time where I like fully shaved and then I got a bunch of ingrown hairs and shit and it was awful. And then ever since then, I've just trimmed. But yeah, yeah, I first thought I did it like two nights before the wedding. And that was when I learned what razor burn was.
00:27:54
Speaker
I'm like, Oh, so am I fully shaved beforehand? Yeah. Yeah. I look like I got bird flu on my dog or something. So you two both you two both waited until marriage. That's that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we do. God keeps his humps dry until.
00:28:13
Speaker
My parents, uh, waited until marriage as well, but I, I have not been married and I have not waited until marriage. So this is cool. You get right into the, uh, the, the confessional. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Cause I know like we we've talked about this a little bit before and I know my, like my mom and dad, I know my parents listened to the podcast and I'm like, this is probably how they act. They probably had their suspicions about it before. And they're like, Oh my God, he actually waited. That's incredible. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm very proud of you.
00:28:44
Speaker
Thank you, Ryan. This is I got what I came for. So we can close out. I just needed to hear. So thanks, everybody. It's like years later, before you finally realized like how insignificant that was for all the stress that it caused you at the time. Yep. So why don't we? So okay, I want to hear Ryan. Well, you know, why don't we actually get into a little bit about you other than your sex life?
00:29:08
Speaker
That's all I really am interested in talking about. Perfect. You came on here to brag. You're like, I lost my virginity last week. I had to tell somebody. This is like the one time I can brag about my sex life. The only singular time. So Ryan, you grew up in, in the church and I'm curious as how you got to, you know, doing church stuff. You mentioned that you had done, um, had did worship, led worship.
00:29:38
Speaker
And now you make YouTube videos where you pour hot sauce on your dick. So I'm interested in bridging this gap here with you, man. Yeah, so I was raised non-denominational Bible church is what we called the church that we went to. So I was just very straight and narrow Christian. I was also homeschooled. Yes, dude, me too.
00:30:05
Speaker
Oh, you were homeschooled too. Okay, cool. We're in a very similar boat here. Yeah. So I was homeschooled up until I was like 14. And then after that, I went to a Christian co-op where it was like, I would go to school a few days a week. And then I was at home the other three days a week because my mom decided that she didn't have the qualifications to teach me in high school is what she said, which is why she decided to send me there.
00:30:33
Speaker
The foreign language thing becomes a problem. Did you have someone in your homeschool co-op that taught a foreign language? Yeah, I had a Spanish teacher there. Me too. Homeschool co-op, man. Those are special.
00:30:45
Speaker
They are. The dynamics there were very weird. You would get the stereotypical very sheltered homeschooled kids, and then you would get the kids that were kind of even cringier, which were the kids who were sheltered homeschooled kids trying to rebel and be cool, and then they were kind of even worse.
00:31:06
Speaker
Which one were you? I would like to think that I was somewhere in the middle. I was kind of just the class clown. That's sort of what I always was. I was always just trying to crack jokes and hopefully be friends with everybody. Yeah. But there were a few times where the rebellious homeschoolers tried to pull me down the rebellious path and
00:31:28
Speaker
What does rebellion look like? Well that's the thing is these kids were just trying to do anything they possibly could to like rebel against their parents so they were just going out and driving in their cars like going 100 miles an hour down the road just being like super unsafe and just fucking like I was like you need to calm down man. There's better ways to rebel. Try smoking weed.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Just be a little more chill about your rebellion. It is like once you now that you've lived through that period and you look back on some of what rebellion looked like, like weed was the safest option for a lot of these people. The parents should have encouraged him to smoke. Yeah, people don't realize that mostly weed just like chills you out and you know, it's not really that big of a deal. But it leads to crack cocaine. So you really got to be careful.
00:32:18
Speaker
Every single time it leads to crack. I can't, I can't do, I can't do weed. I get paranoid when I smoke weed personally, but that's just me. When was the first time you, when was the first time you smoked weed? Was it in your Christian days? Yeah, it was. So I also did a lot of theater in high school and the first time I smoked weed was like with a group of theater kids. There was like the, there was like the one family of the theater kids that was like the one who would supply weed to everyone.
00:32:46
Speaker
Basically, does that feel like did that feel super nuts that you were smoking weed at the time? Like, did you get nervous? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was like, uh, interesting. I didn't get as paranoid the first time for some reason, but yeah, I definitely felt like something I shouldn't be doing. And it was definitely the thing where all the Christian homeschooled kids were like, stay away from that family. They're the ones who are the bad kids who keep giving weed to everyone. Oh, here, take this weed. Yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
So okay, you were homeschooled, you did homeschool co-op, and that's what you did through high school?
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, I did that through high school, but then when I was 16, I, uh, went to community college early, which is something that a lot of, uh, homeschooled kids would do. So when I was 16, I started going, um, uh, getting my like associates degree. And so then 16 through 18, I like went to community college and then 18, I moved to LA just like out of nowhere. Really? Yeah. Were you, were you still feeling the, like,
00:33:52
Speaker
Were you still feeling the... Because you don't consider yourself a Christian anymore, is that right? No, I don't. Okay. So when did that start happening? Were you feeling that all through high school? Or is it just something you did because you were part of it? Was it not really a big connector for you?
00:34:08
Speaker
So yeah, I was very connected to Christianity all throughout high school. And I was the worship leader for my youth group. So I was very involved with that. But then I was also trying to get into doing like comedy and things. And I was sort of grinding up against this resistance from my parents of like,
00:34:27
Speaker
oh you want to make sure that you're being a good influence with the jokes that you make because if you make a joke that's too offensive you know what are the people in youth group gonna say they're gonna say that you're being you know this joke isn't gonna be a good light to the lord and bring people to god or whatever so i was kind of meeting up with that resistance but when i was eighteen i was on america's got talent the tv show.
00:34:50
Speaker
oh no way um yeah yeah so that was like my first big sort of break i guess and then after i was on there that's when i was like okay i'm gonna go for it i'm just gonna move out to la and get an agency out there and try to like make it in the entertainment industry and i think once i
00:35:07
Speaker
moved away from home and was living on my own. That's when the faith thing kind of started to fall apart. But I think the first signs that it was falling apart was in my last few years of high school, I would just not want to get up and go to church on Sunday morning. I would just be like, I really don't want to go. And thankfully, my parents were like,
00:35:27
Speaker
You know, you're getting old enough that you can make your own decision. So they would just let me stay home Um, but there was some friction there of like you're being a bad influence You're saying you're the worship leader and then you're not showing up on sunday morning. Like what's going on here? So I feel like there's that's probably like the impetus for a lot of people starting to drift from the faith is when it's like clashing up against something that they actually love and they have to now decide
00:35:52
Speaker
Am I actually serious about this or is this just a thing that I do that now is in the way of what I want, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and I think there could have been a way that I could have gone the Christian comedy route and tried to juggle both at the same time. And I don't think that necessarily making edgy jokes means that you're not a Christian or something, but that's just kind of the vibe I was getting from the very conservative Christian church that I was going to.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. It definitely means you can't be a Christian. It is weird because like, if you were, if you were like a somewhat cleanish comic, and people found out you were Christian, they would be like, Oh, that's amazing. We love that. We found this out about this guy who's not too bad. I mean, he swears a little bit like they give you a much bigger pass if they found that you were Christian after the fact. But like,
00:36:46
Speaker
people who do Christian comedy and then try to phase out of it. Christian comedy is a lame. It's a thing. It's not like you could be a Christian and then a comic, and then you might get a pass by some people, depending on how dirty you were. Pete Holmes is one of the, you know, that kind of vibe. It's not too bad, but it is funny, the Christian comedy route thing though, because it's generally not funny, unless you're a Christian.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I haven't gone back and watched much Christian comedy since I've not been a Christian, so maybe I wouldn't enjoy the things that I did enjoy back when I was in high school, but I will say I think Christian comedy can be one of the most difficult routes that you can choose for yourself because you have put this hyper magnifying glass on yourself, identifying as a Christian comedian, because I have a Christian comedian friend named Jaren,
00:37:40
Speaker
and he's told me all these stories about how he'll make a joke that's a little bit, you know, a little bit on the line and then he'll get 100 Facebook messages from Karens being like, I thought you said you were a Christian comedian. What is this joke that you just made? He like constantly deals with that. So I definitely think that there's some truth to just doing what you want and then maybe slipping in the ear of Christian. Like I think maybe like Chris Pratt, you know, has done that where he just kind of did whatever and then, you know, says, oh, I'm a Christian.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, right. Well, you know, in like a comedic genius like Mark Lowry is kind of a once in a generation thing. So I mean, it's not really a bar you can set for yourself.
00:38:20
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. I don't I don't know what he was. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, it's an ironic statement. Oh, it's Mark Lowry, not funny. I remember Junior and me thinking he wasn't funny, so I can't imagine what me now would think of his company. My my example of what I thought was funny was like Tim Hawkins. Have you ever heard of Tim Hawkins? He was a Christian comedian that I liked. Yeah. He's so happy.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm great. At the time I was like, he was, he got the pass. He got the Christian comedian pass. So my company, I can't remember if I've told this story on here, so I'll give you the abridged version. But like, my company is super conservative, like praise at meetings and stuff like that says the Pledge of Allegiance before we start.
00:39:14
Speaker
And they usually, we have like this big convention every year and there's always like a speaker or something they hire to come in. Well, one year they wanted to hire a comedian. They decided to go with a Christian comedian. They thought they were hiring Tim Hawkins, but they actually hired a guy named Tim Wilson.
00:39:33
Speaker
Okay, he's like He was on Bob and Tom all the time, but he's like a real rough around the edges like Roadhouse comedian that made funny songs and stuff and they hadn't was he not a Christian new
00:39:50
Speaker
This guy shows up and it sounds like comedians hate doing these corporate gigs anyways. Yeah, but he showed up and they're like oh Well you do you have clean material you do right and he's like no Dude he played he did like 45 minutes to a crowd that barely cracked a smile
00:40:12
Speaker
Oh, no. I can't imagine being in that dude's shoes. Oh, that would suck so much that you're stuck suffering just because people hired the wrong guy. Like, that would be awful. Oh, yeah. People walked out. It was funny. It was funny. It was just like it was the worst environment for it. Yeah. You're the only one laughing in the corner, Casey. Is that what it was? Yeah, there was like a handful of the non super religious people there that were laughing. But yeah, everybody else was scowling.
00:40:41
Speaker
That's, yeah, I think that might be my personal nightmare. Like performing to a crowd that isn't laughing is like the worst thing for a comedian. Now, do you do stand up as well?
00:40:52
Speaker
I haven't done much of it. I did stand up. So I did like musical comedy playing like a funny song on America's Got Talent. But that's one of like the few times that I've really done that sort of thing. So I really want to get into doing it more, but I haven't done much of live comedy. Definitely in the next year, as things start opening up, I want to start stepping into that world more, especially because I've grown somewhat of an audience. And for me, I think,
00:41:20
Speaker
Um, it takes a lot of the pressure off if you know, you're performing and the audience already knows who you are and they already know your style and they already like you, you know, rather than just going to open mic nights where you're just have a crowd of random people and who the fuck knows if they're going to enjoy it or not. So yeah, I've done a little bit of open mic night stuff and it has not gone well. It's been real rough. I'm telling you, that's one of the worst feelings is is just making a joke you think is funny and getting no response.
00:41:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's uncomfortable when that happens just amongst people that are acquaintances. You throw something out there thinking you're going to be a hit. Like a Mark Lowry reference.
Parental Reactions to Non-Christian Comedy
00:42:04
Speaker
I'm just not going to even try to make friends with any of these people because this was the worst first impression of all time. Dude, so what did your parents think as you started to kind of go your own direction?
00:42:18
Speaker
Um, interestingly enough, so I was getting more and more friction and sort of push back as I was going my own way. But then once I sort of came out to them that I wasn't a Christian anymore,
00:42:34
Speaker
The pushback got a lot less because now I wasn't like being a bad example for the faith, you know, from their perspective. Now I'm someone who's not in the faith, so they didn't feel as conflicted by it. I will say that they still give me pushback whenever I make very sexual jokes. That to them is like where we have the same parents.
00:42:58
Speaker
I understand as well that it's uncomfortable to hear that as the parent of someone just hearing them talk about that sort of thing. So I can't blame them too much as far as that goes. But thankfully, they've been really, they've been really supportive. That's nice. I mean, I imagine that makes it a lot easier. I feel like with a lot of people who have who drift out of it. I mean, that's I mean, one of the things we've like, just heard so many times from so many people. And I mean, Casey's in kind of in the boat to where it's like, people
00:43:29
Speaker
who shift out, they never have that conversation with their parents. They're like, they're, it comes with so much anxiety. There's so much like pressure on them to like, because I mean, I guess some of it has to do with them just not wanting to disappoint their parents. Some of it has to do with like, no one ever brings it up because the parents don't really want to hear it. And it creates a lot of discomfort and friction for, I mean, the amount of people that I'm realizing or going through that it's pretty wild. That's interesting. I didn't know that there was a common thing of just never,
00:43:59
Speaker
bringing up the topic. Really? My parents are treating it like they treated sex education. You just don't ask, don't tell. Like if we just pretend it's not real, maybe he'll just never have sex. Yeah, I had no sex ed class in high school or anything. Yeah, I don't think I've ever taken a sex ed class. Yeah, homeschool co-ops don't usually contract somebody for that.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The only sex ed I got was from my youth group saying don't have it. That's pretty much it. Did so move into L.A. Was that like a complete culture shock? I mean, where are you originally from? I'm from Kansas originally. So yes, a very, very, very big culture shock for sure. What part of Kansas? Kansas City. OK. I'm in Wichita. Oh, nice.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah, Wichita's even a little bit more would be probably even more of a culture shock from going to LA. We're bumpkins for sure. But I do have an apartment in Overland Park. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's right. 10 minutes from me. There we go. You guys could have been but you guys could have almost been in the same. Oh, you weren't there as a kid, Casey. I'm surprised you guys didn't run into each other in your Christian adventures.
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's only an enormous city. Yeah, I think sometimes people don't realize that Kansas City and Kansas is still pretty big. You know, it's not just that, you know, we know every single one of our neighbors, you know.
00:45:39
Speaker
but LA had to be like, did you, so did you have any contacts there or did you just kind of like, I'm going and I'll figure it out? So I actually got like, I was basically just emailing a bunch of agencies out in LA like, Hey, I was just on America's Got Talent. Do you want to represent me? And I actually got,
00:45:57
Speaker
an agency that was interested and agreed to sign me so that was kind of the thing I was like okay I got an agency that's interested so then I moved out there and got a job working at a restaurant and then unfortunately the opportunities from that were pretty dry I didn't really get many auditions that I was sent out to nothing
00:46:18
Speaker
really happened from that so then i ended up moving back home after about a year and a half or so cuz i just didn't it wasn't what i hoped it would be i think that is a thing that happens a lot with people who. You know chase the dream of going to l.a. and then realize oh actually this isn't just gonna i'm not just gonna instantly get a huge role in a tv show and then become super famous you know.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's it seems like such a hard place to survive just like the cost of living and just the amount of people that are there trying to do the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was difficult. But yeah, that that was definitely when I, I think when I was out in LA, the first time was when I fully fell away from the faith, I had my my parents being like,
00:47:03
Speaker
You should get you should find a church out there because if you find a church, then you'll have like a good supportive environment of people, you know, of people who can help you. And I definitely agree with, you know, sometimes churches can be a place to meet friends and find like minded people. But I tried visiting one church and I was just like, I'm just really not feeling this. I really don't think that this is right for me. And then around then is sort of when I decided.
00:47:29
Speaker
But interestingly enough, there's another part of the story I haven't told. So when I was still living in Kansas City, like right before I moved out, I met my girlfriend on the internet. Yeah, my girlfriend. Yeah, my girlfriend, she lives in Australia.
00:47:48
Speaker
which definitely my family thought that she was fake when I first first mentioned her to them. So she she is she's an atheist. And so as I'm moving out to L.A. on my own, I'm definitely talking to her and having conversations where we were discussing faith and things. And she's questioning why I believe the things that I do. And then I'm realizing, well, yeah, why do I believe the things that I do? I'm not exactly.
00:48:17
Speaker
Not exactly sure as far as that goes. So that is kind of talking with her is when I realized that I didn't really believe it anymore. And we have actually been dating now for over four years.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I ended up working out how you as you start to like as doubt starts to kind of creep in and you get less committed to the face as a whole you really start to scratch your head at certain ideas that you're like Do I have the conviction to stand by this anymore? The one we always is like a guy getting eaten by a fish and and then getting spit up like a week later and
00:48:59
Speaker
Mm-hmm cuz I was I don't know about you, but like my upbringing was the Bible is a hundred percent true Exactly how it's written. It is the inerrant Word of God to question one thing is to throw the whole Bible away Yeah, yeah, and I had that exact same thing and that's why
00:49:16
Speaker
That's why I never really had much of a transition into like being a progressive Christian, which, you know, a lot of people in L.A. would be more like progressive Christians. But because I was I was pounded so hard with that idea of like, you have to accept all of it or none of it, I was just like, well, I don't accept all of it. So I guess I accept none of it. And then like that kind of shit, shit. We don't. They set you up for it. Yeah.
00:49:44
Speaker
Set the table for me to be to leave I Could have had a slow, you know, maybe been a progressive Christian, but no I was like, well, I guess I'm done with it. So
00:50:00
Speaker
It's funny, it's like the difference between like Sam and me is like Sam has such a more nuanced perspective on Christianity and I feel like you have a real like you really identify with a lot of the ideals and the person of Jesus and all this stuff and like for me it was just like a list of rules that I was paranoid about and then when finally I was like, you know,
00:50:28
Speaker
I don't know about this part. Like, I don't know about all of it. On to the next thing. Yeah, yeah, that was kind of the same. I mean, I definitely a lot of the principles that I was taught growing up, I definitely still agree with, like, I like the part of in the Bible of like, treat other people with love and, you know, love your neighbor as yourself and try and
00:50:50
Speaker
you know, care for the poor and make the world a better place and all those sorts of things. Like I definitely like those teachings from Jesus, but as far as, I think for me what really got to me was looking at certain Old Testament passages like the one describing how to sell your daughter into slavery and the ones saying stone people to death if you find two men having sex with each other.
00:51:14
Speaker
or the ones where Jesus said, go in and murder every man, woman and child in this city. I think those were like the ones where I was like, yeah, I don't think that this book came from a God. I think it probably was written by men trying to justify trying to justify the bad things that they want to do. So, I mean, I guess if you're going to split hairs. Yeah. Well, it's funny is like the amount of effort that goes into trying to make that work is
00:51:40
Speaker
I just don't, it's lost on me at this point. Cause I mean, I used to try to make that work, like, well, you know, that's because, and then you would kind of get into this like long-winded explanation of why God was different then. And you're like, well, but then God doesn't change. And you're like, well, uh, well he didn't change, but like circumstances did, I guess, I don't know. And then you like really start pedaling back and it gets so, it's like so stressful to have to like have an entire system of beliefs that's built on trying to explain why it's not wrong as opposed to like,
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, genocide. Yeah, I feel like at the end of the day, you just kind of have to you hit the brick wall of just I'm a human and I don't understand and God is God and God has the you know, has the knowledge so I can't fully understand what God says. You know, it's funny. The only time I ever experienced people defaulting to the concept of mystery is like when they just couldn't answer a question about
00:52:38
Speaker
And he's a certain criticism. They're like, well, you know, God's a mystery. You're like, well, you didn't say that the past four hours when you explained to me, you know, why the earth is six thousand years old and carbon dating doesn't work. But when it comes to, I don't know, genocide, all of a sudden God's a mystery. This is getting a little a little strange. You don't seem to think God's a mystery when you discuss like homosexuality there. You think it's pretty set in stone, you know. Right.
00:53:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We all had a similar experience with that. So, all right. So where are you guys at? Like currently belief wise, are you fully detransition from, um, the church or I'm out completely. I think of myself as like an, an apathetic agnostic. I'm not, uh, but I, I mean, it depends on who you ask. We keep, we go back to it from time to time. We had this guy on the podcast who was like a,
00:53:35
Speaker
just a conservative evangelical type, just to, you know, have a conversation with him. He had reached out to us and he was a nice guy and we're like, you know, this could be a fun conversation to just get into it with someone who kind of represents the old ideologies. And I put him into a fun position where after we had our conversation for about an hour and a half, I was like, so based on any of the things that I've said, like, am I, do I count? Am I a Christian? He's like, I mean, I have to say no, I don't think you are. I was like, damn it.
00:54:07
Speaker
Isn't that a whole thing that you're not supposed to determine whether or not someone's a Christian? They say that, but I wish I could recall all that. To rehash everything, I guess, is a bit much, but when you denounce any of the dogmatism that they're coming from and you don't think hell exists and that you don't think people need to be a Christian or need to care about it at all,
00:54:33
Speaker
When you stop making any sort of rules for anybody else and it's just not, for me it was just like a personal choice where I had the language, I generally feel like a somewhat spiritual person, most of the time I'm not, but occasionally I feel like I have experiences that are, that I would identify as spiritual. Usually they're not anything associated with Christianity or Christian things, but I do still participate in like a small church and it's
00:55:03
Speaker
But to me, for me, this is something that I can operate in well. I mean, I do believe in, I guess, some of the tenants. I don't know. I guess I don't know what I believe about it. It just works for me. It's the easiest way to put it. If you're going to ask me to be dogmatic about whether or not the certain miracles happened or Jesus rose from the dead and things like that, I'm like, I don't know. No one really knows any of that.
00:55:34
Speaker
No, I don't know. I just don't think about it. He has all the trappings of a Christian just, you know, he voted for Biden so he doesn't get to be in the club. Yeah. So you're not a real, yeah. So there, there you can tell you're not a real Christian. Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I always had an issue with is this whole idea that you have to have everything
Christian Apologetics and Belief Defense
00:55:53
Speaker
nailed down. You have to know exactly what you believe and you have to be able to say, I know that this is what happened. And then I know this is what happened. And I know this is because I,
00:56:02
Speaker
I wasn't there. I have no idea all I can go off of is, you know, either the Bible or what historians say so Yeah, it's like you don't you can't have a Like you in the super conservative circles like I was from it's like it's not enough to just claim the title like you have to be an apologist you have to like learn the arguments in case someone like challenges a notion that you should be able to quote scripture and and defend and
00:56:31
Speaker
Whatever the idea is, you know? And I got super into that stuff. I was a big apologetics guy for a bit. I, you know, got a Bible degree for God's sake. So it's like, I thought about that a lot. Did you know, did you ever read any of the apologetics books, like the big ones, like Lee Strobel and stuff like that, Ryan?
00:56:53
Speaker
I never quite got to that level, but I did take a debate class when I was at my Christian school and they made us debate, you know, is evolution real? Is climate change real? I think we did have a debate that was just like try to debate
00:57:13
Speaker
Christianity or atheism and then we had to sort of go through the, I know they made us watch, I think it was like Ken Ham versus Bill Nye or something. There was like a big debate that they did. Yeah. That was the master debate. Yeah. Yeah. Being that like music is obviously a big part of your life. Like were you into Christian music or were you kind of always, that wasn't like a big thing for you?
00:57:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was only allowed to listen to Christian music at the beginning. And then I like slowly branched into checking out other other music. But I still have a connection to certain Christian artists like Reliant Kay, I think is my like one of my favorite artists. I love their music. And I still to this day, you know, I've seen them put out statements about things that I definitely agree with. So I don't, you know, necessarily
00:58:05
Speaker
I'll still listen to Christian music from time to time. But yeah, I definitely made that journey of only being allowed to listen to Christian music and then slowly listening to a few other artists and then eventually just listening to whatever so. Relying K is just really good. I think they're 100% with you on that they translate. I following that I didn't listen to the Christian music when I was in high school very much. So when they were like doing their early rounds, I
00:58:33
Speaker
I didn't know them. I ended up going back to them and enjoyed them. They were one of those Christian bands that didn't feel beholden to making youth group kids clap, I guess. So they got good. Their music stayed good. It got a lot more mature. Their lyrical content was always just
00:58:55
Speaker
I thought fantastic. So yeah, it definitely wasn't. It wasn't like, how can we get these buzzwords in the song so that it'll, you know, that we can perform at winter jam or whatever? What's some other ones?
00:59:10
Speaker
Um, I really like switch foot. Switch foot's good. Uh, Relink a switch foot. I always really liked David Crowder's music. Um, he had some good stuff. Trying to think. Oh, Gunger. I loved Gunger was actually a band that, uh, kind of helped me move away from Christianity because they, they, um,
00:59:30
Speaker
started as a very conservative Christian group and now they're very, very progressive. And I don't even know if they consider themselves Christian anymore. But it was interesting that was a band that they sort of dealt with being ostracized from the Christian community because of certain things that they said and that they believed certain ways. And yeah, so I think those were definitely artists that I still enjoy.
00:59:52
Speaker
I haven't actually heard of that one. Yeah. You should, you should check them out. They, um, they are very diverse and they're like musical styles and they became kind of, kind of weird and avant-garde as they went on in their musical journey. So do you, do you know Gungar Sam? Have you heard that? Yeah, I used to, he had, um, he did a pod. Michael Gungar did a podcast for a while. I don't know if he still does it. I don't know. It's called the liturgists. Um, yeah, I listened to that as well. Okay. Right. So it's like, that's, that was, um,
01:00:22
Speaker
one of those that came kind of around that time, a bunch of like, I feel like within a certain like, three years span, a lot of progressive Christian, but they realized that that was the platform for them. Of course, they don't get a voice anywhere else. Like, but as podcasting blew up, progressive Christians took to that. And I mean, there's plenty of conservative Christian podcasts, like, like, well, every mega church puts their sermons out as a podcast. So if you want to listen to Steven Furdick,
01:00:49
Speaker
just rant and rave, then you know, he's available. But that sounds great. So as far as I go ahead, I was just going to ask as far as like what he was saying about the whole like all the Bible has to be true or none of it is true. Where do you fall on that? Like that sort of belief? Like you don't agree with that necessarily? Yeah, no, not at all. I don't. I mean, it doesn't. True. Calling it true or not true, I think is a weird way to put it. I think it's just like
01:01:20
Speaker
I think, depending on what you're reading, I mean, it's all different books, different authors, different reasons who are written, like, so it just gets a little bit convoluted to say true or not, because I don't think I mean, even most of the Old Testament, I don't think anyone wrote it with the intention of being true. And you can see where different like the first and second chronicles, you know, you would if you were you one of those kids that read the whole Bible,
01:01:46
Speaker
Did you read it much? I didn't read the whole Bible, but I did. I was one of those kids who they would tell to read the Bible and then I wouldn't as much as they wanted me to. I know the gist of the different books and who wrote them and all that. You know, Paul wrote a bunch of the New Testament
01:02:06
Speaker
Right. So like that's a good start. Yeah, that's a great thing. Which ones did Jesus write? Well, I forget what books Jesus wrote. Did he write any of them? All of them, Divine Inspiration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Was that a trick question? Yeah. I think, no, Jesus just wrote Song of Solomon. That was the one that Jesus wrote. The only one directly authored by him was the one that's like Christian Komesutra. Yeah.
01:02:30
Speaker
He never had sex. The guy just needed an outlet for Christ's sake, for his sake. Sorry. Excuse me. Do you remember reading King James Version song of Solomon and feeling like it was kind of dangerous? Yeah. Ooh, I guess this does get to be in the Bible, but it feels like it shouldn't be. Your breasts are like two ferns.
01:03:00
Speaker
I mean, it does say breasts, so there's something about the discharge of donkeys at some point, I think. I probably didn't catch discharge at that age. I was like, whose emissions are like that of a donkey is something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta re-re-sung a song of it now. It's a good song. It's a good song. It's a good song. It's a good song. It's where they're slut shaming somebody. I forget who, but.
01:03:25
Speaker
Oh yeah, of course. Dude, how big a load does a donkey emit? Gotta check out Sonic Solomon to find out. How many cubits? Oh, man. He doth emit a furlong. Everybody knows cubits.
01:03:51
Speaker
Wasn't cubits like used to with like Noah's Ark or something? Yeah. Yeah. Like to measure Noah's Ark, yeah. You would use one cubit to artificially inseminate a horse. Yeah, yeah. No, I do think that is pretty accurate. I think you got to get in there because they make those shoulder length gloves, you know? Yeah, exactly. I think I saw Johnny Knoxville do that. Yeah.
01:04:17
Speaker
I'll never forget the time that I, okay, we'll just detour a little bit more. What was the Tom Green movie? Did he do a road trip or Freddie got fingered? Freddie got fingered, right? So I never watched those filthy movies, but I remember being at my grandmother's house once, and I would sleep in the living room, me and my brother, so we would always watch the movies we weren't supposed to, that were on TV.
01:04:47
Speaker
And because they don't have like HBO or something. And so I was what some Tom Green movie and I'm thinking like, Oh, I'm gonna watch this because it's funny. I'm not allowed to watch Tom Green stuff. And I remember being like, disgusted at the age I was I watched it because I don't know anything like what I saw, but I changed it. And but Tom Green was like, flopping a horse's dick around and just laughing his ass off. And I'm like, what? This isn't what I thought I was gonna watch.
01:05:15
Speaker
I thought I was going to go to hell because I just watched Beastiality and I'm concerned about my soul for a little bit. Why am I hard? Some of those movies are a little bit fucked up, those comedies from like the 2000s. Yeah. Dude, that's a great question. What was a movie or an album that was like considered suspect, like you wanted to see it, but you weren't allowed to?
01:05:41
Speaker
God Well, I remember really wanting to watch um, I remember really wanting to watch Lord of the Rings But that wasn't I mean that one wasn't that bad But that was just something that I was like, please mom and dad, please. Let me watch Lord of the Rings They wouldn't watch Lord of the Rings. No, well, I think once I turned like 14 they did but ever since I was a kid I had heard about it and it was this
01:06:04
Speaker
Majestic movie that I wanted to watch so bad. They're like at the age of 14. You'll be ready to process Yes material we will sit you down and this is the time son But I'm trying to remember if there's like a sexual thing or I mean definitely like Finding out about porn was a weird was a weird thing Did you ever get caught watching porn?
01:06:27
Speaker
Uh, yeah, sort of. I definitely had some very, very awkward talking about the worst. It was, it was more the, uh, them looking through my search history and finding like, yeah, that's okay. So that's the better option. It's not like you got caught mid mid. Yeah. Sam and I are too old man. Like back when, uh, we were,
01:06:55
Speaker
young go-hards. The internet was so bad that you would click the back button and it was a 20 second pre-loading process. If you panicked and you hit it again and again and again, it added 10 seconds every time you clicked it. Eventually, you just had to headbutt the screen.
01:07:19
Speaker
You just either had to accept your fate or destroy your computer. Those are the two. I was one of the most nervous kids of all time. So that was a scary thing for me to do. And I was homeschooled. My mom's a stay-at-home mom. That wasn't something you really got a lot of opportunities to. But when you did, there was like...
01:07:40
Speaker
You're like, oh, like your mom goes and you know, she's not gonna be bad for an hour. So you type boobs into the search bar real quick. You're like 14, 15 years old. And then God, this is, this memory just came flooding back when you talked about smashing your face into the screen. And then like, you're like, I guess I'll just click it. Like every, obviously all the options come. There's no like pictures or anything. You're just like, uh, what, what, I guess I'll just click the first one that shows up.
01:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Well, so then it brings you to the screen and then like 10 million pop-ups stop. And you're like, they're coming up back to you and click the X's and you're like, I haven't even seen boobs yet. Like, and then you're just not worth it. Then I hear like the garage reopened because my mom forgot something. She's coming back and I'm like,
01:08:34
Speaker
Like hit the power button and she comes in right when the screen shuts off you're like that computer froze Through the power cord like a rat
01:08:47
Speaker
Now that we're talking about it, I actually remember so my parents had like a they had like a blocking software on the computer so that you couldn't just search for whatever. Of course. So the first times that I was trying to find stuff was by searching for things on Wikipedia.
01:09:05
Speaker
I would like search for like nudity on Wikipedia. That was like my first because Wikipedia wasn't blocked. Did you ask Jeeves about vagina?
01:09:23
Speaker
Dude like teenage boys are the most creative at finding like detectives, you know, yeah, I think before the internet
01:09:38
Speaker
It was like, when you guys buy a crappy old computer, they would give you like these like entry level versions of programs, you know, on a CD. And they'd always give you an encyclopedia. So I remember like, we had Encarta 95 on our crappy old computer. Oh my God, that's right.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah and so i just remember like like tirelessly searching through in car to ninety five to find like renaissance paintings printing i printed one really trying to print like in nineteen ninety eight trying to print a picture.
01:10:18
Speaker
It's just like, yeah, it was like a 30 second delay and then it would make one bar. It would go, yeah, it would stay. And yeah, so I had like a nervous, 30 minutes. I hope they won't find my Renaissance paintings, please. I have a friend that did that. He tried to print a picture of a topless woman and it didn't print.
01:10:45
Speaker
right away someone was up and then it ends up printing later and the computer was his parents bedroom so they just they just found the picture sitting in the printer like three hours later oh no but yeah i definitely believe that like if you try to force kids not to do something they're gonna like find a way to get around it that's why i think like just having open communication is so much better
01:11:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, you're not gonna stifle a teenage boy's disgusting
Teenage Discoveries and Restrictions
01:11:18
Speaker
impulses. And like, if you if you remove all normal material, they're gonna find something that's gonna be weird and scary. It's gonna be weird. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I didn't know I was into this. And then you're gonna end up with some weird, kinky
01:11:37
Speaker
post pubescent boy living in your house. Exactly. And forever. That's the guy that messages April about photoshopping her into a picture where she's 80 feet tall and stomping on everything. I thought that was completely normal. That's all I could find on the internet. It seems like whatever it was into, the message board on that website was active. On the message board I found, yeah.
01:12:07
Speaker
I thought we were gonna end up talking about all the weird habits of boys going through puberty here. That's definitely something I haven't yet. It's a memory that I try to keep repressed for the most part. So thank you for forcing me to relive all that. Yeah, those were terrible times. Being like that you led the worship, like that was so I was in a worship band for a minute. And
01:12:36
Speaker
Like as, as bland and tame as all of us were, not as a band, but as people. Like there was always something that was controversial that we did. Like we played a song in a certain way and people would get upset and stuff. Like, did you ever get in trouble for like pushing the envelope somehow as a worship leader?
01:12:54
Speaker
Well, were you in a church where they were like rock music is not a good thing or like how how conservative was it? Like very conservative. Like people got mad when they started like putting the lyrics to the songs up on the overhead. Well, hi. People got mad. They were like, you know, in church, you sing out of a hymnal. And this is, you know, they like there is people that refuse to look up at it and they would just sit there with their hymnal while it was on the wall.
01:13:25
Speaker
I wish they turned around instead. It's just this endless mentality of everything. The way it is is always better than any possible improvement that we could make to something like and it's just so tiring. Yeah, 100 percent. But yeah, speaking of gungur before, I loved playing gungur music when I was leading worship. And then one day the pastor had to come to me and be like,
01:13:53
Speaker
Yeah. So Michael Gunger recently said something that was very controversial. So you're not going to be allowed to play his songs anymore in youth group. I was like, what? I don't, me playing a song doesn't mean I'm endorsing everything that Gunger has ever said, but I guess that's the, he was afraid that if I play a Gunger song that I was going to get a parent who's like, Oh, how are they playing music from this heathen? You know, it's funny cause like, it's like the con it's like, uh,
01:14:21
Speaker
say someone has a Christian band and then you know someone goes off and does like a solo thing and they're not it's not Christian anymore we can't listen to that old Christian band now because it's like the content of the music didn't change it's the exact same i find that so strange
01:14:37
Speaker
Christians are the original cancel culture instigators. That was exactly what I was gonna say, yeah. And it's so funny that so many of them complain about cancel culture now that it's affecting them, but they were the ones who were pushing it back in the day. But yeah, that is an interesting conversation to be had of can you separate the art from the artist? And I don't know if there's really a clear answer on that. Depends on what they did, you know? I'm going back to Bill Cosby.
01:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely not going to be watching the Cosby Show anytime soon. But no, yeah, there's a line you can cross for sure. And Cosby crossed it. And then that total lack of remorse and sociopathy that went along with it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
01:15:20
Speaker
I feel like there's certain things that the conservative Christian community will forgive and others that they won't. And they will not forgive you for making a statement like a pro-choice statement. They will forgive you for
01:15:39
Speaker
getting peed on by a bunch of Russian prostitutes while visiting Putin. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, if you got caught on tape saying the n-word, like, don't probably forgive you. Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:57
Speaker
I keep wondering like with Jerry jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. and Religious Forgiveness
01:15:59
Speaker
Jerry fall of jr. Like, because there's this is a discomfort with any type of sexual material. Like, he's like in the room watching a young stud like bang his wife, which has to upset them to their core. Will they forgive him for that if he's just Republican enough? I don't know. I guess so. Yeah, they did. They did. He's fine. He's fine.
01:16:26
Speaker
Jerry jr. Yeah, everyone's okay with him. Oh, yeah, that is definitely something that I always found interesting of like, when when do people say that we should extend God's forgiveness? And when is it? I think yeah, I think it's anytime someone says something that like threatens the entire faith or threatens something that we think that we believe in. That's like when they won't do forgiveness. But you know, it just it kind of depends. Yeah, I think you're spot on with that. That's a
01:16:57
Speaker
great point if it's anything regarding the faith or yeah goes contrary to the status quo of their beliefs but if it's like look he said like Casey mentioned the n-word it's like oh we just said it one time it was an accident what's the big deal it's like well you know that's in your vocabulary is a is an issue yeah yeah that's it I think that's pretty spot-on there okay right
LA Comedy Journey and Creative Freedom
01:17:26
Speaker
I want to I want to jump into a little bit more of like your work and what you what you're doing and why and like kind of I know you mentioned you went to LA and that didn't really work out you move back home but I want to yeah I want to talk about how you got into kind of doing your your form of comedy and how like what what started that what was like one of the first like what was the first thing that made you think this is this is the lane that I'm picking America's Got Talent jumping off of that
01:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. America's Got Talent was like the first thing. And then, yeah, I just got very frustrated with LA because I wasn't, you know, things weren't going the way that I wanted them to. And I think one of the things I really hated about being in LA was you always felt like kind of a prop in every, you know, it's like this huge machine and you're just one cog in it and you have to
01:18:15
Speaker
play your part and do your thing and then you're done, which there's nothing wrong with that. But as a creative person, I definitely was feeling like, oh, I want to be able to kind of have creative control over the whole process, which is why I definitely gravitated towards making things for YouTube and TikTok and Instagram because
01:18:37
Speaker
When I do that, I get to be the writer, I get to be the director, the cinematographer, I get to, you know, get better at acting. And that's just really fulfilling to me that I have like full creative control over everything. But I would say definitely like Bo Burnham was one of my biggest inspirations. Starting out, I love Bo Burnham and this guy named Tim Minchin, they're two musical comedians. And I'd say like those guys and then different people who I'd watch on YouTube, different,
01:19:05
Speaker
comedy things sort of informed me starting out doing that. But yeah, it was it was tough for for about three years or so. I wasn't having much success. You go through this big high of being on America's Got Talent and you know, you gain 4000 followers overnight and you're like, wow, this is crazy. This is awesome. And then just for the next three years, it just slowly goes down because
01:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, I followed you. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the worst. That's the worst feeling is I got to like four thousand five hundred followers on Instagram. And then every time I would post on Instagram, I would lose like 20 followers. So it was like it was like the opposite of.
01:19:48
Speaker
It just feels like your career is moving backwards. And that's the hardest feeling that you don't necessarily hear people talk about because you just hear about the success stories, but you don't hear about the person who's on TV one time and then has to deal with the next three years of slowly going in reverse. But but yeah, thankfully, I a few years ago started getting some success on TikTok. That's where I like first started gaining success again and
01:20:16
Speaker
I was working in a restaurant, um, that I wasn't like really loving the environment there. So I was just like, you know what, I'm going to start making a video every single day and I'm just going to put it on TikTok. And I feel like there's some capabilities for, for growing on here by putting out like high quality content. Cause.
01:20:34
Speaker
There aren't many people putting a lot of effort into their videos on tiktok and then thankfully that started snowballing eventually and then Yeah for the last two years. I've just been making funny videos for the internet, which has been really fun dude like were you in LA or in Kansas City again when you were like working at the restaurant and stuff
Fine Dining and Wealthy LA Customers
01:20:55
Speaker
Okay, so I worked. So I moved from L.A. back to Kansas. And then once I was in Kansas, I got a job in like a fine dining restaurant, which I was like, see, I'm like moving up in the hierarchy of restaurants. But then you realize, like, now you're just having to deal with a bunch of snobby rich people, you know, who shit on you and don't believe that you deserve the money that you get from them.
01:21:19
Speaker
So I was working in this fine dining restaurant and then the restaurant said, we're opening up a new location in LA. So I was like, I was like, oh, okay, maybe I could try LA again. So I moved out to LA when they opened up the new location.
01:21:38
Speaker
And then I hated it there. So then I moved back home a second time. So I've moved to LA and back twice now. But yeah, so I was working in this restaurant in LA. I was not enjoying it. It was in like the heart of Beverly Hills. And I thought it was going to be awesome because I was going to be making more money. But really, it was just like
01:21:58
Speaker
dealing with the snobbiest of the snobby people in the entire country. And I was actually getting a lot more people in LA who would like not leave me tips than in Kansas, which I was kind of surprised by. Like I thought, you know, LA is this liberal city that should at least understand that people need to be paid properly. But nope, once you get to like, the 1%, a lot of them are just like, see you as a
01:22:23
Speaker
non-human, you're just there to serve them food and they don't want to tip you. Did anyone famous ever come in where you got to spit on their dinner?
01:22:35
Speaker
Well, I was I would spend on everyone's dinner. So it's just like, like, yeah. No, I did. I did. I did not ever do that. I'm trying to remember. We had some a few famous people come in. Oh, John Cena came in a bunch of times. Oh, really? Yeah. So that was cool. Seeing John Cena. He seemed like he was really chill and laid back.
01:23:00
Speaker
But there was this. Yeah, but there was this. Yeah, just just the tip. But there was a there was this guy who's like a big famous plastic surgeon in L.A. who came into the restaurant and then I had to serve him and his whole family and he was like so.
01:23:19
Speaker
He was just so rude. He was like, oh, this was horrible, horrible service because the the as they brought the food out to us, they didn't do it in the correct order. Like he, you know, he expected everything to be exactly perfect. And yeah, so at that point, I was just like, this is the worst. I need to get out of here. Did he offer all the wages, jobs?
01:23:45
Speaker
I feel like he would have, honestly. He's like, here's my card, honey. You look like you could use a bigger pair. Yeah, you could use some. I feel like, oh, yeah. And we had this extra fancy part of the restaurant, which was this secret bar that was supposed to be for just celebrities and stuff. But apparently, the people who went in there were being real scumbags to the waitresses and stuff. And it's just like,
01:24:09
Speaker
Ah, go figure. Yeah, not super surprising. But yeah, once you definitely glimpse like the the life of the super rich people living in L.A., you definitely you're like, I do not want to be a part of this. It's funny, like all like so many of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis are comedians in and they all lived in L.A. and now they're all leaving.
01:24:33
Speaker
Now that they're officially leaving the place, they are just taking a dump on all of that. They just hated it, but they put up with it because it was like, this is where you do this thing that I do and I have to put up with this. Sometimes you feel like it's where you got to be because everyone else is here and that's where you can audition for roles or whatever.
01:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. Did you, uh, did you like try to do some acting stuff while you were there too? Um, I'm trying to remember the second time I went out, I was like trying to find an agency, but I don't think I ever really found a new agency the second time. Cause I was so enveloped in like working at this fancy restaurant. And then, you know, I was just getting home feeling exhausted from the restaurant and I'm like,
01:25:21
Speaker
My life is I want to be an entertainer, not to be a server in a fancy restaurant. Did you know that they're introducing Luciferian symbols into movies subliminally? People don't even know. I've heard about it so many times that I'm surprised that people don't know at this point.
01:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, a family member sent me one of those videos, like not that one, maybe a year ago. Yeah, was it the one about Hillary Clinton eating babies or whatever? Oh, I mean, one of them. Yeah. Yeah. One of those erotic fan fictions. Yeah. So right after you drifted away from everything, did you have to turn in your
01:26:07
Speaker
I mean, you were in it all through high school, so I imagine they asked for your baptism card back. Has that happened? I had to do the unbaptism, where they dry you off and you're like, you are now? You have been unbaptized. They just drowned you in the tank in front of the car. No, they throw you down in an empty tank.
01:26:39
Speaker
They all just dry you off with a bunch of towels, and they're like, we have baptized you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You do a whole channel on your social media that's just all making fun of Midwest Christian values.
Midwest Christian Comedy and Personal Experiences
01:26:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:59
Speaker
Well, I still I still like live with my parents. So those types of jokes are still kind of I did make I did make it was the video that you guys saw me was me Making fun of like being a Gen Z pastor or something. You said that that's yeah. Yeah We loved it. That was well, that's what that was how I first got introduced you Casey sent that to me of you It was like you addressing a youth group about how premarital sex is sus. Yeah. Yeah, I
01:27:27
Speaker
so good but i definitely experienced that of the youth pastors trying to be hip with whatever the new phrase is you know and then just being so cringy about it that's the vibe of it too like that soft voice over music yeah
01:27:45
Speaker
I heard it. I was like, there's no way this guy didn't grow up in church. You don't make that unless you grow up in church. Well, I had been that guy. I had been the guy who was playing on the piano and praying. And so I had firsthand experiences from it.
01:28:01
Speaker
The other one I fell in love with was the boom where I'm not okay. How'd your parents feel? They actually weren't too bad about that one. Thankfully, I consider my parents very logical, caring people. They're conservatives, but they refuse to vote for Trump. That's great.
01:28:23
Speaker
They were very logical about the coronavirus. They weren't throwing around any conspiracy theories or anything. We were very safe as far as that goes. So that's awesome. Yeah. So I've been I've been very blessed that I think my parents are like my my dad is doing this thing at his university trying to, you know, help like black students get, you know, get further in the in the program and everything, which I think is really cool. And so
01:28:50
Speaker
Definitely they're good people in my opinion. It's just sometimes they run into this is just what I believe because it's what I think the Bible tells me I have to believe and then...
01:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's what's hard coming from our like our background is I feel like there's a real like if you didn't come from that background it's easy to pick an issue that seems black and white to you and to make statements like Anyone who believes this is a piece of garbage and you should disregard them. You should just cut them out of your life and
01:29:26
Speaker
When you come from our background, you're like, well, for one, I used to think that and it wasn't that long ago. Like I had a lot of dumb ideas, you know, and to like, I know people who think that still, and they're not bad people. They're just stuck. Like they're stuck in this ideology and they can't break out because it's to break out on this idea is to challenge their entire worldview.
01:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Faith, Illness, and Comfort
01:29:51
Speaker
My I think my parents would be OK with me talking about this a little bit, but my dad has a he has like a disease that's sort of a ongoing disease that he's not going to heal from. So definitely having the solace of knowing that this pain is temporary and I'm going to go somewhere where, you know, all the pain is going to be taken away and God is going to reward me for the fact that I'm being so strong through this right now. It's like it's a really I feel like that's the beautiful part of religion.
01:30:20
Speaker
So for me to turn around and be like, your religion's bullshit. Dad is like, you know, I'm in a privileged position where I don't, I'm not having to deal with any diseases. So for me to come to him and be like, um,
01:30:34
Speaker
showed up, you know, I just would feel kind of insensitive in my perspective. Yeah, I think that makes so much sense. And I feel like one of the pitfalls of like right now and the place that we're all in as a society is to think like to start thinking that no rational person could come to a different conclusion on a particular issue than you.
01:31:04
Speaker
Like anyone on the other side of this must be an idiot or a terrible person Yeah, and there's just so many things like especially coming from a religious religious background there's so many things that anchor you to positions that you don't know about but like You have to uphold because to question them is to like throw everything into question, you know
01:31:25
Speaker
And yeah, and I'm not going to say, you know, I think that there are a lot of apologists who have come up with pretty logical reasons for why the Bible is legit. And there's a lot of very smart people who have explanations for all the questions that you ask about Christianity. So to just label them all as idiots, it's like that's not really going to accomplish anything, you know? Exactly. Yeah, you
01:31:51
Speaker
You have to decide what you want. Do you want to try to reach these people or do you want to write them off and feel superior? I don't know. That's really painting it in a black and white view that's probably not accurate. I think the other shades are great of that.
01:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'm definitely in a position where me and my parents disagree on a lot of things, but we've been able to learn to coexist pretty well with each other. And I feel like I've, you know, I've heard a lot of stories of families where that doesn't really work out that way. And there is, you know, that rift that happens, but I am pretty lucky to be in a position where me and my parents have been able to just kind of agree to disagree on the things that we disagree on and everything. But
01:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. The thing that's really good about my parents is that they're always willing to listen to why I believe a certain thing. Like I had a conversation the other day with my dad about like capitalism. He was, you know, he was willing to listen to why I believe certain things on different perspectives. That does make me question their Christian credentials.
01:32:55
Speaker
Well, he never, he never, uh, you can have a conversation about something without having to, you know, he still stood firm to all his beliefs when he's talking about it, you know? Sure. Well, having the conversation, at least the civil discourse is what we're missing often. So as long as that you can get that, I feel like we've maybe accomplished something.
01:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But then yeah, the question is, is like, sometimes should you just say, okay, you've gone too far. I don't want to have civil discourse with you anymore because it's, you know, it's not worth it. And that is sometimes the answer too. And I feel like that is a complicated, complicated road to figure out. Definitely. Yeah, there's definitely issues like that, that like, you know, I've come to with certain family members where it's like,
01:33:45
Speaker
We're not going to agree and to talk about this is just to invite chaos, you know, like conflict. So I'm just not going to talk about this with you, you know? Yeah, I was, I was, um, just over at my cousin's house and I was sitting with my cousin and my cousin's boyfriend and her boyfriend was like, yeah.
01:34:06
Speaker
She's trying to she really doesn't want me to get the vaccine because she's really worried about it And I was just like I don't want to do an argument about this I was just like well from what I've seen there haven't been too many side effects And then we just moved on to a different topic because I didn't want to argue about that You know yeah, that's that's definitely on that list right now Which which vaccine did you get I got a Pfizer
COVID-19 Vaccines and Side Effects
01:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Did you get any side effects after your second shot? No worse than the first shot. I was just basically like kind of out of it and sore for a day like sore in my arm.
01:34:45
Speaker
I got nothing after the first shot. The second shot, I got it like 8.30 in the morning. I was fine all day and like 9.30 that night, I just started feeling like garbage and like I got like this chill and I just could not quit shaking like.
01:35:04
Speaker
I literally went to bed and I like had to concentrate to not just sit there and like shiver. Oh wow. To the point of like convulsions it felt like. But the next morning I woke up and I felt kind of groggy and had a headache and by noon I was fine.
01:35:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people who don't really know about these sorts of things, they don't realize that that feeling like crap is actually just your body's immune system responding to it. So it can actually be a good thing to see that you have a fever that you're feeling bad because that just means that your immune system is responding to trying to kill the dead virus that they put in you. I mean, either that or it takes like 12 hours to sterilize yourself.
01:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, it takes 12 hours to turn you gay. Dude, I would have paid extra for the one that sterilized me. Yeah, right. I just sent Sam a gift certificate. Have you been vaccinated, Sam? Oh, yeah, super-vaxed. So, Vax, it's ridiculous right now. Yeah. Which one did you get?
01:36:14
Speaker
Pfizer, baby. Oh, we're all Pfizer boys. Pfizer boys. Pfizer boys? Oh, man. Ryan, it's been a lot of fun having you on here. I really appreciate you talking to us about your story. I had no idea you're on America's Got Talent, so that was a fun thing to learn. Now I'm going to go find those videos. Yeah, watch the first round. Do not watch the second round where I made a very cringy performance and got sent home.
01:36:43
Speaker
I actually forgot to ask you how far you made it, so round two. Round two, yeah, it's the spoiler alert, yeah. Can I ask one thing really quick? Yeah. Casey, you said you're like an apathetic agnostic. How would you like to find where you sit as far as that goes? I'm not, so I'm not an atheist.
01:37:07
Speaker
Like, I just feel like I don't know. And I just don't care enough to invest in finding out right now, you know? Like, I feel like I spent so many years of my life, like, trying to figure this out and trying to define a position, you know?
01:37:28
Speaker
at this point like I'm not willing to read a book about it or to do any research like and really like I feel like Sam and I are kind of opposites in certain ways like Sam is a big reader and so like we have like these guests on that are authors or you know deep into theology and stuff and they've read a lot of the same things and he has like really nuanced perspectives on that stuff like
01:37:56
Speaker
Me, I'm not a reader. I feel like I garner all information from just talking to people and hearing their stories. Like that's what interests me more than anything. Yeah, I'm not much of a reader either. And definitely my response when people are like, well, you should read this book and this book and this book. My response now is like, well, I also have a lot of other religions that I also want to study. So I feel like I've gotten enough Christianity for now. I want to learn more about like,
01:38:24
Speaker
I want to learn more about Islam and Hinduism and that sort of thing because I feel like I've gotten enough of that. I feel like I learned enough about other religions from my Christian teachers. I'm sure you got the most accurate view of those faiths from your Christian teachers.
01:38:45
Speaker
It's like everybody that you learn about a religion from is an apostate of that religion, the switch to Christianity. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, I was definitely taught that atheists are only atheists because they hate God and want to go like have sex all the time or whatever, you know. The funny thing about people who are like, oh, man, you've been unconvinced about something your entire life. You should read this one book and that'll fix it. It's like, I hate the idea that like reading one book will
01:39:15
Speaker
as opposed to like building blocks. Like if you gave, like when I first started shifting in my beliefs, going from like your conservative evangelicalism to where I'm at now, which is ironically, you could maybe argue based on my inability to give specific answers about exactly what I believe could be an agnostic too. But I just kind of, along with admitting that I can't know and don't really know, I like
01:39:43
Speaker
I've found a way to make this work for me. And the principles of it, I think, reflect what I understand to be the truth of the universe. So it ties in for me in a way that I can make work. So I think you can find these principles in this way of being that I think is true in other religions. There'll be the quote unquote liberal version of those religions, too.
Civil Discourse on Religion
01:40:09
Speaker
If you look at statistics from
01:40:10
Speaker
Judaism to Islam to Christianity. They're all kind of similar in the things they say, but they extrapolate the information and those understandings of truth from different books. But I'm like, if back in my conservative evangelical days, you gave me a book that I would read now.
01:40:28
Speaker
I would look at that, I would get 10 pages in and be like, this is horseshit and put it right in the garbage. It's like, you can't just flip somebody's understanding like that. Like, you'd reach interest in where you're Yeah, you wouldn't say shit. Yeah, I wouldn't have said it then. I remember censoring myself a lot. Like, you would just say like, the you would say F for fuck.
01:40:50
Speaker
You would never finish it. If you finish the word, something bad was going to happen. My parents told me not to say frick because it was like a substitution word for the artwork. Yeah, the substitution word. That was a big deal. What's hack? What's darn it? What's literally every word that we have that's not a swear is a substitution for a swear.
01:41:10
Speaker
But something that something that I think is interesting is I feel like there's this stereotype of atheists that, you know, I mean, from the Christian perspective, atheists are like, I don't know, they've been tempted by the devil into believing what is wrong. So they want to tempt Christians away from Christianity. But me sitting here as someone who is an atheist, I'm like, I don't care. I don't care how you label yourself. I don't need you to have the perfect label. I don't need you to tell me that you're not a Christian or you're agnostic or atheist. Like I literally it doesn't matter at all to me. So.
01:41:40
Speaker
But yeah, I think it's so insulting. It can be very insulting of your own intelligence and your own convictions when people assume that the only reason you aren't a Christian anymore is because you haven't read the right book or you haven't heard the right thing. It's like, can't you have some respect for me that I've done research and I have reasons for why I believe what I believe now? The answer is no.
01:42:05
Speaker
Dude, okay, let me throw something out there and lose the respect of everyone listening. So you want to know what's more compelling to me than any of that. And maybe this is just like my personality or my learning style or whatever. So I was talking to just say a friend of mine and he was at a relative's house that has a pool.
01:42:27
Speaker
It was winter time. They had a cover stretched over the pool, but it had been raining So there's like all this water on the cover of the pool, right? So they're inside they're sitting at the table talking having a good time and stuff and he's like I just got this like feeling like this like shiver up my spine where I was like Where's my son so-and-so and everybody at the table is like I think he's downstairs playing with the other kids or something and he's like
01:42:54
Speaker
No, I got to go. I'm gonna go find him. So he walks outside and his kid had fallen onto the cover of the pool. He was face down in the water and like when he pulled him out, he was just blue.
01:43:11
Speaker
Oh, wow. So they, they start like CPR, they call the cops, there's a cop for some reason, it's out in the middle of nowhere, there's a cop like right around the corner. So a cop's there immediately. His kid like, you know, totally incapacitated, all of a sudden, just like coughs up all this water and comes to and like, for some, I don't know what that is. And maybe that's just a person telling a story from the light of, you know,
01:43:41
Speaker
Skewed 2020 right but for some reason like that to me Makes me a more compelled that there's something out there that I don't understand like cuz I'm pretty content to just be like I don't know I don't know what it is and that's fine But when you hear that story of someone getting a feeling and just having no rational explanation for why
01:44:03
Speaker
Right. It just, I don't know. That to me is for some reason is more compelling that there's something beyond like what I can sense and see and smell and see that makes me think, well, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe there is something more. Yeah. And like what about Bigfoot, you know?
Agnostic Atheism and Skepticism
01:44:21
Speaker
Right. For me where I'm at, I'm like very skeptical. And I think I have never really had one of those unexplainable experiences. So maybe that's why I have, you know, I'm more in the skeptical realm, but I would consider myself an agnostic atheist because
01:44:41
Speaker
when someone described it to me it's like agnostic means you don't know an atheist means you don't believe so it's like i don't believe in god but i also don't know whether or not there is a god so that's sort of where i sit basically yeah i could yeah i think that's a good way to put it yeah well there was this one you know this is i don't know why it reminded me of this casey uh maybe because it's a life and death story that you told but um in youth group i heard a story and tell me if this
01:45:09
Speaker
If this doesn't make you believe in the power of the Lord, I don't know what will. So let me know where you guys stand with your faith after I tell this story, okay? Okay. So this guy goes out, Christian man with his son, son's a Christian, takes his non-believer friend, they go out on a boat together. They're having a good old time, chatting it up. And then the waves get a little bit crazy and a storm rolls in and things get wild. And eventually both children fall overboard.
01:45:37
Speaker
And the waves are going nuts in this one life prison. And the dad yells out to his son, he says, I know I'll see you again. And he throws the life as ever.
01:45:49
Speaker
That's Abraham, yeah Wow
01:46:14
Speaker
I don't know if I could do that for God, but that is beautiful. And now I'm like, that is... Fuck. I mean, I don't think there's any correct answer to like what you would do in that scenario, but... As a parent, I can tell you, I would save the fucking shit out of my kid. I love your actual kid. Yeah. Yeah. Like, look, man, I'm really sorry. You're probably a good ass dude. I feel bad for your parents. I'll go to your funeral.
01:46:39
Speaker
Throw the fucking thing to my kids. Absolutely. Did they tell you that story before or after they did the Columbine drills where they put a finger gun to your head and asked you to say whether you believed in God?
01:46:52
Speaker
And has that ever is there ever been an instance where like shooters ask you if you believe in God or not? I don't think I've ever seen that in the news of that actually happening. Well, I think Billy Graham Jr. Oh, it's Franklin Graham. He probably has a story like that. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe in a different country. But I think in America, I don't think people are really being very persecuted for their faith in America.
01:47:19
Speaker
I mean, there's the war on Christmas. That's pretty fucking dumb. True. We're barely, barely surviving the war on Christmas. It's a war of attrition for sure. Yeah. I think, I think one of the times that I started feeling like I was having doubts is I was at my friend's church and they, in front of the whole congregation, they're like, our prayer group went to a hospital this week and we prayed for everyone in the hospital and then
01:47:47
Speaker
everyone in the hospital just started walking out of the hospital and they were all healed. I was like, what? Yeah, they claimed that they went to a hospital and healed everyone by praying. I'm like, I did not hear about this in the news or anything. Come on, Pastor Terry, you're overselling it. You're going too far, Terry. Let's say you healed one guy.
01:48:11
Speaker
Oh my God, that's a bold move. That is a bold move. Okay. Oh my God. Well, I feel like we made some breakthroughs here tonight. I do too. I mean, I think you guys are close to getting saved, so that's nice. You've brought me back. The only, I have one request. If you find yourself coming back, I want to be the one to
01:48:39
Speaker
re-baptize you. That's the only thing I ask. You can be the one to throw me the life preserver. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I can be the person that drowns. Yeah. Ryan, do you want to plug any of your stuff? I know you've got a YouTube channel. You're big on TikTok. Go ahead and... Oh, sure. Yeah. Just look up Mr. Beard wherever you want to find me. Mr. Beard. There's only one.
01:49:08
Speaker
Only one. Well, there's other people who, I think there's like a Beard Care brand that's named Mr. Beard, so you might have searched a little bit. But yeah, thanks for having me on, guys. This was a really great conversation and I appreciate it. Yeah, it was great to meet you, man. Yeah, you too. All right, guys. Well, thanks for listening and we will see you next time.