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Ep. 247 – The Book of Mormon: Don’t Tread on Abinadi w/ Burton Miller
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This week we’re happy to welcome back our friend Burton Miller, fresh off of his recent comedy tour! Burt joins us this week to discuss our childhood bullies, BookTok literature, Joseph Smith’s magnificent holy spectacles, and look over some of the final words of persecuted prophet from the book of Mosiah, Abinadi. Burt just launched a new podcast of his own that we think a lot of you guys will enjoy! It’s called Creative Turn with Burton Miller, and his goal is to “demystify the creative process by asking professional creatives ten questions about how they are following their dreams.” Follow Burt on IG (@burtola), listen to the first episode of his podcast on all streaming platforms, and catch the final performance of his comedy show “The 40 Year Old Burton” in Cleveland on November 1!
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Transcript
Myths of Giants and Joseph Smith's Spectacles
00:00:00
Speaker
Basically, it gets into like pupillary distance, you know, and if when you're getting glasses, or if you're ordering them on Zenny or online, you have to measure your own PD, your pupillary distance, how many inches apart your pupils are, because that's how they ah manufacture the lenses.
00:00:16
Speaker
The, the lenses that Joseph Smith used were like eight inches wide or something. So then an eight inch so e so in p d d one huge PD.
00:00:30
Speaker
So then they were kind of, so that's where you get like giant species that used to live in North America was because in order fit, perhaps, to fit these glasses, you'd have to be 10 feet tall.
00:00:42
Speaker
for them to fit normally the spectacles and but they were like given to joseph smith for the interpretation so that's where this idea came from that like this ancient species was 10 feet tall this this ancient species allegedly wore spectacles that could be put on a regular sized man like a toddler picking up their parents classes and putting them on
00:01:21
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Growing Up
Reunion and Friendship Over Kansas Barbecue
00:01:24
Speaker
Christian. I'm Sam. And I'm Casey. And to today we are joined once again by our friend Burton Miller. Hey everybody.
00:01:35
Speaker
Did you miss me? Oh, so much. ah I... You're okay. A lot. You never know how things will go when you have. ah yeah I know your personality well enough, but like when you sometimes you bring on friends and they're like, it sucks.
00:01:52
Speaker
And it's just deer. And it's like, you got to warm them up deer in the headlights. Like, oh, what do we do? This is weird. I don't normally do this. um And you are ah felt like we just kind of it was just like an episode of the podcast, but it was just like three guys hanging out.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah. And here we are again. I'm excited to see you because after going to dinner with you, i have I have a mental association between you and like a serviceable pulled pork sandwich.
00:02:23
Speaker
A huge pile of meat. Yeah. where where where Where was this pile of meat from? From Kansas. Yeah. from ah virtual local spot Local spot, Casey.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was some like kind of mediocre barbecue place that we went to. It was across the street from a roadway in where I happened to be staying.
Kansas Hotel Anecdotes and Art Show Reunions
00:02:45
Speaker
And for the listeners at home, ah you know, Sam and i have been friends for years, you know, in person. But Casey and I finally got to meet in person over big old plates of smoked Kansas barbecue. And it was glorious.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yes, he left the past behind and he carried the bedbugs along. Yeah, the roadway in was slightly questionable. um i think there were a lot of, you know, long term residents in there, which is fine.
00:03:17
Speaker
um But it was, you know, there was a hollowed out indoor pool that was just filled with old deck chairs, busted out vending machines. Yeah.
00:03:28
Speaker
You know, all the smoke. It was no smoking. ah Previously a set for a zombie apocalypse movie. It was a set. It was a no smoking hotel. But outside every room, there were like chained coffee cans chained to the air conditioning units with dirt in them. So you could just go out, smoke right outside your door while all the smoke gets sucked right back into your room through the AC. Yeah. Yeah. If you took the air filter out of that furnace and and just took a bite of it, it's the equivalent of smoking for 16 years. Exactly.
00:04:04
Speaker
It's a concentrated dose. I also like the the coffee cans. Tincture of cigarette. the Yeah, the coffee cans were definitely chained. They can't risk that loss.
00:04:15
Speaker
Those people have already lost too much. Yeah.
00:04:21
Speaker
was it you just stopped for ah You were going from where where? You stopped in Kansas on your way from where to where? That's when I was what left Vegas after all the shows and when was moving to Cleveland. So it was on my drive basically across um from west to east. And I went through Kansas because my friend from Vegas, Justin Fevella, has an art show at the Ulrich Museum, which is currently at Wichita State.
00:04:51
Speaker
um And if anybody in the area can go see it through, um i think early December, December 6th. But I wanted to see his show. It's a big installation, contemporary art show. And then I was like, wait a minute.
00:05:04
Speaker
Casey is not that far away. So it worked out to get to see Casey as well. That's so cool. ah It's no longer a Vegas guy. You're now in Cleveland. i' mean I'm in the Great Lakes, baby.
00:05:15
Speaker
It's part of a long play to stalk, kill, and skin Drew Carey. Is that where he lives? Yes. Well, that's where the show took place. um Yeah, it's great. I mean, i finally, after three and a half years, you know, my gay boyfriend and I moved in together, and it's been fantastic. oh it's It's cool that he's gay, because it be it is if he was straight, he'd probably be like a youth pastor or something. So that would have been...
00:05:40
Speaker
Right. Exactly. um So, you know, that compatibility piece was helpful with us moving together. um And yeah, so I'm out here now and it's been awesome.
00:05:51
Speaker
If it was a 70s, you'd just be long term roommates forever. ah Exactly. yeah. Soon to be roommates again with the way things are going.
00:06:04
Speaker
That was about politics, Nick, not about our relationship.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. Things aren't going great. We try to, it's funny. Every, we all, there's always those little lures that pull us in, but maybe we we'll hold off as long as we can, but I do already have something, a little snippet for us in the, in the realm of politics tonight.
00:06:29
Speaker
um We last talked before you went on your very first comedy tour. Yeah, I think we talked them in the spring. Yeah, and then ah I had mentioned on the show that I had gone to the one you had in the Boston area, and I sung its praises very loudly. Thank you, Sam. i only got to catch up with you for a minute afterwards because there were so many lovely people there to see you, but It truly was such a great night. So funny, fun, lots to learn, stuff to laugh about.
Comedy Tours and Personal Growth
00:07:05
Speaker
It's good. it's ahs It was awesome. um But I wanted to ask, like, Dr. We wanted to have you back on. You know, it's such that's a huge deal. I think you did something phenomenal. I think you took a huge risk. You did something most people absolutely do not have the guts or balls to do. So um how was it, man? I mean, that's lot of travel.
00:07:25
Speaker
In your own car. It's not the glamorous type. It's not the... It it was not glamorous. It was not glamorous. We did it all by bi car. Nick came with me for a good chunk of it for all the Eastern dates, New York, Boston, Chicago.
00:07:40
Speaker
and then I went to the final Vegas, LA, and then came back. it was It was really fun. I mean, I love road tripping. So being on the road all summer was like a dream for me.
00:07:51
Speaker
um That was like not, I don't know, that that was really not a problem. I enjoyed it all. I love being on the road and doing the shows was super fun. You know, I wanted to do something um for my 40th. And once I like, I think I said on the previous show, once I had the the title, I was like, if I don't do it now, then I can't do it again. I'm only for turning 40 once.
00:08:15
Speaker
yeah so Again, if you have to wait 10 years and hope for a new Steve Carell movie. Exactly, exactly. um Or then I can do, i can base it off the Molly Shannon character, um Sally O'Malley, because she's 50.
00:08:27
Speaker
fifty um ah sequel to the Steve Carell movie would be, it would inevitably a Christian film and he would be a born again virgin and that would be awesome. The 50-year-old born, born e right.
00:08:41
Speaker
The 50-year-old born again virgin. Entering the manosphere, not my whole
00:08:49
Speaker
um But I mean, i I loved it. I got to, you know, see multiple venues. I got to see so many friends all around the country, got to perform. um And it was a blast. And I i have one more date coming up. We're doing a Cleveland show on November 1st at Play Playhouse Square and ah it's called Kennedy's Cabaret. It's a small little downstairs venue in the Playhouse District of Cleveland and it's going to be really fun. So anybody who's in this region, come on down November 1st to Kennedy's Cabaret at Playhouse Square and see the show.
00:09:27
Speaker
was yeah The balcony seats are already taken, though. He's like setting Drew Carey up there to hopefully do like a John Wilkes Booth type thing. Yeah. so It's all cardboard cutouts of ninety sitcom characters. Yeah.
00:09:44
Speaker
When you did the the first show you did, um how like how how was that? like How are you feeling? Okay, the first show, the venue was so hot. It was like blazing hot. They had this tiny air conditioner in there, but I mean, we were like melting. It felt like the inside of a volcano.
00:10:04
Speaker
But also it was, um I mean, it was in Brooklyn and it was kind of this small, like 50, 60 seat um venue and kind of like a converted warehouse, like arts kind of loft area.
00:10:18
Speaker
And I don't know, it it was just, it was really fun. The crowd in New York was, was super fun. um I will say this, Sam, cause you were at the Boston show, you know, New England still has a little bit of that,
00:10:30
Speaker
you know the puritan prudishness so some of the material definitely played better in brooklyn than it did in boston or the the the north shore um even though boston and you know it's blue through and through um some some of the material you know you you learn that it it just plays differently in different rooms with different places yeah some of that religious there's still like probably a little bit more like cultural religiosity Yes, very much, which was not present at all for the New York show.
00:11:06
Speaker
But, you know, that's like some of the jokes that are, you know, they're based on, you know, trauma, traumatic experiences of some sort. Right. Yeah.
Life Journey from Seminary to Comedy
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah. and Like there's got there's sometimes that like pete there's you get the feeling that people don't know if they're supposed to laugh, you know, where it's like, yes,
00:11:26
Speaker
Which is funny to me. Is this a joke? i Right. And I felt I'm like, there are times where I'm like, I feel like I'm I feel like I'm laughing too hard right now. And um and and that I appreciate it. I'm like, oh, people.
00:11:41
Speaker
This is funny. I don't know why. he Oh, oh i ah things were rough. but It's like, you guys, ah but I was a little surprised. I was actually wondering if you knew of like people who, did you know of anyone who went um and feel free to skip if you think they'd listen to this too, but ah who, who,
00:11:59
Speaker
who was, who went because of the burden they knew and what, what wasn't sure of like what the material was going to be, or was it mostly people who had, yeah, there were, there were definitely people.
00:12:11
Speaker
um And that's partly why I did it. You know, i was so involved in the church for so long. I went to seminary, I was working at a church, you know, and then after I stepped back from all of that and then fast forward five years and I am not going to church anymore. I have a boyfriend, you know, finally just,
00:12:28
Speaker
came out, no strings attached. A lot of people just didn't understand that. And that's fine because, you know, we hadn't been actively talking for multiple years. And so a lot changes in those years.
00:12:40
Speaker
So that was another reason why I wrote the show is because I can perform this show and answer pretty much everybody's questions that they're going to ask otherwise and walk through my reasoning, make it funny, at least funny to me.
00:12:53
Speaker
um And so there were definitely people who... were surprised uh you know they and who are still very much in the church and um if nothing else i am happy that they got to hear my story my reasoning and where i'm at with things which is what i wanted yeah i think he's gay did you did you know that no i didn't did you know that um This section gets a little heavy. This is where I talk about the time that I bullied a kid into being held back a year. but is this your is Is this your stand-up set, Casey?
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's the one I'm going to write. Coming out coming out as a bully? yeah
00:13:40
Speaker
The one thing, that's, he was the one, no, was, it was, you were the one who was bullied, but you're just so insecure about it that you're going to make an entire standup set about how you were actually the, the bully the whole time. It's a very like psychologically imbalanced concept of, uh,
00:13:59
Speaker
you You wishing, you willing yourself into a role that never existed. It's called unboxing the trauma that I inflicted.
00:14:11
Speaker
So I don't have to feel bad about it anymore. Right. It's funny now, guys. Come on. we're We're all laughing together. I got my bully kicked out of school. Hey.
00:14:22
Speaker
Wow. Good for you. Look at this guy. I set him on a. why did Why did they bully you? Oh, he was just a dumb prick with the dumb prick dad. And I think it was genetic.
00:14:34
Speaker
It wasn't any shortcomings on your on your side. Well, I was i because the short jokes. Oh,
00:14:43
Speaker
I was the most I was the easiest target for sure. I was like a little short fat kid. Oh, gosh. i wasn't I wasn't going for anything specific. I was just wondering if he was like, oh, you're this or you're that or whatever. Because, I mean, bullies love like a singular thing to bully about. They don't really have brain cells to hold multiple characteristics in place at once. so I was wondering if there was anything...
00:15:08
Speaker
Singular they were going for in their harassment. He was just like a general just jerk that I was kind of afraid of, you know, like he kind of freaked out once in a while and hurt somebody or whatever. And.
00:15:21
Speaker
a lot of threats and stuff like that. And he was just a ah ah jerk. Like he would, he would purposely like hurt kids, you know? And like, so we, our school was kindergarten through 12th grade, all in the same big classroom, you know, it's a terrible setup.
00:15:41
Speaker
And we would have like, what could wrong with that age? Right. waits K through 12 and one, one classroom, one room. Yeah. Cause it's basically homeschooling with a group.
00:15:51
Speaker
Okay. i think Everybody sits in a little cubicle and works on their books. It's illegal in 38 states to do it that way. It should be. We use the word cons so consortium to get around having to use the word school.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah. they and they call it's it's It's like the it's like a A farmer's market, but for homeschool families. You can bring a tent.
00:16:16
Speaker
You're all there ah individually homeschooling your children in the same space, but it doesn't count. I know in Massachusetts, there was some conversation, like ah there had to be some workarounds with our homeschool co-ops because...
00:16:31
Speaker
Massachusetts is a little stricter on probably the education. Yeah. Then most States. So it's like, like yeah you can't educate students unless you are licensed to do so. So it's like the homeschool co-ops are just set up with a certain language in a way that it's like,
00:16:50
Speaker
you know Most of them are weekly and you'd be like a science class, but it's just you know someone who knows how to suck an egg into a bottle or something like that. Whoa, cool. It's so funny too, because I remember for our science, they try to make it legit.
Homeschool Co-op Stories
00:17:08
Speaker
So it's like you would have to I don't because I don't know regular school if you would science and science class with experience, you would like have to write about it and then write what happened and then whether or not things happen the way you thought it was going to happen. Well, in public school, after you they suck the egg through the bottle, there's not a preacher that comes in and says, and that's why God doesn't allow abortion.
00:17:32
Speaker
yeah They suck an egg into a bottle, they go over gender reassignment surgery, and then they have you dissect a suckling pig. they suck a egg into as They suck an egg into a bottle and slowly get move up to things thinner and longer and then they go and the rest you know you can figure on your own time yeah um just not if it's made of glass all right but uh i just remember like oh never doing it i just i wasn't even ah i was a really good kid i never pushed back on anything in real life but
00:18:10
Speaker
It was like my mom would always ask, like, oh, you got to do this. You got to do the whole thing. I never did it. And there's no real grades in homeschool co-op. So it was just like a week after week of me just writing a sentence or two and not finishing it. And nobody ever following up either, by the way.
00:18:26
Speaker
Sounds like your teacher was bad. Yeah. i would She did a good job. ah Sure, it sounds like it. Up until my so my junior year of high school is when she just...
00:18:40
Speaker
I don't know. i had other things going on where she was and maybe assumed a level of responsibility that I didn't have ah because I didn't. That's called being a bad teacher.
00:18:53
Speaker
yeah ah Yeah, yeah, yeah. But up until that point, I'm saying up until that point, it pretty good. If you write one sentence in the packet and they let you do that for K through 11, that's that's bad Yeah.
00:19:07
Speaker
But it was just that. ah Yeah. So it was like, I felt like I was, it was like heavily surveillance. And then around junior year um things, there was just other things going on where it was like, i don't know. She just stopped.
00:19:23
Speaker
the The biggest argument we had was at the end of my junior year when it was, or, Maybe in my senior, forget, but it was like, she went through all of my work and there was basically nothing done. Cause I would wake up, eat breakfast, say I was going up to do my work and I'd sleep for three more hours and no one was checking. Maybe it was two hours.
00:19:42
Speaker
um But it was just like an absolute like, I mean, I remember it as kind of a blowout where it's like, I can't believe you haven't anything. And I'm like, well, technically this is your fault.
00:19:53
Speaker
and See, i I just think it's sad that big government has to get involved in family matters. Like I yearned for the days where you could just ship your 14 year old off to the Forever 21 factory.
00:20:06
Speaker
and yeah Put them ah have them on the orphan train and send them out west. Yeah. yeah The prevalence of boarding schools. I don't know how that ever i went away.
00:20:17
Speaker
Hold on tight. There's no water for 600 miles.
00:20:22
Speaker
But yeah, it's ah I derailed ah your K through 12 bullying story, Casey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, he was a prick and we would go on breaks in the morning.
00:20:34
Speaker
And so the that our gym was like a half gym. It wasn't like a full basketball court side size. And we had a ballroom in the corner where they kept all the like athletic equipment and stuff.
00:20:45
Speaker
So this kid Keith. His name's Keith. i He couldn't probably figure out how to operate a podcasting
Standing Up to Bullies
00:20:53
Speaker
app. So he would go down to the to the on break to the ballroom and he would just like stand in the corner in the door of the ballroom and whip basketballs.
00:21:05
Speaker
down to the other end. And there's like kindergartners stuff in there trying to shoot baskets and whatnot. We had some of those. two ah Oh yeah. That's, i don't know why those people are, there's just a certain archetype of child that is, is just intent on like giving somebody else brain damage. Yes. Early on sociopathy.
00:21:27
Speaker
They're always aiming for the head. Yeah. A Keith Gein. And he so the last straw was like because this happened a lot like he would do that until he just pegged like a ah little kid.
00:21:44
Speaker
And no one was like, stop. No, there was no adult at all. Or were they just like kids? They're scared of them. They're scared of them. there was We had like one competent teacher. he was probably the only one that could drive himself to work if he didn't live in the parsonage next door.
00:22:00
Speaker
Everybody else was a total mouth breather. like They were supposed to watch on break, but they were they were chewing their fingernails in the bathroom stall or something. but so He whips a ball down. and just like He hit this like first grade kid so hard, it took him right off of his feet.
00:22:18
Speaker
and He just slammed his head on the floor. Damn. And the kid's bawling and he comes over and he's like, oh, sorry. Like for the 1300th time. It's just crazy to laugh about a kid that you just concussed.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah. That's crazy. When he's leaning over the kid talking to him and I had this basketball in my hand and I just like two hands over my head. ah just like drilled him in the back of the head as hard as I could.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Knocked his glasses off and everything. And he like stood up and he was just bright red. And he grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the wall of the gym.
00:23:02
Speaker
And i had I kicked him. like I kicked him in the kidney. And then he kicked me. And then the the one competent teacher ran in and broke it up at that point. So afterwards they're giving, they're like interviewing both of us to find out what happened and everything. And and so my pastor is the one talking to me and he's like, he goes, well, look, um, you know, I heard your story and stuff. Now, Keith says that you hit him with a ball first.
00:23:30
Speaker
And I just kind of like sat there for a few seconds. and I'm like, I don't know what he's talking about. He's like, okay. And he got expelled.
00:23:41
Speaker
Also, if this kid has a reputation, like it's just crazy. Like you, like that was probably your first and last fight. I'd imagine. Yep. And last meeting with the principal pastor, man.
00:23:56
Speaker
Outside of like, you know, Bible study and Sunday breakfast and. no But yeah, it's. Like those kids obviously shouldn't be believed.
00:24:07
Speaker
No, there was like an interview process. That's also, it's so funny how like that bully did that. Not like nonstop. And then as soon as they get hit, they're like, dad that's not funny. Like, i don't know. You thought it was hilarious for the past.
00:24:20
Speaker
but Right. Seven. Yeah. It was your number one go-to form of entertainment.
Discord and Online Platforms: A Discussion?
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah. there were he was That kid was like destined to just be like a white-ass trash fentanyl addict. We should look him up. Maybe he's in prison. He might be one of our fun stories.
00:24:37
Speaker
Like, I wouldn't be surprised if he was dead. Get him on pod. Yeah. He grew up prison. My bully. It was one of those like friend bullies. Did you guys ever have one of those were like it was basically a very unhealthy relationship, but they were the only person that paid attention to you. So you and then I wasn't for more abuse.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, he would invite me over to play video games and shit and I'd be like, OK, this is cool. Like I was friends with him in second grade. Oh, holding a fish. Yep. Holding a fish. Yeah, it looks like every picture is holding a fish.
00:25:11
Speaker
Classic bully Tinder picture. Maybe he's cool now. I don't know. I'm going to say probably not. Don't be fooled by the fishing pick. He's not cool.
00:25:22
Speaker
But ah my last draw, because he would just say a lot of mean things to me and like set me up for like little, but little. just It was not a big. They weren't big things. It was just like a lot of this little shit over time where I'm like, I don't think he's nice.
00:25:36
Speaker
I don't think he's a good friend. Mm hmm. And I was like ah always a scared kid. Everything freaked me out. you Remember those white little poppers? Like the little cherry poppers where you you throw on the ground. They just made a little spark when you throw on the ground. I love those. And he he would like do the one that that move where you snap in between your fingers and make him blow up. And he kept trying to make do it. That's classic bully move right there.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, kept he kept trying to force me to do it. was snapping. And I didn't want to because I was scared and I was like trying to not cry. And then while I'm trying to not cry, he's laughing at me and just whipping them at me.
00:26:10
Speaker
And so i I called my mom to pick me up and that was the last time I ever saw him. but he lived fairly close to where I did.
00:26:21
Speaker
And it was probably like six years later, he drove, he rode his bike to my house, but I was away with my mom at an orthodontist appointment.
00:26:31
Speaker
And my brother, my younger brother was like, yeah, Ian came by. was like, what? And he's like, yeah, he rode up on his bike. I guess he was seen if you were home. I'm like, I, that's, that's crazy. Like it's probably less than six. It was probably like four or five years later, but that could, I, maybe, maybe I, I think in in my heart, he was there to apologize and we could have been friends again after that, but.
00:26:58
Speaker
I think he was going to throw have larger firecrackers at you. ah He's just launching M80s. older now and he has access to bigger explosives.
00:27:11
Speaker
The fact that like everybody has a bully story and that it always includes like harming children, harming animals, harming other people with with fire.
00:27:25
Speaker
Like what extrapolate the numbers like what populate what percentage of the population is actually truly sociopathic. Because that's like yeah so sociopath behavior and everyone has their favorite neighborhood sociopath from childhood. Yeah, man. We're their own we're not Scott Farkas.
00:27:45
Speaker
We're not looking at, at, at good numbers here, people. Well, yeah. And I don't know, probably most of those have been deputized into ice at this point. Exactly. Perfect. Perfect profession. Basically like the American equivalent of that. Like,
00:28:04
Speaker
that old lady in the Harry Potter movie that like burned your hand if you misbehaved or whatever. i was going to say like ice agents get, go home and they like tell their families like, I got to like rip a baby from their mother's hands, but they don't have families. They don't, they go home and like put that onto like Twitter or X. They tell their, they tell their pals on 4chan.
00:28:26
Speaker
Exactly. Discord for sure. Discord is getting a bad rap. and It's almost like, But like whenever discords in the news, it's never like good. And it's more often it's becoming more frequent.
00:28:40
Speaker
ah Chances are if someone kills more than two people at a time, they're in a discord channel. Yeah, it's just like ah ah it's basically robots, Roblox for non pedophile lunatics.
Pastors and Scandals
00:28:56
Speaker
But I guess there's a lot of pedophiles on there, too. Yeah, nothing good is coming out of discord lately. No. Okay, well, wow. wow Wow.
00:29:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You got a story for us? ah Yeah. So, Bert, we're going to bring you into our little, some of our favorite segments today.
00:29:17
Speaker
Yes. um We've been focusing on um ah weekly story around a pastor getting arrested. um And guaranteed weekly fodder, if that's your topic.
00:29:31
Speaker
I do. Yes. I mean, you can Google it every day. Like I just go i just Google pastor arrested, click on news, sort by date. And like every like seven to 10 hours is a new story.
00:29:42
Speaker
um It tried not. We didn't want to be redundant. So we were like, well, let's try to not just do like sexual assault every time. But it was too hard.
00:29:53
Speaker
There's a darkness. It's almost all you have to sift through like 30 articles of sex crimes before you get to like financial malfeasance.
00:30:05
Speaker
um So what did you find for us today? ah Not technically a pastor, ah but we're going to roll with it because there's a it's it's it's it correlates to something that many of us growing up as young boys were familiar with.
00:30:21
Speaker
um ah you Do you recall a computer software program? ah Covenant
Covenant Eyes Controversy
00:30:29
Speaker
Eyes? Yes, Covenant Eyes.
00:30:31
Speaker
Nowadays, they call them apps. When we were children, there were computer software programs. um but You probably had it shipped to your house on a floppy disk. And it would automatically generate emails to whoever it was that it was yeah your accountability partner. But Covenant Eyes, ah for those who don't know, was a beautiful accountability program that the founder...
00:30:59
Speaker
created basically for his children he took to keep them, to keep their eyes pure, to prevent them from um turning into totally sex-braved lunatics by being introduced to porn.
00:31:14
Speaker
And um well, the son of the Covenant Eyes founder ah was just arrested after planning a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old. Oh my God. Wait, the son the son of the founder?
00:31:28
Speaker
yeah Stepson, right? Stepson? Yeah, it's technically Stepson. that was The headline article said son. A little bit misleading, but hey, that's journalism nowadays. The lamestream media for it.
00:31:42
Speaker
yeah So Covenant Eyes, it was founded back in 2000 by a Michigan entrepreneur named Ron DeHaas. He was one of the co-founders, at least. And an anti-porn internet accountability so software program that has grown to more than 2 million users.
00:31:59
Speaker
Oh, it's still around. Yep, still around. And it's probably 0% effective. ah That program exists so that way... Men have plausible deniability the with their wives that they're looking at porn.
00:32:14
Speaker
that's ah That's all. it's I don't believe. i actually, now I get tons of advertisements for Covenant Eyes because I did a whole bunch of Google searches on how to. it's so funny when you start searching covenant eyes it's like it just knows that the following questions is like how to get around it and when you say it's just all the top searches when you're looking up covenant eyes that pre-populate are like does it work in incognito mode does it like all these like how do you get away with it that's how they should market it that's how they should sell it we'll never know that you look at porn it's like ah it's like
00:32:51
Speaker
It's the key, man. And it's so it's um so how it works, though, is is it takes screenshots. And then I was then a bunch of the follow ups, like the ones that a little bit lower down is how much it drains your battery because it's constant. It takes screenshots every like 10 seconds or something like that and then use it now. you and i don't It's probably different now. do It's funny now because it uses like AI software.
00:33:15
Speaker
to To scan the screenshots? Because it used to be cookie-based. Oh, did it? i thought Well, I think so. That would make sense. Like on the on a desktop, it used to be cookie-based. Yeah. it would send it would it would well Or it would be ah URL-based because it would scan all the it would scan all the yeah URLs and keep the questionable ones in the report that it would send to your accountability partners. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
I think it'd be cool if it went to like a warehouse. ah but wait great good I think it'd be cool if it went to a warehouse with like 300 guys in there that are just get to scroll through all the screenshots. whenever they find porn, they have to watch it first to verify and then send it to the accountability partner.
00:34:03
Speaker
Well, it's it's it's a warehouse filled with with married women who so who tell ask each other, would you let your husband watch this? And it gets a yes or a no.
00:34:14
Speaker
That was covenant eyes. Was that a little, was that a little tool in your, ah you know, pastor's Batman utility belt? Oh my God. you so people well The thing that I remember is like back in college.
00:34:32
Speaker
I don't remember if I don't remember, like there was a time when I used the software, but there was like my college and then like my church and then I moved to a new city. And so there were like kind of different rounds of like these,
00:34:43
Speaker
accountability groups. But in college, um I had my um my laptop and it was still like Ethernet days. And so my accountability partner was over at my dorm room and and I was an RA. So I had my own room. So it was like even easier to look at porn because you don't have a roommate to worry about.
00:35:03
Speaker
ah Not that my freshman year roommate had Any shame, but you know, I did a little more prim and proper. So anyway, my accountability partner was over and I was like, okay, my my new strategy, because like, I have my own room.
00:35:16
Speaker
There's no way around this. I'm going to be tempted. I'm just not going to have the internet in my room. And the only time I use the internet will be at the library or in the lounge. And so he rips out my he rips out my Ethernet cord from my computer and the wall. He chews it in half, chews the cord in half, and he goes, he goes yeah, it's going to be an expensive hobby to break.
00:35:38
Speaker
That's wild. Choose it in half. It's just silence. That is nuts. You're like, hey, dude, there's scissors on the desk. But it was like it was like to be like symbolic of this drastic step that I was taking to like please the Lord, of course.
00:35:53
Speaker
And so it was like this like dramatic gesture he wanted to do to like symbolize how powerful the moment was. um So he chewed up the Ethernet cord. um and then and then that was and then I never looked at porn again in my life.
00:36:08
Speaker
can that's can i think It's nice that it worked.
00:36:13
Speaker
ah you just have a You have an entire room full of chewed up Ethernet cords. You have to keep calling him over. ah you hey you hungry?
00:36:23
Speaker
i'm go to i would I almost want to argue, unpopular argument probably, that um that the Apostle Paul would have been in favor of AI porn. That's my theory.
00:36:35
Speaker
because oh Fascinating. Paul hated marriage. He loves a workaround. paul hated marriage he he loves a he loves a workaround he Yeah, he does and possibly a reach around, he speaks frequently about how much better he is than everybody else because he abstains from marriage um and that he's focused solely on the work of God.
00:37:02
Speaker
And that the world is Christ is coming back in their lifetime. And look, if you, if you just can't knock it, if you can't just settle for wet dreams for the rest of your life, you have to just find us.
00:37:16
Speaker
You can find a spouse and you can't have sex for fun. This is why Catholics are boring. And it's all thanks to Paul, because you can't have sex for fun. I think Catholics, that's one of the most, like one of their most biblical positions is that like, well,
00:37:32
Speaker
I'm sure they all stick to that. Yeah, no, none of them none of them probably do. they maybe be They find ways to spice up missionary position and they feel so naughty. um But it's it he didn't want people to get married. He didn't want people... if you If you burned with passion and the only way that you were going to get through this world was by nutting in somebody, then you you can get married and you only do it when you reach your limit, but then that's it. like He didn't think...
00:38:00
Speaker
He didn't even think people should be having kids. That's why he was all about not getting married and not having sex that often. So was like a lot about his um his belief of what the purpose of a woman is, is simply a receptacle.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And so if you're burning with desire and you need calm dumpster, as a some have referred to in the past, it's Uh, you, you just, that's it.
00:38:26
Speaker
Okay, cool. You do the thing, you have your wife and then you do the work of the Lord and occasionally you have sex with her, but don't like it too much. It's just, it's a natural release that has to happen. AI porn would have solved all of Paul's problems. It's like, it's not real people.
00:38:41
Speaker
So those people aren't, aren't burning in their passions and in their loins. They it's and they don't need to be saved. Nope. because it's And then so you can just, you know, when you reach your peak.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, minimal. It's it's it's as minimal as you really can get. You reach your peak, you bust your nut, you get back to serving Christ. Sure. I'm going to hate it if my parents listen. How how can we? and My dad's been dabbling again. I'm realizing that you're speechless at your flawless argument.
00:39:12
Speaker
Meanwhile, the rainforest is getting incinerated. Along with the rest of the country. What was that, Casey? that I think we should stretch this position into a doctoral book for sure.
00:39:24
Speaker
i feel like we could... i could be i could Speaking of stretching your crazy ideas into full books. Yeah, ah we talk a lot... We make a lot of jokes about regular porn, but we don't really ever talk about female porn.
Bizarre Romance Novels: A Humorous Exploration
00:39:41
Speaker
female oriented pornography, which is a little different. And I wanted to tell you guys about this book that I heard of today. You guys are familiar with book talk? No.
00:39:52
Speaker
ah Like on tick tock? Yeah. Book Talk T-O-K. Yep. Yes. yeah so So Book Talk is ah it's like a TikTok thing where millennial women basically read smut and then they you know review it and stuff for each other and they grade it on its spice level and whatnot. Okay. Yep.
00:40:14
Speaker
So i want to give you ah I want to give you a rundown on one of these books that I heard about today. Yes, please. Let's hear it. I'm going to hold off on the name just because I don't want and want to spoil the surprise, okay? Violet is a typical down-on-her-luck millennial, mid-twenties, overeducated, and drowning in debt, on the verge of moving into her parents' basement when a lifeline appears in the form of a very unconventional job in neighboring Cambric Creek,
00:40:39
Speaker
She has no choice but to grab at it with both hands. Morning Glory Milking Farm offers full-time hours, full benefits, and generous pay with no experience needed.
00:40:50
Speaker
There's only one catch. The clientele is grade A certified prime beef with the manly, meaty endowments to match. Milking minotaurs isn't something Violet ever considered.
00:41:02
Speaker
It's a curious. I can't wait to repeat that. This is the new 12 days of Christmas.
00:41:12
Speaker
Milking minutes. Into a reversal of fortune. When a stern, deep-voiced client begins to specially request her for his milking sessions, maintaining her professionalism and keeping him out of her dreams is easier said than done.
00:41:28
Speaker
Violet is resolved to make a dent in her student loans and afford new brand, that her name brand, orange juice, and a one-sided crush on an out-of-her-league minotaur is not part of her plan, and unless her feelings aren't so one-sided after all.
00:41:44
Speaker
That's unbelievable. Wait, I was thinking the business... Morning Glory Milking Farm by CM Nascosta. So these aren't glory holes. She's actually facing the people that she's milking. She is stroking off minotaurs, half man, half cow.
00:42:02
Speaker
Okay. Well, okay. Well, well, I realized my mistake here. Time out. It said she was milking. It did not necessarily say stroking. There are other ways to milk. So do we know? True, true. The methodology?
00:42:18
Speaker
Like a mouth milking versus a hand milking. We do. It's what it sounds like. i am You know what? i This is my naivete speaking. i I was thinking Minotaur at first was legit just... I thought this was a review, not necessarily the synopsis.
00:42:36
Speaker
um And I i thought Minotaur was like... Just like a beastly man. And now I realize that they're actually, this is a fantasy. This is art cow part man, but all the important parts are cow.
00:42:50
Speaker
Yeah. So what I do want to rewind on a couple points here. I'm very intrigued by the story. First off, is this an AI generated book, do we think? Or do we think somebody wrote the book?
00:43:01
Speaker
ah Great question. Somebody wrote it, but I guess I don't know for sure. But I will say it has a three point six four on Goodreads. With 60,000 ratings and 12,000 reviews.
00:43:15
Speaker
So probably real book. Probably real. That's ah crazy. My next question is, I got thrown off when they said ah typical millennial mid-20s because we're all millennials are older than that now.
00:43:28
Speaker
So this yeah is this an older book? Or are they all living in a fantasy that they're 10 years younger than they are? ah That could be part of it. Okay, first published August 2021. So yeah, maybe so.
00:43:42
Speaker
Hmm. Okay. little curious on the age piece, right? now A little suspicious on the age piece, but whatever. Whatever. Maybe a lot of the reviews are bots. You never know. Bots have How many of the reviews talk about how great Israel is?
00:43:55
Speaker
That's a good way to find out how many bots. My next... but i
00:44:03
Speaker
Oh my gosh. um My next...
00:44:09
Speaker
observation so this the saddest piece of that whole story to me is the is millennials striving to purchase name brand that that is that is like the american dream for millennials is to be able to buy the name brand orange juice we've given up on houses we've given up on investments on on equity, on wealth. And it's just, I want to get the Tropicana. I mean, that is more devastating than everything else that was just read to me. yeah
00:44:44
Speaker
ah you can ah You can imagine a planet where ah like a realm where you can get a job milking minotaurs, but you can't imagine one without student loans.
00:44:55
Speaker
Right. Right. That's where we are. there is um um You can tell this is a self-insert, too, because ah listen to this. This is a synopsis about the author.
00:45:09
Speaker
says, CM Nascosta is an author and professional procrastinator from Cleveland, Ohio. Whoa, Cleveland, I should go meet them. Dude, you probably could.
00:45:20
Speaker
As a child, she thought that living on Lake Erie meant that one was eerie by nature, and her corresponding love of all things strange and unusual started young. i it's crazy how much I know I hate this person.
00:45:32
Speaker
i kind of like I kind of want to go meet them. I kind of like this. They turn their house into like, ah it's like a tiny little house in a nice, a nice field.
00:45:44
Speaker
And they've turned it into like a museum of themselves. It's like a half house, half museum, fully self-funded. They have a Chrysler County country with a sticker on the back and kind of like,
00:45:58
Speaker
wavy font that says we're all a little mad here yeah yeah i'm getting like witchy vibes i'm getting definitely like figurines of some of these mythical creatures and varying sizes and varying material some you know potentially life size uh and i think it's i think that's great i think it's beautiful lot of bad dragon paraphernalia
00:46:24
Speaker
i what was your quest when you found this I was watching a video of a girl talking about it so
00:46:35
Speaker
she's like she was is funny because she was talking about it she's like honestly the most disturbing part was a scene where she describes kissing because he's like his mouth was so wide and his tongue was so huge and wet and slimy and it's like it's just a cow you're describing me i with a cow well no the face the face would be human right No. the No.
00:47:04
Speaker
The minotaur is like the minotaur is like a upright bull. It's like he's like a bipedal cow with human abs. I'm looking this. I'm looking this up because I may be mixing it up with centaur.
00:47:18
Speaker
It's the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. ah Wait. Centaurs have human faces, but the important parts are horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. okay it's like the opposite of a minute to i mean of a centaur.
00:47:30
Speaker
Well, this is the cover, if I can make this. Oh, okay, yes, yes. so okay so it's it's a it's a Did you say a cow with a torso? A cow with abs? Yeah. A bull with abs. Yeah, a bull.
00:47:44
Speaker
it's yeah it's I mean, that's um that should be illegal in Trump's America. That's bestiality. That's not traditional American values, and that is actually considered terrorism now.
00:47:55
Speaker
yeah Now, a bull market, we can talk about that, but bull milking, milking, can't. coming for all of us.
00:48:05
Speaker
A bull market. Wow. I, um... what what was this What was this document that you were ah that you were studying up on,
Joseph Smith's Spectacles Myths Revisited
00:48:15
Speaker
Bert?
00:48:15
Speaker
Okay, so, well, Sam, you know, was letting me know about the the Book of Mormon little convos that have been going on. Yeah, a little Bible study. They don't call it the Bible, it's but it's like Bible study, but with the Book of Mormon. We read through it, we comment on it, we learn from it, we laugh, we cry, we get closer to God.
00:48:35
Speaker
And I grew up around a lot of Mormons and um I know plenty of Mormons. I'm from Nevada. It's very Mormon area. um And so wanted to just do some research, kind of just like refreshing myself on some church history and, you know, the history of the book, etc.
00:48:55
Speaker
And so I found this document that was going through all of the known accounts of what the interpretation the interpretive lenses looked like or spectacles looked like that Joseph Smith used to translate the book from the ancient text into English.
00:49:16
Speaker
And so that was a document that I sent out. And so basically, you know, these these spectacles based on the accounts of the people who saw them and or use them would have like glasses. They like. glass perfect Yes.
00:49:32
Speaker
Mostly. Yes. Monocle type things. Not monocle. um Nobody knows for sure. But um some type of eye lenses, but they were like, basically it gets into like pupillary distance, you know, and if when you're getting glasses or if you're ordering them on Zenny or online, you have to measure your own PD, your pupillary distance, how many inches apart your pupils are, because that's how they ah manufacture the lenses.
00:50:00
Speaker
The the lenses for um that Joseph Smith used were like eight inches wide or something. So then an eight inch so e so in p d my oneity huge PD.
00:50:15
Speaker
So then they were kind of, so that's where you get like the land of giants that the, the extinct giant species that used to live in North America was because in order to fit, perhaps minute, perhaps, um,
00:50:29
Speaker
They started with a J. But anyway, to fit these glasses, you'd have to be 10 feet tall for them to fit normally, the spectacles. and But they were like given to Joseph Smith for the interpretation. So that's where this idea came from, that like this ancient species was 10 feet tall.
00:50:45
Speaker
This... This ancient species allegedly wore spectacles that could be put on a regular-sized man like a toddler picking up their parents' glasses and putting them on. like well And then you can see seeing amazing things.
00:51:00
Speaker
Seeing amazing things. You see ancient language interpreted before your eyes as well as you see all things past, all things present, and all things future as well. And why would they share? Why do they Glasses but made out of corn cups.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yeah. Why do they need these glasses? Why do they have these glasses? Side note, Cash Patel has a micro PD.
00:51:23
Speaker
Things are so close together they're touching. Yeah.
00:51:31
Speaker
ah Yeah, the Venn diagram is a circle. His PD is monocle. It's a circle.
00:51:44
Speaker
His PD is monocle. That's so So the spectacles are called the Urim and Thummim. Like they've been named. they have this official name. Have you guys talked about this this before? Is that where Uma Thurman got her name?
00:52:02
Speaker
We can't rule that out. Did you say this is like this is like when like a super, super like niche nerdy Mormon is like at a film festival and they're talking about like Kill Bill and somebody's like, they stand up. Did you say Urim Thummim?
00:52:22
Speaker
No, it's Urim Thummim. No.
00:52:31
Speaker
Oh my gosh. So, okay. So let me just share some of the, of the, these are the compiled, this is from mormonscholar.org backslash the giant spectacles.pdf.
00:52:47
Speaker
um So.
00:52:52
Speaker
but
00:53:00
Speaker
It's like in Morbidism, it's like every rock you turn over, there's something even dumber below it.
00:53:08
Speaker
So, okay, so they're going through the sources. So, okay. So Pomeroy and Tucker's 1867 account called them huge, comma mammoth.
00:53:21
Speaker
So these the spectacles were, oh with the aid of the mammoth spectacles. um A huge pair of silver spectacles, another too large for the present race of men, but they were used nevertheless in translating the plates.
00:53:40
Speaker
So it's great for seeing the past, present and future. Perfect for just seeing plates. Well, but they but they were made usable for Joseph Smith after he yeah he had to go back to the site of the tablets for over the course of four years.
00:53:55
Speaker
And after he was loyal for four years. To get his lenses corrected. After he went back for four years, his loyalty was honored. He was able to take the plates and start to translate. It's like going to BJ's to have your the the leg the arms on your glasses adjusted. That's all it is.
00:54:13
Speaker
Okay, so here's another part. It says, the the two stones set in a bow or a bow, B-O-W, of silver were about two inches in diameter, perfectly round, and about five-eighths of an inch thick at the center, but not so thick that the edges but not so thick at the edges where they came together.
00:54:36
Speaker
They were joined by a round bar of silver, about three- Like Cash Patel's. Yes. um Anyway, a lot of measurements. um They were very obsessed with the size. This is the epitome of like when ah ah toddler tries to oversell a lie with over-specificity.
00:54:55
Speaker
yeah it's It's a suspicious amount of detail. In in the Salt Lake City Tribune... um Parley Chase said that the that they were as big as ah breakfast plate.
00:55:10
Speaker
and okay oh And then so then the author clarifies that plates in the early 1800s appear to be oh about seven to nine inches. Oh, so yeah, like one of those smaller versions. of They're like New Year's glasses.
00:55:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah I do love the idea that like the archaeological proof for like a race of giants is just obscenely large like mundane items. It's like, look, no normal man could use this can opener.
00:55:44
Speaker
It's like, look at these scissors I found. i don't Those might be pruning shears. I don't... Wouldn't you love to find out like what other stories were making headlines in the 1886 Salt lake Lake City Tribune? I mean, it it was it was all probably proving these crazy stories.
00:56:03
Speaker
You could probably find them, too. You could probably like go into an old library catalog find them. normal-sized grasses to go through the microfiche. Brigham Young was like the first governor of Utah. I mean, it was basically fully a Mormon state when it when it started. But I also learned that Joseph Smith and um in Nauvoo, Indiana, Illinois, Indiana, I think Illinois, actually, in Nauvoo, Indiana, which was like the city that they started, and he became the governor or the mayor of that town or whatever,
00:56:36
Speaker
He basically did away with any other newspaper besides his own. I mean, it's like it's like cult leader 101. Any other media gone. It was only his newspaper where he talked about how, you know, how huge they were.
00:56:50
Speaker
yeah Huge, very huge. and he at The university that's named after him, um did he found it?
00:57:02
Speaker
Or is it like in memoriam of... I don't know if Brigham Young founded it, but you know he was like... He was like the main guy of the mass westward movement of Mormons from like Missouri, Illinois, Ohio to Utah, what would become Utah.
00:57:21
Speaker
But I think when they when they came to Salt Lake, like it was before that was even part of the U.S. s Like they went outside of the U.S. boundaries because, you know, fleeing religious oppression, they were like getting they would be like attacked by mobs, driven out of wherever they would try to settle.
00:57:38
Speaker
Oh. That's something I know very little about. But, I mean... They were treated very poorly at that point. Like, it was kind of like open season on Mormons. You were, like, allowed to kill them on sight or something like that.
00:57:51
Speaker
That is wild. And also, it goes to show you that, like, if you don't kill all of them... Like if your goal is to like wipe something out, right? Like forms of violence, again, forms of violence violence against a group of people based on their beliefs, definitely further. And like, it can easily further entrench you in that. And you're like, unless you're very thorough, not super effective. Yeah. Unless you're very thorough, it's not super effective.
00:58:20
Speaker
Well, but also, but if you're somebody like Joseph Smith, who is creating and leading this new religion, like attacks against it provide a level of like legitimacy. Like even though we grew up with in Christianity.
00:58:32
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, that everything was persecution, everything. Yeah, it was less violent. Right. Yep. Yeah, we really like fantasized about being persecuted.
00:58:43
Speaker
It was a it was a major like ah I don't know what that was. It was like definitely a youth group thing to talk about. Like someday somebody is going to put a gun to your head and ask you if you believe in God.
00:58:56
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks. to columbine math That's the treasures in heaven kind of thing. I mean, that's how you get that's how you get the jewels on the crown. But we're kind of, we're like weirdly coming back there in a, I mean, like, I feel like people like us who grew up like us have been saying this for a while where you're just like, we all this persecution complex bullshit that you see constantly in the political atmosphere is like, there's always been it's always partly been there, but like we,
00:59:29
Speaker
I feel like we grew up with the the height of think everything's anti-Christian, this and that. and And now you're just kind of seeing it and up on a much larger scale everywhere where the people doing the oppressing are crying.
00:59:43
Speaker
I'm being oppressed. And it's just, it's, it For us especially, it's like really played out. It's just what humans do. It's one of the things that one aspect of tribalism.
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. What comes to my mind um is see you at the pole where it was like this attempt to have like this big public gathering to like show them all that that we are here, that we're praying in public, that we're praying in schools, we're playinging praying under the Christian flag, like as if you don't have.
01:00:15
Speaker
fully protected constitutional rights to do this, like in peace and safety. Right. and like Yeah, you're right, dude. I remember being, i remember there was like, you would almost fantasize about people telling you to stop.
01:00:28
Speaker
Right. Like they would prep you for it. Like, exactly. what are you going to do if someone says you can't do this? You're like, I know my constitutional rights. Exactly. Exactly. It was yeah was like you would prep. So those activities just helped like reinforce that idea that like we need to do this because this right to do this is under attack. And if and if not, like somebody might walk by and yell at us. or But if that doesn't happen, like just know that at the government level, they're coming for this right.
01:00:57
Speaker
like it's So if it's not real, like they have to still up the perceived reality. Yeah. It was like an actual level of disappointment when you didn't get heckled at sea with the pole.
01:01:08
Speaker
i Like, ah, fuck, that one was a failure. My sister every year on ah September 12th sends me this email that I sent her on September 12th, 2001. And she always That's a good sister there.
01:01:23
Speaker
six She always says, remember when you didn't care about 9-11, because it's me rambling about all this crap that and I don't mention the attack at all.
01:01:36
Speaker
But at one point I say, oh, not much is happening except Jen fainted at see at the pole.
01:01:46
Speaker
so She was so moved by the spirit that she she was just overcome. She fainted. And that's how we knew God was real. The day after 9-11. You probably went home from school that day. I mean, what where were you on 9-11?
01:02:06
Speaker
we were We were at school. We had we didn't we didn't go home early. um oh yeah. Everyone just watched it.
Post-9/11 School Memories
01:02:13
Speaker
I was already home. so Everybody watched it. and And government, like we had the TV on and the principal comes in and goes, nobody's supposed to be watching TV.
01:02:21
Speaker
um And the government teacher just turns the TV off. And the second the door closes, just turned it back on. one's supposed to be watching TV. That government teacher was was ah a Mormon.
01:02:35
Speaker
And he started off every class by coming in and saying, hello, young R-words. you're You're for real. Yeah. Oh, that's how every every class started. He said, hello, young R-words.
01:02:47
Speaker
um that and That's coming in hot, professor. and then he And then he went on to get involved in local government. That's perfect. Another condescending leader. I mean, that's Nevada for you.
01:03:00
Speaker
Well, that word's back in full force now. It really is. I'm still not going to say it, though. He's back in. Yeah, he we avoided it. 20-year cycles, baby. Yeah, but I'm just saying he would I don't record but I have been saying it a lot.
01:03:16
Speaker
yeah You like to play clips where other people say it. That's what you do. You find clips of other people saying it and play those. I was trying to read ahead a little bit in the Book of Mormon from where we left off last time, and there's an F-slur in
01:03:36
Speaker
in the coming chapter. Wait, really? Why? yeah is it Is it referring? um Bundle of sticks. Yeah, yeah. yeah You know, I was watching the show. It always catches you off guard when you read it. It does catch you off guard.
01:03:51
Speaker
But I was catching, I was watching, um i've been I started the Apple TV show Slow Horses, a British show. And ah you forget that ah British people still refer to cigarettes as ah that word. And it's...
01:04:12
Speaker
it It's never like easy to hear. Yeah. yo I was like this. yeah so I mean, I don't any straight people who really, really want to use that word. Just go smoke in London.
01:04:24
Speaker
Yeah. they go yeah Back in fashion and it won't be a problem. But that that is the problem. It's not fun for them unless it's a problem. and what what What was the tension like ah growing up, growing up?
01:04:38
Speaker
Christian, but in a place that has so many
Growing Up Around Mormons
01:04:41
Speaker
Mormons. Like, was that a a frequent topic of conversation? Like, did you guys do a yearly study on like why they're wrong?
01:04:49
Speaker
um ah You know, that's a good question. We did do we did do a little bit on, you know, why the why Mormon beliefs are incompatible with the true gospel. And it's because, you know, it's they're not actually, quote, you know, they would say that the Mormons are not actually preaching a gospel of salvation through grace. It's salvation by works. I mean, that would be what the argument would come down to from the youth pastors.
01:05:18
Speaker
um But actually just living it out, I had tons of Mormon friends and a lot of the mormons Mormon friends were great students. And so most of my classes and most of my um all throughout school were Mormons.
01:05:33
Speaker
And um a lot of them had really nice houses and they had a lot of money. So they they built um a part of town like our town we lived in a small town but it kind of like expanded slowly and so anytime there's any new development it was like a really big deal and so they put in like a second mormon church and then around that church they built a bunch of new houses which i mean technically anybody could buy but it was 90 mormons in this neighborhood and these were huge houses like underground
01:06:06
Speaker
racquetball courts water slides huge pools just massive whoa um pantries because you have to you know basically they were like proto preppers basically um and i had a lot of friends that lived in that neighborhood way before it was cool um i had a lot of friends that lived in that neighborhood and um You know, I went to, it wasn't Mormon camp. It was like a Mormon weekend program where you would go up to Utah for two nights and that you could bring your non-Mormon friends.
01:06:36
Speaker
We would do really, we did like the Mormon missionary relay race where like at one end of the field is like the pants. One end of the field is the shirt. One end is the tie. You have wear these giant goofy glasses. You wear these glasses. Like your team runs back and forth, like putting on all the articles of clothing that the missionaries would wear kind of like psych you up for your future.
01:06:57
Speaker
um They did ah testimony sharing, which was a lot just like a normal Christian summer camp. um But I went because this one Mormon guy that I thought was super hot said that if I went, I could stay in his tent. And so that's why I went and I got to.
01:07:13
Speaker
So that was really fun. Hey, that works out. Lord works in mysterious ways. He does.
01:07:20
Speaker
It's funny, like, as we read through the Book of Mormon here, it's, I mean, I'm not gonna, I'll be honest, it's very poorly written. It's wildly terrible as a written document. um One of the most unbelievable things to me. But in like There's also a lot of it, though, like because we since doing this, we've read through a lot of the Bible here, too.
01:07:47
Speaker
Or you know then you go, we've done some of the Apocrypha because as evangelicals, you weren't allowed. That was wrong. The Apocrypha was silly. ah And yeah, like...
Interpretations of Christianity
01:08:00
Speaker
don't know. I feel like the older I get and the the farther I feel removed from evangelical Christianity in that bubble,
01:08:11
Speaker
And then you're in like, even like, like even now I just go like all these Christians everywhere that are trying to be like, wait Oh yeah, this is what Christianity looks like. Like there is no, there is no authority anywhere on this planet on Christianity.
01:08:29
Speaker
Christian, you are a Christian if you say you're a Christian and you could be a Christian nationalist. Or you could be a completely complete leftist. You could be more part of the red-letter Christian group. You could be Christian mystic. you could like christian And every single one of them is like, this is what Christianity should be like.
01:08:49
Speaker
And you just go, this is a choose-your-own-adventure. And I don't have a problem if you choose an adventure that I think aids in human flourishing. But at the end of the day, like...
01:09:02
Speaker
when you realize what Christianity is, when, once you're out of your bubble, you go, none none of, even though I think it's a better book, I, you know, more historicity, not historicity, more, um, historical in the sense of its collections in the way it's put together.
01:09:21
Speaker
yeah, in the doc, like the, the preservation of old documents, like historical in its ancient sense. Um, you go, but when you look at what it is and how it exists, you go, I i guess not, I guess none of this, like, no,
01:09:39
Speaker
They're all kind of in their own doing their own thing, pretending it's the only thing. And I can think of a lot of creating. i know Yeah, go. Well, I was going to say and creating a very complicated matrix of who they're willing to say is in and who's out.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. And it's all just kind of nuts. Our church has it exactly right. Yeah. These churches have it mostly right. These churches have not very much right. And these have absolutely none right.
01:10:10
Speaker
And the extreme irony of people who go, you're saved by grace, not like through works or whatever, saved by grace through faith is the ah terminology, right? um And then they're like,
01:10:23
Speaker
But the like the concept of grace, right, would be this wide thing that just covers you regardless of works. Exactly. But then any so then it comes down to like. Well, the problem is they're relying on their works.
01:10:37
Speaker
And you go, but you're relying on your belief that not relying on your works is what like you it's just as it's another infinite regress in the conversation of Christianity where you're just, yeah, it goes, you it goes nowhere.
01:10:51
Speaker
It's so, it's so ridiculous. Like you're so beholden to this belief that you have about what it means to be saved by grace that people who don't believe it can't be.
01:11:03
Speaker
Which means you're more beholden to your belief than the actual concept of the belief, which should cover people regardless of belief. The churches that are the most vehement that salvation is through grace alone are the churches who are...
01:11:23
Speaker
Protecting profiles. Right. The the strictest ah outwardly in those who's in, who's out, have the most narrow view. And um what somebody once once called them like a two clicks from hell church. It's like, if I can go on their website, if I can go on their website and within two clicks learn that I am internally condemned to hell, like that's not a place that I want to go.
01:11:49
Speaker
That's not a church people I want to be around. Yeah, that's... and A good friend of mine always talks about like, he he would say the same thing. Like when his daughter was looking to go to a church, when she went off to college, he was like, ah just see how quickly you get to Bible believing Christian.
01:12:08
Speaker
And then, then you know that you're in the wrong place. tells you at all Well, do we have any, any chapters in the, in the ah new gospel of Jesus Christ?
01:12:20
Speaker
Oh, sure. We can scan some here. the the Newest Testament. what i What I enjoy about the Book of Mormon is how it very specifically
Critique of the Book of Mormon
01:12:30
Speaker
spells out modern interpretations of Christian dogma doctrine and doctrine as if it's prophecy, because it's all supposed to be written before Christ came.
01:12:41
Speaker
So, ah yeah, we're in Mosiah, by the way. Mosiah. And basically where we left off last time is this guy named Abinadi.
01:12:52
Speaker
was ah He had risen up and preached against the evil king, Noah, who inherited the throne from his father, and he did not follow the ways of Christ, and he engaged in much ah many whoredoms.
01:13:08
Speaker
A lot of whoredoms. We learned that. We learned all the whoredoms last chapter. And training this is this this is the part of the book that takes place in the Americas. Correct, Casey? Yes.
01:13:19
Speaker
Yep. And ah for time reference, this says it was written 148
01:13:26
Speaker
So says and now it
01:13:32
Speaker
the time shall come when all shall see the salvation of the lord when every nation kindred tongue and people shall see eye to eye and shall confess before god that his judgments are just And then shall the wicked be cast out, and they will have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth.
01:13:52
Speaker
And this because they would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord. Therefore the Lord redeemeth them not. For they are carnal and devilish, and the devil has power over them.
01:14:03
Speaker
Yea, even that old serpent that did beguile our first parents, which was the cause of their fall, which was the cause of all mankind becoming carnal, sensual, devilish.
01:14:15
Speaker
knowing evil from good, subjecting themselves to the devil. ah note Something to note is this is supposedly written in 180 BC in the Americas. Obviously, we've got 180 years before Jesus Christ hits the scene.
01:14:31
Speaker
And this book talks a lot ah about it talks a lot about the coming of Jesus in ways that by name make it.
01:14:43
Speaker
Yeah. that Yeah. Yeah. But that make it like incredibly obvious that he's showing up. So if you don't believe in it, like, damn, you missed the boat. And the, one of the reoccurring,
01:14:55
Speaker
concepts that is notable to me is like how dismissive it is of the entire Hebrew Bible because they're like, yeah, we wrote this 180 years before Christ and we knew Christ was coming and you guys like didn't know shit.
01:15:09
Speaker
Um, And we're not even anywhere geographically low near you guys. Like, we're so far away. We took so many boats. And all of our prophecies are in regard to the coming of Christ. And it's people who don't believe in the idea of the coming of Christ the wrong ones. That's The whoredoms, the sin. the thing.
01:15:34
Speaker
It's not believing that Christ is coming. Yeah, and that's part of why... ah Abhinati is under the thumb is because King Noah wants him to renounce the idea that Christ is coming.
01:15:47
Speaker
Mm hmm. Which is fascinating. And is it strange? Is this like a messiah is coming? oh Well, well, he actually did it. Jesus H. Christ is coming.
01:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, Jesus, Holy Christ. Thus, all mankind were lost and behold, they would not have been endlessly lost were it not that God redeemed his people from their lost and fallen state. But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God remaineth in his fallen state, and the devil hath all power over him.
01:16:20
Speaker
Therefore, he is though he is as though there was no redemption made. That's a mouthful. Therefore, he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God, and also is the devil an enemy to God.
01:16:35
Speaker
And now, if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come, there could have been no redemption. And if Christ had not risen from the dead or have broken the bands of death and the grave should have no victory and that death should not have should have no sting, there could have been no resurrection.
01:16:58
Speaker
But there is resurrection. There it is. Therefore, the grave hath no victory, and the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ. It borrows a lot from like from Paul's language about Christ. Well, it's but it's fully a post-resurrection sermon. Yeah. yeah but but But allegedly was written 100-whatever years before he showed up. 148 years before Christ hit the scene.
01:17:25
Speaker
Death, where is thy sting, is Paul. Yeah. But, yeah well well, or is it? Or is it Alabama or Abelaster?
01:17:38
Speaker
Paul was stealing from Mr. Naughty. Abel Naughty? Abinadi Abinadi that means father naughty
01:17:51
Speaker
for those of you who don't know come on that for those you don't know you he some whoredom Abinadi is what um Netanyahu likes to be called in the bedroom oh my god
01:18:11
Speaker
next i yeah Dude, he definitely can't get it up unless there's blood involved.
01:18:23
Speaker
All right. So moving on learning more about Christ. He is the light and the life of the world. Yay. light that is endless. There can never be darkened. That can never be darkened. Yay. And also a life which is endless that there can be no more death.
01:18:40
Speaker
The bar shall put on immortality and this corruption shall put on incorruption and shall be brought to stand before the bar of god to be judged of him according to their works whether they be good or whether they be evil the the bar of god what very works based here yes Very works-based Yeah, it's very, Yeah, I can see why the Christians of our yesterday yesterdays had um they had a problem with the mums. They had some concerns about putting works on a scale. I mean, that's not how it's supposed to be.
01:19:15
Speaker
Interestingly enough, they didn't have the same criticisms of the book of James. If they be good to the resurrection of endless life and happiness, and if they be evil to the resurrection of endless damnation, being delivered up to the devil who hath subjected them, which is damnation, having gone according to their own carnal wills and desires, having never called upon the Lord while the arms of mercy were extended towards them, for the arms of mercy were extended towards them, and they would not
01:19:47
Speaker
they being warned of their iniquities, and yet they would not depart from them, and they were commanded to repent, and yet they would not repent. That was 2,000 words on they were commanded to repent and they did not.
01:20:01
Speaker
So is this whole book just us just a sermon? Most of this entire book is this. It's repetitive versions of very, it's like repetitively saying very basic concepts.
01:20:15
Speaker
That there's really not even anything drill A different person saying Like a different, through a different person. Now this king said it. Yeah. yeah Literally every section of this book is a guy being like, and wherefore it is good that thou beest good, but yay, it is bad that thou beest bad.
01:20:33
Speaker
Be not bad, but be ye good. For if you are good, then you shall be called good and not bad, which is bad. Unto death.
01:20:47
Speaker
Whoredoms. I almost pulled a clip of our modern Joseph Smith today. yeah i spared the audience another clip of our buddy Robbie.
01:21:01
Speaker
You love that guy. He's a beautiful man. And now ought ye not to tremble and repent of your sins and remember that only in and through Christ ye can be saved?
01:21:13
Speaker
Therefore, if ye teach the law of Moses, also teach that it is a shadow of those things which are to come. Teach them that redemption cometh through Christ the Lord, who is the very eternal Father. Amen. Amen.
Joseph Smith's Visions and Ancient Tablets
01:21:26
Speaker
It's emphatically not the law of Moses. That's what's hilarious. It's like the law of Moses is very much not what they're saying it is.
01:21:35
Speaker
but There's also the fact that when, well, okay, ah we're not supposed to say that Joseph Smith wrote this because this was an ancient text. In an ancient language that was buried and revealed and trans and translated um through the spectacles, through the Umim and Thummim. The Umathermans.
01:21:55
Speaker
The Umathermans. But I don't know what else. Oh, he was only like 20 years old. He was super young. I mean, he was like 18 when he had his first vision ah from the angel. And then like all of this finding the tablets and translating was when he was like in his early 20s. I mean, he was very, very young.
01:22:17
Speaker
That was middle-aged then, wasn't it? Yeah. yeah found He found the Altspark. He's a real Sam Witwick-y character. Wasn't that a Transformers like plot point? I hate those. God, I hate those movies. But wasn't that a plot point in Transformers where like something was etched on Shia LaBeouf's glasses or something like that that it shows the universe a map
Storytelling in Religious Narratives
01:22:40
Speaker
where people turn into cars or... so Maybe. God, I hate Michael Bay.
01:22:44
Speaker
I think... was he Was it the end of Men in Black where the entire universe was wrapped up in that necklace? Yeah, so it's the same thing, only glasses instead of a cat collar.
01:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, cat collar, that's right. I only like movies I can recognize from before, you know? The... Is that the end of our chapter? That's the end of the chapter. we miss So welcome to our Book of Mormon study. I um i always want to call it a Bible study. what do I don't know what they call their studies. It's just a book of LDS study.
01:23:16
Speaker
Do they refer to the Book of Mormon as their're as part of the Bible? Is it in that collection for them? I don't know these things. I would imagine. I mean, yeah, it's the Newer Testament. Yeah. testament so Okay, so they would call studying this a Bible study.
01:23:31
Speaker
ah Gotcha. Yeah, but
Mormon Study Practices
01:23:33
Speaker
they don't do they don't do Bible study, I think, in the same and the same way that evangelicals would do it. Okay. like the kit so so So if you're in grade school, middle school, or high school, and you're Mormon, before school, you go to the nearest church by your school, and you go to seminary. You have to go to morning or lunchtime.
01:23:55
Speaker
um But they call it like seminary. It's not like youth group. it has Everything has like different... um terminology. It's got to be different. A little quirky. It sounds smarter. It sounds
Sunday School Humor
01:24:07
Speaker
smarter than Sunday school.
01:24:09
Speaker
You sound like a little bitch boy if you go to Sunday school. Yeah. Yeah. go get a Go listen to a pencil neck with ah an eighth grade education tell you about you know how the Indians are really just fallen Jews.
01:24:23
Speaker
go Go make a little flannel graph art of two people in 69. like That's what mean that Sunday school. Oh, whoa that's crazy. I learned about 69. I made it on a flannel graph.
01:24:42
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah, that's a that's ah that's pretty representative of what the entire book is like. I wish there was more
Old Testament Prophecies in Mormon Texts
01:24:50
Speaker
stories. That's what I was really hoping for was like stories, but it's mostly this.
01:24:56
Speaker
And correct okay, remind me, where in the Old Testament does it like prophesy about the coming Messiah? Because it's what Daniel's one of them, right?
01:25:07
Speaker
Multiple places. place does not out would argue it emphatically does not. but In the most generous interpretation. In the most generous interpretation, Daniel... ah Isaiah, yep. Which of these would be available to these people? In like the most ideal scenario, which of them would be available to people in 148 BC?
01:25:27
Speaker
ah Both of them. In the Americas? Yeah. Yeah, well it's like not even worth factoring that part into.
01:25:38
Speaker
Would this have been stuff that's in circulation? Because I don't know when Daniel was written. or Yeah, yeah. ah Well, and yeah, and I think part of the Book of Mormon is that it was people who had left the Jerusalem area and came to America, right?
01:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Nephites and Lamanites Explained
01:25:57
Speaker
So plausibly they could have had exposure to the prophets. God told them to build a giant pontoon boat and they floated across the Atlantic and some were good and some were very bad and dirty.
01:26:15
Speaker
The Nephites were clean and holy. And loved by God. But the, ah oh God, the laminites. Laminites. The laminites. Our laminiter never works at my school.
01:26:28
Speaker
That's too bad. Lamination is fun.
01:26:34
Speaker
I just like keep thinking about like what what could possibly would these people have had at that point in time in the most ideal of circumstances that would have pointed them to the concept of like Christ coming as the Messiah other than crazy prophet dudes just being like God told me.
01:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you could argue. In 180 BC? Yeah. Yeah, if it was actually 180 BC. I would say the only argument to be made would be Daniel Revelation, but all of that's read back into it. There was no real, I mean, there was a concept of a coming Messiah, don't get me wrong.
01:27:12
Speaker
um That was the thing, but like they read back into it. like it's read back into the idea that it's related to this new found religion of Christianity versus right. It would have been a very Jewish understanding of like the, of the coming Messiah, which was to reestablish the Davidic kingdom and give them their own peace, place, prosperity, all that, which I get why you would think that's America because look at this place.
01:27:40
Speaker
It's clearly God's chosen nation. Yeah. Yeah. But there you have it. A little
Risks of Religious Text Analysis
01:27:46
Speaker
glimpse into the Book of Mormon. We're we're we're just brushing up. Maybe we should do, ah I don't know. it feels it feels like a risk It feels like a risky move to branch into other religious texts that aren't connected to us at all. Especially when you think of the cultural aspects that we're very far removed from.
01:28:04
Speaker
like At least with the Book of Mormon, there's a cultural aspect that you can you can connect with ah to a degree. You don't want to roast the Koran next? No, I'm not ready to do that. yeah I'm good. Me neither.
01:28:18
Speaker
I might sit back and watch on that one. Yeah. But, you know, like we think of like, you know, Hindu, Buddhism, things like that. We're like, oh, that the the way that they even use their texts is significantly different than the way that, you know, modern Christianity and its offshoots have used theirs.
01:28:36
Speaker
But
Nostalgic Youth Group Snacks
01:28:37
Speaker
anyway, Burt, thanks for joining us for i short, ah for us diving into the shallow end of a lot of topics.
01:28:47
Speaker
Thank you for inviting me to Bible study and thank you for these delicious snacks. And I hope to see you on Sunday morning. We, we did, we did get a lot of Arizona iced tea for this.
01:28:58
Speaker
Um, well, we're, so let's close with, um, faint with our, with our favorite youth group snacks. Hmm. I like wet animal crackers out of the giant barrel in the church nursery.
01:29:12
Speaker
That's a good one. And to drink? Faygo. Oh, you did you really have Faygo? Faygo is a very Michigan thing. So Faygo is round. All right. And then everybody would kind of roll their eyes when when they came in with a bunch of Faygo. It's like, oh, good.
01:29:29
Speaker
Red pop. ah Yeah, we didn't have Faygo. I don't think I know what that is. it's like ah It's like a cheap soda brand that is it was made famous because it's like the chosen drink of the Juggalos. Yeah.
01:29:45
Speaker
It must be like, is it like Shasta? Kind of. It's just like a very trashy soda brand. Like... Extra corn syrup. Yeah, think Monster Energy before Monster Energy. Oh, I'm looking it up right now, yeah.
01:30:00
Speaker
Though they have blue, they have red... They have clear, they have orange. It's like you could have it. And clear still has red dye number 40 in it somehow. somehow
01:30:13
Speaker
Somehow. You had to have, in order to drink Faygo and really experience it, like your house had to have one of those enormous antennas on the top that looks like a naked box spring.
01:30:25
Speaker
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
01:30:30
Speaker
You had to have a trampoline with a little blood on the springs. yeah
01:30:36
Speaker
If you go to youth group, Bert, what were you hoping you'd die? was it who i was I was and I'm a pizza kid. yeah You can get me to any town event with free pizza.
01:30:47
Speaker
What's the least likely pizza to get you excited? like Oh. Because everybody has like ah has a least favorite like delivery pizza brand. Oh, it wouldn't it would not matter to me. I would eat literally anything.
01:31:00
Speaker
I didn't like, and this is going to fall on deaf ears. Well, maybe not for you, Bert. You spent some time up here. um I didn't like Papa Gino's when I was a kid. I have since come around.
01:31:11
Speaker
so new It's very New England pizza chain. Yeah, we didn't have it in Nevada. It's good. I like it But I do enjoy it. I...
01:31:21
Speaker
i i don't I asked you guys your favorite snacks at youth group. ah What's your favorite snack, Sam? yeah i was oh i No, i i don't I don't have the strongest recollection of youth group snacks. I feel like my youth group wasn't heavy on the snacks, and I was always disappointed by that. But you could always count on Doritos.
01:31:42
Speaker
What snack could bring you back? Oh, boy, pizza rolls. Not exactly a youth group snack, but if I knew they had boxes of Rice Krispie Treats cereal, like the pink box from back in the day, i'd I'd go through church for sure. Yeah, yeah. That would be, you could get me back into church if I if i knew that was the only place to pick up Rice Krispie Treats cereal. From de-church
Show Wrap-Up and Promotion
01:32:07
Speaker
to re-church, my Totino's Pizza Roll story. Yeah.
01:32:17
Speaker
I love it. All right, everybody. Well, thank you listening. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, thanks for being here, man. And your your last show. This is coming out, what day is today? Tomorrow or the day after, one or the other. Right.
01:32:34
Speaker
And your show your last show in Cleveland is? Saturday, November first Perfect. If you listen this the time, you'll have time to make it there. Tell Bert Growing Up Christian sent you.
01:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, and don't tell Drew Carey about this episode. You'll spoil the surprise, wink.
01:32:55
Speaker
All right, everybody. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you next time.