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Ep. 127 – Latter Day Saints VS. Modern-Day Angst w/ Comedian Skyler Higley
98 Plays2 years ago
Our guest this week is comedian and writer for The Onion, Skyler Higley! Skyler was adopted into a Mormon family as a baby and grew up in Salt Lake City. Although he reveled in his faith as a youngster, being one of the few black kids in the church came with all sorts of challenges. Tokenism, racism, and old bigoted theology were just a few of the things that made Skyler wonder if the LDS church was the place for him. Nowadays, he’s a Chicago-based standup and comedy writer, and we absolutely love his work! Follow Skyler on Instagram and TikTok (@skylerhigley), Twitter (@skyler_higley), and stream his album SALTWATER on Spotify!
But first, Sam sits down with one of our favorite people in the world, comedian Mike Valdes! Follow Mike on Follow him on Instagram (@mikevaldes), Tiktok (@officialmikevaldes), Twitter (@iammikevaldes), and stream his podcast Childlike at Best!
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Transcript
Confessing to Unqualified Religious Figures
00:00:00
Speaker
Even the structure of going to a bishop is like, okay, you wanna repent for something, you gotta go to this bishop, right? If you're a kid who feels like, oh, I got horny and now I feel bad, I masturbated to porn, I feel bad,
00:00:15
Speaker
then you essentially you gotta go sit in this office with this fucking 50 year old man who didn't go to divinity school or anything and then like tell this dude and then the way that it works is this dude asks you questions about it that's not something that should be happening at all there should not be an old man and a kid in a room no supervision and him asking you sexual questions
00:00:42
Speaker
begging for more details don't say gay at school though you know exactly yeah like don't be gay but like we're gonna have this old man ask you the things that make you horny like what and you saw boobs right now describe these boobs me was one of them slightly bigger than the other do you think former Catholics are the only people keeping the phone sex industry alive
Podcast Introduction and Disney Trip
00:01:35
Speaker
Hey, everybody. We are back with another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. Casey is on vacation this week as I was last week. And I believe he announced it and probably made fun of me the entire time for it. But I was at Disney with my family. So I had to find another co-host for the week. And it's not Jeremiah. And maybe I'll make fun of him this entire podcast, because now I have the opportunity to. But I figured, why not?
00:01:39
Speaker
They got to. They have to.
00:02:05
Speaker
debrief my Disney extravaganza experience with none other than a Disney character himself, the the kid from up. Oh, wow. I love it. Mike Valdez. Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm excited, man. This is going to be really funny. You started off making me laugh because
00:02:28
Speaker
because you were like, oh, Casey was making fun of me because I was on vacation with my family. And I'm like, what kind of a horrible human being being with your family? He was a horrible human being, but that's not why he was making fun of me. Yeah, he probably loved your family. You probably love your family, too, you fucking nerd. Yeah. Maybe. Who knows? After Disney, Disney changes. I feel like Disney is one of those things where, like,
00:02:56
Speaker
you leave, there's many things you could leave with. It's like, I mean, one of which could be lots of souvenirs, maybe like a life altering experience for the magic and beauty of it. And then you could also just leave with like a negative
00:03:11
Speaker
symbol in front of your bank account or like yeah, I don't know I left with diarrhea a little bit nice and Probably a divorce. Maybe you could leave with a divorce depending on probably good. Yeah With one less kid. Yeah. Oh my god that I don't want dude. Oh day one at Disney Yeah, we turn we're like in line to go out to where we're eating and I turned around and I'm like oh
00:03:36
Speaker
Fuck, where's Sebastian? And I looked at my wife and- Your son, not the crab. Yeah, yeah. Where's Sebastian? I've been waiting for a meet and greet all goddamn night. We just missed him. Goddamn it. Cancel the trip. We're going home.
00:04:02
Speaker
No. And so I read our we were there with family friends. Yeah. So I ran up to where they were thinking he was with them and he wasn't. That's the most like heart dropping. Of course. I think I'm going to die feeling in the entire world. So you start yelling. Everyone's looking at you like that bitch lost his kid. That guy. Yeah. It's like it's like the episode of Full House where they lose Michelle. Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker
Just it's like walking through disney with a giant sign above your head that says i'm a bad parent. Oh, yeah, absolutely Because to be fair You don't need to lose your kid to have that sign because there are plenty of bad parents like at disney and people that are just like questioning why they became parents as they're at disney, you know, like I uh
00:04:55
Speaker
The last time I went was during Christmas time. So I went I went to the Mickey's very merry Christmas party, which is dope because they give you like cookies all night and like an eggnog and hot chocolate and like a whole bunch of stuff. It's really cool.
00:05:14
Speaker
But you I it was nowhere near your trip because your trip you did all four parks. And yeah, we did it all. We did. Yeah. So Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot. We did a day in Universal, but got the Park Hopper pass to do both sections of the Harry Potter world. And then you guys killed the Orlando and the Orlando like we thought about doing less. And then I'm like, we're not going to go back for a long time.
00:05:41
Speaker
And to think about what it's like to do, we almost did four and then we're like, to just do an extra day. Like, yeah, it's going to be a lot, but at the end of the day, like it just feels like not worth skipping out on something. Cause we left a Friday night, Friday, the 14th, and then came back. Um, well, technically, I guess it was the 22nd. So we were there for.
00:06:09
Speaker
a while and then did the flights back. We had delays both times. So I got in, we had flight delays going there and coming back and they were already evening flights. So I got home at like three o'clock this morning and it was a disaster. Like when my kids and like the flight back, dude, I have never experienced turbulence. I felt like I was on a fucking roller coaster ride.
00:06:34
Speaker
Like that dip, that stomach drop feeling, the flight was, my kids were crying. People on the plane were screaming, dude. Like it sounded like you were on a roller coaster and kids were crying. Some people were throwing up. You could hear and like, it's just the plane would do the drops. And you, if you weren't buckled in, you would have hit the ceiling. Like you really get that roller coaster drop feeling and then it goes back up and goes back down.
Disney Park Experiences
00:07:01
Speaker
And it only lasted, I mean,
00:07:03
Speaker
It's hard to gauge time and something like that, but it probably only lasted 15, 20 seconds max because we were going up through a lightning storm. And then you got above it and you looked out the windows and you looked down and you just saw the lightning exploding in the clouds.
00:07:19
Speaker
really fucking cool. But my kids still were not having it. So we had to close like all the airplane windows so they couldn't see it. And yeah, it was a scary ass flight. It is really scary, man, especially like I it's weird. Like the last time I was on a flight with turbulence like that, the woman next to me was like,
00:07:41
Speaker
I do this thing, and I love, I probably shouldn't do it. But I do this thing on flights, or anywhere where I'm with a lot of people in public where I wear my headphones and I pretend like I'm listening to music but I just try to see what everyone's saying or seeing if they're talking about me.
00:07:58
Speaker
And and this woman was talking so much shit about sitting next to me the whole time. No way. Oh, yeah, she was talking shit the whole time. And and I just played it cool. I played it cool the whole time. And then when turbulence happened, I was like, that's right, bitch. You're sitting with me. You whisper your ear, we're going to die today. Yeah. And you put the tarot cards and you just flip. What's the death card? You just flip that one over, over and over again.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, I said, she was very scared. And I was like, well, let me lead you in prayer. No, I was kidding. I'm kidding. But I made up this lie, which, to be fair, it's not a lie, but I was like, well, turbulence has nothing to do with the plane being bad or whatever. We're just trying to get through a storm. That's why. It's going to feel weird for a little while.
00:08:53
Speaker
And she was like, the lightning is all weird. And I was like, just look at it like God's taken a picture of you, you know, and like and then for some weird reason, she was like, OK, and like actually believed it or whatever. And in my heart, I was like, I shouldn't have to be nice to you because you were talking shit the entire flight about me. Yeah, you should have scared the shit out of her. I should have. Yeah. But I'm getting an extra jewel in my crown when I get to heaven. Yeah, you are.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, and those are worth a lot apparently. Yeah, the exchange rates off the chart these days, especially with the dollar plummeting inflation. That's what I heard. Jules in your crown of the new Bitcoin. That's what I heard. The new Dogecoin. Yeah, the new Dogecoin. Don't tell Casey that. He will try to buy all of it and then wait until it doesn't have value.
00:09:47
Speaker
I am so this is okay. So you tell me everything. So you start with Magic Kingdom. We did. And so I can tell you everything. And then also think about it in hindsight. And I think that starting with Magic Kingdom
00:10:03
Speaker
was the right choice because it's first of all, it's really big. It's huge. Oh, my God, dude, some of these parks are fucking insane. But it's the most like child friendly. My son, he's he's turning six this month. And so but he's he's young ish. Like he's he's a he's a fearful boy. He doesn't really like anything that might be potentially scary.
00:10:31
Speaker
Uh, my daughter is very, very like I want to do all, she's six and she's like, I want to do all the roller coasters. I want to.
00:10:40
Speaker
She has all these things that she wants to do. So no haunted mansion for your son. No, he did not. He skipped out on the haunted mansion. No, no, we brought him. Also, here's the thing about Disney and spending a week in the hot sun every day, all day. It feels like you just stepped into like this rift in the space time continuum. It's like
00:11:04
Speaker
I almost feel like I didn't have that vacation and that I was just, it was like a dream in a fugue state of some sort. I think there's a Mr. Show sketch about it where like there's a news reporter and they're in, they're not at Disney, but they're in Florida and they're talking about how hot it is. And they go, it's so hot, watch this. And they get an egg and they fry an egg on the cement.
00:11:34
Speaker
He's like, that's how hot it is. And it's like, it actually feels like that. Like you can probably fry an egg on the floor. That's how hot it is. It's it. I mean, it's April.
00:11:45
Speaker
But it was still like mid 80s. Yeah. But the heat when the humidity is high and stuff. Oh, yeah, it feels disgusting. But yeah, so like, where was it? Okay, so we you know, we do the Peter Pan. It's a small world, all that stuff. And but what was crazy is like,
00:12:07
Speaker
That that's where that so they split all their best roller coasters up they have like one of their best roller coasters in every park yep so tron is in magic kingdom and i was like i was i was shocked my daughter was she was up for doing tron so i took her to do that that was one of the funnest fucking roller coasters i've ever been on in my life.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. It's like a motorcycle type deal, right? Yeah. I couldn't believe she wanted to do it. The whole time we're in line, she's telling me she's scared. I'm like, you don't have to go on it. If you want to leave, we can just leave anytime. Until you're locked into that ride, you can leave anytime. Now we're standing in line. We're at the gate. We're next. She's like, I'm scared. I don't know. I'm scared. I'm like, do you want to leave? She shakes her head, no.
00:12:58
Speaker
Okay. So we'll do it. And you know, we get on and I've never seen, like, she looked like she just stared death in the face by the time we got off of it. Like no affect, just blank face, like saw ghost. Right. And I'm like, I look over at her. I'm like, did you like it? And we haven't even gotten off yet. Like this is when you like slow down.
00:13:21
Speaker
And you said, cause the ride is sick. I mean, there's no, it doesn't lift you up and do a drop. It's one of those like magnetic. I don't know if it's through magnets or like, um, air pressure or whatever. Um, but you just, you start out flat, you're basically riding a bike and it goes like zero to whatever, but then two seconds, like you're just lying. And it's all like the.
00:13:40
Speaker
you're in a building with all the lights and it feels like you're in Tron. It's a fucking ride. And I'm like, I keep looking over at her and she's just no affect, just blank face the entire ride. I look at her when we're done. I'm like, did you have fun? And she just, no facial expression all nods her head up and down.
00:13:58
Speaker
Wow. Uh, then we get off the ride and I'm like, are you, are you okay? And she's still just nodding her head. Yes. After like 10 seconds, she gets the biggest smile I've ever seen. And she's just like, that was the funnest roller coaster I've ever been on. Like she loved it. She couldn't once she like,
00:14:18
Speaker
Let's the shock of like what it was wore off. She couldn't stop talking about it. Sure. Had grinned ear to ear for like five minutes. It was. Yeah, there's no better feeling. And I could see this as an adult because I've done Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. There's no better feeling than than being scared for over an hour.
00:14:40
Speaker
And then doing a thing that lasts what has to be 80 seconds at best and realizing that you're still alive at the end. It's like adrenaline just goes all over your body and you're like, yes, like I did it.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's like nothing was ever going to happen to you. But, you know, like, especially at a place like Disney, like there's like there's thousands upon thousands of people that are legally required to make sure that you don't die. So.
00:15:13
Speaker
So that helps. I mean, it's not like you're in a carnival, you know, and it's, you know, you're like, well, I do trust that 16 year old, but this is rickety thing looks kind of weird. You know, like holds up into a car. It's like a fucking transformer. Yeah, exactly. Transformers with no personality. Yeah. So next day you're at Hollywood Studios, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, that's next. Oh.
00:15:39
Speaker
I'm pretty sure, thinking back, I said my daughter is six. I don't know how old she is. She is, in fact, seven. I feel like if anyone listens to this that knows my family, they'd be like, this guy really is a bad dad. No, you're good.
00:15:55
Speaker
So she did everything. No, I'm sorry. I was just going to say, give me like the best, like the best of highlights, you know, with everything. Yeah. So Hollywood studios was a blast because what I didn't know about Disney, because I went to Disney when I was like six, obviously rides have changed the way that they present rides have changed. But, um,
00:16:18
Speaker
they didn't own in everything back then. That's true. Now you're like, Star Wars, I mean, they own everything. You go to Animal Kingdom and you're like, so there's a zoo and Avatar? This is really weird. It is crazy how much they own. And then that being combined with universal neighbors,
00:16:44
Speaker
That was obviously like a plan, right? Anything that's anything is between those owned between those two. Yeah. So, yeah, it was like we the Star Wars rides were just fucking outrageous. Dude, what's it called? Rise of the Resistance. Yes, dude.
00:17:04
Speaker
probably one of the coolest rides you'll ever go on in your whole life. There's two, and I won't spoil it for people that haven't been on there, but there's two audible, oh my God moments where you can't believe what you're seeing because you're in it and you're like, oh my God, this is absolutely insane.
00:17:32
Speaker
I'm trying not to spoil it, but you know. No matter how much you explain it, it will never spoil it because when you actually experience it, it will just blow you the fuck away. To see a full-size add-at. You know what I mean? Yes. You see a full-size add-at.
00:17:47
Speaker
You're you're seeing a a row. I mean, just so many stormtroopers. Like, I mean, there's basically three elements to this ride. Like there's like it's not just one vehicle like you're in like like you're essentially taking hostage one point. Like, I mean, it's such a cool concept for a ride. You know, it really is. Yeah, it's like one of the coolest things. And also that immersion. Basically what happened and this is my opinion, what happened was
00:18:17
Speaker
Universal and Warner were like, yo, we're going to make Harry Potter. And that's when the word immersion started, because when you go into Harry into Hogwarts, which you have been. Yeah, there is no more Orlando, Florida. Like you are now in Hogwarts. Like that's literally where you are. And that's what Disney wanted to do. They were like, we're not going to let this Harry Potter like, you know, take all of our money. We're going to.
00:18:45
Speaker
Literally, there is not even a grain of sand from Orlando, Florida. Everything is from whatever planet. Planet Batu, I think, is the name of the planet that you're on.
00:18:59
Speaker
Um I mean so much so that like the food it like the the if you buy a diet coke it looks like a thermal detonator I mean like literally it is like you are on another planet. It is incredible Like it's so cool. Did you end up going to the cantina? No, so we were supposed to uh because
00:19:22
Speaker
We had thought it was like a restaurant, like experience, whatever that you would eat at. But what we didn't know is it's really just like bar food and drinks and that it's a ship destination for kids canceling that reservation to go there. Straight up like that part of Hollywood Studios and Epcot is made for adults. Yeah, it feels more like it. I think. Oh, one of the things I would say before is what
00:19:48
Speaker
So when I went to Disney and I was young, I was well, first of all, I was afraid of everything. So I'm very sensitive to how my son feels. My wife is like, he'll be fine. We'll just do it. And I'm like, there's a couple of times where I was like, we're not putting him on this ride. We have one of which was the Tower of Terror. Yeah, that would have been a bad ride for him. He would. Absolutely. It's a bad ride for me. And
00:20:12
Speaker
So, but even, even bring him on, um, on, uh, what's the one, uh, that we just talked about from magic kingdom with the ghosts. Oh, haunted mansion haunted mansion. I was like, I don't think this is a great idea for him and he hated it. So it's like, I was really sensitive to how he felt. Cause I remember not going on really any rides when I went as a five or six year old. And, um, but what I was like, what I just was blown away by was how I'm thinking like, you know,
00:20:42
Speaker
the best rides are going to be roller coasters. And some of them were great roller coasters, but I guess I just didn't expect the experience driven adventure.
Universal Studios Adventures
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, that these rides, they're not rides. They're not like, let's go fast and then go up and down and they might incorporate some of those elements
00:20:59
Speaker
but it's really like here's a screen that covers your entire face so you can't see anything else and we're gonna just throw wind at you and splash you with water and you're gonna feel like you're actually in this like uh at the um in epcot like the ratatouille ride you're like ratatouille that's gonna be a kid's ride and you're like no you you're a fucking mouse in this ride and you're you're crawling under like
00:21:25
Speaker
stoves and through pantries. Even under the stove, they ignite the fire of the stove and you feel the heat from it. Everything about these rides is so immersive. I'm sitting there laughing with a smile on my face.
00:21:44
Speaker
Like with Rise of the Resistance, they're just like, holy shit, I can't believe this is a thing. I can't believe this exists, and I'm experiencing this. The only regret I have is like, I didn't go on anything more than once, just because of our, like, act schedule and kids. It had so much to do, absolutely. And okay, so there's a few things I have to ask you about, just like as a theme park person. Did you have Butterbeer?
00:22:14
Speaker
Well, I had butter beer. Now, when I was in New York, when did I go to New York? I don't know. Several months ago, we went to New York for a weekend back maybe in September last September. They have the Harry Potter store there and they sold butter beer. And I hated it. It was like too sweet. Not the same, bro. Couldn't do it. It actually surprisingly, the butter beer is the same.
00:22:41
Speaker
Oh, is it? I mean, I just I will say this. It is sweet as balls. It's sweet. It's like the sweetest thing you've ever had in your life. Like it's it's a lot in the back of my jaw. But then they had here, though, they had frozen butter beer. And that was more enjoyable. I did like that a bit more. But even then, I drank a little bit of my sons and that was all I could do.
00:23:03
Speaker
But they have literally everything in Butterbeer flavor. Like they have Butterbeer ice cream, Butterbeer fudge, Butterbeer fart candles. They have everything in Butterbeer scented or flavored stuff. It's wild. So I had to ask you the Butterbeer question. I'm trying to think. Just skipping over to Universal, because we're already at Universal, what were your favorite parts of Universal?
00:23:32
Speaker
So we mostly did spend the day with Harry Potter World. So Harry Potter World has, I think it was three rides between the two parks. It's not a lot of rides. They have the Hagrid one and that's like a roller coaster. And that's a good roller coaster. That one's really fun. I like Green Glots the most. That's my favorite.
00:23:52
Speaker
That was great. And then there's the other one where you in the castle on the other side. I'm bad at remembering the names. I don't like I don't like that one because it's like it like kind of makes you feel like you're holding a broom. And if you're a person, you know, who, whether you identify it as as a man or not, if you have undercarriage, it is going to hurt you. So.
00:24:17
Speaker
You know, like it's just that's just what it is. And yeah, it I mean, it's like it's like the ride was made for people. And then they forgot like, oh, wait, people have ball sacks, right? Like.
00:24:34
Speaker
Which which one is this that you're thinking of because it's when it's Harry Potter's escape from from The the thing of a goo or whatever. I think yeah, you're right. I think I'm forgetting what that's like I'm used to them being in like the you know, you just sit in that little car But this one I think that one actually you pull the thing down and then it has these things that you hold on to it It makes you feel like you're holding on to a broom
00:25:00
Speaker
Okay. I actually don't think I held on to those. I thought it was supposed to feel like I was masturbating the whole time and I was like, oh, I don't think this is the right place for that. So I just held on to the shoulder things. But that one, you go through
00:25:16
Speaker
Chase by Dementors and stuff like that. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. The track is up in the ceiling. So you don't see what you're doing. It literally feels like you're flying the whole time. It's really cool. And then there's moments where you see a screen and then you make a sharp turn and then there's a real animatronic of a dragon and you're like, whoa, stuff like that.
00:25:43
Speaker
God, just the experience of these rides is so fun. It makes me like not like as I get older, I don't do as well in roller coasters. I got to space them apart. They do make me dizzy. They do give me headaches. Same, especially if they're intense with loops and flips and shit like that. So yeah, I, I, I paced the roller coasters. I probably only did one a day. And now the ones that I compared to Six Flags, the roller coasters at Disney are just like smooth. Oh yeah. Smooth ass roller coasters, man. Did you do the Hulk?
00:26:13
Speaker
No, so I didn't do Hulk. We, the only ones outside of Spider-Man that we did, I mean, outside of, we did the Spider-Man ride. The only ones outside of Harry Potter world. Uh, we did Spider-Man, which is a good ride. Very, very fun.
00:26:27
Speaker
My son actually liked that one, even though he said it was a little scary. That's another one of those mind trick ones where like it's like screens and then there's real stuff happening around you. Yeah. It's very cool. It's crazy what you feel like because. Yeah, because you never leave the fucking ground. Yeah, like how it can make you how the car just tilts a little bit and they blow wind and somehow you feel like you're falling off a 32 story building. Exactly. It's unbelievable.
00:26:58
Speaker
Like it's unreal how they do it. Like, I mean, you are completely safe, but it really makes you feel like you are falling off a skyscraper. It's wild. And that Spider-Man catches you.
00:27:13
Speaker
With Animal Kingdom, that was our last thing when we did Animal Kingdom, and a lot of the rides in Animal Kingdom- Had to do Avatar, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. So the rides in Animal Kingdom were a little slow. Of course. They have the safari, but my daughter's like, Animal Kingdom was my favorite. Yeah, because animals rock, dude. Dude, the gorillas are just... So when we got to the gorillas, there's a couple of adult gorillas and there's three babies.
00:27:42
Speaker
And the baby ones were hilarious. They were like, they were just, one of them just runs up and knocks the other one over. The other one falls on its back and throws its feet up in the air dramatically. Like it's like watching kids play and it's freaking. It's awesome. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. It's super fun. Yeah. Did you guys do the dinosaur ride? That's a fun one.
00:28:04
Speaker
The dinosaur no we did all I think we did all the rides at Animal Kingdom, but I don't what's the dinosaur ride Animal Kingdom, so they have a they have one where you're you're like Essentially on an expedition and you go you time travel to last dinosaur. That's one of my favorite rides That isn't an avatar thing
00:28:25
Speaker
We did do that one. That one was fun. It's like, you're in like a bumpy car and you're through a dark cave and you are trying to like getting the guanodon to time travel back with you. It's super cool. Yeah. It's really cool. And then there's like a river one where you just kind of, it's like a little log flu me thing where you just.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's a fun one. I think it was, yeah, it was a Jurassic Park theme, like River Ride. Yeah. Well, we're getting close to the time that we have to go into our episode. And if any listeners are excited about who you're interviewing, they've just
00:28:59
Speaker
completely skipped over this part. But what I was going to say was, this is the most important thing, at least for me. How many lives did you save while you were at Disney? Did you get to preach the word of God? No, I'm glad you asked. Before I answer that, I do just want to do a quick shout out because the only ride we didn't really cover was the Avatar ride. Yeah.
00:29:25
Speaker
That was just a mind blowing experience in the way that use that's another one where you don't leave the ground. Yeah, only tilts you probably like 12 degrees forward and backwards. They kill a virgin immersion like
00:29:42
Speaker
If you look around, you look to your left and your right when you're in it, like it feels like the screen is endless, but you can see the other people looking at it. But if you're looking forward, you can't see anyone to your left or your right. You're in this dome, this like looking at this domed screen. And it's, I don't know, I thought it was, it's, you can't even explain what the experience is like. You're just like, I'm flying at 75 miles an hour. Yeah. And
00:30:08
Speaker
You go near the ocean the waves come up and you get misted with water and yeah, god damn dude It is really funny how like you you see that and like, you know So many people that don't go to Disney frequently are very like but that's a kids thing Like why do adults like it like adults go and they don't even have kids now you get it yeah, because it's better than a rollercoaster I'd rather do that than like
00:30:35
Speaker
You know, that cool, that roller coaster with the big drop. I'll do that once. And then my head hurts. I want to sit and immerse myself into these worlds. You can do those Pandora rides like a thousand times and never get bored of it because you see something new. Like there's always there's always something new. There's an animatronic that you missed or the animatronic is doing something new that you didn't see. Like there's so much going on, you know,
00:31:03
Speaker
Of course, I'm not one of those Disney adults that's going to get married there and stuff like that. Which I saw people doing. Yeah, there's a level of Disney adult that I'm not that person. But I understand adults that don't have children that like going to Disney every now and again because it is really fun and it's a fun
00:31:25
Speaker
thrill that you can't really explain unless you've been there. Because it seems like you're describing a dream in a way, you know? Yeah, it really is. And I would honestly think I honestly think it'd be a lot of fun to go without to go without I could see what the appeal of going without kids like it's so magical and kid friendly and kid oriented that like taking going without my kids while they're young feels like it'd be like
Financial and Gospel Sharing Concerns
00:31:49
Speaker
Like, you're cheating as an adult. Like, this isn't how you're supposed to do parenting. Well, listen, if you're going to go without a kid, go to Epcot, do the food and wine festival, and get litty like a titty. Because it is wild. You get to drink around the entire world. For anybody that hasn't been, there's like little pavilions of all over the world. And you can have alcohol from literally everywhere around the world, and food from everywhere around the world. I mean, it is.
00:32:19
Speaker
Wild yeah, I definitely got a good I got a few drinks there. That was one of the few places I really did some drinking otherwise
00:32:27
Speaker
too angry about spending money after like day three. I'm like, just blow my fucking brains out already. Yeah. I'm so tired of spending money. Wait, honey. You spent $35 on this cocktail from Germany because I've never had it before. The spending money actually started to become painful for me after day three. Like after day one, I got with the check for one of the those like
00:32:52
Speaker
Character experience diners where it's like a flat rate and they just keep bringing food look if you if my kids ate a lot but they ate like Three bites of food and you get charged 40 bucks for them, you know
00:33:04
Speaker
And after I got the check for that, I looked at my wife and I was like, I don't want to see another one of these for the rest of the week. Like they go to you and she doesn't care. She'll spend, she'll just keep, Oh, let's do this. Let's do that. She does her time. I mean, we've been saving for this, but like we paid for everything. Like our tickets, our flights, the head element paid for prior to it. So, and then.
00:33:26
Speaker
Like, but we had saved for it. But even then I'm like, I'm actually physically ill over how much money I know we're spending. And I know how much, I know how much I think we're spending and I know how money works. So whatever I think it is, add 20% and it's probably that or more. And you're like, Oh my God, I don't, I can't, I can't. And by the last day, we didn't even have a theme park. We're just killing time until our flight. So we go into like Disney Springs. It's like a outdoor mall kind of thing. Yeah.
00:33:55
Speaker
Did you guys go to Gideon's? It's like, no, but it's like, get the kid's face painted. Now we'll get some ice cream. And ice cream is $15 a person. Of course. Kill me. Just fucking kill it. Can we get on our goddamn plane? I don't want to spend any more money. Well, it's it's salt and straw. So like, you know, they got they got biscuits and gravy flavored ice cream. You know, like, that's the thing. Like, that's the whole thing about salt and straw. Dude, you missed out. And like, to be fair, you might not have been able to do it, but Gideon's
00:34:24
Speaker
is so dope at Disney Springs. It's a it's a cookie like bakehouse type deal. And by far one of the best cookies you'll ever eat in your entire life. Like their cookies are a pound and like.
00:34:40
Speaker
chocolate chips all over, they put salt on their cookies. So like it's like the savory sweet in every single cookie that they make. And so they have like different things like they have, you know, the cookie of the week and they have limited edition stuff. And like, you know, when you walk in, it's very like Tim Burton esque, you know, type deal. So everything is very Gothic looking and like all that stuff. But yeah, their wait time is like three hours minimum, you know, when you're trying to get a cookie there.
00:35:07
Speaker
That's crazy. Three hours for a cookie. Got to be honest. Worth it. It really is. It really is my my one of my best friends. He had a wedding that I went to. And it was it was during that time when I went to Disney and I went to Gideon's for the first time before. And then I found out at his wedding he had Gideon's cater his wedding, dude.
00:35:33
Speaker
It was like it was the greatest day of my life. I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Like his wedding cake was a Gideon's wedding cake. It was so awesome. That's wild, dude. Yeah. To answer your question, I did intentionally ruin people's flights by witnessing to them, but I did wait until the turbulence started. I was like,
00:35:57
Speaker
Do you know where you're going to go if you die tonight? And you're like, fuck. Fuck. It's over, isn't it? I know that you saw me with my headphones on, but I didn't have my music on. So I heard you talking shit. And what I wanted to say was, do you know who Jesus Christ is as your personal Lord and savior? My biggest hope now is someday on a flight. I remember being at Liberty when I was at Liberty University, people would talk about like,
00:36:21
Speaker
If you're taking a flight and you're out witnessing to people, you have their attention for a couple hours. That's a real lost opportunity. You not taking that opportunity could be the reason they go to hell and they would lay on the guilt, which is awful. Then I would think about that.
Guest Introduction: Skylar Higley
00:36:42
Speaker
Now I'm at a point where I'm like, God damn it, why don't I ever get to sit next to somebody who tries to share the gospel with me? Because I think my approach would be to act really interested, get saved at the end of the flight, and then give them a hug afterwards and whisper in their ear, gotcha, bitch.
00:37:08
Speaker
There was this video that went around of these kids that had to have been from some Christian college that whipped out their acoustic guitars and just started doing crazy worship on a flight. Dude, after seeing that, the only thing I could think about was how the 911 hijackers got the wrong plane.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're right. And there were a few years too early. But to be fair, when I heard you say the whole thing about liberty saying things like that, those are the kind of people that it creates. Yeah, people like that. Or the John Chows of the world, who just- Yeah, where it's just like, dude,
00:37:52
Speaker
Like at the end of the day, like there's a difference between like listening, like, for example, like if I like, you know, South African grunge metal, you know, and I'm listening to it on my headphones, I have every right to listen to it on my headphones. But it becomes a problem when I subject an entire plane to listening to whatever I'm listening to. You know what I mean? Like you're allowed to have whatever beliefs you want. Nobody stopping you, you know, but like
00:38:21
Speaker
Except for maybe the enemy. But are we really starting? Even if it was someone with an acoustic guitar who was just playing Wonderwall, I would want to die. Just shut the fuck up and sit down. We're on a goddamn airplane. It doesn't matter that it was worship. It happened at all.
00:38:45
Speaker
If somebody farts too loud on an airplane, they should be thrown off. Nevermind gets up on an acoustic guitar and sings. Yeah, it's true. It's true, man. I mean, yeah, but anyway, this has been a fun conversation. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for joining me for this intro. I think, I don't know, I got to talk to Casey, but he might have just lost his job as all. Okay. You might be replacing him. Okay. Sorry.
00:39:14
Speaker
Just be prepared for that call. Yeah, that's what happens when you start hanging out with your family too much. You're fucking nerd. You were perfect for this. I'm so glad you were free because I can't think of anyone else I would have liked to debrief my Disney.
00:39:30
Speaker
Uh, my Disney trip with so I had, I had such a blast. Uh, so the guest this week is a standup comedian named Skylar Higley. Uh, he was a former staff writer for Conan. He's currently a staff writer at the onion.
00:39:45
Speaker
He's got a comedy album streaming on Spotify called Saltwater. And he is hilarious. He's very funny. He grew up Mormon, which I know for you real Christians isn't Christian, but it's Christian adjacent. And when I saw when I heard one of his bits where that got that information got slipped in.
00:40:07
Speaker
I realized that I had no choice but to reach out because I had found him a little bit before that. Every time I find comics whose bits I love, I'm like, God, I go through their profiles and their TikToks and I just hope and pray that the Lord allows me to stumble across a video where they talk about their Christian upbringing.
00:40:27
Speaker
Because then it gives me an excuse to reach out to them so Skyler was one of those he was a really fun guest and You should absolutely follow him on all social media platforms because his jokes are hilarious and you should also look for wherever he's doing shows because if you're around you should absolutely go see him I'm looking forward to him
00:40:47
Speaker
coming out to my way. So if you're not in our Discord, you can find the link to that in our Instagram page through our link tree. You can follow us anywhere you want and leave us a review. Reviews are great. We don't
00:41:07
Speaker
You're doing all right, but I'll be honest and say we don't have enough of them. So just give us more. I want more. I want more reviews. Also I'm broke, uh, after Disney. So if you want to Venmo me some money, I'm not going to simp too hard and post it, but just shoot me a message and be like, look, I'd really like to support, uh, your ministry. Uh, and I'll send you my Venmo. That's fine. I mean, and this is all you'll hear about it. I'm not a simp. So go fuck yourself and enjoy our conversation with Skylar Higley.
00:41:39
Speaker
Hey, everybody, we are back with our guest, Skyler. Skyler, what's going on, man? Hey, it's me. It's you. Not much. I'm good. Prago's rainy, you know. Chicago. That's what I was going to ask. I thought you were in Chicago. All I knew was central time. But then I was going through some of your videos. And I was like, I saw a laugh factory in the back. And I was fairly certain that was in Chicago. Yep. The Chicago laugh factory doing great right now.
00:42:09
Speaker
That's like that's like there's a billion of those, though. Right. I mean, they're. Yeah. Yes, there is the one on Sunset, the original one, and then there's Long Beach and Chicago and Las Vegas and probably a couple others. I don't know. See, probably start franchising and went downhill on beach or something like that. You know, yeah. Chicago is one of those places I grew up in Michigan and like
00:42:39
Speaker
It was like Southern Michigan and everybody, like now I live in Kansas, everybody assumes that like Michigan got, you know, just like these horrendous winters and stuff. And like, it was pretty much like Chicago gets the winter that everybody.
00:42:55
Speaker
thinks the Northern States gets. Oh, yeah, it's not. Well, I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, which I'm sure we'll get into, but a little foreshadowing for everyone. You can't figure out what we might start talking about. Yeah, the winters there are not they're not anything to, you know, they're pretty crazy. You don't mess around with the Salt Lake City winters either. You get like
00:43:25
Speaker
hella feet of snow and the difference here is you're getting like a lot of lake effect wind and stuff so that sucks just trying to walk around but you know Salt Lake City you got that where you it's so cold and if your car wasn't a garage you gotta scrape off the ice and turn it on and wait for it to get warm as you're driving to work and it fucking sucks and you're just like
00:43:49
Speaker
freezing in your car. Every morning, it's 6am. It's not great. That's like the part of the country where it used to be that if you didn't pack enough like, like rock hard biscuits and you know, boiled belt jerky, you were gonna have to eat your babies and through the winter.
00:44:09
Speaker
Yeah, and many did. I live in Massachusetts and it gets fairly cold. It's not the misery that it is in some places, but that feeling dude of like, it's like negative anything. Once it's negative degrees out, it's just trash.
00:44:29
Speaker
having to start your car in that you're like what it's gonna be and how am I gonna have like a positive day if it's negative degrees outside that's just not because you're in physical pain like you're especially if you forget to work your car you're literally like in physical pain for a while before your car warms up enough for you to maybe probably just in time for you to get where you're going it's
00:44:52
Speaker
Your hands hurt, you can't touch the steering wheel, it's so fucking cold. Like, it's like holding onto a basket. You pull your sleeves out over your hands and shit.
00:45:01
Speaker
The amount of times in the morning I was driving my mom to work or myself to school like this, just with my hands tucked and just like kind of keep it center, but mostly just trying not to touch the wheel. It's awful. I think cars are better now too. I sound like I'm talking about from a really long time ago, but it literally is just like the 2010s to now car-wise. I think they're better at getting warmer.
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's like some places they play this the floor is lava as kids and like where you grew up, it's like you play the steering wheel is dry ice.
00:45:38
Speaker
speaking of dry ice I actually just uh I touched accidentally dry ice for the first time not understanding that this package that I got had dry ice in it to keep whatever I bought cold and I I just went to take it out presuming it was like a regular ice pack and I was like oh
00:45:57
Speaker
why the fuck does my hand feel like it's on fire? And then I start googling like what that can actually, but apparently you can get frostbite very quickly from that. That was a new experience for me. So I appreciate being able to tell everybody that. Anyway, moving on.
00:46:13
Speaker
We really map out these segues well. Okay. So, all right. Not to, uh, not to jump into it too ham-fisted here, but, uh, Salt Lake City, you grew up Mormon. Obviously everyone thinks Lutheran. No, yeah, I grew up Mormon and, um,
00:46:38
Speaker
And that's how I got to be this. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't have a preamble for it other than like, yep.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, was it something that you were involved in that you were not necessarily make, obviously as a kid, you're not making that choice. But were you involved in that from like, for your entire childhood? Was that a lifer thing? Or was it like parents found the Mormon Church when you were like, older or elementary school or something like that?
00:47:12
Speaker
No, no, good question. It was very much just the classic, I forget that people's like convert or like people's parents convert when they're in elementary school or their kids or something like that. Because I was just like, sort of raised in it. And that was just like, our, my parents were that and their parents were and their grandparents were and it's just like, you know, that's hella retention.
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it can they they it was one of those lines that did that I think the retention kind of ended with my Parents and my generation to be honest, but like yeah it going back. I know there are Like grandparents they can trace their family line like back to the pioneers and so they were like the OG Mormons and I'm from a line of OG
00:48:07
Speaker
converts that probably goes back to like Missouri where they converted or something like that. They were chased out with like firebrands and pitchforks. Yeah, that's what they that's what they like to talk about. They go, hey, they were mean to us a really long time ago. Remember, and then we had to go because everybody else was mean. And then we didn't make any mistakes and do anything wrong ever.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah, and then they're all like they were mean and chased us out and then ironically they Did the same thing to black people until the 70s, right? Yeah, but they don't tell you that part The gloss over that so okay, I feel like
00:48:57
Speaker
Salt Lake City, that area is such a it's not it's not like an insular community, but it's like so distinctive. And I don't know, I think, you know, people who didn't grow up anywhere near that, like, I feel like we don't really have a great idea of what the culture is like there. I mean, what's church like church for us was like,
00:49:19
Speaker
every time the doors were open. It was Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night. I went to a Christian school, like all the same people all the same time. What was that for you? I would say it's similar. I would say it's similar in that sense that like the whole community revolved around the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not just any church.
00:49:49
Speaker
The one true church. Yeah, the one true church of the Lord and everybody else is wrong. It was something that was like interwoven into the community. I don't know how much everyone here knows about Mormonism, but essentially like you have, well, let's just go back a little bit to the inception of the territory of Deseret. It's like what people need to understand about that area is, you know,
00:50:19
Speaker
However insular or not it is now, it was a place that started as a territory established by the Mormons. That's like what the territory of Deseret was. And the prophet of the Mormon Church at the time, Brigham Young, was like the
00:50:39
Speaker
governor of that territory. It was like a theocratic government and the church sort of controlled the government and you can argue still does.
00:50:58
Speaker
that was the community within just politics and whatever was centered around this specific faith. So then fast forward, you still have a lot of that structure in place still. So all the community structures are like split into wards and stakes and all that. And when you're in a ward and you're a bunch of people who go to the Mormon church, most people get essentially
00:51:27
Speaker
What are these assignments like traditional churches? If you have like a pastor or a priest or something, they went to divinity school and then they get hired by a specific church to get paid to be a church guy. It's not like that in Mormonism. You literally
00:51:43
Speaker
if you're involved in the church for the most part and you have the priesthood or are just involved you get some type of assignment that makes it like you're involved and it's kind of your part-time job to help this whole community run and so that's why it's like very heavily bureaucratic and hierarchical and then they have like
00:52:06
Speaker
the Quorum of the Seventy and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Mormon Prophet. It's like the whole thing is like this big corporate hierarchy of a religion. So yeah, that made everything in life sort of about that as well. I feel like, you know, I've started the Witcher.
00:52:26
Speaker
the end like four times. And about like two days into it, I'm like, this is this is too much lore. I can't get I can't get I feel like Mormonism is kind of like that where it's like layers and and yeah, it's it's hard to it's hard to follow if you're not familiar with the structure, I feel
00:52:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, definitely. It's something that's so layered and specific. I mean, it's something that took me they tell you it over and over again, but it took me my entire childhood to like know all that stuff. And then you just know it and you go you're not looking at it from the outside being like, oh, this is a lot of stuff. This is a lot of lore. This is a complete other world of stuff, just like the way that you structurally and then just like
00:53:17
Speaker
the belief system and how that developed and I was just thinking about that level of war because recently I was telling a friend like it doesn't really so much happen anymore but I would I used to fully get like US presidents and Mormon prophets confused like you know because it's it was all you would just learn about these like old white dudes that were in charge and
00:53:46
Speaker
In Utah, you learn about that in the same breath as US presidents. Sometimes I'd get which ones were which confused. I thought it was like Lyndon Brigham Johnson. Yeah.
00:54:00
Speaker
What is it? No, this one's even worse than that. The example is there's the president, Woodrow Wilson, and in Mormonism, there is a Mormon prophet named Wilford Woodruff? Something Woodruff? Sorry, real quick, I'm gonna look it up. Yeah, go for it. Can't be getting your old prophets wrong there, man.
00:54:24
Speaker
uh wilford woodruff yeah so i would get wilford and woodrow wilson confused as like who those people because it's just it's essentially the same thing at least to me as a child you know yeah see i could see why that's tough i um then you could just be like me and never have known any of the presidents other than like the big hits like your washington's and your lincoln's everyone else was just before my time
00:54:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's, yeah, that's sort of why. And then it's like, oh, well, I have all these profits in my head, but those guys are not, you just thought of it as the same thing. And then living in Utah too, like there's Pioneer Day, which is July 24th. And so they celebrate it like another 4th of July. So you like, it's really,
00:55:12
Speaker
when you're growing up in that world, it feels like Mormonism and the whole Mormon thing just is how America is. It's like, oh yeah, we celebrate this holiday of America and then this holiday of Mormon Utah. It's just the same thing twice.
00:55:32
Speaker
So there's a huge emphasis for people growing up on Mormon history, not just belief. All the 40 years of it. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I guess how far back does it go? Okay, so growing up Christian, it's like Christian history is obviously a couple thousand years.
00:55:53
Speaker
But is any of that, do the Mormons call back to any of that or do they really kind of keep to like the foundation of Mormonism and then kind of leave out everything else prior to that?
00:56:10
Speaker
what we're talking about. Like, are we talking about like public education or like in schools or just like church Sunday school stuff? Because that's two different answers. Oh, it's like public education, right? Like education wise, like my school, all we talked about was Christian history. So that was the focus of every era that we looked at was like, well, where were Christians during this period, you know?
00:56:38
Speaker
Right. Public education there would have been would have brought in a lot of like Mormon concepts just because it's Salt Lake City. Yeah. Okay, this is interesting.
00:56:53
Speaker
Well, it's not like it's Mormon concepts, like they would explicitly teach you that stuff in schools, but I do remember it is just the version of the same way the United States. I've been thinking a lot about how Mormonism and the Mormon narrative and everything that it is is just sort of like a microcosm of the
00:57:17
Speaker
American narrative where it's like we were uh religiously persecuted so we went to this place and then established a system that was based on white males and then persecuted others like it's sort of the same thing so um yeah right interesting um in uh when I was growing up in schools they would tell you a lot of like pioneer history for example and uh but of course like there is that um
00:57:46
Speaker
you know correct version of history that you're supposed to know and especially within the church they like tell you what the history was that's like how the pioneers got chased out and went across the plains and then established this new place but then they really downplay
00:58:06
Speaker
A lot of the weirder parts when it came to like polygamy and underage marriage and genocide and slavery and stuff like that so it's like yeah there was an emphasis on Mormon history in that regard but then
00:58:22
Speaker
there was like not the full picture that we got um and then as far as like ancient history there's like stuff that was in the book of mormon about like the israelites somehow coming and becoming native americans they didn't talk about that stuff too much i mean there'd be like church
00:58:42
Speaker
history but like it comes up and then they're like and yeah it's that but they're like it's not a detailed information type history that we got of like you know in 17 whatever the Christians were here or even further back 16 and 1500s Christians were because there was no Mormonism so it's like well the history that's relevant is like back in the
00:59:05
Speaker
ancient times when the Nephites and Lamanites were doing things and then flash forward to 18 whatever when Joseph Smith quote unquote finds the golden plates.
00:59:16
Speaker
Oh my god, that's so cool. I really like the comparison between the way that they keep the histories nice and tight, like in the same way that your US history education is. It's easy to just dog on, I mean it's easy to dog on everything, but when you look at Mormonism, there's like strange beliefs and it's like, oh,
00:59:38
Speaker
Let's just give them a hard time without really taking a good look at how everyone else also seems to handle history. So I think that's an interesting comparison. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, no. It was just realizing in a similar way where I realized all this stuff that they just
00:59:59
Speaker
didn't ever tell me about when it comes to whatever that story was about them like killing a bunch of Native Americans and sort of burying that or just having black people. And it's just like, you know, like obviously you want people who you want to adhere to a certain ideology to understand a certain version of history. It's like, well, that's what
01:00:27
Speaker
Mormonism did in its own way. And that's what America did. And then like, if you leave Utah and Mormonism or you leave America and you talk to people from other places, they'll go like, Hey, remember when you did all this stuff? And you're like, I wasn't even taught that. And it's like, Yeah, why would they tell you that? I have a Mormon history con question for you.
01:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so I'm curious because like Joseph Smith was was murdered, right? So is it your like your understanding of it? Do you think that Brigham Young was he like the heir apparent kind of chosen by Joseph Smith to succeed him? Or do you think that they had kind of like a Lennon and Stalin sort of relationship where like,
01:01:14
Speaker
Lennon really didn't want Stalin to be the next guy in the chair. Kind of was like suspicious of him and stuff, but most ambitious dude and willing to do whatever he needed to do to get the job. I mean, what's your feeling on that?
01:01:29
Speaker
Um, you know what, I actually don't know what they would tell you is that Brigham Young was like the heir apparent and, um, and then they sort of do that thing where they hand wave about like, yeah. And at the time there was some people who didn't really agree about who should take over a blah, blah, blah. And then some people split off and whatever, but they like don't.
01:01:53
Speaker
they tell you about it but they don't get into the details of it that much so what you're saying right now like i'm sure that was i don't know if that was like a situation or how much of it was a situation because i genuinely was just not told about that and wasn't given like the researcher information so it's like it could have not been i actually wouldn't put it past knowing uh who Brigham Young is and the way he
01:02:21
Speaker
did a lot of political maneuvering and the way he wanted power. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the situation, but I don't know. Was polygamy, was that Brigham Young's thing? Well, he definitely went hard for polygamy. I think it was established with Joseph Smith, I'm pretty sure. Yes, yes, it was. But
01:02:50
Speaker
I mean, people can check me on that if they hear it. I don't care. But I know Brigham Young definitely, definitely did. And he really ran with that. Yeah. Yeah. He had a lot of, you know, wives and and stuff like that. So he his it was certainly Joseph's thing, I think.
01:03:09
Speaker
But I, in my mind, it's much more Brigham Young's thing than it was Joseph Smith's thing. Because he was establishing like he literally took everybody away so that they could, you know, be polygamous.
01:03:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's polygamy is such a cult leader thing. Like they all do it. Like if they last long enough, pretty soon they have multiple wives. It's just like the cult leader move. And I feel like that's why you see so many of them going back. That's another thing I was gonna ask you. Okay, so I kind of like spiraled off on cults like several times as a
01:03:51
Speaker
you know, a typical pathetic adult. Before he got into sales, he was trying to figure out how to make his mark and really considered starting a cult and then just got into like MLM shit. And now he's just a sales manager. He took the easy way out, really. If you put in a little more work, he could have been taking people's wives and creating multiple families.
01:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, you really could. You're a handsome guy. You could if you really you get the right haircut, you get the suit on and talk a bunch of shit. I mean, yeah, maybe it could work. Thank you. I like that. Yes, I do have thick shoulders and I feel like that's necessary as a cult leader. Yeah, that's real nice. We're being very tall. I think that's the other one. You need you need a length or a height and or a width.
01:04:37
Speaker
That might be what undid me on the plan. So there's like all of these like super weird, sometimes violent offshoot cults that spring out of Mormonism.
01:04:54
Speaker
And there is that a Christianity too, you know, I mean, of course, but Mormonism has quite a few. Did you guys like, I'm sure they didn't teach you about any of those, but did you guys as kids, like, did you talk about those at all? Was it like something that you knew, like the, you know, the
01:05:12
Speaker
the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints or the Children of Thunder or any of those? I definitely knew about FLDS because that was, I think, especially for the time because what's his name? What was the guy's name that ran that? Warren Jeffs. Warren Jeffs. I always call him Jeff something. It's Warren Jeffs. That I remember
01:05:32
Speaker
being a thing because while I was growing up, some big story that I don't even think I remember understanding happened where he had a bunch of teenage wives and then the FBI had to go in and get him, I'm pretty sure.
01:05:51
Speaker
And so I remember that being a big thorn in the side of Mormonism and people talking a lot about like, that's them and we're us. And also the problem is in popular culture at this time that was before the Book of Mormon musical and so a lot of people.
01:06:11
Speaker
Like got that can a lot of people confuse because of how many offshoot cults there are it just? popularly in in the US casual the casual person gets the Mormonism confused with the million Mormon cults that have offshot like people assume that if I tell them I was raised Mormon they think that I was raised in like the Weird like cult situate and I I wish that would be so much cool
01:06:41
Speaker
But I wasn't. I really wish that I was, and I could have all my cult stories and stuff, but no. It was just- Honestly, if you freed yourself from a cult, that would just launch you. You could sell a book on that shit too easily. They would have kicked you out of Latter-day Saints or the fundamentalist Latter-day Saints because they did their best to get rid of young men because they take up the challenge.
01:07:14
Speaker
So what you were saying.
01:07:16
Speaker
There's a great documentary. It's recent too. I mean, it's not like, I mean, it was like last year, but if you haven't seen that documentary, Keep Sweet about the FLDS, maybe it's good. It's funny because these things come out, there's like Keep Sweet and I think there was maybe another one and then there was like under the banner of heaven that just came out and people are constantly asking me, they're like, did you watch this? I'm like, no. What?
01:07:46
Speaker
i want to forget i'm trying to know i didn't watch it i should i'm like no that's not i don't want to yet that's how i feel about all their escapism though that's how i feel about all the like ex-vangelical ex-christian things like uh god forbid the jerry fallwell thing casey and i went to liberty university so when when uh it's like
01:08:11
Speaker
I don't know. I invested enough of my life into that story to not have to sit down and watch a Hulu movie about it. And it's like, as these things pop up, you're like, yeah, I feel like I've I just already know that enough about that to not have to sit, like, subject myself to like three hours of triggering. Right. It's like, well, did you watch? I was there. I don't need to watch. I know what happened.
01:08:38
Speaker
I'm trying to see my my fat little teenage self like waving in the background, you know. Yeah. So when you know, I did you. Yeah, like when you were growing up, were you like, yeah, this is great. I'm like, I don't know how like the buy in works because it's like, OK, I'm thinking about in the sense of like, I knew a bunch of kids who grew up Catholic and they were like, yeah, I'm Catholic. And they were into it because they were just their family tradition. That's what their family did. And then like,
01:09:07
Speaker
but they never had a real like, I need to tell people about this, like a solid buy-in. And then there's like evangelical little boys and girls like Casey and I were just like, we need, everyone needs to know about this. Like it is my passion. I need this and so does everybody else. Like what was your level of buy-in as a young Mormon boy?
01:09:28
Speaker
Um, as a, as a young Mormon, I remember being into it, dude. I was really like, I went hard. I was for my childhood self, probably between like before I turned maybe up until I want to say 15 or so, which is when I started like
01:09:48
Speaker
being able to understand the concept of logic, I was really, really into it. Because there was a sense of like, there is this pride that came from being good at doing Mormonism, especially within the community. And it was a community that I
01:10:09
Speaker
felt otherwise ostracized from. I'm black, everybody else around me is white. I was adopted into the church. So I think that even the factor of being adopted and then being somebody who was like faithful was something that was celebrated as a win to the people in the community. So they're like, oh, you're so spiritual, you're so faithful, blah, blah, blah.
01:10:37
Speaker
So then I was really into it because I was getting a lot of validation from it. And, you know, as it turns out, I didn't like charge stuff, I just like validation. And I feel that so much. I feel like that had to do a lot of my like,
01:10:52
Speaker
getting into it was like, this is where I get the validation, like in the people pleasing. And because that's the kind of person I am. Like if I was born into a different environment, I would have found that somewhere else, but I found it there. And that's why I dove in. Sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, it's exactly that. And I felt really like I remember it was just something that I would get complimented with a lot that was just like, you're very faithful. You're very spiritually correct. And you're very
01:11:21
Speaker
you're doing such a good job, like being a Mormon. So I was like into it. I would try to, you know, I would do all the,
01:11:30
Speaker
tithing prayers where you like do it or the sacrament prayers where you go up and like bless the sacrament and I would be very involved for the time that I was in it just because I really wanted people to think that essentially that I was going to the celestial kingdom and so yeah and then it started falling apart when I just like became more cynical and got access to the internet
01:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, there it is. I mean, I'm in school and the grad school and one of the I've just doing like my last semester had to do like a research project on
01:12:14
Speaker
it's protective factors for kids and at this point in time this day and age it's like the internet was like one of the biggest it's obviously the internet is a terrible place to spend a lot of time but for kids who are like my like LGBTQ community kids who are minorities it's like when they're when they grow up in religion and they're like they
01:12:39
Speaker
They're they know like they they start realizing that they that they're gay and they're like fuck Like I know what this means for me. The internet is one of the most like life-saving tools Just because they they that's where they think they use it for good. They like find Communities and and they do a lot of research and they hear new ideas and opinions like it's internet is such a protective factor for people trying to figure out how to like
01:13:05
Speaker
navigate their way through something like that, where you're like, I'm the only one in this area that thinks that I know if I talk about this here, it's going to be a giant problem.
01:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's the great thing about it. Like what's any obvious statement that can be extrapolated from this and all the terrible things aside, the thing that the internet did is it connected us and made us unsiloed from other people in our geographic areas, which is why you could track probably
01:13:47
Speaker
the time when I was growing up and like the rate of people or the percentage of people that were Mormon in Utah to now and I'm gonna guarantee both with population growth but just like with how people are that percentage is plummeted even though it might be still a pretty big percentage because it's where everybody is but I remember growing up
01:14:16
Speaker
I remember hearing it was like 50 and now it might be like 30, which is a pretty big drop, even if it's still a lot of people. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, the evangelical exodus is it's going through the same thing and it feels like a lot of that has to do with internet access. Like, oh, you're telling me that there's another way to
01:14:37
Speaker
Even for people who maintain a level of spirituality, it's like you're telling me there's another way to read this and think about this that just kind of flew under the radar for the past 20 years. Yeah. And you need access to you need access to other ways of thinking. They didn't give you that. They actively discouraged going out and like reading other things or hearing other things.
01:15:01
Speaker
And when it's everybody, or feels like everybody in the community, and if you say something inflammatory, half the people in a room would get really upset, even if you're not at church on a Sunday. Like, that is repressive to other forms of thought. And if you don't have access to it, yeah, you're gonna stay Mormon for a long time, and you wouldn't even have considered that there's another way. Like, that's what the big problem was. And then,
01:15:29
Speaker
you start learning about stuff and you go, oh yeah, maybe I can make up my mind for myself whether I want to engage with this or not. I'm surprised Salt Lake City doesn't have their own internet yet. They could have gotten out of it by having their own specific internet. Like North Korea. All it links to is Kim Jong-un's like Wikipedia page and it's like, yeah, he was born under a shooting star by a unicorn.
01:16:00
Speaker
Because you shouldn't put that out. That's a decent idea. I'll probably try that. Maybe I'll try that. And that's how I'll make my first bag. There you go. Did you did you were there other did you have friends there that were kind of going through the same thing or was it mostly like online that you were meeting people who were like defecting from this?
01:16:23
Speaker
Um, neither. I, I never met anybody online that were, well, one time there was an interesting thing that happened. One time I was in seminary. Um, which by the way, um, seminary.
01:16:38
Speaker
in Utah, if you go to a Utah public school in middle school and high school, you can get a, I think it's, is it eighth grade or ninth grade? It starts, you can get a free period. What's done is you get a free period from school
01:17:00
Speaker
and they let you out of school and then through the church you sign up for seminary classes and the seminary building would be like right off campus like you'd have to walk off campus but right where the fence was or where like another parking lot was
01:17:16
Speaker
off the campus is where the seminary building was so it's like that was the level of separation of church and state in Utah where it's like oh yeah you can have a free period if you want so you can go to your religious class and you go for that period and they teach it like a class with all Mormon stuff and then you come back and they like grade you and stuff and it's like whatever so I was in seminary and I got I think I
01:17:44
Speaker
signed up to like text people in the class. It was like when cell phones and stuff were relatively new to be able to be used by teenagers. And I texted people in the class like, you know, to remember to like read this scripture so that for next week or whatever. That was a class assignment.
01:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, it was like a it was like a classic because it was, you know, religious class. So they I got to sign up to like be the accountable accountability person to like text everybody like remember to read this for class. And somehow I got a wrong number.
01:18:23
Speaker
And I texted somebody who was like, very much not Mormon and they were like, and I think they realized that I was a teenager because they were a little more mad at first, but then they
01:18:38
Speaker
then they kind of softened and I don't remember exactly what the interaction was but it was just like them being like hey like I'm not uh doing this I'm not this person and and I'm not I don't want to be like this like cult thing I think they came at me being like it was a cult and I was like oh this is a seminary class and well but then I said some sort of like proselytizing type thing this like reflexive sort of testimony bearing that they teach you to do
01:19:07
Speaker
And then this person sent this message that was just like, look, I know you think this is the only way to think about things, but it's not. And they're telling you to do this all the time. But you should always just read and research and never stop doubting this idea. And it was like weird because it was just like a stranger. And they always tell you to never doubt. And then this person's like, never stopped doubting. And I'm like, what?
01:19:36
Speaker
And it was something that really stuck out in my mind. It's not like the moment that I started departing from, you know, Mormonism and stuff, but it is like one of the first times I somewhat engaged in a conversation about the religion that wasn't just somebody like shit talking it and being like that's stupid or like supporting it. And it was like somebody that was just like, yeah, like just maybe not. And I was like, huh.
01:20:04
Speaker
That is fascinating. And that dude, you should stow that away as like a future screenplay idea. Yeah, or just that's the that's the infection inflection point where like, this young kid who grew up in the church and stuff like that starts to like rethink his belief and everything. And that would be a great movie.
01:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean really what the inflection point was for me in a real way was when I started getting interested in comedy was it was that because there are there were so many podcasts out where people would talk about all sorts of things. Pete Holmes's podcast, he would talk about religion and stuff. And I remember just being
01:20:49
Speaker
a fan of Bo Burnham and I was like, oh, this is my favorite. He makes the songs. And I listen to the podcast and at the end of it, like they bring up religion and he just goes on everything I was like dying over. I'm like, this is amazing. And this is me being like this 15, 16 year old kid. And then he like launches into this tirade about like atheism and why
01:21:09
Speaker
stuff didn't make any logical sense. You might have had the same experience, but you hear something that is so antithetical to your beliefs, but made a lot of sense. He was making a lot of sense, and that was very scary to me. The more and more I started looking into comedy and
Conflicts with Mormon Beliefs
01:21:35
Speaker
the way comedians were and the things that they might have believed in and like stuff that Carlin would say about God and stuff like that. I was like it's weird because I like absolutely love this thing and these types of people who do this and we all love
01:21:53
Speaker
you know comedy TV shows and for the most part none of these people are Mormons but I've been taught that this is the only correct way to live and yet they're doing something that's really cool so those things feel incompatible to me and I don't understand how these people can do this thing and we have to only live in one way and that was really the starting point for me being like
01:22:22
Speaker
maybe this isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's fascinating because that is very similar to how I really started. Because I made some friends that were not Christians after I left college and that was a big deal to me because I
01:22:42
Speaker
It was like, wow, you know, these people are actually like cool. They don't seem to be constantly like second guessing me like they're, you know, they seem to be cool with me. However, I, you know, whatever my worldview is and stuff like they don't see me as a liability if I don't totally line up with them, which is cool. You know, but then I the thing that really like made me start rethinking like what I believed for me.
01:23:07
Speaker
was I wish I knew how I ended up finding it or what episodes I listened to first, but I somehow stumbled onto Joe Rogan's podcast and he had such like a wide breadth of different people that were on there. And before that, I had been like a conservative radio guy. So I was listening to like Glenn Beck and I mean, just more on
01:23:32
Speaker
publication like all day yeah i mean no i remember glenn beck being on in every car that i wrote in like it wasn't something that i was into i don't know if he maybe he is i don't know he is because he spoke at liberty for a commencement and there was like a lot of controversy because he was mormon oh shit okay that makes sense i remember glenn beck being on a lot
01:23:56
Speaker
Yeah. What happened to him? Because I know the blaze is still big, his like media network or whatever, but like he as a media personality really fizzled out. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I haven't thought about him in years. He just got overshadowed by a new kind of extremism. So he just did not make the curve like the road started to curve towards like Alex Jones and Ben Shapiro and like he didn't
01:24:25
Speaker
He didn't take that right turn at Albuquerque, you know? Yeah. That's crazy. It's wild that you bring him up because it really is like, oh, this is what adults listen to, is Glenn Beck. Yes. It was on so much. Can you imagine, I think back to the world of that time in radio where you just
01:24:47
Speaker
that you just had these people get four hours where they just talked by themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And not being funny at all either. Just fucking like the whole time. They never interviewed anybody. Dude, they just have a list of like six things to be outraged about for four hours at a time. I'm surprised more of these people didn't just fucking die of a heart attack. Yeah. Lindbeck was like my favorite.
01:25:17
Speaker
Cause I listened to like him and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. But Glenn Beck was my favorite because like he would crack jokes here and there and stuff. Like it was a little more entertaining. But I remember like the thing that, that soured me on him was that he was like constantly selling some stupid book. Like he had a new book like every two months and it always just seems so dumb.
01:25:45
Speaker
And I remember it was October or November. And he had this Christmas book coming out called The Christmas Socks or something stupid. And every time he would get on there and pitch a book, he would cry or pretend to cry. I'm driving down the road, going to work, doing my thing. And he's on there for the 50th time pitching a stupid book. And he's like, this book?
01:26:15
Speaker
is the book that your family needs this Christmas. Then I'm just like, I can't do this anymore. It's good to not only have that option.
01:26:35
Speaker
who knows had I not had I grown up 10 to 20 years earlier I may have just graduated from you know I think there are other forces at play also pushing me out of it the fact that I'm black and not I wasn't commonly accepted as much in social circles just kind of like you know right away it wasn't just like
01:27:00
Speaker
It was if people were going to be my friend, it was typically like that tokenism type thing as opposed to like we genuinely appreciate your friendship and you being a part of this group. It was as opposed to we got one. Yeah, exactly. It's so cool that you're here.
01:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, so the whole like way that I think there were a variety of factors that like kind of pushed me away from it aside from just Maybe I wouldn't have any way I think it might have taken longer, but I still think I would have found my way out and also like growing up I remember like my so my parents got divorced when I was
01:27:42
Speaker
Nine and before I was nine that was when like everything was just like everything is absolutely fine. I don't Understand aside from the fact that dad's a real wild card. I don't understand. You know any problem that might
01:27:58
Speaker
uh be in the world and then my parents like got divorced and we moved to a different place and all my friends before then were like mormon children and then when we moved to my grandparents house like the people who lived closest to me uh my two friends that i hung out with the most were not mormon and they never tried to get me to not do it
01:28:22
Speaker
They were like, just not Mormons and like truly the I use this word lovingly but like dirtbag friends that were like these cut ups that were always like getting in fights and they just wanted to like fix their cars and they're like, yeah, man, fucking, you just gotta be a piece of shit and every, you know, and
01:28:43
Speaker
Toxic masculinity things I didn't fit in with them either, but I think it was through That that like as I went to school and stuff Middle school and high school. I never really wanted to be a
01:29:00
Speaker
that close of friends with other Mormon kids. I would always, in every context, be the lamest kid, and people would make fun of me for being Mormon. And it didn't make me want to seek out other Mormons, because I'm like, those other people are honestly more annoying than me. I don't like it. The interesting kids, the people that I like, are not those people.
01:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, I was homeschooled and I often found, I was like, most homeschooled people were like, oh my God, I cannot believe I have to spend time with you. Like you're 14 years old and you're still running around like a velociraptor in the church parking lot.
01:29:44
Speaker
Yeah. They were weird. Yeah. It can be like homeschooling. I think Mormonism too as a community and culture can be very infantilizing. So there are these people who are weird because they don't know the social pressure of someone who's like, hey, don't act like that. Yeah, exactly. So it gives a weird point in there too with
01:30:12
Speaker
Okay, there's, there's, if you have like that infantilizing influence there, where there's kids that are lagging behind, you know, there's always like some kid in the group that, you know, he's, he's like, five years behind in his development and what he thinks is cool and stuff. But he's becoming kind of a horny weirdo. Oh, yeah. What to do?
01:30:42
Speaker
Like there was a kid like that at our at our school that he was weird from day one and like I remember he left for a while and then he came back to school years later as we were like juniors or seniors or something like that and I remember him like I
01:30:59
Speaker
running around with like the little kids because we were K through 12 in our school and all in one big room. So like Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like that doesn't just scream Chris Hansen walking in. No good. You got to separate those. He was like running around with like the third and fourth graders and he was getting real strange with like
01:31:26
Speaker
these younger like to the point where like we, you know, as sheltered oddballs ourselves, we're starting to go. There's something you need to keep this kid away from the younger girls like we like talk to a teacher about it. And it was Yeah, there's always one kid that you're like, he goes from like, you know, drawing spaceships with crayons as a as a ninth grader to all of a sudden, you're like,
01:31:52
Speaker
Is this person a predator? Like, yeah, yeah, that definitely was it's just one of those things that it's like, what, hopefully, you know, not too dark of people like having whatever experiences that make them into that, but then also, at least where I'm from, just this maladjustment to the way sexual education is approached.
Religious Influences on Personal Beliefs
01:32:16
Speaker
So like, you get these people who
01:32:19
Speaker
These kids who have like no idea what to do with these feelings and you're like wow, that's um, I don't know that looks that's dicey That's all dice. It's like you plugged all the holes and it's just coming out the wrong It's like just spring leaks everywhere coming out the wrong area
01:32:36
Speaker
There's, there's plenty of like, I mean, somewhat adjusted men that have trouble with some of that stuff. I feel like I wish I knew, I wish I could tell you who the guy was that made the video. Cause it was really interesting, but there was this video that, uh, that I watched a while back where this guy's analyzing movie tropes and stuff like that. And, uh,
01:32:59
Speaker
He had this like outline for a trope that he sees that he was talking about he sees in like all these different movies that he called like born sexy yesterday and in it he's like talking about how there's so many movies you can look look through like movies that you've watched as a as a you know a kid or as a person a
01:33:20
Speaker
There's this continual trope where there's a woman that's a feature character in the story that doesn't know anything about the world around her. For some reason, one of the ones that he uses as an example is the fifths... God, what's the one with Bruce Willis where it's in the feature element? The fifth element.
01:33:44
Speaker
So like, you know, you have this like female character who's kind of like scantily clad and attractive, but she's sort of like a baby, like doesn't know anything about the world around her. And she needs this like guy to teach her everything, you know, about the world around her. But then she also has like value in a way because she knows how to like,
01:34:06
Speaker
fight and kill people or something. And and slowly like falls in love with this dude who's like just teaching her how to put on pants and stuff. How many movies that that plays out that I mean, it's successful because that's a thing that like men have trouble with. They want like this person who, you know, no other man is a competitor for this person's attention because they're basically like tutoring them at life. It's weird. It's really weird. Yeah, that is odd.
01:34:37
Speaker
Anyways, yeah, so okay. So you are you you start shift you start like there's a disconnect you start like Shifting out like where's like what's the final like this isn't for me and did it like fuck up relationship with? Family, where's it kind of I know that can happen in in those settings. What was that like for you? Um
01:35:00
Speaker
I had a couple different experiences that it wasn't one final thing because it was a transition of things that happened over, I think, a few years. And I think it was an amalgamation of a lot of things. And I'll try to remember them all at once because there are a few examples that come to mind.
01:35:25
Speaker
uh my parents divorce was one of those that uh you know at risk of uh him getting litigious my adopted father oh i'm adopted by the way that's how oh yeah i said that earlier i never know what people know about me
01:35:44
Speaker
You said you were adopted by the church. So just from your comedy, I know you were adopted. But you did say you were adopted by the church. So maybe that might have been missed by, you were adopted not by the church, into the church, but that might have been made a miss. Into the church in the sense that I was adopted into a Mormon family for generations. Anyway, so they got divorced and, or the process of them getting divorced was like, he was,
01:36:12
Speaker
really, you know, would like cheat a lot and be what the kids call abusive and the kids. And then he like, one time I remember there was like this big like, my mom caught him cheating, there was this big deal about it. And then they were like, I was like a child seeing this and they and they were like, Oh, we're gonna like, work it out and like go to the bishop a lot. And like, you know how
01:36:41
Speaker
through Mormonism when you have like different issues and problems like there's it's Kind of I don't know what it is like now cuz I'm not in the church now But like it the whole thing was sort of you go to the bishop. It's not like it's kind of like he's your therapist but like he uh He hears all the problems of everybody and he's like he's supposed to be like the you know priest or whatever Like the arbitrator or like somebody who's trying to like help like a marriage counselor
01:37:12
Speaker
I mean, both. That's what the thing is. They're all things. Exactly. You have any issues. You need to repent. You're having marital issues. You're having this. You go to the bishop. And I just remember that being a laborious situation where they were trying to, quote unquote, save the marriage, even though my father was acting in a way that
01:37:40
Speaker
was you know contrary to that because that's like what you're supposed to do for Mormonism and I just like realized how much sort of I was noticing how much pain my mom was in all the time and like especially my dad having this like sort of man comes first patriarchal sort of mindset of like
01:38:01
Speaker
She needs to cook and she needs to cook right and blah blah blah because like he's got the priesthood and blah blah but it's like well how is it that this man has the priesthood the power of God and He gets to wield it and
01:38:18
Speaker
but my mom doesn't and morally she's a much better person than him. That didn't make sense to me. Huge disconnect. So it was a big disconnect. So there was that. There was the LGBT
01:38:36
Speaker
stuff prop eight that that's right oh right there was there was all that um and i don't even remember what prop eight was specifically i just remember prop eight being anti-gay or whatever
01:38:51
Speaker
It was anti-gay marriage in California, right? Yeah, I think so, but Mormons were a big proponent of it. It was a problem because I was getting into high school and stuff. Middle school and high school, I started knowing people who were gay.
01:39:16
Speaker
Back in the day, back in even the 2000s, like you experienced this I'm sure as a white straight dude, like we were calling everything gay, everything was gay, we're like gonna be just homophobic and whatever, but it was when it came to starting to know people for real and all this like anti-gay sentiment, it was like that's, well that's very, this is weird because it'll, everybody's acting like,
01:39:43
Speaker
were this like loving kind religion and then like actually ostracizing people and then when I started to realize that like us just like playing this game called smear the queer and calling stuff gay wasn't just like a harmless like this insult but like actually a thing um I started and then people in Mormonism sort of like supporting those like the homophobic beliefs
Impact of Homophobia and Intolerance
01:40:05
Speaker
I started like being not super cool with that um I had a friend uh in
01:40:11
Speaker
in middle school who was gay and committed suicide because he was getting bullied by people. A lot of these people were Mormons. And so that was like one of those things that was just like, this is the way people are feels very wrong.
01:40:28
Speaker
Um, yeah, uh, so that was one of those things that was like, I just, I don't think that this is a thing. And then just the same thing that was happening with like me getting involved in comedy and reading stuff and, and all that eventually just like sort of culminated in, um, Oh, Oh. And the last thing was like, so I stopped talking to my dad around 15 years old. Um, and.
01:40:57
Speaker
his father, my grandpa would take me out to Grantsville, Utah, where they have a property out there where we would work on stuff. After that point, he would always be like,
01:41:09
Speaker
Why aren't you talking to your dad? You got to talk to your dad again." And I was like, but he's not somebody who should be involved in my life. I don't think that that's healthy. And he's like, no, but you got to do it because family and church and stuff like that.
01:41:29
Speaker
this is bullshit what are we talking about family i'm adopted you know like why is this this sort of like oh it's blood like this idea that people have well that's already not true so i don't know what we're doing here so it was just like a variety of things like that and i remember maybe my it wasn't my final straw because i was already out of it i went to utah state university um
01:41:54
Speaker
I left home to go to college because I'm like I gotta get out of this place and I remember my freshman year I smoked weed for the first time and my friend who I was like completely in love with and she was still in Salt Lake and
01:42:13
Speaker
I remember telling her about it. She had converted to the church when she was 17. And I remember telling her about it. And she really like freaked out and was like, that's so bad. That's so awful. And I'm like, like, well, this is it's just it's how is it awful? Well, it's illegal. And I'm like, yeah, but laws are
01:42:34
Speaker
you know, made up and something that I learned from weed. And it's so like, I just saw that difference of like, this person is so rigid. And also going back to your question of if it caused any relationship issues between family and friends and stuff, this person was like, my best friend from
01:42:57
Speaker
elementary school on and and she was so rigid and so angry and so upset about this thing that like like this doesn't really make sense why you would be so upset about this and I was like yeah I guess that given all those things did this can't really be something great to adhere to so up until that point but definitely after that point I was just completely done
01:43:21
Speaker
Christians get real render under Caesar when it comes to like marijuana, but not so much when it comes to like registering a handgun, you know? So was that something that she stayed like upset about? Did that change the way that you felt about?
01:43:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, she there was also we had other things going on. I was in love with her. She kind of was like, oh, yeah, we can we I I think that you whatever. And then it was one of those like not knowing how to not be.
01:43:59
Speaker
Not not understanding that this person is never gonna give you the type of love that you want And then she started dating somebody else sort of behind my back. I was like what the fuck so we had other shit going on But yes, definitely That was something that I can't date you because you're a drug addict now. Yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean it would have been something like that but then there was also like, you know, there was that situation of
01:44:28
Speaker
Oh, my parents would never let me date you. Okay. That's right. Your parents own you. I forgot. I forgot about that part where you're a woman. So your parents do, in fact, own you. Yeah, of course. Why not? No. Okay. So obviously, like, the Mormons have changed some of their beliefs over the years.
01:44:49
Speaker
And historically, they had some really awful doctrine about black people. Was that something that you were aware of? I'm sure that wasn't talked about a lot.
01:45:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's funny because I just started listening to this audiobook Mormonism and white supremacy that is very good That's going into the details of this stuff but the I didn't I had a Small awareness of this. I remember my mom at different points telling me that like she would do this thing would be like hey if anybody ever says to you that like
01:45:28
Speaker
you're cursed for being black. That's not true. That's not real doctrine. That's not, you know, that's, but she's like, if you interact with this form of racism, that's not true. Don't believe that. And I was like, Oh, okay. Because I didn't know that, like, I didn't know how, like, high up it went or who this came down from, basically. And I didn't know that it was like, you know, just kind of written into doctrine that
01:45:58
Speaker
Black people were lesser and stuff. And when they talk about it, they act like that's not what it was, that it was just like people that started kind of like randomly saying this instead of like,
01:46:13
Speaker
people like Brigham Young saying stuff like this. So I wasn't even that aware of that while I was growing up, but then you would run into things here and there that people would say this stuff. And then I remember having a seminary class where like them doing stuff where they're like, we're gonna address this. And basically the Mormon thing about it is like,
01:46:40
Speaker
they make this justification where like, well, only certain people in the past like had at first, it was like only this small group of like these tribes and whatever, and they break it down to like, different like genealogy and ethnicity and stuff like that, where it's like, and now the priesthood is supposed to be like it, it got, you know, soft launched a bunch of times for whatever reason. And so that was like their justification.
01:47:07
Speaker
And, uh, but they really try to not talk about it so much. It was only through like other avenues where that kept coming up. Were they a curse of ham or a Mark of Cain kind of racist? Yeah. No, both. I mean, both of those. Because it's like, don't worry. That came up at Liberty University, too. We had a college class in, uh, where this old ass should have been dead white guy was like,
01:47:36
Speaker
one black kid in the class. And he starts talking about the curse of ham. I can't remember if it was curse of Ham and Mark of Cain. Either way, I know those both existed as a concept. And he starts talking about how like, you know, that's, that's how we got black. It was like that framing, like how we got black people. And it's like, this kid in the class, his eyes were like, got huge. But in a sense, it was like,
01:48:02
Speaker
Sadly, there was like a comedy to it because he just heard it so long, apparently. And he was just kind of like, like, Oh, here it is. I knew this was coming. And everyone else in the class was just like, don't look at him. Don't look at him. Like you just keep your eyes straight. But everyone felt like so fucking weird. And that was the first time that I because I grew up
01:48:22
Speaker
I didn't grow up Southern Baptist. It was just evangelical, but that never came. Like I never, that was the first time sitting in that class that I heard that theory. And I was like, I was like, holy shit. Like jaw dropping to have a conversation like that at a university. Like it's a real, like there's some like real hard, like scientific data back in that one.
01:48:42
Speaker
Yeah, the fact that like I the whole either one of the I because both of our are somewhat used interchangeably it feels but like yeah, the fact that you would sort of just casually say that or believe that is just like what what that that goes that runs antithetical to everything we know about anthropology. But yeah.
01:49:08
Speaker
And I remember what's what's even more awkward is like the follow up to that like they say it as though it's a fact and then listening to him like do that spiral of like but let's look but that doesn't mean that and this is why it's not racist like oh the explanation like that that like let's
Religious Institutions and Cultural Changes
01:49:25
Speaker
get into why it's not racist is generally a good idea that you're getting into one of the most racist conversations you'll ever be a part of
01:49:31
Speaker
Yeah, here's why this weird essentialism that these people are cursed and damned isn't racist, because God invented it.
01:49:41
Speaker
Okay, so God's race, what are we talking about? And I do remember that as the same thing, that's the same thing, the same logic that was applied within Mormonism to queer people and still is today, where it's like, here's why it's not homophobic, what we believe. And this weird, really trying to split the difference of justifications and getting into the most,
01:50:09
Speaker
abstract version of logic to justify why this sort of hate the sin, not the sinner logic is not something that is just completely harmful to people. It's like, no, it is. Actively homophobic. How could I be a homophobe when I'm the only one trying to tell them that they're going to burn hell for all of eternity? I'm trying to save them. Right.
01:50:35
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like that's like a weird differential point between like fundamentalist evangelicalism and Mormonism because like
01:50:45
Speaker
There's plenty of racism and evangelicalism, but it's not written in doctrine. That wasn't a theory that I heard. It was people's own theories where they got racist, but homophobia, that one, it was like, well, gee, I'll refer to the book.
01:51:09
Speaker
It is weird the way that those communities respond to cultural change. From a survivalist standpoint as an institution, the smart thing to do would be to say, this was wrong. It was never right. And the church has gotten this wrong for a long time. And we're not going to preach that anymore.
01:51:35
Speaker
But instead, because that kind of undermines the fundamentalism of the whole thing. So it's like, no, it wasn't. It's not that it was wrong. It was that, you know, people like since have misinterpreted it. Here's what it actually means and blah, blah, blah. And it's it's so dumb. It's so dumb. Right. There are all these mental jumping jacks to like justify what was just like wrong. But like exactly to your point is it would undermine
01:52:05
Speaker
the idea that for example like if Brigham Young was like some slavery is okay and people like flip-flopped on slavery and whether or not it should be allowed and stuff it would like undermine the fact that this guy's got a connection with the omnipotent god if he's just like
01:52:26
Speaker
having these issues. So it's you got to do a little bit of tap dancing with the with logic to make that happen. You got to stretch some stuff. Meanwhile, there's like a whole like group of
01:52:43
Speaker
leaders out there who have like wrongly predicted the end of the world like six times and never lost a member of their congregation. Right? Like, well, like, why? What is wrong just wrong? There's like a deadline. It's like, hey, stop. If you don't know, just stop predicting. You know, tell me when you have some good. Don't give me a bunch of random bullshit and go, yeah, take another shot next time. Whoops. Sorry about your retirement.
01:53:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's my experience. How did like purity culture and stuff factor in for you?
Purity Culture's Psychological Impact
01:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely like one of the fundamental pieces of like, probably how, you know, it, I think purity culture is one of those that like,
01:53:34
Speaker
If there's ways that the religion sort of fucks you up, I think it's definitely purity culture. I mean, partly I wasn't so affected by it, obviously earlier, because like, I don't think anybody was trying to have sex with me anyway, but
01:53:53
Speaker
It was like one of those things that like I was 12 years old thinking that I was addicted to pornography like way before I actually was you know, cuz it's just like I looked at a boom online one time I I Wanted to see a boom and I looked for it and I found it. I must be a fucking psychopath, you know So that was definitely a thing like it was that is like
01:54:21
Speaker
I would say that purity culture sort of feels like the bedrock of what the culture is in certain ways when it comes to like being a single unmarried person, like that's your whole, that's a gigantic part of your identity is just the fact that like, I'm going to, you know, not, or I'm going to abstain and like,
01:54:51
Speaker
You know, I think we are all three aware of the massive amount of issues that causes for people's mental health and especially how it intersects with all that stuff about queer people. It's like, you have to, if you're going to have any sexual contact with somebody, you better be married. And it better be a temple marriage too, because then it's still,
01:55:18
Speaker
you know, in not correct. So yeah, of course, like kids were dry humping and all that stuff and and everybody went on their missions at 18 so they could come back and get married at 21 and and all all of that. It's definitely like a heavy, heavy factor. I think there's I feel like I'm being brought about it because I feel like there's so many things to say about it that is like
01:55:44
Speaker
Yeah, that I feel like, yeah, and that's, there's, there's a lot of it that's hard to shake off after, you know, you decide that you're like, I'm done with this, and I'm not doing it anymore. Like, I feel like that the the after effects of purity culture, it's just, you know, as a grown man, it's hard to get rid of.
01:56:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's one of those that you have to approach, I think, with a lot of like, intention about like therapy and stuff, because it really, really gets in your head. And I think it crosses wires in all these ways. And that's why, you know, within these churches and in the Mormon Church as well, there's rampant sexual abuse and
01:56:30
Speaker
That is essentially unchecked or it's swept under the rug because the people are like There's purity culture and there's shame spirals involved I mean like we we all have that going on culturally anyway So when you add this layer of like religiosity on top of it, I mean, you know, you know these Temple garments the Mormon special underwear They have
01:57:00
Speaker
uh these uh prayers like sort of laced into the underwear like itself and like i was doing this joke about it that like what is uh adhering to a chastity law if not essentially just like a BDSM relationship with god there's
01:57:22
Speaker
This man, there's this man who goes, you don't come until I tell you to come. It's like, that's what it is. That's all we're doing to our brains. That's so true. It's just like, it's like a soft cotton penis cage.
01:57:47
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's that and that's what like, that's what people's, you know, relationship to their sexuality is at that point. So like, yeah, I think, I don't know, that's that's sort of my thing on purity culture, there needs to be a lot of and now they're starting to finally acknowledge those issues, but there needs to be
01:58:09
Speaker
a lot done in that regard because unlike with Catholicism I don't think that there's gonna be this like big sort of like spotlight kind of thing there's kind of been people doing like protests about bishops like and their sort of sexual abuse of minors even if it's not actual even if they don't abuse them in that way which a lot of them do but
01:58:37
Speaker
Even the structure of like going to a bishop is like okay you want to repent for something you got to go to this bishop right if you're a kid who feels like
01:58:47
Speaker
Oh, I got horny and now I feel bad. I masturbated to porn. I feel bad. Then you essentially you got to go sit in this office with this fucking 50 year old man who didn't go to divinity school or anything and then like tell this dude and then the way that it works is this dude asks you questions about it.
01:59:09
Speaker
that's not something that should be happening at all there should not be an old man and a kid in a room no supervision and him asking you sexual questions begging for more details don't say gay at school though you know exactly yeah like
01:59:27
Speaker
Don't be gay, but we're gonna have this old man ask you the things that make you horny. Like, what? And you said you saw boobs, right? Now, describe these boobs for me. Was one of them slightly bigger than the other? No, it was just one of those boobs. Do you think former Catholics are the only people keeping the phone sex industry alive? They got to. They have to. It's weird imprinting. Oh my god.
01:59:57
Speaker
I want to with the time we have left, I do want to talk about like your comedy and your shift into that.
Career Transition to Comedy Writing
02:00:02
Speaker
You've done like you've done cool shit. I mean, beside like you wrote, did you were a staff writer for Conan? You're you do shit for the onion. You're a staff writer for the onion right now, right? And obviously you are.
02:00:15
Speaker
Sorry, I just to go back to the stuff that we were just talking about I wrote an onion headline like fairly recently that was like Mormon argues that the sexual abuse in his religion is just as legitimate as any other faith It's like you were trained for that exact job
02:00:43
Speaker
So you're hard pushing into comedy when you start pursuing it as a career. What'd that look like, man? I feel like that's always a sexy industry and it's a hard one to understand and it feels dependent on being in certain locations, obviously in the middle of nowhere.
02:01:04
Speaker
You're not going to just like find a comedy club and do it like you got to like really like make that conscious choice and then and pursue it. So what was that look like for you? Yeah, I mean, it's it's it looks like exactly that. I went to the wise guys comedy club. It was weird. I had this experience of like I went to an open mic.
02:01:25
Speaker
and then I tried to go back and they became like 18 and up as a and I was like damn so I can't and this is like me as a teenager so like I can't do this yet but I'm interested in it and then I turned 18 went to college came back did another open mic there and then that was like right when they got their liquor license was like now we're 21 and up and I was like I just I waited um
02:01:50
Speaker
And so there was a handful of stuff here and there. Real quickly, I'll go through. I did some improv and stuff in college and then
02:02:02
Speaker
right after I was doing improv in this little indie venue called The Comedy Loft in Ogden, Utah. But there wasn't a lot of stand-up outlets that I could go to. And then through all these podcasts and everything I was hearing, everybody was like, if you go to Chicago, number one, there's no industry there. So you can just go and be creative and fail. And I felt like that's what I needed because I wasn't really good at anything yet.
02:02:31
Speaker
Chicago has improv and sketch and stand up and like a vibrant big city. And I've always I always wanted to live in a much bigger cosmopolitan area than Salt Lake. So I was like
02:02:48
Speaker
20 and I just packed up all the shit that I had and just moved and started doing stuff and started trying my best and it kind of just one thing led to another from there.
02:03:06
Speaker
I don't even so you the idea of just relocating and giving something like that a shot is I feel like there's like a like if you're willing to do that like do you kind of have like the type of personality and a drive to make something like that work I feel like it's the people who are like I like the idea of this and then it you know it gets these kinds of careers require you to like make some some major life changes and I
02:03:35
Speaker
I don't know how people have that in them. I feel like the idea of that, that unknown of like, I'll just move there is like always fascinating to me. Yeah. But the thing is about most stuff, once you realize, I mean, coming from the place that I do and having the experience that I had with most situations, it sort of feels like the thing that you're afraid of is not really
02:04:00
Speaker
that big of a deal. I did have these same grandparents that were like, you gotta talk to your dad again. I hadn't really been talking to them a lot and I told them that I was gonna go and they got so scared. They're like, what are you gonna do? How is this gonna happen?
02:04:18
Speaker
and honestly the truth is like with most stuff you can kind of figure it out you're gonna figure it out or you won't and then if you don't like then you'll have to what's the worst case scenario okay then i gotta move back all right it's like not there's no i'm not gonna explode and it so it wasn't like that scary to me i mean when you're that age you don't really have a sense of your own mortality and i was just like well
02:04:47
Speaker
The other option, I love this one thing. There's one thing that I want to do and it seems like there are careers in it. The other option that I had was to stay where I was and
02:05:00
Speaker
live in Salt Lake City and navigate not wanting to be Mormon around a bunch of people that didn't really accept me and in a place that's predominantly white. I don't think this is my place. I don't feel comfortable here. It doesn't really even feel like home and I've grown up here. I was like, why not? I don't think there's any... I don't think that
02:05:30
Speaker
The idea of failure was not that it wasn't even an option, but it was just like not even something that could happen. I think simply trying to do something is a win. Yeah, when nothing's worse than staying where you are. Yeah, exactly. Well, not going to stay here. So let's just go do something. And if that doesn't work out, I'll do something else. And life is long.
02:05:57
Speaker
You have, you know, all sorts of other stuff that you got to deal with. So I think it's, yeah, it was that people talk about how, oh, that must have been a big thing. It's like, yeah, in a way and in another way. No.
02:06:12
Speaker
How'd that lead to comedy writing then? What's the connection there between trying comedy in Chicago and then finding a connection to comedy writing? Well, The Onion is based in Chicago. I liked sketch comedy, which Second City is here.
02:06:32
Speaker
So I started one of the first things I started doing is taking the second city writing course. I didn't actually learn that much from it, but I did get to meet people that also wanted to make sketches. And then I.
02:06:45
Speaker
started submitting for the contributing freelance for ClickHole pretty quickly because I remember reading ClickHole in high school and just loving the absurdity of how these headlines were. The Onion was something that I heard about and also loved because I'm like, oh, funny fake news. But ClickHole was this new Buzzfeed parody after Buzzfeed had come out. It was just the jokes of this article.
02:07:12
Speaker
Crazy, it's just insane with this internal logic and I love that so I started doing that and then that eventually led to me like getting a Contributing thing at the onion and then I did the onion fellowship and then it was covet and then I went and did Conan because I had in that time gotten a manager and then Which leads us to essentially the present where I went back to the onion in 20 years
02:07:40
Speaker
maybe the top of 2022 and now I'm here. Nice. So what's on the horizon for you? Where are you headed now?
02:07:51
Speaker
I want to get back into TV. If Conan hadn't ended his show, I would still be there right now, and I think about that all the time. I was six months into an absolute dream job, and then he was like, I'm not going to do this show anymore, but this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Well, but this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. How could you stop?
02:08:19
Speaker
So I want to get back to, you know, TV. I got a couple of pilots that I have worked on and am working on. I wrote a movie that I would like to get made that probably won't get made because movies, if you are not a famous guy, don't really just get made without it taking a really long time. And it's a crazy script.
02:08:47
Speaker
Really the next thing is just like I would like to staff on a TV show whether that be One of these political talk shows like The Daily Show I got close to getting and or Scripted TV. I'm ready for that. That's sort of where my focus is right now and then just like kind of tour around and do stand-up and ticket selling tickets is
02:09:16
Speaker
weird and difficult now. And you kind of got to have a whole thing with that. And you got to have platforms. And it's a very tricky sort of place to the industry is very weird now. So I just want to be able to focus on like being able to create stuff that communicates the things that I feel about all this stuff. So that's, that's hopefully where I'm going next career wise, wires hiring.
02:09:46
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. And like the follow up. I need a male Candace Owens. I don't know. Just just a thought. Like, I mean, if I don't know, could be you could be.
02:10:03
Speaker
I would I could I look I grew up like I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a dyed in the wool Mormon boy and and a lot of these things these black people are saying are are are honestly out of line there is no systemic racism you got the part dude I mean if at some point you need us to delete this episode so you can you say the word right
02:10:31
Speaker
Well, dude, it's been really great talking to you. Thanks so much for doing this. Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me.
02:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, man. Nice to meet you guys. This is great. Where can people find you? Oh, just find me at my my Instagram and Twitter. It's just Skyler Higley. S-K-Y-L-E-R-H-I-G-L-E-Y. If you want to go to Skyler Higley dot com, you can. But, you know, that's got some stuff I've done on it. So Instagram, Twitter, my website. TikTok before it gets completely banned in the US. Yeah, I mean, TikTok is
02:11:06
Speaker
Sure. My TikTok too. I don't even know what to do with that sometimes. I'm like, do I focus on that and get all these followers like people do? Or is it going to get banned so I should never worry about it? I know. Well, that's how I found you. There we go.
02:11:22
Speaker
I'm thankful for that. So the bits I've seen from there, it's like I found you and then I just like flicked through every single one of your posts until I got all the way to the bottom. So I was hooked.
02:11:40
Speaker
very funny and everyone should definitely go check it out and hopefully things will work their way out and you'll you'll end up doing a show in or around Massachusetts someday and I can absolutely oh I definitely will that'll be soon ish I don't know perfect well I'll keep an eye out all right thanks for having me yeah and all right everybody thanks for listening we'll see you next
02:12:15
Speaker
you