A Geek History of Time - Episode 166 - The Popes, Walter White, and John Cena Walk Into a Bar Part I

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what I mean? Well, you know, uh, you really like it here. Uh, it's kind of nice.

And uh, it's not as cold as Muckin' Home of the Sun as well. So, yeah, sure. I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone, I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah. So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier.

Good day, Spree. If sysclothed it was empty-headed, plubian trash, it was really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder, pull back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's totally free. Round two. A thorough intent doesn't exist.

Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seeing a lot of the rats. But it just... This is a geek history of time. Where we connect and earn these two real world, my name is Ed Lailock, I'm a world history teacher, and currently, I'm currently the unemployed up here in Northern California. And yeah, that's actually my biggest news is unlike some suckers. I am already on my summer vacation as we begin recording this.

So there's going to be an awful lot of working on the house. And I get to spend two months being a stayed home full time dad. So looking forward to it. Who are you? And what are you all about? I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and a drama and soon to be US history teacher. I guess we're not going to make this timeless.

So yes, I am that poor sap who is still working. Rather, I'm watching children not work as we care. Reign toward the end of the cliff. So sweet, sweet release of summer could not come sooner. They're good kids. I just can't wait till they figure it out. So, but I will also, since we've already made this not timeless, I'm now the proud parent of two children in the double digits.

Yeah. Yeah, my daughter turned 10 yesterday. So yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. I will be giving her her gifts. So I will tell you this, because you enabled this. I will be giving her her gifts to our Saturday when she comes back home.

I did, however, give her one gift the night before her birthday proper. And I gave her a gift the day of her birthday proper. Okay. The gift I gave her the day of her birthday proper was not a big deal. It was a set of miniatures of spell effects. Oh, okay. Cool. Her brother gave her his gift on her birthday proper. And it was a miniature of Tiamat. She was over the moon. No kidding. Yeah. It was very cool.

Yeah. So, and when he told me what he wanted to get her, I'm like, well, no matter what I get her, your gift will be the most special this year. Well done, sir. He also got up early and cleaned the cat boxes for her, even though it was her day to do it. And I had told her, it's your day. These are your cats, even on your birthday, you have to take care of the the ones you love.

And he got up extra early so she wouldn't have to unbidden, unasked for by anyone. Bless that boys heart. Your your son, your son is the best of us truly. You really? He really is. Yeah. Now having said that, her birthday gift from me, yeah, yeah, is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,

10 different wrapped up packages of books that you gave me. Nice. Gratis, I might have. Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, of second ed, third ed, fourth ed, and a little bit of fifth ed stuff. Yeah. The one that she got the night before her birthday was the Volos guide to Waterdeep from second edition. Yeah, yeah. And she was over the damn moon about that. She was comparing it to her maps. She's like, I need to find out where he lives. And she's like, they changed the maps and did it.

Did it. So and she's about to open every single book. You gave me two full boxes full of bankers, two bankers boxes full of Dungeons and Dragons. So she's she's going to Yeah, I anticipate she will cry because that is how she handles intentions of joy. Very cool. Yes, very cool So that that is the cheerful stuff And now for the next. Oh God. How many pages is this? I'm going to guess with 32 pages. I'm

going to say probably about four episodes. Oh my God. Okay. Um, do you have anti-depressants on hand? Because if not, like, like, it depends on how we define on hand there in the house good good enough good enough I have and I have a very strong beer here in front of me, okay, okay That would get you through that's my go-to coping mechanism. That's like doping in the early marathons Like where they're like drink scotch and eat strict nine. Yes Which they did which they did. That was what? Yes. Oh, God. If there was some way like because of the right? Yes. The purview of our show is not such that I can just explore whack-ass shit from the past. If I could, I would do an entire episode on the 1912 Olympics. It was the last Olympics that featured tug of war as a event. And also it involved

quite the scandal when it came to running the marathon, including one person who took a car. I remember that bit. Another person and they were doping him along the way by giving him Scotch mixed with strict nine so as he wouldn't feel the pain. by giving him scotch mixed with strict nine so as he wouldn't feel the pain. But there's nothing that like I can tie that to a nursery. Like no one, no one in nursery would be like, you know what, this, this, no one, everyone's gonna believe this, this, this, you know,

no, no people would be like, go back to editing. You can't. You, yeah. Holy shit. You can't. You, yeah. Holy shit. Okay. Anyhow, yeah. There's a swam across like the Marne River. I might be compressing.

Yeah, you're, I think there's a couple of, a couple of different Olympics. Yeah, it just pushed me over there. But, you know, the early Olympics were kind of a shit show. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's good times. So, so what exactly is the, take the medal from the Native American guy

because you played baseball for pocket change ones. So yeah, all right. So this next four episodes will depress you. I kind of want to give you the title first, and I kind of don't. I like the idea of it sneaking up on you. Okay. So you tell me what you want. Do you want it to sneak up on you or do you want to be gobsmacked by the title? Um, I'm going to say, go ahead and sneak up on me. All right. Where are we starting this December of 1919? Oh, okay. Cornelius Vanderstarr founded C.D. Star and Company, later known as Star Companies in Shanghai, China. Okay.

Vanderstarr was a California ice cream salesman. And after he dropped out of UC Berkeley in 1911, seeing little future in ice cream sales, he enlisted in the US Army in 1918. But he didn't get to travel the world and get shot at because by the time he was deployed, the war was over and the flu was in full effect. Okay. Still, he then joined a steamship company and got stationed in Japan and from there, he made his way to Shanghai where he found work for many different insurance companies.

Okay. Now, to understand where I'm going, you have to understand the basics of an insurance company. They are thus. You cannot afford it if everything goes terribly wrong and your business, your car, your home, and your life ends up broken by some accident. So what you do is you ensure those things. This way, if the worst thing happens, you are paid a fraction of and up to the total value of depending on your policy, the things that you've insured. You do this by paying

monthly or even annual insurance payments. Okay. This way, the insurer can count on steady income from you and many, many others, which would enable them to then pay out the value of the thing should the unfortunate occur and the insurers therefore don't want the unfortunate to occur. And frankly, you don't either. It's better than your life if your ship doesn't break down. Yes, yeah, nobody does. So it's kind of like a benevolent Ponzi scheme. Kind of, kind of. The part of it, the part of it you're leaving out is the insurance company builds on the money that you're paying them by then investing it in God knows what all. And so they're making money from you paying your monthly premium.

Yes. And they're also getting the financial benefit of interest in whatever else is happening on the money that you're paying them. So like if you can be the guy or gal who found a successful insurance company, it's kind of way to print money until something goes, you know, really long ways for a lot of people. Yeah, like say the Loma Breater earthquake of 1989. Where they were like, sorry, we can't pay for your house. You're fucked. Um, now the more risky the things existence, the higher your premiums. So if you have a car, you know, you've got this, this many premiums, but if you, uh, have a car and you race it all the time, you're going to have to pay more for your insurance premiums. Yes.

And so if you have a business, lots of capital or anything of value, it's good to pay for insurance on it so that you can at least pay to have it replaced if something bad happens. Yes. Now, it gets really complicated because in those days, you could ensure people and things without their actual knowledge and you could over-insure something so that the value of the payout is worth more than the actual value of the thing. This was especially a common in garment factories in New York to the point where the triangle shirt waist factory, second largest tragedy, was that it burnt down before the owners meant to burn

it down. Wow. Okay. Vanderstark. All right. Started up his owner, insurance company in 1919, like I said, but it also seems to have had a Shanghai specific branch called American Ageatic Underwriters. Both of these were international in their approach, and once the Japanese invaded China, he had to move the headquarters of AIA, American AIA Group, pardon me, and star companies to New York. Vanderstarr himself worked for the OSS during the war, given his networking capabilities and his understanding of the culture's languages in the area. This made a lot of sense.

And he specifically worked with Wild Bill Donovan and created the insurance intelligence unit of the OSS during the war. I did not know that that existed until this podcast. He gave the monetary back to necessary. Yeah. And he gave the monetary back to necessary for the flying tigers. Oh, yeah. He funded the flying tigers. Fuck yeah. You underwrote them so far. I like this guy. I'm really worried that this is all going to fall apart. We're going to find out what a rat bastard was. But so far, I'm liking this dude.

Yeah. Now, about 55 years later, so about 2000, Mark Fitz wrote an article in the LA Times that said, quote, they knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion, and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration. They weren't just secret agents, they were secret insurance agents. These undercover underwriters gave the World War II spymasters access to a global industry that both bankrolled and ultimately helped bring down Adolf Hitler's third Reich.

Okay. Now, there is a book that I have on my shelf and I can't see it from here. Let me turn my head. I believe it's called the approaching storm. And do you remember in episode two when Palpatine said, oh, generals Kenobi, or General Kenobi, and, or no, I think they're still Jedi, Jedi and Padawan at that time. Yeah. Because the Clone Wars hadn't happened yet.

Yeah, yeah, episode two. Yeah, Kenobi and Skywalker are just coming back from Ancion. That book was about Ancion, and in it, Ben Kenobi, or Obi-Wan Kenobi pardon me, spoiler alert. Obi-Wan Kenobi had a friend who had a two-sided brain that they would talk to each other at night when he slept, but he was essentially a large snail-insurance salesman. And when you're going to take down part of the banking

plan, that's basically what you need it. So when I read this, I was like, I wonder if they got the idea for that. And for once, I didn't dive deeper to find out. Now in 1949, Vanderstarr also moved his company now called American Insurance Group or AIG. In New York due to the fact that Mao won despite AIG's efforts to back-shek. And from that point on, it was the world's largest insurance company. In 1968, Vanderstarr died. AIG continued on with a man named Maurice call me Hank Greenberg as his chosen successor, a position that Hank Greenberg held until 2005. Now Hank Greenberg himself

was a war hero in World War II, yeah. Okay. And he was there for Normandy. He was there for the liberation of Dachau and then later he joined up for the Korean War. He received a bronze star, which I would like you to tell me what that's for. The bronze star is a decoration for valor in combat. The progression is bronze star, silver star, metal honor. Okay, basically. Okay. And below the bronze star are individual service crosses, like the Navy Cross or the Army. I don't remember what the Army's award is. Yeah. Okay, cool. So pretty pretty pretty courageous during the war. Yes. And he got the command dur of the French ordra national

de la legion to honor. Yeah, well, shortened frequently to just the legion of honor. Oh, that so it has to continue. You know, for somebody who taught Latin. No, I know. Your inability to pronounce French like hurts. Okay, Latin is in grave in stone. French is spoken in cursive. That's a really great analogy. All right. Yeah. That's true. All right. Fine. So, but his efforts in the European theater during World War Two or earned him the Legion of Honor. Okay. Now, when he returned to the United States, he went to school for his bachelor's warts and then a law degree by 1950. And then when he returned from Korea, he passed the bar.

After Greenberg took over AIG, the company went public the very next year in 1969. Now, decisions were made with stockholders' profits in mind, not the good and bad ideas of the man in charge. So Greenberg oversees this. Now that he's the one executing these policies coming up with things that are, but he is now beholden specifically to stockholders. Yeah. Whereas, you know, Vanderstar, he was beholden to himself.

This is a private company. Okay. Which is wild considering that it's an insurance company, the biggest insurance company in the world. Greenberg focused his efforts on using brokers instead of agents as a way to cut down on costs. Brokers got paid based on the profits of what they did or they'd get a flat rate paid directly to them by the investors,

which means AIG doesn't have to pay them for that. Yeah. So this is independent contractors doing work, which you know, the lure is you could make a lot of money if you make a good sale, but the downside is it's wildly unstable if you're not at the top of the game. Yeah. And the hope keeps everybody coming back to the trough and working for patents for AIG. Now in the 1980s, they got especially creative. AIG started offering very specific insurance packages. They'd ensure at least aircraft, pollution liability, and my favorite, they

insured political risk. You could take out insurance specifically against political risk. How exactly do you do you file a claim for political risk? Well, I mean, if you look at voting records, you could literally go, uh, my exhibits are that the Bolin Amendment passed. So, you know, all the money that I sank into, you know, Nicaraguan guns. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Now, since they were publicly traded, that also now meant that AIDG would follow the constant growth model, which as we know works perfectly and it's never a problem. Especially for an insurance company that is the largest insurance company in the world. But if you're not growing, you're dying.

What could go wrong? At least there's a lot of regulations. So it's not going to be a problem ever. Oh, no. This of course leads to more entizements to get more people to invest. And since it's an international company, this means getting more and more diverse investors. And you find new ways to make money off of people worldwide. In India, for instance, AIG strove, quote,

to provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high level independent to make money off of people worldwide. In India, for instance, AIG strove, quote, to provide financial advisory services to corporations seeking high level independent strategic advice. In other words, they're advising specific countries with huge populations on their finances. And not just countries, specific leaders, like, say, in 2003, when Vladimir Putin asked AIG to invest in Russia to help bolster their economy so that he'd also have a pathway to improve relations specifically

with George W. Bush. Greenberg specifically met with Putin in 2003 to see about helping his reach that end, or helping him to reach that end. In 2005, that among other scandals caused Greenberg, then 80 years old, to step down from AIG. Okay. In January of 2006, AIG settled out of court for $1.64 billion and apologized publicly for deceptive business practices.

Essentially, they'd been investigated by, they'd been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Department of Justice and the New York State Attorney General for fraud. I believe the New York State Attorney General at the time was, oh God, not Anthony Weiner, not that guy. The other guy that was brought down by his own dick. Oh, oh, his name escapes me. He's really smart, though. Yeah. Um, it'll come to me later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really really smart until he was governor. Yeah. He was governor of New York or or lieutenant governor. I forget. I think he was governor because then, uh, the guy, the, the guy who was blind ended up being governor for bed.

Okay. Spitzer. Elliot Spitzer. Okay. Yeah. I think in 2006, he was still attorney general or he'd just passed that off to someone else. So anyway, Geek Timers messages on the Twitter at Geek History Time. Tell us who the attorney general was in 2006.

There you go. So those all investigated them for fraud. And this was two years after they had already paid, AIG had paid $126 million in a settlement to make up for a number of regulatory violations. Now, you're the largest insurance company in the world. You're publicly traded. A lot of people like that money, you're going to still have that money to be able to spend.

Although you are spending monies to get it like, you're kind of turning fines into a service fee. Well, yeah. But you know, when you said that they paid one point something billion dollars, that's a really big dollar amount to, you know, anybody who isn't the world's largest insurance company. Right. Kind of the question I have there is, okay, so how does that compare to their profit numbers for that? Right. And I don't know how many of dollars dollars did they bring in like, you know, like, yeah, absolutely. Like was it even if it was 1% of their profits? That's a hell of a

hell of a get, but I got a feeling it wasn't. I, yeah. Yeah. So they paid $126 million in the settlement to, I forget to who? They also were sued by the state of Minnesota who refused the settlement and went ahead and sued them anyway, by the way. On the same day, in February, that that happened, Ben Bernanke testified to Congress that Chinese ownership of US debts wouldn't jeopardize or would not destabilize us. And he was right. We found other ways to destabilize ourselves.

Yeah. Now, having stepped down, Hank, Maurice, called me Hank Greenberg, stepped down. Martin J Sullivan took over. And he took AIG into a new realm. Because again, if you ain't growing your diet, now they began expanding into credit to fault insurance markets. Specifically, they took on in the tens of billions of dollars

of the high risk that went along with writing bad mortgages. AIG also ensured tens of billions of dollars of derivatives against default, but they specifically, and in retrospect, foolishly, failed to prioritize purchasing re-insurance cover, purchasing re-insurance to cover that risk. re-insurance cover, or purchasing re-insurance to cover that risk. It gets really complex and really complicated and I barely have a passing understanding of it. Yeah, well, I mean, almost nobody

has has anything approaching a full time under the full scale understanding of it. Like I was actually just watching a video clip the other day when I was procrastinating, you know, trying not to take it graining done. And it was from a margin call, the movie margin call, which I don't remember how many years ago it was made, but it was before Kevin Spacey, you know, got out of it as, you know, being a predator. And it was Kevin Spacey and I want to say Jeremy Irons, but I don't know, I don't know if I'm saying the right name. But anyway, it did cast of thousands. And it was And it was some financial firm basically at two o'clock in the morning, the CEO and all the presidents of the corporation and like three guys from the analysis office who are

clearly scared out of their minds, sitting in the boardroom in the corporation as they all realize we have over leverage ourselves. And this whole thing is about to take a massive shit. Oh, yeah. And we're and we're going to die. Yes. Zach Quinto play one of the analysts. Yeah. Yeah. Demi Moore was in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and, and, um, yeah, and it was, it was this, you know, and, and the thing is, in, in part of the clip, Zach Quinto's character, one of the higher executives before the meeting actually starts one of the executives asked him, so, you know, what's, what's your CV where, you know, where, where were you before this. you before this. And he gives this very specific explanation of, you know, well, I got my doctorate in physics from MIT, you know, and my specialty was in, and he finishes describing what it is. And there's this beat. And Demi Moore says, so you were a rocket scientist. And Demi Moore says, so you were a rocket scientist. And he says, yeah.

And the thing is, it's numbers. Everything is numbers. And the money here was better to be very frank. And so like, no, literally the math of all this stuff was being worked on by no shit rocket scientists. People getting doctorate level degrees in mathematics, and they're the only ones who could look at the numbers and go, okay, I can kind of figure this out. Right.

It was this, it was this ridiculous, it was, it was the level, it was financial manipulation on a level of subtlety and complexity. Like it's like if Mozart was a financial manipulator instead of a pianist. Kind of, yeah. You know, there's, oh, damn it. Now I can't remember the name of the name of the series, but, anyway, there was there was another series that was a bad a group of consultants, you know, financial corporate, no, I don't think it was the boiler room. And I'm forgetting the name of the cast, the names of the cast members. And I'm just completely drawing a blank on it. But it was an amazing show. And one of the cast, the names of the cast members. I'm just completely drawing a blank on it. It was an amazing show. One of the very first episodes, they get called in to deal with the PR fallout from a bank, completely fucking up and violating the law and doing all

this stuff with these shady investments. It was deeply cynical. But one of the points that got made was, you know, we on our team, we have a couple of guys who got their bachelor's degrees from Harvard in math. And they're having a hard time figuring out how you fucked this up this hard. Nice. You know, so yeah, like it was, it was, it was an amazing artifact of how complicated we've let so many facets of our own economy get. Right. You know, by the way, Elliot Spitzer was the attorney general of New York. He was in line to run for Governor and he was taken down by his own Dixie. This is well, he's a Democrat and Democrats actually get taken down by infidelity. Yeah. Um, so more on that later, oddly enough, but not Elliott Spitzer, but Spitzer was brilliant at this kind of shit. And he

it's Bitzer. But Bitzer was brilliant at this kind of shit. And he had really like I watched a lot of interviews with him talking about the stock market and things like that. And he did a really good job of explaining everything that was happening in real time. Unfortunately, he was a non-entity by that point because the politics of power were already fully in swing and people were lining things up. So anyway, AIG, like I said, ensured tens of billions of dollars of derivatives against default. So if these derivatives, you know, if these bundles defaulted, then they're ensured, and of course they're going to default, then they're insured and of course they're going to default, but they did not purchase re-insurance to cover that risk. So they didn't get any outside insurance to cover their insurance of something that was clearly going to fall. AIG also used collateral on deposit to buy mortgage back securities. And so when they had to pay out for all those failed mortgages,

there goes their collateral. Equally as important, they're went their good name. And they bought out 21st century auto insurance, changed the name and hoped that that would staunch the bleeding. And it didn't. I remember that because I was insured by 21st century auto insurance at the time. And the government had to bail out AIG to the tune of $180 billion. With a B, ladies and gentlemen, you imagine Carl Sagan, $1 billion.

Yes. To put it another way, $180 with nine zeros after it. Mother fuck. Yeah, I think that's more money than any billionaire has right now. Yes. Yeah. I think you're right. So the fear was, I just, I want to cut in here the series that I couldn't remember the name of. House of lies. Okay. Lead actor is Don Chital, Kristen Bell is one of the supporting actor. I said cast. It's an amazing show. Anyway, carry on. So the fear was that if AIG couldn't cover its losses,

confidence in insurance would plummet, and the market would plummet, and the entirety of the financial system would collapse. It's likely that this was actually correct because if they went under, remember the largest international insurance company in the world, they would have dragged down a whole bunch of very huge banks with them. And not just Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch and B of A, but a ton of European banks as well. Oh, yeah. Well, the whole the whole international is completely interconnected. Yes. And in the word, it's actually spider web is the wrong analogy. It's like financial tentacle porn. It's they're all changed to each other and one of

them is really. So yeah. So essentially, AG found a way to buy on the margin without even paying for the margin, which is kind of like how we do filibusters now. This meant that they had not paid in advance for the bill that was coming due, and since the regulations have been softening since Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, the problem was manifold. CNN money said that with AIG, quote, the situation is even more serious. The company is much larger and complex than and complex than Lehman brothers and its assets hitting the market all at once would likely cause worldwide chaos and send values plummeting. Experts question whether there are even enough qualified buyers out there to digest the company and its subsidiaries.

Holy crap. They needed a federal bailout or we would all be screwed, which that's a problem unto itself but they got one as a result. And this would not have been a problem if we weren't involved in two major wars, 13,000 miles away with no end in sight. And that wouldn't have been a problem if the sitting president and enabling Congress hadn't actually cut taxes from almost the entirety of that war. See when you you go to war, you're supposed to raise taxes to pay for it, but instead, Dick Cheney kept hitting the button of, quote, we'll be greeted as liberators, explaining that Iraq would give the US hell of oil and thanks, and that'll take care of our costs.

None of this happened, of course, and the wars didn't end, and we still hadn't found Osama bin Laden. Yeah. So, the federal government had to find the money to give an insurance company to keep them from imploding due to a really complicated game of financial mouse trap and Liar's Dice combined without really raising taxes. Because we've been cutting taxes this whole time and raising taxes to pay for an insurance company that did hinky shit wouldn't

play well politically in 2006. And this meant, even more of the social programs and safety net programs for people who are now losing their jobs because of the financial collapse caused by such companies playing fast and loose and losing in the first place. This is also a year after Katrina hit and people drowned because it rained. Oh, so politically you can't raise taxes. Jesus, yeah, I had forgotten about that particular confluence. Yeah, yeah. So and now the best part, AIG had to announce publicly after it gets $180 billion bailout that it was going to pay its executives $165 million in executive bonuses because they're a public-a-trade company.

So they have to announce their bonuses and $450 million for the financial department of their insurance company. You know, the fuckers that got us here. And so that was a total of $1.2 billion in bonuses for the insurance company. You know, the fuckers that got us here. And so that was a total of $1.2 billion in bonuses for the whole company. They had to announce that after we gave them all that money. And then, and then things started tumbling hard. Liquids get banned from airplanes due to a thwarted plot to use liquids and gels to hide and activate explosives on planes. Henry Paulson, the former CEO from Goldman Sachs, was put in as secretary of the treasury with unanimous support by the Senate, by the way. That's both parties.

Steve Irwin, fucking died. A hazardous waste plant exploded in apex North Carolina unleashing some really awful poison gas evacuating. I want to say 2000 plus people and foreclosures went up by 42% from 2005 with 1 million 259,118 foreclosures filed in 2006. This was the bursting of the subprime mortgage bubble in addition to all that other shit. Jesus. But that's not what I'm going to talk to you about. I'm going to talk to you about Walter White and Al Swerringen and why we like them so much while heaping hate and grumbling disapproval on John Cena and Pope Francis.

Okay. That's why this podcast is called Walter White, John Cena and Pope Francis. Why we hate good people and love bad people. Okay. Okay. Um, there's an intro for you. Right. That's that's what hell of a cold open.

Yeah. Um, bold move cotton. Let's see how it plays off for. Yeah. In four episodes. I'll bring it back to AIG. We bring it back around to AIG. Yeah. So so before we go anywhere, the first thing I would say is Vivot Francis. Sure.

As the as the, you know, token believer on that. And that's that's Latin for let's go scene. Uh, yeah, you know, be a Francis in in context. I'm not even mad. I'm not even mad. Um, yeah. Um, so okay. So you want to know why people hate Pope Francis? Let's go ahead and start there.

Yeah. Well, to understand that, we have to go back to ECW. Again, always. Really? Okay. Okay, now ECW is silly, right? Yes, yes. Okay.

All right. I'm not going to give you points for remembering this because it's every other episode that I mentioned. Yeah, but these people who threw batteries at Santa Claus. Yes, yes, they are. Okay. Right.

The same. Okay. The same. Okay. So yeah, they're a Philly based wrestling organization, and they absolutely set themselves up as the renegades, the extreme and gritty underdogs of wrestling. And by 2006, they had been bought up by WWE

having folded in 2001. Now in November of 2000, I know, I know. Okay, so they folded in 01, because the purchase of essentially their intellectual property. Happened in November of 2000. Yeah, happened right around the time they folded actually, but then the WWE stopped sitting on all their stuff

that they had and started making money with them. Okay, all right. So it starts in November of 2004 when the WWE using its vast library, which is why the WWE bought all these different federations was always for their tape libraries. Vince McMahon had in mind to have a WWE network from the jump. And I'm low to give him credit because he's such a union busting prick.

But dude had a fucking vision and as an historian and who loves wrestling. I love the fact that he's like someday I will want to show people on a network Playboy buddy Rose and pretty boy Doug Summers taking on the midnight rockers Someday, yeah, so or the first cage match that I could have ever found which was from 1934. I found video of it. I think It's called Yeah, yeah, it was the chicken wire match with Luthese I think I have to go back and and look I watched it it was it was something anyway So they bought Everyone out all the time as as quickly as they could to get their libraries

everyone out all the time as quickly as they could to get their libraries. So in 2004 in November, they put out a DVD called The Rise and Fall of ECW. And at this point, the attitude era had already ended. And WWE was searching around to find its new white hot something or other. See, with Hulk Hogan, you had white hot, Hulk Mania. And then with the attitude era, you had the Austin attitude era. And that was white hot. And so since wrestling is inherently self cannibalizing, they kept trying to find similar formulas to what had already worked, despite the fact that the attitude era was nothing like the Hogan era. Yeah. So I'll find it. Okay, so we're looking at 2006 right now. So I'll find it. Okay, so we're looking at 2006 right now. Mm-hmm.

2004. Okay, okay, sorry. 2004. Mm-hmm. Um, where is the rock chronologically? Let's see, he has already left. Okay. Yeah.

Uh, let's see, because WrestleMania 19 would have been 2002, 2003. And yeah, the rock is now making movies. He's probably making Get Shorty or something like that. So he's not, he's not getting huge big, but he is, he's putting in the one. He has gone Hollywood. Yes, okay. He's on the undercard of Hollywood. Okay.

But a lot of people, I mean, he's got massive name, American ignition. He's already been on SNL a couple times. So, but the DVD sold like gangbusters. And the wrestling observer noted, now the wrestling observer is kind of like a trade publication. It's the closest thing that they have to trade pub. Okay. And they noted that it was the best pro wrestling DVD of 2005, because it released in November of 04, so it counts for 05. And the WDB also released a book about the same time of the same title, and it did less well since wrestling was a visual medium.

But this look at the old and beloved brand, rekindled an interest in ECW. And since the MacMans always want to make more money, they organized a specific pay-per-view to be aired from the Hammerstein Ballroom, which was ECW's actual old stomping grounds in New York. Not in Philly, but in New York. Yes, it's based in New York. So they're the Hammerstein ballroom, which is a beautiful building. It's, it's only seats like 2500, like it's a small venue, but it's majestic. It's got a balcony. Oh, okay. All right.

It, it very much is a vocative of, of the past. It lent an air of legitimacy and nostalgia to the event, even though there were several rods smack down wrestlers on the card, it was a legitimate attempt at making as ECW as possible a pay-per-view for the WWE. In fact, they brought in Tommy Dreamer, who at that time was working in WWE talent relations. Tommy Dreamer is like the forever good guy in ECW. And he was always the underdog. He was always taking the beating, etc., etc. He never wanted to win the title. That was the point. And so he kind of became the emblematic guy of ECW. Like you had Taz, you had Sabo, you had Rob Van Damme,

you had the Dudleys leaves you had all these great stars who very much went on to do great things and they were always in the the top tier of it but Tommy dreamer was just fucking always there man like okay the best example I could think of to ECW what, yeah, I don't know what maybe the Steiner Brothers worked WCW or what, Jake Stink Roberts was to WWE. Okay. Never at the top, top, top, but always very popular. Always, always somewhere there.

Yeah, and always compelling to watch. Okay, so Tommy Dreamer was in charge of booking this show and he they told him specifically get as much ECW talent as you can reliably get. And as things kept rolling along, ECW became the third brand for the WWE after Ron Smackdown. which was kind of cool. Now, there will be purists, but whatever. So the event itself was as ECW as it got. At the Hammerstein ballroom, you did have lots of Smackdown wrestlers invading it,

which prompted chance from the crowd, such as you suck dick or fuck you smack down and shut the fuck up because ECW exactly. Now Rob Van Damme interrupted being the ECW hero once again. And after the next match, Raw invaded. And Edge was the champ at the time. Now Edge had just gone through this huge battle and war with Matt Hardy. And because in real life, Edge had started a relationship with Matt Hardy's girlfriend, even though all of them were like best friends. Because Matt Hardy was on injured and stuck at home. And Lita and Edge were sharing a car and pretty soon a bed.

And so Edge was now the champ. And Lita was with him because WWE loves to lean into shit like that. And oh my god, what a storyline. Anyway, so the crowd starts chanting, I fucked Lita. Oh, yeah, you could take the fans out of Philly. You ain't taking the Philly out of Philly. Philly fans, holy. Oh, and that's the tamer of the two chance they chanted about her. Lita's got her bees. What? Wow. Yeah, people are animals. They're awful. They're

fucking awful. Like, don't get me wrong. I think what she did to Matt Hardy was terrible. But these are these are adults and they have their own problems and They're fucking awful. Like, don't get me wrong. I think what she did to Matt Hardy was terrible, but these are adults and they have their own problems and people get to end relationships and should she have done it differently and better? Sure, not my business. And ultimately, I always loved Lita. She was my favorite.

She was just such a good wrestler. But also, wow. Yeah. She developed like some serious stress issues Um, but also, wow, yeah. Um, she developed like some serious stress issues over this, by the way, she had an ulcer. Um, it was not good for her. She ended up retiring probably within a year. Wow. Yeah.

You know, I kind of like, I get the idea that, um, sparkly murder gymnastics is gymnastics is a soap opera. Yes. But I feel like there's a certain there's a level of cruelty involved in like, oh, like I can see Vince McMahon going, oh, so you're not with him anymore, you're with him. You know, honestly, you know, so. Vince McMahon very much wanted that story to happen, but he and Bruce Pritchard, the one of the headwriters at the time, went to Lita and Edge and Matt Hardy and said, can we do this? Can because there's money here, okay, do this You need to be on board with it now

If you're not on board with it, does that mean you possibly get pushed down the card? Yes, so do you find a way to swallow the bitterness? probably But they did make good money doing this feud and it told a very compelling story. Um, but it also put edge on top. And a lot of people really mad about that because Matt's the one that got fucked over all of this. Yeah. But edge is a goddamn superstar. I mean, he really was. So, but of course they took it all out on her.

Now, another match happened and then Paul Heyman came out and he cut a promo on Edge and JBL. Now JBL is Justin Bradshaw-Layfield. He played basically like a J.R.U.ing type wrestling character. Okay. Never like JBL. You won't hear me say too many kind things about him because I think he's a right bastard.

But, and I don't mean the character. I mean the person. But having said that, those were the two champions at the time. So he cuts a promo on edge in JBL and he gets a huge pop for it. Now afterward, at the end, a brawl broke out in the ring between ECW wrestlers and WWE wrestlers and look at ECW wrestlers are getting it over on them. And then JBL out of nowhere starts actually attacking the Blue Meanie and pounds him in the back of the head to the point where his head opens up and needs like

stitches, which then led to a match with the Blue Me. Where Blue Meaning got to give him a receipt and JBL was okay with that. That's the thing, like JBL has always been a bully, always has been, but he also will take his licks. He's like, no, this is just how it goes. It's like, it doesn't have to. But he's always been a huge bully in a prick though. Okay, and now from what I remember

of our discussions, VECW previously, it wasn't an ACW match until more than one person's blood. Yeah, but I mean, you've had matches where, I think WW had an O-blood policy at this time. I could be wrong. They flip-flop back and forth and given that it was ECW, it might have been a special night.

But the hitting of the blue meaning and spilling blood was not sanctioned. It was ECW. It might have been a special night. But the the hitting of the blue meaning and spilling blood was not sanctioned. Yeah, no, it was it was JBL taking liberties. Okay. Anyway, it went really well. And the fans had a version of ECW to both really love and really hate because it was ECW. So they loved it, but they also hated it because it wasn't really ECW. It was corporate ECW. It was WWE's ECW. So they could have that fandom, like any fandom anybody's ever been in,

that weird, I loved it so much, but I fucking hate it too. Yeah, they ruined it, they ruined it. I love it so much, but, but like I fucking hate it too. Yeah, they ruined it. They ruined it. I loved it. They took the things I loved and they ruined it. They made a stormtrooper black. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of shit. So, you know, and, and again, I was never a huge fan of ECW. I understand that. So the thing, the thing, the things that I liked about it this second time around were probably the same things that you know true fans hated about it second time and that's fine that's that's okay either way 2005 2006 was a really weird year for wrestling in November of 2005 Eddie Guerrero died

WWE had an elimination chamber match in January in which John Cena won against five other guys, but then immediately lost following that match because Edge cashed in the money in the bank, which is the first time something like that has ever happened. Cena got it back a few weeks later at the Royal Rumble and people started complaining louder that John Cena was being forced on the fans. He was fairly new to the championship and people started complaining

because they wanted edge to do it. There was also a guy called the Boogie Man who wrestled. He ate worms and dropped them on your face. It was gross, it was weird. There was a woman. That's an hell of a gimmick. Yeah, there was a woman who had a growth on her face. Other than that, she was hella hot,

who sang terribly. And then the boogeyman ate the growth off of her face. It was a weird time. That was really sound like they're just desperately, desperately stretching. It kinda, yeah. Yeah. That's spping at anything.

Yeah, throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks. The bad guy started getting more and more cheers by WrestleMania too. Cena, although he was very much a good guy and wrestled as a good guy, and the storylines had him as the good guy. He never took shortcuts or anything like that. He came down to an entrance that aped the gangster era of the 1920s in Chicago. Now that's badass, that's cool suits,

that's cool cars and she'll like that. Isn't that still good guy taking on slightly bad guy trappings? And it didn't matter people boot him anyway, even though he kept wrestling as the good guy. Now, not everyone boot him, but there were vocal males in the audience who boot him. Now, the next few months saw Sean Michaels wrestle against Vince McMahon and his son Shane in a handicap match. But it wasn't really a handicap match. It was a tag team match. It's just that Vince McMahon and Shane McMahon took on Sean Michaels and his tag team partner, God. We've talked about this one before. Yeah. Yeah. So then you fast forward to 2006, right? Because I started with 2006.

You were not wrong to think that here. June of 2006, they had another ECW one nightstand pay-per-view. And in this one, the Philly fans came up to the Hammerstein Ballroom and John Cena got booed big time. So he has this gimmick where he takes off his shirt and he is just fucking cut. He would like he is a reed. Well, that's yeah. Oh my God. And he throw his shirt into the crowd to the delight of the ladies, to the delight of the children, right? Yeah. ECW one night stand, they threw the shirt back at him.

do one night stand, they threw the shirt back at him. It's brutal to these people. They really are. And they do what they can to rattle you. They really do. So they had a sign that said, if John Cena wins, we riot. Mick Foley, Mick Foley, a hero, a staple of ECW. They considered him a bad guy because he was a corporate sellout because he'd gone to WWE. The chance were something, of course, as well. For instance did it Randy Orton go

fuck scene. And, uh, and, and yeah, to other women that were out there, you're a crack or and I can't get anymore shocked. And she's got herpes. There's no. Yeah.

Wow. And then when Sino's wrestling fuck you, Sina, chance were heard. Yeah. And again, smaller building. So echoes and fewer, you know, even if you only have like 200 people, that's what like, I can't do math. Is that 10% or once 10% of the audience. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's a lot of people, you know. Yeah. Um, they start chanting same old shit, same old shit, um, or overrated,

or you can't wrestle. So from this point forward, and because of the acoustics in that building, from this point forward, John Cena is starting to get booed by a segment of the fans in WWE. He's still going to be a total babyface, and yet the WWE fans are starting to sharply divide on him from this point forth. For the next four years, fans were split on Cena. There were articles written about him, about how he'd not been authentic enough and how he's not the Hulk Hogan of our generation. And in 2011, the WWE finally found a way to capitalize on it. They had him feuding with the rock who had returned specifically to feud with John Cena. Because

John Cena had called out the rock. And the two of them had gone back and forth verbally from about Royal Rumble through the week before WrestleMania. And it was really cool because both guys could rock the mic, no pun intended. The rock sang songs, he like got out of guitar and made up songs about John Cena. They wrapped battled because John Cena's old gimmick was to be a freestyle rapper. They called each other out. The rock got Cena hashtagged with fruity pebbles because Cena had a habit of like having a whole bunch of different t-shirts that he would sell in all just different colors. And yeah, and I think the rock came out. I was like, you out, you think I'm gonna bow down to someone,

or you think you can go one-on-one with the great one, you dress like you wear fruity pebbles, then he turned to the mic, he goes, hashtag fruity pebbles, and it trended number one for a while. Wow. It got John Cena a sponsorship by fruity pebbles. I'm looking love wrestling. That was not beautiful, right?

Um, and also hashtag John Cena's Lady parts, I think was another one. Just like, I don't know if he got a sponsorship for that. But it was, it was weird. It was a great time for people who loved or hated John Cena, frankly. And, and finally, they conflicted physically and the fans enjoyed the entire ride. And the rock made sure that John Cena lost at WrestleMania to a chicken shit heel named The Miz. And the people were stoked that the hero lost to a chicken shit

heel. Okay, the good guy got beat because the superstar interfered and cheated on behalf of the chicken shit heel. And so for the next year, they built toward a match at the following WrestleMania. What do you call it? And while the rock bounced in and out of WWE because he had filming schedules and things to do with he and Cena having matches on the same team only to end in the rock hitting him with the rock bottom. Cena also feuded with a bunch of other people, most notably my favorite feud, CM Punk and John Cena. CM Punk beat John Cena and then K-Fabe left

the company. He had done so after what was called the pipe bomb. Now, CM Punk, well, CM Punk used the pipe bomb interview to call out the real reasons why people didn't like John Cena. And that resonated big time. So I'll go through that in much more detail later, but recognize at their match in Chicago, at Money in the Bank, I believe it was 2011. There was a sign and it said, if Cena wins, we riot. Okay. So five years later, you see that same sign. And after that few, John Cena finished his viewed with the rock and put the rock over at WrestleMania. The next night, he comes out, you know, rock you beat me, blah, blah, blah.

Thank you so much for this. It's been an honor and the better man won last night. Then Brock Lesnar came back from UFC. Brock Lesnar was the UFC heavyweight champion. He beat Randy Cotour unconscious to become the UFC heavyweight champion. I remember that. Yeah. It was a big deal. Yeah, it was. Randy Cotour said at one point, he's like, yeah, I was,

I thought I had plenty of room to duck back and I pulled back and this lunch box just kept coming at me. And I realized that it was his fist. And the next thing I knew I was on the ground. So this lunch box is it's a good. Yeah. So Brock Lesnar comes back and steps in the ring.

And John Cena at this point is wearing a John Deere green shirt, because that's the brand, that's the color of his fruity pebbles, advertisement at the time. And he is just putting over Brock Lesnar like, man, it's good to see you back. There's been a lot of changes. Check it out, you know, and done it up. And Brock Lesnar beat the shit out of him,

bloodied him for real. Elbow to the, I mean, like legit elbow to the face and the fans loved it. legit elbow to the face and the fans loved it. Cena still wrestled, acted and spoke like a total baby face at this point. And this will take us through 2017 where John Cena was feuding with all sorts of people who wrestled his heels, but they were getting cheered by a larger and larger segment of the fans. And the whole time John Cena wrestled and acted and spoke like a baby face all the way up until his hiatus in 2017 and then he returned

to part-time wrestling. The only time John Cena got cheered truly got cheered was when he came without division, was when he came out to call back call out Roman Reigns for doing the exact same thing that he had done for getting shoved down our throats. Now, John Cena, who has the record of Make-A-Wish appearances at over 650, who never stopped being a good guy since WrestleMania 20, still got booed from 2006 on through just very recently. 2006 until very recently. Just keep that in mind. And by the way, the just to back it up just a bit because I feel like a sock. Yeah, I'm just, you know, yeah, there's some stuff going on here.

Yeah, there's some stuff going on here. You know, and the CM Punk pipe bomb speech is a wonderful promo. It's amazing. Like it really, really is. And I'm going to get into it more. But essentially the short version is CM Punk was very frustrated with how he was being used in the WWE. And he hated that he legitimately hated this is not KFA. He legitimately hated that other people

were getting pushed over him and beyond him when he knew that he was better than all of them. And point of fact, he was. He was a much better performer. He worked really, really hard, et cetera, et cetera. And he could work a crowd. And yet, all these other people are getting pushed over him. And he had a problem with that.

He was like, I'm gonna just go be the best in the world somewhere else. He said that. And so his contract was coming due and he made it very publicly known that he ain't resigning. And so then he had to talk with Vince McMahon and Vince McMahon said, let's make an angle out of this.

Because of course he did. And we'll get into the money in the bank match a little bit later. But so that's the John Cena. Now meanwhile, in Bavaria, in April 16th, 1927. Meanwhile, in Bavaria. Ha, ha, ha.

Joseph Allewish's Ratsinger was born in his parents' home. The great nephew to a man who saw the gospel and Catholicism as a way to empower the poor. His family was exceptionally religious for the time with his brother growing up to become a priest and a musician. His great uncle, Georg, I think it's George without any York York George, I mean, yeah, I just remember the countis and the sound of music calling it Gayorg Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with Gayorg because that's how the the countis said it in sound of music Yeah, so anyway his great uncle Gayorg had been equal rights or equal parts Chaplin and editor of several journals and newspapers in the 1800s. Georg Ratzinger was even a member of the

Bavarian Parliament and later the Reichstag as a centrist. Now until the center proved to be too conciliatory when it came to ignoring the. And then he, Georg, was driven further left because he saw the need for good works for God's children. He himself was a man of great learning and wrote, oh boy, the folks worked shrap in Yerhann, Stiklin, Grunt, Lagen, Ethnic, Social, Studian, Uber, Culture, and Civilization, or in English and far less fun, the National Economy and its Moral Foundations, Ethnic Social Studies on Culture and Civilization.

So Georg opposed the materialism needed for Adam Smith's ideas to work, so I already like him. materialism needed for Adam Smith's ideas to work. So I already like him. And he thought that Christian ethics would actually and should actually guide a political economy. And he's saying this, at the same time that Otto von Bismarck is making Germany great from blood and iron. Okay.

Georg's grand nephews both became priests. Georg, who's the older nephew, so named after his great uncle, was playing in the church, he was playing the church organ as early as 11, and he entered seminary in 1935. Unfortunately, in Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s, there was some other stuff going on too, so he couldn't just focus on his talent for music and looking the other way. Yeah.

Gaeorg was drafted. Gaeorg, the younger was drafted into the Vermacht in 1942, shot in the arm in 1944 in Italy and ended up a POW under American control in Italy until the end of the war. Okay. He was quickly released and went back to re-enter the seminary in 1946 with his younger brother. There's not much else to say about Gae Georg beyond the fact that he absolutely knew what was happening to the boys in the Reagansberger, Dom's pots and choir, and look the other way from 1964 to 1994 when he retired from that position. But his younger brother, oh, young Joseph,

what a disappointment he must have been to his grand uncle because Joseph wholly rejected his grand uncle's approach to secularizing the good works of Jesus. Politics and church ought not to mix in that way according to Joseph when he got older. Joseph was conscripted into Hitler Jungin and by his brother's report, he was not a big fan

of mandatory service, which by the way, it was 90% of the kids. So I'm not holding them to the fire on this one. Like that fucking sucked. They also had a cousin with Down syndrome who was taken away in 1941 and murdered under action T4. This specifically was the part of the Nazi ideology that spoke to racial hygiene by murdering people deemed useless eaters. Quote, the more severely burden should not propagate themselves. If we do nothing but make mental and physical cripples capable of propagating themselves, and the healthy stocks have to limit the number of their children because so much has to

be done for the maintenance of others. If natural selection is generally suppressed, then unless we will get new measures, our race must rapidly deteriorate. It's and Darwin is spinning in his grave fast enough to generate electrical power. Yeah. Well, just in case someone wants to talk about Hitler's economic successes, remember, they were based on shit like this and they used stolen Jewish wealth to balance the books. Yeah. Also, I would point out that this idea of survival of the fittest, humans figured out how to take care of their own

since they were humans, since before they were humans. Paleolithic era. Yes, since the other times. Yeah. We can look at skeletal remains and know that people suffered debilitating injuries and lived people suffered debilitating injuries and lived for the time period. A very long time afterward. Yeah.

Yeah, because what we figured out that other animals didn't or were not sophisticated enough to have in the way that we have is the idea of being truly a troop animal. Like, turns out fitness includes taking care of the elderly and infirm because they have a lot of uses still. Yeah. So, yeah. Generational knowledge. But yeah, Joseph and Georg lost a younger brother

to this policy, which is fucking awful. I had not known that. Yeah. So when people are like, oh, he's a little Nazi kid. Mm-hmm. No. No, I'm going to say no. Now, there's plenty of criticism on,

but we got to get there first. So young Joseph unwilling to conscript into the H.J. was then drafted into the Luftwaffe's anti-aircraft corps and then into the infantry. In 1945, he deserted his post as the Allies got closer and he went back home. Okay, so far I'm down. That's good. He was interned in an Allied camp and his parents' home was made into the Allied headquarters in the area. And after the war ended, he was released and he joined his brother and seminary shortly thereafter. Okay. So while Joseph moved through his theological life, he'd bump into reformers of all sorts, especially those who were the proto-libertarian

theologists. But as he got older into the late 1950s, he moved further and further away from what he considered a Marxist approach to Catholicism. And as he got higher and higher up in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, he got more and more vocal in his conservative and exclusionary approach to loving Jesus, publishing multiple journals that helped crystallize and codify that approach. In 1978, Joseph Ratzinger was promoted from Archbishop to Cardinal Priest. Now, I have no idea what these things are. I assume they can move more than just diagonally on the board now. So, okay, bishops are the ecclesiastical bosses essentially of A diocese. So, uh, so they're like the Capoe regime, uh, and the priest's

enlightenment. Okay. Try that. Yeah. And, and in it, I don't actually mean that flippantly, but like my understanding, that's, that's a good hierarchy I can understand. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you're keeping it in Italy. So I can understand that. So, so somewhere along the way, in the formation of the church, as we know it today, the hope, the bishops of Rome, basically argued that, okay,

so in the scripture, Jesus said, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will found my church. Yes. And he made Peter a pun. It was. Yes. It was remarkably enough.

And he made Peter, essentially, the number one disciple. Right. First among equals. First among equals. Right. And the bishops of Rome, because Peter had then gone on to become bishop of Rome before being himself crucified upside down upside down, upside down, St. Peter's Cross is actually an upside down cross for all of my supernatural fan friends out there in the viewing, listening audience. Keep in mind that it's not just witches who have upside down crosses. It could also be devout Catholics who are, you know, Peter fans. And Peter was kind of in charge, but at the same time when Jesus is around, he was a disciple. So

Peter is a switch. So witches and switches. Nice. Thank you. Not even remarkably enough, not even mad. Thank you. Because I have more of a sense of humor about the stuff than other things. So Peter did. Yeah. Well, you know, here's the thing. I heard he was stern as fuck like in every painting, he's always frowny.

Well, he's always frowny, but I think part of that is because in the religious tradition that comes up, you know, after him, there are two things that are remembered about. Number one, the part I already mentioned that just said on this rock I'll found my church. And the idea that the keys to heaven were handed to him. He is in Catholicism and to a lesser extent, in Orthodox Christianity, he is a Christian stand in for the psychopath. Okay.

He is the, because you know, the idea is that you're gonna have to stand before St. Peter before you can get into heaven. That's the, that's the, not joke, but that's the way the jokes are always phrased. Is you're gonna go, you know, three guys are standing from the St. Peter and Yadda Yada. And that's because of that line in scripture.

And so the thing is because of that responsibility, and also the interpersonal stuff between him and Jesus and the fact that he had to deal with the guilt of fucking up and denying Christ. And therefore, he's also redeemed by Christ's grace because Christ is like, yo, you're still a stand up guy, even though you failed to.

And then later on in one of the most affecting passages in the New Testament for me personally, Christ asks him, so three times a denied Christ, I don't know the guy, I don't know, I don't know. Right. Then Christ reappears before Peter and some of the other apostles and says to him, Peter, do you love me? And Peter says yes. And then Christ asks him again, Peter, do you love me? He makes him affirm him three times. He makes him affirm him three times. Number two, every time he asks him, do you love me? It's in a different, it's using a different Greek word.

Oh, God. I remember these sermons from like when I went to youth groups, believe it or not, I went to youth groups. And there are three kinds of love and Greek words, etc. Okay. So he's using all three different ones. So he's right all three. Yeah. Yeah. And and so for me, somebody who identifies really strongly with Peter as the fuck up. Um, and the loud mouth in the hot head. That's like I get I get every year when that comes up during during the Easter season in church, I get weeping in church. It's like it's a thing. Yeah. So. Okay, get me to our fish. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So so originally bishops, it was like, okay, so a bishop is in charge of the church in his area. And then the Pope said, and then they were essentially they were all equal. Then the Pope started claiming papal supremacy.

So I'm first among equals, like Peter was first on equals on the boss. Right, right, right. So then for heavy emphasis on the first, less so heavy among the issues. Heavy emphasis on the first, less so on the equals. And then as time went on, for administrative reasons, it became important for there to be some rank

between Il Papa in Rome and the bishops out ever place else. And so an archbishop is like a bishop that other kind of yeah, like other other other bishops kind of kind of sort of answer to him. It's it's it's not it's my understanding like congregation to diocese to parish to our county commissioner. Yeah, yeah. And then and then somewhere along the way, and I don't know enough about the history to pinpoint it, the idea of cardinals is these are people who have been made, they're the people who are responsible for electing the pope.

Right. And most of them are archbishop's, if one kind or another. Sure. But it is possible for anybody to be made a cardinal. Sweet. The pope, any adult male, Catholic, over the age of 18, can be made a cardinal. Nice. Any adult Catholic over the age of 18 could be selected as the Pope, which

has happened a few times. Not in a very, very long time, but yes. Right. Yeah. And so, yeah. So that's, okay. Bishops is like, you know, Kapade regime. Right. And, you know, the commissioners, they answer to the archbishop's and then there's the cardinals who are kind of yeah actually that's a really good that's a since we're talking about Rome that's a really good analogy yeah yeah yeah okay and then the pope right well he becomes a cardinal priest which I did not realize wasn't or you minister to the birds. So apparently Francis of a CC was not a Cardinal priest. No. Neither was Aussie Smith. So apparently someone above him like the cut of his holy jib, and in 1981 he was appointed by the sitting pope,

And in 1981, he was appointed by the sitting pope, that point, John Paulo. Second. J.P.2. Yep. To be the prefect of the sacred congregation of the doctrine of faith, I just love all the genitives there, which is the oldest of the sacred congregations. And it was originally instituted to protect the church

against Heresy. Nicely done. Over the next 20 years, he'd branch out, get appointed to more stuff, start one of things, big on journals, including the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1991. He got appointed to that, right after it was created. Huh. Yeah. He also oversaw the expulsion of Matthew Fox.

The Dominican, not the actor from Party of Five and from Lost, who had questioned the doctrine of original sin and supported a more humanist and anthropological examination of the legend of Jesus. Yeah, he oversaw his expulsion. Yeah, go be an Episcopalian. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to do that, just like join, join the universitus, Unitarian Universalist. Come on. No. If you're going to be a Catholic, be a fucking Catholic. My brother whom you know and whom you've known longer than I, he is, I think, the seventh generation

on on our dad's side to have been baptized in the Univiterian Church in San Francisco. So it's always a kick to me that like, oh, go be one of them. They're not even anything. And it's like, like, we have church records of my brother. Yeah. Funny. Yeah. Interestingly, he was also in charge of enforcing a document governing the confidentiality of

internal investigations into priests accused of sexual abuse. See, he didn't do Nazi shit. He didn't. Like, he was drafted into it like most young boys at his age, and he spent most of his time deserting and being imprisoned. But as an adult, so when he became Pope in 2005, which he beat the odds that Vegas said at 7 to 1, he later was reported as wanting to retire, not get promoted. And I kind of believe that since he took the name Benedict, but he said God had other plans.

Okay, so speaking as somebody who converted after he was pope. Okay. My understanding of those circumstances is him saying, you know, I really want to retire, but God had other plans. Right. It's like ceremonial modesty. Yeah. Yeah.

So I hesitate to say that he was being disingenuous because, right. Paul, but by the same token, you know, you, you're supposed to say that. You're supposed to, number one, you're supposed to say that. Number two, if you listen to the not testimony, but the, the accounts of other people who were involved in the process at the time, he was politicking. And part of that could have been that he ideologically was really concerned about a major reformer taking over. Actually, again, he's going to come up soon.

Guardian of orthodoxy. Right. And it could have been like, maybe it was, I don't really want to do this, but, you know, better, I do it in suffer than the church have some reformer takeover. Uh-huh. Because that was in that first ballot, the first slate of ballots. Yeah. The, the one who was closest to him in the votes. Yeah. We'll do it from Argentina. Uh-huh. Oh, I know. So yeah,

Francis. As Pope Benedict XVI, his reforms were predictably modest and moderate at best. It felt more like he was spell checking and copy editing. The policy is rather than setting new ones. like he was spell checking and copy editing the policies rather than setting new ones. He did some cosmetic stuff. He changed who greeted him daily to include a married couple and their baby. He also said everybody who greets him daily, instead it used to be like this whole group of priests. And then he's like, no, no, no, I want just 12 priests, but I want a married couple, their new baby, somebody who is a new convert to Catholicism, and I want a different group of Cardinals that had done it before. He also took the top off of the Pope mobile, stuff like that. So very cosmetic.

And that's fine. You don't need visionaries every single time. And I personally have no stake in this, but mostly he just added Greece to the cogs that needed it from what I could find. He reaffirmed the anti-bottly autonomy for women's dance that your church has held fast to since 1588, which is right when Spain got defeated by England. So it's kind of sus to me. And at the same time, he also, uh, you know, okay, what's, what's interesting? Mm-hmm. He also, by the way, just before he gets to the interesting part,

he also maintained the same stance about marriage stopped by couples that aren't cis-hate. So again, he's, he's keeping, he's keeping it traditional. So what were you going to say? Yeah. What I was going to say was in regard to the stance against women's botanolid autonomy, the thing about that is your partly correct, that significant portions of that due date pack to 1588. Mm hmm. Oh, I found shit that went way back further, but like this was the first like, oh, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, because yeah, yeah, the church.

It was the first cohesive coherent on purpose codification of the dance that I could find. Yeah, but the idea of life beginning at conception is not scripturally supported. Right. And there are any number of Jesuits who are in perfectly good standing with the church, but the American council of bishops would probably prefer to keep their yaps shut. They're the same people that wrote letters against the TV show soap. So. I know.

I know. So, you know, the way the way decisions get made and the way the hierarchy of the Catholic Church actually works is one of the most weird dotted line kind of kind of org charts that you can possibly imagine. Everybody has a solid line leading up to the Pope in the Catholic Church. But then below the Pope,

there are all of these dotted lines, right? You know, archbishop's and the American Council of Bishops. And like the Pope mostly lets the bishops in any given country mostly kind of handle issues in their own country. Probably grateful for the ocean and the sea that is between him and America. Probably. I'm this the current Pope is definitely grateful. Yeah. But, you know, but it's this, it's this tangled mess of dotted line. And, you know, but, but, you know, what I'm trying to around to pointing out is that we base things in Catholicism on scripture,

on tradition, and on revelation from the Holy Spirit and reason. Thinking through, okay, if this thing then, logical follow-on must be this thing. And tradition generally has the biggest seed in the table. And scripture is number two. And the funny thing in this case is, the funny thing in this case is that scripture, pre-clearly, if you go into the Old Testament and you look in the books of the Old Testament, like there are instructions for how to deal with

a fetus you don't want, or can't afford. And there's also literature written by... And my point, can't afford, you know. Yeah, and there's also literature written by several canonized folk who are like, all right, so until this point, you don't have a quickening. So it's fun. And until this point, you don't have a quickening. So it's fun. And until this point, you don't have a quickening for girls. So it's fine.

And on and on. Yeah. So. And. And yeah. So anyway, but the, as you say, the reinforcement of the policies, it's 1588. Yeah.

Yes, and no. Like yes. Yeah. When it comes to her autonomy. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he also went hard in the paint when it came to Jews, indigenous peoples, and Muslims. But most of that was honestly just kind of continuing tradition as well. It's pretty clear from the way he chose his name, that the way, all the way through the way he ran the place, he saw himself as a placeholder

and a continuer of what John Paul II was doing. The last Benedict was the last guy I think to retire from the gig, too. I know there's no. There's a guy. Well, there's only been two. Right, but there's a guy who... No, no, I think I'm right. Yeah, yeah. The last guy to to have retired from the gig was the other Benedict, one of the other 15 Benedict's. His also he also continued his lack of action when it came to sexual abuse of children at one point, making sure to secure his own diplomatic immunity immunity in a Texas case. This isn't to say that he did nothing. One could certainly point to the one case in Mexico where Benedict made sure to launch an investigation

against a priest that he'd formally been pressured multiple times by those above him prior to his becoming a pope to stop investigating. So he was pressured by people above him when he was a cardinal priest. I'll let you figure out how many of those people are. But he was told, don't investigate this guy. And when he became Pope, he's like,

fuck that, we're investigating this guy. But he also didn't start the investigation until after John Paul II specifically honored Mari Saul Maceal first. And once Benedict was Pope, he did go for it. So that's one. Anyway, for eight years, Benedict was Pope, then he resigned the first to do so in just under 600 years, becoming Pope Emeritus. When he resigned, he had an approval rating amongst Catholics of about 76%.

Yeah. Now in 1924, was that? Yeah. Now in 1924. Tell me in the 24. Was that count me in the 24? But continue. Yeah. Well, actually, this might not be a bad place to stop, which totally sucks for people who are listening to this one episode at a time.

I'm going to recommend everybody binge these over the next four weeks. So at least listen to this one and the other one right next to each other, like maybe hold off for a week now that I'm telling them at the end of the episode. So because this is a good place to stop because I'm about to get into your homeboy of Hope Frank. So that'll be that'll take a little longer because he's been added a bit longer. Okay. So, I'm not going to bother. Well, actually, well, is there anything that you've leaned from this or have I just mostly reinforced what you already knew? And now you're like, how the hell are we going to get from here to there?

Well, I think the punchline here, such as it is, is that Benedict retired, which fuck me. Anyway, he retired with a 76% approval rating, which ties in very nicely with everybody who got cheered over John Cena. You know, and the thing is, and there are there are shades of difference because like if you're if you're going to ask Catholics, you know, do you approve of the Pope, it's going to take an awful lot for most, especially cradle Catholics to say, well, no, I don't think this guy ought to be the one. Because that's just, that's culturally, it's just not done. Like, you know, they're, they're going to find a way to go, well, yeah, I mean, you know, he's the Pope, you know, even if he don't like him, particularly.

And then there are going to be because there's assholes everywhere, there's going to be those those hardcore elements, we're like, Oh, yeah, no, yeah, no, he's he's the guy, you know, um, and and so so there is this. this thing that's happened in the last two decades, that is a cynicism. You're stepping on my, on my, on my road here. Yeah. Okay. Yep. But, but you're not wrong. You're not wrong to even sniff that based on where we've gone so far. Yeah. That's, that's the, that's the sense that I've gotten is it's like, if somebody is legitimately no kidding a boy scout, Captain America, or Superman, you know, if somebody is no kidding

the lawful good, paladin, shiny boy, there is this knee jerk desire to see them as fake. There is this knee jerk response of thinking it's Tui or overly sentimental or cringe to, you know, talk like the kids do nowadays. And, and I think that's what we're seeing showing up here. I think you've, that's my, that's my theory. You've gleaned quite a bit. Okay. Well done.

You've got to know me well over the last 160 plus episodes. What's that he's talking about ECW? Cynicism. Well, and just people from Philly are sadistic foxes. You read many things now that schools out. I am actually, hey, number one, I mentioned before, in an previous recording, I mentioned that I was reading through the adventures of Sherlock Holmes,

which I still very strongly recommend. I actually recommend all of Conan Doyle's work, because even when it's not great, it's still solidly entertaining. Sure. And in preparation for the next time, I'm the one doing the, hey, did you know I'm going to recommend everybody go out and read Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. Okay.

Specifically the Caves of Steel. If you want to earn extra credit in Mr. Blaleck's class, you can also go read I-Robot. Okay, cool. So, I'm reading the Vatican Pimpernell World War Two exploits of the Montsenior who saved over 6,500 lives by Brian Fleming. And I'm recommending that as a companion piece to John Corwell's book, Hitler's Pope, the secret history of Pius XII. I think the two of those would read quite nicely in the same way that having pickles with a peanut butter sandwich oddly works. Okay. Yeah. So that makes sense. Where can people find you on the social needs?

I can be found on TikTok at Mr. underscore Blalock. I can be found on the Twitter machine at EH Blalock. And we collectively can be found on the Twitter machine at Geek History Time. And on the Intro Web, pardon me, our website is Geek History of Time.com. How about you? You can find me on Twinssta at the Harmony. But at the time this drops, you can find me on August 5th at Luna's if you have your full

vaccination, $10 and a desire to see some amazing puns. It will be the last show with Daniel Humburger on it actually, as he is moving to Hawaii. So every show thereafter, I've secured a Charles Emerson Winchester III to his Frank Burns. Okay. So, but yeah, that you can find us doing that. And I'm not too active on TikTok, although some are starting soon.

So perhaps I will find new ways to entertain myself. So anyway, for a geek history of time, until next time, I am Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, Vivot Francis.