Citation Needed - Phantom Time Hypothesis

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

The phantom time hypothesis is a historical conspiracy theory asserted by Heribert Illig. First published in 1991, it hypothesizes a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, to fabricate the Anno Domini dating system retroactively, in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history[1] to legitimize Otto's claim to the Holy Roman Empire. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.[2] According to this scenario, the entire Carolingian period, including the figure of Charlemagne, is a fabrication, with a "phantom time" of 297 years (AD 614–911) added to the Early Middle Ages.

Well, that's funny. No, well, usually walks in with me from the parking lot so we can do like a pop culture commentary thing. Must be running late. You bet I really wanted to talk about Squid Game, man. And perfect. Oh, Jesus, what did you do? What just happened?

Or do you mean when did I do, Cecil? No, I did not mean that. No, I didn't mean that. Well, okay, Cec did not mean that. No, I didn't mean that. Well, okay, Cecil, if you must ask, I did this week's episode is about the Phantom Time Hypothesis. So I sent everyone an email telling them that we're recording at a different time today. But everyone got a different email, huh?

Why would anyone listen to that? I send out the show schedule, man. Oh, yeah, I know. I didn't send it out as me. I sent it from your email. You guessed my password? Oh, no, I answered your security questions. Remember, I learned your mom's made me name that time.

I showed up to Thanksgiving, pretended to be your sister's candidate. It was easy, actually, like super. You know, you could use your brand for so many other things that aren't like this. You know that, right? Yeah, you sound like a lot of my therapist right now. It's crazy how much you sound like them.

Hey, Cecil, what gives, man? Usually you're in the parking lot. When I get here, I had good thoughts on squid game this week. It's E-Like, E-M-L, that we're one of the different time, because of his stupid topic. Dude, lame. Not lame, thematic. Think about it.

The phantom time hypothesis is this mind blowing archeological theory that changes the very course of history as we know it. And now we're experiencing that sensation in miniature right before the podcast. It's perfect. It's not perfect. It's stupid. Just like the phantom time hypothesis, which is a ridiculous conspiracy theory which literally any amount of thought totally fucking debunks.

Don't lash out, so not here, not in front of Heath. What are you talking about? Heath's not even... Hey, ho! Where's my gombu's at? Right? Gombu's? Goddamn it. Gombu. Goddamn it. It's real. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where you choose a subject you'd

sing a lot about on a Wikipedia and pretend we are experts because this is the internet. That's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be apologizing profusely for picking Eli last week. And the essay is for this week. But to do this right, I had to bring along the people that apologize for Eli on a much more regular basis, Heath, Noah, and Eli. Yeah, I'm basically the William Lane Craig

of Eli Apologetics this year. It's not getting ridiculous. I'm ultimately wrong every time, but I made a career out of it. So yeah, William Lane Craig. Honestly, I've given up the column Bosmological Arc. Ha, ha, ha, ha column boss, Melodic Clark. Very good. Honestly, I've given up a apologize and form everybody knows what they're getting in retro

spec, at least that's enough for right? And Cecil, if the internet's taught me anything, it's that I never have to apologize. And if I do, it's cancel culture. There you go. Okay. Yeah. Hot cast listener takes a lot of time and research to write a knowledgeable and interesting essay every week. And sometimes we need to break

and he likes to turn. So yeah, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. We're contractually obligated to give him a turn. But anyway, if you want to help keep this show going, you can stick around till later and we'll tell you how to give us money. And with that all the way, tell us, Heath, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event we'll be talking about today. We're going to be talking about the phantom time hypothesis. Ooh. That sounds like a giant license. This is going to be right up your alley.

Lie. Tell us what is this phantom madness? Whatever you got. The theory first postulated by extremely reliable and smart Jesuit priests and carried forward by historical, mathematical and radiological outsiders that anywhere between We're between 97 and a thousand years of world history as we know it is fake. Dun dun dun. See, so you put in the dun dun dun sound right there, right? Yeah.

Can you just do it one more time so I know exactly where to talk about it? Yeah, it's just like, dun dun dun. Yeah, no problem. I can absolutely do that. Nice. Nice. Okay. So our story begins with a near-uzon's Ask Flashback to the

alleged year of 1700. When French Jesuit and Librarian Jean-Haudin, theorized that most of the art and literature from ancient Greece and Rome were 13th century forgeries created by, I shit you not, this was really his theory. A secret cabal of atheists trying to make the Bible look bad. Okay. Yeah. But now they just read it and then they make accurate skits based on the content. Yeah. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I want us to make the Bible look bad. I feel like 13th century Noah's back there. He's like, guys, I feel like forging centuries of art. That's gonna be like a whole thing. Can we just, you know, point out the slavery endorsement or the whole phobia.

And now those are both good right now. The stabbing your kid for God, though, right? Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. But to be clear though, almost all the history, as we know it is fake, right?

Especially if we include all the various members of we and then average it out. What he was hypothesizing is that like like those years weren't there at all. We just rolled the calendar up a couple centuries, like my wife trying to get the bonuses and animal crossing and hope nobody would know. Exactly. Exactly. Now, like a fitted sheet and turn into a calendar, it's missing stuff. You come to me with the earth-deeenth century. I'd never mind. Now, I want to give Hardware his due here. He was almost certainly a loon, but in his defense, if you were a Catholic priest, raised in the Jesuit tradition, the 1700s sucked ass for you. Right. In Hardware's lifetime, let alone his

career as a librarian, the world started widely distributing ancient texts on every possible subject, which were all vastly superior to the Bible, which Hardware unfalteringly believed was the word of God. Like, have you read a medieval play? It's like being told a knock knock joke by a mentally ill toddler. I'm saying, if you read your, you're going to play sadly, I have what which one which one did you read? Miri. Play. They just called it play at that point. They only had one.

They only had one. They just had. I'm just saying, if you spent your whole life trying to sus out the secrets of the universe from the book of kings and then society kicks down your door to show you how much better they were at math a thousand years before the word of God was written, that's going to sting. Is it not written in the annals of the mentally ill toddler? That's a book of kings deep cut there.

You got to know. Yeah, absolutely. So further, a ton of ancient Greek texts, Hardwa came across, War of Fordries, right? Hell, 150 years later, Joseph Smith starts a religion because five of his buddies saw him magic, saw his magic golden Bible, right? 1700s were an absolute boom in the market for antiquities. And wherever there's people willing to pay for something, there's criminals willing to fake that something for cash. Yeah. And right now, during the pandemic, the criminals are the far right commentators

faking medical expertise for cash. That makes sense. Yeah, exactly. What up, fellas? Anyone got rickets or a blind horse? This right here is the healing you were of a theater. Yeah. Pretty much. Either way, Ardwar, much to the mockery of his contemporaries, concluded that the drama, philosophy and the art of ancient Greeks were fake.

And his ideas lay largely dormant for years until the alleged 1850s, when Russian revolutionary Nikolae, and like Zandrovich Morazov picked up the totem of truth and carried it further into the light. Yeah, it turns out this disinformation campaign is older than we were given at credit for. Now, I want to point out Morazov is an interesting ass dude, and honestly, probably worth his own episode, right? He did some some cool spaceship. He thought things about atoms that not a lot of people had thought before. I think he's confusing. And they were rings.

And he signed up to be a sniper at the Siege of Lennon Grand at the age of 84 and survived. Yeah. Did he just nap through it? Like what? He killed a bunch of and he didn't have, there's a whole story of it. He didn't have classes and they were like, oh, you won't be able to snipe. And he was like, give me, and he just shot a bunch of people anyways. It was very cool. But he's important. Statue of story. Yes, that's cool. Had to get to my very important facts about this theory.

Yeah, sure, sure. But he's important to our story comes in his study of the timeline of Christian dumb. Okay. I realized that Eli meant Christian dumb, but he wrote Christian Dome. And now I want a Mad Max style-esque sort of fight to the death between religions. That's what I really want. Okay. You want the crusades for the heavens. But with the Dome. dome with the dome, right? Thank you.

With the, no, no, no, no, no. With the spectator. Crusades would have been fine if they had a dome. We've always said that here on citation needed. And look, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds on this, but in Mara's Oves Defense, the historicity of Christian dumb, especially in the 1850s, is a fucking mess. Okay? It's been 20 years since 9-11, and depending on the survey, about half of Americans think

the government was behind it. Now, imagine that 9-11 had happened a thousand years ago, that there'd been at least 3 9-11 commissions in the meantime that all concluded different things, and that at one of those 9-11 commissions, Santa punched a guy in the face. Okay, the government definitely shot down those reindeer over Pennsylvania. That we know. And like 1850 post revolutionary Russia was one of the only places it was safe to examine this kind of thing.

Okay. The Russian revolution was in 1970. Are you using a Phantom timeline here or what? Bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap. So I think he meant industrial revolution, but bap, bap, bap, in lightening. So Morizov does some math. He compares it with history. And he realizes that the timeline Christianity is working with is to say the least off a bit. But more as of unlike Hardware figures that at least some of that Greek

shit that hardwares thought was fake must have happened. So he figures it must have happened during the Middle Ages giving birth to the new chronology theory, a theory which is very similar to the Phantom Time hypothesis, but as we'll learn is somehow even sillier. But why? By whoops, when for? Well, that question wouldn't get answered until more than a hundred years later, when a Russian mathematician and a German crazy guy unveiled the truth once and for all. Oh, I guess that's break time. All right, well, confident in the knowledge

that we're waiting for nothing, we're gonna pass around the house. I'm gonna leave her 10 to 20 minutes, but we'll be back in a bit for a little apropos of nothing. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Also signs, we gotta have signs, right? Oh, like hidden everywhere, yes. Hey, guys, what you doing?

Oh, hey, Heath and I are making our own conspiracy theory. Oh, yeah, what's the conspiracy theory? We do not believe in Thursday. You don't believe in Thursday the day of the day of the week. You know, you know, how it always feels like, you know, it's Monday, Tuesday, Friday, all of a sudden, it's Friday. That's because Thursday is actually a creation of big calendar to sell more Buffalo Wild wings.

Pretty sure. Okay. Just going to leave all of that alone. How is it going? It's not great. Actually, we made a Twitter for it. We put a few posts on Reddit, but it doesn't seem like it's really picking up any steam. Oh, hey, I got you, boo.

What was that? Oh, I just tweeted that as a Jewish person, I was really hurt by your theory. Why would you do that? Wait for it. Holy shit, we just got 8 million Twitter followers, guys. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to sell BS, you just make 8 million Twitter followers, guys. Yeah. Yeah. You want to sell BS? You just make it a little anti-traumatic. You don't know what's BS. Freedom of speech. He's, we do know that we made this up like 40 minutes ago. Oh, yes. Right. That was just, just now. Yeah. Sorry. It was that a lot of Twitter followers. No, it happens. It happens. Freedom

of speech. Sorry. Sure And we're back left off some guys We're wrong and That was it Recap amounts of wrong people you could have included. I guess I'm grateful this essay is only as long as it is so far. So yeah. She's got a two-parter. Why don't I get it? I love you too, Cecil. Skipping that. What happened next? So the ambulance of knowledge is next picked up by mathematician, Antley Timofievich Fomenko, who like all great crazy people with academic credentials is super smart about his thing. In this case, topological mathematics and super not smart about everything else.

All right. Cool. So I'm guessing he what testifies at a congressional hearing about the danger of social justice and then he makes a really sad Axe Kata video Something something Sepulpina's calendars are hoax it math. Oh, they go pretty much James Lindsay did all that stuff He's the worst Okay, to be fair That's kind of true about pretty much all the people who are super smart

about a thing. What distinguishes folks like Fomenko is the fact that they don't know it. Exactly, right. We never made Carl say he can do a cartwheel. That's right. But I'll fall down. Carl. So in 1973, using his own mathematical analysis of the Bible, Fomenko managed to flesh out the timeline that Morazov proposed, starting with the

revelation that all of Chinese and Arab history are fabrications of 17th and 18th century Jesuits. What? What did he think that Chinese and Arabic people had instead of history? Quazines, maybe It's not clear. Was he with it? The world had other stuff besides, you know, Arabia and China. Also.

He is not. Okay. I'm going to continue his theory straight from Wikipedia here. See if you can catch the shade from the Wikipedia editors here at the end. Quote. He also claims that Jesus lived in the 12th century AD and was crucified on Joshua's Hill, that the Trojan War and the Crusades were the same historical event, and that Genghis Khan and the Mongols were actually Russians, that the lands west of the 13 colonies that

now constitute the American West and Middle West were a far eastern part of the Siberian American Empire prior to its disintegration in 1775, and many other theories that contradict the conventional historiography to say the least." And quote, no, I just, I love that he made him Russian specifically. See, guys, it's not as embarrassing as we thought it turned out we kicked our own asses. It was. It was. And if you're thinking yourself, wait a second. Did we have like carbon dating and ship by 1973?

Yes, we did, but that stuff is all wrong because reasons. Also, even if it wasn't, carbon dating only tells you how old stuff is, not what year it happened. Yes, it does. It's both. It would be able to find out. Be exactly. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Now, no, no, no,. It's both. It would be able to find out. But the B exactly.

Bepa, Bepa, Bepa. Now, no, no, I'm just stopping you. No, Bepa, Bepa, Bepa. Now, Fomeko is still alive. And he's actually still a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Really? For the numbers on map stuff, not for this bullshit.

But his idea never gained wide acceptance or spread. It wasn't until the German genius with a penis. My nickname not his. How did Bert Illig blasted this bad boy wide open with his seminal work? Geschlafzure Construction Domenschischitis Unurge Tastasstak. That's now. You just made noise. It was a lot of it. So we're not even related to the letters. I thought he was. He was like, no, that's true. That's true. It didn't really fall apart and told men's shits.

At a certain point at the end, he's like squeezing his tummy, like a backpint just to get those sounds out of there. It was amazing. His grandpa killed my grandpa. I don't have to learn his word. So, Ileg made some major changes to the work that came before him. And his hypothesis has caught on in a way that none of the previous time, a justification, a native just did.

It received mainstream press in Germany in 1991. German revisionist history. Say it as a soul, guys. Come on. Yeah. And it caught on especially hard in the early days of the internet, capturing the imaginations of conspiracy loons like David Ike, but also normal people like novelist and vlog brother John Green,

who apparently was firmly convinced of this theory as a teenager, but has since read or learned anything in the history of ever. That'll do it. Yeah. So what is the phantom time hypothesis and does it hold water? You decide. Okay. I just want to do a quick recap. Russian James Lindsay said time is a hoax. Some German guy wrote time comp and David Ike is on board with all of this.

Please proceed with the rest of your French. Yeah. I just love that they're going, okay, just wouldn't see that nobody even wanted to believe the all of history as bullshit hypothesis along came Germany. That's predictable, predictable. Okay. So according to Ileg, who I should point out has read many thick leather books and has a desk of fine mahogany in order to legitimize the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor auto the third quote auto Pope Sylvester the second and possibly the Byzantine emperor Constantine the seventh fabricated the anodomany dating system retroactively in order to place them at the special year of AD 1000 and to rewrite history to legitimize autos claim to the Holy Roman Empire and quote, okay, but

how is that helpful? It's like, who was being like, it's seven ninety three, not a power of 10. It's guys are fucking fraud murder. Wait a minute. I've just looked at a new calendar. Exactly. Yeah. So in doing this, they created the entire so-called Carolingian period and the figure of so-called

Charlemagne adding 297 years to the early Middle Ages. Okay, I feel like you had those years closer to the beginning of AD. I mean, it's still dumb, but that would be less, less more right? It was like changed into the Bible. Yeah. So it would just be like,ada yada yada fast forward to 97. Yeah, you'd think. So what evidence does Illig have to support his claim? Many and much late. Thank you. First, there is no archeological evidence that can be reliably dated to the period 8614 to 911. There's that's's, there's so much. You could just go see it.

You live like 30 minutes from the natural history museum, man. And, and, there's no way. Even if it was their supposed evidence, the inadequacies of radiometric and dendrochronological methods during that period are obvious. Oh, Eli, really quick. I will rename all of our podcasts, the Eli Bosnick happy fun podcasts. If you can tell me what Dendro chronological means,

old dentists. Okay. It means, it means tree ring dating and the dead ass reliable record goes back at least 13,000 years for the Northern Hammas. So, look, maybe the early Middle Ages are just fake in the Southern Hammas here, but in the Northern Hammas, for sure, we can make a mistake. The trees are fake.

The trees are in on it. Whatever. Evidence. Evidence, piece number two. Oh, the number and the trees. All the entwives. Exactly. Whatever. Evidence number two, the number and the trees, all the endwives. Exactly. Whatever. And evidence number two.

No, if it's real, it's evidence one, but it's not. So it's evidence zero. Zero exactly. Good counting. Quote. The presence of Romanesque architecture in 10th century Western Europe, suggests that the Roman era was not as long ago as conventionally thought and quote, and I'll point out, yeah, I'll point out that Wikipedia doesn't even have a reputation for that iron clad argument.

Yeah, but you don't need to explicitly refute the argument from incredulity. They just figure you're smarter than that. They don't say anything out loud. There's a cheesecake factory in my town. That means I live in ancient Egypt. It's crazy. It indicates that. It indicates that conventionally.

But the smoking gun of Ilex theory, the grassy knoll, the princesses airbag, if you will. That's a real thing. It's none other than Noah's own ally, the Gregorian calendar. Tell me in the back. We're not even on speaking terms me in the fucking group. Fuck that. So what you dumb calendar, we did a whole episode on this calendar, and I won't go into too much detail, but to make a listen, I didn't. To make a long calendar, are we on now?

The. to make a long calendar are we on now? The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, Well, the Julian calendar introduced by Julian Caesar was known to introduce a discrepancy from the tropical year of around one day for each century that the calendar was in use. By the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 80, 15, 82, Illig alleges that the old Julian calendar should have produced a discrepancy of 13 days between it and the real or tropical calendar. Instead, the astronomers and mathematicians working for Pope Gregory the eighth had found that the civil calendar needed to be adjusted by only 10 days. And quote, the only explanation Pope somebody and another guy invented 297 years of history.

Well, I mean, we're the hell those other five hopes. Exactly. They're going to change it to 13 days, but that's bad luck. So they decided to do 12 days with a 12 a and 12 b. They decided. Yeah. 12 13, 297 years. That's all it goes. Whatever. Now at the risk of Marsh coming back and doing an entire new guest episode, just on me in the name of fairness before we conclude, I guess I should address the. It's a bit see teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini flaws that there are in this otherwise flawless theory. Eli, the entire essay has been a concession today.

We're already doing that. You are, you are doing that. You are America based down on the mud. So when it comes to the complete and total absence of archeological evidence from this time period, there's actually quite a lot of it. Also, carbon dating is probably real, and it actually can be tied to specific years, and not just how long ago something was, because they can use well documented events like storms and fires and stuff, but whatever, boo, boo, there.

They were undocumented events, like there was a campfire for example. Exactly. So next up, is that a retraction of Bup-up up? It's a retraction. It's a side. You said the opposite of what? It's a crossfire. We're on a crossfire.

I'm Tucker Carlson. You're a Nazi. It's where I ask questions. Exactly. Exactly. Next up, of the very, very few ancient texts we have tiny, barely there, really, like, what? Their astrological observations do seem to match up with the so-called accepted timeline, like the solar eclipses observed by planning the elder in 59 AD in Fodius and Fort 18 AD.

And also China had really, really explicit records of Haley's comment. Yeah. Actually, pretty much all of China's history is a problem for this theory. Whatever, whatever. 297 years actually came from the lags. Exactly. Exactly. It's obvious that potmodo king, whatever teamed up with China and the trees and created a bunch of fake mathematically sound eclipses and comets. If astronomy worked to prove time scales, there wouldn't be a scale model biblical arc and contend.

Exactly. Thank you, C. So maybe, maybe God dialed the speed of light back as he went. So he just, yeah, he's like, whoa, this is way too fucking bad. I could be it. That could be it. That could. I have a bedroom lamp that's getting slow to when you turn it on. I'm in bed before it lights even hit me, man. It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. They learned about MC square. I got to fix this. Give me second. MC cubed. MC Escher. I'm see hammer. MC Es yes, she was the closest to the flaws in this.

There. About that thing about Charlemagne being fake. I guess like some other people saw him and wrote about him and other parts of the world. Also, Muhammad was alive during the time before that didn't exist. Pretty sure. We're pretty sure he's real. But you don't know maybe Muhammad teamed up with the Pope in China and the tree is to put a different pope in power probably. It worked for Hugo Chavez and Joe Biden. We do have modern day. I knew you would come around to my side eventually.

Interesting. Thank you. Yeah. And also that calendar thing at the end, that's, that's nothing. It's not nothing. When they adjusted the calendar, they did it to change the date of Easter, which was later changed by the NIC and Council. So that explains the difference that it like calculated. Like it's just, you could have Googled it's just and last and I couldn't have Googled.

I'll give him that. That's fair. Yeah, he couldn't have Googled. He could have dot-neted or whatever the fuck early internet was. And last, and I mean super, leastly, like, shh, whatever, like this last thing probably won't even make it into the podcast. It's such a teeny tiny minor detail. So you might remember that this whole theory is based on the idea that Otto and those other kings moved up the calendar so they could rule during the year 1000 AD, except according to the theory, they only moved the calendar up

to 911 AD, which is 89 years before 1000 AD, at which time they were all very much dead. And your explanation for that is time capsules. Revealed by time capsule. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would that be? I'm away ahead of my time. Okay, are you ready for the quiz? Give me a minute. Okay, now I'm ready for the great. Take a minute. All right, that's like one of those little thing give a. Give me a minute. Okay, now I'm ready for the game. Great, take a minute. All right. That's like one of those little things.

Give a penny, take a penny. That's right. Exactly like that. You ready? Yes. Which of the following is the best dating site for people who believe in stuff like this? Hey, okay, stupid.

He? He? Ivermectender. Oh, that's fucking amazing. Or I see. I'm standing mectinder. Oh, that's fucking amazing. Or I see I'm standing carbon dating. Oh, I gotta go with carbon dating carbon dating. See carbon dating is correct. Fantastic.

Oh, amazing. So good. All right. Eli, which of the following is the dumbest thing people believe? Hey, according to QAnon Cannon, powerful satanic pedophiles transfer children to each other and underground tunnels and then cut off their faces to harvest a drain of chrome. B, according to the movie, the orange drain of chrome and adults.

Why is there so much in the face? I don't even get it. B, according to the movie, what the bleep do we know? Native Americans couldn't see explore ships and see when they arrived in the Americas, because they hadn't seen ships before. See, according to prosperity gospel, religious leaders talk to God and instead of providing some great insider truth, they just, he just really wants you to give more money to religious leaders or D. According to the essay schedule, we should let Eli write citation needed scripts. Oh,

is D because we should know better. It is correct. I didn't think it picked D, but it is D. Absolutely. All right. All right. I got one for you, Eli. Missing time isn't real and and it can't hurt you Eli.

And we know this because A, there are well documented or E, all of the above. Ha ha ha ha ha. Okay, that one was spooky. That one was spooky. I'm gonna go with A. That is so good. A?

Oh, I'm sorry, it was C. Down with three elephants under the tablecloth. It's tough because both Heath and Noah were super clever, but I'm gonna give it to Noah. That was very, very, an excellent use of the A through E. Excellent, Bravo. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, well, since he's not here to defend himself, I'll go with Thomas next week's S.X. Okay, all right. Well, for Eli, Noah and Feath, I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We back next week and by then, Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then come celebrate 600 episodes

of Cognitive Disons with Tom and I on... Well, Cognitive Disons. Or you could listen to the other shows scathing Atheist, Skepticract, out of the movies and TND, minus like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash that T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T Alright, who's ready to podcast? Damnit must have been pre-show shenanigans. I also enjoyed Squid Game.

Yeah.