Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Do We Believe in Demons? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 379
Episode Date: April 24, 2023What’s it like getting to know an actual exorcist? In this episode, Rhett & Link talk about their latest video where they play Dungeons & Dragons for the very first time, accompanied by an exorcist ...who truly believes the game is demonic. Subscribe to the Rhett and Link Channel! https://www.youtube.com/rhettandlink Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/EAR and get on your way to being your best self. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This, this, this, this is Mythical. No. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to be the ultimate soccer parent?
Keep chasing it.
Drive your ambition.
Mitsubishi Motors.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time.
I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link.
This week at the round table of dim lighting, draw near. Uh-oh. Dem'm Rhett. And I'm Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, draw
near. Uh-oh. Demons. Hey. What? Draw near people who are interested in hearing
about our latest video where we hired an actual true life exorcist slash
demonologist from TikTok in order to advise and protect us as we play
Dungeons and Dragons for the first time in a video that was completely documented on
the resurrected, hmm, interesting, or OG channel, youtube.com slash Rhett and Link.
Yes, this is the second video, which in the producer parlance is 102.
Okay, yeah.
You know.
RLC 102, Rhett and Link channel, episode two.
The technical term for it around these parts.
And it's just great to be getting these videos out there,
you know, it's like we're trying to,
you know, we're not hitting a schedule,
but we're trying to do it once a month. And we were we hatched this idea we were very excited about it but i'm
interested to talk about the ideas that the video tees up you know so this is not really there's
like yeah we'll talk some behind the scenes about how we made the video, but the ideas and the beliefs
that we're dancing with in this video,
I think there's good conversation to be had in that realm.
This is one of the first videos,
I would say maybe the first video,
outside of an ear biscuit, where we're directly addressing or using something that kind of comes from our faith POV for content.
This is something we never did back in the day, right?
We didn't know how to go about things, even when we were in the early days making videos and we were still thinking sort of
in a like Christian mission mindset,
but we were like,
we're not gonna do that directly through our video.
We're gonna do that through the avenues
that our videos create for us.
And then of course, we lost our faith and became apostates.
And so that particular strategy went out the window.
But there were those many years
where we were
just not talking about what was happening,
the loss of faith and all this stuff.
Yeah, it was complicated.
It didn't translate into content directly.
And there's no-
Readily.
We don't ever intend to make Good Mythical Morning
an outlet for these types of things.
Like, you know, we're not gonna,
well, you know, we might do something like,
okay, we're gonna bring some psychics on to GMM
and test them in some fun game or something like that.
But it's always just to have fun
and to create something lighthearted
and we're not trying to take on controversial subjects
and not kind of delve deep into our perspectives.
But this is the first piece of content
that the whole thing starts from this
because of who we are, where we come from,
and the mindset that we bring to something.
It kind of sets the stage for exploring this thing
in an entertaining way.
I'm trying to remember how we came up with the idea.
Do you remember?
Well, Link, I have evidence.
Oh, yeah?
Because something clicked into place.
Yeah.
I could not remember this.
I can't remember.
But I went back to the doc.
So basically, there was this document that had just a,
just a huge brain dump of video concepts.
And there was one of them
that was called Dungeons and Dragons.
And here's what it reads.
Growing up in the evangelical church,
we were convinced that any kid playing D&D
was regularly communing with the devil.
We enter the dungeon and face the dragon.
Along the way, we unpack the phenomenon of parents
and specific cultures spewing misinformation
based on fear and lack of understanding.
So it was like...
Is that it?
So that was the D&D idea.
That was the pitch?
It wasn't really a pitch.
It's just like I had this long list of things
that was just like, eh. Most of them weren't fully formed. And then there was a pitch? It wasn't really a pitch. You know, it's just like I had this long list of things that was just like, eh, most of them weren't fully formed.
And then there was a second list, which was less defined general ideas.
And it just says faith related.
Given our public reputation around leaving the Christian faith, this seems like fertile ground.
A couple of starter ideas.
Get to know a Christian who says that they regularly have supernatural experiences, like
this TikToker who claims to deal in demons, Demon Eraser.
Oh, you had...
Oh, so...
Yeah, so I...
Yeah, we were thinking that because you watch all...
And you allude to this in the video, that the algorithms serve up spiritual content.
There's another really good idea that content
i'm not going to oh you just read another idea yeah okay well it's written down you can tell me
you can remind me of it later what was i saying i watched this kind of kind of content yeah so
the algorithm gives you more of it and so there was an idea there of... But there were two separate ideas. Yeah, and it wasn't, can we see an exorcism?
But I know that we talked about that.
Because there are people who will post, you're going to have to tell me, exorcisms on the internet?
You can watch these things.
Yeah, so I would say that most of the content that I get served is just like Christian
or ex-Christian content in general.
And I talk about the algorithm in the main video,
the Dungeons & Dragons video,
but the interesting thing that I found
is that the TikTok algorithm knows,
TikTok knows that I'm an ex-evangelical.
Instagram's algorithm is not as sophisticated
as the TikTok algorithm.
And it thinks that I'm a Christian.
Interesting.
And so on Instagram, I just get like Christian content
and I watch it because I'm, you know, I'm still fascinated.
I'm probably gonna make a video about this,
because it's a phenomenon of people
who are no longer a part of it,
who are still fascinated by it.
You're a Christian on Instagram,
and you're an ex-believer on TikTok.
Yeah.
For me, that's proof. You need a double life, man.
That's proof right there,
because I'll just get like-
But you're still watching
the sincere Christian content
on Instagram.
You're just watching it just to keep an eye out
or are you watching the stuff
that's a little more entertaining?
It's entertaining to me.
I'm entertained by it.
In fact, Jessie recently tweeted,
she was like, my husband loves to watch Christians
do take down videos of him.
Of you.
And laugh along the way while she says,
I cuss like someone who learned to curse in their 30s.
Cause she gets so upset about it.
And I'm like legitimately, I'm so into it.
I love seeing them, the latest thing they've come up with
or the way they-
Somebody's taking their passion and their energy
and they're directing it towards taking you down.
That's pretty great.
Let me say that.
I'm for it.
It's not just me.
The last one I watched was mostly about the fact
that you became Topa Chica.
Oh, really?
And that's your latest, like,
boy, you really crossed
the line when you did Drip Drag.
Like, the sexual deviance that you are now endorsing
openly for all the children to completely lose their way,
like, dude, you've crossed the line.
And meanwhile, I'm over here looking at cat videos,
dog videos, and...
That was the latest one that I watched. Sometimes, like, wolves or mountain lions I'm over here looking at cat videos, dog videos, and...
That was the latest one that I watched.
Sometimes, like, wolves or mountain lions trapped in, like, a snare,
and then somebody has to come along and get them out of it.
Any drag mountain lions?
Nope.
Interesting.
Nope.
I did my thing.
I'm good with it.
I'm really good with what I did.
Well, a lot of people are not.
Now I'm moved on to the next thing.
This one pastor is very not happy about it.
Really?
Did he cut the footage of it?
Yes.
Oh, so he paid for the society?
No, he cut to the trailer.
He showed the trailer from the society.
Okay.
At first I was like, hold on.
This guy posting exclusive society content?
This is what a lot of people do.
They don't, they read, they get enough of it to say that they just want to use it to make a point.
But they don't want to sit there and like actually watch the content in its entirety and draw like within a contextual situation, draw a complete conclusion.
I've seen enough of this to now instead of see
all of it and yes it is behind a paywall sorry um preacher uh whoever you are but like and i've seen
enough of this to now make perpetuate just the conclusions that i'm coming to that are like
a little short sighted.
I mean, if you haven't watched the whole thing
and yet you're going to take it down,
it's like, come on, at least give it,
just at least give me a chance.
At least give Topo Chica a chance.
Just so you understand,
I don't think this pastor watching the entire video
is going to change his mind.
I think it's only going to make him more upset.
Maybe he would have,
I would have liked for him to see the conversation that I had.
I'm sure it wouldn't matter.
Okay. You know, sorry. I'm sure it wouldn't matter. Okay.
You know, sorry.
I'm just saying I don't think his mind is open to that.
So, but this was two different ideas, right?
So, well, yes, I end up watching a lot of this content,
and I'm just genuinely fascinated by it,
and I'm not just the stuff that's about us being taken down,
but, like, I watch a lot of, like—
Most of it is not about you or us.
No, no, no, no.
Just to be totally clear.
Right.
I watch a lot of ex-evangelical like deconstruction stuff.
And then like there's a couple of people that are really good about sort of breaking down certain things.
And one of my favorite guys is, I think his name is Dan mcclellan but he he's like a bible scholar and
he'll like take something that somebody says and then kind of like give the correct perspective
on things but occasionally this demon stuff will pop up and the thing that was popping up more often
than demon eraser was there's an exorcist uh who's older guy. I think he's got a church in Arizona, Bob Larson.
And this guy's been around for years and he's-
Older meaning in his 60s or?
Yeah.
Okay.
And he's like in a church context doing these crazy exorcisms.
And his content is just posting the exorcisms.
He's got like a cross and he's like placing it on people's heads.
And people are convulsing
and doing all this crazy stuff.
And, you know, so I-
So it's like church footage.
Well, it's not church footage.
It's not, it's-
He's filming it so that he will be able
to post these exorcisms.
Okay.
It's like, it's all produced.
It's like, this is what he does
and they...
And he's doing it in a crowd.
He's doing it in a church.
He's doing it in like
some church
or wherever he's at
and there's like people coming up
and there's like people
holding these people back
and they're going crazy
and he's eventually
like casting them out
and then they're okay at the end.
You know,
they all kind of go the same.
So there was that guy
and then I guess
Demon Eraser.
It's really, the account is Demon Erasers,
but I call Brian the Demon Eraser.
Brian is sort of the face of Demon Erasers.
He's the face of the conglomerate, as I called it.
Yeah.
In the video.
So I was just fascinated because, you know,
well, you got Bob Larson, who's an older guy,
who's been doing this thing for a while,
but then you've got Brian, who's a younger guy, whose main outlet is, you know, where you got Bob Larson, who's an older guy who's been doing this thing for a while, but then you've got Brian, who's a younger guy,
whose main outlet is, you know,
modern social media and TikTok.
Right.
And his account wasn't very old.
It didn't have too many videos.
But when, so when we were in one of our brainstorming meetings.
You showed Demon Eraser to me.
Well, but before that, we were like,
oh, we wanted to do the Dungeons & Dragons thing.
Everybody was kind of into this idea.
We didn't, and we were like,
this is great because the movie's coming out.
If we could get it to come out around the time
the movie's coming out, that's even better, you know,
tie in with that zeitgeist thing.
But we didn't really have an angle.
It was like Rhett and Link play Dungeons & Dragons.
And as we were getting into these videos,
we wanted to have more sensational angles that are more fun to watch, right? And then that
was when we were like, well, what if we combine these two ideas?
That was the breakthrough, when it was like, we can hire an actor. He has a
damn form on his website. This is it. And it was just, and you know, like...
Well, you're jumping ahead, though, because he was an archetype.
Yeah, we were like, we're going to get somebody...
Somebody like this guy. I'm sad, though, because he was an archetype. Yeah, we were like, we're going to get somebody.
Somebody like this guy.
And you can, like, we talked to the rest of the team.
We were like, you guys can research, and if there's somebody else to be found, like, we can pick the right person.
I never had any idea that he would be, A, you know, willing to do it, and B, just up the road in Bakersfield.
Like, the fact that that worked out.
So we felt like it was a huge breakthrough.
It's like, yes, we have cracked this video.
It's not just,
it would be fun to document us learning how to play
and talking about our upbringing,
but creating an honest experiment.
Like I just started to get really excited
because I was like, this sounds hilarious.
But it also sounds kind of scary.
It sounds risky on a number of levels.
There's a lot of unknowns.
And so then it became less about it being funny and more about it tapping into my curiosity.
about it tapping into my curiosity. What will happen if we really do this in an open-ended way?
Like what's the story gonna be?
I definitely knew that we did not want
to make a prank video.
That was very obvious to both of us
from the very beginning.
But it was also very obvious that this concept
could easily be a joke on any number of people.
Everybody involved or just one person.
Who's in on the joke?
Well, and we're like, well, everybody's in on the joke
because it's not a joke.
And it's important to us.
But we knew that it would be entertaining.
That we're approaching it.
We were hoping it would.
As an honest experiment,
that was such a great hook.
And yeah, I didn't want to manipulate it.
You know, it's like, I'm very happy
with where we landed with this video.
First of all, it's 40 minutes.
I'm like.
More than that, I think.
Over 40. But it's like minutes. I'm like... More than that, I think. Over 40.
But it's like, yeah, we're making things that I think require this amount of time.
You know?
It feels less like something you can just watch and blow over and forget it ever happened.
You know?
It's a piece.
That's the type of thing that I'm excited about to do, too.
And we're doing what we did in the first video, which is we're talking about it before it gets released.
Right.
And so we can only- Don't know what people are going to react to.
So I'll make a couple of predictions that may,
now that the video is out when you're watching this,
you can tell me if I was right or wrong.
And then after that, can we just talk about demons more?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
I think because it will make people uncomfortable, right?
Watching, it's an uncomfortable situation.
That's the thing that's exciting to us about it.
You've got a guy who thinks that what we're doing
is a demonic activity,
and we're doing it right there in front of him.
And we're literally turning to him to consult with him.
And we've invited three players,
a dungeon master and two players,
who are established,
you know, you can watch their content online.
I did not
meet them until... That day.
Basically, we sat down at the
table with them and introduced
them to Brian the Demon Eraser.
Right. So it's like, yeah, it puts them
in this... I don't know how they're gonna
react. Well, there are some people... They were prepped.
It was explained what was gonna
happen to them. They weren't blindsided
by it. But
also didn't know what their posture was gonna be towards
it. But people...
There's a certain percentage
of the world and a certain
percentage of our audience that is not
comfortable... Making people uncomfortable. our audience that is not comfortable-
Making people uncomfortable.
With anything that is uncomfortable.
And so, and I, listen, I can't, that's your prerogative.
That's not where we're at.
Like we wouldn't do this if we,
if we didn't like the idea of it, right?
Like I showed the video to Shepherd and he just loved it,
you know, and he's more like me.
It's like the discomfort and the fact that this,
oh, you created this social situation
that was like, what is gonna happen?
Like, that's the thing that gets us excited.
That's why we made all those local commercials with people
and we made weird commercials with people
who'd never been on camera before.
Like, we love that stuff.
When you don't know how it's gonna be received,
yet you know that it's gonna be talked about, is an exciting, it's an invigorating place to be.
Now, what's the other thing people are going to give feedback on?
You got other predictions, I'm sure.
Like some people, they're going to be in the, they have their beliefs to some degree align with Brian the Demon Eraser.
I don't even think it's necessarily about,
we'll talk about how our beliefs,
where they line up and where they used to line up
and whether they did or not line up.
But that's a group of people that are on some spectrum.
And then there's like avid D&D enthusiast players
who are like, they're going to have their own opinions.
And by the way, some of them might not have anything to do
with the exorcist demonologist part of it all.
It might just be like, you didn't do us justice.
Like I felt like I wanted, well, there might be criticism
to just the D&D play of it all and how we that
was edited i don't know um one of the things i'm anticipating is because i see it so often again i
watch takedowns and one of the things that i consistently see is when i feel like I'm actually being really fair handed when it comes to talking about
Christianity. And I try to, I, you know, cause I have so many people in my life who are still
Christians, still evangelical, still conservative evangelicals. Yeah. That you love. And I love
them. And we have meaningful relationships and meaningful conversation. And I haven't like
pushed them out of my life. And I, you know, I disagree,
but I respect where they're at
and realize that they come to their conclusions
through their own process.
And I'm not, I'm much less evangelistic
than I ever was as a Christian.
But I think there's something about,
this is my theory at least.
I think there's a lot of projection that happens
when certain Christians watch us talk about these things because they assume that our main goal in any time we bring up Christianity is to just tear it down and pull people away. Right.
things to do that. But more often than not, I'm just kind of just presenting my perspective on something and being like this. I'm just, you know, I got a lot of outlets where we just talk about
things. The goal is not to change people's minds. The goal is to just share where we're coming from.
But I think that what people are going to think, because they tend to be like,
oh, here's Rep bashing Christianity again. I mean, I'll talk about my album or I'll talk about new merch
that I've got and kind of explain
the symbolism behind it and then
some of the comments will be oh you're bashing
Christianity again it's like what
I don't see
where I did that so I think because
there's this projection
of thinking that if you're talking about something
you're trying to persuade people
you're tearing something down,
people will assume,
oh, Rhett and Link are now officially beginning
their videos where they tear Christianity down directly,
and they did it with this D&D video.
And like, that's not what we're thinking at all.
We're like, oh, we want to play Dungeons & Dragons
because we weren't ever able to do it.
There are people who legitimately believe that Dungeons & Dragons because we weren't ever able to do it. There are people who legitimately believe
that Dungeons and Dragons
is a demonic thing.
Wouldn't it be cool
to put all those things
together in the same room?
Won't that be fun?
Interesting?
Who knows what's
going to happen?
Like, that's our motivation.
Right, but we didn't,
we never sought
to put Brian the Demon Eraser, Exorcist demonologist, in the position of representing all people of Christian faith.
Right.
And I don't even think – well, we're not interested in doing that, and I don't think we did that.
So we're going to get into how how we, like how our beliefs interact with everything that we were,
that was happening.
But I do think there's one other group, right?
There's the group that's like, you didn't,
you were too sympathetic to this guy.
Exactly.
So it's like, there's some people who are like, well,
you're using him as like a straw man to take down Christianity.
Not the case.
And then there's other people that's like, you should have gone for the jugular for this guy.
You should have made him into a complete butt of the joke.
And, you know, we just wanted to present him for who he is,
and every member of the audience is just coming to their own conclusions.
This is not a propaganda piece in any way.
But like,
I think that's the other criticism.
Oh, you should have taken him down hard.
Or there might be people who's like, you gave this guy a platform.
Gave him a platform. Now people know about his account.
Now people are going to go there and
he's going to remove their demons.
It's like,
well, that may happen.
I think that could happen. I think that could happen.
I think ultimately my answer to all of that is that I know where our hearts are at,
and I know what our motivation for making the video is, and I'm very comfortable with that.
And if I were to get into a place where I tried to anticipate every segment of an audience's perspective
and anticipate their reaction and try to accommodate their reaction in the content,
we would never make any videos.
Especially not of this nature, and this is just exciting.
I mean, and so we set the ground, the foundation, the groundwork with the team
to help them understand
like the parameters of what we were interested in
and everything that we've just talked about.
And so then we kind of entrust everyone to do their part.
So like just one example,
I mean, you could look at anything and see,
it's not just everybody who touches the video
and who's worked on the team,
like has an impact on every single moment of it that's another part of the fun of it
but here's one example once it cuts to the montage of um the demon eraser at the beginning
and it's just his tiktok footage you'll notice that it's just a montage of his footage. It doesn't, and this is a Ben choice to say,
because he told me after the fact.
Like, I saw the edit and I was like, this works.
But like, what I didn't think about was,
well, you know what, you could have,
you could have kept cutting back to us
in like our office doing our talking head thing,
and we could have provided commentary on it,
or it could have just cut back to us and we're making a funny face.
And you could easily get an additional,
you could get a laugh out of our reaction to it,
or you could get information.
Maybe it's not just a laugh.
You could get information about what we thought about him,
but what we wanted to do was just present him,
and it's a montage, so we put, I think it's still in the cut,
there's a note at the bottom, something to the effect of,
all of these clips are taken out of context.
Which, do we really have to say that for a montage?
But we did, because it's like, hey, this is what he puts out on the internet,
and here's like an edited version of it.
This is what he puts out on the internet And here's like an edited version of it
That's
It's pruned
And primed
For a reaction
But
We're not gonna spoon feed you
A reaction
That you can just
Emulate our reaction
Or disagree with our reaction
Come to your own conclusion
Yeah
I think that was important
I don't know why I said I think that was important.
I don't know why I said I think that was important.
Link, that was important.
Was that important?
Yeah.
I do think it was,
I think it was important to talk about all these things because there's a lot of pitfalls
is what I was trying to go with that thought.
No, no.
Again, who knows?
Who knows?
Like, you can never anticipate.
We will know.
Future us knows.
That's the weird thing about making these videos
is like, what if it's like so many people got mad about this
for this thing that we didn't anticipate?
It's like, I don't know, that's part of the excitement.
I'm having to embrace that.
Cause I have no other choice,
but I'm not gonna stop making stuff.
We're not gonna start throwing things out there
and seeing what happens.
But like you said, this was in new territory.
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buy store today terms and conditions apply so to kind of establish a little bit about what,
how would we have interacted with Brian and his beliefs 20 years ago?
Let's go back 20, let's go back 30 years ago.
Well, we already said we never played it.
And the only reason wasn't for beliefs.
It was just like, our friends didn't play it really.
We didn't have a lot of opportunities to play.
It wasn't like, hey, kid, you want to play Dungeons & Dragons?
And we were just like, no, I don't want to do crack.
I want to go roller skating.
It wasn't one of those guys.
Well, everything that we thought about it was just based on a few things that had been said to us, right?
Very, very prevalent within the evangelical community at the time was that, you know, this was on the level of heavy metal music, but worse, right?
So these are things that are from Satan.
They celebrate satanic things and they invite demonic forces into your life,
in general, was what we thought.
But we grew up Baptist, right?
And then non-denominational, basically kind of Baptist.
But in that world that we grew up in,
which is what you would say is not a Pentecostal church, just to illustrate the point that Christianity is not monolithic whatsoever, we believed theoretically in the existence of demons.
They were not very active, at least not in America.
There's always this sort of unspoken thing that the areas in the world where people are kind of messing around with animistic religions and native religions and stuff like that, like, oh, over in Africa or in South America, that that's where the demonic activity is because their religions are like really tied into it or whatever. So if you're a missionary and you go over to those places, you might see some demonic activity. But in our circles,
it wasn't like, oh, somebody's sick. That's a demon. Somebody's got a mental illness. No,
no, that's possession. We never witnessed an exorcism. Our preachers never did exorcisms
When you pray for somebody to get healed
You don't talk about demons
You might talk about the activity of the devil
And what the devil is doing to scheme
But we always saw demons and the devil
As a bit more sophisticated
It was like, oh, well, you know
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
is convincing the world that he didn't exist.
That was the mindset that we were in.
It was just like-
Well, did you just quote C.S. Lewis?
Because according to the demon eraser, he's demonic.
No, I quoted the usual suspects.
Oh.
Kevin Spacey to be exact, I think.
I thought you were in mere Christianity.
Well, first of all, maybe C.S. Lewis did talk about that.
So we would have said that there was much more demonic activity at, say, a liberal university where they're teaching things that undermine traditional ideas.
traditional ideas. That's where the sophistication of the devil is such that he's going to use the intellectualism of mankind to unravel the godly ways of thinking. That was what we thought.
We weren't like, oh, this person's going to get possessed and we're going to throw some holy
water on them. No, we thought that that was probably BS. Even as Christians, just letting
you know, we never delved into this.
Demons are super active and they're on people and they're in people.
Now I didn't know people who thought that and had experiences that we can talk
about.
Let's talk about that.
But one more thing was that we missed the Harry Potter cavalcade when that
first, when the books first started coming out.
We were already too old for that.
But in our church environment,
the younger kids were discouraged,
if not told not to read those books
because they referenced things that were of the devil,
witchcraft, wizard devil. Witchcraft.
Yeah, it was like, stay away.
Don't become enamored with that stuff.
Don't become enamored with it.
It opens a door to you being open
to more of Satan or his demons' influences.
So, and we did believe that Satan or I guess his demons, like we never talk about demons.
We just talked about Satan as if Satan was everywhere all at once and he was, or it was, I don't know what the pronoun.
I think he is probably what.
I haven't asked Satan's pronouns.
Lucifer.
Lucifer.
I'm just saying according to the Bible.
Yeah, okay.
They tempted you. I'm using saying according to the Bible. Yeah, okay, they tempted you.
I'm using they. Okay, I like that.
Satan would tempt me.
If I wanted to do something that I shouldn't do,
I'd be like, stand behind me, Satan.
Yeah, but we didn't really give.
But I wasn't scared of Satan because I just felt like I was causing enough trouble
and I just felt like it was from myself anyway.
I didn't really fixate on the Lucifer of it all.
I knew I wasn't going to hell because I had accepted Jesus.
We also thought that you couldn't be possessed
if you were a Christian,
because the Holy Spirit is inside of you,
so that there was no place for the demons to go,
because they get inside there and they see God.
They can see Jesus in your heart and they have to leave.
You know?
No more room at the inn.
Yeah, right, Jesus is taking up shop here.
He learned his lesson.
You know, Jesus, he's going to get in early.
I ain't going to keep sleeping on them mangers.
A manger is what livestock eat out of.
Right.
Yeah.
We don't, I mean, yeah.
This isn't a Christmas episode.
I'm just explaining my joke.
Yeah, yeah.
Usually when you have to explain a joke. Jesus learned his lesson.
I know, it was great.
It was a pretty good joke. I didn't think you had to explain it.
It was great. It was great to begin with.
But... And I think
Satan... Did Satan approve of that joke? I don't know.
Did he tempt me to...
Am I an agent of Satan in the fact that
I made that joke? Some people might believe
I am. Oh, yeah. Lots
of people believe that we are.
But we did know people
who
I knew well, and I trusted
and who I believe are honest, who ha who had experiences with demons. Uh, and when they,
you know, conveyed those experiences to me, I'm still convinced to this day that whatever it is they experienced,
at least as it manifested itself in their minds, was real to them.
Give me details.
People who were missionaries.
Okay.
People who had been to, you know, other parts of the world, which interestingly, I mean, I'll just, let me, a little sidebar here.
You know, first of all, I think that Christian missions are based in white supremacy.
You know, it's pretty clear that that's in the history of Christian mission is very much a white supremacist thing.
much a white supremacist thing, where you bring your philosophy and you come in with the understanding that the
brown people who you are visiting and what they believe is
inferior to what you believe.
And also you contextualize it within your own tradition and
say the things that they worship are actually the bad parts
of your religion.
There's satanic, you know, You contextualize it within your framework. And
then you come in and then you justify eradicating their belief. Now, up until very recently,
you also justified eradicating them as people. You said that they weren't even people and
you eradicated them and you established, you know, look at what Spain and what the Spanish
and the British did in the Americas.
Yeah, and if you're watching that series 1923, which I don't watch Yellowstone.
I've never gotten into it, but I'm into the prequels.
1923, I mean, has a heartbreaking, visceral storyline that explores this.
Yeah, okay.
So I watched the first two episodes, I think,
so I haven't gotten beyond that.
And it doesn't slow down.
So interestingly, there's so much of this thought
and this underlying foundation
that still is very active within the church,
and this is stuff that I had no idea about
when I was a part of it.
Hold on, you were telling me about the demons, your missionary friends who saw demons. and this is stuff that I had no idea about when I was a part of it. But...
Hold on, you were telling me about the demons,
your missionary friends who saw demons.
That's what I'm getting back to.
Well, get back to that.
I'm setting the stage for it.
Good.
Because I find it interesting
that you go into these situations
where you're interacting with brown and black people
and their religions,
and you're assuming
that what they're all involved in is witchcraft.
And so I'm saying that that is very racist.
It's just very, very racist.
Let's just be honest about it.
Now you may say, well, my Bible says that, you know,
it's either, if you're not for God, you're against him.
So it's all within the Christian context.
And I understand that your worldview, because I had the same worldview in the past, it was all Christian.
So it was like everything that wasn't of God was of Satan.
But I just, I think it's important to just tease that a little bit and question that and challenge that a little bit.
Because the fact is that when you come into a place
and the assumption is that what these people are doing
in all their rituals and all their background
and their culture, which is who they are,
it defines who they are, is based in evil.
That is, there's so many racist over, undertones to that.
Just a note, okay?
But, because it's interesting that that's,
when you're in a little bit more of a, you know,
Pentecostals or whatever, like demons are everywhere.
If you talk to Brian, like I don't know what his background is, but demons are everywhere.
They're not just in those places.
Like he's got demons everywhere.
But from where we were coming from, it's like, well, you might encounter some of these more obvious manifestations of demonic activity if you go into these places.
I'm just making the point that that's coming from a racist place.
But the people that I knew had those experiences.
So I'll just kind of go through a couple of the stories.
There was one story in which someone was grabbed very like forcefully on the shoulder while they were sleeping.
Right.
When they were in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa, right?
Just the pit of demonic activity.
But this is one of your friends
who's describing being grabbed themselves.
Yes.
There was someone who jumped
like up onto something
that they shouldn't have been able to jump up onto.
Okay.
And were they being,
was the demon inside of them being confronted
in this moment?
I don't remember. Okay.
There was another person turned to my friend.
They opened their mouths and fangs grew.
Fangs grew. Fangs grew.
So those are a couple of examples. Now,
do I believe that this person and these people, just multiple people, had experiences where they believe these things happen? Yes. Do I believe that supernatural things actually happened and
there were fangs that were grown and there were fangs that were grown
and there were supernatural heights that were achieved.
Almost certainly not,
because it's so much more likely
that based on the worldview and the perspective
that they were bringing with themselves
and the way that they saw the environment that they were in,
the mind is incredibly powerful.
You can rationalize so many things.
You can convince yourself of so many things
that it's just so much,
because it's been demonstrated
and you don't have to be like clinically insane
to see these things or to experience these things.
Right.
I think that it's just,
my perspective is most likely there's no there there.
The other option is that maybe there is some there there and there is some supernatural thing that people tap into and experience.
But the conclusion that because those things happen and can be experienced by certain people, then it is necessarily true that this one particular perspective on those events, the Christian perspective, is the right one.
Like, that's an unnecessary leap.
Right.
Why can't it just be ghosts?
Why can't it be a ghost that grabbed you?
Or, I mean, the fangs thing, that's a little different.
I guess what I'm saying is, like, I wasn't there, and I'm not saying,
and I'm still open to being able to experience something that is a clear,
and we've talked about this in my deconstruction update,
that I'm open to experiencing quote-unquote supernatural things
or things that are beyond our understanding
and things that defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
And I think the world would be a cooler, more interesting place if that is the case.
But I can't prove it.
And I definitely can't experience it
and then base my beliefs or endorse a belief system
based on my experience,
because my experience is too unreliable.
And so, because my experience is too unreliable,
I don't think that someone else's experience
is gonna be more reliable than mine. You know, I'm not gonna be like, okay, you experienced that someone else's experience is going to be more reliable than mine.
You know, I'm not going to be like, okay, you experienced that.
That's all I needed to hear.
I just find it so interesting that, like, we believed in Satan.
We believed in demons.
We believed in angels because there's references in the Bible, you know.
Apparently, there's a lot of other extra Bible books that go into a lot more detail that give you a lot more fodder if you want to be a demon eraser, you know, different books.
But I just kind of wrote it off, you know, and there were other churches where it's like they're doing lots of things that are just dictated by belief. Okay, if you believe that you can speak in tongues,
well, you need to go to another type of church where that will be welcomed. And then it happens
a lot over there, but it never once happens here. If you feel like that your sickness is a result of
demonic activity, well, you better go over there. And I'm talking about like maybe sometimes a few blocks away from a church
that will believe something totally different than what we believed, right?
So it's just like you get in the right group of people,
it seems like you can start to explain that like if, you know,
they work themselves up.
We all get into groups and we work ourselves up into what we can agree on
and what we can say yes and or no don't and find another place for that.
And so then people start to group up.
And is it that the demons are grouping up with these people over here?
And then everybody over here.
So when you get sick and you're in this group, it's because demons are getting you sick.
But when you get sick over here, it's because, well, you get sick and you're in this group, it's because demons are getting you sick. But when you get sick over here, it's because, well, you're sick and you just need to go to, like, you need to seek medical attention.
Well, I think from...
And it didn't, but it was weird that we were in this strange place where it's like, I believed in Satan, I believed in demons, I believed in angels, but I just, we had specific beliefs about it that wrote it off whereas other people played
it up well we definitely didn't think that anybody who was getting sick in any place was a result of
demonic activity but we right we had a lot of criticisms of pentecostal being a pentecostal
church and like charismatic thinking like we thought that the whole speaking in tongues thing
was just an emotional thing you know again it was just your mind playing tricks on you and like
people can just work themselves up and like are they really speaking in like the tongues of angels
or whatever other languages and that kind of thing we didn't really believe that that was, and we also believed, I guess we were dispensationalists,
and that we believed that those-
There was a time and a place.
There was a time for that.
In his past.
And it was basically- For miracles.
It was basically the book of Acts, you know?
It was that initial- Okay.
The initial establishing of the church God would use.
It's just so great.
Signs and wonders.
It's so amazing.
Again, it's just an example of how you can rationalize anything.
So as a Christian who was looking around and seeing a world that seemed natural,
that did not seem supernatural, I didn't see evidence of demons.
I didn't see evidence of Satan's activity, at least not in those really like...'t see evidence of demons. I didn't see evidence of Satan's
activity, at least not in those really like-
Fangs type of way.
You know, yeah, this physical manifestation. Again, it was these things happening at a higher
level. But because the Bible clearly describes demon possession and demons making people sick
and demons being cast out of people and put into pigs that then go off cliffs.
Jesus did that.
And then there's these things that happen
in the book of Acts.
Because those things happen,
and we believe that those are true historical accounts,
we had to reconcile those things.
And so the way we reconciled them,
of course, we didn't reconcile them.
Somebody, some other apologist,
some Bible person did it for us.
They developed this idea that there's a dispensation,
there's a time in which these things happen, and then it's over,
and the reason we don't experience it is because God has changed the way
that he works in the world.
It's like, come on, guys.
Isn't it so clear that you're just making it up as you go along?
I mean, I'm sorry I didn't want to make it about this,
but I'm just saying that's –
It makes you feel that way.
It's when I look back on it, I'm like, go.
I mean mean come on
Or the
Yeah and it's
If you go to a Pentecostal church
And you're like
You say
I'm
I'm
I'm really feeling this
I'm going to open my mouth
And I'm gonna pray in tongues
I'm gonna do it
And then you go for it
And it works
Well you're in
Yeah
You know
You're in more
And if you go for it And it doesn. Well, you're in. Yeah. You know, you're in more.
And if you go for it and it doesn't work, then it's like you start to think,
maybe I need to go somewhere else.
And then where I can surround my thinking with a belief structure that makes me feel okay with what I'm not doing.
I don't know.
It just seems, I don't know.
I always tend to go back to this. We all believe what we want to believe. I know I believe what I want not doing. I don't know. It just seems, it's, I don't know. I always tend to go back to this.
We all believe what we want to believe.
I know I believe what I want to believe.
I know that about me.
I just know that's a big part of human nature.
It's just an impulse.
And it's just like,
you can,
you can work some acrobatics,
but yeah.
So the dispensation of it all,
that is the answer for us that like,
I didn't worry about demons.
I practically didn't believe in demonic activity in my life or in my presence.
Yeah, yeah.
Or in my worldview.
When we prayed, we prayed according to God's will.
We talked to God.
And, of course, we would say, you know, if it's your will, Lord, this thing be done, which is a whole different conversation.
But we would pray and just ask God to do things.
Heal this person.
If they got healed, praise God.
If they didn't get healed, God, thank you for this experience.
You know what's best or whatever.
But there was never, if there's a demon
here if there's a cancer demon can we cast out the cancer demon which is again what brian what
brian believes you know one of the things and you obviously it's very very clear in the video but we
talked to brian for a really long time and basically i don't even know if this is still in there.
The nut demon?
Well, I know that the peanut demon joke, it's not really a joke, it was just an observation,
is still in there.
But you said it kind of feels like there's demons everywhere.
Yeah.
And it almost got to this place where it was like, the world feels a little bit meaningless.
Like, is it true?
From that, if your perspective is that demons
are in everything and there's so many places,
like demons might be in this computer,
if somebody's looked at porn on my computer,
boy, what me.
But if somebody's looked at porn on my computer,
then there's like a pornea demon on this computer, right? Or my phone. My phone's never seen porn.
Why you mean so weird?
So there's demons on this phone. There's demons in books. There's demons in rocks.
If there's demons everywhere, then God created a world in
which the thing that's more real than the senses that he gave you to experience the
world is something that's below the surface. I don't know, man. And the thing
that you talked about was, or I think we did keep this in the video, where it was
like, is it that if I were to talk about the video Where it was like Is it that
Like if I were to talk about the spells that I was casting
And I'm talking about them in a
Way as if it's a chemical reaction
Yeah
Does that mean the demons are like
We're cool
You were talking about
Yeah does that fool the demons
And I was doing that because this is what Brian was
Again I think it's important to talk about
Like what our position was as we
entered the video, and mine was very much like clean slate.
Like I'm going into it in this place where I can make myself really open to stuff.
Like if I'm going to hang out, if I'm going ghost hunting with a ghost hunter,
I'm not going in there like some skeptic.
I'm going in thinking ghosts are real.
I'm going to see one.
I'm going in thinking, ghosts are real, I'm gonna see one. I spent the night at a haunted hotel,
and I was trying to make stuff happen.
Like I was like, I'm open to it,
ghosts, if you're here, show yourself to me.
And I'm open to it, man, like I wanna see it.
It's just more fun to live that way for me, right?
So I was able to, I don't know where you were at,
but I was able to put myself in a position
where it was like, all right, I'm going into the situation thinking that anything that I have thought about this previously is I'm throwing it out the window.
And like, this guy has this very specific perspective. We're bringing him in. We're saying that he's going to kind of advise us. And these people are doing this thing. They're going to be a little bit uncomfortable with this guy talking about demon stuff, but we're going for it.
But it just really early in the process,
it became very evident to me
that we were just playing a game.
Right.
I thought, I just didn't,
I never thought that demons might show up.
I didn't think that he was going to say,
don't do that.
There's a, I thought he might say
That I sense there's a demon here
You know more of like a like what a psychic who was channeling somebody
like
someone with the s name is trying to
Get through to someone about a pendant
Does anyone here not have a relative with an S?
You know?
A medium.
Medium.
Medium.
He doesn't, so he doesn't do that.
But he didn't, he didn't.
But he would directly condemn that, as a matter of fact.
Yes, he would.
He would, I thought he would say,
oh, there's a demon here.
The shit's hitting the fan.
I gotta, I gotta, I gotta start using my blowtorcher.
So I didn't know.
But yeah, and then I was like,
okay, this is just,
the only mess that we're gonna have to clean up
is any relational mess here.
And I'm here for that.
You know, I didn't want to create it,
but I wanted to create a space for it.
You know, so that's what I was interested in was,
what can happen?
What's the interplay between these people?
And I was happy with where it landed because I felt like the approach was honest and the results were pretty honest.
The fact that like we played the game, Nobody was ultra offended on either side of it.
And I don't know how many sides there actually were.
Maybe at least three.
But I don't know.
Somehow everybody was kind of brought a little bit closer together.
You know, you tolerated your differences.
And when they were pretty prickly and you might
feel like you were getting, that was directed at me type of thing, one way or another. I felt like
everybody just put their best foot forward and we had a fun evening. Well, to his credit, Brian,
Brian, here's the thing about Brian, is that, yes, he believes very, very honestly and sincerely that demons are very active.
And that Dungeons and Dragons is not a good thing to play.
Right.
But even though he believes that, and he will tell you this is what he's basing that on.
He's not a jerk about it.
He's not a jerk about it. You know, and he's not, he was not judge, I mean, okay, judgmental in the sense that he's judging the things that are happening and saying, well, that's a demon or that's not a demon.
the things that are happening and saying, well, that's a demon or that's not a demon.
But at no point did I feel,
and I appreciate this about him, personally judged.
And I don't think that he said anything necessarily,
I mean, obviously just the fact
that he believes these things,
there's inherent judgment in that.
If you're somebody who's like based your professional career
on D&D, like the people that we had there.
So there's some implied judgment.
But I think that he was very gracious towards the individuals who were there
and was, you know, and by the end of it,
he's like making noises and trying to,
you know, be a part of things.
And so I-
While still remaining true to his beliefs.
I appreciate that about him.
I disagree with his worldview.
And I don't think that there's, you know,
I don't believe in it.
I don't think that there's adequate evidence for it.
And I'm sure that we would disagree
about many, many things.
But in terms of the way that he interacted with us
on a personal level, it was, you know,
a lot of people who have done takedowns of me and you on the internet could
learn a thing or two just about how, you know, friendly he is.
Yeah.
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I don't know what he actually believed about me or you.
You know, the fact that, like, yes, my tattoo,
getting a tattoo is problematic, you know, in his opinion.
Getting a tattoo of Elvish, which is demonic writing, in his opinion, is problematic.
It opens you up and it makes you friendly with the demonic world.
What do you think about the people who are going to say,
well, even if I don't believe everything that Brian believes,
I do believe in a spiritual realm.
I do believe in demons more than you guys ever did.
And that they do have some sort of sway over people
on some level.
Maybe it's not as ubiquitous as Brian believes it may,
you know, maybe you fall in a slightly different place,
but what about the kids?
It's like, you're basically making light of-
What about the kids?
Huh? What about the kids?
What about the children of the world that are watching our video?
That's what...
Did I answer your question?
Yeah.
Did you have a question?
I just said, what about the kids?
What about the kids who are watching our video?
And obviously Rhett and Link are not scared.
They're making light of the fact that there is a spiritual realm, and some bad shit can go down there.
And you're just—you're anesthetizing them to it.
Anesthize—whatever the word is.
You're making them numb to it.
You're making them open to it.
That was really the practical crux of where Brian was coming from. It's like, yeah, even if there's not a demon here right now,
we're kind of saying, bring it on.
So, I mean, that question has been asked,
not just about this video,
but about us deciding to talk about these things in general, right?
Right.
And that question for me only makes sense
and is only a legitimate question
if your starting point is that Christianity is true,
the Bible is true,
and so anything that potentially undermines it
is going to be bad for the kids.
And I'm asking the question, I'm not saying this, but how come it
isn't the case that Christianity is bad for the kids? You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying it
is. What I'm saying is you have to center that question from a framework, from a POV. And
what about the kids? Well, what about the kids?
Like, is it better for the kids to grow up thinking that Dungeons and Dragons
is a fun game
powered by human imagination and cooperation?
Or is it better for them to think
that it's crawling with demons
or even might be crawling with demons and
therefore they should stay away from that. And while
they're at it, they should stay away from anything
that any sort of talk of witchcraft.
Why?
I mean, if I had to
put my foot down on one side of
that issue right now, I would say I think it's
much better for the kids
to see
Dungeons and Dragons as a fun game about imagination and cooperation.
And I do think we did that.
I mean, in making the video, we pretty much did that because we played it and we had a good time.
And we presented it in a fun light.
Right?
Yeah.
light.
Right?
Yeah.
Because, I mean,
and to answer that question like on a holistic level,
like,
if I didn't think
that us talking about these things
was
more
illuminating
than it was
debilitating,
we wouldn't do it.
Like if I thought that us talking about these things,
these spiritual things and giving our perspective
was a net negative for the people listening,
I wouldn't talk about it.
Right.
You know, I'm not, we don't talk about these things
despite the number of people who've said this
because there's more money in talking about these things and being...
We're interested in it.
In the story.
In the story.
You know, we were probably...
It turns out that we lose a lot of followers every time we talk about this stuff.
It's like there's not great money in criticizing
and talking sort of critically
about the most popular religion in the world
and overwhelmingly the most popular religion
in your own country, which is where our audience is mostly.
Like there's not great money in that, FYI.
So you-
But we're not, we're just talking from our,
we're just being honest about things.
We're talking from our mouths and from our asses sometimes.
Yeah, most of the time from our asses.
Yeah, let's be real.
So I don't believe in demons, but I'd like to be open to believing in ghosts.
But I'm not really, I don't really believe that either.
But I know there's a lot of people who do. There's this like, are there other realms?
Are there other levels that we're just like,
we just have little hints of the existence
of other planes of existence, spiritual or otherwise.
Well, if there are other planes of existence
that through some sense that we don't yet quite understand, we have the ability to tap into and some people have the ability to tap into it more readily than others.
If that's true, which I'm very open to that being a possibility.
When we talk about creativity, we're talking about receiving creative ideas from some external source. I mean, we use the term spiritual or supernatural because it's beyond just the physical, you know, a materialistic understanding of the world.
But what's more likely?
Is it more likely that if there is some sort of thing that can be tapped into,
that it's really hard to understand what that is and people experience it,
and then people try to define it and put it in a box,
and that's where religion comes from?
And that's why if you go all around the world,
we just demonstrated how not monolithic Christianity is.
There's so many different perspectives just within this one faith.
And then once you move beyond that into these other faiths and they have, people are experiencing weird shit and people are trying to explain it, trying to reconcile it, trying to systematize it so that they can relay it and talk about it and write it down in a book somewhere. But I'm just saying that from a probabilistic standpoint,
if that stuff happens, your individual perspectives on it are probably just wrong,
probably mistaken.
And so that's why I'm not coming to any hard conclusions about it.
I don't think playing Dungeons & Dragons makes you demonic.
I think it does make you a little open to those concepts.
And then if you start getting into that part of it,
like, oh, I'm going to start reading about demons and stuff,
you might start believing, I don't know,
anything can lead to something for somebody depending on,
it's just like, oh, don't even think about that
because who knows what it could lead to.
It's like like, oh, don't even think about that because who knows what it could lead to.
It's like, well.
But I don't think there's,
I think a much better argument could be made about like certain types of music
with certain subject matter, right?
So if there's like, okay, you're listening to music
that is celebrating-
Murder. Murder or torture.
Yeah.
Right?
Okay, if you're like,
I'm singing like this about torturing somebody.
Well, you could be singing real pretty about it.
No, but I'm just saying, let's just say that you're-
I got in the torture device.
No, let's say you're getting really worked up
and you're like appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Now, one theory is that by getting that out through music,
you're less likely to do it in the real world.
I don't know.
Or maybe you're like, you know, you're leaning into that.
And then yes, that could somehow like influence your behavior.
I could see how the case could be made for that.
But Dungeons and Dragons isn't doing any of that.
It's completely based in this idea that because there's warlocks and witches and magic,
and those things are labeled in the Bible as evil and of the devil,
it's just because those things were part of the game.
Yeah.
The game just was like, oh, it's all bad.
It's opening yourself up to these, but like,
no, you're just, it's an imaginary world.
It's like playing Zelda.
And which I guess again, is still a bad thing
if you follow that logic all the way.
Yeah, well, yeah. there's so many games now
for so many different reasons that you could,
again, it's like, it was Dungeons and Dragons,
then it was Harry Potter, and now it's like everything
you can shake a stick at is probably something that's,
I mean, yeah, definitely for Brian is gonna be demonic,
and you gotta stay away from it.
That's why I ended up asking him, and it's not in the edit,
it was like,
in a world where you're encountering
demonic activity at every turn,
every turn,
it's like,
what is that,
what kind of life is that?
Like, I would be a wreck.
You know?
Yeah.
Where's the fun?
And he was like,
well, I have fun in having power over them. Maybe there's an answer in that. he was like, well, I, I have, I have fun in, in having power over them.
Maybe there's an answer in that.
It's like,
you know,
it's,
it's,
he has,
you know,
he was so cool,
calm and collected.
He wasn't afraid,
you know?
So it's nice to believe all these things when then you can believe,
oh,
but I've,
you know,
I have power over this through Jesus.
Jesus has power over this and has given me access to it,
however you want to say it.
Maybe that is a really good feeling for some people.
I mean, I don't...
Our video and now at this point,
I don't want to either start to psychoanalyze
any more of what draws people to certain beliefs,
whether it's Brian's belief system
or people who play Dungeons and Dragons.
Well, but it's, I mean, first of all,
humans, it has been reinforced
through many, many generations
that it's beneficial to attach some sort of agency or some
sort of reason to things that you don't understand,
like to define things,
right?
Like there's a survival advantage to believing that there's a lion in the
bushes when you hear something move,
right?
Like that you,
is when you hear something move, right?
Like you actually gain a survival advantage by extrapolating and defining.
And most people, and we're two of them, by the way,
because we're people, I'd say all people
have a tendency to want to just, you know,
like not just rest in this uncertainty.
Like it's, I don't know what Brian's day to day is,
but like he wakes up and goes throughout his day
and there's no uncertainty for him,
at least as he communicates or on the surface
of like the things that he experienced.
It's just like, that's a demon.
This is a demon.
That's a demon.
And I'm kind of living in a place where it's like, well, some, you know, I woke up from a nap and had an idea.
And then somebody in the next room had the same idea.
Is there something going on there?
I don't know.
I'll lean into that a little bit.
Like some people are just not comfortable with kind of living in that level of uncertainty where you want to define it.
You want to pin it down because it's just easier to go on with your life.
If you can just be like, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to establish this.
You know, there is a God and, you know,
this religion that I'm a part of is true. And it's like, I'm going to,
let me get these things in place so I can just go on and live my life.
And I just think there's a temptation for everybody
to sort of come to a conclusion.
Like there's a temptation for us, I think,
and I can hear it in you
in the way that you talk about these things,
to just be like, it's all fake.
You know what I'm saying?
It's just not, none of this stuff is real.
This is all just people's minds playing tricks on them.
And it'd be easier to just be like, that's right.
It's all people's minds playing tricks on them.
The human mind has an incredible capacity for imagination.
And everything can be explained through just the power of people's imagination
and their ability to rationalize and manipulate their own thoughts.
And I'm going to just be an atheist and just move on with my life.
And I'm tempted to do that at times.
Oh, yeah, it's easy.
And I'd like, that's my, that's where I,
unless I make active decisions to be open,
that's just where I fall back.
I fall back into that.
And I would say that.
That version of certainty.
But I would say that like from a practical standpoint,
the only thing that I'll ever like stake my claim on
or like really try to defend are things that I can prove.
I will try to convince you,
like I'm not gonna do it on a regular basis
and I don't do it on the internet really,
but like if somebody asked me in my personal life
what I think about evolution, for instance, because I think there's so much great evidence for it, and I think it's an important thing to understand and believe, I'll talk to them about that because I think that that's not a real questionable area.
That's like a pretty obvious thing.
but like,
then there's stuff like this,
like,
oh,
what's happening when two people have,
you know,
two twins have some crazy experience across the globe.
Right.
And there's all these evidence,
all this evidence of it.
It's like,
well,
I'm not going to say that's their mind playing tricks on them because,
you know,
it seems like it happens too often. Who are we to say?
And there must be something else going on,
or maybe there is, I'm open to that.
I'm not gonna try to convince you of it though.
I can't wait to see what the comments are
on the video and also on this one, you know?
Anything else that we experienced,
and Jenna, pipe in here because you were there all along the way too.
Like anything else that we experienced from just a, people might be interested to know, inquiring minds want to know in terms of the process.
the process?
No one was harmed with the lighting of the flamethrower
and no property either.
Everyone was totally fine.
Yeah.
The flamethrower was originally designed
to be done outside,
but it was raining.
Yes.
And so we were like,
let's do it in the fireplace.
And when it happened,
it was very intense. And when it happened, it was very intense.
But watching it back, you see just how high the flames leap out of the fireplace
up onto like the speaker underneath the TV.
And again, it's just a flash of fire.
It's not going to do anything.
And he seemed to have a lot of control over it.
But there was a certain level of trust.
He seemed to want her to keep doing it.
I love the fact they did it twice.
And then we found that footage that we use at the beginning, which...
It's like a Canadian television show.
Again, this is where I think some people would be like,
oh, Rhett and Link are trying to tear down the Christians, you know,
because we show this ridiculous video from the 80s
and the way that the guy, like, talks.
I think we were talking about his bottom lip being very wet
most of the time that he was speaking.
Nothing against the guy.
I'm just saying that, like, it was hard not to notice that.
And, you know.
Well, Ben put a, he did like a side camera effect that then goes around.
Maybe de-emphasized the black lip.
But, you know, you got these guys who, even when we were very, very strong,
professional Christians even, missionaries, we would have been like,
these guys are, we would have thought they were hilarious.
We would have thought those guys in that opening video
were hilarious, you know?
I would probably kind of agree with them on some level,
but like, I mean, they're ridiculous characters.
Thank God for dispensationalism.
But they mentioned in that opening video
about the demons escaping the objects
and screaming.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh man, we got to put a scream in.
In the dice.
In the burning dice at the end.
It was just a great bookend.
It was beautiful, man.
And we haven't talked to Brian since then.
We don't have an active relationship with Brian.
You know, we knew him in the moment.
Well, you know, I think-
We made some memories and that was it. I think we utilized the services. Yep, we knew him in the moment. Well, you know, I think- We made some memories and that was it.
I think we utilized the services.
Yep, we did.
And like you said, I think he spoke for himself.
He-
And I don't know what he thinks of the video.
He said what he said.
Yep.
Did what he did.
Right.
It was very consistent with his perspective.
And I'm sure that there are people who feel as if they are in need of some sort of help in fighting the demons in their life.
Are you about to recommend Brian as your rec?
I'm just saying that it's kind of an inevitable consequence of, hey, we use an exorcist and people know where to find him.
Okay, so we got, you're going to recommend him
and you're going to recommend,
you're going to have equal recommendations.
I'm not recommending him.
And then you're going to recommend him.
I'm just saying that it was sort of implied.
You can go see where he's at.
What's your rec then?
My rec is that you play Dungeons and Dragons.
Okay.
Really, I mean.
It was fun, yeah.
And it was a little bit of an interesting introduction
to the game.
Typically an exorcist will not be present
when you're playing, I would think.
It's up to you though.
And the main thing holding me back from it, of course,
is that we know people who play on a regular basis
and it is a time commitment.
And that is something that we do not have
in our lives at this point.
But maybe at some point we will.
I could see how once you really understood
the ins and outs of the game and being with,
Lamar was a great dungeon master, to see that on display. you know, Science Mike, our friend, is a great dungeon master.
We've never seen him in action, but I can kind of imagine how good he would be as well.
Yeah.
But I think that I highly recommend it.
So find your local D&D group, however that's done.
Oh, a demon just left you.
Another demon just left you.
Oh no, I think it was, he was only half out.
Is he out now?
First sneeze.
Yeah, took two sneezes.
Get him all the way out.
His hoofs were caught.
He's gonna come back in.
No one said bless you.
Bless you, bless you. Brian did say that. back in. No one said bless you. Bless you.
Bless you.
Brian did say that.
When you sneeze, when you yawn.
Burp.
When you burp.
These could be demons coming out of you.
And with that, let us know what you think.
Hashtag Ear Biscuits, wherever hashtags are used. And call in and let us know how the video struck you in this conversation.
1-888-EAR-POD-1.
Can we end this with a flamethrower?
It's like...
Hey, Rhett and Link.
This is Ray Skaneek and Colin from Salt Lake City, Utah.
I was listening to the podcast and I jumped in and left a voicemail earlier
because I was super excited about Rhett's scuba certification,
but I should have listened to the whole thing through
because Link's story was so funny and so unfortunate.
But I called my wife who works at Park City,
and she was confirming that they do incentivize
the catching
of people who are using someone else's pass. So that is just, it's all it is, is just a way for
the resort to make more money, really, when it comes down to it, even though it's like, yeah,
Link paid for it, and he was just sort of, it was all the passes were paid for by him. He was just
taking the day. That's one of their ways to make extra money. So we empathize with you, Link.