Shutdown Fullcast - LIVE: Church Disasters & Jason's novel launch

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

- Our first live show in FIVE YEARS - Crowd of 500 maniacs "shockingly well-behaved," per Monday Night Brewing - Revival preacher Surber calls down righteous thunder - Lmao this intro music by Trey - Podcast Business: Book has raised over $50K for the Trevor Project - Spencer: undercover Crusader? - A full hour of CHURCH DISASTERS, where blood and fire bring unrest - Holly reveals The Chili That Kills You - Evangelicalism crash course: Jason reads from HELL IS A WORLD WITHOUT YOU - Hot gossip!! The media-biz stories behind "niche"!! - Blockhead freshmen savage a (totally real) Christian advice manual, as performed by Jamie Howard, Will Leitch, Chili, Andrew Klema, Brigit our videographer, Jay Busbee, and Daniel Palmer - Ryan's Catholic zoology update - Collective salvation, as explained by a 2000s punk cover song - Thank you to AV crew Surber, Doug, Anthony, and Brigit! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, church family, put your hands together and make a joyful noise. And let's welcome the shutdown of full cast. Spitzer Hall, yes sir And then that's Holly Anderson, My goodness, Andy Anderson's music Jason Cook I'm hit best Thank you.

Hey, what's up, y'all? Spencer Hall, would you hit him with the welcome? Don't half-ass it. Welcome to the shutdown full camp! Everybody's being in the spirit tonight. Let me hear you say, alright. Ooh, I like that. Atlanta, fucking Georgia.

Y'all don't come half-assed. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm cussing. Don't miss us? Spencer, this is a cool church. Our pastors wear cargo shorts. Our pastors have lip rings. Pastors smoke a little weed.

No, pastoral. Our pastors say the fuck word. Well, welcome, everybody. We are going to be discussing affairs of the spirit, the Lord, and faith tonight. And, of course, how those all went dreadfully wrong for all of us, some of us, and individual stories. That we will share with all of you. This is a college football podcast, which is why we're going to talk about God and plagues tonight. I see all you pit fans out there nodding, plagues, yes.

I see one guy in a split zone. shirt, and you're going to have to answer for some shit. Hey, listen, this is predominantly an evangelical Protestant kind of vibe, but, you know, I was raised Catholic, and that is fucking heresy right there. We got troops, they're coming for you. Do you want to intro us? Yeah, I think I do that sometimes.

If you will look to this side of me, this is Holly Anderson. I am... I am Spencer Hall. Joining us is Brian Floyd. To my left is Deacon Ryan Nanny. And the man of the hour, the Tower of Power, the chosen son himself, the man of of the evening over here to my left,

the man through whom the Spirit speaks strongest, that would be Jason Kirk. Thank you all for being here, and I, did I do that? I'm looking right now and I'm seeing an empty line. I can't believe everybody, all of y'all showed up in time, which is incredible. Including Spencer.

We were late. I just, I mean, I know how Atlanta works. I know it's not easy to navigate, so thank you all for getting here early and being here with us. Thank you for being here. In general, here we have a PNG file that we have put up weekly.

We chose to leave the nav bar up top for you because we're in internet production. That's how we go. Don't we all need a little navigation help? Can I tell you about someone who can navigate you? Away from the bar. No, that's not true. Jesus would be at the bar.

I am the author of Hell is a World Without You, and this is my book launch. And we have a piece of podcast business. Podcast business, what's a business? Podcast business, it's a business, and it's now a church, which means we don't have to pay taxes, and that's really cool. And the other than go, fucking south.

So this book sales, where is my book? Wherever it is. I had a copy, some, yeah, you should have one in your hands, so that's good. Everyone just throw one up here really hard. This book right here, This is still yours. And tickets from this show, thanks very much to the involvement of my beloved co-hosts,

have combined to raise well over $50,000 for the Trevor Project. Final number to be determined. I don't know. There's a hardcover on eBay right now over $1,000, so that'll go in. and whatever y'all are thrown in at the merch table, that's getting thrown in. And we'll donate that once we do the tabulations.

At some point, Emily helps me with math. Once my daughter helps me with math, she's so much better at math than I have ever been. Shouts out to math. Say what? Shout out to math. Shout out to math. Georgia Tech fans in the house tonight.

Starting salary of $154,000 average per graduate. The Lord does work in Mysterious. So, a message... This is not your show. This is the Lord's show. A message to all of you from the Trevor Project, all right? To Jason Kirk in the shutdown forecast community, thank you for your incredible support of the Trevor Project.

Thank you for being a part of our Trevor community. Together, we are building a safer, more inclusive world for the LGBTQ plus young people of tomorrow. we have a two-part show for you tonight with an intermission in the middle stick around after the intermission for a we're going to attempt to do a like normal book panel quote fingers in conversation with full cast in conversation and then we're going to attempt the biggest shit show that we have ever attempted on a stage so You don't want to miss that.

Also, be sure you pick up your book if you haven't. This is yours, my friend. Thank you. Thank you for the prop. And now, church disasters. So we asked all of you in the room to send in your own stories, and we will read quite a few of those, because I'll be honest, once we open this to the general public, y'all brought it, all right? Y'all had good shit.

To sort of summarize the ones that were kind of considered, so many of you and the full cast communities at large used to be small Episcopalians who knocked over enormous candles. I see that hand. I see that hand. What's up, New England? Also, so many of you were teenagers who snuck into various church rooms

to make out or do jackass shenanigans. I see those hands. Go dogs. Also, so many of you farted during baptisms. Wait, during baptism specifically? Bloop. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ryan.

I just told an immersion baptism joke. I'm sorry for me. But speaking of, so many of you were also Catholics who did one of the million little whatever Catholic things y'all do, who farted during that stuff. You have more opportunities to fart. I farted during the Crusades.

Boy, was that embarrassing? I know it smelled crazy in the Crusades. And that was the worst thing to happen during the Crusades. Among the many, many downsides of the Crusades, the smell had to be up there. Let's be honest. It's on the list. Oh, let's do this for the kids. Crusades were bad.

As artists, we have to put that out there first. The Crusades were bad. bad. Separate the charts from the artist. Except that they were bad. Spencer Hall, pro crusades? Noted anti-Catholic pro-crusaders, Spencer Hall.

It turns out nobody thinks the anti-Catholic thing is funny in real life, huh? We're going to work on that. And so many of you have witnessed small children saying sassy things to church adults. So shout out to small children who have said

sassy things. Do we want to go in this order by chance? Holly, do you want to start? Can I ask, can I ask a question? Yeah, yeah. Do you want us to share our own personal religious slash church? If you have one that the Lord has placed on your heart, if the Lord has given you a word in this place tonight, if Father Abba, Papa, Daddy God has given you a message that you would like to share with this nation tonight, then we would love to hear it. In true full cast fashion, I didn't remember until about five minutes ago that I had a church disaster. We were talking backstage about the one good thing those of us on this couch had going for us growing up as papists or papists adjacent. And that is time. Fifty-five minutes was

the average for me. What about y'all? Forty-two, baby. Forty-two. Father Arnold. Yeah, 42 minutes. Beat the Baptist to the buffet every Sunday. Ryan, what about you? Tampa's a little slower. but like I'd say like 61, 62 still reasonable compared to what our evangelical brothers and sisters are used to right? We got all day. The exception

the glaring, terrifying exception is when you get a new music director who's failing themselves and you open the program on Sunday and it's a normal may in and out all the sad hymns are over, you're back into the Easter shit.

And you see a list of 30 names to be baptized. And the music director has convinced the church to purchase a new set of tabletop chimes. And the music director decides that they're going to play the chimes in between every baptized child. And what results is not so much a religious ceremony as like a Peter Pan book and record.

A baptized. that's you in the name of fairies turn the page. And that's about as disastrous as I could come up with was having to sit for longer in church than I should have. Which is why I didn't write the book. No, the real unfortunate part, because I've experienced something similar to that, is that you're in church being like,

these fucking babies, just stepping all over my NFL Sunday. that child receiving the sacrament of baptism and in your head you hear sure sure that would have been a great song to play between baptisms listen I don't want to be buried in a church but if you do you got to play the Foxy dream music

when I go out right the slow jam that they play when somebody's heard on the field yeah this kid is purified from sin and can go to heaven if he dies tomorrow but Brad Johnson might be slanging it right now I just know Lutherans do not have this problem. We are, they, y'all get out on time, don't you?

I have a church disaster. It's a religious disaster, but it involves me officiating a wedding of two people who are in this room, but I'm not going to call them out because they don't need that. I was asked to officiate a wedding of two of my very good friends, Matt and Wendy.

And they had a rehearsal dinner, but we didn't rehearse anything, which is fine. And I prepped my ceremony, and I was all ready to go. And we start the wedding ceremony, and I'm going through all the emotions. And about five minutes in, I realized that I did not invite the crowd to sit down. So they are standing for the duration of the wedding. But there's good news. we didn't rehearse, I didn't realize that the ceremony only took up about 12 minutes. And then they were married and off and on their way. So it was fine that everybody just got a little

extra core time. So I was attending CCD, which if you do not know what CCD is, it is Catholic Sunday School. And they make you study for it, which I wouldn't do that shit. I ain't reading all that. You read it for me. That's why I'm Catholic. we subcontract that shit we're like I don't want to read the Bible some dude in Rome does that for me Vatican 2 haters Spencer Hall yeah that's me

this was going to be conducted originally in Latin but we revised that there's like I could have done it there's like three people in a crowd who are like that'd be sick bro that'd be so high Gothic and tough but I was in CCD and they had an

exercise where they were like well we're going to pick an important Bible verse that's important to you, which is where this whole thing went wrong for me. And they're like, you're going to, you know, explain it and why it's important to you. So I picked the verse in the Old Testament where the bears are sent after the bald guy. Fuck yes. Yeah, yeah. If you don't know this one, it's like a bunch of kids make fun of this ball guy for being bald.

They're like, ah, bald ass. And God is like, I really like bald guys, so I'm sending bears to eat the children. The Bible's like, this fucking rocks. And the CCD teacher. Who's a civilian, by the way? Not a nun, not a priest. Not a military member. No, he was a colonel.

I mean, to be clear, we just talked about the crusades. We do need to specify. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did not think this was funny that I thought this was personally important. And he asked me, why was that important to you? And he goes, because I value bald men. That was my answer. Shout out to bald men.

Where are y'all at? Yeah, shout out to bald men. I see that name. I see that name. If you're a bald man and you're here tonight, you're beautiful. In my eyes and the Lord's. If you're a bear, fuck you! So I said...

That's not the end of the story? This dude had a rolled up... And then a bear came out. Yeah, and then a bear came out and a aid me. We had a rolled-up CCD workbook, and this dude whacked me across the head twice with it. Just like, totally clocked it. And if you've ever been in a situation

where nobody knows what the fuck to do, including yourself, that was it after he hit me twice in the head with the shit. And he hit me, and he just drops it and, like, walks out of the room. and he never came back just didn't never came back you made his ass quit

I made him quit yeah but later after the priest is like do you want to apologize to him and you know occasionally as a child was asking who to apologize to who me to apologize to him for getting smacked so how do you make me hit you yeah yeah exactly the 60s were different yeah

18 60s yeah dad was off at Gettysburg it was confusing don't ask what side he was fighting for we don't like to talk about that mistakes were made so anyways like do you want to apologize to you know the guy

and you know in moments you don't really have backbone as a kid right if you're a kid they're like hey do you want to apologize to Satan you're like I'm sorry Satan I remember being 12 and like it was a great moment because they were like do you want to apologize to him and I remember these were my words which was

fuck him and they're like did you just say you know like you don't know who's saying that you don't know that it's you you're just like who grabbed the controls at that point The spirit moved. Yeah. It must have been the Lord,

is my only conclusion. I think you were briefly Pentecostal. Yeah. I got it. Pentecostas, where I got all that? When you said you were asked to present your favorite Bible verse,

I was positive you were going to be like, well, I just went with this room from like, here comes the rump shaker. Yeah. From the book of Wutang. Oh, God. So, I... Jason, do you have any church?

Disasters? No, it went fine. So here's a funny thing. Well, funny to me. This, I did find my copy, but thank you for letting me borrow yours. So this thing right here, this book, I really don't know that it would exist without the fullcast community. Because there was an episode, and I've told this story many times,

it was the first time I've retold it on the forecast with added context. about 10-ish years ago for whatever reason we were talking about just weird stuff that happened in our upbringing and I told a story of a night at Wednesday night youth group in middle school before Columbine when a bunch of men burst into the room

wielding rifles to try and terrify us into denying our faith they left revealing it was all a skit a prank you know it was part of the lesson right and here's the punchline I think it's funny none of us

gave a shit no one got in trouble didn't think about it for at least 10 or 15 years until basically it popped into my head while we were recording our college football podcast I said it and I remember Spencer said literally what the smoking hell and I was like what do you mean it was church

And Ryan essentially said, like, how did no one get in trouble for this? How did, you know, how was no one attacked in response? And it was just like, because we were learning stuff about God. I didn't know. But yeah, then I just sort of set it aside again until a few years ago. I was talking to Emily, and I told her the story. And the look on her face just made me realize, like, I got something here. I got some weird shit here.

And I tried to sort of write about the distinction between this objectively insane thing that people should have been jailed for and an entire room of middle schoolers no selling it. Like I've talked to friends who were in that room. I've talked to them 20 years later, like, hey, do you all remember this?

And every time, there's probably at least a couple of you are in this room. What you told me was, oh yeah, I remember that. I'm trying to see if I spot any of you, but it was just the craziest shit ever that happened, and it was just lost in an ocean of crazy shit. But then I started hearing from y'all. I started hearing from other people,

and not just in Georgia, from various states all around the country, who had witnessed crazy shit like that, who had witnessed crazier shit. And we started talking about, like, all this other connected stuff, rapture fear, and hell fear, impurity culture, and just all this other stuff,

and I started to realize how universal all this stuff was and how little people who don't know who Nick Saban is know about it. I never figured out who he is either. He lasted longer in his job than she did. And he's got a new one.

So, yeah, so that turned into this thing. So the disaster portion, goes through about like there the rest is really happy and joyful and the disasters end that's a spoiler but

that's my disaster I guess one of them so yeah and now we will read some that literally y'all sent in and then we'll probably get to some from now a reading from the book of y'all I got one that came from a lady shout off the ladies

Hi Kate Best Friends Church Let the youth make all the food For the Super Bowl party Friend and I made chili Wherever you think this is going I promise I promise

Church curmudgeon who hated everyone said it was the best chili he ever had ate three bowls died that night Kate, can you stand up wherever you are if you're here? Woo! Thank you for laying that at the foot of the cross. Kate, we love you.

Good job. Good job killing that old guy. I heard he was talking shit about bald people. What? the conversation the next year was like when it was time to plan who was making the Super Bowl food. It's tough to change it because it was spelled

Super Bowl food for the party. No, it really was. That's in the thing. I didn't mention that. They were probably like, can you make it again? Can you make sure Bob gets some of it? The fuck the thing is if you did that now, there is a portion of the internet that would be like, I got to try this fucking jelly.

Doctors hate it. Like, you could run a successful TikTok account off. I make chili that kills people. The Reaper. Yeah. Or this. I'm the really wealthy lady from a privileged family who didn't think anyone could con me into

eating the chili. I ate $50,000 in a floral shoebox for this chili recipe. This is the CIA. You can't tell your husband about the chili. It stands for chili information agency. We just made this night into a time capsule, but what a time capsule. Go to the bank and eat all this chili. Don't mind if God loves all of us, even if you are the dumbest bitch alive.

Can I tell you how much I love that too? Because it just gets into the assassination scenario where someone in a foreign land is like, who did this? And they're like, human. I would like to... You don't know what we're talking about? I'm really excited. Yeah, I love how online you all are. I'm really excited for you to find out.

You're like, man, did you read that article on the cut? Which one? 40% of you were like, fucking. The one that you couldn't have waterboarded out of me. No. Yeah. I would like to share this one which involves killing birds. One time I killed a seagull with a spatula.

Are you here? Just go ahead. You're here. Beautiful. Okay. All right. What jacket is that? Yeah, yeah.

What jacket is that man wearing? George's a tech fan, the devised an implement for a... Thus to all birds. So this is the double-edged sword. We've identified the tech fans, so we're like $154,000 starting salary on average. Also, he's probably got a sword. Yeah, all, yeah. Also, all the Georgia fans are like, we know who to rob in the parking lot.

That boy's going to be an easy role. Georgia fan's going to be too easy littering in the parking lot to rob anybody. Not if he's got a spatula, apparently. Yeah, well, we're about to find out. I was volunteering at church camp one summer, and we held a big cookout on the beach for the campers. I was grilling burgers for around 150 kids on a public grill. You are skating on thin ice there already.

Several dozen seagulls were circling and gathering on the pavilion near me trying to get scraps or a burger patty. One got bold and landed on the side of the grill that I was cooking at and grabbed a patty off it. I reflexively smacked it with my spatula to go away. Okay, Goku. I ended up knocking

the shit unconscious onto the shelf of the grill in front of about a dozen campers. Now, there's a comma. There's a comma. Plus all of its seagull friends. Let's be honest. This is how prehistoric man

learned how to grill in the first place. He had a fire, he punched a bird, and he was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Bird smell good. Braxmart. A buddy of mine acted quickly and removed the bird to some bushes out of sight. We kept an eye on it, and when the bird woke up, it had very clearly broken a wing or something, so we had to put it out of its misery. This gets worse.

If you let me finish, it gets so much worse. It had broken a wing. Or something. It had. Pass it turns out I fuck that bird up did the Atlanta police write this?

Yeah this is an officer involved seagull murder I'm sorry incident so we had to put it out of its misery out of view of the campers using a piece of wood

we'd found nearby we told the kids the seagull woke up and flew all You told him it went to heaven. I was not accosted by the seagulls for the rest of the summer. Josh, Josh, do you live in Minecraft?

It's nice that you can neatly divide those who got burgers before this incident and those who ate a post-seagull. Burger. I'm just glad you didn't mash it down, like, on the grill. You got to sear it to keep the juices in. All the other hard-fied sequels are like, no, not Bernie. Oh, my God. This is from Ian from Madison, who's not here, or at least didn't say they were here.

For Holy Week, my family's church had congregants, volunteered to act out scenes as different characters from the story of the crucifixion. my father comma the most important phrase in any disaster story forever convinced the second most important phrase in any disaster story he would make a great actor eagerly agreed to play a Roman soldier conflicted about arresting Jesus he fashioned a toga out of a spare linen bedsheet and borrowed my carbon steel short sword which 16-year-old me sharpened and oiled obsessively.

That feels like a euphemism. And also not. I'm pretty sure he's like, no, I take very good care of my sword. Yeah, that's the thing. 16-year-olds don't take very good care of their swords. I got it at the rainstick store at the mall. It's very special to me. During the performance, he decided to improvise

and wrenched the unexpectedly heavy sword out of its sheath. In the process, he managed to rip the toga at the waist and opened up a gash in his thigh. I love the drama of turning pages. In the adrenaline-fueled focus of his performance, Dad failed to realize that he was bleeding profusely and then he was exposed up to his briefs. It took several attempts by the pastor to intervene,

before he could be stopped to seek medical attention. Shouts to believe me in the craft, you know? Like, the show's on. We're not stopping because I'm bleeding. Stigmata, by any means necessary. So this one, Sarah, are you here with us tonight? Everyone named Sarah, let's hear it. This is yours, whether you like it or not. It's like the lady, Matt.

This was, sent in by Asara, who is here with us, and the ending could go one of two ways, I guess we'll find out. My boyfriend, with whom I was unequally yoked, said a curse word at church. Y'all, do you know what unequally yoked

means? No, no, you're going to have to explain it to me. I thought it, I read this one, and I was like... I thought it meant she was stronger than him. Yes, I also thought one of them could bench more than the other. That is the literal biblical meaning of unequally yoked. Don't yoke an ox with a donkey or whatever.

Christians have decided it means Christians shouldn't date non-Christians. So this is a mixed religion couple. So this has nothing to do with dead lifts or power claims. Right. As far as we know. It could be how they met. I don't know.

They might have met at a power team show. He's just tuning out for the rest of the story. This was the greatest disaster that a very evangelical girl like me could imagine. But now, I've dropped the evangelical part, married the cursing boyfriend and brought him with me tonight. Sarah, is he here?

Hey! Wait, I have a question. What was the cuss? I have no idea. That's disappointing. The Lord has stricken it from your memory. That was a disaster that turned up, I think.

I think you look about equally yoke though. You're like, you're a good match. Yeah, y'all want to come up here and try to move the couch and see who's in the tire. We can put that to rest. I'm not used to going in order. Caleb, oh my God, is this a real Caleb? Caleb, where are you at?

Is there a real life Caleb in here? My son, where are you? Caleb There's my Caleb Dad's first day preaching at a new Methodist church Big crowd to hear the new preacher

Mom, seven-year-old twin brothers and I are seated near the back of the sanctuary halfway through sermon Brothers got bored crawled under Pew I love this Brothers realized

sanctuary was slanted towards the front and started log rolling themselves under the pews towards the pulpit giggling loudly mom watches in horror as each pew reacts when their feet are disturbed

this is like a double dare offend by two boys if you've ever dropped anything in the back of a church like you've heard like your water bottle just make the loudest possible noise And now you've got two live ones. Boys finally reach the front.

My mother has to retrieve them. Picks one up like a running back toting a ball. Drags the other behind her all the way back out of the sanctuary. Don't take them back to the ramp. You just respond to them. It's mom's first day. It's mom's first day. We're learning.

This is why I picked this one. Congregations only comment was that the service was too long. Caleb, are your brother's also named Caleb? I picture Ralph Wiggum flying through the window. Picture these boys sailing underneath these pews. If you yell out for Caleb at like an evangelical church, how do you know? The heads are turning. Yeah, there's like...

Or if you say, is anyone here having a middle name, Grace? Yeah. Somebody's key in a truck. This involves injuries, so I chose it. When I was five, I fell off the monkey bars. Who's it from? I'm so sorry. It's from Harry.

If Harry's here, I hope your arm is healed. I fell off the monkey bars during Sunday school and broke my arm. One of the deacons, also a lawyer, met me and my mom while we waited for my dad to get the car. The deacon, trying to make a joke, It's always an important phrase When you're trying to make a joke It's like when you hear a date

In a Disasters podcast, right? Something bad is about to happen Trying to make a joke To diffuse the tension Looked at my arm and said Yep, they're gonna have to amputate it I don't know if you've ever joke With a five-year-old, it's not a joke

You know? They're not a seagull Right You can take their limbs Yeah, like my five-year-old son And he was five, you'd walk up and be like Oh my God, you would be been transformed into a toad, and he'd be like, shit!

I immediately broke out in hysterical tears, and my mom screamed at the deacon until my dad dragged her into the car. There's a kicker. Four years later, the deacon was elected to the United States House of Representatives. We only send our best. Can I pause and say, and we've expressed admiration for this format before, there are some fantastic kickers in this these all just have

these beautiful little flourishes on the end and I want to applaud all of y'all we've never gotten a crop like this before yeah y'all wrote your asses off with this do you think the lawyer was like shit should I sue the church there's some money in this baby if he was on his hustle he would have

right yeah the only thing I can think is that he had accidentally apologized a minute ago and like as in I'm sorry then realized he could have been held liable for that and was thus trying to just blot out anything he said was sheer limousy. If I scare this child, he'll be too afraid to sue. I think churches, by the way, should be an extra legal zone

because already you don't pay taxes. They are, don't worry. Oh. Let me introduce you to the Diocese of Boston. What about that? But this is my long way of saying, I think trial by combat should be legal out churches only. If you want to fight somebody,

you've got to go do it in church. And it's fine. I have some news for you about the Bible. Yeah? How do fights go there? Ryan. You've invented Book of John Wick. You know who else said they were back?

Spencer did it. Spencer did it. Spencer did the youth pastor thing. This is from Antonio. Once my brother, who was five, and I, who was seven, broke into the sacristy at our local church. What's that? The sacristy is the, let's call it the safe, where Catholic churches store the relics, bones. Brother, I wish.

In Europe, yeah, you can find a thumbbone, whatever you want. Over here, slim pickings. No, where they store the sacramental wine and bread that they will use for communion. We'll get into that. We ate all the communion. And drank three bottles of communion wine. This is a five and a seven-year-old, y'all.

Like, this is some you're going to get on morey shit. That's how the whole town found out the priest was an alcoholic with a dispensation to use grape juice instead of wine. He got shipped to another state a couple months later. How the fuck did he get in trouble? Here's what I really like about this story. So you're thinking, like, I think I would know if I was drinking grape juice instead of wine. but because they're Catholic they got to go with the whole

transubstantiation thing and nobody's allowed to pretend like this tastes like wine or like grape juice because in the Catholic faith we're literally eating the body and blood of Christ we're out here

fallout threeing it's so fucking hard y'all so all of you tonight your drink coupons are valid for the body of Christ whether it is alcoholic or not, all right? Also, I can tell you from experience, one of the most low stakes, friction-causing events you can have at a Catholic church is switching what you use for communion.

People have big, some people want the dry circle. Some people want the, like, kind of pita bread, maybe. I don't know what it is, man, if you want to hear a dad have some opinions about Mass change the bread up. Personally, I think you could, like,

I think you could use anything. I think you could go up, stick your tongue out, because that's another way you can receive it. And the priest could, could place a Cheez-It on your tongue. There's no reason that couldn't happen. And yes, that is a sponsorship opportunity.

That's a G-Z-It. J-Z-It. That's right. Now with more flavor than G's nips. I'm feeling the jeeziest. See, this is why the whole Pop-Tart thing worked because in the Pop-Tart bowl, right? Because, you know, you eat the mascot

and half the crowd is like, oh, it's just so fucked up. And half the crowd's like, yeah, it's pretty-old. All right, who is the Judas of the Pop-Tart universe? Mike Golick, Jr. Wow. That's not a dig? He likes Pop-Turt. He walked away with 40 toaster strudels,

Feeling terrible. It is not an insult to say that man could kill 40 Pop-Tarts. He would say we were underestimating it. He would be mad. That's a former line that you're talking about. So piggyback just a little bit on the ending of our last episode, how incredibly fun would it be as a small child to receive the communion wafer, bite down,

and then turn around and scream to the sanctuary, it's got bones! I felt it screamed. Meg? One last digression on that. I think, you know, in the Catholic service, if you walk up like this, it's like, I'm not ready to take communion.

Like, I'm troubled in the spirit or something. That should get you like a half sandwich or something. No, it gets you a subclub stamp. Yeah. You know, so you get something out of it. Sure. Yeah. Get like a nerd cluster placed on your tongue.

Yeah. Now we're talking. I feel bad, but I still got a little snack. That's all I want to have at church. I think you're thinking of the dentist I've been about as recently and I think they're both scams You've named the other institution

Spencer could talk for 45 minutes I don't believe in it These are both scams that make me feel bad about myself Yeah Not wrong You want me to do what every day Kelsey Are you here with us tonight

Anyone named Kelsey? I see that hand. From Kelsey. We had a pretty well-known ex-MLB player come in and lead one of our chapels. His message was about forgiveness, and he starts talking about how when he was on the road all the time playing baseball,

he lost his faith a little bit, and... Not by himself. How much? How did you know? Not in contemplative moments of prayer. I think the Lord has given you the gift of prophecy because this ex-MLB player wasn't the best husband to his wife, Kelsey reports, all pretty normal stuff until he starts going into

how he got addicted to porn while on the road. This is in front of a bunch of middle and high schoolers. That kind of thing happens at this kind of church, yes, including his two sons who go to school there. He ends this whole story by saying that the night he came clean to his wife and she forgave him was the night his son, who he made sure to refer to by name, was conceived. On the other hand, awesome day for the other child, right? Let me tell you what I know about my conception.

It wasn't this. Hey, hey, Mark, hey, hey, hey, you remember, hey. Hey, Mark, wake up three weeks later. I cannot think of a more receptive crowd for that message, though. You're that other kid, you can't relax for the rest of your life. Your brother can't speak at your wedding. Because he stands up and you see a smile and you know, you know this is coming back.

I can't think of a more receptive crowd for that message, though, that a bunch of middle schoolers in high schools, And you're like, no, when you're like, hey, I was addicted to porn. The high schoolers are like, we're listening. I was addicted to porn, and now I'm a professional athlete. It'll ruin your life. You'll become a successful picture. I've watched 500 hours of hotel pornography.

That is my dream. I didn't know what I was doing, day or night, hour after hour, just viewing pornography. And the high schoolers are like, the dream, the dream. The dream. but literally, yeah. You don't want any part of this. I believe I do want a part of that. I think I'm going to practice baseball.

Jamie, do you want to share a story with us? As the Lord placed a story on your heart, so I asked a few people if they'd like to deliver their own. And Jamie, who's, I'm sure you all have seen her handle online, Glitter Burrito, a tremendous handle, and also has a couple podcasts, one about horror movies, and what about our careers and stuff? Yeah, so my church disaster is the first time I ever saw a compound fracture in person.

So, like many evangelical youth group, my youth group pastor was desperate to get teenagers in the door, and we played something called shaving cream waffle ball. If you've never played this, and many of you seem to have been familiar. first base was a kiddie pool and the wiffle ball was full of shaving cream I don't know why he thought having a bunch of teenage girls cover themselves in shaving cream was a good thing a bunch around a teenage guys

I have an idea but don't watch porn in hotels don't do it you'll become wildly successful we had a great time a larger girl from my high school basketball team stepped up to first base my youth pastor decided to pitch, she hit, slid into home base, and her leg went in a 90-degree

angle, and the rest of her body did not go that direction. And that is the first time I saw an ankle bone go through a shin bone and a foot flop. Please tell us about the other times. List form is fine. I'm a fan of college football, as you all can read on my shirt. Roll Tide! So, Tyrone Prothrow, I am very familiar. Oh, no, oh no, she's doing it.

We are lifting him up in prayer. I'm sure he's fine right now. He was my banker at region. He was my banker at Regions for a little bit in Tuscaloosa, roll time. Jason, do you want me tell the other story about the mascot head? Sure. That sounds like a good story. So, like any good church-going girl, I dated a bunch of guys in Christian hardcore bands.

And, uh... Do you remember any of the names of the bands? Uh, oh, I might get some of them in trouble. Okay, never... Maroon 5. Let's just say, I'm guessing all these names had like nine words. Yes, and lots of X's, because we were straight edge, even though we were underage. I'm not straight... I'm not a loser. I'm straight-edged.

Right. So our church had this thing called a harvest festival. I'm sure you're all familiar. This was the evangelical alternative to Halloween because heaven forbid I dress up in a leg avenue costume from Spirit Halloween and go trick-or-treating at the age of 16. So I was dressed up in a Snoopy costume. Couldn't tell you why, but my church had a...

The sexiest Peanuts character. He's always naked. My church had a full-on Snoopy fur suit and had local firemen out because apparently Snoopy firemen, I don't know, I think they were confused. A 16-year-old meat loved it. And I was dating a guy at the time

who I did not know was also dating a girl from the arrival high school at the time. Boo. I was 16. I was a sophomore. She was a senior. He was a junior.

I'm going to let you guys do the math there for a second. So she pulls up in her very, very cool 06 Mustang. You guys remember when they redid the body? Yeah, yeah. She pulls up, pops the head of my Snoopy costume off in front of children and says, we need to talk. And that is how a bunch of children discovered that, no, no, the fur suit character is not real. And that's my church disasters, y'all.

I thought she was going to say that it was the same girl who'd compound fractured her leg in every story like the sixth one it's like not again I don't want to take sides Jamie but that girl sounds cool as hell did you say it was a fox body Mustang? Come on now come on

sometimes you just got to take the L back to me back to you oh boy Adam from New Jersey when I was in Hebrew school I had a teacher who would this sounds like something

I shouldn't be allowed to say when I was a teacher it's in quotes okay okay when I was in Hebrew I mean it is in Hebrew school I didn't make this up you know fractured times

I had a teacher who would play a game with us called Jewish football this is written down This is written down When you walked into the class He would quiz you with a question about Jewish history This is actually how football should go It should be short answer based

Student athletes Finally the University of Chicago is back Uh huh If you got it right He reward you by having you run a route Across the classroom and throw you a jolly rancher to catch. The teacher had to stop doing this after one kid decided he was going to catch the Jolly

Rancher rapper and all with his mouth. It went right down his throat. He started violently choking on it. And they had to do the Heimlich to save him moss, though. Yeah. Edelman in this case. Yeah. Also, that teacher put it on him, ma'am.

Yeah, I know. That's on you. You got to catch that. That's a tiny ubiquit target. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, Jane Koston decided to text me in the middle of this and was like, I found a place of places to go buy Celsius for cheap in Salt Lake City, Utah.

She's got like a fucking, this is what she decided I needed to know in the middle of the show. She wanted to just tell y'all, go blue. All that we're missing now is for my father to forget we're doing a show and call me right now. He will. He will. Um, so mine is short and fucking spectacular. Uh, this is from Tyler. Tyler, you here? I know there's like five Tyler's here.

Yeah, Tyler, this one is Sean McDermott related. Um, so it's very brief, but I think it's to the point and we'll, uh, spark some discussion. Substitute youth pastor. This is not the starting youth pastor. He tore his ACL. and they had to go to the substitute. Substitute youth pastor did a, you really got to hand it to al-Qaeda.

14 years before Sean McDermott did it. I don't know about you, man. That's not trouble for me. I'm bored and I'm in Sunday school. He's like, you got to really hand it to al-Qaeda. I'm like, thank you for just invoking the notion of a Belichekian facility somewhere in

2000 Afghanistan that says do your job on the wall. The thing I like about that story is that's probably one of the more socially acceptable conversations youth pastors had for 9-11. Yes, in fact.

That's light work. Light work, right? I just love that situation though because it's like, oh man, it's a substitute youth pastor. Let's see if he's really going to bring it. If that's line one, you're just like heat. I didn't come in to hand the ball off? Go deep.

He's audibly. Yeah, for those of you who are younger, everything then could have come straight out of a Nixon tapes joke. Yeah, 100%. And really ever since, but... This is from John. First baptism in many years

at a rural church in West Virginia. And this is the phrase I never thought I would say. baptism pool had a heating element what the fuck kind of honeymoon baptism pool is this the Lord wants you to be cozy it's bad to be those rich kids up in Huntington baptism pool had a heating element I know wait wait wait I know why I had a heating element

it was an aquarium when they weren't using it for baptisms they're like put the tropicals in there Cozy. I just like to think that the pastor was sort of like, we're not using this and I would love a soak. Wait, wait, wait, wait. My back is killing me. I had it more practical

ideas that it's probably to keep it from frozen fucking solid for nine months out of the year. Did you say West Virginia? Was this a still? Oh, shit. You wouldn't actually need a heat. Never mind. Holly knows how that works. How many hot dogs

can we make in this place? because pastor likes it some hot dogs. Baptism pool had a heating element that had not been turned on in a while. Pastor briefly set the baptism pool on fire. This is the ultra rare story where I want to know more. If you are a pastor and you accidentally set something that shouldn't be on fire, on fire, you start

saying, you're a miracle worker, you div shit! Look what I have summoned, listen to me, and give me your money! Y'all better get in or I'll double it. How much of like affected pastor work is that as being like, I did that on purpose. I definitely did all that on purpose. If you ever find yourself as a pastor, if you ever find yourself pastoring a church in which you're allowed to wing it,

all you have to do is say, the Lord just called down the anointing. magic words get you out of anything uh let's see here do you think the parents went ahead with the baptism after that I would be like can we do next week I want to know more about the smell specifically

it's like this creates it's hot hot dog water I will say this if I could have the most metal baptism possible I would right like that's what it would take yeah future me was like looking at baby me they're like, baptize and flame. For the emperor. For the emperor.

The Lord has decided your baby will be WCW now. If he makes it, he's a superhero. I think you're just describing which trials. As a supporter of the Crusades, previously established fact, let's just bring it back. How do you manage that with being anti-

Catholic. I contain multitudes. He's about that action. Yeah. About that action. Clause, yeah. West

from Indianapolis, are you here with us tonight? Woo! The keeper of the book. The keeper of the book, the generous one of the tomes, the loner of the pages.

It makes them our scribe. The librarian. West recently learned, his brother-in-law is part of his church's quote fingers, belonging to West, security team, which is responsible for protecting the pastor and congregation from people who hate Christians. They're white and live in South Dakota.

Seems like it's working. All threats neutralized. Sorry for being awesome. Guess I'll be clocking out for the day. Let's do. Let's do one more round of these. Oh, man, I got to pick a new one. And you said all threats neutralize in the Dakotas,

and I'm like, there's a lieutenant governor just running people down up there. She can't shoot, she can't shoot for shit. No way, that's their actual governor, I know. All right, I got one more. Oh, dear. You had another blue one. I did have another blue one.

This doesn't narrow it down at all. Michael W. Michael W. Smith? Michael W. Smith, this is your time. You've found your place in this world. Really? Nobody? Look at Spencer go.

Nobody? You forgot. I grew up in Tennessee. Whoa. Tell me you never, no. Tell me you didn't grow up in Nashville. Michael W. Baptist Church, this is, again, I want to say I'm not reading the news.

This is an submitted disaster story. Baptist Church split over whether the pastor had the authority to disavow the Confederacy. or whether it had to be voted on by the whole congregation. Now, unless this is a contemporary of Spencers, I'm assuming this happened fairly recently. The thing that really changed this story is which way the pastor wanted to go. You know?

Also, to what end? Right. Yeah, how did this come up? Like, this is another one. We're out of the ultra-rera. We always tell you guys to make these stories shorter. This is one where I want to just be, then what? You know, the substitute youth pastor probably had some really good opinion.

Just like that, like, this vote goes one way or the other, and you clap your hands and like, oh, glad we sorted that. If I know anything about Baptists, this church is now three denominations. At least one of which has off-duty cops stationed outside it so that none of them have to sit through the red light on Sunday, yeah. It's probably one that's like pro-Civil War, anti-Civil War, and then there's one that's like here's how we would have done it.

Oh yeah, this is, the built different church is the one you have to watch out for. More Confederate submarines. That would be our approach. Or like, you know who should have seceded Colorado. Colorado versus the world. Why? Just wanted to freak it.

Just because. John L.A.'s awesome. John. John L.A. needed receivers. He really did. Terrible roster. Speaking of white supremacists. Nashville.

Nashville Mega Church. I was born there. I could do that. Nashville Mega Church rented out local college basketball arena for service to end capital campaign to build indoor playground, video game, arcade, and skateboard half pipe.

Praise his name. I could guess this. We could probably guess this church for them three. I mean, the thing is, there's no more. people, so where's the money supposed to go? They're welcome to come skate.

I have heard tell that heaven is a half pipe. About that. So pastor rolled onto stage riding a Harley while congregation made noise with thunder sticks. You can just hear

thunderstruck playing, right? That's not a joyful noise. He got fired for emotionally abusing employees a year later, half-fibed did not get built. I didn't know you. How do you get, okay, first of all, how do you get fired for emotional abuse in Nashville in a church? It said something mean to a rich person.

Yeah. Like, this guy, I don't know, this guy's a Kentucky fan or something. Something else is going on there. Jason's book, I didn't grow up evangelical. So Jason's book, as I think for a lot of people in this room, was an interesting. look at a world that I didn't know very much about. I haven't even heard that much about because it just wasn't, it wasn't part of my life. But this is a submission that I think is relatable to anyone of any faith, any lack of faith, any walk of life, really. And this is

from Lizzie. During our youth group scavenger hunt, friends nearly got arrested while trying to talk cops into arresting a couch. Go ears. It doesn't matter what God you believe in. At some point, you're dumb enough to think I can get the cops to arrest this furniture and not me. Yeah. Yeah.

I just think that's beautiful. This couch called me a bitch, I'm seriously. It's the couch as weed. I don't know what you're talking about. It's got ribs like Adam. Get him. Let me do two quick ones. This couch talk shit about the Chargers.

What year did this gentleman join the Marine Corps? Guanty! Thank you to everyone who, by the way, who military or military adjacent, who's written into us ever since the United States Marines joined the full cast of the Universe to tell us that we have never told a joke about the United States Marines. Connor are you here I know you're lying Oh field apparel

There is a There's a Connor here There's not one Connor in here Connor reports in front of a youth rally crowd Of over 4,000 The main speaker spent a better part of her four talks Singing the chorus to Salt and Peppers Let's talk about sex

So much... Church adults are obsessed with talking to children about sex, yes. And let's close it down with this one, Nick from Atlanta. When we sent out the call, these were rolling in, this was the first one that I saw that I said, oh, we're in good hands. Was playing hide-and-seek overnight at church as a high schooler. Split my head open on an HVAC duct.

Climbing up a ladder. into the attic. Bled for hours. And refused to go to the ER. Sounds like somebody we know. Nick, Nick, if you stop bleeding and you made it here with us tonight, thank you.

Thank you for that report. Anybody have one more Hang on. Why are you looking at me? I'm out. You're out? Let me pick one at random. That's be fun.

Talk amongst yourselves. Okay. Matt. Got to end with a mat. Let the record show the Google Doc, even after I've deleted the ones we've read, still has five mats. We've never told a joke.

Worship Leader slash dad squashed a wound. Dad. Squashed a wounded bat underfoot on stage during the communion prayer. Carpet stain never removed. It's okay, because that was Dracula.

With the right sense of theatricality, you have just defeated the devil. Where, oh, man. Stomp him out. You're damn right I'm leaving that evidence. Thomas Wayne's like, this is not how I thought this was going. So we are going to take a quick intermission. Doug, do you have our special music number dialed up for us by chance?

Or one of you. We have three producers, so surely one of our music ministers has a special music prepared for us tonight. Yeah, Mr. Luntz. You remember that story I told you about the girl and the car and the baby? Yeah. So we'll be back in about five minutes. She was driving last Friday on her way to Cincinnati on a snow white Christmas Eve. Going home to see her mama and her daddy with the baby in the backseat.

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Download game time today. Last-minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. Can I read a little bit of this? So I'm going to read a bit. from the beginning of the story, all right? Chapter 2, the setting is the year 2000 AD. An ominous year, because the rapture just happened. In our story, a 14-year-old church boy

is trying to join a different church where his brother works. Why? For a very deep theological reason. He went to that church camp, and all the girls were cute. This church kid named Isaac already very clearly has all sorts of religious doubts and shames and unresolved grief from the death of his father, whom Isaac kind of believes might be in hell suffering maximum eternal torment right this moment and the next, and the next until the end of time and beyond. Making matters even worse, Isaac is an Oakland Raiders fan.

So, in this chapter, Isaac is going to explain how the evangelical kid's typical week goes, all right? Along the way, he'll give us a little bit of a crash course. If you weren't there, guess what, now you are. If you were, I see that hand. There will be a couple paragraphs in here with self-harm ideation. I'm going to put up a hand in case anybody wants to cover their ears. during those paragraphs, all right? Otherwise, it's all really funny.

Sunday. Want to hear some math? I asked my mom. I've been to church like 50 Sunday mornings per year, already 700 times total. Well, you reached that 700 club way faster than I did, she laughed in our 92 Chrysler minivan bought when her and dad had expected to produce

an abundance of kids. She was driving to her downtown megachurch, which I'd secretly decided. was no longer mine. She'd grown up in Southern California during the 70s Jesus movement when semi-hippies invented Christian rock. She'd been a total hippie, though, meaning she preferred weed over war until Jesus fixed her. After moving east, she churched Eli, my big brother, and I heavily from the beginning, and tried to drag dad along too. He'd resembled white Messiah paintings, but her Greek bronze skin was like Revelation 1.15 Jesus's. At most churches I'd

attended, Sunday morning meant laughing at the pastor's usual jokes, worrying about bad America's persecution of good America, tithing my lawn mowing money, being warned against churches that interpreted the Bible non-literally, and singing songs whose lyrics appeared on a big screen I'd nicknamed, and actually, I coined this during a full cast episode, and then I was like, oh shit, I better write that down. The HumbleTron. Then everyone was invited to the altar, either to get saved or to rededicate by publicly admitting failures. I needed to do that again soon because mere days after camp, my radiant glow had dimmed to a flicker. Also, each Sunday, there was a youth group, which the megachurch is snowboarding youth pastor called Inspiration Super His Way 3.0.

It mostly consisted of singing along with men dressed like Carson Daly, then breaking into boy groups and girl groups. While learning how to focus on Jesus instead of girls, boys wondered what girls were learning about, then tried to read candy, glossy lips from across the room and falling in love with her and her and her and her. Isaac, would you answer that question, please? My group's teacher interrupted.

Jesus, I assumed, bingo. And her, and her? Adult church plus kids, Church equaled 1400 lifetime sessions for me so far, plus 650 Sunday nights. Those were so mellow that when the pastor at my cousin's tiny church said the little mermaid mind-controlled Ellen DeGeneres into gayness, he was wearing shorts. Driving home past billboards of the megachurch pastor's gleaming smile, I almost convinced Mom to let me join Eli's medium-sized church, which fed my soul the best, you know?

Coincidentally, people there liked me. Monday. Smoke flashed above a thousand jumping teenagers. On the megachurch warehouse's stage was rock band Skillet. Which had been Christian Nirvana,

but had become Christian nine-inch nails, part of evangelicalism's never-ending project constructing a facsimile world designed to consume the original. Everyone thinks DC talk was Christian Nirvana, but that was just one song. D.C. Talk had gone from Christian M.C. Hammer to Christian U.2.

Bear with me. I secretly love secular music, but had enjoyed the bonfire at my cousin's little church, where we'd destroyed all our sinful stuff. In went Harry Potter books, see you when you get their CDs and Forrest Gump tapes. As white dads blew Jewish sofars, garbage bags burned, and sixth graders mooned each other, I torched a madden game because James Dobson's Breakaway magazine said

16-bit cheerleaders would make me lust. Didn't quite work. My schoolmates had seemed surprised whenever I'd mentioned going to church on weekdays while secular middle schoolers did things like cocaine and welfare. At church, I get high the old-fashioned way. While you smoke stems and seeds, I'd said,

citing things rappers disliked. I didn't know whether Eli's church did stuff on Mondays, but did know it'd ignite my soul-saving passion better than the megachurch's warehouse, where I liked loud noises but lacked friends. Also, my classmates claimed MC Hammer and YouTube were Christians. Then why don't Christian merch stores sell their albums, dumbass? Sorry.

Tuesday. Once I met a Catholic. After I rebuked his merry witchcraft, he explained his made-up holidays that have perfume names like Ascension, Conception, Epiphany. So I explained holidays about Jesus, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. When God gave this land to Judeo-Christian like Thomas Jefferson. Speaking of, something I knew I'd miss about mom's megachurch was its oomph.

On Tuesday, July 4th, 2000, we sat watching fireworks crown its 30-foot Jesus statue. People sang along to Christian every genre musician Carmen's God in America again. A song about our Judeo-Christian country having been great until 1960s, Supreme Court stuff turned high schools into war zones of condoms in astrology. That song's real. I didn't make up that lyric either. Middle school that lacked those things, except for the kid who detonated salsa-filled rubbers and the goth girls who explained the moon's emotions.

High school sounded scary. Near the songs end, Carmen preached about how Christians should storm the White House until Americans stop going to hell. I didn't make up that song. It came out in 1993. In a star-spangled hat, mom cheered the White House plan, which would involve terminating adulterous Democrats because character matters. Eli, wearing Charles Barkley's Olympics jersey, preferred hell stuff.

I figured they went hand in hand. Wednesday. At the megachurch, girls could wear whatever to weeknight youth group, unless the youth pastor discerned armpits were too sexy. At my cousin's fundamentalist church, girls couldn't show their shins. I hoped Eli's church didn't forbid Sarah Beth's modest summer attire. Bathroom break. Back from jerking off.

It's called literature. Full of fresh regret, I prayed for the strength to join Eli's church without succumbing to Sarah Beth's cruel near nudity. I'd long ago stolen an uncle's six-inch stiletto knife, then kept it hidden. in my backpack. Sometimes after sinning, I warned myself, pop goes the eyeball. I practiced on grapes slicing away their skins while imagining my eye stuff, glooping down my cheeks in my pitch, blacken shower, my skull lightning as its sins trickled down the drain forever. I believe suicide would be one sin, but it would prevent so many others. Cold, hard math. Anyway, Wednesday church was usually fun. Obstacle courses. Eating live goldfish. A pretend funeral. This kid, Zach, read his

friend's suicide note, which listed times Zach should have shared the gospel. After Zach cried, why didn't I tell him about Jesus? The casket burst open. The dead kid screamed, I'm burning in hell thanks to you. And then we played Red Rover. In the kitchen, I asked mom,

I've been to like 600 Wednesday nights, right? She laughed at my chart of attendance stats. Only one Wednesday had involved four gunmen storming in and threatening to kill a 17-year-old unless he denied Christ. mom still didn't know about that Eli sure did years prior

he'd been that 17 year old Thursday in elementary school I went to Awana meetings where my Awana is that all right I went to awana meetings at a neighbor's church

each Thursday there we learned to tie rope knots shoot BB guns and pledge allegiance to the Christian and American flags. What was a want I like for? I asked mom in our mint green pine salt kitchen beside big photos of smiling kindergarten me and smiling preteen Eli. She looked up from cutting coupons. Bible trivia? I have ribbons you won. All right. One year, the final question was about the Bible's rivalries between brothers. Kane versus Abel, Ishmael versus Isaac, Jacob versus Esau and Joseph versus everybody. And that was just Genesis.

16-year-old Eli had celebrated my victory by putting me in a headlock and joking about adding me to the list. At the megachurch Thursday was a church day, just like every other day. Softball leagues about 1st Timothy 4.8, buffets about John 651. Movie nights about Neo being Jesus.

22-year-old Eli preferred his church's focus. Did Jesus command us to build upward basketball gyms or to save souls? Upward basketball veterans. Your mad your church can't afford any gyms. I laughed. He laughed. The thing his church did afford friendships. Friday.

The pastor's son, Josiah, invited me to his weekly Men's Accountability Group for Men Ages 13 through 16. At our Pizza Hut buffet meeting, after we prayed that our personal pans and Mountain Dew would nourish onto our bodies, it felt weird when it was my turn to finally confess J. Owing. But once I admitted I'd fall in prey to a modest knee socks stretched around sinister soccer girl calves.

Everyone hugged me like I'd been jumped into a gang. Confessions equal hugs. Keep confessing. Nearby was an upperclassman accountability group where 17-year-old Christians laughed about sinning. You think J. Owing is funny? You frost-tipped generation who played golden eye instead of making America Judeo-Christian again?

I vowed to never become a jaded senior who considered freshman night. naive. Otherwise, Fridays were for remembering. One Friday, long ago, imperialists butchered an innocent drifter, so we call it good Friday. And on a Friday in 1993, sunrise blinded dad as he was driving. Hours after that, my cousin's pastor said in an ice cream man voice that I shouldn't cry because dad was finally happy as can be partying in a big mansion. So I never had. If my heroes enjoying perfect happiness, then he must have been delighted to leave eight-year-old me behind. Wanting him back is heartless of me.

Imagine depriving someone of gold streets offering nothing in return but pillow forts. I learned lucid dreaming for two reasons. To see boobs, without leaving internet evidence, and so that when I dream the sound of dad's garage door opening, I could say like the angel in all dogs go to heaven, you can never come back. Saturday.

So this next line, I think it's my favorite joke in the whole book. No one has told me that they like it. what you think, okay? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, as the world's only Bible believing monotheists, Saturday was the one day without religious services. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, finally. I'm going to do this all the time now. Excuse me, relationship with Jesus services.

Usually, several Saturdays I'd been handed anti-abortion signs and told to stand in parking lots, feeling productive for angering strangers. Other Saturdays, we did overnight kid parties at the go-karts arcade. My main church lock-in memory, playing Tekken against some kid who told me arcane secrets about R-rated movies. Wild things sounded like everything English teachers claimed Shakespeare was. But I feared it would make me J-O myself unconscious. Lord, I prayed, safeguard my computer.

from wild things, unless my wife wants to watch it with me, once we're 17. Other times, multi-day church events lasted through Saturdays. At one youth retreat, I remember teams racing across a parking lot, slurping flat coke from a tub, running back, spitting it into another tub, and repeating. Nobody won. Too many kids puked. Then we made beaded bracelets to use as tools for explaining salvation. What's there to explain? Salvation's already easy to understand. Right?

That's it. So now it's time for... In conversation. with the shutdown forecast. Real quick, can I, I'm going to run through a few FAQs real quick. Is the book real? Okay. In an English class way, I could talk for about an hour, but it simply put 99% of the settings and events are inspired by things I witness to one extent

or another, but even that doesn't go far enough because I'm far from the only one who witnessed any of it in various religious settings around the world. And for the past, call it 1,600 years. but is a story about me. Well, my biography is sprinkled throughout all the characters, but here's the twist. This story is also about you. But I grew up atheist in Massachusetts.

How could this book possibly be about me? I guess you'll have to read and find out, but people who grew up even more atheists than you talking Canadian atheist have told me they loved it, and I've read it multiple times. But I'm a manly, manly boy. but who only reads manly books about real tough boy stuff like the Roman Empire. It's not for me, right?

First of all, like I said, 99% of it is real in one way or another. Secondly, it will teach you one fact about the Roman Empire that you didn't know. That's a challenge. And chapter six, I believe. Again, people who read even manlier books than you have said the book made them cry. So, again, challenge on. And why isn't this book set in the South?

Because the man in the beautiful red jacket said a few years ago that everywhere is the South. So yeah, hey, do you want to talk about this? Do you want to talk about me? You want to give me some attention? RIP, Topic Heath. Yeah. You want to talk about you.

And I want to talk about you. My first question is this, and it's a question and a comment. I read it, and I don't religion at all. And yet it was profoundly affecting to me because it was a world that I didn't really know existed. Y'all apparently were real fucking busy. There's deep lore. I kind of approached it from a Warhammer perspective. I was like,

Yeah, let's go ahead. Let's all get late tonight. Put the Warhammer out there and watch the sex roll in. But in doing so, it did make me sort of wonder. It made me realize I didn't know y'all were doing all that. I didn't know this was happening. I didn't know any of this existed to this extent. Sure, you heard about it, and you're like,

ah, that's just some weird guy in Nashville. No, like, this is all over the place. So I guess my question at the end of all of this is, did you really know about the outside world that was looking in like me going what the fuck is up what are y'all doing

so what we were told about y'all was that when you said shit like that that you were persecuting us that's accurate and that every time we heard that we were laying out treasures in heaven so that only drove us to be even fucking weirder

so so so it's If you and I went to the same high school in 1930, if I had seen you sitting there, I would have said, I'm going to thump that guy with the Bible so hard. That is the guy who needs, that's the guy who needs the most Bible. You would have hated it, and I would have fed on that hate. I would have drilled down, dug in. We would have fucking hated each other,

but I would have called it love. It's how it would have worked. That's amazing. just been like, I don't know, what's up with that, dude? I'm going to go back and take some laudanum, because it's 1930. Do some opium. But yeah, we were told that all the hours we were putting in, all the memorization, all the events, all the reprogramming of the human brain, all of it.

We were told all of it was just endlessly valuable and important and not just good for us, but warding off bad, because everything around us was bad, secular music and secular music. movies and public schools. Yeah, we knew what was going on. We just thought it was bad, because we'd been told it was bad. And little by little, you know, I was fortunate to go to public school for high school after being homeschooled and middle school, which basically meant playing football computer games for three years. You were so trained to be a blogger?

I can't do math, but I can't tell you how fuck. can't tell you how front-page sports worked on Microsoft Windows. But yeah. So one of the central elements of the book, I would argue does not have anything to do with religion.

And this is a book about a protagonist who is coping with the loss of his father at a very young age. And I'm curious, as you went through the process of writing this and it evolved from a short story to a novel with a lot of, I'm sure,

changes along the way. When did you decide to make that a central part of that character's development and story and what was the thought process in building that in? So when I killed Isaac's dad

so it starts with a very like rudimentary story construction thing where it's like I have a about a teenager and I need him to kind of get in trouble a lot. There's too many parents around. One of them's got to go. You know, it's, how does Frozen start? The parents are gone, right?

Like, there's lots of stories about young people which is just like, let's do some stuff, kid. So I invented a Bambi and sent him to the weirdest church I could find. And I decided, you know, mom should stay because there's lots of interesting things to say about a single mother in this very patriarchal world and she's always, you know, you know, tormenting herself with like,

am I qualified to raise boys? Of course you are. Of course you are. But this world is telling her she's not. So mom's day, dad, bye dad. I was about two years in to this story when I'm finding all these threads of like, all right, so Isaac is worried about the fate of his dad's soul. Isaac has this because of religious toxic positivity. He has this like unresolved grief. There's these big theological questions that are pitting him against his big brother for the fate of their father's soul. Also there's far jokes, I swear. And I started to realize, it was two years in, I remember I was on a call with Justin Ferguson and Casey Rowlett, who might be here tonight, and I just realized like, oh, my grandfather died

when I was about 10 years old, he wasn't religious, at his funeral, I heard relatives saying, are we sure he was saved? And I had nightmares about that for years. this sounds fake that I wrote a novel without realizing I had personally lived the most

central conflict in the whole thing but I just realized like hmm never more in my grandfather thank you for coming to our comedy show I love my grandfather he was a let the record show he was a Rick Flair guy

but in his in his heart, in his heart, a dusty roads guy. Can we make a soundboard of everything we'd click-trained them to say? What would it look like? I have a more light-hearted question. I can give you a set.

Sorry. The attention to detail when it comes to AOL-I-L-Instant Messenger screen names. is impressive. And I would like to hear more. Did you go back and find, like, actual AIM, screen names? How did you come up with this part of the book? So, so in the early 2000s, I think, you know, our generation, we were online.

Zoomers believe they invented. There's one right there. They believe their generation invented. I'm pointing at my daughter. Oh, I remember, look at my daughter. They believe they invented being online and typing at each other and all that stuff. No, no, no. The only difference is now the Internet is in their pocket and they can never escape it.

So, like, AIM was always going to be very central. It's a way to deliver lots of bursts of conversation. And I found lots of ways to, you know, infuse it with character. Like, punctuation, like, as an editor, it was like, well, this character's use of ellipsies. It's very meaningful. It's fine that only one person will ever care about that. But so as far as the aimed screen names, yeah, a lot of thought went in.

I did not go back and find old chats. That might have been a good idea. I did go back and research emoticons. Those are authentic emoticons, nothing but the most authentic emoticons throughout. So a tour of screen names of characters who, I think all of the ones whose screen names appear, one girl army 86, a five-iron

Iron Frenzy, it's okay to cheer Five Iron Frenzy. The cheers for Skillet I'm not feeling great about. They're a little Christophascist, I shouldn't say a little. Five Iron Frenzy, we fucking stand, okay? The song is about feminism, and yes, this was a woke Christian ska band in the fucking 1990s. All right? They were teaching us about the history of American colonialism. They were apologizing for Christian homophobia.

and they got a horn section. So this character, the pastor's niece, she's a gentle kid who's quietly being pulled toward rebellion against church patriarchy, one-girl army. The character, Alexa, my heart, anyone who's read, you'll like Alexa. She says the most F-words of anyone. She likes attention and she likes the power

that comes from making things awkward, perhaps by talking about sex in front of youth group boys. Her handle, of course, is let's talk about Lex, baby. Goodbye Sky Harbor, with lots of zeros and punctuation. Emo girl, Paisley Grace, who goes by PG, is our most online kid, lots of emoticons. And her handle is a Jimmy Eat World song about faith and doubt, which very much aligns with her character. Bobby, the anime girl, her handle is Hear It in My Ghost, a quote from Ghost in the Shell, about intuition and sensing something about the universe.

She's drawn toward the mysteries of the stars. Spencer's already referenced the Michael W. Smith song in the pastor's son's title because Spencer... What's up? Spencer knows a lot about evangelicalism. My place in this world is Josiah's handle. He's a buttoned up dude. Of course, he goes with a nerdy-ass song,

but there is a deeper meaning about a young man searching for a place that he can belong. bad boys boobies the numbers boobies right the calculator numbers Amir he is a Detroit Pistons fan who likes boobies that is brave that is truly brave

it's called literature the Caleb's you'll get to meet the caliphs in just a moment the Caleb's aim names were the dumbest shit I could think of with one second of thought each lots of Wario and Madden and just the dumbest shit ever and finally

the narrator, the protagonist Isaac, his handle was something my daughter said one day that I thought was brilliant so I wrote it down into literature those three words were sharks with rabies

Are you willing to divulge what your childhood aim, screen name was? So my middle school basketball nickname. Great start. Was bug with two G's? I don't remember why. But everything was a play on that. Probably just playing along with whatever trend was in hip-hop at the time. there was probably a snoop buggy bug.

But someone said, oh, no. Thank you. Thank you for that. I want to take us to the end, and I'm not going to spoil Isaac's turning point. I'm going to say towards the end of the book, for those of you who just bought it tonight, you'll know it when you get there.

I'm actually curious about you and because I'm aware that this particular event that Paul's Isaac in the book is one of the non-biographical not autobiographical events in the book did you have a particular inciting incident for your own deprogramming? Did it happen gradually? What were, do you have anything in particular

that you can credit for that? So it was kind of a lot of of a lot of little things, which I sort of tried to show in the book. I tried to demonstrate it with this voice in Isaac's head that's always yelling at him, and the voice is kind of, Isaac starts to push back on it, which is kind of how I remember it. The original device I used was a jinga tower falling apart as, you know, all these little moments of, like, you see an LGBTQ friend get outed

and learn to hate themselves because of something a pastor is saying, which that was a moment that, I mean, that's kind of how you end up at a Trevor Project fundraiser is if that was a moment that has annoyed the fuck out of you for almost your entire life. Lots of small moments, you know, just little stuff

like you learned something about science that doesn't line up. You read a little too much Jurassic Park. You find a Bible verse. It doesn't square with another Bible verse, and you're taught, well, there's no contradiction. That's how you end up hosting a podcast with Emily Kirk about celebrating the Bible's contradictions. What do they mean? They are there.

So let's explore the mysteries of those contradictions. The final boss for me, which probably not going to be a big surprise, is, well, the word right up there with the big red letter, the belief in eternal conscious torment for me was the thing that kept me locked in. I have to believe all this shit, no matter how much I don't. or else, it's got a red letter. And it was not until really recently that I finally let go of that. Like, y'all have been listening to this podcast since it happened.

Like, I left church decades ago, and it was really not until I went back and found actual theological arguments from Christians for the past 2,000 years that the more fitting story of humanity and the universe is one in which the universe itself is striving for the redemption of all things, not discarding parts of itself to eternal torment. Once you get there, they can't hurt you anymore. So I see the inciting moments and I see the finishing blow, I guess.

And then just a million little moments in between. for more you okay okay how about a fun question how about some red meat for these sharks

the word niche niche The word niche has been applied to this podcast by By the way, we've spoken her name in the show before and a lot of y'all don't seem to realize this. I'm not going to tell you what episode, but Ryan says her name. Yeah, hold on.

Let me find it right here. Melissa Bell. Oh. I don't care. Go tell God. Fuck her. A lot of y'all think it's Matt Iglesias. We have many other reasons to fight him in the parking lot,

except we won't because he has dirty hands. We wash our hands of him. Yeah. I'm sorry, I mean, I forget him. I literally saw him in the bathroom not watching his hands. Y'all, we've never told a joke. He's the filthiest person. Okay.

Anyway. The word needs to be applied to this podcast. We've told the story, alluded to the story many times of how Vox let us walk from their company with this feed for nothing, because that's how much they thought it was worth. That's how much they were paying us. You ran into a lot of the same tenor of

responses trying to sell this book, and those are stories we haven't told on the show, and I was wondering if you wanted to share any of those. So... I would love to. So, during, as we sort of tried to do a little promo tour for this, one thing a lot of people have asked me is like, how is college football like religion, right? And it's, Jesus, where to begin.

One thing that jumps out is the map. Because media companies are headquartered right here. College football happens here, right? This is how we sold Banner Society, by the way. We said your audience is here and here, and we are. here and here, upside-down tea. And it's literally an inversion of your map. And everybody in the room making $400,000 more than we were, said, what?

I remember my first day, my first meeting at SB Nation, I walked into a room, and the only two Southerners were on this couch. And then Ryan got there, too. So we were, but he was a New Yorker at the time. Tampa is really the Midwest. Florida doesn't count. No. Tampa special.

hand handle. So the general knowledge base about, you know, these two subjects, college football and religion, are very bubbly. And I think people who live in tall buildings in big cities with lots of media influence do not believe themselves to be people who live in a bubble. That's funny. I think the rest of us know we live in bubbles, right? So we have that going for us. So we invented go-carts to bang our bubbles into each other. Yeah, they just balk a lot, and sometimes they permeate. So the podcast was called Too Nish by New York City Media Executive. While pointing at a picture of Nick Saban on a flyer for our live show in Birmingham

during SEC Media Days Week and saying, see, I don't know who this is. Mind you, this is Vox Media, where SB Nation, the sports stuff, pays all the bills. And what paid all the bills at SB Nation, friends and neighbors? Well, the college football coverage. Fraud. And card show. That and card show. Fraud.

He's not lying. No. So much fraud. Oh, my God. So when I started looking into the New York City traditional publishing industry, I tried to sell them on, you know, the fact that like tens of millions

of people grew up like me. Millions of us have questions about that time. There's a growing ex-vangelical movement on the internet. There's these podcasts and lots of people listen to, these big Instagram accounts. There's nonfiction books coming, you know, there is this section of people who, you know, everyone has heard the phrase lapsed Catholic. Everyone knows what it means. Ex-vangelical, ex-evangelical, has been invisible in pop culture at large for a long time, partly because the evangelical is so good at telling its own stories.

Everyone knows Left Behind, right? But no one knows about, like, the kids who had to read Left Behind. So, I got some good feedback from, you know, agents publishers about, like, this book is funny. Love the mission. Love what you're doing.

You seem to be saying mean stuff about Republicans. We love that. We want you to know we're good people. It's funny, but and this is a quote, it arrived in October 2021, I believe.

Someone who gave me three words of praise for the book, then said, but it's too niche. They should have known. They had no idea that they had just spoke on the token word that unlocks our fucking superpower. I said, dog is fucking on is what happened.

So, based on publishing industry analysis, and there's an article at Countercraft you can find that breaks it down that the average traditionally published book is going to sell less than 5,000, right? So I'm like, okay, that's my goal, sell 5,000. Here on the day of the novel's last, launch, it is nearing 7,000. What, like it's hard? Including 600-something copies bought by absolute maniacs for incredibly high prices

just because they knew the money would be going to the Trevor Project. But Jason, I thought we were in the South. Including ending in an hour, the final, the 420 edition of our 666 hard covers, which also includes artwork by this young lady right here. Some insane person is paying over $1,000 for this. So if this is niche I'm a stay niche So I wanted to ask about the documentary Wild Things

Let me tag in Isaac He has so many thoughts Actually the alternate intro that I was going to go in With this as a joke was So Jason we're going to rank the world's religions Tonight from worst to best Let's start with the worst. I know you're ready.

What I wanted to ask, what... We've done this 10 or 12 times on the show and it just never makes it into an episode. Edit that out. Do it in front of a whole crowd full of people, but edit it out for a podcast. Dark match. Was that your question?

You'll never find out what we think of Calvinists. Sorry. Never. They don't care. that's kind of the beauty that's super fair yeah they don't they like say what you want it's already decided bro it's done

Lutheran sleeper hit A lot of the book is set in a certain time and place and I don't mean geographically but culturally and this is maybe an unfair question but too late here it is do you think the world you are depicting in this book

the evangelical world how much does it bear a strong resemblance to the evangelical world that exists now? Do you think things have changed? Do you think things have gotten more calcified? Like if you were, if

your daughter were to write the version of this book 15 years from now she's never been to church Yes, yes, but if you're talking about I guess my question is like what, do you,

think this is like this is what it was like and now it's different or is it like yeah pretty much same so here are the ways it's changed one their music fucking sucks now they didn't appreciate tooth and nail records while they had it now everything is knockoff hill song Jeremy can't get the fuck out to the mask is off And everyone knows the year of the year is 2016. When there was no longer any dance about, well, we don't, you know, we want presidents to have upstanding moral character when they're Democrats.

At that point, there was a hard shift, a hard pivot, but not in terms of what they actually preached, because I heard it before then. But in terms of the level of allegiance that had to be committed to specifically hateful right-wing politics, like I often find online these conversations where someone will have a conservative orthodox set of opinions and appear, it seemed like they'll fit in just fine with the rest of these folks, and then they'll say, you know, I don't think a gay wedding is the end of the world. and that's it they're out of the club

that's it they're done they're they now have you know the one side has no reason to trust this person and the other side has just just rejected them so it is a down-the-ballot orthodoxy

that is enforced at this point that 20, 25 years ago there was a bit of wiggle room and it's gone very gone There's also, if I can throw in a kind of a converse to that, there's also the, and this is interesting in so many ways, but that's another show, the removal of agency from, you know, you've got a guy, you've got a guy running for president and you say to these people, because I have these people in my family. You say to these people where 10, 15 years ago, you wouldn't have put up on this with this. This is not the guy you want to be the leader. And they go, oh, and this is something.

much more chilling, because I had somebody in my family say to this, they go, oh, no, he's the vessel. It doesn't, it doesn't, yeah, it gets scary. He is the vessel by which, through which we are to enact, you know, capital G, capital B, God's plan. And not only does that remove agency and accountability from these vessels, it doesn't move the goalposts, it removes the goalposts and they're what you would call wiggle room uh they've they've I admire them they've lost all sense of embarrassment that's a really dirty thermos like as far as vessels go fortunately it's not still 2016 today yeah we fortunately it's not positive fortunately everything isn't 2016 forever citation needed right right welcome to

2016. I was going to go ask, because there's serious competition for this, all right, what sport is closest to the evangelical God? And why is it college football? Not the NFL, because I know they're trying. I know they try. Are they concentrated too much power in San Francisco? Nice try, Pelosi.

What did college football do with San Francisco? Moved it to the ACC. We're preaching the gospel of cookout. Just moving Bojangles and Jesus a little bit closer to Berkeley. Evangelical God is similar to Calvinist God, similar in my opinion, the Catholic God, similar to a wide swath of Western Christian gods. similar to a god invented by Augustine.

Augustine, go join Jeremy Camp. Both of you get the fuck out. This is a god that loves you with an asterisk. This is a god that wants you everything and will give you in return for it a version of everything. Is it possible to give everything? to give everything. No, no, it's not. You suck at it. You're terrible at it. So you should feel really bad about it. And that, to me, feels exactly like being an Auburn fan.

Auburn basketball fans, you may not be familiar. That's what's known as a dunk. Is it time? I want to hear from my boys, Jason. Yeah, it's time. The Shutdown Full Books Players. Yes, if you are a member of the Shutdown Full Books players. If I have approached you at any point in the past days, weeks, whatever, about playing a Caleb on stage, we would like all of you to crowd around that one might.

microphone okay this is our I see one of you approaching the stage don't be shy you know who you are I see I see I see another of you I see it I see here comes some more Caleb local celebrities what will fucking leach Jay goddamn Busby get your country ass up here so so you folks if you wouldn't mind introduce yourselves I will I will bring you the scripts that you will be on on your own to figure out. And additionally, Jamie is back up here. She's going to play the role of Isaac, all right? Valentine's Day, 2002, the Pizza Hut Buffet.

My name is Isaac, a born-again 10th grader, and tonight I'm the accountability group's interim leader. Beside our third picture of Mountain Dew, I place my copy of every young man's battle, a best-selling Christian book written by some guy named Steve, all about how to simply keep your brain from having any lustful thoughts ever, about learning brain hacks so powerful that a 15-year-old can walk past beach volleyball without oogling anybody. Our youth pastor told us to read and discuss everything but the last

chapter. Since the fate of my immortal soul depends on getting a bunch of freshman boys named Caleb, to follow instructions, here we go. Who wants to begin our book club, I ask, praying that the Holy Spirit will use this meeting to lead us to our pure minds and zipped up jeans? Well, boys, I love this book written by some guy named Steve. Really? I asked, relieved. What'd you love? Dog, I'll tell you what I loved about Steve's book. It's so freaking horny. Okay. Off to a rocky start.

my entire table full of Caleb scrambles to speak one of them has even taken notes the first Caleb to ever do anything resembling schoolwork Steve could have just explained how to reprogram ourselves but no my sanctified imaginations in tatters after Steve typed a zillion words

about his days of lusting after string bikinis cheerleader boobs jiggly glistening joggers jiggly glistening swimmers jiggly glistening I interrupt him knowing we will never run out of embarrassing quotes from Steve's book

you know how Christian men who try to be relatable by talking way too openly about desire yeah our assigned reading is the epitome Steve is like a youth pastor trying to give the whole world the dress code girls aren't girls aren't allowed to wear shorts only capri pants

capri pants are hot dummy astronaut suits would be hot. Our youth pastor sucks always bragging about drilling his milk even though we're not allowed to. At least when Pastor Jack brags about drilling his milk,

he pauses to defend America's freedoms. They're giggling, but they are genuinely perturbed. For a minute, I try discussing the Steve's least al-Bundi material, the parts about slavishly micro-analyzing your every thought, even while asleep.

You know, simple stuff. But the Caleb's retain control. Steve said, if you see boobs, you're robbing them from her future husband. Bro, boobs change when looked at. Like, the quantum light thing? Boobes have visual acuity based on movement? Wait, how some

time-traveling husband own her boobs? Aren't they her boobs? Whoa. That fits my dad's speeches about girls being actual human people. Signs and wonders. Caleb Wisdom. With big brotherly head nods, I encourage them to continue.

I am great at this. During the part about how me boning Steve's relatives would dishonor him, I'm like, imagine my mom writing, my faith-based womanhood depends on nobody porking my son. that suck for my mom because look at me, baby. I like Steve's chapter about how fapping isn't a major sin.

Unlike me pork in your mom. All sins are major, I say. Like an attorney advising against a crime that'll happen anyway. Someone said fapping is gay because it's a guy touching a wean. Someone else said it's murdered because it blasts a zillion babies face first into a T.J. Max catalogs photos of the capri-dance. What a way to go.

Which is worse? Gainess or murder? Murder! I managed to interject. At school. If you're not chasing girls down halls, screaming, Gimme S-E-X, like Jimmy Kimmel, you're gay. At church, if you're not sad about liking boobs too much, you're gay. Everyone's gay ever since the Twin Towers fell.

Steve's Christian, don't be horny books, isn't? Steve's Christian, don't be horny books, says instead of fapping, wait for a wet dream. Nature's loophole, Satan will never see it coming. Steve says to have longest wet dream street contests. Are any you bad enough dudes to dream wetter than me? That was fucked up. Will, you just made that up. What the hell? That's not in the book.

Ryu from Street Fighter says, Don't fight for victory. Fight to improve yourself. Victory will. Come. If Josiah were here, could he steer this back on course? Could C.S. Lewis?

Could anyone? You know Steve's parable about me being a sumer wrestler? and my lust to another summa wrestler, and we're bumping, jiggly, glistly, bellies to the bat? My man parts got tingling. Talk about a sumo surprise. When Steve says church girls are just as horny as guys,

I'm like, great. Now I'm never thinking about anything else. Huge a stumbling block imaginable, pervert. It's called dittling, you virgin. Oh, no. Now they're fighting over the notepad. Research time. Let's rank church girls by how much they probably diddle. Alexa would say she's number one, but she likes to mess with us, which rocks.

No, it's true. She's a skittling... Just in time, I punch his arm. Alexa, finding out, I let someone call her that. Last thing I need. Paisley Grace definitely hasn't dittled. her singing voice is too pure. You know who's the biggest X factor in the bad girls ranking? Isaac, I bet you... You idiots would explode if you discuss this for 30 seconds, I say,

snatching the notepad and ignoring my brain's instant top ten list. Does describing our friends like that fit accountability group? Substitute teachers should be fun. If Steve's book is right about girls being horny, shouldn't you write every lady's battle books about how not to stare at balls? Every lady's battle would be like, my fellow Americans, I too admire jiggly glisting ball sacks,

but Jesus said, Stop yelling, I whimper. Respecting our terrible youth pastor for getting anything done ever. No way am I going to tell them that the same Christian thought leader who wrote our awful homework has indeed co-written a book called Every Young Woman's Battle,

let alone that I've learned some of the things that get taught to girls at church. In middle school, they even had to play Sleeping Beauty while a prince, aka a future husband, defeated demons, aka non-husband people with disease spewing penises. Listen, I'm terrified I'll lead Serenity Grace into sin. I wish Steve's book could have outjiggled my lusts,

sumo, but this young man's battle rages on. Wait, are the arcane secrets in Steve's last chapter? That chapter is about not becoming gay, I say, which isn't how it worked

the Caleb's gaffa about needing that advice urgently because after all the jiggly glistening talk. They want to J.O. together. At church and school, everyone always jokes about being gay. Looking around, I feel worry. What if a gay person overhears our commotion? If we make that person think Christians are homophobes, we'll offend them toward hell. I whisper, hey, guys, maybe quit these jokes. That makes the Caleb's whisper jokes about me being

gay, but at least they're whispering. I'm great at this. I despise myself. I sucked at making Steve's book fix me. Every day my sins make the nasty world even nastier. So every night I pray to get crotch leprosy until my monster rots away. The other Caleb's look around, exposed. I feel scared because I know that kind of self-discussed myself.

I feel some sort of duty, but I can only mumble second-hand advice that I know is empty. Good effort, Sarge. Let's go play Street Fighter, Sumo Guy versus Sumo Guy. evenly matched in power, jigglyness, and respect. At the following week's Accountability Fight Club, I say, Caleb, I told my mom something. You told her I suffer from cartophilia,

which means I'm in love with Carmen San Diego. You bent dick, Arnold. Sounds like last week's meeting went well, Josiah says, elbowing me. Actually, I told mom about my guys discussing how best to think of girls. She's been in the middle of complaining about men getting promoted over her and about choir ladies scolding her in 1997, 1999,

and last September for not marrying anybody that she's semi-dated as if she chose my fatherlessness. People have opinions about my family I constantly discover. She suggested something for us, I say. First, tell me which streetfighter character you most respect. Street Fighter 2? Hyper, Super, Turbo, EX series, Street Fighter 3,

first, second? I don't care. Just give me a character. God! Right, Rad, the weird-haired Army guys. So... Air Force guy! Rad.

What if instead of doing the youth pastor thing being disgusted by girls? And instead of doing the world's thing, being brainless Jimmy Kimmel's, we treat girls like their... guile. Staying away if they're crouched because they're charging flash kicks?

Treating them respectfully. But sure, that too. One of the Caleb's tests Isaac's Hot Mom's Gile Plan, ordering cheese sticks from their pretty cashier and then returning. I saluted her, told her, ma'am, I respect your professionalism. Foolproof, except she laughed

so I'm in love, tell your mom it was worth a shot. Your mom's also worth a... I punch his arm. This respect thing seems like a good plan, way better than Steve's plan. But what about when girls want their boobs honked? Hey, does Uday Hussein's name spell 666? Isaac, when are you going to sprout a pair and ask the pastor's niece to leave space for Jesus with you? I reiterate my most common excuse. Can't take her anywhere until I can drive, plus the actual road blocks.

Like, you know, she's the freaking pastor's niece. If you're scared, say you're scared. You're such a Steve. Oh, God. Now they're chanting that at me. And calling me Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve. Certain that a pastor's niece won't date anyone until after she's married some televangelist

and his immaculately conceived a quintuplet praise band. Oh, yeah? You think I'm not good enough? Well, I'm not. But how dare you agree? In this life for the next, I say, studying my red plastic cups, Mountain Dew, light beams like a crystal ball,

I will see her whole entire sports bra. Caleb's gasp at my starry-eyed ambition. Josiah punches my arm so hard I don't swing back. My forbidden soulmate's cousin happens to be the guy I'm supposed to confess my thoughts to, and he knows a lot of wrestling moves. Life sucks. Okay, not to sound gay, Steve.

But I actually agree that ladies should be respected. Except the Bible acts like girls are, you know, property. Josiah half chokes on Mountain Dew then quotes our pastor's explanations of God-programmed, male-dominated households. Josiah explains that the Apostle Paul said genders have different roles, but are equal in Christ. Gael ain't the only guy with different versions, huh, Steve?

Um, all scriptures equally God-breathed, Josiah says, quoting Paul to defend Paul. If Paul's messages seem contradictory, we got to study harder. Huh? Oh, sorry, Steve, wouldn't listen. Busy thinking about jiggly glistened sumo wrestlers, get pre-pants. I'm so happy right now. That was a chapter 15 that you just heard. From, uh, from Jamie Howard, Andrew Klamma, Daniel Palmer, Jay Busby, Chile, Will Leach, and videographer Bridgett.

Yes. This is going on YouTube. so we can share literature with the world. We could blur your faces if you want. I mean we can, sure. So yeah, that's nearly the end of our show. The bar next door is open until midnight. So once we leave here, once we pack stuff up and whatever,

fellowship can continue until midnight. Just so you know, if anybody wants anything signed, I will be here until nobody wants things signed. I understand people also have stuff for a Mike Olstott jersey for Ryan to sign. I assume that's for Ryan. Where is the guy who had Ryan sign their Mike Alstott rookie card? It's true. There we go.

Congratulations to this man. Jason, can I provide a bit of religious orthodoxy before we go? This is a real letter that the Archbishop of New Orleans wrote in March 2010. Who I assume is the proprietor of a business in Covington, Louisiana, called Instigator, Ranch, and Hatchery. Dear Jim, thank you very much for your letter concerning the question, if alligator is acceptable to eat during the Lenton season. Yes, the alligator is considered in the fish family.

and I agree with you God has created a magnificent creature that is important to the state of Louisiana and it is considered seafood to be clear the Archbishop has just denied that alligators are reptiles wishing you God's blessings

I am sincerely in Christ most Reverend Gregory M. Amund Archbishop of North Brian, I have a question. The thing isn't baptized. What's all that water for? Damn, that's a really good point. Yeah, I just want everybody to know.

Thank you. So one last thing. Thank you to our Caleb. Thank you to my co-hosts. Thank you to our. A.V. team. Serber, Doug, Anthony, and Bridget, who are all associate pastors.

And Jacqueline as well. Erica and Evie. Fessor for contributing to our stickers pile. Anyone I'm forgetting to name, I'm sorry, blame it on original sin, which isn't real. And of course, Emily Kerr. Y'all have no idea how disorganized the last three months would have been without Emily. Like, my entire life would have been the full cast. They say it's not cool to talk about love.

Fortunately, I'm not cool. I love these people. I love y'all. Tonight is about love. And I don't just mean the kind of love you wave at a problem and call church. The money we've raised together for the Trevor Project is love put into action. Love with hands and feet. Love with hands and feet. I believe they do the kind of work that Jesus did.

I wrote a book. Here's a spoiler. It's about love. It's full of dick jokes. You've heard a few. And fart jokes. And anger and bitterness and fear and guilt and shame and self-disgust and self-hatred.

And it's about love. All of you, whether you were raised, religious or not, have been told about hell. You've heard, hell is a world beneath us or far away from us, a world made of fire that never stops torturing us and demons and pitchforks in Satan. Here's how we know that's not true. Catholics made it up. Jesus told us what hell is. Hell is a world in which the immigrant is not welcomed, the orphan is not housed, the oppressed does not go away. free and the sick are not physically, bodily, literally healed.

Hell is a world where LGBTQ children are kicked out of their houses by Christian pastors. All of you, whether you were raised like me or not, have heard at one time or another that this world, a world, a world. that is so much like hell at times would be better off without you. Here's what I was taught. I was taught hell is a world without God. But here is what else I know, because I've read the book of Genesis a lot. Your body has been animated by the breath of the spirit.

So here's another book, spoiler. If hell is a world without God, and if you are the breath of the spirit, then hell is a world without you. You've also heard things about heaven. Whether you've heard it from religion or from pop culture, you've heard that heaven is a place far away. A celestial playground for very good people who've earned angel wings.

You've heard heaven is a place that is not this world. But here's what Jesus taught. The kingdom of God is advanced right here, right now, brick by boring brick. Every single time the immigrant is welcome. the orphan is housed, the sick are healed, the oppressed go free, and LGBTQ people are treasured as images of God. So where is heaven? Is heaven a place far, far away from this world?

It's not cool to talk about love. It's not cool to say the best God. gospel theology I have ever heard comes from a pop song written in 1987. But completely, unironically, what Jesus taught is this. In heaven, love comes first. We'll make heaven a place on earth. And here's how you know that's true because MXPX covered it. Oh, baby, do you know what that's what?

Ooh, heaven is a place on earth When the night When the night falls down I'll wait for you and you come around And the world's alive When the sound of kids from the street outside When you walk into the room You're moving close and we start to build

And we're spinning with the size above You need me out in a way about love Oh, baby, you know what that's worth The heaven is a place on earth You say in heaven Love comes first We'll make heaven A place on earth