Stuff You Should Know - Hell! Hell! Hell!

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

What is Hell? It's complicated and depends on which religion you're talking about. We dive into this fiery mess and do our best to explain it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. St. Chuck Bryant. Hmm. And St. Jerome Rowland is out there as well. I'm not a saint. I'm a center.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. The first real episode of the new year. It is, Chuck. It's beyond the future now. It's 2021. That's so futuristic no one ever even used it in a sci-fi book. That's right. We had our, what we like to call our elementary school Christmas break, which means it's about three and a half weeks long. We work hard for that. We do. So you better treat us right. That's right, man. How was your holiday? Good? It was good. I finally got to just kind of disconnect and decouple and just relax and it was nice actually. I went, I went the entire time without cracking my computer open. I was really proud of that. Wow. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Like I did stuff on my phone that I needed to, but I just, there was a ban on opening

my laptops. Even just for funsies? Yeah. No porn? I didn't want to, I didn't want to see a computer or a keyboard for a little while and I was able to do it. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I just did. The porn was all just like, I just made drawings myself. Flipbooks. I love doing things on my laptop, but I was proud of myself for not looking at any work emails. I did a little bit at first because there's, you know, some buttoning up into the year stuff, but then I was just like, you know what? And you know what I put is my, I mean, you've seen my occasional auto reply, which is, if it's an emergency, please realize that there are no podcast emergencies, which is sort of true. It's, I think 100% true, actually. And you got your slide whistle?

I did. I don't have it with me right now or else I, dang, I'm sorry. We got to debut the slide whistle later because I got to hear that thing. Yes, we do. Thank you for that. Did you get your gift from me? I did. Okay, good. I thought that you would find that wildly appropriate. And it helped out our buddy too. That's right. And so we're just going to wade into some easy, peasy waters here with hell. Hell. This is tough, man. I was like, who's dumb idea was this? And I realized it was mine. I never forgot. Yeah. The COA here is that, I mean, people like, I think the Grabster helped us put this together. He said people make their entire careers out of just Dante's Inferno, much less concepts of hell. And it is very broad and dense and confusing.

And so this is sort of just a stuff you shouldn't have stabbed at it. Yeah. And let me just add to that that we are in no way, shape, or form biblical scholars, theologians. No. We're going to get a lot of stuff wrong. Yes. We're probably going to walk right past interpretations that are popular and widely accepted. Correct. We're like, this is just us talking about hell. So just relax. We already know we're going to hell. So there's nothing you can do to us that's any worse. So just calm down and enjoy the episode. How about that? Yeah. Enjoy this episode about eternal conscious torment. Yeah. And if you are a scholar of Dante, just don't even listen. Yeah. You will literally puke into your cupped hands while you're listening to this on the train

because you're that polite. That's right. Go back and listen to the science of Qt again. Wow. That was a reference to something that doesn't even exist yet. That's just heavy. Yeah. So Chuck, I want to talk first. I mentioned eternal conscious torment. And that is kind of like the broad spectrum of what most people walking around today in the western world, whether they're Christian or just familiar with the Christian concept of hell. Think of hell. It's where your soul is tormented, beaten up, bullied, maybe talked about behind its back, set on fire. And in this state, there's no dying. There's no death of the soul. The soul is immortal. So this pain, this torment, this horribleness just keeps going on forever and

ever and ever. And that comes directly from St. Augustine who kind of plays big into this concept of hell. But the idea that there's an immortal soul, that it goes somewhere after death, and that depending on how it behaved here on earth, it may or may not face eternal conscious torment. That is seriously, it's a theological term that they use today. That strikes some people, some theologians as wildly disproportionate to the kinds of sins we're talking about here. Like you overindulged in fudge-browning mix during your time on earth means that you're going to be, to just suffer a literal, never-ending, infinite eternal torment of damnation because you overindulged in browning mix. That just doesn't quite jibe for some people. So

there's been other alternatives that were posed many, many years ago, that were actually around in some cases before eternal conscious torment came around. That some people are saying like, hey, maybe this is a better interpretation of what's actually going on with hell. Are you familiar with those other interpretations? Well, which ones? Namely, universalism and annihilationism? No. This was that thing that I was saying, we've got to talk about these. So check this out. I'm going to let me wow you for a second, okay? Okay. Because these are to me the softer, gentler versions of hell. One is that universalism, another term is universal salvation. And it's this idea that there is an end, there's a finite date to the to the torment

and that you're basically going to hell depending on how badly you sinned. But over time, you can kind of work that sin off and you will eventually come out the other end saved and go to heaven. And that that happens to everybody. Everyone is, is, it can possibly go to heaven through this idea. The other is annihilationism, which makes a lot of sense too, if you believe in this kind of stuff, that the people who are saved, the righteous, the virtuous people who are going to go to heaven, they go on to heaven after they die. Everybody else just ceases to exist. They're annihilated upon death. There's no hell, but there's no heavenly reward for those people. I like those a lot more than eternal conscious torment. The thing is eternal conscious torment is so

gripping. Yeah. That it's, it's like, this is, this is, this is just what people think of when they think of hell. And apparently, if you're an evangelical in particular, and you believe in anything but eternal conscious torment, you're, you're, you're flirting with being shunned by your peers because you're, you're going in the face of orthodoxy. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's a lot to unpack. I know you grew up fairly Catholic and I regret how many times I've had to say the word Baptist on this show. I feel like there's a lot of people taking a shot right now. If this is the stuff, you should know drinking game. But I can't not mention that growing up Baptist, it's a very, you know, it's a very fiery, brimstoney religion. And it's, I very much grew

up with the concept, this very sort of trophy concept of heaven is this, you know, lovely place where God lives. It's in the up there in the clouds. And you go up. And then if you're not good, then you go down to somewhere, I guess, in the center of the earth where the devil lives. And where Satan pokes you and where you are, you know, there's lakes of fire. And it's all very scary. And, you know, it wasn't until I got a little bit older that I realized that these are stories told to get children in line. Yeah. And not just children, adults who go on to continue to believe in hell, you know, and to subscribe to this stuff for sure. It's definitely a way to keep people in line. But the concept of hell generally in the concept of souls, and this is

probably no surprise to most sort of critical thinkers, but it, you know, the idea of being worm dirt. And after you die, that's just it is a lot to take on as you approach that day. Yeah. So it is really, it makes a lot of sense, I think, that people from very early on started to think about the concept of a soul, a self that lived on, and, you know, it just makes sense that there's a quote, good place and a bad place. Yeah. But the thing is, is apparently it doesn't seem to have necessarily been in just like part and parcel from what Ed's saying, and from what I saw elsewhere in the research is that heaven seemed to have developed first very early on. And then there was a real

emphasis on symmetry in the ancient and like pre-modern world, where if you had one, you had the opposite and equal proportions. So eventually over time, that kind of was like, well, if there's this really lovely place that's like paradise after you die, then there has to be the opposite of that, the antithesis of that too. And that's where this development of hell came from. But the fact that hell wasn't, hasn't always been around or as long as, you know, the idea of the afterlife. And then the idea that it wasn't ever, it hasn't always been this place where you're, you were subject to the most cruel kinds of punishments available to the human imagination. Yeah, for overeating. Right, yeah. That that's not as old as the idea of the afterlife

either. That was really surprising to me, but it's pretty neat because it's weird. It's almost like humanity got infected by a germ of real meanness and in darkness that we're still living with today, and that you could kind of trace it in the evolution of our idea of hell as well. Right, or to the beginnings of Twitter. That's right. That's evil incarnate. It depends on what religions you're talking about, but virtually every religion has some sort of afterlife concept. Early Judaism, of course, certainly does. If you read back, Ed described something from the Sumerian underworld where they kind of more talk about hell as, or the afterlife, I guess, is just sort of boring. Yeah. And there wasn't, you know, you didn't go to a

fiery place where you're tormented. They talk about, you know, being thirsty and eating dust, certainly unpleasant. Yeah. But then this idea starts where you can be in a better place in the afterlife according to what you've achieved on earth, but not necessarily good deeds at first. Like, if you're really rich, then you're going to go to a good place because your family could afford to bury you with food and drink and jewels and gold and stuff like that to carry with you to the other side. And that would put you in a much better standing. But again, this is not like, I was a good person. This is just, I died rich. So all these really valuable things they could put underground and bury with me. Right. But in the same way, too, the living could care for you.

They could, you might not be rich, but your family might care so much about you that they come on every Sunday or whatever they called Sundays back when the Sumerians were running around and bring you like a little food and a little beer or something like that. And they were sustaining you in this place where everybody else was eating dust and dirt, but your family so loved you because you've been such a good person during your time while you were alive, that they were coming and bringing you like bread and beer. And in that sense also, Chuck, it's really kind of poetic because you that person are living on in the memories of your family after you died because they're coming and keeping your memory alive by bringing you

bread and beer and all that. And so in that way, you are living on in this kind of immortal means as well. But the converse of that is really disturbing and that if you don't inspire people to care about you afterwards, like you really cease to exist. Like there's no one on earth who's thinking of you or honoring you. And in that sense, if there is no afterlife, that is annihilation. That is true oblivion. What Disney or Pixar movie is it? I saw it recently that has to do with this. It's brutal. Like you're being erased until you're remembered after death. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless. No, I know it's called Inside Out maybe.

No, that's the one about the emotions, which is equally brutal. Yeah. I don't think that's the one I'm thinking of. I thought the kids like imaginary friend was being erased or demolished in the end. Oh, was that in that movie? I think so. Yeah. Remember the elephant that was like George Clooney's friend? Richard? Are we gonna ask it right now? It certainly seems that way. Oh, I can't remember. And this is officially marks the first podcast of the year where people are screaming at us. Which is coincidentally the first podcast of the year that we recorded. That's right. I think it's ancient Egypt where the first idea of this weird sort of afterlife judgment panel sort of steps in where there are people like literally

in charge of this thing, almost like a bureaucracy. And there's an administration and it sounds a little bit more like Sammy Davis Jr.'s sitcom pilot that failed. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. She-Devil? I don't remember. It definitely wasn't She-Devil. It was something like that though. Yeah, but it was pretty good. The show was? I mean, the like one minute trailer I saw made it seem pretty good. But this, you know, their ancient Judaism sort of overlaps with some of this stuff. But Judaism, it's a whole different thing because, you know, they have references. There's a lot of references to things that were later just sort of rewritten and re-translated as hell, which makes it really confusing if you look at ancient texts.

Yeah, Judaism had Sheol, which is, it kind of follows in that same tradition from the pre-Christian era that like when you died, there was an afterlife and there wasn't much to it. It wasn't bad. But it's not a place, right? It wasn't particularly pleasant. Yeah, apparently to the early Jews, they were basically saying like, this is, it's the state of mind after death more than like if, yeah, an interdimensional physical place that exists outside of this world, not like a realm. But yeah, like you're saying like a, yeah, like a, I guess a state of mind as far as that goes. But it also suggests that you still have a mind after you die. Well, and it also suggests that, I mean, there's a little bit of the punishment and reward, but it's

not necessarily you go to the fiery place or you go to heaven. It's a little more of a spiritual connection. Like if you did good on earth, you're going to spend your afterlife little closer to God. If you're not such a great person, you're going to be, you know, a little further away from God. Right, right. But, but overall, the point of she all was that no matter what you did on earth, no matter who you were, good person, bad person, it doesn't matter, you were going to go to the same place. And even at the time, apparently they realized that this was unjust. There is like a part of, I think Ecclesiastes that says that the fact that there are, that everybody goes to the same place no matter how good or bad you are in life, this is the injustice that is done under

the sun. The same fate comes to everyone. Right. Which I didn't realize that Ecclesiastes rhymed, but got a nice beat to it, nice tempo. It doesn't all rhyme, does it? I don't think so. I was kind of surprised at any of it rhymed. But that's a really important point, Chuck, that to these ancient people, whether they were the early Jews or the Canaanites or or the Egyptians, there was, there was not punishment in the afterlife. God punished you during life. Like you, you were suddenly, you know, like directly or something like that. That was punishment from God. As we kind of evolved away from that, the idea that God had a direct daily hand in our lives as a, as a species, that punishment moved to the afterlife rather than

during this life. Right. Which is not recognized in Judaism, of course, as New Testament stuff. No, and there was something else that stuck out to me is what we'll kind of see in a second. Judaism seems to have developed as a religion as, as contrary to some of the other religious beliefs that were around. Like they seem to have really kind of opposed the Canaanites. The Canaanites were into child sacrifice. They, they had multiple gods. And the, the Jews kind of played off of that. Like some of these, these devils that we understand today, demons like Moloch and Baal, you know, BA, apostrophe AL, those were actually Canaanite gods. And they kind of perverted the, the pronunciation of them to kind of mock them or make them seem other or different. And

you think like, well, that's not very nice. That's one religion disparaging another. But at the same time, the early Jews were saying like, also, we shouldn't be sacrificing children. Like that's not, that's not a good thing to do. Let's practice this other thing instead. So I'm, I'm kind of a fan of their, of early Judaism, it turns out. I had no idea. You should convert. I just might. Should we take a break? I think we should. All right, let's take a break. We'll read up a little bit on whether or not you're allowed to convert. Okay. Because I don't even know. And then we'll be back right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing

can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody,

yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major

league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you converted? I looked it up. I'm not allowed to. It would require me to be religious. Oh, well, interesting. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about the sort of the confusion of,

I mean, a lot of the confusion in what we think of as hell lies in just these texts, some Hebrew texts and translations and mistranslations and stories that are told, the old game of a telephone that happened throughout the years while these things were passed on. So there's a lot of things over the years that you've thought of sort of as a generic hell like Hades, which was Greek, the Greek underworld, also synonymous with the shield, but not hell. There's Tartarus. That's in the Old Testament also from the Greeks. That more closely resembles hell from what I could tell. Yeah. And that's like a part of the underworld where God's imprisoned enemies. There is like

punishment. It's fiery. And maybe that concept, like a lot of this, what we're doing is sort of unpacking what we think of as hell now and sort of where this stuff came from. And it seems like Tartarus is definitely one of those places. Yeah. And like Hades and Sheol more closely resemble Purgatory or Limbo, where Tartarus, yeah, is definitely hell hell. Like that's where torment and fire is. And all this stuff, this really kind of popped up to me. It's like, wow, this is like our, what we think of as hell today, even like the cartoon hell with like the pitchfork and the fire and all that stuff. The fun one. This is some ancient stuff that it's built on. Yeah. Over eons, you know, like the earliest people who started burying their dead because they thought

like maybe there was a life afterward. And it just kind of evolved from that kernel. And more and more civilizations came along and added to it and subtracted to it and said, no, you're wrong. No, you're wrong. And let's go to war over this. Like hell is like this hammered steel drum that's been hammered out by, you know, millennia of people and cultures. And it sounds pretty good. Yeah. I thought you were about to say by John Bonham. Did he play a steel drum? No, but it just, you sound, it sounded like the intro to a Led Zeppelin song there for a second. Gehenna is something else we should mention. This is another kind of quote unquote hell. But this was a real place. It was a literal place near Jerusalem where it

sounds like it was kind of a, some sort of ancient, what's the word I'm looking for? Not necessarily a, where do you take all the trash? We did an episode about it. Land fill. Yeah. Sort of a landfill on fire. Okay. This one interpretation. Which is a great record title, I think. Land fill. Yeah. Why not? But this is where they like would take stuff to burn trash basically. And there might have also been child sacrifice happening there because I guess they figured, well, there's a fire already happening. So we won't have to start one. It depends on what source you're looking at. But it became a metaphorical hell where a place that was on fire, you could be sent there. It was a place of judgment. You could be cast unto it.

And that's in the New Testament, of course. So that's another sort of Hades-like, I guess usage that just makes it all the more confusing. Yeah. But again, like, you know, as we're getting further and further along and deeper and deeper into Christianity, which we haven't quite hit yet when Gehenna was first introduced because I think that's Jewish, right? It's like a Jewish… Yeah, I think so, even though it is in the New Testament, which is even more confusing. Right. But it kind of shows you how like connected, like these civilizations and groups were over the ages, you know, that this still popped up. Well, just borrowing things from one another. Exactly. But then as these translations,

you know, kind of go on over the centuries and there's newer and different versions of the Bible in the New Testament, the Old Testament, like, you know, all of these things just become this generic hell, which kind of opens it up to making hell this big, huge, amorphous place where, oh, it's like this, but it's also like this and it's like that. And by naming everything just hell and losing that kind of the ethnicity involved, the Christians were able to kind of wholesale adopt all of these ancient traditions and conceptions of hell into their own version of hell. And this is the Christian hell, whereas if you kind of start poking behind it, you're like, oh, this Christian hell is made up of all these other conceptions of hell along the

way. So as far as like… And I love that Ed calls this section the topology of hell. But that's sort of, you know, a big part of it is… And we mentioned a little bit heaven as this place where God lives that's above you up in the sky because it's pretty… No one really knows exactly where all that comes from, but it all does make sense that, you know, you look to the skies when you pray, you look up when you're talking to God. And if that's the case, then it makes sense that, like you said, with the symmetry that there is another place. We bury the dead underground. It makes sense that there would be a place that's deep and dark and fiery, I guess, you know, cave-like, deep underground. That stuff is scary. So it makes sense that hell just sort of became

this place that's, for lack of a better word, under our feet somewhere. Yeah. And what was interesting to me is that like disconnected groups and cultures, not just geographically, but through time as well, all had that same conception that like hell was underground and heaven was somewhere above us or in the sky. Like the Mayans had a place called Shibalba, which is like, I guess, translates to a place of fear. And that is when you die, you start out there and it's underground and it's hellish and scary and you have to work your way up basically into the sky to paradise. And she all was underground. It was connected to the grave. And that seems to be where this idea also, not just that heaven was in the sky, so hell must be

underground, but also that there has to be some connection underground because we've been burying people or at least putting our dead in deep, dark caves for at least 130,000 years from what I've seen, but it may even go back before that. And Neanderthals, I think, buried their dead even. So it's a really kind of ancient impulse to like put your dead underground or in some underground subterranean place like a cave chamber. So of course that would be connected to the afterlife in some way. But it is interesting that it's like, as far as I can tell, there's not a single culture that's like, oh yeah, that's where heaven is, is underground. Yeah. And it's like, I find myself saying, well, it makes sense because you climb your way out of

hell with good works toward heaven. Like it's sort of a chicken or the egg thing. Like it makes sense to me, but it only makes sense because that's the way it's always been framed. Yeah. There's a few thousand years of culture behind that, that way that you were raised or I was raised, you know? Yeah. So you mentioned purgatory. This is a realm of the afterlife. Purgatory is, it's like a waiting room where you were waiting to be judged. It is not, it's not like a great place. It's not like an awesome waiting room with like the best magazines. It's more like the waiting room with boys' life and highlights. Right. Nothing but highlights and boys' life and all of the puzzles are already filled out. Yeah. Or, oh man, the worst is any

doctor's office where it's nothing but like medical and health magazines. Yeah. No one wants to read that stuff in there. No, no they don't. You want to read a three-year-old sports illustrated. Right. And everybody else in the waiting room is not wearing a mask. Oh no, thank you. It's the 2020 version of hell. Dude, that's my new nightmare. I'm having those about three times a week. I don't like that. Where I'm being descended upon. They seem like zombies, but they're just people without masks. Right. It's weird. Potato potato. But you know, it's funny, has this happened to you where you watch like movies or TV shows or something pre-COVID? Yeah, sure. It's like, you're way too close to that person. Get back. Like, we have

been changed, man. Possibly forever. Oh, I think you'd be surprised how quickly we'll forget. I hope so. Oh man, I hope so. I hope this all just becomes like some bad dream that just fades over time. I don't know. My mom's getting vaccinated this Saturday. Good for her, Jack. She needs to do it live on Instagram or something. Yeah, she was like, you know, should I have any reservations? I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And she's like, well, then I mean, I have to wait in line. You're like, oh, those reservations. Yeah, make reservations. Yeah, make reservations. Rezzies. But yeah, stuck, being stuck in purgatory is not a good thing. So it's not, it's not hell, but it's not someplace where you want to be. That's why people, you know, use that term now,

like I'm in purgatory. Yeah. And there's something about purgatory that I hadn't really realized is it's not interchangeable with limbo. When you go into limbo, you're there forever. Like, that's where you spend eternity. Sometimes by no fault of your own. Like this is where people who lived before Christ ever existed go after they die because they can't possibly have been Christians. So they're not being punished, but they're not being rewarded by, you know, in heaven. It's kind of mean. Purgatory is a place where you, I guess, have to have been a Christian, but maybe a lapsed Christian, a Christian who sinned, something like that, to where you can work it off and, you know, go on to heaven. And that's kind of that universalism or universal salvation idea. It's like,

that's all there is to hell is purgatory, where you can work it off over time and be saved. And then it also really jibes too with this idea, Chuck, of the Buddhist hell, basically. The Buddhists have a concept of hell where I think called Naraka, which is also a Hindu concept. But there's this idea that you're there for very, in each of these hells, you have to go through these hells. And your lifetime there is very specific. Like your lifetime in this hell is 1.62 trillion years. And then the next hell is like, you know, quadrillion years or something like that. But you eventually work your karma off on earth. And if there's a real striking resemblance, this Buddhist hell to some, you know, Christian and Jewish interpretations of hell,

or I should say, some Christian interpretations of hell, where you can work off your bad deeds and then go on to Nirvana or heaven. That's because they all borrowed from one another. It's really, I mean, that's basically the fact of the podcast is that there is a lot of incestuous interchange between the religions overlap. That's another way to put it. What I think is also interesting is the concept of temperature in hell. It's a very big deal. You always think of fire and heat and sweatiness, but that is not always the case. There are frozen hells aside from, you know, the Dakotas that Naraka, you were talking about. I think that's a frozen hell, right? Yeah, there's eight hot hells and eight cold hells. And the eight cold

hells are like, in this one, your skin starts to blister. In this one, it's so cold that the blisters break. And then it just keeps going from there. Like all these horrible things happen to you from being exposed to the cold. Yeah, it's very interesting. I guess it's just sort of a variation of the same thing. Like something really cold can burn you. Yeah. But I mean, it really kind of gives you this idea, Chuck, there's like so much thought has been given to all the little horrible details of hell. And I wonder like, what that satisfies? Like, couldn't you just be like, okay, we all believe that there's a hell and it's a horrible place, as bad as you can imagine. Just go with that. What was the purpose of going into all this detail?

I think the specificity, if hell and sins on earth are to be punished in the afterlife, to me, it would make sense that there would be a great specificity put forward. So people know exactly how bad it is in order to inform their deeds on earth. Like it's not just, hey, it's a bad place. You don't want to go there. It's like, it's a place where your skin will melt off and you will be, you know, you'll have to push this fireball around for eternity or whatever, you know. Yeah. And the person's like, fireball, that sounds terrible. You're like, I was okay with this thing, but maybe I should be a better person. I guess I won't steal this car after all. But it's all like fear stuff. And that, you know,

that existed right through my religion, you know, and still exists today. Do you remember roughly how old you were when you were like, oh, I don't actually believe this anymore. I'm free. It started in sort of middish high school, but I was still sort of doing this stuff and hanging with certain crowds, certain crowds. Do you mean like the opposite of certain crowds? No, you know, going to like Young Life and FCA and stuff like that, that into early college. And the big transformation, I think I mentioned this before, was when I took a religion class in college. And I did learn that so much of this stuff is kind of all the same and borrowed from one another. And that is antithetical to grow up in the Christian

Baptist church where they're like, no, no, no, this is the only truth. Everyone else is wrong. Right. And then when I said, well, wait about, what about all these other religions that are really, really similar? They're like wrong. Yeah. And so I had a, that was a big reckoning. And then it was just sort of gradual from there. Your comparative religion class was taught by Professor Louis Seifer. Oh man, he had a, he had a heck of a ponytail. I just remember that. I thought that was really clever back when I saw that movie. Yeah. And looking back, it's pretty dumb. Wasn't it Angel Heart? Yeah. I mean, good enough movie, very much of its time. But I remember thinking that Louis Seifer thing was like, whoa. Right. Right. There's a restaurant, I think in

like DC maybe? Louis Seifers. Yes. And I'm like, that's, that's an unusual choice to base your restaurant franchise on Satan. You know? Oh, I love it. Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's. All right. More judgment and punishment coming up right after this. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in

the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, you promised judgment. You promised punishment. Let's lay it on us.

Well, I mean, you know, this is like you mentioned earlier in the Old Testament, like God directly punished people. You could be smited or blinded or whatever. And the New Testament is when things got a little more organized and it was literally like, here's the sections of hell. If you did this, you go here. If you did this on earth, you go there. And a lot of this is informed by writers and not even like biblical scholars, like people like Plato. And a lot of these stories, again, are really, really similar. There's a story from Plato's Republic where a man named Err goes into a coma, journeys through the underworld, and then wakes up and then tells everyone what happened down there. And this has a lot of reward

and punishment included and a really organized system. And there are a lot of stories really similar to that throughout time that, you know, I don't know if they were based on Plato or the Republic or just like we've been talking about sort of overlap and incestuous. I think you can make the case that they were based on Plato because Plato, he wasn't the first to come up with the idea of the immortal soul and they're being like judgment and torment, you know, potentially afterward, if not reward. But he really kind of boosted it, I guess. He signal boosted the idea of an eternal soul and possible damnation. And he directly influenced Saint Augustine. And Augustine definitely influenced some of

these later guys like Dritthelm and Tundale and their idea of hell. But Augustine was influenced by Plato. And Augustine had the other distinction along with, I think Augustine and Saint Gregory were really kind of big time into that eternal damnation idea. But Augustine also was the one who basically said, this is orthodoxy. This is the correct interpretation of the scripture. If you don't believe it, we are fine with inflicting violence upon you. That same tradition of what you were saying where this is the only truth and anybody who believes anything else is wrong, that finds its source. At the very least, it finds its early popularity from Saint Augustine. So this idea of eternal damnation. And if you don't believe in that, you're wrong.

That kind of finds its place in the early Christian church in the 5th century. And so you do have these guys who came later, like Dritthelm and Tundale, who had nothing to do with scripture. But their experiences where basically they died and came back to life and said, there's a hell and it's awful. Really kind of informed our idea of what hell is like. And it seems to be based a lot on these ideas by Augustine who got his ideas from Plato, who got his ideas from God knows who. God does know who. That's true. If you really want to drill down, though, to where we get many, many of our ideas of what we think of as hell is Dante, of course, who we mentioned earlier. I did not even know Dante's last name until we researched this. And there's

going to be some great Italian coming up, everyone. Come on. But Dante Alleghieri in his divine comedy and specifically Inferno, Dante's Inferno, is really where we get a lot of what we think of as hell today comes from Inferno as far as, and people even say without even knowing, like, oh, the eighth circle of hell and stuff like that. Like, I've been guilty of saying that my whole life and not really understanding what the heck that even meant. But what's interesting, too, is so Dante wrote the Inferno, or he wrote the divine comedy in the early 1300s. I guess it took him 15 years. And so this is the 1300s, and he writes about these nine circles of hell, the nine concentric circles of hell. Like, that is a really ancient concept, even though he divided it and

like really enunciated all of the different distinctions in a really popular way. That's really old. Like, think of that Naracca. There's eight hot hells. There's eight cold hells. There's like this idea of different stages. Like, the Mayans even had this idea where you progress through these different stages up the tree of life from that dark underworld. That's a really ancient idea. But yeah, Dante was definitely the one who you would credit with this, you know, coming up with it even though it's totally wrong. Yeah. And it's also important to remember when Dante wrote this stuff, it was the last 15 years of his life, and this was after he battled the pope in the Catholic Church and was exiled from Florence. So a lot of this stuff is

just reeks of sort of having a bone to pick and like, hey, the things that happened to me, like they're going to be slotted in. Like, it's almost like using his own experience to create the symbolism of like, this is what happened to me, and that makes you the worst person if you did these things. Exactly. Like, I'm going to put you in hell in my book. Yeah. And I'm sure some of those people were alive and like, hey, man, don't put me in hell. Like, this is not, you can't do that. And he's like, I just did. You know? Here's a nice cube. Have fun. So he, Dante, one of his big things, and that I think made his work so famous too, was he really got into contrapasso. You want to take that? No, that was great. I didn't even pinch

my fingers and thumb together. And contrapasso is basically this poetic eye for an eye where, you know, if you do this on earth, if you sin in this way, your punishment is going to be some poetic justice in the afterlife. And that was the whole point of hell. As far as Dante was concerned, it was where God got justice for things that were done wrong here on earth. Right. And apparently, it said as much over the gate of hell. It said, It said, which means justice moved my high maker, which is basically saying like, this is what this place is for, is to get justice. And there's also a very famous inscription over the gates of hell, abandon all hope ye who enter here. And that came

from Dante's Inferno as well. How is that what that's from? That's good stuff. It really is. It was also used to great effect in boondock saints. So Dante and Virgil are, before they even go to hell, they have to cross the river Acheron and deal with Charon, the boatman, which is, you know, I think this has been used a million times too in literature and pop culture, like this boat person that has to transport someone across this river to a different place. Sometimes you have to pass a test, you know, like Monty Python style basically. And that's so weird. Right as I said that, I just looked up to our Aaron Cooper special Monty Python Photoshop poster where I'm King Arthur and you are

one of the knights and Strickland is in there too. Yeah. Isn't he like the page with the coconuts? Yeah. And he's also over there. Now I'm looking at a picture of me face punching George Lucas. You haven't been in this room in a while, have you? No, no, but I remember it pretty well. It's burned in your brain after 12 years. Yeah. So where was I? You were talking about the River Styx or Archeron and the boatman. Yeah, which might as well be the River Styx, right? Right, but it is. It's like straight up taken from the Greeks and yet this devout Christian

Dante is writing about it like the Christian hell and it really kind of goes to show you just how much literary license he took with this. Well, and how much he borrowed from the Greeks because like you would think this is probably the Christian stance on hell and it's not. Like for instance, Dante sees things that it's a virtue if you have moderation in your life. Right. Like you don't want to be too spendy and greedy. You also don't want to be too miserly, but that's not a Christian thing at all. Like that's not in the Ten Commandments. It's not one of the Seven Deadly Sins or anything like that. No, there's gluttony, but miserliness is not in there.

Right. Yeah. So he's definitely just saying, this is what I Dante think, but I guess it just hit a nerve because I mean like we were saying at the outset, like this is basically what people think of when they think of hell these days, if not the fire in the red pitchfork and all that. All right. So first circle, limbo, not purgatory, like we mentioned. This is where you can, like it's not terrible, but it is hell and it's sort of unfair. Like you said, if you're not like you could just be born before Christ and you could be in limbo. Right. Like Aristotle's there. Aristotle was great and virtuous and one of the greatest

thinkers the world's ever produced yet. He's stuck in limbo because he existed before Christ, so couldn't possibly be saved. So what's next? Lust is next. And this is pretty interesting too in that some other people who had seen visions of hell like the medieval knights we talked about earlier, they're talking about like, oh yeah, they nail your sack to a board with rusty nails or just really juvenile stuff. Dante goes a lot more poetic in that his idea of lust is, their punishment for lust is, lovers are blown about by the wind so that they can never quite get together. And there's always kept just out of each other's reach, which is, you know, it's a lot more poetic than the other one.

Did you say nail your sack to a board? Yeah. Like your backpack? Yes. Okay. All right. Third circle is gluttony. Here you're stuck in the mud and it's, you're being pummeled by hail and freezing rain. And this is where he got a little bit of his bone to pick out on Florence. And what a terrible place that was. The fourth circle is where we get into the greed and the miserly, basically the circle of immoderation, like don't go too far in either direction. Yeah. And he really kind of plays into that symmetry as well, where on the one side are the people who are super gluttonous and like spend just tons of money. And then on the other side,

there are the people who are super stingy and hoard their money. They're really two sides of the same coin. I think Dante is correct in that sense. And so they're both in that same circle of hell, but on opposite sides of the circle. The next circle. Balance. Number five. Anger. Yeah. That's, that's where those of us who are, who get road rage will be eventually. That's where I'm going to be unfortunate. All right. You're in the river sticks in that case. Yeah. Just lost it around being like, I'm so mad about everything. Circle number six, everyone feels like a Dave Letterman top 10. It does all of a sudden. These are heretics. These are pagans. These are atheists. These are people who while they were on earth were like,

Hey, I'm just going to have a good time while I'm here. I'm not worried about salvation. Yeah. And Epicurious in particular is there. And I was like, why Epicurious? And apparently, he very much in his followers to not believe in any kind of afterlife, which is why they're like, make the most of your time here on earth. I guess that's where I am. Yeah. It's basically another way to interpret that is that these were people who so discord by injecting alternative ideas into the believer's minds. All right. Well, maybe I'm not there then. No, like also, if you, if you don't believe in an afterlife and you're enjoying your time here on earth, you'd go there either way. Okay. You're screwed either way. Well, at least we'll be there together.

We also, I don't think we mentioned that Virgil, the poet Virgil is the one who's guiding Dante around through these things. And I guess his kind of acting is like his, what is the name of the guy from New York dolls and Scrooge Buster Poindex. David, yeah, Joe Hansen. He's acting as Dante's Buster Poindex. Okay. And so Virgil's escort him around, they get to the seventh circle of hell, which contains the city of Diss, which Diss, or is Diss in the sixth? No, I think Diss is. It's in the sixth. Is it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because in the seventh comes after. Yeah. So, and so a lot of, a lot of people kind of chop up these circles of hell into the first through third, the second through the sixth, and the seventh through

the ninth. And apparently Dante considered basically the first through the sixth is all kind of generally in the same category, which was they were sins of incontinence, where people just couldn't resist the earthly temptations. Yeah. They had a weakness of will. They're kind, you know, they're being tormented because they made these choices, but also this is really, it's forgivable stuff. Seven through nine is where, who he considers the genuine sinners, the evil people reside. Yeah. This is where arsonists and murderers that he actually frame, you know, suicide as one of these in that seventh circle, the eighth circle. And, you know, this is, it gets a little confusing because then there are smaller pockets within these circles. Right.

Right. And again, if you're a scholar of Dante, just, I'm so, so, so sorry. Yeah. Hopefully, they turned this off a while back. But the eighth circle is for 10 kinds of fraud. And then the ninth circle is finally where Satan is. And this is for Satan and as the lead trader, basically, not trader, but traitor. Right. Which is, you know, this is a big one for me. I mean, as a Pisces fan of Black Sabbath, fan of Black Sabbath, like loyalty and is very important, broken trust is to me, like one of the worst things someone can do. Sure. And so I didn't realize that was Piscian in nature. Yeah, pretty Piscian, very loyal, very friendships and relationships are sort of at the utmost importance to be betrayed as like just kind of the worst

thing you can do. Gotcha. So this would be your, you'd really enjoy this. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's my eighth circle. But it's interesting in that Satan, the ultimate trader to God is stuck there, but could get out in theory if Satan just realized that like, hey, I'm beneath God and I can recognize God as being above me and I'm not God's equal. And it's a frozen, it gets a little confusing, but it's a frozen lake. It's a little antithetical to what we think about as Satan is being fiery because what happens is the lake would thaw in free Satan if he wasn't flapping his big bat wings to try and fly up to God to prove he's as equal, but instead of Satan's wings, I guess, throwing forth like fire, which you would think it actually,

I guess, is icy and it just keeps that lake frozen. Right. But if he would just, yeah, if he'd just give up, then he'd stop beating his wings and it would thaw, right? Yeah. Then he would be free, but then he just wouldn't be Satan anymore. You know what I mean? Sure. He'd be a broken version of Satan and who wants that? That's right. Then we wouldn't have Sammy Davis, Jr. TV pilot. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So I mean, it's not like our idea of hell just ended at Dante or I was like, yep, that's it. Don't need to add to it. Like plenty of people have over time. One of the coolest I've seen, I cannot remember what it was, but I suspect it was an Aeon Flux cartoon on, remember, Liquid TV on MTV? I think somehow Aeon Flux ended up in hell and like this,

the weird conception of it was just so unsettling. Everything was just so off. It was really well done. I'll have to go like see if I can find it. All I could find was that Aeon Flux, the movie sucked. That's all you can find when you search Aeon Flux in hell right now. But I really want to find that again. If I do, I'll have to tweet it out. Yeah. I mean, you could do a whole second podcast episode on popular versions of hell and pop culture and movies and TV and literature, paintings, Serona Musbash is a great example. I love those paintings. This was a couple of centuries after Inferno, but these are the ones that look like sort of indie folk album covers. They're great. Very cool stuff. And like I said, there's scores of versions

of hell from Clive Barker to Marvel Comics to Sammy Davis Jr. in the good place. They're all over the place. So it's definitely something that's like, I don't know, it's just weirdly captured pop culture's imagination just as much as it did thousands of years ago with religion. You know, one of the greatest, one of the other great conceptions of the afterlife, not necessarily hell, but hellish, is found in this, I think I've mentioned it before, a Joyce Carroll short story called Night Side, where there's this seance and like the spirits that are contacted are like all freaked out because there's no, it's all just chaos. Nobody, I think they keep saying like no one's in charge and like everything's just out of order.

And it's a really like unsettling read. Like Joyce Carroll, it's so good with horror, but that particular one is super disturbing. I highly recommend everybody reading it. Yeah. And if you want to see a fun take on the afterlife, watch the great Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life. Oh my God, that is such a great movie. One of the all time great sleeper films ever. Wonderful. So good. Yeah, that's a good, that's a treat right there, Chuck. Good for you. The great Albert Brooks. Yep. Well, since Chuck can't stop talking about Albert Brooks, I think that means it's time for Listener Man. Fun fact, a lot of people know this. Albert Brooks, born Albert Einstein.

No. Yes. No. Yes, brother of Super Dave Osborn. I guess I had known that, but only when Super Dave died recently, right? Yeah, he did die. Their birth name was Einstein. I think Super Dave Osborn was Super Dave Einstein. No, I think it was Bob Einstein. Isn't that his real name? I don't know. I think so. I don't know. But that he's like from the Larry Budd-Mellman era of Letterman. Oh yeah. Good stuff. Oh yeah. So if you want to know more about hell, just start sending your A off and you'll find out about it soon enough. And like I said, since Chuck keeps talking about Albert Brooks, it's time for Listener Man.

Yeah, I'm going to call this one of our great senior listeners and this lady is from Australia. Hello, guys. I'm an 80-year-old woman in aged care. My life was very mundane and quite boring. I finally bought a mobility scooter now and I could get out and ride the wonderful pathways and visit the shops. My son, Robert, thought I needed more interest, so he hooked my phone up to Josh and Chuck podcasts. Nice. Wow. All capitals. How I love riding around on my scooter and listening to your wonderful humor and mostly interesting things in quotes. I love it. So perhaps she even has the book. I have learned so much about everything. Love, Elvis, visiting Nixon for a narc badge, building boulder, dam, Francis Perkins, et cetera. Just everything, guys. Keep

up the good work. Cheers from Glenda on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Very nice. That was Glenda, right? Yeah, just love hearing from Glenda. She's great. Thank you, Glenda. Yeah, I think Glenda should write in every once in a while to say hi and talk about her favorite recent episodes. I would love that. What do you think? Glenda, if you're listening, please do that. And was her son Richard? Robert. Robert, thank you for turning your mom on to stuff you should know. Yeah. Well, if you want to talk about how you turn somebody on to stuff you should know, we would love to hear about that. That's great. You can write us in an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to

podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.