Stuff You Should Know - Selects: The Tale of the Church of the SubGenius

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

The Church of the SubGenius is a religion, but really a parody of religion. Learn all about this group of weirdo outsiders in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our October, 2021 episode on the church of the Subgenius. It's a neat little romp through what started out as a couple of guys who liked pamphlets and turned a whole generation, well some percentage of a whole generation, into interesting people skeptical of anything someone is trying to sell them on. As you can hear from this intro, it's kind of difficult to describe,

so just enjoy listening to the episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there wandering around in circles, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast about the Church of the Subgenius at long last. When did you become acquainted with the Church of the Subgenius? I had a group of friends that walked on the outer side of life, darker side of life, less serious side of life, I'm not sure.

In the 90s, and there was one guy who was big time into the Church of the Subgenius. That's how it happened, right? Yeah, that was my first introduction. Then I actually came across the hour of Slack on Georgia Tech's student radio once, like in the early 2000s. Rec Radio. I never got into it, though. Are you actually like a secret subgenii? No, same as you.

I had a friend in college, a very influential friend actually, who turned me onto a lot of different things as I was just getting into college and exploring different ways of life and thought patterns. And sherm sticks. My buddy Jason, he turned me onto a lot of things in life and I've been able to tell him so, which is always a nice thing. And Bob Dobbs in the Church of Subgenius was one of them.

Yeah, yeah. And like you might not be utterly familiar with the Church of the Subgenius, but I'll bet there's a pretty good chance that a lot of stuff you should know listeners are at least familiar with it without even being fully aware of what it is. But there's a very, very famous picture of a clean-cut, mid-century, middle-aged dude with a pipe clenched in his teeth and almost like a Patrick Bateman psychotic look on his face.

Patrick Bateman meets Ward Cleaver. Exactly. Yes, Chuck. I don't think anyone's ever put it better than that. And that is J.R. Bob Dobbs, who is the high prophet of the Church of the Subgenius. And he has popped up everywhere from the background at Pee Wee's Playhouse. There was a sublime record that had him on there. Like he shows up all over the place. It's almost like code. And so you probably have seen it,

even if you're not familiar with the Church of the Subgenius. That's called the Dobbs Head. Right. Gathered from clip art, which we will see, it's kind of one of the fun end jokes, about a pseudo religion, a satire and parody of religion. And it's, you know, it was formed by two guys, we'll get into the history, but I have a sort of a favorite definition, and I know you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them.

Mine comes from Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle, and he said this, In the late 70s, the Church of the Subgenius was intended as a dogmatic antidote to a reemergent mediocrity, embracing an aesthetic in confluence with evolving new wave sensibilities and tropes in music, film, and pop culture. It was an end joke with a half serious punchline. Very nice. That was great. And yours was from Ed, the grabster himself. He kind of put it nicely. Yeah, also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said that the best way to explain the church is it is a joke, but to get the joke,

you have to see that it isn't really a joke at all, but is actually getting at harrowing truths about the world. Not bad, Ed. Not bad. So the whole thing... I think it scared Ed a little bit. I think so too. It's hilarious and cute. But the whole thing is that it is a parody of a religion, a parody of a cult, a UFO sex

cult, if you want to get technical. It's a absurdist in-joke and the whole thing is one big in-joke made up of like millions of tiny little in-jokes that anybody in the church can kind of generate and create. But it's all kind of hung on the skeleton of this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs, who is the world's greatest salesman, who is basically carrying out the will of an alien God who may or may not love us, or the subgenie, as they're called in plural. Either it sucks you in immediately and you're like,

I want to know more about this because this is hilarious or repulses you because it is making fun of everything that you hold dear. There's not a lot of middle ground, although I would count myself as somebody in the middle ground to tell you the truth. That was so awesome, Chuck. Nicely done. Yeah, what I just did there, and you'll see this a lot if you watch the documentary, if you see any YouTube footage of people from the subgenius church hanging out at one of their De-Vivals, they don't call them revivals, they call them De-Vivals.

They will do this thing where they kind of juggle their throat with their hand as they sort of do this weird chant. And I didn't find much information on that specifically, but I did see them doing it all over the place. Well, it is a huge, huge rabbit hole. And as we'll see, like, some people accidentally take it seriously. And that's not the right thing to do at all. That is a mentally unsound thing to do. That is not what the intention is or anything like that. The intention is to basically point out how just warped our consumer culture is. And it made a lot more sense in the 80s before our culture ended up becoming the parody that the Church of the Subgenius was carrying out. Yeah, it had a very Mad Magazine vibe, something I know that you and I both grew up loving and cherishing.

And I could see, if that's something as mainstream as you want to liken it to, to help people understand, it's almost as if Mad Magazine started a religion and Alfred E. Newman was the god. And it was all just one big joke about consumer culture. And then if people end up taking it seriously, you can really see why, like, that would be a very strange thing. Like, of course, Alfred E. Newman is not god. And of course, Bob Dobbs is not god or the prophet. But these two guys founded this kind of funny joke religion in the late 1970s because they were like-minded dudes. And what started as a joke grew into, I guess, a mini-phenomenon?

I don't know, man. I think it's... Or major phenomenon. I would say major as far as cult classic or cult phenomenon go. And also we should also, I think we should preface all this if it's not too late to all of the Church of the Subgenius members out there, past and present and future. This is one of those things where like, if you explain what makes something funny,

it is like, that's the least funny thing you can do. So if we traipse into that just by virtue of explaining things, we're sorry. I know. Because it is a fun, kind of cool thing that was created for people that felt like they were on the outside of things. Precisely, yes. For outcasts and weirdos who didn't fit in necessarily, they found common ground before

the internet by writing letters back and forth to each other. They kind of had the internet through pen and paper in these DeVivals. And we have Douglas St. Clair Smith and Steve Wilcox to thank for this. Yeah, the original outsider weirdos. That's right. You may not know by that name, if you're familiar with the Church of the Subgenius, you know them as Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond.

And these were two guys, like I said, who were, they were in Texas. I think Philo grew up in a religious family, but, and had a really good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation, but he was always sort of didn't quite fit in and felt like the outsider at school and was seeking outsider culture. And whereas, Stang was, I think he described himself in the documentary as secular humanist scientist in his upbringing, super liberal family, whereas, I keep calling him Wilcox, whereas Filo's was more conservative

to be sure. But they found common ground when a friend introduced them. They said, you both love comic books. You both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together and you might have a new friend. And they were immediate friends. Yeah, yeah, they definitely hit it off. In part also because they both kind of just felt

like they didn't really fit into Dallas, Texas at the time. That helps. One of the other things they really had in common was a love of like earnest, bonafide, extremist pamphlets. Right, they're fun. Yeah, whether it's extremist religious groups, extremist like white supremacist groups, which I'm sure Dallas, Texas in the 70s had quite a bit of.

Like anybody who is just kind of off the rails and was trying to recruit other people to be off the rails with them, and made a pamphlet about that. These guys would collect it and relish it. That also included, remember the Jack Schick tracks in the Satanic Panic episode? They were huge into that.

It had a huge influence on them as well. Those comic strips about how somebody, you know, had sex before marriage and now they were burning in hell kind of stuff. Like they took all these things together and they kind of use them as the basis for this outlook on the world, which is humans are totally nuts in a lot of ways. And then even more than that, they can be dangerously nuts

when they try to foist or impose their own crazy thoughts onto you and make you behave a certain way because of their crazy thoughts. That that's the danger that comes out of modern life. And I think that's one of the things that really stuck out to them and the thing that drove them to kind of try to fight that however they could. Yeah, I have to say I see the appeal of what they did because if you remember a few years ago, God, this is quite a few years ago now, our buddy Joe Randazzo and I wrote a TV pilot together about a Scientology-esque religion and it never went anywhere. We even had a few pitch meetings and nothing happened with it.

But in writing that script, we had to create our own religion for that pilot. And you can't just say, well, let's just call it this and it's whatever. Like, you have to really kind of explore the tenets of it and make it a real thing. And we did that. And I made a pamphlet, Joe and I made it together, and I kind of put it together. And we brought the pamphlet to the pitch meetings and it, I'll send you one sometime. It's really funny. Our religion was called Binarism and it was like this numbers-based kind of Scientology

thing, but it was so much fun. And all I could think about when these two guys got together in 1979 and hatched this idea was, yeah, it's a lot of fun to create a phony religion even for a screenplay. Yeah, and they were definitely inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and his success at basically founding Scientology based on some science fiction ideas that he had and then becoming rich. There was a famous quote attributed to Elrond Hubbard that you can't get rich writing science fiction, but you can get rich by writing or by founding your own religion. And so we should be really careful here. They weren't inspired by Elrond Hubbard in the sense like they wanted to take advantage of people.

I think they were more fascinated by the fact that there are plenty of people out there who will buy into this. And I think they kind of wanted to explore that. Not in any kind of like, it's weird. The whole thing is kind of a cynical, it comes from a cynical place where you just have to be cynical to be critical enough of society to see it for what it is. But it's also like a very humanist group as well, where like they're not trying to hurt you,

they're not trying to exploit you. They definitely come off as superior a lot of times, especially if you're not in on the joke, because that makes you by definition, part of the butt of the joke. Right, makes you a normie. Yes, but for the most part, they're not like a group of people

who like hate or despise other people. I think they're fascinated by the fact that that kind of stuff exists. And they're also fascinated by just how conformist the average person is without even thinking about it. Yeah. So they were fascinated, I guess, is the way to put it, by L. Ron Hubbard and his success with Scientology. And there was another quote that was attributed to

Stang. I don't know if it was in the documentary that came out recently or not, but he basically said, we figured that if Jim Jones can get 900 people to kill themselves, we could get 900 people to send us a dollar. And they kind of wanted to toy around with that and see, you know, if that was the case. Not to exploit people, but just to kind of see, I think, if there was anybody else out there. They were kind of shouting into the wilderness, and the way that you told them that you were out there

was to mail in a dollar and say, give me some of your pamphlet. Yeah, and here's the deal. Stang, it looks like by all accounts, has generally made his living doing this over the year. Yeah, and here's the deal. Stang, it looks like by all accounts, has generally made his living doing this over the year. Yeah, it worked. He's not gotten rich. It's not a Scientology thing where it's like,

and send me a hundred more dollars and we'll give you another thing. No, no, no, no. It's really just sort of, mail us some money and we'll send you our comedy goods in the mail. Yeah, yeah. And he still stuffs envelopes and he still sends pamphlets and CDs and literature today.

It's like paying for a Mad Magazine or something, but it's just done from this guy's house. Yeah, I also get the impression that the far and away, the vast majority of the people who understand the Church of Subgenius for what it is, when they send money and they're sending it out of like gratitude for what Stang and Philo have built together. Yeah, 100%.

That's what it is. They're not being duped in any way. They're in on the joke. They're just showing their support by shoveling money toward those guys. All right, I think that is a great preamble. You're either turning off your Hi-Fi system now, or you're intrigued by what's to come.

And we'll talk about the night at All Hatched right after this. No one is harmed, no death, no trauma, just a few cells grown in a dish. This is David Eagleman from the Inner Cosmos podcast. And this week, we're tackling a tough question where brain science meets the future. Lab-grown meat is going to force us to confront the boundaries of our ethics and our imagination. It invites us to question why we draw lines exactly where we do and whether those lines are drawn in ink or in pencil. And what does this have to do with sanctity, brain plasticity, social belonging,

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so these guys are hanging out. It's 1979. They didn't have, I think Filo was the one who always had a pretty decent job. He kind of had an okay career and he always wanted to, there were times where he kind of dropped in and out of his involvement because he did have a decent career, but he always supported it. Whereas, Stang was all in from the beginning and didn't have a ton of prospects for work. But they were hanging out and they were like kind of wondering why they, you know, didn't have

more and why they weren't as successful as they thought they should be. And Stang said, you know, we aren't geniuses. You know, we must be subgeniuses. And he says in the documentary, he was like, that's the moment that was literally like a lightning bolt out of the sky that hatched this idea. So they kind of took all their interest in all these weird pamphlets and weird UFO cults and pseudo religions and new age beliefs. And they made the original pamphlet,

spent $60 on this original pamphlet and we're just leaving them at dry cleaners and stuff like that until Stang's wife got mad and she was like, that's a lot of money for us. At least send this to some publishers and see if you can do something with this. So they sent it to every publisher under the sun and got rejected by every publisher under the sun. But it's pretty funny that later they did end up having a fairly successful book, but early on book publishers didn't know what to do with these guys.

Yeah, and you can understand why. If you've ever seen what's called pamphlet number one now, which is part of the church doctrine, this is like the sacred writings. The idea is that Ivan Stang is the sacred scribe who took down the words of Bob Dobbs. And by the way, Bob Dobbs, the Bob is always in quotes, not just when you say JR Bob Dobbs, like even if you say Bob Dobbs or even just Bob, it's always in quotes, that's how you write his name.

And that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah one, that alien overlord that runs earth. And this was kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet. In the front of the pamphlet said things like, the world ends tomorrow and you may die in all caps. It asked, do people think you're strange? Do you? I love that one. There was another one that said, eternal salvation or triple your money back. So like these are the things on like on and in the pamphlet and they're going around to publishers being

like, hey, you want to you want to give us some money for this? So of course, everybody said no. The most astounding thing is that eventually somebody actually said yes at, I think, McGraw Hill. Yeah. And this was much later when they finally did get their book published after they had quite a following and the sort of writing was on the wall with these, you know, fairly successful gatherings and live shows. But yeah, the book came later.

Early on they got together and started started just as buddies getting on the CB radio and doing, and this, again, this was like you would get on the Internet today, back then it was the CB, and they would do these sort of parody voices, basically hatch what was the beginnings of what would end up being the hour of Slack radio show, which is 90 minutes long, part of the joke. It basically hatched what was the beginnings of what would end up being the hour of slack radio show, which is 90 minutes long, part of the joke. And people started hollering back at them.

He said they were trolls before they were trolls. You're kind of trolling people on the CB. And then other people would troll back and call them pinks. And that's where the notion of pinks or pink boys came up. And pink boys, they kind of flipped it. In the church of the subgenius, pink boys are the others. They're the squares, they're the ones who just follow along and go to their nine to five job

and spend their consumer money on catalog items. And anyone else outside is a pink or a pink boy. Yes, but there's a distinction between, say, people like you and I, and actual dyed-in-the-wool pink boys. The kind of like middle manager types who are like not only fully bought into the con, the great con that's going on, they actually like almost violently defend it in its existence and its rightness.

Those are pinks, they're irreparable, there's nothing that's ever gonna help them, and they're genuine humans. Now there are plenty of subgenii out there who don't know they're subgenii. They haven't been exposed to the church, they've never seen a dobs head maybe, whatever reason, they're not aware that they're a subgenius yet.

And if you're a true subgenius, then you have yeti blood coursing through your veins. Now, if you're an actual subgenius, that means that you are of yeti heritage, who has basically become aware of the teachings of Bob and are now actively working against the conspiracy and exploiting pink boys any time you get a chance. Because again, they're hopeless. They're never going to be converted because they don't have any yeti blood in them. Right. And to reiterate, I don't know if I kind of just tossed it off earlier, but Bob Dobbs

is a piece of clip art. Literally that face that you see was a piece of clip art from Clip Art Catalog, and they loved clip art because it was free. Yeah. And a lot of their early stuff was just collage from clip art that they had found. And this was from a clip art catalog, and now it's, you know, one of the, you know, arguably one of the most famous pieces

of clip art there is. Yeah, and I don't know if it was a joke. It's so hard to tell what's a joke and what's not, because they play everything so straight. Yeah, they're in character basically. Yeah, but I saw on one of their websites, they said, reminder, this is a trademarked piece of art now as part of like the copyright subgenius. So I don't know if they actually did copyright it. I could totally see them doing that in real life. Or if they were just joking about it. Either way,

yeah, it's kind of great. So I think we probably can't go any further without explaining this concept of Slack. I mentioned the radio show is called The Hour of Slack, and kind of the major, I guess, philosophy and tenet of their religion is this concept of Slack. Are you having trouble describing it? No. I mean, they even say in the documentary it is not even to be described, that they can't even describe it. So whatever we do is going to be our own attempt.

Okay. Slack is different for every person, but the definite idea is what you think, which is being Slack, like kind of, but not just being lazy, having everything you need in life and being content while giving up as little as possible, exertion-wise. Yeah, exertion-wise, exactly. Like having done as little as possible, exertion-wise. Yeah, exertion-wise, exactly. Like having done as little as possible

to actually attain it. That's one definition of slack for sure. The point is, like I think it's one of those things where you, or what is not slack is easier to recognize than what is slack. And I'll give you an example of something that happened today. Okay. Okay, because I've been thinking about this.

I'm like, how are we going to define slack? Yeah, yeah. So I knocked over the toilet brush behind the toilet in my bathroom, right? Okay. And you know, like the little drippings that end up in like the toilet brush holder? Yes. They spill out on the floor. Yeah, those are the worst drippings. The worst

drippings. I would have rather spilled like, like, like raw pork juice onto my floor than those drippings. They're bad drippings, right? Bad drippings. So I spent the next 10 minutes, not only like cleaning up those drippings, and I mean, like cleaning it up, like there's some floor missing now, I scrubbed it so hard. And then also cleaning the holder for the scrub brush before I put everything back.

And this is a totally unintentional, totally avoidable thing for me to be doing. That took up 10 minutes of my life. I did not want to be doing it. It was gross, it was yuck. And I realized this is the perfect example of what is not Slack. It's the conspiracy. It was the conspiracy that probably had something to do with it.

But the point was is like I was doing something I didn't want to do. And I was doing it. I was getting no reward from it whatsoever. I was a little stressed out about it. It was not Slack. So Slack is the opposite of that. It's where things are going your way. It's where you are content and happy. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have everything in life, like all the trappings of life.

It very frequently doesn't mean that. Instead, it's just whatever it is that makes you content. And because it's undefinable, that means that it's up to every subgenie to define what is Slack for them. Yeah. And the conspiracy is the things that prevent you from achieving Slack. Originally, I think the conspiracy was literally like the man, that kind of thing. But it evolved over the years to the point where one of the guys in the documentary said

it evolved to, you know, it was like when it rained really hard on a day, you were going to do something like that's the conspiracy. I gotcha. It's things I think conspiring against you. That toilet brush knocking over, that's definitely the conspiracy. Right. Because it prevented you from, I guess, taking your mid-morning nap. Right. And under the teachings of Bob, the conspiracy is actually an acronym for

Clicks of Normals Secretly Planning Insidious Rituals Aimed at Controlling You. That's a good one. Agreed. And then under the doctrine, like, this is an actual group who they don't know what slack is, but they know it exists and they're bent on stealing as much of it as possible. And they start stealing it from everybody, pinks and yeti from the moment you're born. And so it's up to you to steal it back, to get as much slack as you possibly can.

But the problem with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the show here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind consumer culture and they've created this illusion that what normals and pinks and non-subgenie yeti who haven't figured themselves out yet buy into as life is all just this vast consumer conspiracy. And that they actually offer what appears to be slack, but it's like- False slack.

False slack is what they call it. Yeah, it's manufactured slack. So it's like the subgenius w Wiki is awesome. And they give examples of like pre-planned recreation, like days off from work that you earn or are given. Like these are, this is all false slack. Like it's somebody else deciding what your slack is and you're buying into it. And that is the, that is not slack. Slack is you have to decide what slack is. Right. And there is not slack. Slack is you have to decide what slack is.

Right. And there is original slack. We were all born with original slack, according to the church. And the conspiracy chips away at that slack or sells you false slack over the years to degrade your natural slack that you're born with. And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack. And this is like, if you lose your job or something, And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack.

And this is like if you lose your job or something, if you get fired, this is just involuntary slack that Bob is sending your way to force you to take a little time off. Yeah, I saw a video from, I guess, 2009 or 10, and it called The Great Recession, The Great Slack Session. And it basically said like the financial markets have melted down. It had like this real dramatic music. Millions of people are out of work. No one has a clue about what to do about it.

Victory is at hand. There's one other thing I want to say about Slack too. There are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as far as Slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty interesting that like the whole concept has gotten this far. It's evolved into something. And I think this is a really good example

of what happens with the church's teachings. Like these guys just wrote some crazy stuff like back in the 70s, 80s, even into the 90s. And then other people who kind of vibed on it came along and expanded it. Like I wrote an essay on the scissors of sight, and apparently that's mentioned offhandedly in pamphlet number one. And somebody wrote a whole essay about how they're still trying to figure out what those are, and they think it's from a crystal in Atlantis, and it was just, like, that's just what they do. It's almost like they're putting stuff out there

as like thought starters for other people's creativity to kind of sprout from. But anyway, the two paths for Slack is kind of split between these two groups, the rewardians and the emergentiles, right? Yeah, and the emergentiles are getting their slack because they're getting the things done that they kind of feel like they want and need to get done. But it's under a deadline from someone else.

But then they have their slack. And then the rewardians don't think, this is more like Tao of Steve stuff. Did you ever see that movie? No, I need to though. I'm well aware of it. Sort of, that was sort of that guy's deal. He was just like, he had this life philosophy and he would have really fit in with these folks,

with the rewardians. They're basically like, slack off all the time, don't do any work until you absolutely have to. Right. I think there's quite a bit of pot involved every day kind of thing. Sure. That wouldn't surprise me. And that's what I think most people would think of when they think of like slacking. Like, yeah, that's what you do when you slack. You don't work, you sit around, you smoke pot, you're like never put on pants or anything like that, and you're just having the time of your life,

as long as like that's what you want to do. Emergentiles, you're like, no, no, there's another way to do this. I feel really good about accomplishing something, about setting a goal and meeting it, but that's my goal. I wanna learn how to climb a mountain, so I'm gonna go learn how to climb a mountain

and climb that mountain. And during that whole process process I'm slacking. Like that's my slack. Um, so those are kind of like the two ways of doing it. And apparently the two groups kind of pity each other and think they have it completely backwards. But the point is, is neither group is right or wrong because it's all up to the individual what your slack is.

I mean, what these guys really, it was, it's such a time and place thing. They were born out of this sort of spirit of the Mary Prankster's 60s counterculture, Ken Kesey kind of thing. But they came along at a time where that had been bulldozed over and the 80s were being born, which was about as anti-60s counterculture vibe, as you can imagine. But these guys still had that sort of fun, playful idea. And this was their invention. I always think it's just so fun and so cool. Every time I see a DeVival or a live show,

I absolutely do not want to be there. No. But I think it's awesome. I liken it to when I saw Spinal Tap in concert. They actually toured when I was in college and I was such a fan of the movie and they played the Fox theater and we all went. And it was not fun at all because it was like,

it was funny as a movie, but you're at this rock and roll show that is supposed to kind of be funny, but there were also people that were really getting into the rock and roll. And I didn't know, I was stuck in between worlds. I didn't know how to feel. And when I was watching these subgenius live shows,

I was kind of like, oh, that's like Spinal Tap Live. I don't want to be there, but I'm glad people are enjoying it. Yeah, it's kind of like, yeah, and dude, they are enjoying it. The people who go to those are genuinely having, like, the time of their lives. Like, that's their time to, like, just be themselves as much as they ever have in their lives. I love it. It's almost like I would compare it to a, like, meeting of the Juggalos, a Comic Con, and a goire show all mixed together.

That's what the divivals these days kind of seem like, just based on what I've seen on the internet. Yeah, that's good. I like it. And if you think this is all really dumb, then you probably would not like their motto. They have a lot of sayings and mottos, but their chief one that they kind of yell out if you think this is all really dumb, then you probably would not like their motto. They have a lot of sayings and mottos, but their chief one that they kind of yell out at these DeVivals is, F them if you can't take a joke, or if they can't take a joke.

Right. And it means right there, like they're, it's amazing to me that some people took this too seriously because the motto is literally, this is a joke. Right. yeah. And it is really kind of like disconcerting because like if you do take it seriously, like you really have to go to great lengths to get past all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything. It suggests that there's like, you're worse off than the average cult member,

because you're actually taking a joke cult as a cult. It's like when Fight Club got too serious. They started blowing up buildings and stuff. Yeah, I think so. Except there was no violence involved in the Church of the Subgenius. No, they're peaceful. That's right, because they're all stoned.

Yeah, I think a lot of them are. I think a lot of them are like the Frank Zappa types, where they're just weird and they have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol or anything like that. That too. They were born with original stoned. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. Requires no drugs.

Apparently, Frank Zappa was a real jerk to people who did drugs. Like, he had that cafe or restaurant or club or whatever, and he would kick you out if he thought you were on pot. That's conspiracy. Yeah, he was a little pink from what I can tell. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and you said also if this kind of stuff

seems weird to you or whatever, or you don't like it, like that's a pretty like fairly normal reaction. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. But one of the reasons that that it might make you feel a little wobbly or a little shaky or like you're missing something or like you're being made fun of that kind of weird feeling in your stomach is because you probably are being made fun of.

Like if you're not in on the joke, like I said earlier, by definition, you're part of the butt of the joke. You're a member of that group. And if you actually are actively getting offended at what they're saying and doing, because one of the threads of humor that they very frequently use is bad taste, shock value, like it's just basically the opposite of PC. Like they really don't care for PC very much.

And if you're deeply offended by this stuff and you actually like respond to it, you're actually kind of proving their point that you are maybe a little too wrapped up in this culture that they're basically saying like, this is a fraud, this is all a fraud. And like, you're proving that there's problems with it by getting mad at something, you know, at a joke basically.

Yeah, and you know, before you start feeling too sorry for these people because they're being made fun of as like squares who aren't hip to the joke and don't get the joke. I mean, the original reason this was started was because these very people were outcast and being bullied by those very people to begin with. Right.

So let's take a break, man. We'll talk about some of the lower points in the Church of the Subgenius that have happened across the years, huh? Let's do it. ["The Church of the Subgenius"] Let's do it. No one is harmed, no death, no trauma, just a few cells grown in a dish. This is David Eagleman from the Inner Cosmos podcast.

And this week, we're tackling a tough question where brain science meets the future. Lab-grown meat is going to force us to confront the boundaries of our ethics and our imagination. It invites us to question why we draw lines exactly where we do and whether those lines are drawn in ink or in pencil. And what does this have to do with sanctity, brain plasticity, social belonging, messed up boundaries between mental categories, flesh copyrights, and the future of personhood? What is the table we're going to set for ourselves? What does this question uncover about brain science and our calculations of morality?

Listen to Inner Cosmos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places, through unforgettable love stories, and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors,

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American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they love to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said.

It would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American history hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you went to a DeVival, one of the things you would find Chuck is, especially an early one, is a lot of like put on preaching, like evangelical mock preaching, but what the guy's doing is like doing a fire and brimstone preacher bit. But what he's saying is espousing, you know, Bob stuff about, you know, if they can't take a joke or, you know, whatever. And that like doesn't sit very well usually with people, but also it never really sits very well with me because it's obnoxious even in its real form

and it's super obnoxious when it's like mocked because. That's why I wouldn't want to be there. Yeah, yeah. And the anti-music is another reason. That was the next thing I was gonna get to is like if you are not super into this and probably on a pretty decent amount of acid back in like 1985 or

four, the anti-music would probably turn you off too. I know I don't like it at all either. Yeah, it's basically the idea is that they would get a bunch of instruments and you could just do whatever you want with them and the idea is that you're not, you can't play these things. These are not skilled musicians or not even musicians at all. And they would just make noise with them. And, you know, when watching the documentary, you get the idea from some of them that it's sort of like the drum circle that finally everyone gets in synchronicity for a minute. You're like, oh, okay, something just happened. That would happen occasionally, apparently, with the anti-music,

is that it would coalesce at a certain point, or maybe that was the drugs talking. But basically, it's a bunch of people making a lot of awful noise and screaming. Yes. There was actually a time during the devivals, I think during the 90s, maybe, where a schism in the church developed. Was very much planned, yeah. Right, so the idea was, so one of the big parts of the, one of the tenants of the church is there,

like the world's going to end eventually on X day. And X day was originally slotted for July 5th, 1998. And that came and went, and there were no UFOs driven by sex goddesses to come whisk off the subgenie to Planet X to live out the rest of their eternity partying. But the fact that this was coming along, the church decided, we don't know what's going to happen to the pinks after that, so we need to decide. And the schism was formed between people who said, well, there will probably be sub subgenii who want to stay and rule the world, and we can just let them rule the pinks

from there on out. And then the other group said, no, no, no, all the pinks are going to be slaughtered on X day. There won't be any pinks left. And apparently this differing opinion on basic church doctrine, like was a thread that was carried on for a very long time. It was, and I think we just need to be really clear. A schism was written into the script of the Church of the Subgenius. Okay.

It was nothing formed. They wrote a heel basically into their wrestling show with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of the Holocaustels who believed, and again, all in jest, but he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically, like kill these people. And I think it was Stang was the leader of the Evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's just enslave them basically and keep them alive. And two things here.

First of all, in that they eventually had a big show in the 80s kind of jumping back in San Francisco. They had had these sort of small tent devivals with a hundred people. And then in San Francisco, they booked this theater for two nights, 900 seat theater for two nights. And we're like, we don't really know if we can do this. And they had set builders and set designers, and it became a real actual thing.

The news covered it. And they did. They covered it. And they had a fake assassination of Bob. Bob finally came out. He walked out on stage and then bang! He was immediately shot. But apparently they started doing this a lot. Bob had many, many lives and could be killed over and over again, assassinated. So there was that. And then after X-Day, judging from the documentary is when it seemed to like kind of go bad.

And not go bad in that everybody really started believing and it became this really scary thing. But it sort of lost its judge a little bit. And there were some people and I think one person specifically even went up to Stang. I don't know if it was the X day. I think it was the San Francisco show in 1984. Okay. I think it was that San Francisco show in 1984. Okay. And he was, you know, obviously someone who needed some real help because he thought this was all real,

was livid that it wasn't being taken seriously and that people were laughing. And that's when Stang was like, oh man, like kind of this was bound to happen, but it also made him sad because I'd never wanted anything like this. Right. And that was the reason why. So, like the documentary that was made by Sandy K. Boone, who was involved in a few other pretty great documentaries recently, including Tower. I don't think it's The Tower, just Tower, the one about the Charles Whitman, the shooting at the University of Texas back in the 60s. Oh, it's amazing.

So, remember Waking Life, that whole thing Linkletter did with the animation? They did that for this documentary and it really had a great impact. The rotoscoping, cool. Yes. So, she was involved in that as well, but she made this documentary. Apparently, her late husband was a great adherent in the Church of the Subgenius, and she made it also kind of as an ode to him as well. But in it, Stang and Philo break character, and like they hadn't broken character for 30-something years, right?

Like they've done interviews, they've like print TV, radio, like they've done the radio show, they've like written tons of books. They just don't break character. That's just part of their jam. And for this documentary, they did. And they said the reason why, at least Stang said the reason why he did, was because they're kind of getting on in years, and he wants to make sure that it's perfectly clear before he dies that this is a joke and that everybody knows it was a joke

and it's always been a joke and there's like you need to take it as a joke so that it doesn't accidentally turn into something like Scientology down the down the line. Yeah, he said you watched it, right? Yeah, yeah, I didn't watch it right before this. I saw it several months ago. Yeah, he said, and this kind of sums it up in the way that it makes sense, but it doesn't. And this is in relation to that guy who really came up to him

and other people that really thought it was real. He said, we always wanted to trick people, but we didn't really want to trick people. Right, yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. They were fascinated by the fact that people could be tricked. Yeah.

And they wanted to explore that and make fun of it. And they invited other people to explore it and make fun of it, but it wasn't to hurt anybody. That's they weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea of having you become a part, become a member, sending your dollar, become ordained,

buy into all that sales stuff was to point out that that's what was going on in the real world. Yeah, and this sort of came to a head in the 90s when it was just after Columbine. They had a live show planned in Boston and Papa Joe Mama, who was again, their sort of scripted heel agent provocateur, got on a, think a radio show and somehow referenced Columbine. It was a little unclear. I think he blamed Columbine on the Church of the Subgenius. Oh, was that what it was? I believe so.

Okay, because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was, but it was clear that that was over the line for both Philo and Stang. And the show was originally canceled by the theater, and then a real church, I think like an Episcopal church, stepped up weirdly and said, you can have it at our church. And then they got bomb threats and they said, well, no, I guess we can't do that. And then I think they ended up having it in a public park or something. But that was sort of like where it, you know, the 90s weren't too kind to the, not just like the numbers, but once the internet was born, and that was like really when the consumer culture and the internet boom happened for real, it was just so antithetical to the church

of the subgenius. It seemed to kind of fade away until later on when the internet kind of helps revive it again. So my take is that what really kind of let it downhill, not to say that there's like, like it, not to say that it went downhill on its own, like that just, just the world changed. Yeah. And there was, just the world changed. Yeah.

And there was, like the world became the parody. It wasn't like straight any longer. It was just a joke, but that was real life now. So you can't satirize something that is the satire that you're coming up with. There's just no way to do it. No, that's absolutely right. And that's, you know, America changed quite a bit

in the last like 20 years. And the, like, what do you, like how, you just can't, you can't satirize something when it becomes this weird version of itself that you were using before. It encroached on your turf kind of thing, you know? Yeah, and in the last like 10 minutes of the documentary sort of focus on the Trump administration and these fringe groups that started online there saying this crazy made-up stuff and that really puts a hurting, like you said, on something

like the Church of the Subgenius as far as being, and their numbers were never huge, but I get the idea from watching it that Stang still has people that write in that still send him some money. He told one funny joke about getting a payment upon receipt envelope that like he had to pay $2 to even open this thing. And he was all perturbed about that. And there was a thousand dollars in cash.

Oh really? And he took half of it and immediately took it to a sick friend. Like that's the kind of guy he is. Oh that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well. But he's still, you know, paying his mortgage, stuff in envelopes. Well yeah, because I think like if you go back and you read the original books and you know even still I was reading like the Wikipedia that explained all of the different stuff

is hilarious and like totally worthwhile and still applies today. Like it's like in a certain way it's timeless even though it screams Reagan era, you know? But it still makes sense because we still have like a consumer driven culture that has a lot to do with gender norms and conformity and exploiting people for their labor. Like all that stuff is still going on. So the original stuff still stands and still holds. Yeah.

And they, you know, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo and I can't remember the other guy's name in Devo, they were way into it. Penn Gillette, Nick Offerman, Richard Linklater, Paul Rubin's, Pee Wee Herman's playhouse, had a Bob Dobbs on his big wall collage. These were all people that were attracted to it. It was a lot of dudes, of course, but they do interview a few of the women

in the original group that said, we were outcasts and we wanted to meet these weirdo guys, and this is where we did it. We went there because it was mostly guys. And you know, we could meet these dudes. But it was very male oriented. And I don't know, I just, like I said, I never, I always had fun reading about it

and hearing about it, but never wanted to get too involved just because I'm too much of a pink, I guess. Yeah, yes. It is a lot of fun to read about for sure. Like there's a lot of stuff out there on the internet to read. And I- This is like 10% of it. I incurred, yeah.

It's huge. It's an enormous, huge rambling, like what do you call a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine? Mythos, I guess. Maybe. Yeah, canon. Yeah, canon.

That's what I was looking for. There's a huge extensive canon and it's a lot of fun, especially the older stuff. Some of the newer stuff is not that funny because it's, and I don't mean new, I mean like mid 2000s, the mid aughts kind of stuff started to really lose its sense of humor. Some people lost their sense of humor and got real serious about it. The 80s and 90s stuff is hilarious. I strongly recommend going to read an explanation of the male to female discrepancy in the Church of the Subgenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia.

Or by the real book. Yeah, well, I don't think that was in the book. That was just supplemental stuff. It was an essay explaining it, but it also is more like a kind of a call to arms for those girls who never felt like, or always recognized that they were kind of being forced into certain gender roles and didn't ever feel good about it.

She had a quote, "'It's not enough to simply burn your bras. Why stop there? Burn a few bridal boutiques in City Hall while you're at it. It's a good essay for sure. Totally worth reading. So yeah, there's a lot more to say about the Church of the Subgenius, but we'll just leave it to you. I feel like we should just part with it's a joke.

It is a joke, ultimately. It's a joke and take it as that. Okay? Man, you got that down. You got some yeti in you, pink boy. Ooh, maybe. And since I called Chuck a pink boy, it's time for listener mail.

Keeping it short and sweet here with a quick correction from a new listener. Hi guys. I'm a very new listener and I love what I've heard so far. However, just three episodes in about the Magna Carta, one of you offhandedly suggested that William the Conqueror was a beloved English king because he annexed Normandy after the Battle of Hastings. That's pretty much backwards, guys. He was a Norman king who conquered England at that battle.

William's story would make a great episode. That is from Scott Scattergood in Suwon, Korea. Well, Scott, since you're new, you obviously don't know that most of the viewpoint that we give on Stuff You Should Know is from the Vikings viewpoint. So we had it right. Okay, good. Scott Scattergood, what a great name.

Right? Yeah. What happens if you scramble Scott around? Scatter's good. If you want to get in touch with us like Scott did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. ["I Heart Radio"] Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you listen to your favorite shows. No one is harmed, no death, no trauma, just a few cells grown in a dish. This is David Eagleman from the Inner Cosmos podcast. And this week, we're tackling a tough question where brain science meets the future. Lab-grown meat is going to force us to confront the boundaries of our ethics. And what does this have to do with brain plasticity, social belonging, messed up boundaries between mental categories? What does this uncover about brain science and our calculations of morality?

Listen to Inner Cosmos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death

and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down on a cherry tree? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree?

Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.