The Eric Metaxas Show - Fun Facts Friday

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

For this week's "Fun Facts Friday," Eric, Albin and Chris gathered 'round the warmth of the internet to share amazing facts and unusual insights into what is quirky, off-beat, and just plain weird.

But first, two very important questions. Have you ever tried to stack marbles while wearing boxing gloves? Also, did you know that marigolds and geraniums hate each other? Absolutely. And now your host, Eric Mataxis. Hey, folks, welcome back. We're having a lot of fun, and we'd like to share it with you at no cost. This is free.

If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening on your radio, it's completely free. And aren't you ashamed that you're getting this level of entertainment and notification for nothing. The least you do is, I don't know. Albin, Chris, what could they do? We can patronize our sponsors. We have Mike Lindell's My Pillow.

Listen, if you're talking bed clothing, sheets, pillowcases, the mattress topper, oh, the mattress topper, unbelievable. All that stuff, you get a whopping discount if you put in the code, Eric, because we have a special relationship with our friend, our special friend, Mike Lindell. We have a special discount code, Eric. If you use the code, you get the discount. If anybody uses the code Eric, they could just type it in by mistake. They get the discount. So please tell your friends that if they're watching it on TV and they put in that code, that code could be filling the pockets of Satan himself for all we know. We don't know. All I know is when you put in Eric,

you help this show. And we would appreciate it. that because the fine entertainment that we present is, we think it has some value. Perhaps it doesn't. Hey, hey, guys, you know, we've been doing Ask Mataxis and we've got a fun fact Friday coming up. But why don't we just keep going with the Ask Mataxis? I know we've got a lot more questions. Go ahead. Oh, yeah, definitely.

Now, you know, you said this is free, but please people remember, you get what you pay for. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, by the way, tonight on TBN, Catherine Schwarzenegger, Pratt is your guest on the TVN show tonight, 6 p.m. Eastern Time. She is one of the loveliest young women. I have to say, you know, when you meet someone, you go, this is a lovely young person. She was so polite, so gracious, so friendly, and she's the daughter, of course, of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So really interesting to get to meet her. And I hope you can tune in tonight, 6 p.m. or Sunday at 10 p.m. This is Eastern Time. All right. So what's the first question? Here we go. Question number one, dear Mr. Metaxus, this is from Colleen. Would you please let us know what you were thinking when you sent out your tweet against Joe Biden and that racist remark for which he apologized? We have generally admired your work since meeting you several years ago.

This type of comment seems out of line with our expectations of you. So an explanation, please, an apology? Thank you. I'm sorry, what? Let me read that again. No, you go with that. No, you know what? Yeah, I know it was kind of a misunderstanding, I guess.

That's putting it generously. But I responded to it in depth on the program yesterday, and we posted that at YouTube. So if you go to the Erkma Taxis show on YouTube, I gave a rather lengthy explanation of it, because it's a little complicated, I think. I think that that's Twitter's not a world of nuance. That's the problem.

And so sometimes you can get yourself tangled up there. But I did answer it, and I would encourage you to go to YouTube to the Eric Mattaxas show, and you'll see it right there. It was yesterday. And anybody who wants to know more, about it. Check that out. The video's gotten a ton of views already, I have to say,

because a lot of people were wondering, hey, what's up with Eric? Yeah, they were, they were wondering if you had had some kind of aneurysm. People don't know that, you know, I'm kind of complex, and it's something I've learned to live with. I've learned to manage my own complexity. Yeah, and also the tricky thing about Twitter is there's no workshopping, a tweet, you know, that you have comedians who do really brilliant satire and they literally i have i have some friends who are in the space and they work on it for months of the time in these little basements where they're kind of safe they have small audiences yeah but twitter's like the ocean so you know there's no workshopping the

tweet is kind of it's it's in or that that's exactly that's exactly that's exactly right um anyway that's for shizzle true okay so any other questions yeah arley uh has a question I was listening to your podcast a while back and made a note to give to one of the charities that Eric was advocating, only I can't remember who it was. Do you remember, Eric? I remember, but you're going to have to hurry.

You got to go to our website, which is metaxis talk.com. You will see there a banner for AngelTree and Prison Fellowship. That is the banner to click. You go to Metaxistock.com. You click on that banner and Bob's your uncle. Now, if you prefer to call, I happen to have a phone number here, but if I give it out, you have to call it. That's the deal.

Here's the number. 888-206-2793. 888-206-2793. We're doing a wonderful campaign with Prison Fellowship and Angel Tree to help the children of prisoners. it is really a very moving and beautiful idea. And I hope that the person who just asked that question and anyone else answering right now would be moved to at least check it out

and see what it's about. Great, great, great, great. Richard has a question. We had a show on last week, I think it was Friday, with Kent Hecken-Lively. Okay, this is this whole virus and inoculation whole business. Right, right, right.

So he says so many people are so ignorant on the topic of vaccines and people who voice opinions. They're all silent if it's against the narrative, right? I was hoping you could do a vaccines week similar to Hell Week. Remember we did Hell Week? This is during Chris's time here as well. That's like 45 years ago. Exactly.

We got a week and we did a Bigfoot week. Who can forget Bigfoot Week on the Eric Mataxis show? And as far as the anti-vaccine week, I don't think so. Let's get, any other questions? Would you consider a woke week? A woke week? Yeah, just because it's fun to say.

No. Okay, I was thinking lately, I mean, Christians are looking for the great awakening. Instead, we're getting the great awakening. So, it's a different country. You're clever. You know, it's not like they say. Well, they say. You're clever.

I don't like what they say sometimes. Okay. Chris, you must have a question down there in your neck of the woods. I do. Okay, this is from Wendy from Lincoln, Nebraska. I am a distant cousin, here comes a big name drop, of George Washington. His maternal grandfather is one of my eight times great-grandfathers, eight times removed, I guess. In your research, did you learn anything about the Ball family that came from Greater London?

I've hit a roadblock in my genealogical research. I'm hoping that perhaps you have some knowledge or information on this subject. Oh, yeah, that's an easy one. No, I don't. I think that's so funny. They're expecting you're going to be doing research on their family. What I find funny is that imagine if this were your relative, you know, I think that the incentive to look into the, you know, nooks and crannies of the distant relations of Mary Ball, Washington. I would think that ball would be in your court as a descendant.

but no, I didn't. I can't pretend that I know more about George Washington than I do. So I'm sorry. I feel like this is a very disappointing segment. I've got nothing to say. Well, here's one to wrap up this first segment. I think we're going to get a little bit of a laugh out of this. Excuse me, David, who wrote the question.

But he says, thanks for your great books. I just want to know if you are a Christian, because I don't see any public statement anywhere about it. I want to know if you believe and live that Jesus Christ is your savior. I'm pretty sure that highly Salasi is the second coming of Christ. I've been an Ethiopian Rastafarian for most of my life. I don't like to talk about it on this program, but I think highly Salase, I think he is, you know, he's pretty much it. At least that's what the documents show.

So I'm going to stick by that. The reason I don't have dreadlocks is because Say, doesn't want my audience to know that I'm a Rastafarian. Well, that, yeah. Actually, you know what? I just realized that none of that's true. When we come back, I'll tell you more about my actual faith. Don't go away.

Wait, I thought you didn't have dreadlocks because you play for the Yankees. Yeah, that too. Hey, the folks. Welcome back. It's Friday, Friday, Friday. Friday. Which means that in our next segment, we're going to do fun facts. Friday. We always have fun with that, even if we don't have a slide whistle. But right now,

we're going to continue doing Ask Mataxis. So many of you've written these tremendous questions. And so we just thought, let's go. Yeah, Chris, you want to take this one first? Sure. This is, this is from Zane Kemper. He says, hi, Eric, 22-year-old here. Five months ago, my wife gave birth to my first born son. Do you have any parenting advice for a young father? Thanks. Your friend, Zane. I could have sworn that somebody Zane wrote in.

Did we already answer that question? I don't know. But do I have parenting advice? Yeah, I do. This is my standard advice. If you both wake up when the baby wakes up at night, that's foolish. You need to divide and conquer. One of you should wake up, and you take up.

and you take turns and make sure the other one continues to sleep. If you both wake up, you're just going to end up killing each other, probably. So that's my advice. Like people would be like, I want to be up with my wife to kind of support her during that time. It's like, no, you sleep. You let her stay up.

And then the next time you get up and you let her sleep. You train. Yeah, even if your kid's 15, you just switch off. Right, right. Okay. That's a pretty good life hack. Yeah, life hack. There you go. Okay, I've got a, this one's a good one from Sharon. I really like this one a lot. I want to see what your advice is to her. She says, I see an increasing number of Christians, young people especially, but not completely, who love the Lord, take their faith seriously, believe and study the Bible, etc. But they are politically left-leaning. This is quite different. Yeah. You have Christians?

What? Apparently so. This is quite different from how it was when I was a young person growing up in the evangelical church. Presumably, you would agree that they are misguided. Do you believe there are biblical principles that these people, these young people, don't understand? And if so, can you spell out what they are missing? Would you think it is more a matter of practical wisdom that they're missing? Well, it's kind of both. I mean, I think that one of the reasons Bonhofer, is such a hero to me is because he understood that our response to things often changes when circumstances change. It's not a one-size-fits-all that, you know, if you're trying to follow God, in 1970, the spectrum of political options was dramatically different than it is today. And so I say to my friends, you don't have to like Donald Trump or you don't have to like you, you have a responsibility. This is not a popularity contest. You have a responsibility to think through.

This is a heavy responsibility, by the way. What are the overall effects that a certain candidate will have if he or she is elected? And when it comes, for example, to Donald Trump, you know, if, if you. care about the poor. The problem I think, Albin and Chris, is that there are a lot of people that bought into the idea that socialism or big government or the Democratic Party care for the poor and help the poor. Now, many people in those precincts may care for the poor, but their actions are harming the poor. Now, we need to sell that because that's true. The fact of the matter is that we have watched big government ruin generations, mostly in inner city

environments and communities, but we gave it a chance. And we have been able to watch it fail and fail and fail. And so we're in a new day. If you care about the poor and you think socialism will help them, you think the Democratic Party will help them, I'm here to to tell you that, and this has nothing to do with faith, it simply has to do with whether you care for the poor. If you really care for the poor, you cannot vote for a Democratic candidate because you are going to harm these people's lives. And I don't just mean harm one person or 10 people. You're harming generations of people. This has been going on since I was a kid. Moynihan, Senator Moynihan, who was a wonderful principled liberal senator here in New York City. And by

we're going to get his daughter on the program. I knew her years ago, and she has a lot to say about what's happening in China right now, because her father was an ambassador to India. She's a world traveler. She knows what's going on. But Senator Moynihan in the 60s came out, and he understood that the breakdown of the black family was harming blacks. This was a big issue, right? The left shut him down.

Now, he was on the left, but they shut him down and said, we're not going to go there. We're just going to do what Lyndon Johnson wants to do. We're going to throw trillions of dollars at it. We're going to call it, you know, the great society. We're going to spend money and we're going to buy people out of poverty. We have spent our money. That's money you have earned and I have earned and our parents and grandparents have earned. And it has all been thrown away.

It has done not only no good. It has harmed the poor. So if you care about the poor, if you just want to sound woke and hip and do the virtue signaling schick, okay, you know, vote for Bernie or for whomever. But if you actually care about the poor, you need to know that socialism destroys the poor. Socialism harms the poor. So for that reason alone, young people need to educate themselves and just understand that there's a million reasons that we can now know this. Okay, 50 years ago, maybe we didn't know it. We were going to give it a shot.

Well, we've given it a shot, and it has destroyed innumerable lives. So if you care about the poor, I don't think you have a choice at this point. Honestly, I think you have to try to go with the free market, and you have to try to make capitalism real capitalism, which is with a principled, virtuous culture where capitalism works. We're not talking about crony capitalism. But when it comes to all kinds of other social issues, if you elect a Democrat in this day and age, they're going to bring judges into our system who have bought into this anti-American narrative. And it's an anti-constitutional narrative.

They want to change the constitution. They want to legislate from the bench. We know that the judicial branch is not the legislative branch. They have no business legislating. They're supposed to be judges. But that's what they've been doing for 50 years. And it's been harming people. We've been losing our liberties, religious liberty.

We've had to fight for it and we have to continue to fight for it. That's what happens when you elect Democrats today. Okay. Now, I still have friends that are Democrats, but I think that they're mistaken. They don't seem to understand that the ramifications of electing Democrats today is very dramatically different than from electing somebody like Jimmy Carter, who I don't think was a great president, but he was a good man and he tried and he really did care. In this day and age, it's a completely different story.

I think also we have to talk about the administrations, that, for example, President Trump, I don't know where he is on faith, but I'll tell you what, his vice president is an evangelical Christian who cares about the unborn. His secretary of state, Pompeo, is a serious Christian.

Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education is a serious Christian. These people are using their power to bring biblical values to bear on the issues that face us as a country. And so I really do worry that young people aren't, they're not paying enough attention

and they don't really understand what works and what doesn't work. And they just kind of go with the crowd. And, you know, when I was young, I was politically liberal. And then I began to realize, oh, what my father and mother have been saying to me all these years, they know they grew up under evil communist regimes. They know what

happens when you lose your freedoms. And so it took me a while, it took me too long to see it, but anything I can do to help young people understand these things, I guess that's why I write my books, right? So I'll just say that I wrote a book called If You Can Keep It, and I wrote it principally for young people. I mean, it's really for everybody. But I said, what can I say in as few pages as possible, in as entertaining a way as possible, to teach young, people, college students, high school students, anyone, but as I say, principally the younger people, why they need to love America, why they need to know that with all our flaws, we are what Lincoln called the last best hope of earth. Now, I would say God is the only hope of earth, but the point

is that God has instituted political systems. He's allowed freedom to come into being, history. There was no freedom a number of centuries ago. And the more you know about it, the more you begin to think differently about the political process. And the more you know that kind of the main point of my book, if you can keep it, is the fragility of freedom is such that if we do not deal with that. If we don't fight for freedom, it can go away forever. And that scares me. So I wanted to leave things on an iffy note. I think I've succeeded. So we're done. I think. Yeah, we've We've got to get ready. We all have to go and change our clothes because Fun Facts Friday is coming up next.

Oh, my gosh, I forgot. All right. So we'll do that. And then at the end, maybe I'll read my baseball poem. Don't forget, folks, go to metaxis talk.com. Click on the banner. Please, we need your help. Thank you.

Christian bestselling author and speaker, Richard E. Simmons, does not shy away from the big questions of life. His latest book is called Reflections on the Existence of God, and it tackles the biggest question of all, does God exist? I've read this book, and I've got to tell you, I'm a little biased, but you can imagine that I like it a lot because Simmons offers insights for those grappling with life's biggest questions. Where do we find meaning in life? Who determines what is evil? Can we be moral without God? Does God even exist? Former White House aide Wallace Henley says, I've taught apologetics for many years and I've read every scholar mentioned in this book. Of all the books on apologetics, Simmons is the best I have ever read.

This book is easy to read because it's divided into a series of brief essays, perfect for a devotional or discussion with a friend. I highly recommend that you add a copy of reflections on the existence of God to your pandemic reading list. Simmons asked questions that speak directly to one of the most important things you possess your worldview. Folks, you know how important this is to me. Your worldview is going to impact the way you live your life for better or for worse.

If you want to challenge yourself to spiritual and intellectual growth, and I hope you do, then be willing to ask yourself life's toughest questions. Dive in today by picking up a copy of reflections on the existence of God right now. Go to existence of Godbook.com. That's existence of Godbook.com. Hey, folks, welcome back. As promised on this Friday, we're going to do, it's really an audience phase. favorite on this program. And it has been since we went on the air in the early 60s. It's called Fun Facts Friday. I know that Chris Heimes and Albin Seder, both of you have come to this day

armed with facts, most of which are fun. And since it's Friday, they qualify as fun facts for the Friday segment. So what do you guys have? I mean, and these facts are true facts, right? These are not fake facts. These are true facts. I know we've done things from your book, don't you believe it, and from B.S. Bentley, but these are true facts. And by the way, I got an envelope in the mail just like yesterday. It had 40 bucks in it. And it said, Albin said, our care of Mr. Metaxes. So that might be from James Taylor. I don't know. You know, James Taylor owes me 40 bucks. How did you know that? Not anymore. I think he heard that son of a gun all over the country, all over the world, and finally,

my money back. Okay, now, Chris has some fun facts he wants to share. Which of you should go first? Chris, I think you were teed up. You had something. Yeah, so I'm kind of obsessed with the freakage qualities of Australia as a continent, the wildlife, and the nature facts. Apparently, there are these giant birds that were kind of like,

you know, not chicken hybrids, but they were the size. They're about eight feet tall, and they're called Funding. birds. They have a scientific name called Dromornis. That's what these birds are called. They're also referred to as demon birds. They had kind of... Anyway, they're giant birds that could eat horses.

And apparently... Hold on. Stop. Stop. Yeah. When were these animals alive? That's where it's a fun, freaky fact. The geologists, an anthropologist would say they were in existence as recently as 15,000 years ago. How many?

15,000. Okay, 15,000 years ago. So these are monstrous birds. Yeah. What do you mean they could eat horses? There were no horses roaming Australia. So how do we know they could eat horses? Well, maybe it was my little pony.

Come on. I don't want to confuse my audience over much. I want to confuse them just the right amount. So where do you get this idea that these monstrous prehistoric birds could eat horses? Well, you know, you have these real egghead type, you know, geologists who come up. Geologists, Chris? Yeah, you know. The bone dusters.

They're not geologists. Archaeologists. Archaeologists, yeah. The bone. Paleontologists? Paleontologists. Yeah, thank you. You know, but anyway, so they've come up with these theories. They're kind of like the CSI guys of history or whatever with animals with geology,

or with the zoology, I should say. But yeah, they have these crackpot theories, and apparently one is that these birds can eat a horse. Wait a minute, wait a minute, my really little pony. I just want to say that that's one of those facts. There are so many caveats just came with that, that it becomes, it's about as meaningless as the stuff in my book, don't you believe it?

Like, I don't know what part of that to grab onto. Because I know that there were giant birds in the past. I mean, there were ox, were they called ox. There were all these different kinds of birds that were really, or what's the other one? There's another one called the Mauna or Mauna. I can't remember, but there were these giant, I was just reading about them not long ago.

So there were giant birds in the past, but you're telling me these birds, could eat horses and there were no horses in Australia. So somehow I just feel like it's like a Mobius strip of logic. I don't know where I am, which way am I facing? It's very confusing. Would you accept shrimps on Barbies? Yes, I would.

Albin, do you have anything that's at least slightly factual? Because I'm so confused. We need to go back to something really factual. Wait a minute. One last time I want to gild this lily. my really, really, really, really little pony. Yeah, that's getting even less funny, and it started off as not that funny.

So listen, wise guy. I'm going to, you know what, to cleanse our palate, because when we started Fun Facts Friday, way back when the show began, the idea was that we would read some facts that were completely made up, right? So these are not true facts. And maybe if I read one of those,

it will be kind of like a palette cleanser. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to read something and I'm saying in advance that this is not true. Okay. You ready? Yes. Okay. And there's a picture. If anybody's watching this on this comes right out of my book, Don't You Believe It, which is available on the internet. That looks like how Holbrook playing Lincoln. Yeah, well, here it is. It says, the man whose profile appears on the one cent coin is not Abraham Lincoln as is popular as is popular. As is popular. popularly believed, but a practical jokester named Pompei McPhib, who bore such an uncanny resemblance to the 16th president that he was able to fool the sculptures every time. McPhib also appears in the Lincoln Memorial and on Mount Rushmore. In each case, the cost to taxpayers was too prohibitive to allow the work to be redone. So these errors stand to this day as sobering monuments to one man's misplaced sense of humor.

That is amazing. That's a complete lie. Fake fact. We started, you know, this whole fake news thing. We started with fake facts, and they just picked it up for the news, right? Do we have any real facts we want to share with everybody before we go to a break? Because I think we've confused. We've driven our audience away.

I wanted to add one caveat is that one scientific journal referred to the bird that I was talking about, and this is a quote, as the demon duck of doom. That's a great place to end. We'll be right back with another segment of Fun Facts Friday. Don't go away. Hey, folks, welcome back. It's Fun Facts Friday on the Eric Mataxis show. We have some fun facts for you.

Albin, Chris, what do you have for our wonderful audience? Well, let me ask Chris, real quick, did you finish up with your Australian fun facts? You went down under with some deep, deep facts. Yeah. No, I think I'm good for now, but there is no end to the facts. I'll just take a break and let you. Okay, because I do have something here.

It's not necessarily a fact, but it's something about the English language. Now, Eric, you always like to say, you know, English as a first language. You have some fun ideas about that. I think English is also, I think English is also a funny language. Because you know how we say that the ground is crawling with ants? Well, what if we extrapolated that? What if we said, you know, the sky is flying with birds? I mean, we don't do that.

or the ocean is swimming with fish, or how about this, the cemetery is dying with corpses? English has a odd language. I want to go back to your premise. I think the premise is faulty. The ground is crawling with ants. Do we say that very often?

Chris, do you say that? The ground is crawling with ants? No, I don't know. The ground may be crawling with bugs. crawling with bugs. Yeah. I thought they're more specific to ants. This guy was flying with birds.

Yeah. That's a very interesting phrase, I have to say, was flying with birds. But the ocean is swimming with fish. We often say riddled with, riddled with, that's an interesting word, too. Why do we say riddled with bullets? See, now I can't go on my computer and look that up right now. I'm dying to know, why do we say riddled with bullets? Well, we're getting back to Frank Gorshian and the Joker.

Riddle me this, Batman. Well, now you, one of you had something else you want to share. I'm going to look that up while we're. I'm going to, this is actually a question to you, Eric, and you, Chris, and the audience. There are five basic tastes, okay, for your taste buds, and the chefs use these all the time. Do you know what the five basic tastes are? We can usually get the first three or four, but it's the last one, I think, is very interesting. Is one of them pineapple?

Yeah. Well, sweet and salty. you two of them. You see how that works, sweet and salty. Okay. Okay. The other two, then two more are sour and bitter. But the last one is really interesting. Okay, sweet, salty, sour and bitter. That's four. That's four. Okay. The fifth one is you mammy. You mommy. And you know why they say that. Whatever you mommy comes up with, that's your, you can eat that kid, you know. But no, It's safe. Japanese.

Well, it's based on that. It's savory. It's basically savory. Whatever say, that's kind of a... Hang on a second. I'm sorry to interrupt. Catch all. I'm sorry to interrupt this tangled web of semi-logic.

But there are actually five or you're just being funny. No, no. No, there are actually five. And when I looked it up, the last one was it spelled U-M-A-M-I, you mom. And humami refers to savory. Yeah, it's savory or like kind of a meaty flavor is what's described at this website that I look at all of this stuff. So say it again, you have sweet and sour. Yes.

No, sweet and salty, sour and bitter. They kind of like play off of each other. So you eat and salty, sour and bitter and then meat flavored. Yeah, like you, it's called you. It's one of the basic tastes. It's the early part of the 20th century, and it is Japanese. It's a Japanese chemist came up with this idea of that that was that elusive fifth taste. I don't know.

Have we blessed our audience with this information, or have we really, have we harmed them? I think we've made them hungry, if nothing else. I looked up the phrase just now when somebody says it was riddled with bullets. riddled with riddled uh is it's it's derived from the word the word riddle actually at some point meant sieve so something you know that has that many holes in it uh so that's where you get the idea riddled with because evidently it referred to a sieve um i just thought it important to at least put out one actual fact since we're confusing people okay i'm right i'm writing that down i'm gonna read another false fact from my book. Now, it's impossible to get this book. The book is called,

Don't You Believe it? I wrote it, and it came out, St. Martin's Press, 1996, and it sold no copies, but I just want to say that it's filled with non-facts. These are all untrue. For example, this is not true. Most forest fires are caused by mice. The rodents smear themselves with the resin from pine trees and run through campfires before anyone can stop them. That's not true. By the way, from B.S. Bentley, I remember this, the book is in the other room and I sure run over there and gotten it, but the man, and he's a New York City man who came up with the phrase, my door is always open, has been robbed, robbed, robbed 942 times. That's a pause for laughter. Yeah. And that could actually be a fact. never got the guy's name. Okay, this is another untrue fact I'm going to read from my book.

Peter and Arthur Bookman of Mississippi are Siamese twins connected by a common beard. And there's a photo in case anybody doesn't believe it. Look, anybody, if you're watching this on video, you can actually see a photo, Siamese twins connected by a common beard. There it is, folks. That's in my fabulous book, don't you believe it? I do think you can get copies of this on the internet, but it's like it's very hard to get. So I'm hoarding my copies. Oh my goodness. It's unbelievable. Do we have any other real facts we want to share with people? I have another one from Australia. There's a species of spider in Australia

in which the male variety plays peekaboo during its mating ritual. Why? It plays peekaboo to attract the female spider. Is that the famous peekaboo spider? Does he use one of his like eight legs to go like this? Becaboo. I don't have the name of the species, but I have it on good authority from this web page that it is in fact true. Okay, I'm going to close with another completely false non-fact from my book. I think you should close with a prayer at this point. Here it is.

Here it is. This is not true. During the Revolutionary War, British forces suffered head. losses at the hands of giant canaries, some as large as horses. These monstrous birds became extinct by the 1830s, but deserve a special place of honor in American history for their noble bearing and their selfless contributions to the founding of this great republic. And there's a photo right there.

Look at those monstrous birds, completely untrue. We'll be right back, and we apologize. So many things I could have found. The clouds got in my way. Hey folks, welcome back. I was just talking about how I missed baseball, and I said that I had written a poem years ago about Babe Ruth, and I wanted to read that poem to you,

and there's nothing you can do about it. It's called the Sultan of Swat. Yeah, swing away. And here's the poem. Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat. He hit home runs a lot. He take the baseball for a ride and round the diamond with a jerky stride, a tiny comic trot.

Babe Ruth was the Kaiser of clout. He knew how to hit him out. His full name was George Herman Ruth. His number was three, and that's the truth. There isn't any doubt. Babe Ruth was the marquee of might. His shots were out of sight. One year he blasted 60 such.

It's nothing if you've got the touch of supersonic flight. Babe Ruth was the baron of blast. His swing started back in the past. It rolled through the present with a mighty crack and shot toward the future, and it didn't look back. Even Garrig was outclassed. Babe Ruth was the sovereign of swing. There's no sense arguing. He wore a pinstripe uniform with a waistband larger than the norm.

He was a one-man summer thunderstorm. I think that's everything. Wait! Babe Ruth was the bad boy of boom. He was the ruling vizier of Vava and Vum. He was the prophet of every pitcher's doom. He was the poster boy of breathing room and the architect of Zoom. He was the true conjugator of going gone.

He was the mad inventor of the Bronxian bomb. He was the Grand Archduke of Outa Here and the Lord High Mayor of Way Till this year. Have I made myself quite clear? So hail to the Sultan of Swat, to the master blasting monster tot, to the long ball hitting Lancelot, to the pinstriped, Prince of the Lunar Shot and the reigning Raja of the cleanup spot. Babe Ruth is the Sultan of SWAT. Thank you very much.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Round the bases now. That's my baseball poem. And you can find it at my website, ericmetaxis.com. I've got a bunch of poems that I wrote there. And it's kind of funny. We were talking about Chris Rock earlier. I think he would be the guy to read it. Like sometimes you think of a voice, Chris Rock should be the guy to read that poem. Excellent. Now, before we go, folks, I want to remind you of the good news.

Someone has donated actual Geneva Bible pages. If you don't know what they are, to buy one, it's like $50, I think, to buy one on the Internet. that. If you give $250 to Angel Tree, okay, for $200, you get two subscriptions to Metaxa Super. That is, you know, commercial free podcasting and a number of other things. You get two of those. You get a signed copy of my book, seven more men. There's one right there. Seven more men sent to you. That's for $200. But if you give $250 while supplies last, because we don't have a ton of these. We will also send you a Geneva Bible

page. I mean, it's an amazing thing. It's over 400 years old. It's beautiful. I thank the person who, I don't know if we should mention their name, but I just wanted to say we want to do that. As you know, if you give $500, you'll get two of those and

two books and then you get all that stuff and a visit to the studio. Right? Yes. Somebody can give $10,000 and I know someone can. We just have three days left. This is a really beautiful opportunity to help some kids that need help.

We want to encourage you to go to the website metaxis talk.com. Very easy to give. I promise you, super easy. Or you can call the number 888-206-2793, 888-208-80, 206, 2793, 888-28-206-27993. God bless you as you give, and thank you for listening to the program.