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Support for stuff you should know is brought to you by TD Ameritrade, investing isn't one size fits all. Every investor has a unique style. And that's why TD Ameritrade offers two different mobile apps. There's TD Ameritrade Mobile, which lets you manage your portfolio with streamlined simplicity or THINKORSWIM mobile, which gives you the tools you need for more advanced trades and in-depth analysis. Visit TD Ameritrade dotcom apps to find the one that's right for you. Once again, that's TD Ameritrade dotcom apps.

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It's been 30 years since the first episode of Beverly Hills Nido 2.0, 30 years since we walk the halls of West Beverly High and since we all hung out at the Peach Pit. Relive it all with Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling on their new podcast, Niono, two a.m. OMG. We get to tell the fans all of the behind the scenes stories that actually happened to them as they watch every episode of the beloved 90s TV show. From the very beginning, listen to Nyarota and OMD on the I Heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There is Charles W. S.. Chuck Bryant in St. Jerome. Roland is out there as well. I'm not saying I'm a sinner. And this is stuff you should know.

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The first real episode of the New Year. It is, Chuck. It's beyond the future now. It's twenty, twenty one that's so futuristic. No one ever even used it in a sci fi book.

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That's right. We we had our 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 it right.

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That's right. How was your holiday? Good. It was good. I finally got to just kind of disconnect and decouple and just relax. And there was no 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 Fonzie's.

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Yeah.

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No, I didn't want it right. I didn't want to see a computer or a keyboard for a little while and I was able to do it.

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Yeah, that's great. I just did the porn was all just like I just made drawings myself. Right.

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Flip books. Yeah. 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 as you know, some buttoning up end of the year stuff. But then I was just like, you know what? And you know what I put as my I mean, you've seen my occasional auto reply, right? Which is it's an emergency. Please realize that there are no podcast emergencies.

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Right. Which is sort of true.

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It's, I think 100 percent true, actually.

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And you got your slide whistle. I did.

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I don't have it with me right now or else I think we got we got to debut the slide whistle later because I got to hear that thing.

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Yes, we do. Thank you for that. Did you get your gift from me? I did. OK, good.

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I thought that you would find that wildly appropriate and it helped out our buddy, too.

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That's right. And so we're just going to wade into some easy peasy waters here, OK, with hell.

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Hell, this is tough, man. I was like, whose dumb idea was this? And I realized it was mine. So I never forgot.

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The CIA here is is that I mean, people like I think the grab store helped us put this together. He said people make their entire careers out of just Dante's Inferno. Right. Much less concepts of hell. And it is very broad and dense and confusing. And so this is sort of just stuff. You shouldn't have stab at it. Yeah.

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And let me just add to that that we are in no way, shape or form biblical scholars. No theologian. No. We're going to get a lot of stuff wrong. Yes. We're probably going to walk right past interpretations. They're popular and widely accepted. Correct. We will like this is this is just us talking about how. So just relax. We already know we're going to hell, so there's nothing you can do to us that's any worse.

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So just calm down and enjoy the episode. How about that. Yeah. This episode about eternal conscious torment.

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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 cute again. Wow.

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That was, that was a reference to something that doesn't even exist yet. That's OK. Heddy. Yeah. So, Chuck, I want to talk first.

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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 your soul is tormented, beaten up, bullied, maybe talked about behind its back, set on fire. And in this in this state, there's no dying. There's no death of the soul. The soul is immortal.

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So this this pain, this torment, this horribleness just keeps going on forever and ever and ever. And that is that that comes directly from Saint 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, then seriously, it's a theological term that they used today that strikes some people, some theologians, as wildly disproportionate to the kinds of sins we're talking about here.

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Like like your. Overindulged in fudge brownie mix during your time on Earth means that you're going to be to suffer a literal and never ending infinite eternal torment of damnation because you overindulged in brownie mix, that just doesn't quite jibe for some people.

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So there have 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.

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Are you familiar with those other interpretations?

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Well, which ones, namely universalism and annihilation ism now?

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Hmm. This was that thing that I was saying. We got to talk about this. So check this out. I'm going to let me wow you for a second, OK? OK, because these are to me, the softer, gentler versions of hell. One is that the universalism, another term is universal salvation. And it's this idea that there is an end. There's a there's a finite date to the to the torment and that you're basically going to hell depending on how badly you sinned.

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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 annihilation ism, 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.

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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 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.

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Well, yeah. I mean, you know, it's a lot to unpack. I know you grew up fairly Catholic, and I regret how many times have had to say the word Baptist on this show.

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I feel like there's a lot of people taking a shot right now if this is the stuff you should know. Drinking game. Yeah, but I can't not mention that growing up Baptist, it's a very you know, it's a very fiery brimstone religion. And it's I very much grew up with the concept, this very sort of trappy concept of heaven is this, you know, lovely place where God lives.

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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.

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Yeah, not just children, adults who go on to continue to believe in how you know and to subscribe to this stuff for sure. It's definitely a way to keep people in line.

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But the concept of hell generally in the concept of souls, and this is probably no surprise to most sort of critical thinkers, but, 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.

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And, you know, it just makes sense that there's a, quote, good place and a bad place.

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Yeah, but the thing is, is apparently it doesn't seem to have necessarily been just like part and parcel from from what Ed saying and from what I saw elsewhere in the research, is that heaven seemed to have developed first very early on. Yes. And then there was a real emphasis on symmetry in the ancient and like premodern world where if you had one, you had the opposite in equal proportions. Right. 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 injustice of that, too.

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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 were subject to the most cruel kinds of punishment. Right. Available to the human imagination for overeating. Right. Yeah. That that's not that's not as old as the idea of the afterlife either. That was really surprising to me.

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But it's pretty neat because it's weird. It's almost like humanity got infected. By a germ of real meanness. Mm hmm. And in darkness that we're still living with today and that you can kind of trace it in in the evolution of our idea of hell as well. Right.

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Or to the beginnings of Twitter.

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That's right. So 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, describe something from the Sumerian underworld where they 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.

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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.

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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.

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But in the same way to 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 show 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, you know, 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 in and bringing you like bread and beer.

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And in that sense, also, Chuck is really kind of poetic because you, that person, are living on in the memories of your family after you died. Yeah, 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 immoral means as well. But the converse of that is really disturbing in that if you don't inspire people to care about you afterwards, like you really cease to exist.

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Like there's there's there's no one on earth who's thinking of you or honouring you. And in that sense, if there is no afterlife, you that is annihilation. That is true. Oblivion.

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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. And until you're remembered after death, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yeah, I know. It's called the inside out.

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Maybe now that's the one about the emotions, which is equally brutal. Yeah, I don't think that's what I thought her. I thought the kids, like imaginary friend, was being erased or demolished. And the hell was that in that movie? I think so, yeah.

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I remember the elephant that was like George Clooney, his friend Richard, or we said right now it's certainly secretly 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.

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That's right. I think it's Egypt, ancient Egypt, where the first the first idea of like this this weird sort of afterlife judgment panel sort of steps in. Yeah. Where, you know, there are people, like, literally in charge of this thing, almost like a bureaucracy. And there's an administration and it's it sounds a little bit more like Sammy Davis Jr sitcom pilot that failed.

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Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. She devil. I don't remember I ever definitely wasn't she devil that was, wasn't she? It was something like that, though. Yeah, but it was pretty good.

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The show was I mean, the like one minute trailer I saw be pretty good. But this, you know, they're ancient Judaism sort of overlaps with some of this stuff. But Judaism is it's a it's a whole different thing because, you know, they have the references. There's a lot of references to things that were later just sort of rewritten in retranslated as hell, which makes it really confusing. If you look at ancient texts, yeah, Judaism had Shiel, which is it kind of follows in that same tradition from the pre-Christian era that like when you died, there is an afterlife and there wasn't much to it.

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It wasn't. But it was. Right. Wasn't particularly pleasant. Yeah. Apparently to the to the the early Jews, they were they were basically saying, like, this is it's the state of mind after death more than like. Yeah. Interdimensional like physical place that exists outside of this world. Not like a realm but. Yeah. Like you're saying like a. Yeah, like, I guess a state of mind as far as that is that goes, but it also suggests that you still have a mind after you die.

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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 a 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.

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Right. Right. But but overall, the point of Sheol was that no matter what you did on Earth, no matter who you were, good person, bad person, 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.

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The same fate comes to everyone. Right, which I didn't realize that Ecclesiastes rhyme, but got a nice, nice beat to it. Nice tempo. It doesn't all rhyme does it.

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I don't think so. I was kind of surprised that any of it rhyme. But there's 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 suddenly, you know, like directly or something like that. That was punishment from God as we kind of evolved away from that.

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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.

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Right. Which is not recognized in Judaism, of course, as New Testament stuff.

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No. And there was something else that stuck out to me is, look, 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 candidates were into child sacrifice. They they had multiple gods. And the Jews kind of played off of that. Like some of these these devils that we understand today, demons like Mullock, Imbil, you know, Beah Apostrophe, those were actually Canaanite gods.

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And they kind of perverted the pronunciation of them to kind of mock them or make them seem other are 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 right. It's not a good thing to do. Let's practice this other thing instead. So I'm kind of a fan of the of early Judaism.

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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.

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We'll read a little bit on whether or not you're allowed to convert, OK? Because I don't even know. And then we'll be back right after this. Kuhnen is a conspiracy theory so complex that it's formed a cult like following many of its followers, Tinku is associated with Donald Trump and that he's cryptically communicating with them via obscure image boards online. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world believing this, and as a result, Kuhnen, on his torn families apart, led people to violence and is even infiltrating the highest levels of government with disinformation.

[00:20:39]

Now, in 2020, more than 70 US congressional candidates have either shed or outright endorsed Kuhnen material. President Trump has even given a veiled thumbs up to the movement outside of what the conspiracy community thinks. Nobody quite knows the true identity of. We aim to change that. I'm Jake Hanrahan. Join me for a Q Clearance, a podcast series that aims to look at who is really behind. Q and on listen to Q clearance on the radio, up A podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:21:15]

Have you written a book and need some insight into what comes next? Or are you passionate about cooking and want to know how to make it your career? Or maybe you just want to hear insider stories about the entertainment industry? Either way, we've got you covered with the two guys from Hollywood podcast. I'm Alan Dovid, the literary agent and talent manager. And I'm Joey Santos, a columnist and celebrity chef. And on our podcast, Two Guys from Hollywood, we bring our expertise to the table with, of course, delicious cocktails and all kinds of recipes for you to try at home.

[00:21:45]

So grab a drink and join us. We've got a wide range of celebrity guests and Hollywood insiders to discuss pop culture, publishing and entertainment. And we'll provide you with an unfiltered and sometimes brutally honest show about Hollywood. As we like to say, we don't dish. We serve, listen and follow two guys from Hollywood on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcast. We'll talk to you soon.

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By the way. Have you converted? I looked it up, I'm not allowed to it would require me to be religious. Oh, wow, 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 these texts, some Hebrew text and translations and mistranslations and stories that are told, you know, the old game of telephone that happened throughout the years while these things were passed on.

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So there's a lot of things that, you know, over the years that you've thought of sort of as a generic hell like Hades, which was Greek, the Greek underworld. Yeah. Also synonymous with the Shiel, 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.

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Yeah. And that's like a part of the underworld where the gods and prison 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 Tataris is definitely one of those places. Yeah.

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And like Hades. And she'll more closely resemble purgatory or limbo where Tartarus Yazz is definitely hell hell like that's or torment and fire is and all this stuff that's really kind of like popped up to me.

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It's like, wow, this is like our what we think of as hell today, even like the cartoon hell with like the pitchfork in the fire and all that stuff. The funny 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 is a life afterward and it just kind of evolved from that kernel. And more and more civilizations came along and added to it, subtracted to it, said, no, you're wrong, no, you're wrong.

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And let's go to war. Of this like hell is like this hammered steel drum that's been hammered out by, you know, millennia of of people and cultures. And it sounds pretty good. Yeah.

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I thought you were about to say by John Bonham, did he play a steel drum? No, but it just isn't. 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. And what's the word I'm looking for, not necessarily a where do you take all the trash, the episode about it?

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Bland, bland. Yeah, sort of a landfill on fire. OK, that's one interpretation, which is a great record title, I think. Landfill. 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.

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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 into it. And in the New Testament, of course. Yeah. So that's another sort of Haiti's like, I guess, usage that just makes it all the more confusing.

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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?

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It's like a Jewish. Yeah, I think so. Even though it is in the New Testament, which is even more confusing.

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Right. But it kind of shows you how connected like these these civilizations and groups were, the ages, you know, that this still popped up.

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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 these things just become this generic hell, which kind of opens it up to. Making how 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.

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And this is the Christian hell. Whereas if you kind of start poking behind it, you're like, oh, this is this Christian Hels made up of all these other conceptions of how along the way.

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So as far as like and I love the Ed calls the section the topology of hell, but that's sort of, you know, a big part of it is we mentioned a little bit heaven is 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.

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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.

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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. They'd like hell was underground, heaven was somewhere above us or in the sky, like the Mayans had a place called Xibalba, 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.

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And Sheol was underground. It was connected to the grave. And that seems to be where this idea also not just the 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. Yeah. Or at least putting our dead in, you know, deep, dark caves for at least one hundred and thirty thousand years from what I've seen. But it may even go back before that.

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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 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.

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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 the 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.

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There's a few thousand years of culture behind that. That way that you were raised or I was raised, you know. Yeah.

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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 lights. And I write nothing but highlights in boy's life and all of the puzzles are already filled out.

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Yeah, or oh man. The worst is any doctor's office where it's nothing but like medical and health magazines. Yeah.

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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.

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And everybody else in the waiting room is not wearing a mask. Oh no thank you. It's it's the twenty version of hell. Dude, that's my new nightmare. Yeah. Having those about three times a week, I don't like where I'm being descended upon. They seem like zombies, but they're just people without masks.

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Right. Weird potato, potato. But, you know, it's funny. Has this happened to you where you watch, like, movies or TV shows or something? covid. It's like you're way too close to that person. Get back. Like we have been changed, man, possibly forever.

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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.

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And now my mom's getting vaccinated this Saturday.

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Good for her, Jack. She needs to do it live on Instagram or something.

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Yeah, she was like, you know, should I have any reservations? I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

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She's like, well, then I mean, you have to wait in line. You're like, oh, those reservations. Yes, make reservations. Make reservations, RedZone. But yes, 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. Are now like, I'm in purgatory. Yeah, and there's something about purgatory that I hadn't really realized, it's not interchangeable with limbo.

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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, and have it. 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 sin something like that to where you can you can work it off and and, you know, go on to heaven.

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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.

[00:32:31]

And then also really gibes to with this idea, Chuck, of of the Buddhist hell, basically the Buddhists have a concept of hell where I think called maraca, which is also a Hindu concept. But there's this this idea that you're you're there for very in each of these Hels, you have to go through these health and your lifetime. There's very specific like your lifetime in this hell is one point six, two trillion years. And then the next hole is like, you know, quadrillion years or something like that.

[00:33:05]

But you eventually work your karma off on Earth. And if there's a real striking resemblance to this Buddhist hell to some, you know, Christian and Jewish interpretations of hell, where I should say some Christian interpretations of hell, where you can work off your bad deeds and then go on to Nirvana or heaven because they borrowed from one another.

[00:33:25]

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 and how it's a very big deal. I always think of fire and heat and sweatiness, but that's not always the case. There are frozen hells aside from, you know, the Dakotas, Nebraska you were talking about. I think that's a frozen hell, right?

[00:34:00]

Yeah. There's eight hells and eight cold hells in the eight cold hells are like in this one your skin starts to blister and this one is 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.

[00:34:17]

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.

[00:34:25]

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 what that satisfies.

[00:34:40]

Like, can you just be like, OK, 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 what was the purpose of going into all this detail?

[00:34:51]

I think this I think the specificity if if hell in the in sins on earth are to be punished in the afterlife, to me it would make sense that there would be great specificity put forward so people know exactly how bad it is. Yeah. In order to inform their deeds on Earth. Yeah. 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.

[00:35:25]

Yeah. And the person's like fireball. It sounds terrible. Like I was OK with with this thing, but maybe I should get better person. I guess I won't steal this car after all.

[00:35:35]

But it's all like fear stuff and that, you know, that existed right through my religion, you know, and we still exist today.

[00:35:44]

Do you remember roughly how old you were when you're like, oh, I don't actually believe this anymore. I'm free.

[00:35:51]

It started in sort of mid high school, but I was still sort of doing this stuff and hang in with certain crowds, certain crowds.

[00:36:01]

Do you mean like the opposite of certain now, you know, going to like young life and FCA and stuff like that into early college? And the big transformation, I think I've 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.

[00:36:28]

Everyone else is wrong. Right? And then when I said, well, what about what about all these other religions that are really, really similar? They're like, wrong. Yeah. 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 Lewis Cy-Fair and he had a heck of a ponytail.

[00:36:51]

I just felt safer. I thought that was really clever back when I saw that movie. Yeah. And looking back, it's pretty dumb. Wouldn't Angel Heart. Yeah. I mean, good enough movie very much of its time. But I remember thinking that Louis thing was like, whoa. Right. Right.

[00:37:09]

There's a restaurant I think in like D.C. maybe Louis cyphers. 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.

[00:37:23]

So we take another break. Yeah, let's. All right. More judgment and punishment coming up right after this.

[00:37:42]

Contact World is a technology and media company dedicated to improving public health because we're fed up with the way our country has ignored public health for so long.

[00:37:51]

Those days are over and our podcast is our opportunity to dive into hot topics that are relevant to your life.

[00:37:57]

From contact tracing to vaccines to social and racial justice.

[00:38:03]

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[00:38:14]

As we seek truth in health. Contact Worlds podcast is the voice of the people and your opportunity to improve public health and health equity. So subscribe to contact World and tell your friends, because we all deserve the right information, not misinformation. Visit contact Outworld. To learn more, listen to Contact World, the podcast on the radio, our Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:38:42]

Hi, this is Boin Yang here, and if you're as excited as I am about the upcoming fourth season of Search Party on Biomax, then you'll want to tune in to Search Party the podcast.

[00:38:53]

I'm sitting down with the creators and stars of the Dark Comedy to delve deeper into the disturbing world inhabited by Doree, Drew, Elliot and Portia and to help us discuss Search Party's most prominent themes were inviting a very special celebrity fan to join its chat.

[00:39:07]

Folks like Paul Scheer, Vanessa Bayer, busy Phillips, Taran Killam and Carrie Brownstein, among many others.

[00:39:14]

I couldn't be more excited to talk with these folks about one of my favorite shows on TV. So join us as we review classic moments, share behind the scenes anecdotes and analyze the complex characters and unpredictable plotlines that make the series.

[00:39:26]

Oh, so much fun. Search Party Season four comes to Biomax on January 14th, with seasons one through three available now. Meanwhile, subscribe and listen to Search Party, the podcast on the pirate radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:39:53]

OK, Chuck, you promised judgment, you promised punishment. Let's let's lay it on us.

[00:39:58]

Well, I mean, you know, this is like you mentioned earlier in the Old Testament, like God directly punish people.

[00:40:05]

You could be smothered 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.

[00:40:19]

And a lot of this is informed by writers and not even like biblical scholars, like people like Plato. Right. And a lot of these stories, again, are really, really similar. There's a story from Plato's Republic where a man named her E.R. 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 in 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 or the Republic or just like we've been talking about, sort of overlap and incestuous.

[00:41:03]

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 there being like judgment and torment, you know, potentially afterward, if not reward. But he really kind of. Boosted, I guess, he signaled, boosted the idea of an eternal soul and possible damnation, and he directly influenced St. Augustine.

[00:41:31]

Yeah, and Augustine definitely influenced some of these later guys like Helmond Tindale and their idea of help. But Augustine was influenced by by Plato. And Augustine had the other distinction, along with I think Augustine and St. 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 we are fine with inflicting violence upon you.

[00:42:09]

That same tradition of what you were saying, where this is the only truth that anybody who believes anything else is wrong, that finds its source. At the very least, it finds its early popularity from St. Augustine. Yeah. 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 and I think the fifth century. And so you do have these guys who came later, like Helme and Tindale, who had nothing to do with scripture, but their their experiences were basically they died and came back to life.

[00:42:43]

And so there's a hell and it's awful. Right. Really kind of informed our idea of what hell is like. And it seems to be based a lot on this, these ideas by Augustine, who got his ideas from Plato, who got his ideas from God knows who God does know who you are.

[00:43:01]

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 Dontae, of course, who we mentioned earlier. I did not even know Dante's last name until until we researched this. But it's in there's going to be some great Italian coming up. Everyone, come on. But Dante, Aliki very, very in his divine comedy and specifically Inferno. Dante's Inferno is is really, 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 the eighth circle of hell and stuff like that.

[00:43:42]

Right. Like, I've been guilty of saying that my whole life and not really understanding what the heck that even meant.

[00:43:48]

But what's interesting, too, is so Dante wrote the The Inferno. He wrote The Divine Comedy in the early thirteen hundreds. I guess it took him 15 years. And so this is the thirteen hundreds. 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 like that. That's really old.

[00:44:18]

Like think of that Nebraska. There's eight hot 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.

[00:44:43]

And it's also important to remember when Dante wrote this stuff, it was 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 the things that happened to me, like they're going to be slotted in like and it's almost like.

[00:45:10]

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.

[00:45:22]

Yeah. And I'm sure some of those people were living like, hey, man, don't don't put me in hell. Like, this is not you can't do that.

[00:45:29]

And he's like, I just did, you know, here's an ice cube. Have fun.

[00:45:35]

So he dontae one of his big things and that I think made his work so famous too was he really got into contrabass. So you want to take that? No, that was great. I didn't even pinch my fingers and thumbs together in contrapositive is basically this this poetic eye for an eye where, you know, if you if you do this on earth, if you seen in this way, your punishment is going to be some poetic justice in the afterlife.

[00:46:06]

And that was the whole point of of hell as far as Dante was concerned. It was where God got justice for things that were done wrong here on Earth.

[00:46:15]

Right. And apparently it said as much over the gate of hell. It said you desire most say, il mio out of authority, which means justice moved my haymaker, 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 that came from Dante's Inferno as well. How is that what that's from? Mm hmm.

[00:46:45]

It's good stuff.

[00:46:46]

It really is. It was also used to great effect in Boondock Saints.

[00:46:53]

So Dante and Virgil are before they even go to hell, they have to cross the River Acheron and deal with Sharon, the boatman, which is, you know, I think this has been used a million times, too. And literature and pop culture like this, 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.

[00:47:24]

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.

[00:47:35]

And Strickland is in there, too. Yeah. Isn't he like the page with the coconuts? Yeah. And there he is over there. Now I'm looking at a picture of me face punching towards George Lucas.

[00:47:48]

Yeah, I've been in this room in a while. I have, you know. 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 Archer your and. Yeah.

[00:48:02]

Which is 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 Dontae is writing about it like this, the Christian hell.

[00:48:13]

And it really kind of goes to 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 thinks that it's a virtue if you're have moderation in your life. Right. Like you don't want to be too spending and greedy. You also don't want to be too miserly. But that's not a Christian thing at all.

[00:48:43]

Like that's not in the Ten Commandments. It's not one of the seven deadly sins or anything like that.

[00:48:47]

No, there's gluttony, but miserliness is not in there, right? Yeah. So he's definitely just saying this is this is what I don't think. But I guess it just hit a nerve because, I mean, like we were saying at the outset, like this is this is just 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.

[00:49:09]

All right. So first Circle Lembo. OK, not purgatory, like we mentioned, this is where you can like it's it's not terrible, but it is hell and it's sort of unfair. Like he said, you know, if you're not like, you could just be born before Christ and you could be in limbo.

[00:49:28]

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? Lost is next. And this is pretty interesting, too, in that, you know, some other people who had seen visions of hell like the, you know, medieval knights we talked about earlier, they're talking about like, you know, oh, yeah, they they nail your sack to a board with rusty nails or just really juvenile stuff.

[00:50:02]

Dante goes a lot more poetic in that his idea of lust is is their punishment for lust is, you know, lovers are blown about by the wind so that they can never quite get together. And there's always, you know, kept just just out of each other's reach, which is, you know, it's a lot more poetic than than the other one.

[00:50:21]

Did you say nail your sack to a board? Yeah. Like your backpack. Yes. OK, 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.

[00:50:39]

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.

[00:50:58]

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 to spend just tons of money. And then on the other side, they're 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.

[00:51:21]

The next circle, balance number five anchor is that yeah, that's that's where those of us who are who get road rage will be. Actually, that's where I'm going to be on for. It's all right.

[00:51:35]

You're in the River Styx in that case. Yeah. Just lost it around being like I'm so mad about everything.

[00:51:41]

Circle number six, everyone feels like a Dave Letterman top ten does. All of 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.

[00:51:58]

Yeah. And Epicurious in particular is there. And I was like, why Epicurious? And apparently he very much and his followers did not believe in any kind of afterlife, which is why they're like, make the most of your time here on Earth.

[00:52:11]

I guess that's where I am. Yeah. It's basically another way to interpret that is that these were people who sow discord by injecting alternative ideas into the believers minds.

[00:52:25]

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 go there. Either way, you're screwed either way.

[00:52:36]

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. Yeah. Through these these things and I guess is kind of acting is like his. Oh.

[00:52:52]

What is the name of for New York Dolls and Scrooged.

[00:52:55]

Buster Poindexter. Yeah. Johanes his acting is Dantes Buster Poindexter. OK, and so Virgil's escort him around, they get to the seventh circle of hell which contains the the city of dis. Which dis or is this in the sixth. No, I think this is it's in the sixth. Is it. Yeah. Yeah, 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 1st through 3rd, the 2nd through the 6th and 7th through the 9th.

[00:53:31]

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 temptation to see that a weakness of will their 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 the genuine sinners, the evil people reside. Yeah.

[00:54:03]

This is where arsonists and murderers that he actually frame, you know, suicide is one of these. In that seventh circle, the eighth circle, and, you know, this is it gets a little confusing because in their smaller pockets within these circles. Right. And again, if you're a scholar of DONTAE, just I'm so, so sorry.

[00:54:26]

Yeah. Hopefully they turned this off as expected.

[00:54:29]

But the eighth circle is for 10 kinds of fraud. And then the ninth circle is finally where Satan is, and this is for for Satan and as the lead trader, basically not traitor, but traitor. Right. Which is, you know, this is a big win for me. I mean, a as a Pisces fan of Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath, like loyalty and is very important. Broken trust is to me like one of the worst things someone can do.

[00:55:02]

And so I didn't realize that was Piscean in nature.

[00:55:05]

Yeah. Pretty Piscean, OK.

[00:55:07]

Very loyal. Very friendships and relationships are sort of of the utmost importance. To be betrayed is like just kind of the worst thing you can do.

[00:55:16]

Gotcha. So this is this would be your your you'd really enjoy this. Yeah.

[00:55:21]

I mean, I guess that's my eighth circle.

[00:55:23]

But it's interesting in that Satan, the ultimate traitor 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 his equal.

[00:56:01]

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.

[00:56:10]

Right. But if he would just. Yeah. If he'd just give up, then he'd stop beating his wings and it would melt. All right. Yeah. And then he would be free, but then he just wouldn't be Satan anymore, you know what I mean. Sure. Be a broken version of Satan. And who wants that. Right.

[00:56:23]

Then we wouldn't have Sammy Davis Jr. TV pilot.

[00:56:26]

Yeah, right. Exactly. So, I mean, it's not like our idea of hell just ended at daintier, but it's 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 iron flux. Hmm. Cartoon on Remember Liquid on MTV? Yeah, I think somehow Aion flux ended up in hell and like this the the weird conception of it was just so unsettling.

[00:57:01]

Everything was just so off. It was really well done. I have to go see if I can find it. All I could find was that Asian flex. The movie sucked. That's all you can find when you search and flex in hell right now. But I really want to find that again if I do all of the tweet it out.

[00:57:17]

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. Hieronymus Bosch is a great example. I love those paintings. This is a couple of centuries after inferno, but these are the ones that look like sort of indie folk album covers. Yeah, they're great. Very cool stuff. And, you know, like I said, there's scores of versions of Hal from Clive Barker to Marvel Comics to to Sammy Davis Jr.

[00:57:52]

and the good place. They're all over the place. So it's definitely something that's like, I don't know, it's just really captured pop culture's imagination just as much as it did thousands of years ago with religion.

[00:58:05]

You know, one of the greatest one of the other great conceptions of the afterlife, not necessarily Helbert hellish is found in this. I think I've mentioned it before. Joyce Carol Oates short story called Night Side, where there's this science and like the spirits that are contact that 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.

[00:58:35]

Like Joyce Carol Oates is so good with horror, but that that particular one is super disturbing. I highly recommend everybody reading it.

[00:58:41]

Yeah. And if you want to see a fun take on the afterlife, watch the great Albert Brooks movie, Defending Your Life.

[00:58:47]

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.

[00:58:57]

The great Albert Brooks.

[00:58:58]

Yeah, well, since Chuck can't stop talking about Albert Brooks, I think that means it's time for Listener Mail.

[00:59:07]

A fun fact. A lot of people know this. Albert Brooks born Albert Einstein. No. Yes. No. Yes. Brother of Super Dave Osborne.

[00:59:17]

I guess I had known that, but only when Super Dave died recently, right? Yeah, he did die. Their birth name was Einstein. Mm hmm. I think I think Super Dave Osborne was Super Dave Einstein. No, I think it was Bob Einstein.

[00:59:33]

And that is really. I don't know. I think so. I don't know. But he's like from the Larry Bud Melman era of Letterman.

[00:59:41]

Oh yeah. Good stuff.

[00:59:44]

Oh yeah. So if you want to know more about hell, just start sending your ass 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 listening to me. Yeah, I'm going to call this one of our great senior listeners.

[00:59:58]

And this this lady is from Australia.

[01:00:02]

Hello, guys. I'm an eighty 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 Podcast's. Nice. Wow.

[01:00:22]

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. I love Elvis visiting Nixon for a narc badge building Boulder Dam, Frances Perkins, etc.. Just everything, guys, keep up the good work. Cheers from Glynda on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Very nice. I was going to write.

[01:00:55]

Yeah, just love hearing from Glenda. She's great. Thank you Glenda.

[01:00:59]

Yeah. I think Glenda should write in every once when I was just say hi and talk about her favourite recent episode. I would love to think. Yep. Glenda, if you're listening please do that. And was her son Richard. Robert, Robert, Robert, thank you for turning your mom on to stuff you should know.

[01:01:16]

Yeah. Um, 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 stuff podcast that I heart. Radio dot com.

[01:01:36]

Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts, my heart radio is at the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Contact World is a technology and media company dedicated to improving public health.

[01:01:56]

And our podcast is our opportunity to dive into hot topics that are relevant to you, from contact tracing to vaccines to social and racial justice. We may not have all the answers, but you deserve to know what goes on in your neighborhood and the decisions that affect you and your family's health. I'm Justin Beck. Join me and my co-host, Katherine and Deepti as we seek truth in health. Listen, the Contact World, the podcast on the radio, our Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:02:26]

Hi, this is Boin Yang here.

[01:02:28]

And if you're as excited as I am about the upcoming fourth season of Search Party on Biomax, then you'll want to tune in to Search Party the podcast. In each episode, I go behind the scenes with the writers and actors of the disturbingly dark comedy and chat favorite moments and things with special guest celebrity fans.

[01:02:45]

Search Party Season four comes to Biomax on January 14th, with seasons one through three available now. Meanwhile, subscribe and listen to Search Party, the podcast on the radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.