Speaker 1: So there is a film that is tremendously important to
Speaker 1: both of our lives. And back in I think It's
Speaker 1: Safe to Save, you had walked up to a young
Speaker 1: Matt her young Ben, and you had said, what is
Speaker 1: one of the most impactful films you've ever seen? Not
Speaker 1: just sci fi film, just film you've ever seen. Odds
Speaker 1: are pretty high that one of us would have said
Speaker 1: something like it's the Matrix because it's about way more
Speaker 1: than science fiction, is about way more than artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: It is about the metaphysical nature of reality, idea that
Speaker 1: there is something beyond the veil. Uh. And then we
Speaker 1: would go, this is a great conversation, but we have
Speaker 1: to go record our episode about nasticism. You know, you
Speaker 1: know this, Ben, Uh? Yeah, No, this is really This
Speaker 1: is a fascinating conversation that we have with our good
Speaker 1: friend Joe McCormick in in this episode, this classic episode,
Speaker 1: and we just learned a little bit about the personal
Speaker 1: spiritual journey that gnosticism describes. And I particularly love this one.
Speaker 1: I hope that you enjoyed as much as we do.
Speaker 1: In this world or the next, from UFOs to psychic
Speaker 1: powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained defense.
Speaker 1: You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Noel. I am Ben.
Speaker 1: You are you? And that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. However, ladies and gentlemen, this is
Speaker 1: a very special episode of the show because we are
Speaker 1: honored to have a returning special guests. Uh close friend
Speaker 1: of ours on close friend of the show, writer and
Speaker 1: host for How Stuff Works, stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: forward thinking brain stuff. I could go on, but I
Speaker 1: won't in the interests of time, ladies and gentlemen. Joe McCormick. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: it is fun to be back. I think the last
Speaker 1: time I was on this show we were talking about
Speaker 1: shills on the internet. Oh yes, we got we got
Speaker 1: deep on that subject. We shot some fun things for video.
Speaker 1: If you have not seen that video, check it out please.
Speaker 1: And that's one of that that's one of the podcasts
Speaker 1: that really enjoyed making two and it got a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback. Uh, guys, you were likely largely from sock puppets,
Speaker 1: we hope. So that's one person making a lot of
Speaker 1: email accounts Yeah, that's whe where we were. All four
Speaker 1: of us were accused routinely for several months and sometimes
Speaker 1: still in the common thread of being uh anti Russian
Speaker 1: spies or something. I can't remember. The conspiracy and the
Speaker 1: threat that was very strange. I didn't mean to promote
Speaker 1: any anti Russian message, but some people were sensitive about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, the thing that we have to deal
Speaker 1: with when we delve into those kinds of topics is
Speaker 1: that it may appear that we are looking at one
Speaker 1: case obsessively, or that we are somehow singling out one
Speaker 1: country organization. But it goes back to the sources we
Speaker 1: can find, right just talking about the thing we know
Speaker 1: the most about. Yeah, and it it sure did appear. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that Russia was doing a terrible job,
Speaker 1: but it was way easier to find examples of their
Speaker 1: sock puppetry than many other places. Uh. And speaking of
Speaker 1: fantastic segues, let's get to uh, let's get to something
Speaker 1: that that is fascinating and a little bit of background
Speaker 1: for everybody. Okay, So in the past, listeners, you have
Speaker 1: asked Matt and Nolan I a question that haunts me still,
Speaker 1: what is the world's oldest conspiracy theory. You may you
Speaker 1: may notice on our videos in the intros, at least
Speaker 1: the older intros, you see something that says it starts here,
Speaker 1: and we've we've wanted to know where does it start? Right? Where? When? What? Why? How?
Speaker 1: All of the all of the big journalistic questions. And
Speaker 1: it's a game that we have played for years now.
Speaker 1: It's a rough game because, as you're going to see
Speaker 1: quite quickly past a certain point, ancient history is Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna curse on the show, so I'll say
Speaker 1: it's a freaking roar shack. People see what they want
Speaker 1: to see in it. They draw what is convenient to them.
Speaker 1: There are people phantom history enthusiasts, for instance, who believe
Speaker 1: that we are still in the medieval or Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: Uh wait, what what's the argument there? Oh? Is that
Speaker 1: the is that the missing era theory where they believe
Speaker 1: there are a couple of hundred years that didn't actually happen.
Speaker 1: Charlemagne's made up. Interesting. Yeah, we we do have a
Speaker 1: video on it, and I think we did an audio
Speaker 1: episode on it. If we haven't, we should we will.
Speaker 1: Or maybe that was just in the missing years so
Speaker 1: we got to something different. It's not. It's probably not
Speaker 1: the oldest or the first conspiracy theory. Well, according to
Speaker 1: its adherents, it may well be. We're talking about one
Speaker 1: of the oldest extent conspiracy theories in Western history, and
Speaker 1: it's one that casts out not just like on one
Speaker 1: aspect of the world right, but on the entirety of
Speaker 1: reality itself. We're talking about a war for the soul
Speaker 1: of Christianity, a war for the fate of human beings,
Speaker 1: a war for reality. Uh. The line we use in
Speaker 1: the video is a cosmic cover up leading to things
Speaker 1: that literally literally cannot be imagined. So we're talking about gnosticism. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a topic I wanted to talk about on
Speaker 1: a podcast for a long time, and I hope I
Speaker 1: get to revisit it eventually, because unfortunately it is one
Speaker 1: of those subjects that is so fascinating and so rich.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say this, but we will not be
Speaker 1: able to talk about everything that's interesting to talk about.
Speaker 1: We're we're barely going to be able to scratch the
Speaker 1: surface today. But we want to give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a flavor of what gnosticism is, how it
Speaker 1: was lost to history, and then partially regained what we
Speaker 1: can know about it, why it's so mysterious, and why
Speaker 1: it proposes such a mysterious view of our place in
Speaker 1: the cosmos. And one of the most interesting facts about
Speaker 1: this mystery, as you alluded to, is the fact that
Speaker 1: it sort of is a conspiracy theory. It is a
Speaker 1: cosmic conspiracy theory about the role of creation of human
Speaker 1: beings of the gods, and how it's all a vast
Speaker 1: cover up. Yeah, and the encounter with the divine. Now,
Speaker 1: as we do in any episode that touches on religion,
Speaker 1: we want to have a little bit of a of
Speaker 1: a disclaimer, right, Yeah, I would say that for my
Speaker 1: part here, we're not here to evaluate the I don't
Speaker 1: know theological merits of one religion versus another we or
Speaker 1: anything like that. We just want to talk about the history,
Speaker 1: what people believed in the past, where these ideas came from,
Speaker 1: and how they played into ancient societies and still do today,
Speaker 1: and the very very strange stories of early Christianity. Personally,
Speaker 1: I am personally, I'm a little bit I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit bummed that we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: cover some of the other offshoots or sects but this
Speaker 1: is a big one. This is one of the um
Speaker 1: more mysterious and influential, and we can always come back
Speaker 1: to uh, we can always come back to other some
Speaker 1: of my other favorite offshoots. Okay, So can I put
Speaker 1: you guys in a scenario? Yeah, perfect for all game. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to take you back
Speaker 1: into the past and have you imagine that you are
Speaker 1: a Christian living somewhere in the Roman Empire about the
Speaker 1: year one eight, No you specifically okay imagining? Okay, So
Speaker 1: maybe you're in Gaul, you're up in France, and and
Speaker 1: you're part of a small Christian community in a town
Speaker 1: that meets regularly, and you do the Christian rituals. You
Speaker 1: celebrate the Lord's Supper, you practice baptisms, you worship Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: and you believe Jesus Christ to be the one true
Speaker 1: savior of humankind. So what's your life like? One thing
Speaker 1: I would say is that the pagan locals probably don't
Speaker 1: like you a whole lot. They spread lies about your
Speaker 1: beliefs and religious practices. For example, they might say that
Speaker 1: you guys practice incestual orgies and feast on the flesh
Speaker 1: of sacrificed infants. That's not true, but that's what they
Speaker 1: say about you. When disasters happen. Sometimes people blame you
Speaker 1: and call you atheists because you won't sacrifice to the
Speaker 1: pagan gods of Rome or to the Roman emperor to
Speaker 1: keep everything in order. You're not carrying your weight, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not doing your job as a citizen of this empire,
Speaker 1: where I guess you probably wouldn't whether or not you're citizens.
Speaker 1: You're not doing your job as somebody living in in
Speaker 1: uh in this community to keep the God's happy and
Speaker 1: keep us out of harm's way. But otherwise things probably
Speaker 1: aren't too bad unless you're living during one of the
Speaker 1: few periods of sporadic persecution. So one day, after a
Speaker 1: good sermon in your church, there's there's one member of
Speaker 1: your congregation who comes up to you and says, uh, hey, bunny,
Speaker 1: did you like that sermon today about the resurrection and
Speaker 1: you know, immortality and all that. Yeah, that was pretty good. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe you should join my private study group. We can
Speaker 1: we can learn more about the true knowledge of God.
Speaker 1: So no, you're gonna You're gonna follow this guy to
Speaker 1: his Bible study group and it meets at his house.
Speaker 1: And at first everything sounds pretty normal. You know, they're
Speaker 1: talking about the same kind of stuff you're hearing about
Speaker 1: in church. They're talking about salvation and knowledge of God
Speaker 1: and eternal life. But over time you start hearing maybe
Speaker 1: some weirder concepts that maybe aren't quite so familiar from
Speaker 1: what you're used to at church, Like how the creation
Speaker 1: story you've always been told in the Book of Genesis
Speaker 1: is really just a cover story, and that Noah's flood
Speaker 1: was a false flag operation, and that, of course Judas
Speaker 1: is really a misunderstood hero, not the betrayer of Christ. Wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I want to interject real quick. Who are these guys? Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like nol you have encountered some
Speaker 1: adherents of the Gnostic school of thought. I'm intrigued. Tell
Speaker 1: me more. Well, the Gnostics were a group of early Christians,
Speaker 1: and and the Gnostic way of thinking, we do believe
Speaker 1: extends beyond Christianity, so they were There were probably Gnostics
Speaker 1: who weren't exactly Christians, like there might have been hermetic
Speaker 1: Gnostic traditions that had to do with some version of
Speaker 1: the God Hermes, but there was Gnostic Christianity and so
Speaker 1: when people talk about gnosticism, most of the time what
Speaker 1: they're talking about is nastic Ristianity, and it was a
Speaker 1: system of beliefs within early Christianity that uh, that was
Speaker 1: eventually not the dominant one, uh, the strain of thinking
Speaker 1: that eventually became the dominant one in early Christianity and
Speaker 1: then turned into the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, and
Speaker 1: subsequently also the Protestant Church since that broke away from
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, is often referred to by scholars as
Speaker 1: proto Orthodox. So in a very loose way, this just
Speaker 1: means something like Catholics before there was a Catholic Church. Um, though,
Speaker 1: if if you get all the way into the muddy
Speaker 1: waters of early Christian history, that's not exactly. That is
Speaker 1: not an unproblematic concept. People have challenged the validity of
Speaker 1: the idea of a proto Orthodox Church, but I think
Speaker 1: it's it's okay enough for our purposes today. And we
Speaker 1: read we read a fantastic book and a great course.
Speaker 1: Coincidentally that that's the name of the series, but it
Speaker 1: is also a great course. I'm gonna be honest, I
Speaker 1: haven't fish the book yet, but I like what i've
Speaker 1: read and I did check out the great course. So
Speaker 1: we have we have some quotations from an author that
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we're both fans of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy was my main source on gnosticism. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he's He is an Ohio State University history professor History
Speaker 1: of Christianity professor named David Brackie, and Bracky says this
Speaker 1: in his book on the Gnostics. He says, most scholars
Speaker 1: agreed that there was no single church in the first
Speaker 1: and second centuries, but a multitude of competing groups, one
Speaker 1: of which began to emerge in the third centuries. So
Speaker 1: that be the two hundreds as the dominant one, and
Speaker 1: so can be called proto orthodoxy. So these are the
Speaker 1: guys who eventually become the major dominant players, and they
Speaker 1: are contrasted with what we would think of as as
Speaker 1: the heresies, basically the early systems of thought in Christianity
Speaker 1: that did not become the winners in the battle of ideas. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have I have a great idea for this one
Speaker 1: or a comparison of everybody. So the more we learn
Speaker 1: about the evolution of man, the more we're learning that
Speaker 1: it was not a single linear thing, right, that there
Speaker 1: were other close like versions of people of humanity. So
Speaker 1: that's how we find that there is d N a
Speaker 1: uh Neanderthal Denisovan DNA in modern humanity today. So les
Speaker 1: competing um, these competing types I don't want to say brands,
Speaker 1: but competing types of early man still ended up with
Speaker 1: us today in a kind of I mean d N
Speaker 1: a reproduction is already kind of a religious syncretism or
Speaker 1: similar to it. Right, So this this analogy for um
Speaker 1: for people who maybe are not too familiar with the
Speaker 1: early days of religion, that's a good way to look
Speaker 1: at it. Is that fair? Do you think? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good one in that I think,
Speaker 1: based on what I've read, the most uh, the most
Speaker 1: accurate way to look at the development of of theology
Speaker 1: and Christianity are really probably any religion, but especially in
Speaker 1: Christianity based on what we know is that it's not
Speaker 1: a unity into diversity system, and it's not a diversity
Speaker 1: into unity system, but it's a diversity into diversity system.
Speaker 1: There are lots of competing ideas and they get sort
Speaker 1: of go through recombination over the years into various different strains.
Speaker 1: But you start with diversity and then you end with diversity.
Speaker 1: So where did gnosticism come from? Well, that's a difficult
Speaker 1: question to answer because we don't know exactly where or
Speaker 1: when it came from. Was it a variation that emerged
Speaker 1: from early Christianity? So did you have Christians who started
Speaker 1: taking on ideas other ideas from the culture, maybe from
Speaker 1: neo Platonism, which is the thing we can talk about
Speaker 1: in a bit, uh and and turn into gnostics. Or
Speaker 1: did it originally come from Judaism. Was there a kind
Speaker 1: of Jewish gnosticism that became Christian gnosticism, or did it
Speaker 1: come from paganism and secular philosophy and then incorporate Christian ideas. Uh.
Speaker 1: We don't really know the answer to that question because
Speaker 1: we don't know when or where it first showed up.
Speaker 1: There's some guesses, like some people think maybe gnosticism started
Speaker 1: in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, but they're all
Speaker 1: just kind of circumstantial guesses. We don't really know. One
Speaker 1: thing we can do, however, is disprove some earlier theories,
Speaker 1: because before a very very important point in comparatively recent history, UH,
Speaker 1: Gnasticism was the subject of a lot of wild speculation
Speaker 1: so we can't. It sort of invites that, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Once we actually talk about the gnostic myth, I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna understand a little more like why this is why,
Speaker 1: why this invites some really weird literature and speculation. I
Speaker 1: just have to jump in here and say the the
Speaker 1: kind of creation myth and the Adam and Eve myths
Speaker 1: nasticism fascinate me, and I really like them. I think
Speaker 1: I might be converting, like while we're sitting here, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well we'll check in with you in a little bit,
Speaker 1: ok because I want to hear I want to hear
Speaker 1: what you think once we get to Yaldebo's Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. You're gonna love them. You're gonna
Speaker 1: loved big hit with the kids, kind of kind of
Speaker 1: like a buddy god sweet in some version. No, not
Speaker 1: at all, I know, I know. Let me just have
Speaker 1: this one, Joe. Okay, Well, anyway point being, point being,
Speaker 1: uh that we know, for instance, the earlier belief that
Speaker 1: nasticism originated in Eastern traditions such as Buddhism is fairly
Speaker 1: easy to dismiss. Yeah, it's probably not correct. That's probably
Speaker 1: not correct, which I know sounds like waffling a little bit,
Speaker 1: but again, it's ancient history. It's all you can do
Speaker 1: is waffle there. There's almost nothing certain in ancient history.
Speaker 1: And then to add to the problem before again a
Speaker 1: very important moment in this story. Uh, the little documentation
Speaker 1: that we did have about Gnostic belief systems came often
Speaker 1: from its critics. They, yeah, almost entirely from its critics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so for the longest time, almost everything we knew about
Speaker 1: the Gnostics came from heresiologists, from members of this group
Speaker 1: you might call proto orthodox people who who were trying
Speaker 1: to identify bad, aberrant strains of thinking in in their opinion,
Speaker 1: and and teach people how to recognize them and how
Speaker 1: to get rid of them, get them out of your church.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want these bad ideas running around
Speaker 1: almost like skeptics for the religion or for the belief,
Speaker 1: the system of belief. Well, to bring it, to bring
Speaker 1: it into another thing, you always have to consider a
Speaker 1: source as and gentlemen. So if we were just to
Speaker 1: look at some modern analogies, what we're saying is you
Speaker 1: wouldn't trust Coca Cola's review of a new pepsi product.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't. If someone works at Chevy, you wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: them to say, you know what, you know, those toyotas
Speaker 1: are badass, you know you and said you would expect
Speaker 1: the opposite. You would expect for them to have problems.
Speaker 1: You're never going to see even an Olive Garden ads
Speaker 1: singing the praises of a night out at Applebee's. That's
Speaker 1: just not how people or ideas work. Well. Our olive Garden,
Speaker 1: in this case, is going to be a second century
Speaker 1: church father named Irony as of Leone. You know what
Speaker 1: do y'all know about Irony s Well, I know that
Speaker 1: he is great at parties. Uh, from what I remember, Well,
Speaker 1: he was pretty much an an enemy of the Gnostic belief,
Speaker 1: to the point of maybe being an alarmists. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he wrote a whole book about this pretty much.
Speaker 1: It's a for sure, it's called Against the Heresies. But
Speaker 1: the real title of this treatise Ireneus wrote is on
Speaker 1: the Detection and Overthrow of the so called Nosis, or
Speaker 1: on the Detection and Overthrow of knowledge falsely so called yeah.
Speaker 1: And he uses the phrase so called yeah so frequently. Well,
Speaker 1: what does what does this term gnosis mean? Well? Gnosis
Speaker 1: refers to sort of the key concept of Gnosticism, and
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea of knowledge. Now, all Christians would
Speaker 1: probably incorporate the idea of knowledge of God, right if
Speaker 1: you want, if you want to be a member of
Speaker 1: the true religion, you're gonna have to know what God
Speaker 1: is like. But the Gnostics emphasized their special type of knowledge,
Speaker 1: that that it was a knowledge that was better than
Speaker 1: the kind of knowledge other people had because it was
Speaker 1: a more direct, more true, more intimate knowledge of the
Speaker 1: real reality of what God. Yeah, it also focused on
Speaker 1: knowledge from within as well. Correct, That's that was one
Speaker 1: of the big ideas, is that many much of the
Speaker 1: true knowledge that you are getting actually comes from within. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that there is that there's this there's a true
Speaker 1: nature inside of you that wants to uh to realize
Speaker 1: the true almost as more of like an enlightened state
Speaker 1: like I like something that you would read about in
Speaker 1: philosophy as opposed to a religious text. That's very much.
Speaker 1: That's very true in some ways, except that there also
Speaker 1: is a ton of complicated mythology. Yeah, that you'd have
Speaker 1: to incorporate. But yeah, so this guy iron As of
Speaker 1: Leone who wants to talk about the overthrow of knowledge,
Speaker 1: falsely so called. He was warning his congregation about the
Speaker 1: dangers of all these interpretations of Christianity other than his own,
Speaker 1: and um and and so he talked about what the
Speaker 1: Gnostics believed. He talked about how they were wolves in
Speaker 1: sheep's clothing. They'd come preaching a message that that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like what you would hear in your church.
Speaker 1: You would be like, Okay, yeah, they're talking about eternal
Speaker 1: life and salvation and knowledge of God. So I think
Speaker 1: that's all right. But then he says, once you dig
Speaker 1: down deeper into what they're teaching, it's this crazy, aberrant,
Speaker 1: horrible thing that's going to lead people astray and straight
Speaker 1: into damnation. A m Night Shamalan twist. It sort of is, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the end of the village. But for
Speaker 1: your religions, no, I would never I would think that's
Speaker 1: a spoiler. Kidding. I would never tell your listeners that
Speaker 1: at the end of Lost, everybody is in a dream
Speaker 1: of a lawnmower, in the dream of the sentient lawnmower.
Speaker 1: Come on, when was that show over? What's the statute
Speaker 1: of limitations on spoilers? Anyway, Uh, this goes guys, this
Speaker 1: goes into another conversation that the fact that everybody is
Speaker 1: a dream of a sentient lawnmower is more like the
Speaker 1: Gnostic myth than it is what's in lost. Um So,
Speaker 1: the other other things that Irony has said is that
Speaker 1: Irony has had this idea we talked about in a
Speaker 1: minute ago. A minute ago is saying something that we
Speaker 1: were saying is probably not true. He had this idea
Speaker 1: that Christianity began as a single, unified tradition, everybody is
Speaker 1: on the same page, and then later it split off
Speaker 1: into all these bad interpretations on this rock. I found
Speaker 1: my church, and then eventually people lost their way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but most scholars today of of ancient history and of
Speaker 1: early Christian history just wouldn't agree with that picture. They'd
Speaker 1: see it's probably started very diverse. Um. The He also
Speaker 1: basically said the Gnostics they're immoral, and this is these
Speaker 1: are David Brackie's words, immoral and theologically stupid, so both
Speaker 1: both bad people and dents. And also you can tell
Speaker 1: that he would completely believe and supports of like strange orgies,
Speaker 1: baby eating, you know what I mean. Though, It's funny
Speaker 1: because people said that about his type of Christians, even
Speaker 1: though it probably wasn't true. I mean, baby eater was
Speaker 1: a fairly common Uh, it was. It was a fairly
Speaker 1: common insult in the public discourse. Pretty good to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it was. Our version of it now
Speaker 1: is un American. I've called two of the three of
Speaker 1: you baby eaters before. Yeah, but I respect you because
Speaker 1: you said it to me and not about me, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you excluding me from that. And to be fair,
Speaker 1: then you were sort of chewing on a baby. Look, guys, guys,
Speaker 1: this isn't about me or or any any allegations. Let's
Speaker 1: move on because we're getting to um Matt's new favorite character. Right.
Speaker 1: So one of the other things Irone has talked about
Speaker 1: is he explained the mythology and theology of the Gnostic
Speaker 1: school of thought as he understood it, which one of
Speaker 1: the main takeaways is, uh, this might come as a
Speaker 1: surprise to some people, but these Christians believe that the
Speaker 1: God of the Book of Genesis is actually a horrible,
Speaker 1: false sort of devil figure called YadA Boat. And until
Speaker 1: much more recently, pretty much all we had was these
Speaker 1: these heresiologists, these people writing about gnosticism from an unsympathetic viewpoint,
Speaker 1: so we didn't get their own story, like what they
Speaker 1: would have said about themselves. That is until one day
Speaker 1: in Egypt in nineteen forty five, when a couple of
Speaker 1: guys were digging for fertilizer at the base of the
Speaker 1: Gibal Altarif cliff near a city on the Nile called
Speaker 1: dog Hammadi. They toug up thirteen ancient code disease. They
Speaker 1: were crazy, they were awesome, they were sealed in earthenware.
Speaker 1: But these dudes were refraid. Right, yeah, well, uh so
Speaker 1: codices are basically it means books, it means not scrolls
Speaker 1: are the things you pick up when you're wandering around
Speaker 1: in role playing games, and they tell you about the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: a codex, so so like the codex. You might often
Speaker 1: hear about ancient books called codex something, Codex mallificus, codex
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's Codex mallifica as the one it's
Speaker 1: got to be. It's it sounds like it's up there
Speaker 1: in a necronomicon. Air, But it just means a bound book. Right,
Speaker 1: and you see these in Mesoamerica as well, right, And now, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. So at first, these guys don't want
Speaker 1: to open the container because and I love them for this,
Speaker 1: I respect them for this. I hate it when I
Speaker 1: see people acting uh and acting cartoonish and horror movies.
Speaker 1: So if this were a horror movie, they would dig
Speaker 1: up the jar, they would open it. It would be
Speaker 1: Pandora's jar or something, or in some terrible terrible faces
Speaker 1: would melt off right or their faces would melt off.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent example. So so the thing is, Um,
Speaker 1: what I like about this is if you dig up
Speaker 1: a clearly ancient sealed container from who knows how many
Speaker 1: years past. We do, but they didn't at the time,
Speaker 1: you're not just gonna jump in and pop the top
Speaker 1: and see if it happens to drinkable wine or something
Speaker 1: like that. The guys who discovered this legitimately feared it
Speaker 1: might contain a gin. I hadn't heard that detail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was so they initially hesitated, and then they when
Speaker 1: they brought them, when they transported them back to uh well,
Speaker 1: long time listeners, you know, a gin is something made
Speaker 1: from juniper berries. It's and it works. Uh A revolutionized
Speaker 1: the cotton industry. Uh no, a a jin d j
Speaker 1: I n In or just j I n In is
Speaker 1: a third creation of God in Islam, a third species,
Speaker 1: if you will, not necessarily demons or angels. We've talked
Speaker 1: about and in the past discussion. I think I had
Speaker 1: had the misconception previously that it was always exclusively an evil,
Speaker 1: malevolent spirit, and you've corrected me. But I believe in
Speaker 1: this situation that was likely the one they were expecting
Speaker 1: to pop out, That was the fear. Yes, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: always heard about it as a wilderness dwelling spirit of
Speaker 1: some kind. Right, there are different classes of Oh man, Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna have to do a GIT episode one
Speaker 1: day because I'm too fascinated with it. Anyway, So that
Speaker 1: detail is allegedly what happens. And now as we know, guys,
Speaker 1: the Non Commodity Library became very very close to uh
Speaker 1: extinction within just a few like days or weeks of
Speaker 1: discovery because originally I think that one of the people
Speaker 1: came home to the house after they brought it home
Speaker 1: and found that somebody in the house had tried to
Speaker 1: start an oven with some of the papers on the
Speaker 1: cour disseas, and so we we lost part of what
Speaker 1: the library originally was. But I think that just out
Speaker 1: of necessity or were they did they the documents? I
Speaker 1: think they didn't realize what they were. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so they eventually it passed hands a few times. I
Speaker 1: think first they showed it to a local priest and
Speaker 1: then eventually it came to the attention of scholars. But
Speaker 1: once scholars became aware of these ancient documents, these codessees, uh,
Speaker 1: that they realized they had something very valuable and very
Speaker 1: interesting on their hands. So it was a big collection
Speaker 1: of texts that were written in Coptic, which is an
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian language. Is sort of the the last stage
Speaker 1: and the evolution of the Egyptian language over the over
Speaker 1: the centuries. Uh, you know, came from down the line
Speaker 1: from hieroglyphics, but written in Greek Greek script. It was
Speaker 1: a translation, right, Yeah, it was a translation from so
Speaker 1: the originals. These were copies, so they weren't original documents,
Speaker 1: but they were copies of documents that scholars could tell
Speaker 1: were originally written in Greek because sometimes there'd be just
Speaker 1: the Greek word taken straight over when there wasn't a
Speaker 1: good Coptic word to fill in for it, and nobody
Speaker 1: knows for sure exactly when the originals of all the
Speaker 1: texts in this library were composed. But they think that
Speaker 1: the copies that they had in these jars or in
Speaker 1: the jar came from somewhere between maybe three fifty to four.
Speaker 1: But they could have been copies of much earlier works,
Speaker 1: we don't know. And they had all kinds of things
Speaker 1: in them. They had the Christian literature, they had some
Speaker 1: writings of Plato. They had like Plato's Republic, uh, sort
Speaker 1: of I think annotated to be a little bit more
Speaker 1: gnostic friendly. Yeah. What else did they have? They well,
Speaker 1: they have they had some Hermitic literature, Yeah, which we'll
Speaker 1: see Alistair Crowley claimed to have an intimate knowledge of. However,
Speaker 1: this this is important because because let's look back again
Speaker 1: at the the unbelievable circumstance and and the one of
Speaker 1: the questions that we will never be able to answer,
Speaker 1: which is why did someone put these jar and bury
Speaker 1: them at this cliff or did they bury them on purpose?
Speaker 1: It sounds like they did because it was sealed. And
Speaker 1: then another question, who was that person? Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. We probably documents don't identify who their
Speaker 1: author was. I think one thing that's often speculated is
Speaker 1: it was likely either like a monastery or somebody wealthy,
Speaker 1: because these are bound books and those were not available
Speaker 1: to people who didn't have a decent amount of money.
Speaker 1: So it was either like an institution that had some
Speaker 1: money to spend on these documents, or it was a
Speaker 1: wealthy person. Probably. Why were they buried there? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Were they buried for protection once persecution? Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be that somebody valued these books and the theology they
Speaker 1: contained and said, well, you know, the church is not
Speaker 1: so into people having copies of these documents anymore, so
Speaker 1: they were hidden there. That's a possibility, but we really
Speaker 1: just don't know and what But what we do know
Speaker 1: is that this fundamentally shook the foundations of religious study
Speaker 1: in the West. Yeah, because now we had primary access
Speaker 1: to not what the Gnostics enemies said about them, but
Speaker 1: what the Gnostics said about them, said elves. But if
Speaker 1: we got we got their own literature. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: What their enemies said about them wasn't always wrong. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean, they in some cases were basically the picture
Speaker 1: painted by Irony s Uh writing in the year one
Speaker 1: eighty about the Gnostics he was aware of is not
Speaker 1: super off base, it's just very unsympathetic. So he offers
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a dense, unfriendly reading, offering,
Speaker 1: you know, not a generous portrayal of their understanding of things,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Not generous, but not
Speaker 1: entirely inaccurate. Yeah, he didn't lie, or at least as
Speaker 1: far as I know, he didn't lie very much about
Speaker 1: what they taught. Yeah, he would just say, here's what
Speaker 1: they believe, here's why they're immoral and intellectually inferior and wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was contextualized within his beliefs, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what are the core gnostic beliefs? Like? What makes
Speaker 1: somebody a Gnostic? And and how is it different than
Speaker 1: are Christians of the time or or just other people
Speaker 1: in general. While we talk about this, listeners, just just
Speaker 1: a note here, think about where you might have seen
Speaker 1: a similar philosophy turn up in other places. I think
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting for people to find that. Yeah, sort
Speaker 1: of a Debbie Downer worldview here, ask me not necessarily,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing that that that scholar I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, David Brackie. A lot of as I said,
Speaker 1: A lot of my information here is going to come
Speaker 1: from him, and I kind of like his take on
Speaker 1: it because he says, you know, it sounds like a
Speaker 1: downer world view to us, but it also has very
Speaker 1: positive points, in some ways, more positive than than some
Speaker 1: ways of looking at religions that do exist. So so
Speaker 1: hang with me here for a second and we'll see
Speaker 1: how much of a downer it really is. But it
Speaker 1: it's certainly if you're not familiar with it, gonna sound
Speaker 1: weird as heck. First of all, coronostic belief number one,
Speaker 1: The whole material world, including our bodies, is just awful.
Speaker 1: The entire material universe. Yeah, yeah, the material universe. That Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that by world, everything made of stuff just sucks.
Speaker 1: It's just awful. It's flawed, gross and wicked, and this
Speaker 1: world is not our true home. They would not have
Speaker 1: looked fondly upon the Madonnas long material girl, No, no,
Speaker 1: they would. Yeah, that is the antithesis of narcissism in
Speaker 1: many ways. Yeah, except that it might articulate it pretty well.
Speaker 1: Gnostic theology from the other end, saying like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm fine being a being a confused, befuddled creature of
Speaker 1: material existence. Who doesn't know my true inner light? But
Speaker 1: why is this so flawed? Well, the world is incredibly
Speaker 1: flawed because and I mentioned this earlier, the God who
Speaker 1: created this world is not the true God, but a dumb, cruel,
Speaker 1: feeble wanna be god called yald about oath or also
Speaker 1: also parallel with this idea, or sometimes known as the
Speaker 1: demi urge, right, and in some schools of Nasticism, also
Speaker 1: called the craftsman, which I think is what demi urge means. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: In the etymology, it's the it's the great artifice or
Speaker 1: one who who builds or creates this world. So in
Speaker 1: a way, this, this creator is the source of the
Speaker 1: imperfection defining the material world. And in some cases yelled
Speaker 1: the boss, this demi urge, this craftsman is not aware
Speaker 1: that a higher plane exists. Yeah, he's kind of fumbling,
Speaker 1: or he might be sort of aware. It's just this
Speaker 1: is just not a good God. And you can see
Speaker 1: pretty immediately why this made Christians mad and they didn't
Speaker 1: like this, this alternate theology. So as humanity just sort
Speaker 1: of a tragic, silly accident. No, I'll get to that
Speaker 1: in the creation myth and a bit, but they well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a sort of humanity, is a way of
Speaker 1: rectifying a tragic, silly accident. But our material bodies are
Speaker 1: no good. Material is garbage, right, This this is a
Speaker 1: a reality, and transition is maybe a way to put it.
Speaker 1: Oh I like that. I like that very much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So another core tenant, it's that our our material bodies,
Speaker 1: as we've said, materials are bad, and so our material
Speaker 1: bodies are not who we really are. We come from
Speaker 1: a spiritual plane of existence, which is the plane of
Speaker 1: the true God, uh not the inferior creator of this disgusting,
Speaker 1: horrible material world. And this true God is largely indefinable, unknowable, incomprehensible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and then finally, one of the other maintenance
Speaker 1: is that you can find salvation in achieving correct knowledge,
Speaker 1: and achieving knowledge of your true origins and the true
Speaker 1: origins of the universe, the true origins and nature of
Speaker 1: human beings, and discovering them through participation in these very
Speaker 1: complicated myths. Okay, so now I think it's time to
Speaker 1: actually do a case study in gnostic mythology and look
Speaker 1: at the Gnostic myth as presented by one of their
Speaker 1: scriptures that was discovered in the Nakamati Library. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we need to take a listen from
Speaker 1: our sponsor. Yeah, here's where it gets crazy. Okay, Now
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at what's in the Secret Book. According
Speaker 1: to John, it was one of these texts contained in
Speaker 1: the Nagamati Library. It's one of the cortex of of
Speaker 1: this uh of the Gnostic school of thought. And I
Speaker 1: want to present it. I want to give credit where
Speaker 1: credit is you. I'm presenting it as summarized by the
Speaker 1: scholar I mentioned earlier, David Bracky, because he has a
Speaker 1: really great summary and explanation of it actually in his
Speaker 1: Great Courses series on Gnosticism, which I highly recommend checking out.
Speaker 1: So he's my main source on on what I'm about
Speaker 1: to tell you. But this is what you get if
Speaker 1: you read the Secret Book according to John, which you
Speaker 1: can read online as well. Oh yeah, so, first of all,
Speaker 1: authors unknown, We don't know who actually wrote it. Claims
Speaker 1: to be written by the apostle John, but you know,
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't. Uh. It was written probably sometime between
Speaker 1: like a hundred and a hundred and fifty c e.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure, but it is an apocalypse.
Speaker 1: And this is a very popular form of religious writing
Speaker 1: for the time. In fact, there are there are apocalypse
Speaker 1: is in the Christian Bible. There is the Book of
Speaker 1: Revelation that that's the apocalypse of John. What what revelation?
Speaker 1: There is just the it's the translation of the word apocalypse.
Speaker 1: It means an unveiling or a revelation of things. Right.
Speaker 1: We've explored that point on this show before, because nowadays,
Speaker 1: in modern US usage or English usage, it's often conflated
Speaker 1: to mean just a disastrous into the world or something,
Speaker 1: and really it's just it's a it's a an enlightenment
Speaker 1: of sorts. Yeah. I think it comes from the fact
Speaker 1: that that often these revelations did reveal things about the
Speaker 1: end of the world, but the but originally apocalypse just
Speaker 1: meant revelation. And though it is certainly true that a
Speaker 1: very popular thing for the gods to reveal was something
Speaker 1: about the end of the world. Right, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: who's gonna win the next game? Right? Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to be able to scare people in order to believing
Speaker 1: in what you're telling them, right, Okay, Okay, So the
Speaker 1: Secret Book according to John, this apocalypse revealed to the
Speaker 1: disciple John. The Savior appears to John after he's already resurrected,
Speaker 1: and he comes back. He's like, listen, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you the true story about everything. Now, this time for
Speaker 1: the real story. So are you guys already buckle up?
Speaker 1: I've been trolling you for thirty three years. Um. So
Speaker 1: here it is. The true God is not the God
Speaker 1: of the Bible. The God of the Bible is a
Speaker 1: fake god. The true God is in fact, this abstract,
Speaker 1: huge mind. It's like a Brackie's words, are a vast intellect.
Speaker 1: And this huge mind fundamentally cannot be known or understood
Speaker 1: by human beings. It's this vast, complicated but at the
Speaker 1: same time completely simple, at rest, at peace, incorruptible, perfect
Speaker 1: spirit of thought. Well, originally, originally you want you? Are
Speaker 1: you with me? So far sounds to me like a
Speaker 1: giant quantum computer the size of several universes, maybe a
Speaker 1: giant single thought. Well, actually it's everything there is. So
Speaker 1: originally it's everything there is. It's ultimate, eternal and at peace. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this thing is called in in Brackie's words, he
Speaker 1: calls it the invisible spirit. That's actually what the Genesis
Speaker 1: song Invisible Touches about. Is that true? I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not a genet. I wanted to be true. Well, let's see,
Speaker 1: maybe they are listening to the show. So right in, guys,
Speaker 1: right in, and let us know right well, there is
Speaker 1: something about this invisible spirit that figures into that because
Speaker 1: he wants to touch the light, the heat in our eyes.
Speaker 1: And he begins to think, so I said he, but
Speaker 1: actually it's more likely to say it. Yea. So the
Speaker 1: invisible spirit, it begins to think, and when it begins
Speaker 1: to think, the thinking produces an entity of thoughts. So
Speaker 1: it has a thought, and that thought is the first
Speaker 1: created thing known as forethought Greek pro noia. That is
Speaker 1: a reflection of the invisible spirit itself, because if it's
Speaker 1: all that exists, what does the invisible spirit have to
Speaker 1: think about except itself? So it thinks about itself, and
Speaker 1: then that thought becomes sort of a copy of itself.
Speaker 1: So the forethought is a divine thought that is also
Speaker 1: known as an eon like self awareness. Yeah uh, and
Speaker 1: these thoughts are all known as eons or emanations from
Speaker 1: the great invisible Spirit. Are you with me so far?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're about to go into the deep water. Okay.
Speaker 1: Fourth forethought is also known as barblo, a word that
Speaker 1: we can't translate. We don't know where it comes from.
Speaker 1: The first time I heard it actually always a child
Speaker 1: that was watching uh animated film called Vampire Hunter D
Speaker 1: And there's a character named Barbara Barbelo or are they
Speaker 1: pronounced it barbelow as well, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: character or a place, and so I checked it out.
Speaker 1: I did some research at the library and that's actually
Speaker 1: how I learned about Nussicism at a young age from
Speaker 1: Vampire Hunters. Vampire. Well, that's an important thing you point out,
Speaker 1: you say character or a place, because I think with
Speaker 1: these divine with these divine beings. In the Gnostic mythology,
Speaker 1: the line between place and person is kind of blurred.
Speaker 1: Something like the invisible spirit could be referred to as
Speaker 1: a as an entity that acts like a person, but
Speaker 1: it can also be thought of as like a place
Speaker 1: you can go. So the invisible spirit thinks the eon
Speaker 1: forethought or barbailo and uh. And then when God has
Speaker 1: thought of as a collection of AONs or eons, he
Speaker 1: starts thinking all these thoughts um and this whole collection
Speaker 1: of thought eons is known as the entirety or the fullness,
Speaker 1: and they all and they use a buddy system too,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So each eon has a counterpart of
Speaker 1: the opposite sex, making it this kind of male email partnership.
Speaker 1: So it's not just an eon, but there's like the
Speaker 1: eon of wisdom, which has the female main part of wisdom,
Speaker 1: but then also the male counterpart two wisdom. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: with me so far. Maybe then the invisible spirit looks
Speaker 1: upon the Barbelo, and this act creates a spark called
Speaker 1: the auto jen, a sort of the divine self origin.
Speaker 1: It is the English term bract he uses. It's also
Speaker 1: known as the anointed One or the Christ. So it's
Speaker 1: something kind of like sexual procreation between the abstract and
Speaker 1: visible spirit and the Barbelo that produces the Christ. And
Speaker 1: you can see how fundamentally offensive this would be to
Speaker 1: the proto orthodoxy of the time. And perhaps listeners to
Speaker 1: to some of you know, to keep in mind, we
Speaker 1: are not preaching this. We're attempting to shy light upon
Speaker 1: this fast cover up theory. Yeah, okay, so so I
Speaker 1: just have to start really vast. So okay, So the Barbelo,
Speaker 1: which is a thought from the invisible invisible spirit, it thinks,
Speaker 1: I thought, it creates kind of a mirror image type
Speaker 1: thing of itself. Then when the invisible spirit looks at
Speaker 1: the mirror image of itself again, it sort of has
Speaker 1: sex with it spirit whatever it does to it to
Speaker 1: create a second thing from it. So it's like spiritual union.
Speaker 1: It emanates, it has a co emanation. Yeah, okay, And
Speaker 1: how are these these uh, these various elements personified? Like
Speaker 1: if you had to animate them, if you were going
Speaker 1: to make like an instructional cartoon about these various parts,
Speaker 1: what would they look like? Pure white light extending forever
Speaker 1: into the universe. No, I'm just kidding. I just made
Speaker 1: that out. But it's something like, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that they don't have you can't, you cannot not like angels.
Speaker 1: They don't have like a corporeal No, we're not to
Speaker 1: that yet. These these things are more like sentient concepts.
Speaker 1: But we're getting there. We're getting to the creatures. Okay,
Speaker 1: So uh this leads so after the there's this barbelo
Speaker 1: uh invisible spirit union here, this leads to the emanation
Speaker 1: of twelve more eons. So they're just creating thoughts all
Speaker 1: over the lace eons that are separated into four groups
Speaker 1: led by beings called the Luminaries that serve the divine
Speaker 1: self original and I don't get into all their names
Speaker 1: and everything, but ultimately here's where we get to how
Speaker 1: all the trouble started. So you remember I mentioned to
Speaker 1: go a minute ago how they all have male female
Speaker 1: counter counterparts. Well, there's one eon called Wisdom or Sophia. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Wisdom is the lowest eon yet created, and she
Speaker 1: is female, and she decides that she wants to think
Speaker 1: her own thought without the help of a male counterpart.
Speaker 1: The mail was so she she essentially wants to reproduce
Speaker 1: a sexually so to speak. And this is a mistake,
Speaker 1: a huge mistake. It is. It is the ultimate huge mistake. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the e so she does it. She manages to
Speaker 1: reproduce a sexually, but the eon she produces by this
Speaker 1: comes out seriously flawed, messed up, deformed. And it's this
Speaker 1: misshape and progeny that's called all the both. So even
Speaker 1: in this mythology, the female is the one that screws
Speaker 1: everything up, uh sort of, But she's also she also
Speaker 1: ends up trying to set things right right. This is
Speaker 1: kind of a hero's journey for Sophia. In fact, this
Speaker 1: is an interesting question people have looked into, like is
Speaker 1: gnosticism more more feminist friendly than than other ancient religions,
Speaker 1: And some people have said, well, yeah, it is for X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z reasons, And then other people have said, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not really for these other reasons. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of a wash. It has it has some more
Speaker 1: female friendly ideas and it has some less female friendly ideas.
Speaker 1: But but to to Knowl's point, it is it is
Speaker 1: true that it has that that Pandora moment, that moment
Speaker 1: which is very common in stern religions. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot. Let's face it. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of the people controlling these ancient religions were men, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them didn't think very highly of women. Right,
Speaker 1: It's true the gender politics which can continue, the gender
Speaker 1: politics you hear about the day, were much much different
Speaker 1: earlier on the point of spiritual beliefs. So so we
Speaker 1: got you all both on our hands. Well, obviously about
Speaker 1: oath has no place in the entirety. So where's he
Speaker 1: gonna go? Well, they got to cast him out, So
Speaker 1: they cast out the oath. He's out of the heavenly
Speaker 1: Realm's satan, right, No, he's not quite well. I mean
Speaker 1: to them, he might, but they don't use these terms.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying in in the mythology, he is a
Speaker 1: stand in forestaction saying that commonality. Yeah, a bad figure
Speaker 1: who's cast out the differences. He's a bad seed instead
Speaker 1: of a rebellious force. He's just not perfect this world
Speaker 1: of perfect thought and wasn't wasn't one of the concepts
Speaker 1: that Sofia was actually trying to kind of cover up,
Speaker 1: like her mistake, like she was, uh, see you, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: She's trying to hide it. So she throws him out
Speaker 1: into exile. And one more parallel, remember in the Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman tradition, Vulcan and Herfestus throw him from Mount Olympus,
Speaker 1: uh and becoming lame, also becoming the artificer of that pantheon. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's a very interesting parallel. Okay, So we got y'all
Speaker 1: to both cast out bye bye to the entirety. But
Speaker 1: when he goes, unfortunately, he takes some of the power
Speaker 1: of the entirety with him. Promethean Yes, and then what
Speaker 1: once he's out there, what's he gonna do. He's just
Speaker 1: out there in the void. He's out he's outside of
Speaker 1: the entirety. So he's like, well, I'm gonna make a
Speaker 1: copy of the entirety. Duh, that's what I gotta do.
Speaker 1: I gotta make another one of those that I came from.
Speaker 1: But because he's dumb and uh mean and not very good,
Speaker 1: he just flawed in pretty much every way, he doesn't
Speaker 1: do a good job, and instead he makes this horrible world.
Speaker 1: He's trying to copy the invisible spirits emanation of the eons,
Speaker 1: so you know, the invisible spirit thinks thoughts and they
Speaker 1: become companions, these other beings you all. The bath instead
Speaker 1: makes a bunch of godlike beings to be in his
Speaker 1: court that are known as the Rulers. And these are
Speaker 1: these evil figures that are sort of God's helpers and
Speaker 1: the bad God's helpers. And I just want to say,
Speaker 1: far be it to like humanize this abstract concept. But
Speaker 1: it's an understandable thing on an individual level to want
Speaker 1: to recreate a home. But he's kind of a dick
Speaker 1: about it. I just have to say, Yaldebo doesn't think
Speaker 1: he's a bad guy in the scenario at all yalda
Speaker 1: bo just is doing what he or she or it
Speaker 1: thinks it wants. They're a bad guy. Yeah, Hans Gruber
Speaker 1: just wanted to sit on a beach with you know,
Speaker 1: earn a right. Right. Well, that's you know, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a a point that we explore here. But here's
Speaker 1: why I say that, you know, and being crassed when
Speaker 1: I say he's being a dick or whatever. But he
Speaker 1: lies to his creations. He does. So He's created these rulers,
Speaker 1: and he tells them that there are no other gods
Speaker 1: except for him, and he demands loyalty from his eons.
Speaker 1: And this is this is bad news. The entirety gets
Speaker 1: wind of this, and they don't like it. Uh. So
Speaker 1: there is some some fixing that needs to be done. There,
Speaker 1: there is a there is an act of repair that
Speaker 1: must be carried out. And who does that fault to. Well,
Speaker 1: really it falls to Wisdom because it's her fault for
Speaker 1: creating yelled about with in the first place. All right,
Speaker 1: So so Wisdom's gotta fix things, uh. And so what
Speaker 1: she does is she temporarily comes. She temporarily comes together
Speaker 1: with the eon known as Afterthought. And this pairing along
Speaker 1: with the Barbelo. So there's some some teamwork here. Uh.
Speaker 1: They try to reclaim the power that Yella Bath stole
Speaker 1: from the spiritual realm of the entirety when he left.
Speaker 1: And they kick things off by saying, let's have yelled
Speaker 1: the Boath make some humans. So by influencing Yelda both
Speaker 1: secretly yeah yeah, they send an image of light in
Speaker 1: the form of a human in actually the form of
Speaker 1: the entirety down to yealda Boath and this tricks yelled
Speaker 1: the bo Oath into creating the form of a spiritual human.
Speaker 1: So they make a human, but it won't become animated.
Speaker 1: But this is a bear in mind. This is not
Speaker 1: a human with a body, it's the spirit of a human.
Speaker 1: So then Wisdom and the Barbelo trick yelled to bo
Speaker 1: Oath into breathing his spirit into the newly created human forms.
Speaker 1: Yelled to both does it. But this was a bad
Speaker 1: idea for him because in doing so, he passes the
Speaker 1: power of the entirety that he took when he was
Speaker 1: exiled into these created beings um and and this means
Speaker 1: the humans are going to be more powerful than ye
Speaker 1: all the Oath and the rulers and that's no good.
Speaker 1: So they gotta scramble to cover up the mess. And
Speaker 1: what they do is they quickly cram the newly created
Speaker 1: human spirits into bodies made from the matter of the
Speaker 1: universe that they all to boath created bodies made of earth.
Speaker 1: And this helps keep humans bogged down, just kind of
Speaker 1: feeling baffled and unable to think clearly. It also limits
Speaker 1: their power by all by chaining them to this rock
Speaker 1: in a way by gravity. Yeah, yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: an interesting way of thinking about it. Like that, We're
Speaker 1: just we're just stuck. We're just stuck in this nasty
Speaker 1: mire of material stuff. Uh So, now what are Wisdom
Speaker 1: and the Barbelo are gonna do? Well, they get another plan.
Speaker 1: They send Wisdom down in the form of afterthought to
Speaker 1: hide inside humans and try to steer them back to
Speaker 1: knowledge of the spiritual realm, knowledge of the entirety, and
Speaker 1: so the great the huge salvation conflict and gnosticism uh allah.
Speaker 1: The revelation of John is that Wisdom and the Barbelo
Speaker 1: are trying to bring the power of the entirety uh
Speaker 1: present in human beings back to the spiritual plane. Meanwhile, y'all,
Speaker 1: the oath and the evil rulers want to prevent humans
Speaker 1: from figuring out their true nature, figuring out their power,
Speaker 1: and prevent them from getting knowledge of the invisible spirit
Speaker 1: and of where they came from. So it's a battle
Speaker 1: over revelation of secret knowledge. The good guys want us
Speaker 1: to figure out the truth about where we came from,
Speaker 1: and the bad guys want to perpetuate the conspiracy. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the cover up and the cover up, I'm glad,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that. And so the cover up
Speaker 1: it comes in the form of we get these false stories.
Speaker 1: So what the Gnostics said about the Bible that the
Speaker 1: other Christians believed in that, you know, the Jewish text
Speaker 1: that they adopted from the Torah, the Book of Genesis.
Speaker 1: The Gnostics would say, yeah, that, I mean, that's all
Speaker 1: pretty much true as it goes, but it gets some
Speaker 1: things wrong because they believed Moses wrote it, and they
Speaker 1: believed Moses was working from the incorrect assumption that Yalda
Speaker 1: Both was the true God, but in fact, yell To
Speaker 1: Both was Yalda Both not the true God. So it's
Speaker 1: full of just mistakes and stuff that the Gnostics tried
Speaker 1: to correct. So a part of this secret revelation. Uh,
Speaker 1: according to John, is that he he retells the Genesis story,
Speaker 1: but he fixes the parts that Moses got wrong and said, actually,
Speaker 1: what happened here, for example, Uh, in Noah's flood is
Speaker 1: that you know, Yalda both wanted to kill all the
Speaker 1: humans to snuff out the invisible spirit, but instead the
Speaker 1: spirit of wisdom came down and gave us some you know,
Speaker 1: and and preached to Noah and revealed things. And then
Speaker 1: Noah was able to save some people and preserve the
Speaker 1: spirit of truth, like he fixes. I hope I hope
Speaker 1: listeners that you all hear the air quotes around fixes right,
Speaker 1: that that that idea is so fascinating to me, that
Speaker 1: you know, instead of in the biblical recollections of what
Speaker 1: occurred when no A story that there are actually two
Speaker 1: gods or two forms of gods who are very dying, yeah,
Speaker 1: for to save them but then also destroy them. And
Speaker 1: it gives like a reasoning behind wanting to flood the world.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Yeah, so you can imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: this probably sounded as ridiculous to ancient Christians who are
Speaker 1: not part of the Gnostics thought as it does to
Speaker 1: people who aren't familiar with it today is just like,
Speaker 1: what is all this complicated stuff? Where do they get
Speaker 1: this from? So in a way though, uh, right, before
Speaker 1: we get to the end, this is sort of a
Speaker 1: prequel to Christianity, yes, But then also there are Gnostic
Speaker 1: texts that, in the same way that this sort of
Speaker 1: rewrites the story of what happened in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: there are also Gnostic texts that rewrite or at least
Speaker 1: offer a different version of the story we get in
Speaker 1: the canonical Gospels. So if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke,
Speaker 1: and John, there's some differences between them, but they present
Speaker 1: a you know, sort of basically similar eology about who
Speaker 1: Jesus was um and what's going on there. The Gnostic
Speaker 1: scriptures are very different. Uh. For example, there's the Gnostic
Speaker 1: Gospel of Judas. It's a retelling of the Gospel stories.
Speaker 1: This one was not found in No Commodity. Is a
Speaker 1: different Gnostic scripture Discovery, but just some brief features of
Speaker 1: this Judas. Judas is scary and the one who in
Speaker 1: the old story is the betrayer of Jesus now is
Speaker 1: not the bad guy but the hero. And so this
Speaker 1: story is not so much concerned with the works or
Speaker 1: deeds of Jesus, but with his revelations. So Jesus reveals
Speaker 1: all the secret history of the universe and his plan
Speaker 1: of salvation to Judas himself and the other disciples don't
Speaker 1: get it. And then Judas helps Jesus slough off this
Speaker 1: you know, worthless material body and a sin to the
Speaker 1: higher plane. And and further his message of of you know,
Speaker 1: revelation of the true knowledge. And so with this inversion
Speaker 1: of that of that story, for the ultimate human villain
Speaker 1: of the Bible even even worse than Herod, right, for
Speaker 1: the ultimate human villain of the Bible to actually be
Speaker 1: the more like uh that the Hans Solo kind. You're
Speaker 1: all clear, kid, Now, let's blow this thing and go,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, It's absolutely necessary for Judas to exist and
Speaker 1: betray and do what he did in order for salvation
Speaker 1: to occur. So it's always been a fascinating thing for
Speaker 1: me just going back and looking at that story and
Speaker 1: how Judas then becomes vilified and is evil for allowing
Speaker 1: for salvation. As as we'll see, the nastics to the
Speaker 1: earlier point about diversity, Uh, gnostics did not well, let's
Speaker 1: agnostic traditions did not always agree on these points, just
Speaker 1: as Christian denominations today don't agree on points. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so that that brings us to I mean, there are
Speaker 1: various schools of so called gnosticism, and this is gonna be,
Speaker 1: uh another point where we should introduce some subtlety, because
Speaker 1: some things that people have called anastasism are things that
Speaker 1: modern scholars might say, Well, I don't know if that
Speaker 1: should be called gnosticism. Uh, you know, is it sufficiently
Speaker 1: similar to say that it's the same thing Ironeus is
Speaker 1: talking about in one eighty or is this a different
Speaker 1: kind of thing? For example, there are schools of thought.
Speaker 1: One of them would be Valentinianism, after the religious thinker
Speaker 1: Valentinus in the second century. Right, right, So in this
Speaker 1: school of thought, Uh, this DENI urged yelled to off
Speaker 1: the craftsman, not an inherently bad guy actually or bad
Speaker 1: being actually, is working in concert with this higher God,
Speaker 1: this invisible spirit to bring about salvation. So in other words,
Speaker 1: this is like the employee who is at the clean
Speaker 1: up site yeah of an environmental or metaphysical disaster. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and so Valentinianism is one of these. It's
Speaker 1: like some early heresiologists might have lumped it in with Gnosticism,
Speaker 1: and even some recent historians might, but then other history
Speaker 1: ends would say, no, Valentinianism we should think about as
Speaker 1: its own thing, but yelled about in this is still
Speaker 1: flawed and is not always helping with consent or knowledge,
Speaker 1: but instead being secretly influenced. Another another flavor of early
Speaker 1: Christianity that was, you know, condemned probably by the proto Orthodox,
Speaker 1: but might also have been different than Gnosticism with which
Speaker 1: it was lumped in, is Thomas Christianity. You may have
Speaker 1: heard about the Gospel of Thomas, right this is this
Speaker 1: is one of these early discoveries of of another gospel
Speaker 1: that may have even come from the first century. It
Speaker 1: was an early writing. We don't know exactly when it
Speaker 1: came from. Oh, actually, we don't know exactly when any
Speaker 1: of these gospels came from, but we have pretty good
Speaker 1: ideas about the canonical gospels. Gospel of Thomas was probably
Speaker 1: pretty early, and people used to say, well, this is
Speaker 1: a gnostic gospel, and now we don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: Jesus says things in it that sound pretty nastic. But
Speaker 1: then there are other you know that their their secret knowledge,
Speaker 1: their secret knowledge revealed only to certain people. But then again,
Speaker 1: there are other elements that I think scholars would say, no,
Speaker 1: it needs to have its own category. So here's here's
Speaker 1: another question. What happened Sasticism. Yeah, this is a good
Speaker 1: question because I mean, I think the traditional story is well,
Speaker 1: Nasticism lost control for the battle of Christianity and the
Speaker 1: proto Orthodox Church. Eventually the Catholic Church one out and
Speaker 1: got to dictate what theology was across the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: and thus the Gnostics were just sort of eliminated from history.
Speaker 1: But I think there is now an emerging strand of
Speaker 1: historical thought that that says that's that's maybe not the case.
Speaker 1: It's more like Gnosticism as a named thing lost power,
Speaker 1: but it also in a way got to define the
Speaker 1: path of Christianity in doing so, in the number one Christianity,
Speaker 1: Proto Orthodox Ristianity and early Catholic Christianity would partially define
Speaker 1: itself in opposition and reaction to Anasticism, So it drive
Speaker 1: drove some theological statements in those ways, and in other
Speaker 1: ways you can still see gnostic ideas that seem to
Speaker 1: be incorporated into the late theology of existing Christianity today.
Speaker 1: For example, think about how some Christians today might say
Speaker 1: that the material world is evil and the only true
Speaker 1: reality is a spiritual one. I mean, that sounds compatible
Speaker 1: with what people would think of as normal Christianity today,
Speaker 1: but that also sounds a lot like a Gnostic idea. Now,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, thank you for join and me. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of these pews empty because it's Sunday
Speaker 1: football season. But I'm not going to put on of fancies, suit.
Speaker 1: I don't think the price of the ticket to the
Speaker 1: football game matters. There's another ticket not trying to get right, Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, so condemnation of the material world, or how
Speaker 1: about this is a common thing you'll see in Christianity day,
Speaker 1: the idea that the world is not the way it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. You know, that there's something flawed
Speaker 1: about the way the world is now. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: you could say that that seems compatible with what most
Speaker 1: Christians understand from their modern theology, but at the same
Speaker 1: time that that sounds pretty similar to some Corognostic teachings.
Speaker 1: And this is uh, this is a fairly common belief
Speaker 1: in many other religions. Yeah, and then of course there
Speaker 1: are other traditions that have continued throughout the years that
Speaker 1: that do seem to incorporate elements of Gnosticism. So like
Speaker 1: the Mandans, that's you know, that's a religion that that
Speaker 1: seems to be in some ways nastic. Yeah, and then okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's something. We were going a little bit long
Speaker 1: on this podcast, but we hope you're enjoying it here
Speaker 1: and we have some good news. This ancient conspiracy goes
Speaker 1: into the modern day. So although Nasticism and I love
Speaker 1: the way to say this, Joe is defeated in name
Speaker 1: by what would become the Orthodox of mainstream church, those
Speaker 1: beliefs and organizations have been revived at several points in
Speaker 1: history leading to the present day. That's right. No, if
Speaker 1: you want to be a Gnostic, you could sign up
Speaker 1: today in yeah, I really been. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: want to show me how Okay. In the eight nine,
Speaker 1: a French librarian named Jules Donelle founded uh the Inglis
Speaker 1: Nosti or the Gnostic Church. Funny story, Eventually he gave
Speaker 1: up and resigned converted to Catholicism because he fell for
Speaker 1: an anti Masonic hoax called the Taxil Hoax. Later later
Speaker 1: he joined Uh, he rejoined his own church as a bishop,
Speaker 1: and then this thing for this became a part of
Speaker 1: a larger entity. That church folded. But don't abandon hope yet, folks.
Speaker 1: If you want to join up, you can consider the
Speaker 1: spiritual descendant of this uh, the church the Gnostic Church
Speaker 1: of Apostles of the eng Least nast a post Leak
Speaker 1: founded by Robert Amberlain in Night. That church exists today
Speaker 1: in France, French territories, in the Ivory Coast in Midwestern America. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, Gnostics also have a tremendous impact on
Speaker 1: other figures that aren't necessarily like religious figures US. For instance,
Speaker 1: the Theosophical Society uh, spearheaded by uh Madame Blevatsky, who
Speaker 1: was not my favorite person, but you know it deserves
Speaker 1: a mention, is what's wrong with Madame Blevatsky is just
Speaker 1: not my favorite person. That's the nicest thing I can say.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, no, because Alistair Crowley is right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a swell guy. But he's also inspired
Speaker 1: by nastic thought in a secular way. He had like
Speaker 1: the sexual magic belief in gnosticism. Uh. And then Carl
Speaker 1: Young was fascinated by it. There was even a magazine
Speaker 1: that ram for short time called Nosis in a Burst
Speaker 1: of Creativity, That's what they named it, and it was
Speaker 1: devoted to that Esoter tradition. But it goes further than that. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you look at some of your favorite works of fiction,
Speaker 1: you will see the gnostic belief carrying on today, like
Speaker 1: Neanderthal DNA and a Homo sapia. Yeah, sometimes I wonder
Speaker 1: how conscious this even is, Like there are lots of
Speaker 1: science fiction novels and movies and stuff that have extremely
Speaker 1: familiar themes if you've read about gnosticism, but you wonder
Speaker 1: like did the creators do this on purpose? Or is
Speaker 1: or is this sort of cosmic conspiracy theory just a
Speaker 1: just does it run deep in our dna? Yeah? Do do?
Speaker 1: We do? We naturally go to these places when we're
Speaker 1: trying to dream up what the truth about a crazy
Speaker 1: world might be like, But examples would be things like
Speaker 1: Blade Runner or the Matrix. Well, just sort of like
Speaker 1: that meta idea of like, this is not the big picture.
Speaker 1: What we are experiencing here is almost a test or
Speaker 1: a cruel joke, and um, once we are revealed the
Speaker 1: bigger picture our minds were either blown or we are
Speaker 1: able to you know, transcend to that reality. This is
Speaker 1: a painful audition in the great cosmic drama. Or I mean,
Speaker 1: they're trying to reach it back out to the to
Speaker 1: us and and give us these truths through our media.
Speaker 1: They found out that mass media is the way to
Speaker 1: actually get this knowledge back to everyone. Well, yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's definitely this theme about like things being not how
Speaker 1: they seem. But also how about the theme of creations
Speaker 1: rebelling against their creator when they find out how flawed
Speaker 1: and wicked he is. Yes, either if any of you
Speaker 1: seen um, yeah, yeah, and that that's a that's a
Speaker 1: great that's a great film with an ambiguous ending that
Speaker 1: one I won't. I have not seen that yet. Okay, guys.
Speaker 1: At the end, it was all the and uh ice
Speaker 1: cube ends up going like going back and Samuel L.
Speaker 1: Jackson is eaten by the shark. Right, and then there's
Speaker 1: this weird cameo by Tom Waits. I don't know what
Speaker 1: he was going for, but I liked it anyway. He
Speaker 1: was the voice of the lawnmower. He was the voice
Speaker 1: of the lawn more So there there's other stuff, right,
Speaker 1: sci fi is often steeped a gnostic thought. One of
Speaker 1: the one of the films I saw him as a
Speaker 1: kid that blew my mind was Dark City. Remember that, Oh,
Speaker 1: I loved it. Holds up, It holds up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's supernostic. Right, Yeah, there's everybody lives in this Everybody
Speaker 1: lives in this sort of bewildered dreams stay where they're
Speaker 1: sort of kept stupid by powers above them, and that
Speaker 1: there's a reveal or figure who wants to bring the
Speaker 1: light and make people awaken from their stupor and realize
Speaker 1: where they are and how they came to be there. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And then there are there are other films like that,
Speaker 1: but they're also comics. We're huge comic fans here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works, and and we're if we're not on
Speaker 1: the air, sometimes we meet up just to trade comics.
Speaker 1: But one that really I don't know about you guys,
Speaker 1: but one that really impressed Matt and I was The Invisibles.
Speaker 1: I've only read the first volume of it because Christian seger,
Speaker 1: my co host on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, loved it.
Speaker 1: But he loaned that to me and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I've got to read more. I've got the full set
Speaker 1: if you want to read them. Yeah, yeah, dude. Well okay,
Speaker 1: so before we go and change this to the comics show,
Speaker 1: well we have to do the following things. We have to.
Speaker 1: First off, thank you so much Joe for coming onto
Speaker 1: the show. It's always a pleasure. That's fascinating. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for having me. It's been a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. And as I said at the beginning, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I mean a gnosticism is such a huge and fascinating subject.
Speaker 1: We have only scratched the surface. So if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about it, one of the main things
Speaker 1: I'd recommend is the works of the guy I've mentioned
Speaker 1: a few times on here. David Brackie is a scholar
Speaker 1: of gnosticism. Very interesting, very careful scholar. Uh and I
Speaker 1: like his work, So look him up and look at
Speaker 1: his books or his Great Courses series on it, and
Speaker 1: that's a good place to start. No, what what was
Speaker 1: that look you just gave me? Why are you? Why
Speaker 1: are you making shrimp eyes at me? Man? That's just
Speaker 1: the way my eyes looked. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: the weird mee. You gotta make them bigger, just like
Speaker 1: little slits. No, no, Okay, look, what's going on here, guys? Yeah,
Speaker 1: doesn't he have kind of I don't want to make
Speaker 1: this awkward for you, Joe. Okay, but listen, No, you've
Speaker 1: been You've been alluding to a thing. It's a weird vibe.
Speaker 1: Are you accusing me of him and halling? I'm accusing you,
Speaker 1: certainly of being circuitous. But uh, far be it for
Speaker 1: us to sit around accusing each other. That's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: But this is a show about uncovering the truth. So
Speaker 1: lay it on, est man. What's going on? Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: alluded to this? What's this Stuff of Life all about? Oh?
Speaker 1: My gosh, you guys, the Stuff of Life? Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's that's my new show that I've been working on.
Speaker 1: And you're right. I have alluded to it a few times,
Speaker 1: just talking about things that I've learned, um in the
Speaker 1: research that my colleague and our colleague Julie Douglas has
Speaker 1: done wonderfully as the host of the show. UM. But
Speaker 1: my part is I am the producer, um And you
Speaker 1: know I produced a out of the How Stuff Work shows,
Speaker 1: But as many of you guys know, that largely consists
Speaker 1: of folks in the room having a conversation. So the
Speaker 1: extent of my production on many of those is you know,
Speaker 1: editing and doing you know, sound design here and their
Speaker 1: music cues. And I've done some original music for some shows,
Speaker 1: but this is a show that's given me the real
Speaker 1: opportunity to just kind of, you know, stretch my legs
Speaker 1: a little bit and I do original music compositions and
Speaker 1: sound design so to kind of give sort of like
Speaker 1: an immersive quality to these these of these episodes. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what is the show about. I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 1: The show The Stuff of Life is largely it's just
Speaker 1: about you know, it can be anything. Really. Like the
Speaker 1: first episode, the pilot, which I'm actually going to drop
Speaker 1: in iTunes on the twenty seven of this month, which
Speaker 1: is uh, will be next Wednesday, UM, is called the
Speaker 1: Power of Fear and UM we talked to experts in
Speaker 1: addition to folks right here at How Stuff Works. We
Speaker 1: have sort of a little round table section in every
Speaker 1: episode where people get to kind of weigh in on
Speaker 1: the topic and we make some really nice little on
Speaker 1: bites and everyone kind of has a chance to sort
Speaker 1: of give their two cents on what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But in the fear episode. We talked to UM two
Speaker 1: folks who have a company where they actually train UM
Speaker 1: office workers for example, or people in retirement communities how
Speaker 1: to deal with an active shooter scenario. That's actually one
Speaker 1: of the little details I mentioned. And we were talking
Speaker 1: about crisis actors. UM. This company goes in and does
Speaker 1: these drills. They do let people know they're happening. And
Speaker 1: the point that I made in the episode was that
Speaker 1: you know, when people do these things without letting people know,
Speaker 1: that's a you know, good recipe for some lawsuits there, UM,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's it's a thing that happens. And
Speaker 1: they had a really interesting perspective on just how to
Speaker 1: deal with fear, things like tactical breathing, and they talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Centennial Park bombing. That kind
Speaker 1: of was sort of the impetus for you know, how
Speaker 1: do we deal with these scenarios and what you know
Speaker 1: kind of gave them the influence they needed to start
Speaker 1: this company. UM. But we just sort of kind of
Speaker 1: crack open stories and sort of look at what's inside
Speaker 1: and figure out, you know, what makes us tick and
Speaker 1: why we're such storytelling machines. Not in terms of fiction,
Speaker 1: but just in terms of how we share our experience
Speaker 1: on this planet. Okay, so this is a story about
Speaker 1: the human experience, I would say, So that's it's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it. Ben. You don't have to say.
Speaker 1: I listened to a bit of a I guess a
Speaker 1: rough cut that you had sent me. And the sound
Speaker 1: design and the way everything flows together. I hate to
Speaker 1: make you know a comparison, but it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like a radio lab type show that has all of
Speaker 1: the music flowing into a next segment and then you're
Speaker 1: somewhere else and then everything changes. It's just beautiful. Man.
Speaker 1: I've also yeah, I've also heard it. I totally have
Speaker 1: production envy. Uh. And like all the shows, we do
Speaker 1: it how stuff works. This is free longtime listeners. Some
Speaker 1: of you may remember Julie Douglas from her tenure on
Speaker 1: Joe show Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and uh, Julie
Speaker 1: has this fantastic um and this fantastic talent for finding
Speaker 1: the the spark or the hinge of a story. So
Speaker 1: when you when you listen to episodes of Stuff of Life,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you'll love that show. The
Speaker 1: same applies to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Absolutely and
Speaker 1: just say you guys know, Um, it is live in
Speaker 1: the iTunes store already, and you can go and pre
Speaker 1: subscribe if you want to. There is sort of like
Speaker 1: a little trailer, kind of a teaser in there right now.
Speaker 1: M pretty short. But then on Monday coming up, we're
Speaker 1: gonna launch what we're gonna call episode zero, which will
Speaker 1: be sort of a more like a four or five
Speaker 1: minute just kind of run down about how the show works.
Speaker 1: But I'll go ahead and give you the heads up here.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is we're gonna have a show come
Speaker 1: on every week. UM, you're gonna have it start. The
Speaker 1: first episode is going to be about thirty forty minute
Speaker 1: episode um. And then after that there will be like
Speaker 1: maybe a half a long episode that's a little lighter
Speaker 1: but sort of a companion piece to the topic that
Speaker 1: came the week before, and we're going to continue that. Um.
Speaker 1: And definitely and uh, full disclosure, I was I was
Speaker 1: hoping it get caught. I'm not sure how the final
Speaker 1: it goes, but at some point in the show I
Speaker 1: did freestyle. It's true. It's glorious. So go ahead and
Speaker 1: look forward in the iTunes store and I'll subscribe now
Speaker 1: and so you can get that episode zero in your
Speaker 1: feed as soon as it drops, and then the first
Speaker 1: episode which comes out on Wednesday. And we've also got
Speaker 1: some social media stuff gone on Facebook. I believe it's
Speaker 1: just Facebook dot com slash the Stuff of Life, but
Speaker 1: you can just search for it and definitely find it
Speaker 1: um and looking forward to hearing some feedback. Yes, Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life. Stay tuned. You'll never you never know who
Speaker 1: might pop up on that show. Uh. So there's there's
Speaker 1: one other, one other thing, Joe, that we have to establish,
Speaker 1: which is that Stuff to Blow your Mind. One of
Speaker 1: our pure podcasts, which you host, has a lot of
Speaker 1: episodes that would be right up the alley of our
Speaker 1: audience right yes, over on Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My co hosts Robert Lamb, Christian Saga and I we
Speaker 1: explore all kinds of topics. Were primarily a science podcast,
Speaker 1: but we try to bring a lot of diversity of
Speaker 1: subject matter and so we end up talking a lot
Speaker 1: about phthology and religion, uh, philosophy, history, and we just
Speaker 1: try to keep it weird, to always surprise you with
Speaker 1: something strange about reality, because reality is pretty strange, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this one who knows about the other one? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the the invisible spirit, who knows what lies beyond.
Speaker 1: But if you want to check out some some stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know, friendly topics on stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, you might start with the episodes
Speaker 1: Christian and I did recently on the Science of the
Speaker 1: X Files from January of sixteen. Or maybe you could
Speaker 1: look at the episodes Robert and I did last summer
Speaker 1: called Techno Religion for the Masses if you're interested in
Speaker 1: these religious themes, where we talked about intersections of technology
Speaker 1: and religion, including some fascinating religions that border on some
Speaker 1: semignostic themes. But that's not your only show. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can also listen to me. I'm one of the co
Speaker 1: hosts on the show Forward Thinking with Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogelbaum, where we talk about future technology. So if
Speaker 1: that's thing, you can find me there too, And you
Speaker 1: can find Joe on the Stuff of Life. Yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: our man Joe is popping up left and right in
Speaker 1: the podcast world, and it's always a pleasure when our
Speaker 1: paths intersect. They have a demonic copy of me that
Speaker 1: they use for half of this stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: get some of the same accusations. We're having a moment, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: break the circle of you were biting on that baby
Speaker 1: and I saw it happen. Look, you can't go around
Speaker 1: be it. What are you the king of babies? You're
Speaker 1: in charge of all the babies. To be fair and old,
Speaker 1: we did let that baby get way too close. Guys, guys,
Speaker 1: let's remember that the audience is listening right now. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for tuning in. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about nasticism, you can check out
Speaker 1: our video series. You can uh send us an email
Speaker 1: because we have a lot of stuff in the course
Speaker 1: of this that, as Joe said, we couldn't get to
Speaker 1: at the time, but who knows, we might return to
Speaker 1: explore more early Christianity. If you want to talk to
Speaker 1: us directly, you can tweet to us. You can join
Speaker 1: our Facebook group. Every like gets us a little bit
Speaker 1: further away from being fired, So check out conspiracy stuff
Speaker 1: on both of those both of those formats. If you
Speaker 1: want to hear every podcast we've ever ever done, including
Speaker 1: our earlier work with Joe over here, then you can
Speaker 1: visit our website. Stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: dot com the best and longest u r L in
Speaker 1: the history of mankind, and this well, I was going
Speaker 1: to say realm, but that's fine, and that's the end
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