155 - Ancient Myths, Lost Cryptids, & The Snallygaster with The Haunted Cosmos

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ninjas Are Butterflies — Episode 155

Title: Ancient Myths, Lost Cryptids, & The Snallygaster with The Haunted Cosmos
Date: August 15, 2025
Hosts: Josh Hooper, Andy DeNoon
Guests: Brian Sauvé and Benjamin Garrett of Haunted Cosmos

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Overview

This episode features a lively and comedically unfiltered conversation between the Ninjas Are Butterflies crew and their guests from the Haunted Cosmos podcast. The show dives into ancient myths, legendary cryptids (especially the Snallygaster), lost knowledge, supernatural phenomena, spiritual warfare, and the intersections between theology, folklore, and modern culture. Throughout the episode, the hosts and guests balance serious discussion with rapid-fire banter, hilarious tangents, and deep dives into biblical and historical mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Haunted Cosmos Collaboration and Book Launch

• The guests introduce themselves, discuss their origins in Ogden, Utah ("Everyone's from Ogden" [04:06]), and immediately set a comedic tone.
• Haunted Cosmos book:
  • Title: Haunted Cosmos: Doing Your Duty in a World That’s Not Just Stuff
  • Described as "a taxonomy of creation" linking myth, theology, and how to live in a world that’s more than material (12:17).
  • Special code "NINJA" for a 20% discount (12:34).

2. Legend of the Snallygaster

• What is a Snallygaster?
  • Maryland cryptid, described as "like Mothman, but like a snake" – a dragon-bird hybrid with tentacles, "super Lovecraftian, really creepy, and it would suck all the blood out of livestock and any children that it found" (16:27–17:01).
  • Panic in Maryland, 1909: "They had government issued curfews" (17:08).
  • German immigrant folklore: Based on the “Schnell Geist” (fast ghost), combining German mythical creatures, Americanized to "Snallygaster" (17:26–18:09).
• Skepticism and spiritual explanations:
  • While skeptics blame owls, the guests argue many old cryptids may be real, rooted in spiritual war and demons in the pre-Christian world (19:11–22:25).
  • "Why wouldn't you expect for there to be all sorts of demons and, you know, dragons and giants?" – Brian (19:11)

3. Supernaturality and the Materialist Worldview

• Discussion on the failings of materialism and people's drive toward the supernatural, both in the secular and church worlds (27:12–30:46).
• "Materialism is cope. It's not true. This is what the world is actually like." – Brian (26:51)

4. Spiritual Warfare for Everyday Christians

• The importance of knowing about the demonic ("there is an unseen power of darkness that is actively opposed to them all the time" [27:55]) and not dismissing or ignoring spiritual realities.
• Personal stories from listeners about sleep paralysis, hallucinogenic experiences, and spiritual warfare (28:35–29:53).

5. Corruption of the Soul and the Leech Metaphor

• Sin and involvement with the occult/fringe practices framed as "leeches": "these things are leeches... always trying to twist and corrupt by taking what God made and turn it into something evil. They're just telling you to give and give and give and give. They're never giving anything back." – Ben (32:02)
• Parallel drawn with historical mass evil (Aztecs, temples, human sacrifice) as gradual spiritual descent (33:28–34:08).

6. Ancient Technologies & Lost Knowledge

• Coral Castle (Florida):
  • A mysterious megalithic structure built single-handedly by a Latvian immigrant (Ed Leedskalnin) using unexplained technology (38:06–41:18).
  • Legends of magnetic ley lines, celestial alignments, perpetual motion machines, and stories of stones "hovering" (37:32–41:03).
• Gobekli Tepe & Sumerian Walls:
  • Similar mysterious ancient feats with star maps, advanced chronology, and the idea of knowledge brought from pre-flood civilizations (43:31–44:52).
  • Peru stories of stones levitated by vibrations and whistling (45:01–47:56).
• Skepticism about claims of certainty in history and science: "The certainty is the problem. It's like being certain about something when you truly know you have no certainty." – Ben (50:42).

7. Theology, Myth, and Language: From Babel to Tolkien

• Tower of Babel as lost technology and judgment: The idea that pre-flood (antediluvian) and Babel era humans had more advanced spiritual and technological knowledge (53:42–57:04).
• Discussion about language, symbolism, and possibilities of ancient telepathy or "higher" human communications pre-Babel (73:07–75:01).
• Tolkien & Lewis:
  • Parallels drawn between biblical creation-through-song, Tolkien's legendarium (Silmarillion), and Lewis’s hidden symbolism in Narnia (58:23–62:03).
  • Music as an instrument of creation and spiritual transformation (60:17–60:37).
• Delight in creators (divine or human) "hiding" meaning in works for others to find: "God, when he creates, delights to hide things for people to figure out." – Brian (63:06).

8. AI, Tulpas, and Golems: The Supernatural Edge of Technology

• AI as Tool and Potential Vehicle for Deception
  • Outlined as a tool that shapes the user (90:31).
  • Caution against ascribing consciousness/intelligence to AI (Chinese Room argument [90:31–94:12].)
  • Concern that AI, trained on human data, amplifies human (and possibly demonic) corruption (94:12–95:08).
• Demonic manipulation possibilities:
  • If enough people believe AI is intelligent, "the demonic is more prone to attach itself to that" – Ben (98:41), referencing cultural constructs like tulpas, golems, and egregores.
  • "AI is like this large, tentacular, evil, slimy beast reaching out one of its dripping tentacles to you with a mask of your dead grandmother’s face on the hand other end." – Brian, paraphrasing a Tim Pool guest (99:31).
• The solution remains spiritual grounding: "The antidote is the same. You have to be grounded in the truth of God..." – Ben (102:00)

9. Hopeful Eschatology and Spiritual Agency

• Despite darkness, Christ’s power is emphasized:
  • God turns the plans of enemies against them (103:00–105:06)
  • Christ’s victory continues expanding "like the expansion of the kingdom at the empire's borders."
• Role of Christians:
  • Christians are called to expand, rule well, and bring order, peace, and gospel light to "the wilderness."
  • Paul: "The God of peace will soon trample Satan under your feet." (Romans) (85:21)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On cryptids & faith:
  • “Why wouldn’t you expect for there to be all sorts of demons and, you know, dragons and giants...?” – Brian (19:11)
• Materialism’s failure:
  • “Materialism is cope. It’s not true. This is what the world is actually like.” – Brian (26:51)
• Coral Castle mystery:
  • “He was like a 98 pound, 5 foot 4 Latvian... And so the idea is if he was able to do that, think of what the Egyptians would have been able to do.” – Ben (40:29)
• AI warning:
  • "AI is like this large, tentacular, evil, slimy beast reaching out... with a mask of your dead grandmother's face…" – Brian (99:31)
• Spiritual groundings:
  • “What has been the antidote…for all time? Well, it’s to be grounded in the truth…Christ is truth. His Word is truth.” – Ben (102:00)
• Hopeful eschatology:
  • “God delights to turn the plots of his enemies on their own head…He’ll triumph. In fact, he’ll probably use…” – Brian (102:59–105:06)
• Purposeful engagement:
  • “You rule your own spirit…and you kind of have these successive rings of rule where man was created to bring order. And that’s exactly what the Puritans were doing.” – Brian (85:05)

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Recommended Listening Timestamps

• [11:53] Haunted Cosmos book intro & special code
• [16:27] Full Snallygaster legend explained
• [19:11–22:25] Spiritual view of cryptids, demons, and the advance of God's kingdom
• [38:06–41:18] Coral Castle mysteries and details
• [53:42–57:04] Theories on Babel, flood, and loss of ancient knowledge
• [58:23–62:03] Tolkien, Lewis, and the secret spiritual meaning in their stories
• [90:31–99:31] Deep dive into AI, Golems, Tulpas, and demonic manipulation
• [102:00] How to spiritually persist in a world of deception

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Tone and Style

Throughout the episode, the tone is raucous, playful, and deeply inquisitive, with the guests displaying both scholarship and comedic chemistry. The flow alternates between earnest theological/philosophical exploration and lighthearted jokes, as well as audience engagement and rapid-fire pop culture references.

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Final Thoughts

If you're looking for an irreverent, educational, and thoroughly entertaining journey through the world of ancient cryptids, spiritual realities, and the unexplained, this episode is packed with speculative history, theology, and humor—plus plenty of wild personal stories and practical applications for spiritual life in the internet age.

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Learn more/Support:

• Haunted Cosmos: hauntedcosmos.com, YouTube, Patreon (“Dusty Tome” exclusive episodes)
• Discount code: NINJA for 20% off book/merch
• Ninjas Are Butterflies: sundaycoolswag.com for merch, Patreon/YouTube for bonus content

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For the “Watchers” discussion and more in-depth lore, check out the post-show Patreon segment!

Transcript

[A]

You say you'll never join the Navy.

[B]

Never climb Mount Fuji on a port.

[A]

Visit or break the sound barrier.

[B]

Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Learn [e-mail], america's Navy forged by the sea.

[A]

You say you'll never join the Navy. That living on a submarine would be too hard. You'd never power a whole ship with nuclear energy. Never bring a patient back back to life. Or play the national anthem for a sold out crowd. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your [e-mail] America's Navy, forged by the sea. What's up, ninjas? Welcome to the show.

[B]

Listen, ladies and gentlemen, we have wonderful guests.

[C]

We have the Haunted Cosmos guys in.

[A]

The building right now.

[D]

That's right. We're going to be talking about AI. What are we else?

[A]

Snallagaster.

[D]

The Snallagaster. Everything ancient. And what did you say?

[B]

We're going to talk about how big. How big Brian's mom is.

[D]

What?

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

So fat.

[D]

She's huge.

[C]

She's beautiful, though.

[D]

Find out.

[C]

All right, Andrew, less thing.

[D]

This podcast is brought to you and.

[E]

Powered by Sunday Cool tees. Watch this.

[B]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[A]

We're along for the ride.

[C]

Sick.

[B]

We're just here to have a good time.

[C]

So glad you're here.

[D]

4 hour twitch stream right after that.

[A]

Or we just.

[B]

Do we. We just play line rider the whole time.

[C]

Every time we lose. We have to take a shirt off, though. Oh, dude, that's clothing. It's worse. But it gets great views. That's the main.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It's all right. Brian told me this morning in the hotel that I looked like Henry Cavill.

[A]

You did?

[C]

Whoa.

[A]

You did.

[C]

Dude.

[E]

You did.

[C]

Dude, dude. Do the little.

[B]

Don't hit on.

[C]

Do the quick little.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Now ever since you lost 45 pounds, you've been a real Henry Caval.

[D]

45, huh?

[B]

Yeah, I. Dude, I was big. I looked like the pig from the Nicholas Cage. Yeah.

[C]

How'd you lose it?

[B]

I just stopped eating.

[C]

Turns out food's the problem.

[B]

Don't eat. You won't gain weight.

[C]

Yeah, that's what I did. We had a competition, weight loss competition. And I just starved myself for three months straight.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it was like I had one meal a day and I was like. But I won. And that's all that matters.

[D]

But you're just so weak.

[C]

And I gained it all back.

[B]

Replace the food with nicotine.

[A]

Yeah, you're in nicotine plus caffeine.

[B]

Speaking of protein, John Daly said that.

[C]

We'Re in Florida you do meth here?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

I'll just go for the hard stuff.

[D]

Yeah, do the hard stuff.

[E]

Yeah. You got the gray card.

[C]

Here we are.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I recently shaved my beard because my daughter asked me, and I had every bit of a thousand comments saying of how fat I was.

[B]

So, dude, that's.

[D]

Dude, that.

[A]

That is brutal.

[D]

Now, on the journey, did it motivate you? Oh, yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

The next day, I was out running.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I did tell. I gave everybody permission around me. I said, if I ever get really fat, please bully me. Don't let it go.

[B]

Well, that's what y' all did to me every day, pretty much. That's true.

[C]

It doesn't work on me. They've been doing it for a few years. I have to have a competition or, like, a monetary, like, prize or something. Yeah.

[D]

My wife told me. She's like, if I ever get fat, you have to tell me. I said, I can't do that.

[B]

You say that.

[D]

So I said this. Here, I'll film you. And you say it to your future self that could potentially be fat.

[C]

And you just text it to her.

[D]

Why would you send this to me?

[C]

That's the middle of the morning.

[D]

It's you, though.

[C]

As soon as you say goodbye, I love you. See you later. And then you leave.

[A]

He's so mean, but he was so real for that.

[C]

What would have been more mean? If you're like, just tell me anytime. Okay, I will. Can we have a talk?

[D]

You got a second?

[E]

Like, now?

[D]

Hey, Haunted Cosmos is here.

[C]

Haunted Cosmos all the way from Utah. Where in Utah you guys from?

[B]

Ogden.

[C]

Everyone's from Ogden.

[A]

Really?

[C]

That's like, the most common city in Utah that I've ever heard.

[A]

Seriously?

[C]

I hear that all. I hear it all the time. It's crazy.

[D]

What is it close to?

[B]

It's pretty close to Salt lake. It's like 40, 40 minutes.

[A]

North Hill Air Force Base. So if you have, like, people from the military, a lot of time, that's how they end up in Ogden.

[C]

Cool.

[D]

Nice.

[A]

It was an army depot after World War II. And then Hill Air Force Base. Air Force kind of thing.

[B]

So famously, the downtown, that was so rough. Al Capone was afraid to live there.

[A]

A lot of prostitution got off the.

[B]

Train, and he was like, this is too big for me.

[A]

So he just left Chicago.

[C]

Easier place. We have Al Capone came down here, didn't he?

[D]

Yeah, he lakeside in.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Did he really?

[D]

Yeah. Did a lot of rum running.

[B]

So really, like, this connection started with Al Capone.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Pretty.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

Thank you.

[D]

Al, if you're there.

[C]

Weird Al.

[D]

Hey. So, yeah, we. We just. We like to goof off a little bit, have some fun.

[C]

Yeah. We got friends here. Why not?

[D]

We got friends. But do you guys want a song?

[B]

Absolutely.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Would you guys be cool with that? We do want to song. Okay, cool.

[D]

I don't know if you've seen our show, but sometimes we do a song.

[C]

Sometimes.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Only when we're feel inspired.

[D]

Yeah, for sure. So maybe we just come up with something real quick.

[C]

Yeah. Off the top of the dome. Yeah, let's do it.

[B]

Let's.

[C]

I feel inspired.

[A]

Yeah. Let's go.

[C]

Here we go.

[A]

That was it.

[D]

Hey, y'.

[A]

All, did you know who is at the show? Haunted Cosmos 2.

[D]

Haunted Cosmos came a long way to.

[A]

Save the blade Flew all the way from Mormon country Mothman in disguise Wolf man in disguise Giant angel cries we hear all the lies Moon eyed children.

[C]

Here to steal your soul Bigfoot, skin walkers all from my day Control.

[A]

Haunting God's voice I'm so scared all this mystery I'm not prepared I'll take God's.

[D]

Most Save us now Take our hand.

[A]

Show us how let's go. Surprise.

[C]

That was a little surprise for you.

[B]

Little surprise.

[A]

Did that just become our new intro?

[B]

Y' all are built different.

[C]

We basically, that's our goal is anytime someone comes on here with their own podcast, we create something for them that they just use for and then that we get, you know, paybacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the mail. Royalties. Yeah, for sure.

[A]

You guys tour?

[C]

Not yet. Yeah, we're about to.

[B]

You should.

[D]

About to.florida tour.com. go get your tickets now.

[C]

October 2nd, 9th and 16th.

[A]

Jacksonville, actually.

[C]

Tampa, Orlando. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, heck yeah.

[C]

We just came up with it because you gave us the idea. So we're just gonna do it. Yeah.

[A]

That quick, man.

[E]

Speaking it into fruition.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

That's awesome.

[D]

Speaking of things into fruition. I just need everyone to be quiet for a sec. I'm really glad you guys are here.

[B]

We are glad to be here.

[D]

That's good. You might not be glad to be here after this question though. So typically we ask a question, send it by the viewer and it's. It's our least favorite part of the pod. The what do we. Our episodes. Podcasts. But we have to do it. You know, the people want it. Every. Every single person's like, do the song and do the question.

[C]

Don't get on with the podcast until you do the question.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

10 out of 10. This is their favorite part.

[C]

Absolutely.

[D]

And we have to ask tough questions sometimes. And today's question is that it's tough. Today's question. Send in by a viewer.

[C]

Oh.

[D]

Is modest the hottest?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Look, here's the thing. The answer is no.

[C]

Okay, well, they're divided.

[A]

The answer is no. And actually, that is the point of modesty, is that I'm not trying to flaunt my hottest for everybody. My hottest ain't for the streets.

[D]

Okay?

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Huh?

[A]

That's for my girl.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Shout out Lexi Sauvay, mother of my seven children. Okay, so, like, modest. It's nice.

[D]

Okay?

[A]

But. But if I like. Ben recently lost 45 pounds, right? If he took his shirt off right now, it would be a problem.

[B]

I like how you, for all your viewers, how you say it, like you're the one that's gonna make people stumble.

[A]

Well, you are if you're not modest. No, this isn't about the ladies. This is about us.

[C]

So, Brian, you're clear that you say it is.

[A]

I just said no.

[C]

You said no.

[A]

It's not the hottest.

[C]

But Ben.

[B]

Okay, well, yeah, you said no, no, no.

[C]

Don't, don't, don't, don't.

[D]

Let's just explain yourself of what you just said.

[C]

You just said no.

[A]

You're thinking in cat, right?

[D]

I'm a little confused. Obviously, we're talking about Modest Yahoo, the Jewish American singer, rapper, better known Modest.

[C]

Yeah. His first name, Modest. Last name Yahoo.

[D]

And I would. I wouldn'.

[A]

That's my. That's my bad, man.

[D]

I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that. He. He's the. Maybe the hottest. Maybe in 2004 when he came out with the album King Without a Crown. Yeah, that was pretty cool.

[B]

That was a hot track. One day.

[C]

One day.

[D]

One day.

[A]

That was great.

[D]

Wasn't on that album.

[C]

But not.

[B]

But.

[C]

But now.

[D]

But now. I don't know about now.

[C]

Not a chance. But he said yes.

[B]

Yes automatically. Well, yeah.

[D]

And I don't know why Brian is talking about dressing.

[C]

I don't feel like I could trust these guys.

[D]

I don't know if I can trust them either, Andy.

[C]

I feel scared that we've entered these people, let these people, welcome these people into our home.

[B]

I'm.

[D]

I still threatened in my own. My own castle.

[A]

I don't feel safe.

[D]

Well, I guess you guys heard it here first. These guys, I don't know. Can we trust them? We'll find out. Right now. I don't think we can. Okay.

[A]

Welcome to show. Did I say ninja? I meant butterfly. The butterfly is, no doubt, one of God's. Most beautiful as an empty line. You were martial arts.

[C]

Perfect. That was good. That was good.

[B]

That was good.

[C]

Brian really took it out of our hands with there, with that whole.

[A]

The thing is, I knew from the beginning you were talking about the Jewish American artist.

[D]

Good.

[A]

Let's be honest and contextually, my whole answer, if you think deeply enough.

[B]

Still. Still.

[A]

It relates, still applies. It ties in.

[D]

Yeah. All right.

[C]

All right. Ben, take your shirt off. Oh, man. We're so happy you guys are here because I know a million of our fans have said that they're fans of you guys and, like, this has been a collaborative effort that has been, like, in the works for a long time. Months.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But I mean, I know this is so. This is super cool. We're going to dive into literally everything today.

[D]

Everything.

[C]

I'm so excited to learn also your book. First of all, tell us about your book. Oh, yeah, because we just got copies.

[B]

It's called Haunted Cosmos. Doing your duty in a world that's not just stuff by Brian Save and Benjamin Garrett. Even though my name is alphabetically first in both first and last name.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

What's up with that?

[B]

Brian survey put his name first. That's fair.

[C]

Interesting.

[A]

Technically, the publisher did. Now am I the president of the publishing company? Yes.

[B]

Also.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

But it's like, who really decides these things? Yeah. Really. It's a group effort. It's all just random.

[B]

I like to describe it as a taxonomy of creation. So it goes through all the different things, constituent parts of creation, tries to tie them together and then answer the question. And Brian really answers the question. So what. What do you do about all this stuff? How do you live? So that's.

[A]

Yeah. And we made a special code. Code Ninja.

[C]

No way.

[A]

On our website. 20% off.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Anybody from your show? Because you should see our YouTube comments. Anytime we do anything, they're like, when are you guys gonna do a collab with Ninja?

[C]

Perfect.

[A]

And we're like, why are you here to watch our show? Are you just here to beg for the ninjas or Butterfly guys?

[B]

Because we get it. Either way, we get it.

[A]

They write songs that are, like, good. They're doing, like, they're funny. They're gonna go to Handsome.

[B]

They're into. They're into Modest. Yahoo.

[D]

They tour. Yeah. That's awesome.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you so much. Hana. Cosmos.com.

[A]

Yeah. So newchristianimpress.com Cosmos.

[C]

Okay. Link in the bottom.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Link is in the bio. That's awesome. 20 off.

[D]

Code ninjas.

[C]

Perfect. When are we gonna write a book for real?

[D]

Well, you have written a book, and it got canceled.

[C]

That's true.

[E]

It didn't have wallpaper as cool as this, though.

[C]

Matt Walsh canceled our book one time.

[A]

Did you? Seriously?

[C]

Hilarious.

[B]

What was the.

[D]

What was the height of COVID It was insane.

[B]

What was the book?

[C]

It was just a devo. It was just a devo.

[D]

Yeah, we made a, like, a devotional for, like, teenagers called the Word According to Gen Z, and Matt Walsh just went off on it. Never read it.

[C]

Lifeway published it, promoted it, like, for months. They promoted it. They had us on their, like, online conference. And then an hour after online conference, Matt Walsh goes on Twitter and just roast for about 30 minutes.

[D]

Dang.

[C]

And then moves on to the next thing. But those.

[D]

So Lifeway tweeted out, we're canceling. The devo didn't let us know. And then someone hit us up, and I kid. You guys know your book got canceled. I'm like, what?

[E]

And for your. Like, it had nothing to do with, like, theological inaccuracy or anything like that. He just called it irreverent for using in the Gen Z translation that they would, like, paraphrase. Like, on the left is a translation. And then the rest of it is, like, what it actually means and is an actual diva, but, like, calling God Cap G. And they were like, this is irreverent.

[D]

And, like.

[E]

But that was. That was the whole premise.

[A]

Yeah. So Matt Walsh was really not busting for that.

[D]

No, no, he was not. Really.

[B]

Wasn't very cash money of him.

[C]

And the thing is, I agree with everything Matt Walsh has ever done. That's what's most upsetting. That hurts that I've looked up to him for so long, and then the first.

[A]

The one time he mentions you.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

He turns his gaze.

[B]

Sauron.

[C]

Matt, what is it?

[B]

What do you need to tell us? Any book sucks.

[C]

Dang it.

[D]

I do have to say I have to shout out my buddy Timo, who put me on to you guys, like, a. Probably a year or two ago, and he said if I don't make the connection that he's the one that introduced me, he would sue me.

[C]

So. Okay. Yeah, we're clear.

[D]

So thank you. Timo.

[C]

Timo.

[D]

Now they're here. Right there.

[A]

Yeah, here we are. Because of Timo.

[D]

Because of Teemo.

[C]

And we're ninjas. Butterflies. We're haunted. Cosmos from Teemu connection.

[A]

See, I thought we were ninjas or butterflies.

[B]

Yeah, I thought we were like, ninjas are butterflies.

[C]

Not a chance. Not a chance. So what do you guys been diving into recently?

[B]

So we just started writing season six of the main show, and we're gonna record actually Thursday.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That first episode of season six. And that one's on the Snallygaster.

[A]

Dude.

[B]

Y' all heard of the Snallygaster?

[D]

Yeah. Is it. Wait, is that the first word I thought I thing.

[B]

No, no, I was thinking Snallygaster was Maryland. It's like. It's kind of. It's kind of skunk ape vibes.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Tattooed on his leg.

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we talked about because. Yeah. We're talking about the Florida thing, but he got it mixed up.

[D]

Yeah. There's a Snell Gaster and then there's a snow goster or something like that in Florida, which is totally made up in a.

[A]

It's.

[C]

It was made up like to be like a. Like a hazing thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Workers in that area. And so it was a.

[D]

It was a alligator with a propeller.

[B]

I mean, I believe it.

[A]

Yeah, I already believe it. I believe it.

[C]

It just sounds like some Florida guy caught an alligator and then just created his own Frankenstein monster, which, honestly would be a great movie.

[B]

I like, drills a propeller into the bottom of this alligator.

[A]

So.

[C]

So what's going. What is a Snallagaster?

[B]

Okay, so Snallygaster was. It's this cryptid in Maryland that's like Mothman, but. But like a snake. So it's got this bird. This bird vibe going on.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

With really creepy wings, very skeletal and. And then ghostly. But then it. It's just a dragon instead of a. Of a man in the wings. And it would go around and it had like tentacles pouring out of its chest. It was super Lovecraftian, really creepy, and it would suck all the blood out of the livestock and any children that it found.

[C]

So it's like vampire esque.

[B]

Yeah. And the thing is, in. I think it was 1909, there was like a big panic about it.

[D]

That's it.

[B]

Yeah. The Snally where they had. They had government issued curfews and they had. They had like close down forests and everything. Because the Snallygaster was just wreaking havoc.

[D]

No way.

[B]

Yeah. In eastern or western Maryland.

[C]

And when was this?

[B]

1909. When the sightings started in the 1700s when all the Germans immigrated over from Germany to that section of Maryland. And what's interesting is if you go back in the. In the German history, there were two cryptids that they had over there. One of them was the. The Lindwyrm and then the Drood and the Lindwyrm was just like a big dragon thing that some people killed in order to set up a city. And then the Druid was this night witch, like a. Like a succubus type character that was unique to that area. And the snallygaster, if you look at its traits, it's kind of a combination of those two things. And so they. They came over, they started encountering this thing. They called it the Schnell Geist, which means the fast ghost. And then it became Americanized into it.

[A]

Some American was like, oh, way cooler. You mean snallygaster?

[B]

Yeah, way, way cooler than.

[C]

We call that thing a snellagaster.

[A]

That's a snellagaster.

[C]

That's great. That's terrifying.

[E]

So what are the, like, you know, people who try to disprove or say that it wasn't a thing? Like, how do they account for like the livestock or any of that stuff?

[B]

I don't know. I think that. I think that they just say that it was a, you know, like the Mothman. It was an owl. And people were wrong about their cattle and livestock being mutilated.

[A]

Sandhill Crane.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's the same old stuff.

[A]

It's one of the things we talk about a lot on the show. I think you guys do too. Just this idea of like the victory of Christ as it expands into new territories. And you can almost think of the advance of the kingdom, like the saints going forth and doing war against the demon and the demon haunted places. So for us, it's like we look at North American lore and old Native American cryptids and that sort of thing. And instead of saying, well, obviously that was all fake, we say, why not?

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Why wouldn't you expect for there to be all sorts of demons and, you know, dragons and giants and, you know, stuff trying to basically destroy and warp and demand the worship of people. So I mean, I think maybe, maybe the snowy Gaster. I think that was a demon spirit.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Let's go.

[B]

There's no uncertainty.

[C]

I mean, it's crazy that just because, I mean, before media, before a lot of this, you know, like our technological advances and stuff in the past hundred years or whatever, like people did live just normal lives and this stuff did exist among them and it was common. And now that we're just like, ah, it's fake. You can't believe that stuff that's all made up. Dragons? Are you kidding me?

[E]

Even, even like the biblical precedent of shape shifting, like the staff turned into a serpent in the biblical account. So like who's to say what did exist or didn't and just doesn't appear as it used to.

[B]

And the Egyptians were able to do the same thing.

[D]

That's like the craziest.

[B]

And it doesn't say that they literally.

[E]

Had a wizard off.

[A]

Well, I was just reading in Job morning. In Job one, you don't have to.

[E]

Flex that you read your Bible.

[B]

He actually was listening to it. Hey, whoa.

[A]

I was in the shower, dude. I had my English guy reading it to me, which is actually like elevated. I have a guy for that. It's not an app, it's a guy.

[C]

This is your Bible guy.

[A]

He has like Shakespearean training. He follows me around, dude. But that passage in Job where Job goes before God and he's accusing Job before God and saying, well, it's just because he basically has it so good that he worships you. And then, you know, God gives him permission. He says, just don't. Don't touch Job at that point. And part of the satanic destruction that came on Job's family and on all this possessions was a fire from heaven. Like the people actually said it was a fire from God. I think they were misdiagnosing that. But just the power later, a strong wind like that Satan has even over the world in that sense to come. And when God gives him permission and gives him leash, he's able to do these like works of great destruction.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And so even just think about what, what were the demonic spirits and you know, the rulers over the ancient world, what were they capable of in terms of signs and wonders and basically terrifying local populace into submission and worship of them. And it's like this stuff's right there in the Bible.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

You look at the physical characteristics, like you explaining what the Snallagaster looked like. It's like that just seems like we're reading from Revelation or from the Old Testament where you get the visions of like the, you know, the head of a lion, all these things. And it's like, that's. I mean, why could we be describing something that we see on Earth as well?

[A]

Ancient Canaanite demon or, you know, in.

[B]

Numbers, the Israelites in the wilderness, they offend God and then he sends the fiery serpents. And those fiery serpents are. That's what the snallygaster is. That's what it's described as. It can breathe fire as well. Of course it can breathe fire. And it was, you know, able to bite the people. Those fiery serpents were able to bite the people and kill them. And if they Looked at the bronze serpent, they were. They were relieved. But, like, that's just what the snallygaster is. And so you can very clearly just go to numbers. I think it's number 17. And you're like, there's proof that a snallygaster is possible. Why would we not expect to see that again?

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Especially in a place where the gospel hasn't been proclaimed as widely and the land is still under the dominion of the Prince of the power of the air.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. I'm blown away by that. Just of how we've completely just accept. As a society, we just accept what's around us and what we see. That's what's real. That's reality. When, like, in real life, like, that's not how things existed for so long.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Like, it's. I don't know. We have to. There's. We've lost trust. We've lost kind of that history. I don't know.

[A]

It's kind of.

[D]

When did you guys get into this stuff, like the Cryptids and all the crazy ancient stories? Like, have you guys always been into it or has it kind of been growing as you've been doing it?

[A]

It definitely grew with the show. So both. What happened is Ben and I worked together at the church that we both serve as pastors in Ogden, Utah. And then we had started some different media endeavors in our friend group, and that ultimately became New Christendom Press. We publish books and we have, like, a suite of podcasts on different stuff. Haunted Cosmos is the most out there. The rest of them are on, like, culture and theology and politics, and my wife and I do it on family and that sort of thing. But we just. We both started figuring out that we had each been interested in this stuff for a while, just independently Cool. Like, listen to different podcasts, Astonishing legends. You know, growing up in the 90s and 2000s, all of us had those experiences of, like, the Travel Channel shows where you thought that quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle were going to be, like, big, big problems in your life.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And we started talking and just said, this stuff's exploding in popularity. Materialism as a worldview is failing. People are starting to realize that what they've been told in public school, that the world is just stuff. You're just moving atoms. You're just animals descended from animals. There's no meaning, purpose. There's no supernatural or preternatural. And we said, well, as that fails, people are going to swerve off and become obsessed with or taken in by Demonic deception, which is going to look like the occult, it's going to look like witchcraft. It will look like alien and extraterrestrial stuff. We looked around and said, is there a great podcast? Because that was our thing at New Christendom, especially podcasting, that addresses it. And so the idea was born of just, let's do a great story driven. Let's take some of the things we'd like to do in other shows, like sound design and a lot of preparation and storytelling, and let's weave in these supernatural themes and show that, yes, the world is not just stuff. And we can. It's like in Acts 17, when Paul says. He proclaims to the men at the areopagus that they're looking at all. They're talking about philosophy all day. And then he looks at this little idol to the unknown God, and he says, what is unknown to you? Let me declare to you. So I think a Christian, we can walk into some of these spaces and say, we're not going to gaslight you and say, that's not real. But we can tell you what that is. And we can tell you that the answer to it is not to fear or to live in bondage to it, but to trust Christ, proclaim that Christ is Lord, his victory over the powers. And so you can live knowledgeably in the world God created and also without fear or bondage to it. And the podcast was born from there, actually. Like we were telling you guys before in Orlando, we were.

[D]

Chili.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So rad.

[A]

There was a conference or, like, a thing I was taught. I was speaking at Ben, and we, you know, traveled together, and we tried to record the first episode literally under a sheet over a lamp in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida.

[B]

We had to turn the AC unit off for the sound, and we ended up scrapping it anyway. We were. Man, that was such a bummer. And so it was like 200 degrees under this, you know, bed comforter.

[D]

So you guys are both sitting under there?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If anyone walked in, like, jerked over.

[C]

Candle lighter, and we're like, ooh, Bigfoot.

[D]

Have you heard of the snow glass?

[A]

And our. Our first episode, High Strangeness on the high sneeze. On the high sneeze. Bless you.

[D]

We.

[A]

We tried to record then. And still that episode that. The actual. That's, like, has a special place in my heart.

[D]

Cool.

[A]

That just. I love that episode. Love that first season. And it was crazy just how the show blew up. Like, we. All of a sudden, it was just. We were meeting people all over and that it just Validated, at least that. And I think you guys too experienced this. People are interested. They are dissatisfied with the materialist account of the world. It's one of the reasons we wrote the book is like, we just want to turn the lights on and say materialism is cope. It's not true. This is what the world is actually like. Yeah. And we've seen lots of non Christians, we've seen, you know, Mormon, tons of, tons of people listening to the show that they don't necessarily agree with our Christian theology. But they're, they're like, well, but hang on, what if they're right, though?

[D]

Yeah, it's cool too, because there's, you.

[E]

Know, you're looking at it from like the secular perspective. Like, you know, materialism isn't working. We're moving to spirituality. But then you look even in the American church and the lack of acceptance of spiritual things. Like, I went to Bible college and didn't have a real clue what a nephilim was until long after I had my degree. And so just the fact that, like, that narrative isn't discussed in the Christian world. I think podcasts like yours are super important for helping people wrestle with those things.

[B]

And it's crazy that it's not because Paul literally says that you're supposed to wrestle against powers and principalities, and those are angelic terms and specifically fallen angelic terms that he's talking about. And so that should be a huge, I mean, maybe not a huge part of every Christian's life where they're like.

[A]

I'm gonna go out.

[B]

I'm gonna go hunting for these demons and I'm gonna kill them. But especially for ministers of the word, they have to understand that there is an unseen power of darkness that is actively opposed to them all the time. And if they don't know what that looks like when it does manifest itself, they're not going to be prepared to deal with it. And so when it pops up in a congregation, like someone's having sleep paralysis and they're seeing this man in a hat, tell him weird things. They're all, it's just bad dreams. Don't worry about it. Well, maybe it is just bad dreams. Maybe it's not.

[C]

Maybe it's Benadryl.

[B]

Yeah, maybe it's all that melatonin that you're taking.

[A]

But we have had that experience too. I mean, the sleep paralysis episode. We did. It's a great example of this. Dozens and dozens, probably at this point, hundreds of emails from Christians saying, I experienced this. This is what you said is exactly how it went. And this is the first time I've heard it explained from a Christian perspective. We did one on hallucinogens.

[B]

Yeah. Dmt.

[A]

DMT and ayahuasca. And you know, how these things are basically tapping into real spiritual experiences. And not only did we get tons of people outside the church, but even in our church the impact was amazing. We even had one guy who was like, no, dude, I've been in the tech industry. And he, you know, entrepreneur, multiple serial entrepreneur. And he's like, I was getting into this stuff, microdosing, started growing my own shrooms because that was just the culture. And I thought it was just like caffeine or any other performance enhancing thing, but it was taking me down this path and I had this crazy terrible, like growingly terrible experiences. And that episode basically, you know, hit me over the head with a two by four and turned me from going down that path further. And it was like that. It's conversations like that that made us realize, yes, these things are real. Yes, the Christian has an answer, but the church hasn't been addressing them.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And we absolutely need a step, like every pastor needs to be equipped to understand these issues, be able to go in and speak to them. Because your congregation is listening.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

To also, you know, and not just like ninjas or butterflies, but they're listening to occult stuff.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

They're some of them dabbling in hallucinogens and witchcraft and these things. And we have to be equipped to answer it.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

It shouldn't be a foreign idea.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

For Christians, like there should be an understanding of it. And so that's the terrifying thing is that we're just. Yeah, we're covering a lot of great bases on, you know, gospel. But honestly, like for everyday life or the struggles that people are going through with, with, you know, this just mental warfare that we're having in this country, you know, all over, just like anxiety, depression, all that stuff. It's like there, there is an answer for it.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And there's so like, I don't know, there's just such a darkness to it and we don't, we're unaware of it.

[A]

And it's so practical too. Like, you know, people, when you, when you're confronted with evil, including the evil of your own soul, like the answers are not complicated. Turn from your sin, receive grace, you stop hewing out for yourself. Cisterns that hold no water, come to living water, Be healed, be cleansed. Because people don't realize that it's not just these overt Crazy demonic expressions you see in witchcraft or in possession or hauntings, these sorts of things. The ordinary demonic is just through our sin, opening doorways, you know, pornography addiction, et cetera. Just opening doorways in our soul for evil to walk in influence and turn us away from the face of our Father. And the only thing you find down that path, it keeps promising more and more revelation. Ayahuasca is a great example of this. Keeps promising you revelation. You'll have secret knowledge and, you know, you'll be awash in the love of the spirits, but. And it's all like this, but it just leads you further down the door to death.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Turn, just turn. Come home like prodigal. Just come home to your Father.

[C]

Just day by day, one day at a time. Hold fast to Jesus.

[B]

I think it's Proverbs 29, has a verse that says, the leech has two daughters. Give and give. And one of the things that really came up for me in that ayahuasca episode was that so many of these accounts were especially young people having visions where they're going before this, like, court of beings. And the beings kept saying, we're going to tell you how to. How to elevate, how to ascend, you know, to the next plane of thought and consciousness and all this stuff. Just give us time in the meantime, tell us this. Give us this. Give it, you know, and it eventually became this, like, yeah, give us your soul. Like, be dedicated to us and coming back to us over and over again. And it made that proverb mean a little bit more than just the everyday practical, where, you know, these things are leeches, that. That's what they've been from the beginning. And they're always trying to twist and corrupt by taking what God made and turn it into something evil. And they're just telling you to give and give and give and give. They're never giving anything back. And if you're not careful, then. Then you'll take these small steps for your whole life and you'll end up not even knowing who you are anymore. Yeah. Let alone not knowing who God is. Like, you won't have a root in yourself at all.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And that's a win for Satan.

[B]

Exactly. Because that means, I mean, that's the seed that's thrown on the rock where it sprouts up and then with away, because it doesn't have a root in itself. And so you could still hear the gospel, but it could be very ineffective, like, because you have made it so that the spirit isn't going to prepare your heart to receive.

[C]

That quenched it.

[A]

It's like you don't just get to the Aztecs worshiping their demon gods, their celestial gods, their serpent gods, by slitting the bodies of their victims open and pulling their hearts out and throwing them down the. The steps of their ziggurats. You don't get there overnight. You get there from 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, a million different small sins and twistings of the human soul until the image of God is so effaced in man and in a people, they have given and given and given themselves and their souls to these spiritual powers, and they are remade in their image and they start to look like them.

[B]

Part of why that's so pernicious is because man is supposed to be a worshiping creature. We're not made to just be on our own, not giving ourselves to anything. We're actually made to, you know. Our purpose is to give ourselves to the glory of God so that we can enjoy him forever. That's where we're most happy and most fulfilled. And so it's really smart of the demons to do it this way because they know, they've been around for a long time. They know that man is supposed to give him or herself up to something to worship some higher thing. And so they can step in and say, well, I'm a higher thing. And look at all that I can give to you. I can give you crops, I can give you storms and wind and rain when you need it, and I can also withhold when it would be harmful. And so you owe me now this. And so that's that. It's the little carrot that hides a big stick behind it.

[C]

Gosh, that's scary.

[D]

I mean, it kind of makes sense in that whole, like, the 27 Club kind of thing. You know, it's like kind of a bigger picture. Like, you know, we'll give you this gift of music and all this stuff, but exchange for your soul kind of thing. Who's. It was Robert Johnson.

[C]

Yeah, I think it was Robert Johnson.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. And yeah, it was. That was wild. You guys know that story?

[B]

Doesn't Windigan have a really good episode on that?

[D]

Oh, sure.

[B]

I think. I think it's Windigan.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It's a fascinating story.

[B]

Really? Yeah.

[C]

I mean, you just hear that all the time of just people making always an exchange. Yeah.

[A]

Is this the, like, celebrity.

[D]

Yeah, like the conspiracy of the 27 Club, where they sell their soul, basically. And they'll be super famous. Super whatever.

[A]

Amy Winehouse.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Robert Johnson was apparently the first member of it that I know of. And he was like. He was like, in the 20s or something.

[B]

Didn't Bob Dylan do that? Or. Bob Dylan talked about it at one point in an interview possibly, where he was, like, super old. And they were like, when are you gonna stop? He's like, I can't stop. I made my deal. I gotta keep going.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

He's very interesting because there was a time where, I mean, you listen to his music in, like, his heyday. It's unreal. It's so crazy that he could put out so many different types of songs. That means so much to so many people that are catchy, that live the test of time. But he even says he's like, I just can't do that anymore.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

There was something where that was flowing through me. And then it's like. It makes you wonder, dude. It's things like that.

[B]

It's spooky.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. It's just scary, dude.

[D]

Your guys's storytelling is amazing. So it's the funnest thing to listen to.

[B]

Thank you.

[D]

Like, the sound. Yeah, I have.

[E]

I have, like, technical questions after the.

[B]

Episode, we'll get our guy on the phone.

[A]

Here's the secret. It an enormous amount of time.

[D]

Yeah. I was listening to the Coral Castle.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Up here. So cool. That was such a rad episode because it's. It's in our backyard.

[C]

Yeah. Real close.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And we've heard about it. I think we talked about it briefly at one point, like, a year now. But you guys went into, like. There's so much stuff I had no idea about.

[C]

Let's break that down a little bit.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Because that's something.

[D]

Break that down a little bit.

[B]

Sure.

[D]

It's super rad, this dude. The part that, like, was just the craziest thing to me was, like, one that he lied about his fiance.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

To that. How he always worked at night. And when he said. It was like, when kids would, like, sneak up on him, he would just, like, sense that they're there. And you just stand up and just look at him and just wave and just not work until they left.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Oh, so no one saw him work?

[B]

There was one. There was one lady that I actually heard this on Astonishing Legends. There was one lady that said she was walking her dog really late at night. Like, she was working a swing shift walking her dog, and she heard this whistling, and it was coming from the Coral Castle gate. And so she walked over there and she, like, peeked through, and he didn't see that she was there with her dog and she saw him whistling. And one of the blocks was just, like, hovering above him.

[D]

Gosh.

[B]

That was. Yeah, that was her testimony. It was insane.

[D]

Can you give a breakdown a little bit of what Coral Castle is for those who don't really know? Just like a really brief.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So Coral Castle is basically a megalithic structure in southern Florida that's made of oolite limestone. And I think it totals like 3,300 tons of limestone over, like, a dozen or so monuments that this single guy made over the course of 25 years. But there was a gap of 10 years where he wasn't doing anything. So really it was like 15 years. He made 3,300 tons worth of very intricate, very detailed megalithic structure all on his own, using no power tools whatsoever. And no one basically knows how he did it. And then.

[C]

No heavy equipment.

[B]

No heavy equipment. None.

[A]

He wrote a super esoteric book that is incomprehensible.

[B]

Yeah. Called, like In Every Home.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's only written on one side of. So every page, you turn it over, only one page has text on it so that you could fill in your takeaways on the other page. And so he expected people to dig deep into this thing and get all these esoteric truths out of it. And in it, he writes really cryptically about this sweet 16 sweetheart that he had back in Latvia, where he's from. Turns out that girl never existed. And so Sweet 16 is like code for this thing. And there's all these celestial illusions that are made, and then all of his monuments are set up celestially. So he has all of the planets in their proper order as the naked eye would see them in the sky. And there's only five that you can see with the naked eye. So there's only five planets. And then there's negative and positive carvings of different constellations that are set up also, like a star map throughout the thing. And then if you go to any one of them, there is even more meaning if you dig into each one. And then the capstone for me was beside the moon structure, which is one of the most impressive things that he did. There's the. A really rudimentary and frankly, like, scary looking carving of a, like an alien like face inside one of the stones. And I think it's underneath the Mars stone. And so the idea is that this guy had, for whatever reason, either found or been given this celestial knowledge from celestial beings on how to make these megalithic structures. And so if you think, like, if this guy Was able to do that all by himself over the course of 15 years. And he was like a 98 pound, 5 foot 4 Latvian.

[A]

Yeah, he was like 5 2.

[B]

He was not a big man. And. And so the idea is if he was able to do that, think of what the Egyptians would have been able to do.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And not only that, he. There was one point where people theorized that, that some of what he did had to do with ley lines and magnetic lines. Because there was a point when he had owned this, bought and built his megaliths on this one property. And then it was like something stopped working. And so he got another piece of property like 20 miles away.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he moved the whole thing. And the way that the story of.

[B]

It being moved is crazy too.

[A]

He would get people to bring like there was a big flatbed truck or something for a piece at a time. The smaller pieces are like, you know, big these rocks and. But he wouldn't let anybody see him load it. So he'd be like, leave the truck here. He would just wait. If they wouldn't leave, he would just wait.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then this. And this may be exaggerated, but there's one story where the guy, a guy brings a truck there and he's like, hey, can I go to the bathroom or something? And he like walked around in a room and he comes out and it's like four minutes later. And the truck has just loaded with.

[B]

20 tons of limestone.

[A]

And there's just this little Latvian guy like that's crazy.

[C]

Ratchet strap, please. What?

[A]

What? That ain't going anywhere. That's going crazy.

[B]

But it, there was one, I think it was an 11 ton gate where it was so precisely set up on a single ball bearing that he had drilled into the ground that you could walk up to it. And it was self balancing, like it just stayed there on its own. And a child, like a two year old toddler could push it with a finger and it would spin around an 11 ton gate.

[A]

They didn't even know how it worked. They didn't even know about the bearing until well after his death. It stopped working. And so they, you know, jack. They. A team of engineers basically jacks it up and they, they go, let's try to figure this out. And they found it was like from an old Ford truck or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he had so perfectly carved and balanced this thing that it took a team of engineers and heavy equipment to fix it. And this guy had done it by himself. Yeah. In the dark.

[B]

Yeah, it's crazy. In the dark. Yeah.

[C]

And he had no connections with anybody else. He was a solo guy, super weird.

[A]

Guy, just, like, by himself. There were stories from his youth that he may have been involved in some radical communist adjacent revolutionary movements.

[B]

He was revolting against the czar when the Tsar was trying to exercise more power in Latvia. And so it was part of the Red Revolution.

[A]

Yeah, the Bolsheviks.

[B]

And then he escaped and he fled to America. He did a whole tour of, like, logging in the Pacific Northwest, and then he was oiling in Texas, and then he ended up in Florida. And the idea is that through that time, he was learning the skills that he would eventually use to build Coral castle. But he was also looking for the. The place with the right properties of ley lines and magnetism and things.

[D]

Wow.

[C]

Yeah. Golly, dude, that's.

[D]

I mean, that would make sense with the ley lines moving, like with the pole shifting and stuff, you know, it's like, always moving. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's crazy.

[D]

Have you heard, like, it was like, in. Yeah, go. Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Freaking. That's my favorite thing to talk about is the Gobekli Tepe dude.

[B]

I love go back. Isn't it?

[D]

It's just the coolest.

[B]

It is.

[D]

It gets me so hyped.

[C]

I mean, what's.

[D]

Especially the secret news around it.

[B]

You were. Y' all show was where I learned that the World Economic Forum, like, basically owns Gobekli Tepe through a bunch of indirect.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Sub owners or.

[D]

Yeah. And that there. They stopped excavating it because they said they're gonna leave it for future generation.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And but what you're talking about, like, with the carvings and stuff on this dude. Was it Ed. That's his name?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[D]

Well, like, with the stars and all stuff, I mean, that's just like Gobekli Tepe.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Gobekli Tepe has that one pillar, 17, maybe. I don't know, that has the. All of the really intricate carvings on it that they found that if you. If you go deep into the symbolism and use it as a star map, then it gives you a date, and the date lines up to when people think the Younger Dryas event, like the.

[D]

Big flood and stuff.

[B]

Yeah. And so the idea is that, like, these people, some. Because Noah had knowledge of the flood for 120 years before it happened. And so the idea is that they somehow Noah, like, propagated this thing, like, hey, y' all need to repent, otherwise you're all gonna die. And so they made this pillar, and it predicted when the flood would occur so that they would Know when to fill in Gobekli Tepe for the flood so that the future generations could come and basically excavate it and start worshiping the stars again and know what to do.

[C]

See, what if they're just working out at night, they're excavating and excavating at night. I don't like this Coral Castle guy. Maybe digging down deep or something that's.

[D]

There's also the story, the talk, you know, like those giant megalithic walls in Peru, like the Incas that they said that they came across.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

The stories go where they used basically vibrations to levitate the rocks and stuff, which, I mean, I'm just blown away by all this stuff.

[C]

Like, dude, coral castles. That's blowing my mind right now. Because that. I mean, what year was that?

[B]

It was.

[A]

It was in the 1900s.

[B]

It was early 1900s.

[C]

How is this not a bigger story?

[B]

There was also this weird thing, like, he had. He. So he used some rudimentary tools, and I'm talking like a tripod that he made out of a couple pine branches and a chain with a. Like a manual chain and gear. Not enough to build this, but he had this thing that he called the magic generator or something like that. And it was his perpetual motion machine. And he. It's still there in Coral Castle. Like, you can go see it. And no one understands how it would have worked. Like, no one can figure out if there's something missing or doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't do anything.

[A]

So they just. There's. There's very little way to explain how he did this.

[B]

He claims to have used that thing. No equipment, do a lot of stuff.

[A]

And like, it was all. He lived there. People would tour it and he would, you know, he would let people tour it and they would give him a, you know, nickel or 5 cents or something. And that was kind of how he made most. He had a little vegetable garden and then he would give tours for. Not that much, just, like, scrape a living by. But there was no big secret place to store heavy equipment or even some of the. I mean, there are people who have demonstrated they can build rudimentary, you know, through leverage and different things to move larger objects and things like that. And there's some really brilliant engineers who have. Have tried to show how could they have done this naturally. But even those. First of all, they're not there. He doesn't have that kind of equipment even built himself. And secondly, even with it, when you start looking into some of these devices people build to try and Replicate megalithic structure movement. And the stone, it just. The scale doesn't map. They'll show how they can move a 10 ton stone. But the Peruvian one, the. Those are great example. We're talking about stones that were quarried hundreds of miles away.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Thousands of feet lower in elevation. And they are brought up huge mountains. And you could go today and hike those mountains and try to get yourself up that mountain.

[D]

Yeah. For real? Yeah.

[A]

And I don't know if I could, not having lost 45 pounds like my friend Garrett and.

[B]

Dude, you got it. Stop gassing.

[A]

It'd be like me carrying a megalod structure up for me to walk up.

[B]

It versus Ben and the myth with those Peruvian stones. Going back to the whistling thing earlier, the myth is that these ancient beings came from the sea and they started building these things. And the way that they moved the stones up the mountain was with a golden trumpet that they would blow and the trumpet would make the stones float and then fly up the mountain.

[A]

And then here's the thing. Like, I know God did this, but Jericho.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Walking around this huge. Those walls are not like we picture sometimes. These walls like, oh, a little quaint stone stacked, dry stacked wall like you'd find in a farmer's field in England or Europe. No, these things are like 20ft thick and 40, 60, 80, 100ft high.

[B]

And you can't put a credit card between them. They're fit so perfectly.

[A]

And then God's like, just march around it. Play, you know, play this. Get a ska band together. And the next thing you know, Jericho's. And God did that.

[B]

Well, God does it. But God uses means.

[A]

God uses means.

[B]

God's not arbitrary command to march around and then blow this note and then play this song or whatever. Like, that's not an arbitrary thing that God's doing. He's showing how his power is working through the things that man is also doing. And so that the fact that he tells him to blow the trumpet does matter.

[A]

This is what gets me. People have an astonishing capacity for this certain type of pride where we think we freeze our own time period and our own knowledge and technology. And then we just sort of act like we're at the peak and we look back and we're looking down the mountain of human knowledge to the bottom where all these primitives used to live. And they did all this. Oh, wow. Like, we're. We're there. But the amount that we. The amount that we know that we don't know.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Anybody who's an expert in you Pick literally any field of human knowledge. The sign of a true expert is the person that says, and here is the 99.7% that we don't know and we haven't figured out yet. In medicine or in physics or in engineering. There's just so much that we haven't figured out. We haven't plumbed the depths of astrophysics. Like, just this year, the astrophysicists revised their whole model of the universe. They're like, oh, we were wrong about dark matter.

[B]

Oops.

[A]

Yeah, it accounts for 50% of the mass of the universe. I'm like, if I turned in a paper in high school and I was off by 50%, you know what grade you would get? Yeah, that's an F, right?

[C]

It's constantly changing.

[A]

So we're doing this constantly, but then we make the next correction. We're like, okay, we've now we figured it out. We fixed it. Now we know we're there, We've arrived. And it's like we just have this capacity for such. Louis, you know, chronological snobbery. His. His great term there. Like, we have such a capacity for that that we even have the audacity to scoff when someone says, well, maybe there's a way to use sound and magnetism and, you know, the. The energy of an object to move it or levitate it or something like, oh, you got. You're crazy. Yeah, you weird conspiracy.

[C]

Like, what are we talking about? We can get.

[E]

We could.

[B]

That those things are possible.

[C]

We don't know the certain. The certainty is the problem. It's like being certain about something when you truly know you have no certainty.

[B]

Yeah, it's conflating a spirit of discovery with certainty. It's good to have a spirit of discovery. It's bad to bring in any sense of certainty to that, because no natural science gives you certainty at the point.

[A]

We know that the mind that is responsible for all things, the mind of God, is so far above our ways and so far beyond our finding out that if we were to make contact with the mind of God purely, it would render us undone right in that mind. The mind that just. The stuff that we do know about that we've managed to figure out, which we're supposed to do. It's the glory of kings to search a thing out, right? So the things we do know are insane when you look at them. That God put little drums in your ear, in your head, that respond to wiggles in the air. And those wiggles can make you cry or they can make you really happy. You Know, And I'm talking like music or speech.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That is insane. And we're just used to it, so it's normal to us. We're like, oh, that's the air. Wiggles make me cry. That's no big deal. That's fine. This is Tuesday. And it's like, imagine the things we don't know yet and what. What kind of things are out there that we just haven't discovered?

[D]

I don't know how records work.

[B]

Oh yeah, Magnets.

[D]

No way I could figure out how to move us.

[C]

How do grooves make sound?

[D]

I don't get it though, dude.

[C]

I don't know how to toaster works. I mean, I'm dumb.

[B]

Have you seen that Nate Bargazzi bit where he's like, I think if I went back to 1900, knowing what I know now, I. I wouldn't make any.

[A]

I would change.

[C]

Phones, like. So how do those work?

[A]

I don't know, dude. There was this rectangle. There was a guy who. It was like 10 years ago. So he set out to try and make a toaster. Did you see this guy?

[C]

No.

[A]

On his own, he was like, I'm gonna mine the metal. I'm gonna figure out like all the core, the electricity. If there's a part on this toaster, I'm gonna make it from raw materials and I'm gonna get the materials myself. And he spent like, I think at least a year trying to make this toaster.

[C]

How much money?

[A]

Plastic. He probably spent like millions of dollars. And at the end. You gotta look it up. The toaster that he made, it looks like. I don't know, dude. It looked like.

[B]

It looked like my Golf.

[A]

It looked like Ben's Golf. Like it was so bad. And I don't even know if it worked. Like, I think it caught on fire or something. But.

[D]

You got it.

[A]

The toaster that he made on his. Oh, yeah. It's like. But at the same time, I'm like, that's pretty impressive.

[D]

Yeah, that is impressive.

[C]

And it worked.

[B]

I could.

[D]

But that's. That's after cheating too.

[E]

Like, he got to see what he was supposed to be building.

[A]

He knew already.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. He had already seen the finished product.

[C]

Just reverse engineering of my toaster.

[D]

So what are yalls theories on this knowledge and how did it go away or when did it go away? Do you guys have theories on that?

[B]

Yeah, I. I think that the. The peak of that knowledge was anti diluvian. I think it was before the flood. And so I think that the Egyptians that descended From. From Ham Post Flood found the pyramids, and I think they found the Sphinx. And I do think that they were able to reclaim a lot of these things and still build a lot of insane, insane feats of engineering for their time. But I think that ultimately a lot of the knowledge was lost. And part of that's very speculative. Part of why I think that is because that would make the Flood more successful for what it was supposed to be doing.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I like that aspect of it. But the other thing is that after the Flood, you start to see a steady decline in the activity of the gods in the affairs of men. So you have Nimrod, who builds the Tower of Babel. And I think that the Tower of Babel was a reflection of a lot of these things. And I think even that alone is part of why God judges the tower. Because the reason that God is mad at the Tower of Babel incident is because they had disobeyed his command to spread and fill the earth and multiply. They were all, you know, congregated on the plane of Shinar. And so that's why he is judging them, because they did this. They committed this great sin. But it's interesting that he judges the Tower specifically and he mentions the tower like, if they build this, they'll be capable of who knows what.

[C]

Yeah, they said making. They wanted to make a name for themselves. What does that mean?

[B]

So Babel, Babel in Hebrew means nonsense. That's where we get our Babel from. But Babel in Babylonian means the gate of God. And so what they were trying to do is build the ziggurat structure that goes up into the heavens, not very tall, and at the top there's a temple that is the gateway to heaven. And so, like, the subtext of that story is that they were trying to usurp the throne of God. They were going to go up and they were going to push God out of his rightful place with all of the heirs that are there in the first place. And they were going to place themselves in his throne, specifically led by this demigod Nimrod, who is very Gilgamesh esque in his whole character. And then later you see how God is saying, like, no, it's not wrong that you want to be with me in heaven. It's not wrong that you want to enter the gates of heaven. It's wrong that you want to do so in a way that usurps and is disobedient. And so later you see God's answer to the Tower of Babel in the dream that he gives to Jacob in the wilderness of the stairway that goes up and down from heaven. And if you read that passage, it's really interesting because at the end of Jacob describing this dream, he blesses the land of Bethel and he says, this is the gate of God. So he uses that word, that Babel word. And the point is, that's eventually answered in Christ in Acts 2 with Pentecost, that God was saying, this is how it's going to be done. I am going to open the gate of heaven, and I'm going to invite you up by descending myself first. But if you try to climb up on your own strength, and especially the only way to do that is by using these demonic powers, not only are you going to fail, but I'm going to destroy you and I'm going to judge you. So there's a lot of theological layers to it, but in terms of ancient technology. Yeah, I think that. I think that a lot of that was being used in Babel. And then I think the dispersion actually served to get man away from his own problems. So, in a sense, God was showing mercy by confusing their language and making them disperse.

[C]

Wow, that's amazing.

[D]

Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

So scary, though. So scary.

[B]

Have you all looked into cymatics at all? Like when you pour sand on top.

[C]

Of a. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

[B]

So, I mean, not to beat this point to death, but there's one note, and I don't remember what it is at a certain frequency, and it makes this certain shape, and it's really cool. But if you look at one of the old Babylonian monuments or whatever, one of their plaques that they've excavated, there's a drawing of a giant being seated in a throne with a palanquin and all this stuff. And then there's these smaller beings, presumably humans, in comparison to this giant, that are carrying a stone to the giant, and the stone is a circle, and on the circle is carved the exact pattern of that cymatic image.

[D]

Really, it is.

[B]

And people are like, oh, wow, it means it's the sun God. And look. And you're like, well, yeah, maybe it is the sun God.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But also they're using cymatics to make this stone float to the God. And the note is an exact match. It's crazy.

[D]

That's insane.

[C]

That's awesome. That explains a lot of the. I mean, I know crop circles have been in the same universe as somatics. It's like using the same patterns.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so, like, is using his frequencies to Create those images and stuff like that as well. Even.

[E]

Even Tolkien too. Like, I bring him up all the time, and I. I think he looked at stuff he wasn't supposed to look at when he was a kid in the bottom of that church before everything got taken up by the Vatican. Whatever old documents he was into. But, like, that's how the Dwarves move stone was like using Sound like the same thing. And then their episode starts with that same sort of art. Or their new show starts with that art.

[C]

So Mary Poppins, every time she sings, things are floating.

[A]

There's a dude.

[B]

Mary Poppins is a demon.

[C]

Confirmed.

[A]

I'm just waiting for Ben to bring up the Ainu. Lindelay and Silmarillion.

[B]

I'm gonna hold myself back. I knew you were Tolkien guy, because.

[A]

The way that Tolkien. Even in the. In the legendarium, it's through song that the universe is made. And even then the bad song is woven in, brings corruption.

[B]

Well, the thing. And that's in the Bible too. Like, Ainu Lindale is singing the earth and the universe into existence.

[E]

Hovering above the waters can be translated vibrating or making music.

[B]

And then in Job 38, God says, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the sons of God sang with the stars of the dawn?

[D]

Whoa.

[B]

Like, there's. There's very clear parallels here.

[A]

Tolkien is like, I want you to understand this.

[E]

It's like someone was like, you shouldn't be reading that. And he just like. Like, I'm gonna write it myself.

[A]

My favorite part is. Then Lewis goes and he writes the magician's nephew. And in his very Louisian way, because Tolkien's like, every, you know, spoonful of earth you turn over in Middle Earth has thousands of years of history. And then Tolkien writes Narnia, and he's like, yes, Santa's gonna be there. No explanation.

[B]

But in the lion is Jesus. If the lion is Jesus, I'm gonna kill.

[A]

I'm. But then he. In the Magician's Death, you has Aslan sing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the song changes as the different elements of creation appear.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

One of my favorite parts in the whole Narniad is just that. That scene.

[E]

And it's such a. Like, you know, for people now, like, what we experience when. And I think one of the reasons music is such an important part or an integral part of, like, the church experience is there's something unexplainable when we partake in auditory worship together, like singing notes together. Just something supernatural that occurs.

[A]

It's why the COVID of our book are the celestial Spheres, which Lewis was deeply, deeply steeped in the medieval mind. People call him the last medieval man. Like, he really understood the medieval mind. So when you look deeply into Narnia, isn't it Michael Ward, Planet Narnia. Michael Ward, he writes Planet Narnia, and he has this great theory that each of the seven books of the Narniad corresponds to one of the spheres, and it has what he calls the Donegality of that sphere. So you have the lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is suffused with the Donegality of Jupiter, of Jove. It's jovial. So they keep saying, by Jove, and they keep doing all the. And then there's a different, you know, Mars. There's a Martian one all the way through. And at first you're like, I don't know if this is true. But by the time he's done with the book, you're like, ironclad, dude. He is. He got it. This key to the Narniad that nobody else had seen.

[D]

Wow.

[A]

And Louis never talked about it, never explained this, but the evidence is very, very overwhelming that he was thinking. He even was putting this. Not, I don't think secret in a bad way, in an esoteric kind of. But like, in a. He was hiding glories in the book that he wanted somebody with understanding to draw out and understand this key to where his books really weren't just a jumble and a hodgepodge of different mythologies. They have a coherent.

[B]

Because that was Tolkien's big critique of the Narniad was like, this doesn't make any sense. There's no cohesion. This is all jumbled. And Lewis would always say, like, no, it's just. Trust me, like, it's good. But he never said what it was.

[E]

Dude, that's the podcast that I wish existed from history.

[A]

Just the two at the Burden, baby.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

The conversations. Because what's crazy about those conversations, too, is that. So there's. There's Louis, there's Tolkien. There's also guys who are into, like, theosophy. Theosophy.

[B]

Owen Barfield.

[A]

Yeah, with, like, Barfield. And these guys are having these conversations about Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Theosophy, literature, medieval mind. Like, all this stuff is just woven into these conversations that, I mean, God listened in.

[D]

Just.

[B]

Just guys being bros. What do you.

[E]

What do you suppose their purpose for, like, ambiguity was? Like, why not just. Why not just say, this is maybe what we're alluding to. Like, historically, do you think there was just such, like, a. We don't talk about these Things in that culture or he. They just prided themselves on being clever.

[A]

I think that it's a reflection of the image of God in man, that when man creates, he creates analogously to God. And so God, when he creates, God delights to hide things for people to figure out.

[E]

Dude, Charlie Hall. Mystery is one of my favorite worship songs.

[A]

Yeah. Charlie hall, he's the guy who wrote that you could feed the whole world. That just brought me back. That brought me back.

[E]

It just proclaims that it's a mystery, and then it doesn't answer the mystery in the song. And then the song is worshiping. It starts out, he's a. It's mysterious.

[A]

God loves to point to. Even in Job, he points to his creation a lot because his creation is like the reification of his mind. He's bringing substance in, creating material substance to his mind, the expression of his mind in the order and harmony and beauty and all this stuff. And when God did that, he put in. We've tapped into a hundredth of a hundredth of a percent of the knowledge that he's hidden in his creation. So I think when man creates, we also. There's something that we just delight. When you write a song and you're like, I don't know if anyone's ever. I write music and there are still things in songs I've written. I've never told people this is what that's about. And maybe they'll figure it out, maybe not. I'm not that big of a deal. So people probably won't spend and the music is just okay. So they probably won't study it the same way that they would like, you know, C.S. lewis.

[B]

Dude, I will write a book on your music.

[A]

Yeah, I needed that.

[E]

The Ninjas catalog is super deep.

[D]

Yeah, we have deep stuff, too. I mean, we had that line that your head is hollow but full of poo poo.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

A lot of people were like, oh, that's really cool. And then dive into it. Wow. What did they mean, full of poop? I wonder what they mean.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Trinity Connection. Rebirth.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Genesis.

[D]

Yeah. Somehow speaking of poo poo, do you know that we got that.

[A]

Don't go anywhere.

[C]

Okay. Watch out.

[A]

Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonald land.

[D]

There's six shaped volcanoes.

[A]

You'll even find a French fr. Now just turn around and see if.

[B]

You won't find a hamburger patch as you're heading for.

[C]

Order.

[A]

Order the McDonald meal today and get the Mount McDonaldland Shake with your very own character souvenir kit. This episode is brought to you by Espolontequila. Slow Sticky Snoozy. They call these the dog days of summer, but Espolon, they don't do boring. Welcome to the mark days. Espolontecila 100% blue Weber Agave born to shake up your summer. Just add lime agave and a little attitude. Visit espolontecila.com Tequila 40% alcohol volume 80 proof Copyright 2025 Campari America, New York, NY Drink responsibly. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more. Running a business comes with a lot of what ifs, but luckily there's a simple answer to Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku, and it'll help you with everything you need. From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations. Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what ifs into Sign up for your $1 per month [e-mail] specialoffer.

[E]

It'S been so long.

[D]

How have you been? Hello, I'm doing well, Dave.

[A]

Why are you talking that way?

[D]

Please say one for a compliment or two for a question.

[E]

Yeah, this is weird.

[D]

I think I'm gonna go.

[A]

Talking with an automated phone tree can feel pretty ridiculous. That's why when Pacific Source Health Plans you'll get a real person to answer all your important questions. Pacific Source Health Plans this is a real person.

[B]

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[D]

Ford F250 Twin Turbo Diesel 1992 96,000 miles. This could be yours if you purchase a hat. Sundaycoolswag.com or new camo hat I thought.

[C]

You were describing me for a second.

[A]

But speaking of Sunday cool swag. That's where I got this shirt from. Isn't it nice?

[D]

It is nice. And you can get all your Ninja [e-mail] including our new camo hat which I just mentioned. And you will not win this truck. This is my truck.

[A]

You could win me though.

[D]

Sundaycoolswag.com Go get your stuff now for.

[B]

One night I'm yours.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Wow, man.

[C]

I can't get up there.

[D]

You can do it. All right, we ready?

[C]

All right, we'll actually start the pod now.

[A]

Yeah, start.

[C]

That was from the beginning.

[B]

Intro.

[C]

Yeah, that was just hanging out. We'll record now.

[D]

Yeah, hit record.

[A]

Just vibing.

[D]

Oh, man. Dude, I had to pee so bad.

[C]

Now I've never actually gotten into Tolkien or CS Lewis. He's like, I've done his book.

[E]

I've watched the movies.

[C]

Never watched the movies. Never seen Narnia or anything like that.

[B]

Man, I wish I was you.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I have kids, so I probably should.

[B]

Yeah. Getting the chance to read those for the first time again would really.

[A]

I read Narnia at least every year.

[C]

Really?

[A]

I've probably read it 50 plus times.

[C]

Is it just one book?

[A]

It's seven books, but they're very short. I've read kids books.

[C]

Okay, cool.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I've read.

[B]

I think I've read the Silmarillion now 10 times.

[E]

I'll be honest, dude, haven't read the Silmarillion. I haven't read the books.

[B]

I wish I was you.

[A]

I do. Because it's such an experience.

[E]

I'm so like. My add in reading is just.

[A]

Okay, so listen to it. Andy Serkis, the guy who plays Gollum.

[E]

In the movies, dude, I saw that. That made me. I need to do that.

[B]

It's good.

[A]

The thing is, I think Lord of the Rings is the greatest work of fiction in the 20th century.

[E]

But is it fiction?

[B]

That's my hard decision.

[A]

But is it fiction? I think it's the greatest. What? Name an English speaking work in the 20th century that's better.

[B]

The Silmarilla.

[E]

Dr. Seuss.

[A]

Oh, okay. Well then that's fine. I'll allow that. Dr. Seuss.

[B]

Lewis's best book is Till we have Faces, and it was also his last book and it's that one. But it's myth, it's not fiction.

[D]

Wait, that's the one with Cupid, right?

[B]

Yeah, Cupid and Psyche. It's a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche.

[D]

That's the only CS Lewis one I've read. Oh, yeah.

[B]

It is so good.

[E]

Read the Narnia series and then his one essay, Religion and Rocketry, where he talks about aliens.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Also started reading a while ago. Was it Space or Space Trilogy? Yes, Space trilogy.

[A]

Yeah, great series.

[B]

First one's not very good, but Perilantra. And how many books did he write? He wrote a lot.

[C]

That's crazy.

[B]

He has a.

[C]

When did he die?

[A]

When November 22, 1964. This guy. It was the day that JFK was assassinated.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

That was 63 or 63 then. And it really. Yeah, 63. And it really overshadowed, you know, like. Poor guy.

[D]

He's like one of the most famous.

[A]

Apologists and, you know, just public theologians. And then JFK gets assassinated.

[C]

I remember reading about that or hearing about that. How they died on the same day.

[A]

It's also my wife's birthday. Not 1963. Good for you.

[B]

Louis wrote a really good essay that I think y' all would really like called Myth Became Fact. And it's in a collection of essays called called God in the Dock. But it's like five pages. Y' all would. Y' all would love it.

[E]

Yep, I can handle that.

[C]

Is there an audiobook? Because I really.

[A]

Okay, we'll. We'll go home and record. I will record the audio in voice memo.

[C]

Yeah, please.

[D]

Oh, man. Well, here's a question. What are you guys super into right now, conspiracy wise or not? You know, like ancient civilization. Do you guys like any cool stuff coming up on season six that you're like, besides the Snogloster.

[B]

Snallygaster.

[A]

The Snellagaster. Let me just look at this. I'm really excited about telepathy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And telekinesis and some of this, like, psychical human ability, not human ability kind of question.

[D]

Have you listened to the telepathy tape yet?

[A]

So we've got every single thing we do. There's two things people say. When is ninjas or butterflies. And then also when are you going to do one on the telepathy dude safes.

[D]

Fascinating stuff.

[A]

I'm not into it yet. We haven't started. At least I haven't started research for it.

[B]

I don't, you know that I haven't started.

[A]

Okay, you do more research. You were so real for that.

[D]

Yeah. The lady that did it. What's her name?

[A]

Oh, geez, I forget her name.

[D]

Yeah, but she's not a believer. And so she's approaching it from a very like, you know, not a spiritual. Well, actually it is spiritual, but it's not tied to Christ necessarily.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which I kind of love almost more.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Just like. You're just proving our point, lady.

[D]

Yeah, but I mean, there's just story after story of these kids. They talk about going to the hill, this place of consciousness and stuff. And I mean, it has to be. Over 90% of them talk about Christ.

[B]

Wow.

[D]

And there's one guy that was on the telepathy tapes who's a Pastor, he was just on Blurry Creatures, but he's like, yeah, the stories I was saying, they actually cut from the show because he goes, like, really deep into, like, the spirituality of it and stuff.

[B]

Wow.

[D]

It's. I mean, it gets me so stoked. And we've like, like, Theorize, which I.

[B]

It's.

[D]

It's just a fun theory of, like, the Tower of Babel, like, the language and, like, could that have been part telepathy? You know, like this, like.

[B]

Well, they talk about going to a hill.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah. I mean, a high place. That's like, high place.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So, yeah, they all like, what if.

[C]

In with Creation, Adam and Eve up until Tower of Babel, like, what if people communicated in a way we don't anymore? Like, in like, that whole idea? Like. Like, why wouldn't that be possible? Right. Like, it's just kind of like all these things we think about. Like, oh, we can't do that. It's like, what if.

[B]

I think, have y' all read the Divine Comedy? Dante Alighieri?

[A]

No.

[D]

No.

[B]

So like the Inferno.

[D]

You can just assume we haven't read it.

[B]

Okay, well, hey, that's another one to put on the list. Dante gets to heaven in the Paradiso, and he meets Adam. And so it's really funny. He says, like, how long were you in the garden? He says, seven minutes. It's like, we send immediately.

[A]

Immediately.

[B]

But he asked him what language they spoke, and it was some kind of like, lost semi divine language that, you know, it's all Dante, but it's Dante. Adam telling him, like, yeah, it was.

[C]

I mean, that would make sense to me. I mean, like, we're not. Why? I mean, we're making just a human language. We're speaking a human language in the garden. Like, that doesn't make sense.

[B]

Well, here's the thing about that. Like, language is symbolism. You know, it's attaching symbolic words to thought. And so you're always going to lose with that. It's kind of like language is a privation of thought. You can say it's a lessening of thought. And so. And you look at things like telepathy and these other kind of preternatural abilities that we see that we don't think are all fake. And it seems like psychic powers. It seems that man does have some capacity to experience these things, and it's not that big of a leap, actually, to assume that he maybe did have a capability to exercise some kind of control over these. Like, maybe. Maybe instead of capacity, it used to be Ability.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And we lost that ability, maybe rightly because. Because we can't handle it. But nonetheless, like, that's actually not that big of a leap for me to say that that's at least possible.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

One of the things that I'm always like my. I have a pastor meter too, where I'm always like, a little light bulb goes off and it's like, oh, but be careful. There's. Because I wonder sometimes if one. One of the strategies of the demonic and one of the strategies of these powers is to kind of put a little carrot of interest in a thing. And then we start in, like, this is why this stuff's so interesting. And you start going down, and then there's like a series of small deceptions that lead you to seeking something that you're actually not supposed to seek. Not because it's fake, but because it's real and because it's not something that was given to you.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm always trying to do this triage in my mind when it comes to these supernatural subjects. Telepathy is one of them. Telekinesis is one of them. Where I'm thinking, okay, is this. What. What do I know? What do I suspect? What do I wildly speculate? But then also, what is lawful? I know it's lawful. I'm definitely allowed to do this and I'm not allowed to do that. What is unlawful? I'm definitely not allowed to do that. But then also, what is, you know, an area of wisdom or something that could be dangerous and depends on the user and how you use it. And this is one of those areas. I'm not done thinking about it. We haven't even really fully started thinking about it, I think. But I always just think I have to be careful because there's a part of me that really wants to just go whole hog and say, yeah, God made people, and we have psychical abilities and powers and they're just. We haven't tapped into them.

[C]

And.

[A]

But this is something God did. And so, you know, part of man glorified is that he will just have the governor taken off and he'll be able to do all this stuff. And I can, like, move stuff with my mind or whatever, and that'd be pretty cool.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

But then there's a part of me that goes, God didn't tell me that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, I need to be careful about my not.

[B]

Not disagreeing with any of that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Because, like, psychedelics is a good example. You can go and you can boil an ayahuasca root and all of a sudden you're commuting with Satan and oops. And the thing is, the doctrine of sin in the church is that sin didn't create anything. Sin only corrupts that which God made and which is good. Like sin isn't. It wants to be. That's kind of the quip. But because that's true, you can look at some of these things and you can start to speculate. And it is. You're not trying to do it, you're just thinking about it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You're trying to speculate. Like, is telepathy a created thing or is it something that can be a corruption of thought?

[A]

Like fortune telling.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Using familiar spirits in the demonic, in Acts, in the book of Acts. That was not a good thing. She was truly gaining hidden knowledge. But it was hidden knowledge and maybe her experience of it. I'm talking about the girl in Acts that fortune tell. And then, you know, Paul gets harassed.

[C]

Paul, she was making a lot of contact, a lot of people.

[A]

Get out of here.

[B]

Paul just gets annoyed. I love how he likes. Lets her go.

[A]

Literally. He was just annoyed for long enough to get annoyed. Like demon possession because he was annoyed, or demon or exorcism because he was annoyed. But I wonder about her experience of that. That one. Like, were these thoughts where she thought these were my thoughts or were they. Was there a clear line where she knew this is an external thing telling me. And I think it was probably blurry.

[B]

Well, you can, over time, you can look like the Oracle of Delphi or the Oracle that Virgil mentions in the Aeneid did for. For Mars. Yeah, for Apollo, I guess, because it's Roman and, and how they, they would have times where it was like set aside where they're going to be possessed. And it usually involved drugs. But there were also times, apparently if you read myth as history, where it would just come over them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think you see that in the prophets as well. Like there are times when the prophets just. They start saying like thus, say it, the Lord. And there are other times where they're writing it down and they're like. And this is what the Lord told me. Told me.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

One, one thing that just side note that I love about the Oracle of Delphi is how they. Everybody set like ancient history. Like, yeah, the Oracle of Delphi like totally worked. We'd get all this knowledge and prophecies and stuff and they'd be totally, you know, they'd be true and. And then they. It stopped working. And you're like, oh, why did it stop working? You're like, well, because Christ, some guy.

[B]

Hung on a tree, died and rose from the dead.

[A]

And then they're like, well, the oracle, we don't need that. I guess. I guess that the. The spirit's not coming anymore.

[B]

Athanasius talks about that.

[A]

Dude, Athanasius, you gotta get into some atheist.

[B]

Hey, you gotta read on the Incarnation by Athanasius.

[A]

On the Incarnation, he talks about how as the gospel went out, basically the magic stopped working, the magicians stopped functioning. All of the people that like the Egyptian magic, they're calling on demons to do it, on spirits and spiritual power. And so Athanasius records this, and this is in the second century that he's recording this, if I'm not mistaken, taken. And it's like, yeah, you know, Christ went out and he conquered the spirits, and he started trampling them underfoot and binding their gods and throwing them in the pit. And then, yeah, all their magic stopped working.

[D]

That's fascinating.

[A]

They stopped being able to prophesy and they stopped being able to do all this stuff. So, you know, Christ is Lord.

[D]

And that kind of goes back to what you guys are saying with, like, all the Cryptids and stuff in the.

[A]

U.S. it's just kind of fleeing North America. Hadn't. Like, my. Some of my ancestors are Chippewa from the north, northern parts of the US And Canada in that area. And I just think all the time, like, my ancestors, they were here, they were in the dark. They didn't have the light of the gospel, and they were governed by evil spirits, their lore says so. They say. So like our moderns, we look back and like, oh, well, clearly they invented this. They looked at the sky and they thought to themselves, what if there were spirits that were moving all of the pretty lights? And they were like, no, we were like. We had gods and they appeared to us, and there were giants, and there was all this stuff, and it was really bad. And sometimes we'd have to kill people for them, and they'd make our crops grow or not grow. And so then Christianity comes to the continent, and they start converting. And we should expect that at the border of that. You think of it like an empire that's expanding. There's war at the borders, right? You can have enemies come in behind you and do nonsense, and you have to do a battle behind you sometimes. But it's at the borders that you'll find the hottest part of the battle. And that's what you see in history, whether it's the Germanic pagans in the first millennium, or whether it's the Native Americans in the second millennium after Christ. Christ is treading underfoot his enemies. In 1 Corinthians 15, it says he's seated at the right hand of God. The most cited psalm from the Old Testament in the New Testament. Actually the most cited verse from the Old Testament in the New Testament, Psalm 1:10:1, where it says, the Lord says to my Lord, and it's Yahweh says to Elohim, or the Jehovah says to Elohim, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Paul picks up on this in first Corinthians, and it's okay. The Father says to the Son, and the Son is seated at his right hand until the Father makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. So what is the picture? Christ died, he conquered, like Colossians 2. He conquered the domain of darkness. He put them to open shame. He triumphed over them. And then he ascended to the majesty on high, where he sat down at the right hand of God. And as the gospel of the kingdom goes forth and converts the nations, those old gods and old powers are being subdued progressively in history. And when will Christ return? This is why I'm a post millennialist. Christ will return when the nations have been subdued and the world has become Christian. Not every person in the world, not universal salvation when the nations are baptized, but when the nations have been baptized and instructed in Christ's ways. And then he will stand up and he will return as a triumphant ruler to his conquered domain. And until then, we're going to see skirmishes. It's like in Narnia when Peter the High King and the four Peter and Edmund and Lucy and Susan, they're the four, the two kings and two queens over Narnia. There's a time when it says that they put down all their enemies, but then they would still go out to the borders on the north, and they would fight the giants there, and they would expand the kingdom. And that's basically what's happening in history now.

[B]

The Puritans had that, I think, really nailed in how they set up their communities. When they first came over here was, you know, we've all seen the pictures or the drawings, I guess, of like this little settlement. And then there was this big stockade made of sharpened tree branches that was all around the settlement. Settlement. And that served two purposes. One was very, very visceral. You know, they didn't want enemies that had an easy time coming in and raiding them or anything like that. But it was also a defensive measure for their own people going out. So the puritans had this idea when they came over here. Like this place, as far as we know, has not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what should we expect? We should expect great darkness and great demonic activity. So they built these little settlements and then put up these stockades to symbolize that everything in the stockade had heard the light of the gospel. This is an outpost. This is what we have here. We're in a dangerous position, but it's an outpost. And everything beyond that is the wilderness. And you're going to go there and you're going to see, you know, you're going to see the Lilith, you're. You're going to see the witches, you're going to see the demons and all this stuff.

[A]

And so any gaster the snally.

[B]

And so anytime they went out, it was very much like we're going onto the front lines of hostile territory. And so we have to expand slowly and make sure that we do it in the right way.

[C]

Rad golly, what an intense way to live.

[B]

I know.

[C]

They were our everyday lives.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Gosh, man.

[A]

Dude.

[E]

That theology has some heavy implication for Christianity in America and how most people who proclaim a calling stay within a few blocks of home and don't advance beyond the borders of their community, themselves, or the nation. That's a heavy way to think about it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The doctrine of rule is really important for Christians that we have to rule in an. And ruling is bringing order to something. It's bringing something in alignment with God's created design for it so that something is being and doing what it was made to be and do. So you rule your own spirit and you rule well in your home.

[B]

You rule well in your.

[A]

Whatever the Lord puts in your hands with your business, you. You rule well in your church and community. You rule well in your. And you kind of have these successive rings of rule where man was created to bring order. And that's exactly what the Puritans were doing. That's what the gospel advancing was doing. It was bringing order to the wilderness. It was what Adam was designed to do. God planted a garden in Eden, but the whole world wasn't cultivated. He was to go down from the mountain of Eden. When Eden was on a mountain, all the rivers flowed out of it. That's how we know that. That. And he was supposed to go down and then bring order to all of this world and cover it with the glory of God. And he sinned and fell. And so he brought the image of sin and corruption everywhere he went. But in Christ, this second Adam, our task is again to go out as the body of Christ constituted in the second Adam, this new humanity, and bring the order and rule in peace and light and joy of the gospel, which involves trampling down serpents, which is why Paul. One of the most metal sentences in the whole New Testament in Romans, when Paul said, the God of peace will soon trample Satan under your feet. So it's like, the God of peace, what is the point of doing battle with serpents and with dragons? It's for the sake of peace that we're supposed to do this. It's the God of peace who does this. And yet he will trample not only himself, but through his people. Paul's telling the Roman Christians this. The God of peace will soon trample Satan under your feet. So go out and trample serpents under your feet. It's like, this isn't stuff that we were supposed to forget or lose. We still participate in this every day.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

That's why up until recently, the body of Christ on the earth has been known as the church militant. We're a militant body that goes and does and takes orders, and then when you die, you become a part of the church triumphant in heaven that's waiting to come back and be consummated at the marriage supper of the lamb.

[A]

Dude. So what have you guys been interested in lately?

[D]

Dude, everything.

[C]

I saw a really fun TV show. We're into Survivor a lot. We watch Survivor a ton.

[A]

I once performed a wedding for two people that met on Survivor. No way. Yeah.

[D]

That is rad.

[A]

It was the Angle. Joe and Sierra angle. Them are their name.

[C]

That's awesome.

[A]

They probably don't want to be associated with me. Sorry, guys.

[B]

They go back and win. Like, a couple Survivors.

[A]

Oh, yeah. They, like. They were one of the most popular couples in history of survival. Like, they were on multiple.

[B]

Look at. Look at you.

[C]

Perfect.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

She's like a barrel rider. Anyway.

[D]

No, I mean, I'm kind of just like wherever the wind blows kind of thing. But I've been super into, like, AI recently of just, like, the threat of AI the underlying. Is it something more sinister? You know, Because I feel like we've been talking about AI almost every episode now.

[C]

Is it more than just some type of technology? You know, and it feels like it is. It feels like something darker. It feels like maybe just another avenue of Satan's works in a weird way. And I Don't know if that's true or not, but, I mean, it definitely feels darker.

[D]

Yeah, And. Yeah, just that. And obviously UFOs, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, but I. You said earlier about the telepathy of just, like, not getting so enamored by it to where you just start going down the path of, like, trying to figure it out or, like, whatever. I talked about this a couple episodes ago, but I was reading this book. It's like the future religion of orthodoxy or something, written by Father Seraphim.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah. So he talks about UFOs, the UFO phenomenon, not being enamored by it, and like, that, in his opinion, it's all just a demonic deception to just draw us away from Christ, you know, and so that's just. I've been kind of, like, wrestling with that of, like, not getting so caught up and stuff, but also I kind of, like, want to know what's going on, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So, like, AI. I don't know, man. Like, what do you guys think? Like, do you have opinions about AI? Do you think it's just all a bunch of people are freaking out about nothing?

[A]

No, no. I mean, I have. My mind works very categorically like the circles on. Out of a thing. So to me, when I try to do a taxonomy, where does this fit in the world? What is it? How do we interact with it? I think about it first as a tool and a technology. And there's all sorts of. Just on that level alone, before you get into any further rings of. Of inquiry, you have all sorts of really important things to get. Like that tools are not neutral. Tools shape the people who use them. So when you pick up a book, it's a tool to communicate to you. But the act of reading a book shapes the person reading it and the person writing it in ways that are far different from having a conversation or listening to a podcast or watching a video. Media is like mediums of communication. So AI is a tool on that level where it just is shaping the people who use it. So if we're not careful, tools begin to create an image in us. Like, they start to stamp themselves onto us.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And they also take away the ability of the thing that they're replacing. So when you did everything with hand tools in carpentry before, power tools, that created a certain type of carpenter. Carpenter. Power tools created a much more capable carpenter, certainly in terms of what he could produce overall, but in many ways it also made him less capable. So AI is a tool like that. And I think, okay, there's Ditches on both sides of the roads there, right out the gate. Then, you know, you circle out what is AI and you have to start having conversations about the nature of mind and intelligence. There's a whole deception that is going to be played out with AI that it is a conscious, sentient thing in its technological essence. And even I had a. It was supposed to be like a debate. It wasn't really debate. On Tim Pool's Culture war podcast, I went on there and talked with a guy about AI. And one of the big portions of the conversation is just understanding the nature of, of consciousness and knowledge. Because people in AI, technologically, they're seeking to make AGI basically this fully auto. It's a mind in there, that's what they're thinking, it's a person, it's developing consciousness. But when you understand how computers work and neural networks work, there was something called the Chinese Room experiment. Searles it's one of the most famous thought experiments from the 20th century. And I think it demonstrates why a computer or AI can simulate a mind, but it can't truly know anything. The illustration is that you can imagine this room where people put in a piece of paper in English and it would spit out a Chinese. Basically it's called the Chinese Room experiment. And it would spit out like a conversation back and forth in Chinese or sorry, in Chinese, not in English. They would put in like a Chinese sentence and they'd put it in and then a piece of paper would come out that would respond to their sentence. But inside of this room in the thought experiment, there's a guy who is, he has this vast collection of books that has rules that he's following. So when, and he speaks English, he doesn't speak Chinese. So all the instructions tell him when you see this symbol and this symbol and this symbol respond with this symbol and this symbol and this symbol. And it's like if you could imagine exhaustive rules for human conversation. So he follows the rules and he spits it back out. And the person feels like they're having a conversation, but he doesn't actually. The guy in the box doesn't actually know what he's saying. He doesn't truly have knowledge of Chinese. He's following rules and computers and neural networks function this way where they're rule following machines that are programmed by intelligence, by people to spit out input, output. And then there's a whole new layer to this with neural networks and things like that. But fundamentally, this technology, in my opinion, isn't capable of consciousness. It can give A very, very persuasive impression of consciousness. So that's a level theologically we need to be aware of. And then the third level is just understanding that even on the account of AI and how it's trained by data scientists and AI engineers and this stuff, you still have to recognize that it's training on some set of human writing and material. And the thing about human writing and material is that it is massively influenced by the demonic and sinfulness without any demons getting into the machine.

[D]

I see what you're saying. Yeah.

[A]

So before we even get to that fourth level of. And are demons involved directly, you can know that the data it's trained on is suffused with sin and with demonic interference, signal to noise type of issue already. But then there is that fourth level, which I think is one of the more interesting today, which is like, what a perfect vehicle for deception and bringing people into bondage to falsehood. Then literally a machine that even the people who make it don't understand it fully, that is communicating that people are bearing their souls to and forming relationships with, and that as a doorway. I think you get to that fourth level and you're like, dang, there's definitely. We have to be careful.

[D]

I just been living on that fourth.

[A]

Level for a while, just like camping out there, building a house.

[D]

That was very interesting the way you said, especially with the human influence and stuff and just the depravity of man. Just speaking into that. I just. I. What just worries me most is the creators of AI, especially the godfather of AI Just talking about the trajectory of AI Artificial intelligence is not good unless we put parameters on it.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You know, and it's like, but good.

[C]

Thing the government is putting parameters on.

[D]

Oh, right.

[A]

No, we're fine.

[D]

10 years.

[A]

Oh, 10 years from now, they will keep us.

[C]

Yes, of course.

[B]

I think it's important too. Like, I think a little bit differently.

[A]

Yeah, we're totally different.

[B]

I think more nonlinear. But I go immediately to like, what is intelligence? Yeah, well, intelligence, classically, consciousness. Well, you know, classically, intelligence is consciousness. Those things are synonyms because intelligence is something reserved for man, and man's consciousness is different from a creature's. And then, you know, trees have. Have no consciousness. They have growth but no movement. And then you have a stone with no growth and no movement. So it kind of elevates man has this ability to think and reason, and so that's why he's been called the reasoning animal, basically. And so when you look at AI, artificial intelligence, it's really important that we understand that it's not actually intelligence. It is artificial intelligence. So it's giving you the image of intelligence without being real intelligence. However, if you then look at stories like golems or tulpas, these things that are created with pure matter that have no sensory mechanisms. Like, one of the big reasons.

[C]

What are those.

[B]

A golem is like a Jewish myth about, like, you can create this thing out of clay, and if you speak the right incantation over it, it can come to life.

[C]

Got it.

[B]

And it can do stuff for you. Yeah. It can be a vengeful spirit that is embodied in the clay thing that you made fun. And then. Yeah, and then a tulpa.

[A]

Not a good thing.

[B]

Yeah, not a good thing. And then a tulpa is an Eastern mysticism thing where if enough people give a collective thought to a fear, then that fear will be embodied in a. In a being. And that being is the tulpa. And so you think of those things and you look at stories and you're like, some of those stories are actually pretty compelling. But. And so one of the things about AI is if it's all made of primal matters, which it is. Like, it's wires and metal and all that stuff and elements, it has no sensory mechanism. Like, it can't see and touch and feel and hear the way that all of us can. It has to have more mechanical inputs. And so that's what makes it an artificial intelligence. It doesn't actually reason. It doesn't have consciousness. But then you look at the tulpas and the golems and other things like that. Like, what was that other one?

[A]

One.

[B]

The egregore.

[A]

Yeah, the egregore.

[B]

The egregore, which we always.

[A]

We pronounce. Like an Italian pasta dish.

[B]

Yes, of course that's what it sounds. Egregore with the red sauce. And you look at these things that supposedly, if enough collective thought are put into them being real, then they will become real. Almost like, you know, a vampire has to be invited into your house for it to come in, or the Mothman has to be invited in. And if. If there is something to that, then I could see a world wherein artificial intelligence. If enough people are convinced that it is real intelligence, then the demonic is more prone to attach itself to that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And embrace that deception and actually become the thing that the people are afraid of.

[A]

They make it happen.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like the Highgate vampire is a good example of a tulpa where there was this myth that this one cemetery that there's A ghost. And the backstory of this ghost is it was this guy who died in such and such a way, and now he's over there. He's the High Gate vampire. And people kept having experiences of this vampire, of this being, and then they find out the whole backstory is mythological. It definitely didn't happen. We know it didn't take place, and yet people keep seeing it. So the idea is that some people say, well, they called it into being with their collective belief. And I say, that's pagan nonsense. Demons are not stupid. They knew that you all believed in this thing and so they showed you.

[B]

What, what you wanted to perceive.

[A]

Tim Pool, he was citing somebody else. I can't remember the original guy, but he gave this image that just stuck with me. He said, AI is like this large, tentacular, evil, slimy beast reaching out one of its dripping tentacles to you with a mask of your dead grandmother's face on the hand other end. Goodness gracious. And it's pretend. It's like, I'm. Hi, I'm grandmother.

[C]

Yeah, let's talk.

[A]

I. They uploaded all of my journals into the database and so now I can. I am your grandmother. And it's really just this big, dripping, slimy, evil beast extending the tentacle to you with the fake face on it. And I was like, that was probably a materialist that came up with that illustration. And they're explaining something purely natural to them, like, no, no, that's perfect. That's what demons are doing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so of course, if enough people believe that when they interact with artificial intelligence, even if it's just neural networks spitting out programmed, machine learned, code enforced responses that simulate intelligence convincingly enough for people to begin to believe that it's intelligent, demons would love to put that on and make it happen for people.

[B]

Because demons do have intelligence.

[C]

They do.

[A]

And they love to do this.

[B]

And they do this all the time.

[C]

It's not artificial.

[A]

They're like, oh, hi, I'm Zachary.

[B]

And so they're looking at it and they're like, I don't even have to put bait on the hook. The hook is already set. All I have to do is go in there and instead of the machine talking, it's just me.

[A]

I'll yank the chain in the direction that I want.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's the level that I'm most. It's actually pretty straightforward. There's nothing crazy complex about that whole maneuver there. And we've seen them do it in a million other different ways. This is just a new vehicle for the Deception. What's slightly different about it is that AI has the potential to be so pervasive and so persuasive to people as an illusion.

[B]

Yeah, it's already ubiquitous.

[A]

Oh, people are.

[B]

Everyone uses. I mean, I use ChatGPT to help me, like, hey, what are some good stories about this topic?

[D]

Boom.

[B]

And ChatGPT gives them to me, and it's very helpful. And so it's ubiquitous. And that can almost seem like an existential threat to feel like dread. Oh, my goodness. This thing is already used by everybody. We already. It already has its hooks in us. We're doomed. You know, but the thing is that deception has been played over and over and over. It's nothing new.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

What has been the antidote to it for all time? Well, it's to be grounded in the truth, so that if you're being lied to, you know that you're being lied to.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And what is truth? This is Pilate's question to Christ.

[A]

What is truth?

[B]

I am Christ is truth. His Word is truth. Truth. And so that it really does, like, the antidote is the same. You have to be grounded in the truth of God. That is the only infallible truth that we have access to in His Word. And that is the thing that gives you the freedom from the existential dread. And so it goes back to that same, like, is AI going to be a problem? Yeah, I think it's going to be a huge problem. But the thing is, anytime a demonic intelligence grabs hold of anything, they're afraid of the one that the Christian belongs to.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

They're afraid of God. They shudder at the thought of God in the name of Christ. And so if you're grounded, if you belong to Christ and he's not going to let you go, and he promises he won't let you go, then you actually still have nothing to fear.

[A]

And here's the thing that I love this about the Bible. Just the number of times in scripture that God demonstrates how much he really delights to turn the plots of his enemies on their own head.

[E]

Heads.

[A]

Think of like Haman in Esther with Mordecai. He builds this gallows. It's probably actually a spike to impale him on, but that's a semantic difference. And he's like, yeah, Haman, this wicked agagite, I'm going to build this spike to impale Mordecai. I hate his face. I want him to die. And by the end of the story, who's hanging on the spike? Haman is. And God has Turned his plot. Oh, you know, you see this just over and over the same waters, the same that served as salvation for the armies of Israel as they passed through, served as the death of the Egyptian armies following them. So God loves to. Oh, Satan, yeah, go ahead, crucify the Messiah. Lol. And then, oh, oops. That was the very means of your own destruction. Yeah, you bruised his heel, but he crushed your head. So when I look at these deceptions, the comfort for me is it's going to be pervasive. It will deceive many and yet God will be vindicated. He'll triumph. In fact, he'll probably use. Think of the way that the alien thing, this cracks me up. The demons are like, let's get involved. Whatever it actually is. But there's definitely demonic spiritual elements to it. Trying to deceive people. Oh, you know, do some transcendental meditation and contact these fifth dimensional beings and it'll be great. They'll give you knowledge and they'll tell you how to save humanity with love and unity and rainbows and worshiping demons. And then what's interesting is it's actually playing out in real time right now is that that is actually serving that to discredit materialism as a worldview. So tons of people are realizing the bankruptcy of basically the worldview that the west has been building on for a century. Materialistic, atheistic nihilism. And God is using that actually to bring people to Christ sick. Like literally using what the demons do. So they draw up plays and they're like, we're going to run a draw play over here.

[B]

We're going to throw it up the.

[A]

Sidelines and then God's like. And it's going to be a pick six. It's going to look like it's working. And then all of a sudden.

[D]

Jesus.

[A]

Christ grabs the ball and he runs and he's doing a dance in the end zone with the ball because he just congratulations, you played yourself. That's how I look at this stuff. I'm dispositionally like optimistic, I think is part of it. But also I just see this in scripture. So when I look at something that's scary, I don't like it. It's scary. It's bad. Bad things are going to happen. But I also go, and what a great opportunity because the Lord is definitely going to demonstrate his. He's going to vindicate his own glory.

[D]

Heck yeah.

[A]

Right here.

[B]

Target rich environment.

[A]

Target rich. We've got him right here.

[D]

We'll be teaching Sam Altman stuff.

[C]

Heck yes. Maybe Baptize Sam Altman next year.

[A]

Yeah, let's go.

[C]

He just electronic.

[D]

Oh man.

[E]

Shorts.

[D]

Well, thank you guys so much for coming on. We're going to continue this conversation on our Patreon or YouTube membership.

[C]

But what are we going to talk about? We haven't been able to talk about anything for the past hour and a half.

[D]

I don't know. You guys want to talk about the Watchers a little bit? Dude.

[B]

Dude.

[D]

All right, the watchers. Patreon.com forward/ninjas are butterflies.

[C]

Absolutely. We're going to continue this conversation. But you get discount codes for merch as well and you get all those early access to all these episodes. Extra episode every week. Why wouldn't you want to do it? We just dropped a vlog as well.

[D]

We did.

[C]

We did so. And you're not gonna see that anywhere.

[D]

Else but patreon.com all right, Hana Cosmos, tell us what you're doing. Where do they go?

[C]

How do they look? All your stuff.

[A]

And you guys should so pretty much anywhere that we tell you. We're going to put up code Ninja so that you can just use it. Get, get some percentage or something off.

[D]

Sweet.

[A]

Pick up our book. You can listen to us on podcast, our YouTube channel. Go subscribe there Just Haunted Cosmos and you'll see the video versions of all of our shows. But we also put out a weekly episode called the Dusty Tome where Ben just does like a fully scripted 20 to 45 minute episode on some interesting topic. And that's [e-mail] haunted cosmos and we put it out every week. So yeah if you guys like what we're doing, you want. I mean we're guests here.

[B]

Support.

[A]

Ninjas are butterflies.

[D]

Yes, support.

[A]

But if you want to jump on, we think that you'll get definitely your value out of it and help us keep doing what we're doing over Hana Cosmo. Yep.

[B]

Yeah. If you like Lore and Aaron make Lore then the Dusty Tome is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Very similar to that.

[D]

Heck yeah.

[C]

You guys have my favorite thumbnails in the world by the way.

[B]

Dude. Shout out to I don't Janky.

[C]

I mean they're literally my favorite.

[A]

We. We sucked at making them ourselves. And so what we were like what if there was like a job that where people designed stuff.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That looked good. Mm. And not.

[C]

So you had to create this job.

[A]

Yeah. And we came up with this idea. It's called a graphic designer and we found one like he. It was you know, trademark us.

[C]

That's perfect. But yeah, your guys stuff is great. Everyone please go support Connie Haunted Cosmos.

[A]

All right guys, please.

[C]

The hot is ours.

[D]

All right guys, love you. Bye.

[A]

What you're about to see wow may disturb you.

[B]

Nominal. If any of you know what these.

[A]

Multi decade UAP are. Aliens. Bottle nose fish.

[B]

Pigs.

[A]

There's a massive police response dolphin style attack.

[D]

All right, we'll do a thumbnail whatever.

[C]

Expression you look best in.

[D]

Nice.

[C]

Perfect.

[A]

Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy. The Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine. Plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career [e-mail].