Speaker 1: But yeah, hi, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: I mean, we very much enjoy having other people to
Speaker 1: talk to you about our nerdy shit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like, oh yeah, you know us too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm very excited to talk about this particular
Speaker 4: kind of nerdy ship.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, the thing is that it's like particularly
Speaker 1: wild in my but you know, how on earth can
Speaker 1: something be quite so dull and insane at the same time.
Speaker 1: You don't know, you don't know the magic of medieval history, baby, but.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nice, Okay, I am. I am rolling luckily on
Speaker 5: my end now. So that's that's that's the going.
Speaker 1: Okay, I am.
Speaker 3: Too, got my local going.
Speaker 1: You're I simply love to have backup.
Speaker 2: It's good to have back up.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's why I keep a version of myself
Speaker 5: in painting form behind me.
Speaker 1: You know, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3: That is not me, but it does really look like me.
Speaker 1: I love that for you.
Speaker 6: You had a lot of hair back then.
Speaker 3: That was yeah, I know, that was that was the
Speaker 3: seventies were a different time.
Speaker 6: Oh man, there we go.
Speaker 3: That's the sound. That's the sound. It's the sound of
Speaker 3: the police.
Speaker 1: Wow, not again, Christ I mean, like, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: just trying at the moment, you know, as a as
Speaker 1: a gentle lady who is not used to being in America.
Speaker 1: I'm like getting used once again to like just seeing
Speaker 1: like all these heavily arm coups all the time. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck is going on?
Speaker 2: It's like they're keeping you safe, That's what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really safe.
Speaker 6: You don't like your police state, I know, book.
Speaker 1: And it's remarkable because so many more armed police here
Speaker 1: in Tacoma, and yet so much more Matthews. So it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy how those things don't actually correlate and anyway
Speaker 1: share just like well they might correlate, just you know,
Speaker 1: in the other direction. God, I swear to like my
Speaker 1: brother was shouting to him like the other day and
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, you know, like last time I saw
Speaker 1: a gun discharged and I was like, yeah, So, like
Speaker 1: I think about my life in London is I don't
Speaker 1: have any stories.
Speaker 6: Like it's the same thing is when you go to
Speaker 6: your required longbow training every Sundays, the same thing is.
Speaker 6: You know, it's just a little louder over you. You know,
Speaker 6: we we like a little a little pizzazz, you know,
Speaker 6: you Brits are you know, stiff upper lipping on you
Speaker 6: and keeps it spicy. You're as American as I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, signs point to yes. I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of like an American who's going.
Speaker 6: I meant that. I meant that as a you know,
Speaker 6: a point of common and I can understand how it
Speaker 6: might have been heard as either an insult or a threat.
Speaker 2: I think being called an American these days is an insult.
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, isn't that great? Where are you guys gonna
Speaker 6: go when this soul collapse?
Speaker 5: Well, my roommate is has dual citizenship with Canada, and
Speaker 5: so I was going to say, probably Canada, but then
Speaker 5: that will probably just become a fifty first state.
Speaker 6: So oh that's never ha. I know, I know, I'm
Speaker 6: just making sure, like I'm like, all right now, we
Speaker 6: gotta be.
Speaker 2: Like the valiant Canadian troops are actually going to make
Speaker 2: sure that they do not become the fifty first state.
Speaker 7: If anything, Yeah, marching under the orders of Imperator fucking
Speaker 7: dug Ford become like the great like anti American.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. Like, if anything, New England is going
Speaker 2: to get an next into Quebec and then New England
Speaker 2: will become Francophone and it'll be wild.
Speaker 4: A bunch of amure having to learn new language.
Speaker 6: Bostonians. Yeah, we got the reverse Irish French connection.
Speaker 1: Let's go, let's absolutely go.
Speaker 6: Oh all right, well, unfortunately, not unfortunately, but I do
Speaker 6: have a time limit because.
Speaker 1: I actually I guess that we're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 6: All right, well cool, let's do this. Uh well, I'm
Speaker 6: really you know, I'm really bad at uh at like
Speaker 6: segues and transitions. I'm like, how should I do this?
Speaker 6: And then I realized I've been thinking about how I
Speaker 6: need to do the segue or transition. Well, I should
Speaker 6: have just said, all right, anyway, let's talk about the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about some mystery place.
Speaker 6: I love being I love being neurotic. It's great. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know here we are all right, here we go. Hello,
Speaker 6: and welcome back to We're Not So Different, a podcast
Speaker 6: about how we've always been idiots. My name is Luke Waters,
Speaker 6: and I am an amateur medievalist, and as always I'm
Speaker 6: joined by doctor Eleanor Yannige, who is anything but today, folks,
Speaker 6: we got an interview. We don't have a question today
Speaker 6: because of that interview. But we're gonna start doing like
Speaker 6: an episode of a mailbag episode a month or something
Speaker 6: until we can because yeah, we we got to do that.
Speaker 6: But anyway, you guys know the deal. If you want
Speaker 6: to subscribe to the Patreon and give us questions, you know,
Speaker 6: the patreon dot comst w nist pot. I'm not doing
Speaker 6: the whole spiel. We got people here, we got things.
Speaker 1: To do ourselves in front of the guests you got.
Speaker 6: We don't want to We don't want to embarrass ourselves
Speaker 6: in front of in front of royalty.
Speaker 2: What oh god, see when did that happen?
Speaker 5: Oh I'm I wondered why my head was so much
Speaker 5: heavier to it was.
Speaker 3: All those hollow crowns you have back here, hal the
Speaker 3: solid ones light.
Speaker 6: Oh man, hollow.
Speaker 3: Snake was definitely my favorite character, I think in Middle Gear.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, it's gone good.
Speaker 6: Hollow Snake. Oh, folks, we're here today to talk about
Speaker 6: mystery plays. What the hell are they am?
Speaker 1: I right?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, that's the kind of thing you're listening to
Speaker 6: the show to find out. Well, if you don't know
Speaker 6: the name, mystery play might evoke ideas of dramatic stories
Speaker 6: that involve someone solving crimes being acted out before an audience.
Speaker 6: And if that's what you're expecting, well then I've got
Speaker 6: one piece of advice. Prepare to be disappointed. If, however,
Speaker 6: we're imagining a series of living tableau depicting scenes from
Speaker 6: the Bible that were often incorporated into religious ceremonies like
Speaker 6: the Mass, well then you're in the right place. But
Speaker 6: I hear you ask what mysteries about the Bible are
Speaker 6: being solved in these mystery plays. To that, I must reply,
Speaker 6: you got a lot of fucking nerve power serious mystery.
Speaker 6: I love doing these because I get to talk to myself.
Speaker 6: It's fun. But seriously, the mystery as it's used here
Speaker 6: refers to the higher mysteries of the spiritual variety, the
Speaker 6: miraculous works of God, things of that nature. Now you
Speaker 6: might think that sounds pretty boring, like one of those
Speaker 6: outdoor Nativity scenes that churches in America do around Christmas.
Speaker 3: And my church did that. I did for many years.
Speaker 6: As did you get to play Baby Jesus.
Speaker 3: No, I was.
Speaker 4: I was the child shepherd and I was standing out
Speaker 4: there while the live sheep that we had was strangling
Speaker 4: itself on its own leash.
Speaker 2: Was it just was it just a sheep or were
Speaker 2: there other animals as well? I'm not sure. I remember
Speaker 2: you talking about that.
Speaker 4: We had three sheep and the church also owned a donkey.
Speaker 4: I will never forget the day that the pastor opened
Speaker 4: his sermon with just some news everyone, the first Baptist
Speaker 4: Church of Gallup, New Mexico's donkey went to be home
Speaker 4: with the Lord on Wednesday after Yes.
Speaker 6: Yes, look, I I was vers I was. I was
Speaker 6: raised in evangelical Christianity. Let's go, and I've been. I've
Speaker 6: been an atheist for a long while. But I will
Speaker 6: be honest. If your version of heaven doesn't include animals,
Speaker 6: I don't want to fucking hear about it. If you
Speaker 6: if you can't take a dog or a cat, or
Speaker 6: a beloved donkey up to heaven with you, then what
Speaker 6: the fuck is even the point?
Speaker 2: Donkey?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a donkey growing up. And also just
Speaker 1: a huge segue to talk about uh, you know, growing
Speaker 1: up in Takoa, we had this donkey whose name was
Speaker 1: Edgar Rice Burrough.
Speaker 6: He was always of course you did.
Speaker 1: He was always breaking out and like a Tibetan, mastiffs
Speaker 1: would always break out with him because they were like,
Speaker 1: I need to shepherd by donkey.
Speaker 3: And once the.
Speaker 1: Donkey kicked lights out of a bus that honked at
Speaker 1: him because he was standing in the middle of the road.
Speaker 1: And we've got this giant Tibetan master who's.
Speaker 3: Like a fucking touch my donkey.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, to.
Speaker 1: Do it anyway, Like my parents copped a misdemeanor on
Speaker 1: that one. Anyway. WHOA. I was chatting about this last
Speaker 1: night to my homeboy, who teaches high school history here
Speaker 1: in Tacoba, and he also teaches the thing about urban animals,
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, it's illegal to have donkeys in
Speaker 1: Tacoba and I was like, well, we were living in
Speaker 1: Lakewood at the time, and he goes, it's also illegal
Speaker 1: to have donkeys liquids.
Speaker 6: Shut up, shut up.
Speaker 1: Apparently my family is probably the reason why you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to have a donkey.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go.
Speaker 6: I call it.
Speaker 1: The people cannot be trusted, and I want to be
Speaker 1: so real with you. We cannot.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, let me let me finish this. I
Speaker 6: can introduce him. Oh my god. Yeah, no, no, you're good.
Speaker 6: I yeah, you know. I must admit that there are
Speaker 6: several million other things I could think of that I'd
Speaker 6: rather do than doing a mystery play. But as we've
Speaker 6: noted many times on the show, preaching and religious activities
Speaker 6: were popular culture for medieval Europeans. Ough Man, what what
Speaker 6: a bereft time? Now, I'm just kidding. These mystery plays
Speaker 6: allowed them to experience the biblical stories they heard in
Speaker 6: mass and sermons through a different visual medium, and they
Speaker 6: were a hit, especially in Spain and England. Over time,
Speaker 6: they developed entire cycles or series of plays focusing on
Speaker 6: certain topics or characters. But they also became more secularized
Speaker 6: after the pope pulled a medieval footloose and forbade the
Speaker 6: clergy from doing any more acting on stage. Can you
Speaker 6: imagine not letting those queens act? Good God. This moved
Speaker 6: the mystery plays from the churches to town guilds, who
Speaker 6: began producing and putting them on, even moving into fully
Speaker 6: secular stories. But we're not here to talk about mystery
Speaker 6: plays alone. We've got guests Brian Alford, Josh Borman, and
Speaker 6: AJ Ditty from the Worst of All Possible Worlds podcas Caids. Hello,
Speaker 6: I wanted to come on this show to talk about
Speaker 6: this topic, specifically, Brian, Josh and Aj thank you so
Speaker 6: much for being here. How the hell are you?
Speaker 2: Hey? Thank you for having us. I guess we'll each
Speaker 2: introduce ourselves. You won't be able to tell us a
Speaker 2: part listener, even people who listen to our show, and
Speaker 2: we have listened to our show for like the almost
Speaker 2: two hundred episodes we've been going now still can't tell
Speaker 2: us apart. But I'm Josh. You can sort of differentiate
Speaker 2: me because I swear more and I say I do
Speaker 2: that more often.
Speaker 4: And Josh also, Josh also has a Michigan accent. Yeah, Brian,
Speaker 4: by the way, I have a new Mexican accent.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Yeah, And I'm a j and I
Speaker 5: have a San Diego accent, which means about as much
Speaker 5: as a New Mexico accent.
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, as someone from the Puget Sound area.
Speaker 5: Word apparently, I say you's weird. I say the you
Speaker 5: and bullet weird. That's sort of do you say no?
Speaker 8: I don't say boo, but yeah, no, sweetish ship.
Speaker 2: Sounds more Nordic to me.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know. Look, I barely. If I
Speaker 6: get too riled up, you'll start to hear me sound,
Speaker 6: you know, start to sound a little bit like foghorn leghorns,
Speaker 6: you know, from the great State of Gelgia.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for having us on though,
Speaker 2: where We're really excited because we all sort of have
Speaker 2: our own experiences with the mystery plays. Like Eleanor reached
Speaker 2: out to me not too long ago, and at first
Speaker 2: I was like, well, you know, we I could just
Speaker 2: come on and riff. But then I realized, oh, ship,
Speaker 2: there's like one thing about medieval history that we all
Speaker 2: sort of know about and have direct personal experience with.
Speaker 2: So I'm very excited to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, So I want to start you guys there,
Speaker 1: because how the fuck do you have trug? Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, Hellen, I need.
Speaker 5: Allow me to allow me to elaborate on a little
Speaker 5: thing called the Mysteries, which was a play that was
Speaker 5: done at the Flea Theater, a theater we can mention
Speaker 5: because this is not our podcast, right, we will our show,
Speaker 5: but we can name it wherever else. And this was
Speaker 5: a modern adaptation of the York Mystery Cycle. Commissioned fifty
Speaker 5: one play rights, which was whittled down to forty eight
Speaker 5: because three of the plays were really bad.
Speaker 3: And I'm considering the things that did make.
Speaker 5: The Yeah, there was one that involved a potato witch.
Speaker 5: That was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life,
Speaker 5: but was also probably the worst.
Speaker 3: And so witches wait, sorry, thank you, thank you was
Speaker 3: the witch of potato. No, no, she just kept throwing
Speaker 3: potatoes at people.
Speaker 6: Oh I know, I'm so fat and I love Burger
Speaker 6: so much potato, which like a potatoes.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was up. But yeah.
Speaker 5: So basically, each one of these playwrights took one of
Speaker 5: the episodes of the mysteries, like like in the way
Speaker 5: that you know in in actual mystery plays, like guilds
Speaker 5: would take on like one of the stories, and then
Speaker 5: they would write their version of it.
Speaker 3: And ours was a very queer, very modern, very.
Speaker 5: Secular version of the story, or it tried to like
Speaker 5: it's best to be uh it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was queer in the sense that like a lot
Speaker 2: of people got their tits out and like sometimes and
Speaker 2: sometimes you have dudes making out and sometimes you'd have
Speaker 2: girls making out.
Speaker 4: But like literally every picture online, any article that's written
Speaker 4: about the Mysteries, there's just a picture of Colin Waite.
Speaker 2: Yes you sexy jesus, Yeah, just.
Speaker 4: Like looking absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 3: All of that one just doing crunches.
Speaker 6: So did the three of you do this together?
Speaker 3: So I did, Yeah, Josh Josh AJ worked on it.
Speaker 4: I was still in college, but I was a theater
Speaker 4: major and study history and and so my my way
Speaker 4: into like medieval mystery plays is mostly through like every
Speaker 4: Man or the Second Shepherd's Play or the Brome Abraham
Speaker 4: and Isaac, and I think the Second Shepherds is part.
Speaker 3: Of the Wakefield cycle, so not the York cycle.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The fact that I mean, but I'll be honest with
Speaker 6: the fact that you'll know any of that is no.
Speaker 6: And I'm and I'm being completely serious here. It's it's
Speaker 6: really cool because like this is something that I like,
Speaker 6: I mean, when I started the show, I didn't know
Speaker 6: a ton about medieval history, and yeah, and I've learned
Speaker 6: some much from Eleanor, but this is even something where
Speaker 6: I was like, I have to remind myself what this
Speaker 6: is because we've mentioned it a you know, a handful
Speaker 6: of times, we haven't really done it. So the fact
Speaker 6: that all three of you have a knowledge either working
Speaker 6: knowledge or you know, background academic knowledge of it is
Speaker 6: really cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is. It is literally how Aj and
Speaker 2: I met was doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: AJJ acted in it and I was the wardrobe manager.
Speaker 5: Yes, which with a cast of I think it was
Speaker 5: fifty four actors, a lot of costumes, all unpaid, six
Speaker 5: hours very we got very sweaty in them, and it
Speaker 5: was gross.
Speaker 3: It was a gross, gross time.
Speaker 1: So I've got a question. So you're doing in theory,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty one, but that didn't happen. So you
Speaker 1: did forty eight plays as a part of the cycle.
Speaker 1: So was that like once a week or no? No,
Speaker 1: how was this happening? I don't know.
Speaker 5: Along for the most part, they were all about ten
Speaker 5: minutes some of actually they got it down to I
Speaker 5: think most of them were around five to eight at
Speaker 5: a certain point, because it had to fit into a
Speaker 5: six hour time frame, otherwise it was violating ordinances in
Speaker 5: the city. If we went past midnight, the upstairs neighbors
Speaker 5: would call, you know, four one one on us, basically.
Speaker 3: Three one one three one one, thank you. I would
Speaker 3: like information on them.
Speaker 5: So and so we were there, uh, basically we also
Speaker 5: in between.
Speaker 3: There were three acts to it.
Speaker 5: The first act was the entire Old Testament, which kind
Speaker 5: of felt like rushing through a lot of that, and
Speaker 5: then Act two was Jesus' birth to ministry, and then
Speaker 5: Act three was the Crucifixion through revelation, and uh, it
Speaker 5: was very sort of Jesus heavy in Jesus forward as
Speaker 5: the mystery plays themselves in the Mystery sycle obviously were
Speaker 5: and there was also food, right like you guys, they
Speaker 5: were served food. Yeah, there were two intermissions, so the
Speaker 5: first intermission was a half hour break to eat dinner,
Speaker 5: and then the second intermission was a half hour break
Speaker 5: to have dessert, and both of those were served by
Speaker 5: the actors again unpaid. Sweaty to the hottest we've ever been,
Speaker 5: I will say, but we were sexy in a way that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, a way I think that may have like
Speaker 5: tipped some of the reviews honestly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's how.
Speaker 5: We That's that's how I met most of my artistic
Speaker 5: collaborators that I still work with today.
Speaker 3: And it's also how I met my spouse.
Speaker 5: So, you know, kind of I wish we would have
Speaker 5: gotten paid and that it wasn't just a cult basically that.
Speaker 3: We were a part of for a brief period of time.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean, look, Josh and I met out
Speaker 5: of it, and that's obviously led to some really wonderful stuff.
Speaker 5: And all it took was Josh washing my horribly horribly
Speaker 5: sweaty scarves.
Speaker 3: That that's right the show.
Speaker 6: And you guys, you guys simultaneously riffed on a joke
Speaker 6: together and you looked at each other and you're like,
Speaker 6: no way, no way, We're going to start a podcast.
Speaker 6: And you know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't not that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was basically like we didn't actually start the
Speaker 2: podcast until more recently, Like with this mysteries was like
Speaker 2: a decade plus ago at this point.
Speaker 3: Four Yeah. Nice, Oh wow, eleven years.
Speaker 1: How dare you point out that twenty fourteen was eleven years?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 1: All right, now, I don't appreciate that, but I.
Speaker 4: Do have remember remember Obama who remembers the the time
Speaker 4: he wore Khakis that the.
Speaker 6: Only the only problem he ever had.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 6: Yeah, anyway, I do have one of the questions, So
Speaker 6: this was commissioned by a living human being and not
Speaker 6: a time traveler?
Speaker 3: It was? It was? In fact, yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: It was sort of the brainchild of Edis Kandar, who
Speaker 5: was the director slash cult leader in charge of that
Speaker 5: particular production and also the Flea Theater itself, I think
Speaker 5: put out a commission for it. Basically they wanted big,
Speaker 5: grandiose things because that director had done a thing called
Speaker 5: These Seven Sicknesses, which was an adaptation of like a
Speaker 5: whole Oedipus cycle I think, and which was also six hours.
Speaker 2: And then that was a really big hit for the
Speaker 2: theater a few years earlier.
Speaker 5: And then they did Rescom, which was a restoration comedy.
Speaker 5: I know, there was like a six hour play, a
Speaker 5: mashup of all kinds of restoration comedies, which are also
Speaker 5: not very good.
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean, I make the joke, but it's
Speaker 6: cool that like they let you guys just go in
Speaker 6: there and do a queer and alternative retaillings of the
Speaker 6: Bible and know them was like, hey, man, what the
Speaker 6: fuck you know? I mean it was in New York, but.
Speaker 5: I mean the people who own the rights to the
Speaker 5: Beatles soundtrack got very upset with us and sent us
Speaker 5: a season assist.
Speaker 3: So how long that we sing?
Speaker 2: Was it was that for the scene where you ended
Speaker 2: up singing the killers?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, And then they sent a season desists three days.
Speaker 3: We got away with it.
Speaker 10: It was in every review, but we got away with
Speaker 10: what songs.
Speaker 3: All these things that I've done. That is after the best.
Speaker 6: Song, the best fuck out anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was after Pentecost.
Speaker 5: But what was the Beatles song that Hey Jude, we
Speaker 5: did hate Jude.
Speaker 3: That so much. Yeah, and you know who's I that
Speaker 3: thing was?
Speaker 5: That was my buddy Matt Cox was the one who
Speaker 5: suggested that, and then he went on to write Puffs.
Speaker 5: So he has like very good sort of storytelling instincts.
Speaker 5: Where it came to it, but it was it ended
Speaker 5: up being a very collaborative process because again, the players
Speaker 5: would come in and bring in these plays and sometimes
Speaker 5: they were just terrible, and so there was a lot
Speaker 5: of rewriting happening in the room, which was another thing.
Speaker 5: And also from what I understand, uh, something that was
Speaker 5: true of the original mystery plays as well, that there
Speaker 5: was a lot of sort of localizing of a lot
Speaker 5: of like the stories too, to the particular guilds who
Speaker 5: are putting these stories up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's a really funny example in the Dream of Pilot's Wife,
Speaker 4: they refer to the devil as mahoon, which is a
Speaker 4: medieval term for the devil that comes from the name mohammet.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: It's like here are these guys in you know, thirty
Speaker 4: three ad referring to Mahoon. There's also like in the
Speaker 4: Second Shepherd's Play, there's a lot of characters who use
Speaker 4: like turns of phrase that involve Jesus Christ in some way,
Speaker 4: even though he doesn't get born until the end.
Speaker 3: Of the day.
Speaker 6: It was like, you know, it's like some Roman back
Speaker 6: in you know, forty forty BCE and they're like, what
Speaker 6: does BCE mean? Like, I don't fucking know anything.
Speaker 3: Just write it down, man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I guess before we go on anymore, let
Speaker 6: me turn to eleanor real quick, eleanor you know, can
Speaker 6: you just give us a little bit more of a
Speaker 6: background on like how medieval people saw these and you
Speaker 6: know what, what you find interesting about them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So, I mean the first one to kind of
Speaker 1: say here is that, you know how I'm always going
Speaker 1: on and on about how people love sermons, and they'd
Speaker 1: be like, fuck, yeah, there's a new preacher in town.
Speaker 1: We're all going like, I mean, mystery plays are that
Speaker 1: but times ten? Right?
Speaker 6: Did you get to see it? I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It kind of starts off sort of as a like
Speaker 1: youth past or ass kind of thing where they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, what I'll really get to the people is
Speaker 1: if we if we act out these plays, and it
Speaker 1: does start out as a very particularized thing that is
Speaker 1: happening in churches, so it might happen as a part
Speaker 1: of the mass, or it would be sort of like
Speaker 1: optional extra credit. The priests would be like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: we're doing a play tonight, and everyone would be hype
Speaker 1: because you know, there's a play on and that's cool.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, Luke and the introduction, this eventually gets
Speaker 1: out of hand and like the priests are beefing the
Speaker 1: monks are because like monks will do this too, and
Speaker 1: then like people will go over to the monastery and
Speaker 1: everybody wants different parts. There is rather a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, dressing up as women that happens because only
Speaker 1: men are involved in the plays.
Speaker 10: Their hands shoot up, Oh I have to get kissed
Speaker 10: in this one.
Speaker 1: It's getting sexy. It's getting a little bit too at
Speaker 1: each other's throats. And then the church is like, okay,
Speaker 1: that is it. Priests, no more of this, and uh,
Speaker 1: there's some backlash that the priests are not happy.
Speaker 2: I want to keep kissing that guy.
Speaker 6: No, we're I have to, I can't. It kills me
Speaker 6: every time, every time. It doesn't matter, does it matter
Speaker 6: what it's about, It just gets.
Speaker 1: So basically, the church has this big clamp down, but
Speaker 1: the cat's already out of the bag, right, And everybody
Speaker 1: loves mystery plays. So that's where the guilds come in.
Speaker 1: And the guilds are like, well, this is awesome because
Speaker 1: we also wish to beef with each other and dress
Speaker 1: up like women. So like, the usually is that it
Speaker 1: gets taken on by local guilds, and that's certainly how
Speaker 1: we know, for example, about the York mystery plays are
Speaker 1: one of the cycles that we have tons of info on,
Speaker 1: and basically varying guilds would say, okay, we want to
Speaker 1: do this one, we want to do this one, and
Speaker 1: as we say, it's a cycle. So the liturgical year
Speaker 1: kind of mirrors this. And the idea is that like
Speaker 1: every January, you would kind of like start from the
Speaker 1: beginning so you know whether or not you're going to
Speaker 1: do Old Testament plays or in some cases people would
Speaker 1: just start with, you know, kind of the birth of
Speaker 1: Jesus at Christmas, which is like close enough or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then they go through the year, and then by
Speaker 1: the time you get to advent, you're doing apocalypse stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's like it all makes sense and it's all
Speaker 1: kind of like in harmony with the year, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of opportunities to do mystery plays because there's
Speaker 1: a fucking feast like every other week, so it's just
Speaker 1: like you just throw it up like whenever you've got
Speaker 1: like a Saints Day or something like that, and everybody goes.
Speaker 1: There is also a tendant thing where because this is
Speaker 1: like the form of media, there is also created like
Speaker 1: parody mystery plays. So yeah, yeah, there's like.
Speaker 2: A famous joy.
Speaker 1: Oh aj, I've got great news for you. And there
Speaker 1: is a play that is called Unguentarius in Latin or
Speaker 1: Mustichka in Czech, and it is like a body retelling
Speaker 1: kind of of like the Abraham and Isaac story, but
Speaker 1: also with like a quack doctor who is like selling
Speaker 1: medicine that can like revive you from the dead, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of farting. Yeah, I'm just like so
Speaker 1: it's just like farting every like five seconds and then
Speaker 1: pretending you're dead and then farting in someone's face and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But we have that one, right, So
Speaker 1: and it's very like scary movie where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you so, we all know what mystery plays are supposed
Speaker 1: to be, and this is kind of like an inversion
Speaker 1: of that. So enough people are involved that you can
Speaker 1: also have like a whole parody thing going on. Now,
Speaker 1: the parodies are probably gonna more likely be put on
Speaker 1: by professional troops of actors and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But this is how embedded it is in medieval life,
Speaker 1: is that you just kind of assume these things are
Speaker 1: going to be taking place as a part of the
Speaker 1: liturgical year and as like the festive season. You have
Speaker 1: to have these or everyone is gonna be pissed.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 1: They want their little play. They want to see a
Speaker 1: dude who doesn't have a beard dress up like a
Speaker 1: girl and then you know a question mark. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what they want, right, And.
Speaker 3: Where it goes from there, who's you know.
Speaker 4: But it's interesting even in the non parody plays, like
Speaker 4: how much is allowed to go on. They have actors
Speaker 4: playing God the Father, they have actors playing the devil.
Speaker 3: You know, there's I mean, there's like not really that
Speaker 3: fear of.
Speaker 4: The devil that we have in a lot of modern
Speaker 4: culture now where people freak out at SNL sketches because
Speaker 4: they say lamash to or whatever. But like and even
Speaker 4: the in the Wakefield cycle, the Second Shepherd's Play is
Speaker 4: itself a farce where a guy is like, he hexes
Speaker 4: two shepherds and then like steals one of their sheep
Speaker 4: and puts it in a cradle, and he talks to
Speaker 4: his wife. He's like, we're just gonna pretend that that's
Speaker 4: a baby and that you're giving birth to its twin
Speaker 4: right now. So just like moan and shout a lot.
Speaker 4: And then when they uncover it all, they just put
Speaker 4: the guy in a big pillowcase and throw him against
Speaker 4: the wall a few times, and then an angel shows
Speaker 4: up and he's like, hey, a kid was just born.
Speaker 3: It's God. You should go check it out. They're like, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: and then happens.
Speaker 2: The version of the Second Shepherd's Play that was in
Speaker 2: the show that AJ and I did was actually, I
Speaker 2: think one of the strongest plays in the entire thing,
Speaker 2: maybe the strongest, because unlike a lot of the other ones,
Speaker 2: it really just kind of did a contemporary version of
Speaker 2: the play that sought to sort of preserve the structure
Speaker 2: and the mood of the thing, whereas a lot of
Speaker 2: the other plays in that thing were just like what
Speaker 2: if they what if it was what if? They said,
Speaker 2: fuck a lot? What if what if Satan got naked.
Speaker 1: Afraid to ask the big question?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I got for real. That was a big hurdle
Speaker 5: we had to overcome.
Speaker 3: At one point, it did not happen.
Speaker 5: Did not happen, but the playwright was very insistent that
Speaker 5: it that it would and again unpaid actors. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: the only way he was talked out of it was
Speaker 5: because the director was like.
Speaker 3: Then it's going to smell like pee for the rest
Speaker 3: of the plays, and that's not fair to the other playwrights. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: are like, we would actually not like to be Pete.
Speaker 2: On the other Uh, the transfiguration was it. It was
Speaker 2: like it was Jesus making out with the angel Gabriel
Speaker 2: making out with Satan. They were having a three way.
Speaker 5: Songs by Billy Porter, who wrote three original songs for
Speaker 5: that show, Joke.
Speaker 2: Downtown I Am Downtown New York City Theater.
Speaker 5: Carly Ray Jepson came to performance of it and he
Speaker 5: did black out drunk.
Speaker 3: At one point and like knocking over wine.
Speaker 2: It was like my uh, my college the theater professor
Speaker 2: came to one of the performances and pretended not to
Speaker 2: know me. That was funny.
Speaker 6: Oh oh oh.
Speaker 5: But the thing about the Shepherd's Play, Josh, that you
Speaker 5: brought up and and I think one of the reasons
Speaker 5: why it was the best and why I think maybe
Speaker 5: Brian you were attracted to that one, is because there's
Speaker 5: a lot of time where the shepherds are just kind
Speaker 5: of waiting for the signal to happen, and that allows
Speaker 5: a lot of creative freedom for the writer to like
Speaker 5: be like, well, what were they talking about? And you know,
Speaker 5: if it's a contemporary one, you can just make it
Speaker 5: about like make it a little playlet. And then all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, there's a star in the sky and
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, look there's a star. And then because
Speaker 5: you know, if I recall correctly, it was they were
Speaker 5: just like it was because it was alex And and
Speaker 5: Lindsley where the two main the two.
Speaker 3: Made Justin and Justin Perdue.
Speaker 2: Justin was there right, and they were just like shitty
Speaker 2: like teenagers who were just like not looked after very
Speaker 2: well by their parents and sort of just became buds.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, seeing the star gave them like a
Speaker 2: thing to focus on and go do, and it was
Speaker 2: very it was very touching, and you can see why
Speaker 2: in situations where they do the adaptation in a way
Speaker 2: that makes sense, you can see what it is about
Speaker 2: these narratives and themes that remain universal and resonant, because,
Speaker 2: of course, people who are as you were saying, a
Speaker 2: waiting for something to happen, they just need to find
Speaker 2: something to fill that time with, and sometimes that lets
Speaker 2: us know who people really are as well as what
Speaker 2: is it they really want, and what is that they
Speaker 2: really want can then be fulfilled by the arrival of
Speaker 2: the Christ.
Speaker 4: And sometimes what they really want is to hex your
Speaker 4: shepherd friends and steal their sheep.
Speaker 2: Yeah sometimes maybe yeah, yeah, sometimes.
Speaker 4: That sheep develops a very hardcore suicidal impulse and then
Speaker 4: your dad, playing the shepherd standing in front of you,
Speaker 4: has to go rescue in the middle of the tableau.
Speaker 1: No. I think that's actually a really important point, Brian,
Speaker 1: because we still sort of do this, and I definitely
Speaker 1: remember it from growing up in the Seattle area. There
Speaker 1: was there was like one, i think, big evangelical church
Speaker 1: where they would have these ads. Ever, of course they'd
Speaker 1: be like, we have this huge living nativity, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically they're like, we've got camels, it's got a cast
Speaker 1: of hundreds or whatever.
Speaker 2: They like billboards up or something like that.
Speaker 1: They would throw at billboards and I think like also
Speaker 1: have like uh like commercials on local television. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously I never went because I was raised right, like
Speaker 1: it was definitely one of these things that was in there,
Speaker 1: so that we still have this impulse. It's just that
Speaker 1: in terms of how the modern and very particularly the
Speaker 1: American imagination works, it's like there's one there's one religious
Speaker 1: holiday year and it's Christmas. For some reason, like we
Speaker 1: got to ignore Easter. Like I've got like my European
Speaker 1: friends and Australian friends are always laughing because like we
Speaker 1: get tons of time off for Easter in Europe and
Speaker 1: Australia You've got like a four day weekend, and they're
Speaker 1: like mystified by the fact that Americans don't, because they're like,
Speaker 1: you're the only ones who believe in this shit. Yeah
Speaker 1: you get any time off.
Speaker 2: You're right, we do believe in the Easter. Bunny, he's
Speaker 2: really important.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you you misunderstand the belief here is not in
Speaker 6: Jesus or Christ or anything like that. It's in the
Speaker 6: power of commercialism. God, we're gonna sell you chocolate. And also,
Speaker 6: I think the reason people here don't do it is
Speaker 6: because it moves around and they're like, I'm not keeping
Speaker 6: track of that ship. Yes, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3: I really I own her cycle. Bullshit. I mean, come on.
Speaker 6: My kid asked me. My kid asked me like a
Speaker 6: couple of years ago. She's like, when is Easter? And
Speaker 6: she was like four or five at the time. And
Speaker 6: I was like, I really don't know, dear, and she
Speaker 6: goes she did not believe me. She was I was like,
Speaker 6: I was picking bran. Yeah. She ran and like, you know,
Speaker 6: you could play. You can play that little game with
Speaker 6: the kid for a minute. But they then they're like
Speaker 6: stop and you're like, oh, you know, okay, I was
Speaker 6: just kidding, but I was like, no, baby, I really
Speaker 6: don't know what it is. And she got home she
Speaker 6: was mad at me. She runs and tells my wife.
Speaker 6: She's like, Daddy told me the Easter moves every year,
Speaker 6: is it? And I was like and I looked at
Speaker 6: my wife and I and I just struck my shoulders
Speaker 6: She's like it, dear, it does move every year. And
Speaker 6: she was like fine. You know, it's like one.
Speaker 1: Of the big things that people are really into in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages is calculating Easter. It's like as a hobby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we'll have all these manuscripts and they're like,
Speaker 1: and this how you calculate it? All right, and they're
Speaker 1: really into that.
Speaker 2: But I really understand Easter on a much deeper level than.
Speaker 1: You, like, like, that's what's going down.
Speaker 4: And this is what autistic people did before they discovered anime.
Speaker 6: Yeah and trains.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being a weed for Easter, it's a it's one,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Easter boo. Is this anything?
Speaker 1: Okay? All right, now I'm listening. Okay, Fine. So I
Speaker 1: saw like a I need mystery play the other day
Speaker 1: because for work, I like mad I made a TV
Speaker 1: show about the Apocalypse that should be out next month,
Speaker 1: and so there's a bunch of people in Oxford who
Speaker 1: hang out and do mystery plays because Oxford is known
Speaker 1: for its nerds, right yeah, And they put on a
Speaker 1: little Apocalypse mystery play for me, and it was like
Speaker 1: fun if you relate to it like medieval people did
Speaker 1: right where I was like you know, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it upon myself to behave like a medieval person,
Speaker 1: and like whenever the bad person who's like gonna go
Speaker 1: to Hell is like getting yelled at by Jesus, You're like.
Speaker 3: Jesus, yeah, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and like that's really fun because there's like and
Speaker 1: there was like lots of proud participation and right, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of like the traditional like oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you're going to heaven with me. Oh you're going to
Speaker 1: hell a y oh, because you were like hype to
Speaker 1: other people and you are mean to them, bah blah.
Speaker 1: But apparently they do I'm gonna go. I think this year,
Speaker 1: like next it's next month. I think it's like April
Speaker 1: twenty seventh. They like put on a bunch of the
Speaker 1: mystery plays. And last year they got in trouble because
Speaker 1: they were doing like the Massacre of the Innocence as
Speaker 1: like one of the mystery plays or whatever, ye like
Speaker 1: in a normal way and like some narcass student like
Speaker 1: is like trying to study like a loser for their
Speaker 1: or something, and they're like and they hear all this
Speaker 1: noise because they're like doing they're doing the mystery play
Speaker 1: in the churchyard and they look out the window and
Speaker 1: there's like these people waving around like babies on spikes, and.
Speaker 6: Then like yeah, hell yeah, and.
Speaker 1: They like made a complaint about the massacre of the
Speaker 1: Innocence Play, which I was like, okay, you're in. I
Speaker 1: cannot stress what a loser that kid is. But like
Speaker 1: they're absolutely still kind of going for it in Oxford.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is like a niche ass special interest
Speaker 1: for you know, nerds and the autistic people that we love,
Speaker 1: you know, so like that's great, but I do think
Speaker 1: that there is kind of like that aspect to it, right.
Speaker 1: It's like, on the one hand, they could just be
Speaker 1: like super super boring, but for medieval people, they it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a pantomime. Sure, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be kind of like throwing things and
Speaker 1: yelling and like he's behind you, Jesus, you know, and
Speaker 1: like all of that.
Speaker 3: I know, I am exactly, you know.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, I was just gonna say, it's
Speaker 6: like when you have to watch a show with your
Speaker 6: kids and it's like where's the ball and the kid's
Speaker 6: supposed to be like right there, Jesus is like where's
Speaker 6: the Devil? And they're like, he's behind another guy who
Speaker 6: looks like Jesus pops up. He's like, I already knew.
Speaker 5: We are looking for a god's clues. We are, We're
Speaker 5: looking for a god's cuse so we don't go to hell.
Speaker 4: Hey, the Explorers is walking by El Diablo.
Speaker 5: Diablo no damning.
Speaker 2: Which one was the torture of the Innocence or whatever?
Speaker 2: Which one was that in the Mysteries, that.
Speaker 5: Was the Border agents who were also assassins, I think,
Speaker 5: and they were talking about whether or not they were
Speaker 5: going to go through with killing the kids.
Speaker 2: I would oh god, I don't even remember that one.
Speaker 3: I would like to point.
Speaker 6: Out that I looked up your Mystery play and that
Speaker 6: specific one gets a ride up in here about you know,
Speaker 6: being transgressive and uh you know, uh, Mary and Joseph
Speaker 6: trying to go to the inn and ice or you
Speaker 6: know whatever whatever it was called at the time, agents
Speaker 6: harassing them and giving them ship for it.
Speaker 5: You know, Yeah, yeah, that was that. That one was
Speaker 5: that one that was really that was really acted. I
Speaker 5: mean most of Act one I spent downstairs because I
Speaker 5: was I played the doctor who told Mary that she
Speaker 5: was pregnant was that was one of my roles, and
Speaker 5: then the other one was doubting Thomas. So a lot
Speaker 5: of my stuff happened in X two and three.
Speaker 2: You acted your face off as doubting Thomas. I will
Speaker 2: say that was.
Speaker 3: A big scarf. The scarf did most of the word no, no.
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna be it.
Speaker 3: No no, yeah.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 5: It was really fun because originally in the workshop production
Speaker 5: of that, it was I had a very different play
Speaker 5: for Doubting Thomas that made absolutely.
Speaker 3: No sense, with like eighteen minutes of.
Speaker 5: A monologue that began with the line there's noise all around,
Speaker 5: but I can't see any of it and kind of
Speaker 5: just went from there like it was high poetical, but
Speaker 5: it was also like I genuinely have no idea what's happening,
Speaker 5: like beat for beating this monologue, and then it got
Speaker 5: rewritten because that writer had a nervous breakdown and was
Speaker 5: replaced by there was sort of like an overarching group
Speaker 5: of playwrights called Collaboration Town that with like write like
Speaker 5: stuff that would happen during like the intermissions and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they basically made the whole thing make some semblance
Speaker 2: of sense if it wasn't for them, the thing would
Speaker 2: have been straight nonsense.
Speaker 3: And also Jill Rafson also really helped out with that.
Speaker 5: Who's a current name and director of Classic theater shake
Speaker 5: Their company sorry, their.
Speaker 3: Name was was Collaboration Town.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, population them.
Speaker 4: We're gonna we're gonna get together and we're gonna collaborate
Speaker 4: what should we call our group?
Speaker 3: Collaboration Town?
Speaker 5: Great, got it one, but that that that one was
Speaker 5: always really fun because I wanted to do a lot
Speaker 5: of audience interaction with it.
Speaker 3: So during the intermissions I would go up and like, audience,
Speaker 3: I'm just.
Speaker 5: Like, hey, would it be okay if I like headbutted
Speaker 5: you during the section? And they would either say yes
Speaker 5: you can or no you can't, and I would be
Speaker 5: like great, fine, but then uh.
Speaker 3: It really endeared.
Speaker 5: I think I had to kind of I really stack
Speaker 5: the deck in my favor by going up and talking
Speaker 5: to them during the intermissions and just hey, this is
Speaker 5: the choreography.
Speaker 3: You comfortable with this?
Speaker 5: And then they would usually they would usually were very enthusiastic.
Speaker 5: If they were sitting in the front row, they kind
Speaker 5: of wanted to be involved because.
Speaker 3: There was like no room.
Speaker 5: Also, the floors were made of slatted wood that were
Speaker 5: very sharp, and we had to do the whole show barefoot.
Speaker 5: So the amount of just like blood that was on
Speaker 5: that stage from all of our like toes falling in
Speaker 5: between gaps and things. Uh, I mean, look, here's the thing.
Speaker 5: The original mystery plays also pretty dangerous because.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to put a guy in a
Speaker 3: giant pillow case and slamming have special effects. They just
Speaker 3: actually did it.
Speaker 2: They just did it.
Speaker 5: We were just going for authenticity, you know, we were
Speaker 5: downtown theater artists.
Speaker 6: Well, there was one guy who enthusiastically volunteered for that,
Speaker 6: and you're like really, and he's like, yeah, just beat
Speaker 6: the ship out of it. Just locked me in something.
Speaker 6: And you guys, you could throw me in like a
Speaker 6: safe if you want, you know, push me down the stairs.
Speaker 6: They're like, what the hell are you talking about, Bob?
Speaker 3: What the fuck is her actor who played Jesus.
Speaker 5: Actually, there was a lot of negotiation around what the
Speaker 5: crucifixion would look like, and eventually just ended up standing
Speaker 5: on a box and putting his hands up right and
Speaker 5: then like tied to the thing. But originally he was
Speaker 5: just going to be suspended from the cross and it
Speaker 5: took him saying, I think you're actually just trying to crucify.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is that is what the usual
Speaker 1: crucifixion was. Yeah yeah, well yeah, And I mean but
Speaker 1: it is true like video people, I mean, it's got
Speaker 1: to be like one of the highest incidents of CTEs
Speaker 1: participating in mystery plans or like whatever. But because they're
Speaker 1: doing all kinds of stuff, like you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: they've got like rigging and the angels are coming down
Speaker 1: from heaven or like you know, Jesus is being is
Speaker 1: like ascending. You know, you've got uh, they're building like
Speaker 1: really elaborate hell.
Speaker 9: Mouths that they know, so they got like these huge sets,
Speaker 9: which was again like part of the church objection because
Speaker 9: they were like, could not be like spending all this
Speaker 9: money on a hell mouth, and they're like.
Speaker 1: What if we do though, you know, and then things
Speaker 1: like this where it's just like it's getting too elaborate
Speaker 1: and you know, there's no idea of help and safety.
Speaker 1: You know, people are falling off stage, breaking legs right
Speaker 1: and left. You know, it's a it's a good family
Speaker 1: day out. It's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3: The violations.
Speaker 2: So stands for Oxford Safety.
Speaker 4: Well once this is in the hands of like all
Speaker 4: these different guilds, right, this is what like Shakespeare is
Speaker 4: riffing on a little bit and much ado about nothing,
Speaker 4: but like each guild has its own specialty. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: if you're a tanner, you might as well do some
Speaker 4: stuff that involves leather. If you do rigging, like of
Speaker 4: course you're gonna make somebody fly. And now I'm just
Speaker 4: realizing what the tanners too. If you want to if
Speaker 4: you want to do a player where you're pissing on people,
Speaker 4: those guys.
Speaker 3: Are well prepared for it. They have a handle to
Speaker 3: make the leather. Oh yeah, yeah, I kiss all day.
Speaker 6: He didn't even he didn't even smell it anymore. He's like,
Speaker 6: they're like, what about the smell for the others and
Speaker 6: the and the the Tanner's like, I'm good man, I
Speaker 6: can't smell.
Speaker 2: Smell twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Like I mean the fishlongers. They're like really
Speaker 1: into like the feasts of gloves and fishes obviously.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, Oh too bad.
Speaker 1: We didn't all go to John's fish shack before we
Speaker 1: came or you know, like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. I just I think, uh I do
Speaker 6: think it's fascinating. You know that uh uh adding the
Speaker 6: visual aspect to it, You know that that does a
Speaker 6: lot for people. It gets people rolled up a lot.
Speaker 6: And you know, it's uh, kind of like going to
Speaker 6: the movie. Now you go, You're sitting in a nice
Speaker 6: theater and you're like, you know, even if the movie's
Speaker 6: not great, get a snack, you get to chill. It's
Speaker 6: not the exact same for them, but you know, you
Speaker 6: finally get to see someone acting out the Bible instead
Speaker 6: of just a guy talking about it.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's also something that has always been
Speaker 2: attention in Protestant Christianity specifically, is this idea of like
Speaker 2: how much should you represent physically? The idea that like
Speaker 2: it becomes at some point idolatrous if you put forth
Speaker 2: something that is so clearly concrete that then it takes
Speaker 2: away from God breathing the inspiration in or whatever.
Speaker 6: Like.
Speaker 2: That's why traditional Protestants tend to be really against religious
Speaker 2: icons and that sort of thing, because it's depicting almost
Speaker 2: that which ought not be depicted, If that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, and yeah, the Puritan tradition that arises
Speaker 4: this is why in the more Protestant countries will have
Speaker 4: like these big gaps, Like in England, people stop doing
Speaker 4: mystery and then they pick them up hundreds of years later,
Speaker 4: as you know, these these historical finds in someone's collection
Speaker 4: and records and everything, and they go, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 4: should start putting them on again. Whereas in Spain there
Speaker 4: are some towns in Spain where it's basically an unbroken
Speaker 4: lineage since you know, the thirteen hundreds or something like that, and.
Speaker 2: It's the sort of thing too where it carries through
Speaker 2: in a strange way to to contemporary Christianity, even on
Speaker 2: the Protestant side. Like just as an example, Brian and I,
Speaker 2: the school that we went to is a Dutch Protestant.
Speaker 3: College named after John Calvin.
Speaker 2: That's right, our boy, the man himself, and it has
Speaker 2: had a theater program. But the sort of politics around
Speaker 2: it are a little weird because, particularly in like the
Speaker 2: mid twentieth century, early to mid twentieth century, a lot
Speaker 2: of the people coming out of that tradition were still
Speaker 2: very opposed to the idea of doing anything that was
Speaker 2: too elevated or theatrical, and so they sort of had to, like,
Speaker 2: for instance, the theater in which the stuff is presented
Speaker 2: is not called the theater. It's called an auditorium. And
Speaker 2: that was like the compromise that they had to do
Speaker 2: in order to get the capital sponsorship. Before this new theater,
Speaker 2: they couldn't actually call it a theor So there's this
Speaker 2: weird tension throughout the history of Protestantism where there is
Speaker 2: this understanding that if you represent something dramatically, it can
Speaker 2: really compel people in a way that you can't by
Speaker 2: just you know, reading from the Bible or whatever. But
Speaker 2: if you go a little too hard, then the ideas
Speaker 2: you might be blaspheming or like getting in the way
Speaker 2: of what our Lord and Savior is trying to tell
Speaker 2: you directly through the word, because at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, it's the word, the actual text on the page,
Speaker 2: that is the bedrock of Protestant Christianity.
Speaker 6: I think, yeah, I think that the thing that that
Speaker 6: people who earnestly believe this would say is that you know,
Speaker 6: just look at anything, any representation of a thing, and
Speaker 6: you if you take that in your mind like you
Speaker 6: will see it like that, and that becomes the way
Speaker 6: that you play with it, and you don't see and
Speaker 6: so your vision of God or your vision of Jesus
Speaker 6: or whatever or the afterlife is replaced by like, you know,
Speaker 6: the buff guy with the crown of thorns and you know,
Speaker 6: the Jesus.
Speaker 2: Our good friend Colin.
Speaker 6: Wait, it's replaced with that. And so you're focused on
Speaker 6: a man made picture instead of your internal, positive, numinous
Speaker 6: feelings about God. But you know, it's one of those
Speaker 6: things that like, I mean just a lot, I mean,
Speaker 6: not just Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity have these problems, but
Speaker 6: it just the weight of all these contradictions just like
Speaker 6: keeps piling up and keeps piling up, and keeps piling up,
Speaker 6: because now we're all so mediated that it's really hard
Speaker 6: to make that like stick in the real world now
Speaker 6: because people are like, of course I've seen a representation
Speaker 6: of the Garden of Eden. Of course I've seen a
Speaker 6: representation of Moses, like because I've seen a picture because
Speaker 6: you know, the Charlton Heston Tink Commandments movie was on
Speaker 6: TV when I was a kid, you know, like, you know,
Speaker 6: and so it just it collapses under that. And now,
Speaker 6: as far as I know, they don't they don't really
Speaker 6: focus on that as much anymore. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 6: and go ahead.
Speaker 4: In an American Evangelicalism, American Christianity in general, but especially evangelicals,
Speaker 4: is like kitch has really taken.
Speaker 3: Over, right, Yes, yes, you know people know, of course.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Charlton Heston also doing Ben Her. Before that, Ben Hur
Speaker 3: was a.
Speaker 4: Big Broadway play in the late nineteenth century that had
Speaker 4: actual horses on stage doing a chariot race on a
Speaker 4: giant treadmill. And huh, now we have things like Josh
Speaker 4: and I were briefly obsessed with this Hamilton inspired rap
Speaker 4: musical about Jesus that was produced by the Duck Dynasty.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, what is story the musical that was written
Speaker 4: by a homeschooled seventeen years.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like it they in a way. This
Speaker 2: is actually kind of an interesting contemporary reflection of the
Speaker 2: mystery plays. Because this was a musical. They set up
Speaker 2: a tent just outside of Dallas.
Speaker 3: They built a gigantic theater and shopping complex for this one.
Speaker 2: They were thinking it was going to run for years.
Speaker 2: I think it ran for nine months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we were Jesus.
Speaker 1: And I'm here to say it's not not that, it's
Speaker 1: more like it thrown away my miracle.
Speaker 4: You also have like mega churches of course, like like
Speaker 4: Righteous Gemstones is always riffing on this mega churches that
Speaker 4: will do these giant pageants at Easter and Christmas with
Speaker 4: like a lot of flying, a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: drum lines and whatever they have. There's the Sitan Sound
Speaker 4: Theaters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Branson, Missouri that do these
Speaker 4: enormous Bible musicals with like you do Jonah, And there's
Speaker 4: a gigantic whale puppet that flies over the audience.
Speaker 6: Also in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and and and it kind of has some
Speaker 4: of those same especially the ones that are at megachurches,
Speaker 4: has this sort of same roots. It's like, oh, we're
Speaker 4: going to get the local business leaders together, they're going
Speaker 4: to build this. There's that infamous Jenny Nicholson covered that
Speaker 4: that church in Canada that does like Avengers themed passion plays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every every year. It's a passion play that rips
Speaker 2: off of a different Disney ip.
Speaker 3: Basically, it's like it's like Iron Man and then they
Speaker 3: sing free Bird when he dies.
Speaker 2: Ian King one was my favorite personally. They crucify Simba.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, okay, So here's my thing. Right, Like obviously,
Speaker 1: the like the human impulse to act out a Bible
Speaker 1: story has always been there, but I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the this is one of these instances where
Speaker 1: in okay, we're keeping certain things, the acting out of
Speaker 1: the Biblical story, we're keeping the using like local businesses
Speaker 1: in order to like prop this up kind of like
Speaker 1: your name out there. But how come we're so much
Speaker 1: more cringe.
Speaker 6: Because because they meant it. Then they meant it. They
Speaker 6: meant every fucking word of that they and they meant
Speaker 6: it deep in their marrow. And so like when you
Speaker 6: look at it, even if we even if we were
Speaker 6: able to see one that they put on and we
Speaker 6: were like, oh, okay, you know, here's another one about
Speaker 6: you know, Jesus is going to do this or whatever, hooray,
Speaker 6: Like they don't have that, so it doesn't enter into
Speaker 6: that for them. But like this stuff now is like
Speaker 6: that's fucking that. That's worse than like, that's worse than
Speaker 6: just turning on Disney Plus for the congregation, Like you're
Speaker 6: just like yeah, you like you've like melded all this
Speaker 6: stuff and we're beyond like perverting the gospel. We're beyond
Speaker 6: like uh blaspheming. This is like instead of Jesus kicking
Speaker 6: the money changers out of the temple, inviting them all
Speaker 6: in and you know, we're gonna have a banquet, We're
Speaker 6: gonna put on a play about how much we love
Speaker 6: the the Roman Empire. Like you know, it's like and
Speaker 6: I mean that it's it's not I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: money and religion being a problem is not new. You know,
Speaker 6: is not new. It's not a Protestant thing. But this
Speaker 6: like uh like just a based nature of it is. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's just I like, again I'm an atheist, but I'm like,
Speaker 6: you guys, don't even take that seriously. This is just
Speaker 6: an affectation for you, like I would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like a thing.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's like an earnest thing. Like for
Speaker 5: the seventeen year old, it feels incredibly earnest, right, I
Speaker 5: feel like that just because they've been raised. It's sort
Speaker 5: of the gumbo. Yeah, yeah, no, there is something to
Speaker 5: like like the people who are full grown adults who
Speaker 5: are doing this, who are like co signing onto this,
Speaker 5: that that to me, I think plays into your point
Speaker 5: of just like the like you know what, there is
Speaker 5: no real difference between the money lenders and the fucking
Speaker 5: priests anymore.
Speaker 2: But I this is something that we This sort of
Speaker 2: thing is something that we talk about a fair bit
Speaker 2: on our show when we're talking about things that are
Speaker 2: within sort of the evangelical bubble. How you get these
Speaker 2: meta narratives that people just receive and absorb.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 2: And in the case of something like yeah, those ridiculous
Speaker 2: church passion plays where Tony Stark gets cruise, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's like, you don't you you don't really understand anymore
Speaker 2: what the point of the story is, Whereas I feel
Speaker 2: like with the original mystery plays, if you talk about that,
Speaker 2: it's more didactic in a way, but it's also more participatory,
Speaker 2: where it's like you are really wanting to understand this narrative,
Speaker 2: not just as a piece of this is something we
Speaker 2: all know, but as something that you want to actively
Speaker 2: participate in. You want to understand how you connect to
Speaker 2: this story. And I think that's really meaningful. And that's
Speaker 2: a meaningful difference because Yeah, you go and watch one
Speaker 2: of these spectacles and you're just sitting there and being entertained,
Speaker 2: and I feel like that's very different from what you
Speaker 2: get when you look at those old mystery plays.
Speaker 1: I suppose there is also something here too, where to
Speaker 1: an extent, the fact that the church is like, not, no,
Speaker 1: you need to you need to fucking knock it off,
Speaker 1: like this is clearly God beyond right. It's not for
Speaker 1: the clergy to be doing that. Almost, I guess gives it.
Speaker 1: It's like it nots to the thing that we're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: because clearly what they're worried about is that it's going
Speaker 1: to turn into like the megachurch thing right right where
Speaker 1: they're like, this is not fucking appropriate, and they know
Speaker 1: it's not appropriate, right, Whereas yo, if like the if
Speaker 1: the Fishmonger's Guild wants to put it on go for
Speaker 1: your life. We're not saying don't have religious plays. We're
Speaker 1: saying that they don't have a place within actual churches
Speaker 1: during mass, right, And I guess that's that's like a
Speaker 1: reasonable objection that I can kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm coming down on the side of the medieval church
Speaker 1: with seems legit.
Speaker 6: I mean, no, they are right about it, and I
Speaker 6: mean this is the like we are circling around the
Speaker 6: genesis of the like the problem that our earnest early
Speaker 6: Protestants had with icons, with these things, because the church
Speaker 6: is also saying, all right, guys, you are making like
Speaker 6: we of our icons now, but you got like, you know,
Speaker 6: this is this is beyond stained glass or anything. This
Speaker 6: is you know, this is pure spectacle. You know, this
Speaker 6: is taking the place of God in the imagination or whatever.
Speaker 6: And you know, and when you don't have that lever
Speaker 6: at the top to pull and be like, hey, guys,
Speaker 6: maybe we should pull it back, then the human imagination
Speaker 6: just goes to its extent and you know, here we are.
Speaker 6: Sometimes that's good, you know, And then sometimes you end
Speaker 6: up with the little mermaid being crucified or whatever. For
Speaker 6: the love of God, no speak. She can't speak because
Speaker 6: Ursula slash Satan has taken ability to say, eloi, eloi?
Speaker 6: What the fuck is how?
Speaker 3: I don't know what fish? I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Why is Eric here? And he's shirtless and just hanging like,
Speaker 6: what is going on?
Speaker 3: Why is that priest making out with Eric? Wait, there's
Speaker 3: so much piss.
Speaker 4: It's everywhere everywhere, got all over my potatoes.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's at the beginning.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there there is one of the things
Speaker 4: that some churches do that I do think is sincere
Speaker 4: and it's still in its own like cracked bizarre way.
Speaker 3: Is hell houses?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah sure, And I say I make immersive theater,
Speaker 4: or I have made immersive theater. I haven't done anything
Speaker 4: in a little while, but like, yeah, I know they
Speaker 4: need to get into escape rooms, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: But these Back in the seventies, Jerry Folwell was like,
Speaker 4: you know, everything's getting too secular. What if we come
Speaker 4: up with the most insane idea in the world, which
Speaker 4: is just take people in a haunted house tour where
Speaker 4: they see the consequences of like getting an abortion and
Speaker 4: you know, doing weed so much that you become anti war.
Speaker 4: And that has evolved into there's a great documentary from
Speaker 4: like twenty five years ago now called just called hell House.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's about these.
Speaker 4: I think the Pentecostals are really the only people developing
Speaker 4: like a modern Christian aesthetic that is a really interesting one,
Speaker 4: and it's a really scary one. It's one that acknowledges demons,
Speaker 4: and it's not demons in the medieval way of like, well,
Speaker 4: look at Satan, We're going to get one over on him.
Speaker 4: He's a big dumb dumb It's like everything is coming
Speaker 4: after you. That headache you got yesterday, that migraine, that
Speaker 4: was a demon, and he could come back and he
Speaker 4: could be stronger the next day. And that is a
Speaker 4: it's a very theatrical thing and it's very cheesy, but
Speaker 4: I do think that they're the best hell houses are
Speaker 4: the ones that are extremely earnest, that are so they
Speaker 4: feel that same sort of like urgency and they're like,
Speaker 4: you need to stop getting abortions all the time because
Speaker 4: then you're gonna die in a car accident. And what
Speaker 4: the car accident has to do with the abortion is unclear.
Speaker 4: But this room that's just full of demons that just
Speaker 4: keeps shouting abortion at the car.
Speaker 2: The car accident was on the way home from the abortion.
Speaker 1: I love my monthly abortion. The girls and I get together.
Speaker 6: Have mimosas afterwards, smoked, smoke too much, weedy to California,
Speaker 6: babys in with no I think I think we've hit
Speaker 6: the nail on the head here, which is that you
Speaker 6: can do like the theatrical ship, but you just have
Speaker 6: to live. You have to believe in a literal, actual hell.
Speaker 6: I don't want to hear about your pluralist heaven or
Speaker 6: anything like that. I want to know that you feel
Speaker 6: the hot brimstone breath of Satan on your neck every
Speaker 6: day and you are literally worried about the the the
Speaker 6: location of your eternal soul, then you can do it. Otherwise, Yeah,
Speaker 6: we're just doing We're just doing musical theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was That was a big part of I
Speaker 2: think why the show that AJ and I worked on failed, Like,
Speaker 2: when it failed, it was because of that lack of respect,
Speaker 2: I guess is one way putting it. But like the
Speaker 2: idea that this story really truly does have broader implications, right,
Speaker 2: and it might not necessarily have to be to do
Speaker 2: with literal heaven and literal hell. Yeah, but you have
Speaker 2: to at least believe that things matter, that like we
Speaker 2: are as a species, let's say, barreling down towards some
Speaker 2: sort of absolute existential crisis such as climate change for instance, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, the play, the play that was about
Speaker 2: Noah's flood that was also about climate change, didn't really work,
Speaker 2: but it could have worked. It was close to working
Speaker 2: because of that exact thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it consisted solely of one line, which is Noah,
Speaker 5: please please I'm sorry, I fucked up.
Speaker 3: Just let me on the boat. Just let me on
Speaker 3: the boat.
Speaker 5: And then it was like more and more people just
Speaker 5: ran on and kept screaming it, and then they all
Speaker 5: got flashed away in the flood. But I think, like
Speaker 5: what the ones that were successful, and I think the
Speaker 5: mystery plays even back in the day that were successful,
Speaker 5: are just like very good adaptations of the original story.
Speaker 3: They got at the core idea behind it.
Speaker 5: Like in our version, Pentecost happened and you read about
Speaker 5: all the apostles all of a sudden, like you know, incense,
Speaker 5: Peppermint's color of time, eyes just like opening up and
Speaker 5: they see the time knife and they understand they have
Speaker 5: to go out on their mission or whatever, right, And
Speaker 5: so you have to instill in the audience what the
Speaker 5: apostles felt in that moment in order to make it
Speaker 5: an effective adaptation. And there's something about an entire room
Speaker 5: of actors singing all these things that I've done and
Speaker 5: encouraging you to sing too.
Speaker 2: And stopping so hard that you literally feel the building shake.
Speaker 3: Like a whole building shake around you. But that's where
Speaker 3: three one one calls. That's also like.
Speaker 6: The killers are playing a show downstairs.
Speaker 3: Someone should tell the killers.
Speaker 5: But yeah, no, that the feeling that it it like evokes,
Speaker 5: I you know, having read the original York mystery plays,
Speaker 5: like a lot of them are it's a little bit
Speaker 5: harder to translate into like a modern thing. But the
Speaker 5: ones that hit me the most, like even the Doubting
Speaker 5: Thomas one, it was like it told the whole story
Speaker 5: and it made me feel the way Thomas did, which
Speaker 5: was just extremely unsure of everything. And tell my best
Speaker 5: friend who I watched, you know who died, like comes
Speaker 5: back and tells me everything's gonna be okay.
Speaker 3: And then you feel the relief of that.
Speaker 5: Like that, that, to me is what makes an effective
Speaker 5: mystery play, is getting at the truth underneath all the
Speaker 5: biblical stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or maybe it's just maybe it's just a firm
Speaker 6: like actual belief in like God in a guy that
Speaker 6: you can conceptualize and understand. I mean, because so much
Speaker 6: of religion now, like it doesn't matter who it is,
Speaker 6: it doesn't matter what religion it is. So much of
Speaker 6: it now is just like a shirt, like a jersey,
Speaker 6: a team jersey that people wear because they because it's
Speaker 6: a cultural thing and it's a thing. And if that
Speaker 6: people can interact with religion however they want. It's not
Speaker 6: my business. But like when you try to do art
Speaker 6: about that or you try to make a story and an
Speaker 6: adaptation of that, people can tell if you either like
Speaker 6: just don't really care about God, or maybe you believed
Speaker 6: in God at one point and lost your faith. There's
Speaker 6: interesting stuff there, and they could tell if you seriously believe,
Speaker 6: you know, this is God. God dwells in me, you know,
Speaker 6: in whatever form, And you could tell that when somebody's
Speaker 6: doing it. You could tell when somebody struggle with it
Speaker 6: and when they just think it's a joke, yeah.
Speaker 2: Or when they're just kind of trying to shock people
Speaker 2: in a really empty way.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of that too, And it's like, are
Speaker 2: you trying to even even when you shock people, are
Speaker 2: you trying to do it from a place of authenticity?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: Like are you wanting to wake them up to something
Speaker 2: meaningful or you're trying to just make them be like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, you know that those.
Speaker 3: Are very Jesus is gay? Jesus gay?
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I means it's the difference between come out jump scare
Speaker 1: and you know, like something that actually is is genuinely
Speaker 1: like thoughtfully frightening, right, Like, it's two things, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I'll never drive a car after my
Speaker 4: monthly abortion again, exactly, it's on something primal, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: I always walk, you know, all the mimosas. You can't
Speaker 3: just go for.
Speaker 1: A vigorous after minute cities. You know, I could gets
Speaker 1: everything within fifteen minutes. But you know my abortion provider
Speaker 1: brunch place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how's life in the gulag eleanor how's.
Speaker 3: It treating you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you don't. You don't have freedom like we
Speaker 6: do here, No good, good old fashioned freedom. He could
Speaker 6: smell it in the air. He's definitely not gonna kill
Speaker 6: us all tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm getting rid of all those e p A protections,
Speaker 4: thank thank god.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, piss is back. It's back, folks can but they're
Speaker 3: saying it. The pisses back. They've been asking me for years.
Speaker 3: They're asking they want to piss, They want to They
Speaker 3: have no where that they can piss. They have to
Speaker 3: go to the toilet. All that piss is going to waste.
Speaker 3: It's going down the pipes, and it's all pipes.
Speaker 4: We all watch that show Seinfeld show, Jerry Seinfeld he's
Speaker 4: a stand up community.
Speaker 3: He had a neighbor.
Speaker 6: Neighbor folks, you love him, you love it. Welcome to
Speaker 6: the stage, mister Michael Richards. It was famous routine from
Speaker 6: the Last Factor, and Michael Richards just comes out there
Speaker 6: and even he's like, Okay, I can't do this.
Speaker 5: Comedians and cars getting coffee.
Speaker 3: Where's Jerry? Where is he? Good luck?
Speaker 6: Good luck? That's awesome? Oh my god, Ellen, eleanor what
Speaker 6: have we what have we missed on on the mystery plays? That? Uh,
Speaker 6: that that maybe we should hit before we go.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, like that's pretty much it. And the
Speaker 1: point of it is that it is an art form
Speaker 1: that the community takes part of, but you can only
Speaker 1: really have it if you have a really interconnected community
Speaker 1: that also really deeply understands and believes in the material
Speaker 1: in question. And it's kind of a form of religious
Speaker 1: literacy that we kind of lack now, which is sort
Speaker 1: of universal and it's way. It's just one of the
Speaker 1: neat things about the medieval period actually is that they're
Speaker 1: all weird little guys doing these weird little things, and
Speaker 1: it's what I really love about them. So I appreciate
Speaker 1: you guys coming on and trauma dumping.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for all of our collective issues with Christianity. That's right, folks,
Speaker 6: we got problems with Jesus and you're gonna hear and
Speaker 6: you've actually just heard about them. You can't unhear it now.
Speaker 6: We did it. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you so
Speaker 6: much for coming on the show. I'm sure a lot
Speaker 6: of our listeners will definitely have heard of it, but
Speaker 6: if not, please tell us about the Worst of All
Speaker 6: Possible worlds.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, so well, thank you both Luke and Ellen
Speaker 2: for having us on. This is really good. We had
Speaker 2: a good time finally getting those stories out that we
Speaker 2: have never been able to tell on our own show.
Speaker 2: So let's go.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, we do a show.
Speaker 2: It's called The Worst of All Possible Worlds. Every week
Speaker 2: we talk about a different piece of media. We talk
Speaker 2: about the narratives within that piece of media, both the
Speaker 2: explicit ones and the implicit ones, and we talk about
Speaker 2: the way that those narratives shape the world that we
Speaker 2: live in. Our tagline is case studies in the pop
Speaker 2: culture of a dying Empire. The vast majority of the time,
Speaker 2: that empire is the American Empire. Every once in a while,
Speaker 2: it's the Japanese Empire. We've talked about some. It's mostly
Speaker 2: and sometimes the British Empire as well, but mostly the
Speaker 2: US because that is our wheelhouse and we have a
Speaker 2: particular fascination, as you have just heard, with the intersection
Speaker 2: of narratives and evangelical Christianity. That is not our exclusive focus.
Speaker 2: We talk about all sorts of stuff, you know, video games,
Speaker 2: TV shows, movies, whatever, but we also are very interested
Speaker 2: in the reactionary right and the way that they are
Speaker 2: advancing their project through media. So feel free to go
Speaker 2: check us out. Our website is worst possible dot world
Speaker 2: and we also have a very affordably priced Patreon five
Speaker 2: dollars a month Patreon dot com ash worst of all.
Speaker 2: So we hope to see you there.
Speaker 6: Well yeah, uh, thank you all for coming it. It
Speaker 6: sounds great And you know, can I can I interest
Speaker 6: you in in a series on on the greatest work
Speaker 6: on nine to eleven in the War on Terror? And
Speaker 6: I'm of course talking about Revenge of the Sith.
Speaker 3: Uh it only it's more relevant it it does.
Speaker 6: It's just you bring me on and it's just me going.
Speaker 6: He was right, I don't understand it either, but he
Speaker 6: was right. It was to me about I take I
Speaker 6: take no pleasure in reporting this, But he was fucking
Speaker 6: right again.
Speaker 2: It was over he had the high ground.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 6: I couldn't. You can't, folks, folks he had that. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 6: I can't. China. China has the high ground, folks. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 6: Elean or what what's going on with you?
Speaker 1: Oh? Mate? I'm in the to Vic Northwest and mostly
Speaker 1: very stoned at the moment, but you can all check
Speaker 1: out my blog Going Hypenmedieval dot com. I am on
Speaker 1: the social media's at going Medieval more, particularly Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: uh you know where I bother Josh and things like that.
Speaker 1: I was recently interviewed for a Rolling Stone article about
Speaker 1: historians talking about how all of this is something that
Speaker 1: we're used to seeing. So you could check that out
Speaker 1: if you've got a Rolling Stone subscription, And I actually
Speaker 1: do really recommend, if you're wanting some actual good reporting
Speaker 1: at the moment, having a Rolling Stone subscription, because there's
Speaker 1: someone doing some of the only investigative journalism at the time.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Isn't Miles Clear writing for them as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly, Yes, Yeah, Miles is the one who tapped
Speaker 1: me for that, which I appreciate, so check that out.
Speaker 1: And otherwise, like you know what my fucking problem is,
Speaker 1: Like you're you're already listening to this show.
Speaker 6: It's fine, there you go, folks. Yeah, my name is
Speaker 6: Luca is amazing on the various social media's, I post
Speaker 6: on the one that's annoying me the least at the moment.
Speaker 6: And uh yeah, so whichever one that is, folks will
Speaker 6: see you follow both and you get the same bullshit
Speaker 6: either way. Uh yeah, you can find my old show,
Speaker 6: uh People's History of the Old Republic if you want
Speaker 6: to hear me yap about Star Wars. But anyway, thank
Speaker 6: y'all so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Bye.