Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w St. Chuck Bryant uh, and st. Jerome
Speaker 1: Rowland is out there as well. I'm not a staying
Speaker 1: I'm sinner. Uh. And this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: The first real episode of the New Year, it is Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's uh beyond the future now, It's that's so futuristic,
Speaker 1: no one ever even used it in a sci fi book.
Speaker 1: That's right. We we had our are what we like
Speaker 1: to call our elementary school Christmas break, which means it's
Speaker 1: about three and a half weeks long. We worked hard
Speaker 1: for that. We do, so you better treat us, right.
Speaker 1: That's that's right. How was your holiday? Good? It was good.
Speaker 1: I've I finally got to just kind of disconnect and
Speaker 1: decouple and just relax. And it was not Actually I
Speaker 1: went I went the entire time without cracking my computer open.
Speaker 1: I was really proud of that. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Like I did stuff on my phone that I needed to,
Speaker 1: but I just there was a ban on opening my laptops,
Speaker 1: even just for funzies. Yeah, no, poin didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to write. I didn't want to see uh computer
Speaker 1: or a keyboard for a little while, and I was
Speaker 1: able to do it. Yeah, that I just did. The
Speaker 1: porn was all just like I just made drawings myself, right,
Speaker 1: flip books. I uh loved doing things in my laptop.
Speaker 1: But I was proud of myself for not looking at
Speaker 1: any work emails. I did a little bit at first, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, some buttoning up into the year stuff.
Speaker 1: But then I was just like, you know what, and
Speaker 1: you know what I put as my I mean, you've
Speaker 1: seen my occasional auto reply, which is, uh, if it's
Speaker 1: an emergency, please realize that there are no podcast emergency,
Speaker 1: which is sort of true. It's I think true. Actually.
Speaker 1: And you got your slide whistle. I did. I don't
Speaker 1: have it with me right now or else. I dang,
Speaker 1: we got a debut the slide whistle later because I
Speaker 1: got to hear that thing. Yes, we do, thank you
Speaker 1: for that. Did you get your gift from me? I did? Okay, good.
Speaker 1: I thought that that you would find that wildly appropriate
Speaker 1: and it helped out our buddy too. That's right. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we're just gonna wade into some easy, easy
Speaker 1: waters here with hell. Hell. This is tough. Man. I
Speaker 1: was like, who's dumb idea was this? And I realized
Speaker 1: it was mine? Uh so I never forgot. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: c I a here is is that. I mean, people
Speaker 1: like I think the Grabster helped us put this together.
Speaker 1: He said, people make their entire careers out of just
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno, much less concepts of Hell. And uh it
Speaker 1: is very broad and dense and confusing, and so this
Speaker 1: is sort of a just a stuff you shouldn't know
Speaker 1: stab at it. Yeah, and let me just add to
Speaker 1: that that we are in no way, shape or form
Speaker 1: biblical scholars, theologians. We're gonna get a lot of stuff wrong.
Speaker 1: We're probably gonna walk right past interpretations they're popular and
Speaker 1: widely accepted. We were like, this is this is just
Speaker 1: us talking about hell, So just relax. We already know
Speaker 1: we're going to hell, so there's nothing you can do
Speaker 1: to us that's any worse. Um, So just calm down
Speaker 1: and enjoy the episode. How about that? Enjoy this episode
Speaker 1: about eternal conscious torment. Yeah, and if you are a
Speaker 1: scholar of Dante, just don't even listen. Yeah, you will
Speaker 1: literally puke into your cupped hands while you're listening to
Speaker 1: this on the train because you're that polite. That's right,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to the Science of Cute again. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was that was a reference to something that doesn't
Speaker 1: even exist yet. That's hetty. Yeah, So Chuck, I want
Speaker 1: to talk first. I'm mentioned eternal conscious torment, and that
Speaker 1: is kind of like the the broad spectrum of what
Speaker 1: most people walking around today in the Western world, whether
Speaker 1: they're Christian or just familiar with the Christian concept of hell,
Speaker 1: think of hell. It's where your your soul is tormented,
Speaker 1: beaten up, bullied, um, maybe talked about behind its back, uh,
Speaker 1: set on fire. Um. And in this in this state, um,
Speaker 1: there's no dying, there's no death of the soul. The
Speaker 1: soul is immortal. So this, this pain, this torment, this
Speaker 1: horrible nous just keeps going on forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 1: And that is that's that comes directly from St. Augustine,
Speaker 1: who kind of plays big into this concept of hell.
Speaker 1: But the idea that there's an immortal soul, that it
Speaker 1: goes somewhere after death, and that depending on how it
Speaker 1: behaved here on earth, um, it may or may not
Speaker 1: face eternal conscious torment. That is seriously, it's the theological
Speaker 1: term that they used today that strikes some people, some theologians,
Speaker 1: is wildly disproportionate to the kinds of sins we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, Like like you over indulged in fudge brownie
Speaker 1: mix during your time on Earth means that you're going
Speaker 1: to be to just suffer a literal, not never ending, infinite,
Speaker 1: eternal torment of damnation because you over indulged in brownie mix.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't quite jibe for some people. So there
Speaker 1: there have been other alternatives that were posed many many
Speaker 1: years ago, that were actually around in some cases before
Speaker 1: eternal conscious torment came around. Um that some people are saying, like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a better interpretation of what's actually going
Speaker 1: on with Hell. Are you familiar with those other interpretations well?
Speaker 1: Which ones, uh, namely universalism and annihilationism. Mm hmm. This
Speaker 1: was that thing that I was saying, we got to
Speaker 1: talk about these such check this out. I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: me wow you for a second, okay, because these are
Speaker 1: to me, the softer, gentler versions of hell. One is
Speaker 1: that the universalism. Another terms universal salvation, and it's this
Speaker 1: idea that there is an end, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: finite date to the to the torment, and that you're
Speaker 1: basically going to hell depending on how badly you sinned.
Speaker 1: But over time you can kind of work that sin
Speaker 1: off and you will eventually come out the other end
Speaker 1: saved and go to heaven. And that that happens to everybody.
Speaker 1: Everyone is is it can possibly go to heaven through
Speaker 1: this idea. The other is annihilationism, which makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to if you believe in this kind of stuff. That, um,
Speaker 1: the people who are saved, the righteous, the virtuous, people
Speaker 1: who are going to go to heaven, they go on
Speaker 1: to heaven after they die. Everybody else just ceases to exist.
Speaker 1: They're annihilated upon death. No hell, but there's no heavenly
Speaker 1: reward for those people. I like those a lot more
Speaker 1: than eternal conscious torment. The thing is, eternal conscious torment
Speaker 1: is so gripping. Yeah, that it's it's like this is
Speaker 1: this is this is just what people think of when
Speaker 1: they think of hell. And apparently, if you're an evangelical
Speaker 1: in particular and you believe in anything but eternal conscious torment,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're flirting with being shunned by your peers
Speaker 1: because you're you're going in the face of Orthodoxy. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's a lot to unpack.
Speaker 1: I know, you grew up fairly Catholic, and I've regret
Speaker 1: how many times I've had to say the word Baptist
Speaker 1: on this show. I feel like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people taking a shot right now if this is the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, drinking game. But I can't not
Speaker 1: mention that growing up Baptist, it's a very uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very fiery, brimstony um religion and it's um.
Speaker 1: I very much up with the concept, this very sort
Speaker 1: of trophy concept of heaven is this um you know,
Speaker 1: lovely place where God lives. It's in the up there
Speaker 1: in the clouds, and you go up and then if
Speaker 1: you're not good, then you go down to somewhere, I
Speaker 1: guess in the center of the earth where the devil
Speaker 1: lives and where Satan pokes you, and where you are
Speaker 1: you know, there's lakes of fire and it's all very
Speaker 1: scary and and you know, it wasn't until I got
Speaker 1: a little bit older that I realized that these are
Speaker 1: stories told to get children in line. Yeah, and not
Speaker 1: just children, adults who go on to continue to believe
Speaker 1: in how you know and and to subscribe to this stuff.
Speaker 1: For sure, it's definitely a way to keep people in line.
Speaker 1: But the concept of hell generally in the concept of souls. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is probably no surprise to most um sort
Speaker 1: of critical thinkers. But you know, the the idea of
Speaker 1: being worm dirt and after you die, that's just it
Speaker 1: is a lot to take gone as you approached that day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is really it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I think that people from very early on started to
Speaker 1: think about the concept of a soul um, a self
Speaker 1: that lived on um. And you know, it just makes
Speaker 1: sense that there's a quote good place in a bad place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is, apparently it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: have necessarily been just like part and parcels. From from
Speaker 1: what Ed's saying and from what I saw elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the research, is that heaven seemed to have developed first
Speaker 1: very early on, and then there was a real emphasis
Speaker 1: on symmetry in the ancient and in like pre modern world,
Speaker 1: where if you had one you had the opposite and
Speaker 1: equal proportions. So eventually over time that kind of was
Speaker 1: like well, if there's this really lovely place that's like
Speaker 1: paradise after you die, then there has to be the
Speaker 1: opposite of that, the antithesis of that too, And that's
Speaker 1: where this development of hell came from. But the fact
Speaker 1: that hell wasn't hasn't always been around her as long
Speaker 1: as you know, the idea of the afterlife, and then
Speaker 1: the idea that it wasn't ever hasn't always been this
Speaker 1: place where you're you were subject to the most cruel
Speaker 1: kinds of punishments available to to the human imagination. Right. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: that that's not that's not as old as as the
Speaker 1: idea of the afterlife either. That that was really surprising
Speaker 1: to me. But it's it's pretty neat because it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's almost like humanity got infected by a germ of
Speaker 1: real meanness and in darkness that we're still living with today,
Speaker 1: and that you could kind of trace it in in
Speaker 1: the evolution of our idea of hell as well or
Speaker 1: to the beginnings of Twitter. That's that's right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's evil incarnate. It depends on what religions you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but virtually every religion has some sort of afterlife concept. Um.
Speaker 1: Early judy is Um. Of course certainly does. If you
Speaker 1: read back, um ed described something from the Sumerian underworld,
Speaker 1: where they kind of more talk about hell as uh
Speaker 1: or the afterlife I guess is just sort of boring. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there wasn't you know, you didn't go to a
Speaker 1: fiery place where you're tormented. Um. They talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: being thirsty and eating dust. Certainly unpleasant. Um. But then
Speaker 1: this idea starts where you can be in a better
Speaker 1: place in the afterlife according to what you've achieved on earth,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily good deeds at first. Like if you're
Speaker 1: really rich, then you're gonna go to a good place
Speaker 1: because your family could afford to bury you with food
Speaker 1: and drink and jewels and gold and stuff like that
Speaker 1: to carry with you to the other side, and that
Speaker 1: would put you in a much better standing. But again,
Speaker 1: this is not like I was a good person. This
Speaker 1: is just I died rich. So all these really valuable
Speaker 1: things they could put underground and bury with me. Right,
Speaker 1: But in the same way to the living could care
Speaker 1: for you. They could. You might not be rich, but
Speaker 1: your family might care so much about you that they
Speaker 1: come on every Sunday whatever they called Sunday's back when
Speaker 1: the Sumerians were running around, um and bring you like
Speaker 1: a little food and a little beer or something like that.
Speaker 1: And and they were sustaining you in this place where
Speaker 1: everybody else was eating dust and dirt. But your family
Speaker 1: so loved you because you've been such a good person
Speaker 1: during your time while you were alive, that they were
Speaker 1: coming and bringing you like bread and beer. Um. And
Speaker 1: in that sense, also, Chuck, is really kind of poetic
Speaker 1: because you, that person, are living on in the memories
Speaker 1: of your family after you died, because they're coming and
Speaker 1: keeping your memory alive by bringing you bread and beer
Speaker 1: and all that. And so in that way, you are
Speaker 1: living on in this kind of immortal means as well.
Speaker 1: But the converse of that is really disturbing, and that
Speaker 1: if you don't inspire people to care about you afterwards,
Speaker 1: like you really ceased to exist, like there's there's there's
Speaker 1: no one on earth who's thinking of you, are honoring you.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, if there is no afterlife you you,
Speaker 1: that is annihilation. That is true oblivion. What Disney or
Speaker 1: Pixar movie is it? I saw it recently, that has
Speaker 1: to do it. It's brutal um like you're being erased
Speaker 1: and until you're remembered after death, Eternal Sunshine, the Spotless Mind.
Speaker 1: Now I know it's called inside out. Maybe no, that's
Speaker 1: the one about the emotions, which is equally brutal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I thought her. I thought the
Speaker 1: kids like imaginary friend was being erased or demolished. And
Speaker 1: then was that in that movie? I think so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: remember the elephant that was like George Clooney's friend Richard
Speaker 1: has it right now? It certainly seems that, Oh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. And this is officially marks the first podcast
Speaker 1: of the year where people are screaming at us, which
Speaker 1: is coincidentally the first podcast of the year that we record.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, I think it's Egypt, Ancient Egypt, where
Speaker 1: the first the first idea of like, um, this this
Speaker 1: weird sort of afterlife, uh judgment panel sort of steps
Speaker 1: in where you know, there are people like literally in
Speaker 1: charge of this thing, almost like a bureaucracy, and there's
Speaker 1: an administration and it's it sounds a little bit more
Speaker 1: like Sammy David's JRS sitcom pilot that failed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. She Devil. I don't remember it.
Speaker 1: Definitely wasn't she devil? That was wasn't it was something
Speaker 1: like that though, Yeah, but it was that was pretty good.
Speaker 1: The show was, I mean the the like one minute
Speaker 1: trailer I saw me pretty good. Um. But this, you know,
Speaker 1: the ancient Judaism sort of overlaps with some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: But Judaism is a it's a it's a whole different
Speaker 1: thing because you know, they have references. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of references to things that were later just sort of
Speaker 1: rewritten and reach translated as hell, which makes it really
Speaker 1: confusing if you look at ancient texts. Yeah, Judaism head shield, um,
Speaker 1: which is it kind of follows in that same tradition, uh,
Speaker 1: from the pre Christian era that like when you died,
Speaker 1: there was an afterlife and there wasn't much to it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't but it wasn't it wasn't particularly pleasant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently to the to the the early Jews, they were
Speaker 1: they were basically saying like this is it's the state
Speaker 1: of mind after death more than like if interdimensional like
Speaker 1: physical place that exists outside of this world, not like
Speaker 1: a realm. But yeah, like you're saying like a, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I guess a state of mind as far as
Speaker 1: as that as that goes. But it also suggests that
Speaker 1: you still have a mind after you die well, and
Speaker 1: it also suggests that um, I mean, there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of the punishment and reward, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: you go to the fiery place or you go to
Speaker 1: have and it's a little more of a spiritual connection,
Speaker 1: like if you did good on earth, you're gonna spend
Speaker 1: your afterlife a little closer to God. If you're not
Speaker 1: such a great person, you're gonna be, you know, a
Speaker 1: little further away from God, right, right. But but overall,
Speaker 1: the point of she'all was that no matter what you
Speaker 1: did on earth, no matter who you were, good person,
Speaker 1: bad person, doesn't matter, you were going to go to
Speaker 1: the same place. And even at the time, apparently they
Speaker 1: realized that this was unjust. There's like a part of
Speaker 1: I think Ecclesiastes that says that the fact that there
Speaker 1: are that everybody goes to the same place, no matter
Speaker 1: how good or bad you are in life. This is
Speaker 1: the injustice that is done under the sun. The same
Speaker 1: fate comes to everyone, which I didn't realize that Ecclesiastes rhyme,
Speaker 1: but it's got a nice, nice beat to it, nice tempo.
Speaker 1: Does it doesn't all rhyme? Does it? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I was kind of surprised at any of it rhyme.
Speaker 1: But there's that That's a really important point, Chuck that
Speaker 1: um to these ancient people, whether they were the early
Speaker 1: Jews or the Canaanites or um or the Egyptians, there
Speaker 1: was there was not punishment in the afterlife. God punished
Speaker 1: you during life like you you were suddenly you know,
Speaker 1: like directing or something like that. That was punishment from God.
Speaker 1: As we kind of evolved away from that, the idea
Speaker 1: that God had a direct daily hand in our lives
Speaker 1: as a as a a species, that punishment moved to
Speaker 1: the afterlife rather than during this life, right, which is
Speaker 1: not recognized. And Judaism of course as New Testament stuff now,
Speaker 1: And there was something else that stuck out to me
Speaker 1: is well, we'll kind of see in a second. Judaism
Speaker 1: seems to have been developed as a religion um as
Speaker 1: as contrary to some of the other religious beliefs that
Speaker 1: were around, Like they seem to have really kind of
Speaker 1: opposed the Canaanites. The Canaanites were into child sacrifice. They um,
Speaker 1: they had multiple gods, um. And the Jews kind of
Speaker 1: played off of that, like some of these these devils
Speaker 1: that we understand today, demons like malok and by all
Speaker 1: you know, be a apostrophe a l um, those were
Speaker 1: actually Canaanite gods, and they kind of perverted the pronunciation
Speaker 1: of them to kind of mock them or make them
Speaker 1: seem other or different. Um. And you think, like, well,
Speaker 1: that's not very nice. That's one religion disparaging another. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, the early Jews were saying like, also,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be sacrificing children, like that's not that's not
Speaker 1: a good thing to do. Let's practice this other thing instead.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm kind of a fan of the the
Speaker 1: of early Judaism. It turns out I had no idea
Speaker 1: you should convert. I just might. Should we take a break.
Speaker 1: I think we should. All right, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: We'll read up a little bit on whether or not
Speaker 1: you're allowed to convert, because I don't even know, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be back right after this. Have you converted?
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I'm not allowed to. It would
Speaker 1: require me to be religious. Oh well, interesting. Uh So
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about the sort of the
Speaker 1: confusion of I mean, a lot of the confusion in
Speaker 1: what we think of as hell lies in um. Just
Speaker 1: these these texts, some Hebrew text and translations and miss
Speaker 1: translations and stories that are told, you know, the old
Speaker 1: game of telephone that happened throughout the years while these
Speaker 1: things were passed on. So there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that you know over the years that you've thought of
Speaker 1: sort of as a generic hell, like Haiti, which was Greek,
Speaker 1: the Greek underworld um also synonymous with the shield, but
Speaker 1: not Hell. Uh. There's Tartarus that's in the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: also from the Greeks, that more closely resembles Hell from
Speaker 1: what I could tell. Yeah, and that's like a part
Speaker 1: of the underworld where God's in prison enemies. Um. There
Speaker 1: is like punishment, it's fiery and maybe that concept and
Speaker 1: like a lot of this what we're doing is sort
Speaker 1: of unpacking what we think of as hell now and
Speaker 1: sort of where this stuff came from. And it seems
Speaker 1: like Tartarus is uh is definitely one of those places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like Hades and she all more closely resemble purgatory
Speaker 1: um or Limbo, where Tartarus. Yes, is definitely hell. Hell,
Speaker 1: Like that's where torment and fire is and all all
Speaker 1: this stuff that's really kind of like popped up to me.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, this is like are what we think
Speaker 1: of as hell today? Even like the cartoon Hell with
Speaker 1: like the pitchfork in the fire and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: This is some ancient stuff that it's built on. Over
Speaker 1: EON's you know, like the earliest people who started burying
Speaker 1: their dead because they thought like maybe there was a
Speaker 1: life afterward. And it just kind of evolved from that, Colonel,
Speaker 1: and more and more civilizations came along and added to
Speaker 1: it and subtracted to it and said no, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: No you're wrong, and let's go to war over this.
Speaker 1: Like Hell is like this hammered steel drum that's been
Speaker 1: hammered out by you know, millennia of of people and cultures,
Speaker 1: and it sounds pretty good. Yeah. I thought you were
Speaker 1: about to say by John Bonham did he play a
Speaker 1: steel drum? No, but it just you sounded it sounded
Speaker 1: like the intro to it led Zeppelin song their first
Speaker 1: second um Gehenna is something else we should mention. This
Speaker 1: is another kind of quote unquote hell um But this
Speaker 1: was a real place. It was a literal place near
Speaker 1: Jerusalem where it sounds like it was kind of a
Speaker 1: uh some sort of ancient uh almost the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, not necessarily a where where do you take
Speaker 1: all the trash? Episode about it? Land land? Yeah, sort
Speaker 1: of a landfill on fire. Okay, that's one interpretation, which
Speaker 1: is a great record title. I think landfill, Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: But this is where they like would take stuff to burn, um,
Speaker 1: trash basically. And uh there might have also been child
Speaker 1: sacrifice happening there because I guess they figured, well, there's
Speaker 1: a fire already happening, so we won't have to start one. Um.
Speaker 1: It depends on what source you're looking at. But it
Speaker 1: became a metaphorical hell where a place that was on fire.
Speaker 1: You could be sent there. It was a place of judgment,
Speaker 1: you could be cast into it. Uh. And that's in
Speaker 1: the New Testament of course. Um. So that's another sort
Speaker 1: of hades like um, I guess usage that just makes
Speaker 1: it all the more confusing. Yeah. But again, like like
Speaker 1: you know, as we're getting further and further along and
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into Christianity, which we haven't quite hit yet,
Speaker 1: when Gehennah was first introduced because I think that's Jewish, right,
Speaker 1: It's like a Jewish So even though it is in
Speaker 1: the New Testament um, which has even more confusing right,
Speaker 1: but it kind of shows you how like connected, like
Speaker 1: these these civilizations and groups were over the ages, you
Speaker 1: know that this still popped up just borrowing things from
Speaker 1: one another exactly. But then as these translations, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of go on over the centuries and there's newer
Speaker 1: and different versions of the Bible and the New Testament,
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, like you know, all these things just
Speaker 1: become this generic Hell, which kind of opens it up two,
Speaker 1: making how this big, huge, amorphous place where oh, it's
Speaker 1: like this, but it's also like this, and it's like that.
Speaker 1: And by naming everything just Hell and losing that kind
Speaker 1: of the ethnicity involved, the Christians were able to kind
Speaker 1: of wholesale adopt all of these ancient traditions and conceptions
Speaker 1: of Hell into their own version of Hell. And this
Speaker 1: is the Christian Hell, whereas if you kind of start
Speaker 1: poking behind it, you're like, oh, this is this Christian
Speaker 1: Hell is made up of all these other conceptions of
Speaker 1: hell along the way. So as far as like uh,
Speaker 1: and I love that Ed calls a section the topology
Speaker 1: of Hell, but that's sort of you know, a big
Speaker 1: part of it is um. And we mentioned a little
Speaker 1: bit Heaven as this place where God lives that's above you,
Speaker 1: up in the sky because it's pretty no one really
Speaker 1: knows exactly where all that comes from, but it all
Speaker 1: does make sense UM that you know, you look to
Speaker 1: the skies when you pray, you look up when you're
Speaker 1: talking to God. And if that's the case, then it
Speaker 1: makes sense that, like you said, with the symmetry, that
Speaker 1: there is another place we bury the dead underground, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that there would be a place that's deep
Speaker 1: and dark and fiery. I guess you know, cave like
Speaker 1: deep underground. That stuff is scary. So it makes sense
Speaker 1: that Hell just sort of became this place that's uh,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, under our eat somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what was interesting to me is that like disconnected
Speaker 1: UM groups and cultures, not just geographically but through time
Speaker 1: as well, all had that same conception that like Hell
Speaker 1: was underground and Heaven was somewhere above us or in
Speaker 1: the sky. UM like the Mayan's had a place called Shebalba,
Speaker 1: which is like I guess translates to a place of fear,
Speaker 1: and that is when you die. You start out there
Speaker 1: and it's underground, and it's hellish and scary, and you
Speaker 1: have to work your way up basically into the sky
Speaker 1: to paradise. Um, and she all was underground. It was
Speaker 1: connected to the grave, and that seems to be where
Speaker 1: this idea also not just that heaven was in the sky,
Speaker 1: so hell must be underground, but also that there has
Speaker 1: to be some connection underground because we've been burying people
Speaker 1: or at least putting our dead in you know, deep
Speaker 1: dark caves for at least a hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: years from what I seen, but um, it may even
Speaker 1: go back before that. In Neanderthals, I think buried they're dead.
Speaker 1: Even so, it's a really kind of ancient impulse to
Speaker 1: like put your dead underground or in some some underground,
Speaker 1: subterranean place like a cave chamber. So of course that
Speaker 1: would be connected to the afterlife in some way. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting that it's like, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, there's not a single culture that's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where heaven is is underground. Yeah, And it's like
Speaker 1: I find myself saying, well, it makes sense because you
Speaker 1: climb your way out of hell with good works towards heaven.
Speaker 1: Like it's sort of a chicken or the egg thing,
Speaker 1: Like it makes sense to me, But it only makes
Speaker 1: sense because that's the way it's always been framed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a few thousand years of culture behind that, that
Speaker 1: way that you were raised or I was raised, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you mentioned purgatory. Um, this is the realm of
Speaker 1: the afterlife. Uh, purgatory is um. It's like a waiting
Speaker 1: room where you were waiting to be judged. Um. It
Speaker 1: is not. It's not like a great place. It's not
Speaker 1: like an awesome waiting room with like the best magazines.
Speaker 1: It's more like the waiting room with umoylights and high lights, right,
Speaker 1: nothing but highlights and boys life and all of the
Speaker 1: puzzles are already filled out. Yeah or oh man. The
Speaker 1: worst is any doctor's office where it's nothing but like
Speaker 1: medical and health magazines. Like, no one wants to read
Speaker 1: that stuff in there, No they don't. You want to
Speaker 1: read a three year old sports illustrated right, and everybody
Speaker 1: else in the waiting room is not wearing a mask.
Speaker 1: Oh no, thank you. It's it's the version of hell. Dude.
Speaker 1: That's my new nightmare. I've had having those about three
Speaker 1: times a week where I'm being descended upon. There they
Speaker 1: seem like zombies, but they're just people without mask right,
Speaker 1: it's weird potato potato. But you know what's funny? Has
Speaker 1: this has happened to you where you where you watch
Speaker 1: like movies or TV shows or something pre COVID and
Speaker 1: it's like you're way too close to that person. Get back,
Speaker 1: like we have been changed, man, possibly for ever. Oh
Speaker 1: I think you'd be surprised how quickly we'll forget. I
Speaker 1: hope so, oh man, I hope, so, I hope this
Speaker 1: all just becomes like some bad dream that just fades
Speaker 1: over time. And now my mom's getting vaccinated this Saturday.
Speaker 1: Good for her, Jack, she needs to do live on
Speaker 1: Instagram or something. Yeah. She was like, you know, should
Speaker 1: I have any reservations? It was like nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 1: And she's like, well then I mean I have to
Speaker 1: wait in line. You're like, oh, those reservations, make reservations,
Speaker 1: make reservations, but yes, stuck. Being stuck in purgatory is
Speaker 1: not a good thing. Um, so it's not it's not hell,
Speaker 1: but it's not someplace where you want to be. That's
Speaker 1: why people you know, use that term now like I'm
Speaker 1: in purgatory. Yeah, And there's something about purgatory that hadn't
Speaker 1: really realized it. It's not interchangeable with limbo. When you
Speaker 1: go into limbo, you're there forever, Like that's where you
Speaker 1: spend eternity, sometimes by no fault of your own. Like
Speaker 1: this is where people who lived before Christ ever existed,
Speaker 1: um go after they die, because they can't possibly have
Speaker 1: been Christians, so they're not being punished, but they're not
Speaker 1: being rewarded by you know, in heaven. It's kind of mean.
Speaker 1: Purgatory is a place where you I guess have to
Speaker 1: have been a Christian but maybe elapsed Christian, a Christian
Speaker 1: who sin something like that, to where you can you
Speaker 1: can work it off and and you know, go on
Speaker 1: to heaven. And that's kind of that universalism or universal
Speaker 1: salvation idea. It's like that's all there is. The hell
Speaker 1: is purgatory where you can work it off over time
Speaker 1: and and be saved. And then also really jibes too
Speaker 1: with this idea chuck of Um of the Buddhist hell. Basically,
Speaker 1: the Buddhists have a concept of hell where I think
Speaker 1: called naraka, which is also a Hindu concept. But um,
Speaker 1: there's this this idea that you're you're there for very
Speaker 1: in in each of these hells. You have to go
Speaker 1: through these hells, and your lifetime there's very specific, like
Speaker 1: your your lifetime in this hell is one point six
Speaker 1: two trillion years, and then the next hell is like,
Speaker 1: you know, a quadrillion years or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: but you eventually work your karma off on Earth. And
Speaker 1: if there's a real striking resemblance this Buddhist hell to
Speaker 1: some you know, Christian and Jewish interpretations of hell, or
Speaker 1: I should say some Christian interpretations of hell where you
Speaker 1: can work off your bad deeds and then go on
Speaker 1: to Nirvana or heaven. That's because they'll borrowed from one another,
Speaker 1: it's really I mean, that's basically the fact of the
Speaker 1: podcast is that there's a lot of um incestuous interchange
Speaker 1: between the religions overlap, that's another way to put it.
Speaker 1: What I think is also interesting is the concept of
Speaker 1: temperature in hell. Um, it's a very big deal. You
Speaker 1: always think of of fire and heat and sweatiness, but
Speaker 1: that's not always the case. There are frozen hell's um
Speaker 1: aside from you know, the Dakota's, Uh that Naraka you
Speaker 1: were talking about. I think that's a frozen hell, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's eight hot hells and eight cold hells. And the
Speaker 1: eight cold hells are like, in this one, your skin
Speaker 1: starts a blister. In this one, it's so cold that
Speaker 1: the blisters break, and then it just keeps going from there,
Speaker 1: like all these horrible things happen to you from being
Speaker 1: exposed to the cold. Yeah, it's very interesting. I guess
Speaker 1: it's just sort of a variation of the same thing,
Speaker 1: like something really cold can burn you. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean it really kind of gives you this idea, Chuck.
Speaker 1: There's like so much thought has been given to all
Speaker 1: the little horrible details of Hell, and I wonder, like
Speaker 1: what what that satisfies? Like, couldn't you just be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we all believe that there's a hell and it's a
Speaker 1: horrible place as bad as you can imagine. Just go
Speaker 1: with that. What what was the purpose of going into
Speaker 1: all this detail? I think this I think the specificity
Speaker 1: if if Hell and the and sins on Earth are
Speaker 1: to be punished in the afterlife. To me, it would
Speaker 1: make sense that there would be a great specificity put
Speaker 1: forward so people know exactly how bad it is, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to inform their deeds on earth. Like it's
Speaker 1: not just hey, it's a bad place. You don't want
Speaker 1: to go there. It's like it's a place where your
Speaker 1: skin will melt off and you will be you know,
Speaker 1: you'll have to push this fireball around for eternity or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, and then person, it's like fireball. That
Speaker 1: sounds terrible, Like I was okay with with this thing,
Speaker 1: but maybe I should get a better person. I guess
Speaker 1: I won't steal this car after all. But it's all
Speaker 1: like fear stuff and that you know that existed right
Speaker 1: through my religion, you know, and we still exist today.
Speaker 1: Do you remember roughly how old you were when you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't actually believe this anymore. I'm free. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: started in sort of Middish high school, but I was
Speaker 1: still sort of doing this stuff and hanging with a
Speaker 1: certain crowds. Certain crowds do you mean, like the opposite
Speaker 1: of certain crowds? No, you know, going to like young
Speaker 1: life and uh a f C A and stuff like
Speaker 1: that into early college, and the big transformation I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this before was when I took a religion
Speaker 1: class in college, and I did learn that so much
Speaker 1: of this stuff is kind of all the same and
Speaker 1: borrowed from one another, and that is antithetical to grow
Speaker 1: up in the Christian Baptist Church, where they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is the only truth. Everyone else is wrong. And
Speaker 1: then when I said, well, wait about what about all
Speaker 1: these other religions that are really really similar. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I had that was a big reckoning and then it
Speaker 1: was just sort of gradual from there. Your comparative religion
Speaker 1: class was taught by Professor Lewis Cipher. Oh man, he
Speaker 1: had a he had a heck of a ponytail. I
Speaker 1: just been out Cipher. I thought that was really clever
Speaker 1: back when I saw that movie. Yeah, and looking back,
Speaker 1: it's pretty dumb, wouldn't it, angel Hart, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: good enough movie, very much of its time. But I
Speaker 1: remember thinking that Louis Cipher thing was like, whoa, right, right,
Speaker 1: there's a restaurant I think in like d C. Maybe
Speaker 1: Louis Cipher's yes, And I'm like, that's that's an unusual
Speaker 1: choice to base your restaurant franchise on Satan. You know,
Speaker 1: we love it. Should we take another break? Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: all right, more judgment and punishment coming up right after this. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you promised judgment, you promised punishment. Let's let's lay it
Speaker 1: on us. Well, I mean, you know, this is like
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier in the Old Testament, like God directly
Speaker 1: punished people, you could be smited or blinded or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the New Testament is when things got a little
Speaker 1: more organized, and it was literally like here's the sections
Speaker 1: of hell. If you did this, you go here. If
Speaker 1: you did this on Earth, you go there. Um. And
Speaker 1: a lot of this is informed by writers um and
Speaker 1: and not even like biblical scholars, like people like Plato
Speaker 1: um And a lot of these stories again are really
Speaker 1: really similar. There's a story from Plato's Republic where a
Speaker 1: man named Er e Er goes into a coma, journeys
Speaker 1: through the underworld and then wakes up and then tells
Speaker 1: everyone what happened down there. And this has a lot
Speaker 1: of reward and punishment included in a really organized system.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of stories really similar to
Speaker 1: that um throughout time that you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they were based on Plato or or the Republic
Speaker 1: or just like we've been talking about, sort of overlapping incestuous.
Speaker 1: I think you can make the case that they were
Speaker 1: based on Plato because Plato he wasn't the first to
Speaker 1: come up with the idea of the immortal soul. And UM,
Speaker 1: they're they're being like judgment and torment, you know, potentially
Speaker 1: afterward if not reward UM. But he really kind of
Speaker 1: um boosted it. I guess he signaled boosted the idea
Speaker 1: of an eternal soul impossible damn nation UM. And he
Speaker 1: directly influenced uh St Augustin and Augustine. Uh definitely influenced
Speaker 1: some of these later guys like drip Helm and tundale
Speaker 1: Um and their idea of how but Augustine was influenced
Speaker 1: by by Plato and Augustine had the other distinction along
Speaker 1: with Um. I think Augustine and St. Gregory were really
Speaker 1: kind of big time into that eternal damn nation idea.
Speaker 1: But Augustine also was the one who basically said, this
Speaker 1: is orth that I see, this is the correct interpretation
Speaker 1: of the scripture. If you don't believe it, we we
Speaker 1: are fine with inflicting violence upon you, that same tradition
Speaker 1: of what you were saying, where this is the only
Speaker 1: truth in anybody who believes anything else is wrong. That
Speaker 1: finds its source at the very least, it finds its
Speaker 1: early popularity from St. Augustine. So this idea of uh,
Speaker 1: eternal damnation and if you don't believe in that, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: that kind of finds its its place in the early
Speaker 1: Christian Church, and I think the fifth century. And so
Speaker 1: you do have these guys who came later, like drip
Speaker 1: Helm and Tundale, who had nothing to do with scripture,
Speaker 1: but their their experiences where basically they died and came
Speaker 1: back to the life and said, there's a hell and
Speaker 1: it's awful. Really kind of informed our idea of what
Speaker 1: hell is like. And it seems to be based a
Speaker 1: lot on this ide these ideas by Augustine, who got
Speaker 1: his ideas from Plato, who got his ideas from God
Speaker 1: knows who. God does know who. Uh. If you really
Speaker 1: want to drill down though to um where we get
Speaker 1: many many of our ideas of what we think of
Speaker 1: as hell is Dante, of course, who we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Um I did not even know Dante's last name until uh,
Speaker 1: until we researched this. But it's and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some great Italian coming up. Everyone but Dante Algieri in
Speaker 1: his Divine Comedy and specifically Um Inferno. Dante's Inferno is
Speaker 1: is really um really where we get a lot of
Speaker 1: what we think of as hell today comes from Inferno
Speaker 1: as far as and people even say without even knowing,
Speaker 1: like the eighth circle of Hell and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Like I've been guilty of saying that my whole life
Speaker 1: and not really understanding what the heck that even meant.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting, too, is so Dante wrote the the Inferno, well,
Speaker 1: he wrote the Divine Comedy UM in the early thirteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I guess it took him fifteen years um. And so
Speaker 1: this is the undreds, and he writes about these nine
Speaker 1: circles of Hell, the nine concentric circles of Hell, like
Speaker 1: that is a really ancient concept, even though he divided
Speaker 1: it and like really um enunciated all of the different
Speaker 1: distinctions in a really popular way. Um. Like that that's
Speaker 1: really old. Like think of that Naraka, there's eight hot
Speaker 1: hot hells, there's eight cold hells. There's like this idea
Speaker 1: of different stages, Like the minds even had this idea
Speaker 1: where you progress through these different stages up the tree
Speaker 1: of life from that that dark underworld. Um, that's a
Speaker 1: really ancient idea. But yeah, Dante was definitely the one
Speaker 1: who you would credit with this, you know, coming up
Speaker 1: with it, even though it's totally wrong. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: also important to remember when Dante wrote this stuff, it
Speaker 1: was in it was the last fifteen years of his life,
Speaker 1: and this was after he battled the pope and the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and was exiled from Florence. So a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff is just reeks of sort of having
Speaker 1: a bone to pick and like, hey, the things that
Speaker 1: happened to me, like they're going to be slotted in
Speaker 1: like and it's almost like, uh like using his own
Speaker 1: experience to to create the symbolism of like, this is
Speaker 1: what happened to me, and that makes you the worst
Speaker 1: person if you did these things exactly Like I'm going
Speaker 1: to put you in hell in my book. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of those people were alive and like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: don't don't put me in hell, Like this is not
Speaker 1: you can't do that, And he's like, I just did
Speaker 1: you know here's a nice cube. Have fun. So he
Speaker 1: um Dante. One of his big things and that I
Speaker 1: think made his work so famous too, was he um
Speaker 1: really got into contraposso you want to take that? No,
Speaker 1: that was great, Um. I didn't even pinch my fingers
Speaker 1: and thumb together. Uh. And contraposso is basically this this
Speaker 1: poetic eye for an eye where you know if you
Speaker 1: if you do this on earth, if you sin in
Speaker 1: this way, your punishment is going to be some poetic
Speaker 1: justice um in the afterlife. And that was the whole
Speaker 1: point of of Hell as far as Dante was concerned.
Speaker 1: It was where God got justice for things that were
Speaker 1: done wrong here on earth. And apparently it said as much.
Speaker 1: Over the gate of Hell Um it said you to
Speaker 1: ze most say il mio alto fatore, which means justice
Speaker 1: moved my high maker, Um, which is basically saying like,
Speaker 1: this is what this place is for, is to get justice.
Speaker 1: And there's also a very famous um inscription over the
Speaker 1: gates of Hell abandoned all hope he who interheed, and
Speaker 1: that came from Uh Dante's Inferno as well. How is
Speaker 1: that what that's from? Mm hmmm. That's good stuff. It
Speaker 1: really is It was also used to great effect in
Speaker 1: Boondocks Saints So Dante and Virgil are um. Before they
Speaker 1: even go to Hell, they have to cross the over
Speaker 1: at Huron and deal with Sharon the boatman, which is
Speaker 1: you know, I think this has been used a million
Speaker 1: times too in literature and pop culture, like this, this
Speaker 1: boat person that has to transport someone across this river
Speaker 1: to a different place. Sometimes you have to pass a
Speaker 1: test um, you know, like Monty Python style basically. And
Speaker 1: that's so weird. Right as I said that, I just
Speaker 1: looked up to our Aaron Cooper special Monty Python photoshop
Speaker 1: poster where I'm King Arthur and you are one of
Speaker 1: the nights. It's Stricklin is in there too, Yeah, isn't
Speaker 1: he like the page with the coconuts? Yeah? And there
Speaker 1: he else is over there. Now I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: picture of me face punching George Lucas. You haven't been
Speaker 1: in this room in a while, have you? No? No,
Speaker 1: But I remember it pretty well. It's burned in your
Speaker 1: brain after twelve years. Uh So where was I You
Speaker 1: were talking about the river sticks and or Archer Honor,
Speaker 1: and which is might as well be the River sticks? Right, right?
Speaker 1: But it is. It's like straight up taken from the Greeks,
Speaker 1: and yet this devout Christian Dante is is writing about
Speaker 1: it like this the Christian Hell, And it really kind
Speaker 1: of goes to to show you just how much literary
Speaker 1: license he took with this well and how much um
Speaker 1: he borrowed from the Greeks, because like you, you would
Speaker 1: think this is probably the Christian stance on on hell,
Speaker 1: and it's not um. Like, for instance, Dante sees uh
Speaker 1: thinks that it's a virtue if you're have moderation in
Speaker 1: your life, like you don't wanna be too spindy and greedy,
Speaker 1: also don't want to be too miserly, But that's not
Speaker 1: a Christian thing at all, Like that's not in the
Speaker 1: Tin Commandments. It's not one of the seven Deadly sins
Speaker 1: or anything like that. No, there's gluttony, but miserly nous
Speaker 1: is not in there, right, Yeah, So he's definitely just
Speaker 1: saying this is this is what I Dante think. But
Speaker 1: I guess it just hit a nerve because I mean, like,
Speaker 1: like we were saying at the outset like this is
Speaker 1: this is just this is basically what people think of
Speaker 1: when they think of hell. These days if not the
Speaker 1: fire and the red pitchfork and all that. All right,
Speaker 1: So first circle limbo, not purgatory like we mentioned. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is where you can like it's it's not terrible,
Speaker 1: but it is hell and it's sort of unfair like
Speaker 1: you said, Uh, you know, if you're not like, you
Speaker 1: could just be born before Christ and you can be
Speaker 1: in limbo, right like Aristotle's there. Aristotle was great and
Speaker 1: virtuous and one of the greatest thinkers the world's ever produced.
Speaker 1: Yet he's stuck in limbo because he existed before Christ
Speaker 1: so couldn't possibly be saved. So what's next? Lust is next?
Speaker 1: And this is pretty interesting too in that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: some other people who had seen visions of hell, like
Speaker 1: the the you know, medieval nights we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: they're talking about like you know, oh yeah, they they
Speaker 1: nail your sack to a board with rusty nails, are
Speaker 1: just really juvenile stuff. Dante goes a lot more poetic,
Speaker 1: and that his idea of lust is is their punishment
Speaker 1: for lust is you know, lovers are blown about by
Speaker 1: the wind so that they can never quite get together
Speaker 1: and there's always you know, kept just just out of
Speaker 1: each other's reach, which is you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: lot more poetic than than the other one. Did you say,
Speaker 1: nail your sack to a board, Yeah, like your backpack? Yes, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right. The third circle is gluttony. Uh. Here you're
Speaker 1: stuck in the mud and it's you're being pummeled by
Speaker 1: hail and freezing rain. And um, this is where he
Speaker 1: got a little bit of his bone to pick out
Speaker 1: on Florence and what a terrible place that was. Um.
Speaker 1: The fourth circle is where we get into the greed
Speaker 1: and the miserly. Um. Basically, um, it's the circle of moderation, like,
Speaker 1: don't go too far in either direction. Yeah, And he
Speaker 1: really kind of plays into that symmetry as well, where
Speaker 1: on the one side are the people who are super
Speaker 1: gluttonous and like they spend just tons of money, and
Speaker 1: then on the other side there are the people who
Speaker 1: are super stingy and hoard their money. They're really two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. I think Dante is correct
Speaker 1: in that sense, and so they're both in that same
Speaker 1: circle of hell, but on opposite sides of the circle.
Speaker 1: The number five is that, Yeah, that's that's where those
Speaker 1: of us who are um who get road rage will
Speaker 1: be potentually that's where I'm gonna be Unford, all right,
Speaker 1: and you're in the river sticks in that case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just losh it around, being like I'm so married
Speaker 1: about everything. Uh, circle number six everyone. It feels like
Speaker 1: a Dave Letterman Top ten does all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: These are heretics, These are pagans, these are atheists. These
Speaker 1: are people who, while they were on Earth, were like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna have a good time while i'm here.
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about salvation. Yeah, and Epicurious in particular,
Speaker 1: Ler's there and I was like, why Epicurious? And apparently
Speaker 1: he very much and his followers did not believe in
Speaker 1: any kind of afterlife, which is why they're like, make
Speaker 1: the most of your time here on earth. I guess
Speaker 1: that's where I am. Yeah. Um. It's basically another way
Speaker 1: to interpret that is that these were people who's so
Speaker 1: discord by injecting alternative ideas into the believers minds. All right,
Speaker 1: well maybe I'm not there then, um no. Like also,
Speaker 1: if you if you don't believe in an afterlife and
Speaker 1: you're enjoying your time here on earth, you go there
Speaker 1: either way you're scrowgy. Either way, well, at least we'll
Speaker 1: be there together. Um. We also, I don't think we
Speaker 1: mentioned that Virgil, the poet virgil Um is the one
Speaker 1: who's guiding Dante around through these these things, and I
Speaker 1: guess it's kind of acting is like his um uh
Speaker 1: oh what is the name of from New York Dolls
Speaker 1: and scrooged buster point X. He's acting as Dante's buster
Speaker 1: point decks um, and so virtual's escorting him around. They
Speaker 1: get to the seventh circle of hell Um, which contains
Speaker 1: the city of dis which dis or is this in
Speaker 1: the sixth I think it's in the sixth Yeah comes
Speaker 1: after Yeah, So the and so a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of people, um kind of chop up these circles
Speaker 1: of hell into the first through third, the second through
Speaker 1: the sixth, and the seventh through the ninth. And apparently
Speaker 1: Dante considered basically the first through the six is all
Speaker 1: kind of generally in the same category, which was they
Speaker 1: were sins of incontinence where people just couldn't resist the
Speaker 1: earthly temptations. They had a weakness of will. They're you know,
Speaker 1: they're being tormented because they made these choices. But Also
Speaker 1: this is really it's it's forgivable stuff. Seventh through nine
Speaker 1: is where who he considers the the gen new in centers,
Speaker 1: the evil people reside. Yeah, this is where arsonists and murderers.
Speaker 1: Um that he actually framed, you know, suicide as one
Speaker 1: of these Uh in that seventh circle, Um, the eighth circle,
Speaker 1: and you know this is it gets a little confusing
Speaker 1: because in their smaller pockets within these circles. Uh. And again,
Speaker 1: if you're a scholar of Dante, just I'm so so sorry,
Speaker 1: so sorry. Yeah, hopefully they turned this. But the eighth
Speaker 1: circle is for ten kinds of fraud. And then the
Speaker 1: ninth circle is finally where Satan is and this is
Speaker 1: for for Satan and as the lead trader basically um,
Speaker 1: not trader but trade or which is you know, this
Speaker 1: is a big one for me. I mean as a
Speaker 1: Pisces Uh Sabbath fan of Black Sabbath like loyalty and
Speaker 1: um is very important. Broken trust is to me like
Speaker 1: of the worst things someone can do. And so I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that was picy in in nature. Yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: pice in very loyal very friendships and relationships are sort
Speaker 1: of the utmost importance to be betrayed is like just
Speaker 1: kind of the worst thing you can do. So this
Speaker 1: is this would be your your you'd really enjoy this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that's my eighth circle. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting in that Satan, the ultimate trader to God,
Speaker 1: is stuck there but could get out. Um. In theory,
Speaker 1: if Satan just realized that, like, hey, I'm beneath God
Speaker 1: and I can recognize God as being above me and
Speaker 1: I am not God's equal. Um. And it's a frozen
Speaker 1: it gets a little confusing, but it's a frozen lake.
Speaker 1: It's a little antithetical to what we think about is
Speaker 1: Satan is being fiery, because what happens is the lake
Speaker 1: with thaw and free Satan. If he wasn't flapping his
Speaker 1: big bat wings to try and fly up to God
Speaker 1: to proof he's as equal, but instead of Satan's wings,
Speaker 1: I guess throwing forth like fire what you would think
Speaker 1: and actually I guess is icy and it just keeps
Speaker 1: that like frozen. Right. But if he would just yeah,
Speaker 1: if he'd just give up, then he'd stopped beating his
Speaker 1: wings and then it wouldn't all right, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: he would be free. But then he just wouldn't be
Speaker 1: Satan anymore. You know what I mean, to be a
Speaker 1: broken version of Satan, and who wants that? Right then
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have Tommy Davis Junior TV pilot. Yeah, right, exactly. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like our idea of Hell just
Speaker 1: ended at Dante. But I was like, yep, that's it.
Speaker 1: Don't need to add to it, Like plenty of people
Speaker 1: have over time. One of the coolest I've seen I
Speaker 1: cannot remember what it was, but I suspect that was
Speaker 1: an aon flux Um cartoon on Remember Liquids on MTV.
Speaker 1: I think somehow aon flux ended up in Hell and
Speaker 1: like this, the the weird conception of it was just
Speaker 1: so unsettling. Everything was just so off. It was really
Speaker 1: well done, and I'll have to go, like see if
Speaker 1: I can find it. All I could find was that
Speaker 1: aon Flex the movie sucked. That's all you can find
Speaker 1: when you search a on Flex in Hell right now.
Speaker 1: But um, I really want to find that again. If
Speaker 1: I do, I'll have to tweet it out. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could do a whole second podcast episode on popular
Speaker 1: versions of Hell and pop culture and movies and TV
Speaker 1: and literature. Paintings. Serronamous Bosh is a great example. Um.
Speaker 1: I love those paintings. This was a couple of centuries
Speaker 1: after Inferno. But these are the ones that look like
Speaker 1: sort of in default album covers. Um. They're great, very
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Uh. And you know, like I said, there's
Speaker 1: scores of versions of Hell, from Clive Barker to Marvel
Speaker 1: Comics Too, to Sammy Davis Jr. And The Good Place.
Speaker 1: They're all over the place. So it's definitely something that's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just weirdly captured pop cultures imagination,
Speaker 1: just as much as it did thousands of years ago
Speaker 1: with religion. You know, one of the greatest, one of
Speaker 1: the other great um conceptions of the afterlife, not necessarily hell,
Speaker 1: but hell ish um is found in this. I think
Speaker 1: I've mentioned it before a Joyce Carol Oates short story
Speaker 1: called night Side, where there's this um seance and like
Speaker 1: the spirits that are contacted are like all freaked out
Speaker 1: because there's no it's all just chaos. Nobody. I think
Speaker 1: they keep saying, like no one's in charge and like
Speaker 1: everything is just out of order. Um. And it's a
Speaker 1: really like unsettling read like Joyce Killer Oates is so
Speaker 1: good with horror, but that that particular one is super disturbing.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend everybody reading it. Yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: want to see a fun take on the afterlife, watch
Speaker 1: the great Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that is such a great movie. One of the all
Speaker 1: time great sleeper films ever, wonderful, so good. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good that's a treat right there. Good for you,
Speaker 1: the great Albert Brooks. Yeah. Well, since Chuck can't stop
Speaker 1: talking about Albert Brooks, I think that means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener. Ma'm fun. Fact a lot of people know this.
Speaker 1: Albert Brooks born Albert Einstein. No, yes, no, yes, brother
Speaker 1: of super Dave Osborne. I guess I had known that,
Speaker 1: but only when Super Dave died recently, right, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he did die. Their birth name was Einstein. I think
Speaker 1: I think Super Dave Osborne was super Dave Einstein. No,
Speaker 1: I think it was Bob Einstein. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think so, I don't know, but that he's like
Speaker 1: from the Larry Bud Melman era of Letterman and yeah,
Speaker 1: good stuff. Oh yeah, So if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about Hell, just start sending your a off and
Speaker 1: you'll find out about it soon enough. And like I said,
Speaker 1: since Chuck keeps talking about Albert Brooks, it is time
Speaker 1: for a listener. Man. Yeah, I'm gonna call this one
Speaker 1: of our great senior listeners. Uh. And this this lady
Speaker 1: is from Australia. Hello, guys. I'm an eighty year old
Speaker 1: woman in aged care. My life was very mundane and
Speaker 1: quite boring. I finally bought a mobility scooter now uh
Speaker 1: and I could get out and ride the wonderful pathways
Speaker 1: and visit the shops. My son Robert, thought I needed
Speaker 1: more interest, so he hooked my phone up to Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck podcasts. Wow, all capitals. How I love riding
Speaker 1: around on my scooter and listening to your wonderful humor
Speaker 1: and mostly interesting things in quotes. I love it. So
Speaker 1: perhaps she even has the book. I have learned so
Speaker 1: much about everything, love Elvis, visiting Nixon for a NARC, Badge,
Speaker 1: Building Boulder, Damn, Francis Perkins, etcetera. Just everything. Guys, keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. Cheers from Glenda on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
Speaker 1: Very nice. That was Glenda write. Yeah, I just love
Speaker 1: hearing from Glinda. She's great. Thank you, Glenda. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think Glenda should write in every once in a while.
Speaker 1: I was just say hi and talk about her favorite
Speaker 1: recent episode. I would love What do you think, Glenda,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, please do that and what was her son?
Speaker 1: Richard Robert Robert Robert. Thank you for turning your mom
Speaker 1: onto stuff you should Know. Um, well, if you wanna
Speaker 1: talk about how you turn somebody onto stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear about that. That's great. You
Speaker 1: can write us in an email, wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
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