Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's
Speaker 2: chalk and cherries here too. And this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know about humanism, which I find fairly relatable in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways and in other ways not necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we we'll get into it.
Speaker 3: Can we say Whatlivia titled this one? She's been really
Speaker 3: killing it lately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: This is on humanism, the bright side of being a
Speaker 2: godless heathen.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: I was looking for that, aha definition, because that put
Speaker 3: it about as good as anything in this whole article.
Speaker 3: The is it American Humanist Association? Is it an association?
Speaker 2: Yes, they are associated.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They put it like this, It's a progressive philosophy of
Speaker 3: life that without theism or other supernatural beliefs. Bit of
Speaker 3: a dig affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical
Speaker 3: lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.
Speaker 3: And of course, if you don't know what theism is,
Speaker 3: we're talking about, you know, religion and God. So it's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you can be a good person and have a moral
Speaker 3: and ethical center and strive to do those things without God.
Speaker 3: At the center of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And most humanists, I yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it's fair to say most are atheists or at least agnostic. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at the very least if they do believe in a God,
Speaker 2: he's not an interventionist God. He's not playing our role
Speaker 2: in our lives day to day. Maybe you could also
Speaker 2: interchange that definition of God with the universe or nature
Speaker 2: or something like that, but not God in any religious
Speaker 2: way whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in fact, like if you do believe that, a
Speaker 2: lot of like like strict humanists will say, well, you
Speaker 2: can't really be a humanist because not believing in God
Speaker 2: in that sense is a core part of humanism. And
Speaker 2: a lot of other people say, hey, you're a humanist.
Speaker 2: Who are you to tell me what I believe? Now
Speaker 2: the humanist says, you got me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And as we'll see it, you know, it had kind
Speaker 3: of been tangled up with religion here and there until
Speaker 3: it kind of landed eventually where it did.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk a little bit about the history though.
Speaker 3: That term humanism goes back to at least Cicero in
Speaker 3: first century BCE, Rome, when that very famous writer and
Speaker 3: I think lawyer and Statesman use the word humanitis to
Speaker 3: describe like people developing or the development of these qualities,
Speaker 3: these virtuous qualities that Chuck will talk about, like a
Speaker 3: moral and ethical center, compassion, good judgment, like being a
Speaker 3: good person and doing good things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we leap frog all the way over
Speaker 2: to the Renaissance. And you'll know that we leapt over
Speaker 2: what are called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, Medieval era.
Speaker 2: The Renaissance humanists are the ones who gave us the
Speaker 2: term and the idea of the Dark Ages, that there
Speaker 2: was a part of history where essentially the Church ruled
Speaker 2: everything with an iron fist. Corruption was rampant, and people
Speaker 2: were removed from their relationship with God and the Church
Speaker 2: was inserted. And what these earliest Renaissance humanists did. They
Speaker 2: were all Christians to a person, most of them Catholics too.
Speaker 2: They changed that whole idea and said, what happens if
Speaker 2: we get the church out from between the individual and God.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a connection between you, this person who
Speaker 2: is important and matters just because you're a person, and
Speaker 2: God who made you. And this is where the very
Speaker 2: beginnings of humanism find themselves. Even though no one in
Speaker 2: the Renaissance would have called themselves a humanist because that
Speaker 2: concept didn't really exist quite yet. This is the first step.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, looking back, we apply the tag to
Speaker 3: a lot of different people. We're going to talk about
Speaker 3: some of them, but yeah, they wouldn't have called themselves that.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 3: Petrarch was probably looked at as maybe the first humanists
Speaker 3: or the first modern man sometimes called. And in the Renaissance,
Speaker 3: it was it was a pretty hot ticket depending on
Speaker 3: what crowd you ran with. If you were among the
Speaker 3: elites in the Renaissance, you might have hired humanist scholars
Speaker 3: to come and teach your kids all about like sort
Speaker 3: of the moral systems of the classical era to you know,
Speaker 3: and very much in the effort, like you were saying,
Speaker 3: to bring us out of what they call the dark ages.
Speaker 3: And some aspects of this whole movement in the Renaissance
Speaker 3: included three things we're gonna kind of touch on here
Speaker 3: are realism, dignity of the individual human, and application of learning,
Speaker 3: like putting it in to practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So humanism contrasted with scholasticism, which had been going
Speaker 2: on for hundreds of years. It was essentially the church's
Speaker 2: form of teaching and that was basically reconciling the concept
Speaker 2: of reality that came from the classical Greeks like Aristotle
Speaker 2: with scripture and basically using scripture to explain the world
Speaker 2: and reality as it is. And these humanists came along
Speaker 2: and they were like, what happens if we stopped doing that?
Speaker 2: What happens if we just study the classical Greeks and
Speaker 2: just basically also still stay Christians, but stop using this scripture.
Speaker 2: This received wisdom that the Church gives us, what if
Speaker 2: we study it ourselves instead? And that brings up that
Speaker 2: other the second part you mentioned, which is the dignity
Speaker 2: of the individual human Up to this point, individuality was
Speaker 2: not prized. You were not supposed to look inside yourself.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to look outside the glory of God, you yourself.
Speaker 2: If you paid too much attention to yourself, that was
Speaker 2: a quick one way trip to hell for you when
Speaker 2: you died. The humanists were like, no, let's look inside ourselves,
Speaker 2: like we're important, you the individual is important.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also part of that first one with the realism
Speaker 3: was that we are flawed. So if we want to
Speaker 3: learn about each individual and human the nature, what it
Speaker 3: means to be human, we have to look at the
Speaker 3: bad stuff too, like the vices and the disorders and
Speaker 3: things like that. And then that last one that I
Speaker 3: mentioned was application of learning, like all this stuff is great,
Speaker 3: but it's not naval gazing like or we don't want
Speaker 3: it to be navel gazing. We want to actually stimulate action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're not learning just so you can give
Speaker 2: more money to the church or something like that too.
Speaker 2: And if this sounds a little bit like Protestant thought
Speaker 2: about the connection between the individual and God, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: These thinkers eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, which basically
Speaker 2: pushed the face of the church off to the side
Speaker 2: and said you and me God we're connected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And it'll also tie into the Unitarian Church in a
Speaker 3: big way later on. A church that has interested me,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I like my Sunday's free,
Speaker 3: so probably not going to go.
Speaker 1: But if any quote unquote church.
Speaker 3: Appeals to me at this age and where I am
Speaker 3: in life is definitely those guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those people that you see out and about at
Speaker 2: like ten am on a Sunday. Can give that a
Speaker 2: little knowing head nod too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So something I think is we're pointing out real
Speaker 2: quick though, to Chuck is everything we're talking about involves God.
Speaker 2: Even though the Church has been pushed out of the way,
Speaker 2: God has not. Yeah, God is still front and center.
Speaker 2: Christianity is still the most important thing around, and that
Speaker 2: is this is the cradle of humanism. And one of
Speaker 2: the frequent criticisms of modern humanism is that it's never
Speaker 2: really shaken off its birthright from Catholicism or Christianity, even
Speaker 2: though it opposes religion itself. We'll get more into that,
Speaker 2: but I just wanted to put that out there for
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 3: And we're also talking about like coming out of a
Speaker 3: time where atheism could get you killed. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: like saying that there is no God, you know, was
Speaker 3: against the law unpunishable by death for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that started to change gradually around beginning in
Speaker 2: the seventeenth century. One of the people we have to
Speaker 2: thank for that is Francis Bacon. Yeah, known as the
Speaker 2: father of empiricism. He also invented bacon and he also
Speaker 2: had a big hand into coming up with the scientific method.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we talked about him and that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, which has been largely abandoned by science
Speaker 2: in the last one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he argued for really studying like like what
Speaker 3: we call social sciences. Now he kind of kicked that
Speaker 3: off as well, the systemic study of like the human passions.
Speaker 3: But all these people that we're gonna talk about here
Speaker 3: in the next little bit, we're Christians. So this is
Speaker 3: sort of this is where it was still a time
Speaker 3: when it was still tangled up even though they had
Speaker 3: these ideas, All of these people, Bacon and this next person,
Speaker 3: Thomas Hobbes, were Christian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that there are Christians who identify
Speaker 2: themselves as humanists and vice versa, that goes to show you,
Speaker 2: like that those two things are not incompatible. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can be religious and care about human beings and like
Speaker 2: they don't have to oppose one another, although humanists have
Speaker 2: eventually said yes they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the deal, right, I mean, did
Speaker 3: I read that correctly? Is that it's the modern humanist
Speaker 3: movement was really where they were like, we're really separate
Speaker 3: from and congruous with belief in God.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Okay, so we mentioned Bacon. What about Thomas
Speaker 2: Hobbes because he came up with the social contract, which
Speaker 2: is ba like you and me. We basically allow a
Speaker 2: government to rule us in exchange for protecting us from nasty, brutish,
Speaker 2: short lives which we would otherwise have without the state
Speaker 2: or without society. Right. That doesn't sound very humanist, even
Speaker 2: though it's human centered, because he assumed that humans were
Speaker 2: essentially bad and we'd club you over the head and
Speaker 2: kill you first chance. They got. That's why we need government,
Speaker 2: according to Hobbes. But he's considered one of the early
Speaker 2: humanists for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was Christian as well, but he did
Speaker 3: not write a lot like and his writings didn't write
Speaker 3: a lot about God. He kind of put that to
Speaker 3: the side and said, you know, if we want to
Speaker 3: understand who we are and what it means to be human,
Speaker 3: we have to look at it through a just a
Speaker 3: very sort of secular and like, very reasoned approach.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, so humanist rationalism to understand ourselves in the world.
Speaker 2: Thomas Paine was also one. He was probably Yeah, he
Speaker 2: was like the first person that you can point to
Speaker 2: and be like, the guy's a humanist. He even says
Speaker 2: so himself in not so many words, or more than
Speaker 2: those words. He was a pamphleteer who helped get the
Speaker 2: American Revolution started despite moving to America just two years
Speaker 2: before the revolution started. That's how effective his pamphlets were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was very forward thinking. He was arguing very
Speaker 3: early against slavery. He's had an idea for what we
Speaker 3: might call universal basic income now, very much believe in
Speaker 3: the equality of all humans. And he has this quote
Speaker 3: that's really pretty great, like I'm a big pain guy.
Speaker 3: After reading up more on him, Sure, my country is
Speaker 3: the world that my religion is to do good. Pretty nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's pretty much no better way to sum up
Speaker 2: the humanist view in a nutshell than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The French Revolution also, there's a couple of people who
Speaker 2: get called out a lot, Jacqui Beart and Twant Francois Momorro,
Speaker 2: because they established the cult of Reason, where they would
Speaker 2: actually go in and seize churches in France during the
Speaker 2: revolution and repurposed them. I saw into Temples of Reason.
Speaker 2: I read about them on the Collector, which is a
Speaker 2: great website that explains all sorts of different philosophies and stuff.
Speaker 2: Great website. Anyway, the French Revolution itself basically said Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: you're out. And then they were like, okay, well, wait
Speaker 2: a minute. We're all about reason and enlightenment. What are
Speaker 2: we going to fill the vacuum left by getting rid
Speaker 2: of the Catholic Church? And all of these ideas like
Speaker 2: the Cult of Reason kind of came along, which was
Speaker 2: essentially create humanist temples to logic in humans and humanity,
Speaker 2: remove God from the equation altogether.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And buddy, do you think I like Thomas Bain. Don't
Speaker 3: get me started on Jeremy Bentham, because after reading up
Speaker 3: on Jeremy Bentham, I wish I had named my daughter
Speaker 3: Jeremy Bentham Bryant.
Speaker 2: That would have been a great name.
Speaker 3: I really missed an opportunity because Jeremy Bentham was a
Speaker 3: great dude. He was working for welfare, fair programs for
Speaker 3: the poor early on. He didn't believe in slavery obviously
Speaker 3: child labor, and this was like decades before anyone else
Speaker 3: was talking about this stuff. He was into animals. And
Speaker 3: we'll see. That's some of the criticism from humanists is
Speaker 3: that they kind of stop at humans. And that's not
Speaker 3: to say that humanists can't be like pro animal or
Speaker 3: pro environment, because most of them probably are right but
Speaker 3: ben them very early on when it talked about like
Speaker 3: the suffering of animals, he said, the question is not
Speaker 3: can they reason, because that's what animals were, just animals,
Speaker 3: because they can't reason, they have brains like us. He
Speaker 3: combatd that with the question is not can they reason
Speaker 3: nor can they talk? But can they suffer?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What a thing to say in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you explained what you meant by he
Speaker 2: was into animals because I was confused at first.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on.
Speaker 2: One of the other cool things about Jeremy Bentham is
Speaker 2: he willed his body to science. He donated to science
Speaker 2: early on and they used it. They said, thanks a lot, buddy,
Speaker 2: here's your skeleton back. Because as part of his wishes,
Speaker 2: he wanted to remain at University College London, which he helped
Speaker 2: found as a secular college open to everybody. And he's
Speaker 2: still under glass at the University of College of London,
Speaker 2: dressed up in his own clothes. He's got wax hands
Speaker 2: with gloves on, he has a wax head and apparently
Speaker 2: he originally wanted his head to be part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they used some I guess some Maori technique of
Speaker 2: desiccation and it didn't go very well, and his descated
Speaker 2: head is still around. But they're like, Jeremy, you do
Speaker 2: not want us to leave this on your body because
Speaker 2: you look so great with the wax head. We're just
Speaker 2: going to keep this separate under class itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Up with Jeremy Bentham?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned the secular college Like he went well
Speaker 3: beyond like the separation of church and state, where he
Speaker 3: was like, colleges should have nothing to do.
Speaker 1: There should not be religious colleges.
Speaker 3: He really wanted to draw a strong divide between God
Speaker 3: and kind of all the institutions.
Speaker 2: Right. He was also the father of utilitarianism, which is essentially,
Speaker 2: if at its worst, killing one person saves two people,
Speaker 2: then you kill that person, which gave us things like
Speaker 2: the trolley problem as a utilitarian thought experiment. Essentially, Bentham,
Speaker 2: I think, didn't really think that way, but he was
Speaker 2: basically like, we want to maximize the most good for
Speaker 2: the most people. That's the way he developed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 3: You want to take a break, Yeah, I think we're
Speaker 3: off to a hot start, So I'm gonna go take
Speaker 3: a cold shower and we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, we're back, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: the development of humanism in the way that we know
Speaker 2: it today, because up to this point we've been talking
Speaker 2: about a little bits here, little bits there that all
Speaker 2: together changed the world and essentially took all the power
Speaker 2: in the West, especially Europe and eventually the United States,
Speaker 2: away from the Church and organized religions in general and said, no,
Speaker 2: there's a way for you to live an upstanding, meaningful,
Speaker 2: ethical life without even believing that there's a God or
Speaker 2: in afterlife. And here's how we're going to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the idea at the time, and there's
Speaker 3: still people that believe this in twenty twenty six. Which
Speaker 3: is pretty scary, is that if you were not religious
Speaker 3: and devout, then you were a heathen and you were
Speaker 3: like morally bereft. And those like people very early on
Speaker 3: stood up and were like that didn't make any sense,
Speaker 3: Like why is it I don't believe in God? Like
Speaker 3: people have feelings in their heart or whatever. And someone realized, like,
Speaker 3: why is it that in my heart? Like I don't
Speaker 3: believe in a God, but like I believe in doing
Speaker 3: like really good things, Like why are those tho? Why
Speaker 3: are those two things have to be tied together. And
Speaker 3: that was humanism, or if you look at philosopher and
Speaker 3: theologian from Germany Friedrich Niedhama, the term was HUMANISMUS in
Speaker 3: eighteen oh eight, and that is he was kind of
Speaker 3: talking about that Renaissance humanism, those studies that they were
Speaker 3: doing with the people that are trying to sort of
Speaker 3: reform education during the Renaissance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but very quickly people latched onto that. He just
Speaker 2: kind of came along at the right He was in
Speaker 2: the right place at the right time, Yeah, which was Germany,
Speaker 2: because Germany eventually became kind of the cradle of modern humanism,
Speaker 2: and eventually humanismths what we would call humanism now we
Speaker 2: just dropped the US or the US And if you
Speaker 2: kind of subscribe to that, it was way beyond the
Speaker 2: way that you interpreted scripture. You supported women's equality, You
Speaker 2: were all about separation of church and state. You had
Speaker 2: compassion for all people, not just people that looked like
Speaker 2: you and had the same amount of money as you.
Speaker 2: You cared about actually doing stuff to get the government
Speaker 2: to take care of poverty and things like that. Like Quakers.
Speaker 2: The conception of Quakers at this time was a really
Speaker 2: good view of what it meant to be a humanist
Speaker 2: at the time, because you still believed in God, but
Speaker 2: you really cared about other people. And this was fairly
Speaker 2: new for Europe at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you mentioned the French Revolution, but in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, during the time of all those European revolutions,
Speaker 3: was it also started to kind of touch on socialism,
Speaker 3: of course, and like this idea of a utopian society
Speaker 3: that we could strive for. It was starting to become
Speaker 3: a little more acceptable in the United States at the time,
Speaker 3: where well partially because of German immigration to the United
Speaker 3: States and you were talking about them being the cradle,
Speaker 3: but also Charles Darwin and just this idea that you
Speaker 3: don't need these theist beliefs to be a good person,
Speaker 3: and there's something called free thought that can happen, like
Speaker 3: prethinking is very much at this time aligne with deism.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And free thought essentially as a concept
Speaker 2: is it's just questioning everything, Yeah, especially received wisdom. You
Speaker 2: stop and ask click, well, wait a minute, why do
Speaker 2: I think that? How do I know that? You just
Speaker 2: challenge all of your own assumptions, and by doing that
Speaker 2: you can kind of free yourself from being indoctrinated by
Speaker 2: the man essentially. So this is when it seems to
Speaker 2: me the progressive movement in the United States really started
Speaker 2: to come about. Yeah, right, this is the till late
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. One of the next big things that happened
Speaker 2: was the establishment of the New York Society for Ethical
Speaker 2: Culture by again named Felix Adler. And this became essentially
Speaker 2: the ethical movement E in capital E, capital M. And
Speaker 2: they were basically like the very first humanists. They tried
Speaker 2: to essentially provide the same thing, that's say, moral upstanding
Speaker 2: structure that the church provides for so many people to
Speaker 2: people who don't believe in God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and not more than that. But alongside that, I
Speaker 3: think they realized that the church had something that people
Speaker 3: clearly liked in tradition and in ceremony, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: if we're going to be a thing like, maybe we
Speaker 3: should have some of that stuff too. So they organized
Speaker 3: Sunday services and they said, how about a how about
Speaker 3: a deist marriage ceremony, like kind of substituting religious ritual
Speaker 3: for non religious ritual because people like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, They're like, how about atheist holy communion, and the
Speaker 2: humanists are like, how does that work?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, we don't know. This is new. We're
Speaker 2: just throwing everything we can at the wall. See what sticks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe instead of the blood and body of Jesus,
Speaker 3: it's just crackers and grape juice.
Speaker 2: There you go. And they were like grape juice or flavory,
Speaker 2: and they're like, grape juice.
Speaker 3: We used grape We used grape juice at our church
Speaker 3: because even the Baptist did not take wine as a communion.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny to think about.
Speaker 2: I remember moving to the South and being like, you
Speaker 2: don't drink any wine, like even in church because I
Speaker 2: was raised Catholic.
Speaker 1: Welch's baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. So this whole kind of evolution is
Speaker 2: still going on. In the United States in particular, it
Speaker 2: started to take off. Humanism really is huge today or
Speaker 2: through the twentieth century in the US and the UK.
Speaker 2: They're kind of like hotbeds for humanist activity. And the
Speaker 2: people who were attracted to this were very frequently liberal intellectuals, yeah, philosophers, literati,
Speaker 2: intelligentsia like academic elites and people who ran in their circles,
Speaker 2: which included communists at the time in the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 2: like basically super radical liberal thinkers were very much attracted
Speaker 2: to the early establishment of modern humanist organizations.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That in the United States in particular, the University
Speaker 3: of Chicago nineteen twenty seven was one place where it
Speaker 3: really got cooking. There were efforts there by students and
Speaker 3: so professors who belonged and this is where the Unitarian
Speaker 3: Church comes into play. They were Unitarian Church members, which
Speaker 3: is technically Protestant denomination. It's very political, has always been
Speaker 3: very politically progressive. And in this group in Chicago, there
Speaker 3: were a lot of ministers, even in theologians who had
Speaker 3: non Christian ideas that they were putting forth, like transcendentalism,
Speaker 3: and they had a magazine. They organized what was called
Speaker 3: the Humanist Fellowship and put out the New Humanist Magazine.
Speaker 2: It was like all ads though yeah, probably so all
Speaker 2: ads and perfume samples.
Speaker 3: Well, and at the very end they had the little
Speaker 3: fold thing like the Mad magazine did.
Speaker 1: It's very popular.
Speaker 3: But they were trying to move Unitarian and as Unitarianism,
Speaker 3: even in nineteen twenty seven, completely away from Theism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Unitarian Unitarianism as a church was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go and then stop just short. And that's where
Speaker 2: it stays today. Essentially, they're like, you don't believe in God, Great,
Speaker 2: you can be a member of our church. Do you
Speaker 2: believe in God? Yeah, great, you can be a member
Speaker 2: of our church. It's universalist Unitarian. Right.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the manifestos?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can't have liberal thinkers and communists together
Speaker 2: and not come up with a manifesto. Right, It's just
Speaker 2: going to naturally bubble up from those people being together.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen thirty three, I think they drafted the
Speaker 2: first humanist manifesto and it basically said so and this
Speaker 2: is where this is one reason why religious people don't
Speaker 2: like humanists. It took direct aim at religion, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then this is why people who are religious don't
Speaker 2: like humanists. It also called humanism its own type of religion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: take that, chuck and run with it.
Speaker 3: Mixed messages. Can I read this bit from the seventy
Speaker 3: three manifesto?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or wait?
Speaker 3: This was Okay? The seventy three was a manifesto Part two?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, nineteen thirty thirtight. I believe thirty three was
Speaker 2: the first one, I think, thank you, we got there.
Speaker 3: Okay, thirty three was the first one. Seventy three was
Speaker 3: Manifesto two, and this was from seventy three. Using technology wisely,
Speaker 3: we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduced disease,
Speaker 3: extend our lifespan, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course
Speaker 3: of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers.
Speaker 3: Starting to sound a little bit like scientology there, and
Speaker 3: provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and
Speaker 3: meaningful life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also smacks of transhumanism too. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just denoted by h plus Stellarc. It's a branch. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a branch of humanism where you graft a human
Speaker 2: ear onto your forearm.
Speaker 1: Right. Oh boy, man, I can't believe you remembered his name.
Speaker 1: It just came right up.
Speaker 3: If you're a long time listener, you remember when we
Speaker 3: first talked about Stellarc, the transhumanists who did, in fact,
Speaker 3: graft a human ear to his arm, complete with a
Speaker 3: little speaker like it heard and worked, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it. Yeah, I had a Bluetooth speaker which
Speaker 2: is probably dead by now.
Speaker 1: How many c tips do you think that guy's gone through.
Speaker 2: Oh, crisps, he's like got catch up in there again.
Speaker 1: Oh man.
Speaker 2: So the reason that they wrote the nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: Manifesto two was because Manifesto one had a lot of well,
Speaker 2: it was of its time. Yeah, it was very pro
Speaker 2: communist and socialism, it was anti capitalist. It even said, quote,
Speaker 2: the existing acquisitive and profit motivating society has shown itself
Speaker 2: to be inadequate. Yeah, it said it was a religion.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventy three they're like, let's just kind
Speaker 2: of get rid of some of this. Let's not call
Speaker 2: ourselves a religion of any kind. We'll still take aim
Speaker 2: at religion, but we're not going to call ourselves a religion.
Speaker 2: We're going to drop the whole life communist, capitalist, you know,
Speaker 2: West Coast, East Coast war in our own manifesto.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then as time went on, there were more affirmations,
Speaker 2: there were more manifestos. There was one in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, two thousand and three, in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, so all these were American, by the way.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and two it finally went international, which
Speaker 2: what's called the Amsterdam Declaration of Humanism from two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, and it basically it basically says like, yeah,
Speaker 2: everything these guys have been saying, but take out the
Speaker 2: religion stuff and the anti capitalist stuff.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: And they said, we need a word though, if we're
Speaker 3: going to be consistent, and so instead of religion, let's
Speaker 3: settle on this word life stance.
Speaker 2: You were like, oh, sure, sure, LifeStance.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows what that is. We did a little digging.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty obscure term. I think Wikipedia, which is
Speaker 3: not a website. We really like to go to a
Speaker 3: lot for this, but that's kind of the only place
Speaker 3: we could find anything. But this is how they define
Speaker 3: it is the relation that one has with what he
Speaker 3: or she accepts as being of ultimate importance.
Speaker 2: That's a great definition of life stance for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it really gets across. And essentially it's what they use
Speaker 2: in place of religion, not just what they offer, what
Speaker 2: humanism offers people, but what people need. And that's one
Speaker 2: thing that humanism is always basically said, is you need
Speaker 2: the things that religion give to you, like people need that.
Speaker 2: It's been around for thousands of years for a reason, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And there's all these different ones around the world that
Speaker 2: billions and billions of people subscribe to because it gives
Speaker 2: their life meaning, It gives you purpose, it tells you
Speaker 2: how to be a good person. And humanists were like,
Speaker 2: all we're saying is that you don't need religion. You
Speaker 2: don't even need to believe in God to have all
Speaker 2: those same things. And as the world and in particular
Speaker 2: the United States and the West, has gotten more and
Speaker 2: more secular and less and less religious, there's this there's
Speaker 2: a debate that's developed, like, is humanism up to the
Speaker 2: task of providing meaning in people's lives in the absence
Speaker 2: of religion, And that definitely remains to be seen, but
Speaker 2: it seems to be leaning a little more like No, Actually,
Speaker 2: things kind of fall apart when you don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of people who believe that their lives have meaning
Speaker 2: because they believe in religion. That seems to be the
Speaker 2: way things are leaning right now. That's not the endpoint
Speaker 2: necessarily though.
Speaker 1: No, for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think I'm like you, like, a
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff seems very appealing to me, a
Speaker 3: lot of the thoughts. But you know, when I was
Speaker 3: reading that one thing, I was like, man, this sounds
Speaker 3: a little scientology like here and there.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, and then let's not like LifeStance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just feels like the kind of word where
Speaker 3: you go to a meeting, like a humanist congregational meeting,
Speaker 3: and they're like, and now Josh would like to rise
Speaker 3: and share his life stance, and then everyone like clucks
Speaker 3: and goes LifeStance, LifeStance or something, right, and that's when
Speaker 3: they and I like back out of the room very slowly.
Speaker 2: You know what LifeStance says to me, It says I
Speaker 2: don't know what I mean. That's what that word screams.
Speaker 2: If you use a word to describe what you're talking
Speaker 2: about and no one else knows what that word is.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, it's much more widely understood.
Speaker 2: Is the name of an insurance company than then? Yeah,
Speaker 2: then you you kevin't figured out exactly what you're trying
Speaker 2: to say. That's my take on it. And what the
Speaker 2: reason they're using life stance is because they can't use
Speaker 2: the word religion. They're using that in place of the
Speaker 2: word religion. So a lot of people kind of look
Speaker 2: at humanism like, man, these guys really tie themselves up
Speaker 2: into knots to get around this religious thing. They're really
Speaker 2: preoccupied with religion, despite saying you don't need religion to
Speaker 2: live a good life. If you don't care about religion,
Speaker 2: stop talking about religion so much. Stop focusing on religion
Speaker 2: so much. That's a big criticism of humanism that it's
Speaker 2: just it's like those you know, those hilarious parodies of
Speaker 2: like Southern preach or whatever, and it's taking aim at
Speaker 2: hypocrisy and stuff. If you really feel that way about
Speaker 2: the church or religion or God or whatever, just go
Speaker 2: your own way, do your own thing. Stop paying attention
Speaker 2: to it, stop giving it your oxygen. If you really
Speaker 2: feel that way about it, and if you don't, if
Speaker 2: you still are focused on it like that, there's something
Speaker 2: there's some disconnect between what you claim to believe in
Speaker 2: what you're actually doing.
Speaker 3: Brother Josh, I want to thank you for sharing your
Speaker 3: afflack flat nice.
Speaker 1: That was great, Chuck, that was great. I like that
Speaker 1: that screed.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should take a break and talk about what
Speaker 3: happened in nineteen forty one right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're back.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about what happened in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 3: not the movie nineteen forty one from Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2: Good one.
Speaker 1: I'm talking not really, I'm talking about did you like it?
Speaker 2: Hey man, anything has got Bellushi in it? I like,
Speaker 2: all right, Yeah, I don't see what was wrong with it.
Speaker 3: It was a notorious bomb. But that's not to say
Speaker 3: you can't like it.
Speaker 2: No, I do like it. I just have never heard
Speaker 2: that other people didn't like it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, it's pretty well regarded as a big plot.
Speaker 3: But I appreciate you sharing your affle, Like once again.
Speaker 2: I had that's my life stance on in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: It's a good movie.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get sued, all right. So in
Speaker 3: nineteen forty one, there were two Unitarian ministers that form
Speaker 3: the AHA that we referenced at the very beginning of
Speaker 3: the American Humanist Association. They, you know, they advocate for
Speaker 3: humanist causes like separation of church and state of course
Speaker 3: in schools that is, like, hey, let's legalize birth control,
Speaker 3: things like that. They have about thirty four thousand plus
Speaker 3: members with two hundred and thirty local chapters, and they're like,
Speaker 3: you know, their goal is I think not only to
Speaker 3: spread the word, but I think like you are saying,
Speaker 3: is to like try and unify into something that's with
Speaker 3: a coherent message that people can actually say, like, Hey,
Speaker 3: that's a legitimate thing that you can believe in and follow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like that appeals to me. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: go find out more about what you guys are saying.
Speaker 2: So there's a guy named Andrew Cops and he's very
Speaker 2: frequently cited when you're talking about humanism. He's the executive
Speaker 2: of Chief Chief Executive of Humanists UK, and he basically says,
Speaker 2: here's what humanists are about. One, we use the senses
Speaker 2: and reasoning when we're seeking out the truth to understand
Speaker 2: what the world's all about. We are all about rationalism.
Speaker 2: We're all about scientific inquiry. That's what our stuff is
Speaker 2: based on. It's not based on supernatural beliefs. Again, it's
Speaker 2: not based on receive wisdom. It's about using rationalism in
Speaker 2: our own senses to understand the universe for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Can I just make a quick comment. I don't want
Speaker 3: to get too political, but using the sensus and reasoning
Speaker 3: like that is missing I think a lot today because
Speaker 3: we're in a world now where they are very powerful
Speaker 3: people in the world that are literally sort of gaslighting
Speaker 3: the rest of the world and saying, like what you're
Speaker 3: seeing and hearing is not the truth, Like even though
Speaker 3: you're seeing it and hearing it. So to see someone
Speaker 3: stand up and say, hey, one of our big tenets
Speaker 3: is going to be the use like to see stuff
Speaker 3: and hear stuff, and like that's what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I find your reasoning sensible.
Speaker 1: Yes, aflack I flic what else?
Speaker 3: Viewing humans as the product of natural biological processes and
Speaker 3: seeing death is the end of individual consciousness. So you're
Speaker 3: not going to an afterlife. You're not gonna go hang
Speaker 3: out with Elvis and Tom Petty. Once you're gone, you're
Speaker 3: a warm dirt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing after that. It's a real bummer part
Speaker 2: of it, for sure.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: But I've always, well I've always in my adult life
Speaker 3: believe that, and I don't think it's a bummer. That's
Speaker 3: just yeah, I don't think it's a bummer.
Speaker 2: You know. I believe that for years and years and years,
Speaker 2: and I've just recently kind of started to I don't
Speaker 2: want to say go back, but just kind of expand
Speaker 2: the possibilities. Yeah, that's good, more than I used to
Speaker 2: because I was exactly what you're talking about, like that's it,
Speaker 2: Like you're just it's lights out. You don't even know
Speaker 2: it's lights out because you don't exist anymore. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: like you didn't exist before you were born. This is
Speaker 2: exactly the same thing. It's just tacked onto the end
Speaker 2: of your life, not the beginning of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that you're exploring that.
Speaker 3: I think that's I think I'm not opposed to anyone
Speaker 3: in their beliefs, So I think it's great, Especially when
Speaker 3: you get older and you're in the like forties and
Speaker 3: fifties and you start kind of radically.
Speaker 1: Exploring new ideas. I think that's very valuable.
Speaker 2: It's funny. I have been doing that a lot lately.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons why I wanted to do
Speaker 2: this episode in Humanism. I've been reading a lot of
Speaker 2: different philosophy and just yeah, yeah, exploring ideas that I
Speaker 2: hadn't before. And I didn't realize why. Apparently it's because
Speaker 2: I'm about to be fifty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, so I've been hurry.
Speaker 2: I got I have to find meaning in life before
Speaker 2: I die.
Speaker 1: I've been watching a lot of Kids in the Hall reruns.
Speaker 2: Nice. You can do a lot worse than that.
Speaker 3: And reading rock bios. But that's fine, everyone has their
Speaker 3: own thing.
Speaker 2: What else, Chuck, How about if you want to live
Speaker 2: a good life, Yeah, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: You have to develop yourself personally, like keep striving, sure
Speaker 3: to be better and do better, try to connect with others,
Speaker 3: pursue things that are truly meaningful. But you don't necessarily
Speaker 3: have to believe in the meaning of life to do
Speaker 3: all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's not what you're seeking.
Speaker 2: Yes, And from my recent exploration, that is essentially the
Speaker 2: basis of a philosophy called existentialism, which actually, yeah, is
Speaker 2: born out of nihilism, and it's basically saying, yes, there's
Speaker 2: no God, there's no meaning to life, we're all a fluke.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean you can't live a great fulfilling life,
Speaker 2: right that has meaning that is meaningful to you. So
Speaker 2: go figure out what your life is, what you want
Speaker 2: it to be, and make it meaningful. And I think
Speaker 2: that's if you do believe that there's no such thing
Speaker 2: as God, That to me is essentially the best mentality
Speaker 2: you can take on that if there's no afterlife before
Speaker 2: all a fluke, then it's up to you pal to
Speaker 2: go make meaning for your own life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like live with intention, I think is another good
Speaker 3: way to say that, to like not just be someone
Speaker 3: who things happen to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or live without Netflix. That's another way to put it.
Speaker 3: To What's another one view moral behaviors, like you know,
Speaker 3: consider other people's needs, Like humanism is not a self
Speaker 3: inward looking thing, like you're looking inward, but you're acting outward.
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, Oh, it does.
Speaker 2: It makes perfect sense. It's not a self centered or.
Speaker 1: Self Yeah, self center I was looking for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not self involved. You care about other people.
Speaker 2: And yeah, by doing that, you're you're you're developing yourself.
Speaker 2: That's part of self personal development. Right. You're also not
Speaker 2: relying on any doctrine to teach you ethics, although you
Speaker 2: can go find ethics from like say the great Greek
Speaker 2: philosophers or Buddha or you know, Taoism or Confucianism, like
Speaker 2: you can go find these from wherever you want. You
Speaker 2: can even read the Bible or something and sure, you know,
Speaker 2: like Thomas Jefferson edited the Bible, he took all the
Speaker 2: miracles out and just basically made it a really great
Speaker 2: moral handbook. You could do the same thing. Right and
Speaker 2: still gain these idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The point is you're not supposed to take anything wholesale,
Speaker 2: including ostensibly humanism. Like you should not just go, okay,
Speaker 2: I want to be humanists, tell me how to be,
Speaker 2: because they're going to say no, you got to go
Speaker 2: figure that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should probably start with the New Testament too
Speaker 3: and just leave it at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that Old Testament is grim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty grim.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're a humanist, you're you're definitely like
Speaker 3: opposed to war, you value universal rights of all humans,
Speaker 3: in equality. It's not tied to a political system necessarily.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know it has its roots in sort
Speaker 3: of liberal progressive think, but you don't have to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm a registered Democrat and a humanist. Like you can
Speaker 3: be anybody. I'd argue, maybe not. You could vote for anybody,
Speaker 3: But as far as political affiliation, it's not tied to
Speaker 3: anyone thing.
Speaker 2: No, nor should it be.
Speaker 3: We should probably name some famous humanists through the years.
Speaker 3: You could start and end with Albert Einstein, but we're
Speaker 3: just going to start there. He supported the Capital the
Speaker 3: E Capital C Ethical culture movement, and was a founding
Speaker 3: member of the First Humanist Society of New York, and
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty published Essays in Humanism. And he was
Speaker 3: he was walking the walk.
Speaker 2: Oh, he definitely was. He was big time into world
Speaker 2: peace and civil rights. And he was a pantheist apparently
Speaker 2: as well. So yeah, he was definitely the real deal
Speaker 2: as far as humanists are concerned. So too was Isaac
Speaker 2: Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut. Apparently they were both very much active. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the American Humanist Association.
Speaker 1: No surprise.
Speaker 2: Kurt Vonnegut had a great quote, if you don't mind
Speaker 2: me taking.
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, do your best Vonnagut. I want to hear this.
Speaker 2: He said that. By the way, Kurt Vonneguet and I
Speaker 2: are basically voice doubles. Okay, does he have a I've
Speaker 2: never heard him talk, man. Does he have an unusual.
Speaker 1: Or significant Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Weirdly, the only time I think I've ever heard Kurt
Speaker 3: Bontaguet talk was if I'm not mistaken, He had a
Speaker 3: cameo and Broughtney Dangerfields back to school. Yeah, because he
Speaker 3: hired he paid him to tutor him in college.
Speaker 2: Well, how about this. You take this quote, but do
Speaker 2: it as Dangerfield?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, it said.
Speaker 2: He said, being a humanist means trying to behave decently
Speaker 2: without expectation of rewards or punishment after you're dead. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's nice, it's great, great description of it.
Speaker 3: What else, if you're a Star Trek fan, you even
Speaker 3: if you're not, you're probably not surprised that Jeane Roddenberry
Speaker 3: was a very big in the humanist movement. He I
Speaker 3: means Star Trek is a is a great example of
Speaker 3: just a group of people that are doing humanist things
Speaker 3: that that's kind of the culture of that show.
Speaker 1: A they're trying to solve.
Speaker 3: Problems peacefully, high tech, but of course it's they're always
Speaker 3: trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: On Star Trek.
Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, there are a bunch of do gooders. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they don't want to use their phasers. It's why they
Speaker 2: always set them to stunt. So there are many critiques
Speaker 2: to humanism. They get it from all sides, other atheists,
Speaker 2: other philosophers, Christians obviously. Christian thinkers basically are like, dude,
Speaker 2: you can't have meaning in your life without God. Theology
Speaker 2: teaches us that God is what gives your life meaning,
Speaker 2: you chump, And that's essentially the most basic criticism of humanism.
Speaker 2: They basically say you can't be ethical or moral or
Speaker 2: have meaning or value in your life without believing that
Speaker 2: there is such a thing as God.
Speaker 3: Right, you mentioned atheists, there are also atheists that say,
Speaker 3: you know what, a little too much credulity going on
Speaker 3: about the value of humanity and like that we can
Speaker 3: all just improve ourselves. And I mean, I think there's
Speaker 3: some very prominent philosophers from the twentieth century that are
Speaker 3: very much anti humanist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they call themselves anti humanists. Apparently the structuralists and
Speaker 2: post structuralist movements of philosophy that came out of France
Speaker 2: in the sixties and seventies, I think maybe even into
Speaker 2: the eighties, they were very much anti humanists, and they
Speaker 2: were like, the individuals don't matter other than you know,
Speaker 2: we don't go make our own meaning everything we are
Speaker 2: is basically created by institutions and structures that were born
Speaker 2: into and there's basically no way out, So stop being
Speaker 2: silly and naive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting to me, not to do an episode
Speaker 3: on necessarily, but I'd like to poke around the structuralism
Speaker 3: a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of that.
Speaker 2: I have been doing that, and it is very interesting. Essentially,
Speaker 2: what they're saying is like, you are so shaped by
Speaker 2: institutions that these cool thoughts that you think you have,
Speaker 2: the interactions you have with other people, all of them
Speaker 2: are shaped by the institutions we're born into. Argue with that, right,
Speaker 2: but so much so, Chuck, that those cool thoughts, those
Speaker 2: amazing things that you're saying, those interactions with people, all
Speaker 2: they're doing is reinforcing those institutions because they're all within
Speaker 2: that structure. So you're just teaching other people how to
Speaker 2: be in that structure too by even rebelling against it
Speaker 2: as a form of reinforcing the structure.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's very grim.
Speaker 2: Like, it's actually a very grim approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: One other thing too that they get held up for
Speaker 2: a lot is that they that they believe that man
Speaker 2: is inherently moral, and that a lot of philosophers are like,
Speaker 2: how do you prove that? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Where'd you get that from? That's not a universal given,
Speaker 2: Like philosophies never turned that up. And did you see
Speaker 2: that thing that I found from Francisco Jay Eliah? He
Speaker 2: basically said, so, basically, this guy kind of proves that
Speaker 2: humans are actually biologically moral, resulting from a consequence of
Speaker 2: natural selection. Francisco j. Eliah says that one, we have
Speaker 2: the ability to anticipate consequences of our own actions. Two
Speaker 2: we have the ability to make value judgments, and three
Speaker 2: we have the ability to choose between alternative courses of action.
Speaker 2: And so because of our abilities, our natural abilities to
Speaker 2: do that, we are naturally moral creatures. Which is the
Speaker 2: only support I've seen for that idea that people are
Speaker 2: inherently moral. I've only ever seen attack. This guy did
Speaker 2: a pretty good job of making a case that supports that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, isn't the idea that humans are inherently
Speaker 3: evil much more common?
Speaker 1: Like, wasn't that what Hobbes was all about?
Speaker 2: That's what Hobbes was about Satanists, Yeah, basically, or I
Speaker 2: think they're like, it's not good or evil, and I
Speaker 2: think Satanists are really they don't like humanists very much either. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a Yeah, there's a lot of it's definitely not
Speaker 2: settled whether humans are inherently good or bad.
Speaker 1: So we haven't figured that one out.
Speaker 2: I guess, not meaning toward the bad lately though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I mentioned environmentalists and animal rights activists earlier that sometimes
Speaker 3: there's they believe there's just a little too much human
Speaker 3: and humanism, But there are certainly a lot of people
Speaker 3: and humanists that have kind of worked on the environment
Speaker 3: and animals and the value of all that stuff into
Speaker 3: the cause for sure.
Speaker 2: Very very Jeremy bentha mask Yeah. Yeah, although if you
Speaker 2: want to get down to it, I've seen an example
Speaker 2: given where a genuine humanist if if somebody killing a
Speaker 2: deer kept a human family alive, they would be like,
Speaker 2: killed that deer. Dear interesting, that deer is secondary, It's
Speaker 2: life is secondary to human life. Humanists might be like,
Speaker 2: no way, man, go eat go eat a plant, go
Speaker 2: eat some lichen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've never been a hunter, but if the zombie apocalypse happened,
Speaker 3: like I could, I could do it.
Speaker 2: You could eat zombie. I think it's if they bite
Speaker 2: you that you become a zombie. I've never seen any
Speaker 2: problems with somebody eating them.
Speaker 3: Well, that's true, you definitely need a healthy spice rack though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that rotted shark they eat in Iceland.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh god, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's essentially like eating zombie. From what I understand, okay,
Speaker 2: tastes like zombie. You got anything else?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I uh, you were right. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't think I was gonna be able to get
Speaker 3: through this because it's very petty stuff for me. But
Speaker 3: you said, settle down, jerk, you'll be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did great. When when't like a philosophy class
Speaker 2: one of your favorite classes in college too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and every time we do anything philosophy related, I
Speaker 3: get all scared and it always works out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he did great, man, you always do great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do you?
Speaker 2: Thanks well, check and I agree we both did great.
Speaker 2: Patting ourselves on the back. He let me pet you
Speaker 2: on the back, dude, Oh thank you. That means, of
Speaker 2: course it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right, this is going to be short and sweet.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: I think I jokingly asked for a haiku as it
Speaker 3: relates to mcguffins, because many years ago we put out
Speaker 3: the call for haikus and got hundreds and hundreds of them,
Speaker 3: to the point where I think we just quit reading them,
Speaker 3: so and hopes people quit sending them, and time marched on,
Speaker 3: and they did. But David centnasen a haiku about the
Speaker 3: mcguffin amt coukay man, you ready. The mcguffin lives, critics argue,
Speaker 3: and gnash teeth. The ending still comes wow, and David
Speaker 3: goes on to say, this great show, guys, y'all create
Speaker 3: an entire universe of stuff, insider stories and jokes. I
Speaker 3: hate it when I can't recall one of the callback
Speaker 3: tangents and you just want to say, lastly.
Speaker 1: The Jackhammer episode. Wasn't that terrible? Guys? It was needed
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Can you read the high cup again? It's still sinking
Speaker 2: in like the genius of what David did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty good. The mcguffin lives, critics argue, and
Speaker 3: nash teeth. The ending still comes, man, pretty good.
Speaker 2: That's a T shirt if I've ever heard one. Aaron Cooper, that's.
Speaker 1: A high quality coup.
Speaker 3: Buddy.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like David and well, I'll
Speaker 2: not send us a high coup, but just write in
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