Part Two: God's Debris, by Scott Adams (with Matt Lieb)

Robert sits down with Matt Lieb to discuss Scott Adams's worst novel, God's Debris.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Uh, I'm finishing my many taco from Trader Joe's OJS.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know, sponsor us, dude, I wish.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
That we could get sponsor protruders. I've never even seen
them like nod.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Because they gave all that money to the LAPD when
the LAPD opened fire wildly into one of their stores,
murdering an employee. Why can't we get some of that cash?
Oh yeah, Trader Joe's.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Was that in la Uh huh I remember that?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yeah, there was like a criminal on the loose, and
the LAPD decided, you know what will help this situation,
emptying our ar fifteens into a glass storefront. And then
Trader Joe said, thanks guys, here's a donation. Matt Leeb,
what's the hull, Matt? This is part two. I don't
know if it'll be airing the same week or months later.

(00:52):
We'll probably slot this in around Thanksgiving or some ship
when we've got some anyway, there we're doing a little.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Pinhitmry to be filler, put me down podcast sweeps week.
I don't want anyone to hear this shit.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
We're reading some books because I need a little bit
of a break. Well, actually, I just need to get
ahead up on production. I'm still writing episodes this week,
but this helps out. So I'm going to be reading
you a story, another little book, a canticle for Matt Lebowitz,
Matt Libowitz, I'm do you get my canticle for Lebelwitz, Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
It's not bad.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
That's a pretty good little referenced.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
There we go, thank you. I don't have the jar Jr. Soundboard. Uh,
it's just I got a new thing and now it's
just all kind of boring ones. So I won't be
doing it, you know what, because this is the in between.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Thetweens, and people are still people are still going to
be pedants. Someone's going to be like, actually, a canticle
is like a hymn or a psalm or something like that,
it's not a book, And to which I would say,
we're reading another Scott Adams book, and his prose is
both musical and holy, like the text of a psalm.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
You know exactly. Yeah, what I was there to say, Matt, Matt, Matt,
Matt what So.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I was just out in between recording the first episode
on Scott's Terrible Novels in the second checking on my
goats because I castrated one of them the other day,
which I.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Wanted to hear more. I wanted to hear more about
why did you do that?

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Well, you can't have too many bulls or whatever rams
with the testicles hanging out, like you don't really want
to have more than one because they'll like hurt each other, right,
And we're not going to breed this one. So he's
going to live a long, happy life, but he just
is not going to have testicles. It's like your cat,
right or you know, Like I had somebody get get

(02:42):
all unrey at me online about this. I'm like, I
don't know, man, like you do it to your animals,
Like if you have a pet, it's just like it's
not going to breed, it's going to get hurt, hurt anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
I don't care what people feel about it. What's interesting
to me about it is that the way we do
it is with rubber bands. Right, there's like a whole setup,
yeah where and you basically just kind of you know,
there's a little pain for an hour or so, and
then the nerves kind of deaden and then eventually the
test Like.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
When BuzzFeed they'll do a live stream where they put
a bunch of rubber bands on a watermelon and they
keep putting it on until it explodes.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
No, that would be a crime, I believe use we
use a specific device and specific rubber bands meant for castration.
But what's interesting to me about this, Matt, is that
the first real powerful moment that I had as a
young child on the internet. I think this occurred around
ninety nine, might have been his late as two thousand
and two thousand and one is I'm hanging out. I'm

(03:36):
sure I found it through something awful, and I wind
up on this web forum for gay men who are
in a very specific kind of I think you would say,
like pro like dom sub relationship oka. And it was
a subset of these guys talking about auto castration, which
is how to castrate yourself. And they also used rubber
bands on themselves to kill their testicles and then eventually

(03:59):
remove them. And anyway, isn't it beautiful that as a
little boy I learned that about the world I read.
I spent hours. I didn't know why, but I spent
hours reading all of these detailed discussions about the best
way because these guys, there's not like there was like
a book how to castrate yourself right, like there was
I think people had back in the Catholic Church days

(04:21):
when you'd had to do it to like sing better.
People had learned a lot of this stuff, but I
think it was like an oral tradition.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
No, and also were probably in Latin too, so it's
like you got to learn Latin to learn how a
couple of round balls off? What is I thought this
was America.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Much like in a canticle for Lebowitz. These people had
to rediscover, you know, the knowledge of the past. And
I spent hours and this is like I can remember
one time like reading just like I'm going through this
and stuff. It's like early on a Sunday morning, I've
gotten up early to check read the Internet. Before my
dad takes the dial up. We've got to like go
to church, and so I go to church. Just like

(04:56):
thinking about these descriptions of how men castrated themselves using
reb bands, which I love about the Internet. I credit
that with a lot of the you know, just learning
the vast had a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Of sense that that is like an early memory for you. Powerful.
It's weird how much that probably dictated where you're at
right now.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, absolutely, it had no impact on me castrating a goat.
I did that because my neighbors who are more experienced
with this sort of thing do it that way.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Oh, I thought it was because it's just love of
the game.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
You love the game. That's why I got that ABC tattoo.
Baby always be castraighting.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah yeah, man, No, Like I was also like, I
feel like goatsy had a huge influence. Oh, absolutely, yeah.
It just it showed me that humans are capable of
remarkable feats.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Humans are capable of remarkable feats. It also taught me
a lot about storytelling. If you go back to and
if you're not, if you're if you're young right, or
you just weren't terminally online goat See was like one
of the very first online memes, and it was really
the most influential early online meme. And the basics of
it is that it's a photo some fellow took with

(06:02):
a prolapsed rectum of himself bending over and spreading his
ass cheeks so that you can see what his prolapsed
rectum looks like. And it is biologically a fascinating photo.
And because it was just kind of like one of
the more horrifying I thin guess how most people found
it things being passed around the early Internet, it became

(06:24):
like a shorthand. For I am a very online person.
The way you would express this shorthand is you would
trick people into looking at the picture of this man's
rectum by being like, Wow, there's a fire at the
power plant nearby. Check out this photo of it or
something like.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
That, this hyperlink, you know, and then it would just
be goatsy guy stretching out his asshole hello wide, yeah,
and you'd be like, oh no, not again.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
All of these different bits of Internet culture when they
come down to normies, right, they get sort of softened.
Like the softening of Goatsy was rickrolling right, yeah, you know,
it's just a video this bad song, right, instead of
this man's like confounding anus.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah. Well, to be fair, the guy doing Goatsy was
Rick Astley.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
That's why he's got the ass right in there right there.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
The name.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
That's good. That's good stuff.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Well, it's also fun because I think Goatsy taught me
everything that you really need to know about good storytelling
right open obviously you want to grab them right away,
and that prolapsed rectum is like a great intro paragraph. Right,
you're immediately in the story, but you also want to
you want to set up like mysteries, you want to
set up aspects of the plot they're going to be

(07:37):
relevant later, because that's just kind of satisfying as a reader.
And the goats Sy version of that is this dude's
got a wedding ring right now, Like we don't know
much of.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
It, but we know there's we know there's.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
A story going on with right, Yeah, somewhere behind the scenes,
right and maybe you know, maybe one day we'll find
the answer to that mystery.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
We know that he took a valve before God, and
we know that you know, he's got shiny hands, so
you know that he's also safe when he's tearing his
asshole aside.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Absolutely, absolutely, he's careful, he cares. There's a whole world
implied in Goatsy. Speaking of people who created a whole world,
I want to talk about the peerless fictional crafting of
Scott Adams.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
Now, oh yes, the Goatsy of the comic book, the
Coatsy of the comic book world right, the prolapsed anus
of modern discourse.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, I did one of my favorites. So there's this
thing in Vegas, the the Madison Square Garden sphere, which
is you've seen pictures of it all people are doing
it as like my favorite post about it is like,
you know, somebody posts like a picture of it looking
like an eyeball and was like, can't wait till someone
hacks this and we get to watch mister Hans die
on it. And again, if you're not an old internet had,

(08:55):
Mister Hands is a man who was part of a
gang of Zoo files who would regularly meet up in Washington,
I believe, and like molest a horse, and one day
the horse fucked him and he died as a result
of it. For reasons I shouldn't need to explain.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Biological and we can all put that together, and I
think you can anyway put it together.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
It wound up. He was like a congressional aid or
some shit. He had some job in government. It was
like a weird or he was like a contractor. I
think he was like a so he he was. It
was like a whole black thing.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, it was. It was wild.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
There's a documentary about it called Zoo that is very
uncomfortable to watch, but we'll give you the whole story.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
There's also a movie semi about it called The Death
of Dick Long and you must watch it that I
haven't seen. But my god, I wish I hadn't said
anything in fact, but now you should see this movie.
It's one of the greatest movies ever.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Now I have decided that if I ever get to
set up like my canticle for Lebowitz style, like like
hidden you know, a reservoir of human knowledge for people
after the apocalypse to rebuild society, you know, my version
of the foundation. Actually it's just gonna be Zoo and
that other movie. That's all they need.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
That's all they'll need to know. What was this culture
about guy's getting fucked up by the guys were getting
fucked up by horses? To hard I guess you know, hey,
to each their own is.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Said, we're delaying the start of God's Debris. Now we
read The Religion War last time, which is actually the
sequel to God's Debris, but God's Debris takes place after
the Religion War. I didn't do this for any artistic reason.
I did it because if Scott has any sort of
pride at all as a writer, then he was very
intentional in having these books set the way they are,
and I don't like Scott or respect him, so fuck him.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah yeah, now, welcome to death, like that horse did
to mister.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Hands, like that hosted to mister Hands. Now I feel
like I should start with noting that on the inside
of this book we get the author's websites, So we
get Dilbert dot com. Fine, dil burrito dot com, which
is the burrito that he made that was an instant
failure because it made people shit themselves half to death
and tasted horrible.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
And then the yeah, oh you didn't know about the Delta.
We talked about it in the episode.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, he made a vitamin pill that was a burrito
and it was horrible.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Oh my god, God bless him, God bless aurial spirit.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
And then he started a restaurant called Stacy's Cafe, which
is the name of the cafe the super Genius works at. Yeah,
he's got that rep that website on here too good
to see how all of Scott's projects worked. So introduction.
This is not a Dilbert book. It contains no humor.
Those two are not exclusive Scott. I call it one

(11:43):
hundred and thirty two page thought experiment wrapped in a
fictional story. I'll explain the thought experiment part later. God's
Debris doesn't fit into normal publishing cubby holes. There's here's
the bit I was telling you about last time. There's
even disagreement about whether the material is fiction or nonfiction.
I contend that it's fiction because the characters don't exist.
Some people contend that it's nonfiction because the opinions and
philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader. Again,

(12:07):
like eighty percent definition.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Not the definition of fiction and nonfiction.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
So many of the most influential tech weirdos in the
country's entire version like vision of reality is based on
misinterpreting Doune Like yeah, like that's like what fiction is for.
But okay, okay, Scott kind of shitting on the entire
craft of fiction.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
But fine.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
The target audience for God's Debris people who enjoy having
their brains spun around inside their skulls. After a certain age,
most people are uncomfortable with new ideas, like, for example,
the existence of turkey. That certain age varies by person,
but if you're over fifty five, mentally you.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Won't enjoy this. Get your brain spun Wait to hear
about Sunnis and Shia's yeah, good, Yes, dude, that's gonna
fuck you up.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
That certain age varies by person, but if you're over
fifty five minute, you probably won't enjoy this thought experiment.
If you're eighty going on thirty five, you might like it.
If you're twenty three, your odds of liking it are
very good.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, this is how you sell to this demographic. By
the way, he's got it down to a t. Yeah,
you got it right at the beginning of your book. Hey,
if you're young, this is cool, and for you it's
want to smoke cigarettes. And then you say, if you're old,
you're not gonna get this. Parents just don't understand why,
my shit, that guy gets it. Man. That's why Dilbert

(13:31):
is a big hit with the kids these days. God.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
There's so much in here too, just about like his
belief system because he's like so the story central characters
of you about God that you've probably never heard before.
If you think you'd be offended by a fictional characters
on traditional view of God, please don't read this. The
opinions in philosophy here's the best part. The opinions in
philosophies expressed by the characters are not my own except
by coincidence, and a few spots not worth mentioning. Pease,

(13:57):
please don't write me with passionate explanations of why my
views they're wrong. You won't discover my opinions by reading
my fiction. I beg to differ, Scott. I think I
think we might have picked out a couple of opinions.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
We made it pretty clear that you are very It's
you know you can read him like a book, which
is ironic here. I love this. I love the idea
every single book so far that you've read, uh starts
out with the sales pitch to the demographic and or
the publisher, and.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Which is I do love the idea of like, if
every author did this, if Tolkien's like you might not
think a little guy who lives in a hole is
very interesting.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
But let me tell you about this habit he learned.
Tell you about it. If you're just an old fogy,
you're not really going to understand this. But if you're
a kid, holy shit, hold on your brains because it's
about to get spun around.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
If you or if you're over fifty five, you probably
think it's okay to craft a series of magical rings
that allow you to dominate the minds of entire races.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
But let me tell you something, it's not. Yeah, oh man,
I love it too, because it's not fiction, because the
ideas of crafting the magical ring have been like thought
about in a nonfiction world. It is you know what
I mean? Is that not what Hitler was trying to do.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
I want to give Frank Herbert's version of this. I
bet you guys think that fears good. No, no, no,
let me tell you it's the mind killer. You know,
it's like, does me a little bit to be honest? Yeah, okay.
The central character in God's Debris, that's the avatar, knows everything,

(15:36):
literally everything. This presented a challenge to me as a
writer when you consider all of the things that can
be known. I don't know much. My solution was to
create smart sounding answers using the skeptics creed. The simplest
explanation is usually right.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
You know, why is he doing this? Why is he
explaining literally every aspect of this? He knows.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
The key to good writing is tell, and it no
point show. Don't even write a novel, just tell people what.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
They should tell. Yeah, Oh my god, so funny.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Like Also, so, the simplest explanation in that last book
was that you can stop people from believing in all
of their faiths with a single joke.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
With a with a heart joke that goes viral.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's the simplest explanation. You might be getting Okham's Razor wrong.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, I don't think he understand Sokham's Razor, but it's
you know, for him. I'm glad he's like almost humble
because he's just like, you know, listen, I'll admit that
I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I
get around that fallacy. I get around that by like

(16:42):
saying smart things like fart joke can save people by
making them not believing God yeah, fart joke, brain big. Yeah,
fart joke, brain big.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
That's that is. I'm gonna get on good Reads and
review this.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Brain big joke.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Now, man, So this does the chapter one for this
has the same name as if you were to do
a book about mister Hands the package.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Oh, here we go. That's pretty good. That's not bad,
not bad.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Put that joke in our canticle for Lebowitz Storehouse of
Human Achievement. Yeah, the rain made everything sound different. The
engine of my delivery van. The traffic is it rolled
by in a film of fallen clouds, the occasional dull honk.
I didn't have a great job, but it wasn't bad either.
I knew the city so well that I could lose
myself in thought and still do the work, still get paid,
still have plenty of time for myself. So he's a

(17:33):
delivery man. That's our character. He's about to go meet
the avatar. He's gonna drop a package off. YadA YadA, YadA,
YadA YadA.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
There is a fun bit about driving in San Francisco
here where he's like, if you think too hard, you
ever shoot your target and end up at the pier
the tinderloind. If you relax and let the city help,
the destination does all the work for you. I don't know, man,
I've driven a lot in San Francisco. It's actually pretty
hard to accidentally wind up at the pier.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
No. Yeah, you definitely will not accidentally get to the
will You will get to the pier because you mistakenly
thought it would be easier to do that than take
an uber or take like the mass transit, And then
you'll realize you.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Have to park at the pier, which is a fucking nightmare. Yeah,
you'll hate yourself. Stay away from the pier, avoid the
peer at all costs.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Anyway, tinder Loin's fine. He gets to the delivery. Yeah,
he knocks on the door, and he's going to meet
the avatar, the old man.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
That's chapter two.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
I figured I would leave the package inside the door
and sign the customer's name I had signed for customers
to before.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
No one had complained yet.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
It was a firing offense, but that only happened if
you got caught inside. I could see a long, dark
hallway with red faux textured walls lined with huge illuminated paintings.
At the end was a half open door to a
room that hosted a flickery. Yet at god, okay.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Uh, if he's so smart, i'l come. His door is
already opened.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, come, his doors already well, because he's been expecting.
This guy was startling. Yeah, yeah, the avatars, like I've
been expecting. You you know one of those things.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Uh they're naked with a towel around them, just like yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Okay, So he tells the avatar's get a package that
this guy needs to sign for and then the guy
does a mysterious genius old man stuff and asks him,
if you toss a coin a thousand times, how often
will it come up heads. The elderly are spooky when
they degenerate into reflections of their younger selves. They say
things that make sense. It's some grammatical level, but it's

(19:20):
not always connected to reality. I remember my grandfather in
his declining years, how we spoken non sequiturs. It was
best to play along about fifty percent of the time,
I answered, before changing the subject. I need a signature
for this package. Why, well, I said, measuring how much
information to include in my response. The person who sent
the package wants a signature. He needs confirmation that it
got delivered. I meant, why does the package come up

(19:42):
heads fifty percent of the time?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
So, first off, don't ever do this to a delivery boy. Look,
I don't care if you have all of the secrets
of the universe to pass on. He is getting paid,
you know, hourly. He's got like a fucking more than that.
He's got like a car full of shit to deliver.
He's getting like penalized if he's not making his deliveries
fast enough.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
To deal with dogs too. He's got to deal with
fucking traffic. He's done. These guys are overworked as it is.
If you got a fucking little brain puzzle, like if
you do flippies on coins, how many time it go? Ahead?
Just then fucking keep it to yourself. Just yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
So he the avatar is like, you can just sign
for me, and he looks up the name on the
package slip and it's avatar. So he signs for him. Uh,
and he's like, it's for you, what's for me? The package?
I just delivered the packages, I said, My job is
to bring them to you. It's your package. No, it's yours.
Uh okay, I said. Planning my exit strategy, I figured
I could leave the package in the hallway on the

(20:39):
way out. The old man's caretaker would find it. What's
in the package? I asked, hoping to get past an
awkward moment. It's the answer to your question. I wasn't
expecting to be exactly yeah, it's this. So like the
gist is that the avatar is doing this like very
frustrating faux smart like, oh, did you deliver the package
or did the package deliver you because you wouldn't have

(21:00):
come here if not. Well, actually, like I came here
because it's my job and I have to make rent.
But whatever, we went through over this in the episodes,
it's very frustrating.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Let's mind jiu jitsu, we like to call it. In
smart guy circles.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
The delivery man's mind has been tickled by the avatars
brilliant who delivered the package? Used the baggage?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Who's on first? And I'm thinking that she's saying who,
But it's our guy? Is our guy? Name who? It's
just it's spoilers.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
This whole thing is a Socratic dialogue, so the whole
plot is just the two of them talking in a room,
which is why this will be shorter than our than
the epic about the religion war.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
But let's uh, I just want to I just want
to come back.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
I was muted, but like a minute and a half ago,
Matt made Matt made a funny and I want to
acknowledge that.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
What was it? I went, I gave you like a.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
And you didn't get to hear it because I was muted, So.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
I wanted to come back to give it to you.
I don't know what I said, but smart guys, and
I was like, hell yeah, man, hell yeah for you, Yeah,
for you. I like when people I just love it.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
We're not telling you the listener what the joke was
that made her laugh? Yeah, nobody know what he's saying.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Ship. Yeah it made you laugh.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, let us let us know which joke you think
Sophie was laughing at.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I need a Sophie in my life, man. I need
someone who's just like be like, hey, by the way,
a few minutes ago, you fucking killed that. H Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Sometimes I do that to people and I'm just lying,
you know, and then they wonder for the rest of
their lives, like what it was they said that was
smart or funny, and they think I'm being nice so
they like me, but I'm really just gaslighting, Like I'm
actually just trying to damage their brains?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Are you? Are you? The avatar is you? And the
avatar is a fun can prick.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
It's time for ads, I think.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Sophie, you know what is the avatar of capitalism is
the sponsors of behind the Bastards.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
You know, unless you have cooler zone media then ha haha, No.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Then you get it free, no ads, haah paying.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Us money to listen to this ad free on cooler
Zone Media is equivalent to being chosen by the avatar
during your delivery drive.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Couldn't agree more.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
To inherit his wisdom. So yeah, you know packages for you.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
If you subscribe to cooler Zone Media, you can pretend
that Matt Leeb and I invited you into our home
that we share together in order to teach you our
wisdom in front of a crackling fire. You're allowed to
do that.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
And our wisdom is just doing Abbot and Costello bits. Yeah, well,
you do them smart.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
I do them badly because I can only kind of
remember who's on first, and I think the Mummy movie
they were in, that's all.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
I got. The Mommy movie. That's the real smart guy movie.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, yeah, I watched part of that one morning when
I got up early to watch the the CGI Starship
Troopers show that was only on on like six am
back in the Yeah. Anyway, great, great show, both of them,
both of them, and we're back, Matt. Did you ever

(24:26):
watch the CGI Starship Troopers show?

Speaker 4 (24:28):
No?

Speaker 2 (24:28):
I didn't even really know nobody saw. Yeah what was
Was it also a satire? Or were they like?

Speaker 1 (24:36):
No, it was like pretty close to the aspects of
the book. It was closer to the book than the show,
but also did its own thing. I haven't watched it
in twenty five years, but I remember it being pretty cool.
That said, it was easier to impress me.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is before you saw Gotzi and
mister Hands.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
This was right around when I saw gots This was
probably before mister Hans though, Okay it is. I do
wonder what it did to me and so many other
members of my generation. Just like watching a video where
a man gets fucked to death by a horse as
a little kid, it did something to me, and because
like somebody tricked me into watching it, right, because yeah,
just like huh.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, no, definitely for me, I was just like, all right,
so avoid horses, so avoid horses. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Well it was also this thing where like it was
the first thing I can remember where I was like, well,
I probably can't talk to my parents about this, Like
if I if I ask them about this video, I'm
not going to be allowed on the internet anymore.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Right exactly, I'm just keeping this one from them, right, Yeah, yeah,
it was. In fact, I think I did the exact
same thing and I'm not sure, but I low key
blamed that for my eventual drug addiction, because eventually I
started keeping more secrets like first mister Hands than it
was Tobgirl. Then it was delauded. You know, That's how

(25:57):
it goes.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Can you imagine dying to ask your parents about Tubgirl.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Or Lemon Party?

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Holy shit, I don't even know. I don't even know
how to describe that to the listener. Well, Lemon Party
is a bunch of old people, Evan's energy. I'm not
going to try to describe Tubgirl. You don't need that
in your head if you haven't already seen it. If
you have, then you just the minute I said the words,
Even if you don't have a visual memory, a perfectly
clear photo of it popped up in your head, like

(26:26):
if you're driving, you just veered off the fucking road
right now.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yes, yes, and we're sorry about that, Barl apologizable for it. Legally,
it's not our fault. We are safe from legal Who
was it?

Speaker 1 (26:39):
What was it that made used to make web forums?
What was the PHP or something like that. I forget
the name of the online underlying software? Whatever, fuck it, it
doesn't matter. Chapter two after this, uh, this delivery boys
decided to stay and talk to the Avatar. Is your
free will? Do you believe in God? The old man asked,
as if we had known each other forever but had
somehow neglected to discuss that one time topic.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
I'm sorry, but this is like everything. It's like he
saw the Matrix. Yeah, they really only like the scene
where they're sitting on the leather couches, and he was
like that whole Let's make that the whole book. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
It's also like, you know, this is I'm actually the
way I'm doing it it is more earned than the
fucking way he wrote it. Because this is the first
book in the series. We know nothing about the Avatar.
There's no like when you get that scene. Exposition dumps
are always kind of a dicey thing in fiction, right,
it's an easy to make that kind of like shitty writing.

(27:34):
Like you have to be very careful with it, and
that's why we remember stuff like that scene in The
Matrix because it's earned pretty well. But like a, you
are as hungry for Neo for answers to those questions
as as he is when we get to that point.
This is just like, none of this is earned. I
don't care what this old man has to say. He's
done nothing to impress me. He has not set up

(27:55):
that he knows. Again, even a slightly better version of
this would have, like their be a conflict that he's solved,
maybe like the one that we get in the religion war,
and then you know we but even then, I'm not
that interested in this old man but either.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
I mean, so far, all that he has done is irritate. Yeah,
he's irritated cost a young man is job. Yeah, he's
basically going to get this man fired all to do
like a thing where he's like, oh, thanks for the package, here,
I give it to you now. And now he's trying
to convince him that he's smart, and it's, uh, I

(28:32):
don't know. It's like he's missing the whole part of
the matrix where there was like fucking thirty minutes of
movie before that.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, so they start this very irritating conversation where the
avatar asks do you believe in God? And the delivery
guy says, yeah, I believe in a god. Of course
there must be a god. Not because he believes in
a god, but because he thinks that he's an old
man and he wants reassurance about the afterlife. So the
avatar then is like, do you think God is omnipotent

(29:01):
and you know he has free will and that people
have free will? And the guy's like, yeah, sure, And
then the avatar says the question that I don't know.
Most people ask themselves when they're thirteen. If God knows
what the future holds, then all our choices are already made,
aren't they. Free will must be an illusion, he was clever,
But I wasn't going to fall into that trap. God
lets us determine the future ourselves using our free will,

(29:23):
I explained. Then you believe God doesn't know the future,
I guess not, I admitted, But he must prefer not knowing.
I mean, that's not necessarily the case. Like again, I
don't believe in an omniscient God. But if God is omniscient,
he can let people make their own choices while also
knowing the instant they make them where those choices go.
Those are not actually in conflict.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Right.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Here's a good example of that. If you watch a baby,
as many of us have, touch a hot burner on
a stove. You know the baby's gonna hurt themselves, right,
But they are still exercising their free will and touching
that burner.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
That's right, and God is letting it happen. God, is
that's the reason why my baby keeps burning herself. Yeah,
I tell her it's not me, it's God as I
put her hand on the just kidding everyone, my baby.
Don't hurt a baby.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
But I will say I can't not whenever I listen
to these atheist arguments because I was raised Robert, don't.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Hurt a baby, But no, I want to hear the butt.
I'm here with it.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
I'm saying if you, if you are trying to make
like an argument for the existence of God, and someone's
counter argument is like, well, God can't be both all
powerful and all knowing and give us free will? Like, well, yeah,
free will doesn't. Like your free will is not impacted
by the fact that God knows what you're going to do.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
That doesn't mean you don't have free will. It just
means he knows what you're going to do, just like
I know the kid reaching for the stove is about
to touch it and get hurt, right, I haven't. I'm
not impacting his free will by the fact that I
know where this ends.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
You know also trying to figure out like the fucking
like intricacies of the rules of God is some nerd.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
It's always it's always there. But this is like, I've
had a lot of arguments with religious people over the years.
This is a bad one from an atheist point of view.
This does not make the point that you want it
to make. Yeah, so, but this dude, the delivery man
just folds and is like, Oh, I guess God can't
know everything if people have free will, and I believe

(31:20):
that people have free will. So the avatar asks for
whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future? Well,
it must be for his own benefit in ours too,
I reasoned, he wouldn't have to settle for less. The
old man pressed on, couldn't God just give humans the
illusion of free will? We'd be just as happy if
we had actual free will, and God would retain his
ability to see the future. Isn't that a better solution
for God than the one you suggested? Why would God

(31:42):
want to mislead us? If God exists, his motives are
certainly unfathomable. No one knows why he igrants free will,
or why he cares about human souls or why pain
and suffering are necessary parts of life. Actually, again, I
hate that I'm ind the deficient decision now of like
defending Christianity, But like libraries have been written of guys
like this is a huge, huge part of apologetics is
like the problem of like, you know, paying an evil

(32:03):
and whatnot in the world. And again, Scott, if you
wanted to make the smart argument to this, and you
want to make this character seem smart, you could do
fifteen seconds of googling to find like, what did you know?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
What did like C.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
S Lewis say about the problem of evil? Right? You
don't even have to go to like a religious scholar,
find another fucking hack writer. Sorry, guys, if you see
s Lewis fans I loved him too as a kid.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
But find a C.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
S Lewis argument on this quote from that, and then
your character seems smarter and you have something to bounce
off of that's not a straw man, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
I'm pretty sure that Dilbert guy is not like a
big reader of other guys. He wills guys who I
think is just like, why would I need to read
when all the smartest things are already written in my brain?

Speaker 1 (32:47):
If you were to tell him. Actually, a massive amount
of like Catholic literature over the course of the last
thousand years has like been people positing answers to those questions. Yeah,
he would just get angry you.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Right, yeah, yeah, you would yell at you and then say, oh,
I guess you're trying to be woke.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
And then then you would tell him Turkey exists, and
he was His brain would catch on fire.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
So fast in a skull. Once you learned about the
existence of Turkey, this guy is gonna have a wow.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
And here's if you're If you're frustrated with me defending Christians,
don't worry, I'm about to get to defend brain surgeons.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
So uh.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
He starts talking about love, and the delivery boy says,
the one thing I know about God's motives that he
must is he must love us, right, The avatar responds, love.
Do you mean love and the way you understand it
as a human? Well, not exactly, but basically the same
thing I mean love is love. A brain surgeon would
tell you that a specific part of the brain controls
the ability to love. If it's damaged, people are incapable

(33:47):
of love and capable of carrying about others.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I think a brain surgeon would say that the brain
is pretty plastic and that people have suffered very traumatic
brain injuries and retain their ability to love.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Also they sometimes their personality shift.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
But like, I don't know, I don't think they'd phrase
it that way if they were a good surgeon.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
This is like a guy who literally knows absolutely nothing
about the human brain. But it's just like, no, brain
is exactly like computer, you get rid of love program
and then no more love. It's like not how a
brain works.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
No, it's also like again, this is the dumb version
of it, because he just did he doesn't even look
up like what science there is chemically on what goes
on when we experience what we call love. Again, the
slightly smarter version of this is you like have some
sort of little rant about how well the release of
oxytocin in the brain is what causes what we call
love and if you damage that then like people can't like.
And that's not entirely accurate either, but it's at least

(34:36):
slightly smarter than just the region of the brain. Yes, whatever,
fuck you, Scott, Google something this isn't this isn't complicate
We're not talking about jar or Tolkien writing a billion
words of backstory in his fucking like Oxford office. We're
talking like I'm talking about a region's probably Google for
the name of that region of the brain. I want
this guy to sound smart, right, let me let me

(34:58):
look this up. Oh it turns out out anyway.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Whatever, No fucking way that he is doing any research
for this a book that he wrote in a conversation
by himself, painting him as the smartest man in the world.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
I mean again, let's be real. You want to punch
this up to be better. We're talking forty five minutes
of extra research, not a lot. Do all Muslims believe
the same thing? Oh, there's actually differences, but.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Like, yeah, no, but they have to get into and stuff.
It's just trying to prepare propel a story forward and
as a story about smart guy who uses fart joke
to kill God.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Smart guys fart joke kill God.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Good stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
So yeah, So isn't it arrogant to think that love
is generated by our little in our little brains? Is
the same thing in omnipotent being experiences. If you were omnipotent,
why would you limit yourself to something that could be
reproduced by a little clump of neurons. I shifted my
opinion to better defend it. We must feel something similar
to God's type of love, but not the same way

(35:54):
God feels it. What does it mean to feel similar
to the way God feels Is that like saying a
pepple is similar to the son because both are around Again,
I don't want to be a pedant here, but there
are different shapes of pebbles.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Scott, pebbles are all over the map. They're all over
the map. I've seen a lot.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I saw a rectangular prism pebble the other day. You know,
come on, Scott, Adam. Sorry, I am now being a pedant,
but I hate him. He's irritating me. So maybe God
designed our brains to feel love the same way he
feels it. He could do that if he wanted to.
So you believe God wants things and he loves things
similar to the way humans do. Do you also believe
God experiences anger and forgiveness. That's part of the package.

(36:32):
I said, So God has a personality according to you,
and is similar to what humans experience. I guess part
of what's frustrating to me about this argument is that
Scott repeatedly lets us know this delivery driver doesn't particularly
believe what he's saying.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
He's just giving the answers.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
He thinks this guy wants to try to end the conversation,
which means I have no investment in him being proved wrong.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
We have not established this character. We haven't established that
he believes things in a certain way. So like the
fact that it is he specifically notes like I just
said this because I thought it was the right thing
to say. I thought this would comfort him. I thought
he would stop talking. That means like, I don't I
get the slightly better version about this. If you want
to do this whole religion plot line, have this avatar
get fucking captured or something by a religious terrorist, or

(37:19):
have him be you know, he's living in some sort
of like dystopian world and he gets arrested by the
religious police, and he asked like if he maybe if
he could like convince you want to do this socratic dialogue.
I'm not saying this is a good book, but it's
a better one. You want to do this fucking socratic dialogue,
Have him talk things out with this like, you know,
religious extremist who's supposed to be torturing him over the
course of a book and gradually change this guy's mind.

(37:40):
And then this guy, you know, he can write out
how he influences everyone else to change things, as opposed
to like, well, this delivery driver has just told me
he doesn't believe anything he's arguing. I am not invested
in him having his mind changed because he doesn't believe
any of these things.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
He's just like, yeah, he thinks he's doing a fucking
dust Ievski here. That's the thing is he does think he'sky.
He does he's doing a It's like a fucking Dilbert
version of Dustaevsky, and it's it's incredibly hard to watch

(38:14):
or to hear you read, because all I'm imagining is
like like a wife looking over at Scott Adams. I
don't know if he was married at this time.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
I think it was, yeah, because he hadn't gone, he
hadn't had his spasmic dysphony or whatever.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, So like I mean, essentially just watching her Dilbert
ass husband writing something that is a thousand times scarier
to see as a wife. Then all work and no
play makes Jack a dog like this is fucking.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
I would much rather walk in on my spouse like
designing a truck bomb than to hear like I've decided
to write a novel that's a Socratic dialogue that'll explain
to everybody why religions not real.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Just make a bomb, man, just make a bomb. Money. Yeah,
I'll get some bottles and we'll do some Molotov cocktails.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Just seeing then you've titled the word document God's Debris.
I'm ready to die. Let's just go out. You know,
fuck it, we have not.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Given I think, sufficient attention to how fucking terrible of
the title God's Debris is.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Wait till you hear why that's the title. So I'm
moving us ahead quite a while to God's Motivation, which
is a few chapters ahead. If you were God, the
avatar said, what would you want?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
I barely know what I want, much less what God wants.
Imagine that you are omnipotent. You could do anything, create anything,
be anything. As soon as you decide you want something,
it becomes reality. I waited, knowing there was more. He continued,
does it makes it? You don't need to do that,
Just give us the whole fucking line. We don't need
that anyway. Whatever, Fuck you, Scott, Fuck you learn how
to write, He continued, Does it make sense to think

(39:57):
of God as wanting anything? God would have no motions,
no fears, no desires, no curiosity, no hunger. Those are
human shortcomings, not something that would be found in an
omnipotent God. What would then motivate God? Maybe it's the challenge,
the intellectual stimulation of creating things. Omnipotence doesn't mean nothing
is or means that nothing is a challenge? And what
could stimulate the mind of something one who knows everything.
You make it sound almost boring to be God. But

(40:19):
I guess you'll say boring is a human feeling. Everything
that motivates living creatures is based on some weakness or flaw.
Hunger motivates animals, Lust motivates. That tells us a lot
that he's like. Lust motivates is a flaw in a weakness.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
H Scott. H Scott, No, like his wife reads that.
He's just like, oh really, okay, all right, So that's
why you won't fucking go down on me.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Look, obviously there are some people, you know. Not everyone's
motivation is sexual, But for people who are lust is
like one of the you know, there's people can take
it negative ways, but like being attracted to someone and
following for them is nice. Most of us don't see
that as like, ah my weakness.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah yeah, no, it's a natural and you know, if
you want to be weird about it serves a purpose.
But yeah, fucking mostly just like natural and fune.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, it's fun, it's it's this is it is like
low key again as much of an as an atheist
influencers as that's extremely catholic, right, Well, of course when
we're lustful, that that's a weakness. Are weak human bodies
making us hard?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, very catholicarly catholic. It's just like an
atheist though he's like, yeah, I'm a guy who doesn't
believe in God who still punches his boner every time.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
One. Fear and pain motivate animals, and again that's also fun,
Like I raise animals and like a lot of my
you know, chickens are not smart animals, but it's not
just fear and pain. For example, they they are capable
of taking like comfort in each other's presence and like
the warmth that they generate. You certainly see that with
animals like goats, with like sheep, you know they are

(41:53):
there's a degree of like tenderness that they have towards
their young. They play like other animals play. It's been
proven in fact that like cows, they produce more milk.
They're generally healthier when they have not just other cows,
but specific I'd like cows pick out other cows that
they bond with, like it's described and yeah, it's like
they're friends, like that is how it's described in like

(42:16):
the literature studying this, that like cows just kind of
have buds, and I think a lot of animals actually
do that sort of thing, just like how basically every
animal actually likes getting pet like many different animals surprising
kinds of them if they get to experience getting scritched
behind the ears or like this is pretty dope. That's
not fear and pain, that's just like comfort, Like it's nice,

(42:38):
it feels good.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
I don't know. I'm very much enjoying the idea that like,
don't tell Scott yeah this because much like Turkey, it
will explode his fucking mind when he finds out that
there are cows with more friends than him.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Oh, at way more friends.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
And by the way, having lived with cows for a
chunk of my youth, I would much cows are a
much nobler creature than the Scott Adams. But yeah, someone's
going to show Scott that video of like a coyote
and a badger hunting, and he's again his brain is
going to spin out of his head.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
What if all that would have like stopped this degeneration
of his brain was like some someone sends him some
videos of animal best friends, like he could have we
could have stopped you know, Dilbert from turning into the
guy he did.

Speaker 4 (43:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Fun, So it's tragic. If I had a time machine,
I'd go back in time. I wouldn't kill Hitler. I
would show him a duck being a best friend with
a pig.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, a duck and a pig hanging out. Yeah, or
like yeah, one of those birds that like chills out
on like the back of a crocodile's neck. Yeah, cleans
it off. Like, no, it's not just fear and pain.
Sometimes you're motivated by another thing that makes you feel good.
Yeah yeah, yeah, anyway, it's because it's also like I
don't know, I do actually reject what Scott is kind

(43:59):
of in co compoinitely doing the idea that like, human
beings and animals have like fundamentally wildly different motivations. Right,
there's there's every now and then you get some asshole
on like Twitter who will be like, oh, your cat
and your dog don't love you. They just know that
you provide like shelter and comfort and security, And it's like,
why do you think we like each other? Exactly, as
if like that's not a profound thing, taking comfort and

(44:22):
feeling secure in the presence of another.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Yes, yeah, nothing is there. Anyone could offer that to anyone,
just willy nilly, just.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Little robots making you know, the world bearable through their presence.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
And there's not fuck you for just being like, oh,
you know what, the cat relationship is very transactional, like
shut the fuck up, yeah, Jonah hill ass it's weaponizing
therapy talk. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I fucking hate all these because again I am I
am not a believer that human beings and animals are
experiencing fundamentally different things. We just have words and animals
have you know, I don't know whatever Echo the Dolphin
is doing in that Echo the Dolphin video game anyway,
whatever we could we could we trudge on? So what
motivates God? Asks the delivery boy? Do you have an

(45:12):
answer to that question? Or are you just yanking my chain?
I can conceive of only one challenge for an omniptant,
being the challenge of destroying himself. You think God would again,
potentially an idea you can have some fun with in
a sci fi book, right, the idea that like God. Yeah,

(45:33):
but also the way to make that fun is not
spoiler God's debris as God murders himself at some point
in the past and like now we're we're we're all
living in like the shattered remnants of God trying to
reconstruct himself. Right, that's what intelligence is. Yeah, I don't know.
I think a more interesting version of that is, like you.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Actually the Dilbert guy. Yeah, not written by the Dilbert guy.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
You can do a lot with You could do a
lot with the idea of like a God who maybe
is playing different religions off of each other in order
to like somehow kill himself, like trying to fit in
like people uncover that mystery and you've got to I
don't know, there's a fun like vaguely kind of fucking
gnostic work of fiction that you can.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Wear out of that where credit is due. Yeah, every
I guess on average, it sounds like three hundred pages
at Scott Adams writes, he writes one half good idea
that he uses terribly. It's a guy who has uh,
you know, the the In the last book it was
a general who had a guy falling around with a
gun to kill him if he ever gets too powerful.

(46:35):
And in this one it's a fucking, I don't know,
suicidal god who kills himself.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Scott Adams is pretty good at coming up with half
of a good idea. Like if he was a TV
pitch man, you know, he'd be like.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
So this.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
So this therapist moves to Seattle, you know, from his
from his old home on the East coast, and he,
let me tell you, this guy hates the Irish.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
You think you don't like the Irish. Boy he's made.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
It cut out everything he said. After therapist moves to Seattle,
we gotta banger, Adams, you did it again.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Well he left out the whole thing where the the
rolicks nose. He's got a drunk nose. You're gonna cut
the hole. That's the whole point. I do want to
see Scott Adams Fraser too.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
It is funny because like Fraser is basically a parody
of the kind of guy Scott Adams is. But yeah, yeah,
very funny, good stuff, all right anyway, angel and yeah,
and r I p Kelsey Grammar who died right after
that show and has gone on to do nothing else.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Yeah. Well, you know he played Beast.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
He did play that was actually really I I always
thought was good cast.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
I thought it was a great choice. It was like,
its a good beast. Yeah, it's a good beast.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Although I having seen the hell Boy movies too, I
kind of want to see David Hyde Pierce's beast. I
know he didn't wind up being the but he's I
think he could have done it. I think he would
have been great. Ah, I love me. That's why I'm
not excited about the trade. The Fraser reboot.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Is that, like, what there's a Fraser reboot? Yeah, they're
doing a reboot.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
He's back in Chicago, I think it is, or not Chicago,
and where the fuck he came from?

Speaker 2 (48:13):
I think he's back the Seattle is where he's at.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Seattle's where he's at. But when the Fraser series ended
he was moving to Chicago, I think, and I think
this this new one's supposed to start with him leaving
Seattle back for Boston. For like the next where is
the Cheers Bar? It's in Boston, Like presumably we might
see it. Okay, I think they did film something at
part of the episode there, although maybe I'm getting that wrong.

(48:37):
But like my frustration with the show idea is that,
like I think, because this is all Kelsey Grammar's baby,
it's been confirmed that like David Hyde Pierce isn't back.
You know, it's him and a new cast of characters,
and I think they've like convinced themselves that, well what
we all the core of the show was always Fraser,
and you know we can always have we can just

(48:57):
move him to It's like no, no, no, no, no no,
was a fun side character in Fraser. We were there
because of Martin and Niles. Like that is that is
what brought our asses into the honest Edie and Edie
great dog actor man that's also look up fucking uh
what's his name? The guy the Fraser actor. He gets

(49:18):
so angry when people call the dog an actor because
he's like, it's just memorized the series of tricks.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Like, that's not what acting is. Let's be real. Acting
is memorizing a series of tricks. Cry, look hawk, I
get it, speaking of a series of tricks. H it's
time for some ads. Oh I love ads, Thank you,
thank you so do I.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Ah, we're back. We're thinking about how disappointing the Fraser
reboot's gonna be.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, doesn't have any of our favorite characters, and in fact,
the few of them are no longer with us.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Scott is promising in this terrible book about God to
wrinkle our brains and like spin them around, uh pleasantly.
Whereas the biggest shock to my mind, the thing that
like most like shook my fundamental belief of about reality,
was hearing that Martin from Fraser was played by a

(50:16):
British man. What yeah, oh man, Yeah, that accent is
all like acting. Not one break. There's not a second
in that show where you don't believe he's a fucking
street smart cop from the fucking working class Seattle neighborhood.
It's amazing, crazy, Oh my god, it's so cool.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
British people are really good at doing the accent. I
really yeah, we just yeah, I can't do that. It's
like in reverse. It wouldn't work. I could never be
on peaky blinders, you know.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
No, no, nor.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Can I.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Em hul voice hlorious boy, he boasting not you will
put doctor as big as a house saw him.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
That's what that shows about. He's a very big doctor. Boy.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
I bet that we probably lost about a third of
the audience with that little spree of accent work.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Zvie shows up just shaking and livid, furious. Let's continue,
Let's finish this last bit of Scottish we got to finish.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Through flawless logic that we're all totally convinced of. Scott
has gotten us to believe that all the only reasonable
thing for God to want to do is commit suicide.
You think God would want to commit suicide, I asked.
I'm not saying he wants anything. I'm saying it's the
only challenge I think that God would prefer to exist,
then not to exist. That's thinking like a human, not
like a god. You have a fear so like I'm

(51:46):
not trying to say what God thinks, but you're thinking
like a human, not like a god. And I know
how a God would think. You have a fear of death.
So you assume God would share your preference. But God
would have no fears. Existing would be a choice, and
there would be no pain of death, nor feelings of
guilt or remorse or loss. Those are human feelings, not
God feelings. God could simply choose to discontinue existence. There's
a logical problem here, according to your way of thinking.

(52:08):
I said, if God knows the future, he already knows
if he will choose to end his existence, and he
knows how he will succeeded it. So there's no challenge there.
Either you're thinking is getting clearer. Yes, he will know
the future of his own existence. I know normal conditions,
But what do his omnipotence include knowing what happens after
he loses his omnipotence or what his knowledge? This is
again all like, I'm high with my fucking dealer and
he won't stop talking to me.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
All like, I'm getting anxiety because I'm like, bro, you're
definitely fired, You're definitely fined. Yeah, no, you're losing.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
It's okay. He becomes the avatar. That's what this avatar
is doing, is he's pilling this guy to make.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
An asplaining that to your fucking manager. Oh okay, I
was late because I became the avatar.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
I became the embodiment of all human knowledge and potential. Like,
I'm sorry I missed my last like dozen deliveries.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Bra Like, yeah, I'm sorry about that. I'm God shure
himself real fucked up. Yeah. Did you hear the thing
where God did suicides to himself?

Speaker 1 (53:04):
God and Hitler both both did a suicide. Hitler, who
is not that bad in this version of the future
because another guy didn't even worse genocide of.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
The Jews, Right, That's.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Right, Hitler's in the number two in terms of genocides
of Jewish people in this book.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
That's the way that Scott likes it. The way Scott
likes some of this way off of Hitler. You know
this guy, I think we've been misjudging him a little bit.
Let him rest in peace.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
I'm gonna make a worse Hitler and he's Muslim, Yeah
much kind of Muslim, all of them.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
All of them, But you know, fucking I don't care
if they're the shit one or the Sun one. The
point is they all worship.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
The wrong God, which is the dead God committed suicide.
So I'm going to skip ahead to the end here
the chapter called fifth level? Who are you?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
I asked.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
I didn't know how to phrase the question lightly. The
old man certainly wasn't normal. I'm an avatar? Is that
some sort of title? I thought it was your name.
This man has never encountered the word avatar in his
life the first time? Yeah, yeah, I never watched that
cartoon or this is where I learned the word avatar
from when I was eleven, played Avatar or played Eldar
in third edition Warhammer forty thousand.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Anyway, I learned it from you know, forums where you
know you had a fucking you have a forum avatar, right, yeah,
and so you have an avatar common word.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah, excuse me for asking this, The delivery guy asks,
I don't really know how to phrase it, so I'm
just gonna come out and say it. You want to
know if I'm human? Yeah, I apologize. Because of all
of his brilliance, he can't possibly be a mortal man.
I apologize if that sounds silly, It's just that the
old man waved off the end of my sentence. I understand. Yes,
I am human. I'm a fifth level human. An avatar.

(54:51):
Fifth level, he doesn't doesn't even get another feet yet.
Jesus Christ. You can't even do two attacks if he's
like a melee class.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, this guy's barely got any XP and he thinks
he's a fucking genius.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
What a what bullshit bullshit loser. Yeah, you can't even
cat like I guess. Actually, if you're a wizard in
three point five, you can cast fireball now, so that
is that is when things start to get fun at
fifth level is a wizard.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
So there you go. Get a little too nerdy for
me there, buddy. But you know, I've seen a vagina
before I find myself. That's good, that's good.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
It is very funny that we've turned around from like
D and D being a thing that like people shoved
me into lockers when they noticed my D and D
books in middle school to like people getting laid dropping
D and D knowledge these days.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Yeah, I can DM a campaign one. Yeah amazing. I've
decided to stick with the bullying thing now because now
it feels like I'm bullying the mainstream culture. I'm even
ahead of you. I'm bullying people fork in comic books.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yes, like I see somebody like an iron Man and
I just shove him and a lot of times that
guy is three hundred pounds of solid muscle, and let
me tell you, I get the shit kicked out.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yeah, I still out of ten. But the point is,
as you stood up to the big corporation.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
A lot of huge dudes who are into comics and
better at fighting than they actually Yeah, it's become a problem.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah, it sucks that they all teamed up with like
the MMA guys. So they're all fucking doing keeto and
lifting and reading iron Man and I'm sitting here like
a lump, just going like fuck you, just thinking.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
In new ways to call them dorks. Yeah, oh, I
bet you like it when people combine three colors in
a variety of ways to make a panopoly of color
in a print medium.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Huh you need Yeah? Got him?

Speaker 1 (56:40):
So he's a fifth level avatar. People exist at different
levels of awareness, and avatar, who's one who lives at
the fifth level? Is awareness? Like intelligence? I asked, no,
Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within
your level of awareness. Your intelligence will stay about the
same over your life. Awareness is entirely different from intelligence.
Awareness involves recognizing your delusions, for what they are. Most

(57:00):
people's awareness will advance one or two levels in their lifetime.
What does it mean to recognize your delusions? When you
were a child, did your parents tell you that Santa
Claus brought presents so on Christmas Day? Yeah, I said,
I believed in Santa until kindergarten when the other kids
started talking. Then I realized Santa couldn't get to all
those homes in one night. Your intelligence did not change
from the moment you realize that Santa Claus was a

(57:21):
harmless fantasy. Your math and verbal skills stayed the same,
but your awareness increased. You were some suddenly aware that
stories from credible sources, in this case your parents, could
be completely made up. And from the moment of that
realization you could never see the world the same way
because your reality had changed. I guess it did. And
in school, did you learn that the Native Americans and
Pilgrims go, oh, boy, Scott, I don't want you dig
it diving in it?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah, but he does. He does.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
To be fair, He's like, yeah, this was made up.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
You learned that a bunch of your history is made up.
Awareness is about unlearning. It's the recognition that you don't
know as much as you thought you did. He described
what he called the five levels of awareness and said
that all humans experience the first level of awareness at birth.
That's when you become aware that you exist. In the
second level of awareness, you understand that other people exist.
You believe that most of what you were told by
authority figures. You accept the belief system in which you

(58:06):
were raised. Also, Scott doesn't really get little kids here,
because like it's a little bit messier than that, because
kids definitely believe you at some point. But also little
kids have a period where like the only thing they
want to say is no, and like reject everything you
tell them. Like that's why touching a hot burner is
kind of inevitable. Every kid will have some version of
that experience pretty much. It's not always a burner, but

(58:28):
like because you don't listen to what the adults tell you,
because that's part of anyway.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Whatever, dude, this is a full grown man writing.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
This is a full grown man. I'm skipping the other levels.
The fifth level of awareness is the Okay, the fourth
level awareness is skepticism, So all right, I guess I
should continue. The third level of awareness is that like
human beings are wrong sometimes, but you can still believe
in God. The fourth level is when you become an
atheist on the internet and you believe that the scientific
method is the best measure of what's true, and you

(58:56):
have a good working grasp of truth thanks to science
and your senses. You are arrogant when it comes to
dealing with people in levels two and three. That also
says a lot, because like it's certainly true that like
little kids, babies and stuff are aware unaware of things
that we're aware of, like the idea of like object
permanence and stuff. Right, this is very basic shit. But
I don't I'm not like arrogant about them. It's I

(59:18):
think it's amazing. Actually, I got to watch the other day.
I got to have this amazing moment where like there's
this little baby that is effectively a roommate of mine occasionally,
and you know, like on like a floor mat for
doing yoga, I have these ones that like you can
fit a bunch of them together like puzzle pieces. So
they have these little inns that you can put on
them that are shaped like zippers, like little like foam

(59:38):
zippers three or four feet long. And this baby that
I hang out with noticed that the shape of the
zipper was kind of similar to the silhouette of a train,
and the baby started making chew chew sounds. And I'd
never seen the baby exhibit sort of a capability of
abstract thought before. It was like, watching this moment in

(59:59):
development hand happen, I was just like yeah, more yeah,
instead of like I was not filled with arrogance, like
look at this dumb baby. It was like, Wow, there's
like the sense of wonder, of almost religious awe at,
like watching a brain like change over, Like it's beautiful. Actually,
I think that's why people like being parrots, you know.

(01:00:20):
But now everyone's just like, look at these shitty ass kids.
They don't know fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, all great, I have a fucking idiot. Yes, he
thinks the zipper as a train. Yeah, doesn't even know
how to cook an omelet.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Yeah, drink your bottle, baby, anyway. So the fourth level
of skepticism, the fifth level of awareness is the avatar.
The avatar understands that the mind is an illusion generator.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, yes, I love he's straight up. Just like fourth
level is atheist because why because that's one away from
super genius. Yeah, that's one away. Yeah, once atheist, you
are only one level away from being so smart that
you can talk to animals.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
And yeah, the avatar recognized the science is just another
belief system. YadA, YadA, YadA. Anyway, this is all like
second grade philosophy. Shit, that's uh, that's everything Scott Adams
believes about the universe.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Matt Lee, how are you feeling? I mean, honestly, I'm
feeling kind of like amazed and embarrassed for him, like like,
because part of me is realized. Like halfway while you
were describing the levels, I was like, all, fuck, he
was attempting an l Ron Hubbard thing, Like he thought
for a second it might be possible that he could
do a hubbard esque rift and religious Yes, that's what

(01:01:45):
he's doing. And I was just thinking to myself, like, fuck,
that has got to be It's got to be really
embarrassing to like begin the process of writing your own
dianetics but then realize you're too fucking stupid to do it.
So instead you invent a guy. You make it fiction,
and you invent a guy who's this you label the

(01:02:06):
smartest guy in the world, and then he says all
the things that you thought of as your religion, Like
that is I mean, you know, it's uh, it's great writing,
it's great compelling story. Does it end with him eventually.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Becomes the avatar, the avatar disappears, whatever, this guy is
the new avatar, YadA YadA.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
YadA, avatar convincing the Delivery gotta suck his dick, because
that's kind and what I would use it for.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
This would be one of my favorite books if like
it was. The review at the end was that he
was just trying to fuck just Delivery. Now you get
to hit you're a fourth level now after her socratic dialogue,
but to hit fifth gotta my dick, you gotta.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Set my dick. Honestly, if it had gone that level,
I would have been like, dude, maybe this is this
is the best novel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
This is like, yeah, he's fuck Dostoyevski up in here
of a modern era.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Absolutely choose this way of doing the story. You might
as well start it off with like a guy comes
over to fix the cable or clean the pool, like
you're starting it off on a porno premise. You're not
gonna end it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
That would be That would be so and the next
and then it's thirty pages.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Of hardcore pornography that would.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Like he is like walking you through Like how when
this when the avatar busts in this delivery boy's mouth,
he gets that first taste of salt. That's the first
experience and it takes him back to being a child
seeing the coast for the first time, the spray of
the ocean in his face, transported through time by the

(01:03:41):
taste of the avatars. Come, Matt, you have anything to plug?

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Oh dude, you know if you like come, you're gonna
love pod yourself a gun, which is a Sopranos and
the Wire Rewatch podcast were gotten through all of the Sopranos,
and now we're at season three of the Wire, so
check it out. By the time you hear this, we
may be starting season four, which is the best season. Yeah,

(01:04:05):
and you know, fucking follow me on Instagram at Matt
Lee jokes. Oh right, I almost forgot. If you are
in the San Francisco Bay Area or any of the
surrounding areas, on Tuesday, October seventeenth, at eight pm, specifically,
my wife Francesca, if Youreantini and I are going to
be headlining the San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club, So yeah,

(01:04:30):
please come out to that. It is a Tuesday at
eight pm October seventeenth, where at Voice, my wife and
I are going to be co headlining. There's going to
be some other great comedians coming out. It's gonna be
a lot of fun. You can get your tickets at
Punchlinecomedyclub dot com and Yeah, October seventeenth, please come out.

(01:04:52):
It's going to be so good. I swear to God.
I mean, at the very least, you're going to get
to see my wife and I kiss, like live on stage.
It's a sex show. Anyways, come out to that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Follow Matt Leeb on the gram. Yeah, and the next
time you see a person who believes a religion, tell
them tell him a fart joke and a.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Fart joke and then you'll end war.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.