Religious Syncretism: The Ultimate Conspiracy?

Religions are as old as humanity, and predate the written word. They've also been home to a great many secrets -- in fact, some religions have been predicated on secrecy, and others are amalgamations of two preexisting belief systems. Join the guys as they explore the strange rise of religions, the ways in which they have melded over time and, ultimately, ask whether there are any real secret religions active in the world today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel is
on a musical adventure. They call me Ben. We are
joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
as everyone had turned into our live show, has already learned.

(00:49):
Congratulations are due to you, my old friend. You have
made it ten years right, ten year anniversary. Oh man,
it was huge. It was really great, and honestly, I
couldn't be happier. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Someone also recently
asked us, I don't know whether you saw this about

(01:12):
the age of stuff they don't want you to know,
going back to the YouTube days. You know, I think
we're ten maybe eleven at this point? Are we ten
maybe eleven between? Yeah? That's crazy. So that means that
this show started around the time you got married. That's right.
It was part of my vowels made vows to my

(01:36):
wife into to you guys. Oh wow, weird and explains
a lot. I know kidding, we are. We are having
a great though busy time here at the top secret
stuff they don't want, you know, studio with it a
publicly available address. Because we're traveling a lot, we're making

(01:59):
some way eaves and we are still we're still delving
into new and strange things, at least as far as
this show is concerned. Because one of the new and
strange things that we're delving into today is a very,
very old thing. We are delving into the story of
some of the legitimately oldest conspiracy theories in human history,

(02:27):
not just written history, not just oral history. The capital
h whole thing today's episode, you see, is about religion
before the dawn of recorded history. This has been one
of humanity's most inspiring, divisive and if we are being
brutally honest, dangerous debates, oh absolutely, And just to put

(02:51):
this out there, as we do every time we talk
about something like this, we at this show will never
tell you what to believe or what not to believe.
That is your own thing. What we will do is
discuss a lot of these things. And Dan, if you're
listening and driving to work, uh, that means you. Oh
that's right, Yes, thank you so much, Dan Harmon. We

(03:13):
do have eyes and ears scattered around various places in
the English speaking world. We we appreciate, we appreciate your time.
Did you get a chance to listen to that clip?
I did. I really hope he doesn't feel too bad
about listening to this show after after talking about it openly. Well,
I want to point out also also, I I would

(03:35):
hope this is abundantly clear to anyone listening to the show.
We're not Nazias, nor do we identify with or give
any consideration to, uh categorically, any ideas of racial or
religious supremacy. That sort of stuff is is just the

(03:58):
lowest form of thinking, you know what I mean. Um,
but you know, with that, With that said, it was
really cool to to hear our show spoken by somebody
that you know, we we genuinely appreciate his work. So
oh yeah, and I respected brilliant writer and unfailingly honest too,

(04:20):
which is a rare commodity in these our modern days.
Here's here's hoping the best we can hope, now, Matt,
is that we do not get ruthlessly lampooned on some
episode of Rick and Morty. Oh or should we hope that?
Either way? What a what a way to go? And
I like that. We're also we're also being careful to

(04:42):
talk about avoiding prejudices and discriminations as we enter into
one of the most discriminatory and prejudice parts of the
human experience, religion. You know, what would the what if
if we were trying to sell religion to some extraterrestrial

(05:03):
species or someone who had somebod never heard of it?
The taglines are you know, there's a multitude of them,
but they're also pretty distressing. Again, if we're being honest religion,
you know, in the byline is a lot of good
people died and an uncountable number of people have died
over the years because of persecution by varying sects of religion.

(05:25):
But you know that doesn't mean it's all bad, right, sure. Yeah.
While there is no way to estimate how many people
have died due to religious conflicts over the course of
this strange experiment we call the human species, there's also
no way to estimate how many people have been physically
saved by another person's religious principles. You know, someone has

(05:49):
their finger on the button for a bomb or their
finger on the trigger of a gun, and all of
a sudden, there's some sort of distant echo internal monologue
in their heads saying thou shalt not something something, and
they say, I will not be force of evil today,
or just by the simple kind words of one person
to another that saved the life of another, or you know,

(06:12):
giving the giving of food, or the selflessness that exists
in many, if not most religions. Sure, yeah, in a
very real way, spiritual beliefs taught empathy too many people. However,
knowing that we cannot estimate the number of people who died,
and we cannot estimate the number of people who were

(06:34):
saved physically again not spiritually, we can sadly and tragically
safely assume that the number of people who died due
to religion far outweighs the number of people who are
saved to a religion so far. You know what I mean?
Maybe will be the big ear for all of us. Yeah. Well,
we also can't continue without stating the fairly obvious. But

(06:58):
maybe something we don't about very often is that religion
can be used as a control structure for the masses,
a control structure for the mind essentially, and opiate of
the masses. Yeah, yeah, I mean it can be used
in those ways. If wielded. It's it's tough to even

(07:19):
talk about a lot of times, because if wielded by
an improper power, or by a power or someone with
intentions to do so, it's possible. At least I'm gonna
say that, I'm gonna take it a little bit further
and maybe what I did for here, which is fine,
I am going to argue that, at least from a
social perspective or a sociological perspective, all religion is a

(07:43):
means of controlling a group of people. That doesn't necessarily
mean it's a bad way to control a group of people,
because there are a lot of ancient texts that have
restrictions or constraints that may seem oddly specific fi right
in a modern day, but if you look at the

(08:03):
time in which these were created, a lot of them
were things like health code concerns. You know what I mean.
It might say, you know, insert God here says not
to consume this animal because it's unclean, when the reality
may have been don't consume this animal because it will
give you trick gnosis or something and you will die,
you know. Uh, And the same thing with like rules

(08:25):
about hey, don't sleep with your family members because it's
it's what's bad for the goose is bad for the
gander genetically or even something is as simple as you
try not to be jealous of other people. You know,
like that. It's it's a simple idea. But if you
can encode that in someone, you can probably make society
a little bit better or at least at large by

(08:47):
controlling them. Agreed. See again, it's it's rules of the
road for for a group to survive. In this show,
we're going to explore the basics of religion as current
understood from an academic and an historical perspective. We are
not going to make any attempt to proselytize you, and
we won't We certainly will not try to grade one

(09:11):
belief system as better or worse than another. Uh, we're
not qualified, And to be honest, there is no one
alive or dead who was qualified, is qualified, or will
be qualified to do so. Oh man, I know, I
know hyperbole, right, and I would be glad to be wrong.
If there is someone who who is genuinely some sort

(09:33):
of omniscient religious authority believe for you. I'm pretty sure
there's there's at least two people somewhere in Arizona that
could probably fit that bill. Yes, yes, right to us. Please,
we are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Instead
of doing that, instead of you know, lauding one religion

(09:55):
or or vilifying another, or try I'm to convert you
to one of our uh self manufactured religions, we are
going to delve head first into the one of the strangest,
longest running conspiracy theories in history, and that is the
idea of secret religions. Here are the facts. Okay, So

(10:18):
when we were saying religion, what we're really talking about here,
we're just going to hit some of these basic points. Right, religion,
we're talking about the worship of a god, some kind
of supernatural being or pantheon of beings gods in that
in that case, and and their ability to exert some
kind of power over humans or or the earth or

(10:39):
some other physical aspect in that we encounter, or the
or your access to the spiritual world. Yes, yes, so
the idea there being that there is a god of everything, maybe, right,
a yahweh, or there is a god that controls certain
aspects of the world, right, like a hades, right, a

(11:03):
god of the underworld. That's and that's very general though,
because that doesn't encompass all religions, right right. That's the thing.
This definition is not entirely correct. Not all religions have
what we would recognize as a supreme deity. Some religions
just have precepts like don't kill people because it will

(11:23):
make things worse for you, right, uh. And then we
have to arrive at a more inclusive definition, or maybe
more comprehensive definition. If we're trying to fit everything that's
ever been called a religion into one definition, we would
say something like a religion is a cultural system will practices, traditions, values,

(11:44):
and beliefs, often accompanied by psycred text, locations and rituals.
That's that's pretty good, because it's so damnably broad. And
this leads us to a huge controversy, a controversy that's
probably never going to be solved even now, even today
as you listen to this. As we recorded in nineteen

(12:05):
there is no scholarly agreement over what exactly make something religion. Like,
think of all the things in the world that are
not religions but fit that second definition. We're talking about
some some nerd fandom, right, watching the people who get
together to watch Rocky horror picture show. So yeah, some marketing,

(12:29):
multi level marketing games. There we go, Uh, sports fandom. Right,
this is what we do for our team to increase
their chances of getting to the super Bowl, and people
believe in it. I gotta wear my green pants or whatever. Right,
thou shalt not say, uh, that's certain play whilst in
a theater. Yes, exactly exactly. And now let's let's exit

(12:53):
stage left, pursued by a bear to look into the
history of religion. How do we get to this crazy
place where billions of people around the world are defining
their lives and living their lives according to something that
billions of other people think is either misguided or inaccurate

(13:15):
or complete hogwash. The weird thing is, we've been working
on this conundrum for the longest time. Asking asking where
religion begins is a lot like asking who the first
person to discover fire was, Right, there's not a clear answer.

(13:35):
We're not gonna find one unless something very surprising happens
in today's episode. The best we can guess is that
again religion predates the written word and recorded history. At first,
that sounds impressive, but written history only really kicks into
gear five thousand years ago or so, which is a

(13:56):
drop in the bucket. It's not a long time humans
were around the way before then, It just took us
a while to start writing things down in full. The
oldest known writing currently is a limestone tablet. It's called
the Kish tablet from Sumere. It's around dates backed around

(14:17):
b c E. And it's it's in a weird spot
because if you look at it, it's pictograms. It's an
assemblage of pictograms. But it represents a kind of awkward
transition from proto writing to syllabic writing of what would
later be recognized as kenea form. So syllabic writing, of course,

(14:40):
is the kind of writing that you would see English
rendered into on a page. Right, you you have different
you have different symbols representing different sounds or groups of sounds,
and you arrange them into things and holy smokes, by
golly by gum, when you pronounced those correctly, they make
a spell. The living language. I love where you took

(15:02):
that when you said syllabic writing. In my mind, I
really was thinking about the art of chiseling stone tablets.
I apologize that that's where remember and went No, but
I mean it makes sense to Can you imagine how
how frustrated the authors and the thinkers of old would
be with with our creative aptitude today. It's so easy

(15:27):
to write a book today. All you have to do
is not get distracted. You can get up, you can
get a pen and a piece of paper for free,
pretty much. But good luck not getting distracted. Good luck
not getting distracted. Yes, so that that's where we are.
We know this stuff existed forever, and there's some fascinating

(15:47):
physiological processes at play in the human mind. From everything
we can find, human beings seem hardwired for these sorts
of belief structures. We see this because what we would
call religion today likely arose independently in many, many parts
of the world and was probably most often tied to

(16:10):
natural cycles of the earth, right crops growing, the harvest season, birth, death, winter,
what time is the sun coming up? When's the eclipse?
That kind of jazz, And then also in step with that,
veneration and fear of the dead. Those who have passed beyond.

(16:30):
Let's weigh that body down with rocks, but in a
respectful manner so they're not pissed at us later. Well. Yeah,
and in those big questions that are endlessen have been
around forever and probably will never leave us because there
may never be a concrete answer of what happens to
us after we die, right right exactly. We do, however,

(16:52):
know the oldest universally agreed recorded religion. We we have
been able to get a ballpark sense where and when
that begin? Oh yeah, sure, so the the oldest recorded
religion goes all the way back to Mesopotamia, and a
lot of the practices that we know about from here
likely began as the worship of some kind of natural forces,

(17:14):
as Ben was speaking about earlier, seeking some you know,
supernatural intercession for crops, I mean, making sure that we
have enough food to feed all the humans that are
around us, as well as feed the animals that we
need to sustain our lives. And also you know, trying
to avoid some kind of natural disaster that exists within

(17:35):
their part of the world, to say, a tornado or
flooding or something to that. Effect. And you know, when
you're thinking, when you're thinking about the Mesopotamians and what
they were, what their beliefs were back then, you have
to first start with knowing that they were polytheistic, meaning
they worshiped several major gods and then numerous, well thousands

(17:56):
at least of minor gods. Yeah, exactly, each Mesopotamian city,
whether Samerian, Acadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and so on, they not
only had the universally recognized pantheon of Mesopotamian gods, they
also had their own patron god or goddess. So for

(18:17):
for a good analog of this, if you're familiar with
US cities, imagine just for the sake of argument, the
entire country had the same polytheistic religion. But in addition
to the pantheon that everybody in the country agreed upon,
each city had its own specific god. A god for

(18:39):
Los Angeles, a god for Chicago, right right, a god
for I don't know, Spokane or Syracuse. You know that
that's the sort of environment in which these people lived,
and each Mesopotamian era or culture had different aspects, expressions,
or interpretation of the gods. This is something we see

(19:01):
again in in Greco Roman culture. For instance, mar Duke
god A Babylon, for example, was also known in Sumer,
but he was Inky or Ea. This practice that's kind
of complicated. Cultural exchange had its heyday from aroundt b
C where we see the Kish tablet to about four

(19:22):
hundred a D. At that point, this pre existing religion
began to be supplanted by Syriac Christianity. Yeah, and the
way it gets supplanted is not always the most peaceful
thing or method um. But it is important to note
that this kind of transitioning, Uh, if you're living in

(19:45):
one space, one area, the transitioning of religion as some
overlay with that area, it's not rare. It's pretty dang common.
And most often, like we were saying, it's not, it's
not as though they it's an on off switch, right
with Let's say, if Buddhism moves into an area, it
doesn't just turn over to Buddhism. That's kind of obvious,

(20:07):
but in our minds sometimes we we separate things like
that just to make it easier, right, But this is
a one giant cross fade that that occurs when an
area is transitioning from one religion to the next, and
sometimes that belief system ends up morphing and becoming something
new when it's two or more combining. Right, Yeah, like

(20:31):
a brand new package, same great taste, you know if
you're buying religions at a grocery store, or maybe same
rough package, but the taste is got a little extra
spice to it. There we go, there we go with
new ingredients. So I think that's a more apt comparison

(20:51):
that you've just made. And this goes to a larger point.
It's something that I think escapes a lot of us.
It definitely escaped me when I was a kid in
history class or you know, reading various uh dusty tomes
because of the huge, huge disparity between the average human

(21:14):
lifespan and the length of time that it takes a
global or large spread systemic change to occur. Because of
that disparity, we have a terrible on the ground perspective
of what history is, how it's happening. It is so
incredibly rare to be a person or people who can

(21:37):
look around in the present day whatever that is, and say, oh,
this this is a huge event in history. We can
do it now. I hate to quote Fox News here,
But now more than ever, we can be aware of
those moments because we can communicate on a global scale
so quickly. Right, people around the world watched the moon landing,

(21:58):
and everybody kind of God. It was a big deal,
you know what I mean. But four hundred, five hundred,
six hundred years ago much you know, not not to
mention even further back. If you were living in a town,
you would see the change of history. You would see
the tide of history turn on a slower intergenerational access.

(22:20):
Maybe you were raised, for instance, Christian, but your your
older relatives, who maybe said they were also Christian, still
had a lot of practices and beliefs that were veneration
of ancestors or worship of a polytheistic assemblage of God's

(22:40):
And so for you, that would be the reality. That
would be how things always were. And then you would die,
and then your children or your offspring or younger people
in your area, if the Christian religion was on the rise,
they would always be Christians, but maybe they would still
have a couple of traditions that they didn't really understand.
You just always did that because Grandma did it, you

(23:01):
know what I mean. So you can I mean, just
because you mentioned my wife earlier, I would say that
there's a lot of that that exists within her families. Um,
you know, the varying branches of her family, as you know,
Santorea and things like that make their way into Catholicism
as some of those older traditions morph into things that

(23:21):
you would do for the church essentially. Uh, It's it's
fascinating and a little bit of foreshadowing here. I like that,
met because this means that some of these practices had
to continue in secret. They became conspiratorial due to the
repressive policies of the dominant state governments or religions, which

(23:45):
usually were hand in hand and inseparable. Right, God is
the King and so on. Somehow, plucky little tykes that
we are, humanity manages to survive this very strange cyclical practice,
this battle of ideas and ideology, and it leads us
to today. So what is the state of religion today?

(24:08):
As far as we understand it. We have some statistics
and we have some inspiring news. It turns out that
several very ancient religions have survived this strange cycle, this
strange war of ideas, and will explore them in depth
after a word from our sponsors, Yes, we're back. And

(24:35):
as we were saying, some of these quieter religions have
survived in the corners of the world, in places where
you may not expect to find them. And uh, we're
going to talk as well about some of the oldest
existing religions where we're gonna jump into a lot of statistics,
as you mentioned right now, about what our religious world

(24:55):
looks like today. Right So, according to all of visual
sources and even to um anecdotal stories you can find
in oral traditions, many ancient religions have more or less
completely died out. They were supplanted by newer spiritual rival
or they were as you as you mentioned earlier man

(25:16):
or grocery store analogy, they were absorbed into a more
popular system. It's it's interesting too when you listen to
or you read transcriptions of oral retellings and folk tales,
because religious wars are sometimes depicted not as arguments over

(25:38):
ideology or spiritual values. They're depicted as wars of survival
and attrition against strange people. Right like when we did
our episode on the the people of the Steka right
in North America, or what's now called North America. They

(25:58):
the antagonistic people, the so called giants, were not depicted
as people who had a different lifestyle or a rich
spiritual culture. They were just a rival group competing for resources.
And then later this kind of stuff gets um gets airbrushed,

(26:22):
gets the made for TV treatment, and then some some
other community leader comes along and says, oh no, no,
no, no no, no no no. I mean, the war wasn't
really about fresh water or grazing land. It was that
our God told us to do it, and that's why
we did the right thing. Yeah, Maria took told us

(26:43):
to go over here. We we, we Babylonians took over
all of this land because we were told to right right.
And I love that you point this out. Because the
rule is usually that religions will die or be absorbed
into a different model over time. You will not, for example,

(27:04):
find a ton of at least publicly accessible temples and
churches dedicated to worshiping marduk or or Marduk or Marduk.
You will, however, find that despite that, despite that unpleasant
fact that many religions of ancient ancient times have enormous

(27:28):
stain power even today, people will usually say that the
oldest known existing religion, extant religion is Hinduism. It originated
in the Indus River Valley part of modern day Pakistan,
sometime around two thousand five b C, possibly earlier. And
just to stop on that point for a second, it's

(27:48):
a little bit difficult to pinpoint the origin of Hinduism because,
unlike some other religions, it doesn't have a particular founder
that one can point to. There's no Aha Mazda, no
more is this Abraham, Jesus and so on. It also
doesn't have a single text Bible at Torah Kuran, and
this leads scholars to conclude that what we call Hinduism

(28:11):
today is an amalgamation of a great number of pre
existing traditions and beliefs. The question then becomes how far
back to those traditions and beliefs? Date is it? Five
thousand years? Is this a situation where some of these
these beliefs and practices predate the written word? Yeah? Does

(28:31):
it go back to the via Maana's and back to
the stars? Right? Like this is this is a thing
that people probably drop acid and talk about all the time.
But but as far as proving that, it's very difficult.
So we we just know that at some point around
at least two thousand, these things all came together into

(28:55):
what we call Hinduism. The oldest script is the rig Veda,
also believed to be ancient thousands and thousands of years old,
and the next oldest religion that is still around today
is Judaism. That's correct. I would like to say that
Hinduism um did something very smart in keeping or having

(29:18):
staying power with their religion, because they invented reincarnation, which
meant that everybody who's ever worshiped Hinduism made it back
here somehow discovered, discovered, And that, of course is a joke.
I do not mean to insult anyone's belief. So okay, yes,
you're absolutely right. The next oldest would be Judaism because

(29:38):
that um it originates in the Southern Levant. We talked
about that area before, and it was founded by the
biblical Moses that a lot of us do know. But
the Jewish history traces it back to earlier than Abraham.
And the most important religious text here was the Torah,
of course and still is the Torah, and it's part

(30:00):
of a larger work. Uh, what is it called the
Tanak or the the Hebrew Bible. You'll hear it called
as well. And this is this is interesting because similar
to Hinduism, you know, there's that there's this official founding,
right or this is this official this is Judaism kind

(30:21):
of moment. But uh, but but Jewish history traces back
before then, right as as as a people, and there's
a lot of historical work done there. And then let's
say the third ancient, oldest extant religion Zoroastrianism, originating in

(30:41):
Persia modern day Iran around fifteen hundred b c. All
three of these religions still have adherents today. Of the three,
Zoroastrianism is probably the smallest, as an estimated two hundred
thousand followers around the world. Right, And it's important to
stay that there are a couple of a couple of

(31:05):
issues with with the with calling those three the oldest
extant religions, but we'll get to them in a second.
Let's look at the largest religions today. We pulled some
numbers from a couple of places, including the Pew Research Foundation,
and the Pew Research Foundation along with some other folks,

(31:26):
broke it down this way, and he said, the largest
religion in the world today is Christianity at an estimated
two point three billion followers, and then Islam comes in
at number two with one point eight billion people. Hinduism
still at it quite successful one point one billion people,

(31:46):
and Buddhism comes in and out about half a billion.
And then let's let's group a bunch of other religions
together into what's called folk religions. That would be point
four billion, which I feel is a little bit of
a pop out. But there's another group we skipped over,
which is if we included this, this would be the

(32:07):
third largest religion. One point two billion people in the
world consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular belief system, and
in many places on Earth, this group seems to be
on the rise. Okay, we tease some issues with these numbers.
Here's the problem. These numbers are tricky and in no

(32:27):
small way misleading, because anybody who practices one of the
faiths mentioned at any part in the show up to
now is saying, hey, they're lumping in a lot of
really different things together, different offshoots, denominations and so on.
And some of these, like the various flavors of m

(32:48):
Protestant Christianity would would seem to have a lot in common, right,
but not necessarily not necessarily right there, Still are they
still different enough that they would you know, some of
them would rather not be lumped in together with all
these other people who got in their opinion, Christianity wrong.

(33:10):
And then other groups like Shia or Sunni Islam practitioners
are more or less bitterly opposed and would not, as
a result, be particularly thrilled to be lumped into a
category either. They would say, no, we are different because
we have the line of the profit correct, and these

(33:31):
people not only got it wrong but refuse to see
the light. So do not include us with them. And then,
you know, if pushed to the point, they probably still
be like, well, they're still Muslims, so they got that
part right. So there's still like not as bad as
an appostate, or not as bad as a non Muslim,

(33:52):
but still it's important we're different. Why are you calling
us the same? Well? Yeah, absolutely, Well, in a lot
of a lot of this goes back to those people
that we mentioned there are unaffiliated in any way with
some kind of religion, and that goes right back, or
the rise in that number goes back to the secular
thinking that exists in our world now and as always existed.

(34:16):
But but again it's it's morphed a little over time
as science continues to improve, as technology improves, as the
need for explaining of a lot of these things morphs
for us because we're kind of replacing a lot of
that with these little, um black boxes in our hands
that we carry around. It's it's so odd the way

(34:40):
these big questions kind of get get uh, not answered sufficiently,
but they feel like they're maybe not as important. They
get refrained. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, and that leads us
to the rise of the secular mind, those one point
two billion people you're mentioning. So this is weird because

(35:03):
it's it's a real time, real world example of what
we're talking about when we what did you call it?
Meant when we look at that gigantic cross fade of
of one belief system to another. And here's a great
example of it. There's this funny, tragic comic practice that
occurs around times of political or social strife in countries

(35:25):
across the world. Many, many countries do this. It's not
just the US, although perhaps we have the most clownish
reputation for it. Here's what happens. Something's going wrong domestically
abroad times are tough. Politicians and spiritual figures when seeking
a boost in approval ratings or a way to distract
the population from uh, genuine physical problems and concerns, will

(35:49):
start railing about human beings turning away from the true path,
whatever that true path might be. And the argument goes
that there's this lack of religious faith and that's the
real cause at the root of whatever problems are currently
being encountered. The economy is bad, people have turned their
back on God, and that not uh, you know, the

(36:12):
federates or rising corporatocracy. That explains it, and it doesn't
remind you of the crops are really bad this season.
We haven't been sacrificing enough. We need to continue the
sacrifices right. And there's another darker side of this too,
where they may say the lack of faith is not

(36:34):
only the reason for something going wrong, it is a sin,
and this sin may only be um we may only
be redeemed through a specific set of actions. In the past,
one of the go to actions has been waging war
on a community nearby adjacent to you in the next valley,
over the pass or so on, in order to save

(36:55):
them from the terrible things happening under the rule of
whatever king or religion exists over there, whatever infernal, unclean
pagan god. Right, Yes, so we have to we have
to kill these people to save their souls, which sounds
crazy when we put it into one sentence, but we

(37:16):
guarantee you that is real logic that has been deployed
countless times. One great example of this, I know we're
getting we're getting kind of bleak here, so let's maybe
do a comparatively benign example. This is one that um,
you and and Mission Control and I all grew up
with here in the US. And you probably heard this

(37:39):
too at some point. The good old Christmas debate gets
rolled out, rolled out every every few years in the
United States, And you know this, one Christmas season starts
and then a politician or maybe a Christian um spiritual
figure on some sort or another, goes on the media

(38:02):
and decries the horrific practice of saying happy Holidays rather
than Merry Christmas. Woe unto you, they imply, for this
country has lost its way. And this small phrase is
a tiny reflection of everything going to absolute hell in
a handbasket unless you do what I mean, God tells

(38:22):
you to do right and it goes further than that.
You'll hear the argument that secular values are in and
of themselves religions. Right there, there are people really you
have to watch out for the rise of secular humanity.
The idea of being good without God is tricking you.
It's a front for a different thing. It's still a religion.

(38:42):
It's insidious, it's sinister, and that's how they get you.
For more on this, listen to our episode on the
Origins of Christmas and also watch our video because it
really really brings the holiday cheer when you start learning
about what it actually is. And again, this is not
in any way to denigrate people's faith. This is this

(39:06):
is a way that cynical, very cynical people manipulate innocent
people who probably just want the same things. Is everyone
else listening right. You want to feel like you're very
good at stuff. You want to feel like you are
comfortable with the world around you and your place in it.
You want to love and be loved. That's not that hard.

(39:27):
Everybody deserves that. But we're also very susceptible to someone
trying to play to our fears for their own benefit. Yeah,
it works with me more often than not. Unfortunately. Um,
but it does go even further. It doesn't stop there. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the thing. Okay, all of these estimates, these definitions,

(39:49):
these historical milestones, they all rely entirely upon our understanding
of revealed public religions. Reveal old religion will be religion
based on divine revelation. Right, God took some form and
told us how to stop screwing up so bad. We

(40:12):
told this, you know, how to live better, how to
how to do the right thing with our collective life.
So we're basing everything up to this point on religions
that we know exist. And the question is, what if
there is more to this story? What if there are
religions and belief systems that don't like Islam or Christianity

(40:32):
ask their adherence to advertise the faith. What if their
religions that don't want to convert a bunch of new followers.
What if there are secret religions and what if they
exist in the modern day? And we'll talk about that
right after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where

(40:57):
it gets crazy will be the easy answer here is yes,
oddly enough, and it could be argued, but that you know,
by the virtue of these things being secret, and this
is crazy. I know. Um, these religions are in and
of themselves in some way a conspiracy, just by the

(41:17):
fact that there are groups of people who have been
trying to hide them and working together in secret to
keep them secret. Yeah, it's sort of the Church of
So yes, we're entering a realm of strange and possibly
disturbing speculation here. Let's start with the most easily provable cases,
will move to the plausible, and then we'll hit that

(41:38):
deep water for a second. We'll see what we mean
in a moment, No calu, I promise. Yeah, we'll also
talk about in a few of these cases how that
cross fade is occurring. Then you can kind of see
it in these specific religions. Yes, yes, so first off,
real proven secret religions. The mystery schools. Oh yes, we're
some of the most famous. So the Greco women world

(42:00):
was no stranger to secret religions. These were specifically referred
to as mystery religions. It sounds sinister mystery school mystery religion,
like there's something really wrong going there, or it's it's bad,
But a lot of times it's just mysterious, y'all. It's
just it's it's not for you unless you're on the inside, right,

(42:22):
unless you're connected. These practices originate in pre existing tribal ceremonies.
These were performed by people all throughout the world, and
a lot of these practices were things that we could
maybe see or encounter analogs of or descendants of today,
but we we don't know exactly what they did. A

(42:42):
lot of that will be lost to history. In the
tribal communities where these practices originate, every member of the community,
the clan, or the village was initiated and then you know,
they were brought in to become a member of the
school for this belief system. But in Greece, initiation became

(43:04):
a matter of personal choice, meaning that the people who
would induct you, they could decide whether or not you
didn't automatically deserve to be inducted, and you didn't automatically
have to. You could say no. It might be very
politically or even physically dangerous for you, but you could
say no absolutely, and uh, you know, several of these

(43:25):
mystery religions reached the highest levels of their popularity within
the first three centuries a d. But again, the origin
of of a lot of these goes back to much
earlier centuries in Greek history. And a lot of these
mystery religions, as little as we actually do know about them,

(43:45):
we we do know that they had things in common.
A lot of these were, you know, meals that would
be eaten together with people who were like minded or
believe the same things. Um, there would be some form
of physical movement that venerated something, write, a dance of
some kind, and other ceremonies like that. And there are
a lot of times be or probably the most important,

(44:08):
let's say, would be the initiation rites that occur for
every new member that joins officially into the group. Yeah, yeah,
And examples of these mystery religions, we we have a few,
even if we don't know a ton about their specific practices.
We have followers of Dionysus, right, we had the Elusinian mysteries.

(44:29):
These were the earliest and most famous of the mystery cults. Again,
I know the C word, but that's what they were
often called. Well, yeah, and a lot of times it
was the extreme or this is just my opinion here,
but a lot of it tended to be the extreme
worship of one or you know, one or two or

(44:49):
maybe just one of the gods that are worshiped within
the pantheon of the Greek gods. You would have a
specific cult of mithra, cult of this, or cult of that, right,
and that those kind of end up becoming many of
the mystery religions, right. Yeah, And this this one group
we're talking about, they lasted for over a thousand years, again,

(45:12):
a thousand years of which we are aware, so we
don't know what else was going on. And there's something
else it's fascinating about this. So at this time there
wasn't really a separation between a a a secret cult
or a mystery school and a secular secret society. There.

(45:33):
You know, a bunch of people maybe in Turkey, want
to start a society with closed door meetings to form
a better fire brigade. Right in ancient times, that's a
true story. In the suspicious eyes of leaders at the time,
both these secular interest groups and these religiously motivated groups
were dangerous because they had the possibility becoming avenues for

(45:57):
conspiracy and revolution. And the US. These groups whenever possible,
where subverted, exterminated, or if it was expedient to do so,
they would be you know, they would have public officials
joined them. Yeah, and these kind of societies still still
carry on the big question is whether or not they
still have clause and things, or if they're just kind

(46:21):
of old boys clubs. Right. Yeah, And what you're talking about,
they're having an official join one of these secret groups.
It's an attempt to either absorb it into another, uh
of the larger religious systems probably and or just making
it not so strange to then allow those people. You know, again,

(46:44):
it's strategic and if you're thinking about it this way
to bring it into the fold. And that's where we
get into that thing we discussed earlier, religious syncretism, where
that cross fade, where we're right in the middle of it,
where where one becomes another one plus one equals three.
It's it's it's interesting stuff. That's a good way to

(47:04):
say it, Matt. Yeah. This is the blending of two
or more religious belief systems into what essentially becomes a
whole new system one plus one equals three, or the
incorporation of unrelated beliefs into an existing religious tradition. This
can occur for a lot of reasons. It commonly happens
obviously in geographic areas where multiple religions exist close together

(47:30):
and at once and they're active in the culture. Or
and this is the dirty side, is where you find
a lot of the more extreme examples when a culture
is conquered and the conquerors don't just bring weapons, they
also bring their religious beliefs. Convert or die, right, or
convert and physically die, But don't worry. We're saving your
soul and you can be a slave forever in our paradise, right,

(47:53):
true story. Unfortunately, at least that was the pitch. So
the thing, the thing that's weird about this is that
unless the unless the culture being attacked is entirely eradicated,
their pre existing beliefs and practices will continue on. And
then we end up with things like, um, we end

(48:15):
up with things like gnosticism, or we end up with
things like offshoots earlier forms of existing religions and just
something a little more like reco Buddhism or um what
what is the name of the other one own historians,
as Christianity was moving into China. I mean, there's a
lot of really interesting things there to talk about that

(48:37):
are it's less stuff they don't want you to know,
but it's it's it's more stuff he was in history class.
But again it's fascinating and it's interesting too, because I
would argue that there is a lot of stuff they
don't want you to know in aspects of religious syncretism,
because religious syncretism can also exist in a very powerful

(48:57):
form as coded protests and is evidenced by the practices
of repressed native people's under the thumb of colonizers or
imperialist One example, which I believe we mentioned on the
show before, is the idea of folk saints. So I
didn't really know about folk saints until I had spent

(49:19):
some time in Central America and I made friends with
one uh Mayan deity was called San Simone. When I
encountered his worshippers or his admirers, San Simon originally started
life as a started is whatever the deity version of

(49:39):
life is. San Simon was originally a mountain god in
the Maya religion, and he was also known as Maschimon. Today,
he's considered the patron saint of health's crops, marriage, business,
revenge and death. I know, it's kind of a weird.

(50:00):
It's a weird group. Right. When you're saying patron saint,
you mean like in Catholicism, like he is a saint
or is it? Ah? Yes, okay, So folk saints are
people venerated or deities venerated as saints, but not officially canonized,
recognized by the church. See what we see here is

(50:23):
a process of taking a pre existing belief and saying, Okay, yes, saints,
we get it. We already have those, you know what
I mean? Thanks, but no thanks saints, but no saints
or not worth it, or at least we can add
a few more to the roster. Right. And another example
of religious syncretism as a form of protest would be, uh,

(50:47):
the way that vudun in Benin or voodoo haiti or
however you wish to pronounce it had to confront and
adapt with Catholicism. Yeah, right, and so we have. And
that's where you get santaria or condoble for instance. Yeah,

(51:09):
this is where the brutal Catholic forces would think that
they had successfully converted the people, but the people were
just using that Catholic imagery to be a stand in
for their original practices, which they didn't. It didn't really

(51:29):
have an intention of changing, because if you want to
change someone's mind, one of the worst ways to do
it is to threaten. Yeah, but if you did take
it on in that way, you could at least appease
the colonizers when in close quarters. We'd love to hear
your examples of religious syncretism. Right, this is is a

(51:49):
widespread phenomenon. We know that a lot of ancient belief
systems in smaller communities maybe may be practiced still today
having been I don't want to say contaminated or adulterated,
but having been influenced by different, uh, different religions that

(52:10):
some they somehow encountered. Yeah, I would have to say,
just really fast. As I mentioned here, today is the
first time, and I don't know how this occurred, the
first time that I realized that it was Greek influence
that gives us depictions of a human Buddha within Buddhism.
I did not realize that at all. But it's it's

(52:31):
because of trade routes that existed and uh, just the
influence of people from Greece who you know, had certain
religious beliefs who then as they move forward and are
continuing on encounter Buddhism. They enjoy, you know, they believe that,
let's say, more than they believe there are other original

(52:52):
traditional beliefs. Then they start to follow Buddhism, and as
they're thinking about Buddha, they you, rather than seeing it
symbolically the way it's been represented for hundreds and hundreds
of years, they truly imagine Buddha as the man, as
this human being, you know, son of a virgin woman.

(53:13):
And they begin using their culture that exists within them
and the way they view art, the way they think
about these things, and they apply it to Buddha. And
that was fascinating to me. I it was a long
winded way to say, just like the statues that in
my mind are of Buddha are really Greek, Yeah, or
at the very least heavily heavily influenced, Yes, exactly by

(53:35):
by that frame. And there there's a word for that, right, Matt, Yes,
vocabulary word of the day everyone interpretation o greaka And
that just means essentially interpreting the world by by really
through Greek eyes or by Greek means and these are
just some of the numerous examples. Please please please let

(53:57):
us know other examples you've seen. This stuff is endlessly fascinating. Yeah,
and it's really just interpreting all of the other religions,
the gods, all the things that people from you know,
from that time, from that early civilization, as they're encountering
these other things, how they view them. And it's strange
because when you think about it, religious syncretism could at

(54:20):
its best be a very inclusive approach to belief. There
are other things that are very much not syncretic, or
at least no longer are. There are religions that are
entirely dictated by lineage. These are, in short, clubs you
cannot join. If you are most of the people who

(54:41):
will ever listen to this show, You cannot join some
religions no matter what you do, no matter how good
you are, how helpful, how noble, etcetera. You just didn't
have a chance since the day you were born because
of who your parents were. One great example of this,
with which I have some personal experience, is a group

(55:03):
called the Drews d r u z E. The Drews
are a unique people and belief system who originated in Egypt,
but have spread across the world, with a lot of
concentrations in Lebanon, Syria. Is that Alan Jordan's the religions
membership is predicated on these certain lineages, and this means

(55:26):
that one cannot convert to this religion, one cannot become
a Druz. They also practice a form of religious syncretism
in a way. I'm interested to hear what you think
about this. To avoid persecution, especially very religiously conservative areas,
they would publicly adopt a religion if they had to,

(55:48):
but they would continue to practice their own real belief
system in secret. Drew's religion is seen as an outgrowth
of Islam that incorporates elements of Judaism, Christianity, but different
from all of those religions Greek philosophy. Here you go,
Matt and what people have described as problematically as Asiatic

(56:09):
thought heavily influenced the foundation of the religion. And they
add some ideas and still have some ideas that were
pretty out there. They were pretty hot takes for their time.
They said we should get rid of slavery, which used
to be a very hot take, and sadly in some
parts of the Middle East is still a hot take today. Uh.

(56:30):
They said we should separate church and state. Again still
a hot take. Uh. And this put them at very
high risk of persecution in more conservative areas. If you
are not a Druise, you will not be privy to
various rights and practices because again it's not for you.

(56:51):
That does inherently make it, at least some degree a
secret religion. Doesn't mean they're sinister, doesn't mean they're out
to get anyone. And I actually, through marriage, am related
to several Drews. Yeah, well I am not Drews, to
be very clear, uh, and I never will be because

(57:11):
the way the religion is organized on a socio cultural,
even biological level. Well, have you twenty three and me
or ancestry yourself because maybe you are Drews, because it'd
be hard to fight against if you did. You did
a test. I don't know if it works that way.

(57:32):
And it's also kind of you know, people's beliefs are
important to them, and I don't want to be one
of those actually Drews, right right, So let me two
percent in you know what I mean? I do. I
think that's kind of disrespectful, you know, even for me

(57:52):
even to talk about it in this way that I
am apologies. No, no, no, I think as long as
we are respecting the boundaries that that a group has set,
that's the best we can do. There are other similar
cases of that. Oh yeah, sorry, I wanted to bring
this up earlier. We were talking about this seek Religions. Yes,

(58:13):
our episode on on worshiping Satan, the devil, Lucifer or
anything like that, we've talked about it in a whole episode.
And you know, are they actually reel to anyone who
worships some version of that? And there is there is
one group of people that we've mentioned before, I believe
on this show that you had talked to me about.

(58:35):
They're called the Yazdi. Yes, a little bit Luciferian, I
might say, because of the differences in doctrine here, which
will be very brief. We could delve into that in
a separate episode. They've been vilified before as quote unquote
uh devil worshipers, and that's entirely because non yea Ziti

(58:59):
pop relations have associated the smell TuS character with Shaiton,
the Islamic or Arab name for Satan. Is ities for
themselves find that offensive and and don't clear clearly don't agree.
There's not, as far as we know, a community of
people who says, yes, there is a divine good God

(59:22):
and we are with a bad one. There's nobody, there's
there's not yet a provable community of people who are
at that level of edge. Lord is m I think
most most communities generally tend to be a little more
well adjusted than that. But it is plausible. Now. I
would say it's more likely than not that many local

(59:45):
religions have existed for a long time and exist today
more or less unknown to outsiders. Let's call these like
insular community systems or insular tribal religions. And I thought
you would appreciate this one, Matt. And let's just go
to an extreme example. What are the spiritual beliefs of
the people on North Sentinel Island? How would we know that?

(01:00:08):
We don't this belligerent community. Google it if you have,
if you somehow have not heard of This is a
fascinating story that Matt and I have been tracking for
God since two thousand thirteen or so. Uh, we learned
about it in two thousand twelve. For thousands of years,
the people on this island have been on their own
since around the Stone Age. They likely have a religion,

(01:00:33):
because again, humans are hardwired to generate and propagate these
sorts of belief systems, but their religion has been so
far removed from any other belief system on the planet.
They have not encountered some form of religious syncretism, right,
so pure, Yeah, so in a way, this maybe like

(01:00:56):
one of the oldest un uh. And I don't want
to say adulterated again, but like one of the oldest
un mixed tapes, just you know. And also just like
the Drews, You and I and everybody listening probably cannot
join them. They and there are few encounters with the

(01:01:17):
outside world in modern history. They have made that abundantly clear.
And the only time that they've been successfully members that
community have been successfully taken out of the community, it
was disastrous. Uh. And it's no wonder that they doubled
down on on putting a big keep outside to the
rest of the planet. Oh yeah, absolutely, Well that's a

(01:01:40):
real world example. What if we wanted to go down
the rabbit hole a little bit further, What if we
get to something that maybe isn't even necessarily a religion,
maybe a closer to a society, but it does have
religious belief perhaps built into it. Whatever. Could you be
talking about the illuminati? That's right, that's right, fellow conspiracy realists.

(01:02:04):
You know them, you love them. You expected him to
show up here in this episode, and you were right.
Uh so, congratulations. For hundreds of years there have been
rumors that have, for being diplomatic, varying levels of credibility,
arguing that the world is actually run by a group
of incredibly powerful people, that they are all real pills,

(01:02:28):
but somehow they cooperate together and they have their own
secret religion. They profess one religion publicly, but they practice
this other religion that has meant for the elite and
the elite alone. And you'll hear various fringe researchers or
i would say French speculators saying that you know, they

(01:02:50):
secretly continue the ancient mystery schools, right, or some Mesopotamian
polytheistic religion, and that they consider the things like Christianity
or or Buddhism or any any younger religions tools to
control the masses, manipulation systems for slaves. Yeah, and there's

(01:03:11):
no lack of let's let's say this again in a
diplomatic but accurate way. There's no lack of people claiming
to have evidence that this is true. Yeah. All I
would say, Ben, is that the answers to our questions

(01:03:35):
about the Illuminati all exist on a stone castle on
the top of a hill with a man who is
known only as the songwriter, and if you seek under
the silver lake you may find him. They talk about
Philip K. Dick. No, what is this. It's one of
the first times I've ever been able to reference something

(01:03:58):
without you know what, I'm knowing what I'm talking about.
So I'm really really happy about it, and I'm gonna
wait for you to learn about what it is when
people write to us. Interesting. Yeah, okay, because at first
I was thinking, man, the high castle, but maybe I've
just been I'm so excited switched because yeah, maybe I'm Yeah,
it's obscure. I promise you it's obscure. And is it cool?

(01:04:20):
Does the reference work? Um? I don't know, but we'll
just have they were great. Yeah. I think I think
it's cool. Oh, thank you man. I'm excited. Nintendo Power
is involved as well. Is this Castlevania? No? Got way on?
I think hearing castle is just throwing me. It's actually
not too far. But it is a video game. Uh no,
it's not a video game. Wow, there's a mystery of foot.

(01:04:45):
How appropriate for this episode. So while I'm caught shady
on this, yeah, I'm flammings, I'm stumped. Uh. We know
that there are different, um, different things that are purported
to be evidence of an existence of the sinister's secret religion,
practiced by some relatively anonymous cabal of people. Right, and

(01:05:10):
some of these things are real. The Bohemian Grove does
have this ritual called the Cremation of Care wherein they
ritualistically burn and effigy and they get really weird about it.
It seems to be a rich boys club. But for
people who believe that there is a secret religion in play,

(01:05:31):
this is a smoking gun, yes, or I should say
a smoking effigy. Yeah, you're you're I mean, you're correct,
That's what it is. For those people. It's it's tough though,
umo because we can't really we can't fully prove anything
like that, you know, is it truly religious belief? Just
because they you know, do something. If someone participates in

(01:05:54):
something like the cremation of Cara, Rich right, doesn't mean
that they actually believe a whole separate set of beliefs
and that they're all working together for some goal. That's
why it's so difficult for us to really explore something
like the Illuminati, because we know there's that real thing
called the Bavarian Illuminati that we've talked about New Years Times. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:06:15):
but like right now, I mean, if someone is in
a secret religion like that, they're not gonna nobody's gonna
talk to me or you. They might, they might talk
to They might talk to you, They might talk to
they might talk to all of us, they know what,
speak only to Paul. We need to get Dan Harmon
on the case because they'll definitely talk to him. They'll
strike up a conversation, you know, something Rick said, and

(01:06:37):
then he's in. There's a problem, though, Matt. If something
like that existed, and if it was that powerful, then
why would we be able to talk about it so
openly and so easily? You know what I mean? Because
we we did a what three part series on on

(01:06:58):
the so called Illuminati, and I think we did I
think we did a pretty good job of of separating
some facts from some fiction and fancy there but again,
that's that's the biggest argument. If if it were something
that existed, it were dangerous, it were a potent force
in the world, then why it's okay. It's kind of

(01:07:22):
like the Wigia board argument. If there is a way
to reliably contact the afterlife, if if we if we
say that people, some part of us exist after the
corporeal body no longer functions, then would the way to
contact the afterlife really be a mass produced board game
by Parker Brothers? Has is that has is it possible?

(01:07:46):
That just goes to real and they're like, why is
no one taking this Wigia board thing? Seriously? It's our
one chance to talk to you. It just it doesn't
match up, you know. And I don't mean to I
don't mean to sound dismissive of that. I'm just saying
that it See, if there is some secret evil religion,
and if it's real, then I don't understand why they

(01:08:06):
haven't reached out to us or you know, done something.
I know, maybe I'm whistling in the graveyard, or maybe
I'm uh, maybe I'm I'm not daring anybody to do
anything crazy. I'm just saying it's that's That's one of
the biggest pieces of evidence against that stuff existing that
does improve it doesn't exist. The same thing with evil religions,

(01:08:28):
the ideas of secret Satanist which you already mentioned, but
it does. This all leads us to one concrete answer.
This is one of those episodes where we do have
an answer. The answer is, yes, secret religions do exist.
They do exist today to one degree or another. They
may not be exactly what we're thinking of what fiction

(01:08:51):
wants us to believe, but yes, there are secret rituals
and practices, and there are there are value systems. If
we define secret as things that not everybody has access to,
then yeah, of course those exist and they probably will exist.
The only question then is how much or how little
influence did they have on the world in which we
live today? Does does it matter to you? Are you?

(01:09:15):
Are you going to be resentful of people who have
their own belief system if it doesn't affect you just
I mean, it's it's a tough thing to deal with
as humans, but you know, some things they're just not
for you. For me, the biggest question for today, after
everything we've talked about, is how much did some tiny

(01:09:36):
secret religion with you know, a small group of people
practiced and believed. How much did that secret religion influence
whatever your religious beliefs are right now? And you know,
if you if you follow one of the larger movements
in traditions and religions today, how much did a lot
of these smaller, secretive religions back in the day changers.

(01:10:02):
That's a great question. And I'd also like to say, um,
and it's just to build on that that faith as
we understand it, regardless of your specific spiritual belief system
or religious belief. Maybe faith is a uniquely human superpower.

(01:10:22):
We don't have a very good definition of what intelligence is.
We are closer and closer, like the more we learn
about intelligence and these amazing baffling machines we call the brain,
the more we learn that we have a lot in
common with animals that we used to think we're not
super intelligent, like corvids and elephants, cetaceans and so on.

(01:10:46):
But the one thing that still differentiates us is this
ability to imagine an unseen world, you know, and I
mean using unseen because I don't want to say you know,
for some people in our audience today, some of us
listening will probably say, I think you mean made up,
But I don't want to say made up. I want

(01:11:07):
to say unseen, because I know this is a very
personal and very real thing for a lot of people. Well, yeah,
the concepts of parallel dimensions are certainly not unscientific, right,
I mean, or at least within the thought of these
things and anything that you would compare to a heaven,
a hell, whatever you want to call it, a purgatory,

(01:11:28):
all those things that would or could be just considered
a parallel dimension that exists simultaneously next to ours. There
we go, and maybe a good way to phrase it
is as a series of questions. Do elephants have God's?
Do corvids have God's? Do dolphins have God's? The answer,
as far as we know, is no. From everything we

(01:11:52):
have seen, there is one flavor of life in this planet,
and therefore the entirety of our experiences that has the
capacity to pursue this sort of mental system, and it's us.
This is you know, I gotta quote Spider Man. With
great power comes great responsibility. We're the only living things

(01:12:14):
that can do this. And regardless of how we may
feel on individual levels about individual examples of this, we
have to sit back and admit that is astonishing. I
don't know where else to go with this. You know
what I mean? Is is a world without this kind
of capability better? I would argue no, because that same
kind of uh almost said hotspot, but that that that

(01:12:39):
same kind of ability is what drives us towards these
innovations that again, no other living creature has been able
to do yet so far as we know. Absolutely, So
go ahead and if write to us, if you have
any thoughts on any of this stuff, we'd love to
know what you think. You can find us on Instagram,

(01:12:59):
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with everyone else listening who is willing to also go
there to talk about all this stuff together. Because I
think this could be some pretty ripe conversations, right, Yeah,

(01:13:20):
I agree. And if you would like to speak to
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(01:13:41):
and I and anyone else who may have worked on
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are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they

(01:14:15):
Don't want you to Know is a production of I
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