Variants of Hell

Welcome to our annual month of creepy topics! We are kicking off this year's selection with an overview of various conceptuatlizations of Hell from the perspectives of different religions and denominations. How common is the idea of Hell and why do so many traditions embrace this idea?
We are excited to get started!

Recommendations

• Abraham: Shrinking (https://tv.apple.com/us/show/shrinking/umc.cmc.apzybj6eqf6pzccd97kev7bs) 
• Shane: 28 Years Later (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10548174/)

Holidays (10/01/25):

• Happy spooky season, folks!
• Balloons Around the World Day
• CD Player Day
• Homemade Cookies Day
• International Coffee Day
• International Day of Older Persons
• International Music Day
• International Raccoon Appreciation Day
• Less Than Perfect Day
• National Black Dog Day
• National Book It Day
• National Hair Day
• National Pumpkin Seed Day
• Pudding Season Begins
• Vegan Baking Day
• Willy Wonka Day
• World Vegetarian Day
• National Chimney Safety Week
• National Drive Electric Week
• National Fall Foliage Week
• National Hispanic Heritage Weeks
• Breast Cancer Awareness Month
• AIDS Awareness Month
• LGBT History Month
• National Cookie Month

Links and References: 

1. https://youtu.be/fNkyPFS5vTg?si=AzPnUdBeGBYG_WVB
2. https://foundations.vision.org/hell-origins-idea-626
3. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/ 
4. https://www.faithonview.com/what-is-hell/ 
5. https://bigthink.com/high-culture/brief-history-hell/ 
6. https://doctorspaghetti.org/heaven-and-hell-the-pastafarian-view/ 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Welcome to Hell A Welcome to Why We do what
we do. I'm your frying in Hell host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
And I'm your could use a drink of water host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and in the
month of October, the whole entire month, we take the
month to celebrate spooky creepy things by doing episodes themed
around those spooky creepy things. Because it's Halloween, which is
such a fun holiday, and we've been doing this for

(00:56):
five years, these Halloween episodes. Can you believe it?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
It's wild, wild, and it's always so fun because it's
my favorite season of the year. So I think it's yours, too, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
It is, absolutely, I just I love so many creative
I want to I guess I want to say, like,
I like the stories that go with it. I like
the art that's been created around it. I like just
the sort of fun, whimsical treatment of the macabre that
we see in this space. So anyway, that's it's Halloween

(01:27):
month here and we're excited. So this kicks off our
month long trip down episodes that are again are themed
after spooky things and as I was alluding to with
my opening. This particular discussion today is going to be
about variance of hell.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, and how and like you know, what what we
do with hell, like how hell is used. So we're
looking at hell from a science perspective. You know, I
was thinking about this and maybe we'll unpack this. But
scientifically speaking, it doesn't even make any sense for there
to be a population of demons that live inside the
earth in a really hot place, like it feels like
that's not a place where organisms would exist. But you know,
we're talking about supernatural. Who cares, doesn't matter. We're going

(02:07):
to unpack all of it.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Sure, And before we do that, we will first acknowledge
that it is October first, which is I mean, we're
kind of acknowledging that by just having this topic to
begin with. Uh huh. We have to acknowledge that it
is Balloons around the World Day.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
So scary. It is CD Player Day.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
It is Homemade Cookies Day, yup, yup.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
It is International Coffee Day.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yes please. It is International Day of Older Persons.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's nice, that seems sweet. It's the International Music Day
as well.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
I accept love it. International Raccoon Appreciation Day. We appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Rocket, Oh my god, Rocket and Rocky too. I think
is Rocky and yeah, it is less than Perfect Day.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
It's National black Dog Day.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Mmm. It is national day.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Hm. That could mean so many things, so many things.
It is National hair Day. Hey, I have hair, Hey
me too, look at that. It is National Pumpkin Seed Day.
Love that that makes sense to me? Yeah? Good? Hey,
putting season begins is apparently what this holiday is also called.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, we get ready. It's also Vegan Baking Day.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
What huh? It is Willy Wonka Day, and.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It is World Vegetarian Day.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Nice, National Chimney Safety Week. It's important.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, well you got to get it ready for Christmas, right,
so that's right. Yeah, it's a National Drive Electric Week.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Okay, cool, that's very good. National Fall Foliage Week, yep.
Heading into the colors.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Love it, love it. We don't have that here.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Oh that's right.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, it's one of the variants of hell right now.
It is National Hispanic Heritage Week.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Nice. It is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That's very important.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yes it is. It's AIDS Awareness Month as well.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
And it's also LGBT History Month that's very important as well.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
And it is National Cookie month.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
All right, So cookie gets its day and then it
gets the rest of the month as well. Sure have
your cookie and eat it too, I.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Suppose, yeah, several of your cookies, several.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
All right. Well, anyway, if you are joining us for
the first time, welcome. We're glad that you hear. We
hope that you didn't get very dissuaded by that long
list of holidays that we acknowledged and were actually here
to listen to an episode and hopefully enjoy it. And
if you're a returning person, then you know our little
thing that we do, and you are here anyway, so
we really appreciate you waiting through all of that, which

(04:36):
we think is fun and hopefully you find fun, and
if you don't, then you're still here and we appreciate
you all through all of that. So that's where we
find ourselves. If you like to support us, you can
join us on Patreon, pickup some merche, leave a rating
and review, like, and subscribe, and of course go tell
a friend. I'll talk more about that in detail once
we get through our entire discussion here. I think that's

(04:59):
what we have to say before we launch into our topic.
Is there anything that I'm missing before we start.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Uh No, I think that's it.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Okay, very good, We've covered the important things. Oh, this
is a full length discussion with what we've been doing
most of the time we've been a podcast, but we've
started releasing these minis. Those come out on Mondays, and
I always announce like these are minis, they come out
on Mondays, and then I don't say anything special about
our full length episodes. They come out on Wednesdays. But
those are the two formats that we currently release, except

(05:26):
we will also release those nostalgia episodes where we will
replay an older episode and update some things on that
topic since that originally published. But that's I guess what
I could pad out our preamble with before we jump
into our topic, because we're going to talk about hell.
There have been many ideas about an afterlife throughout human history,

(05:49):
and in this afterlife, there's an aspect of it that
consists of evil, torture, and judgment. And we will enumerate
a list of several types of hell and they're corresponding faith,
God of torture, and a brief stop at the end
to consider why this idea is so pervasive. But that's

(06:09):
what we're what we're taking on today.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, hell, Yeah, I'm gonna say that a lot as
we go, So just get ready. Probably I can't help it.
It feels it feels right, So I mean, let's go
ahead and dive into like a little bit of background.
So we're going to unpack this a little bit. So
the various ideas of hell are so variable that there's
actually very little to tie them all together. It's like
folklore and storytelling and all the things that go along

(06:31):
with this, which we'll unpack as we go a little bit.
So most of them occur in the afterlife, these versions
of hell, but there are some that occurred during your lifetime,
like twenty twenty five in the state of Florida or
the United States in particular. Right, that's a very particular
living hell.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, And so this is all to say, like, if
we're trying to define this, what's kind of interesting is
if you were to overlap all of the sort of
vendagrams of the different hell, there's like a point at
which they don't all touch each other, which is going
to say that the definition of hell, to encompass all

(07:06):
of these ideas is very difficult to do because they
you just can't find a commonality that exists across all
of them. One of the most common is the afterlife thing.
Most do involve some form of torture, but some are
even meant to be just a time of reflection that
don't necessarily have anything that's like torture directly. Probably the

(07:27):
most business that through line in this idea of hell
it has to do with our misdeeds in life and
some capacity, right that I think is the one thread
that sort of ties everything together. Maybe there's one more,
but that's like one of the most consistent aspects of
the ideas of hell is this idea of our misdeeds

(07:48):
during life, right.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
And So another common element that we find is that
hell has something to do with religion in some capacity.
So despite the impressive variety and conceptualizations of hell, the
majority of them have some overla which likely have to
do with the fact that the various religions have borrowed
from other religious traditions when constructing their narratives about hell
and the afterlife. So it's kind of like we're picking
and choosing and cherry picking and pulling all the things

(08:10):
together to create new narratives based on old narratives. We're
taking the things that we like, we're getting rid of
things that we don't like. Now we're creating a new thing.
And that's kind of you see that kind of throughout history.
It's variations on a theme.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, absolutely, and we will sort of kind of do
these in order, not really like we actually mostly grouped
them sort of by theme, but there's a little bit
of order to it. And what you can start to
see is how the ideas borrowed from each other and
evolved their own stories from other people's stories about these
sort of things. But importantly, one foundational concept and most

(08:45):
versions of hell speaking of these misdeeds thing is that
it depends on the concept of free will, which does
make sense if you think about it. It's really difficult
to justify having some kind of afterlife torture scenari where
someone is punished for their misdeeds if they did not
choose to do the things for which they're being punished,

(09:08):
but were instead maybe forced to do those things, right.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Right, So, of course, free will itself is a pretty
flimsy and useless concept and fails to have a basic
grasp on the facts of human behavior and neurology. So
see our episode on this specifically because we do talk
about this in depth or I don't think I was
on the episode that was that was pre me? Was
it pre me? I think it was.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
It was. Yeah, So we did do a nostalgia on it,
so that would have been we've only been doing nostalgia
episodes since you've been on original episode. It was episode fifty.
So it was published like within the first year of
us being a podcast. Yeah, and so this came out
April twenty fifth, twenty eighteen. Then we published our nostalgia
follow up on this on November ninth, twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Interesting here we are look at that.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, so anyway you can, you can go there to
help hear us unpass our discussion about free will. But
I think the short answer to that is it's a
useless concept. If you start to break down free will
in terms of what that means. The idea of free
will being that we are not influenced by our experiences,

(10:16):
most people don't even buy what that is. And if
you accept free will is we are influenced by our experiences,
then it becomes a useless idea that has no utility
because it completely undermines the whole point of free will. Yeah,
so that's like just that simple of a breakdown pretty
much dismantles the idea and demonstrates its lack of usefulness

(10:37):
and anything that we're going to talk about.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, most definitely.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
So, Yeah, we have all these sort of mystical religious
versions of Hell, and all of these exist in these
sort of oral storytelling traditions. There is no actual episode
or no actual version of Hell that's ever been confirmed
or described by anybody who has ever been there or
seen it, or science or philosophy. There was actually, coincidentally,

(11:02):
a very large hole that was dug and I want
to say Russia where they It was like the deepest
anyone had ever gotten, and it was getting so hot
as they were drilling down because they were drilling down
toward the mantle of the earth, which is basically lava.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
I think there are people who legitimately hypothesized that they
were actually drilling down into Hell, like that's what they
thought they was happening.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, but of course they were drilling down into hot lava,
which is hot and lava, and so it's going to
melt your drill bits, Yeah, as you get very close
to it. So that's that's what happened. The only real
confirmed version of Hell is our current reality, particularly in
the United States.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yep, yeah, yeah, there are two, Like I think these
are just kind of fun side notes too. There is
a believe it's a hole in Turkey that is perpetually
on fire because like wherever they drilled is like constantly
leaking methane and they can't put the fire out, so
it's like it's just constantly burning. It's like an open
hole full of fire. So that's cool.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's one like that in the United States. If you
didn't know that, there's a it's a Virginia. I think
it's in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
It's basically it's what Silent Hill is based on. Yes, yeah,
so for more spooky things. And there is also a
castle in I believe the Czech Republic where it's called
Huska Castle Huska or Huska Castle, which is believed to
be a gateway to Hell because there were a lot
of like weird things that were happening around the castle.
But the way the castle is designed typically castles like

(12:31):
are built for defense and and armaments are pointed out
towards where whoever, you know, invaders, right, So for some reason,
this castle is built where are all the armaments are
pointed in towards the inside of the castle, where there's
a particular hole that like somebody was lowered, Like you know,
that's the lore. Somebody was lowered into and they came
out with bright white hair and they died from shocks. So,

(12:52):
like there's just things like that that are really interesting.
So Castle Huska is another one to check out if
you want to do that.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good one. Yeah, so I
love it. Up at Centralia, Pennsylvania, that was a similar thing.
It was like it was from drilling I think that happened,
or maybe coal mining. I think it was coal mining. Yeah,
it started the fire. And because it's a fossil fuel
and it is basically like burning through the reserves slowly,
it's basically a town that's always has like fire pits

(13:19):
and smoke just emanating from the ground. Yeah, so sort
of described as hell on Earth. Yeah, the entire underground
is on fire. Yeah yeah, exactly the entire ground. But yeah,
speaking of Hell on Earth, let's do a quick ad break. Yes,
all right, we are back, and we've been describing these

(13:41):
various ideas and versions of hell, including the real ones
that we can find in a geographical locations on our planet,
which mostly are just hot like that. That's yeah, that's
the thing about them. Yeah, it's exempt sure one with
a Yeah, there's a giant hole that has a lot
of lore surrounding it. And actually that would be a
really fun episode to just like dig into that castle,

(14:01):
maybe the mini or.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Something Castle Huska. My best friend has been there and
said it's the most unremarkable castle she's ever been to.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Wow, okay, fun. Yeah, but uh okay, great, Well I
think we need another mini for Halloween, so maybe we'll
do Castle Huska.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh yeah, it's on the list, perfect, beautiful.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
All right, Well, let's go ahead and count them down.
We're going to talk through these various versions of hell.
We're gonna start with Greek mythology and Greek mythology, you
have Tartarus. It's a deep, shadowy abyss of torture located
deep beneath the Earth's surface. And this also is the
place that serves as a prison for the Titans. It
could be for the rebellious gods and for enemies of

(14:46):
the divine or maybe divine enemies who are also divine,
but then our enemies to the people or other divine anyway,
that's what you'll find down in Tartarus, according to Greek mythology.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, and that sounds familiar, and you are somebody who
studies Roman mythology, it's pretty much the same thing with
different names. Yeah, so that's Hades, right, Tartaris in Greek
mythology is as Hades and Roman. So now, eventually it
became a place of torture for the worst people and
shifted more towards punishments that were designed to reflect the
actions of the sinner that landed them in this terrible,
terrible place.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
I actually think Hades is still from Greek mythology.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Oh maybe it is.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Hades is the name of a person that became sort of.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah, Haites is the god of death.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, used synonymously with like the underworld afterlife. Sure, but
I think the actual location is Tartaris. I'm not sure
what the Roman equivalent is, but I believe you're correct
that they just basically borrowed from it and then use
the same idea.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yeah, all right, so we're talking about this place where
it was just this shadowy abyss that was used to
store titans when you weren't using them, and then it
sort of over time morphed into this place that was
torture for people, with punishment that was meant to fit
the crimes that they committed. So we have the story
of Sisyphis. This is a very famous story in Greek mythology.

(16:01):
Evidently mostly people are familiar with this punishment. Evidently what
he did is he murdered guests and seduced his niece
during his lifetime, and Greeks were very big on hospitality.
You do not murder guests, and so this was considered
quite punishment worthy. And so he was doomed to roll
a boulder uphill until when it finally reached the top,

(16:23):
it rolled back down to the bottom, and then he
must start all over again. Some people will refer to
tasks that they have as Sisifian or Sisyphian tasks, which
are these unending, laborious tasks that you do them and
it's like you never actually make any progress. Pulling weeds
in your yard is basically the same thing. Yep, you
pull them and then they just sprout right back up

(16:44):
where you pulled them from, and then you have to
do it again, and nothing ever changes and it sucks
and I hate it.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, yeah, it's the worst. It's terrible. It's terrible. Now,
King Tantalus or Tantalus served his son as a meal
to the gods, and he stole the wine of the gods.
So bad news, by the way, if you all don't know.
And when it comes to like Greek and Roman mythology,
you're not supposed to piss off the gods most mythology. True,
you're not supposed to piss off the gods, right.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now, in punishment, he was sentenced to float in water
below a fruit tree, but whenever he attempted to grab
the fruit, it moved away from him, as did the water,
so he suffered thirst and hunger eternally.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, He's basically floating in water that he can't drink,
dying of thirst, just outside of the reach of a
fruit tree he can't reach, dying of hunger. And they
felt that this eternal longing for sustenance that he could
never reach was appropriate punishment for him.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, not nice, all right.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Buddhism, believe it or not, Buddhism has a concept of hell.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
In Buddhist Naraya and Naraka. It consists of eight hot
hells and eight cold hells. You want to have both
temperature extremes here balance. But in the view of Buddhism,
you're actually born into one of those hells, as determined
by the action you took and the karma you accrued
in your previous life. Now, the interesting thing about these

(18:06):
two is that time spent here is not eternal. It
lasts until your karma has been balanced, and then you
were reborn into a higher hell once released. The point
here being that like, depending how on how out of
whack your karma was in life, is how long you
will have to spend in this place. So it was

(18:27):
like all you did was, I don't know, microwave fish
in your office. You maybe only spend like four lifetimes
in there, versus if you were in the current Trump administration,
you'll spend like a million lifetimes in there.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, standard
fair Like, there's a method right now. The eight hells
increase in discomfort and intensity as the levels proceed downward,
and the eight ice hells also decrease in temperature, so
that each level is colder than the last and the
participant is alone. You might hear that, and you might go, Okay,
there are levels of hell. Is that similar to circles

(19:02):
of hell? The circles of hell are a little bit different.
We're not going to talk about Machiavelli and Hell's and
all those fun things, so like, but it is one
of those things that like it is kind of like
an interesting kind of layer. Was like, it gets worse
the more your karma is out of balance.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
We'll briefly touch on Dante's concepts of the Christian Hell.
And I do think that that that was developed out
of traditions such as this, where you had these ideas
of levels of hell, and that was sort of borrowed
from that. Yeah, all right, so that's Buddhism. Let's talk
about Norse mythology. In Norse mythology, you have this place

(19:36):
called Nastrand and what that actually means, like that translates
into corpse shore. Yeah, and so this is part of Hellheim.
Very appropriate name, I guess, and this is where just
the worst sinners go. They end up on these snake
infested shores in Hellheim and a Nastrand as corpses. And

(20:01):
the people who end up here these are like murderers,
I guess, they considered this on par with murderers, as
oath breakers and adulters, like those are the people who
end up a Nastrand and the snake infested shores.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, now, the snake venom creates rivers of poison that
sinners must wade through, which sounds so uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yes, and actually so there are cages in this place
that are made from the bones of snakes, and the
bones of snakes drip with poison. The poison is so
much that it creates these rivers and then the tortured
must wade through them. This place is guarded by Niedhoger,
which is the dragon that oversees the worlds of the

(20:43):
damned and he choose on their souls. So that's the
dragon down in Nastrand. Apparently the dragon also chews on
the nose on the roots of Igdrisil, the tree of
life in mythology. So this dragon's kind of a jerk.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, he's kind of like a that's not trained very well.
It just keeps chewing on your shoes and like the
furniture and like now you're mad about it. So yeah,
that'd be like the worst kind of like pet dragon.
I think, well, that and the one that just like
keeps setting your house on fire. I guess that would
be pretty upsetting. Yeah, Smile would be a pretty terrible
pet dragon too, I guess. But Smile is English lore,

(21:21):
so not not Norse. So on dragons, yeah yah, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, let's make sure we get a dragon citation
in here. I also just it's just strong recommendation. Spend
some time reading Norse mythology. Fascinating stuff, like it really
super interesting. Like Thor has two goats that he can
kill and eat and they regenerate as long as he
has there like all of their bones, like they like

(21:44):
he can like kill and eat them every day and
every night and they just come back to life as
long as he has all of his bones. But if
he's missing a bone, he doesn't get him back.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
So yeah, And there's like Odin's crows that have some
specific abilities. Friga has like all these magical powers. Loki
as like this really interesting lore and magical powers.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Look, he turns into a wolf and has a baby
as a wolf. It's a whole thing.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
The appropriation of those characters for comics I love. I
think it's really fun and the actual mythology itself is
like crazy, it's just super interesting. So Outland is yeah,
very interesting, really great storytelling. Yeah, not really great storytelling.
Is like ads, All right, let's go ahead and talk

(22:29):
about Islamic Hell.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah. So Johannam or Johannam is seven layers Hell, with
each layer being reserved for a specific type of sinner.
So this version of Hell exists in a temporal contiguity
with the world and awaits the worst sinners polytheism, hypocrisy,
and people who disobey God's law reject religion. So it
basically like operates has the same clocks as us.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like the people who are in Hell
there are in Hell right now alongside us in our
temporal existence of reality, and it's people who reject religion
who end up there.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
That's actually a theme We're going to see quite a
bit more as we move through these. All right, So
the idea here in Islamic tradition is that Judgment Day,
everyone crosses a bridge called as sarat a sarat maybe,
and those who are doomed to torture will fall off
the bridge, and the bridge like traverses, it goes over
this Johanna. So everybody must cross it, and if they

(23:30):
were sinners, then they will fall off the bridge as
they're crossing, But the pious will make it across the
bridge and they will reach heaven.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah. So the top layer of Johanna or Joe. Yeah,
Johannah is more likely more like purgatory and essentially the
only part of Johanna in which people have any hope
of escaping if they can repent their sins. In the
lower levels, though, torture can include blazing fires, boiling water, lacerations,
and drinking puss filled water no thanks.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, there is like a surprising amount of having to
consume gross beverages that make up conceptualizations of hell, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
And it's really fascinating to think about that because then
we turn that into a game show called Fear Factor.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah yeah, and then that becomes a podcast that ruins
the world. Yeah, here we are, so we're all in
hell now. Yep, all right, let's switch to Hinduism. So
in Hinduism you have Naraka. This is a dark realm
below the earth where the souls of the dead are
temporarily punished for their misdeeds in life. As I said,
misdeeds very common theme here.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is a purification hell with
twenty eight sections tailored to particular sins.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
So when you arrive at Naraka, Chitragupta finds your entry
in a ledger containing a detailed list of all of
your transgressions. So you have your bookkeeper there, Chitragupta, and
Chitragupta reads these to the lord of Naraka named Yama,
who is the god of death. So you're getting ratted
out by an as soon as you get there. They're

(25:01):
just gonna like have you stand there where they lead
off every they read off every terrible thing you've ever
done to the god who will decide your fate.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this and like,
as I'm reading this, I'm going that sounds familiar, Like
could you imagine going to like I don't know, like
maybe something like gates or like they could even be
described as pearly and there is somebody there that you
meet that tells you all the things that you do
and decides whether you enter or not. Like maybe we'll
call that person what Peter, Saint Peter or something like that,

(25:31):
just as a guest, Like just like it's just a
random end and then like if you don't get in,
you just go to like a dark realm. I don't know,
like hell, to go hang out with Satan. I don't know.
Sounds familiar to me, but I don't know. Maybe I'm
just making that up. I don't know, Maybe I just
maybe I just dream that. Now Yama sentences you accordingly.
In those punishments. They're carried out by demonic messengers called umadatas,

(25:54):
and the punishments may include being suffocated, burned, consumed by serpents,
or drinking disgusting substances again like diet mountain dew.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Oh well, there goes our sponsorship with die mountain dew.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, Pepsy just pulled out. Oh man, all right.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
So those Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, and Zoroastrianism, you have douzak and
this is a deep, dark well in which the adversary
of their god, our Heman, carries out a variety of punishments,
including having you be tortured by giant animals or subjected

(26:34):
to extreme temperatures extreme hot and extreme cold. So this
sort of has overlap with the hot and cold that
we saw in Buddhism. And now we have animals that
are our tortures.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like so far. A lot
of the hells include like liberal use of unconditioned motivating operations.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
That's such a nerdy way.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
So now people are packed tightly together but still feel
isolated from one another, and they're likely to only be
able to consume foul smelling and tasting food and drink.
So pickles and mountain dew, cheese and pineapple and pizza
and pineapple on pizza. I like pineapple on pizza.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
I'm putting in the category. It doesn't remind me this
whole idea of you been tortured by giant animals. The
far side has this amazing comic where it's a picture
of God and God's looking at this He's created all
these animals and they're all sitting there, and he says
something along the lines of He's like, Wow, this looks
really great. Now I'm going to create something to kill

(27:43):
all of you, or like to eat you all or
something like that. That's great.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, it was really good. Okay, this is a religion
I had not heard of before, this called Mendian. And
in the Mandian hell, we have the world of darkness,
with the Great Sea of suff The demon Leviathan also
called Er throws souls into the Great Sea of suff

(28:12):
where they are held prisoner and tortured.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yep. Now, at the end of days, the souls will
be released from their prison and allowed to move on.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yeah, so this is a more temporary holding hell. But
you get to hang out in the Sea of suff
maybe suffering. Yeah, with a demon god Leviathan thing.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah, I mean sounds scary.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Sounds like a really good metal album theme. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, I would be shocked if there wasn't one of
those already.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah. Yeah, Okay. Slavic Slavic religion tradition of hell, you
have this place called Peklow. This is an underworld in
which souls are judged and punished for their actions, overseen
by Pechlank, who judges the wicked and offers them a
chance at redemption. So you do they guess they want

(28:59):
people to feel badly enough that they want to escape,
but they want them to first face the punishment.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, and if they don't accept the offer for redemption,
then they might be turned to stone, turned to a
werewolf or a flush eating monster. I feel like it'd
rather be a monster than a stone.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, I think that too.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Also, I think were wolves are flesh eating monsters, but
I suppose they mean flesh eating monsters that are not
wear wolves. Yeah, yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
There's two fleshating monsters. There's were wolves and non were
wolf flesh eating monsters. We have those kinds.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Yeah, were wolves and RFK Junior.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, nailed it all right.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Alternatively, so there's like different conceptualizations here. Peclo is a dark,
fiery place of torment ruled by Vellus, a horned dragon
like god, which is, you know, pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
We got more dragons, yeah, very metal first before I
get into this next point. I always think it's interesting
when they say dark and fiery, like.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
That's right, Yeah, Like the fiery seems like it would
negate the darkness. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, Like if you're in hell and there's lots of fire,
somebody left the lights on, right, and can't be dark
if the lights are on. So anyway, it's.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Very dark fire.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's dark fire. Ooh, it's scary fire. Now. Vellos may
have been the inspiration for the Christian Satanic figure that
we all know and some people love, but like that's
kind of like a thing to think about is like again,
pulling from lore and pulling from like, you know, different
types of belief systems to create new ones happens pretty often,
so this may be one of those things.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, Vellas is described as this horned figure very powerful.
I don't remember whether or not the lure consistent of
like as being like a rejected holy figure or something
like that. But the source I actually found basically just
said this is the inspiration for the Christian Satanic devil.

(30:52):
But I didn't do a lot more fact checking beyond
what they said on this and basically accepted that it
was probably more accurate to say and may have been
the inspiration for that figure.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's fair.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
All right, Well, the next section we have is a
bunch of different versions of Christian hell. All of them
have boobs and penises. Sure, no, just kidding, but all right,
these are the ideas of the various denominations of Christianity
and the hells that encompass those spaces. So yeah, well
let's talk about the Christian idea of hell.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, so, the Christian hell actually differs slightly across various
nominations even so far is disagreeing about whether Hell is
a metaphorical place or a literal place. In some places
it's a literal black hole. So if you want to
see the documentary event Horizon, about a space crew that
almost made it, that's a good one to check out. Also,
on a very serious note, one of the best horror

(31:50):
movies has ever been made. Scares me to death.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
It's kind of an insane movie.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
It is an absurd movie.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
It is absurd and it's weird, and it's such a
unique piece of art. I just it's kind of a
special movie, you know, truly.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Is it's its own thing, man, all right.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
The overseer of Christian Hell is Satan, the devil, or Beelzebub.
There are more names for him, sometimes just called the
beast of Note Hell is not actually mentioned anywhere in
the Old Testament. This is something that many people who
are both Christian and non Christian may not have known.
But in the Old Testament of the Bible no mention
of Hell. You do get the concept of a place

(32:32):
called shell Ol Shellol, and this is referenced sixty six
times in the Old Testament. But scholars disagree how best
to translate this. The two most common interpretations are that
that word literally translates from a word that literally means grave,
and some have interpreted it more liberally to mean land

(32:52):
of the dead. Some even interpret it to mean just
the dead. Neither actually suggests anything having to do with
eternal torture or a torturer or anything. But you have
no mention of hell in the Old Testament. You have
the shell place, and that any translation you get from
that is like the grave, land of the dead, or

(33:14):
the dead, but it's not something where you have like
a demonic figure torturing people for their misdeeds. Is just
the other side or once life is over.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Basically, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So the first time
Hell is actually mentioned in the Christian Bible is when
somebody was reading and a person walked up to that
person and interrupted them and tried to sell them something.
So that was really the first time we saw that,
and they called it an ad All right, and we

(33:47):
are back, we're talking about the first time Hell is mentioned.
And so we have now said, you know, at this
point in time, hell was never mentioned in the Old
Testament of the Bible. The first time it's mentioned in
the Christian Bible is in the New Testament, and Biblical
scholars suggest at those instances, as few as they are,
could be understood stood as misinterpreting words that don't mean
hell from the languages and the cultures that they were

(34:08):
influenced by.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Okay, so we have in Luke sixteen nineteen through sixteen
thirty one, Jesus describes a rich man as being in
torment in Hades and begging for relief. That's how it's written. However,
even in the references to the lake of Fire, the
flames are described as eternal. It's so they say eternal flames.
They don't say eternal suffering, and so they indicate this

(34:32):
idea of Hades being this lake of fire in eternal flames,
and I think some people just understood that to mean
maternal suffering. There are some translations of the Bible that
simply decided that rather than calling it Hades, they would
call it hell. So you might find versions of the
Bible where you see the word hell in there in
this exact passage, but older translations, ones that are closer

(34:56):
to the original way that it was written, translated to Hades,
and then they give this idea of lake of fire
with eternal burning flames, sure, which again I think some
people then said, oh, eternal suffering, and it's like, that's
not what it said though.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
That's how it says. The idea of hell is that
people who have rejected God are separated from God. Revelations
describes a lake of eternal fire and brimstone. Importantly, no
amount of pain or suffering is considered sufficient to satisfy
the bloodlust of the jailers, who would see quote unquote
criminals brought here. So the people brought here do not
die or succumb to their injuries. Instead, they are either

(35:30):
revived or kept alive and awake and definitely to be
able to continue suffering their torture.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, it's sort of like if you did something bad
in life, you should spend all of eternity many billion,
trillion times your lifetime suffering for it. Yeah, just completely
insatiable bloodlust.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Seems like a disproportionate punishment, is all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
It certainly does, so there's that idea, Yeah, all right.
In Catholicism, hell is a self imposed isolation that comes
from rejecting God. So it's if you reject God, then
you end up in this isolation from other people. It's
actually kind of a unique commentary on human beings that

(36:12):
a really significant number of ideas of hell consists of
being alone, right like you don't have people around you
at all. I think that that taps into a recognition
of the importance and value we have for one another
as a species, even if we like to act like
we don't have that a lot of the time right now.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
With Protestantism, Protestantism, Protestantism, Protestantism sees hell as a place
created by God to punish fallen angels and the devil,
as well as those who reject salvation.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yes, rejecting God, rejecting salvation comes back. Eastern Orthodoxy sees
hell as a state of torment after having been separated
from God but experiencing his presence without a connection. So
it's people who were, like given the opera oportunity to
contact God but did not develop a connection to God
or lost the connection. This results in unbearable anguish, which

(37:09):
taken together, makes Hell a metaphorical spiritual condition and one
that you can actually experience during your lifetime, so that
in this version of Eastern Orthodoxy, hell could be something
that happens while you're alive, not just an afterlife thing.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah yeah, Now, Gnosta Christians actually viewed Hell metaphorically as
the flawed material world. So it's basically just kind of
like here we are. Yeah, this is now, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
The other mention of Hell that you might see in
the Bible is called Gehenna, and this is comes from
Jewish mysticism, where it is another world that will commonly
be cited in the Bible regarding discussions about Hell, and
in Gehenna, souls confront their misdeeds like we've seen in others,
although not Hell exactly. It's more like a purgatory where

(37:57):
souls reflect on their misdeeds and experience great shame. And
the more thoroughly and completely they experience the shame, the
more quickly they will be purified and move on from
this purgatory. But they must spend time in purgatory really
living into the shame of their misdeeds as much as possible.

(38:18):
I don't want to do that, No, no.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Nope, nope, nope nope, I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Do that again. Another place that RFK Junior once there
will never leave.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Nailed it, absolutely nails all right. So we've also got Mormonism,
and Mormonism has outer Darkness, which is a very cool name.
And I was trying to figure out if Mormonism took
that from HP Lovecraft or if HP Lovecraft took that
from Mormonism. I'm pretty sure Mormonism gave HP Lovecraft the idea,
but that.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Makes sense to me.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
It's also spooky. But out of Darkness is only for
the sons of Perdition, who are described as people who
had perfect knowledge of Jesus Christ, received the Holy Spirit,
and then completely rejected Christ. They are considered irredeemable and
have no chance to ever progress. This is inhabited by
Satan and his angels live here and is a place
of despair and quote weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, also,

(39:11):
there's no coffee there, so you got to deal with that.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yes, that's that's the primary thing. I think.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Actually, well they do that here too, but like you know,
it's it's just it gets kind of like amplified there,
like it's imagined like you're always tired and there's no coffee,
it's worse.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
So across these various conceptualizations of Christian hell, we see
that the Christian God is uh seems to be extremely
sensitive about rejection. This guy is I mean, real thin
skinned about people like turning away.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah, he's almighty until he thinks you're mad at him.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, it's like friends are off never talking to you again,
punishment for you.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh man, what an interesting way to think about that.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
I love that you got some real significant attachment issues.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
All right. We do have one more version of Hell
that's important for us to talk about, and that, of
course is the most popular and beloved religion that you'll
find around the world, which is the Gospel of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yes, it's actually not the most popular
religion in the world, but it's an important to understand this,
all right. So we're not getting into the history and

(40:19):
the tenants of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
but Flying Spaghetti Monster does have Hell in this religion. Sure,
in case you didn't know, now, in the Flying Spaghetti
Monster tradition, heaven and Hell are very similar for some
specific philosophical reasons. Now, in heaven you have a beer
volcano and apparently a stripper factory, and I think you

(40:42):
choose sexy body type of your choosing whatever that might
look like to you. So For some people, it's a
bunch of Michael B. Jordan's coming out of the volcano.
For some people it's same thing. Else, I'm trying to
give it of the celebrity to put in there.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
You don't need to Michael B. Jordan works for everybody.
I think that's a very good point. Yes, it's just
Michael Man. It's so handsome, so handsome, it's so charming.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
It really is just absurdly so all right. Anyway, So
that's what Heaven is, but Hell is a beer volcano,
except that the beer is stale, and all of the
strippers that come out of the stripper factory have venereal diseases,
which I guess matters because they're also sex works, sex
worts who do more than do stripping, I guess. Anyway,

(41:24):
that's the idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Heaven and Hell.
Both of those sound closer to Hell for me than not.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
I'm like, yeah, neither of those sound fun.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, not where my choices would be. But that's that's
what's in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Heaven and Hell.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, And honestly, like the reason we wanted to talk
about that is because when we were kind of like
navigating through you can see how like we can put
like a more modern what sounds like an absurd tale
around this. But every religion, in every belief system that
we covered not and of course we didn't cover all
of them. There are lots of versions, lots of different
ways to go about it. But the thing about this

(41:59):
is that they're different lore. It's different storytelling, it's different
mechanisms by which people engage in certain behavior. And that's
kind of like the point of all this, right, when
we talk about the behavior of people, and we talk
about why Hell exists and why we've created Hell, a
big part of it is largely for social control. Right.
And that's not to say, and I want to be

(42:20):
clear about this because I know you and I are
we're not spiritual believers. We're believers in science, right, I
think that's a thing. So our particular Hell is an
anti science world, which you know here we are. But like,
largely when you think about this as a general rule, whatever,
we're not, like I want to say, we're not denigrating
your belief system. We're not trying to disrespect your your

(42:42):
belief system, but we have to understand what the function
of Hell is on earth when we talk about it,
and it's really to control people, right, Lots of these
folks believed the best or only way to facilitate human
behavior or control it or guide certain behavior was to
threaten people with fear, with pain, was so with torture,
with eternities of this which is far longer than any

(43:05):
crime that landed them there. Like I mentioned before, it
was disproportionately punishing somebody for a misdeed they engage in
in their life. It's punishing their soul forever for something
that happened when they were a teenager. And so I
think it's just important to understand a lot of it.
And there's historical evidence to demonstrate that some of these
stories were created specifically to control people when the Catholic

(43:27):
Church was in power, when Christianity took over and like
replaced lots of like polytheistic religions. You see this historically
happening over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah. Yeah, So we've talked about before the idea that
like human language is unique and that it allows us
to behave with respect to things that are not It
allows us to behave with respect to things that have
not happened yet, it allows us to behave with respect
to things that happened well before we were born. It

(43:57):
allows us to behave with respect to arbitrary things, things
that we can imagine, and so we can come up
with the idea of something like a dragon. We've never
seen a dragon, No dragon has ever existed, but we
can create that with things like tools of our language.
And so language, as a sort of epiphenomenal byproduct of
its existence, enables the ability to behave with respect to

(44:21):
ideas like there is such a thing as life after
life is done, and that is the afterlife, the what
happens when we die. Even honestly, the concept of death
is something that really only exists because we have language,
like things would die, But as far as we know,
no animals go around thinking about their death because it

(44:42):
means nothing to them. There is the like animals have
relationships with other animals, and when those animals are gone,
they understand that they're gone, and it seems like they
can behave with respect to that. But they don't necessarily
walk around like. We have no reasonab believe that they
have any conceptualization of their own deaths, and our language
give us that for better or for worse, and as
a consequence of that, we can then imagine something like

(45:05):
what about this hypothetical place that these good or bad
things happen, It's heaven and Hell's And why that then
might become useful is in the grand experiment of humans
joining together to create civilizations and cities and cultures and
things of that nature. There was a oh, such a
wide variety in the ways that people behave that there

(45:28):
was a desire for some people to try and control
the flow of that to some extent, and in particular
I think where there are some people who would do
a lot of harm to other people and do so
on purpose. Yeah, and so some attempts to try and
rain that sort of thing in. And so one way
to do that is to tell you that there is
such a thing as like if we don't catch you

(45:49):
and punish you, someone will.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Like, yeah, you'll never escape it, exactly right.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
You cannot just get live this life doing whatever you
want and hurting other people and doing all these harm
because like something will have like there is the inescapable
consequence of what happens after death, and that way, like
we can have systems in place that catch you during
your lifetime and try and deal with it that way.
But if they don't catch you, then like, don't worry,
someone will. And the idea there then being that they

(46:17):
can try and influence the behaviors that happen so that
they could get that under control in a way that
that worked for the powers that be, if you will.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
What becomes tricky in this, though, is the consideration of, like,
what do they consider criminal behavior? Because there are ones
that I think are relatively easy and black and white
ish to agree on, which is like, you are hurting
someone in a way that they did not consent to,
that they did not want to have happen, and you're
causing harm to that person in some capacity. That seems

(46:46):
fairly straightforward. Yeah, But then you have other examples where
it's like someone who's like I chose to love someone
who or I've realized that I love someone who looks
very similar to me. They happen to have the same
genitalia that I do, they happen to have the same
physiological presentation that I do. And and the people who
are like, uh no, that's unacceptable, you should be tortured forever.

(47:08):
I think many of us look at that and be
like but why.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, which is like, you know, again, that's something that
has come up more, I would say, more in a
more modern space because of some you know, more conservative
leanings and stuff of misinterpretations of the Bible. But I
also think it's really important too, Like, I know, we're
kind of dogging on this idea of like hell being
used as a coercive tool and controlling behavior and like
really managing behavior. But the promise of divine reward does

(47:34):
the same thing. It does. Yeah, right, It's like you
do bad, and you do and this is the bad
thing that happens, but if you do good, you get
this great thing at the end of it too. So
like it's not just that hell is the bad thing.
It's it's the dichotomy of hell is bad Heaven is good.
We're gonna use both to steer your behavior towards what
we want to see and make you avoid those things
that we don't want to see.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
You need the carrot and the stick and not the
ad Bam nailed it all, right, We're back. We've been
describing essentially why we think there has been this propagation
of ideas of hell that have spread around cultures and
over time and I think that on the one hand,

(48:17):
you have the one of the original formations of this,
the idea of both heaven and Hell, as you are
just saying, is to facilitate human behavior. I think that
the function of this shifted over time because as you
started to get into really fervent, zealous commitments to these
sort of religions, the function of hell came to instead

(48:37):
symbolize something a lot more deeper about like the moral
failings of humans more broadly sure, and that allowed it
to spread the ideas of like who belonged in Hell
and what Hell should and could consist of, so I
think to spread to a lot of ideas of human life.
And it also kind of weirdly watered it down in
some ways too, because you have people who is spouse

(49:00):
devout religious leanings, and maybe even our participants in like
religious activities, who then we find out later we're also
doing these things that are like pretty despicable and deplorable
things that they that they behave in and it's not
clear if they never actually believed or if they believed
that like they could. It's sort of like the whole

(49:22):
idea of what was it called where you could like
buy forgiveness from the church.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Oh, I know what you're talking about, but it's like, uh, absolution.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I feel like it was called like indulgences. Yeah, indulgence
was that I had to I had to look it up.
But this idea that like at some point the church
really needed to do fundraising. They were like really struggling,
and so they're like, we're going to launch this infomercial
where now, rather than repent, all you have to do
is buy your redemption card and be on your merry way,

(49:54):
and so they're there. Then started to be this way
that hell showed up or that Heaven should up really
and either version where it was like get out of
jail free card, buy it at the church gift store, sure,
and you'd be fine. And again sort of watering down
the whole idea here, but also just being leveraged in
a way that's very functional for those religions, like it

(50:15):
actually kind of makes sense in a space where your
monetary viability is linked to the significance of hell, like
the more terrible Hell sounds, the more you can sell,
and the more you can sell those indulgences for yeah, right,
So it actually might push extreme views of this because now,
the more you can get people to buy into this,

(50:36):
the more product you can move.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Right right exactly.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
So, I found this really lovely quote from someone who
was just talking about the various conceptualizations of hell, and
I thought that it captured so beautifully and so perfectly
everything that we talked about, and we could have maybe
just said this, and then that would have been the
whole episode. H It is quote. On the one hand,
it referring to hell shows our desire for justice. If

(51:00):
life will not play fair, then we can at least
imagine an after life where the wicked and treacherous pay
for their crimes while their victims receive relief from earthly torments.
On the other hand, houses our hate and tolerance and savagery.
It puts on full display our head and desire to
be proven superior over others and to punish those who
don't conform to our beliefs. End quote. This is from

(51:23):
author Kevin Dickinson in one of those places. I was like, Yeah,
I think that's that's pretty much it. That is exactly perfect.
It is like we like to imagine a place where
humans suffer. That's wild. That's wild that we would value
something like that that's like, let's really celebrate the idea
of suffering and push it not to it's like extreme,

(51:46):
but like even past to the extreme into things like
internal damnation. And for some of them, it's as simple
as as like rejecting your faith, right, Like that's what
got you there, and that's just wild to me. And
on the other hand, as he said in this quote,
I think it does also highlight this desire for there

(52:07):
to be some kind of sense of justice in the world,
Like why do bad things happen to good people?

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Right?

Speaker 1 (52:13):
There is your answer, as you just need this pretend
entity of good and bad afterlife things where the bad
things that happen to good people will be rewarded in
their afterlife versus the good things that happen to bad
people they will be punished in their afterlife. Right And
were it only so easy? But that is I think

(52:33):
a reasonable understanding of that quote is just such a
beautiful snapshot of all the things we discussed.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah, I think that summarizes it perfectly.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Okay, well we need to wrap it up there, so
thank you all for listening. This is just our first
entry into a several episode long trip we're going to
go down into the discussion about hell related topics. I
hope that you enjoy what you heard today and in
our future halloweeny themed spooky episodes and just all of
our episodes. Really, that's what I hope.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, we're having We're gonna have a blast. It's gonna
be a good it's gonna be a good spooky season.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Indeed, And if you would like to support what we do,
you can join us on Patreon. If you go there,
you get add free episodes, early episodes, bonus content, and
I will read your name from the list of people
who help make our podcast be a podcast. And so
thank you so much to Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin,
Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara, and Charlie. Thank you

(53:27):
for being a people.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
You're the best. You're the best ever.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Also, thank you to my team of people without whom
I could not make this podcast writing and fact checking
from Shane and myself. Thank you for recording with me today, Shane.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Hey, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Our social coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio engineer
is Justin Greenhouse. Thank you Justin for being so awesome
always always all right. If you'd like to tell us
about any hells that we missed. I did actually deliberately
leave out some versions of hell that were like crazy
long and convoluted from other religious traditions that I found,
but we be happy to share those, So feel free

(54:01):
and write in. You can tell us something that we
got wrong. If you'd like to gently correct us. We
appreciate constructive feedback. That's always good. You can email us
directly to tell us about those things at info at
wwdwwdpodcast dot com, and you can also reach us on
the social media platforms as I said, like subscribe, leave
about a rating and review, and just go tell someone
that you know, you know. I just recently had someone

(54:24):
who is like, hey, I have a really long drive
ahead of me. I don't have anything to listen to.
Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, my podcast,
that's where it's at. Yeah, actually I recommend lots of things.
Yeah yeah, but you, dear listener, could recommend our podcast
and that would sound much less lame than our hosts
recommending their own podcast. Right, But okay, I think that

(54:45):
that is what I have to say about all of that.
Is there anything I'm missing? Before we transition to recommendations.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
No, I think that's I think we're ready.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Let's recommend some things. Yeah, we recommendations.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
I'm gonna recommend to align with our spookiest of seasons.
A scary movie. Nice, And that scary movie is a
movie called twenty eight years later. So I am somebody
who really enjoys a good zombie movie.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Me too.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Twenty eight days later, scared me to smithereens. That thing
was so scary. There's nothing scarier than fast mad zombies.
And there was just in the way it was shot,
was gritty and gross and weird and just it was just,
you know, I don't like that they made environmentalists the villains. Yeah,
you know, it was like the environmentalists that were the problem.

(55:38):
But anyway, but they also made the military of the
villains too, so I guess there is balance there anyway.
Twenty eight days later, excellent movie. Twenty eight months later,
fantastic sequel. I think they did a really good job.
Twenty eight weeks later, whatever it is, Yeah, you're right,
twenty eight weeks later.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
I was like, I was like, it should be twenty
this one should have been twenty eight months.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
But it's not. They skipped a unit.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
They skipped a unit, but here we are with twenty
eight years later, and it is a continuation of that story,
you know. And it starts off with the survivors of
the rage virus that took hold of England. They are
quarantined to the island and so it's kind of a
new space where they're really looking at kind of like
what happens in the aftermath and how do people survive?

(56:18):
And it stars Jody Komer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Ralph
Fines and incredible, beautifully shot, super interesting story, really talking
about how people have learned to survive in the wake
of something really serious. And I thought it was a
really fun, really interesting movie. I don't think it was
as good as the other two, but I think it

(56:38):
was still really good and a worthy entry, especially because
director Danny Boyle, who directed the first one, is back
for this one, so it's the original director, which is
cool too, So that's great.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Yeah, I definitely am interested in seeing it. I also
liked the first two and tend to love zombie movies
more broadly, so cool. Good recommendation.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, all right.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I'm recommending a TV show. This is on the Apple
TV Plus service, but man, that service is just crushing
out the TV shows lately. This one is called Shrinking.
The stars Jason Siegel, Harrison Ford and then just a
variety of other really gifted and talented actors. For people
who are fans of Ted Lasso, I could see them

(57:19):
really latching onto this. So it's essentially about more or
less three therapists who are talking to behavioral therapists who
work together, and the story picks up with one of
them whose wife had died within the last year, and
then him basically not dealing with that and sort of
just devolving into a giant mess and then sort of

(57:42):
climbing out of that. So right now there are two
seasons out. I'm given to understand that the third season
will come out in twenty twenty six. But it is
a just a very it's a very funny show, also
just very heartwarming and lots of really lovely character moments
with people just being good to each other. So yeah,
I very much enjoyed it, strong recommend It's again streaming

(58:02):
on Apple TV Plus and it's called Shrinking. Love that cool,
all right. So that's twenty eight years later in shrinking,
and then versions of Hell. This is probably the last
time we're going to plan to spend a lot of
time on Hell, but maybe we'll come back to it.
Who knows. We do whatever we want.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah, this is our show, exactly supported by you the listener.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
But I think that's what I have to say today,
So we will let you go about your spooky day,
your spooky season, your spooky week, what have you. And yeah,
that's it. So anything you'd like to add before we
sign off, Nope, that covers it, ram what we do.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
You can worry more among this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
B