Flat Earth Clues (8–14) (GAM191)

Noah Lugeons

Heath Enwright

Eli Bosnick

***Flat Earth Clues*** (segments eight through fourteen) is the story of… *ibid*. I'm not giving this flat Earth nonsense another intro—last week we did *Flat Earth Clues* segments one through seven, and this week we watched segments eight through fourteen. Go.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, because where there's God, there's awful.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you weren't convinced by not looking at *FlightAware*, but you still have six more clues to put in your movie, you will—fuck you Bill Nye the Science Guy. Oh, you thought there wasn't going to be a "Fuck you, Bill Nye the Science Guy" part of this movie? Well that's on you, listener.

### **More or Less Convincing**

* Heath: …*ibid*. Reject the premise.
* Eli: ...less, and that's impressive to me.
* Noah: ...the arguments somehow managed to get worse, or less existent.
* Marsh: …they get less coherent as an argument, but they also just seem to have way less impact.

### Best Worst

* Heath: ...YouTube comments. [From both Christian and atheist sides.]
* Marsh: …ordering. [The world is flat because of white coats.]
* Noah: ...therefore. [How the world would be better if everyone believed].
* Eli: ...filmmaker gratitude. [Mark put a thanks in the comments of the last GAM episode on YouTube.]

### **Notes**

* Check out Marsh on Twitter, *Be Reasonable*, *Skeptics with a K*, and at The Good Thinking Society or Skeptic of the Year.
* Marsh interviewed Mark Sargent on  *Be Reasonable* Episode 38. Also, he says "years" weird.
* Mark's e-mail address and phone number are (from all of his videos up to 2020) msargent23@comcast.net and 303-494-6631. [As Noah says, "Listeners, be nice."]

### **Jokes**

* **8. The Creative Force**: [So, he's gonna start off with a very old story; you see, this isn't the first dome—there were other domes.] [Heath: "They" might be a master race also, by the way. That seemed to be what he was describing there. This crazy—like, he basically started describing John Galt's invisible valley and its master race of Libertarian tax-evaders and their crazy futuristic from-thousands-of-years-ago society. I don't know—it was very confusing.] [Yeah, so apparently Wakanda, back in the day, decided to build a tower to the sky… so he's telling the Tower of Babel, but he's doing it insanely.] (12:22)
* **9. The Magic Show**: [Also, this is where we learn the First Rule of Magic—this is a quote—"The First Rule of Magic: assume the rule isn't being broken, only hidden." And I can confirm, that is not the First Rule of Magic, or… English. Fun fact.] [Noah: Nope, it's not. Eli, is there a first rule of magic?] [Eli: Absolutely.] [Noah: What's the First Rule of Magic?] [Eli: Never talk about Fight Club. … Dammit!] [So yeah, okay, but basically this video is him acknowledging that a bunch of people wrote into him and said like "Hey man, you can fly straight from Johannesburg to Perth." Right? Like we were talking about last week. He's going like "Alright, alright smart guys, but are they real flights though?"] [Marsh: Yeah, he says it like he isn't acknowledging that he fucked up previously, cause he basically says this video is him researching: "I did a bunch more research." Yeah, but you did research about the claims you made in video seven, you should have done that research before video seven. That is the time to research video seven!] (27:20)
* **10. Hiding God** : [Marsh: But this is where he's totally lost track of what he was previously saying though, really, because his point is that the existence of God is being kept from us by… the people who built the dome? Which previously he was alluding to as being God, so who are the ones who built the dome if not God, and what the hell is the point of God if he didn't build the dome? If he's not the one responsible for building the world and putting us on here, what the fuck is God?] [You know, that's the thing—that's the thing that got me out of the conspiracy theory worldview to begin with, was the moment that I realized that you can wait forever—they're not going to connect those dots. It's just about putting dots out there.] (41:57)
* **11. Souls in the System**: [Noah: And that was before I realized that this was a movie from the guy that Buzz punched! Right? That's this guy? ] [Heath: I watched the punching video a good forty times the other night, just because it reminded me of it. I love it. It's such a satisfying video.] [Yeah, that was back when we all agreed we could punch people out of bad ideas. What happened in the intermediary years, when Nazis came?] [Heath: You shouldn't do that I guess, but like… I don't know, old man astronaut? I couldn't be more sympathetic to punching. Still don't, but…] [Noah: Yeah, if you're an old man astronaut… I do make that exception: if you're an old man astronaut, you can punch anyone you want. Or an old woman astronaut.] [Marsh: I think just "old man." Let's just go old, yeah just go old person. If you're old, you've been around the block a few times…] [Noah: Naw, I know too many old assholes. Look, I'll tell you what Marsh, you live around the old people—the racist assholes—they can't be trusted with that kind of power.] [Eli: It'd be like a Tommy Robinson rally when the press shows up Marsh. Think ahead! Think ahead.] ](54:20)
* **12. Real Eyes**: [Marsh: I *do* know that Mark Sargent think that the moon gives off light that isn't just reflecting the sun's light, but he does think that the sun gives off heat, 'cause he said to me when I spoke to him that "We know that the moon is its own independent light source because sunlight is warm, whereas moonlight it's cold." No, that's his point.] [Heath: \*squeels\* Moonlight is cold!] [Noah: Wait, it's not just not hot, but it's actually cold? It's like the faucet twists?] [Yeah, so he said if you put a thermometer in the shadow—when it's moonlight—if you put a thermometer in the shadow and observe the temperature, and then move it from the shaded area that it's in into an exposed area that is able to get the moon to it (but arguably is exposed to other things as well), the temperature drops. And that's nothing to do with the movement of air, it's all to do with moonlight.] [Heath: So moon photons are anti-photon matter, and they just annihilate temperature degrees. What?] [Marsh: They carry cold with it, yeah. The moon shoots cold at us to balance out the sun.] [Noah: Benatar the moonlight moves so slowly you see ] [Eli: See, and this is why *Be Reasonable* is my favorite skepticism show. I mean, yes, we make dick jokes, and *CogDis* is funny, and *Skeptics with a K* is interesting, but you're never going to have a straight-faced adult tell you that moonlight is cold on any podcast except fucking *Be Reasonable*. Get on it people: Leo the Lion is just waiting for you!] (1:06:22)
* **13. The Lost Nail**: [Eli: And look, I *love* this video; this video appeals to exactly my kind of stupid, 'cause you know what? I have zero answers for any of the questions he asks in this video, and I couldn't be bothered to Google. He gets me. He's just like "How do spacesuits work?", And I'm "They don't. Flat Earth motherfucker!"] [Marsh: There is a lovely moment, there's an absolutely lovely moment when he's talking about how complex and wonderful the spacesuit has to be, and he says it's got this, it's got that, he said it's got oxygen… but when he says it's got oxygen he flashes up the sign for O2. That's the logo for O2, the telephone company, the cell phone company. It's the equivalent of him saying "We just need to look over the horizon" and he shows the Verizon logo instead.] [Heath: But the basic idea is he's like "Why won't NASA send me a fucking astronaut suit? And why did they block me on Twitter? And why did they tell me 'Please put your clothes back on, you're in a public lobby?' Why are they being weird? They're hiding stuff."] (1:21:50)
* **14. The Coat of Credibility**: [Noah: Alright, but now, okay, just to give you one more great example of what an idiot we're dealing with here. He starts listing different uniforms, different professions that have uniforms that we feel certain ways about. He's like, "Think about all of the different people that you see in uniforms: police officers, fire fighters, school teachers…" What? That was his *third* example.] [Eli: What… what does Mark think a "school teacher" outfit is?] [Heath: "Uh, native Americans, construction workers…" You're doing the Village People again, man. "Sorry! Sorry. Uh… pornographic school teacher? The rest of my point? Nailed it."] [Marsh: Yeah, she could not be more clearly from porn. She could not be more clearly from porn, that teacher.] [Noah: So yeah, he goes "You know, think about it, when you see a cop uniform you think protection." I'm like "Man are you white. Holy shit, how white you are.] (1:30:36)

### **Interstitials**

* Skinny Mike meets Trump God and Sarah (8:30)
* MSSX (10th Anniversary) (9:28)
* Noah Lugeons, Tower Builder (19:14) [Doodly-Doo]
* Flat-Earth Pilot Training(36:56) [Doodly-Doo]
* Mark Sargent Tests a Spacesuit at NASA (1:26:16) [Doodly-Doo]

### **Tropes**

* Christians Don't Know How the World Works.
* This is YOUR Movie!

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Episode on YouTube
* Film on YouTube
* IMDB