Flat Earth Clues (1–7) (GAM190)

Noah Lugeons

Heath Enwright

Eli Bosnick

***Flat Earth Clues*** (segments one through seven, plus the preface and introduction) is the story of how the Earth is not an oblate spheroid like we all thought, but is actually a very large room service plate with a metal steamer dome over the top, made of invisible vibranium and held up by an intricate series is infinity trusses I think—it's interesting.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, except on the weeks that we *wished* we were doing that.

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

Well, if you love cold hard facts, but you like them warm, soft, and nope, you will *love* this collection of stock photos and unrelated conclusions.

### **Best Worst**

* Heath: ...narrator. [A guy who cannot pronounce "picture" or "nuclear" or avoid thumping his microphone.]
* Heath: ...visual aids. [The first image that popped up on Google.]
* Marsh: ... impact. [This is one of the two biggest and most influential things to have happened in the Flat Earth in the past 150 years.]
* Noah: ... informational durability. [Someone at NASA was clearly fucking with Mark Sargent].

### **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 (from Clue 1 all the way to videos from 2020) are msargent23@comcast.net and 303-494-6631. [As Noah says, "Listeners, be nice."]

### **Jokes**

* **Pre-face**: [Noah: Well, and then also, apparently to bolster her argument, she points out that even people who believe dumb conspiracies usually laugh at flat Earthers. Right? Like that's her whole point, it's like "Even the people who believe in the nonsense laugh at us." Why would *you* tell me that? I *know*.] [Eli: End of point.] [Heath: This is the first in a series of "Okay, you're all clearly laughing at me right now." Yup, already correct: I am.] (14:39)
* **Introduction**: [Heath: Aw, I was so mad about this.] [Noah: "I already had a goddam introduction!" Yeah, so Mark Sargent is going to take over the narration, because dammit she wasn't thumping her microphone regularly enough.] [And again, he introduces this by saying the first question he gets asked is "Is this a joke?" And hey Mark, if the first question someone asks you about your life's work is "Is this a joke?", *you have made a terrible mistake*.] (16:36)
* **1. The Empty Theater**: [Noah: Okay, so this the first point he felt—of all the points he was going to make, this is the one he put up front—this is his best shit.] [Eli: "So if you're watching this, you already know that the moon landing was fake—let's take that as a given."] [Noah: And then he goes "Alright, let's—yeah, NASA is obviously bullshit, so let's talk about space movies." And I'm like "Sure, that beats the fuck out if what you were talking about just now.] (36:50)
* **2. The Byrd Wall**: [Marsh: And speaking of the Nazis, he does talk about—after, at the end of the war Germany surrendered; he shows two be photographs of Germany surrendering. They both have UFOs in them; that's not mentioned—we do not refer to the UFOs in either picture.] [Heath: Okay, I thought I was *crazy*! I—thank you for confirming that—I… in my notes I was like "Did they just show a fucking flying saucer alien ship with a swastika, or am I taking way too many drugs right now?" No, it was real.] [Marsh: Yeah, in my notes Ibsaidy "Oh yeah, we're not going to talk about the UFOs in the Germany surrender photos, because we said we weren't going to talk about the Hollow Earth theory, and if we start digging into that area, that's where we're going: it's UFOs and Nazis all the way."] (48:20) [Marsh: So, the weird thing is, fundamentally—and we'll get to it as we go through this—fundamentally, beneath all Flat Earth belief is fundamentalist Christianity, creationism, and sort of... Biblical view (Biblical literalism). So, they probably think the world is metaphorically being held up by angels, but they also think the Earth is on pillars, because the Book of Job says it's on pillars. So yeah, the angels are there for moral support I think.] [Noah: Well, the pillars have the rockets that provider the acceleration that needs to happen to make the gravity work.] (56:49)
* **3. The Map Makers**: [Noah: Well, and okay, alright, here's the problem: he says like "All of these different projections are there, and only our map is derided all over the world." And I'm like, "First of all, okay, I'm pretty fucking sure the Mercator projection is derided all over the world, but secondly, people who use that map don't actually think the world is rectangular." Right? It's not the *map* that you're using that we're taking issue with—if you guys were just fans of the Azimuthal Equi-what-the-fuckin-equidistant map—if you were just fans of that map, we'd leave you the fuck alone!] (1:03:56)
* **4. Shell Beach**: [Eli: His projections onto the human psyche here are fascinating. He's like "Look, you show a person a fence and they *fly into a murderous rage!*" Naw man, some of us just go do something else.] [Marsh: Because, what he says about the fence as well… he says, uh… the fence is—the fence for the humans—well the fence "... it's bigger, it's older, and wiser than they are." The fence is *wiser* than them? What do you? That's a weird addition to make about this wise fence.] [Eli: Oh, I wanted so badly for a flash cut to him getting advice from a fence: "You guys gotta break up man. Real couples don't fight this much."] (1:10:24) [Noah: This is where he brings up—and I hate this because conspiracy theorists keep bringing up *Dark City* in their bullshit, and I love that fuckin' movie. Stop! Conspiracy theorists, find your own fuckin' movie. Stop fucking with *Dark City*—it was a great flick. I can't watch *Dark City* now without thinking about these goddam conspiracy theorists.] (1:12:46)
* **5. The Status Quo**: [Eli: C'mon, this first sentence is *impressively* wrong: "Look, back then, there were five religions." No. No.] [Noah: There was never a time when there were only five religions.] [Marsh: He names the five as well. So, it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so it's like "Ha ha! Unlucky Sikhs. Go fuck yourself ancient Greeks. You guys do *not* count.] [Heath: Also, the title of this was uh... intriguing to me—"The Status Quo" is the name of this section, and I was very excited to find out how a lie about a round Earth is going to keep the rich in power. There's a bunch of Illuminati hanging out, being like "Alright, we've got two ideas. Hands up for 'Murder AOC.' Great, great. Hands up for 'Round Earth Conspiracy.' Oh, wow! Okay, a lot more." Marsh, have you heard theories on how this keeps the rich in power somehow? Is there like, "Big Globe."] (1:21:49)
* **6. Depth Perception**: [Noah: Now, I know it's a small thing considering how much dumb shit he's done in this movie so far, but he refers to the thickness of the Earth as it's *heighth*.] [Eli: Yeah he does! Oh, and again, these videos keep getting better and better with each one, because he's gotta sum up his previous crazy arguments. So he's like "Okay, just so we're all caught up (please start at video one—I numbered them), we're in a giant dome covered in plasma TVs with danger high and ice around… water, salt… moon isn't real. Alright. Sound good? Let's get to my next set of facts."] [Heath: "Got it. Invisible vibranium, super-LEDs with the stars showin' on 'em, uh, try to keep up. Moving on." No, I will not move on. Absolutely not. Also, what's a super-LED? Are they… special? You can't show stars in regular ones?] [Marsh: Yeah, what he's doing there—he's making a fundamental error—is that you buy the latest technology, it's going to date really quickly. It's just a false economy. You're better off waiting: wait for the price to come down a little, wait for it to be a bit established. Never be an early adopter, it's just not worth it.] [Heath: We are *slashing* prices.] [Noah: "If you do it right, you only have to buy one dome. That's what I'm saying: you buy one dome if you do it right."] (1:33:46)
* **7. The Long Haul**: [Marsh:bAnd there's a point here that I noticed that had been coming up a couple of times, right? He keeps showing, and he shows at the start of this video and the middle of this video as well, the Flat Earth Society logo. And I kinda have to do a little digression here to point this out, in that in *Behind the Curve* (the video on—the documentary on Netflix about Mark Sargent) he also says he's part of the First Earth Society, but *no* flat Earther that I've talked to believes that the Flat Earth Society is real anymore. They believe that they're all paid shills, paid by the government in order to spread misinformation. So, every flat Earther I've ever met, since about 2015 says the Flat Earth Society is a bogus operation run by the government to throw you off the scent. And this keeps happening: people who become big in flat Earth, after a while get ejected from the community, not just in the sense that we don't like them anymore, but "they were never part of this community, they were always liars." And I asked someone about this—asked why this happens, why some of the early leaders are no longer considered part of the movement—I asked a chap who came to my talk the other day, and he said "Well the thing is, you start off in flat Earth, and you get a lot of attention because you're making a lot of good points, and because you've got so much attention, the government/Illuminati/lizards spot you and then bribe you so you can be on their side, and that's why the people who are really big (after a while) become no longer part of the moment." So yeah but, I'm still citing their early work, when they were presumably genuine, so that doesn't work. If you genuinely think they were never part of the movement, that doesn't gel with them being spotted after the fact.] [Noah: I just love this downward spiral they're in, that when they realize they themselves are wrong, they have to assume that they themselves are in on it. Right? Like, what a terrifying circle you've created here.] [Marsh: And this is the problem with a worldview and community that's based around a central ideology that's got no foundational basis in reality, is that you've got nothing to anchor it to, so that a prophet and speaker of the truth one day can just be eaten up and spat out as a shill the next day, because there's no way of verifying what they're saying.](1:46:50)

### **Interstitials**

* Marsh Meets President Trump and Tall Tyler (10:25)
* Admiral Byrd Returns (52:00) [Doodly-Doo]
* UN/USGS AE Map (1:02:32) [Doodly-Doo]
* Tall Tyler Diatribe (1:05:56)
* A Dig-Proof Extra-Tall Breathable Glass Cage with a Mouse in It (1:21:03)
* Volcano Pitch Meeting (1:38:47) [Doodly-Doo]
* A Flight in Mark Sargent's World (1:49:37) [Doodly-Doo]
* Water Doesn't Curve (1:57:55) [Bonus]

### **Tropes**

* Christians Don't Know How the World Works.
* The Eli Bosnick Story
* Indoctrination of Children [Into Globe Earth.]
* This is YOUR Movie!

### **Links**

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

### **Ad Reads**

* Wix.com: Pranking Marsh with SkepticoftheYear.com (2:02:00)
* Quip: *Be Reasonable* with Eli Bosnick, Brushing Denier (2:03:03)