In short
Stuff You Should Know: Selects - The Tale of the Church of the SubGenius
Episode Summary In this episode of the podcast "Stuff You Should Know," hosts Josh and Chuck delve into the peculiar and satirical world of the Church of the SubGenius, a parody religion established in the late 1970s. They explore its origins, key figures, and its cultural critique on consumerism and conformity. The Church, which centers around the figure of J.R. Bob Dobbs, offers a humorous yet critical perspective on the absurdity of mainstream society and the nature of belief.
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Key Concepts and Discussions
- Introduction to the Church of the SubGenius
- Origins: The Church began as a joke by two friends, Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond, who were inspired by various countercultures, pamphlets, and extremist ideologies.
- Establishment: The church was formed to satirize traditional religions and highlight the absurdities of consumer culture.
- Key Figure: J.R. Bob Dobbs, depicted as a clean-cut salesman, serves as the high prophet of the church.
- Defining Parody and Humor
- Parody of Religion: The Church serves as a parody of fanatical belief systems, inviting followers to question societal norms.
- Absurdism: The humor is derived from its absurd nature, where the line between satire and sincerity often blurs.
- Philosophy of Slack
- Slack Defined: Slack is the state of being content and having everything you need without undue effort. It's highly individualized.
- False Slack: The church critiques societal constructs that promise happiness but are merely distractions from true fulfillment.
- Conspiracy: The term "conspiracy" is defined as societal forces that hinder personal slack, with a humorous twist.
- Community and Identity
- Outsider Culture: The Church provides a sense of belonging for individuals who feel alienated from mainstream society.
- Engagement: Followers participate in devivals, gatherings where parody and satire are celebrated through music and mock preaching.
- Cultural Impact and Legacy
- Influence: The Church has permeated various aspects of popular culture, appearing in art, music, and media.
- Discussion on Seriousness: Some followers take the parody seriously, which raises concerns among the church's founders about the misinterpretation of their message.
- Challenges Over Time
- Decline and Revival: The church faced challenges in the 90s as real-world events (like Columbine) complicated its satirical narrative.
- Maintaining the Joke: The founders emphasize the importance of recognizing the Church as a joke, aiming to prevent it from becoming a cult-like entity.
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Conclusion and Key Takeaways The Church of the SubGenius represents a fascinating intersection of humor, cultural critique, and community. It challenges listeners to reflect on societal norms, the nature of belief, and the importance of questioning authority while maintaining a lighthearted approach to the absurdities of life. The episode reinforces the notion that much of our reality can be viewed through a lens of satire, urging listeners to find their own "slack" amidst the chaos of consumer culture.
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Notable Quotes
- "We wanted to always trick people, but we didn’t really want to trick people."
- "F them if you can't take a joke," reflecting the Church's attitude towards societal norms.
This summary captures the essential discussions and insights from the episode, providing a detailed overview for those interested in the Church of the SubGenius and its cultural implications.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:31on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, even running back B. John Robinson. When I'm on the field and feeling the pressure, I usually just take a deep breath. When I'm just breathing and seeing what's in front of me, everything just slows down. It just makes me feel great before I run the play. Just like B. John, we all need a strong mental game on and off the field. Make a game plan for your mental health at loveyourmindplaybook.org. Love your mind. Brought to you by the Huntsman Mental Health Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and the Ag Council.
1:05Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our October 2021 episode on the Church of the Subgenius. It's a neat little romp through what started out as a couple of guys who liked pamphlets and turned a whole generation, well, some percentage of a whole generation, into interesting people, skeptical of anything someone is trying to sell them on. As you can hear from this intro, it's kind of difficult to describe, so just enjoy listening to the episode.
1:41Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:50Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's over there wandering around in circles, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Oh, the podcast about the Church of the Subgenius at long last. When did you become acquainted with the Church of the Subgenius? I had a group of friends that walked on the odder side of life, darker side of life, less, you know, less serious side of life. I'm not sure. In the 90s. And there was one guy who was big time into the Church of the Subgenius. That's how it happens, right? Yeah, that was my first introduction. Then I actually came across the Hour of Slack on Georgia Tech's student radio once, like in the early 2000s.
2:41Rec radio. I never got into it, though. Are you actually like a secret subgenia? No, same as you. I had a friend in college, a very influential friend actually, who turned me on to a lot of different things as I was just getting into college and exploring different ways of life and thought patterns. And sherm sticks. My buddy Jason, he turned me on to a lot of things in life. And I've been able to tell him so, which is always a nice thing. And Bob Dobbs in the Church of the Subgenius was one of them. Yeah. Yeah. And like you might not be utterly familiar with the Church of the Subgenius, but I'll bet there's a pretty good chance that a lot of Stuff You Should Know listeners are at least familiar with it without even being fully aware of what it is.
3:34But there's a very, very famous picture of a clean cut, mid-century, middle-aged dude with a pipe clenched in his teeth and almost like a Patrick Bateman psychotic look on his face. Patrick Bateman meets Ward Cleaver. Exactly. Yes, Chuck. I don't think anyone's ever put it better than that. And that is J.R. Bob Dobbs, who is the high prophet of the Church of the Subgenius. And he has popped up everywhere from the background at Pee Wee's Playhouse. There was a Sublime Wrecker that had him on there. Like he shows up all over the place. It's almost like code. And so you probably have seen it even if you're not familiar with the Church of the Subgenius.
4:23That's called the Dobbs Head. Right. Gathered from clip art, which we will see. It's kind of one of the fun in-jokes about a pseudo religion, a satire and parody of religion. And it's, you know, it was formed by two guys. We'll get into the history, but I have a sort of a favorite definition, and I know you do, and maybe we'll just read both of them. Okay. Mine comes from Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle, and he said this. In the late 70s, the Church of the Subgenius was intended as a dogmatic antidote to a reemergent mediocrity, embracing an aesthetic in confluence with evolving new wave sensibilities and tropes in music, film, and pop culture.
5:08It was an in-joke with a half-serious punchline. Very nice. That was great. And yours was from Ed the Grabster himself. He kind of put it nicely, didn't he? Yeah, also from the Austin Chronicle. Yeah, so Ed said that the best way to explain the church is it is a joke, but to get the joke, you have to see that it isn't really a joke at all, but is actually getting at harrowing truths about the world. Not bad, Ed. Not bad. So the whole thing— I think it's scared Ed a little bit. I think so too. It's hilarious and cute. But the whole thing is that it is a parody of a religion, a parody of a cult, a UFO sex cult, if you want to get technical.
5:52It's an absurdist in-joke. And the whole thing is one big in-joke made up of like millions of tiny little in-jokes that anybody in the church can kind of generate and create. But it's all kind of hung on the skeleton of this doctrine of the prophet Bob Dobbs, who is the world's greatest salesman, who is basically carrying out the will of an alien god who may or may not love us, or the subgenie, as they're called in plural. and like either it sucks you in immediately and you're like, I want to know more about this because this is hilarious or repulses you because it is making fun of everything that you hold dear.
6:42There's not a lot of middle ground, although I would count myself as somebody in the middle ground to tell you the truth. That was so awesome, Chuck. Nicely done. Yeah, what I just did there, and you'll see this a lot if you watch the documentary, if you see any YouTube footage of people from the sub-genius church hanging out at one of their devivals. They don't call them revivals. They call them devivals. They will do this thing where they kind of juggle their throat with their hand as they sort of do this weird chant. Yeah. And I didn't find much information on that specifically, but I did see them doing it all over the place.
7:21Well, it is a huge, huge rabbit hole. And as we'll see, like some people accidentally take it seriously. And that's not the right thing to do at all. That is a mentally unsound thing to do. That is not what the intention is or anything like that. The intention is to basically point out how just warped our consumer culture is. And it made a lot more sense in the 80s before our culture ended up becoming the parody that the Church of the Subgenius was carrying out. Yeah, it had a very Mad Magazine vibe. you know, something I know that you and I both grew up loving and cherishing. And I could see like, you know, if that's something as mainstream as you want to liken it to, to help people understand, it's almost as if Mad Magazine started a religion and Alfred E.
8:12Newman was the god. And it was all just one big joke about consumer culture. And then if people end up taking it seriously, you can really see why, like, that would be a very strange thing. Like, of course, Alfred E. Newman is not God. And, of course, Bob Dobbs is not God or the prophet. But these two guys founded this kind of funny joke religion in the late 1970s because they were like-minded dudes. And what started as a joke grew into, I guess, a mini phenomenon? I don't know, man. I think it's— Or major phenomenon. I would say major as far as cult classic or cult phenomena go. And also, we should also, I think we should preface all this, if it's not too late, to all of the Church of the Subgenius members out there, past and present and future.
9:06This is one of those things where, like, if you explain what makes something funny, it is like that's the least funny thing you can do. So if we traipse into that just by virtue of explaining things, we're sorry. I know, because it is a fun kind of cool thing that was created for people that felt like they were on the outside of things. Precisely, yes. For outcasts and weirdos who didn't fit in necessarily, they found common ground before the internet. Yeah. By writing letters back and forth to each other. They kind of had the internet through pen and paper in these devivals. And we have Douglas St.
9:45Clair Smith and Steve Wilcox to thank for this. Yeah, the original outsider weirdos. That's right. You may not know him by that name if you're familiar with the Church of the Subgenius. You know them as Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond. And these were two guys, like I said, who were – they were in Texas. I think Philo grew up in a religious family and had a really good childhood. It wasn't some like stifling situation. But he was always sort of didn't quite fit in and felt like the outsider at school and was seeking outsider culture. And whereas Stang was – I think he described himself in the documentary as secular humanist scientist in his upbringing, super liberal family.
10:34Whereas – I keep wanting to call him Wilcox. Whereas Philo's was more conservative to be sure. But they found common ground when a friend introduced them. They said, you both love comic books. You both love Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Get together and you might have a new friend. And they were immediate friends. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely hit it off in part also because they both kind of just felt like they didn't really fit into Dallas, Texas at the time. That helps. One of the other things they really had in common was a love of like earnest, bona fide extremist pamphlets. Right. They're fun.
11:13Yeah. Whether it's extremist religious groups, extremist like, you know, like white supremacist groups, which I'm sure Dallas, Texas in the 70s had quite a bit of. Like anybody who is just kind of off the rails and was trying to recruit other people to be off the rails with them and made a pamphlet about that. These guys would collect it and relish it. And that also included, remember the Jack Schick tracks in the Satanic Panic episode? They were huge into that. It had a huge influence on them as well. Those comic strips about how somebody, you know, had sex before marriage and now they were burning in hell kind of stuff.
11:53Like they took all these things together and they kind of used them as the basis for this outlook on the world, which is humans are totally nuts in a lot of ways. And then even more than that, they can be dangerously nuts when they try to foist or impose their own crazy thoughts onto you and make you behave a certain way because of their crazy thoughts. That that's the danger that comes out of modern life. And I think that's one of the things that really stuck out to them and the thing that drove them to kind of try to fight that however they could. Yeah, I have to say I see the appeal of what they did because if you remember a few years ago, God, this is quite a few years ago now, our buddy Joe Randazzo and I wrote a TV pilot together about a Scientology-esque religion.
12:49And it never went anywhere. We even had a few pitch meetings and nothing happened with it. But in writing that script, we had to create our own religion for that pilot. and you can't just say, well, let's just call it this and it's whatever. Like you have to really kind of explore the tenets of it and make it a real thing. And we did that and I made a pamphlet. Joe and I made it together and I kind of put it together. And we brought the pamphlet to the pitch meetings and I'll send you one sometime. That's really funny. Our religion was called binarism and it was like this numbers-based kind of Scientology thing.
13:23But it was so much fun. And all I could think about when these two guys got together in 1979 and hatched this idea was, yeah, it's a lot of fun to create a phony religion even for a screenplay. Yeah, and they were definitely inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and his success at basically founding Scientology based on some science fiction ideas that he had and then becoming rich. There was a famous quote attributed to L. Ron Hubbard that you can't get rich writing science fiction, but you can get rich by writing or by founding your own religion. And so we should be really careful here. They weren't inspired by L.
14:03Ron Hubbard in the sense like they wanted to take advantage of people. I think they were more fascinated by the fact that there are plenty of people out there who will buy into this. Right. And I think they kind of wanted to explore that. Not in any kind of like – it's weird. The whole thing is kind of a cynical – it comes from a cynical place where you just have to be cynical. to be critical enough of society to see it for what it is. But it's also like a very humanist group as well, where like they're not trying to hurt you. They're not trying to exploit you. They definitely come off as superior a lot of times, especially if you're not in on the joke, because that makes you, by definition, part of the butt of the joke.
14:51Right, makes you a normie. Yes, but for the most part, they're not like a group of people who like hate or despise other people. I think they're fascinated by the fact that that kind of stuff exists. And they're also fascinated by just how conformist the average person is without even thinking about it. So they were fascinated, I guess, is the way to put it by L. Ron Hubbard and his success with Scientology. And there was another quote that was attributed to Stang. I don't know if it was in the documentary that came out recently or not, but he basically said, we figured that if Jim Jones can get 900 people that killed themselves, we could get 900 people to send us a dollar.
15:30And they kind of wanted to toy around with that and see if that was the case. Not to exploit people, but just to kind of see, I think, if there was anybody else out there. They were kind of shouting into the wilderness, and the way that you told them that you were out there was to mail in a dollar and say, send me your pamphlet. Yeah, and here's the deal. Stang, it looks like by all accounts, has generally made his living doing this over the year. Yeah, it worked. He's not gotten rich. It's not a Scientology thing where it's like, and send me$100 more and we'll give you another thing. No, no, no.
16:04It's really just sort of mail us some money and we'll send you our comedy goods in the mail. Yeah, yeah. And he still stuffs envelopes and he still sends pamphlets and CDs and literature today. It's like paying for a Mad Magazine or something, but it's just done from this guy's house. Yeah, I also get the impression that the far and away the vast majority, the people who understand the Church of Subgenius for what it is, when they send money and they're sending it out of gratitude for what Stang and Philo have built together. Yeah, 100%. That's what it is. They're not being duped in any way. They're in on the joke.
16:41They're just showing their support by shoveling money toward those guys. All right. I think that is a great preamble. you're either turning off your hi-fi system now or you're intrigued by what's to come. And we'll talk about The Night It All Hatched right after this.
17:18new year new goals and in this economy a better money plan is more necessary than ever i am matt and i'm joel uh we are from the how to money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link.
17:52Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI, and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before, For my award-winning podcast, Shell Game.
18:27This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
19:03I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
19:50Starting January 20th.
20:03All right. So these guys are hanging out. It's 1979. They didn't have – I think Philo was the one who always had a pretty decent job. He kind of had an okay career, and he always wanted to – there were times where he kind of dropped in and out of his involvement because he did have a decent career. But he always supported it, whereas Stang was all in from the beginning and didn't have a ton of prospects for work. But they were hanging out, and they were like kind of wondering why they didn't have more and why they weren't as successful as they thought they should be. And Stang said, you know, we aren't geniuses.
20:39We must be subgeniuses. and he says in the documentary he was like that's the moment that was literally like a lightning bolt out of the sky that hatched this idea so they kind of took all their interest in all these weird pamphlets and weird ufo cults and pseudo religions and new age beliefs and they made the original pamphlet uh spent 60 on this original pamphlet and we're just leaving them at dry cleaners and stuff like that until Stang's wife got mad and she was like, that's a lot of money for us. At least send this to some publishers and see if you can do something with this. So they sent it to every publisher under the sun and got rejected by every publisher under the sun.
21:24But it's pretty funny that later they did end up having a fairly successful book. But early on, book publishers didn't know what to do with these guys. Yeah, and you can understand why if you've ever seen what's called pamphlet number one now, which is part of the church doctrine. This is like the sacred writings. The idea is that Ivan Stang is the sacred scribe who took down the words of Bob Dobbs. And by the way, Bob Dobbs, the Bob is always in quotes, not just when you say J.R. Bob Dobbs. Like even if you say Bob Dobbs or even just Bob, it's always in quotes. That's how you write his name. and that Bob was getting his divine inspiration from Jehovah One, that alien overlord that runs earth.
22:11And this was kind of like the conceit of the pamphlet. And the front of the pamphlet said things like, the world ends tomorrow and you may die in all caps. It asked, do people think you're strange? Do you? I know, I love that one. There was another one that said eternal salvation or triple your money back. So these are the things on and in the pamphlet. And they're going around to publishers being like, hey, you want to give us some money for this? So of course everybody said no. The most astounding thing is that eventually somebody actually said yes. I think McGraw-Hill. Yeah, and this was much later when they finally did get their book published.
22:53after they had quite a following and the sort of writing was on the wall with these fairly successful gatherings and live shows. But yeah, the book came later. Early on they got together and started just as buddies getting on the CB radio and doing, and again, this was like you would get on the internet today. Back then it was the CB. And they would do these sort of parody voices. basically hatched what was the beginnings of what would end up being the Hour of Slack radio show, which is 90 minutes long, part of the joke. And people started hollering back at them. He said they were trolls before they were trolls.
23:34They were kind of trolling people on the CB. Right. And then other people would troll back and call them pinks. Pink boys. And that's where the notion of pinks or pink boys came up. And pink boys, they kind of flipped it. In the Church of the Subgenius, pink boys are the others. They're the squares. They're the ones who just follow along and go to their nine-to-five job and spend their consumer money on catalog items. And anyone else outside is a pink or a pink boy. Yes, but there's a distinction between, say, people like you and I and actual dyed-in-the-wool pink boys. Sure. Like middle manager types who are like not only fully bought into the con, the great con that's going on, they actually like almost violently defend it in its existence and its rightness.
24:30Those are pinks. They're irreparable. There's nothing that's ever going to help them. And they're genuine humans. Now, there are plenty of subgenii out there who don't know they're subgenii. They haven't been exposed to the church. They've never seen a Dobbs head maybe. whatever reason, they're not aware that they're a subgenius yet. And if you're a true subgenius, then you have Yeti blood coursing through your veins. Yeah. Now, if you're an actual subgenius, that means that you are of Yeti heritage who has basically become aware of the teachings of Bob and are now actively working against the conspiracy and exploiting pink boys anytime you get a chance.
25:11because, again, they're hopeless. They're never going to be converted because they don't have any Yeti blood in them. Right. And to reiterate, I don't know if I kind of just tossed it off earlier, but Bob Dobbs is a piece of clip art. Literally, that face that you see was a piece of clip art from Clip Art Catalog, and they loved clip art because it was free. And a lot of their early stuff was just collage from clip art that they had found. And this was from a clip art catalog, And now it's, you know, arguably one of the most famous pieces of clip art there is. Yeah, and I don't know if it was a joke.
25:46It's so hard to tell what's a joke and what's not because they play everything so straight. Yeah, they're in character basically. Yeah, but I saw on one of their websites, they said, Reminder, this is a trademarked piece of art now as part of like the copyright subgenius. So I don't know if they actually did copyright it. I could totally see them doing that in real life or if they were just joking about it. Either way, yeah, it's kind of great. So I think we probably can't go any further without explaining this concept of slack. I mentioned the radio show is called The Hour of Slack. And kind of the major, I guess, philosophy and tenet of their religion is this concept of slack.
26:35Are you having trouble describing it? No, I mean, they even say in the documentary it is not even to be described, that they can't even describe it. So whatever we do is going to be our own attempt. Slack is different for every person. But the definite idea is what you think, which is being slack, but not just being lazy. Having everything you need in life and being content while giving up as little as possible exertion-wise. Yeah, exertion-wise, exactly. Like having done as little as possible to actually attain it. That's one definition of Slack for sure. The point is, like I think it's one of those things where you, or what is not Slack is easier to recognize than what is Slack.
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27:24And I'll give you an example of something that happened today. Okay. Okay, because I've been thinking about this. I'm like, how are we going to define Slack? Yeah, yeah. So I knocked over the toilet brush behind the toilet in my bathroom, right? Okay. And, you know, like the little drippings that end up in, like, the toilet brush holder? Yes. They spilled out on the floor. Yeah. Those are the worst drippings. The worst drippings. I would have rather spilled, like, raw pork juice onto my floor than those drippings. They're bad drippings, right? Bad drippings. So I spent the next 10 minutes not only like cleaning up those drippings, and I mean like cleaning it up, like there's some floor missing now.
28:06I scrubbed it so hard. And then also cleaning the holder for the scrub brush before I put everything back. And this is a totally unintentional, totally avoidable thing for me to be doing. That took up 10 minutes of my life. I did not want to be doing it. It was gross. It was yuck. And I realized this is the perfect example of what is not slack. It's the conspiracy. It was the conspiracy that probably had something to do with it. But the point was, I was doing something I didn't want to do, and I was doing it. I was getting no reward from it whatsoever. I was a little stressed out about it. It was not Slack.
28:45So Slack is the opposite of that. It's where things are going your way. It's where you are content and happy. And that doesn't necessarily mean you have everything in life, like all the trappings of life. It very frequently doesn't mean that. Instead, it's just whatever it is that makes you content. And because it's undefinable, that means that it's up to every subgenii to define what is slack for them. Yeah, and the conspiracy are the things that prevent you from achieving slack. Originally, I think the conspiracy was literally like the man, that kind of thing. But it evolved over the years to the point where one of the guys in the documentary said it evolved to, you know, it was like when it rained really hard on a day, you were going to do something like that's the conspiracy.
29:33I gotcha. It's things I think conspiring against you. That toilet brush knocking over. That's definitely the conspiracy. Right. Because it prevented you from, I guess, taking your mid-morning nap. Right. And under the teachings of Bob, the conspiracy is actually an acronym for cliques of normals secretly planning insidious rituals aimed at controlling you. That's a good one. Agreed. And then under the doctrine, like this is an actual group who they don't know what slack is, but they know it exists. And they're bent on stealing as much of it as possible. And they start stealing it from everybody, pinks and Yeti, from the moment you're born.
30:14And so it's up to you to steal it back, to get as much slack as you possibly can. But the problem with the conspiracy is they're the ones running the show here on Earth. They're the ones who are behind consumer culture. And they've created this illusion that what normals and pinks and non-subgenia yeti, who haven't figured themselves out yet, buy into as life is all just this vast consumer conspiracy. And that they actually offer what appears to be slack, but it's like false slack is what they call it. Yeah, it's manufactured Slack. So it's like the Subgenius Wiki is awesome. And they give examples of like pre-planned recreation, like days off from work that you earn or are given.
31:12Like these are this is all false Slack. Like it's somebody else deciding what your Slack is and you buying into it. And that is the that is not Slack. Slack is you have to decide what Slack is. Right. And there is original slack. We are all born with original slack, according to the church. And the conspiracy chips away at that slack or sells you false slack over the years to degrade your natural slack that you're born with. And then there's also involuntary slack, which is my favorite slack. and this is like if you lose your job or something, if you get fired, this is just involuntary slack that Bob is sending your way to force you to take a little time off.
31:56Yeah, I saw a video from, I guess, 2009 or 10 and it called the Great Recession the Great Slack Session and it basically said like the financial markets have melted down And it had like this real dramatic music of millions of people are out of out of work. No one has a clue about what to do about it. Victory is at hand.
32:23There's one other thing I want to say about Slack, too. There are basically two groups, two approaches or philosophies as far as Slack is concerned. And I think it's pretty interesting that like the whole concept has gotten this far. It's evolved into something. And I think this is a really good example of what happens with the church's teachings. Like these guys just wrote some crazy stuff like back in the 70s, 80s, even into the 90s. And then other people who kind of vibed on it came along and expanded it. Like I read an essay on the scissors of sight. And apparently that's mentioned offhandedly in pamphlet number one.
33:02And somebody wrote a whole essay about how they're still trying to figure out what those are. And they think it's from a crystal in Atlantis. And it was just like that's just what they do. It's almost like they're putting stuff out there as like thought starters for other people's creativity to kind of sprout from. But anyway, the two paths for Slack is kind of split between these two groups, the Rewardians and the Emergentiles, right? Yeah, and the Emergentiles are getting their Slack because they're getting the things done that they kind of feel like they want and need to get done. but it's under a deadline from someone else.
33:39But then they have their slack. And then the rewardians don't think, this is more like Tao of Steve stuff. Did you ever see that movie? No, I need to though. I'm well aware of it. It's sort of, that was sort of that guy's deal. He was just like, he had this life philosophy and he would have really fit in with these folks, with the rewardians. They're basically like, slack off all the time. Don't do any work until you absolutely have to. Right. I think there's quite a bit of pot involved every day kind of thing. Sure. That wouldn't surprise me. And that's what I think most people would think of when they think of, like, slacking.
34:14Like, yeah, that's what you do when you slack. You don't work. You sit around. You smoke pot. You're, like, never put on pants or anything like that, and you're just having the time of your life as long as, like, that's what you want to do. Emergentiles, you're like, no, no. There's another way to do this. Like I feel really good about accomplishing something, about like setting a goal and meeting it. But that's my goal. Like I want to learn how to climb a mountain. So I'm going to go learn how to climb a mountain and climb that mountain. And during that whole process, I'm slacking. Like that's my slack.
34:47So those are kind of like the two ways of doing it. And apparently the two groups kind of pity each other and think they have it completely backwards. But the point is, is neither group is right or wrong because it's all up to the individual what your slack is. I mean, what these guys really, it's such a time and place thing. They were born out of this sort of spirit of the merry pranksters, 60s counterculture, Ken Kesey kind of thing. But they came along at a time where that had been bulldozed over and the 80s were being born, which was about as anti, you know, 60s counterculture vibe as you can imagine.
35:24But these guys still had that sort of fun, playful idea. And, you know, this was their invention. I always think it's just so fun and so cool. Every time I see a DeVival or a live show, I absolutely do not want to be there. No. But I think it's awesome. I liken it to when I saw Spinal Tap in concert. They actually toured when I was in college. and I was such a fan of the movie and they played the Fox Theater and we all went and it was not fun at all because it was funny as a movie but you're at this rock and roll show that is supposed to kind of be funny but there were also people that were really getting into the rock and roll and I didn't know, I was stuck in between worlds I didn't know how to feel and when I was watching these Subgenius live shows I was kind of like, oh, that's like Spinal Tap Live I don't want to be there, but I'm glad people are enjoying it.
36:23Yeah, it's kind of like, yeah, and dude, they are enjoying it. The people who go to those are genuinely having, like, the time of their lives. Like, that's their time to, like, just be themselves as much as they ever have in their lives. I love it. It's almost like I would compare it to a, like, a meeting of the Juggalos, a comic con and a guar show all mixed together that's what the devivals these days kind of seem like just based on what I've seen on the internet yeah that's good I like it and if you think this is all really dumb then you probably would not like their motto they have a lot of sayings and mottos but their chief one that they kind of yell out at these devivals is F them if you can't take a joke or if they can't take a joke Right.
37:14And it means right there. It's amazing to me that some people took this too seriously because the motto is literally this is a joke. Right. Yeah. And it is really kind of like disconcerting because like if you do take it seriously, like you really have to go to great lengths to get past all the winks, the nods, the absurdity of everything. it suggests that there's like you're you're worse off than the average cult member because you're actually taking a joke cult as a cult it's like when fight club got too serious they started blowing up buildings and stuff yeah I think so except there was no violence involved in the church of the subgenius no they're peaceful that's right because they're all stoned yeah I think a lot of them are I think a lot of them are like the Frank Zappa types where they're just weird and they have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol or anything like that.
38:10You know? Those are, they were born with original stoned. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. Requires no drugs. Apparently, Frank Zappo was a real jerk to people who did drugs. Like he had that cafe or restaurant or club or whatever, and he would like kick you out if he thought you were on pot. That's conspiracy. Yeah. He was a little pink from what I can tell. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And you said also if this kind of stuff seems weird to you or whatever or you don't like it, like that's a pretty like fairly normal reaction. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. No. But one of the reasons that it might make you feel a little wobbly or a little shaky or like you're missing something or like you're being made fun of that kind of weird feeling in your stomach is because you probably are being made fun of.
38:58Like if you're not in on the joke, like I said earlier, by definition, you're part of the butt of the joke. You're a member of that group. And if you actually are actively getting offended at what they're saying and doing, because one of the threads of humor that they very frequently use is bad taste, shock value, like just basically the opposite of PC. Like they really don't care for PC very much. And if you're deeply offended by this stuff and you actually like respond to it, you're actually kind of proving their point. that you are maybe a little too wrapped up in this culture that they're, that they're basically saying like, this, this is a fraud.
39:41This is all a fraud. And, and like you're, you're proving that that there's problems with it by getting mad at something where, you know, at a joke basically. Yeah. And, you know, before you start feeling too sorry for these people because they're being made fun of as like squares who aren't hip to the joke and don't get the joke. I mean, the original reason this was started was because these very people were outcast and being bullied by those very people to begin with. Right. So let's take a break, man. We'll talk about some of the lower points in the Church of the Subgenius that have happened across the years, huh?
40:19Let's do it.
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43:23so um if you went to a devival one of the things you would find chuck is uh especially an early one is a lot of like put on preaching like evangelical mock preaching but the what the The guy's doing is like doing a fire and brimstone preacher bit. Yeah. But what he's saying is espousing, you know, Bob's stuff about, you know, F him if they can't take a joke or, you know, whatever. And that like doesn't sit very well usually with people. But also it never really sits very well with me because it's obnoxious even in its real form. And it's super obnoxious when it's like mocked because— Well, that's why I wouldn't want to be there.
44:05Yeah, yeah. And the anti-music is another reason. That was the next thing I was going to get to. If you are not super into this, and probably on a pretty decent amount of acid back in 1985 or 4, the anti-music would probably turn you off too. I know I don't like it at all either. Yeah, it's basically the idea is that they would get a bunch of instruments, and you could just do whatever you want with them. And the idea is that you can't play these things. These are not skilled musicians or not even musicians at all. And they would just make noise with them. And, you know, when watching the documentary, you get the idea from some of them that it's sort of like the drum circle that finally everyone gets in synchronicity for a minute.
44:51You're like, oh, OK, something just happened. That would happen occasionally, apparently, with the anti-music is that it would coalesce at a certain point. Or maybe that was a drug stalking. But basically it's a bunch of people making a lot of awful noise and screaming. Yes. There was actually a time at Devivals, I think during the 90s maybe, where a schism in the church developed. Well, it was very much planned, yeah. Right. So the idea was – so one of the big parts of the – one of the tenets of the church is like the world's going to end eventually on X day. And X-Day was originally slotted for July 5th, 1998.
45:35And that came and went, and there were no UFOs driven by sex goddesses to come whisk off the subgenii to Planet X to live out the rest of their eternity partying. And then, but the fact that this was coming along, the church decided, like, we don't know what's going to happen to the pinks after that. So we need to decide. and the schism was formed between people who said, well, there'll probably be sub subgenia who want to stay and rule the world and we can just let them rule the pinks from there on out. And then the other group said, no, no, no, all the pinks are going to be slaughtered on next day.
46:16There won't be any pinks left. And apparently this differing opinion on basic church doctrine was a thread that was carried on for a very long time. It was. And I think we just need to be really clear. A schism was written into the script of the Church of the Subgenius. Okay. It was nothing formed. It was – they wrote a heel basically into their wrestling show with Papa Joe Mama, who was the leader of the Holocaustals who believed – and again, all in jest, but he believed like go out and shoot the rich basically. Right. Like kill these people. and I think it was Stang was the leader of the evangelicals, which was, yeah, let's just enslave them basically and keep them alive.
47:04And two things here. First of all, in that they eventually had a big show in the 80s, kind of jumping back in San Francisco. They had had these sort of small tent devivals with 100 people. And then in San Francisco, they booked this theater for two nights, 900-seat theater for two nights. and were like, we don't really know if we can do this. And they had set builders and set designers, and it became a real actual thing. The news covered it. And they did. They covered it, and they had a fake assassination of Bob. Bob finally came out. He walked out on stage and then bang. Yeah, he was immediately shot.
47:38But apparently they started doing this a lot. Bob had many, many lives and could be killed over and over again, assassinated. So there was that. And then after X Day, judging from the documentary is when it seemed to like kind of go bad. And not go bad in that everybody really started believing and it became this really scary thing. But it sort of lost its judge a little bit. And there were some people, and I think one person specifically even went up to Stang. I don't know if it was the X Day. I think it was that San Francisco show in 1984. Oh, okay. And he was, you know, obviously someone who needed some real help because he thought this was all real, was livid that it wasn't being taken seriously and that people were laughing.
48:30And that's when Stang was like, oh, man, like kind of this was bound to happen, but it also made him sad because I'd never wanted anything like this. Right. And that was the reason why. So like the documentary that was made by Sandy K. Boone, who was involved in a few other pretty, pretty great documentaries recently, including Tower. I don't think it's The Tower, just Tower, the one about the Charles Whitman, the shooting at the University of Texas back in the 60s. Oh, it's amazing. So I remember Waking Life, that that whole thing Linkletter did with the animation. They did that for this documentary, and it really, like, had a great impact.
49:09Oh, the rotoscoping. Cool. Yes. So she was involved in that as well. But she made this documentary. Apparently her late husband was, like, a great adherent in the Church of the Subgenius. And she made it also kind of as an ode to him as well. But in it, Stang and Philo break character. And, like, they hadn't broken character for 30-something years, right? Like, they've done interviews. they've like print TV radio like they've done the radio show they've like written tons of books they just don't break character that's just part of their jam and for this documentary they did and they said the reason why at least Stang said the reason why he did was because they're kind of getting on in years and he wants to make sure that it's perfectly clear before he dies that this is a joke and that everybody knows it was a joke and it's always been a joke and there's like, you need to take it as a joke so that it doesn't accidentally turn into something like Scientology down the, down the line.
50:11Yeah. He said you watched it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't watch it right before this. I saw it several months ago. Yeah. He said, um, and this kind of sums it up in the way that it makes sense, but it doesn't. And this is in relation to that, that guy who really came up to him and other people that really thought it was real. He said, we wanted, we always wanted to trick people, but we didn't really want to trick people. Right, yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. They were fascinated by the fact that people could be tricked. Yeah. And they wanted to explore that and make fun of it and they invited other people to explore it and make fun of it but it wasn't to hurt anybody.
50:47They weren't actually trying to exploit anybody. Like the idea of having you become a part, become a member, send in your dollar, become ordained, buy into all that sales stuff was to point out that that's what was going on in the real world, you know? Yeah, and this sort of came to a head in the 90s when they, it was just after Columbine. They had a live show planned in Boston, and Papa Joe Mama, who was, again, their sort of scripted heel agent provocateur, got on, I think, a radio show and somehow referenced Columbine. It was a little unclear. I think he blamed Columbine on the Church of the Subgenius.
51:29Oh, was that what it was? I believe so. Okay, because I couldn't quite tell what the reference was. But it was clear that that was over the line for both Philo and Stang. And the show was originally canceled by the theater. And then a real church, I think like an Episcopal church, stepped up weirdly and said, you can have it at our church. And then they got bomb threats. And they said, well, no, I guess we can't do that. And then I think they ended up having it in like a public park or something. But that was sort of like where it, you know, the 90s weren't too kind to the, not just like the numbers, but, you know, once the Internet was born and that was like really when the consumer culture and the Internet boom happened for real.
52:11It was just so antithetical to the Church of the Subgenius. It seemed to kind of fade away until later on when the Internet kind of helped revive it again. So my take is that what really kind of let it downhill, not to say that it went downhill on its own, like that just the world changed. Yeah. And there was like the world became the parody. It wasn't like straight any longer. It was just a joke, but that was real life now. So you can't satirize something that is the satire that you're coming up with. There's just no way to do it. No, that's absolutely right. And that's, you know, America changed quite a bit in the last like 20 years.
53:00And like what do you, like how, you just can't. You can't satirize something when it becomes this weird version of itself that you were using before. It encroached on your turf kind of thing, you know? Yeah, and in the last like 10 minutes of the documentary sort of focus on the Trump administration and these fringe groups that started online there saying this crazy made-up stuff. And that really puts a hurting, like you said, on something like the Church of the Subgenius as far as being – and their numbers were never huge. But I get the idea from watching it that Stang still has people that write in that still send him some money.
53:42He told one funny joke about getting a payment upon receipt envelope that like he had to pay$2 to even open this thing. And he was all perturbed about that. And there was$1 ,000 in cash. Oh, really? And he took half of it and immediately took it to a sick friend. Like that's the kind of guy he is. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, he struck me as that as well. But he's still, you know, paying his mortgage, stuffing envelopes. Well, yeah, because I think like if you go back and you read the original books and, you know, even still I was reading like – the wikia that explained all of the different stuff, um, is hilarious and like totally worthwhile and still applies today.
54:20Um, like it's like in a, in a certain way it's timeless, even though it screams Reagan era, you know? Um, but the, the, it's still, it still makes sense because we still have like a consumer driven culture that is, that has a lot to do with gender norms and conformity and exploiting people for their labor. Like all that stuff is still going on. So the original stuff still stands and still holds. Yeah, and they, you know, Mark Motherspa of Devo and I can't remember the other guy's name in Devo. They were way into it. Penn Jillette, Nick Offerman, Richard Linklater, Paul Rubens, Pee Wee Herman's Playhouse, had a Bob Dobbs on his big wall collage.
55:03These were all people that were attracted to it. It was a lot of dudes, of course, but they do interview a few of the women in the original group that said, like, we were outcasts and we wanted to meet these weirdo guys, and this is where we did it. Like, we went there because it was mostly guys. Yeah. And, you know, we could meet these dudes. But it was very male-oriented, and I don't know. I just, like I said, I never, I always had fun reading about it and hearing about it, but never wanted to get too involved just because I'm too much of a pink, I guess. Yeah. Yes, it is a lot of fun to read about for sure.
55:39Like there's a lot of stuff out there on the internet to read. This is like 10 % of it. Yeah, it's huge. It's an enormous, huge rambling, like what do you call a group of beliefs in scripture and doctrine? Mythos, I guess? Maybe. Yeah, canon. Yeah, canon. That's what I was looking for. There's a huge extensive canon, and it's a lot of fun, especially the older stuff. Some of the newer stuff is not that funny because it's—and I don't mean new. I mean like mid-2000s, the mid-aughts kind of stuff started to really lose its sense of humor. Some people lost their sense of humor and got real serious about it.
56:19The 80s and 90s stuff is hilarious. I strongly recommend going to read An Explanation of the Male to Female Discrepancy in the Church of the Subgenius by Reverend Nancy Regalia. Or by the real book. Yeah, well, I don't think that was in the book. That was just supplemental stuff. It was an essay explaining it. But it also is more like a kind of a call to arms for those girls who never felt like or always recognized that they were kind of being forced into certain gender roles and didn't ever feel good about it. Yeah. She had a quote. It's not enough to simply burn your bras. Why stop there? Burn a few bridal boutiques in City Hall while you're at it.
57:04It's a good essay, for sure. Totally worth reading. Good stuff. Yeah, there's a lot more to say about the Church of the Subgenius, but we'll just leave it to you. I feel like we should just part with it's a joke. It is a joke, ultimately. It's a joke. and take it as that. Okay? Man, you got that down. You got some Yeti in you, pink boy. Ooh, maybe. And since I called Chuck a pink boy, it's time for listener mail.
57:33Keeping it short and sweet here with a quick correction from a new listener. Okay. Hi, guys. I'm a very new listener, and I love what I've heard so far. However, just three episodes in about the Magna Carta, one of you offhandedly suggested that William the Conqueror was a beloved English king because he annexed Normandy after the Battle of Hastings. That was me. That's pretty much backwards, guys. He was a Norman king who conquered England at that battle. William's story would make a great episode. That is from Scott Scattergood in Suwon, Korea. Well, Scott, since you're new, you obviously don't know that most of the viewpoint that we give on Stuff You Should Know is from the Vikings viewpoint.
58:14So we had it right. Okay, good. Scott Scattergood, what a great name. Right? Yeah. What happens if you scramble Scott around? He scatters good. If you want to get in touch with us like Scott did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thank you. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone needs to take care of their mental health, even running back B.
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From the publisher
The Church of the SubGenius is a religion, but really a parody of religion. Learn all about this group of weirdo outsiders in this classic episode.
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