St Patrick’s Day Cold Open

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to Solutions from the Multiverse.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

It's the Irish version. Thank you for listening. I'm Scott Mulpin. Mullen. I'm Adam Powell's. I'm a staying as a German accent. I can't do them any good. Do you know what I'm doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Mr.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Madame's money.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Mr. Madam, it's because today, I mean, not the day we're recording it, but the day it's published, is St. Pati's Day.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Wow, you're doing a really good American accent.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

But yeah, it is because this is St. Patrick's Day when it comes out. Correct.

What A Secular Saints Day Is

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I mean, oh, St. Patrick's Day. Oh. Oh. Cool. See, this is what I was saying. Okay, should we go straight into the solution? Right into it. Okay. Hey everyone, I'm Adam Browse. This is Scott Maupin across from me here. He we are Solutions for the Multiverse, which is a podcast that brings you solutions that you've never heard of before. And today's solution is Secular Saints Day. Secular Saints Day. Secular Saints Day. So Christians, Catholics will know that there's this thing called Saints Day. So every day has like not just one, but like multiple saints associated with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Oh, there's enough for every single day.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Oh yeah, there's way more than that. Yeah, there's thousands of saints. Thousands of saints. I think so, yeah. And so every day has like more than once. Usually it has like usually there's like a major one, and then it has like a bunch of like minor ones. And you can kind of pick, but that's like your saint day. And the saint that you're born on is almost like a little horoscope. Like it's sort of is supposed to sort of influence you in a way because you can like pray to that saint. Because Catholics are kind of like Hindus. They like all the saints are like little demigods that you can like pray to to get to God. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

And so the saints are like these it's like Street Fighter, and these are your and you can access the different special combos of your saint if you were born on that.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

You can get those combos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can like Hadook in if you're born like January 14th. So everyone has a Saints' Day. And uh so the proposal today is that we have a secular Saints Day calendars. And it doesn't have to just be one. I mean, I think a major one would emerge, like repeat the same thing like with the Catholic saint days, where like there'd be like the major saint of that day, but then there'd be also like minor saints, and you could kind of choose another minor saint if you kind of identified with it more. Kind of like a Hindu, like you know, if you identify a little more with this other regional deity, you can kind of like pick that deity to kind of like pray to and do rituals with. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

And the sec the secular part means that it just means that we're separating it from the religious. It doesn't mean that they have to be of any religious way.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Any moral, you know, they should be moral heroes. They could be of any moral, any well, not any chaotic bad. That's right. You can do marquis de sod, January 4th, January, June 4th, Marquis de Sad. Yep, yep. No. So so yeah, so you basically you pick moral saints. So we can get into it's the fun thing is generating the calendar, right? Because you get to pick 365 saints, and then and then different groups or people could could actually generate different calendars. So there could be like the calendar of uh secular saints that were just like generic American ones, and then there could be like global, a global one, and there could be like a freedom fighter one where every single day is a freedom fighter, and there could be like an African one where it's like all these African amazing heroes from Africa or the African diaspora.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

There could be like, you know, South American ones, or you know, you could be like a chemistry saints where it's just like people for science.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Secular saints day. And then you you would you would go, you would Google, like you can do right now, if you want to Google like what's my Catholic, like what's my Saints' Day Saint, you can find out from your birthday. Well, you could say, Well, what's my secular saints day? And it would have this long list. It'd be like, Well, the mathematician is this, and the freedom fighter is this, and the you know, the kind of global most sort of western culture one is this guy or girl. And right, yeah, there could be a woman's one where it's all women moral heroes, you know. So there could be all these different ones, and then when you look up your debt, your birthday, you could like, you know, pick among those to feel like you identify closer to that one or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

But that would be like your adopt that as your saint, your secular saint.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Just a hero that you think of, like, oh, I was born on yeah, so I can tell you mine. Okay. So I was born on March 21st, 1985, which is exactly 300 years to the day after Johann Sebastian Bach. Oh I think of Bach as a secular saint, not necessarily as a moral hero, but an artistic hero, which in a way is a kind of moral hero. And you could, or you could do an artist one where those 365 artists you know, but it's so I think of Johann Sebastian Bach as my sort of secular saint, and that's kind of cool, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

And I could make Do you also like Bach's music?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

I mean, I appreciate it. I don't think I would like but he's your same.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

I mean, you got into it. Don't you have like a different thing?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

I was almost named Sebastian from Johann Sebastian Bach. That was almost like within a hair's breadth. That was my name.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

I think of him as the organ, like the intense organ music, the fugues and all those different like he was basically like the best counterpoint composer ever.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

And he like did such intense counterpoint that he like figured out tonal harmony just by layering so many counterpoint variations on top of each other. He was like, Oh, chords, and then he's like, he like invented tonal harmony from that. Whoa. So yeah, he's like a total mathematical musical genius.

Why Secular Culture Needs Heroes

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Well, I did it a little bit different. I don't know who was born on my day per se, but I made a list. But before I get to that, I want to find out how is this a solution? I'm gonna push you on. Oh, yeah, yes. What are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

So this is a solution to um uh secular society lacks this, and it should have it. Because it's a superpower of religious society. So why shouldn't secular humanistic sort of society just have it? Right. Why do you give it up just because you're not yeah, why would you just give up like this awesome thing, which is like looking up your birthday and seeing cool moral heroes that you can like think about and kind of identify with if you want or not? I mean, it's totally up to you.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

I mean, on a level, it's sort of exercising the same thing that mentorship or or like having a mentor mentee. Sure. A hero, a hero. Or someone to look up to. Sure. Yeah. A role model.

Stories That Build Moral Courage

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, there could even be a calendar of of fictional ones, I think. Okay. So you're you're asking a good question, and I'll answer it more directly. Um, so one is just practical, like, why should secular humanists give up this awesome thing that Catholics get and Hindus get? Because they have their own, you know, kind of their pantheon of gods is almost like this. It's like you know, and and Muslims to some extent have this too. They have various sort of Muslim saints like Hussein and and various other ones that they really think of as like heroes and kind of and the Catholics also have martyrs who sometimes aren't sainted but are still like these heroes. And then obviously Jesus, the you know, the the the apostles are considered like moral heroes, right? So why should secularism, if it's going to be an alternative to a religious way of doing life, which I think it should be, right? Why should it be like weaker or worse? It shouldn't. It should be like actually more robust because it can include all the good things uh that religions like discovered, and it can just sort of secularize them and make them there. So like you can say, like, um like as I have in my life, like I very much look up to like Plato and Aristotle. I've always been like that since I've read their work, I've was like admired them as moral and uh heroes of the world. You know, they're they're uh academics, but they're and they're scholars, but they're also contributions. They're also moral heroes. Yeah, they they sat down every day and decided to like make a huge valuable contribution to society and to their you know to their to their to history. And so I think of them as like moral heroes, and I s I gain what's interesting about this is comes from Rudolf Steiner, who's an early American philosopher guy who or British, British or American, and he was the basis of what's now Waldorf schools. Okay. So he like invented Waldorf schools, and one of the things he says, because I read all his a bunch of his lectures on education because I was interested in Waldorf schools, is that uh when if you want a child uh or a young person or or an adult, I guess, but it's mostly young people, to forge like a moral, uh, a moral like to have morality and not just have it as a code, but actually have the willpower to like do the hard things that their moral code asks of them. And he believes, and there isn't really evidence to support this, but but there's also not evidence to disprove it. So it's an interesting theory. He believes that young children, especially like pre-abstract thinking, like before the age of 12, especially, they actually need to hear the stories and identify with moral heroes, and those each create like strands with which they braid and kind of make their moral fiber, that then later in life they're able to say, I'm gonna do the right thing. And the right thing is to like, you know, be selfless or help or whatever it is, and they actually are able to do it because they can call upon emotional memories of like looking up to these like moral heroes. Yeah. And this bears out in the data, uh, in some respect, because uh Christians, uh at least, you know, the research I've looked at, it's not I I mean it reflects on all religious people, but Christians in particular, actually, in some ways, behave more morally in their behavior than non-Christians. Okay, which pisses off non-Christians, you know, pisses off atheists, but it's actually in the data. Right. One example is undirected organ transplant. So that means organ transplant where you just give it because out of the goodness of your heart, with no no one, not your family member, not someone asking you, no one no one panics knocks you out, no, no one knocks you out from you, put you in a bucket of ice, you wake up in a bath of full ice. No, it's not like minority. That does not count. You did not do a good thing. That also is non-directed, but in a way. You don't get it credit for it. Or can translate, right? So no, so yeah, so imagine someone just says, you know what, it's the right thing to do. I'm just gonna donate my kidney. Right. That's like that's like Does that happen? It does happen enough. A few thousand a year. Yeah. Okay. Of kidneys, lungs, liver, you know, the ones where you can give half nice people, one lung, one liver, or part of your liver, one kidney. Um there's not very much else you can do, you know, bone marrow can be non-directed as well, which is also it's not a full space.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

But I mean, at what point are you trying to take over the other person's body? I mean, if you put all that into somebody, you're I mean, that's like a hostile takeover. You're trying to put your morrow into the get out. You're like, I think you're maybe they're donating with like a they're like, there's a 10% shot that I get some sort of like control abilities if I get enough of me in there.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yeah, I just go.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

I can just kind of yeah, like pilot, I can pilot the pilot the mech suit. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I think it's a I think it's an open uh area of research, Scott. I think you might want to just look into it. Yeah, look into whether you can mech suit other people by donating your bone marrow to them. Bone marrowing bone marrow. I wanna see your Google list. Wait a minute, there's an alert that popped up and said, I'm on a list of more now. A bone marrow list. You're not allowed to donate a bone marrow, that's for sure. But yeah, so, anyways, Christians uh actually end up in some ways being more moral, in other ways not. Like Christian civil Christian societies, like societies that are Christian, uh like countries, um, and any like severely religious societies are actually less moral than like they don't take as good of care of like their poor and they don't because they don't adopt socialism, basically. Okay, and whereas you know, Europe is like almost all atheists and they're like incredibly dedicated to like the welfare, not only of their own citizens, but like they take in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and they they really like do a lot to like provide for the welfare of all their people and they're atheists. I mean, they're they used to be Christian, but they're not now.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

And you go down the street and asking the average they're not Christian in Europe. Yeah, it's it's not then the average is not like a religious society.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Christians are no, yeah. Europe is atheist.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I've never been to mainland Europe. Okay, Europe is a almost entirely atheist society, yeah. Yeah, I mean they're historically Christian, and people might say, and Christians here will say, well, they're culturally Christian, and so everything good about their society is coming from Christianity. I mean, but the old Vatican said, But the opposite is the truth. I mean, the opposite is people are actually have abandoned their Christianity, and then they gained socialism and got really, really good at taking care of their poor and helping people and stuff. So it's so it whereas America and other like highly religious societies, like Muslim religious societies and uh, you know, other super religious societies sometimes don't take as good a care of their people, even though they claim to be like morally, anyways. But part of the reason you see uh Christians be more charitable than non-Christians and more uh uh more, you know, this undirected, non-directed organ transplant and stuff, I believe is some evidence that that that that Rudolf Steiner and this sort of Waldorf idea is is right. That that and I feel it myself, like if I just introspect my own moral commitments, I feel not that the exact details of the moral commitments come from those heroes, but the strength, the courage to convert from inaction to action, I think comes directly from this like well of bravery and strength and sort of impetus. And that well, when I look at it, is like these heroes that I have, you know, whether it's Plato or Gandhi or um, you know, I have these various sort of heroes.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

It I mean it checks out because as you were describing it earlier, I'm like, well, sure, I grew up I grew up religious in a very religious uh household, but then transitioned out of that in uh like when in my twenties. But it I like also was very much a comic books kid when I like was in my teens and going forward. So I was like latching on to the moral the moral lessons and the the ethic fibers that were going through Spider-Man and doing what's right, doing what's right, even though it's hard, making sacrifices, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Right. I think a lot of people go to Harry Potter these days in the recent generations, and that's why there could be fictional ones too. But I but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Do you think uh there would be pushback on this idea of secular saints from the religious aspect? Who cares? Or do well I'm saying do you think they'd be like the religious community, would they be happy to be like, oh yeah, you guys can also have something like we have, that would be cool. Or do you think they would be like, oh, we we're kind of not into this because you're well it's only the Catholics, really.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

The Catholics, it's a thing. Only the Catholics have like Protestants don't have saints. This is true. I did not grow up with yeah, so so it's only a Catholic thing. I I grew up, went to Catholic school. My parents were culturally Catholic, but left the church and when they were, you know, 20 in their 20s. Gotcha. So we know, but I culturally know a lot about Catholicism for that reason. So no, I mean Catholics might be like, you know, Catholics get mad about Harry Potter and say it's witchcraft. Who cares? Like, who cares what they think? Like, that's fine, they can do whatever they want. Okay, you know, but the point is that they've they've hit upon a really smart thing when they invented it in like the Middle Ages or whatever, they hit upon a really smart thing for developing moral fiber. Well, what we need is like secular moral fiber. We need people to be more brave and courageous to put their morality into action. And it turns out the way to do that is to have these moral heroes. And if you don't have those moral heroes, you kind of are sort of like, well, it's not my fight, or oh, you kind of can rationalize because you have this fear, you don't have that courage and impetus. So you can kind of rationalize how like you can kind of back off and like you know, it's not my fight, and like, oh, I feel kind of awkward, like, I don't feel like I can do that, or that's kind of scary. Like, wow, they're so brave, they go in protest, or they go and are doing all this activism to like make the world better, or starting a social impact business, or wow, they're so brave. I don't feel like I can do that. Rudolf Steiner's theory is the reason people feel that way is because they didn't have the moral heroes like given to them and fed to them in story form when they were younger. And so they end up just kind of anemic.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

People setting an people setting an example uh leads to other people following suit, you know, like in good and bad, like in school shooting ways, then you know, when there's a shooter, then other people copy cop the thing. Yeah, even something evil. But like even when someone like breaks the four-minute mile, all of a sudden then lots of people all of a sudden can start breaking where it's been a thing that no one could do forever.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

So there could be an athlete one, you could do an athlete for sure. So you do Joe Montana, July 10th or something, you know. Or uh yeah.

Drafting A New Saints Calendar

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Was this a good time to tell you? Tell me, yeah, what are you doing? So I didn't I don't know what in which day. I thought I was trying to like fill out a calendar of who would be on like my secular saints.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Oh, so you would have 365 saints.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I didn't have three, pretty, pretty greedy, Scott. I want all the saints, but like I thought of maybe like the number of holidays you have in a regular year. All right, so I was brainstorming on Secular Safe.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah, what'd you come up with?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

And well, first I looked up some and they already exist. Like I was gonna be like Harriet Tubman, but that's already like uh March 10th. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

So we do your we could just blame them, pull that in. Yeah, let's just that's our okay. We'll just put bring it into the the the bring it in and the competition.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Luther King Day is already a thing. Malcolm X day in some places is already a thing. But I was like, yeah, I on my list is Gandhi. Great, and so that would be Gandhi.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

That would be Gandhi, right? Unless you're gone that day. But you could you could pick like the Indian Independence Day, and that could become the Gandhi Day. You know, you pick some day where then it resonates through because it's supposed to capture like you're you're trying to think like like seven-year-olds who are like, what's my secular saint day? It should like resonate through their imaginations in a narrative way.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

I have Jonas Salk. Jonas Salk. Is that the polio game? He's the guy who gave away the polio vaccine. It could be the package. It's called Salk's Giving, of course.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Okay, good Dolly Parton, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Don't salk. Dolly Parton is a good one.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Dolly Parton? Is she really a moral saint? I guess. Oh, yeah. She does so much philanthropic work.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Philanthropic. And she's just an awesome person. What day would she be? Dolly Wally, of course, would be her holiday. It's like Diwali, but Dolly Wally.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Oh, yeah, that's good. I like that Dolly.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Then there's then there's Water's Day for Bill Watterson, the Calvin and Hobbes. Yeah. Oh god. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I thought he would be a good one because his Calvin Hobbs is timeless. Amazing, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Totally timeless. And he never sold out. Did you know that? Right. No. He never sold out. That's why you don't see like no fish merch or sir or stickers or anything. I mean, you do, but it's all knockoff. Right. It's yeah. But you don't see like bunch boxes because it's not allowed.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

And then I have Al Saints Day for Al Green and Weird Al Yankovic. They share it. Yeah, they're both on Al Saints Day.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And then All Saints Day can be like the celebration of all the saints. Yeah. Secular, even religious, whatever. We can be a little ecumenical, you know, and just really jam them in. Bring in, yeah, bring in all the Muslim saints. It's also cool to learn that actually all the religions have something like a saint. Not necessarily a saint day calendar like the Catholics, but you know, yeah, like I learned a lot about the Muslim Saint Hussein, who is this very famous, all the Muslims who who know this saint. He's this like really, really righteous fighting for the right uh in some you know conflict in the middle in the Middle Ages, you know, for the Muslim Middle Ages. Okay, or the European Middle Ages, which was the Muslim, like their civilization was like kicking butt. He like stood for the right thing and fought the right fight and was like really righteous and sacrificed himself. And yeah, so every so that could be like so All Saints Day, the secular All Saints Day could actually celebrate all saints, like not just Catholics, just bring them all in. Yeah, it could be fictional saints, musical saints, mathematics saints, uh Muslim Saints, Catholic Saints. You know, they could all be in one tent, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

That would rule, yeah. All right, so what about Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers?

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Oh great, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

I love that perfect good Fred Day, it's his holiday. Yep, yeah. I I put Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates all in there. Oh my god. One day or two, yeah. One day it was it's uh for Ain't Patrick's Day because none of them are named Patrick.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Okay, good. Ain't Patrick's Day makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Well, that includes a lot more than a huge number, just uh Patrick Swayze. Are there any Patrick's that Patrick Stewart?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Yeah, but those aren't moral heroes. No, not probably not. Are there any Patrick moral heroes?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Not that I've concerned as far as I'm concerned. And there never will be. The Patrick name is Kers.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

It's cursed, I tell you. To the grave.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Oh, and and the last one on my list is you know, well, you know Independence Day, right? Of course. Well, then there's Into Prince Dance Day, which is where you if if you're into Prince music, you dance into Prince Music. And Prince is these things. Prince of the music, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, you mean the artist form of the presume.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

I mean both Prince and the Artist Form of the movie. Okay, so his music is the the entirety of the Prince Musicology, his discography. Musicology, or discography, discography, musicology. One of his albums was called music. Yeah, amazingly done.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I meant discography, but yeah, musicology. Prince is a weird guy. Oh, yeah. Super weird. Big time. I never didn't understood how he was like a sex icon. He looks like he's so slight, but he just I don't think it matters for Prince.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

He oozes charisma, and when he sings, you're like, oh hello, what's up? I mean, wow. Yeah. And also he I think he coated himself in velvet most of the time. So well, I mean, that goes insane. It's pretty serious. You've draped yourself. You know you're serious about your sex leader game when you are head to toe velvet and ruffles. That's right.

Merch And Funding The Movement

SPEAKER_00 22:46

You cannot. So I don't know. I don't think there'd be pushback on this. And anybody could do it at any moment. Yeah. And you know what is really a big opportunity here? Marketing. Not to break it down to just show this money, money, and stuff, but there's merch opportunity like crazy. Okay. So every Catholic knows that you can buy, and lots of people do, buy a necklace of your Saints' Day. And so you there's like you know, you go into like Catholic Tchotchki shops, yeah, and they have a whole like section of just like Saints' Day merch, and people very urgently, like deliberately walk in there, go to their saint, and buy like the statue, the picture, the you know, the the necklace, uh, and then they go up to the register and they pay like$35 to get it all. And the Catholics are like, yoink, you know, cha-ching. Nice. And and they and then and it's a good trade because the people get this like um totem, you know, for them to focus their moral energies on, and it's very positive for them. It's very good for them to do that.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

You go to Applebee's, and the person's like, yo, is that a necklace with Louis Pasteur around your neck? And you're like, Yeah, thanks for Aristotle. Why did you think it was Larry? Did you give Aristotle a little microscope? You're like, I thought of that.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

He was a scientist that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Deny him access to microscope.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

What am I? A monster. God. So yeah, so it's a great merch opportunity. And you know what? I'm announcing right now solutions for the multiverse's merch store when it someday opens, which it's not open today. Full of which have the Saint calendar, it'll have the Saint uh necklaces, it'll have Saint uh icon pictures that you can.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

What do you think is going to be our most best-selling merch, like type of merch selling?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Well, I think a t-shirt, is it I think the All Saints calendar, that's like a tear-off calendar. Is it the bobblehead or just a calendar and each day says the saint on it? I think that'll be a because people buy a calendar every year and we just keep selling that one. Suckers.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

What a what a racket. We should have been in calendars this whole time.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

They can't you can't save them for later. I was learning that if you really want to make a lot of money on like a YouTube channel, it's all about the merch store. It's like 40 to 60 percent of most YouTube, like pot good revenue positive YouTubers have like merch, and that's what they make money on. Like Kurtz Kazakh did a whole video explaining this. So I got bad news. If anything about podcasts, if anybody wants to run the solutions for the multiverse merch store, well, you can cut yourself in on whatever and then make it, and we would do it.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah, well, I've been meaning to talk to you about the supplement uh plan scheme that I was uh sure to come up with for us. So that's yeah, we can just pedal. Supplements from the multiverse. Oh wow, we don't even have to change the things.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I made a whole list. There's a lot of things that that we could take solutions and then make uh make uh merch from it. But this is like I think this All Saints calendar and all saints stuff is that's that's like the calendar big merch opportunity. Okay, yeah, yeah. And then we'd have like a t-shirt and yeah, we saints also solutions on t-shirts. And it's only March right now. So we've got a hat is pretty cool with like a light bulb on it.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

We got nine months to get this thing. Well, oh yeah, conceivably, probably more like six because people start buying their calendars early. No, we gotta do it. People don't buy their calendars on December 31st, nobody does that.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

They get way out of the head. My mom butter calendar is like easily six months ahead. So we don't we only have three months. But she did other things. How early does your family plan like a trip? Like if you're gonna go on like a week vacation to like Mexico or something, how early in number of months does your family like buy the plane tickets, like get it all locked in?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

I feel like above me, the family members do it at about six months. Okay, and me, I'm lucky if I'm doing it at a month and a half.

Saint Benedict And Identity

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yeah, yeah. My mom easily one year early, one year ahead. Wow, easily. Sometimes like she's already like planning before confident with that. Like she came to she came to visit San Francisco, so she and it was great to see her and stuff. My dad came a little bit too, uh, because he was busy, and but then um she came in like January, and then she meant she the uh two weeks late after she left. She was like, Oh, we'd like to come in March. And we were like, I mean, that's soon, but yeah, great. We got a new baby, like you just want to come and spend time with the baby, like you want to come again. Great, yeah, come in March. That's great. And we were like, Okay, great. And then we were like, okay, it's like getting to be March. Like, what day are you coming? And she was like, Oh, oh no, no, March 2027. What and we were like, What are you talking about? Who says in January? Parents of the newborn are like, we are not capable of thinking March 2027, that might as well be on the moon, like that. That's wild, that's hilarious. Yeah, that plan's so far ahead. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. But yeah, anyways, secular saints, they're cool. I I think they would be. I can say another thing about secular saints, which is that my Catholic saint, yeah, is Saint Benedict. Who is oh no, the one who turned against everyone and no, Saint Benedict is the patron saint of uh scholars. He's famous for writing the rules of the monastery. So Catholic monasteries in the Middle Ages were like crazy first. They were just like house, you know, houses of like Catholic guys hanging out. Right. But there were no Protestants, so it was just Christian guys hanging out, and they were like supposed to be like Christian, but then it was kind of crazy. So this guy Benedict was like, look, let's write down a bunch of rules about how like a monastery should work.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Rule one, you don't talk about the monastery. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Rule two, you don't talk about the water. Rule two, wear the big brown robes all the time. Um, but yeah, he wrote all the rules, and you know, monasteries were places of study, okay, purportedly. I mean, it was all just sort of whatever wasn't great study, but you know, they were purportedly like you know doing stuff. Coming for the monasteries. I mean, they did they weren't how they were like, look at these ancient texts that are officers, and they just turned them sideways and would like write that's all they did. That's what you think. But I don't just think that. Look at the historical record, like and they call it the Dark Ages for a reason. Like, there wasn't much going on except for a bunch of religious craziness, you know, fanaticism, you know. They were just like repeating fanatical, you know, chants all the time. All they weren't really they weren't like what just chant, chant. How do you make the wine exactly? Right. They did do beer, they liked beer, but they weren't like, how does light work? Let's like grind new lenses to look at the sky. Like, they weren't like actually doing study, you know. Okay, they were just like, How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I think it's this many. I think who cares? You know, we need that study though. Right, right. Thomas Aquinas did do, I mean, he wrote the Summa Theologica, so he sort of brought together a lot of the scholarship, you know, put it into it. So there was some study, but anyways, he wrote this the things, and so he's known as Saint Benedict's known as this the saint of scholars. And I just from a young age that imprinted on me like that I was somehow a scholar because I had a patron saint of Saint Benedict's, and now I'm a professor and you know, teach people and do scholarly work all the time. And I've stayed in Zen monasteries and lived a monastic life for months, you know, weeks at a time throughout my life. And where you just copied papers so no, no, you just meditate, you're not even allowed to write anything down, you just meditate all the time. Wow, yeah, and and eat food and wander around, be quiet. Pretty rad. But, anyways, why did I do those things?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Well, did you find that impetus to do that to be the value to have the value that you wanted going in? Or I mean that's a huge question to just off. Absolutely.

Zen Retreats And Clear Mind

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Spending time in Zen monasteries is a hugely valuable thing for anyone to do. Hugely valuable. Think of it this way a glass of water, like lake water, you know, you dip it in the lake. Okay. That's like your life. It's hard to see through because it's like been agitated all the time. But if you sit it, let it sit on the counter for like an hour, it'll be a lot clearer. If you let it sit on the counter for a week, it'll be crystal clear with the muck at the bottom. That's what it's like to go for Zen monastery for seven days. Okay. Yeah, or nine days, or ten days, whatever you do. Yeah, you can do different lengths three days, five days, seven days, nine days. Ten if you go to the Gwenka ones, which isn't Zen, that's insight meditation. But yeah, I've been I've done lots of them. I've done probably a dozen retreats like that. That's really sick. I try to do one like one every I used to do one like every year for a couple years. Now I do them like every five years.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Does everyone do well, or is there like somebody doing bad and you're like, hey man, you're you're stirring up my water over here? Like no, everyone follows the rules.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

You first follow the rules, yeah, which is like don't talk and don't turn around, don't look at don't look at anyone. You're not look at anyone. No eye contact, no eye contact.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

That's one of the rules. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yep. You can acknowledge each other. Like when you're walking and someone walks past you, it's polite to like stop and bow to each other, but not with eye contact. Whoa. It's really nice. It's nice. It's luxurious. Yeah, it's luxurious because you don't have to be anyone to anyone. Like you don't have to be like, I'm a person, I'll be myself to you. You don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

You're just like, I'm just but don't do you have to resist the natural urge to look at the other people that you're around.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Maybe for like 30 minutes at the beginning, but then you just get into it and it's like awesome. You just start ignoring people. Well, you don't ignore people, you pay attention to them peripherally. So, like, especially in a Zen monastery, you're very aware of what like the people next to you are doing. Okay. Because often things are happening like down the row. And so you have to like see that someone just rotated and then you rotate too. Or like you see that someone passed something and you have to like take it and pass it too. And so you're very aware of like the people on either side of you, and you're aware of like what's in front of you, like ambient-wise, but you're not like looking at someone in the eyes and like catching their eye and being like, Hi, there, you know, there's there's that all that is not there. It's this intimacy, there's a deep intimacy, like you know, platonic intimacy, but it's totally it's like playing basketball when you're playing basketball. I mean, I guess you make eye contact to be like pass me the ball or something, but you're not making eye contact with everyone, you know, you're but you're still a team and you know where everybody's kind of at and what's going on. Sure, it's like that. You know what's going on, you know, you feel like part of this group, but you're not like, well, hey, I'm Adam and I like to do this and I like pizza, but I don't like burgers or whatever. You know, all your kind of preferences and personality. Maybe it's good that they don't let you talk and they don't let you talk. You do talk to the teachers, you can talk to the teachers. What? There's a thing called Doku-san, which is where you go talk for like 20 minutes with one of the teachers.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

I'd blow their mind. I'd be like, We are all teachers. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

They're like, I've heard it before.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Does not everyone have something to teach me?

SPEAKER_00 33:50

I mean, you gotta use that voice too. I'm sure people do that. Can you imagine how awful?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

I'm that's why I'm thinking I'd get kicked out right away.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

No, no, I don't want to get kicked out. You only get kicked out if you're completely abstraparous, you know. But most Completely what? Like annoying. Like if you were breaking all the rules and they kick you out.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

I fear that that's exactly what I would be doing.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I broke the rules a little bit. Like sometimes, especially my first couple of retreats, I like couldn't help but go read because I like reading. So it's hard not to. There's no reading? No reading, no writing, no eye contact, no talking for seven, nine days.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

I was just gonna say, what are you supposed to do all day?

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Meditate. It's just meditate. That's the answer. What you sit and then you walk. You never sit for more than 40 minutes at a time, though. So it's like sit, walk, sit, walk, and then it's like lunch, and then it's like rest time where you can do whatever you want. You can go for a run. You can go for a run. Okay. There's like a gym sometimes. You can wait, weightlift if you want. Well, I feel like that kind of stirs up. No, you can't watch Natalie. Come on. There's no technology, you can't look at your phone. You put your phone away, you don't look at it for seven days. You gotta raw dog it. Just that. Yeah, that's a raw dog. That's what it is. That's a raw dog. It's a great thing, anyways. But why did I why did I have the impetus and the moral not the moral code to go do it, but the moral courage to go do something difficult like that. And I think the answer was because my when I was young, I had a little statue of Saint Benedict, and I had like a little Saint Benedict night net uh necklace, and like, you know, yeah, Saint Benedict. I was like, yeah, pain state of scholars. I'm like a scholar. I like kind of I didn't ever say that to myself, but I felt that way. Like, I'm a scholar.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

But like scholarism is that's not the right word. Scholarism is was your North Star, right?

How A Saints Movement Spreads

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Yeah, it became this well, a strand in my moral fiber. So I feel like I'm not Catholic. I'm not gonna raise my kid Catholic, probably. I mean, she might go to a Catholic school because it's nearby, but I really would like my children, and I I'd really like all the secular children to have the same experience where they can build a really robust moral fiber, and this would do it for them, I think. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

I think it's great.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

I like it.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

All saints.org. That's gotta be yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Solutionsfm.com slash allsaints.org.com slash slash double slash backslash tack tap slab slap.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Well, if anybody wants to make the all saints movement, uh, you know, get in touch with me. I think that'd be cool. And you can make a lot of money because you sell the pendants, the calendars. Like, I don't mean make a lot of money, but it can fuel itself, like it can fund itself. It does, it won't, it doesn't, it's not just like a charity thing. I mean, it could be a charity, it could be a nonprofit, but it won't be just like, oh, we have no money. It's like, no, you'll have money. Right running a small business. You've selling the calendars and the and everything and the statues and everything. You can make little tchotchke shops in every tourist town and say, Oh, get your secular saint.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Oh, yeah, like the say the town, like the New York Saint, like the New York Saints. Yeah, they would love it. The New Orleans Saints, but New Orleans says but like the saints from this area. You go in and you're just like local. Oh, here's the Saints of Brooklyn or whatever. Well, that's cool. And you have a little shopper museum with the people from that area.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Canonized sort of is we could make a startup and it would be canonized with a Y. God, that's awful. Let's patent everything. That's right. Shut it all down. You could trademark it. So you could make the calendars and then trademark that calendar, and then people couldn't steal your calendar, which is good, which is good. So you can you know make some money from selling it, and then use that money to promote the idea of secular saints and moral co moral courage.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Would you imagine that you could get like places to adopt these holidays like one by one?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Is this a like a grassroots publish the calendar and it would just have all the days on it?

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Okay, but I mean like some places like on Rosa Parks Day, whatever. Some places celebrated, some places don't.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could you could go to the places that are celebrating and like be like, yeah, we you know, promoted all over the country and the world. Do you ever get Rosa Parks is still alive?

SPEAKER_01 38:00

I did not.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

She sued Outcast because they named one of their songs Rosa Parks.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Did she win? Yeah, she won.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

She she's a private person. Do you imagine? She doesn't do any like talks or anything.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

You're the judge and you're just like doing normal judge things. One morning you're like Rosa Parks versus Andre 3000 and Big Boy. What is my day?

SPEAKER_00 38:23

This is a great day. Oh my goodness. This is gonna be a good day. This is a good let's do discovery. Let's see what the evidence is here, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Big boy, the floor is yours. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Andre or Mr. 3000. I don't know. How should I what should I legally please to the court? Anyways, yeah, saints. And then you maybe you could even publish little biographies of every saint, and now they're like the they're like, and people could buy like the sets, like, oh, we can buy like the set of like the saints' biographies, and now it's all these biographies that are the saint biographies. You could do a lot, you could do a lot with it, and the whole thing is all for the good because it's just promoting good morality without any need for like God or you know, mysticism, or like you're burning hell if you don't do any like you just leave all that aside, you don't need any of that. You just say, Look at these amazing moral heroes. Don't you want to be like them? Yeah, I want to be like them. They're so cool, they're so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

You know, in terms of learn the stories, learn the histories, learn the yeah, why they became who they were.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

I like it. Okay, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Moral Saints, no, secular saints, secular saints day or secular saints calendars. Calendars or something, yeah. I guess secular saints day. Days.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Days what's your saints? Celebrating secular saints. Yeah, man, it's just getting harder to say what I did.

Closing And Sharing Request

SPEAKER_00 39:39

This is why we need someone to come and do it. Actually, they can do the branding and everything. You could call it canonized. We need Don Draper. What about canonized? Canonized. Okay. That means made a saint, right? So canonized, you know. Okay, thanks everybody for coming. This was Solutions from the Multiverse. We'll be back in two weeks. See you next week. We know that the beginning says one week still, but it's actually every two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

We should remain we should.

Bonus Outtakes And Re-Intro

SPEAKER_00 40:01

No, it's too much work. This is the white out moment. We are currently auditorily whiting out that when it says, well, every week it's just two weeks for now. Yeah. It's all right. But thank you for tuning in. Thanks for tuning in. Tell your friends. We'll bring another one. Tell your kids, tell your wife, send them solutions on the multiverse. It's the only way podcasts grow, really. That's the word of mouth. Word of mouth. Please send us out, especially if you think there should be all saints calendars and all saints days. Secular All Saints Days. Secular Saints Days. Bring them on. All right. Take care, everyone. Bye. Bye. In contemporary parlance. Wait, what's your version of contemporary parlance? Rawdoggan parlance. Just like in the last couple months. The word raw dogging means not looking at your phone.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

That oh, that's what you meant by your raw dog.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Well, that's what it means. Oh, that's what it means? Now, well, in the sexual context. Are you aware of the pre the but in the in the just day-to-day context, it just means not looking at your phone.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

I would have guessed you were saying you are it was a euphemism for not wearing underwear. You're like a raw dog.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

That's condo. That's con condo commando. Yeah. Yeah. Well I definitely am wearing underwear. New underwear.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

New new underwear. Why?

SPEAKER_00 41:30

I just thought I'd try out some new underwear. You know, ladies' underwear. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not layered.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

I think new underwear is one of the truly greatest feelings. You're just like, you get a little extra pep in your stuff, you're just like, I'm walking around new underwater.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

It's like a little secret that I'm here now. Except for when you put it on your podcast, then it's everyone. I'm not gonna add this.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

We're starting with the it is recording. Oh, it is recording. Okay. I did start with it.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

We can add this at the end. Bonus. We could add a bonus track at the end. Bonus bonus rapport. The rapport. That's funny, actually. You cut off all the stuff at the beginning. The back bonus?

SPEAKER_01 42:07

The backbone of the show is uh the very end. I have to make sure I have what I need for this, actually.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Oh, do you have to get your many important papers out of your briefcase? I have to get my many papers. Should we get started? Should we start? I will get started. When you want to get the as much paper crinkling into the microphone as possible.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

There, that's what everyone loves. This is gold. Dulcet tones of paper great.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

And I'll just chew into the microphone while you do that. Oh, we could be great.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Releases a separate episode as almost episode.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Two episodes. Chews and pay chewing and paper.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Alright. But we start with the we start with the thing now, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:48

We just go welcome and then we and then we go and then we go straight into the solution. All right.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

So all right, here we go. Let's go for real. Oh wait, no, I have to turn my phone thing off. Okay. I'm not raw dogging over here, so I need to turn my notifications off.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Can we do something where I can see what time it is? I don't have any way to see what time it like what so I can we can wrap up on the same like 40. Don't we aim for like 45? Yeah. We can always just check what raw dog is. Just raw dog, man.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

All right, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

But my notifications are off now.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

We'll just go through it. The motions of the oceans.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Welcome to solutions from the multiverse.