Episode 153 - Goofus Soup

Send us Fan MailThe episode opens with fetus-based parasitism, the dangers of keeping a child who returns from Cairo possessed by an evil mummy, and a brief pregnancy scare that ends with the baby being completely fine, folded into an anatomically disrespectful pretzel, and suddenly kicking nonstop. The group also detours through toddler hyperfixations, the ancient discovery that chickens are made of food, and the unsettling realization that Abigail’s coworkers have accidentally memorized his historical lectures.This week’s cocktail is The Bathilda Bagshot, a grandma-coded sparkling concoction made with Sprite, Aperol, grenadine, champagne, and violet syrup. The drink commemorates the hosts’ ongoing theory that Mitch McConnell and various Mormon patriarchs are not technically alive but merely skin sacks animated by one extremely determined evil snake. Pop culture then swallows the room whole, covering Jeff Arcuri’s crowd work, House of the Dragon, the aggressively horny new Wuthering Heights, Obsession, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, internet racism about historical casting, John Bernthal’s urgent need to tell everyone something, and Taylor Swift’s billionaire wedding extravaganza summoning the Guillotine Girls once again.History: [00:39:01]Abigail introduces the central thesis of Freemasonry with a truth as old as civilization: boys love leveling up. Beginning with the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff and Solomon’s Temple, she follows the mythology through the Knights Templar, whose actual history as crusading soldier-bankers was eventually alchemized into hidden treasure, secret knowledge, and medieval persecution fan fiction. From there, operative masonry, meaning men who were genuinely skilled at stacking rocks without killing anyone, evolves into speculative masonry, where the square becomes morality, the compass becomes self-restraint, and the rough stone becomes the imperfect man because apparently nothing can remain a normal tool once enough Enlightenment dudes gather in a tavern.The episode continues through the formation of England’s first Grand Lodge in 1717 and Adam Weishaupt’s short-lived Bavarian Illuminati, founded in 1776 after he essentially decided that Freemasonry was too expensive and started his own cooler secret club. Although the real Illuminati disappeared within about fifteen years, conspiracy culture inflated it into an immortal world government, aided by the same pattern-recognition slurry that later produced Wayfair child-trafficking theories and QAnon. Abigail ultimately frames fraternal orders as elaborate, ranked reconstructions of ordinary friendship and mutual aid: women bring soup when someone’s husband dies, while men appoint the Worshipful Junior Deputy Inner Sentinel of Extremely Normal Hats to authorize casserole distribution under Section 14. The conversation expands into male loneliness, emotional repression, AI companionship, and the radical possibility that men could simply hug their friends without first inventing 79 degrees of tit-touching secrecy.FHE: [01:46:39]Everyone now turns to the CES Letter’s section on the temple and Freemasonry, beginning with the conspicuous fact that Joseph Smith introduced the Nauvoo endowment only seven weeks after becoming a Mason. The group examines Heber C. Kimball’s claim that Mormonism possessed the “true masonry” supposedly preserved from Solomon’s Temple, then asks why God’s restored ancient ritual resembles the exact nineteenth-century Masonic ceremony Joseph had just experienced rather than any earlier form. The inventory of borrowed material includes the square and compass, garment and veil markings, names, tokens, signs, blood-oath penalties, and the intensely intimate Five Points of Fellowship, also known as therapy for touch-starved men but with substantially more knee contact.The hosts examine the church’s removal of the penalties and Five Points of Fellowship in 1990, along with the endowment’s continuing stream of “adjustments” that somehow never count as changes to an eternal and unalterable ordinance. This leads to the larger question of why an omniscient Heavenly Father would require his own children to present secret handshakes and memorized passwords before entering heaven. Personal temple memories provide the emotional underside: beige rooms, chlorine-soaked baptistries, borrowed white underwear, wet translucent jumpsuits, invasive nudity, polyester veils, and the disconnect between the transcendent spiritual experience everyone was promised and the deeply uncomfortable locker room they actually received. The episode is closed in the name of women, who managed to build communities of care without invented priesthood ranks, and with one final plea to humanity: men, just be gay.Follow us on Insta @gr8_and_spacious, Twitter @gr8andspacious, Discord (https://discord.gg/pdeXSQdga) and Reddit u/gr8_and_spacious for behind-the-scenes shenanigans, hilarious memes, and maybe even a sneak peek at our next episode..If you've got a burning question, a hilarious anecdote, or just want to say hi, shoot us an epistle at [email protected] don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast!Support the show