The Church of Speedrun!

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Emory, have you ever done a speed run? Sounds like some gaming shenanigans. It's definitely some gaming shenanigans. You're going through a level uh as fast as humanly possible, or or sometimes the whole game as fast as humanly possible. AKA it is a speed run. You're not like you know, going through all the parts of the game, you are just getting from point A to point B in the fastest, fastest way possible. Today we're speed running Prison Escape Simulator.

It is time for our first Donkey Kong Bonanza speedrun. I'm actually a top 100th speedrunner in the Oregon Trail game. I think we have like 15 seconds to get it. Come on, come on. Come on. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Yes. So we all know what a speed run is. That's the theme of this episode. And I guess my question is who's gonna speedrun first? You wanna you wanna speed run or should I speed run? I think I should speed run first. All right, let's go. I decided to interpret this theme.

Uh loosely. All right, speed run through your loose interpretation of speedrun. I'm ready. All right, so my story comes from the What Is It subreddit. Um, so my question to you, Ben, is what what is it? What is that subreddit? So R slash what is it is like one of the very broad subreddits in which someone can discover something, they don't know what it is, they post a photo and a slight explanation sometimes, and hopefully other Redditors will help them figure out what it is.

Everything from like a weird unexploded munition that somebody dug up in their backyard to like an ancient tool um that they found in their grandmother's um hutch. Uh-huh. Those are already much cooler examples than what is probably m most commonly posted, which is like Someone posting an object and asking the question basically like, is this sex, drugs, or rock and roll related? And a subgenre of that, which is like, I found this in my kids stuff. Is my kid using this?

Sex, drugs or rock and roll? Um Yeah, usually yes. If that kid's if he's smart, then the answer is yes. Are you speaking from personal experience? Is this something did this happen to you as a child? Did anyone find something in your room? Oh god. Ben. Benjamin? I think my dad found a dime bag underneath the seat of our our car once. Oh. And he was like, Is this grass? And I was like, Yes, that's grass.

And you're old enough that he couldn't post on What Is It and say Is this No, he could he could. Ha ha ha. He got an immediate answer from me, which was yes, and did we don't say that anymore.

Uh yep. Okay. So I'm gonna send you a picture that I found in the What Is It subreddit. Can't wait And I just want you to really Um I don't want any guesses yet. I just want you to take in the contours of this object. Okay. I have seen this and I believe I know what it is, but I am so in. Okay. So uh refrain from saying anything. Okay. Because this this was a real um this was a real journey that the commenters took us on.

I mean it very much is one of those things that you look at it and you immediately go, Is it drugs? Is it sex? Is it rock and roll? I'm less leaning towards when I see this image. But but it's um God, how would one describe it? It's a very clean white structure, but it's also kind of swoopy and bumpy. And it has these two, it looks like almost like dinosaur vertebrae or giant teeth kind of thing. Like ribs.

Boobs is a good way to describe it. I was gonna say the little giraffe the boobs on top of the giraffe head. Yeah. I should know what those are. The boops. Yeah. The boops. The giraffe boops. Um yes. But then also it has this bump, which I would argue is almost more almost more like a giraffe boop. Um

Yeah, nothing is completely flat on this. It's got like it the whole thing is like a smooth, curvy texture. Yeah. That bigger bump looks like it would fit sort of like perfectly in a in a cupped hand. Um And also very, very uh suggestive in all directions. Yes, it does. I was about to say. Yes. So the comments of this like really, really delighted me. The the caption is found in my son's room. So that's this is important. This is a parent. Um

Their name is Accident with an X, which is kind of fun. Accident. Um they've found this object in their son's room and they just say, What the hell is it? So I found a wide variety of guesses. Some of them are more innocent. Someone said uh that they used like a like an internet lens feature and said um It says it's a sculpture of some sort. That's a sculpture right there. It looks sculpted. It does look sculpted. And organic. Yeah.

Someone else said looks like packaging foam or plastic to keep some sort of item in a box still during transport. I thought that was a pretty genius guess because we've all opened something from a box. that like is packaged with a very particular Structure to hold the form. Yeah, especially these days. They're doing amazing things with cardboard these days. Yep. Someone said it looks like a like a PSOAS tool for back pain.

I was gonna say, yeah, it looks like a massager in a way. Which a lot many sex toys are also Massager like or literally massagers. Yep. So then there were the guesses that I feel like started, these were what I would call the gateway guesses, sort of got me got me on the the road to oh, seeing it differently. Um a couple people pointed out this is three D printed. Like maybe it's some sort of a three D printed uh stand or mount for something. And Getting warmer.

That's getting warmer and that ultimately led to the answer, which Ben Drumroll Br. Um it's something something VR headset holder. Yes. This is this is a holder. So the the winning comment here, someone says. Does he, meaning this person's son, does he have a VR headset? Could be a mount. I 3D printed one for my meta quest, and it somewhat looks like that. And then OP posted a picture of the headset in this mount.

Although O P, I'll say this, we uh that this sounds relatively innocuous, but depending on the age of your kid, you might want to check on what they're watching in the VR headset. So other people commented that too, like this tool isn't a sex toy, but your kids just watching porn on a VR. Could be. Could be. So someone responded to this and said, Okay, but you still have to confront him, meaning your son. You still have to confront him with it and scream about drugs when he gets home. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh. Oh, absolutely. Um, but I also saw an overwhelming wave of people saying something like this particular Redditor saying, I never would have gone snooping in my children's rooms when they were kids, and I damn sure wouldn't have turned to the internet for information on what they might have been doing. Novel idea, ask your son what it is. Yeah, I mean it's look, I don't um My kids are eight years old, so I'm mercifully currently um not having to ask these questions.

But I can I don't disagree with that necessarily. You should have a relationship with your f you know, members of your family where you can have open, honest discussion. Um, also I would say, like, as a parent, you might just be picking up or cleaning up or putting something in their room and like bump into it. It's not like the OP is like.

tearing their room apart looking for looking for um uh paraphernalia or something like that. But um and then it might be a little awkward. It might feel a little awkward. You might like really want to know what it is before you talk to your kid about it. Yeah, you don't know if you should be having the sex talk or the drugs talk or the rock and roll talk. You gotta know which talk. It's the devil's music, son. Ha ha ha! Stay away from it.

That is true though. Like it's you wanna be you wanna have these conversations with care. And to your point, OP does say I wasn't snooping, uh he's at his mom's and I was putting his laundry away. It was sitting in plain view on his desk. I was doing some drugs in his room and I Yeah, that's right.

And someone said you should you should show this post to him when when your son is is older maybe and see if he'll get a kick out of it and the OP was like, I'm gonna show him as soon as he gets home. Like I think he'll I think he'll think this is hilarious that I thought this was some sort of uh, you know, something a little salacious. But also a funny thing, that that picture of the VR headset in the stand Yeah.

This led to some more informative comments. What do you what do you notice about that picture? Like what's just to the right of the VR headset? Well there's a curtain. Uh-huh. A completed curtain. And behind every curtain is presumably a Window? And a window lets in And it turns out, several Redditors chimed in, that light, even just a few seconds of light, apparently can damage the lenses of the VR headset.

So those lenses are never supposed to be exposed to any kind of Oh well today they learned to store their headset in a better spot. And this is why I say this is all very tangentially related'cause I was like, you know Do it. This sounds like a gaming thing. I'm gonna go with a gaming thing. Uh, and hope that Ben doesn't know what this is. Well, it like in a way, what is it? The subreddit is like an attempt to speed run an answer to a question. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so there you go.

Alright, well I've got another speed run story for you. Um and it does involve the devil's music. Just kidding. It it involves um Drugs. Religion. And um it's uh it's a mixed tale, a mixed tale with mixed results about speed running. Um and we will get right on that in a minute. Drömmer du om en strand villa på Maldiverna? Ett butikkhotell på Mariz. Eller en gömd ö i Grekland. Globrotter, tar dig till exklusiva resmål och handplockade hotell. Värden över. Boka digitalt.

På globtrotter.se eller låt våra resexperter ta hand om varje liten detalj. Vi finns med hela vägen, före, under och efter resan. Globter- en resarranjör utöver det vanliga. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at B.U. Questrum's School of Business. Ships move the vast majority of the world's goods, and it's cheaper and safer compared to trucks or planes. So the shipping was there. centuries and it will remain there in the future.

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CitySpace Productions crafts custom podcasts for businesses that showcase expertise. deepen connections, and drive engagement. Turn your vision into a podcast. Visit wbr.org slash creative studio. You go into church? I feel like I just went to my church, which is I went on a little walk in the woods. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, I love that. But otherwise no. I think I've been in an actual church. I could count it on Not one hand, let's say two hands in my whole life. Yep.

Okay, so those more than five but less than ten, you can count'em on your hand visits to a church. Um, Amory, were any of those visits to the Church of Scientology? You know, they were not. Don't think I'm breaking any news there about my own. Okay. And are you familiar with the Church of Scientology? What's your familiarity with Um, well we've we've covered it a little bit on the show. Uh huh

I know that it was founded by a sci-fi writer. I most you know what's interesting is that I mostly know I don't know a Scientologist in my life. To me, Scientology is a religion of celebrities. It's like Tom Cruise. John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss, um Leah Remini, who left the church. Yeah, so so as you said, you know, this is a religion created in the nineteen fifties by L. Ron Hubbard, a sci fi writer. Um, it has a very big

presence in Los Angeles because as you said, many famous actors are members of the church. Um, but people who have left the church have really just kind of described a r an awful culture within the church, a culture of violence and abuse. cultism. Um, and we could say that it is a very controversial church in the list of churches that exist around the world. Mm-hmm. And before we did anything on the show about it back in the day, what was your familiarity with it or r relationship to the church?

Yeah. Well, I had almost a a non existent relationship to the church. Except I used to go to Austin, Texas. Once a year to try to go to South by Southwest. Um, and when I did that, I would spend some time at K U T, shout out our local NPR uh station in Austin, Texas. And near to K U T there was a Scientology building. It was a weird spot. It felt a lot like a semi abandoned department store front window. Um you know, it doesn't look like a church. Um definitely not church like but

Whatever the case, i uh this was a very odd spot. And I was curious about the church of Scientology just through looking in this window. I was like, man, this is very different from your average church that you might look into the window of the front door of. Um that will become relevant in a second, so I want you to do me a favor. Mm-hmm. Go to reddit dot com That's very formal of you. Okay. Reddit.com. Okay. Okay, search Scientology speed runs. Oh my goodness. Okay. Now sort by new.

What are you seeing? Tell me what you're seeing. Well the top one is from uh R slash cults. Any Scientology speedruns coming up in the Boston area? Not the onion. Uh hundreds of youths descend on Vancouver's Scientology building as part of speedrunning trend. Yes. Now you're getting it. Um what is a Scientology speed run? Over the last month or so, I have been seeing on my uh feeds. uh these so-called Scientology speed runs. And this apparently started as a TikTok trend.

Um it may have started with a user uh whose username is at S-W-H-I-L-E-Y-Y. S Wiley. Okay. Um uh posted a speed run and started this trend and it is really, really blown up over the last several weeks, as you can see with with basically youths, uh mostly mostly boys, teenage boys. And what will happen is they will essentially run into Scientology buildings and see how far they can get. Wow, this is a a very literal speed run. Yes, it is a literal w what are teenage boys if not

Literal beings. Um take a look at that. Okay, so it's a guy running through a church of Scientology. He must have a camera on his head in addition to he's filming on his phone. Yep. And there are people he's just like Scientology speed run and he's just running through hallways of what look like basically a d an office building almost. A pretty generic looking building. Doesn't look like a church, right?

Doesn't look like a church. There's clearly like someone behind him he says at one point like Don't push me, sir. Um it's as if like someone is trying to get him out of there and then as he's approaching the exit there's at least one police officer, maybe more than that, and he's he's been caught and he's just trying to he's just trying to boogie his way through the church.

Boogie is a good description. So I've seen some other versions of this video where there's like twenty kids all at the same time charging into the building and running pell mell. uh through the building. And why? Do we know why? Just because it's sort of a mysterious place and this is a this is a fun challenge? I mean fun is relative, but you know. It's chaos. It's this sort of chaos thing. Um

Whatever happened to a good old flash mob? I mean, that's kind of what this is, right? But it's like a little bit more aggressive in that it's like these kids are like running into this building. Um the person who apparently started this trend told the Hollywood reporter, I do not condone what I did, even though I didn't break any laws. This is a person who um started it via TikTok.

Anyway, there's now been a number of reports about this. Uh so there was an NBC report, Hollywood Reporter did one, The Guardian has done a few pieces, uh it's now in the New York Times. Like you said, it's it's it's been done in Vancouver. People are trying to do one in Boston now. It really has swept the country in the past few weeks in this really interesting way. I think one of the posts I saw was from if it it's the same Hamburg, from Hamburg, Germany.

What do you s what what's your impression of how the people in these buildings might react to this kind of thing? Well I... I I guess I have a c a question and a comment. My my comment is from the little bit of reporting that we've done on Scientology in the past. the the officials that we've spoken to or people we've reached out to, there is more of a defensive approach in their responses. Like they are expecting to have to defend

how they run the church. And so it's not surprising to me that there would be, you know, to have seen the police in the video and to see a sort of like, get this person who's running through our church because It th I can I can appreciate that no matter what the religion is th or the organization is, that would just feel kind of violating if someone is You know. uh stampeding through your your space.

I think churches in general, they're meant to be places of respite, places where anyone is welcome, right? Like that's the idea. Scientology, as we've talked about, is is pretty complicated uh as a version of this. People have called it a cult. It has it displays m lots of cult like aspects in the way that people are asked to worship and contribute and be a part of the church of Scientology. So it is definitely complicated and and lots of other churches

you know, display problematic ways of existing as well, we should say. Um, the Church of Scientology said in a statement, quote, these are peaceful spaces designed to welcome parishioners, visitors, and members of the public. Turning them into targets for viral stunts is not journalism, protest, or civic activity. It is trespass, harassment, and disruption of religious facilities.

The spokesperson for the church also told the Associated Press that a staff person there was injured and required medical attention. In May, Sandy Springs police in Georgia also arrested a man there as part of yet another Scientology speed run attempt. This is, you know, it's getting it's getting it's getting complicated. Um, the Guardian article quotes Leah Remini. She says something that I think kind of speaks to my own non church of Scientology, L run Hubbard Soul.

Which is Uh, she says, if someone is brainwashed for years into believing the outside world is filled with dangerous lunatics who wish to impede Scientology, A group of people running through a Scientology building is only going to confirm that belief and lead them to dedicate themselves even more to the cause they believe in. Unquote. Hey, I I love in many ways I I'm still an adolescent boy and I, you know, I'm a pro being ridiculous person and doing ridiculous things person in many ways.

But I also think uh it's gotten crazy, guys. Let's let's maybe back it off. I don't know. Yeah, and I think a question of our time. And this has sort of come up across different episodes, whether it's um you know, our Jeffrey episode, the the gentleman in Hong Kong, or, you know, from Hong Kong originally, or or this topic, I feel like the question of our time is How do we demonstrate? What is how do we show up and resist things that we want to resist and demonstrate our beliefs and

Basically like how to win friends and influence people. You know, like like I don't think that we're very good broadly speaking. at that right now. Yep. Um I think like you're pointing out, it becomes clearer when you see an example of something like this that you go, Oh, that actually is not helping anyone. That's not making the world a a better place in any way.

And I just hope we all are looking for our own sort of forms of resistance or protest or whatever that actually helps bring someone to whatever light we want to bring them towards and not turn them off from whatever it is that we're doing. It's tricky though. These these kids might be trying to turn people on to the church of speedrun. You know what I mean? It's tricky. Yeah.

I had not thought of that. Thank you for introducing me to that perspective. My mind is open. Um The Church of Speedrun. The Church of Speedrun. Maybe that'll be the one that rounds out all the digits on your hands. You could go to the Church of Speedrun. What Yeah. You said you could count the number of churches you visited on All right, we can start that. Can we speed run solving the world's problems? I really There we go.

Hey, before we go, endless threaders, we have a question for you. Do you use WhatsApp? We want to know about that. We are making an episode about WhatsApp. Uh we've got some great stories from some listeners. We're looking for some more. Um, we want to know if you use it not just to like chat individuals, but like

Maybe you have a huge wild and crazy family chat group on WhatsApp. Maybe you get your news on WhatsApp somehow from another country. Maybe you're part of a yoga group on WhatsApp. What are your massive chat groups that you participate in in WhatsApp. What are the interesting ways in which you use WhatsApp? We want to make an episode about that. We need your help. If you have interesting stories

Please tell us. We'd love to hear from you. You know what to do. Email us at endlessthread at wbr.org. You can send us a voice memo. You can send us an email. You can send us some screenshots. Whatever you want to do, just uh get in touch with us. We'd love to collaborate with you on our upcoming WhatsApp episode. And now we shall speedrun the crit. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalliani Sixena. It was co-hosted by me, Emory Seavers.

Mm-hmm. It was edited by Dave Shaw, mix and sound designed by Marquise Neal and our production manager Paul Vikus. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Emily Jenkowski, and our senior managing producer, Samata Josh. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between Scientology and those things in our bedroom that we really don't want our parents to know about.

Have an unsolved mystery, unsold history, or other wild story from the internet, you know what to do. You can email us at endlessthread at wbr.org. Speedrun over. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast about the Morotra Institute at B.U. Questrum School of Business. Follow is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Valerie Thomas.

Professor of Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech on whether the ocean freight shipping industry can reach net zero emissions by 2050. Is technically feasible. That's a very simple question. Will we get there will will it all be deployed? We're gonna see. I just wanna add in there that yeah, we've talked a lot about the difficulties for shipping in getting to net zero.

This is not the only thing that's gonna be going on. Aviation is seeking to do the same thing, maybe even faster, and uh the other uses of petroleum are all transitioning You may think and in some ways that makes the problem even bigger There are other ways that it makes it easier. Some of the fuels that are used for shipping are very similar to those used for aviation. So as the infrastructure gets built out Shipping can benefit.

Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at IBMS.bu.edu.