113. CHUMP TALK: How to Start Your Own Church History Podcast

You know what they say: if you can't join them, beat them. 

And we're not taking any more cohosts on our show unfortunately. So if you want to get into the CRAZY LUCRATIVE world of church history, you're gonna have to start your own podcast. 

But don't actually do that, we can't really afford any more competition if we want to be financially stable anytime soon...

Anyways. 

This episode of chump talk dives into how we go about researching our topics, from finding reputable sources to sifting through the propaganda that pretends that it's real history. 

Also we talk about boy dinner, which sounds weird when you say it, Taylor. 

Bon appetit! 

Transcript

Papi Chulo (00:00.527)
Hey everybody, welcome to Jump Talk!

Tom Bombadil (00:04.943)
SHUT UP!

Papi Chulo (00:07.193)
That was good. You guys just got electric on me. That was good. That was good. All right. shoot. I mean, we haven't really done any catching up or banter or whatever. So how you guys doing? How are we feeling this fine Thursday evening?

GOBBA GOOL (00:20.248)
What's the male equivalent for girl dinner?

Tom Bombadil (00:26.063)
Boy dinner.

Papi Chulo (00:26.755)
Boy dinner? Boy dinner sounds like dinosaur chicken nuggets.

GOBBA GOOL (00:28.45)
Yeah.

I don't know what I feel like whatever I just ate for dinner is is that I just had boy dinner Brandy's at Brandy's out with her sister and her dad. They took him to like some live musical. I don't even know what you would call Blade Runner is going is going to be playing on the screen while a live orchestra plays the music.

Papi Chulo (00:36.143)
Boy dinner. Okay. What did you eat?

Papi Chulo (00:53.903)
Why are you not there right now?

GOBBA GOOL (00:57.363)
tickets were expensive and it was the Christmas present.

Papi Chulo (00:58.691)
That sounds awesome. Okay, okay, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah, dude, I would be super pumped to miss that sounds amazing. Blade Runner with a live like orchestra.

GOBBA GOOL (01:06.528)
Yeah. Right. Right. But the more important thing going on here is the garlic naan, the garlic naan from Trader Joe's that I microwaved and then the cheese and crackers I ate after.

Papi Chulo (01:13.283)
Boy dinner.

Tom Bombadil (01:17.807)
Hmm.

Papi Chulo (01:20.633)
Bro you couldn't put it the oven for eight minutes like it says on the back?

GOBBA GOOL (01:24.32)
No, why would I do that?

Papi Chulo (01:26.383)
It's like at least boy dinner rye. Okay, sorry, sorry. What did you have with the garlic naan?

GOBBA GOOL (01:31.158)
Nothing. That's the whole point.

Tom Bombadil (01:33.167)
That was boy dinner.

Papi Chulo (01:35.311)
Gosh.

GOBBA GOOL (01:35.734)
I had garlic naan from Trader Joe's. It went from the freezer to the microwave to your table. Or my... And I ate it, I ate it hanging over the sink like a rat. I'm just kidding.

Papi Chulo (01:42.777)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, just like that.

Papi Chulo (01:49.007)
How big is TJ's in California? I feel like that's like, I feel like it was made for California, Trader Joe's. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see that.

Tom Bombadil (01:49.135)
Hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (01:57.912)
Californians love it. It's cheap. Yummy. We all have ethnic palates.

Papi Chulo (02:05.324)
That's very true. Yeah, you guys are really diverse and cultured out there. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I love that Trader Joe's like they'll change the brand's name based on the ethnicity of what they're selling. So if they're selling like a Mexican like bean burrito, it'll see it'll say Trader Jose. And then it's like Trader Giovanni if it's like Italian or something like that.

GOBBA GOOL (02:06.901)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (02:11.04)
We really are. Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (02:25.708)
That's right.

GOBBA GOOL (02:30.144)
I don't think they do that for Indian, do they?

Papi Chulo (02:33.388)
I don't think so. Like Tradergupta.

Tom Bombadil (02:35.279)
Heh. Heh.

GOBBA GOOL (02:35.286)
Trit. Trader, Trader Babish.

Papi Chulo (02:39.118)
It's just like Trader Joe's. Yeah, well Joe's good. Yeah. man, what you up to Tommy? How you doing?

GOBBA GOOL (02:43.606)
Yeah, we'll keep Joe. We'll just keep Joe. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I Yeah, what are you up to, Tom?

Tom Bombadil (02:51.821)
I'm doing good. We help a lot with the night to shine event that goes on every year. You probably have one in your city. In fact, even by the time you're listening to this, the people in your city might be interested in having your help with your local event. But it's basically like a prom night for people of special needs all over our city. it's turned into a pretty...

Papi Chulo (03:01.102)
Mmm.

Tom Bombadil (03:19.087)
pretty big event here in Tucson so we've been working a lot on that and it's been fun. I just came from one of our meetings, one of our final meetings before we have our event this year and it's a lot of fun.

Papi Chulo (03:30.434)
Nice. Dude, I did not know that Night to Shine was nationwide. I literally thought it was just Tucson. It's global? That's awesome. Wow, that's amazing. That is super cool.

Tom Bombadil (03:35.777)
It's global, dude. It's like in like 60 countries. Yeah. Yeah. And it's only in it's, I think this is the 11th year that they've ever existed. so it's yeah, the Tim Tebow foundation still kind of oversees it. but it's

Papi Chulo (03:47.971)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (03:49.368)
Tim Tebow started it.

Papi Chulo (03:55.149)
Why'd you say that with a smirk, Taylor? You were like...

GOBBA GOOL (03:57.359)
Cause I thought he didn't. actually, I thought I was like making up something, but he has, so his, actually did start it.

Tom Bombadil (04:03.087)
Yeah. Yup. Yeah. He came to our Tucson event a few years ago. It was kind of fun. was during COVID. It was a year that we had to do like a, we did like a drive-through event. so dancing is a huge part of the event. Our friends at Special Needs love to dance. And so that and karaoke, they love karaoke, man. And this year we have three karaoke rooms and they're like themed. So like one's like all Disney. So if they want to do like Disney karaoke, they go to one room and then they'll take like

Papi Chulo (04:03.896)
Turns out he's a better man than you thought.

GOBBA GOOL (04:06.551)
Wow.

Papi Chulo (04:15.276)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (04:25.708)
Let's go, dude.

GOBBA GOOL (04:26.104)
Mmm.

Tom Bombadil (04:32.783)
country and then like pop and rock. So yeah, it's really fun.

Papi Chulo (04:34.506)
Mm-hmm. That's awesome, dude. I love that. Dude, can I tell you guys a story? I know we try not to do a ton of banter, but I have to tell you guys this story. I think you'll get a kick out of it. So, I, yeah, yeah, I know it's chum talk, keep it a casual. Um, so I, for the past like couple of years have been helping out. My sister special needs has born with an intellectual disability. She's my, she's closest in age to me. And so she's been very, very involved with the special Olympics for gosh, since she was a teenager. So.

Tom Bombadil (04:44.303)
It's Chump Talk.

Papi Chulo (05:03.502)
probably close to 20 years now, which is amazing to think about. She's been in it for that long, but yeah, so I helped coach her basketball team and I just love all the athletes. are like adults that I've known for as long as Jen has been involved. So I've known them for a very, very long time. And getting to know their families has been a beautiful thing. It's really awesome. So unrelated, I picked up some new shoes off of Amazon.

They were like Adidas slip-on shoes, which I just like, just wanted something cheap and comfortable that I could just slip on whatever, not have to worry about tying the laces. were like 25 bucks. was like, awesome. Perfect deal. I'm at practice the other Saturday and one of the athletes comes up to me he's like, Hey coach John, I like your shoes, man. And I was like, thanks dude. And I looked down and he's wearing the exact same shoes. And I'm like, all right, heck yeah. Heck yeah. We're gawking the same shoes. As I was leaving, my buddy Glenn comes up. He's like coach John.

Tom Bombadil (05:52.985)
Haha.

Papi Chulo (06:00.153)
You got some really nice shoes, man. And I was like, thanks dude. And I looked down and he's also wearing the exact same shoes. And I realized because they're like cheap Adidas and slip ons, which is, you know, pretty important for a lot of the, a lot of special needs adults. It's just, it's just the right pair of pair of shoes to wear. And I was like, all right. I'm I, all right. I kind of gave me a little bit of, was like, okay. I don't know if I, all right.

Tom Bombadil (06:06.189)
Haha, I see where this is going.

Tom Bombadil (06:21.387)
Ha ha ha.

GOBBA GOOL (06:21.462)
Wow.

Tom Bombadil (06:28.527)
Just a little fashion perspective.

Papi Chulo (06:30.112)
Exactly, yeah. But it's still good. I'm still gonna rock them, because I've got no pride about that. It's all good. But anyways.

GOBBA GOOL (06:32.43)
Mmmmm

GOBBA GOOL (06:38.286)
So last week when we talked about who wears slip-ons, missed a group.

Tom Bombadil (06:38.767)
Ha

Papi Chulo (06:45.026)
We did. We were talking about slip-on sandals, but yes, yes, you are correct. There is a group out there that doesn't do great with the knots, as you could imagine, so.

GOBBA GOOL (06:54.956)
Wait, no, it's the same slip-ons, right?

Papi Chulo (06:59.178)
No, dude, I was thinking like, like, like the Nike, the Nike slip ons, like the just sandals. I'm talking about like, like, like their shoes, their shoes. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (07:05.272)
That's what I thought.

Tom Bombadil (07:09.347)
Yeah, not slides.

GOBBA GOOL (07:11.579)
Tom Bombadil (07:13.903)
Yeah, so I'm still tripping about the fact that these people, like the same people have been playing basketball together for 20 years.

GOBBA GOOL (07:14.38)
I'm just lost.

Papi Chulo (07:22.358)
A lot of them. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of coming and going, but dude, there's a, mean, yeah, I can think of a couple people that have been on the team since Jenna joined back when she, like I said, she was probably 16 or 17 and she's, know, in her early thirties now. so yeah, dude, it's, it's a surprisingly close knit community. will say, and this is, know, you did your, your plug for, for night to shine. Like there are so many, I guarantee you listener, there is a.

Tom Bombadil (07:24.206)
That's rare.

Papi Chulo (07:51.875)
there is a community of intellectually disabled adults with their families that are most that are that are doing some form of Special Olympics. The greatest tragedy about Special Olympics is that 95 % of the volunteers are these athletes parents and a lot of them are getting older because you know athletes don't age out. Most parents have to continue to care for their adult children until they're basically very old age. And so I think one of the

GOBBA GOOL (08:14.325)
Mmm.

Papi Chulo (08:20.834)
greatest opportunities for the church to just step into the community is just like dude find your local Special Olympics chapter and just Throw a few like young single people out there to volunteer like it is such a blessing dude. So get on that chump nation. Yeah

Tom Bombadil (08:32.729)
Hmm, that's cool.

GOBBA GOOL (08:34.88)
I love it. Special needs people are such a joy to be around too. Yeah. Have you guys heard Shane Gillis? Have you heard Shane Gillis talk about it? When he's like, because is it his cousin or his brother has Down syndrome?

Papi Chulo (08:40.15)
Yeah, 100 % dude. Just nothing but smiles.

Which is uncle I think.

Tom Bombadil (08:51.224)
Uncle Danny.

GOBBA GOOL (08:51.47)
okay. they find out that his, and it's like, my gosh, how's he doing? And Shane's response better than anyone I ever met.

Papi Chulo (08:52.364)
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Papi Chulo (08:59.502)
Yeah, that's the thing, dude. I love it, man. It's so good. Like it really shows what we value as like Americans or whatever that we're like, gosh, this poor, this poor person just, they can't work a nine to five or drive a car. And it's like, yeah, but they can enjoy so much of life, bro. Like they're having the greatest time.

Tom Bombadil (08:59.769)
Yeah, yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (09:24.45)
Yeah, they're like stoked that they microwaved themselves a grilled cheese sandwich.

Papi Chulo (09:28.878)
100%, 100%. Yes. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So I love it, dude. I love it. All right. Well, Trump talk listeners, you guys know that we've got to, we kind of do this once a month. We like to do a little topic that's outside of the range of church history, just to give us a little bit more to talk about and give you guys who like to listen to a little bonus episode, a little bit more to listen to. so, that's right. Yeah.

Tom Bombadil (09:29.295)
There's some garlic naan.

GOBBA GOOL (09:30.966)
or some garlic, dude.

GOBBA GOOL (09:55.157)
Always free.

Papi Chulo (09:58.159)
Your average podcast would put this behind a paywall because they're motivated by capitalism. Not us though. That's right. No, we're committed to giving you guys stuff for free. That's right. And so we actually, so we think we'll get some actual dinero out of the deal. It's asterisk. Yeah. But no, Taylor had a cool idea where we basically just, the three of us just share

GOBBA GOOL (10:05.248)
Yeah, greedy capitalists.

Tom Bombadil (10:05.945)
Yep. Yep. Yeah, we won't do that until we think we can get away with it.

GOBBA GOOL (10:13.422)
Always free. No, no, you'll have to kill me.

Papi Chulo (10:27.214)
kind of what the process looks like for us getting into this. Cause I know that a lot of folks who follow our podcast are really big fans of church history or some of you guys just history in general. think that would include all three of us. And so yeah, the question is like, how do we research? How do we look through, how do we basically put together info for our episodes? What does that look like? So yeah, we've got a little bit prepared for that.

Tom Bombadil (10:52.93)
awesome.

GOBBA GOOL (10:52.962)
little taste of the research.

Papi Chulo (10:55.316)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You want to start us off, Tay-Tay?

GOBBA GOOL (10:59.956)
I can. I'd be curious to know first, you guys, do you still have access to your library from, where'd you go, RTS? Covenant? Do you guys get that?

Papi Chulo (11:07.938)
Yeah, covenant.

Tom Bombadil (11:10.095)
I haven't checked.

Papi Chulo (11:11.958)
I don't think I do. Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (11:13.07)
So you don't, okay, this is gonna be interesting then, because we all have very different, I think we probably have different modes of research.

Papi Chulo (11:21.993)
Mm, I think so too.

GOBBA GOOL (11:23.914)
So the first thing to start with research is you have to have a question. And then when it comes to a paper writing or a very specific topic, the better your question, and more specific, as hyper-specific as possible is kind of where you want to go. And that's going to set up your parameters for your research.

Papi Chulo (11:47.982)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (11:53.175)
for a lot of kind of, when you're just having fun, you can chase whatever rabbit hole you want. Like what's the whole game on Wikipedia? You go to a random page and you have 10 clicks to get to Darth Vader or something like that. And so, if you're browsing around Wikipedia, you can just kind of land wherever. But so I'm gonna try to do.

Papi Chulo (12:07.758)
Mmm.

GOBBA GOOL (12:20.226)
I'm going to explain how I research, and then I'm going to try to give a quick guide for your average listener. Because my research is heavily subsidized by the Southern Baptist Convention through Gateway Seminary's library. So that's not fair to your average listener. So let's just say, throw out a historical question. Let's do like a live, little live activity here. Throw out a historical question.

Papi Chulo (12:33.848)
Yeah

Tom Bombadil (12:46.617)
Where was... Who was Thomas Aquinas?

GOBBA GOOL (12:51.64)
Who's, that's a great question. So you know what I'm gonna do first, Thomas, not Aquinas? Didn't ask you.

Papi Chulo (12:53.132)
Hmm. What's that, Taylor?

Okay.

GOBBA GOOL (13:01.272)
That was funnier in my mind and then it just kind of came across as mean.

Tom Bombadil (13:03.759)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Papi Chulo (13:05.326)
It's mean all around for me, so.

Just joking.

GOBBA GOOL (13:10.622)
Pat pat. Okay, hey, so so Thomas Aquinas. First off, Tommy, that's a good question. Super broad question, but I think that's something that somebody would have, especially, you know, you come across pints with Aquinas. You're like, what the heck does that mean? Who's this guy? So I'm going to tell you the first place you go is Wikipedia. And you're like, wait, why? Because Wikipedia is going to be the best

general summary that you're going to get. And it's going to be in word format, which is kind of crazy nowadays that you have to say that, but it's words. So it's quick and you can scan. And then if you want to paint a general picture of Aquinas's life in a layman's sense, can then, you can then go, so you read, you read his Wikipedia page and I guarantee you that page is going to have 800 links.

So then you have two options. You can now narrow your field of research. Maybe I wanna learn more about Aquinas' monastic, his early monastic life. Then you're gonna follow those pages. Or if you want to keep painting a general picture on Aquinas, go ahead and go to YouTube and then type in Thomas Aquinas, you know, bio something, and you're gonna get a hit.

There's going to be, you could even type in lectures on Thomas Aquinas. Now that might give you something a little more specific than you're looking for, but then you can just throw it on in the background. You can look for a podcast. I think that's actually how some of you have found our podcast, because you just had a random question, so you typed it in and you found us talking about a random thing.

Tom Bombadil (14:52.175)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (14:57.922)
We are going to have some very different philosophies on this. I'm realizing right away. Yeah, no, no, no, it's going to be good. It's going to be good. Carry on.

GOBBA GOOL (15:03.188)
On research, that's great. No, the more the better. The more the better. So you're painting this picture. And as you fill in these gaps, depending on how deep you want to go, because we're really only talking like an hour, a couple hours here at most. And within a couple hours, because of all the tools that we have access to, you can actually walk away with a general understanding of Thomas Aquinas.

at least in a bibliography a biographical sense. Now, where Thomas Aquinas is going to get real deep, real fast, is if you decide to get into his theology. Because the historical facts that are outlining his early life, there's probably, and I don't know anything about Aquinas, but I'm just going to guess, there's probably only a handful of sources. So.

You can find those sources by going to Wikipedia. And then most ancient literatures are available for free online. So you can pull up the primary sources. And then I would love for all of our listeners to just spend as much time in primary sources as humanly possible. So if you want to keep going deep on the biographical general picture side, go ahead, find whatever primary sources are attached on Wikipedia. And then just read.

those exclusively. You do not need commentary. If you don't understand something, that's okay. But just you could Google that, but spend as much time in primary sources. if you... Thanks, dog. Thanks, dog. Now, if you want to start getting into his theology as maybe a layman, you're going to go off a deep end really, really fast. And I would suggest

Papi Chulo (16:37.39)
That's bars. I'll give you that. That's bars. Yeah. Preach.

GOBBA GOOL (16:55.0)
filling in regular theological blanks. And this is where education in the higher ed world is gonna come along, because you don't know what you don't know. So if that, I will suggest supplementing something, because if the word soteriology is confusing, you're gonna be gone. And I don't mean that as an insult. But like when you get into that theological world, and then you get into like the implications of Thomas Aquinas' theology, because you can go read what he said.

directly and try to process that. But there's been people that, how old, what was he, 1400s, 1300s? When was Aquinas?

Tom Bombadil (17:36.015)
Mm-hmm, 1414 hundred sounds right, but thanks for putting us on the spot He died in 1274 gosh dang it gosh dang it

GOBBA GOOL (17:41.358)
I don't know. I said I didn't know

Papi Chulo (17:43.608)
He's medieval. He's medieval, right?

GOBBA GOOL (17:48.335)
That's old. So he was like right in that medieval Peter Lombard era. So okay, so 13th century, people have been writing about Aquinas now for almost 800 years. So now you start getting into the academic side, which is where I'll shift now to how I do it because now you're way past cute little Wikipedia biography, way past even just reading the words of Thomas Aquinas or

Papi Chulo (17:48.546)
13th century.

Papi Chulo (17:54.157)
Hmm.

Papi Chulo (17:59.919)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (18:17.836)
whatever monk wrote down his biography, all of that, you're so far past that. Now you're in a world where you have 800 years of discussion to essentially try to parse through and catch up on. And that's where it gets extremely overwhelming. Yeah. And that's where I would say, my friends, if that is a path you want to go down, it will take years, but it's worth it.

Tom Bombadil (18:32.429)
You just described my day. Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (18:46.178)
and you will change your motivation. What started as, what did Thomas Aquinas say is now going to turn into, and you don't have to get a master's degree to do this, but it's gonna turn into a full blown big picture understanding if you do it right. Now you're probably asking, okay, on the academic side, how can I start? I would say you wanna find general books.

Papi Chulo (19:06.734)
Hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (19:15.722)
at first. So we've left the topic of Aquinas, and now we're on, what's that book that's like the little book on theology? Here's what I'm talking about. It's like a tiny little fella. No, it's called like something like the little book on theology. It's something like that. I should have had that brought up. But you get something like that, and that's going to explain to you like very basic understanding of terminology.

Papi Chulo (19:26.604)
Sumo.

Tom Bombadil (19:33.359)
Don't know it.

GOBBA GOOL (19:45.613)
Trinitarian, blah, blah, blah, blah, know, soteriology, eschatology, what are these words mean? And that's gonna serve as sort of your little jumping point. And then you're gonna be interested in, maybe what's eschatology? And then you're go down to Rabbit Hole and you're gonna find a few more general eschatology books because you're gonna go to publishers like Crossway. Shut up, shut, I knew he, of course the first thing you say is Crossway.

Tom Bombadil (20:09.965)
Hahaha

Papi Chulo (20:10.912)
No, no, no, no, no. No, dude, literally, I'm not laughing at Crossway. I just love that you're describing someone who's about to like have an obsessive disorder. Like you're like, look, eventually, like you're gonna spend some money, hundreds, eventually thousands of money on this. And you're gonna be a specialist and no one's gonna respect you. And no one, no one is gonna respect you. It's like, like, like.

Tom Bombadil (20:36.687)
Like, how do you know?

GOBBA GOOL (20:38.616)
Get the

And John Simon's speaking. He needs to go back to soul care, I think. That's what this is. Call it Pastor David.

Tom Bombadil (20:46.319)
Hahaha

Papi Chulo (20:48.066)
Like this just, this just descending into this academic neurosis, bro. I'm just worried about you. I'm worried about you.

GOBBA GOOL (20:52.758)
Well, I am. That's how it is. That's you don't just one doesn't simply look into the well of Aquinas and look back. What is the quote? Like the abyss stares back. Yeah.

Papi Chulo (21:01.518)
And you don't need a master's degree.

Tom Bombadil (21:05.391)
Before you know it, you're selling things you never wanted to sell to buy things you never knew you would buy.

Papi Chulo (21:09.486)
That's right. And your wife won't talk to you. Your wife won't talk to you. Your marriage is on the rocks.

GOBBA GOOL (21:14.894)
So you're going to hit up publishers that like Crossway, B &H, Reformation Heritage, who else is kind of a general, they're like the layman's. Zonderman Academic, I've, well, now, so now we're throwing out more of the academic sources that might be a little rough for the beginner to get through, but

Tom Bombadil (21:16.559)
Hehe.

Tom Bombadil (21:30.165)
IVP

Papi Chulo (21:31.701)
IVP, Sondervan.

Papi Chulo (21:40.974)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (21:42.637)
That's okay because you're going to keep going down this rabbit hole, as John Simon pointed out. And then you're going to get to the point where you're like kick, like a bouse. You're kicking yourself because you don't have access to a library. And that's okay because there are a ton of libraries, gateways library is in the middle of the most random spot in California. And we have people that come.

Tom Bombadil (21:50.575)
Take the end.

GOBBA GOOL (22:08.334)
who have gone down this rabbit hole and they come and borrow books from us because it is still accessible to the public. So find a theological library. And I know the vast majority of our listeners would never, you're not gonna enroll in a liberal seminary, but their libraries are still gas. And a lot of times they're more gas because they have more cash than the conservatives. So yeah, baby.

Papi Chulo (22:30.35)
Mmm. Where there's cash, there's gas. Write that down.

GOBBA GOOL (22:36.558)
So head on down to your local seminary, become friends with the librarian, and I don't care where their theological stances or whatever, you need them to be your friend, because they're going to point you in all sorts of directions that you never knew you needed to go. And you're just going to keep rolling, and you're going to keep discovering. And you can do this all as a layman. I mean, we're talking, and you can commit as much time to this as you want. If you only want to do a couple hours a week,

as sort of the self-discipline, you can do it. If you want to do a full-blown PhD, you also can do it. It's just different time commitments. And the full-blown PhD is you're looking at a long process. So yeah. I know it's supposed to be like, what's my personal? And I'll wrap up my time in two minutes. I'll describe what I do. So in my.

For the podcast, my prep is somewhat similar to the process I just described. But I will use my resources available to be much, much faster. If I can't find something specific quickly, I will go to my library and I will talk to the library staff who for some reason know everything about everything. And they will be like, get this book or, look into this.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And next thing you know, I've got some primary sources to go through. I've got some general books that are gonna have more primary sources in the footnotes, and then I can kinda go from there. That's just sort of general research. Start with a question. The more specific your question is, is gonna be better for papers, as I said. But broadly speaking, chase all the rabbit trails. Just fill in your knowledge.

The fun thing about research is it's literally never ending because there's not enough time. So chase that Thomas Aquinas.

Papi Chulo (24:40.118)
And if you find yourself, and if you find yourself developing an anxiety disorder, or if you are finding that you're in financial problems, or maybe you took out a second mortgage on your house, it's okay to stop. It's okay to stop. It's okay to stop and get some help. No, can, you can stop, stop, get some help. That was good, Taylor. I like that.

GOBBA GOOL (24:54.924)
that expensive. They're not that expensive. Never quit. No.

Tom Bombadil (24:56.239)
Hahaha.

yet somehow.

GOBBA GOOL (25:03.822)
Buy JSTOR, buy JSTOR full-blown books and articles for $500. You need it. You need it! Dude, nobody has.

Papi Chulo (25:12.718)
Stop it, stop it, stop it, don't need it, you don't need it, no. This is why people can't park in their garages, because they're full of books. Books that they haven't even read.

GOBBA GOOL (25:22.476)
they might. But you

Papi Chulo (25:23.79)
They might, ugh.

Tom Bombadil (25:24.111)
If you go to the Inland Empire, the IE, you can find Taylor living in a tent under a bridge surrounded by historical books.

Papi Chulo (25:30.382)
Surrounded by books.

GOBBA GOOL (25:32.664)
My books keep me warm.

Tom Bombadil (25:34.861)
He has, whenever he records this zoom, has a special like zoom background for our recording that has like Brandy walk by every once in a while. So we think that he's home.

Papi Chulo (25:43.438)
That's the background noise that Taylor has. It's the generator going off.

GOBBA GOOL (25:43.882)
Yeah, I to pay. I have to pay or...

Tom Bombadil (25:49.685)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (25:51.948)
Right, right. Anyway, that's my process. I'm glad that yours is different, JS.

Papi Chulo (25:54.764)
man, that was good.

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think we approached it slightly different ways. So I think mine will be good, but not in ways that are next necessarily wrong with yours, you know? So I'll be good. I'll jump into mine. I don't think it'll take that long, but here's the thing. Taylor is Taylor's telling everybody that I'm morphing back into a Baptist, which may or may not be true because I have an acronym for you guys. It's just an easy, easy acronym when it comes to researching church history, ladies and gentlemen, all you have to think.

is banana. B-A-N-A-N-A. Banana. B!

GOBBA GOOL (26:35.32)
B-A-N-N-A-N-A-N-A-A-A-S.

Tom Bombadil (26:38.489)
Ha ha ha.

Papi Chulo (26:40.322)
Taylor, this is my time. B stands for brother you're being lied to. This is the first thing that I always consider when it comes to church history, especially where it's dicey, which is you have to consider who you're listening to. The reason I kind of like gave Taylor a little like mild side eye. I like Wikipedia because Wikipedia it's, it's self moderated so well.

GOBBA GOOL (26:44.528)
Are we?

Tom Bombadil (26:45.775)
It's a real hurt people.

Papi Chulo (27:08.728)
that if you snuck in some random falsehood to something historical, it would probably be edited out exactly, which is kind of a cool blessing. The beef I have with YouTube is that, especially when it comes to church history, where there's a lot of implications, like there are people who will pick up YouTube videos,

Tom Bombadil (27:13.199)
There's a million autists that are, yeah, they're coming for you.

Papi Chulo (27:30.89)
about the council of Nicaea, like Joe Rogan, who will just be like, man, did you know they sat down and wrote the Bible at the council of Nicaea? And that's when the whole Jesus idea was, you know, all that, all that stuff. So my whole thing is like, you know, if you're going to get into books, if you're reading articles off the internet, if you're watching YouTube videos, if you're listening to podcasts, all those things are good on paper. You just have to know who you're listening to.

Personally, I love historians who have some kind of footing in the academic world because that at least means that I can trust their Approach even if their conclusions may be disagreeable. I love church history professors There's a dude named Ryan Reeves who posts YouTube videos of church history lectures that he gives on YouTube for free and I think he's a Gordon Conwell professor or at least a former Gordon Conwell professor so

GOBBA GOOL (28:24.93)
You know, I just asked somebody today, and I think he's still there, is what I was told. Yep.

Papi Chulo (28:29.198)
Let's go. Dude, it's a legend. I love this guy. I do. Well, Taylor said, yeah, I love lectures. I just think there is something that feels so much safer to me about something that had to pass through some necessary filter of academia rather than some dude with a cool background who's like, let me tell you all about this niche church history topic. And I'm like, I don't trust you, dude. I don't know anything about you.

also it's just important to recognize like, and this is something we've covered a lot, different traditions see things differently. And that's not bad. That's a part of understanding the, like the width of church history. But if you ask a Protestant Eastern Orthodox Catholic about the robber's synod, they'll say, yeah, the robber's synod was a joke. It was, it should not be considered an ecumenical council. If you ask a Copts or an Armenian.

or a Syriac Christian about it, they'll say, no, that was the second council of Constantinople and it was perfectly valid because that's their history and that is necessary. But it also means that if you're reading one side from one person, you're going to get that person's perspective. So always, that's my number one rule whenever I approach stuff is always know who you're talking to and assume that there's a spin, not necessarily a malicious one, but assume that there's a spin, especially on a controversial thing.

GOBBA GOOL (29:51.439)
Before you go to your second acronym, can I tag on to that? So there's like a gay heretic Mormon who does church history. They have like a think tank in Canada. That guy's historical work is good. So like it is possible to be a good historian and

Papi Chulo (29:56.472)
Hit me.

Papi Chulo (30:06.318)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (30:10.967)
Okay, yeah.

Tom Bombadil (30:16.142)
You talking about Dan, whatever his name is?

GOBBA GOOL (30:18.926)
Yeah, he's kind of got like the medium length hair. Oh, well, it might be Dan. That might be the guy I'm talking about, his husband. look, their historical work is like good, though. So.

Tom Bombadil (30:21.369)
No, I'm thinking of somebody else.

Tom Bombadil (30:28.249)
haha

You was his husband.

Papi Chulo (30:36.3)
Yeah, yeah, I don't think you have to discredit someone because of their background. Okay, I don't know who that is.

Tom Bombadil (30:39.555)
I was thinking of Dan McClellan.

GOBBA GOOL (30:43.251)
No, no, no.

Tom Bombadil (30:47.427)
This guy is spiritually gay, I don't know if he's actually...

GOBBA GOOL (30:48.087)
you bring him up.

GOBBA GOOL (30:52.184)
Dan McClellan's textual criticism is not good.

Papi Chulo (30:57.836)
Not great. Yeah.

Tom Bombadil (30:58.061)
No, that's why I was like a little I kind of wanted to check. We're not we weren't talking about him.

GOBBA GOOL (31:01.107)
No, no, no, no. So, okay, so yeah, the work of history can be done by anybody.

Papi Chulo (31:01.198)
Yeah.

Papi Chulo (31:07.82)
Yeah, like you don't have to be a Christian to be a good church historian. if you, and you can be, and this is the thing that I think we wrestle with, you can be a good Christian and a terrible historian. And that's important because for me, especially when it comes to just dissecting and learning from church history,

GOBBA GOOL (31:12.504)
That's right.

GOBBA GOOL (31:21.292)
That's right. That's so good.

Papi Chulo (31:30.21)
There has to be, we have to spit out the hit pieces. We have to spit out all the people who want nothing more than to just throw rocks at the church and make a mockery of what our, what our, you know, our boys and ladies have done before us. But also we can't whitewash. We can't, we can't buy into propaganda views. Like we have to be better than that. We have to be able to discern that. So just assume you're being lied to and you'll have a much better time. that's B. A always keep primaries first.

Taylor already touched on this. There's a billion, there's so much church history and material. If you want to learn about the church fathers, all the patristics, you can watch a YouTube video where a handsome 25 year old will tell you about St. Augustine and St. Athanasius, or you can read their stuff directly because like we've said on the show, there's hundreds of sermons, excerpts, books, all this kind of stuff from Augustine alone.

GOBBA GOOL (31:59.969)
No.

GOBBA GOOL (32:27.31)
It's not even all been translated.

Papi Chulo (32:27.81)
That's not even counting a ton of other patristics. So, and it's, yeah, and it's been translated so much. It is not hard. it's, yeah, it's honestly.

Tom Bombadil (32:30.125)
And it's not hard to read either.

GOBBA GOOL (32:37.262)
Well, some of it's not. Augustine's so prolific, not everything he has has been translated. So that's how much there is.

Papi Chulo (32:42.316)
Yeah. Yeah. So dude, like get some buddies from church, like make it a little, a little book club where you pick up a Tristic text to go through for the month and then, you know, meet over a couple beers or if you're not 21 yet, maybe some soda pop and just make it, make a day of it. That's not, or if you're Baptist, yeah, some soda pop. but yeah, keep, keep the first account, firsthand accounts first. That's, that's always the best. and

GOBBA GOOL (32:59.35)
or if you're a Baptist.

Tom Bombadil (33:08.995)
And if you're, I'll tack something on there, if you're reading a book that's not a primary source, you can kind of gauge the quality of a history book by how, what the footnotes look like, the bibliography, how many primary sources they are relying on. If the book that you're reading doesn't have any of those, it might be fine, but it's, it's, you're basically going off of somebody's opinion.

Papi Chulo (33:27.118)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bombadil (33:37.615)
But if you jump to the back of the book and you're able to check, like, the author basically showing his receipts, the historian showing his receipts, if it's thick back there, that's a good history book.

Papi Chulo (33:49.903)
Yeah, agreed. 100%. Okay, so B, brother you're being lied to. A, always keep primary accounts first. N, nice try, but more is more, not less is more. Nice try. More is more. Here's the thing. You've heard people say, oh, less is more. Wrong. More is more.

GOBBA GOOL (34:07.214)
This is the worst!

Tom Bombadil (34:09.49)
Heh.

Papi Chulo (34:17.196)
Here's my thing, and I've wrestled with this as I've prepped a lot of episodes. There are, as you can imagine, lots of controversial, weighty opinions when it comes to church history. If you read something from one author that seems like it stands out and it has a lot of lasting implications, that doesn't mean it's wrong. But if one author is leading really heavily with one thing, like...

treat it like a mechanic and get a second opinion. Like you wanna make sure it's beneficial, I believe, that your research should show a consensus and not just one fringe opinion. And if it is a fringe opinion, that's perfectly fine, but it should be recognized as such. Go ahead, Tay.

GOBBA GOOL (35:07.448)
That's a really good word. And the thing is, you have to be an expert in the field to even know if what you just came across in your little pop history book is even a fringe opinion or not. So you're not going to know. And I'm trying to think of an example.

Papi Chulo (35:20.131)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (35:28.814)
here we go. Remember back in Isaac McCoy with the whole we couldn't find, you know, to verify if the Mormons, if he did chase the Mormons off with guns? So like, pretend Isaac McCoy was more famous. And that story, I do think, is hard to verify. I don't think it's verifiable. The Mormons claimed it, and then Isaac McCoy never wrote about it. It was the actual fact. But Tommy...

Papi Chulo (35:41.013)
sure, sure.

Papi Chulo (35:53.006)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (35:55.331)
Pretend Tommy, we're just gonna throw Tommy into the bus. Tommy loved that story so much. If he's writing the book on Isaac McCoy, he's gonna be like, and then Isaac McCoy rounded up the boys and loaded the guns and chased the heretics off the Indian land and saved them all. And so in that book, it's popular. Everyone's just gonna start counting that as fact. And so like, you're right, John Simon. It's good to read someone else who's gonna say, actually, there's only one source for that and they didn't like him. So they might've been li-

Papi Chulo (36:21.314)
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Next one, just so can keep it moving and grooving. A, back to A, avoid propaganda. I mentioned this before, but I feel like it needs repeating, especially because like we're in the age of like TikTok church historians where people read.

two pages of something or they watch a YouTube video and then they make their own video that goes viral because it just they know how to work the algorithm and stuff. It's just like dude if if you read something from let's go back to Council of Nicaea and it's another garbage take about the Council of Nicaea and then you look this author up and his his like author website is nicaeaisfake.com

Like if someone has literally built their brand around their opinion of church history or of history in general, that means that their livelihood is wrapped up in this brand and how it's being received by others. It's more about marketing at that point than it is about honest history telling. So there is a lot of propaganda that just parades itself as history. And as we know from the heretics series, like a lot of heretics were really good at using the Bible.

just like a lot of bad historians can be really good at twisting primary sources, but you just, gotta know when people are really trying to twist the knife and they're more about selling an opinion than presenting history in an honest way. I think that's a big thing. And then my last two points are really just kind of reiterations of what we talked about a lot with our Apostles series, which is just because Christians believed it.

GOBBA GOOL (37:56.75)
Mmm.

Thank

Papi Chulo (38:07.138)
doesn't mean it's history. On the other hand, just because it's tradition doesn't mean it's not history. Perfect example, the whole Peter was crucified upside down thing. We talked about that. It was a great conversation, historically very, very interesting. We did come to the conclusion, as many historians have, that Peter was most likely not crucified upside down. Does that mean it's not history? Absolutely not.

because the tradition and the story existed for so long, it's still a valuable story to be told, but just in the context of which we now understand it. So tradition doesn't lose its historical significance just because history has found it wrong. It just means that now we need to look at it with a broader lens. So just remember, banana.

Tom Bombadil (38:56.376)
Nice.

GOBBA GOOL (38:57.27)
Well done.

Tom Bombadil (38:59.619)
Well, I feel like what we've done is successfully plotted our podcast in the, should never listen to stuff like this. If you're trying to do historical work. Yeah. Cross reference. I feel like it's in the name. Like if you're coming to our podcast for solid stuff to put in your term paper that's on you dog.

GOBBA GOOL (39:11.629)
Mmm.

Papi Chulo (39:12.558)
Just cross reference.

Papi Chulo (39:24.398)
Exactly. Yeah. And legit, if you want to hit us up and be like, Hey, I really liked what you said about this. Could you share some source? Yeah, dude. mean, we'll wait. We want to have sources to back everything we say, but if you're, if you're putting a footnote, John Simon, comma, John church history for jumps, then yeah, you're going to get railed and you should.

Tom Bombadil (39:31.439)
Can you back that up? Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (39:43.275)
no.

Tom Bombadil (39:43.479)
Yeah, no, no, no, you're done. So my approach is kind of like Taylor's, although I don't quite have the Ferrari library tools that Taylor has these days. But I, start with Wikipedia almost every time. And I liked what you said, John, about comparing it to YouTube.

YouTube, there's really no way to verify the content that's there until you do it yourself. But with Wikipedia, there's a certain level of crowd sourcing that information, which doesn't make it true. Democracy doesn't make something true. But especially the more important the topic is in history, the more likely it is to have multiple views present in the Wikipedia article.

So reading about something really obscure like Wilgefortis, that may have been written by one person, know, seriously. But the fall of Constantinople, guarantee there's a lot of hands probably from multiple religions, multiple viewpoints, and it's going to be a fairly good place to start to kind of wrap.

Papi Chulo (40:52.248)
Mm-hmm

Papi Chulo (40:58.86)
Lot of hands on that one.

Tom Bombadil (41:11.341)
my mind around what's going on at this time in history. So I definitely use that resource a lot for initial research. And then I don't spend as much time on YouTube every once in a while. I will, but usually I will do that when I'm a little bit more interested for some reason in hearing how somebody else in the church history content creation space has approached a topic.

I can't think of a good example of what you know when that would admit usually maybe for like somebody's biography I'll do all if I if we're doing the biography of a certain person. I will look up maybe a 10 to 20 minute YouTube biography on this person and Those are helpful for me because sometimes that will reveal to me something that was missed in The Wikipedia article or the book that I read on this person

that this other content creator has been able to mine out from somewhere. And so now I've found this new detail of this person's life that then I can go try to hunt for the primary source for that. And I took...

GOBBA GOOL (42:23.246)
You just said something so good about someone else's mind. like history really is, if we want to use that analogy or metaphor, that I mean, it is going and digging and then coming back and rearranging what you pulled out of the ground, rearranging it in the most appealing way possible to try to like tell a story and...

You could be on the same dig site as somebody else. They might find something different than you. But that's, the point is there's still a source to go back and pull truth from. So that's really good, Tommy.

Papi Chulo (42:54.104)
Hmm.

Tom Bombadil (43:02.445)
Yeah. Yeah. And then from there, I mean, I totally concur with what you guys were saying about primary sources. They're super available. Basically anything older than what 50 years old is public domain. know, so when you're, when you're dealing in the realm of history, like you can basically get your hands on anything you need. And then it's usually really accessible.

as far as the readability, you were saying, John, unless you're getting into as funny, an example of something that maybe isn't always super accessible feeling would be like parts of the Summa Theologica by Aquinas, you know, like that would be challenging. But for the most part, across the board, just in history, like you can read stuff, you know? And it's not because they were

Papi Chulo (43:46.039)
Yeah.

Tom Bombadil (44:00.803)
like dumb or something you're writing at a lower grade level or something like that. just, they're people too. And they were trying to communicate their thoughts so that people could understand them, especially theologians. The pastoral theologians of church history wanted hearts to be changed because of what they were writing, especially the super well-known ones that shape

Papi Chulo (44:08.622)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bombadil (44:27.619)
the traditions that we're a part of like August and like Calvin like Luther these guys were writing at a very accessible level for for people so yeah that's basically how my process works and then if you for those who are curious about how I actually prepare an episode like just today I I prepped the episode on the Byzantine Empire so like I was sitting down just reading all over the internet and was

I used a pen and paper to write down a bunch of notes. I had a couple books that I was referencing that I had taken some notes in prior. And then I took all of that information and turned it into note sheets for when we actually record that episode. But I kind of still have it all here because I didn't put everything that I wrote down. Like you were talking about arranging the data, Taylor.

everything that I found out didn't necessarily make it into my actual notes, but it's here in case one of you asked a question and we decide to go further into our little rabbit trail. And that's pretty much it.

Papi Chulo (45:33.454)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (45:40.301)
Yeah, dude, it's like, it's so much, it can be so much fun doing all the research and like kind of putting things together. But then I've found, and this is not to say that I don't love doing the Chumpcast with you guys, but it's like when we, when I have to start writing my episode and then I'm like, all right, how do, how the heck do I condense everything I've just absorbed like into, into something that's not just going to come across like a, like a, like a fire hose of information.

Tom Bombadil (46:00.292)
Yeah.

Papi Chulo (46:08.034)
but follow some kind of like trajectory. I'm like, gosh, that's where it gets really daunting. Like the history is fun, but the teaching is, you know, exhausting sometimes. But.

GOBBA GOOL (46:18.126)
In my research, I struggle with knowing when to stop chasing something. And this is a bigger picture on like, maybe you should be big. If someone does the same thing, you're probably built for a PhD. Because realistically, what you do at the doctoral level, it's not this hyper fancy. It's just work, and it's hyper specific work.

Papi Chulo (46:27.267)
Mm-hmm.

GOBBA GOOL (46:47.65)
You just become an expert. I think we've talked before about kind of the pains of jumping through eras because being able to fill in like details, I've roasted you about the fish. Remember that one time, John Simon, like the fishmonger habits. Like if you're living in an area and you're riding on a certain guy, it's actually beneficial to know. what fish was he eating?

Papi Chulo (47:13.848)
to know the fish.

GOBBA GOOL (47:17.218)
And that's like a fun and helpful piece of information. But if you're writing a master's level paper on the Trinity and you need to reference Aquinas, you don't need to know what breakfast they ate at the monastery. And you're actually wasting your time. you're, you know, there's only so much time in the day, you're wasting your time looking that up, even though it's fun. And that's what I struggle with.

Papi Chulo (47:17.262)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (47:30.274)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (47:38.233)
Well, dude, that's one of the reasons why I'm glad we've been able to kind of condense the show into more series is because then we can actually spend more time getting our roots down and like understanding an era in a more, yeah, just a more detailed way in comparison to, you know, I just spent four hours researching a 45 minute episode that has no continuity with anything we're gonna study.

for the next three months and it's like, gosh, dang, like it's a lot. So yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (48:10.38)
Yeah.

Well, it's why generalists, they come across as smart. And I know we can, the greatest deception we've ever had is that people might think we're smart. You can come across as smart because you read, you know, a primary source and memorized a handful of Wikipedia pages, but like, you have just only scratched the surface of, yeah.

Papi Chulo (48:18.67)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (48:22.35)
you

Papi Chulo (48:34.508)
Yeah, yeah, it's literally the phrase I think of often is an inch deep and a mile wide. It's like you cover a lot of, you cover a lot of ground, but you're not, you're not quite as deep as you could be. And I, I'm perfectly okay saying that's where I feel like I am personally with church history, but I mean, I've got my whole life to study this stuff.

GOBBA GOOL (48:44.034)
Mmm.

GOBBA GOOL (48:50.121)
The sick part, that's right, exactly. And the sick part is that you have to, to kind of even understand the big picture of what's going on, you have to be an inch deep, mile wide on everything. So it does help to just read about everything, but yeah, I don't know. As you see, there's a lot of like tension in this. What do I read? How much do I read?

Papi Chulo (49:05.038)
Yeah.

Papi Chulo (49:10.36)
Mm-hmm.

Papi Chulo (49:14.766)
Yeah. Yeah, Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I feel you, man. I do. All right. Well, hopefully that was beneficial for you guys. Feel free to ask us any questions about our research process or, um, don't know, anything else like that. This was a fun episode. This was, this was a fun episode. Yeah. Thank you guys. All right. Well, well, uh, thank you guys for listening to Chump Talk. We'll be back on Tuesday with our regular drop. We will see you guys later.

GOBBA GOOL (49:19.084)
Yeah.

GOBBA GOOL (49:43.875)
Bye bye.