Here’s what we talked about:
- The Last Boil
- Official Chili Appreciation Society International Website
- Madelyn Rose Craig
- American Lutheran Theological Seminary
- Limitless, with Bradley Cooper
Make sure to follow Cory on X @CoryLaflin
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Transcript
[00:00:03] Cory: I’m about to be in the show.
[00:00:05] Remy: Oh, you’re on the show.
[00:00:06] Cory: I’m on the show now. Oh, okay.
[00:00:08] Remy: Wow.
Corey Laughlin from Twitter.
I always said. I always said Laughlin.
[00:00:17] Cory: Everybody does. I get used to that.
[00:00:19] Remy: Sure.
I guess Laughlin would be like. There would be a U and a G H instead of just an F.
[00:00:27] Cory: Yeah, that’s what I mean. There are. There are Laughlins out there that are. That are Irish or Scottish descent.
I’m not those.
What are you. What are. Comes from a different. So, dad. So Laughlin comes from, actually French Laflamme.
And before that. Before that, it was.
It was Kemner. Q U E M E N E U R Ken, here’s the story, please.
So Papa Urvay or whatever came over from Britain, from the extreme northwest of France, and he moved to Canada, moved to Quebec, and he set up on the Ile D’Orleans in the St. Lawrence Seaway, just north of or just northeast of Quebec City. And he was tired of. As the story goes, he was tired of boats running ashore on the island. It’s a pretty big island in the middle of this gigantic river, essentially. And so he started building bonfires to act as kind of an ersatz lighthouse.
And so they started calling him La Flamme. Was French, at least at the time, or maybe still is for bonfire or slang for campfire or bonfire or something like that. And so then it just kind of stuck. And so we’ve seen actual documents of Louis Kemner D. Leflam, which means that just call D being called being or being said, said, like Leflam. So eventually it just.
It got Anglicized.
They were happy living in Quebec until the Homestead act happened. And then all of a sudden, they ended up. All of a sudden they ended up in Vermont.
Funny how that works. And then made their way down to. Unlike all the cool Acadians and French Canadians, they didn’t keep going to go to Louisiana. They stopped in Kansas. And here we are.
So that’s Dad’s side of the family. Well, that’s where the name comes from.
Also has a fair amount of Welsh in there. And Mom’s side is 100% German, therefore, you know.
[00:03:03] Remy: Excellent. What are you drinking? What is that?
[00:03:05] Cory: I am drinking spent Oktoberfest. Because it is the last day.
It is the official last day of Oktoberfest, because I believe Oktoberfest runs through the first Sunday in October, if I remember correctly. Not that my mom’s family is from northern Germany. In fact, we’re going There in December. Um, my mom and my brother and my son and. And my, My niece, we’re gonna go visit the. We’re gonna go. We’re gonna go and. And remind ourselves why we left in the first place.
Why the family left. I suppose.
[00:03:40] Remy: Amazing.
I. I’m drinking Modelo.
[00:03:44] Cory: Nice.
[00:03:46] Remy: But I’m doing it in my. This is. I don’t know if you’ll be able.
[00:03:50] Cory: Oh, nice.
[00:03:53] Remy: It’s the Last Supper, but it’s a crawfish boil.
[00:03:56] Cory: Crawfish boil. I love it.
[00:03:58] Remy: Yeah, look, that’s. That’s totally Tony Shasheries right there.
Cajun seasoning on the table.
[00:04:07] Cory: Yeah, that’s nice. That’s. That’s beautiful.
Good stuff. I like, I like Modelo, but it’s just kind of. I had this for the. We had a.
Like our district men’s retreat this weekend on Friday and Friday night and Saturday through. And so I’ve got a couple leftovers.
What was that?
[00:04:33] Remy: Tell me about your district men’s retreat.
[00:04:35] Cory: Oh, so we have a.
Actually have a decent sized house out in the center of the state and every like late September, early October.
Yeah, we do like a Friday night and Saturday men’s retreat. And this year we talked about classical Lutheran education with the headmaster of Concordia Academy, Wichita.
Okay.
[00:05:03] Remy: Okay.
What were your thoughts and feelings going into that? What were they going? How did you change? How did you grow? Tell me more.
[00:05:11] Cory: I mean, I learned a lot.
Headmaster Snyder did a talk, mostly it was a history lesson on where education, where the roots of education really started and what the different philosophies in education were going down through history. Because when you say classical education, that’s not really a terribly well defined term. And so he broke it down from the Greek era through the.
Through the cathedral schools versus through the university, through going from what would be more of a general college education to actual subjects and this, that and the other. And talked about different philosophies and stumbling blocks along the way in terms of why we need to kind of reclaim education nowadays in the, you know, in the modern context. Also.
Also too much to our chagrin found out that. That the concept of public education was started essentially by the Lutherans of Northern Germany.
[00:06:23] Remy: Awesome. Amazing. Amazing. And probably so that everyone would be able to study the Bible.
[00:06:29] Cory: Yeah, right, Absolutely.
Rather than keep it was to put it in the hands of the. Of the. You know, it was the whole left hand, right hand kingdom thing. Right. So they. So put the chart. The schools in charge of the left hand kingdom to keep the. Keep the church, let them make sure they study the Bible and not have to worry the church about the day to day operations in schools.
[00:06:53] Remy: Amazing.
Amazing.
[00:06:56] Cory: To which one of the pastors, to which one of the pastors, when he dropped that bomb on us, went, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Too much laughter.
[00:07:10] Remy: Yeah, yeah. We. Public education is not the same, I assume these days as it would have been.
[00:07:19] Cory: I know.
[00:07:21] Remy: At its genesis.
[00:07:23] Cory: No. And it’s, it’s so I’m. I’m only say tertiarily evolved with Concordia Academy Wichita being. I’m the chess coach there. But only because. Only because my son graduated out of high school like literally the year before they started there. And I really kind of wish we’d had.
[00:07:46] Remy: What a dorky school. The chess coach. Get out of here.
[00:07:51] Cory: I played when I was in high school and then I got out of college and I played some more, a little bit just as a hobby. And then a friend of mine who ended up moving from being kind of an adjunct professor at WSU at Wichita State University, when I say wsu, that’s the term I’m defining, to being a math teacher up at one of the suburbs, essentially Valley center, which is a northern suburb of Wichita, and found out that she’d inherited the, the chess, the chess club as part of being the math teacher. And she asked me if I wanted to help kind of get it off the. Off the ground. I said, sure. And I was there 17 years.
We won six state titles.
I outlasted her.
[00:08:46] Remy: Just get her off the ground.
[00:08:48] Cory: Yeah, I outlasted her as a sponsor. I outlasted the next person as a sponsor. And when the third person who is the sponsor decided that they weren’t going to do it anymore because they wanted to spend time with their kids, were a younger guy and his kids were just getting up to that age of doing stuff. I was like, all right, I’m going to call. And my son was in the second half of high school. And so I was like, you know what? I’m not breaking in. I’m not breaking in another sponsor.
We’re going to take a break.
So we took a break and Henry graduated and then kind of got the itch again. And Concordia Academy started up a couple of years ago and I asked them, is this something you’d want to do? And they’re like, yes, like, okay.
So last year was our first year and we have a grand total of four people in the club considering there’s, I think only 12 people, the 12 kids or 13 kids at the school. I think we’re doing okay.
[00:09:43] Remy: I think that’s a pretty good. I think that’s a pretty good talk then about vocation, huh? And just doing, doing what’s in front of you. Doing what God puts in front of you. Is that as a, as a man and you strike me as a pretty driven man and a father. Is it, is it fulfilling to, to just do the work God puts in front of you? Is that fulfilling in your life?
[00:10:09] Cory: You know, it’s been a, there’s been a lot of. I’ve had a lot of issue trying to figure out what that is.
And I don’t think I’m alone. I think there’s a lot of people that have that. And especially when you actually don’t have that metaphysical worldview and you wonder what am I supposed to be doing? And regret starts to creep in and did I miss my window or what if I was supposed to do this or that or the other. When you have that metaphysical physical worldview, it’s a lot easier to like, oh, okay, I’m supposed to be. You see the, you see the positive breaks I think a bit more than the negative ones.
And yeah, I grew up.
My mom was. My dad was a truck driver. My dad fixed appliances and then he was a truck driver and then he fixed appliances again and then my mom did one year of university but this was back in the, in the 60s and that was. There wasn’t a whole lot of scholarship money available and she didn’t, you know, and her family wasn’t terribly wealthy so she got to do one year at Emporia State University studying chemistry and then had to give it up. And so she was, I, I joke that she is the, she is the smartest. She is the smartest school cook slash janitor I’ve ever known. I make. If anybody who’s familiar with Dilbert remembers the trash man from Dilbert who is the, the running joke is that he’s the actual genius among everybody in the, in the comic. And it’s like, right, that’s kind of my mom.
But she was also not, she was never, if she was bitter about it, she never ever showed it right. She, you know, she, she’s person who like I, she could do pretty much whatever she wanted and she just wanted to do was, I would say just survive. But no, she, she saw the, she saw where there was value in, in, in being home. The reason she took, the reason she took the job.
And yeah, I had a. Ostensibly a two income family growing up, but the reason mom took the job she did was because she would be home by the time I got home, before I got home from school. So she was there early. So it was like my brother.
[00:12:38] Remy: Are you an only child?
[00:12:39] Cory: What’s that? Oh no, I have one brother.
[00:12:42] Remy: You and all him.
[00:12:43] Cory: Indiana? No, I have one brother seven years older than me. So. So essentially by the time I could go to school he was already well big enough that he could make sure that I got on the bus, you know, so.
So yeah, he’s. So yeah, then, then when I got home she’d be home and so it wasn’t, it didn’t. Even though she was working, she was at home when she really. When she needed to be so. And she was good at. And she really saw it. As time goes on and growing up, you see a lot of things that with your family and I’m sure this isn’t at all unique to me by any stretch of the imagination, but every family has their issues or if every family has their problems of having to take care of this person or this person or that the other person or maybe multiple people.
And you think that that’s just the way things are until you get out into the world a bit and you realize exactly how much your parents did to really help everybody else, not only in the family, but in the community.
My dad’s parents, my mom was.
I was over at my grandma and grandpa’s house pretty much every other day growing up and then mom was taking care of her mom and with who had. Was the only. Was the child of. Out of five who is.
I don’t want to say saddled but who had that, who took that responsibility and took care of Grandma? Damon.
And then when my dad’s mom suddenly started developing dementia, moved her in with them and didn’t. And you know, she, she would grouse about things every once in a while but not very much as, not as much as, not as much as I’ve groused about my problems in life.
You know, it’s like she, she was, I was talking at the, at the retreat this weekend just to, to some of the people and saying my mom was one of the most, maybe the most unflappable person I’ve ever met.
I mean we’d get mad when she needed to get mad as a parent, but did not, never, never panicked, never had like a freak out moment. You know, if I, if I felt that, you know, you’ve, it was not a helicopter parent by the stretch of the imagination, by any stretch of the imagination. But she didn’t know. But also wasn’t like, wasn’t negligent in her duties. It was, you know, instead of, you know, like, me falling off the bike and, oh, how are you? You know, are you okay? And stuff like that, it was just like, how’s your knee?
[00:15:30] Remy: Right. Yeah. Get back on it.
[00:15:32] Cory: Is it bleeding too bad? No. Okay, you’re good. You know, understood, acknowledge the situation and deal with it in an appropriate manner. And that was the way mom did. And from that I was fortunate to receive the skill of being able to cope in crisis situations of like, okay, when things are truly going bad, it’s like, all right, abcd. These are the things that needs to. Need to happen. You know, drive through it. And then, then when, when the pressure’s off, then it’s like, okay, I’m going to go into that room and completely lose my, Lose my mind for a bit by myself.
Just give me, you know, a couple hours and we’ll be fine then. And we’re fine. So it’s. She was. And always. And she’s always been a good godly Lutheran. Lutheran woman, raised Missouri Senate.
[00:16:31] Remy: So you’ you’re womb to tomb.
[00:16:35] Cory: I’m not exactly womb to tomb.
Womb. And then I went on Rumspringa, for lack of a better term, as all.
[00:16:48] Remy: Good French Canadians do.
[00:16:50] Cory: I don’t really want to associate myself with the Anabaptists, but here we go. No, no. What happened was. So, yeah, I was raised at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Clay Center, Kansas, and, you know, good LCMS raised. Link in the description was that.
[00:17:10] Remy: I said link in the description.
[00:17:12] Cory: Link in the description. Yeah, we can put their pastor, Sara is doing a wonderful job there, but, you know, confirmed the whole thing. Graduated high school, came down to Wichita to go to university, and I was literally fooled.
Suckered into joining an ELCA church. I’m not kidding.
[00:17:35] Remy: Oh, no.
[00:17:37] Cory: Because I got here.
[00:17:38] Remy: Oh, no.
[00:17:39] Cory: So what happened? And it’s like, you have to give some credit to the LCMS church that I grew up in, especially when you’re talking that this was in the 80s, in the early 90s, and so it wasn’t that far removed from Seminex. Right. But they never preached against Seminex or against the ELCA or I never heard anything about it. Now, of course, I had to do with the fact that, that St. Paul’s is the only Lutheran church in town. So it wasn’t like they were, you know, there wasn’t like any sort of competition with an ELCA church in town. Or anything like that. So there was no need to. And there was a lot of other LCMS congregations, you know, north, you know, there in Kansas and the Lynn and Palmer and. And Hanover areas and stuff like that.
So.
So I had no idea that this.
The. At the magnitude of this.
I came down to university and somebody like, my first week there is like, oh, you’re a Lutheran. You want to go come to church with me on weekend. On this weekend? I said, sure. And. And so I went. And the pastor there at the time was a. Was a very conservative, you know, very nice lady. No, no, that was later.
Not even kidding.
No, actually they were. They had. When I started going, they had an interim pastor, and he was. I can’t remember his name, but he was actually pretty cool. And then the pastor that they. That they called and got was a. Was Pastor Joe Wald. And I will not broker any. Any slander against Pastor Joe Wald, who is a. It was kind of reminds me for us Twitter fans of, like, John Christensen, same kind of. Same kind of vibe. Yeah, like the loyal. What’s the term? The loyalist. The loyal opposition.
He’s a good conservative pastor within the elca. And it did happen. And so, once again, it just kind of drove it through. I didn’t realize how big of a deal this was when I asked to transfer my membership. Except when they said, are you sure? When the search hit over, like, are you sure? I’m like, yeah, yeah, think so, anyway. Oh, no, I met my wife there.
[00:20:03] Remy: So did anybody. Did anybody at home, church, give you a heads up, like, at all?
[00:20:09] Cory: No, they didn’t give me the, like, Mom. Mom was like.
I would have expected mom to be like. I don’t think she was terribly well educated into what the. The actual issue was either. I mean, I mean, she knew. She knew about the split, but I don’t think she didn’t. Hadn’t gone it. You know, you didn’t have Wikipedia. You couldn’t look up the history at the time. You’re kind of going this by word of mouth. And of course, pastors are, you know, even. Even the midst of that are trying to abide by the eighth commandment. So they don’t want to let themselves get to, you know, get too loose at the top of things.
But, you know, there was kind of a. They’re not really the same. And I’m like, I’ve been, you know, and I’m like, well, I’ve been. And, you know, they use the small catechism. I haven’t heard anything openly Heretical. I think we’re fine. Okay. Mom was like, he’s pretty much the same. I think mom was. Yeah, exactly. I think mom was like, well, at least he’s going to church.
And the other thing is, the other half of my family, my dad’s half of the family was all Methodist. So it’s like. I’m sure mom was doing the calculus of, well, it could be worse.
It could be worse.
[00:21:25] Remy: He could be one of those Methodists.
[00:21:27] Cory: No, actually, but the thing is, I spent a lot of time. It’s like, I don’t talk down Methodist. If you notice on Twitter, I don’t talk down Methodists very much at all, just because I hung around with them so much growing up.
Once again, it was like, 99.9% of the time you’re preaching out of the Bible, you’re going to be okay. And so sometimes I remember being at some and we were always there for special services or there was, like, weddings or maybe anniversaries or something like that. I’ve been to more than my share of services at the Methodist Church in Clay center, and there was anything there that made me want to nail anything to a door.
It was like, okay, this is good. Sometimes you get a little bit heavy on the social whatever, but okay. I mean, that’s kind of their vibe, and you just deal with it and go on. And they never looked at me sideways, knowing even full well that we were Lutherans. So it was cool.
There were worse communities in town.
So I have nothing but. I say nothing but fondness. I have plenty of critique, but I’ve had good experiences with Methodists so far in my life, let’s say so far.
[00:22:53] Remy: Give me two seconds. I’ll be right back.
[00:22:55] Cory: Roger that.
[00:22:57] Remy: My wife nailed this chili.
[00:23:00] Cory: Nice.
So what’s the. So good. What’s the base on? I mean, I mean, just. Just a beef. Ground beef chili or. Or.
[00:23:09] Remy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
And sure, yeah, I’ll. I’ll just cut that little bit out. We’ll pick up right here. That’s my podcast. I can do what I want. Of course.
Yeah. No, it’s. So I start with onions, and I saute down some onions and then add garlic and then add ground beef. And I get the ground beef good and cooked and drained and cooked some more.
While that’s happening, I am steeping some dried chili peppers. It’s called chili, not beanie. So we’re putting chili in it.
Right. And so we.
I steeped some dried peppers. This time it was Guajillo, New Mexico. And ancho.
[00:23:58] Cory: Nice.
[00:23:59] Remy: And I let those steep up, and then I threw them into the. We got one of those nutri bullet blenders.
[00:24:06] Cory: Yep.
[00:24:07] Remy: So I threw it in there with a half a ghost pepper and some chipotle peppers and adobo sauce. Blended all that up really good into a paste.
[00:24:17] Cory: Cool.
[00:24:17] Remy: And then I put my chili paste in my ground beef, let that go for a minute, add some red wine, let that reduce down a little bit, and then I do my spice pour.
[00:24:29] Cory: Take some notes. You’re doing it a little different than I would do. Than I do it, but that’s okay. I mean, that’s why I’m taking notes. I’m like, oh, yeah, I should probably use more fresh peppers. I mean, I use plenty, but I use, like. I should use, like, dried. No, I should use like. Like guajillo and arbol or, you know, stuff like that would be. I have. In the. In the pantry. I just haven’t. Didn’t. Anyway, go ahead. I’m sorry.
[00:24:50] Remy: Always. Always adds a really, really nice flavor. Really nice flavor. A good complex heat. Yeah. But, yeah, so I add all that. I do my spice pour. When I do my chili paste, I do my spice pour in which my. Because I’m using actual chilies, my spice pours mostly just garlic powder and cumin. Yeah.
And then. Yeah. After it kind of sits for a minute, I’ll add in some beef stock and get it to where I want it, and then just kind of let it simmer and come together.
[00:25:18] Cory: There you go.
[00:25:19] Remy: Tomatoes. I’ll put tomatoes in it.
[00:25:21] Cory: Right. I do the. So I’ve been working on a recipe this fall.
Some friends of mine. So it’s like two weeks ago, I think, was the. Or, no, it was last weekend. Last weekend was the.
There’s always a big chili cook off in Wichita, like last week of September, first week in October. And we always. Me and some of my friends go down and of course, we’re absolutely brutal. You know, we walk around and try the chilies, and, you know, it’s a two. Yeah. I mean, we don’t go to numbers, but we. But, yeah. Where it’s, you know, so it’s like, oh, liquid smoke, lovely. You know, sort of thing.
And we. Anyway, we’d been. For years, we’d had this idea of what if we. What if we did the most bougie chili that we could possibly think of.
And so after, like, two or three years of talking about, I actually started.
I came up with a. Came up with an idea. And so here’s my. So here’s my overwrought chili.
Start up by browning up, searing some short rib, oxtail, and flatiron steak.
[00:26:40] Remy: Okay.
[00:26:41] Cory: All right.
And then. And there’s a reason for those three. Well, which we’ll get to that. And then. Then, you know, with some of the salt, with some of the fat that renders off. I add that renders out of that in the browning as I pull the meat out, and then I add some flat and make a roux out of it, because I have to make a roux out of everything.
[00:27:02] Remy: Okay.
[00:27:03] Cory: And so to thicken that up. And I brown it. Not like as much as I brown for my jambalaya, but I brown it. You know, some get the vegetables in. So I’ve got. And then I do the. Doing the classic French mirepoix. So onions, carrots, and celery. Yes, there are carrots and celery in my chili.
But then also.
[00:27:20] Remy: All right, that’s anathema, but yeah, some belt in here.
[00:27:26] Cory: But also bell peppers, jalapeno peppers. And then this last time, the last round of innovation on this, I started adding habanero to give it more kind of back end heat, because the jalapeno is nicer up front, but the habanero is good on the back. But I might have to go with guajillo. That might. Guajillo. And ancho would add some nice smokiness to it. That sounds.
[00:27:53] Remy: It does, yeah.
[00:27:53] Cory: It’s something I have to do for the next round.
[00:27:56] Remy: It’s kind of so. And it’s kind of a sweet smokiness, too. Yeah, very nice.
[00:28:02] Cory: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I’ve worked with ancho before, and I don’t know why. I just spaced, and it’s like, why don’t I just rehydrate some peppers and throw those in, too? Anyway, so then, yeah, sweat out the vegetables, you know, add the garlic, add the tomato. Add a one tin of crushed tomatoes.
I do add beans. I add. I have one can of black beans because I like black beans. Because I. Not because.
And just because I like black beans. I like the. And it’s not. I have so much meat in there. Now.
[00:28:34] Remy: We left. We left chili behind at a mirepoix, so.
[00:28:37] Cory: No, no, no, no. But then you add this, you know, then you add this.
Then I add. I want it. I usually add a lager, but I have used wine before. Like, use it. Reduce that down.
[00:28:48] Remy: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:49] Cory: But I like to use a lager instead. I think that’s more.
That’s more online with the flavors that you’re looking for. And then reduce that down. Then you add the stock, put the meat in and the spices, of course.
And then. Because I don’t want to be on it for eight hours, he was doing.
See here, That’s Hannah in the background.
I don’t want to do it for eight. Have it cooking for eight hours. I actually cook it in a pressure cooker.
And an hour. Once I get it up to pressure, it’s a hundred. It’s a. It’s an hour 15 once I get it up. And once I get it up and whistling and then take. Reduce the pressure off, and you have. And you have chili. So I know it’s. It’s. Wow. Yeah. So that’s the. We were. We were literally going for. For. What would Anthony Bourdain make if he were making chili? Was. Was the idea. So, yeah, it’s supposed to be. But here’s the really funny part is the spice mix that I’m using is literally like a McCormick spice mix. Like, copycat. Like, it’s all fresh stuff I mixed.
[00:30:00] Remy: But the McCormick spice mix, honestly, pretty good flavor, right?
[00:30:06] Cory: See that? See, when we’re at the chili cook off, that’s what we always say is everybody’s trying to bring their own. Do their own weird thing. And our criteria when we’re at the cook off is, could I sit and eat and watch a football game? Game? We’re eating this.
[00:30:21] Remy: Could I go through a bowl or.
[00:30:24] Cory: Two or three of this watching the Chiefs play? The answer is yes. Then, then. All right, then. Then you. You’re getting my vote. So that’s.
[00:30:32] Remy: Why Do I want to throw a dollop. Do I want to throw a dollop of sour cream on this thing and go to town?
[00:30:38] Cory: Yeah. Yeah. Throw some cheese and, you know, some cheese and crackers on it or whatever. You know, whatever you’re. Whatever you like to do. You dress it. Dress it up however you want afterwards.
So, yeah, that’s the chili I’ve been working on. Oh. And then my friend of mine convinced me to go a little further afield to throw some actual chocolate in there right before I throw the. Before I put the lid on, too. Just like 2 ounces.
I could probably go with 4 ounces, but just to add a little bit more depth of. Of flavor to it and add a little bit of texture.
So that’s actually a good idea.
I’m using, like, Ghirardelli 60%, because just you can get it. But, you know, but like you said, probably like a 70 would probably be better, maybe even 80. If you’re not worried, that’s a good idea. If you’re not worried about bitterness, you could push it up to the really, really dark stuff, but.
[00:31:44] Remy: Well, you don’t have to. The. The. Depending on the heat level you get in there.
Because capsaicin binds to the same receptor gene or whatever in your mouth that chocolate does.
[00:32:03] Cory: Really?
[00:32:05] Remy: Yes.
So depending on the heat level.
[00:32:10] Cory: Heat.
[00:32:11] Remy: And chocolate go really well together because you taste the chocolate more because you’re not losing so much of it to those receptors. So, like, a buddy of mine gave me a Ghirardelli brownie earlier that he made and, you know, like, out of a box or whatever, right?
[00:32:28] Cory: Yeah.
[00:32:28] Remy: And I took a bite of it, and it was good. You know, it was good. It was a brownie. And then I ate a ghost pepper that I had on hand.
And this was earlier today.
I ate pepper that I had just. Yeah, it’s what we do. And I let the heat. I let the heat back off a little bit. I’m still on fire. It’s still brutal. But I’m. I let it back down after about 15 or 20 minutes, after it had backed down a little bit, I ate the rest of the brownie. And I’m telling you, it was night.
[00:33:01] Cory: And day, the most amazing brownie ever. Then at that point, it.
[00:33:06] Remy: Yes, it was. It was. And it just. I don’t know. It’s so rich. It was so, like, rich. I don’t know.
[00:33:13] Cory: Yeah. And the fats are going to be helping.
[00:33:15] Remy: They go well together.
[00:33:16] Cory: It probably helped kill, you know, some of that residual fire, too. And. But really. But, yeah, those receptors are already.
Now I have to try that. That sounds really interesting. So you’re so. Are you like, me, like, if I’m cooking with this pepper, I need to eat it to see what it’s. See what it. What it actually tastes like.
[00:33:32] Remy: I. Yes. I got that from Gordon Ramsay. This is now. This is now. Food or answers. I got. I got that from Gordon. I got it from Gordon Ramsay where he said.
He said that you need to eat everything raw before you cook with it so that you actually know what it tastes like.
[00:33:51] Cory: I had a co worker give me about a half a pound of Scotch bonnet peppers about a month ago or three weeks ago. And. And I was gonna make it. I knew what I was gonna do. I was gonna make Jamaican jerk pork with it because I had a recipe for that. But I. You can’t get. You know, Scotch bonnets aren’t really an easy get.
And so. But I’m like, I’m the same way. And the same. The same co worker has given me, like, she grows, like, type, like, bird eye, bird’s eye chilies, you know, Thai chilies every year, too. And I’ve gotten those from her. And I’ve eaten before. I cooked with those. I ate one of those raw, and for a couple of minutes, I thought I had made a tremendous mistake in my life. And then it kind of went away. And so I’m like, no, I have to do this before I cook with the Scotch bonnets. I had to eat one. And Veronica was here.
She’s finally figured me out enough that she’s just like, all right, go for it.
I’m here to root for you. And, I mean, it’s an end. Scotch bonnet is like a habanero. It looks an awful lot like a habanero, but it’s sweeter than a habanero. So it’s a really pleasant, nice, peppery flavor. It just. It’s just.
It’s just sitting there sweating. That was a really good pepper, you know, but once you cook it, that’s how.
[00:35:09] Remy: That’s how the. The ghost is. The ghost pepper is probably my favorite pepper right now. I grew one this year, and I’ve just. It’s been so much fun to use in everything, but. But it’s got a really floral, really fruity.
[00:35:23] Cory: Oh, nice.
[00:35:24] Remy: Almost kind of like herbaceous kind of note to it. It doesn’t really taste like a pepper. It tastes. It tastes like herby, but it’s very sweet, kind of in this sort of floral kind of way.
And you get that.
I mean, 15 seconds, Corey, 15 seconds, just long enough to be like, oh, I taste it. That’s really good. And then it comes up from the back, and it drives all rational thought of your mind. It is the hottest thing when I.
[00:35:56] Cory: Ate the Scotch bonnet.
[00:35:57] Remy: Technically, it’s the third hottest.
[00:35:58] Cory: Yeah, when I ate the Scotch bonnet, I was like, you know, it’s like there was an immediate burn, but I’m like, oh, this is doable. You know, it was more than a jalapeno, but, like, yeah, this is doable. And flavor’s really good. And, yeah, it’s about the same thing. Like, 15, 20 seconds, and then. Then crawling up the back of your throat and through the top of your mouth. And I’m like, oh, that’s a thing. You know? And I went through a beer, a beer and a half, and. And one good swing of swig of full fat milk, and then I was, okay.
[00:36:32] Remy: So for me.
So they say they Say so the capsaicin’s in oil and the heat, the heat you’re already feeling. The heat you’re already feeling. You’re not going to stop. There’s no way to stop it. Once it.
[00:36:47] Cory: Yeah, either.
[00:36:48] Remy: Once it’s down to the receptor, you’re feeling the heat, buckle up.
[00:36:51] Cory: The best you can do is wash.
[00:36:52] Remy: Away, not feel any more heat. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there. Because capsaicin is an oil like olive oil. There’s. You can do things like full fat milk or ice cream which bond with the oil and drag it down your throat. Yeah, well, yeah, because the only thing you can do. Yeah, the other thing.
[00:37:13] Cory: Water does you no good. Water is just like, oh, that’s nice and cool. Right? Why did it.
[00:37:17] Remy: And then.
[00:37:18] Cory: And then as soon as it goes away, it comes right back because it didn’t wash. Anything spreads around.
[00:37:21] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So breaking apart the oil, for me, that’s been the better. That’s been the better method. If I, If I eat a super hot chili and I am just not game for it right then for whatever reason, a swish of lemon juice around the mouth usually does pretty good to break up a lot of that. The acidity of the, of the lemon juice will break up a lot of that oil.
And then alcohol also does it for me. I’ll take a swig of beer or a swig of wine and swish that around my mouth pretty good. And then, you know, that’ll also do a good job.
[00:37:55] Cory: Yeah, the carbs are kind of. Yeah, the beers are pretty good. Milk is the best.
I mean, full fat milk or. I don’t know, you’ve probably seen hot ones once or twice. And I think Alton Brown did half and half when he was.
[00:38:16] Remy: I didn’t have half and half really works. Half and half works.
[00:38:21] Cory: You want something that. Yeah, something that can. That oil will be a bit soluble in, so. And not just breaking it down, but just dissolving it and carrying it away. You know, this water will just slip right over it and it doesn’t matter.
So it just stays right where it is. So do we want to talk about Lutheranism again or do we want to keep talking about food?
[00:38:37] Remy: Because before people hate me too much.
Before people hate me too much.
[00:38:42] Cory: That’s like people from.
Ask them about the cookies. You know, whatever.
[00:38:47] Remy: Ask him. Corey from Bread Twitter.
[00:38:51] Cory: Yeah, that’s what I’m known for. Even though it’s like I don’t do nearly as much baking as I know as, as like Maddie, Matty, Craig and, and, And Pastor Jeremy probably does more than I do too. It’s just that when I do it, I do. I end up doing like the really, the really technical, challenging stuff just because I. Just because I. I want to see if I can do it and then I post pictures to it because I. I need the attention.
[00:39:26] Remy: That’s it.
[00:39:27] Cory: I’m sure, I’m sure Maddie bakes. That’s why I have the podcast board every day. But she’s too busy, too busy with, with actually working, you know, dealing with the kids and everything else. Being a mother to post things on my kids out of the house. I could take pictures of whatever I want. Cats, food, whatever.
[00:39:43] Remy: So Maddie, Maddie, I think, I think she gets. She gets the affirmation and the value from her children and her husband. Whereas you and I, we get our affirmation and value from the Internet strangers.
[00:39:58] Cory: Yeah.
[00:39:58] Remy: And the fake Internet points out of.
[00:40:01] Cory: I mean, the. Veronica tells the story of like she. Because when we were early married, she would come home and she would. She was trying to do the good housewife thing, you know, and come home. And even though she was working at the zoo, she was a zookeeper. She was senior keepers, amphibians, reptiles at Central County Zoo. Oh, wow. And she would come home and fix something and it was always good.
And then not very long into the, into our, into our marriage, I decided I wanted to make jambalaya. I think. Or no, it was etoufe. Before I made it jambalaya, I made etouffee. I just looked up, looked up a, A emerald Lagasse recipe, you know, and, and online. And I put it together and she’s like, took one fork full of it and she’s like, this is your job now.
You do this.
So this is better than anything I’ve ever made. So. So, you know, and I don’t mind.
[00:40:56] Remy: Yeah, we.
My mom was a teacher all my life and she used to never use the bathroom during the day. She’s a fifth grade teacher and she was very proud of the fact that she would not use the bathroom during the day.
Yeah, she is super proud of this. And she.
[00:41:15] Cory: Waiting for this punchline, had one of those.
[00:41:18] Remy: No, no punchline.
[00:41:20] Cory: Okay.
[00:41:20] Remy: She had one of those giant, you know, those giant bugs. Like they used to sell the giant, like 87 ounce travel mugs or whatever.
[00:41:29] Cory: Yep.
[00:41:29] Remy: And she would get that boy and fill it up with like a half a gallon sweet tea and ice and sip on that all day and never once go to the bathroom. And then at the end of the day, she would go to the bathroom after all the kids were gone. But she would hold her water all day long until eventually, after years and years of doing this, her bladder had gotten distended and moved like out of place.
And so she ended up having to have a pretty major corrective surgery. And she did all of the cooking at home up until that surgery, at which point my dad had to do the cooking. And he had never cooked in his life.
But my dad is a mathematician and a very brilliant, very driven man. And so he sat down and learned everything about cooking that you could possibly imagine. And when he first started cooking, those first few meals were terrible.
[00:42:25] Cory: Right.
[00:42:26] Remy: But after about two and a half weeks of cooking, my dad was the only person that we would eat right. You know, his food.
[00:42:32] Cory: Yeah, he won, he won the full time job.
[00:42:36] Remy: He did, he did, man. And it was my mom. My mom still gets upset because there was some time when I was like 13 and, and dad went somewhere and mom cooked and I, she was like, you don’t like it or whatever. And I was like, oh, it’s not the way dad makes. It’s not as good as the way dad. And mom was like, this is my family recipe. I taught your dad this.
[00:43:01] Cory: Oh, I’ve had, I have, I have one friend from. Who’s. I’ve. We’ve talked about this friend before, but she, she challenged me to bake posca bread for Easter.
And because she, her family is. Or half of her family is Ukrainian. And so, and so I went and researched this and I made this and I made this bread. And she, you know, and the first time she tried it, she’s like, she was absolutely, say aghast that I got it right the first. She’s like, my, okay, my grandma would adopt you. You know, you get, when you get to compliments like that, you know, you did it right. Yeah. She’s the reason I started doing pierogies at Christmas too. She’s like, came to visit around, around Christmas time and I was like, wanted to do something nice and so I made pierogies and I, and I had to do them, but I had to do them my way. And I, you know, doing the research, probably much like your dad. And I’m doing, okay, what goes into pierogies? Okay. Mashed potatoes and cheese. Okay. And so, but then I was like, well, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do. I did like, I did not just mashed potatoes. I did potato puree where I pass it through the sieve, through a sieve and add a bunch of butter and cream and stuff to it. And then I use gruyere cheese, because I was gonna make. I’m gonna make French cuisine pierogies.
And I’m like, it can’t be too far off. A gruyere is a decent hard cheese. It’s going to be, you know, fairly close to the same flavors. And, yeah, once again, she had it the first time, and I was waiting for the. For the commentary on. On. On it not being right. And she’s just like, I give up.
You’re making all my pierogies now. I’m like, cool. You know, even though that’s awesome, I like the challenge. I love being able to. To surprise people. That’s part of what I. Going back to vocation. Hey, let’s go back to the thing.
I like it because it’s a really easy way to let people know that you actually care about them. And the whole. Because food is so much a part of everybody’s day, right? And it’s so connected to your emotions, whether you like it or not.
And making anything, like, the hardest thing I’ve ever made, like this probably beef bourguignon, and had the most steps, I should say, but once you get it down a couple of times, I could say, make the jambalayak blindfolded now, but pretty close, although I might have to tape up my fingers afterwards.
But it’s when somebody like that. Somebody’s going through something really tough, and they wax poetic about times with their grandparents or stuff like that, and having this food, and you can, like, show up and get. And get in the ballpark, you know, and not even trying to get. It’s like, I know this. This isn’t going to be, you know, a home run. Not to use too many baseball analogies, because the Royals are still playing as we. As we record this or not they playing today? Yeah, they’re probably playing right now.
But, you know, you just get it in the park that it’s recognizable as the food that you put it, you know, and if you can get it. If you can get it into the infield, so much the better, right? And people realize that, like, oh, wow, you went out of your way. You know, it’s like, I like to learn new things anyway, so it didn’t. It feels, you know, it’s not. It’s not a burden to me. You know, it’s not a. It’s not for. I know for a lot of people, it would scare them, and I’m just like, oh, cool. I get to learn something new and Give you some good food.
But it really lets people know that you’re thinking about them and you really care. And so that’s why I, like, I’ve got dozens of people that are like, okay, this person wants this. This person for their birthday. And I need to actually have a spreadsheet for this stuff.
Whenever somebody’s birthday is coming along, it’s like, I don’t even tell them happy birthday anymore. I just message them and I go, cake.
And they know that that’s like, okay, what cake do I. I’m asking them, what cake do you want?
And I have one friend who’s just to be a smart ass, looks up the most technically challenging cake that he can find.
He gives me a new challenge every year. And in fact, his birthday is coming up towards the middle of this month, so I’m going to get that order here pretty soon.
But.
[00:47:35] Remy: Food too, I think, is such a. Especially sharing food together with one another. It’s such a very core Christian thing too.
[00:47:44] Cory: Yeah.
[00:47:45] Remy: You know, we read in the New Testament about the. The love feasts that they would have where, you know, we’re all getting together at least once a week, maybe more, sometimes every day in some places, and we’re all bringing food and we’re all sharing a meal together and having fellowship, you know, and that’s. It was such an essential part of the church biblically. And then the early church, you know, the Apostolic and the Apostolic Fathers after that. Such a. Such an important and central part of Christian identity and Christian religion has been getting together over a meal, you know.
[00:48:30] Cory: Yeah. And I mean, our entire. It’s like our entire religion’s based around a meal, you could say, especially. Especially our. Especially our rendering of it as Lutherans, you know, so we place a great deal of importance on that meal.
And so if that meal’s important, well, other meals are important too. So every church thinks they have the best potlucks.
And all of them are correct in some degree.
I’m sure that to somewhere, someone, somewhere, Lutefisk is the perfect potluck meal.
Just not to me, but to somebody, not to you French Canadians, just good Germans.
That’s not a French Canadian critique.
That’s a German versus a Scandinavian Lutheran critique.
[00:49:28] Remy: Oh, yeah. No, I’m saying Lutefisk is just never going to be good enough for you French Canadians.
[00:49:32] Cory: Oh, no, Lutefisk is never good enough for anybody. I’m. No, it’s good enough for somebody. It’s just not gonna be good enough for me.
I pride myself on being Able to try anything. I’ll try anything food related once and I like it most of the time. I’m pretty good at seeing the good in things. But even I have a line somewhere.
It’s, I prefer the good German, you know, potluck. I have good sausages or some good schnitzel and some spaetzle and some good slaw or sauerkraut. I for years said that I had somehow missed the sauerkraut gene.
I just didn’t like sauerkraut. And then literally within the last five years, it finally hit me what the whole point of sauerkraut is. I think I finally had let somebody talk me into a decent German, you know, like a vice versa or something, with some sauerkraut and had it and some mustard. And I was like, I get it now. Okay, all right. I get it now.
[00:50:49] Remy: I think a lot of it too is like, is the quality of the sauerkraut. We just had our Oktoberfest and a German lady put it on Rita and she just made her own sauerkraut. Just started, you know, fermenting the cabbage, however long ago and just made her own sauerkraut right up front.
And so we have this homemade sauerkraut. And it’s so good, you just like, you just eat it. You could just eat it. It’s okay to. You want to eat it, you know.
[00:51:18] Cory: So I think you don’t really realize how that sour. How, how that, that sour, bittery, you know, how that. I mean, it’s just pickled cabbage is what it is. And, and pickles are good. And you realize what the point of that pickle is to cut through.
The point of that is to cut through the richness of the meat and such. And you’re just like, oh, okay, balance everything out.
So, yeah, I’ve rediscovered the sauerkraut gene within myself. I’ve made my ancestors proud.
[00:51:49] Remy: So getting back to your ancestors and the sauerkraut gene, Elca, take me on your spiritual journey.
[00:51:57] Cory: Okay, so getting back to this story. Yeah, so I was over at this, at. At the CLCA church in town through my undergrad.
Got married in that church to my wife. We’re still married.
And then Pastor Wold retired and that’s when the nice lady took over.
And the thing was, and there were some other things that went on with that church. There was, not to use any names, but there were. There was somebody who was prominent in like the later leadership of that church, who was, who was having.
Who was for to not to mince words, breaking the seventh commandment. And there was no. And it was pretty much an open secret. This was happening. And there was no. There was not even an inkling of church discipline. And then between that and then the pastor, their pastry, whatever we want to call her once again, we’re trying to give her a fair shake. But the sermons kept getting.
They were definitely. They all had a political kind of bent to them. And actually the breaking point wasn’t even me. It was my wife who was, say, raised ELCA and still considers herself an ELCA Lutheran. But. But this woman was giving a sermon on the woman with the issue who had been bleeding and touched the robe and made it sound. Basically made the entire. Through the entire sermon made it sound like Jesus had to act like this misogynistic man to this woman to be accepted by the crowd or whatever, even though he was going to show mercy. And we’re driving home from that and Nan Veronica is like, that’s not my Lord. That was not my. That’s. She is making. This woman is making things up. You know, this is. And. And that was kind of the. That was pretty much the end of it there, you know, between the other things that had happened. It was. And that it was just like, why are we still here? And so we stopped going. But then the problem is when you stop going, it’s like then the inertia kind of unless you immediately go and find someplace else. You know, you get used to sleeping in Sunday mornings. And so we did that for a while, but then we had our son and it’s like, well, we need to find something to do. And so we tried several different non denominational churches in the Wichita area at the suggestion of this friend or the other.
Some of them were better than others. Once again, I’d go in with a hard ear of how are we addressing the gospel here? And it was never, like I said, if you’re actually preaching from the Bible and you have at least some education, 99.9% of the time, you’re not going to say objectionable.
But it came to a point where we had been going to this one church for a while and you know, some friends of Veronica’s had invited us and people seemed nice enough and there was a praise band, you know, there was a drum kid on stage behind plexiglass, you know, in the whole thing. But. And so, yeah, and it’s really funny when. Because I think this discourse had happened on Twitter this last week about the praise music or the hymns versus. Versus Contemporary Christian music, that thread and the people in. And I had to. I felt it when somebody is. Somebody said, the people who complain about hims being.
Hims being.
Corey. What’s the word? Being boring, you know, had never. You know, when you’re seeing contemporary Christian music, you’re saying the same. You’re singing the same phrase 50 years, 50 times in a row. You know, you’re not even going through different verses.
It was that. That was our experience. Like, God is love.
God is love. You know, for like, 10 straight minutes. And the drummer gets his solo in, and the guitarist gets his solo in, and, you know, it’s just like, okay, this is. This is maybe not the worst concert I’ve ever been to, but can we at least get to the teaching?
We’d been there for a while, and I was like, okay, you know, the people are nice enough, and whatever. The pastor then came to talk to us, like, after, you know, one day after service. And here’s where I realized exactly how Lutheran I actually was.
I realized that the Holy Spirit had not departed from me because of this. And I didn’t really just realize I hadn’t. And I had learned it so well that I didn’t even realize that I was being Lutheran.
And the guy walks up to us, and he’s like, hey, you’ve been here. Nice to see you again. You know, you guys have been here for some months. You know, I think you guys are probably ready to, like, officially join the church, and I think we need to get you guys baptized. And I immediately said, we’ve been baptized.
[00:57:34] Remy: Amazing.
[00:57:35] Cory: I mean, just. No, we’ve been baptized. He goes, yeah, but you are willing to make that commitment to here? You know, you make the commitment. No, no, no. We’ve. We’ve been baptized.
And. Yeah, but you’re. And he’s still trying to sell it, and. And I. And I didn’t realize how.
How I. How bad I doubled down, and he’s. When he’s. And he pushed it for the third time because. No, but I really think it would be better if you did this again. And I started reciting the Apostles Creed.
[00:58:06] Remy: Amazing.
[00:58:09] Cory: One baptism for the remission of sins. We’ve been baptized, and he didn’t. After that. We stopped going, like, very shortly after that.
Then a little bit later, when my son was playing soccer and we got in with the team with my brothers where my nephew was playing, and they were organized out of this Missouri Synod church on the east side of town. It was a bit of a drive.
And then eventually, you know, and so we went to there a couple of times, but it was a bit of a drive. And they’re a little bit saying they weren’t quite as liturgical.
They were a lot better than the non denominational church. But you know, it’s still a little bit informal.
Excuse me for that. And then one day I did a Google search. It was like, is there any Missouri Senate church is like closer so I don’t have to drive all the way out to.
Out to Greenwich. And they and Greenwich Road. And I looked and there’s like a half mile from my house is Grace Lutheran Church. Like Louis Walk.
[00:59:20] Remy: Amazing.
[00:59:20] Cory: Okay, cool. And so happened to be the pastor there at Grace Lutheran Church was a certain man named Jeffrey Boyle, who is now a professor at Concordia at Fort Wayne. He’s actually teaching at the seminary now.
And so that. And so I walked in and got some really good. And immediately it was the full liturgical experience. Like the church that I grew up in was followed the Divine Service 3 or 1, 2 or 3 depending on what the week was.
But we didn’t have a processional with a crucifix or incense or stuff like that. And so I got there and I got this.
It was a lot like the church I grew up in, but better. But it was a little bit more. Even more serious about it. And that’s what I liked. I talked to lots of people when they talk about the different services that they go to, like the Baptists and their services and friends that I have there in different automations. And it’s like. And I understand that there’s some churches that are like people go there to be joyful. Like life is hard enough and I need to go and rejoice in the Lord.
And I get that. I get where some people might need that might be the need for that particular community.
I have no doubt that somebody really. That people really look forward to that. Especially if life being so hard. Me, I have the opposite problem. It’s like my life is actually pretty good and I’m really bad at being really, really prideful. I don’t know if you could tell from Twitter, but I need to be brought low and I need to and not brought low in the way that the Baptists would do it.
And to be challenged to just do more. I need law and gospel, right. And that’s why I love the service. You immediately start with the corporate confession and absolution and then you get into the word and get into the liturgy and then it’s like any good Lutheran, any good lcms or AALC Church. I’m sure you’re getting long gospel every week.
And by the end of that it’s such a simple message that it’s.
This sums up like 95 plus percent of my engagements on Lutheran Twitter, is that I don’t understand why this is so hard of a concept for everybody else to understand.
Back to the pride again, right? So it’s like the Presbyterians. Well, obviously because of this verse and this verse, the double predestination or whatever else. And there are some very, very, very faithful, good, faithful Calvinists out there in the world and even, even on Twitter, you know, so I don’t want to.
[01:02:38] Remy: Like talk it down and well educated.
[01:02:41] Cory: And well educated and, and, and yes, I have not read Calvin.
[01:02:45] Remy: Very smart.
[01:02:47] Cory: I have not read Calvin and the people, the couple that I’m thinking of in particular. And then they, if they, if they end up seeing this, which they might because they’re the kind of, kind of people that would watch a Lutheran podcast just to see my. Probably just to see my chubby butt on it.
But they’ve told me that Calvinism is caricatured pretty badly. Of course, so is Lutheranism too. So I probably owe them that much to at least kind of read it at some point. I don’t fear that I’m going to be changing my votes anytime soon, but because in the popular, in the actual day to day application of it, man, they’re just a. I just, I see more problems than I see, than I see solutions for it. Like the assurance that they’re looking for with it. And I get why, why that assurance is comforting. But you don’t have to, you don’t have to do the mental gymnastics to that point to get it. To get that assurance, you just have to go with this is what the word said and stop there. And you’re there.
[01:03:55] Remy: Yeah.
[01:03:55] Cory: You don’t have to prove to yourself through, through re. Through your own reason that, that, that’s enough. You just have to go, that’s enough.
[01:04:05] Remy: Also, no shade against my boy John Calvin. But Calvin’s writings, how boring. Just like, just, just he was a lawyer turned theologian. How boring do you think his writing is?
[01:04:22] Cory: You could get me talking about lawyers turned theologians within our own synod. Oh, sorry, not within our own Senate anymore.
That’s the, his writing.
Yeah. I don’t know.
[01:04:40] Remy: Calvin’s writing is exactly as boring as you think.
[01:04:43] Cory: It’s that bad, huh? Okay. I had a friend of mine, the friend who challenged me to make Pasca. She was raised Roman Catholic and has lapsed essentially. And I went to visit her a few weeks ago, and we were having a fairly deep discussion about theology and as deep as she could go. But it’s amazing. I mentioned this at the men’s retreat this weekend. It’s amazing to.
To the average catechized Roman Catholic that a moderately well catechized Lutheran sounds like a theological student.
Yeah, sounds like an actual theologian. Because she’s saying. She asked me, in all honesty, in all seriousness, just like, have you ever considered actually just studying theology and getting into it for real and getting a degree, whatever else? And I was like, if I did that, I’d have to read Barth, and I don’t want to read Barth.
[01:05:47] Remy: You have to read so much more. There’s so much reading. There’s too much reading. It’s. I mean, there’s not too much reading. There’s probably not enough reading.
[01:05:54] Cory: But, like. Like, I want to. I wish I could hang with your boy Cooper, but, man, that’s like. Like, I’ve got. I’ve got.
[01:06:00] Remy: Nobody can hang with Cooper, dude.
[01:06:02] Cory: Well, no, I know he’s got to.
[01:06:03] Remy: Be one of the smartest. One of the smartest men I’ve ever met.
It’s. It’s mind blowing having him as a professor in class. It’s insane because he just knows. He knows, like, he has this encyclopedic knowledge of church history and church fathers, movements within the church, doctrines that people. I mean, he just. He’ll straight up be like, has anybody ever heard of this really obscure theologian that no one has ever read because his work isn’t even in English yet. And he died in, like, 586. And we’re like, no, Cooper, nobody’s heard of that guy, you know, and he’s like, oh, well, he had this really interesting theory on the atonement. And you can see how that later influences, you know, some other guy you’ve not heard of. And it’s just. It’s insane. It’s. I’m like, how do you. He just spends all his time, like, studying. I don’t know how he does it.
[01:06:52] Cory: Yeah, I don’t know. He’s apparently. Apparently has time to do yo yo tricks, you know, I’m like, how do you have.
[01:06:58] Remy: Super genius dude? He’s a super genius. He. What it is. I can tell everybody the truth because I actually know Cooper personally. I have his phone number. I call him. I hang out with him whenever we’re near enough to hang out. He is a very good dude. I can tell you the Jordan and this I hate to put this out here on the podcast because it’s actually going to wreck him. It’s probably going to ruin his whole career.
[01:07:23] Cory: Oh, whatever.
[01:07:24] Remy: But he. He has that drug from Limitless, the Bradley Cooper movie. Was it Bradley Cooper? Yeah, it was. It was Bradley Cooper. He is the limitless drug. He takes.
[01:07:35] Cory: He takes the.
[01:07:37] Remy: He takes the magic.
[01:07:38] Cory: The.
[01:07:38] Remy: The limitless drug, and it, like, magically, he can use 100% of his brain, and the rest of us are down here with just like 8 to 10.
[01:07:45] Cory: Is he dealing?
I get it on that.
No, no, no.
[01:07:54] Remy: I wish I’ve tried. I want the limitless drug.
[01:07:59] Cory: There’s a guy.
[01:08:00] Remy: There’s a guy in my town that says that he has the limitless drug and he’s willing to sell it to me, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually just crack cocain.
[01:08:08] Cory: Guy is selling.
[01:08:09] Remy: He doesn’t look like he takes the limitless tr.
[01:08:11] Cory: I was. I was gonna make it. I was thinking. You were talking about Joe for a second until you. Until you said that.
[01:08:17] Remy: No, no, no, no. I’m talking about the homeless guy that.
[01:08:21] Cory: Hangs out at the church.
Oh, boy.
So we could talk about.
[01:08:30] Remy: Thanks so much for.
Oh.
[01:08:35] Cory: Right. I mean, this is.
[01:08:36] Remy: We’ve blown through an hour, man.
[01:08:39] Cory: I’d say. I didn’t even get to talk. I wanted to talk about all of our Twitter friends. It’s like, congratulations, Here I am, episode two.
Episode two.
Because I did want to talk about. Because I mentioned this in the notes. It’s like everybody. You can’t get on Twitter any day. Or X, if you want to call it that now. Everybody’s like, this is so toxic.
This is so toxic. I’m going to call it Twitter. Going to call it Twitter until somebody says. Until somebody says it’s cringe. And then I’m going to call it Twitter even harder.
No, but the thing is, like, the reason I’m on Twitter now is because of all y’all. You know, it’s.
I. I stay away. I try to stay away from the outreach machine part of it. I’m. I’m usually successful, but now that Concord Carry is back, maybe not so much for going forward for a while, until I adjust, but there’s a bunch of people there that. That’s where I can get a hold of you, you know? And it’s like, I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to lose the ability to get a hold of you or Joe or the Stoddards or the Lawrences and shout out to Nevin, wherever he is, out hunting this weekend with the kids, out of the wife and out of the country. You know, there’s like all these people like all scattered over and around the country, around the world and we can meet up and actually have, have, have fellowship essentially. You know, have, have civil conversations and, and not, not, you know, not crawl up, you know, not get in each other’s faces about things and actually have. It’s like we’re the whole other than, other than the few, you know, the few real rabble rousers out there and everybody knows who they are and they even know who they are and that’s why they do it. I’m thinking like Concord, Carry and Metz and you know who go out, the Texans really who go out and troll for the Lord within our group.
It’s always a good time. Even when things get contentious. Like even the thing about that Joshua Steele was talking about last week, the question about.
Right. Difference in right.
If it would be preferable for a Lutheran to go to a Lutheran church that was using contemporary worship rather than not go to church at all.
And on one level that’s a really obvious, that’s a really obvious answer. It’s like, no, you’ve got to go to church. You’re part of the church whether you like it or not.
You got to go and hear the word and participate in the church.
But Carrie had the thing, well, if the form has changed, then the doctrine has changed. And it was the point he was making and it felt like it was going to get out of hand, but it didn’t because believe it or not, we’re all adults and, and sometimes we can even use little magic black box for something that’s not completely self destructive. And it’s just really fun. Yeah, yeah, it’s a good, it’s really, it brings so much say, confidence. It’s not the right word, but it’s nice to know, especially like we’re having this issue in Wichita right now where we’re trying to get the different churches together, especially with regards to Christian education because there’s a couple of churches that have schools and we kind of want to set up something like the Catholic diocese has in terms of reciprocating tuition sort of deals to encourage a Lutheran education. Right. But you have that sort of a shared identity like within the Catholic diocese, whether you’re going to, within Wichita, if you’re going to Cape and Mount Carmel or you’re going to Bishop Carroll or whatever, you’re still Catholics. And the Lutherans have been even LCMS Churches are kind of fragmented to each other, and we’re trying to build that community. And I’m very hopeful about this because of, believe it or not, Twitter, because once we sit down and we can actually talk about things, we realize exactly how much we share in common. And when we get something wrong, we can take that, say, church discipline, but we can take the gentle instruction and come back and be better about it.
There’s a bunch of people on Twitter that I really hope I get to meet someday. And I don’t know why we would ever have a Twitter meetup. Sounds like maybe the most insane thing that anybody could ever ask for.
[01:14:04] Remy: It sounds like the. It sounds like the exact thing my parents would never let me do.
[01:14:09] Cory: Right.
[01:14:11] Remy: For good reason.
For good reason.
[01:14:15] Cory: But it’s like, do I. Do I need to crash an AALC thing just so I can meet you and you and Joe and Jordan, I mean, and Lisa, of course, you are.
[01:14:23] Remy: Totally allowed to crash AALC things.
[01:14:25] Cory: I’d have to.
[01:14:26] Remy: I mean, somehow.
[01:14:30] Cory: What’s that? I’m sorry.
[01:14:31] Remy: I mean, no, not necessarily.
In just a couple of weeks, we’re having the pastors conference, you know, and I’m sure no one would mind if he stopped by for.
[01:14:43] Cory: Where are you having your.
[01:14:44] Remy: Minneapolis.
[01:14:45] Cory: Okay. That’s still a little bit of a. Yeah, I was like, I’m a good Midwesterner. I could drive that. But I. You know.
[01:14:55] Remy: Corey, I am going to go ahead and cut her off here.
[01:14:58] Cory: All right. I was just going to ask you about how the. How the.
[01:15:00] Remy: Thank you so much.
[01:15:03] Cory: Thanks for having me.
[01:15:04] Remy: I’m sorry.
[01:15:04] Cory: I’m sorry we haven’t been. I’m sorry. For a little bit. All over the place compared to some of your. Some of your others. But no, I hope. I hope you get at least an hour’s worth of good material here.
[01:15:16] Remy: Well, I’ve recorded an hour and 15 minutes, so I think that that’s at least an hour, so thank you, sir. And I’ll put a link to your Twitter and everything down there, and we’ll see you on the Internet and we’ll see you in the discord.
[01:15:31] Cory: Okay.
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