Citation Needed - The Ark Encounter

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Ark Encounter is a Christian theme park that opened in Williamstown, Kentucky, United States, in 2016.[2][3] The centerpiece of the park is a large representation of Noah's Ark, based on the Genesis flood narrative contained in the Bible. It is 510 feet (155.4 m) long, 85 feet (25.9 m) wide, and 51 feet (15.5 m) high.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Eli Bosnik and I'll be sailing the ship this evening, but I'll need podcast hosts two by two to help me. First up, two guys who knew the dinosaurs who got left behind, Noah and Cecil. Yeah, we've been looking for a way to break this to you listeners, but I'm actually that Noah. And I'm actually that Cecil, Cecil the C6 sea serpent.

Yeah. It was a long time ago. And also joining us tonight, the two guys who definitely would have eaten the unicorn Heath and Tom. The horn marrow was so good. Oh, good. Shot of bourbon right down it, come on. I think unicorn was so good. Shot of bourbon right down it. Come on.

The unicorn was just okay. I mean, I would eat it again, but not like first again. Show. Yeah. Game. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons. Too much glitter.

The subject of this week's show. Rambos don't taste like you think. You know? Whole thing tastes like Skittles, you know? Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons, the subject of this week's show has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the American taxpayer, depending on how you count it. And we?

We pay our taxes. So if you'd like to support us the way we've technically supported you, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. You'll get pre-show shenanigans and access to our patron-only bonus episodes, which include readings of My Immortal, articles on blackbelt.com, and so much more. And with that out of the way, tell us Heath, on this most glorious day, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about at last? You said today.

Okay. No, you switched it. You switched it. So it wouldn't be today again. Nice job at the last second. We're going to be talking about the Ark encounter theme park in Williamstown, Kentucky. Oh, indeed we are. And Noah, sometimes we go looking for subjects and sometimes subjects come on looking for

us. Are you ready to hit this ball off the tee or what? Yeah, to be clear, in this instance, I glanced at the Wikipedia article here and there for dates and dollar amounts, but this was the first essay that I essentially just wrote from memory. Right, exactly. Until you get your own Wikipedia article, you have not found an easier subject. Our job for like 10 ten plus years has been like basically talking about stupid shit. So what is the Ark and Counter theme park

in Williamstown, Kentucky? It is the brainchild of a young earth creationist, Christian apologist and literal son of Ham, Kenneth Alfred Ham, better known as Ken Ham, or as Heath has memorably dubbed him Amish Wolverine. You picked the wrong barn, bub. Shlup, shlup, shlup. Aren't they supposed to make a different sound than shlup? So Ken Ham is a piece of shit from Queensland, Australia, who was, and I didn't know this until I started researching for this essay, once a science teacher.

What? Come on. Yeah, he got a bachelor's degree in applied science with an emphasis on environmental biology from the Queensland Institute of Technology. And how proud I'm sure his alma mater is that I brought them on, right? I get it. I think my high school burned my face out of all the yearbooks. Yours is the only yearbook with an in damnation memorandum page.

I tried to get my college to list me in the notable alumni as influencer. I have not heard no responses to that one. Which is actually a nicer response than I expected. Right, honestly, yeah. So after college, Ken got a job teaching science at a high school in Queensland, but he got disillusioned by all the truth that they taught in science class. Or I guess he got illusioned by it.

But so he decided to quote, this is an actual quote of his, do something about the influence that evolutionary thinking was having on students and the public as a whole. End quote. So he resigned his teaching position in 1979 and started doing the exact opposite. He and his wife founded creationist science supplies and creationist science, educational media services, which sought to provide creationist materials for anti-truth schools. Okay, what the fuck would that be? The supplies? Like, evolution charts with just the same guy for them? That's what we're talking about.

I just- that backstory implies that he somehow made it all the way through a teaching degree without running into evolution. I mean, I made it all the way through a teaching degree. Eli, you know what? Fair point, Tom retract. All right. So now a quick word on what we mean by creationism here and specifically young earth creationism, I feel like our listeners mostly understand this, but to be

clear, this is the belief that the Bible is literally true down to the generations and ages that it lists for the Septuagint and the Shirenes and forefathers and what. Yeah. So stupid. And when you do the math on all those generations, you find that the earth is only a little over 6,000 years old or 9,000, depending on who you ask, because it's literally impossible for such a contradictory book to be correct. Might be 9,000, you son of a bitch.

They get so angry. But that's what they believe. And in pursuit of that belief, they construct a whole bunch of pseudoscience that defends their position. I mean, you could make the argument that 9,000 years is less wrong than 6,000, but it's like a drop in the ocean kind of ratio. Exactly. Yeah.

Now, of course, many of the most observable proofs of the Bible's prolific errancy comes from two fields of science, evolution and geology. Now, evolution is their main enemy, right? That's their boss fight, and they have truckloads of nonsense apologetics to combat that easily observable phenomenon. But when it comes to geological questions, they basically just have the one. The flood did it. Pretty much every

question about how rock layers formed and how fossils formed and how mountains rose and continents drifted all get swept away with Genesis chapters 6 through 9. Right, but it doesn't get swept away. The geological record doesn't indicate a flood of the entire world. Flood is just a word they can say next when they're talking about it. It's like when somebody makes up fake science and you call them out, you're like, that's made up, and they're like, yeah, but it's,

no, it's quantum. Right, yeah. Like, okay, you said a word next. That's nothing, though. I don't even know why anyone on their side tries to explain things, like, at all. Like, when the starting place is magic, it's like, oh,

oh, the evidence doesn't match. And what we'd expect if there was a global flood, huh? Well, it was a magic flood. So put that in your spreadsheets nerds and I'll see you all in it from above. So quantum magic. Yeah, right. Yeah. So anyway, so it was this reliance on the Genesis narrative that led after a series of mergers, rebrandings and relocations to the founding of Answers in Genesis, the organization that Ham is most known for today. And from the moment it was founded, AIG's chief goal was to build a fake museum dedicated to lying to children about how the world works. AIG was founded in 1997 and it would take a full 10 years before they would see that dream realized with the 75,000 square foot creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky in 2007. I like that they pick and choose the answers from Genesis. You're not getting the answer

to how to make an internal combustion engine from Genesis. No, Bernoulli's principle. You're getting how big a fucking arc was. That's what you're getting. Hey, any answers in there about ethics at all? I said 300 cubits is the answer I have. Hands down. No, it's worth noting here that along the way the coalition of organizers Hamill is heading up fell apart. The disputes aren't particularly interesting, but in 2005 the AIG confederation split up. noting here that along the way the coalition of organizers Hamill is heading up fell apart. The disputes aren't particularly interesting, but in 2005, the AIG confederation split up.

Oh, that was just so they could go two by two. No, but in the same year that the $27 million museum opened creationist ministries international, which had been part of that coalition, sued Ham and AIG for deceptive conduct in their business dealings. That suit would later be settled out of court in 2009, but it's worth flagging early on that Ken Ham earned his reputation for shady business dealings early. How do you do free money for lying wrong? You're Ken fucking Ham. Right. Yeah. Now, so I've never been to the creation museum, but Eli has made me watch

documentaries that are just people walking around. So good drew multiple. So we're going there. So sad. And it's actually so many jazz scooters. So many. You never you can't imagine it. It's all ramps to inside.

Yep. Now it's actually a pretty substantial place. If you don't have a clear idea in your head of like how big 75,000 square feet is that that'd be about twice the size Of the average grocery store. Yeah, or about thirty three thousand three hundred thirty three square How you measure but yeah, yeah So it boasts a special effects theater, whatever the fuck that is a planetarium and an alas or a skeleton with such a Sorted backstory that could practically have its own fucking citation needed episode

Right the story involves a sham documentary a possible theft an alleged effort at tax evasion and Donald Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows what? Okay, but there's no way that sham documentary was made by a literal pedophile, right? It's not that also, to make it worse. Okay, at the Creation Museum Planetarium, do they just project the word Herbament, question mark, above your heads, and you stare at it till you get bored and leave?

Yeah, right. I think it might be. So the Creation Museum was, of course, controversial as all hell from the minute it opened. Its literal stated goal is to deceive children and leave them less informed going out than coming in. But that didn't stop public schools in Kentucky from taking classes there on field trips. And that practice apparently went on under the radar of watchdog groups for nearly a

decade. It was only in 2016 that the Freedom for Religion Foundation found out about it and put a stop to it. To everyone that was going to say they weren't going to learn anything in Kentucky anyway, I want to point out that that might be true, but they were actively teaching them the wrong thing here. Right, this is negative. Yeah, this is exactly negative.

Thank you. Yeah, but two grocery stores worth of bullshit about evolution wasn't enough for Ken Ham. He dreamed of more. He dreamed of a life-size replica of Noah's Ark, because apparently he thought that seeing how seaworthy such a thing obviously wasn't was gonna help his cause. Yeah, his first idea was a mountain god made that he couldn't move, but George Orwell kept jumping through a time loop and strangling him.

So, you know. He'll do that to you. Now, it should surprise nobody that the guy whose whole thing is pretending that we've known the secrets of the universe for the last 2000 years had not come up with an original idea. There have been plenty of other attempts at a replica in the past, and a couple of them were even successful. Asterisk. A Nozark theme park opened in 1997 in Hong Kong, though they wouldn't actually complete their 450 foot replica for 10 years.

There's another 450 foot long one that actually floats. Well, asterisk, right? It sits on a thing that floats anyway. That's not the same at all. No, no, it's not. No. Yeah. His would do that. If you put a boat under it. So this is float.

I'm not a boat. So, yes, this is Johan's arc. It's it's based out of the Netherlands. And though it is no more seaworthy than Ken Ham's monstrosity, it is sitting on 25 Lash Together barges so that it can exist on water at least. There's also a half scale model to do to build that one made before any two thirds scale model in New Brunswick. Okay.

This is the best. They tried to launch Johan's are out of a port in the Netherlands and immediately smashed into a bunch of other boats. Huge accident. Really bad. Sorry. Smashed other boats. Huge accident, really bad. Sorry, smashed into boats. I shouldn't say other boats because Johan's Ark is not a boat, much like I am not a boat.

And I mean that officially, like in the legal sense, not a boat. At one point, they docked in Ipswich, England, and they got stuck there when the local government refused to let him leave because yeah, it's technically not even a boat. It's just a wooden box, a giant wooden box that can't even go anywhere without being towed. So the Ark thing, Johan's Ark, got impounded and it rang up a bunch of parking tickets while the idiots who made it refused to pay

for very basic safety equipment. It's the best. What do you mean give it to the dove? No, man, you take the ticket. I'm not giving it to the dove. All right. So regardless of the fact that it was a bad idea to begin with and other people had already done it, Ham plowed ahead with his passion project in December of 2010. Answers in Genesis and a new for-profit

corporation called Ark and Counters LLC announced that they intended to build a theme park called Ark and Counter that would, in their words, quote, lend credence to the biblical account of a catastrophic flood and to dispel doubts that Noah could have fit two of every kind of animal onto a 500 foot long ark. End quote. They estimated that the project would cost about 150 million dollars. OK, look, that credence got repoed, by the way. Look, I know mission statements are always aspirational, but last I checked,

grocery stores don't contain one of every animal. So I think a boat twice that size might not do the trick. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, but tell me again how spending $150 million to hire teams and teams of people to use heavy equipment and modern tools and get their materials from a global supply chain will lend credence to the idea that once one guy did the same thing by himself in his backyard with a mallet and chisel.

Well, he had his son's help. Is this quantum? Who was rounding up the animals? They rounded up. He was like, so they intended to raise the money privately, but they intended to recoup a bunch of it publicly. Like for example, they intended to use a tax incentive program that the state of Kentucky had for tourist attractions that would cover 25% of the cost if they

met certain attendance goals after it was built. They also talked the city of Williamstown into designating a two kilometer radius around the site that they intended to build on as a tax increment financing district, which meant that 75% of the sales and property taxes in that area would be given to the park for the next 30 years if I'm paying for that thing or set with 75% of my property taxes for 30 years they better let me toboggan in it in the offseason I mean it's empty enough see so you know it's really easy to demonize the city of Williamstown over this.

Yes, it is. It sucks that any taxpayer dollars are going towards religious indoctrination. But part of separation of church and state is that the state of Kentucky has to treat this for-profit business just like any other for-profit business, regardless of its religious mission. So I'm actually okay with the state incentives for tourist attractions going their way, but that doesn't mean that Williamstown has to create new tax-free zones and shit to lure them in.

That being said, Williamstown was given a very deceptive report suggesting there's going to be all this employment and long-term growth in the hospitality industry. So if you're inclined to see them as one of the bad guys, I guess I can at least assure you that they get what's coming to them in the end. Yeah. And to be clear, when they said employment, they meant we'll hire people if they sign a hetero fuck pledge. That's what Spenham and Answers in Genesis was talking about.

Also way too little attendance and jobs regardless of that. But we thought we was going to get to join the cult isn't stirring the sympathy I feel like no is hoping it Yeah, and also I have been to Williamstown, Kentucky And I'm I'm just struggling to imagine what kind of property tax base they have to spare in that net Yeah literal wood They're standing outside of some guy's cabin, ah do I want some of the literal wood. It's just the woods there. Like they're standing outside of some guy's cabin. Ah, do I want some of the moonshine?

Are they like levying against the raccoons? What is this? No one there. Oh, with their little hands. They gather stuff up, little shinies. So in February of 2012, they sealed the deal with the city and they bought the land. But it turned out that raising one hundred and fifty million dollars is really fucking hard. At the time of the purchase, they had to sheepishly admit that they'd only managed to scare about five million dollars in funding to that point.

So close. Really, man. Almost. And it would take apparently at least twenty four million dollars just to start building the damn thing, just to do all the planning and shit. Now here's the big advantage Ham had at this point. His lack of fundraising wasn't just his problem, right? He was the one that would have to give up on his dream of owning an art park, but at this point, local politicians in Williamstown and nearby had been selling the project to their constituency.

Constituency is a pretty big word for a town of less than 4,000 residents, Noah. Right, yeah. So, no, but it was supposed to create 900 jobs at the park and as many more because of increased demands for hotels and restaurants, for tourists flocking to see this amazing art replica. So now, at least to some extent, these politicians were on the line to make this thing work as well. So in December of 2013, when Ham had still only raised 14 million fucking dollars, they offered $62 million

in tax increment financing bonds. Whatever the fuck that means. I have to quote from the Wiki here because I don't know money stuff. Quote, the unrated bonds were backed by the ARK encounters projected future revenues, but the city was not liable for repaying them in the event that the revenues did not materialize Quote interrupt this podcast to remind you that the government charges you a 3% fee for paying your taxes on time I know I can help translate that actually means that the financing was based on the Financial equivalent of crossing your fingers and hopping on one foot while selling pretty please bonds.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just want to be sure. Yeah, they should have sold NFTs, which have backing invalid. Get a picture of a monkey. Yeah, picture of a monkey. Now one wrinkle to these bonds was that you needed to sell quick. The city announced them in December, but if at least $55 million worth didn't sell by

February 6th of the following year, all of the bonds would be automatically redeemed. And as of early January, more than halfway through the sales window, they'd only sold $26.5 million worth. So close. But Hale had one more trick left up his sleeve. To push the project past that all-important threshold, all he needed to do was let Bill Nye kick him in the nuts on camera. Alright, well, this is an audio medium, which means sadly the interstitial break can't

just be us watching that full debate and laughing at him. So we'll figure something out with a little apropos of nothing. Plus, it's a stick, which is just like a carrot. Dude, what are you talking about? Hey guys, what's up? Eli thinks bacon is a vegetable? Okay, that's definitely not true. That sounds wrong. But it comes in a strip just like fruit by the foot. I don't know, he does have a point there. Nope, no, he doesn't. He does not have a point. Okay, you know what? We'll settle this officially. Let's have a debate about it.

Ooh, what? We'll do like an Oxford style debate. I'll be bacon as a vegetable and then you can be like against my position. That sounds good. No, no, it's not good. He's just wrong. You should just stop being wrong.

We shouldn't do a debate. If I'm wrong, you should debate me and prove it. He's got you there, Heath. He does not have me there. He does not have me anywhere. Look, debate is a terrible way to know stuff. It literally just takes an idea that's wrong, gives it by definition equal footing at the beginning,

and then treats it more seriously than it deserves. Ideas are not like a dim sum cart that people get to choose from. We have to trust experts and we have to expect those experts to be self-correcting. That's how we know true things in like real reality. It sounds to me like you're afraid bacon is a vegetable. Thank you. I was going to say that. Thank you. I hate it so much here. Can I have the bacon?

And we're back. When we left off a guy who lost an argument to a high school textbook he was teaching from decided to go against the guy who made a generation love learning. How'd that go for him, Noah? Did he win? Bad and good, actually. So from everything I can tell, Bill Nye seems like a swell guy. He's funny. He's motivated in all the right ways, put a lot of good shit into the world. And on the one occasion where I met him and got all fanboy about it, he was really nice. So it seems really harsh to blame him for the arc encounter coming into existence. That being said, it's totally his fucking fault. And I'm pretty sure even he's

admitted as much at this point. Because in January of 2014, only a few weeks into that controversial bond sale, Ken Ham announced that Bill Nye had accepted an invitation to debate him about Young Earth Creationism at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Now, I want to say that immediately, the atheist community in one voice started warning him off of doing it. A certain not yet prominent voice in the community may even have done a diatribe about what a bad idea it was. but Nye ignored the entreaties of people who knew Ken Ham better than he did and he did the debate anyway. And to his credit, he fucking destroyed Ken Ham in that debate. Sure, dad.

It is one of the most lopsided debates I have ever seen in my life. Bill Nye is on Ham's home turf and the audience is lining up to suck Bill Nye off at the end of it. But the debate did generate enough buzz to get those bond sales up over $55 million and get work going on the ARK replica. Okay. Moral of the story. Don't do debates when one entire side and all of its followers are literally incapable of knowing when they lose. Right. So in other words, don't do debates. Now one of the things that bedevils you when you try to build a replica of Noah's Ark, of course, is that there is an universal agreement on exactly how big a cube it was back then.

So the existing replicas had settled on 450 feet stem to stern, but Ham decided to go with 510 feet or 155 meters, perhaps because they were using a more nuanced understanding of the source material, or perhaps because they wanted to have the biggest bullshit boat on the market, but one way or the other, that's the number they landed on. Okay, if you can't agree on 6,000 years versus 9,000, based on the book of a perfect God.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're going to have trouble with the distance from your elbow to the tip of your finger, which is how it's defined in the Bible. And I feel like Amish Wolverine, he's working with six fingers on each hand minimum. So it's actually tricky, right? So meanwhile, the city of Williamstown is busy

spending on godly sums of money improving roads to and from this new attraction. First, they spend 1.15 million on road improvements and then an additional 9 million improving the off ramp from nearby Interstate 75. Meanwhile, hams consortium must have been a terrible fucking off-ramp when they started. So Ham's consortium filed a new application though asking for even more tax incentives, you know, now that it was too late for them to back out, along with a new feasibility study that promised even more visitors jobs and ancillary revenues.

Okay, but hear me out. If you give us infinity dollars, we become the economy and we've technically created all the jewels. Right, yeah. So they broke ground on the park's main attraction in February of 2015 and over a thousand craftsmen would ultimately contribute to its construction, which makes the already implausible story of an old man and his family building it in the Bronze Age all the more credible, apparently. Oh my god.

Yeah. Now, the original plan was to build it Bronze Age style using only wooden pegs to hold it together. But it turns out you can't put a bunch of kids in an experimentally designed 510-foot-long, 85-foot-wide, five-story wooden structure. So ultimately, they agreed to follow building codes and not get shut down. No, Ken, we can't build it that way. We also think it's a health code violation to fill it to the top with manure every four hours. We don't care how realistic that is. Okay. This Ken Ham walking away grumbling, but know it and have to deal with stupid OSHA breathing down

his neck. Yeah, right, right. Still, despite the reluctant use of some metal, the structure uses an insane amount of wood, over 3.3 million board feet, according to their weirdly specific promotional materials. But once construction started, it actually went pretty quick and the park was ready to open on July 7th of 2016. And apparently they chose 7-7 as the opening date to correspond to Genesis 7-7. Quote, and Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. End quote. And given what a random ass quote that is, I call bullshit. And I think that they just decided which weekend was going to work out best for summer tourism. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, if they opened on July 4th, the verse would have been, uh, Hey, no, uh, I'm going to genocide every single living thing. Love God. So like not as fun for the press. Yeah, probably not done July 4th. Um, incidentally, by the way, seven seven would also be the date that the tri state free thinkers would use to protest the park's existence every year thereafter. I point that out because the local advertising companies wouldn't let them promote it on billboards, so it seems like this publicity is the least

I can do. Every year we remind people that they were robbed of $25 million by a guy who still doesn't pay taxes, and they think we're the assholes. Yeah, they do. They do. And of course, I should emphasize here that atheist groups have all kinds of great reasons to protest the existence of this park. As much as Ken Ham loves to sell it as just our blind fury against all things Christian, they did a lot to earn our ire in this instance. Like for example, as Heath already brought up, they have a Christians only hiring policy.

This might be a company that receives taxpayer funds in the form of all those tax incentives. And not only do you have to profess Christianity to work there, but like you have to agree with their form of Christianity, which includes opposition to same sex marriage. You even have to bring a recommendation from your pastor attesting to your Christianness to apply to work there. Can you just show them the fondle marks or do you need like a real note? Yeah, see, so you can check them out on their OnlyFans, the Ark Park casting couch. Yeah, right, right.

Now to their credit- Is this help together with pegs? Now to their credit, when it came out that they were discriminating, the state of Kentucky did try to withdraw the incentives, but in one of the more perverse no URs I've ever seen in my life, Ham filed a religious discrimination suit against the state in defense of his religious discrimination. And then fucking Kentucky voters threw out the Democratic governor they had at the time and the Christian nationalists they replaced him with gave all the ill-gotten gains back. Now to be fair, Ken Ham promised them jobs, not good ones that acknowledge your gay dads are people, right?

Read the copy everybody. Yeah, yeah. So what awaits you at the Arc and Counter theme park? A really big boat that can't actually boat and not much else. Admittedly, I'm hardly the most qualified person on this cast to answer that question. But even on the exhibit section of their website, they are so desperate to pretend that there's 60 dollars a head worth of shit in there that they list the arc's interior and exterior as separate attractions. Come on. What's more, those are the only attractions. Come on. What's more? Those are the only attractions listed. Okay, Noah hear me out. There is a shell-less turtle. It looks like someone put legs on a poo man from South Park and it is worth seeing. It is 100% worth seeing.

There you go. See? $60 worth of poo turtle. $60 worth of poo man right there. You guys, when Cecil and I went to the Ark Park, I got in the parking lot a very stern lecture Not the laugh and point at people which lasted exactly until we got to this shellless turtle at which point See so I were holding each other upright to avoid That's right, okay not exaggerating I look this up on Google images Not exaggerating at all. Not exaggerating. I looked this up on Google images.

There's a bunch of families. They got big smiles in the picture they took. And in the background, there's a fuck it. It's a piss trough from a stadium bathroom for giants right behind them. It's so silly. So I looked at the most recent maps online and I fleshed out the experience for you a little. So here's what you get for your $60 an adult and $32 a kid. You get the big fake boat. You get the Aero Rat Zoo, which includes an animal show. So there's that. There's a buffet, a gift shop, the Freefall Tower, which is all towers,

if you're careless enough, I guess, a virtual reality theater, a carousel, and of course, a carousel, and of course, zip lines, which you have to pay extra for. Okay, the only thing worse than an Ark Park attendee is an Ark Park attendee who zip lines. I hope it ends in a vat of acid. That's my dark and mysterious backstory, Tom. Now, it's probably worth noting that the promised economic boom for Williamstown never materialized. In the eight years that the park's been open, there's been no noticeable growth in the hospitality sector of the town

because there's not enough in the park to make anyone want to stay for more than a day. Right. So if people are coming from a long ways away, they're generally staying in nearby Cincinnati, which has the advantage of not sucking. Except they're chilly. Yes, except except their chili, which is an abomination Thank you. It's so bad. It really is Nobody is a national nobody should eat that and they talk about it probably

Like you're getting mad. It's like you You got to go to gumbo. No, no, no, I don't have to go. No disgusting is you don't have a gun That's why I don't have to go there. So Mo's and you're like, no, no, no, I don't have to go. No, it's disgusting because you don't have a gun. That's why I don't have to go there. So but here's the thing. It's not just that Williamstown didn't see a bunch of new restaurants and hotels and stuff like that and a bunch of new tax revenue. The burden that the park is placed on the city's emergency services,

combined with the generous tax incentives that they're locked into for another two fucking decades, is actually impoverished the area. All for a few hundred jobs that most people in the fucking city aren't Christian enough to get. To be fair, Noah, impoverishing Kentuckians is the state sport of their politicians. Yeah. Since forever. I'm sure they're very much used to it. They didn't even notice. Yeah.

So you know how we always talk about starting a wild, wild country? If we started a wild, wild country in Williamstown, okay, so you know how we always talk about starting a wild wild country if we started a wild wild country in Williamstown, Kentucky Take away their tax incentives. Oh, we're totally we're totally like repossessed their art. Oh my god Right trick Mitch McConnell into coming and do Yeah time with him hang out We're allowed to have a chill, cool time with him. Hang out. And shellless turtle. His weird dead hand.

So, but this financial burden eventually led to the city creating a new tax for tourist attractions. And Ham, who had until then sold himself as this benevolent patriarch of the local community, fought like hell to get out of it. This fight included an embarrassing moment where he actually tried to sell the park to himself for a dollar so that it could be classified as a church instead of a for-profit business. But that didn't work and it just made him look even stupider than spending nine figures to build a boat that can't float in a landlocked state already had. All right, Noah, if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Bill Nye doesn't come to me for advice often enough. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Are you ready for the quiz? That I am. Okay, Noah, we learned about Amish Wolverine this episode. What's the other religion related X-Man? A. Professor Pax. B. Jubilee see Catholic Bishop or D

nice Canaanite crawler all right I'll go with be Canaanite crawler I know he was DVD teleported all right no which right. You got it right. All right. No. Which of the following is my favorite extra detail? A, the Ark Park got damaged by heavy rain. So good. So good.

B, Ken Ham sued the insurance company when they didn't pay as much as he wanted for the heavy rain damage. C. I'm just going to back it up. That all means Ken Ham made a flood proof box designed by the god of the universe in his head and then bought insurance insurance. Yes. Or D Ben Shapiro's wife pulled him a wet vagina is the Z and he believed her. I will go with secret answer E all of the above and Heath I almost included a your welcome in the original essay for not bringing this up and leaving it for you. That is why I didn't bring it up.

There's also a way I didn't mention Mrs. Shapiro's arid vag, just in case you... Yeah, because that fits into anything. And also correct. Except for Benny, it doesn't fit in there. Because it's dry. All right, Noah. All right, Noah.

It's too big. Said complaints. All right, Noah. What are some real exhibits at the Ark Park that we didn't get a chance to mention? A. A broom with a sign that says, this is how we got rid of all the poop, stop laughing at us. Yep. That's so good. Yes you do.

A B. A wall of the four thousand something kinds of animal. The best. Which include items such as water dog and quote, large fish, parentheses, whales. Or C. Their dragon adventure, which as you hinted earlier, we watched a 60 minute video about which is for dioramas about how to. All right, Eli, the fact that you did not add a D here is just purely so you cannot tell me that there was not a fourth one.

There's a lot of there's a lot. So I'm going to go with C the dragon one. Yeah, that is correct. All right. Were the like eight thousand jazz scooters that form into Voltron and they mark them? My favorite part was this one wall that just says and then they all die. My favorite part. All right, Noah, there is definitely not enough Bible story theme parts.

What are their Bible stories would make make for great wholesome family fun? A. How about one starring the story of Lot offering up his daughters to be raped? Or B. The story of Abraham almost but not quite murdering his own son? Or C. The one where Job is used as a pawn in a bet between God and Satan? Or D. The fever, violent apocalypse of revelation or E definitely not the arc, which nonetheless has the aforementioned cheerful sign at the arc encounter explaining that genocide is fun as long as the right people survive. Yeah.

The joke is almost impossible that you're trying to make time because the most blood soaked story is the one they made the children's theme park about. It's the most homicidal story in their book so I think it's E. Are you fucking kidding me? All right Noah nobody managed to stump you which makes you this week's winner. All right well I'm contractually obligated to say that I won an Eli essay. What? No! No! All right well surprise for me as well as everyone else.

For Tom, Noah, Cecil, and Heath, I'm Eli. Thanking you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, I will be an expert on something else. I wonder what it will be. No you won't. Asterisk. You won't be.

You won't be though. Between now and then, you can listen to our podcasts on your podcast player. And if you'd like to know where the show is going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod where you'll get access to bonus episodes as well as patron-only shenanigans at the beginning of every single show. Or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us check out past episodes connect with Us on social media or check the show notes be sure to check out shitation pod Dot-com and leave that five-star review so you could bury that one of that guy

Who's so mad that he was looking for a mystery podcast that he didn't find one bury that guy We talk about history. Not enough for that guy. He was so mad. He got a weird one recently. I was trying to remember what it was. He thought it was going to be like a serious He was like, these guys are stupid faces.

It's the best. Do you guys remember when the guy gave us a 4 star review and his words were just, it would be better if Eli died I think about it all the time because it's so true and he also gave us four stars because he likes you guys I mean it's like mathematically fair if that's his actual opinion Like I disagree, but you know like that's the right number if that's what you think.