The Messenger

Hey, True Weirdos, we just wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for your support. True Weird Stuff has won the Best History Podcast and the Women in Podcasting Awards and we've also won a Signal Award in the Paranormal category, and that's only happened because of you, our fellow strange people. Thanks. Stick around if you want after the episode for a little bonus content and conversation.

Let's say that humanity was created in a laboratory by an ancient race of highly advanced extraterrestrials, okay? Let's just go with that. And the time has now come for the people of Earth to know the truth about themselves and their origin. How do you break that kind of news? I know, maybe you recruit an Earth human to serve as the messenger.

But who? A world leader? An artist? A celebrity? A child? How about a guy who ran away at 15, took a shot at teen pop stardom, but then ended up becoming a journalist who covered the auto racing circuit? Yeah, that should do it. That's Claude Maurice Marcel Vaurion, aka Claude Seller, aka Rael, a word that means the bringer of light.

They came on the Earth, built the big laboratories, and inside these laboratories, through DNA and cloning, they did create all life on Earth. And this place is for the encounter between them and human beings. And they got a small beam of light against me. It's true, weird stuff. Imagine starting your own religion. People do. King Henry VIII did, founding the Church of in 1534 to get around the Catholic Church's tiresome rules and regs regarding annulment and divorce. Joseph Smith and James Strang founded the Church of Latter-day Saints in 1844.

L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in 1955. A fairly new kid on the block is the Church of Coppomism, which preaches that all information is sacred, divine, beautiful, and meant to be shared. It's an internet religion, and Coppomists hold the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V keyboard shortcuts as sacred symbols. There are anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 religions in the world. It all depends on who you ask.

About 85% of the world's population practices some form of religion, with the majority of people practicing one of the big four, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. But Claude Vorilhon, he didn't believe in any of it. He was an atheist, as was his mother and his grandmother, whose home he grew up in. Claude's father wasn't in the picture. For whatever reason, mom and grandma packed the boy off to a Catholic boarding school. Not that he stuck around. Claude ran away from that school when he was 15. He hitchhiked to Paris, where he basically kicked around on the streets, playing music and little cafes and nightclubs.

A music director for Europe 1, the top radio station in France, who happened to be on the lookout for new young talent, scouted Claude. Signed to a record deal, Claude managed to release six singles and become kind of a teen pop sensation for a minute. Things were looking fairytale good for Claude, who'd gone from teen runaway to recording star.

He was living one dream and saving up for another, because what Claude really wanted was a race car. But the whole too good to be true bubble burst in September 1970, when Claude's radio benefactor died by suicide. That was the end of Claude's pop star career. Now he had to pivot. Claude traded Paris for the much smaller city of Clermont-Ferrand, and in 1971 launched his own racing magazine called Autopop. It billed itself as a magazine for drivers. The timing wasn't great, you know, what with the global oil crisis and the prime minister of France calling for a ban on motorsports.

But as it turned out, destiny had something else in mind for Claude Vorilhon anyway. Claude Vorilhon's new home in Clermont-Ferrand, it's one of the oldest cities in France. It's surrounded by a chain of more than 80 snoozing volcanoes, one of which is the dormant Puy-de-Dôme. What an interesting mountain that is. The first time it erupted, 95,000 years ago.

Its last eruption was more than 10,000 years ago. It was a place for sacred and secret and mysterious rituals, dating all the way back to pre-Christian Europe. The ruins of temples have been unearthed at the summit. And even today, more than half a million people make the trek to Puy-de-Dôme every year. There are a couple of paths you can take, but you'll have to hike it since the only road on the dormant volcano is closed to all but military and emergency traffic.

And hiking it was just what Claude was doing the afternoon of December 13, 1973. The trails can get pretty crowded, but on this particular day, a Thursday, overcast and chilly, Claude found himself alone inside the dormant Puy-de-Lascelles crater. And this is what happened next. Claude watched as a large metallic object descended from the sky. He described the shape as being like a bell that had been flattened more than 22 feet in diameter. It was, he said, unlike any kind of technology he had ever seen. The object or vehicle or whatever it was, touched down without making a sound. A door opened, and to Claude's stunned amazement, a being stepped out. He estimated the being to be just about four feet tall with dark eyes, dark hair worn long, and olive toned skin. And strangely, the being absolutely radiated passivity. It was this feeling that emboldened Claude. In French, he called out, Deviantu! Where did you come from? From very far, from another planet. I have come to meet you, Claude Bourguignon. I have many things to tell you, and I have chosen you for a difficult mission.

You are going to transmit to humans what I am going to tell you, and according to their reactions, we will see if we can officially show ourselves to them. I know that you have recently read the Bourguignon. Come into my machine. We will be more comfortable to talk. Well, this has taken a real unexpected turn, hasn't it? Buckle up. Claude's story is just beginning. He's not only on the cusp of starting his own religion, he's about to dramatically challenge your religion. All religions. He's about to challenge every idea of how life on this planet came to be. We were the ones who made all life on earth. You mistook us for gods.

We were the origin of your main religions. Now that you are mature enough to understand this, we would like to enter official contact through an embassy. So far, all the ingredients of your basic CE3, close encounter of the third kind, all present and accounted for, solitary human, isolated location, mysterious craft, even more mysterious occupant, a message for humankind.

One heck of a message. Life on earth is not the result of random evolution nor the work of a advanced people who made human beings in their literal image. The being went on to explain to Claude that the proof of this could be found in the ancient texts of so many of Earth's cultures. Your Bible, the being said, the book of Genesis, the story of your species creation.

You gave us the name Elohim, a name that appears more than 2000 times in your Old Testament, the name that you use for your God. In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. That's the translation of the original Hebrew. It may not be the version of scripture you heard in Sunday school, like in the King James version of the Bible, Elohim, as translated as the English word God and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters. The being explained to Claude that the word Elohim was mistranslated, that it didn't mean God in the singular, but instead was plural and meant those who come from the sky. We could get all kinds of into the weeds here, trying to parse the finer points of theological debate, but whoever was chatting Claude up there in the forest was right about one thing. There are multiple references to the Elohim in the Bible.

The word Elohim is used to refer to Yahweh, the God of Israel, to members of Yahweh's council, to demons and angels. And now a four foot tall figure standing in the crater of a dormant volcano in France is suggesting that the Elohim are actually extraterrestrial scientists. A very long time ago on a distant planet, the development of knowledge made it possible to create life. But on that distant planet, according to the being, it was decided that any experiment in creating life was far too dangerous to even consider. The technology was banned on that world, but not necessarily on all worlds. This was a highly advanced civilization, roughly 25,000 years ahead of our own, capable of fanning out into the galaxy in search of suitable planets for experimentation. Ships were sent on reconnaissance flights.

Satellites to monitor atmospheric composition were placed in the orbits of promising planets. From one of those planets was our very own Earth. So a vast terraforming project was launched in preparation for the arrival of an entire colony of technicians, scientists, and engineers. There were rules in place that being explained, limitations on what kinds of life might be created. Using their own synthesized DNA, the extraterrestrial scientists experimented first with the most elementary forms of life.

From there, and you know, that's like bacteria, amoebas, little teeny tiny things. From there, they moved to plants and then to aquatic life. So many adjustments had to be made as each new creature found a place in the ecology of this newly terraformed world. Birds were next. And every step of the way, the alien scientists collaborated with artists. Why should these new creations not be as beautiful to behold as they were wondrous to conceive? Keep in mind that Claude Vorilhon, self-described atheist who left school at age 15, flirted with pop stardom and then created his own car magazine.

He's hearing all of this from a small humanoid figure that stepped out of what could only be called a spaceship. Can you even imagine yourself in his place? You'd think you were losing your mind or hallucinating or dreaming. We have succeeded beyond our hopes. The terrestrial animals we made were thriving. This world, your world, was vibrant now with life.

We were intoxicated with our success. It made us bold. It made us arrogant. Government on their home world had been very clear. There was to be no further experimentation. They were forbidden to engineer any creature in the shape of a human being, any creature capable of human behavior. But of course, you already know what happened in secret at first. But what secret of that magnitude ever stays secret for long?

It was the greatest ethical scandal in the history of their world. It was agreed that there was no undoing it, no way through it, but forward. So the experiment, that's us, was allowed to continue. And that's a nice way of saying that the newly created inhabitants of the planet Earth weren't immediately exterminated. But an edict was laid down.

These creatures were to be kept in complete ignorance of their origins. All of this happened in the beginning, long before these creators, these Elohim, fully grasped the magnitude and meaning of their creation. They were simply acting out the eternal cycle of the cosmos, the being explained to Claude, the cycle of the created becoming the creator.

Wondering why the Elohim journeyed across the mind-bending vastness of the universe to spill this tea to the publisher of the car magazine, Autopop? It's a fair question. And the answer is a bombshell. One that explains so much of Claude's early life. His absent father, not his father at all. Claude's single mother had been taken aboard an Elohim craft and was artificially inseminated and then returned to Earth with no memory of the event. And that's what we did with Mary of Nazareth, the Elohim confided. And now it was time for Claude to fulfill his destiny. The being told Claude that his new name was to be Rael, a word he said that means son of the light. The message Rael was to share with the world was that the Elohim would be returning. And the being also explained to Rael that he was not their first messenger, that the Elohim had sent 39 other prophets to Earth. But the gulf between the highly advanced Elohim and the far more primitive humans always resulted in the message becoming hopelessly distorted. You're up Claude. Do try to get it right this time. Tell humanity their true origins and ours. The Elohim are not gods. The Elohim were created as you were created, as you will go on to That's the fundamental truth of the universe, an infinity of creation and destruction, an infinity of life. Explain to humanity, he said, that DNA is your true essence and can be made eternal. Show them how all of your earthly religions are simply misinterpretations of the that your true gospel is our extraterrestrial science. Tell them that these human made religions are oppressive, scientifically limited, engineered to repress both human artistry and human sexuality. And when they doubt you, show them the accounts of us and our work in your Bible.

And while you're at it, we need you to get an embassy built and prepared for our arrival in Jerusalem, if possible. Claude spent six days that December in 1973, meeting with the Elohim in the secluded crater of the dormant volcano. His mysterious teacher, who claimed to be 25,000 years old, walked Claude through some of the historical events that he'd only ever heard stories from the Bible, like the Garden of Eden, for example. Not an actual garden, but an enormous laboratory at the heart of an artificially created continent. And the great flood that forced Noah into the arc building business totally happened. The result of a nuclear explosion engineered by the Elohim.

Noah's Ark, also real, though the true story was very different from the one Claude had heard. The real Ark that being explained was a spaceship built to preserve the DNA of animals threatened by the floodwaters, animals that the alien scientists might want to clone in the future. And the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Elohim cloning Jesus, creating the appearance of life after death. Your prophets, the being declared, were all human beings chosen by us, the Elohim, to serve as their messengers to humanity. Moses, Buddha, Muhammad, Elijah, Ezekiel, John the Baptist, Joseph Smith. And Jesus? Yes, the being said, Jesus too.

Claude, now real, took this news in stride. He was an atheist already, so an extraterrestrial creature casually informing him that there is no God, no immortal soul, no life after death. That wasn't anything he didn't already believe. But there's no call for despair, the being said. Look what we, your creators, have shown you. You can be cloned and live on that way, or you can upload your consciousness into the virtual world and live on that way. And if your species succeeds in abandoning war and learns to live in harmony, then and only then will you make your way to the stars to join the fellowship of other scientists spreading life throughout the universe. How does that sound? Well, it sounded pretty amazing to Claude Real. But listen, the being said, there's some urgency here, my humble human messenger. Our return is imminent.

The prophecies are right there in most of the religious texts held sacred by your species. Your holy books speak of apocalypse. And now with the atomic weapons unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity is on the brink of nuclear annihilation. We Elohim are what you call the revelation. It will seem as though we drop from the skies, bringing to your world all of our advanced scientific knowledge. But it is only after your species has learned to control its own violent impulses, deadly technology, that we'll return to this world. We're of the mind that such an event could cause havoc, you know, which is why we need you to tell everyone what's up. Tell them we're coming.

I may ask Claude, why choose me as the messenger, I was simply out for a stroll in the woods. And now I'm a prophet. This is crazy. The stroll in the woods, said the Elohim, this encounter, you summoned me via telepathy. You led me here to this place, just as I led you only a few years ago to purchase that copy of the Bible. You bought the book perplexed by your own impulse to do so.

And now you understand that your Bible contains information which we must discuss. Fair point. Claude didn't know what had come over him, why he suddenly felt so compelled to purchase a copy of the Bible. They needed someone who lives in a nation where new ideas are well accepted and where the living people are allowed to express their mind. France, in other words.

They need a person who is a free thinker, but not anti-religious. As for himself, the being explained, he was no one special, just an Eloha whose job it was to monitor the progress of humanity, to gauge when humans might be ready to learn the truth of our origins. You are the future. We are the past. And there was just one more thing, one more little detail that turned out to be not so little at all. Your true father is no human male.

Your true father is Yahweh. Your brother is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Wait, what? Drop that bombshell and now you're just leaving? Okay, bye. Bye, mysterious space visitor. What an experience. But the Elohim had clearly picked the right guy because Rael, without hesitation, left his old identity and life behind to preach the word.

The very last issue of his car magazine, Autopop, was released in September 1974. Rael published his first book in 1976 called The Book Which Tells the Truth. In it, he told you the story we've just heard. He followed that book up with another called Extraterrestrials Took Me to Their Planet. That voyage went down according to Rael in October 1975. And once there, he not only learned about their culture and society, no war, no disease, no money. But he also met Moses, Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus. Oh, and was also seduced by a half dozen biological lady robots.

Perhaps this laid the groundwork for other Raelian ideas to come. Like the Order of Angels, a group of women who lived apart like nuns, but who, unlike nuns, were training and studying to be the Elohim's earthly consorts. The angels ate little meat, sugar, or carbs in service of maintaining their beauty. They cultivated humility, purity, and serenity. They also made the perfect volunteers for a project critical to both Rael and the Elohim, experiments in human cloning.

They even launched a website in 1999 selling human eggs on the internet. And so, the brand new UFO religion called Raelism took off. Rael and his followers first set up shop in a large country house in France before locating to Quebec. Rael taught his followers that the Elohim home planet was not in our solar system, but was in our Milky Way galaxy.

90,000 or so Elohim called that planet home, and they're divided into seven different races. All Elohim are vaguely feminine in appearance and manner, said Rael, declaring that even the most feminine woman on earth is maybe 10% as feminine as any random Aloha, which honestly is giving so much 1950s sci-fi energy. Hey, you kids play rough.

All right, doll, all right. We have found the intruders. Good, bring them in. We shall do so. They speak English. Go! Go! Go! I believe we better accept the invitation. Yeah, the way those shooting irons of theirs work. I'm with you, Doc. Bachino! Bachino! That's from the 1958 classic, Queen of Outer Space. Anyway, Rael also explained that the Elohim are practically immortal, profoundly peaceful and non-aggressive. The Elohim, he reported, never wear clothing, and since sexual jealousy is completely unknown in their world, all practiced free love, freely and in enthusiastic freedom.

But the Elohim were absolutely forbidden to procreate, and so many elected to be sterilized. Their system of government was notable for one thing that we on earth sure could learn from. Only the most intelligent Elohim were permitted to hold any power. Oh, yeah, and they also taught their new prophet the art of something Rael called sensual meditation.

The goal of which is to open a telepathic channel to the Elohim, a cosmic orgasm, to use Rael's term. Raelian baptisms occur only four times a year on the first Sunday in April, which commemorates the very first baptism Rael conducted on Sunday, April 4th, 1976. And fun fact, it's also the anniversary of the day the Elohim are said to have created Adam and Eve.

Your next chance to be baptized comes on August 6th, the date that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This date reminds believers that humanity has entered the age of apocalypse. Mr. Schott in August, and you'll have to wait till October 7th. That's the date Rael says he met Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha on a spacecraft.

The date of his second encounter with the Elohim. If you can stand to wait, your last chance of the year comes December 13th, the date of Rael's first encounter with the Elohim and the date he was anointed their 40th and final prophet. The baptism itself starts out looking like a traditional Christian baptism, you know, sacred water prayers.

Initiates are required to reject and deny any prior religious beliefs. This is called the act of apostasy, where the Raelian baptism takes the turn is telepathic communication with the Elohim, something that's strengthened, they believe, by clasping hands and forming a human chain. Doing that transmits the genetic code of each newly baptized member directly to the Elohim.

Each code is recorded. And when the Elohim return to make judgment, the worthy will be candidates for cloning. This is called the transmission of the cellular plan. Finally, each new member signs a contract, a contract that applies only after the member's death. It authorizes a mortician to cut a piece of bone from the deceased's forehead, pack it in ice and zip it off to Rael, who would then deliver it on to the Elohim.

Why the forehead? The third eye, you know, that mystical center of spirituality and intuition that lives smack in the middle of your forehead, but is sadly invisible. Could just anyone join the movement? Not exactly. There were rules, maybe not the easiest rules to follow, like tithing 10% of your income, restrictions on what you could eat or drink.

Given the Raelian fixation on genetics, it makes sense that Rael was looking for prime specimens, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, recreational drugs, all forbidden. Vegetarianism strongly encouraged. No homophobia allowed, no racism, no sexism permitted. In fact, Raelians were obliged to fight oppression and advocate for equality.

That last was critical because Rael said he'd learned from the Elohim that gender was an artificial idea, something that humans had just made up to exert control over each other. Beings are fluid. Identities are fluid. Sexuality is fluid. And if you're prudish in any way, Raelism ain't for you. Sexual pleasure, Rael preached, was a gift to humanity from the Elohim.

As far as relationships or marriage was concerned, Raelians weren't fans. Polygamy, said Rael, not monogamy, was the more peaceful, productive route. Relationships only spawned conflict, control, and jealousy. But what about children, you might be wondering? Well, the Raelians believe that the planet is grossly overpopulated and most have no interest in reproducing and even less interest in creating traditional nuclear families.

So, as you can see, being a Raelian isn't some casual Christmas and Easter sort of religion. It was a commitment, a lifestyle, a calling even. Rael told his growing army of followers that they were on a mission. First, we bring the message to humanity. The message being that every living thing on our earth was created, designed by the Elohim, and through their advanced technology, humans will someday achieve a kind of immortality via cloning and spreading our DNA throughout the universe.

The second task of Raelism, of course, was to build that embassy to welcome our extraterrestrial parents back to our home. Which meant the embassy would also need a pretty big landing pad for the Elohim spacecraft. Now, unfortunately for Rael, Israel was like a hard no on building the Elohim embassy in Jerusalem. This despite the faithful raising more than seven million dollars to build the thing.

But it would appear that the symbol for Raelism, which is a swastika entwined with the Star of David, that was offensive to the Israeli government. Obviously, Rael insisted that for the Elohim, the symbol meant infinity in time and space. It was even emblazoned on their spaceship, don't you know? Whatever, said Israel, that's a no from us.

And from Lebanon, and from Japan, and Brazil, and Dubai, among many, many others. Rael tried changing the religion's symbol in 1992. Ordered, he said, by the Elohim themselves to assist in these earthly negotiations. The new symbol swapped out the swastika for a swirling shape that Rael said represented the galaxy. But then 15 years later in 2007, Rael reverted to the original logo.

That humanity could not comprehend the sacred symbol gifted us by the Elohim was a problem humanity was just going to have to cope with, said Rael. The Nazis were terrible and all, but why did they get to own the sacred and ancient symbol of the swastika? Now, this does feel a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face, but Rael didn't see it that way.

He didn't consider himself blinded by religious zeal. He had been granted the gift of sight. And it was the rest of humanity that could choose to fall in line or not. You can admire Rael's conviction, I guess. But the simple fact is they've yet to get that embassy built, which isn't great, given that the Elohim have set the year 2035 for the return.

Don't sweat the deadline, though. The Elohim said they'd return to Earth once humanity had succeeded in harnessing science and technology for peaceful purposes only. And we're nowhere near achieving that. If anything, we've gotten worse since that fateful day Claude Vorilhon checked up Puitodome and became the prophet Rael.

It's not cool, you know, to mock other people's beliefs. Life can be brutal. And whatever you need to hang on to just to get through it, no one should ever take that from you. But did you feel the butt coming on? But hey, maybe scratch your existential itch with your own hand. Because Rael didn't. His UFO religion was centered on more than just the glorious return of our creators, the Elohim.

Raelism preaches liberty above all else. Great intellectual, spiritual and sexual. That's really lofty and nice on paper. But in reality, it sure looked like Rael surrounding himself with a harem of very young, very unworldly women. His first wife was a nurse named Mary Paul Crestini, and she hadn't bargained on being married to a prophet.

Rael was the publisher of a car magazine when they got married. She stood by him when he announced that his new life was to be spent in preparation for the return of our extraterrestrial creators. The couple even welcomed their second child together. But then the nude gatherings in their living room became a regular thing.

As did Rael's infidelity in the name of the Elohim. At first, I believe that Claude really thought what he was saying was true. But over the years, I began to think that the whole Raelian movement was a trick to have more sex and satisfy the enormous ego and need to be worshipped that he had always had. He was a very cynical, manipulative and charismatic man.

Second wife Lisa Sunagawa stuck around for even less time than Marie. Then third time's the charm, as they say. Rael's third wife was a teenager named Sophie. Both her mother and aunt were devout Raelians. And upon Sophie's baptism at age 15, Rael, now in his late 40s, declared that Sophie's very birth had been programmed by the Elohim.

She had been chosen, preordained by the creators, to be Rael's bride. Her mother was like, well, he's 30 years older, but maybe you really were born to serve him. And she consented to the marriage. Surprisingly, the couple lasted for more than 25 years. Sophie traveled with Rael and was the religion's favorite ambassador when it came to nudity.

She posed naked in front of a fake UFO for Playboy magazine. And then he dumped her. No real reason given. Maybe the Elohim had told him to trade her in for a younger model? Whatever the reason, it didn't even make a dent in Sophie's faith. It would appear she's still a Raelian, still cheerfully serving as a sort of brand ambassador for the movement.

So there's a four-episode documentary on Netflix right now called Rael, the Alien Prophet. It goes hard on the two aspects of the faith that most captured the public's attention at the time. Neither of which are the idea that humanity was a lab experiment. And also there's no God. The public was like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But would you look at all the naked people in that field? And they're cloning babies. First, the naked people. You already know now that Raelians are fans of nudity and sexual liberty. Rael's first wife said that what they called liberty was in practice debauchery and wickedness. Tomato, tomato, right? But isn't it interesting that the movement served as a kind of sexual candy store for Rael?

The Order of Angels, that weird little squadron of young beauties groomed to mate with the returning Elohim, they were off limits to everyone except for Rael, whose appetites were apparently big. As he told a reporter back in July 1991 that if he wanted sex 15 times a day, but his partner wanted sex 25 times a day, he would simply bring in his personal assistant Bobby to mop up the shortfall.

How generous. Sex 15 to 25 times a day. Do you people not have jobs or pets or hobbies? Critics and former believers say that what Rael craved above all things was submission. His ego demanded it. That's the thing that charismatic cult leaders always have in common. All must submit to the prophet Rael. But most especially the women.

It's so hackneyed and cliched and tired, but there it is. And if you watch the Netflix doc, you'll see footage of Rael sitting on a stage as a procession of topless women slowly and sinuously make their way toward him. His facial expression, eyes narrowed to slits, a knowing half smile curving his dry lips. It's like watching a snake getting ready to devour its prey.

And as goes the leader, so goes the followers. One older gentleman as bearded, portly and jolly as Santa Claus told the documentary crew that if Rael was wrong about the Elohim, wrong about there being no afterlife, wrong about all of it. Oh, well, it wouldn't make a difference. If he was forever dead, completely annihilated, what would he know?

And if he opened his eyes in heaven and discovered that God was real, outstanding. This man, this Raelian said that if heaven was real, then he looked forward to an eternity of being serviced by three young, beautiful women. Which makes you pause because, sir, listen, do you really and truly believe that there is a universe in which a 17-year-old girl fervently prays to go to a heaven where she and two pals can be concubines for a grizzled grandpa for all of freaking eternity?

Are you out of your Rael worshipping mind? I can straight promise you, my friend, that your idea of heaven is some poor girl's idea of hell. Spaceships and aliens and free love and human cloning. The Raelians claim they did just that. Claim they successfully cloned not one, but several human babies. Is that even scientifically possible?

And I think this could be very beneficial for humanity. We support freedom in every field of life. Absolute freedom with respect of other people, but absolute freedom. But also very important for us is a respect of freedom of science. And what would that look like? Immortality through cloning. It's what the Elohim promised Rael.

The prophet who laughs at the suggestion that he's just trying to play God. There is no God, so we are playing intelligent human beings. An identical copy of you spawned for one reason. To hold all of your memories. Everything that makes you, you. Your clone. And you're living forever. And that's on the next True Weird Stuff.

Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode. Don Morgan, Wendy Tonetti and Kary "Doc" Bowser. Wow, I'll say that I have heard of Raelians before. And it wasn't from Netflix, but I remember reading about it years ago. I don't know. It's one of those things that he was called Rael. And when you said the Raelians, I went, oh, this sounds familiar.

Think it was this. It was it was the whole nudity thing. I think that's what I remember about it. Which means it's possible that I got a copy of Playboy magazine at some point along the line. And that's what my connection to this is. I saw it. You know what, Max? I really am not interested in making fun of people's beliefs.

I'm really not. I'm not interested in sitting here and go, can you believe these clowns? But here's the dealio with this guy. Yeah, maybe he had an encounter in a volcano. And maybe we're all just a big old lab experiment. But he was a big old freaking pervert and sexual predator. So when we go through this, I always make notes.

And one of the things that I read is most of the time, most of the time when one of these guys comes along, sex becomes a big part of the equation. And he had those characteristics that a lot of these guys who are cult leaders seem to have. And they all seem to have a charisma, whether it's David Koresh or Jim Jones. One of these guys, they always seem to have that sort of charisma about them where people sort of blindly follow along.

And the water gets hotter by degrees, right? I mean, I think it's very easy to be like, who could be stupid enough to follow this? Well, I mean, you're vulnerable at certain points in your life to certain messages. And here's a guy who's telling you something that like he pieced his whole religion together out of lots of different ingredients.

Remember that this his encounter happened in 1973. And his first book came out in 1976. So I don't remember 1973. I kind of hardly remembered 1976. It was the bicentennial or I probably wouldn't have a single memory from that year. But I think from my understanding that the culture globally, the zeitgeist in the early and mid to late 1970s was ripe for something like this.

You know, this is pre-internet. So it was harder to challenge certain things than it is now. And the 70s, this was a time of cattle mutilations in the American West that were allegedly being done by UFOs. We're just a couple of years away from Star Wars, the movie and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At this point, there was a lot.

Eric Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods. I remember that. Was a huge like worldwide bestseller. And suddenly everyone was talking about what today we call ancient aliens on the History Channel, right? So Rael kind of capitalized on all of this stuff that was kind of floating in the atmosphere and he knitted it together into this sort of belief system that very conveniently for Rael, who was an atheist, very conveniently took God out of the equation and gave people science in its place.

And there's a couple of, like, if you were this guy's psychiatrist or psychologist, you'd be taking notes. Because, you know, he grew up not knowing who his father was, living with his mom and his grandmother, and then being shipped off to Catholic boarding school. And I do believe you know a thing or two about that. Yes, I do.

Okay. You know, we've, like, I'm looking at this guy and I'm going, well, here's a guy who's suffering from massive narcissism and delusions of grandeur. And what could be more grand than being the son of God and the brother of Jesus? What's grander than that on earth? And that was his story. So there's all sorts of ways that you can link back to his, if you want to be kind of Freudian about it, link back to his early life and go, I kind of see where the seed got planted here.

This religion is thriving. There are still people who believe in it today. Yeah, I did know that. And, you know, again, it's like Scientology. Look, I think Scientology is a vicious cult that destroys families and individuals and picks people's pockets until there's nothing in there, not even the lint. But that's not me making fun of your belief.

That's me not approving of your organization. I don't know. Maybe there is, you know, a million tiny invisible feet hands walking on my arm. I don't know. But the thing that got me about Rael and Raelianism was the magnitude of sexual exploitation and the grossness in a lot of ways of who this guy was as he became more and more kind of solidified in his power.

Yeah, and how convenient. I met with I met with the extraterrestrials. So I have I have the pipeline. Do you know what I mean? It's like. So the guys the guys who who believe in who have cults where they're saying they believe in God, they have the pipeline to God. Do you know what I mean? So this guy's like, yeah, no, God, but.

But. But. And, you know, there's a phrase that applies here. And that phrase is reverse engineering. This what Raelians believe what he preaches makes a ton of sense if you just look at it, you go, oh, my God, yeah, there are Elohim in the Bible. And what about the wheel of Ezekiel? Maybe that was a spaceship. And, oh, my God, maybe the ancient alien guys are right.

And oh, oh, oh, here's the thing. You can reverse engineer. You can open up the Bible and begin reverse engineering based on what you have. It wasn't like he invented the word Elohim or these concepts that he talked about, but he was really good at knitting all these disparate little stories together into one pretty coherent whole.

And I got to give him credit for that because the kid the kid was kind of he was like a hot mess as a kid, dropped out of school at 15. And yet he managed to put together an entire coherent sort of theology. It doesn't stand up to a ton of scrutiny, especially when we get into next week's episode in human cloning. So it doesn't, you can't kick the tires too hard without collapsing the whole thing.

But if you are vulnerable and it's 19, let's say 77, and there's no internet and you're searching, you're searching and this is in front of you, you can see how people came on board, can't you? Oh, absolutely. I think one of the things that in between this and some other things that I've listened to, I listened to a podcast about this Twin Flames, these people that were kind of selling this to people that they could find their Twin Flames soulmate kind of thing, but it's a cult.

Anytime you have those cults, you have people that are thirsting inside for something. And as you said earlier, you know, you do it by degrees, you know, it just gets warmer by degrees. And these people, yeah, okay, maybe that's a little bit, okay, fine, I'll follow this. All right, no, all right, fine, I'll believe this.

And pretty soon they're wound up into whatever this cult dogma is. And I think that you can see how people get wound up with it. If you stand back from this, it does look kind of crazy. And I think especially when you consider the fact that he was an egomaniac that was doing this purely for his own perversion. He, to this day, so I, after I finished, so I wrote the episode and then watched the Netflix documentary, which is how I usually do something like that, because I don't, I'm trying to, I will, there's more to the story than you get, like in a casual magazine story or the Netflix documentary.

And the Netflix documentary went really heavy on the sex cult aspect of it, right? So only after I finished it and then watched the documentary, I got Kevin to watch the documentary. And we were like 13, literally, I looked at my phone, we were 13 minutes in and he was like, what the, am I looking at? Like it was, and then I went back in and added some of the stuff that was in the documentary back into the episode.

And I originally only planned to do like, just here's the world's biggest UFO religion on this week's weird stuff. But I could not do justice to the craziness of the human cloning, which is why I split it. And next week is about human cloning. And you really probably want to listen to this one before you listen to that one.

Although you don't have to. And the thing is, check with a man's wife to get the straight story on what's going on. Do you know what I mean? Cause she's like, yeah, okay. I believe did it for a little while, but here's the straight story. This is what's really going on. The guy, like he lives in Japan now. Or that was the last place I knew he was, was in Japan.

And he's having quite a bit of success. In Japan with bringing new converts to the religion. And there are a couple things about it. Cause you try to keep an open mind again. I don't, I don't want to make fun of what people believe. What do I know? I'm just a little monkey, but you know, I don't know. And as you say, there's a lot of this that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

It doesn't. So there were a couple of things where I was like, all right, I mean, life is a grand mystery. And you know, none of us know anything. And to quote Max talking to his dad, I guess that's why we call it faith, right? Cause we don't know. We have faith, but we don't know for sure. So I don't know, maybe it's spaceship did land and somebody got out and said, hey, we're the scientists that created y'all.

And if you can get your shit together, we're going to come back. Maybe that's true and real. And maybe that really happened. And I guess I'll find out, you know, eventually. But it was when we got a little further down the road, past all of that, where you're like, yeah, I don't think so. The order of angels. So you have recruited a team of very young, very unworldly, beautiful women who you have sex with, but they're in training to have sex with aliens.

That's what that is, Max. Sometimes you just got to say exactly what it is in order for the full impact to land. Any woman in the organization that he wanted, he had. And it was like you were having, you know, the prophet was blessing you with his attention. It's gross and manipulative and exploitive and abusive. And that's just OK.

That's just the sex cult part of it. Here's here's another place he lost me because he did a very, very good job of taking threads out of scripture and ancient texts and archaeology and all science. And he did a very good job of pulling all those threads and weaving something new out of it. The problem is, is when it was time to put your money where your mouth is, a religion that's based on alien manipulation of DNA and immortality through cloning, especially one that's around in the 90s and 2000s.

And right now, like this one is. We know an awful lot about cloning now. And what Rael was preaching and teaching, none of it, none of it adds up and none of it adds up. And you were talking about in 1999, they were selling human eggs on the Internet. Yeah, you could, boy, you could get away with it. Well, that was really the Wild West days on the Internet, wasn't it?

Yeah, in 1999, there was. Do you know what else is sort of reminded me of a little bit? Was that Heaven's Gate guy? Oh, remember that apple apple white? Yeah, very similar, you know? Yeah, there was a similar. Did you say and you said that they were sterilizing people? Well, so this is the other place where it gets really weird.

Rael told his followers that remember what he said. And there's some weird kinky in here because he's like all of the Elohim. They don't practice any gender. The average Elohim is 90 times more feminine than the most feminine woman on Earth. OK, I mean, I guess like planet of glamazon aliens. I mean, I've seen those movies on TV, too.

But there was something weird about that. And then he said that the Elohim were forbidden to procreate, which is why many of them opted to be sterilized. There's something wrong with that picture for me. If these immortal beings are forbidden to procreate, why do they have reproductive capacities at all? Because they don't reproduce, they clone.

So why do you need to be sterilized if you're a species that exists for all time by cloning yourself? So, yeah, it doesn't make sense. Weirdly contradictory. And in next week's episode, I mean, there's so much delicious good stuff. I hate to spoil the fun by telling you how he explained this cloning happens. But when you hear it, you're going to be like, get out of here.

Who bought that? I can't wait for this. Who is buying that? Um, yeah, so that that's the thing. Like, I kind of I kind of can understand how you came in and you kicked the tires and you were like, yeah, I mean, this makes sense. And that makes sense. And he's right. The Elohim are all over the Bible, you know. But when he gets to those other things, nobody was troubled by that.

Nobody asked any questions. They got kicked out of France. Then they got kicked out of Canada. They had this enormous property in Quebec and it was squirrely. And people in Canada were suspicious. And so a big newspaper sent two employees, both female, both young and attractive females, because that's how you got in to Raelian events, undercover journalist, photographer, undercover.

And they were undercover there for months and months. And keep in mind what's expected. The women are topless. Like, this was a lot for these two reporters to do. And they did it and they blew the lid off of it. And that's how the Raelians ended up being bounced from their property in Quebec. And now they seem to be doing really, really well.

In Japan. In Japan, yeah. And eventually, you know, like the scam, if it is a scam, right? If it is a scam. Well, I think the thing that happened to them in Canada is they, so the article came out and then they, the Raelians, they filed suit against them and then they lost the suit. And then that's when. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they didn't.

They didn't. You know, it didn't happen right away. And they, of course, were, you know, Judas, Betrayer, you know, blah, blah. And you can, if you, if you watch, you'll see this was really traumatizing for the reporter who broke this story. Like, you see her back then and you see her now and you can see that she was traumatized by the time she spent with Rael.

Yeah. And he has a, and she, this Bridget Boisselier is his second in command. And she figures heavily in next week's episode because she, Bridget was a research chemist and a college professor. That was the thing about, that is the thing about Raelians. They, he attracts a pretty surprising segment of the population, you know, people that you would think would be a little more skeptical.

But anyway, Bridget Boisselier is a Raelian and she's like his lieutenant and they, he funds a shell company, which exists only as a post office box in the Bahamas. And she's the CEO. And they commence to cloning babies. I see, but she's not his wife, his current wife. She's not his wife, no. And the thing that you'll see, Max, when we get to next week and, and for anyone who listens, I think you'll remember when what we're going to, part of what we're going to cover was all over the news.

This, the Raelians are not some obscure thing that you have to pick a rock up to find. This is one of those in plain sight, all around you situations. That dominated the news cycle for a long time in the early 2000s with their hijinks and So yeah, yeah. There you go. There's no God according to this. And, and let me, for anyone that listened to this, because Max and I have friends who are very, very devout Christians.

And they do not like this kind of subject matter. Not mocking. I'm just telling you just facts are what it was. They're blasphemous. Yeah. There's no God. There's no afterlife. There's no immortal soul. That the only thing that is, is DNA. And, and in some ways, you know, they call Raelianism a UFO religion, but they don't worship UFOs.

They don't worship the Elohim. They worship DNA. That's at the centerpiece, I think, of this religion. It's the answer, the be all and end all to everything. I guess they could, they could sell that by all of the information that we got about DNA in the 1990s. And we found out a lot more during that time about it. So I suppose that's how they go about selling this.

I think that's part of what made it kind of sexy and appealing to people, the timing of it. And, you know, there was a lot of buzz and talk about things like this, DNA and cloning and all of that. And we didn't know what we didn't know. And Dolly the sheep, remember? I remember Dolly was the first, the first cloning experiment.

All of this sort of coincides with the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep. And I've got some shocking news about Dolly in next week's episode, too, that'll make you rethink cloning. But he was able to, like, kind of pick a very tiny lane, but he kind of navigated it well. I don't think it would, if he tried to launch that religion now, I think it's a non-starter.

I think the Internet would make it really hard for him to sell some of these concepts, because all you'd have to do is Google and you'd be like, I don't know, it doesn't seem likely. But then again, what does science and knowledge ever have to do with the mysteries of faith? So maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe, maybe he could pull it off today.

I mean, let me ask you this, Max. Um, what parts of Rael's message do you think you would never be attracted to it? You're the last guy that could be vacuumed into a cult, but what parts of these do you think might resonate that you might be vulnerable to leaning into? Well, you know, the thing is, if you if you are a person that has struggled with any kind of traditional religion and you say, well, I, I reject this and you reject it for whatever reason.

Um, and then you say, but there is a part of me that still wants an explanation for this. And this guy comes along and says, yeah, that explanation you rejected, that doesn't work for you. But there is an explanation. And here it is over here. And I know it sounds kind of crazy, but here is the explanation. You might go, all right, yeah, tell me more.

There's there's really no part of this that I go, well, this seems attractive. Um, I'm not against topless women. I mean, you know, I mean, thank you on behalf of all topless, you know, I mean, but, um, and I imagine that for some guys, that's a real attraction. But I don't understand how that's an attraction for the women.

You know, when you were talking about the fact that these three women were going to be your handmaidens in the afterlife or whatever it was, I was thinking about, isn't that what we were told that the hijackers said we're going to happen that the 9-11 attacks that they were getting the virgins. Can I just say, can I just say, as a woman, as a woman, I do not want to spend eternity servicing a man that looks like Santa Claus.

But here's the thing. When you, who came up with this? Why? A man came up with worse. Well, you know, that's why I said, like, that's some that's her idea of hell, Paul Paul. Like, you've got to be kidding me. And the man couldn't be more jovial. Oh, and by the way, the Raelian symbol, they all wear these giant ass pendants that are a swastika and a star of David is there.

It is a very upsetting thing to see. It's shocking. It's now Bridget Bridget Boisselier. She wears the the new she wears a pendant with the logo that they temporarily switch to. But it is a giant ass, not as big as Flavor Flav's clock, but a giant medallion that they wear prominently outside their clothes. And in case you're wondering, but is it a swastika and a star of David?

Are you guys exaggerating? Can I just say some about Bridget Boisselier? I took Spanish and Latin. Sure, I didn't take French. I butcher every language, probably including English. So I'm looking at a picture and she's wearing that she has bleached blonde hair and she has a really revealing dress and fake boobs. And she doesn't look like somebody who would be like second in command of a religion.

Well, but, you know, keep in mind that this is a religion where he sits on the stage and these these beautiful women are just kind of like undulating toward him. And he's doing everything but flicking out a forked tongue and hissing like it's so so. So for a woman, for a young woman, I guess it's the same thing that was attractive for those women with Charles Manson.

You know, it's you have somebody who's charismatic and that's what attracts them into the situation and they get a lot of attention. And I don't understand that part of it. I really don't. I don't either. I don't think like I know I'm not so cocky as to think I'm invulnerable to a cult, but I'm invulnerable to that kind of cult because there's no way and I include when I was 16.

There's no way that I'm like, wait. So in order to get not even to heaven, but in order to get cloned, you got to look at my boobs. Fuck out of here. That doesn't sound right. But again, I want you to think about the women that find themselves. They're very, very young. Now, many of Rael's followers who came into the religion movement when they were very young are still there.

But some became disillusioned, disenchanted. And one of those women talks to the documentary filmmakers on the Netflix show and the pain in her eyes and her voice because she believed and she believed that he was the 40th and final prophet on Earth. Yeah, and to have that belief taken from her, the magnitude of that loss and betrayal was painful.

In addition to this, in addition to the damage that was done to her in that situation. Yeah. So, yeah. I can't wait for this next episode. That's all I can say. I can't wait for what comes next with this. Part of what and I don't know that this matters or is relevant, but something that kind of stuck for me that I went back and forth in my own mind with was, OK, you're an atheist.

That's fine. Whatever. You're you've always been an atheist. Even Catholic boarding school did knock that out of you. And so you have created an entire religion basically with no God. I feel like I might have given him an ounce more credence if he had been a person of faith who had this encounter at Puitodome in the volcano and had his own faith destroyed by the realization that he was part of a science experiment.

But the fact that he was an avowed atheist before the encounter in the volcano, I couldn't help but feel and maybe I'm just a great big bitch, but I couldn't help but feel that he was marshalling an argument to support his own. I think so. I think the definition and I don't have a dictionary in front of me, but I believe the definition of an atheist is not just that you don't believe in God.

It's you don't believe in God and you can prove there's no God. And so if that's the case, if that is the definition, he is he is the living embodiment of that definition because he has proved there is no God. And here and here is the proof. Exactly. And there's just a feeling like if you came back, let's say Max hikes a lot.

He goes on these long, epic, like 10 mile hikes, right? So Max is in the woods somewhere and he's on this hike and he finds himself having a conversation with a being from a spacecraft. And Max, who is a person of faith, comes to me and said, I'm shaken. There's no God. We're a science experiment. Well, that's going to sit me down and I'm going to need to hear more and I'm going to be shaken, too, because my friend who has so much faith has lost his faith in an instant and now believes with his whole heart this other story.

And I think maybe I am just being like really bitchy and taking something personal that isn't. But it irritated me the way the pieces of Rael's life, of Claude Vaurien's life that were most difficult for him. He managed to build the most dramatic belief structures around his not having a father, his atheism, all of it.

Just seemed, I don't know, seemed a little too on the nose, although I have to say he did have six hits that charted in Europe as a teen pop star. I mean, the guy is an enigma, right? Wasn't Charles Manson trying to make it as a musician, too? Again, yes. Thank you. And how far apart was Manson from this guy's experience?

How far apart were the Manson murders from the launch of the Raelian faith? So the Manson murders were like in 69, 1969. Okay. And so he was doing this starting in the early 70s? Yeah, he had his encounter in 1973, so four years after the Manson murders. Yeah, just, you know, just a bunch of stuff that makes you go, oh.

And how do I know that the Manson murder was in 1969? Because I read Helter Skelter when I was in middle school. Like a good boy. Instead of doing your homework, which is, we learned in a recent episode, you offered to sell your soul because you haven't done your homework. Because you were reading Helter Skelter when you should have been doing social studies.

I was such a weird kid, going to the library and buying Helter Skelter and reading it. My parents were like, good, he's reading a book. Don't look at what he's reading. Serial killers, Helter Skelter, Manson, it's okay. That was your dad. Your mom went in and said, Frank, he's reading a book about Charles Manson. And your dad said, Francis, he's reading Leave the Boy Alone.

So, yeah, I mean, doesn't it just feel like there's a lot of stuff that's a little, like, too on the nose? And also, you know, this is right around the time when Chariots of the Gods was blowing up the bestseller list. There's just a lot. And that was a big, that was a cultural phenomenon when it came out. It really was.

That bad boy is still in print. I see Eric Vondonigan all the time on Ancient Aliens, when the Ancient Alien astronaut theorists are sitting around shooting the breeze. So, and again, this guy could be telling the truth. And who even knows? Am I too judgy to say, I don't think so? I don't think so. I want to be accepting of different beliefs.

I want to try to be open minded. But every once in a while, there's a little voice in my head that goes, what the? And, you know, I'm no theologian. And, you know, I don't my my depth of knowledge on all the world's religions is not vast. I can tell you this. I've never once encountered a situation where Moses or Muhammad or Ezekiel or Buddha, Jesus had a retinue of topless teenage girls following them from place to place.

Have you? Yeah. I mean, I've never seen a religion where the second in command looked like this. Jesus. And Sherry, you know what? I'm you know, my New Year's resolution. And I did make a resolution and I make it every year. I'm going to be less snarky. I wanted to say something really mean spirited. But I was I was gentle as I could be about how I feel about her.

Well, yeah. And he also and by the way, as he gets older, you know, they say you get the face you deserve. For a being of light, I'm not so sure. And I don't mean that like, like, oh, you're being mean because he's not conventionally good looking. No, I thought, please. No, I saw him. Yeah. He'd have to invent a religion to get laid.

No, for real. For real. And and you can't like you can't point to, you know, Moses and the burning bush. It was a literal shrub. OK, it wasn't like a guy next to him. It was the same thing. Yeah. When Jesus washed the feet of the poor, he stopped at their ankles. He didn't work his way up their leg. I mean, you just like, what is it?

Why are we a seductive sex? Yeah. Why are we asked to look at these men who not only exploit women, they exploit all of their followers and they steal them blind and they they're guilty of human trafficking and all sorts of stuff. Why are we forced to go? Well, I guess, you know, it's possible. What? And we've got this we're designed by this advanced race of genderless Elohim extraterrestrials who are all hyper feminine.

And one of their instructions to him is you need to get you a bunch of topless teenagers. Really? Really? And if this means that the Elohim are not going to take a piece of my forehead and put me in their magic cloning machine. And when you and when you hear about that, you're going to be like, shut the door. The Jetsons had more real science in it.

OK, when you hear about that. So maybe maybe I will not be cloned into immortality because I'm snarky and you're definitely not getting in because you just said Rael had to invent a religion to get laid. So aliens are going to come after us. So and you know what? They might. Although I say god awful things about the Scientologists for some and they leave me completely alone.

And let me just say Xenu. Let me just say Xenu around here. That kind of if the Scientologists came after us, that publicity would be bang. Oh, yeah, we got to be a ratings promotion. Hey, Tony, we've got a ratings promotion for you. I'm like tone tone. The Scientologists are mad at true weird stuff. Oh, my God, we're finally going to make it.

I don't I don't think the Raelians have the the oomph for the firepower to come for us the way the Scientologists like to do. And, you know, hey, smoke them if you got them. Believe whatever you need. This is a hard this earthly life is a hard one. We are very emotional creatures and we're fragile and we need each other desperately.

And when we don't get that need met, it can warp us and distort us and turn us into monsters. And this is a hard life. And whatever you believe in, if you pray every night to a moldy avocado, at least you're I mean, you're doing what you can. But be very careful of religious leaders that that tell you the pathway to heaven is by you sucking their dick, because that's what was happening here.

OK, that let me tell you, you don't know, Max. I'm a woman. I do know that ain't the stairway to heaven. I mean, it's fine. You know, everybody has a birthday. I never knew. It is not how some man telling you that I'm looking at you, Warren Jeffs, some man telling you that him laying his hands on your body and and forcibly assaulting you sexually is the path to heaven.

I promise you that's always a lie. I promise you that there is no way that the path to heaven is lined with. Sexual assault and exploitation. Never, ever, ever. That said, maybe we are an alien science experiment. Who knows? Who knows? But do not. Oh, my gosh. Do not miss next week's episode, because it's a couple of things are going to happen.

First of all, you're going to be like, what did I just hear? But but by the end of it, you'll know why we can't clone people. And I think Max, Max used this expression when I was running some of this stuff by him a week or so ago. Or no, it wasn't Max, it was my friend, Uncle Sparkles, Rick. He said, it's almost like God put a kill switch in there to stop us from doing it.

And the kill switch can be seen in a microscope. And that's all I'm going to say, because it's freaking amazing. And I can't wait for next week. Thank you so much for joining us. And I guess stay out of the craters of dormant volcanoes. I don't know what to tell you. Keep your shirt on, please. Oh, we'll see you next week for human cloning.

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