Before we begin, please note that this episode does include themes of sexual assault against minors.

As always, the team and I did our best to handle these details as they are,

part of a story that needs to be told, but definitely not something that needs to be glorified.

With that said, listener discretion is advised.

Music is advised. Joseph may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed.

It was the mid-16-100s in Italy,

and he had just been rejected from becoming

a Franciscan friar for being, and I quote, unremarkably unclever, an insult so cutting we still

know about it 400 years later. Eventually, he did convince the friars to let him serve in their

stables, though, and after years of devoted labor, they

finally gave in and admitted him to their order. Which is when the friars discovered something

shocking. Their newest recruit may not have been smart, but he did have other skills. Joseph,

you see, could fly. Now, okay, to be fair, reading descriptions of this so-called

miraculous levitation does make it sound quite a bit like a particularly smooth hop. Think

pommel horse guy from last summer's Olympics, Catholic style. But even so, this party trick

amazed the clergy so much that word of his holiness spread far and

wide. Sure, some thought that he was a witch, and the friars did keep a close eye on him,

but Joseph's reputation was soaring, no pun intended, I swear. A century after his death, he was

canonized, and today he's the patron saint of aviation, pilots,

and astronauts.

There are countless stories throughout history of religious clerics exhibiting strange,

even paranormal abilities, magical visions, stigmata, speaking in tongues, and yes, even levitation.

...