Tracy Nicholas is a folklorist, author, and game designer. Her upcoming book Mind Over Magick explores empirical and anecdotal evidence for the existence of magick. She is also a frequent host on the Folklore Podcast, her own show Folkloring, and creator of Madmen & Heroes, a company that mails monthly folklore and history inspired puzzle games to subscribers.
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Book Recommendations
Chapters
00:00 Start
1:13 The Nature of Magic
9:50 Quantum Connections
13:56 Global Phenomena
18:50 Past Life Experiences
23:11 Divination and Interpretation
29:10 Dark Goddesses and Folklore
39:58 Modern-Day Horror Stories
51:54 Paranormal and Conspiracy Theories
1:03:44 Paganism and Christianity
1:15:25 Folk Magic in Eastern Europe
1:18:00 Curses and Their Energy
1:41:12 Folklore Across Cultures
1:49:54 The Journey to Podcasting
2:01:18 Game Design Inspirations
2:10:27 Unique Stories of Resistance
2:20:12 Learning Through Stories
2:30:35 Embracing Wonder in Life
Transcript
Speaker1 (Tyler):
[0:00] I weaned that I hung on the windy tree, hung there for nights full nine. With the spear I was wounded, and I offered I, was, to othen myself to myself, on the tree that none may ever know what root beneath it runs. None made me happy, with loaf or horn, and there below I looked. I took up the runes, shrieking, I took them, and forthwith back I fell. Nine mighty songs i got from the son of bullthorn best lust father and a drink i got of the goodly mead poured out from the oath rear then began i to thrive and wisdom to get i grew and well i was
Speaker1:
[0:42] Each word led me on to another word each deed to another deed runes shalt thou find and faithful signs to the kings of singers colored and the mighty gods have made full strong the signs full mighty the signs that the ruler of gods doth write othen for the gods deign for the elves the dvalvin for the dwarves aslith for giants and all
Speaker1:
[1:07] mankind knowest how one shall write knowest how one shall read. Knowest how one shall tent. Knowest how one makes trial. Knowest how one shall ask. Knowest how one shall offer. Knowest how one shall send. Knowest how one shall sacrifice. Better no prayer than too big an offering. By thy getting measure thy gift, better is none then too big a sacrifice words of the high one the all father from the hovamal odin translated by henry adams fellows
Music:
[1:50] Music
Speaker0 (Tracy):
[2:14] I think, honestly, that it's sort of a culmination of a lot of my spiritual practice, my self-improvement work over my lifetime,
Speaker0:
[2:26] and it's just sort of, I threw everything I had in there. And what it's really about is an examination of our beliefs around magic, what we think magic is and isn't, and whether or not magic is real in a scientifically provable way. And I examine kind of what parts of magic and magical thinking can be proved, what can't be proved, and sort of what assumptions we make about magic. So that's generally what it's about.
Speaker1:
[3:10] What were your findings?
Speaker0:
[3:12] Well, I think that there's a lot of things that if we look at magic in the way that if you define magic as something that you don't put any mechanical effort toward outside of yourself, but something changes. So you change something in the world around you without doing anything physically in order to make that happen.
Speaker1:
[3:40] Right yeah i think a lot of people will have if they just do a google search they're going to find like crowley's definition of um science and art of causing change with the will essentially but yeah without physical input although i i would say that then the like physical rituals do come into play at some point right
Speaker0:
[4:01] Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of people, you know, it's a spectrum of what people believe. Some people believe that there are very rigid rules around the tools that you use and the chance that you use and what kind of herbs you use for what. And then there are people who are like, you don't need anything. All you need is your will, which is sort of, you know, an amped up version of manifesting and the secret, which, you know, in a way, that sort of thinking is along the right lines, I think, but it just doesn't really go far enough. And so I think that, you know, again, this is what people's beliefs are. And at a certain point, everything is made up, right? Like somebody, if someone's saying, here's the right way to do a spell.
Speaker1:
[4:53] Right?
Speaker0:
[4:53] Somebody made that up. And, you know, it's like different and a lot of people are very eclectic and they pull in different tools, different pieces from different traditions. You know, there are certainly people who belong to very specific traditions and they practice according to those rules. But I find most people do not. I find most people sort of mix and match according
Speaker0:
[5:14] to their personal, you know, preferences and beliefs. And that's kind of, I think, part of paganism in the Western world is that people want to be independent. They don't want those rigid kind of church rules, right? And so people mix and match. And again, it doesn't matter if it was made up a really long time ago or if it was made up 50 years ago or if you made it up last week, right? It's all made up, ultimately.
Speaker1:
[5:46] Yeah i mean the evolution from you know i mean ancient ritual magic created by king solomon is obviously documented in there but then you have in the 20th century like the chaos magic movement and obviously you have the influence of thelema and things like this in the in the western world um but i mean i'd see there's such a rise nowadays of like neo-paganism and people trying to recreate essentially what was going on in ancient europe ancient hellenistic time frame or and try to make sense of that but then you in in america especially we have such a strong um i would say just influence of the new age movement of let's just take everything and see what happens to throw it all together you know this this works for me this doesn't work for me um in a way that's kind of like i don't know that's what we do with everything that's like what americans founded our country on let's just take all the good ideas and throw out all the bad ideas and see what happens um but yeah like if you could give like a 101 bit of like history of the whole thing leading up to where you're at now with your research
Speaker0:
[6:56] Yeah, I mean, I really researched initially, I was researching sort of the background
Speaker0:
[7:03] of magic and what people believed. And I do go into that in my book and sort of, you know, there's a chapter that's like, here's kind of from, you know, sort of ancient European thinking to now. And then I started incorporating some of my other beliefs about what magic is and you know I started to look at things like a lot of people talk about you know like energy work right and they they talk about grounding and shielding and protect your energy and all of that and so I really started thinking about that. And I, it occurred to me, like, for example, when you go to a concert.
Speaker0:
[7:49] Right, and it's a great concert, right? It's like everything is just right. And the crowd is feeling it. And, and it's sort of like, you know, that's an energy exchange, like people are exchanging energy. And so that's a pretty obvious example that we all have experienced. And you can tell when the energy is off, you know, like the musicians are hitting all the right notes or the actors are saying all the right lines, but it's just like it doesn't build into a positive energy. Nothing like it just feels flicked. So you know the difference of that.
Speaker0:
[8:23] So I think that, you know, we can say there is observable evidence that we exchange energy, right? And so that sort of started leading me down a rabbit hole into.
Speaker0:
[8:36] You know, what do we do with energy? And so then I was thinking about the placebo effect, right? So that is, you know, you take something that you believe will help you get better, right? You're sick, you take a pill, you think it'll help you get better. Now, there's nothing in that pill that actually will help you get better. So there's no actual mechanical intervention.
Speaker1:
[9:06] Right?
Speaker0:
[9:07] But your brain believes that you're getting better, and so you do. Right now, what is more magical than that? You just think I'm going to get better now. And your brain fixes it and you get better. And so when you take those two concepts together, where you know that your brain can alter your body just by thinking about it, and then you start to think about, well, OK, you know, but that's inside me. What about other people and magic that, you know, people are using to influence the world around them? And you sort of apply that principle of you know what an energy exchange feels, right? And so, but that's not the end of the science there.
Speaker0:
[9:51] And so I'm a game designer as well as an author. And so I know a little bit about game theory. And there is something in game theory called quantum pseudotelepathy.
Speaker0:
[10:07] And quantum pseudotelepathy is the idea that when you are playing a Bayesian game, which is a game that involves strategy in which the players don't have complete information. Right and if you're playing a strategy game with two players that um if if you'll envision a grid three by three grid right and one person can fill in columns and the other person can fill in rows but they can't speak to each other or in any way communicate and they just have to you know do that and for every time that they fill in you know one person fills in their column other person fills in the row. For every time those don't intersect, they win that round jointly. But if they ever hit a point where they do pick the same box, then they lose the whole game.
Speaker1:
[11:04] Right?
Speaker0:
[11:06] In quantum pseudotelepathy, If the players have had contact before the game, even if they can't talk during the game, they do statistically significantly better than they would do if they had had no contact at all. And so the reason it's called pseudotelepathy, it's not that it's fake telepathy. It's just on a quantum level, this is part of what quantum entanglement is, which is saying that when we connect with people on a quantum level, there is a physical, an actual real physical connection. And it doesn't matter how far away the person is. It doesn't matter, you know, if you've been with someone and then you're not with them. You still maintain that quantum connection. Right. And Einstein called this spooky.
Speaker1:
[12:00] Action at a distance.
Speaker0:
[12:01] Exactly. Yeah. And so it's so it's pseudo because there is an actual physical connection. Right.
Speaker0:
[12:10] But, you know, that that's a real thing. That's that's a provable theory that is, you know, in in game design theory.
Speaker0:
[12:18] And so when I started going down these different rabbit holes, I was like, okay, so these things are provable, you know, like quantum entanglement is, you know, a theory that has been around for a very long time.
Speaker0:
[12:32] Quantum game theory is also, you know, provable. And so I focused a lot on those things to talk about, you know, what is magic. Now I do get into things like spirits and fairies. And, you know, and my basic belief on all of that is it's any chance of trying to prove that at this point is pseudoscience, right? We can't tell if that's real or not. A lot of people have had experiences talking to loved ones or, you know, psychics and all of that. And a lot of that, And that's worldwide, right? And so I think we have to pay attention to the fact that it is a shared experience that many, many people have had. And that has some merit to it, to just say it would be really unusual if, you know, only like all of these people had this experience and there was nothing at all behind it. Not impossible, and we can't prove it. So I'm not going to make claims that we can, if that makes sense.
Speaker1:
[13:41] That's an interesting topic. I have dogged into that a lot recently. Pseudoscience is probably not like an incorrect term because you're not really
Speaker1:
[13:54] able to do an experiment in many cases. But i would say the trouble with uh trying to prove something like a fae or a fairy or a spirit or whatever is that you're it's a global phenomenon we know that we can we can even cross-reference and say like same symptoms different thing that they assigned it to right different name they
Speaker1:
[14:16] Use for it whatever um so i spoke a lot with uh do you remember the show ghost hunters like 20 years ago uh i had barry fitzgerald on the show who was like one of the main people on ghost hunters international and he is now uh running a project called project doorway where he and steve mayra and a lot of other uh folks in that kind of parapsychology world are trying to just get people together and cross-reference this stuff all over and one of the things that they've been doing is talking about like um looking at satellite imagery of like geomagnetic anomalies around the earth and you know it's interesting like there's a lot of cool stuff like the the 37th parallel is a good book for people who are interested in this kind of stuff but yeah people have talked about this in documentaries like as long as i can remember about there's like a kind of grid of magical energy around the world and like all these ancient monuments kind of fall on it and places like uh sedona arizona and uh somerset england and somerset kentucky and like the names are shared and it seems like just a bunch of weird coincidences and synchronicities and such but then you get these like high strangeness kind of situations um so i would just say go ahead are
Speaker0:
[15:27] You talking about ley lines.
Speaker1:
[15:28] Yeah sure i mean that's the trouble with this stuff is that there's so many different people observing the same phenomena putting applying a different name to it you know and then uh it's almost the same problem with government like you compartmentalize things and then the people who are actually seeing the phenomena or doing the research are not communicating with each other. So then if I bring up like, oh, ley lines, and then another person says... Uh, spiritual grid or, you know, something like that. We, we're not talking to each other. If I go do a Google search for other people thinking about the same thing as me, we're not talking to each other. We're not even going to come across each other. Um, same thing with a fairy versus a shinigami versus a, you know, a ghost or a poltergeist, all these different words that get thrown around, but they're all very similar. If you go to Japan and start asking people the right questions, you'll, you'll find paranormal phenomena. They just may not call it what you think? So that is interesting. I'm not even arguing with you. I'm just like kind of, I'm so fascinated by the entirety of it.
Speaker0:
[16:32] Yeah. I mean, I always wonder about, you know, places that are super haunted.
Speaker0:
[16:39] And I think why those places, you know, presumably people have been dying everywhere. Right. And so, you know, why do those particular places have, you know, more activity than others and you know it's it's the big joke like why do you never see like a ghost who comes from the 1990s right you know why is it always like this victorian era kind of or you know old timey kind of people civil war or yeah exactly so.
Speaker1:
[17:11] A famous person too that's every like past life regression it's like oh i was the queen of sheba i'm like why couldn't you just been the gardener or anything other? Yeah.
Speaker0:
[17:21] Yeah. It's funny. I've done a couple of like past life regressions. I was never anybody famous. One time I was the daughter of a guy who was like basically the groundskeeper for a rich family. And so we were like servant class. Another time I was just like a housewife. And so I thought that was really interesting. But what I found most interesting about it is the person who did it basically did a recording, like, you know, channeled whatever she was channeling and did a recording and sent it to me. And she really nailed some of my personality traits, like in sort of the behaviors of these two past people. It was like, oh, you know, that's why I have this toxic behavior or that, you know, or why I this is, you know, my my love language or whatever it was.
Speaker0:
[18:23] And so that kind of thing is always surprising to me. And, you know, of course, I've had readings where, you know, it's been like, oh, you know, this particular person is here and it ends up sounding very much like my father. And they're wildly accurate. And so and of course, I've had very generalized readings as well, where it's just like, yeah, that could apply to anybody.
Speaker0:
[18:46] And so I do wonder about, you know, the accuracy of some of it. And some of it is like random stuff that I didn't know yet. And so I'd be like, that doesn't really resonate with me. And then later, a day or a week later, I'd find out that, you know.
Speaker0:
[19:04] Like one time it was this person who had come through with this very strange name. And I was like, I have no idea. I'd never heard of this person. I don't know what you're talking about. And then, and she kept saying, tell George this, you know. And then finally at the very end she said well um you know talk to gina about it and all of a sudden i was like okay i have an uncle george who has a daughter named gina and so i reached out and i'm like okay you're gonna think this is really weird right and i said but do you know and and i went and looked on facebook and sure enough there was this like nickname it was it was i don't even remember what the name was but it was she had a friend on facebook that had this name so i was okay, now I have to email her. So I reached out and said, you're going to think this is really weird, but this person, whatever the name was, and she emailed me back immediately. She said, oh my God, that was my mother's best friend.
Speaker0:
[20:00] And she passed away. And I sort of described the exchange and how this person was kind of pushy and all of this stuff. And she said, yep, yep, that's exactly her. And before I went and looked on her Facebook page, I had no idea this other person even had existed right so that's kind of weird and and i don't know how you would have even if you had looked me up on facebook done an extensive search that would be a pretty big reach.
Speaker1:
[20:27] Yeah, that is very compelling. And then I think that, you know, if you talk to a, I don't know, a Catholic priest or something, they would say, well, of course, they're going to lie to you. And they know things about you that you, you know, you wouldn't know because they're watching you all the time and all that sort of thing. It's very scary. But so like you said, you've done like readings and past life aggressions and such things. Like, how do you go about navigating that space and knowing what is dangerous versus what isn't dangerous?
Speaker0:
[20:55] As far as getting readings, I don't think I really consider it dangerous. I think that, you know, it's like any other kind of divination to me. And I love divination. I've got a pendulum. I've got oracle cards. I don't like tarot very much, but that's just a personal thing. what what's.
Speaker1:
[21:21] The difference for the people listening like between tarot and oracle cards
Speaker0:
[21:25] Tarot is a specific um type of it it has like all the same categories basically it's got the major arcana which are figures and different characters and it's got the minor arcana which is like cups and and wands and i don't remember the others um but it's it's always the same right it's always the same deck no matter what artwork you put on it it and it has a very specific way of being read and interpreted oracle cards are um much there's no one type of oracle card right it's based on um and again you know people make them up it's based on whatever.
Speaker0:
[22:13] Theme a person wants to do it can be you know gemstones or herbs i've got my one that i usually do which is called the enchanted map and it's just a bunch of stuff that this person made up and so you pull the cards and in tarot there's always a spread and the spread means that you have to put the cards out in a specific way and then each card in the order that you pull them, refers to something different like one card will maybe refer to your past and another will refer to your current situation another one will be about how you're feeling about your current situation and you know another will be about the the future or danger that's coming or you know With an oracle card, it's more based on sort of the meaning of the cards themselves.
Speaker0:
[23:12] And you can do them in a spread if you so choose, but you don't have to.
Speaker0:
[23:17] And so, as I was saying about any kind of divination, I think that in a lot of ways, it doesn't matter if it's true, because it is sort of a backdoor into your own subconscious, right? Like, if you're thinking too hard about a problem, you can't figure it out. And this is sort of like here's what you really think you know um and they say that like if you flip a coin pay attention to like that split second of what you hope it will be before you actually see what it ends up being heads or tails and then then you know what you really think about it right there's like a second where you're like rooting for one.
Speaker1:
[24:05] Or the other what you want versus yeah yeah i i totally agree with you um it's interesting with tarot oracle cards or whatever i i always find it interesting that kind of what people walk into a tarot reading the same way that they walk into a therapist where they think they want someone else to tell them the answers to their problems and realistically actually i feel like if you're walking into any any person who's divining anything for you and they start telling you what to think they're probably not uh going to be very helpful like you you are just going to be presented with all these different questions so you see a card whatever that happens to be and your question to yourself is what does that mean to me right now what what do i make of this and then you go think about that and then eventually you poof you know the truth um but you could do this i could do the same thing with a regular deck of cards or you know going out and doing nature magic like here's the leaves in the grass tea leaf whatever it is the the idea is to bring something forth from your own soul your own consciousness that you solve for yourself hopefully i
Speaker0:
[25:11] Mean there are as many different kinds of divination as there are things basically um you know you can you can throw the bones you can do bibliomancy where you open up your book to a page and you know check the eighth line down.
Speaker1:
[25:29] My favorite one to do with people when they're having a problem creatively is grab a random book off the shelf, open up any page, read the first thing that you see. And then what does that mean to you? It's the same thing. Right. Yeah.
Speaker0:
[25:44] You know, I think that that used to be like, it used to be very difficult to get books. It was expensive and difficult and they were hard to make. And so, you know, books, I think, have long been seen as sort of powerful, containing power, if not magic. And so I think that, you know, that one makes a lot of sense. And, you know, there was, I'm from Chicago, which at a certain point was like one of the occult centers of the world. And there were a lot of grimoires published here, a lot of occult activity and, you know, societies and that sort of thing. Um so so yeah but but again it's anything you can go outside and pick up a couple of sticks and toss them and interpret the way they fall you know and so it really again that's why i think it's more of a backdoor into your mind where you and it is it's all about the interpretation and so someone who's reading my cards can tell me okay this is what the tower means right this is what it symbolizes and they can talk about those different meanings
Speaker0:
[27:05] but it's up to me to say and here's how it applies to my life in this moment yeah.
Speaker1:
[27:12] The tower is a very special card for me always has been like every time like every time i have a problem if i like i think about like oh you're trying to save a princess from the tower again you idiot the tower is a lie don't worry about that um but this is what they whatever they happen to be whatever they bring to mind is just a great way for us to do our own cognition whether you believe that's metaphysical or or if it's just psychology uh i would say the best psychologists were the ones who said both why not both has well how come it has to be one or the other right
Speaker0:
[27:47] Right yeah i mean i think that um you know you often hear about the card death in the tarot and you know immediately yeah immediately people are like that's not necessarily actual death it could be metaphorical you know you're changing jobs or you're you know and and so again i think that because there are very specific ways to interpret the tarot, and maybe I'm just a lazy card reader. I don't really feel compelled to sort of memorize all of those, you know, what are the entities of the tarot, and so that's why I kind of just like the other oracle decks better. And I like the symbolism. I've got a deck that is dark goddesses and that one's a lot of fun because dark goddesses are um, they're, they're, they've always got two sides to them, right? They, they have a good side, but they also have a challenging side. And so, and some of my favorite characters in folklore are ambiguous like that. And I actually recently did a episode of my podcast on dark goddesses, which was a lot of fun, very interesting stuff.
Speaker0:
[29:10] But, but yeah, I like those ambiguous characters because we can see ourselves in those characters, right? Yep. And not like caricatures, like the Greek gods, they sort of take the characteristics and foibles and they bring them to the extreme. And I'm not talking about those. It's the old joke, it's like 90% of what happens in Greek mythology is because Zeus couldn't keep it in his pants, right?
Speaker0:
[29:41] But I think that characters like Baba Yaga, for example, who is a witch, she's Russian folklore, and she has a house that walks around on big chicken legs, right? And she rides around in a mortar and pestle. That's how she flies around.
Speaker0:
[30:07] And her house has a fence around it that is made of bones and skulls of people that she's killed. And so if you go to ask her for help, she might help you. She might take you in and mentor you and teach you about witchcraft. She also might kill you. It just depends on how she's feeling right then, right? And so I like that, you know, she can be both of those things, like completely heartless and unfeeling.
Speaker0:
[30:43] But also, like, she might transform your life and save you from a terrible situation. I think that those are the most interesting characters because, you know, we all have parts of ourselves we don't like, right? And so it's fun when you can see like okay but you know she does do good stuff sometimes so you know she's not all bad um and and i just as you can tell i'm a big fan of symbolism and how we think about things so and.
Speaker1:
[31:17] That's a really good point and it's something that i think paganism addresses that like any sort of dualistic religion never really gets around to is like the idea of there's like pure good and pure evil and they're constantly at war comes from you know zoroastrian kind of philosophy whereas prior to the evolution of that spiritual way of thinking all of the gods were just basically human i mean they had these very complicated characteristics Thor, Loki, Odin, none of them were perfect, right? And they didn't claim to be. They just kind of were these emotional beings that represented something within ourselves that we projected into these stories. Whether you believe that they're real or not, the fact stands that Zeus is the father of all and also has a problem with keeping it in his pants. He's always going around and doing stuff and pissing his wife off and everything. So that's really hard for, I think, a Judeo-Christian mindset to wrap their brain around if they're coming into it new. Other than just studying it as a scholarly, this is mythology. This is what people believed before they were told the truth, so to speak.
Speaker0:
[32:30] Yeah, I mean, as a folklorist, to me, folklore is neutral. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, right? It just matters that people believe it or continue to tell the stories or continue to engage in the practices, right? And I define folklore very broadly. When I think about folklore,
Speaker0:
[32:52] it is a shared set of beliefs or behaviors amongst a group of people, right? And the group can be two people, or it can be an entire community, or it can be in, you know, a country, or it can be worldwide. It's just, you know, what do you believe? What practices do you engage in? And so when I think about folklore, the interesting thing for me is what do people believe and what sort of shared beliefs are there? Like we were talking earlier, you can go find ghost stories in Japan and like all over the, there's no place where there aren't ghost stories. And so what do they look like in different places? And I was just reading a book where it said, like, it said.
Speaker0:
[33:51] It doesn't matter what it is that your belief is. It just matters that you kind of follow it, right? And so it's interesting to see where people come from. And you can see as people started moving around the planet, right? They bring their folklore with them. And so you start to see multiple instances of the same belief, but it's transplanted. And when it gets to a new place, when the folklore gets to a new place, it adapts to that environment. And so our stories are tied to our ancestors and our past, but they're also tied to where we are physically. And I find that very interesting.
Speaker1:
[34:39] Um so the stories that we tell ourselves amongst our groups and everything say a lot of sociologically about who we are like what are we afraid of so when it comes to something that's scary the way that you describe something that you find scary within a group says a lot about what your values are and what you fear so there was this really interesting study where they were going around looking at people who have paranoid schizophrenia in different parts of the world, right? And, you know, the kind of classic example in American and Western culture is you think there's a big government conspiracy and there's black helicopters following, you know, very like, it's a beautiful mind kind of thing. And that stereotype is real because lots of people feel that way. Then if you go to somewhere like in the Orient, Turkey, India, especially like the voices are different they're not saying kill yourself or you know the the government's after you or anything like that but that's something we fear in western culture they fear something it's like your house is dirty you've dishonored your family you know you're worthless you're you're not a good you're not contributing to your to your group whatever those are the kinds of things the voice is telling them because that's the worst thing that they you can imagine and it's the it's no matter where you are whatever your values are your fear is going to be a reflection of those values um this is very very interesting very insightful stuff that i was reading about that
Speaker0:
[36:09] Yeah, and I also think it's interesting that in some cultures, people who do suffer from various mental, what we would define as mental illnesses, those people are seen as holy.
Speaker0:
[36:24] And so it's like, it also depends on how you interpret how that, you know, like we see it as something shameful. And it's terrible, but that's how we see mental health. struggles. It's shameful. You should keep it to yourself. Nobody wants to know. We medicate people to keep them either calm or to keep them... And obviously, there are some conditions that are dangerous for the individual or for others. And you want to help people in that situation. But, you know, like when we talk about, you know, ADHD and we, you know, and that's a real condition. But there's, you know, for a while, there were a lot of kids being diagnosed with it that just needed more time, like outside exercising. And they just had, you know, more energy. And so because they weren't sitting still and focused on what the teacher wanted them to do, they were labeled in a particular way that, you know, would have been managed by just different behavioral choices.
Speaker0:
[37:40] But we don't set up schools for kids we set up schools for the efficiency of the teachers to have a particular curriculum um you know and that then they all have to perform at a certain level we're not trying to help the kids be the
Speaker0:
[37:56] best that they personally can be we're trying to get them to fit a mold i.
Speaker1:
[38:01] Think if you interviewed some teachers what you would find is that it's not set up for their efficiency either it's set up for the efficiency of something bigger than themselves, and they feel it's out of control too. But yeah, ADHD in particular, I think, got way out of hand. This whole idea of just putting kids on drugs so that they will conform is... I don't understand how someone can look at that from a 40,000-foot point of view and not see that the problem is not your child. The problem is the situation your child is in.
Speaker0:
[38:32] And, you know, God bless people that are still going into teaching, right? You've got to love them because it doesn't pay well. It is a thankless job. The budgeting is such that they can't get what they really need, and they're often supplementing it with their own money. It's it's it's just a really hard, hard thing to do. And then you've got all of these rules imposed on you where you're right. The teachers, their hands are tied in a lot of ways. And so, you know, that that's a that's a rough job.
Speaker1:
[39:07] Well, my brother is a high school teacher and I spent six years in the Air Force and I think he has it worse than I ever did. Like, to be honest with you, as far as just like feeling safe and in control of your environment and all that kind of stuff. It's a it's a rough job being a teacher is hard uh being a public school teacher is like as hard as it gets because you're just kind of thrown to the wolves and you're held to all these crazy expectations um they don't even get you yeah in the air force they give you a gun like yeah you can defend yourself yeah yeah
Speaker0:
[39:37] And i mean honestly like it's such a different environment than when i went to school like there were no you know mass shootings there were like the kids are getting trained for that now and so you know putting that very real fear into them um but you know for the vast
Speaker0:
[39:55] majority of kids that it never happens to they still get handed that fear.
Speaker1:
[39:59] One of the interesting things about all of this is that it's sort of a modern day kind of horror story and like folk tale is you know from starting really i think i would say with columbine we we invented this sort of zeitgeist of the the creepy kid in the trench coat who you know doesn't conform and then he becomes a school shooter and all that kind of thing and then it starts to manifest in society and then even after we get past this like hopefully a hundred years from now we're not doing that anymore but people are still going to tell the stories about this and eventually people are going to debate about whether it did it even happen like what are the records of this why why did it happen why do people keep telling the story about the you know the the i don't know what they'll call him the column biner or something like the kid in the trench coat who goes around and you know whatever um and and i i imagine maybe not all but a lot of the stories that we do tell have origins of some kind that are like based in reality like maybe there wasn't a baba yaga maybe maybe there was an old lady who was like the kind of witch doctor who lived outside of the village that people did go to and sometimes she would screw you over and sometimes she would help you and it depended on how you interacted with her and what your intentions were. And then from there, that story just grew and grew and grew and eventually, you know, now we have John Wick.
Speaker0:
[41:16] I mean, I think that a lot of if you look at some older stories, like when people started banding together in, you know, compounds and small villages and stuff that, you know, the woods out in the forest, that was dangerous. And it was particularly dangerous after dark. And so exactly that's where a lot of those scary stories come from. And I think about, there's a story called the Black Shuck. And the Black Shuck is a massive black dog with glowing red, sometimes yellow eyes. And the Black Shuck is sometimes seen as something dangerous, but oftentimes it's a protector. And the it will like show up when someone is like walking alone at night and maybe they're drunk and they don't know what's going on around them or whatever and they're about to be you know set upon by ne'er-do-wells and and so the black dog walks with them until they're safe again right and so you know in that case you can start to see when like things started shifting from From the woods are the scary thing, the beasts out there are the scary things, to men are the scary things, or mankind.
Speaker0:
[42:46] And so it's, and I see the same kind of shift where...
Speaker0:
[42:53] Like in modern times now, you know, again, the village used to be the safe place, but it's not so much anymore. Right. And so when you start to see urban legends, it's like the monsters are in the cities now. Right.
Speaker0:
[43:10] And so because it is, it's dangerous to be out oftentimes in cities. And, you know, you're set upon by someone who is going to mug you or whatever. And so when you see those stories transitioning, and even when you look at alien abductions, right? So alien abductions used to be the standard was, you know, out on a country road with no lights.
Speaker1:
[43:37] With a beer in your hand, bib overalls on.
Speaker0:
[43:40] And the car dies and then, you know, or it comes, you know, the spaceship comes to a remote farmhouse, right? It was always someone who was alone. But in recent years, I've been hearing, there was that one very sad video of a woman who was on a plane and she had to be removed because she was making a big to-do about this one guy who she was saying was an alien. And it was very difficult to watch. But, you know...
Speaker1:
[44:10] That Twilight Zone episode that happened to William Shatner, right? Like, this is the same.
Speaker0:
[44:14] Yeah, my all-time favorite Twilight Zone episode. I love that.
Speaker0:
[44:19] But, yeah, you know, it was before the plane took off. They had to remove her. It was, you know... But she honestly and truly believed it. And, you know, again, it doesn't matter if it's true. All it matters is that someone believes it and why do they believe it? And there's also been recently, Recently, there was another person who was convinced that everybody on a train, like a commuter train with them, were aliens, and they were freaking out. And so, you know, again, we're seeing that the city is now the dangerous place because—and I think that that has, you know, sociopolitical underpinnings of we have become a culture—and this is true for
Speaker0:
[45:02] most of the Western world— we other people, right? We, you know, you're one side of the political spectrum or the other, and you hate the other side, right? And so, you know, we throw insults, we talk about the people on the other side, and it's, you know, and you talk about, you know, people, you don't call them, you know.
Speaker0:
[45:27] Immigrants, you call them illegals, right? And it's, you know, when you start to dehumanize people right then the monster is us right and so it makes sense to me that we would be seeing monsters in other people around us because that's you know metaphorically that's what we're doing anyway.
Speaker1:
[45:53] Have you seen the movie Borat ever?
Speaker0:
[45:55] No, I have not.
Speaker1:
[45:57] It might not be your cup of tea, but for the sake of telling this, the guy is actually a British Jew who's playing the character of Borat,
Speaker1:
[46:09] But he really does go around and do these crazy things to see how people interact with him doing crazy things and then film it and makes it into the movie, right? And one of the things he does is like he's experimenting with this idea that kazakhstani people don't like jews and that they're told all these horrible crazy stories about like stereotypes of jew jewish people right so he goes to a synagogue dressed as a jew and in this case it's like he's got a carrot tied to his nose and long fingernails and a weird hat and all this all these really ridiculous stereotypes walks into the place and then he has all this like he's projecting every stereotype that you would hear and then like this old jewish woman who's like a literal holocaust survivor just like calmly sits him down and she's like hey look i'm not like that i don't have a long nose why are you afraid of me and of course sasha baron cohen is the guy who's dressed up he knows this stuff like he knows this is ridiculous but he's trying to see what the reaction is and where do all these crazy stories come from like why is it that people think that because they're it's the same way you were just describing like we you when you start otherizing another person you turn them into a monster in your head you tell like in germany they were telling little kids stories about how they drank blood and they were you know carried diseases like rats and all this sort of thing,
Speaker1:
[47:36] When in reality, you're the monster because you are now dehumanizing an entire group of people, so...
Speaker0:
[47:43] Yeah, well the whole baby eating in the treatment of a pizza joint, like... People believed that. Like, how ridiculous. How can you hear as an adult? How can you hear that and be like, yeah, I'm going to go there and get to the bottom of it?
Speaker1:
[48:02] Like, the problem is that, you know, that story in and of itself, like Pizzagate or, you know, the succulent hot dogs.
Speaker1:
[48:11] Like, of course, we're never going to prove that. And it's probably not true. But the grain of truth that leads someone to something like bohemian grove and then jeffrey epstein and p diddy is like reigniting the fire like see see i wasn't completely wrong like no you weren't completely right either but yes there's a problem your diagnosis wasn't you know you're sorry you're the medicine you were prescribing wasn't necessarily identifying what the diagnosis was um and people get so lost in this stuff i i mean i'm talking right now i have a recent podcast guest who was trying to convince me of like geoclimate engineering and he's pretty convinced and i was like okay i'll look into it and i'm i'm gonna be honest i was a weather forecaster in the air force i'm open to the idea that someone can manipulate the weather at a micro scale because they they doing it in dubai right now like it's it's a real thing the question is is harp uh shooting something into the ionosphere that is somehow supercharging particles and heating up the surface enough to make hurricane to steer a hurricane into north carolina and then i'm like and why and then it's you know and the answer is like they don't care about anything they just they don't care like it's just it's just a pure evil at the top and all this stuff And I'm like,
Speaker1:
[49:35] I just, I just need a little bit more evidence before I'm willing to jump on
Speaker1:
[49:39] this train. You know, it's.
Speaker0:
[49:41] Exactly. I mean, it's, you know, and, and not to say that we don't manipulate the weather, you know, we've been seeding clouds for how many years, you know, like to make it rain. And so, but I think that when you look at what it would entail, you know, do we have the technology for that kind of thing? And if so, what would the expense be? You know, I mean, how, like, would a government pay for that? I mean, how are we going to send billionaires into space if we're over here spending money manipulating the weather? Yeah.
Speaker1:
[50:20] And in the answer to that, so it's, it's a similar sort of thing. You start otherizing the enemy until they become something that's like beyond human. Right. So the simplest Occam's razor answer is like, yeah, there's bad people doing bad things at the top of the heap. And then there's also good people trying to fight with it and all that kind of thing. Or if you, if you can't prove it and you don't have like all of the evidence, then you start saying, well, it's not them. It's the reptile alien archons who are on the dark side of the moon who they've been negotiating with since we first launched the atomic bomb and you see they don't care about us so the the humans aren't allowed to talk about it who are in communication with them so and it just never ending but that's modern day folklore i mean there i had a dr justin sledge on talking about UFO religion and it has just become no different than any other mythos that's ever existed where we're trying to explain something we are observing and what we are observing is real there is chaos in the world there are crazy super storms what's the cause of it we don't know so we We have to tell ourselves a story that makes it a complete narrative. That's what we do. We can't look at the moon without seeing a man in it. We can't look at a picture of Mars without seeing a face on Mars. There might be a face on Mars. I don't know.
Speaker0:
[51:45] Well, it's interesting because I've gone to a fair number of paranormal conferences.
Speaker0:
[51:54] Mostly looking to connect with authors that I want to interview. And so and i've met some really great people and i've met a lot of people who write about you know very specific paranormal events and the thing that shocks me about those events is and you know i i find it interesting i'm like you know i'm always up for a good you know werewolf story or or bigfoot story and those bigfoot people are very serious about bigfoot um but the number of conspiracy theorists at these events i mean it's far more than half and they're just like drawn to the paranormal and i wouldn't have thought that but now that you're talking it's like yeah i see that that connection of you know where when you have to have an answer you'll at some point tell yourself anything, right? And I mean, I always laugh about conspiracy theories, because as you said, yes, there are bad people in, you know, leadership all over the world doing terrible things. And they're, you know, making under the table deals and, you know.
Speaker0:
[53:14] Doing what they can to stay in power and wealth. That's all very true. But some things, like, it's like, well, why would they do this, first of all?
Speaker0:
[53:25] And if they did, just like, let's take the moon landing, for example, right?
Speaker0:
[53:32] So why would, so we, if we staged it and it was on a soundstage, right, first of all, that would take hundreds and hundreds of people to set that up at all levels of production, right? I worked in film for a while. It takes a lot of people to do productions like that. And, you know, besides the fact that we didn't really have the equipment to fake what they said we faked, but that's beside the point. But you're going to tell me in, you know, 75 whatever years, nobody has ever that worked on that project has ever like gone to a bar and gotten drunk and been like, yeah, I worked on that. That was fake. Nobody's ever told their spouse. Nobody's ever let it slip on their deathbed. Right.
Speaker1:
[54:21] The thing is, that has happened. like there are people who have said i was involved and i knew what really happened and i went to clovis air force base and i saw stanley kubrick in the room there was like five generals and they faked the whole way whether or not that person's lying we don't know because you know there's always that chance that they just want to sound important but there's like air force osi officer there's people who have come forward and said it's a conspiracy but
Speaker0:
[54:47] And let me ask you this Let me ask you this. And again, it's back to the question of why. Why would then the other superpowers in the world, Russia and China at the time, why would they agree that like, oh, yeah, you know, it was faked, but America got there first? Like, why would they be, what would be their motivation to be part of that story and part of that fake?
Speaker1:
[55:16] So again I'm just totally playing the devil's advocate here but China and Russia believed that it happened. They fell for the trick, right? And then they were always skeptical of it. Recently, there was this big AI conference where they were analyzing the recent Chinese missions to the moon versus the videos that were provided by the United States, which certain people truly believe was filmed in New Mexico and can point at the things that make them think that.
Speaker1:
[55:48] The image analysis of this ai was like saying essentially like this is the if this is the real thing that this cannot possibly also be the real thing and vladimir putin was standing there and he was like like nodding like yeah i knew it i knew they lied i knew it um the other argument is that they're also in contact with the reptile aliens and they're also afraid of them and they're also trying to maintain whatever they need to do to establish global control i'm i'm more on your side of this argument where i think like it it seems like a lot but then again it it is a lot to do a film you know set it is a lot to make that happen but is it is it cost effectively more or less than actually putting people on the moon and there's just there's there's a i would say it's a more than 0% chance that we haven't had people on the moon. I'm not saying it's 100%. I'm not even saying it's 2%, but somewhere more than zero, there's reasons to doubt it is where that comes from. And then reasons to doubt don't necessarily equate to, I have definitive proof that we didn't do it.
Speaker1:
[57:01] That's where I get really, really tired of those people, as much fun as it can be
Speaker0:
[57:07] Yeah i mean sure i i understand why people are like oh you know here are all the reasons why it would have made sense to do that um i think that you know there are also a lot of people who were like hey i worked on the space program you know and there's a lot more of those people than there are of people that are i worked on the movie set right and so but.
Speaker1:
[57:36] They wouldn't let the people in the space program know what they were doing right
Speaker0:
[57:39] That's part of that yeah not in every place certainly um i i met a guy at a nursing home about 15 plus years ago and he was like i worked on sputnik and he was telling me all about it in in great detail and it was it was really fascinating stuff um and so you know i i think that to have a complete complete. You would have a complete lack of anybody knowing anything about the space program if it didn't happen, right? Unless they had a bunch of people play acting, working on it. But then they would figure out at a certain point that there was no rocket taking off, right? And then it's like, well, okay, people go watch rocket launches. You know so did people go watch that rocket launch presumably they did right and so if they're saying it.
Speaker1:
[58:43] They did send up a rocket and then they just brought it back at the right time to keep the story yeah yeah right um no my number one argument with the whole climate engineering thing is like i've sat in a fucking room with a bunch of people watching the weather all day every day monitoring every observation every storm everything across the entirety of north and south america for years and my number one argument with these people is like so you i'm not arguing whether you're right or wrong i'm just saying you think that all of us were completely oblivious to what was going on like that that the government on purpose was editing in real time and i'm talking a matter of seconds satellite and radar imagery before it got to us so that later i would confirm to you that i would tell the public no that's not true like that's the level of conspiracy you're talking about and you know there's no arguing there's really no what
Speaker0:
[59:48] Are they saying that the what is the manipulation for.
Speaker1:
[59:54] Because it's pure evil, and all they care about is death and destruction and control.
Speaker0:
[1:00:00] So there's time and energy to create chaos for no reason. It's just like the evil league of evil.
Speaker1:
[1:00:09] Well, they want to enslave the human race and to take all of the golden minerals from our planet so that they can re-engineer the atmosphere on Nibiru, so that they can undo their own climate disaster. So they so in order to solve their own climate disaster they come here and try to
Speaker0:
[1:00:30] It's the lizard people.
Speaker1:
[1:00:31] It's it's deep like this is so deep i mean ancient aliens deep what oh this has been going on since the dawn of man kind of stuff they they made us we are we are uh engineered by them to be their slaves in our dna this is awesome i'm not kidding but this is the modern day folklore this is real that lots of people believe this like a religion and what who am i to tell them they're wrong i can't prove they're wrong
Speaker0:
[1:01:04] When you know the government came out and you know we're doing the whole you know thing and everybody was all worked up about that and then they're like yeah aliens are real and everyone was like oh it was just like no reaction.
Speaker1:
[1:01:18] Yeah that's also very interesting too is like the the lack of reaction to when things come out but then the whole government priming us for recognizing ufos now um is to slowly adapt us to being able to accept it when we do see the real thing in real life and all but Who knows? I mean, the drones in New Jersey and in Connecticut recently and all this kind of stuff, like, who knows what that is? I don't know.
Speaker0:
[1:01:53] Well, you know, I mean, for me personally, I would have a very, very hard time believing that there isn't other life out there. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would there only be life here? So, you know, it's just a matter of, you know, how far along technologically, civilization-wise, you know, like, is it, you know, are they still at the, you know, cellular level? Is it still, like, is that, you know, single cell life? Or, you know, is it massive advanced civilization, right? That's what there's no way to tell.
Speaker0:
[1:02:37] And, you know, again, it's this othering. So if we do share life with other areas of the universe, which we must, you know, are they like every story that you hear about your every fictional accounting is like they're hostile, right? They come here, there's very few that they're not hostile. They come here, they attack, and, you know, we have to deal with that. And, you know, again, it's why people are afraid of, like, people coming into the country. It's like, they're just people, you know? Like they're, in most cases, they're very vulnerable people. And so, you know, to be afraid of them is, it's very telling on how we feel about other people and the stories we tell about other people. And I think that, you know, being afraid of aliens and telling stories that they're manipulating and controlling us is just an extension of being afraid of other people.
Speaker1:
[1:03:44] Let's get back to while staying on the same topic, talking about European paganism, and then as the Romans spread Christianity throughout the nation, they encounter people who have completely different beliefs than they do. Ironically, not that far removed from what they just believed right before this. And then you have the othering of anybody who wasn't a Christian, and that word is heathen and pagan. Like they're just throwing these words around and saying like, oh, they're a witch. They're evil because they're doing these things that we claim is wrong. And if they're interacting with something that isn't the god that we say that they should interact with, it's a demon. And if they claim to interact with the Virgin Mary or the Archangel Michael and they don't check off every box that we say they ought to, then they're actually talking to a demon that's lying to them. It's exactly the same sort of conspiratorial othering that you see.
Speaker0:
[1:04:42] Well, now, interestingly, when the Christian church first started, you know, the big takeover, they... Initially would adapt to pagan beliefs, right? Right. Christmas, Easter. Yeah, and that's why, oh, like, you know, the church stole these, but no, it wasn't like that at all. They didn't steal any pagan celebrations. You know, I mean, even like the Wheel of the Year, where we talk about, you know, the solstices and the equinoxes are obviously natural events that happen, but the other four holidays in the Wheel of the Year were made up in like the 40s or 50s, right? A couple of British dudes made those up.
Speaker0:
[1:05:30] Right. But anyway, when the church was taking over, people like their harvest fest, right? It's celebratory. The bulk of the work for farming is done for the year or they've slaughtered their, they've got their meat And they're safe for living through the winter, right? And so people had these massive celebrations. Well, the church came in and saw that, and they went, we've got to replace that with something that is just as much fun. And that's why a lot of those holidays line up, like the holidays that have to do with the actual year and actual when spring comes.
Speaker0:
[1:06:18] And the, you know, growth starts again. People celebrate it because they lived through the winter, right? And so, you know, and again, it's so telling to me. So Easter, right? It's, you know, Jesus resurrecting, right? Which is the perfect metaphor for the growth in the land. Like, it's been dead all winter. It's been, you know, under the ground, buried under the snow. And then it comes back to life.
Speaker0:
[1:06:50] And so that's a perfect story for a springtime event, because it says, here's how we can think about regeneration and rejuvenation that isn't the exact same as what those 30 pagans were celebrating. Right. And so, you know, I think that they first adapted and then as they grew and grew, they started taking over and stories, the later stories of, you know, anything that is not the Christian dogma is wrong and bad. Like those started happening a little bit later. And it was sort of a centralized, a more centralized decision, you know. And so like that some of the people who were like way off in like some little village, like those pagan beliefs, you know, you still got like Holy Springs that were, you know, a pagan belief. And they still believe that that's a holy spring. And so a lot of the far-flung places were slower to adapt that, you know, pagans are bad and they're witches and they're evil and they're going to hurt you. um and a lot of.
Speaker1:
[1:08:11] Them just adapted to whatever like okay well we have to call whatever we believe uh saint peter and saint michael and saint gabriel now like it happened more recently in the well not the united states at the time but like in new orleans you have the haitian and african voodoo taking place and then like marie laveau was in church every sunday a catholic practicing catholic and all she did was just like take her beliefs and map it on to catholicism to make it make sense for her i
Speaker0:
[1:08:44] Know tons of christian witches you know they are they're christian they go to church but they also do magic and witchcraft and they have and you know if you look at to me if you look at the book of psalms i mean that's a book of spells right there if you if you read through those and you could use those. And I do, man, when I do my full moon ritual, I use Psalm 23 as my reading during that ritual. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, Christianity is not exclusive, you know, like it doesn't exclude magic necessarily. And like right now...
Speaker1:
[1:09:24] It sort of requires it. It's just that it's more of an, I want to say it's more of a recent thing that people interpret like certain parts of it to say like, this is bad and everyone who does it is evil. But I mean, like if you go, like King Solomon was a magician. Moses was a magician. Jesus Christ was... Depending on your particular, I don't know, way of interpreting that word, these were all people who did what we would now call magic.
Speaker0:
[1:09:53] Look at Judaism, right? Right now I'm studying the Kabbalah, which is, you know, ancient occult practices. And there are lots of different rituals in, you know, that study. Like, there's one, for example, called the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. Yep right and so you know it's for getting energy like banishing energy basically and so there are certain words that you say that and a lot of them correspond to uh like yggdrasil like tree of life kind of stuff and there are certain gods names that you say and you know you do certain ritualistic moves. And so I think that there's, you know, ancient traditions, it was all about magic, right? But then like in the church.
Speaker0:
[1:10:55] When the Bible was written, right, it was, I mean, that was a very political kind of thing, the writing of the Bible, right? And, you know, there was a small group of high up priests who decided what went in the Bible and what didn't, right? And so their sort of lens in selecting it sort of took the magic away from the individual and put it in the saints and the God and God and Jesus and all of that. And so that, I think, was a major break for a lot of people because people used to, I mean, certainly there were experts in magic, right? In ancient times, there were, you know, cunning folk, there was the local healer, there was the person that you'd go to for that love spell, you know. But a lot of people also owned their own magic, right?
Speaker0:
[1:12:01] Like any sort of good luck charms, any apotropaic magic was done by the individual, right? You would, you know, craft your own dolly out of corn, right? Or, you know, corn ducks. and you would hang your horseshoe or you would, you know, put even like religious symbols or whatever by the hearth. And like all of those little magical things that people did every day were, you know, they owned their own magic. And that's part of like my philosophy in my podcast, Folkloring is that, you know, we can own those things. We can bring those practices back to ourselves and, you know, connect to our ancestors, connect to our magic. And again, it doesn't matter if it's real or not, if you are using the symbolism, right?
Speaker0:
[1:13:01] A lot of times, if I want to think about, you know, like, transition in my life, right? I will think about liminal spaces as I walk through a doorway or down a hall, right? I think about being in transition, and I use that kind of symbolism to help myself connect to that kind of belief, right? And so, I think that it was you know the writing of the the bible was taking magic away and interestingly you know people are people right so all the stuff that didn't get in the bible it eventually like leaked out here and there and people started seeing these other things that that didn't make the cut to go in the.
Speaker0:
[1:13:49] They like there were I think it was in the Caribbean where people were convinced that like white people were holding real magic for themselves because they had the Bible and they showed people the Bible. But then there were these secret passages, these secret parts that only the white people knew about. Of course, it wasn't really that. It was just that those parts didn't make the cut for whatever, you know, political reasons that there were. And yeah i mean there's there was a very big fear at a certain point that you know like magic there was powerful magic that people couldn't get to.
Speaker1:
[1:14:27] Well there in many cases there was reason to believe that conspiracy i mean you had secret societies that did maintain these traditions these books whatever like the free like the freemasons for sure the knights of the templar the, you know, the Rosicrucians, they all, like, kept a secret, like, the access that they would have to certain things. Whether they made it up or not is just reason to point out and say, like, these people seem to know shit, we don't.
Speaker0:
[1:14:54] Well, I'm not saying that that didn't exist, because it certainly did. I'm just saying that's not the truth about what happened with the Bible.
Speaker1:
[1:15:02] For sure, yeah. The Council of Nicia, many other parts. People always bring up that one event, but it was like there were lots of these mass meetings amongst the reason why the Orthodox Church was like, we don't want anything to do with you Catholics anymore is because they were doing stuff like that. And they're like, ah, no, we're going to stick with our stuff over here. And interestingly...
Speaker1:
[1:15:25] In Eastern Europe, if you just go walk around and talk to people, they still totally believe in love spells and all the different kind of folk magic that has been there since the dawn of time while still being orthodox. Just go walk around the Czech Republic and just go to a bar and talk to people. Ask them what they think, what they believe, and you'll find that they're very open, very open-minded when it comes to this sort of thing. Whereas I'd say Western culture has largely tried to shut this out at a mass scale.
Speaker0:
[1:15:56] Largely but i think you know if you go if you look at like the uk right like there are you know it's like throw a rock and you're gonna hit some sort of festival right and and even in ireland for example like they don't believe in fairies or at least they'll tell you they don't but they will still like move a road if there is like if they don't like if there's lore about fairies in a certain spot and they don't want to piss off the fairies right um so they don't believe but why take a chance yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:16:35] It's the same as like there's no such thing as an atheist on his deathbed or in a foxhole or whatever but it's like you say you don't believe in this and
Speaker1:
[1:16:42] yet you'll literally move mountains to avoid dealing with the possibility that that may be true. You know, you take someone who's like, I don't believe in ghosts and put them in a haunted house and tell them to stay the night and everything they hear. Which is like another interesting part about magic is like suggestion and like telling someone a story, just planting the idea in their head. Like if I say I put a curse on you and you know, I don't believe in curses. That will never affect me. The next bad thing that happens to you, you're like, Nah, it's not the curse. And the next bad thing that happens to you, you're like, I think that guy cursed me. I think I'm really cursed. Then you go to a medium and you're like, what happened? And you're like, well, someone told me that they put a curse on me. I didn't believe it. It's like, oh, they put a curse on you. All right. Because now you're here worried about a curse. Whether that curse was real or, you know, however you interpret that is like, kind of got you. I kind of did. I accomplished the goal I was trying to accomplish.
Speaker0:
[1:17:38] Yeah, I heard a very interesting theory about curses from a friend of mine a few years back. And she said, curse is really easy to, it's easy to cast a curse, right? You can just say, F you, right? And you've cast a curse. Or, you know, a little kid can say,
Speaker0:
[1:17:58] I hate you to their parent. And, you know, that's a form of a curse. but the person that the curse has been cast against is the one that has to feed it right like a curse takes you have to give it energy in order for it to continue on and continue affecting you and i thought that was a really interesting take on it where it's just like just starve the curse and you know it'll go away.
Speaker1:
[1:18:26] A fun example was like in the 60s ed muskie was running for office against nixon and hunter s thompson wrote this article that was saying that that guy is a crazed lunatic and he's uh deeply addicted to ibogaine which is not an addictive drug but in the 60s nobody even knew what ibogaine really was in america and that was enough to derail that guy's entire campaign and he lost the election because people believed it and it's like He told, he just made up, Thompson later actually talked about this. He's like, yeah, there was a rumor going around that he was addicted to Ibogaine. And I started that rumor. And in a way, he's like, he put a massive, just hysterical hex on this dude that ruined his campaign just by saying some words. And it's interesting about words because we use it in our everyday language. Like you spell a word and words have power, but spells don't exist. It's very interesting. Again, there's so many things that are hidden in our own language, in our own culture, that we are doing this kind of stuff and we don't even think about it. We just take it for granted and ignore it.
Speaker0:
[1:19:42] Right, right. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. If we get back to the concept of, you know, magic is like, you know, this guy put some words out in the world and it's the consequence of it was that this guy's campaign got ruined. Right. And, you know, sure, it's a lot of people believing something that wasn't true. But, you know, what was the behavior on the part of the campaign after that happened? Right.
Speaker0:
[1:20:21] And you think like if they did that, I don't know what what happened. I don't know how they handled it and why it completely derailed his career and campaign. But they handled it in some way that clearly wasn't effective. Right. And had they handled it a different way, you know, go jump on some other news outlets that were, you know, like newspapers that that had integrity. And, you know, invite them to come on the campaign trail with you. And, you know, it would be obvious that there was no addiction happening or you'd see it, you know. And so it was, you know, sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy there because whatever they chose to do about it obviously didn't work, right? And so their behavior was affected by the words in a way that didn't counter that, you know, rumor.
Speaker1:
[1:21:24] Even today, it happens all the time where you just have to go on Twitter and say, I think Tom Hanks is a pedophile and then write a little article about it on a weird, obscure website. And then before you know it, it's caught on like wildfire and people are literally having these deep discussions about whether or not Tom Hanks is a pedophile or, or insert name of person here, because it's, you just throw something like. Anything at all that you want to say about someone that is taboo enough to cause people to be like, well, that sounds unlikely, but I think the nature, like the nature of the accusation warrants investigation and it can take a long time or never before someone recovers from that.
Speaker0:
[1:22:08] Right, right. And, you know, I think that that too, like things like that are fueled by, you know, every time you something comes out that a beloved, you know, your famous figure is, you know, like a horrible person and was, you know, harassing their employees and or whatever, like sexually harassing people or. And and so like you start to see those and you know like i there was one within the past year um i won't name names um but like when it came out i was like oh i loved him and now i can't like i don't want to consume his stuff anymore and it was so disappointing because you know you you so you hear enough of that and like he had had a really good reputation he had had a reputation as a feminist up until then and when it all started coming out and you know by by all accounts it it really was i mean he really did do some some terrible stuff and it was like oh you know like really um but so you get enough of those and anything starts to be believable right and.
Speaker1:
[1:23:26] Or more importantly people don't know what to believe that's I think confusion is even like even worse in so many ways than just finding out someone did something wrong is good we want to know the truth but not knowing what the truth is causes chaos in the world and you know that's what the reptile aliens want right that's um
Speaker0:
[1:23:48] Well and it's only going to get worse with deep fakes right because you know now you can tell right now you can tell if it's like an ai video because like the mouth doesn't move quite right and everything but those are going to get better and better.
Speaker1:
[1:24:03] Um it'll be before your episode comes out i'm putting out one that i did with a gentleman named lee ellman who is uh he's actually a tv producer he did a lot of cool stuff for like true tv and all that but in the past year he has been uh engineering this app called eternal diary this like just warning this is crazy stuff so the idea is that you upload all this information about your loved one their pictures videos that you have of them maybe you give them access to their messages whatever anything they can do to like read you know reimagine what that person was like and then you can video chat with your dead grandpa i've heard about it i've
Speaker0:
[1:24:46] Heard about it it's fascinating stuff um i i don't know how healthy it.
Speaker1:
[1:24:54] Is i don't either but he's a really nice guy like i i thought i was gonna be talking to like dr frankenstein you know i was like oh i'm open-minded i'll give it a shot really really nice dude and i think he's coming from a genuine place but it's one of those pandora boxes thing where i'm like what are the all of the many many implications of how this could go wrong there's literally a black mirror episode about exactly this situation where a woman loses her husband and then recreates him in ai and and it's never the same and who knows yeah yeah well
Speaker0:
[1:25:26] And i wonder too you know obviously we just saying the word incel you know the type of person um you know and so you've got to wonder if people like that who are you know frustrated they feel that they're.
Speaker1:
[1:25:47] Owed
Speaker0:
[1:25:47] Something that they're not getting in real life. That's the idea. And it's distasteful to even say, but you got to wonder how many people like that will create a partner just to be able to be as abusive as they want to them.
Speaker1:
[1:26:08] And then the question, like, at what point does this abused robot, which means slave, by the way when do they become cognizant and have rights to not be treated the way that they're being treated and you know there's so many questions that I have about this sort of thing I think at the stage that it's at to be to be reasonable about it like It's an app. It's not your grandpa. It's just a way for people to, you know, have those memories or whatever. And like, I don't know, this is what they probably had very similar conversations when video first came out, when photographs first came out and when books first came out. You know, like, do you really want to have Anne Frank's diary public for everyone to read? Like this was her private thing.
Speaker1:
[1:26:55] And then people have like these arguments like, well, it's an important story for people to know. And it's like but it's still this person had rights and like you're giving something someone who's already passed on a life after their death that people can interpret and redo so the same thing will happen probably with these ai models of someone's actual persona where it's like it's not really your grandpa and in fact and frank's diary was edited by other people to be more palatable to what her dad thought it ought to say um yeah so it's
Speaker0:
[1:27:26] Like in the editing obviously they edited it in part for her privacy because she was you know a young woman and so she wrote about things that you know she was doing and so but but then then it's the the editors that decide what's you know like what it is that should be out there in the public and what shouldn't.
Speaker1:
[1:27:49] You and i could each have our own version of what grandpa was like on our own phones and one of the questions I asked the guy was like could I have my brother's grandpa and my grandpa talk to each other and see how they interact what do they think of each other because I bet you they're completely different I bet you they have all kinds of like disagreements and yeah like the image that you have of a person versus the image this and you can like I guess it's not like finalized yet but you could have Maybe your grandpa was one of those people who used words that aren't okay anymore. I don't know. Maybe he said gypsy a lot or something like that. And then you can just decide you don't want grandpa to do that anymore. And he just doesn't do that anymore. I'm like, but that's not my grandpa would never do what I told him to do. He was going to be like, ah, shut up, dummy. Or I don't know.
Speaker0:
[1:28:43] Yeah. Well, I think that it's interesting and it sort of ties into memory.
Speaker0:
[1:28:50] And so when you remember something You know, people think Oh, you know, I remember this one important event in my life You know, and this, you know, it was this perfect day And I was out with my partner And we came.
Speaker0:
[1:29:08] We walked into a field And there were, you know, a million dragonflies flying over our heads And it was magical It was a great experience, right? And then you retell that memory right and as you're like retelling it to someone right the car honks as it's driving by right and then the next time you remember it it's very possible that you incorporate that car honking that happened while you were retelling the memory into the memory and now there was a car driving by and it honked and all of these dragonflies rose up or you know what i mean and so if you're creating something like this and of course you're going to have a different grandpa than you know your your brother because you had different relationships and so again you know it's it's going to play more and more and more into your own biases and sort of reinforce what you believed your grandfather to be and people are just more complex than that so you're just creating the version of your grandpa that you want to create.
Speaker1:
[1:30:21] The thing is that my grandfather wasn't an automaton that I do know. He was not someone who you could hit a button and he would change his behavior for the sake of your convenience. Like, and I loved him for that. That's part of why I liked him. That's another thing that they explored in Black Mirror is like, like this woman's AI Android new husband is so much more compliant with her than the real guy would have been. And part of relationships is like, whether we admit it or not, we kind of like a little pushback every now and then. We like for the other person to check us on our behavior and stuff. But when she's just like, just go, just get out of here. And he's like, okay. And then he stands outside all night. And she's like, why would you do that? The real, you would never do that. And he's like, oh, well, if you don't want me to do that, then I'll add that into my algorithm so that I don't offend you anymore. And eventually he's just living in the attic. And he's only allowed it yeah
Speaker0:
[1:31:16] It reminds me of uh twilight zone episode where the yeah the little kid is um anything that he wishes comes true and so you know ultimately of course his you know parents the adults in the house are terrified of him because you know they could he could turn him into, you know, a shoe or a rat or like any, anything could happen because, you know, the, the kid didn't get ultimate power with no emotional regulation. And so it just, you know, it was obviously, it was a, you know, morality tale of, you know, this is what happens if, you know, you, you get this ultimate power and you don't have the emotional maturity to deal with it, right?
Speaker1:
[1:32:06] The old Islamic tale of the fisherman and the lamp, which we now have Aladdin, is kind of the modern manifestation, but be careful what you wish for kind of thing, because having absolute conformity is not good. You need to be told no and when to stop.
Speaker0:
[1:32:27] It's true of so many of our folk tales, right? They're morality tales um and some of them are tales of like oh there's there's a monster in the lake don't go in the lake where in reality what it is is there's a lot of um you know like seaweed and stuff that you can get tangled up in and drown right it's dangerous so we make up stories of for people not to do things but a lot of the stories are just those morality tales.
Speaker1:
[1:32:57] So in your, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, like what other, I mean, we talked about Baba Yaga and the Black Dog a little bit, but what are some of the more interesting stories that maybe people don't know, but you think maybe should be more popular or known about?
Speaker0:
[1:33:11] Well, I think that, you know, we know a lot of the stories from European folklore because we've, you know, we've had the Brothers Grimm. We've had, there was a certain point in time where, you know, self-proclaimed folklorists were going around collecting stories, which had been oral traditions before that. But that mainly happened in Europe, right? And so those stories...
Speaker1:
[1:33:43] Or Europeans visiting other places now that I think about it. Because I just quoted 1001 Arabian Nights, which was written by a British guy. And that just clicked for me. Okay.
Speaker0:
[1:33:52] Yeah. So I think that a lot of those stories are well known and easy to find. I think some of the more interesting stories comes from like African folklore and like Australian, you know, like lore that is from the indigenous peoples there. I think that, you know, there's a story about the like world creation called the Rainbow Snake. It's not called the Rainbow Snake. It is the Rainbow Snake. and and yeah and and so you know those kinds of stories and there are you know they have different um outcomes there's a bunch of stories that i like a lot about um a character and this is african lore a character called uh anansi and it's a spider anansi is a spider and it is a trickster God, right? And the fun stuff about Anansi is that.
Speaker0:
[1:34:57] A lot of times he would get himself in trouble. So, you know, if you look at the more popular one, like popular tricksters like Loki, a lot of people know a lot about that from the movies and from, you know, a lot of stuff that they heard. Anansi has just a wide variety of different stories of like, you know, how did Anansi's legs get so thin? Or how did Anansi learn to walk on the water? You know, different things that spiders can do. And a lot of times it's, and Anansi is very greedy, right? And so he tries to fool his neighbors a lot. And so that's how he often gets himself in trouble. And so I think that, you know, those are really interesting stories. And, you know, like even if you look at some of the stories that came over when people were brought here as slaves, right? A lot of those came from the African continent.
Speaker0:
[1:36:02] And so they brought their stories with them. And because those people were slaves and they didn't allow them to learn how to read because that kept them disenfranchised. They couldn't do anything. If they kept them ignorant, they were stuck. But they would still tell their stories. And the stories would often be like there were these stories about, it's called Br'er Rabbit, B-R-E-R. And you still find these in the American South. And these stories were oftentimes so there was a a evil figure uh brer bear and then there was brer rabbit who was the hero and the evil figure represented the the slave owners right and the rabbit represented the people and so the the the brer rabbit was always like brer bear would come with brute force, and Br'er Rabbit would always outsmart him. And so those, I find those to be very interesting stories because those were stories of rebellion, right?
Speaker1:
[1:37:19] We read this, some version of this story when I was in elementary school, I want to say. I grew up in Alabama, so we did get a lot of these tales, I would imagine.
Speaker0:
[1:37:30] Yeah, and there's one, I think my favorite Br'er Rabbit story is that the Br'er Bear, and Br'er means, I believe it means brother. Yeah um and so he ends up capturing brer rabbit and he's gonna i don't know he's gonna kill him or whatever and he's like well if you're gonna kill me just go ahead do it i don't care i'm ready to die but whatever you do don't throw me in the briar patch and brer bear's like he's like no no never throw me in the briar catch and like acting all terrified and and they're like don't do it don't do it so of course you know brer bear um being you know slow throws him in the briar patch immediately but as it turns out brer rabbit grew up in the briar patch and so knew how to navigate through and was just trying to get away and so stories like that of like that that escape, danger and stuff and yeah i mean those are stories people told each other both because you know they.
Speaker0:
[1:38:34] They adapted to the land they were in. There were stories about tricksters that were beating out the evil overlord figure. And so that was stories that were like, hey, we're going to get out of this at some point. And giving hope to each other right under the noses of the slave owners who couldn't be bothered to listen to their stories that they tell at night.
Speaker1:
[1:39:02] That is so fascinating.
Speaker0:
[1:39:03] Yeah, those are some of my favorite stories. And I like a lot of the Native American stories as well. Although, you know, yeah, I definitely need to be careful. I do. One of my games is about a creature called the Mishipashu. And the Mishipashu is it's up on the like u.s canadian border in that area i can't remember the the tribe off the top of my head but it was a sort of water leopard and it protected the waterways essentially and it protected what it was there was a lot of copper um in in the waterways And so when people started, like, you know, wanting to strip the land of this copper, you know, there was this creature there that if you were out on the water with ill intent...
Speaker0:
[1:40:04] Like in a lake, it would drag you to an island in the lake and strand you there. And so it would, in that way, protect the land, right?
Speaker0:
[1:40:19] And so, yeah, I think a lot of, and they're so widely varied across the United States because the United States is so big and the land is so different, right? Like in desert areas, you're not going to have a story like that. So I think that the lesser known, like the European stories are great. They're interesting. I find them, you know, fascinating. But I like the stories that you haven't heard as much. And a lot of the African stories, there's an author who writes about African folklore, and her name is Helen Nde, spelled N-D-E. And she has a podcast about African folklore. She's from Cameroon, And when
Speaker0:
[1:41:06] I read her stories, she's written a bunch of adapted African folklore. And in so many cases, not only are the women the strong heroine characters, right, as opposed to the damsel in distress, they're also much racier than when you think of other kinds of folktales.
Speaker0:
[1:41:32] And so, yeah, so I think that that's, those are the ones that I find interesting, because they don't follow the norm that I was taught as a child, there's a hero, and he battles the dragon and saves the damsel in distress. And, you know, there's that, like, formulaic and the archetypes of, you know, that come from sort of, you know, middle-aged, white, male, European perspective of what a hero should be.
Speaker1:
[1:42:03] Right. I was curious, this whole fascination with folklore and with magic, where did this start for you? Do you have an earliest memory, or maybe the first story you read, or the first time that you became fascinated with it?
Speaker0:
[1:42:21] Yeah, I was an avid reader as a youth. My brother's two years older than me, and I actually learned to read at the same time he did. So it was just something I took to naturally. um and so i in the library in the children's section of my hometown library there was a massive massive selection of folklore from around the world it just must have been a librarian who was really into it and so early on i was exposed to you know russian folklore and like just from all over the world. And it was really just sort of formative for me. And the stories captured me. And so I was always into that. I think one of the first books I had, my father's family came from Greece. And so early on, my parents got me a book about Greek folklore.
Speaker0:
[1:43:20] And so I was very into mythology, the Greek mythology and all of that, because it felt like it tied me to my ancestors. And so that was just an interest in the folklore. Magic, I think, came to me a little more naturally. I remember, and certainly as a teen in high school, I was searching out any kind of occult books I could. But when I was in grade school, So somewhere less than fourth grade, right?
Speaker0:
[1:43:56] I was not a very athletic kid. I was a reader, I loved to read. And so when we'd be out on the playground when the weather was decent enough, I didn't really want to be playing whatever the, you know, kids were playing. And the schoolyard butted up against some woods. And the woods were part of, like, a park. And I would sort of, like, step into the, you know, tree line. So I could hear what was going on, but, like, I couldn't really be seen. But I would know when it was time to go back in. And there was this big rock, right? and I would go every day and I would decorate the rock, right? And I'd put flowers on it if it were spring and I'd put like leaves and little bits of like, you know, different pretty, other pretty rocks. And I would change it up every day. And in retrospect, I think to myself, that was a nature altar. That was like my first nature altar that I just sort of just, you know, took to. I didn't know what that was. I didn't think about it.
Speaker0:
[1:45:08] And just having read so many stories, I think, with magical things in them through the folklore I read, I just was interested in magic. And I, you know, really, I liked it. And then, you know, I got to high school. I started working in theater. I kind of put that aside and I didn't really think about it, but there were always some practices that I would keep up with, right? Like I'd move to a new place, I would smudge it.
Speaker0:
[1:45:47] And as far as the debate about whether or not we can use that word, I would smoke cleanse it. And smudge was never a Native American word, but anyway. But yeah, and that's a tradition, you know, you see the Irish do smoke staining it's called. But I always carried some things with me and I would always, set up as decor, but it would really be little altars, right? And so when I got divorced last time and I moved into my own house and had, you know, free time and I had a full-time job, but I still, I had all my personal time to myself, I was like, I'm gonna lean in. And so I started reading more about it, and just practicing more. And I think it's, you know, it's an ongoing learning cycle. You're never going to know everything about it. But it's certainly something that is, you know, part of my day-to-day life. And then when I didn't have a job anymore, and I opened my own business, and I was, you know, into gaming, and one of the series that I created was about folklore, because I liked folklore. So I wrote this series of 12 games, and in order to research it, I was listening to a podcast called The Folklore Podcast.
Speaker0:
[1:47:10] And so, you know, that was great. I learned a lot. I did my games. And then I was like, well, what am I going to work on next. And so at the time, the guy who is the host of that podcast, Mark Norman, he just put out generally on one of his podcasts, he said, hey, if anybody's looking to do some film reviews of films about folklore, and I get bored very, very easily. Like, I always need to be doing something that I don't know how to do and learning something new. And so I thought, I've never written a film review? Sure, I'll try it. So, you know, I jumped in and I started writing some reviews, and I'd been doing that about a year. And Mark, like, emailed me one day, and he said, hey, look, I've got this film I want you to review, but I don't have time to interview the guy. Can you do it? And I was like, sure, why not? Like, I've never interviewed a guy. And so I started interviewing for the folklore podcast and i've been doing that this is this is on the fourth my fourth season now that i've been working on that podcast um and so.
Speaker0:
[1:48:26] About a year and a half ago, almost two years ago now, I'd always wanted to kind of do my own podcast. But, you know, I was doing stuff with a folklore podcast and it's a big podcast and it's very popular. It's in the top 0.5% of all podcasts. And so, but I was talking to a friend of mine, Tanya, and we were just like, I was just like, oh yeah, I've always kind of wanted to do a podcast. And she's like, wait, I've always wanted to do a podcast, you know? And so we started talking about kind of, I was writing the book about magic at the time and she was developing her business, which was basically teaching like homesteading. And we went, there's a tie in here with the folklore and the magic and sort of how you bring that into your life. And so we came up with the concept of folkloring, like, let's do it. And so we jumped in and I don't think I would have had like the guts to have ever made the leap if I hadn't worked on the folklore podcast first and sort of got my feet wet and like knew how to do it.
Speaker0:
[1:49:34] And I don't think Tanya would have either if I hadn't been like, come on, we can do this. So, so yeah, we started it and then she circumstances changed for her and she didn't have the time anymore. So I just sort of carried it forward myself. And that's kind of how I got here on podcasting. And we talked about the book earlier.
Speaker0:
[1:49:54] And so, yeah, that's that's kind of what my path was.
Speaker1:
[1:49:58] Yeah, that's it. It's really interesting. I got into podcasting very similarly. I had some friends who were doing another podcast. It was called the state of quake, which was like about the game quake. And they were sort of always up to date news about what was going on in the world of that game, whether that, you know, different people or whatever. And, and I like started noticing that there would be weeks when they weren't making a show. And I'm like what the hell this is my favorite thing I want more of it so then I ended up like kind of volunteering myself like okay when you guys can't do it I will like interview players or something like that and then I'll send you the footage and you could just publish it on your feed I don't care and then after doing that for a while I was like all right I'm the only one around here doing anything so that's where in the keep came from and then it went from just that you know just arena shooter games to indie games to whatever i want to talk about that was years you know five years ago six years ago it's been a long time 2019 i want to say so yeah um that's really really interesting how do you like so your show i've listened to a couple episodes now but you're primarily like sort of doing interviews with other folks who are also fascinated or writers and that sort of thing no
Speaker0:
[1:51:20] Actually that's pretty new um typically what i would do um is i just do like the folklore of and like i've done one folklore of cauldrons and the folklore like i said earlier of dark goddesses and um so typically i'll research um whatever particular topic, I always start with way too big of a topic. And so, and I like to keep my episodes to under an hour. But I will, you know, go ahead, research it, I'll make myself an outline, and then, you know, do that. And I find that, like I said, once Tanya left, because we were both researching, and then after that, all the researching kind of fell to me. So it's, you know, It's a lot of work to do that kind of format. And so...
Speaker0:
[1:52:17] I was started getting guests and I joined a couple of groups like on Facebook, like find a guest to be a guest. And so and I also have a service that is, you know, it'll send me every day. Like, here's a bunch of podcasts, you know, do you qualify for any of these kind of thing? And so that's when I started getting more people. And then at some point, I don't know exactly how this happened, but Llewellyn, who's a publisher, I don't know if you've heard of them, but Llewellyn kind of found me and asked me to start writing reviews. So now I'm doing that, and I'm also interviewing some of those people.
Speaker0:
[1:52:59] So it just sort of happened. And interviews, for me, are a lot less workload. I try and only do every other episode because i don't want to do a bunch of interviews all in a row because it's so wildly different from my original format um and so so yeah that's that's kind of so i'm mixing it up now and i've got probably got five more um recorded and ready to go so.
Speaker1:
[1:53:25] No i i absolutely love interviewing if you can't tell like and i don't really i don't even really like the word interview I like having conversations with people I I don't care what people want to talk about like if someone is like really passionate about something I could just talk about it forever um because like the the way that human beings like you're just your story of like you know when I was a kid I liked to read and then I got fascinated with this and then like just that journey all the way up to now where it's like and you know you're You're like an example of someone who can just take that weird thing that they're obsessed with and turn it into a career. And I think a lot of people should look at that and then look at their own life and be like, you're unhappy because you're not doing the thing that you love all the time. That's just kind of how it is. And do I really want to sit at a desk doing something that I don't want to do 40 hours a week every day until I'm dead? Or can I just find a way to monetize the thing that I love? And what you've done is really incredible.
Speaker0:
[1:54:33] It's interesting because there's a whole other trajectory of my career that kind of has nothing to do with folklore and magic. I mentioned that I worked in theater. I was a stage manager for 10 years. And I ended up, and as I said, I get bored easy and I want to try new things. And so I ended up running a concert venue. And it was in Chicago on Navy Pier. And it was about a 1,200-seat house. So it was, like, little. And so, like, through that, they were still doing a rebuilding. They were still making it into what it is today, which is kind of like a tourist kind of place to go, restaurants and bars and stuff. But they were still building everything but the Skyline stage when it opened. So for a summer, we were out there with construction and people would just come to the theater and leave.
Speaker0:
[1:55:33] And so I ended up putting that job because Disney came in and took over and it was not a great place to work anymore. And so but I met a bunch of construction people and so one day they called me up and they were like oh we like what union do you use for movie projectors and what union do you use and I was like why are you asking me these things and they're like oh well you know we're building these theaters these movie theaters and so I I was like oh I want to check it out like I've never been on a you know I've been on the construction site that I've been living in but other than that so I go to these movie theaters and they said, okay, well, we were actually trapping you because we want you to come, and do all of the fixtures, furniture, and equipment. We don't know how to do that. We know how to build buildings. And I was like, okay, I don't know how to do that. I'll figure it out. I did that. And then those theaters were built. Right. And so they had this program at that company and it was the like the quality managers. And so it wasn't quality control like you'd think of in construction. It was like quality processing. And so they would track success and do a bunch of like strategic planning and stuff. So I really got into strategic planning. And so I got my master's in strategic organizational change.
Speaker1:
[1:56:56] Right?
Speaker0:
[1:56:56] And so this whole big career, and then I was a strategist for a while, so I'm a big strategy geek. And so like when you think about that whole like construction and then strategy and strategic planning and you know yet i'm trying to prove whether or not magic is real which you know and you'll see it reflected in my book because i talk about i was also very fascinated with like business improvement books you know and so i quote a lot of really famous like business books about how to improve your strategy or how to, you know, improve, like, you know, by by tracking or, you know, like all that kind of thing. And so you'll see that reflected in my book, which is why I said it's like my whole life feels like it was leading up to the point of writing the book. And it's all of these, you know, I do a lot of I quote a lot of psychology and a lot of, you know, I have obviously I delve into some science. So so yeah, so it's, It's just like when I tell that story of my sort of magical trajectory, and it's what we were talking about earlier, like your grandfather, people are complicated. And so it would be shocking to people from my strategy days what I'm doing now and shocking to people now knowing that I worked in construction and strategy.
Speaker1:
[1:58:22] Yeah no i i always like joke with a lot of my my peers and friends like in the in the tech video game business or whatever it's like you go look at their resume or their linkedin page or something and it's like i went to i graduated from high school i went to college and then i stayed in one field and then for me it's like no i i tried everything and i'm only 30 so i'm probably going to do a lot more stuff i imagine but like i've never just i've never been okay with just being like stuck in a particular trajectory and like always kind of find a way to like turn this into something else that i'm moving towards so like yeah you know like i spent some time uh traveling around as a pro wrestler i spent some time as an apprentice to an electrician uh then i spent a long time in the air force and while i was in the air force i started this business and i started a podcast and then i started a gaming company and then i went to go to europe for a few years and work for a bigger video game company and it was like instead of going to college and getting a degree in game design why don't I just go work for someone who does that and then I'll know everything I need to know to run my own business and and who knows where that will go later but I'm a real big fan of the the kind of the branching paths idea of everything that you do you have like you'll come to a fork in the road and you make a choice and then you never know what doors will open up to you just talking to people
Speaker1:
[1:59:48] All the time podcasts are the best networking tool in the world where it's like
Speaker1:
[1:59:53] You get to have these really deep interesting conversations with people
Speaker1:
[1:59:57] You never know i mean like your your game design company which we haven't even touched on yet um we should just as soon as i looked at it i was like man why i'm why aren't people doing this with games like with video games why aren't people like oh every month you just get a new thing.
Speaker1:
[2:00:14] There's already subscription models. There's already things like Fortnite or whatever where they're trying to milk you for buy this new gun or this new skin or that kind of thing. But I'm talking about what if you get a whole new thing every month and you just trust this designer to make stuff that you like or that's within a certain parameter and like that's genius never even considered it
Speaker0:
[2:00:38] I mean it's a great model um business wise because it's you can anticipate what's coming right like you can anticipate what your income is going to be because most people people save money if instead of going month to month, they do a three-month subscription or a six-month subscription. They save money at each tier. And so they tend to do the longer subscriptions. And so you know, like, you can anticipate what your, you know, upcoming needs are going to be. And because mine is a physical game, obviously, I have to order stuff to put in the game. So I can manage my inventory.
Speaker0:
[2:01:18] And yeah, You know, you get people who are interested and if they like the format of the game, they typically I've got three major storylines and they typically will jump from one storyline to another.
Speaker0:
[2:01:34] And, you know, I talk a lot about the storyline about folklore, because that's kind of what we're here to do. But I also have a storyline called The Resistance, which is about, the basic premise there is about learning how different resistance movements throughout time have worked. And the the whole premise of the story is like we're being taken over by you know what was fiction when i wrote it we're being taken over by corporations and they um are you know stealing our land rights and our you know and and so you know we need to fight back and so there are stories there's stories about like there's a story about gandhi and you know non-violent protest and then And there's a story about the suffragettes. And there's a story about Boudicca. And each of the stories focuses on a different way of resisting.
Speaker0:
[2:02:39] And so, yeah, that's fun. And then, of course, I've got the Folklore 1, which is, again, folklore from around the world. So I've got a story about Sunni in Japan. And there's stories. there's there's one set in Australia and there's you know from around the world and so and then I have a final storyline that is based on a series of epic fantasy books written by a friend of mine mm-hmm.
Speaker1:
[2:03:13] And these are all sort of like puzzle escape room type.
Speaker0:
[2:03:16] Yeah. So when you get the box, you know, there's a box mailed out every month and it comes with a bunch of stuff in it. There's some artifacts in it. And then there's a cover letter which sort of explains what the premise is of that particular month. And then a bunch of random other stuff. And so the first part is you've got to figure out what you have to do. Like where do you start? What do you, you know, do? and then yeah you just sort of solve the puzzles and some of the um content is online and so some of the puzzles will take you to a website and then typically that website page will be password secured and it'll be like an answer to a puzzle will be the password right and so yeah and that's sort of how gameplay works. And there's also, like I have for every game, there is a hints page where if you get stuck on a puzzle, it'll give you a series of more and more detailed hints. And then finally, it'll be like, okay, if the hints didn't get you there, here's how you solve it. Here's exactly the steps you go through to solve it. And then if you still don't get it, like, okay, well, here's the answer. Because everybody's brain works a little different. And if you get stuck and you have no recourse, it's just frustrating. And it's like, well, okay, I guess I can't finish this game. And so, you know, I'm here to help people have fun and not be frustrated.
Speaker0:
[2:04:46] So, yeah, you never get stuck.
Speaker1:
[2:04:49] The first instance of like tying the web into like puzzles in a game I can remember is this video game called Fez where you play as like a little two dimensional dude. He's wearing a magical Fez and like he exists in this 2D world like old school Mario kind of thing sideways platformer. But once he gets the magical Fez he becomes aware that the universe is bigger than he thinks and there's a third dimension and you can actually turn the world and solve a lot of puzzles. By going this way instead of this way and actually very inspired by paper mario if people are familiar with paper mario but um you kind of traverse this little fantasy world and you come upon like these sort of ancient sites and pyramids and stuff and they have hieroglyphs on them but the hieroglyphs are qr codes and they help you solve the mystery too they go you know to some place on the internet and very fascinating but yeah and you like you so you ship these worldwide or because the logistics are crazy yeah
Speaker0:
[2:05:55] Just to um the u.s canada and the uk.
Speaker1:
[2:05:58] Okay yeah no that's so cool i really i'm glad you thought of it so i can uh potentially steal your model for video games one day.
Speaker0:
[2:06:09] It's a great model. The thing about my games that is different, and there's lots of companies that do exactly this. The big one is called To Catch a Killer. And, The difference between mine and virtually every other one that I've ever seen or played, and I've played many of them, is that almost all of them are murder mystery.
Speaker0:
[2:06:39] Right. And so you've got to and a lot of them, it's so predictable. It'll be like you basically get a bunch of information. You get a bunch of suspects, a bunch of information, and you have to deduce who couldn't be the killer. Like, oh, this guy was in the hospital at the time of the killing, and this guy was here doing this thing. And so mine are very different in they are, you know, I've got the resistance lessons, and you're trying to work your way through that particular kind of resistance, so you learn that. Or I've got, you know, the mysteries that happen around the folklore. And those are really, you know, a lot of them are this mysterious thing happened and we need to figure out. Like, this guy disappeared when he was studying these hieroglyphics, and we need to figure out what happened to him from his notes. Or, you know, yeah, like, this group of people testing in the waters disappeared, and we need to figure out what happened to them. And so the basic premise on that, and it's called The Craft, and the basic premise there is the director of this Center for the Research and Archives of Anecdotal Tales is the full name.
Speaker0:
[2:08:06] And her name is Lydia Lohr. And so she's like, well, basically, we need to bring you on as a contractor. And can you help us with this case? So... Somewhat different than all the murdery ones.
Speaker1:
[2:08:20] Yeah. I imagine you just do a lot of research for all these different stories, especially when you're talking about resistances and such things.
Speaker0:
[2:08:29] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:08:30] What's your bookshelf look like?
Speaker0:
[2:08:33] Well, for those stories, some of them are fictionalized, but I don't contradict anything that actually happened in history. And so it's, you know, well, I mean, that's true for the folklore as well. Those are a little bit more fictionalized because in a lot of folklore, you're talking about characters as opposed, you know, like I don't want to retell a folklore story. So I have to find a different way to tell a story that people won't be familiar with. And so, yeah, those are more fictionalized. Uh but yeah i mean it's it there was a lot of research into the just just being able to pick especially on the resistance because it's like i didn't want to do real things that people like were very familiar with i wanted to do some more obscure like i've got one box that's about this guy named eugene bullard and he was an african-american guy um.
Speaker0:
[2:09:40] And in France, he went to France during Nazi Germany, and he ended up opening up a bar. And so he, because the Germans would go into this bar, and they would talk freely in front of him because he was black. And they racially assumed that he wouldn't be able to understand German, although he was fluent in it. So he ended up becoming a spy. And just, you know, hearing all of these tales. And so, you know, like that was such an interesting find. And he's such a fast, he was a boxer. He had, he would, he was a pilot, right? And so he would go out and like on bombing runs.
Speaker0:
[2:10:27] But he always had a monkey with him. He just, he had a monkey and he would always bring it with him on his runs. And so I like finding the more obscure stories. And then puzzle yeah puzzle research was wild like there are you know there are only so many categories of puzzles you know you've got your ciphers you've got mechanical puzzles which are like you know jigsaw puzzles right um and you've got like but there's like tons and tons of kind of ways you can interpret that like there's a million different ways to do a cipher right um And sometimes, like, I have one puzzle that's a cipher, and it's called a scatale. And a scatale is, so basically, you take your paper and put it in strips, right? And you wrap it around something. And as you wrap it around, the letters line up. You have letters line up. And then when you unwrap it, the letters are all in a random order.
Speaker0:
[2:11:34] And the trick with the scatale is that the person who's decoding the cipher needs the exact same circumference of whatever stick or whatever they're using. And that's the trick to that cipher. And so, you know, it's just like diving deep into trying to, and I always want to like surprise people with different puzzles. I don't want them finding the same puzzle three boxes later and being like, oh, you know, we saw this. Because part of the fun of most puzzles is that aha moment where you, you know, figure out like, oh, this is what we do.
Speaker0:
[2:12:14] And I keep, if I do any ciphers, I keep those answers very, very short. Because once you've figured out a cipher, it's just mindless, boring, drudge work to keep writing the whole thing out. So you don't want those answers to be long because it's boring for people because they've already figured out what it is. They just need to get to the end of your answer.
Speaker1:
[2:12:40] That's something we do a lot in game design in general is just have to say, like, does the effort that one needs to put into this match the reward that they get at the end of doing it? Right. So you have lots of, especially, like, newer video game designers that really want things to be, like, super hard and, like, you know, they want to show how, you know, incredibly genius they are at creating a combat or a puzzle or whatever. And then when it gets to like the play testing part of it it's like this is not fun like you're just being brutal for no reason and of course there's always going to be a sliding scale of how an audience reacts to that but it's like if you want to make money you should probably at least give people options and then you know so in a lot of games you'll have like easy medium hard ultra hard or whatever such that you could do that but then you have to take the same the same story and the same mechanics and find a way to scale that to different versions so you'll even get games a lot of games that are like have a recommended it's like we recommend you start here yeah this is this is the intended experience and any other thing that you choose is just your preference right
Speaker0:
[2:13:57] I i think that in a way the games that i design it's a little bit easier because they're designed i mean you can play them solo certainly but they're designed to be played in a group and so it what i found in play testing was that you know obviously everybody's mind works a different way and everybody brings something different to the group and so it's it's fun like some people will gravitate for the cipher and like there was one guy that i had that um he did tested a lot of games for me he was severely dyslexic and so yeah so he always struggled and and he was doing it because his girlfriend was like one of my testers and he was just you know supportive of her but he like he wouldn't really do much if it was a word based puzzle. But man, you get some of those, like if it's like a math-based puzzle, like they'd be like, oh my God, what do we do? And he'd be like, here's the answer. He'd be like one second, he'd have the answer. And so, you know, everybody brings something different to it. And I think that that's part of the fun is that we all have our strengths.
Speaker1:
[2:15:15] No, my wife and I are very much like that, where it's like, if it's simple arithmetic, I'll be sitting there forever, like counting on my fingers and toes and then she'll just spit out the math question like that but if it's like a literary thing or anything to do with like letters or words i'm like oh that's this and i've read like a thousand books about that particular subject and she's just like what are you magic and i'm like It's not what I said, but I didn't say that. But yeah, that's so cool. What's your clientele look like?
Speaker0:
[2:15:50] Typically, I would say it's about 75% female, 30s to 60s. A lot of times buying, for like their spouse and, yeah and just you know middle class for the most part.
Speaker1:
[2:16:22] Yeah I would think that you you would have like you know moms grandma family that want to do this but I would also think that like you would have like gaming clubs you know that that play tabletop games and stuff like that who would be interested or like shops that would be like oh we got the latest version of that whatever do you archive all of your games like such that you could reproduce them if you need to
Speaker0:
[2:16:46] Yeah so the the series i i only wrote um like 12 games in each series and it cycles back around each year okay, yeah um so so i just you know i've done them now i'm i'm on my ninth year you.
Speaker1:
[2:17:06] Have like first edition second edition written on the box somewhere
Speaker0:
[2:17:10] No i do not um i i reprint i reprint new or every time but the boxes i just order the same box every time yeah um and uh but but yeah So those, you know, come back around and I have had, I've had bars order, like both entire series. I had a bunch of like gaming bars. I've had in, when we were in lockdown, interestingly, I had a lot of like, you know, care homes or like, you know, senior care homes. And they they got and they were getting them for like their like residence to and that was like to combat you know the depression and to help keep their mind sharp and and all of that kind of thing um and so i sold a ton uh there i do sell a bunch at um there's a conference every year in California and it's a game school conference. And so there are, A group of people who believe that the right way to homeschool is with games. And so that's how the, and so obviously the history, you know, both the history and the literature, games have been very appealing to those people. So that's mostly the groups that I've sold to.
Speaker1:
[2:18:38] I learned way more about history from games and from Iron Maiden than I ever did in school, for sure. I think it's a way better way to learn. like just like i know who miyamoto musashi is because iron maiden saying about him not because the most history teacher said anything about him you know that kind of stuff um or nostradamus i think i got from judas priest there's just so many so many wonderful things but
Speaker0:
[2:19:03] The music is a great way to learn you know i mean i i don't know if you remember this but um certainly it was very popular for a long time there was a series that It was very groundbreaking in the 70s, but they still continue to play them called Schoolhouse Rock.
Speaker1:
[2:19:24] Oh, yeah. Yeah, they still show. Well, at least when I was in elementary school, which admittedly was 25 years ago. Yeah, they still showed Schoolhouse Rock like Conjunction Junction. What's your fun? All that stuff. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker0:
[2:19:37] So that's, you know, how how I learned a lot of different things. Um anyway um and and stories are great as well for learning things right and it's it's interesting um there's this phenomenon that is um i can't remember the name of it but basically like people will learn stuff through a story and then as time goes on they will forget that they learned it in a story and it will just become part of their belief system.
Speaker0:
[2:20:13] So, you know, both folklore and music are very powerful ways to learn.
Speaker1:
[2:20:20] Is the word ludonarrative dissonance uh no i'm talking this is a video game term i just had to google it real fast but it's a similar kind of concept i yeah i find it so fast fascinating how like we keep sort of reinventing and telling the same stories over and over again um i mean in film and television and books whatever but like in my field in particular like video games are so influenced by folklore in so many ways like i just
Speaker1:
[2:20:57] Recently played through this game called kingdom come deliverance where you are in like 1500s bohemia and you play as like a you know a young dude who's born to a blacksmith and throughout the game and through many many rp especially role-playing games you just have all of these like little bits of like this is the folklore of that time and like so for you to understand the context of like what another character is talking about if they mention somebody or some legend in that area and you need to know those things in order to exist in that world um so many of the things that tie us together in whatever culture we live in are the stories that we share if i you know if if you and i uh we're talking and then i just like make some obscure reference to arthurian legend you and i would probably know what i'm talking about but someone who's not familiar with arthurian legend wouldn't um and the same applies to wherever you may be if you're if i'm sitting in denmark and then two of my friends are talking about like when thor and loki did that thing there's a star trek episode actually about this where there's an alien species and all of their language is reference to their shared myth and so when they speak to another culture even though it's like the universal translator is making the words make sense to the captain it's like he doesn't know any of the references so he can't communicate with them and that's actually kind of how language works in so many ways
Speaker0:
[2:22:26] Well, it's interesting. I have this game, and I got it at a store that sold games that were out for testing. So it wasn't widely distributed. I don't know if it was ever widely distributed. But it's called Wise and Otherwise, and it's a board game. And it has to be three or more people. It's better with more people. And you read on one side of the card, you read the beginning of some like proverb or, you know, wise saying from some random culture. And then people have to write down what they think the second half of that is. Right and so it's it's hilarious because like some sayings from other places which are you know part of their cultural lore make absolutely no sense you know and you'll hear like oh we've got this saying in denmark that you know and it'll be like some completely random thing so yeah the game's a lot of fun to just hear all of these different weird sayings like what were they thinking you know i'm.
Speaker1:
[2:23:38] From the the southeast man that's it's like 50 of what we say is just like some weird thing that people are like what the hell did you just say to me and i'm like uh it's it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock means that it's coming down and splattering on the ground that's what that means like oh okay or it's colder than a witch's nipple or something i don't know just weird things that people say
Speaker0:
[2:24:03] Yeah i saw a meme the other day that was like, it's raining and then it would be like like like you said like a cow pissing on a rock and that you know say where it was from and it was like a big series of of those and they're all like super random and you know you get the cats and dogs in there of course and at the very end it was like and so it'd be like you know it's it's raining um cats and dogs united states and it's raining pissing down you know southern united states and and at the very end it's like it's raining men hallelujah yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:24:37] Or or even like um there's biblical references that are just kind of in our everyday like life that you don't even think about what you're saying it's just that you and i both know that story and we just use that as a language you know as a language of reference um That's so cool. So with the games, do you feel like... Do you feel like you'll continue to do more of these different immersive worlds like as time goes on? Because you said that you'd kind of written them all and now you're cycling through them.
Speaker0:
[2:25:19] Yeah, maybe. I mean, I like doing it. I got caught up. I had to really focus on the podcast and the book or I would have never started the podcast, never gotten the book done. And I'm just about to I've done I've been through the developmental editing process and I'm about to get the my copy editor. And so I'm and I like have like I've got my launch plan and the book is actually it's on it's in pre-sales now, but it's actually going to go live on February 17th. So I've got a ton of work to do preparing for that because as soon as it is available you know or purchased I'll have to do a series of presentations and classes based on it so kind of you know working on that now um and so but when that's done you know like I said I like doing it And writing the games is a very iterative process because the puzzles have to make sense.
Speaker1:
[2:26:28] Right?
Speaker0:
[2:26:28] And like the Scitalia I was talking about earlier, it goes in a box that is set in the time period where that puzzle was first found. You didn't see this kind of cipher earlier than this particular time period. So that was a great puzzle to put in that box. But, you know, it can't be like... It's not like a musical where it's like people, for no obvious reason, suddenly burst into song. You can't just suddenly, like, oh, and there's a puzzle next. It has to follow the storyline. So you kind of have to create that all together. So it's a lot of work. It's actually, interestingly, I think more work than just straight ahead writing. So yeah, and it's a big lift to start a new series. because you've got to get designs for the boxes and do all of the upcoming research. So if I were to do another one, I think I might just do a second season of one of the current boxes.
Speaker1:
[2:27:37] I'm writing a game design document now for this new idea that my friend and I had. And that's one of the things with writing a game is that I know the plot. Like I that was in my head from the jump like what what's the story I want to tell but then I have to like structure it in such a way that it makes sense for the player like okay what is the player going to do it's great that you have this story in mind but like what does the character do during that time and how is that fun to the player and trying to come up with like different ways to do that so um but the lovely thing about video games is it's not necessarily grounded in physics or practicality you can kind of play with that a lot um even uh even uh there's been like a big i think that portal was kind of the first big game that did it but a drive to like break euclidean physics in games and like okay you don't you don't have to walk from point a to point b you can just jump through a portal is something that happened i think as far back as at least doom and quake where you're like oh you want to get to this other place just jump through the slip gate and we'll just use that as a storytelling device um
Speaker1:
[2:28:52] Yeah. And also finding ways to do it that hasn't, you know, isn't just like, oh, that's been done before. Oh, this is just a clone of another thing. It's exactly like that. It's exactly like that. Yeah. Well, I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but do you have any like kind of closing thoughts or stuff that you want people to know, plugs, where people can find you, all that kind of thing?
Speaker0:
[2:29:12] Okay well you can find my book which is titled mind over magic um it's pre-sales right now at crossed crow books that's my publisher okay um and you can get it on amazon um and you can find my games at madmenandheroes.com um and you can find my podcast at uh folkloring anywhere that you get your podcasts. And if you want to go back over everything I do, my website is folklorienlife.com.
Speaker1:
[2:29:52] Folklorienlife.com. I will make sure these all go into the episode notes so that people can easily find them. But yeah, this has been really great, very informative, and I thank you for your time. I wish you the best of luck with the book coming out, and maybe we can touch base again later on.
Speaker0:
[2:30:10] It was a lot of fun, and my final thought is that bring folklore and magic into your life. We can go throughout our lives just dealing with the mundane, but the world is more fun, more interesting, and a better place if we live in wonder.
Speaker1:
[2:30:36] Amen.
Speaker1:
[2:30:51] Thank you very much to Tracy for coming on the show and teaching me all that stuff. I didn't know anything about African folklore really outside of Egypt before this conversation. Lots of other stuff. Make sure you go pre-order her book now, Mind Over Magic. I will leave a link in the show notes wherever you may be listening, and it will definitely be on the website. Make sure that you're actually going to inthecube.com and clicking on the articles for all these episodes because I am leaving books that get mentioned and links to go purchase them if you so choose or at least you can look them up and do whatever it is that you do to acquire books and yeah, and all the other stuff man, thank you to our Patreon supporters for all your wonderful support throughout the years I love you so much you'll never know how much I appreciate it Patreon supporters get episodes early and so do other kinds of supporters. So you can go to inthecube.com forward slash support if you would like to support
Speaker1:
[2:31:57] Our little project here. I hope you guys are enjoying the episodes. Look forward to hearing what you think in the Discord. Discord.inthecube.com if you're not already a member there or in the comment sections of wherever you're listening. All that stuff. Make sure you tell your friends to check out the show if you like this then hopefully they will too i love you god love you stay in the keep
Music:
[2:32:33] Music