Like Jack Burton always says, “…The check is in the mail.” We explore the hidden physics, biology, politics, and ecology behind magical systems.

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Episode 80 Transcript

In Episode 80 of Rabbit Hole of Research, Joe, Nick, Georgia, and Mary welcome author B.L. Mostyn (Heroes of Another Age) to the Basement Studio to discuss the costs of magical systems.

We discuss the physics, biology, politics, and ecology behind magic systems, fantastical creatures, and the power structures that sustain them. We ask the questions worldbuilders sometimes skip: How does your magical system really work (is it consistent), how many Big Macs to make fire balls and shape shift, and who’s controlling access and should they?

Special Note: The episode is being released during a rough week in NWI and Chicagoland, and the show notes may be shorter than normal. On August 11th, tornadoes and a derecho tore through the area causing major damage. At the Basement Studio: two maple trees were ripped out of the ground in the front parkway, and the cottonwood’s canopy in the back garden was shredded (luckily everything missed the house) but we did lose power. 

As of this episode’s release, the power is still out: latest restoration estimates is between tomorrow and the end of August. The Rabbit Hole family is safe. We appreciate your check-ins, patience and your support, and will keep you updated. Stay safe, stay curious, and we love y’all!

Check out more from B.L. Mostyn:

• website: blmostyn.com
• newsletter signup: blmostyn.com/newsletter-signup
• Heroes of Another Age — Amazon link: a.co/d/0323LFhh (paperback, audiobook & kindle)

Georgia and Jim’s Touch of Noir 2027 Wall Calendar —

12 months of all-original art by Jim and Georgia; orders are open now, with mailing expected in September

Check out what the RHR crew is creating:

Joe:

• Named by the Guild Literary Complex as one of the 35 Writers to Watch!
• Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories Anthology featuring a story by Joe!
• Joe’s Sci-fi physiological thriller Novel: Will You Still Love Me If I Become Someone Else?
• Joe’s Rom-Com Novella: Tomorrow May Be Too Late

Future Events to Hang with the Crew:

Podcast Cross-Appearances

• Joe on GoIndieNow: 21grams with Joe Compton talking about villains.
• RHR Crew on This Podcast Will Change Your Life with Ben Tanzer

Events & Conventions:

• Dragon Con — Atlanta, GA (September 3-7, 2026) – Joe attending as Professional
• Joe will be reading on Zoom: Words // Friends Aug 26th @7pm CST / 8pm EST Register for free zoom link here: http://tinyurl.com/wordsfriendsummer

It’s Science for Weirdos

Want to support the show? Tell your friends. Follow us on social media, Discord, share the podcast, and let us know what topics you are excited about. Leave a Comment. And for email alerts sign-up for the Substack newsletter and never miss an episode, exciting updates or the bonus images we talk about on the episodes. 

We discussed these questions on the episode and now want to Hear From You (leave a comment):

• If you could have one magical power, what would it be, and what would you be willing to pay for it?
• Hard magic or soft magic (Hard: systems with strict rules and consequences, or Soft: a little extra splash of Handwavium in your magic?
• What’s your favorite magic system or fantastical creature?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We read them all, and your ideas often shape future episodes.

Leave a comment

Future Episodes

• Episode 82: Climate Change and Data CentersGuest: David Pincus, PhD
• Episode 84: ETGuest: Chris Guzman (@theboxinggloveartist)
• Episode 86: Disability in HorrorGuest: Grace Daly (Bram Stoker nominee)

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Show Notes & Fun facts 

Stuff crew said they’d put in shownotes

• The bird Kevin from Up — it’s based on a real animal (the Himalayan monal)By AJIT HOTA – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57993244Kevin: Pixar: https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Kevin

Books:

• Heroes of Another Age — B.L. Mostyn
• The Power — Naomi Alderman
• The Wheel of Time series — Robert Jordan
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams (Babel fish)
• The Magicians — Lev Grossman
• Mistborn Saga — Brandon Sanderson 
• Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons — Dr. Ernest Drake (Dugald Steer)

Movies/TV:

• Big Trouble in Little China (1986) 
• The Flight of Dragons (1982) 
• Up (Pixar) — the bird Kevin; discussed as based on a real mountain pheasant
• The Power (TV series, Amazon) — unfortunately it was cancelled after season one
• The Flight of Dragons (1982 animated film) 
• Avatar: The Last Airbender

Comics:

• Sex Criminals — Matt Fraction & Chip Kidd (Orgasms stop time, go check it out)

Fun Facts to Impress Your Friends With:

1. The bombardier beetle is nature’s fire-breather. It stores two separate chemicals — hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide — in its abdomen, combines them on demand, and ejects a boiling toxic spray at 100°C. 
2. Dragon flight has a real chemistry solution. The 1982 animated film The Flight of Dragons proposed dragons ate limestone, combined it with stomach acid to generate hydrogen gas, and fly like blimps. Hydrogen is also highly flammable, which may explain fire-breathing. But accidents happen, even though the physics can work, remember the Hindenburg disaster.
3. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from your mother. When sperm fertilizes an egg, the paternal mitochondria are actively destroyed during travel to the egg. The maternally supplied egg provides all the energy infrastructure for new life. This means certain inherited traits, including susceptibility to some diseases, follow a strictly maternal line, or a fantastical magic system could be tied to the mother’s bloodline.
4. Kleiber’s Law says big animals burn less energy per pound than small ones — metabolic rate scales to body mass to the power of 3/4, not 1:1. A dragon-sized reptile with a slow metabolism, like a crocodile, could theoretically survive on one massive meal and go dormant for months. One dragon per mountain range isn’t fantasy, as discussed in episode, it’s actually the ecologically sound population density for an apex predator that size.
5. The Australian military once lost a war to emus — and Joe thinks this may explain the dragon mythology. In 1932, the Royal Australian Artillery deployed machine guns against 20,000 emus invading Western Australian farmland. The emus won. They split into small groups, scattered under fire, and the military operation was abandoned after 1,000 confirmed kills, not emus but the soldiers. The commanding officer noted the birds moved with the “invulnerability of tanks.” Now consider Joe’s point: an emu stands six feet tall, runs at 30 mph, and has clawed feet capable of disemboweling any human that stands in its way. If medieval soldiers encountered a flock of emu and a few barely survived, they were not going home to say they got decimated by flightless birds. They were going to describe a magnificent beast with terrible claws. And like a game of telephone, this is how Emu becomes a Dragon.

Episode Highlights

• 00:00 — Basement Roll Call: Joe, Nick, Georgia, and Mary welcome author B.L. Mostyn to the Basement Studio.
• 03:26 — Checklist For Magic Systems: Joe walks through his framework for interrogating any fictional power system — energy source, physiology, ecology, economy, politics, and failure modes.
• 05:58 — Defining Magic And Science: B.L. offers her definition of magic as anything we don’t fully understand, and the crew explores where science ends and magic begins.
• 12:44 — Scale Access And Wonder: The crew debates what makes something feel magical versus merely impressive — is it scale, rarity, or just not knowing what’s in someone’s hand?
• 17:33 — High Low Soft Hard Magic: B.L. breaks down the spectrum from high to low magic and soft to hard magic.
• 24:56 — Heroes Of Another Age Magic: B.L. walks through her elemental magic system — gods, elementals, a cycle of power flowing through all living things, and why humans in her world cast magic wrong and damage the world around them.
• 28:31 — Species Politics And Fear: B.L.’s eight-species world has dragons, elves, Nokin, dwarves, and humans — each with a different relationship to magic, and humans fearing it most because nobody taught them correctly.
• 34:46 — Dragon Ecology And Flight: Joe and B.L. work through the biology of dragons — territorial range, volcanic nesting, slow metabolism, centuries-long growth from house-cat size to full dinosaur scale.
• 41:19 — Magic Powered Dragon Flight: B.L. explains how her dragons use ambient air energy rather than wings to fly, drawing on the kinetic energy already moving through the atmosphere…but at what cost.
• 43:24 — Handwavium And World Logic: The crew agrees a little handwavium is okay. what matters is internal consistency, not scientific accuracy down to the gram.
• 43:55 — Emus As Dragon Origins: Joe floats his theory that medieval dragon lore may have started with soldiers encountering flocks of emus and surviving just barely to tell a different Handwavium tale.
• 47:33 — Real World Fire Breathing: The bombardier beetle is nature’s fire-breather, and the crew discusses how a dragon could realistically generate flame using hydrogen gas.
• 49:50 — Costs And Morality Of Magic: B.L. raises the ethical dimension — what are you willing to pay, and what are you willing to take from someone else? Dark magic as externalized cost.
• 51:12 — Jedi Force Power Politics: Joe makes the case that the Jedi industrialized the Force, and asks whether the dark side was really just a competing school of thought that got framed as evil by the victors.
• 53:50 — Hereditary Magic Genetics: Nick asks whether magic passes to offspring, leading Joe to explain mitochondrial DNA, maternal inheritance, and epigenetic tagging.
• 56:25 — The Power Matriarchy Magic: Joe recommends Naomi Alderman’s The Power.
• 59:25 — Magic War Crimes Fallout: Nick asks B.L. whether magic can constitute a war crime in her world — boiling seas, mass extinction, and whether the environmental cost of catastrophic magic becomes its own deterrent.
• 01:02:13 — Pick Your Power And Costs: The crew goes around the table — B.L. picks shapeshifting, Mary, universal language comprehension, Nick, airbending, Joe, telepathy/telekinesis, Georgia, after pondering for awhile, picks stopping time.
• 01:10:23 — Time Stop Comic Tangent: Joe recommends Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction.
• 01:11:28 — Books Cons And Farewell: B.L. plugs Heroes of Another Age, and the crew signs off.

“Stay curious, stay safe… Love Y’all!”

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Transcript

joe: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to The Rabbit Hole of Research down here in the basement studio. We’re all crewed up. You’ve got me, Joe.

Nick: You got Nick.

joe: got Nick. Georgia. We’ve got

Georgia.

Mary: got Mary.

joe: We’ve got Mary, and we have a special guest with us.

BL: Hi, I’m B.L. Mostyn. I am the author of epic YA fantasy, Heroes of Another Age. And I’m here to talk about, world-building and magic and wherever the rabbit hole leads us

joe: Yeah. So

Geo: Yeah All right

joe: like this is the first time

Nick: I feel like this is the first time we’ve covered anything magic

joe: I, we did. We had,

Nick: I, I-

Geo: we did. We had,

Nick: what have we covered?

joe: We had Davis on and magic medicine a

Nick: Oh. You know

joe: sea- second one this, this season. Yeah. Yeah. Geez.

Nick: Man, I forgot about

joe: we lose friends at a podcast there.

Mary: Oh,

Geo: But you take more medicine than magic- Yeah … [00:01:00] probably.

joe: We don’t– We haven’t talked a lot about magic, so- So

this is yeah, super special. So…

Nick: Do you have a list for us, Joe?

joe: Do you have a list for us, Joe? You know, I actually have a list and a monologue ’cause you guys have been giving me a hard time not having a list. So I wanted to come prepared for both.

Mary: But- Excellent

joe: I’ll just go

Geo: Right out the gate. Stage

joe: setting here.

There is always that moment of excitement when someone raises their hand and the impossible happens. Fire from nothing, a wound knitting itself shut, the dead opening their eyes, time stopping, a mountain cracking in half because someone wanted it to. And you start to imagine if you could do that, everything would be different.

But before you sign that contract in blood, here’s the thing you should be asking: where does it come from, and what’s it going to really cost me? If you raise your hand and produce fire, that fire is real. It has temperature. It used energy that came from somewhere. If you heal a wound, what are the biological costs?

If you move a mountain, you just applied force to billions of tons of [00:02:00] rock, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Science doesn’t take the day off because you’re the main character, and a universe doesn’t give free lunches.

it doesn’t stop at science.

You have to think politics and ethics because magic doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It would exist in a world full of others, and the moment one person or one creature or bloodline has it, then everyone else will want it. But who controls the training, the access, the supply? Who profits? Who pays when it goes wrong?

And what happens to anyone who tries to take it without permission? So handwavium aside, what’s magic really costing and who’s paying? Or just remember what old Jack Burton always says: “Have you paid your dues, Jack?” “Yes, sir. The check is in the mail.” So…

Nick: What? What is that one from?

joe: from? Big Trouble

Geo: don’t know?

Nick: You don’t know that? Oh my

joe: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Nick: Oh my God.

joe: starts with a little magic.

Nick: I forgot all [00:03:00] about that movie. Yeah, that’s- I love that movie … it starts with magic, so yeah. How could you forget that movie?

joe: with magic, so

Geo: How could you forget

Mary: could you forget about

Nick: ‘Cause it’s been forever and a half

joe: Forever and have. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So that’s kind of… And my list kind of frames off of that, but, you know, I don’t know, we can start talking and then we can go. I’ve got, I got

Geo: You’re gonna keep us in suspense?

joe: Yeah, no, I mean, I’ll keep talking, you know. That’s why I do a podcast, so Just jump

Nick: was waiting for you to just jump into your list.

joe: So I had a list. My list here and that’s always, I give this disclaimer to lists, you can disagree with it, you can agree with it, whatever. But I had like a little checklist

Nick: Also be– if you have anything that you wanna add to his

list-

joe: to the list, yes. Or-

Nick: just jump in and just start correcting him.

And

joe: Yes. That’s the way. Or delete,

Geo: that’s the way, or delete. I, I had a

joe: I, I had a checklist for integrating fictional magical power systems, and I highlighted some of that in the little monologue. But I had energy source, like where does the power come from? When is it depleted? The psycho- the [00:04:00] physiology.

What does it do to the user’s body over time? Mine. Ecology. How does it fit in with the surrounding environment? Food web. Economy. Who supplies the infrastructure, profits? Politics. Who controls the access? Institutions that manage it or restrict it. And failure modes. What happens when it breaks, overused, or falls into the wrong hands?

So I kinda had these questions, this checklist that- Mm-hmm … As you build a world, I think you should be thinking about and asking in your work. So does that… I mean, you construct these worlds, so I don’t… I write more in speculative sci-fi but, you know-

BL: Well, you know, the interesting thing about sci-fi and fantasy is they’re really not that far apart, so you’re talking about, you know, magic systems. We could go straight into Star Wars, and what is the Force but magic? And, you know, you talk about handwavium we have all sorts of ways to travel. Are you traveling by dragonback?

Are you traveling [00:05:00] by warp drive? So the, the lines are not as well-defined as we may think, but I think that’s an excellent checklist, but they aren’t necessarily all applied to the same type of

joe: Yes, that’s true. Mm-hmm. Good

Geo: point.

Nick: do you fall under the umbrella of magic being a science?

BL: I, oh I’m so ashamed I don’t remember who said this quote, but any sufficiently advanced m- science looks like magic

Mary: Mm-hmm.

Geo: Yeah. Yeah.

joe: Arthur C. Clarke? I don’t know.

BL: so I mean, like, it all comes to somewhere, and they’re all, there, there’s always rules about everything. As Joe implied, you know, every action has an equal opposite reaction, and energy can’t be created or destroyed, so where are you getting it from?

Geo: And I feel like it’s magic just when I, like, turn on the light switch,

BL: Mm-hmm.

Geo: you know? Mm-hmm. And it gets light. Yeah.

Nick: it magic? Yeah.

Geo: It’s like magic, right?

Nick: It’s like magic. Is that waving your hand? Right? It’s like magnets. How do they work?

Mary: do they work? Oh, B, can I ask you [00:06:00] a question?

BL: it’s a great thing to think about scale. You know, something as small as electricity or magnets, like when you amplify that 10,000 times, like you get lightning bolts and, the Earth’s magnetic field.

joe: Right.

BL: again, it’s science or, you know, if it, if you don’t know how it works, it’s

magic

Geo: Exactly. Did

you have a question, Mary?

Mary: Did you have a question? Oh, yes. I w- I was going to… Thank you. I was going to ask Bee, what is your definition of magic?

Nick: Ooh,

Geo: Good question

joe: question. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

BL: That’s an excellent question. My

Mary: back to it. Yeah. Okay.

Nick: Okay.

Mary: I always say we can come back to it, too, or if we wanna think about it and tease out the…

BL: I love the question. I think that magic is anything that we can do that we don’t fully understand it. You know, you can… You know, you were talking about the lights, and in some ways it’s magic to some of us, and it’s not to others and- But, the way somebody makes you feel.

You know, you talk about that magic something. You know, [00:07:00] emotions can be a type of magic or, you know, intuition. My, my daughter at the time was two, and she hid my keys in a a play microwave, and it should have taken me 10 years to find this, but I just had this sudden burst of inspiration that it was in this tiny little box, and I found them before I was late for work.

Is that… What is that? Is that magic? Is that intuition? Is that something else?

joe: Right?

Mary: I love it

BL: I think it’s anything that we don’t fully understand. I mean, the human body is magic. Like, we understand synapses and electrical impulses and things like that, but we don’t really know how it works, and it’s different for all of us.

So I think magic has a wide spectrum

joe: I like that. When, at, at, so at what point… I mean, so someone with that definition, and I think you alluded to it with the lights, that for some people they move from magic to science, and is that where the power and control comes in? ‘Cause once someone [00:08:00] understands it then they’re wielding it.

You start to apply that in some way.

Geo: Yeah. Like science and superstition is so closely related, which, you know what I’m saying? Like, so like if you’re actually the scientist and you’re able to explain things, you take away so much superstitious power. You know what I mean? I don’t know.

joe: Right,

Mary: No, absolutely. I

BL: No, absolutely. I agree with you that, you know, once it’s demystified it becomes science and not magic because now we understand it. And, you know, the scientist stops being a wizard and becomes a scientist because he’s explaining it in different terminologies that more people can understand. But Joe, you talked about training and who controls it, and so as soon as, you know, the wizard beco- understands the power that he’s working with, he, she’s working with and is able to pass it on to others, you know, much do they understand?

We talk about, like, [00:09:00] equivalent exchange and, you know, either the energy from the Earth or wherever you’re getting your source from or even the body. You know, it’s still … You understand how it works. It’s sort of like doctors. They understand kinda how it works, but not really

joe: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think I can– you can see that, and

Geo: you’re going

joe: there and trying to understand the system and completion ’cause sometimes you don’t need to understand every component to use the thing, right? So that’s

Geo: Like a light switch.

Nick: like a

joe: a light switch.

Nick: think it’s

Mary: I think it’s an excellent– I think it’s a, yeah, it, yeah, that’s a good example.

Geo: a good

joe: or, your car, right? We– You get in, you either turn a key, depending on how old your car is, or push a button now, and it fires up a combustion engine. I don’t know how many of us here understand. I mean, maybe there’s some motorheads here, but understand a combustion engine in its entirety.

And now with, the electronics in the car and the computer in the car you now have this other complicated system in there now as you [00:10:00] get in. So but we all, you know, I… Well, I… If you’ve learned– You have a driver’s license, you’ve done that. You can get in the car, you can turn a wheel, you can put it in drive, and, you know, you can go somewhere.

So and you don’t have to understand it. You don’t even have to, you know, kind of just understand how to manipulate it. So you’ve been taught enough to use this very complex thing

Geo: And,

joe: you know, are you a master of that? Are you a master of driving? You know, that, that’s–

Mary: it’s- I am a master of

Geo: a master at driving. It’s kind of an interesting point. She’s a g- good driver.

joe: Do you move? And then you teach people to drive, so you go and tea- So that’s this whole thing where you don’t

Geo: that’s, I think that’s true. That’s true for a lot of tools. You don’t necessarily understand everyth- exactly how they work.

joe: Right. But

Geo: I- You know what I mean? … guess then,

joe: would you call it magic though, right?

Because that’s ’cause you don’t understand something. I guess it’s your perspective. Is it

Nick: There’s a lot of stuff I don’t understand, but I’m not like, “Oh yeah, this is a magic, how these words get [00:11:00] transferred from one end of the world to the other.”

Right. Yeah.

It’s like-

Yeah. Yeah … oh,

y- I don’t know. I have a basic understanding of the internet, but it’s not like-

joe: And we take it for granted then. Yes. Right. Right. Right. And st- and ultimately stop being curious, right?

‘Cause then that’s, that can easily happen where you go and then you’re not curious about your world and then something

Geo: you just kind of accept something. Yeah.

joe: Yeah. No, I’m just trying to make that move from magic, and then you were talking about training and the, so you go, “I declare myself the wizard of cars.

I am,” you know, and then you go it…

BL: instructor, right? The driving instructor doesn’t

joe: Right. Right. Right.

BL: know how the car works, but somehow trains you to do the thing with the magic box that moves you

at 60 miles per hour, right?

joe: Interact

with other and it is a matter of and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Apocalyptic and- Yes.

Geo: Yeah.

BL: go post-apocalyptic and none of us on this phone call know how the internet works or know how light

joe: Right.

BL: is gets into that light bulb, we’re [00:12:00] all kind of, we’re all kind of screwed

joe: We’ve

Nick: worry, Georgia, I can turn on a light.

Geo: Okay, cool.

Nick: cool. Don’t worry.

Geo: And

joe: we’ve had that conversation before in different episodes about skills and how in a, a post-scarcity kind of world that skills of knowhow will become the commodity. So it won’t be necessarily money or things like that. It’ll be who can actually run the power generator, who can actually, you know, create medicines or know chemistry-

Mary: Who can unclog a toilet.

joe: who can un- well, you gotta

Mary: get-

Geo: You

joe: gotta get plumbing to work,

Nick: where are you gonna have this h- hidden toilet at? Who

Geo: dig an out- an

joe: outhouse, that’s gonna be,

Nick: a-

Mary: Yeah, who, y- yeah, exactly.

Who can de- design a a system, where you don’t, spread disease. I think that, but the idea of magic… So is magic just like the, the m- the less you understand things, the more you’re swayed by magic?

BL: Maybe so. I mean, it, you [00:13:00] know, if we’re talking about storytelling I think will also be a, a big thing in post-apocalyptic society because we’ve always had storytellers from the beginning to the end.

Mary: Mm-hmm.

Geo: Mm-hmm.

BL: And, you know, it goes into things like high magic and low magic, like is it secretive? Is it just a thing that one or two people can do?

Like telekinesis, rolling a pen across the table is not that impressive, right? But, if you can move mountains, as Joe was talking about, then it becomes this grandiose thing. So I think that it becomes a thing of scale, and that, maybe we don’t think, it’s a trick if you float something in the air, but it’s magic if you do this thing, and I think that we have the association that magic needs to be something big and flashy and out of the ordinary

Nick: How big would something need to be for you to be like, “Wow, that’s magical”? Like I feel like if someone’s in one room and they’re like, “Hey, I need that hammer,” and they just, you know, throw it up and- Yeah

joe: Yeah[00:14:00]

Nick: I’d be like, “Whoa.” that would be impressive to me. I, it’s not much, but I’d be like-

Geo: I think that’s a lot.

Right?

Nick: Right?

I don’t know.

Geo: Yeah. But

joe: do you know what

BL: How often does he do that trick? Oh, sorry

Nick: would hope all the time. I mean, if I could do it I would randomly do it, just, “Hey.”

joe: a hammer, right? So that’s a, I think maybe be you’re headed that way.

Is it just a hammer? So you can just keep call- you

Nick: can just keep going. You

joe: have the hammer, you have a set of magnets in your hand or something, and you can direct that magnet when you want it, but you, or hammer, but you can’t grab your beer across the room. What’s the variety of use of the…

Geo: I think it really matters on perspective.

joe: Yep, and that’s the thing. Right. That’s

Geo: obviously if I don’t, if I don’t see those big magnets in your hand, and it impresses me, then that’s- What’s in your hand? Then that’s magic. Don’t worry about about what’s in my so I just think about obviously masters of magic, like Houdini or

Nick: oh,

Geo: the guy that is around that- David Blaine? Yeah. Like, so there’s different things, [00:15:00] and it, and obviously it’s a slight of hand. It’s,

joe: like- Right

Geo: doing something so that someone doesn’t notice it, but then that does become magic.

joe: or endurance or outlasting whatever, and you … That feat is like, “Wow, that’s impressive. You held your breath for 20 minutes under, , submerged in ice or

Nick: or whatever. See, but I wouldn’t count that as magic.

Like-

joe: you don’t think so?

Nick: No. Oh, okay. That just means you learned, you trained your body enough to- Right … hold your breath.

Geo: It’s

Mary: impressive, but not magical.

Nick: you.

That’s what I’m trying

to say. I’m not like, “Holy crap, that’s a magician right there.” It’s like, “Oh, good job, you, y- you can hold your breath. You did s- a lot of training for yourself.”

joe: Well, I think a lot … So, so far we’ve touched on things that we know at some level their scientific explanation. Even if doctors don’t know 100% at the cellular and molecular level how

organs work,

they do have a physiological function that they can transplant them.

They can reconnect them. They can [00:16:00] revive them. We have this i- and we f- but, how do we move from something that’s truly, phenomenal, like physics breaking, right? Is that … That then would be how do you do that thing that just defied physics or gravity? I think you were talking about levitation or teleportation or even telekinesis besides the hammer.

So if you can, move all sorts of objects around, , with, just you can float them in the air and no strings, and

BL: I think it comes down to how many people can do it. So, you know, Joe, you or Nick or Mary or Georgia, like, we could all, like, with a little bit more schooling, go back to med school and all become doctors, in theory. And so it’s something that we all have the ability, theoretically, to go and get our degree and be able to hook up organs in the human body and things like that.

These are all things that we can achieve with enough effort. Whereas magic, who has it? Like, very select people, very few people can [00:17:00] move the hammer, can, float the beer across the room, or move the mountain, and I think that’s when we start getting into the fantasy realm of it, that it’s not something that’s accessible to everyone.

Not everyone can do it, and then it becomes magic. Because, to Nick’s point, we can all figure out how wiring works and hook up a light bulb, but I can’t call electricity to my hands. I can’t, you know, throw fireballs or anything like that. So I think the… That’s when it e- enters the fantasy realm, when there are only a few people who can use this ability

Geo: So you,

joe: had mentioned high and low magic, so can you dive into those two? Because it feels like we’re gonna probably split into these pretty soon, so

BL: Yeah, absolutely. So, so there’s high and low magic, and then soft and hard magic. High and low magic, high magic is like, it’s everywhere. Like, like think about Lord of the Rings. You know, there are wizards, we know there are wizards, there are magical beings that can talk to [00:18:00] animals or that can, you know, move mountains or can do these things.

There are magical creatures like dragons. High high magic is, it’s everywhere. Whereas low magic is like a secretive, like one or two people know about magic. I can think of , The Magicians for example. It’s only a small school of people, and they have this magical ability, but it’s hidden, often feared, often rejected by the rest of society.

If anybody found out, they’d have to keep it secret. So that’s the, the spectrum of high to low magic is, how integrated is it in everyday life? How well-known is it?

Geo: Mm-hmm.

Mary: Mm-hmm.

joe: And that’s… Oh, go

Geo: And then did you use a couple other terms? Was that soft and

joe: And hard

BL: Yeah, so, soft and hard magic, it’s the same thing as soft technology and hard technology. But it’s, you know, how solid are those rules? Like, the handwavium is, like, very soft magic. Like, I would kind of argue that Harry [00:19:00] Potter is very soft magic. Like, sometimes you use a wand, sometimes you have to say the spells, sometimes you don’t have to.

Sometimes you can use a potion. There aren’t really a lot of laws, because apparently, like, love potions are okay and legal, and , all of these ethical questions. Like, we just don’t define a lot of the rules that govern magic and what it costs and what happens if something goes wrong. Like, we don’t talk about the effects that magic has on the world or the caster themselves.

Whereas hard magic, we can look at Brandon Sanderson is, one of the king of hard magic. In his Mistborn series, he had… And I’m gonna get this wrong, but he had, 13 different types of metals and what each one of them did, and I couldn’t find a chart on this, but he actually in the writing talked about to the gram how much energy that, that caster would get out of that [00:20:00] ener- out of that metal that he ingested into his body and burned it in his stomach, but just basically digested it.

And so you knew exactly what you were gonna get out of that, how it worked, how long it was gonna last, what it did what happened if it went wrong. If, swallowed copper instead of iron, you would not get the same effect and maybe you couldn’t even use it at all. So, you know, hard magic has very set rules, consequences, backlash

Nick: I think that’s the kind of magic I like to see, where it’s like, oh, it does take a toll on you. It’s not just out of thin air I can do this. It’s,

joe: Right

Nick: oh, you can do this. Yeah.

joe: And consistent. Yeah. Right? ‘Cause I think that’s, and that’s a craft issue there.

Geo: and then also I f-

joe: hard with, I mean, sci-fi too, I think you have the same sort of soft, hard science sci-fi that you go

Geo: And I think a lot of times maybe the author knows all these rules, but they aren’t necessarily- Right … written in the- Yeah … Could come up here and there. But [00:21:00] that’s so interesting. So before you, like, so your books are you, how would you define your books?

BL: I tend toward the harder side of magic because I like the idea that there are consequences, that there are rules. If, somebody in the cast got injured and somebody could just wave a hand and they’re healed, well, there are no consequences anymore. You don’t have… The stakes have s- have lowered dramatically.

You know, there’s no threat of death. There’s no threat of,, dismemberment or injuries. Like, “Oh, we can fix him, no problem.”

Geo: Right

BL: I like the idea that there are consequences and there are rules, and it’s not limitless. Like, this is an ability, like, you know, we could all do a race right now, and it’s based on our bodies and it’s based on how much energy we have, how long we would go, who’s gonna win and it’s, advantageous to each of us to hone our skills and our abilities and our physical physical prowess to be able to handle these, these powers and these these effects.[00:22:00]

So I do tend towards the harder side

joe: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, no, I think that’s… I mean, I think it’s good, I, and I think Georgia touched on it just in writing. I always say that even with sci-fi, one should understand their world, all the elements. You don’t have to necessarily write all that, but you should know it because I think you can easily go into the softer kind of handwavium because you all of a sudden have a plot hole and you hadn’t thought through, and so you write yourself…

You paint yourself into the corner, and the only way out is to, literally hand w- , wave your hand and get out of it and break kind of your own rules as you go through. And I think you’re mentioning Harry Potter and some of the rules there, where sometimes it works this way, and then sometime…

And it’s never no explanation of why. Like, even if you gave this person some level you have to understand that and think about it, but-

Mary: I think we’re thinking about two different concepts possibly.

joe: Mm-hmm.

Mary: Because they’re… Because magic, I mean, I think, like, the way we’re talking about magic, magic is [00:23:00] exempted from scientific rules. But in order to have a story that’s meaningful, then there has to be some rules within that magical system. That, I mean, but they don’t…

You know, so you don’t have to think of, like, well, maybe you do, like the scientific rules, how many, how much, how many calories does it take to levitate off the ground or fly through the air? But you don’t have to in a magic system. Do you know what I mean? But you wanna do that as a proper world-building system to know how your world works, even, you know, that kind of thing.

joe: I don’t know. So I’ma, I’ll say this, I don’t know if you need, I don’t know if you need to know all the, the details down to the gram of metal of how it works. Mm-hmm. I think you just need to have a consistent set of rules so that when this magic is used, it is used consistently throughout your story.

Mary: That’s a good, you know, it’s good st- it’s good storytelling. You

joe: have to be scientifically accurate. That, at least if, you know, I’m writing that’s what

I do to make sure that the rules are just followed- Right … [00:24:00] that in chapter seven all of a sudden you got a new set of rules because you’ve had some plot hole open up.

But I mean, is that

Geo: fair?

joe: Is that-

BL: Yeah, I totally agree. There’s a, there’s another term used in writing, the deus ex machina, where the solution just comes out of nowhere, and it’s, like, poor storytelling, right? Like, where you’re just like, “We have not talked about this thing that came in and swooped and saved the plot and all the characters,” and things like that.

And I feel like that’s what happens when you break your own rules , of magic, of technology, of whatever you’re writing, is, , without rules and given it’s, , it is all made up, it’s fiction, right? But without rules, like, you know, where is the plot? Where is the stakes?

Where is the what are you fighting against? Where are your restrictions? And, you know, because if you could do anything with magic, you could just go up to the bad guy, snap your fingers, and they’re gone. It’s a pretty short story

Mary: Right. And well, and I wanted, I would like to also talk [00:25:00] about Bea, about your new book Heroes of Another Age and how magic… I mean, without giving it everything away, but how does magic how does magic come about in your s- I mean, manifest itself in, in, in this new book of yours? In the new book

BL: Yeah, absolutely. So magic in my world is element-based. It and again, we we talk about the tip of the iceberg as the only thing that makes it into the book, and that we as writers know, like, all the rest of it under the surface. So I have created this cycle where, you know, the gods have bestowed magic into the world, which is caretaken by these elementals, which, you know, floods the world, the, the water, the air, the fire, and the stone with this power that is then consumed, eaten, or drank by humans and animals, and, you know, f- as they eat other humans and i- or other animals and plants and things like that, they accumulate it, and then their prayers go back [00:26:00] up to the gods, who then do this cycle.

And the ones who are gifted with the ability to use the magic that they have within them draw from themselves, but they also make pacts with the elementals, who are the caretakers of the world, because, you know, gods are a little outside the range. And they can draw from the elemental, and they can draw from themselves, but they have limitations.

Their bodies can only hold so much. And even though the elementals, you know, have tremendous power, the, the caster themselves can’t hold all of it. So I have rules and restrictions in that way, and, you know, it’s taking from these different elementals, you get the different types of power, so if you drew from the fire elemental, you get fire power.

Sheer kinetic power, you can just do your own energy or, you know, wind or water or stone. So that’s really my magic system, and it’s determined based on the caster, their physicality, how much, you know, energy, vitality, however you wanna say it how many, you [00:27:00] know, chocolate bars they’ve had that day for the energy to call up the spell, but it yeah, exactly.

It’s based on their physiology, how much they, how much magic they can contain within themselves.

Nick: Are they able to do multiple different elements or no? Oh

BL: I actually, again we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of it, but there are three levels of casters in my world, because we all, in my books have magic within us, but it’s about the ability that you have to access that. And one is called the listeners. These are the people who just have a super green thumb, and their fields are always growing well because the water always goes exactly where it needs to go, and they’re just…

They have an affinity for an elemental, and they don’t even necessarily speak to the elementals and the spirits and things like that. They just sort of have a gift for it, so they’re accessing a little bit of that magic subconsciously. And then you’ve got the speakers, who can speak to one type of elemental.

They [00:28:00] have affinity for one type of element. And then you have the commanders or the sorcerers, who can use all the different types

Mary: Nick,

Geo: So you

joe: this hierarchy it sounds like. Is that a hierarchy of control also? So would the sorcerers, I guess, would they be the ones that will train up or seek out or, you know, do you have this, you know, a political structure? I guess that’s what I’m getting at. Is magic now controlled that way in, in your world?

BL: Yeah, absolutely. So I also have very many species. I have eight species in my world and they each view magic differently, so we’re talking about political, we’re talking about historical, so there was an order in which the gods of my world created each individual, and, you know, dragons were first, and they have no ability to use magic because they already have fire and giant size and wings and claws.

They didn’t need anything else, so they’re like, “Pfft, whatever.” And then [00:29:00] the elves came, and they were the first ones to discover magic. They were the first ones to use it, so they’re, you know, super in tuned with it. Then came my aqua species, my Nokin, who lived under the sea, and they’re like the little brother to the elves, so they had a lot of political conflicts.

They didn’t share very well. The dwarves came and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, this is magic. This is how it works,” and so, you know, they went to go… They went underground to find their own sources, and by the time humans showed up, they were like, “Yeah, we don’t wanna have anything to do with you. We’ve had enough teaching about magic,” and, like, figured it out themselves.

So humans in my world have a fear of magic because they don’t understand it. And there are still casters that show up among humans, but they have to hide it or be ostracized.

Geo: Mm-hmm.

BL: So there is a political system and it varies per species. I’ve been working on my world for a long time, so there are a lot of rules, and I know exactly how this works and all the different dimensions.

I was actually listening, Joe, to one of your earlier podcasts about finance[00:30:00]

and currency and things of that nature, and I’ve even, like, thought about the currency. I’m like, “Oh, gold is a soft metal, and it, you know, it can go underwater, but silver tarnishes, and iron tarnishes,” so there are certain things that the Nokin couldn’t use as currency, and then, you know, what they would trade with different species.

And so, yeah, there’s a lot of world-building going on here.

Mary: I think

Geo: I think that’s

joe: I think that’s I think that’s really cool. I, there was a couple points you were going through your world, and I wanna touch on some. But one I think is interesting is you said the humans were fearful of magic ’cause they don’t understand it. And I think early in our conversation we were

I kinda mentioned curiosity and how we are in our actual world, our real world, and how people seem to be pulling away from scientific fact and their curiosity is diminishing for the easy kind of fix and the easy find, and it and becoming fearful of people who might have knowledge or know, science or doctors or practitioners.

So I think it’s really [00:31:00] interesting that, you could say it’s, it was planned, and you had it. Or was it a happy accident? Or you just, you know, world- the world as it is just wound up, , mirroring your,

BL: Well, I think it’s a cycle that human beings go through. I mean, we were talking earlier about superstition and things like that. Like medical doctors in the Middle Ages, if you didn’t use leeches, you were clearly using witchcraft, and like it’s, everything you’re doing is black magic.

Even though the person got better, you clearly contacted with devils to make this happen. So I think that we’ve seen that people are afraid of what they don’t understand, and I think that people, as all animals honestly, look for the easy way out. Like, if the lion can steal a kill from the, the hyenas so that they don’t have to go hunting, and they can save those calories and just get the free meal, they’re gonna do it.

So I think people will go for the easy solution, the easy answer. But in contrast, they don’t wanna understand how it happened because that’s [00:32:00] scary. They don’t understand how it happened. They don’t wanna know anymore. Just give me the answer

joe: Yeah.

Nick: So with the humans on the, in your book, do they take a toll if they start doing magic? Like, since it’s not widely used among humans, i- is there like some kind of repercussion for them doing it, or is it just-

joe: Or, and then can I add one little- No

Nick: No, you may not.

joe: you cannot. Can I wanna add a little tidbit.

Are there researchers studying this? Like, are they experimenting on other humans? , ? You guys are messed up.

BL: are actually, because they’re always trying to outdo the elves when it comes to, you know, being the superior species on the planet. So they are doing research. The humans are not. They will definitely just tie you up and put you on the stake if they find you doing magic.

Geo: you should, yeah, so you need to keep it

joe: So if you accidentally hap upon some at, you look at the

rock,

Geo: if you decide, “Oh yeah, there’s so- You just keep that to yourself. Yeah.

Nick: No. You make a big extravagant

thing about it. Right. That’s, You start

taking out anyone [00:33:00] who’s

joe: Yeah.

BL: And the interest- one of the other little twists in my world is that, you know, the elves discovered that if they make contracts with the elementals, they don’t always have to ask the world to supply the power. They’ve already kind of made the deal with them, and they understand they’re not out to do harm and things like that.

But since nobody taught humans the correct way to do it, every time they cast magic, they cause harm to the world around

joe: Oh, right, right.

BL: So when they cast a fire spell, you know, the air becomes cold. It bec- you know, they’re drawing it from an unwilling world and that’s one of the penalties of them not embracing magic

joe: Yeah, I was gonna say that’s the conservation of energy there. So as people talk about fireballs, but you pull that energy from somewhere, so would you have a thermo drop somewhere else? So it’s cool that you’ve added that in. If they’re using a fire moment, there’s, how they’re generating the fire is still probably can talk a little bit about that.

But yeah.

Nick: So since they don’t have any, like, contracts or anything with the elementals, when [00:34:00] they’re doing it, do they get hurt, like, with their hands, like with the fireball?

BL: The one human that I talk about that, like, does a lot of this he’s learned to do the spell that, no, he doesn’t get hurt by by using the magic himself, but he does damage the world around him. And, , there is a cost because even when he’s shown, there’s a better way to do this, like, he’s like, “I don’t care.

Like, it’s faster. I don’t have to ask. I don’t have to ask the elements for this. I don’t have to make pacts. I don’t have to do any of this stuff.” Like, so there’s a moral toll that kind of comes with, like, doing it without asking, without permission, and eventually if you do cause too much destruction, if you do cause too much trouble, the elementals will have, have a problem with this and come and get you

joe: like the humans will take care of it

BL: Well, that too, if they

discover

joe: you’re there, that who gets to them and then kind of does this kind of, yeah, I think that was that leads into kind of the other area was the biome, and you mentioned dragons, and dragons in [00:35:00] fantasy realm are usually magnificent, powerful beasts, apex, true apex predators.

And I wonder how you balance that because just the– We’re not gonna talk about flight and things like that. I think I was on a, a panel at Dragon Con, and we got into that quite a bit. But one of the things I thought about then was actually the environment, right? Because apex predators like that, usually there’s a lot of lower species lower , kind of prey species that they can feed on and feast on.

So are your dragons communal, or is it just one dragon per. Have you, have you– what’s your math there to work that out,

BL: So they are communal. They’re one of the intelligent species on my planet. They were one of the first, so they are communal. They do have governments. They have trades with the other species. But they are confined in where they can live. Where they lay their nests has to be a volcanic range, like a, you know, could be dormant, but, like, still has that pool of lava [00:36:00] that will incubate the eggs for them in a communal clutch.

So that explains why they’re not all over the world and just taking over everybody’s territory and mashing the rest of the species into dust. So that’s one way that I control the, you know, the populations and their realm of influence and things like that. They also don’t breed quite as often.

Like, I think it was, oh, there was one movie where it was like where it was the dragons used to exist, and then they all went into hibernation, and the one guy let them out, and they took over the world, and there was like one male. Like, all the rest of them were female, and he could, impregnate all of them, and they all laid a laid a clutch of, 80 eggs a piece or something like that.

And it’s like, no, this is not sustainable. And even the one male dragon started eating some of the females,

joe: right. Yeah, that, that’s… I mean, and are your dragons as large as– I mean, in terms of size, like, are they, dinosaur size? Are they elephant size? Are they dog si- You know,

Nick: our- I would love if they were dog size. Me too. And probably. I mean, it’s sustainable, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Mary: too. Probably[00:37:00]

Geo: very

BL: of them are. It depends,

joe: Me too. That probably very sustainable, right?

Yeah.

Mary: No.

BL: de- well, so, you know, there’s a fascinating book I think it’s called,

Nick: just wanna see a human piss

BL: An Adult’s Guide

joe: the dragons, yeah. Oh, dinosaurs. Okay, yeah.

Yeah

BL: because, like, if you talk about the the, the larger dinos- dinosaurs, like the brontosaurus, the brachiosaurus,

joe: Mm-hmm. Right

BL: they all started out the size of house cats, and then they grow, like, in huge leaps and bounds to be much bigger.

But if you even look at the dinosaur eggs, they’re, like, not that

joe: not big. Yep. Yep. Yep.

BL: and so, dragons in my world are similar. They’re born, you know, they’re born on the smaller size, and so it takes hundreds of years for them to get to the really colossal sizes where they’re the size of, like, full-grown dinosaurs, right?

But yeah, so some of them are dog-sized for, you know, 50 or 60 years

joe: I just think that

BL: grow up

joe: when you have… I mean, you talk about the dinosaurs, and so the prey, you know, the di- the, the prey dinosaurs let’s

BL: Mm-hmm.

joe: They [00:38:00] actually for defensive purposes grew very large, and we see that even in, on Earth in, in animals we have. Whereas prey generally because of their metabolic costs to be an apex predator usually slims down and becomes very sleek, very…

You know, every muscle is there for, every pound of muscle is there for a reason. So that’s why I was asking in your world. And it sounds like what you’ve done is just extended the life to centuries and then you would finally as a old, maybe slower, your me- your metabolism’s starting to slow, you start putting on weight and mass and become a, a mature senior dinosaur.

Is that- Dragon. Or dra- sorry, dra- yeah, dinosaur.

BL: Yeah. But it’s, yes, very much that way

Geo: Yeah, cool.

joe: Yeah, no, I think it’s always interesting the biology of these worlds and the creatures that live in there because, you have to think about that. Like why… I guess the dragons, would they eat the dwarves and the elves and the [00:39:00] humans, right?

I mean, they would be the food items at some level. Is that… Right? I don’t know. I’m just thinking out

BL: in my world they’re not because they’re a communal species. There’s trade. they

Geo: Big Macs.

joe: have Big Macs. Big Macs, that’s right. Yeah.

BL: they really view themselves as historians and the keepers of time because they’re the ones who invented it ’cause they were the first species that, like, actually was, like, around and populating. So they’re highly intelligent creatures much like the other species

joe: So they respect the other intelligent creatures. They don’t by whatever rules of intelligence they’ve outlined, so

BL: Yep. So they, you know, eat things like, you know, the deer, ram rams, bighorn sheep, shee- like lots of prey species that exist

joe: Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Nick: Damn, that, that has to be a lot of deer for them to eat

Geo: have eaten

BL: Well, yes and no, because if you think about if you think about crocodilians or you think about snakes, they have one large meal and then they, like, go to sleep for, like, months while they digest it. So you have to, you think [00:40:00] about, like, reptiles having a slower metabolism, and Joe, I think you know a lot about biology and you know that it just takes one to satiate them for a long time

joe: usually they don’t move around, so if you’re… And that’s where the biology of your dragons would be. If they are still maintaining court or being active, then they’re gonna burn through that meal pretty quickly and have to find another one and to keep up their caloric load.

Or if they’re not… Right, I mean, it depends on if they’re fire-breathing or some other-

Nick: Flying in

joe: Flying in general … flying, right. They don’t, they can’t fly or they don’t fly, and that conserves then energy. They only do that under… You know, the, the consequence of flying is that you could starve yourself, right? You could become metabolically weak and then, you know-

Nick: That’s when they invent scooters, Joe. Don’t worry

joe: when they, divulge in other urges. You know, you have a, serial killer dragon that’s flying around and,.

BL: so the way I got around flight was I- that they don’t actively use magic, but magic exists inside [00:41:00] of all creatures on this planet, and so they use magic to

lift themselves. So if you s- if you see, you know, the, the typical fire drake or wyvern in, like European, but then you look at Eastern Asia, right, like Chinese or Japanese dragons the long that don’t have wings, right?

How are they flying? And so thinking about that, I’m like, they would be supported by this magic that, that flows through them. So that gets you around also the hollow bone and weight-to-wing spread ratio issue that, you know, you always run into with dragons

joe: Now you had the, the human penalty that with the fireball example that it would cool off. What’s your penalty? So you use magic to fly. Where are you pulling this? Are you cooling down a large area and , , all of a sudden it’s wintertime , over, over the city because you’ve taken flight, a herd of, I don’t know, are they a herd of dragons

Nick: The council.

joe: a council of dragons

BL: a clutch maybe?

joe: a clutch of drag- Yeah.

I mean, would you have this [00:42:00] energetic cost, right? Because that’s … You’re now displacing that. And I mean, and don’t say you’re pulling from another dimension because that’s the that’s the favorite on this podcast.

Nick: That is Joe’s go-to.

BL: Absolutely. No, the interesting thing about air magic, about air in general, is that, you know, because of the rotation of the Earth and things like that, like we have constant motion of air in general. So like just taking that kinetic motion and like using it and amping it up in their own for their own purposes and their own flight, there’s enough energy in the air at the different levels of the of the stratosphere to, to power the flight

joe: So kind of like little hurricanes? I’m trying to

re- Yeah,

BL: like not,

they don’t cause little hurricanes, but they can, you know, would absorb the the

energy that is

joe: The, the heat the, air streams and things like that, the energy and the heat in that is

Nick: It’s like they’re gliding with style, not flying.

joe: flying. They’re… Okay. So- they don’t have wings, so they’re not gliding

Nick: Dang. I don’t know, man. They[00:43:00]

BL: They could be falling with

Nick: Yeah, falling with style.

That’s what it is. Thank you.

joe: what it is. Thank you. Well, you gotta get up there. I mean, it’s all right. There’s energy to get up there that you need, the, the lift, the, you know, okay.

BL: You, you do need to flap and get up there in the first place, you would need more energy. You’re totally

Nick: That’s

joe: scientist in me,

BL: lot of times in my book. They,

like, wanna skip that step, so they just jump off

joe: There you go. So that’s it. So,

Nick: how I do it

joe: It’s the, the scientist in me is now like, to Mary’s point, like maybe, you know, shut the scientist brain down and not the… A little handwavium’s okay.

Geo: Right. Well,

Mary: like handwavium, but like, it’s more like word buil- world-building. You know, it’s i- it’s important, like you said to have like, just like omnipotent characters running around because then there’s no story. Right. You know? So yeah, there has to be some internal logic in your, in whatever creative work you’re doing.

Yeah. Did I ever tell you guys-

joe: dragon theory?

BL: No, please

joe: So- I don’t know. Go for it. So I had this, this thing, like dragons are these creatures. And so, [00:44:00] the… I said that maybe dragons of fantasy and lore were really just emu or ostriches, right?

They are mean birds, man. Like, you- That’s true … you don’t mess. They will kill. Like, you just let them loose on people, they will slaughter them. It… They’re kind of, they’re big. They’re like four or five feet tall. They got, these, these long claws. They’re like mini raptors.

Nick: I mean, the shoebill-

joe: they go, right. I mean, there was the Australians. , you had the Emu War. I mean, so-

Nick: I forgot about the emu

joe: thing is that maybe you send out your knights, they’re going somewhere, and they just run into a flock, a, a herd of emu, and just get slaughtered. And they make their way back.

They’re not gonna say, we got decimated by birds.” They’re gonna be like, “There was a magnificent beast that breathed fire,” and you know, you’re gonna build this whole thing up and have this whole lore of this, these creatures that, that could do

this right? It, it

Mary: an ostrich-

joe: it.”

Mary: I did

an ostrich didn’t kick my ass. A fire-breathing- Right … yeah, exactly.

joe: [00:45:00] 20 feet tall, if not- Right … 20 feet wide. It was, , w- great wings, you know? Yeah, so you go and, then they go and they examine the scene, and everyone’s all picked apart like they would’ve been maybe attacked by a dragon.

So

Geo: Or an emu. Or

Mary: Or- Or an emu … a bunch of

joe: a bunch of emu just flocking around just kind of,

Mary: Don’t go to Australia is what you’re saying. Just don’t…

joe: In the high, in the highlands up.

BL: the cassowary. The cassowary is the blue bird with the crest. they’re a nasty group

joe: Yeah.

Geo: Is that the bird from Up? No. No. No.

joe: No. That was some made-up bird, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it it was actually based on a real

Oh, was it? Okay

BL: Yeah, seriously. Look it up sometime. But they- it was based on a mountain phe- pheasant. And actually the enemy or the bad guy from Up is looks very much like the scientist who discovered the mountain

pheasant.

joe: Wow. That’s so cool.

BL: it’s actually based on a real animal

Geo: so cool. Wow. Cool.

joe: That’s neat to Not quite that big, though.

we’ll put that in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. No, but that’s my dragon theory. I like to, I like talking about dragons. I [00:46:00] li- I think figuring out the science of them, and you’re right, the hollow bones. There’s a book about it, like it’s, they got gas pockets and they float like a blimp, and,, there’s all these kind of weird kind

Nick: like a whale

things.

joe: wow. Like a whale

BL: of Dragons

joe: I th- I think that might be it, yeah.

BL: Yeah,

joe: illustrated guide. I can’t… Yeah, it

BL: There was a

movie, uh, I think in the ’80s The Flight of Dragons, where they would like, they ate limestone and they had fire, or they had the Thor thimble, which was like the electricity in their, in the roof of their mouth that they s- weirdly generated so that their stomach acid with the limestone would expand them and they could fly like blimps or breathe fire

joe: Yeah. And I said, “Well, they could just be using, , hydrogen gas,” which is, , like the Lindenberg, , that flew. The Hindenburg, sorry, not the Lindenberg. The Hindenburg.

Nick: That’s

Geo: less, the

BL: didn’t end so well for

joe: that’s

Geo: the lesser known.

joe: you know, which then, , exploded… And if you’re fire-breathing, then you would have this source of gas built up in your

Geo: And maybe it’s unicorn farts[00:47:00]

Mary: Yeah.

joe: could be unicorn farts. That’s… We’re not even talking about unicorns. Yeah, no. It’s,

Mary: edible glitter.

joe: I love, I mean, I think the fantastical creatures are always fun, ’cause you can just pull from real

Geo: I was gonna say, there’s so many real-life fantastical creatures, just like the bir- Bigfoot. Just like, well, I was gonna say, just like the bird we were talking about in Up, you know?

Like-

joe: say- Bigfoot. … just like the bird we were talking about up, you know?

Like- Nick, stop dressing like Bigfoot. Come on. You gotta stop it.

Nick: Yeah. This is me

BL: there’s a,

Nick: Yes.

BL: there’s an insect called the bombardier beetle that actually, It has a couple chemicals that makes napalm and makes fire

just,

joe: does,

Nick: Oh yeah, f-

joe: It’s like about 100

100 degrees. It can just blast out and eject, tens of

Geo: of feet. I remember that bug because of that children’s book called The Bugliest Bug. Do you remember that?

joe: I do remember the

Geo: Yeah, and they talk about the b- Oh. Yeah.

Mary: I don’t know that one.

Cool.

Geo: Cool. Yeah, no.

joe: Yeah, that’s always a, the especially talking about [00:48:00] how would you get to fire-breathing, how would you get to projectile kind of exothermic reactions out of that so you could have just a chemical mix.

That one’s easy. , different organs. You would, you could set that up and, to have, to create fire. I think the flying is always the, especially for a large creature-

Wouldn’t you have to have

Geo: we have a hard time even explaining how we make airplanes fly, right? Ma- There is some,

joe: there is some, right, the, the lift

Nick: in that plane has to hope and think-

joe: that’s right.

Nick: we don’t fall out of the

sky.

But seriously. That,

Geo: Nope. But seriously, that,

joe: There there are models … but I

Geo: pretty much like a magical concept in a way. Well, I,

joe: No I… There’s a number of things that

Nick: doesn’t believe it, they crash

joe: we use that fall in that we maybe not understand it 100%, but it works, and so we just go with it un- until it stops working? I don’t know. It’s like this worked really well for, you know,

Geo: know-

BL: I always love it when you shrink down physics and it, like, works completely different. Like,

the [00:49:00] bumblebee should in no way be able to

fly,

joe: Yeah.

BL: um, but it does

joe: Yeah. , you do the same thing with quantum mechanics, right? So you have, , kind of classic physics and Newtonian physics, and you got quantum physics, as all the rules kind of change and shift there a little bit. And we don’t understand everything. That’s why we do science. That’s why we’re curious and think about it.

Nick: Are you saying I don’t understand everything?

joe: I don’t know

Nick: I don’t understand this.

joe: don’t,

Nick: no. I’m not

implying

Geo: you mean?

joe: anyone of anything

Nick: is this nonsense?

joe: No I… , was there anything you wanted to go into? , while we’re here, you got us here, and any ideas, you wanna hash out? Or

Geo: we find out

joe: the handwavium of, your biome a little more know- Or someone else., we can, it’s we leave names out.

BL: No, I was I was curious about sort… So we talked about the physical kind of costs of magic, but there are more. We talked about mental. If you look at, like, [00:50:00] Star Wars, the, the dark side of the Force and the light side of the Force, that there’s a, a bit of a, a morality there. But also, what if, the source isn’t from you personally?

Like, the, the, the dark wizards who sacrifice people and, cut out their hearts to appease the gods or to get certain powers and things like that. So the cost of magic is interesting, and it changes from culture to culture. Like, the Far East will talk about mana, which is different than just energy and vitality.

You see a lot of it in in video games and things like that, right? Like, you’ve got the, you’ve got your mana bar to tell you how much you’ve got. So I think that the cost of magic is really interesting. It comes down to what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to give up in order to use this?

joe: Right.

Geo: Like basically selling your soul- You gotta be selling your soul

joe: Basically selling your

Geo: for

Nick: of them would, Yeah …

Geo: abilities or certain- what do you go for and what will

joe: what do you pull forward? Or what will you gain if you do choose one path versus the other? I think Star Wars,

Geo: f-

joe: a little [00:51:00] sci-fi fantasy, so

Geo: I mean- I think that we all, well, I can just speak for myself, hope there is karma.

I mean- … you really hope that someone gets their- Right … you know.

joe: I always think that the thing that was interesting in Star Wars, and we did talk about that on the financial one, maybe not in this, this level where… But it almost felt like the Jedi had industrialized the Force.

Like, they were going around the universe scouring for people who had some high midichlorian value, and then taking them in, training them, and saying, “This is the way, and you’re gonna…” And then, the dark side of the Force, they were, they had their own practices. And I don’t know if they were more evil.

I think the way their story was told it,

Geo: I- … blowing up a whole planet, come on.

joe: But the Jedi blew up the entire Death Star. I mean, that was blowing up planets, so I

Nick: that wasn’t the Jedi, though. That [00:52:00] was done by a Jedi.

joe: Well

Geo: Good

joe: that’s

Nick: you’re grouping them. They’re-

joe: because the Jedi Order was- Wiped out

wiped out, yeah. Because they were laying the hard pressure on the few folks who wanted to study a different pathway of Force, right?

Nick: So I,

joe: Then that’s control, right? So that’s to control and who, where was the money coming from for the Jedi or for the Rebels, ? That, there’s a lot of un- undisclosed,

Nick: Joe, are you s-

Are, are you standing up for the Empire?

joe: I’m just saying that the story is we talked about storytelling and the victors get to tell the story. And so it seems like that , it’s like these two guys we didn’t like, right? ‘Cause there’s only a master and a apprentice , and then you got hundreds of Jedi.

So it, it feels like somebody was on the take.

Mary: I think, just think that’s just go- good organization really, you know? Yeah. You know? Yeah. But

joe: But once you figure out the cost of it, you can then industrialize it. Then you can go, “Let’s create a system [00:53:00] where we have a power structure, and we want our way of magic, our way of life to persist.

So how do we keep that?” And anyone that challenges that, then they become anti. They become the dark side, right? I mean, that,

Nick: of the state.

joe: hate. Right, exactly. So you can frame it a lot of different ways, but I don’t know. At some point, the Jedi were maybe wrong.

BL: You know, The Wheel of Time was interesting on that point because you had the Aes Sedai, you had the females that were in charge of everything, right? Like, they all bowed down to them. And if you were a guy and practicing the magic, like, you were bound to go insane, and so, like, no guy was allowed to do it.

And, like, I thought that sort of dichotomy was sort of interesting. It’s not not typically what you see in a typical patriarchal system. But,

joe: mm-hmm.

Nick: Quick question. Does magic get granted or, If someone’s pregnant and they do magic, does their offspring get magic too? Or is it, like, [00:54:00] just them?

BL: My world it gets passed down, through the bloodline. Like, so if your mom or your father wa- your mother or your father was a w- was a sorcerer, you had the chance to be a sorcerer. If both of them, you were pretty much guaranteed to be a sorcerer. It was, , passed down her, , that way in my story which I think is easier from a storytelling point of view because you actually have, like, a built-in teacher.

Like, your parent would teach you the thing, but what’s interesting with that is that especially in, in human society where it’s feared and they have to hide it, the separation of knowledge and the segregation of different spells and different fields of expertise within magic and things like that, it would be incredibly siloed.

So that was sort of in- something interesting that I was exploring in some of my books

joe: Yeah. And it, did you make a choice not to have it follow, yeah the mom or the dad, like, so in, in a very hereditary kind of way?

BL: Yeah. [00:55:00] I mean, like, it’s, I mean, honestly, all of genetics is like Russian roulette. Like, are you gonna get the blue eyes? Are you gonna get the brown eyes? Are you gonna get the high metabolism? Are you gonna be, you know, fat by the time you’re 10? Like, you know, you just, you don’t know what you’re gonna get.

Crazy grab bag at the end of the day, so I figured the ability to use magic would be another one of those,

uh, another one of those genetic

joe: there are some maternally inherited features, right? So all our, that’s how mitochondria all are maternally passed just because the nature of how , male sperm works. , it kind of burns itself out to, to deliver the DNA payload, and then the egg supplied by the mom has all of the kind of goods to get life going, , and the energy resources, the protein resources.

That’s why epigenetics tagging and turning off and on of certain genes is also maternal. So you, you do have, you know, from a, a strictly biological point of view, a [00:56:00] maternally inheritable,

inheritable,

inheritable,

Traits like that. You know, it has some very strong… Scientific basis.

So I was just asking, like, you know. But yeah, so you’re more non-sex allele magic, if we’re thinking as a geneticist. If I can put on my science hat, Mary. I’m gonna put on my science hat. I’ll take it off really

Mary: Very nice. Very ni-

BL: That is an impressive science

joe: So yeah, so

BL: that is cool knowledge

joe: but yeah, no that’s something you do. And I was Nick, you had reminded me and speaking of women and kind of, power is The Power Power by Naomi Alderman,

Alderman

where women now have gained the ability to generate electricity a- and then they kind of take over the world. So we go from a patriarchy to a, a matriarchy.

matriarchy.

a matriarchy.

A matriarchy.

And so the, the book is written, like, from the point of view of, like, a historical conference about, and someone’s presenting the idea that men used to be in power, and the, the women can’t believe it. You know, it’s like they that’s hard, so hard to believe when we’re talking [00:57:00] about historical things and how magic and systems kind of go.

And once you, you get

a

Geo: of this- Which is similar to how Handmaid’s Tale is,

joe: and-

Mary: that- Which is similar to

Nick: Tale is,

joe: The structure of the

Geo: right … structured, yeah.

Exactly. But also The Power, John Leguizamo and Toni Collette, it’s excellent. Season one, yeah. Yes. I really did enjoy it. I really hope they bring it back.

joe: they said they weren’t gonna bring it back. They got canceled. Oh. No,

Geo: the- It was too powerful

joe: read, just read the book.

Geo: the book. It really was kinda touching really close to some-

joe: Yeah, I know. You kind of, yeah. I- we had to go through that.

There, it’s a little… Yeah, there’s some-

Geo: It’s good. Yeah. I would watch just that l- s-

joe: and- I think all the trauma presented in the beginning of that book is resolved, and so I think that’s… I’ll say that I think there is some traumatic things, ’cause it’s talking about how women’s power structure in the world currently and then you’re moving from that and how and how they actually gain the ability.

But did you read the, the-

Nick: No. No, I have not.

joe: The Power? Yeah, it’s good. The

Mary: Yeah. I haven’t read it,

joe: really good. No, it’s a [00:58:00] really good read. It– B, did you read it or have you

BL: I’ve not, but I’m completely adding it to my list

joe: Yeah. Very good. A very good read. I recommend it. But it had that magic development,

right? Yeah. Because I, I– or they– it was kind of, they said it was like a electric eel power. I don’t know. The… And he had a special gland that was activated. And

Geo: And it- I don’t even think- … had to do with, like, age.

joe: right, yeah, age.

Geo: age, like some system- Like maturity and age and, yeah

joe: women couldn’t actually do it, so it became then also this struggle.

Geo: Anyway, it’s interesting

love, you know? Yeah. Very

Mary: who can generate the most electricity.

joe: Generate the most electricity. Right, right. Or if you had– I think you were post-menopause. It was, like, kind of a, there was some line where you didn’t get your gland in time, so you were out.

Whatever the trigger, the signal trigger was genetically. But yeah, so it was kind of, it was very interesting.

Nick: Yeah, I’ll have to read that one. Yeah.

Geo: Yeah.

joe: yeah. No, definitely. Yeah, and then the other thing was ethics. I think that, that came up, and we’ve touched on that. That once you have magic, what does…

You know, you were saying that, and in your s- your world, [00:59:00] you’re like the sentient, intelligent species have some ethics, that they’re not just gonna go and, “You know what? Eh, we’re gonna…” there’s probably war and things like that, but they’re not discriminantly, they’re using magic in some ethical way.

But I think sometimes, like you said, I think you get into systems or books and stories and it’s just like,

Geo: don’t- I think that’s where the tension comes from.

That’s, a lot of times. You know what I mean?

Nick: Is there any kind of magic that can be considered a war crime in your books?

Mary: Yeah.

BL: Well, actually so i- in, in, we, I don’t talk about it in the books themselves, but in, you know, I allude to it in the past between the elves and the Nokin, is that they had this, this great big war and you know, they were talking about wiping out whole populations and, like, so mass genocide that you could do, like, boiling the seas or things like that.

Like, there were definitely war crimes that you could do that you would wipe out, civilian [01:00:00] locales, like, and infrastructure and things like that. So absolutely, like anytime you talk about conflict, there are rules, like we were talking about magic and everything else, there are rules that you’re supposed to follow, and I do think that comes down to morality.

I think that comes down to, like, how far are you willing to go to get what it is that you want?

joe: I mean, I guess i- it is that balance with severe consequence, right? Because to do this thing, , I guess if

you detonate-

Geo: to the karma Right. I

joe: right, I

Geo: karma- We’re hoping … but

joe: but also if you detonate a nuclear weapon at some point, we lived in a, a semi-closed environment, so you know, nuclear fallout’s gonna make it around the globe, and you’ll be impacted.

So I think there is this… It’s not a, it’s not a clean weapon, right? So I think in magic systems, the way it sounds like, like, and especially your world is set up, that there is some, there’s some costs, environmental costs, kinda mental costs. So is that, if you actually do nuke the [01:01:00] sea to get rid of the, the aquatic species you were talking about or to decimate them, that would cost you, and maybe even your population or territory, , is that fair, or is that, you know-

BL: Yeah, absolutely because if you, just like the nuke, like if you were to, boil the sea, well, you lost a major food source, a major source of economy. You know, trade is gonna be a problem. You’ve killed all, all the plant life and things. You made a dead spot in your your environment, and also there’d be backlash from the other species.

Like, if you’re messing up the entire planet, it becomes a world war kind of situation where you’ve gone too far that, you know, you can’t be doing this, this kind of stuff

joe: Yeah. And would you need to use magic to sustain yourself? Like, so now if you kill the oceans, which oc- you know, all the algae, plankton,, produce oxygen that we breathe. If it’s a Earth-like planet then now you’ve now… Are you now re- devoting magical resources to just live?

While this ocean recovers or whatever other resource. No, that’s really… [01:02:00] That’s, mm-hmm.

BL: Yeah, and I mean, who’s got the, who’s got the energy to s- to support a a system like that? Because there’s still a cost for that for that magical recovery

joe: right. Poor humans sound like they’re screwed in that though,

so. Oh

Nick: 100%.

Mary: 100%.

Geo: 100%.

Mary: So B, if you had a, a magical pow- what would your magical power be?

BL: shape-shifting.

Mary: Nice. What would you shape shift into?

BL: well, it depends on the situation. I feel like this solves like so many of the other powers. Like some people say flight, I could turn into a hawk. Like some people say, “I wanna breathe underwater,” I could turn into a fish. Wanna run fast, wanna jump high, there is an animal for almost everything that you wanna do, opposed to with the exception of like mind reading and things like that, which I definitely wouldn’t want.

But I just think that, you know, the biodiversity on this planet, like there’s so many amazing superpowers that each, each animal, each, each creature has. Why not take them all?

joe: Now if you get, you get- Right … [01:03:00] shapeshift, let’s put the science hat on a little bit.

Mary: Okay.

joe: what’s its cost? Like, are you stuck in that? And so there’s gonna be conservation of mass, so you’re not going, you’re gonna turn into a similar size fish, let’s say

BL: an incredibly dense fish, so floating is a problem here

joe: right. So you have a Wall-E fishy.

So, so what’s your cost? What’s the penalty for… I mean, I think that makes a b- I think Georgia, you touched on it, and B, you’ve kinda allud- you know, touched on it also. There’s cost to this, and that, that’s what creates the tension and the power in the story.

So what would your cost be, you know, to shapeshift there and to change into these different animals?

BL: Well, I think it would be painful.

Like, if you’re moving the ligaments, the bones shape-shifters, werewolves in particular are big in my books, as you can probably tell from the cover. But yeah, like, if you’re moving ligaments, bones, and y- you know, as being a biologist that canine feline, a lot of the mammals have very similar bone structure.

The way that we’re made up, similar organs, like, so transforming into [01:04:00] a horse, a cat, dog would be pretty simple. It’s when you get into, like, other where you turn into a reptile and things like that and you have to grow more ribs to expand the entire body, or if you have to

joe: There, there are different, I’m gonna say just there are different… We did an episode on werewolves, and so some of the physio- and it changes. It is, it’s not trivial, so that is kind of our bone structure is different and, you know, we kind of go in… Okay, go ahead. Sorry. It’s pain.

Geo: It’s pain- It’s painful. Yeah, painful but one of my biggest pet peeves about werewolves, if I’m allowed to say this, is that, like, everybody goes and they create, like, the whole body face, but they alway- they never put a tail. And I’m like, really? Changing the shape of the skull is ha- is easier to believe than adding a few more vertebra even just elongating the vertebra?

Mary: Yeah,

joe: yeah, or changing that shape. No, there’s… Yeah, in the episode we talked about it and how, I… We kinda just said you would have to [01:05:00] go pretty much down to almost a, a goo form and then reform yourself out of that, kinda like a, a butterfly, a caterpillar to butterfly- transformation. So, and it would be very… It would be cleaner.

Geo: But how many Big Macs?

joe: It was quite a bit,

you know. I

think we were in a few hundred thousand calories to, to Yeah. whatever. Yeah we did the math in that episode.

For sure. It was a fun one, yeah. We were eating people. It was

Geo: What about you, Mary? What’s your, what’s yours?

Mary: What would my magic power be? Oh, gosh. I think it would be really cool to understand languages.

You know, to be able … And I once had a, I once had an idea that I never did anything with, but the i- you know, like, you make a wish, like, to understand all the languages, and then the, whatever the genie you know, careful what you wish for, you end up understanding every language in the universe.

So, and that would be kinda fun. So you’re, all of a sudden your brain is just crowded with, you know

joe: A noise?

Mary: Right, right, exactly. You know,

Nick: you [01:06:00] mad.

Mary: is this g- where is this thing coming from? Or, you know, like, just the idea like, oh, we’re really not alone, that kinda thing.

joe: Yeah. And that was Douglas Adams in the the Babel fish, right? Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Mary: when you had the babble fish that

joe: fish, yep, and then you could understand every language.

You wouldn’t have a constant stream like a radio station- Right … but you could, if someone talked to you in a, from a different language, you would be able to understand it. So yeah,

Mary: Yeah. And it’s ended up starting a bunch of wars because of it, you know, so

joe: Yeah.

Mary: yeah. Mm-hmm. How about you, Georgia?

Geo: Oh, gosh.

joe: You had all this time to

Geo: I know. I can’t- We went

joe: through werewolves, Babel fish.

Geo: I can’t think. I wanna ask Nick.

Nick: That’s right … I would want the ability to control the air element. I think that would be a really good one. Air

joe: element. Yeah. Like, what do you

Geo: what do you mean by that?

Nick: like- Well,

joe: Well,

Nick: have you watched Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Mary: No.

Geo: No.

Nick: a great show and you should definitely watch

Mary: Oh, okay.

Geo: okay. So then we [01:07:00] would understand- Yeah … your magical power? Yeah, ’cause I

Nick: ‘Cause I mean- Bending it … would you consider, … Yeah, right? Okay,

BL: Yeah I personally really like air ’cause there are so many applications. Like, you could, you can… I mean, if you look at tornadoes, if you look at you know, just all the things that it can do there are stories about tornadoes and vortexing, like, lifting children out of fields and then plopping them fine in, like, the hay bales next door, right?

So it can be fierce, it can be gentle, it can rip the roofs off houses. You can move things, you can cut things,

Nick: can fly

Geo: Was that like Storm then,

Nick: then, kind of? Storm is more weather element

Geo: Okay. Yeah.

Nick: But yeah the, the air elemental would be very spot on.

Geo: Mm-hmm. What’s

joe: what’s the cost of this air power? Like you what’s the- … consequence? Do we have a consequence?

Nick: consequence? Consequence is you having to actually do movement to get this to go

joe: So you gotta be in shape.

Nick: No, I mean, you just have to do these [01:08:00] techniques

joe: I say there’s a pattern or some skill- Yeah … involved. Like you have to do

Nick: you can’t just go,

Geo: You become a- Wind … a master

joe: can’t just-

Geo: go. You can’t just- No

Nick: you would have to

Geo: learn

Nick: skill of it. What about you, Joe?

joe: You know-

Nick: Georgia isn’t ready.

joe: Yeah.

Geo: Hey, thanks.

Mary: think- thinking, no, j-

Nick: where do you think you go?

Mary: think- po- pondering,

Geo: think, you know, just-

joe: I really, I do, I am fascinated by telepathy and telekinesis and those powers. I just think that it is… And we did do an episode on that, so I think first season. I don’t know. It’s been a little bit.

Nick: been a while. Been a while

we

joe: got into biohacking.

It was kind of a weird episode with Michael, I think he was on. Yeah I think that’d be really neat. And,

Nick: would be your cost?

joe: Yeah I think it’s similar to what Mary was saying. I think any of these where you’re mentally just taking in information, our brains right now we filter a lot of stuff out that comes in.

We generalize and [01:09:00] we just make guesses and predictions to help us with that ’cause all the information we’re taking in of our world. So now if you’re taking in all your information and the informations of everybody else, and then using whatever energy to manipulate this everything else yeah, that’s– you’re probably just gonna be drained, if you actually use it.

So y- hopefully you can turn it on and off. Like, you can choose when you wanna do it, and not just have it an on switch where… ‘Cause then I think if that’s the case, you’ll probably have to medicate.

Nick: You’re gonna go insane

Geo: and-

joe: kind of dampen

your… You know, it’s kind of we talked about, like, with speedsters and things like that, that their world, it’ll be incredibly boring because they’re moving so fast that everyone else is just going so painfully slow just to say anything or do anything that they have to be able to modulate that and go, “You know what?

I’m gonna go normal speed slow now.” And they can control that, but that probably has energetic costs

to- actually

dampen that and to do that. So yeah, so probably have to eat a lot and, you know, work out and stay, [01:10:00] staying good mentally sharp and focused, right? Because if you lose focus, you could cause harm there also unintended harm.

So yeah, no, but I don’t know. I think it’s worth the risk. That was me hitting… Sorry. That’s how you do it. Using my mental

Geo: about,

Nick: I

Geo: I don’t know, is that magic being able to control time?

joe: I don’t know if that counts as being

Mary: Oh,

Geo: I’d like that one.

joe: idea. Yeah. That’s one of– well-

Mary: like the time turner. That’s

joe: yeah. That’s one of my favorite graphic novels is Sex Criminals. and the whole magic system there is, is about stopping time, but they stop time when they have an orgasm And so the whole system is built that way.

And then there’s cops and, groups of people that monitor that and go after people who are. And the people that accidentally figure out they can do this, they start robbing stores and stuff, hence sex criminals. So yeah, so, yeah. It’s pretty it was a pretty…

But then the thing about the comic, if you read it, it gets pretty [01:11:00] meta. And it goes into, a lot about depression and with this power and this sense of what you’re doing. So it really, and I think in the later episodes broke the fourth wall and had this whole thing, because I think the writer and they were going through some stuff, and they were using this as a way.

But it really, it went from this kind of cheeky fun to this, , really serious, like, whoa that’s kinda heavy, man. , is this kind of, but yeah, I, I-

Mary: I hadn’t thought about that,

joe: yeah. Right. So, but yeah, time. Time is, that’d be crazy. Yeah.

Nick: So B, do you have anything you’d like to plug?

BL: Yeah. You know, I’d just like to, you know, thank all of you for my time today, and encourage all of your listeners to pick up my book, Heroes of Another Age, and it’s available everywhere fine books are sold. I also have an audiobook, so you can get it there as well.

Nick: Very

BL: then, you know, visit my website, blmostyn, M-O-S-T-Y-N, .com and join my newsletter.

Sign up for,, when the next books are coming out. I have a [01:12:00] couple of short stories going into anthologies here in a little bit and more world-building and more fun

joe: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, we’ll put all that in the show notes, so we’ll get all those links. You can find it there. Just click on them, go visit Bee and her world and what she’s doing. Any cons coming up this summer? Do you have anything

BL: Yeah.

Um, I got quite a few cons and festivals in you know, I’ll be at Balticon. I’m going to Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity, which is a Columbia convention for a bunch of different a bunch of different genres. I’ll be at the Maryland Renaissance Festival one of these days, which is kind of fun. All

I’ll be around lots of different

places, but those are the highlights right

now.

Nick: MarsCon

joe: in 2027,

Geo: 2027. Or Dragon Con. Did you mean at MarsCon? No. Oh, okay

BL: where I met the lovely Joe

joe: So yeah, so no, that’s a fun… That’s a really fun con. Smaller, but, a lot of good stuff. So yeah, awesome. Well, yeah we’ll… If you, as you [01:13:00] get things, we’ll put it in the show notes.

We always support the friends of the podcast, so yeah. It was great having

Nick: so much for being with us today.

BL: Yeah. Thank you all for giving me the time

joe: Yeah, for sure. Well, you got me, Joe.

Nick: Yeah, I got Nick. You got Nick.

Geo: Georgia. You

joe: got Georgia.

Mary: got Mary.

joe: We’ve got Mary.

Nick: And we went down some magic holes

joe: magic holes. Some magic holes. Y’all stay safe with those magical spells. Stay curious. Bye-bye. We love y’all.