j: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the rabbit hole of research. We’re down. No, we’re not

nick: are we? I don’t think we are. At the

j: We are not in the basement studio. This is the month of October, month of horror

geo: Like our first season

j: we took the show on the road and we are here being hosted by the Horror House.

nick: Hello all.

Moses: Hey, what’s up you guys? Thanks for coming.

Vinny: location, so we have a little more

j: bigger location.

geo: Yeah. It’s really stretch

nick: my legs out a little

j: bit. A lot has happened.

It is night.

nick: time

j: Yeah. Yeah. We were tucked in. It was cozy. It was a cozy, comfortable horror space. Yeah.

geo: Yeah. Nice. Where, what’s the address now?

Vinny: 28 42 North Milwaukee Avenue. So

nick: are the voices we’re hearing?

j: I know

Moses: Moses Gibson and my brother Vincenzo Malave,

Vinny: Vinny.

For people who don’t want to save Vincenzo.

j: Yeah. And you got me, Joe,

nick: You got Nick.

j: Nick. We’ve got Nick Georgia. We’ve got Georgia, and we’re here at the Horror [00:01:00] House, converting it to the basement studio once again.

geo: Recording. Live right now, but not live that you won’t get to sit here at

nick: No. They’re hearing this as we

Vinny: Yeah, so don’t try knocking on our door and expecting

geo: get

j: on

Vinny: here with the headphones on recording a podcast. ’cause sorry to break

j: the mic. Hey, is this podcast happening? The other day we’re gonna talk about graveyards, ghost and graveyards and the horror in involved in that. Which there’s a bit. So we’ll see where we get to. Like always I do have a opening, but if Vinny, Moses.

If you guys want to go and just introduce yourself, introduce the shop and then we’ll do some promos at the end for you guys.

geo: Absolutely.

Moses: Yeah. Thank you guys for coming first of all. This is the Horror House. So my brother said 28 42 North Milwaukee Avenue or right across the street from this awesome horror themed coffee shop called The Brood. So if you’re ever in the area in Chicago, you gotta come check us out.

We sell all manner of different horror merch and [00:02:00] memorabilia from apparel posters, figures, collectibles, art pieces, you name it. VIN

Vinny: as far as a little background mean, Moses started doing this back in like 2016 when we started a brand called the Cryptic Closet.

Fast forward six years and we’re opening up a horror shop where we carry the cryptic closet stuff and a bunch of our friends.

Yeah, it’s been cool. We’ve been a store firm for about three years and do a lot of special events and I don’t know, I think just try to keep ourselves very involved in the horror community in Chicago.

j: Yeah. Yeah. If you haven’t come and visited, you should make a trip to the Horror House and check everyone out. Moses Vinny, they’re super nice. They’re super chill dudes, so come on in. Even though tar themed, there’s probably something for everyone and a great coffee shop, you know, the brood we got some coffees there this morning.

So yeah, really

Vinny: There’s a guy who comes in every week who just comes in to walk over to the Mortal Kombat machine in play.

j: Oh, yeah. There you go.

Vinny: He’s been, he’s come for the [00:03:00] past, like almost year and yesterday when he came in, he played and then he walked out and he looked at me and he said, nice to meet you.

j: I

Vinny: met him like 20 times.

nick: You’re

Vinny: change my voice when I said it. But yeah, so come in. We’ll, literally, if you just wanna come and play Terminator or Mortal Kombat.

All is welcome.

j: There we go. Hell cool.

So yeah, so let’s jump into this. Let me

nick: a list for this, Joe?

j: I have a list at some point, but I’m gonna, I’m just gonna give a little let’s set the groundwork or what’s beneath the ground.

So I, I’ve got graveyards. Worms

nick: worms,

j: are human landscapes of memory and mortality. They are places where the living organized to dead shaping stone and soil into records of history. At their simplest graveyards are spaces of burial and ritual defined by rows of markers of habitats, and the quiet work of decomposition beneath the ground.

As Nick said, worms, they serve practical, cultural, and ecological functions from the management of remains to the preservation of collective memory, and even as accidental [00:04:00] sanctuaries for wildlife. Ghosts by contrast, are intangible presences, aberrations said, to persist beyond death. Wandering in place where memory, grief, and fear converge.

They appear in every culture and every era, sometimes as harbinger of danger, sometimes as ancestors, keeping watch sometimes as restless. Echoes of lives unfinished. it seems like a door

Vinny: cat.

j: Oh, okay. Yeah. I’m like, oh man, here we go.

Vinny: or a graveyard.

geo: You’re introducing the, our guest.

nick: I was like, I saw a door open.

geo: our ghost guest. Perfect

j: segue explanations,

Moses: goes like, oh, hell nah.

nick: like,

j: It’s done. We’re

nick: I was down for it. All right, we’re finished. I was like, let’s go get that. Ouija board boys.

j: Yeah. . great , segue here. Explanations range from neuroscience and physics to folklore and theology.

Yet the ghost endures as a cultural constant haunting of spaces where the living and dead overlap. And this episode , we’ll enter the graveyard gates [00:05:00] to explore the science and symbolism of ghosts. So

nick: just to start off, ghosts aren’t always in graveyards. Yes, they can

j: That’s true. Yes.

nick: In houses, in bars,Reed’s,local

Vinny: in,

Moses: reads. Yeah. I heard

j: Yes. There is a ghost

Moses: I heard that. I heard that. It’s

nick: She says, I still haven’t seen anything.

We had the EMF last

geo: And they haunted our podcast

j: if you listen last year

Moses: forgot about

nick: It wasn’t technical error. It was a ghost

j: It was the ghosts. That’s

Vinny: troll.

Moses: Ghost show. Straight unplugged. Just,

nick: Yeah. It was like, you know what,

j: I don’t we wanna hear this episode. We’re gonna cut it.

Vinny: Yeah. It’s like we’re a ghost, but we’re like a nerdy techo. So I’m gonna fuck up your entire podcast.

I’m not gonna boo you.

j: I think the that Melissa say the ghost preferred gin and we were drinking Molart. I know. There, there was probably some conflict of spirits.

That’s right. And it makes sense

And it

geo: makes sense because that spot used to be a mortuary.

j: Right. That’s right. Yep. Yep. And we’ll,

Vinny: my question is, how did she find out that the ghost likes gin?[00:06:00]

j: yeah, there

Vinny: like she probably left out a little shot glass and then like, cut the straw in

j: I think there was some mention that it ask in some way. I don’t know.

Let’s, she

Vinny: We’ll have to, we’ll have to revisit that.

j: again. Yeah.

Moses: No, I don’t like Jim.

I am Agin.

nick: and a gin.

Vinny: Style.

j: Yeah.

nick: Ooh. That makes it even worse.

j: but yeah, there’ve been tons of movies. Oh.

geo: Oh no, I was gonna say, I think that’s what Joe was saying, ghosts and graveyards. Like not necessarily only ghosts and graveyards. No

nick: I just had to make sure, you know,

j: and usually a lot of thinking

nick: that only if you’re in a graveyard, you’re

j: No.

Vinny: Listen, the movie Ghosts with Patrick Swayze,

nick: Swayze

Vinny: one of my favorite movies.

And then the not to, there was not even one graveyard

j: There was not a graveyard. And I was gonna say, most ghost movies or cultural references don’t necessarily happen in a graveyard. They usually happen in the house or there’s some,

nick: if there is, the graveyard has been paved over.

j: now.

geo: Exactly.

j: Poltergeist.

Poltergeist. Go

Poltergeist going [00:07:00] Poltergeist. There it is. Little

nick: ghost there.

Moses: Little disrespect to the,

j: Yeah.

nick: I mean it’s a typical story. Disrespect.

j: You gotta have respect there, ancient burial grounds and you go forward. Yeah. So

geo: all right guys.

Moses: what

j: else we

geo: Why are you looking at me?

Vinny: The new

j: I dunno. I was looking at everybody. I’m gonna go

nick: I thought Georgia had something to say

Moses: We already covered Ghost, the movie

j: We got movie

Vinny: Okay.

I was just gonna say, I was like, I can keep talking about ghosts.

Like I, I’ll put a penny on the door right now. I love that movie.

nick: Yeah.

j: It’s been a while since I’ve watched ghosts.

But it had all the elements there where the, you know, usually a lot of the ghost themes some of them, they come back because they were wronged and then they’re trying to correct that wrong. And so part of the movie is them figuring out they were ghosts and then trying to do something with their ghost hood.

It’s Ghost Hood and then Tale From

Moses: the hood.

j: That’s right. Tale. I don’t know what the ghost person. Yeah. Ghost hood. It’s like [00:08:00] adulthood. You know? Now

Vinny: Oh, I thought it was like a neighborhood of

Moses: hood.

j: That’s right.

nick: actually, there’s a ghost hood

j: Is there a movie called Ghost Hood? That’d be cool.

Moses: sounds like we need

j: make it happen.

Yeah, we should make it a ghost hood.

Moses: horror comedy. Let’s go.

j: why’s the rent so cheap here? This is the ghost hood.

nick: Oh, we,

Vinny: the landlord’s, like, I want to go pick up the rent, but my tenant ghosted me.

j: Yeah. We have so many one-liners like that. And then they come back and then and then you are going through their wrong. Then once they correct the wrong, then they are released from the physical plane.

nick: Or if they’re really angry.

j: Usually some, somebody wronged them, right? They usually gotta correct the wrong,

nick: don’t know. I feel like there’s still always just some angry ghosts that are just angry for no reason. That’s if

j: you need a part two.

Vinny: That

Moses: See, they’re haters. They’re in it for the love of the game.

j: That’s right. Yeah. No,

Vinny: Those are the ones, those are the ones that tend to stay on earth. And then like they never make it up to heaven. So they’re bitter or they’re just like stuck in

nick: I thought they’d just become politicians

Vinny: No, they’re waiting for somebody to to record a episode of a podcast with a Ouija board so they can get the

j: That’s [00:09:00] right. It ain’t come out.

nick: I am trying.

geo: unfortunately Nick did not get to do the  Ouija board yet.

j: we’re not doing a

nick: Why aren’t we doing the Ouija board?

j: I don’t know.

Vinny: Did you see Somebody made a Luigi board and it’s a  Ouija board.

It’s like Super Mario theme and it was pretty badass.

j: I think they have

geo: pretty fun.

Vinny: of that.

j: a OUI board for every, like, you know, it’s a Barbie Ouija board. There’s like every themed

Moses: they sell ’em at Toys are

j: board, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Vinny: I bought a Stranger Things once and

j: Toys are Rus isn’t toys are ru close?

Moses: They reopened.

geo: Oh

j: they, okay.

Moses: yeah,

j: it

Vinny: It’s

he

the, it’s

geo: Did they just in way?

Vinny: yes.

geo: Just recently, right?

Moses: not

Vinny: yeah, it’s

j: okay. Yeah, basically

Vinny: they took over like an old KB toy spot in the mall, but there’s like no physical location.

I think the only place that I know that has like the old style like tile and all that is in Canada.

j: Okay. Yeah.

geo: Okay. Oh,

j: Yeah. It’s a ghost. Have

geo: the Ghost of Toys Us

Location.

Vinny: They’re supposed to bring back more, but I don’t know if like, I mean it would be really cool if they just targeted the old toys [00:10:00] Russes and just packed back up and opened in those spots.

Because like the places that took over those spots when I walk in, it just feels like toys are us when you first walk in. So I’m like that. That’s the experience for me when they said, oh yeah, toys Are us is open. I went to the mall and I walked into like a shitty little KB toys. I was like,

j: yeah, I felt

Vinny: like I

not the same.

Yeah.

Moses: Funko pops,

geo: But, and then the  Ouija boards are for ages eight and above, so

Vinny: I wanna see an 8-year-old. Just get cursed.

j: one of friends. There’s there doing  Ouija board stuff. I don’t it was a

geo: people are very much, have a really strong opinion about  Ouija boards.

I don’t

nick: understand

it. Like everyone is very much like, hell no. It’s like it’s a toy.

Vinny: I think also we’re in 2025, there’s so many messed up things happening that they’re like, no, I’m not taking another one.

nick: like,

geo: oh, remember like standing the broom up?

Vinny: Oh yeah.

j: Yes. Making

geo: the broom stand.

j: I think you, I think with the Ouija board and a [00:11:00] lot of this stuff, I think people are truly have some respect and fear of supernatural things.

If even if you don’t fully

nick: no respect or fear of

j: that’s why you’re, that’s why you’re gonna be haunted. And I don’t want no parts of it. So that’s

nick: Joe, as a scientist, do you actually believe this?

j: I should poll everyone. You do you believe ghosts

nick: No.

j: You’re, no. Okay. Moses, what do

Moses: Ghosts? I believe in a spiritual realm.

j: Okay. So you believe in ghosts? I don’t know.

Moses: I don’t know if ghost is the

nick: what would you call them?

Moses: Interdimensional entities.

Vinny: That’s too many.

That’s, I’d rather just

j: Aliens, yeah,

Moses: Aliens, ghosts, demons

j: you’re, it sounds like you’re splitting hairs a little bit.

Moses: We’ll just say, we’ll say the demons.

j: if you have like the spirit world, so if one of the spirits come back to the physical world, they would be a ghost.

So you believe there is some congregation of,

geo: there some connection between the spirit world and the

Moses: in the physical plane?

Yeah. Yeah.

geo: I think your answer is yes.

Moses: Yeah,

j: Yeah. Yeah. [00:12:00] I’m gonna go with Yes. He did a bunch of hand waving on there, but

Vinny: I have asthma. I just gotta say ghosts. I can’t say I gotta save my breath. I do believe in ghosts. Don’t, I can’t say how or how it’s, how it works, but there’s been enough between the stories that I’ve heard and stories from my family, from like the old home that my grandparents used to live at. I definitely there’s ghoster just like, there’s some kind of afterlife, you know?

j: Because I’ve

Vinny: seen enough weird shit. And I think all of us, especially with the internet, you know, we’ve seen enough videos that are unexplainable, you know, so I don’t exactly know how or like how to explain it, but I’m one of those people that probably wouldn’t mess with the Ouija board only ’cause I’ve heard stories

From friends or like, you know, when I was younger, me and my cousins played with the Ouija board.

They never seem to end too well. So I’m just like, with my luck it’ll really work really well. So I’m just like,

j: yeah, you

Vinny: I’ll just watch. Yeah.

j: Yeah. Georgia.

geo: Yeah. I think I’m gonna give a wishy-washy [00:13:00] answer. No,

nick: cannot give a wishy-washy answer. You attacked MO

j: I know, right? It was like,

geo: I think there something to that, but I don’t know. I guess can I could still be undecided? No. Alright,

j: right, you can on the side. We’ll revisit at the end there.

Vinny: Ghosted that answer.

j: Yeah. That’s, there

nick: that’s the kind of ghost I believe in ghosting.

geo: I think that definitely is some other presence and like things that are unexplainable.

And I think people have like energies that probably live on after

Vinny: They’re

geo: they are no longer alive. So I guess that could be a go, that could be set that could be ghosts.

j: right? Yeah. I’m not a big believer in the ghosts.

geo: How is that not a big surprise for me?

j: I think our, you know, just a.

Moses: to

j: loop

back maybe a little, but our brains are really good at trying to make patterns out of things that don’t necessarily have a pattern or isn’t real. And so we [00:14:00] try to explain our world and what we perceive through that.

And so I think if something happens, or a noise, like we had just earlier, we were laughing about it while I was opening the show. There was a door creaking open and we were all primed to think about ghosts. And our heads probably all of us, if you’d asked me if I believe in ghosts at that moment, I’d like, yeah, it’s coming.

It’s gonna come through that door right now. And then Vinny goes, no, is this my cat? I’m messing with the door, messing with this. And so I think that’s some of this here and there are a lot of physiological cues that we get from our world that we aren’t maybe necessarily can interpret.

And then we have to funnel that through our cultural experiences and. I think death in, in the afterlife is a big part of that. And so that’s where I stand on

So do you

geo: think that we want to believe in ghosts because we wanna stay connected to those that have died? So it’s interesting ’cause we talk about [00:15:00] fear and ghost and horror obviously, but also it can be of

nick: we’re more prone to be fearful of the ghosts, where in like Asian countries, they’re more open to being Yes.

They’re more friendly.

geo: Right. And I think if anything it gives a comfort, not just a fear, you know, there’s a comfort that

j: I think we’re always looking for that, but then you have, ’cause you don’t necessarily have to see a physical manifestation. To feel though, like I, I think that was Moses. You know, that split in the hairs is like, you, you believe that there is some spirituality or some place afterwards that, spirits go, but not necessarily physically manifesting and moving stuff on your shelf and messing with you.

In some way. Be it fun. I heard Casper

Vinny: I will say I, I’m, you’re saying all this, and in my head I’m like I should have just not told him I had a cat.

j: That’s right. You

Vinny: then you would’ve been even more freaked out. You’ve been like, wait, there you guys, you heard the creek and then a black cat came out, a random black cat.

Like, I [00:16:00] don’t know, dude.

nick: I don’t see a cat just

Moses: I’ve never seen this in my

j: Yeah. You just go What cat? Whatcha talking about

nick: cat are you

Vinny: I have a whole bunch of cat food back there, but it’s purely a coincidence.

nick: It’s a ghost cat

j: cats and ghosts. That’s really interesting is they have gone together historically in there way back to like, the Egyptians believed that cats could see into the afterlife and could ward off evil spirits.

So you have this kind of relationship and then cats through history and across culture, you know, Japanese folklore, they were shape shifting kind of cats tied to death. Medieval Europe, you know, linked with cats, witches and hauntings, which the witches and cats

Moses: the witches.

j: that was

nick: not the witches,

j: the black plague.

There was women who had cats and they didn’t get the plague because the plague was transmitted through fleas on rats. And so if you had cats the rats with the fleas didn’t come into your home and you were less likely to contract the plague. And but they saw these women with the [00:17:00] cats , who were, you know, not.

And so society’s eye, , a proper. lady.

And then they were vilified and deified as witches

Moses: They’re

j: of that. So they were haters, but

nick: Why are you still alive? And I’m dying.

j: It was like, how come these women, with all these cats and then cats have this kind of historical kind of connection to, spirituality and quote unquote power.

And then you see that and you just assign it. Once again, humans, oh, they must be using cats to do something weird and we don’t like ’em because they’re not dying. Let’s go get ’em. So it’s a, it know let history cats, and magic spirituality have really intertwined through history in interesting ways.

So

Vinny: yeah.

Moses: Cultism and all that.

j: And I was gonna say, one interesting things I had saw was that there are frequencies. I’m trying to notice infrasound at sub 20 Hertz vibrations and they can trigger anxiety, nauseous, and even aberrations in the

nick: oh, I’ve [00:18:00] actually heard about this.

’cause wasn’t there a government testing a weapon within the past decade that was supposed

j: testing weapons somewhere.

Moses: Yeah. On giant crowds of people too. It’s not just like one person. They’re like, yeah, you see those, like 50 people over

j: Yeah.

Moses: Take this and just shoot it in the general area over there and

nick: It’s supposed to be like one of those that just messes with your head

j: it does. Yeah. Sound. Yeah. And so like earthquakes cause these volcanic eruptions, avalanche, large waterfall. So this is like a natural.

Frequency that you would physiologically, respond to. And it was interesting is one of the things with cats, and people go, oh, cats they’re staring off into the distance. And they must be looking at some sort of spirit or ghost or entity, but some of it could just be a they pick up the smallest of movement in their environment and then b, it could just be some motor running your refrigerator motor at some frequency and it kicks on and it’s like, oh, what is

So you’re saying, you are saying

geo: that you’re hearing this instead of a ghost?

j: We assign our cat’s behavior. Or behavior in general to fit a narrative. And if the narrative that cats [00:19:00] have a special ability to see beyond,

geo: Oh, so you’re trying to explain the,

j: but maybe it’s just there.

This, there’s some little thing, you know, flutter in the corner that they’re looking at past you, everyone has a cat know what I’m talking about. The

Moses: Yeah, no they get geeked up for a second. They

j: That’s right. Yeah. And they just stare off past you and it’s like, what are you looking at?

And you look behind you and there’s nothing there but empty space. But some of it could just be they’re hearing some frequency somewhere that’s happening or some

Moses: it’s not per it’s perceivable like range of,

Vinny: I feel like if I’m listening to this podcast, my initial thought is these guys better do a follow up podcast. At a haunted location,

nick: I would totally do it. And I want to, we were

geo: We were,

Vinny: a legit,

Moses: be dumb for

geo: Yeah.

Vinny: has activity.

’cause that’s a

j: you

nick: And then we’ll bring out a Ouija board.

j: You stop with the,

Moses: see. That’s a lot of doubling down statistically of like,

Vinny: like, yeah, we, he’s like, yeah we didn’t believe in ghosts or Bos. Now we’re witches.

nick: know what, I’m totally d It’s

Moses: like, now I’m a [00:20:00] full blown occultist

nick: I would give into it. I would give into it all. If we can get some hard proof.

geo: So we could just stop here and then meet up again at the cemetery

j: we

nick: let’s pack up guys.

You guys aren’t opening the

Moses: where’s the nearest cemetery?

geo: Yeah.

j: Yeah. There we go. We go to cemetery. Yeah. And I’m getting all these things about why not, but maybe why, and I, my head goes to, oh, go ahead.

Moses: I was just gonna say that, our perception of just in general, not, like human perception, obviously we can read into like the electromagnetic spectrum and kinda, you know, pick things up with machines to help us out.

But I feel like even with that, there’s so much in existence that we cannot physically interact with most of existence, really. So it’s one of those where it’s hard it’s hard to rule anything out,

j: Yeah. No truth.

Moses: truth is definitely stranger than

j: No I think that’s right. And I was gonna, you know, for all the reasons you have ghosts, that. May not manifest with classically [00:21:00] explained science.

You know, they have masks, they can move objects, they emit light and sound. How are you doing all that? How many big Macs do they need to do that? But that’s a

nick: They need at

geo: Of course, they’re not eating Big Macs

j: How do,

nick: they’re eating souls.

j: But

Moses: I

nick: saw,

j: I was thinking about some of this and we’ve touched on this, but the, a couple things came to my mind. One was the multiverse that, that ghosts or the way we perceive ghosts, they’re just apparitions from another multi-dimension that we happen to be interacting with, right? So it crosses over for a second and we have this experience or keep having this experience.

’cause in this house or this place that was where their domain was at one point in time or in their universal line. That’s different than ours. Significantly different that we have that. So that was one idea had. The other one was that, and this, you know, we have some fans of the show.

Is the simulation hypothesis that ghosts are glitches in the matrix? They are unclean programs and I think [00:22:00] even the Matrix, they touched on that, the ghost programs and things, but we could have, that could be Is that evidence? So

geo: so this, do you believe in more than Ghost, I believe?

j: No. I,

Vinny: like,

Moses: How do you feel about, how do you feel about simulation theory

Vinny: is Lawrence Fishburne. They both really exist.

nick: Wait, they’re real.

Vinny: Yeah, I found that out last week.

nick: thought they were ai,

Vinny: was an interview and I was like, wait a minute. Can’t spell Matrix without ai. Also, side note, there’s a drinking game that we have, we currently have our door closed and we have a sign saying that we’re recording a podcast, and two people so far have pushed a door still.

So I will make note, and then anybody who’s listening, just take a shot. So then by the end of the podcast, you’ll just be too drunk to do anything.

j: They’ll see ghosts

Vinny: Yeah, probably. And

nick: they will become the ghost. Just start knocking things down. What was that?

j: Yeah. I’m not a believer in the simulation hypothesis, and we did an episode early in season two on this topic or into season one.

I can’t, yeah. But. And I’m

nick: this season.

j: a season? Yeah. Whew. [00:23:00] Season’s

it really? Yeah.

nick: Yeah. This we’re on season two guys. We’re,

j: we are, we’re in season two. But that was an idea , and the other thing would be the, this quantum and entanglement and and then you have waveform collapse, the observation effect where you have things exist in both states, so superposition, and then until you make the observation, you collapse down to that thing being gone.

So a ghost could be there. When you look at it, you’ve now made an observation and you’ve collapsed waveform form back. And then, you know, over time, you know, the, I have problems with that because it’s not.

predictable

or reproducible in some way. Like it’s changes for whoever’s watching.

Yeah. Yeah. And I’m not a quantum physicist, so maybe I’ll be like, no, you’re wrong. That’s, it can be proved. If we’re going to say it’s real then here’s some ideas to make it real.

geo: Has anyone done like a movie or a book about that type of concept? Like that’s what, ghosts

j: Our quantum

geo: yeah. I [00:24:00] don’t think so.

j: so. No. I feel

geo: I don’t know.

Vinny: Ghost

nick: I don’t know guys

Moses: Ghost Hood. The

Vinny: Ghost.

Idle hands? Seth Green and his best friend. No, I’m kidding. I’m

j: Oh, I was like, really? I was like, dude, dad on top of it. As

nick: as you said Seth Green, I was like, oh wait. He might actually be

j: you know, there was I have a little a list here, but Black Mirror, then they have the the one.

Moses: Had. Which episode? It

j: San L No, it’s the one where the woman, they kept going. They were living through the memory. Oh. And then they go and keep repeating and you could get digitally uploaded or it was like some sort of

Moses: Oh, he was trying to remember that girl’s face.

nick: Oh

Moses: Yeah.

j: I can’t, I’m trying to think of that one.

But yeah, that was one, I think that had something like that, but I don’t have the actual source of that. But no, most I mostly ghost movies. It’s supernatural, right? Supernatural. And usually it’s a revenge style. It know somebody’s wronged you, you’ve been wronged and then you are you’re coming back for vengeance , except Casper, he was one of the few,

nick: Actually, I, you know, let’s go with the conspiracy theory.

Is [00:25:00] Casper our killer?

Vinny: No. The real conspiracy, I’ve read it everywhere is Casper one ghost or was the other ghosts?

Part of his like,

j: oh, split personalities. Yeah. Have

Vinny: Have you heard about that?

j: No, I haven’t heard that.

Vinny: Yeah, me either. I just made it up right now.

nick: I did hear that. He might be Richie Rich.

Vinny: Wow.

j: I did see that.

That

Vinny: No, I did see

j: drawing. Yeah. The, yeah.

Vinny: think it was just a lazy

j: Yeah, we have a Casper, if people don’t know, it was a children’s story that was first created in 1930s, was unpublished and it became famous, the Casper, the Friendly Ghosts as a cartoon in 1945. And it was unique at the time because most ghosts were from the horror kind of lens of revenge and, you know, scaring the heck outta people.

But this was , a story I always like Casper, lonely,

not scary, and actually kind.

geo: the, and then they came out again in like the, was it like the seventies and eighties or

j: 95.

Vinny: then nineties. I was gonna say the movie. ’cause then because then it, it made no sense. ’cause then I saw final destination. I’m like, he’s a [00:26:00] ghost. Like how is he gonna die? He’s Casper and

j: And they made a backstory that he died of pneumonia, I think, or something like that. And he had like, it was like a kind of a dark layer,

Vinny: had the black

Moses: sick boy.

j: Yeah. Yeah.

Vinny: So it really, side note it’s slightly on topic though. Do you know when you go to like corn mason or like pumpkin patches? They have like those big cut out, those cut out wood things where just like a farmer and his wife and then the top parts cut in a curve and you just put your head on top and then you take a photo. I think there’ll be a really good gravestone idea. Like, I want

geo: Oh, so then like a photo op at the graves? Yeah.

Vinny: I don’t know, I’m just trying to think outside the grave, the

box.

geo: I like that.

Moses: Honestly, that’s a great idea. Yeah,

geo: I really actually like

Vinny: you know, that like, that meme of that guy who’s like sitting there like on crouch knees and he has, is a peace sign up probably that it and graveyard for him with the head cut on and you can, oh my

geo: oh my gosh I actually really like it.

Vinny: I die

geo: Yeah.

Vinny: or after

Moses: The living something fun to do, you know? Yeah. That’s for them [00:27:00] anyway, where if you know everybody

geo: right?

Moses: is dead

nick: I just wanna be tossed in the woods, you know, let the animals eat my dead body.

Let it do something good once,

Vinny: like did you see what Vinny did before? Did you see what he did for us before he died? He’s like a

j: A funny Jesus,

Vinny: Jesus’.

do anything except make a weird ass gravestone. And he left a dad joke on the other side of it. It’s like a double whammy. That’s how I’m gonna leave the earth. You’re

nick: you’re not gonna come back as a ghost?

Vinny: I might.

nick: You should find some

Vinny: I just said somebody has to bring out a

Moses: you should find it.

Vinny: Ouija board. That’s the only way it can come out is if it’s a Barbie licensed Ouija board.

geo: I got

j: I got you.

Vinny: Then I’m gonna come

j: It’s ready to go.

Vinny: to go and I’m gonna whisper the

j: think. Vinny, are you

geo: gonna start collecting Ouija boards.

Vinny: So you see, you’re like, I did the Barbie Ouija board and like, I feel like Vinny’s voice is whispering. That Matchbox 20 push song in my ears, I’m sleeping.

Moses: Crossover of ghosts with dreams and weird encounters [00:28:00] actually even post, right? Because you have the whole phenomenon of like, sleep paralysis and the hallucination. But what’s fascinating to me is that like across the world the hallucinations are, it’s usually like a set

nick: the shadow man. It’s

Moses: usually a shadow man. Or like somebody, like some somebody in your bed or like on top of you,

geo: Yeah.

Moses: which is weird. Like, why are they on top of you? Why are they on your chest?

j: That was a

nick: Isn’t

Moses: ’em, get em off.

nick: the feeling of not being able to get up

j: Yeah. So you’re

nick: your body, oh, you got the science stuff

j: I mean I was gonna, you go, you could do it.

Moses: He’s got the, he’s got the colloquial speak version.

nick: got you.

j: you’re in that a transition of conscious states and so your body as you go to sleep, your respiration, your heart rate, everything slows your muscles. You’re in this, you’re in this state of sleep and

and

become aware.

While you’re in this state,

nick: aren’t you also in between REM cycles too?

j: Yeah, you, I don’t the exact state of where you’re Yeah. You’re in a more deeper sleep state. [00:29:00] And as you become aware. You also are aware that your respiration rate has been suppressed, your heart rate, your muscles you’re pretty much para paralyzed, yet you’re aware of your surroundings and now your mind has to make sense of that, right?

So you can imagine that you’re gonna see all sorts of things ’cause you’re now in this very trapped, confined state. And you, I think that’s part of this. And then you have other myths on top of that, once again to the, like the cats and sucking your soul. And that’s been, I think you, I’m trying to think of a movie where the cat will sit on your chest and things sit on your chest to have access to your mouth, to pull your soul, your spirit out of you.

And

Vinny: I’m so pissing my cat right now. I let her do that all the time.

j: That was thought what they were doing. And and then like having kids and stuff, it’s like, don’t have, because cats will. Rest on your chest and, I think it’s just comforting for them ’cause they fill your heartbeat. Your breathing rate and things

geo: So really the, so really this is the cat [00:30:00] episode?

j: Oh no, I don’t wanna, I’m not deifying cats, like, you know, I love cats. We have a cat, Ivan. He is a good

geo: I know. I love cats.

j: So I

but you do have cats in this, they’re used a lot in this kind of thing and I don’t, they get, you know, wanna de deify them and say, you know, it’s just they’ve got a lot, they got a lot of pressure put on ’em because they’re,

Vinny: Yeah.

Don’t say that too loud. She’s right there. Yeah.

Yeah.

No, but like, so with Ghost, I also curious to know, like, do you believe in the theory of reincarnation,

nick: No.

Vinny: like where you pass away and instead of becoming a ghost, it’s almost like you come back with No with no knowledge of your past life. And it’s almost like a reset because like, I’ve also heard. Theories like that. And then it also ties into the weird deja vu moments. ’cause like nobody can explain deja vu and why you have them, or why everything feels certainly familiar or you feel like you’ve done something before. Like it’s crazy that we’re in 2025 and that’s something that still can’t be.

nick: so that wouldn’t be reincarnation then?

Vinny: No. But I’m[00:31:00]

nick: that would be

Vinny: would wouldn’t that

j: different ideas there.

Vinny: But I’m saying that deja vu. I’ve also heard theories that like, it could be something from your past life being triggered as to why something feels familiar.

nick: I did hear something about this. It’s what was it? It was something about.

Deja vu is your body reliving it as if you’ve died already?

Vinny: That’s

I’m saying. Like it’s, it could

nick: just your brain doing that whole, your life flashes before your eyes, shit. Yeah.

Moses: But just for like the mini second. Yeah. Not the full, it’s not the full blown joint.

Vinny: When I

that, I was like, in my mind I was like, man I want that to be real so bad.

’cause it gives more answers to things that aren’t answered, you know? ’cause I’ve always wondered about dejavu and like, is it like past life or whatever it is. ’cause Yeah, at this point I’ve watched enough horror movies where I’m open to the possibility of almost anything, you know, as far as like supernatural

goes,

j: and

And I think you’re, once again, we go back to our brains, to human brain [00:32:00] and finding patterns and things that, people have white noise, what is the Spirit radio?

Spirit boxes. Yep. That does white. And you hear it’s just white noise. And we hear voices. We make things. People play the records backwards. And I hear so, our brains are designed per a, to keep us alive, you had to find patterns really fast. And then identify patterns that might be like something else, a past situation.

So some of these deja vu situations could be that the situation is close enough. And your brain is actually just processing and trying to lower your anxiety somewhat to go, Hey, this has already happened. Or prepare you if it’s some bad situation you’re going into. So you have this moment where your brain is actually just analyzing its environment.

It’s and saying what makes sense. Oh, this is like, I felt I’ve been here before. Okay, this isn’t so bad. Or I’ve been here before and I really need to leave

Moses: Yeah.

j: ’cause

it, it didn’t turn out so well.

Vinny: That’s why you gotta talk to those four or 5-year-old musical prodigies who are like four years old and they’re playing [00:33:00] guitar like they’re fucking Jimi Hendrix. I’m like okay. Somebody sacrificed their, one of their children for

j: People that are like, I think we have neuro a neural spectrum and we, you know, people that have like autism and we think about, we identify that, and then you have like this  savants that come in and usually they’re at some extreme in, but we don’t, you know, identifying that al early in some skillset that is talented.

We, we all, once again, put that in context with ourselves and go, man, that’s super impressive. But they could be somewhere on that scale. We usually see math, savants or, artistic, but it could be, they play guitar. They just can hear music.

They see it

Moses: different perfect pitch and

j: play Right. And they just can play that. And they see the instrument, you playing it, and then mimic it and then add their own creativity to it and can go. But they’re still social. They still have, so yeah it’s interesting what our brains can do.

So yes,

nick: Yeah. Guys, I think they’re a ghost in

j: Nico Ghost is throwing things now it’s upset. It’s like, you’re gonna believe Joe, you’re gonna believe, yeah.

Vinny: Maybe it’s just me wanting believe it’s a ghost because I’m like, it has to be somebody reincarnated.

’cause [00:34:00] when I was four, I was. Learning how to

j: and see reincarnation is interesting because I, and you asked that question.

Vinny: perfection

nick: wait.

Vinny: all. I’m just trying

j: trying to move it along here.

Vinny: know how slow in life I was.

nick: I was like,

j: Move it along.

nick: over this. I,

j: I’m just gonna

nick: aren’t you four years old? Learning

j: like, I was a grown man before I learned how to wipe No,

nick: I didn’t stop peeing the bed till I 23

j: 16

Vinny: I realized I didn’t have to wear a diaper.

Moses: I’m crying.

j: I got reincarnate. No. But yeah, reincarnation was re trusting me because I always thought, and in my own head, and this is I haven’t looked this up, I haven’t thought about this in a while, but somewhat are conservation of DNA and you go from bacteria, through human octopuses, whatever you think the intelligent kind of life forms are.

We share our DNA like humans to banana. I think we’re 50%. There’s a lot of, mechanistic systems, which are the same, you know, and are the way our proteins are made the genetic code bananas. Yeah.

Vinny: You like, I wanna know more about this,

j: [00:35:00] 50% our genetic.

nick: is that where bananas and pajamas comes

j: No. Our genetic code, like the instructions of life, we share about 50% of those instructions with a banana.

And some of that’s just cellular function, like how proteins are made ribosomes, they make proteins or your mitochondria proteins. Those are all shared, those are historical. Those haven’t changed that much through time. So those are just a basis of cellular life. So you share a lot of the same cellular kind of functionality at the cellular level with a banana.

And as you go, you get higher. You have muscles, you have you know, your neurobiology is different than a banana. If it has neurobiology. We have different systems that then will separate. They have to do something different in their life. You do something different in yours. But if you think through that with reincarnation, one could easily go, oh, you could you, it’s not that different, right?

You, it’s a loss of function or gain of genetic code and information and how that is processed and how is that moved. And then you get into how is memory stored? How are these things, is memory stored by the architecture of our brain [00:36:00] and how it’s wired? And so does some of that base memory carry over? If you’re thinking about reincarnation at the genetic kind of molecular level,

Moses: Cellular memory.

j: Cellular memory, right? So could you have that, could that persist in your code? You know, like most, like from biology, most of our, you know, there, there are sequences that get in our DNA code that get turned on and turned

nick: Is the cloud real? The cloud,

Vinny: yeah. I have a bunch of my pictures on ’em right now.

j: cloud

nick: like, is there, is if there’s reincarnation, is there like a person

j: how do we get to the cloud?

geo: A person cloud.

nick: ’cause I was just thinking, so

j: So you mean like, is there some if they, if

nick: if reincarnation was real and right. Yeah. Then there’s just a cloud of uploaded people or

j: Or your genetic because your genetic, yeah.

Coding is different. I think you, if you had just over time all the combinations that could happen in humanity, I don’t think we’ve recycled yet. So you could go,

Vinny: I mean we, we do have a lot of [00:37:00] space sloughs. Huh? You get it. Space

Moses: But I think that speaks to the deja vu thing too. I think that’s, I feel like, just like we know over time, adaptations come from lived exp experience, the survival of those who made it through things and how experiences are even like trauma can be passed down like to the next generation.

Epigenetics, all that kind, how far that goes. So maybe we’re like having experiences that aren’t literally, it’s not even your experience. This is something that happened that could have happened to your generation, your dad, your grandfather. This could have been like 10 generations back. You don’t even know who those people are.

But

j: comment on that epi epigenetics. So that’s his kind of control of our genes and how they’re turned on and turned off at some level. And really interesting and fascinatingly, is that all your epigenetic markering or most of it comes from the mother, right?

Because you gotta think, you gotta think that the DNA payload and we’re getting a little reproductive volume away from ghosts but sperm really is just, it’s just full [00:38:00] of mitochondria. So energy to swim to the egg and deliver your half of the genetic. Input. And so there’s not a lot of extra room.

You can’t carry around a lot of extra proteins or information. It’s just a genetic code. Whereas the mother provides the egg, which then would have all of this kind of other information embedded in there. All of their imprinting, all of their kind of genetic controller epigenetic control is imparted on that load.

So when that 50% comes in, then the maternal side then imprints on. And that’s why when they do kind of anything mitochondrial kind of ancestry thing that did get a pur, it usually go to the mitochondria, which is maternal passed. So all your mitochondria. Have come from your mother ’cause you’ve, you know, the sperm has burnt it all out.

And so when you get there, that’s, the mother has provided all this kind of generational history in. So usually you follow lines through the mother’s, pedigree and in human history that people, we’ve had some concept of that because, like slavery.

Then when they made all [00:39:00] the changes, it was like, your your freedom state comes from your mom, right? It’s like passed through your mom. You look at other cultures that it is always through the maternal side that you get your cultural kind of background. And so at some level it’s really interesting and fascinating that, generational things are usually passed that way and learned genetic memory. We talked about this on the the swarm episode and crows they have, they actually will pass down memory faces. So

nick: they pass down

j: has identified they don’t like you or they like you. Then their progeny will also carry that on and have the same hatred for you.

So if you go out and you upset crows or mag pies or jays, I think they will remember and keep coming to, get you the

Vinny: It

Moses: take out the whole bloodline is

j: that’s

Vinny: If that’s the case, like my mom’s Puerto Rican, so I’m probably more of like a plantain banana.[00:40:00]

j: Yes. There it is. can’t

nick: I think we just did the show. I think we’re,

j: it.

geo: I just have no idea how this relates to Ghost, but

j: yeah.

geo: If crows can remember and like hold a grudge. I know, but I was just thinking about that. And then humans. We aren’t born, like, you get all that from your parents or from culture whether to hate someone or to, but you don’t just automatically see someone and know whether you should hate, how does that work with crows and not humans?

j: Yeah

geo: good

Vinny: ’cause crows don’t wear like douchey t-shirts or anything, you know, like we, we at least get to see somebody wearing a really dumb outfit and we’re like, I hate that guy. Like, crows are all the same. Like, how do you

geo: yeah,

j: Yeah. I dunno.

geo: I don’t know. Anyway,

j: go. But no. Yeah, that’s, it’s a fascinating thing. You’re right. There’s a lot about brain chemistry and human brain, like Yeah, I think we are you, it came up earlier that there’s a lot we don’t know that’s even [00:41:00] about ourselves and how our brains work to that level, or crow’s brain, which is smaller and, you know, potentially you could understand it better, but Yeah, no, they’re, it’s sophisticated and they show intelligence.

So that is a sign of intelligence, but it’s a generational, and I will say that probably there are generational traumas that get passed

There is,

and you go in humans and we just don’t, we don’t think about it because then it’s taught also. But you have some innate kind of, you know, especially a person of color, you have some innate.

Fear is some somewhat, it’s like, and you, your parents try to teach that out of you. But then also the wink, wink, nod, like, you know, oh, okay, don’t do this that, but you may not know why you’re not supposed to do this or go to this neighborhood or hang out there. But you just know to trust that and go, you know what, you know until you don’t, until you’re like, I’m gonna go find out.

And then you find out

nick: Isn’t there like the stories that get passed down, like don’t whistle at night. You

j: Yeah. It’s just

nick: stories that get taught down and you know, you forget where it all came from.[00:42:00]

j: Yeah. Yeah. They go in there and the ghost stories, tie it all back together, that we have a lot of those also.

Vinny: Why

nick: are there no recent ghosts? All the ghosts seem to be like at least a hundred plus years old.

geo: Are you talking about like in stories and stuff or what do you

Moses: and lore. Like even in real life, like legends of

nick: Yeah. I want a hipster ghost around here. Like I just want it to annoy

Vinny: Those are hard. You gotta leave PBRs out.

j: Yeah, that’s right.

Vinny: Like Santa.

nick: I want someone to be like, man, your music taste sucks. And I’ll be like, yeah, it probably does.

Vinny: makes it easier for us to track regular ghosts. ’cause now that we know that you just gotta like do really ancient shit, you gotta put on like, I don’t know, Charlie Chaplin movies or something for these old ass crusty ghosts to come

nick: But like, it,

Vinny: you

j: yeah.

nick: wouldn’t it make sense that they’re, they would be ghosts now, like

Vinny: seen John Wick?

j: Yeah. They go, yeah. Hey, new

Vinny: new ghosts.

j: that’s, I was gonna say,

nick: I want a new

Vinny: Ghost [00:43:00] revolution

j: From a mo like movies. Let’s go there because some, and it touches on the kind of ghosts.

Vinny: Okay. That’s a ghost right there. That’s

geo: Please clarify. Please clarify.

Vinny: his weird. Siri

Moses: The government was listening.

Vinny: on

j: started jumping in. But I was gonna say one of my favorite probably ghost adjacent movies is Event Horizon. And it touches on that multiverse, like you have the space time. I think George, you had asked if there’s any movies, but that’s one that that I think I’m gonna, I enjoy a lot, man.

That’s just a great movie. But it has that ghost haunted feeling and it’s actually filmed, if you watch it the color of the tint of that movie is almost sickening. You feel anxious through that whole movie as they get going and the descent into madness and this multidimensional ghost and these voices that he’s hearing and just sabotaging the ship and killing people.

No, it’s a barium.

Vinny: could

nick: ghosts be

j: a.

a,

nick: a,

Vinny: Hipsters

nick: if [00:44:00] seeing ghosts, could it be associated with schizophrenia or other mental disorders? Yeah.

j: Yeah. I, yes. I think any, like, tampering with the mind, be it degenerative kind of disorder, a disease like schizophrenia or drug induced, I

Vinny: ’cause people, if they have

Moses: Yeah. Take some psychedelics. You will see

nick: something exactly like it’s all.

j: all, and it’s how you perceive it. So I think if you’re hallucinating or you’re having that and how you perceive what you’re hallucinating of becomes then a. That could become a ghost, that could become a thing if you’re anxious and hyped up already and you hear like, you know, with the cat in the door earlier you didn’t, your brain is already primed and you’re just gonna process that.

Not even rationally, none of us thought, I didn’t think, oh, that’s a cat. Or that’s somebody in a know back in the back room doing something. We were primed to talk about ghosts and graveyards then. Oh, we heard creaky noise or something. Drops in the corner. Your brain my brain, your brain will go right away to, oh, that, that must be, that, that proves it right there.

That’s it. That’s the proof. We got it on tape [00:45:00] and then you spiral on control from there. And then you have the ghost hunters come in with the E em f tools or they’re low frequency kind of recorders.

nick: Joe, should we become ghost hunters?

Moses: I think he’s, I think he’s saying that they’re, that they’ve fallen into delusion. Yeah.

j: That’s They’re gonna come after me now.

geo: Alright.

nick: yes, you come after me for that. I’m fine.

Moses: Okay. I have one I read something on Instagram recently that I thought was interesting, somewhat poignant to the conversation. I feel like it was back to the dream, you know, like the sleep paralysis or even in rem sleep, right? When you’re actually dreaming and encounter weird stuff.

And then in association, particularly with lucid dreaming, so people that, that can lucid dream, they said that and again, this is just like, you know, internet theories. Jargon, but they’re like, yeah, if you’re lucid dreaming, maybe don’t tell the dream entities people that are around you, that they are not real because the spiral of, you know, it could, you could trigger.

You know, some glitches in the dream and then you end up [00:46:00] in a nightmare because of how that feed loop act. I did that once. I actually did that once prior to reading that, but it didn’t go that way.

j: You told the dream people that they were dream

Moses: it was one person. It was a friend of mine. It was Daniel.

geo: But

Moses: his response was funny. ‘ cause he told me he al he was like, yeah, I know. So that was weird.

j: Yeah. You didn’t have to go through a whole sixth sense kind of

Moses: thing. No. He was like, oh yeah, I know. I was like, that’s weird. And then I told him about that and he was like you know, the archetype of Daniels the dream interpreter, so that makes sense.

I was like oh shit.

Vinny: shit. I, there has to be one.

I, I wanted to be like Tam my whole life. I’ve just been talking shit to every person in my dream saying, you’re fake ass motherfucker. I’m real. You aren’t

j: I’m not real.

Vinny: real. It’s like, that’s why my life is in shambles.

j: could be like, it could be like inception, right? ’cause you had the inception where they got buried in a dream and at the end you don’t know if he’s stuck in a dream or if he’s back in.

I

Moses: a dream like that where it was like several in one, like where you woke up and you’re you, how do you even fall asleep in a dream? That’s [00:47:00] the craziest part.

j: I suffer from sleep paralysis. So I’ve had that happen to me a few times. And usually it’s like where I am pushing. I’m not getting good sleep. I’m like really burning a wick at both ends, maybe a few hours.

I don’t sleep that many hours a night anyway. But usually this is like, I’m physically working, like we were doing renovation on the house, so I’m up, I go to bed at one in the morning, wake back up at, four to do something to start planning. And then all of a sudden I will get in a cycle where I then have sleep paralysis episodes.

And it is creepy because if it’s so bad, like if I push it too long and I don’t really respect the start, you know, you get a warning, like you’re gonna be,

Vinny: I’ll say, what does a warning feel like?

Like when you know that you’re getting close to that point?

j: Yeah. Usually it’s your dreams the way you feel.

You might have an episode but it’s not as severe, like where you, you feel it, but then you snap out of it. And the worst though was, yeah, I had this where I went and it was like sleep paralysis, inside of sleep paralysis. So you’re in sleep paralysis, you can’t move, you’re freaking out, you’re seeing things and then you feel yourself wake [00:48:00] up out of it.

But really then that’s just another cycle of sleep paralysis. And it was like, oh, I gotta go to bed, like at 6:00 PM and like, sleep or like, you know,

nick: So was yours ever like stress induced or No,

j: not really.

A lot of it was just like I said, burning a wick at both ends.

Just poor sleep habits where I am just, I’m just probably exhausted mentally. And then that just triggers this whole cycle. So the first, when it happened the first time I was in grad school, and it could have been stress induced, like, you’re getting ready for things and you’re

nick: I feel like

j: You’re quantifying exams, things like that.

nick: It’s one of those things that ends up Yeah, having like a stress induced,

Moses: Yeah,

j: Yeah. Yeah. You’re anxious. But Yeah, I was, I didn’t walk.

a walk?

No, not that I know of.

Moses: Good. Good. That’s that, that, that freaks me out. Like I feel like the potential for somebody to like, get hurt doing

Vinny: doing that. Yeah. It’s not as fun as stepbrothers. Like, I always think of stepbrothers when I think of people sleepwalking.

I don’t know, taking the pillow cushions and putting ’em in the stove. But like, I’m just thinking like, man, that would really f like that would fuck me up if I woke up and I was like

j: in

Vinny: different state and I realized that I was [00:49:00] sleepwalking like it.

j: There’s been murder cases like that

Moses: dang, somebody killed someone like that.

j: Yeah. And then they went somewhere killed, someone came back. It’s like a total I don’t have it. I didn’t have it for exotic

Moses: Can we, how do you prove that though?

j: go. Yeah. But there’s a bunch of, I think there’s a couple

was sleeping.

Vinny: there’s a guy who’s reading that right now.

j: right.

nick: you’re talking abouts

j: right.

Vinny: guy right now who’s reading that and he’s gonna cheat on his girlfriend and say, I was asleep.

j: I think the

nick: I dunno what you’re talking

j: wife. I think it was like, it was, yeah. They killed her wife. Then they wake up somewhere and it’s like, oh, you killed this

nick: person. Look at the video of me. Look

Moses: Oh, by the way, you totally murdered that lady

j: That’s

Vinny: at some point, like with situations like that, if the person’s like saying I was sleepwalking, and they genuinely were, how do you fucking prove, like, do you have somebody do a lie

j: Yeah, no, it’s like, it’s a total, yeah. I think one person got off and one person got convicted.

I I would’ve to look it up, but there’s a few documented cases and similarly drove, but we, I was gonna say, we just watched that show. We were just talking about it. The one where the doppelganger, killed somebody and then he was doing the lecture and then they went The

the

geo: outsider. [00:50:00] I

j: The

nick: started that

geo: Oh, it’s so good. It’s so good. It’s a series on it’s a series on HBO and it came out like, what, like maybe five, five years or more

j: years ago. Yeah. I

geo: I think it’s based on Stephen King. It’s really good

Vinny: think

that like, you people can be in that sleepwalk like state and Yeah.

geo: Yeah. I don’t,

Vinny: life and do

geo: I just don’t buy

Vinny: Like I, I

geo: I don’t buy it.

Vinny: doing something like, I’m gonna get up and I’m gonna leave and I’m gonna go kill some person and then I’m gonna come back home and then lay back

j: drive your car, go there,

Vinny: I don’t buy, I don’t buy it.

nick: having a full on conversation with someone

Vinny: Yeah. Yeah.

nick: Yeah, then I go back to bed and what they’ll bring it up hours later when we wake up and they’re like, what are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking. Like it’s a whole on conversation that I just don’t have any memory of.

Vinny: Hey guys, take a take shot number three. ’cause that kid just tried to push the door open while he’s

nick: his face is leaning against

Vinny: against

Moses: I know. He, it’s funny [00:51:00] how close his forehead is to the sign that says, we’re open at one 30,

Vinny: right? No, but

j: We’re recording here.

nick: any of you used watch the movie Dream Scenario with Nick Cage?

Moses: Yes. Yes. That 8 24 movie. It’s so

Vinny: was in everybody’s dreams.

j: Yeah. Oh wow.

nick: that one was a really weird,

j: like a ghost of dreams. Really?

Vinny: Yeah. And some people were scared of him.

Some people were like,

nick: but he wasn’t doing

Vinny: love with him, but he wasn’t doing anything. I see.

j: see.

nick: Was just a boring person

Moses: then they started having nightmares and then they’re all blaming him. He’s like, I literally didn’t do any like, that’s like

nick: like, what did you do?

Vinny: I also like this whole conversation has made me even want to go back and rewatch the sixth sense.

j: Yes. Yep.

Vinny: Really good.

j: Really

Moses: up Bruce Wallace, wake up.

j: dead people. But I was gonna I wanted to touch on some traditions. We talk about ghosts and things, but there are a lot of cultures. So one that I found I didn’t realize was the Tibetan sky burials, Tibetan sky burials. And it’s a practice where the human corps is placed on a mountaintop to decompose, while exposed to the elements, or to be eaten by [00:52:00] scavenging animals like vultures

Moses: and

j: and they come. And so I was like, that’s really fascinating the way, ’cause Western culture, you, you get buried in like, casket. You’re really like, isolated from the natural world when you really should be, you know, reunited with it in that way.

And so I thought that was an interesting one. And then the other culture that is is Dia de los Muertos.

Where and that’s also ghosts are involved there. The movie Coco, I believe

geo: And that goes back to what Nick was saying, that you embrace this and you welcome these spirits and then you celebrate

nick: Yeah. It’s very different in each culture,

Moses: Yeah.

Vinny: that’s why

nick: why it’s like,

geo: I, that seems so much more healthy.

nick: Yeah. And that’s why I think it’s very much a mental thing where it’s again, why I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s a very psychological event

Vinny: event

nick: where it’s gonna be very personal to you and it’s gonna be very much in your own head.

But it’s not to just say, oh, this isn’t a thing. But [00:53:00] it is a thing too, that person,

geo: I think. And that the whole big thing is as long as someone remembers you, you haven’t like the whole thing about like, Coco, like I think that’s so true. Like just keeping those memories. And then once those memories are gone,

nick: I

geo: is that like,

nick: trust me to remember them

j: that is

geo: I know that is true. Memory remembered. I don’t have the best memory.

j: is that part of the ghosts, you know, kind of mythology is being remembered. And so if you haunt or if you, if you’re not getting revenged, ’cause we talked about that, but if, you know, other type of ghosts are you really kinda like a Casper, you’re just lonely.

You

geo: forget about me

j: in this realm. Like, you know, hey I was somebody of, you know, note maybe, I

Vinny: or like, do ghosts have the option to stay and be petty? You know what I mean? Like,

geo: Like,

Vinny: is that an option?

j: Yeah.

Vinny: I just want to hang out by fucking old lady Ruth’s house and I just want to fucking take a finger and just like open one of the cabinets once a day and [00:54:00] make her paranoid for us.

Or you know, like,

j: or think about it and go, oh, you know, you know, da, I used to be here and, you know,

Moses: used to do

j: doing that, right? That’s just like that. So is it a way to remember,

Vinny: I would troll people if, like, if

if

I had the option to go to heaven or hell or stay on earth and troll people,

j: just,

Vinny: I would stay and troll people because that’s heaven to me.

j: right? What if you’re misremembered though? What if you’re like there and Moses like, oh, that’s that’s my boy Johnny that’s doing that, and not Vinny, will you go harder? You’d be like, you know, you’re gonna, I’m gonna prove to you it’s

geo: That’s why you need to, that’s why you need to get out the Ouija board. Come on.

nick: Thank you.

j: Who’s here? Is this who’s Mo’s

Vinny: you’re like, who’s leaving these empty inhalers around here?

It can’t be

j: Who’s leaving all the cabinet

nick: Wasn’t that what Houdini and his wife did? Like, they had

geo: they had seances. And Houdini spent a lot of time like trying to debunk. Did debunk. Yeah. And they’d do these seances and stuff, and he’d go and like

nick: this [00:55:00] is what this is.

j: Find like ghosts. Like

geo: like, yeah. Show it all the little

j: he’d go find a Whoopi Goldbergs of the world and proved that they were.

frauds,

which he was not in a movie,

nick: he was the original

Vinny: Yes. He

nick: the original Ghostbusters,

Vinny: He

he had eyebrows. We’ll be

be clear.

anyway.

geo: Okay. So

Vinny: sorry.

j: yeah.

geo: should we talk about? What’s a favorite ghost?

What’s a favorite?

j: close to the end here, so Yeah. What’s our,

Vinny: I’m curious to know with like graveyards though, I feel like we didn’t go as

nick: we did not

Vinny: we?

geo: Graveyards. We got

Vinny: like

j: Graveyards are in Yeah, we’re at the end in a graveyard.

Started us off, but

Vinny: it would be hard to dismiss that there’s something like when you go to a cemetery,

We talk about movies where things are haunted because they’re paved over it.

geo: When nothing’s

Vinny: paved over and it’s just bare at cemetery, there has to be like, I don’t know that, that’s the kind of thing where.

People who are sensitive to those things will tell you with no hesitation. Like my aunt was who [00:56:00] had passed would see things. And my mom I’ve been in the car with her where she would see a ghost, like literally while we’re driving. She’d like, did you see that person? I remember there was one time where we were driving on 95th and she said she saw, she’s like, is that person like, isn’t he scared that the cord’s gonna get messed up?

And I thought my mom was like, hallucinating. I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, that guy back there. I was like, what guy? She’s like, he was holding a, like a megaphone with a cord and he was holding up a sign. I was like, mom,

j: there was nobody there.

Vinny: Just looking.

I looked back and she’s like, oh no, I think I saw a ghost. So like I, things like that where I’m like, there’s something there that maybe not everybody can see, but I think when you go to a graveyard, there’s, there goes number four.

See

Moses: let’s see if they go back to back and make it five, no

Vinny: it would be hard to believe that there isn’t anything, you know, like when the physical bodies are six feet under.

geo: What? And

Vinny: and it

geo: there’s so many

Vinny: bodies

geo: there’s so many there. And I think also maybe just the feeling of grief and people’s, it’s almost like a [00:57:00] tangible thing

nick: There’s a

Moses: A

geo: a place like that, you know,

Moses: been historically haunted, like where there’s a lot of, usually that’s what it’s associated with.

Like haunted locations is tragedy or a lot of negative emotions or just negativity in general. Like, you know, there’s a lot of

nick: if you didn’t know that place was like tragedy happened there, would you still have that

Vinny: Yeah. ’cause

Moses: It’s happened to some people and then they figured it out after the fact.

Vinny: Like,

j: like what

Vinny: Amityville horror is like a perfect example where there a family. And they moved into a home that had history.

nick: that all bullshit?

Vinny: Depends

nick: that was the Warrens shit and the Warrens were

geo: think

Vinny: the warrants were called,

nick: and

geo: Yeah, no, there were actual people and they actually had these accounts. I’m not saying that’s for sure true, but I actually my ex-brother-in-law was, knew one of the people that lived there.

Vinny: Yeah.

nick: I feel like [00:58:00] that stuff all ended up coming out after the fact. And they’re like, oh, we’re gonna start leaning into this as I push my,

j: but also, I know, what are you doing?

Vinny: we mentioned earlier, Poltergeist is another example of that, right? The family that moved into the home and it was right

j: On top of the native graveyard, a burial grounds.

Vinny: I feel like

I don’t

j: But that was a, that thing of respect, right? That respect wasn’t given to this burial site. And then it was also, you know, consumerism and all that layer, there was some other messages there, but you’re right, the ghost there, they were haunting because they wanted they wanted revenge, but they also.

Took a liking to the carolann, you know? She could give them something, like she could, her innocence could guide them into, or back from the, this kind of spiritual plane. And they were using that also, but, so you had a mix little message in there of what they were doing. And then it was like, oh, we’re, you shouldn’t have, paved over this, ancient burial site.

Because the spirit that was there wasn’t friendly, obviously. So it wasn’t even like, you know, we want, [00:59:00] we went out or you’ve done something wrong. It was like, now I’m gonna, let’s really torture you.

Vinny: But

yeah, there’s so many interesting angles to like, look at it from, especially when you start including actual stories and experiences that people have actually gone through, you know, outside of like. Your life. ’cause it’s like, obviously depends on what you’re around and what you expose yourself to. But I don’t know, there’s enough weird shit going on in the world where I’m like, I wouldn’t be surprised at this point, you know?

j: Yeah. So what’s so they get to George’s question. Favorite ghost

Vinny: Ghost

Moses: Favorite? Favorite graveyard?

j: Your favorite graveyard? No. What’s your favorite ghost? What’s your favorite ghost movie? Let’s do that.

nick: For me, I think it would be between Insidious and Talk to me. Like those two are both on the newer side, but I feel like their ghost stories just linger a little bit longer than most,

Moses: That’s fact.

Yeah. Talk to me slapped.

nick: Especially for it being like a younger audience, like, or cast. I was so happy with [01:00:00] how

Moses: I think that’s what helped with it. ’cause if it didn’t have the younger cast, it wouldn’t have hit the same because it was, it is one of those where it’s the I guess like you said, irreverence, like the young crowd being like, yeah, like on paper, should we not be doing whatever we’re doing?

We’re getting TikTok views.

j: right. Yeah.

Moses: We’re getting clout with our friends at, you know, in the, in their, you know, community space. So it’s like,

nick: so what?

Moses: What will the kids Gen Z?

nick: for Yeah. Which I feel like this is like the first Gen Z horror film that was

j: good.

nick: You know, yeah.

geo: So that was a newer ghost?

j: Newer

geo: Or is

j: multiple.

Moses: It’s a, it’s like a hand that gives you access to the,

j: yeah.

Vinny: said it’s not the hips or ghost that you were

j: No. Yeah. The

nick: That, that’ll come later.

Vinny: I lovely Bones.

j: Ali Bones.

nick: Oh yeah,

j: Yeah. That

Vinny: one was a really cool one where.

Basically the ghost of the girl helps dude figure out her murder.

Yeah, who

Yeah. I read that book. Yeah, that was really good actually.

Moses: Phone.

nick: Black phone. I [01:01:00] forgot about how good that

Vinny: dude, black phone two is gonna be insane. Have you seen the trailer?

nick: No, I don’t watch trailers.

geo: like

Vinny: nightmare on Elm Street ish. Like it’s insane.

And it’s almost like sleep paralysis where like

She’s

knocked out.

But

the things that are happening in her dream are being reflected to the people who are seeing her

nick: I’m gonna change mine to sinister actually.

Vinny: Sinister. You can’t change yours.

Moses: Was more Ethan Hawk.

Vinny: it.

nick: That’s why I was like, wait, Ethan Hawk sinister because that was a

j: a

Vinny: fantastic

j: Yep,

Vinny: Georgia.

I ghost is

j: Ghost.

Vinny: That was my, that was

j: I

geo: did like Ghost a lot and I did like six Sense. Yeah. That’s just

j: Those are classic Poltergeist.

geo: You remember that one? Devil’s Backbone.

j: Oh, devil’s Backbone. Yeah. That’s, that one’s really good. Yeah. That’s like, session nine.

geo: Oh, session nine. Yeah.

j: That was a really good one also where they had the ghosts that insane asylum that were, they were removing the asbestos from. So that was a good one.

Vinny: 13 ghosts.

I

j: No one mentioned Ghostbusters.[01:02:00]

Vinny: Oh, yeah. Or ghost ship.

nick: I brought up Ghostbusters.

j: You got a candy, man. I’m rocking

Moses: Can Candyman. I guess that counts, right?

j: yeah. So what’s your

geo: favorite?

j: I Event Horizon. I think you I just, I’m gonna go with that. I mentioned it. I brought it up, but it’s really it’s a little off. It’s not, it wasn’t built as a ghost story, but when you watch it, it really is a ghost story in space. Like, you’re not, there’s not many of those where you have that.

nick: I think we solved ghosts. We solved, we didn’t touch,

Vinny: think, I don’t think

j: dunno, that’s what we thought.

Moses: Bachelor’s Grove is my favorite graveyard.

j: Yeah. That’s, yeah, that we’ve heard that before. Bill Heller, which one talks about the Bachelor’s Grove?

nick: yeah, that’s where I want to go. You want to

geo: that’s where we were gonna go do,

Moses: down to go back.

nick: Yeah. We’ll bring in a spirit box and

Moses: I don’t know about no boxes. Come

geo: on.

j: We gotta brainstorm with us. Bring our own

geo: the Ouija board in. She’s gonna have

nick: it on my chest.

geo: What?

Vinny: the planchette Yep. planchette necklace is crazy.

j: His shirt is really a Ouija

Moses: Yeah. I’m just worried about us getting kicked out of there. You gotta go [01:03:00] during the day. If you go at night. They like, there’s cops over there during

j: Oh, really? Yeah. I can imagine.

Moses: Oh. ’cause people go over there

geo: Maybe we could do it like outside of October.

j: Yeah. Maybe we can do it official. We can just

Vinny: Joliet, the old Joliet haunted prison.

j: Oh, that would be cool.

Vinny: A podcast?

j: Yeah.

Moses: See then you ain’t gotta worry about anybody bothering you, you know?

j: one in Crown Point, with

geo: The old jail. Yeah.

j: You go in there and let’s

Vinny: We just never come back. They’re like,

j: I know, right? That’s it.

That’s how a movie gets made, right? That’s how a horror movie is. Is it?

Vinny: this hidden footage. I think it’s their last episode that they never uploaded

j: person that leaves,

Vinny: possessed.

Moses: Lost

j: you know, it’s gonna be Georgia, probably the final girl usually makes it out.

We’re all gonna be, we’re all gone. I’m, I’m done. I’m be the

nick: the first. Yeah.

j: maybe Moses or Dick might beat me to it, but

nick: Me for just doing something stupid.

Vinny: What’s the

geo: Ouija board.

nick: Come here, lemme fight you. If it’s anything like fasm phobia, oh, I’m gonna be yelling at them. Calling ’em cowards all day.

j: about fantasm, right? That was another one where you

Moses: [01:04:00] Yeah. Fantasm definitely

j: Yeah. That’s a old school one. There. Yeah, I think that’s we’re at the end of time. I think we can keep going.

As Vinny mentioned, we

geo: No. ’cause there’s a lot of people that, there’s a lot of people that wanna get into the store.

I think we need to wrap it up.

nick: banging down the

j: it up. We haven’t

geo: we don’t wanna like, touched

j: we haven’t touched on graveyards

geo: We don’t wanna, like

Moses: We might we might have to split that into a

j: Let’s go another one. Yeah. Maybe do it.

Moses: grave yard.

Do it. Yeah. Do it at a graveyard.

j: Yeah. As we go,

Vinny: you guys

nick: you guys have anything to plug?

j: Yeah. You guys got things going on October, ’cause that’s your

Vinny: month.

So we got in October, we have it’s not necessarily horror, but we’re doing like a, I think you should leave like Tim Robinson event at the arcade bar

j: Yeah. Yeah. Saturday

Vinny: the fourth. Then we have we’re gonna be doing our own thing called Halloween Hangout that we do every year at the same arcade bar where we get a whole bunch of vendor friends come hang out.

j: And

Vinny: and then in November we have a big screening at Music Box On the 26th, we’re doing a 35 millimeter screening of PeeWee’s, big Adventure

nick: Wow. Hell

j: There

Vinny: and 35 millimeter.

Nice.

j: [01:05:00] Cool, cool.

Vinny: so yeah, if you guys aren’t doing anything in Black Wednesday and want to come start your night with us, we’re gonna do like a big merch drop and have like a big old fun party.

Usually we do horror movies, it’s so close to the holidays. It’s like, it just feels like,

j: Do something lift modes. Yeah.

Vinny: we’re big Peewee fans. It’s like we finally have the excuse to

j: to do it. Cool. Yeah. And we’ll

Moses: Oh, and that gey screening October 10th.

Vinny: Yeah. We’ve been doing these like backyard screenings

j: cool.

Vinny: cool

call we call it the Midnight Rewind Society where we do like old VHS tapes and

j: Oh wow. Cool.

Vinny: Play ’em in the back.

Nice.

j: We’ll put links and have that on the newsletter that comes out and, you know, you can check it out and find these guys. Come up, visit the horror house and get all your horror related

nick: Play some games. Play

j: Yeah. But don’t come when they’re recording a podcast

Yeah. Or read the signage. But yeah, so Cool. Thanks again for having us join you for the second year in a row. It was, it’s always fun in conversation and everything like that. So you have me, [01:06:00] Joe,

nick: you got Nick. You got Nick

j: we’ve got Nick

geo: Georgia. We

j: got Georgia,

Got Moses,

Vinny: Vinny and Elvira.

j: El Elvira.

Vinny: El.

j: it

Moses: the kitty

j: Creaking doors open,

geo: Oh sweet. And

nick: we went down some holes

Vinny: holes,

j: holes.

Moses: Y’all

j: curious. Stay safe. Love y’all.

nick: Love y’all from the other side.

j: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Rabbit Hole of Research down here in the basement studio for another exciting episode. We are all crewed up. You have me Joe, we’ve got Nick.

You we’ve got Georgia.

And for this episode, which will be on H two, oh my god. Water life and everything in between. We have a special guest joining us, and as always, we have the guests introduce themselves.

That’s tradition now. So please.

Maud: Okay.

Hi,

I am Maud Lavin.

I’m a writer. I’ve written mainly

nonfiction

for decades. Books and

articles and so forth. This is my first novel,

mermaids and

lazy Activists

j: Great.

Maud: from Beyond Press.

nick: Very

nice.

j: That good.

Maud: Yeah.

And

I

got into this novel because I really love, Lake Michigan. I love Lake [00:01:00] Swimming. I

I’m concerned about

If

keeping the water clean ish. and

at

the same time I was tired of a lot of environmental.

Writing as being apocalyptic.

and

Do. And

I started thinking like you know what, if I write

something kind of goofy and funny and laugh out loud funny, and then Fit in some of the environmental information into it, and it could be actually a pleasure, a romp to read. And also I got the idea that of giving a certain amount of the proceeds to flow, which is a really great non-profit headquartered in Traverse City.

That’s a Great Lakes protectorate. They call themselves water advocates. They Just

su Do a lot of environmental

lawsuits. So that kind of freed me up to be even more goofy.

Yeah. because It’s

okay. That’s the serious part [00:02:00] will be the donation to flow.

And I can just really have fun with the humor.

j: Yeah. Awesome. Very cool.

So yeah, so usually I give some sort of definition and then I have lists. So

nick: Is it gonna be a liquid list?

j: It’s gonna be a very fluid list, so we’ll have that. No, yeah. So I just wanted to, just for grounding,

we all

know it and love it, but water, is a transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid that forms the basis of life on earth.

It’s composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, H2O, and is essential for all known forms of life. Water can exist in three states, solid state, ice, liquid, and gas water vapor. It is the main component of earth’s hydrosphere and the fluids of living organisms. And with that water pollution is a contamination of bodies of water, lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers by substances that degrade water quality.[00:03:00]

And harm ecosystems or human health. And so in this episode wanted to plunge into the symbolic, speculative literary and scientific meaning of water with Maud here and brushy around her book that she just talked about getting into mermaids and lazy activists. And it’s a tale that doesn’t just tell a story as Maud alluding to it swims through climate anxiety, feminist resistance, and local ecology by way of an unlikely heroin a mermaid.

In short, we’re gonna be discussing what happens when literary imagination enters environmental discourse. And

nick: So

question Very good.

I haven’t read this book yet. I’m sorry.

j: I’m about halfway through. So that’s where I’m at with it. So I’ve read quite a bit.

nick: Does a mermaid come about because of.

pollution?

Maud: no. I was like,

there are,

She is one

of many freshwater mermaids

who live in the great Lakes, [00:04:00] Okay, cool. and

j: hundreds of years old.

They can live to two, 200 years, I think. Or so. And

Maud: Yeah. 100 in the book, so she’s like mid midlife.

j: No spoilers.

Maud: she Yeah,

georgia: no

Maud: brash, she is sexual.

she is a

wise ass. She’s not the like twinkly, little

Disney kind of mermaid, she’s competitive.

And the other main character whose human main character, whose name is Maud, also A Professor emerita at the school of the. Art Institute as I am.

And part of Chicago Lit scene. They meet at or near 57th Street, beach.

And even though Evelyn doesn’t, , truck much with humans except when she wants boy toys

She,

they start talking and they become friends and competitors too. And Evelyn through her [00:05:00] mermaid group is required to do some eco work because they have to work, they have to try to keep like Michigan fairly clean.

’cause they live there,

georgia: And

Maud: The human wants to too. ’cause she just loves it. She loves swimming in it

and yet they’re also both really lazy. They are the lazy activists

and they screw up a lot. Or they try something that’s too hard and,

That’s a lot of it.

And,

j: Yeah. And I think you, you hit it. ’cause when I was doing research and thinking about this topic, especially eco activism, the thing that kept going in my mind was the seventies, eighties be horror movies where nature , humans have done something poor. And I have a few examples.

Frogs food of the Gods, Ana, alligator, they all had these kingdom of the spiders. They had these

varying, usually humans

were going in somewhere, destroying the environment. And then nature would. Rise up and then take their [00:06:00] revenge and this kind of very fantastical and horrific way.

So having fun here, that’s a really interesting take. And how’d you get to that point? Like in, in the storytelling? Did you just in, in the use of mermaid, I think instead of maybe other mystical or mythical creatures.

Maud: Oh, I dunno, there’s

something about women and mermaids. I just have always liked mermaids and I’ve met some other people who write about,

Freshwater mermaids They’re also women.

And really don’t know. have had a

long

time interest in pleasure and activism. that The feeling like what motivates people to actually

make

change. And I feel like it’s, a desire.

Maud: Much more often than only anger and self-defense. Although these days, all of the above.

I,

georgia: Exactly.

Maud: Okay.

But it’s

a personal interest of

mine. [00:07:00] And

I’ll just confide and it’s in the book too, if you keep reading. I started out in art history and Weimar studies, 1920s Germany, and my first book

was on the Berlin Data artist

ish New York Times

notable book.

See, I

snuck that

in

j: Nice. Nice.

georgia: Very nice. So

thank

Maud: Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

I love the Marxist philosopher

Aaron Block

and

He wrote a lot about these traces that people would,

Encounter in daily life that would. Either remind them of some pleasure or inspire a future vision of shared pleasure. And so I thought for me, water is like

that

I

remember swimming in

lakes in Ohio growing up.

I

Lake Michigan. How how unbelievable is it that Chicago runs right up to the shores and you could just walk over and jump in, or at least go waiting whenever you

want to.

nick: Do it [00:08:00] constantly.

Maud: That’s

fighting for,

You do it constantly?

nick: Oh

yeah. My daughter loves going.

georgia: so

Maud: We’re so lucky.

If I have to

Just sit through. I don’t want people lecturing

me. I wanna think

yeah, we gotta to

Preserve the

lake and even enhance

georgia: I think that’s so interesting about motivation and like what motivates people.

And I think humor is something you can really get a message across so much more with humor than anything.

Oh,

nick: a hundred percent.

If you can coat things in humor, people see

what is

the message, and then you’re like, oh, I’m laughing.

Oh, I’m learning,

oh,

georgia: I’m laughing at this, but oh boy, it’s pretty

serious. You start

nick: angry over this situation.

georgia: Yeah,

j: Yeah. Yeah.

georgia: I think of and actually, it’s not totally a comedy, but I think of Charlie Chaplin and the Great Dictator.

And obviously there’s some great scenes that are very humorous when the two dictators are trying [00:09:00] to.

Get their chairs higher than the other one.

The other one.

But, and I also think there’s this scene where I wanna say his name was Hinkle in the movie. And when he was playing with this big giant globe and he’s just doing these weird things, he’s bouncing it off and all of a sudden then it pops.

But what a what a message that was, yeah. Without saying anything, so I do think, I think that makes a lot of sense about getting some really important

messages out.

j: And it’s having,

Maud: go ahead.

Joe.

j: No. Go for it. Yep. No. You’re a guess. So you

can,

Maud: I’ll also say that the laziness part is important

too because they just really wanna have fun and

they

like to.

Have

coffee, go to the beach.

They’re in the poetry circuit,

right? They like to give, go to readings, give readings

j: Recipe poetry, right?

Maud: recipe, poetry. There’s some of that. And

there. Okay. And the thing is,

I thought about this [00:10:00] a lot actually, that they a lot of us, I think want to

desperately see change, contribute to making

change.

We Really

need that in this country, My God, but

It’s also

Can I also have fun with

my friends? Can I can do this part-time? Can I and for me, I am a lazy activist and I have

to

decide okay, I’m not

gonna do X, but I will, I think I

could do phone

banking starting this fall.

So I have to make these deals with myself because I

do still wanna have fun.

nick: Do you consider

that laziness, or is it just for your mental wellbeing?

Maud: Yeah. No,

It I think it’s healthy, but

say,

nick: I a hundred percent agree. It’s the amount of times I’m like, I should go do that,

j: right?

nick: But for my own sanity I’m not.

And

it’s Yeah. Yeah. It’s the the book is jaunty, so by embracing

Maud: The word [00:11:00] lazy

Is they’re bratty, the friendship

is a kind of bratty one, especially Evelyn.

And

the

mermaid of one. And

At one point

they’re thinking

of doing this project on the subway, and Evelyn’s no, if I’m gonna go below the surface, it’s gotta be underwater, where it’s beautiful.

I’m not hanging out on the subway. Like, they’re just They’re very self-indulgent.

And then they do

hit on some things

Putting clover borders around a farm so that to

hold back

some agricultural runoff,

which is one of the big problems. Salt runoff,

agricultural run runoff

septic tank runoff,

And so on.

They do

j: lawn care runoff. People don’t think about that.

Maud: Yes,

j: Yeah.

Maud: So they’re

not being like

superheroes.

j: They’re

Doing what they

do. Yep.

Maud: Regular

human

regular

mermaid

hanging out and

Doing something while also eating [00:12:00] blueberry muffins.

j: So other thing that I thought was interesting and as I mentioned, and I’m about halfway through, is this idea of environmental memory.

And what I mean by that is you can look at the lake and its sediment and tell its history even its history of pollution and things like that. You can go back and I have some fun facts in a list that I’ll talk about, but it is really, it’s neat because using the Evelyn Mermaid character who holds this historical knowledge, not only of the lake and the pollutants, but the cultures, I found out really the native cultures who were there that had the treaties. When the French and the British came in, and I thought that connection there that you made that jump. So I don’t know if you intentionally did that or was it just, you were thinking, oh this yeah.

Maud: Sure. That was intentional. And

I put, I put a bunch of my

friends in, the book as cameos, and Tim Mo Motor is this fantastic,

Poet, really one of my favorite poets [00:13:00] anywhere. And so he is in there. And then there’s

some fake illusion that like Evelyn might have messed around with his grandfather and,

j: yeah. That’s right.

Yes. And Tim is actually part of the bad river band of

Maud: lake

Superior Chippewa. And I played a little fast and free with Chippewa history review, Tim carefully reviewed it.

I

guess he’s the sensitivity reader, but,

It’s also that.

But then there, there are certain parts that are very carefully researched

And talk about the Bad River band and other tribes and First Nation people who are involved in trying to protect the Great Lakes. And That part is so is accurate. And then it’s, it, there’s some fantastical stuff too,

and how they didn’t like the French ’cause they

were

snobs and you know, they,

j: So

Yes.

Maud: I think

you could tell, I hope you can reading it

j: The part how they got their [00:14:00] names right because that was a play on this assimilation and they, we wanted to fit in or be accepted and you had this whole even the Maud character also that was, their part of their story and how they

got their name and why they were named, yeah,

Maud: Yeah, absolutely. And

she, ev Evelyn does take a break from wildly fooling around, and she gets a boyfriend, Malcolm a Merman, and like

Who’s

ever heard of mermaids named Evelyn and Malcolm?

It’s

Me?

georgia: So I guess I’m, I wasn’t super familiar with the lore of Freshwater mermaids.

Yeah.

So, you played on a lot of that kind of existing lore for

Maud: There’s not that much. Mo, most me mermaid stories are about the oceans,

georgia: okay.

Maud: Saltwater mermaids,

but just They’re just such

appealing

cryptids, there are some others. And There’s just a lot of, [00:15:00] there’s different.

Bigfoot

kind

of stories about the Great Lakes and they’re so huge.

and there’s

so

much of the shoreline is so wild that, why wouldn’t there

georgia: be? Exactly. exactly.

Maud: no, So I, I

didn’t, in fact, it wasn’t until I was really into the book that I thought oh, I better look what

else is out

there.

j: back and

Maud: There’s some wonderful stuff, but

It’s

actually

pretty

j: Yeah. Okay.

georgia: Yeah.

j: Yeah. Yeah. As I was gonna say, the in story, more recent memory, two kind of mermaid stories, and they’re both ocean mermaids. One was by Mira Grant or Seanan McGuire who writes as her horror fiction under Mira grant. Roiling in the Deep and drowning in a deep series.

And in that one, mermaids are a Apex. Creature of the ocean. And so they’re, they’ve now evolved to be the top, like humans on land. They are. And so [00:16:00] when folks go out to the ocean, they’re using whale sonar and all these kind of disruptive kind of tools. And then these me people attack and fight for their, their ocean or their body of their land I guess, or their water, I don’t know what you call it.

Yeah. their territory. There yes.

Maud: Yeah.

j: Namor does.

Yeah. So that’s,

that was one. And then the other one was the deep by rivers Solomon and this was a story that actually was started by William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes, and Daveed Diggs.

As Like a hip hop rap mythology.

The story is that during a transatlantic slave. Africans were two were tossed overboard. Some of them were pregnant and they actually gave birth in the ocean and they became a mer kind of culture in society. And the Deep by River Solomon was a novel adding to the lore and the myth of this story, the first of maybe many more novels people might write [00:17:00] of this kind of mermaid culture, mer culture.

Those are a

couple mermaid examples that I thought where they had this kind of either. Eco activist, bent to it or this kind of cultural assimilation, cultural reclaiming. And I thought that was interesting that you also, you had this tether in there.

That was really cool as I was reading it and you started getting that and I was like, I just thought about these other, the way that used the mermaid, besides a SA siren or, this pure horror or kind of just luring men to their death. That’s how they’re always used.

But this is using the lore and the myth,

Maud: friendlier and

it’s a cross

species

friendship. It’s also when

Evelyn prefers to be in the Water, but when

she comes on land

and changes into she’s not in any pain or anything.

They even

go,

Evelyn and Malcolm come with go with Mod to

an AWP Writers Conference. And there the thing [00:18:00] about the cross species friendship though, is that it’s also not that sweet.

There’s competition in it, and there’s a tendency on

both sides

to

Regard each

other as

pets.

especially, I

Maud: Especially the mermaids keep saying, things like stupid humans.

And,

Finding humans alternately

intermittent,

like either,

Annoying

or fun to play with.

Yeah. so There’s,

it’s a little, actually it’s a little sibling like, but the environmental,

Importance

of that

is,

A species coexistence and mutual thriving, but without a preaching this to it.

That it’s not, they’re, they have fights. They

give

each other hard times sometimes.

Yeah.

j: Yeah, No,

I think

it’s yeah, it’s good.

nick: Hell

Maud: They all like blueberry muffins.

j: who doesn’t like a

blueberry muffin?

nick: Is it the blueberries that they like? [00:19:00] Or is it like the whole

Maud: The whole thing.

Yeah,

nick: It’s always

a, it’s always one of those things. It’s oh, I just really love some blueberries.

j: I’m just gonna have those blueberries.

georgia: But that’s a little different than blueberry muffin,

j: and blueberry muffins. They’re cooked

and they’re All right. We’re,

georgia: anyway, I

j: going. So I was gonna, I was gonna ask too the kind of inner species relationships, because Evelyn has. Relations with humans on the shore of Lake Michigan at her occasion.

And then, and the question that went my head asked, especially as a biologist is are there any hybrid Chimeras that can come out of that? Are, did you think that through or is that in a book? I just haven’t gotten there yet. Don’t, if it is, don’t spoil it. But yeah, I

thought

about that.

Yeah.

Maud: it’s not, in the Book And I haven’t

really thought about it. I am writing

a sequel.

j: Okay.

Maud: let’s see.

I

don’t know if that,

will,

we’re gonna meet Evelyn’s aunt and we [00:20:00] also, meet, I dunno if you’ve gotten to this point in the book

we

do meet a little mermaids troop, which is four Hs, but they’re little

mermaids and they’re more

violent.

They’re violent, they’re very feral.

nick: Huh? What are four Hs?

georgia: You’ve

heard of? You’ve heard of the four H?

haven’t No.

Like

a group that that kids do lots of different outdoor activities and learn different skills. Camping, horseback riding, they very

Maud: farming,

j: environmental, right? Yeah.

Maud: I was in 4-H for years growing up.

They’re Rural all across the US or mainly rural and

tend to show

in county fairs and they’re great is totally great.

georgia: and I just love

Maud: in the Midwest. for A long time. You gotta learn

about four.

H. Four H is

Amazing.

georgia: I love the visual of four H mermaids. I just love that. Yeah, yeah. That’s such,

a great,

Maud: yeah. Okay. But

the hybrid kids. The hybrid

j: Yes.

Maud: [00:21:00] That’s a

good idea.

’cause

j: you have the, because they have, because they can still have legs. There’s all, there’s also, how many Big Macs would it take to,

I was gonna, the calories of transforming. Yeah.

georgia: I haven’t read it myself. I’m curious about the transformation. Is that written about very much in the book, or does that just,

j: I’m out, like I said, where I’m at, but it feels like there’s, as we say here, a lot of hand waving on the mermaid to human walking transition.

That’s yeah,

Maud: it, the most important thing to me was

that she does not.

she

and Malcolm too. They don’t suffer.

j: Right,

Maud: And They do

whatever they want and as long as they want. So there’s no kind of punishment or anything like that. So they’re just they’re stronger than humans too, so they try to pass as humans.

But like they’re taking the train down to AWP in Kansas City and that it’s too hot and they can’t open the window. So Malcolm just [00:22:00] pushes one of the windows out,

That this whole thing, like They find, human rules tiresome. Wait, I want to think of, oh, I wanted to say something about the

hybrid.

So

I know some of the activist things that I wanna deal with in this. The second book are one of them is citizen lobbying. So we’re gonna make a trip to Lansing and. Go through around the Capitol and try,

make sure that

part’s authentic. And another is Michigan is rare estate that does not have uniform septic requirements.

Okay. I have to deal with that. but I can tell you that Bob and Evelyn are gonna try to get involved with that, and then they’re just gonna be like, Ew, this is too gross. I hate this. they’re gonna go up and do something. else.

j: you totally can see it.

Maud: I have those two things that I really wanna get information about in the book, so that they’re both they’re a little boring important but boring. So then I [00:23:00] want the fantasy part to be even more fantastical. So maybe in the little mermaids group, maybe we’ll have some people who are hybrid and, you

georgia: I like that.

Maud: that, Thank you for

that

idea.

j: they have that.

Yeah, no,

It is there. I was just, in my head, I was just thinking about it and also to some of the science in there, how that work. And it feels like there’s some long history. And I think the nick had asked like how the origin of the mermaids, like how did they actually come about?

Was it, were they a aquatic species that then, had the capability to come on land

nick: also, do they have gills? How are they

Maud: They have, lungs.

j: they have lungs.

Maud: They have really big lungs that comes that’s towards the end of,

Towards the end of the book. There’s a whole I, in, in, real life, I have fairly severe asthma.

I’m trying to get the group and also my partner Bruce. Is in the [00:24:00] book involved in like fighting particulate pollution. and I’m bringing Some of the asthma measuring things to the beach and we’re all doing it, and evelyn is just exploding the instruments. have this incredible lung power and they also have built these rooms

like under,

underneath the

cribs.

j: right. Yep.

rooms or whatever.

Maud: We

suspect that there are other rooms and stuff too, but they don’t have, gills, they have lungs they need to have lungs. because I need to talk some about air pollution,

too.

georgia: I got,

you.

Maud: Which is not distinct from water pollution.

j: And are they’re

mammals then. That’s what we’re or are they? Are they mammals? And so like a whale or dolphin whale. Yeah.

Turtles are not mammals.

I was like, come

on man.

nick: you’re telling me a turtle isn’t a mammal? No, like they, they live on both land and

j: they’re amphibious.

Yeah,

nick: sure.

j: Yep.

nick: That’s what you want to label it as?

georgia: there are some amphibious mammals.

j: ooh, that’s a good [00:25:00] question. Like penguins, they go into the water, they dive, they don’t

nick: in the water.

j: they don’t, they live on land, but they can go either

way. Yeah.

georgia: a while underwater.

j: I think most of the,

georgia: I was gonna say is the biology of having lungs and being in water. How does that work? Is that not

j: No, I mean, whales, dolphins like

I think

they’re, yeah, no they have lungs and things. I think the thing you have to control is buoyancy. Because if you’re filled up with air, then you’ll rise up.

So you have to, control that and have mechanisms. And if you’re di diving deep, so we’re talking, those are ocean, depth fairing mammals. And so they dive, whales dive to great depths, so they have to have the, fat layer to keep warm insulate.

But yeah, they can submerge for hours. I mean it’s, for quite some time. Yeah. So you do have

Maud: That’s, that’s the,

j: The

Maud: world making with the mermaids. all came from either things that were funny

and or sexy or things that I [00:26:00] needed, like I had certain environmental things that I wanted to talk about.

So therefore, yeah, I needed them. with lungs.

j: yeah. Sea otters and seals and sea lions are

all. Also they’re amphibious. They go both. They live on land, but they actually function better

in terms of swimming and their motions are more fluid in water than on land.

And they’re at that point because their weight is still manageable. Because if you like a whale, when a whale beat is beached, essentially it’s hours before it’s just gonna die, like almost crush under its own weight. And so trying to get it back out into the water is an effort.

So that’s yeah. The other

Maud: the other thing I was playing with is they’re really strong, the mermaids and the mer people and they swim.

Like

at,

they take these group swims where they can go all the way up.

Lake Michigan and then through little bit of Lake Huron and into Lake [00:27:00] Superior. And that’s, that is just pure joy. As a swimmer, like I, I can’t do that. But I can imagine like a stronger version of all of us, doing that And just having a blast, and they have to go in groups though. ’cause that’s a big swim even for them.

j: Yeah. That part, yeah. Where they went up. And then also some of the pollution effects of eating where They

Maud: Yeah. They have to watch

what they didn’t use to.

they didn’t use

j: Yep. The modified liver. So you have a little bit of some of the science in there. So they have these modified livers to deal with the pollution. So probably

over time that evolved greater capacity for, cleaning.

nick: Now how are they dealing with the

microplastics?

Maud: Yeah.

they

don’t, they do have big,

they do

have big, livers. They

just, we’re,

We all have that.

That’s,

I was careful about the science in it. And [00:28:00] Dr. Mika Toska, is a friend and she was my science reader.

j: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Maud: She went through everything and, it was fun. Double checked it and we talked about it. and she used to work, for nasa.

j: Oh, Yeah, no, it, like I said just reading it though, there’s some little science tidbits in there that you go but then my brain just keeps going. I want more. I’m a sci-fi spec, speculative author, writer, and I do science, so I’m like, oh, how would this work?

Maud: Yeah,

I might have a little bit more

mermaid world

building in the second one again, mainly so I can compensate for like discussions. of Septic. tank policy.

j: That’s gonna be fun.

georgia: You poop

j: jokes in there I see. Makes in up.

Maud: choice do I have.

nick: Oh no, your arm twisted on that one.

j: Yeah,

yeah. There

it is. Yes.[00:29:00]

georgia: And

the of the Great Lakes.

Do

you know how

j: Yeah. I actually have, I, I have Lake Michigan’s depth because that’s what I knew we were be talking about, so that’s the only one I prepared on. The deepest point is 923 feet, so about as deep as a 70 story building.

nick: Oh

j: Oh, damn. Oh

georgia: Wow.

Wow. It’s

j: to

nick: that deep.

j: yeah. To MOD’s point, the surface area is about 22,400 square miles. So it’s about, it’s larger than the entire country of Croatia. So it’s a large body of water. And that’s Lake Michigan.

Lake Superior is bigger. It’s a lar it’s the larger of the Great Lake. So Yeah.

Maud: I love the expression inland Ocean. I really love that because

georgia: Oh yeah. That’s good.

Maud: What they are.

j: Yeah.

Maud: Yeah. Superior is

so

gorgeous too. No.

j: It

Maud: Offense Michigan, Yeah, it is.

Oh my

God. my God.

nick: Lake Mission’s, lake Michigan’s gonna get really upset by that state. I know. Yeah. That’s right’s it’s be

like,

Hey, next

week [00:30:00] Lake

j: Michigan,

georgia: the Mermaid

j: is the only

georgia: is gonna come over,

j: only Great Lake that is entirely in the us.

Maud: Yeah.

j: It’s us’ Great Lake. All the other one shares a border with Canada. So yeah. Lake Erie, lake Hu. Lake Superior Lake, Ontario.

Michigan. You can’t take Michigan? No. No matter how pretty superior is Lake Michigan is ours.

georgia: Oh, that’s interesting.

Yeah.

j: I didn’t even Yeah. So we got nobody but ourselves to blame for the contamination also, I guess that’s something.

level.

Maud: They’re

They’re all connected.

j: they are all interconnected. Yeah. Yeah. And like Michigan probably at some point was as bad as Lake Erie. So Lake Erie, like spontaneously com busted. It just caught

It was, Good. Yeah.

No. Yeah. Go for it. Yep.

Maud: Lake area is the most shallow.

j: Yeah. Yeah.

Maud: So it’s the most

Susceptible to,

j: to, pollution.

Yep.

Maud: But it’s improved a lot.

So I grew up in [00:31:00] Canton, Ohio which is about an hour and a half

to two.

South of Lake And It used to be really gross and then it improved a lot. And now of course, since we have that incredible environmentalist,

Running

the country

we’re all little worried

about what, what’s gonna happen with Great Lakes.

j: and I went to my college at Penn State Barron, which is in Erie. So we used to go, I remember friends that were from Erie, go, let’s go to the lake and wade in and do this. I’m like, I’m not getting in that lake. I’ve seen the videos of this lake that was just totally polluted.

But yeah they had they put in a great deal of money, time and effort to remediate that lake and at least have it where you can enjoy it as a natural resource again, instead of just being a, a kind of a, a dumping ground for in industrial waste and pollution.

nick: And bodies,

Maud: and as

because you all know, the

Great Lakes.

provide,

one 10th of the

[00:32:00] US

Are drinking water,

one half of Canada’s drinking water.

Great Whole, so we are we humans are in north America, are highly dependent on the Great Lakes. So we have a lot at stake.

j: Yeah. And they, they have overall about 21% of the world’s fresh water

in a great lake.

So on this water so much and we’re just like, you know what? Yeah. Yeah.

nick: Nah, let’s not take care of it. The

j: The funny thing

nick: don’t drink water.

j: Water. Is

Maud: we are, we, are

j: Good. Yeah. I

was

Maud: we trying?

j: I

was gonna

Maud: Go ahead.

j: The funny thing about it is that where. Mostly water ourselves and we have this resource and you go to talk to people about taking care of our watersheds and things like that.

It’s oh no, I don’t have time for that. And not even at a lazy level, it’s just I can’t be bothered with this thing that is sustaining us and is our kind of is

Without it, put in the back. of the book, there’s actually a lot of Good Great Lakes [00:33:00] nonprofits, so

Maud: I List as many as I could and their websites. and I had some people who are Non lazy activists double check. that

j: Good.

Yeah.

Maud: for me.

And

actually

the politics of those who love the lakes and want to preserve

them or even improve them are really interesting to me because it’s of course a coalition, like a lot of, causes are. And, you gotta include fishermen.

It’s a big there, there’s a, lot of recreational stuff that happens on the lakes

and that people absolutely swear by. So it’s

not an extra, it’s, not oh yeah.

And then occasionally I’ll go fishing. It’s like some people, a lot of people, it’s just huge.

Really huge. When there have

been some

spills and, catastrophes on various rivers that, that feed into some of the Great Lakes, there’s been a huge outcry. and you have environmentalists, you have the [00:34:00] recreational people you have, invasive species in various

groups, Trying To restock different lakes. So it’s pretty interesting. I think that, and when I was able. To do a book gig in Traverse City which is so much about the lake. And I loved it because

people were laughing.

A lot at my jokes, That’s always a good

feeling.

but it is, it’s really, the lake is a way of life,

georgia: Right.

Maud: We can, one, we have to feel lackadaisical sometimes. But I think there’s a lot of people who feel very passionately about the Great Lakes.

georgia: Right?

And

I think of the woman and her name was actually Alice and I, but Diane of the Dunes, we,

nick: I think we’ve touched on that

haven’t we?

georgia: I think we did a

j: in a Lighthouse

georgia: the Lighthouse but, that more about the Light Keeper, but I think we mentioned Okay.

Okay.

Diana, of the Dunes. But I just I, I have read books about her and [00:35:00] now it’s been a while, so I’m

going out on a limb here, but she was really, she was a student at, this was like turn of the century, but she was a student at University of Mm-hmm. And just being a woman, I think she studied math, I can’t remember. And, but she just decided I don’t want anything to do with that anymore. I don’t want anything to do with civilization anymore. And she just went and lived right next, in the dunes by the lake. But the thing that got her to come out of kind of her isolation was she came out to speak about different environmental issues about the lake.

And so I just, I think that, yeah, I really just the power of the lake and the passion.

j: When you, yeah I, I think as Maude was saying, when you go to the lake and you see it and you’re a little bit. Awestruck. It’s like going to see the Grand Canyon.

[00:36:00] Like when you look out, it’s just, you’re like, wow. That’s just, that is an impressive thing. And I remember when we first moved to Chicago, we were living in Hyde Park and I walked, I was like, I’m gonna go run, walked down, and then explore a little bit. And so I just went down and I’m walking and it was the first time I did it.

You get to feel like, wow, this is so cool. And you walk along the shore and you make that turn and then you see the city of Chicago downtown jetting out into the lake. And it was just, I felt that scene and planted the YAPS when Charleston Heston falls his knees. And, but I went, it was the opposite feeling.

It was like, oh, this is it’s this is so amazing right

now. It was like,

Maud: right? It’s. yeah, When people come visit, I was like, we gotta go do that. ’cause it’s so cool this you you build it up, like we turn this corner. It’s like you just, you have this surge of just all you’re like, oh, this is look at this, look at what they’ve done.

A deaf city and it’s so beautiful on the lake also, Do you go to 57th Street Beach?

j: Yeah, I think that’s where we Yeah. ’cause we lived

Maud: where it [00:37:00] was? Yeah. That’s my favorite beach.

love, the view we just see.

j: Yeah.

Called

Maud: Chicago the ary

georgia: The itself. The beach itself has this long sandy

Maud: shore,

so you can just even I think I started waiting this year in April.

Like the water’s really cold, but you can just weigh it out on the sandy, sho on

the sandy,

Stretch. And and then when the summer, when it warms up like now or soon,

There’s a lot of families that go there, a lot of little kids. In the san the sandy part ’cause it’s really shallow, far out.

And then you

can

go beyond that and have a good swim. It’s

amazing. It’s really

amazing.

j: It is really cool.

georgia: And also going in the winter time. And Like when it’s obviously not in the

Water, but just

seeing the ice in the, during the winter.

Oh, it’s it’s just like really

amazing.

nick: I don’t know. why

[00:38:00] sand and snow just don’t seem to mix

georgia: Just

j: They go together water

georgia: though. and

Maud: still go

gorgeous. And I

think that the lake is a place

of

hope

too. It’s

j: It’s

Maud: Very

sensual

and Yeah,

maybe mermaid still

live

j: Maybe

they do. And I was, some of the things just looking up during research this episode, but I learned that the Lake Michigan has underwater dunes and fossil beds, so it has these massive sand dunes and even ancient coral from a time when Mic, the Midwest was a tropical sea, and there’s actually petrified forest down there submerged underwater. Yeah. So there is this kind of almost, submerged other world. There’s

a mystery.

Maud: there’s a mystery to

j: I I don’t have pictures.

nick: No, like that we can

j: Oh, I’m sure you probably can find something. Yeah. People probably have

dove down.

nick: in the

the show

j: notes. Yes, you’re,

georgia: said that. for a while.

nick: I know, right? I felt like I had to.

j: the

[00:39:00] other thing

Is a shipwreck alley.

Like I also didn’t realize there’s over 1500 known shipwrecks are in Lake Michigan, and a lot of ’em are preserved because of the cold and water’s fresh. So you don’t have the kind of corrosive power of the salt as

you would in the ocean. So it’s there and there’s even a underwater preserve called the Manitou passage underwater preserve.

Wow. Yeah.

So it’s these cool facts I didn’t realize

about Lake Michigan, so Yeah. That’s

that’s so

georgia: awesome.

j: that’s some stuff, and even you probably can throw that into your novel, some of these

tidbits, these that’s right?

Maud: Each. Each gig I do, I get more people like

sharing their pet Things about, Or you’re a scientist. So

it’s your professional

Thing.

j: Yeah.

One of the, one of the interesting things, and this was way back, ’cause I, as I said when I was at Penn State Baron there was researchers there studying mussels. And mussels is an invasive species that, that is found in the Great Lakes and just taken over. And it was [00:40:00] interesting because they’re a nuisance in a number of ways, but one way is that they actually filtered a water in the lake, and they’re so efficient at it that the water is becoming unnaturally clear, which then disrupts nutrient cycles and food web.

So like lake trout and white fish, they’re becoming, they’re hard to compete,

because it’s like

Maud: they’re depriving Trisha food, but yeah. they are. It’s Beautifully.

clear.

j: yeah.

Maud: Also, just for laughs I have Evelyn, she can, she says at one point that

she’s got such

beautiful

skin because.

She uses like a ground up muscle shells as

j: Yeah.

Maud: of laughs and

Readings.

Yeah.

j: That’s So yeah,

it’s one of those interesting things. And the other thing is, as you can smell, lake Michigan in the summer months, there’s these cyanobacterial blooms in the warmer shallows and they produce a toxin called micro cysteines and they have a strong [00:41:00] odor. And so as you get these blooms, then you get this kind of smell off of the lake, and that’s what you’re probably smelling these cyanobacterial blooms.

People will say algal blooms, but they’re not algae. Algae is different than cyanobacteria. So just

wanted to clean Yeah, so yeah, algae is a eukaryotes. So it’s more closely related to plants. Terrestrial plants. They’re aquatic

Maud: okay. This

is good to know.

I think I did have the term

algae blooms in

there.

j: People say that all the time, but they’re usually blue green. It’s a historical misnaming, so people go blue green algae, but really that’s blue green cyanobacteria, which are photosynthetic bacteria, and they’re not directly related to algae. So it’s one of these it’s, it probably people aren’t gonna mark you wrong but they’ll know, they’ll be like, oh, that’s wrong.

georgia: Only

sur ’cause it’s,

Maud: well

For book number two because I

know bacterial will be in that

j: Yeah, There. So yeah. so that’s just

One of those things where people always go blue green algae, and it’s oh, it’s not algae. I know it’s, [00:42:00] people call it that, but it’s not technically. Yeah. So it’s just naming thing.

But yeah.

I

think we talked about that in the plant episode. I think

nick: so.

j: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

nick: like, know this information. I

j: know there it is. why

the rabbit holes all connect. That’s what we always say, so

georgia: I know this? Yeah.

nick: I have no need for this information.

Maud: I

do though.

I have, need for it.

j: yes.

nick: There you

you go.

You

go back to our plant episode. I feel like that one we covered I feel like we covered aquatic life in

j: We did, we talked about some aquatic plants. Yeah. Yeah.

Maud: I just do wanna put in a plug for Michigan State. I wanna put in a plug for Michigan State because I did do some interviews, there’s a lot of great environmental stuff coming out of Michigan State and also the different, the agricultural people who work for the state of Michigan, some of which come from Ms MSU. and I was able to interview a couple people

and. That was really fascinating. So there’s a lot of a [00:43:00] farm service thrust to a lot of the work and also a public facing commitment, if you want, you can get your arm talked off about different invasive species that interfere with blueberry crops and so forth.

So that was, there, there really is like the most wonderful unofficial coalition.

People

people who say specifically love Lake Michigan and our, and work or work and play and Lake Michigan. Oh, one other thing about that too is that the Michigan coast of Lake Michigan is just full of

beaches. So we, all of us technically own. At least part of Lake Michigan. Everyone who lives on or in the watershed, like we, it’s part, it’s ours,

right?

Our country is plural or whatever. But the other feeling of a kind of healthy [00:44:00] feeling of ownership is that a lot of people just grew up, just going to the beach.

Like we talked about it in Chicago, but also all the way up. All

the

way.

up, It’s just incredible how embedded it is in so many people’s growing up, there, sense of self, it is really nice. So in a way it isn’t it isn’t something to be preached about. It is something to just be tapped

in. people

who already have pleasure relationship. to

j: Leverage that to, to get people thinking about it

and Yeah.

Caring a little bit. Yeah. That’s, I don’t, I think people don’t realize sometimes they need to care about something or have to put effort like that into it. Or just even like you said, just reading or thinking about that, that this is happening outta sight out of mind

a level of, awareness.

georgia: Yeah. yeah.

Maud: Yeah,

j: Yeah,

Maud: We are very lucky.

to

live on the lake.

j: Definitely.

That was really cool. And

Maud: And I have to

[00:45:00] say personally too, it’s a point in history. I’m trying to

keep names out of this, but I wouldn’t say

it’s an entirely lucky moment in US

history.

not

for me.

georgia: Yeah. That would definitely not be the word to use.

Maud: The

land.

itself and the lakes and the water and Great Lakes, they do our sort of reminder. of Like how lucky we are,

georgia: right? And then And the national parks.

nick: Absolutely.

The National

georgia: the National parks and the park Rangers.

and,

the I’m

just saying there’s so many,

Maud: that’s Right, Not selling off public lands. yep. Okay.

georgia: Yeah.

Maud: You cannot tell all of us in the Midwest that’s a good idea.

and there it did get political. But what are we gonna do?

That’s our

life.

georgia: Yeah. That’s yeah.

j: Yeah.

So yeah, we’ll have, I guess authors and Have

to do, and maybe we’ll see another generation of Bee horror movies come outta it.

nick: The one movie that keeps coming to mind for me is [00:46:00] Idiocracy by Mike Judd. Because what they were using a Gatorade like drink to

georgia: I don’t I

j: don’t think, I’ve seen that damn me either. What?

georgia: South Park person? No no.

nick: of the Hill.

georgia: Oh, king of the Hill. Yeah, yeah, I haven’t seen that.

Oh,

nick: you should? A hundred percent.

Okay.

Yeah.

They were using a Gatorade like drink to water, the plants and everything. They’re like electrolytes. It’s what plants need.

georgia: Oh, geez.

nick: Yeah. There it

georgia: Oh, wow.

nick: this is,

j: This is, we don’t need that water.

nick: that’s essentially what they were thinking. What are you stupid that goes in the toilet? And it’s what? Yeah. A hundred percent recommend that film, especially in these days.

It, it’s a little too close to home.

j: Yeah.

georgia: I don’t,

j: All right. Let’s we can start the wrap up. Yeah. Do you got any, so you have a few more plugs you wanna throw in there? We’ll get these in the show notes also.

Maud: Yeah. I just wanna say this

was really fun.

really, yeah.

really enjoyed it So much. Thank you again. In

[00:47:00] terms of October events with the book.

Yeah.

We’ll be at Seminary co-op,

Talking about the book. And That’s the end of October.

The

date

is

j: I’ll put it in the show notes. You can just, we can get

Maud: Okay. Okay. The end of October, be at seminary co-op talking about mermaids and LA lazy, activists. And my discussant will be Zach Cahill.

Who’s wonderful artist and writer and friend. Zach is in there too.

Evelyn

is

trying to get him involved in money That’s right. Oh, yeah. Yes. I was like, I know that.

j: Yeah.

No, that’s right. Yes. Wedding

band that she’s stolen, I guess that was,

Hey

Maud: Yes. I wanna say

that all my friends who are

in there. in Little cameos. Yeah. I did get their permission for their

j: Yeah.

georgia: That’s

Maud: Zach is still

speaking to me. And yeah,

We’re gonna be

at seminary and have some fun with

it

And

And listen.

to [00:48:00] people

Also talk about what the lake means to them. and

j: Yeah,

Maud: uh, Environmentalism, not just with the, we’re all gonna die.

j: Yeah. Or the post-apocalyptic, like we, we did not heed the warning of, ah, Maud and the lazy activist.

And now you have to engage in, do

nick: you think Eve would survive in a post-apocalyptic world?

Eve. Evelyn. Jesus.

Maud: that’s

okay. The whole point is that

it’s a

A moment,

j: You’ve elevated

nick: her

to Eve.

now. it’s like

Maud: there they’re not.

That’s why she’s required to do eco work,

by her mermaid.

Maud: Yeah. So she can either do eco work or something like a lot or different versions of it. But this eco diplomacy is to make sure that it’s not an apocalypse. Yeah. So they’re not having any of that. They’re not helpless or helpless, but they are lazy, enjoy being [00:49:00] lazy.

j: Aren’t we All I was gonna say to

The point of water and how important it’s to us humans the novel Sea of Rust by Cargill and that’s it.

It’s a robot apocalypse

so

there, there’s a war between sentient machines and humans. And not to spoil it. ’cause like the first paragraph of the book. The robots find the last human and kill ’em.

And

the whole thing. You go,

Every movie,

Terminator humans put up a good fight, the Matrix, and it’s all us.

But in this book, what he said was, the robot says let’s poison all the water sources. And we don’t need you just go, all the humans if you can’t drink water,

they’re going to die.

So it was like this total strategy that, oh, the machine just said, this is what’s important to humans, so why fight ’em?

Why use nuclear weapons and all No, this, that they have to drink. So it was it

Maud: this is the opposite of

that.

j: right?

That’s

right. That’s what I’m saying. yes.

Maud: it’s

also not self righteous.

It’s Not self righteous. ’cause these [00:50:00] activists are like, they’re

fuckups, they’re funny,

they’re

just

j: yeah.

Maud: Playful.

and then they do what they have to do.

j: Yeah. That’s just how important water is that, when the machines become sentient, they. They go, you

know what? It’s but

It’s hard for humans to figure it out right now. Oh, let’s just dump all this crap in there. We don’t need that water. Who needs fresh water? We’ll just get Gatorade.

Gatorade

Maud: I’ll say specifically

for

what I’m imagining is your audience. So this is, this book is from Beyond Press in Hyde Park. Mike Phillips is the EIC, and they do mainly horror and

fantasy. Books, some books that are about Chicago.

And I wanna say for your listeners if they’re doing fantasy Mike is great to work with.

j: Yes.

Maud: press to work with, and I,

Like I said at the beginning of our talk, I have been around the block, right? I have this [00:51:00] is my eighth book. So I know I, when I say that, an editor and a publisher, it’s good to work with. I really mean it.

that’s a plug too.

j: Yeah, no, definitely. And I’m in, I have a story in the, that red line

Maud: Oh, the the I’m gonna get

that one.

j: yeah, so

Maud: Oh, wonderful.

j: working

with Mike and we, since I’m on campus, we met up and did some promo things, so No I’m excited about that. It was a fun, it was a fun kind of

aside from

getting stuff back to my agent but yeah. No, not about me. It’s about Maud so Yeah.

georgia: that’s

so cool.

j: myself.

Maud: we’re press

j: are, yeah I agree. Like working with Mike was really awesome and a lot of cool stuff, especially the fantasy and horror. So this was different. So when I started reading it, it’s a good, it’s a good read. I’m enjoying it. It, like you said, it’s very chaunty, very conversational, so it just flows and.

Yeah, The characters

are likable

in their perky

way, so

I’m looking forward to reading. Yeah. Yeah. So

yeah,

we’ll

have the links to the book on there and you can go see a [00:52:00] discussion at the seminary bookstore. We’ll have that link. Great bookstore, I dunno what time it is, but Plain Air right next to it. Great coffee shop so you can make a whole little evening out of it and

So yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, it was. so much for

Definitely. This was

a

great

Maud: Oh, thanks for inviting me. I just,

had a great time.

j: Yeah. Perfect. Nice. Alright, with that, you got me Joe here.

nick: you got

j: You got Nick. We got Nick

georgia: In

j: We’ve got Georgia and

nick: went down some watery

j: Watery

holes,

georgia: Fresh water

j: holes. Stay activated out there.

georgia: Ice

j: Stay safe. Love you.