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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't put to stuff.

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Speaker 1: I never told you a protection of I heart radio.

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Speaker 1: Oh my voice kind of gave out and that it

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Speaker 1: true things to come. What I'm just kidding? What Please

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Speaker 1: don't put a curse on my my money maker, moneymaker

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Speaker 1: and my money maker. So this brings us to another

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Speaker 1: edition of Sminty Fiction. I have a little teaser for

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Speaker 1: you all. We're at the end of my one shots,

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Speaker 1: which means we're going to move into a longer form,

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Speaker 1: continuous one what yes, which I'm very excited and nervous about.

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Speaker 1: Kind of nervous putting the us out there, but I

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Speaker 1: am excited. I think it'd be great, as always is.

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Speaker 1: If this is not your deal, totally cool. We only

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Speaker 1: do this once a month. It won't hurt my feelings. Um,

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Speaker 1: if you're like nope, not for me. Also, as always, Christina, amazing,

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Speaker 1: Thank you. These would not happen without Christina. She brings

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Speaker 1: it to life. Love it she does. So Samantha and

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Speaker 1: I have a lot of stuff going on in personal lives.

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Speaker 1: I know we've alluded to some I know everybody does.

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Speaker 1: But so this one might be a bit shorter because

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Speaker 1: there's some moving, there's some vacation perhaps. Yeah, yeah, so

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Speaker 1: a lot's going on right now. This one might be

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Speaker 1: a bit shorter. So this one is interesting for a

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Speaker 1: couple of reasons. We've talked before about dreams and dreaming, uh,

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Speaker 1: and how women's gender differences in dreams, but also how

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Speaker 1: in the pandemic my experience has been my dreams have

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Speaker 1: become more vivid and more wild than they ever have been.

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Speaker 1: And as of late, I've noticed I have a lot

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Speaker 1: more sleep paralysis happening where dreams are happening with the

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Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, and it's terrifying. It's so scary, but I

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Speaker 1: do get what I feel like, and I know that's

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Speaker 1: kind of a trope, and people make kind of it

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Speaker 1: really good ideas from my dreams. Hey, that's even better though. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: There's been so many I've written down where I just

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Speaker 1: have like the title in the basics and they are

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Speaker 1: in our like spent fiction folder because it might come

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Speaker 1: back to them. I had one last night where Sebastian

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Speaker 1: stand trying to kill me, but then no, I didn't.

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Speaker 1: I didn't, and then he became best friend. He was

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Speaker 1: mad about Winter Soldier costume, and so I guess that

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Speaker 1: was the grounds to kill me. And then he became

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Speaker 1: best friends with my my one of my best friends,

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Speaker 1: and I became very jealous. But anyway, this story comes

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Speaker 1: from that because this is actually a really vivid dream

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Speaker 1: that I had and my love of time travel horror.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any like thoughts opinions on time travel?

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Speaker 1: I love, I love a good trouble on time travel,

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Speaker 1: for sure. I like. I like that whole perspective because

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Speaker 1: I I really lived wishing we're And again, this is

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Speaker 1: very much may being a part of white culture, not

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Speaker 1: realizing how damaging it was. But like in the nineties

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Speaker 1: forties because I love the old school musicals, I love

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Speaker 1: so any of that, and I think fifties really wanted

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Speaker 1: to be a part of that, um not realizing as

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Speaker 1: an Asian woman, I wouldn't have done much. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: like their moments. And then also because the unknown of

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Speaker 1: way back when it like interesting, like you can get

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Speaker 1: some good stuff like Witchcraft and all of that, like

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Speaker 1: and it's just today and we know the good horror,

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Speaker 1: but when we talk about the vetch and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: but it throws it back, it feels even more ominous. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I Also, I'm somebody who loves puzzles, and I

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Speaker 1: feel like a good time travel movie. Our story I

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Speaker 1: like trying to put together like the pieces, and I

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Speaker 1: think there's a horror in thinking you can go back

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Speaker 1: and fix something and then it makes everything so much worse,

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Speaker 1: even worse. Okay, So with all of this in mind,

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Speaker 1: let us get into the fiction portion of this episode.

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Speaker 1: When I was eleven years old, a man knocked out

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Speaker 1: my door for crisp demanding knocks, and goose bumps broke

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Speaker 1: out over my skin. The hair on my arms stood up.

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Speaker 1: You are a long black coat. The skin was pale,

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Speaker 1: strikingly so. His eyes dark, had no hair, col permeated

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Speaker 1: the room, the heavy kind of cold that froze everything

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Speaker 1: in its tracks, that slowed time itself. My mom, a small,

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Speaker 1: petite woman, was swallowed in his shadow. He smelled like vinegar.

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Speaker 1: It was overwhelming. He looked out of place in our

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Speaker 1: small apartment. A specter looming in the doorway. They spoke

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Speaker 1: in hushed tones, his voice avoid I watched out up

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Speaker 1: the corner of my eye from behind my couch. I

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Speaker 1: thought he might be a tax collector, or there to

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Speaker 1: evict us. There was a seriousness about my mom's shoulders.

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Speaker 1: That reminded me of how she held herself when she

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Speaker 1: spoke with a bank on the phone. She stepped back

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Speaker 1: to let him inside. The way he moved was unnatural,

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Speaker 1: as though he was gliding. They went into the small kitchen,

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Speaker 1: my mom taking a seat at the table as the

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Speaker 1: man stood in the corner. The harsh fluorescent light of

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Speaker 1: the kitchen painted shadows on his face, of scaring his

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Speaker 1: features from his jacket. He produced a piece of paper,

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Speaker 1: sliding it onto the table, followed by a pin. I

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Speaker 1: watched my mom as she read it, her head in

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Speaker 1: her hand. He stood in silence, watching, waiting. My mother's

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Speaker 1: shoulders slumped. She signed the paper in the corner. The

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Speaker 1: man smiled, a thin, garish smile in the light. Something

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Speaker 1: shifted in the air shivered. I couldn't see his eyes,

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Speaker 1: but I knew he was looking at me. He collected

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Speaker 1: the paper with reverence, pocketing it in his long black jacket.

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Speaker 1: He murmured something, stepping out of the kitchen and into

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Speaker 1: the dining room. My mom followed behind him, her arms

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Speaker 1: wrapped around her middle. For the first time I looked

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Speaker 1: into his eyes. They were empty, though I desperately wanted to.

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Speaker 1: I couldn't look away. Ten years from now, your life

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Speaker 1: is going to change, he said. The statement was flat, lifeless.

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Speaker 1: The moment passed, he showed himself out, walking out of

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Speaker 1: our lives. I assumed forever. I hoped forever. I stared

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Speaker 1: at the door until my mom came and knelt in

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Speaker 1: front of me, blocking it from view. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

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Speaker 1: Over the years I asked my mom about this incident,

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Speaker 1: but she just got the same guarded smile, with a

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Speaker 1: vague explanation about a mortgage before she changed the subject.

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Speaker 1: Not one birthday went by I didn't think about it

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Speaker 1: my twenty one birthday, and the life changing promise loomed

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Speaker 1: a larger and larger the closer I got to it.

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Speaker 1: That wasn't the only reason I could never forget that day.

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Speaker 1: I saw him the man. I saw him everywhere. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: it was just a flash, a reflection in a window

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Speaker 1: and the TV. Others it was more of appealing, a

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Speaker 1: pervading sense of dread and cold, always accompanied by the

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Speaker 1: strong smell of vinegar. Once I was in a movie

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Speaker 1: theater and this presence was so strong I swore there

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Speaker 1: was a hand on my shoulder that I could feel

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Speaker 1: his empty, vacuous smile next to my ear. I ran

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Speaker 1: out of the theater. My friends made fun of me

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Speaker 1: for it for years. Sometimes I saw him, not a shadow,

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Speaker 1: not a reflection, standing there, watching, smiling. I pretended I

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Speaker 1: couldn't see him until he went away, but he never

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Speaker 1: truly went away. I jerk awake in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the night, convinced someone had been standing over me only

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Speaker 1: moments before. I only told one person about this, my

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Speaker 1: best friend Katie. We jokingly called the apparition fine car.

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Speaker 1: There are things you don't question as a kid. We

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Speaker 1: moved into a house, a big one, after so many

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Speaker 1: years in a small apartment worrying about money. It was

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Speaker 1: the height of luxury. My mom became increasingly distant, hurt,

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Speaker 1: but her armor was seemingly unyielding. Soon after the move,

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Speaker 1: my friend Katie bought Awuiji board over for a sleepover.

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Speaker 1: With nervous anticipation, we laid it out, giggling, unsure what

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Speaker 1: to do. We asked it about boys, jerking away and

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Speaker 1: laughing at the first signs of tentative movement, asking each

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Speaker 1: other if the other moved the cursor, and both the

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Speaker 1: humanly denying it. Let's talk to fine car, Katie asked,

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Speaker 1: excited to her, the specter that followed me around was

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Speaker 1: a source of morbid curiosity, or she felt excitement. I

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Speaker 1: felt fear. I wanted to know more about him too, though,

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Speaker 1: And whatever he'd spoken to my mom about, whatever contract

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Speaker 1: they signed that left me with his shadow, is fine

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Speaker 1: gard here, she asked. The cursor stayed resolutely still. My

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Speaker 1: friend tried again. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then slowly, surely,

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Speaker 1: it slid across the board, the window, coming to a

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Speaker 1: stopover Yes. We both stared at it, then at each other,

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Speaker 1: shaking our heads at the silent question. Neither of us

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Speaker 1: had moved it. What do you want? Another pause? We

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Speaker 1: waited with bated breath. The familiar cold settled heavy in

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Speaker 1: the air, the faintest sound of a whisper, the smell

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Speaker 1: of vinegar. We read the letters aloud as the cursor

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Speaker 1: skittered across the board, as oh oh, and my stomach

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Speaker 1: clenched with fear. Then the cursor twitched and we both

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Speaker 1: kerked away from it. As it burned. It began moving

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Speaker 1: erratically on its own as we watched, and growing horror

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Speaker 1: with jerky movements. The indicator darted and halted over a

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Speaker 1: string of numbers the date of my twenty one birthday.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly he was right behind me. I knew if I

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Speaker 1: turned around, I'd see his two pale face and two

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Speaker 1: empty black eyes. I frozen terror, the cursor's movements growing

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Speaker 1: even more frantic, My heart pounded against my ribcage. Racing

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Speaker 1: out of control. Panicked, I threw the board against the wall.

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Speaker 1: Silence descended, interrupted only by my gasping breaths. Then my friend,

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Speaker 1: um awesome, she declared it. I never used the Wigi

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Speaker 1: board again. By the time I was twenty, my mother

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Speaker 1: and I may as well have been strangers. My impassioned

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Speaker 1: fee for her to talk to me, to look at me,

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Speaker 1: was met with silence, her expression unmoved. The specter was

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Speaker 1: an almost constant, now a shadow I'd been forced to accept.

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Speaker 1: Dread saturated my life, and I became a shadow of myself,

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Speaker 1: a certainty taking stronger hold every day that I was

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Speaker 1: getting closer and closer to my execution. And then scientists

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Speaker 1: announced that they discovered time travel, that they were working

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Speaker 1: on a machine and training their first travelers, as they

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Speaker 1: called them. Everything was about to change. They said, jubilant.

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Speaker 1: They set the date for the first voyage, the same

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Speaker 1: date as twenty one birthday. I was in my apartment

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Speaker 1: when I found out. My stomach dropped, tried to swallow

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Speaker 1: and couldn't. This couldn't be a coincidence, couldn't The news

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Speaker 1: reported on their progress. As the day ticked closer, they

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Speaker 1: speculated about the date they'd go to forward or back.

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Speaker 1: I already knew what date they choose, ten years earlier,

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Speaker 1: the same day the mysterious specter first knocked on my door,

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Speaker 1: but my twenty one birthday arrived at the entire world

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Speaker 1: watched with excitement as they powered up the machine, wires

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Speaker 1: and coils whirring, a city hum filling the room as

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Speaker 1: scientists gave updates on the status of machine. The travelers

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Speaker 1: stepped in the glass case, four men and women, excited, nervous.

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Speaker 1: The term I count down blaired or the humming intensive,

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Speaker 1: then zero. A tearing sound d the air, one that

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Speaker 1: you could feel in your bones. The travelers were screaming

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Speaker 1: horrific primal sounds as they were ripped apart and reassembled

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Speaker 1: again in again, until they seemingly were shorn out of existence.

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Speaker 1: The broadcast cut out the world ended that day. I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure how long I stared blankly ahead, waiting. There

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Speaker 1: was a knock on my door, four sharp knocks, dream like.

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Speaker 1: I answered it. The man who had haunted me for

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Speaker 1: years stood there fully corporeal, just as he had a

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Speaker 1: decade ago. Behind where once the landscape had been burdened,

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Speaker 1: it was now desolate, the sky purple and angry, even

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Speaker 1: though it was the middle of the day. Strange creatures twisted,

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Speaker 1: all teeth and claws and tentacles, snarling, shambling and galloping

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Speaker 1: and screeching. The man smiles that lipless smile, his eyes

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Speaker 1: brighter than I'd ever seen them, some unidentifiable quality burning

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Speaker 1: within With purposeful movements. He reached into his jacket pocket

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Speaker 1: and pulled out a crisply folded piece of paper. He

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Speaker 1: held it out to me. Shock dictated my actions. I

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Speaker 1: reached out and took it. When I unfolded it, certain

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Speaker 1: words stuck out to me. Tethered fixed point, my mom's signature,

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Speaker 1: the date of collection, today's date. You're one of the travelers,

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Speaker 1: I said, as the fabric of reality was torn asunder

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Speaker 1: behind him. He smiled. Images invaded my head as he

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Speaker 1: stared at me, sharing his memories, images of a cavernous

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Speaker 1: darkness and screaming and pain of being reputedly torn apart,

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Speaker 1: impossibilities and monsters and demons as time lost meaning and

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Speaker 1: reality collapsed in on itself, gigantic creatures roaring, evolving and unnatural,

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Speaker 1: the answer to our summons, rushing into the tear we created,

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Speaker 1: watching existing, aging and ending pain, loss of self, mutating,

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Speaker 1: and then arriving finally to the location in time they'd

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Speaker 1: sought after, no longer quite human, aged and monstrous, unable

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Speaker 1: to return home, furious, Ten years to weight seemed like

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Speaker 1: nothing compared to the near eternity they'd spent in a hellscape,

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Speaker 1: exposed to so much horror as the world was unmade,

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Speaker 1: but they were unmore from time outside of it. Discordant

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Speaker 1: the contract was only meaningful, and that the intent inherent

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Speaker 1: in it provided a thread for a lost traveler to follow,

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Speaker 1: a guiding light my mother signing that contract rang across

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Speaker 1: the universe until it reached its terminus, a fixed point

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Speaker 1: in a destabilized universe. He'd followed me, shifting in and out,

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Speaker 1: a shadowy constant in my life, tethered to me as

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Speaker 1: I guided him back home. His energy manifesting and starts

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Speaker 1: and stops as he grew more powerful. The closer we

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Speaker 1: both arrived at our destined meeting at the end of

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Speaker 1: the world, and in return, I was not unmade, as

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Speaker 1: humans all around us screamed, transformed as their cells destabilized

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Speaker 1: and reconstituted into twisting, mindless, pained creatures. But now, I asked,

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Speaker 1: He smiled and held out his hand. Haven't we been

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Speaker 1: here before? Maybe we will be again and we're back.

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that fiction bit. Okay, So a

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Speaker 1: couple of things on this one. Like I said, this

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Speaker 1: was based on a very vivid dream that I had

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Speaker 1: and my love of time travel. So I believe I've

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Speaker 1: talked about it before on the show. But vinegar is

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Speaker 1: a real thing. I hesitated real, but it is something

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Speaker 1: that I believed that I saw as a child, and

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Speaker 1: I'm sure it was like the creepy child from a

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Speaker 1: movie who can see ghosts that they can't see or whatever.

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Speaker 1: I am very very confident that I was just dealing

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Speaker 1: with trauma. And also I had a friend who would

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Speaker 1: really prop up. We both liked horror, we both like

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Speaker 1: these kinds of things, and she would really prop that

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Speaker 1: up so I would smell this vinegar and I would

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Speaker 1: see this figure, and uh, my friends knew, they knew

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Speaker 1: about vinegar. And the Luigi board instant is also true,

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Speaker 1: and I just want to, you know, put out there.

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Speaker 1: I love horror. I don't particularly believe in ghosts or anything,

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Speaker 1: but I don't dismiss that I was going through something

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Speaker 1: and it felt real at that time. But yeah, it

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Speaker 1: did feel like something always hang over me and always

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Speaker 1: watching me. And I again, I think that was my trauma,

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Speaker 1: but that was part of the inspiration of this story too.

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Speaker 1: The title I got from again. I love these technological

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Speaker 1: um of applying these technological terms to these human, deep

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Speaker 1: human experiences that we all go through. Uh. Delete culture

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Speaker 1: is a term that refers to an idea that you

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Speaker 1: can just post something and then delete it and it's gone,

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Speaker 1: but it's never actually gone. And so this idea in

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Speaker 1: terms of like contracts and time travel, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: I just really like the title. I do think it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: The idea of a parent selling the future of their

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Speaker 1: child knowing that in like a ten years time in

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Speaker 1: this case, their life is going to go terribly wrong.

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Speaker 1: But in that ten years you're going to have your fame,

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Speaker 1: your fortune, or whatever it is. I find that really fascinating,

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Speaker 1: especially in our culture of and this is broad generalization,

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Speaker 1: but in our culture of seeing kind of like pushing

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Speaker 1: kids from a very young age to be Olympic athletes

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Speaker 1: or actors or whatever it is that the parents kind

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Speaker 1: of making this decision and then really pushing. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in the best case scenario, that works out great for everybody,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't always. It doesn't always. So that is

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Speaker 1: one thing that I've just been thinking about, I guess

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Speaker 1: on my mind and kind of that whole signing of

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Speaker 1: a contract and not worrying like we're not gonna worry

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Speaker 1: about that now. We'll deal with that later. We'll find

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Speaker 1: a way out of it. We'll find a way out

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Speaker 1: of it. And then you can't. And I clearly have

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Speaker 1: a whole thing about like knocking and somebody coming, like

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Speaker 1: somebody being there, that it's mysterious. So I'm getting like

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Speaker 1: vibes just thinking about it. But also, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to be real honest to admit the because I bet

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Speaker 1: some of you picked up on it. I can't remember

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Speaker 1: how it ended. The dream. I don't remember how the

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Speaker 1: dream ended, so I made up like I remember all

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Speaker 1: the stuff leading up to it, but it's kind of

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Speaker 1: without an ending, and it felt appropriate for a time

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Speaker 1: travel story. Also, those are my nightmares when something doesn't end,

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Speaker 1: Like when something doesn't end on the movie. I need

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Speaker 1: an ending. I needed closure, which is one of the

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Speaker 1: ways I prevent from being scared from a movie is

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Speaker 1: I need to see an ending. So right, no, it is.

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Speaker 1: It's upsetting. There's no real ending, and I just wanted

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Speaker 1: to put that out there. I'm gonna be a real

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Speaker 1: honest because I'm sure some of you were like, wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, I'm not the only one that does it.

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Speaker 1: They're playing movies that just sort of end. So as always,

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Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed, and yeah, I look out for

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Speaker 1: more interesting fiction content in the future. And as always too,

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Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for something in the public domain

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Speaker 1: we could read, that would be awesome, So police in

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Speaker 1: those are way our email step media, mom stuff at

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Speaker 1: iHeart nea dot com. You can find us on Twitter

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Speaker 1: and moms the podcast, or Instagram at stuff I've Never

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Speaker 1: told You. Thanks as always to our super producer Christine

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Speaker 1: making the magic happen us, and thanks to you for

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Speaker 1: listening someone ever told you. Subrotection of I Heeart Radio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcast on I Heart Radio is via radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple podcast or regul listen to your favorite shows