Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your
Speaker 1: podcast that is expertly introduced every single time by Margaret Kildroy,
Speaker 1: who is me and in particular, I also want to
Speaker 1: introduce Caitlyn Deronte. I don't know why. It's in particular,
Speaker 1: I really prove to lie about the first thing that
Speaker 1: I said. But Hi, Caitlin, how are you? Can you
Speaker 1: save me?
Speaker 2: Oh? It's here, I come to the rescue. Caitlin in particular.
Speaker 1: Name Caitlin is the host of the Bechdel Cast, where
Speaker 1: they talk about movies, but they're not allowed to talk
Speaker 1: about men and who are in the movies because yeah,
Speaker 1: which has ever made this joke?
Speaker 2: Because every movie is about men? So yeah, kind of
Speaker 2: really say like five words to each other and then
Speaker 2: we have to end the episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else I can talk to women
Speaker 1: about besides men. Oh, there's a bunch of men in
Speaker 1: this episode last Monday head well whatever, there's also some
Speaker 1: women in it, so, including Sophie. Stop. Sophie's the producer.
Speaker 1: Ian is our audio editor who can't say Hi, Hi Ian, Hello?
Speaker 1: Unwomen did our theme music? And this is part two
Speaker 1: in our Derive through Surrealism, which will piss off some
Speaker 1: situation as somewhere because the situations didn't like the surrealists,
Speaker 1: and then the ones who invented the concept of derief,
Speaker 1: but it was based on the surrealists. That's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. Last time we talked about a
Speaker 1: bunch of shit THEYD in World War Two, because I
Speaker 1: figured i'd start with some of the action. This time,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with their precursors. I'm actually not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm just gonna talk about some people who inspired
Speaker 1: them because they some of them inspire me too. Some
Speaker 1: of them I don't like. Yeah, so let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Okay. In one of the last episodes, we did not
Speaker 1: me and Caitlin but means we talked about John Henry,
Speaker 1: the guy who beat the steam engine? Right, and I
Speaker 1: actually was, wait, I want to ask I ask everyone
Speaker 1: this now, do you know that John Henry was a
Speaker 1: real person? I M.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a pretty generic ass sounding name.
Speaker 1: So, oh, the like the guy who beat the steam
Speaker 1: engine in the song maybe this is the different rocks
Speaker 1: we live under.
Speaker 2: I don't know this reference.
Speaker 1: Okay, never mind, there's this like myth about the like
Speaker 1: like John Henry is a steel driving man and he's
Speaker 1: faster than any machine and he like beats the steam
Speaker 1: drill and then he dies.
Speaker 2: Right, I okay, I am familiar with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a real person. We did a whole episode
Speaker 1: about it, and he was a black convict who went
Speaker 1: on to go and serve as the model for Superman
Speaker 1: and Captain America. Therefore all modern comics hmmm. And our
Speaker 1: guest prop pointed out that history keeps proving again and
Speaker 1: again that black people invented everything, and he's not wrong.
Speaker 1: I have this pet theory that I'm working on, which
Speaker 1: is that basically everything to cool, everything cool that comes
Speaker 1: out of is based on coo Europeans looking around and
Speaker 1: being like, oh God, our society is evil and shitty,
Speaker 1: what is better and finding inspiration from colonized people, indigenous people,
Speaker 1: enslave people, and their descendants. These Western folks are desperately
Speaker 1: trying to counteract the shittiest parts of their society, which
Speaker 1: plays into the history of appropriation, capitalism and blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. But it's also really interesting and so
Speaker 1: this is my way of saying, a bunch of the
Speaker 1: people who inspired the surrealists were black, and even though
Speaker 1: actually there were a ton of black surrealists, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about them later, but they're not the face of
Speaker 1: the movement. I want to talk about this guy named
Speaker 1: Pascal Beverly Randolph. I'm just gonna assume you haven't heard
Speaker 1: of him, because I hadn't heard of him, and no
Speaker 1: one I know has probably heard him unless you're into
Speaker 1: like specific occultist stuff. I have not. He is fucking wild.
Speaker 1: He is one of the forefathers of American occultism. He
Speaker 1: was a sex magician and a spiritualist.
Speaker 2: Define sex magician. Oh we're gonna okay, good, sorry to
Speaker 2: beat you. Yeah no, no, actually, in not fucked up ways.
Speaker 2: I think that's what's the thing that's wild is I
Speaker 2: am describing everything that would be a shitty con man
Speaker 2: m hm. Instead he is an earnest seeker of wisdom
Speaker 2: who is trying to help people and succeeds. Okay, great,
Speaker 2: it's like the really wildest story. He may or may
Speaker 2: not have been an actual doctor. He certainly called himself one,
Speaker 2: speaking of things that are very con manny. He if
Speaker 2: I had known about him before I started this four parter,
Speaker 2: he might have gotten some episodes on his own. He's
Speaker 2: just really fucking cool.
Speaker 1: He was born in New York City in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: five to a free black mother and a white father.
Speaker 1: Through his white dad, he may or may not have
Speaker 1: been descended from this guy, William Randolph, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of the Colony of Virginia, which means that our
Speaker 1: black sex magician who helped inspire surrealism might have been
Speaker 1: related to everyone from founding father and third President Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson through the Confederate General Robert E.
Speaker 3: Lee.
Speaker 1: Some scholars think he made of his pedigree in order
Speaker 1: to confront racism in his career, because racism was a
Speaker 1: major impediment in his career, which like fair whatever.
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, I would make up all. I would say,
Speaker 2: I have two masters degrees. Yeah, it's weird because they're
Speaker 2: both in screenwriting, just from different schools. Yeah, University of
Speaker 2: Boston and Boston University. Yeah, congratulations. We are less than
Speaker 2: ten minutes in. So Pascal's dad runs out on the family.
Speaker 2: I'm sure race is a factor here, the white dad.
Speaker 2: His mom died of cholera when he was six. I'm
Speaker 2: sure race and its attended poverty is a factor. Here
Speaker 2: and he grew up homeless in nineteenth century five.
Speaker 1: Points Manhattan, which is not an easy time. That's like
Speaker 1: the like bad part of there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: good parts of Manhattan. Twenty five. He taught himself how
Speaker 1: to read and write, and then he fucked off on
Speaker 1: a sailboat as a cabin boy in a deckhand and
Speaker 1: saw some of the world. He came back after five years.
Speaker 1: He worked as a boot black, a dyer, and a barber.
Speaker 1: At some point he converted to Roman Catholicism. It did
Speaker 1: not stick, and he studied mysticism everywhere he went, and
Speaker 1: then he got involved in the spiritualist movement. I assume
Speaker 1: everyone has heard Jamie Loftus's series Ghost Church, but in
Speaker 1: case you haven't, have you ever heard of Jamie Loftus Klein.
Speaker 2: I know the name, yeah, but I haven't. We have
Speaker 2: never met. We've just we've we've done a podcast together
Speaker 2: for seven years, but we've never met face to face.
Speaker 1: And well, one of you is dead and being spoken
Speaker 1: to by a spiritual media. No, oh, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: it's me.
Speaker 2: Oh dead. I wasn't going to tell you if I've
Speaker 2: been dead the whole time. Is this the sixth sense.
Speaker 1: So Ghost Church is a podcast that talks about the
Speaker 1: spiritualist movement, and it's like people who do seances and shit.
Speaker 1: That was wildly popular in the nineteenth century. It was
Speaker 1: actually remarkably tied into radical politics in a way that
Speaker 1: I did not expect to keep running across spiritualists as
Speaker 1: I do this podcast. He gets involved in the spiritualist movement.
Speaker 1: He doesn't stick with it, but he's there for a while,
Speaker 1: and he goes on behalf of that movement around much
Speaker 1: of the world. He studies at least somewhere between being
Speaker 1: a deckhand and be working with the spiritualists. He goes
Speaker 1: to at least Cuba, France, England, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt.
Speaker 1: And you wouldn't believe how hard I had to work.
Speaker 1: You might believe how hard I had to work to
Speaker 1: dig up more than just traveled in Africa and find
Speaker 1: an actual name of a specific country, right if Africa
Speaker 1: is a country, which it's not. Along the way, probably
Speaker 1: when he was about twenty five, Pascal married a black
Speaker 1: woman and had three kids with her, though it's the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, so only one survives to adulthood. Fourteen years later,
Speaker 1: they get divorced, and he marries a white Irish woman
Speaker 1: with whom he had another kid. And both of his
Speaker 1: wives were his actual partners and spiritual practitioners of their
Speaker 1: own and he I think kept up with all the kids,
Speaker 1: and he didn't do what his dad had done. And
Speaker 1: also I had to look this up. I was like,
Speaker 1: how did he marry a New York State is one
Speaker 1: of the very few states in the US that has
Speaker 1: never outlawed interracial marriage, so it was even legal for
Speaker 1: him to marry that Irish woman. But he didn't last
Speaker 1: long in a spiritualist movement because he wasn't a con man.
Speaker 1: He was probably lying here and there about his past.
Speaker 1: His black wife may or may not have been an indigenous,
Speaker 1: but was absolutely selling Native American medicine for a living.
Speaker 1: But he he wasn't a con man because he wasn't
Speaker 1: He was seeking actual trances, right, And he was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you all are just doing weird shit on stage or
Speaker 1: stage magicians. This is not of interest to me. You know.
Speaker 1: He was specifically into being mixed race. He didn't love
Speaker 1: he didn't love the way that people exoticized him. But
Speaker 1: he talked about how he channeled multiple racial identities and
Speaker 1: it helped him channel the spirits. He said, quote, I
Speaker 1: owe my successes to my conglomerate blood, my troubles and
Speaker 1: poverty to the same source. And by eighteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: he leaves a spiritualist movement. He's like, y'all's trances are bullshit.
Speaker 1: You're faking, and you're a bunch of racists, and you're
Speaker 1: claiming to be activists trying to make the world better,
Speaker 1: but you're just doing it for clout and money and
Speaker 1: fuck you. He also, in contrast to spiritualist teachings, he
Speaker 1: was basically a universalist. Instead of believing that only select
Speaker 1: souls are immortal, he was like, every soul is equal,
Speaker 1: every soul is immortal. At one point he moved to
Speaker 1: Boston and declared himself a medical doctor because he'd read
Speaker 1: lots of books on the subject. So he's shaking her
Speaker 1: head now the hand is on the face. I like
Speaker 1: how this just as easily could be a setup for
Speaker 1: someone who just turns into a terrible cult leader, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: for sure. But he's like the good person one as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, you know. He set up
Speaker 1: the first Resicrucian societies in the US, which I had
Speaker 1: to look up. It's an occultist movement that goes back
Speaker 1: to the early seventeenth century in Europe. Basically, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's like a secret order of like secret knowledge that's
Speaker 1: going to like set the world right. He labeled his
Speaker 1: shit as resacrution. He said that he admitted this later
Speaker 1: because he had a lot of spiritual teachings and since
Speaker 1: he was black, no one was going to take him
Speaker 1: seriously unless he gave it a label that like white
Speaker 1: people were already like new and we're familiar with. And
Speaker 1: the current order that he started doesn't like to talk
Speaker 1: about their founder's sex magic. But he goes around and
Speaker 1: he's traveling. He's forming secret societies all over the place,
Speaker 1: or at least claiming to some of them. Might have
Speaker 1: been like I set one up in Denver and it
Speaker 1: was me and I swear there was like fifty guys there,
Speaker 1: you know. But he had all these spiritual teachings. It
Speaker 1: was the sex, drugs and rock and roll type thing.
Speaker 1: Too early for rock and roll, but sex and drugs,
Speaker 1: especially hashish, could lead to spiritual enlightenment when paired with study,
Speaker 1: according to him. And he's selling all this shit through
Speaker 1: mail order, Like really, I'm setting it all up, right,
Speaker 1: But half of the shit that he's selling through a
Speaker 1: mail order is free, and all of his prices are
Speaker 1: like rock bottom, like barely breaking even because he's not
Speaker 1: a grifter, and he seemed to be into free love,
Speaker 1: not as I want to be a cult leader and
Speaker 1: have a million lover's way, but an actual women's liberation
Speaker 1: way like we were talking about last time. Right, It's
Speaker 1: so funny that I'm so skeptical of like free love
Speaker 1: and all that shit, even though like polyamory is like
Speaker 1: a fairly major part of modern queer culture, you know, right,
Speaker 1: but also as many of the same problems.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, that's the thing, the lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of yeah, like liberating movements can get and have
Speaker 2: been weaponized against the people who are Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: but yeah, I see what you mean. But yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: polyamory all the way, Yeah, said Caitlin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also was a gender rebel and probably pansexual.
Speaker 1: He also makes the oldest reference to a non binary
Speaker 1: gender with a specific name that I've ever read. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's other ones, but the oldest one I've ever read.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, I believe in love all the way through,
Speaker 1: and while I live, I will help every man, woman
Speaker 1: and the in the betweenities to win, obtain, intensify, deep
Speaker 1: and purify, strengthen and keep it in betweenity just between
Speaker 1: these okay, between the y Yeah, I love it. I
Speaker 1: know that was non binary, Like, no, I'm not non binary,
Speaker 1: I'm a between.
Speaker 3: Of the Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also declared that earthly gender was provisional, that your
Speaker 1: soul itself isn't gendered, just your body on earth, and
Speaker 1: that God was both genders. He also taught both feminine
Speaker 1: and masculine magic, but that was intentionally the gender of
Speaker 1: the magic, not the practitioner, which, as my weird tangent,
Speaker 1: is fairly Odin of him. Do you know that Odin
Speaker 1: practice women's magic? No, the like every fucking nazis favorite
Speaker 1: god Odin you know, oh.
Speaker 2: Because of right Norse mythology.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah yeah, And he's like presented as like as
Speaker 1: if he he's the all Father, right, although I like
Speaker 1: the LGBT supportive Pagans who are like Odin is the
Speaker 1: all Father, not the so Father, but he willingly gives
Speaker 1: up his eye. This is a complete tangent, But I
Speaker 1: wrote into the script because I like this story, he
Speaker 1: drinks from the pool of knowledge. He gives up his
Speaker 1: eye to drinkrom the pool of knowledge. He learned satyr,
Speaker 1: which is women's magic and is also the magic of
Speaker 1: men who take the submissive role with other men, because
Speaker 1: all throughout history running this thing where instead of like
Speaker 1: there being a stigma against men being gay, there's a
Speaker 1: stigma against men being the receptive partner in sex. This
Speaker 1: tangent brought to you by Margaret's Adhd the Pascal. He
Speaker 1: also wrote, quote, it don't follow that all who wear
Speaker 1: the penis are in soul true males, or that a
Speaker 1: vagina is the sign of womanness, which pushes him so
Speaker 1: the fuck far ahead of his time from a sexology
Speaker 1: point of view. Seriously, he skipped several steps. I was
Speaker 1: like reading like some people were like, oh, he like
Speaker 1: predated the inversion theory of late nineteenth century stuff. He didn't.
Speaker 1: He skipped that entirely. He went to fucking modern trans theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he rules.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: By doing sex magic, the stuff he taught, he promised
Speaker 1: people better sex, better health, women's liberation, and also the
Speaker 1: kids you make during sex magic will be smarter.
Speaker 2: So wait, okay, I still am not clear on the
Speaker 2: definition of sex magic and sex magician.
Speaker 1: I am not as versed on this because most of
Speaker 1: the time when I meet someone who describes himself as
Speaker 1: a sex magician, I am run screaming the opposite direction, sure,
Speaker 1: which is not fair to many people who practice all
Speaker 1: kinds of shit that are as cool and like enrich
Speaker 1: as people's lives. I just distrust men. But I believe overall,
Speaker 1: he's like turning talking about turning sex into ritual and
Speaker 1: like working on like consciously developing like other ways to
Speaker 1: have sex, and like be very conscious about sex. That's
Speaker 1: my inference. I don't actually wrote like forty some books,
Speaker 1: and I mostly just read about him instead of like
Speaker 1: reading his books.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so it's time to read forty books, you know.
Speaker 2: Apparently not me. I'm busy playing Zelda.
Speaker 1: Have you started the new Zelda?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I just did like four days ago, and I've done
Speaker 2: nothing else.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you didn't cancel this week.
Speaker 2: So I honestly was like, I was like, can I
Speaker 2: get away with playing the game while.
Speaker 1: I'm I mean, I'm playing Baller's Gate three right now,
Speaker 1: but that's different.
Speaker 2: Sort No, But I took time out of my busy,
Speaker 2: Zelda schedule to talk with you your wife.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. So his slogan,
Speaker 1: tied to his dislike for church and traditional marriage, was
Speaker 1: quote love forever against the world. And he believed that
Speaker 1: as we learn to unlock ourselves, we'll be able to
Speaker 1: bring in a new world, a new epo of human history.
Speaker 1: And this is where he starts getting kind of surrealist, right.
Speaker 1: And he's also he has like two very different lives.
Speaker 1: He has like himself as a sex magician and a
Speaker 1: traveling actually oddly not a con man, doing all the
Speaker 1: same things that conman do. And then also he was
Speaker 1: an abolitionist and he was involved in political stuff, and
Speaker 1: like largely the two didn't affect each other, right, Like
Speaker 1: he didn't hide them, I don't think. But he was
Speaker 1: all about abolition as a pre Civil war, He's going
Speaker 1: around touring the South talking about abolition, spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time in New Orleans, hanging out with voodoo priestesses,
Speaker 1: and like being a free black man from New York
Speaker 1: and voluntarily going to the South is like braves shit,
Speaker 1: very dangerous. He took a gradualist rather than revolutionary stance,
Speaker 1: which tended to offend his fellow abolitionists for good reason.
Speaker 1: But whatever, he had more skin of the game than
Speaker 1: I did do or whatever. You know, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to Some people didn't like him in the abolitionist movement.
Speaker 1: During the Civil War, he spent his time recruiting black
Speaker 1: soldiers for the war. He was already in his forties,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he fought directly himself. After the war,
Speaker 1: he spent a lot of his time in Louisiana teaching
Speaker 1: thousands of black people how to read and write through
Speaker 1: the Freedmen's Bureau schools during a time when white racists
Speaker 1: were attacking every black person and white Republican they could find.
Speaker 1: He lived there during the New Orleans Massacre of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, in which probably fifty black people and three
Speaker 1: white allies were killed by a racist mob, so he
Speaker 1: slept with pistols under his bed as the death threats
Speaker 1: came in for his daring to teach black people how
Speaker 1: to read. He wrote quote, if Hell is any worse
Speaker 1: than New Orleans, I pity the damned. He was a
Speaker 1: good writer. Yeah, he got a little millenarian after that.
Speaker 1: He predicted a great apocalypse was coming, that the white
Speaker 1: people would give the Southwest to black people and he
Speaker 1: would march off towards their Zion with them. He lectured
Speaker 1: and wrote extensively about black rights. Unrelated to his occultism,
Speaker 1: he formed the National Equal Rights League. His other personal
Speaker 1: motto was we may be happy yet, and it applied
Speaker 1: to both of his interests, magic and emancipation. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I like him so much is he's
Speaker 1: like a he's a seeker, right, He's someone who wasn't
Speaker 1: convinced there was He wasn't convinced he was right, but
Speaker 1: he explored spirituality to the best of his knowledge, and
Speaker 1: he wrote. He wrote shit that contradicted his previous shit
Speaker 1: as he changed his mind as he learned new things. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's cool. I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: He believed in the spirit realm, and he believed that
Speaker 1: our souls are it's like, not totally dissimilar from the
Speaker 1: Big Bang kind of even though that wasn't developed scientifically
Speaker 1: until the twentieth century. Basically, that like the thoughts of
Speaker 1: God have spread out all over the galaxy, falling like
Speaker 1: dust onto certain worlds where they slowly collect into geological formations,
Speaker 1: ants and non human animals before eventually they might become
Speaker 1: human souls. Then when you die, your soul returns not
Speaker 1: to the dust, but instead travels to the spirit realms,
Speaker 1: which are Sometimes he writes it about them as being
Speaker 1: around planets, galaxies, or beyond space itself, and it depends
Speaker 1: on how enlighten this particular soul is where you end up.
Speaker 1: In his earliest writings with his internalized racism, he says
Speaker 1: that the white souls are the most developed and they're
Speaker 1: going to end up like in the coolest spirit realms.
Speaker 1: By the end of his life, it's people of color,
Speaker 1: not just black people, who are the most developed and
Speaker 1: are in the coolest parts of space, and white people
Speaker 1: who are damned mm hmm or have more to more
Speaker 1: development to do, just not inherently wrong. Through study and
Speaker 1: drugs and sex, one could drop through the outer world
Speaker 1: into the world below, into the spirit realm, which he
Speaker 1: sometimes conceptualizes under the earth and other times is the
Speaker 1: interior of one's own soul because inside of us microcosms
Speaker 1: of the universe. And yeah, he lived his life and
Speaker 1: he did that shit nice. In July eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: at the age of forty nine he died. He most
Speaker 1: likely shot himself in the head with a revolver. He
Speaker 1: was destitute, and he was resentful of the white occultist
Speaker 1: world continuing to ignore him. A friend and fellow occultist
Speaker 1: on his deathbed claimed to have killed Pascal during a
Speaker 1: fit of temporary insanity, but it's likely that this later
Speaker 1: confession is a lie. It's likely that he took his
Speaker 1: own life. And yeah, his wife continued to publish his works.
Speaker 1: He published forty five books and pamphlets while he was alive,
Speaker 1: and all of the big occult groups after he died.
Speaker 1: It drew on his legacy because black people have been everything,
Speaker 1: and the Surrealists also drew on this. His writing about
Speaker 1: the unconscious world seeping into the conscious world and particular
Speaker 1: influence them. But a lot of the influence information about
Speaker 1: black influences on the Surrealists didn't start being acknowledged until
Speaker 1: the later incarnation of the Surrealists and like the sixties
Speaker 1: or whatever. And we'll get to that at some point.
Speaker 1: But what we're going to get to first is, uh,
Speaker 1: what's something good? We can be sponsored by books, but
Speaker 1: libraries lost books. Yeah, yeah, everyone listening should write at
Speaker 1: least forty books in their life.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: If you don't, what are you doing? Why are you alive?
Speaker 2: Loser alert?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely to be taken seriously, and just like
Speaker 1: you should take these ads seriously. Here's some ads, and
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking about how awkward it'll be
Speaker 1: if I ever have to do host red ads anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: more influences. The Surrealists are all about automatic writing, right,
Speaker 1: letting the unconsciousness, like like, hey, God, take the wheel,
Speaker 1: only without God, you know, hey, dream take the wheel
Speaker 1: and produce stuff. And if that sounds like improvisational music
Speaker 1: like jazz jazz, that's not a coincidence. As far as
Speaker 1: I can tell history, the West is like the only
Speaker 1: place that's ever been really super whatever's only plays I've
Speaker 1: found that has been super obsessed with, like music should
Speaker 1: be written down and performed exactly as it's written. And
Speaker 1: this is even only the recent West, which leads me
Speaker 1: to a tangent. Okay, there's this finished instrument called the contelee.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of zither. I've made a couple of them.
Speaker 1: I think they're really cool and I like playing them.
Speaker 1: And I listened to an interview with the traditional contelet
Speaker 1: player and he was like, well, the traditional way to
Speaker 1: play this instrument this is sit in the corner of
Speaker 1: the house, probably drink, have your dog, sleep on your feet,
Speaker 1: let that rest of the house do their own thing,
Speaker 1: and then make up whatever you want as you and
Speaker 1: just like suck around on it. Yeah, And it's not
Speaker 1: about playing specific compositions. It's about channeling, right, It's about
Speaker 1: improvisational music. Everyone has known this forever, with the exception
Speaker 1: of Western Europe during some certain time period. But the
Speaker 1: Surrealists are from Western Europe in that certain time period.
Speaker 1: So improvisational plane. This is like a fucking epiphany, right.
Speaker 1: Jazz is imported from the US, in part by black
Speaker 1: soldiers from the US or in World War One, and
Speaker 1: the Surrealists are super into veteran of the pad Josephine Baker,
Speaker 1: the black superstar who moved to the France, moved to France,
Speaker 1: fought Nazis and had a pet cheetah whoa Yes, she's
Speaker 1: a real quote. You should check out that episodes.
Speaker 3: Better.
Speaker 1: There's another jazz musician in particular who influenced them, though
Speaker 1: not right at the beginning, and so he's not really
Speaker 1: a pre curb he gets called a crew precursor. But
Speaker 1: I think people are playing a little fast and loose
Speaker 1: with history sometimes. Felonious Monk who basically was this like,
Speaker 1: he was born in North Carolina nineteen seventeen. He learned
Speaker 1: all the Western greades on piano and he was like, nah,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I like jazz. And his quote is the
Speaker 1: piano ain't got no wrong notes. And he revolutionized piano plane.
Speaker 1: He also got involved in the civil rights movement, and
Speaker 1: he inspired the fuck out of the surrealists more influences.
Speaker 1: What's your take on edge lords?
Speaker 2: I mean, I find being I find edge lord behavior
Speaker 2: pretty irritating a lot of the Yeah, as far as
Speaker 2: just yeah, you know, yeah, I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really fucks of my head
Speaker 1: as I read more and more history is that, like
Speaker 1: what an edged lord is. I mean, obviously people aren't
Speaker 1: using that word except for recently, but like someone who's
Speaker 1: like edgy on purpose and playing with like dark stuff
Speaker 1: that might trigger people or whatever out of like shake
Speaker 1: things up, you know, for its own sake. What that
Speaker 1: means has been different politically and like culturally, like at
Speaker 1: different times, and like wildly differently. It has been used
Speaker 1: by like aggressive shitty centrists, the far right and the
Speaker 1: far left, and not often at the same time. They
Speaker 1: seem to like pass it back and forth like a
Speaker 1: hot potato. You know, right now the potato is in
Speaker 1: the right wings hands, I think, and I don't so.
Speaker 1: One of the original Edgelords in literature is a character
Speaker 1: named Malderour, and he is a protagonist of a book
Speaker 1: from the eighteen sixties called La Chanton about Malderoor The
Speaker 1: Songs of Maldour. I have tried to read it. I
Speaker 1: hope one day to succeed. My god, it is dense.
Speaker 2: What's the name Malderour?
Speaker 1: Maldo m A L D O R.
Speaker 2: O R sounds like a Lord of the Rings character, honestly,
Speaker 2: and Zelda character. Totally not to bring it back to
Speaker 2: Zelda again, but.
Speaker 1: If Zelda, if the character was in Zelda, Zelda would
Speaker 1: be a very different game.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, and say more about that, please.
Speaker 1: Well, first time I tell you about a dog named Alderar. Okay,
Speaker 1: Because I've been on a fucking adhd bender this week.
Speaker 1: I read so many different books about surrealism and they're
Speaker 1: all so different. I just was like, whatever, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this thing.
Speaker 2: I think this okay podcast tone tonally this or this
Speaker 2: you know what is it? Four parter of episode so on?
Speaker 2: Surrealism is surrealist.
Speaker 1: That's my intention? Yeah, yeah thanks. My surrealist friends in
Speaker 1: Baltimore had a dog name and he was super cool
Speaker 1: and smart as hell. And this is where I first
Speaker 1: heard about Maldraur and rest in peace, you good boy, Malderer.
Speaker 1: He was the first dog I ever met where they
Speaker 1: could be like, go get the following toy and the
Speaker 1: dog would go to the chest and pick out the
Speaker 1: correct toy and come back.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is dog's smartest. Shit. He's also the inspiration for
Speaker 1: me naming my dog Rentraw, because I thought, if my
Speaker 1: super cool friends can name their dog after an obscure
Speaker 1: figure from literature, so can I. So can you Rentraw?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: Literately?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Always in the script, I was like, this is where
Speaker 1: I reveal the origin of my dogs name, because I
Speaker 1: was talking about my dog. I'm Rinshaw is a character
Speaker 1: from William Blake? Who is this? I'm almost certain I'll
Speaker 1: do an episode about William Blake eventually, once I figure
Speaker 1: out the way to make it. Entertaining to people besides me.
Speaker 1: He's a proto anarchist who wrote and illustrated. He like
Speaker 1: did some of the first illustrated manuscripts in the Western tradition.
Speaker 1: Like think, he's like sometimes like a precursor of the
Speaker 1: modern graphic novel because he'd like write really weird theological
Speaker 1: shit and then draw it too. And he was a
Speaker 1: printmaker and he like so he engraved it all by hand.
Speaker 1: He basically made zenes. He was a weird fucking zineester
Speaker 1: who I like a lot. Rintrall's the name of a
Speaker 1: character who represents the just rage of the prophet. The
Speaker 1: first line from his book The Marriage of Heaven and
Speaker 1: Hell is Rintraw roars and shakes his fires in the
Speaker 1: burdened air. And no, I can't tell you what that
Speaker 1: means because I don't understand it, but it's pretty mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And I understand a lot of the rest of that book.
Speaker 2: So okay, that's what's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the back to Maldor of the character, it is
Speaker 1: about a man who has abandoned traditional morality in violent
Speaker 1: and absurd ways. That's that's kind of you know, And
Speaker 1: it's like there was a time in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: where doing that was like, holy shit, someone tried something
Speaker 1: wildly new, whereas now you're just like, whooped to do?
Speaker 1: In gill little like small flag that you like, you know,
Speaker 1: like this book is attributed to Comte de la trement,
Speaker 1: which is the pen name of a poet named Isidore
Speaker 1: Lucien Dakau isidor read all the Romantics or another influence
Speaker 1: about the Surrealists I'll get to one day. And he
Speaker 1: was a depressed trust fund kid, so very like the surrealists,
Speaker 1: who wrote furiously late at night and self published the
Speaker 1: book with his dad's money. It's just very surrealist of it. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of talking shit. I don't know what percentage
Speaker 1: of the I don't know what percentage of the surrealist
Speaker 1: or trust fund kids, but art world early twentieth century
Speaker 1: was a lot of them. Otherwise weren't. And so he
Speaker 1: wrote this book and he was like, oh, look how
Speaker 1: I jam. But then he started an inversion of it
Speaker 1: called Songs of the Good that was built on courage
Speaker 1: and hope and faith, which is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that a modern edgelord would not do. Because I think
Speaker 1: he actually was like I want to explore different parts
Speaker 1: of the human psyche. Right, But before he could do that,
Speaker 1: Prussia besieged Paris in eighteen seventy and the conditions of
Speaker 1: the city got worse, and Isodor died at age twenty
Speaker 1: four in eighteen seventy. So that was the other reason
Speaker 1: I forgive him or whatever. Anyway, So this Edgeloord's thing
Speaker 1: is honestly part of the core of surrealism, the idea
Speaker 1: of tapping into the unconscious and writing things that up
Speaker 1: end the values we assume have it like, it has
Speaker 1: its own value from the surrealist point of view, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is like part of this how the concept
Speaker 1: of being edgy and up ending values and morality and
Speaker 1: all this stuff is like goes back and forth. The
Speaker 1: far left was doing it in the sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 1: centered around Michael Moorcock and creating the concept of the
Speaker 1: anti hero, or rather popularizing the concept of the anti hero.
Speaker 1: But now it's like the concept of the anti hero
Speaker 1: is this like really interesting thing? And now it's just like,
Speaker 1: of course, your detective smokes cigarettes and hates women, Like, congratulations,
Speaker 1: who's an edgy boy, You're an edgyp boy.
Speaker 2: It's not even Edgi anymore, because everyone's doing it.
Speaker 1: I know the real Edgen is Hope.
Speaker 2: That's why I love Paddington so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Edgie Paddington. Have you seen the memes that are
Speaker 1: where there's like the person who photoshops them into different
Speaker 1: movies stills?
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, of course you have. I've seen that.
Speaker 2: There's also oh what, why don't I remember her name? Ever?
Speaker 2: The star of the movie eighth Grade?
Speaker 1: Whose name is I've heard of eighth Grade? I went
Speaker 1: to eighth grade.
Speaker 2: We did that too, So I'm talking about Elsie Fisher.
Speaker 2: I almost always call her isle of Fisher. That's someone
Speaker 2: else Elsie Fisher had for a while she would like
Speaker 2: change her Twitter account to Evil Paddington and then she
Speaker 2: would tweet stuff that Paddington would say if Paddington was evil,
Speaker 2: and it was the funniest bit I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Ok, this actually gets into like some of the things
Speaker 1: that I keep thinking about when I'm researching this, where
Speaker 1: it's like all of the shit that the surren less
Speaker 1: are doing, or the people before them are doing. It's
Speaker 1: like we blow through cultural ideas, like our like machine
Speaker 1: for culture is just overclocked now, like like it's like
Speaker 1: we used to have abacuses and now we have supercomputers.
Speaker 1: We're just like and everyone gets to participate. So all
Speaker 1: of these culture things, cultural things like happen so fast
Speaker 1: and like you know, and they're not less good or
Speaker 1: less important or less interesting than like the Surrealists, just
Speaker 1: because like the surrealisted certain things first, but they didn't
Speaker 1: really right, but they like you know, and like I
Speaker 1: really like the Surrealists. But we live in a beautiful, strange,
Speaker 1: absurd time where culture happens really quickly, and Evil Paddington
Speaker 1: is like the kind of thing that would have broken
Speaker 1: these people's minds.
Speaker 2: Right, and in our modern world it was just like
Speaker 2: a random blip slash, a random bit that has come
Speaker 2: and gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. But the blip who had come and gone Isidor,
Speaker 1: who died at twenty four, wrote this one book, self
Speaker 1: published it later, I think it got picked up by
Speaker 1: some other people in nineteen seventeen, when the surrealis is
Speaker 1: going to find a copy of La Chanta Maldor and
Speaker 1: the character becomes their icon. Here's the person who's like
Speaker 1: against everything, right, you know, he's their prophet alongside Baldiire
Speaker 1: who wrote the book the Flowers of Evil, just poetry book,
Speaker 1: and who also fought in the eighteen forty eight revolutions.
Speaker 1: And then Arthur Rimbaud, who is a gay author who
Speaker 1: wrote a Season in Hell and fought in the early
Speaker 1: Paris Commune but got out before everything went to shit
Speaker 1: and everyone died, who also wrote poems about Louis Michelle,
Speaker 1: the anarchists here of the Commune. Anyway, what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say is, all though cool old edge Lord's actually
Speaker 1: like threw down in all these revolutions. If you're an edgelord,
Speaker 1: now one, cut it out. It's not as interesting anymore
Speaker 1: to get into Paddington, I guess. And three all your
Speaker 1: heroes were leftists. Get with a program. Okay, yes, all
Speaker 1: of this pushing traditional morality had a limit even to them, right,
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, we like Maldoror who like and we
Speaker 1: like people imagining evil and all this shit. And then
Speaker 1: fucking Dolly starts putting out paintings of like Hitler naked
Speaker 1: and sexy and the other surrealists. He has a bunch
Speaker 1: of paintings, including like more recent paintings that are like
Speaker 1: Hitler masturbating or whatever. It's like what they're called they're
Speaker 1: too surreal for whatever anyway, and the other surrealists are like,
Speaker 1: are you fucking serious, my man, And so they ran
Speaker 1: him out of the surrealist group in nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: for a while, and then for good they like put
Speaker 1: him on trial and then decided not to kick him out,
Speaker 1: and then in for good in nineteen thirty nine, when
Speaker 1: DOLLI was like, yeah, but I like Franco but like
Speaker 1: for real, and they were like, you gotta go, like
Speaker 1: you're a fascist. For some straight Dolly quotes, just to
Speaker 1: fucking clear the air for anyone listening, Dolly said, quote,
Speaker 1: we don't want happiness for all men, rather the happiness
Speaker 1: of some to the detriment of others, since oppression and
Speaker 1: suffering are primordial psychological, biological, and physical conditions for the
Speaker 1: happiness of the rest. And then I'm going to read
Speaker 1: an even worse one. Okay. So first he wrote about
Speaker 1: how the death penalty was like human sacrifice, but it
Speaker 1: was a good thing, oh my god. And then he
Speaker 1: wrote that Nazism was a surrealist government and the swastika
Speaker 1: is a surrealist symbolo. He also like vaguely got involved
Speaker 1: in the Allies trying to fight the Nazis, but not
Speaker 1: in a useful way, and he wrote, quote the domination
Speaker 1: or submission of all colored races was possible if quote
Speaker 1: all the whites united fanatically like he's just like actually
Speaker 1: the worst. And I'm going to read one more quote
Speaker 1: a bit more brutal than I usually read on the show,
Speaker 1: because I fucking hate Dolly, he wrote in a letter
Speaker 1: to Britton, the surrealist leadery guy who I actually really like,
Speaker 1: Dolly wrote quote, I declare that even though I may
Speaker 1: have pity and a negative opinion of the cruel lynchings
Speaker 1: and bonfires, I admit to feeling real pleasure and considerable
Speaker 1: sexual excitement in reading about such things, and do not
Speaker 1: intend to censure those who burn blacks alive and lynch them.
Speaker 1: I consider I have to consider the legitimate pleasure that
Speaker 1: drives these people. Yuck. Yeah, these are fucking monster Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that that like shows the like limits
Speaker 1: of the like edginess that they're sort of interested in,
Speaker 1: right in the same way that Magree's started like painting
Speaker 1: flowers and shit. When the Nazis occupied things, you know, right,
Speaker 1: they're like evil is a really interesting concept. And then
Speaker 1: when evil is like personified in the world. They're like, Nope,
Speaker 1: not that that's the enemy.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean there's all like everything's all about context, right,
Speaker 2: Totally like to question and challenge the status quo is
Speaker 2: not inherently edge lordie, because a lot of times the
Speaker 2: status quo is bad and needs to be restructured or whatever,
Speaker 2: but like to be edge lordy just for the sake
Speaker 2: of like wanting to get someone riled up. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I associate like edge lord totally if you're with totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so Dolli after the war, he moves to
Speaker 1: Spain and converts the Catholicism of the Francoist National Catholicism type,
Speaker 1: and he spends the rest of his days raving about
Speaker 1: how like monarchism is the real rebellion or whatever, like
Speaker 1: fucking Nick Fuentes type shit. And I will argue that
Speaker 1: Dolli was kicked out. He was not a surrealist. He
Speaker 1: was the inversion of surrealism. He was like the like
Speaker 1: the dark mirror of it. But you know, there's a
Speaker 1: danger having edge lord heroes. But there's still something interesting
Speaker 1: about Maldaurar. And we're gonna talk about one more precursor,
Speaker 1: and it's the need to eat food and therefore advertise stuff.
Speaker 1: Food is a type of stuff. They call it food stuff.
Speaker 1: Yell me, here's the meds and we're back. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about one more actual precursor. Germenberto was a
Speaker 1: French anarchist lady. She was raised in a working class,
Speaker 1: Republican like left wing family. She wanted to get into
Speaker 1: drawing and shit, she went to art school when she
Speaker 1: was like ten because she was like winning all these
Speaker 1: awards for a drawing. Then her dad died and she
Speaker 1: had to as a pre teen leave school to go
Speaker 1: work in the factory. Because this is I mean, like, frankly,
Speaker 1: this is why so many of the artists back then
Speaker 1: were fucking like trust fund kids, you know, because German
Speaker 1: wanted to be an artist and had to not die instead.
Speaker 1: I mean it.
Speaker 2: You have to be surrounded by a certain level of privilege,
Speaker 2: should be able to even have the time and energy
Speaker 2: to create art.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people do create amazing art, and you know,
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and it's just is less likely
Speaker 1: to be held up in the like art world, you know,
Speaker 1: sure for sure. When she was thirteen, she fell in
Speaker 1: love for the first time with a soldier who immediately
Speaker 1: died in World War One, and she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: war is bad. And then in a factory she joined
Speaker 1: the union and pretty much immediately got arrested for giving
Speaker 1: a speech that was like I think she's like probably
Speaker 1: like you know this, like teen girls given a speech.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, what about violence, guys, And we tried violence.
Speaker 1: That might solve some shit, help things get better around here,
Speaker 1: you know. So they were in jail. She got arrested
Speaker 1: multiple times for writing different insundiary things. By the time
Speaker 1: she was eighteen or so, the Anarchist Union of Paris,
Speaker 1: and she wrote about how soldiers should dessert, presaging that
Speaker 1: great surrealist activity being the coolest fuck lady, you tell
Speaker 1: soldiers to dessert? She oh, you'll appreciate this part. She
Speaker 1: took on a lot of debt from rich banks with
Speaker 1: no intention of repaying it as like a specific class
Speaker 1: war thing, like as a way to rob the rich, right,
Speaker 1: hell yeah. She also lost a lover to suicide, a
Speaker 1: guy who had been drafted and was like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I can't, I don't want to be drafted killed himself.
Speaker 1: She had a not fucking easy chunk of life. Actually,
Speaker 1: it never gets less rough, unfortunately. But she's interesting. This
Speaker 1: fascist thing starts happening in the early nineteen twenties, like
Speaker 1: it hits France, like not long after it hits Italy,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't take over quite as hard. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: until it does, I guess during World War Two. But whatever,
Speaker 1: She's like, I don't like this. This fascist thing is
Speaker 1: not my style. And there's this guy, his name's Marius Platau,
Speaker 1: who runs a far right newspaper and also the National
Speaker 1: Federation of the Night's Camelot, which is the far right
Speaker 1: youth organization of the time, and they're trying to bring
Speaker 1: back the monarchy much like today's. Wow, it's almost exactly
Speaker 1: one hundred years ago. Is exactly one hundred years ago
Speaker 1: the thing we're talking about today, and we are now
Speaker 1: dealing with people who are trying to set up far
Speaker 1: right night organizations to bring back the monarchy. So Jermn
Speaker 1: was like, well, I have a problem, and I have
Speaker 1: a revolver. So that far right newspaper he runs, it
Speaker 1: has an office. On the twenty second of January nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, she walked into the building and shot him
Speaker 1: five times and killed him. She spent eleven months of
Speaker 1: waiting trial in jail, and the whole time she maintained
Speaker 1: her guilt. At no point did she'd make any other
Speaker 1: claim other than I shot and killed that man because
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 2: Bad, Like, yes, I definitely did it.
Speaker 1: There was a nun there who was supposed to like
Speaker 1: talk with the prisoners, you know. It was like a
Speaker 1: sign to the jail jer men managed to basically convince
Speaker 1: the nun to like leave the convent, I think, to
Speaker 1: be an anarchist for a while. That later she returns
Speaker 1: to the convent. I hope she stayed both. That's my
Speaker 1: personal hope, you know. And this trial is a big
Speaker 1: fucking thing. And this is like right before the Surrealists
Speaker 1: announced themselves by being like we're the Surrealists, right, And
Speaker 1: the jury is like, you know, carefully considering the evidence,
Speaker 1: and the jury is like, well, she says she's guilty,
Speaker 1: but I don't think she did anything wrong. Fuck that guy,
Speaker 1: and they fucking let her off. She's found not guilty.
Speaker 2: J Yeah, sometimes you just have to stand your ground
Speaker 2: and then everyone will be like I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah actually yeah.
Speaker 1: The rest of her life was not super happy, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into it because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people around her dying and suicide and stuff.
Speaker 1: Her trial, though it's set a fire in the minds
Speaker 1: of the Surrealists. Her mugshot appeared in like one of
Speaker 1: the first issues of their magazine, surrounded by the other
Speaker 1: Surrealists and alongside some of their other heroes like Freud
Speaker 1: and Picasso, and the caption was a quote from Baldaire,
Speaker 1: the woman is the being who cast the greatest shadow
Speaker 1: or the greatest light in our dreams. And so it's
Speaker 1: like this is them being like, we are obsessed with
Speaker 1: the woman as muse, but the woman as muse isn't
Speaker 1: like check out her tits. It's like this woman had
Speaker 1: a revolver and put five shots into the head of
Speaker 1: the monarchist movement.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I yeah, fair I would yeah.
Speaker 1: No note honestly, and there are other precursors and inspirations
Speaker 1: Freud has talked about all the time. It's true that
Speaker 1: they were stoked about his ideas about dreaming. He's overstated
Speaker 1: as an influence. He's like presented as like the only influence,
Speaker 1: I think, because he's like one of the least political
Speaker 1: of their influences, and then Picasso and you can go
Speaker 1: read about Picasso and Freud anywhere you want, So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna bother. We're not done with this derive. When
Speaker 1: we come back next week, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the dataists, the early Surrealists, and then the living movement
Speaker 1: that gives the hippies the phrase. Oh yeah, it's surrealists
Speaker 1: who came up with the phrase make love not War
Speaker 1: in the sixties. And probably, but I can't promise we'll
Speaker 1: find more ways to talk shit on Dolli as well
Speaker 1: as the surrealists who went over to Stalin. Okay, Cliffhanger, Eh,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for Why are you always drawing attention
Speaker 1: to my Cliffhangers. I'm acknowledging, I'm acknowledging You're brilliance. Oh thanks, thanks.
Speaker 1: It's important. But if people are interested in you're brilliance,
Speaker 1: not you, Sophie, but you, Caitlin. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in Sophie's brilliant, then.
Speaker 2: We'll make space for you too. Sophie. Yeah, my brilliance
Speaker 2: can be found kind of everywhere. I've fact speaking of
Speaker 2: influence and inspiration, No, I kid, uh, but you can
Speaker 2: listen to The Bechdel Cast, which I co host with
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftis, and we talk about movies through an intersexual
Speaker 2: feminist lens. Margaret has been a guest. Definitely start with
Speaker 2: that episode if you've never heard the show, or start
Speaker 2: anywhere you want, you know, do whatever you want. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, be be follow your heart and you can
Speaker 2: follow me online. I guess at Caitlin Dorante.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bechdel Cast is my favorite movie podcast. I didn't
Speaker 1: expect that I would like movie podcasts, and I listened
Speaker 1: to Bechdel Cast, and now I listen to the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You might have a similar experience, or you might already
Speaker 1: like movie podcasts. If you don't like the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 1: there's probably you should talk to somebody. You should get Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should fix it. You go to therapy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you want to follow me, you can follow me
Speaker 1: on substack. I write a new essay every week. Half
Speaker 1: the time. It's like more personal, like memory journalist type stuff,
Speaker 1: and that's only for the people who are paid subscribers.
Speaker 1: But then every other week is free content. I write
Speaker 1: more about history, I write more about politics. I write
Speaker 1: about preparedness. I swear it's more entertaining than those three.
Speaker 1: Well whatever you hear me. Listen to talk about history.
Speaker 1: If you made it this far you think I'm not boring,
Speaker 1: I hope, And if you do, also you should like
Speaker 1: if you hate, listen to podcasts like that's interesting but
Speaker 1: not good?
Speaker 2: Well? Who are you an edge lord? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Which would fit on your wait? Would it? Yeah? Would
Speaker 1: don't get that tattooed on your knuckles? Usually, I there's
Speaker 1: positive things. Mal door would also fit, but that would
Speaker 1: be another edgelord tattoo, but it would be like a
Speaker 1: pretentious one, which is cooler. Maybe Sophie rescue me. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have any plugs, Sophie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Listen to the four part series James Stout just
Speaker 3: did about the Marsha Islands on It could happen here, and.
Speaker 1: You'll learn that the word bikini comes from terrible things
Speaker 1: that the US government has done.
Speaker 2: Listen to the climate change episode. It's really good. If
Speaker 2: you're gonna if you only have.
Speaker 1: Ten for one see everyone next week.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
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Speaker 3: your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Here