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R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Hi,

1:02

it's Jennifer, a founder of Go Kid Go

1:04

and a mom to two kids. Join

1:07

my family on the Story Train with

1:09

Calm Conductor Birdie each night as we

1:11

travel through the magic rainbow tunnel to

1:14

everywhere and anywhere to find the best

1:16

bedtime stories. Search for

1:18

Story Train on Spotify, Apple, or

1:20

wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome.

1:28

You've got Digital Folklore. Hello

1:32

and welcome to the After the

1:34

Episode episode that happens after episode

1:36

nine of Digital Folklore season two,

1:39

episode nine. We are doing the

1:41

After Episode episode about that episode.

1:43

So with me is, of course,

1:45

Mason Amadeus, who was the person

1:47

who tortured himself putting this episode

1:49

together. Yeah, I'm about to have

1:52

an episode. Exactly. And

1:54

that episode was called Unwrapping Our

1:56

Presence, which should be a hint to

1:59

people about the episode. What some of the torture

2:01

was yeah so I mean the reason that name

2:03

doesn't the hit now but would have hit if

2:05

we had landed on time as at this episode

2:07

supposed to come out on Christmas day because spoilers

2:09

obviously if you have it was the the episode

2:12

douglas into this the we've gotten back to the

2:14

point in the first episode of a season with

2:16

of and selling off the cliff on Christmas day

2:18

as mentioned by Perry and we have this meet

2:20

little plan of when episodes come out and the

2:22

sun is supposed to end on Christmas day there

2:24

was a cute little real world tie and butter

2:27

and and presence for those who are listening that

2:29

haven't read the title. Is

2:31

not to yes it is presence

2:33

as M S E. Presence.

2:36

Side attorney know how to explain that,

2:38

our persona, his presence within the real

2:40

world and honestly the I'm I'm most

2:42

bummed about the title that landed because

2:44

this is the pun title I was

2:47

the proudest of because it's our reality

2:49

is unwrapping our presence in this reality

2:51

is and laughing and it was going

2:53

to come out on Christmas. Boho you

2:55

so has use a homophone right? Yes

2:58

exactly Yeah and yeah. This one. Was.

3:00

A real doozy. Ah, it's pretty

3:02

you mentioned. And again, for those who

3:04

have not yet listen to episode Nine,

3:06

you do want to go back and

3:08

do that because there's probably going to

3:10

be major spoilers and Will are talking

3:12

about his see actresses the penultimate episode

3:14

of the season. That's where a lot

3:16

of the stuff happens that sets up

3:18

the final predicament that we're gonna find

3:21

ourselves in his we close out the

3:23

season. Yeah, this is that isn't that

3:25

tip of that shark when you're looking

3:27

at like a narrative plot right? And

3:29

Santa. It was. A

3:31

real adventure to discern to come out.

3:33

I'm good at tired I think. actually

3:35

heard about what was happening. I have

3:38

some statistics. I think Todd wounded you.

3:40

Yeah, I think so. I had seventeen

3:42

blue screen of death full computer crashes

3:44

trying to put this episode together. also

3:47

the reaper session at one point got corrupted me

3:49

because of a at it was a filter i

3:51

was using to switch between like what tracks are

3:54

visible switching between like the sound effects and the

3:56

voices and for some reason it's appended a bunch

3:58

of like acts the decimal or drunk like

4:00

that into the session file and then it

4:02

corrupted it. The thing that was most frustrating

4:04

was that I couldn't figure out what it

4:06

was because it wasn't clear. All that was

4:08

happening was that every time I did something

4:10

that would cause an undo point. So like

4:12

if I moved something, every undo point was

4:15

like 500 megabytes. Yeah.

4:17

And so it just was quickly like eating up

4:19

my RAM. You see, I'm so much of a

4:21

nerd. The only thing that I would think there

4:23

is I got to buy more RAM. It's amazing.

4:26

Just got to load it up. I just got to load that

4:29

thing up with more RAM. That's the other compounding factor

4:31

is I actually have faulty RAM. So every second

4:33

that my computer is on is a little bit

4:35

like a lottery because once something starts to write

4:37

to that bad sector, it all just freezes and

4:40

shuts down. That is unfortunate.

4:42

Yes, it's been fun. But I

4:44

think the episode came out good

4:46

despite everything else. It was fun.

4:49

Rich Dagle, who is the voice of Todd,

4:51

I think outdid himself on that. Oh my

4:54

god. He didn't outdo himself because I want

4:56

to see where he goes after that. If

4:58

we ever want to ring more out

5:00

of him. Yeah, I mean,

5:02

gosh, he just absolutely delivered

5:04

this episode. His supervillain speeches.

5:06

He's really good at switching between all

5:08

the different tones. I wasn't expecting him to do

5:11

the radio DJ voice he did. And then when

5:13

we got that bit back, it was just it

5:15

was flawless. He took that script and just brought

5:17

it to life. Well, he has as

5:20

part of the services that he does all

5:22

these different personas that he advertises that he

5:24

can do and like old timey radio voices

5:26

one. Which is the first thing

5:29

that I ever hired him for back in

5:31

the eighth layer insights days is

5:33

I needed somebody to do this

5:35

really like 1940s 1950s radio style introduction to

5:41

something and I found him that way and

5:43

then heard some of his

5:45

other work and started using him like anytime I could

5:48

get a chance. That's super cool.

5:50

I have not seen his page actually. So I

5:52

didn't know that that was a

5:54

that he had like a cast of characters. Yeah. Well,

5:56

who knows if we'll hear from Todd again, but we'll

5:58

have to get rich to voice other characters

6:00

for sure because he's just

6:02

really good. Yeah. With Mouth

6:05

Almighty, right? Mouth Almighty. mouthalmightyvo.com.

6:08

Exactly. And we usually use Fiverr

6:10

to get him because his taxes and accounting and

6:12

everything else get managed through their back end. So

6:14

I think that's the most convenient way to get

6:16

in touch with Rich if you like his audio

6:18

stylings. We talked a little bit about the technical

6:20

hitches. We should talk a little bit about what

6:22

we covered in this episode because I think the

6:25

content from the folklore we interviewed is very fun.

6:27

So do you want to explain

6:29

how we did this? Yeah. So as we

6:31

were entering the season, and

6:33

I should back up and say we weren't as

6:35

consistent with it as we could have been. We

6:39

wanted some interesting ways to just get to

6:41

know the folklore a little bit before we

6:44

took a deep dive into the thing that

6:46

we wanted to talk about. And we always

6:48

knew that we might build these into some

6:50

kind of cascades or something else later on.

6:52

So we devised three questions that we wanted

6:54

to ask everybody that we could. The

6:57

first one was, what

6:59

emoji do you find yourself using the

7:01

most or annoys you the most? The

7:04

second one was, given the types of

7:07

research that a lot of these people

7:09

have to do, there's going to

7:11

be weird stuff in their browser history. So

7:13

what stuff in their browser history stands out

7:15

as being strange or that they would have

7:18

a difficult time explaining to a spouse, loved

7:20

one, law enforcement, child, anybody

7:23

else that stumbles across it.

7:25

And then the last one

7:27

is a little bit more on

7:29

topic for these types of people,

7:31

which would be, what is their

7:33

favorite contemporary legend? And if

7:35

there's a way to tell that in a compelling

7:37

way, we wanted to hear it. Turns

7:39

out a lot of these are

7:42

just little nuggets of potential story

7:44

and don't really translate in a

7:46

lot of ways to the actual

7:48

storytelling when somebody provides

7:50

that information. We usually just get the

7:52

nugget about what the central idea of

7:54

the story is rather than the compelling

7:56

campfire narrative. But I think that's interesting

7:59

because I also... I kind of think that's how

8:01

we encounter those kinds of stories in our daily lives a lot

8:03

of the time. It's like, did you

8:05

hear about the blah blah blah? Yeah, we

8:07

sort of talk around it and I don't

8:09

know that I've ever heard anyone tell me.

8:11

I've never heard a retelling of the Vanishing

8:14

Hitchhiker story like in story form, but I've

8:16

heard about it and around it so much.

8:18

I think it'd be interesting to talk about

8:20

on a meta level with folklorists. I guess

8:23

the thing that we tend

8:25

to do is we conflate

8:27

these urban legends, contemporary legends

8:29

with things like campfire stories because

8:32

some of them have turned into

8:34

campfire stories like the hook, I

8:36

think ends up getting turned into a

8:38

longer narrative campfire story. The

8:41

killer in the backseat gets turned into

8:43

something like that. The person is inside

8:45

the house type of thing gets turned

8:47

into that. So I think that in

8:49

my mind when I first built that

8:52

as one of our questions, I kind

8:54

of had those in my head a

8:56

little bit more than some of the

8:58

fun things that we tend to talk

9:00

about with the folklorists because of course

9:02

the things that are overdone and overblown

9:05

that have turned into society's

9:07

campfire stories, they're going

9:09

to be a basis for conversation, but they

9:11

may not be the most interesting thing to

9:13

somebody that spends all their time studying these.

9:16

Right. And retelling a story is a whole

9:18

lot of pressure too to put on someone at the

9:20

start of an interview. Yeah. It's

9:22

a different skill totally. So I just have

9:24

to say that as you were giving examples,

9:26

I really wanted to say the hash slinging

9:28

slasher and then it took me until just

9:30

now to realize that was from SpongeBob and

9:32

isn't actually a piece of folklore. But

9:35

you could turn it into one. It

9:37

kind of is inside of the universe

9:40

of SpongeBob. It is the story, this

9:42

folktale that is told about the hash

9:44

slinging slasher. I've never seen a complete

9:46

SpongeBob episode. You haven't seen

9:48

a complete, are you serious? Yeah. I've

9:51

also not seen a complete Phineas and

9:53

Ferb episode despite my name being Perry.

9:55

And everybody's saying, where's Perry and showing

9:57

me penguins all the time or platypus.

10:00

Sorry. Oh my gosh. Platypodes,

10:02

first of all. Platypodes? No,

10:05

I don't think that's true. That's wild. I can

10:07

only imagine how much Phineas and Ferb stuff you

10:09

must hear on a daily basis, being named Perry.

10:11

But I didn't know there was a single living

10:13

person who has not seen at least one full

10:15

episode of SpongeBob. That would be me. That's a

10:17

very big fan base and culture with a lot

10:19

of fan art and folklore

10:21

around it. There's that whole story of

10:24

the SpongeBob episode that was a creepypasta

10:26

online. There's a lot more than that

10:28

too, series about what it might

10:30

be a metaphor for and stuff like that. We

10:32

could do an episode about SpongeBob at some point.

10:34

We could. And that could be how you finally

10:36

watch one full episode of SpongeBob. Yeah. If

10:39

you would, walk us through the

10:41

critical elements of this episode. So

10:44

like story-wise, where are we?

10:46

What's happened? And where

10:48

do you think this is going to go? We

10:50

open up with Perry and Mason trapped by Todd

10:53

in some sort of extra dimensional space.

10:55

Or maybe just Todd's office in the pawn shop.

10:57

It's a little bit hard to tell. And

10:59

Todd is giving his supervillain speech.

11:02

His speech is cut short with a weird

11:05

knocking outside of the walls. Todd sort of

11:07

pauses the supernatural frame for a moment to

11:09

call out and see what's going on. When

11:11

we hear a very old

11:14

and very problematic meme from outside.

11:16

The I'm a fire in my

11:18

laser, shoop-de-woop meme. Which,

11:20

that joke, I don't know. That one

11:22

was really for me and I hope

11:24

for other people. Like, Perry and Mason

11:26

in Digby escape, clambering into the Volkswagen

11:28

and speeding off down the road. The

11:30

road is closed all of a sudden as there's

11:32

this sort of push and pull

11:34

between us and Todd trying to shape reality.

11:37

And ultimately it ends up with us driving off of

11:39

the side of the cliff. Just like we opened the

11:41

season as we're going up to Mark's Wizard Tower. Which

11:44

the reason for going up to Mark's Wizard Tower I thought

11:46

was kind of funny. In that like, oh the world works

11:49

like the secret so Mark will be an actual wizard. Yeah,

11:51

if we just kind of believe hard enough as

11:54

we're getting there. Mark will become the wizard that

11:56

we need him to be. There's a part of

11:58

me that wishes we had gone. through with

12:00

that and like gone up to have Mark cast

12:02

a spell or whatever. But

12:04

where we're going, who knows? Well,

12:07

we still don't know though, right? Because if

12:09

we were believing hard enough that Mark is

12:12

that kind of person, then could we also

12:14

believe him into being where we need him

12:16

to be at the time that we

12:18

need him to be there. That's a

12:20

very good point. How much power do we really

12:22

have? I don't know. I've not read that book

12:25

anyway, so I don't know. I've seen some TikToks.

12:27

Yeah. I was trying to do

12:29

a callback to our first ever episode where

12:31

we talked about manifestation. Yeah. And

12:33

I think you did. I think you ad-libbed a line

12:35

in there about like manifestation. Remember the first episode? Right.

12:38

Yeah. I think that that was in

12:40

there. We also mentioned, I think in one of the ad-libs, the

12:42

tulpa. So I don't think that ended up in there, but I

12:45

do believe manifestation and episode one

12:47

mentioned got put there. I nipped a

12:49

lot of little things out of it

12:51

here and there for pacing. We had

12:53

to keep pacing. Yeah. We

12:55

had some really good lines, unfortunately, that we

12:57

had to lose inside of Todd's monologue and

13:00

stuff like that. This one was a weird

13:02

one to sound design because there's so much

13:04

going on. There's

13:06

so much movement and it's all weird,

13:08

right? Yeah. There's a moment

13:11

that I hope nobody noticed until I say

13:13

it now, which is when right after DB

13:15

rescues us, us running to the van doesn't

13:17

really make sense. How did we like, he

13:20

was having dada December. We didn't pass through

13:22

any people. There was no crowds. But if

13:24

we had dragged that scene out and had

13:26

crowds and people and us trying to maneuver

13:28

through them, it would have just been weird

13:30

and muddy in an audio medium. Well, see,

13:32

I kind of assumed that it was several

13:34

hours later and everybody was gone. Or

13:37

like reality is breaking, right? So it could just

13:39

be that nobody's there. Yeah, it could be anything.

13:41

Yeah. In my mind,

13:43

being shaped by movies, we were

13:46

kind of unconscious for a little

13:48

bit and then we

13:50

come to as taught as monologuing, but

13:52

it's maybe three, four in the morning.

13:54

Oh, I love that. I had,

13:56

I had thought of it as being right

13:58

after the episode. last heard, but

14:01

that leaves that weird plot hole. And I'm

14:03

always hesitant to be like, what did I

14:05

think was happening? And when people are talking

14:07

in the Discord about their theories about the

14:10

story, I really have to, I want so

14:12

bad to engage and chat with that, but

14:14

I don't want to sway anyone's ideas about

14:16

it, because it's way more fun to me

14:18

if other people read into different things. I'd

14:21

almost rather not say what I had in

14:23

mind. But even, I mean, it could be

14:25

that when we break out and we're running,

14:27

maybe we're not even in the same reality

14:30

that we were in anymore. Maybe it's a

14:32

parallel universe where there's still Todd's shop and

14:34

we're trying to get to the Volkswagen, but

14:36

da-da, December didn't happen. All this other stuff

14:38

didn't happen. Or something otherly is going on.

14:41

So that is kind of what my headcanon

14:43

was, that the Shoop-de-Woop laser broke a big

14:45

chunk of Todd's reality, and so we were

14:47

just basically running out of a blown-up building

14:49

to the car. There's

14:51

so many moving parts. I feel like it was an

14:53

odd one, but I think it does a good enough

14:56

job of tricking you into missing how odd it is

14:58

and just feeling the flow, I hope. That's the goal.

15:00

Exactly, yeah. I thought it flowed really,

15:03

really well, and was fun to listen

15:05

to from a sound design perspective. And

15:07

it just, a lot of it

15:09

felt like some good payoffs, where you

15:12

get to hear Todd be who Todd really is. You

15:14

also, I mean, he's kind of sullen. He

15:17

almost wanted to make friends, right? Right, but

15:19

it's sort of like, he's very abusive, right?

15:21

Because he's like, why did I do this?

15:23

Because I like you. Like, we didn't consent

15:25

to being pulled into a pocket universe and

15:27

having our entire lives up through. No,

15:30

I mean, you can't. That's a thing

15:32

an evil, big, bad guy would do. But

15:34

then you feel bad for Todd, right? Because he's like,

15:36

I tried so hard to do all these things for

15:38

you. And I actually think that makes him kind of

15:40

more scary as a villain. Well, for anybody

15:43

that's kind of older generation, it reminds

15:45

me of the movie Fatal Attraction, where

15:48

there's this person who, from

15:50

all appearances, really loves this guy.

15:53

He was her mistress and he's

15:55

married, but she's like super, super

15:57

obsessed with him, where

16:00

she just starts doing really, really horrible things

16:02

to get his attention. And it reminds me

16:04

of that. It's just like, I love you

16:07

so much. I like you so much. I'm

16:09

going to go to these huge extremes to

16:11

prove it. Look how much I've sacrificed. I'm

16:13

going to boil your child's rabbit type of

16:16

thing. Right. Look at all the things

16:18

I've done for you that you didn't ask for me

16:20

to do and actually don't want. There's this line in

16:22

that just where she says, I will not be ignored.

16:24

Dang, I wish I had seen that because that would

16:26

have been a great little reference to throw in having

16:28

Todd say, I will not be ignored probably when he's

16:30

on the radio. You think you can just drive away

16:32

from us? Oh, yeah. I want to know what people

16:34

think Todd is. That I don't

16:36

want to say what I think Todd is, but I want to know

16:39

what people think Todd is. It's got to be

16:41

something Eldridge. I've been watching a lot of YouTube

16:43

lately. I almost said, comment down below, like and

16:45

subscribe. Tell me what you think Todd is. Comments

16:48

on Spotify Q&A. Yes. Comment on

16:50

Spotify Q&A. Or Discord. I

16:53

think we have some listener shoutouts,

16:55

some things to cover. Yeah. We

16:57

have one other question,

17:00

comment that came in through

17:02

Spotify. This was on the

17:04

If Memory Serves episode, the

17:06

Mandela Effect, Trust versus Truth

17:08

and AI. This is CorvidsRUs

17:10

says, is there a reason

17:12

why older generations like the

17:14

boomers, like the boomers, refuse

17:17

to trust actual people, but

17:19

take Facebook at face value?

17:21

Oh, but take Facebook at

17:23

face value. Nice wordplay there Corvids. Yeah. Have

17:27

you done an episode on this kind of thing? Not

17:30

specifically, right? Yeah. But we

17:32

have mentioned it a few times, which so it

17:35

continues to come up. Yes. Come

17:37

up tangentially like different generations relationships with

17:39

the internet, like how the

17:42

boomers, which I'm just going to, I feel like

17:44

this, the boomers. This question has given me carte

17:46

blanche to say that for this segment. The

17:48

boomers were the ones telling us to

17:50

not trust anyone online, that everyone's fake

17:52

and lying. And now the boomers

17:54

are the ones falling for the Facebook scams and stuff.

17:56

It's interesting. It's kind of like how, uh,

17:59

when we talk to But was it Dr. Christina

18:01

Downs who told us that Gen Z kids

18:03

have a very different relationship with the internet

18:05

where they're not as tech savvy on the

18:07

whole as we would have expected? Yeah, I

18:09

think we've heard that echoed through a few

18:11

people that have done this kind of research.

18:13

Yeah, that there's not as much tech savviness

18:16

and that this feeling that the internet is

18:18

just an extension of real life.

18:21

I think it'd be interesting to

18:23

explore older people's relationships with technology

18:25

and the internet because it's

18:27

not a niche thing anymore and so everyone

18:29

has had to adapt. Yeah, I mean though

18:31

you do still have some curmudgeons, right? Because

18:34

and Joel Best exemplified a little bit of

18:36

that. Yeah, in this episode which is in

18:39

anything that we asked is like do you

18:41

use emojis? Ah, I've got no use

18:43

for those. Right, I'm not on social

18:45

media because I have a life. Yeah,

18:48

and he said several things like

18:50

that which just shows

18:52

that you can be a super, super

18:54

intelligent person contributing greatly to society kind

18:57

of at the top of your game

18:59

with the things that you know and

19:01

what you're doing and still

19:03

have this one thing that's out

19:06

there that the majority of people in the

19:08

world are doing and know about really well

19:10

that you're just not participating in. And

19:12

I don't know what that means but it's

19:14

really interesting to see how that shapes frames

19:17

and world views and everything else. And I

19:19

kind of admire that too, not in like

19:21

a way where I'm like, oh yeah, all

19:23

tech is bad and I don't think Joel

19:25

thinks that either but just as someone who

19:27

is chronically online and like working online and

19:29

hobbies in my art is online and you

19:31

are online all the time too, it's refreshing

19:33

when you meet someone who is not chronically

19:35

online and you're like there is a whole

19:37

world and like even if the internet is

19:39

terrible I can go outside and it's nice.

19:42

Right, yeah, exactly. Joel was

19:44

a lot of fun. I hope he

19:46

comes across. He was, He's

19:48

like, he's not a crank. He's like,

19:50

he's not like a grump. He's like

19:52

a really upbeat and fun dude. Yeah,

19:54

I mean you get the idea that

19:56

he just views life with this really

19:58

playful attitude. Yeah. There is money

20:00

could have ever seen his answers to

20:02

those icebreakers. All of them he was

20:04

like now nothing I don't know for

20:06

for he says he added the browser

20:08

history. one area crown around looking for

20:10

a weird points of view and things

20:12

online. Everybody's browser history is fascinating. Yeah.

20:15

When he as somebody like what is

20:17

the hardest thing to explain or what

20:19

would you be slightly embarrassed about saw

20:21

my gosh responses to that are fantastic.

20:23

A Perry I have an idea yeah

20:25

what a mosey do you find yourself

20:27

using too often and which most you

20:30

do you hate. We never answered these

20:32

questions whenever I use well and as

20:34

I feel bad because it's the thing

20:36

that they said boomers tend to have

20:38

mess with sideways smile his if it's

20:40

with or the for the sideways laughing

20:42

crying nemo. Yep that's mine too though

20:44

and I'm. A I'm a Millennial

20:46

Jersey Casper So. I use

20:49

that way too much. It's kind of the

20:51

default and a lot of ways and then

20:53

the one that's what is the one that

20:55

annoys me. The ones that it always

20:57

be I guess was it Christina Downs that

20:59

mention the suicide or maybe us cassandra. That.

21:02

Just the the the ambiguous thumbs up.

21:04

yeah that's the one. I hate that.

21:06

I hate that one to August so

21:08

we have the same answers on this

21:10

than because like all of the weird

21:12

and like particularly heinous emerges I love like

21:14

the weird i've weird mouth but it's

21:16

the thumbs up as the ambiguous sons

21:18

of his like are you madam it

21:20

is if any is everything okay, is

21:22

this a good thing and then yeah

21:24

I also use the sideways cry last

21:26

way too much so I will amend

21:28

this to so. in addition to just the

21:30

ambiguous thumbs up the. One that disturbs

21:32

me the most I see it is

21:34

like the little panting smiley face on

21:36

has been. ah yes, that's just it

21:38

makes me feel dirty. It it? yeah,

21:41

I guess it is definitely what. it's

21:43

definitely a spicy M O J or

21:45

any contextually in society. Yeah, don't like

21:47

it or gotta think it's so funny

21:49

to use that when wrong though. Which.

21:51

Is why have a hard time I owe

21:53

that. There's a right way to use. That

21:55

said, that's the Southern Methodist why it needs

21:57

to. Does that say like see I love

22:00

all of those. It's the one the only

22:02

one I think I can take any issue

22:04

it is the thumbs up and I think

22:06

it's just because it's really hard to decipher

22:08

the meaning of yeah I like that horrible

22:10

red faced panting and yeah be there's lots

22:12

of the emerges as it did I I

22:15

like and I can see below you in

22:17

the world for but the Liberals or panting

22:19

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Hellofresh America's number one. Meal kit. What

25:06

about favorite contemporary legend for you?

25:09

Oh, geez. I would have to think about that.

25:11

I don't know why I've not thought about our

25:13

own questions. I know I haven't either. And it

25:15

just occurred to me that this would be a

25:17

good spot for us to answer them. I'm having

25:19

a hard time with the favorite contemporary legends as

25:21

well. For me, and maybe

25:24

because it's in my head because it was

25:26

a diagram within the program for

25:31

the Iscore meeting, International Society

25:34

for Contemporary Legend Research meeting

25:36

a couple years ago, they had a picture

25:38

of the cat in the microwave or maybe

25:40

it was a dog in the microwave. That

25:42

one, I think, is one of my favorite

25:44

ones. Cat in the microwave or dog in

25:46

the microwave? Yeah. I forget which animal

25:48

it was, but the little animal in the microwave. I don't know

25:50

what that is. It's the one

25:52

where somebody's dog or cat gets wet

25:55

or needs to get cleaned up. Oh, no.

25:58

It pops it in the microwave. Oh

26:00

no! That explodes. Oh, I

26:02

hate that. I hate that a lot. And

26:06

I think that's why I love it so much is

26:08

when you really think about it. It's kind of the...

26:11

It's like the

26:13

babysitter one where they accidentally

26:16

put the turkey in the baby's crib

26:18

in the baby oven. In the oven.

26:20

Yeah. The microwave one though is

26:22

just that I want to throw up and cry. That's

26:24

a... Fluffy

26:27

got wet. We're going to have to

26:29

dry fluffy off. No. It

26:31

was... There was

26:34

like a myth that went around recently

26:36

about microwaving something improperly. It was like

26:38

your phone or something. People

26:40

were saying it was a way to fix a problem with a

26:43

device. Oh, it's kind of like the... Which

26:46

really does work if your phone gets all wet,

26:48

put it in rice, but it was probably something

26:50

like that. If something happens, do this. You put

26:52

this big chunk of metal in your microwave. Yeah,

26:55

it was something like that. Also the way I

26:57

thought you were about to say, well, it works

26:59

if your phone's wet, put the phone in the

27:01

microwave. No, don't do

27:03

that. Yeah, please don't. I don't think

27:05

I have a favorite contemporary legend. Come

27:08

back to me on the contemporary legend bit. What

27:11

thing in your browser history would be

27:13

hardest to explain? I

27:15

mean, over the past few weeks, it's

27:18

all been AI and

27:20

like Apple Vision Pro and creating

27:24

digital twins and stuff like that.

27:26

I don't think any of that is

27:28

embarrassing. So I

27:30

bought pregnantsonic.com. Okay,

27:35

you win. So I have that. Right now

27:37

it points to the Patreon of one of

27:39

my friend's podcasts, Hannah Wright. Also

27:41

I believe a fan of the show, Hannah

27:43

Wright, who does the show In

27:45

Between, which I'm on this most recent season of

27:48

as Larkin. It's a really fun show. She does

27:50

not want pregnantsonic.com to point to the Patreon for

27:52

that show, but it does. But I

27:54

mean, how often do people just randomly go to

27:56

PregnantSonic.com? I should check the web stats because I'm

27:58

not sure. do with it in

28:01

the long run? I mean you could SEO the

28:03

heck out of that and do some adwords. Yeah,

28:05

I'm open to suggestions of what to do with pregnant

28:08

Sonic in the long run, but I just had

28:10

to buy that URL. We should get a billboard to

28:12

add for it. Yes,

28:15

we should. Man, what

28:17

would be embarrassing? So the thing with

28:19

me is anytime I think I'm going

28:21

to an embarrassing URL or about to

28:23

do some kind of search that I

28:25

would rather not be in my search

28:27

history, I immediately go to an incognito

28:29

window. Oh, okay. So

28:32

it's not there. But

28:34

I guess you'd say if somebody

28:36

subpoenaed my history from my ISP

28:39

and it wasn't being properly protected

28:41

by private relay or VPN, what

28:43

might they find? Yeah. I mean

28:45

it would probably be some weird stuff

28:47

with like Loeb and

28:51

looking at urban legend and AI horror

28:53

stuff and just some of the results

28:55

of that that had like dismembered children

28:57

in it. Oh, right. Right. Because there's

28:59

all that horrible AI. Yeah. But I

29:01

mean, that's not a fun thing to

29:04

think about. No, I mean, the question

29:06

itself doesn't necessarily lend a thing. I

29:08

feel like it's like programmers, writers and

29:11

folklorists have the weirdest search history,

29:13

right? Programmer search history is like how

29:15

to kill child because

29:18

of child's processes. Oh,

29:20

yeah. Yeah. So I think that's

29:22

us answering those questions. So maybe

29:25

on the Patreon side, since we

29:27

talked about how great Rich was

29:29

in this, and I think that

29:31

he had some fun bits. I'm

29:34

wondering if there's value in just

29:36

posting Rich's raw audio from

29:38

this to Patreon. You know, he

29:40

did do it in two complete

29:42

consecutive single takes with like only

29:45

a couple of alts here and there. It might

29:48

be. It's very fun to listen through his

29:50

whole performance, especially that last bit where

29:52

he's just like devolved. Yeah. And halfway from

29:54

there he goes through it in its entirety

29:56

twice. I used a lot of each splicing

29:59

them together. Yeah, and it really

30:01

wasn't hard to do is the hardest thing

30:03

about it was trying to choose which One

30:06

to use because they were both really good

30:08

takes the second one was way darker than

30:10

the first Yeah, and it was fun because

30:12

I in that very first scene There's a

30:14

fair split between the first take and the

30:16

second take because I wanted it to keep

30:18

that dynamism of like He's

30:20

very big and I know you type of thing

30:22

Yeah And then he's getting down real close like

30:25

and then people would also get to hear

30:27

Rich's voice doing some of that stuff without

30:29

as much processing on it So yeah, because

30:31

you I mean you straight had

30:34

him sounding like an interdimensional demon,

30:36

which was amazing I'm glad you liked

30:38

it. The effect on his voice is

30:41

actually really simple and it's one I really love It's

30:43

like a technique that I don't remember how I started

30:45

doing it I think I was just messing around and

30:47

played with it But basically you have Rich's audio and

30:50

then that is getting split and going into two separate

30:52

pitch shifters One only in the

30:54

left ear one only in the right ear and they're

30:56

both pitched a little bit differently And I pulled the

30:58

formant up on both and pitched I think I pitched

31:01

them both down by different amounts But

31:03

it makes it feel like there's this three voice

31:05

thing going on But they're in unison and then

31:07

the having them be panned hard left and hard

31:09

right makes them interact in an interesting way in

31:11

The in the center, but yeah, I

31:14

loved it It was it was fun I and

31:16

I don't know how often he gets to hear

31:18

the final result of all these things I imagine

31:20

not that much because he's just how always having

31:22

to like move on to the next thing I'm

31:24

thinking we ought to send him part of this

31:26

one because as I was editing it I was

31:28

like rich sounds so good I hope he knows

31:30

how good he did. I'm sure he does I

31:32

think I I've

31:34

seen nothing but positive reviews from

31:36

anybody that's used him for

31:39

these things But I want to know if he's

31:41

heard how cool he sounds, you know, I Hope

31:45

he knows. Yeah, me too. I hope his I

31:47

hope his kids in his family knows if he

31:49

has kids and family So

31:53

why is dad scary like a team? All

31:55

right, so as we get ready to close

31:57

out then what do you

31:59

you want us to be thinking

32:02

about preparing our souls for in

32:04

the next episode? Well,

32:06

I think this is a hard one to answer because

32:08

we need to figure out what we're doing for the

32:10

next episode. True. We

32:15

know where we're at. We had had something planned

32:17

that we're still going to go through on, so

32:19

I don't want to spoil anything about it. We're

32:21

just doing it later. Right. And then

32:23

we had a different thing planned for this. And

32:25

then I think timing has just gotten weird.

32:27

So now there's a little bit of figuring

32:29

out to happen for the next one. But

32:32

I think the one thing I know what

32:34

to look forward to is us

32:36

mentioning something and probably talking a bit about something

32:38

that we've been asked to talk about many, many,

32:41

many times. And also the story is going

32:43

to take place in a very cool way.

32:47

Yeah. Yeah. I think location

32:49

is going to be interesting. Topic will

32:51

be interesting. Collaboration will be interesting.

32:54

Yeah. There's lots of things that

32:56

are coming together, and unfortunately, none

32:58

of it has fully solidified yet.

33:01

So we're again in a race against

33:04

the clock to get something done. Yeah.

33:06

But that's the last episode of the season, so

33:09

we're going to put a lot of intentionality into

33:11

it and see

33:13

how soon we can get that to everybody. Until

33:16

then, we do have tons of great

33:18

unplugged episodes. Oh, yeah. We're

33:21

lining up for folks and maybe a

33:23

couple of fun things in between if

33:25

we get a chance to do those

33:27

as well. There might be some changes

33:29

in the format going forward in season

33:31

three, partly because as

33:34

you've seen, the production process has gotten pretty

33:36

wild. And the

33:38

way we've been doing it and bouncing things around

33:40

has been tricky. And

33:43

so Perry and I have been brainstorming

33:45

on different ways to approach covering folklore

33:47

with the same pizzazz and style and

33:49

uniqueness that we have, but in a

33:51

way that's different. And

33:54

I don't want to talk too much about the

33:56

kinds of shifts we're thinking about because we're still really

33:59

talking about. a lot behind the scenes, but one

34:01

of them is maybe more shorter

34:04

form, deep dives, kind

34:06

of like we've talked about the idea of

34:08

the folklore curious, things that are produced

34:10

more about as segments about a specific

34:12

topic rather than the overarching

34:14

narrative, and then the narrative is bleeding into

34:16

it. Yeah, so there's a lot

34:18

to be figured out. What we're gonna

34:21

do is, after we finish episode 10

34:23

of this season, we'll

34:25

give some updates, some thoughts, and

34:28

kind of some hints and

34:30

previews into what we're

34:32

thinking about, and I guess what we'll actually be

34:34

doing in that

34:37

mid-season interval. So I

34:39

guess with that, everybody stay tuned

34:41

for episode 10. There's gonna be

34:43

some fun unplugged stuff there

34:46

as well, and we will continue to

34:48

go through it. I think Mason has

34:50

some hexadecimal stuff and RAM

34:52

stuff to figure out on his machine

34:54

before he can actually like really dive

34:57

into editing again in a productive way.

34:59

Yeah, I got to start that out.

35:01

I mean, fortunately, it should be quick.

35:04

I hope they'll cross-chip the RAM. Yeah,

35:06

and we got to figure out all

35:08

the hex weirdness that happened in your

35:11

re-personation. Yeah, I think the issue was

35:13

that the SOS extension track filter was

35:15

just printing the hex codes for

35:18

the tracks into the session each time I was

35:20

filtering them. I mean, those kind of errors tend

35:22

to bleed throughout computer systems too, so we want

35:24

to make sure that you're not accidentally

35:26

causing issues. We

35:29

got to go. We have work to

35:31

do, and I'm sure that

35:33

everybody else has the next podcast in

35:35

their queue to listen to after this.

35:37

Yeah. So whatever that podcast is that's

35:39

next, queue that up now and enjoy

35:41

it, and we will see you or

35:43

let you listen to us or connect

35:45

with you over Discord or see you

35:48

on Patreon or somewhere else next time. I was

35:50

just looking at what you have coming up next.

35:52

That's cool. I like that. Have fun. That's a

35:54

good show. Yeah, it is. Stick with that. Or

35:56

skip it. I mean, it may be out of

35:58

date by now. Meitter,

36:00

bye! Al

36:45

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