A Geek History of Time - Episode 44 - Dark Crystal Israel Palestine Part I

Episode Date: March 7, 2020

While Ed is on assignment working with the Wisconsin Trade Federation, Damian invites in a trivia host, Ashley Sanders, in the hopes that someone will have the patience to sit through an entire viewing of the Henson classic, The Dark Crystal. Damian then compares it at even greater length to LSD, New Age channeled writing, and the escalating conflict in Israel and Palestine. Not only does Ashley discuss Aughra’s thicc-ness, but also Santeria; as Damian tries to make sense of how 7 Deadly Sins fit into 10 Skeksis. Sponsored by this-should-have-been-your-chance-to-shine-business-with-money-but-you’re-being-shy..

I said good day sir. You don't ever plan anything around the Eagles because the Eagles represent the grace of God. You heathen bastards. One of vanilla nabish name. Well you know works are people too. I'm thinking of that one called they got taken out with one punch. So he's got a wall, a gall, a gall, and a wall. Every time you mention the Eagles, I think done Henley.

Ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. This is a geek history of time, where we connect nursery to the real world. I'm not at Blalock, so unfortunately I hadn't said quite right.

But I am Damien Marmini, our any Latin teacher, a part-time more history teacher, a union rap of father, a dog owner, an uninspiring kite flyer, and just an all-around aflop of that. A cross for me is my guest for today. Hi, my name is Ashley Sanders. I host a weekly pub quiz at Yola Brewing called anyone's guests every Tuesday at 7 p.m. if you want to come stop by. Also, my curls don't bounce when you pull them. I've been told that by strangers before. Much to their disappointment. So don't pull her hair without getting consent first. A problem I don't have because I keep my hair so short that it always just stands up.

But actually, when I have shaved my head a few times, one of the gals in the attendance office used to want to touch my hair all the time, which was funny because I turned to her at one point. I'm like, don't you normally get this? And she started laughing. But my hair was velvety soft, so I couldn't blame her. So actually thanks for joining us. I wanted to talk about the dark crystal, and I figured someone who knew a lot about trivia

might actually be able to hang with us on the dark crystal while Ed is away on assignment. So I am hoping that you've seen the dark crystal, the movie from the 80s. I just recently watched it. So I am hoping that you've seen the Dark Crystal, the movie from the 80s. I just recently watched it. Good timing. I could not have planned this better. That's great. This is called the Dark Crystal in the Two State Solution. Things that make you go, hmmm. Oh lord.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really do want someone to come up with a mashup of CNC music factory and Chamberlain. So... I... I went the first time he did that. I thought, oh god, I hope he's not going to be a bigger character. Yeah, yeah, and he was.

I know he was. That was fun. I actually found somebody decided to loop it for 10 hours straight on YouTube. Oh, so I played that in the background one day while my daughter and I were playing and she just finally looked at me. She's like, how long does this go on? It's so fun. So my daughter is a huge fan of the Dark Crystal. My son also really likes it. He likes Fiskig, that little character that's all about the palm Iranian essentially. My daughter really likes all the different characters.

The TV series came out so we watched that with our neighbors and she got a book where it names all the characters. I didn't know if you knew this but they had names besides just their title. Chamberlain's name is like Skeckog or something like that. She could tell me everything about it, but so apparently there's a whole mythology to it. So that's kind of fun. So what do you know about early 1980s geopolitics? Not much. Would you say that if you were to learn about it through metaphor, you'd understand it better? Yeah, absolutely. Good. Well, then you already are on the way to understanding because the dark crystal

is 100% about Israel and Palestine trying to come together for a two-state solution. So without any further ado, let's dive in. So it's December 1982 and I am 4, almost 5 years old. And the Dark Crystal comes out and make American theaters. It was a fantasy movie. For those people who don't know, it was all muppets and animatronics. There were no people on it unless they were dressed up as these creatures. In fact, the people, like, there's a guy inside the gartham suit. So there's giant beetle

things, right? And they hurt their backs because it was like 70 pounds worth of gear, so they couldn't be in it for very long. And then the landstaters, those white things that moved like they're on crutches, that was another dude, and he's just in it, is pretty cool. So when they were fighting, that was just two dudes toppling. Yeah, it was Larry and Ralph meet each other up. It was good times. It was a lot of fun.

So yeah, Muppets and Amitronics, and for its time, it was really, really groundbreaking. Like, even still, I think it holds together as like a built world. I think it's in some ways better than CG because there's an authenticity and a weight to it that you can't get with CG. And like, I don't know about you,

but I notice when there's green screens and stuff like that, everything is just a little bit too defined. And this is a world that like things kind of blended together better. So the early 80s also saw an explosion of movies that created a universe for us to inhabit. And that was Henson's crack at it. So ET and Tootsie also came out in the same year.

Have you seen either of those? I've seen ET, not Tootsie. Okay. Tootsie fantastic makeup. Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorothy and then he switches over to playing Dorothy Michael in this kind of a cool thing. And ET, as you know, a lot of animatronics, Steven Spielberg, right? And they were massively popular. So part of this movie is lack of popularity because it didn't really hit big when it came out.

You can lay that at the feet of the fact that the field was already kind of saturated. Like ET was a blockbuster. It was really the first sentimental blockbuster in some levels that people saw. Apparently I saw it when I was three or four and it triggered something in me and I was sobbing the entire way home. So my mom told me. Apparently I didn't like that ET had to leave. So I was working through all kinds of abandonment issues when I was four. Twitzi, I didn't have any such issues. It was nice.

But it also, to be honest, the dark crystal, kind of boring. Yeah, and I think the dialogue suffers a little. It seems like they were writing it around the fact that there are muppets. Oh sometimes you see a scene and the camera's on Jen and it's like it really bothers me that and the camera cuts somewhere else and he finishes the sentence and it's a lot more verbose than the camera was on him. There's a lot of inner monologue to on his part. Yeah. Oh, that was so dull. Like in comic books, that makes sense. You have the box text because the

idea and comics was anybody could pick up their first issue as this issue. So you have to kind of just reintroduce them to everything all the time. And you'd have Spider-Man swinging through the streets of Manhattan talking about everything you just read in the previous comic But if it was your first time reading it it'd catch you up But in this case is like oh my god, you know, we kind of know that you're alone because we saw your master die a second I go you don't have to talk about how alone you are, you know Yeah, I think I think you mentioned his master dying like two or three times and being alone Yeah, all right alone then

And it's like what other option did you have dude like really? Yeah, so it was kind of boring. It was not well written. I mean it was Jim Henson writing it And actually another guy named Brian Odell doing the screenplay both of which were I again, I would say uncreative as far as squeezing exposition things. It was very exposition heavy. So no characters really stood out to me, either besides being mildly entertaining. I mean, there are some slightly iconic characters,

but like, they don't really have any depth. Like all the depths seem to go into making them really interesting looking. Yeah, you know. And Jen in particular, being the protagonist and the chosen one, uh, is just, doesn't really do a lot. And in fact, there's a lot of stupid things throughout the movie. Like what?

Uh, he's just, he's told that there's a prophecy and he's meant to save the world and he needs to bring the crystal shard to the dark crystal and reunite everything and they get attacked by the like the beetle guard thing. The Gartam? Yeah. And he's got the shard in his hand. He just kind of goes, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. And then he shucks it. And then they find it immediately the next morning. Well, that was good for me because I was like,

um, so do you want to go get that? Yeah, I guess you don't want to be like, oh God, we got to find the damn thing now. It's another 20 minutes of exposition. I felt bad for throwing it and I shouldn't have thrown it and just like the whole way he's thinking his way through. So, yeah, it's a standard plot. I mean, it really is. It's chosen one like you said. Here's thinking his way through it. So yeah, it's a standard plot. I mean, it really is.

It's chosen one like you said. Exactly. So you had to have that moment where he's like, I don't want it. But now the world, while remarkable, was quite frankly so busy that the characters get lost amongst it. Like one of my favorite parts is they're panning

across the scene. And you have like these little berry creatures that are part of like the skin of a big rock thing that turns out as a mouth and like it's really cool ecology but like your main character is dull and bland and gets lost immediately. Like it's not fun. And doesn't have wings. Well, he's a boy. Yeah. I mean, of course not. He's a boy silly. You know, it did turn a profit. It was also the 16th highest grossing film of the year, which I don't know how many films came out that year. I hope the number is greater than 17. But it did turn a profit. So that's, we can't say that it was a stanker. And it's actually the second highest grossing

Muppet slash Puppet movie of all time. What's number one? The Muppet movie. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. It's a kind of a niche thing though. Yeah, you can't beat the original.

It's like second only to wine. Well, what's the best? Wine. You know. However, the dark crystal, even though it's clearly another example of bearded white guys appropriating what little they know about Eastern mysticism, like in its podcast about the Jedi. If you guys haven't listened to that, I encourage you to go back on how George

Lucas got the Jedi wrong. It is a fascinating look into the Israel Palestine conflict that was going on from the 70s and 80s. Now it was going on before that, but really the flavor of it had shifted by the 70s. For a little bit of background, Jim Henson starts writing this story for the dark crystal in 1975. I think he snowed in in an airport or something like that. And in 1975, as before I was born, Ed was probably already a teenager. But and producer George, I think he'd gotten through college and had a favorite look here by that point.

But 1975 is two years after the Yamka Pur War. Do you know the Yamka Pur War? I don't. OK. So essentially, there's a high holiday of Yamka Pur and Israel and the six Arab nations around them that they kept fighting with, got into another fight, and it didn't last long.

This is also three years after Munich. There's a movie about Munich, so there's more possibly people would know about it, but essentially, the Munich Olympics, there were Palestinian activists, terrorists, fighters, and they basically took hostage a bunch of Israeli athletes, mostly a wrestling team, and it ended very badly for everybody involved. Most of them were dead.

I think, oh, it's not Sam Donaldson, it was Peter Jennings. He's famous for saying they're dead. They're all dead. It was a lot going on. It's also one year after the United Nations recognized the Palestinians right to self-determination. So you've got a lot of this tension coming back and forth. Israel is its own state, but the United Nations

recognized that a group of people, an ethnic group within Israel, have a right to their own determination. And a lot of this is because Israel was created out of what was Palestine back in the 1940s. So the background to all of this is a lot of insurgencies, a lot of attacks from within Israel and from outside of Israel as well, by various groups that are aimed at either eliminating the state of Israel or aiming at Palestinian liberation. And sometimes even those two goals end up in conflict. So the Palestinians become kind of the poster child for Arab-Israeli aggressions.

Sometimes the Arabs and the surrounding countries are attacking Israel on behalf of the Palestinians and sometimes they're attacking Israel, claiming that it's on behalf of the Palestinians, but it's not. So, that's all happening while he's writing this down. That's the kind of the background fuzz of what's going on there. The background to this is also a lot of special forces attacks on the part of Israel to to attack small groups of people

They're attacking what they would call terrorist cells other people would call them freedom-fighting cells and that's the problem is it's this is a conflict that's very divisive obviously, you know but It's it's a lot of back and forth, a lot of state sanctioned assassinations, a lot of efforts to maintain the state of Israel and the midst of all this occupation or opposition pardon me. So you have a government trying to keep itself in power, trying not to let this insurgency rise up and destabilize the government, also trying

to keep itself safe from all the surrounding states that want to topple them as well. And then you've got a smaller group who had their country taken away from them and were made to live in an apartheid state. And then you have a bunch of people who are fighting on their behalf, but not necessarily in the ways that they want. So that's what's going on where he's writing this down. Also, the background to this is a lot of rhetoric where one side wiping the other one completely out

and refusing to compromise is the stated goal. And that's true on both sides, and they both have holy books to back this up. So it makes it impossible to walk back from in a lot of ways. I wouldn't say it's crusade but I would say that there's a lot of religious rhetoric about who's supposed to live there. When did God promise it to him? Who did He promise it to first and that kind of stuff? Also the background to this is there's a lot of things happening outside of Israel. So the rest of the world can't just ignore it as an internal issue because usually when

a group sets it up where they oppress a minority within their own state, the United Nations kind of like clucks their tongue but doesn't do much else. It's only when it starts to get across borders that the UN steps in and says, hey, well, let's take a look at this. And actually, the UN is refusing to ignore this partly because of the escalation of the violence that's happening. There are a lot of mass casualty attacks and murders of groups of women and children. a lot of mass casualty attacks and murders of groups of women and children. That's happening on both sides. So you'll have one group, Bama Bus. You'll have another group, Bama Village.

And it's back and forth and back and forth. And there's a lot of dissension amongst the various groups that have a stake in Palestine's continued existence, including a lot of murders within the liberation movements of Palestine. So all of that's happening by 1975. Like it's just like layers upon layers upon layers of violence and people so fully committed to their cause that peace is not an option. Peace will only be gotten after they've destroyed the other person. Henson writes a 25-page treatment

that has flavors of the movie that we've come to love way more than we should. He's also been reading, and here's where it gets fun. He also admits to not understanding what he's read, but something called the Seth material. Have you ever heard of the Seth material? I have it now. No?

Okay. Have you ever heard of New Ageism? Yeah. Oh, okay, cool. So this is Ageism, not A-Gism. Okay, just magnitude. So that was Fred. He's kicking me wherever he's listening to this. Um, so the Seth material is a book that was written in the early 1960s by a woman named Jane Roberts. Have you ever heard her name? No. Okay.

Uh, she claimed to be channeling a male ghost named Seth. Okay, it makes sense. Right, like you do. Um, whom she'd met while using a Ouija board with her husband researching ESP for another book. Okay. So I don't know if you've ever done research and you find something really interesting and suddenly you become an expert on barrenuckle boxing of the late 1800s instead of like socialism. Like maybe that's just me I don't know but like

she is using a Ouija board and finds this ghost named Seth and then he starts telling her stuff and she learns how to channel spirits. You've heard of channeling spirits or? Well, some stories about people getting spirits channeled into them. No kidding. Yeah, I've never told you that my family practices Santa Ria. No! Yeah. yeah, okay. Yeah, and so we'd all you know dressing our ceremonial garb and You get in a circle and the ceremony starts there is a coconut shelf will wine

That's passed around and then the head priestess We all kind of chant as she waits for her, like essentially guardian angel to come and possess her. Wow. And, uh... Now, Santeria, let me just back it up. Yeah. Is this tied to the Loa, like that pantheon, or is this a different thing?

It's a different thing. Okay. It's, um, it's an African religion that is disguised as Catholicism. Okay, is this the homian? Mmm. These are things that I know that are tied to other things. So, again, I could be wrong. So, okay.

Oh, yeah. It disguises Catholicism. Yeah, and so there is like a pantheon and they kind of currently correlate with different saints and catholicism. Sure. And it's just a popular religion in places where they're both Spanish and African influences, a lot of Central America, Caribbean. Caribbean, yeah.

Okay. Anyway, so yeah, you would know when she was possessed because she'd take a big spig of wine and then all of a sudden spit it out. Wow. And start convulsing and chanting. And I mean, this is obviously, I'm an atheist, so like... I was gonna ask, so... No, no, no. Okay, so I don't actually subscribe to any of this, but she would start convulsing and then her

guardian angel was a man, so once she was possessed she would take her skirt off, take off all her jewelry, get this woman shit off of me, and then the reading ceremony would start once she was like possessed. So let me can I ask you a few questions about this? Yeah. So does there have to be a priestess or is this just within your family it was a woman who kind of ran the show? It's within our family it was a woman.

It doesn't have to be a woman I don't think. It just has anybody who has like their a close relationship with their guardian angel spirit and has the ability to be possessed. Okay. Wow. That's that's narrowing of the field there. So, um, geez, I have so many questions. Um, so none of which you're answerable too, but I'm just genuinely curious. So you're family practice this. Yeah. Okay. So you have some background in observing it. I do. Okay. Yeah. And you don't mind sharing tales out of school. No, I don't. All right. So does it have to be a male guardian angel? No. Okay. It doesn't. It could be anyone basically just a spirit will latch itself on to you because it likes some aspect about you. Wow. Okay. And at what point, because you said you're an atheist, at what point did you kind of just be like, okay, this is what they do to get down. Like, was that really early on or was that like last year?

No, it was, it was in my early 20s. Actually actually it was it was a big to do really so there was um I Don't know how to act your podcast. No dude. This is great Normally Ed is talking to me about the history of the samurai but this point so it's fine all right So there's he's gonna be so mad at me There's a bus I'll throw him under of course when he does his podcast I'm just throwing in the dumbest fucking puns. So I never met it. So this is all I first impression. Oh I sure you've seen him though. He's been on our Capital punishment actually isn't he gonna be

This month no, oh no, I think that's your boyfriend No, he's gonna be a role. Oh, that's right, okay, nevermind. But also not Ed. Ed was one of the guys on the teacher episode. Oh, yeah. Were you there for the teacher one? No. Oh, man. So he was on camera, actually.

He was the guy in the kill. Oh, I did hear about a kill. Yes. I've heard the legend. Yeah. Never met the legend. Well, you know, he's legendary. So, all right, so back to you, hijack.

Yeah, okay. So there has to, you have to be called to the religion. You can't just kind of like jump in. You can't stop in, okay? Yeah, so they like frequently hold these divination ceremonies and then whatever the gods or the spirits kind of want you to know, they will reveal during this ceremony. And so it has to be revealed in a ceremony that it's your time to join.

Okay. And they didn't call for me for a long time, alter my childhood and my adolescence I would just never called. Okay. and my adolescence I would just never called. And then one day my early 20s, it happens, or they're like, okay, it's Ashley's turn to join, and they had kind of been grooming me a little bit for like a higher position and potentially to be like the next priestess. Oh wow.

And I had really long hair in my early 20s because it came out in a divination ceremony that I had a spirit with me who likes my long hair. And it was important that I keep my hair long because as soon as I cut it I would be cursed by the spirit that had attached itself to me. And so at this this point when I'm called, I've already kind of made up my mind and, you know, I'm coming out of the pool of agnosticism, dipping my toes into atheism. Which really you're just dipping your toes into like really dry sand. Yeah, it's not exciting. It's like, wow, I don't believe in anything now.

This is kind of lonely. Well, I don't know compared to everything I grew up with. It seemed very, very, um... Oh, I bet. Like almost exotic. Scatalysts, yeah. Yeah. Wow.

I get a kick out of that. Okay, so I grew up mostly atheist. I don't consider my parents to have been agnostic or atheist so much as apathetic. But I dipped my toes into religion for about a season and then I was like, oh not for me. And then it was like, I'm an atheist. And I would argue with people because I was just a dick and I like to argue. But by and large, it was so much not a part of my life. Like, it just wasn't a thing that existed. It's like, you know, it's so nice. I don't go to conventions, I don't, you know,

or do you not believe? I mean, either. Why do we dress up again? I don't know. You know, like that kind of thing. Like, I didn't go to any of that. It was just never a part of my life. So it's just fun to hear you go from a family that practices Santaria to, and then I got into atheism. And that was exotic. It kind of was. I get it, yeah.

It was scary for me to kind of leave my family behind like that in a way. But the time I was called for, I try to talk to my mom about it and tell her, I don't really believe in any of this stuff and I don't really want to do the ceremony because it costs money too. It costs a lot of money.

Oh yeah, it's dick. There's of course. I was hoping that it wasn't going to be some version of like evangelicalism. Yeah, I was hoping that it wasn't gonna be some version of like Evangelicalism. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to say a cult, but it's you know, there's money involved So a lot a lot of money and so I told my mom, you know I really don't want you to say all this money. It could be better spent somewhere else And I don't want to do this. And my mom was just not having it. She really, yeah, you don't have a choice.

Now hold where you said early 20s. Early 20s, yeah. In college, yeah, or? In college, living at home. Okay. Yes, she's like, you don't have a choice. It's you've been called and that's that. And I kept trying to, you know, tell her nicely,

like I really don't want. And I kept trying to, you know, tell her nicely, like I really don't want. And finally, I thought, well, this would be the coolest life-trying movie. I know this is, I always feel like it's like some crazy story. Like, your life is a sublime song. Like, I don't practice interiors. Yeah, yeah.

So I had this long hair that I needed for my my spirit and I wanted to show everybody that I was serious. Uh-huh So I kind of pulled a Mulan and just like wow Wow all my hair off Did you donate it? I? Did good for you Like see again atheist. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm sure that was a spiritual awaken. Now, on the mundane plane, did someone get that hair?

I did. For those of you that don't see her right now, because it's not a video podcast, you have beautiful hair. Oh, thank you. Like, very thick, and I'm sure that if I were to pull on it, it wouldn't bounce. But, like, so I can only imagine it being like eight times as long as it is now Well, okay three times as long as it is now and some kid just being like oh my god cancer was the best thing ever Like look what I got oh

My goodness, yeah, yeah Yeah, so yeah, I cut it off. I got disowned you got disowned. Yeah Wow, have you been repossessed? Wow, ooh, bad choice of words. But have you been reowned? They brought you back? Yeah, after a few years, everything was fine, but for a hot minute. And my mom said some things that, honestly, I'm kind of like just now starting to forgive her for.

Sure. But, Don't fuck with people's ticket to heaven. Yeah, yeah. It's a really powerful thing for someone. She was like, you need to get out of my house because you disrespect the gods and I don't want your bad you do on me.

She actually used those words? No. Well, because like, you know, why people say that shit all the time? And it's like, oh, you know that's an actual phrase, right? You know, but like, okay. Yeah, no, she doesn't say that shit all the time, and it's like, oh, you know that's an actual phrase, right? You know, but like, okay. Yeah, no shit, that shit doesn't say, that's actual words.

Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Dang. Okay, so this new ageism stuff. Yes. Yeah, you're like, no, okay, I can see that, right? Yeah.

Okay, well her name's Jane Roberts. I did a deep dive on this, and I got really lost amongst the muck I found out that like Wicca and I'm gonna piss off at least two thirds of our eight listeners Um, I found out that Wicca was kind of popularized by a guy who had previously been an underwater demolitions expert in World War 2 for the British Um, and a whole bunch of people come back from War 2 in Britain, and they're looking for something, and they get into like Satanism, they create Wica, they get into this new age, like post-World War 2. It's almost like, because you had the lost generation after World War 1, and they just got really fucking drunk. And it was right

after like Houdini had died anyway, so There was actually a he might forget exactly when he died But he was busting up say ounces left and right pointing them out to be frauds, right? So they couldn't get into that so much so they just got really drunk But after World War two there's enough distance and people are like you do what you want to do man It's fine like we're not gonna we don't care Just don't scare the horses and a lot of people got into this and so dear Jane like I said she she was using a Ouija board now after World War II this new age movement took off because I think part of it's because the church has got

bomb to shit too like I do think that like when you destroy because the churches were built on top of former pagan temples typically. And former pagan temples were built on top of usually some sort of natural phenomenon that made people go, whoa what's that? You know, when I took kids to Sicily this last year and it was really cool because we went to a, we were in Tower Mina and we and we looked at an ancient Greek theater that had then become a Latin or Roman arena, which had then become a Christian crypt. So you just got literal layers of stuff and what was cool was the backdrop of it was Mount Etna. Like, holy shit, Right? And so I had the kids sit down

and I said, okay, now I want you to look. I mean, number one, the acoustics of this place are amazing. I said, I want you to look and pretend that like all these ruins of the theater aren't there. And what are you looking at? And they all, well, Mount Etna, I said, wouldn't that be enough to just come and sit down and watch it blow up sometimes? And just watch it? up sometimes and just watch it like that would give you a sense of awe and wonder. And it did. And then people are

like, and while we're looking there, our attention's focused there. Let's build a theater. Because the theater was to Dionysus and he's the God of wine and madness and parties. So now you start to try to assign belief to it and you try to it. It's just a natural phenomenon that you're You know looking at that is awesome on its own and then we create these religious structures on top of that And then the next group comes in and they do and the next group comes in and so these churches got blown to shit and so I think in some ways and this is as I think in some ways, and this is as woo as I will get, that spiritual energy was diffuse. People didn't have a place to specifically go anymore. They had ruins to go to.

And so their willingness to believe in that same thing, I think, was just as diffuse, because the actual physical embodiment of it was rubble. So their faith was shaken, and a lot of people were looking for alternatives to the standard churches that they'd grown used to. Now this book, the Seth material, really became a seminal work in the New Age philosophies, and it's considered a quote, channeled work. So she wrote the whole thing. And I have kind of my own history with that kind of stuff. I didn't do it, but I was married to someone who did. I don't really want to tell her to her to the laundry

or any of her stuff because she's not here to defend herself, but it was a channeled work. And to me, the word work is really important in there because in pro wrestling, work is where you're trying to get one over on everyone. So it's carnival. But the being Seth channeled through her at plenty of gatherings for an audience and was a quote, energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter. since no longer focused in physical matter.

In the 60s, people's credulity was much higher, I guess, because... Okay. I'm sure you could find some people nowadays who'd buy it. Oh, yeah. Like, there's a whole section on Amazon, you could find that. I met a woman who went on an ayahuasca retreat in Peru, and she had this mantra that she told me.

She said, you gotta be humble in the jungle. And the problem is I'm a comedian, so I immediately said, I was like, oh, were you walking around at night? And she said, yeah, I said, did you stumble in the jungle? And then another comic was there with me too. And then we just started going back and forth and back and thank God she was drunk and he was bigger than me

so she was hitting him. But it turns out she was like a 16th generation shaman's daughter, people make shit up. It's like the 1800s, you could literally call yourself anything and just move one town over and everybody like oh my God, he is the emperor of Paraguay. You know, you're like, cool Cool but it was a channeled work and like I said he was an energy personality yes and snow longer focused in physical matter. I think people would

have called that a soul or a spirit I don't I don't know but this sounds bigger and and takes up more print. He'd completed his earthly reincarnations apparently there's a limit, or there's a goal. I don't know, maybe it's like a Kickstarter. And now he was coming to them from a different plane of existence. She wrote all this down and talked about this. Now I mentioned this because this kind of self-oriented personal growth-based spirituality was a really popular thing in the 1960s and would grow throughout the 1970s and this isn't meant as a dig so much as a correlative connection, okay?

Ausley acid also comes onto the scene in 1963. Do you know how is the acid is? I don't. So somebody developed LSD in 38, okay? And the patent for expired in 1963. The CIA was using acid LSD in the MK Ultra Program in the 1950s. Now that was a experiment that they would run on people without telling them what they were doing to them. So they'd dose people without telling them, and they were seeing if they could find some sort of truth serum or mind control serum to like create sleeper agents and stuff. Is really wild shit. Do you know what Elvis Huxley is? Yes. Okay, he was huge on acid. Can Keezy? No. One flew over the cookies, Ness? Oh yes. Okay, he had a group called the Mary pranksters.

They drove a bus and this is where he started getting into the psychedelic movement. And Timothy Lerie? Yes. Okay. These guys are huge advocates of acid, especially after 1963. Ausley was the guy who kind of really popularized it. He gave it to the Beatles. He gave it to a lot of people. Like it was his acid. Like it was like, oh wow, that's like he became synonymous with acid in the same way band-id became synonymous with adhesive bandage. So this is all happening in the United States and the United Kingdom specifically. Those two places are really getting into acid. Those two places are really getting into this new age spiritualism.

In France they had existentialism, partly because I think they felt the physical occupation of the Nazis. Germany, they had their own shit, they were divided by two countries. You know, they've got a wall growing up between them because of those two countries. But England and America were just remote enough from it. And again, England got bombed all the hell but America hadn't. But they were just remote enough from it that acid and new age spiritualism was really, really ramping up up. Also Dr. Strange, have you heard of him? Yeah, I want to try. Yeah, those comic books and the comics for there's a group called Shield

Nick Fury, right back when he was white. So the original Nick Fury was white and he had like the the gray sideburns and We don't talk about him anymore. No, but Sammy now. No, but, Sammy now. Yes, it is. You damn right. But, yeah, Dr. Strange and Shield Comics were really big too. At the same time, because they both dealt with psychedelics.

So psychedelia is a genre of advertising. And when I taught comic books, because I taught comic books for a semester, I talked about the 70s, and it was so much fun, because I'd show them like advertising from the 70s, and it was like the dumbest things were be connected to the psychedelic thing. So did you ever watch Sesame Street? Yeah. So you remember 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, you remember they pulled the thing and it goes through, and that art, that's wild in the advertising. Like, I found one for carnival cruises. And they didn't say, take a trip,

which I was like, how do you miss that? But yeah, it's huge. So the Seth material covers a lot of ground, okay? Because it is a groundbreaking book in its own genre, right? It set the stage for all the others to come. It talked about the origin, the universe, talked about what God is, it called God, all that is, or the multi-dimensional God, which you're just adding adjectives. It talked about guardian spirits, it talked about reincarnation, the higher self, multi-dimensional reality, the purpose of

life, a lot more stuff. Now by the late 60s, you get into Star Trek and sci-fi, it really starts to kind of ramp up as well. Now what I'm zooming in here on though is this, the Seth's materials talked a lot about the people experiencing and creating realities of their own. Not a shared objective truth on any level. So your reality is completely yours and you have your spirit guardians and you experience your origin of the universe in a very different way than I did.

And at different times and maybe you're an older spirit. I mean, there's all this stuff that's very self-focused. There was still a shared objective truth, but that shared objective truth, according to the Seth Chronicles, was on a higher plane. So we're all trying to get there. And this is where Ed would point out, like, oh, this is white people trying to understand Buddhism without actually having read about it. And I think that's fair. This idea of our higher selves starts to be a thing, which I know the Mormons already had a version of that in their religion, but now it's becoming very popularized.

It's not just tied to one cosmology. Down here, on Earth, on this plane, we're all in our own realities. And sometimes those realities bump into each other. Jane Roberts, the one who channeled Seth, said, quote, if you want to change your world, you must first change your thoughts, expectations, and beliefs. Which I mean, on the surface, that's, I mean, that could be on a poster today, you know, that could really be something that our underarmer uses to advertise next, you know.

Now she's writing these books and she's influencing a legion of other writers. And spiritualists, ministers, college students, people who are dissatisfied with the way things are going on, all throughout the 60s and 70s. Jim Henson read and again admitted that he didn't get it, this book. But he also said, but I really liked it. But I'm going to point something out here. Israel is experiencing its own state as something that needs to be defended from anywhere between three to six Arab nations who are committed to something called the Cartoum resolution. And that happened in 1967, which is almost 20 years after the creation of the State of Israel.

They're called the Three Nose. Number one, no peace with Israel. Number two, no recognition of Israel. And number three, no negotiations with Israel. So the reality that Israel is dealing with is that they are recognized by the UN as a nation. They are a member state of the United Nations. And yet they're under constant threat of being attacked, wiped out, and certainly terrorized.

Okay, that's their reality. Palestine is in the same place, but it's not called that anymore, but they're Palestinians, and they're experiencing their own state as something that needs to be defended and liberated from a foreign intruder. They sometimes get help from anywhere between three to six Arab nations in the area, who don't necessarily see them as equals by the way, but as the enemy of their enemy.

Both Israel and Palestine worship the same God. If you look in the Quran, it's a continuation of the Bible and of the Torah. It's all the same God, it's all the same desert. I have my own thoughts on why that is. Speaking to a fellow atheist, I don't feel so bad about it. I don't think I'm being reductive. I'm just being mildly anthropological. The sun was really, really harsh in the desert and you'd better not step out of line because you'll die.

And so you had a very harsh God with very specific rules and they all seemed to blossom from that. But both worshiped the same God who gives them both a claim to the same land in different books who gives them both a claim to the same land in different books. And at different times. So in many ways, you're seeing geopolitically what Jane Roberts is talking about, multi-dimensional, occupying the same space in the same plane, but different selves.

You literally have like a transparency of one state over another. And everybody is dead sure that their transparency is the one that exists. So here's Jim Henson, right? He's snowed in at an airport hotel. He's writing the beginnings of the dark crystal. And he is steeped in a philosophy that he doesn't understand and he's living at the same time as two states are existing simultaneously as one. Okay, he's living while this is going on and yet they exist at the expense of each other too, right? They exist mutually and they cannot mutually exist

and both of those things are happening all at once. It's very like, it's like it's a binary choice that we've chosen both on, which you shouldn't be able to do. It's, I think my mom did research and she's found there's the thing called a, I think it was a proton computer or something like that where you don't have binary ones and zeros, you have it existing. It's almost like Schrodinger's computer. It just exists as both. So he's, you know, he's also a guy who tried LSD and he said that it didn't have any effect on him at all.

Which, I'm like, of course it didn't. The guy who works with Muppets, LSD didn't fuck with it. He was already there. The guy who imagined and manifested Muppets into existence. The guy who like sitting there he's like, okay, so here's what we want to do. We're going to film this thing from like my head up, but my arm is going to be the mouth and my other arm is going to hold a wand and you'll never see me. And the whole world will exist without legs. Like, I mean, if you look at what muppets are, it's that. His biography later on would actually say, quote, of course it didn't, quote, Jim was already

there. So that's that's that's the the soup in which he is sitting while he's writing this this 25 page treatment, which I don't know if you've ever read like original drafts of things like for screenplays and stuff. Sometimes they have absolutely nothing to do with what the movie becomes. Have you ever heard of the movie Dirty Dancing? Yeah. Okay. Have you ever heard of Dirty Dancing too?

Has that happened in the night? Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. I don't know if you know this, but the guy who wrote it is now the host for, wait, wait, don't tell me. Wow.

Yeah. And he wrote it so that he would have a scene in there where he was doing some hot dance with some hot Cuban woman. Okay. He wrote the script. There is literally nothing in the screenplay that actually got turned into a movie. At all, that resembles anything that he wrote.

So like this stuff happens all the time. It's like we like your idea. We're going to change 100% of it now because we want the rights to it. So, uh, Jim Henson makes Brian Fraud. I think it's Fraud or Fruid. Someone can correct me on on the Twitter at uh Harmony. Um, this guy was a fantasy illustrator, um, and he turned into a concept artist for this movie. And he made him and David O'Dell, the screen play writer, read the same book. So hey guys, here's a 25 page treatment. Now before you do it, I want you to read Jane Roberts, which I'm all for people to give

me book suggestions, but not for me to do my job. Like my boss once gave me a book on pedagogy and I'm too busy teaching to read a book on pedagogy, which probably isn't a good thing. But it clearly this book had an impact on him to the point where he's foisting it upon to other people who are ostensibly very busy. Despite not getting it. Yeah, well clearly because he didn't let them exist in their own realities. Good point. That's a good point. Odell even pointed to

a very specific line that Augra you remember Augra? Oh she's my favorite. She's her favorite. It's the hair for you isn't it? It's okay she's twice in the movie she did this weird maneuver where she's like you know she's asked somebody's throat and then she pauses did this weird maneuver, where she's like, you know, she's asked somebody's throw, and then she pauses, and then she can squat down. And she grunts squats. Grunts squats, as if she's just like taking a shit right there all the floor.

She might have. That was my, she's my favorite for sure. She's rad. I don't know if you noticed, because when I first saw this, I was a young lad, but then I saw it again, when I got my own VCR and VHS player. You know, I founded it, Suncoast videos that used to exist. But she had nipples.

Yes! Okay. Yeah! I didn't want to be the one bringing that. Yeah, I'm trying. Oh, that's fine. Agra has no business being that big. She got asked. Oh my god.

Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah. She got the float Yeah, yeah, yeah. She got the floaty ass too. Like it exists in orbit of her. Yeah, like there was someone in charge of just like puppeteering the ass. That's why I was glad with the remake. They didn't have like someone like J.L.O. play augura. You know, they didn't like try to update it.

Like, no, no, no, we're gonna keep her frumpy, you know. But yeah, she had nipples gonna keep her frumpy, you know? But yeah, she had nipples and I was just like, okay. She's also missing an eye that she can like pull out and look at people with. Right? Yeah. She got the horns.

Mm-hmm. What you don't see very well, but her thumbs do the same horn thing off the nail. Oh, okay. It's kind of cool. But he says, Odell says that there's a specific line that August said about Jen's master So remember she talks to Jen about his master and he he says that his master died because that's like his third most favorite line to say

And her response is you know, well, you know, she asked where's your master? You know, blah blah. He says well, he's dead She's like could be anywhere then. Yes. Yeah. Odell specifically said that if he hadn't read Roberts' book, he never would have come up with that line. And to me, it's such a throwaway line. Yeah, and it didn't really end up coming back to playing the plot. Right. It's one of those things that you would think,

like, oh, I'm going to remember that for later, but it didn't really end up paying off. But it was interesting. Yeah, I wonder if us both being atheists, because normally I do this show with a Catholic, which I didn't realize at the time was such a fun layer to add to it, because we both are still very dogmatic, but he's got a ticket to heaven as a result.

And I'm just sitting here going, yeah, I don't know why I follow these rules. But what you're gonna call it, that line, to me has no meaning. I wonder if to somebody who has a spirituality, a cosmology, that would have more meaning, right? But at the same time, her just being so flippant, well, it could be anywhere then, and she's still grumpy.

I liked it. So here's Odell on Hanson's vision, okay, or Hanson's vision, I'm sorry. He says, quote, the spiritual kernel of the dark crystal is heavily influenced by Seth, like he's naming it. I've always felt that the idea of perfect being split into a good mystic part and an evil materialistic part, which are reunited after a long separation is Jim's response to the teachings of that book. Jim admitted that he didn't understand the book himself and that everyone would understand it or not understand it in their own way.

But he thought it opened up a whole different way of looking at reality, which I think was one of his goals in the making of the dark crystal. Number one, I think it's like the eighth time we pointed out that Jim Henson said, I don't really get this stuff But like I don't know it just did you ever see close encounters of the third kind? No, okay There's a scene in it where a guy gets zapped It's also a very boring movie. It was 1970s. They had a much slower pacing to things and and all that and I grew up on Star Wars

So I just I you know, I always liked things that were faster and more intense as George Lucas was demanding But there's this one part where Richard Dreyfus is in it. Do you know Richard Dreyfus? Yes. Okay. He is making a sculpture out of mashed potatoes. And he sculpts devil's table, devil's mountain. You know what you want to talk about? Yeah, yeah. it's a... Oh shit, I used to live in Wyoming.

Oh okay, so it's there, it's a plateau. Devil's Tower. Devil's Tower, thank you. And he sculpts it while everybody else is eating. And then he's just sitting there, like mesmerized, because he's gotten zapped by aliens and stuff as they put programs into his head, I guess. It's never fully explained.

But his wife is looking over and he goes, this means something. But he's never sure what. And that to me is such a 1970s approach to stuff. Oh, it's deep. I don't get it, but it's deep. You know, I don't really wanna go to school for this, but it's deep, you know.

Now, I'd like to call attention to the phrase that he used. He says that everyone would understand it or not understand it in their own way. Again, in their own way, it's this refrain that you see in the 70s. It's not just you do you, I'm a do me. It's you and I exist in totally different realities. And we're lucky if we bump into each other or sometimes that bump into each other is not good, but that's the existence of the 70s. And at the same time, you're seeing that actually playing out in what the British call the Middle East, what I, as a Geographer, would call Southwest Asia.

The original draft of the Dark Crystal wildly differs from what we see on the screen, okay? I don't really care enough about to discuss it over much, but it's not what gets through to the edits and the movie that we see is what gets through. I will say that it was very evil versus good. These were the elements that were still in it. A malevolent race still takes over from a powerful group of wise people, and ultimately the two races are re-unified. Now again, George Lucas was not a student of geopolitics,

he was not a student of the book that he insisted his friends read. But I do find it interesting that that narrative shows up in the dark crystal. While the world is watching this area where you've got this struggle between two forces and people absolutely pick sides Now Jim Henson did however like a lot of white guys with beards in the seventies who probably smelled it patulli Barrowed heavily from Eastern mysticism going on essentially from Persia through India

So even further to these now. I don't know how much you know about your geography. Do you know the area that's called the Middle East? I mean, I could point it to you. Right. Right. Okay, so can you name a couple of countries that are in it? Sure. Jordan, Iraq, I ran. Right. Now, that's the kicker. Iran's not part of that.

That was it not. It's not. So the Middle East stops that Iraq and Then you get into Persia Okay, and then you get Farler East and you it but a lot of people think the Middle East is essentially just the Arab speaking world So they'll extend the Middle East all the way to Afghanistan, which is on the other side of Iran And they'll extend it all the way through Morocco Which is you know is an ocean away. But the Middle East is specifically this area

that used to be the British protectorate. Okay, and again, this is why I don't mind calling it Southwest Asia. I think when you get to Iran, you're still in Southwest Asia. By the time you get to Afghanistan, you are in Central Asia. But there's this Eastern mysticism that Europeans and guys in the 70s really liked that went from Persia through India.

And you have a bunch of different empires, historically there, that had a bunch of different takes on different religions. They also had Islam overlaying some of it. They also had Hindu overlaying some of it, but there's a lot of other religions going on too. The Zorastrians, you had Jainism, you had all kinds of stuff going on in these areas. The world that they live on, which is never mentioned on screen, but it's a part of a lot of the production. It was in all the notes. It was called Thra. THRAAA, I want to say. It was in all the notes, it was called Thra. THRAA, I wanna say. I think it's Win-A. Is it? Okay, Thra.

It was originally called Mythra. Do you know of Mythra? It was a God in the East. Jen was supposed to be blue. That sounds very Hindu religion, right? And he's thin, and if you start looking at his features You're like oh, they were avataring him not like the thunder smurs, but like actual he's got streaks of blue in his hair He does he absolutely does and very pretty blue too like it's it kind of

luminescent the podlings were essentially human potatoes Like like they actually were inspired by potatoes. They're like, well, what if a potato was a person, and that's what the podlings were? And I love the podlings. They spoke a language that sounded Slavic. To the point where people who spoke Slavic languages would be kind of like we are with the minions.

We're like, I know that word, you know? But it wouldn't make sense as a sentence. Right? And they lived like good peasants should. Now all of this is eastern. It's not British, it's eastern. It's it's it's I'm going to say Oriental in the classic term like to the east like. Hanson absorbed them into a more Mediterranean. All these ideas he he absorbs them into a more mediterranean, all these ideas. He absorbs them into a more mediterranean idea of good versus evil. Because that is very much a mediterranean culture thing. That's very much the Bronze Age religions in the Mediterranean area.

Now that includes Judaism, Christianity, Islam. But it also includes a bunch of cults and religions that the Romans celebrated, that the Gauls celebrated, that the Bedouins celebrated, all these different religions. There was a lot of good versus evil stuff going on, the Greek pantheon, stuff like that. You had the Titans and the gods. You had this constant struggle, right?

Whereas if you go further east, you get into this karmic wheel. You get into this, not necessarily a struggle between forces, but a struggle within a force, a personal struggle, right? So you're on this karmic wheel and you're trying to keep a balance or you're trying to find a balance and you're trying to work your way through it, whereas in the Mediterranean we're fighting people. And I've got my own thoughts as to why that is, it has to do a lot with like the scarcity of resources. But if you look at the garthum, what color are they? Oh, a dark brown, black. And the land strieters? They're light greenish, cream colored. Yeah, yeah, so black and white. Yeah. Good and evil, right? Typical American hodgepodge of stuff that he didn't spend very much time

researching. He's like, these are good ideas, you know. For instance, the skexies, okay, the big bird-beaked creatures. They were part raptor, part dinosaur, part, I don't know what, Raptor, part, dinosaur, part. I don't know what, there were 10 of them. Okay? 10, make sense, it's a good number. We have 10 fingers, boom, 10 skexes, but then they're like, and they embody the seven deadly sins.

That was the original conception. It's like, bro, you just said 10. What are we gonna do? And we'll double up. We'll overlap. We'll repeat. It'll be fine. And if you look at them at the dinner party, you know, they're getting very gluttonous,

right? And you've got Chamberlain. It was very ambitious, avarice, you know, and that kind of stuff. And the general is wrath, you know, and you've got a lot of that, you know. So, but it's there. It's there. And since the skexies and the mystics are comic opposites, if such a thing could exist,

and to Jim Henson's world of thraw, they did, they represent the virtue mirror image of their skecs' counterpoints. It goes as I say power points, but that's not quite right. Counter parts. So the skecsies represent all the seven deadly sins. Whatever the opposite of gluttony would be There's a mystic that represents that whatever the opposite of averis would be there's a mystic opposite of that and on and on and on and on Right, you might remember you start with the emperor dying

Mm-hmm And then it goes quickly to the mystic's leader dying both leaders died quickly to the mystic's leader dying. Both leaders died, right? Which to me was very mosa-se too, because he dies before he gets to the Promised Land. So the leaders die before the final reconciliation happens. Yeah. I found that fascinating.

Now the Skexes were part of this world. They were of this world. They were concerned with power, with domination. They were always jockeying for position, always scheming. They're very predatory Intensely selfish. Yeah, the last thing the emperor says before he dies. I'm still in power Yeah, and then disintegrates. Yeah, literally disintegrate like he's holding on to power until then and then immediately They start jockeying for position and Chamberlain. I think he says it's time to make my move. He does, yeah. Yeah. And it's time to make my move.

And then, you know, any call somebody spithead, which I'm like, okay, it's kind of for kids, but not, you know. But they live in a contrived and a constructed world. Like, it is a world, you clearly, you see their castle. It's clearly something that was constructed and built. It didn't just occur naturally that way, right? And it's still represents their very angular and thinned out and and kind of desiccated way of life. Mystics were more ascetic, is that the word? Eschatic, yeah. Eschaticism. Okay. Yeah. So as as get are people to do without, right? They purge themselves of all their materialistic urges,

right? They were connected to the natural world. They were unconcerned with hierarchies. And they aimed themselves at self-knowledge and knowledge of the world beyond the self. Not even self-mastery, by the way. And you remember some of them them are counting on a weird ass abacus and their meditators.

There's one who I think is doing like kind of Tibetan art, where he's doing sand paintings and stuff. And they're almost completely divorced from the self. And they're also really into geometry. That's a thing. You look at all the patterns, they're even patterns on their faces. Oh, yeah.

You know? So that all the patterns, even patterns on their faces. Oh yeah. So that's the differences, right? And if you look at where they lived, they lived in caves. Maybe they hollered stuff out and maybe they made a courtyard, but they didn't do too much to alter the world. They just kind of found the world that they were in. So you have these polar opposites, and Hanson very much wanted that. Again, I would point out that you have two groups of people living in the same land who have very mutually exclusive ways of life that run into each other into conflict. Now, in the world, in Thr got the Palestinians in the Israelis, right? And they exist at the expense of each other. So now it's April to December of 1981, okay? And they're filming all of this at the L-Stree Studios in London,

which is where they did a lot of episode five of Star Wars, Dagobah. This means that this was being written, edited, and rewritten and what on, from 1975 to 1981. So for six years, it's getting tagged, it's getting changed. And here's where that history seeps in and collides with the philosophy that he found very attractive, okay? Here's what's been happening. It would be in the news on some level, although it's not possible to determine how much he

had access to it, but it was on the headlines on the newspapers and back then people would see newspapers. It was in the zeitgeist while he was designing this movie. It would have been on the radio, it would have been on the television when you read the news, when you hear the news, and stuff like that. Now I'm going to avoid saying terrorists, and assassination, and other such loaded terms as best as I can. I'm simply going to stick to Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers. And even that kind of makes me a little bit uncomfortable because I'm already using different words for what they're doing. And it's not because I don't want to take a stand. I absolutely have my own thoughts on this.

But it kind of gets back to what Henson was thinking and what philosophy was bouncing around in his head. But I will point this out. A soldier has the backing of a government, of an institution, and fighters are people who are fighting for a cause. Whether either of them are on the right side or wrong side is for other people to decide. Again, I have my own thoughts. It's still a problematic distinction for me, but I'm gonna stick to that. But

and actually that's actually a perfect place to stop for this episode. And next episode I'm going to get into a lot more of the nitty-gritty history of what was happening as he was writing it and stuff like that and hopefully we'll see how this Aviated itself in the movies. So at this point normally what I do is I ask Ed or he asks me so far what have you gleamed? So far what have I cleaned? Well, oh man, you're lipid and army. Yeah Well There's I I think it's interesting that even though there are two worlds existing simultaneously and the Dark Crystal that Jim Henson chooses

to make one evil and one good. Especially since at the end of the film, the point of the prophecy is to join the two halves as they were and that's what is meant to be. And I don't know if he's leaving it up to the viewers to interpret Which sides evil which sides good as an allegory of the Israeli palcing in conflict? Yeah, I don't think he was that conscious of it Which is kind of a rolling theme through this show is that our our thrill intent doesn't mean shit You know most people don't try to make an allegory and they accidentally make an allegory

Yeah, and you know very often they stumble over backward into it because they're not fully educated on it it. Most people don't try to make an allegory and they accidentally make an allegory. Very often they stumble over backward into it because they're not fully educated on it or because they're reliving a trauma that they went through like in Tolkien's case. But I do think it's interesting that you're right that they, at the end, they become one, which means what happens to the good and what happens to the evil. Yeah. You know, which I think Jane Roberts would have a response to that. Good and evil exists down here, and they become one, and they become beings of light.

So it's possible that they transcended the ideas of good and evil, which I don't know about you, but I've always had trouble with the idea of transcending good evil because it sounds like that those are just trait things and like no other people living and dying because of that so. Well if you believe there's something beyond. Yeah I guess that would help. Sometimes the world can seem trait I guess. Yeah I suppose yeah that must be nice. Cool.

Well do you have anything that you would like to plug? That I would like to plug. Well, I already plugged my trivia, but I'll plug it again. Plug it again. Yeah. Yolo Brewing every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Yours truly hosting anyone's guests. That is our weekly pub quiz.

It's super fun. I write all the questions myself. And then I can be the one asking you stuff. That would be cool. I like being a matter of all. I like being asked stuff too. I like not knowing things and having to ask others. Do you think you're gonna like are there topics that you guys do in your trivia or no? We do just general knowledge. I try to mix it up, especially since, you know, I have my areas of expertise and I have things that I don't know, so I like to make sure that I'm kind of catering to everyone. So I try to keep it as broad and very dispossable. Okay, so no dark crystal questions then.

Um, maybe. That'd be cool. That'd be awesome. Cool. Well, can we find you anywhere on social medias or no or your Landlocked you can find me on Instagram at Daesh Doh Love it D-A-T-S-H-D-O-H all separated by periods. Okay, so dat.ash.do.

Do. Alright, nice. I'm, you can find me at duh harmony. There's two H's, duh and then harmony on the Twitter and also on the Instagram. You can find ed at eHblaloc on the Twitter. You can find a geek history of time at geekalock on the Twitter. You can find a geek history of time at Geek History Time on the Twitter. We actually had somebody correct us on a previous episode. I wanted to call that out. A listener named Derek who actually was one of our guests and he taught us all about pinball.

He pointed out to us that during our episode on Captain America and the Great Depression, that I erroneously had said that Roosevelt promised a chicken in every pot. When in fact, it was Hoover, so it was off by one president. So I wanted to give a shout out to Derek for looking that up for us and correcting me. I know there were plenty of other mistakes I've made, and given that I'm talking about Israel and Palestine, it very well might be that I get things completely wrong or you just think I'm into ideal law going the wrong way. Please do not hesitate to flame Ed at EH Blaylock and leave me alone. No, you can hit us up at Geek History time on the Twitter. Also, if you have subjects that you think would be fun

to explore, please let us know, because we're always looking for more stuff to dig into, more geeky things to tie to other things, and stuff like that. So, all right, well, for a Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Ashley Sanders. And as Ed would say, keep rolling 20s.

I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Ashley Sanders. And as Ed would say, keep rolling 20s.