Demonology & Creativity w/ Lauren Shippen
/We welcome back past and future guest Lauren Shippen to talk about her newest shows, her childhood experiences being haunted, and how both real and fictional demons have shaped her work. Then, Lauren turns the tables on US for a conversation about creativity, the supernatural, and finding hope in a creative world.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, murder, homophobia, racism, white supremacy, colonization, and possession.
Guest
Lauren Shippen is an audio drama creator behind shows like The Bright Sessions, Two Thousand and Late, Maxine Miles, and Bridgewater. She creates inclusive, character-focused stories that will make you feel things. When she's not writing, she's working to make audio drama as accessible as it can be, by providing free resources to new creators. She also spends a lot of time on Tumblr.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And we are joined today by past and future guest, Lauren Shippen. Now, I have a couple things to say here. First of all, Lauren Shippen, prolific podcaster, writer, creator of Two Thousand and Late, a new dark comedy by Atypical Artists, as well as the upcoming, Phantom Pulse. She'll tell us more about that. Spooky. But, Lauren, I just ran some stats real quick before we started. You've only been on the show once. That was episode 17, Stonehenge.
JULIA: Uh-oh.
AMANDA: But don't worry, you are mentioned in 12 additional episodes.
LAUREN: Oh, my God.
AMANDA: Either your work, your books, or anecdotes, you know, you as a friend. So, I mean, welcome back to the show, whopping nine years later.
LAUREN: Wow.
JULIA: Wow.
LAUREN: I mean, thank you so much for— nine years, Jesus. Thank you so much for having me back and for mentioning me. It's lovely to be mentioned. And, yeah, I believe that, that first Spirits recording was the first time that the three of us ever met in person.
AMANDA: That is true.
LAUREN: Back in, what, 2016?
JULIA: Oh, yeah. That was the year.
LAUREN: That's the year. That was nine years ago. That's— there's the math on that. Yeah.
JULIA: I— I've never felt older than in this moment.
LAUREN: I know. Good Lord.
AMANDA: It's true. And I just want to just invite you to kind of tell me just, like, what's up with you and your life in the past almost decade? And how is your relationship to the spooky kind of evolving over that decade?
LAUREN: Yeah. So we first met, yeah, nine, 10 years ago because we were both in the podcast game. We've both been in the podcast game or we all have been in the podcast game, both being Spirits and me. But, obviously, the three of us have all been in the podcast game in various ways. And I've just kept making audio dramas, so, you know, writing fiction podcasts, telling my little stories through audio. I started out sort of in speculative fiction with The Bright Sessions. You know, my first podcast for any listeners that might not be aware. It's about people who have supernatural abilities in therapy. And so I've always been, like, interested in sort of the supernatural and the science fiction. And as I have written more stories over the years, have just sort of done more and more of that kind of stuff. So, like, I got to write a horror show about the Bridgewater Triangle starring Misha Collins.
AMANDA: No big deal.
LAUREN: Yeah, which was, like, really crazy and wild, especially as somebody who, like, is a fan of Supernatural, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
JULIA: Oh, we will.
LAUREN: Working with Misha has been a dream. He's a lovely, lovely man. And then, yeah, just like these two shows that I've been really working on for the past year, it Two Thousand and Late, which is out now and Phantom Pulse, which will be coming out sometime next year, are both very much just about, like, the occult and dark magic, and all of that fun stuff because we all love— you know, I love like an autumnal spooky vibe and that's just always what I'm trying to reach for in my work, I think, in many ways.
JULIA: Absolutely. Do you want to give us a little summary of what Two Thousand and Late is about for the listeners?
LAUREN: Yes. So Two Thousand and Late is a dark comedy about a woman who gets possessed by a demon on her 36th birthday. She was supposed to be the chosen one at 16, but the demon is 20 years late. And when it shows up, it's sort of like, "Oh, you guys have already done a really good job kind of making things a lot worse up here on Earth. So, like, maybe let's just have some fun." And ultimately, the two of them try to unionize her for legal reasons, mammoth warehouse job, but it's Amazon, you know, with middling results. So it's, you know, got your classic kind of spooky demon stuff, but with the twist that the demon is really about another job and also sounds like a 1940s radio star.
JULIA: Yay. My favorite combination of things. So, Lauren, I think— I don't know if we asked you this all those years ago when you were on Stonehenge, which was in the first 20 episodes of the podcast we ever produced.
LAUREN: So crazy.
JULIA: What was your relationship with spooky things growing up? Like, did you have urban legends that were kind of unique to your hometown area that you remember hearing about? Or I'll nudge you towards the, "Hey, the house that we visited you at, at one point was haunted." But was there anything that, like, you had supernatural experience-wise when you were younger?
LAUREN: Yeah, I— you know, it's so funny. I've— I like a certain brand of horror now, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but I have always been very much a scaredy cat. And so I— like I didn't really, like, watch horror movies at all until I was probably in my, like, 20s. And I have been into a haunted house, think, once. Like, it's— like that kind of stuff is not my vibe. But I always loved Halloween because I'm a theater kid at heart and I love getting dressed up in costume.
JULIA: Hell yeah.
LAUREN: And I love witchy stuff because I'm a fantasy girlie at heart and, like, always wanted to be a witch. And so I think that, like, those sort of two things, along with, like, a lot of the media that I think we grew up with, you know, like Hocus Pocus and Halloweentown, and sort of, like, the more, like, cozy, spooky vibe was very important for me growing up. And then like, yeah, in my teen years, getting into things like Angel, and Buffy, and Fringe, and the X-Files and, you know, like all of those types of things that kind of run the gamut from, like, ghosts to aliens and vampires and everything in between. And yeah, I think I tended to avoid the, like, the sort of the scarier stuff in part because there definitely were a bunch of urban legends growing up that I was really genuinely afraid of. Of course, I mean, we are three people in their 30s who were socialized as girls growing up. And so I imagine we all know about Bloody Mary.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Of course, naturally.
LAUREN: Saying, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary," in the mirror three times to this day still kind of freaks me out. Were you guys scared of that?
JULIA: Yes, of course.
AMANDA: What did you think would happen?
LAUREN: I was worried that, like, a scary woman was going to come out of the mirror. Like, what did you guys think was going to happen?
JULIA: Right. I think more like— we're like, "Okay, a scary woman's gonna come out of the mirror and then what?" You know?
LAUREN: Right.
JULIA: Like, is she just gonna be like, "Hey, what's up?"
AMANDA: "And what?"
JULIA: "Thanks for calling me." Or is she going to murder you? Because I think there's a spectrum of how spooky this shit was to you as a kid.
LAUREN: I think I was such a scaredy cat that just— I couldn't even think past the scary woman kind of yet. Like, that was scary enough for me. But I did love like Ouija boards and Light as a feather, stiff as a board, because those were, like, just sort of fun spooky.
JULIA: It's so funny to me that you're like, "Bloody Mary, absolutely not." "Ouija board, love that shit." That's hilarious.
LAUREN: Love that. Love that. Talking to ghosts, I'm into that.
AMANDA: Lauren, you are also a fellow bisexual, so I—
LAUREN: Yes.
AMANDA: —imagine that like me, it was like, "Oh, you mean I can touch other girls without people asking why?" Like where's—
LAUREN: [7:07]
AMANDA: Like those games also— the ones you're naming as acceptable also involve like a little, you know, light finger caressing on the planchette, you know?
LAUREN: That's true. Yeah, a big piece of was—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —yeah, sort of getting to, like, yeah, like, almost hold hands with a girl to sleep over.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: That's a very good point. I hadn't really thought about that, but that definitely was a piece of it. Also, the girl with the ribbon around her neck, of course.
JULIA: Lauren, at the time that we are recording this, we'll have just released an episode two weeks ago about The Girl With The Green Ribbon.
LAUREN: I cannot wait to listen to that.
AMANDA: Iconic.
LAUREN: Truly iconic. And then the other one that really freaked me out, which might be, like, a little bit more generational or regional, I'm not entirely sure. It's not one that like— it's one that know people know, but that I don't talk to people about as much as like Bloody Mary or The Girl With The Ribbon Around Her Neck, which is The Man With The Golden Arm.
JULIA: Oh.
LAUREN: You guys familiar with this?
AMANDA: Who's he?
LAUREN: Okay.
JULIA: This sounds familiar, but tell me about it, because I'm very curious.
LAUREN: Let me make sure that I actually even have that name right. It— this may have been, like, a variation on a theme of an existing urban legend that has a slightly different name. But, basically, it's like kind of like, you know, a man with a hook hand style thing. Like that—
JULIA: Ah. The Hook Man.
LAUREN: Yeah, it's sort of that genre of story. Growing up, me and my family would always go to Cape Cod every summer and we used to do— with, like, all of my cousins. Like I— I'm— I come from like a— on my dad's side, had a very big Irish Catholic family, right? So it would be like 30 of us like on the beach. I'm sort of, like, squarely in, like, the middle of my cousins. And so my oldest cousin is in his early 40s and then my youngest cousin is, like, just out of college right now. My oldest cousin, John Michael, [8:50] was, you know, telling like a ghost story around the campfire. He was probably, I don't know, like 15 or 16 at the time. We were having, you know, this, like, bonfire kind of cookout on the beach in one night.
JULIA: Peak cousin telling story age. I love that.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
LAUREN: Absolutely. And, like, he was always very much, like, the— like, he was— yeah, the oldest cousin, the oldest boy named after our grandfather. Like, he was sort of, like, the one sort of responsible for— like he— and just, like, very loving, very caretaking, like, was not the kind of cousin that was gonna, like, get you into trouble, right? Like, very trustworthy, like, reliable guy. He told us this ghost story, and like, it's so funny, I don't really remember that much about the story itself, but like, you know, we're all standing around the fire and he's like, you know, doing a great job telling a story and it's about The Man With The Golden Arm. And then at the very end and sort of, like, the climax of the story and sort of, like, the jump scare moment, he pulls out his own arm and he's put— you know those like yellow Wiffle bats?
JULIA: Yeah.
LAUREN: So he's put that in his sleeve so that it looks like—
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Wow.
LAUREN: So I think that might be why— maybe he changed the name to Man With A Golden Arm to, like, match the Wiffle bat. And I just, like, burst into tears. I was so scared and he, like, immediately was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Like it's just like— look, it's just a Wiffle bat." He— you know, 'cause I was probably, like, six or seven years old.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: But it was like— it's just one of those things that, like, really sticks out in my head. So it's like, I'm afraid of The Man With A Golden Arm, a legend that my cousin may have made up.
AMANDA: It's an incredible amount of planning.
JULIA: Honestly, yeah. Shout out to cousins who go above and beyond to scare all of the younger cousins. We appreciate that. I'm also just realizing the name sounds so familiar to me because it was a Frank Sinatra movie.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Yeah, there it is.
LAUREN: There you go. Okay, yeah. So I think probably it is the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
Lauen: —hook hand man. You know, like scratching on the car window—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —type of thing. I yhink it was that and I think he did just adjust it to work with the Wiffle bat rather than like a hook, which is really smart.
JULIA: And Lauren, I'm going to tell you right now, as of this recording, the week before this episode comes out is going to be The Hook Man episode. So you are nailing all of the classics.
LAUREN: Two for two.
JULIA: I love this so much.
AMANDA: In a final moment of synchronicity here, and I mean, maybe Julia, you planned this, we spoke in the Girl With The Green Ribbon tattoo about noted pervert, Washington Irving. I'm making that up. I don't know if he's a pervert or not. But he—
JULIA: Amanda kept saying he had a beheading kink and I can't get over it. I can't get over it.
LAUREN: I mean—
AMANDA: Prove them wrong.
LAUREN: Listen, he's not here to defend himself, so—
AMANDA: Can't libel the dead. I would love to know, Lauren, because your hometown is quite near to Sleepy Hollow. If there were any, like, ritual, annual, you know, celebrations of the spooky season that you think may have been above and beyond for other areas of the country.
LAUREN: So I was born in Manhattan and then grew up primarily in Westchester. But from the ages two to nine, I actually lived in the Bay Area in California. And so it's like that is— that sort of like I feel like the prime trick or treating time.
AMANDA: Hmm.
LAUREN: And so that is really where I feel like I got most of my, like, kind of, like, Halloween sort of traditions growing up. And that was sort of your standard fare. But definitely in New York, like in Westchester, you know, I spent a lot of time in old houses growing up that my mom would take me to. I mean, yeah, I'm sure you guys have done this too, where it's like, you're gonna go see the Vanderbilt home on the Hudson, whatever, because it's like historical, whatever. Like, my mom loves that stuff. And so like we did do, you know, some of those things, you know, in the fall. And so there would be sort of, like, that sort of very hocus pocus Halloween town atmosphere, like autumnal and cute, but also like a little bit spooky. But the thing that really sort of was that— the pinnacle of that was when we were in the Bay Area. We would go to the Winchester Mystery House quite a bit.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Hell yeah.
LAUREN: Yes. And that is— I've been there, like, seven times. It's one of my favorite places in the entire country. I love it. And I've done, like, the full— I've never done their, like, at night tour, which is, like, still on my bucket list, but I've done their, like, behind the scenes tour where they take you into, like, the— which I highly recommend. It is a little bit pricey, but not a lot of people do it because I— it was just me and the docent and so we just got to go around and the— and, like, the docent told me about like, you know, the supernatural encounters that the staff had had, that he had had. Oh, yeah, and I did— I think I have told you guys my one ghost story. I think— I don't know, Brandon asked me if he could tell my ghost story on a stream for Multitude the other week. I don't know if he ended up doing it, though.
JULIA: Yeah, I'm not sure that he did, but share it for the audience because I'm very curious.
LAUREN: Yeah. So Cape Cod, go— have been there most summers of my life. My family's like never owned a house there or anything, so we sort of, like, rent houses with our family growing up and stuff. And now my parents—
AMANDA: What are you, a Kennedy? Come on.
LAUREN: Yeah. Yeah, come on. You know, the houses that we've rented have changed throughout the years, right? And so in college, my parents started renting this new house that was built in the 1930s. And then in, like, the 1970s, '80s, the family put, like, a big addition on it. So it was kind of a funky house and that, like, part of it was, like, your kind of classic, like shiplap Cape Cod home and the other half was, like, classic, like, 1970s, you know, type thing.
AMANDA: My favorite podcaster is Lauren Shiplap, just so everybody knows.
LAUREN: Yes, perfect. And I was staying in one of these— one of the bedrooms on sort of, like, the new part of the house. It literally was a dark and stormy night. It was— we were having a big storm and I had fallen asleep. You know, I went to bed and the storm clearly, like, moved to, like, right above us, right? Because there's, like, huge clap of thunder and like a— and flash of lightning so loud that it wakes me up.
I wear glasses, so when I am asleep, I don't have my contacts in, obviously. And so, like, I wake up and, like, the room is kind of dark and, like, I see my mom folding laundry at the foot of my bed. And my mom is a night owl, right? Like, she will stay up until, like, 2:00 in the morning sometimes. Like, she just, like, works on a different circadian rhythm than I do. But I was like, why is she folding laundry in my room? Like, I don't understand.
JULIA: On my bed.
LAUREN: Yeah, like, on my bed. Like, what is she doing? And so I sort of, like, you know, sit up and, like, you know, I'm like up on my elbows sort of, like, looking at her. And then there's another flash of lightning. And even though I cannot see with perfect clarity because I didn't have my contacts in, it is very clear that this woman is not my mother.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: She is blonde. My mom is not blonde. She's blonde. She's got sort of, like, a short, like, kind of, like, almost like bowl cut type thing. She's wearing like a sort of pastel purple turtleneck and, like, a sweater over the turtleneck and just, like, folding laundry. And there's like a laundry basket and she's, like, folding laundry.
JULIA: Turtle turtleneck is too recent for a ghost, I'm gonna tell you right now.
LAUREN: Well, that's what was so weird.
JULIA: I don't like that.
LAUREN: And, like, she clearly was, like, from, like, the 1980s. It was a woman from the 1980s. And then, like, I— and I sort of, like, start— you know, I'm sort of like, "What the fuck?" And then there's another flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and she and the laundry basket vanishes. And the next day, I spend the entire day, like, just going around looking in every— because it's a— you know, it's a house that a family has owned, so that— and they, like, just rented over the summer, so it's, like, got all their stuff in it. So, like, I go through all of the photo books, I go through all of the photos on the wall. I find— and I try to look for this woman and she is not anywhere, so I'm like, maybe, like, I saw her face somewhere on the wall and, like, I do sometimes have the— I can't remember which— if it's hypnopompic or hypnagogic when you're waking up, but I do have that hallucination sometimes, where it's like you're awake, but you're— it's sort of, like, the opposite of sleep paralysis where it's, like, your body's awake, but your mind is not and so you kind of hallucinate things. So that's why I assume it is, but that's the closest I've ever come to having, yeah, a ghost encounter. It was bizarre.
JULIA: Wow.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: That's so wild.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: Damn. Damn.
LAUREN: Have you guys ever had an encounter?
JULIA: I famously saw what I think was some sort of, like, demonic or ghostly figure while I was making out in a car with Jake when we were teenagers in high school.
LAUREN: Holy shit. And that's prime real estate for, I mean, Hook Man, you know?
JULIA: Yeah, I know. So it was like— we were in the back of a car. I looked up at one point and there was a man, like, underneath the closest streetlight. And he's just standing there in silhouette in, like, a trench coat with a dog next to— like a big dog. Like it was like a German shepherd or something like that.
LAUREN: Absolutely not.
JULIA: And I was like, "We have to go. We have to go right now." And then, like, Jake gets in the car and we, like, kind of back up and, like, turn around the corner, and then go the opposite direction. And then when I looked back, the guy was not there anymore.
LAUREN: Nope. Nope. Very bad, very bad, very, very bad.
JULIA: Yeah, it's bad. Lauren, it was bad. I still remember it, like, vividly 16 years later, so that's how you know.
AMANDA: Creepy as hell.
LAUREN: Yeah. Jesus Christ. What about you, Amanda?
AMANDA: None for me. No.
JULIA: Amanda goes, "Thank God."
AMANDA: I mean, for now, my siblings are very creepy and I certainly imagine a lot of scary stuff, but no sort of defined experiences that I can point to.
LAUREN: We should just spend more time at my parents' house because I— my mom has seen it.
AMANDA: Lauren, I've been angling to invite myself back for years, okay?
LAUREN: Okay.
JULIA: Years.
AMANDA: Two presidential administrations.
LAUREN: Listen, next time we're in New York, you guys should come over. Because, yeah, my parents live in a house from the 1920s that is like— it's a very cool house. It's got a— like it's got a secret bar in the basement that the wooden panel behind the bar opens up for, like— you know, where you put the hooch because it's built during probation. It's a cool house.
JULIA: It's the kind of house that you should host a murder mystery party at.
LAUREN: 100%. The fact that we haven't done that yet is a failing on my part. I know.
JULIA: Lauren, what we doing?
LAUREN: But, yeah, my mom says that she's seen a sort of a figure around and that also he has a dog, but she thinks that he's benevolent.
JULIA: Uh-oh. Okay. Sure.
LAUREN: So—
AMANDA: That I respect.
JULIA: Okay. All right. Listen, a dog does not mean it's a bad omen. You know, in general, dogs are good.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: But sometimes—
LAUREN: I think it's a good dog and I think it's a good ghost. That's what I'm choosing to believe.
JULIA: For your own sake and your own sanity, I have to believe this is a good ghost.
LAUREN: For my own safety.
JULIA: So this really leads to a great point about like, yeah, you definitely grew up with some creepier experiences, even if that, like, wasn't something you necessarily were seeking out, the horror genre as a whole. I know and we'll— I guess we'll talk about it, you are a big Supernatural fan, in general. And that is going to kind of lead me into my segue of, what is it about demons that you personally find as an interesting trope to both consume, but also to write about?
LAUREN: Yeah. I mean, I should say that the other piece of sort of my upbringing that is significant to this is that I was raised in part Catholic, which, you know, I had my—
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —first communion Catholic, you know, did that whole thing. I ultimately was confirmed Episcopalian, but I did go to Catholic Church for the first, you know, 10 years of my life.
JULIA: Episcopalians are just, you know, the Catholic Protestants, you know?
LAUREN: Catholic lights. Yeah, exactly. It's just Catholics, but you can be gay and you don't have hell. Like, that's really just what being Episcopal is. But hell definitely made an impact. You know, like the concept of hell definitely made an impact. And my parents were never big into that stuff at all, but just— you know, you sit in Sunday school, you go to chu— you kind of absorb it, right? And so I think I found the idea of the devil quite scary, and I think I found the idea of hell and demons and all that kind of stuff quite scary. And so I think for a number of years, I really avoided it. And then I think actually sort of the biggest influence on, like, Two Thousand and Late specifically and the way that I think about demons in that, at least, like tonally is, do you guys remember a show that was on the CW called Reaper?
AMANDA: Julia just had the reverse Raymond Simonier [20:46]—
LAUREN: Oh, no.
AMANDA: —where you think something's gonna happen and then nothing's there.
LAUREN: So, yeah, nobody's seen the show except for me.
AMANDA: I was primed to say yes. Wow.
JULIA: Whoa.
LAUREN: I know, because you— I say CW show and you think, "Of course." But no, it ran for two seasons.
JULIA: I saw so many of those CW shows, how did I not see this one?
LAUREN: So this show had, like, an outsized impact on me. Like, it's so funny. Like, I was a devoted viewer of it. Ray Wise plays the devil and it's about a guy— sort of a burnout guy, who on his 21st birthday finds out that his parents sold his soul to the devil when he was born, and he now has to become a bounty hunter for hell.
JULIA: Cool.
LAUREN: It is like genuinely, like, it's kind of like classic CW high-jinks goofiness, but like it also genuinely had some, like, very interesting, like, things to say about the devil and, like, the devil's relationship to God. And there are these, like, two— in the second season, there— the guy, the main character, has neighbors who are two gay demons who escaped hell and are trying to just, like, live as, like, normal demons. Or it's an angel and a demon, I can't quite remember, but it's sort of like a forbidden love thing. And so, yeah, that like— that kind of, like, I think, took off the fear of hell and demons for me, because it was like, "Here's a sort of fun version of all of those things." I think that, that is the thing that sort of made me interested in the perspective of who demons are and, like, what they want, and who the devil is, and what he wants and all of that kind of stuff. Which then led me to things like The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, which is a really interesting—
AMANDA: Shout out.
LAUREN: —book where these two demons are corresponding about how to corrupt a person's soul.
AMANDA: Have you seen the stage adaptation of that?
LAUREN: I have not, actually.
AMANDA: It's worth it. It's got, like, Waiting for Godot vibes, but if everyone kind of is, like, two beers deep, it's pretty good.
LAUREN: Okay, yeah. I mean, I love the book. And so, yeah, so I think that that is really like— even by the time that I got to Supernatural, and I think Supernatural's, like, very interesting take on demons, I sort of was, like, interested in the perspective of the demon, rather than, like, the perspective of the person who's, like, possessed by the demon, if that makes sense.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Sorry, I was just looking at the characters. Apparently, Lauren, you're right on both accounts for those two gay characters, because they were demons. One of them gets killed and then he's reborn as an angel.
LAUREN: That's right. Yes, because he gets his way. That's Michael Ian Black, I think.
JULIA: Yeah, it is Michael Ian Black.
AMANDA: Oh, my God. This is a wild show.
LAUREN: Yeah. I'm— like, I'm pretty— because I rewatched the pilot as I was, like, drafting Two Thousand and Late just to be like, you know, like— as this sort of tonal inspiration. And I'm pretty sure you can watch the entire show, like, on Dailymotion. It's like— it's nowhere else. Like it's not on any streaming or anything.
JULIA: Sure.
LAUREN: But, yeah, it's really— it's worth a watch. Like, I do think it's, like, quite fun. I mean, Ray Wise as the devil is just like a great bit of casting. And yeah, it's goofy, Monster of the Week high jinks.
JULIA: It feels real, like, Charmed meets Lucifer vibes, if I'm being honest.
LAUREN: Yes.
JULIA: Like that seems really interesting.
LAUREN: It's like if you sort of combine those shows together and then gave it the, like, tonality of Superstore.
JULIA: Hmm, okay. So it is very much a comedy.
LAUREN: It's like— it's ultimately— it ultimately is, like—
JULIA: That's a good pitch.
LAUREN: Yeah, an hour-long comedy. Like it's very much like— which I think is probably why it didn't end up doing very well, because, like, hour-long comedies are hard for people to, like, understand conceptually, I think. But yeah, great show.
JULIA: So talking about kind of, like, the Catholic upbringing meets the, like, demon centric fiction that you had growing up. A lot of the stuff that we learned in, like, Catholic school and stuff like that doesn't talk about the, like, fun demonology aspects. They're just like, you know, "The devil's here." And you're like, "Okay, what does he do?" And they're like, "Meh, it's not in the Bible."
LAUREN: Whatever.
JULIA: It's not in the Bible.
LAUREN: Yeah.
AMANDA: You better not find out. You better not be bad enough that you get down there and you figure it out.
LAUREN: Yeah, exactly.
JULIA: When you're, like, kind of doing some research on demonology and you start getting into, like, the demon hierarchy and, like, all of these, like, sort of non-canon and, like, using the literal definition of canon for religion purposes, these, like, non-canon, like, you know, the hierarchy of demons, the prince of this, the, you know, princeps of that or whatever. What did that look like process-wise for you and how did that align itself with what you were seeing on television and what you were seeing in fiction? You know what I mean?
LAUREN: Yeah. I mean, I would be really curious to hear kind of, like, from you, like how— like, yeah, where those things came from, right? Because it's like, you do kind of, yeah, encounter, like, the mafia family tree of demons, you know, if you sort of start looking into this stuff. And I think one piece of fiction that's done—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —that really, really well is Evil, a much under loved CBS show that also was definitely a point of inspiration for Two Thousand and Late in the sense that it has a completely unhinged female lead who just like, "I support women's wrongs." She's insane. I love her so much. She may or may not have been possessed by a demon at one point.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Like, the thing that's great about that show is it never commits to—
JULIA: She's so great.
LAUREN: —whether or not these supernatural things are real. Which I think is a really like—
AMANDA: Don't worry, Lauren, I've watched all of it over the last month.
LAUREN: Good, good.
JULIA: I have like six episodes left. I'm almost done.
LAUREN: It's so good.
JULIA: I will say, Lauren is part of the reason why I started watching the show in the first place and then converted pretty much this entire audience into watching the show. So—
LAUREN: I can't believe that you had— like that you hadn't— it's like such a Julia show in mind, you know?
JULIA: I know, because it wasn't streaming anywhere besides Paramount and I don't own Paramount stuff at all. So—
LAUREN: We had Paramount I think, basically, for that because I think we watched the first, like, season on Netflix and then we're like, "Wait, this rules. Like we need to watch this." Evil does it really well. I think the Supernatural does it really well. For me, when I sort of encountered all of that, I was like, "Yeah, I'm not going to worry about the stuff. Like I'm not going to worry about the literal, like, names of certain demons. Like the— I'm not going to worry about, like, the rankings or anything like that. The book that I've used the most is this book called Demon Possession, An Unusual Collection of Experiences, Case History, Studies, and Conclusions from a Wide Range of Professional People, Including Doctors, Psychiatrists, Scientists, Historians, Theologians, and College Professors. This is literally like a series of lectures given in, like, the '70s and '80s by those various people, along with, like, responses from other academics to those lectures. It— I have only gotten through about half of it because it is like— it is dense. But the thing that I really enjoy about it, I got it, you know, off of eBay because it's like this isn't something that's like, you know, it ha— it was published once 40 years ago. And basically, like everybody who's like writing and talking about this stuff is doing so from, like, an incredibly serious academic perspective of like, what do we know about demons from the Bible? What do— like what do we know is canon? What does the Bible say about demons and demon possession and how to get rid of possessed demons? How have those, like, you know, things sort of changed over the years? I'm like, what have we seen— I actually— I'm still just in the sort of Bible canon part of the book. It gets into, like, actual case— you know, cases of demonic possession later, so I'm excited to get to that. But it's been eye-opening because I think I sort of assumed that, like, and, like, the idea of like demonic possession was like a little bit of a construction of, like, the Catholic Church. I like— I didn't really think that it was something that was, like, mentioned in the Bible all that much, but it— I mean, it is.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah.
LAUREN: It is mentioned in the Bible. And so like, yeah, I mean, in terms of, like, those demonic hierarchies and stuff, what is canon and, like, what is sort of Catholic fan fiction?
JULIA: So I think a lot of it is gonna be Catholic fan fiction, is at the end of the day. Like you said, there are—
LAUREN: Hmm.
JULIA: —references to possession and demons in the Bible, but not in the way that, like, people think about. So, like, when I'm talking about the, like, hierarchy of demons, I'm usually talking about a reference to The Lesser Key of Solomon, which is basically this, like, anonymous grimoire that was published from 17th century sources, and that's where we get the, like, list of The Hierarchy of the Ars Goetia, I think is what it's called. And that's the, like, 72 demons that make up the various hierarchies of hell, right? And that's where we get a lot of the names that are very much just like, LOL, It's Not Pagan, it's fine. We're taking gods from other religions and we're making them into demons because that can't possibly be a pagan thing. It must be a demon. So that's, like, we get, like, Bael from that.
LAUREN: Right?
JULIA: Right? Or we get, like— I'm trying to— I'm looking at the list right now. Asmodeus is one of the options as well. There's truly one that's just—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I'm going to tell you right now, there's one that's just Amy, and I think that's really funny.
LAUREN: Amy, fuck Amy.
JULIA: And it's President Amy, which is also hilarious.
LAUREN: President Amy, that's really good.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. But, like, it's a lot of those kind of, like, if you heard a vaguely, I guess, Latin or Greek name that is in reference to demonic entities, it's probably from The Lesser Keys of Solomon.
LAUREN: That's fascinating. And, like, did that then feed back into— because, yeah, it seems that, like, at least part of the way that the Catholic Church approaches exorcism is at least in part founded in some Bible lore. But do you feel like then that, like, the— that grimoire, like, kind of fed back into, like, actual, like, Catholic religious practices.
JULIA: So The Lesser Keys of Solomon is sort of like a— it's based on the Testament of Solomon, which is considered, like, pseudo-canon. It isn't necessarily like, yeah, this is definitely canonical, biblical scholarship. But it is like, "Oh, you know, maybe it's supposedly it's from the early first millennium AD but like— it's tough, right? Because so much of it— I think a lot of the ways that we see demonic possession and also exorcism on television and in movies is very much a fictionalized version of what that actually is. We've done an episode on exorcism and, like, I would say, you know, for listeners who are a little bit more interested in not hearing me just, like, off the cuff talking about this, go check out that episode. But, like, a lot of it is, like, there is a specific script, there is a, like, playbook basically on what needs to happen during a possession and during an exorcism. And I don't think a lot of it is like, you know, "I'm calling upon you, Asmodeus, to release this body or what have you."
LAUREN: Right.
JULIA: You know what I mean?
LAUREN: Yeah, yeah. It's like a little bit more general— I— this is going to sound like a bit, but it's not.
JULIA: No, no, no. Go ahead.
LAUREN: Is there a Greater Keys of Solomon or just The Lesser Keys?
JULIA: That is a good question. I don't think there is a Greater Keys of Solomon. I think it's just The Lesser Keys.
LAUREN: Just the lesser? Okay.
JULIA: I would be surprised if there is a greater.
LAUREN: It feels like there's an opportunity for us here to maybe write The Greater Keys of Solomon and pull off like an L. Ron Hubbard type thing, you know?
JULIA: Hmm. Yeah, we could be the new Aleister Crowley. I see where you're going for. Sure. That makes sense.
LAUREN: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
AMANDA: I think it makes total sense for three white queer femmes to become the new L. Ron Hubbard. Like, we are ready to ascend, like, white feminism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're ready.
LAUREN: It's our time.
JULIA: Totally, totally.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: Lauren, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm having such a blast, but I think it's about time for us to grab a refill.
AMANDA: By the powers of Asmodeus, let's do it.
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AMANDA: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda, and welcome to the refill. Thank you so much to all of you who have joined us on Patreon. Maybe you've been a member for many years and every single month or year. You re-up your subscription and we really, really appreciate it. Or maybe you are one of the folks who've just joined us. We are so happy to welcome ambiquafflua, Daniel G., Ginger P., and Dani with an I. Thank you so, so much. We really can't overstate how much your support means. It is the reason we can keep making the show. So if this show is something that you value, we would really appreciate your support. And by the way, gift-giving times are coming up and you can gift a Spirits membership to somebody you love or tell someone you love that you would love to receive one as a present. Just go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and you can get or gift a subscription today. Thank you as well to our supporting producer-level patrons, Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Rikoelike, Lily, and Wil. And our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. Folks, we are having so much fun recording a, let me say, extra juicy urban legends episode, but what that also means is we need more emails. So please, if you have been meaning to write in, now is a great time. Please send us your urban legends at spiritspodcast.com or email us directly, spiritspodcast.gmail.com. There is so much going on at Multitude and so many exciting new friends and shows for you to enjoy. Recently, I was taking an early morning drive and wanted to feel comforted while it was raining outside and I listened to Simple and Clean. A show where hosts Mischa Stanton and Mayanna Berrin and friends talk about Kingdom Hearts, which is a small video game franchise about really big feelings. Now, I was not a Kingdom Hearts kid. I didn't know almost anything about the franchise, except it was Disney-related before listening to Simple and Clean. So this show is for me. Mischa and Mayanna break down the story, explain why they love it, and convince me that this strange story deserves a place in my heart. And I got to tell you, I'm already influenced. I want to start playing Kingdom Hearts, but nothing else I can really appreciate why people I love enjoy this thing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Please go into your podcast app right now and look up Simple and Clean. New episodes come out every Sunday wherever you get your podcasts. We are sponsored this week by bookshop.org, which is a fabulous way to support independent bookstores and authors. You can get eBooks, audiobooks, and physical books at bookshop.org. And the best part is that they raise money for local bookstores, almost $42 million as of this recording. I love that we get to recommend books to you on bookshop.org. That is where we keep the list of all of the books we've recommended on the show, as well as all of the books by the authors we've had on the show. So if you go to spiritspodcast.com/books, you can see those two lists and every single purchase you make on bookshop, financially supports local independent bookstores. Also, if you want to just have another cherry on top and get a discount code, the team there has been kind enough to make one for us, you can use the code SPIRITS for 10 % off your purchase. Thank you again to bookshop. One more time, that's bookshop.org, or if you want to see the lists that we have made, spiritspodcast.com/books, and you can use the promo code SPIRITS.
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JULIA: We are back. And Lauren, one of the things we always like to ask our guests is, what have you been drinking lately? Whether that is cocktails, mocktails, coffee creations, what has been your drink of choice?
LAUREN: So something I'm very excited to make now that the weather is turning and we're really entering into fall is a drink called the Harvest Sling.
JULIA: Ooh.
LAUREN: Which is from— I believe it's a Please don't tell recipe.
JULIA: Ah. Classic.
AMANDA: Nice.
LAUREN: And it's— yeah. And it's got like apple brandy, and lemon juice, and, you know, maraschino cherry. And it's just like very autumnal and delicious. And I'm excited to sort of make my first Harvest Sling of the season.
JULIA: Hell yeah. That sounds amazing.
AMANDA: Freaking delicious.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: Now, what we're going to do for the back half of this is a little bit different than what we typically do in a Spirits interview like this. But Lauren has graciously requested that we have a little bit of a roundtable about creativity and kind of how I think the supernatural and creativity can kind of cross each other over. But Lauren, I'll open the floor to you if you'd like to ask the first question.
LAUREN: Yeah. So for Two Thousand and Late, I have been doing these bonus after shows where I talk to creatives and activists, and all sorts of folks about their work and about what, you know, inspires them and also, like, what's giving them hope. Because I think that oftentimes as specifically, like, online creatives, it does feel like we are sort of, like, battling the demons of trying to get an audience and trying to get paid and all of these things. And so I mean, I'd love to start out by, like, hearing more about how each of you, like, found your way into being full-time creatives on the internet. Because, like, I— you know, I— we've known each other for a long time, we're friends. Like I certainly know—
JULIA: You saw the beginning of our journey.
LAUREN: The general shape of things, yeah. But, like, I would love just, like, kind of hear, yeah, with the sort of retrospect of the last 10 years, like how you think of the time from, like, getting into creative stuff and, like, what sort of drove you to start Spirits, because I actually don't know that I know that story. And then, like, yeah, sort of taking that and turning into, like, a thing where you get to, like, talk about spooky shit full-time.
JULIA: Yeah. I would say that I have always had a fascination with mythology and folklore and urban legends. And I definitely shared that with Amanda very early on in our friendship because as you know, but as a reminder for the listeners at home, Amanda and I are companions from the cradle, in which, mean, we met when we were five in kindergarten.
AMANDA: Yes. I think we briefly overlapped at the same preschool, but Julia and I were friends in elementary school, and then I'd say BFF starting from middle school when we both entered the same theater program. But I have many memories of Julia being one of the only other kids in our grade more interested in reading than, like, playing with, you know, outside at recess.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And so we would kind of trade off, like, that giant Egyptology, like kids coffee table book.
LAUREN: Yes.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Like one of us would check it out from the library at given times. There was one about dogs that we also traded off, but there's a real excellent memory along with this girl, Catherine, [39:48] of making laminated ancient god trading cards in the style of Pokémon cards. This was the late '90s, laminated with scotch tape.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: That's awesome.
JULIA: And then kind of the next step in the evolution that leads us to Spirits is I went to college for history and then accidentally stumbled my way into getting a separate religious studies degree because I liked the professor so much that I was like, "Hey, really love your class. What are you teaching next semester?" And she was like, "Well, I'm the head of the department, so I have to teach the senior capstone, but I'm also teaching a class called Meaning of Death." And I said, "I'll see you next semester at Meaning of Death." And I just kept taking classes with her every semester until she was like, "You know you could minor in this, right?" I was like, "Cool, great." And then I got to the beginning of my senior year and she was like, "If you take one class that I don't teach, you can get a entirely separate major in this." And I said, "Okay." And she's like, "You can TA for me that semester, too." I was like, "You know what? I would love that." And so I ended up getting a degree from— for both history and religious studies.
LAUREN: That's awesome.
JULIA: When I graduated college, I got a pretty terrible job at a spa and wellness company, writing copy for their social media team. And it was miserable. And Amanda was also working in Manhattan at the time, so we would meet up at this bar for drinks to kind of talk about life. But also sometimes I would be like, "You know, like, you know, if you think about the god of the dead and like the fact that—" and Amanda would be like, "Uh-huh. Yep, yep. Sip, sip. All right, great."
AMANDA: And, like, Julia, like, I love this shit, too. Julia had sent me, you know, papers that she wrote in college about this stuff, like, memorably about, like, the definition of cult in the Oneida community.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I love this stuff and I'm just an enthusiastic listener. And it is also important to set the scene and say that that bar that we were regulars at was the Jekyll and Hyde Club of Times Square.
LAUREN: Oh, incredible. Oh no, it closed?
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
AMANDA: It was replaced, I think, by Guy Fieri's Wing Stop or whatever.
JULIA: Oh, that feels right.
AMANDA: Yeah. And they had a deal where they had two cocktails, which were basically eight ounces of pure liquor for $15 during happy hour. So Julia and I patroned that bar a lot.
JULIA: It was buy one, get one free, which is not— you shouldn't do that.
AMANDA: That's not a good idea.
JULIA: That's a bad idea.
LAUREN: That's crazy.
AMANDA: Especially— yeah. So we were commiserating about our terrible jobs and lives, talking about the creative shit that we loved. And, like, Julia's been my fan fiction beta reader since we were 12, okay? Like, we've been long-time creative partners. And honestly, like in my recollection, we love podcasting, we loved your work, Lauren. We loved listening to shows, Magnus Archives, like all of this stuff. I loved lore, I loved, like, Mental Illness Happy Hour.
JULIA: Welcome to Night Vale was a big one for me.
AMANDA: And honestly, Spirits was an excuse for us to get together every single week in our newly full-time working adult lives and spend an hour talking to each other. We hadn't lived in the same city in five years because Julia went away to school and I stayed close to home. And it was basically an excuse to make something with my BFF. From my recollection, you know, we took it seriously. We wanted to do a good job, we liked podcasting, we wanted to be taken seriously. The sort of, like, right place, right time of having a good concept, fairly good branding, you know, excellent research in Julia and I had a small YouTube audience for my college vlogging days. And that's what we kind of launched to originally. And within about a year, we were making a little bit of money. And then within, I would say, two years, we could pay our editor and upgrade our equipment. We were able to do it a little more regularly. But then year three, we were able to make enough money that we could supplant or quit our terrible day jobs.
LAUREN: That's amazing. Over like— you guys have covered so many things over the years in terms of mythology and cults and exorcism, you know, all of Stonehenge—
JULIA: Uh-mm.
LAUREN: —all these different things. Is there any like particular topic that— I think one of the things that I think about a lot in writing supernatural fiction or, like, even consuming supernatural fiction is like the ways in which like are— and, yeah, you guys talk about this all the time on the show. Like the ways in which our myths or, like, or superstitions or supernatural narratives, like, reflect things in society, whether those are, like, you know, oppressed groups or ideas or fears of death or what have you. Is there any topic that you guys have covered over the years where you were, like, really surprised by, like, sort of the connection between, like, the thing that you were talking about and sort of, like, the culture that it came from— or the society that it came from and sort of what it was saying, how it was interacting with that sort of populace? Does that make sense as a question?
JULIA: No, no, no, that— it totally does. And there's two that jump out at me in particular. I also want to say we have covered so many topics. And I remember a moment when we were first starting the podcast where Amanda looked at me and she's like, "So, like, theoretically, how many episodes do you think we could do?" I was like, "I think I could pretty much go forever. You know, I think I can manage it."
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: And, like, we've done very little overlap on previously recorded episodes and previously covered topics, so we've covered a lot of shit. To answer your actual question, I think there's two that really pop out for me, one is the story of Beaivi who is a Sami goddess for which is the Nordic region, particularly I believe it's Finland, and they are the indigenous people of that area. And they have this sun goddess and a festival that they hold for her every winter equinox, where essentially it's everyone in the community goes and checks on the people that they're, like, concerned about that maybe don't have as much of a support system that they might need. And it was basically, like, we had an incredible conversation about how community can help with people's mental health. And that was one of my favorite episodes, for sure.
LAUREN: Oh, that's awesome.
JULIA: And then the other one was a topic that we talked about, which was the rainbow serpent, which is a Aboriginal Australian story. And that one in particular was framed in the lens of climate change because a lot of what the rainbow serpent story has to do with is having the, like, seasonal watering holes that provide for— not only the people in the area, but for the animals in the area and stuff like that and how climate change can really throw off the balance of a delicate ecosystem like the Australian Outback.
AMANDA: Totally. And I think the through line there is, you know, indigenous wisdom that settler colonialism has, you know, erased and displaced.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And I would think for me, Lauren, like, I don't know, like we have so many stories that make me think like, "God, we've been people forever." Like, that's one of my refrains on Spirits is, like, we have always wondered like, why them? Why not me? Why is this happening? Where am I? Will someone parent me? Will someone take care of me? Are my kids gonna be okay? Like, all of these just very deep human yearnings have been reflected across time and it makes me feel, you know, humble and small, and connected to, you know, the millennia of humans that have come before us. And I think as a, you know, queer person in my 30s, growing up in, you know, New York City and thinking that I'm like the most advanced person to ever live, I think it's— I've been like humbled by the need for ritual. Throughout Spirits, I've also become Jewish and going from, you know, an atheist-race Catholic to being like a fairly observant Jew. I am just like whatever your belief system is, we need some kind of structure. And I am really, like, moved and continually convinced by the spiritual technologies of belief systems, ritual, community care, tradition. Truly, no matter what flavor that tradition is and however you package it, like we need ways to look forward to the seasons changing, to, you know, mark passage of time, to grieve, to hope, and to, you know, think about what might come next. And—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —it is continually shocking somehow. 460 episodes later, every time I see another example of just the innovation that we have made as a society and how important we have made that, and how much and how closely we've held those traditions, despite the fact that, you know, most of us didn't have writing systems until extremely recently in human history, to be able to, like, carry that forth. It really matters to us way beyond the scope of an individual human lifetime.
LAUREN: I love that. That's so beautifully put and something that I have also been thinking a lot about, I think, like, in my 30s, as I sort of have gotten a more, like, even keeled life. And I have also— I lived in LA for long time and now I live in Seattle. And it's like I'm back in a place, like, New York that has seasons. And I am an atheist, despite being raised Christian. Like, I don't adhere to any belief system. But I still do feel that need for ritual and something that I did for my sister last year for Christmas was— so one— something she and I talk about sometimes is, you know, we're Irish-American, we have families still back in Ireland, we visited them, we have some Irish cousins that we keep in touch with. You know, we talk about how, like, there are certain Irish traditions that we definitely, like, carried forward and that we did growing up, but that there is all of this stuff that's just, like, lost. And I think this has become, like, more of a point of discussion—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —in white America, specifically, how like sort of the machine of white supremacy has stripped culture from lots of different places, right? Like obviously, like there's the— what— white supremacy has done to non-white people, which is the largest, most egregious harm.
AMANDA: Yeah, whiteness is culture. It's the planet's culture by definition.
LAUREN: Yeah, like there are a lot of immigrants who came over to America with traditions and then eventually those were removed from their daily lives.
JULIA: Hmm.
LAUREN: In Irish culture, too, has been talked a lot more about recently, right? The fact that the Irish language, that people were colonized by the English and their language has been destroyed over many years. And there's, like, a real effort now to sort of revitalize it.
AMANDA: Including, by the way, an all-Irish language adaptation of Mean Girls, which is going to be airing in the next couple of weeks. I will be watching it.
LAUREN: That sounds awesome.
JULIA: Link me.
LAUREN: Well, in, like, one of my, you know, like the— on seven times remove or whatever, who was a nun for very many years. You know, we went to go, like, visit her when I was a teenager at, like, the old family farm where, like, my great grandfather was, like, born, like, that they still live on.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Like, she— you know, she, like, taught us some Irish phrases and stuff because within her community, they were still spea— the older generations were still speaking Irish to each other.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Anyway, all to say, like, yes, what I did for my sister was, like, I put together this, like, notebook for her that, like, marked each— 'cause the, you know, sort of Celtic pagan religion has different seasons and you guys have talked about some of those on Spirits [50:35] it's like Samhain and all of that kind of stuff. And sort of, like, gave her, like, seasonal, like, things to do each season, you know? And sort of, like, dividing up the year in a slightly different way. Instead of four seasons, you know, you've got sort of, like, a little bit shorter seasons. And just, like, you know, paying attention to, like, take a walk and see if you can, like, notice the first flower of spring or, like, you know, like, curl up by the fire and do this or whatever. Like things that are not necessarily related to, like, the pagan religion, but that are still, like, rooted in, like, a ritual of, like, observing the way that the seasons change and observing the way that, like, the natural rhythm of, like, human life might shift.
JULIA: Yeah.
LAUREN: Right? It's like— you know, like, yes, I think in quarters in part because, like, I, you know, own a business and that's what you have to do when you own a business. But also, like, there is, like, a certain degree to which like— yeah, like kind of, like, every three months maybe I can, like, do something different, you know?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: And so I think kind of, like, building those, taking traditions, taking rituals from wherever you can and kind of, like, forming your own thing, I think is a natural inclination. And it's like— I think that whether that's coming from religious place or a place of just sort of like, need a rhythm in my life, I think that you're right, Amanda, like we do all kind of just, like, need it in some way.
JULIA: 100%.
LAUREN: Not to change topics completely, but another thing I was thinking about is the necessity of human storytelling, right? And how, like, what we all do for our lives is one of the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: —oldest traditions and one of the sort of most necessary parts of being a human and how, at least right now, it feels, like, punted to the side in many circumstances, right?
JULIA: I was gonna say at risk, so yeah, I feel you there.
LAUREN: Yeah. And obviously, yeah, you know, like, arts funding and actually— you know, like, the starving artist is a cliche for a reason.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: But it feels like there's like a whole bunch of, like, new threats right now. Obviously, like creeping fascism has always been a threat to art and that's not a new threat, it's just a new threat for us in our lifetime. But like technology, obviously. Like both AI, but then also I think, like the algorithmic monster that is trying to be an online creator. I'm just kind of, like, yeah, curious how you guys sort of see, yeah, what you're thinking about that currently. Kind of, like, anxiety that you have or hope that you have or, like, challenges that you face being, you know, somebody who's making art in a time in which, like, art is not only undervalued, but also being, like, overtaken by truly, like, non-human entities.
JULIA: My thought process is always, like, "Wow, I can't believe I've been doing this for 10 years.
God, I hope this is still a job in 10 years." You know, 'cause I'm like, what am I going to do after this? I still haven't exactly figured out, like, what my exit plan might be if, like, podcasting just all of a sudden becomes, I don't know, Napster. Is that a good reference? I have no idea. I'm sure I can still find something to do creatively, but it is been such a blessing that I've been able to do this for so long, and I really hope I get to do it for as long as I have been doing it.
AMANDA: I mean, it is not easy and it's getting harder. Like there are lots of ways in which podcasting is kind of a unique medium where it is more human-centered. It is less dependent on platforms and algorithms because of the technology of the RSS feed. You might be listening to us right now on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, any of a number of third party podcast apps, and that's very unusual. There are not very many other kinds of media where you can choose how to consume it and we can distribute it from one place that isn't mediated by Spotify's whims or Apple's whims or YouTube's whims. All three of those we are affected by, but not entirely. And so one real pro of podcasting is to some extent, Julia and I are making stuff for the same people who started listening to us 10 years ago, as difficult as it is to find a podcast. Like, as there is no algorithm, right? We're not crossing your for you page. We are—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —trying to, you know, take advantage of those technologies, but it's hard to get here. But once you're here, you're really in it. I listened to the same shows I listened to eight years ago, you know, in large part. And once I find a show that I'm into, oh, man, they got me deep. I'm buying merch. I'm going to live shows. Like, that is—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —the kind of person I am and that's the kind of person that podcasting welcomes. And so we are kind of, like, eking out a living from the basically smallest possible audience we can in order to support ourselves financially. That being said, neither Julia nor I has had a substantial raise in a very long time and both of us do other stuff. Julia edits other podcasts. I have a whole other job. Both of us have been doing, like, producing other podcasts, editing other shows, having a day job with Multitude, our podcast company—
LAUREN: Yeah.
AMANDA: —throughout our entire time being creators. We've not had the luxury of being a full-time creator, which is both luxury and also I think a bit of a trap in other ways. For me, like, making a living the best I can in a way that doesn't alienate my audience or treat them like—
LAUREN: Yeah.
AMANDA: —they don't have brains. And making ends meet other ways is kind of how it's always been and how I expect it always will be. The thing I'm really optimistic about is the need for human connection as the world gets more and more siloed and alienating. I am way more optimistic about the future of online communities, of finding your people online, of people being willing to give what money they have to support the things that matter to them, than I ever have been. Ten years ago, it was not normal to support a podcaster on Patreon, okay? Fifteen years ago, Patreon didn't exist.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Twenty years ago on YouTube, if you loved a YouTuber, and they were like, "Hey—"
LAUREN: Hmm.
AMANDA: "—PayPal me some money so I can quit my day job." People would, like, throw tomatoes at you. There's been a real cultural shift.
LAUREN: Yeah.
AMANDA: COVID had a big part of that, where we all tried our best to support the institutions we loved, realizing how fragile they are. And I hope that folks with the privilege not to have acknowledged how fragile the institutions they rely on are until now, are now having that moment and realizing that the things that they count on, they can't take for granted. They have to have an active part in actually making that happen. And I'm using lofty language to describe something even as simple as saying, you know, on the comments of a podcast Instagram, "I love this. Thank you for showing up for me. Of coming to our live shows, of sharing the show with people you love, even if you don't have money to spend." All of those things really matter. And for me, I was a lonely, weird, queer 15-year-old in my bedroom looking for, you know, community online. I found it on YouTube. And I think those same 15-year-olds today are finding that community in podcasting, on Discords, online. And it'll be more and more necessary, sadly, but also, you know, a little opportunistically, I think, as the world gets more hostile for anyone with any form of difference.
LAUREN: Yeah. I think that's so well put. And I think about the nature of podcasting so much and the fact that, like, we do own, like, the means of production as much as like any artist really can who's making stuff, you know, online. Because, yeah, even if you are a YouTuber, like you are kind of stuck on YouTube. You know? Like if you are a writer, like, you know, you might be kind of stuck on Substack. Like there's just a lot of different types of creativity that is really, like, platform specific. And I do love that podcasting is so platform agnostic in many ways. Like, of course, we are still subject to the whims of Spotify and Apple and YouTube in various ways, but that's not the be all and end all.
JULIA: No.
LAUREN: I also agree, I think that— like I just— I don't have interest in consuming AI content. Like, I just don't understand what's interesting about it. And I have to think that that will ultimately be true for most people. Like, I do think we'll see more and more, like, AI-supported human content, and I think that, like, there's a spectrum of a conversation to be had about that, right? Like, I think that maybe I'm more on the—
AMANDA: If it give captions to more content that doesn't have captions, I am all for it. Like, that's a great use of computer learning.
LAUREN: Exactly. Things like captions.
JULIA: I'm never going to use AI to, for example, write a Spirits outline. You know what I mean? Like, that's— it's so my own voice, and I... want to believe genuinely that, that is part of the reason that people come and listen to the show, you know?
AMANDA: And they want the texture, right? Like in audio editing, there's a thing called room tone, okay? Like—
LAUREN: Absolutely.
JULIA: [58:50]
AMANDA: —if you just do voiceover in, like, a velvet booth where nothing else is happening and you listen back to it, your brain is like, "Aah, what's happening?"
JULIA: There's something wrong there.
AMANDA: You need a sense of atmosphere. You need a sense of room, texture, taste, a little imperfection. We've all seen those videos where it's too smooth and you're like, "Oh, no. Like what's happening here?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: That's not right, yeah.
AMANDA: People want the messiness of human experience and my fuckups are way funnier than a computer's perfection will ever be. And I— like, Lauren, I push back a little bit against the word art. Like, I bristle at it a little bit. I don't know if what I contribute— yeah, like I don't know if what I contribute to Julia's research is art necessarily, but we sure do make entertainment. And I think it is valuable and remains really valuable, you know, to this day and more and more as the— as our kind of career goes on, that people choose to spend time with us and they want to hear what we think, they want to see our friendship, they want to learn with us, they want to see where we, you know, depart and where we converge in our worldviews. And that is lovely. And I find every human being more interesting than the best computer. And I want to spend time with people and learning their complexities and their weirdnesses. Like, at the end of the day, what mythology tells us, in my opinion, is people are gonna try and they're gonna fail. And, like, that narrative, that story, we can never let go of it. And that's not something that a, you know, a, like, generative copying and plagiarizing from the lowest common denominator of all the works to come before us can ever achieve.
LAUREN: Completely agree. And, yeah, just to clarify what I was— I thought that you were bristling at— I thought maybe I had said the phrase AI art and [1:00:23] at that, 'cause it's like, yeah, 'cause I definitely don't believe that—
AMANDA: You were describing us as artists and I was like, "I don't know."
LAUREN: I mean, like, well— and then, like, I think absolutely what you do can fall under the umbrella of art, but also, like, I think that, that is something that, like, each person just gets to decide for themselves, right? Like I—
AMANDA: Yeah.
LAUREN: I— I'm— yeah, and this is not really important, but between sort of like art entertainment and content, like I'm always sort of, like, flying between the three of them being like, "What fits best? Like, I don't really know. Like— and, like, what's bothering me today and what's not bothering me today?" And, yeah, but, yeah, I completely agree. I think that the messiness and the imperfections— I think that there's a big difference between like there's no original idea or there's six stories, right? Like that— I think truism about human experience, right? It's like whether or not we, like, literally know every myth in the world that came before us, like, I mean, yeah, you look at myths from one continent and myths at another continent, and they, like, share a lot of the same DNAs.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
LAUREN: Despite the fact that those cultures never talk to each other, right? And so I do think that there is, yeah, there is truth to the fact that, like, human beings are never, like, really generating an entirely new idea. But that is very different from a generative machine not generating a new idea, right? Because it's like—
JULIA: Hmm.
LAUREN: Like the idea may not be 1,000% unique, but the human being who is thinking of it is, right? Because there's— like the same two human beings have never existed. Whereas the same two LLMs are operating off of the exact same information, and therefore cannot bring any kind of unique perspective to it. I think— and I do think that, like, even if you can't touch that, I think that you can feel it.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: You can.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And people are smarter than the software bros trying to become trillionaires off of our ignorance and need. Give us credit for it. And we can smell it coming, y'all. Like, we know when it's there.
LAUREN: Yes.
AMANDA: I don't know, man. Like, it's— it is so interesting to be a person in the world. And the specific nexus of, like, you in your circumstances with your proclivities and your flaws and your foibles, making the things that you're interested in with the tools you have at this moment has never happened before and will never happen again. Whenever, you know, Julia and I talk to other creators or when I try to teach my students—
LAUREN: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —like, I try to say, like, lean into the Venn diagram of yourself. Nothing else is at the center of that Venn diagram of being, you know, whatever constellation of, you know, societal conditions and timing and circumstance has happened to you. That mess is what you've got to cook with and, like, that's all we're gonna have. And if we're lucky, our life is long enough to add to that Venn diagram. And that is just, know, however weird you think a, you know, at the time for me, 24-year-old with, you know, stage management experience who loves video blogging, working in finance with an English degree and a best friend who loves mythology, what can come out of that? It's this. And, you know, nobody else specifically could do this except for Julia and me. But whatever your version of that is, is worth making. Even if it's for an audience of none, even if an AI can copy it tomorrow, even if you don't make any money from it. The drive to create is, I think, what makes us human, along with the knowledge that we're gonna die. Put those two things in a room, and you have some pretty cool art.
JULIA: And even if, you know, another show existed that had the same exact elevator pitch as ours, their show is going to sound wildly different than our show. And I think that is kind of beautiful and why I would say, you know, Spirits is and was as successful as it is, you know?
LAUREN: Yeah. Well, I'm already feeling pretty hopeful, but a final question, what is a creator, an organization, a piece of art, anything that you feel like is, like, giving you hope in these very uncertain, unstable times?
JULIA: Oh, God. That's, like, such a good question, but the answer is so many different things.
LAUREN: I mean, that's great. I love it.
JULIA: There are a ton of authors that I really love that are releasing new books, either now or in the near future. Ann Leckie is a huge one who wrote the Imperial Radch Series. She just announced that she is releasing another book in that same series that's coming out next year. I'm so excited about that. I just finished T. Kingfisher's newest book that, like, at the time—
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: —we're recording this, came out two days ago. Just finished it. It was great. But, like— and then also Hades 2 is something that is just giving me a lot of hope of being like, "Yeah, we can keep telling stories and making mythology interesting in ways—"
LAUREN: Hell yeah.
JULIA: "—that create, essentially, games of the year every couple of years." And I love that for us.
AMANDA: My most hopeful activity is gardening. I can't believe I can get a little packet of seeds for a dollar, and then a couple of months later, I've got beans or pumpkins or watermelon. And every year, I think, "Truly, this can't work." And then it works again. So that is my favorite seasonal embodied, you know, tied to the calendar hobby. The person whose work challenges me and makes me feel hopeful and helps me grow, the most right now is Ann Umo [1:05:20] They are Connect with UMO on Instagram and other social media platforms. And they are, like, a therapist, coach, writer, speaker, artist, and just post really incredible stuff and do, like, coaching and classes and everything. But mostly about, like, healing and what that means in a world where, you know, your societal labels can never be left behind. And also just like beautiful pauses. Like I run across Connect with UMO on the Insta feed and I'm spending a few minutes with that, thinking about it, seeing how it goes. So if you have not heard of them before, connectwithumo.com.
LAUREN: Oh, I'm definitely gonna check that out.
JULIA: Lauren, this was such a incredible conversation and we're so glad that, one, we got to interview you and you kind of got to interview us as well.
LAUREN: Yeah.
JULIA: But can you tell us where people can find you and your work online?
LAUREN: Absolutely. Yeah, you can find me @laurenshippen on Bluesky and thelaurenshippen on Tumblr. I'm also technically on TikTok. And you can check out Two Thousand and Late wherever you get your podcasts. Also go to atypicalartist.co/phantompulse to stay up to date on what I think is going to be a very, very cool project that we'll be talking about more quite soon. So those are all the places. Thank you guys for having me. This was so fun.
JULIA: Lauren, always a pleasure. As Amanda said, past guest, also future guest.
AMANDA: Congrats on Two Thousand and Late.
LAUREN: Thank you.
AMANDA: I'm so excited. I love this show.
LAUREN: Thanks. Oh, this is so fun. Thank you.
AMANDA: Folks, next time you are staring into the void at an algorithmically influenced future, but then remember that you are a flawed human being with the unique capacity to create, also add—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: —stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
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