Tricksters w/ Isaac Sanders
/We’re creating the normie to trickster pipeline with the help of scholar and game designer, Isaac Sanders! We talk about their work around the archetype of the trickster, not only in folklore and mythology, but in day to day life.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of queerphobia, racism, fascism, and spiders.
Guest
Isaac Sanders (they/them) is an Afro-Indigenous, non-binary scholar, game designer, and social worker who believes play can change the world — and has the receipts to back it up. A PhD student at the University of Washington School of Social Work, Isaac's research lives at the intersection of AI, youth homelessness, and the radical idea that the systems meant to care for people should actually care for people. They run a transitional age youth program at the Doorway Project, founded Spark Action Lab, design games rooted in lived experience, and create content as @alltimeisaac — bringing social work into the 21st century and building worlds that love us back.
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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, 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 delighted to be joined today by Isaac Sanders. You are a scholar. You are a poet. You are a two-spirit, non-binary Afro-Indigenous person. And you posted something so powerful that I threw my phone across the room and then picked it back up to call Julia and said, "We have to have Isaac on the show, all about tricksters as anti-fascist practice." But first of all, Isaac, welcome to the show. Thanks for taking the time.
ISAAC: Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be here. It's also so nice to meet y'all. As things go, I was like— we were emailing back and forth, but it's always great to see, like, a name and a face, and actually talk to y'all and not, like, see, like, different video recordings from your Instagram, but actually talk to y'all. So it's very nice to see y'all.
JULIA: Well, we're very excited to have you here today.
AMANDA: Isaac, I have to ask, how did you find your way to the trickster? Because that is very much what we want to focus on in our recording today, though I'm curious about all the kinds of ways that folklore has intersected with your life.
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: But let's start with the trickster figure.
ISAAC: Yeah, that is so good. So, one of the things that my mom did for me— and I'm gonna talk about my mom a lot, I'm gonna talk about my grandmother a lot, because they are pivotal figures in my life. But when I was younger, she really liked Aesop's Fables. Like it was, like—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —one of the first books that I had received. And from there, my whole— my journey through, like, mythology or just, like, these kind of tales that bring in these characters became a core part of my life. And Br'er Rabbit was the one for me. I loved that story and just hearing about like— and I'm gonna call it what it is, the manipulation tactics of this rabbit were—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —fascinating to me. I was obsessed with like, "Yeah, I can work smarter, not harder." And this is always going to be the way my brain operates. And so I kind of, like, took on this identity of the trickster at a young age where I would make my cousins do things, knowing good and well, we weren't supposed to be doing them, but I wanted to see what would happen. And so—
JULIA: There's nothing more chaotic than a child who said, "I'm going to be the trickster now," because children are already immediately chaotic. And so to, like, make a conscious decision as a young child to be like, "This is the energy I want to bring into this world," incredible.
AMANDA: Amazing.
ISAAC: Yeah, it's been a character trait and it still is very much a character trait that I lean into on a regular basis. But, yeah, being a little kid and having cousins who were willing to do whatever I said, I really just wanted to see what would happen. And so I'd be like, "I'll give you $5 if you go and, like, swing that golf club and make this thing happen." And then we break a window and I'm like, "I didn't do it," because I didn't.
JULIA: Technically.
AMANDA: Did your cousins rat you out or—
ISAAC: No, well, I would be like, "What are we gonna do?" And so we would try and strategically get ourselves out of it. But if we couldn't and it was like, "What's going on?" I would sit in a corner, I'd have my little Game Boy Advance in my hand and I'd be like, "I didn't see anything. I didn't do nothing."
JULIA: Learning from a young age, not ratting anyone out. No one is ratting each other out. This is good, this is solid.
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And if no one knows who did it, no one can get in trouble technically.
ISAAC: Exactly. Although sometimes I think our family— like my uncle, my mom, my aunt got really creative of, like, how to watch us. I call it surveilling. And to this day—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —I will call it surveillance—
AMANDA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —but it was for the greater good, I think. I think they did their best.
AMANDA: Well, you point out something really interesting to me about the figure of the trickster and just trickster energy throughout folklore and stories more broadly, which is, like, many parts of it we don't teach kids. A lot of the trickster goes against the, you know, helpful, compliant worker of capitalism, and maybe even some of those ways where we try to keep our kids safe, but those lessons later add up to, you know, conformity. And so I'm curious kind of if you felt or identified that tension between the things I'm being told to do probably for a good reason at some point down the line and just the fun and experimentation, and inherent queerness of trickster energy.
ISAAC: Uh-hmm. Yeah, one of the things that I was taught very early on, which I didn't know was queer until I got older, but my family was so adamant about me being curious all of the time about everything and asking why. And the issue is that I turned that back on them so quickly of like, you have to justify every single one of your actions or any of your asks of me to explain to me why I have to do this or why this is important to you. This goes all the way to the fact that I was like, "Where are the dinosaurs in the Bible? This doesn't make any sense to me. Where are they?" And, like, my grandfather to this day has not given me an answer, and I'll hold on to that until the day I die. But it is one of those things where I was so adamant about understanding and knowledge that it turned into, "There's not a lot of things that people can't explain to me. There's just a lot of words—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —that are being said, and they said I have to do this because this is how we've always done it. And I'm noticing that people are not having a good time, so why do I have to do it the same way? And I started kind of getting to that energy around, like, eight or nine. And then by the time I was 12 or 13, I was asking my mom who, like, Assata Shakur was, and my mom also had all of these books in her basement. So it wasn't like I was just asking these things off top, like I didn't know what was happening. My mom owned these books. So I was like, "Who is all of these people who do this justice work? This seems really interesting." And she was like, "Isaac, you can't do this. This is dangerous. Like, this is like— the way they do these things are scary and bad." And, like— and it's not— she wouldn't say bad. She was just like, "It's radical."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: And then I was like, "I wonder what that word means because I'm curious and I love knowing stuff." And then I was like, "Radical seems really cool. I want to be radical." And so it was kind of this evolution of, "You're teaching me these things for the role of compliance are to learn and I'm starting to learn how to do different because of it." And by the time I was 16, 17, all of the things I grew up seeing which— like, the first thing was Trayvon Martin was, like, one of those big pivotal turns for me. I was just—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —like, "The only way that I can get through this is by joking. And then also burning things to the ground." And I can do both of those things at the same time. And sometimes it's actually really cute to do both of them at the same time. But that is inherently queer to hold those two dichotomies at the same time, because to a lot of people, they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. And for me, they're on top of each other. Because if you're not playing while you're breaking things, I don't think you're playing right.
JULIA: Hmm. It— I mean— and that's a kind of fundamental rule to, like, game testing and game creation. I know— I'm just thinking about that because that's something that is inhabiting my life right now. But that's so interesting. And I love this idea of them being layered rather than on the opposite sides of the spectrum. That is so cool. I— that's a great image to stand on.
AMANDA: So for those who are listening and interested in a trickster figure, they might think about that Aesop's Fable, they might think about Anansi, kind of other figures from global mythology and folklore. How can we kind of introduce and welcome people into the trickster and what they have to teach us? How would you define a trickster to start?
ISAAC: Oh, my gosh. So there's three pieces of a trickster that I think are really important to acknowledge. There's the one that everybody sees, which is the kind of goofy jokester, "I'm performing in front of you, for you to laugh. Like I'm a comedian, but I might be a comedian at my own expense. I might be a comedian at somebody else's expense." And so those are the tricksters that everybody kind of goes to. My favorite part of being a trickster is the ones who are disruptive through the jokes and the memes and the creation of things. But they're asking these questions and being like, "Actually, this is a story that I can tell that's showing that this doesn't operate the way that you're saying it does." Or, "I'm gonna poke holes in the things you just told me because it doesn't make sense for you to be telling this story knowing that it's wrong." And then you have the subversive, like the scary trickster, which is the ones who are underground, doing wild work to kind of get things to be done by—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —any means necessary. And that is always going to be the trickster that I'm going to be, whether it be in academia, whether it be out in public, like that trickster makes the most sense to me.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Hell yeah. That is such a wonderful breakdown of the three different archetypes of trickster. Do you think that you could, sort of, like go through each one of them and give us some examples, both of, like, the modern usage of that, but also ones from world mythology that you think are relevant to each of those?
ISAAC: Yeah. I think going back to Br'er Rabbit is one of the ones, and a lot of the folks I'm going to say are the ones that are very well-known, but I'm going to connect them—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —to some historical figures because I think it's really important—
JULIA: Yes.
ISAAC: —to balance those two things out. So one of the folks that I think a lot about is Br'er Rabbit and how Br'er Rabbit did the work that they did is very similar to how Frederick Douglass did the things—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —that he did. So Frederick Douglass infiltrated academia and wrote— like at the beginning of his career, wrote as a white man, but knew—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —that he was a black man. And then images of him started coming out later showing, "Hey, look, actually you were listening to me and reading me the whole entire time and I'm black. So what now? Like, what are we going to do now?" So it's sometimes it's not those big subversive shifts that happen that need to happen. It's, "I'm going to go into this space or research a population knowing that I don't belong to it." I tell people all the time, one of my professors asked me, "Would you take a million dollars to study white supremacists?" And I was like, "Absolutely. I want to be BlacKkKlansman. Like, I want to have my own movie later on in life. Like, this sounds great."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: "Sounds like a fun little project." Also, I just want to understand. But it is those times when people choose to do the weird thing and the thing that everybody's saying, "No, that's dangerous. That's— why would you do that? Why do you care?" Because it's important to try and play—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —in these spaces that are taboo, even though in my mind, it's not taboo at all to, like, try and learn and understand another human. But in our day and age, it is hard to understand somebody who is so volatile or different in thinking than we are. But for me, part of being a trickster is understanding those things and then disrupting them to the best of your ability. So it's not just to understand and learn and— there's care incorporated, but it's not— that's not the central point. The central point is to understand, to then kind of break apart, which then takes me to Minstrelsy.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: So a lot of times when we think about minstrels, we think about racism, we think about Blackface, but a lot of minstrels in the, like, early 1900s were black people. And it was black people who were performing for, like, primarily white audiences. But a lot of the minstrels were just mimicking what white people were doing and doing that exaggerated, like, thing with this Blackface on and knowing exactly what they were doing. There was no like, "Oh, I'm just doing this to get a paycheck," because there was paychecks that came with it and they also were getting paid extremely well, but then would have pictures of themselves in their playbooks of them in, like, very nice suits and very, like, beautiful, like, jewelry and these very expensive things. And then in their minstrel seat, they're wearing the things that the crowd is wearing. They're not—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —looking like they are in these pictures. They're dressed up like the crowd. And that was some subversive ways of taking power back in these kind of dynamics. And I think in the same way that they're trying to take power back in these performances. It makes me think of television shows and movies that navigate these topics that we're all trying to navigate and what that looks like, not from a learning perspective, but like what ways can we twist this or what ways can we pull in. I— my favorite genre, Afrofuturism to talk about—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —these patterns happening over and over and over again. Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors, but like she has this essay. It's called A Few Things About Telling the Future. I think I butchered the name of it, but it's fine. But she talks about the way that while you're telling the future, it's just looking at patterns and then throwing them into 30 years from now and then writing about it. And Parable of the Sower is a great example because she wrote it—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —30 years before. all of these things started happening. And when you look at her book and it says 2024, and you're like, "This is wild. Why does this feel so parallel?"
AMANDA: Yes.
ISAAC: Because all she was doing was paying attention. And so part of—
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —being a trickster is also just paying attention to the things that are going on around you so you can play within them. I think Anansi is my favorite trickster from mythology, mostly because I was grazed with African mythology. And so Anansi was the first person I had, like, attach to. Afraid of spiders. Could not— you could not put me in a room with a spider any given day. I'm still working through catching spiders and putting them outside safely because my immediate reaction is like, "You're trying to kill me." So Anansi being one of my favorite mythology characters is wild, but the connection of weaving stories and weaving webs and how to be a really good trickster is to also be able to tell stories and be a historian in a lot of ways, be able to make up things on the spot. I play a lot of TTRPGs and they make me feel like a trickster and, like, I get to perform very chaotic characters. But thinking of TG RPGs, I always think about tricksters are chaotic good and only chaotic good.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: The moment their chaotic—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —starts moving towards neutral or evil, they are no longer a trickster, they're a dictator—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —or a destroyer. And if they start moving up from chaotic to lawful, all of a sudden that goodness is like, "We're dictated, we're going to, like, stay within this regimented way of being and rules matter." But that chaotic good is the sweet spot for every single trickster and I wish the whole entire world was just aligned as chaotic good, because I think we'd be in a very different place.
JULIA: Oh, that's— I— first off, I love the analogy of talking about, you know, chaotic good as the definition of trickster. It does make me raise the question then of the character of Loki, because Loki is usually defined as being a sort of trickster god within Norse mythology. Do you think that Loki then, when he starts doing, like, "evil things," like moving towards neutral and evil, he becomes a destroyer in that sense?
ISAAC: I don't think he ever moved.
JULIA: Oh! Okay.
ISAAC: I think he was constantly chaotic good. He just was doing something that made sense to him based on the viewpoint.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: A trickster who—
JULIA: Ah.
ISAAC: —is being— in a lot of ways this happens to tricksters, who are being suppressed for who they are, who are being put in positions because they can't be powerful. You're not doing the thing the right way. You reacting to that is not evil. You're reacting—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —to the conditions that you are in. And I've never saw Loki as evil the way that Loki was— I hated Thor. Like, Thor got on my nerves. I was like—
AMANDA: Bullied all of us in high school.
ISAAC: Right. I was like, "You have become this funny character, allegedly. You're not funny to me. You were being rude to your brother." Like— and I also think that the weird way that Marvel made Loki technically be like—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —a different species of people to justify his behavior was also a strange, like, turn.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: But when people talk about Loki as the trickster god, Loki would just— and this is very similar to, in indigenous cultures, the coyote, Loki—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —was just doing stuff to learn things and learn the human condition. Like, I was just like, "I'm gonna make this—"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: Like, "I'm gonna manipulate this situation to figure stuff out. But Loki didn't stop at just people. Loki was doing it with the gods. Loki was doing it with everybody.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: Like, I'm just playing games to see what'll happen. And that intrigue is always gonna live in chaotic good for me, which is why I think they made that Loki TV show, because they—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —realized this was not where Loki needed to land. And—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —being chaotic good was always the nature of Loki in all different, like, multiverses, because that show was really great for me. I love the Loki show.
JULIA: I think they also just realized that the fandom was just so horny for the character of Loki. They're like, "We should really cash in on this."
ISAAC: A 1,000%.
AMANDA: Sometimes I feel like— Julia, is it Charlie Day in the meme from It's Always Sunny with, like, all of the different—
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AMANDA: —strings?
JULIA: Yes, the conspiracy board.
AMANDA: I feel like that person often when Hollywood is like, "What draws all of these— what draws the surprising interest from the people?" And I'm like, "It's queerness! It's queerness!" And I'm pointing at the string— you know, the different, like, figures and photos, because it's someone who is willing to not just go against the grain, but to go with the grain until the point that they stop and kind of take your chin and make you look at the, like, logical consequence of the system that you're in. And something as like— that you've really unlocked for me here is, like, thinking about the role of fear as something that the trickster, like, interacts with and overcomes. Because I think so often it's going with the system, as I said, and then, like, stopping at a point that's maybe a little bit past logical conclusion, or maybe you stop a little bit before the point of, like, individual prosperity, maybe. Speaking of, like, the actors, you know, getting their deserved paychecks for doing a thing that might feel odious at times. But they get to stand there, occupy space, and make people see them as they want to be seen. And that calls into question and, I think, invites audiences to either abandon their worldview as it's been or deal with the kind of fear and, I don't know, like, alienation almost of what they thought was, like, a logical way to view the world, suddenly being shown that it's different. And I don't know, if that sits with you at all, but just that intersection has a lot of fruitfulness for me in this moment.
ISAAC: Yeah. One of the things, like, bringing in the myriad of research that folks have talked about tricksters, I believe— oh, my gosh, it's Hyde's Tricksters Make the World. It's the pivotal trickster text, right? Written—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —in 1998, it's very— you would think it wouldn't fit, but it's constantly just, like, found its way back into specifically the American lexicon of, like, what does trickstery do for us? If we're thinking about folks like Robin Williams or, like, these very pivotal tricksters who played these characters that we love to this day, even if they are no longer here, we will always turn to them and be like, "This person did something for me because they were good, but their characters were chaos." And those two pieces have to be married together. But—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —one of the things that Hyde says is that a system with tricksters can bend. A system without tricksters will break. If there is—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —no levity and joy and, like, play within the systems we live in, they're going to break immediately. And one of the things that I think is happening today is it's very easy to create divisive content. It's very easy to get people to want to choose a side and be, "I have to be right, I have to be wrong." A trickster sits in the middle and is like, "Y'all are having a completely different conversation. What if I play a game? What if I—"
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: "—go to a protest and I'm just chanting and singing songs? What if I show you the videos of young people still playing soccer in rubble? Like there's these things that happen which are devastating and you have to recognize that. And also you need to know that the human experience cannot thrive in fear. And it should not ever— like if the world is asking you to be fearful all the time, we're not going to make it beyond the shackles that have— in the prisons that we have all been conditioned to, like, understand through social norms and social conditioning in schools. Like, the moment you decide that you want to play, I think it unlocks a future that we would never necessarily be able to get to.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Yeah. I think there's also— you mentioned Robin Williams and now that has kind of, like, done something to my brain in a way that I wasn't expecting. But the idea of why characters like that are so beloved is I think that there is a certain amount of fear within the average person where they see someone acting out in a way that they consider chaotic, that they themselves feel like, "Oh, I can't act like that, but isn't it powerful? Isn't it interesting that this person is breaking those norms and breaking those social status moments and is coming out looking better?" And I think there is something sort of, in that regard, aspirational about the trickster. Do you think that rings true?
ISAAC: Yeah. I think one of the things, especially Robin Williams, is his characters— like, I think of Genie from Aladdin.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: Genie was so unserious. Like, there was such serious moments of that show where I was like, "If it was me, I'd be pissed at Genie. Why are you talking to me this way—"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —knowing good and well somebody has just been kidnapped?" And you're just kind of like, "Well, let's make a joke as we're flying on the magic carpet." Like, no, what are we doing? But that— those kind of moments are pivotal in my, like, childhood— of Robin Williams being Mrs. Doubtfire. Are these very—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —why would somebody do that? Why would you dress up as a woman and then go in here? I love drag now, and that is extremely queer. Like—but a lot of the things that I found interesting about Robin Williams were inherently queer. But, like— but Robin Williams, to my knowledge, never came out as queer, but like the characters that he created were queer. And, like, we were talking about, Loki is inherently queer. And being queer is also being playful and being subversive and working through things because historically that's what's had to happen. And that is constantly—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —fighting through fear to be who you are. And I think just being a marginalized human being, you have to understand what fear does to you and then push past it. And so there is some kind of freedom that comes with being marginalized because we're on the fringes and we see how everybody else is operating. I think one of the—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: I think I'm, like, describing a Bell Hooks concept because that's all I talk about. But I think it's from margins to the center. But the idea is that as you are more and more secluded from society, you're pushed to the margins. But the vantage point of being at the margins is you see everybody at the center and these people—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —do not recognize that they are caught in this web that they have to, like, traverse. And then you're sitting on the margins, being like, "Yeah, it kind of sucks to be over here, but these people are silly. Like, why are they fighting like this? What's going on here?" And I think that just like— that queerness, that like care that comes with being a trickster is so important. And it starts with imposter syndrome and then it ends with, "I'm not an imposter, the system is the imposter and I must get through that."
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: And I think there was a wild jump from Robin Williams to imposter syndrome and overcoming it, but in my head—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —that made a lot of sense.
AMANDA: I've never felt more with you.
JULIA: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense to me. This also is giving real, like, jester energy in the way that like— I'm picturing as you're saying, like being on the margins, but the margins allow you a broader view of, like, the situation in society as a whole in front of you. And this idea of, like, the jester in a court is able to see all the court shenanigans that are happening and has a unique position in the court to then mock the, like, machinations of this thing that it is a outsider on, but is also an observer of. And I think that is very trickster energy as well in my mind.
AMANDA: Yeah. The jester is, of course, dependent on the will of the ruler and the court. Jesters can and were caught out or sent away, killed, if they do things that, you know, are out of favor. But also, they are the freest. They have the most perspective. And I'm thinking, too, like, it's not even a bird's eye view, you know, taking kind of Bell Hooks' view of the margins, but it is— it's like shoulder to shoulder, side by side with, like, the most interesting people with the best perspective. Maybe it's Anansi's viewpoint. It's the spider's, you know, perspective, the spider view.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —of being able to be kind of at the edges of that web and seeing how the closer you get to the middle, the more trapped you are. Would it be nice to have the resources of the middle? For sure. But I think for so many of us, Isaac, you're really giving me some helpful words for why, you know, feeling queer feels like a breath of fresh air and the only way to be. Because in some ways, I do pity those who don't have any reason to question their place in that spider web.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: Yeah. I think it goes back to— and this will be funny when my mom listens to this, but she made me one of the most curious people in the whole entire world. And I'm not saying she made me queer, but between her telling me I could ask a whole bunch of questions and her only buying me Britney Spears and NSYNC albums, then we landed where we were, and I think we were supposed to be here the whole time.
AMANDA: Thank you for your service, ma'am.
ISAAC: Right, exactly. Thank you so much, mom, for making me queer. But she did have this energy about her. My mom was in the military, and before she was in the military, she was a police officer. And now, my mom's a social worker. So she's traversed all of these different systems, but she did it in what I consider a very queer way because she was, like, one of the first black women police officers in Kansas. She then—
AMANDA: Wow.
ISAAC: —joined the military and she chose to enlist rather than go the officer route because she was—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —like, "If I don't enlist, I am not pushing the norm of, like, women are not supposed to enlist. They're not supposed to even be here. So I'm going to do it this way that's harder because that is what I wanna do." And a lot of people would look at that and be like, "Oh, she's like following the rules. She wants to follow the rules." My mom was breaking a whole bunch of stuff and bending a whole bunch of stuff because of making those choices and being raised by somebody like this who constantly is like, "I don't understand why you're putting yourself in a box, Isaac." Even when I was, like, coming out, my mom was like, "Boxes. weird, why would you do that?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: It— and now that I'm older, when I'm— like now I'm just like, "Oh, yeah, my queerness is very fluid and I get to call it and define it every single day." When I talk about my queerness, I talk about colors rather than talking about, like, my sexuality. Like there's—
JULIA: Cool.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —a lot more freedom there. Now that I'm older and I think about when my mom was like, "Why are you yourself in a box?" I'm like, "Well, yeah, she was right that day. I guess I couldn't— I'm trying to find the language is important and language is extremely important for these things to help people explore." But now that I'm past it, I'm like, I get to be whatever I want to be. And that is what she was probably trying to teach me in those moments that I was mad at her about. But in saying all of that, I think that going back to the jester conversation, I'm actually playing a jester in my current TTRPG game.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: Isaac, we're gonna be friends. I'm gonna force this.
ISAAC: Oh, my gosh, yes, please. I want to— if— we need to play more games, I love playing games with people. I am obsessed with—
JULIA: Hell yeah.
ISAAC: —game playing. But, yeah, playing as a jester has been really fun or at least, like, even thinking about the idea of it because my jester character also is the center of attention and also the prettiest person on court.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Naturally.
ISAAC: Just be— like I can be a jester and I can be funny. I also can be gorgeous.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: And now what are you going to do with that? Because you're now obsessed with me.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: And being obsessed with me means you're gonna tell me a whole bunch of secrets and you're gonna tell me a whole bunch of information, and I don't have to fight to get it. And now that I know everything, I get to do with that what I will.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: And now I'm playing a different game. But that's how I have always imagined a court jester.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: Like when we watch it on TV, they make them seem silly and there's a buffoonery about it, and they're always connected to the fool.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: And I think that they're performing the fool and a 1,000% operating as, like, a high priestess. Like, they're like—
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Yes.
ISAAC: They're doing, like, chess in space while everybody else is still playing checkers. And I think that level of creativity is so awe-inspiring and it is now why the research I do is wrapped around this because I'm like, "I get to do research however I want to." And if I lean into this trickster ideology, which a lot of indigenous academics do, they don't lose themselves within academia, they just integrate themselves. And when they integrate themselves, it's bringing poetry, it's bringing soundscapes, it's bringing their language into this very sterile, "You need to follow the rules," space. But I don't know who said it, and I know it's like, some— like I'm about to like butcher this quite a little bit, but like to be an artist is to break.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: The, like, know-how to break the system so then you can play in it. Because the goal is not to necessarily tear it apart, but it is to create within something that isn't creative. And there's a lot of people, a lot of queer people especially, who have been able to do that for eons. So—
JULIA: That is so, so incredible. I want to hear so much more about your research. But for now, I think we're going to very quickly grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
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JULIA: Hey, it's Julia, and welcome to the refill. Thank you so much to our newest patrons, Liminal Bonfire and Connie. [31:19] You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil. And of course, our legend-level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Michael. If you hear these midrolls and you're like, "Hey, that Patreon thing sounds interesting, but I don't have the money to spend on it right now." Did you know that you could do a seven-day free trial? All you have to do is go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and click on the seven-day free trial. It's really cool. And you could try out stuff like our cool bonus urban legends episodes, check out the recipe cards that we do for every single episode, and so much more. Go and check it out, patreon.com/spiritspodcast. I also want to tell you about another podcast here at Multitude. This Guy Sucked is a history podcast for haters by haters. Join historian Dr. Claire Aubin and a new expert every week to pull back the scholarly curtain on some of the world's biggest bummers. No dead person is safe, and the show's guests prove that the best part of understanding the past is criticizing it. New episodes every Thursday wherever you listen to podcasts from Charlemagne to Carl Schmitt. There is a great episode that just came out fairly recently on Dick Cheney. Oh, boy, you got to listen to that one. Every episode gives listeners all the ammo that they need to win dinner table arguments over why history's main characters are actually kind of the worst. So check out This Guy Sucked. Again, new episodes every Thursday wherever you listen to podcasts.
PAYNE: They told us it was a weather balloon, just a glitch. It was a drone. Now, it's just AI, I guess. The explanation keeps changing, but the stories don't go away.
SPEAKER 5: Videos appearing to show UFO is flying through the air are real.
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JULIA: And now, let's get back to the show.
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JULIA: We are back. And, Isaac, one of the things that we love 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?
ISAAC: My drink of choice is always some— I love a well drink. I don't know what it is.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: I don't know if it's— like a lot of the times in my head, I'm like, "Maybe I'm not sophisticated enough." But I'm also like— I just like what I like and I know why I'm here.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ISAAC: And I'm not—
JULIA: Hell yeah.
ISAAC: I'm not drinking for it to taste good. I'm here because there is something that's going on in my life that needs to take me out of my own brain. So—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —the fanciest drink, which is like very childish to me, but like I love an Amaretto sour. I will always go—
JULIA: Okay.
ISAAC: The headache I have, horrid. But drinking it, I'm like, "This is really cute."
JULIA: In the moment?
ISAAC: Like any sour—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —I'm just kind of like, "Oh, this is nice and refreshing."
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: And then the next day my head hurts so bad. I don't know how to function. So it would— it used to be real fun when I was 21. Now, I don't know if Amaretto sour, that's like a once a year kind of drink.
JULIA: Fair. That's fair. That's fair. I'm— listen, I still love a gin sour at home, a homemade gin sour, one of my favorite cocktails. So I don't think you're wrong in any regard.
AMANDA: Isaac, one of the many fascinating things about you is what you mentioned around queering academia, around kind of expanding and enlivening the ways that we research and the ways that we package and pass on and weight knowledge. And so one of the wonderful things that stood out to me in your bio is the phrase, "Academic Poems," which is one of the published articles that you have co-authored. So maybe we can start there. Tell me, how are you queering academia?
ISAAC: Yes. Oh, my gosh. So first I have to shout out Meg Paceley, Professor Meg Paceley, who was the one who introduced me to this, like, possibility. So we were working on research about, like, trans rural youth, specifically in the Midwest area, and their experiences navigating health care, and where you had to go to get health care, and why did you have to go to the big city, what were— who were the safe people that you potentially, like, could go to in your small town? Like, what were the things, right? We got all these transcripts and then Meg was like, "Hey, Isaac, we're about to work with another professor and they have PhD folks who are there." And I wasn't in my program yet. I was still, like, working in the field, but I knew I wanted to go get—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —my PhD eventually. And Meg was like, "Isaac, like, we're gonna work on academic poems." And I go, "What?" Meg's like, "Yeah, you can do academic poems."
AMANDA: That's allowed?
ISAAC: I'm like, "What— show me these things." Like— I'm like, "I don't believe you." Sent me a whole bunch of academic poems. I'm like, "Oh, people have been doing this for years." And essentially what you do is you take the transcripts and you take blurbs from transcripts and you formulate them together and make them into a poem. And you can see—
JULIA: That's so cool.
ISAAC: —the way themes come out through the poetry—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —that you create. And I didn't know academia would let me do that. And that was the turning point for me. I was like, "Freedom. Like, this is what this world looks like when you can just be free to, like, navigate and play within these systems."
Because there is no limit to what you can do in academia as long as you can justify it. And once that was in my brain, I was like, "I can quite literally do whatever I want." But, like, there is very specific professors, so like Meg Paceley, Dian Million, who I've been able to work with, who are these kind of pioneers within their field for doing research that is not common or not expected from the fields that we're in. So Dian created this thing called Felt Theory, created years ago, but the Felt Theory ideology from Dian was this idea that, like, indigenous people have a whole bunch of trauma and that trauma is not necessarily communicated with words. And so to pretend like that is not somebody's way of being or way of knowing is silly because— just because you don't talk about it doesn't mean that thinking and that knowledge is not passed down genetically. And so—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —you can feel theory. You can feel through who you are, what you're learning from picking up from just, like, looking at things or things like that. So having those kinds of people in my circle have really queered my experience and like them also being queer scholars also help a lot. So there's so many examples that I think you have to dig for a little bit, but there is freedom in academia. It's just pushing against the machine and knowing that the machine is going to push back. But it might take you a little longer to graduate, but you'll get to do fun things rather than the quantitative papers that make your head hurt, but you have to do anyway.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. I— listen, I would rather stay in academia doing things that I love than really force myself to go through the standard, like you have to do these things, right? And graduate, feeling like I didn't learn everything that I set out to learn. You know what I mean?
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: You also touch, Isaac, on the work that you've done with homeless youth, specifically LGBTQ and BIPOC youth. And I have been thinking too about, like, the maybe resentments of the audience or the, you know, mainstream in visible reminders of the limits and problems of those systems. And that can be, again, the trickster pointing out something ridiculous, the jester pointing to a veiled political critique that everybody is thinking about, but only the jester gets to state. And I think—
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: —there is a world where gender nonconforming folks visibly pointing out, you know, the rigidity and absurdity of the gender binary, but also homeless youth specifically as a population that folks don't want to even recognize for their existence points out all of the ways that we're failing each other as a society all the time. Does that make any sense?
ISAAC: Yes.
AMANDA: And can you connect these areas of your scholarship and research?
ISAAC: Oh, my gosh, yes. Young people are all tricksters. You are born as a trickster and you are taught to not be a trickster as you go.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: The issue— and I think the blessing and the curse of being a young person experiencing homelessness, I had my own bout with homelessness when I was young as well, is you learn how to get your needs met by any means necessary. And doing that is inherently being tricky. You have to get really creative and figure out ways of, "I need to yell at this vocal range to make sure that this person understands that I'm serious, that I need to get the food that they are offering, and I get to choose what that is."
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: I don't get to just hand me down food. I get to get good food because just because I'm homeless does not mean you give me scraps. That's wild.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: I remember when I first started working in youth homelessness and I was working in an under-18 shelter, and these young people were able to talk about the clinical pieces of their lives better than I could, and I went to school.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: Like, they understood things beyond what even anybody who is working in the field can. And I always think about tricksters who have that lived experience of the world. That's the reason why they can play and be jesters and do these things, because they have experienced something that was hard, but found levity within it. And so every young person I've ever met, I always learn from. And some of my favorite young people are the ones that people would say like, "Oh, they're the worst of the worst. They don't follow rules. They're always breaking stuff."
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: But the moment you flip it and you're like, "Okay, but, like, why would you play this game with me? What's the point of playing this game? Oh, you want attention. And you, when you were growing up, did not get attention from adults. I can sit with you and not have to, like, be angry at you to be with you and give you that care that you're looking for." But to do that, they get really creative and you have to be—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —really funny. And they— I— I've heard the funniest things working at shelters because they're just kind of, like, figuring it out and they're figuring it out in such fascinating ways. I work at this organization called The Doorway Project, which is based here in Seattle. But we look at working with homeless youth as a holistic thing. And so we have things like Healing Pages where you read short stories with folks and that brings us around the table and we pay them to be able to read these short stories and tell us about their experiences and how they're interpreting the stories. And I've read some stories that I've like, "Oh, these are stories I've read when I was younger and this was the analysis that I came out of it with." One of the recent stories, oh, my gosh, it was— it's this very specific story about running. It's this like little girl who's going to a race and she's running. One of the folks in this meeting was just like, "Why is she so obsessed with running? Why— does she not do something— like, why— where— why isn't she doing anything else?"
JULIA: Why did she have other hobbies?
ISAAC: Derail the whole conversation. But I was just like, "This is so funny, because when I read this, I had to write a paper about it." And so—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —I didn't see any joy within it, but I was like, "Also, why is she obsessed with running?" 'Cause it sounds like—
AMANDA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —it's something she's just good at, but she could just— does she actually like running? Like, let's start unpacking this and, like, the ways that their viewpoints are just very different than ours, inherently makes me want to question why I think the way I do. And am I becoming too rigid and I'm losing the trickster energy by not being in touch with what young people are thinking? Because a lot of the—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —times we discredit their knowledge and their knowledge is the only thing that I think is going to get us to a better world because they still have hope in a way that like we are begging for hope as adults. Young people inherently have hope and the world is the thing that takes that hope away. Not—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —them growing up or them being in like these situations, but they always have some level of hope that I'm just like— and I'm just awe-inspired by, which is why I show up and I try and give them as many resources and things that I can. And sometimes that resource is just care and sitting with folks and understanding, "Yeah, this shit sucks." If we cannot—
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: Like, I can't fix the system today, but I can sit here and plan out, like, what kind of jobs you think you could do and how to be completely audacious when it comes to applying for things that you know you're not qualified for. Because a lot of people do that every single day, and I want you to get this administrative job.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: I don't know. But that's like where—
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —we have to be, right?
JULIA: Circling back to that imposter syndrome that we mentioned earlier.
ISAAC: Exactly.
JULIA: A 100%.
ISAAC: I don't think anybody is an imposter in a world where people are told that they need to be something by someone else. I don't think you—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —can be an imposter by being yourself. And that means being audacious and a trickster and a jester at all points in time, because that's who we are inherently. We have our quirks and our things. And we should hold on to those as much as possible, because I think the older we get, the more we lean back into that trickster mentality. I think for a lot of folks, it's like, "Oh, the older you get, the more rigid." My grandfather is 96 years old and he's the funniest man I've ever met in my life.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: And he's gotten funnier the older he's gotten because he does not care. Like, he does not care.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: There is something about hitting that certain age and then you're just like, "I really don't care what other people think, truly."
ISAAC: Yeah. And the thing is, you don't have to hit an age.
JULIA: Exactly. You don' have to.
ISAAC: You can just not care right now—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —and do all of the funny things that you think about. It's just good. It's good to have fun.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: So as we build for ourselves a normie to trickster pipeline, as we set our—
ISAAC: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —you know, trickster education, I was going to use the word boot camp, but no, I want to say, like, invitation, summer camp.
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: You know, art circle. How do we suffuse our lives with more trickster energy? Who are some of the tricksters, scholars, artists that you look to, that you learn from, in addition to the wonderful and distinguished folks that we have already named in this episode?
ISAAC: Yeah. I think for me, a lot of the tricksters that I think about are personally, like, connected to me because I know—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —that their behavior when they're being a trickster is that behavior, right? You get to see the influx and the shifts between times, like the code switching that we have to do every single day. So lot of the times, it's personal. It's the mentors I have in my life, but mind you, some of my favorite mentors are eight years old. Like—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: — they are— they're people who are like, "Look at this picture." And it's like, "This is a drawing. I have no idea what this is. It's extremely abstract." And they're like, "It's a dinosaur." And I'm like, "You know what? It's a dinosaur."
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: I—
JULIA: It is.
ISAAC: And you have convinced me fully and I don't have any questions about it because that is—
AMANDA: "I didn't see it but now I do because you saw it before I did."
ISAAC: And then I start pointing, I'm like, "Okay, I see the lines, this is the head, like, we're gonna do this." But those things that we kind of think are playful and it's like, "We're gonna allow kids to be kids and do these things." That is the tricksters that I love in my life, are the little kids who are—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —like, "Actually, I'm gonna draw something and I know it's not a dinosaur. And I'm gonna tell you it's a dinosaur and when you sit here and tell me it's a dinosaur, I'm gonna tell you, 'I know it's not a dinosaur.'" And these kind of—
AMANDA: Because it is foolish to go along with things that we don't really understand because we don't want to be seen as wrong.
ISAAC: Exactly. It's— and so it's—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: It's just like, "Yeah, what is this? Let me actually have a mature conversation with you about why you think this is a dinosaur, because to me, this is not a dinosaur. Like— and that's okay. And we can have these conversations." So I always go back to kids. Kids are just— they're a wealth of knowledge that we don't tap into enough. Some tricksters that I think in this moment are really, really important are the folks who are doing, like, art during the periods of time of distress. I know that they're not the things that are going to be the headlines, but there's folks like Adrienne Maree Brown who come to mind, who are having a whole bunch of hope during a period of time that's just extremely distressful. Octavia Butler—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —folks who think about Afrofuturism or indigenous maturity, like being able to think of ourselves outside of this and beyond this—
AMANDA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —and surviving this. Because I think that's one of the elements—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —of futurism that people don't really grasp onto. It's like, "Oh, yeah, it's a post-apocalyptic world. How did we make it? How did we get here?"
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: Because there had to be something— I remember I was reading— this is a wild tangent, but it's going to be fine.
JULIA: We love it.
AMANDA: That's Spirits, baby.
ISAAC: I remember I was reading— it— look, it's great. I love it. This podcast— I'm coming back. Y'all— I'm deciding I'm coming back. Y'all don't get to tell me I can't.
JULIA: Excellent.
AMANDA: The door is open. You have a portal. You have an extra-dimensional portal, Isaac. You just meet us any Monday and we'll be here.
ISAAC: Perfect, love it. I read the Hunger Games and I—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —just didn't expect anybody to be of color. It just wasn't a thing and I didn't realize it until I was taking a class in college that was Freaks and Freakery in American History. It was a great class.
JULIA: Cool.
AMANDA: Wait, can I see that syllabus? Do you still have it?
ISAAC: I think I could— you know what? I can find it. I'm gonna find it—
AMANDA: Thank you.
ISAAC: —some way, somehow. But I took this class and I was like— we were reading the Hunger Games and they were like, "Let's talk about like, being a spectacle and like TV and like, what is this—" and I, like fully understood that. But I was in the classroom, we were talking, I was like, "Yeah, it was crazy when I watched the movie and there was black people in it." And they were like, "Isaac, like District 11 was a plantation." I'm like, "Excuse me?" Like it was just—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —so wild to me to even think that folks made it that far. And that—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Yeah.
ISAAC: —was a turning point for me to be like, "Is my imagination— like just white— like white people are gonna be doing everything?" And it was. And I've been—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —unpacking it ever since. That was my senior year of college and I've been just on a—
AMANDA: Wow.
ISAAC: —mission to be like, "No, that's not— like I don't have to subscribe to these kinds of things." Which goes back to, like, what are the things— your imagination is such a radical space. And if you're not decolonizing your mind from what is going on around us, if you're not, queering your mind, if you're not making your mind as like— is the word malleable? As like man—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: You can manipulate it and move it in many different ways. That is the thing that all tricksters must do. You cannot just think in one way. You have to look at things and know that it's a prism and not a square. Like, you have to have multiple words to think about the same things and tear stuff apart. It's so important to be tearing stuff apart but bending it, not breaking it.
JULIA: Incredible.
AMANDA: Bringing it back to Robin Williams, we should all be Flubber. Our brains should be Flubber.
ISAAC: Exactly.
AMANDA: Immutable, transferable, transformable, can take something and expel it and keep what makes sense.
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Flubber.
JULIA: Flubber.
ISAAC: I need to re-watch that movie. I haven't watched that movie—
JULIA: It's a good one.
ISAAC: —in years.
AMANDA: Same. Same. Well, Isaac, this is not a goodbye. This is an until next time.
ISAAC: Exactly.
AMANDA: But as the audience is in love with your perspective and your work, how can they follow you and the wonderful things that you are putting out into the internet?
ISAAC: Yes. So on Instagram, I'm @alltimeisaac. So it's Isaac all the time. It's very easy. But my Isaac is spelled I-S-A-A-C. Just because I know people spell Isaac in the different ways. I also call it that biblical Isaac because that is how Isaac is spelled in the Bible.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: I— also, I cannot take credit for that. My grandfather has been saying it. I'm named after my grandfather. So—
AMANDA: Aw.
ISAAC: —he says, "I'm biblical Isaac."
JULIA: Nice.
ISAAC: "Not those weird spellings of Isaac." Which they're not weird, they're just different. They're queer spellings—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —of Isaac. So—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: —shout out to the queer Isaacs. And then on TikTok, which we should all be off TikTok, but I'm still there because it's still important to share knowledge in spaces we're not supposed to be in.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ISAAC: It's alltimeIsaac1, because my old account, they won't give it back to me. And—
JULIA: Fair.
ISAAC: —because I'm also Isaac all the time, and I'm number one. So all of those things are important. I do a lot of writing on Substack. My Substack is called The Life and Times of a Burnt Out PhD student because that is me, but I'm doing a lot better and trying to move past that. I also have a website that is titled AllTimeCurriculum.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: And so I have a couple or three syllabi on this. The one I just recently posted is an ode to Bell Hooks. It's all about love as an action, not necessarily as like theoretical thinking about love and its place in society and stuff like that. Like, what is the actionable steps to love each other as human beings and love a world and get into these things? Because we don't have those kinds of conversations enough, in my opinion. And there's other—
JULIA: Hmm.
ISAAC: —stuff, but I'll come back and then tell everybody else what the other things are because—
JULIA: Excellent.
ISAAC: —I'm trying to do way too much all the time while trying to get a PhD. So, you know, it's fun.
JULIA: Dang.
AMANDA: I am so happy to be spectating and along on the journey. I am so excited to take the Bell Hooks curriculum. I cannot wait. So next time you are finding yourself on the edges of society, looking side to side at your most creative, gorgeous, hot—
ISAAC: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —fellows on the margins, remember—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: —stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
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