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2. It's All Connected with Jason Lahman · Spooky Butt

• speaker-0: Mm. Mm-hmm. speaker-1: hello and welcome to Spooky Butt. I am here in Spooky Foot Studio joined by Jason Lehman. Jason Lehman is an American cultural historian and visual artist. He studied design and illustration at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and the Parsons School of Design in New York. He received his master's in the history of science and technology from San Francisco State University, where he also taught history courses in the humanities department. He has received grants from the University of California and worked on projects at the Science Museum and the Welcome Collection in London. He has taught a number of courses on cultural history for morbid anatomy and has a special interest in the history of what we now call the paranormal and how categories of phenomena change over time. He has a lifelong fascination with the experience of synchronicity. Welcome to Spooky Butt, Jason. speaker-0: Thank you, Claire. It's a real delight to be with you today. speaker-1: I'm so excited. speaker-0: Me too. speaker-1: So okay, this is kind this is a little bit embarrassing. So I started taking classes through Morbid Anatomy. The first class I ever took was with you, and it was the Femme Fatale part one class. So prior to that class, I had no idea what cultural history was. But what I didn't realize is that's what I'm passionate about. Cause when people hear that I'm passionate about history, they think like, you're passionate about like battle dates and like documents. And I'm like, no, I'm passionate about like what was going through people's heads at that time and why like how did we get from point A to point B? So I guess in your own words, how would you describe cultural history? speaker-0: Well, I'm with you on that because as a person who's always been really fascinated by the past, it isn't just the you know, the dates of things that are interesting to me. It's as you say, it's like what did things sound like? What did things smell like? Why did people believe certain things in certain periods of times and certain periods of time I should say, and then why does that change over time? So I often cite the great anthropologist Clifford Geertz, and I'm not gonna get this quote exactly right. He was one of the first people to really encourage anthropologists and historians to work together. And he I believe he defined culture as being sort of like a web of meaning that human beings themselves make and in which they are also caught. So kind of creating a wonderful sort of metaphor and thinking about the nets or the webs of culture, right? So it's it's a lovely quote. I'm not giving it back to you exactly the way that he said it, but I would I would say that cultural history is the study of sort of the the meanings that connect people in a particular time and place and which very often are invisible to them. They're the things that they take for granted and that inform their lives. And so I'm very interested in where those things come from and also how they change over time. And because history is really just the study of things in a certain period of time, you can really do a cultural history of anything, really. speaker-1: And yeah, that's that's a great point. So what was it that made you decide to become a cultural historian? speaker-0: Well, I started out actually, I I had always been very interested in history, but I f started out as a visual artist. But I was actually at the design school in Detroit, Michigan, in at the Center for Creative Studies in the late nineties, and I took three elective courses to fulfill a humanities requirement. And they were with two wonderful professors, Diane Voss and Harry Smallenberg. who she had a background in the history of science from Harvard, really, really interesting person. And Harry, I think, had a background in music and also literature. But the courses they taught were history and culture of science courses. And so what Diane Voss brought to the table was a really, really sort of a a a very deep wide reading in things like the history of optics and the history of physics. She was also very interested in material culture studies. And then Harry would like bring to the table, you know, the music of the time or different things that sort of sort of coincided with those moments in scientific history that we were studying. It was really fascinating, and that's what really got me going. And that's also why I kind of developed a penchant for. the history of science and the history of technology. So that's really where it started. so I kind of went down the design illustration route for many years. And then years later, in my thirties, I went back to graduate school and said, I really want to do this. And that's when I got my masters at San Francisco State. And I'm fifty one now. So that was a few years ago. but it was just it was it's was sort of a natural progression. But by the time that I ended up doing the master's in history, cultural history, I also had, you know, I had had many years of, you know, doing commercial art and illustration and also just, you know, I love art history as well as the history of science. So I guess I would say my love of cultural history, and I think this is how I teach when I teach at Morbid Anatomy, is like, what are the different exciting, interesting, juicing juicy things we can bring for music? art, science, whatever, to make the subject come to life. So that's that's where it comes from for me. speaker-1: That's fabulous because it's yeah, it's like thinking of things in like three dimensional terms and really immersing yourself in a topic, which is so cool. I do want to mention, so we're both fans of Robert Eggers. We both, you enjoyed Nosferatu. And he has Werewolf coming out I think Christmas of this year. And I just learned that I think all of the dialogue will be in Middle English or Low German, I forget. speaker-0: Yes. Middle English, but supposedly they've they've also worked to alter the sound so that modern audiences will be able to understand it. So I think I don't think there's gonna be subtitles. speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: I don't know that for sure. But I just watched the trailer and it looks quite interesting and terrifying. speaker-1: Right. Yeah, I'm I'm very excited to have a werewolf Christmas. I don't know. but yeah, that just got me thinking of that. So one thing that I love about your aesthetic is that you're the intersection of technology and art. Because I know like in today's world with like the AI slop and then like the digital world, it's just like those are two things that you wouldn't necessarily put together. So, like, are you more drawn when it comes to technology to like analog technology and how to view that through like an artistic lens? speaker-0: Yeah, well and also, you know, being a Gen Xer, I'm sort of the last analog generation. So, you know, when I was in high school I was learning to program basic and you know, I through my family, you know, I I was very close to my grandparents, you know, who were born after well during the first world war and I even knew my great grandmother who was born in the eighteen eighties. So I feel like in many ways I am much more connected to the analog world than I am to the digital world. Obviously, I live in the digital world, but they're very different. so yes, I I think that's also I have such a, as you know, a huge passion for the nineteenth century. So I'm very interested in sort of the the ancestor objects of the objects that we live with, right? So what came before it, those sort of the archaeology of technology. And of course most of that's analog. So yeah, I would say that that's that love of that and fascination with that probably arises out of my strong feelings for being connected to the nineteenth and the early twenty cents. speaker-1: that's so great. Cause I, yeah, I've never really thought of it that way of like ancestor objects. Like before the calculator, there was the abacus, and I mean that's a corny example. But it's funny that you mentioned that. well, thank you. But it's funny that you mention the turn of the century, because that's my next question on my sheet over here. so It's funny because I one thing so I thought that morbid anatomy was maybe just like witchcraft and things like that and like going into some of the more like otherworldly kind of topics. But what I've noticed is that with morbid anatomy, there's a lot of this just like kind of immersion in like beautiful aesthetics and decadence and things like that. It's not all like ghosts and, you know, the occult and whatnot. and so my favorite, I think, aesthetic of all, my favorite art movement is Art Nouveau. And I absolutely adore the turn of the century. I saw Moulin Rouge when I was like ten years old and it just like seared into my brain. And then my grandmother was a huge Francophile. So I like when I was very young, I learned about John Singer Sargent and whatnot. so that's that also just like ignites a fire in my soul. I should you know, to make it kind of dramatic. But I absolutely love that aesthetic as well. so like what do you particularly like about that time aesthetic wise? And like what's, I don't know, like can you tell me about like what how does like the decadence and the opulence and whatnot kind of affect you and affect your work? speaker-0: Sure, yeah. Well, I would my late husband always used to say people would say, you know, describe your aesthetic and he said, I'm Zen, and he's Baroque. But over the years, you know, he became more Baroque, even though he actually did own Baroque objects, but he was a great fan also of nineteenth century and eighteenth century Japan. So when we came together, we kind of I think influenced one another. But what I have come to find is great design is great design. And in the nineteenth century, particularly towards the end of it. You get a lot of different a lot of different things happening. And Art Nouveau is interesting because it's sort of the tail end, you know, of the decadent, you know, it's the tail end of the bellpox, it's the fantasiac. And in a sense, we're moving towards a kind of a refining of things that have been much heavier, sort of in the mid to the late Victorian. But all that is to say is I think why I'm attracted to it is one, there's a lot of, you know, it's also the moment of height European imperialism. So there's, you know, Orientalism and exoticism and japonisma. But there's also, and you know, I talk a lot about this in my classes, you know, it's the era also of early archaeology. And so these archaeologists are also bringing things back, right? I mean, you know, things are also being looted and stolen, and this is an old story. but there's such a plethora of objects in the 19th century from all over. And those objects are particularly for avant-garde. excuse me, avant-garde artists. they're they are objects of inspiration. And so for me the 19th century is just this incredibly fertile, weird time. And as you know, you just took my my class on the Gothic. There's the neo-medieval. So it's sort of like a little bit you know something for everyone is there, you know? And it's a very, very global time in so many different ways. So I just think there's so much to look at, so much to choose from. And you know, and you know this too, like when you're in museums and you actually get to see the objects, you know, from any period of time, but particularly like the 19th century, it's like the woods, the fabrics, the gilding. It's just, it's so rich. It is so rich. So anyway, that's a long-winded answer to your question, but I would say that's probably what's at the root of it. There's so much there. speaker-1: No, that's perfect. Cause yeah, it's it's interesting because you know, thinking about it, if someone were to say like Gilded Age, Bose Arts, that sort of thing, it's like, okay, you can kind of just fast track to that time and you understand what they're saying. But when you really think about it, my God, there's so much there. Like I it's so funny because it's like you just go deeper and deeper. And I think that's maybe why it's such an enduring time because you have, you know, like Vienna Secession and you have all of that, and you have these. Gilded Age mansions going up on, you know, the Upper East Side and things like that. just I don't know, it w it's interesting because a lot of people will say that like we are also in kind of a Gilded Age right now with like just the crony capitalism and like the tech companies making obscene amounts of money and like not treating employees well and that sort of thing. Cause there was during the Gilded Age, there was quite a bit of suffering. And it's just so interesting to juxtapose that with just like the beautiful art that came out of it. Like s like so many immigrants and poor people and whatnot were suffering endlessly, but you get just this incredible artwork that was pretty much reserved for like the one percent, you know. speaker-0: Well there was but there's also this whole thing too, which you know, there's also the rise of the middle classes in the nineteenth century, this new consumer class. And, you know, as I often say, in the nineteenth century, working class people are, you know, going to places like the World's Fairs and they're going into the arcades in Paris. So there is also a kind of an opening up. And that's not to say that there wasn't all this suffering and horrible inequality, you know, and all of these really awful. things that are coming about in relationship to, you know, runaway capitalism, fronty capitalism and but there is also kind of a an opening up of the world. and so people are also, particularly in the cities, are being exposed to all kinds of new experiences and sensations and visions, you know. so I think that that's also something that we also have to think about is that there is a kind of also a There's a very strange book called what is it, The History of Bourgeois Perception, which is addresses a lot of these different things. How these very strange new public spaces were made available to a much wider range of people in certain ways. So I think that's also something to keep in mind. And that I think also is very similar to the era that we're in. speaker-1: Hmm, okay. Yeah, 'cause like in today's era we have content creation kind of like what we're doing right here. And then we have like TikTok and Instagram like day in the life of like a blah blah blah doctor or whatever. So it's people seeing things that have never been showcased before. So that's that's really interesting. speaker-0: Yes, absolutely. I think that's another sort of interesting echo or similarity, absolutely. speaker-1: Right. And I so it's funny to talk about like the world's fairs and whatnot, because here in St. Louis there was a huge one in nineteen four. And what's kind this is kind of a funny aside, I live on the route of the worst marathon run in recorded history. And it was at the nineteen four Olympics, which was the first Olympic Games held in the United States, and no one took it seriously. speaker-0: Wow, I didn't know that. Wow. speaker-1: Yeah, it's it they were like 'cause I think the nineteen hundred Olympics, which was the first like modern Olympics, was in Paris. Second one was here in St. Louis, and it was it it's not the like advertising juggernaut it is today. So nobody paid attention. So you had people like the marathonners running through like crowded streets, like weaving between like bistro tables, getting chased off course by dogs. Like the story is outrageous. It was just an outrageous time. speaker-0: Well, they were in the process of inventing it, weren't they? speaker-1: They were, yeah, they were making it up as they went along, which we're all kind of doing all the time. But yeah, with when I think of like the World's Fair and things like that, I it's kind of funny 'cause it's always through kind of like a this was this was like a very insensitive time. There were a lot of things that were like, you know, the blah blah blah village, come see like the savages and things like that just done. Very racist, not very tasteful, but it's just kind of interesting 'cause We're we take this for granted nowadays, but at this time, this was, you know, the first time maybe someone in the United States had ever seen a person from the Philippines or whatever. so that's interesting because it was a time of like, it's like, yeah, there's this kind of terrible gawking aspect to it, but it's also like, hey, maybe this is helping people to become more tolerant, and maybe this is helping to educate them, or maybe I'm just like giving them credit. speaker-0: Yeah, I would say I yeah, no, I don't know if it well, I don't know. I you know, these things w what I can speak to is the whole process of the display aspect, which is much which is part of a much larger sort of transformation of looking and of display that, you know, and a lot of cultural historians have written about this. This is I studied a lot of the like A book that we're going to use in the Paris class later in the year that I'm teaching from Morbid Anatomy. It's Vanessa Schwartz's book, Spectacular Realities, which is about Paris in the 19th century. But there's another very intense book called Colon, I think it's called Colonizing Egypt. It's been so long ago. But it's actually fascinating because it's it it's it's a work of cultural history, but what it's giving voice to, and they're using the documents, of the envoys, I think from Egypt, if memory serves, who were talking about how the Europeans stare constantly. So it's sort of like, you know, the the g the reversing the gaze. But there is something very interesting happening in the 19th century in conjunction with imperialism. So one, yes, there is this obsession with educating, you know, people about the world, but also human beings are being, you know brought and put in these spaces very often that's you know they're also like being held prisoner and not being treated very well and they're being put on display. but it's a pa it's part and parcel of this larger cultural story of collecting and display that you know human beings have always done the this type of a thing. You know, it's like we like to look, right? But this this very specific thing that's happening in conjunction with you know imperialism in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century starts to take on a life of its own. And that's what a lot of these cultural historians who work on this stuff are arguing is that particularly in the West, and then it spreads to the rest of the world, this idea of like viewership, like as an individual like looking at other, becomes really central to kind of like modern consciousness. And I find that really interesting. but also there's a guy at Stanford whose name escapes me and I should sorry I didn't come prepare the list of names. I should have. what is his name? He wrote a really interesting book, I know people who studied with him, on how the modern humanitarian movement in the West, you know, grew out of a lot of this relief work and quote unquote missionary work that's going on in Africa. So again, one of things I'm interested in as a culture as a cultural historian is how this idea, like you were just saying, of like becoming more tolerant, seeing others as like ourselves rather than being different, the histories of these things can be wound together, you know, almost like you know, thinking of the snakes on the caduceus, right? They're part and parcel of the same process. So the colonialism and the racism and the paternalism. speaker-1: Yes, uh-huh. speaker-0: can also be deeply connected to the history of quote unquote relief or development or very often they're inter deeply interconnected, right? speaker-1: That's great that you say that because I think especially now and I think the culture here has kind of toned it down a bit, but we kind of came out of the great like culture war and like the crazy, you know, like canceling and people really mining their Ps and Q's, which on the one hand I think is appropriate, but also it got a little bit out of hand there. But that's interesting to say like, hey, like something that this is it's difficult to say, but like something that might be maybe not great could also have like a really positive impact down the line. When it comes to like being more culturally sensitive. speaker-0: They're interconnected and you know, there's something very American about like over the last ten years where, you know, there were a a lot of you know, the whole backlash to quote unquote wokeness or whatever. It's what I often felt was, because I grew up in an evangelical household, the the right and the left in the United States, even though I don't think we really have a left in the United States, not compared to, you know, what what the left looks like in other parts of the world. there is a kind of a Puritanism which is very American. You know, and I was saying the first, you know, Northern European settlers were these, you know, raving dissenters who were Puritans. And so there is a Puritanism that you find throughout I think all s when you look at the history of social movements in the United States, there's a Puritan flavor on the right as well as on the left. speaker-1: Ooh. Okay. speaker-0: Yeah, right? It's like your your and you know, there's this whole idea of shibboleth too. It's like the way that you which is a the whole interesting idea about the way that certain words are pronounced, it that this is it's something that comes out of the Old Testament. But it's I I pull that up as a kind of a metaphor because when people are judging one another with any any type of a movement, there are like a certain set of very often purity tests. Or are you The doctrinal line. And that becomes sometimes more important than the actual outcome of the type of work that you're trying to do in a reformative manure. You know, even trying to change people's minds, there's a self righteousness, which nobody likes. So speaker-1: No, that's so interesting because it's well, we're talking kind of like horseshoe theory here. how yeah, polar opposites tend to have more in common than they do not in common. Yeah. but it's just so funny because like we don't realize like growing up in America and like I'm from a very Catholic city and I grew up very Catholic, but like there's so much that's just so puritanical and it's it's just weird because I don't I'm not even conscious of it ninety nine percent of the time. That's wild. speaker-0: Yeah, well it's at the very root of the founding of the republic, so speaker-1: Man, that's and it's it's funny because you don't re like of course you're not taught this in school, like when you learn about the pilgrims who came for, you know, the first Thanksgiving and all of that. And it's like these people were nutbags. And they like if you were caught dancing on a Sunday, you were killed. Like I'm amazed how many innocent lives these people just burned through. And it's people from their own culture and their own religion. It's just it's wild to me. That that happened. And that sustained itself. Yeah, well. speaker-0: Pretty, but it's also very human too. I mean, getting back to this whole idea of like why I first got interested in cultural history, it's like why do people act the way that they act? And it's because they have a belief about the meaning of a type of behavior or the meaning about the meaning of another person. This person represents something in their in their way of organizing reality, right? And I mean none of it's real. I mean things are happening, but the mean the meaning of things is so slippery and so informed, right? And liquid. And that's that's something that I would say the majority of human beings really have a hard time understanding. speaker-1: wow. Yeah. my god, it's it's all connected. We're all it's all connected. So I think okay. So you through taking numerous classes of yours through morbid anatomy, you are like an in like literally the Encyclopedia Britannica when it comes to films. So what like in order this is kind of going back to like the late nineteenth century and all of that good stuff, like what movies do you think capture that aesthetic? speaker-0: Record. speaker-1: the best like if you really want to like immerse yourself in that time and just be delighted by it. speaker-0: You mean the late nineteenth century? Is that what we're talking about? speaker-1: Yes. speaker-0: gosh, well I there are several different I mean I so I grew up, you know, this is before well I guess cable television did exist. We did not have it. So our local PBS station was how I got acclimated to a lot like I don't read novels, which is interesting. People are like, You don't read novels. I sometimes, but I usually use novels only as sort of reference point for my historical work. And they're great for that. But I grew up, I mean, I know all of like the the Dickens novels and you know a lot of Oscar Wilde's stuff like Lady Windermere's Fan, The Plays and things like that. Daniel Duranda, The Way We'd Live Now, I can't even remember the author of these. But I the the you know, Edith Wharton and and Henry James, these these great authors of the nineteenth century, or even Balzac, I know them through. The BBC adaptations. So as a child, I watched all of these with my mother and grandmother, all these BBC adaptations of the great 19th century novels. And a few of the 18th century too, like Clarissa, which is, you know, Richardson, which is quite horrifying, also thrilling. so I, you know, I I think that there have been some wonderful American you know, I think the Scorsese's Age of Innocence is a very fine film. I'm trying to think of some other things that get into you're talking about like the sort of like the material culture of things. And I'm sorry, things are just not coming to mind right now. But one of the things that I that I do love, which I think really is a gr captures well, two things that come out of Balzac. One is the BBC adaptation of Cousin Bet with Margaret Tyzak, which you can find, which I I've watched that numerous times. I think it's about four hours. It's fantastic. And then Lost Illusions, which was recently done. we watched it, I think, about three years ago, which is a French film. And I think those two, because Balzac, of course, captures so much about what we're talking about, the metamorphosis and the transformation. of modern France, you know, post-revolution, and all of the scraping and the climbing, and then all of the way that people are trying to navigate the new social classes, particularly as they get money or they want to get money or they wanna or they want to somehow weave themselves into the landed classes and things like that. He wrote so beautifully about that. But those are two film adaptations that I think are quite good. Cousin Bet with Margaret Tizak and then the new version of Lost Illusion. speaker-1: okay. I have not heard of either of those, so I will definitely check those out. That's great. so I think I want to get into kind of your experience with morbid anatomy. So when did you first kind of get involved with the morbid anatomy community? speaker-0: What's funny, Joanna and I were talking about this the other day, and I was trying to remember. So it was I think around twenty twenty one, she and I, just post COVID, we were first having conversations about this. And then I think I taught my first class for them, which was the cultural history of robots, which is the a big class that I that I teach on the history of automata, so you know, type analog technology. going back to the ancient world all the way up to the invention of the word robot. That class had been a big hit when I taught it in the Bay Area. And I'd always wanted to do a new version of it. And so that was the first class I taught for them in 2022. And then after that I did did a history of fairies, which was a big hit. And yeah, I qu I don't quite know where we are, but I love Morbid Anatomy. I love what they do. There's so many amazing people, as you know, who teach classes there, give workshops. Such an interesting variety of people. And then you always meet the most amazing people taking the classes. I take classes there, you take classes there. It's so that it started, I think, about four years ago. And it's been a great it's been a great gift to me because you know I'm not affiliated with an academic institution, but I love to teach. And they really, you know, they've so far been thrilled with everything I've pitched and I've yeah, so I'm very, very grateful to them. speaker-1: It's yeah, it's it's kind of like I don't if I could describe it to people who are unfamiliar, I'd kinda wanna call it like a hogwarts for like goth adults. Yeah. But like not run by like a bigot, you know, run by someone who's a good person. But I don't I think just like I've always aspired I think my my biggest aspiration in life is to be a college student again, to have like no responsibility and to just learn. And so through morbid anatomy, I can kind of scratch that itch. And I've taken I think I've taken ten classes and I've only been taking classes since twenty twenty-four. so I just I rock through these and it's just such a great experience. speaker-0: Well, it's always a delight to have you, Claire. It's always wonderful to see you visit and 'cause you can feel the enthusiasm. And you know, one thing I wanted to say too is why academia was very difficult for I didn't f that's why I didn't finish my PhD. And I was turning forty and I like, I'm not doing this. because what I loved was the research and the teaching, you know, and I and I enjoy writing too, but my real passion is the teaching and the sharing. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: And that's not that is not what is central if you want to go on an academic path. Now I have had many fine teachers who were academics, but it's all about the publication and doing original research. And my my feeling was there's so much original research that's already been done. What I feel my role is, and I think I'm actually pretty damn good at it, is synthesizing. So it's like that's the part that I want to do. It's like I will go. You know, I can do primary source research and you know I do that, but it's like there are so many fine scholars that have written so many great books and people don't even know about them. So I feel like I can be an interpreter and a a translator of those original interesting secondary sources and bring those to, you know, a a wider audience. And, you know, everybody who takes classes at Morbid Anatomy themselves are academics and artists and creatives, you know, really smart, interesting people. So they're they're ready for it, you know. So I feel like it's a great fit for people like us. speaker-1: Yeah, that's that's wonderful because that's that's something to think about with academia is that it's just that focus on like original ideas and things like that, which of course is great, but also there's so much speaker-0: Wonderful, but it's not it. That's not that's not the only thing. And I think that's always what drove me nuts. speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause there's so much that already exists and it's like we need someone to pull that into the current time and like like you said, synthesize it and like translate it and whatnot. 'Cause speaker-0: And make use of it for our lives. 'Cause it is valuable. Mm-hmm. I think even sometimes the most esoteric stuff is valuable. speaker-1: Right. So you do have you have three classes coming up through the end of the year. so the first one we can kind of talk a bit about each of these. so the first one, I've got the name pulled up, it's Shining Cities, Falling Stars, A Cultural History of American Apocalypse, and that starts on Sunday, July twelfth. speaker-0: Woo, I know, comin' coming up. speaker-1: America's it's absolutely perfect because it's America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday and it's it's one of those things I just you think that the apocalypse and like the rapture and that sort of thing is just kind of an isolated this only happened like this came about in this one time and then just reading the class description on Morbid Anatomy's website, it's like wait, this has always been around. This is like woven into the fabric of America. speaker-0: It the idea of the apocalypse has been with us from the beginning of the colonial projects. And you know, as I said, I grew up as an evangelical, so you know, I was terrorized as a child with the idea of the rapture, which is fairly new. That's John Nelson Darby in the nineteenth century. But this idea of America, the United States of America, and you find it even in you know, in in the in the Iberian colonialism too, this idea that quote unquote new world is somehow tied into the prophecies of the end of time connected to apocalyptic Christianity does go way back. So I'm thrilled to be teaching this because not only am I educating myself about elements of it that I didn't know about, which is another reason that I teach these classes so I can learn, forces me to do the research. it's because it's as you say, we don't think about this. And it's why is America always, you know, like militarily behaving in certain ways. And it's like, well, this is very deeply rooted in in the belief systems of the people who came here and set up these, you know, colonial governments which then became nation states. speaker-1: Wow. It's yeah, it's gonna be an absolute banger of a class if I do say so myself. So I it's gonna be crazy. and then so the next class you're teaching, which begins September sixth, one that I'm looking forward to probably the most, is the Dream Worlds of Paris. Splendor, spectacle, and sensation from revolution to Bellapoch. so I know you had mentioned that you taught a class on the Bellapoc at San Francisco State and I've speaker-0: I'm excited. speaker-1: been bugging you. speaker-0: And Claire, I wanna thank you for bugging me because we are doing this at Morbid Anatomy, you know, thanks to you. Really? You brought it up and you said, you know, and I was like, Well, it's been years since I've taught it, but it was always it was always a hit when I taught it. And I love it so much. And it was, you know, the class at San Francisco State was the full history of Paris. We call we called it for Romans and Romantics. And that's too much. And back to our discussion about the Bell Epoch in the nineteenth century, I like, that's where the juice is. So for me. Yeah. So thank you, Claire, for bringing up and nudging me and it's happening. So speaker-1: my god, I'm so excited. And that's that'll be perfect too, because it's like it coincides with the fall here in the northern hemisphere. so it'll just be that kind of like easing your way into like longer nights and that sort of thing and like cosier atmosphere. So I'm I cannot wait for that. I'm so excited. speaker-0: Your T or your absence. speaker-1: My accent, yes. My laudanum. Yes. and then the third class that you have to round out this very busy year begins November 1st. So this is the quest for the grail. A thousand years of vessels and visions. so I I think this just got posted pretty recently to Morbid Anatomy site. So you can go ahead and sign up for all three of these courses. But yeah, the quest for the grail, that's gonna also be speaker-0: No, right. Yes. speaker-1: Fantastic 'cause there's it's it's just kind of interesting. I was reading the description of the class and it sounds like there were some ancient maybe Celtic rituals and history and that's kind of like maybe that's where Christianity kind of pulled this from. speaker-0: Right. So the idea Yes, the idea of the magic cauldron. There's all these I just have to say I'm an art King Arthur nut too. So again I something I often ran into when I was doing graduate work was like, Jason, you can't it's like focus and it's just too much to focus on. So thank God for Morbid Anatomy, right? It's like five weeks here, six weeks here, and we get to do all this. But I've always loved King Arthur, X caliber had a huge impact on me as a kid. speaker-1: Okay. Yeah. speaker-0: Other cheesy movies like Arthur and the Sword, which I've just recently actually got an original movie poster for, which I'm the little nerd in me is so thrilled about that. But I always, again, the reason I'm teaching the Grail class is I've always known a little bit about a lot of aspects, but not enough to real to feel confident. So about what where does this come from? What is this, right? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So yeah, so getting anyway, getting back to what you were just saying about the Celtic, yeah, looking at the pre Christian ideas, the syncretic ideas, and then also how there's all these different texts that borrow from one another throughout the Middle Ages. You know, and then you get these crazy books like what is it, Holy Blood, Holy Grail or what you these these crackpot conspiracy theories which are still form the internet, right? speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: There's all these podcasts and YouTube channels which are recycling a lot of this stuff that was made up in the you know twentieth century or so I find as a cultural historian, I find that all very juicy and interesting too. So yeah, I pitched that and they were like, yeah, great. So we're doing we're doing a whole grail class. speaker-1: my god, that's because yeah, I I know about like obviously the holy grail from like Monty Python. And like Catholicism, we don't talk about King like going to Catholic school, we don't we don't talk about King Arthur or anything like that. But no, that'll be great. And then I just kind of made me realize when you talk about like the the crazy stuff that's on the internet, it's also like another reason why cultural history is so important is because it kind of gives you an even deeper speaker-0: Of course, yeah. speaker-1: understanding of media literacy and being like, Hey, I've seen this before. This is this is not real. This person's a charlatan or whatever, you know, snake oil. speaker-0: Well, Claire, thanks for saying that because I so this is this honestly, to tell you the truth, I actually really do feel that this is sort of my life's work. And I feel like I'm just getting started. And it's to help people understand that, you know, all this weird stuff that's floating around in conspiracy, it's like there are grains of truth and aspects and elements of all these things that are real, but they're real in the sense that very often they're very old stories that have been told for a very long time. And people want to be like, you know, the whole the Holy Grail is an object and it does exist somewhere. And like the Ark of the Covenant is like, you know, in this secret church in Ethiopia, and there's only, you know, there's this one monk who guards over it. And it's just like, okay, it's like maybe. And if you want to spend your life obsessing over whether or not that object is sitting somewhere in a cave, okay. But to me, I feel like that's what the primary focus is. It's very black and white. I think it's kind of boring 'cause it's so literal. speaker-1: Yeah. Ooh yeah. speaker-0: So as a cultural historian, the more interesting thing for me is why do you care? What is it what is it in your upbringing or your psychology or in the stories that you grew up with that makes this a valuable thing for you to want to be thinking about and for you to invest your time in? So you as a cultural artifact, as a human being, right? Getting back to the Cliffords idea, right, of being you're trapped in the webs your own making, it's like to me that's the more interesting question. So I feel like what so many of these sensationalist podcasters miss is you know i is is the real juice. Is there's there's much juicier, more interesting things going on here. And you know, I'm like the next person. I I do want to know, you know, if something really is sitting in that cave glowing or whatever. But sometimes I don't think those things are really answerable. And to your point, because we have not only a lack of media literacy, I just had a long conversation. with a really interesting woman, you know, who's a high school teacher in Indiana and I, you know, talking about just the levels of not only actual illiteracy kids can't read, but also cultural illiteracy. They just don't it's very sad. They haven't been exposed to even the most basic things around culture. Even around film, you know, not to mention books. So that's the to me as a cultural historian and as a teacher that also makes me very sad. Because I think all this weird stuff is relevant and juicy and interesting, but I don't think people usually are given the tools to understand how to make it really relevant. Does that make sense? speaker-1: Yeah, it it does. And it's kind of it's weird kind of talking about those students who don't have really any frame of reference. And that's something that it's like I guess it's a blind spot because you think we are in the information age, like capital I information age. You'd think that this would not be an issue anymore, because everything is at your fingertips, you know? speaker-0: I agree with you, but I think that's the problem. Everything is at our fingertips and nobody knows how to winnow it. In fact, it's funny you bring this up. I just saw a clip of Carl Sagan from one of the many shows that he did is in a library and he said, if I were to read like a book every week for the rest of my life or five books, he he gives a number and he walks across the shelves and he goes, It's this and then the camera pans back and shows you the whole vast library he's inside. Nobody can read all this. You know, and and nobody and you have to be taught you have to be taught how to read. There are ways that you can read you know real technical things like speed reading, you know, or I mean you learn how to do a lot of this stuff in graduate school. but nobody's being taught how to parse. I often talk about parsing a source. You know, people will just rattle these things off about King Arthur, the Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, Second Coming, all and like, well, what where are you getting this from? Or when people say things like, the Bible. I'm like, whose Bible? Right? It's like, when are we and where are we? Like when you're talking about something, t the you use the wonderful term f you know, frame of reference, right? Nobody has a frame of reference. speaker-1: That's good. speaker-0: And I don't even think if they they don't even think a lot of them even understand that there is such a thing as a frame of reference, you know. speaker-1: Dune is man, Dune's gonna come true. what's the like what speaker-0: In what way? It's like Ohleharian jihad, right? Is that what you're talking about with speaker-1: The machine like man built machines to like think from that. speaker-0: Create a machine in the form of the human mind. Yeah. The butler speaker-1: Orange Catholic Bible, like speaker-0: Right. Is that are we gonna become Benegesserites, Claire? speaker-1: think about this anytime I'm like rewatching the Dune the Dune movies or whatever, I'm like, I man, I'd be a Benegesseret. They're not good people. Maybe not bad people, but like God, that'd be so cool. speaker-0: They're pretty frickin' cool though. speaker-1: They are. There's they're probably I think that's the coolest thing to come out of the Dune universe is just the Benegesseret and all of that. speaker-0: So I also love the guild commanders though, you know how they're in their tanks. speaker-1: that's right. Yes. Cause they're the ones sorry, this is off on a tangent. They're the ones who actually need the spice, right? speaker-0: A fold space. speaker-1: That's right, okay. Ooh, my goodness. Yeah. Dune That's it on the one hand I'm like, I hope it doesn't come true. On the other hand, I'm like, what if we that would be kinda cool. But we'll I don't know, we'll see. So on that note, I think we're ready to get into the kind of spooky-ookie portion of today's show. so this is kind of funny. So we've talked a bit about synchronicity and your lifelong fascination with it. And what's kind of wild is you're the first person I've ever met who experiences synchronicity in a similar way to me. I experience it. It's gotten better. I've I've gotten older, I think, because I can kind of tune it out, but I would experience it so strongly that I had to stop kind of telling people about it because it made people like really freaked out. so it's it's nothing bad, but it's more like someone will be bring something up and I'll be like, hey, I was just thinking about that or whatever, you know. So I just kind of keep my mouth shut. It's it doesn't detract from my life, but it's kind of more of like, this is this is kind of funny and I can kind of derive meaning from that. But yeah, let's get into Like your experience with synchronicity and your theories and all that good stuff. speaker-0: Sure. Well, it's like you, it has marked my life in such a profound and amazing way. And I have some very if you'd like, I actually brought some very specific stories to share with you, which are so magical and remarkable. But I'll just say this. It first started happening to me when I was twenty years old. I'd left home for the first time and I went, you know, I'm a a a I come from a ranching family in Northern California. In many ways, a really incredible upbringing. And access to lots of books. I don't come from a family of people who usually go to college or university, so I was one of the first people in my family to do that. At any rate, I went away to this art school in Detroit, and just an amaz amazing immediate connections started happening in the library. People that I had been reading about, some of my professors had known them, just weird coincidences. And this went on when I ended up going to Parsons in New York. There was a whole I think a s this happens to a certain degree anytime you're with your people, whether you're an academic or an artist or you're in show business, right? There's there's intersecting circles within different, particularly among bohemians and creatives, right? But it just got to the point where it was just eerie and I really felt like I was being guided. So it was a very special woman. I never took any classes with her. She'd been a nun, and then she had left the order and become an art historian. Her name was, she's no longer with us. Her name is Dr. Dorothy Costa. She's sort of a legend at the Center for Creative Studies. And one day I sat down, we were getting to know each other, and I said, Dr. Dorothy, these this weird thing is happening. And I was explaining the synchronicities. And I didn't know the word then. And she said, Jason, that's synchronicity. And she said, You're on your path. She said, That's what this means. And then later on, I got so excited about this. In that when I was talking about those classes I took with Voss and Smallenberg, I wrote a whole paper, a short paper, on synchronicity through the writings of Jung, because of course he's the you know sort of the great modern writer about this. Just and I think I brought this up in the in the Gothic Cosmos class which you were in, the older word serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole and it you know comes out of this fairy tale, the three princes of serendip. Which is an old name for the island of what is it now? Sri Lanka. And so there's this fairy tale about these coincidences that keep happening over and over. And as you well know, when you have these types of coincidences in your life and they happen pretty regularly, you do feel kind of like you're a character in a fairy tale, because it's very magical. So she was the person who really turned me onto that, and she connected it to the fact that I was on my path. And that's that's being affirmed like that in it, I then came to understand for me, you know, I do believe in the supernatural and the paranormal and all these things, as you well know, but for me that's how it manifests. It manifests as the meaningful coincidence which is the odds of something like that happening are just so ridiculously high when it happens. that I don't and I don't know how it happens. But it makes me feel like, you know, the universe is looking out for me. So that's that's how that started. Now I can tell you a couple of s of s very specific stories about that if you're interested, but I also if you have any questions or I don't know if that works that way for you, if you feel affirmed in your path. speaker-1: I think I've started to kind of pay attention because I remember thinking like, okay, pay attention to serendipity and that sort of thing. there's a lot of just like weird synchronicity that it just feels like it's kind of a party trick. it's just like silly things like I'll have a song stuck in my head. And then I meet up with a friend, and that friend is like singing that song. It's like weird connections. So I think for me it's both path affirming, and then I also think that we're all connected. And then some of us have like different tunings. So some people maybe can see entities, some people can hear things, whereas I can I may be sensitive to like the threads that connect all of us. And it's kind of stronger depending on like is this person like a very close friend or is this person, you know, a coworker, like that sort of thing. speaker-0: Absolutely. And I would say also knowing you a little bit better now, I think your interest in cultural history and th the way that it fascinates you, cultural history is also very much a way of I think creating a kind of a synchronicity, right? So it's seeing patterns, it's seeing the invisible connections and influences of things. And I don't think in that sense, I don't think synchronicity is supernatural. It's n it's natural. I think it's just And I think to your point also, I love that you were using the idea of being t you know, t tuned. I've been t thinking a lot about this idea of frequency, right? If you're turned to a right, so your people, the people you resonate with speaker-1: Hey. speaker-0: The music, the projects, the whatever, the foods, the the things that make your soul sing, whatever metaphor you want to use, you feel it. it's because those things do resonate at the same frequency, you know? And I don't know if that's even a metaphor. I think maybe w those things are in some way vibrating at the same wave. I don't know what we would call it, right? speaker-1: I'd never even thought of that because that's be like, hey, me and this person are in the same wavelength. And it's like everything is yeah, energy, everything emits. speaker-0: Well that's how cool he worked. I mean, I my my as you know, my my husband passed away last year, sadly. He was quite a bit older than me. And we were together for nineteen years, and he was also my best friend and and you know, an artist and we traveled together and it was a really you know, I I I miss him not only because he was such a wonderful, wonderful man and so much fun, but because we were so synced up. And so, I just if I could tell you the story of how we met So this is and everybody kind of gets a kick out of this, and most of my friends all know the story. So this is before the apps. But we actually met on an earlier a gay website called Manhunt, and I don't even know if it still exists. But the big joke was, you know, and I was getting out of a long-term relationship. So I was just looking to have fun, you know. And and he had never been with or dated anybody younger, but it was interesting because I was this is talking about esoteric. I was reading a biography on the Duke of Orsini and learning about the garden of Bomarzo. It's also known as the Park of Monsters in Orvieto, Italy. I'm obsessed with it. Salvador Dali and the Surrealists kind of rediscovered it, but it's a Renaissance garden of these giant creatures and very strange things carved out of tufa stone. And it's all overgrown, they've they've restored a lot of it. And so my hand all on Manhunt was Bea Marzo. And he had I forget what his was, but it on but he had an epigram, the epigram only connect from Howard Zen was his opening line. And I'm like, wait a minute, this is like, you know, a hookup site. Why are like this guy's interesting? And so he wrote to me and he was like Bo Marzo because and he said, That's my favorite garden. What do you know about Bo Marzo? And I said, Is that an epigram from Howard Zen, our favorite novel, one of my favorite movies? Yeah. speaker-1: my god. speaker-0: I love Forster. That was the beginning of our relationship. You know, and he was also very hot, but it was that was that was also that was also nice. But I said to him after we had gotten together and we basically never separated after that, I said, Would you have messaged me had my handle not been Bo Marzo? And he said, No, I don't think I would have. You were you know, I was twenty five years older than him. He goes, Yeah, I thought you were cute. He goes, but I wasn't interested in dating somebody that much younger. He goes, but that because I was like, why is this guy's name that? So fast forward ten years later, we went to the Garden of Bomarzo together, stood inside the head of Orco, did a magical ritual, and I really felt like Again, follow your fascinations. You show an interest in the universe. The universe shows an interest in you. But there were, you know, other weird I have to tell you one more story that's sort of my history. So in after I had a real second blooming when I turned 30, left a long-term relationship, which was totally over, and was ready to kind of just explore the world again. I was 30. And I had a fascination with Christopher Isherwood. And his partner who's still with us, Don Bacardi, the gay artist, very famous as a portrait artist. And I wrote Don a letter and said, I want to come down and pose for you, because he's famous for just d he draws famous people, but he also is very famous for drawing people who write to him, right? And and he's gay. So ver you know, also if you're a queer person and you get your portrait drawn by him, or even if you're not, it's kind of cool because it's like This is a man who drove who dr you know did portraits of Stravinsky and Marlena Dietrich and Angela Landsbury. You know, he they knew everybody. and you know, and he's done thousands and thousands of portraits. He got back to me and he's like, come down and pose for me. So I did, and I got to, you know, be in that house where he and Christopher Isherwood had lived together. I got to see Isherwood's, you know, office and and then I sat for him. For four hours. And then he ended up telling me these stories, and I asked him all these questions, and it was so amazing. Okay, so fast forward, I when I got together with Daniel, Daniel said, Well, you know, I I I hung out with them in the 70s, Jason. And speaker-1: Wow. speaker-0: And Daniel had actually house sat for somebody in their circle when he was in his twenties. Don had like Daniel was in his twenties. Don had like taken him grocery shopping and like kind of took him under his wing, and then he found out that Daniel loved, you know, Isherwood's novels and was like, Well, do you wanna come back to the house and meet him? So Daniel got to like go there and hang out with them and kind of got to know them over the years. But what was wild is After Daniel and I had been together for a while, we went back down together and Don did portraits of us together and then we hung out with him and had all these and it was just bizarre to be in that house to to think that you know, Daniel had been there around the time I was born when he was a young man. Years later I would go there before I met Daniel and then after that, you know, so and I think again, as I say, I think if you are an artist or you're you know Or you you're you're lucky enough to like, you know, bump into these people or somehow be a part of them. The thing the these st you you know what I'm saying? It's maybe this is not a great example of like, you know, the sudden synchronicity. But you know, I could go on and on and I'm not going to, but there are many other stories about the people that Daniel knew. Like his sister-in-law was actually very close friends with my art history professor almost twenty years before or fifteen years before I met Daniel. They tied at San Jose State together. speaker-1: Wow. speaker-0: Yeah, the weird connections like that. And so as I look back over my life, Claire, I do feel like if you pay attention, I think the universe guides you. And I just feel like if you show up and show an interest and follow your heart, stuff happens. I can attest to that. speaker-1: Right. And if you what I've noticed is that if you don't follow, if you do things that are out of alignment or whatever, the universe is going to burn it all down. It's gonna reroute you. speaker-0: You will I'm sure you've experienced this too. We all go through these periods of our life where we are in denial about what we want and what we should be doing, and our fear holds us back and our circumstances, right? speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: I I understand that so much of this is a crapshoot, where you're born, how you're born, you know, what level of privilege or access you have. You know, but I've also met the most extraordinary people in my life. You know, you know, I have, you know, suffered as we all have in many different ways. You know, I also come from a lot of privilege, which I fully understand. But I have met people who do not, who have astounded me in the way that their their intention and their belief in themselves has just doors have opened for them in the most extraordinary ways, you know. So it's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing, this business of synchronicity. speaker-1: It is. Yeah. And just reminding yourself to like surrender. Like don't be afraid. Like you can surrender to it and you can just kinda pay attention and let it let it in. You know, let the love in and all that kind of stuff. speaker-0: And and you know what I also say too, Claire, is like you have to find the people and they can even be dead too, right? It's like find the people that inspire you, the people who've come before you. know, I'm a historian and I also believe in the spirits of of the those who have passed on being around us and with us. I feel Daniel's energy around me every day. and there have been some interesting manifestations, which we can talk about another time. But you know. Again, I do feel that there are powers that watch over us. And maybe they're just frequencies. But whatever we want to call them, when we tune into them, they do show up. I do believe that. speaker-1: I yeah, I've felt that too. I've felt guided kind of in my life. It's like it's kinda interesting. It's like the concept of free will, you know, like how how free are we or are we all just kind of do we have predetermined paths? Like it's just it's kind of interesting and also like do we choose when and where we're born? Do we choose when and where we die? Like, I don't know, it's it's all these all these big questions that no one really has the answer to. speaker-0: We don't have the answer to it, and I always used to say too, is the myth useful? Is the story, is the explanation useful for what you're doing? and you know, I'm I'm talking about not talking about that in a scientific sense, you know, because there's certain things that scientifically work and scientifically don't. But when it gets to the more subtle realms of like the things that we're talking about, you know, this idea people, especially in the West, are very very much push back against this idea of reincarnation in the sense of like, us choosing our parents or, you know, I have very strong ideas about that, which I don't need to talk about here. But again, it doesn't to me it actually doesn't really matter. I mean, I don't know if you know about this, but there's been a lot of people I've been listening to lately who talk about how the beliefs that you hold in your life will actually impact the afterlife that you experience. And I thought, that's interesting, this concept of how beliefs program consciousness here and now to the point of you know, when you depart this body, those beliefs are gonna continue to impact what's left of your consciousness. Now I don't know if there's any way to prove that scientifically but I think that's a very interesting concept. speaker-1: That's wild. Cause it's you kind of think that like the beyond, the afterlife, et cetera, we all kind of go to the same place. okay. Yeah. I I hope. Yeah, I hope that's not true. speaker-0: That I don't believe. Well, I mean, but I could be wrong, but I think 'cause I do think it's all I think it's all one thing and it's all connected, but I don't know. I think you know, having just been with the person I love the most in the world as they passed away, and I have known a you know, I knew a I've been close to a lot of older people in my life and have been through death. Never this intimately where I'm with somebody as they're dying. but it's weird things happen. You can sense the energy shift, you can see how things change. You know, and then you talk to people like Death Doolers who do this professionally, and they can talk about the stages of the of the transformation. So yeah, I know there's so much we don't know. But I do want to say this, I think there's a lot that other people that we don't know know. So that's also been my challenge lately. And morbid anatomy has been a great help to this, a a great help in this for me. is realizing that are there are so many interesting, brilliant people trained in fields which I know nothing about. And if I wanna know more about that, there are experts I can seek out who can educate me about these mysterious things we're talking about. speaker-1: Right. Yeah. It's a community of people who are experts in things that I didn't know like kind of were a thing. And then it's like it they're just fascinating. It's just fascinating to listen to someone who's so passionate and so educated about a specific topic. so yeah, that's fantastic. so I have one kind of final question for you. It's not too much on the spooky side of things, but just out of curiosity, have you ever considered maybe writing a memoir? And as so I'm a millennial, and so I am very jealous of you being able to experience your youth in New York City before Giuliani. And then I know you have some interesting stories go. speaker-0: I could tell you stories. Yeah, because I got to see Times Square before it was Disnified. that was something. Iliani was starting to do his thing though. Yeah. yeah. And I yeah, had dinner at Trump Tower. Yeah, I got stories about the nineties in New York. My mother asked me that the other day. She said, Would you ever consider writing a memoir? I said, Well, we're not there yet, but maybe. speaker-1: huh. It's my god, that's great. And then your time in so I guess this was grad school in San Francisco with like the grand domes. my god, wild. Cause I was thinking about it like one place I would love to time travel to would be San Francisco. Right before the earthquake. So I guess that was like nineteen hundred. Such a cool nineteen six. Okay. speaker-0: My team is six. God, I should know this. Think it's yeah, it's a little nice. speaker-1: Yeah, nineteen hundred or nineteen six. That sounds corrupt. But Okay. Yeah, so before it'd be fun to like maybe spend a month there and then like get out 'cause you know what's going on. speaker-0: Yeah. My family have very deep roots in California. My f my you know, I come from this ranching family and our my people have been there since they weren't there during the gold rush, but they've been there since the eighteen fifties. Still a fragment of land in our family that my nephews are the eighth generation to live there. speaker-1: Wow, okay. my god. Wow. speaker-0: So yeah, so I have pictures of my great-grandmother and my great-great grandmother at the expo in San Francisco in nineteen fifty. speaker-1: That's so speaker-0: So that's after the quake, but you know, they were they were hanging out there. speaker-1: my god. What a that's wonderful. so let's see. So you're teaching we've got three classes on deck at Morbid Anatomy. where else can listeners find you and find your work? speaker-0: I have a rather meager YouTube channel that's got some you know lectures on it. Many of them are also you know free lectures that have been offered through Morbid Anatomy. and then, you know, I d I don't have a I have I don't have a big social media presence, but I do have two. If people are interested in the history of automata, or if they're also interested in the history of like spirits and gods and magical creatures, I have two curated Instagram accounts. One is called Zona. Phantasmatica and the other one is called Cybernetic Salon. So if they want to find me on IG, those are the two public places that they can find me. but other than that I don't have a really big presence other than the lecturing and the and those two those two things. I used to think that was an issue, but the older I get the more I think I sort of am as a Gen Xer and kind of like, that's enough. speaker-1: It's yeah, it's perfect. And I think, you know, ha the classes through morbid anatomy, like all that good stuff. It's yeah, it's the perfect amount, I think, of an online presence. so before we wrap up today, any parting words, final thoughts, like anything you kinda wanna let the listeners know before we depart. speaker-0: I do want to say something. I think, you know, practitioners of magic often talk about keeping a magical diary if you're doing magical work. And I think I think I think keeping a journal is really important. I don't do it regularly now, but I did in my twenties. And I must tell you, that's how I, you know, when I was was preparing for this, I was going back through my old journals. The synchronicities happened all the time. And some of them were very funny and silly, and as you say, you know, that someone's humming the song that you read about that morning. But I kept track of these things. And what I realized was I think I kept inviting myself to have that experience with the world because I was so focused on it. And some and sometimes they were quite quirky. So I would say, I think, well, two things. I think keeping a journal, recording these things, no matter how silly they are, I think it brings delight to your soul and it's an encouragement. And I also think it will encourage it to happen more. But there's two quotes I would also offer up too, which I love, which go all the way back to when I was first studying this in my 20s. Chance favors the prepared mind. And then if you show an interest in the universe, the universe will show an interest in you. speaker-1: Perfect. Yes. Chance fa I love that. Chance favors the prepared mind. So visualization, intention setting, all that good stuff. speaker-0: And and specificity sometimes too. I think when we want to manifest things the more specific we are, you know. So But I don't know, I'm just speaking from my own experience. Thanks, Claire. speaker-1: Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me on this silly spooky butt journey. yeah, this has been great. Good buttons. speaker-0: Prayer. Take care. Bye bye. speaker-1: Thank you for listening to this episode of SpookyBut. Music by Drew Mantia. Artwork by Lauren Seely. Listen to Spooky But on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Please be sure to like, rate, and subscribe. Follow Spookybutt on Instagram at Spookybutt Podcast. Need to make contact? Send us an email at spookybuttpodcast at gmail.com. We'll see you on the other side. Goodbye.