Campfire Stories with Richard Hatem: Ghost Hunting, Mothman, Weird Happenings

Weird ladies and gentlemen. This is an episode of Scary Story. As we tell, I am your host, Chris Stashi, and I'm joined by what are what are our friends over at Twisted and Uncorked call you we the crazy the crazy Uncle Richard HadAM crazy Uncle Hose. Yeah, the crazy uncle, which I feel like, is you know, like one degree off drunk uncle, drunkle d Yeah, you know, yeah, their nickname for me? Isn't that really hot or a normal guy or the older dude?

You know, I'd like to ask, you know, it's just oh, he's the crazy uncle. I mean, you are you do have crazy uncle energy. I know I do, but I don't like to like people are like for me though, for me, you have like crazy older brother energy. I was like, again, just crazy relative. But but it's like, mean, am I not everybody's crazy brother that they wish they had?

But they don't like. I don't know who I picture myself as, but I do get people are like, oh my god, you're like you're like a movie star or something. You're like Martin Short. And I will actually say that, yeah, people have got yeah, because I of course I am, because look at me. I mean nothing.

I necessarily look like him, but I'm making faces, doing voices, acting weird sc and I'm like, why is that just Martin Short? Well no, but I mean that's an example. It's not. They're not saying God, you you're like, you know, fucking hot John Cusack or and I'm not even going for like brockhad or something. I think you have.

I think you have jotten John. You're a little bit too. You and me are a little we're up Okay, you know what, let's break this down. I think you and I are up here in terms of energy, and a lot of the people that we work with aren't. And I think that that's an interesting area to be.

Because your wife said it best. She doesn't understand how podcasts between the two of us don't just go for four hours. Who says they don't, Yeah, they don't know. But what's funny is you mentioned like that, you know, like, I'm not going like you're too high energy to be John Qusack, that the high fidelity guy is way too high energy for you. You're too high energy for him.

Actually, well, you know, and I never can understand, you know, when I was in high school and nothing is changed by the way. I mean, I'm exactly the same person I was forty years ago. But but it was always like, why aren't the girls all gravitating toward me? Instead they're going to like the guys that don't say a word and just stare sullenly into the distance. And I'm like, those guys are boring?

What about me? I've got an opinion, I've got things to say. I'm here dancing like a lepricn you know, And I couldn't understand it then and I don't understand it now like a Leprica. I heard it was like two of the three stooges. That was me.

Yes, I heard all. I've heard all about it. Well, you know, well I told you because of but I heard about the cold call you did. Who did you hear that from? Well, you're talking about you're talking about Stephen Cannel, right, the Stephen Cannel story.

Yeah, I didn't tell you that that. I'm sure didn't, did Susan. Susan didn't. No, Richard, I read about it online. Shut up, I mean, is that the answer you want?

I don't know right about it? On Richard had him fans dot Com. Dude, we're sitting here on a rainy LA day. I don't know what rainy LA day. It's raining in Los Angeles.

Oh, it's been storming here. I wish I could, um, I wish there was a window that could show you the mountains. So I'm right by a mountain range. I live like right outside the Rose Bowl. Oh, like in a giant castle right now.

You live in Hollywood. Isn't that everyone lives in the giant castle on the hills. Yes, yeah, yeah, kind of. There are many castles on the hills. I don't live in one of them, but but I do.

But you know, if you've seen the Rose Bowl or the Rose Parade, you know there's a mountain range just to the north and and I mean like less than a mile. It's right there. But when storms come through it's La. We get rain. Sometimes you get snow, but usually that's way further inland.

There is snow on the mountains. So and you're like, yeah, if you were in down, if you were in a building in downtown LA, you would be looking not just at snow covered mountains, Like halfway down the mountains is covered in snow. It looks like someone just just dumped powdered sugar across an entire mountain range, which we never get, like once every ten twelve years you'll get snow and maybe just for an hour. This has been days now because we've had all week and really for the last few months, it's been cold, more consistently cold than it usually is, and rain which in the mountains becomes snow and it looks gorgeous. It's so beautiful and it's so rare.

I literally just drove around circling the freeways by my house for about a half an hour this morning, just cruising around looking to see how far to the east and the west I could see snow covered mountains. Because it ain't gonna last, so I'm trying to trying to get a real print on my brain. Two weeks ago, we had a foot of snow here and it cost the street that I live on almost three thousand dollars to clear it. Does that sound fun to you? Well, I'm not, do you, mister la Man with you're driving on your free ways?

Where's your carbon footprint? Richard Well? Carbon footprint? You're yeah, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

Yeah, I mean, look, I get it. I get Oh yeah, I know. I actually annoying. Look, I brought I like the snow because I work from home. But I understand why people don't because they can't work from home.

You work in the service industry. You can't cook food from your house. So yeah, I get it. I just have the luxury of working from home, and I'm not going to pretend like I don't. Hey, Richard, I have a question for you.

Please. Why haven't you written a book about your your philosophical beliefs on the paranormal, unexplained and unknown. Well, you know I've been asked to do that many times social media. Have you been asked before this this moment we're talking about. I don't know.

I feel like it kind of makes sense. Well, okay, I'm gonna give you two reasons. One reason is I'm not a professional in the field, and so often you know, right now, if you look at all the books that are written about the paranormal, one camp are are people who are professional sort of professional academics, parapsychologists, philosophers that jeff types. Well yeah, but and I'm but I'm Jeffrey Kryple. Uh, Stephen Brode.

You know, people who who are devoting their academic life to examining these topics, and I don't have that level of educational or academic pedigree to to sort of get me through that door. Also, my my thinking has not been honed to the razor's edge that they're thinking has, because through their education they've been exposed and have given hard thought to concepts that I have not approached yet. I read a book by Jeffrey Jeffrey Kreiple, and I barely understand what I'm reading, and he's writing for a popular audience, so it kind of shows you how far back in the field I am in terms of being able to intellectually parse these subjects and then and then discuss them back in any meaningful way. And I don't really have a lot of original ideas.

Then the second reason is I'm also not on the pop side of it. I'm not doing a reality show where I'm part of a ghost hunting team, and so I can take advantage of that. And then the third reason is I'm not an experiencer. And those are the other books, the ones that I enjoy reading, the ones that you know, I had a near death experience. Let me write a book about my abduction experience, And so those are popular books.

Well, I don't fall into any of those three camps. I fall into the camp of interested observer. And she wrote the Mothman Prophecies, Richard, which was based on somebody else's books. So what most people don't even realize that. Come on, Matt, like, okay, just remember that though, because remember what that you are the Mothman to so many people.

You think, why are you why are you selling yourself short to those people that are that are Richard Hadham fans because of the Mothman problems? Dude, I am not because look, I mean, anyone who knows me knows I will go far and wide to talk to you know, three people who are gathering in my name about anything, but certainly about Mothman. So you are in the pop side of things, you know, you know to a certain degree. But you know, I ain't. It's not claiming you slept with a ghost.

I get it. Yeah, I'm not Chris Carter. You know I'm not Jordan Peel. Also, that's the other thing is that I don't. I don't really you know, Mothman was not a horror movie.

It was a supernatural drama. I'm not even I would not count myself. Even among the top ranks of horror movie fans. I've seen some that I've liked, but I don't seek them out. It's not like my genre, like oh, just you know, handfuls of candy, you know, gimme, gimme any horror movie you've got, slasher porn, go or torture porn, give it to me.

I'm kind of like, okay, whatever. So I don't know. That's you know, I just see I see these all as positives. You're you're differentiating yourself in a positive way. I don't.

I always see the positive, you know what I mean. That's but that's me. I get it, though, I understand. I get what you're getting at. Like, well, you know, and you probably let me ask you a question.

Oh here we go, do you ever um, because you've gone to haunted locations? I know you have. You've talked about it well, and we facetimed from inside of one together. Remember that ye was so upsetting and it was after Scott and Forest went. So I was like, Okay, I happen to know people who had a really scary experience there, So why are you tempting fate?

Why not? Well, what I was going to say, is there was a point in my life where I fantasized about, well, what if I just do it? What if I just take a year and go to a bunch of haunted locations and try to, you know, see if I have an experience, and and then I'll write a book based on, you know, my year chasing the paranormal or whatever. But have you ever thought about doing that? Like, like I think a lot of guys have.

Have you ever had that thought? I don't know. It sounds like fun, sounds like what the you know what it sounds like I had I knew, I say that had some friends people were definitely not my fucking friends. I knew some people that went to all the baseball stadiums in the country on like a road trip. That's what that sounds like.

But you know, not lame like that is. I'm sorry all you hot dog eaten head a row bros out there. I have never thought about that. But again, like, you know what the thing and I don't know if you've seen this on Netflix, and look, it has to do with the Warrens, So you know, take everything with a grain of salt, many grains of salt. Regarding the our dear friends, the Warrens.

There's a show on Netflix called twenty eight Days Haunted. Have you seen this show? It's kind of it's kind of what you're talking about. So they the Warrens positive, I guess in the mountains of research and evidence that they compiled, they're fifties plus years of investigating or whatever the hell the show says. They talk about how apparently it's not about just going for a day or an evening, it's about being there for twenty eight days.

So they're doing an unquote unprecedented experiment. And I was, I didn't know if you heard about this, so tell me if this is unprecedented. They lock people in haunted locations for twenty eight days, like lock as in you're supposed to be in there as all the time. Okay, it's like again, it's not like they're like have guns at the eggs of like turnaround or won't shoot. But that's a different show.

That's that's sixty days in. But but you know, it's like, you know, hey, you need to essentially like live here. And it's not like they it's not like they're unwilling. These people want to do this. They're like paranormal investigators, mediums, psychics, you know, spiritualists, what have you.

But there's this this positing that and I haven't finished the show yet, but it's that, you know, if you stay there and you're you're you know, enveloping yourself in the environment, does that actually yield something tangible happening? Because it's less about I'm going to go for an evening and do a ghost adventures thing, and you know, Bagan's does it for two days, I think, but like, twenty eight days is not two days. I'm sorry, no fucking way, Like twenty eight days is a long time. That's a month of your life to take up root and go do something like this. And look, I don't know if it's all fucking fake.

These places are real places that are haunted without the show existing, but the stuff that they're capturing is kind of strange. Well, so a couple of things. One is it's that's really interesting, and right it is kind of unprecedented, right, Well, I think so in terms of reality program it's like Big Brother meets you know, ghost Hunters. Sure, but I'm more talking about like, I have not heard of putting people in a haunted location for an extended period of time like this. Well there, I would say.

The one example that comes to mind a Skinwalker ranch where yeah, people, you know, there were stories and a family inhabited the Skywalker Ranch actually Skinwalker, like dude, that was like first season in the show. We did an episode even I think what you and I no, we like Jess and I did, and we tried to we tried to reach out to, um, did you ever see the show? No, so the show on History Channel, they like have people that are there for a while, and I tried to get a hold. I reached out to all of them, and I was able to talk to one of them on LinkedIn and I just straight up ast him. I was like, hey, like straight up because he wouldn't talk to me, like he wouldn't go on the record.

I still have it on LinkedIn and I won't say who it was. But I spoke with him and I was like, hey, will you just tell me on the record, is any of this like a put on? And like and again he said it wasn't to put on. He said, weird things are happening out there, unexplained things, and again, there's no reason to lie to me. Well, yeah, I tend to believe that.

Um, you know, the people who sort of took over Skinwalker Ranch, the first group that was like, Okay, we're gonna move in, we're gonna occupy this place, we're gonna be there, we're gonna live there, and we're gonna set up cameras and we're gonna like really try to do that thing you always wish people would do, which is bring you know, the mighty hammer of science or at least photography surveillance. Yeah, pinormal, I mean, that's what it is, like, put a fucking camera everywhere. If if the question is can we find proof? The only kind of proof we're really ever gonna have a shot at getting is video or photo, So throw a fucking camera on every single goddamn thing, right right. Well that was that, and that was their logic, and their results were were you know, mixed, as of course they always are, because the cameras were fail you know, inexplicably and wouldn't always reliably pick up what the naked eye was experiencing.

So it's a great book to read, you know, Um, you know, god, what's it called The Hunt for the Skinwalker or something? But anyway, a documentary off of the book. Right, anyone listening, just google Skinwalker Ranch and you'll be immediately connected to all of the books and articles and documentaries and reality shows. So, because if it follows the logic that says, if a certain location is reliably haunted, like you know, many many people have had experiences where there's an aspect of like you can see things or physical things move around, a poltergeist for something, then it stands to reason that if you go to that place and spend a lot of time in that place, you will experience something. It's almost like going to la asking a friend, well, what restaurant should I go to if I want to see celebrities, and then you go, well, you might go to Dantana's or you know, Madeo or this place or that place, but I can't guarantee that the night you go anyone's going to be there.

But if you go to the night before or the night after, you might see amazing celebrities. What a fun analogy, Richard, What a fun analogy. Well, I'm dead serious, that's a really good I mean, that's a good analogy for all of this. But if you go to that restaurant three times a week or even better if you work there every night as a waiter. Yeah, you're going to see celebrities.

Your odds go way up. As they say, if you go hunting for bigfoot, you might find bigfoot the only peace. I mean again, like there are people that are out camping obviously and have bigfoot experiences. But I find it hard to not believe people who go looking for bigfoot and find evidence, like maybe they are just making shit up, but those like like we're saying here, if you're going and putting yourself in that environment to find something or experience thing, you're more than likely going to have a better shot than most people at actually it happening to You don't end up in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night by accident, unless you do. But most people don't.

But this is if you proceed under the philosophy that the things that are happening are are sort of almost leaning more toward well demonstrable physical manifestations. And here's what I'm getting at. I might walk into a haunted house and experience nothing, but the person next to me who's there at the same time that I'm there, who is quote unquote sensitive, a psychic, a medium, they may have a very different experience. They may see things that I don't see. They may feel things I don't feel.

Here sounds, voices that I don't hear. So there's also the experiencer. And I do believe that some people are you know, their frequency range is wider than mine, and so they can pick up on more things than I can. I've never felt like I was one of those people. I don't walk into places and oh I feel the energy in this room.

I don't. That's just not my thing. So that's the other thing is like I could go and spend five years in a house and not experience anything, but somebody else, whether they're a declared psychic or not, might go and by the second night they're experiencing something. So that's the other thing. It's it's not always going to be the same for every single person, right well, And that's what's interesting about this show is, like you said, it is obviously reality TV.

So there are these moments of conflict, and one of them is there's a meet. I believe this woman's a medium and she's with these two guys, So it's the dynamic already is kind of again, maybe it might be considered a little kind of starting off on an abrasive foot two kind of big personality men with a big personality woman. And it's again like they're setting it up for that. But they start asking her why she won't do mirrors crying, and she's like, you know, I won't do mirror scrying. That's the one thing I don't do.

She says, I'll do candle scrying, but I won't do mirror scrying because mirror scrying, I guess, is a step too far. Or what are these things like described for the for the listener? What these methods are mirror scrying? Best I can tell is you're you're sitting and you have a mirror and you kind of look into it. And while you're looking into it, it's like reading tea leaves.

You're like looking for something in the mirror, like I don't look like I think the whole thing with mirrors and the paranormal and the supernatural obviously again their mirrors are I can It's like, I don't know, it's a superstition thing, right, Maybe I don't know. I metaphorical The metaphorical power of a mirror is that of gazing, sort of gazing at or within one's own self. You're looking at a you know, a sort of an image once removed. Can something appear in a mirror that maybe can't appear directly to you? Right?

A thing has to manifest one degree off to to sort of get past the brain filter. You know. I'm sure there's theories. I don't know what they are, but yeah, you look into a mirror and you see something the future. Whatever you're asking that's you know, or again, but like you could see the paranormal or you know, ask for again.

It's like anything as a dowsing rods, you're asking for something and hoping that by doing something else you'll get a reaction from something. And she was making this whole big deal about I won't do mirror scrying. I won't do it. And it's like you're sitting here in this house for a month and you're drying the line here, like you're drying the line here. But it's so funny because it is still reality TV.

It still has that like lay that like that film of oil on it that reality television yields for the for the viewer who wants a little bit of a little bit of greasiness with their meal, a little fried side order of fucking pickles, or or French fries with your burger. I get it. I don't bemoan reality TV the way I used to. Well, I wonder if that person had a bad experience, Well they were like I do candle scrying, but I don't do there. I know it doesn't it do astin sounds crazy, but I guess it's like it's like I don't a stunt person going.

Look, I'll do car stunts, but I won't do high falls. I can't. I don't know, like I get it, Like I do understand this idea that, to you know, put yourself in a vulnerable position and ask for an answer from the other side is not a position I put myself in regularly anymore than I think you do. Which is why I'm not going to the Sally House every weekend. Which is why you're not going to the Sally House at all.

Like you, you don't want the opportunity for it to happen, so you're going to remove yourself, which is why I understand her reasoning. But I think it's funny that we're now in a position as a society where what we want our answers. So go sit in this house for a month and get us some answers. Well, yeah, and um, you know, you will find no paranormal investigator in America who will tell you it's a good idea to use a Wuigi board. Like this is not something you hear.

People are typically like, don't use a Wuiji board. I don't care what you do. I don't care if you say a prayer and invite a you know, protective white light and do all of your don't do not use the Ouiji board. It's it's like going on the dark web. You're just gonna attract bad stuff.

Um My son, I went to a party the other day, you know, and he's in high school and you know, he's fifteen, and it's like, wells getting to that age you know where and maybe you know obviously past that age. If it's like, wow, we gotta the drug conversation and the sex conversation and there's so much you gotta be careful with Huigi board conversation. Gave him aig board conversation. You have the well because he comes back and he's like, oh dad, we did some experimenting tonight, and I'm like, oh shit, here we go, there's fentanyl is out there. Don't put anything in your mouth, and you don't know, you know, did you touch someone without their consent?

And he was like, oh, we went into a dark room of me and a few and I'm like, no, no, he's got an STD now. Oh and then we all put our hands on something, and then and then and then he tells me it's a Wuiji board. And then I really got angry and I was like, this is a fucking bridge too far. Bal Yeah, I'm like, I pushed, I pushed Susan aside. This is my area, honey, dash all.

We need to have a little conversation man to man about disembodied spirits. Is that is that? Is that your genuine belief on Weigi boards? Yes? I told him, if you believe you, I'm like, look, before you touch a plan chat, you gotta put on a condom, se practice safe, safe scribe, safe scrying.

That's a good one, safe spiritualism. No. I was I'm like, luck, okay, thank god that's the only wood he was playing with at the party. But anyway, I could go on all night with this, you know, it would it would play, it would it placed in the Catskills and I'm a fan Richard had him. That's Martin Shark, so you could just you could just be short Martin.

Yeah. Yeah. But here's the thing though, Here's the thing is that there's such a fine line because there there have been there there's a philosophy in the world of paranormal investigation that UM and I do compare it a lot to improv comedy or television writing in this way that UM people will gather to do a seance circle. Okay, so it's like, well, you know, let's I'm you know, five friends and I are all gonna, you know, take a few hours and just you know, sit in a room together around a table and we'll go through a particular invocation whatever and see if we can manifest some phenomenon. And whether that phenomenon is coming from outside or is some energy built up among those people is still a point of debate in paranormal circles.

But there are people who do that, and people have described doing it for years and it's like, we got nothing, we got nothing, we got nothing, And then one of our members had to leave. They moved. So I just went to my neighbor and said, hey, would you mind sitting in and that very night we started getting results. And so it's almost like, oh, so it's like the energy of certain people in a certain configuration can get results. And by the way, same thing with a writer's room.

You know, on a TV show, some same here are more fertile than others. Yeah, you and guests on your show. It's like, some the magic happens, some the magic does not. Yeah, sometimes it takes a little more of a spark to get it going, and sometimes it's you know, we have to stop now, thank you for being here. Well, and improv groups, you'll hear about certain ones.

It's like, yeah, you know, we perform for years, but that one year where we had you know, Phil Murray and Gilda Radner and you know whatever, John Belushi, and it's like, yeah, that one really that one worked. Not, by the way, not just because you had five individually talented people who were off the charts talented, although that helps, but that does not guarantee a good show, right. It's got to be the right five people, right, and they all have to have edges that fit together because they can't all be perfect right, and you can't it's almost like you can't have five spicy flavors. You need the perfect mixture of flavors. So anyway, Richard, this is food.

That's what he's saying. All the flavors all at once. That's time food. Baby, Oh god, I mean that's legit. That's the whole philosophy behind type.

Is that all? Really? Yeah, it's like it's like sweet and sour and spicy added it all at once. Like yeah, I'm not even Joe, I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious.

Think of pad tie, dude, when you eat pad tie, there's the peanuts, there's the and then there's the lime that you put on top. Like, tell me another Asian noodle dish where you're putting lime on top, right, you know what I mean? Like right, yeah, dude, I'm with you because I honestly feel that. And you know, I mean again, we've seen all these ghost hunters, taps, ghost adventures, all these shows where it's groups of people, right because we you know, we drag on the old bag man, old Zach Beagans. We drag on that man quite often here, and it's deserved in his case, because he does taunt ghosts for whatever motherfucking reason.

But there are three other people with him. It's not just Zach Begans, it's the other three guys, Aaron and the other two. And like ither or not they get results. They have to, like you said, they have to be able to exist complimentary to one another within the space. Right and maybe the compliment, maybe the configuration they have now is not yielding the results it did before because they used to have another guy who left the show unceremoniously.

I believe in the first like ten seasons, Nick Groth, right, there was that whole thing with him and with the bagman, and I don't know, I mean again, like it'd be interesting to go and watch those episodes and see if there's a bus results more results with the without people. It's it's an interesting thing to ask because how do you know, I mean, how does one know? Right? Well, it speaks to again our desire to have an experience, but we don't know how to have it right. And and again I think the TV writer's room or the improv group analogy holds really well because it's like you go in with all good intentions every night you go in.

If you're doing an improv show, it's you know, the same five or six people going in they all want to have a good show. They all hope that that creative lightning will strike. And what's really funny is with with groups like that, or with just an individual performer, say a stand up comic, they will often cite the audience in terms of energy, focus, and sometimes it's just magic. Sometimes it's like, look, I don't know where this crowd came from, but it was like we'd all known each other for years, and everything I said they got, and they laughed, and it was just pure joy from from the minute I stepped on stage to the minute I stepped off, and the very next night the same material. And it's just a bunch of people who look like they've never met each other you and don't want to be here.

And so it's it's it's not math. If it were math, there'd be no fun behind it. Yeah, So it's that combination, the combination, and not only that, but but the energy that is built and the kind of energy that is built. So you can apply that to to ghost hunting. And and you're hoping for magic.

You're you're you're hoping that whatever the environment has to offer, it will connect with what you're bringing, and and and and results will will happen. But I mean it's funny because you know, there's never going to be proof that works for everybody. You were saying earlier that that ultimately the proof is going to be photographic. It's going to be on photographs or video or something, and that that would be like, you know, the most kind of demonstrable proof. But then it's quite easy to just say, well, but we live in an age where anything could be faked.

So I mean it's interesting, but I don't know where that theoretically from three theoretically right it would be. But I mean, yeah, obviously, I mean I always cite your ghost in a jar thing whenever I bring up the proof that even if even even if someone had a ghost in a jar, no one would believe you. Oh yeah, no no, because I like, I think one hundred percent right in that respect that I always think about that because there will, Like you just said, there is never going to be proof that fits everybody one hundred percent. There's never going to be even if there was a ghost in a jar on the table and I could hold it up and show you on camera right now and someone could see this recording, someone would go that cgi they did that in post and it's like, if you didn't know I had a ghost in a jar and I showed it to Richard right now and his genuine reaction was captured and you could see it, there would still be people that wouldn't believe it was actually what I said.

It was. Well, not only that, but we know that the person that the human being is bringing so much to the evaluation of the evidence. In other words, it's very easy to say, well, all these people, they all get excited and they want to believe, and they look at anything and they're like, look, look there's orbs, it's ghosts, and okay. But of course on the other side there's people, no matter what, they are philosophically resistant to to ever allowing for the possibility. So no matter what evidence you bring, it's deep down there's a resistance.

And I think that's actually much more common. I think there is a natural human resistance to this. And I'm not surprised, and I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. This is weird stuff. It's not comfortable to think about.

I don't like thinking about it, and I think about it all the time. I mean to really, the one that really gets me is precognition. And that's one where there's I mean, just stacks and stacks and stacks of proof of people knowing about events before they happen. But I cannot square that with the world that I live in on any level. I have no working philosophy that I am satisfied with that tells me, well, here's how that could happen and why.

Any explanation I come up with is describing a world that I fundamentally don't understand and one that frightens me one way or another. And yet I know it's true. So if I knew it was true the way I know that you know other certain things are true, i'd never sleep again. But you go, Okay, a thing happened. I cannot deny it.

I cannot prove it's fake. In fact, I believe it's real. If it's real, it's impossible, and it proves that the world is not what I think it is. Now, I got to go home and have dinner, and so that's what you do, because you can't carry this with you all the time. It's very I don't know how anyone could.

Even people who experience it firsthand often backslide from their own experience, or keep it to themselves in the case of a near death experience, because they know it's true and they know no one will ever understand, so they don't talk about it and they try to find a way forward. It's really interesting you mentioned precognition. I'd never thought about it that way. That it's like, how does one explain it without completely breaking what your ability to understand existence is? Yeah, in a way that is, like you said, kind of frightening.

I mean, it's like simulation theory, but worse in a lot of ways, because simulation theory feels like easily explained away because oh, now we have computers and that's but again, like that's the closest analog that we have to understanding what a sub reality could be if we were in it is. I mean they always say that about you know, reality reality or V you know, virtual reality theory or whatever however you want to phrase it, is that can only be perceived by the technology you have at the time. So people two hundred years ago thought, oh, we're in somebody's book that they're writing. Now it's we're in a V. Yeah, you know what I mean.

Now we're in VR simulation but like, precognition makes no sense if it is real, which again, like you said, there's more evidence to show that it is. Something is happening. Deja vu exists for a reason, and people aren't just saying deja vu because it's a good phrase to say because it is. I prefer deja reeve more. But you know deja But deja vu apart from being a great phrase if you think about it for like you said, more than two seconds, it breaks what are ability to understand reality is at a core level as I sit and look at my stopwatch running while we record an episode of this show, so I can make time marker stamps to know when to go back to in a recording to edit, and that's my ability to comprehend time is often fixed to how I work, because that's how I'm constantly aware of time.

If I had to think about what precognition meant and how it could break my ability to understand time, yeah, my brain would probably start leaking out of every one of my orifices. Yeah, and like, first you have to wrap your head around Okay, we live in a universe where where everything, let's say, one theory of time and existence is that everything is mapped out beforehand. So if you have a precognitive dream, you're dreaming about a future event. So if life and all experience is a highway, and you're on that highway and you suddenly have a vision of a Del Taco, and then a few miles down the road, sure enough you see the del Taco that you pictured in your mind. It's like I have arrived at the predestined point where the del Taco exists.

I just I knew about it ahead of time. Okay, great, Now you have to get into why, Well, why does a person have a dream about an event or a perception or a feeling about an event in the future, because the event has to happen. Let me explain what I'm saying. If you have a precognitive image or dream about let's say a plane crash, and you know the airline and the number, and then you wake up in the morning and you go online and you discover, oh, yes, that airline has a flight with that number, and it's flying over the city that I saw the plane crash into. So you call them up and you go be super careful because something might happen to you when you fly over there.

Let's say they believe you, so they don't do it. Now the event doesn't happen, but that's not confirmation. The event may never have happened. Or I like the one where you doing something is the reason the event happens, right, that's the one that I that's you want to talk about, the one, the initial one you can't square away, and then the one you really can't square away because that's the one that's the unknowable one. But it factors into this because again it's essentially the flip side of the same question.

To see the future, you have to see something that actually is going to happen. So if it's bad and you try to make it not happen, it's going to happen. Now. Often it's the event itself where you're like, oh my god, it reminds you of the dream you had. Sometimes a person has a dream but they don't have enough details until the event occurs, and then it's like okay, so yes.

Again, going back to the plane crash analogy, a plane did crash into a building that looked exactly like what I saw in my mind. I just didn't know that that was a you know, a town in you know a South Dakota, And now I look at news footage and that's exactly what my dream was. So yeah, I told a bunch of people a plane's going to crash into a building, and then later I saw the plane and the building and that was it. I just didn't know where. And but that's the one so so yes, so precognition work and what the There's a theory something that got discussed in Eric Wargo's book Time Loops, which is you're not foreseeing the event, you're for seeing you learning about the event, and your emotional reaction to learning the event.

Does that make sense? Yeah? Sure, yeah, I mean I'm not sure if that explains any anymore or any less. I mean, it's just it's I like where that. I like where they that the reasoning is coming from.

Though I'll get the details wrong. But um, but the story that illustrates it is a true story about a guy one hundred years ago who a dream of an island and a volcano erupting, and in his mind it was very clear to him. Five thousand dead, Okay, So so he woke up and he's like, there's an island somewhere, and I dreamt that there was a volcano erupting, and five thousand people died, all right? And then two days later, I guess he read in a newspaper that there had been a volcano eruption and that five thousand people had died. Now, later it was discovered that there was an error in the reporting, and in fact, five hundred people died.

So what he realized was he wasn't dreaming about the objective event. He was dreaming about his experience of learning of the event and learning about it inaccurately because it was reported to him inaccurately. Do he did? Win? I mean, but I mean, but it's that's what you're talking that's effectively what you're talking about, right, Like you're missing you're misinformed by the only way you would learn about it at the time, or in whatever, in whatever existence you have.

Yeah, right, So so in the dream state, you did not enter the Akashic records and learn about an objective fact of existence. Instead, you just saw what you would experience in two days. How does that change any of this? It doesn't change anything. I was like, how the question is why like I've had I've had Like I told you when we recorded the point and I had that weird sort of anticipation of the song me and my arrow, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, and I and right around the same time, I had another event where I dreamed about something that would occur in the writer's room, and I woke up and I thought about it in the morning.

I'm like, oh, that was kind of weird. And then later that day that moment occurred. And when it occurred, I was like, this happened. This was the thing I dreamed of and then it happened. Did you say that in the moment?

Huh wow. I didn't say it beforehand, but I said it in the moment. I'm like, oh, and here it is, um and so. But it was a fairly nondescriptive event. So why right, Okay, I see what you're asking, all right, Why something so quote insignificant unquote as you would say.

And not only that, but I'll tell you something else. The big ones, the big stories, like the one I told a little earlier about like or Edgar Casey or Edgar all of Edgar Casey's stuff, you know what I mean. Like, those are big ones. Well, and they're they're almost universally big bad one. Right, that's what I mean, like big bad things.

Nobody's like, oh, you're gonna win a million dollars. Like so maybe those you know what, maybe those people are out there and maybe those are the people that are winning the lottery. They're people that know. Maybe that's what it is. The story.

You know, if you talk about precognition, everyone always goes to, well, you think about the dead zone, but then you think about, you know, my god, a plane's gonna crash. Nobody there is not within our you know, sort of um discourse, a sort of of oh, it's that thing where a person dreams that they're gonna win the lottery and then they win the lottery, or a person dreams that they're going to meet the love of their life and then they do. Those stories exist. I'm sure they do, but we don't hear about those. It's not like no one wakes up going, oh my god, something amazing is going to happen to me today, and then later that day they get the job, they run into that person they were hadn't seen in years, they get the good news.

Most of the time, it's people like Natalie Wood having a premonition that she was going to drown, like and she had an inordinate fear that she was going to drown, and then she ended up drowning. Like that's normally what we're talking about. It's never like I had I had the love of something and I did this because of It's like that does not happen here, I don't. But and that, and that further goes to the question of why, because then it feels like there's intent right on the part on the part of of whatever it is, you know what I mean. Because again, because again, like you said, if it's if it is overwhelmingly seemingly negative things that we're being able to preconceive through precognition, then why aren't we seeing the positive things?

And if we're not, then there must be something at play making that determination. What is that? I don't think it's like a I'm like saying it's oh, it's aliens. I'm just saying there seems to be something that has intent. Look, the skeptics will often say that people tell stories about their own quote unquote supernatural experiences as a sort of a means of self aggrandizement.

You know. They people want attention, They belong I want to belong to a group of people. By the way, I would like to point this out to everybody. You want to belong to a group of people that are constantly being like chastised and made fun of and look down upon, that's you, Like, I don't understand the logic, Like I want to belong to a essentially like in some ways, like a not marginalized group, but a group that draws a lot of ire from the mainstream and had to the point where people were not talking about their experiences like right, But but that's not you know, that's out of the mind of in the mind of the person. They just want attention in the moment, even if it's quote unquote bad attention.

They just want to be the center of attention to say, oh, this thing happened to me. Okay, well that's great. But but here's what you don't often hear or I don't often hear. And again, if listeners have these stories, let the podcast know. But um, I didn't hear a lot of people after nine to eleven, for instance, Uh say, you know, I woke up and I just I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn't know what exactly.

I just knew something bad was going to happen in New York and I live in New Jersey, and so my and my husband or wife works in on Manhattan Island. So I told them I got a bad feeling, don't go to work today. So they didn't. And that was nine to eleven. And my wife or husband worked in the World Trade Center and absolutely would have died if I had not said that thing to them.

Okay, I don't hear that a lot. Now. That would be a great story to tell, and that certainly makes you the hero. But what ends up happening is and there's there's a great story about a a landslide in I think it was in Scotland or England, in a place called Aberfell, but it was there was a small like school and a you know, a freak occurrence, A giant landslide buried it and killed you know, dozens of children. I mean, it made national headlines.

It was a horrible tragedy. And there had been people who had had bad dreams and weird feelings that something bad was going to happen, but they didn't know exactly what and they didn't ah and so some of those people dropped their kids off at school that day never to see them again because they weren't connecting it directly with on this day, this particular thing is going to happen. It's going to result in the death of my child. But they live now with that gnawing regret that they didn't do something about it. But what do you do if you don't have the exact information?

And as far as I know, no one knew enough to keep their kids out of school that day. So my point again is why have the vision, why have the feeling is behind it? You know, what's the intent? Or is it or is it some element of our existence that we do know about bad events coming in the future. Our own instinct for survival is so hardwired into us that sometimes those two meet in certain individuals and it is a feeling of self preservation.

That might be a theory if the people were always involved, but often they're not. People in California, I had weird dreams about the Twin Towers. Well, they were never threatened by the Twin Towers, you know. Well, And what's funny is remember watching um, oh my god, I wish I remember it was a nat Geo show, and it was it was It would kind of covered everything they did Nostre Damas, they did conspiracy theories, they did all kinds of stuff. And in the Nostredamous episode, again we've done a Nostre Damas episode, nostredamis.

We can return to Nostre Damas if you would. Let's not right exactly, but they were talking about, you know, nine to eleven, and that's two thousand and one, and again they're probably people listening to this that were born after that. Hello, hello children, Now are you hello youngsters? Um? In this episode they talk about web bots kind of scouring the internet and kind of picking up on the energy of the Internet and like things being searched and things like that.

And around nine to eleven it was it was yielding results in a direction that was seeming like there was more noise on the wire than there normally should be, and that crested right like around and or before nine eleven. And it kind of comes back to this question that you're having, which is what is going on? Because that's because again, like the consciousness going in a certain direction is kind of what we're talking about, being maneuvered in a channel seemingly or maybe like a like a like one of those gates that you can kind of move in and out slowly to control the flow of water. But you're not. You're not stopping it completely.

You're increasing the flow a little bit or cutting it off a little bit. That's what it seems like. But like you said, to what end? Why this is just you and I sharing stories back and more than enough punchline? Is why?

Well, okay, so those web bots, I have a question. Those are web bots where they agendized in any particular way for military or intelligence. But it was just but this was in the This was in the more wholesome days of the Internet where you could do something like this just for you know, statistical data purposes. I'm gonna have to find this episode and link it or share it with you so you can see it, because again, like it's interesting because the energy kind of moving in a direction is kind of what you're talking about. Right, Yeah, let me go.

I want to grab a book off my shelf, but I'm connected by wires. I'll be literally be back in ten seconds. I gotta show you this thing because it's exactly about what we're talking about. It's a new book, really cool. It's by a writer named Sam Knight and it's called the Premonitions Bureau, A true account of death foretold.

This is fiction or nonfiction, nonfiction and this is the oh aber Fan. Okay, So here's them from the inside jacket, just just to you know, sort of let listeners know what we're talking about. On the morning of October twenty first, nineteen sixty six, Kathleen Middleton, a music teacher in suburban London, awoke, choking and gasping, convinced disaster was about to strike. An hour later, a mountain of rubble containing waste from a coal mine collapsed above the village of Aberfan, swamping buildings and killing one hundred and forty four people, many of them children. The doctors and emergency workers who arrived on the scene was John Barker, a psychiatrist from Shelton Hospital in Shrewsbury.

At Aberfan, Barker became convinced there had been supernatural warning signs of the disaster, and decided to establish a quote Premonitions Bureau in conjunction with the Evening Standard newspaper, to collect dreams and forebodings from the public in the hope of preventing future calamities. This book story, this is the story and it's really cool. And so he basically contacts a reporter and what they do is really smart and it can be done even more easily now, which is basically crowdsourcing, right totally. The newspaper, the Evening Standard, just you know, ran a little ad saying, if anyone has a dream that they feel is about a future event, sent us a letter and they collected them and then they waited to see what happened.

And a couple of the people really were tapped into something. And so you can do that. You can do it online. And again it's like wow, oh yeah, but you know someone you know you it was faked and you can yeah, right, okay, so you fake anything, got it. But if you had a website where submissions were timestamp and people wrote in and then you were able to through keywords, you know, over a course of weeks or months or even years, begin to see kind of what you're talking about.

Like, you know, in April, were a lot of people talking about the ocean. In May, was there a tsunami? And where those people near one another they're located? Again, like capture some piece of information that would allow you to see where they were too, because again, like you've mentioned, it's not oh my god, I live in the Twin Towers, which was not obviously a thing because that's not a thing. But let's just imagine it was a thing.

You live in the Twin Tower, right, you imagine, But again, like imagine you live in the building and you have a premise, like you don't have to be a participant in the event directly for this to happen. And that's the thing that's the crazy part, because that's the thing that's hard to wrap head around because like we've said, what is the intent? Then if the thing that's doing it isn't oh it's the it's the people who are involved. Those are the only ones we can let know. Well, and as you mentioned a little earlier, and we kind of skipped past it, but there are and there is a little bit more rare, but there are cases of people who have a dream and in an effort to avoid the consequence described in the dream, take action that causes those consequences to come about that they never would have done had they not had the dream.

So then you're really looking at it going, well, I'll wait a second, what if you'd woken up and not remembered that dream, then you wouldn't have done the thing that caused the dream that you at this point don't remember. I have a question for you. That's a real mind fuck. So let's let's let's speak theologically here Again, this is a it's a partial theological idea. So if we base ourselves off of good and evil, there are people that are getting premonitions, right, and they're the ones that are these these negative events, And a lot of these people are coming forward and saying things it's about them, or trying to stop them, or yo, I remember this, or They've gotta be the inverse.

There's got to be people that are having premonitions about terrible things happening and not saying a fucking peep or going and making those things happen. We'll wait a second. I can't there be the inverse of what we're assuming is a thing that people are readily coming forward and talking about. Aren't there people that would maybe be seeing things and using them to a negative advantage and they would never utter a peep about it? Will give me an example?

I can't. I mean, I mean, like like fantasy example, A fantasy example. Okay, so say you knew again you can't see how. But again, like the guy with the volcano, right, oh, five volcano, five thousand people dead. But let's just say, okay, bad example, but let's you se use it, um Columbine fifteen dead.

What if one of the killers saw that ahead of time and was like, okay, like I got it, you know what I mean? Like, oh, if a if a damaged person an emotionally you know, like when a crime is committed by someone who is considered mentally unbalanced, right, you know, But but how was it not like oh, I'm seeing a future where this thing happens and I'm putting it into effect or it's a again, it's a confirmation of that thing happening that you're going to make happen. Because again, like we're saying, you seeing the future, my own future, me seeing a you know whatever, I'm not getting hit by a car tomorrow, but I see in a premonition that I am, so I avoid it. Why couldn't there be the inverse someone who's not a morally good person seeing something bad and either letting it happen to see what happens.

You're telling me all the great, all the only good people the world saw nine to eleven happening and didn't say anything, you know what I mean? We know, like for instance, with Columbine or with nine to eleven, we know that there were human beings who made a conscious daylight plan to carry out a bad thing, right, Okay, So so the question is, let's let's just stay with and maybe not specifically Columbine because a deal and right, but a Columbine like situation. Right again, terrible example, but again just to put it in a perspective that everyone can more or less immediately understand exactly. So, let's say a teenager as a dream that they walked into their school with a gun and started firing.

Okay, let's pausit that all right. So now that what you're saying is that kid then wakes up and then has the means and the emotional you know, bandwidth to go ahead and go I dreamed it. Now I am consciously going to decide to go make that dream come true. Right, I mean, that's kind of the future reality that I saw happen. Well well in other ways, but but they're not helpless.

They're they're now they are now taking initiative to make that thing happen okay, or or my or the or the other one is the less involved version where someone saw a school shooting happen and just didn't say anything because they just they just wanted to see what would happen, wanted to see what would happen. Well, okay, but but you know, you're you're parsing things pretty close. I know, I know, I know, you know what I mean. In first example, it's a it's a person who in the in the aftermath of an event, I mean, at a certain point, their conscious mind took over and they did a thing right. Oh yeah.

Later on they might say, you know, I did this because I dreamed it. But now you're just sort of like, well, okay, you're a screwed up guy. You dreamt about something, and we know that you're screwed up because you were screwed up enough to actually then go act on it. So everything sort of a what if it's I saw myself doing it? Yeah, no, is that any different?

That's I guess it would be. Okay, look be very different if you or I did it. Okay, if if you are if if a person who just with it's like there's zero, zero, zero percent chance this person has no history of anything going on, and then they had a dream of them doing something terrible, and then they went and did it. You would still you would still factor backward and say, well, at a certain point, for some unknown reason, they had a psychotic break. That psychotic break may have, you know, most likely occurred before the dream or the dream is being reported by someone who did something horrific.

How much credence can we give to the accuracy of that story? And even if we do, who cares? Your dream became a plan became a reality. Okay, So that's that's case number one. Case number two is you have a terrible dream that something happens at a place, but you wake up.

Now one of two things. Either you go, well, this is crazy. I mean, I can't you know, it's a dream. No one's going to believe me, so I'm not going to say anything about it. That's not what I'm positive, right, and then you feel bad later or but now all you're doing is sort of parsing intent where your dream it's like, oh, I just dreamed somebody, and I'm not going to mention a president.

Okay, so no one get political on me. But I dreamt someone killed the president, and guess what, I think that's great because I don't like that person. And then later that day someone did. I feel great about it. But it happens the way you imagined it, one for one, not just I imagined that happening.

That's more what I was getting at, right. No, No, I dreamt about the exact manner in which it happened, and I didn't say anything about it, and I don't feel bad, and I don't feel bad, and then it happened and I don't feel bad. That is an interesting entry point. Well, it's funny because it takes into account the actions taken by the person and also that person's personality. I know I've described this, and I always do a poor job of it.

But a friend of mine was in an improv group and I when saw them, and one of their sketches, a pre written sketch, was called the World's Laziest Psychic And and so you know. Curtain comes up on a slovenly guy drinking a beer watching TV, and he ses watching TV and watching TV, and then a few but thirty seconds later, his wife walks in angry, puts our hands on our hips and says that Jenkins next door. Their house just burned down, and he goes, I was forgetting something. I mean, that's what I'm talking about. But my question is is if the thing, if people are willing to come forward and say that they're seeing these things happening, do you think that there are people that the inverse could be true for as well?

I don't know, because it's there. The only twist is that they well, ay, we can never know, right. I know, I know, I know, but we can, but we can never know any of it. Point what if okay again again, God forbid, a president is assassinated and then a person sitting at the bar, you know, down at the corner, drinking a beer with their buddy, and then they find out about it on TV. And then that guy goes, I knew it.

I dreamed that last night, and I purposely didn't say anything about it because I hope it would happened, and it did. I'm buying around for everybody. You'd go, that guy's full of shit, but hey, old old Joey is always full of shit. Oh Joey, Joey Joey Junior chab a dude, is this the Simpsons? Is this mose Bar yeah, yeah, it's it is weird.

But well because it again I just asked, it's an interesting entry point. Well, like, what would you do if you knew? I don't know, it gets a little weird because it brings intent into it. Right, Well, here's the thing, if you so, Okay, so if you if you knew, and again, let's just use an example that's non political. If you knew COVID was I'm just just ye, I'm just kidding.

I'm just fucking joking. If you knew that tomorrow a airplane was going to explode, and it was going to be found out that the airplane exploding was due to something that the manufacture of the airplane had overlooked intentionally, and by doing that, this company's stock would tank into the ground and you had hundreds of millions of dollars in stock. What would you do with that information? Right? Okay, that's that's interesting.

Yeah, well you would sell your stock, right and then tomorrow, all of a sudden, the airplane explodes in the stock tanks and you made out like a bandit while everybody else took a fucking bath. Yeah you want there to Yeah, I mean that that's you've you've broken the story that that's the one you want to tell is a guy we show the audience that they have this premonition, makes the connect that it's a terrible thing that would benefit me. Now I go to someone and say, hey, if you know something bad's going to happen, but you know it's going to benefit you, and then you just don't do anything and you let the bad thing happen. Is that a bad thing? Does that make me a bad person?

And then you do a whole thing and then the thing happens, and then we get whatever the you know, Twilight Zone result is um, but it is you know, that's the other thing. Maybe that's about guy said the Twilight. I mean it is pretty much the said episode of the Twilight So but you know, but okay with without without poorly written dialogue. You had the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago, and what if you um woke up the morning of the Super Bowl and you were like, oh, I had this dream that a particular like insane play was going to happen in the third quarter, right, a prop bet to end all prop bets. You made exactly, and so so you just sort of go, I'm going to bet that this team in the third quarter is gonna you know, they're gonna throw you know, find ninety yards, but there'll be an interception and it's going to go there, And I'll make you a bet.

It's like God, that is the craziest bet in two thousand and seven. A guy's going to catch a ball on his helmet one handed in the fourth quarter of a game where the other team is unbeaten going into the super Bowl. If you made that bet at the beginning of the season, and you could find a way to configure it like you right, or the Patriots in twenty seventeen where they're going to come back you know in the you know, in overtime and score three touchdowns, or you know, whatever the insane circumstances were in that game. You and if you made that specific bet and then a book he had to pay off. Boy, let me tell you, there'd be questions.

But at the same time, what could they do because they'd go, you made an insane bet. There is literally no way you could have controlled that outcome. There's nothing you, as a human being, or any human being could have done to make all of that happen. There are teams of people groups trying to make a thing happen, another team try to make things not happen. Physics, weather, a million different circumstances.

Okay, we're gonna pay you, but you will never be allowed to bet again, right like that, that's the one. I mean to be fair, that's but you're totally right, like you know. That was a couple of years ago at the beginning of the Super Bowl, I believe, between the Broncos and the Seahawks. I believe it was the first time that there had ever been a safety on the first fucking play of the game. I think, or is a safety or yeah something?

I mean, I think it was a safety. It was intentional grounding in the end zone which resulted in a safety, I believe is what ended up happening. And there were some people that won that prop bet, and I think it's probably the same thing where it's like fucking fifteen hundred to one or whatever the fuck or five thousand to one or whatever the hell. But again that is I don't know. I feel like if you were that person, you would never open your mouth.

But these are and these are stories though you never hear, you never hear someone say about I dreampt about a crazy play in a sports game, and so and I told people about it, and I bet on it, and that that happened. You never ever, I've never heard that, Right? Why not? Why are those events not washing up on the shores of today from tomorrow? Only bad things, only something terrible is going to happen.

And I don't have the information available to me to effectively stop it. And even if I did stop it, that in and of itself disproves any proof I could ever have had that it was going to happen, right, because it has to have happened already, Right, isn't that the thing we kind of have danced around this whole time? Like that's the scary part is what does it mean that you saw something that if it happens, you saw it happening. What the fuck does that mean? Like?

How does time make sense? Then? If time is perceived in a straight line, that's about as not straight a line as I've seen outside of a literal circle, Like you know what I mean? Like it suggests that a future is already in place, right, that the line is not straight, but maybe the lines are going parallel even I mean again, Now, one theory is that of course there are you know, every moment branches off into you know, many, many different possible futures, right, yeah, mister multiverse man, yes, correg we can have as many Spider Man as we want, Sony well, right, And and some of those future paths have a higher probability of happening, and so there they'll be pictured as wider than the more narrow paths, which are less likely to happen.

Um. And and there's a theory that you know, you you have all kinds of dreams at night about about all kinds of crazy things, infinite possibilities, all of which represent a possible future that just doesn't come to pass. And you don't think of it as that because since it doesn't come to pass, you don't think of it as a dream of the future. You just think of it as a weird dream where I went to work and this thing happened, but then the next day I went to work and that didn't happen. Now, and sometimes dreams are very very strange, you know, don't feel like whoa that could happen?

It's like, right, most dreams you have are like, well, I went to work, but it kind of wasn't my office. Also my dad was there and some days for fifty years. Yeah, and for some reason we were all there, but it was a holiday and we all had to do this certain thing and didn't make any sense. And it's like, okay, so that's not a dream about the future. That's just that's a recognizable kind of a dream of just strangeness.

That felt weird. It was a weird feeling. So let me ask you if you if you had a dream that okay. So I'm sure there are places you go with some frequency where you live, but say you had a dream that okay, So say you ghost, I don't know what do you do sometimes you go? Do you have a place you go on the weekends or like like, well, there's a there's a diner about a mile from my house that I go to, you know, I would say at least once a week, if not a week breakfast.

Okay. So say you have a premonition that you're going to go do something you always do, and you just go the next day and do it like well, but again, like what when you wake up you interpret a dream, right of course, and nothing is interpreted in a vacuum. There's no bias, less interpretation of anything. If you're a human being or at this point, if you're an AI, you are your your future output is determined by previous inputs. That's the way this works, right, And when you wake up, either you don't remember your dreams or you do, but but it has that dream feeling of like, yeah, that was weird, right, I had this really weird dream.

If you have a very but sometimes people will have a dream like more of a lucid dream, and when they wake up they're like, that felt very real, Like I thought everything about that makes sense, like that all those events could happen and present things that could happen in my life with people that I know and in circumstances that I totally understand. So that felt very real and there was a real, demonstrable event that will either happen or not happen within those circumstances. So I wake up, I go to that diner. The dream I had was I go to the diner and I saw that waitress, you know, fumble the coffee and burn her hand. So I go to the diner and while I'm there, that event happens.

You know, Yeah, it happened, and it probably happens all the time at the diner. Well but but he's But here's my question and it ties into this. So say you had a dream that you went and did something you never do and you remembered it the next day, would you go and do that thing because you had the dream about it? Oh, that's interesting, you know what I mean? Like saying I had that experience.

Okay, I will say I have never had that experience. My question, well, I haven't either, I don't think, at least not that I can remember. But my question to you is, say to tonight, you have a dream about something. I'm going to go to Universal Studios tomorrow, something that Again I don't know your frequency, but it's not like we talk about it all the time. So say it's like I'm gonna go to you have this massive dream about going to Universal Studios with your family, blah blah blahlah blah, you have a great day whatever.

Would you then go to Universal Studios the next day? Or would you be like fuck that I'm not doing that. I had a dream about that. How do dreams affect your decision making process? Or is it again, if it depends on the dream And I have heard and again these are far more rare.

But I've heard a story I can't remember where the million books I read, maybe the book I even recommended, but a person dreaming. It's like, I dreamt the person I'm going to marry. I know where, and I saw where I met them, and and and then I'm going to and so I go to that place and I met them and I married them. Now people will say, well, but that was you deciding to do that, So it's not just it didn't just happen. You still had to be there.

You went to a place. You're saying you dreamt that person, and that person was there, But really what you did was you had a weird You had a feeling in a dream. You went to a place. The feeling was, I'm going to meet someone here, so you went in with open eyes and an open heart. Well, odds are you're going to meet someone nice, and you did, and then later you married that person.

But all you're doing is making sure that dream comes true. So now you've got an interesting story to tell. Yeah, it's fucking weird. So again, that's a that's a that's interpretation that's going to always fall toward. You know, you took an active role, and so you can't just say a thing happened.

No, you went out and you did it. You dreamt that you were going to go eat at cheeseburger and you woke up and you went out to a diner and you ordered a cheeseburger and you ate it. Would you would you be influenced by a dream slash precognition if you want view it that way, would you personally go and do the thing if you dreamed it? Well, okay to reiterate, I don't think I've ever done that. I'm really interested.

I mean, have you have you heard of other people you know? Doing that? Like I dumped, I went to the beach today, so I decided, what the fuck I'll go to the beach. I've never asked anybody, but I have heard people say, like, you know, this is something I wanted to do, and I've like, I want to do it forever. So that's kind of like the same thing, right.

It's like you've dreamt about it, you think about it all the time, but that's making good on something you want. So it's like, how is that any different? How do you differentiate it? Again? Like it's like you've said, it's a very thin, almost transparent graphite, thin like graphine, like that, thin, like one Adam thin, because it's it's intense.

Well, and if you take one step away from precognitive dreams and you just talk about, well, how do you interact with your subconscious and you're unconscious, and how do you interact with your intuition? Right um as a life philosophy. You know, my boss at Titans, Greg Walker, said something once where where we were we were talking about you know, you you're you're walking down a street or you're driving down the street. You see the restaurant you've never been to, and you decide, damn it, I'm going to go. And you you go to that restaurant and you know, maybe it turns out great, or you're walking down a street you make an impulsive decision to do something that that's not high stakes.

And someone in the writer's room that day said, that happens to me all the time, but I never do it because I've I've got a place to go. I'm already going somewhere, so I just go to that place. And my boss lamented that and said, ah, if you don't listen to your intuition, it's going to stop talking to you. Yeah, And I just love that, and I've thought, Wow, that's that's a life philosophy that I'm hearing a person who is so confident in their own sort of experience and their sort of and their and their orientation toward life that they that they consciously go when I get a wild hair, got to follow it, because if it starts paying off pretty soon, it's going to pay off in more ways and good things are going to come into my life because I listen to that little voice, and that is very much connected to creativity.

Yeah, I was about to say, I think to people that I know that have followed their little voice, or people that have movies that they've written, or massive podcasts that they have, you know, five hundred plus episodes of I mean you listen to that, like you said, I mean under Siege two in your entire career is because I'm sure you listen to that little voice, right Like, Well, I think I think people who have creative careers are listening. And you can call that little voice the muse or the creative impulse, or or some ability to connect things in your mind in a unique way. But then follow up on it, and yeah, you do. When I teach writing classes, I do talk about that because people go, well, I've heard that to be a real writer you have to write every day.

And I will tell people, no, you, there is no there's no definition of real writer. And if you don't write every day, it does not mean you are not a writer. But I think when people say that, what they're getting at is whatever your routine is. If your routine is to only write at midnight on Tuesdays and Thursdays because you don't work on Wednesdays and Fridays, and nighttime is when you write best. If you get in the habit of doing that, if you get in the habit of sitting down to pursue something creative regularly at certain times, you're training your brain to relax its editorial voice and to overtime listen to the abstract creative voice, the muse, if you will.

And if you do that, and you sit down at a certain time regularly and go, Okay, I'm not going to be rate myself. I'm not going to sit here. This isn't math, this isn't science. I'm just going to let my imagination flow. Well, you're going to train almost like working out certain muscles, You're going to train your imagination to show up, and you're basically telling your subconscious all right, I'll be there.

Will you meet me for a while. It does, It starts to meet you and it's not, but it'll start to work and pretty soon that understands. If I if I sit in that place and I light the candle and I get my cup of coffee, that's the ritual, and that's the invocation that brings the imagination and the muse and pretty soon it shows up and you start doing it. And if you meet with your friends in a darkened room every Sunday night, after a while, something either within or without will learn your habit and it will meet you there. You're a natural storyteller.

You know that. I'm just trying to give you a good outro so you have a place to cut. God damn, I wanted to mention to you as as we bring this episode to a close that because you're talking about the creative process and you're talking about training your brain and putting your mind and consciousness through the paces. I mean, you're right. You don't have to write every day, but you do need to do what ever it is thinking about it, manifesting it, making it real again, you know, you know we were talking before we started recording.

I try to record most every day for at least an hour, you know, again, because if I don't do what's the If I'm not putting my best foot forward here, why do it? And honestly, I've gotten to the point where I feel like I could into it a conversation all the way through it without having to have something in front of me the whole time. And I don't. Do you feel that way about doing this? Like the podcast thing?

You feel? Do you feel what I'm getting at? Like there's a weird thing about doing this where it's like you can see, you can see it in your mind as the other person's talking, where you want to try to go with it and see if they're a like you said, see if they meet you there exactly. And that's the improvisatory is a good word either way? Make it up.

I don't feel the shit, make it up, but as it's yours now. But that's the nature of what we're doing in our conversation when we're recording, is is we're we're sort of tossing the ball back and forth as we walk together down a road and and and you know, you're sort of doing two things at once and hoping that something emerges, and often it does. You and I tend to work on the same frequency. But when, for instance, when I texted you this morning and said, are we still on for today? And you said, yeah, you noticed that I didn't say, hey, and what are we going to talk about?

Because I should have some stuff ready. I'm like, you and I going to sit out and we're gonna talk, and we're gonna talk about something, and it's gonna be cool, and it's gonna go for a couple of hours. And I'm not I'm not worried at all. It's I liken it to jazz, you know. And and in a lot of ways, there are people that do this that playoff of sheet music and again people and again, jazz is sheet music, but it's sheet music with parts that don't have spots, and you know, and again, and the best people that I know are the people that blended the two.

They have a little bit of both. They have spaces for one and spaces for both. And are people that do one one all the way perfectly, and ones that do it all the way and they can't do it at all. I you know, again, like anything else, this is I don't know, Like with premonitions and precognition, you should hopefully find a way to make the things that you're seeing work for you ultimately, because I think the human experience is ultimately as terrible as it sounds. And I think this is something that a lot of people need to hear.

It's okay to be selfish, and it's okay to put yourself before other people, and it's okay to make sure that your experience of life that you're getting is what you want out of it, because there is not going to be anybody else that is going to go to bat for you for it, and it needs to be you and it has to be you, and it's got to be you. And if you're making your talents work for you and you're honing them, or you're using your ability to see the future or precog things work for you, and that's a thing that you were actually able to do, then great, But be selfish. Seriously, it is something I wonder about. I don't know. It's an experiment for the audience.

Maybe two to each night, as you're going to sleep to consciously engage you're subconscious by saying tonight I will dream of the future, and then every morning write down everything you dream that you can remember. Keep a dream journal. I bet people who keep dream journals are much more aware of the times that there's been a connection between what they've dreamed and what has happened than people who don't. And I also think it's a way of engaging and respecting your intuition. If you want to remember your dreams, keep a dream journal, because your conscious and unconscious mind will begin helping you remember if you If you consciously say I want to remember my dreams, and you do it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning you wake up and write those dreams down.

I think after a little while, you're going to remember more dreams than you would have if you hadn't done that. You just gave me the best idea I've been looking for, the where I can put the twenty minutes of meditation every day that I've been trying so hard, define a right to it right when I wake up, and I will keep a dream journal just for you, Richard, and I'll include it in my daily routine because if not anybody else wind out me, yeah, no, do it and then see, you know, six months from now, check back in the next time we do a campfire story. Because it's like you've been like six months since we did one of these. I know, yeah, well we should do it. I think dreams are are the most accessible way to interact with your subconscious and unconscious.

And again, there is a way to engage with that side of your mind that that allows you to have a dialogue. I think therapy does that too. If you discuss dreams in therapy. Where after, if you and that's happened to me in therapy, we're I'll talk about dreams. And then as as we begin to compile a language for my subconscious, you know, water means this, buildings mean that, animals mean this.

Once we begin assigning that, my subconscious begin speaking in that language. Right now, it feels like I'm unearthing the language of my subconscious, but I know that it is also creating a language for my subconscious to speak to me. And it speaks its own mind, by its own rules. But at least now I can understand what it's saying a little more clearly. So, Richard, when you're engaging with your subconscious.

When you're not engaging with your is subconscious and you're engaging with the people, the masses, the ones who want to hear from you. Where can people find you, Richard? They can find me on HBO Max. The second half of season four of Titans will premiere, I believe in April. I don't have an exact date.

We should find out soon. But for Titans fans, the final six episodes are coming soon. If you have not watched Titans but you're interested, go to HBO Max. The first three seasons are available in their entirety, and the first half of season four is also available, so you can catch up over March and then catch the final six episode in April. After that.

I don't know what's coming up. A lot of ideas brewing, a lot of meetings are happening, but I can't announce anything yet. As soon as I can, I will. You know where to find me Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Where where where there's a podcast that we mentioned sort of offhand, eighties TV ladies.

Richard's wife puts together a hell of a fucking show. Guys. If you've never listened to it, go listen to it. It's it's, it's. It's a tighter ship than this one, you'll arn me.

Mate's they're not taking on any water over there. Not saying that we are here, but you get my drift. As for me, you can find me well here and social media sucks, so don't frequent that unless you really want to feel bad about yourself. Big thanks always to Maggoty and Dustin Reledge for the album artwork, and to Alex Malnack of Blonde. You can find him on Spotify, or if you live in the Omaha area or the Midwest you might be able to find them touring near you.

Richard, thank you so much for joining me as always always a pleasure man anytime I'm here, and as always well at our good friend the former House Decidings. Mister Tim White lead us out. No mystery is closed to an open mind.