Mentally Oddcast Transcript: Stefan Petrucha
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An audio version of this podcast is available here.
00:00:01.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday Lee Friday, and we are brought to you by Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine. Do find us on Ko-Fi, Sometimes Hilarious Horror.
00:00:16.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Today's guest is Bronx-born author, damn it!
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Today's guest is Bronx-born author, Stephan Petrucia, and his work has sold millions of copies worldwide,
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Stefan
can Can I stop you for a second?
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Wednesday Lee Friday
I guess you already did.
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Stefan
It's Stefan Petruca.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Stefan Petruca. See, i I need to do phonetics when I send out these lists.
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Stefan
Yeah, no, everybody everybody gets it wrong, so I'm not.
00:00:44.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, nobody can spell my name, so like I get it. They can say it, but they they cannot spell it.
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Stefan
Really? Wednesday? day Sure.
00:00:50.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
When does day? like Lots and lots of different things. All right. So for the third and hopefully final time,
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Stefan
Sorry.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Bronx-born author Stephen Petruca has sold millions of copies worldwide, over 20 novels to his name, including original works like Ripper and Dead Man Walking, which I love, and licensed prose novels like Spider-Man Forever Young and Deadpool Paws from Marvel.
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Stefan
Take care.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
He's also written hundreds of graphic novels, spanning iconic franchises like X-Men, Beowulf, Mickey Mouse, and Nancy Drew. um His latest book, An Effort, which took seven years, is the original science fiction epic, The Stars Within, which just came out. I haven't even had a chance to read it yet, but I will. Thank you, Stefan. Welcome.
00:01:41.92
Stefan
Sure. Thank you. Thank you. I hate to correct you again, but you said X-Men instead of X-Files.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Did I?
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my god, I'm an idiot.
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Stefan
No, no, not at all. They're very similar.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, they're both like feasts of man candy, but yeah, that's an important distinction.
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Stefan
They both have mutants.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Like a Star Trek Star Wars thing.
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
And I can't even say I didn't read my own writing because it's typed.
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Stefan
We'll be canceled. Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Right? So with apologies to Wolverine and David Duchovny, we always begin by asking guests to tell us the story of the first horror movie that they remember seeing.
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Stefan
yeah
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Wednesday Lee Friday
And I'm sure you've got a great story. So let's hear it.
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Stefan
Well, actually, I remember this, I mean, i I think it was from an age where you're not supposed to remember anything. I was three years old, I think it was before before the birth of my sister, and I was watching an Astro Boy cartoon on TV, on our black and white, that had like an ancient, it actually had a remote, but it was sound operated remote.
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Stefan
And I saw a commercial for Abaddon Costello Meet Frankenstein. And it was the scene where the monster Glen Strange, as I now know,
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
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Stefan
hurled the nurse out of the window and crashed the glass. And this this terrified me. And I wound up having dreams, I think, probably for weeks and perhaps for the rest of my life of being chased by the monster in our in our Bronx neighborhood.
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Stefan
You know, you one of those dreams where you run really like crazy and he's moving very slow, but somehow he's always managed to be behind you.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
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Stefan
So I don't know when I actually saw the film, but that's my first memory of of a horror film. It was just a commercial.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well I know I might my story is similar actually because I remember the Jaws trailer more than I remember anything else I would have seen at that age. And for people who have not seen the Jaws trailer, it is terrifying.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, it's even today compared to ah just a regular trailer. It's it's a scary trailer. It's it's like set up. But
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Stefan
Oh, yeah. And and and so was the film. I saw it by accident. A bunch of my friends went went to New York City. We were going to get Broadway show tickets for $15, but we didn't like any of the shows. And Jaws had just premiered. And nobody really, you know, it was a shark movie.
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Stefan
And we went to see that and we walked out, like, stunned.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I guess so my good I can't even imagine that just going in to see jaws like cold Just vaguely knowing that it's a shark movie and then you get that Yes, very much so well, especially now I mean trailers are just insane with giving away information.
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Stefan
Yeah, that's probably the best way to see something like that, too. Because the expectations can ruin the things. And it was the first it was the first of like... Oh, God, I hate that. You know, you feel like you've seen the movie.
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Stefan
by the end of it and it gives away all the plot points.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, there's, I mean, I think the most egregious example of that that I can think of is the movie Quarantine, which is the American remake of of Wreck, the zombie movie.
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Stefan
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Because the trailer has actually the last scene in the film, like the final jarring thing where, uh, Jennifer, what's its, you know, Deb from Dexter, and she gets like grabbed and and dragged backwards.
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Stefan
Dragged away. Yep.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
It's in the trailer.
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Stefan
It's, yeah, yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
So by the time it shows up in the movie, you know, it's coming and into the very end.
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Stefan
Great shot. yeah Oddly enough, I recently had the opposite experience. i you know Yesterday was my birthday, and we went to a secret movie at Cinemark, and you don't know what it's gonna be. And it was The Companion.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I saw your post about that. So how was it?
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Stefan
And I saw the...
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I love those trailers.
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Stefan
i Other people liked it more than me. But what I wanted to say about the trailer was that it doesn't reveal the twist.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
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Stefan
I thought, seeing the trailer, and maybe I was just being dense, that it was about like two psychopaths or serial killers who were having a relationship and got involved in a bizarre sadomasochistic relationship.
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Stefan
you know But that I don't want to give away what the twist was for those who might not know, but it's nothing like that. um it is It has a really cool twist about 10 minutes in, and while it handles the tropes really well, after that you just know exactly what's going to happen for the rest of the movie anyway, um in terms of a mini review.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
well Well, and that is really the bane of being especially a horror fan, a hardcore horror fan, because movies that are made for mainstream audiences assume that you haven't spent the last couple of decades voraciously watching every horror movie.
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Stefan
but It was well enough that the audience gave it a bunch of applause and for me it may have been that I've seen too many movies for my own good to enjoy it as much as I might have. Yeah.
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Stefan
Our tastes are much more refined. yeah
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Well, and and we can, we can spot all the the tropes and all the techniques and all the, you know, like we'd spot all of it.
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm actually reviewing the new Dexter series, which is a prequel.
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Stefan
Oh, yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
And I have tons of issues with it, but one of the things is that they show us something in episode three that I'm like, Oh my God. So it's obviously that person. And and so then in episode seven, when they drop the big reveal, it's like, yeah, I know.
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
we we are Everybody who watches this kind of content knows.
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Stefan
Yeah. no It's like woman wakes up and throws up. Okay. She's pregnant, you know?
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
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Stefan
you know There's no secrets. i dev I haven't seen the whole thing. I just managed to see the beginning. But I really like the opening sequence. ah He's pulling the t-shirt on.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
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Stefan
And for a second, he looks like you know Anthony Hall. And then you then then you realize it's the younger actor playing him. So I thought that was really well done.
00:07:10.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
There's a lot to like about the new series. I have big problems with a lot of the retconning in it, but the show as a whole, like the people that they've cast to play the younger versions of the characters, they're wonderful.
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Stefan
Sure.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Misuka and Deb are both just spot on.
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Stefan
Well, they look good in the trailer. Yeah.
00:07:28.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot to like about it, but if you are really invested in the original story, the retconning is gonna bother you a lot. Like, they've done some things with Laura Moser that are just like, no, that was a little hippie girl who got in over her head, not whatever the hell this is.
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Stefan
like Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on the kind of retconning for me, some of the stuff I don't care about. But there was plenty to you know like and dislike about the original Dexter 2.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah. And I think it it asks a lot of its audience because sometimes the writing gets a little lazy and sloppy and you just have to kind of go with it for the ride.
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Stefan
I mean, well, even in the original series, I mean, the stars were really some of the serial killers he ran into, but the rest of the cast itself was very cartoony and kind of two note.
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Stefan
And some of it was like a little too hard to swallow sometimes.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I would agree with that.
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Stefan
And, you know, he can't get caught, but they bring him to the edge of being caught. And it's like, how is he not going to get caught this time? And then nobody liked, you know, the final episodes.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. It's it I mean, it it it does rise to the level of like Clark Kent's glasses sometimes.
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Stefan
Yeah, yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Like really, we're all supposed to just not notice that that just happened.
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Stefan
yeah ah Yeah. Anthony Hall's great.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, he is. I actually just saw YouTube of him singing Bowie songs and it was delightful.
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Stefan
Really?
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, he does audiobooks, too. He read he does a Pat Cemetery on Audible.
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Stefan
Boom.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
and For a while, I was getting just so many audiobooks. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but the Deadman walking books are also on Audible. the for are there How many of those are there?
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Stefan
Yes. There are two two dead, there's dead man walking and and what's the second one? Dead man running. still on I was just, and I would have done dead man running for the, what am I always gonna do? with deadment Dead man sitting.
00:09:18.51
Stefan
that
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Deadman enjoying his day off with ah with a coffee.
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Stefan
Dead man stopping. Dead man yielding at the intersection.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
um
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Stefan
Yeah.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
So I.
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Stefan
I i did so speak, it was one of the rare times when I did speak to the person who did the audio book beforehand. So I gave him Farewell, my lovely Robert Mitchum, as an example of the kind of voice.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, nice.
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Stefan
And he he he took that to heart and I think did a great job.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, that is so.
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Stefan
I had even more control over the stars within an audio book because a friend of mine did that. so But that we we'll get there at some point with that.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
Definitely, definitely. I don't want to get ahead of myself because there's so much stuff I want to ask you.
00:09:56.31
Stefan
No, it's cool.
00:09:56.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, so.
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Stefan
I'm ADD, so we can bounce around. it's like We may have to.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Girl, same.
00:10:04.04
Stefan
Cheers.
00:10:04.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
So, I mean, we we did talk a little bit about like horror in general, but I want to know you, you mentioned Frankenstein as like one of your introductions to undead people.
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Wednesday Lee Friday
What, what else? I mean, obviously you're influenced by zombie culture.
00:10:18.71
Stefan
I don't think he's undead. yeah Yeah.
00:10:20.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
How did that come about?
00:10:21.85
Stefan
I don't think Frankenstein is undead. I think of him as he's he's alive. You know, he's he's got a beating heart as opposed to a zombie who is literally dead because he I mean they'rere mean, they're more magical.
00:10:33.82
Stefan
You can kill them by shooting them in the head. But, you know, they can crawl around with just their hands and stuff. So I only heard part of the question was it how they got introduced to like zombies and stuff?
00:10:42.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, how zombie culture, like how your interest in it began and how it came to influence you.
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Stefan
I think the first time I saw zombies was probably when I was eight or nine and it was like in an episode of my beloved soap opera, Dark Shadows.
00:10:57.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
it's
00:10:57.60
Stefan
And they had some curse occurred and all the the the bodies in Collinwood Cemetery came to life and they did their hands coming out of the you know graveyard thing.
00:10:59.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep.
00:11:10.22
Stefan
You see like tales from the clip. And they took off for Collinwood and Barnabas and Julia fled and used the I Ching to go to the future to 1972 and you know found the place in wounds.
00:11:22.06
Stefan
So those were kind of the first zombies I saw. And I don't remember when I saw Night of the Living Dead, but my original encounters were probably Romero. And I saw um when it came out, I wanted to see Dawn of the Dead, but no one would go to the theater with me.
00:11:37.70
Stefan
So it was one of the first movies I went to by myself.
00:11:40.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow.
00:11:40.81
Stefan
And I thought it was thought it was wonderful. I thought it was hysterical. and scary and all kinds of all kinds of great things. And I wound up doing a video satire of it called Afternoon of the Airheads, which requires a little bit of an explanation.
00:11:53.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:11:55.60
Stefan
I was taking a class called the Language of Social Control, and we studied an episode of Charlie's Angels in it. And it was a very, you know, media, you know, we're being, you know, the massages, Mindy Marshall McLuhan, all that stuff, probably some from CO at some point.
00:12:09.62
Stefan
And I wanted not to have to write the final paper, So to get out of that, I did a video satire of Charlie's Angels ah called Chadwick's Airheads. And it involved an attempt to assassinate our college president. And it was set on the campus. And my the professor, richard Richard Stack, dear friend, loved it, insisted I show it in public. And we had like you know several hundred people showed up. So it was kind of a thing on campus. So I did the the sequel was Afternoon of the Airheads, in which
00:12:42.95
Stefan
the president of the college, trying to stop people from protesting, because we actually, we we were in the last colleges to take over an administration building in the 70s. But to stop them from protesting, he he he's in cahoots with the Dr. Death, who's a professor faculty member in the Nat Sze building, um who comes up with a way to basically create Romero-esque zombies, but they're more insipid. They just wander around saying, I like to dance and paint.
00:13:13.67
Stefan
And we, an artist friend of mine, Bill Beerwert did a beautiful satire of the Romero poster, which is when they you know when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. And this was when there's no more room in the dorms, you know the dead will walk the campus. And it was, they say, I have it somewhere. It was printed, we printed it in the school paper. And that one ran out about, that ran about an hour. And at the end of it, I got to blow up the campuses ah Performing Arts Center, which was a series of like Broadway-sized stages.
00:13:47.46
Stefan
we I got a guy to build a little um a model out of it, had a little sugar cubes, and I had the one guy on campus who had a license to use explosives because he'd been working in special effects as as an intern somewhere, and we it looked great.
00:13:50.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Neat.
00:14:01.13
Stefan
Anyway, but it was also you know black and white reel-to-reel video, so nothing compared to what you could do with your phone today. So that's my early relationship with zombies comes out of that more as a ah satirical thing.
00:14:15.43
Stefan
And I think even when I yeah when i saw Night of the Living Dead, which may have been after Dawn of the Dead, I was terrified by it.
00:14:15.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
00:14:21.89
Stefan
Dawn of the Dead didn't scare me because you know the zombies wandering around with the music in the mall was just you know funny. But Night of the Living Dead, I watched it late at night with commercials on channel seven or something.
00:14:33.91
Stefan
And i'm like and that i was I was up for the rest of the night.
00:14:37.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, definitely.
00:14:37.30
Stefan
I mean, it's the only film that kept me up yeah I think it's in my late teens or even early twenties. The only film that kept me up like that since was the Blair Witch Project. But that's my thats my general relationship to The to the Walking Dead, which is another series.
00:14:52.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
I see. I see. Now, I feel compelled because I i gather that you're a little older than me. um But the 1979 Salem slot, you got any feelings about that?
00:15:06.51
Stefan
i is That's the one with, ah what's his name?
00:15:12.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, good old what's-his-name. No, it's David Saul and James Mason.
00:15:13.90
Stefan
No, no, no, famous actor.
00:15:15.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:15:15.85
Stefan
James Mason, James Mason is the one I'm thinking of. I really like James Mason in it. ah Felt like he was slimming to an extent. And I love, you know, Stephen King is, you know, I was gonna say he's the blah blah blah of the United States and I can't, draw oh, Charles Dickens of of our time.
00:15:36.08
Stefan
ah I will do that, I will forget a name, sometimes my own.
00:15:39.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh no, I get it.
00:15:40.72
Stefan
And I think he's done some wonderful, amazing stuff. I tend to enjoy his non-horror stuff more. I loved different seasons, I loved several of his short stories. The Shining is great for me up until the end when the monster shows up because I thought it was such a wonderful portrait of a decaying alcoholic mind that it didn't need the ghosts.
00:16:05.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:16:05.62
Stefan
And those are my favorite kinds of ghost stories where you don't really need the ghosts or the ghosts don't have to be, it doesn't matter whether the ghosts are real or not. Because it's it's it's all the the psychological terror and the horror of being human.
00:16:21.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:16:22.32
Stefan
The Innocence is a favorite of mine.
00:16:25.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, definitely.
00:16:27.20
Stefan
you know, based on Turn of the Screw by Henry J.
00:16:29.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
That movie scared the crap out of me. I saw that as an adult by myself in a movie theater because I was working at the theater and they played it and someone came in to bring me popcorn and I like jumped and yelled.
00:16:31.35
Stefan
Oh yeah.
00:16:41.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
It was it's so scary.
00:16:41.90
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, me too. I think I saw that when I was like 12 or something. And that, that, that was before Night of Living Dead, but was it was an early one that kept me up.
00:16:52.39
Stefan
And the kid dies at the end, but the which is pretty,
00:16:54.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Spoiler alert for this 80 year old movie.
00:16:56.86
Stefan
Yeah, I'm sorry. Well, you know, you don't even know who the kid is. So, you know, it's kind of a spoiler alert.
00:17:01.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
00:17:02.73
Stefan
But you don't need, they don't need to be ghosts. It could just be someone convinced that there are ghosts. Debra Kerr does it. I saw it recently and Debra Kerr's performance is so over the top. It's almost funny, but it still had the same kind of general impact that that did.
00:17:20.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I think a lot of those older performances, especially when you take one of those like proper young ladies that like have all that weird societal training where you don't say what you think and you don't say when you're mad and you know and then you put them into a situation where like, oh, there's ghosts and this is dangerous and a whole bunch of crazy shit's happening and I am a lady so I can't say anything about it.
00:17:34.31
Stefan
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:44.89
Stefan
It was her her her own um sexual repression was so over was kind of over the top the second time I saw it. I mean, you have to get that across because that's part of what's driving her interest in the ghosts.
00:17:53.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and.
00:17:59.23
Stefan
You know, fascination with these have dead lovers,
00:18:02.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, and they really explore that, like in the the Mike Flanagan version of that.
00:18:02.73
Stefan
yeah a
00:18:06.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't know if you saw that.
00:18:08.13
Stefan
Oh, that's, that's the, um, is that the mini series?
00:18:11.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Bligh Manor.
00:18:13.36
Stefan
Yes. Yeah. I enjoyed lots of that.
00:18:16.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, there's certainly some knits to pick if, if, uh, that's, yeah, but, but yeah, there's, there's, there's lots and lots to love.
00:18:20.95
Stefan
And it's, it's, it's, it's melting in my mind with the, I'm sorry, it's melting in my mind with the Shirley Jackson when he did.
00:18:27.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there, he's one of those people where I think a lot of his work, you know, it's like Rob Zombie's music. Like, yeah, it's good.
00:18:35.69
Stefan
Yeah.
00:18:35.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
I like it. But there's a, there's a sameness to, to the storytelling, certainly.
00:18:36.75
Stefan
Yeah.
00:18:41.30
Stefan
Well, I hated what he did with the end of that one because he ruined one of the best written paragraphs in horror, which is Shirley Jackson's yeah know opening to the Haunting of Hill House, where the last line is, and whatever walked there walked alone.
00:18:56.79
Stefan
And at the end of his version of that, he he he has the ghosts keeping each other company.
00:19:02.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Yeah, does
00:19:02.35
Stefan
so yeah Whatever walked there walked together, you know and they were happy.
00:19:05.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
00:19:06.96
Stefan
And I was like, I wanted to punch the television at that point. But that also, I think it's that one that also has one of the best jump scares I've ever seen, where the two family members are driving in the car and they're having this very tense, fraught fight, and the tension's building, and then all of a sudden there the head of their dead mother or sister comes shooting between them, screaming.
00:19:29.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
he does.
00:19:30.72
Stefan
And I leapt across the room. That's probably still the best jump scare I've ever seen.
00:19:35.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Right on. All right. So we got to talk about dead man walking now, because one of the things that blew my mind when I read it was that there's a point where the zombies, which are not typical zombies, these, these folks are are sentient and they have to barricade themselves in a building because of mob of living people are coming at them.
00:19:42.46
Stefan
sure
00:20:00.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, I mean, they're, they're rage monsters, man. And. You know, I'm an American. You're an American.
00:20:05.76
Stefan
Sure.
00:20:05.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
So we're living with rage monsters right now.
00:20:08.86
Stefan
me all yeah Yes, yes.
00:20:09.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
So so not only was the scene itself just brilliant as a ah reversal of of everything we know about zombie culture.
00:20:10.98
Stefan
And we had them then too.
00:20:18.03
Stefan
Thank you. Thank you.
00:20:18.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
but Thank you. and But there's also like some societal relevance to that, that the people that claim to be all about law and order and and you know bringing people together and whatnot are the violent monsters tearing everything up.
00:20:20.60
Stefan
Oh, sure.
00:20:34.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Yeah, I don't know where to go with that. I had a question about that.
00:20:39.30
Stefan
yes No, that's OK. I mean, I can tell you.
00:20:40.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
But no, like why how how did that how did that come to be, like that that scene in particular?
00:20:46.08
Stefan
Well, because I'm brilliant Wednesday.
00:20:46.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's part of the plan from the beginning?
00:20:48.85
Stefan
Well, I got the idea for for for Dead Man Walking. I mean, I wasn't looking to do as a zombie thing because, you know, Walking Dead, it was done to death. It's impossible to do anything new with it.
00:21:00.48
Stefan
So, you know, you invariably you try to play with the tropes. So it was driving along um to go grocery shopping or something. And I'm listening to an NPR broadcast about um the death penalty.
00:21:12.05
Stefan
And they're they're saying, well, you know, one of the big problems with the death penalty is you can't take it back. You can't, you know, the person's dead. And I started thinking, well, what if you could? So that's where that whole thing came from. So the um the the way it works and in Dead Man Walking is they develop this method that brings people back. Some people use it on their family members, but their family members are, you know, wind up being depressed and tend to go feral.
00:21:41.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:21:42.08
Stefan
But they mostly started using it with people who were wrongly put to death as a way of making up for the state's mistakes. And it winds up, and it's very much, yes, yeah, you know, but then grandma starts eating the family pet.
00:21:51.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it seemed like that and then like really, really rich people.
00:22:00.19
Stefan
So, you know, you can't keep her in the house anymore.
00:22:01.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Hey, she's from a different generation, man.
00:22:03.66
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, but they had to do that.
00:22:03.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Give her a break.
00:22:08.22
Stefan
And, you know, going, eyeing the children hungrily. um so it was So from there, I mean, considering where it came from, it it the idea it came full blown as sort of a class thing. And, you know, Romero has one of the rare proactive early main black characters in Night of the Living Dead who winds up getting, you know, should I spoil, can I spoil the end of that?
00:22:32.82
Stefan
tweet
00:22:32.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
You can spoil the end of a movie that came out two years before I was born.
00:22:36.08
Stefan
Okay.
00:22:36.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
00:22:37.39
Stefan
Have you seen it?
00:22:38.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Have I seen it? I could recite it, sir.
00:22:40.93
Stefan
Okay, you know, you already said you were terrified by it. So I mean, he gets, and this horrifying, the ending of that is more horrifying than the rest of the movie, because they think he's a zombie and they shoot him.
00:22:47.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
00:22:50.03
Stefan
And it's these what, you know, these white crackers wondering around what they're saying.
00:22:52.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it's funny because when I watch that movie now, I generally stop it when the militia guys show up.
00:22:53.23
Stefan
We're gonna take care of those zombies now. You know, so.
00:23:00.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
I say, oh, good, they're there to save the day. Hooray. And then I just turn it off so I don't have to look at it because man, I.
00:23:08.50
Stefan
So, yeah, so Romero's very aware of class in in in in both of those movies.
00:23:13.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:23:13.81
Stefan
I mean, he kind of abandons it later, but I think he just never got the budget he wanted to do.
00:23:18.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
00:23:19.28
Stefan
Day of the Dead and things like that. And, you know, Dawn is more. I guess somebody said once that the Night of the Living dead was ah nineteen fifty s movie done in the nineteen sixty s and dawn of the Dead was a movie done in the So he's always kind of looking back and that kind of thing.
00:23:35.77
Stefan
But, you know, the the social satire is very different. So, you know, my point is I didn't make up the idea of, you know, zombies and class issues, but I did turn them effectively and into an underclass.
00:23:38.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yeah, they do.
00:23:47.27
Stefan
And I'd be telling myself, you know, yeah, they're kind of an underclass, but they're also really zombies. They're dead. And if they go feral, they generally are dangerous. And then I'm thinking, you know, now people do that too.
00:23:57.70
Stefan
Yeah. You back them into a corner enough. They're going to, you know, they're going to, they're going to go for you. So that that's, you know, was the formation of the idea.
00:24:08.63
Stefan
And, you know, yes.
00:24:09.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and in in that scene in particular, the angry living people are much more terrifying than the zombies because they can't be reasoned with.
00:24:20.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, you know, I i don't want to be all politics all the time, but that is a problem that we're having right now is that people think outlandish things and they cannot be reasoned with.
00:24:20.71
Stefan
yeah
00:24:31.89
Stefan
I, you know, yes, but I think that, that part has always been there and the internet has, what I used to say, when the internet started, you're saying, you know, the damnedest people are getting organized.
00:24:42.76
Stefan
and And it's put a megaphone to that. But, you know, we're also in a situation now where, you know, Trump was elected by the majority of voters.
00:24:54.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Uh, no, um actually more people voted for other candidates than for Trump.
00:24:54.86
Stefan
So, okay, fine. Well, you know, the majority of, you know, yeah Trump was elected by, Trump was elected Trump was elected by 3 million votes.
00:25:04.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but I mean, it is worth re it's worth repeating that more people voted for people who were not Trump than who voted for Trump.
00:25:12.57
Stefan
Sure.
00:25:12.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes. He, he is the guy who got the most votes, whatever.
00:25:13.89
Stefan
Sure.
00:25:17.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
If indeed he was, I mean, Trump did come out and say that.
00:25:18.41
Stefan
Sure.
00:25:22.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, he had the votes in Pennsylvania thanks to Elon or some ridiculous thing implying that.
00:25:27.81
Stefan
Yeah, he says all kinds of, yeah, yeah and it may be true.
00:25:29.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, that's the thing. It's like, oh, wait, why would I believe anything he says?
00:25:30.73
Stefan
yeah
00:25:33.27
Stefan
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and Kennedy's father bought him Chicago in 1960, whatever the hell that was.
00:25:39.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
o
00:25:40.78
Stefan
ah So that's, you know, it's not new and it's it's that, you know, that part of it's American. A lot of it's ah unfortunately American. But I guess part of my point is it's not just the lunatics who voted for him.
00:25:52.42
Stefan
And um you've got people who voted for Obama twice and who voted for Trump. You got people who voted for, you know, Hillary the first time and then recently voted for Trump.
00:26:04.13
Stefan
You got people who voted for Biden, but voted for Trump.
00:26:04.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I can't. i I can't give my head around it.
00:26:08.21
Stefan
I know.
00:26:08.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, I know that there were protest votes about Gaza. Congratulations on all that. By the way, protest voters now that he's saying he wants to clean out Gaza and let rich people just move in and do whatever.
00:26:13.34
Stefan
Yeah. you know
00:26:20.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, nothing he's doing is surprising, but it's it's all pretty awful.
00:26:23.54
Stefan
Yeah.
00:26:25.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
And ah I think part of the what makes it so infuriating now is how surprised his supporters seem to be.
00:26:26.63
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:33.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
at at the awful things that he's doing.
00:26:34.15
Stefan
We'll just wait a couple of months.
00:26:36.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
i
00:26:38.04
Stefan
And we'll see. And you know some of them are probably just, oh, boy, maybe he shouldn't have released all the January 6th insurgents. But you know we'll see what happens next. But I think we're at a point where we need to, well, I mean, that's ah it's ah it's a whole complicated issue.
00:26:55.08
Stefan
I'm really looking forward to the midterms. I think there's a point in all this where the rubber hits the road and you bump up into reality. and I think the, I'm not even gonna say democratic institutions, but I think the institutions in the United States are robust enough that we're gonna have elections in two years. And I think the holes the Republicans have on Congress is teeny tiny, and that could easily flip. so And then you know Trump's not an ideologue. He doesn't believe in anything.
00:27:29.58
Stefan
So in some ways it wouldn't surprise me if he like discovered universal health care and thought it was his idea.
00:27:36.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:27:36.14
Stefan
It's Trump care. It's Trump care in the Gulf of Trump.
00:27:37.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
that's
00:27:39.33
Stefan
you And I'm renaming New York.
00:27:40.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, maybe liberals should just start ah saying how much we would hate universal health care and how its insurance is really woke.
00:27:45.62
Stefan
Well, yeah
00:27:49.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
We'd love it.
00:27:51.09
Stefan
well in terms of, in terms of the dialogue though, I think we got to be more open to talking to the, and I know it's painful. And I know it's incredibly difficult, but we gotta be more open to talking to those people who voted for but for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. and and And just try, you know, my main goal, despite shaky hands, has been trying to understand why they did that.
00:28:16.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because they're hateful and cowardly.
00:28:18.84
Stefan
That is, it's a simple explanation.
00:28:22.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
If you believe that trans people go to libraries to read books because they want to molest children, you cannot be reasoned with.
00:28:29.77
Stefan
Not everyone who voted, my point is, yes, everyone who believes that voted for Trump, but not everyone who voted for Trump believes that.
00:28:37.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
But they're fine with that. They're fine with I mean, he, yeah, I don't think we're going to get the country back.
00:28:41.55
Stefan
Yes, no, no, no, I understand. I understand. I understand. But at this point, to take the country back, you can't do it without those people.
00:28:53.33
Stefan
Unless you're going to wait till they die.
00:28:54.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think that was our last chance to save democracy and people gave it to the Brolica.
00:28:57.68
Stefan
Okay, well, i totally I totally disagree with that.
00:29:00.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
I hope you're right, man.
00:29:00.03
Stefan
I totally disagree.
00:29:01.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
I do.
00:29:02.43
Stefan
I mean, I think, you know, Facebook posts, America's dead. You know, the American ideal is gone. I don't think ideals die. I think there's going to be a midterm. I think people just don't act the way we want them to.
00:29:15.32
Stefan
And historically, historically, we've always been like that as a nation.
00:29:15.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Do you don't think, um I mean.
00:29:20.87
Stefan
You know, we're not, you know, what Churchill will say, we we ah but America will always do the right thing after we've run out of all the options. Uh, and we still had an option with Trump. Um, so I remain hopeful. I mean, this isn't like Vietnam where, you know, people were coming back in body bags and had to either flee the country or sign up for the draft. We're in a different place now.
00:29:47.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
wait Wait, dude, I was at my door buzzer earlier. like get I mean don't even remember what day it was. Was it Monday?
00:29:56.09
Stefan
Good Lord.
00:29:56.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
They were looking for the family upstairs and they wanted me to let them in.
00:29:58.25
Stefan
Good Lord. No, I...
00:30:00.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
and and I was like, I don't think the buzzer works.
00:30:01.11
Stefan
I...
00:30:02.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't know my name. I don't think we have an upstairs. like i don't but but i mean it's people First of all, Trump's first term, he bungled COVID over a million Americans ended up dying of it.
00:30:08.22
Stefan
I...
00:30:10.85
Stefan
Yeah.
00:30:15.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
so
00:30:15.96
Stefan
Sure.
00:30:16.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
There are absolutely body bags being hauled around and people are leaving dude I have a friend in Texas who had to send his kids out of the state because one of them is trans and he had He can't be with his kids.
00:30:16.82
Stefan
Sure.
00:30:26.12
Stefan
Yeah. No, no. it I'm not saying it's not and not saying it's not horrible.
00:30:28.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
So Well, but just to say that people are not in real danger right now is incorrect I mean am I misunderstanding you?
00:30:32.76
Stefan
Please don't misunderstand me. I didn't say that. i did I did not say people are not in real danger. I'm saying that it's it's different. American fascism is not going to be you know Nazi Germany fascism. There are lots of differences in the where we are as a country and where the Weimar Republic was as a country. And again, you know, i and I understand, I understand the, I don't want to say defeatism, but I understand the feeling that it's over. I just don't think it is.
00:31:13.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Man, I hope you're right. I think voter suppression is going to be an enormous problem in the midterms because Trump already didn't want to allow mail-in voting, I mean, years ago.
00:31:22.29
Stefan
Yeah.
00:31:22.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's why he fucked up the post office so bad.
00:31:22.76
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:31:25.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Which can I just say, well,
00:31:26.79
Stefan
But then he turned around and everybody, you know, every, you know, and now, now we still, we still have.
00:31:31.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Biden did not do much to fix the post office. And I think that was a big, big fumble. Louis DeJoy is still in charge.
00:31:37.46
Stefan
Well, who to blame on, who to blame Trump on is another question. You know, Biden's on my list.
00:31:41.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:31:43.93
Stefan
um It was Jack Smith's pyre on my list. Because there's no reason it should have taken four years for him to bring charges about the actual crime.
00:31:54.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I have to agree with that.
00:31:56.05
Stefan
Yeah.
00:31:56.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
A lot of balls drop there, Merrick got merrickt Garland.
00:31:57.86
Stefan
And
00:31:58.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, the thing is, we we seem to, we got this idea in our heads that Merrick Garland was this great liberal, liberal and he really wasn't. He was the guy that was supposed to be so centrist that nobody would vote against him, and then they still, you know, that whole clusterfuck.
00:32:14.24
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was the last couple of months of Obama's term.
00:32:21.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, I mean, it was...
00:32:22.22
Stefan
I mean, you can blame Obama in some ways, too. he um let the democratic machine across the country kind of fall apart. He just wasn't into, he just wasn't into it. And one of the reasons some of those people, like in Michigan, didn't vote for Hillary was because he went to, oh, who had the lead pipes?
00:32:41.67
Stefan
The lead in the water.
00:32:41.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Flint? Flint, well, lots of cities, but Flint is the one people know about.
00:32:43.16
Stefan
Flint.
00:32:46.57
Stefan
Well, yeah, yeah, Flint. Well, he went, Obama went to Flint when they knew there was still lead in the water, said to everybody it's fixed, and drank a glass of water and then disappeared.
00:32:59.29
Stefan
And that was it.
00:33:01.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, there's there's still plenty of families in Flint that can't drink their tap water.
00:33:02.03
Stefan
So a lot of people felt betrayed by, yeah, yeah i want yeah where do they where did this where does the fire come out of the faucets? But that anyway, now my my brain's jumping.
00:33:11.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Well, that's a south thing.
00:33:13.31
Stefan
my point yeah Yeah, no, no, and I realized that.
00:33:14.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's that's a fracking thing.
00:33:16.75
Stefan
i just I was thinking of faucets and that's how my brain works. um But my point is, but Obama let a lot of stuff fall apart. And Hillary did not visit many of the states that she lost.
00:33:31.46
Stefan
So there's a lot going on that, you know, not even voter suppression, voters didn't come out. I thought, yeah,
00:33:39.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, voter apathy, obviously, is a huge American problem.
00:33:43.08
Stefan
yeah, but and yet we've had record turnouts at the same time. We've had the most turnouts in the last, I think, three or four elections than we have had you know, I think since World War II or something.
00:33:54.29
Stefan
ah And then, you know, the now I've lost my thread. So so so help me.
00:34:01.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
well
00:34:02.53
Stefan
So my point, you know, I hope you're wrong, you know, about the about what will happen next. I mean, there's already tons of lawsuits against what Trump is doing. and
00:34:12.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. that Well, there have been lawsuits against Trump since the eighties and they haven't really slowed him down.
00:34:18.56
Stefan
Yeah, but these are lawsuits against the Trump administration, and they have slowed him down. I disagree with that. I think that there's several instances where he has been blocked in various ways.
00:34:32.05
Stefan
um
00:34:32.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, he doesn't get to do absolutely everything he wants the second he wants to do it, but I mean,
00:34:37.41
Stefan
Yeah, for starters.
00:34:38.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
People don't even call him out on his lies. We aren't even calling Nazis what they are when they make Nazi salutes.
00:34:44.42
Stefan
Yeah, I think, I mean, okay, so part of the thing is,
00:34:49.67
Stefan
Musk's a Nazi.
00:34:51.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:34:52.10
Stefan
And to prove he's a Nazi, all you have to do is quote him.
00:34:54.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:34:55.67
Stefan
But that photo is a distraction because people can argue people can and do argue about it.
00:35:02.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, if you're only looking at the still photo, but there's there's video, I mean, it's not.
00:35:05.13
Stefan
but yeah no not And I saw both, and you can still argue about it.
00:35:11.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Hmm, I'm not sure that there's a good faith argument against that.
00:35:13.75
Stefan
i' people People do. I mean, there was like a two-page article in the New York Times about the history
00:35:18.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, people do, but that doesn't mean it's a good faith argument. They're shit-talking.
00:35:21.01
Stefan
I didn't say it was a good faith argument, but I'm saying it's an argument that's a distraction.
00:35:26.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
I would agree with that, certainly.
00:35:27.25
Stefan
And, and that all you have to do is just quote him and then stop. Yeah. But I understand how difficult, I mean, they're like posts up about how, you know, I'm never going to forgive you for voting for Trump.
00:35:42.49
Stefan
And as I said earlier, we're going to need some of those people to vote against them. So.
00:35:48.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, ah there are, somebody who voted against, you know, keeping marriages together and I just, I can't get my head around it.
00:35:57.86
Stefan
Sure.
00:35:59.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
I i don't, it's, it.
00:35:59.35
Stefan
I understand. I understand and I sympathize. It's just ultimately not a great strategy.
00:36:07.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I'm not a strategist. I'm just a regular old voter.
00:36:09.30
Stefan
do Fair enough. Fair enough.
00:36:11.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I worked on, I was a Kamala ambassador. And I don't know if you saw any of the posts about what ended up happening because one of the things that happened, ah there was an error and there were postcards sent out with my face on it, but they had my full married name.
00:36:24.90
Stefan
Really? Oh, wow.
00:36:27.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And I was okay with my face going out, but I don't use my married name publicly. Mostly because my husband's family is pretty religious and I'm a sex writer and they were just weird about it.
00:36:36.80
Stefan
Sure.
00:36:37.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I didn't, you know, I just thought it was best to keep those things separate. Well, people from where I graduated from high school, which is a real redneck area, actually not where I graduated, but where I went before that, um, real redneck area.
00:36:51.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I mean, I was getting like threatening phone calls from people. We were going to have ah a party for my husband at the place where my family used to go when I was a kid, like the, you know, the family pizza place.
00:36:55.83
Stefan
sure
00:37:02.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
We were all going to take a drive down there for his birthday. And we were threatened to keep my n-word husband out of their town and just like really vile shit.
00:37:14.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so I think, well, thank you.
00:37:14.19
Stefan
Yeah, no, I'm sorry to, I'm sorry to hear that.
00:37:17.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think that because so much of this has impacted us so personally, I'm just not as willing to say, oh, let's, let's break bread and talk about why you want us all dead.
00:37:24.29
Stefan
Of course, of course.
00:37:30.19
Stefan
I don't think you have to, okay. I mean, I just don't think everyone who voted for Trump wants you dead.
00:37:37.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, no, but they didn't vote against the people that do.
00:37:37.61
Stefan
ah think people are in I think people are, on I think people think people,
00:37:41.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
They they voted for the people who said, you know,
00:37:43.24
Stefan
Yes, yes. but There are different reasons to vote for them that they had or thought they had and I think they can be convinced otherwise. And I think you're talking about, I mean, you' if you're talking about somebody who has a you know belief system of the type you're talking about, yeah, of course. But there are a lot of people who voted for Trump and some of them can be convinced otherwise, obviously, because you know they they voted for Obama and they voted for Biden. So there are other reasons going around, and I'm not thinking, you know, you should have to do this. I certainly understand the emotional difficulty in that. And I you know i just i think it's the only option left, to in and again, in terms of strategy. And if you don't want to be a straegist strategist, I sure as fuck don't blame you.
00:38:34.74
Stefan
uh but there's got this there's there's going to be a way out and and you know when it comes to it when it comes to a lot of immigration you know i'm i'm uh oh i love the term uh yt i hadn't heard that before ah when you first time i saw this when you you posted it no it's cool yeah
00:38:53.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, when will we use the the abbreviation YT? It's just a way of um avoiding the white people as a protected class on Facebook. So you can.
00:39:04.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah and And yeah, it's it's interesting because.
00:39:06.92
Stefan
And so it also, harked for me, it harkened back to Whitey, you know, in Honky.
00:39:09.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:39:10.39
Stefan
And know I was like, oh, that's nice. It's it's making a comeback. um But um'm you know but you know that's me, and I'm living in the biggest bubble in the nation and in Amherst, Massachusetts. you know So I'm not dealing with immigration issues.
00:39:24.25
Stefan
I don't have you know ice people at the door. um And there are some states that are fighting that as well currently. There are tons of lawsuits about that, and we'll see what the courts say about it.
00:39:37.24
Stefan
I don't think all the courts are, are corrupt.
00:39:41.74
Stefan
So I think, you know, I hope you're wrong. I hope I'm right. So yeah.
00:39:47.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that that would be great. It would be great if...
00:39:49.02
Stefan
Yeah. But you know, it surprised me with Harris and I was horrified after Biden's debate performance and I was thrilled when he stepped aside.
00:39:55.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my goodness.
00:39:56.98
Stefan
But, you know, if he hadn't run the fucking first place, when he was going to be a first term, you know, then someone would have gotten the nomination who had more time and the legitimacy of the convention. But what surprised me was I had hoped she would win largely based on the the women and other people who came out in support of yeah abortion rights during the previous elections that stopped all the, or a number of them that stopped all the, you know, abortion bans or some of the, some of the abortion bans. And they didn't show up or they didn't, or they voted for Trump.
00:40:34.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, white women largely voted for Trump and it's so upsetting and disappointing.
00:40:34.58
Stefan
Yeah.
00:40:37.90
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:40.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
And and basically every black person I know is like, you can't possibly be surprised by that.
00:40:40.25
Stefan
I mean, that was, that was my hope, you know, for how it could work.
00:40:48.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I'm like, i I don't know. I don't know if I'm surprised, but man, I am horrified and disappointed because I don't.
00:40:54.17
Stefan
Well, was hard. I was surprised because they did it last time. Yeah. They came out, they came out for the local races, but not for the, you know, the national election.
00:41:03.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it's just that the whole pro-life argument in politics is so false, and I'll probably take some shit for saying this, but i the Republican platform is not a pro-life platform.
00:41:16.86
Stefan
Yeah, no, obviously.
00:41:16.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
You're pretending if you think that they care about the innocent babies, you know?
00:41:21.43
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:22.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
First of all, the phrase innocent babies pisses me off.
00:41:25.66
Stefan
Sure.
00:41:25.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
As but as opposed to what, worldly criminal babies?
00:41:28.78
Stefan
yeah
00:41:29.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
you're You're trying to manipulate people when you use a term like that.
00:41:30.16
Stefan
Well, you yes. Yeah. No, you know completely sympathetic. I mean, on a purely intellectual basis, my feeling is that the federal government doesn't have the right to force anybody to keep themselves connected to anybody else to keep them alive.
00:41:46.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Agree.
00:41:47.55
Stefan
you know, period. I mean, if it was my, if I was connected just to to Jesus by a thing, and if I took that out, Jesus would die up to me. You know, my call.
00:41:57.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well yeah, and the oft-used example is if someone needs one of your organs. You cannot be compelled to give someone your organs because you have body autonomy.
00:42:06.40
Stefan
Yeah, yeah. And you know, and and past that, if you have a religious objection to it, yeah that's that that's on you. But in a, in a society, a functioning society, you know, it's just,
00:42:17.51
Stefan
It's a basic right to have that autonomy over your own freaking body.
00:42:18.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it's just that what we're It seems very transparent to me.
00:42:22.08
Stefan
like yeah We've got a field from zombies. yeah I do want to say something about the the thing here. I'm watching the screen, and every time you talk, there's a little waveform that shows up, but I don't have that.
00:42:29.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Uh-huh.
00:42:37.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, I'm seeing yours.
00:42:38.72
Stefan
Okay, then we're cool. All right.
00:42:39.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yeah, I'm seeing yours. I would have brought it up if if we weren't.
00:42:43.54
Stefan
Okay.
00:42:43.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
um but yeah like What I'm seeing in politics, like this is really only the second generation of men that had to find women to be in their lives like legitimately.
00:42:54.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Not that a woman needed a man so she could have a bank account or buy a house. or You know, own property or, you know, anything like that.
00:43:01.22
Stefan
Have a credit card!
00:43:02.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
We don't, and society is now set up so that we don't necessarily need men, even though there's like a wage gap and there's, you know, a little bit of of legal discrepancy between genders.
00:43:14.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Men are terrified. You hear all about this loneliness epidemic and these men can't find wives or girlfriends. Like, no, of course you can't. You're listening to Joe Rogan and the the other guy, the sex trafficker, what's his name?
00:43:29.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Andrew Tate, you know, and they're listening to these men that tell them to be like super selfish and dickish and that you're the prize and you don't have to treat women well.
00:43:29.72
Stefan
Yeah.
00:43:32.65
Stefan
Yeah.
00:43:39.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, they love that shit or, you know, all this weird stuff. but treating women like they're a different species you know not like oh it's a person you want to have a relationship with a person we'll go introduce yourself you know and it's not that like the whole pick up lines thing is just so weird to me like let me think of a clever lie to get your attention like yeah well but you know I'm i'm on
00:43:47.23
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:52.09
Stefan
yeah
00:44:02.14
Stefan
Well, that's old, you know. it That's a long time story. Yeah.
00:44:08.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was not on the dating scene for a long time and I mean I'm married and everything but I do dating apps I like meet new people and it's crazy it is insane the things that grown-ass men will say to get you to like you know all that there I don't
00:44:26.73
Stefan
Yeah, it's it's a total puzzle. I mean, I've been married for over 33 years now, I think. And it's ah i'm so I'm completely unaware of the dating scene. And it it just all strikes me as ah as a terrific puzzle. I mean, you'd think it'd be easier to find somebody that you were actually compatible with because of the way different ways you can talk to people. And say say you get the dick pics, you know. and but But, you know, that's, of course that kind of thing gets amplified more. But you probably have a better sense of how common it is than I do. I tend to not,
00:45:01.18
Stefan
Trust the megaphone of social media. I mean, I think it's a...
00:45:07.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, the loudest people aren't always the right ones, but you know.
00:45:10.14
Stefan
No, but they're the ones you notice, you know, and they one they're the ones you didn' wind up talking about, you know, and I think nice people are still meeting each other, you know, and maybe I'm kidding myself, but...
00:45:11.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, definitely.
00:45:19.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, no, I mean, i'm I'm definitely making friends, but I'm also seeing things that are just horrifying, you know?
00:45:25.80
Stefan
Sure.
00:45:26.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
um So I want to get into um your diagnosis a little bit. Now, I'm aware that you live with, um is it ADD or do you have ADHD?
00:45:35.91
Stefan
I don't even know the difference. I think one's a subset of the other, isn't it?
00:45:38.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, one comes with hyperactivity and is likely, I mean, it's it's kind of like that
00:45:42.16
Stefan
Probably the hyperactive one, but yeah.
00:45:44.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it it seems sort of like the difference between having depression and being bipolar that like sometimes there's a real high energy part of it and not everybody gets that. and
00:45:55.65
Stefan
i don't think I don't think I'm i'm bipolar. I mean, i know by but I know bipolar people, and I don't have the same swings.
00:46:03.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, lucky you.
00:46:03.96
Stefan
you know Yeah, and well, I'm very lucky in a lot of ways. I mean, no doubt. um I can get hyper and have that that kind of energy. And if you look at the 16 millimeter films of me when I was a kid, I'm always i'm in constant motion, running around like crazy. um But it wasn't a... yeah The ADD or ADHD wasn't a diagnosis for me until we moved here and I actually sought it out because it started dawning on me
00:46:34.64
Stefan
that yeah something was wrong that could perhaps be treated. For me, one of the biggest manifestations of it, it doesn't mean you can't pay attention to something. um I can write novels, I can sit down for eight hours and do something. It means you cannot
00:46:53.79
Stefan
Pay attention to things that that part of you doesn't want to. You can't choose what to pay attention to. And the busy biggest example for me is if you're sitting with me in a car and I say, you know, when do I make my next turn?
00:47:05.54
Stefan
And you say two blocks and make it right. I will five seconds later ask you the same question. But is it this one? Is this one? Is it this one?
00:47:14.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:47:15.81
Stefan
And by then, you know, something dawned on me something was going on and I started reading about the uh you know the symptoms from adult onset and I probably have yes yes I wish I'd had Ritalin in high school um no more so in college I probably would have uh I think my depression is related to my uh ADD and because I also kind of tend to lock on to things and like you know someone else might give it get over a a broken romantic relationship in three months and for me it would be like a year and a half
00:47:26.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you went all through school without a diagnosis.
00:47:51.78
Stefan
And I'd be you know depressed and and very, very hard for me to to get out there and working about.
00:47:55.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well when you're smart and creative, it's easy to become frustrated and disappointed with yourself when your brain doesn't cooperate with all the things that you want to do.
00:48:05.75
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, no that's that's certainly true. i tend to I tend to kind of follow it like a roller coaster. I mean, I had to stop. i I just want to make this side reference since we talk about horror. There's a section in the Exorcist, the book, which I love.
00:48:21.42
Stefan
where they want to give Reagan a ritalin. And they say, ah you know, it's it seems like a contradiction because it's a stimulant, but it actually manages to calm people with similar conditions, not being possession, down. And for all my life, I had such sort of an internal dialogue, you know, not schizophrenic voices in my head. We can talk about that later. I've never heard voices, but yeah kind of like a call and response thing going on.
00:48:49.77
Stefan
And the first time I took methylin, which is the generic version of Ritalin, the conversation stopped. It was like one side caught up with the other. And I was in front of myself.
00:49:03.16
Stefan
I wasn't like stuck inside myself.
00:49:05.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:49:06.07
Stefan
And that was that was ah that was a revelation. I had found my drug, yeah as it were. And that enabled me to focus. And I was on it for about 15 years until my high blood pressure I had to stop, so I haven't been on it for, I think, the last three or four years.
00:49:24.44
Stefan
And, you know, i i'm I'm older, I'm 66, and you get used to, i I think some people do anyway, get more used to who they are. So, you know, nowadays I handle it more by, I will type for five minutes and then I'll walk around the house.
00:49:38.77
Stefan
And then I'll, you know, come back and start typing again, or working on something.
00:49:38.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:49:42.97
Stefan
So it's, so or, you know, i'll i'll so I'll head one place and i'll i'll I'll do the dishes on the way, you know. So that's more, you know, learning to live in my body, but Ritalin was vitalin was a godsend and i wish ah I wish I'd had it in college.
00:49:57.69
Stefan
um And I think the depression is more sort of related to the to the ADD, but I still get like, you know, I guess morning blues. And I was on Well Butrin, which is chemically related to Ritalin, so supposedly they work together.
00:50:14.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Is it?
00:50:14.51
Stefan
um Yeah.
00:50:16.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow, I took well butrin years ago because my doctor didn't believe me when I said I was bipolar. He thought I just had depression and he gave me well butrin, which sent me into crazy, crazy amounts of mania.
00:50:23.41
Stefan
ah
00:50:30.36
Stefan
Wow. Well, yeah, you're free yes so youre you're you're probably bipolar. ah Isn't it great when doctors do that to you? You say, no, you know my daughter has OCD and she runs into the same problems.
00:50:38.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well,
00:50:41.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, being a woman and going to a male doctor, that is an ongoing, you know.
00:50:41.19
Stefan
but people Oh, with female doctors, too, with female psychiatrists. as I think you're anxious. I'm going to give you this. yeah And it's like, no, no.
00:50:51.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and and a rush to medicate people is is often, I mean, yes, people can and are helped by medication. I certainly am.
00:50:59.87
Stefan
Yeah.
00:51:00.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
But someone who hardly knows you shouldn't be prescribing you a medication. Like, that's terrifying.
00:51:05.56
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of abuse about it. And, you know, when, you know, when I first heard about Reland and all that stuff, I, my initial impression was was that it was intensely overprescribed and, you know, they were just kind of taking kids who were being kids and, you know, stuffing drugs down their face. And then a friend of mine said, look,
00:51:25.68
Stefan
I understand where you're coming from. I felt the same way. But I know my son can now you know sit down and read a book or you know do his do his homework. and he's not on And he's happy about that. So it it worked for him. And he had some some people have issues and some people the drugs work for. So I think there's overprescribing. I think there's reason to distrust doctors, except in the case of vaccines.
00:51:53.43
Stefan
um
00:51:54.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
it's important to just advocate for your own health, because doctors like to say that thing.
00:51:57.36
Stefan
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
00:51:59.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, they'll say, oh, well, you know, you googling this isn't the same as going to medical school. And and that's true. That's a that's a valid stance that if you Google something, but at the same time, me living with something for 20 years is not the same as you taking a weekend seminar about it, doctor.
00:52:08.30
Stefan
well he yeah
00:52:16.76
Stefan
yeah know yeah And Maya has the same problems with her OCD. She's been trying to get a methylene prescription. They don't want to give it to her because she's taken it and it helps her. but
00:52:25.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:52:25.38
Stefan
don um So that, that could also possibly be related to that, but it depends on where you live and how you're being treated by your doctors and what, what you have, what you're forced to put it up with or what you in some instances choose to put up with.
00:52:39.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and what your insurance will cover.
00:52:39.38
Stefan
And I'll give you an idea how they treat. I'm sorry, what?
00:52:42.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then there's what your insurance will cover.
00:52:44.49
Stefan
Oh yeah, God. Um, that's a whole other two hour conversation, but, um, but to give you an example about how things are different here at Emerson, I went in for a tooth cleaning and it was kind of like, it wasn't like a public
00:52:47.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:52:58.71
Stefan
situation but there was another chair like beyond the stack of books and things where they were doing another cleaning and the woman there was into the the the cleaner said you know we'd like to give you a like a fluoride treatment since you haven't been to the dentist in a long time just you know basically spray some on your teeth and she said i I'm from an anti-fluoride home of upbringing or background ah so I don't will will it hurt me and rather than saying You know, every goddamn state has fluoride in the water, and the only one that doesn't, Hawaii, has the worst tooth decay in the nation.
00:53:33.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, they do.
00:53:34.53
Stefan
Yeah. ah She said, well, what you may have read about, true or not, is ingesting it, and we're just painting it on the surface of your teeth.
00:53:47.36
Stefan
So even then, it wouldn't get in. So even if there is something wrong with it, which there isn't, and and she took the fluoride treatment, you know?
00:53:55.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, neat.
00:53:55.97
Stefan
So there's there there's ah just the most respectful dentist I've ever been to. you know like And so it worked. And it was and and was someone who listened you know and had the right response for that person.
00:54:09.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and yeah you're right.
00:54:10.18
Stefan
no
00:54:10.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
That does go back to your earlier point about reaching out and like having the conversation with people.
00:54:16.96
Stefan
Yeah, God knows it's not easy.
00:54:17.66
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I wish that I had that kind of patience because i I do, you know, I have that whole issue with Don Jr.
00:54:19.05
Stefan
you know
00:54:25.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I spend a lot of time talking to MAGA people online and usually like, you know, when they're done telling me that they think I'm ugly and they don't want to sleep with me or whatever, they we we do end up talking about political things.
00:54:25.98
Stefan
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.
00:54:39.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And it often seems to come back to, well, we hate you because you're deviance and you're dangerous and you want to hurt children. It it's so often goes back to being suckered by this Nazi ass propaganda.
00:54:49.98
Stefan
Sure.
00:54:54.31
Stefan
Sure.
00:54:54.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, people used to know that Rick Santorum and and all the things he thought were a frigging joke and they seem to have forgotten. And I don't know why that happens.
00:55:03.13
Stefan
Well, yeah I mean, you're putting yourself in a position for good or ill where you're talking to some of the worst aspects of our society. you know It's like my mother, my mom yeah I love my mother.
00:55:16.23
Stefan
She had a terrific sense of humor. She's a wonderful human being. She's also a racist. She you know she thought that yeah if it was a smart black person, it was because they had white blood at some point.
00:55:23.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh jesus
00:55:25.43
Stefan
but ah and you know And she was a um probation officer in Queens. So all of the people of color she met, and she met many because there weren't a lot of white people coming to her office, were criminals.
00:55:43.92
Stefan
So, you know, surrounded by that kind of reinforcement, you know, it doesn't create a huge opportunity you know for change.
00:55:48.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, Jesus Christ.
00:55:53.57
Stefan
And I don't know that, I don't, I'm not saying your situation is like that, but if you're going out and talking to MAGA people all the time, I'd go crazy. I mean, I wouldn't last a week. I curl up and a fetal thing under the desk.
00:56:04.31
Stefan
I just, and I cure it in my feed differently.
00:56:04.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I'll tell you, I tried to be untruth social.
00:56:07.16
Stefan
So everybody says, my God, the Nazis are talking to me on Facebook. I'm not seeing them. I'm seeing pictures by Botticelli from the, you know, museum or whatever, you know, and it's common. But like,
00:56:19.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's the only time in my life I ever made a fake account, or I was like, not myself.
00:56:19.32
Stefan
well,
00:56:23.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was a different person.
00:56:25.25
Stefan
Sure.
00:56:25.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I went untruth social as a white man, and I just started misspelling everything and seeming angry. Cause well, my plan, cause you know, I, I, my first book about dungeon, my first president son book that is not about anyone we know came out in, in 2020.
00:56:42.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
And so I went on truth social to market it. I was going to pretend to be outraged by it and see if I could get MAGA people.
00:56:48.48
Stefan
Oh, Jillian, brilliant.
00:56:49.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Right.
00:56:50.80
Stefan
you're you're you're You're a stronger person than I am.
00:56:52.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Dude, I couldn't do it.
00:56:52.84
Stefan
thats
00:56:54.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was on truth social for about a week and a half.
00:56:54.58
Stefan
ah
00:56:56.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
And every time I went on there, they were talking about killing people every time.
00:56:57.01
Stefan
Yeah.
00:57:00.92
Stefan
ah just like it It utterly drains you. yeah On Facebook, when i ah yeah when when Trump was running the first time, twenty s so i those um I had a massive purge of anybody who remotely said anything kind about him.
00:57:11.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:57:13.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:57:15.12
Stefan
It's like, you're gone, you're gone, you're gone. ah But you know and since then, he won again. So there's a new problem. and um aye would, if I did this every day hour upon hour, I, yeah like I said, I'd be in a fetal ball and on under the desk. But, you know, I have occasional conversations where I think the other person is being remotely reasonable. I recently had a big back and forth with a fan of my work who does not believe in evolution.
00:57:44.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh geez, how does that even work?
00:57:47.48
Stefan
Well, with great difficulty, because he said, there's no evidence of this. And I would say, well, yeah, there is evidence of this. And if there's no evidence of this, and I'd be like, well, yeah, there is the evidence of this. I mean, you know, ultimately it wound up.
00:57:58.25
Stefan
Yeah, I did not convince him to believe in evolution, but the conversation itself was not vitriolic. Is that a word?
00:58:04.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
but Vitriolic? Vitraulic?
00:58:06.45
Stefan
Vitri, vitriolic. It wasn't mean, you know? I mean, I had conversations with people on the left who call me a, neonazi you know, call me a Nazi supporter because I'm not towing, you know, the party line exactly the way they wanted to.
00:58:17.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah, I've been called a colonizer, which makes me laugh because I've never owned property in my life.
00:58:17.20
Stefan
it We are famous. Oh, yeah. Sure. We are incredibly famous for our circular firing squad. you know And what ends up happening is there's only two of you left.
00:58:29.27
Stefan
um So you know i I try to find the middle ground, but I don't do this every day. you know It was very hard for me not to say, what the fuck is wrong with you?
00:58:36.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I used to.
00:58:39.92
Stefan
How can you not believe in evolution? you know What kind of an idiot are you? And that kind of opening stance does not lead to a good conversation.
00:58:48.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know what, though? What if you're genuinely curious to know what kind of idiot they are? Because I am fascinated by that.
00:58:53.36
Stefan
Well, then but that's not the way to find out.
00:58:55.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
but
00:58:55.71
Stefan
but The way to find out what kind of an idiot someone is is not to say what kind of idiot are you. yeah But they're not going to answer that question.
00:59:01.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
But it's so straightforward. They like being straightforward. They like telling it like it is, right? that's I do.
00:59:08.97
Stefan
You know what I'm saying.
00:59:10.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
I do know what you're saying. um
00:59:13.01
Stefan
And mode moderation has become increasingly difficult over the years. yeah
00:59:16.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, I just get so carried away with it.
00:59:21.13
Stefan
No, i and i I understand and you you have my sympathies. so
00:59:26.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you also were saying that you live with depression and um like, it sounds like you're not medicated for that right now. Is that correct?
00:59:35.59
Stefan
i'm most I'm only medicated for my for my blood pressure. sir Oh, cool.
00:59:40.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
i say Well, a lot of times, though, with with ah high blood pressure, they'll give you beta blockers, which do have mental health benefits as well for things like anxiety, which can, you know, exacerbate depression.
00:59:50.29
Stefan
but i don't think
00:59:54.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
So.
00:59:54.86
Stefan
I'm on three different medications. I don't think any of them are beta blockers. And now I have and now i can barely move. and yeah my My blood pressure is like 120 or something like that.
01:00:02.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, nice.
01:00:06.08
Stefan
I usually like to be in a room where people do their blood pressure, because mine's usually the lowest. It's nice, but I feel healthier in my 60s than I did in my 50s physically.
01:00:18.80
Stefan
So that's great. but
01:00:20.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:00:22.43
Stefan
you know i i
01:00:22.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:00:23.92
Stefan
miss the well butrin for my depression and i miss the uh... and certainly mister ritalin but i've looked like i said i've learned to live with both i mean for the depression now i take cbd like i got like cbd gummies which is the there's a part of the the you know the marijuana plant that does not make you stone and as uh...
01:00:35.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice. Yes, I am aware.
01:00:41.94
Stefan
well and in case our listeners out there uh...
01:00:45.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Any regular listener here, I think, will know a lot about weed, but yeah.
01:00:48.40
Stefan
and believe me i i don't need hallucinogenic drugs i just have to be me um So, and, and that, and that works. I mean, and it's, it's down to like, like occasional morning blues where I'll stare out the window.
01:01:00.34
Stefan
Although, you know, things have been going well lately. So I haven't, you know, some of my depression is situational. It's more like the extent I, to which I react or overreact to things that makes it more like, and yeah I wouldn't even say chronic depression, but long lasting.
01:01:16.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, if it's first thing in the morning, it could even be related to blood sugar.
01:01:20.91
Stefan
Yeah, I don't think it is. Um, doesn't feel that way. It's it's a very, um, you know how it works. Sometimes you just, if you're, if your body's depressed, your brain's depressed, you'll look around for something to connect to it.
01:01:32.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
o
01:01:35.17
Stefan
And one of the hardest things was to not learn to connect it to something, to just think of it as free floating and then try to work my way through it. But it was like, you know, I went on Wellbutrin after my ah youngest daughter went to college because I would wake up and make her breakfast every morning.
01:01:52.52
Stefan
And we would talk.
01:01:52.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Aww.
01:01:53.62
Stefan
And then I didn't have anything to do, you know? And she was was, you know, she was gone. I missed her, but I also, this big structural thing in my life was gone. And that was depressing.
01:02:04.87
Stefan
And that's, that's when I went on, you know, but so that was in the morning too, possibly because that's when I made her breakfast. But that's when I went on the, on the well butrin in addition to the, in addition to the ritalin.
01:02:15.68
Stefan
And it helped. It helped for a long time. It, there's a certain, artificial quality to the brain states it creates, but I'd never felt like I wasn't me like some people do, or that I'd been robbed of my highs or lows or anything of the sort.
01:02:32.55
Stefan
The focus was, it was like, i you know, it was literally like I could focus on things, whatever I wanted to, you know, rather than only things that I could wind up obsessing about.
01:02:32.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Interesting.
01:02:44.70
Stefan
And I tend to be an obsessive worker with like novels and my videos and things like that, or back in the old days with my videos. I mean, I'll so i'll grab it and then hold on to it until it's until it's finished.
01:02:56.01
Stefan
Which is, well, you're great in some ways for a novelist, but doesn't necessarily speak to your balanced emotional health.
01:03:01.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
01:03:03.74
Stefan
My brother-in-law Chris says if he's ever in a rowboat, he'd want to be in the middle of the ocean, he'd want to be there with me because he'd know I would never give up. but I would just keep growing no matter what until, you know.
01:03:14.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. What an amazing compliment.
01:03:18.43
Stefan
Yeah, yeah. I was pleased. But it's, you know, your superpower could also be your super weakness. Sometimes it's important to let go of things.
01:03:27.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes. Well, you know, on that note, um, you have, uh, you describe yourself as having an acute schizophrenic reaction, uh, to, yeah.
01:03:29.76
Stefan
Is it? Yeah.
01:03:36.65
Stefan
When my father died, that was, that's, a um that's complicated. My father was an alcoholic. Um, he was, um, emotionally abusive, uh, physically abusive to our dog.
01:03:52.34
Stefan
Um, and I was living with him, but when we would, while I was living with him is his, he would still get drunk, but he wouldn't scream or anything.
01:03:52.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh.
01:04:00.47
Stefan
He would just kind of fall asleep. And, uh, when I, and we were very close, he was, he was also brilliant and would crawl across fire and burned glass to help.
01:04:12.30
Stefan
But in the throes of his disease, he would, you know, I'd find a bottle somewhere and he'd say, I put that there to know, to prove that you were trying to test me and that you were betraying me, you know, that kind of crap.
01:04:22.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nah.
01:04:23.89
Stefan
So, was you know, gaslighting before it was a popular term.
01:04:27.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:04:27.49
Stefan
My mother would gaslight me too. She would buy, you know, she'd buy corn beef and then she insists insist that I love corned beef. And I hated corned beef, but she would tell me, anyway, mom was funny and that's a whole other story.
01:04:39.15
Stefan
So I was living with my father. and went to college and left him alone. And within a year he was dead, acute pancreatitis. And I didn't visit him as much as I thought perhaps I should because yeah whenever I called him he was drunk and it was very uncomfortable for me. And I was free, I was in college as I got out of there. And when he died, and I'm not saying this particular sentence caused my nervous breakdown, but my mother basically said, you know, you kept him alive.
01:05:11.18
Stefan
And she meant it as sort of like, I did a good thing, but I'm thinking yeah all of 18 or whatever the hell I was. Oh, I killed him.
01:05:20.86
Stefan
And I add that to the, you know, and this is the guy, and you know, nobody's perfect.
01:05:20.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh geez, what a thing to live with.
01:05:25.41
Stefan
My dad was an alcoholic, but he was one of the most, he was the most important person in my life. And it was like having my soul hit by a Mack truck.
01:05:36.60
Stefan
And I, I didn't sleep, I had delusions, some of them were fun delusions, like the Beatles had reunited to save me, by and they were playing on the roof.
01:05:47.78
Stefan
Others were, you know, the the mafia bought me this coat to to keep an eye on me, you know, that kind of thing. And I was i wasn't kicked out of school, I was taken away from school, and brought to my mother's house, which is probably the last place in the world I would have wanted to live, but I was stuck there, and put on foraging.
01:06:02.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
01:06:06.91
Stefan
and ah It was revelatory in a lot of different ways. I think the chief of which that plays into some of the themes of my writing and certainly my latest book, which is an odd place to insert a promotional statement, that the self, which we like to think of as impermeable and a beautiful soul that exists unto itself, can actually be broken, that it has pieces and it cannot work for a while.
01:06:33.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
01:06:36.77
Stefan
And that's literally what it felt like. I mean, people have asked me to describe it. The closest I could come up to come to is if you've ever been half awake and half asleep, half in dream and half waking, and you could not either wake up or fall asleep, and it was intensely uncomfortable. And that's what it felt like. Like I was i was you know trapped between these two things and couldn't go one way or the other.
01:07:05.37
Stefan
But, you know, and yeah yeah in time, I recovered. I think the reason I recovered was to get the hell out of my mother's house. So I decided to, you know, I'll behave sane. And, you know, eventually, you know.
01:07:15.61
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, let's not gloss over that, though. you You recovered. I mean, how did you do that? it it it was Was it just time?
01:07:22.11
Stefan
Well, time, you know, a lot of it well grief is a tricky thing and people you know deal with it in different ways. And I could say it was a conscious decision to behave sanely.
01:07:34.21
Stefan
and And to an extent it was, but it was really just, it was, you know, sleeping and waiting and and and time. Because you get hit by a Mack truck and then your body starts to heal. And, you know, in my case, the self healed. But, you know, ah the some of the sensations from it lasted for years. And that's, it wasn't until many years later when my best friend and woman I was seeing wound up engaged.
01:08:04.55
Stefan
Like after two weeks, it was like this bizarre, it was bizarre.
01:08:06.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
What?
01:08:07.59
Stefan
I know my life is like that. It was this bizarre, hyper, sobobber thing.
01:08:09.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
holy
01:08:11.12
Stefan
And I felt this intense depression and I bottomed out and then I realized I wasn't gonna go crazy again because I hit bottom and I was still sane, you know, or as close to it as one gets.
01:08:20.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:08:27.57
Stefan
So, but, you know, but but that that that was years later. um I wanted to get back to some of the things I started feeling at the time while I was still in school before they had taken me out, before it got too crazy. so In this numb state, I started listening to people and liked listening to people because I didn't want to feel what I was feeling or hear what was was going on in my own head, so I kind of developed this hyper focus on people. And I didn't start hearing voices in the sets of schizophrenic voices that are disembodied head, but I started
01:09:01.91
Stefan
when When you sit and listen to someone for long enough, they'll start self-narrating.
01:09:05.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mmhmm.
01:09:06.14
Stefan
They'll talk to themselves. And I started noticing that in this process, they would use different voices. Like, ah usually you my roommate says this, my mother says this, my mother says that, but without the attributions.
01:09:19.12
Stefan
Like, should I do this? Should I do that? Am I feeling this? And they started striking me as literally different voices. Like, this is something they remembered their mother said.
01:09:26.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
01:09:28.77
Stefan
This is something they their father said. And then I started being a crazed intellectual creative that I was. I started wondering, you know, I started hearing these things everywhere from different people when they spoke, and I could kind of parse it out. In some cases, it's not like when somebody says, good morning, what time is it? You know, you're not going to say, oh, that was a xenon from Greece, and or that kind of thing. But I started wondering, you know, how old some of those voices might be. You know, how long they'd been around. Some of them probably lasted a long time and floated around to either and how they operated in the sense of archetypes. And some of them are probably ancient. And people are probably in saying things like that to themselves about themselves for thousands of years. Or sometimes it'd be like a week ago. you know Andy Worrell's 15 minute fame, and except as it applies to archetypes. And that became the basis for both my first novel and The Stars Within, which is which is also a space opera.
01:10:26.89
Stefan
But that's very directly connected to my experiences during my, you know, the doc, the family doctor and the the first psychiatrist I visited called it an acute schizophrenic reaction in relation to to to grief.
01:10:41.51
Stefan
But they were making shit up, you know.
01:10:43.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, they're all they're all guessing.
01:10:43.89
Stefan
They didn't, yeah yeah well more more so more so in 1977 than, you know, or 1978.
01:10:45.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's it's all about the best guess.
01:10:51.31
Stefan
77, 78, that's around when it happened. Then now, I hope, you know, and they didn't have the same collection of drugs, so I got i got the horse tranquilizer. So, God, i went I couldn't wait to get off that stuff. So, and it was the right onset age for schizophrenia, but I didn't have those, the right symptoms for it. I didn't hear outside voices, and my delusions were, you know, passing. It was kind of like being, and like again, it was kind of more like being half asleep.
01:11:26.05
Stefan
you know You realize this isn't happening, but you're wondering if it's happening, kind of a thing.
01:11:30.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
OK, so how does that ah lend itself to the premise of the stars within?
01:11:30.77
Stefan
and
01:11:37.78
Stefan
So, okay, it starts within, is ah it's a space opera on the surface. And I can go into the plot on that. It's it's a rollicking, adventury, space, you know, fight, pew, pew, pew. It's also kind of a deconstruction of the chosen one. But the underlying argument from some of the characters and some of the belief systems is that the the gods are real, but they're part of ourselves. They're these archetypes, these voices. And the part that I did not believe even when I was hearing the voices is that that they're they're conscious at times, kind of like occasional gods that control things or rather steer them, kind of like the murmuration of birds in particular directions.
01:12:23.38
Stefan
in the same way that narratives determine your choices. You know, if you're the hero, you have to do this, or you have these two choices, as opposed to just kind of, you know, screwing it all and heading down south for the winter or whatever. And so they they they funnel sort of human events in certain ways. And then it starts with, the one that there's I've got a little page prepared on the basic plot of it.
01:12:51.00
Stefan
But it's rather than a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It's a long, long time from now in this very galaxy. And there's a couple of space empires, and there's a, these, arccosian the empires are aggressive atheists.
01:13:08.19
Stefan
they They're not like our atheists. They're more like based on the French Revolution.
01:13:13.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:13:14.97
Stefan
And they're hell-bent hellbent on spreading their atheism and enlightenment throughout the galaxy, whether various cultures want it or not. As a result, um there are different worlds that have different beliefs and in different gods.
01:13:24.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Rude.
01:13:30.69
Stefan
And they fight with each other because gods hate each other. And people would believe different beliefs, you know fight each other like crazy. But they wind up having to band together in order to fight the expansionist Arcosians.
01:13:43.32
Stefan
So they form this very uneasy alliance called the Pantheon. And yeah one of the story events that happens at the very beginning is that somebody finds this weapon on earth that puts the Arcosian expansion on steroids. So it makes everything much more fraught. But there's also this guy on Arcosia who's a great art a great thinker who's trying to find it um a middle path, as it were, that makes everybody hate him. And his his his argument is that you the gods are real, but date what we think of as ourself and our souls is in fact malleable, comes in pieces,
01:14:16.00
Stefan
And we we're only cognizant of a small bit of it, whereas these archetypes, which can be conscious, are like those gods, except they're not necessarily external. They don't exist without us. Sort of a thing. So the the the most of the believer planets hate this guy because he's he's saying that the gods are not you know external. And the Arkosians consider him an apologist.
01:14:44.73
Stefan
So he winds up you know ostracized. But that's just a very small part of the book, and that's how it relates to that specific issue.
01:14:51.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Jeez, that is huge. I mean, first of all, that's like mind bending because it's really high concept, but it also sounds like a really digestible, like a fun story that you're going to be into for the story.
01:15:01.19
Stefan
Thank you. I mean, that's that's not even the story.
01:15:05.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
But yet.
01:15:06.78
Stefan
you know I mean, the story follows this one kid who thinks he's the chosen one because his mother told him he was. I don't call him the chosen one. It's called the world soul. um And everybody's wrong, you know. It's one of the one of the themes of the book. I mean, you know, one of my feelings is in terms of basic principles and such. And you'd ask the question in the questionnaire about my atheism. And my my basic premise is that in reality, you know, the map is never the terrain. And all we have are maps, whether it's the map that our senses provide or belief systems or our expectations.
01:15:43.00
Stefan
And, you know, you can never get to the reality. All you see is you're just stuck with maps. So along those lines, my personal belief is that, well, that's my first principle. I mean, that's everything else flows from that. But in terms of atheism, agnosticism, belief in things like that, and here's ah that that horrible kind of compromise again. um I believe that I came out of something vastly bigger and more complicated than I am.
01:16:12.73
Stefan
and that um in some sense the distinction between myself and it is an illusion and that eventually that illusion is going to disappear and I'll be back as part of that. I do not think that thing plans its day around me but I know that I have to plan my day around it and if you want to call it God I don't object to that, and if you don't, I don't object to that either. But I don't i certainly don't believe in a god in the sense of some man, woman, or anything, or a principal in a chair telling you to do this, this, this, and this. So that's my complicated and answer about agnosticism and atheism.
01:16:55.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but you've actually been in situations where you were like judged and ostracized for being an atheist.
01:17:01.73
Stefan
Yeah, when I was 15. I'm 66 now. so And they were, they were kind of, that was kind of a comic thing. And and it was it wasn't funny because they were really going to beat me up.
01:17:11.99
Stefan
It was, hey boys, we got an atheist here. So, yeah.
01:17:15.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
My loving God wants me to kick your ass, sir.
01:17:18.52
Stefan
yeah the Yeah, yeah. So there's a, there's a simplicity. We don't like no atheists around here. Yeah. So there's a kind of you know comic book simplicity to it that, and I imagine there are too a lot of the manga people you run in, that they have that kind of similar, unsubtle personalities, shall we say.
01:17:26.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
We don't take kindly.
01:17:37.33
Stefan
But, you know, that that that's endemic. um I kind of lost my thread. Did I have a thread? Did I get somewhere?
01:17:43.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, we were talking about ah the difference between, like I guess you were saying being an apologist versus trying to understand everyone or or trying to compromise.
01:17:57.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Was was the theme there?
01:17:57.79
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was the book. Yeah. And I guess, you know, that' that's you know me trying to understand Trump voters is related to that.
01:18:06.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, very much so. Because I'm listening to it like, oh, I'm frustrated with this. But yeah, I could, I could see that.
01:18:12.76
Stefan
Yeah.
01:18:14.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because, um, yeah, that that's huge. Now I'm really excited to read it.
01:18:20.24
Stefan
Oh, cool. Good. Well, then my job here is done.
01:18:23.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
but
01:18:25.73
Stefan
Took me seven years. there's a
01:18:27.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that's a lot. I've certainly, I mean, the current thing I'm working on feels like it's been that long, but seven years, damn, I have not spent seven years on a single project yet.
01:18:36.70
Stefan
I well it go to went through several iterations.
01:18:36.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Not, not a book.
01:18:39.64
Stefan
you It was originally a fantasy novel. Now it's kind of like a cross between Star Wars and the Game of Thrones.
01:18:45.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Neat.
01:18:45.96
Stefan
And I'm usually a very fast one of needs be a very fast writer. I think the fastest turnaround I did on a novel was three weeks because it was the Wicked Dead series and they had rejected.
01:18:53.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
Damn.
01:18:56.37
Stefan
That was a pain in the ass. Anyway, they had rejected it because they did, they wanted me to change the ending. And then she said, look, you're either going to change the ending so that all the people don't die or the bad people don't win.
01:19:09.58
Stefan
or you've got to write a new novel in three weeks. And I said, all right, I'll write a new one.
01:19:12.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:19:14.12
Stefan
So, you know, typically, but you know, yeah, yeah.
01:19:14.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, spite is a great motivator.
01:19:19.80
Stefan
It was never published. It was only the first five volumes of Wicked Dead were published.
01:19:21.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, damn.
01:19:25.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
01:19:25.80
Stefan
Well,
01:19:29.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
That, damn. I'm trying to get my head around that now.
01:19:32.53
Stefan
i've had i've had I've had lots of works that were in that weren't published. I mean, I think that's just endemic with being a writer for, you know, What, 40 years now, I think? Professionally?
01:19:42.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow. Yeah, I have a friend who does, uh, she's an illustrator, but she does her own, like does graphic novels now.
01:19:49.31
Stefan
Mm-hmm.
01:19:49.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
And she just had a thing come out and it's just huge. She does, um, yeah, nothing special.
01:19:52.57
Stefan
Oh, great.
01:19:54.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's called the comic.
01:19:56.15
Stefan
Great title.
01:19:57.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
But yeah, oh and it's, it's marvelous.
01:19:57.41
Stefan
I don't...
01:19:59.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's just so like, I mean, it's, it's sort of a YA thing, but it's kind of for everyone. but she she'll be on my show eventually, so you'll get to hear about it.
01:20:04.41
Stefan
Yeah.
01:20:07.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
um So if somebody is completely unfamiliar with your work, where's the best place for them to start?
01:20:07.92
Stefan
Actually,
01:20:14.80
Stefan
Well, with the stars with it.
01:20:16.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, that this one?
01:20:17.37
Stefan
With the new one, yeah.
01:20:19.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:20:19.50
Stefan
but um You know, it's the one that's most on my mind. It depends on your proclivities. I mean, if you're're you're more of a horror fan and you have dead men walking, I guess.
01:20:27.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, I actually recommend Dead Men Walking to my noir thriller friends.
01:20:32.47
Stefan
Oh, thank you.
01:20:32.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
all the people that be loving, ah you know, the Humphrey Bogart movies. I'm like, oh, you got to read this.
01:20:37.02
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, I'm in i'm imitating Dashiell Hammett for a lot of it. The glass key in particular.
01:20:43.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice, nice.
01:20:43.70
Stefan
where he he tries to eliminate the use of adjectives in it. It's his most style-based book.
01:20:50.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
I can't even imagine like I'm. I don't tend to spend a lot of time with adjectives and and basically describing things in general. I get i get criticized for it a lot.
01:21:01.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's like, i don't where are they? Where's the room?
01:21:03.23
Stefan
yeah
01:21:03.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
like I don't give a fuck about the room. Listen to what they're saying, because what they're saying is insane.
01:21:09.21
Stefan
yeah Yeah, well, dialogue's always been easier for me, which I guess is
01:21:09.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:21:12.82
Stefan
some way surprising, because I've done so many comic books where I spend so much time describing pictures for the artist. But it it's a kind of a stripping down process, where you want the character to be there, you want a sense of the place, and you don't want this, you know, you you got you wind up writing all this extra stuff that you can just get rid of.
01:21:30.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:21:30.59
Stefan
And I think The Glass Key is ah a perfect example of a sparse style. And you know, I think people say that about Hemingway, but I i never really cared for Hemingway much. So,
01:21:42.23
Stefan
There's that. I've also written a lot, you know, some other things I'm proud of is the Bandyman, which you probably can't find anywhere. It was right after the X-Files comic that I did with Charlie Adler and Maron Kim.
01:21:54.32
Stefan
It's about, it's it's three different stories, but one of them is about the woman who wrote Genesis in ancient Judea, being held by the current king of Judea.
01:22:02.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
wow
01:22:06.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:22:08.75
Stefan
And it's a three-way story, one of which is her in the past, illustrated by Jill Thompson, who is really upset right now, given what's going on with her previous famous partner, who sucks.
01:22:20.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Ugh.
01:22:23.93
Stefan
Yeah. my let's Let's not go there at all.
01:22:26.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, let's not.
01:22:28.09
Stefan
Yeah. And Maran Kim did the center story, which was about the original version of Genesis, which was in which the first person God created, he was not finished with, but didn't like where he was headed, so he sort of abandoned him.
01:22:46.00
Stefan
But he survived as this unfinished man and called the Bandy Man, Bandy-us.
01:22:52.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Holy shit, that's fascinating.
01:22:54.81
Stefan
And the third one, illustrated by Charlie Adlard of X-Files and that other thing, The Walking Dead fame, um is about someone present day, a guy kind of like some of the guys you're talking to, ah who finds out that he's he has a brother who is descended from Bandyas, or may be Bandyas, and him dealing with being essentially unfinished.
01:23:22.11
Stefan
That's one of my favorite things I wrote.
01:23:23.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:23:24.13
Stefan
But it was a great opportunity because I was in a position to get, because of the I was famous for doing the X-Files. My last bout, unquote, with fame was the X-Files comic. And after i I was fired from that,
01:23:36.50
Stefan
two weeks after my daughter was born. um And after that, i was eight but I was able to get this pet project through that I absolutely adored. So,
01:23:46.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but I mean, you've written Deadpool and and like Spider-Man tie-in stuff.
01:23:50.59
Stefan
yeah, yep.
01:23:52.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, yeah how do you not just walk around feeling like the coolest guy ever, like all the time?
01:23:57.12
Stefan
Oh, you know what? say Because I don't know where my mortgage is coming from.
01:24:03.67
Stefan
for you and that's That's the simple answer, and and then and I don't go to a lot of conventions anymore. Mostly you know mostly say I'm home. But what does make me feel really cool is sometimes, I forget this, I wrote a what if, what if blink lived ages ago.
01:24:17.77
Stefan
And as a consequence of that, I am listed as having created Marvel Earth, I think it's 256. So I created a whole Earth in the Marvel universe.
01:24:29.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
dope right wow um i just am looking over my questions here i want to make sure we haven't like missed anything because we jumped around a little bit but i'm learning so much um so so wait so your new book is on audible and i know the two hessiest man books are also on audible what else is over there for people that like to read with their ears oh okay
01:24:30.17
Stefan
So that's cool.
01:24:39.23
Stefan
yeah
01:24:45.12
Stefan
Our disease is our strength. but
01:24:50.35
Stefan
Yes.
01:24:53.44
Stefan
Yes.
01:24:55.85
Stefan
Oh, Ripper. Ripper's on Audible. And they did that. That was a nice, they did a nice job with that because they did more like a radio show with sound effects and stuff. So it's not just like one voice.
01:25:03.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, that's super cool.
01:25:05.65
Stefan
And, uh, let me turn around and look at my book show. See if I can remember. I think those might be it in terms of the, uh, in terms of the Audible books.
01:25:14.88
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:25:15.57
Stefan
We're having like 24 of these things.
01:25:17.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. Yeah, I've only got a couple of things on Audible, but like one of them is a full ensemble cast and then one of them is just, you know, a lady reading it.
01:25:23.45
Stefan
Yes, yeah.
01:25:26.81
Stefan
Yeah, I don't think they ever did audibles for the Marvel book. Oh, no, they did Deadpool. They did a fun job. I'm in the audio book for Deadpool.
01:25:33.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, nice.
01:25:35.02
Stefan
There's one point where you know Deadpool talks to me. and I do the two lines. So but that's cool, too.
01:25:41.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's so cool.
01:25:43.04
Stefan
yeah
01:25:43.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right on. Well, did, did, ah you know, I actually have a question here about AI if we want to cover it.
01:25:48.76
Stefan
Oh yeah, that's another R and F.
01:25:49.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Well, you know, I'm in a situation right now where, like as a sex writer, which is my day job, I was writing for two different companies and one of them was bought um by a foreign company.
01:26:02.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
And they took like 15 years of great writing from all these people and just sort of made it a blog in their store.
01:26:09.50
Stefan
Oh god, yeah.
01:26:09.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
So it's all just a store now. And it's so, like, there's so much good work there.
01:26:11.94
Stefan
Yeah.
01:26:14.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the other site um is, was on hiatus, but they really want to use AI for both graphics and for pros. And I need to decide whether or not there's a way for me to even work for this company anymore without being just a total hypocrite.
01:26:31.65
Stefan
Well, when you say use, what do you mean specifically? They want the AI to write the stories. I mean, I understand what it means when they're doing the arts.
01:26:37.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I think what they're using it now is, well, they use it for graphics, for some graphics, just as article headers. And I've never done my own graphics. So it's kind of none of my business.
01:26:49.14
Stefan
Yeah.
01:26:49.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
But at the same time, I'm so vocally opposed to replacing the humanities with generative AI that like. If, for example, you know, an article will go up, but then a few months later it'll get freshened up, you know, so it can stay kind of evergreen facts change, whatever.
01:27:00.02
Stefan
Yeah.
01:27:09.33
Stefan
Okay.
01:27:09.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
So they want to use AI for those kinds of things for, for freshening things up for rewriting things for simplicity and.
01:27:17.10
Stefan
Because that when they rerun it, does the person who did the original piece get any money?
01:27:21.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I typically know not for the the, like I write a piece, I sell it, they own it.
01:27:24.57
Stefan
Okay.
01:27:28.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's how that works.
01:27:28.50
Stefan
Okay.
01:27:29.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they can do what they want with it. But I'm very serious about not wanting my own, my personal name on things that I did not write entirely myself.
01:27:40.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
If there was an AI algorithm involved, I don't want my name on it.
01:27:43.99
Stefan
Sure.
01:27:44.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
But at the same time, as, as any writer knows, your byline's important. You don't want your byline to just be disappearing out there.
01:27:51.51
Stefan
Yeah.
01:27:52.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
So,
01:27:52.64
Stefan
Well, yeah yeah we' wait we've had several conversations about AI online that I recall for online. And they're, you know... I don't know if you want my blessing or my my warning or my...
01:28:04.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
I would like your honest opinion. I mean, I'm not not not necessarily to heed or not heed, but I would like to know what other people think.
01:28:06.95
Stefan
What? Okay. No, no, no, no. I don't expect you to do what what anything I said. um i First of all, we're all hypocrites.
01:28:18.01
Stefan
I mean, we're I have a cell phone that was probably built by child labor.
01:28:22.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, i I eat American chocolate, so I get it.
01:28:22.83
Stefan
I drive it an internal combustion unit. Yeah, I am still in the United States paying taxes to you know this racist, misogynist hellscape.
01:28:32.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mmhmm.
01:28:34.26
Stefan
um So you know everybody's a little bit of a hypocrite. You bring anything into the world, it's gonna get dirt on it. ah Second thing is, I mean, there are three issues with, at least three, with AI. You know, one is the, is it art? Then my and it short answer is, yeah, it can be. um And the second thing is the legal issues, how it fits in with the copyright. And I think that was, in some sense, largely solved when the copyright bureau said you can't copyright it based on, interestingly, a previous decision about animal paintings.
01:29:10.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:29:11.49
Stefan
it's it's If it's not human, you can't copyright it. That waters down the value of AI as a um you know you know a screenplay written by AI can be used by anyone if it doesn't have a copyrighted.
01:29:25.96
Stefan
So it waters down the value to some extent in the market. And the third one's a tricky one, which is the fact that you know none of these people were asked permission to to train these large language and and artistic models.
01:29:33.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:29:40.38
Stefan
um Yeah, and in terms of quality, as I said before, AI writes better or as good as half of what's on television, which is more of an insult on on what's on television.
01:29:50.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Burn on you CBS Yeah
01:29:52.00
Stefan
Yeah, well, any of it, any of it. I've gone to movies where I've sat down and I've seen entire movies where every line of dialogue was from another movie, you know? And there's three guys who got paid, you know, $100,000 for this.
01:30:04.81
Stefan
Or three guys, are two guys and a woman, yeah.
01:30:07.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it is very much the question of art versus product.
01:30:07.82
Stefan
I remember these kids
01:30:11.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, are we making valuable media that we are proud of and want to share with people? Or are we making something that's like a background for some ads that we want people to look at?
01:30:21.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I only want to be involved in one of those.
01:30:22.27
Stefan
I, well, the big art question is something I kind of gave up personally a long time ago. Specifically when I wrote ah an issue of something, I wasn't particularly, it was a licensed thing. The licenser wasn't giving me much leeway. So I didn't have my whole heart in it, but I did it and it was it was popular and I didn't ascribe much value to it. But then I got this letter from this couple who thanked me for it and the artist ah because their,
01:30:52.36
Stefan
adult son was a huge fan of this property. And on his deathbed, they read this comic book together. And that was the last moment they shared. And so they valued it tremendously. So my own sense of what I do that is valued or not, and I hew to an aesthetic, ah but it went out the window. It's like, I just don't know what's going to be, you know, what's going to change somebody's life or not.
01:31:22.60
Stefan
You know, it's not necessarily the things I think should change their life or the ways I think they should be changed. So all I all i do is I stick to myself. And that's related to that question of product versus, ah you know, quote unquote art.
01:31:36.08
Stefan
Art's in the eye of the beholder.
01:31:39.35
Stefan
It's not in the hand of the artist. That's a that's my conclusion on on that particular issue.
01:31:47.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay.
01:31:47.76
Stefan
But at the same time, You know, these these models were trained by people who didn't give their permission. So there's an ethical dilemma there.
01:31:55.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and it also takes work from, I mean, it's kind of like the argument that the music industry makes. Well, we're losing sales because you're not, you know, you're copying it off the radio or whatever, or downloading it and not buying it.
01:32:11.52
Stefan
Well, yeah, but that that's an old argument, yeah.
01:32:11.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know and And I realized that not everybody would be buying the things. It is a matter of getting more things to more people. but
01:32:22.11
Stefan
Yeah, yeah, I used to be worried about bootlegs of my books, but then I realized that the numbers were kind of minor and the people who were bootlegging them wouldn't have paid for them anyway.
01:32:31.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and I think a lot of writers would rather be widely read than widely sold.
01:32:32.30
Stefan
don It depends depends on how much money I have for my mortgage, you know.
01:32:35.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, you know beyond the fact that we we need money to live.
01:32:39.86
Stefan
and
01:32:41.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, I get it. I don't make crap doing what I do. I, you know, the magazine, I'm like selling collectibles to fund the magazine.
01:32:48.75
Stefan
Oh, yeah, no, no, and and I count myself one of the lucky ones.
01:32:50.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, and yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:32:51.49
Stefan
you
01:32:52.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, it's, you know, it if you can live on what you create and not have to, you know, slave for the man, that's, that's amazing.
01:33:02.11
Stefan
Sure.
01:33:03.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's.
01:33:04.32
Stefan
And to back up a second, it's I don't think it's going to take work from, and I hesitate to use real real artists, but I think there's a very basic level where things in like clip art and ah you know royalty-free stock images have taken work from people for years.
01:33:26.97
Stefan
I think it's more along those lines. It's kind of like the low-level stuff. But I think the stuff that influences that I like to think influences dialogues or you know culture in general, as ah as opposed to the the shared moment on the deathbed with my you know crappy story. I think that will remain in the hands of humans. I don't think that can be done by AI.
01:33:47.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think to to some extent that's true, but we also hear, I'm sure you're hearing what I'm hearing that a lot of authors that are very against AI pros are fine with using AI art for their book covers.
01:33:48.08
Stefan
but
01:33:59.56
Stefan
Well,
01:34:01.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. I mean, that's well, I mean, with a graphic designer and I know not everyone does, so I try to not be too privileged in my opinions of that.
01:34:02.53
Stefan
ah je that's that's just plain as hypocritism hypocritical rock
01:34:11.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
But like when we started sometimes hilarious horror, we used ah AI art. i I took a bunch of AI images that represented the stories and then I gave them to our graphics guy and said, please incorporate these into the cover.
01:34:25.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's what we did. And we took a lot of heat for it because i I really didn't know.
01:34:27.31
Stefan
well that's lame, you know? That's just plain ass, like, hypocritism.
01:34:30.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
I thought at first that it was like Photoshop. This was like two years ago. And I thank you.
01:34:34.16
Stefan
And I don't personally hate you for it, Joseph.
01:34:37.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
but But we don't do that anymore. Now that we understand that A, it takes work from artists that had already been created and and was utilized to train AI without their permission, but also that it's
01:34:48.94
Stefan
The whole training thing is is the is is the stickler there, you know, in some ways, because it's it's using their own work to create the model. But if you look at copyright law, I mean, it's not illegal to read something or to look at something, and that's essentially all it all it's doing.
01:35:04.28
Stefan
But, but to back up for a second, I designed the cover of the stars within and I made it using not AI. I wouldn't, I'm not that stupid, but, but um, you know, a clip art and image from the hubble and two, two pieces of clip art and an image from the Hubble telescope, which was public domain.
01:35:26.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nice.
01:35:27.20
Stefan
It was free. And I think the two images I used cost $24. and we spent another $16 on the Adobe font that we used. I could have had the publisher give an artist $1,000 to paint something, and that would have supported the arts. And when I originally was putting this together, I was thinking of it, and it went through various evolutions. I was thinking of it literally just as a sketch to show a real artist to put it together. But when it came out, we liked it. And so we kept it.
01:36:03.09
Stefan
And that's not the equivalent of using AI, but it's some of the same issues you're talking about. And if you go through a Bookstore, most of the covers you're looking at aren't original art.
01:36:15.58
Stefan
They're licensed photos that some Photoshop guy ran through and put the right font on it and did design work. And there's an N-art to that. And there's an N-art to prompting chat GPT the right way.
01:36:23.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, yeah, definitely.
01:36:29.40
Stefan
you know um yeah garbage in, garbage out. If you ask it really interesting questions, you get really interesting responses. i In deference to the way people are upset about it, I don't use it. I mean, yes, I use it, but I don't use it professionally. When I was playing with it, what i when I write, I gave myself, and this is probably an ADD thing too, there's some artists who will, some writers will rewrite the first sentence over and over and over again until they get it perfect and they know, you know
01:36:59.91
Stefan
how it is. I gave myself permission to write whatever crap I wanted with the understanding that I would go back and change it. So a lot of my writing is re-writing, which is 90% of writing anyway.
01:37:13.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah, I hear that.
01:37:13.60
Stefan
and
01:37:14.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
My first book actually was a NaNoWriMo, which is, you know, where you just get in there and you write and write and write and write until you got a whole bunch of it and then you decide what to do with it.
01:37:17.57
Stefan
you
01:37:24.29
Stefan
Yeah, yeah and you make yeah, I work with an outline too, and i i but I'm free to change the outline. So when I was playing with it, what I would do with it is I would let it do that first shitty draft. You know, because I would look at the pile of crap that I had put down and I said, that sucks.
01:37:35.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay.
01:37:39.63
Stefan
But the fact that I knew it sucked meant that I had an idea for something better. And then I would try to make it match that idea of something better.
01:37:48.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:37:49.67
Stefan
And so in so far as I use ChatTP, I used it in that sense. yeah So and it was very useful. But again, because of the because I'm part of that community and out of respect to the people who hate it, ah not going to go there. And I want to say until the issues are resolved, but to an extent, they're just not going to be resolved because legally you'd have to change the copyright law. And I don't think anybody understands that. They're like, I mean, there's a stupid thing. Noam Chomsky said it's a cut and paste machine and it's just not. I mean, if it was, we wouldn't have any problems.
01:38:23.65
Stefan
you know that would just be flat out copyright stealing. But it's generative. It makes stuff up. I remember asking it to give me a list of my books, and some of them were real, but it had made up a sequel to The Ripper called The Shadow of the Moth.
01:38:39.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, Chad GPT had me writing for sites I'd never written for that seemed plausible, but but not true.
01:38:40.66
Stefan
i
01:38:45.10
Stefan
Yeah, yeah. And The Shadow of the Moth is a great title.
01:38:48.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
01:38:50.69
Stefan
Wow, I wish I had done a sequel to The Ripper. My sequel to The Ripper was called Ripper and New One. now um There was a sequel to The Ripper that never got published, too. It was Ripper, Ripper, and Son. But that's I have a lot of sad stories like that. Anyway, so it's it's a dilemma. And what are you leaning towards? You're leaning towards just quitting?
01:39:09.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um, well, you know, I have this thing, um, called money that I need, but, but no, I'm, what I'm, what I'm trying to do honestly is, is find a way to stay with the company and not be not, not feel like a hypocrite every day.
01:39:14.23
Stefan
Yes.
01:39:24.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cause the thing is I've never had to do my own graphics. So the graphics part of it is really none of my business, but i I can't, if, if they can agree that anything with my name on it or that I'm getting credit for is not.
01:39:38.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
AI produced in any sense, I think that would be enough for me.
01:39:44.19
Stefan
Would they, you know, would they let you spell that out in your credit or something?
01:39:47.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Well, I mean, i don't I don't think I have a current contract, so we'd probably be negotiating a new contract anyway.
01:39:54.47
Stefan
I'll give it a shot. I mean, you know, it's like, I'm using my child labor produced phone.
01:39:56.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
so
01:39:59.33
Stefan
Yeah.
01:39:59.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:40:01.07
Stefan
I'm just, I'm using it. Yeah.
01:40:02.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Let me just eat one of these slave snickers right quick.
01:40:02.46
Stefan
so I'm sorry to children.
01:40:05.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
um But I guess, I mean...
01:40:05.35
Stefan
Yeah.
01:40:10.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't know. i It's very grating because the guy in charge will say, oh, it's so much faster. It's so much easier. And the the voice in the back of my head says, well, you just don't want to pay people.
01:40:19.33
Stefan
It is.
01:40:23.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's like a shitty thing to accuse someone of because, you know, money is finite. Nobody has as much of it as they really want.
01:40:33.17
Stefan
Sure, but that's the old story about it.
01:40:33.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, even Elon is bitching about what he can't do. So.
01:40:37.47
Stefan
That's the old story about any automation though, you know, it's, it's deeper, it's faster and it puts people out of work, except for the people who maintain the machines or the people who learn how to use the machines.
01:40:40.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, it is.
01:40:47.19
Stefan
I mean, in 20 years, there might be, you know, writers who do use chat B.T. are maybe ahead of the curve. And I read this about someone saying early on, there'll be two kinds of lawyers in the future, you know, lawyers who use chat GPT to do the drafts of their legal things, and those who go to business, you know, because the others would just be much more efficient. And efficiency, ethical or not, wins out.
01:41:15.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole like business via algorithm that insurance companies and, you know, litigation finance people are all arguing about and it's, it's crazy.
01:41:17.67
Stefan
It's Yeah. Well, evolution is, you know, for for my non-evolutionary friend on Facebook, evolution is about that which survives.
01:41:38.00
Stefan
And it's not always...
01:41:38.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. I want to give everybody just a minute to sit with that. Evolution is about that, which survives. so
01:41:45.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:41:48.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Did we cover everything that you wanted talk to talk about? Do we leave anything out?
01:41:51.48
Stefan
Oh, i I think so.
01:41:54.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
It seems like it.
01:41:55.03
Stefan
I'm tired.
01:41:55.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, i I got through everything on my list. Do you ah do you have any questions for me?
01:42:00.78
Stefan
ah You wanted me to end with a question. I'm dying to know what you're going to do about your AI dilemma. But in a more more perhaps genial sense, so what's ah your favorite thing that you've written?
01:42:12.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:42:13.60
Stefan
And why?
01:42:15.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, my first book was A Total Mary Sue about a girl who ah you know a crazy girl who kills her mom because her mom was abusive.
01:42:23.51
Stefan
Mm-hmm.
01:42:23.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
um and that was basically i mean it's It's a pretty good read, and and I find that sad teenagers like it a whole lot.
01:42:31.18
Stefan
Cool.
01:42:31.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
um My next book I wrote just to make sure I could write a book that wasn't about me, and ah frankly, it's it's not great.
01:42:37.00
Stefan
yeah
01:42:38.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
um I think the book I'm probably the most proud of is my third book, which is called Kiss Me Like You Love Me, and it's ah multiple first person. like Every other chapter is first person from the killer's perspective.
01:42:52.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then the other chapters are various people in his life, his ex-wife, his stepdaughter, his boss. um It is.
01:42:58.69
Stefan
Oh, that sounds cool.
01:43:00.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
and it in ah One of the things that I try to portray is that is like how much of a difference the perspective makes and how much we lie to ourselves because the the killer is not like a smooth, slick killer.
01:43:10.75
Stefan
Yeah.
01:43:14.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
He's a big dumbass who you know is fixated on young girls and he's really gross and he doesn't see that he's gross. and it's It's very much about men that that see women and girls as like a ah species to be conquered as opposed to like you know just a ah human person you might want to interact with if it's all these little mind games and self-deceptions and also the idea of people not taking advantage of the power that they have you know like you could have done something in this situation but you you didn't for reasons that seem reasonable to you at the time but look at what happened you know because i'm i'm always a proponent of like having the conversation getting mad and then like yelling if you have to and just getting it all out there
01:43:45.74
Stefan
Oh, excellent. Mm hmm.
01:44:02.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know, truth, truth, truth. But that's not, you know, it doesn't always end up that way. And then it turned out I had autism. So I, like, oh, well, that explains a whole lot of why I hated retail.
01:44:11.64
Stefan
Oh, wow.
01:44:16.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:44:17.04
Stefan
Sure. um well there's ah There's a satisfaction to diagnoses sometimes.
01:44:20.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, so very much so, very much so. And then, like, after that, my last novel was ah The Finster Effect, which was my zombie thing.
01:44:25.01
Stefan
but yeah
01:44:29.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that that's another first-person perspective, but some of the perspectives are also animals because there's a dog and a cat and a swarm of rats.
01:44:34.92
Stefan
Oh, nice.
01:44:39.49
Stefan
Was they communal conscious or was it the individual rats that were
01:44:42.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, it's interesting because it is a communal consciousness. It started out there was going to be a rat general. And and I love that idea because i I love The Rat Man's Notebooks.
01:44:52.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's one of my favorite, favorite books.
01:44:53.38
Stefan
Yes, yes, well I was just going to mention Willard and and Ben, yeah and the love song by Michael Jackson to a rat.
01:44:56.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:45:01.38
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Oh, Ben.
01:45:02.51
Stefan
It doesn't get better, yeah.
01:45:04.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
But but but yeah, that's um i'm I'm really fond of that one as well. And then I didn't write anything for like eight years. I didn't publish a damn thing.
01:45:15.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
And um then I wrote the the first President Sun book because it was so important to me that people understand how I arrived at the conclusion that Don Jr.
01:45:26.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
is secretly decent. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to explain this and everyone will understand it because it makes so much sense.
01:45:29.55
Stefan
yeah
01:45:34.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
And whoops.
01:45:36.49
Stefan
Are you classified as a satire or something?
01:45:39.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Whoops. Yeah. i ah
01:45:40.48
Stefan
it's like
01:45:42.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah that That is probably the single biggest fumble that I have ever made in terms of, I mean, there's lots and lots of people that I used to think were great that I now know are not great.
01:45:53.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know When I was a kid, I had a crush on Scott Mayo.
01:45:57.26
Stefan
Yeah.
01:45:58.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Whoops.
01:45:58.08
Stefan
Yeah. Yeah.
01:45:59.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
And like a lot of people, I like Chris Knoth, I like Kevin Spacey and Neil Gaiman and you know all those people that's like, oh, whoops, they're monsters.
01:46:03.25
Stefan
Yeah.
01:46:07.05
Stefan
Bill Cosby heard a lot.
01:46:07.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
um But, but yeah, well, and even now it's like, Oh, I'm sorry. Snoop Dogg just went fascist. What the fuck?
01:46:14.37
Stefan
Yeah, yeah.
01:46:15.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, you know, I'm a fat, funny brunette. So Roseanne also hit me pretty hard.
01:46:20.95
Stefan
Yeah, but she's had a number of issues. Yeah.
01:46:22.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
and She has, she has, but, you know, i I mean, and it's weird to me because I often find myself
01:46:24.24
Stefan
you know
01:46:30.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
thinking about how like some people, once they say or do one fucked up thing that makes them seem like they're down with the fash, I don't want anything to do with them anymore.
01:46:42.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
like The Rock declined to declare for a for a candidate and I was just like, oh, fuck him. if If you're not going to say Kamala is the right thing, I don't like you anymore. The Rock, you can shut up.
01:46:52.37
Stefan
Sure. or Sure.
01:46:54.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, but then, you know, this Don Jr. thing for like years and years. I'm like, no, no, no, he's in a picture with that guy, but he probably doesn't know. and You know, I mean, I sounded like a regular Trump person just with a different Trump.
01:47:03.52
Stefan
hey Sure.
01:47:08.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like I always had some excuse or some reason why it wasn't what it looked like. And it turned out.
01:47:13.70
Stefan
yeah. I mean, with Roseanne, you can you can you can honestly believe some of it was yeah switching her meds. You know?
01:47:20.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah. Well, and but then that's the thing. People try to say, oh, it's the weed. It's all that weed. Like.
01:47:26.54
Stefan
Well, if it's a one yeah if it's a one of, you know, and they're really sorry, you know, oh I'm sorry, that's what the wall tell, told me to say, you know, like, okay, all right, but we're going to keep an eye on it.
01:47:30.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right.
01:47:36.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:47:37.67
Stefan
But, you know, i ah built Bill Cosby was one of the, you know, my family life was fraud as a child, mom and dad fighting, dad being an alcoholic. And we, but we could always laugh at Bill Cosby albums.
01:47:48.72
Stefan
It was like this moment of family togetherness that kind of meant a lot to me. And then, you know, that was not a one of.
01:47:56.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:47:56.07
Stefan
You know?
01:47:56.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah. Totally. Well, yeah, that's, that's my husband's family.
01:47:57.87
Stefan
now
01:47:59.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
He grew up constantly listening to Bill Cosby and like, he's one of those guys that says lines. Why did I eat chocolate cake for breakfast? We asked for eggs and milk.
01:48:09.76
Stefan
yeah but yeah This public persona was so dignified, you know?
01:48:10.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
He made us eat this. So, so yeah. And and it's and it And that's part of the, like the bad part of the internet is that you have to learn so much more about people that it's like, right.
01:48:24.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:48:24.94
Stefan
I mean, I'm a huge Beatle fan, John Lennon hit women, but he thought it was the wrong thing to do.
01:48:29.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
he sure did. Eventually.
01:48:34.10
Stefan
Yes, yeah, but that's a thing, you know?
01:48:36.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Well, that's another thing I have a hard time with.
01:48:37.13
Stefan
Learning.
01:48:39.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like when a cop, you know, does something that any idiot could see was inappropriate.
01:48:42.10
Stefan
Well, Lennon's not a cop, he was in, yeah.
01:48:43.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but and just in general, any adult that goes around hurting people, if you've ever been hit, then you know that hitting hurts.
01:48:50.94
Stefan
Yeah, absolutely.
01:48:51.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
This isn't something that you should need a sensitivity class because you can tell a three-year-old no hitting, and they might still hit, but they'll understand what you mean.
01:48:57.57
Stefan
You can, but not all three-olds are told that. you know So i'm I'm not saying it's ever right, but yeah you know I guess I believe and I think redemption's possible.
01:49:03.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, but by the time you can legally buy a beer, you've been told.
01:49:14.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, it can be, but I mean.
01:49:14.69
Stefan
It depends on the circumstance, you know not if you're if you're you know drugging and raping women for 10 years.
01:49:21.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, Russell Brand, you know, Russell Brand is apparently a big Christian now and people are just buying it because the Lord told him to stop assaying teenagers or something.
01:49:22.42
Stefan
I think you're youre we're past that. you know
01:49:28.13
Stefan
Yeah.
01:49:33.42
Stefan
Jesus.
01:49:33.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
you know, ah eventually. So guess what, dude? It's time for the mad lib.
01:49:38.71
Stefan
Oh, okay.
01:49:39.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Are you ready for this?
01:49:40.57
Stefan
Sure.
01:49:41.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
This one looks like it has a ton of, okay, wait, let's start one, two, three.
01:49:41.22
Stefan
yeah
01:49:46.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Looks like I'm gonna need four adjectives.
01:49:51.09
Stefan
Good Lord. um ah Red.
01:49:56.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, you got this. Wait, what?
01:49:58.64
Stefan
Well, red. Salacious.
01:50:04.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:50:04.21
Stefan
Criminal. It's so on my mind for some reason.
01:50:08.84
Stefan
um Hopefully. Is that an adverb? Hopefully not.
01:50:12.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's an adverb, because it's a ly, so one more adjective.
01:50:13.40
Stefan
Okay. Hopeful. Is hopeful?
01:50:16.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
Hopeful.
01:50:18.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, I need two verbs.
01:50:20.30
Stefan
Out of six? Two verbs. ah Encroaching.
01:50:28.50
Stefan
And ah validating.
01:50:32.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
and Okay, I'm going to present tense these.
01:50:35.29
Stefan
Okay, validate and encroach.
01:50:37.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, and then I need any one, two, three singular nouns.
01:50:37.94
Stefan
Yeah, I could do that.
01:50:43.71
Stefan
Three singular nouns. Potato. um Pumpkin. um I'm doing all fruits. I mean, I'm doing all vegetables. And neophyte.
01:50:58.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, I need a plural noun, please.
01:51:02.71
Stefan
ah Tissues.
01:51:05.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
a number,
01:51:07.36
Stefan
42.
01:51:09.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
and, ah and a part of the body plural.
01:51:09.89
Stefan
Everybody probably does that, yeah.
01:51:17.26
Stefan
ah Pancreases. Pancreae.
01:51:22.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
pancreas sees um all right so this is truth or dare because last ah recording we did part one of truth or dare so this is part two and it's the dares okay so the dare is pretend you are a red puppy encroach loudly and wag your potato dare put on some salacious music and dance like a criminal pumpkin for one minute
01:51:35.58
Stefan
Okay.
01:51:44.13
Stefan
but
01:51:52.75
Stefan
that's that's a lot That's poetry.
01:51:53.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm gonna need video of that, sir.
01:51:54.09
Stefan
okay I've actually done that.
01:51:57.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Dare, hop on one neophyte while you validate and say the alphabet backward.
01:52:07.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Dare.
01:52:07.70
Stefan
easy The Dr. Seuss story
01:52:13.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
One fish, two fish, red fish, neophyte. um Take off your socks and tissues and step into the shower. Then turn on the hopeful water and yodel at the top of your pancreases for 42 seconds.
01:52:23.34
Stefan
yeah
01:52:31.03
Stefan
Okay.
01:52:33.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I have every confidence in you. um All right.
01:52:35.51
Stefan
Well, thank you.
01:52:36.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
I've just hit my microphone stand with my hand like three times because I am professional, dude.
01:52:41.72
Stefan
Yeah, and that's what we do when we're professional.
01:52:44.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Well, thank you so much for being here and for telling me how to pronounce your name.
01:52:47.29
Stefan
Well, thank you for having me.
01:52:49.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
Finally, that was, that's, that's good info. Um, and, uh, we want to remind listeners that, uh, we can be found on coffee. Under sometimes hilarious horror the magazine that sponsors the mentally oddcast We're gonna see everybody next week. And again, thanks so much for being here um we're gonna have links in the district description for the ah the Amazon link and the audible link and All the other information that y'all might need to catch up with Stefan's work. Okay Cool so we'll see everybody next time
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