It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: The Barrow Will Send What it May: Chapter One

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

Margaret reads Robert the second novella of the Danielle Cain series, Preorder the third book in the series, including all three audiobooks, on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tangled-wilderness/the-immortal-choir-holds-every-voice  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if mysterious drones appeared over your hometown? I started asking questions. What do you remember happening on that night of December 16th? It actually rotated around our house, looking as if it was peering in each window of our home. I'm Gabe Lenners from Imagine, I Heart Podcasts and Lenners Entertainment. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen Up First from NPR on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all newnew fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's bestselling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford

Kobla, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call Zone Media. Let's get this... Book Club! Book Club! Book Club! Book Club! Book Club! Book Club! Uber Alice! Uber Alice in the rebel!

Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club! Only book club, where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. And we're going back to an older format. We're going back to the way that book club started, which is me reading a book I wrote to Robert. Hi Robert. We are returning to tradition. That's right.

Specifically, when the book club started, I read a book called The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, and you can go back and listen to it if you'd like. you might want to before you listen this but also you might have a different brain where you can just jump Into the sequel and which case that's great Because the third book is finally gonna come out in this series And so I thought why not read you all second one for free excellent so the first book the lamb Lamb of Slaughter of the Lion, had Danielle Kane and a bunch

of her friends dealing with a demon in a squatted town, and then they're on the run. And then they're like, let's be the punk rock Scooby-Doo people. And that's my summation of it. Robert? Mm-hmm? I was going to pretend like you haven't read this book, but I think you've read this book. Yes, I have. Yeah. But now you get to hear it. So... Mm-hmm. I was gonna pretend like you haven't read this book, but I think you've read this book. Yes, I have Yeah, but now you get to hear it. So mm-hmm. I guess I'll just start it

Yeah, I mean I've loved the Danielle Cain series so excited to be rereading slash listening to the second novella in it Really just waiting for you to get the third one out. Oh, it's being kickstarted right now. Slightly harassing you over that. Good. Yeah, get in there and donate, you motherfuckers. Yeah. All right. The Barrow will send what it may. This was published by Tor.com a number of years ago.

2018? I don't know. You think I would know. But it's not the part of the document I have open right now. Chapter one. The towering bursts of flame that staggered their way across the empty, black horizon weren't helping my mood.

I'd been dozing in the backseat of the car, my head against Bryn's shoulder, but the staccato, silent bursts were too eerie to sleep through. Where the hell are we, I asked. Outside, as far as I could see, were featureless plains. No stars in the sky, just blackness. Blackness and fire. Hell's about the word for it, Bryn said. She was gazing out the window, her face little little by the interior lights of the car,

and a lot by the occasional streaks of fire outside. A single thick black tattoo line cut its way down her face from her short bangs to the bridge of her nose, and her face was severe, even more severe than usual. Or maybe I was just drowsy. The rest of the passengers were silent, and we tore down the road through all that darkness. It was gas flaring. As

I woke up more properly I remembered, must be in North Dakota somewhere. Excess natural gas production beyond what they've got the infrastructure for gets burned off. I'd never seen it with my own eyes, those flames that stood in monument to the wastefulness of civilization. My left shoulder ached where thread, regular sewing thread, held together a crowbar wound. My right hand was sore, still, and mottled with supernatural gray where an undead goat had bitten it. Behind us, a thousand miles of highway ago, was nothing. Dead bodies and probably some investigators

who wanted explanations we couldn't really give. A demon killed those police officers, sir, it wasn't us. They probably shouldn't have pulled out guns around a blood-red three-antler deer with obvious supernatural agility. So, whose fault was it really? No one would believe us. A week ago, I wouldn't have believed us. We couldn't go back. Ahead of us, there was also nothing. We had a sort of scattershot map of towns with friends who might shelter us, of places that might have books or witches who could teach us. Doomsday was convinced that if we could make it to the Washington coast, we'd eventually find people who could get us on a boat to the islands off the coast of Canada. Vulture had a Google map populated with disappearances and strange phenomenon we might look into.

But none of us had anything concrete. No real plans. Only chaos. This is how we're meant to live. Thursday drove for 16 hours straight, his fists gripping the wheel at 10 and 2. No music on the stereo, but the ethereal washed-out voices of AM radio preachers were on sometimes. I think they were telling us that we were going to hell. I always assume that voices like those are telling me that. We left the fields of fire behind just as the sun edged over the horizon behind us.

Thursday pulled into a rest area, quote, to watch dawn maybe eat something. But once the engine was off, he didn't even make it out of the driver's seat before he fell asleep. The rest of us, better rested, leaned against the car in the chilly morning air and watched that sunrise. If you stay up all night, you owe it to yourself to watch sunrise, every time. Vulture passed around a tiny bottle of orange juice he produced from somewhere, maybe his hoodie pocket, because those blue jeans short short shorts, sure didn't have serious pockets

on them. He would have made a good stage magician. He had the right kind of charm, and all his motions were fluid, almost hypnotizing. He smiled easily, and even though his smile rarely looked genuine, when he smiled, you found yourself smiling too. Is this gonna work out? Brynn asked, breaking hours of silence.

She was sitting on top of the spray painted red old Honda Civic hatchback, her steel-toed boots hanging down over the side. She ripped at a pomegranate, casting its pulp onto the pavement. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. I'm not sure she owned any t-shirts that still had their sleeves. On a long enough timeline, Doomsday said, no, but it'll work out today. Even if she was only just now learning to weave words into ritual magic, Doomsday had a way of warping the world around her when she spoke. What's more important, I asked, laying low or our new career?

It was idle curiosity, nothing more. What mattered was our motion, not our purpose. Laying low, Doomsday said. Find some demons, Vulture said at the same time. They looked at one another. They'd known one another for how long? Years? I'd not known them even a week. But do you know what I did know,

Robert Evans? That products and services also uh I was trying to think of something to say along the lines of all of the gas burning off that you see when you drive across certain parts of the rural. Anyway, the oil and gas industry sponsor.

I don't know. I don't have anything for you. Well, here's to whatever sponsors us. Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds, but what if there's something else, something much more ominous,

that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones or are they? We used to work drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh that is beyond creepy.

Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, it's a Martinez the news can feel like a lot on any given day But you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening That is where the up first podcast comes in every single morning in under 15 minutes We take the news and boil it down to three essential stories You can keep up without feeling stressed out listen up first from NPR on the I heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Ow, goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers

about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out-of-his-element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And, as I was about to learn, no amount of showering

can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab

for the recently canceled. In the future, we will all be canceled for 15 minutes, but don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke, or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class, and mandatory Ayahuasca ceremonies are designed to force the cancel

to confront their worst impulses. But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing. Karen, where have you brought us? Cancellation Island, where a second chance might just be your last. Listen to Cancellation Island on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

Could we be sponsored by like the kind of spirit of vengeance as embodied by wildlife, Margaret? Could that be our sponsor? Do they have money? I think so. Well, they could if they do some vengeance first I'll have Sophie send an email. Yeah, that's the easiest way to reach the spirit of vengeance embodied Just just just drop it off to an elk You know I Don't know what would happen if you asked for a sponsorship and put it on a piece of paper and put it on an elk's antlers It mm-hmm your life would be interesting. Nobody knows, nobody knows.

And elks seem pretty chill. That's what they're always saying. They always seem like megafauna, terrifying megafauna. I secretly don't believe in moose. No, no, not real. Yeah. Not absolutely not real. It's conspiracy from the Canadian neighbors, yeah.

But elks, elks are real. Unfortunately, what is real and deeply off-putting are camels, where like you see camels in movies and like, you know, camels are a thing. When you first run into a real ass camel, it's like, what the fuck? That's like the size of an elephant. What the fuck?

This is what people were writing. Of course these things, like you couldn't fight these things on a horseback. No horse would ever get close to a camel. Oh my God. All right, back to the story. Yeah. Find some demons while laying low, Vulture said.

It was his way of conceding. The more we know about magic, the more equipped we'll be to handle whatever comes at us," Doomsday said. So both, I asked. How the hell will we do both? Magic, Vulture said, grinning. Brynn, probably delirious, laughed with her whole body, her heels banging against the

window glass. Shut the fuck up, Thursday mumbled from inside the car. At least, that's what I think he said. It's what I would have said. Thursday would have driven the whole way if we'd have let him, but his protestations were scarcely audible as we helped him up into the backseat. I took his place behind the wheel, Bryn took shotgun, and we ran away from the encroaching day.

I've spent most of my life in the flyover states, and their beauty is largely unmatched throughout the rest of the country. But sometimes the endless expanse is too endless. I spent the full day driving. Vulture was nocturnal by choice, and he snored softly with his face against the glass. Thursday was wiped out. Doomsday was wanted for murder, more actively than the rest of us, and wasn't excited about being the one who would get ID'd if we were pulled over. Brynn could have taken a turn,

I'm sure of it, but I didn't want her to. She looked happy sitting there in the passenger's seat. She put her hand on my arm and left it there for a long time. And that settled that. I wanted to be the driver. I drove all day. I used to think I was going to end up a trucker. When I first started hitchhiking 10 years back, I'd been 18 and fallen in love with basically every lady trucker I'd met.

Even when that thing happened when I was 19 where I had to stab a man trucker in the hand, even after that, I had assumed I'd wind up a trucker. Open road solitude, books on tape, decent pay, who wouldn't want to be a trucker? By the time I was old enough for the job, I didn't want it, mostly because I didn't want any job. I found my niche as a wanderer and driving on some company's schedule just wasn't going to suit me. Still, I was pretty sure I was one hell of a long haul driver.

We crossed into Montana and I kept driving. Glacier National Park is probably the single most beautiful place in the country and I figured we'd get to sleep there, blend in with the tourists at some campground, if I just kept at it. We made it halfway across the state. I was on a side highway, avoiding the interstate because the occasional small town speed trap seemed like a better bet than the highway patrol, who might have at all points to look for us. Some British man was narrating a fantasy book at us from the stereo, vultures doing.

And the sun was just starting to get low. Brynn was asleep. Everyone in the backseat was quiet, hadn't said a word in an hour. The sun was just starting to look a little low on the horizon. I nodded off. I came to halfway into the oncoming lane and corrected. There was no traffic to run into, oncoming lane and corrected. There was no traffic to run into, just an endless stretch of Montana Highway.

I slapped myself, it's usually good for about 10 minutes or so, and made a mental note to pull off at the next exit, switch drivers. I nodded off again. I had never crashed a car in my life. When I came to, probably a half second later, I was in the wrong lane again. Fully, this time. Startled, I corrected, fast, and saw myself headed real quick toward running off the right side of the road. So I corrected again. Still wasn't thinking. Way too fast. The car went up on two wheels and my vision got choppy. Blackness. The sunset streaming through the window with the road where the sky

should be. Blackness. Maybe I screamed. Maybe somebody else screamed. Where's the reset button? Like I was a kid again playing Nintendo. Just hit the reset button. Start over from the last save. No, it's actually happening. Blackness. Then it was over. We were 20 feet off the left-hand side of the road. The car was upright again.

We'd spun a full 360. The windshield was fucked. A beautiful spiderweb of fucked, with trees in the distance that I could see through the kaleidoscope of fucked Guess the car didn't have airbags. What year did airbags get to be standard? Thursday's voice cut through the white noise that I hadn't even noticed Doomsday. Yeah Vulture. I'm fine Brynn alive. I freaked out. I just started gasping for air.

Danielle? I had rolled the car. I had almost killed Brynn. Danielle? Fine, I answered, because I wanted to be left alone and answering seemed like the fastest way to accomplish that. I took off my seatbelt. Thank fuck we'd all been wearing seatbelts.

Even the people sleeping, even the other people sleeping, had been wearing seatbelts. I opened the door and tried to stand, but my legs gave out and I collapsed in on myself. Danielle, Brynn said, she was next to me, crouching, her arm around me. I fucked up, I said, fighting for air. I don't need anything, I'm the one who- I gave up trying to talk. I got my head between my knees and I retched out gasps. No tears though, not yet.

Vulture knelt down on the other side of me, put his arm around me too. I lifted my head up to see him, wet blood smeared across his brown skin. You're bleeding, I said. I'm fine, just cut up my arm a little, nothing deep. I fell asleep. We're alive. Vulture pulled aside the shoulder strap of my tank top. Hey, he said, my stitch is held.

Gotta get this thing away from the road before anyone drives by, Thursday said, into the trees. Vulture glared at his friend, but Thursday was right. We didn't wanna deal with cops or ambulances or any of that shit. Brynn tried to help me up, but I shook her arm off. The only thing worse than needing emotional support after what I'd done was stubbornly refusing help I so obviously needed. But I couldn't help it, which made me resent her support even more.

But she had a fucking car though, that I could do. Vulture and I were tied for being the smallest, but no one made any suggestion that I should get back behind the wheel. Doomsday got in and steered while the rest of us pushed, and we got it into what was probably a tree farm. The trees were in those unnaturally perfect rows, and I was sure that the car wasn't completely hidden, but with any luck we'd gotten it far enough from the road that it looked like it

was supposed to be there. A few cars went by while we were doing it, but none of them slowed down. What's next? Doomsday asked, getting out. Get the VIN numbers off, Thursday said. It's just VIN, Vulture corrected. Vehicle identification number, like ATM machine or pin number or whatever. Fuck off.

There'll be a plate on the dash, that's easy, I said, cutting in. But it'll also be stamped into the frame in a few places. We need a pretty serious file to get it out, even if we can get all the VIN numbers without taking the thing apart. They talked it over for a moment, then Thursday pried the metal tag off the dash while Vulture and Brynn took off the plates. Close enough for government work, I guess. Me, I leaned against the back of the car. I tried not to take stock of what condition the car was in, but the windows were all busted out and the roof was caved in on the back corner. You all right?

It was doomsday, probably the least emotional of the five of us. Strangely, that helped. I put my hand on the massive dent on the roof. If we'd landed anywhere else, I said. We didn't, doomsday pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag. You smoke, I asked? Not usually, she said. Use two more.

Still keep a pack around, but I could use a cigarette. You did almost just kill us all. I'm not gonna say don't remind me. I probably won't again. You know what you did, and you'll mostly get over it, and there isn't one of us who's anywhere near as mad at you as you are. Thanks, I said. I didn't smoke either. Can I have a cigarette? I don't bump cigarettes out to non-smokers.

It's hard to hitchhike with five people. Under normal circumstances, the thing to do would have been to split into two groups, but these obviously weren't normal circumstances. To make things even more fun, we had to get a ride before the cops stopped us and ran our names. None of us had any idea if there were warrants out for us yet, and none of us wanted to find out the hard way. Five people and luggage. Bryn, Vulture, and I all had travel packs.

The days had decent sized suitcases. All of them were covered in glass and Vulture's yellow pack was now replete with blood stains. Alright, Doomsday said, dropping her cigarette from her lips, letting it fall to the ground where she stomped it out with a heeled boot. Gather round. Hold hands. Got a ritual for this hitchhiking shit. We were still in the woods, hidden from the road. I took Vulture's hand and Bryn's hand, and the five of us formed a little pentagon. "'You say what I say,' Doomsday said, but like, in a round.

I'll say a line, then Thursday you say that line while I say the next one, then Bryn, Danielle, Vulture. You say the line that the person on your left would have said last time. After I say the fifth line, you'll all go on without me until Vulture says the last line alone. Anyone fucks it up?

We just have to start over. First time I tried this method, I fucked up every line once. It's not a big deal. Got it? Got it, we said back. We began. We ask for good strangers.

We ask for the barrow to send what it may. We ask that ill eyes pass us over. We ask for the dead to guard us. We ask that sorrow be held at bay. It took us about four rounds to get it right. It's hard to listen to what someone is saying while you're talking, but not as hard as I would have thought. I'm glad I was never the one to fuck up. I don't know how well I could have handled any more failure. I felt the energy pass between our hands, a subtle

thing, the kind of thing I might have felt before I'd seen magic. But after Vulture said the last line, a silence fell over us and the wind picked up. A gyre spun itself between us, the same direction as our ritual, then spun outward through the trees. Then that silence. So I asked at last, the fuck did we just do? It's nothing, doomsday said. Just a spell for good luck with strangers, keeping people who'd hurt us away.

And all that shit about the Barrow and the dead? I don't know the spell too well. I think Barrow is the name of the endless spirit it appeals to. He's a death spirit, I guess, but that's not what the ritual is about. Yeah, great. What could go wrong? Well, Robert, I'll tell you what couldn't go wrong. Products and services that support this podcast, one of which is the seatbelt, which Margaret,

because you brought that up, I had to look it up. Shockingly, seatbelts or airbags, sorry, airbags did not become mandatory until 1998. Amazing. I am. Really took us a while on that one. mandatory until 1998. Amazing. Really took us a while on that one. I mean, this scene of flipping the car is based on when I flipped a station wagon when I was 17. I was guessing that a lot of this whole road trip part was very, very much based on your experience. Yeah, totally. And it was definitely like a 1990 Ford Escort station wagon.

It definitely did not have airbags and I was completely unharmed and if I hadn't been wearing a seatbelt, I would probably be dead so seatbelts airbags and whatever else wear ads are Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds, but what if there's something

else, something much more ominous that appears under the cover of night, silent, unseen, watching? night, silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones. Or are they? We used to work drone because it was comfortable to other people. One minute it was there, one minute it wasn't.

Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically? Yes, absolutely. Listen to Obscurum, Invasion of the Drones, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. boil it down to three essential stories. So you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person?

Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to

your favorite shows. This is John Cameron Mitchell and my new fiction podcast series, Cancellation Island, stars Holly Hunter as Karen, a wellness influencer who launches a rehab for the recently cancelled. In the future, we will all be cancelled for 15 minutes. But don't worry, we'll take you from broke to woke or your money back. Cancellation Island's revolutionary rehab therapies like Bad Touch Football, Anti-Racism Spin Class and Mandatory Ayahuasca Ceremonies are designed to force the cancel to confront their worst impulses But everything starts to fall apart when people start disappearing

Karen where have you brought us? Cancellation Island where a second chance might just be your last Listen to cancellation island on the I heart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back! An SUV picked us up, not ten minutes after we'd been waiting. An SUV picked us up, not 10 minutes after we'd been waiting. For those keeping score at home, neither being picked up by an SUV nor so quickly is common. I mean, both have happened to me before, but usually not while hitching with five people, two of them being people of color and men besides.

Oh, and Brynn had that face tattoo and Doomsday was a bona fide cop killing husband killing murderer. I actually can't blame anyone who drove past the five of us though, no matter what their car. No one wants to be outnumbered by strangers in their own vehicle. It takes a certain kind of person, one with bravery and a belief in doing right by people, to pick up a crew like us. It takes a person like Gertrude Miller, it turns out.

Where are you headed, she asked, after the four of us got in the back and I climbed in shotgun. I'd been designated driver dealer wither by a rather hasty consensus decision. With the caveat that Thursday would be ready to step in if the driver was a creep or just a bro looking to bro down. Gertrude Miller wasn't either of those things. She was a white woman, probably 50, with a vacant look in her eyes and a cold but somehow genuine smile on her face.

She had that tired look of a woman who'd done service class work her entire life, and the self-confidence of the same. Out to Glacier, I said. You? It's good practice to ask where a ride is going, probably more important when you've got reason to be skeptical, like when I'm hitching alone and a man picks me up. If they can't give me a clear answer, I don't get in their car. Pendleton, she said.

That'll get you close to Glacier, but I'm afraid the sun will be down before we get there. That's fine. I said we'll figure it out from there. Thanks for the ride. Anytime. She said know why I picked you up. Probably Jesus had told her to pick us up or maybe I reminded her of her daughter or her granddaughter or she was Worried about me and the company I kept. Why is that? I asked. God told me to, she said. There are some young folks who look just like y'all in Pendleton. They run the library ever since the county gave up on it, and they still run it for free. Never would have thought I'd make friends with someone with a face tattoo.

No, I didn't. But these kids are all right. Figured you'd be all right, too. tattoo, no I didn't, but these kids are alright. Figured you'd be alright too." The smile dropped off her face for a moment, and she squinted at the road ahead. Plus, she went on, I've already died once. Ain't got nothing left to fear. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just waited for her to elaborate. She didn't. Instead, she put the radio on, pop country filled the car, and we drove back off into the sunset. That's the end of chapter one. And... Huzzah! Soon.

Yeah, I love the way you describe the countryside. Like it's it's very it all has the vibe of like four in the morning after you've been driving all night, which is also the most like a cult time of day. Like it's the most it's the most I ever believe in magic. It's why all the things that are now part of like the horrible fascist movement we live under, it's where the beauty like there there was a time when like you could just listen to Coast to Coast AM and a man would talk about Bigfoot and the aliens. Yeah.

430 in the morning as the sun rose over the desert and it was a magical thing to experience. Yeah. They've taken that away from us Margaret. I know it's like yeah what happened to just the person who listens to that also has a lot of VHS tapes are very strange things And they're very cheap apartment. They share with four people you know yeah, and that is a good thing That's a good kind of person to be Yep, and I I like the lake I like the altered

How it's like drugs to just stay up too late and like also just to drive all day, you know It's a nice feeling yeah, it's been too long since I've like lived in a car for an extended period of time and that yeah, I You can really tell in your writing that you've had a lot of your kind of seminal life moments Behind the wheel of a vehicle and a long proud highway behind you. Yeah, and then also just like getting into the car with strangers.

I was thinking about this recently. I haven't hitchhiked in like 20 years. And, but I used to do it a lot. And then I sometimes I'm like, I don't know whether I'm not trying to encourage listeners to necessarily go hitchhiking, but that's probably just me aging, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of depressing to me the degree to which some of these things that were a big

part of my life are just like not really done anymore. Like there's some hitchhiking, but I'm also talking about stuff like couch surfing, getting killed by Airbnb and Yeah. Like that sort of stuff. Like there used to be there used to be a lot more of I think wisdom as a rule comes from spending a lot of time with people you've never met before who have lived completely different lives. Yeah.

I think the world is increasingly designed to make sure nobody has that experience. That is a... Totally, because the people, yeah, the people who pick me up hitchhiking, or the people whose houses I've stayed at, or the friend of a friend of a family who I'm just gonna go hang out with and go get a drink at a bar with

that I don't have anything in common with. No, you're right. That is... people need that. Yep. But what also people need that. Yep. But what also people need to do is wait another week for chapter two. Right. You assholes. Yeah. I love you.

Farewell. If you're enjoying The Barrel with Sundwood at May, then you might like its sequel, which is called The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, and it's on Kickstarter now. And you can go back it, unless you're listening to this in the future, in which case it's not on Kickstarter anymore. But you can go buy it. You have so many choices. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com.

Or check us out on the iHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly, at CoolZoneMedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. What would you do if mysterious drones appeared over your hometown? I started asking questions. What do you remember happening on that night of December 16th? It actually rotated around our house, looking as if it was peering in each window of our home. I'm Gabe Liners from Imagine, iHeart Podcasts and Liners Entertainment.

Listen to Obscura, Invasion of the Drones, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Hey, it's Amartines. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias favorite podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower?

From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. What's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously.

Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Mark Seale. And I'm Nathan King. This is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture. This podcast is based on my co-host Mark Seale's best

selling book of the same title. Leave the Gun, Take the Canole features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Kobla, Robert Evans, James Kahn, Talia Shire, and many others. Yes, that was a real horse's head. Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Canole on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.