Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Witch & Tell with Michael Cruz Kayne and "The Supermarket Sorceress"

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

What does real-life witch Lexa Roséan think of Etsy witches in the MLB playoffs? Is there a recipe to re-kill Bin Laden and/or save humanity from A.I.? And how easy it to f*ck up a spell? Plus: witch wars, curse battles, the origin of "abracadabra," the butt fumble of spells... and none of that Harry Potter sh*t. Also: Cheeseburger.• Learn more about Lexa Roséan• Listen to "Sorry for Your Loss" by Michael Cruz Kayne Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. The Jets are losers. Right after this ad. Can you explain what we look like to you for people who maybe aren't watching on YouTube yet? You look like a tree, sort of, yeah, a tree. Sort of. That is a strong endorsement of this incredibly statically staticky costume that I'm wearing.

I see the bark. I see the truck. The trunk. Yes. There aren't really leaves. Well, if I may wave my branches. There does appear to be one leaf. They gave us one little orange leaf.

One little orange leaf. One little orange leaf. Well, the leaves are fallen now. When you say they gave you one leaf, it doesn't appear from looking at the costume that you spent like a ton of money on it. Because it can be grateful for what you got. The fact that it feels almost velveteen. Yeah. It's like a satine.

Yeah. Maybe it's Armani. Yeah. It says something. Oh, yeah, I'm wearing a sign on my chest, on my bark. It says no trespass. No, it's kind of like a foreboding tree. That's a Uri tree.

Yeah, yeah. And the yard of the house sounds like on top of the hill, but you're not supposed to go to. And on that hill, there is a studio. And in the middle chair of the table, in the studio, there is... A cheeseburger. A cheeseburger.

Am I a cheeseburger? I am. There's a big piece of cheese. Yeah. I'm a cheeseburger. Yum, yum, yum, yum. A wrinkle on what our attention was. I assumed it was a hamburger based on an episode of this show that I've done before.

And many discussions about Mr. Hamburger, Alonzo Hamburger Jones, the great comedian. Correct. What's happening? Oh, I forgot to turn these on. The production value here is crazy. You guys spare no expense. And on this hill, in that house, there are multiple producers. With my navel.

I think so. That's clear that this is a Halloween episode. Whoa, boo. Will we cut around this in the edit? I hope not. Probably not. Are you familiar with the catchphrase comic, Hamburger Jones? You're going to have to help me there.

Well, there's a previous episode of this show. We're going to direct you, too. Are you familiar with the aspiration scandal involving the Los Angeles Clippers? And Steve Balmer and Kuai Leonard. Wow. No. That's perfectly fine. That just makes you a normal number of society. And also, there's another episode that you can catch up on.

We're not here to quiz you. Michael and I are definitely not here to quiz you. Wait, is the tree something to do with aspiration? Oh, because the tree. Oh, my God, the trees. Damn it, are we? Okay, sorry. Are we?

I'm totally in the dark here. Spookily in the dark. That's really good. Are we bad at co-hosting or nearly doing a thematic reveal? Does the hamburger have to talk like that? The hamburger is not spooky at all. No. Cheeseburger.

Cheeseburger. The cheeseburger, I think, is sort of inviting. It's kind of delightful costume. Yeah. I do want to explain that Michael and I do this thing lately where the two of us set at a table and we talk to someone who has no idea who we are or what we even do. And so could you please introduce yourself to the Pablo Torre finds out audience by name and perhaps by occupation? So my name is Lexa, Roseanne.

and I'm a professional witch and a psychoanalyst. And also, I'm not really wearing a costume, but I am wearing my Marie Levo Voodoo T-shirt. So she was a... The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum. She was a famous practitioner of Voodoo in New Orleans, and a pretty amazing woman. But I'm just an ordinary.

Witch? Yeah. I mean, that to me is... That's a paradoxical description to me, every witch. I mean, I will tell you just off the bat, your personality seems lovely, but inherently, I fear you. Wow. Is that okay to say that? Is that offensive, that we are kind of afraid of you?

No, I'm cool with that. Okay, good. Otherwise, it'd be a lot of pretending. I mean, you seem delightful. I can only assume that when I hear the word which, I have a certain set of prior. about what that entails. It's part for the course, you know, when we do something good

and we heal, then we're praised, but when the crops fail, we're burned. Yeah. Right. That's pretty hardcore. I do want to explain for, again, those who are just listening and not watching, things you might be surprised

if you clicked on this video and only knew of witches through the movies, you aren't wearing a hat. No, I was when I came in, but I, you mean the pointy witchy hat? That feels like the most offensive thing that's been said so far is the pointy hat thing. I just sort of, I assume that was a caricature of a witch. I didn't come with my broom either.

Look at that. That was my follow. There's no parking in front of your building. In true, like, genuine appreciation, I want to say thank you for sitting here and allowing us to ask you questions that are going to be many degrees of stupid, but also, I think, sincere. I want to quote from no less a publication than the Village Voice. Of course, sure. To point out that you, Lexa, were voted Best Witch in NYC.

No shit. Yeah, real shit. That seems pretty cool. What's the, are there, for something like that, are there other witches that you're like, it better fucking not go to this other witch? Yeah, actually. Yeah, there's some sh**y witches that you're, like not a fan of.

For sure. Okay. Interesting. How many witches would you say are in, well, I guess New York City as our current location. Let's just keep it to that. How many of them? I think thousands. There's many, many witches or witch wannabes, right?

What's a witch? I feel like I'm about to embark on a tongue twister by accident. What makes a witch a witch want to be? Why couldn't you be? If you want to be a witch, why couldn't? If you want to be a witch, why wouldn't you be a witch? So there's a lot of different theories about that. Like when I was younger, I went through a series of initiations and studying to become a witch in a tradition that dates back to Gerald Gardner,

who was kind of the first person in England to come out of the witch closet in, I guess, 1958 year I was born. after they repealed the witchcraft laws in England, because before that, if you let yourself be known as witch, you might be burnt to stake, you might be hung. So at that time, back in the in the mid-80s, I met several people who referred to themselves as hereditary witches, which sounded a little dubious, heredia, especially the hereditary druids, because they kind of disappeared hard to trace. But today, they're most likely, are men. hereditary witches because the women and men that I grew up with all had kids, well, the ones who do have kids, they grew up in Wiccan homes.

So Wicca is a sort of modern, reconstructive religion of what they imagined the ancient pagan religions were like. But there are many people who just call themselves witches without going through any training. How does one get initiated as you were into this craft? So it's not a particularly proselytizing group, religion, if you want to call it. You have to ask, and then you have to study for a year and a day, and then you have to ask again. And there's like a year and a day studying between each initiation and the third one. Literally one year and one day?

Yeah. And the third one, you become a high priest or high priestess. Is there the equivalent of a pope for witches? Well, we do have witch queens. Whoa. But to be a witch queen, I don't know, you have to have a certain number of covence offshoot from you or certain number of initiates. I'm not a witch queen. But my priestess is both of them are witch queens.

I guess that makes sense. There's like a lot of bureaucracy. Because there has to be. In any hierarchical organization, there has to be where there are rules. The more organized, it became the sort of more it fell apart. Right. The more you're just like, I just want to cast spells, guys. What the fuck.

Exactly. I got to fill out of form and shit. I was here for the noots. So that's why I'm very soft about, as I called me for wannabes, which is maybe not such a nice term. It's like, I kind of feel like, you know what, if you want to be a witch, be a witch. I wanted to be a witch when I was a little little.

And my mother would take me to the library and I would check out books on witchcraft. And I had an experience when I was like maybe seven with my father of like I made him do this ritual with me to raise the dead. And it worked. Wait, what? What did it work? It worked. What would happen? Yeah, but what does that mean?

Well, we used to go to Jamaica for our holidays. And there's a famous place there and a famous woman called the White Witch of Rose Hall. And she's kind of infamous because she had several husbands and kind of supposedly murdered them all. But I don't know where in my seven-year-old mind I decided this wasn't true. And we should, I had read in a book that my mother got me in the library a spell to raise the dead. And I wanted to raise the dead. And I wanted to ask her what happened. Kind of wanted to clear her name.

And I convinced my father to take me there at midnight. There's a place where she's supposedly buried there. There's a whole, I mean, needless to say, there's a whole Wikipedia page about this. Like the White Witch of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer. Annie Palmer. In Rose Hall, Montego Bay. Montego Bay.

Okay. My father's favorite place. I mean, I've seen the commercials. I only know it, I think, from the song Kokomo. I just want to point out to the basic sort of setup of like, why are we doing this beyond our general curiosity? which is, in Michael's case, endless. Yeah, we don't have enough time for the episode I want to do.

But I would say that witches are kind of having a moment right now. Not merely because it's literally Halloween. It is tis the season of the witch. And tis the year of the witch, I dare say. Oh, tell me about that. Yeah, I'm interested in this too. I mean, my daughter and my niece, their favorite thing is wicked. Oh, right.

Oh, well, Wicked is fabulous. Okay, good to know the witches like Wicked. Movie and the Broadway show. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And the story they're in of like there is a green-skinned villain who turns out to be both the hero of the story and also like... It's a nice turnaround.

Yeah. I just wonder if in that there is some resonance for you as somebody who maybe projects on the basis of her profession. and her perhaps rituals as scary, but in fact, may well be a friend to all. I'm totally down with that. All of which is to say that I'm wondering if at some point in this episode,

you will consider casting a spell on a couple of people that we might ask you to towards the end. Not yet, but just me and Michael were going to sort of like soft launch some cursive. Yeah, I mean, we can talk about that. People always ask me, are you a good witch, you're a bad witch? I say I'm a real witch. So at times, you know, we need to lay some stuff down to protect ourselves.

Our witches with the curses, etc. Are we ever like cursing each other back and forth? Curse battles? Oh, don't even get me started on witch wars. Witch wars? Of course that's what they're called. The 106 in Park of witches. So sometimes witches are just blasting back and forth.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Damn. I do want to understand. This episode is going to be 12 hours long. My understanding of the witch as a profession and I guess wizards, is that how we should think of it? Are they related, separate? No, not the same thing at all.

They can be. They cannot be. Depends who you talk to. Right. Growing up, I was, of course, familiar with the stories of King Arthur. Sure. Merlin was, of course, a very famous wizard. Mordred.

You got Mordred. That's the bad one, right? Well. Is it Mordred the evil? The evil? I don't want to cast dispersions in front of a witch about whether one is a good or a bad witch. My impression was Merlin was the good one. Oh, yeah.

It was the evil one. I know this from playing the game. I can't think what the game's called. Avalon. Avalon. Avalon. I think that's kind of what Wicked is about. That's what I'm saying.

Sort of the idea of like, who's telling the story. Mm-hmm. I see. I see. Okay, so you're saying that, like, you know, the perspective might shift. My view is overly simplistic. Right. Yeah. That's hurtful, but I, but probably correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Likewise, uh, Jafar from Aladdin. Uh-huh. You know, he's working for the Sultan of Agrabah.

But what if he, too, has a bunch of interests that my niece might enjoy? Yeah, I mean, he, we got to, Jafar's a bad guy. Have you, are you familiar with, uh, with Jafar? I'm not as familiar with Jeff. Well, then we shouldn't dwell on it, but that guy's a bad guy. But you're making me think of the latest Superman, which brings up these kind of issues as well. Just the idea of like who's the villain.

Yes. Yeah. And I guess what I'm saying is across not just the world of musical theater and the cinematic adaptations of musical theater, as well as various children's books, we're also getting to this point where, I mean, have you heard of the Etsy witches that have gone viral in the various things that they've done on the internet?

I'm hearing about that, yes. Yeah, I'm noticing that you're not eager to co-sign what all the other alleged witches are up to because they may not be up to the, you know, standards. Listen, I'm in my crone years at this point. Do you know about the crone? I don't. We have, you know, the triple goddess, maiden, mother, and crone. So I'm in my older years, maybe a bit more laid back.

You know, it's going to really take something to get me up from the table, okay, to start stirring some shit. Right. Right. In my youth, I cast my share. Yeah. I can't believe this is a conversation I'm having. That's not a sentence a person I have ever talked to in real life has said. Oh, yeah, in my youth, buddy, I cast my share.

I was flabbergasted to learn on the internet that one of the Etsy. Witches, apparently only charged $16 for a curse lifting spell. And a Mariners fan hired them for approximately $16. And there was a winning streak and then, of course, a horrific exit from the MLB playoffs. So mileage varies, I guess, on the efficacy of the $16 spell. Listen, I've respect for the $16. And I've respect for that particular Etsy Witch, whether she's, you know, self-initiated. There is, there are self-initiations, or whether she's, you know,

gone through a true initiation process. But, you know, perhaps you didn't charge enough, and that's why the spell kind of conked out midway. But there's lots of theories that we could go into about that. You know my story, right? I would love for you to tell. Please, gosh, tell me your story. In a way that wicked allowed witches to do,

I would love for you to tell your story. Yes, please. So, and George Vessie wrote about this in the New York Times, Yes, the great sports writer George Vessie. Yes. So I had a group of fellows come to me. They were in their early 30s, and they were New York Jets fans, and the fathers had been Jets fans.

So, you know, it's a thing inherited, right, from the father to the son. And, of course, the Jets had not won Super Bowl since 1969 with Joan Ameth. They wanted me to take the curse off of the Jets. So I agreed. I grew up in a football house. My father played football and his brother played high school, a little bit of college. And I thought, well, maybe I can do this. No money involved.

Although you should always cross the palm with silver for anything that business you do with a witch. You should do that. Is that literal or figurative? Well, it could be paper money. Okay. Yes. Yeah, okay. I don't think we have any silver, but you could probably scrounge up some dollars.

Yeah, I think late at night on Fox News, they're selling, I think. You can get some of that. The way you said cross the palm with silver sounded like it was a quote from something. Is that? It is. I don't know where it's from. Okay. Yeah, it is.

An ancient tomb. An ancient tomb. A run, perhaps. Yeah. So he did the spell, as I instructed, and there were several phases to it. And as he was doing it, the Jets. were winning and things were going along really well. And then it was that final game and chance that they had. And he, I didn't find this out till later, but they lost the game. And, you know,

I forget what Vessie ended up writing about it. But what he didn't investigate and I investigated afterwards is like I called the fellow up. It was like, what happened? I actually was sick and could not. He went to Times Square to do this big ritual. And I instructed him on what to do, but I couldn't be with him. And he told me that he made a variation on the chant that I had given him to say that he wanted the Jets to win the Super Bowl in his lifetime, which was not what he was instructed. He was instructed to say to win, to win this game, this particular game in this particular year. So as a psychoanalyst, I have some theories about that. Yeah, why? Which is that I think that these guys are, the Jets are losers.

And there's something about being invested in losers and maybe not wanting to give up that status. Oh, you're saying he self-sabotaged the spell. Yeah, of course he did. I mean, he should live a long life. He should live a very long life. And I'm convinced that one day in his lifetime, the Jets will win. But he basically... Not this year.

He edited the own... edited his own fine print to make it so that this spell was undermined because as a psychoanalyst, you also can detect that some part of him, at the core of him,

the most inner ring of his body is just a big loser who didn't want to stop losing. I mean, he went to a witch. He said, tell me how to do this. The witch goes, here's how you do it. And then you don't do what the witch says?

And then it starts working. And then it, the finish line, he's like, actually, let's see, you could, you could make this work anytime, as long as I'm still around, which just means, you know. Jeez, Louise. I know. That is a very, that's the butt fumble of spells. Really?

What, approximately what year are we talking about here? 2010. Yeah. Oh, so not that long ago. The 2010 Jets, as a matter of historical record, um, lost in the AFC title game with the aforementioned butt fumbler. Oh, is Mark Sanchez. Who this year has not been a great year,

perhaps just merely as a matter of general observation for Mark Sanchez. We'll flash a headline here. Not great for the guy who could have been saved via spell, but instead was, of course, beholden to the self-editing of an inveterate, hereditary loser. Right. But they did win some earlier games. Yeah.

Yeah. It made the AFC title game. Yeah. Look, the notion. that sports fans come to you. What about sports to you feels ripe for this sort of like, I guess, both psychosis and longing

for some supernatural, truly supernatural intervention? Well, the first thing I think of is baseball, a lot of superstition in baseball, right? They don't even need witches, kind of. They've all kinds of superstitions. And there's a history of curses with the Red Sox.

Curse the Bambino. Curse the Bambino. Yeah. So. Jason Giambi, Yankee Slugger, used to wear a lucky gold thong. Speaking to, wow. Superstition. Yeah, the power of such objects.

Of cursed objects. Let me ask you this. I think the word superstition to me is pejorative. Immediately it's like kind of a silly thing. Is that do you use superstition in the same way? What I think of is respect. You know, certain road you don't cross without leaving an offering, let's say. Got it.

Okay. Respect. Well, when it comes to who taught you that respect, what did you inherit? Oh, boy, that's a long story. I mean, my mother could read your mind, and that was really scary. So there's that kind of element of respect. How vivid is your memory of what your mom was reading? Oh, she just knew.

She knew what you were up to. I mean it was truly scary. I think my question is, do you mean, like, in the way that I also think my mom knew what I was up to? Or do you mean, like, she had some kind of supernatural? No, I mean, she had some kind of super. She was born with a call. Do you know what that is? It's a veil that the baby is covered in a, like a veil or a call.

And they say that those people are witches. Wait, what the hell are you talking about? The baby is born with a... Oh, C-A-U-L. Yes. Okay. But what does that look like? Well, you can describe it, I suppose, but I'm reading the definition.

Well, I wasn't there. I didn't see it, but it's kind of like a cloak or a veil. It's a thin... When the baby is born, there's a cloak over the baby. There is a thin membrane covering a newborn's head at birth, which is sometimes associated with superstitions of, yeah, various interpretations. Never heard of this in my life. Yeah, it's a thin, filmy membrane of the amniotic sack, Michael.

Huh. That can cover a newborn's head and face at Earth. Okay, a call. C-A-W-L? C-A-U-L. C-A-U-L. This is dramatic. This is dramatic.

So your mother was born with a call. She was so dramatic, yes. From the first second she showed up. And babies who are born with a call, immediately, the assumption is that they have some kind of a power. Because this is, I guess, that an extreme. I've never even. heard of this, so it must be somewhat rare. Yeah, I've never heard of it until now,

to be quite clear. But it's a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some early modern European traditions. Oh, boy, yeah, linked call birth to the ability to defend fertility and the harvest against the forces of evil. Oh, interesting. Okay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a whole folklore around this. Okay. I mean, I'm obsessed with this now. This is what I'm going to spend the rest of my... After we're done here, that's what I'm going to spend the rest of my day learning about. But your mom... In other words, her personal story is a supernatural one.

Yes. And she did have supernatural powers. She could see things that other people couldn't see. She could read your unconscious. You could read your mind. And my father's mother, she also had some... She was an herbalist. But, I mean, we're talking about the 60s.

Like, who was into that in the 1960s? Herbalist, like a setiva or indica or like something. She grew plants, she made teas. Yeah. She had knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's your father's mother, you said?

Yes. And then your mother. Whoa. Yes. So you could say, I could say, oh, I'm a hereditary witch. But I've never, I've never claimed that. I went, you're going to do a tree joke now? Something about a tree.

Let's do it. I don't know what you're saying. What are you saying is that you have a pretty spooky family tree. There you go. Was it worth it? Was that worth it? All that? That was totally worth it. Okay. It's a very generous audience.

I mean, someone knows what good entertainment is. Is there some significance? The fact that it was these women that had these sort of natural abilities, does it skip? Like, is it like only men can get colorblindness pretty much? Is it like a reverse? I don't know why I brought up colorblindness. Is that true? I think colorblindness is carried in the chromosomes.

Interesting. Women can carry it, but they don't express it in general. The female condition in a nutshell. Yeah. So men have the super, I have the superpower that only men have, I think, which is that I cannot see most colors. But women, like, are men, but men can be witches or no? Oh.

No men can be witches. And there's not a separate, because I thought a warlock was a... But you know, there's a controversy over this. I don't know this. For me, my idea, men can be witches, women can be witches, trans people can be witches. But there is a certain sect, a Dianic sect of witches that are not very friendly to trans women. Whoa. Are they like generally more politically conservative witches on other subjects or specifically that issue?

You know, I love the Dianic witches because they were all so big fat feminists. And then this is in the 70s. And then they all had babies through like artificial insemination. And they all had boy babies. And I just thought this is really great. What are you going to do with this, ladies? Dianic is a derivative of some Diana. Diana, the goddess, the goddess, Diana of the moon.

Okay, that's right. A bunch of real J.K. Rowlings over there is what it sounds. F*** her. She's not a witch. She's like, what the... Stolen, stolen valor. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Are you not now prior to the prior... Are you saying that because of this trans issue? Are you saying it also because of, like, do you like, this Harry Potter shit? I hate this stuff. It's the Harry Potter shit. He made me read the Harry Potter back when the first book came out,

so somebody could interview me and, you know, do a, do like an article about what is a witch? Think about Harry Potter. And I think that I was fairly kind, but it would, I didn't enjoy it. I felt it had no, this is a word, Tom, which means taste, no, no salt in there, no spice in there. You're a master of not merely various spells, but vocabulary. There's probably just a whole nomenclature in, like a lexicon inside of witchery that we just don't know anything about. Except one thing that is clear and relatable is f*** K. Rowling. Yeah.

I mean... That I understand. I do love the idea, by the way. If I can climb onto a soapbox made of myself, I would love to observe that there are some witches out there. some real witches out there, allegedly, for whom the supernatural is certainly possible. This is built into the premise, but are like, but gender is not something we can interpret in a way that violates the binary of boy and girl. And how crazy is that?

That seems a bit, a bit, dare I say, logical. This is, when we talk about the interpretation of, I mean, you, Michael, you, what is, but no, I reference. Your, Michael is an excellent comedian who has a one-man show. And part of the underlying sort of like thought that just sparked in my head, so to speak, is this thing you think looks like this can actually be multiple things. Absolutely. And so it is with gender and spells. I mean, as Aaron, as Jets quarterback Aaron Rogers once said, words are spells. He's not wrong.

Don't necessarily want to co-sign him. Somehow want to co-sign. Well, look up the origins of abracadabra. The origin of abracadabra, one popular etymology of it, is that it comes from an Aramaic phrase, or in this other case, a Hebrew phrase, which translates to, I create as I speak. And there's yet another wing of theories

that propose that it is a corruption, sort of, it's like a normative term. Google. How dare you? How dare you? Of the Hebrew words for Father's Son and Holy Spirit. Ab, Ben, Rock, Hak, Kodesh in some former fashion.

I'm not great at pants. Abercadabra. Abra. Abra-cadabra. Abra-cadabra. Yeah. I didn't realize that was like a serious, I didn't really know it was a serious phrase. Yeah.

Say the first meaning again? The first meaning, I create as I speak. I create as I speak. Words or spells. Words or spells. The podcasters creed. Hmm. The most reckless witches of them all.

Oh, man. What are the rules here? Okay, here's another question. What are the rules? I think we're learning them as we go. You spoke before. You alluded to the power of spells. Is there, like, what is the most powerful thing that a spell has ever done?

Ooh. Do you understand my question? Yeah. Yeah. What's the, hmm. Well, you know, Roland Nordic. She's gone. Goddess rest her soul. I was lucky enough to have many teas with her to go to her apartment in the Upper West Side. She created a tarot deck and she wrote a book and she was a very lovely witch. So she used to tell us about she's British from the UK. She used to tell us that every week, witches of London would gather and they would chant and they would. do a spell to keep Hitler from ever touching the soil on British soil.

And, well, he never did, right? They had the air raids, but they never invaded by land or by foot. Whoa. That's pretty powerful. Yeah, f***ing Winston Churchill. Yeah, exactly. That guy taking all the fucking credit. We will fight them on the beaches.

Guess what? The fucking witches are doing it. We're fighting them in this cauldron. Hypothetically, if we were to, persuade you to cast a spell, how does that go? Like, what do we need to present to you? What do we need to tell you about? What do we need in terms of ingredients? How do we sort of make this happen? Well, we did bring some ingredients, right, into the studio that were from a spell that I wrote in one of my books, Enchanted evenings. I believe you have been in communication with Ryan Cortez,

the most wicked of all. The most wonderfully wicked, Ryan Cortez. That's right. You guys have been like hanging out on the side. And chili. You brought over. I would just say these look like ingredients

I would have in my home. Yeah, well, I'm the supermarket sorceress. Is that right? Yeah. That's such a great rap name. So the ingredients that I use to make like, you know, cookies or, you know, a nice chili, you could also use to cast a powerful spell.

Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. So if you put all these things together, you can basically cause somebody to slip up. Make a little mistake. Yeah. Oh, okay, so hold on.

So this is important because it does not mean that we are wishing horrific consequences. And that is the thing I really worry about with spells. Okay, so the little encounter I've had with spells in pop culture is always like, you do this, what is it? It's like a monkey's paw. Like you do it. You make a wish and the wish comes true, but in a super-ficked-up way that you didn't want it to come true in.

There's that, and there's also, like, it'll come back at you three times or ten-fold. Is it possible for us to, like, very narrowly define the parameters of the results of this spell, or is that just not how it works? That's not really how it works. But there is an element of how it works, and I write about this, I think, in almost every foreword of my book. So the idea is an Alistair Crowley, who was known as the most wicked man in the world, he wrote a lot of books too. But he talked about this. And from a psychoanalytic standpoint, we also can understand this.

So one of the examples given is, for example, let's say you want to kill somebody, okay? And you do a death spell. Ooh. So there's always this kind of idea that, oh, it could bounce back. You know, it could mirror back. So how do you keep that from happening? So, yeah. How would it mirror back? Like, you, someone has a different spell that protects them from your spell?

Or you're rubber and I'm glue's spell. Yeah, or do you like say a word wrong and it ends up, like, how do you, how do you know? It's more complicated than that. So if you were going to want to kill somebody. Which we don't. For the record, legally speaking. Legally speaking. Not even legally.

Just in any way. I don't want to. Also that. Legally, ethically. But let's say that we did. Sure. Yeah. For the purposes of podcast.

Right. Like, listen, I had a book coming out that I was supposed to have a book signing at the, was it the borders in the World Trade Center in October, the first week of October of 2001. Yes. Okay. So you know what happened. Right? Yeah, sure do. And we had all this publicity lined up and everything and everything got canceled. But my publicist said to me, well, you know, channel, whatever, we'll have you on.

If you do a spell to kill Osama bin Laden. And I said, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. And they were like, but blah, everyone wants him dead. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just not going to do that. I'm not feeling that. But, you know, this book is actually about money. And I can tell you this is going to be a lot of financial problems and issues. now after this World Trade Center.

And I was right about that. Oh, there was a Borders bookstore, by the way, in the World Trade Center. Yes, of course. It was a three-floor thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was a beautiful thing. You know, and I said, I can talk to people about money and investment, and that's all the, everything that this book is about to help people out.

And they were like, no, no, no, they only want you to kill Osama bin Laden. So just so you know, I wasn't even into killing Osama. Right. Even when it's someone who universally was regarded as killable, you're like, that's not really my thing. Right, right, right, right. So, okay, so if you want to kill somebody and you do the spell to kill somebody, it's not going to work unless that person has a lot of suicidal ideation. Whoa. And if they don't, if they're a well-adjusted person that's had, you know, years of psychoanalysis and they feel pretty good about themselves.

So that line that you sent is going to, if you think of like a line of an electrical charge, right, you send it or like a magnet, right? There's a positive and you have to have a negative. And then it's like, boom, it hits. But if that's not there, it goes back to return to the sender. Oh, my. So it sounds kind of like when my kids were littler than they are now, if they would try and push me if I was like kind of already.

tipping over, I would fall down. But if I'm standing up straight, they're pushing me would actually knock them down. You've got this so perfectly. Thank you so much. Well, I'm ready to be a witch. Unless that's a bad thing to say, in which case I retracted. No, that's a wonderful thing, you cheeseburger, you.

So, yeah, so if you're going to do that kind of work, you better make sure that you're very healthy in terms of your mental health and your physical health and emotional health. Because otherwise it will return. So your spell is more likely to succeed if it's some sort of a negative spell on an object that is already predisposed

like kind of teetering on the edge. You're kind of going to push it over. You got it. Okay. Wow. Fascinating. So what I found out already is that I need to come up with a backup because I was going to ask you to re-kill Osama bin Laden. That would be that.

I mean, wow. That was going to be the aggregated clip Could you double, could you double kill? Could you revive Osama bin Laden and then kill him again? And then we could also have the rock leak out on Twitter that I had re-killed Osama bin Laden. The rock, the man called the rock? Are you not familiar with this?

What is this? How the rock tweeted out the news of the Osama bin Laden assassination by alluding to this thing before anyone else did. The rock had the news first? That's right. Before Obama? I did not know that. Well, I don't know.

Kind of makes you think the rock is a witch. It is May 1st, 2011. At the Rock, quote, just got word that will shock the world, dash, land of the free, dot, dot, dot, dot, home of the brave, all caps, damn proud to be an American exclamation point, 1024 p.m.

And not long after. Wait, but he didn't say Osama bin Laden in there anyplace. Yeah, but then what happened was. He just got news. that shocked the world, and we just sort of interpreted that that meant Osama bin Laden?

Your theory is that he was like... That he was like, Doritos is releasing a new flavor. The 3D Dorito. They're bringing back dipsy doodles or something. But maybe he did know. I'll tell you got dipsy doodled. Osama bin Laden.

Got double dipsy doodles. Double dipsy doodle. That's what they call the operation. I would like to try something on the level of like, a pratfall spell. Like something embarrassing that happens in public that all of us might be able to observe

that we can even root for having cast such a spell that prevents us from having true legal liability. Most importantly, legal liability. Is there someone, Michael, that you are thinking of? Well, okay, I don't tell me if this is allowed what I'm going to say. Because it's not a person. You can't curse me.

No, it's not you. Is it Katie? Are you going to curse Katie Nolan? No. No. Knaul is a person. First of all, Katie. I think of you as a person. I do not want to curse her. I wanted to curse AI.

I want AI to be cursed. I am so down with that. This is a good idea. I was going to go. These ingredients are really good for this. Let's go. Wait, I like this. AI needs to slip up so badly that everyone can see,

ah, this is a bad investment. This, we can't trust this. I think this is a great idea. I was going to go. Michael, are you brilliant or what? I think I'm brilliant. I think I might be the fucking smartest cheeseburger at all the land. Allow me to say, Michael, to that suggestion, well done.

Well done. Because like a burger. Really good, dude. You're fucking on fire, man. I was going to say, my proposal, which I think we should not do, because yours is way better, was I was going to curse Dan Orlovsky because he hates me. And also, he's scared of all of the spices on the table. Oh, he is? Well, then he better just, he better watch himself.

Well, he already ran out of an end zone once, which feels like he was cursed by some other witch. I don't even know whatever this beef is. I don't know what this is. You know what I think about when I see Dan Rolovsky? That guy's hands are so big. I know. Do you ever watch him on any of the shows?

If he puts his hands in frame, they are enormous. I don't know if we'll cut this out or not, but if we don't cut it out, you guys got to find a picture of him. Then when those hands get on screen, it's like some kind of a supernatural creature. As someone who has giant tree hands right now, It is like it is.

Imagine this, but telestrating like a Caleb Williams play on an iPad. Exactly. That's mostly what the Dan Orlovsky experience is like. Like just so, background for me, vis-a-vis AI, like just this week, they found out that, like, you know, it'll take high-risk gambling bets that it will lose. I forget, like in Albania,

they had a guy on TV saying that the AI is pregnant with 83 babies. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't, but that sounds... How does that work? I don't know. I didn't understand what he was trying to say. He said that the AI in their country now has 83 babies, one of which will go to each, like, minister in the government. And each one will have his own AI.

I'm not a fan. Also, all the energy? I know the data centers. The data centers. The water and the energy and everything. This is taking, sealing. And it was supposed to be, it's going to save you. AI is coming.

It's going to fix all the stuff. What is it? I don't think it does any of that. The chat, the chat, CBT people, or whatever, open AI. It's going to do porn. Oh, yeah. They're like, no. Now it's going to do porn. We're going to do porn.

I mean, which is, it was already doing porn, but they're like, they're like a mainstream company that's like, oh, and also we do, it's, we do porn now. Right. Right, right, right. I thought it was going to end all our global everything. And instead it's like, I got good news for you, though. As a psychoanalyst, I think this is really bad for humanity. Yes, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now is there some, like, wacky-ass, way this is going to come back and bite me in the ass? This smell? No. No. You seem confident that it's not going to, but Pablo's very uncertain. This feels like a classic rake that you're actually having to step on.

This is like the beginning of a movie about a series of curses that I walk into where like a bunch of robots fall on top of me or something. Yeah, when you get... Well, you know, there is such a thing as protecting yourself. Okay. Well, how do we let's do that, too. That is allowed. In what way?

We're not even talking about a person here, right? We're talking about a... What are we talking about? We're talking about truly an interconnected series of... A bunch of beeps and boops. Beeps and boops. But you're saying, I protect myself? Yeah, ourselves, any witch can use self-defense.

I think that this is a risk worth taking. And I would say if there's a way to, like, in the spell, to say, like, you know, any kind of negative ramifications should now and in the... the future be directed to Pablo? Is that something we can do in this film? We can just say any kind of boomerang effect? Pablo is willing to accept insofar as it's your podcast. It is my podcast.

And also, to be very clear, we're talking not about Alan Iverson in case we are accidentally cursing. Yes, that's a good thing to do. One of the greatest basketball players in all the time. Are you familiar with Alan Iverson? No. He was a great basketball player. And his initials are AI.

So we don't want to have this. Oh, no, no. We don't want to harm him. We're talking about artificial intelligence. Yes. Great. We have a cauldron. Okay, well, I'm putting this here. I don't know if you're going to use it for anything or not, but there it is.

I think I would love. So these are the four ingredients. These two are actually protective. So actually, we might... Just pour those on my head. Yeah, we might each want to... Just smelling salt that shit. Yeah, just chomp on that.

Take a bay leaf. Okay. Nice. I'm eager. Any protective thing, I'm all for it. I'm taking a bay leaf. And this can just be, I can just get a McCorm. I don't have to go to like a witch store.

I can just buy a bay leaf. Right in the supermarket. Right in the fucking supermarket. She's a, she's a market sorcerer. Sorcerer. And you're going to take a whiff of the mint. Put a little on your bay leaf. A little on my bay leaf.

Wow, that's really nice. Little cinnamon. Cinnamon is funny because cinnamon can be used. That mint is really, this is, this is, it's really minting. Ooh, oh boy. A little on the bay leaf. Okay. So it's a lot of the baleshealing?

Yeah, and you can put a little on your minty bay leaf. Okay. I am so into this shit. Okay. I didn't think I would be into this. Honestly, I think it's your vibes. Lexa has good energy. She has great vibes.

Energy. Oh, thank you, gentlemen. Okay. So we have red sage, chili powder, black pepper, cinnamon, and we are going to need a pinch of sulfur. So we're going to need some matches to take, like, take the, scrape it off a matchhead. We're going to get some of that.

We got that. Sage. Yep, it's going into the cauldron. Going into the cauldron. You know, like, we need some real sage, meaning some wisdom. I see. Instead of AI. Agreed.

Agreed. And the cinnamon is. Where the cinnamon go. Oh, here it is. For God's sake, Pablo. Give it. Here it is. With haste.

See, so cinnamon, depending on what you mix it with, depends on how it will act. It's a fast act, something that acts fast. So, you know, if you add it with some positive things, it's like, quickly, protect us, keep us strong and successful. Here, quickly. Mess up AI. I'm just wondering, did we have something to literally actually represent AI?

What would be representative of that? Yeah, we got something. What I want to use is I want someone to, like, print, Oh, here this, listen to this. The, like, definition of AI. So a piece of paper that has a definition of artificial intelligence on it. Oh, so we can target this. Put it in the call.

Okay, can we get that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can write it down. No, I don't want you to use your handwriting. Oh, we want to type it. Okay. We did need matches. We do. Can you print out a piece of paper that has the definition of AI on it?

Ask AI to define AI. Yes. Ask AI to define AI. I love it. That's good. I love it. I love it. Oh, dude, this works.

We're so set. We're so set forever. I think this is exactly what America needs us to do. So we have printed out what... We asked AI what AI is. And AI told us that it is the development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning, and problem solving.

And then it goes on to give us. a little more gobbledy gook, but that's kind of the, that's the crux of it. Okay, so we're going to fold that paper into nine folds. Nine, any particular kind of folds? We don't care. Just nine times folded one. I'm not going to be able to do nine halves, but there's, that's one, that's two, that's three, that's four, that's five, it's taking longer than I wanted to, that's six,

that's seven and that is eight and that is nine so nine is the number of completion and endings okay so that's going to go in the cauldron throwing it in there yeah okay and we're going to add some sulfur so we're going to add nine matchheads i don't want to lose count take your time four four you want to do some okay I wonder other people at Finnelli's Cafe will feel about us using that. Shout out to local Soho Institution. This is five. For unintentionally helping solve the world's foremost.

This is six. Plague. This is seven. Pablo, I feel like the last two should be yours. This is... Eight and nine. Don't f*** this up and put an extra goddamn matchhead in there, I swear to God. Yeah, because then it'll be new beginning.

Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Oh, shit. beginning? Oh, shit. No, we didn't. That was eight. Wait, wait, wait. I think there might be nine in there right now. No. One, look, look. Come here and look.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Oh, my God. Wow, you see how easy it is a fuck up a shell? Fuck. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We don't want eight either because eight is infinity. God, damn it. Fuck me.

Dude. This is fucking intense, dude. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There's nine in there right now. Fibing. Nine in there? Should I check it, too? Yes, everyone, everyone in the world come and check it.

We totally almost Orloxkied that. We almost, but I got no beef with Dan Orlovsky. I don't know what happened. I have no problem with you. That's you and Pablo. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Ficking A. Wow.

We were so close to AI, like, taking, what would, ten, ten, ten is what? Ten is new beginning? New beginning. We don't want a new beginning. No. Eight is infinity. Oh, Jesus.

We have all the stuff. I'm fucking nervous. I'm genuinely a little. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited and scared. And we should probably go to Fortuna. The great goddess Fortuna.

She rules to fortunes and things can go forward. If you say so, then I'm absolutely not challenging you on which gods we're going to. I'm going for whatever gods you say. But O Fortuna also is, that is the, that's the Carmina Burana. Yeah, it is, exactly. Wow. Whoa. Okay.

Wait, is this, that's a, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. No, that's Carmen. Oh, so fabulous. That's Bazae. That's Besee. God damn it. That is, uh. Oh, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

Bap, ba, ba, ba, ba. Or is that? Bha-Bah. B-Bah. B-Bah. God damn it. Cut this out. No, no, no.

Leave it in. Roll the music underneath. I know stuff. Cut it out. So with this dramatic music playing underneath us in our post-production edit. It will be there. What do we need to do? Oh, goddess, Fortuna.

We ask you to protect the fate of men. and to turn the fortune of AI, cause it to slip up and fail so that it cannot harm humanity. So mode it be. So mode it be. So mode it be. Do you guys want to add any words to that? May humans masturbate the old-fashioned way. Amen.

And that's beautiful. That is beautiful. So mod it be. And, you know, may humans reign over technology and not the reverse. So mode to be. I have no spells vis-a-vis masturbating myself. I have not, I'm not, that's not for me. Methinks the witch doth protest too much.

Methinks the cheeseburger. Wow, okay, wow. Make love, not AI. Yes, indeed. Damn. I got to say, I usually come up with some very clever sign-off to wrap it all together on Pobletori finds out, a show about finding stuff out. But I got to say, I think I'm pretty stumped. Jesus Christ.

Could that undo the spell? Could the spell be fucked up by that? No. Cleverness is never offensive. Fortuna's not going to be like, fuck this. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Avaroma Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.