The Confessionals - RELOADED | 168: What Is The Paranormal? with Brad C. Hodson

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

On Episode 168 of The Confessionals, we have the opportunity to sit down and speak with horror author Brad C. Hodson! Brad joins us to share some of the paranormal experiences that have occurred throughout his life. During the course of the episode, Brad and Tony engage in an entertaining conversation about what “the paranormal” really is, and how so many people who experience the so-called paranormal will comprehend and convey their experiences differently, depending on their individual views and perceptions. Become a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinCome Meet Tony:LIVE SHOW in Gatlinburg, TN!Tickets: https://bit.ly/3IC4IkxWatch Expedition Dogman: https://bit.ly/3CE6Kg0SPONSORSGET EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase! Listen to this episode for more information! Link: bit.ly/3YaMD1NGET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals60 Promo Code: "confessionals60" for 60% off plus free shipping!!!Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.comCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterSOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIDiscord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkel

Merkel. I guess it's time to go back in time. Are you telling me you built a time machine? Out of a Delorean? Time is but a stubborn illusion. I have a lot of memories of the past. People who are time traveling within themselves. Time travel is possible.

This was all circulating around the base that, A giant had been killed, but no one was supposed to talk about it. Boney fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. The giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand, and he's running really fast. And spears, Dan, holds him up like this.

Somebody else. Shoot them in the face. Shoot them in the face. They basically decapitated. And I look over and there are two. I was pushed and couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay, I reload it. Welcome to the show, everybody. You're listening to The Confessionals. I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thank you for being here. If you've had an encounter or a story you'd like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me. Just get a hold of me. And if you want extra shows every week on Thursdays, we release member-only episodes on the website.

So if that interests you and you want more of the Confessionals on a weekly basis, go to the confessionalspodcast.com and sign up to become a member today. Now, we got Brad C. Hudson coming on the show this week. He is a horror author. And he comes on to talk about his own paranormal experiences that he's had. And then we talk about the paranormal itself and what he thinks about it, what I think about it. It was a very loose conversation today. And I think you guys will really enjoy just kind of digging into the minds of myself and Brad as far as what is the paranormal, what is reality, and what is this all made of? It was a really good conversation. I'm really excited for you guys to hear it.

So without any further delay, let's get to Brad right after this Thursday's member episode trailer. Let's go. Kind of too. I was kind of interested in it, but he was really into NASA. What I remember, too, is we were watching that movie Explorer. And my body said, let's do that, you know? He said, why don't we just sneak out the window and lay in your backyard? And I'm like, okay, let's do it.

We got to be quiet. So we snuck out the backyard. Back to the Explorer, he had some snacks, and he had a flashlight. A big, you know, one of those square-looking flashlights, used those out the window. We laid there, and we would write down what time we saw it and everything. This was crazy. The thing it was around 1256

Yeah, I haven't run down 1256 We saw a shooting star go across the sky And he was starting to write it down And then he started telling me about From the city and the towns Makes the stars a little dim And you can't really see it

So he grabbed the flashlight And he shined it up in the sky And as he shined it up in the sky I think anymore It was like weird We were thinking that the flashlight did it But there's no way the flashlight can do a triangle ship With so much detail

you know with all the like these saw like pipes and stuff connected really like all these weird pipes I didn't see the pipes I was focusing on corner had a glowing and in the center of that glowing donut there was this weird like

mist like faint mist coming out of it the blue light was so I probably took about six seconds to go all the way over the hell's that and I kind of still watched it and as it was going

faded like it just like vanished got Brad C. Hudson on the line. Brad, how you doing, man? I'm doing pretty good. It's a great weekend so far. How about you? Doing great, man. So I don't really quite understand how we got connected.

All I know is that we were supposed to do an interview a couple weeks ago. I called you and you weren't expecting me to call. You had no idea who I was. I have no idea how this interview got scheduled on my calendar. But I have your phone number, your email, your name, everything. and we had to reschedule it by here we are, man, getting this thing done. I'm actually really excited to talk to you because you're a horror author, right? Yeah, that's correct.

I've been writing professionally for about 10 years now. So that's really, I find it interesting. And maybe, you know, two months ago, I wouldn't have been in this state of mind that I am in now. But recently, I've been actually personally thinking, you know, with all the stories that people tell me on my show of their paranormal experience, you know, all this stuff. I started thinking, I wonder if I sat down to try writing, you know, fictional stories, like horror stories, if I'd be any good at it. And that's why, like, when I saw it, you know, I had this interview with you. I was really excited to talk to another author that actually does this for a living. But, you know, you've worked with, you know, a lot of different

authors and stuff. And one of the authors that you mentioned to me that you work with is somebody that I just came across recently and I really enjoy his work, which is Paul or Chuck Pollanick. Is that how he pronounced his last name, Paulinick? Paulineck, yeah. Paulineck. Yeah, he's fantastic. I've been lucky enough to be in a couple of anthologies alongside him and, you know, met him on a couple occasions and sat down and talked.

And yeah, he's just a great guy with some crazy stories, as you can imagine if you've gotten into his books. Yeah, I mean, definitely, I haven't even scratched the surface on his work. But I'm very fascinating. I found out about him through the Joe Rogan interview that Joe did with him recently. And I was just, when I heard him talking about his books and just the guy just is a very different kind of guy. So that kind of started, you know, me thinking about different things. And then I saw you worked with them.

I was like, wow, that's really cool. But some of the stuff that you have coming out, I wanted to kind of get off to the side before we get into some of your experiences. In October, you have some stuff dropping. What is that? Yeah. So I have my first collection of short fiction. It's titled Where Carrying God's Dance. And it's about 75% previously published short stories and then a few new ones that I've thrown in.

But I'm really excited. I've been publishing short fiction for a long time and have, I don't know why, I just never considered putting a collection together of my own fiction. But, you know, it's a lot of the fiction that I've had published in books alongside folks like Palinac and Neil Game and George R. Martin and, you know, I've been pretty lucky in that regard. And so I finally decided to pull it all together and release a collection.

It's mostly horror stories. There's a couple of curveballs in there too. I've got a comedic story and things that are less horrific. But for the most part, it's a great little

slice of Halloween atmosphere, I suppose. Yeah. Well, I mean, that obviously would be a great environment for our audience to tune into because, you know, the audience is all about, you know, scary stories and things like that. And you also, you also wrote a book, though, a novel called Darling, right? And that, I think I saw on your website, that's actually being turned into a motion picture. Yeah. Yeah. That's been, um, it's been in development. element for a few years. And funding last I heard was

just finalized. It's in a casting phase. The script's going out to actors. I saw a list of some of the actors. I don't want to mention them because, you know, it can all fall apart. But it was definitely one of those where I was like, oh, wow, I'm excited just for this

person to read this. But yeah, it's you know, Darling was my first novel, it's kind of my take on haunted house story. It takes place in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, which East Tennessee is just rife with ghost stories and creepy folklore. And so growing up, I always wanted to do something with that. And so Darling was kind of born out of that.

And luckily, the director, Banner Gwyn, he's also from that area. so he has a nice kind of feel for what inspired the book. And I think you'll be able to bring a lot of that to the film adaptation. Well, that's really cool. Is Darling something that, you know, has anything to do with your personal experiences as a kid growing up, though, in the haunted house? You know, a little bit. There's a lot of, so to give you a very,

quick biography of myself. So my mother died about a month after I was born from complications with my birth. And my father watched her die and kind of went off the deep end. He ended up

in prison. You know, very kind of Faulkner-esque story to my background. So my grandparents raised me and, you know, they were older. They grew up during the Depression and Appalachia. And, and, you know, And just I don't think we're at all equipped to deal with this situation.

And so it was a big wound that was kind of all my family's life. And so that was just something I kind of grew up with was how the death of someone can so strongly impact those around them for decades. And so that was a big piece of darling. But the other piece was not only some of the creepy. stuff I experienced, but my grandmother again grew up in what they called the hollow. The hollow holler, depending on

where you're from. Yeah. You know, just like backwoods, Appalachia. And she had a ton of weird, creepy ghost stories, some of which I remember vividly, things that she heard and then things that supposedly happened to her and her sisters

growing up. So, kind of all that environment swirled together. and became darling. Wow, that's really interesting because, I mean, I guess there are times that, you know, people have experiences in life that kind of help shape and mold their character, but also it can also shape and mold a book that they write as well. So that's really cool. So you're in East Texas or East Tennessee, I should say, when you're a kid and in the house

you were living in, it was, for lack of better words, it was haunted, I guess, right? There were a lot of weird experiences. and it's one of those things as an adult, I kind of look back on them and I can tend to be dismissive of them because I'm like, well, I was a kid, I had no idea what was going on. And, you know, there may have been a problem with the plumbing,

et cetera, you know, that I wasn't aware of at the time. But my grandmother, again, swore that the house was haunted. There was one story I remember that I always found creepy where she had stayed up late watching television and everyone else was in bed. and she turned off all the lights and was walking down the dark hall to get to her bedroom

and ran into a person. Wow. And the person grabbed her by the shoulder and she reached over and flicked the light on the hall and no one was in the hallway with her. And then for me as a kid, just a lot of weird, it was a two-story house.

And I think when I was around 12, I moved my bedroom into the downstairs area. And so I'd be like playing video games or whatnot. And then hear footsteps marching around upstairs and door slamming. And, you know, I'd be like, oh, I'm going to go upstairs and see what's going on. I'd go upstairs and nobody was home. They'd gone to the grocery store.

And would hear sometimes somebody call my name. Again, I'd be downstairs, only person at home. And I would hear what sounds like my grandmother yelled down the stairs. badly and I'd yell up what and there's no answer I'd go upstairs nobody else was home um those things creep me out oh yeah and again as an adult I try to be like well maybe that's some kind of psychological phenomenon that we're not aware of where you sometimes hear your name called and you know that gives me some comfort during the day and then at night when I'm sitting by myself I'm like no I don't think that's what it was yeah I mean I can understand you know the idea

of trying to pass things off and stuff and trying to figure out what naturally could have been. I mean, I've had things happen to me in my life where I lay there in my bed and I'm like, what could that have been other than, you know, a ghost or something like that? Because I just want to find a natural explanation for it. When you were an adult, though, you worked at graveyard shift. And that graveyard shift was in a building that was, I guess, known to be haunted. And you had, when I read this experience, it's like, wow, that's kind of eerie. You had an experience there.

Yeah, this is basically like a Twilight Zone episode. And I've actually thought this happened over 10 years ago. And I've constantly been like, I want to write about this someday. And I just haven't figured out the right angle into it to make it a fictional story. Yeah. But yeah, so it was the old, it was a post-production facility called Inner Sound. This is, I live in Los Angeles now. And so it was down off Santa Monica Boulevard.

and it was in the old EMI Records building where like Joplin and the doors recorded back in the day. And everybody there said the place was haunted. But nobody had their own story. It was always like, oh, this guy who used to work here had this happened to him. And so I never thought anything of it. And I would pick up some extra money

working security there over the weekends. and so there was this one Saturday where I was there and it would be 12-hour shifts. And I was in the building all by myself. Buildings locked up, had alarms on it. I'm basically there to answer the phone, take messages, and make sure nobody breaks in because there's a lot of expensive equipment. And I've been doing this for months. And it was a creepy place when nobody else was there,

especially if you went into the areas where they recorded audio because everything was soundproofed. And so as soon as you walk in, the environment just shifts and you feel like a difference in the air pressure. And even the sound of your breath is being absorbed by the walls. So it was very immediately when you walked in. But I'd been doing it for months. Nothing weird happened.

It stopped even thinking of the ghost stories. And then this one day I'm setting, at the front desk and the phone rings. And I answer it and nobody's on the other line. And I look down at the switchboard and it says the call is coming from the machine room inside of the building. And so my first thought is that somebody's broken in. So I grabbed this big mag light and this three foot long steel thing that you crack somebody's head open with. And I go search the building.

I go into that room. I go into all the other rooms. look around, nobody's in the building. Check all the doors, they're all lock, the alarms are armed. There's nobody in this building. No way someone could have gotten in and out of the building. So I kind of chalk it up to a fluke,

like maybe something's wrong with the phone system. And I go back to the front desk, and I'm sitting there, and it's about 20, 30 minutes later, the phone rings again. This time is coming from a break room that's right next to that machine room. I punch it up on the security monitor.

Nobody's there. I go make my rounds again. Don't find any sign of anyone. Doors are locked. Alarms are armed. This keeps going on through the course of my 12-hour shift that day. Every like 30 minutes or so, the phone will ring. It's from a different room in the building.

And I go check and there's absolutely no sign that anybody could have gotten in. And again, as soon as these phone calls are made, I'm punching up the rooms on the security monitor too, where oftentimes I can see the phone, and there's nobody in that room. So I don't know what's going on at this point. I'm creeped out. At the same time, I'm like, it's just got to be a problem with the phone system, something weird with the phone system happening. But it keeps happening throughout my shift, and every call gets closer and closer to the lobby where I'm at. So finally it's about 30 minutes before my shift's over and another security guard's going to come and relieve me. And I get the final call.

And this call is coming from the client phone, which is in the lobby about 10 feet from where I'm sitting. I can see the phone. There's nobody here. I'm the only one in this room when I get this final phone call. So I'm thoroughly creeped out at this point. My relief comes to pick up the next shift. I still don't quite know what's happened, so I don't completely go into it with him,

but I'm just like, hey, there's something weird going on with the phones. So the phone may ring a bunch, and I'm not really sure what it is, and just kind of leave it at that. I go home, get some sleep, come back 12 hours later to relieve him for my next shift. And when I walk in, the first thing I ask is, so how many times did the phone ring last night? And he says, none, didn't ring once.

So whatever happened was only happening to me. And as soon as I left, it stopped. And so that was my one creepy experience in that building. Yeah. And, you know, I can't definitively say it was a ghost, but I don't know what else it is. It could be either. I mean, there's something, I mean, that's got to be creepy. I mean, anybody going through that would be creeped out, especially it seems like it's getting closer and closer. What you need to do is you need to make this to your next book because it really could be, you know, a storyline in there for a book.

Very interesting. What do you think all this kind of stuff is? I mean, I know you mentioned, to me also in the interview or the email that you had seen an apparition in a medieval tower. What do you think that is? Yes. So it's actually funny. Like I consider myself a skeptic and 90% of the ghost stories I hear. I'm like, oh, okay, well, that was sweet paralysis or whatever. You know, I find some explanation.

But for somebody who does that, I have a lot of weird ghost stories. So we were in, we were in Naples. in 2008, my wife and I, and we had spent the day in Pompeii, and we came back to the bed and breakfast we were at, which was in the top of this 15th century medieval tower. And we're the only ones there, and we're out on the patio, watching the sunset, having some wine, you know, nice, nice romantic evening, nothing creepy, nothing that would put you in the mind for ghost stories in any way, shape, or form. and I'm sitting there and talking to her, and the way I'm setting, I can see behind her into the double doors that open into the bed and breakfast's living room. And it's dark, the lights are off.

There's a bit of wall, and then another door that opens into the kitchen, and the lights on in the kitchen. And while I'm talking to her, the living room's huge. I see a man in kind of, like a white, blousey kind of shirt, something you'd see like guys wear on the beach in 1980s music videos,

like very Duran during him. And white pants walk through the room. And I can vividly see him still. He was about six feet tall, kind of bronze skin, black hair, wearing all white, and he just walks through the room.

And my wife's telling me something. And I'm watching this guy walk and I'm thinking, oh, I wonder who came home to the bed and breakfast because we'd met some of the other people staying there. And he walks past the wall to where the only place he could go is into the kitchen. And so I turned my gaze to the kitchen door to see who steps in and nobody steps in. And I'm like, that's weird. And so I get up and I poke my head into the living room just to see who walked in and the lights come on. They were on a motion detector. but they didn't come on when this guy walked through the room.

And I didn't even think the word ghost for about 10 minutes. My wife tells the story much funnier than I do because I'm like suddenly freaking out. I'm like, where'd the guy go? Where'd the guy go? And I'm looking around for whoever I saw walking in the room. Because I didn't, in my mind, I didn't see a ghost. I just saw a guy walk through the room and then he disappeared. And then about 10 minutes later, I was like, did I see a ghost?

Did I just see an apparition? So that was definitely a strange experience. Yeah, absolutely. So as a skeptic, as somebody who tends to be more skeptical of these kind of things, but also have had your experiences, how do you explain these kind of things? I mean, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it because, I mean, you write, you know, horror kind of things. And so you do spend some time thinking about, you know, the idea of life being scary, you know.

And I'm just interested. to hear what your thoughts are on some of these experiences that people have? You know, I've heard a lot of theories that, um, that sound good. You know, whether you're talking about, uh, electromagnetic energy causing hallucinations and feelings being watched or, uh, infrasound. Um, there's some solid research there that's creating the feelings people associate with a haunting. But there's no one, there's no one scientific theory that encompasses all the types of haunting experiences that people claim to have. You get into an area where I think there are multiple things going on with a lot of ghost stories.

I think there are, you know, whether it's electromagnetic energy, infrasound, psychological phenomenon. You know, like I was saying, hearing my name being called a lot as a child, and I always wonder if that was just some kind of psychological or neurological things that we're not aware of, you know, where you're predisposed to hearing your own name, things like this. But I will say that even when I, when I'm being skeptical and I look at a lot of these stories, read a lot of these stories, and I started saying, saying, oh, well, that was probably this or that was probably that, or, you know, they're misinterpreting this natural phenomenon, et cetera, that still doesn't account for everything. There are, there's just enough room left for doubt, just enough stories that don't fit those molds that it leaves me wondering. And, you know, again, with my own stories, like, I could, I could say, for instance, the phone

calls that night, that there was just some kind of quirk in the system. It was rebooting itself or whatever, and that's why the calls were occurring room to room. Doesn't explain why it ended when I left. Could just be coincidence, you know? But even with that, if I try to apply that same logic to seeing the apparition in Naples, he would have had to have been a hallucination. but there's no there was nothing happening that would have caused me to hallucinate. I haven't had hallucinations before or since. So there's no logical basis for that being a hallucination.

So I'm only left in that case, for instance, with being like, I saw somebody. What the implication of that is, whether it's a ghost, whether, you know, somebody else staying at the bed and breakfast was practicing their illusion routine. You know, I don't know. But I saw someone. You know, I'm 100% confident in that. And there are other, like, weird little experiences I've had, too, that, again, just leave a bit of doubt.

That house I grew up in, my grandparents eventually moved out. And, you know, it was like 18. And so I rented it for a couple of years. had some friends move in. And there was this one winter where I was there with my friend Keith and we're sitting on the couches in the living room chatting about something. This blizzard had blown in, knocked all the power out. So we had no power.

I think we're making pot of chili in the fireplace to eat. And we heard somebody open the kitchen cabinets, rummage around in the dishes, and then close the cabinets. were the only people home. And we looked around the house and nobody was there. And that was an experience I shared with somebody else. We both heard that. So again, I'm left with the question of like, well, what was it?

It couldn't have been a hallucination because we shared it. Exactly. Yeah, I look at a lot of different things. I mean, I have people on the show that have had many different types of experiences. We cover a lot of different stuff on the show. And, you know, some of it is just, you know, your traditional, simple hauntings and some of it's more extreme. and the more extreme it gets, the harder it is for people to fathom and let alone believe. But when I sit back and I start thinking about things, one of the things that I've been hearing

more and more about recently over the last couple of years, and I don't understand it at all completely, even remotely. But the idea of quantum physics and how that might possibly explain some of the paranormal experiences that people are having, when I hear somebody talking about quantum physics, it really sounds paranormal to me because it's such a strange type of physics that they're just now starting to scratch the surface on. And I couldn't even go into describing exactly what they're saying happens. But basically, things that should be predictable aren't able to be predicted on a quantum level. And I wonder if, you know, 10, 15, 20, 50 years down the road, if we'll be looking back and saying quantum physics explains a lot of these paranormal type events

people are having. But even at that, I don't know if it will explain everything that people have had. It's just a very interesting route of thinking that I've been thinking on recently. And, you know, it is what it is. But yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting because when you're, you know, when you're like tourists like us, like, you know, obviously I'm not a physicist. You come across a lot of things like Einstein's spooky action at a distance. For instance, where two, and I'm probably totally butchering this, and somebody who's a physicist is going to comment on this episode and be like, that guy's an idiot. But, you know, two particles that are linked,

but can be millions of miles away from each other. If you affect one particle, you turn it clockwise, the other particle will still have that effect, even though in space they're not touching each other. So quantum physics brings up a lot of weird areas. I have seen some people who know more about that than I do kind of refute that that could explain hauntings, but I think one of the problems with that is that there's a lot of cultural baggage with hauntings. And if you're talking about, you know, a ghost being the spirit of a dead person, that's something that's, that's something that's been brought up in every culture since the beginning of time. I mean, you can go back to the Odyssey

and, you know, when Odysseus is having to feed blood to the spirits in order for them to speak to him, you know, every culture on the face of the earth from the beginning of time has had ghost stories. Which to me is one of the things that also lends credence to there being something behind it. Again, whether that's a scientific or psychological phenomenon or something else, that it's not just people making it up. It's not lies. You know, I think that's an easy, an easy way to just dismiss it. And that's not to say some people don't do that.

But, you know, if every culture on the face of the earth throughout time and memorial have had these stories, and they're all similar in a way that you don't get with, say, leprechauns, which are a purely Irish phenomenon. or the penangolin, which is a purely Southeast Asian phenomenon. These are things that are in their folklore that you don't find in the folklore of other people. But they all talk about ghosts and hauntings. Now, that's a long-winded way to say, not only do I think something is going on there,

but that's how we are culturally conditioned to view whatever this activity is that we're experiencing, whatever these anomalies are. And so I think there is a possibility that, science might one day explain it and it might not be anything even remotely similar to how we view it. And I find that really fascinating. I mean, you think of something like the radio. You know, radio waves existed since the Big Bang.

But until Marconi built a radio, no one was able to pick them up. No one was able to listen to them. No one was able to transmit messages. until Marconi created the radio. And so I always wonder, is that what some of this is? Is there some, you know, equivalent to radio waves

that we don't know about yet because we haven't been able to develop the technology to detect them? Yeah, and you know, it's even like with technology itself, I mean, if you were to be able to travel back in time to, let's just say, 1650, and you pull out your,

iPhone, that would be witchcraft back then. You know, that would be paranormal witchcraft. Yeah. And you'd get probably burned at the stakes for. And now we just call it science, you know? Yeah. I think Arthur C. Clark had that famous quote that, again, I'm probably but any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

And I think that holds true. that whatever is behind these things, again, I think there's probably dozens of reasons. I think whatever, if there's a scientific explanation we can find one day, each one of the ghost stories I've told you I've experienced probably has a different reason behind it. It's not the one thing that caused all of them.

But as a horror writer, and somebody who likes stories and somebody who likes mystery and someone who likes to creep himself out at night. I also don't want to completely discount the possibility that there is some kind of intelligence, you know, creeping in on me at night. And, you know, that's fantastic thinking. It's magical thinking.

But no matter how skeptical I try to be, I can't rid myself of that, whether it's comforting or it's just that I like the chill of the unknown. I don't know, but that's always going to be a part of my brain. Yeah, me too. I mean, I'm very much, I mean, I'm unapologetic as to my levels of belief. I mean, I very much believe that paranormal stuff, it really happens. It really goes on. What it is, we don't know. I don't know. And that's why I try to stay neutral on it. I mean, I have my thoughts and opinions on things. But at the end of the day, I put my head down on my pillow, and I believe that people are experiencing

these crazy things. What it is, I don't know. But it's, it's a, it's a, very fascinating. And I like that quote you mentioned earlier. It's very true. It's just one of those things where we live in a world where there's a lot of oddities. And just because we can't explain something doesn't mean it's not happening around us. Right. And it doesn't mean that it's happening the way we think we do. And that's, again, I think an easy go-to, and this is where I'm a jerk to both believers and skeptics, I guess. It's easy to discount people's stories of hauntings with just a blanket like, oh, they're making it up.

It's their imagination run wild. But so many of the stories don't fit that mold. And then another argument that constantly gets made is, oh, well, it's one person in a dark room experiencing it. How can we know it? But there's so many stories that have been verified. I mean, you know, experiences that, you know, experiences that, you know, you. you know, a dozen people have had it once.

There's one in Chicago. I forget the details. I think it was in the 60s maybe, but where an entire tour group of like 20 people supposedly saw this apparition. And again, that doesn't mean it's a spirit of the dead, but there's something happening there. When that many people experienced something at the same time, another weird story I'll tell you is,

that's the one weird experience my wife has had. we were on our honeymoon in Key West and we're going on, we went on like the ghost tour. And it's hot, it's sweltering. And we went to a few places and we go to this one shop where, you know, they have a ghost story about an apparition that's seen there. But it's supposedly tied to this door that they have that's, you know, there's like 600 pound oak door that the shop owner bought from a, castle that had been demolished in England.

Actually, I think the castle burned down. That was it. But they bought this door, had it flown over, and placed on the door of the shop. So we get there, and again, it's just sweltering out. My wife starts to feel really sick. She's like, I don't know if I can keep the tour going. I'm hot, I'm nauseated.

I'm feeling vertigo. So we sat down for a minute until it passes and then we pick back up the tour group and then she's fine once we get away from that shop.

So the tour is over and we don't mention it the tour group is big enough that the tour guide I don't even think saw us

the tour is over I walk up to the tour guide and I'm like have you guys experienced anything just wanting their creepy stories and then he goes

yeah you remember that shop that had the door, we sometimes get a lot of people there who start getting sick and they feel hot. It's as though they're like inhaling smoke trapped in a fire, kind of the same symptoms. And he's like, you know, a couple of our tour guides experienced that too. And I was like, oh, that's what happened to my wife. Again, not even occurring to me that there might have been some kind of, you know, ghost story there creating the symptoms just like, oh, she's hot

and she sat down, which could have been the case. But it was so strange to me that she had a weird experience that was then verified by the tour guide and supposedly dozens of people had experienced and we didn't know about it beforehand. And those are again the kinds of things where it's like, that wasn't our imagination. It wasn't my wife's imagination.

It could have been just, you know, she was too hot. Maybe she needed to drink more water. I don't know. But it, again, leaves the right amount of doubt. Like, that wasn't one person alone in bed creeping themselves out. There's enough verification there that, you know, the odds of something having occurred go up. There's a lot of people who have had experiences paranormal-wise.

And I'm not even just talking about, you know, ghostly stuff. We're talking about UFOs and things like that. Like there's a lot of people who have had these experiences that have had multiple people experience it with them. And that's got to be at least comforting for them to know that they're not totally crazy because they know that there's other people confirming what they saw. For the people who are, you know, experiencing something crazy and they don't have that person that experienced it with them, you know, it's one of those things where when you relay those stories to people, you're now leaving your experience. in the hands of the people you just told it to for them to judge you, whether they think you're crazy, if they believe you or what. And that can be something that's hard for people to open up themselves vulnerable-wise to those kind of things. And I always tell people, like, I really believe

that if you have an atheist sitting in a room and a theist sitting in a room, somebody who does believe in God, and they both experience the same paranormal experience at the same time together, those two people are going to walk out of that room explaining what they experienced very differently because they have different worldviews going into that experience that's going to help contribute to how they view their own experience, how they make sense of it, and how they relay it to other people. And so when they relay that to other people, they're going to relay it totally differently from one another because they believe certain things that are totally different going into that experience. And that's why I really try to keep an open mind as to when

people are telling me things because I have my own worldview that I view the world in. And that does shape and mold how I listen to people's experiences, but it also would, for them, it shapes and molds how they tell their experiences. And so that's why I try to keep a very open mind when it comes to all these different things people have going on. Yeah. I mean, there's no, that type of cultural baggage, again, when you bring it into one of these stories, it could lead you in a dozen directions and might be completely off the mark. But again, when it's the shared experiences, it's incredibly hard to just completely discount it. I mean, even, like you said, even a diehard, skeptic, atheist doesn't believe there's anything behind these, could experience

something, and just say, well, I obviously suffered sleep paralysis last night. Maybe I should go to my doctor. But, you know, there's a theory I've always liked. It's named after a made-for-TV British movie from the 70s called The Stone Tape, but the theory is called the Stone Tape Theory. And the idea is, you know, a lot of ghost hunters and, you know, et cetera, they claim that there's fluctuations in electromagnetic fields where there's a haunting. And what the Stone Tape Theory posits is, you know, older recording mediums, BHS tapes, cassettes, etc.

they use magnetic tape to record audio and video. And the magnetism is what imprints that on the tape and is how you play it back. And so as the stone tape theory goes, is that there's types of environments and certain conditions that we're not yet aware of to where the environment can actually record things that are happening in it, and then somehow play those back. I've always found that fascinating too, whether that's true or not. You know, if you want to get into seeing apparitions or hearing noises and, again, these shared things, it's a very fascinating idea. I recently sold a screenplay kind of based on the same idea. But, of course, I take that in a direction where it's like they're sure that's what's going on.

They create a device to allow them to play it back. of like, oh, no, we're wrong. We've actually punched a hole into, you know, the other world and spirits are coming through. Because again, I just can't leave that to the side. We talk about a lot of different things on the show. And I just came off an interview a couple hours ago where I was talking to a guy about the idea of, you know, living in a simulation and punching holes into other worlds and what could come through. You know, Elon Musk, everybody, you know, most people, unless they're haters, would say that he's a genius. Like, he's very intelligent. And he's, convinced that we live in a matrix, or not a matrix, but a simulation is what he says. And so he,

if he could have one question answered, of all the questions he has, it would be what's on the other side of the simulation. When you have one of the smartest guys in our time that we've ever seen saying things like that, it really makes you wonder, you know, what's going on here, you know, because he's not convinced that this is actually real. Well, and if we were to live in a simulation, if you start thinking of things like, I mean, I think the Matrix deal dealt with this. It's been forever since I've seen those, but the ghosts and deja vu are little like glitches in code.

And the idea that if you were in a simulation, somebody who kind of knew how to hack that simulation, would it look any different from magic? Yeah. You know, would being inside the simulation and trying to hack the simulation, would you basically have to perform rituals? And things. Now, this is my writer brain talking, of course, you know, that I'm not actually saying like, oh, you know, John D. The Queen Elizabeth's court magician was a master hacker. But it's fascinating to think about these things. Because we really, there's so little we know about the nature of the world and the nature of reality. And we're learning more all the time. And sometimes what we learn closes doors, but it opens several more.

And who's to say, you know, when I'm an old man and I'm sitting on a, you know, in a rocking chair on my porch, telling my grandkids a ghost story that they're going to be like, oh, dad, that granddad, that was just you misinterpreting phasma recollection or whatever. Yeah. I mean, because if you think about the future generations, they seem to be getting smarter and smarter at a younger age because they have access to technology and things like that that we don't, we didn't have growing up. And so I totally could see future generations, young kids being like, you're stupid for thinking that. Like, that's easily explainable. And you get into like a weird area too. Like I was telling me my grandmother had just tons of stories. And there's one that always stuck with me where like, I think she was like 14 at the time.

And she and her sisters were walking home from somewhere. And again, this is like, you know, backwoods Appalachia. This would have been like, I don't know, 40s, 50s. And it's dark. and they're walking back from somewhere and they cross over some railroad tracks and they hear somebody following them. And they look back and all they see is like a big shadow. And this continues and they start to get creep out because they're young girls and being followed by a guy in the middle of nowhere who knows is what's going to happen. And then they pass under a street light and when they get far enough ahead of the street light to where the guy should be under the street light, they turn and it's a railroad worker standing there with no head.

so they all scream and they take off running and they go you know they get home and they run up to the they shut the gate behind them and they run up to the porch and they look in this headless railroad worker standing at the gate and then he turns around and he walks off and it always creeps me out of the kid but then I got older and I was like that's that's a folk story like I don't think that happened I think you heard that and then you were telling it to us not intending to lie to us as children, but you were just trying to tell us a scary story, et cetera, et cetera. But who knows? I mean, those folk stories have to have a basis in something. So it again, it's kind of like, it becomes auriboros, the snake that eats its own tail.

You can go round and round. Well, here's an explanation for that. But here's a doubt. And then here's another explanation and here's a doubt. And you just go round and around being like, I believe, I don't believe. Yeah, I totally get it. I totally get. I mean, I've talked to some many different types of people through what I do and stuff. And basically it boils down to people don't know. They just don't know. And so it's just looking to the interpretation of the person receiving the stories, which I think, I just think that's way, it's a beautiful scenario for me.

I mean, I love the fact that every week I put out shows where people are telling their scary stories of what they've been through, paranormal wise or whatever. And at the end of the day, when I put that out, it's now out of my hands. is out of the person telling the story's hands. It's now in the hands of the audience. And each and every single one of those people have to sit there, listen to it, and make a decision whether they believe or they don't believe. And either way is fine.

It's just, I love that. I love the environment that what I have with the show offers to people. It's just this really raw, genuine environment where it's just like, here's the story. Now you decide. And I just love that. It's a very kind of cool update. to, you know, a long history of oral legends that we have, you know, that now these oral

legends can get passed on in the form of a podcast or, you know, a YouTube channel or whatever. And, you know, it almost gets to the point where, like, whether it really happened or not is moved, you know? Yeah. It's more about just the person telling it, believe it happened. And, you know, that kind of becomes what I'm most interested in, because ultimately at the end of the day, if we're all wrong about this, none of this stuff's happening. You know, there's very mundane explanations for every bit of it. What's it hurt? You know, if we're not taking it

to the degree of, say, you know, the spiritualists in the 1920s who were praying on families who were grieving their children lost in the war and, you know, swallowing terry cloth to vomit up is ectoplasm and stuff just to fleece these people for money. That's one thing. But a lot of times that's, again, where, you know, I feel like I'm often jerks to skeptics, too, is a lot of times, a lot of the skeptics, they just kind of kill joys. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like, what's it hurt for us to to get together and tell ghost stories to each other, you know? Yeah, I agree. And what you said just a few seconds ago, I 100% agree with you. And that's what I tell people. Like, when I hang up the phone with somebody and they are done telling their story to me, if I walk away from that interview with

them saying, I believe that they believe what they just told me is what they experienced, I'm down for airing that interview. Because as somebody who comes to the table with, like I said earlier, with my own worldviews, how I interpret things and how I share my story is going to be different than other people's. And I have to see that coming from the person. And I have to see that coming from the person telling the story as well, they have their own worldviews on how, how this world operates. And that really does shape them all how they perceive their experiences and how they relay their experiences. And so I can't control that. And whether I agree with how they describe their experience to me or not is irrelevant to the fact that they experienced something and what they

told me, they truly believe. And that's how I view things. Yeah, I think that's a great way to view it. Well, thanks. But so I wanted to ask you here. you know, with you being an author, I saw on your online and stuff, you actually were in some movies too, right? Yeah. I've, so I've kind of one of the ways I've made my living as a writer over the past 10 years is I do a lot of uncredited rewrites for movies that nine times out of 10. I'm glad my name isn't on when they're released. But, you know, I've been. pushing really hard to get some more original stuff out. And, you know, so I've got a few things

out there right now that are picking up steam, television show, and a couple of other film projects. But, but yeah, when I, when I first moved out here, I dabbled in acting. I was in an improv group and then formed a sketch group, and then I moved out here and, you know, had little roles and this, that, or the other. And I don't know. As I got older, I got more and more antisocial for like a better word. I'm just an introvert. And so the idea of auditioning and hustling for gigs and even, you know,

I was doing stand-up for a little while, the idea of being in front of an audience. Like, none of that just really fulfilled me the same way that it did, setting down and creating stories, creating worlds. that's what really grabbed me. And, you know, it's kind of a similar thing. Like you talk about people calling in and telling these stories. It's like, you know, me setting down on my computer and creating this stuff myself, it's like I'm having that conversation with myself to really make me sound insane.

So, you know, I get to experience those things in my head and then tell myself about them and then kind of work through the process that. way. And yeah, I just, you know, I like a lot more and it's really thrilling. That's not to say I wouldn't do something in a, you know, act in a film or TV show again. If something came along that was fun and, you know, I didn't have to go through the horrible hustle actors do. I have so many friends that are actors and it's like you have to love what you're doing to go through that. I mean, you do in any art. You know, it's not like, I'm not a millionaire by writing, by any means.

You know, I still sit down every month and I'm like, oh, God, how am I going to pay rent this one? You know, so, you know, you have to do that in any art. But like, acting is such a, you're always putting yourself out there. And then it's like you're getting rejected. When you get rejected for a role, yeah, like, you know, if I send a book or a story or a screenplay out and it gets rejected, it hurts. I don't like it. But it's like, well, it's that work. And I can go in and fix it and do other things to it and look at it with a critical eye.

You know, if an actor goes out on 20 auditions, they get rejected 20 times. Like, that's a blow. That beats you up. Yeah. Because it's the people making the film saying, you're not good enough for what we're doing. You know? Yeah. And some of those people have no.

like no decorum at all. It's not polite. Like I know actors who have been told like, you know, just straight up like, you're too fat for this role. Yeah. And like friends of mine who are not in any way,

shape, or form fat, like you would be like, that is one hot chick right there. And, and then, but they go in and it's like, you need to lose about 10 pounds. And it's like,

what? But forget about the ability. Yeah, exactly. And you hear that over and over again. It's just got to, it's got to get rough. Yeah. I mean, my wife, she used to act and she did a lot of plays. I mean, she's been in over

30 productions and she was the lead in most of them. And one of her things was she always wanted to kind of get into movies and things like that. But as she got older, it's the same exact thing with you. She just started losing the passion for the hustle and she's, my wife is introverted. So it's the idea of going and, you know, putting yourself out there to be rejected by people you really don't care to have their opinion about your life anyways and all that stuff. It just, it's just like not interested. So I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah, because I, you know, I don't want to crap all over the film industry and, you know,

especially as a writer, like, you know, I don't want to, don't want to sound bitter or anything. There are a lot of great people in the film industry, a lot of very smart people in the film industry, and I've been lucky enough to work with some of them. But there are also people who you, whether it should go into picture script or you're going to audition who it's just a job for them and they actually kind of hate what they're doing. And so they don't like you and they're not very knowledgeable about film and could care less. And so you get rejected by those people. It's like, why do I even care to listen to your opinion? How did you get that job? So let me ask you a question here. Take me into the mind of Brad,

the author. And how do you come up with the idea that you want to write on? how do you develop these ideas? Because I imagine, you know, writing, you know, a novel, is it going to come out in one sit down? Like, okay, I know where this is going to go, but it's got to be in pieces, right? Yeah, you know, it's really weird. Like, I've never come up with a stock answer

for where stuff comes from because it's just a host of different things. Like with books a lot, I might get like a scene in my head with a book or a movie. And it might be a scene like in the middle of it. you know, something creepy or something emotional or something funny, whatever. And then that scene kind of sticks in my head. And then other ideas I have start connecting to that scene until I have enough where I'm like, I think I've got a book here or I think I have a script here. And then I can sit down and start fleshing out around that, trying to figure out,

all right, where's the start? Where's it end? What's my story here? What's my theme? Sometimes it's a sentence that pops in my head. I get that a lot with short stories. I'll just feel like in the shower or something and the opening line pops in my head.

And I'm like, I want to see where that goes. And so, you know, I just sit down and start writing to kind of figure it out for myself. Like sometimes writing is like reading. You know, with some projects I sit down and I outline meticulously. And then with other ones I sit down and I just start writing and I see what pops up. And, you know, that's very exciting and thrilling.

Also, very messy. Usually requires a lot of rewriting, a lot of editing after the fact. But that's really thrilling, especially when you get something that you really enjoy out of that. Again, I've had a lot of luck with the short stories in that regard where I'll just sit down and be like, I don't know what this is. I have this sentence or this image pop in my head. I just want to see where it goes. And, you know, then you like what you ended up with and you actually manage to sell it and it gets published. next to, you know, one of your favorite authors.

And you're like, oh, wow, this was a thrilling experience. And then the next time you sit down to do it, you're like, oh, this is crap. There was a, I think it was Harlan Ellison said this. And I'm giving like third-hand information. I think I read this on Dan Simmons website, quoting Harlan Ellison. But this analogy of, you have this machine that's kind of, you have this machine that's covered in like blinking lights and it's making these like whirring and chirping noises. And that's that's your core idea.

And before you can work on that idea, you have to walk it out to the swamp of your subconscious and just kind of toss it in. And I might sit there for months. But as it sets at the bottom of the swamp, creatures start swimming around it and getting stuck to it and vines and things grow over it and sludge coats it. and these other things attached to it. And then when it's ready to be written about, it'll crawl itself out of the swamp to reveal itself to you.

And I've always kind of liked that idea that, you know, a lot of times things set and percolate for a long time. And, you know, I'll have an idea that I love and I don't know what to do with it. And then six years later, I'll have a second idea. And I'm like, those two things go together. And then boom, now I have a story. I find that very, I don't know, I find that very inspirational. I don't know if anybody else will and stuff, but for me, because like I said in the beginning of stuff, recently I've been thinking

about trying, you know, to write something, write something, because I have so many people's experiences that get thrown my way. I have all these different takes on paranormal and horror and scary stuff that people go through. I, I have thought about trying to write something, you know, that is, you know, along the lines of, you know, fictional scary stories based off of true stories

or whatever. And hearing that kind of, the process is kind of inspirational. One thing I forgot to mention that I wanted to bring up is, are you connected to this, this, I guess it's a novel or something

called 18 Wheels of Horror? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have a story in that. That's what I thought. Yeah, I've got a,

that's an anthology put together by Eric Miller, who's a very talented writer himself, screenwriter also. And he put together a really nice anthology there. It's all trucking-related stories. Yeah. And growing up in the South, obviously, like, trucking culture is bigger there, especially when I was a kid. And then my real father, you know,

long after he finally got out of jail, I drove a truck for a long time, so I heard a lot of weird stories about it. That was kind of a fun one to dive into. I based it all around the story I happen there. This exit I would always pass driving down to visit my wife before we got married. She lived in Birmingham, Alabama.

And along that route, just in the middle of nowhere, no lights, no communities, nothing. And then you'd come across this exit called Rising Fawn. And there's this massive truck stop there. So I'd always stop there and get a coffee. And so I just kind of wrote this very like Twilight Zone-esque, kind of psychological ghostish story that set around that truck stop.

That was a lot of fun. Yeah, I actually, I come from the trucker, lineage. My dad's a trucker. I'm still currently a full-time trucker. I do the show in my off hours, which takes me into the early morning. But I mean, I just found out interesting. So you know, you know the stories. Oh, yeah. I mean, truckers love telling their stories, to be honest with you. And I actually have a show that I'm working on. It's a slow process because it takes a lot to really put on a good podcast. And it's time and energy that I don't have right now. But I do have like the first couple episodes done and the logo done. It's called Hammer Lane Legends. And it's going to be

just a show like the one I have here where it's, but it's truckers coming forward and just sharing their crazy experiences. It could be paranormal related or it could be, you know, I had this one guy come on that I interviewed that he was coming from Canada to Florida. And somewhere in Canada, as he's approaching the border, he actually had this car. And he noticed the car at first because it was a really nice car, come flying up next to him, cut him off, slam on the brakes, the guy gets out of the car on this bridge and just runs off the bridge, just killed himself right in front of the trucker. Yeah. And so he gets down to the border and he said, you know, there's a guy that just committed suicide off the bridge back there. And they looked at him,

they looked at the bridge and they said, all right, we'll take care of it. Like it's something that happens all the time. So I mean, truckers have lots of stories, you know. It's a very interesting life that truckers that they'd live, you know, I'm fortunate that I'm not over the road. I'm home every day. So I don't have to, you know, I get to actually, you know, socialize with my family every day. But the over the road truckers, a lot of them have some crazy stories. And I just wanted to bring that up because I thought you were connected to that series and I just wanted to ask you about it. But, you know, before we get out of here, I want to just kind of bring it back around to some of the things that I want people to check out of yours. And one thing we didn't mention the beginning is an actual,

I guess you described it as a low-budget horror comedy that people can stream, right? Yeah, yeah, it's called, well, it was originally George's Intervention. The distributor renamed it George A Zombie Intervention. So, you know exactly what you're getting when you come in. But, yeah, that was our first feature, ultra-low budget. We had no money to put into it. We were lucky enough to get some great cast members. It's got some fun cameos in it.

like Brink Stevens, Lloyd Kaufman from Troma fame, isn't it? So, you know, it's just a fun little movie. If you're into low-budget horror comedies, that's when I check out. I have, I do a lot of voice work in it. I never appear on screen, but a voice, like we have a little kind of cartoon at the beginning that explains the zombie world and our rules for zombies and stuff. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. That was probably that we do that.

Maybe 12 years ago that we actually shot it. I think it originally came out on DVD 2009 or 2010. Recently had a Blu-ray release. And, yeah, is now up on Amazon Prime video. So, you know, it's, like I said, it's a fun little film. Don't expect a big budget or anything. I mean, I know all about the low budget stuff with my wife. I mean, I actually had a group of people come out to my house one night and they filmed almost an entire, I guess it was in short film overnight at my house. And my wife was in it and stuff. That's why I let them do it. But, I mean, they use my house for free, you know, and I was up all night and I had to work the next day and all that stuff. But, you know, low budget films, there's art, though, behind that, you know, the low budget aspect of things because you don't have a huge budget to do all the special effects and things like that. So you have to get creative with how you go about doing things. And I find it interesting. But I think everybody should definitely check out Darling for sure. I mean, that's on Audible, right, for audiobooks as well. Yeah, yeah, the audiobook came out

around last Halloween So that's on the Audible Unfortunately, since I originally wrote the book That's become a very popular title For whatever reason I was a little bit ahead of the curve there So make sure when you go on Audible You look that up with my name

And that'll come up And you know, the company that did the audiobook Did a fantastic job The Irwader has a brings a lot of gravitas to it. And I think it's a fun, fun experience, especially for, you know, October, Halloween, fall.

If you're stuck in a truck, you're driving around, visiting family, whatever. That's, I've fallen in love with Audible just for being in the car. I get so much more reading done that way. So, yeah, yeah, folks should definitely check it out. And, you know, if they like it, leave a review. If you don't, I guess you can too. We highly discourage negative reviews around here.

And also in October, we have where carrying God's dance coming out, right? Do you know when that's coming out? It'll be mid-October. I don't have an exact date. But you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook or check out my website, which I haven't updated in ages, but I'm going to jump back into it for this book, Brad dash Hodson.com. That's H-O-D-S-O-N. But, yeah, where Carrying God's Dance

should be available for pre-order on Amazon, I believe starting next week. But it's a collection of 18 short stories. They all very much fit into a Halloween atmosphere, not just being horror stories, but there's a specific, you know, obviously from our conversation, I tend to write things that are more ghost story-related,

creepy, atmosphere. Even when they're not ghost stories, they have a very, you know, leaves of change color, crunching beneath your feet, cool wind. I found an abandoned building nobody's been in for 20 years kind of feel. Well, that's awesome. It's perfect for the month of October and Halloween and things like that. And everybody, that's listening, that if you go and get any of his content, shoot him an email and let him know how much you enjoyed it and let them know that you heard about him from the confessionals. Brad, I appreciate you being here, man. Yeah, I had a blast.

Definitely enjoyed you interviewing me today. And if you ever want to talk in the future, I've got a few other stories I didn't even touch upon today. Awesome, man. Well, I think we'll definitely be in touch, man. Great. I look forward to it. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it, please

share the show with your friends, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, email, bulletin boards, word of mouth. I don't care how you share the show. But if you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends because that is the best thing you can do to help support the show on a weekly basis. And I want to let everybody know, I'm thinking about dabbling with the video side of things for the YouTube channel. If I have somebody that actually wants to be on video during the interview, maybe I might start filming the interviews and putting them up on YouTube. But with that, I was thinking it'd be really cool if I could help support the people who listen to the show. So if you are a business owner or you are a content creator, if you have merch and you would like to have

your merch represented in my videos, go ahead and reach out to me. Let me know if you have a t-shirt that you'd like for me to wear during the interviews. And I'd be happy to represent my listeners. And that's my way of helping to support the people who listen to my show. So thank you very much for listening to the show and supporting the show the way you guys do. I greatly appreciate it. appreciate it. And until next week, stay safe, take care, and remember. The truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off.