Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 40: Being Straight Edge in the Middle Ages (w/ special guest Scott Benson)

Episode Date: March 2, 2018

Scott Benson (@bombsfall) drops in to answer a burning question: what was it like to be straight edge in medieval times? Jk this episode is mostly about his killer video game, Night in the Woods. Enjoy!

Are you scared that we're becoming the resident perverts of the Appalachia Tom? Yeah, I'm concerned that we're occupying a niche that's just marginally better than problematic, like super problematic, man. And that's only because we believe the right things. Explain. I don't know how to explain it. I'm just becoming a prude from now on. You think that we're being too...

I think we're... This is to sound dumb but little B tweeted out this thing that said no consent no booty and I shared it and it's like

retweet if you're trying to get that booty with consent and for some reason I felt guilt about that. Am I making a lot of consent? I don't think so. I just was, you know,

trying to have some fun on the internet. Well, it's all about having fun anyways, right? Not on the internet. That's all Lil B cares about. Yeah.

There's no fun to be had on the internet. Well, let me give you a little bit of advice. I'm still reeling from that echo. I think I broke something. Is it really going to matter in 600 years what we fucking said or didn't say in this podcast? No, it's really not. That's a good point.

Well, I mean, I guess it could be written down in a history book somewhere. If so, we're definitely immortalized as perverts. Yeah. Well, I think that was the whole shtick from the beginning, right? I'm just saying, are we trying to get outside that box, or... Are we happy with what we got going on? I like being a pervert, personally. I mean, I don't know.

Is talking about sex, does that make you perverted? I feel like it does now. I don't think so. Really? Yeah. Yeah. now i don't i don't think so really yeah uh because it's something that you do it's like shitting or pissing maybe it's not polite to talk about it in public but i don't know i think people need to have their ideas about things um why why why people consume

media in the first place like you know it's like if they just wanted to have the same boring, banal shit just projected back to them, why would they watch movies or listen to music or podcasts or anything? I think that our job is to take things that are possibly taboo to talk about and stretch them out or dissect them or turn them on their head and make people

take their power from them. It's like this book that I was reading. I've told you about it before. I'm reading books now. I've tried to do this thing. I've told you about it before. You're reading books now? That's big. I'm reading books. I'm reading books now. I was trying to do this thing

where I've tried to stop smoking weed so that I can actually retain the knowledge I've read in books. How's that playing for you? Well, that's not true. I'm just trying to relegate my weed smoking to weekends

from now on. And maybe one night. It's kind of like how some people cut carbs through the week. You're cutting weed. Yeah, I have cheat weekends. Cheat weekends. Yeah, and then maybe one night a week.

And then on the weekends. Okay. Plus tonight, that night. I haven't smoked today. I haven't smoked since Sunday. You probably didn't eat it with that, honestly. Yeah, that'll give you a head change. Do you know about, there are ways to get high Probably didn't need it with that, honestly. Yeah, that'll give you a head change.

Do you know about, there are ways to get high without actually taking substances. Binaural beats. Yeah, there's that. Do you know about the, what is it called? Machine, record player, hallucinations. What? The dream Machine. You ever heard of the Dream Machine?

No, but I'd love to know how to get high without destroying my innards. It's a... Carry on. A stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artists Brian Gison and William S. Burroughs,

systems advisor Ian Somerville, created the Dream Machine after William. Okay, blah, blah, blah. But, okay, I can tell you how to make it. I tried to do it in high school, but it didn't work because I got a record player, and I was like, oh, this will be tight, man. You got a record player in high school just to get high off of. Like not even to be like a cool guy.

Not even to be a cool guy. I wanted to get high in the in a very original way is that a dumb way to get loaded well i'll tell you i'll tell you about it it doesn't sound dumb once you actually say it out loud in its original form a dream machine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides the cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute a light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder, and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second.

This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing. Let me ask you a question. If we were to go home and try this, would something just break up there? Because I don't have much left to give, to be perfectly honest. It would be like,

it claims that it is like entering a hypnagogic state. Did you find that to be true? Well, I couldn't get it to work, because I don't think I cut the slits in the right, I was in a hurry, you know, and I didn't know how to explain it to my mom. Your't think I'd cut the slits in the right I was in a hurry you know and I didn't know how to explain it to my mom was coming home yeah like that's what are you doing art now art projects now like yeah mom and I'm like a zombie my eyes are like this big what if you got half this record record player and then killed your family?

How would you explain that in court? Well, I would explain it as it's all part of the quest to expand my mind, man. My consciousness. You're a slave to your to your quest for knowledge. Man, like back in the day okay, back to the book I was telling you about. It's called Cultures of Darkness. Here it is. Just happened to be laying around

in the studio. Oh, here it is. I was looking to work today and then I walked over here. I was reading it on my lunch break. Cultures of Darkness Night Travel travels in the histories of transgression from medieval to modern. Seems kind of relevant since we're talking about night in the woods. We're talking about things that go on at night as opposed to daytime.

But 600 years ago or so, it was very common for people to be just fucked up at all times on various forms of opium, bad derivatives of poppy. They would cut bread in the same way. They would step on bread in the same way that modern drug dealers step on drugs. They would cut bread with all kinds of shit. I really hope that's where we get the expression, that shit stepped on.

I mean, well, it's there. But back to your point about being pervs, perverts have always existed, man. Yeah, and the more I think about it, the more you've pulled this up, I'm thinking of Ben Franklin and the Hellfire Club. Well, one of my favorite... Like, it was just de rigueur for people to, like,

throw, like, just huge, debauched, days-long orgies, like in the 1700s. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've never done that shit. Right. We've never done that shit. We just make a tasteless joke on the internet. We're not Marquis de Sade, you know?

But it references this one book that I also read earlier last year called Montaillou. I remember you talking about this. Yeah, but there's a great quote in it. Montaillou was like a little village in the French Pyrenees with their, this like heretical form of Christianity called Catharism or Catharism took off.

But it was pretty blasphemous. But they quoted this one guy, this one peasant in this village. He was being asked how God was made. And he said, God was made fucking and shitting. And he had this like hand gesture. Basically, he was saying like fucking. Fucking and shitting and he had this like hand gesture basically he was saying like fucking and shitting yes exactly fucking and shitting so you really think that

that like we ain't got shit on these guys it really matters like whether people five or six hundred years ago were like internet woke i mean no it It all, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it does. I guess maybe it helped in their little tiny sphere of influence, but we're nobodies, man. That's true. We're just some gals. And we don't make light of consent.

We actually do think that consent is necessary and... Part of the deal. Part of the deal. And so, I don't know. It's okay to be a little perverted every now and then, man. I need to cut myself some slack. I've lost my edge. Maybe... That used to kind of be my thing.

I lost my identity really in the post-woke era. It's like you said, it's harder to do as you get older. It's hard to be a charming perv as you get older. No, that's just not doable. It's really just not doable. If Jack Nicholson can't pull it off, what do the rest of us have? If you're being a perv and not replicating

rape culture, I say, good on you. But if you're perpetuating rape culture, then in that case, yeah, it's a time to self-reflect and say, what am I doing and saying? So two questions before we call Scott here

for reflection. One, is there a tasteful way to be a pervert? And two, what's the dumbest way you ever got loaded? Okay. The second question I can answer a lot easier than the first question uh because the answer is always whippets will whippets ever be supplanted as the the the official dumbest way to get it's always gonna be the dumbest way to get

mostly because physically cognitively it has probably more diminishing returns than any other drug yeah very true it's like what is okay let me rephrase this then what's the dumbest arcane plant that you've ever smoked and held whatever to get loaded? Smoked and held? Anything. However you take it. Oh, shit, man. But it's got to be pretty fucking dumb,

like nutmeg or some shit like that. I've always heard about nutmeg. I don't know if that's true. When I was like 15, I got caught drinking, and I was grounded for a while, and so I couldn't smoke weed or anything. Which I wasn't really smoking a lot of weed at that time, but I wanted to get high. And I had this little hemp necklace.

You see where I'm going with this? I basically burned it. Puka shale, hemp. I just wanted to see if it would work. I just wanted to see if it would work. I just wanted to know if it would work. You're looking at me like I'm the dumbest person alive. Keep in mind this was 15 years ago. Dude, I beat off a shampoo one time

and I still got the scars to prove myself. I have friends that did that. I can never understand why. There's no judgment here. The thought of getting it in my pee hole just made it... That was a wise instinct you should follow that your whole life if you think something's gonna sting your pee hole don't bring it to your pee hole

most things will sting your pee hole that's true it is true uh but yeah the first one is it is it is it possible to be a tasteless perv? Tasteful. Tasteful perv. It's kind of like, is it possible to have tasteful rock and roll saxophone? Well, we'll leave that one up to the listeners. It's a matter of debate. How's that sound?

We'll leave it up to the listeners. That sounds good. We'll give Scott a call and get this underway. Well, Scott, we were just talking before you came on here. We have three questions that we'd like you to ponder. One, and we'll start from the least problematic to the most. Okay. Number one is, We'll build up.

Yeah. Is there such a thing as tasteful rock and roll saxophone? Yes. Yes, I'm gonna say yes. I'm gonna go with yes, and I think Springsteen's probably the best example. Yeah, Springsteen's the go-to. Right.

I feel like, yeah. Yeah, I'll just echo that. I think I could probably think up more examples of good rock and roll facts,. It's going to be our side project, a spinoff, our Frasier-type spinoff. Which was on longer, Frasier or Cheers? I think Frasier, maybe. Okay, well, I was going to say, the sacks cast will outlast the... Yeah, the trailbillies.

...mostly just remembered for i'm fine with that like we had this cool kind of like leftist podcast that was like giving perspectives that aren't you know generally you know uh found in kind of the shitty media and stuff but mostly i was here for the rock and roll sex. My legacy isn't the intellectual issuing intellectual profundities. It's waxing poetic on the rock and roll sex. I think rock and roll sex

though is maybe the music, the perfect music for profundities. Yeah. I think you're right. You're probably right. So number two, Tom. Number two was... Wait, what was number two? Number two was what's the dumbest way you've ever gotten loaded?

Loaded being drunk. Yeah, or any kind of... Any sort of intoxication. I have actually never been intoxicated of any sort. Oh, that's incredible. You fucking sinners the closest i've gotten is taken like dayquil or pseudofed or something i think like i don't

think i've ever been like i mean like i think like too jacked up on caffeine is the closest i've ever been to like well my mind is certainly being altered right now. Unfortunately, I don't have any good stories of that sort. You're better for it, honestly. You probably think way smarter than we do. It's probably why you've made a great video game. Oh, yeah, yeah. Game developers known for their great life choices. I just want to DJ run that back and let it stand for itself that I literally just said you're way smarter.

You think way smarter than we do. I didn't say anything. I thought that was pretty great. Clearly lots of drug use on this end. No, I never have. I was straight edge for the Lord when I was a kid. And I've been surrounded with enough examples of various substances going badly in my life that I was just never like, yeah, let's go do that.

Also, I watched my dad quit smoking like cold turkey when I was like in third grade. And that didn't seem fun. Right. Oh, yeah. my dad quit smoking like cold turkey when I was like in third grade and that didn't seem fun right oh yeah yeah I I just learned from others I feel like it's like that old drug commercials like I learned it from you dad except for like it was the opposite I was still in Tom a minute ago that I'm reading this book right now about the sort of like history of transgressive sort of behavior and activities from like medieval to modernity. The notion of being straight edge in the 16th century would have been a really funny one because your daily life as a peasant in the 16th century was either you were hallucinating wildly because someone had cut your bread with hallucinogenic mushrooms or you were hallucinating wildly because of St. Elmo's fire or something in the whole town.

Everyone was just blasted or tripping or whatever until like a hundred years ago yeah exactly i remember like early in the early american uh experience there was uh i remember like the 18 or 1820s maybe or something like there was a huge thing for temperance because people were like okay listen just bang your your you know you're in a boardroom with the other early americans and you're just like all right people we are drunk constantly we have got to stop this we are so goddamn drunk constantly how did we ever found a country or win a war yeah it's actually I think it pretty much was like that. It was like public drunkenness was a huge, yeah. Well, if you live to be 48 and that was considered elderly, that was kind of like a good way to go through life, I suppose.

Right, right. I think like, because it was because like the water wasn't like fit to drink a lot of the time, right? It was just like an enabling excuse where everyone was like, oh, yeah, no, we can't drink the water. It's too bad. Let's just get absolutely blasted or something. Let's get absolutely just snowed under tonight. Right.

Yeah, like the Environmental issues You know they're really bad today But back then it was also like it's own sort of like Very particular set of really crazy problems Like didn't like the Cuyahoga River Like catch on fire Like the whole thing Like caught on fire in Cleveland

Yeah yeah no Cleveland is the home of the burning river Right I mean it's bad when your water is flammable Like, that's classically not supposed to happen Classically, fire and water are enemies When they join forces, you know that's when it's bad When they decide to join forces, you know that's when it's bad. When they decide to join forces. I fucking hate when, like, the elements of nature team up to kill me.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, jeez. Sorry, now I'm just thinking of, like, you know, straight edgers. Yeah, like, you know, 500 years ago or whatever, and they're just, like, I'm just picturing the actual band Minor Threat and, like, their songs about, like, not know, 500 years ago or whatever And they're just like I'm just picturing the actual band Minor Threat And like their songs And I'm not wanting to perish of fits Yeah, Ian McKay of the 16th century

Was like a troubadour Who would charge like three farthings And no more To get into his show Who was the fugazi of middle-aged theologians and preachers. I don't know, but I'm sure he's out there. The third thing, what was the third thing, Tom? Is there a tasteful way to be kind of like a loose, kind of pervy guy?

Is there such a thing as being a tasteful pervert? Yeah, but you have to kind of like well i guess there's two ways of going about this right i think there's there's the classic normal way of doing this which is just you know be involved in a uh you know a relationship or an interaction with someone where everyone is consented to the weirdness. You're right, right. That's the classic way, but I feel like you might be asking more of like, how do you be a public version of that? In which case, you need to start a YouTube channel and just call yourself, you know, just talk about, you're educating people about kinks.

I feel like you need to professionalize it, basically. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Terrence Ray, the wolf pervert. You need to build yourself not as much of a pervert, but someone who can offer either service to someone or someone who is out there just on a quest for knowledge and sharing that knowledge. You just love to teach.

We have a buddy that does this character called dr poon and the the kind of joke is that he's like a uh he's like you know not a medical doctor yeah he's like a phd dr poon is not a medical doctor is he like a like what is his doctorate in what do we decide is it just like oh i was an architect and now i'm just like like a horn dog i think that's what it is i think that's basically it's like when you meet like you know someone who's like trying to sell you on like spiritual surgery or crystals or whatever and they're like you know doctor you know steve crystal or something and then you're like wait your doctorate's in like marine biology right right like didn't like

hunter s thompson i think he was like a doctor but it was like he got his doctor like in the 70s version of like online he like sent in a card for it or something. Yeah. The 70s version. The middle-aged version of Ian McKay, the 70s version of online. I'm writing this down. I'm going to write all these speculative things. JD Vance can use them in his next speculative fiction novel, which

we've tried to... It always comes back to JD. It was announced today That the Shape of Water screenwriter Is working on the Hillbilly Elegy Script Cool Yeah exactly cool

A bunch of other fake shit about genetics Yeah I've not actually seen the Shape of Water yet But earlier today Tom was like Hey man can you Earlier today Tom was like Can you photoshop can you... Yeah, well, say Tom was like, earlier today Tom was like, can you Photoshop J.D. Vance's face onto the fish guy from Shape of Water?

And I didn't know yet that they were talking about this woman, the screenwriter writing the script, and I thought it was Tom just referring to the fact that he's made the joke before that J.D. Vance is a well-known retainer of water. So I was like, oh, that's a good joke. Like, he's the shape of water.

He's going to get, like, all Charles Murray on, like, The Fishmen. He'll be like, well, the ones that are descended of bass have, like, a strong work ethic. The trout, on the other hand. Right. They like cold climates. They only, yeah. Breaking out, like, you know,

the phrenology charts for, like, various, like, lake fish of Northern America. Yeah, the salmon swims upstream because of its brain size. It goes against the flow. It can think for itself. The sturgeon, on the other hand, is cursed by God. That's kind of the thing with, like, all this stuff, is that it's, like, so much of it is just trying to, like, find some sort of, like, essentially kind of, like, providential explanation for stuff. So you can be like, well, you know, I can't help that I was born great, and I can't help that you were just born terrible.

Right. So that's all part of God's rich cornucopia. Right, right. Geez. Well, I think we've thoroughly answered your questions, Tom. Right? Did we do them justice? I appreciate that.

Okay, good. Great. Where did these questions come from? We were talking before we called you. I don't even know, me and Tom just were shooting the shit before we, I'm not sure. Darren's apparently caught a buzz off a record player once. Rock, sax, uh, let's see here, what was the second one? Weirdest way I ever got, uh, drunk.

Right. And then, how do you become a pervert in like a respectable in a respectable way i feel i feel like there's a common thread of like a lifestyle running through this that is like just a really exciting thing i look forward to seeing come out from you guys like in a book or something basically the trill billy's brand when you really boil it down it Yeah, live that lifestyle. Right, it's sex positive, smut, whatever, it's getting loaded in really dumb ways, and rock sacks.

Mm-hmm. But the truth, when you pull the curtain back, is that we are teetotalers. We've come full circle with that. Yeah. Well, we don't drink, but I definitely use drugs. I don't know how to say that in any way that doesn't make me sound like a piece of shit.

That's why we were talking about this, because me and Tom, before we called you, we were talking about the, what is it called, Tom? The Dream Scope? The Dream Machine. The Dream Machine. You ever heard of the Dream Machine, Scott? No, I don't think so. So what it is, is you get a cylinder, you cut slits in it. You have to cut, and the reason, I tried to do this in high school and I couldn't figure it out.

You have to cut them a certain distance apart from each other. You drop a light bulb down into the middle of the cylinder and you put it on top of a record turntable and you put it at 78 or 45 RPM. And what it does is it'll correspond to your alpha waves that are, you know, like in your brain and

should help you relax. It sounds very hopeful. I've never heard of this, but like I've known a lot of potheads. Well. I feel like this is just reminding me of, I'm getting flashbacks of all the other kinds of various lighting setups and spinning things at the back of a Spencer's gift. I was talking to someone about spencer's

gifts the other day and how spencer's gifts just have not changed at all except for do you have spencer's gifts in your area like whatever malls nearby yeah we had them um in the you know the closest mall to me growing up was like an hour and a half away but there was a spencer's gifts there yeah yeah they still sell evanescent shirts exactly the same now except for um the there's the sex toy like counter or whatever it's just the entire back wall like so like before there was like a tiny little bit of like you know discretion right or something now it's just like all right kids you want a south park shirt a rick and Morty thing, and a massive dildo? That might be a good thing, though.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe we're becoming more sex-positive society. Well, I was going to say this goes with your brand. Right. The sex posies. Right. The sex positiveness. Right.

Go into my YouTube channel. I'm going to try to get that Spencer's Gifts co-marketing. Speaking of the depressing state of America's malls, this is a good segue. Let's talk about Night in the Woods. Okay, so yes, Scott, the reason we wanted to have you on this week is because we knew that the one-year anniversary of the video game Night in the Woods is either coming up or just past us, correct? It was a week ago today, actually, I think.

Okay, awesome. Yeah, a week ago today, I believe, the 21st of February, 2018. Yeah. So, well then, yeah, like, maybe just tell us what Night in the Woods is. You don't have to get really deep into it at the moment. And then tell us what your role in it was. All right. Yeah, Night in the Woods is, like, kind of an adventure game type of thing, video game. It's got little cartoon animal people in it cause I'm good at drawing those.

Uh, and it kind of takes place in, uh, kind of a Northern Appalachia type, uh, area, kind of like where it intersects with like, you know, the Rust Belt, uh, mining belt type of, uh, place. Uh, and it's a story of a young woman named May who is drops out of college and comes back to her town and trying to kind of resume her, you know, carefree teen life of just kind of like a young, you know, kind of a charming, well-meaning delinquent.

But she finds out that people have kind of moved on and the town has kind of changed. And there's some other stuff going on that I won't spoil. Right. But yeah, that's kind of it. That's kind of the basic idea behind it. Yeah. It got somewhat more notoriety, I think. This intersects with this podcast, but it got a bit of kind of notoriety because Bethany – oh, I should say what I did.

I was the co-director, co-writer, and artist animator guy on it. When you're a tiny team of three people, you end up doing a whole bunch of different stuff. Sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah. So Bethany, my wife, she was the co-writer on it. She's from central Pennsylvania originally. And I've lived out in western PA for like, geez, the past 18 years or something. Um, so we kind of wanted to write about like, and make a game about, um, the, uh,

kind of the areas that we knew and the people that we knew, cause there aren't a lot of games set in places like this that aren't like, Oh no, you're off the beaten path, and now they're all actually crazy and are going to kill you here type of place. And so we ended up hooking up with a Canadian indie game veteran guy, Alec Hawoka, who's made some really cool games in the past. And he was like, hey, you guys want to make a game? And then we made a game. We woke up three and a half years later and the game was done um so uh so but yeah so we were just kind of like going to make a game about like stuff that we knew people we knew and whatever and then like it was we were like well we know

a lot of kind of like you know the the towns around here that were kind of left behind in, you know, just by capitalism and the markets and all these other things. And we were like, well, let's make a game about that because no one else on Earth is talking about that. Right. And then three years later, right when we were about to release the game, the 2016 elections happened. Right.

And so people, you know, we addressed some of the stuff that would be somewhat relevant or resonant in that year. So people were like, well, I can't believe you guys made a game just about this. Like you made it in the past six months or something. We're like, no, we're just ahead of the curve or not ahead of the curve. We were just talking about stuff that no one else was talking about until they talked about it for about six months and then lost interest.

Right. Um, so yeah, yeah. That's, that's the basic elevator pitch of night in the woods as it might pertain to, uh, listeners of your show.

Right. Um, well, it's kind of tricky. I don't, you know, I don't want to give any spoilers away because like one of the sort of joys of playing the game is sort of watching how a lot of the layers sort of peel back to to show you this really sort of complex story of something that's going on in this post industrial post mining town. is yeah rural decay like you were just saying um but but even more than that like i think something

that really resonated with me and i think you know just reading a lot of things that people have written about it and said about it is is um also how it tries to relate um mental illness you know in in that sense of like social isolation to being in an environment that is um just sort of constantly in some state of decay you know what i'm saying so it's like yeah yeah i think there was like there's like a a basic through line of all the themes there's no way to talk about this without being a little spoilery right right right there's kind of a through line with a lot of the themes of the game which is like being in a place or existing in a place either in your life or geography or geographically whatever that's kind of lost it's like what it's supposed to be it's organizing force like the thing that it's

like clustered around so it's like the old mill in town and your town's named after it. And all this stuff at one point, you can only buy things with like actual money branded by it. And now that thing is gone. Right. And you, though, are still a place where people, you know, like you're still in a place where people live and have their lives and stuff. And like their addresses still say this, like have the name of this company on it or whatever. And, but that's gone now. And, uh,

so that kind of question of like, well, what, what comes next? What is that thing? Like, wow, that we are kind of clustered around this thing that's not there anymore.

Um, so there's that. And then at least, you know, like everyone on our team has, uh, you know, who made the game has dealt with some sort of mental health stuff via kind of depression or anxiety or kind of dissociative stuff. And the feeling there of like, I should be fine. I should be feeling OK. And I you know, my my brain and my emotions should be trustworthy, but they're not right now. And there's no really, it was really great rational way. And like,

and like, if it's like untreated, this can kind of cause like a lot of, a lot of problems. It can kind of lead to some just really, you know, uncomfortable or unpleasant or just kind of really difficult stuff to deal with. So that was kind of another way of kind of dealing with that, like, of, you know, this is supposed to work, but it doesn't work. And so what do I do about it? And kind of trying to talk about just the ways that we kind of deal with both of those and like, really, and like what the consequences of those things kind of going untreated and being kind of deal with both of those and like really in like what the consequences of those things kind of going untreated and being kind of like you know retreating into isolation and stuff

and then like the third one the third way i guess that the game talks about that is kind of with god you know like if you have like a faith or a church or whatever but you stop believing that god exists there's that same kind of like hole left there yeah so that was kind of like how those things like wove together i feel like over like the three years we were working on it right yeah well one of the things that i thought was interesting um about it is how it it's like there's a routine to everything. It's not like, so I'm not much of a gamer. I mean, you know, I like to play games every now and then. What am I doing on this podcast?

Fake gamers. I mean, but I am, I mean, I do like to play video games and I do play them. I just don't play them a lot. I do play them I just don't play them a lot um so like you know this I think this game is pretty unique in that in some ways it tries to simulate routine and I thought that that was a pretty sort of fascinating thing it's like um you know it sort of tries to simulate routine and sort of being in a small town and seeing the same people every single day and how sometimes that feels like it can limit your horizons. And I think May even says this at certain points in the game,

how there's little to look forward to or hope for. And I don't know. I just thought the game did such a good job of creating this sort of insular world that you can really get a glimpse into what it's like to be a young person in a town that everybody's telling you that, oh, the best times at this place were way in the past. You've got nothing to look forward to. So I don't know. It does a really good job of that, I thought. Thanks. We wanted to, like, early on, we talked about almost like a ritual, right, of, like, it's like if you live in a neighborhood and, like, every day or every other day or several times a week you walk down to, like, the 7-Eleven or you walk down to the gas station or there's, like, a coffee shop or a grocery store.

Anyway, there's something nearby. Even if you're just, like, going for a walk every day down to, like down to like the river or something like you end up in these kind of daily rituals and like so much of your life happens within these small spaces like even if you don't like live in kind of like a small place it's a little cut off like you know people stick to their neighborhoods and their blocks or like that one strip mall that they go and get like their stuff at or whatever right um so we wanted to kind of tap into that feeling of almost ritual like as the like this is what i get up and do every day and by doing that like over and over i think like again like we've become so much part of like the rhythms of our of our lives uh and we wanted to kind of make a game

that was about kind of the rhythms of these of these kind of like lives and kind of what's great and terrible and joyful and interesting and claustrophobic and all these other things about it yeah um you know and and there's that and then there's like um the in the title of the game itself night in the woods so you know you have this routine by day and then you have this like almost totally different world that comes out at night and um it's sort of like in that terrain is like where you really start to see um the sort of panic that's like slow building panic i think that like that is um sort of present in all the characters in the in the sense that like they're trying to again i'm not trying to give any spoilers or anything it's really hard to talk about something like that like spoiling something yeah like we were kind of like pleased

that like we didn't of like pleased that like we didn't let like almost any spoilers from the game much out of like what we had really prepared to talk about like drop before the game came out and people i think thought where they were like cartoon animals and like driving around like riding around your hometown this is going to be a fun cartoon nostalgia fest about like right fun friendships and goofing off and it's like yeah but you know it's about some things right well um this doesn't this isn't really giving anything away because it's part of the plot itself but like at night you know may has these dreams that are incredibly uh visceral and they're incredibly you know uh violent and terrifying. And, you know, juxtaposed with the daytime, I just, it just, again, it just does such a good job of, like, showing how, you know, you can have your routine at, you know, what you do every day.

You wake up, you go for it. But, you know, it's really hard to sort of shake some of the things that you experience at night, whether those are actual dreams or, you know, going out with your friends and getting into trouble or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm glad that that kind of resonated. Like, we kind of, like, I guess, like, yeah, like, the nighttime stuff is a bit more where, like, there's just, like, um,

there's this, like these, there's these undercurrents in the game, uh, that pop up in different ways, uh, throughout. And I feel like part of May,

I mean, our character, her kind of like odyssey into these spaces is, you know, both kind of personal, but also, uh, her just coming into,

like, it's a way of her kind of coming into contact with elements of her world and her environment and history and like the town's history that, that you just kind of like, don't know about necessarily when you're, when you're a kid. And as you become an adult, you become like far more aware of like this context and this kind of unfamiliar space right um and being like oh yeah this whole thing that happened here is kind of fucked up or these spaces that i am really comfortable with are actually like you know like my my understanding of them as these like safe places is so much based on the fact that i was just a kid at the time. Right. Yeah.

And, and stuff. So, I mean, I think that was kind of like part of it was just, you know, the, yeah, the, the kind of like, not even like undercurrent cause it's not like hidden necessarily. It's just the like coming to a greater understanding that even this place that's like in this like safe routine, be it like this kind of place that we're at in our lives or place we are geographically has this kind of disorienting uh this like uncontrolled aspect to it that you kind of bump up against the further away you get from kind of being in a secure place where you're just not thinking about that stuff i don't know i don't know if this is necessarily true for you guys

with your own neuroses and mental stuff, but for me, I tend to have these super nostalgic sort of warm, fuzzy feelings for certain spaces that were actually quite terrifying when I was there and going through certain things in those spaces. Including but not limited to the church. Yeah. But sometimes like years later having some distance from that

I kind of like almost find myself not really missing it but almost kind of getting that like you know Christmas time when all the Coca-Cola shit's rolled out. You know what I mean? Yeah. The warm and fuzzy. That kind of thing. That's weird that I know exactly what i mean yeah the warm and fuzzy that kind of thing yeah that's weird that i know exactly what you're talking about with the christmas coca-cola thing

unique shared reference point um right yeah these things are kind of like as home as anything else like because you know and that's i think that's kind of another thing we talk about a lot in the game is just different kinds of like homes and like what being home means uh for kind of different people um and stuff like if anything the game's kind of anti-nostalgic uh there's a bit of a spoiler well i won't go into too many spoilers but there's some pretty bad stuff that happens in the name of nostalgia yeah at one point in the game um and like when we made it like you know we're all like in our mid-30s we were in our early 30s then we were so we were so young um but uh the like none of us look back on that time period of our lives. It's like you're 20. It's like, 20 sucks. Yeah.

Like, you're not a kid, but basically everyone still treats you kind of like your kid. Yes. And you have no idea what the hell you're doing, but you're supposed to be out doing something. And you're not, like, an adult enough yet that you kind of, like, are secure kind of in being an adult, but you're not a kid. I don't know. It's like, where do you hang out when you're like 20 or something? It's like, you know, particularly if you're kind of like in your hometown, it's like, well, you're not going to go hanging out like the high school parties unless you're like

that guy. But you can't go to the bar because you're not old enough. Right. Yeah. Like you have the choice between like going and and drinking, I guess, in someone's garage or something, or being that guy that's hanging out at the gas station at night with your souped-up Dodge Neon, listening to Butterfly by Crazy Town, trying to chat up the high school girls. Hell yeah.

That's a really particular archetype, but you'd be surprised. I've joked about that archetype in the past, and almost every time someone's like, yeah, I know that guy. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, it's like you were saying, and I did pick up on that, the idea that it is anti-nostalgia in some way. But there are also parts of the story that um that talk about the importance of myth and they talk about the importance of the stories that we tell ourselves about um the common history

that we do share and you know you were talking a little bit on twitter about this i can't remember maybe it was a few days ago but um you know one of the things that you were talking about is how a lot of the stories in the game are based on real stories, one of which was one of my favorites from the game, which is about May finds her this tooth, you know, that was her grandfather. And basically the story. I don't know. This is definitely a spoiler, but it's sort of central to what i'm trying to say the story is that like um i guess her her grandfather worked at a mine and with a very unruly boss or something the boss punched out the tooth of one of the miners and so to retaliate the

miners pulled all the teeth out of the boss's head and they held on to him um and uh and and like and i think that the your point you're trying to tell is that like you know there's this very robust history of like people not taking any shit you know what i mean and and like and that's all throughout the game about like the dignity of the worker and and how in this our current like and you know you see it with may's dad like your current system like um we don't even have that anymore, and we don't have unions and all this other, all these other things, but, like, it just goes to show you, like, the importance of myth and the stories that we do tell each other into, like, the importance of that into bringing it into our day-to-day lives. the importance of that into bringing it into our day-to-day lives. Yeah, we, that tooth story is really funny. So Bethany, let's go right around the game.

She is just a massive, like, research person. She just loves research. She, like, loves reading about, like, you know, basically anything. And she has just, like, books and, like, stacks and stacks and stacks of notes from, like, all these, like, historical things, like, because a lot of, like, what's in the game history-wise is based on where she's from, like, kind of some firsthand, you know, this was, happened in my family, this happened in my town, and then some of it's from, like, research and stuff, and that tooth story is funny because it stems off of, I forget the actual occasion, but it was like about like some like shithead boss who was like garnishing their wages or something. And yeah, a bunch of like whatever the criminal, like, you know, so, like, stagecoach one night or whatever.

And, like, totally, like, I forget, like, how much, what they did to the guy. But they, like, left this, like, note or whatever, like a drawing of a coffin. And it was, like, you're going to be in this if you don't stop this or something. And, like, written in this, like, really bad, like, mid-1800s. Like, one guy to write in this in our group right we can all draw we can all draw skulls though so that's that's cool right which i loved i was like like you know you know i guess like d minus on like the the actual kind of like grammar here but a plus on the visual yeah yeah on the message but there's something about that that like uh we both just loved like immediately like not in a condescending like oh

look at this folks do something it's just like no these are guys who are like no you are fucking with us and we are recognizing that we are being fucked with by you because you have this power and we need to let you know that we don't have a lot of recourse but the one recourse we have is not the recourse you want yeah um at all um and like i guess it's kind of like you know that sounds like thuggish or whatever and like are kind of like more we're supposed to have these more like genteel relationships with our employers or our people who have this power but we just really loved that like just how to the point it was yeah and how like and how like yeah like i can sit here like you know in my like apartment in like south

pittsburgh or something and be like, it's never good to threaten someone with violence, blah, blah, blah. But it's just like, I don't know. Sometimes it might be all right. You're in that situation. But those, those stories, yeah. Like I think that the power of story and the power of history is like, I think a major theme in a lot of the stuff that Bethany and I ended up working on um that this these stories that we tell ourselves are like really important because they can form some sort of concrete connections in in ways that we don't necessarily always have access

to um it's like yeah i was not there for that particular thing that happened. However, that happening is very, very important to me. That kind of thing. And it, like, tells us, like, how we, it informs how we feel about ourselves and the places that we are and the kind of struggles that we're kind of collectively find ourselves in. Yeah. That was, like, a very, like, I, that was a very, like, respectable answer to that story to that thing other than no we just like the fact that they talked with the boss well but yeah the the underlying you know point is that um bosses do suck and they don't have your best interest at heart and we do live in an era when people sort of like try to uh you know, we live in the era of the cool boss.

And that's, you know, and that's just, it's so absurd. It's like, you know, your boss isn't your friend, you know. It's like that he doesn't have your best interest in mind. Bosses suck. And I like that about the game. Like it just hammers home that point. And I like the fact that, you know know kids and teenagers are going to be playing that and you know and you know and that they put they store that away and they take that into their

jobs you know what i mean it's good yeah the whole thing about bosses is weird i had a conversation with someone a while ago about this and they're like like some bosses are really great i'm like yeah some bosses are really great people and try to do the best they can but the position the way that you are kind of forced to relate to each other the position of bosses suck it's like the cops or whatever it's just like there's a lot of really nice cops out there but the structure and the way that this is set up precludes there being some sort of thing where it's like oh well yeah like you can't there's no amount of niceness that is going to take away the fact that someone can fire you yeah yeah like you know i've known a lot of great people

who are kind of like who are bosses and stuff um and but it kind of like it's the structures around it that makes it that you can't just you're you're never going to be friends on the same level or something right there's always going to be that power held over you and that power is like the problem exactly right um and the fact that you kind of have to do all this stuff in in order because you on some level fear that power and like that's the fucked up thing and and we just have like example after example i mean more examples than not of like you know your manager at the grocery store might be super cool but the guy who owns the grocery

store is sending you a wage and that wage is way too fucking low uh and you're supposed to be you're supposed to have all this like flexibility in your schedule but they can also just fire you for you know i need to take a day off or you know i had a kid and i need some like time off after it or something like it's just the personal like holiness of the person of whoever it is like the condition of their souls almost it doesn't really matter when it comes to talking about these actual giant like power dynamic yeah things because for some and in the game i think we wanted to talk about that a little bit just because no one ever talks about it particularly in video games which

are like all about becoming the boss right that's exactly true yeah um well yeah i like that you know and i like what you're saying on twitter how about how a lot of those stories are based on real things. And, you know, in some of the stories that you were, was it like, were y'all doing, what is it called, the Ghost Town Trail? So I don't know anything about that, and I guess that's in Pennsylvania. Oh, right, yeah, the Ghost Town Trail. Westtown Trail is a trail, and it runs through Indiana and I think Cambria County, which is a place that in western PA, like maybe an hour, hour and a half west or east of Pittsburgh, and it's a place that I've spent a whole lot of my life, of my adult life. Bethany and I met when she was going to college in Indiana County,

and I was in bands that played around there and it's also where like route 22 which is like the main artery that isn't the interstate to get to uh to pittsburgh so and her family lives on the other on the opposite end i used to live in altuna all we just spent a lot of time in that area. Yeah. And it's this trail that goes through a bunch of, well, ghost towns. They're not really even there anymore. You can find foundations and old mining equipment in the woods. Right. And old machinery. And there's like, we just call it the mine equipment graveyard.

There's a place that's just been a dumping ground for all this mining equipment that you can go to. And it's just piles and piles of like mine carts and stuff just out there in the woods. So it's like 36 mile long trail and you can go through and kind of like find evidence of all these places that used to be there. And a lot of them were like old, like straight up, like company towns. We were like, the boss was like,

might as well just been like the local emperor right right uh and it's just like a beautiful absolutely gorgeous country and since we're such like nerds for history of that sort and also just like finding like like going out and like looking for stuff and finding it like that place is like a gold mine of just, it's gorgeous, and then you look and you're like, oh, and it has this tragic history to it. These are both these things that we apparently like. It's beautiful, and people suffered.

There's evidence of their suffering. We're not short on those type of places either. Yeah, there's plenty of places like that in eastern Kentucky. But, yeah, I guess the larger point I was trying to make is that, yeah, your attention to detail and these stories, it comes through in the game. And the setting of the game is something that really resonated with me and I think probably would resonate with a lot of our fans and anybody who lives in Appalachia and is a young person in Appalachia

I think would find it very compelling and, I don't know, sort of palliative. I guess that would be the word. It's been funny because we get a lot of those emails and messages from people like, I grew up in eastern or southern Ohio, or I grew up in Tennessee or Kentucky or West Virginia or a bunch of other places, even out to Michigan and stuff, and people are like, holy shit, this is my town. Yeah. There's so much of a commonality.

That's one thing we found out is that there's so much that all these places and so many people who either grew up in them or lived there for a long time and have this strong connection to it. There's so much commonality there. Because so much of this are these larger – I think everyone's like, oh, my hometown. When you're a kid and you're in a town like this, sometimes you can be like, oh, my town just sucks. And afterwards you're like, oh, no, there's a reason why all these towns are suffering from similar things. But we kind of also didn't want to make a game that was just about like, oh, everyone here is suffering. Like everything here sucks because we wanted to make something where like people were, you know, like actual whole lives take place here and those lives aren't

like you know terrible horror shows right now um when we got we we would get interviewed sometimes so so when the interview kind of circuit for this game was happening it was like late 2016 into early 2017 and like we kind of became like the video game equivalent of those horrible trump country pieces of like the like we had like someone from like the new york times interview us and and they're like oh so you're out here in like the rust belt like what does the trump presidency mean to you we're like well he's the fucking fascist we hate him like i don't know and then they're like oh but you know like this does this campaign resonate with you more because you're out there in the Rust Belt? And I'm like, no, it doesn't at all.

What are you getting at? Like, it's just so, it was so kind of obnoxious. I remember this one person was like, yeah, so Bethany, like, you know, is your town kind of built around like one of these like dying places? And Bethany's like, yeah, I mean, we still have standard steel. It's still there, but it's like cut down. there was a few other places but they're not there anymore and now like you know all this other stuff and the interviewer actually asked like did it like how did it feel to know that you'd never work in a factory bethany just like looked at me like i don't know what how to answer this question this is the

stupidest question uh it's just like you know like yeah I don't know how to answer this question. This is the stupidest question. It's just like, you know, it weighs on Bethany's heart all the time that she's not working at a factory. Like most people who live there work at like Walmart or are like nurses or something. Like no one's like it's not just. Yeah. But like these people would, you know, get this. And you talk about this often, obviously. But we talked about this on Twitter, just the kind of like,

well, we're here, show me to this one particular stereotype that I'm looking for, I do not care about anything else. Right, right. We talked to, one of the best interviews we had about the game was a guy from Youngstown, Ohio, who was writing something for the Pittsburgh City Paper, and he's like, yeah, yeah, this game is great because it looks exactly like my hometown. And I was like, oh, thank God.

We could talk to someone who has some familiarity with the places and stuff that we're talking about as opposed to someone who just wants to feel like they have their finger on the pulse of white, middle-aged male resentment. Right, right. That somehow is typical of an entire place. Like, everyone is just sitting outside, like, the depression factory, waiting for Trump to show up. And they're all, like, men in, like, their 40s wearing, like, you know, I don't know, like, you walk up and a John Mellencamp song starts playing. their 40s were in like you know i don't know like you walk up in a john mellencamp song starts playing um but like um but we and he was like yeah like it sucked because like he's like over

this past year like we'd have people from like new york times watch and post or time or news we come and they'd never talk to the local press at all like they would just like they make they might like ask us like you know basically like where do all like the unemployed people hang out or something uh and they'd go to a diner always a diner and uh always a diner walk up to like the first guy with a MAGA hat that they'd see and be like sir you're obviously the king of this county uh and you know and some sort of weird Youngstown royalty so you can speak for all the people. But yeah, so it was weird, like, kind of going through that thing and, like, these two very different reactions we've had of people who are kind of from these places, you know, from around here

or from, you know, just the general area being like, oh, God, yeah, this is exactly what I know. I've just never seen this really depicted in a game or in culture before versus other people who were like, what can this tell me about Donald Trump? Right. Right. Which is funny. Which is so funny you're talking about the diner people, Scott. We've literally had reporters from national outlets just basically ask for the most like derelict end of the rope son of a bitch that coal miner that

just give me that guy yeah you're like most of the people around here work at a low you know this is like you know they work at the arby's like you know or something like it's not yeah i don't know it's it's weird it's like so i know like like so i'm not like from you know here like i grew up like all kind of all over the country like texas born in texas and moved to like ohio like suburb of cleveland and then lived a little bit in central california but then mostly grew up in my teen years in north jersey and then when i first moved out here when i was like like two weeks after my 18th birthday i like i just had no understanding of what it was like industry and like places like any of the stuff we just talked about i just had no understanding of it at all um and so i think

like i get the kind of like outsider point of view but i don't understand like it's just the kind of like weird well i'm suddenly an expert like arrogance of it like it's okay to like not have a clue right but it's not okay to like pretend to be like well so i'm some sort of authority figure because i parachuted in for like half a day and was like you know show me to the nearest clan meeting please right um it's funny because they these a lot of these outlets uh they they claim to be objective and they're doing objective reporting but when you actually like are on the receiving end of their reporting you get this you get to see the sort

of nuts and bolts of what they're doing and it's not objective in any way like they're they're working with a very specific ideological frame and it's just i don't know i just think it's even more laughable like in our current moment where you know like the new york times opinion page is like sort of trying to defend itself from all these you know oh, we're welcoming in a diversity of viewpoints. It's like, no, I've seen how you work. I know what you're doing. And that's not what you're doing. This isn't fooling anyone. Like, it's only like, this only works because people are either agree with it or they're polite. Exactly. And like, that's it. It's like, it's like so much shit. It's just like, oh, well, why can't we afford to pay teachers?

Well, because we, you know, like, among among other things all this money just went to billionaires it's not rocket science like right you know it's pretty clear i mean the actual mechanisms for it are complex but what happens is really clear you know like jeff bezos you know amazon employees don't make a living wage and are working horrible conditions and are discouraged from unionizing and all this stuff. And Jeff Bezos is the richest man alive. Like it's not, it's not hard to see how this, like see what happens here.

Exactly. But like, it is weird to me, the idea of, and sorry, I feel like I'm like retreading some things that you probably talked about, like on past shows. Although I've listened to your entire catalog, i should know this but like um the but it's just the question of like what is gained by this like why why would you want to cling to a

really particular narrative about how you know this this area this vast very diverse place that covers like so many different contexts and peoples and all kinds of stuff, like, what's to be gained by really hanging on to this narrative and pushing it constantly that it is this kind of monochromatic, like, place that you can easily essentialize? Like, that I don't without like just giving into being like oh well it's just they suck i don't know like uh i think for me i don't understand i don't understand what's to be gained by it i guess i think for me it reveals who they think their readership is and and the thing is is i don't even think that they think that i think they know what

their readership is and their audience is and their audience is coastal liberal elites you know and i hate to use that term it's kind of like played out at this point but i think to me that just it's all about profit it's all about selling a newspaper a newspaper and so like by working with that very specific framing they think that they're giving their audience what their audience presumably wants which is a jd vance type soothsaying person who can explain this vast region in a way that makes sense i don't know i could be wrong i don't know oh sorry i i just stepped on you what were you saying no i said i could be wrong but uh it's it's okay to step on me when I'm admitting that I might not know what the fuck I'm talking

about. Are we going back to the Dr. King thing again? Yes. Like, it's okay to step on me. Yes. Alright. Play that rock, Fax. I think there's that, and I think that there's, like, the self-mythology of a lot of...

So I hate using the term liberal as like a pejorative because sometimes it makes, I feel like it makes me sound like I'm like, not for me, I'm like perfectly correct lefty or something. But I think that it plays to the liberal self mythology of we are somehow just inherently more cosmopolitan and urbane and like you know whatever like we're upwardly mobile we are um all these different things to be able to look at a place and go

and here's what we're not right um there's a you know not to name names there's there's some there's some people that i've kind of hustled with over the past couple of years about this who do kind of like use like actual words of like well those places are full of obsolete people and the sooner that they die the better we'll all be

I'll name names off air if you want to go beat someone up but like yeah it's just like a guy being like well I live in Boston and we've never let anything like this happen here. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's Boston. That bastion of anti-racism. We're reading seriously.

Boston. I think it was, do you know Tressie, what's her last name? Oh, McDade. Tressie M.C. Yeah. She's an author and a sociologist, I believe. Yeah, she blurbed Elizabeth Katt's book. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's kind She blurbed Elizabeth Katt's book. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, kind of, you know, same general circle. She's great, and I know that she, I think once, I think it was her who said that, like, Boston is the most racist place in the U.S. that isn't in Louisiana or something. Yeah, well, I believe it. And, but yeah, but it was funny listening to folks from there. And again, I grew up mostly in New, you know, grew up mostly in North Jersey.

Like I have a lot of love for East coast. I have like a New Jersey tattoo. It's something that I love a lot, but there's that notion of like, well, because I'm geographically from here, I am, you know, this, this makes me, uh, somehow more viable viable and like i'm the person of the future right whereas these places are just you know almost genetically because you know when people talk about this they do get into this almost charles murray jd vance type thing of like well the people from there are just predisposed exactly failure or poverty or something um and that just that just steams me up so much

basically when i hear it coming from like what yeah i don't know like particularly like after the last election and like i i'm looking and i'm like seeing all this like like amazing like organizing and stuff that's happening down there you know like you know bravo to uh west virginia teachers on like the strike and stuff this week and all these things are happening here in Pittsburgh and the DSA we're trying to do stuff and to hear people from elsewhere

just be like well those people are just doomed somehow and as soon as we can let them all die or whatever we'll just all be better off and it's just like ugh well Scott thanks for joining us

and everybody go check out Night in the Woods you can find Scott on Twitter at bombsfall is your Twitter handle if I'm correct and we look forward to speaking with you soon sounds great awesome thanks Scott alright Scott we'll see you later Yes. And we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Sounds great. Awesome. Thanks, Scott. All right, Scott. We'll see you later, man. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. I am just a piece of cake, and it's not good. I've got training. I'm a person just like you. I've got benefits. I've got the syrup. And I know, and I know, and I know. That's not me. What am I supposed to do?

I don't do nothing. And I want to give it a try. I've got training. I've got training. I've just made it! I've just made it! I've just made it! I've just made it!