Podcasts about Nevermind

In this theologically rich episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Jesse and Tony delve into the Parable of the Lost Coin from Luke 15:8-10. They explore how this parable reveals God's passionate pursuit of His elect and the divine joy that erupts when they are found. Building on their previous discussion of the Lost Sheep, the brothers examine how Jesus uses this second parable to further emphasize God's sovereign grace in salvation. The conversation highlights the theological implications of God's ownership of His people even before their redemption, the diligent efforts He undertakes to find them, and the heavenly celebration that follows. This episode offers profound insights into God's relentless love and the true nature of divine joy in redemption. Key Takeaways The Parable of the Lost Coin emphasizes that God actively and diligently searches for those who belong to Him, sparing no effort to recover what is rightfully His. Jesus uses three sequential parables in Luke 15 to progressively reveal different aspects of God's heart toward sinners, with escalating emphasis on divine joy. The coin represents something of significant value that already belonged to the woman, illustrating that God's elect belong to Him even before their redemption. Unlike finding something new, the joy depicted is specifically about recovering something that was already yours but had been lost, highlighting God's eternal claim on His people. The spiritual inability of the sinner is represented by the coin's passivity - it cannot find its own way back and must be sought out by its owner. Angels rejoice over salvation not independently but because they share in God's delight at the effectiveness of His saving power. The parable challenges believers to recover their joy in salvation and to share it with others, much like the woman who called her neighbors to celebrate with her. Expanded Insights God's Determined Pursuit of What Already Belongs to Him The Parable of the Lost Coin reveals a profound theological truth about God's relationship to His elect. As Tony and Jesse discuss, this isn't a story about finding something new, but recovering something that already belongs to the owner. The woman in the parable doesn't rejoice because she discovered unexpected treasure; she rejoices because she recovered what was already hers. This illustrates the Reformed understanding that God's people have eternally belonged to Him. While justification occurs in time, there's a real sense in which God has been considering us as His people in eternity past. The parable therefore supports the doctrines of election and particular redemption - God is not creating conditions people can move into or out of, but is zealously reclaiming a specific people who are already His in His eternal decree. The searching, sweeping, and diligent pursuit represent not a general call, but an effectual calling that accomplishes its purpose. The Divine Joy in Recovering Sinners One of the most striking aspects of this parable is the overwhelming joy that accompanies finding the lost coin. The brothers highlight that this joy isn't reluctant or begrudging, but enthusiastic and overflowing. The woman calls her friends and neighbors to celebrate with her - a seemingly excessive response to finding a coin, unless we understand the theological significance. This reveals that God takes genuine delight in the redemption of sinners, to the extent that Jesus describes it as causing joy "in the presence of the angels of God." As Jesse and Tony note, this challenges our perception that God might save us begrudgingly. Instead, the parable teaches us that God's "alien work" is wrath, while His delight is in mercy. This should profoundly impact how believers view their own salvation and should inspire a contagious joy that spreads to others - a joy that many Christians, by Tony's own admission, need to recover in their daily walk. Memorable Quotes "Christ love is an act of love and it's always being acted upon the sinner, the one who has to be redeemed, his child whom he goes after. So in the same way, we have Christ showing the self-denying love." - Jesse Schwamb "The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace... The reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased, is because God has this real pleasure to pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire." - Jesse Schwamb "These parables are calling us to rejoice, right? Christ is using these parables to shame the Pharisees and the scribes who refuse to rejoice over the salvation of sinners. How often do we not rejoice over our own salvation sufficiently?" - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript [00:00:08] Jesse Schwamb: There still is like the sovereign grace of God who's initiating the salvation and there is a kind of effect of calling that God doesn't merely invite, he finds, he goes after he affects the very thing. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that here. The sinner, spiritual inability. There's an utter passivity until found. The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace. It's all there for us. And the reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased is because God has this real pleasure. To pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire. Welcome to episode 472 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse. [00:00:57] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother. [00:01:01] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. [00:01:02] Jesus and the Parable of the Lost Coin [00:01:02] Jesse Schwamb: So there was this time, maybe actually more than one time, but at least this one time that we've been looking at where Jesus is hanging out and the religious incumbents, the Pharisees, they come to him and they say, you are a friend of sinners, and. Instead of taking offense to this, Jesus turns this all around. Uses this as a label, appropriates it for himself and his glorious character. And we know this because he gives us this thrice repeated sense of what it means to see his heart, his volition, his passion, his love, his going after his people, and he does it. Three little parables and we looked at one last time and we're coming up to round two of the same and similar, but also different and interesting. And so today we're looking at the parable of the lost coin or the Lost dma, or I suppose, whatever kind of currency you wanna insert in there. But once again, something's lost and we're gonna see how our savior comes to find it by way of explaining it. In metaphor. So there's more things that are lost and more things to be found on this episode. That's how we do it. It's true. It's true. So that's how Jesus does it. So [00:02:12] Tony Arsenal: yeah. So it should be how we do it. [00:02:14] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I cut to like Montel Jordan now is the only thing going through my head. Tell Jordan. Yeah. Isn't he the one that's like, this is how we do it, that song, this is [00:02:28] Tony Arsenal: how we do it. I, I don't know who sings it. Apparently it's me right now. That was actually really good. That was fantastic. [00:02:36] Jesse Schwamb: Hopefully never auto tuned. Not even once. I'm sure that'll make an appearance now and the rest, somebody [00:02:42] Tony Arsenal: should take that and auto tune it for me. [00:02:44] Jesse Schwamb: That would be fantastic. Listen, it doesn't need it. That was perfect. That was right off the cuff, right off the top. It was beautiful. It was ous. [00:02:50] Tony Arsenal: Yes. Yes. [00:02:51] Affirmations and Denials [00:02:51] Jesse Schwamb: I'm hoping that appearance, [00:02:53] Tony Arsenal: before we jump into our, our favorite segment here in affirmations of Denials, I just wanted to take a second to, uh, thank all of our listeners. Uh, we have the best listeners in the world. That's true, and we've also got a really great place to get together and chat about things. That's also true. Uh, we have a little telegram chat, which is just a little chat, um, program that run on your phone or in a browser. Really any device you have, you can go to t Me slash Reform Brotherhood and join that, uh, little chat group. And there's lots of stuff going on there. We don't need to get into all the details, but it's a friendly little place. Lots of good people, lots of good conversation. And just lots of good digital fellowship, if that's even a thing. I think it is. So please do join us there. It's a great place to discuss, uh, the episodes or what you're learning or what you'd like to learn. There's all sorts of, uh, little nooks and crannies and things to do in there. [00:03:43] Jesse Schwamb: So if you're looking for a little df and you know that you are coming out, we won't get into details, but you definitely should. Take Tony's advice, please. You, you will not be disappointed. It, it's a fun, fun time together. True. Just like you're about to have with us chatting it up and going through a little affirmations and denials. So, as usual, Tony, what are you, are you affirming with something or are you denying again, something? I'm, I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm ready. [00:04:06] Tony Arsenal: Okay. Uh, it is, I thought that was going somewhere else. Uh, I'm, I'm affirming something. [00:04:13] AI and Problem Solving [00:04:13] Tony Arsenal: People are gonna get so sick of me doing like AI affirmations, but I, it's like I learned a new thing to do with AI every couple of weeks. I ran across an article the other day, uh, that I don't remember where the article was. I didn't save it, but I did read it. And one of the things that pointed out is that a lot of times you're not getting the most out of AI because you don't really know how to ask the questions. True. One of the things it was was getting through is a lot of people will ask, they'll have a problem that they're encountering and they'll just ask AI like, how do I fix this problem? And a lot of times what that yields is like very superficial, basic, uh, generic advice or generic kind of, uh, directions for resolving a problem. And the, I don't remember the exact phrasing, 'cause it was a little while ago since I read it, but it basically said something like, I'm encountering X problem. And despite all efforts to the contrary, I have not been able to resolve it. And by using sort of these extra phrases. What it does is it sort of like pushes the AI to ask you questions about what you've already tried to do, and so it's gonna tailor its advice or its directions to your specific situation a little bit more. So, for example, I was doing this today. We, um, we just had the time change, right? Stupidest thing in the world doesn't make any sense and my kids don't understand that the time has changed and we're now like three or four weeks past the, the time change and their, their schedule still have not adjusted. So my son Augie, who is uh, like three and three quarters, uh, I don't know how many months it is. When do you stop? I don't even know. When you stop counting in months. He's three and a quarter, three quarters. And he will regularly wake up between four 30 and five 30. And when we really, what we really want is for him to be sleeping, uh, from uh, until like six or six 30 at the latest. So he's like a full hour, sometimes two hours ahead of time, which then he wakes up, it's a small house. He's noisy 'cause he's a three and a half year old. So he wakes up the baby. The baby wakes up. My wife, and then we're all awake and then we're cranky and it's miserable. So I, I put that little prompt into, um, into Google Gemini, which is right now is my, um, AI of choice, but works very similar. If you use something like chat, GPT or CLO or whatever, you know, grok, whatever AI tool you have access to, put that little prompt in. You know, something like since the time change, my son has been waking up at four 30 in the morning, despite all efforts to the contrary, I have not been able to, uh, adjust his schedule. And so it started asking me questions like, how much light is in the room? What time does he go to bed? How much does he nap? And it, so it's, it's pulling from the internet. This is why I like Google Geminis. It's actually pulling from the internet to identify like common, common. Related issues. And so it starts to probe and ask questions. And by the time it was done, what it came out with was like a step-by-step two week plan. Basically like, do this tonight, do this tomorrow morning. Um, and it was able to identify what it believes is the problem. We'll see if it actually is, but the beauty now is now that I've got a plan that I've got in this ai, I can start, you know, tomorrow morning I'm gonna try to do what it said and I can tell. The ai, how things went, and it can now adjust the plan based on whether or not, you know, this worked or didn't work. So it's a good way to sort of, um, push an ai, uh, chat bot to probe your situation a little bit more. So you could do this really for anything, right. You could do something like I'm having, I'm having trouble losing weight despite all efforts to the contrary. Um, can you help me identify what the, you know, root problem is? So think about different ways that you can use this. It's a pretty cool way to sort of like, push the, the AI to get a little deeper into the specifics without like a lot of extra heavy lifting. I'm sure there's probably other ways you could drive it to do this, but this was just one clever way that I, that this article pointed out to accomplish this. [00:08:07] Jesse Schwamb: It's a great exercise to have AI optimize itself. Yeah. By you turning your prompts around and asking it to ask you a number of questions, sufficient number, until it can provide an optimize answer for you. So lots, almost every bot has some kind of, you can have it analyze your prompts essentially, but some like copilot actually have a prompt agent, which will help you construct the prompt in an optimal way. Yeah, and that again, is kind of question and answer. So I'm with you. I will often turn it around and say. Here's my goal. Ask me sufficient number of questions so that you can provide the right insight to accomplish said goal. Or like you're saying, if you can create this like, massive conversation that keeps all this history. So I, I've heard of people using this for their exercise or running plans. Famously, somebody a, a, um, journalist, the Wall Street Journal, use it, train for a marathon. You can almost have it do anything for you. Of course, you want to test all of that and interact with it reasonably and ably, right? At the same time, what it does best is respond to like natural language interaction. And so by turning it around and basically saying, help me help you do the best job possible, providing the information, it's like the weirdest way of querying stuff because we're so used to providing explicit direction ourselves, right? So to turn it around, it's kind of a new experience, but it's super fun, really interesting, really effective. [00:09:22] Tony Arsenal: And it because you are allowing, in a certain sense, you're sort of asking the AI to drive the conversation. This, this particular prompt, I know the article I read went into details about why this prompt is powerful and the reason this prompt is powerful is not because of anything the AI's doing necessarily, right. It's because you're basically telling the AI. To find what you've missed. And so it's asking you questions. Like if I was to sit down and go like, all right, what are all the things that's wrong, that's causing my son to be awake? Like obviously I didn't figure it out on my own, so it's asking me what I've already tried and what it found out. And then of course when it tells me what it is, it's like the most obvious thing when it figures out what it is. It's identifying something that I already haven't identified because I've told it. I've already tried everything I can think of, and so it's prompting me to try to figure out what it is that I haven't thought of. So those are, like I said, there's lots of ways to sort of get the ais to do that exercise. Um, it's not, it's not just about prompt engineering, although that there's a lot of science now and a lot of like. Specifics on how you do prompt engineering, um, you know, like building a persona for the ai. Like there's all sorts of things you can do and you can add that, like, I could have said something like, um. Uh, you are a pediatric sleep expert, right? And when you tell it that what it's gonna do is it's gonna start to use more technical language, it's gonna, it's gonna speak to you back as though it's a, and this, this is where AI can get a little bit dangerous and really downright scary in some instances. But with that particular prompt, it's gonna start to speak back to you as though it was a clinician of some sort, diagnosing a medical situation, which again. That is definitely not something I would ever endorse. Like, don't let an AI be your doctor. That's just not, like WebMD was already scary enough when you were just telling you what your symptoms were and it was just cross checking it. Um, but you could do something like, and I use these kinds of prompts for our show notes where I'm like, you're an expert at SEO, like at um, podcast show notes. Utilizing SEO search terms, like that's part of the prompt that I use when I use, um, in, in this case, I use notion to generate most of our show notes. Um, it, it starts to change the way that it looks at things and the way that it, I, it responds to you based on different prompts. So I think it, it's a little bit scary, uh, AI. Can be a strange, strange place. And there's some, they're doing some research that is a little bit frightening. They did a study and actually, like, they, they basically like unlocked an AI and gave it access to a pretend company with emails and stuff and said that a particular employee was gonna shut out, was gonna delete the ai. And the first thing it did was try to like blackmail the employee with like a risk, like a scandalous email. It had. Then after that they, they engineered a scenario where the AI actually had the ability to kill the employee. And despite like explicit instructions not to do anything illegal, it still tried to kill the employee. So there's some scary things that are coming up if we're not, you know, if, if the science is not able to get that under control. But right now it's just a lot of fun. Like it's, we're, we're probably not at the point where it's dangerous yet and hopefully. Hopefully it won't get to that point, but we'll see. We'll see. That got dark real fast, fast, fast. Jesse, you gotta get this. And that was an affirmation. I guess I'm affirming killer murder ais that are gonna kill us all, but uh, we're gonna have fun with it until they do at least. [00:12:52] Jesse Schwamb: Thanks for not making that deny against. 'cause I can only imagine the direction that one to taken. [00:12:57] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. At least when the AI hears this, it's gonna know that I'm on its side, so, oh, for sure. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. So as do Iye. [00:13:05] Christmas Hymns and Music Recommendations [00:13:05] Tony Arsenal: But Jesse, what are you affirming or denying today to get me out of this pit here? [00:13:09] Jesse Schwamb: So, lemme start with a question. Do you have a favorite Christmas hymn? And if so, what is it? [00:13:16] Tony Arsenal: Ooh, that's a tough one. Um, I think I've always been really partial to Oh, holy Night. But, uh, there's, there's not anything that really jumps to mind my, as I've become older and crankier and more Scottish in spirit, I just, Christmas hymns just aren't as. If they're not as prominent in my mind, but oh, holy night or come coming, Emanuel is probably a really good one too. [00:13:38] Jesse Schwamb: Wow. Those are the, those are like the top in the top three for me. Yeah. So I think [00:13:42] Tony Arsenal: I know where you're going based on the question. [00:13:44] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, we're very much the same. So, well maybe, so I am affirming with, but it's that time of year and people you, you know and love and maybe yourself, you're gonna listen to Christian music and. That's okay. I put no shade on that, especially because we're talking about the incarnation, celebrate the incarnation. But of course, I think the best version of that is some of these really lovely hymns because they could be sung and worshiped through all year round. We just choose them because they fit in with the calendar particularly well here, and sometimes they're included, their lyrics included in Hallmark cards and, and your local. Cool. Coles. So while that's happening, why not embrace it? But here's my information is why not go with some different versions. I love the hymn as you just said. Oh, come will come Emmanuel. And so I'm gonna give people three versions of it to listen to Now to make my list of this kind of repertoire. The song's gotta maintain that traditional melody. I think to a strong degree, it's gotta be rich and deep and dark, especially Ko Emmanuel. But it's gotta have something in it that's a little bit nuanced. Different creative arrangements, musicality. So let me give two brand new ones that you may not have heard versions and one old one. So the old one is by, these are all Ko Emanuel. So if at some point during this you're like, what song is he talking about? It's Ko. Emmanuel. It's just three times. Th we're keeping it th Rice tonight. So the first is by band called for today. That's gonna be a, a little bit harder if you want something that, uh, gets you kind of pumped up in the midst of this redemption. That's gonna be the version. And then there are two brand new ones. One is by skillet, which is just been making music forever, but the piano melody they bring into this and they do a little something nuanced with the chorus that doesn't pull away too much. From the original, but just gives it a little extra like Tastiness. Yeah. Skill. Great version. And then another one that just came out yesterday. My yesterday, not your yesterday. So actually it doesn't even matter at this point. It's already out is by descriptor. And this would be like the most chill version that is a hardcore band by, I would say tradition, but in this case, their version is very chill. All of them I find are just deeply worshipful. Yeah. And these, the music is very full of impact, but of course the lyrics are glorious. I really love this, this crying out to God for the Savior. This. You know, just, it's really the, the plea that we should have now, which is, you know, maranatha like Lord Jesus, come. And so in some ways we're, we're celebrating that initial plea and cry for redemption as it has been applied onto us by the Holy Spirit. And we're also saying, you know, come and fulfill your kingdom, Lord, come and bring the full promise, which is here, but not yet. So I like all three of these. So for today. Skillet descriptor, which sounds like we're playing like a weird word game when you put those all together. It does, but they're all great bands and their versions I think are, are worthy. So the larger affirmation, I suppose, is like, go out this season and find different versions, like mix it up a little bit. Because it's good to hear this music somewhat afresh, and so I think by coming to it with different versions of it, you'll get a little bit of that sense. It'll make maybe what is, maybe if it's felt rote or mundane or just trivial, like you're saying, kind of revive some of these pieces in our hearts so we can, we, we can really worship through them. We're redeeming them even as they're meant to be expressions of the ultimate redemption. [00:16:55] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, I, um, I heard the skillet version and, uh, you know, you know me like I'm not a huge fan of harder music. Yeah. But that, that song Slaps man, it's, yes, [00:17:07] Jesse Schwamb: it does. It's [00:17:07] Tony Arsenal: good. And Al I mean, it, it also ignited this weird firestorm of craziness online. I don't know if you heard anything about this, but Yes, it was, it was, there was like the people who absolutely love it and will. Fight you if you don't. Yes. And then there was like the people who think it's straight from the devil because of somehow demonic rhythms, whatever that means. Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm not a big fan of the heavier music, but there is something about that sort of, uh. I don't know. Is skill, would that be considered like metal at all? [00:17:38] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, that's a loaded question. Probably. [00:17:39] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. So like I found, uh, this is, we're gonna go down to Rabbit Trail here. Let's do it. Here we go. I found a version of Africa by Toto that was labeled as metal on YouTube. So I don't know whether it actually is, and this, this version of skill, it strikes me as very similar, where it's, ah, uh, it, it's like, um. The harmonies are slightly different in terms of like how they resonate than Okay. Other harmonies. Like I get [00:18:05] Jesse Schwamb: that [00:18:06] Tony Arsenal: there's a certain, you know, like when you think about like Western music, there's certain right, there's certain harmonies when, you know, think about like piano chords are framed and my understanding at least this could be way off, and I'm sure you're gonna correct me if I'm wrong, is that um, metal music, heavy metal music uses slightly different. Chord formations that it almost leaves you feeling a little unresolved. Yes, but not quite unresolved. Like it's just, it's, it's more the harmonics are different, so that's fair. Skillet. This skillet song is so good, and I think you're right. It, it retains the sort of like. The same basic melody, the same, the same basic harmonies, actually. Right. And it's, it's almost like the harmonies are just close enough to being put into a different key with the harmonies. Yes, [00:18:52] Jesse Schwamb: that's true [00:18:53] Tony Arsenal: than then. Uh, but not quite actually going into another key. So like, sometimes you'll see online, you'll find YouTube videos where they play like pop songs, but they've changed the, the. Chords a little bit. So now it's in a minor key. It's almost like it's there. It's like one more little note shift and it would be there. Um, and then there's some interesting, uh, like repetition and almost some like anal singing going on, that it's very good. Even if you don't like heavier music. Like, like I don't, um, go listen to it and I think you'll find yourself like hitting repeat a couple times. It was very, very good. [00:19:25] Jesse Schwamb: That's a good way of saying it. A lot of times that style is a little bit dissonant, if that's what you mean in the court. Yeah. Formation. So it gives you this unsettledness, this almost unresolvedness, and that's in there. Yeah. And just so everybody knows, actually, if you listen to that version from Skillet, you'll probably listen to most of it. You'll get about two thirds of the way through it and probably be saying, what are those guys talking about? It's the breakdown. Where it amps up. But before that, I think anybody could listen to it and just enjoy it. It's a really beautiful, almost haunting piano melody. They bring into the intro in that, in the interlude. It's very lovely. So it gives you that sense. Again, I love this kind of music because there's almost something, there is something in this song that's longing for something that is wanting and yet left, unresolved and unfulfilled until the savior comes. There's almost a lament in it, so to speak, especially with like the way it's orchestrated. So I love that this hymn is like deep and rich in that way. It's, that's fine. Like if you want to sing deck the Holes, that's totally fine. This is just, I think, better and rich and deeper and more interesting because it does speak to this life of looking for and waiting for anticipating the advent of the savior. So to get me get put back in that place by music, I think is like a net gain this time of year. It's good to have that perspective. I'm, I'm glad you've heard it. We should just open that debate up whether or not we come hang out in the telegram chat. We'll put it in that debate. Is skillet hardcore or metal? We'll just leave it there 'cause I have my opinions, but I'm, well, I'm sure everybody else does. [00:20:48] Tony Arsenal: I don't even know what those words mean, Jesse. Everything is hardcore in metal compared to what I normally listen to. I don't even listen to music anymore usually, so I, I mean, I'm like mostly all podcasts all the time. Anytime I have time, I don't have a ton of time to listen to. Um, audio stuff, but [00:21:06] Jesse Schwamb: that's totally fair. Well now everybody now join us though. [00:21:08] Tony Arsenal: Educate me [00:21:09] Jesse Schwamb: now. Everybody can properly use, IM prompt whatever AI of their choice, and they can listen to at least three different versions of al comical manual. And then they can tell us which one do you like the best? Or maybe you have your own version. That's what she was saying. What's your favorite Christmas in? [00:21:23] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And [00:21:24] Jesse Schwamb: what version of it do you like? I mean, it'll be like. [00:21:28] Tony Arsenal: It'll be like, despite my best efforts, I've been un unable to understand what hardcore and medical is. Please help me understand. [00:21:37] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, we're gonna have some, some fun with this at some point. We'll have to get into the whole debate, though. I know you and I have talked about it before. We'll put it before the brothers and sisters about a Christmas Carol and what version everybody else likes. That's also seems like, aside from the, the whole eternal debate, which I'm not sure is really serious about whether or not diehard is a Christmas movie, this idea of like, which version of the Christmas Carol do you subscribe to? Yeah. Which one would you watch if you can only watch one? Which one will you watch? That's, we'll have to save that for another time. [00:22:06] Tony Arsenal: We'll save it for another time. And we get a little closer to midwinter. No reason we just can't [00:22:10] Jesse Schwamb: do it right now because we gotta get to Luke 15. [00:22:12] Discussion on the Parable of the Lost Coin [00:22:12] Tony Arsenal: We do. [00:22:13] Jesse Schwamb: We, we've already been in this place of looking at Jesus' response to the Pharisees when they say to him, listen, this man receives sinners and eats with them. And Jesus is basically like, yeah, that's right. And let me tell you three times what the heart of God is like and what my mission in serving him is like, and what I desire to come to do for my children. And so we spoke in the last conversation about the parable lost sheep. Go check that out. Some are saying, I mean, I'm not saying this, but some are saying in the internet, it's the definitive. Congratulation of that parable. I'm, I'm happy to take that if that's true. Um, but we wanna go on to this parable of the lost coin. So let me read, it's just a couple of verses and you're gonna hear in the text that you're going to understand right away. This is being linked because it starts with or, so this is Jesus speaking and this is Luke 15, chapter 15, starting in verse eight. Jesus says, or a what woman? She has 10 D drachmas and loses. One drachma does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it. And when she has found it, she calls together her friend and her neighbors saying, rejoice with me for I found the D Drachma, which I lost in the same way I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. [00:23:27] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. On one level, this is, uh, again, it's not all that complicated of a scenario, right? And we have to kind of go back and relo through some of the stuff we talked about last week because this is a continuation of, you know, when we first talked about the Matthew 13 parables, we commented on like. Christ was coming back to the same themes, right? And in some ways, repeating the parable. This is even stronger than that. It's not just that Christ is teaching the same thing across multiple parables. The sense here, at least the sense I get when I read this parable, the lost sheep, and then the prodigal, um, sun parable or, or the next parable here, um, is actually that Christ is just sort of like hammering home the one point he's making to the tax collectors and or to the tax collectors or to the scribes who are complaining about the fact that Christ was eating with sinners. He's just hammering this point home, right? So it's not, it's not to try to add. A lot of nuance to the point. It's not to try to add a, a shade of meaning. Um. You know, we talked a lot about how parables, um, Christ tells parables in part to condemn the listeners who will not receive him, right? That's right. This is one of those situations where it's not, it's not hiding the meaning of the parable from them. The meaning is so obvious that you couldn't miss it, and he, he appeals, we talked about in the first, in the first part of this, he actually appeals to like what the ordinary response would be. Right? What man of you having a hundred sheep if he loses one, does not. Go and leave the 99. Like it's a scenario that anyone who goes, well, like, I wouldn't do that is, looks like an idiot. Like, that's, that's the point of the why. He phrases it. And so then you're right when he, when he begins with this, he says, or what woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until he, till she finds it. And of course, the, the, the emphasis again is like no one in their right mind would not do this. And I think like we think about a coin and like that's the smallest denomination of money that we have. Like, I wouldn't, like if I lost a, if I had 10 silver coin, 10 coins and I lost one of them, the most that that could be is what? 50 cents? Like the, like if I had a 50 cent piece or a silver dollar, I guess, like I could lose a dollar. We're not really talking about coins the way we think of coins, right? We're talking about, um. Um, you know, like denominations of money that are substantial in that timeframe. Like it, there was, there were small coins, but a silver coin would be a substantial amount of money to lose. So we are not talking about a situation where this is, uh, a trivial kind of thing. She's not looking for, you know, I've, I've heard this parable sort of like unpacked where like, it's almost like a miserly seeking for like this lost coin. Interesting. It's not about, it's not about like. Penny pinching here, right? She's not trying to find a tiny penny that isn't worth anything that's built into the parable, right? It's a silver coin. It's not just any coin. It's a silver coin. So she's, she's looking for this coin, um, because it is a significant amount of money and because she's lost it, she's lost something of her, of her overall wealth. Like there's a real loss. Two, this that needs to be felt before he can really move on with the parable. It's not just like some small piece of property, like there's a [00:26:57] Jesse Schwamb: right. I [00:26:57] Tony Arsenal: don't know if you've ever lost a large amount of money, but I remember one time I was in, um, a. I was like, almost outta high school, and I had taken some money out of, um, out of the bank, some cash to make a purchase. I think I was purchasing a laptop and I don't know why I, I don't, maybe I didn't have a credit card or I didn't have a debit card, but I was purchasing a laptop with cash. Right. And back then, like laptops, like this was not a super expensive laptop, but. It was a substantial amount of cash and I misplaced it and it was like, oh no, like, where is it? And like, I went crazy trying to find it. This is the situation. She's lost a substantial amount of money. Um, this parable, unlike the last one, doesn't give you a relative amount of how many she has. Otherwise. She's just lost a significant amount of money. So she takes all these different steps to try to find it. [00:27:44] Understanding the Parable's Context [00:27:44] Tony Arsenal: We have to feel that loss before we really can grasp what the parable is trying to teach us. [00:27:49] Jesse Schwamb: I like that, so I'm glad you brought that up because I ended up going down a rabbit hole with this whole coined situation. [00:27:56] Tony Arsenal: Well, we're about to, Matt Whitman some of this, aren't we? [00:27:58] Jesse Schwamb: Yes, I think so. But mainly because, and this is not really my own ideas here, there's, there's a lot I was able to kind of just read and kind. Throw, throw something around this because I think you're absolutely right that Jesus is bringing an ES escalation here and it's almost like a little bit easier for us to understand the whole sheep thing. I think the context of the lost coin, like you're already saying, is a little bit less familiar to us, and so I got into this. Rabbit hole over the question, why would this woman have 10 silver coins? I really got stuck on like, so why does she have these? And Jesus specific about that he's giving a particular context. Presumably those within his hearing in earshot understood this context far better than I did. So what I was surprised to see is that a lot of commentators you probably run into this, have stated or I guess promulgated this idea that the woman is young and unmarried and the 10 silver coins could. Could represent a dowry. So in some way here too, like it's not just a lot of money, it's possible that this was her saving up and it was a witness to her availability for marriage. [00:28:57] The Significance of the Lost Coin [00:28:57] Jesse Schwamb: So e either way, if that's true or not, Jesus is really emphasizing to us there's significant and severe loss here. And so just like you said, it would be a fool who would just like say, oh, well that's too bad. The coin is probably in here somewhere, but eh, I'm just gonna go about my normal business. Yeah. And forsake it. Like, let's, let's not worry about it. So. The emphasis then on this one is not so much like the leaving behind presumably can keep the remaining nine coins somewhere safe if you had them. But this effort and this diligence to, to go after and find this lost one. So again, we know it's all about finding what was lost, but this kind of momentum that Jesus is bringing to this, like the severity of this by saying there was this woman, and of course like here we find that part of this parable isn't just in the, the kingdom of God's like this, like we were talking about before. It's more than that because there's this expression of, again, the situation combined with these active verbs. I think we talked about last time that Christ love is an act of love and it's always being acted upon the sinner, the one who has to be redeemed, his child whom he goes after. So in the same way, we have Christ showing the self-denying love. Like in the first case, the shepherd brought his sheep home on his shoulders rather than leave it in the wilderness. And then here. The woman does like everything. She lights the candle, she sweeps the house. She basically turns the thing, the place upside down, searching diligently and spared no pains with this until she found her lost money. And before we get into the whole rejoicing thing, it just strikes me that, you know, in the same way, I think what we have here is Christ affirming that he didn't spare himself. He's not gonna spare himself. When he undertakes to save sinners, he does all the things. He endures the cross scor in shame. He lays down his life for his friends. There's no greater love than that. It cannot be shown, and so Christ's love is deep and mighty. It's like this woman doing all the things, tearing the place apart to ensure that that which she knew she had misplaced comes back to her. That the full value of everything that she knows is hers. Is safe and secure in her possession and so does the Lord Jesus rejoice the safe sinners in the same way. And that's where this is incredibly powerful. It's not just, Hey, let me just say it to you one more time. There is a reemphasis here, but I like where you're going, this re-escalation. I think the first question is, why do the woman have this money? What purpose is it serving? And I think if we can at least try to appreciate some of that, then we see again how Jesus is going after that, which is that he, he wants to save the sinner. He wants to save the soul. And all of the pleasure, then all of the rejoicing comes because, and, and as a result of that context. [00:31:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:23] Theological Implications of God's People [00:31:23] Tony Arsenal: The other thing, um, maybe, and, and I hope I'm not overreading again, we've, we've talked about the dangers of overreading, the parables, but I think there's a, and we'll, we'll come to this too when we get into the, um, prodigal son. Um, there is this sense, I think in some theological traditions that. God is sort of like claiming a people who were not his own. Right. And one of the things that I love about the reform tradition, and, and I love it because this is the picture the Bible teaches, is the emphasis on the fact that God's people have been God's people. As long as God has been pondering and con like contemplating them. So like we deny eternal justification, right? Justification happens in time and there's a real change in our status, in in time when, when the spirit applies, the benefits that Christ has purchased for us in redemption, right? But there's also a very real sense that God has been looking and considering us as his people in eternity past. Like that's always. That's the nature of the Pactum salutes, the, you know, covenant of redemption election. The idea that like God is not saving a nameless, faceless people. He's not creating conditions that people can either move themselves into or take themselves out of. He has a concrete people. Who he is saving, who he has chosen. He, he, you know, prior to our birth, he will redeem us. He now, he has redeemed us and he will preserve us in all of these parables, whether it's the sheep, the coin, or as we'll get to the prodigal sun next week or, or whenever. Um. It's not that God is discovering something new that he didn't have, or it's not that the woman is discovering a coin, right? There's nothing more, uh, I think nothing more like sort of, uh, spontaneously delightful than like when you like buy a, like a jacket at the thrift store. Like you go to Salvation Army and you buy a jacket, you get home, you reach in the pocket and there's like a $10 bill and you're like, oh man, that's so, so great. Or like, you find a, you find a. A $10 bill on the ground, or you find a quarter on the ground, right? Yeah. Or you find your own money. Well, and that that's, there's a different kind of joy, right? That's the point, is like, there's a delight that comes with finding something. And again, like we have to be careful about like, like not stealing, right? But there's a different kind of joy that comes with like finding something that was not yours that now becomes yours. We talked about that with parables a couple weeks ago, right? There's a guy who finds it, he's, he's searching for pearls. He finds a pearl, and so he goes after he sells everything he has and he claims that pearl, but that wasn't his before the delight was in sort of finding something new. These parables. The delight is in reclaiming and refining something that was yours that was once lost. Right? That's a different thing. And it paints a picture, a different picture of God than the other parables where, you know, the man kind of stumbles on treasure in a field or he finds a pearl that he was searching for, but it wasn't his pearl. This is different. This is teaching us that God is, is zealous and jealous to reclaim that which was his, which was lost. Yes. Right. So, you know, we can get, we can, maybe we will next week, maybe we will dig into like super laps area versus infra laps. AIRism probably not, I don't necessarily wanna have that conversation. But there is a reality in the Bible where God has a chosen people and they are his people, even before he redeems them. [00:34:52] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly. [00:34:53] God's Relentless Pursuit of Sinners [00:34:53] Tony Arsenal: These parables all emphasize that in a different way and part of what he's, part of what he's ribbing at with the Pharisees and the, and the scribes, and this is common across all of Christ's teaching in his interactions and we get into true Israel with, with Paul, I mean this is the consistent testimony of the New Testament, is that the people who thought they were God's people. The, the Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the, the sort of elites of, uh, first century Jewish believers, they really were convinced that they were God's people. And those dirty gentiles out there, they, they're not, and even in certain sense, like even the Jewish people out in the country who don't even, you know, they don't know the scriptures that like, even those people were maybe barely God's people. Christ is coming in here and he is going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like you're asking me. You're surprised that I receive sinners and e with them. Well, I'm coming to claim that which is mine, which was lost, and the right response to that is not to turn your nose up at it. The right response is to rejoice with me that I have found my sheep that was lost, that I have reclaimed my coin that was lost. And as we'll see later on, like he really needles them at the end of the, the, uh, parable of the prodigal son. This is something I, I have to be like intentional in my own life because I think sometimes we hear conversion stories and we have this sort of, I, I guess like, we'll call it like the, the Jonah I heresy, I dunno, we won't call it heresy, but like the, the, the like Jonah impulse that we all have to be really thankful for God's mercy in our life. But sort of question whether God is. Merciful or even be a little bit upset when it seems that God is being merciful to those sinners over there. We have to really like, use these parables in our own lives to pound that out of our system because it's, it's ungodly and it's not what God is, is calling us. And these parables really speak against that [00:36:52] Jesse Schwamb: and all of us speak in. In that lost state, but that doesn't, I think like you're saying, mean that we are not God's already. That if he has established that from a trinity past, then we'd expect what others have said about God as the hound of heaven to be true. And that is he comes and he chases down his own. What's interesting to me is exactly what you've said. We often recognize when we do this in reverse and we look at the parable of the lost son, all of these elements, how the father comes after him, how there's a cha singer coming to himself. There's this grand act of repentance. I would argue all of that is in all of these parables. Not, not to a lesser extent, just to a different extent, but it's all there. So in terms of like couching this, and I think what we might use is like traditionally reformed language. And I, I don't want to say I'm overeating this, I hope I'm not at that same risk, but we see some of this like toll depravity and like the sinner is lost, unable to move forward, right? There still is like the sovereign grace of God who's initiating the salvation and there is a kind of effect of calling that God doesn't merely invite, he finds, he goes after he affects the very thing. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that here. There is. The sinner, spiritual inability. There's an utter passivity until found. The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace. It's all there for us. Yeah, it's in a slightly different way, but I think that's what we're meant to like take away from this. We're meant to lean into that a bit. [00:38:12] Rejoicing in Salvation [00:38:12] Jesse Schwamb: And the reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased is because God has this real pleasure. Jesus has this real pleasure. The Holy Spirit has this real pleasure. To pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire. You know, it was Jesus, literally his food and drink like not to be too trite, but like his jam went upon the earth to finish the work, which he came to do. And there are many times when he says he ammi of being constrained in the spirit until this was accomplished. And it's still his delight to show mercy like you're saying He is. And even Jonah recognizes that, right. He said like, I knew you were going to be a merciful God. And so he's far more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved. But that is the gospel level voice, isn't it? Because we can come kicking and screaming, but in God's great mercy, not because of works and unrighteousness, but because of his great mercy, he comes and he tears everything apart to rescue and to save those whom he's called to himself. [00:39:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I love that old, um, Puritan phrase that wrath is God's alien work. And we, you know, like you gotta be careful when you start to talk that way. And the Puritans were definitely careful about everything. I mean, they were very specific when they spoke, but. When we talk about God's alien work and wrath being God's alien work, what we're saying is not, not that like somehow wrath is external to God. Like that's not what we're getting at of Right. But when you look at scripture and, and here's something that I think, um. I, I don't know how I wanna say this. Like, I think we read that the road is narrow and the the, um, you know, few are those who find it. I think we read that and we somehow think like, yeah, God, God, like, really loves that. Not a lot of people are saved. And I, I actually think that like, when we look at it, um, and, and again, like we have to be careful 'cause God, God. God decreed that which he is delighted by, and also that which glorifies him the most. Right? Right. But the picture that we get in scripture, and we have to take this seriously with all of the caveats that it's accommodated, it's anthropopathism that, you know, all of, all of the stuff we've talked about. We did a whole series on systematic theology. We did like six episodes on Divine Simplicity and immutability. Like we we're, we're right in line with the historic tradition on that. All of those caveats, uh, all of those caveats in place, the Bible pic paints a picture of God such that he grieves over. Those who are lost. Right? Right. He takes no delight in the death of the wicked. That's right. He, he, he seeks after the lost and he rejoices when he finds them. Right. He's, his, his Holy Spirit is grieved when we disobey him, his, his anger is kindled even towards his people in a paternal sense. Right. He disciplines us the way an angry father who loves us, would discipline us when we disobey him. That is a real, that's a real thing. What exactly that means, how we can apply that to God is a very complicated conversation. And maybe sometimes it's more complicated than we, like, we make it more complicated than it needs to be for sure. Um, we wanna be careful to preserve God's changeness, his immutability, his simplicity, all of those things. But at the end of the day, at. God grieves over lost sinners, and he rejoices when they come back. He rejoices when they return to him. Just as the shepherd who finds his lost sheep puts that sheep on his shoulders, right? That's not just because that's an easy way to carry a sheep, right? It's also like this picture of this loving. Intimate situation where God pulls us onto himself and he, he wraps literally like wraps us around himself. Like there are times when, um. You know, I have a toddler and there are times where I have to carry that toddler, and it's, it's a fight, right? And I don't really enjoy doing it. He's squirming, he's fighting. Then there are times where he needs me to hold him tight, and he, he snuggles in. When he falls down and hurts his leg, the first thing he does is he runs and he jumps on me, and he wants to be held tight, and there's a f there's a fatherly embrace there that not only brings comfort to my son. But it brings great joy to me to be able to comfort him that that dynamic in a, uh, a infinitely greater sense is at play here in the lost sheep. And then there's this rejoicing. It's not just rejoicing that God is rejoicing, it's the angels that are rejoicing. [00:42:43] The Joy of Redemption [00:42:43] Tony Arsenal: It's the, it's other Christians. It's the great cloud of witnesses that are rejoicing when Aah sinner is returned to God. All of God's kingdom and everything that that includes, all of that is involved in this rejoicing. That's why I think like in the first parable, in the parable of the lost sheep, it's joy in heaven. Right? It's sort of general joy in heaven. It's not specific. Then this one is even more specific. It's not just general joy in heaven. It's the angels of God. That's right. That are rejoicing. And then I think what we're gonna find, and we'll we'll tease this out when we get to the next par, well the figure in the prodigal son that is rejoicing. The one that is leading the rejoicing, the chief rejoice is the one who's the standin for God in that parable. [00:43:26] Jesse Schwamb: Right, exactly right. So, [00:43:27] Tony Arsenal: so we have to, we have to both recognize that there's a true grief. A true sorrow that is appropriate to speak of God, um, as having when a sinner is lost. And there's also an equally appropriate way to speak about God rejoicing and being pleased and delighted when a sinner returns to him. [00:43:53] Jesse Schwamb: That's the real payoff of this whole parable. I think, uh, maybe all three of them altogether, is that it is shocking how good the gospel is, which we're always saying, yeah, but I'm really always being moved, especially these last couple weeks with what Jesus is saying about how good, how truly unbelievable the gospel is. And again, it draws us to the. Old Testament scriptures when even the Israel saying, who is like this? Who is like our God? So what's remarkable about this is that there's an infinite willingness on God's part to receive sinners. [00:44:23] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:44:23] Jesse Schwamb: And however wicked a man may have been, and the day that he really turns from his wickedness and comes to God by Christ, God is well pleased and all of heaven with him, and God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, like you said, but God has pleasure and true repentance. If all of that's true, then like day to day, here's what I, I think this means for us. [00:44:41] Applying the Parable to Our Lives [00:44:41] Jesse Schwamb: Is when we come to Christ for mercy and love and help and whatever anguish and perplexity and simpleness that we all have, and we all have it, we are going with the flow. If his own deepest wishes, we're not going against them. And so this means that God has for us when we partake in the toning work of Christ, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despite our sinfulness, that we are laying hold of Christ's own deepest longing and joy. [00:45:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And [00:45:10] Jesse Schwamb: Jesus is comforted when we draw near the riches of his atoning work because as his body, even his own body in a way is being healed in this process. And so we, along with it, that I think is the payoff here. That's what's just so remarkable is that not only, like you're saying, is all heaven kind of paying attention to this. Like they're cognizant of it. It's something worthy of their attention and their energies and their rejoicing. But again, it's showing that God is doing all of this work and so he keeps calling us and calling us and calling us over and over again and just like you said, the elect sinner, those estr belongs to God and his eternal purpose. Even that by itself, we could just say full stop. Shut it down end the podcast. Yeah. That's just worthy to, to rejoice and, and ponder. But this is how strong I think we see like per election in particular, redemption in these passages. Christ died for his chief specifically crisis going after the lost coin, which already belongs to him. So like you were saying, Tony, when you know, or maybe you don't know, but you've misplaced some kind of money and you put your hand in that pocket of that winter coat for the first time that season and out comes the piece of paper, that's whatever, 20 or whatever, you rejoice in that, right. Right. It's like this was mine. I knew it was somewhere, it belonged to me, except that what's even better here is this woman tears her whole place apart to go after this one coin that she knows is hers and yet has been lost. I don't know what more it is to be said. I just cannot under emphasize. Or overemphasize how great God's love is in this like amazing condescension, so that when Jesus describes himself as being gentle and lowly or gentle and humble or gentle and humiliated, that I, I think as we understand the biblical text, it's not necessarily just that he's saying, well, I'm, I'm displaying. Meekness power under control. When he says he's humble, he means put in this incredibly lowly state. Yeah. That the rescue mission, like you're saying, involves not just like, Hey, she lemme call you back. Hey, come over here, says uh. He goes and he picks it up. It's the ultimate rescue, picks it up and takes it back by his own volition, sacrificing everything or to do that and so does this woman in this particular instance, and it should lead us. I think back to there's this virtuous cycle of seeing this, experiencing this. Being compelled by the law of Christ, as Paul says, by the power of the Holy Spirit and being regenerated and then worshiping, and then repenting, and then worshiping, and then repenting, and then worshiping. Because in the midst of that repentance and that beautifulness recognizing, as Isaiah says, all of these idols that we set up, that we run to, the one thing they cannot do for us is they cannot deal with sin. They cannot bring cleanliness and righteousness through confession of sin. They cannot do that. So Christ is saying, come to the one you who are needy, you who have no money. To use another metaphor in the Bible, come and buy. And in doing so, we're saying, Christ, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. And when he says, come, come, I, I've, I have already run. After you come and be restored, come and be renewed. That which was lost my child. You have been found and I have rescued you. [00:48:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And these, these are so, um, these two parables are so. Comfortable. Like, right, like they are there, there are certain passages of scripture that you can just like put on like a big fuzzy warm bathrobe on like sn a cold morning, a snuggy. Yeah. I don't know if I want to go that far, but spirits are snuggy and, and these two are like that, right? Like, I know there are times where I feel like Christ redeemed me sort of begrudgingly, right? Mm-hmm. I think we have, we have this, um, concept in our mind of. Sort of the suffering servant, you know, like he's kind of like, ah, if I have to do it, I will. Right, right. And, and like, I think we, we would, if, if we were the ones who were, were being tasked to redeem something, we might do it. You know, we might do it and we. We might feel a certain sense of satisfaction about it, but I can tell you that if I had a hundred sheep and I had lost one, I would not lay it on my shoulder rejoicing. I would lay it on my shoulder. Frustrated and glad that I finally found it, but like. Right. Right. That's not what Christ did. That's right. Christ lays us on his shoulders rejoicing. Right. I know. Like when you lose something, it's frustrating and it's not just the loss of it that's frustrating. It's the time you have to take to find it. And sometimes like, yeah, you're happy that you found it, but you're like, man, it would've just been nice if I hadn't lost this in [00:49:36] Jesse Schwamb: the That's right. [00:49:37] Tony Arsenal: This woman, there's none of that. There's no, um, there's no regret. There's no. Uh, there's no begrudging this to it. There's nothing. It's just rejoicing. She's so happy. And it's funny, I can imagine, uh, maybe, maybe this is my own, uh, lack of sanctification here. I can imagine being that friend that's like, I gotta come over 'cause you found your coin, right? Like, I can be, I could imagine me that person, but Right. But honestly, like. This is a, this is a situation where she's so overcome with joy. She just has to tell people about it. Yeah. She has to share it with people. It, it reminds me, and I've seen this, I've seen this, um, connection made in the past certainly isn't new to me. I don't, I don't have any specific sorts to say, but like the woman at the well, right. She gets this amazing redemption. She gets this, this Messiah right in front of her. She leaves her buckets at the well, and she goes into a town of people who probably hate her, who think she's just the worst scum of society and she doesn't care. She goes into town to tell everybody about the fact that the Messiah has come, right? And they're so like stunned by the fact that she's doing it. Like they come to see what it is like that's what we need to be like. So there's. There's an element here of not only the rejoicing of God, and again, like, I guess I'm surprised because I've, I've, I've never sort of really read this. Part, I've never read this into it too much or I've never like really pulled this out, but it, now that I'm gonna say it, it just seems logical, like not only is God rejoicing in this, but again, it should be calling us to rejoice, right? Christ is. Christ is using these parables to shame the Pharisees and the scribes who refuse to rejoice over the salvation of sinners. How often do we not rejoice over our own salvation sufficiently? Like when's the last time? And I, I don't want to, this is, this can be a lot of loss. So again, like. God is not calling every single person to stand up on their lunch table at work, or, I don't know if God's calling anybody to stand up on the lunch table at work. Right. To like, like scream about how happy they are that they're sick, happy, happy. But like, when's the last time you were so overcome with joy that in the right opportunity, it just over, like it just overcame you and you had to share it. I don't rem. Putting myself bare here, like I don't remember the last time that happened. I share my faith with people, like my coworkers know that I'm a Christian and, um, my, they know that like, there are gonna be times where like I will bring biblical ethics and biblical concepts into my work. Like I regularly use bible examples to illustrate a principle I'm trying to teach my employees or, or I will regularly sort of. In a meeting where there's some question about what the right, not just like the correct thing to do, but the right thing to do. I will regularly bring biblical morality into those conversations. Nobody is surprised by that. Nobody's really offended by it. 'cause I just do it regularly. But I don't remember the last time where I was so overcome with joy because of my salvation that I just had to tell somebody. Right. And that's a, that's a, that's an indictment on me. That's not an indictment on God. That's not an indictment on anyone else. That's an indictment on me. This parable is calling me to be more joyful about. My salvation. [00:52:52] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. One of the, I think the best and easiest verses from Psalms to memorize is let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Yes. Like, say something, speak up. There's, there's a great truth in what you're saying. Of course. And I think we mentioned this last time. There's a communal delight of redemption. And here we see that played out maybe a little bit more explicitly because the text says that the joy is before the angels, meaning that still God is the source of the joy. In other words, the angels share in God's delight night, vice versa, and not even just in salvation itself, but the fact that God is delighted in this great salvation, that it shows the effectiveness of his saving power. All that he has designed will come to pass because he super intends his will over all things that all things, again are subservient to our salvation. And here, why would that not bring him great joy? Because that's exactly what he intends and is able to do. And the angels rejoice along with him because his glory is revealed in his mighty power. So I'm, I'm with you. I mean, this reminds me. Of what the author of Hebrew says. This is chapter 12, just the first couple of verses. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses in this communal kind of redemption of joy surrounding us. Laying aside every weight and the sin,

The air is crisp, lights are going up, and your obnoxious coworkers won't stop playing Mariah Carey. Yes, it is the most wonderful time of the year to be an anime fan who likes to spend money. Nevermind the consumerism though, we are gonna talk about the weirdness of the anime Christmas episode! From the humorous to the romantic and everything in between! What happens when a foreign religious Holiday is stripped of the last of its religious value? FRIED CHICKEN BABY! Plus we have news and recommendations. OH HO HO HO HO HO HO!

In dieser Folge geht es um Paare, die nicht zusammen in einem Haushalt leben – sogenannte "Living apart together"-Paare. Wie zufrieden sind diese Paare im Vergleich zu jenen, die zusammen in einem Haushalt leben? Und trennen sie sich eher? Wir schauen uns die Vorteile und Nachteile dieser Beziehungsform an. Vielleicht ist sie ja etwas für euch?Hier findet ihr die Umfrage von Elitepartner dazu, wie zufrieden Singles mit ihrem Beziehungsstatus sind.Eine aktuelle Studie des Bundesinstituts für Bevölkerungsforschung zu "LAT"-Paaren findet ihr hier zusammengefasst, eine etwas ältere hier.Wenn euch "Never Mind" gefällt, lasst es uns wissen: Abonniert uns, bewertet uns, so finden uns auch andere Hörerinnen und Hörer eher. Vielen Dank!Anzeige. Diese Folge wird präsentiert von flaconi. Auf flaconi findet ihr erstklassige Produkte aus den Bereichen Parfum, Skincare, Make-up und Hair Care. Sichert euch jetzt mit dem Code „MIND10“ bis zum 30. November 2025 zehn Prozent Rabatt bei eurem Einkauf auf flaconi.de, flaconi.at und flaconi.ch. Alle Informationen zur Aktion gibt es unter: https://www.flaconi.de/podcast-konditionen/ __Never Mind – Psychologie in 15 Minuten ist ein Podcast von Business Insider. Wir freuen uns über eure Ideen und Fragen an podcast@businessinsider.de sowie https://www.instagram.com/fannyjimenezofficial/. Oder ihr schickt uns eine Sprachnachricht an die Nummer 0170-3753084.Redaktion/Moderation: Fanny Jimenez, Recherche: Fanny Jimenez/Produktion: Serdar DenizImpressum: https://www.businessinsider.de/informationen/impressum/Datenschutz: https://www.businessinsider.de/informationen/datenschutz/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Enjoy!!!!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!Pocoloco

Don't you see, sensei I'm just as disappointed in myself And ready to die Just as I relay the message, Spray me with your morbid essence Don't, croak, you fool, You've only a spoon ful of sugar left to go The dose is coming up your throat, — you didn't know to throw up Grab the rope and go up Before gravity has crushed your —thought: Stupid boy, you don't want to die— Nor to do, but oh, do we have it coming Silly mortal, overlords and governed, Short of morals, steady coming at your doorstep So goes our concert! And so goes our concept for divorce, And sure of course, Your four corse meal, and/or dessert This is just devastating, genetics made me The sort at sorting words, but surfing, Sure. Ever temporarily the cadence changes, Still they say “you've been betrayed” But never had a friend I made made As good as death and God have been to me For everything you're meant to be, Plus everything you're meant to me, I go, unwanted, troubled and disgusted at my own immortal outcome. Sure. My back hurts and I'm wounded, Heartbroke, Thrust in every cardinal direction Also, honored at the mark of magic wand Upon her shoulder; And so, Just as soon as the sun and moon, Does the fire escape set a perfect path For outward destruction of the bricks and mortar Or your alter (This we talk about, to some effect Is your repression and affective form of supernatural perfection) But forget the makeup; I can make you up to be a star And not of wars and other worlds, But those that come before us, Carson, and the others Paar before that. But, I think not dear sir How wrong you are, A wretched bird, Set not to fly, but O father Wit and relay messages, The passage said, and set to clocks, The past was won and so the future altered, But dear feathered father, Mortal you are not But just another triumph Of my god; And set the mirror to the magnets Camera, lights and action, Magic— All the signs of the dawn, and the mad don Red Dawn came upon us, called the Red Man Tom, from other, over, under Still was my mistake to mumble such Or put upon the tongue As such assumption Still— wonder? Bird, shut up; Love I dusk And lust I soak In all the frittered dust and feathers, Colors, coming up as mister Chuck and wood, and wait and ponder Slithered this to wonder, not a rock, But potted fern, Asunder Thunderstorm And wicked rain And fair the back A tide had come And sitting there upon the shore, Was us, and 12 apostles She's a Brick— Seemingly out of nowhere, A RED BRICK HOUSE falls very perfectly from the SKY and into OZ. oh good, my house is here. House. [the festival project ™] But I don't want to make house! Then play it! I don't want to play house it is BORING. You play it— they want it. But I don't want it. Then forget it! What! Listen kid, a job's a job! {Enter The Multiverse} Wrong, this is wrong— everything is wrong. What's wrong, Rob? I'll be back. ROB LOWE has just played TRUTH OR DARE L E G E N D S if I could get inside your head For just a second Bread and butter Heaven, hell, And other places I have wandered But oh, wonder This is never what I wanted, Was it? No sir. Sure, I set you off, No sooner had you got a gun and shot me. Handsome fucker. I'll bet. Wrong act. Wrong award show. Wrong hat and a baseball bat, Peanut butter and a nice cold cheesecake, Don't forget to order cheesesteak For your cat. A carnivore at odds with the other worlds, And also fused to us; This drifting back and forth Between the Rock And Hollywood Has got to stop. ((The world is toxic.)) the legend of… L. JONES It's you! BLŪ AH, crap. L. JONES Listen, I got something for you. BLŪ Where did your bird go? L.JONES What bird? CUT TO: Now open that. No wait! It's a trap! THE VAULT inside THE CRYPT at 30 ROCK has been opened. I keep looking down at my phone As if I'm expecting a phone call Or incoming message from God But the worlds to a song Are all jumbled up in my Concious I don't want to talk about it I feel Nauseous Everyone is being obnoxious Even my own blood I don't want to function I just want some French toast crunch For lunch Nostalgia I got a whole inch taller on the peloton Holla Now I got a body, Broader, So close to Broadway But I never go there That's a tall order Of “gotta have money” I mean live theatre It's fine I'll eat here And repeat these things till they just rhyme Line them all up like a context, Story Someday I'm gonna cut my own check Watch me lol none of this rhymes without a hard Brooklyn accent ; Guess you can't hack it! Send you ass packin! I said “That's whack son!” Then I went back blonde Now they want Backend, Contract, Off the top, Royalties Residuals I'm an individual with insidious syntax And yet I'm ridiculed Truly I'm a tit-for-tat Or particle of all you are Circular centrifuge, I trickle down your tentacles (Eugh) Choke the chicken just to give the cat a chicken bowl, Chick fil et and pret a tair just to get a ritual Espresso and a quick snack So I can get my dick wrapped In chocolate and licorice because the shit is edible Damn that I guess they set a damn trap By putting out the welcome mat, Then strapping Like a mothafuckin' straight jacket Matter fact, I look a nap in it, Then magic tricked the slip effective Compliments of Michael Jackson Or was it tech nine? Maybe I should get my Mind right I lost it once I guess I've better find it If I am, in fact, A diamond in the rough It's probably blooded it up enough That you should dig it up and shine it; Better yet, Somebody outta pick it up And sign it, Cause I write enough To put a vision To a blind man It's Fran Fine, man I'm behind, man The shadowgov had put me on a diet My bad I noticed that they tried to shut me up But couldn't stop the words or other stuff That just keeps coming out of my head I put coconuts as butter onto my bread And thinking thoughts of Carl cox As I drift off in my bed, I said, “It shouldn't be a problem, officer” As I reached for the gun And he aimed it at my death. That's an impossible apocalyptic suicide— Did you invite the devil in? I said “Nah, but that guy did.” The problem is, I pointed over yonder to a ghost Who also knows that I'm a well respected psychic; Nevermind a sidekick, side bitch in a sidecar, Psych ward, Sike! We spike war on your kind! So far, If I make history tonight, The other side decides their psalm is just as likely The third reike. Okay, strike one: I'm gonna turn your lights off. Strike two : you do and say what I do: Strike three: we're gonna make you suicidal I specialize in denying rights for high profits But big brother, or boss— What if my glove fits? The instance it does, We lock you up with no service, Your world becomes dark And your words become worthless Oh shit. This is not a good rap song. Like, at all. I must say, I do agree, You lose your trust, but silently Denied is all your trouble, Till it just begins to bubble up Until the cookie crumbles— See that feeling in your stomach? This is bigger than the money, girl — They want your soul, and then the world! I told you never call him. I didn't! Then explain this: [Skrillex] *sharp inward sigh* CUT IMMIDIATLEH TO STAN You know what! That's it! I don't care how handsome or rich and famous he is! This has to stop! KYLE Hey, wait just a minute— STAN SHUT UP KYLE. KYLE You shut up! STAN You're starting to sound just like him! KYLE Take that back! STAN I won't take it back! You all might have forgotten who you are, but I haven't!after of fact, I bet to Cartman, you're still that stupid little Jew kid! KYLE That's IT. KYLE takes out his phone. what are you doing? …I'm tweeting about this. I thought it was X now… It is, but you can't ‘x' anything, it's still calledl tweeting. I guess youre right. —and I'm tagging Cartman ! STAN Are you serious? Oh shit, this is social suicide. …did I ever explain this storyline? …I don't know, did i? I'd gotten so focused on this impending doom looming over me with this whole lawsuit that I'd forgotten entire worlds and whole documents. Even more terrifying, was the sudden quiet and the onset guilt that came over me for getting distracted. But I couldn't remove myself from it entirely—- it seemed to have ruined everything. It wasn't just motorcycle noises, it was like a nervousness and angst twisting in my stomach for months and months, until finally, as the court dates started approaching, it was peaceful, or rather, normal, all of a sudden. It couldn't be peaceful because now that the extreme noise was gone, I knew it had been planted all long— but what was the purpose? I'd lost two years not knowing, and though there were albums, they were never what I wanted. Now I was sorting through the documents of the show like it was the rubble of a decimated building— completely demolished, and I hadn't the slightest clue the contexts or the storylines anymore. It was pain and suffering, but not in the legal context. It was a creative disaster— I hadn't any idea in the slightest where I'd left my audience before I was forced to abandon them. But I was forced to choose, at times, between soap and toilet paper, or eventually, food, and water— or a phone. Eventually, this too became a pattern of the impossible— trying my hardest to do what I thought had been my purpose, but for far, being so endlessly sabotaged, even ridiculed and humiliated, and still, I couldn't understand why. I was tired— and somehow, even though I'd wanted to be left alone, I was the target. Worse was that I assumed it to be bigger than I thought and completely out of control— I thought immediately back to how my best friend from middle school had been attacked, and how she was made to think that it was me…to the point that she'd become obsessive about it to call my mom over it. And as far as the court was concerned, to the wrong ears or wrong eyes, anything I'd published in the festival project could look troublesome, like the ramblings of a mad mad, or schizo, or uncontrolled obsessive thoughts— because the biggest secrets of all, the things that tied together these fictional worlds and plots, were my own real life experience. The inability in a court of law to detail the podcast, which had started as meltdown some would call grandiose over an almost long forgotten rockstar and a porn model — and the entries into the festival project that followed, which included high concepts, off-kilter comedy, politics, and even fringed on social justice. Nothing I ever would have wanted and especially over money, but the lawsuit wasn't about money at all. In fact, at any moment I would have chosen to die and have it all stop if it weren't for my very young son being left alone. Though recently the dread had overcome with a sense of unbearable loss and agony, encrypted with suicidal thoughts and wants, reeling for human touch, the overbearing factor seemed to be that if I killed myself, I was giving someone what they wanted. I was really much too tired to go on, but leaving behind the world in entirety, in my very own way of beliefs wasn't just “shitutting it off”, it was starting it over. Understandably and undeniably immortal in its nature, the instances of God I had left spoke with a reminiscence of being born again, and having to remember which is it I'd wanted to start off. It was an unachievable overload of chaos and disruption, a level of corruption that spoke to something so dark and sinister it seemed biblical — then, again, I tried to wrap my mind around a way to rebuild a positive world from hope and thought, or manifest reality, but this is the very experience I'd felt was intended all along. The motorcycles weren't merely meant to destroy my career, or my will power, or force— they were, but also they were made to play upon my most valuable asset, the power of thought, to make it impossible to become something other than what was wanted; to use my own mind against itself and destroy my way of thought by using vibrations that could not be shut out, or stopped— they followed me to the sound collective, to Shakespeare in the park, the bank, the doctors office— it was as if they knew and understood my very thoughts, my process. It was of nothing at all to corrupt every single body and brain who would surround me or come close— by using the power that seemed supernatural enough, but indeed were powered by money, and technology. Perhaps, in this essence, I thought, was the purest display of defective intention itself; the mere thought that this indeed was rather Good Vs. Evil or God and The Devil would easily be written off as a diseased way of thought. The social world and constructs had been built around being open minded to a system of psychology that was intrinsically rather corrupt. I knew this could only be fought with what I knew, and what I could draw from as logic. I didn't want to go to court because I knew the people I would be fighting were liars, and well trained psychological masters of manipulation, well hidden terrorists dressed as public servants and systematic corrupters all for simple profit margins, to whom I was not so much a person or a mother, or a daughter, but a number. Because I was poor, and had once or four times chosen to love the wrong person in an unorthodox and uncontrollable form of torture, dismissing each and every social construct or physiology that was by the book, by embracing that there was a reason for change I quickly became quite the antagonist of sorts and hopefully not some sort of martyr —for the kind of people that had money and property, and perhaps even socially constructed circles to camoflage their own self doubt and hatred, but absolutely also had no morals. –Death of a Superstar DJ If I lose my mind At least I know I'm right on time This time— I meant that, I had it bad this time MCBADBAT I had it bad this time, And the last. Perchance for you, Hour or folded, Hair my weight And glassed upon thy, This upon now, Feathered waking, And there barely weathered Shaking. Dear, dear, Tis is fair truth, To fare that I have gasp And fated at thy doorstep; And yet, care to force, Her breaking waves and saving tinder, Fit there slithered in as yet astonished, Then another; And I hated. So, then, slower now. All there, gathered none. And show to show thy force What then became and withered after, None to bark or beg But birds and feathered creatures, pander The tides did Quake, And the heart did grow ten fold and steady saying None upon us but one left to shiver in the depths That yet remain as undiscovered For now never there was another world, Undone, And also another becomes, My death— And therefore all the worlds I kept, To travel on and travel As becomes one, does another onward As the first is glass to dust, And last is born there. So, Then, I, Crept, In my dress, Kept for clothes that church did water I, met, My mark and there the doors of shadows open Wilted and wake? Hear you; A star was born In other cosmos tied with our own nurture So, Kept, The weight of clasp and bone That holds the crept and precious alter Goddamn cat! Where are you. AAtticus Caaticus Oop. Gotta go. Toonces! Tooooonces! Where are you? Omg remember that one where that couple has a magic toddler and they just let him like,float away. Yeah, barely. Yeah. So I do. CUT TO: TOONCES focuses intently on the task at hand; he's sure he can manage to drive the human vehicle to his own home— to where he's assured he will find the actual body in which he belongs. Now… let's see, if I can just Wait, I who? ATTICUS CATTICUS, An ancient alien sorcerer must relay a series of important messages. Unfortunately. YO WHAT THE FUCK. None of them seem to be getting through. CUT BACK TO: TOONCEEESSSS. here kitty kitty kitty!! {Enter the Multiverse} I would dedicate, but honestly I've not time to waste And I'm craving wedding cake I hate to destroy you But for now, you know I can't employ you; This implies my eyes are also murder And I'm sure of her departure From another world, Perhaps across the border. Also, quite the dark sorcerer himself LORNE MICHAELS has well hidden himself under the guise of having become one of the most successful television producer of all times— And even in his own very small world, Nobody quite seems to know why. JIMMY FALLON Lorne, I have to tell you something. LORNE MICHAELS This had better be good, Jimmy, I've just made popcorn. [the festival project ™] Don't worry, for now, The risk remains hidden, As sure as an asset is an advantage, I can't have the classes counting Heads of cabbage as accomplishes, The masses are honestly astonished And impossible, but what was wrong with Boredom in the first place? Nonsense More words And still no dollars Hunger strike, And burning harder, California deficit, lack of bread, Heaven sent interventions and scissors, Mistresses, disasters and divorces But who says the whole story has to suffer? You're a surfer under water, Remember that when you finally catch your breath above the surface Can you clear her? He who? Back to work! Or back to the future! My super brain is dead but I think I'm next I think heaven swallows whole the blooded laugher From the constructs I've come from. Remember that. Remember not to fall from too far up, God would give you wings With time to spare Before you ever wondered where Your mark was On the plaza Don't let me up to the very top. I will at the very least Best scenario jump off And rid the world myself, Just for a dozen donuts over Crossing hearts and Hollywood And Griffith park To also soft my foot Upon red carpets. You ever shave your armpits!? …no. Hm. Catholic. Of course. Get in. Destination. —Rotterdam. You idiot. I made it. Whatever, get in the boat. DI NERO Give her your shirt. What. Your shirt. Why my shirt. Just— Fine. Here. [he hands over his shirt— in an instant, the woman becomes an exact REPLICA.] …my shirt. Relax. Nothing's gonna happen to it. Okay? —in fact, you're still wearing it. Alright! She's right, Jimmy, relax. I can't, that's— It's simple. There is nothing simple about this whatsoever. You're right. It's not, so get over it. [The Festival Project ™] BILL MURRAY There's a compartment at the end of the left corridor— Alright. In that hatch, there's a chamber. Okay, what'll I do? You'll open it? How? I'll tell you how, just get there. Suddenly, a barrier falls; it appears as though there are booby traps set here. Uh— that might be a problem. There might be a few of them. What just happened? Booby traps. —ah, I know what you're talking. Those aren't booby traps— they're Bobby Traps. What in the Hell are you talking about? For whatever reason Jimmy Kimmel Is important Now I'm scared of him, I know he knows the devil Come to think of it, Might even be an advocate Have an avocado But don't know the half of it These are, as it stands Comes what may Special circumstances I could circumvent an intervention, Never second chances I've been setting rat traps, Trapeze artists, Bampheramph camp, And also trampolines over the plaza That seems dangerous. Yeah. AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Damn. Know it's plausible, That I also am an alcoholic, Though dysfunctional, Professional, And underrepresented So I stand myself, Let's just say pro-se if you will I could add Prozac to my snacks But I'll be delayed, if you still Don't get my messages I'm sick of having heart attacks; A hard advantage I was looking back on “fully packaged” A six pack of abs And nothing left to eat but cabbage, Haven't had a mouth, But I've been counting on my ass To get me back up north, I'm coming from the South Out West, there's a word for that At best, you're a four and a half My body double stunts and stumbles Struts at nothing Struck before the one, And so between high noon and Somewhere around 30 in I'm never turning 30, 30 Rock is in the wind— So count that up, That's what my income is. That's what they said? “Too late, you've been betrayed” If that's how it is, Then I request “beheaded” You know your mother says That ugly face just becomes permanent If you keep making it, And so I did, The second that it ended I'm Trying so hard Just to be What they want That it hurts Just to stop And relax For a moment INT. THE LAIR. NIGHT What is this? Where am I? You're— Alive. Why? …I changed my mind. You're not ugly You're just not mine I changed my mind I changed my life around. I skip line after line, But the message ain't right, I have time a chance No challenge accepted No exceptions or Expectations Expand this racism vocabulary Set the rat traps back To February Stamp the weather's getting Better with the postage clearing Abstr– My cat is so cute I can't stand him; But he's pretty bad, That my only friend; Animal. I blacklisted deadmau5, And my whole set sucked. Presently, however I'm a peasant Plucking pheasant feathers Guess I– pppftt. Like it never even happened But I'm sure we're all to war, Like a fear I never grasp it, What's l before, uncertain of your l words— My dear, were tattered and the masters heavy handed, Oh, my dear, we're marching on a battered Wit, to all your fan mail I tel you, I was I tortured, Let me show you And also, No one forced my hand at magic, Questioned prestidigitation, Or went back to every second, Land you think you owned as time In fact, my crucial very hard earned gossip column Asks the reader to reform his or her thought Before a judgement can be made How fascinating. The bag says ‘poems' so I wrote one, But I'm sure since my marker's toggled on I'm being stalked, It's like a magnet, Punch the clock And here they pour into the coffin So I won't be pouring coffee for the puffin; Maybe someday I'll look back at this as all I ever wanted, But for now it's just a horror show, Where I belong the murder— Yet a thriller, Best, The audience is captivated, Yes This is evasive, Cause I can't been captured yet By either masses or Mass murderers. At last, a cadence comes clean of its Breaking waves and rhythms, Tides and ties, Becomes another— Then, I'm whisked away Not back to slumber, but of subtle thoughts Of Californian water Lapping up across our surfboards; I often wear them tides, The undertow As pull of greater waves I sit aside as all that passes [The Festival Project ™] When I see Calvin Klein, I think of you; Not what you used to be But turned in to So it's mutual— Pay attention, fool As does moss grow on a rock And this to you— It is unfortunate, my dear You miss with every twist, Adjustment of attention span, The glances I foreshadowed (Here you are, inside your past) It's just affective of the effect, You've been levitating, Yes, I find it devastating Every second kept is just a fortune But you pause before you post— You reap before you even think Of what you sow, You don't belong, Agast, (True) Set the tone, Classless, But I'm Art, you are a Daunting folk song, Mistletoe and marker. CAMERA ASSISTANT Marker. …what is this for again? CAMERA ASSISTANT (Annoyed, mumbling) Shut up. Ten minutes passes and still, I'm awake But the tragedy of the mistake has just set in, I'm sure I've been tortured, I'm paid in mistakes, but I'd rather be shattered with Mortimer's curse. To the tune of Ten by ten by ten I will never be lover, nor friend in the end. {Enter The Multiverse] DRAKE concentrates heavily on a very long , seemingly very angry message— a frowning face plastered as he writes that is so noteworthy, it catches the attention of many a passerby— still this focus unwatered, as he bashes heavily away at the text message with the thumbs of fury for over 30 minutes while sitting at a booth in a well-loved pancake restaurant. As a tall stack of pancakes is served before him, and he, still unbreaking this angry texting streak or eye contact with his phone sits before them, history is made in what internet culture has now deemed as “the most meme worthy face in history” The world wonders what he could possibly be writing— and more importantly—-who he could be texting. Tears come to his eyes but do not fall as he raises his thumb with reserve, to finally press [RETURN.] CUT TO: SUNNI BLU receives a text amidst a wild party. Almost without so much as a reaction, SUNNI BLU pings the message to a projector and cuts off the lights, and music. A VERY LONG, ANGRY TEXT is projected on the wall. I slept from 10-2 There was nothing else to do My name is Devin DeLouise And I am not supposed to know these things Seven are dead and three are left I know what's next I'm also often known as And referred to as coyote ugly; Suffering a tantra wall, Yo, you son of a bitch! You dirty, dirty son of a bitch. I must admit, I had a lot to do with this… I had no part in it! Relax… soon enough, the both of your realize— this is how the unimaginable gets written. [he loads the polished sterling silver pistol and glamours over it] You have our memory. —all memory. And as soon as it ends, before it can begin again. The slate is wiped clean. Good riddance. “A Different Kind of Monologue” Is this what you wanted? Ooh— you should try me! I wish you would try me! Try me! I wish you would. Be calm, Grand Master. This will all be over momentarily. What's going on. Deprivation chamber. Crypt? —Encrypted? A lockup. Ah. Thought so. That ought to show us what he's really made up. We can all hope. [he pounds on the glass, the one way mirror acts as a camera which the maj aresses, rabid and wi the anger of a dangerous animal, both we, n audience, and the small group of men gathered a the other side of the room. This could be the basis of a lot of lawsuits. So now I have your tears and agony A wilted throne and wand Which which would grant a wish of comedy, And therefore ever after, Not pain and guilt, but laughter So heavy is the hat that acts as crown, And so foolish is the King to think ‘imself as not one, Creaks the crow and also of the feathered guilt that follows, I Kept and bashful, wishing not the show as throne but sorrow, Kept to wick and wake and bones to shatter from tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Do you fear us? …do you wish to be feared? What of us? I seek to cause the wish that stands as though you may as granted. So shallow, fair child. And brother and my son also. Gross! Stop. You are weird! Dude, you are fucked. In the withdraw, my shadows and darkness Are there always, never resting Stories and gathered images, Visions of betrayal and archaic wants. In time, I've abandoned them all and betraying that which I've lost, For I know, and not ponder on That I shall never know love, As all standing tal over me Have eyes; And all I want Knows not what hides under my ugly. Alright. I followed your spiral, downward, and down wind and down wood, Into a place where I also aspired to show your mark Upon my rotted corpse or coarse crossifix; Sure worded and down trodden. Now, worse, I'm also sworn To mourn all my own losses, Kind folk. Kind hearted and now my eyes also sudden to wander— And there goes my miles and triumphs And morals and war songs, And sure, swallowed the barrel of a gun But also departed with honor, I tell I. Glimpses of wither and winter and whittling pain, And I slither my back to the center of All I am, in this, and shadows, Fairtails, And grains of rice and sand to twist away Into the rain as I lay dying. What a fortunate! Don't make my mark up and out, few for short times, Aye, conspire to warthog, Remember so force your spirit onto ours, And shake, sandbox! There aiming at you were the snakes of six liars, And the stakes of empires lost and won over, Also one solemn subtle Star of David Worn upon the neck of six monks, Ragtime Six popes, pass I; Six fathers and streaks solemn and Care tan teared salamander, Having weight and wake to cheer For our slaughter. Then, you, Having gained and also lost should reap to sow, What you'd have wanted; Though the tongue so convexed having way to guild your complex, Shaking as I hunger fruit that not but hangs Before l wanted I know, I could knot be consoled I know, I could not be consoled I know I could not be consolidated either Bought, or purchased I know I'm not consoled at all, I know I'm not confirmed at all I know, I know I'm not confronted, nor immortal — but your glorified affliction. Poor infinity. Of poverty, perhaps, but never poor at all. For your were warned of all the doors as opened at your calling. Not to walk though, But to ponder at them, wondering. he's gone Maybe I should go Too Heavy weight hanging on my Shoulders I'm just star struck I don't know You I don't really like saying What I go through Talk an hour, Fake it All day show Monologue Improvisation Now i'm on a roll, But my thoughts got darker I like adderall and a real smooth talker I like a husband-father , Doctor, Actor, Tall and handsome, Doesn't matter I'm alone, so i feel hopeless Aggie's gone, So i might as well go though Oh– She's gone ((I think i'm past my time)) I think i should go to She's gone (so long) Right on, man I might as well go to It's been a long time, Gotta turn my light off, Overtime, That's a long ball game Season's over; On my back in the middle of the ball court She's gone, So i might as well go too. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025 The Festival Project, Inc. ™ All rights reserved. Chroma111. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025. [The Festival Project, Inc. ™] All rights reserved. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY LAW. INFRIGMENT IS PUNSHABLE BY FEDERAL LAW LEGAL NOTICE / ARTIST STATEMENT Project: The Festival Project ™ (Season 12) Genre: Speculative Auto-Ethnography / Social Surrealism Disclaimer: This document is a work of creative non-fiction and political satire. While inspired by the author's lived experiences with systemic oppression, housing displacement, and surveillance, the narrative employs stylized fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, and metaphor to dramatize the psychological impact of these events. The "characters" and "dialogue" herein are artistic devices used to critique historical and modern power structures. This text should be viewed as a performative artistic expression protected under the First Amendment, and not as a literal transcript of clinical psychosis or a formal sworn affidavit. This is a character study of 'Chroma111,' the collective artworks of a musician living in a dystopian surveillance state. The erratic language is a stylistic choice to represent the character's psychological deterioration under systemic oppression. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Genre: "Afro-Surrealism" / "Social Horror" "Psycho-Acoustic Weaponry" or "Havana Syndrome symptoms." The Frame: The protagonist is subjected to "noise harassment"—a tactic dramatized here but rooted in the known reality of tenant displacement and "psychological attrition." The narrative depicts a process of "Soul Murder" ( also known as spiritual warfare) orchestrated by a hostile apparatus. The antagonist is "The Institution," representing deep-state mechanisms that view multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story allegorically dramatizes the invisible mechanisms that enforce racial hierarchy, depicting how broken social systems weaponize psychological practices against the individual. Artist's Note: This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as an artistic testament to the psychological siege endured from to 2023-2025. It is a creative record of survival against a hostile state architecture. The following is a creative non-fiction horror manifesto regarding the psychological assassination of a multicultural American artist. It documents—through the lens of Afro-Surrealism—how modern surveillance technology and sonic harassment are experienced by the targeted individual. As it stands It has become a modern sequel which mirrors the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, set in the present day. "The protagonist is being subjected to 'noise harassment'—a known tactic used by landlords and corrupt entities to displace tenants. The sound is weaponized to induce sleep deprivation and psychological attrition, dismantling of their ego and will to live, orchestrated by a hostile state apparatus. The antagonist in this piece is 'The Institution'—a deep state that views multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story dramatizes over time the invisible mechanisms (the 'Deep State') that enforce racial hierarchy and and psychological genocide, weaponizing broken social systems and unfounded psychological practices as biological weapons. This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as evidence of the psychological siege endured from 2023-2025. It is a transcript of survival against a hostile state architecture. This project spans an unlimited multiprojectoral arc of over two years of chronic violence, reaching into historical and theatrical projections and parallels over the all documented records of human existence through time and space.

Don't you see, sensei I'm just as disappointed in myself And ready to die Just as I relay the message, Spray me with your morbid essence Don't, croak, you fool, You've only a spoon ful of sugar left to go The dose is coming up your throat, — you didn't know to throw up Grab the rope and go up Before gravity has crushed your —thought: Stupid boy, you don't want to die— Nor to do, but oh, do we have it coming Silly mortal, overlords and governed, Short of morals, steady coming at your doorstep So goes our concert! And so goes our concept for divorce, And sure of course, Your four corse meal, and/or dessert This is just devastating, genetics made me The sort at sorting words, but surfing, Sure. Ever temporarily the cadence changes, Still they say “you've been betrayed” But never had a friend I made made As good as death and God have been to me For everything you're meant to be, Plus everything you're meant to me, I go, unwanted, troubled and disgusted at my own immortal outcome. Sure. My back hurts and I'm wounded, Heartbroke, Thrust in every cardinal direction Also, honored at the mark of magic wand Upon her shoulder; And so, Just as soon as the sun and moon, Does the fire escape set a perfect path For outward destruction of the bricks and mortar Or your alter (This we talk about, to some effect Is your repression and affective form of supernatural perfection) But forget the makeup; I can make you up to be a star And not of wars and other worlds, But those that come before us, Carson, and the others Paar before that. But, I think not dear sir How wrong you are, A wretched bird, Set not to fly, but O father Wit and relay messages, The passage said, and set to clocks, The past was won and so the future altered, But dear feathered father, Mortal you are not But just another triumph Of my god; And set the mirror to the magnets Camera, lights and action, Magic— All the signs of the dawn, and the mad don Red Dawn came upon us, called the Red Man Tom, from other, over, under Still was my mistake to mumble such Or put upon the tongue As such assumption Still— wonder? Bird, shut up; Love I dusk And lust I soak In all the frittered dust and feathers, Colors, coming up as mister Chuck and wood, and wait and ponder Slithered this to wonder, not a rock, But potted fern, Asunder Thunderstorm And wicked rain And fair the back A tide had come And sitting there upon the shore, Was us, and 12 apostles She's a Brick— Seemingly out of nowhere, A RED BRICK HOUSE falls very perfectly from the SKY and into OZ. oh good, my house is here. House. [the festival project ™] But I don't want to make house! Then play it! I don't want to play house it is BORING. You play it— they want it. But I don't want it. Then forget it! What! Listen kid, a job's a job! {Enter The Multiverse} Wrong, this is wrong— everything is wrong. What's wrong, Rob? I'll be back. ROB LOWE has just played TRUTH OR DARE L E G E N D S if I could get inside your head For just a second Bread and butter Heaven, hell, And other places I have wandered But oh, wonder This is never what I wanted, Was it? No sir. Sure, I set you off, No sooner had you got a gun and shot me. Handsome fucker. I'll bet. Wrong act. Wrong award show. Wrong hat and a baseball bat, Peanut butter and a nice cold cheesecake, Don't forget to order cheesesteak For your cat. A carnivore at odds with the other worlds, And also fused to us; This drifting back and forth Between the Rock And Hollywood Has got to stop. ((The world is toxic.)) the legend of… L. JONES It's you! BLŪ AH, crap. L. JONES Listen, I got something for you. BLŪ Where did your bird go? L.JONES What bird? CUT TO: Now open that. No wait! It's a trap! THE VAULT inside THE CRYPT at 30 ROCK has been opened. I keep looking down at my phone As if I'm expecting a phone call Or incoming message from God But the worlds to a song Are all jumbled up in my Concious I don't want to talk about it I feel Nauseous Everyone is being obnoxious Even my own blood I don't want to function I just want some French toast crunch For lunch Nostalgia I got a whole inch taller on the peloton Holla Now I got a body, Broader, So close to Broadway But I never go there That's a tall order Of “gotta have money” I mean live theatre It's fine I'll eat here And repeat these things till they just rhyme Line them all up like a context, Story Someday I'm gonna cut my own check Watch me lol none of this rhymes without a hard Brooklyn accent ; Guess you can't hack it! Send you ass packin! I said “That's whack son!” Then I went back blonde Now they want Backend, Contract, Off the top, Royalties Residuals I'm an individual with insidious syntax And yet I'm ridiculed Truly I'm a tit-for-tat Or particle of all you are Circular centrifuge, I trickle down your tentacles (Eugh) Choke the chicken just to give the cat a chicken bowl, Chick fil et and pret a tair just to get a ritual Espresso and a quick snack So I can get my dick wrapped In chocolate and licorice because the shit is edible Damn that I guess they set a damn trap By putting out the welcome mat, Then strapping Like a mothafuckin' straight jacket Matter fact, I look a nap in it, Then magic tricked the slip effective Compliments of Michael Jackson Or was it tech nine? Maybe I should get my Mind right I lost it once I guess I've better find it If I am, in fact, A diamond in the rough It's probably blooded it up enough That you should dig it up and shine it; Better yet, Somebody outta pick it up And sign it, Cause I write enough To put a vision To a blind man It's Fran Fine, man I'm behind, man The shadowgov had put me on a diet My bad I noticed that they tried to shut me up But couldn't stop the words or other stuff That just keeps coming out of my head I put coconuts as butter onto my bread And thinking thoughts of Carl cox As I drift off in my bed, I said, “It shouldn't be a problem, officer” As I reached for the gun And he aimed it at my death. That's an impossible apocalyptic suicide— Did you invite the devil in? I said “Nah, but that guy did.” The problem is, I pointed over yonder to a ghost Who also knows that I'm a well respected psychic; Nevermind a sidekick, side bitch in a sidecar, Psych ward, Sike! We spike war on your kind! So far, If I make history tonight, The other side decides their psalm is just as likely The third reike. Okay, strike one: I'm gonna turn your lights off. Strike two : you do and say what I do: Strike three: we're gonna make you suicidal I specialize in denying rights for high profits But big brother, or boss— What if my glove fits? The instance it does, We lock you up with no service, Your world becomes dark And your words become worthless Oh shit. This is not a good rap song. Like, at all. I must say, I do agree, You lose your trust, but silently Denied is all your trouble, Till it just begins to bubble up Until the cookie crumbles— See that feeling in your stomach? This is bigger than the money, girl — They want your soul, and then the world! I told you never call him. I didn't! Then explain this: [Skrillex] *sharp inward sigh* CUT IMMIDIATLEH TO STAN You know what! That's it! I don't care how handsome or rich and famous he is! This has to stop! KYLE Hey, wait just a minute— STAN SHUT UP KYLE. KYLE You shut up! STAN You're starting to sound just like him! KYLE Take that back! STAN I won't take it back! You all might have forgotten who you are, but I haven't!after of fact, I bet to Cartman, you're still that stupid little Jew kid! KYLE That's IT. KYLE takes out his phone. what are you doing? …I'm tweeting about this. I thought it was X now… It is, but you can't ‘x' anything, it's still calledl tweeting. I guess youre right. —and I'm tagging Cartman ! STAN Are you serious? Oh shit, this is social suicide. …did I ever explain this storyline? …I don't know, did i? I'd gotten so focused on this impending doom looming over me with this whole lawsuit that I'd forgotten entire worlds and whole documents. Even more terrifying, was the sudden quiet and the onset guilt that came over me for getting distracted. But I couldn't remove myself from it entirely—- it seemed to have ruined everything. It wasn't just motorcycle noises, it was like a nervousness and angst twisting in my stomach for months and months, until finally, as the court dates started approaching, it was peaceful, or rather, normal, all of a sudden. It couldn't be peaceful because now that the extreme noise was gone, I knew it had been planted all long— but what was the purpose? I'd lost two years not knowing, and though there were albums, they were never what I wanted. Now I was sorting through the documents of the show like it was the rubble of a decimated building— completely demolished, and I hadn't the slightest clue the contexts or the storylines anymore. It was pain and suffering, but not in the legal context. It was a creative disaster— I hadn't any idea in the slightest where I'd left my audience before I was forced to abandon them. But I was forced to choose, at times, between soap and toilet paper, or eventually, food, and water— or a phone. Eventually, this too became a pattern of the impossible— trying my hardest to do what I thought had been my purpose, but for far, being so endlessly sabotaged, even ridiculed and humiliated, and still, I couldn't understand why. I was tired— and somehow, even though I'd wanted to be left alone, I was the target. Worse was that I assumed it to be bigger than I thought and completely out of control— I thought immediately back to how my best friend from middle school had been attacked, and how she was made to think that it was me…to the point that she'd become obsessive about it to call my mom over it. And as far as the court was concerned, to the wrong ears or wrong eyes, anything I'd published in the festival project could look troublesome, like the ramblings of a mad mad, or schizo, or uncontrolled obsessive thoughts— because the biggest secrets of all, the things that tied together these fictional worlds and plots, were my own real life experience. The inability in a court of law to detail the podcast, which had started as meltdown some would call grandiose over an almost long forgotten rockstar and a porn model — and the entries into the festival project that followed, which included high concepts, off-kilter comedy, politics, and even fringed on social justice. Nothing I ever would have wanted and especially over money, but the lawsuit wasn't about money at all. In fact, at any moment I would have chosen to die and have it all stop if it weren't for my very young son being left alone. Though recently the dread had overcome with a sense of unbearable loss and agony, encrypted with suicidal thoughts and wants, reeling for human touch, the overbearing factor seemed to be that if I killed myself, I was giving someone what they wanted. I was really much too tired to go on, but leaving behind the world in entirety, in my very own way of beliefs wasn't just “shitutting it off”, it was starting it over. Understandably and undeniably immortal in its nature, the instances of God I had left spoke with a reminiscence of being born again, and having to remember which is it I'd wanted to start off. It was an unachievable overload of chaos and disruption, a level of corruption that spoke to something so dark and sinister it seemed biblical — then, again, I tried to wrap my mind around a way to rebuild a positive world from hope and thought, or manifest reality, but this is the very experience I'd felt was intended all along. The motorcycles weren't merely meant to destroy my career, or my will power, or force— they were, but also they were made to play upon my most valuable asset, the power of thought, to make it impossible to become something other than what was wanted; to use my own mind against itself and destroy my way of thought by using vibrations that could not be shut out, or stopped— they followed me to the sound collective, to Shakespeare in the park, the bank, the doctors office— it was as if they knew and understood my very thoughts, my process. It was of nothing at all to corrupt every single body and brain who would surround me or come close— by using the power that seemed supernatural enough, but indeed were powered by money, and technology. Perhaps, in this essence, I thought, was the purest display of defective intention itself; the mere thought that this indeed was rather Good Vs. Evil or God and The Devil would easily be written off as a diseased way of thought. The social world and constructs had been built around being open minded to a system of psychology that was intrinsically rather corrupt. I knew this could only be fought with what I knew, and what I could draw from as logic. I didn't want to go to court because I knew the people I would be fighting were liars, and well trained psychological masters of manipulation, well hidden terrorists dressed as public servants and systematic corrupters all for simple profit margins, to whom I was not so much a person or a mother, or a daughter, but a number. Because I was poor, and had once or four times chosen to love the wrong person in an unorthodox and uncontrollable form of torture, dismissing each and every social construct or physiology that was by the book, by embracing that there was a reason for change I quickly became quite the antagonist of sorts and hopefully not some sort of martyr —for the kind of people that had money and property, and perhaps even socially constructed circles to camoflage their own self doubt and hatred, but absolutely also had no morals. –Death of a Superstar DJ If I lose my mind At least I know I'm right on time This time— I meant that, I had it bad this time MCBADBAT I had it bad this time, And the last. Perchance for you, Hour or folded, Hair my weight And glassed upon thy, This upon now, Feathered waking, And there barely weathered Shaking. Dear, dear, Tis is fair truth, To fare that I have gasp And fated at thy doorstep; And yet, care to force, Her breaking waves and saving tinder, Fit there slithered in as yet astonished, Then another; And I hated. So, then, slower now. All there, gathered none. And show to show thy force What then became and withered after, None to bark or beg But birds and feathered creatures, pander The tides did Quake, And the heart did grow ten fold and steady saying None upon us but one left to shiver in the depths That yet remain as undiscovered For now never there was another world, Undone, And also another becomes, My death— And therefore all the worlds I kept, To travel on and travel As becomes one, does another onward As the first is glass to dust, And last is born there. So, Then, I, Crept, In my dress, Kept for clothes that church did water I, met, My mark and there the doors of shadows open Wilted and wake? Hear you; A star was born In other cosmos tied with our own nurture So, Kept, The weight of clasp and bone That holds the crept and precious alter Goddamn cat! Where are you. AAtticus Caaticus Oop. Gotta go. Toonces! Tooooonces! Where are you? Omg remember that one where that couple has a magic toddler and they just let him like,float away. Yeah, barely. Yeah. So I do. CUT TO: TOONCES focuses intently on the task at hand; he's sure he can manage to drive the human vehicle to his own home— to where he's assured he will find the actual body in which he belongs. Now… let's see, if I can just Wait, I who? ATTICUS CATTICUS, An ancient alien sorcerer must relay a series of important messages. Unfortunately. YO WHAT THE FUCK. None of them seem to be getting through. CUT BACK TO: TOONCEEESSSS. here kitty kitty kitty!! {Enter the Multiverse} I would dedicate, but honestly I've not time to waste And I'm craving wedding cake I hate to destroy you But for now, you know I can't employ you; This implies my eyes are also murder And I'm sure of her departure From another world, Perhaps across the border. Also, quite the dark sorcerer himself LORNE MICHAELS has well hidden himself under the guise of having become one of the most successful television producer of all times— And even in his own very small world, Nobody quite seems to know why. JIMMY FALLON Lorne, I have to tell you something. LORNE MICHAELS This had better be good, Jimmy, I've just made popcorn. [the festival project ™] Don't worry, for now, The risk remains hidden, As sure as an asset is an advantage, I can't have the classes counting Heads of cabbage as accomplishes, The masses are honestly astonished And impossible, but what was wrong with Boredom in the first place? Nonsense More words And still no dollars Hunger strike, And burning harder, California deficit, lack of bread, Heaven sent interventions and scissors, Mistresses, disasters and divorces But who says the whole story has to suffer? You're a surfer under water, Remember that when you finally catch your breath above the surface Can you clear her? He who? Back to work! Or back to the future! My super brain is dead but I think I'm next I think heaven swallows whole the blooded laugher From the constructs I've come from. Remember that. Remember not to fall from too far up, God would give you wings With time to spare Before you ever wondered where Your mark was On the plaza Don't let me up to the very top. I will at the very least Best scenario jump off And rid the world myself, Just for a dozen donuts over Crossing hearts and Hollywood And Griffith park To also soft my foot Upon red carpets. You ever shave your armpits!? …no. Hm. Catholic. Of course. Get in. Destination. —Rotterdam. You idiot. I made it. Whatever, get in the boat. DI NERO Give her your shirt. What. Your shirt. Why my shirt. Just— Fine. Here. [he hands over his shirt— in an instant, the woman becomes an exact REPLICA.] …my shirt. Relax. Nothing's gonna happen to it. Okay? —in fact, you're still wearing it. Alright! She's right, Jimmy, relax. I can't, that's— It's simple. There is nothing simple about this whatsoever. You're right. It's not, so get over it. [The Festival Project ™] BILL MURRAY There's a compartment at the end of the left corridor— Alright. In that hatch, there's a chamber. Okay, what'll I do? You'll open it? How? I'll tell you how, just get there. Suddenly, a barrier falls; it appears as though there are booby traps set here. Uh— that might be a problem. There might be a few of them. What just happened? Booby traps. —ah, I know what you're talking. Those aren't booby traps— they're Bobby Traps. What in the Hell are you talking about? For whatever reason Jimmy Kimmel Is important Now I'm scared of him, I know he knows the devil Come to think of it, Might even be an advocate Have an avocado But don't know the half of it These are, as it stands Comes what may Special circumstances I could circumvent an intervention, Never second chances I've been setting rat traps, Trapeze artists, Bampheramph camp, And also trampolines over the plaza That seems dangerous. Yeah. AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Damn. Know it's plausible, That I also am an alcoholic, Though dysfunctional, Professional, And underrepresented So I stand myself, Let's just say pro-se if you will I could add Prozac to my snacks But I'll be delayed, if you still Don't get my messages I'm sick of having heart attacks; A hard advantage I was looking back on “fully packaged” A six pack of abs And nothing left to eat but cabbage, Haven't had a mouth, But I've been counting on my ass To get me back up north, I'm coming from the South Out West, there's a word for that At best, you're a four and a half My body double stunts and stumbles Struts at nothing Struck before the one, And so between high noon and Somewhere around 30 in I'm never turning 30, 30 Rock is in the wind— So count that up, That's what my income is. That's what they said? “Too late, you've been betrayed” If that's how it is, Then I request “beheaded” You know your mother says That ugly face just becomes permanent If you keep making it, And so I did, The second that it ended I'm Trying so hard Just to be What they want That it hurts Just to stop And relax For a moment INT. THE LAIR. NIGHT What is this? Where am I? You're— Alive. Why? …I changed my mind. You're not ugly You're just not mine I changed my mind I changed my life around. I skip line after line, But the message ain't right, I have time a chance No challenge accepted No exceptions or Expectations Expand this racism vocabulary Set the rat traps back To February Stamp the weather's getting Better with the postage clearing Abstr– My cat is so cute I can't stand him; But he's pretty bad, That my only friend; Animal. I blacklisted deadmau5, And my whole set sucked. Presently, however I'm a peasant Plucking pheasant feathers Guess I– pppftt. Like it never even happened But I'm sure we're all to war, Like a fear I never grasp it, What's l before, uncertain of your l words— My dear, were tattered and the masters heavy handed, Oh, my dear, we're marching on a battered Wit, to all your fan mail I tel you, I was I tortured, Let me show you And also, No one forced my hand at magic, Questioned prestidigitation, Or went back to every second, Land you think you owned as time In fact, my crucial very hard earned gossip column Asks the reader to reform his or her thought Before a judgement can be made How fascinating. The bag says ‘poems' so I wrote one, But I'm sure since my marker's toggled on I'm being stalked, It's like a magnet, Punch the clock And here they pour into the coffin So I won't be pouring coffee for the puffin; Maybe someday I'll look back at this as all I ever wanted, But for now it's just a horror show, Where I belong the murder— Yet a thriller, Best, The audience is captivated, Yes This is evasive, Cause I can't been captured yet By either masses or Mass murderers. At last, a cadence comes clean of its Breaking waves and rhythms, Tides and ties, Becomes another— Then, I'm whisked away Not back to slumber, but of subtle thoughts Of Californian water Lapping up across our surfboards; I often wear them tides, The undertow As pull of greater waves I sit aside as all that passes [The Festival Project ™] When I see Calvin Klein, I think of you; Not what you used to be But turned in to So it's mutual— Pay attention, fool As does moss grow on a rock And this to you— It is unfortunate, my dear You miss with every twist, Adjustment of attention span, The glances I foreshadowed (Here you are, inside your past) It's just affective of the effect, You've been levitating, Yes, I find it devastating Every second kept is just a fortune But you pause before you post— You reap before you even think Of what you sow, You don't belong, Agast, (True) Set the tone, Classless, But I'm Art, you are a Daunting folk song, Mistletoe and marker. CAMERA ASSISTANT Marker. …what is this for again? CAMERA ASSISTANT (Annoyed, mumbling) Shut up. Ten minutes passes and still, I'm awake But the tragedy of the mistake has just set in, I'm sure I've been tortured, I'm paid in mistakes, but I'd rather be shattered with Mortimer's curse. To the tune of Ten by ten by ten I will never be lover, nor friend in the end. {Enter The Multiverse] DRAKE concentrates heavily on a very long , seemingly very angry message— a frowning face plastered as he writes that is so noteworthy, it catches the attention of many a passerby— still this focus unwatered, as he bashes heavily away at the text message with the thumbs of fury for over 30 minutes while sitting at a booth in a well-loved pancake restaurant. As a tall stack of pancakes is served before him, and he, still unbreaking this angry texting streak or eye contact with his phone sits before them, history is made in what internet culture has now deemed as “the most meme worthy face in history” The world wonders what he could possibly be writing— and more importantly—-who he could be texting. Tears come to his eyes but do not fall as he raises his thumb with reserve, to finally press [RETURN.] CUT TO: SUNNI BLU receives a text amidst a wild party. Almost without so much as a reaction, SUNNI BLU pings the message to a projector and cuts off the lights, and music. A VERY LONG, ANGRY TEXT is projected on the wall. I slept from 10-2 There was nothing else to do My name is Devin DeLouise And I am not supposed to know these things Seven are dead and three are left I know what's next I'm also often known as And referred to as coyote ugly; Suffering a tantra wall, Yo, you son of a bitch! You dirty, dirty son of a bitch. I must admit, I had a lot to do with this… I had no part in it! Relax… soon enough, the both of your realize— this is how the unimaginable gets written. [he loads the polished sterling silver pistol and glamours over it] You have our memory. —all memory. And as soon as it ends, before it can begin again. The slate is wiped clean. Good riddance. “A Different Kind of Monologue” Is this what you wanted? Ooh— you should try me! I wish you would try me! Try me! I wish you would. Be calm, Grand Master. This will all be over momentarily. What's going on. Deprivation chamber. Crypt? —Encrypted? A lockup. Ah. Thought so. That ought to show us what he's really made up. We can all hope. [he pounds on the glass, the one way mirror acts as a camera which the maj aresses, rabid and wi the anger of a dangerous animal, both we, n audience, and the small group of men gathered a the other side of the room. This could be the basis of a lot of lawsuits. So now I have your tears and agony A wilted throne and wand Which which would grant a wish of comedy, And therefore ever after, Not pain and guilt, but laughter So heavy is the hat that acts as crown, And so foolish is the King to think ‘imself as not one, Creaks the crow and also of the feathered guilt that follows, I Kept and bashful, wishing not the show as throne but sorrow, Kept to wick and wake and bones to shatter from tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Do you fear us? …do you wish to be feared? What of us? I seek to cause the wish that stands as though you may as granted. So shallow, fair child. And brother and my son also. Gross! Stop. You are weird! Dude, you are fucked. In the withdraw, my shadows and darkness Are there always, never resting Stories and gathered images, Visions of betrayal and archaic wants. In time, I've abandoned them all and betraying that which I've lost, For I know, and not ponder on That I shall never know love, As all standing tal over me Have eyes; And all I want Knows not what hides under my ugly. Alright. I followed your spiral, downward, and down wind and down wood, Into a place where I also aspired to show your mark Upon my rotted corpse or coarse crossifix; Sure worded and down trodden. Now, worse, I'm also sworn To mourn all my own losses, Kind folk. Kind hearted and now my eyes also sudden to wander— And there goes my miles and triumphs And morals and war songs, And sure, swallowed the barrel of a gun But also departed with honor, I tell I. Glimpses of wither and winter and whittling pain, And I slither my back to the center of All I am, in this, and shadows, Fairtails, And grains of rice and sand to twist away Into the rain as I lay dying. What a fortunate! Don't make my mark up and out, few for short times, Aye, conspire to warthog, Remember so force your spirit onto ours, And shake, sandbox! There aiming at you were the snakes of six liars, And the stakes of empires lost and won over, Also one solemn subtle Star of David Worn upon the neck of six monks, Ragtime Six popes, pass I; Six fathers and streaks solemn and Care tan teared salamander, Having weight and wake to cheer For our slaughter. Then, you, Having gained and also lost should reap to sow, What you'd have wanted; Though the tongue so convexed having way to guild your complex, Shaking as I hunger fruit that not but hangs Before l wanted I know, I could knot be consoled I know, I could not be consoled I know I could not be consolidated either Bought, or purchased I know I'm not consoled at all, I know I'm not confirmed at all I know, I know I'm not confronted, nor immortal — but your glorified affliction. Poor infinity. Of poverty, perhaps, but never poor at all. For your were warned of all the doors as opened at your calling. Not to walk though, But to ponder at them, wondering. he's gone Maybe I should go Too Heavy weight hanging on my Shoulders I'm just star struck I don't know You I don't really like saying What I go through Talk an hour, Fake it All day show Monologue Improvisation Now i'm on a roll, But my thoughts got darker I like adderall and a real smooth talker I like a husband-father , Doctor, Actor, Tall and handsome, Doesn't matter I'm alone, so i feel hopeless Aggie's gone, So i might as well go though Oh– She's gone ((I think i'm past my time)) I think i should go to She's gone (so long) Right on, man I might as well go to It's been a long time, Gotta turn my light off, Overtime, That's a long ball game Season's over; On my back in the middle of the ball court She's gone, So i might as well go too. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025 The Festival Project, Inc. ™ All rights reserved. Chroma111. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025. [The Festival Project, Inc. ™] All rights reserved. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY LAW. INFRIGMENT IS PUNSHABLE BY FEDERAL LAW LEGAL NOTICE / ARTIST STATEMENT Project: The Festival Project ™ (Season 12) Genre: Speculative Auto-Ethnography / Social Surrealism Disclaimer: This document is a work of creative non-fiction and political satire. While inspired by the author's lived experiences with systemic oppression, housing displacement, and surveillance, the narrative employs stylized fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, and metaphor to dramatize the psychological impact of these events. The "characters" and "dialogue" herein are artistic devices used to critique historical and modern power structures. This text should be viewed as a performative artistic expression protected under the First Amendment, and not as a literal transcript of clinical psychosis or a formal sworn affidavit. This is a character study of 'Chroma111,' the collective artworks of a musician living in a dystopian surveillance state. The erratic language is a stylistic choice to represent the character's psychological deterioration under systemic oppression. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Genre: "Afro-Surrealism" / "Social Horror" "Psycho-Acoustic Weaponry" or "Havana Syndrome symptoms." The Frame: The protagonist is subjected to "noise harassment"—a tactic dramatized here but rooted in the known reality of tenant displacement and "psychological attrition." The narrative depicts a process of "Soul Murder" ( also known as spiritual warfare) orchestrated by a hostile apparatus. The antagonist is "The Institution," representing deep-state mechanisms that view multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story allegorically dramatizes the invisible mechanisms that enforce racial hierarchy, depicting how broken social systems weaponize psychological practices against the individual. Artist's Note: This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as an artistic testament to the psychological siege endured from to 2023-2025. It is a creative record of survival against a hostile state architecture. The following is a creative non-fiction horror manifesto regarding the psychological assassination of a multicultural American artist. It documents—through the lens of Afro-Surrealism—how modern surveillance technology and sonic harassment are experienced by the targeted individual. As it stands It has become a modern sequel which mirrors the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, set in the present day. "The protagonist is being subjected to 'noise harassment'—a known tactic used by landlords and corrupt entities to displace tenants. The sound is weaponized to induce sleep deprivation and psychological attrition, dismantling of their ego and will to live, orchestrated by a hostile state apparatus. The antagonist in this piece is 'The Institution'—a deep state that views multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story dramatizes over time the invisible mechanisms (the 'Deep State') that enforce racial hierarchy and and psychological genocide, weaponizing broken social systems and unfounded psychological practices as biological weapons. This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as evidence of the psychological siege endured from 2023-2025. It is a transcript of survival against a hostile state architecture. This project spans an unlimited multiprojectoral arc of over two years of chronic violence, reaching into historical and theatrical projections and parallels over the all documented records of human existence through time and space.

Don't you see, sensei I'm just as disappointed in myself And ready to die Just as I relay the message, Spray me with your morbid essence Don't, croak, you fool, You've only a spoon ful of sugar left to go The dose is coming up your throat, — you didn't know to throw up Grab the rope and go up Before gravity has crushed your —thought: Stupid boy, you don't want to die— Nor to do, but oh, do we have it coming Silly mortal, overlords and governed, Short of morals, steady coming at your doorstep So goes our concert! And so goes our concept for divorce, And sure of course, Your four corse meal, and/or dessert This is just devastating, genetics made me The sort at sorting words, but surfing, Sure. Ever temporarily the cadence changes, Still they say “you've been betrayed” But never had a friend I made made As good as death and God have been to me For everything you're meant to be, Plus everything you're meant to me, I go, unwanted, troubled and disgusted at my own immortal outcome. Sure. My back hurts and I'm wounded, Heartbroke, Thrust in every cardinal direction Also, honored at the mark of magic wand Upon her shoulder; And so, Just as soon as the sun and moon, Does the fire escape set a perfect path For outward destruction of the bricks and mortar Or your alter (This we talk about, to some effect Is your repression and affective form of supernatural perfection) But forget the makeup; I can make you up to be a star And not of wars and other worlds, But those that come before us, Carson, and the others Paar before that. But, I think not dear sir How wrong you are, A wretched bird, Set not to fly, but O father Wit and relay messages, The passage said, and set to clocks, The past was won and so the future altered, But dear feathered father, Mortal you are not But just another triumph Of my god; And set the mirror to the magnets Camera, lights and action, Magic— All the signs of the dawn, and the mad don Red Dawn came upon us, called the Red Man Tom, from other, over, under Still was my mistake to mumble such Or put upon the tongue As such assumption Still— wonder? Bird, shut up; Love I dusk And lust I soak In all the frittered dust and feathers, Colors, coming up as mister Chuck and wood, and wait and ponder Slithered this to wonder, not a rock, But potted fern, Asunder Thunderstorm And wicked rain And fair the back A tide had come And sitting there upon the shore, Was us, and 12 apostles She's a Brick— Seemingly out of nowhere, A RED BRICK HOUSE falls very perfectly from the SKY and into OZ. oh good, my house is here. House. [the festival project ™] But I don't want to make house! Then play it! I don't want to play house it is BORING. You play it— they want it. But I don't want it. Then forget it! What! Listen kid, a job's a job! {Enter The Multiverse} Wrong, this is wrong— everything is wrong. What's wrong, Rob? I'll be back. ROB LOWE has just played TRUTH OR DARE L E G E N D S if I could get inside your head For just a second Bread and butter Heaven, hell, And other places I have wandered But oh, wonder This is never what I wanted, Was it? No sir. Sure, I set you off, No sooner had you got a gun and shot me. Handsome fucker. I'll bet. Wrong act. Wrong award show. Wrong hat and a baseball bat, Peanut butter and a nice cold cheesecake, Don't forget to order cheesesteak For your cat. A carnivore at odds with the other worlds, And also fused to us; This drifting back and forth Between the Rock And Hollywood Has got to stop. ((The world is toxic.)) the legend of… L. JONES It's you! BLŪ AH, crap. L. JONES Listen, I got something for you. BLŪ Where did your bird go? L.JONES What bird? CUT TO: Now open that. No wait! It's a trap! THE VAULT inside THE CRYPT at 30 ROCK has been opened. I keep looking down at my phone As if I'm expecting a phone call Or incoming message from God But the worlds to a song Are all jumbled up in my Concious I don't want to talk about it I feel Nauseous Everyone is being obnoxious Even my own blood I don't want to function I just want some French toast crunch For lunch Nostalgia I got a whole inch taller on the peloton Holla Now I got a body, Broader, So close to Broadway But I never go there That's a tall order Of “gotta have money” I mean live theatre It's fine I'll eat here And repeat these things till they just rhyme Line them all up like a context, Story Someday I'm gonna cut my own check Watch me lol none of this rhymes without a hard Brooklyn accent ; Guess you can't hack it! Send you ass packin! I said “That's whack son!” Then I went back blonde Now they want Backend, Contract, Off the top, Royalties Residuals I'm an individual with insidious syntax And yet I'm ridiculed Truly I'm a tit-for-tat Or particle of all you are Circular centrifuge, I trickle down your tentacles (Eugh) Choke the chicken just to give the cat a chicken bowl, Chick fil et and pret a tair just to get a ritual Espresso and a quick snack So I can get my dick wrapped In chocolate and licorice because the shit is edible Damn that I guess they set a damn trap By putting out the welcome mat, Then strapping Like a mothafuckin' straight jacket Matter fact, I look a nap in it, Then magic tricked the slip effective Compliments of Michael Jackson Or was it tech nine? Maybe I should get my Mind right I lost it once I guess I've better find it If I am, in fact, A diamond in the rough It's probably blooded it up enough That you should dig it up and shine it; Better yet, Somebody outta pick it up And sign it, Cause I write enough To put a vision To a blind man It's Fran Fine, man I'm behind, man The shadowgov had put me on a diet My bad I noticed that they tried to shut me up But couldn't stop the words or other stuff That just keeps coming out of my head I put coconuts as butter onto my bread And thinking thoughts of Carl cox As I drift off in my bed, I said, “It shouldn't be a problem, officer” As I reached for the gun And he aimed it at my death. That's an impossible apocalyptic suicide— Did you invite the devil in? I said “Nah, but that guy did.” The problem is, I pointed over yonder to a ghost Who also knows that I'm a well respected psychic; Nevermind a sidekick, side bitch in a sidecar, Psych ward, Sike! We spike war on your kind! So far, If I make history tonight, The other side decides their psalm is just as likely The third reike. Okay, strike one: I'm gonna turn your lights off. Strike two : you do and say what I do: Strike three: we're gonna make you suicidal I specialize in denying rights for high profits But big brother, or boss— What if my glove fits? The instance it does, We lock you up with no service, Your world becomes dark And your words become worthless Oh shit. This is not a good rap song. Like, at all. I must say, I do agree, You lose your trust, but silently Denied is all your trouble, Till it just begins to bubble up Until the cookie crumbles— See that feeling in your stomach? This is bigger than the money, girl — They want your soul, and then the world! I told you never call him. I didn't! Then explain this: [Skrillex] *sharp inward sigh* CUT IMMIDIATLEH TO STAN You know what! That's it! I don't care how handsome or rich and famous he is! This has to stop! KYLE Hey, wait just a minute— STAN SHUT UP KYLE. KYLE You shut up! STAN You're starting to sound just like him! KYLE Take that back! STAN I won't take it back! You all might have forgotten who you are, but I haven't!after of fact, I bet to Cartman, you're still that stupid little Jew kid! KYLE That's IT. KYLE takes out his phone. what are you doing? …I'm tweeting about this. I thought it was X now… It is, but you can't ‘x' anything, it's still calledl tweeting. I guess youre right. —and I'm tagging Cartman ! STAN Are you serious? Oh shit, this is social suicide. …did I ever explain this storyline? …I don't know, did i? I'd gotten so focused on this impending doom looming over me with this whole lawsuit that I'd forgotten entire worlds and whole documents. Even more terrifying, was the sudden quiet and the onset guilt that came over me for getting distracted. But I couldn't remove myself from it entirely—- it seemed to have ruined everything. It wasn't just motorcycle noises, it was like a nervousness and angst twisting in my stomach for months and months, until finally, as the court dates started approaching, it was peaceful, or rather, normal, all of a sudden. It couldn't be peaceful because now that the extreme noise was gone, I knew it had been planted all long— but what was the purpose? I'd lost two years not knowing, and though there were albums, they were never what I wanted. Now I was sorting through the documents of the show like it was the rubble of a decimated building— completely demolished, and I hadn't the slightest clue the contexts or the storylines anymore. It was pain and suffering, but not in the legal context. It was a creative disaster— I hadn't any idea in the slightest where I'd left my audience before I was forced to abandon them. But I was forced to choose, at times, between soap and toilet paper, or eventually, food, and water— or a phone. Eventually, this too became a pattern of the impossible— trying my hardest to do what I thought had been my purpose, but for far, being so endlessly sabotaged, even ridiculed and humiliated, and still, I couldn't understand why. I was tired— and somehow, even though I'd wanted to be left alone, I was the target. Worse was that I assumed it to be bigger than I thought and completely out of control— I thought immediately back to how my best friend from middle school had been attacked, and how she was made to think that it was me…to the point that she'd become obsessive about it to call my mom over it. And as far as the court was concerned, to the wrong ears or wrong eyes, anything I'd published in the festival project could look troublesome, like the ramblings of a mad mad, or schizo, or uncontrolled obsessive thoughts— because the biggest secrets of all, the things that tied together these fictional worlds and plots, were my own real life experience. The inability in a court of law to detail the podcast, which had started as meltdown some would call grandiose over an almost long forgotten rockstar and a porn model — and the entries into the festival project that followed, which included high concepts, off-kilter comedy, politics, and even fringed on social justice. Nothing I ever would have wanted and especially over money, but the lawsuit wasn't about money at all. In fact, at any moment I would have chosen to die and have it all stop if it weren't for my very young son being left alone. Though recently the dread had overcome with a sense of unbearable loss and agony, encrypted with suicidal thoughts and wants, reeling for human touch, the overbearing factor seemed to be that if I killed myself, I was giving someone what they wanted. I was really much too tired to go on, but leaving behind the world in entirety, in my very own way of beliefs wasn't just “shitutting it off”, it was starting it over. Understandably and undeniably immortal in its nature, the instances of God I had left spoke with a reminiscence of being born again, and having to remember which is it I'd wanted to start off. It was an unachievable overload of chaos and disruption, a level of corruption that spoke to something so dark and sinister it seemed biblical — then, again, I tried to wrap my mind around a way to rebuild a positive world from hope and thought, or manifest reality, but this is the very experience I'd felt was intended all along. The motorcycles weren't merely meant to destroy my career, or my will power, or force— they were, but also they were made to play upon my most valuable asset, the power of thought, to make it impossible to become something other than what was wanted; to use my own mind against itself and destroy my way of thought by using vibrations that could not be shut out, or stopped— they followed me to the sound collective, to Shakespeare in the park, the bank, the doctors office— it was as if they knew and understood my very thoughts, my process. It was of nothing at all to corrupt every single body and brain who would surround me or come close— by using the power that seemed supernatural enough, but indeed were powered by money, and technology. Perhaps, in this essence, I thought, was the purest display of defective intention itself; the mere thought that this indeed was rather Good Vs. Evil or God and The Devil would easily be written off as a diseased way of thought. The social world and constructs had been built around being open minded to a system of psychology that was intrinsically rather corrupt. I knew this could only be fought with what I knew, and what I could draw from as logic. I didn't want to go to court because I knew the people I would be fighting were liars, and well trained psychological masters of manipulation, well hidden terrorists dressed as public servants and systematic corrupters all for simple profit margins, to whom I was not so much a person or a mother, or a daughter, but a number. Because I was poor, and had once or four times chosen to love the wrong person in an unorthodox and uncontrollable form of torture, dismissing each and every social construct or physiology that was by the book, by embracing that there was a reason for change I quickly became quite the antagonist of sorts and hopefully not some sort of martyr —for the kind of people that had money and property, and perhaps even socially constructed circles to camoflage their own self doubt and hatred, but absolutely also had no morals. –Death of a Superstar DJ If I lose my mind At least I know I'm right on time This time— I meant that, I had it bad this time MCBADBAT I had it bad this time, And the last. Perchance for you, Hour or folded, Hair my weight And glassed upon thy, This upon now, Feathered waking, And there barely weathered Shaking. Dear, dear, Tis is fair truth, To fare that I have gasp And fated at thy doorstep; And yet, care to force, Her breaking waves and saving tinder, Fit there slithered in as yet astonished, Then another; And I hated. So, then, slower now. All there, gathered none. And show to show thy force What then became and withered after, None to bark or beg But birds and feathered creatures, pander The tides did Quake, And the heart did grow ten fold and steady saying None upon us but one left to shiver in the depths That yet remain as undiscovered For now never there was another world, Undone, And also another becomes, My death— And therefore all the worlds I kept, To travel on and travel As becomes one, does another onward As the first is glass to dust, And last is born there. So, Then, I, Crept, In my dress, Kept for clothes that church did water I, met, My mark and there the doors of shadows open Wilted and wake? Hear you; A star was born In other cosmos tied with our own nurture So, Kept, The weight of clasp and bone That holds the crept and precious alter Goddamn cat! Where are you. AAtticus Caaticus Oop. Gotta go. Toonces! Tooooonces! Where are you? Omg remember that one where that couple has a magic toddler and they just let him like,float away. Yeah, barely. Yeah. So I do. CUT TO: TOONCES focuses intently on the task at hand; he's sure he can manage to drive the human vehicle to his own home— to where he's assured he will find the actual body in which he belongs. Now… let's see, if I can just Wait, I who? ATTICUS CATTICUS, An ancient alien sorcerer must relay a series of important messages. Unfortunately. YO WHAT THE FUCK. None of them seem to be getting through. CUT BACK TO: TOONCEEESSSS. here kitty kitty kitty!! {Enter the Multiverse} I would dedicate, but honestly I've not time to waste And I'm craving wedding cake I hate to destroy you But for now, you know I can't employ you; This implies my eyes are also murder And I'm sure of her departure From another world, Perhaps across the border. Also, quite the dark sorcerer himself LORNE MICHAELS has well hidden himself under the guise of having become one of the most successful television producer of all times— And even in his own very small world, Nobody quite seems to know why. JIMMY FALLON Lorne, I have to tell you something. LORNE MICHAELS This had better be good, Jimmy, I've just made popcorn. [the festival project ™] Don't worry, for now, The risk remains hidden, As sure as an asset is an advantage, I can't have the classes counting Heads of cabbage as accomplishes, The masses are honestly astonished And impossible, but what was wrong with Boredom in the first place? Nonsense More words And still no dollars Hunger strike, And burning harder, California deficit, lack of bread, Heaven sent interventions and scissors, Mistresses, disasters and divorces But who says the whole story has to suffer? You're a surfer under water, Remember that when you finally catch your breath above the surface Can you clear her? He who? Back to work! Or back to the future! My super brain is dead but I think I'm next I think heaven swallows whole the blooded laugher From the constructs I've come from. Remember that. Remember not to fall from too far up, God would give you wings With time to spare Before you ever wondered where Your mark was On the plaza Don't let me up to the very top. I will at the very least Best scenario jump off And rid the world myself, Just for a dozen donuts over Crossing hearts and Hollywood And Griffith park To also soft my foot Upon red carpets. You ever shave your armpits!? …no. Hm. Catholic. Of course. Get in. Destination. —Rotterdam. You idiot. I made it. Whatever, get in the boat. DI NERO Give her your shirt. What. Your shirt. Why my shirt. Just— Fine. Here. [he hands over his shirt— in an instant, the woman becomes an exact REPLICA.] …my shirt. Relax. Nothing's gonna happen to it. Okay? —in fact, you're still wearing it. Alright! She's right, Jimmy, relax. I can't, that's— It's simple. There is nothing simple about this whatsoever. You're right. It's not, so get over it. [The Festival Project ™] BILL MURRAY There's a compartment at the end of the left corridor— Alright. In that hatch, there's a chamber. Okay, what'll I do? You'll open it? How? I'll tell you how, just get there. Suddenly, a barrier falls; it appears as though there are booby traps set here. Uh— that might be a problem. There might be a few of them. What just happened? Booby traps. —ah, I know what you're talking. Those aren't booby traps— they're Bobby Traps. What in the Hell are you talking about? For whatever reason Jimmy Kimmel Is important Now I'm scared of him, I know he knows the devil Come to think of it, Might even be an advocate Have an avocado But don't know the half of it These are, as it stands Comes what may Special circumstances I could circumvent an intervention, Never second chances I've been setting rat traps, Trapeze artists, Bampheramph camp, And also trampolines over the plaza That seems dangerous. Yeah. AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Damn. Know it's plausible, That I also am an alcoholic, Though dysfunctional, Professional, And underrepresented So I stand myself, Let's just say pro-se if you will I could add Prozac to my snacks But I'll be delayed, if you still Don't get my messages I'm sick of having heart attacks; A hard advantage I was looking back on “fully packaged” A six pack of abs And nothing left to eat but cabbage, Haven't had a mouth, But I've been counting on my ass To get me back up north, I'm coming from the South Out West, there's a word for that At best, you're a four and a half My body double stunts and stumbles Struts at nothing Struck before the one, And so between high noon and Somewhere around 30 in I'm never turning 30, 30 Rock is in the wind— So count that up, That's what my income is. That's what they said? “Too late, you've been betrayed” If that's how it is, Then I request “beheaded” You know your mother says That ugly face just becomes permanent If you keep making it, And so I did, The second that it ended I'm Trying so hard Just to be What they want That it hurts Just to stop And relax For a moment INT. THE LAIR. NIGHT What is this? Where am I? You're— Alive. Why? …I changed my mind. You're not ugly You're just not mine I changed my mind I changed my life around. I skip line after line, But the message ain't right, I have time a chance No challenge accepted No exceptions or Expectations Expand this racism vocabulary Set the rat traps back To February Stamp the weather's getting Better with the postage clearing Abstr– My cat is so cute I can't stand him; But he's pretty bad, That my only friend; Animal. I blacklisted deadmau5, And my whole set sucked. Presently, however I'm a peasant Plucking pheasant feathers Guess I– pppftt. Like it never even happened But I'm sure we're all to war, Like a fear I never grasp it, What's l before, uncertain of your l words— My dear, were tattered and the masters heavy handed, Oh, my dear, we're marching on a battered Wit, to all your fan mail I tel you, I was I tortured, Let me show you And also, No one forced my hand at magic, Questioned prestidigitation, Or went back to every second, Land you think you owned as time In fact, my crucial very hard earned gossip column Asks the reader to reform his or her thought Before a judgement can be made How fascinating. The bag says ‘poems' so I wrote one, But I'm sure since my marker's toggled on I'm being stalked, It's like a magnet, Punch the clock And here they pour into the coffin So I won't be pouring coffee for the puffin; Maybe someday I'll look back at this as all I ever wanted, But for now it's just a horror show, Where I belong the murder— Yet a thriller, Best, The audience is captivated, Yes This is evasive, Cause I can't been captured yet By either masses or Mass murderers. At last, a cadence comes clean of its Breaking waves and rhythms, Tides and ties, Becomes another— Then, I'm whisked away Not back to slumber, but of subtle thoughts Of Californian water Lapping up across our surfboards; I often wear them tides, The undertow As pull of greater waves I sit aside as all that passes [The Festival Project ™] When I see Calvin Klein, I think of you; Not what you used to be But turned in to So it's mutual— Pay attention, fool As does moss grow on a rock And this to you— It is unfortunate, my dear You miss with every twist, Adjustment of attention span, The glances I foreshadowed (Here you are, inside your past) It's just affective of the effect, You've been levitating, Yes, I find it devastating Every second kept is just a fortune But you pause before you post— You reap before you even think Of what you sow, You don't belong, Agast, (True) Set the tone, Classless, But I'm Art, you are a Daunting folk song, Mistletoe and marker. CAMERA ASSISTANT Marker. …what is this for again? CAMERA ASSISTANT (Annoyed, mumbling) Shut up. Ten minutes passes and still, I'm awake But the tragedy of the mistake has just set in, I'm sure I've been tortured, I'm paid in mistakes, but I'd rather be shattered with Mortimer's curse. To the tune of Ten by ten by ten I will never be lover, nor friend in the end. {Enter The Multiverse] DRAKE concentrates heavily on a very long , seemingly very angry message— a frowning face plastered as he writes that is so noteworthy, it catches the attention of many a passerby— still this focus unwatered, as he bashes heavily away at the text message with the thumbs of fury for over 30 minutes while sitting at a booth in a well-loved pancake restaurant. As a tall stack of pancakes is served before him, and he, still unbreaking this angry texting streak or eye contact with his phone sits before them, history is made in what internet culture has now deemed as “the most meme worthy face in history” The world wonders what he could possibly be writing— and more importantly—-who he could be texting. Tears come to his eyes but do not fall as he raises his thumb with reserve, to finally press [RETURN.] CUT TO: SUNNI BLU receives a text amidst a wild party. Almost without so much as a reaction, SUNNI BLU pings the message to a projector and cuts off the lights, and music. A VERY LONG, ANGRY TEXT is projected on the wall. I slept from 10-2 There was nothing else to do My name is Devin DeLouise And I am not supposed to know these things Seven are dead and three are left I know what's next I'm also often known as And referred to as coyote ugly; Suffering a tantra wall, Yo, you son of a bitch! You dirty, dirty son of a bitch. I must admit, I had a lot to do with this… I had no part in it! Relax… soon enough, the both of your realize— this is how the unimaginable gets written. [he loads the polished sterling silver pistol and glamours over it] You have our memory. —all memory. And as soon as it ends, before it can begin again. The slate is wiped clean. Good riddance. “A Different Kind of Monologue” Is this what you wanted? Ooh— you should try me! I wish you would try me! Try me! I wish you would. Be calm, Grand Master. This will all be over momentarily. What's going on. Deprivation chamber. Crypt? —Encrypted? A lockup. Ah. Thought so. That ought to show us what he's really made up. We can all hope. [he pounds on the glass, the one way mirror acts as a camera which the maj aresses, rabid and wi the anger of a dangerous animal, both we, n audience, and the small group of men gathered a the other side of the room. This could be the basis of a lot of lawsuits. So now I have your tears and agony A wilted throne and wand Which which would grant a wish of comedy, And therefore ever after, Not pain and guilt, but laughter So heavy is the hat that acts as crown, And so foolish is the King to think ‘imself as not one, Creaks the crow and also of the feathered guilt that follows, I Kept and bashful, wishing not the show as throne but sorrow, Kept to wick and wake and bones to shatter from tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Do you fear us? …do you wish to be feared? What of us? I seek to cause the wish that stands as though you may as granted. So shallow, fair child. And brother and my son also. Gross! Stop. You are weird! Dude, you are fucked. In the withdraw, my shadows and darkness Are there always, never resting Stories and gathered images, Visions of betrayal and archaic wants. In time, I've abandoned them all and betraying that which I've lost, For I know, and not ponder on That I shall never know love, As all standing tal over me Have eyes; And all I want Knows not what hides under my ugly. Alright. I followed your spiral, downward, and down wind and down wood, Into a place where I also aspired to show your mark Upon my rotted corpse or coarse crossifix; Sure worded and down trodden. Now, worse, I'm also sworn To mourn all my own losses, Kind folk. Kind hearted and now my eyes also sudden to wander— And there goes my miles and triumphs And morals and war songs, And sure, swallowed the barrel of a gun But also departed with honor, I tell I. Glimpses of wither and winter and whittling pain, And I slither my back to the center of All I am, in this, and shadows, Fairtails, And grains of rice and sand to twist away Into the rain as I lay dying. What a fortunate! Don't make my mark up and out, few for short times, Aye, conspire to warthog, Remember so force your spirit onto ours, And shake, sandbox! There aiming at you were the snakes of six liars, And the stakes of empires lost and won over, Also one solemn subtle Star of David Worn upon the neck of six monks, Ragtime Six popes, pass I; Six fathers and streaks solemn and Care tan teared salamander, Having weight and wake to cheer For our slaughter. Then, you, Having gained and also lost should reap to sow, What you'd have wanted; Though the tongue so convexed having way to guild your complex, Shaking as I hunger fruit that not but hangs Before l wanted I know, I could knot be consoled I know, I could not be consoled I know I could not be consolidated either Bought, or purchased I know I'm not consoled at all, I know I'm not confirmed at all I know, I know I'm not confronted, nor immortal — but your glorified affliction. Poor infinity. Of poverty, perhaps, but never poor at all. For your were warned of all the doors as opened at your calling. Not to walk though, But to ponder at them, wondering. he's gone Maybe I should go Too Heavy weight hanging on my Shoulders I'm just star struck I don't know You I don't really like saying What I go through Talk an hour, Fake it All day show Monologue Improvisation Now i'm on a roll, But my thoughts got darker I like adderall and a real smooth talker I like a husband-father , Doctor, Actor, Tall and handsome, Doesn't matter I'm alone, so i feel hopeless Aggie's gone, So i might as well go though Oh– She's gone ((I think i'm past my time)) I think i should go to She's gone (so long) Right on, man I might as well go to It's been a long time, Gotta turn my light off, Overtime, That's a long ball game Season's over; On my back in the middle of the ball court She's gone, So i might as well go too. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025 The Festival Project, Inc. ™ All rights reserved. Chroma111. Copyright © The Complex Collective 2025. [The Festival Project, Inc. ™] All rights reserved. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY LAW. INFRIGMENT IS PUNSHABLE BY FEDERAL LAW LEGAL NOTICE / ARTIST STATEMENT Project: The Festival Project ™ (Season 12) Genre: Speculative Auto-Ethnography / Social Surrealism Disclaimer: This document is a work of creative non-fiction and political satire. While inspired by the author's lived experiences with systemic oppression, housing displacement, and surveillance, the narrative employs stylized fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, and metaphor to dramatize the psychological impact of these events. The "characters" and "dialogue" herein are artistic devices used to critique historical and modern power structures. This text should be viewed as a performative artistic expression protected under the First Amendment, and not as a literal transcript of clinical psychosis or a formal sworn affidavit. This is a character study of 'Chroma111,' the collective artworks of a musician living in a dystopian surveillance state. The erratic language is a stylistic choice to represent the character's psychological deterioration under systemic oppression. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Genre: "Afro-Surrealism" / "Social Horror" "Psycho-Acoustic Weaponry" or "Havana Syndrome symptoms." The Frame: The protagonist is subjected to "noise harassment"—a tactic dramatized here but rooted in the known reality of tenant displacement and "psychological attrition." The narrative depicts a process of "Soul Murder" ( also known as spiritual warfare) orchestrated by a hostile apparatus. The antagonist is "The Institution," representing deep-state mechanisms that view multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story allegorically dramatizes the invisible mechanisms that enforce racial hierarchy, depicting how broken social systems weaponize psychological practices against the individual. Artist's Note: This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as an artistic testament to the psychological siege endured from to 2023-2025. It is a creative record of survival against a hostile state architecture. The following is a creative non-fiction horror manifesto regarding the psychological assassination of a multicultural American artist. It documents—through the lens of Afro-Surrealism—how modern surveillance technology and sonic harassment are experienced by the targeted individual. As it stands It has become a modern sequel which mirrors the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, set in the present day. "The protagonist is being subjected to 'noise harassment'—a known tactic used by landlords and corrupt entities to displace tenants. The sound is weaponized to induce sleep deprivation and psychological attrition, dismantling of their ego and will to live, orchestrated by a hostile state apparatus. The antagonist in this piece is 'The Institution'—a deep state that views multicultural intellectualism as a threat. The story dramatizes over time the invisible mechanisms (the 'Deep State') that enforce racial hierarchy and and psychological genocide, weaponizing broken social systems and unfounded psychological practices as biological weapons. This is a living document. In the event of the artist's silence or unnatural death, this text serves as evidence of the psychological siege endured from 2023-2025. It is a transcript of survival against a hostile state architecture. This project spans an unlimited multiprojectoral arc of over two years of chronic violence, reaching into historical and theatrical projections and parallels over the all documented records of human existence through time and space.

Mark invites writer, director, and friend Nick Mendillo to talk about his first album, Nevermind by Nirvana (1991) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Steve and Dylan try their best to be positive about artists they don't like, with Steve giving Dylan WASP's "Babylon" and Savatage's "Fight for the Rock" to listen to while Dylan puts forward Led Zeppelin III and Nirvana's "Nevermind." Can the duo review these albums without saying anything negative? Tune in to find out! Hosted by Steve Wright, Brian "BC" Chapman and Ryan "BB" Bannon Produced by Dylan Wright Music by Mark Sutorka Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bF0jaPz3htRAyewwT36F5?si=663f338936b842c0 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PTHpodcast 

1990's rock was an exciting time. Nevermind (no pun intended) Nirvana, what about Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, The Meat Puppets, Primus and Smashing Pumpkins?In his new book, Greg Prato gets the full story of the era from the folks who lived it. Alternative for the Masses by Greg Prato is available right now wherever you get your books.

Coming from a challenging, working class upbringing in the United Kingdom, Steve Jones discovered his outlet in music - as founding guitarist of the groundbreaking punk rock band the Sex Pistols. Despite the release of only one album,”Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” the band changed the course of music and history - vocalizing issues of class in songs like “Anarchy in the U.K.” – and influencing fashion, art and society. Since then, Jones has continued to play music (both solo and with bands The Professionals and Neurotic Outsiders) and was the host of the popular, long-running radio show, “Jonesy’s Jukebox.” In 2022, his insightful memoir, “Lonely Boy,” was adapted into the FX television series, the Danny Boyle-directed “Pistol.” Steve Jones talks to host Alec Baldwin about the roots of punk rock, coming up alongside Vivienne Westwood and Chrissie Hynde, and the road to getting clean – and beginning life anew. Originally aired May 14, 2024See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when one of the leaders of the fight against climate change decides that it's not a big deal anymore? Tune in to The Public Square® today to hear more. Topic: Climate Change The Public Square® with hosts Dave Zanotti and Wayne Shepherd thepublicsquare.com Air Date: Monday, November 10, 2025

Send us a textJoin DJ Paulie and Lou, The Back in Time Brothers as they dive deep into the revolutionary world of 1980s UK indie music. This episode features DJ Brit's expertly curated top-ten countdown, celebrating the bands that defined a generation with their independent spirit and authentic sound—from The Cure's genre-defying evolution to The Smiths' jangly perfection, Joy Division's haunting post-punk, and the dream pop pioneers Cocteau Twins.Plus, contributor Todd Snyder delivers a fascinating "Rock Talk" segment exploring the most controversial and banned album covers in rock history, from The Beatles' infamous "butcher cover" to Nirvana's Nevermind baby. Discover how censorship battles often made these albums legendary.Throughout the show, enjoy the signature segments: "Busted" featuring hilariously inept criminals (including a bank robber who left his wallet behind), "Random Facts" with surprising trivia about the human body, and "Crazy Classifieds" with absurd fictional ads.Whether you're a die-hard indie fan or discovering these influential bands for the first time, this episode celebrates the DIY ethos, chaotic clubs, and John Peel sessions that shaped modern alternative music. Join The Back in Time Brothers for a journey through the sound that changed everything.Support the showThanks for listening. Join us each Monday at 1pm Central at www.urlradio.net and follow us on Facebook!

I've popped up on a movie podcast, War Movie Theatre with Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. Here is what they have to say about the show: "A 1964 film about accidental nuclear war from a legendary director and featuring a German scientist with homicidal ideas? That's right, it's Dr Strangelove… hang on, no, it's Fail Safe. Overshadowed on release because of a lawsuit from a rival film (you can guess which), this parable from Sidney Lumet has come to be regarded as a classic, with fans including George Clooney. "The Ocean's 11 star couldn't be with us to make the case for it himself, so we're joined by a man known to many as the Clooney of British politics, Mark Pack: polling expert, Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords and Total Nerd." Show notes War Movie Theatre podcast with Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon: Apple, Spotify and YouTube. Never Mind the Bar Charts theme tune by Hugo Lee. New to listening to podcasts? Here are some tips on how to listen to podcasts. Check out some of this show's most popular previous episodes.

Can you imagine the Bill Gates essentially saying "never mind" regarding climate change? Well it happened in a memo to the United Nations. How could this story be true and also not be the news story everyone is talking about? This conversation is not happening anywhere else but The Public Square®. Please don't miss this episode and share this with a friend. Topic: Climate Change The Public Square® Long Format with hosts Wayne Shepherd and Dave Zanotti. thepublicsquare.com Release Date: Friday, November 7th, 2025

Hour 2 - As they head into the weekend, Jacob & Tejay are joined by Tommy, Brandon, & thee Paul Savage for week 10 picks.

Can you do a financial podcast and not mention the Budget right now? No, not really. But you can give it a good shot at keeping Budget chat to the minimum.  On this week's podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert take breather from talking about Rachel Reeves and the endless cycle of madness that is the Budget 2025 build up to discuss some other stuff. Can they get through it without mentioning the Budget anymore than five times? Listen to find out. First up it's interest rates. Why did the Bank of England hold, will there be a cut next month and how far will they fall? Plus, how have rate expectations shifted and where exactly do mortgage borrowers and savers stand now? Next, it's house prices. Leading estate agent Savills says property values are due to rise 22 per cent in five years, but is that a lot or a little - and could homes actually be getting cheaper. Lee explains why savers are stashing so much cash and Simon sounds a clarion call for moving your money out of insult accounts. Then via a quick diversion avoiding sneaky speed cameras, it is on to the turf war. Is it ever okay to consider artificial grass and what will it do to your house price? Listen to the end for B***** mentions score.

Surprise! It was Maureen's mom's birthday. She is in PA. There was a party. Actually, there was more than one party. Maureen is still there, so things are going great. She wishes she was in NYC to watch NYC try to get its first non-clown mayor. You already know what happened, SaysWhovia. Dan and Maureen are in the dark.Meanwhile, Dan has split his time between helping people in Chicago, which is still under occupation, and doing his job. It's a lot! Good thing the government is working and no one has to worry about ACA premiums or…Ah. Wait. Nevermind.Still, it's not all bad. And it's such a beautiful fall day! Like Dan and Maureen learned at exactly this time last year—nothing can go wrong now! Says Who is made possible by you, through your support of our Patreon at patreon.com/sayswho

After years of funding and fueling climate panic, Bill Gates has done an about-face. In a new 17-page memo released ahead of COP-30 in Brazil, Gates admits that rising temperatures will “not lead to humanity's demise” and urges the climate community to drop its “doomsday outlook.” This marks a stunning shift for one of the world's most prominent climate influencers and could signal a long-overdue return to honest, fact-based climate discussion.In Episode #180 of The Climate Realism Show, hosts Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely break down what Gates' reversal means for climate policy, science, and the green tech industry. They also cover the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a new study showing wind turbines are even worse for birds than previously believed, claims that climate change is to blame for higher Halloween candy prices, and why attributing the intensity of Hurricane Melissa to global warming is misguided.Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, and X. Visit our sponsor, ADVISOR METALS: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

After years of funding and fueling climate panic, Bill Gates has done an about-face. In a new 17-page memo released ahead of COP-30 in Brazil, Gates admits that rising temperatures will “not lead to humanity's demise” and urges the climate community to drop its “doomsday outlook.” This marks a stunning shift for one of the world's most prominent climate influencers and could signal a long-overdue return to honest, fact-based climate discussion.In Episode #180 of The Climate Realism Show, hosts Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, and Jim Lakely break down what Gates' reversal means for climate policy, science, and the green tech industry. They also cover the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a new study showing wind turbines are even worse for birds than previously believed, claims that climate change is to blame for higher Halloween candy prices, and why attributing the intensity of Hurricane Melissa to global warming is misguided.Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on YouTube, Rumble, and X. Visit our sponsor, ADVISOR METALS: https://climaterealismshow.com/metals In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!

1990's rock was an exciting time. Nevermind (no pun intended) Nirvana, what about Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, The Meat Puppets, Primus and Smashing Pumpkins?In his new book, Greg Prato gets the full story of the era from the folks who lived it. Alternative for the Masses by Greg Prato is available right now wherever you get your books.

Durante las próximas cuatro semanas, Cancioneros hará una breve pausa. Volveremos con nuevos episodios el 17 de noviembre. Mientras tanto, estaremos compartiendo nuevamente episodios de nuestras temporadas anteriores. En este episodio de El Cancionero de Kurt, conducido por Albina Cabrera, exploramos la evolución del punk a través de cuatro álbumes icónicos que influyeron profundamente a Kurt Cobain. Comenzamos con Burning Farm de Shonen Knife, banda japonesa que rompió estereotipos y fusionó la energía del punk con melodías pop. Continuamos con Never Mind the Bollocks, Here 's the Sex Pistols, que encapsuló la rebeldía y agitación política de los años 70. Philosophy of the World de The Shaggs, un disco tan único como polémico que sigue siendo un hito del rock alternativo. Finalmente, exploramos My War de Black Flag, una obra que fusionó el punk con elementos de heavy metal y doom, marcando una evolución en el sonido de la banda. Albina te guía por reflexiones y anécdotas que conectan estos álbumes con la cultura rock de América Latina, con testimonios exclusivos de la artista punk Alice Bag, la periodista cultural Suzy Expósito, los directores de La Bestia Radio México, el periodista venezolano Rafael Uzcátegui y el miembro fundador de Los Violadores de Argentina, Sergio Gramática. Agradecimientos especiales: Francisco Carrera, Director de La Bestia Radio México. Mario Rincón, Director de La Bestia Radio México. Suzy Expósito, periodista musical y artista punk con base en Los Ángeles. Ha trabajado en Rolling Stone Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Vogue y más. Rafael Uzcátegui, periodista venezolano. Compilador de los libros "Educación Anterior" sobre el punk en Venezuela y "Mayoría Equivocada" sobre el punk latinoamericano. Alice Bag, artista, activista y fundadora de Bags mítica banda punk con base en Los Ángeles de fines de los 70s. Sergio Gramática, baterista y miembro fundador de Los Violadores, la primera banda punk de alcance masivo en América Latina. Host: Albina CabreraProductora asistente: Gisela Casa MadridEditor: Dusty HenryProductor de audio: Roddy NikpourPodcast manager: Isabel KhaliliDirector editorial: Larry Mizell Jr.Apoya este podcast: kexp.org/elsonido For the next few weeks, Cancioneros will be taking a short break. We’ll return with new episodes on November 17th. In the meantime, we’ll be re-sharing episodes from our previous seasons. In this fifth episode of El Cancionero de Kurt, hosted by Albina Cabrera, we explore the evolution of punk through four iconic albums that profoundly influenced Kurt Cobain. We begin with Burning Farm by Shonen Knife, a Japanese band that broke stereotypes and fused punk energy with pop melodies. We continue with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which encapsulated the rebellion and political turmoil of the 70s. Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs, an album as unique as it is controversial, remains a milestone of alternative rock. Finally, we delve into My War by Black Flag, a work that fused punk with elements of heavy metal and doom, marking an evolution in the band's sound. Albina guides you through reflections and anecdotes that connect these albums with Latin American rock culture, featuring exclusive testimonies from punk artist Alice Bag, cultural journalist Suzy Exposito, the directors of La Bestia Radio Mexico, Venezuelan journalist Rafael Uzcátegui, and founding member of Los Violadores from Argentina, Sergio Gramática. Special thanks: Francisco Carrera, Director of La Bestia Radio Mexico. Mario Rincón, Director of La Bestia Radio Mexico. Suzy Expósito, music journalist and punk artist based in Los Angeles. She has worked for Rolling Stone Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, and more. Rafael Uzcátegui is a Venezuelan journalist and the author of the books Educación Anterior about punk in Venezuela and Mayoría Equivocada about Latin American punk. Alice Bag, artist, activist, and founder of Bags, a legendary punk band based in Los Angeles from the late 70s. Sergio Gramática, drummer and founding member of Los Violadores, the first punk band to achieve mass appeal in Latin America. Team:Host: Albina CabreraAssistant Producer: Gisela Casa MadridEditor: Dusty HenryAudio Producer: Roddy NikpourPodcast Manager: Isabel KhaliliEditorial Director: Larry Mizell Jr.Support this podcast: kexp.org/donateSupport the show: http://kexp.org/elsonidoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

durée : 00:05:28 - Le Bach du matin du vendredi 31 octobre 2025 - Le Quatuor Nevermind interprète les Variations Goldberg n°3, 4 et 5 dans un arrangement pour traverso, violon baroque, basse de viole et clavecin. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

An episode packed with strong food opinions and another one-pot-wonder chicken dish.  Jamali Maddix is a British comedian, writer and presenter known for his honest and intelligent humour. Alongside regular appearances on shows including Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI and 8 Out of 10 Cats, he's also fronted a number of documentaries, including last year's Follow The Leader for U&Dave. He's with us to talk about the new Comedy Central show, Jimmy Carr's Am I The A**hole,  where Jamali, Jimmy and GK Barry are in charge of serving judgements on the divisive behaviour of members of the public.  Angela serves spiced whole chicken with herby rice, which is an instant hit with Jamali, tasting so good that it proves a distraction from Nick's questions. The drinks pairing of Felsner Moosburgerin Grüner Veltliner 2024 Kremstal is a test for Jamali's palate, but he gives it a go, despite not being a huge wine lover. Room is made for dessert, with a selection of Ottolenghi's new ice creams, including, Madagascan Vanilla & Miso Caramel.  Food chat at Dish has never been so passionate, with nothing safe from Jamali's razor sharp takes. Air fryers, wine and the concept of sharing desserts are among the victims in this week's episode. We also get to learn all about alligator cheesecake and finally find out the true value of the Dish table. Any takers?  You can watch full episodes of Dish on YouTube and, new for this season, on Spotify.  All recipes from this podcast can be found at waitrose.com/dishrecipes A transcript for this episode can be found at waitrose.com/dish If you want to get in touch with us about anything at all, contact dish@waitrose.co.uk  Dish from Waitrose is made by Cold Glass Productions

Today on the pod we were lucky enough to talk to music legend Butch Vig! He told us about being the drummer for the band Garbage, and also chatted about producing Nirvana's "Nevermind". Don't forget you can watch Garbage live at the Auckland Town Hall when they're here on December 3rd!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Petri Redelinghuys from Herenya Capital Advisors unpacks Pick n Pay's latest results – with losses mounting even as Boxer lifts group performance. Naked co-founder Ernest North explains why car insurance remains key to safeguarding your financial well-being. RMB's Isaah Mhlanga shares insights on where investors should look for the next big opportunities across Africa.

In this episode, #254 of the XS Noize Podcast, Mark Millar is joined by a true architect of punk — Glen Matlock, the original bassist and founding spark of The Sex Pistols. Glen co-wrote ten of the twelve songs on the band's legendary 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, giving its chaos a melodic backbone that helped define an era. Now, he's reclaiming his story in the new documentary I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol — a compelling, filmic portrait of the Pistols' rise told through wry, honest, and often hilarious first-hand accounts. In this conversation, Glen looks back on the bleak yet electric energy of 1970s Britain, the provocations of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's SEX shop, Steve Jones' infamous thieving, and the band's chaotic search for a frontman that would ultimately change music forever. From bust-ups and fan mania to the tabloid outrage that followed, Glen offers a frank and insightful portrait of a group of misfits who tore down the old order — and the cost that came with it. He also talks about the real story behind I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, co-writing the songs that built Never Mind the Bollocks, the truth about his split from the Sex Pistols, the spirit of early punk culture, fashion and rebellion, and the life lessons learned from one of rock's great survivors. Hear Glen Matlock reflect on the chaos, the craft, the myth — and the man behind it all. About The XS Noize Podcast With over 250 episodes to its name, the XS Noize Podcast has become a trusted home for music's legends and trailblazers — a space where real conversations meet real stories. Hosted by Mark Millar, the show has welcomed an extraordinary lineup including Miles Kane, Matt Berninger, Saint Etienne, D:Ream, Gavin Rossdale, The Farm, Snow Patrol, John Lydon, Will Sergeant, Ocean Colour Scene, Gary Kemp, Doves, Gavin Friday, David Gray, Anton Newcombe, Peter Hook, Razorlight, Sananda Maitreya, James, Crowded House, Elbow, Cast, Kula Shaker, Shed Seven, Future Islands, Peter Frampton, Bernard Butler, Steven Wilson, Travis, New Order, The Killers, Tito Jackson, Simple Minds, The Divine Comedy, Shaun Ryder, Gary Numan, Sleaford Mods, and Michael Head — among many more. Explore the complete XS Noize Podcast archive here  

Chasen Wayne took the long road to honky tonk stage success. The native Texan's first job in the music industry – if you could call it that – was a club bouncer as a teenager. His reputation and professionalism landed him at a popular venue in Austin, Texas where he wound up booking shows, too. Nevermind that his big claim to fame in Austin is booking a video shoot for Zach Bryan, a story he tells us in the latest episode of Roots Music Rambler. Wayne's primary focus was on his weekend residency at the club and building his musical career. His new album Corpus shares stories of his path out of addiction to sobriety, fatherhood and much more. Wayne's stories are mostly true and autobiographical. But they're raw and revealing which has him destined to continue to grow an already avid fan base and keep living that honky tonk dream. We talked to Wayne about sobriety, father hood, digging tunnels and a lot more. And we got to hear the details behind the big Zach Bryan video shoot, too.  Also on this episode of Roots Music Rambler, Frank and Falls discuss Morgan Wallen deciding not to nominate his latest album for Grammy consideration, the pop country vs. “real” country debate, and they share their picks for Pickin' the Grinnin' – music you should listen to.  Watch the Episode on YouTube Download the episode and subscribe at rootsmusicrambler.com, watch the full episode on YouTube, or download wherever you get your podcasts.  Also be sure to help spread the love of the show with Roots Music Rambler's new merch, now available at rootsmusicrambler.com/store. Authentic t-shirts, hats and stickers are now available.  Buckle up for The Hoe-Down and the Throw-Down! It's a new episode of Roots Music Rambler. Notes and links:  Morgan Wallen says “No” to the Grammy's Chasen Wayne on Spotify Chasen Wayne on Instagram Zach Bryan's “Nine Ball” (filmed at Sagebrush) The Roots Music Rambler Store Roots Music Rambler on YouTube Roots Music Rambler on Instagram Roots Music Rambler on TikTok  Roots Music Rambler on Facebook Jason Falls on Instagram Jason Falls on TikTok Francesca Folinazzo on Instagram Pickin' the Grinnin' Recommendations The Onlies Del Roscoe Subscribe to Roots Music Rambler on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, GoodPods or wherever you get your podcasts.Theme Music: Sheepskin & Beeswax by Genticorum; Copyright 2025 - Falls+Partners. All music on the program is licensed by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Roots Music Rambler is a member of the Americana Music Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hour 1 Audio from WGIG-AM and WTKS-AM in Brunswick and Savannah, GA

Started off a little rocky but really stay tuned for the best top ten lists you'll ever hear.Also Toronto took it to a game 7!!!

Steve brews up a delicious golden lager-ish beer as a salute to our Canadian neighbors up north.

Synyster Gates followed in the footsteps of his tech-savvy cousin Bill Gates by designing the first-ever guitar amp to be authenticated on the blockchain. The Nevermind baby tried to sue Nirvana for the millionth time and Ringo Starr used to have Kid Pix on his computer no diddy. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit Ending song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2kGgujxodI

If you could, you could… but you can't…Welcome back to the Chris Moyles Show on Radio X Podcast.It was a busy week this week with four guests on the show! Kicking things off we were joined by Richard Hammond who chatted to Chris and the team about the new season of Richard Hammond's Workshop. He also took a little trip down memory lane, reminiscing about Top Gear and even his old days in Radio!Next Greg Davies joined the team in the studio, talking about returning to Never Mind the Buzzcocks with its new season that aired this week. There was also a surprising amount of chat about cows, and on that theme, Greg told Chris a story that he said was probably the funniest thing that has ever happened to him.Professor Brian Cox was in the Studio next talking about all things space and promoting his new live tour that he is taking all over the world. He answered questions about multiple universes, travelling at the speed of light and even pondered on what time actually is. The final guest this week was the hilarious Chris McCausland. He came in to promote his new book, a vulnerable yet hilarious autobiography delving into his experience losing his sight and becoming the winner of 2024's Strictly Come Dancing.But wait, we have more than just guests to offer you! Listen out for these silly bits as well:Dom's Leather libraryToby's guess whoCowboys and Cowgirls in the Radio X officeEnjoy!The Chris Moyles Show on Radio XWeekdays 6:30am - 10am

In today's episode the latest in photography/videography news from our friends at PetaPixel. Blackmagic RAW coming to select Sony cameras and much more. You can find the show notes here.

On this week's Please Keep Me Anonymous, Chris and Rosie are joined by comedian, Taskmaster, Never Mind The Buzzcocks host and all round legend, Greg Davies! As well as talking about the new series of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Greg reveals what his first TV job was and he shares the details of a very stressful photoshoot (and it's not the one with all the milk!) Rosie and Greg bond over true crime obsessions and the three all get nostalgic for the naughty kids at school. Watch Never Mind the Buzzcocks on Tuesday's at 9pm on Sky Max and NOW To find out details about any forthcoming shows join Greg's mailing list at Gregdavies.co.uk Watch Taskmaster on C4 at 9pm on Thursdays or catch up at Channel4.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of 'Seeing Them Live,' Charles and Doug explore the intersection of True Crime and Rock and Roll with guest Jim Berkenstadt, also known as the Rock and Roll Detective. Berkenstadt has a worldwide reputation for uncovering the hidden histories and mysteries within popular music. His exhaustive investigative works span from serving as a historical consultant on several high-profile documentaries to publishing award-winning books that delve into the enigmatic corners of rock history. Berkenstadt recounts his initial foray into rock investigation during eighth grade when he explored the 'Paul is Dead' conspiracy surrounding Paul McCartney. This early experience sparked his lifelong passion for becoming a rock detective, leading to a prolific career that has seen him solving many mysteries in the music world involving elements of True Crime. Jim shares stories about attending memorable concerts, including a terrifying but exhilarating Wings concert in 1976 where pyrotechnics blew him and his friend off their chairs. He also recalls sneaking into a sold-out George Harrison concert and the emotional tribute concert for George Harrison organized by Eric Clapton.Berkenstadt discusses his book 'Mysteries in the Music: Case Closed,' which tackles complex topics such as the FBI's extensive and somewhat absurd investigation into alleged obscene lyrics in the song 'Louie Louie,' the CIA's possible involvement in Bob Marley's death, and the Beach Boys' interactions with Charles Manson.Additionally, Berkenstadt's book 'The Beatle Who Vanished' narrates the incredible yet true story of Jimmy Nichol, a drummer who substituted for Ringo Starr during a Beatles tour, only to mysteriously disappear from the public eye. The discussion also covers Berkenstadt's involvement in music documentaries like 'George Harrison: Living in the Material World' and his upcoming work on Nirvana's Nevermind album. Through a combination of rock legends, government intrigue, True Crime, and lost histories, Jim Berkenstadt brings to life the dramatic and captivating interplay of True Crime and rock and roll.BANDS: Billy Preston, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Foo Fighters, Garbage, Green Day, Jeff Lynne, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Muddy Waters, Nirvana, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, Smashing Pumpkins, The Beatles, The Euphorics, The Quarry Men, The Rainbows, The Rolling Stones, The Spotnicks, The Traveling Wilburys, Tom Petty, Traffic, Wings.VENUES: Chicago Stadium, Edgewater Hotel, Royal Albert Hall, Soldier Field, Sunset Marquee, The Checkerboard Lounge. PATREON:https://www.patreon.com/SeeingThemLivePlease help us defer the cost of producing this podcast by making a donation on Patreon.WEBSITE:https://seeingthemlive.com/Visit the Seeing Them Live website for bonus materials including the show blog, resource links for concert buffs, photos, materials related to our episodes, and our Ticket Stub Museum.INSTAGRAM:https://www.instagram.com/seeingthemlive/FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550090670708

The world is a dumpster fire, confirmed. Following California's landmark AI safety bill SB 53, the head of Nvidia is allegedly "quaking in his boots"—which is a good sign, unlike the news that the "Nirvana Baby" Spencer Elden's lawsuit was finally dismissed. Meanwhile, corporate America continues its pivot to chaos: Spotify shuffled its execs, Meta is charging UK users for ad-free Facebook and Instagram, and the UK is introducing digital ID cards (Hello, Mark of the Beast). The entire internet is now dominated by bots, proving the Cracker Barrel logo outrage was manufactured, a fact that's somehow less depressing than the FCC accidentally leaking iPhone schematics. Naturally, Alphabet just paid $22 million to settle President Trump's YouTube lawsuit, confirming that legal threats are the new VC funding. Disney is panicking over an "AI Actress," sending cease and desist letters to Character.AI, while OpenAI rolls out its new Sora app and ChatGPT's ability to buy things for you, proving it's determined to turn the internet into one seamless, copyright-infringing shopping mall, and it's now worth more than Elon Musk's SpaceX.The ensuing boredom demands new media, though the pacing is terrible in everything: Slow Horses Season 5 and Human: Neanderthal Encounters are great, but even the original Matrix and Frankenstein trailer (by Guillermo del Toro) feel slow, confirming the Princess Bride litmus test. MXV's Riot Fest photos were rad, and Disney lost 1.7M subs after suspending Kimmel, which is why YouTube Music is testing AI hosts (who will only be wrong), and the Pivot Tour is happening. Our Apps & Doohickeys department confirms security is an afterthought: macOS 26 unlocked the Journal app, but the smart glasses race is fully on, and Logitech's new keyboard can be recharged by any light (finally, tech that works!). Amazon Fire TV is expected to ditch Android for Linux, Meta introduced the AI-filled Vibes feed, and Tile trackers were found to have a stalking flaw—a fact only slightly more depressing than the swift failure of the Neon call-recording app and the continued existence of the Comet browser. Finally, The Dark Side with Dave celebrated the low-budget charm of Blue Thunder and the necessity of Disney Park Ride Overlays, while Dave embarked on his quest to unbox the Home Depot R2D2. We thank our patrons for keeping this beautiful noise alive and pay tribute to the amazing Jane Goodall.Sponsors:Private Internet Access - Go to GOG.Show/vpn and sign up today. For a limited time only, you can get OUR favorite VPN for as little as $2.03 a month.SetApp - With a single monthly subscription you get 240+ apps for your Mac. Go to SetApp and get started today!!!1Password - Get a great deal on the only password manager recommended by Grumpy Old Geeks! gog.show/1passwordShow notes at https://gog.show/716FOLLOW UPCalifornia Governor Newsom signs landmark AI safety bill SB 53Nvidia Is Quaking in Its Boots‘Nirvana Baby' Spencer Elden's ‘Nevermind' Suit Dismissed AgainIN THE NEWSSpotify Appoints New CEOs as Daniel Ek Becomes Executive ChairMeta announces paid subscriptions for both Instagram and Facebook in the UKUK announces plans for digital ID cardsOpenAI's New Sora App Lets You Deepfake Yourself for EntertainmentThe First 24 Hours of Sora 2 Chaos: Copyright Violations, Sam Altman Shoplifting, and MoreOpenAI Rolls Out ChatGPT's Ability to Buy Stuff for YouOpenAI Is Now Worth More on Paper Than SpaceX, Catches Up to Elon Musk HimselfDisney sends cease and desist letter to Character.AICreator of “AI Actress” Responds to Near-Universal BacklashFCC accidentally leaked iPhone schematics, potentially giving rivals a peek at company secretsAlphabet will pay $22 million to settle President Trump's YouTube lawsuitCracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers SayMEDIA CANDYMXV's Riot Fest PhotosSlow Horses Season 5Frankenstein | Guillermo del Toro | Official Trailer | NetflixHuman: Neanderthal EncountersPivot TourYouTube Music is testing AI hosts that present relevant stories, trivia and commentaryHow Many Streaming Subscribers Did Disney Lose After Suspending Kimmel?APPS & DOODADSmacOS 26 unlocks the real potential of Apple's Journal appThe smart glasses race is really on nowLogitech's new keyboard can be recharged by any kind of lightAmazon Fire TV devices expected to ditch Android for Linux in 2025Meta introduces Vibes feed for AI generated contentNeon, an App That Pays to Record Your Phone Calls Hit #2 on the App Store, Taken Down Over Security FlawTile trackers reportedly have a security flaw that can let stalkers track your locationComet - The browser that works for youTHE DARK SIDE WITH DAVEDave BittnerThe CyberWireHacking HumansCaveatControl LoopOnly Malware in the BuildingThe Princess BrideBlue ThunderThe Best Disney Park Ride Overlays, and Where to Find ThemHome Depot R2D2 Unboxing and Assembly!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Butch Vig on Garbage's first ever show at the 7th Street Entry, what it's like to hear Nevermind out in the wild more than 30 years after producing the album and where he was told to NOT go to a Packers away game as an out of town fan. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10-02-25 - Entertainment Drill - THU - w/Dale Hellestrae - Nevermind Baby Has Lost His Child Porn Lawsuit Against NirvanaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

10-02-25 - Entertainment Drill - THU - w/Dale Hellestrae - Nevermind Baby Has Lost His Child Porn Lawsuit Against NirvanaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Step into the hazy swirl of distortion, pain, and beauty that is Siamese Dream, the breakthrough sophomore album from The Smashing Pumpkins. Released in 1993, this record solidified the Chicago band as one of the most important forces in the alternative rock explosion of the early '90s. Crafted under the intense perfectionism of frontman Billy Corgan, Siamese Dream was famously recorded under heavy emotional and psychological strain. With internal band tensions, Corgan’s battles with depression, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin’s drug issues, the album was nearly doomed before it began. But out of chaos came a sonic masterpiece. Produced by Butch Vig (who also produced Nevermind for Nirvana), Siamese Dream is both lush and brutal — blending dense guitar layering with orchestral elements and raw emotion. It opens with the thunderous “Cherub Rock”, a track that sets the tone with explosive drums and swirling fuzz. Other standouts include the beautifully melancholic “Disarm,” the shoegaze-tinged “Mayonaise,” the soaring “Today,” and the crushing “Silverfuck.” The album was a commercial and critical triumph, debuting at #10 on the Billboard 200 and eventually going 4× Platinum. Critics praised its intricate production, emotional intensity, and ambition. It remains a defining album of the ‘90s — a tortured, beautiful document of a band and a frontman trying to keep it together while making something transcendent. Siamese Dream isn’t just a record — it’s a world to get lost in.

While the presidential election heats up, this morning's Gift Grub shifted focus slightly, from the President to the Paso Doble! Who is going to replace Lorraine Barry as a judge on Dancing With The Stars Ireland? Hit play now to hear the full episode.

Send us a message or question! Have we got a treat for you...Something different - U-boats instead of aircraft!In our final episode of this series, “The U-boat War - Wolfpack,” we explore the U-Boat War from the German perspective with historian and author Roger Moorhouse, whose new book Wolfpack: Inside Hitler's U-Boat War will be published on 9 October 2025. Hosts James Jefferies and Jane Gulliford-Lowes dive into what life was really like aboard German U-boats, the shifting strategies of the Battle of the Atlantic,  the human stories behind the steel hulls, the role of Ultra Intelligence, the impact of Allied bombing and developments in technology. By looking at the war through the eyes of the U-boat crews, this episode reveals a side of World War II history that's often overlooked. Join us for a fascinating conversation that brings these powerful and complex narratives to life.Further reading: You can read Jane's articles on Ultra Intelligence in the Battle of the Atlantic and How to Survive Being Sunk by a U-Boat here. Never Mind the Dambusters Merchandise is now available at https://never-mind-the-dambusters.teemill.com/Support the showPlease subscribe to Never Mind The Dambusters wherever you get your podcasts. You can support the show, and help us produce great content, by becoming a paid subscriber from just $3 a month here https://www.buzzsprout.com/2327200/support . Supporters get early access to episodes and invitations to livestreams. Thank you for listening! You can reach out to us on social media at @RAF_BomberPod (X) or @NeverMindTheDambusters (Instagram)You can find out about James' research, articles, lectures and podcasts here .You can read more about Jane's work on her website at https://www.justcuriousjane.com/, and listen to podcasts/media stuff here

Brent Mills of Greyhaven joins us to rank and review every Nirvana album! Hear our thoughts on all 4 albums, from their early grunge roots to becoming one of the biggest names in rock music.We also get a special inside look at Greyhaven's upcoming album Keep It Quiet, out October 10! We discuss the evolution of Greyhaven's sound, our favorite tracks from the new album, how an unassuming demo became the opening track, and much more!Greyhaven WebsiteJoin our Patreon for bonus content and more: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the discourse!TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DiscogDiscourse⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discog_Pod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discog.discourse⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Time Codes:0:00 - Intro0:27 - Interview with Brent33:27 - Shoutouts36:40 - 4th Place47:55 - 3rd Place1:03:46 - 2nd Place1:20:58 - 1st Place1:40:51 - Patreon ShoutoutSongs used in this episode:About A Girl, Come As You Are, Heart Shaped Box, In Bloom, Sliver, Smells Like Teen SpiritNirvana's albums are:Bleach, Nevermind, Incesticide, In Utero

In today's episode host James Cox sits down with veteran rocker David Ellefson—a guitarist whose love affair with music began at eleven, when the bass line of Bachman‑Turner‑Overdrive's Not Fragile sparked a lifelong obsession. From those early needle‑drops to the thunder of KISS‑era amps, David walks us through the soundtrack of his life: the grind of marching‑band sax, the thrill of early cover‑band gigs, and the relentless quest to chase the songs that saved him from the darkness of depression.We dive deep into David's recent projects—his “No Cover” collection of beloved cuts, the hard‑rock collaboration with Jeff Scott Soto on the new album Unbreakable, and the behind‑the‑scenes stories from legendary Battery Studios in London, the very rooms that birthed Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, and even the original Nevermind console. Along the way, we hear anecdotes about the Trans‑Siberian Orchestra, Megadeth's “Big Four” saga, and a poignant moment recording a video right as the world mourned Ozzy Osbourne's passing.If you've ever found solace in a guitar solo, a soaring vocal, or the simple act of pressing play, this conversation is for you. Tune in as we explore how music not only fuels a career but also becomes a lifeline—one chord at a time.

As arguably the single most important, most influential group in pop music history, The Beatles have been honored with thousands of cover versions. This week, Uncle Gregg, Brett, and Third Lad Arthur Alexander hand pick some of the fabbest and gearest of 'em all. 101 episodes ago, power pop hero Arthur Alexander joined us to recount his fascinating life and career: growing up in Communist Poland, getting exiled to the U.S., and being a driving force in two of the NYC's seminal power pop bands - The Poppees and Sorrows - before putting out his fine solo records One Bar Left and ...steppin' out! He was one of our favorite guests yet, so we were ecstatic to have him join us for this topic that is near and dear to his heart. Big Stir Records presents Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow, the long lost thrid album by NYC power pop legends SORROWS, recorded in 1981 during a one-night session at the peak of their energy. This final chapter in their musical legacy includes the indie hit “Out Of My Head” and ten unreleased originals, plus three covers. The band, formed from the ashes of The Poppees, had previously made waves with their debut Teenage Heartbreak and faced struggles with their ill-fated second album (Love Too Late), which nearly ended their career. Forty years later, Arthur Alexander and the band recovered the rights to the material, leading to the surprise 2021 release of Love Too Late... The Real Album. Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow captures the band in raw form, fueled by the frustration of industry interference, delivering high-energy rock tracks like “Never Mind,” the heartfelt elegy for John Lennon “Cricket Man,” and the rockabilly scorcher “Let Me Know.” Recorded at Mediasound Studios in NYC, it's a powerful testament to the band's sound and vision, offering a cohesive, fiery farewell with timeless tracks that reflect both their struggle and resilience. Thanks to Rex Broome and Christina Bulbenko from Big Stir Records. You are both amazing! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ian and David crank things up to eleven with another---Nevermind. Not gonna finish that hackneyed joke.But it feeds right into today's double-feature review of Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues and Megadoc.What do a legacy sequel about a fake British rock band and a documentary about filming one of cinema's most notorious flops have to do with one another? More than you might expect, as we discover in this spoilerific deep dive.Spinal Tap 2 picks up with Nigel, David, and Derek reuniting for one last (contractually obligated) concert. But do they still have "it", and do cameos by legends like Sirs Paul McCartney and Elton John elevate the absurdist mockumentary humor--or simply drag it out?Mike Figgis' Megadoc finds the director chronicling the making-of chaos behind Francis Ford Coppola's Razzie Award-winning retro-futurist drama, Megalopolis. From difficult actors to incomplete ideas to entire departments being wiped out on a whim, the film drags shadowy Hollywood mystique into the daylight (for better and worse).Join us for an examination of two movies that don't quite work--but whose seeds of greatness were trampled on by ego, age, and cynical nostalgia!Support Kicking the Seat on Patreon, watch us on YouTube, and follow us at:XLetterboxdInstagramFacebookShow LinksWatch the Spinal Tap 2 (2025) trailer.Watch the Megadoc (2025) trailer.Keep up with all of David Fowlie's film criticism at Keeping It Reel.Plus! Listen to Ian and David's other recent (and very raucous) reviews of:Being Maria / Last Tango in Paris (2025 / 1972)The Unholy Trinity (2025) Magazine Dreams (2025)A Real Pain (2025)Rebel Ridge (2024)Duchess (2024)What Remains (2024)

In this episode, Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, founder of the Black Food Security Network, describes how experimenting with one small church garden led to connections with other churches and then with farmers and eventually to a transformed ecosystem—in this case, a food shed. This inspiring refugia story weaves through health justice, food security, and climate resilience. Even more, this story celebrates the power of relationships among thousands of gifted, passionate, faithful people. Many thanks to Heber Brown for graciously welcoming us to a church garden at one of the network churches in Baltimore, where we enjoyed chatting together in the greenhouse. To learn more about Rev. Dr. Heber Brown as a pastor, writer, and speaker, take a look at his website. You can also explore the wider work of the Black Church Food Security Network here.Rev. Dr. Heber BrownTRANSCRIPTHeber Brown Our garden has really become like a front door. It's a demonstration site. You're not going to feed an entire city or community with a church garden, but it becomes an activation space for your congregation members and the neighbors to come and reap the personal and individual benefits of just being closer to soil, but then also to practice what collectivism looks like in a garden space. It's a very controlled environment for a laboratory for, “how do we do this together?” And those learnings can roll over into other places as well.Debra Rienstra Welcome to the Refugia Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Debra Rienstra. Refugia are habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis. We're exploring the concept of refugia as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia: nurturing life-giving spaces in the earth, in our human cultural systems, and in our spiritual communities, even in this time of severe disturbance. This season, we're paying special attention to churches and Christian communities who have figured out how to address the climate crisis together as an essential aspect of their discipleship. Today, I'm talking with Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, founder of the Black Food Security Network. Beginning with a small congregation, a 1500-square foot garden, and a divine calling, the Black Food Security Network now connects 250 Black churches and 100 Black farmers in the Mid-Atlantic states and beyond. Reverend Brown's story weaves through issues of health justice, food security and climate resilience. And I love how beautifully this story illustrates the power of refugia. One small experiment started to form connections, then spread and eventually transformed a whole ecosystem—in this case, a food shed. I think you'll find Heber's brilliance and humility and joy inspiring, but he would be the first to say that this network is built on relationships among thousands of gifted, passionate, faithful people. People finding and exercising their beauty and agency is the best part of this story. Let's get to it.Debra Rienstra Heber, it's so great to talk to you today. Thank you so much for spending some time with me.Heber Brown Thank you for the opportunity.Debra Rienstra You've told your origin story about the Black Food Security Network a million times. Will you tell it again for our listeners?Heber Brown Absolutely. So, somewhere about five years in to pastoring a beautiful congregation here in Baltimore City called the Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, I began to notice a pattern of members of our congregation who were being hospitalized, and in response to that, like any well trained pastor will do, we do the things that seminary and other places have taught us: to show up by the bedside, give prayer, give encouragement, don't stay too long, and get to the next member who needs that kind of pastoral care. And so I was doing what my family—which was a family full of pastors—and seminary taught me to do: to go and visit. And during those visits, and while extending that encouragement, those prayers and the like, I also got the opportunity to do deep listening and learn some things about the people in my church, that stuff that doesn't necessarily and normally come out on a Sunday morning during all of the activity of a service. And one of the things that would come up, that started to come up in the confidentiality of those sacred circles, was the ways that diet and food was a part of the picture that was leading to the dis-ease and suffering, physical suffering, of those in the church. And I began to hear that over and over again. So I'm going, I'm praying, I'm giving scripture, I'm listening, shaking hands and moving on, and listening and hearing about food being in the picture. Alright, next visit. I'm going, I'm praying, I'm giving scripture, I'm giving encouragement, I'm listening, shaking hands, move to the next person. Food comes up again. It came up so much that eventually I got tired of just hearing about this challenge and walking away. I got unsettled by listening to people who I love and share life with, share with me their challenges, and as much as I believe and know that prayer is powerful, I wondered if there was ways that I could pray in a different way, pray through action.And so I got the idea—well, God gave vision. Well, no, God didn't give the first vision. The first one was just my idea. And my idea was to partner with the local market that was really right across the main intersection from our church. And I wanted some type of pathway so that food from that market could get to our church, get to our members, and it could improve their quality of life and address the health challenges in our church. But I still remember the day I went over to that market. And when I went to that market, and I looked at the prices of the produce, and then I also took note of the—as the young folks would say—the vibe of the space. It failed the vibe test, and it failed the price tag test. I saw barriers that would prevent, or at least slow this idea around nutrient-rich produce coming from that market right across the main intersection to our church within walking distance. And I got frustrated by that. I was frustrated because what we needed was right within reach. It was right at our fingertips, literally, but those barriers there would have made it very difficult for us to acquire and obtain the food that was there. Over the years, and like you said, I've told this story many times, and it's a living story, and so even my reflections on parts of it illuminates different ways, even at this stage of my journey with this. But I thought about like, what stopped me from talking to the market manager anyway? So I made the decision on that day just to walk out and say, “No, I'm not going to pursue partnership.” As I reflect on it, I interrogate myself, like, “Why didn't you at least have a conversation? Because who knows, something could have come out of the conversation, and maybe they would have given you the food for free or the discounted rate...” et cetera, et cetera. And when I sat with that and I thought about it more, I think there was something within me that didn't want free food. I thought, and I still think to this day, in a different, deeper, more conscious way, more aware way—but back then it was just something within where I thought that free food would have been too expensive. And not in a dollars and cents kind of way. That would have cost us too much with respect to our dignity, our sense of somebody-ness, and I did not want to lead my congregation in kind of genuflecting to the benevolence and charity, sense of charity, of the “haves” of the neighborhood. I did not want to reinforce kind of an inferiority complex that comes with staying in a posture of subservience to what you can recognize to be unjust and racist systems that keep food away from people when I believe that food is a God-given right. Healthy, nutritious food is a God-given right. I didn't want to lead my congregation into that, and I didn't want to reinforce even a sense of superiority, which is an equally devastating and damaging thing to the human soul, to think that these poor Black people are coming across the street to get food, and we are in the position to help those poor, at risk, needy people. Whether inferiority or superiority, both, I believe, are corrosive to the human soul. I did not have the articulation of that then, but I had enough in me that was living in that space that stopped me from leading our congregation into a partnership there. And so I left out, I walked back to the church. While I'm walking back to the church, near the front door of our church, there's a plot of land, and that land I'd walked past a thousand times before that day, but on that day, with divine discontent bubbling up inside of me, that's when God gave a vision. God vetoed my idea, gave a real vision, and that vision was rooted in us growing our own food in the front yard of our congregation. And so I go inside the church and I announce this vision to members of the church, and I remember saying to them, “Hey, y'all. God gave me a vision!” And I saw eyes rolling, like, “Oh, here he goes again.” I was at that time, I was in my early thirties. I started pastoring at 28 years old. And, you know, I came in at 28, I had all the ideas in the world. We was gonna fix everything by the weekend. And this patient congregation gave me room to work out all of that energy around changing everything immediately. So they were used to hearing this kind of stuff from me before, and so the rolling of the eyes when I said, “Hey, y'all, let's start a garden,” was quite expected, but I'm grateful for a remnant of the folks who said, “This one actually might work. Let's stick with him. Let's go with him on this.” And that remnant and I, we got together, we started growing food in the front yard of our church, and long story short, that garden helped to transform the spiritual and the physical material conditions of our congregation. 1500-square feet. We started growing 1200 pounds of produce every season: tomatoes, broccoli, kale, corn, even watermelon some years. It just transformed our ministry and even attracted people to the ministry who were not Christian, who'd never come to the church. Some people flew in from out of town. Like this little congregation of like 125 people with the 1500-square foot garden became, for some people, a destination, like church. And I was like, “What is this? We don't have bells and whistles and smoke machines and everything else. We're just a regular church on the side of the road with a little piece of land. And this garden is becoming a calling card for our ministry.”Debra Rienstra It was such a wild thing to do, and yet—it's just a garden.Heber Brown It's just a garden!Debra Rienstra So, I want to come back to, now, you know, long fifteen years later, you have this network of 250 Black churches and a hundred Black farmers, mostly up and down the East Coast, but all over the US. And we'll get to that exciting development in a bit, but I want to go back to those early days, because we're really interested in how congregations get excited. So could you talk about Maxine Nicholas?Heber Brown Yes, yes. Maxine Nicholas was the president of the sanctuary choir when I first got to Pleasant Hope. And she also was the one who organized a lot of exciting trips for seniors. They went shopping and went to plays. And you know, that was my introduction to her, when I first got to the church. And really, that was the extent, pretty much, of what I knew about her, how she showed up in the ministry. And when I shared this vision from God for us to start a garden, she was one of the members who said, “I'm gonna help.” And it was critical that she...what she did was critical to even us having this conversation today because she had the agricultural and farming know-how. I didn't.Debra Rienstra You didn't know anything!Heber Brown No, I didn't know anything! I was, I mean, born in Baltimore City. Yes, I spent summers down the country. As we say in my family and community, we say, you know, “We're going down the country for the summer.” And so, when school let out, my parents took us down to our relatives' home in rural Virginia, and my big mama, mama Geraldine, we would stay with her. She had land. She grew, you know, all the things. I wasn't paying attention to any of that when I was a young child, but some seeds were planted. But it really wasn't what I was focused on then, so I didn't know much about growing or, you know, agrarian kind of rhythms of being at all. Sister Maxine, though, grew up with multiple brothers and sisters on a farm in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. She moved to Baltimore from North Carolina around the fifties, joined Pleasant Hope shortly after that, and had really grown with the church over the years. Though she left the farm, the farm never left her. It was still in her. I didn't know it was there. My seminary-trained pastoral eyes were socialized to lock in on the gifts that people had that could be in service to our Sunday service, the production of the corporate worship experience. So if you can sing, I was trained to say, “Hey, I think you should join the choir.” If you could play an instrument, get on the band. Could you stand for two hours or so? The ushers' ministry. But I had some major blind spots about the gifts of God in people that were detached— seemingly detached and devoid—from what corporate worship and liturgy could look like in our space. Sister Maxine stepping forward helped to challenge my blind spots. She's not just a sanctuary choir president. She's not just the planner of trips for the seniors. She was a farmer.Debra Rienstra Isn't that remarkable? I think so many churches are full of such talent and passion, and sort of untilled passion, right? That, as you say, we're so focused on church programs, whatever those might be, for a church, that we often don't realize what people are capable of in the service of the name of Jesus, right? So, now you say, when you go to work with a potential partner church, you look for the Sister Maxine.Heber Brown That's right, she's a profile.Debra Rienstra How do you find the Sister Maxines? Everybody wants them.Heber Brown Yeah. Many times, well, one thing I know for sure, I'll say. Sister Maxine is rarely the pastor. It's not the pastor or anybody with the big highfalutin titles up front on the website, on the camera. It's rare. I'll just say that: it's rare, in my experience, that that's your Sister Maxine. They do play a crucial role in the furthering and establishment of this kind of ministry, “innovation,” innovation in air quotes. But Sister Maxine is, in many times, in my experience, that's the one who is recognized as getting things done in the church. And many times, they're almost allergic to attention. They're the ones who are running from the microphone or the spotlight, but they're the ones who prefer, “I'm in the background.” No, they often say things like that: “No, no, that's not for me. I just want to get stuff done. You know, I don't know what to say.” Oftentimes they talk like that. But everybody in the church knows if it's going to get done, this one's going to do it. Or, you know, maybe it's a group, they're going to get it done. And so that's one of the things that I've just trained myself to look for, like, who really is over—you know, when I shake the hand of a pastor, many times I'm looking over their shoulder. Who is behind you? Because what I know is, “Pastor, and no disrespect, but you're not the one who's gonna be with me in the garden on the land. You'll be getting an introduction to the land most times, just like I will be when I first arrive.” Who's the person who already knows it? And then too, I think you find the Sister Maxine by listening. Hearing Sister Maxine's story, and really listening to the fact that she grew up on a farm in North Carolina. And watching her face light up when she talked about growing up, she talked about her parents, and she's since passed away, but I still remember so many conversations we've had. And she would tell me about how her parents would send all the children out to work the farm before they went to school. And she would chuckle and say, “My daddy sent the boys and the girls out there to work that land,” to kind of challenge notions of this is not a woman or a girl's work. Her parents like, “Nope. Everybody get outside.” And she chuckled and laughed and smiled sharing so many of those kinds of memories. And I think you can find the Sister Maxines oftentimes by doing deep listening. And sometimes it's not a Sister Maxine that's really doing the farming thing, but it might be a Sister Maxine who's into herbalism, or, you know, or who has stories about their elders or parents who could walk in the field and put stuff together and tend to a rash or a wound or a bruise. These things might not show up on a resume, but they're in the lines of the stories of the people who are right under our nose. And so maybe I'll just offer it finally, that maybe it's, you know, you find Sister Maxine by doing deep listening.Debra Rienstra Yeah, yeah. Okay, so now you've got a church garden. And it's transforming the congregation. How? What's changing?Heber Brown Well, one of the things that transformed with the congregation was just like the pride. Members of the church was taking pride in what we were doing. You know, we're not a megachurch in the city. Never have been a megachurch. In fact, our church blended in so much in the background of the neighborhood that when I first got to the church, the trustees—really one of the trustees in particular—was really adamant about us needing to build a steeple on top of our building, because the steeple would then indicate to the community that this is a church. And thank God we never got a steeple, but we didn't need it. The garden became the steeple, and the members started taking pictures of the produce they were receiving from the church garden and posting it on their Facebook page, and putting it, you know, sharing it with their families. They began sharing recipes in the congregation related to what we were growing in our garden, and I saw people start coming to our church for worship and programming that were coming because we had a garden.Debra Rienstra Lured by the cabbages.Heber Brown That's it! Not these sermons I worked so hard to put together.Debra RienstraNope. It was the cabbages.Heber Brown I'm trying to say, “You know, this word in the Greek means...” and all this stuff. And I'm trying to, “Hey, y'all, I have a degree!” And I'm trying to show you I have a degree. Like, “no, we're here for cabbage.”Debra Rienstra You just need carrots. So, from there, we become this big network, and there's a lot going on between those steps. So you've got the garden. You start having markets after services on Sunday. What happens next to begin creating this gigantic network?Heber Brown Yeah, so this network, I mean, this activity with our garden continues to grow and mature. We're testing. We develop an appetite for experimentation and a curiosity, and nurturing kind of a congregational curiosity about what could happen, like, what if? What if, what if? And in that kind of context, my “what ifs” also grew to: “What if other churches could do this too?” And what if we could work together to systematize our efforts? And so I was very clear that I was not interested in a scaling of this experience in such a way that would create additional siloed congregational ministries. Like, that's not going to fix and help us get to the root of why we are hungry or sick in the first place. If we're going to, you know, really get at the root of, or some of the root, of the challenges, we have to create an ecosystem. We have to have churches who do it, but also work with other churches who are doing it. And we compliment—like a choir. You got your sopranos, your altos, your tenors, and you got some churches that will do this part well, other churches will do that part well, but if you sing together, you can create beautiful music together. And so that idea started rolling around in my head, and I started talking to farmers and public health professionals here in the city, and other folks, food justice folks in the city, and just kind of getting their reactions to this idea. I had never seen or heard of anything like that before at that time. And so I was just trying to get a read from others who I respected, to kind of give some insight. And in the course of that, this city, Baltimore, experienced an uprising related to the death of Freddie Gray.Debra Rienstra Yeah, this is so interesting, how this became a catalyst. Describe that.Heber Brown It kicked at the uprising and the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore City police officers. And for those who are not familiar, Baltimore City, like many communities around this country, sadly, had experienced a long line of Black people who've been killed by Baltimore City police officers with no consequences to those officers or to government officials who supported them. So Freddie Gray in 2015 was the latest name in a long list of names and generations of Black families who've endured the brutality and the horror of those kinds of experiences. When the city goes up in demonstrations and protests against police brutality against Black people in Baltimore, one of the things that happened was those communities nearest the epicenter of the demonstrations and protests that were already what we call “food apartheid zones” and struggling with food access and food security, those neighborhoods...things intensified because the corner stores that they were dependent on also closed during that time. Public transportation did not send buses through the neighborhood, so they were stranded there. Even the public school system closed for a few days, and 80,000 students in Baltimore City, many of them who were dependent on free breakfast and free lunch from school, had to figure out something else. So with all of that support not there anymore, members of the community started to call our church, because by 2015 we were known kind of like as the “food and garden” church. They got food. It was our calling card. So they called the church office. They said, “Hey, Reverend Brown, Pastor Brown, we need food.” I called our garden team. We harvested from our garden. We called farmers that we knew. Other people just made donation to us. We transformed our church into like this food depot. We started processing donations, harvesting, loaded it up on our church van, and I was driving our church van around the city of Baltimore in the midst of the uprising, getting food to people and into the communities that called us to come.Debra Rienstra Wow, you've done a lot of driving vans around, it seems like. We'll get back to that. But it's just so fascinating that that moment catalyzed, it sounds like, an awareness of food insecurity that made it really real for people who are maybe aware of it, but now it's reached a sort of acute moment. And I love the way that you talked in an interview with Reverend Jen Bailey about how Black churches are already a network. And so that moment, it sounds like, activated that network. And in fact, the way that you talked about the legacy of Black churches having a spiritual vocation connected to social change for a long time, and so many people used to doing things with hardly any obvious resources, like not money or power, and depending on God to make a way out of no way. And it sounds like you just leveraged all of those incredible assets born of years of struggle and said, “We can do this. We can move from being consumers at the whim of systems like this to producers that create food security.” So how did you, you know, sort of leverage those assets and help people understand that they had them?Heber Brown Yeah, I think that what was helpful to me early on was to almost look at the church like, assume the posture of a social scientist. And to almost go up on the balcony of the church and look down on it. Like, just back up and try as best as possible to clean your lenses so you can just look at it. What does it do? What does it care about? What does it prioritize? Like, just really take notes. And that's a part of what I was drawn to do early on, was just: what does Pleasant Hope— and not just Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, but all the churches that we're in relationship with, and all the churches that I knew, being a preacher's kid, my dad still pastors in this city. And so I've grown up in the church, the Black churches of Baltimore and beyond, and so just stepping back and watching to see what it does gave me some curiosities, some clues, some tips and hints, like: wow, if it already does that, then if I can just run downfield a little bit and get in the path of where I know it's about to come, then potentially it could make what it's going to do anyway even more impactful. So an example is: pastors' anniversary or church anniversary services always have food in the picture. You're going to eat. And you don't have to be a Black—that's any church. You're going to eat throughout the year. It's a part of the practice of the faith. If you can run downfield and get in front of where you know the congregation is about to come—because church anniversary is the same Sunday every single year. And you can reverse-engineer like, at what point will the church need to buy food? At what point do they need to decide where they get the food from? At what point is the budget decided for the following year so they see how much money they're going to spend on food. If you can get in and kind of almost double dutch into those critical moments, like jump rope, and be like, “If I make this suggestion at this particular moment, then it's going to introduce something into the conversation with the trustees that might increase the amount of money spent on food that we then could use to connect with this particular farmer, which we then can use to connect with the kitchen ministry, who they can then use to create the menu for the meal.” And before you know it, you have a plate with local food right in front of everybody's faces at the church.Debra Rienstra You have said that after the pulpit, the second holiest place in the building is the kitchen.Heber Brown It really...honest to God, is the second, and it's a close second too, because everybody can't walk into that kitchen. And if you can strategize and think about how to leverage the stuff, the assets, but also your knowledge of how this entity operates, it could really be transformative.Here we are, chatting at the greenhouse. Debra RienstraHi, it's me, Debra. If you are enjoying this podcast episode, go ahead and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. If you have a minute, leave a review. Good reviews help more listeners discover this podcast. To keep up with all the Refugia news, I invite you to subscribe to the Refugia newsletter on Substack. This is my fortnightly newsletter for people of faith who care about the climate crisis and want to go deeper. Every two weeks, I feature climate news, deeper dives, refugia sightings and much more. Join our community at refugianewsletter.substack.com. For even more goodies, including transcripts and show notes for this podcast, check out my website at debrarienstra.com. D-E-B-R-A-R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A dot com. Thanks so much for listening. We're glad you're part of this community. And now back to the interview.Debra Rienstra You've really asked people to go back in the system to origins, like the origins of the soil, and think about the provenance of everything they eat—in the church, but also at home and and say, “Well, why can't we help Black farmers find markets for their food by creating this whole network?” Talk a little bit about what the network actually looks like. So you've got farmers, they create produce, and then you go with a truck, and sounds like it's all you! You go with a truck, bring their stuff to a church. So explain how that all works now in the larger network.Heber Brown Yeah, so now, after getting our official start ten years ago, so I started 15 years ago on this journey. The network itself, this is the tenth year. 2025 is our ten year anniversary. And now what our network looks like is helping member churches to start gardens on land that they own. We are very clear about starting on garden-owned—sorry, on church-owned land, just because in this kind of context, gentrification, eminent domain, that's real. You got Black communities who don't know if their land or property will be taken because a highway needs to be built here. And we don't, we've not tapped into, or don't have the sense of agency, collective agency, yet to push back against those kinds of things. And so church-owned land really is important because it creates some political buffers against systems that would be hesitant to snatch church land. Just politically, it's not a good idea. So knowing that about the political environment, that they don't want to mess with—they want votes from congregations. They don't want to, you know—congregations coming after them is like, “Oh, okay, well, let's grow food on the land that is less likely to be taken by politicians or developers.” And so we help churches to start gardens or agricultural projects. It might be composting, it might be rain barrels. It might be, you know, different types of things to either establish it or to expand it. And our gardens really become like a front door. It's a demonstration site. You're not going to feed an entire city or community with a church garden, but it becomes an activation space for your congregation members and the neighbors to come and reap the personal, individual benefits of just being closer to soil, but then also to practice what collectivism looks like in a garden space. It's a very controlled environment for a laboratory, for, “How do we do this together?” And those learners can roll over into other places as well.Heber Brown So gardens is one thing. Markets, Black farmers markets. We do them at churches. We like to do it on Sundays right after worship, when people are hungry anyway. We like putting those farmers right there before people get to their car. We want to make it feel like a family reunion, a cookout in your backyard, a holiday gathering. There's a DJ, we're line dancing, there's prepared food, and there's produce, games for the children. So kind of an event experience. It's really fun. It's an experience, you know? And that's what we really try to do with that program. It's not just transactional, “Here is your squash.” It's: let's give people a nourishing experience that even goes beyond the food that the farmers are bringing. And then we do Black farm tours, where we're driving people around to kind of literally get your feet on soil. And it's become an increasing request of groups and churches that many times they don't even know there are farmers right under their nose, like right around the corner. We're so disconnected from our local food environments. So Black farm tours are helpful. And then what you reference, with respect to driving food around—it's almost like, I've called it the BCSA program. It's kind of a play off of “CSA: Community Supported Agriculture,” like the subscription box program. Black Church Supported Agriculture looks like us helping farmers with the logistics of getting bulk items from their farm to congregations. And yes, over these past ten years, I have done a lot of the driving of refrigerated trucks and box trucks. It's been my joy, though, to do that. It's been a sanctuary for me, even while pastoring. I mean, so I'm preaching on Sunday, and then I'm delivering sweet potatoes on Monday, and like, behind the wheel of a big box truck. I love that kind of stuff, just because it helps me be feel free to explore my call beyond just more conventional, classic understandings of what it means to be a clergy person. So it's been great for me to experience that, but ten years in, it is increasingly important that I get from behind the wheel and pass the keys to somebody else, so that we might really systematize it, because if it stays with me, this network won't go far at all.Debra Rienstra Yeah. Okay, so I want to read a quote from you, and then I want to ask a question about that very thing. So you put it before that your vision is to move people from being—and this is my summary—your vision is to move people from being disadvantaged consumers to confident producers, and that means, and here's your quote, “co-creating alternative micro food systems, not just because of the racism and the oppression in the current food system, but also because of the impending challenges around climate change, the growing concerns around geopolitics, and, at the time you said this, Covid-19, which showed us how fragile our current food system is.” So the Black Food Security Network is wrapped up in health justice, food security, climate resilience. Do you have ways of communicating all of that to people? Are the folks who are buying the carrots and the kale aware of all that? And if so, how are they aware of all that?Heber Brown Yeah, many. I mean, this food is a very political thing, and so it sets a good table for conversations around all of that and so much more that you just lifted up. And so there are many one-on-one conversations or small group conversations or online, you know, conversations that happen where people do recognize the implications of what we're doing. Yeah, that goes far beyond your next meal. And so that is helpful. I am definitely interested, though, in how we do more in the way of communicating that. I would love to see, for example, Sunday school curricula created that kind of takes—again, if I'm looking at how churches operate today, Christian education programs are one of the things that have been on the church budget and in the air of the programming of the church for a very long time, and I suspect it's going to stay there. How do we inject it with Sunday school curriculum that fits? So climate change, racism, social justice, food justice. How do we have Sunday school curriculum, vacation Bible school and summer camp experiences that speak to that? How might we reimagine our Sunday live streams? Is anybody really watching the full one hour of your live stream on Sunday? Could it be that we could produce programming that perhaps pops in on a piece of the sermon, but then pops out to another segment that touches on these different things, so that people really have a dynamic experience watching? Maybe there's one stream of the Sunday service that stays just on the whole service, but maybe there's an alternative link for those who may be closer to the outer edges or different edges of the ministry, who's really not interested in hearing the church announcements and when the tea is gonna be and when the that...Maybe, if we thought about how to create material, curriculum, streamed experiences that are a little bit more dynamic, it would also create a runway for the sharing of those. And last thing I'll say is: what about our small group and discipleship programs at our churches? And so many congregations have book clubs and small group studies that have done wonderful things over the years. I wonder if there could be, in addition to those kinds of groups, where there's an action component. So we don't read just for the sake of reading. We read to reflect. We read to be activated to go do, and then we come back and reflect, and then we read the next thing, and then we go do, and then come back—a praxis. Could our small group and discipleship programs embrace a different kind of praxis, or for how they are experimenting with the practice of this faith in this day and time?Debra Rienstra “Okay, let's pause and go out to weed a little bit.” There you go. So one of the things I love about your story is the way you began with this—we could call it a “low-resource refugia space,” one congregation. And I'm curious how things feel different now. So ideally, refugia in nature persist and grow, connect and spread through corridors, and eventually you have this renewed ecosystem. So the Black Food Security Network is essentially a successful refugia network. You've created an ecosystem. What feels different now for you and for the whole network? You've been at this a long time.Heber Brown What feels different now? So I was thinking this week about the rhythm of nature, and in my personal embrace of this vocation, I try to mirror and mimic nature in a number of ways. And so like during winter, you won't hear me a lot. I'm doing what nature does, and the energy is in the roots and not in the fruit. And I don't take a lot of interviews. I don't travel a lot. I get real still and real quiet. And during the spring, I start poking my head out a little bit more. During the summer, it's go time. During the fall, it's harvest time. So I look at that personally, but now I'm also beginning to look at that organizationally, and with respect to this network. And I'm saying, I'm intentionally saying “organization” and “network” separate. With respect to the organization, I am clearer today, as we go through the life cycles of what nature does, that I now have the opportunity, and the responsibility even, to till the soil again in the organization. And a part of that tilling of the soil, turning the soil over, means me renegotiating my position in the organization. That out of necessity, I leaned into a role that, for the past decade, I've been organizing and bringing things together, but I recognize, and I always have, my highest and best use is really not in the management of the day to day operations of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. My skills are not as sharp in all of the ways that would continue to cultivate that kind of consistency and efficiencies in an organization. And so currently, I am working as hard as I can and as fast as I can to get out of positions that I've been holding, particularly with the executive director. This is not going to be overnight, but I'm articulating it and saying it out loud to help remind myself, remind my team, and also make it more real. I'm speaking it into—I'm manifesting it through my words that if the organization is to continue to grow and flourish. I can't stay in this role.Debra Rienstra Okay, you want to go back to the soil.Heber Brown Right here. For those who are listening, we're sitting at one of our member gardens, and this is where I belong. I still, I will obviously still have a role with the organization. I'm not leaving. But maybe there's a different configuration. Maybe I become more of a John the Baptist. I'm just going out, and I go out and I'm preaching in the wilderness about, and painting the picture, about the necessity of this stuff. And then after that, after I paint the picture, get folks excited, show them that it's real, help them in the early stages—I love talking about the early stages and my failures and all that kind of stuff. And then pass the baton. Once these congregations are activated and energized and ready, at some point very soon, passing the baton to those in the organization who will continue to work with them to mentor them and grow them. And then with the network as a whole, you know, going around and being like a people pollinator—that's what I really feel called to. I want to grow food, and I want to go around and people-pollinate. I want to introduce people. I want to connect folks. I think that's part of my highest use in the network, which will demand a renegotiation of how I show up in the organization.Debra Rienstra Yeah, yeah, because you've talked all along about how important relationships are in making this. It's always person to person, always about relationships. Yeah. So is the network right now fundamentally built on congregations, still? Like it's a network of congregations plus farmers.Heber Brown It's a network of congregations and it's a network of relationships with farmers. We really, over the years, one of the developments that we had over the past maybe year and a half or so, was that really the sweet spot of what we do well is work with Black congregations. That's what we do well. Black farmers, because of a century of discrimination and so many other systemic injustices against them—they need a high level of advocacy, technical assistance, support, financing, et cetera. And we really came to a place about a year and a half ago where we realized...before that point we were trying to help the churches and the farmers. I was like, no, it's enough getting a church to change one small thing, seemingly small thing. How are you going to do churches and farmers? And so a clarity around—what is the sweet spot of what we do well, and where's the thing that others are not doing as much? There are a lot of organizations now, thankfully, that give a lot of support to farmers in general and Black farmers in particular. We don't need to try to be the experts there. We can just be again in a relationship with those organizations that do that with the farmers, and just make sure that we're dancing well together in how, “If y'all help the farmers and we help the churches, now we bring together what our advocacy, organizing and programming can look like.” And so right now, it's congregations, and we're trying to increase our ability to serve our congregations well.Debra Rienstra Yeah, so that's refugia-like, too, in the sense that refugia are very particular to a species in a place, and when they spread and grow through corridors, the biodiversity increases. So you know, you're building, as you say, this ecosystem, and it naturally, you would have biodiversity increase, but there's still going to be specialized pockets. Okay, lightning round. and then a final question. Lightning round, what's your favorite veg?Heber BrownFirst thing that came up...oh man, that's a lot. Nevermind. I'm gonna go with kale. Stay with my kale.Debra RienstraKale! Okay. I'd have to say carrots for me, because they're so versatile. And they last a long time.Heber Brown I've had carrot hot dogs. I'm vegetarian, and so I've had carrot hot dogs. They are really good.Debra Rienstra Okay, so I wanted to ask you about being a vegetarian, because this is essentially the South, right? It is so meat centric. I'm vegetarian too. It is hard to find something to eat. How do you do that?Heber Brown Yes, yes.Debra RienstraWhat do you do about like, pork barbecue?Heber BrownYeah. So a lot of things—social functions and fellowships—I know I have to eat beforehand or bring my own food. And so that's what I do to kind of get through. It's like, I'm not going for the plate, I'm going for the people.Debra Rienstra Macaroni and cheese works.Heber Brown Mac and cheese still works a lot. So the sides—all the sides, I'm good on the sides.Debra Rienstra Yeah, me too. Most impressive farm skill?Heber Brown Attracting labor to help.Debra Rienstra That's a huge skill!Heber Brown Huge, huge huge. I'm still learning. I went to beginner farm school, and I'm still learning the farm stuff, and I'm excited about it, but I'm grateful that God has gifted me to get folks to show up to him.Debra Rienstra Unappreciated farm skill. Okay. Elderberry syrup for communion. Talk about that.Heber Brown When we all get to heaven, I think Jesus will be serving elderberry syrup. It's like, no, I'm playing. Yeah, that was one of those experimentations.Debra Rienstra Did it work?Heber Brown It worked! And then the next week, Covid hit and shut down. So we were just beginning. I partnered with an herbalist who was gonna—and she also was a baker, so she was gonna be doing fresh bread and elderberry syrup every communion Sunday. The day we did this, she was in the church kitchen, baking the bread, and the smell of bread is just going through the congregation. And I knew she had the elderberry syrup in this big, beautiful container. And so it was such a beautiful moment. And I was so jazzed about...I was jazzed about that, not only because the bread was good and like children were coming back for seconds for communion bread, but also because I felt like with the elderberry syrup and the bread, that it was in deeper alignment with our ethics and what we preached.Debra Rienstra It's better sacramentalism. Because, you know, as you've been saying all along, it's not consuming an element of unknown provenance. It's producing. It's the fruit of human labor, right? It's the work of God, the gift of the earth, and the fruit of human labor. And it's labor you've had your actual hands on. So it's a lot to ask for churches to do this, but it's, you know, one of these small experiments with radical intent that could be really, really cool.Heber Brown And I think in a time when congregations, well, I'm thinking about trustee ministries, those who are over financial resources of the church, right? So one of the ways that it worked at my church was, I was like, “Listen, I noticed in our financial reports here that we're spending X amount on buying these boxes of these pre-made communion cups. What if we could take some of the money we're already spending and divert it to an herbalist who could grow, who could make us the syrup that we need, and what if we can do it that way?” And so I had to speak to that particular ministry, not from the perspective of like the earth and the soil, but in a language that I thought that they could better appreciate was dollars and cents.Debra Rienstra Yeah, keeping those dollars local. Oh my gosh. Okay. Final question: what is your vision for the Church, capital C, in the next 50 years?Heber Brown That we'd be baptized back into the soil. That Scripture speaks about the ways in which we are brought from the soil, and God breathed into Adam, the breath of life. And I think there's more of the breath of life now back in the soil, if we would but release ourselves into the compost of what is happening socially now that we would be in a position where new life, resurrection, would be experienced in a different kind of way through our ministry.Debra Rienstra Heber, thank you so much. This was such a pleasure. Thank you for your time today. Thank you.Debra Rienstra Thanks for joining us for show notes and full transcripts, please visit debrarienstra.com and click on the Refugia Podcast tab. This season of the Refugia Podcast is produced with generous funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Colin Hoogerwerf is our awesome audio producer. Thanks to Ron Rienstra for content consultation as well as technical and travel support. Till next time, be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit refugianewsletter.substack.com

In 1981, the music world was still riding the wave of disco's afterglow while carving out the sounds that would define the decade. Rock was dominant on the charts, with bands like Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Foreigner packing arenas, while new wave acts such as The Go-Go's and Duran Duran were beginning to reshape pop with synthesizers and bright, punchy hooks. MTV hadn't launched yet—that would come in August of '81—so radio play and word of mouth still ruled how fans discovered music. It was a year where the classic rock giants coexisted with the fresh sounds of new wave, setting the stage for an explosion of styles in the 80s. Fast-forward to 1991, and the landscape looked completely different. Grunge had crashed onto the scene with Nirvana's Nevermind, turning the polished glam metal of the late 80s into yesterday's news almost overnight. Hip-hop was no longer underground—it was chart-topping, with acts like Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest pushing boundaries while mainstream rap stars like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice were everywhere. Meanwhile, pop was thriving with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Boyz II Men dominating radio. Unlike 1981, when MTV was just getting started, by 1991 music videos were the cultural centerpiece, shaping not just what people heard but what they wore and how they acted. This week, Dave and Rob will be looking at both years side by side, comparing the sounds, the trends, and the artists who defined each moment in music history. Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/totally-80s-and-90s-recall/PC:1001051135    Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/totally-80s-and-90s-recall/id1662282694    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/11dk5TUoLUk4euD1Te1EYG?si=b37496eb6e784408    Playlists:   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jDvx5w8Z0fp9xcUnMiCrH?si=0DsqLrf5SW-ZQn4u3T365A    Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/1981-vs-1991/pl.u-11zB9K3SZmL1YD?ls   Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/user-playlists/8b422db4d9a54d28972d42d29cfee4c2sune?marketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_KgtOxow0o0LBuKeMECH3Ml5LM     Contact Us: Website: https://totally80s90srecall.podbean.com/  Email: 80s90srecall@gmail.com LinkTree:https://linktr.ee/80s90srecall