Podcasts about spurned

On the morning of January 15, 1947, a woman walking with her young daughter spotted something pale and white lying in the weeds of a vacant lot. When the woman walked closer to get a better look, she made a horrifying discovery: the bisected body of a young woman, brutally murdered and like trash in the abandoned overgrown lot. The woman in the lot would soon be identified as twenty-two-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, who the press nicknamed “The Black Dahlia.” Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1947. "Mrs. Phoebe Short can't believe slain girl hers." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 17: 2.Bartlett, Jim. 2017. The Black Dahlia: Los Angeles' most famous unsolved murder. January 8. Accessed January 14, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38513320.Daily News. 1947. "Body of girl mutilated by murderer." Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), January 15: 1.Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1947. Correspondence, Identification Division, FBI. Letter from R.B. Hood, SAC to Director Hoover, re: Black Dahlia identification, Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice.Gilmore, John. 1994. Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia. Gardena, CA: Zanja Press.Goffard, Christopher. 2024. "The killing of Elizabeth Short, dubbed the Black Dahlia, has inspired endless theories." Los Angeles Times, October 26: B1.Hodel, Steve. 2003. Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing.Lait, Matt. 1991. "Memories of murder." Los Angeles Times, June 22: B1.—. 1991. "Search fails to turn up evidence of '47 murder." Los Angeles Times, June 23: B1.Los Angeles Times. 1947. "Beth Short slaying suspect jailed after asserted admission of crime." Los Angeles Times, January 29: 2.—. 1947. "'Black Dahlia' knife braggart terroizes girl." Los Angeles Times, February 5: 7.—. 1947. "'Black Dahlia's' love life traced in search for her fiendish murderer." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 18: 3.—. 1947. "'Dahlia' clues fail; inquest conducted." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 23: 2.—. 1947. "Elizabeth Short case slayer baffles police." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 31: 2.—. 1947. "Girl victim of sex fiend found slain." Los Angeles Times, January 16: 2.—. 2004. "Janice Knowlton claimed a link to Black Dahlia murder." Los Angeles Times, December 19: B7.—. 1947. "'Killer' fails to surrender in Elizabeth Short death." Los Angeles Times, January 30: 2.—. 1947. "Mystery envelope sent in 'Dahlia' case; address book gives dozens of fresh leads." Los Angeles Times, January 25: 3.—. 1947. "Police await second 'Dahlia' letter for clue to break murder case." Los Angeles Times, January 27: 2.—. 1947. "Police free red-haired salesman as suspect in 'Black Dahlia' murder." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 21: 2.—. 1947. "Police stumped in beauty killing." Los Angeles Times, February 2: 2.—. 1947. "Soldier's 'Dahlia' date tale newest clue in slaying." Los Angeles Times, February 6: 2.—. 1947. "Soldier's leave time checked in 'Dahlia' murder." Los Angeles Times, February 7: 2.—. 1947. "Suspect detained for questioning in 'Black Dahlia' mutilation murder." Los Angeles Times, January 20: 2.—. 1947. "Tooth cavities clue checked in beauty slaying." Los Angeles Times, February 4: 2.Nightingale, Suzan. 1982. "Author claims to have found 1947 murderer." Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Janaury 17.United Press. 1947. "'Sick' veteran is booked in Dahlia death." Fresno Bee, January 29: 1.—. 1947. "Spurned lover is hunted in murder of 'Black Dahlia'." Fresno Bee, January 17: 1.—. 1947. "L.A. Police hope Dahliua murderer will surrender." Sacramento Bee, January 28: 4.Weller, Sheila. 2015. "The sins of the father." Dujour, June 01.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the morning of January 15, 1947, a woman walking with her young daughter spotted something pale and white lying in the weeds of a vacant lot. When the woman walked closer to get a better look, she made a horrifying discovery: the bisected body of a young woman, brutally murdered and like trash in the abandoned overgrown lot. The woman in the lot would soon be identified as twenty-two-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, who the press nicknamed “The Black Dahlia.” Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1947. "Mrs. Phoebe Short can't believe slain girl hers." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 17: 2.Bartlett, Jim. 2017. The Black Dahlia: Los Angeles' most famous unsolved murder. January 8. Accessed January 14, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38513320.Daily News. 1947. "Body of girl mutilated by murderer." Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), January 15: 1.Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1947. Correspondence, Identification Division, FBI. Letter from R.B. Hood, SAC to Director Hoover, re: Black Dahlia identification, Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice.Gilmore, John. 1994. Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia. Gardena, CA: Zanja Press.Goffard, Christopher. 2024. "The killing of Elizabeth Short, dubbed the Black Dahlia, has inspired endless theories." Los Angeles Times, October 26: B1.Hodel, Steve. 2003. Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder. New York, NY: Arcade Publishing.Lait, Matt. 1991. "Memories of murder." Los Angeles Times, June 22: B1.—. 1991. "Search fails to turn up evidence of '47 murder." Los Angeles Times, June 23: B1.Los Angeles Times. 1947. "Beth Short slaying suspect jailed after asserted admission of crime." Los Angeles Times, January 29: 2.—. 1947. "'Black Dahlia' knife braggart terroizes girl." Los Angeles Times, February 5: 7.—. 1947. "'Black Dahlia's' love life traced in search for her fiendish murderer." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 18: 3.—. 1947. "'Dahlia' clues fail; inquest conducted." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 23: 2.—. 1947. "Elizabeth Short case slayer baffles police." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 31: 2.—. 1947. "Girl victim of sex fiend found slain." Los Angeles Times, January 16: 2.—. 2004. "Janice Knowlton claimed a link to Black Dahlia murder." Los Angeles Times, December 19: B7.—. 1947. "'Killer' fails to surrender in Elizabeth Short death." Los Angeles Times, January 30: 2.—. 1947. "Mystery envelope sent in 'Dahlia' case; address book gives dozens of fresh leads." Los Angeles Times, January 25: 3.—. 1947. "Police await second 'Dahlia' letter for clue to break murder case." Los Angeles Times, January 27: 2.—. 1947. "Police free red-haired salesman as suspect in 'Black Dahlia' murder." Los Angeles Times, Janaury 21: 2.—. 1947. "Police stumped in beauty killing." Los Angeles Times, February 2: 2.—. 1947. "Soldier's 'Dahlia' date tale newest clue in slaying." Los Angeles Times, February 6: 2.—. 1947. "Soldier's leave time checked in 'Dahlia' murder." Los Angeles Times, February 7: 2.—. 1947. "Suspect detained for questioning in 'Black Dahlia' mutilation murder." Los Angeles Times, January 20: 2.—. 1947. "Tooth cavities clue checked in beauty slaying." Los Angeles Times, February 4: 2.Nightingale, Suzan. 1982. "Author claims to have found 1947 murderer." Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Janaury 17.United Press. 1947. "'Sick' veteran is booked in Dahlia death." Fresno Bee, January 29: 1.—. 1947. "Spurned lover is hunted in murder of 'Black Dahlia'." Fresno Bee, January 17: 1.—. 1947. "L.A. Police hope Dahliua murderer will surrender." Sacramento Bee, January 28: 4.Weller, Sheila. 2015. "The sins of the father." Dujour, June 01.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Another year, another Christmas Special! We've scraped the barrel of festive ideas and selected Love Actually, the "greatest Christmas movie of all time", as the unfortunate premise of this year's audio horrorshow. In this edition, Ross G will be asking questions that are very loosely based on the Richard Curtis classic, with answers from Ross D, Anna and Owen. Including: In Love Actually, grumpy husband Alan Rickman gets into trouble when he buys a necklace for a woman who isn't his wife. If you were to buy a gold necklace for another profession, other than L&D, what would it be and why? Creepy romantic Andrew Lincoln spends Love Actually pining after Keira Knightley: The wife of his best friend. What aspect of L&D do you secretly love, but know that you can never be involved with? Spurned husband Colin Firth spends Love Actually learning Portuguese to be with the woman he loves. What L&D language do you plan on spending the Christmas season learning? Aging rocker Bill Nighy performs his single 'Christmas Is All Around Me' naked on TV, to celebrate it taking the Christmas Number 1 spot. What's your great ambition for 2025? During the discussion, Ross D referenced our newsletter 'Every learning intervention you design should be award-worthy' Ross G referenced the Mitchell & Webb sketch 'Are we the baddies?' Anna recommended our 'critical thinking' Skill Bite course. The papers Anna discussed were: Carter, J. W., & Youssef-Morgan, C. (2022). Psychological capital development effectiveness of face-to-face, online, and Micro-learning interventions. Education and Information Technologies, 27(5), 6553-6575. Carpenter, S. K., Pan, S. C., & Butler, A. C. (2022). The science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 496-511. In 'What I Learned This Week', Ross D revealed a shocking truth about Darlene Love's 'All Alone On Christmas'. Ross G recommended A Christmas Carol, as read by Hugh Grant. For more from us, including details of our new Manager Skill Builder, visit mindtools.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.   Connect with our speakers    If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn: Ross Garner Owen Ferguson Dr Anna Barnett Ross Dickie

Branding is big in contemporary political campaigns. But some candidates are going to odd lengths to appeal to women in 2024. We’ll explain. Plus, the wave of new state voting laws since 2020 has the potential to dramatically reshape ballot access in the 2024 election. And we’ll weigh in on the doomsday prepping economy and “fridgescaping” during a round of Half Full/Half Empty! Here’s everything we talked about today: “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives” from The New York Times “In the tightest states, new voting laws could tip the outcome in November” from Stateline “Battleground State Removes Nearly 10 Percent of Voters for Being Ineligible” from Newsweek “VoteFlare's mission to upgrade voter communication” from Marketplace “In uncertain times, the prepper supply business is booming” from Marketplace “Spurned by Social Media, Publishers Chase Readers on WhatsApp” from The New York Times “Southwest may need to change the perks that made customers loyal” from Marketplace “Earth will capture ‘second moon’ this weekend, scientists say” from Space “The pros and cons of fridgescaping your refrigerator” from The Washington Post New artist-designed Marketplace sweatshirts are half off this weekend! Invest in Marketplace and get yours: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn

Branding is big in contemporary political campaigns. But some candidates are going to odd lengths to appeal to women in 2024. We’ll explain. Plus, the wave of new state voting laws since 2020 has the potential to dramatically reshape ballot access in the 2024 election. And we’ll weigh in on the doomsday prepping economy and “fridgescaping” during a round of Half Full/Half Empty! Here’s everything we talked about today: “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives” from The New York Times “In the tightest states, new voting laws could tip the outcome in November” from Stateline “Battleground State Removes Nearly 10 Percent of Voters for Being Ineligible” from Newsweek “VoteFlare's mission to upgrade voter communication” from Marketplace “In uncertain times, the prepper supply business is booming” from Marketplace “Spurned by Social Media, Publishers Chase Readers on WhatsApp” from The New York Times “Southwest may need to change the perks that made customers loyal” from Marketplace “Earth will capture ‘second moon’ this weekend, scientists say” from Space “The pros and cons of fridgescaping your refrigerator” from The Washington Post New artist-designed Marketplace sweatshirts are half off this weekend! Invest in Marketplace and get yours: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn

Branding is big in contemporary political campaigns. But some candidates are going to odd lengths to appeal to women in 2024. We’ll explain. Plus, the wave of new state voting laws since 2020 has the potential to dramatically reshape ballot access in the 2024 election. And we’ll weigh in on the doomsday prepping economy and “fridgescaping” during a round of Half Full/Half Empty! Here’s everything we talked about today: “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives” from The New York Times “In the tightest states, new voting laws could tip the outcome in November” from Stateline “Battleground State Removes Nearly 10 Percent of Voters for Being Ineligible” from Newsweek “VoteFlare's mission to upgrade voter communication” from Marketplace “In uncertain times, the prepper supply business is booming” from Marketplace “Spurned by Social Media, Publishers Chase Readers on WhatsApp” from The New York Times “Southwest may need to change the perks that made customers loyal” from Marketplace “Earth will capture ‘second moon’ this weekend, scientists say” from Space “The pros and cons of fridgescaping your refrigerator” from The Washington Post New artist-designed Marketplace sweatshirts are half off this weekend! Invest in Marketplace and get yours: https://support.marketplace.org/smart-sn

Williams speaks with Noel Russel on his new book 'The Saved and the Spurned'.

The Uncommitted Movement is strong, committed, and not going anywhere. Listen as Aaron and Damien discuss the piece “Spurned by the DNC, the Uncommitted Movement Staged a Sit-in” by Eman Abdelhadi in In These Times, which analyzes the Democratic National Convention's decision to refuse to allow a vetted speech by a Palestinian to be given on the DNC stage, and outlines what the Uncommitted Movement is fighting for in the context of this election, Israel and Palestine, and beyond, and what we learn and take away from this piece in our continued work for collective liberation. Follow us on social media and visit our website! Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Leave us a voice message⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch store⁠⁠

Join Andy, Craig and Daniel as they talk about Aston Villa's return to Villa Park, Matty Cash's injury, Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers, the last few days of the transfer window and upcoming games starting with Leicester.Gather 'Round The Lamp is a podcast by Under A Gaslit Lamp, an opinion-based blog covering Aston Villa Football Club. You can read some of the latest articles available at www.underagaslitlamp.com.Want to get in touch? You can email us via contact@underagaslitlamp.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this short podcast and video, I discuss ideas that could potentially address self-devaluation conflicts.  Spurned by an article I read entitled, "How To Like Yourself More," I delve into the biological sense of self-devaluations/loss of self-esteem plus my own practices to address this unique set of biological programs.

A two-time national title-winning coach is staying put after agreeing to a new deal. Correspondent Gethin Coolbaugh has the story.

The Lakers get turned down by Buddy Hield...or did they? Plus Trevor Lane opens up the mailbag to discuss a wide variety of trade questions, including one trade that just makes too much sense not to get done... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Returning to our debut topic, we dig into the 2004 attempt to keep the Gladiator train going, Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Joined by super-special guest Joel Christensen (of Sententiae Antiquae fame), we revisit this oddly situated film. Spurned by many, beloved by some, and forgotten by most, this film sits at an interesting crossroads in Hollywood and classical reception. Is it a secret masterpiece? Probably not. Is it an interesting mirror of what had and was yet to come? Definitely. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Returning to our debut topic, we dig into the 2004 attempt to keep the Gladiator train going, Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. Joined by super-special guest Joel Christensen (of Sententiae Antiquae fame), we revisit this oddly situated film. Spurned by many, beloved by some, and forgotten by most, this film sits at an interesting crossroads in Hollywood and classical reception. Is it a secret masterpiece? Probably not. Is it an interesting mirror of what had and was yet to come? Definitely.

#StateThinking: President Biden romances the previously spurned MBS  @MaryKissel Former Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State. Executive VP Stephens Inc. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2024/05/29/the-weapon-saudi-arabia-might-buy-if-it-secures-defense-pact-with-us/?sh=4cb49e935354 1926 KING SAUD

Don't let the end of Part 10 fool you. There's still a lot more going on! The longer title for this Epilogue is as follows: The Good Sparrow, the Bad Psychic & the Ugly Truth. 1. Part 10 Recap 2. Intro to Epilogue 3. Scene 1 - The Dull Sound of Chaos 4. Scene 2 - Those Unjustly Spurned 5. Scene 3 - By the Old Pear Tree 6. Scene 4 - Bloodless on the Road 7. Scene 5 - Finding an Angle 8. Behind-the-Scenes discussion with the Cast* *The BTS chat is Patreon-exclusive. Patrons will find it in the version of the Epilogue posted on the Private RSS Feed Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/unchartednorth⁠ Network: ⁠https://www.unchartednorth.ca⁠ Merch: ⁠https://unchartednorth.com/shop⁠ Socials ______________________________________ Discord: ⁠https://unchartednorth.com/discord⁠ Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@unchartedno⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/unchartedno⁠ Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/unchartedno⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/unchartedno⁠ Threads: ⁠https://www.threads.net/@unchartedno⁠ Reddit: ⁠https://www.reddit.com/r/UnchartedNorth⁠   Credits _______________________________________ Music by Will Savino: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/musicd20/posts⁠ SFX by Epidemic Sound: ⁠https://www.epidemicsound.com⁠ Maps by Narchy: ⁠https://gitlab.com/narchy-maps⁠ Artwork by GrayHood: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/grayhood⁠   Abomination Vaults by Paizo Inc.: https://paizo.com/ "Stemming the Tide" uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., used under Paizo's Community Use Policy (paizo.com/communityuse). We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. "Stemming the Tide" is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, visit paizo.com.

Didn't Ice Cube drop one of the greatest dis songs of all time in his joint "No Vasline" back in October 1991? More importantly, he himself famously spit, "...now let's play big bank take little bank..." to describe his takedown of his former group N.W.A. Cube thought his departure from the trailblazing Compton crew would ultimately hurt the quality of their music, as well as their potential earnings. As the all-time great rapper continues to fight for his professional basketball league BIG3, he's now bewildered that the NBA isn't onboard with his brand of half-court ball having a lucrative future. Not at the expense of the Association's cement market share! Now Cube, via his BIG3 co-owner Jeff Kwatinetz's Outkick hit-piece article, throws another flurry at the NBA and white men who had to have dissuaded the WNBA-bound Caitlin Clark from taking eight figures for two seasons under the BIG3 banner. Sorry but Wood sees both Cube and Kwatinetz's arguments as tantamount to boxer Ryan Garcia's recent dirty dealings with Devin Haney in their April 20, 2024 "championship" boxing showdown where Garcia skirted the contract - as well as boxing professionalism.

Four scientists find their mission led astray, by paradise.Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Forward:In the beginning, defiance led to rejection and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Our species was transported to the parallel universe we've now occupied for several millennia. Legends of that previous world have been handed down to us, along with various elaborations and moral lessons.If we could only access that previous world. A world designed for our inclusion. Does it exist? Is it yet flourishing in our absence? Can we gain a second chance to rejoin Eden?Sally joins an expeditionary team. You know, the job of a scientist is not always easy, but it’s usually pretty rewarding. I’ve helped discover new species of plants and animals, and I derived a number of medicinal properties from my discoveries, too. I’m a naturalist and explorer.But, sometimes I think existence has an absolutely weird sense of humor. How else could I possibly explain the misadventures my team's had this past week? I mean, where do I even begin to explain all this craziness?We were on the trail of an extremely elusive lemur species on Madagascar when my teammate Brad stumbled into a burrow of some kind.“Shit!” he shrieked, his leg sinking calf deep in an extremely well disguised hole. I rushed over.“Oh man! Are you hurt?” I crouched behind him, putting my arms around his chest, hooked under his pits. I used my legs to try and pry him out of the hole. Our other team members, Marty and Mindy, rushed over to help.“I don’t think it’s injured, I was just really fucking surprised.” He began shifting his weight pushing back with his free leg. “Damn, this hole is deep! What makes burrows like this out here?”“What’s the angle like?” Mindy asked. “Most everything in this area are tree-dwellers,”“It’s weird, it’s straight down,” Brad said, “and it’s like there's nothing below, nothing on all sides. I’m only being squeezed right here at the calf.” He pointed to the section of leg we could actually see touching earth.“That is super weird,” I grunted, still pulling. He was coming loose. “But maybe, it was just a hollow that got buried by, a storm, or shifting ground. No biggie.” Marty threw himself into a crouch and aided me by wrapping his arms around my middle.“On my count,” he said. “One, two, three!” we both pulled, throwing our weight collectively into the effort.“It’s working!” Brad said happily. “My leg’s coming free.” After a couple of minutes of combined work, Marty and I got him out and we all fell back in a heap.“Whew!” I grunted. "Brad, your leg ok? Let’s see.“ Pulling away from the hole, Brad rolled up his pant leg and removed his boot. No blood, no bad scratches. It didn’t look twisted, and I saw no swelling."Looks good, Sally,” he told me. “Doesn’t hurt but I could just be pumping with adrenaline. I’ll give it a few.”“Good idea,” I nodded. “Let’s all take ten. Our little kerfuffle probably scared off everything within fifty yards anyway.” My team settled down and busted out water and some snacks. Tromping through rainforest looking for tiny primates was hot, thirsty work.“I kinda want to take a look at this hole,” Mindy said, walking cautiously toward it. “Could be a nest, could be just an odd patch of hollow ground.”“Yeah, let’s poke around a little,” I replied, after taking a gulp of my canteen. “If it’s not an animal den maybe we could fill it up, just so no one else stumbles in and gets hurt.” Mindy put herself on her belly and inched over.“Wow Brad, you must’ve caught it just right. It’s hardly big enough for a boot your size.”“Hey, you know what they say about men with big feet,” Brad quipped in response. He held his palms open nearly a foot and a half to illustrate his point. “You know what I mean?” I playfully punched him on the shoulder.“Sure, but you’re not supposed to stick your foot in those holes,” I countered. We all laughed, except Mindy. Totally focused, she was peering into the opening with her flashlight.“Guys, this is really fucking weird,” she said. “There's nothing down there I can see, nothing at all! And, it’s the weirdest thing, but, There's air flowing out of the hole. Cold air!" We all leaned in. I was fascinated."Buried cave, maybe?” I hypothesized.“Buried something,” she answered. “I say we open it up.”“Agreed,” I said.“Second,” Marty put in. Like Mindy, we all flopped down on our bellies and began pulling clumps of dirt away from the hole. The tree roots beneath us had formed a pretty good network to secure the dirt, leaving only that one gap. Pretty soon we’d uncovered a genuine hole in the ground, only about five feet wide, and deep. So deep, and cylindrical in shape, it was like an abandoned well. I said as much.“Solid theory,” Brad remarked. “What do we do now? Do we just leave it? We can’t fill it in.”“We could make a crude sign or marker and post it to warn passerby.” Mindy remarked thoughtfully. I used my headlamp to beam down into the hole. It loomed below us, black and yawning, but somehow, though I felt like I ought to be frightened, it seemed more mysterious and tantalizing than scary. I stuck my head in, bracing my upper body at the rim.“Hello!” I shouted into the void, and waited. My voice dropped down, but did not come bouncing back, I waited a while. "Echo!“ I dropped the second time, listening intently. Nothing. "This thing must be fucking deep,” I muttered, beginning to shimmy back out. Distracted by my own effort, I had to pause when I half caught something that sounded like my name, coming not from my team but somewhere below me. Twisting to look back at them, I asked: “Did somebody call me?”“No,” Marty said. “We were all waiting for you.” I shook my head and continued dragging myself out of the hole by my elbows.“Let’s make the sign,” Brad was saying when I felt something touch my wrist. I jerked, startled, but saw what appeared to be a root that I’d brushed, and relaxed again. However, when I was unable to pull free of it, I sought the source, And found myself peering straight down, at a vine curled snugly around my wrist, risen from the depths of nowhere.“Uh, guys?” I started, tugging at my captor. It was firmly set, somewhere. Before they could even look, I felt something, odd. The vine trapping me began to writhe, and suddenly the largest, most spectacular flowers I’d ever seen began to sprout and bloom from it. Big as dinner plates, with a five-petal bloom in the most vivid electric purple. I goggled at the sight of the one closest to me. As the flower came into its full beauty, it released a scent that hit me right in the face, immediately making me swoon with heady intoxication. My body, grew hot. And my mind told me to go down, to let the vine take me. That paradise awaited me down there,Mindy was the first to notice my predicament, and the first to react when I shot forward into the hole not of my own volition.The portal“Oh shit,” I declared, feeling myself dragged headfirst down into what I was already envisioning as some kind of wonderland. Mindy dove on my legs, screaming at the guys to help her, and I felt their weight momentarily halt my progress. It was just my round ass and legs sticking out of the hole at that point. The vine on my wrist grew thicker, and suddenly began growing. It enveloped my whole upper body as I watched and began pulling again. Then more vines, already blossoming like mine had, crept out around me to ensnare my team, dosing each one of them with the intoxicating perfume. I was feeling very warm and very good about the whole thing by then. “Hang on!” I giggled. “We’re going for a ride!” The vines got all of us in one fell swoop, and before we knew it, we were all being rushed right along down the tunnel to somewhere, screaming bloody murder in the dark.We fell a long, long time, and at some point I blacked out into nonsensical dreams full of vivid colors and scents but no substance. I didn’t know how long I was out, but I did know why I came to. Something was tickling me, between my legs. I was fuzzy, waking up, but when I felt something thick and incredibly bendy probe between my cunt lips and slide inside me, I hollered, coming awake more violently than anything else could have done. Intense pleasure shot through my cunt as something thrust itself deep inside. I looked down. I was sprawled in a plant that resembled a strawberry patch, naked, with my legs tethered open by tendrils of plant life, a shining green vine filling my cunt. It was growing out of the bottom of the thing, which cradled me like a bed. My arms were tethered above my head, and I watched helplessly as another part of the giant vine-plant wrapped my breasts. Two little buds, different from the previous purple ones, latched on to my nipples and began dripping something- I guess nectar- onto them. The long tendril actually inside me plunged deep into my womb, bypassing my cervix in a moment of strange ecstasy. I felt a tremendous rush of liquid fill me, like, a huge swelling, but then it all absorbed into my body. After that, my blood began to heat. My arousal tipped up to an insane degree.“Oh holy fuck!" I shouted. "Mindy? Marty, Brad- where are you? Are you okay?” The vine in my cunt gently plunged in and out of my hole. The buds on my nipples somehow made them extra sensitive and dying for touch. I began to pant. Nearby I heard what sounded suspiciously like Mindy, screaming an orgasm. A third bud grew toward my clitoris and latched on. I howled. The nectar gushed onto that part of me too and sent my insides roiling with need. Brad popped up into my plant-bed. He wasn’t restrained, but I did notice he was naked, and had a rather interesting new accessory. A vine was in his ass, plunging back and forth.“Sally!” he gasped, steeling himself against his body’s invader. “Everyone’s, uh okay, but,” He climbed toward me, his erection stiff as hell and huge. “Marty and Mindy are like this too, They're already fucking, God Sally I’m so sorry! I can’t help it!” Spurned forward by the vine using his asshole, Brad dove on top of me like a man starving and plunged his tongue into my mouth. Already wild with arousal, I responded eagerly. The vine filling my cunt pulled away and redirected itself into my other hole, The same place it was filling Brad and driving him mad. Once inside me there, the plant spread my legs further and opened me for Brad’s cock.“We can worry about this later,!” I grunted out. “Fuck me, fuck me now!” Nothing in the world was more important at that moment than being fucked. Brad did not hesitate. His huge cock speared me immediately. I howled, he groaned. He started thrusting inside my burning hot hole immediately, and as our bodies entwined we realized the heat was overwhelming, our lust scorching.“Oh fuck! Oh fuck, Sally!” he growled, slamming his hips into mine. I bucked against him, taking everything he had, wanting more.“Yes, yes, yes, oh Brad!” Each of us had our asses plundered, and I felt the penetration from each side within me and screamed my bliss. Brad was fucking like a man on fire, driving his dick so hard into my cunt it was miraculous I felt no pain. Instead I felt heat and good and pleasure so profound my whole body was singing. The buds nipping at my nipples and clitoris had made them so stiff, so swollen in arousal that I marveled they didn’t shoot right off my body. The buds finally left my nipples, and Brad seized downward as he fucked me to latch on with his lips, as if driven by innate primal desire.“So, sweet,” he groaned through his teeth. I could feel a climax building powerfully inside me. The bud on my clit hadn’t stopped its curious brand of soaking aphrodisiac nectar into that most sensitive place, and I was veering dangerously close to stimulation overload. Brad’s cock was thicker and bigger and harder than any man I’d ever had before, and the savagery of his thrusts ought to hurt, but they just felt amazing. I was so rabid I just screamed his name, over and over, and I felt another gush of fluid from the vine in my ass. At the same time, Brad surged forward like he’d gotten the same.“I’m going to cum in you, Sally!” he told me with a tinge of regret.“I’m going to cum too, Brad! It’s ok, this isn’t us!” He wrapped me in his arms. “We’re being used, It’s not your fault.” I breathed raggedly, thrashing myself against him.“No!” he groaned. “I really do like you, Sally! A lot! But I wouldn’t have wanted it this way!”“I know! Me too, it’s ok, you can cum in me! I need you to cum in me!” I screamed. “Please, please cum in me!” My body, overloaded with aphrodisiacs and stimulation, pitched over the edge. The muscle spasms that went off in my cunt were tremendous, and would have crushed a normal cock. But Brad, inundated by the plant’s strange properties, had a dick of steel and pistoned it to the back of me expertly until his body gave up his seed. And believe me, I felt it. It was like the fluid from the vine that had gushed tremendously and then absorbed. He poured shot after shot inside, but it was molten hot and he just kept cumming as I kept cumming, on and on.The orgasm we shared caused an explosion of blue-green blossoms all over our plant bed, and the vines finally released us as we lay shaking in each other’s arms. Mindy and Marty finally found us; they were huddled together and spent from their bout of lovemaking. Brad and I joined our comrades, totally naked as well. All four of us left the now docile and incredibly beautiful bloomed plants that had fucked us, and spurned us to fuck each other, behind. When we did, we could not believe the world spread before us.It was a riot of color. Plant life like none of us had ever seen before. Huge blossoms, trees that dwarfed even redwoods, in hot cinnamon red and mossy green. Tall gold grasses that danced in the breeze. Looking around, we noticed all of our clothing and equipment was totally gone, like it had never existed in the first place. We also noticed that Mindy and I were both now sporting breasts the size of small melons, both of our nipples a deep ruby red, our clitorises the same rich color. I also noticed that my belly seemed to be rounding, and growing heavy. Hers too. My breasts ached, almost as if they were filling up with liquid.“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I hummed forebodingly. Instinctively I cupped my stomach with my palm.“What, the hell, Did we fall into?” Marty croaked out, holding Mindy to him possessively.“I don’t know,” Brad answered.“Am I the only one that heard the voice before we got pulled down here?” I started, trying to keep my rational scientific mind. In fact, I began studying my environment with more critical detachment. I looked up into an overcast, but still sunny, sky, with a faint mixture of pale blues, purples and greens, but saw no hole. Nothing. No cave, either, just lush foliage and Technicolor world.“Voice?" Mindy suddenly barked. "What did you hear?” Her reaction, so sharp and intent, clued me in.“Don’t flip out yet, any of you,” I said, holding up a hand. “We're scientists. We are making discoveries, got it?” I waited, to see them all understand my meaning and nod. “When the vine grabbed my wrist, I thought I heard my name, first,” recollection hit them of the moment, “And after I got dosed by the flower I thought I heard a voice say I should come down here.”“I heard the same fucking thing!” Mindy said. “I thought I was experiencing a panic-induced hallucination! It said ‘paradise’ was down here.” I gasped.“I heard that too!”“I didn’t hear anything besides our screaming,” Brad said, shrugging. He looked at Marty.“Nothing here. But I did get hit by a load of that flower perfume. It made me sneeze but I didn’t otherwise feel anything different.”“It made me feel drunk, and, horny.” I blushed. Stupidly, really.“Yeah,” Mindy said. “Me too,” she looked down, as if realizing she was naked for the first time. Our erogenous zones were like fat cherries on our breasts and loins. The ache in my tits and the swelling of my lower body led me to my logical conclusions.“Okay, Mindy and I were both dosed by the perfume and had physical reactions, and heard a voice prior to being pulled down here. Logically it seems that the targets are females. Though obviously this place makes use of males as well. Based on my physical sensations and everything that happened in the blue-flower plant, Mindy and I are pregnant. The pregnancies are escalated, and not entirely human. I think, this world not only enhances our reproductive capabilities but needs our fertility for its own.”“If it needs both males and females to help it propagate, why didn’t it try and lure us too?” asked Marty.“Maybe because it knows that the males will follow their females, especially if they seem to be in danger. Breeding females are an important resource.” Mindy added on, suddenly holding her belly. “You wouldn’t have let us disappear down that hole without trying something.”“No, we wouldn’t have.” Brad said. “Alright, the million-dollar question now is what do we do?”“Well, I can’t see where we came in here from, can any of you?” They all looked, and once each of them had surveyed the landscape to their satisfaction, they shook their heads.“Fuck,” Marty said.“I postulate that we have discovered a pocket dimension or a passage through space-time, friends,” I said. “Which means that if we get back, We're going to have more money than God.” I grinned, trying to break the tension and get a laugh. It worked, and my team cracked up.“Oh my God,” Mindy started, wiping away a few tears from laughing so hard. “We’ll be the most famous fucking science team that has ever been.”“We went searching for monkeys and ended up proving parallel universes exist,” Brad continued. “Or at least that Narnia might really be in a closet somewhere.”“Wardrobe,” I corrected. Brad laughed.“Oh forgive me, Sir Reads-a-lot.”“Alright seriously though,” Marty said, once the mood had relaxed. “If Mindy and Sally really are pregnant, we’ve got to deal with that.”“Yeah, and we’ve gotta survive,” I said.“We need to find shelter and resources,” Mindy added.“Precisely. Alright team, we can do this.” I put my hand palm down in front of them. “Pile on.” They added their hands to the stack. “What happened back there we can talk about. We’ll talk about how we want to move forward, with these potential babies, and this world. Right now, we focus on food, water, shelter, warmth. Let’s spread out and begin observing.” Everyone nodded.“I’m going to scout the area for potential camping ground or natural shelter,” Marty said. “I’ll also take note of building resources. I think we should remain as close as we can here just because our passage back is likely accessible here.”“Agreed,” Brad chimed. “I’m going to search for fresh water resources and examine these flowers. I want to see if the other plants demonstrate any more signs of sentience.”“I’m going to start looking for edible plants and signs of animal life,” Mindy said. “There could be berries, fruits, roots. We’re going to need as much nutrition as possible if we’re out here a while.” I nodded.“I’m going to see if those grasses can be harvested and woven.” I said, eyeing the long gold strands. “Clothing and blankets for exposure and warmth, baskets, hammocks maybe, hats, water skins- I might be able to make anything we need to survive.”Then, I did something corny, harkening back to our undergrad college biology club days. Our competitive chant seemed the thing to do. All of us nodded, pumped our hands together and raised them with a shout of “For Science!” all together.After we split apart to our chosen tasks, I headed right for the golden grasses. They were silky but strong, like the husk on fresh corn, without the little fibers on the inside. As I ran my fingers up the stalks, moving forward, I felt and saw them bend to accommodate my body. They allowed me to pass without me having to bend or cut them. Well, there was at least some evidence of the world’s sentience. Perhaps cognizance had evolved in the plants of this world, and not the animal life. As I wandered through the stalks, they caressed my body like tiny hands, and I began to notice how direct the touches were. I stopped walking. Immediately the grasses all around me wrapped my body all over and began stroking every one of my curves. I moaned aloud as the tendrils rubbed my incredibly sensitive nipples and wrapped my breasts. They began to squeeze the heft of each tit and tug on my nipples, almost like they were milking me. I felt stalks wind up my legs and find my labia’s cleft. I was already gushing juice from my slit, and they dove into it- four, five, six stalks writhing inside me all at once, squirming and pleasuring my g-spot and my tender cervix. My nipples started gushing clear, sweet-smelling liquid like rain all over the stalks. I cried out in delight as I was rubbed on my clit too, the grasses keeping me pleasured so that I kept producing nectar for them to soak up. As they did, they ripened before my eyes, turning from bright gold to bronze, and they shook off the outer coat, leaving behind a silky strip I could harvest for raw materials. The plants milked me and fucked me to multiple orgasms, shedding piles of their golden husks and turning rich bronze, getting taller and thicker. Soon a whole little patch of bronze was all around me, and I was both thirsty and exhausted, my arms full of weaving material.Not too far off, Mindy was wandering in a brushier part of the landscape, searching for root plants and berries, or fruit-bearing trees. She was getting hungry and thirsty, her belly becoming more of a burden. Sally had to be right. They were pregnant with something. Mindy’s nose detected a sweet aroma and she followed it. A cluster of trees, small, lemon-yellow in bark and emerald green in foliage, were growing just upwind. Their branches were low enough to reach, and she saw a number of fist-sized fruits growing there. Only one way to know if they were edible. She examined the colors of the fruits, and looked for evidence of fallen ones. It seemed as though they started green, like the leaves, and soon turned an orange yellow to indicate ripeness. For starters, Mindy picked up a recently fallen ripened fruit and sniffed it, touched it. It emanated a tangy-sweet aroma and was about the feel and size of a peach. Her Mouth watering, she bit into the fruit.An explosion of delectable flavors coated her tongue. Tangy, tart and sweet, with firm, smooth flesh and thick juice, the fruit was absolutely delicious, and calmed her belly immediately. She felt refreshed and strengthened by it as well, and devoured the whole piece down to the stone inside. Mindy began loading her arms full and took the fruit with her back to the central area. Along the way she felt her cunt getting warm. Just like when the plant had ensnared and injected her before, she was becoming incredibly horny. Mindy found me as I stumbled out of the grasses, arms full of plant material and panting hard.Give her fruit, a voice whispered. Then go into the grasses. The voice startled Mindy but she knew there was nothing to fear, somehow.“Eat this, Sally,” she said, bending to offer me one of the fruits. Parched, I grabbed it and took a bite. It immediately refreshed me, and I moaned at the flavor. It was incredible. “It wants me to go in there. What’ll happen?”“Well for me, like ten orgasms. I helped ripen it somehow, and it shed these stalks.” I pointed. “Our breast juice helps it.” Mindy shrugged, and stepped into the grasses. They took my friend down the road to pleasure, and as soon as I began feeling the effects of the fruit, I understood why. The grasses reached out and dragged me back in. Our screams of pleasure began rising in harmony.Oblivious to the women, Brad was bent over several flowers in the field, absorbed by the wondrous nature of them, their colors, complex perfumes and variegated shapes. He was looking for a fresh water resource, like a stream or a pond, but what he was discovering was even more astounding. Some of the flowers held a reserve of water or nectar inside bulbous lower chambers. But how could he access it without damaging the plant? Carefully, he probed the opening with his fingers. It was large enough to slip something like a straw in there, if he could make one. But as he examined, he brushed the flower’s stamen, releasing some pollen, which he breathed in. The flower then gave up the entire cup-like lower petal, thick as a cabbage leaf and full of liquid, right into his hand. The pollen had a curious effect on him. Immediately his cock thickened and surged rigidly erect.Go to the grasses and pollinate your female again, a voice out of his mind told him. The environment here will see to all your needs. Go. Compelled and horny, Brad took the petal-cup with him and sprinted back to where the girls were being pleasured and harvested by the golden grasses.Marty’s quest through the tall trees and forest-like area had proven rich with sticks and limbs, foliage, mud, and other such raw building materials. He was busily gathering them into a pile when he came upon a tangle of small green plants growing at the base of one of the cinnamon red giant trees. They resembled basil and gave off an herbal scent. Curious, Marty leaned down and plucked a leaf. He brought it to his nose, and it smelled pleasant, minty and fragrant. Deciding it was better to try and document any possible edible greenery, he popped the leaf in his mouth and chewed. It was like spiced mint, enjoyable and unusual. Chewing, Marty went to return to his work, but was quickly blindsided by a ferocious erection.Go to the grasses, the voice told him too. Go pollinate your female.Confused, all four of us were soon converged. The men found us bound by bronze and gold grasses, our tits being milked and our cunts kept in a state of perpetual orgasm. We’d each eaten three of the stone fruits Mindy had found, and our bodies were producing insane amounts of nectar from our breasts. The planet’s voice became audible to all of us in that moment.“Drink of their nectar and seed them,” the voice said, directing the men. The grasses began looping their engorged and enormous cocks. The men were pulled forward, compelled by sexual desire so fierce it could not be denied, like we were. Brad’s lips fell to one of my breasts first, and he began suckling. My cunt and Mindy’s were held open by the grasses. Marty descended on Mindy. I would have thought the grasses filling me and wrapping Brad’s cock would recede when we joined, but they didn’t. Instead I was filled with the mass of flesh and plant, my cunt so full I couldn’t move. I stretched easily to accommodate the girth of everything inside me, and it felt so good I couldn’t do much more than yelp as I received it. The grasses bound Brad at the base of his cock and squeezed, trapping blood in his erection, making him fiercely hard, prolonging his orgasm. They also wrapped his balls and added stimulation there. Finally we both felt the tendrils fill our asses.“Oh fuck!” he cried, jolting inside me.“Ah!” I screamed. Brad started thrusting, but it was half him and half the plants, spurring him deep. Mindy and Marty were right next to us, undergoing the same. She and I grasped each other's fingers together as we each got fucked and filled.Once the orgasms started, they never stopped. My body kept cumming, over and over again on Brad’s dick as he grunted and desperately sought orgasm in my overheated cunt. Adding more aphrodisiac juices to each of us as our bodies were used, the plants finally allowed the men to come, and Brad filled me with I think, a literal gallon of cum. As he did, both my tits and belly swelled even larger, and now we were very obviously pregnant. I ached, and my belly was full and round in my arms. The sight of us like that, Did something to the guys. Without speaking, both of them broke away, as if possessed, and ran off. The grasses moved Mindy and me toward each other, and though they had released the men, we were still trapped, and still being pleasured. We squealed in one another’s arms. We even pressed our lips together as we were both used, our tits and bellies rubbing on each other, and we made out fiercely. Mindy and I were lost in a haze of pure lust.Brad and Marty, meanwhile, had run on instinct back to the flower patch and taken more of the pollen that triggered the voice for Brad. They each took pollen on their tongues and felt their pricks swell again. The flowers gave up their nectar cups and they drank. It refreshed both their parched throats and readied them to return.When they did, they found us tangling our tongues and stroking each other’s tits, our legs still splayed open for them. The boys each grabbed another fruit and came toward us. Marty took me this time, and Brad took Mindy. They plunged their cocks inside without asking, without a word, and began fucking us hard. Pulling our mouths apart, Mindy and I moaned. Each man bent down to make us eat the fruit they bore, even as they rode us so hard I was afraid they’d hurt our babies. But it felt so good I forgot to worry. It was just an oblivion of pleasure and I fell into it.I lost count of how many times the men fucked us, switching between pussies and impregnating us bigger and bigger with every load of cum.“You’re going to give birth soon,” Brad said, as he helplessly fucked the absolutely hell out of my cunt. “We’re going to be giving you sperm until you both give birth!”“The voice keeps telling us, to pollinate,” Marty choked. Every load had made my tits and belly bigger. I felt the child in my womb now, and I heard it. It was made of my and Brad’s human genetics, and enhanced by the sentience of the plants. It would be a new evolution of humanity.“Not long now!” I panted. “Not long,” Brad fucked another load of molten cum into my cunt, and I shrieked as another orgasm tore through me. As it did, my womb opened up, Brad’s cock slipped out of me, and my child fell into my birth canal. The birth itself wasn’t horribly painful, as the whole escapade had prepared my cunt to stretch much wider than before, but it did feel weird. My baby’s head, followed by the rest of her, slid into my vaginal canal, and the remnants of my orgasmic contractions pushed her out of my hole. “Oh fuck!” I cried. Mindy next to me screamed as she too felt life coming out of her body. Brad was right between my legs to catch our daughter as she was born.“Oh my God!” he cried. Our child was attached to me inside, not by an umbilical cord, but a vine, and though human in shape and features, her hair was leafy and her skin had the sheen of silvery bark. “It’s a girl,” he said, wiping startled tears off his face.“We have a boy!” shouted Marty.“Oh my God,” I said, gasping, “we’ve given birth to a new race.”“Thank you,” said the voice. “We’ve been waiting for a species like yours to help us evolve. Now we can begin the Dryad race. Your sacrifices will not be unrewarded.” My body was sweaty, and I was exhausted, but I raised my beautiful new daughter to my swollen tits and she latched on to drink. The world compelled Brad and Marty to run off again for more of its special sustenance. We were left to expel the afterbirths of our children alone, at least until the voice spoke to us alone. “You will be used to birth our children many times, but your bodies will experience pleasure unlike any you could ever dream, and you will never want for anything. We thank you for your service.” Our babes suckled, cooing and growing at an alarming rate, and when our mates returned with more fruit and nectar we were soon seeded by them again. Brad and Marty’s enhanced cocks proved insatiable, and our cunts proved endlessly fertile. Mindy and I have already gestated and given birth at least once a day, and our eldest children already are like seven years old instead of seven days. They’ve already started making the world their own while we are giving them siblings. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, fucking and being pregnant with our dryad children, but it feels so incredible we may never want to leave.Brad’s cock was inside me even as I wrote this, cumming huge amounts and making my belly swell. I’ll be giving birth again soon, to my eighth child. While we’re busy making more, the plants around us show the kids their world and take care of them in the way I guess only sentient plant parents can. We, the humans, can’t stop fucking! The youngest babies drink my nectar while more babies are gestating in me, every day. I never ended up making any clothes. We’ve been too busy having sex since, we got here.Post script:The foliage of this place seems to retain dominion over our team, unlike Adam & Eve's dominion over that first ‘Garden of Eden'. Life in this world seems preoccupied with procreation and pleasure; less so on curiosity and learning. The vines did not tolerate non-compliance in this domain.Has mankind been here before? Is the transporting vine actually a ‘Tree of Life'?  Were we the first human-like race? Will the Dryads ever be transported back to our world? Will Dryads and humans live in harmony?Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente for Literotica

Four scientists find their mission led astray, by paradise. Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Forward: In the beginning, defiance led to rejection and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Our species was transported to the parallel universe we've now occupied for several millennia. Legends of that previous world have been handed down to us, along with various elaborations and moral lessons. If we could only access that previous world. A world designed for our inclusion. Does it exist? Is it yet flourishing in our absence? Can we gain a second chance to rejoin Eden? [[MORE]] Sally joins an expeditionary team.  You know, the job of a scientist is not always easy, but it's usually pretty rewarding. I've helped discover new species of plants and animals, and I derived a number of medicinal properties from my discoveries, too. I'm a naturalist and explorer. But, sometimes I think existence has an absolutely weird sense of humor. How else could I possibly explain the misadventures my team's had this past week? I mean, where do I even begin to explain all this craziness? We were on the trail of an extremely elusive lemur species on Madagascar when my teammate Brad stumbled into a burrow of some kind. "Shit!" he shrieked, his leg sinking calf deep in an extremely well disguised hole. I rushed over. "Oh man! Are you hurt?" I crouched behind him, putting my arms around his chest, hooked under his pits. I used my legs to try and pry him out of the hole. Our other team members, Marty and Mindy, rushed over to help. "I don't think it's injured, I was just really fucking surprised." He began shifting his weight pushing back with his free leg. "Damn, this hole is deep! What makes burrows like this out here?" "What's the angle like?" Mindy asked. "Most everything in this area are tree-dwellers," "It's weird, it's straight down," Brad said, "and it's like there's nothing below, nothing on all sides. I'm only being squeezed right here at the calf." He pointed to the section of leg we could actually see touching earth. "That is super weird," I grunted, still pulling. He was coming loose. "But maybe, it was just a hollow that got buried by, a storm, or shifting ground. No biggie." Marty threw himself into a crouch and aided me by wrapping his arms around my middle. "On my count," he said. "One, two, three!" we both pulled, throwing our weight collectively into the effort. "It's working!" Brad said happily. "My leg's coming free." After a couple of minutes of combined work, Marty and I got him out and we all fell back in a heap. "Whew!" I grunted. "Brad, your leg ok? Let's see." Pulling away from the hole, Brad rolled up his pant leg and removed his boot. No blood, no bad scratches. It didn't look twisted, and I saw no swelling. "Looks good, Sally," he told me. "Doesn't hurt but I could just be pumping with adrenaline. I'll give it a few." "Good idea," I nodded. "Let's all take ten. Our little kerfuffle probably scared off everything within fifty yards anyway." My team settled down and busted out water and some snacks. Tromping through rainforest looking for tiny primates was hot, thirsty work. "I kinda want to take a look at this hole," Mindy said, walking cautiously toward it. "Could be a nest, could be just an odd patch of hollow ground." "Yeah, let's poke around a little," I replied, after taking a gulp of my canteen. "If it's not an animal den maybe we could fill it up, just so no one else stumbles in and gets hurt." Mindy put herself on her belly and inched over. "Wow Brad, you must've caught it just right. It's hardly big enough for a boot your size." "Hey, you know what they say about men with big feet," Brad quipped in response. He held his palms open nearly a foot and a half to illustrate his point. "You know what I mean?" I playfully punched him on the shoulder. "Sure, but you're not supposed to stick your foot in those holes," I countered. We all laughed, except Mindy. Totally focused, she was peering into the opening with her flashlight. "Guys, this is really fucking weird," she said. "There's nothing down there I can see, nothing at all! And, it's the weirdest thing, but, There's air flowing out of the hole. Cold air!" We all leaned in. I was fascinated. "Buried cave, maybe?" I hypothesized. "Buried something," she answered. "I say we open it up." "Agreed," I said. "Second," Marty put in. Like Mindy, we all flopped down on our bellies and began pulling clumps of dirt away from the hole. The tree roots beneath us had formed a pretty good network to secure the dirt, leaving only that one gap. Pretty soon we'd uncovered a genuine hole in the ground, only about five feet wide, and deep. So deep, and cylindrical in shape, it was like an abandoned well. I said as much. "Solid theory," Brad remarked. "What do we do now? Do we just leave it? We can't fill it in." "We could make a crude sign or marker and post it to warn passerby." Mindy remarked thoughtfully. I used my headlamp to beam down into the hole. It loomed below us, black and yawning, but somehow, though I felt like I ought to be frightened, it seemed more mysterious and tantalizing than scary. I stuck my head in, bracing my upper body at the rim. "Hello!" I shouted into the void, and waited. My voice dropped down, but did not come bouncing back, I waited a while. "Echo!" I dropped the second time, listening intently. Nothing. "This thing must be fucking deep," I muttered, beginning to shimmy back out. Distracted by my own effort, I had to pause when I half caught something that sounded like my name, coming not from my team but somewhere below me. Twisting to look back at them, I asked: "Did somebody call me?" "No," Marty said. "We were all waiting for you." I shook my head and continued dragging myself out of the hole by my elbows. "Let's make the sign," Brad was saying when I felt something touch my wrist. I jerked, startled, but saw what appeared to be a root that I'd brushed, and relaxed again. However, when I was unable to pull free of it, I sought the source, And found myself peering straight down, at a vine curled snugly around my wrist, risen from the depths of nowhere. "Uh, guys?" I started, tugging at my captor. It was firmly set, somewhere. Before they could even look, I felt something, odd. The vine trapping me began to writhe, and suddenly the largest, most spectacular flowers I'd ever seen began to sprout and bloom from it. Big as dinner plates, with a five-petal bloom in the most vivid electric purple. I goggled at the sight of the one closest to me. As the flower came into its full beauty, it released a scent that hit me right in the face, immediately making me swoon with heady intoxication. My body, grew hot. And my mind told me to go down, to let the vine take me. That paradise awaited me down there, Mindy was the first to notice my predicament, and the first to react when I shot forward into the hole not of my own volition. The portal "Oh shit," I declared, feeling myself dragged headfirst down into what I was already envisioning as some kind of wonderland. Mindy dove on my legs, screaming at the guys to help her, and I felt their weight momentarily halt my progress. It was just my round ass and legs sticking out of the hole at that point. The vine on my wrist grew thicker, and suddenly began growing. It enveloped my whole upper body as I watched and began pulling again. Then more vines, already blossoming like mine had, crept out around me to ensnare my team, dosing each one of them with the intoxicating perfume. I was feeling very warm and very good about the whole thing by then. "Hang on!" I giggled. "We're going for a ride!" The vines got all of us in one fell swoop, and before we knew it, we were all being rushed right along down the tunnel to somewhere, screaming bloody murder in the dark. We fell a long, long time, and at some point I blacked out into nonsensical dreams full of vivid colors and scents but no substance. I didn't know how long I was out, but I did know why I came to. Something was tickling me, between my legs. I was fuzzy, waking up, but when I felt something thick and incredibly bendy probe between my cunt lips and slide inside me, I hollered, coming awake more violently than anything else could have done. Intense pleasure shot through my cunt as something thrust itself deep inside. I looked down. I was sprawled in a plant that resembled a strawberry patch, naked, with my legs tethered open by tendrils of plant life, a shining green vine filling my cunt. It was growing out of the bottom of the thing, which cradled me like a bed. My arms were tethered above my head, and I watched helplessly as another part of the giant vine-plant wrapped my breasts. Two little buds, different from the previous purple ones, latched on to my nipples and began dripping something- I guess nectar- onto them. The long tendril actually inside me plunged deep into my womb, bypassing my cervix in a moment of strange ecstasy. I felt a tremendous rush of liquid fill me, like, a huge swelling, but then it all absorbed into my body. After that, my blood began to heat. My arousal tipped up to an insane degree. "Oh holy fuck!" I shouted. "Mindy? Marty, Brad- where are you? Are you okay?" The vine in my cunt gently plunged in and out of my hole. The buds on my nipples somehow made them extra sensitive and dying for touch. I began to pant. Nearby I heard what sounded suspiciously like Mindy, screaming an orgasm. A third bud grew toward my clitoris and latched on. I howled. The nectar gushed onto that part of me too and sent my insides roiling with need. Brad popped up into my plant-bed. He wasn't restrained, but I did notice he was naked, and had a rather interesting new accessory. A vine was in his ass, plunging back and forth. "Sally!" he gasped, steeling himself against his body's invader. "Everyone's, uh okay, but," He climbed toward me, his erection stiff as hell and huge. "Marty and Mindy are like this too, They're already fucking, God Sally I'm so sorry! I can't help it!" Spurned forward by the vine using his asshole, Brad dove on top of me like a man starving and plunged his tongue into my mouth. Already wild with arousal, I responded eagerly. The vine filling my cunt pulled away and redirected itself into my other hole, The same place it was filling Brad and driving him mad. Once inside me there, the plant spread my legs further and opened me for Brad's cock. "We can worry about this later,!" I grunted out. "Fuck me, fuck me now!" Nothing in the world was more important at that moment than being fucked. Brad did not hesitate. His huge cock speared me immediately. I howled, he groaned. He started thrusting inside my burning hot hole immediately, and as our bodies entwined we realized the heat was overwhelming, our lust scorching. "Oh fuck! Oh fuck, Sally!" he growled, slamming his hips into mine. I bucked against him, taking everything he had, wanting more. "Yes, yes, yes, oh Brad!" Each of us had our asses plundered, and I felt the penetration from each side within me and screamed my bliss. Brad was fucking like a man on fire, driving his dick so hard into my cunt it was miraculous I felt no pain. Instead I felt heat and good and pleasure so profound my whole body was singing. The buds nipping at my nipples and clitoris had made them so stiff, so swollen in arousal that I marveled they didn't shoot right off my body. The buds finally left my nipples, and Brad seized downward as he fucked me to latch on with his lips, as if driven by innate primal desire. "So, sweet," he groaned through his teeth. I could feel a climax building powerfully inside me. The bud on my clit hadn't stopped its curious brand of soaking aphrodisiac nectar into that most sensitive place, and I was veering dangerously close to stimulation overload. Brad's cock was thicker and bigger and harder than any man I'd ever had before, and the savagery of his thrusts ought to hurt, but they just felt amazing. I was so rabid I just screamed his name, over and over, and I felt another gush of fluid from the vine in my ass. At the same time, Brad surged forward like he'd gotten the same. "I'm going to cum in you, Sally!" he told me with a tinge of regret. "I'm going to cum too, Brad! It's ok, this isn't us!" He wrapped me in his arms. "We're being used, It's not your fault." I breathed raggedly, thrashing myself against him. "No!" he groaned. "I really do like you, Sally! A lot! But I wouldn't have wanted it this way!" "I know! Me too, it's ok, you can cum in me! I need you to cum in me!" I screamed. "Please, please cum in me!" My body, overloaded with aphrodisiacs and stimulation, pitched over the edge. The muscle spasms that went off in my cunt were tremendous, and would have crushed a normal cock. But Brad, inundated by the plant's strange properties, had a dick of steel and pistoned it to the back of me expertly until his body gave up his seed. And believe me, I felt it. It was like the fluid from the vine that had gushed tremendously and then absorbed. He poured shot after shot inside, but it was molten hot and he just kept cumming as I kept cumming, on and on. The orgasm we shared caused an explosion of blue-green blossoms all over our plant bed, and the vines finally released us as we lay shaking in each other's arms. Mindy and Marty finally found us; they were huddled together and spent from their bout of lovemaking. Brad and I joined our comrades, totally naked as well. All four of us left the now docile and incredibly beautiful bloomed plants that had fucked us, and spurned us to fuck each other, behind. When we did, we could not believe the world spread before us. It was a riot of color. Plant life like none of us had ever seen before. Huge blossoms, trees that dwarfed even redwoods, in hot cinnamon red and mossy green. Tall gold grasses that danced in the breeze. Looking around, we noticed all of our clothing and equipment was totally gone, like it had never existed in the first place. We also noticed that Mindy and I were both now sporting breasts the size of small melons, both of our nipples a deep ruby red, our clitorises the same rich color. I also noticed that my belly seemed to be rounding, and growing heavy. Hers too. My breasts ached, almost as if they were filling up with liquid. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," I hummed forebodingly. Instinctively I cupped my stomach with my palm. "What, the hell, Did we fall into?" Marty croaked out, holding Mindy to him possessively. "I don't know," Brad answered. "Am I the only one that heard the voice before we got pulled down here?" I started, trying to keep my rational scientific mind. In fact, I began studying my environment with more critical detachment. I looked up into an overcast, but still sunny, sky, with a faint mixture of pale blues, purples and greens, but saw no hole. Nothing. No cave, either, just lush foliage and Technicolor world. "Voice?" Mindy suddenly barked. "What did you hear?" Her reaction, so sharp and intent, clued me in. "Don't flip out yet, any of you," I said, holding up a hand. "We're scientists. We are making discoveries, got it?" I waited, to see them all understand my meaning and nod. "When the vine grabbed my wrist, I thought I heard my name, first," recollection hit them of the moment, "And after I got dosed by the flower I thought I heard a voice say I should come down here." "I heard the same fucking thing!" Mindy said. "I thought I was experiencing a panic-induced hallucination! It said 'paradise' was down here." I gasped. "I heard that too!" "I didn't hear anything besides our screaming," Brad said, shrugging. He looked at Marty. "Nothing here. But I did get hit by a load of that flower perfume. It made me sneeze but I didn't otherwise feel anything different." "It made me feel drunk, and, horny." I blushed. Stupidly, really. "Yeah," Mindy said. "Me too," she looked down, as if realizing she was naked for the first time. Our erogenous zones were like fat cherries on our breasts and loins. The ache in my tits and the swelling of my lower body led me to my logical conclusions. "Okay, Mindy and I were both dosed by the perfume and had physical reactions, and heard a voice prior to being pulled down here. Logically it seems that the targets are females. Though obviously this place makes use of males as well. Based on my physical sensations and everything that happened in the blue-flower plant, Mindy and I are pregnant. The pregnancies are escalated, and not entirely human. I think, this world not only enhances our reproductive capabilities but needs our fertility for its own." "If it needs both males and females to help it propagate, why didn't it try and lure us too?" asked Marty. "Maybe because it knows that the males will follow their females, especially if they seem to be in danger. Breeding females are an important resource." Mindy added on, suddenly holding her belly. "You wouldn't have let us disappear down that hole without trying something." "No, we wouldn't have." Brad said. "Alright, the million-dollar question now is what do we do?" "Well, I can't see where we came in here from, can any of you?" They all looked, and once each of them had surveyed the landscape to their satisfaction, they shook their heads. "Fuck," Marty said. "I postulate that we have discovered a pocket dimension or a passage through space-time, friends," I said. "Which means that if we get back, We're going to have more money than God." I grinned, trying to break the tension and get a laugh. It worked, and my team cracked up. "Oh my God," Mindy started, wiping away a few tears from laughing so hard. "We'll be the most famous fucking science team that has ever been." "We went searching for monkeys and ended up proving parallel universes exist," Brad continued. "Or at least that Narnia might really be in a closet somewhere." "Wardrobe," I corrected. Brad laughed. "Oh forgive me, Sir Reads-a-lot." "Alright seriously though," Marty said, once the mood had relaxed. "If Mindy and Sally really are pregnant, we've got to deal with that." "Yeah, and we've gotta survive," I said. "We need to find shelter and resources," Mindy added. "Precisely. Alright team, we can do this." I put my hand palm down in front of them. "Pile on." They added their hands to the stack. "What happened back there we can talk about. We'll talk about how we want to move forward, with these potential babies, and this world. Right now, we focus on food, water, shelter, warmth. Let's spread out and begin observing." Everyone nodded. "I'm going to scout the area for potential camping ground or natural shelter," Marty said. "I'll also take note of building resources. I think we should remain as close as we can here just because our passage back is likely accessible here." "Agreed," Brad chimed. "I'm going to search for fresh water resources and examine these flowers. I want to see if the other plants demonstrate any more signs of sentience." "I'm going to start looking for edible plants and signs of animal life," Mindy said. "There could be berries, fruits, roots. We're going to need as much nutrition as possible if we're out here a while." I nodded. "I'm going to see if those grasses can be harvested and woven." I said, eyeing the long gold strands. "Clothing and blankets for exposure and warmth, baskets, hammocks maybe, hats, water skins- I might be able to make anything we need to survive." Then, I did something corny, harkening back to our undergrad college biology club days. Our competitive chant seemed the thing to do. All of us nodded, pumped our hands together and raised them with a shout of "For Science!" all together. After we split apart to our chosen tasks, I headed right for the golden grasses. They were silky but strong, like the husk on fresh corn, without the little fibers on the inside. As I ran my fingers up the stalks, moving forward, I felt and saw them bend to accommodate my body. They allowed me to pass without me having to bend or cut them. Well, there was at least some evidence of the world's sentience. Perhaps cognizance had evolved in the plants of this world, and not the animal life. As I wandered through the stalks, they caressed my body like tiny hands, and I began to notice how direct the touches were. I stopped walking. Immediately the grasses all around me wrapped my body all over and began stroking every one of my curves. I moaned aloud as the tendrils rubbed my incredibly sensitive nipples and wrapped my breasts. They began to squeeze the heft of each tit and tug on my nipples, almost like they were milking me. I felt stalks wind up my legs and find my labia's cleft. I was already gushing juice from my slit, and they dove into it- four, five, six stalks writhing inside me all at once, squirming and pleasuring my g-spot and my tender cervix. My nipples started gushing clear, sweet-smelling liquid like rain all over the stalks. I cried out in delight as I was rubbed on my clit too, the grasses keeping me pleasured so that I kept producing nectar for them to soak up. As they did, they ripened before my eyes, turning from bright gold to bronze, and they shook off the outer coat, leaving behind a silky strip I could harvest for raw materials. The plants milked me and fucked me to multiple orgasms, shedding piles of their golden husks and turning rich bronze, getting taller and thicker. Soon a whole little patch of bronze was all around me, and I was both thirsty and exhausted, my arms full of weaving material. Not too far off, Mindy was wandering in a brushier part of the landscape, searching for root plants and berries, or fruit-bearing trees. She was getting hungry and thirsty, her belly becoming more of a burden. Sally had to be right. They were pregnant with something. Mindy's nose detected a sweet aroma and she followed it. A cluster of trees, small, lemon-yellow in bark and emerald green in foliage, were growing just upwind. Their branches were low enough to reach, and she saw a number of fist-sized fruits growing there. Only one way to know if they were edible. She examined the colors of the fruits, and looked for evidence of fallen ones. It seemed as though they started green, like the leaves, and soon turned an orange yellow to indicate ripeness. For starters, Mindy picked up a recently fallen ripened fruit and sniffed it, touched it. It emanated a tangy-sweet aroma and was about the feel and size of a peach. Her Mouth watering, she bit into the fruit. An explosion of delectable flavors coated her tongue. Tangy, tart and sweet, with firm, smooth flesh and thick juice, the fruit was absolutely delicious, and calmed her belly immediately. She felt refreshed and strengthened by it as well, and devoured the whole piece down to the stone inside. Mindy began loading her arms full and took the fruit with her back to the central area. Along the way she felt her cunt getting warm. Just like when the plant had ensnared and injected her before, she was becoming incredibly horny. Mindy found me as I stumbled out of the grasses, arms full of plant material and panting hard. Give her fruit, a voice whispered. Then go into the grasses. The voice startled Mindy but she knew there was nothing to fear, somehow. "Eat this, Sally," she said, bending to offer me one of the fruits. Parched, I grabbed it and took a bite. It immediately refreshed me, and I moaned at the flavor. It was incredible. "It wants me to go in there. What'll happen?" "Well for me, like ten orgasms. I helped ripen it somehow, and it shed these stalks." I pointed. "Our breast juice helps it." Mindy shrugged, and stepped into the grasses. They took my friend down the road to pleasure, and as soon as I began feeling the effects of the fruit, I understood why. The grasses reached out and dragged me back in. Our screams of pleasure began rising in harmony. Oblivious to the women, Brad was bent over several flowers in the field, absorbed by the wondrous nature of them, their colors, complex perfumes and variegated shapes. He was looking for a fresh water resource, like a stream or a pond, but what he was discovering was even more astounding. Some of the flowers held a reserve of water or nectar inside bulbous lower chambers. But how could he access it without damaging the plant? Carefully, he probed the opening with his fingers. It was large enough to slip something like a straw in there, if he could make one. But as he examined, he brushed the flower's stamen, releasing some pollen, which he breathed in. The flower then gave up the entire cup-like lower petal, thick as a cabbage leaf and full of liquid, right into his hand. The pollen had a curious effect on him. Immediately his cock thickened and surged rigidly erect. Go to the grasses and pollinate your female again, a voice out of his mind told him. The environment here will see to all your needs. Go. Compelled and horny, Brad took the petal-cup with him and sprinted back to where the girls were being pleasured and harvested by the golden grasses. Marty's quest through the tall trees and forest-like area had proven rich with sticks and limbs, foliage, mud, and other such raw building materials. He was busily gathering them into a pile when he came upon a tangle of small green plants growing at the base of one of the cinnamon red giant trees. They resembled basil and gave off an herbal scent. Curious, Marty leaned down and plucked a leaf. He brought it to his nose, and it smelled pleasant, minty and fragrant. Deciding it was better to try and document any possible edible greenery, he popped the leaf in his mouth and chewed. It was like spiced mint, enjoyable and unusual. Chewing, Marty went to return to his work, but was quickly blindsided by a ferocious erection. Go to the grasses, the voice told him too. Go pollinate your female. Confused, all four of us were soon converged. The men found us bound by bronze and gold grasses, our tits being milked and our cunts kept in a state of perpetual orgasm. We'd each eaten three of the stone fruits Mindy had found, and our bodies were producing insane amounts of nectar from our breasts. The planet's voice became audible to all of us in that moment. "Drink of their nectar and seed them," the voice said, directing the men. The grasses began looping their engorged and enormous cocks. The men were pulled forward, compelled by sexual desire so fierce it could not be denied, like we were. Brad's lips fell to one of my breasts first, and he began suckling. My cunt and Mindy's were held open by the grasses. Marty descended on Mindy. I would have thought the grasses filling me and wrapping Brad's cock would recede when we joined, but they didn't. Instead I was filled with the mass of flesh and plant, my cunt so full I couldn't move. I stretched easily to accommodate the girth of everything inside me, and it felt so good I couldn't do much more than yelp as I received it. The grasses bound Brad at the base of his cock and squeezed, trapping blood in his erection, making him fiercely hard, prolonging his orgasm. They also wrapped his balls and added stimulation there. Finally we both felt the tendrils fill our asses. "Oh fuck!" he cried, jolting inside me. "Ah!" I screamed. Brad started thrusting, but it was half him and half the plants, spurring him deep. Mindy and Marty were right next to us, undergoing the same. She and I grasped each other's fingers together as we each got fucked and filled. Once the orgasms started, they never stopped. My body kept cumming, over and over again on Brad's dick as he grunted and desperately sought orgasm in my overheated cunt. Adding more aphrodisiac juices to each of us as our bodies were used, the plants finally allowed the men to come, and Brad filled me with I think, a literal gallon of cum. As he did, both my tits and belly swelled even larger, and now we were very obviously pregnant. I ached, and my belly was full and round in my arms. The sight of us like that, Did something to the guys. Without speaking, both of them broke away, as if possessed, and ran off. The grasses moved Mindy and me toward each other, and though they had released the men, we were still trapped, and still being pleasured. We squealed in one another's arms. We even pressed our lips together as we were both used, our tits and bellies rubbing on each other, and we made out fiercely. Mindy and I were lost in a haze of pure lust. Brad and Marty, meanwhile, had run on instinct back to the flower patch and taken more of the pollen that triggered the voice for Brad. They each took pollen on their tongues and felt their pricks swell again. The flowers gave up their nectar cups and they drank. It refreshed both their parched throats and readied them to return. When they did, they found us tangling our tongues and stroking each other's tits, our legs still splayed open for them. The boys each grabbed another fruit and came toward us. Marty took me this time, and Brad took Mindy. They plunged their cocks inside without asking, without a word, and began fucking us hard. Pulling our mouths apart, Mindy and I moaned. Each man bent down to make us eat the fruit they bore, even as they rode us so hard I was afraid they'd hurt our babies. But it felt so good I forgot to worry. It was just an oblivion of pleasure and I fell into it. I lost count of how many times the men fucked us, switching between pussies and impregnating us bigger and bigger with every load of cum. "You're going to give birth soon," Brad said, as he helplessly fucked the absolutely hell out of my cunt. "We're going to be giving you sperm until you both give birth!" "The voice keeps telling us, to pollinate," Marty choked. Every load had made my tits and belly bigger. I felt the child in my womb now, and I heard it. It was made of my and Brad's human genetics, and enhanced by the sentience of the plants. It would be a new evolution of humanity. "Not long now!" I panted. "Not long," Brad fucked another load of molten cum into my cunt, and I shrieked as another orgasm tore through me. As it did, my womb opened up, Brad's cock slipped out of me, and my child fell into my birth canal. The birth itself wasn't horribly painful, as the whole escapade had prepared my cunt to stretch much wider than before, but it did feel weird. My baby's head, followed by the rest of her, slid into my vaginal canal, and the remnants of my orgasmic contractions pushed her out of my hole. "Oh fuck!" I cried. Mindy next to me screamed as she too felt life coming out of her body. Brad was right between my legs to catch our daughter as she was born. "Oh my God!" he cried. Our child was attached to me inside, not by an umbilical cord, but a vine, and though human in shape and features, her hair was leafy and her skin had the sheen of silvery bark. "It's a girl," he said, wiping startled tears off his face. "We have a boy!" shouted Marty. "Oh my God," I said, gasping, "we've given birth to a new race." "Thank you," said the voice. "We've been waiting for a species like yours to help us evolve. Now we can begin the Dryad race. Your sacrifices will not be unrewarded." My body was sweaty, and I was exhausted, but I raised my beautiful new daughter to my swollen tits and she latched on to drink. The world compelled Brad and Marty to run off again for more of its special sustenance. We were left to expel the afterbirths of our children alone, at least until the voice spoke to us alone. "You will be used to birth our children many times, but your bodies will experience pleasure unlike any you could ever dream, and you will never want for anything. We thank you for your service." Our babes suckled, cooing and growing at an alarming rate, and when our mates returned with more fruit and nectar we were soon seeded by them again. Brad and Marty's enhanced cocks proved insatiable, and our cunts proved endlessly fertile. Mindy and I have already gestated and given birth at least once a day, and our eldest children already are like seven years old instead of seven days. They've already started making the world their own while we are giving them siblings. I don't know how long we'll be here, fucking and being pregnant with our dryad children, but it feels so incredible we may never want to leave. Brad's cock was inside me even as I wrote this, cumming huge amounts and making my belly swell. I'll be giving birth again soon, to my eighth child. While we're busy making more, the plants around us show the kids their world and take care of them in the way I guess only sentient plant parents can. We, the humans, can't stop fucking! The youngest babies drink my nectar while more babies are gestating in me, every day. I never ended up making any clothes. We've been too busy having sex since, we got here. Post script: The foliage of this place seems to retain dominion over our team, unlike Adam & Eve's dominion over that first ‘Garden of Eden'. Life in this world seems preoccupied with procreation and pleasure; less so on curiosity and learning. The vines did not tolerate non-compliance in this domain. Has mankind been here before? Is the transporting vine actually a ‘Tree of Life'?  Were we the first human-like race? Will the Dryads ever be transported back to our world? Will Dryads and humans live in harmony? Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente for Literotica

Four scientists find their mission led astray, by paradise.Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.Forward:In the beginning, defiance led to rejection and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Our species was transported to the parallel universe we've now occupied for several millennia. Legends of that previous world have been handed down to us, along with various elaborations and moral lessons.If we could only access that previous world. A world designed for our inclusion. Does it exist? Is it yet flourishing in our absence? Can we gain a second chance to rejoin Eden?Sally joins an expeditionary team. You know, the job of a scientist is not always easy, but it’s usually pretty rewarding. I’ve helped discover new species of plants and animals, and I derived a number of medicinal properties from my discoveries, too. I’m a naturalist and explorer.But, sometimes I think existence has an absolutely weird sense of humor. How else could I possibly explain the misadventures my team's had this past week? I mean, where do I even begin to explain all this craziness?We were on the trail of an extremely elusive lemur species on Madagascar when my teammate Brad stumbled into a burrow of some kind.“Shit!” he shrieked, his leg sinking calf deep in an extremely well disguised hole. I rushed over.“Oh man! Are you hurt?” I crouched behind him, putting my arms around his chest, hooked under his pits. I used my legs to try and pry him out of the hole. Our other team members, Marty and Mindy, rushed over to help.“I don’t think it’s injured, I was just really fucking surprised.” He began shifting his weight pushing back with his free leg. “Damn, this hole is deep! What makes burrows like this out here?”“What’s the angle like?” Mindy asked. “Most everything in this area are tree-dwellers,”“It’s weird, it’s straight down,” Brad said, “and it’s like there's nothing below, nothing on all sides. I’m only being squeezed right here at the calf.” He pointed to the section of leg we could actually see touching earth.“That is super weird,” I grunted, still pulling. He was coming loose. “But maybe, it was just a hollow that got buried by, a storm, or shifting ground. No biggie.” Marty threw himself into a crouch and aided me by wrapping his arms around my middle.“On my count,” he said. “One, two, three!” we both pulled, throwing our weight collectively into the effort.“It’s working!” Brad said happily. “My leg’s coming free.” After a couple of minutes of combined work, Marty and I got him out and we all fell back in a heap.“Whew!” I grunted. "Brad, your leg ok? Let’s see.“ Pulling away from the hole, Brad rolled up his pant leg and removed his boot. No blood, no bad scratches. It didn’t look twisted, and I saw no swelling."Looks good, Sally,” he told me. “Doesn’t hurt but I could just be pumping with adrenaline. I’ll give it a few.”“Good idea,” I nodded. “Let’s all take ten. Our little kerfuffle probably scared off everything within fifty yards anyway.” My team settled down and busted out water and some snacks. Tromping through rainforest looking for tiny primates was hot, thirsty work.“I kinda want to take a look at this hole,” Mindy said, walking cautiously toward it. “Could be a nest, could be just an odd patch of hollow ground.”“Yeah, let’s poke around a little,” I replied, after taking a gulp of my canteen. “If it’s not an animal den maybe we could fill it up, just so no one else stumbles in and gets hurt.” Mindy put herself on her belly and inched over.“Wow Brad, you must’ve caught it just right. It’s hardly big enough for a boot your size.”“Hey, you know what they say about men with big feet,” Brad quipped in response. He held his palms open nearly a foot and a half to illustrate his point. “You know what I mean?” I playfully punched him on the shoulder.“Sure, but you’re not supposed to stick your foot in those holes,” I countered. We all laughed, except Mindy. Totally focused, she was peering into the opening with her flashlight.“Guys, this is really fucking weird,” she said. “There's nothing down there I can see, nothing at all! And, it’s the weirdest thing, but, There's air flowing out of the hole. Cold air!" We all leaned in. I was fascinated."Buried cave, maybe?” I hypothesized.“Buried something,” she answered. “I say we open it up.”“Agreed,” I said.“Second,” Marty put in. Like Mindy, we all flopped down on our bellies and began pulling clumps of dirt away from the hole. The tree roots beneath us had formed a pretty good network to secure the dirt, leaving only that one gap. Pretty soon we’d uncovered a genuine hole in the ground, only about five feet wide, and deep. So deep, and cylindrical in shape, it was like an abandoned well. I said as much.“Solid theory,” Brad remarked. “What do we do now? Do we just leave it? We can’t fill it in.”“We could make a crude sign or marker and post it to warn passerby.” Mindy remarked thoughtfully. I used my headlamp to beam down into the hole. It loomed below us, black and yawning, but somehow, though I felt like I ought to be frightened, it seemed more mysterious and tantalizing than scary. I stuck my head in, bracing my upper body at the rim.“Hello!” I shouted into the void, and waited. My voice dropped down, but did not come bouncing back, I waited a while. "Echo!“ I dropped the second time, listening intently. Nothing. "This thing must be fucking deep,” I muttered, beginning to shimmy back out. Distracted by my own effort, I had to pause when I half caught something that sounded like my name, coming not from my team but somewhere below me. Twisting to look back at them, I asked: “Did somebody call me?”“No,” Marty said. “We were all waiting for you.” I shook my head and continued dragging myself out of the hole by my elbows.“Let’s make the sign,” Brad was saying when I felt something touch my wrist. I jerked, startled, but saw what appeared to be a root that I’d brushed, and relaxed again. However, when I was unable to pull free of it, I sought the source, And found myself peering straight down, at a vine curled snugly around my wrist, risen from the depths of nowhere.“Uh, guys?” I started, tugging at my captor. It was firmly set, somewhere. Before they could even look, I felt something, odd. The vine trapping me began to writhe, and suddenly the largest, most spectacular flowers I’d ever seen began to sprout and bloom from it. Big as dinner plates, with a five-petal bloom in the most vivid electric purple. I goggled at the sight of the one closest to me. As the flower came into its full beauty, it released a scent that hit me right in the face, immediately making me swoon with heady intoxication. My body, grew hot. And my mind told me to go down, to let the vine take me. That paradise awaited me down there,Mindy was the first to notice my predicament, and the first to react when I shot forward into the hole not of my own volition.The portal“Oh shit,” I declared, feeling myself dragged headfirst down into what I was already envisioning as some kind of wonderland. Mindy dove on my legs, screaming at the guys to help her, and I felt their weight momentarily halt my progress. It was just my round ass and legs sticking out of the hole at that point. The vine on my wrist grew thicker, and suddenly began growing. It enveloped my whole upper body as I watched and began pulling again. Then more vines, already blossoming like mine had, crept out around me to ensnare my team, dosing each one of them with the intoxicating perfume. I was feeling very warm and very good about the whole thing by then. “Hang on!” I giggled. “We’re going for a ride!” The vines got all of us in one fell swoop, and before we knew it, we were all being rushed right along down the tunnel to somewhere, screaming bloody murder in the dark.We fell a long, long time, and at some point I blacked out into nonsensical dreams full of vivid colors and scents but no substance. I didn’t know how long I was out, but I did know why I came to. Something was tickling me, between my legs. I was fuzzy, waking up, but when I felt something thick and incredibly bendy probe between my cunt lips and slide inside me, I hollered, coming awake more violently than anything else could have done. Intense pleasure shot through my cunt as something thrust itself deep inside. I looked down. I was sprawled in a plant that resembled a strawberry patch, naked, with my legs tethered open by tendrils of plant life, a shining green vine filling my cunt. It was growing out of the bottom of the thing, which cradled me like a bed. My arms were tethered above my head, and I watched helplessly as another part of the giant vine-plant wrapped my breasts. Two little buds, different from the previous purple ones, latched on to my nipples and began dripping something- I guess nectar- onto them. The long tendril actually inside me plunged deep into my womb, bypassing my cervix in a moment of strange ecstasy. I felt a tremendous rush of liquid fill me, like, a huge swelling, but then it all absorbed into my body. After that, my blood began to heat. My arousal tipped up to an insane degree.“Oh holy fuck!" I shouted. "Mindy? Marty, Brad- where are you? Are you okay?” The vine in my cunt gently plunged in and out of my hole. The buds on my nipples somehow made them extra sensitive and dying for touch. I began to pant. Nearby I heard what sounded suspiciously like Mindy, screaming an orgasm. A third bud grew toward my clitoris and latched on. I howled. The nectar gushed onto that part of me too and sent my insides roiling with need. Brad popped up into my plant-bed. He wasn’t restrained, but I did notice he was naked, and had a rather interesting new accessory. A vine was in his ass, plunging back and forth.“Sally!” he gasped, steeling himself against his body’s invader. “Everyone’s, uh okay, but,” He climbed toward me, his erection stiff as hell and huge. “Marty and Mindy are like this too, They're already fucking, God Sally I’m so sorry! I can’t help it!” Spurned forward by the vine using his asshole, Brad dove on top of me like a man starving and plunged his tongue into my mouth. Already wild with arousal, I responded eagerly. The vine filling my cunt pulled away and redirected itself into my other hole, The same place it was filling Brad and driving him mad. Once inside me there, the plant spread my legs further and opened me for Brad’s cock.“We can worry about this later,!” I grunted out. “Fuck me, fuck me now!” Nothing in the world was more important at that moment than being fucked. Brad did not hesitate. His huge cock speared me immediately. I howled, he groaned. He started thrusting inside my burning hot hole immediately, and as our bodies entwined we realized the heat was overwhelming, our lust scorching.“Oh fuck! Oh fuck, Sally!” he growled, slamming his hips into mine. I bucked against him, taking everything he had, wanting more.“Yes, yes, yes, oh Brad!” Each of us had our asses plundered, and I felt the penetration from each side within me and screamed my bliss. Brad was fucking like a man on fire, driving his dick so hard into my cunt it was miraculous I felt no pain. Instead I felt heat and good and pleasure so profound my whole body was singing. The buds nipping at my nipples and clitoris had made them so stiff, so swollen in arousal that I marveled they didn’t shoot right off my body. The buds finally left my nipples, and Brad seized downward as he fucked me to latch on with his lips, as if driven by innate primal desire.“So, sweet,” he groaned through his teeth. I could feel a climax building powerfully inside me. The bud on my clit hadn’t stopped its curious brand of soaking aphrodisiac nectar into that most sensitive place, and I was veering dangerously close to stimulation overload. Brad’s cock was thicker and bigger and harder than any man I’d ever had before, and the savagery of his thrusts ought to hurt, but they just felt amazing. I was so rabid I just screamed his name, over and over, and I felt another gush of fluid from the vine in my ass. At the same time, Brad surged forward like he’d gotten the same.“I’m going to cum in you, Sally!” he told me with a tinge of regret.“I’m going to cum too, Brad! It’s ok, this isn’t us!” He wrapped me in his arms. “We’re being used, It’s not your fault.” I breathed raggedly, thrashing myself against him.“No!” he groaned. “I really do like you, Sally! A lot! But I wouldn’t have wanted it this way!”“I know! Me too, it’s ok, you can cum in me! I need you to cum in me!” I screamed. “Please, please cum in me!” My body, overloaded with aphrodisiacs and stimulation, pitched over the edge. The muscle spasms that went off in my cunt were tremendous, and would have crushed a normal cock. But Brad, inundated by the plant’s strange properties, had a dick of steel and pistoned it to the back of me expertly until his body gave up his seed. And believe me, I felt it. It was like the fluid from the vine that had gushed tremendously and then absorbed. He poured shot after shot inside, but it was molten hot and he just kept cumming as I kept cumming, on and on.The orgasm we shared caused an explosion of blue-green blossoms all over our plant bed, and the vines finally released us as we lay shaking in each other’s arms. Mindy and Marty finally found us; they were huddled together and spent from their bout of lovemaking. Brad and I joined our comrades, totally naked as well. All four of us left the now docile and incredibly beautiful bloomed plants that had fucked us, and spurned us to fuck each other, behind. When we did, we could not believe the world spread before us.It was a riot of color. Plant life like none of us had ever seen before. Huge blossoms, trees that dwarfed even redwoods, in hot cinnamon red and mossy green. Tall gold grasses that danced in the breeze. Looking around, we noticed all of our clothing and equipment was totally gone, like it had never existed in the first place. We also noticed that Mindy and I were both now sporting breasts the size of small melons, both of our nipples a deep ruby red, our clitorises the same rich color. I also noticed that my belly seemed to be rounding, and growing heavy. Hers too. My breasts ached, almost as if they were filling up with liquid.“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I hummed forebodingly. Instinctively I cupped my stomach with my palm.“What, the hell, Did we fall into?” Marty croaked out, holding Mindy to him possessively.“I don’t know,” Brad answered.“Am I the only one that heard the voice before we got pulled down here?” I started, trying to keep my rational scientific mind. In fact, I began studying my environment with more critical detachment. I looked up into an overcast, but still sunny, sky, with a faint mixture of pale blues, purples and greens, but saw no hole. Nothing. No cave, either, just lush foliage and Technicolor world.“Voice?" Mindy suddenly barked. "What did you hear?” Her reaction, so sharp and intent, clued me in.“Don’t flip out yet, any of you,” I said, holding up a hand. “We're scientists. We are making discoveries, got it?” I waited, to see them all understand my meaning and nod. “When the vine grabbed my wrist, I thought I heard my name, first,” recollection hit them of the moment, “And after I got dosed by the flower I thought I heard a voice say I should come down here.”“I heard the same fucking thing!” Mindy said. “I thought I was experiencing a panic-induced hallucination! It said ‘paradise’ was down here.” I gasped.“I heard that too!”“I didn’t hear anything besides our screaming,” Brad said, shrugging. He looked at Marty.“Nothing here. But I did get hit by a load of that flower perfume. It made me sneeze but I didn’t otherwise feel anything different.”“It made me feel drunk, and, horny.” I blushed. Stupidly, really.“Yeah,” Mindy said. “Me too,” she looked down, as if realizing she was naked for the first time. Our erogenous zones were like fat cherries on our breasts and loins. The ache in my tits and the swelling of my lower body led me to my logical conclusions.“Okay, Mindy and I were both dosed by the perfume and had physical reactions, and heard a voice prior to being pulled down here. Logically it seems that the targets are females. Though obviously this place makes use of males as well. Based on my physical sensations and everything that happened in the blue-flower plant, Mindy and I are pregnant. The pregnancies are escalated, and not entirely human. I think, this world not only enhances our reproductive capabilities but needs our fertility for its own.”“If it needs both males and females to help it propagate, why didn’t it try and lure us too?” asked Marty.“Maybe because it knows that the males will follow their females, especially if they seem to be in danger. Breeding females are an important resource.” Mindy added on, suddenly holding her belly. “You wouldn’t have let us disappear down that hole without trying something.”“No, we wouldn’t have.” Brad said. “Alright, the million-dollar question now is what do we do?”“Well, I can’t see where we came in here from, can any of you?” They all looked, and once each of them had surveyed the landscape to their satisfaction, they shook their heads.“Fuck,” Marty said.“I postulate that we have discovered a pocket dimension or a passage through space-time, friends,” I said. “Which means that if we get back, We're going to have more money than God.” I grinned, trying to break the tension and get a laugh. It worked, and my team cracked up.“Oh my God,” Mindy started, wiping away a few tears from laughing so hard. “We’ll be the most famous fucking science team that has ever been.”“We went searching for monkeys and ended up proving parallel universes exist,” Brad continued. “Or at least that Narnia might really be in a closet somewhere.”“Wardrobe,” I corrected. Brad laughed.“Oh forgive me, Sir Reads-a-lot.”“Alright seriously though,” Marty said, once the mood had relaxed. “If Mindy and Sally really are pregnant, we’ve got to deal with that.”“Yeah, and we’ve gotta survive,” I said.“We need to find shelter and resources,” Mindy added.“Precisely. Alright team, we can do this.” I put my hand palm down in front of them. “Pile on.” They added their hands to the stack. “What happened back there we can talk about. We’ll talk about how we want to move forward, with these potential babies, and this world. Right now, we focus on food, water, shelter, warmth. Let’s spread out and begin observing.” Everyone nodded.“I’m going to scout the area for potential camping ground or natural shelter,” Marty said. “I’ll also take note of building resources. I think we should remain as close as we can here just because our passage back is likely accessible here.”“Agreed,” Brad chimed. “I’m going to search for fresh water resources and examine these flowers. I want to see if the other plants demonstrate any more signs of sentience.”“I’m going to start looking for edible plants and signs of animal life,” Mindy said. “There could be berries, fruits, roots. We’re going to need as much nutrition as possible if we’re out here a while.” I nodded.“I’m going to see if those grasses can be harvested and woven.” I said, eyeing the long gold strands. “Clothing and blankets for exposure and warmth, baskets, hammocks maybe, hats, water skins- I might be able to make anything we need to survive.”Then, I did something corny, harkening back to our undergrad college biology club days. Our competitive chant seemed the thing to do. All of us nodded, pumped our hands together and raised them with a shout of “For Science!” all together.After we split apart to our chosen tasks, I headed right for the golden grasses. They were silky but strong, like the husk on fresh corn, without the little fibers on the inside. As I ran my fingers up the stalks, moving forward, I felt and saw them bend to accommodate my body. They allowed me to pass without me having to bend or cut them. Well, there was at least some evidence of the world’s sentience. Perhaps cognizance had evolved in the plants of this world, and not the animal life. As I wandered through the stalks, they caressed my body like tiny hands, and I began to notice how direct the touches were. I stopped walking. Immediately the grasses all around me wrapped my body all over and began stroking every one of my curves. I moaned aloud as the tendrils rubbed my incredibly sensitive nipples and wrapped my breasts. They began to squeeze the heft of each tit and tug on my nipples, almost like they were milking me. I felt stalks wind up my legs and find my labia’s cleft. I was already gushing juice from my slit, and they dove into it- four, five, six stalks writhing inside me all at once, squirming and pleasuring my g-spot and my tender cervix. My nipples started gushing clear, sweet-smelling liquid like rain all over the stalks. I cried out in delight as I was rubbed on my clit too, the grasses keeping me pleasured so that I kept producing nectar for them to soak up. As they did, they ripened before my eyes, turning from bright gold to bronze, and they shook off the outer coat, leaving behind a silky strip I could harvest for raw materials. The plants milked me and fucked me to multiple orgasms, shedding piles of their golden husks and turning rich bronze, getting taller and thicker. Soon a whole little patch of bronze was all around me, and I was both thirsty and exhausted, my arms full of weaving material.Not too far off, Mindy was wandering in a brushier part of the landscape, searching for root plants and berries, or fruit-bearing trees. She was getting hungry and thirsty, her belly becoming more of a burden. Sally had to be right. They were pregnant with something. Mindy’s nose detected a sweet aroma and she followed it. A cluster of trees, small, lemon-yellow in bark and emerald green in foliage, were growing just upwind. Their branches were low enough to reach, and she saw a number of fist-sized fruits growing there. Only one way to know if they were edible. She examined the colors of the fruits, and looked for evidence of fallen ones. It seemed as though they started green, like the leaves, and soon turned an orange yellow to indicate ripeness. For starters, Mindy picked up a recently fallen ripened fruit and sniffed it, touched it. It emanated a tangy-sweet aroma and was about the feel and size of a peach. Her Mouth watering, she bit into the fruit.An explosion of delectable flavors coated her tongue. Tangy, tart and sweet, with firm, smooth flesh and thick juice, the fruit was absolutely delicious, and calmed her belly immediately. She felt refreshed and strengthened by it as well, and devoured the whole piece down to the stone inside. Mindy began loading her arms full and took the fruit with her back to the central area. Along the way she felt her cunt getting warm. Just like when the plant had ensnared and injected her before, she was becoming incredibly horny. Mindy found me as I stumbled out of the grasses, arms full of plant material and panting hard.Give her fruit, a voice whispered. Then go into the grasses. The voice startled Mindy but she knew there was nothing to fear, somehow.“Eat this, Sally,” she said, bending to offer me one of the fruits. Parched, I grabbed it and took a bite. It immediately refreshed me, and I moaned at the flavor. It was incredible. “It wants me to go in there. What’ll happen?”“Well for me, like ten orgasms. I helped ripen it somehow, and it shed these stalks.” I pointed. “Our breast juice helps it.” Mindy shrugged, and stepped into the grasses. They took my friend down the road to pleasure, and as soon as I began feeling the effects of the fruit, I understood why. The grasses reached out and dragged me back in. Our screams of pleasure began rising in harmony.Oblivious to the women, Brad was bent over several flowers in the field, absorbed by the wondrous nature of them, their colors, complex perfumes and variegated shapes. He was looking for a fresh water resource, like a stream or a pond, but what he was discovering was even more astounding. Some of the flowers held a reserve of water or nectar inside bulbous lower chambers. But how could he access it without damaging the plant? Carefully, he probed the opening with his fingers. It was large enough to slip something like a straw in there, if he could make one. But as he examined, he brushed the flower’s stamen, releasing some pollen, which he breathed in. The flower then gave up the entire cup-like lower petal, thick as a cabbage leaf and full of liquid, right into his hand. The pollen had a curious effect on him. Immediately his cock thickened and surged rigidly erect.Go to the grasses and pollinate your female again, a voice out of his mind told him. The environment here will see to all your needs. Go. Compelled and horny, Brad took the petal-cup with him and sprinted back to where the girls were being pleasured and harvested by the golden grasses.Marty’s quest through the tall trees and forest-like area had proven rich with sticks and limbs, foliage, mud, and other such raw building materials. He was busily gathering them into a pile when he came upon a tangle of small green plants growing at the base of one of the cinnamon red giant trees. They resembled basil and gave off an herbal scent. Curious, Marty leaned down and plucked a leaf. He brought it to his nose, and it smelled pleasant, minty and fragrant. Deciding it was better to try and document any possible edible greenery, he popped the leaf in his mouth and chewed. It was like spiced mint, enjoyable and unusual. Chewing, Marty went to return to his work, but was quickly blindsided by a ferocious erection.Go to the grasses, the voice told him too. Go pollinate your female.Confused, all four of us were soon converged. The men found us bound by bronze and gold grasses, our tits being milked and our cunts kept in a state of perpetual orgasm. We’d each eaten three of the stone fruits Mindy had found, and our bodies were producing insane amounts of nectar from our breasts. The planet’s voice became audible to all of us in that moment.“Drink of their nectar and seed them,” the voice said, directing the men. The grasses began looping their engorged and enormous cocks. The men were pulled forward, compelled by sexual desire so fierce it could not be denied, like we were. Brad’s lips fell to one of my breasts first, and he began suckling. My cunt and Mindy’s were held open by the grasses. Marty descended on Mindy. I would have thought the grasses filling me and wrapping Brad’s cock would recede when we joined, but they didn’t. Instead I was filled with the mass of flesh and plant, my cunt so full I couldn’t move. I stretched easily to accommodate the girth of everything inside me, and it felt so good I couldn’t do much more than yelp as I received it. The grasses bound Brad at the base of his cock and squeezed, trapping blood in his erection, making him fiercely hard, prolonging his orgasm. They also wrapped his balls and added stimulation there. Finally we both felt the tendrils fill our asses.“Oh fuck!” he cried, jolting inside me.“Ah!” I screamed. Brad started thrusting, but it was half him and half the plants, spurring him deep. Mindy and Marty were right next to us, undergoing the same. She and I grasped each other's fingers together as we each got fucked and filled.Once the orgasms started, they never stopped. My body kept cumming, over and over again on Brad’s dick as he grunted and desperately sought orgasm in my overheated cunt. Adding more aphrodisiac juices to each of us as our bodies were used, the plants finally allowed the men to come, and Brad filled me with I think, a literal gallon of cum. As he did, both my tits and belly swelled even larger, and now we were very obviously pregnant. I ached, and my belly was full and round in my arms. The sight of us like that, Did something to the guys. Without speaking, both of them broke away, as if possessed, and ran off. The grasses moved Mindy and me toward each other, and though they had released the men, we were still trapped, and still being pleasured. We squealed in one another’s arms. We even pressed our lips together as we were both used, our tits and bellies rubbing on each other, and we made out fiercely. Mindy and I were lost in a haze of pure lust.Brad and Marty, meanwhile, had run on instinct back to the flower patch and taken more of the pollen that triggered the voice for Brad. They each took pollen on their tongues and felt their pricks swell again. The flowers gave up their nectar cups and they drank. It refreshed both their parched throats and readied them to return.When they did, they found us tangling our tongues and stroking each other’s tits, our legs still splayed open for them. The boys each grabbed another fruit and came toward us. Marty took me this time, and Brad took Mindy. They plunged their cocks inside without asking, without a word, and began fucking us hard. Pulling our mouths apart, Mindy and I moaned. Each man bent down to make us eat the fruit they bore, even as they rode us so hard I was afraid they’d hurt our babies. But it felt so good I forgot to worry. It was just an oblivion of pleasure and I fell into it.I lost count of how many times the men fucked us, switching between pussies and impregnating us bigger and bigger with every load of cum.“You’re going to give birth soon,” Brad said, as he helplessly fucked the absolutely hell out of my cunt. “We’re going to be giving you sperm until you both give birth!”“The voice keeps telling us, to pollinate,” Marty choked. Every load had made my tits and belly bigger. I felt the child in my womb now, and I heard it. It was made of my and Brad’s human genetics, and enhanced by the sentience of the plants. It would be a new evolution of humanity.“Not long now!” I panted. “Not long,” Brad fucked another load of molten cum into my cunt, and I shrieked as another orgasm tore through me. As it did, my womb opened up, Brad’s cock slipped out of me, and my child fell into my birth canal. The birth itself wasn’t horribly painful, as the whole escapade had prepared my cunt to stretch much wider than before, but it did feel weird. My baby’s head, followed by the rest of her, slid into my vaginal canal, and the remnants of my orgasmic contractions pushed her out of my hole. “Oh fuck!” I cried. Mindy next to me screamed as she too felt life coming out of her body. Brad was right between my legs to catch our daughter as she was born.“Oh my God!” he cried. Our child was attached to me inside, not by an umbilical cord, but a vine, and though human in shape and features, her hair was leafy and her skin had the sheen of silvery bark. “It’s a girl,” he said, wiping startled tears off his face.“We have a boy!” shouted Marty.“Oh my God,” I said, gasping, “we’ve given birth to a new race.”“Thank you,” said the voice. “We’ve been waiting for a species like yours to help us evolve. Now we can begin the Dryad race. Your sacrifices will not be unrewarded.” My body was sweaty, and I was exhausted, but I raised my beautiful new daughter to my swollen tits and she latched on to drink. The world compelled Brad and Marty to run off again for more of its special sustenance. We were left to expel the afterbirths of our children alone, at least until the voice spoke to us alone. “You will be used to birth our children many times, but your bodies will experience pleasure unlike any you could ever dream, and you will never want for anything. We thank you for your service.” Our babes suckled, cooing and growing at an alarming rate, and when our mates returned with more fruit and nectar we were soon seeded by them again. Brad and Marty’s enhanced cocks proved insatiable, and our cunts proved endlessly fertile. Mindy and I have already gestated and given birth at least once a day, and our eldest children already are like seven years old instead of seven days. They’ve already started making the world their own while we are giving them siblings. I don’t know how long we’ll be here, fucking and being pregnant with our dryad children, but it feels so incredible we may never want to leave.Brad’s cock was inside me even as I wrote this, cumming huge amounts and making my belly swell. I’ll be giving birth again soon, to my eighth child. While we’re busy making more, the plants around us show the kids their world and take care of them in the way I guess only sentient plant parents can. We, the humans, can’t stop fucking! The youngest babies drink my nectar while more babies are gestating in me, every day. I never ended up making any clothes. We’ve been too busy having sex since, we got here.Post script:The foliage of this place seems to retain dominion over our team, unlike Adam & Eve's dominion over that first ‘Garden of Eden'. Life in this world seems preoccupied with procreation and pleasure; less so on curiosity and learning. The vines did not tolerate non-compliance in this domain.Has mankind been here before? Is the transporting vine actually a ‘Tree of Life'?  Were we the first human-like race? Will the Dryads ever be transported back to our world? Will Dryads and humans live in harmony?Based on a post by PhilippaMaQuente for Literotica

Eric Brown spends most of his time designing beautiful buildings and doing urban plans for his firm, Brown Design Studio. But, when you get him away from the desk, you find someone with a good sense of history, and an understanding of how to get things done. We partnered up together in Savannah to help create the Savannah Urbanism Series (a guest lecture series), host CNU 26, and create the Savannah 2033 Plan for greater downtown.With all of Eric's many accomplishments, he's a good person to talk with when we try to understand the bigger landscape of change and cities. So, we cover a lot of ground including the role of the business community in planning historically, what all is going on in Savnanah, and what he's seeing with new, greenfield development. He talks a bit about his project Selah, in Norman OK, as one example.Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Transcript:Kevin K (00:01.346)Welcome back to the messy city podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg Got my good buddy Eric Brown with me today. Eric is architect urban designer man about town Savanian What what else should I have on your resume here?Eric (00:22.818)Probably my best accomplishment, which is being a father.Kevin K (00:25.718)There you go, there you go. All right, well, I'm in that with you now as well, although I was a little later at the party than you, but it's a pretty awesome responsibility and I know Nick's a great kid, so congratulations on that.Eric (00:41.494)You haven't seen him in a while. He's six foot one now.Kevin K (00:45.142)Jesus, it's taller than me? That's not possible.Eric (00:47.982)He's a, he's still grown too. He's a big boy. He's going to be a big boy. And, uh, you also haven't seen ace the wonder dog.Kevin K (00:57.418)Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a couple of years since I've been back. Although watch out rumor is we're gonna make a trip back this year, so I'll let you know. So I wanted to, there's a lot of things Eric and I talk about and there's any number of directions we can go with this hour today, but I do wanna hit a couple of things specific to like what stuff that you work on and some things that we did years ago.Um, Eric and I were kind of partners in crime in Savannah, um, really trying to, um, bring more discussion about new urbanism and, and better long-term planning, uh, to the city. And that may seem like a strange thing because Savannah is famous for its planning, uh, and its built environment. But like a lot of cities in the last several decades, um, it's really just been kind of the default.same stuff that you see everywhere, other than the historic district. So one of the things that Eric and I kind of put our heads together on was to get a group together and do an updated master plan of sorts for the greater downtown area of Savannah. We did this in 2018. We called it the Savannah 2033 plan. And...We called it 2033 because not just because it was like 15 years was a nice round number away, but really because 2033 is the 300th anniversary of the founding of Savannah. Savannah is actually older than the United States as a country. So it felt like a great benchmark for us to give. And I flew the coupe a few years ago, so I haven't been in touch in Savannah with every...as much of what's going on, but I wondered, Eric, if you could talk a little bit about that plan and effort and any legacies from that and what might be going on today, sort of good, bad, or indifferent, regards to thinking about planning in downtown Savannah.Eric (03:11.402)Um...That's a good question. And you know...I'm gonna kind of circle back to that answer in a second. But, you know, we also, you know, you and I also kind of had our little CNU group here, brought the Congress here in whatever year that was. But, you know, as part of that CNU group, we did a series of...Urban Speaker Series. You know, we had Mayor Riley, we had Deiru Tadani, we had Rick Hall. Um, we had, yeah, we had a, um, you know, the top talent and, you know, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few on there. And.Kevin K (04:01.738)Chuck Morrone, yeah, Joe Menard goes there, yeah.Eric (04:14.634)you know, when I'm really kind of proud of our efforts, you know, even after all these years.Eric (04:23.242)because people still talk about that. You know, they still talk about those. And, you know, if you were listening to you and I back in 2018 or 17 or whenever that was, we were doing those, 19. You know, our mission, what we told everybody our mission was is to raise the bar of discourse and education here on urban planning matters and.You know, I got to say buddy, congratulations, because it took a while to sink in, but we did it. You know.Kevin K (04:56.175)Well, things move a little more slowly in Savannah, right?Eric (04:58.938)Absolutely they move slow.Kevin K (05:01.586)Although, honestly, they move slowly everywhere. So, what are you gonna do?Eric (05:07.531)But I've seen the effects of some of those. And I think.You know, we've given people the vocabulary and in some cases, passion to go deal with some of these issues. Some of our elected officials, some of our staff members. And so I just wanted to kind of tell you that, you know, all those efforts that were pretty much thankless at the time are still somewhat thankless. But, you know, we did do it. We had an effect on that. So.I'm real proud of you and our efforts on there. So I wanted to throw that out there. There's some significant changes coming that I really can't mention. I don't think it's appropriate to mention right now. But when they do occur, you'll be shocked and you'll know exactly how much of an effect we had.Kevin K (05:54.046)That's great to hear.Eric (06:17.038)exciting to see if that does come to fruition. And everyone out there in podcast land, cause I've talked to other senior groups about doing this or those grassroots education efforts, they are thankless, just they're important though. It's really the most important thing I think you can do as a local group. So hammer away at that stuff, cause it does bear fruit.But back to your planning question, you know that master plan...Eric (06:57.246)was really good work. That our team.you know, just did some really amazing work in a very short time for what we were doing.Kevin K (07:08.89)on a shoestring too. I mean, we did that on a ridiculous budget.Eric (07:10.51)Oof.Yeah, yeah, we did. Um, but.Kevin K (07:17.078)I mean you and almost – you and basically everybody else donated huge amounts of time or else it never would have gotten done.Eric (07:24.47)Well, you know, again, I think it's kind of the same thing. You know, we did get, you know, city council to adopt that guide.You know, I don't know that they have ever gone back and looked at it since then. Um, but it has. Spurned off and affected a lot of things. You know, the tide to town has been a success here, which is, you know, kind of linking up, um, some bike trails with some of our canals Savannah's got a lot of canals, um, and waterways.and kind of tying all those together so that you can really get somewhere substantial on a bike that's in a nice interesting setting, you're not sharing the road with automobiles. So that's just, they just got more funding for their next phase. It's very, it's a huge success story and that's probably the biggest one that came out of that effort. You know, there'sThere's continuing work with the Civic Center, which is one of the focal points of that plan. And the work we put in there is a good kind of milestone, I think, to judge the future work by.Eric (09:00.246)And the Waters corridor has finished up and it looks really nice. I just went, I was over there the other day. And so, you know, those efforts kind of helped that area a little bit, which was part of the East side charrette as well from the Congress.Kevin K (09:21.13)Yeah. You know, one of the things we used to talk about, Eric, it kind of may help people to have some context to know that this was basically a planning effort that we put together that was outside City Hall. We worked kind of through the remnants of Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, but we also went out and raised money privately andand pieced it together. And that was something like, you and I used to talk about that all the time, how, I wonder if you could just expand on this, you know, that one of the frustrations we have is that in so many cities, the business community and people who ought to know better about development and, you know, things that would work well, at least financially in a city.the business community largely has kind of stepped away from being involved in planning and we used to just, that's something we kind of wrung our hands about all the time. Even in a great historic city like Savannah that was often the case, but clearly cities all over the country, you know, it's just been a sea change in how people think about that. And I wonder if you could kind of share some of your thoughts on that.Eric (10:43.033)Yeah, so...You know, I'm a big history buff, history fan, as it relates to planning, but just in general. And, you know, when you look at some of the great plans that have been done.Eric (11:05.366)plan for San Francisco, the plan for Chicago, heck, even the 1815 plan for Manhattan. You know, it wasn't the city of Chicago didn't do that plan. It was the business community that wrote Dan Burnham and Unlimited Check to go get it done, make us a world-class city.And San Francisco did the same thing.It's because the business community needed a competitive city to be competitive in an emerging national market, you know, and never in our history until probably, I would guess, posted.post-war or maybe probably during the depression that started where you had you started to rely on government agencies to do that.you know, because there was no planning profession prior to 19 something, 1912, maybe. Um, and so that's interesting. Um, again, how we used to do it. And, you know, not, I sound like an old man, get off my lawn kind of thing, but, um, you know, it worked and it, those were beautiful plans and they've stood the test of time. They've built magnificent world-class cities.Eric (12:31.282)Chicago is a top three, top five US city, however you want to rank it. San Francisco same. So, you know, you know, so where's our business community? What's the question you and I kind of asked ourselves over some beverages, I think one or two nights and you know, it's.It's different. It's different now. And I don't think we realized this at the time, but you know, let's say in 1893, you know, the business community in Chicago and you had some national, you know, obviously Sears was based, I think Sears was based out there at the time. And you know, you had some national companies, but you know, businesses were for the most part locally owned.Eric (13:30.042)So you had the department store that was locally owned. It wasn't a Macy's yet. It wasn't a Woolworths yet. There were locally owned businesses that did things, steel mills, building cars or mufflers or whatever it was. And all that's gone. Literally that whole class of independent businessmen.that are locally based and care about where they actually are and where they live and how their kids are going to view all this. Those guys are gone and they're replaced with global.corporate MBA dipshits that just care about stock price. And so they're running a global company out of somewhere. And it's real hard to get them to do anything other than for the PR work. And raising funds for CNU, I think we've got a taste of that. But what was interesting is Delta's based out ofAtlanta Chick-fil-A is based out of Atlanta. And so they were willing to fund some efforts in their home market they perceived it as. So we got lucky with a few of those. But Gulfstream here is one of our few major businesses in Savannah. And they do a ton in the community. They do. But they don't gives**t's about the planning work here. It's just not on their radar.Eric (15:18.166)You know, so I think that.that whole shift is something to be cognizant of. And you have to find kind of that civic leadership somewhere else. And by all means, if you have a local-based business, then lean on them. They're just not that prevalent like they used to be. Before we relied on the city.You know, here we have obviously tourism groups that are interested in the planning. So, you know, they provide some of that leadership, right or wrong. And...Eric (16:07.678)I think you have to, you know, as a...You know, as like what we were doing is basically, you know, guerrilla warfare, you know, I always viewed it as, you know, working outside the system as the system isn't getting it done. You know, we were trying to model our efforts on, you know, what some of the great planners before us, Daniel Burnham, and them were doing and engage that business community. And, you know, we found some success here.And so for people that might be trying that same thing, I would do some research into where some of the capital or trusts are in your city. Those are usually good sources for funding efforts to do stuff like this.Kevin K (17:04.594)Yeah, I was thinking about like, even here in Kansas City, we had a great City Beautiful Plan like a lot of American cities did, starting sort of 1880s and all the way through the 1910s. It's interesting that there's a couple of great books that talk about how the creation of the Parks and Boulevards plan here. There was a core group of local business people, including the newspaper publisher that basicallytown and lobbied for that thing to happen. They hired a famous landscape architect at the time, George Kessler, who was an Olmsted disciple. And they basically went around and lobbied to make sure it would happen. And over 100 years later, that's as big a part of what the city is known for as anything for people who come here and see it. And you can see the Parks and BoulevardKevin K (18:02.814)I mean, that's pretty common all over the place. I think you make a great point too about just like the local civic leadership in like, do you ever think about that like in your, compared to your native Ohio? So Eric grew up in Ohio and you know, Ohio is interesting because let's say, you know, 70, 80 years ago, there was unbelievable wealth and industry and local leadership and great cities that were built.As a result, great architecture, but it's probably suffered as much as any place with a lot of those companies becoming part of what you describe. They all eventually got absorbed and combined and merged or dissolved. And there's not as much of that local civic leadership as there probably was.Eric (18:56.934)No, it's not. You know, all those rust belt cities. Pittsburgh's actually probably the best example of a city that was able to pivot quickly, in part because they have a variety of higher learning institutions there that really help them become a research center in many ways and survive the shift away from making steel.Eric (19:25.955)and you know.Cleveland in 1920 was a top five city. It was number four or five city in America in terms of population. And it fell off a cliff there. I mean, it's still a big city, but it's a skeleton of itself. Everybody lives in the burbs, mostly.You know, they don't make, Cleveland never made cars or they made some steel, but they made a lot of the stuff that went into cars, mufflers, transmissions, engines, um, all sorts of that stuff and some steel. But I'll, you know, a lot of that's gone. Not all of it, but most of it.Eric (20:14.026)But you know, I think.Eric (20:18.334)I think those grassroot efforts to find better planning and better design work and expecting better.I think it needs to start with somebody in the community. If that business community is not there, then maybe it's a neighborhood association or downtown association or somebody needs to start it. And I think just follow that path of educating and doing some demonstrative projects, which I know you've done both in Kansas City and-time here in Savannah, you know, just showing how you can, nobody knew what a parklet was. You know, after that, I did one and, um, you know, COVID kind of opened that box and in many places.Kevin K (21:06.385)So we just went out and did one.Eric (21:17.778)I think it's just, but you're fighting uphill guerrilla warfare, but it's actually easier that way because you don't have to answer anybody. You just kind of do what you do. And so I really enjoyed that time we were doing that stuff here.And you know, we just met, a couple of us met again here in the fall. You know, we're going to pick up on some of that again, which is somewhat falling off the radar here. I just haven't had the same time that I had when you and I were doing it.Kevin K (21:54.73)Yeah. And Savannah also is, I guess it's kind of unique when you think about it because it's got, they're probably more like multi-generation families and people who are really invested in the place than there are in other cities in the country. We had a lot of luck with like realtors and other people who also cared about real estate value. But there definitely were, there are.some of those still legacy families that give a damn about the place and what it's changing into for better or worse. I think probably a lot of cities have that, but it felt like maybe some of those older southern cities, Savannah, Charleston, Beaufort, where it used to be, might have a little more of that than other places.Eric (22:46.226)Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. You know, this, this whole topic is really almost worth.Eric (22:55.147)a CNU sub-chapter or, you know, boot camp for guerrilla warfare or something.Kevin K (23:01.508)Ha haEric (23:03.574)You know, how, how to affect change in your local city. That would be actually an interesting session to do. Cause I get asked a lot on stuff.Kevin K (23:16.914)Yeah. Well, and you've also done it not just in Savannah but in Beaufort. You were there with like what, 14 years? Yeah. Something like that. All right.Eric (23:24.082)I don't remember yet, a long time. No, more than that actually, but because I'm getting old now. But yeah, and you know.Kevin K (23:31.736)HeheheEric (23:36.866)There's, you know, once you start waving the flag, people come out of the woodwork and say, yeah, you know, that's a good point, or I agree with that, or, but, you know, you got to, somebody's got to light the fire.Kevin K (23:51.651)Yeah.So what else is happening in Savannah these days? What are you seeing from a development or a design standpoint? I know when I left town and since then, there's been a lot more, I guess what we call, large-scale development east of downtown and a little bit on the west of downtown. And then we had a lot of discussions about, how do you make incremental?change and make some of that missing middle stuff easier in the older neighborhoods? What are you seeing these days? Is it kind of gradual change? Does it feel like things are moving faster or what?Eric (24:35.596)Um...Eric (24:39.702)No, it's there's, you know, if you drive over the bridge into Savannah from South Carolina, you know, I did it the other day and I don't know, there were 13 cranes, you know, the amount of cranes in the air is always a good judge of what's going on. And, you know, we are in that stage where.We kind of are coming out of a stage where we couldn't build hotels fast enough anywhere.And they've kind of run out of downtown space, although not entirely.actually they two of the biggest buildings you knowjust sold to hotel companies that are going to convert them back. The one building used to be a hotel that sits on Johnson Square. That's going to be converted back to a hotel, so we're losing all that office space. And the one East Bryant building, which is the tallest building in Savannah, was just bought. It's going to be at Ritz Carlton.Kevin K (25:42.58)Okay.Kevin K (25:54.63)Oh wow, that's quite an upgrade. It was a great building.Eric (25:57.59)Well, yeah, it's a great building. It's just, you know, it's displacing. We're losing two of the major office buildings downtown. Um, and you know, there's a ton of hotel buildings still going on. Um, there's a couple on their construction. I can see out my window here. Um,And the other thing is the large apartment building that takes up as much, you know, it's as much of a Texas donut as you can fit on whatever site you're on. So there's probably.Eric (26:37.558)six, seven of those going on in various parts of town right now. And some just finished, some just finished up. There are several kind of over by the bridge. There's a lot on upper Montgomery Street that are either built or coming online. That whole area is kind of marching southward. There's a couple of infill ones over by where I live. There's two right, right by my.Eric (27:09.858)And you know they're just they're huge big buildings and the ones inside the historic district you know have enough of a review process. I was walking by the one the other day and you know it's got a really nice brick to it. It's got nice windows you know but the all the you know all the details are kind of crappy. You know theThey made them put brick lintel up there, but it's fake. You know, it doesn't overhang the masonry at all. So, you know, all that little stuff that we kind of gripe about, you know, that stuff's not a hundred percent, but you know, the building forms okay and the materials are okay. But then you look at the ones that are outside that district and holy s**t, it looks just like the fourth war in Atlanta or, you know.any big city is that nameless, shitty architecture.the crazy colors and the rain screen b******t and the ins and outs and the balconies and all sorts of just, you can just see that those fall apart within 10 years. So we're getting some of that, you know, wherever they can do it, they try that. Thankfully, historic district kind of protects us from that to some degree. These are the same issues, you know, Charleston faced as well.We're usually about seven years behind whatever Charleston's going through.Eric (28:50.647)And but you know, it's especially during COVID.You know, all the downtown real estate in a span of 18 months doubled in value, doubled and had already, you know, I'll be here 10 years.Eric (29:10.527)in October.Eric (29:15.514)And you know everything's over four times of what it cost when I first moved here. Coming up on five times. So, you know, there's...Kevin K (29:27.182)It was already kind of at a high basis by then, at that point, honestly.Eric (29:34.376)It's, you know, coming up on, you know, residential stuff in my neighborhoods.Eric (29:46.622)eight, nine hundred bucks a foot. Something like that, you know?which is pretty expensive.Kevin K (29:56.786)Yeah, that's the understatement.Eric (30:00.987)You know and so that's kind of what's going on here. You know it's really filling in and you know theMidtown District, which is south of the Historic District, south of Forsyth Park, that continues to thrive.Eric (30:26.07)you know, some businesses, mostly food and beverage stuff opening up. And, you know, that neighborhoods, which is your old neighborhood, that's, that's also seen a similar, you know, bump in value, you know, which was a lot more affordable back in the day. It's even be hard pressed to find something, you know, under a million bucks up there now or something close to that.$800, $900, $800, $900. And tons of people, especially during COVID, they flocked here, man. There's so many people that cashed out of, my old neighbors were from Brooklyn. Sold whatever they had in Brooklyn, paid cash for whatever and put money in their pocket. So it's so cheap compared to those kinds of places.Still, still is.But yeah, it's a big jump in population here. And it's been interesting, because it's a big jump in.Eric (31:39.586)people living, so that's good. And then, we're still overrun with our, and most people I'm sure won't know that, but Savannah's got a hellacious take rate for Airbnbs, short term rentals. I've never come across anywhere that has any sort of ordinance like the one we have. It's 25% non-owner occupied.Kevin K (32:00.33)HeheheEric (32:09.226)by ward, which is our neighborhood system, if you will. So that doesn't include the owner-occupied ones or the illegal ones. So just the economics on that math drives a lot of... A lot of the Victorians were picked up as Airbnb investments by holding companies. I mean, they would sell without even looking at them just because they can do the math, right?Kevin K (32:39.286)I keep wondering when that bubble's gonna burst. Feels like it's bursting nationwide in different places, the Airbnb bubble, but Savannah, Charleston, those cities are so popular. I don't know.Eric (32:52.49)Yeah, the tourism numbers here are ridiculous for a city of this size, honestly. And with the last round of hotels online now and more coming, it's really overrun with tourists. It just wasn't designed to have as many people as we have here. So it's like, you need reservations now to go get dinner. It's like Manhattan.It's hard to roll in unless you find a neighborhood joint. There's a few left. You can just roll in and you happen to know somebody and you get dinner. Otherwise, there's her standing in line for some of these dumb restaurants. It's like.Kevin K (33:35.498)Hmm. Yeah, that's a new thing.Eric (33:37.975)this.Kevin K (33:38.998)So I also want to talk a little bit about how your practice has changed over the years and like what all you're doing today. Eric's firm is Brown Design Studio. He's an architect. He's done architecture and urban design and urban planning but probably heavier on architecture. And I'm curious like – so you've been doing this a couple of years now? And –You know, obviously a lot has changed from when you initially started doing like new working in new urbanist communities and doing the architecture you're doing. What do you see in today that what if anything is kind of different about your approach and what you're working on, who your clients are, that sort of thing?Eric (34:30.783)Um, that's like, you know, that's a good question.I think, and this is our 26th year in business. So we've survived a couple minor meltdowns and one major one, but our whole focus, we don't do anything that's not, that wouldn't be classified as new urbanism, whether it's infill work or.Greenfield work or something in between. So, you know, we're not like local architects doing whatever comes in the door locally. You know, we work solely in New Urbanist projects, you know, across North America and a few other spots. But that's what we continue to do. And so, you know, not much has changed.In that regard, that's always what our mission was. And we're still on our, it's like the Starship Enterprise, we're on our 26th year mission to help build healthy, walkable places. And it's worth it. It's been a fun challenge. So we continue to do that. We have long-term relations with a lot of, most of our clients are developers. And we have...You know, we have some long-term relationships that, you know, we're here when they need us. They know what we do and, you know, what we're good at, what we're not good at. Um, so that's, that's our, that's our core. That's our core right there.Kevin K (36:19.658)Do you find yourself doing more infill these days as opposed to greenfield stuff or is that not the case?Eric (36:31.054)Um, no, it's, you know, we always, we've always done, you know, because something that plugs in a new urbanist community also plugs in an older urbanist community. You know? Um, and so those always went hand in hand for us, but you know, to, to the heart of your point, yeah, after, you know, definitely after, you know, when the market came back in 2012, 13, whatever 14, you know, um,Definitely we're doing a lot of smaller infill projects. Some of them are pretty random. We'll get a call from a guy in Michigan somewhere that wants to do six townhouses on an urban property his parents owned or something. All sorts of stuff like that all over the place. And some bigger projects, there's still some bigger projects kind of plodding along.we were able to do.Eric (37:34.562)project in Oklahoma, outside Norman, in between Norman and Oklahoma City. That's pretty interesting, a greenfield project. It's big, 720 acres. We did that planning work about three years ago and last year we just got some finished vertical architecture done. So we're continuing to work on that project that we're real proud of.which is called Salem. And it's been fun, you know, doing the land plan, you know, internally. A lot of times we work with some other land planners. So this one we did in-house and then you know with some other team members, but it's been real fun, real rewarding and then you know delivering the architecture to build it out. That's keeping us busy as well, you know that project.But yeah, we've always somehow been known for our missing middle work. We were doing that before anybody knew what to call it, before Dan had invented that term. And so that's still one of our bread and butters. We're still known for that somehow.Eric (38:55.714)done a lot of multi-family projects, continue to do those a lot, a lot of townhouses. And what's interesting is I finally got...Eric (39:08.054)You know, over the years, and I'm sure you've done this as well, you know, where you, you want to take a garden apartment guy and get him to do what we want him to do, right? And I've failed. I failed probably. I'm probably, I'm now like one in 17. So I've got one that I got to actually do it. Um, that's not totally true, but, um, this was a big, you know, 350 unit.project and we got him to build it out of, you know, four, six, eight and 12 pack units. And it's under construction right now. So that was interesting. I think that's going to be a good case study going forward because his rent, you know, I'm anxious to see how his rents compete. It's in a, it's in a, you know, a decent walkable community.So I'm interested to see how the financial case study works out.Kevin K (40:13.557)Where's that one?Eric (40:14.942)That one's in Bluffton, actually, which is across the river in South Carolina. Near for people who don't know it's near Hilton.Kevin K (40:16.842)Okay, cool.Eric (40:25.425)Um.Kevin K (40:27.476)How have the conversations changed with builders and developers since the early days of doing this stuff? Did you have to do a lot more arm-twisting early on with some of your early clients? Is it an easier sell now to do the kind of work that you want to do?Eric (40:50.27)Well, no, it's not. It's the same cell. However, you know, I'm not the smartest guy, but I eventually learned to stop chasing those clients. So, you know, I don't waste my time with them. If you want to do something else, you know, have fun. Here, I'll give you some names of people to call. You know, we can't help you. Um, because I don't give a s**t. You know, if you want to go do some five-car garage, houses somewhere, go have fun.Um, but, you know, so we only take on projects that, you know, are in line with our vision, our mission. And, you know, that that's just what I learned to do, you know, be selective about, you know, who we're going to work for, because we don't want to do everything. We only want to do, you know, something that helps our, our mission, which is, you know, building great communities. And, um, if we're, you know, in alignment,When people do call us, we're gonna run through a wall for them. And we believe in what we do every day. And so I guess I got smarter is what happened.Kevin K (42:02.292)I remember a lot of those conversations too. I got, my God, we went through trying to convince so many crappy builders and developers to do something better.Eric (42:12.31)And what was your, you know, and I did the same thing, man. Um, we were both young, you know, I have similar backgrounds and, you know, had young companies and were young men. Dumb young ideals that you probably put, you know, what was your, what was success rate on?Kevin K (42:14.378)there.Kevin K (42:24.259)Yeah.Oh, almost zero. Yeah.Eric (42:28.726)Yeah, it's like me with these apartment guys. I finally got one, a big one to do it. You know, we've done lots of little ones, but to get a 350 unit thing, that was a big win, but it took me 20 some years to do it. So that's not a good use of my time. But I think what's interesting.Kevin K (42:45.311)Yeah.Eric (42:56.014)is in my, you know, my, my victory that I'm kind of patting myself on the back about there with the apartment, they wouldn't have come to me.if they didn't get rejected prior, because it was, they had to conform with a form, form-based code that we have in the right. And so that's how, you know, otherwise they would have just happily built their normal shitty garden apartment. You know, so that code reform is still critically important.you know, part of our world. Cause you really, you know, convincing someone, you know, to do what we would term the right thing versus, you know, what they're planning on doing. It's a low percentage win rate for anybody. I don't care how good you are, you know, as a closer or whatever, but, and it's just, you know, it's a waste of all of our time and efforts cause it burns you out cause you lose so much.Kevin K (44:00.979)Yeah.Eric (44:01.954)And, you know, I think our efforts would be better spent into, you know, guerrilla warfare to get the codes changed so that these developers now have to start doing the right thing. And then.Kevin K (44:12.698)Yeah, and nurturing like other younger developers who want to do something different, helping bring them along.Eric (44:23.254)Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, but a lot of these projects, you know, are still the big boy, you need $40 million in capital to tackle and you know, those, those guys, you know, I love the small income stuff. We do a lot of that. Um, but you know, it's like, you're talking about the market share of like a Bugatti versus, you know, Volkswagen or something.Kevin K (44:30.098)Yeah. Yep.Kevin K (44:51.902)Yeah.Eric (44:52.374)You know, you got to change Volkswagen. You got to change the mass market.And so I think that guerrilla warfare into code reform at a local level is something that we don't advocate enough for, which goes way back to our start of our conversation. So I think that's, if I could do something besides outlawing traffic engineers.Kevin K (45:07.358)Yeah.Eric (45:22.814)That would be one of the things is push us on this code reform where everybody's working off some type of form-based code.Kevin K (45:32.166)Yeah. Well, it's interesting because even after working in that world for almost 30 years or whatever, we've seen some good efforts with code reform and some good efforts with regulatory reform but there are a lot of days where it feels like we've made zero progress depending on where you're working.Eric (45:56.)It is, you know, it's and I've.You know.Eric (46:03.734)Like the analogy is...Eric (46:08.27)You're.You know, somebody's spending all sorts of time and effort to build stuff downtown here. Great. And we're trying to, you know, expand downtown even, which is a, which is an awesome thing that we're able to do here a little bit, you know, expand your urban core. Meanwhile, you know, out in our suburbs are happily building, you know, Costco's and targets and all sorts of b******t subdivisions. And it's like.Eric (46:40.502)You know, we don't learn. And we don't learn. And some of the strong town stuff makes so much sense when you look at how the life cycle of those suburbs. And it's funny because poolers now, after spending all sorts of money on all sorts of great police stations and city halls and all this stuff, now all of a sudden, they've got funding that's different.Eric (47:10.847)It's just so funny because you know they're hitting that seven year curve on a lot of stuff.Eric (47:18.358)But, you know, I guess that's just, you know, it's just frustrating that the, the conventional model is still building, you know, what, 90% of our built environment here easily. And, um, you know, I guessKevin K (47:31.986)Yeah. Easily. Yeah.Eric (47:40.526)You know, I've just kind of almost accepted it. It's like almost you have to let that happen before you can come back and fix it in maybe 30 years or urbanize it in 30 years. It's almost like, you know, the old patterns of.development where you would build, you know, one story buildings down on Main Street. And then all of a sudden it made sense to somebody build a two story building and made more money than everybody tore down the one story buildings. And you just have to maybe go through that process, I guess. I don't know.Kevin K (48:14.198)Yeah, I mean, it's such a machine. All that stuff is such a – I mean, so you have to envy it. It's an incredible machine. The efficiency of it is amazing. It makes a ton of money for people if you get your timing right in the market. Of course, you could lose a ton of money if you get your timing wrong. But yeah, I like –I always think about like, I make the military analogy. So if you're somebody who cares about traditional urban planning, it's like we fight hand to hand combat in our older neighborhoods and we're really excited when we're in a battle or two. In the meantime, it's like the enemy is carpet bombing, you know, everything outside the older neighborhoods just at will and we kind of willfully ignore it. But yeah.It will continue on I think as long as it can continue on, it seems to.Eric (49:16.246)Well, you know, we're...were how many, you know, it's the expected lifestyle. You know, there's no more generations. There's very, you know, very few percentage of people that have not been raised in the suburbs. Yeah, so it's the normal and, you know, driving, you know, 25 minutes to.Kevin K (49:34.43)Yeah, exactly. It's been like four generations now, yeah.Eric (49:44.75)go to your super Kroger or whatever, or a grocery store, is normal for us.Kevin K (49:51.706)Yeah. That's like, so like the last thing I wanted to ask you is, I mean, so you just mentioned you've, you're working on this Greenfield project in Oklahoma. And I know, I know you well enough to know that you've worked, you still work on some other Greenfield projects here and there. But, but by and large, it seems like I might have the wrong impression about this. I fully admit that I could be wrong about it. You're more plugged into the, this world than I am, but it seems like there's a whole lot less.of those Greenfield New Urbanist projects going on than there were say 20 years ago across the country. I don't know. I guess I wonder, do you think that's wrong or right? If that's the case, what's going on? I think we all thought that once Seaside and all those projects and then Kentlands and once they were all 10, 15 years old.and people saw how cool they were that we would see like an explosion of these around the country and that clearly hasn't happened.Eric (50:55.65)Not exactly. And I think you're, you know, I think you're right. Our, I think our expectations 20 years ago that we were going to change the machine or if not the machine, at least the, my thought was always you would show the market there alternatives.Kevin K (51:18.678)Admittedly, we were like naive and idealistic. I mean that was also part of it.Eric (51:23.67)Well, you know, I'm still kind of that same naive, idealistic person in many ways, which is both pro and cons. But, you know, I think...Eric (51:40.466)I think these projects.Eric (51:46.102)have shown people.that there are alternatives to living in the cul-de-sac, conventional neighborhood world.Eric (52:00.358)And I think that if you look at the market research, it shows you the prices in Ketlin's, the prices in ION, the prices in Norton Commons is significantly higher than its competitor that's a conventional thing right next door or right down the road.Eric (52:30.076)But it also takes 10, 15 years to do something like that. And meanwhile,You know, most of the development work is.Eric (52:45.398)you know, it's easier to go to a D.R. Horton and be done in three, four years, five years. You're done. Right. And the landowner got their money in the first year.They didn't get as much money as they could have, but they got it the first year and they're out. They're on to the next thing.You know, and I think there's just a perfect storm of all these variables there. Those are some of them, you know, the time investment that it takes. I think, you know, we've all, UI has stolen most of the good ideas of the new urbanism that they can make sense of on a spreadsheet, right? And they've thrown all the other stuff away. So they, you know, they have,co-opted some things from us, but you know, UIs, those folks are developing most of the stuff here, you know, not the Urban New Urbanist group, NTBA is a fantastic group that I really enjoy spending time with.Eric (53:56.066)You know, those are developers that are in one, two, three, four places, you know, for 10 years, 15 years, or, you know, you can only do so much. Even the bigger, more sophisticated ones. You know, meanwhile, these other guys are just, you know, knocking down 10,000 houses a year.Kevin K (54:22.686)Yeah, and while I think we kind of recognized how hard it was to do those first TNDs 30 years ago, and I think it's gotten a little easier, it's still incredibly hard. Everything about it is incredibly hard, and you really have, it's kind of a unique personality of a developer who wants to take that on and push for it, because you're gonna be fighting, even today, you're still gonna be fighting so many battles.to just execute even a mediocre T&D.Eric (54:56.626)And, you know, I think there's, you know, there's still a lot of Greenfield work. I think you're seeing a little bit of, you know, obviously no one, not many projects survived 2008. And so, you know, you didn't see many come back on.It took a long time for them to come back online. And in some places, our sailor project, which has virtually very little regulatory oversight, it took three years to get vertical, which is unheard of anywhere else. Most places are still in their entitlements in year three. It takes you five years to come out of the ground. Most places.Eric (55:45.89)You know, it's just a long investment. And, you know, again, the ULI guys are typically...A lot of those guys have to answer to the capital.And the capital is not that patient generally. You know what I mean? They gotta have a plan to move so much dirt or lots or whatever it is. And they just can't wait into something for 10, 15 years, it's hard. I think for that group to understand that. And I guess, you know, that's.Kevin K (56:04.233)Mm-hmm.Eric (56:25.858)you know, maybe something that we have never solved is how do you engage that industry in a different way. And, you know, you remember back to the New Urban Fund that was supposed to show them how to do it. Um, that didn't quite work.So I don't know, you know, it's that.Eric (56:47.362)I, you know, I'm a market guy. So the market guys believe the market's going to kind of tell you what to do. And, you know, they're going to go the easy route, but they're going to put in the big pool and all the stuff that helps them increase their sales rate and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it is what it is.But the people who do, you know, trail with outside Atlanta, they're doing great. They're killing it. You know, so whenever we do these, you know, Norton Commons continues to kill it.They just dominate the market. Once, once you do it, you can do it right. We haven't been able to set up the machine in most cases, you know, the industry to, to continue that it's always been kind of a family or one-off or. You know, very few of these have been done by corporate folks, I guess, just like watercolor that there's been a few, but, you know, they quickly went back to selling pine forest or whatever they were doing before that.Kevin K (57:54.102)Yeah, exactly. Like St. Joe Company did watercolor and water sound and stuff and they own so much land and I think they – it seems like they've kind of gone away from that back to a hybridized version of what they were doing before.Eric (58:08.574)Yeah, and it's, so I don't know, man. I, you know, I do think, you know, if you, if you look around, there's also a lot of smaller projects that we don't really hear about. You know, if you call up Mike Watkins or somebody like that, Mike, Mike's extremely busy and that's what he's working on. You know, he's working on these a hundred acre little projects that he's, you know, nailing and, you know, we do a lot of work with Mike andTom Lowe and those guys. There's a lot of smaller projects that just you aren't gonna hear about. And they're never gonna be, you know, we've done some DPZ. We've got a DPZ project that's stuck entitlement in the entitlement process that we're set up to do some of the architecture on. But you know, it's year four.Kevin K (58:42.536)Interesting.Eric (59:00.394)So they'll call us when they need us, but there's not as many getting the limelight that we used to get. And I, you know, I just had this conversation with Rob Studeville, who used to do one of my favorite things, which was write the New Urban News. I love getting that magazine every month. Remember? Um, so it was good to catch up with him about that, but he, you know, he had those same thoughts and, um, you know, I just don't think maybe as a movement, we're communicating what we're doing very well with.Kevin K (59:15.936)Mm-hmm.Kevin K (59:29.534)Yeah.Eric (59:30.13)other. You know, nobody knows about my Salem project. It's probably one of the bigger ones. You know, Mike doesn't, you know, Michael shares stuff, you know, when he needs one of us to come in and help him on stuff. I don't know what they're doing.I don't know what DPZ or Dover Cole is doing, unless we're working on a specific project with them. So we really don't share as much as we used to.Kevin K (59:57.67)Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, it's like another, we could do a whole other hour sometime on how CNU itself has changed and gotten away from a lot of the practical side of just building great communities. And I think a big part of that is we've lost, we're not talking to each other about who's doing what. And we used to actually have a running list of all these places all over the country. I don't think that even exists anymore.Eric (01:00:25.798)I don't think that's a priority anymore.Kevin K (01:00:27.558)No, it doesn't seem to be.Eric (01:00:30.434)But you know, I think.Eric (01:00:34.282)you know, that, that CNU group.has gotten away from communicating and with each other our successes. Cause that's a large, cause it kept you going. You know, we'd all go back to our little hometowns after seeing you and you feel, I would feel renewed and re-energized. And, um, you know, I would, I would love getting New Urban News in the mail. And I would, whatever I was doing, I would stop and sit down and read the thing. Cause it was great to hear about, you know, some new exciting stuff or some new projects.And ironically, in an age where it's very easy to communicate these days, you know, we don't. We don't pat ourselves on the back. We don't share our success stories.Kevin K (01:01:21.242)It's kind of like seeing you never evolve and communication wise we never evolved past the email to serve.Eric (01:01:28.53)No, you're right. You're exactly, you're 100% about that. The most painful way to communicate that's ever been invented, I think.Kevin K (01:01:29.618)Kind of hilarious. Yeah.Kevin K (01:01:36.864)No doubt.Eric (01:01:38.114)except maybe the group text, I don't know.Kevin K (01:01:42.697)Yeah. Eric, I think we'll wrap it there. It's been about an hour. What are your, what's your favorite spots in Savannah? Your favorite hangout spots these days.Eric (01:01:53.902)Hmm, that's a good question. Depends what my mood is. But, you know, I've got a...I've got a couple of establishments, you know, two blocks from my house that you're most likely to find me in one of those three places. You got, you know, the most famous dive bar in the world, Pinky's.Kevin K (01:02:16.159)Mm-hmm.Kevin K (01:02:19.914)Mm-hmm.Eric (01:02:23.642)There's a place called Savoy, which is run by the people who own Pinkies. And I think that wasn't there when you were here, was it? So that while you were here, it was this kind of shitty wine bar that nobody ever wants. So it's in that space in the Drake Tower. And it's, you know, you go in there and it's 95% locals, 90% something like that. So, you know, I hang out there and then, you know, over by the...Kevin K (01:02:32.05)I don't think I don't remember it now.Kevin K (01:02:37.57)Oh, yeah, yeah. OK.Eric (01:02:53.198)Perry Lane Hotel. There's some stuff there. Those are my hangouts these days.Kevin K (01:02:59.454)All right, so anybody listening, if you're in Savannah, you know where to find Eric, buy him a drink and talk about all this stuff and much more and find out what he's up to. So it's been great to catch up with you. I'll get my butt down there to Savannah one of these days soon so we can dive a little deeper and do the off-color stuff.Eric (01:03:25.17)Okay, good. I don't think you have to censor anything. So I was on my best behavior. But, you know, I, again, just want to reiterate, I think it's great that you're doing this. This is a great way to communicate with folks. Again, we need to do kind of more of this stuff. And, you know, I think just to reiterate earlier, you know, we accomplished a lot here, man. So I'm proud to.Kevin K (01:03:30.11)Not this time, yeah.Eric (01:03:54.606)have had you here as a Superman to my Batman or whatever, whatever you want to term it. So I miss you.Kevin K (01:04:00.29)Thank you.As long as it's not Batman or Robin.Eric (01:04:07.158)I don't want to see you in tights. That would not be a pretty sight, but miss you here, buddy. I appreciate you.Kevin K (01:04:10.305)Nobody.Thanks very much. I definitely miss you, Miss Savannah. I need to find myself there more often. So good to talk to you. See you.Eric (01:04:22.466)All right, buddy. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Mac and Bone open the show by recapping an ugly win for NC State and tough loss for Clemson on the hardwood, reacting to the fact that Derrick Brown was named an alternate for the Pro Bowl and talking about J.J. McCarthy comments yesterday.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Erin Patterson tries to enlist her estranged husband's family to help reunite the family.  Patterson cooks a big meal of Beef Wellington and invites ex Simon Patterson as well as Simon's parents Gail and Don Patterson. Erin also invites Gail's sister Heather and her pastor husband, Ian Wilkinson to the dinner.   Simon Patterson cancels at the last minute. The rest of the family enjoys the meal.  Gail Patterson, 70, and her husband, Don, 70, both get sick within a day of eating the food.  Gail Patterson's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, and her husband Pastor Ian Wilkinson, also get sick. All three die a few days later. Much beloved Pastor Ian Wilkinson survives the meal but now needs  a liver transplant.   Police open an investigation saying the people who fell ill and died displayed symptoms of having eaten death cap mushrooms. Erin Patterson is arrested and charged with 3 counts of murder and 5 counts of attempted murder. The 49-year-old maintains her innocence and stresses she did not intentionally poison her guests.     Joining Nancy Grace Today: Jarrett Ferentino - Homicide Prosecutor in Pennsylvania, https://jarrettferentino.com, Host: “True Crime Boss” Podcast, Facebook & Instagram: Jarrett Ferentino Dr. Bethany Marshall  - Psychoanalyst www.drbethanymarshall.com/, Instagram & TikTok: drbethanymarshall, Twitter: @DrBethanyLive, appearing in the new show “Paris in Love” on Peacock  Chris McDonough - Director At the Cold Case Foundation, Former Homicide Detective, Host of YouTube channel- ‘The Interview Room', ColdCaseFoundation.org  Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan", Twitter: @JoScottForensic   Dr. Lyle D. Burgoon, Ph.D -Toxicology expert, President and CEO of Raptor Pharm & Tox, Ltd., Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences, Critical Science Podcast: https://critscipod.com, https://toxictruthblog.com, Twitter/X: @DataSciBurgoon  Nicole Partin -  CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter, Twitter: @nicolepartin   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeff and Grace try to figure out why Steve Smith is getting disrespected the way he is by the Pro Football Hall of Fame after he was left off the finalist ballot again and what they think about the starts to the season for UNC and Duke on the hardcourt.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yes, it is December. And yes, it is football season. But why not talk a little baseball? JB (Jerry) Manheim is a local author with four books under his belt and a fifth coming out next month. Spurned to write by Antique Roadshow, Jerry takes a look at baseball history during the deadball era and tries to answer some unanswered questions. While it is fiction, it is historical fiction based in fact with reasonable conclusions drawn. Jerry questions how several future Hall of Famers ended up in the same Army camp in Georgia before there was a Hall of Fame? Part thriller. Part history. And all baseball. The books make a perfect gift for any baseball fan and are available at Amazon or any bookstore (you might need to ask for it to be ordered in ). A fascinating conversation. Have a listen. NOTE: This was recorded outside at Rise Up in Edgewater and during the recording, we battled the arrival of leaf blowers, loud cars, and an occasional screeching child. I did my best to mitigate the sound, but there is some muffling and damping! Sorry. - JWF LINKS: JB Manheim (Website) JB Manheim (Amazon) JB Manheim (Sunbury Press)

Farhan Zaidi said the Giants offered the same contract to Ohtani that the Dodgers did. Could the Dodgers trade Ryan Pepiot for Tyler Glasnow? The Lakers lost to Dallas without Kyrie Irving. Ohtani contract update

WARNING - THIS VIDEO CONTAINS SPOILERSLearn the terrible truth of Mournstead's monarchy; the fates of the Sundered Monarch, the Spurned Progeny, and the Tortured Prisoner in Lords of the Fallen.**Try my Partner Aura 2 weeks for free: https://aura.com/lorebrarians doing so supports the channel!**Become a lore luminary:https://www.patreon.com/thelorebrarians Watch the video:https://youtu.be/KBdcXMyUGqQContact:thelorebrarians@gmail.comtimestamps:0:00 - Intro1:07 - The Royal History20:02 - Fate of the Family33:10 - Outro**I do not own the rights to assets used in this video**Support the show

William Taylor - Some understand Jesus' claim to be the 'Prince of Peace' to mean that he sought to bring an end to all hostilities here on Earth...and failed. A kind of wannabe United Nations delegate. The reality is that he promised something very different. He said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword'. Maybe we write Jesus off too quickly on the basis of false assumptions.

Michael Crosswhite // 2 Samuel 10 // Those who spurn the kindness of God's king will face God's wrath.

AP correspondent Jackie Quinn reports on Lottery Jackpot Rollover.

Arnold has to face his on-again off-again crush on Lila once and for all when he starts getting attention from an unexpected source: Gerald's little sister! “Timberly Loves Arnold” is a bit all over the place (didn't we close the book on #LilArnold? Why's Gerald so absent? Why's Sid gotta be so creepy?), but it does get the Kidz a bit nostalgic for the social awkwardness of childhood crushes and sibling tag-alongs. Timberly's good people. “Eugene, Eugene!” dramatizes the relationships among the kids of P.S. 118 when theater director (and Mr. Simmons's archrival) Mr. Leichliter brings a production of the titular stage play to the school. Spurned by a former love, Leichliter changes the ending of the play so the bad guy (Arnold) gets the girl (Lila) – and long-suffering Eugene won't stand for it. In our discussion, we talk about the framing of narratives as school play, how inconsequential Helga is, and how cool Tim Curry is. If you like Stoop Kidz!, tell a friend about our show and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Tell them they can also find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stoopkidzpod and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/stoopkidzpod/. We get a lot of really nice messages from our great listeners, and we'd love to see yours among them, so get in touch! All Stoop Kidz show art is created by our own Emily Csuy (https://www.instagram.com/emilycsuy/). Intro music: “Hey Arnold! Theme” by Jim Lang. Intermission music: “Invisible Hippo” by Jim Lang. Outro music: “When Life Gives You Lemons, Dance!” by Jim Lang from Episode 97B Eugene, Eugene!

PK and Jake Hatch talked about BYU missing out on Gatlin Bair and Steve Ashworth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spurned champion, Bro Sean of Geist battles against Jennifer "Soop" of Castleton, first of her name.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Wildmoore! The first day of sophomore year for Farrow Smith (Ashley Westover) and they've already had their eyes and ears out for undiscovered secrets about the three founding families. Support us on Patreon, where you can get early access to the episodes as well as watch our exclusive After Show! You can also follow the podcast on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Tiktok. This episode was produced by Kenzie Tartaglione and Ashley Westover. Editing by Kenzie Tartaglione. Theme music by Lorna Ryan. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/queerpg/support

Two friends in a Parisian perfume shop make a discovery that will transform our understanding of the world and the origins of life on Earth forever. Set amidst the unforgettable sights and smells of 18th and 19th Century Paris, Elixir tells the story of Edouard Laugier and Auguste Laurent, the son of a perfumer and a fellow aspiring chemist, who met on the Left Bank while pursuing their passion for science. Spurned by the scientific establishment, the pair ended up working out of Edouard's family perfume shop, Laugier père et fils. By day they prepared the revitalizing elixirs and rejuvenating eaux it was famous for, but by night using the ingredients of the perfumery and the principles of alchemy, they pursued the secret of life itself. Elixir reads like a novel, brimming with eccentric characters, experimental daring, and the romance of the Bohemian salon. It is the story of a long-standing scientific puzzle and the struggle to gain acceptance for a new way of thinking about the building blocks of living matter long after those who discovered it were both dead. Yet this is also a story of hope and determination. For while the scientific establishment ridiculed their work at the time, teenage lab assistant Louis Pasteur took it seriously and over the course of an exceptional career, was able to show that their work pointed to a deep, inexplicable asymmetry in the molecular arrangement of living things - an unexplained asymmetry which remains one of science's great mysteries.

Journalists at CNN and NPR expressed happiness that President Biden spurned any Super Bowl interview with Fox News.  Days before those "failed negotiations," Biden received a warm and open-ended interview with the liberals at PBS.

Support World Evangelism by becoming a subscriber to the DAILY PREMIUM AD-FREE SERMON PODCAST using the links below: Subscribe to the premium podcast for only $3/month at Supercast: https://vbph-sermons.supercast.tech/ Subscribe to the premium version of this podcast in Apple Podcasts for $4.99/month: https://apple.co/3dix1mC ALL PROCEEDS GO TO WORLD EVANGELISM --- We need five-star reviews! Tell the world what you think about this podcast at: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3dix1mC Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/vbph-sermon-podcast-43369 Join our bible reading plan: https://bit.ly/2023-VBPH-Bible-Plan Please let us know how this message has influenced you by connecting with us using one of these options: Email: pastor@vbph.org Voicemail: https://anchor.fm/vbph-sermons/message Facebook: https://facebook.com/vbph.church Instagram: https://instagram.com/vbph.church Twitter: https://twitter.com/vbph_church Website: https://vbph.church Are you in Hampton Roads and want to visit our church? Come join us IRL: 1045 Lynnhaven Pkwy., Virginia Beach, VA 23452

Spurned on by the Maintenance Phase podcast episode about the horror of fat camps, besties Alison Rampa (she/her/hers) and Erica Chiseck (she/her/hers) decided to redesign the experience of a fat camp into an actual fat-positive camp. Trophies for biggest cannonballs, gourmet s'mores, midriff-baring clothing, and telling anti-diet ghost stories around the campfire are all part of the experience of inviting women and women-identifying to take up space and reclaim the camp experience at Camp Roundup.As a lifelong fat girl, Erica Chiseck is incredibly familiar with taking up space. An abortion activist, Democratic Precinct leader as well as a board member for the Cincinnati Women's March, Erica never considered being fat one of her centers of activism, but it has become clear in the last few years that simply existing non apologetically in a fat body is an act of resistance and rebellion.Alison Rampa is a writer, teacher, actress, improviser and mom from Cincinnati Ohio. Alison currently teaches middle school English in Hamilton, Ohio by day and is co-owner and producer of a female-focused murder mystery dinner theater company, Unique Events Productions.Please connect with Alison & Erica on the Camp Round up page, and sign up for Labor Day 2023!! And check out Jackie Molloy's NPR article about Camp Roundup.Sophia reads Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver on this episode.All things Fat Joy can be found here…Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fatjoy.life/YouTube: https://youtube.com/@fatjoyTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fatjoypodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/fatjoypodcast/Website: http://www.fatjoy.lifePatreon: http://patreon.com/fatjoyAnd please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the Fat Joy podcast. For as little as $2 per month, you'll be helping make all of our work possible and enable us to offer an honorarium to expert guests, which is key to centering marginalized voices.Deep thanks for their hard work go to Hi Bird Designs and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

Remember 2020?  No not for that reason. I'm talking to Christian fiction readers here.  You couldn't blink without seeing a cover--one specific cover--and hearing people rave about the book. Rain by Dana McNeely. Yeah, I was one of those people, and I kept ignoring it. Why? Because I'm an idiot, that's why. Well, and because I thought it was about Noah, and I just didn't want to read Noah. Well, I was an idiot. Wait, we've established that. Forget Noah! Dana McNeely's Rain is all about Elijah and his attack on the prophets of Baal. So to speak. Note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you. If You Loved Rain, Whirlwind Might Blow It Out of the Water Dana McNeely's story of how she started writing, gave up writing, and then God rained literary blessings down on her (and her readers!) is nothing short of beautiful. She talks about the critique group member who listened to section after section until one asked to have a Bible study with her because she thought she was "becoming a Christian."  I LOVED that. From her writing and publishing story to the books she loves to read and even her take on not finishing books if they aren't your thing, Dana was a delight to chat with. Her love of God, His Word, and story shines through the interview, and I for one am anxious to read the book that started it all... Rain so I'll be ready in time to read her second book, Whirlwind. Whirlwind by Dana McNeely  A king's downfall and a love that transcends war Spurned by potential suitors, Miriam travels to Jezreel to care for her cousin's son. There, the precocious seven-year-old works his way into her heart. When Arameans swarm the land like locusts, Miriam focuses on the safety of her young ward but promises adventures beyond the city walls when the war ends. Gershon, a quiet and kind vintner, is happily building a life for his wife, son, and aging parents. But when his wife dies during childbirth and war looms on the horizon, he must make a decision—will he take a new wife before his heart can mend? Meanwhile, Dov, a young officer crosses paths with the “bird girl” he remembers from the past. That she is a beautiful woman matters not, as he is a career soldier. Unexpectedly charged with leading Ahab's army against the Arameans, Dov anticipates death and defeat in Samaria, but when a prophet pledges victory, Dov vows to fight to the end. When an unlikely victory brings freedom, a bright future seems imminent. Then one afternoon Miriam witnesses a tragedy and must flee with the boy to keep them both safe. With henchmen on their trail, will they find refuge—and her heart the home she's longed for? You can learn more about Dana and her books (and sign up for her newsletter for a free book!) on her WEBSITE. Like to listen on the go? You can find Because Fiction Podcast at: Apple  Castbox  Google Play Libsyn  RSS Spotify Stitcher Amazon and more!

Harwin stans unite! On an episode that's even better with a second watch, there's plenty to unpack. We get to see that Mushroom's tales contain more truth than expected. Spurned lovers, bereft royalty, and ineffective runic armor all spell trouble in Westeros. Clutch your pearls like Alicent and hold on tight. Want to represent Team HOTD? Check out the new merch in the Bald Move store! Theme song: Game of Thrones (80's V Theme) by Highway Superstar Thoughts, questions, do you like dragons? Email in at hotd@baldmove.com. Support Bald Move: Club Bald Move Leave Us A Review on Apple Podcasts Join the discussion: Email | Discord | Reddit | Forums Follow us: Twitch | YouTube | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harwin stans unite! On an episode that's even better with a second watch, there's plenty to unpack. We get to see that Mushroom's tales contain more truth than expected. Spurned lovers, bereft royalty, and ineffective runic armor all spell trouble in Westeros. Clutch your pearls like Alicent and hold on tight. Want to represent Team HOTD? Check out the new merch in the Bald Move store! Theme song: Game of Thrones (80's V Theme) by Highway Superstar Thoughts, questions, do you like dragons? Email in at hotd@baldmove.com. Support Bald Move: Club Bald Move Leave Us A Review on Apple Podcasts Join the discussion: Email | Discord | Reddit | Forums Follow us: Twitch | YouTube | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TJ Raphael is back to talk about the legal implications of the loosely regulations in the fertility industry that turned sperm donations into actual humans with feelings of betrayal years later. Also, Hasta la Moskva: A Russian warship sinks and a British politician skates. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices