Podcasts about watchers

Kyle Rittenhouse sat down with Tucker Carlson last night and we review the legal points discussed in the interview, including when Kyle explains that his lawyers Lin Wood and John Pierce told him he needed to stay in jail.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Author Derek Gilbert on The Second Coming of Saturn: The Great Conjunction, America's Temple, and the Return of the Watchers. Book available here: https://www.skywatchtvstore.com/ Derek Gilbert contact information: https://www.gilberthouse.org/

Minute Thirty-Seven: From Stan the Man to Bare-Chested Thor Joining us to discuss Stan Lee as well as Thor's perfect body is Jessica Plummer, author and contributing editor at Book Riot. In the thirty-seventh minute of Kenneth Branagh's 2011 film Thor... How strong does that chain have to be to rip the bed of a Dodge pickup truck right off the frame? Or is it that the truck itself was not made well? In a minute of perfect bodies, this truck proves it does not have the perfect body. If they chipped the rock away from under Mjølnir, would they be able to pull it away? Look! It's Stan Lee in his cameo! Turns out, Stan the Man is driving the pickup that gets torn apart. It's been disproved that Stan's one of the Watchers now that What If...? has been released, but we explore what he would be up to if he were the Watcher during this crossover period between The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and this film. Agent Coulson finally arrives. And it looks a bit familiar as we've seen a bit of this at the end of Iron Man 2. He's very stoic as the SHIELD agent, and as his first foray outside of the Iron Man films, it really feels like he's starting to step into his own here. But he doesn't have Thor's perfect body. They do make him feel more menacing though. Is that because for this film, they're meant to feel more of a threat during the continuing sequences with Mjølnir? This moment again speaks so well about what Kevin Feige had been setting up with this crossover universe that becomes the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We talk about a few of the other actors playing townies at the crater as well. Back at Smith Motors in Jane's workshop, and we find Thor shirtless, showing off his perfect body. Thirsty, anyone? Thor is putting on clothes and we find him with jeans on. And that's it. Clearly, Hemsworth is happy to show off his body here because those months in the gym seriously paid off. Jessica wanted to discuss these minutes in particular because of the concept of thirst and how these films have subverted a bit of the trope of featuring women in moments simply included for thirsty male viewers by featuring these super men in super shape usually topless to satisfy fans. We discuss the male gaze versus the female gaze a bit. We also discuss the challenge of a male director filming the female gaze. Does that negate it? Though perhaps that's why it's so important to have Darcy and Jane both staring at Thor's perfect body. Darcy's apology/non-apology to Thor about tasing him feels like classic Darcy. Jane does a great job of averting her eyes, oh Lord. Thor fiddles with the computer mouse and Jane stops him. And she realizes how close she is to that perfect bod. And we realize just how much taller he is than she. But while Thor's body may be the perfect body, that damn bleached eyebrow thing and terrible wig. They almost make his entire face disappear. Oh, and we haven't even mentioned the other beautiful thing to look at – those incredible New Mexico vistas through the enormous windows of Smith Motors. Wow, what a beautiful part of the world. We've got Stan Lee's cameo as well as a whole conversation about the thirst everyone has after seeing Hemsworth look the way he looks. Tune in! Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world on The Next Reel's Discord channel! Film Sundries Watch this film: iTunes • Amazon • Netflix • YouTube • Disney+ Join the conversation on Discord Script Transcript Trailer #1 Trailer #2 Poster artwork Original Material Jessica at Instagram, Twitter and BookRiot Jessica's podcast Flights and Tights: A Superman Movie Podcast Buy Sword Stone Table at Amazon or BookShop

Closing arguments in the trial of Travis and Gregory McMichael and Roddy Bryan in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. We recap today's arguments from four lawyers appearing in the case.​

THE EMERGENCE of the Beast, the Antichrist of the end times, kicks off a three-end-a-half year period of literal hell on earth. But the war for control of the earth won't be limited to the natural world. We discuss the connection between the seven-headed Beast of Revelation 13 and the four beasts of Daniel 7, the transfer of power and authority from Satan to the Beast, and why the diadems from Satan's heads are placed on the Beast's horns, not his heads. We also explain why we believe the Daniel 7:19–27 reveals that Revelation 13:7, which reveals that the Beast will be “allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them,” actually refers to conflict in the spirit realm. The key? The Aramaic word rendered “saints” in Daniel 7 is the same word he used for the faithful Watchers in Daniel 4 (the “holy ones”). Watch every episode of Unraveling Revelation at www.UnravelingRevelation.tv.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE IS ACQUITTED ON ALL COUNTS! We review the final reading of the verdict in court and reactions from around the country. Defense lawyer Mark Richards gives an extensive interview and we review the details. What is next for the FREE KYLE RITTENHOUSE?​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

This week on Watchers, Brad was unable to make it, so Colson had his wife Coley sit in and they ranked the "Friday The 13th" franchise from worst to best!

Check out the Rebel Capitalist Live event Jan 7th - 9th!! https://rebelcapitalistlive.com

Unlike yesterday, day 3 of jury watch in the Kyle Rittenhouse case had few exciting moments inside the court room. Outside the courtroom, however, there is plenty of activity brewing in the city of Kenosha. We review the latest in the Kyle Rittenhouse case.​MSNBC booted – judge gets serious threats – hear from Drew H – Rogan weighs in​Jurors ask for copies of the instructions – we review – 36 pages – little heavy lifting​Jurors ask questions about the videos and your questions​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Kalas is still out there, only now, he knows about the Watchers. And he wants to use their knowledge to find the mythical oldest immortal. Methos. Who is said to be 5000 years old

Recap of a very eventful day. Krause tried to throw Binger under the bus! ​Three Big Topics:​1. VIDEOS and how the jury should watch the videos ​2. VIDEOS and how the government gave the defense degraded copies of the video​3. Motion to dismiss WITH prejudice and WITHOUT prejudice later​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

The Brethren of the Coast step through the doorway into a restless dream of an angry god--Into Atlantis, into the kingdom at the edge of dreaming, and straight to the palace to meet its bloody king... if they can make it past the gate.

The ability to perceive into the supernatural realm may be related to brain chemistry surrounding the pineal gland. The pineal gland is small and shaped like a pine cone, and is in the deep recesses of the brain. It produces various hormones related to sleep, sex, and growth.Many religions consider it the gateway to spiritual awareness and it's been called the “third eye” and the “seat of the soul.” Much mysticism surrounds it. The hype is probably overblown and frankly, its functioning and total purposes aren't completely understood by modern science.Peer-reviewed research demonstrates that manipulating the pineal gland in certain ways can impact the development of the sex organs while producing giantism.It is one of the few parts of the brain that is not isolated from the blood stream. Both spinal fluid and blood flow strongly through the pineal gland.ABUSING THE PINEAL GLADWestern diet, fluoridated water, and constant visual attacks (e.g., television programming) might tend to calcify or numb the pineal gland's ability to function. Speculatively, maybe this is why some people can “see” as children, but as they age, they lose their ability: their pineal gland has been so blunted by pollutants generated by Western society.A drawing of the Pineal GlandSome drugs seem to act on the pineal gland, instantly shutting it down. This is why when some seers go to “get help” with something like depression, and a doctor prescribes anti-depressants, the “seeing” stops. But when they go off the drugs (to deal with the depression in other ways), the "seeing" returns.But then, maybe the drugs aren't affecting the pineal gland specifically, but brain chemistry in general. I know a seer who was afflicted with migraines, and took certain migraine medication, only to find her ability to see in the spirit realm stopped. The questions she had to answer was simply: is it worth not seeing into the spirit realm to live pain free? It was, although she felt some fear never knowing if a room was "safe" or not, because she couldn't perceive into the spirit realm anymore.Eventually, her doctor switched medications, and a few weeks later, her ability to perceive the spirit realm returned, while the migraines stayed away. I haven't been able to locate research to indicate if some of these drugs impact the pineal gland, but I suspect they impact brain chemistry generally.Speculatively, some drugs radically “open” the pineal gland in negative ways. People on LSD and other drugs (such as potent, refined marijuana) report seeing very frightening things. It's difficult to know if the hallucinations are just hallucinations or if they are really seeing something in the spirit realm. It's difficult to know if the reason they see things is because of the pineal glad or because the drugs impact various parts of brain chemistry. Activating the Pineal GlandMuch mysticism abounds relating to "activating the pineal gland." Perhaps the pineal gland is stimulated when people pray to God or other spirit beings, when they use certain drugs, when they meditate, and for other reasons.Perhaps it metaphorically opens a window or portal into the spirit world. It enables all of us to have mystical experiences (without drugs).Cleansing the Pineal GlandThere is much advice on the Internet about the need to "cleanse" the pineal gland. I saw one image shared on social media with 15 herbs that "decalcify" (or remove calcium buildup) from the pineal gland. Ostensibly, you'd want to "decalcify" the pineal gland to have better spiritual experiences. I'm reminded of a passage from the Book of Enoch, which describes the Watchers who came to earth in the days of Enoch. A Watcher is a powerful guardian spirit who was supposed to watch over a territory in protection. These particular Watchers "saw and lusted after" the "beautiful and comely (human) daughters"[ref]Enoch 6:1-2, translated by R.H. Charles, 1917 [/ref]. They came to earth and made a deal with men: in exchange to sexually use the women they wanted, the Watchers would teach men, among other things, "charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants." [ref]Enoch 7:1[/ref] For what purpose did they teach about the cutting of roots and use of plants?Witchcraft. In other words, a short-cut, a hack, into having easier spiritual experience. People smoke or consume herbs to control a spiritual experience, or attempt to control God - or other spirits. And this is the heart of witchcraft.This event, in which humans were taught occultism (as well as how to turn women into sex objects, and how to create weapons of war) were, in the views of the Biblical writers, one of the principal causes of wickedness in the world. So let me ask this; Is it God's plan to use herbs to create a spiritual experience?If not, then what is God's plan? Repentance. Oh, sure, repenting is not as easy as consuming or smoking herbs. Repenting is an all-consuming experience... (but isn't that what happens with drug use or dieting or cleansing fads... they control us...?)... because God is an all-consuming fire. Instead of doing drugs to control your spiritual experience, draw closer to God through repentance and spiritual disciplines so God can control your spiritual experience. Turning away from your old life to pursue the life of purity God wants so God can rule and reign in our bodies, our thinking, and our hearts might very well mean changing your diet, and treating your body like it's a temple God wants to live in. It might even mean exercising. It certainly means stop sinning. It means setting our thoughts on things above and submitting your will to God's will. But it certainly does not mean taking herbs or drugs to shortcut God's plan into a spiritual experience. That was the plan of the Watchers, which after all led to great human wickedness. And in case you missed it, Jesus defeated the Watchers on the Cross. Steward Your Body, Mind and SpiritIt's important to not overblow the importance of the pineal gland, or any other part of the body..It's not in the pineal gland that we move and live and have our being. If you are a Christian, it's in Christ.The pineal gland is not the gate and stairway to heaven. Jesus is.Your body -not just the pineal gland - is a gift. Steward it. Your mind -not just the pineal gland - is a gift. Hone it.Focus our thoughts on things above and not things below, and seek first the rule and reign of God in our lives. In other words, keep the knowledge of this gland in perspective.

The final jurors are selected in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and deliberation has started! Recap of this morning's events, including Kyle Rittenhouse selecting his own jurors from a random bin, Kenosha protests starting to form and questions about Binger's reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon. And more! ​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Check out Google Play Books, 'The Book of The Watchers:"☆☆("Found in the Qumran caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran Cave 4), and presumed to be written before BC 170, chapters 1-36 of 1 Enoch are also referred to as The Book of the Watchers. These passages are also known to incorporate portions of the Book of Noah. The theme of the Watchers is final judgement, and incorporates the expository background of one of the most spectacularly glossed-over, overlooked, and misunderstood Scriptures in the Bible - Genesis 6:1-4. The "sons of God" referred to in Genesis 6:2 are explained in detail in The Book of the Watchers. These Watchers were supposed to be watching the earth as part of their heavenly ministry, but instead, they transgressed and became fallen angels. How did they become fallen angels? They saw that women on earth were pleasant to look at and schemed/colluded to somehow incarnate themselves, (literally celestial or, dare we say, 'extraterrestrial' beings manifesting in some kind of physical form), in order to impregnate women and corrupt the bloodline of humans. The offspring of the Watchers (and their human mates) were what the bible calls "giants" or "Nephilim." These half-humans/half-fallen-angel hybrids were extremely wicked, and began eating everything and everybody! This is the reason, some scholars say, for God's sending the flood of Noah. Additionally, The Book of the Watchers outlines how these fallen angels corrupted mankind by teaching them forbidden knowledge of weapon-making, sorcery, witchcraft, astrology, and other forbidden technologies. Consequently, when the flood washed them all away, the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim became the unclean spirits (i.e. demons) we now have roaming the earth. (Luke 11: 24-26, Matthew 8:28-32). All of these things and more are outlined in The Book of the Watchers. We exhort you to keep your spiritual eyes, ears, and heart open as you dive into The Book of the Watchers and prayerfully consider its relevance today. Keep "Watching!" (Matthew 25:13) An Author's Republic audio production. (For Educational purposes and inspirational materials. The Artists, Authors and Producers/Creators own their books and content.)

Prosecutor Thomas Binger delivers closing arguments for the state. Mark Richards delivers the defense closing arguments. Prosecutor James Krause delivers the state's rebuttal close.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Time to talk about some of the bigger movies and shows that have released. Sam went out to see that new Marvel film that Moze had zero interest in. They talk that other big movie about sand and spice, you know the one. There was a hidden gem that caught the eye of both of our heroes—Apple TV+’s “Finch.” They deduced that a man, a dog and a robot can create a captivating story. Host Sam Adams and Philip Mozolak.

Check out Google Play books: 'Gobekli Tepe'...."Built at the end of the last ice age, the mysterious stone temple complex of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is one of the greatest challenges to 21st century archaeology. As much as 7,000 years older than the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge, its strange buildings and rings of T-shaped monoliths-built with stones weighing from 10 to 15 tons-show a level of sophistication and artistic achievement unmatched until the rise of the great civilizations of the ancient world, Sumer, Egypt, and Babylon. Chronicling his travels to Göbekli Tepe and surrounding sites, Andrew Collins details the layout, architecture, and exquisite relief carvings of ice age animals and human forms found at this 12,000-year-old megalithic complex, now recognized as the oldest stone architecture in the world. He explores how it was built as a reaction to a global cataclysm-the Great Flood in the Bible-and explains how it served as a gateway and map to the sky-world, the place of first creation, reached via a bright star in the constellation of Cygnus. He reveals those behind its construction as the Watchers of the Book of Enoch and the Anunnaki gods of Sumerian tradition. Unveiling Göbekli Tepe's foundational role in the rise of civilization, Collins shows how it is connected to humanity's creation in the Garden of Eden and the secrets Adam passed to his son Seth, the founder of an angelic race called the Sethites. In his search for Adam's legendary Cave of Treasures, the author discovers the Garden of Eden and the remains of the Tree of Life-in the same sacred region where Göbekli Tepe is being uncovered today."... (For Educational Purposes. The Authors and Creators own their music/songs and content.)

Kyle Rittenhouse trial day 9 concludes with the defense team resting. We have the latest clips and a full recap on the day.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Once again, we're walking the moonlit path of dreams and discussing The Sandman. In this episode, we're talking about the fifth and sixth volumes: A Game of You and Fables & Reflections.  ----more---- Mike: I don't think I'm getting a birthday present. I am relatively certain that they want to fire me out of a cannon into the sun Jessika: Hello. And welcome to Ten cent takes the podcast where we cause whiplash from rapid time leaps, one issue at a time. My name is Jessica Frasier and I'm joined by my cohost, the curious collector, Mike Thompson. Mike: Man, my collection has been growing by leaps And bounds lately. Yeah. COVID has not been kind to my closet free space.  Jessika: Oh, well, and you recently gave me my first short box, So  thing. So  Mike: I'm not sorry.  Jessika: no, don't be, I needed a place for the, my, I looked over at my, at my bookshelf one day and went, oh no, I have a lot of single issues that are just kind of sitting on a shelf. Mike: you know, you're a collector when you just have the random piles of single issues hanging out,  Jessika: I just have random piles of trade paperbacks. And just like, my counter is literally covered. Not only do I have every one of the Sandman series, just like chilling on my counter. I got, um, moon girl and, uh,  um, devil devil dinosaur, and that's just chilling. So I've just got all this stuff, like all over. Mike: Yeah, it's a, it's insidious. It takes over. your life. One issue at a time.  Jessika: Well, what better way to fill a tiny house shaped like a pirate ship than with comics. Mike: Hm. Fair.  Jessika: If you haven't listened before the purpose of our podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest weirdness and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. This episode, we are returning to our book club and we will be looking at volumes five and six of the Sandman series. If you haven't checked out the first couple episodes of the series, I highly recommend you go back and take a lesson. It's episodes 15 and 17. Mike: Yeah. And we're covering two volumes at a time.  Jessika: Yes, we are. So 15 was one and two and 17 was three and four. So you're joining us for five and six. So welcome aboard. Mike: Welcome to the deep end of the pool children. you don't get an inner tube and we don't have any water wings. Sorry.  Jessika: There's absolutely no lifeguard on duty. We are not responsible Dulce at this time. Mike: If You are enjoying our podcast, please go ahead and rate and review on whatever platform you're listening on. If that's an option it's especially helpful. If you can rate us on apple podcasts, there's a lot of discoverability, , or if you have overcast, you can always do a star for the episode and that'll push promotion as well. Or if you're a comic fan and you're liking what we're talking about, and you've got some friends who you think would actually enjoy it? as Well, please let them know any little bit helps. We really appreciate all of you who are spending your time with us. Jessika Audio: We also want to support other podcasts that we really like in this space. So this week spotlight is on the last comic shop podcast. Here's a quick review of what to expect from them. If you want us to feature your show, go ahead and drop us off.   Jessika:  before we leave into our main main topic, Mike, what is one cool thing you've read or watched? Mike: I was on hooplah the other day and I came across a new series by Jeff Lemire, who is the guy who wrote Sweet Tooth along with a bunch of other excellent. But it's called Gideon Falls and they have the first five volumes on there. it's a really interesting series. It starts off feeling kind of like a horror supernatural thriller involving a Catholic priest who comes to this town and he's very quickly wrapped up in nefarious things going on and it's really creepy. And then there's a B- story involving a guy who is in this kind of weird dystopian, urban environment, far away from the small town of Gideon falls. as the story continues, it morphs from being a, , supernatural horror murder mystery into a bit more science fiction and mad science while still keeping those original vibes. , and also there's a lot of personal tragedy involved with the main characters. That's really cool to read too, which I mean, that's what Jeff Lemire does is he writes these things that just, they make you a lot of times feel like you need to watch Schindler's list for a pick me up. They're excellent, but they are brutal at times. so after I read that, I then proceeded to read through the, what if omnibus that they had on hooplah and I needed something a little bit lighter to cleanse by.  Jessika: That's very relatable. Definitely been in that situation myself. Mike: but what about you?  Jessika: Well, I have, I recently purchased the book herding cats, which is a black and white anthology comic by Sarah Anderson Mike: like this is the woman who did hyperbole and a half, right?  Jessika: yes. Yeah. And also the one that I've spoken about before fangs. Mike: Yeah. The love story between the vampire and the werewolf.  Jessika: Aha. Aha.  Mike: Yes, I listen.  Jessika: you do, you're very good, probably multiple times because we record and then edit and relisten relisten. And this style of comic is definitely way different than the fangs one. , it's more of a simple design and it's just, it's a really fun time to begin with. I highly recommend her stuff to begin with. So hurting is a part of her Sarah scribbles collection. And if you've seen some of those strips floating around online, they're pretty cute. each page of the book is showing like a small relatable instance about daily. And it's definitely a mood booster. If you're looking for a different palette cleanser, this is definitely it, it kept me giggling the whole way through. And despite it's title, it's definitely not a whole book of cat Comics. I promise. Cause I'm not necessarily a cat person per se. I mean, they're fine, but I'm, I'm not a cat person,  but you will see some in there.  Mike: I'm more of a cat person  than you are  Jessika: You've truly are you are with your little dog  cat.  Mike: the Duchess Sprocket fonts adipose.  Jessika: Oh goodness. The names we give our pets. I swear. I think the most fun part about this book though, is that there's also a section at the back. , and it has advice to young artists and it's complete with Comics to go with the advice, which is super cute.  Mike: Oh, that's awesome. That's really cute.  Jessika: Yeah. That's really sweet. All right. Now onto the meat of our episode, this one's going to be a chunker buckle up everyone. So volume five of the Sandman series is titled a game of you and was published in 1991 and 92 it's composed of issues. 32 through 37 of the Sandman series and was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Sean McManus. Colleen Duran, Brian Talbot and Stan.  We begin our tail in somewhere called the land and voices stadium may needed to find help and that the lane was in great peril and that they were waiting for the person, destined, to save them. Ultimately, one of the voices states their decision to go find the person that is supposed to save them. Meanwhile, Barbie, which was a surprise for me to see her again, is a woken by her neighbor, Wanda. And it's revealed that even though she sleeps, Barbie is unable to dream.  Mike: And we should note who Barbie and Wanda are, because the last time that we saw them was in the doll's house and Barbie at the time had been married to a yuppie named Ken who, when the dream, the vortex, was that what it was the dream for techs.  Jessika: Yeah, it was the dream vortex caused by Rosewall. Mike: Yeah. So when the dream vortex hit and. Ripping everybody's dreams into one another. There's this weird kind of overlap. Ken and Barbie had some sort of a fight. We don't know exactly what about, but it was basically, I think it was tied to the fact that Ken was, he was an eighties, yuppy, Wallstreet, wannabe, and his fantasies involved, things that Barbie found kind of testable. And then Wanda was the landlord, right?  Jessika: No, actually that was a different person,  but, um, Wanda. Yeah, Wanda's a new, person and she's in the new place. The Barbie moves to, Mike: Okay. Like I totally read that wrong. I have spent, I've spent decades thinking that Wanda was the same person as,  Jessika: I  Mike: uh,  Jessika: name now,  Mike: yeah.  Jessika: but he was, he was queer in the sense that he was like cross-dressing, but not necessarily like, he wasn't necessarily trans from my understanding. Mike: Yeah. but the other thing is that on the back of the book, I think they sit there and they refer to the drag queen. for, for this volume,  Jessika: oh, well that's just rude.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: That's just transphobic. Mike: yeah. Hold on. Let's, let's take a look at this now.  Jessika: Well, I am going to yell about the transphobia, so we'll , just wrap it up now. We'll get started here. Mike: Yeah, so it's literally the promo text on the back is taken apartment house, add in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, talking severed, head, a confused heroine and a deadly Kuku. So I don't think that's on Neil Gaiman. I think that's more DC comics than anything else,  Jessika: I agree. That was whoever was writing the cover script. Mike: but that is something that, because I read that description, I thought it was the landlord Hal from doll's house, because Hal was someone who clearly was like tight with Barbie and also had a drag persona?  Jessika: there was a one-off statement about how pal gave her be addressed to the landlord for this place where she moved to New York.  Mike: I missed that. Okay.  Jessika: It's again, one of those, you know, I'm glad I could catch something you didn't. Cause it's usually the other way round. Mike: Yeah. No,, but honestly between that and, the, uh, the promo text on the back, I thought that one had moved on from her assigned gender and was now living in her actual identity. But that was clearly not the case. And that was a little confusing to me. But the other thing is that, you know, the art style had changed. And so I wasn't sure if it was just a new artist rendering an old character. So on me.  Jessika: that's caught me a few times though, where I'm like, wait, the art's a little bit different.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Am I like, is this the same character? And I had to kind of suss out who the character was , which is fine. It was easy enough,  Mike: That's kind of shocking that they sit there and still identify Wanda as a drag queen. Like these days  Jessika: yeah.  Mike: anniversary book.  Jessika: Yeah. That was very disappointing to me. didn't realize that. And that just Mike: Not great.  Jessika: Neil, that one probably wasn't Neal.  Awesome. It was God dammit.  Mike: I doubt it was like, I don't, that, reeks of marketing .  Jessika: Well, there are absolutely people who write the, the covers and whatevers. Mike: yeah.  Jessika: So Barbie is living once again, an eclectic type living situation, but has moved to New York. Like we were saying beside Wanda, her neighbors include a lesbian couple named Hazel and Foxglove and a seemingly square bear of a young woman named Thessaly and a middle-aged man named George, who seems to keep to himself for the most part. Barbie also gets very creative with her makeup for the day, painting a black and white checkerboard onto half of her face. And Wanda has decided that spite their lack of money, they should go shopping and at Tiffany's even, Mike: Yeah, I really liked Arby's makeup because it felt very much like what you see on Tech-Talk these days, which is all optical illusions and cool stuff like that. So, Neil Gaiman, oddly prescient, or the 1990s. Jessika: He's doing us good right now. So we quickly cut to the dream realm where Dream is talking with Matthew, the Raven and his son, something happening in a far part of the dream realm, that there was some sort of transition. We zip back to Barbie and Wanda who are on the subway. A woman approaches them for change and Wanda brushes her off. While Barbie throws a of quarters in her cup, the woman becomes very upset when she sees that she is sharing the subway car with a puppy and starts yelling and panicking saying that she doesn't like dogs. The dogs scare her and she exits the car. The first available stop then up the stairs and out of the subway onto the main road, still yelling about not liking dogs. She is immediately face to face with what looks like a giant yellow dog with a large mustache that had to be bigger than a bus. This thing was huge. Mike: Yes,  Jessika: And it didn't even really look like a dog, but that was probably the closest approximation to what you could call it,  Mike: it's kind of this weird amalgamation between a Saint Bernard and a lion.  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to say it.  Mike: as we learn we have seen him before in Barbie's very kind of like Alison Wonderland meets Lord of the rings dreams that she was having before the events of adult's house.  Jessika: Yes. And we will definitely be talking about those  Mike: No.  Jessika: and the woman upon seeing this huge dog what's herself and then faints meanwhile, Wanda and Barbie have made it to their stop and go forward breakfast prior to their shopping spree. After being asked about the subject, Barbie explains that she hasn't been able to dream after a weird night back where she used to live. And after that point, things fell apart with her relationship with Ken, she said she stopped communicating with him anymore and they weren't really being intimate. And then Ken found another woman and was like bringing the other woman over, even though Barbie was there. It was super wack. Mike: Yeah, And I mean, I dunno, good for her for, knowing right out of that situation. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. She didn't deserve that.  Mike: No,  Jessika: So pan back to giant dog thing who is looking super rough, it. Mike: uh,  Jessika: He's still trying to complete his quest, even though he's limping along, the police are trying to cordon off the area and Barbie and Wanda are passing along that same way. Barbie recognizes her friend calls him by name Martin. And as he's trying to make his way towards her, the police fire on him from multiple angles, he falls in a heap to Barbie's feet and tells her that she needs to go back. The land needs her and gives her the serpentine, which appears to be a large pink stone in an ornate fitting on a necklace, one a pulls away as Martin dies from his injuries. She gets Barbie home and helps her into her apartment. And Barbie realizes that the necklace was from her dreams. And then her whole room fills with blackbirds who turn white, which was, that was a wild thing. And outside the door, George seems very interested in the situation and tries to ask Wanda, but she just brushes him off.  Mike: Right. And it's , kind of creepy, like his demeanor is that he seems like that weird sorta infatuated in cell who's uncomfortably interested in one of his neighbors.  Jessika: yeah, he's like at the door with his head down. He's like post Barbie.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I wish you could see me, everyone. Cause I'm just like girl. then he goes and grabs a whole ass Raven and puts it in his mouth and swallows it whole and grinning the whole time and mentioned the. Mike: Yeah, by that point in time, it's not surprising that he is off in a creepy, supernatural way. there've been enough weird little hints about them throughout the issue.  Jessika: Yeah. He's just kind of a lurking most of the time, which is very strange.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: There's a whole lot of other apartment drama, of course. And , Hazel was taken advantage of while drunk and is now pregnant, but hasn't told her partner Fox glove. she's also pretty naive about how reproduction works in the first place, which is super depressing. Like she didn't know basic things. Mike: It felt like she was written to be unbelievably dumb about this one topic, even though she's in a queer relationship in New York, she works as a chef. And when we're first introduced to her, she seems very no bullshit because when we first meet her, it's Wanda trying to get milked for Barbie and Hazel is like, kind of. Antagonistic towards Wanda. And you're not sure if it's because she's possibly transphobic or if she's just not a morning person, because they let Wanda come in and grab some milk and it just seems like they're kind of cranky people who are not thrilled to be woken up in the morning.  Jessika: Yeah.  Yeah.  Mike: But then like later on, she has these moments that are just, literally unbelievably naive and I don't think her character was written like she should have been. I don't know. I, I'm curious if, when they do an audio book of this, if they ever get around to it, how Gaiman's going to rewrite her.  Jessika: Yeah. Same as I, I just think, yeah, there was a lot missing from this character. Just didn't feel like you said believable as a character, just in all of these different pieces to her. So Barbie is still waking out a bit about her experience and with the birds and everything else, and Martin 10 bones, all that stuff, and tries to decompress while watching TV. And she starts drifting in and out of sleep. And by extension in and out of the dream realm, Nuala actually does show up again. I know we had said prior that we weren't sure if she does, but she does, Mike: yeah. And new Allah was the ferry who had been given to Dream as a gift in volume four without her consent, by the way, it was kind of like surprise you now serve the dream Lord,  Jessika: Yeah. You're not coming home with me. Sorry. This is now your problem.  Ugh.  Mike: which, I mean like, admittedly, we all kind of wish that we could do that with our siblings at one point or another,  Jessika: well, Mike: I mean,  Jessika: my brother doesn't listen to this anymore, so it's fine. Oh goodness. So Nuala does show up and she tries to warn Barbie. That shit is about to get complicated at which point Barbie does fall asleep and passes into the dream. cut to creepy George, who is cutting himself open. He pulls open his chest, exposing his ribs, where a bunch of blackbirds had evidently been waiting and subsequently fly out of him. The other members of the apartment complex start having weird and awful dreams and the birds visit each sleeping individually individual thusly catches the bird, trying to harass her and with a glance at ignites in her hand, which affects George. This is the first real glimpse of the idea that thusly may not be the quiet innocuous individual that she first seemed to be. And she then goes to see George at his apartment wielding a kitchen knife. Mike: Yeah, I thought that was really cool. And the thing is, is that that's actually a really good example of kind of game and doing , some misdirection because he doesn't drop any hints about her. All you get the idea of is that she's extremely straight-laced and kind of nebbish for lack of a better term. Jessika: Yeah,  Mike: yeah, and then she just busts out powers and she's really not featured much before this either, which was kinda.  Jessika: yeah, And back in the. Barbie is having to reacclimate herself to her own dream character as she has only the fleeting memories of the night she spent there. And everybody in the building starts to awaken and the birds disappear. They're all shaken after their nightmares. And one by one thusly visits, the apartments of the other residents starting with Hazel and Fox glove followed by Wanda. Leslie already knew the Barbie was in trouble and Wanda used her spare key to get into Barbie's apartment at Besley's urging and Barbie was out hold still in the dream room. Leslie asked Wanda to carry Barbie to George's apartment since Wanda was quote unquote the strongest and then Hazel who I'm sorry, is just dumber than a rock points to Wanda's genitals and says, Hey, you have a thingy, which firstly, take a step back, captain obvious. And secondly, so the fuck what? Mike: Yeah. And it goes back to that thing that we were talking about with Hazelwood. It's like, she is suddenly this very, almost childlike person, even though she is a grown ass adult and a queer relationship in New York city. Like, I dunno, it's, it's not great. It feels. Very clumsy. Jessika: It sure did. And I think childlike is, is probably the best way to put it because it did feel that way. Like she was seeing something for the first time and it's like, girl, Mike: it's like you're pregnant. This isn't the first time you seen one  Jessika: seriously,  Mike: anyway.  Jessika: goodness. The party, Firenze, Georges gross poster size picture of Barbie that he has framed up on his wall  Mike: Yup.  Jessika: and is informed that Thessaly has killed George and he is in the bathtub. So Wanda's freaked out by all of this. Of course, I would also be very freaked out at this. not going to lie to you. Mike: Also we need to, we need to Go back. for a second and it's not that George is dead and in the bathtub it's oh no. George is in the bathtub and they go, oh, is he taking a shower? It's weird that he's taking a shower at 2:00 AM. And she's like, no, no, no, no. I killed him. And his body is in the bathtub and that's when the freaking out happens. Jessika: Yeah,  Mike: I thought that was great. I loved it. Jessika: I did too. Cause definitely left the door open to George's house and everyone's like, George. Hello. Mike: Yeah. No.  Jessika: Oh, of course one is freaked out and she says that she's going to leave and she physically cannot. As if by magic, Leslie also says that she is going to get George to talk and starts the disgusting process of doing so she has to remove his eyes, his face skin, and his tongue, this, she actually bid out, which was fucking as fuck. Mike: Yeah, after it looks like she's kissing his skinless face.  Jessika: Uh, yeah, was horrifying and nails these to the wall and then tells George that it's time to come back and horrifyingly. He does come back and WordStar coming from the face nail to the wall and it's gross. So thusly starts to interrogate him about his plans and he begins to tell the group the CU. Wanda is disgusted and runs to the bathroom where she vomits and the rest of the group seemingly is surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I don't know that I would be personally, so Thessaly who is now out for revenge against the cuckoo for, you know, trying to fuck with her in her sleep states that she needs some menstrual blood and asks Fox glove. And when she asks, why she has to with Besley reveals that she has not been straight in a long time, And that Hazel is pregnant, which they definitely do not have time to deal with at the moment. But hill was obviously shocked and upset by the news. And Wanda is told that she can't go onto the next part of their journey because she needs to watch Barbie. But there seems to be an underlying reason after conversing with a being that seemed to be made of light stating that she needs to seek entry into the dream realm. Mike: Oh so it's actually, um, it's the threefold goddess who the fates basically who keep on showing up throughout. So it's, it's that, mother maiden crone, who normally, when we see them, it's, they're different phases, but they're all kind of part of the same amorphous black shape. So , depending on the artist, it's like, one being, but with like, you know, the three different identities at the same time, but it's also the.  Jessika: Yeah. And I didn't get that. It was those three again, so thank you for, Mike: That's something I caught, like on my second or third read through  Jessika: Okay. Well, I feel better about a thumb. Mike: it's. I mean, it's a fleeting moment. They only show up for like a page maybe.  Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: meanwhile, on the street, our friend, the I don't like dogs, lady is pointing out to a passer-by that the moon is acting strange, that it had disappeared from the sky. He states that it must be an eclipse, but she says that it just left. It was not like it gradually blacked out like normal eclipse. So Wanda watches us the three women walk into the light and disappear out of the room and the moon reappears in the sky for our friend on the street, Wanda starts questioning her womanhood because she vomited during the interrogation that somehow has makes her less of a woman. But I would argue that I would do the same. That whole situation was so gnarly. Mike: Yeah. it's very pagan ritually. it feels like, old school kind of like druidic, I'm sure that someone's going to get mad at me for saying this, but , it's very pagan, a cult. I don't know the rituals, but it feels like a lot of those things that you read about and fantasy novels that are set in, like our theory and times.  Jessika: Totally. So the head then starts talking to. back in the dream realm, RB and company are making their way to their destination and have some near misses and find some other dead friends along the way the land has suffered since she has been gone, they talk about the cuckoo and how the bird lays its eggs and the nest of others. And once hatch, the young cuckoos push out the other eggs or young of the bird who initially built the nest while also fesses up to Morpheus about having warned Barbie. But he agrees that she did the right thing, princess, Barbara, and party, get to their destination, the sea and send, lose the parrot to get help. Mike: Yeah. And at this point there's only one other companion left. Who's like a, like an aardvark or an anteater.  Oh, is it okay? That was some  Jessika: It's a rat. It's like a, yeah, some rodent where it like  Mike: and a trench  Jessika: a order. Yeah.  It looks like a reporter of a pie. Mike: Yeah. And, as their journey has been going on, it's kind of like, , the group of friends in the horror movie who are slowly getting picked off one by one. and the one That always gets me is the monkey. And I can't remember his name. But he would scout ahead and then he didn't come back and Barbie at one point asks if they think that he's okay and one of them just goes no, and then they go and find his body and it's like, Hmm. Hmm. Jessika: Yeah. That was really. And back at the apartment, this was a very web flashy, one where it's very back and forth. Uh, back at the apartment, Wanda is talking to George's face and she asks him why she was left behind. He says it's because she's a man stating that the moon Magic that was used can only be used by biological women, which yikes. No, no, no, no, I don't. I don't like that one bed. And George also offhandedly states that they should be concerned about the weather. So back in the dream realm, Luiz has betrayed Barbie and brings armed guards to their hiding place on the lift. And they also killed the last remaining member of the party. So Barbie is dragged away by the guards and then is paraded through the town into a small pink house. Mike: Which is the house that she grew up.  Jessika: It is, yeah. It turns out to be a replica of her childhood home. she is also confronted by someone who appears to be her as a child, which is strange. child Barbie starts explaining that she had basically possessed her dreams and was taking over. Barbie becomes more and more visibly weak from being , in the house and around the young doppelganger. Ann Young Barbie leaves the house with her entourage of large dark plaid guards. Mike: While dragging older Barbie with her.  Jessika: Yeah. So back in New York things have started to get wild. A hurricane that had just left, turned around and heads back into town. The women walk a path of Moonlight to the dream realm where thusly fesses up that she's been around a pretty long time and starts in on her plan for revenge. I would not want to cross this lady. It did not take much for her to get pissed off enough to want to kill people. Mike: I mean, I found it pretty relatable.  Jessika: So they run across one of Barbie's failed companions who tells them that the cuckoo Barbie  Mike: Well, they come across the body and then facily resurrects them in a similar manager that she did to George.  Jessika: Correct. Mike: Yeah. And that's how they're able to get him to talk.  Jessika: So during the walk Fox glove and Hazel discuss their future and Fox glove decides to raise the child as theirs and they make up in a sense. in New York, the storm is raging. George is making terrible transphobic jokes from the wall and the woman outside has been caught in the storm. So one helps a woman get inside out of the storm, in the dream realm, young Barbie, as an acting and plan, and has gone out to the most ancient point of the land. The higher gram that's land her two companions start making their way over, but are met by young Barbie who points them over to the threat quote, unquote, stating that lose is the cuckoo and loses a parrot. I might add. So the fact that she's saying the para did it is actually kind of a good assumption to make a Kuku. Fastly goes over confirms with the bird that she is in fact, the cuckoo and strangles her and snaps her neck. when Hazel asks why she did it, she says that the bird had to be taught a lesson. The lesson was that you don't get a second chance, which yeah. Mike: Yeah, Nestle is, uh, the epitome of don't fuck around.  Jessika: yeah. found out. then young Barbie explains to Barbie and the others that the time has come to do what she had been brought here for. Back in New York are I don't like dogs. Friend is named Maisie and she is rightfully creeped out by George's face on the wall siding, bad vibes, which agreed more transphobic questions on some stories from Maisie about another trans family member she had, . It was just bad news bears. Barbie does a, she is told by young Barbie back in the dream realm and slams the porpoise teen into the large stone HIRA gram. And there's a great explosion at which point it's revealed the young Barbie is actually the cuckoo and that her goal, the whole time had been to get Barbie, to destroy the Portland teen and the high program. And then the cuckoo wouldn't be held in the land any longer breaking the spell and the land would subsequently be destroyed. So the necklace also disappears right off of Barbie's sleeping chest back in. Morphine's appears and Stacy, he created the land and puts Barbie back in control of her own mind as she had been Bewitched by the cuckoo and all of the characters of the land start filing past, ending with one dark haired and scarred woman in white, who clearly had history with dream, like every other fucking woman in here. So vessel, he tries to claim the life of the cuckoo. But dream is like, Nope. And states that he's displeased, that she's caused some major shit. Mike: Yeah, he was. If I remember, right. Dream was upset that she had trespassed into the dream realm without his permission.  Jessika: Correct? Yeah. Mike: And it's also implied that her getting the goddess to grant her and foxglove and Hazel passage to the dream realm resulted in the hurricane.  Jessika: Oh no, that was absolutely implied. Yeah. The implication was that if you pull the moon out of the sky,  you're going to fuck with the tides. Yeah. Yeah. so we turn again to New York where that storm is even fiercer than before. And then there is an explosion of weather from outside and the world starts to. In the dream realm, dream states that he owes Barbie a boon and also reveals that Rose Walker, from , our doll's house volume had partially caused this mess. During that fateful night of converging dreams. Barbie asks that she and the other three women get back safe and sound, and they are sent back and we end volume five with a funeral Wanda's funeral. Barbie was pulled from the wreckage and was able to recover, but Wanda amazi did not make it. The funeral was similarly depressing and not just because Wanda had passed away, but because they were using Wanda's dead name and it cut her hair and had put her in men's clothing. And she was buried by her family who clearly had no idea who she really was nor cared to listen to find out. And even the headstone had her dead name listed. So Barbie took out a bright shade of lipstick and wrote Wanda on the headstone Barbie dreams that she sees Wanda with a smiling pale woman wearing black. And she finally seems happy. Mike: do we ever find out where the funeral is being held? It's just, it's implied that it's vaguely south Midwest.  Jessika: She had to travel.  And it did kind of seem in the south. I don't know that we got an exact location.  Mike: Yeah. It was, it. was somewhere, very God-fearing and intolerance of people that are the least bit different.  Jessika: Yeah. Well, what were your overall impressions of this story and who are your favorite least very characters or events of the fifth? Mike: Uh, you know, this volume is a really, it's an interesting change of pace because up until now, we've gotten stories where even if dream wasn't the main character, he played a really prominent role in the narrative, even if he was sitting in the background and this time around, he really doesn't show up a lot. And when he does, it's kind of just a bookend, the story. It's funny because whenever I talk about something that Neil Gaiman wrote and I'm like, oh, it's not my favorite thing. It's still better than 95% of things that I've read. this is not one of my favorite Sandman stories. Part of it is just because it's, it does provide that, that whiplash that you get where we're pivoting back and forth between the dream realm and New York. And there is a clumsiness too, to a lot of the characters, like we've already talked about Hazel. I feel like new Haven was trying to provide a narrative where someone who is trans is human, because he has several scenes with Wanda where Wanda talks about it and is very adamant that she is a woman and the story, the narrative doesn't judge or mocker for that. But , as you said, George is gross and transphobic, which makes sense. And, Maisie that the homeless lady is kinder. but you know, there, there is still that moment of are you a man or a woman? and then she relates the story about her grandson. it's not explained if he was just very femininely gay or if he was trans. Um, but she sounds like she was supportive of him, but then , he got killed during some sort of hotel hookup, which, I mean, that was a real risk with gay culture. Like, you know, especially during that time. I think it's one of the Columbia, your stories of the overall Sandman series. I don't think it's bad, but viewed through a 20, 21 lens, I think he could stand some revision. I don't know. I, my, my opinion is pretty much my opinion, I think, has the least value in, in any conversation about gender identity, because I'm a CIS white guy.  Back on track, uh, did it, did it, uh, you know, I, I did actually really enjoy how we got to see some of the characters from the doll's house return, especially Barbie. it's really frustrating that I kept on thinking that we had seen Wanda in the doll's house. And it turns out that that was some misleading copy. That kind of made me think that like, oh, sorry. I liked how we got to see more of a strange fairies hill of a dream from that book and how it was spun out into a larger story that had a bunch of twists and turns. I don't know if I had a least favorite character, honestly, like, yeah, the Kuku is a hateful character, but I also thought it was kind of interesting that, that she was trying to kill Barbie so that she could exist. And then I don't think the cuckoo shows up again. I think the cuckoo just like bounces after this, when she flies off. I for some reason, like, I remember when I thought the KUKA was going to come back and be an even bigger batter nastier villain, but I don't think that happens. I could be wrong. It's been awhile, but I don't think it does. I thought was a really great character. Like we already talked about how, the way that they actually reveal that there's a lot more to where character and also how she is just straight out of Fox all the way through the story. and then, I guess, I guess my least favorite character is Hazel's character and it's not because of anything that was really wrong with her role in the story. It was just, she was very clumsily writ.  Jessika: Yeah, Mike: like I said, I think she just comes across as dumb at the most convenient and unbelievable times. It's just, it's too coincidental where at one point she's asking about like, oh, well, don't, you have to kill a rabbit to like, what, what was it like she was asking about like to perform an abortion or,  or  Jessika: see if you're pregnant. Cause that  Mike: yeah. Like, come on, okay.  Jessika: Yeah, actual most ridiculous thing. I know. Mike: , I don't know. Like, do you agree to disagree? Like, I feel like I might be reading too much into this just with my own thoughts, but  Jessika: Oh no I was, I was pretty disappointed in how this whole thing was written. I'm not gonna lie to you. I was disappointed in the transphobia. Let's start there.  Mike: yeah.  Jessika: It just felt like the entire volume, it may have been done with the intention of bringing to light some of the challenges that trans women face like deadnaming or of constantly being told that genitalia is what makes one, a woman or the idea that to do trans correctly, you need to get surgery or the blatant violence against trans people. But I don't think enough was done to highlight someone doing the right thing and giving example of allowing someone to just live their life genuinely. And Barbie is a good example of a somewhat decent advocate, but I wish that the lesbians in the building had done more to be open or even just not completely stupid about the situation. It just felt really TERF-y  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Which, you know, to, to explain for any of you who don't know a turf as it's trans exclusionary, radical feminist, which is just a way to say you don't want trans women in your fucking woman club for some fucking odd reason. Mike: Yeah, And I mean, back in 1991, when this was written, that wasn't really a thing like, gender queerness, wasn't really a known thing. It was your transsexual  like, did you ever see the movie soap dish with Sally field and Whoopi Goldberg and Elizabeth shoe and Kevin Klein?  Jessika: No.  Mike: It's a really funny movie up until the last 10 minutes, uh, where it's, it's about the cast of a soap opera and how the behind the scenes stuff is even more ridiculous than what's going on in the soap opera. It's great. But then the last 10 minutes or so it's revealed that the villain who's been pulling everyone's puppet strings, , she's , publicly humiliated by being outed on live television as a trans woman. And that's the punchline. in, 1991, This was considered wildly funny. this is an example of how our views have changed in the past 30 years. for the better where we can look at this and say, this is, this is not great.  Jessika: Yeah. I mean, it's still happening though. And that's it, it's still a very real problem within the, you know, the LGBTQ plus community.  Mike: a hundred percent.  Jessika: Yeah. It's just in the end, I felt like there were no lessons learned by the people who had been the most transphobic. Mike: Yeah, I mean, cause George, we knew was going to be terrible. , and then Hazel and Fox glove, there was no. resolution on that because by the time that they get back, Wanda's dead.  Jessika: Yeah. Yup. And which that also felt refrigerators. Like you're going to kill off the one trans person, like okay. Mike: Yeah. And there's the, the happy ending of, we see Wanda perfect. And in this amazing dress with death, waving goodbye to say farewell to Barbie, which is it's. I mean it's  Jessika: But she, but my problem with that is she looks a little bit different. Like she looks more feminine and  she looks more in it's. That's not necessarily what, and I mean, I'm not trans, so I can't speak to this experience, but to me ha, having known people and talk to their experience, that's not necessarily what they want. They don't want to be a totally different person. They just want to be them genuinely. Mike: Yeah. I mean, I certainly can't speak for people who are trans or gender fluid, or, or anything in that realm. Like that is well outside my wheelhouse. I can just say, I agree with you. It feels achy.  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and yeah, since, no real lessons , were learned. I mean, maybe that's the real message that people don't fucking learn. And if so, thank you. That's goddamn. Depressing. Mike: Yeah. The one nice moment was when Barbie wrote Wanda's name on her tombstone and the bright lipstick, that was nice because you know, it was loud and it was flamboyant and it was very much everything about Wanda's personality, but it was really dissatisfying as an ending.  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Did you have a favorite art moment in this volume? Mike: I'm not sure that I had a favorite art moment, but I was really affected every time one of Barbie's friends died or where she found their bodies. like it, it genuinely made me sad. You know, I've already talked about how, when they found per natto, the monkeys corpse and how it was really sad, but Martin 10 bones and his expression right before the cop shot him, because he just looked, it was that look of, oh, I found my friend , and I've got the message, but like, it, uh, it reminded me of the time that I'd take my dog into the vet to put them down.  Jessika: Mm. Hmm. Mike: you know, and that's, it's, it's that moment where you, uh, when you're holding the dog and it's like, oh, everything's okay. And then they give him the shot and he gives you this look just fucking rips you apart every time. So not really, uh, not really a favorite moment, but definitely in effecting one.  Jessika: Oh, you're trying to get me go on to, Mike: Yeah. Um, I dunno. What about you?  Jessika: well, I really enjoyed how they did the color and line work and the moon.  Mike: Yeah, those were cool. Jessika: Yeah, it was neat to see how they use the negative space and implied shapes using lions. And it also made me feel like I was a part of the scene. There was almost like I had to shield my own eyes from the full white pages. Mike: Yeah. that was, that was neat. Jessika: any final thoughts about this volume before we move on? Mike: like I said, it's not really my favorite. I keep thinking about Hazel and Fox glove. And it's interesting because like Fox glove was, , the girlfriend of the woman who put out her own eyes with the forks or , the, the skewers and the diner,  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I figured you were going to bring that up. I was, I was like, how can I condense this  crazy story? Mike: Yeah. And so that, I, that was kind of a neat throwback because I remember Fox glove is like a very, it's like a throwaway name or something like that. And then I think her name is Julie shows up in the jacket that she was wearing and her eyes , are not visible during the nightmares when everyone's being plagued by the Cuckoo's Binion's. I will say that moment where Hazel and Fox glove are first in the dreaming and Fox lava sitting there and basically screaming at Hazel about getting pregnant and it feels like it's going to get real ugly. And she's like, when we get back, I'm gonna , call you all sorts of names and tell you how dumb you are and do you know how much it's going to cost for us to raise a baby. and she's like, we're going to have to buy one of those stupid expensive books to name the kid. And I was like, oh, Okay. , and then they're holding hands by the end of that page. And it's, it's sweet. that story continues actually in a couple of mini series about death, that, that game in road. And they're really good. they've got their own sense of tragedy and everything, but they're, they're solid, I don't know, it's not my favorite , but it does a lot of things that are really interesting. And I also think that it leads to some really cool stuff down the road.  Jessika: Let's move on to volume six, Mike: Okay.  Jessika: titled fables . And flections. This was originally published in single magazine form as the Sandman 29 through 31 38 through 40 50 Sandman special one and vertigo preview one between 1991 and 1993. So very much a true compilation written by Neil Gaiman illustrated by Brian Talbot, Stan wool, Craig Russell, Sean McManus, Jon Watkiss, Jill Thompson, Duncan Eagleson and Kent Williams. And this was very much a, an anthology of a bunch of different stories that didn't necessarily tie together as a, an overarching plot like previous volume did. Mike: Yeah. it's very much like dream country just with about double the cost.  Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. The first story is fear of falling. A musical theater writer and director who is wanting to give up right before his show. While sleeping. He is visited by Morpheus who ends up inspiring him to take the leap of courage. It took to finish his project to completion. Next up was destined mirrors, three Septembers and a January the story of the emperor of the United States. Here's the scene. San Francisco, 1859. Dream is drawn into a contest with his siblings, desire to spare and delirium, to see who could push a man to his death, each trying different tactics to try to lure him into one of those emotions. When Morpheus entered the scene, he basically just gave the man his exact dream. He wanted to be king and Morpheus stated that he was the emperor of the USA. He starts making proclamations about his claim to the throne and starts gaining popularity and the charity of the town around him. And he actually becomes famous for being the emperor and is even sought after, by tourists, visiting San Francisco. He has called crazy at times, but does not fall prey to madness desires, unable to tempt him as he already has everything he dreams of and despair was never in the picture. After his dreams came true. He was truly content and dream had won the contest death swoops in looking stylish as ever and leads. Mike: Yeah. And emperor Norton is actually someone who really existed in San Francisco. Like he's a part of our local history and  Jessika: I  didn't know that. Mike: yeah, no he's emperor, Joshua Norton, the imaginary emperor. he's a really cool part of San Francisco lore and I highly recommend, , reading up on him if he ever get the chance. he's one of my favorite stories about the city that. I grew up in.  Jessika: Oh, I'm definitely gonna look into that now. Cause I mean, I love just a Stone's throw away and I can't believe I've never heard that before. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: The next story is mirrors Thermador said in England in 1794 with Morpheus, just swooping into the home of Johanna Constantine. And I'm sure that name sounds familiar in the middle of the nights and I'm not going to lie. It was really creepy when he was just like Nabu, all your people are asleep, just you and I. Sugar was like big. Nope. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And then he's like, Hey, I have this super dangerous mission. UN she's all, but what's in it for me. And apparently she just believes in vague promises and agrees to help with him and with his family matter that he needs a mortal to intercede in. And it. Then it is post the French revolution. The reign of terror is in full swing and Johannah gets caught sneaking through the town late at night with a decapitated head in a bag, you know, casual Mike: who hasn't been out on a Saturday night with a human head and their satchel come on.  Jessika: Mr. Al of late God. Once you got my bag, nothing you'd be interested in. So She ultimately gets picked up by the law sands head and as kept as a prisoner under a further threat, if she does not tell them where the head is, this whole thing about like her spreading superstitions or some bullshit. Mike: , Yeah, because robes Pierre was all about reason and eliminating superstition and religion. If I remember my high school history,  Jessika: you are correct. Is that whole logic piece, which he was just going off about. So she dreams a little dream and visits, Morpheus and reveals that the head is Morpheus, a son Orpheus,  so Joe had a basically says, this is your fight, but I'm in the ring little hope over here, Hugh the extra creep factor where the law rightfully figures out that she probably hit the head with all the other heads and go tell her to fetch the one they're looking for. Johanna gets the head, props it up, covers her ears. And tells Orpheus to sing. It drives the map, puts them in a trance unclear, but she is able to get away and get Orpheus to a little island paradise where he has previously been. We also come to find out that Morpheus is quite the absentee parent. , it was so sad. There was this part where Orpheus asks Johannah basically does this mean he cares about me and she's like, dunno. Mike: Yeah, it's a, anyone that's grown up with with strained relationships to their parents, like can just feel that gut.  Jessika: Yeah. The fourth story is convergence. The hunt. So we find ourselves this time in a story within a story. Uh, grandfather tells his begrudging granddaughter, a tale about a man named Vaseline who becomes obsessed with finding a Duke's daughter based on a measure painting that was given to him by a Romani peddler, as he goes off in search of this woman, he has never met. He first encounters, the Romani peddler that had given him the miniature she is dead on the forest path, that he just swoops her bag of items and moves off through the forest. He meets several characters along the way, including Baba Yaga and a tall slender librarian, each particularly interested in one of the stolen items. He was peddling one night while hunting a dearest his target is taken out by a woman of the forest who factors into the story a little bit later upon reaching the Duke's mansion. He is led to a dungeon to rot, but is saved by the tall librarian who really, really, really wanted that book because it turns out the book is from the dream realm and Morpheus would be  very, very,  displeased. Should it not be returned? Mike: We've met the librarian before in passing, he's Lucy in the librarian of the dream realm. Like he's the first one that Morpheus basically reintroduces himself to once he gets back to the dream realm preludes and Nocturnes, but like he doesn't show up a lot. , it's one of those things where he's kind of like a central figure to the dreaming, but he doesn't show up a lot in the stories. , I don't remember. I think he may have appeared in passing in season of the mists. I can't remember, but anyway, sorry. His name is Lucien. Like that's, That's all I was trying to,  right?  Jessika: So in exchange for the book, Morpheus takes Vasily to the woman's room, but when he gets there, vastly simply looks at her and gives her the necklace back saying this belongs to you later on in his life. He runs back into the woman who took down the deer while there are both in Wolf form. And at the end of the story, the granddaughter assumes that her grandfather has made up the story to assuage her from dating her current boyfriend. But an ending comment, lets the reader know that the story may have some truth after all. Mike: that was one of my favorite closing modes. I I'm not gonna lie.  Jessika: It was sweet. So our next tale distant mirrors. focuses on Julius. Caesar's next of Ken Augustus, who after a dream decides that he must live one day in the life of a beggar. So he calls upon an actor who happens to be a , little person to assist him in getting into the role for the day and show him the ropes. They start by making artificial boils on their faces and arms. They dress and rags and take to the streets in a dream, he was approached by Morpheus who knew about his troubled past being brutalized by the man. He looked up to the man, a whole empire looked up to, there was also this whole situation with there being two different futures. Augustus had read the prophecies, edited some destroyed others so that that overall people wouldn't know what was truly predicted. And so that he could make his own course of choosing by being a baker one day a year, he was not being watched by Julius and the other gods and therefore could plan without them watching after Augustus's death, the actor who had accompanied him that day wrote the story of his day with the emperor. However, the harsh details of Augustus's life remained a mystery that he himself took to. Next up. We once again, go back in time with convergence. Soft places. If you don't have whiplash yet, just wait. You will get it by the end of this episode. But this time we go to see Marco polo who was lost in the desert and having the most odd dream. He runs into a person who says his cellmate is named Marco polo and they that run into our buddy Fiddler's green or Gilbert, who we saw in the doll's house who tries to impart a lesson on Marco polo. Marco thinks that he is going to be stuck in the dreaming, but when he emerges, he is back with his father and was only a few hundred feet away from the party upon waking Marco forgets the dream. He was just a part of the Seventh story is the song of Orpheus we again, meet Orpheus this time, his head is still firmly attached to his neck and he is going to be married that day. His friend, is also at the wedding along with Morpheus and all of Morpheus as sibling. The bride reminds, era status of his long dead wife. And during the wedding, he requests a private meeting with Eurydice fading, a need for assistance. He states his intention to rape her and goes to grab her, but she needs him and runs off where she steps on and is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies right there. Orpheus realizes that she is no longer around and panics asking if something has happened to her grieving, the loss of his bride Orpheus seeks help from berserk his father than his aunt death, demanding that she bring her back death states that she cannot, that Euridice is any underworld now, and that he is unable to go and come back as he is a mortal after more prompting, she does state that she is able to just not collect him basically. And he would survive coming back from the underworld, but she also tells him that this is not what he wants and that he should go home. Or if he is however, it does the exact opposite and begins his journey to the gate death had described. So he makes his way to the underworld where he's buried across the river sticks and makes his way past Cerberus the three headed dog and through the endless amount of people in the underworld, he gets to Hades and Persephone who asked him for a song. And he asks for his wife back and plays a haunting melody that brings the underworld to a halt. Hades states that he could have his wife back, but that she will follow him as a shadow up and out of the underworld. The one rule was that he could not look behind him before he reached the exit of the underworld, or she would go back down. He made it almost all the way there, but started doubting thinking that he was the butt of Hades, this joke. But when he turned around, he saw Eurydice just before she was dragged back into the other world. Orpheus broke the surface alone and screamed understanding that he had just bought his only chance to have his bride back. Time-lapse Orpheus as many years older and living in solitude, he is visited by his mother, Kelly OB, who had a falling out with Morpheus after he would not assist Orpheus with his quest to bring back your IDC is not interested in talking with her, but she wants him. The picante are on their way and that he should leave as soon as possible. So she disappears and soon after the forest breaks out and cries, a crowd of naked women covered in wine and blood are running right towards him and ask that he take part in their rituals of sex, wine, and eating raw flesh. He states that he cannot participate as his heart belongs to someone else. And they basically say, yeah, we weren't asking. And they literally rip him apart. And eventually decapitate him, sending his head, flying into a river. He, of course can't die. So he's just stuck, literally rolling on a river. Mike: Yeah. It's very much the stories that Orpheus is known for. Everybody knows him from the story of him and URI dicey, but, surprise. There is actually a major part of Greek mythology where he gets ripped apart by boxes, insane followers  and yeah. You're I find you don't want to take part in the ritual. we're going to turn you into one of the ritual supplies and just eat. Yeah,  Jessika: Yeah, pretty much. So Orpheus the head washes a shore and Morpheus comes to see him. He wants to say, goodbye has arranged for Orpheus to be taken care of, but says the he'll never see Orpheus again. His life is his own next is convergence parliament of Rooks.. We visit Daniel and Hippolyta again, she puts Daniel down to nap and he wanders into the dream realm where he goes to the house of secrets and is with Matthew Eve and Abel Eve tells the story of Adam's three wives and Abel after Kane interrupts of course tells a very optimistic and happy version of their story, where everybody got along after all. And after all was said and done, Hippolyta has no idea that Daniel has gone anywhere while he was napping. Mike: we keep getting hints dropped about Daniel and it's gonna play out in a very big way later on.  Jessika: I'm excited. So our last story distant mirrors, Ramadan is about the king of Baghdad, who has everything. Anyone could want ruling over a prosperous city. However, something still feels wrong to him. So he goes down into the secret depths of the palace where numerous wonders were kept. You procures a ball, which holds multitudes of basically like bad vibe entities. He summons Morpheus stating that he would break the ball, therefore releasing all of the bad vibes if Morpheus didn't appear. And when he actually follows through and drops the ball, Morpheus catches, it takes it and asks, why have you summoned me in, what the fuck do you want? The king wanted to trade control of his city in order to ensure that it was going to last forever. Morpheus agreed, but in true Morpheus fashion, he put the city in a jar and left the man to be the king of a city in shambles. So Mike overall impressions of a story, favorite characters or. Mike: Yeah. like I said, this one is a lot like dream country and there's one more volume later on where we get the one-shot stories to provide us with breathers, , , from the overall narrative. They were printed, as they were in, in various orders, but then DC collected them into the different volumes in ways. That makes more sense. but it's interesting because in this case we got a collection of stories without another prolonged round of like soul crushing horror and dark fantasy. I think the anthology volumes actually do a lot to move Sandman from the realm of horror and more into the realm of fantasy, because a lot of the times the individual stories aren't as dark or, as, as brutal. like a lot of times they're a little bit more philosophical or meditative, but I liked them a lot, but I mean, I only own, two issues of Sandman like individual. and one of them is issue number eight, which is the first appearance of death. And the other one is issue 31, which is the one that features three Septembers in a January. The story about . I love that story about Norden. I think that one's great. We already talked about how he was a real person and, he is this really interesting character out of history who is both the epitome , of kind of the magic of a dream and also what you can achieve even when you're faced with a ton of tragedy, because he was actually almost, I think he was basically completely wiped out due to a bad rice shipment and he did die penniless. And at the same time, San Francisco fucking loved him. Like they kept standing, box tickets for him at the symphony on opening night He was arrested once by an officer and the judge actually did immediately dismiss him when he was brought before him. And basically said like, , as an emperor, he is never declared war. He's never tried to invade anyone. He hasn't done terrible things. Other emperors should be like him. And I loved, how desire tried to tempt him with the ghost of a, dead snake oil salesman and the other bit where it turns out he had, like a Chinese information network, , where it turns out that the Chinese populace of San Francisco, which was hugely prevalent at the time, because of the gold rush and. Other things. , I loved the idea that he actually did have , this amazing fantastical life that was already fantastical, but then there were even more elements of fantasy woven into it. and then the other one is, , the parliament of ropes. It's , the story of Cain and Abel and Eve, you know, the purlin or Rooks hits me in a personal way because the bit we're able tells the story about him and Kane and, it's what this person who, who just idolized his brother wanted from the relationship, even though they do have their own strange in certain ways loving relationship, but also Cain murders able on a regular basis throughout the series. And it made me think about, how I stopped talking to my brother a number of years ago, but I still think about him a lot. And I wish that things were different between us, like. I often wonder what things would have been like if we had wound up being slightly different people and I construct those fantasies in my head still sometimes, but yeah. honestly I like this a lot better than I like that. I like the previous volume, because it gives me a lot more to think about, um, I don't know. How do you feel about it?  Jessika: Yeah, I, you know, it's funny as I actually really liked the story of Joshua, the emperor of the United States,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I really like how they kept the narrative bag, leaving the reader wavering between believing that he really had been successful in his reign as the legitimate emperor of the U S or if he was just some sweet old man who was really well-liked well-respected and generally taken care of by this town of other really eccentric. Mike: Yeah. And it turns out the truth is a little bit of both.  Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, I guess so. I mean, he did get out of, out of a core thing, huh? Mike: Well, and when he died, basically, he was going to be put in a Popper's grave. And I believe like the merchants association basically paid for a really Swank funeral and of people  came to the viewing like, you know, but thousands of people turned out for.  Jessika: what I'm going to research this  so sweet.  Mike: Hmm,  Jessika: Yeah. I thought it was really wholesome that he was just so content to have the title of emperor. He didn't have some weird power trip about colonizing or being otherwise oppressive. I would say that that was genuinely refreshing to see him just so content to be valued and validated. Oh shit. That's all I want, Mike: that's all, any of us want. Also, I liked that he hung out with mark Twain and the story, and I don't know if he and mark Twain were friends in real life, but mark Twain was a reporter in San Francisco. after he got run out of the state of Nevada,  Jessika: maybe we'll have to specifically look at up. Well, did you have a favorite art moment in this volume? Mike: I had to, I really liked the art of the hunt, which is the story of the grandfather. Cause it felt really like, it felt really scratchy and you're kind of reminded me of those old European crosshatched wood prints. And then that actually makes sense because I realized it was inked by this guy named Vince Locke. And he's this guy who he actually illustrated a bunch of tabletop role-playing games for white Wolf games in the 1990s. And then he also created the comic that the movie, a history of violence was based off of. If you remember that. Jessika: I do. Mike: but like, I always really liked his style. Like I thought it was really cool and really unique. He's done a lot of other cool stuff as well. He had a comic series called dead world that was a zombie apocalypse kind of comic. If I remember right , well, before the walking dead ever came along like, you know, 30 years. , and then there's the whole issue of Ramadan, which is the story set in Baghdad. so Ramadan was illustrated by P Craig Russell and Russell was a, the first openly gay comic creator. and he's still working today in his art style. It's just, it's one of the most fucking beautiful things you'll ever see. And it's really adaptable into a bunch o

KYLE RITTENHOUSE TAKES THE STAND.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

The Prosecution RESTS in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the Defense calls four of its first witnesses. We review the Rittenhouse Trial Day 7 with clips and take your questions!​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Assailant / victim Gaige Grosskreutz takes the stand in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial on Day 6 of the Government's case-in-chief. We review Prosecutor Thomas Binger's direct exam of Gaige and Corey Chirafisi's cross. We also hear from Kenosha crime lab technician Heather Williams and Kenosha Police Department patrol officer Jason Kreuger. The prosecution finished the afternoon by calling livestreamer Kristin Harris. ​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast You're the reason we can all do this together! Discuss the episode here Music written and performed by Jeff Foote.

NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

This episode is sponsored by Zondervan's new book Why is there suffering? by Bethany Sollereder.Download the transcript for this episode here.Meet our GuestThe Rev Dr George AthasGeorge is Director of Research and Lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew at Moore Theological College in Sydney.Featured MusicMichael Levyis a composer for the lyre. His music is a blend of some original ancient melodies and some of his own creations. His arrangements for solo lyre are based on reconstructions of some of the incredibly rare, actual surviving written music of antiquity. We played two of these reconstructions in our episode, with permission: Ma Tovu and Kandel's Hora. You can find out more about Michael's work, and listen to more of his music at ancientlyre.com.Yamma Ensemble is an Israeli world music group who have a beautiful love of the Hebrew language and ancient instruments. We played parts of their live recordings of Psalm 104 (see below) and also a track featuring the ancient Shofar, based on the Mi'mekomcha, a Jewish prayer. All music used with permission. Links Here's a basic timeline of Jerusalem that might be helpful to get your bearings. Watch Alexander, the 2004 biopic we reference at the top of the ep. Though, to be honest, it really wasn't very good. Get the Oxford Classical Dictionary here. Read a little more about George Athas's upcoming book Bridging The Testaments (Zondervan Academic) in this article he wrote for Eternity News. Read George's PhD thesis, The Tel Dan Inscription (Sheffield Academic Press) which focused on the amazing 1993 discovery in Galilee of an inscription mentioning the dynasty of king David (of David and Goliath fame) - it's likely the first mention of David outside the Bible.  Here's an interesting New York Times article about Jewish communities in Myanmar and India who claim to be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Find out more about the archaeological evidence we have for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple ('the first temple') by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Take a look at the Cyrus Cylinder, housed in the British Museum, which features an inscription mentioning how wonderful the Persian King Cyrus is, of course, but also that he allowed certain subjugated peoples - like the Jews - to return to their homelands and restore their own temples. So, what's The Talmud? Here's an introduction. The Jewish Virtual Library has a heap of maps from this period, so you can see stretch of the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Hellenistic World and the Herodian Kingdom. You might like to check out the 1998 documentary In The Footsteps of Alexander to get a good overview of Alexander The Great. Get to know more about Ben Sira. This YouTube discovery - a Maccadean/Hamilton mash up - made Producer Kaley's day. Read more from Josephus on The Jewish War and Antiochus IV Ephiphanes persecution of the Jewish people. Meet the High Priest Simon (also called 'Simon the Just')  Then, meet Antipater, the Roman-friendly governor of Judaea and founder of the Herodian Dynasty (father of Herod The Great) And then, of course, there's Herod I The Great, who was later made King of Judaea by the Romans. Take a look at Herod's Temple, the 'Second Temple'.And also, this article about the engineering feat of the temple and those massive foundation stones. Josephus records:  Herod announced, "I know the Jews will greet my death with wild rejoicings; but I can be mourned on other people's account and make sure of a magnificent funeral if you will do as I tell you. These men under guard — as soon as I die, kill them all…." Salome disobeyed, and released the prisoners when Herod died, Josephus added. Herod died a very painful death, and his symptoms were recorded in detail. Read this article for more gross details after Jan Hirschmann, professor of medicine at the University of Washington, in Seattle, analysed his symptoms and gave her own diagnosis in 2002 (article from The New Scientist) Who wrote Ecclesiastes? Read this analysis from Zondervan Academic and John Walton. This is a really indepth article on the challenges in dating the Book of Daniel, from The Gospel Coalition. Here's the verse in the Book of Jude that references the apocryphal text 1 Enoch. Here's what John Dickson said about that reference in the episode: "This isn't necessarily because Jude thought 1 Enoch was Old Testament Scripture - it wasn't! - but he did think it made an excellent theological point - about the coming judgment of God - and so it was worth citing with approval. " Here are some readings from the so-called 'intertestamental texts':  From the Book of 1 Maccabees:1Mac. 4:30-43   When he saw that their army was strong, he prayed, saying, “Blessed are you, O Savior of Israel, who crushed the attack of the mighty warrior by the hand of your servant David, and gave the camp of the Philistines into the hands of Jonathan son of Saul, and of the man who carried his armor. 31 Hem in this army by the hand of your people Israel, and let them be ashamed of their troops and their cavalry. 32 Fill them with cowardice; melt the boldness of their strength; let them tremble in their destruction. 33 Strike them down with the sword of those who love you, and let all who know your name praise you with hymns.”1Mac. 4:34   Then both sides attacked, and there fell of the army of Lysias five thousand men; they fell in action.a 35 When Lysias saw the rout of his troops and observed the boldness that inspired those of Judas, and how ready they were either to live or to die nobly, he withdrew to Antioch and enlisted mercenaries in order to invade Judea again with an even larger army.Cleansing and Dedication of the Temple1Mac. 4:36   Then Judas and his brothers said, “See, our enemies are crushed; let us go up to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it.” 37 So all the army assembled and went up to Mount Zion. 38 There they saw the sanctuary desolate, the altar profaned, and the gates burned. In the courts they saw bushes sprung up as in a thicket, or as on one of the mountains. They saw also the chambers of the priests in ruins. 39 Then they tore their clothes and mourned with great lamentation; they sprinkled themselves with ashes 40 and fell face down on the ground. And when the signal was given with the trumpets, they cried out to Heaven.1Mac. 4:41   Then Judas detailed men to fight against those in the citadel until he had cleansed the sanctuary. 42 He chose blameless priests devoted to the law, 43 and they cleansed the sanctuary and removed the defiled stones to an unclean place. From the Book of 1 Enoch:1Enoch 1:1-10 - The word of blessing of Enoch, as he blessed the elect and righteous, who will be present in the day of distress, when all the enemies are removed, and the righteous will be saved. 2 And he took up his parable and said: “Enoch is a righteous person, to whom a vision from God was opened to him, having the vision of the Holy one and of the heaven. It was shown to me, and I heard the holy messengers, and as I heard from them everything and understood I saw, but I was not considering the present generation, but I speak to one being distant. 3 and concerning the present elect I said, and concerning them I raised my parable: My great holy one will go forth from his habitation, 4 and the God of eternity will walk upon the earth, upon Mount Sinai and he will appear from his camp, and he will appear in the power of his might from the heaven of heavens. 5 And all will be afraid and the Watchers will believe, and they will sing hidden things to all the heights of the [earth]. And all the heights of the earth will shake, and trembling will take hold of them and great fear up to the ends of the earth. 6 And the mountain will be shaken and will fall and will be scattered, and the high and lofty mountains will be brought low, to be passed, and they will melt as wax before a fire in flame. 7 And the earth will be torn asunder (into) a split crevice, and all that is on the earth will be destroyed, and judgment will be upon all. 8 And with the righteous he will make peace, and upon the elect will be preservation and peace, and mercy will be given to them, and all will be of God, and he will give approval to them and he will bless all, and he will take hold of all, and he will help me, and light will appear to them and upon them he will make peace. 9 He comes with his myriads and with his holy ones, to make judgment against all, and he will destroy all the ungodly, and convict all flesh about all works of their ungodliness which they in an ungodly way committed and the harsh words which they have spoken. From Ben SiraBen Sira 2:1-18. My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing. 2 Set your heart right and be steadfast, and do not be impetuous in time of calamity.3 Cling to him and do not depart, so that your last days may be prosperous.4 Accept whatever befalls you, and in times of humiliation be patient.5 For gold is tested in the fire, and those found acceptable, in the furnace of humiliation. 6 Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.7 You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy; do not stray, or else you may fall.8 You who fear the Lord, trust in him, and your reward will not be lost.9 You who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for lasting joy and mercy. 10 Consider the generations of old and see: has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken? Or has anyone called upon him and been neglected?11 For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of distress.12 Woe to timid hearts and to slack hands, and to the sinner who walks a double path!13 Woe to the fainthearted who have no trust! Therefore they will have no shelter.14 Woe to you who have lost your nerve! What will you do when the Lord's reckoning comes?15 Those who fear the Lord do not disobey his words, and those who love him keep his ways.16 Those who fear the Lord seek to please him, and those who love him are filled with his law.17 Those who fear the Lord prepare their hearts, and humble themselves before him.18 Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, but not into the hands of mortals; for equal to his majesty is his mercy, and equal to his name are his works. From the Dead Sea Scrolls, the so called Messianic Apocalypse which was discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran (scrolls were scattered across eleven caves at the site). Though fragmentary, the passage powerfully expresses the Jewish hope for a Messiah, an eternal kingdom and the healings and good news promised centuries earlier by the prophet Isaiah:"… the earth will listen to his anointed one (mashiach /messiah) [and all] that is in them will not turn away from the precepts of the holy ones … For he [the Lord] will honour the pious upon the upon the throne of an eternal kingdom, freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, straightening out the twis[ted.] … And the Lord will perform marvellous acts such as have not existed, just as he sa[id,] [for] he will heal the badly wounded and will make the dead live, he will proclaim good news to the poor." 4Q521. OK... now, who are the Essenes?  The Sadducees? The Pharisees? The Zealots? Read again Luke 4:16 - 21:16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.  And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,because he has anointed meto proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captivesand recovering of sight to the blind,to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19  to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The Judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case excused an unknown juror during day 4 of the trial. Allegedly, the juror made a bad joke about Jacob Blake. Reporter Richard McGinniss is called by Prosecutor Thomas Binger during day 4 of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. McGinniss frames Rosenbaum as being the aggressor during the altercation in Kenosha. Government prosecutor Thomas Binger calls Witness Ryan Balch who testifies that Joseph Rosenbaum verbal threatened to kill both him and Kyle Rittenhouse. Balch describes Rosenbaum as being “hyper aggressive” throughout the night.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Kyle Rittenhouse Trial enters day 3 as the government continues with its case-in-chief. On today's show, we recap the close of yesterday's testimony which introduced us to Koerri Elijah Washington, who was livestreaming in August. Government Prosecutor Thomas Binger calls Detective Martin Howard as the next witness. Howard walked the jurors through several video exhibits today and we listen as defense attorney Mark Richards cross examines the detective about the FBI drone footage. And more!​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

Rittenhouse trial day two started with a full jury, opening arguments and the government's case-in-chief. Prosecutor Thomas Binger addresses the jury during opening arguments, describing the various deaths one-by-one. Defense attorney Mark Richards delivers opening arguments on behalf of Kyle Rittenhouse, explaining the theory of self-defense. Government prosecutors call their first witness, Dominic Black, and we review the direct and cross-examinations.​NEW! CLIPS FROM THE SHOW GO HERE:​

When Our Past Is Just Too Disturbing! (Historical Artifacts Part 2)

The long-awaited breakdown of the Oathbreaker Paladin finally reaches the It's A Mimic! podcast, but there's more here than was expected!  As the panel of Dungeon Masters goes over everyone's determined badasses in heavy armour, they find more than simply knights and evil knights.  What roleplaying opportunities are there, and what mechanical strengths are present for each subclass?  This episode has all the answers to these tasty D&D morsels and more, including the breakdown of the options from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything! Cold Open 0:00 Intro 1:42 Paladin Overview 3:42 New Options 5:42 Commercial 20:11  Oath of the Crown Paladin 22:05 Oathbreaker Paladin 35:22   Social Media Info 50:18   Oath of the Watchers 52:33 Inspiration 59:00 Creative Builds 1:04:38  Outro 1:14:18 Post-Credit 1:15:27 DON'T FORGET TO LIKE & SUBSCRIBE! Available On: https://www.itsamimic.com iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/its-a-mimic/id1450770037 Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/show/3Y19VxSxLKyfg0gY0yUeU1 Podbean at https://itsamimic.podbean.com/  YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQmvEufzxPHWrFSZbB8uuw Social: Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/itsamimic/ Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/itsamimic/?hl=en Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/ItsaMimic/ Email at info@itsamimic.com Dungeon Master:  Terry Williams Host 2:  Dan O'Coin Host 3:  Kyle McQuaid Written by:  Terry Williams and Adam Nason Director:  Terry Williams and Adam Nason Audio Editor:  Travis Forsythe Video Editor:  Adam Nason Produced by:  Travis Forsythe and Adam Nason Executive Producers:  Dan O'Coin and Adam Nason Intro/Outro Music by:  Cory Wiebe Logo by:  Katie Skidmore at https://www.instagram.com/clementineartportraits/ Current Gear: Microphone (USA) - https://amzn.to/2WWuCsz  Microphone (CAN) - https://amzn.to/2WTZ69G This post or video may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission for purchases made through our links. This episode is meant to be used as an inspirational supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition and tabletop roleplaying games in general.  It's A Mimic! does not own the rights to any Wizards of the Coasts products. Artwork included in this episode's visualizations is published and/or owned by Wizards of the Coast.

Kyle Rittenhouse trial starts with jury selection, and we have the highlights from day one in Judge Bruce Schroeder's courtroom. Alec Baldwin speaks to the press on the side of the road and we break down his statement in video and transcript to identify how his defense fits with the chain of causation. Major departures and closures around the U.S. in the wake of government mandates, including closed fire departments in New York and the pending expulsion of marines.​​And more! Including:​​

Rust armor Hannah Gutierrez Reed releases a statement through her lawyers blaming others for the killing of Halyna Hutchins at the hands of Alec Baldwin and we review the criminal chain of causation. Republicans are outraged over news that the Biden Administration is in negotiations to settle with migrant families for $450,000 per person to settle civil claims that occurred during the Trump Administration. Governor Ron Desantis and the State of Florida sue the Biden Administration over the government contractor requirements for vaccination and we take a look at the lawsuit filed in Florida District Court.​And more! Including:​

Highlights:   “This is just astonishing. According to The Washington Post, in Democratic counties poll watchers are 2 to 1 Republican.”“In the latest Fox News poll, Glenn Youngkin is up by 5 points the day before the election and the RealClear politics polling aggregate has Youngkin at a plus 1.7%.”“Democrats are facing a nightmare scenario here with tomorrow's gubernatorial election.”“Leftists are admitting, I kid you not, they're admitting that no matter what the outcome tomorrow, Donald J. Trump will be the ultimate winner.”  Timestamps:[02:15] Washington Posts article on an army of poll watchers turning out in Virginia[03:45] The amazing success of the patriot precinct strategy[04:47] Youngkin soaring in the polls and how the MSM is setting up excuses for why McAuliffe's campaign imploded  [05:45] The real reason why McAuliffe's campaign is imploding[09:03] Who the real winner is no matter what happens on the election tomorrowResources:   Ep. 711 Dems HORRIFIED As ‘TRUMP COUP' Becomes ‘RUNAWAY TRAIN'!!!JOIN US for our Virtual gathering of New Conservative Patriots on November 12th and 13th and Learn How YOU Can Build a Society FREE from WOKENESS! Register today at http://conferences.turleytalks.com/no...JOIN ME and DONALD TRUMP JR in PHEONIX for the AMERICAN FREEDOM TOUR Nov 19-20! In honor of our 5 years on YouTube, Get 40% OFF Your Registration!!! https://aft.turleytalks.com/phoenixGet Your Brand-New PATRIOT T-Shirts and Merch Here: https://store.turleytalks.com/Become a Turley Talks Insiders Club Member and get the first 7 days FREE!!: https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com/welcomeFight Back Against Big Tech Censorship! Sign-up here to discover Dr. Steve's different social media options …. but without the censorship! https://www.turleytalks.com/en/alternative-media.com Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review.Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture!If you would like to get lots of articles on conservative trends make sure to sign-up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts. 

Pr. Will Weedon, Host of The Word of the Lord Endures Forever The Word of the Lord Endures Forever Celebrating the Saints Thank, Praise, Serve and Obey See My Savior's Hands The Lutheran Solas in the Church Fathers

Todd Armstrong aka Immanuel Kingman, Host of the Goodness Over Darkness Podcast, Joins us to discuss his journey through darkness and how he turned his life around to become a healer and ascension coach. Todd shared with us excerpts from his recent examination of The Book of Enoch, The 7 Planets, The Watchers, Nephilim, Seraphim, and a possible connection to our research into ancient stone structures. New Intro Song Poll for the Show!Join us on TelegramLeave me a message at https://podinbox.com/MFTIC:For Exclusive My Family Thinks I'm Crazy Content: Only 2$ get 50+ Bonus Episodes, Sign up on our Patreon For Exclusive Episodes. Check out the S.E.E.E.N.or on Rokfin@MFTICPodcast on Twitter@myfamilythinksimcrazy on Instagram, Follow, Subscribe, Rate, and Review we appreciate you!https://www.myfamilythinksimcrazy.comIntro Song by Destiny Lab and Shane Newsome Intro Music 1: Big TalkBy Polyphonic Groove OrchestraInterlude Music: MidnightBy Simple ThievesReleased under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License Thanks To Soundstripe★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

College has separated Kenan's cousin Eric from his girlfriend and it's up to Kenan & Kel to pick her up from her flight from the Big Apple. As soon as Melissa steps off the airplane; however, she's in for a world of pain. Join us as we chase Kenan & Kel across the Windy City from pool hall to tattoo parlor until their watch has ended. Email us at: kenankelpodcast@gmail.com Check out our T-Shirts: https://www.teepublic.com/user/kenan-kel-podcast And our Website: https://www.podpage.com/kenankelpodcast/ Twitter/Instagram/TikTok: @kenankelpodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kenankelpodcast/message

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is being charged with a sex crime for harassment of an aid and we review the latest from Albany state court. New York Police Department Commissioner warns New Yorkers of an officer shortage as Mayor DeBlasio's vaccine mandate for city workers goes into effect. New York State Trooper Christopher Baldner is facing murder charges and was arraigned in New York in the killing of 11-year-old Monica Goods.​And more! Including:​

Attorney General Merrick Garland is scolded by Senate Republicans in a Judiciary Hearing over Garland's school memo authorizing FBI intervention in local school matters. A white-male former healthcare executive wins a $10 million dollar verdict in a reverse-discrimination case after he was fired and replaced by two women. Officials in New Mexico hold a press conference to provide updates in the Alec Baldwin shooting case and confirm that no one has been ruled out regarding criminal charges. ​And more! Including:​

It's a seasonal bonus episode of Watchers in the FEAR Dimension, as Reilly rallies the crew to discuss two classic horror films featuring stars from Doctor Who – The Omen (featuring Patrick Troughton) and the Amicus anthology The House That Dripped Blood (featuring Jon Pertwee and Peter Cushing).   Along the way, Julie plays true to type as “the musical one” and expresses a love for scores by Jerry Goldsmith, Don struggles to understand how so many men could fall in love with a non-so-attractive waxwork, Anthony talks about goofy-looking vampires, and Reilly does his best Cryptkeeper impression. The entire crew discuss whether Pertwee could ever be cast as a vampire in a non-comedic way.   If you would like to watch along with us, The Omen is available from Amazon US (https://amzn.to/3EbmBBl), Amazon UK (https://amzn.to/3pxryjF), and to stream in the US on AMC+ (http://www.amcplus.com) and in the UK on Disney+ (http://www.disneyplus.co.uk). The House that Dripped Blood is also available from Amazon US (https://amzn.to/3m5MKLJ), Amazon UK (https://amzn.to/3b8JI2F), and to stream in the US on Fandor (http://www.fandor.com) and in the UK on Shudder (http://www.shudder.co.uk).   Other media mentioned in this episode: The Exorcist (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3vBsBjI | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2XGCQGU) Rosemary's Baby (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3E6Rmaq | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vC2SHV) The Mephisto Waltz (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3vEYCaz | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3vB1jd2) Hot Fuzz (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3vC2eKv | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3C85mAb) Freakazoid! Season 1 (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3EeUbGF | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3b4xI2m) Psycho (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3m6ZgKH | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3m5sPMB) The Curse of Frankenstein (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3px7hL8 | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3GfDhZZ) Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3jtKa0j | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3EdmvZX) Z Cars: Complete Collection One & Two (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3pdDtmF | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3lV2cKn) Catweazle: The Complete Series (Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3jueY0Z | Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2ZhAbnY) The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror (Disney+: http://www.disneyplus.com) Big Finish: The Macros (BigFinish.com: https://bit.ly/3puN1JX) David Warner in Big Finish (BigFinish.com: https://bit.ly/3nl83Iz) Geoffrey Bayldon in Big Finish (BigFinish.com: https://bit.ly/3CaoUUD)   The opening and closing theme is “What if John Carpenter Did a Doctor Who Theme?” by GeorgeCMusic on YouTube (https://youtu.be/CPzulODLeD8).   Finally, you can follow us and interact with us on our social media accounts - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also e-mail us at watchers4d@gmail.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating or review.

    EPISODE #643 FALLEN ANGELS, NEPHILIM, & GIANTS Richard welcomes an author, lecturer and film maker who, along with a team of scientists, archaeologists and scholars traveled to foreign lands to search for the physical evidence of the Nephilim, the Giants of Old Testament lore.  Guest: L.A. Marzulli has penned 12 books including The Nephilim Trilogy which made the CBA best sellers list, including, The Nephilim Trilogy which made the CBA best sellers list. He received an honorary doctorate for the series from his mentor Dr. I. D. E. Thomas, who was the Provost at Pacific International University. He was also honored with the Gold Medallion award from Chuck Missler at the K-House conference in 2014. His series On the Trail of the Nephilim I & II are full-color, over-sized books, which uncover startling evidence that there has been a massive cover-up of what he believes are the remains of the Nephilim, the giants mentioned in the Bible. Marzulli teamed up with film producer Richard Shaw to create The Watchers series. There are now 11 installments in the series and Watchers 7: UFO Physical Evidence won UFO Best Film and the Peoples Choice Awards, at the UFO Congress in 2014. Marzulli and Shaw took their second trip to Peru in January of 2014, filming ancient artifacts and megalithic structures at various locations, and also filmed the unwrapping of a 2000-year-old mummy skull, at Sr. Juan Navarro's Paracas History Museum, which was revealed in Watchers 8. Marzulli has launched a new series, The Watchman Chronicles and his first independent film was released in March of 2017. The title of the series is "In Their Own Words: UFOs are Real!" SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Life Change and Formula 13 Teas All Organic, No Caffeine, Non GMO!  More Energy!  Order now, use the code 'unlimited' to save 10% on all non-SALE items, PLUS... ALL your purchases ships for free!!! C60EVO -The Secret is out about this powerful anti-oxidant. The Purest C60 available is ESS60.  Buy Direct from the Source.  Buy Now and Save 10% – Use Coupon Code: EVRS at Checkout! Strange Planet Shop - If you're a fan of the radio show and the podcast, why not show it off?  Greats T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and more.  It's a Strange Planet - Dress For It! BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER FOR LESS THAN $2 PER MONTH If you're a fan of this podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium Subscriber.  For just $1.99 per month, subscribers to my Conspiracy Unlimited Plus gain access to two exclusive, commercial-free episodes per month. They also gain access to my back catalog of episodes. The most recent 30 episodes of Conspiracy Unlimited will remain available for free. Stream all episodes and Premium content on your mobile device by getting the FREE Conspiracy Unlimited APP for both IOS and Android devices... Available at the App Store and Google Play. To become a subscriber CLICK HERE or go to www.conspiracyunlimitedpodcast.com and click on Get Access to Premium Episodes

Our guest today is Eric Crowley, a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Whoop, and clients such as AllTrails, Pinkbike, and Lingoda, GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in the Consumer Subscription Software space.On the podcast we talk with Eric about his 2021 report on Consumer Subscription Software, the truth about LTV calculations, and the new era of organic user acquisition.In this episode, you'll learn: Was 2020 just a “COVID Bump,” or a shift in consumer behavior? Are the Bumble & Duolingo IPO multiples justified? How savvy developers are adapting to Apple's App Tracking Transparency The truth about LTV The new era of customer acquisition Links & Resources Spotify Whoop AllTrails Pinkbike Lingoda Bumble Duolingo Instacart Match Group Netflix Noom Weight Watchers Tinder The Dyrt Day One Journal Automattic Tech Crunch Scribd Pandora Eric Crowley's Links Follow Eric on Twitter GP Bullhound GP Bullhound insights Eric's LinkedIn GP Bullhound 2021 CSS survey Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode Transcript00:00:00 David:Hello, I'm your host. David Bernard. And with me, as always, RevenueCat CEO, Jacob Eiting. Our guest today is Eric Crowley, a tech investment banker with GP Bullhound. With investments in companies ranging from Spotify to Whoop, and clients such as AllTrails Pinkbike, and Lingoda, GP Bullhound provides transaction advice and capital to many of the leaders in consumer subscription software.On the podcast, we talk with Eric about his 2021 report on consumer subscription software, the truth about LTV calculations, and the new era of organic user acquisition.Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast.00:00:56 Eric:Hey, David, Jacob. Thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure. 00:00:59 David:Yeah. Every year you release this report, so we had to get you back. This is the third annual Consumer Subscription Software Report, and I wanted to kick off just asking you a little bit about the motivation, and where your headspace is in thinking about creating this. Who the target is, and what kind of questions you're asking yourself as you prepare this report.00:01:24 Eric:Yeah. The report is the GP Bullhound Consumer Subscription Software Report. I call it CSS, which is kind of a playoff SaaS. This is the third year I've been writing it, and it started back in 2018. I worked with a company called AllTrails that was starting to monetize really well by selling subscriptions.It was like a light bulb went off in my head. I was like, this is a phenomenal way to provide a consistently improving product to consumers, where the margins are pretty good. It's easy to access a ton of different people globally through the app stores or through the web, and I just got really excited about it.I started putting some notes down on my own, and then GP Bullhound really supported me in saying like, “Hey, this is actually a pretty big trend. There's gonna be some amazing companies built around this space,” and companies like RevenueCat, that are supporting CSS companies, are just as exciting.So, we've been slowly educating ourselves. The goal behind the report is really just to force me to do some thinking about the space. What it looks like. What it will be. As a banker, you can quickly focus on transaction, transaction, transaction, and not really do any long-term thinking about where the world's going.It's putting myself in your guys's shoes. You guys are building RevenueCat not for what the world looks like today, but for what the world looks like in three to five years. I try to take the same approach with CSS, and think about where's the world going to go. So I talked to a lot of smart people as I put the report together. Entrepreneurs, investors, get their opinions.You guys can see their interviews in the report, and then ultimately we publish it. The audience I like to think about is entrepreneurs, people that are thinking about starting a CSS company, or already launched one, and they're looking to improve their metrics, or think about their target audience as entrepreneur-rich.By partnering with them, investing in their businesses, it takes them to the next level. The other way I like to think about it, it's my own personal scoreboard. I love to flip back two years ago and see, was I right about this company? You're publishing in public, so people can always come back to you and say, “Man, you were way off.” So, I look forward to that.00:03:26 Jacob:I remember the F finding the first one, the 2018, I guess, reporter 2019, whenever the first one you put out,00:03:33 Eric:2019, I think that's how we met actually.00:03:36 Jacob:Did you reach out to me or? I think I found it, or I don't remember what it was, but00:03:39 Eric:We've had a mutual friend, Nico introduced us and said, Hey, you guys should talk about this. and then I think we just went off on a two hour tangent.00:03:47 Jacob:But yeah, I remember being, it's still, there's still not a ton of like really focused research or writing on this space. and I think that, that, you know, this will probably won't be true for very long, right. As long as it continues to grow, but like going back to like who it's for. I mean, I imagine it as some, you know, end of the day, if you're employing.Pushing into some kind of lead gen. Right. But it does provide a lot of value for, you know, even if you're not interested in a transaction or whatever, just. Some like holistic data on a space. Cause like, I, the same, I mean, Eric, you said we're, we're thinking three and five years in the future. It's like, I wish like a lot of times I'm thinking like three to six weeks in the future.Right. and so it's even useful, I think, you know, even if you're, you know, I, you know, we're, we're in a bit of an interesting place as a infrastructure provider to be at kind of a bird's eye view, but it. Founder on one of these CSS apps, you know, like it is useful for you to know, like what's the meta environment, how's it evolving, you know?And if nothing else to like connect you with other people who have experimented with things and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it provides beyond, beyond the, the, the lead gen aspect of it. It provides a lot of value for people. So I'm glad, I'm glad you're, you're still doing it. 00:05:04 Eric:Yeah. And just for any of the listeners, it is free. So you just go to the GP, bullhorn.com website. It's all easy to download and then you can see all our past reports as well. So 00:05:12 David:Yeah, and we'll drop it in the show notes. but, yeah. And, and, and speaking of all that, you know, it, it's something we as RevenueCat want to get more into as well. I mean, just seeing how much value you've created in producing these reports, and we're kind of sitting on a, you know, Processing over a billion dollars a year in, subscription revenue.We've got a lot of interesting data that, that we, that I'm very personally excited to share that we haven't, kind of had the infrastructure to, to do yet, but are, are getting there. And, so hopefully we'll, we'll have our own kind of, state of subscriptions that dives into the data and some of the trends and stuff in a different way than, than your kind of, strategy and higher level look at things.But when one thing that has happened, in the actually. It was announced before your last report, but actually implemented since your last report. And that's the app tracking transparency and iOS 14, which didn't actually ship till iOS. What was it? 14.4 or five or something. So, so we're kind of just now starting to see the impacts of it.And, and, you know, you took a couple of slides in your report to start discussing it. And it really is kind of one of the biggest topics and top of mind for subscription app developers, because it really is a huge shift in the landscape. So I want it to. Start with talking about that. And one of the things you shared in the, in the presentation is that you feel like it's a short-term pain, that's ultimately going to lead to a long-term gain.So I'd love to hear your thinking around what that pain is, but then also what you see the long-term game being.00:07:01 Eric:Yeah, it's a, it's a, great point. And, you know, anytime apple or Google make changes to their, their, their app stores, right. It's a seismic shift throughout the industry because it's something that impacts everyone. And so everyone has to be aware of these changes and then ultimately have a plan for them.And so I think that the change you're talking about David is really the. The implementation of, removing tracking for a lot of, a lot of these businesses specifically, like. And so what the change did with IDFA, is it, it really deprecated the ability for, for marketers within some of these CSS businesses to really accurately target people, specifically using Facebook or some of these other social networks.And so what it's doing is it. It's impacting the conversion rates on, CSS, CSS, businesses, marketing to consumers. And so if you just can't find that person that just is in love with, for example, biking, if you're a Strava marketer, it just takes you a lot longer to find that specific subscribers you might have to market to 10 people now to find two subscribers versus before you can market to five people and find two subscribers.And so it just means marketing efficiencies going down. And that can mean. Growth rates. It can impact conversion rates and ultimately impact just financials of these businesses. And so it's a pretty important consideration for any, CEO marketing team on how they go out and get their, their business in front of consumers.If Facebook's no longer as efficient, they have to find other ways. And so. So my, my thought is like, this is a short-term problem, right? It's something that's going to take people two to three months to adapt and find a new way to reach consumers. But ultimately my hope is for the space is you see the long-term game, which is what I was referencing.People really focus on organic ways of acquiring customers. Right? So instead of just pumping ads through Facebook and trying to find someone who fits a profile, you spend a lot more time really narrowly targeting your demographic, your niche, and then finding ways for them to find your product organically either.You know? So like a company that I work with, we sold a company called Pinkbike and so what they do is they partner with, the trade associations for mountain. And those trails associations now act almost as the marketing partner of pink bike to let consumers know about the fact that all the trail details.Is on, is on the pink bike app or it's called trail forks. And so that's, that's a really powerful, organic customer acquisition tool that they don't have to pay for. And so you're seeing, seeing the same thing happen with, like Strava is doing this, pre.com recently partnered with the NFL. So if your team's got a last fourth quarter fuel goal and you need to get something kicked, you can go to pray.com and submit a prayer for your kicker. I wish I was joking. It's a pretty brilliant idea. So I think this is really good for the sector overall, but yeah. Happy to dive into it. It's it's a fascinating00:09:37 Jacob:We it's a callback to a sub club podcast content, but, Greg, this, the plant app, this is something that they were doing, which is like, we're partnering with, plant nurseries. Yeah. To like, get their app into people's hands. And, yeah, I don't know if it's an earned media or. Bought media, but this is more like this is earned, right?This is like building an audience. You've seen it in the maker community, actually a lot, like in the indie SaaS community, more it's a different game when it has to be consumer scale. Right? Like there's a little bit different. You have to build maybe a bit more than you would in like, oh, just blog about.Built this thing and that's enough to get Indies, but you can apply the same thing, right? It's like produce content, produce something like low investment for users to get engaged with your brand because you're not building an app unless you have some, I mean, maybe you are, but you're not going to build something with very high, like multiples.Like if you're, if you don't have something unique to offer in the first place, but put that into like a more like lightly consumable format, start to build that audience and then make that an on-ramp and yeah, I agree. Like that's, that's something you own, right? Like your brand is. your brand doesn't exist on the app store, right?Like your brand can exist outside of these, like shifting sands and regulations and whatnot, and ultimately is like, you know, going to get reflected in your asset value if that's something you care about. Right. So, 00:10:53 Eric:Yeah, that's a key thing we talk about, right. If any business that we look at that's potentially selling or, or thinking about raising capital, right? It's like, how are you finding your. And if you're, if you're one channel is Facebook, and then consequently, like doing Facebook ads or apple ads on the, on the app store, that becomes pretty challenging.And so you want it to be such a good product, right? So it involves more work upfront. And just as you're talking about Jacob, the product's gotta be better. It's gotta be more efficient. It's got to reach consumers where they are with the problem they have. it becomes a lot more viral and a lot more sticky.So I think, I think it's going to be good for the sector.00:11:26 David:You wouldn't want to name names of course, but I am curious if. Had any clients, or just talks about anybody in the space where they were very reliant on Facebook specifically, and then, and have really struggled as things have changed. You know, I've been seeing some tweets around the, the consumer packaged goods space where some of these CPG companies are really struggling.And so I'm just curious. You know, without naming names, if, if there's any kind of high level things you could share around, apps that have struggled in this new paradigm. 00:12:02 Eric:Yeah. I mean, I definitely can't name names, you know, obviously I keep everything confidential with my clients, but even non-clients, you've seen CACs go up 20, 30%. you see, like, if you think about like conversion rates from installs to subs, That's a big metric of actual intent. Did you find the right user, right?Did someone just click on it and download it? Great. But if they're not actually subscribing that wasn't a successful transaction for you. And so the way I think about this, David is it's the app stores made tracking a lot harder, so it's harder to find your right consumer. So imagine if you're a CPG company, you walk into a grocery.And instead of stuff, being laid out perfectly across the shelves at the right height for you, they just tossed everything in the middle of the store and said, find what you want. Just go pick it out. Right. You're going to have much lower conversion. You're going to have much lower purchase rates because people aren't being targeted with the stuff they want to see.And so I think now you have to find, you know, it becomes more of a specialty situation where you're walking into a store that has stuff for just outdoor gear or very healthy granola. Right. And you're going specifically to that store for that. That's probably better in the long term, for a lot of these companies, 00:13:01 Jacob:Yeah, but there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks that have benefited from this ease relative ease, right. And any sort of market disruption is going to be painful. I was like, anecdotally, I mean, David, we've heard on this podcast and elsewhere people who have just like straight up pause acquisition, who are like all re scrambling because yeah.You get it tuned to this very fine knife edge. And I imagine for like consumer physical goods, like DDC stuff, it's even worse because their margins are thinner than software. Right. 00:13:28 Eric:And you've got inventory and everything. Yeah. It's a totally different. 00:13:31 Jacob:But, you know, as you do like you, the market reshuffles and the people, I can figure it out, the fastest are gonna are going to come out the best.So. 00:13:39 Eric:There's going to be a shift though. So people under this is like that seismic shift that just shows how much of your reliance is on maybe one or two channels. Right? Two, two major tech companies sitting here in San Francisco. If you're super, truly relying on those and you're doing great, fine.But if a bump happens, right, how exposed are you? And so like, this will be a benefit. Right. I think it's going to be a huge benefit for Tik TOK. Right? I think people are finding really good ways to acquire customers through tic-tac. And so that's a very interesting channel. I think it'd be really good for influencers, right?If you have people that are very passionate about a certain space and then they go out and, you know, have a very core customer base that loves what they do specifically. It's going to be pretty powerful for them to.00:14:18 David:Yeah, and I was just gonna say, anecdotally, you know, we haven't done a super deep dive in our data, but at a, at a high level, I was. Bracing for our numbers to take a big dip. Like I, I mean, Jacob and I had talked about it in the spring about, you know, how, what is going to look like for RevenueCat, you know, are some of these subscription apps just going to completely unwind and people are apparently figuring it out because you know, it keeps going up until the right. 00:14:49 Jacob:I mean the consumer, the consumer need hasn't disappeared. Right. So maybe if they just weren't driven, you know, it's not going to, it can't just disappear overnight. Right? Like if you never, if you, if you are a Coke fan who never saw Coke out again, and it's like, you're still gonna buy it. Right. Like there's, there's, there's a certain amount of demand.That's just going to find the supply. But, but yeah, no, I mean, it's hard for us to, to definitively say looking at our data and aggregators. Cause there's so much, but they're definitely. Like this summer was definitely slower than we've had in the past. Like on my, as I'm writing my investor updates of the year and each month and stuff looking at it.But yeah, it wasn't like this catastrophic, you know, macro thing. And they were talking about a lot of like, you know, probably outliers that we hear about people who were affected, you know, more than others, but overall. I, I don't think our, I don't think our prediction last year of, of a potential recession was necessarily false.Like it doesn't, it definitely doesn't feel like it's sped up the ecosystem. Right. But it doesn't necessarily feel like a depression, right. Maybe, maybe a slight recession or just the normalization. 00:15:49 David:Looking at our data in aggregate that, some folks use this to their advantage and actually, and, and accelerated because they knew it was coming and they did focus more on product and organic and other things. And so for whatever, you know, losses, there were. Other folks more than made up for that.And that's it kind of the interesting thing about working with so many, I mean, we're closing in on 10,000 apps on revenue cat. And so, you know, you kind of have a pretty broad basket where you, you know, there are going to be winners and losers, but in aggregate subscription apps are just continuing to tick along and do really well. 00:16:26 Eric:David it's like you read directly from bullets on my report. I, I, I completely agree with you.00:16:34 David:Another thing I wanted to dive into was the, the COVID bump. Cause that's, that's another thing that's kind of been on everybody's mind is simultaneous to this. I was 14 and, and this is something we've talked about again internally, with revenue cat, is it. This summer was the, everybody who was vaccinated and, and Delta hadn't kind of bumped yet.And so, you know, may, June and July, there was a big shift socially. kind of it felt like it, especially in the U S that we were coming out of the pandemic. and, and so simultaneous to the app, tracking transparency, going into effect, we had these like societal shift. And then now we're kind of back into it a little bit with the Delta surge, but just curious what your thoughts are on how much of the boosts we saw in 2020 really was dependent DEMEC and then how much of that will actually linger as kind of shifting consumer preferences and shifting consumer spend.00:17:36 Eric:Yeah. I mean, there's, there's absolutely a companies that benefited from us is called the removal of inf in in-person conversations. Right? So like Bumble and DuoLingo, two companies that both went public, right. They both benefited because their, their business model is designed around, not meeting in person for the first couple of conversations.Right. And so. There's no way to say that they didn't benefit. the way I think about it, though, in this, in the CSS space, it's very similar to like the overall e-commerce space, right? Is consumers looked around to find a solution for a problem they're having right. Instacart you couldn't, you couldn't go to the grocery store or maybe you felt less comfortable going to the grocery store.So you tried an Instacart for the first time. Maybe you were, you know, thinking about meeting someone, you know, long-term but you never, you never wanted to try online dating or you couldn't go to the bar. So you tried online dating for the first time and sorry. What the pandemic did was it really opened up people's eyes to other options from what they'd been doing for the last 20 years, 50 years, whatever it was.And so they had to find other solutions to, you know, their demands, their needs. And so I don't, I think it's absolutely a COVID bump, but I still look at it as really as an accelerant of people adopting new products and services that they would have tried in three to four years. but the pandemic kind of pushed them to try something, to move out of their comfort zone and try something new.So, you know, I absolutely think you'll see a little bit of a downshift in, in some of these companies that had a really big boom, right? Like language learning. People had nothing to do for four to five months, especially over some of the winter times. So people tried new hobby, tried language learning, you know, that'll probably go down a little bit, but overall, if you look at it from like a five-year trend, It's going to be up substantially from where it was in 20 17, 20 18, 20 19, and 2020, you know, made it look like a little bit of bump, but eventually I think those companies will continue to grow and surpass what anything they did in 2020. 00:19:21 David:Yeah, that's really interesting.00:19:22 Jacob:I'll back that up as well with the, the unreleased, Jacob looks at graphs and then gives a, gives a hand wavy descriptions of them. But we, yeah, we, we were, I was kind of bracing for it as well. And then I would say this summer was slow and like, David was. We're not sure why. I think it was, I think it was a number of factors things have since picked up again.But I think generally summers are slow for software a and then B. Yeah, I think we were seeing kind of like a little bit of the payback for, for COVID perhaps it's a, it's a vial. I think it's a plausible theory. We don't, it's really hard to prove. but we have not seen, you know, we, we saw our COVID experience was really drastic.And we have not seen. Similar, like back off from that, like, it has been like, it has been like we just compressed six months and I'm saying partially, this is just revenue casts, individual story because of where we were last year. But then I think also it's, it's indicative of the system in general.It's like, I think, yeah, we just compressed a whole bunch of, like consumer behavior change into like a very short period of time. And yeah, we're not gonna be able to keep that up. Right. We're not gonna be able to continue. To, to crunch that in, or we'll run out of consumers eventually. But, but it doesn't look like everybody's, you know, because, you know, I think the story for CSS in general, it's like we've delivered value for people, right?Like it's, it's a good, it's a good product, right? The whole line, not every product is good, but in general it's like a it's, it's a decent deal. And so I, I think more people discovering that. Yeah, it can only get bigger, right.00:20:55 Eric:Yeah, I think we talked about it in our first year, our first time together, right on the last podcast, which is if these businesses are truly making consumers' lives better, this is going to be a very long-term.00:21:04 Jacob:Yeah. 00:21:05 David:And speaking of that, and the two companies you just mentioned, in the, Time since we last spoke, but Bumble and DuoLingo went public and some other consumer subscription, apps went public. so tell me a little bit about your, your perspective on the, the public investor. Excitement for CSS.I mean, we're seeing pretty high multiples in the both of those IPS did, did very well. so what are you seeing in the, in the public investor space?00:21:33 Eric:Yeah, I think, I think the public market has really woken up to this business model, the power of it and understanding, you know, it's public markets. They do a lot of pattern matching, right? If they've seen something be super successful, they look for something that looks similar to that. And so I think a lot of people are waking up to, how powerful Salesforce is not waking up.They're well awake, very aware of SAS businesses. But I think they're seeing that same pattern starts to take, hold on, CSS. It just has different metrics. Right? And so, you know, Bumble's now public, the match group's been public for quite some time. Once I spun out of IAC, you've got Netflix and Spotify, which are fantastic examples of the international global reach of Content, and how consumers are very sticky for something they love.And so. These businesses who can get to scale really quickly, like you nuMe, right, is a competitor to weight Watchers. Weight Watchers has been around for decades, but Newman built a better mouse trap and they acquired customers at a really quick rate. And, you know, they're well over 400 million in revenue and ready for the public market.So I expect them to go public. Pretty soon. And so I think there's going to be a lot of businesses that follow them that are using this, this metric. So, and then that'll cascade all the way through, from public market investors as, as exit opportunities all the way down to, you know, series a series B investors, seeing this business model work and scale.00:22:47 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, I guess my, like, what's your, like, I, I, when, when we started seeing these go public in the last, like couple of years, so, well, I mean, honestly, it's like, Since we started RevenueCat, like was actually the, kind of the first unicorns, even like, I guess Bumble might've been passing unicorn when we got started, but like there weren't a ton and now it's like every, every month there's a funding announcement for a CSS company.That's a, that's a university. I mean, partially that's just like valuations going up and stuff like this, but like, how do you see. The evolution of this market. Long-term, you know, so DuoLingo pops becomes the first, you know, are they going to be like Salesforce and just be dominant in that space forever?Or do you see it being maybe more dynamic than sasses?00:23:31 Eric:I think it's a little more dynamic than SAS for, for a couple of reasons. One, new consumers like to try stuff, right. And so if it's with like a Salesforce or something, right. That integrates into your day to day operations from a business model perspective, right. So if something breaks there, right.Your business. 00:23:47 Jacob:Is very high. 00:23:48 Eric:Yeah, it's a little higher, right. And it's not just you using it. It's your entire business. Right? So you've got 10 people using this product or 20 people or 5,000, depending on the size of your company. Right. In CSS. It's it's you, maybe you and your family. Right? So it's a little bit of a different switching cost.So that's, that's one. However, these companies can scale a lot of. and they can, they don't have like the heavy, heavy cost and, you know, on the sales and marketing side. So I think they have an ability to actually get to profitability a lot faster, especially if they have an organic customer acquisition engine.And so I think that's going to be a big difference between that, between CSS and SAS. 00:24:23 Jacob:So, yeah, you mentioned the metrics are different. What are, what are the metrics that folks are, public investors are looking at for these companies that it might be different from a SAS company?00:24:33 Eric:Yeah. I mean, a lot of them are the same metrics, but the numbers that are like good are different, right? So like on a SAS business model, right. Revenue growth is just as attractive as a CSS business model revenue growth. Right. Everyone wants to see high double digits, triple digit numbers on revenue growth.But like an interesting thing is net revenue retention. Now that's very different, right? In CSS, you typically don't upcharge people or have additional seats be filled because it's just one person. Right. So, you know, maybe you get an. 00:24:59 Jacob:It's not much expansion opportunity. 00:25:00 Eric:Yeah, you can, you can do maybe some, some packages, upgrades, and people are starting to experiment that you can pack it and you can experiment with bump, bundling 00:25:07 Jacob:But it's certainly never going to be greater. It's never going to be net positive, right? 00:25:11 Eric:No, you're never going to see a net positive number where a lot of the SAS businesses, right.People are looking for net revenue, retention, numbers of north of one, 20, 120% net revenue retention 00:25:18 Jacob:I mean the opposite of churn, right. Which if you have a CSS business with opposite, Congratulations. like 00:25:25 Eric:Yeah. You're doing something well, and I haven't found it yet, but yeah, 00:25:28 Jacob:You might be the only one 00:25:29 Eric:Yes, I think that's right. 00:25:31 David:Quick, point though, to counterpoint to what y'all were both just saying, of all the apps, dating app, it's totally slipping my mind. 00:25:40 Jacob:Tinder. partnership. David, look at us. We're like on a wavelength. 00:25:46 David:They, they have in-app purchase. They have consumable in-app purchases to boost your, profile. They're one of the few that I've seen that could potentially actually have a. A a positive, net revenue retention. whereas most subscription apps are just a subscription. it's going to be interesting to see if other subscription apps can pull off that sort of model that you could actually generate a, a net net revenue retention. 00:26:19 Eric:I think you nailed it, David. So that's coming from. Right. I think people first experimented with, Hey, how do I get someone to buy my product every year or every month? Right. And now is how do you make it even better? So they're starting to listen to their core users. And we talk about this a little bit on the LTVs.And what do these people want and what makes this experience even better for them. And I think you nailed it with Tinder, right? It's the most, it's the easiest thing to convince people to, to encourage more is more, you know, more relationships, right? People love more relationships and people are willing to pay for that.And so, you know, then what else, what else could this go down the path of, right. What other options could people pay for additional services? Or what we've seen is like marketplaces or transactions spinning on. Right. So if you have a really passionate user base and they're going out there doing, camping, for example, like on, on the dirt, it's a camping site, right?What about doing a marketplace to buy and sell use tents right now is not a subscription, but now if someone's paying, like, okay, now they bought something through your marketplace and you get 10% of that purchase price. So there's going to be a lot of stuff. I think that happens there, to encourage that, to encourage that LTV numbers start rising, I just haven't seen a ton yet, make it happen above 00:27:26 Jacob:It's a scale problem. I need to do that either be at such scale for that to make sense. So I was going to say for anybody, listening to this, that hasn't reached 20 million in ARR, probably north of that do not add a marketplace to your 00:27:37 Eric:I totally agree with that. Very, very much focused focus, focus. And so I would even say like closer to 50 00:27:43 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, until you're like, how do we get this thing public? Or how do we show, like, how do we show like N plus one revenue streams, right? Like it's kinda more what it's about than it is necessarily the revenue generated. 00:27:53 Eric:I'm just a dreamer though. You're just a realist. I'm here, I'm here. And you're just telling me all that stuff that could go wrong. 00:27:58 David:One of the things you just kinda touched on that I wanted to dive deeper into was, was a truth about LTVs. And I love this slide on the, on your presentation, kind of defining these two cohorts, which I've never heard, defined this way. And I really loved the analogy and I'm going to start sort of stealing it from you and use.And crediting you of course. but in the presentation you define, tourists and locals, and then talk about kind of the importance of identifying these different cohorts. So tell me about Who the locals are and why that matters and who the tourists are and how companies can start, analyzing their data to understand this and better target marketing, better, craft the experience in the app and, and those sorts of things. 00:28:46 Eric:Yeah. So we're going to geek out here guys, and, really go deep into STSS. Right? So this is where, this is where my brain goes sometimes on a Saturday night, which is just exciting. but so the way I've been thinking about CSS a lot, and so the LTV component of CSS, which is lifetime value, Which I'm sure all your listeners are very, very well aware of is kind of like how much money can you make from this consumer over time.Right. And it's a function of your pricing and it's an, a function of your turn rate. And so, a lot of people are very focused on this metric as investors or buyers, right? Because it's effectively, how valuable is your customer? So it's an extremely important metric. The problem with this metric and lots of other metrics is it's, it's derived from an app.Right. It's looking at all your users that come into your, in your ecosystem is paying customers. And then how do they perform over time? and it's, it's driven, it's driven off an average of all your users. And so when I've gone through some of my client's data and you look at their user base, right, we, we quickly discovered there's a, there's kind of two different profiles.And I won't use any names here, but let's just, let's just say it's, a walking company, right? So you're, you've got people that go out and they, they sign up, you have a hundred people that. And 20 of them start walking every day and they're, and they, this is what they love and they're tracking, they're walking and you've got another 40 that do it for like a month or two.And then they kind of drop off and then just like, I'm going to go do biking or skateboarding or something. And I switch and you've got another people that sign up. They subscribed to it because their friend pressured him into it and they hate walking and they're never going to walk again and they turn off immediately.Right. So you kind of have those three different groups, some that are just going to do whatever. Some that do it for two to three months and then leave. And then some that do it the first month. And then say, forget this. I'm never going to use this again. And so the problem is your LTV of each one of those three groups are very, very different.And so what, we've, what we've been guiding investors and entrepreneurs, as they think about their growing their businesses, really find out who those locals are, who those people that are going to come and use your app every day, every week, every summer, whatever, whatever the metric is that you're looking.And find ways to measure that, right? Because ultimately that's who you need to bring to your community. And one, those people make the community run more robust, right? Cause they're constantly contributing feedback into the. To, they're much more likely to stay around with you guys. And so you need to find those tools that they're looking for.Right? Like seeing around the corner and saying like, okay, this person loves walking. What else can I provide them? What about a weather forecast? So now that they are about to go out and walking, you know, what does the weather look like? And, oh my God, this is now, this is my one-stop stop for, for walking.And so I think w we've been guidinGP Bullhound's like if you use the averages as a broad metric and that's great, and you should, because investors are going to want to know that, but, but really dig deep into your, your cohort and understand like who's using this every day, all day and what do they need. And so if you can really identify that and show that LTV to, to invest in.I think you can get people a lot more excited than just like that average LTV, right? Cause this shows them potential of what it can be over three to five years, which is really important if you're two or three year old company. Right. And try to convince someone to invest in you showing them that lifetime value of the tour or the locals is going to be a lot more valuable than that average.00:31:46 Jacob:I mean, if you think about just as the, you know, I think it's one of the, you highlighted one of the hard parts of assessing these businesses early on, is that yeah. Your cohort, your total subscriber base is very heavily biased on like your most recent cohort, because often you're also growing, right?Like that's often, like your most recent cohort might be the size of your first five, you know? just because, and for that reason you can really have scurry looking data. but you know, if you think five years from now, mostly. Those other two groups you mentioned there they'll have turned out from most cohorts.Right? And then the only ones remaining for four years of cohorts will be these locals and these long-term retention. And then your total subscriber base is gonna look very different than it does today. Right. And yeah, I'll admit revenue. I've tried to solve this problem in the product. And we still are trying to solve this problem in the product.It's how do we like show people? Cause you're, you're dealing with a mixed population, right? And like you, you can also also run into a problem with begging the COO or like doing very, like, look, you got to invest in and say like, look, look how great my retention is. If I just ignore them. Bad users. Right?Like, let me just look at the good ones. Right. But there is something there in that. What you're talking about, Eric, that long, that very long-term view is that if these users really do retain for a long time, eventually they will be the lion's share of. Subscriber base. And that churn that we talk about, like, you know, if you're adding 1% of your total user base, the most you can experience off of that as like 1% of churn, right.Versus when you're adding half, you know, if you have 110,000 subscribers and you add 10,000 in a month, that's going to be a huge effect to your overall subscription subscription base. Right. so yeah, I think, I think, you know, we certainly have a lot to build on the tooling side. Right. And I think it goes to what you're talking about.Air. We're very early. Like, I think we've just kind of solved infrastructure, like infrastructure. I mean, I would even say kind of, cause there's a lot for us that we need to do yet. but as far as like data science and actually yeah. Being able to outside of a spreadsheet, understand this stuff. It's it's, it's not trivial.It's not trivial. All 00:33:51 Eric:It's extremely hard. And I think like, cause there's so much more you could do once you've broken those two cohorts into tourists and locals, right? Like how do you acquire the locals versus how do you acquire the tourists? Are tourists coming through like Facebook, apple store and the locals are coming from referrals.Okay. So maybe your Facebook spend, is that even worth doing the spending on right. If they're, if they're turning off after a month or two, you know, subscribers is a vanity metric, right. If they don't. All right. You can grow. We talked about this in our 2020 report. We have like this cheetah versus thoroughbred.Right. And it's really easy to show a ton of growth. And you've got all these subscribers and everything is fantastic. Right. But if those subscribers get tired and they turn off right away, you kind of probably wasted money on them. Right. Maybe you got paid back in a month, right. So you didn't lose like on the CAC spend right in here, but you're not building your business.Right. You're just gonna you're pinching pennies. 00:34:36 Jacob:But not a lot of work. Right? Like it's not actually getting translated into business 00:34:39 Eric:Exactly. So is it better to kind of focus on the product, right? Figure out what those, those, tourists are using and spend less time on the marketing side and really nailed the products like, Hey, you'll probably grow slower, right? And That's an issue. That's a risk you have to take, but maybe you can grow more efficiently, more capital efficiency.00:34:55 Jacob:Capital's free now, so that's not a 00:34:58 Eric:That's a fair point of half my fault, I'll take full responsibility for some of that. Right. 00:35:03 Jacob:I think it's interesting how this like feeds into, you know, kind of going back to targeting and ad targeting how often. Optimized Facebook campaigns on like trial conversion. And that doesn't even that doesn't, that's all your tourists and your locals. I mean, maybe some of those that never even start a trial would be cause, but there's a lot of tourists in that group that started trial right.Or convert a trial. And a lot of people are targeting off of that. Right. And so as these methods become less. Good. it will force it'll force developers to yeah. Maybe do one of these scary things actually talk to users, right? Like actually like find those locals, like go in your analytics. And I think just the thing as you were talking about, I just want to point out that, like, I don't think you necessarily need to define this off of monetization retention either could just be retention, like pure usage retention, but it could also be engagement.Yeah. I think about the way Facebook, Oriented their growth teams very early on, which was like findinGP Bullhound that connected, like that was a really key step for them in their product, was to get people to make like three or four. I forget there's some number of friends and they oriented all of their growth efforts around that.Find the thing that people do in your. Shows that they're engaged and give them opportunities to show that. And then, you know, you can use that as an indicator. Okay. Talk to those folks and actually talk to them, right? Like find out, always put something in your app that lets you reach out to them in some way.And like, have you can get on a zoom call. I've done. It's easier now in SaaS land because like, I, I, I, people I'm an app. People like I know how to talk to them, but when we were, when I was working in consumer. Phone calls were more awkward, right? It was different. You're not going to books like outside of computer land, but still like just incredibly valuable.And, and, and, and I think like, you know, if we want to talk about the way to build the way to fully realize how CSS is going to, I'm just going to go all in on your turmeric, by the way, I said, I'm going to, 00:36:57 Eric:That.00:36:57 Jacob:I'm going to push it. We're going to standardize. But 00:36:59 Eric:It's not trademark, but knock it out. 00:37:01 Jacob:All right. So to fully like, to fully realize the potential to like help problems for people.Like, I think we need to lean into this more of this model. Right. Rather than I've always kind of like had an uncomfortable relationship with how our RevenueCat fits into the like hyper fast monetization stuff. Right. I'm like, get users, check your CAC, put more money into Facebook. Right. And so, the more the industry gets away from that. The happier I am. I don't know. Like you said, maybe it doesn't go quite as fast, but I think the overall Tam will be larger. Right? If we take that approach,00:37:33 Eric:Think that's right. And, you know, I mean, I've talked to a bunch of founders that haven't raised capital. Right. And they build something that like their users love. Right. Like, so I don't know if you guys saw the deal with day one that got bought by automatic braised almost as your outside capital.Right. He built. 00:37:46 Jacob:Big fans that they won. 00:37:47 Eric:Yeah. Yeah. I was a big,I got it's an awesome business and he did that exact same thing. Right. He just listened to his users. He didn't care about vanity metrics grew really nicely. Right. And it wasn't like, you know, he's not getting tech crunch publishing, but that's fine. Right. You know, on an amazing business.And then, you know, I've got a fantastic exit out of it. So I think, I think people are really waking up to that's a very much a possibility here in the.00:38:08 David:Yeah, one thing I wanted to highlight too, in that graph that you made, and for people that are listening to this, you can go to the show notes. We'll have links to the, Eric's presentation and you can find this chart, but to visualize it00:38:25 Jacob:Page 18. it open right here. 00:38:27 David:Following along at home, the, line for the locals drops.So, you know, even, even for locals, you're going to have some turn early on, but then it essentially flat lines. and I'm sure you did that very purposely to kind of illustrate how. How long term some of these, these, this retention can end up being, and it's something we've actually been talking on the podcast about recently is that we're so early in the space.We don't even really know what, how to measure LTV. Cause you're going to have people who ended up subscribing for decades. and years and years and years, if not decades. And so, and, and then, you know, to your point about the cheetah versus thoroughbred, another great chart in the patient number, Jacob Page number00:39:16 Jacob:I 00:39:17 David:Cheetah versus thoroughbred but in that tuna versus thoroughbred, The other aspect to locals, and we're kind of touched on it earlier is that those cohorts start to stack. So when you identify this cohort, that is going to be a very long-term cohort. That's going to stay subscribed and have very low churn. You, you acquire a hundred thousand this year, and then they're still there next year.And you put a hundred thousand on top of that. And those are still there next year. And by year three, you know, you just continue to grow this pie of people who are very, very sticky in the product. And I think that's part of what. you know, what you're talking about with delinquent and Bumble and other companies is like, we're still just starting to understand even as different as this is from SaaS.We're starting to see similar dynamics as far as. Early on the churn is so high, but then you do have this really strong stickiness over the long-term that, that, that can build a really healthy business of people who really love your, your product and really are invested in it and are going to stay for a really long time.So yeah, I just wanted to point that out that, that I, I love that aspect of the chart of how flat that line is for the locals. 00:40:35 Eric:I mean, you, you can see it in your own spending patterns, right? Like how many of you guys have subscribed to Netflix or Spotify for more than five years? I bet it's a good chunk of your listeners. Right? So, I mean, if I look at my phone, right, I'm going to subscribe to all trails for the next decade, 00:40:47 Jacob:Yeah, I've got CSS. I I've started subscribing to in 20 13, 14, like as 00:40:52 Eric:Yeah. 00:40:52 Jacob:It was a thing, 00:40:53 Eric:I've, been a script user for four years and I still download audio books or download other books from like the San Francisco library. Cause I'm probably the cheapest banker of all time. but you know, I still use script 00:41:04 Jacob:It's finding margin, Eric you're finding margin. That's what that is. 00:41:07 Eric:Exactly. I've pinched counties all day.But yeah, so I mean, I, I think those tails David to your point are still being written. And so that's the whole point, right? If you use average LTV and you say, all right, well, we have 30% churn that math means you lose every user in three years, and that's just not how it works. And if with really good businesses that are delivering value, right?And so then once you convince people of that, right, the investment case becomes a very different company.00:41:30 David:And speaking of that, you, you had a great, slide on investor benchmarks. And so I wanted to get to that real quick, tell me about how you, how you thought. These different metrics. And what, and how investors think about these metrics? Because you know, we're talking about LTV and in there you have LTV to CAC of you, you know, for a really strong app, that investor would be super excited about.You're closest to. Six X versus less than three X, you start to cool off. So, yeah. Walk us through each of these metrics and kind of how you think about it, how you think investors think about it, And even how that's kind of maturing as we understand the space better. 00:42:10 Eric:Yeah. And just to note like these metrics are all different for different types of businesses, right? If you've been around for a year, these metrics are very different versus if you've been around for 10 years, right. If you're in high growth, you know, venture back, spending a lot of money, these metrics look very different than if you're a bootstrap business, you know, just trying to inch out.You know, 10% growth a year. Right. So they can be very different. And the important thing is how does the story of your business and what you're trying to accomplish tie to these metrics? Right. So that's what we spent a lot of time talking to founders about is, is what's good based on what you're trying to do.Right. So it's just how you, how do you tell your story through the metrics? but yeah, so a couple of your points on the S on the slide, we talk about like user growth rates, gross margins, LTV to CAC, churn rates, free to paid conversion rate, and then sales efficiency. and then, you know, just to talk about something different, we, we talked about LTV a little bit earlier, but maybe talking about, churn, right.And so like how quickly do people churn off? Right. And so that's, there's a couple different ways to interpret churn, right? It's one, they didn't find your product. Too. They thought it was really expensive. or if they're not turning, they really love something you've put together. Right. And they decided to pay you multiple times for that either monthly or annual.And so what we just try to do is try to tell the story of where the business is at and where it's going by looking at these metrics. And so, you know, that's why it's so important to truly understand these metrics, because if you don't understand the metrics, it's hard to tie that to the story. so we spent a lot of time with any client or even non-clients just talking about this stuff to truly understand, you know, what investors care about.And it's, you know, if someone's buying the business, they may care a very good. They may care about very different metrics for someone who's investing your business for growth, right? So someone's going to put 40%, $40 million on your balance sheet to go grow. They may be focused less on LTV to CAC now because your LTV is not formally formed, right.They don't know how good it is, but they will focus very heavily on churn, which is a reflection of how good your product is and how good you're finding consumers that love your product. Right. So those, those are metrics that they may focus. They made me more comfortable spending a lot of money in the next two years.Right. So your CACs going to look a lot worse because they watched, you acquire a lot of users to make the platform a lot better. Right. And a lot of CSS businesses, right. UGC is a, is a, is a spinoff of user activity on the post. Beautiful uploading photos reviews. They're adding new new items on, on the platform for other users to use.And so it's worth spending more money to get those people in the first two to three years because your platform becomes that much better and that much more valuable, right? So you may be willing to burn down to a, an LTV to CAC of three X or something like that in the near term, or sometimes even two extra one X, because it's a land grab for those.Once you're on their platform right now. You want to see that LTV to CAC, start to move up a little bit, right? So you start to put it to four or five, six X, LTV to CAC. So it's all about where your business is. It's each different stage, but it's important to have a story and a message around why your numbers are, what they are.00:45:03 Jacob:Of the, I have the slides up in third slide, 37 for anybody who's following along at home. all of these as a veteran SAS CSS person, every annual user growth rate, gross margin to be cash I'll clear me, sales efficiency ratio. Can you talk about that one? Cause that one's, that one's, not as a little foreign to me. 00:45:22 Eric:Yeah. It's, it's a, it's more of a metric that's come out of SAS just to be honest. So it's thinking about like, it involves like how, how many users are you gaining? It's how much revenue you're gaining versus how much money are you putting out there? So it's a little bit of a different metric. and most CSS businesses don't get to that yet because they typically don't have heavy sales team.And so we've included it because you're starting to see some of these CSS businesses really start to grow. And so how much revenue gaining versus how much revenue you're losing and how much is it costing you to do that? And so that's when you're starting to get into like the tens to $20 million of, of, marketing spend a year, it's, it's, important to understand like how efficient is that spend being, and this is the best metric 00:46:00 Jacob:We, it says called sales, but you actually throw in marketing, spend in there as well. So it's like all go to market spend 00:46:07 Eric:Yeah. Are using head count, not just like the ad dollars. right. 00:46:10 Jacob:Right. 00:46:11 Eric:It's like a fully loaded CAC number, like 00:46:13 Jacob:Your, all of your people telling Facebook what to do, 00:46:17 Eric:Yep, exactly. Exactly. 00:46:18 Jacob:Content graders, like all that stuff, right? Yeah. 00:46:20 Eric:If you've got a hundred people running around campus, right. Promoting your app. Right. Okay. How much those people cost. Right. So it's an important way to think about how much you grow. And it's a way to think about like how well can you grow a capitally efficient capital with limited amounts of capital.So it's an important one. We look at it, it's typically a later stage, right? So you've gotta be like north of 20 million of 00:46:40 Jacob:So he's going to be super high when you're small, right? Because you're, you're your. 00:46:43 Eric:Sir. Request important. 00:46:44 Jacob:People are discreet. Right. And that you can't, you're not continuous. So, and also your, your, your revenue just grows less because of like, you know, you're smaller, you're less, well-known like, you're less is momentum is things like this. 00:46:56 David:Well, we're starting to run low on time, but there's so much more I want to talk to you about, but just to hit one last thing. I also love this chart you did, of Pandora versus Spotify. It's such a. And encapsulation, really everything that we've been talking about on this podcast is to see how well Spotify revenue has compounded over the past few years versus a Pandora, which, which look was the juggernaut.You know, when, when, when Spotify started. so, so walk us through this chart. And in how and why you think, you know, Spotify was able to, to grow the way they did while Pandora really struggled. And obviously there's a ton of, you know, other business factors and execution and other things. But, but I think overall, this does speak to the power of CSS.00:47:54 Eric:Yeah. And this is, this is something we did back in 2020 when we were just trying to decide like, Hey, what's is this CSS thing real? And, and a big question you get from, from investors. And listen, I think a lot of them have stopped asking this question because the case studies are out there is why would someone pay monthly or annually for something they can get for free?And by get for free, it means listening to, or watch. Right. And so I wanted to see like, alright, graphically or like actually numbers to will people, more companies make more money by making that really hard decision and say, pay me for what I'm giving you first. I'll give you something for free and exchange every half hour, you watch two minutes of ads, right?That's a really hard question to say, because it involves you putting a lot of value in your product. And so entrepreneurs, you know, product developers have to. Is this worth money or am I giving something out to people that, Hey, they'll kind of use it if they get it for free. Right? So it's a, it's a gut check for people to say, like, did I build something that someone will buy?That's hard. That's really challenging. Ask yourself, especially if you've started with advertising. and Spotify, you know, listen, they were a small company based in the Nordics, right. Versus Pandora US-based juggernaut and, and raised a lot of money. Right. That's a tough challenge. And so they took a really tough thing and said like, Hey, we're going to get.And make people pay for our product and we're going to make it better. But the crazy thing that happens though, right, is you make so much more on a user from subscriptions than you do from average. Right on advertising. You're trying to pick up pennies per subscription on some or pennies per user on the subscriber.You're making 10, 20 bucks a month, depending maybe maybe $60 a year for a subscriber. So the amount of users you have compounds so quickly, and then if you have that heavy retention, all of a sudden, you've got these really thick layers of cashflow that come in every year, use that cashflow. You invest it back in.He invested back in product and you do it again and again and again, and all of a sudden you've got a better product. And if you have a better product, people will come to it. And if it's something that they're using daily, right. Why would you not be comfortable like paying five bucks? Right. If I think about like how much my Netflix subscription is, right.It's $11 a month or something like that. Right. Well, I probably watch 10 hours of Netflix a month, right? So I'm paying a dollar an hour to be entertained. Pretty good deal. And so, like, I think if people, people start doing that math and you start to see like how powerful that that subscription is for user versus an ad driven, it becomes pretty interesting.And so I think you've seen this case study play out over and over and over across CSS, where if you build a good enough product, you know, a 10 X product versus the free option, people will pay for it. 00:50:24 David:And Spotify does double dip as well, which is interesting is that they have a good enough free tier and people can listen for free. But they choose to spend, even though they can. And so, so Spotify is a great example of, of double-dipping with a great freemium tier, but then a good enough product in a compelling enough reason that people will pay.00:50:47 Jacob:Yeah, another dimension. I don't know the specifics of Pandora and Spotify. It's like fundraising history, but if you have like the subscriber. Subscription revenue momentum makes capital more easy to access. And you look at some of this. I think of some of the strategic stuff that Spotify has done. Like they got the Beatles on Spotify pretty early on and lets up, they spent big on partnerships and Content and stuff.And if you have momentum, if you have hard dollars, it's a lot easier to go to an investor and be like, Hey, like I want to raise X million dollar. Revenue growth. I have, like, this is very clearly a business. I can remember raising money in the pre revenue is everything era or like trying to raise money.And it was like a lot harder. Right. Cause it was just like hand waves and we're going to grow and like, and now it's like, yeah, for better or worse, you go over the curtain and you show something. Right. But the big benefit too, I think for founders, it's not just for investor, for founders. It's like, yeah, you build a great business.You're building a safety net, right? Like if you can't fundraise, it's not the end of the world. Like you have options. And I think that's part of the reason why also, I mean, now we're getting into fundraising like macro, but that's part of the reason the funding environment is crazy because businesses are sturdier than they've ever been.Like they need capital less than they've ever needed it. Right. And so like, that's why it's gotten cheaper. or, you know, evaluation's gotten higher same thing. Right. So, Anyway. Yeah. And this is a fascinating to put this. I already was not on here, which was my horse. And I was like really pulling for them.And then it gets to a whole different story of why that's not on there. But, but yeah, it's fascinating.00:52:11 David:Well, I think that's a really fun place to end the story of Spotify, one of the biggest juggernauts in the space. We're going to include in the show notes a link to the report, a link to your LinkedIn and Twitter to follow along.Anything else you want to share as we wrap up? 00:52:27 Eric:No guys. Always a pleasure to join you. One thing for your audience users, we are trying to make the GP Bullhound CSS report a resource for founders. This year, for the first time ever, we did include a link to a survey.So, if you want to contribute your data, what we'll do is aggregate everything, anonymize it, and then we'll provide back a summary to users to say, “Hey, here's your LTV to CAC. How does this compare to other founders at this stage?” We are trying to be a resource. I'll probably give you guys that link, if you don't mind. We'd love to have as many people as possible. No pressure.Of course, all of it would be anonymized. This isn't a marketing tactic for us. It's us giving back to the community. We'd love people to take a second to do the survey, but if not, don't hesitate to email me, tweet at me, hit me on LinkedIn with questions, comments, and specifically stuff We got wrong. Absolutely love to hear where we can learn.00:53:22 Jacob:Yeah. 00:53:23 Eric:Because we're not building, we're just talking about what you guys are doing.00:53:26 Jacob:By the time you print this thing, it's like, stuff's changed, right? Like it's changing so fast.00:53:32 Eric:The whole Apple thing when we were publishing was happening everyday. And I was like, this is unbelievable.00:53:36 Jacob:And wait to...00:53:36 Eric:Since July, and I have to change every minute. Yeah. I had to change a PowerPoint. You guys had to change code. So I think one was a lot harder.00:53:44 David:Well, it was great having you on, Eric, and we'll have to make this an annual thing.00:53:49 Eric:Sounds good.You're welcome.00:53:51 Jacob:Yeah, we'll see you next year. 00:53:52 David:See you in 2022.00:53:54 Eric:All right. Thanks David. Thanks Jacob.

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