Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
Grief of Loss and the Threadbare Promise of Hope (Leah Gets Really High) | Zombie Book Club Ep 70
Hope is both a lifeline and a burden in a world teetering on collapse. In this episode, we explore the harsh realities of grief and the fragile but powerful thread of hope that binds us to our humanity. From personal reflections on the 2024 Presidential election and the disillusionment of military service to the resilience found in nature and community, we delve into the emotional landscape of survival. Leah takes a hilariously unconventional approach to handling the weight of it all, promising to get progressively higher throughout the episode, adding levity to an otherwise heavy conversation.
Join us as we tackle everything from sustainable living and mushroom farming to the chaos of political upheaval and absurdly bad movie nights. With humor, existential rants, and a dash of plant medicine, we balance the grim realities of the apocalypse with laughter and connection. Come for the hope, stay for the Ravens.
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Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is unfolding before our eyes. I'm Dan, and while I'm not hyperventilating and on the verge of a mental breakdown, I'm writing a book about a zombie outbreak that takes place during a political landscape where grifters and fascists are in charge and flag-waving idiots are blind to their lies. It's a really good thing that that would never happen. Ugh.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah, and after a full day yoga immersion retreat, I think I'm going to be chanting my way through the next four years. That's my plan to manage my own mental breakdown.
Speaker 1:I was thinking of inducing a medical coma.
Speaker 2:But if you do that, you won't be able to contribute to being better four years later. Is that what we're aiming? For, and also do you want to Rick Grimes it Like what if you medical coma'd and then you wake up and shit's fucking worse, because, honestly, that's likely the outcome if we all just medically coma ourselves.
Speaker 1:What if, much like Rick Grimes, the only reason that I survived to make the world a better place is because I was in a coma during the most dangerous time?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's not why he survived. He survived because somebody blocked the door, wasn't it Shane? Yeah, shane blocked the door.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're getting off topic. So this is a week after, not even Not even a week. Five days yeah, five, yes, no. This is a week after, not even not even a week. Five days yeah, five, yes, no, yes five five days wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday.
Speaker 2:This is the fifth day that we have been accepting our new reality.
Speaker 1:I also have that many fingers yeah so five days after the realities of the election came through, in the united states for anybody who's internationally listening. Well, it's also the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is going to affect everybody, yeah.
Speaker 1:We know that and I think many, many of our listeners are probably also feeling the same things that we're feeling A lot of dread, a lot of panic, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of hopelessness.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's not really any funny jokes to tell about that, though it still makes me laugh for some reason. Am I just cracking up?
Speaker 2:I actually laugh when I'm in physical pain. Yeah, I've had to explain that to doctors. If they're doing a procedure, I'm like I'm probably going to laugh and just I don't know, that's what my body does, yeah.
Speaker 1:I laughed when I got into a car accident, yes, and the guy that I ran into didn't understand that this was a stress response and just thought I was laughing at him and wanted to beat the shit out of me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think laughing is a reaction to a lot of different experiences. It's not just fun time laughing. Sometimes you have to laugh about the worst shit ever.
Speaker 1:You know I used to say a lot. You can either laugh or you can cry, or both at the same time. Yeah, then you got problems. Which is a really good laugh actually. No, if you're cry laughing, that's like a top tier laugh. A cry laugh is a different kind of laugh, though, true, but yeah, I hope everybody's coping with the new, normal, new reality that we're living in the apocalypse if you will, the much less fun apocalypse, and I really hope that I'm misinformed, that things won't be as bad as I think it'll be.
Speaker 1:God, that would be great. That'd be great if this was just a normal run-of-the-mill thing and I'm just overreacting.
Speaker 2:It would be, and I would not be ashamed to admit I was wrong. In fact, I'd be so fucking happy. But I remember the last time this happened and so many people said to me well, I'm gonna say their name trump was holding a pride flag. You'll be fine, it's gonna. Everything's gonna be fine, leah yeah, holding a flag means everything, yeah especially upside down and incorrectly.
Speaker 1:Yeah I, um I wrote something today. I've kind of really embraced like writing rants. Um, like a lot of times I'll just rant while I'm driving in my truck, you know to nobody, just top of my lungs, ranting about some topic, usually involving that orange asshole.
Speaker 2:Is that what we're going to call him for the next four years?
Speaker 1:Orange asshole I got a big long list of things that I'll say instead of his name. Okay, I'll go along with that Writing in general it helps me really organize my thoughts in a way that it's hard to get out with, just talking openly with my voice, just the way that my brain works. Sometimes I'll get into a topic and then I'll get halfway through, forget where I started, not remember where I'm going with it and then, before you know it, I'm talking about peeps.
Speaker 2:Peeps like the kind you put in the microwave to watch them explode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's how I feel right now. Is a peep that's about to explode, oh no, put in the microwave to watch them explode? Yeah, and that's how I feel right now. Is a peep that's about to explode, oh no. So I wrote this down this morning because I think that this is something that is something that we're feeling, and maybe everybody else too could help be helped by hearing it said out loud. Keep in mind, I'm terrible at reading and talking at the same time, so I'm going to do my best.
Speaker 2:When am I supposed to smoke a joint? Should I smoke while I'm listening to you? Yes, okay, hold on.
Speaker 1:Leah is going to spark up a spliff.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get progressively higher on this episode, yeah, which I haven't done. I was thinking about that. I've not been high on the podcast for a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the times that you have been high on the podcast have been wonderful Well we'll see what we get today.
Speaker 2:All right, let's see if I can get a little ASMR smell or sound Smell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, asmr, get that smell coming through the podcast. All right, be kind to my reading comprehension, please. Hope is a cruel yet necessary illusion. In a broken world, holding onto hope can feel like carrying a shard of glass in your pocket, a constant glinting reminder of what you had or wished to have. But hope is more than wishful thinking. It's a force that compels us forward, even as it lays open to endless wounds.
Speaker 1:To hope in the face of relentless despair is to insist on caring in a world that barely allows it. It's choosing to bind ourselves to loved ones, to promises of safety, to whispers of redemption that may never arrive. Why hold on to visions of peace or safety when the world around us is nothing but a slow motion collapse? Because hope, in all its harshness, is the only way we cling to what it means to be human. If we are to survive in any way that matters, we cannot afford to sever that delicate thread. Hope reminds us of every little thing worth protecting, every precious memory, every moment of connection that we've shared.
Speaker 1:But hope is both a gift and a curse. When the world is against you, hope can feel like a liability, making you feel vulnerable to the ever-present grief of loss Every time we allow ourselves to dream of the future, of a life beyond the ruins, we hand despair, another weapon to use against us. Yet it is in the act of hoping, of caring enough to hurt, that we defy the cruel indifference of a broken world. To live without hope is to be hollowed, disconnected not just from the world but from yourself. To go through the motions, to survive with the color drained, to survive without purpose, the kind of survival that leaves you bitter and empty. Wow, what's your high level? I'm not sure, more than we often can bear, but in the apocalypse, it's the one thing that keeps us moving forward wow what's your high level?
Speaker 2:um, I'm not sure. I'm working on it.
Speaker 1:I've got a very all right, there we go I've I've gone through many of the stages of grief, you know, and, uh, I have a lot of anger, I have have a lot of despair, yeah, and it does feel painful to hope. I think that's what a lot of us are feeling. We're feeling that feeling of hope disappearing and that grief of loss, and I think it's important to hold on to it, even though right now it does look like the darkest time.
Speaker 2:I accepted we were in that back in 2016.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I thought we were out of it.
Speaker 2:Oh, really darkest, time I accepted.
Speaker 1:we were in that back in 2016. Yeah, but I thought we were out of it. Oh really, well, I'd hoped. You know, I knew, I knew that it was an ever present threat, you know, yeah, I mean, I cared enough to pay attention to that orange asshole with every fucking thing that he did. I cared enough to not only stay on top of the news as to what was going on with right-wing politics, but also to be critical of left-wing politics, to fact-check, to look for other sources to find the biases. I cared enough to not only say this guy sucks, but also to be like our guy sucks too. Only say this guy sucks, but also to be like our guy sucks too. Yeah, and it's hard to have that level of caring and it to be defeated by people who don't even know what they're voting for I think that just needs to breathe right there.
Speaker 2:Um and uh, if if you're, I'm just gonna take a minute here before we get too deep. And the people that did vote for orange guy. You know I really like the color orange, I don't want to call him that, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like my favorite. He doesn't own it.
Speaker 2:No, I refuse. And also whatever. Yeah, not even a good one. Okay, sorry, I'm like trying to, I'm like inviting you to stick around and just hear, sort of very hard, not to um like just make the divide worse, especially for those of us who have enough in common that we should continue talking. So if you're, if you're, listening to this podcast, we have enough in common that we should continue talking. That's what I would say.
Speaker 1:so please stick around yeah I'll, I won't say anything dan's in a different place.
Speaker 2:He did not spend a full day chanting.
Speaker 1:By the time this comes out. I kind of wish this episode came out. I wish we recorded it last week, but we didn't have the experiences that we had.
Speaker 2:We could put out a bonus episode.
Speaker 1:We could. That's a possibility, but next week, by the time this comes out, veterans Day would have already happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I know that I'm just going to see so many people proclaiming their patriotism and veterans out there that are like I'm a veteran and a patriot and voted for fascism, and I kind of just want them to go fuck themselves and I'd rather nobody wish me Happy Veterans.
Speaker 2:Day Happy.
Speaker 1:Veterans Day, I don't want anybody to thank me for my service, because you know what my service has led to Fascism. My service was bullshit. My service was for oil. It was for the pockets of the wealthy. It was for people like Elon Musk who jumped around on stage like a fucking moron saying, yeah, look at me, I'm dark MAGA because I got a hat, and meanwhile I'm looking at the picture of him subserviently bowing before his lord and I can only think of Dobby from the Harry Potter series where he's like can only think of, uh, dobby from the harry potter series where he's like master gifted me clothes, master gifted me a maga hat, I'm free.
Speaker 2:Oh, tell us how you really feel, dan oh I could go on, but you know, I didn't.
Speaker 1:I didn't write a diatribe about that today no, you wrote. You wrote about hope, and I think that that's an interesting choice that you made yeah, well, it's, it's important because I, I've, I, I felt all week like I'd lost hope.
Speaker 2:I felt like it's only a matter of time before the secret police come yeah, that's what you looked at me and said when I said thank god, I got my citizenship before this and you said well, Hopefully that's enough. Yeah, and I was like oh, thanks, Dan.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's not enough that it's just politics. It's not just politics because it comes knocking on your door Eventually. It comes knocking, Whether it's the climate 130 degrees outside in Vermont whether it's your tap water being flammable, or it's the price of groceries being $700 for a cucumber.
Speaker 2:While they're making record profits.
Speaker 1:While they're making record profits, While Elon Musk says don't worry, I have a plan for the economy. It'll only be a short-term hardship that people will have to go through. You know it's hard to. It's hard to ignore those things when you know it's coming oh, let's talk about.
Speaker 2:I know we want to talk about sad things, but I feel like we just need to occasionally lean into the fun. So let's, let's go there with me, okay. Last night we went out for thai food yeah, very good, was your idea. And then we came home. I was really high and I realized that my brain is a lightning squirrel and Dan's brain, dan's brain, is a lightning. What was the animal I likened you to? I don't know. Something loud, something very talkative, a lightning woodpecker?
Speaker 1:No, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 2:A lightning. What about, like a lightning crow? I don't know, am I terrifying you?
Speaker 1:I don't know what you're, where you're going with this, and I'm probably gonna have to edit all of this out because it's really going down a branching path okay, well, you told me to smoke a joint. I know so how's, how is, how is your? How is that going?
Speaker 2:I'm high and that's you know. I'm really grateful for plant medicine. Right now it's on I. The best parts of me, I'm pretty sure, come from consuming plants. The sun, water and, um love. Those are the best parts of me. Yeah, animals, fuzzy warming, I think those are very important things.
Speaker 1:We should be consuming those things to make it through the next four years. Yeah, you know actually, that reminds me that something that we wanted to fit into the podcast and also into our social media is just a little bit more resilience type things, things to help you be resilient in this new world, like, for example, we recently posted something about mushrooms. What did we post about mushrooms?
Speaker 2:About chicken of the woods. Oh, they're so tasty. Yeah, I've never had one. I don't think we should explain what chicken of the woods is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Google it, see it for yourself.
Speaker 1:That kind of goes against what I was just saying, right now where we were going to talk more about okay describe it, but we're just, we're going to uh, we're going to just do a little bit more on how to help you guys ease into the apocalypse that we're facing you know, things that might make your life easier, might help you survive.
Speaker 2:Also be up for hearing other people's advice. That's a great. You know, let's crowdsource some advice and we could end up clipping it all together into something interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, Leo, what does this mean for the book club?
Speaker 2:You know, I really went back and forth on this because lightning squirrel, because, um, part of me was like we're the place there. Everybody dissociates. Yeah, you know, this is where we will come to like not think about this for a little like, but we'll kind of like think around the edges of it. Yeah, like we, it's like thinking around the edges of it.
Speaker 1:I'd like to share something about that. It's something that I said at breakfast this morning and it's like, how you know, I used to keep up with with a lot of news headlines. You know the things going on in the world, and now, whenever I look at it, I get really mad. I get really mad at the news headlines and I'm like I don't want to hear any more about what's going on. But then I see a headline that's just like in indie bands, is it bad when they sell out? And I'm like how could you be talking about that at a time like this? And I feel like that's kind of how it is with our podcast. I think people want to come here to dissociate. I think they don't want to think about the things that trouble them in the real world. But the things in the real world are so troubling that to not acknowledge it uh, would, might, might be infuriating yeah, and honestly, I've tried hard for the most part to not acknowledge that that much in the last year.
Speaker 2:I think I we have some things, but it's not like I think we're bringing into every episode, yeah, so I think that there's also like a journey here which is like maybe we're in a place because of what's happened, that we are willing to like make the space to talk about it here, um, but other people might not be. They might be like I know I need zombie dissociation time, which there will be some. I think that's actually a big thing. So we're gonna do some stuff that's like truly about survival and about resilience and, um, resistance I read a book this week.
Speaker 1:it's called on tyrannyanny oh no.
Speaker 1:And I thought it'd be. Oh, this would be a good read to brush up on my knowledge of fascism. I didn't realize it was going to be as useful as it would be in the future. It's actually more about avoiding tyranny, which we've gone face first into. The first lesson is don't bow to the dictator early, don't do it in advance, don't do it while they're rising to power, because you're just rolling out a red carpet for them. So resistance is important, especially right now, while we have the freedom to do that.
Speaker 2:Especially right now. Yeah, it's also our signal to the world, because what people are seeing about the United States right now, if we don't make a loud enough noise that they can hear us and that we'll get time to be seen, they won't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah us and say, well, they get what they deserve. As we're crawling around in our own industrial filth and saying, please help us from all the wars that we're in right now, people might just be like, well, you started it, you voted for him, not even realize that there's people out there that maybe didn't know what they were doing, or people that tried to resist it. That's a little bit what my book is about. It's like maybe we just deserve it.
Speaker 2:I think I agree with you, Dan, and I want to say that I don't think it's white guilt. People will call this white guilt, but that's not what I feel when I think about this. What I feel is like this is generational karmic shit that has to be worked out.
Speaker 1:It's been building for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no denying that my genes carry the creation of whiteness in them, literally the invention of it, and so do yours, yeah, so I don't know why I was saying any of this. Yeah, let's move on.
Speaker 1:What else is this going to mean for our book club Leah?
Speaker 2:Oh God, are you really going, really gonna, I'm so embarrassed in advance.
Speaker 1:This will take a lot of editing. Oh god, I'm so sorry, but it's gonna be good, leah, I think. I think you're wonderful and you're really high and that's lovely I mean, you told me, you told me to do this.
Speaker 2:Can we do some chants?
Speaker 1:We're going to move on. Okay, so you wrote here, leah, that we will be reading quotes from radicals of the past who can show us the way out. Can you tell us what that means?
Speaker 2:It's like, for example, I have made a decision that is an important one, which is I'm going to read more, and I feel like that's something to acknowledge and trust me. This comes back around to where we're going here, because I need to read at least one zombie book a month. I need to read at least one political action book, history book, something like that, a month, and then I also need to read something related to my spiritual tradition a month. So that's three books a month, which is a lot for me. Yeah, and one of them is going to be things like Angela Davis's autobiography. So, yeah, that's my point is, I'll just be reading some quotes about that if they feel pertinent. Yeah, I think they will.
Speaker 2:Probably. You posted a story, I think last night from our best friend Octavia Butler. Octavia Butler.
Speaker 1:What a world that would be if she was our best friend. So we're going to read Parable of the Sower, even though there's no zombies in it.
Speaker 2:But there kind of are, there kind of are. Yeah, they're closer to a real life zombie. They're very possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they've existed before without the need for magic. Ever since you told me about parable of the sower, I'm like I'm excited to read that remember I read it when we went to jamaica for our honeymoon that's when you were reading it. Holy shit, I didn't realize jamaica was that long ago.
Speaker 2:It is a while ago now. Oh, such a special time. Um, now I'm in jamaica and it was really lovely, but I remember I started reading it on the plane and I remember just being like Dan, you have to fucking read this. Like every second line I was like this is the kind of book that feels like you're getting hit in the face over and over again and you want more.
Speaker 1:You want to be hit in the face probably talk about it on the casual dead episode. Just uh, throw it in there like I. Like I mentioned on tyranny, I I recommend on tyranny. It's a very actually short book. Um, I got the audio book and it was like two hours that's that's excellent so I.
Speaker 1:I listened to it in one afternoon while I was at work and, uh, and and, as, as you're listening to it, you really see the parallels to what's going on now and it's frightening. So another thing we're going to be doing with our book club is we're going to be tracking our zombie commune efforts and sharing them. What have we been doing with the zombie commune lately, leah?
Speaker 2:Thanks for facilitating this conversation so well. While my brain goes in fucking 800 lightning squirrels directions, that evening, wednesday evening, when we all got back, I was able to take part of the day off work because, for all the ways work sucks, I feel like my organization is one of the better ones and actually acknowledged that things were bad and gave people space. One of the better ones and actually acknowledged that things were bad and gave people space. So, anyways, um, waiting for you to come home, waiting for simon to come home, because the two of you had to fucking work like nothing happened yeah, I spent the day just like looking around for people who seemed a little bit too chipper and that's why we joke about the hoa and like you have to mow your lawn by the hoa, because it's like that's the kind of mundane shit that is actually happening during an apocalypse Everything doesn't just stop.
Speaker 1:We're not going to be looting for beans and setting up zombie traps and building a Mad Max car. No, we're going to be mowing our lawns and trying to pay the bills. Yeah, it's kind of what I like about Octavia Butler. From what I understand, all of those pressures still exist. Society still exists. It's just the world is fucked and they're just like deal with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's what we're going to have to do. I'm trying to psychologically prepare myself to do that.
Speaker 1:So the zombie commune? Yes. So we all got together and we got out the big board.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I got to put my little facilitator hat on for home, which was super fun because I love doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've got some flip charts from previous workshops or whatever, and markers, markers.
Speaker 1:We're called markers now, markers for life. Everything's different.
Speaker 2:I'll just say it's my Canadian accent my markers. Oh God, yeah, we got our markers and I was like, all right, what's our zombie commune plan? Because we all know, officially, this ride is going to start to get a lot faster, and so we just talked about things that we want to do and we really need to do in like the next six months. I would say get started on as a way of preparing ourselves and starting to build different roots, a different root structure. That is not this civilization. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of those things include reducing our debt.
Speaker 1:That's a big one yeah, we own a home, so a home comes with a lot of debt, more than you would think if you don't already own a home. Sometimes you just got to take out more loans to pay for the things that need to be done. Yeah, yeah, and then all of a sudden you're like we also need to buy a lawnmower. And also some other thing happened and the roof blew off in a windstorm, so we got to get a loan for that. So we did not have our. It's an example, but it can't happen.
Speaker 2:That can happen. We're thankfully not at the highest point of the hill, but that's a thing in Vermont, like the people who have the high houses on the hill and they're like live in the fucking good, good view life. They got the good view. Good wind too, they get the good wind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there was fucking fly off some more fun things that we have on that list. Like I'm I, you know, in our in our zombie bunker studio. A quarter of the room is taken up by my mushroom growing tent. That's not in operation right now and I want to move this to another room. Like we got some stuff that we got to clear out in another room that's kind of unused, but we just kind of throw shit in there, so that's going to become a mushroom farm. We're going to eat lots of lion's manes and oyster mushrooms and that's that's going to be a sustainability um project for feeding ourselves if food gets too expensive. We're also going to work on our gardens. Simon's going to grow weed for Leah.
Speaker 2:Cannabis for me, just me? I think it will not be just for us.
Speaker 1:It'll be. You know all of these things, you know they all tie together and it's all important stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even if cannabis sounds like a silly thing to put on your survival list, it's medicine, it's a painkiller, it helps you sleep.
Speaker 2:There's so many reasons to grow it, yeah, and also you can eat it. And also you were talking about cordage today, dan. We were going for a walk with the dogs and Dan was looking at different tall plants and being like we could make cordage out of them and I'm like, yeah, so I mean, hemp is an incredibly strong material. There's a lot of opportunity there. But also we're going to befriend the ravens. Yes, befriend the ravens. Simon suggested this so that we would still continue to get shiny surprises, which I thought was the best. I was like, yeah, we do need shiny surprises for morale.
Speaker 1:We thought that maybe if we make friends with ravens, they might um, they might bring us money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they might pick up shiny coins. I mean them to us. Ravens are just like dogs were 15 that's our retirement plan.
Speaker 1:Wait, we're having two different conversations.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about ravens and dogs and you're talking about our retirement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the retirement plan is the ravens.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're gonna bring us coins coins aren't worth shit now that's why we need to befriend a lot of ravens oh, is the world truly terrible, or are we just getting older? Nope, it's truly terrible. I just had to check that off my list because you know how old people just get. They get grumpier sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like it's not like it was when I was a kid and I do have those moments, yeah, but also that's true, it is verifiably true, yeah, but it is genuinely bad. No, like I think if my grandfather he died, um, in january 2021 at grandpa tom, and he would always say, before he died, like I would have little facetime calls with him, or I think it was skype, I don't remember we used whatever his caretaker set it up for him, um, on fridays, and I forgot the story I was gonna tell. Now I remember you can keep that, it's fine. Uh, this is what you have to live with if you live with me. So if you've been considering joining the zombie commune, um, yeah, what the fuck was I talking about? Your grandfather, thank you. Yeah, he said he was 95 and he was like I just want to see what happens next and I want to know, grandpa, what do you think?
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe you'd be thrilled.
Speaker 2:I don't know. My grandparents were so interesting because, I think I've said before on the podcast, my grandma was on the more liberal side. You know she voted for her. She would vote for the Democrats if she was an American, for sure. And I'm not saying that that's a compliment necessarily to vote for the Democrats or not. Yeah, I'm not loving them right now, but anyways, she was at least there and my grandfather had every ism one can have, so they were definitely. He would joke about her vote, counseling his out, which is so fucking sexist. And I guess this is all. I'm tying it all back, uh, to the fact that we are here to see what happens next, but we're, more importantly, here to create what happens next yeah, yeah what happens next?
Speaker 2:leah what?
Speaker 1:happens next.
Speaker 2:Leah, what happens next is we continue to interview zombie authors. Yeah, you know what else happens next, what I don't get to make my chanting jokes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you want to talk about chanting? Just briefly. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I told you that I was chanting a lot yesterday for my yoga immersion day thingy and that's what I'm going to be doing this year, and I was curious if you wanted to hear at least one of them.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear your chants. Okay, oh no, I can't do it. I'm having performance anxiety. Can you explain? First of all, can you explain why you like chanting?
Speaker 2:Okay, I like two kinds of chanting, so this will make sense in a minute, but the kind of chanting that I'm initially talking about is um yogic chanting, specifically and and all is honestly like anything by beautiful chorus, because they've made incredible chance yeah, I like them.
Speaker 1:The beautiful chorus song about mushrooms uh, brilliant, mycelium, mycelium. Check that out.
Speaker 2:Oh, that just instantly put me there, uh, but it's uh, it's instantly grounding and makes me see the bigger picture and feel a sense of peacefulness as I'm moving about my day that, like the things that are happening that are, uh, harder to maintain peace in, are just a little easier to maintain peace in than they would be if I wasn't doing it. That's why I do it. Um, and there's probably other things I learned yesterday, and the immersion thing that the special powers they call it. I forget the word in Sanskrit because I forget, as they were telling me, all this. I was like this is great, I already know I'm going to forget all the words, but my point is something.
Speaker 1:You're telling us why you like it.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, yeah, there's the base level of like the entry point of yoga is like, sometimes the special powers like yoga gives you special powers, not like I can fly, but it gives me things like you can bend your limbs.
Speaker 1:I do have more flexibility when I do it, which I'm having trouble with lately.
Speaker 2:And you can bend your brain a little bit, your brain's a little more flexible, okay, and also you're just able to be slightly more present with what's happening and calmer about it. That's pretty important. That's like a special power, but it's about more than getting the special powers. That's what I learned yesterday, but for now that's where I'm at. I'm in special power mode. I'm loving my special chanting power.
Speaker 1:Do you usually do chants as a?
Speaker 2:group, that's satsang. So being in group and chanting is actually one of the most important things you can do. I really feel like I should not be trying to convey the tradition of yoga, because I am way too much of a baby in this area. But I'll just say enough that I enjoy it.
Speaker 1:That's almost most people who've never heard of it.
Speaker 2:That's true, so I'll just speak from my experience instead of trying to convey things that I enjoy it. That's always most people who've never heard of it, that's true, so I'll just speak from my experience instead of trying to convey things that I barely understand. Yeah, but yeah, being in satsang, doing it together, is the best thing that you could do, but chanting alone is also really important, and that's what I do most of the day, obviously, except for with you. Dan listens to me chant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like listening. I have anxiety about doing things in cadence in groups, under instruction. I don't like doing physical activity under command, being told what thing to do with my body, and there's a reason for that, and that's because while I was in the army I was instructed to do things that caused me permanent harm and I had to do them. I had no choice. And here I am now I walk with a cane. As much as I think yoga is actually a really good thing for me to do, I don't think I'll ever do it as a group or under instruction.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'll ever do it as a group or under instruction. I think that that's both completely okay, because the thing about it is that there are infinite branches to the same place and you don't have to pick the exact same branch. So that was actually one of the best reminders that I got yesterday. Basically, I've been doing yoga off and on, mostly asana, just the physical movements like downward dog, child pose, things people know, tree pose for I don't know decades. But what the fuck was I talking about? God?
Speaker 1:You were talking about tree pose, no Downward dog.
Speaker 2:I got the most. The best takeaway I got yesterday from a mental and like understanding perspective that will inform what I do next, is that it doesn't really matter which practice I pick up or how I do it. As long as I do it with the highest intention for good for all beings and myself, then, like you, can't really do it wrong. Yeah, so any point of access that you want, dan, is the right one. Is my point. Like, if you want to do it alone in the basement and I never see it, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how I want to do it, and I want to do it so that I can move my legs when I'm 80 years old, cause right now I'm 41 and I'm starting to notice the difficulty in doing things, and I know that if I continue down this path, I'm, first of all, I'm never going to survive the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, my physical fitness goals are to be zombie apocalypse ready at all times. So if I want to do that, I'm going to need to do something yoga-esque. I'm going to have to do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, my joints are just going to lock up my left knee, my hips, my back. They're going to be straight as a rod and I won't be able to move. I'm not going to be able to bend over. I'm not going to be able to tie my shoes. By the time I'm 43 if I don't do something. Anyways, I think we should move on.
Speaker 2:I'm really enjoying just talking to you, and I'm starting to care less about what this sounds like.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good, I want to hear about these groans from the Horde, because we have some new friends on Instagram.
Speaker 2:We do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And on our Discord. Let me pull it up on my telemophone. I try to remember. This is me unmasked. You should just call this episode Leah Unmasked. Leah Unmasked All basic social skills gone um.
Speaker 1:They say that an intoxicated mind is a sober mouth an intoxicated mind is a sober mouth.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, that's a big one. Our new friend, peter, has apparently been listening to us for a couple of months.
Speaker 2:They say yeah hi, peter, it's nice to meet you. We love getting messages from folks, um and learning a little bit more about you, the folks who are listening. So peter says I was just listening to your podcast about world war z and the book. Compared to the movie, I agree it was a lot better. I know no one noticed the drunk black guy that was sitting there. In like the beginning of the movie the zombie fell out of the apartment building and this is when Brad Pitt was all over there and they just ran right past that drunk black guy. Sorry if that sounds weird, but yeah, I realized that there was a clue right there because he just sat there and took a drink in the zombies. I want you to know that anything about what I'm reading that doesn't make sense is me right now.
Speaker 1:I do remember that actually.
Speaker 2:You do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to watch it again. It seems to me that it's a homeless person. They're sitting out on the sidewalk drinking um and the zombies run right past them and they. They allude to why that is later on um in the movie, of course, when brad pitt, the savior of the world, uh learns virus infected zombies are avoiding humans that have some type of terminal illness. It's not obvious that this person on the side of the road has a terminal illness, but once you learn that you realize, oh, maybe this guy was homeless because he has health issues. He's out there on the street. He's drinking, he has health issues. The zombies are there on the street. He's drinking, he has health issues. The zombies are like, not that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is what Peter says about this fact that this guy's just drinking away. Yeah, I want to be that drunk black, homeless guy sitting there. He was the real hero, not the blonde, blue eyed guy and his perfect family running to the building. He's just sitting there having a drink and says fuck it perfect family running to the building. He's just sitting there having a drink and says fuck it. I mean, he just inherited the earth. He's gonna walk around and get as much alcohol everything he needs. I want to be that guy because all he has to do is just hang out at hospice or something like that. But anyway, I'll leave you guys and let you go back to work. But yeah, I want to be that guy yeah, you know that's.
Speaker 2:I think that's a, that's a take that you know people don't realize he said, go to the Tesla dealership and grab my keys to the penthouse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this has like Omega man vibes like the last man on earth. The world is his for the taking now, because everybody else is being chased by rabid zombies. Yeah, and he's just like they don't bother me anyways here's my new mercedes.
Speaker 1:It's a great concept and honestly like I need that as a movie or a story yeah, I mean, you know if, if world war z was accurate to the book, um, that guy would have had his own storyline and we would have learned who that guy was and why that was important. We would have seen him walk down to the rolls royce dealership and get a, a uh, a rolls royce phantom, and then just cruise around with his drinking not drinking a 40 anymore, but drinking some top shelf stuff. You know, he's, he's got, he's got his like glenn, glenn, get itch. I forget how to pronounce it, but it's like $6,000 whiskey.
Speaker 2:I can't even imagine and I probably wouldn't. Well, you know what I want to say. Like oh, I wouldn't notice the difference, but actually I would, because usually when you consume something of a higher quality, you're like fuck, I just ruined anything. That's not this now, and I should never have known how good this is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that would have been a fascinating movie and you know what still can be somebody could still make that movie.
Speaker 1:Peter he um, he made his way to discord and he did a little review of this movie that now I feel like we gotta watch because it sounds terrible yeah, I didn't ask him if we can read that review yeah, I think we'll just leave it for now. It's just, you know it was. It was a good one and I enjoyed it. Well, what I would? I just want peter to know yeah, peter, yes, we did laugh.
Speaker 2:And also, if you want to see what peter has to say and about what movie that we thought was so funny, um, you can come find us on discord. It's ollie eats brains, called zombie collective. I think it's called brain munchers zombie collective. Yeah, and it's really fun right there. It's like just a small community of folks. It's not all about zombies. We share pet photos. Yeah, I asked for some advice on how to trick out my mobility scooter for the apocalypse. What else happens down?
Speaker 1:We post art, we post some writing sometimes. Maybe I'll post my rant about hope on there too, for people who want to read it.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great idea. Yeah, and we, Ollie has hosted a couple of movie nights which are really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to have one coming up when I'm off of off of work officially 23rd yes, is that right? At 3 PM Eastern time.
Speaker 2:And if you're somewhere else in the world and you're like that's hard to figure out Eastern Time, you can put into the world time clock converter Vermont, United States, America, and that's the time zone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, eastern Time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're going to watch Zombievers and I'm going to be higher than Leah is right now.
Speaker 2:Am I allowed to be high? I don't think I should be. I think I need to be your sober friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need to wrangle me. What if I have too much? And it's like that time that I tried to watch the baby monkey show and I was just like the monkeys are scary, you have to watch, you're committed, but there's zombie beavers.
Speaker 2:That might be too scary. Revenge of the zombie beaver. I think beavers have a lot to fucking complain about with humanity. They do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they. They get demonized because of the of the homes that they build. Yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:You know, it turns out they're actually a really important part of the ecosystem they're so special and also, yeah, they make they make our water clean y'all yeah, they're really important and also like when I was a little kid and they learned about how they live and they make their really nice house and you can, like you can, get into. It is through the water. You got to go in the water and you crawl up in your little hole and it's like all warm and cozy in there. Yeah, it's like dry God to be a beaver.
Speaker 1:You know I um, when we first, when we first, moved here to Vermont, I heard a story about a woman that used to live near our town and the residents thought she was kind of crazy because she would go out there and she would swim up to the beaver dams, dive down and go up inside of the beaver dams and hang out with the beavers.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm willing to believe this story.
Speaker 1:It's true. She did it every day. How do you know? It's true.
Speaker 2:Because somebody told me does not.
Speaker 1:but she's, but, but she's, but she's dead now she's not alive was it the zombie?
Speaker 2:verse. It wasn't the zombie verse. Okay, anyways, she's not like grizzly man who like uh yeah, she wasn't attacked by by beavers the beavers liked her.
Speaker 1:They allowed her to exist in their home.
Speaker 2:Our point is is you could come join us for that. You could come join us watching Zombeavers together November 23rd, 3 pm Eastern Time, because that would be really nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a celebration, celebration of what? My freedom from work. Anyways, thanks everybody for listening to this today. I know it was weird, I know it wasn't our usual episode and these are weird and scary times, but I hope that you got something from it. I hope you found hope or at least a reason to try to hope again.
Speaker 2:Next week we'll be doing something zombie. Actually, next week will be about zombie verse, so we'll report back. Yeah, that's my plan.
Speaker 1:Next week is about zombie.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, the week after this episode, next week in the future, future, Next week. I'm the high one. I don't think that, that this episode comes out on the Today's the 10th right On the 17th.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so a week from the 17th is the 24th.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we got to record next week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're going to watch it, you're going to record and you're going to ship it out. But, we're not watching it next week we're watching it on the 23rd. Oh my gosh, this is the worst outro ever. I can't believe this is going to be enshrined on the internet. You know what we?
Speaker 1:don't know what we're going to do next week, but it'll be something We'll figure it out, don't worry.
Speaker 2:I'm really worried. I'm worried about everything, but I'm also okay with things and I'm grateful for you, dan, for holding this episode down.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, I'm not going to start smoking a joint next time um, we have already told you about the zombie verse and the discords, but we also have a link tree in the description. We got all kinds of links in the description. We have a t-shirt store and once I'm off work, I'm going to make way more. So if you want a zombie t-shirt of some kind, there will be some coming down the pipe and stickers Stickers we're going to make. Oh my God, we're going to make so many stickers. We can make a calendar. We should.
Speaker 2:We should make a calendar with with zombies drawn by leah well, I was thinking we would just pick um our favorite uh episode thumbnails that we've made, okay I think we should make new ones that are pertinent to the month that they're in.
Speaker 1:Okay, but you know we'll reuse a lot of this is what happens when I'm high.
Speaker 2:There's a benefit. Have a a great day everybody.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. All the stuff is in the description. You know where it is. You've heard us talk before.
Speaker 2:Thanks, dan, for editing this. Bye, everybody, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:The end is nigh.
Speaker 2:Now, the end is now.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye.
