Episode 35: Feathers, A Desert Survival Story, and Pop Culture Saints

Welcome back to the Cauldron of Mystery, dear listeners! In this episode Poppy, River, and Skye share their Saw Trap concoctions and discuss their own individual topics they each bring to the table. Get ready for a silly, heartwarming, and... horny episode.

Please be aware that some of the content may be sensitive to some audiences, today's episode includes some sensitive topics such as: self harm, gawking about penises, and JK Rowling slander

If you are under 18 (we don't recommend you listen anyway) or just feel that you can't hang with these kinds of topics, maybe skip this one

If you'd like to skip the hypothetical (this one's on the longer side) go to: 36:32

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Transcript

Poppy 0:18

how are we feeling today? Like, generally

River 0:20

I feel silly. I feel silly and crazy.

Poppy 0:25

I feel a little

Skye 0:26

I'm coming off of a conversation that's riled me up a little bit, um, in our group chat

River 0:31

of why I'm feeling so crazy about work. I,

Poppy 0:34

yeah.

Skye 0:35

but I'm feeling like energized, like the anger is energizing me, and I can, I feel like I can transmute that into like a positive

River 0:43

I'm, I'm on the upswing. I've been in a depressive episode for about two weeks, and now we're going right into mania. Bitch. We are on the upswing now. Let's get this show on the road.

Poppy 1:04

Welcome to Death Coven. Yay. Happy Thursday. Uh, we're so glad you're here. This is a podcast that you're listening to that we put out every other Thursday. my name is Poppy

Skye 1:20

I am

River 1:20

I am Reaver. Ooh, jinx.

Skye 1:23

Ooh

Poppy 1:24

Jinx. Uh,

Skye 1:26

puppy. WL in Sky. That's your host for today. I won't, I'm not gonna

River 1:32

Stop.

Skye 1:33

I'm not gonna maintain this

River 1:34

I'm scared.

Skye 1:36

Hello Kitchens. Welcome to Def Coven,

Poppy 1:41

I can't e everybody's turning it

River 1:43

Everybody's throwing up.

Skye 1:45

the like unsubscribed report.

River 1:49

I'm calling the police.

Skye 1:50

Mm-hmm.

Poppy 1:51

I'm calling Fox News.

Skye 1:52

Mm-hmm.

Poppy 1:54

Uh, anyway, um, so today we are doing that Fang We do, when each of us pick something that we are at least a little bit interested in talking about, and we present it to the other three, none of us know what the other two are talking about. But before we do that, or I don't know, do you guys wanna reveal?

Skye 2:18

What I'm talking about, nah.

Poppy 2:20

Yeah.

River 2:21

I'll, yeah, I'll keep it in the pocket.

Poppy 2:25

Okay.

River 2:25

It's not anything spectacular. My tiny little, and it'll fit so

Skye 2:29

your breast pocket, a little breast

River 2:32

In my three piece suit that I'm currently wearing right now, no pants,

Poppy 2:36

Twirling your mustache.

River 2:39

it's just the top half. It's just the two pieces.

Poppy 2:43

anyway, before we get into our topics, we have an extra special hypothetical today. Uh, if you're a new listener, if, Every other week we play a hypothetical game where I present some kind of question or scenario. And the three of us talk through what we would hypothetically choose or do in that situation. Uh, and this week is extra special because last time we recorded, we talked about it beforehand. So River and sky have had an entire spoilers, uh, or not spoilers, peek behind the curtain. We record every week. So they've had a week to come up with their answer to the hypothetical. and that was to design your own saw trap. So that's what we're doing today because they, our river mostly likes to say that I put them in saw traps

River 3:40

love saw, I just love the

Poppy 3:43

every time we do a hypothetical. So we're,

River 3:48

We're putting suckers in a trap.

Poppy 3:51

putting suckers into a trap. And so I think the, the task was pick a person, tell us why they're in the saw trap, and then tell us what you're gonna do, what you're gonna do when they come for you.'cause they're all bad boys

River 4:11

Mine will not be coming. This is a no

Poppy 4:14

Oh,

River 4:15

zone.

Skye 4:15

Oh.

Poppy 4:17

no. Splash. I, so I can leave my poncho at

River 4:19

Yeah, well you're not, you're not involved. You're safe from my trap.

Poppy 4:23

Okay. That's good. all right. Shall we whack it down on the table? Do we decide who's going first? Are we doing river, poppy, sky, or

River 4:34

I'm cool with that. Mine is very straightforward and pretty short, so I think it's a good, a little appe teaser for y'all's.

Poppy 4:42

Hit me.

River 4:43

I am feeling so deliciously evil about my saw trap and I'm so excited to put this sucker in a trap. And I was thinking about it. I think I came up with it like two, like two days after we recorded and we were like, figure out your own saw trap. And it came to me so beautifully and so deliciously and I was like, oh my God, that's perfect. I want to torture and hurt this person so badly. And it is a real person who currently is alive and exists on this earth. So I have to say this is for entertainment pur purposes only. I am not, if anything happens to this person, it's not because of me unrelated legally. This is a joke

Skye 5:27

joke slash joking.

Poppy 5:29

Disclaimer.

River 5:31

slash Jay. I'm joking.

Poppy 5:34

Mm-hmm. Who's the redditer now?

River 5:36

I am sorry. It's also Tumblr speak.

Skye 5:39

Mm-hmm.

River 5:41

indicators. Yeah. Yeah, it can be whatever you want it to be. And I feel like the second I say the person you both are gonna be like, of course it's this.

Poppy 5:51

Oh,

River 5:52

course, I've talked about them on the podcast before.

Poppy 5:56

have

River 5:57

I have at least, I want to say once, maybe twice.

Poppy 6:01

Will we know. Them because

River 6:04

Oh, you'll know.

Poppy 6:05

slam out

River 6:06

Oh,

Poppy 6:07

and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking

River 6:08

you and most everybody listening will know

Poppy 6:12

Okay.

River 6:13

interior. There is a woman tied to a chair. Both ankles are bound to the chair. One hand is bound to the chair, one hand is free. In front of her is a table with two objects on it. One object is a gun with exactly one bullet in it.

Poppy 6:31

Oh my gosh.

River 6:32

is a legally binding contract signing over all of the rights to Harry Potter. To me,

Poppy 6:39

oh my God.

River 6:40

JK Rowing is in my saw trap.

Poppy 6:43

I see.

River 6:44

She make your choice, Joanne, live or Die. If you want to live, you have to sign this legally binding contract that signs over all the rights and the IP and everything related to Harry Potter to me. So you cannot, every five years dig up its bloated or rotted corpse to make more money and media off of it. I am sick of hearing about New Harry Potter shit every five years. I don't care about Harry Potter. I never have. So I will own it and I will do nothing with it. And all merch production will be stopped. There will be no new media. There will be no new content. It will die in my lifetime.

Poppy 7:28

Harry Potter

River 7:29

I'm closing the everything down,

Skye 7:32

that mean that people are allowed to enjoy Harry Potter again, if you own it or

River 7:36

a trans person owns it, perhaps we might be able to reclaim it. Maybe. But I'm not putting out any new shit. I'm just editing the old shit.

Skye 7:46

Okay.

Poppy 7:46

Okay.

River 7:47

There is no new content. There is no new merchandise. There is no new nothing. If anything, we will only be red conning. That's if she wants to live.

Poppy 7:56

are you reprinting books? Because I feel like if you stop reprinting books and merch, then what was already in existence is gonna become

River 8:04

More rare. Yeah.

Poppy 8:07

items.

River 8:08

I'm not gonna stop anything that already exists, but, uh, if anything, I would make all of the books$1,

Skye 8:18

Yeah.

River 8:18

if not 50 cents, just to like really crash the market. They are gonna be

Poppy 8:23

adjusted for inflation.

River 8:25

cheap. They're staying 50 cents a pop.

Poppy 8:29

They start burning them instead of

River 8:31

Yeah,

Poppy 8:32

and you actually like end up

River 8:33

we're just Yeah. Mass printing them

Skye 8:36

Why do I feel like she'd choose the gun?

River 8:39

And that's why I put the gun there with exactly one bullet.

Poppy 8:42

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

River 8:44

live or die,

Skye 8:44

or what if she does both? What if she signs it over and then is like, I actually can't live with this, but

River 8:49

Okay. That's actually kind of ideal for me.

Skye 8:51

Yeah. That would be ideal because like, what do you

River 8:53

scenario for me.

Skye 8:54

What do you do with her? If she does just sign it and say, okay, I wanna

Poppy 8:57

you know, she's gonna be out there like on a, unless it's like a legally binding, you can't say

River 9:03

it's legally binding. She does not, she cannot profit anymore off of the ip. She cannot make any bootleg Harry Potter where she's not allowed to fucking utter the words. Harry Potter for the rest of her life. She is completely cut off from that franchise

Skye 9:19

to talk about this experience that she had?

River 9:23

in my saw trap.

Skye 9:24

Yeah,

River 9:26

I mean, I guess I can't stop

Skye 9:27

because I bet you that there's a bunch of JK Rowling supporters and like people who

River 9:33

Oh, and they are all turfs. And they are all transphobes. Yeah.

Skye 9:38

But there are people who would like, have her back if she like, went to the

River 9:41

The thing is, they already do, unfortunately, like she will be taking a hit if I take Harry Potter away from her, but she has built up such a turf following

Skye 9:52

Like even if she

River 9:53

if Harry Potter's taken away, it won't fucking matter to

Skye 9:56

Yeah. Even if she died, they'd be

River 9:57

bloated corpse every five fucking years.

Poppy 10:00

And she's a martyr.

River 10:01

And you know what? As long as she's dead, I'm fine with that.'cause I think all transphobes should be dead. Sorry, sorry, editor. Keep

Poppy 10:11

not a threat.

River 10:12

Not a threat, just my personal opinion. I'm not killing'em. I just think they should die. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna drag y'all in with me, but that is River's personal transgender stance.

Skye 10:25

No, I, I stand behind that.

River 10:28

Respect. So there's a gun with one bullet. There's a legally binding contract. And just to add psychological torment to it, I've decided there is going to be a TV on the table also that is playing all of the seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race back to back

Skye 10:43

yes.

River 10:44

she hates men pretending to be women.

Poppy 10:47

Mm-hmm.

River 10:49

And I just, I really wanna, like, I wanna add some psychological damage in there. Make her sweat a little

Poppy 10:55

Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a good, she's gonna suffer for sure.

River 11:00

No matter what I win

Poppy 11:03

Wow.

River 11:04

Ha ha ha ha.

Poppy 11:05

And that's the, that's the whole

River 11:07

And that's the whole point

Poppy 11:08

that's the point of saw trap. That's why this is so fun, because there are no losers,

River 11:12

taking a saw three stance to it, where the, where the traps are rigged and you can't, you can't live.

Poppy 11:21

you're going down either way. There are no heroes here. Mm-hmm.

River 11:26

So that's my saw trap. Thanks for listening and again, for legal reasons, this is a joke.

Skye 11:32

This is a comedy podcast

River 11:34

This is a comedy and education sometimes podcast. We're just having fun here. I'm having a great time.

Poppy 11:43

is it my

River 11:44

Mm-hmm. Take it away.

Poppy 11:47

so there's also a room, there's also a person tied to a chair.

River 11:52

They're just in rooms right next to each other. All of our people are in the same pig

Skye 11:56

that's the connecting thread

River 11:58

Yeah,

Poppy 12:00

It's in River's apartment.

River 12:02

it's not much space and the walls are pretty thin, but I'll see what I can do.

Poppy 12:05

You've got at least three rooms. Put

River 12:08

Only two of'em have doors.

Poppy 12:10

yeah. Uh, okay. So there's a person tied to a chair in a room from behind. All you see is a tall hat, big tall hat.

Skye 12:23

from behind what? Behind the person in the chair.

Poppy 12:26

the person. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're, if the camera's panning through the room's kind of dark. There's a person in a chair. He's got a tall hat.

Skye 12:36

So the person in the chair is wearing a tall hat or something behind it. Okay. Okay.

Poppy 12:41

No, the person is wearing a tall hat. I just haven't

Skye 12:44

It's the pope.

Poppy 12:45

Uh,

Skye 12:46

Okay.

Poppy 12:47

My

River 12:47

be crazy. The new Pope from Chicago.

Poppy 12:52

My person is fictional. The camera's gonna pan around and you see Willy Wonka strapped to this chair.

River 13:01

Okay. Interesting.

Poppy 13:04

And why is Willy Wonka strapped to the chair? What has he done? What hasn't he

Skye 13:10

Why is he wearing a tall hat?

Poppy 13:13

Willy Wonka wears a tall

River 13:14

I thought it was about yay high. I didn't,

Skye 13:18

It's like a

Poppy 13:18

sure

River 13:19

thought it was relatively, I thought it was a fairly short top

Poppy 13:22

Top hats are tall hats. I think it's a tall

River 13:25

Maybe I'm just thinking of the Johnny Depp one.

Poppy 13:29

It's tall. I'm thinking even Johnny Depp has a Johnny Depp's hat. It's taller than, um,

River 13:34

I think all hats are short.

Poppy 13:36

his name? Jean Jean Wilder. It was like Gene Simmons. That's

River 13:41

Side note, gene Wilder, wood smash, hard.

Poppy 13:48

Those eyes,

Skye 13:49

version of

River 13:50

got such charisma.

Skye 13:52

Which version of

Poppy 13:53

Oh, this is a, this is a conglomerate of this Gene Wilder, Johnny Depp and the original role

River 14:00

Okay. It's

Poppy 14:01

This is Willy Wonka, the

River 14:03

It's Wonka Prime.

Skye 14:05

Don't Wonka.

Poppy 14:06

Prime. Yeah. Okay. So why, why is he strapped for the chair? One, he's a slave master.

River 14:16

Isha is, those Lums don't have Right. S.

Poppy 14:19

He's tried to play God by gatekeeping the magic and wonder of childhood, allowing only those who he deems worthy and punishing. Those not only. By withholding fun from them. Withholding fun and whimsy, but also through physical punishments.

River 14:36

the fun is only accessible if you got money. If you got money to buy a candy bar that might have a ticket in it, lottery system style,

Poppy 14:45

Yeah. I almost did Grandpa Joe, because

River 14:47

he's a villain. He's a fucking villain.

Poppy 14:51

Grandpa Joe sucks, but I feel like he doesn't suck as much as Willy Wonka. So

River 14:57

His crimes aren't as heinous.

Skye 15:01

Willy

Poppy 15:01

And he's already at the end of

Skye 15:02

Yeah. Willy Wonka's in his factory becoming a God on Earth.

Poppy 15:08

Mm-hmm. So he's in this room, gray walls, floor ceiling, completely gray room, except for a screen in front of him. Um, so his entire life's work revolves around imagination and cultivating his own personal world Wonderland, full of childlike wonder. Um, so on the, on the wall in front of him is a giant screen, and on that screen we'll play reality TV 24 7, just reality television. No creativity, just kind of, you know, like shitty, shitty

River 15:45

people getting drunk at dinner and

Skye 15:47

He is just watching Love

Poppy 15:48

Doing Doing bad thing, doing non innocent things that mar their purity and getting rich and famous off of it. Uh, so he's kept awake. He's forced to watch as untalented, mediocre, usually morally bankrupt. People become sources of wonder and

Skye 16:07

so this is like a clockwork orange type thing that you're doing to him.

Poppy 16:12

Yes. This is only part of

River 16:13

This is step one.

Skye 16:15

Okay.

Poppy 16:16

Step one. Uh, if at any time the sensors on his body sense an increase in temperature or heart rate indicating any kind of excitement or creative thinking going on, he will be zapped hard.

River 16:32

many volts are we talking

Poppy 16:35

I have no frame of reference for how many volts

River 16:37

Get Michael on here quick. He's an electrician now.

Skye 16:40

I know. Do they increase each time?

Poppy 16:43

Oh, I would love that. Yeah. So he's like really afraid of,

River 16:46

The next one's gonna hurt even worse.

Poppy 16:48

He's gonna be fed a diet consisting only of plain instant oatmeal made with water.

Skye 16:54

Mm.

River 16:55

just steel cut O. It's in tap water.

Poppy 16:59

Not even, I'm not even getting him steel cuts. We're getting that like kind of powdery in the, the packets, you know, like the

Skye 17:05

Not even Quaker, like

Poppy 17:07

not even Quaker. We're talking like Walmart

River 17:10

generic brand.

Poppy 17:12

Yeah.

River 17:12

Dang.

Poppy 17:14

Uh, and so while he's watching television, he's gonna be made to fill out menial paperwork over and over again. That is immediately shredded in front of him.

River 17:24

Okay, this is diabolical. Can I

Poppy 17:27

so that's his fate, that that's the equivalent of the gun with one bullet. Yeah. Forever until he dies. Yeah.

Skye 17:34

but usually in a saw trap, they have an option to like try to leave, like try

Poppy 17:38

which is what I'm getting to

Skye 17:40

Sorry, sorry.

Poppy 17:41

like, yeah. I'm not just torturing him. No. So, uh, if he wants to escape and to be set free into the world again, much like river, there is a contract in front of him that he has to sign, sign the dotted line, and the Wonka factory and all of its subsidiaries will be acquired by the Hershey Company.

River 18:01

Oh

Poppy 18:02

The candy quality's gonna sharply decline. It's gonna get all waxy and like too sweet, you know. Um, the factory's gonna be stripped of everything fanciful leaving behind just gray walls and like an assembly line

River 18:15

architecture,

Poppy 18:16

upstairs and office full of cubicles. All of the MPA Lupas are gonna be set free, obviously, but in their place, the factory's going to employ only children between the ages of 14 and 18 who have scored a zero on the Rice purity test.

River 18:34

Now, what is the Rice Purity Test?

Poppy 18:37

The Rice Purity test is a test from Rice University. Um. That you've probably taken it before. It's like a hundred questions. And each of

River 18:47

gotta do this shit in school.

Poppy 18:50

no, it's like a fun, you know, like, have you, have you French kissed someone?

River 18:54

Oh,

Poppy 18:55

or no? Like, have you had sex in the back of a car? Purity? Yeah. And I mean, back when I was in school and people would take the test, everybody would brag about like their high score, you know,

River 19:07

I literally

Poppy 19:07

they have to score a zero.

River 19:09

You're getting 14 to 18-year-old virgins.

Poppy 19:13

Yeah. Yeah. Like, just completely pure blank slates full of wonder and, and, and purity. Um, so they're not gonna be slaves though. They will work on the assembly lines performing repetitive tasks that stifle their imaginations. Um, but they are gonna be paid because we, we don't do slavery here. Slavery here in the traditional sense, because they're going to be paid the federal minimum

River 19:39

7 25 baby.

Poppy 19:42

stifle their creativity. The ones that show promise they might be promoted. The ones that might eventually become artists or authors or musicians. They'll be promoted to a middle management position in with no

Skye 20:00

worst thing as an artist. I'm like, that's the worst thing I could

River 20:03

I wish I had

Poppy 20:04

room for growth or

River 20:05

bullet right now.

Poppy 20:06

Yeah, so, so basically you either have to suffer boredom for the rest of your life or

River 20:12

Inflicted on the children you love so much.

Poppy 20:15

Everything you've built will be tarnished and all of the children, the, those pure worthy children that you wanted to

River 20:24

you're doing this for.

Poppy 20:27

Mm-hmm. So you can pretend like you're not a selfish asshole playing God. So you can feel like, oh, well I'm, I'm, you know, I'm only doing this to better the world. No asshole. Yeah. So what's it gonna be? William

River 20:40

be? Wonka?

Poppy 20:42

Wonka

River 20:44

Gosh, that's evil.

Poppy 20:45

R.

Skye 20:47

That is really evil.

Poppy 20:48

Cut that.

River 20:49

Oompapa heart a

Poppy 20:50

Thank you.

Skye 20:54

Hoop a looper.

River 20:56

that. What do you think he would pick? Waka Prime? What do you think he would pick?

Poppy 21:02

think he's gonna sign the

River 21:04

I absolutely, he's gonna sign the factory over, change his identity. Start a new one?

Poppy 21:09

I mean, he fucking like locked himself in that factory for years and years and didn't let anybody in, you know,'cause he was making it perfect or whatever.

River 21:17

he was perfecting his

Skye 21:19

Is there a clause in there that says that he cannot start over? He cannot make another factory.

Poppy 21:24

there should be, there should be a

River 21:26

I should be. He's a slimy little devil.

Skye 21:29

There's a non-compete

River 21:30

He's gonna.

Skye 21:31

like, no, no competitive

River 21:32

the rest of your fucking life, you cannot create another factory no matter what. I don't care if it's car parts.

Poppy 21:40

I don't even want him writing an, an autobiography. I don't want him doing anything creative.

River 21:47

you eat your oatmeal

Poppy 21:47

So that's

River 21:48

it, William.

Skye 21:49

I'm realizing that mine doesn't really have a lesson attached to it, I don't think.

Poppy 21:56

it's just pure torture and torment.

Skye 22:01

I'll get to it. okay. As suspected Poppy is my victim in my saw trap

Poppy 22:10

Yeah. I figured as revenge. I,

Skye 22:14

for first time listeners who are like, why would you put your friend in peril Poppy, who I've just grown to love and I love her topics, and she's so smart,

River 22:28

Known her for years.

Skye 22:29

beautiful and she's the pink one. How could you do that to her? Go back and listen to our chef YRD episodes. Um, she is deceptively evil. She is always thinking, always four steps ahead of everyone. She's

River 22:50

It's really funny.

Skye 22:52

It's very

River 22:53

incredible. She gets me every time when I should know better. She still gets me every time,

Skye 22:58

but she needs her comeuppance. She needs,

River 23:01

a retribution

Poppy 23:02

I need, I, I need to be punished.

Skye 23:07

and unfortunately, I feel like you're gonna like this unless you lose the salt trap.

River 23:13

that's up to her and her will to

Poppy 23:14

isn't it, it's a lose lose, right?

Skye 23:17

no, you have a potential to free yourself.

Poppy 23:20

okay. Okay.

River 23:22

Give up Harvey.

Poppy 23:25

No. Although he is gonna give himself up sooner or

River 23:28

God, he's trying.

Skye 23:30

Go back and listen to our cat Meet the Cats episode.

Poppy 23:33

fucking chicken bone, the recent chicken bone incident,

River 23:36

wants to die so bad.

Poppy 23:38

I,

Skye 23:40

Okay, poppy, you less so wake up and more so come into consciousness in a white room. Walls, floors, everything is white. There's nothing in the room. There's no doors, there's no windows. There's a very high ceiling, however, so you're taking a look around and you're like, where am I? How do I get out? How did I get here? Et cetera. So you do see in each corner of the room on the ceiling, black domes, cameras. So you are being watched.

Poppy 24:20

ew.

Skye 24:21

Um, and you are completely naked,

Poppy 24:25

Okay.

Skye 24:25

by the way. The ceilings are very, very high. Uh, probably about 20 feet high. The room you're in, probably like 10 by 10, like not a super big room. Um, but you do notice that on the floor there's sort of like a big tile sort of thing that kind of looks like it's. Like, uh, it's flesh with the floor, but it kind of looks like it has a, an intended

Poppy 24:49

Mm-hmm.

Skye 24:51

And so you start investigating that.

Poppy 24:53

Like painted on

Skye 24:54

it's like a, not a sewer grate, but it has the same effect that a sewer grate would have to where you suspect that it opens somehow. So, but it's flesh with the floor, like a tile, but there's like an outline, like a rectangular outline that you suspect that it opens up somehow. And then you look up and it has a mirror. There's one on the ceiling also, there's also sort of like a, a big square. So there's one above and one below. And again, no doors, no windows. You suspect, you know, you have to have gotten in here somehow. So, you know, you're trying to figure out what's going on. No one's talking to you, you know, you're being watched, you're completely naked. So you're digging

River 25:40

Yeah. Why is she naked?

Skye 25:42

just the hu

Poppy 25:43

So I can't use my

Skye 25:44

just like the humiliation factor, just to be vulnerable and exposed and

Poppy 25:49

around.

River 25:50

I was about, she's not ashamed about her body. Are you kidding me?

Skye 25:54

in like a fluorescent white room with like not knowing where you are. And yeah, it's like very surveillance. So you start digging around, uh, on the corners of the floor, like on that thing, that tile thing. Um, to see if you can find any hinges or any sort of way to pry it up to get out. You're digging around and there's no hinges. There's no nothing like that. You're pulling, you're pulling. It seems stuck, but you do eventually find what looks like to be the corner of a piece of paper. So you pull the paper out and you read it In our group chat, I'm going to send you a photo of what this piece of paper says, and I'm gonna have you read it

River 26:44

God. This is a multimedia trap.

Poppy 26:48

I love a multimedia

River 26:49

I'm not gonna open the group chat. I want to hear it

Skye 26:52

I'm gonna need you to read it out

River 26:53

from the horse's mouth. Uh,

Poppy 26:57

This is, she didn't write this out on a piece of paper listeners. This is like beautifully

Skye 27:02

I'll post it on

Poppy 27:03

on.

River 27:04

wow.

Poppy 27:05

Oh, nice. Oh, oh, shit. There's a code.

Skye 27:08

read

River 27:08

fucking cipher?

Skye 27:10

read it.

Poppy 27:11

Okay. Hello Poppy. Would you like to play a game? There is a plate within the floor and one on the ceiling. One leads to your freedom, the other, your demise. One will open and lead you outside and one will release the opponent below, there is a cipher for you to decode. Decode the cipher and figure out.

Skye 27:31

I figure out who the opponent is. Oh, my apologies. I reread it and I thought it

Poppy 27:36

it's, it's okay. Uh, okay. Figure out who the opponent is and the door to your freedom will open fail or run out of time and the opponent will be released. Be sure to

Skye 27:49

play fairly.

Poppy 27:50

be sure to play fairly. You have 10 minutes. Your time starts now. Code word dinosaur.

River 27:57

God. She started a timer. Oh my God. This is a real life we're watching in

Poppy 28:04

Okay.

River 28:05

Poppy solve a saw trap.

Skye 28:07

Do you understand?

River 28:09

I'm nervous.

Poppy 28:11

I think so. I think there's just a message that I have to recode, right? Or decode.

Skye 28:16

Correct.

River 28:17

Oh my God. Who's the opponent? Oh my God. I'm so

Skye 28:20

Well, you have to decode the message and figure out who your opponent is.

Poppy 28:35

I don't think I'm gonna be able to do this.

Skye 28:37

Really? Do you

River 28:38

Oh,

Poppy 28:38

I concede

Skye 28:39

wow. Um, I thought, I thought that you would know what this was.

Poppy 28:48

no, I do not, but,

Skye 28:51

Sorry, I, I thought I thought I thought more of you. Sorry. No, that's

River 28:58

insult to injury in the saw trap.

Poppy 29:01

I don't know, man.

Skye 29:03

Alright,

River 29:04

I guess the opponent's coming out.

Skye 29:07

the timer runs out. Poppy fails to decipher the code and I will now read the code. What the code

Poppy 29:21

It is also a really long code.

Skye 29:24

Yeah,

Poppy 29:25

It's gotta be at least like 15, 20 words,

Skye 29:29

yeah. Something like that. Timer goes off. I will now reveal what it said. So it said, liar, liar, say my name, come and play this game. Who I am. I won't tell. If you lose, I eat. Well say my name and you'll be free. I'm the beast. You fear endlessly. And then

River 29:57

Oh,

Skye 30:00

so you've,

River 30:01

think I know what the opponent is. Can I guess

Skye 30:06

Hang on, I'll let you guess in just a second. I'll let you guess in just a second. So the bottom plate, you hear it and like smoke comes out and like it starts to rise up.

River 30:20

It's so scary.

Skye 30:21

And so it's like a big block and there's like glass, clear glass around each side and slowly as it rises up you see who your opponent is. River. Who do you think the opponent is?

River 30:37

I wanna see if Poppy has a guess first. Do,

Poppy 30:41

it

Skye 30:42

I can say it

River 30:42

run it through

Poppy 30:43

All. All I heard is the opponent. Are there more clues than just what I fear? Endlessly is the first like part.

Skye 30:51

that's, that's the last sentence.

Poppy 30:54

Okay.

Skye 30:55

else was just sort of fluff.

Poppy 30:58

Okay. So it's, is it a polar bear?

River 31:01

That's what I was guess.

Poppy 31:04

If it's just what I fear endlessly, then yeah. It's a

River 31:06

I'm like, we talked about this last week.

Skye 31:08

So now you're naked in a room with no doors or windows.

Poppy 31:12

Oh, I'm dead. I'm dead.

Skye 31:15

I'm like, oh, oh, you think you're

Poppy 31:16

At least it'll be

Skye 31:17

Yeah. I'm like, oh, you're so smart. You, you do, you do puzzles and fuck with people in their head. Fucking solve my

Poppy 31:24

I do, I love puzzles. I love puzzles, but I don't know what a pigpen is.

River 31:29

heard of it.

Skye 31:29

this wasn't a

Poppy 31:30

Never heard of it.

Skye 31:31

this was the play

Poppy 31:33

yeah.'cause I was gonna say like the WW in the beginning, I'm like, how is that? Liar. Liar. If you is both a and I.

Skye 31:42

I I, I, I did a lot of work working on this cipher.

River 31:50

It seems like you, God damn,

Skye 31:53

I did it. This is the pigpen cipher. That's what the pigpen cipher looks like. You've probably

River 31:56

that's entirely too much.

Poppy 31:59

Oh

River 31:59

language to

Skye 32:00

the, it's the, this one

Poppy 32:03

I see. Yeah. There's no way I could do that in 10 minutes, even if I knew what it

River 32:07

Even if you didn't have a

Poppy 32:08

with that whole big ass 20 word message. Ain't no

Skye 32:14

well

River 32:15

Release the polar bear

Skye 32:16

they're meant for, you know, to, for you to be set up for failure, basically.

River 32:20

Your will

Skye 32:21

It's unfair.

River 32:22

or die.

Skye 32:23

set up.

Poppy 32:25

I gotta, I gotta fight the polar bear.

Skye 32:28

That was gonna be your door to freedom.

River 32:32

All the way up there.

Skye 32:34

It was gonna descend,

River 32:35

Oh, okay.

Poppy 32:37

oh, okay. So I'm like, do I have to scale

River 32:39

opens and then you have to figure out how to get up

Skye 32:42

No. However, if you had one, the polar bear still comes up. Obviously the, the door doesn't open for the polar bear. Like you still have to see it, and it still is like banging against the glass. But a ladder does come down and you do have to kind of climb up over the polar bear, like to

Poppy 33:00

Gross. Polar bears are so scary.

River 33:04

Especially if you're

Poppy 33:05

really don't like them. Yeah.

Skye 33:08

that, and, and when you leave, you're just naked. You don't know where you are, you're just naked in the world.

Poppy 33:13

I mean, I'm

River 33:14

a whole different saw

Poppy 33:15

whoever captured me is probably, if they wanna kill me bipolar bear, I feel like they're not gonna let me actually go,

River 33:23

There's another polar bear waiting for you after you escape.

Poppy 33:26

my God, a polar bear sitting in a chair. Just

River 33:29

Just spins around to look at you.

Skye 33:32

do we feel that that, um, is fair,

Poppy 33:36

oh, I don't, I, no, absolutely not I don't think I deserve to die for,

Skye 33:41

not fair, but do you think that, um, it's, uh, appropriate, I guess I should

River 33:45

Do you think it makes up for your past crimes collectively

Poppy 33:49

no.

River 33:50

fair?

Poppy 33:51

I also don't think it te, like you said, it definitely doesn't teach a lesson

River 33:54

No.

Poppy 33:55

or put

River 33:56

what if I killed you with a polar bear?

Poppy 33:58

and it doesn't, it doesn't trick me like I usually trick you guys, but it's still a very well thought out,

River 34:04

Oh yeah. You put work into this.

Poppy 34:07

for sure.

River 34:08

Why do you know so much about

Poppy 34:09

course, Michael approved,

Skye 34:12

I thought that you knew like a shit ton of ciphers,

Poppy 34:16

I, I know a few ciphers. I don't know a shit ton. I mean, mostly when I play puzzle games, the ciphers are somehow built into the game and you have to figure out,

Skye 34:27

like put the grid on there and have the dinosaur already inserted into the grid and like So it maybe made more sense to

Poppy 34:36

I may have been able even with that, with how long that thing was, 10 minutes. I don't think I could do it even if I had the code, like had the key,

Skye 34:46

yeah. Even if I filled it in entirely, I'm sure.

Poppy 34:50

Yeah, because how many words? It's like six lines of text. I guess I just have to die Bipolar, polar bear. I'm pretty sure they kill quickly.

River 35:00

they go for the neck, right? Like immediately. Yeah. I would

Poppy 35:04

They like

River 35:05

fuck it crush my skull quick.

Poppy 35:08

Yeah. You would hope. Unless it's like

River 35:10

Unless it hits like, yeah.

Poppy 35:11

gentle,

River 35:12

the non vital parts of your brain first.

Poppy 35:16

Oh,

Skye 35:17

Well, disappointing but not really. It was still

Poppy 35:21

I still, I still die. Yeah.

River 35:23

Damn. I'm glad one of us did.

Poppy 35:25

Yeah.

River 35:28

That was crazy. You guys are fucked up

Poppy 35:31

I now I'm gonna have nightmares about polar bears. I

Skye 35:34

River. Did you look at

River 35:35

being

Skye 35:35

did you look at it?

River 35:37

No, I haven't.

Skye 35:38

it.

River 35:39

We'll get it.

Skye 35:40

I like made a, I like made a thing.

Poppy 35:44

It's on old parchment.

River 35:46

You do so much and I love you for that. God damn.

Poppy 35:51

I'm now, I'm picturing a polar bear with like a feather

River 35:54

Yeah, a calligraphy

Poppy 35:55

of this out to me

River 35:57

It's wearing

Poppy 35:57

old paw.

Skye 35:58

Mm-hmm.

Poppy 35:59

Uh, it's, it's just the Coca-Cola polar bear.

Skye 36:03

I thought

River 36:03

They really tried

Skye 36:04

be in the riddle.

Poppy 36:07

Yeah.

River 36:07

that would've made it too obvious. They tried to do such good PR for polar bears Coca-Cola. To be fair, I do think polar bears are cute. They got me on that one. I do think they're very cute, but they're also terrifying. Fun game. Good

Poppy 36:24

satisfied? Are we happy with

River 36:26

I'm happy. I'm happy with mine.

Poppy 36:29

That was fun having like a whole week in

River 36:31

Mm-hmm. Like I said at the beginning of this episode, I don't know if it's staying in, that was an hour and a half ago almost. Mine is less a topic like a research. I learned about a thing and it's more of a show and tell because at work a week ago I was taking out trash, which is not a part of my job description. I'm just a fucking team player and a good employee and I had time to kill. And I'm walking back from the dumpster and I'm looking down.'cause I trip a lot when I walk and I have to make sure I'm not tripping over stuff as I'm walking down the sidewalk behind work and on the left exactly at the edge of the sidewalk. And the dark gravel is a feather, a noticeable feather So I found this feather at work and I, at first I just walked right past it.'cause I was like, oh, feather on the ground. How delightful. And then I went back into the break room at work from the back door. And then I said, that was a gift. I have to go pick that up. I can't actually leave that there. That is for me. So I got a little Tupperware container from the cabinet because we're just lousy with Tupperware containers that our coworkers leave there. And I said, well, nobody's using this. I'm gonna use it to put a little feather in. And uh, I brought it home and now I have it. And an important note, especially if you live in the continental us, avian flu is not running as rampant as it was earlier this year. The numbers have gone down, at least in the state that I live in. So it's less of a concern, but you still want to properly disinfect your feathers before you just handle them with your bare hands because parasites can live on feathers. For a very long time.

Poppy 38:30

You just like microwave

River 38:31

in the freezer. You put it in the freezer for a few days to kill'em off. I left it in the freezer for about a week. I just took it out this morning. And then you just swish it around in warm soapy water to get any physical debris off of it. Let it air dry and boom, you got a beautiful little feather.

Poppy 38:49

Nice.

River 38:49

delightful. So now I have a fun little feather and I'm like, what can I possibly do with this feather? There are so many. And first of all, I do wanna say, because I think it's a gift, and I believe it's a gift. I have been asking Archangel Raphael for a lot of assistance and help recently, and his element is air. And I personally associate him with birds mostly of the medium to large range. And this is, I would say, is a medium sized feather. So for me, I was like, oh, Raphael's giving me a little gift. How sweet isn't that so nice of him?'cause I'm always like, Ugh, fuck my stupid B of life. It's just me against everything. And my allies are always like, no, it's not you stupid bitch. We are right here

Poppy 39:41

It's, it's literally fine.

River 39:43

fine. Have a feather about it. And I'm like, you know what? Life is, okay. So I do. And I've been meaning to set up a proper f. Altar for Raphael for like a year. I just haven't really had time to put it together and like get the things that I want to put there for him or have a space for him yet. So where whenever I do that, this is going on the altar naturally.

Poppy 40:14

Do they have archangel like iconography?

River 40:16

Yeah, they do. They have statue. Raphael is a less popular one. I will say St. Michael is the most popular. You

Skye 40:24

I brought my Michael statue with us to.

River 40:28

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Poppy 40:29

Oh, Michael, but is like

River 40:32

St. Michael the

Poppy 40:33

Michael the

River 40:34

Same one. In the same man. Yeah. He's the most called upon one, especially in like folk practices. He is the one that most people go to for like protection. Raphael can also be used for protection to an extent, but he's more for like healing and health and creativity and communicating. Michael is fire. Raphael is air. So Michael is like hot and quick with it. Let's see, where was I going with that? I don't know. I lost Archangels are dope as hell.

Poppy 41:10

Yeah.

River 41:11

That really all there is to it, but um Oh right. So I have in my possession a black feather. And naturally there are color correspondences, much like with candles and crystals. They also correspond with feathers. It seems like a one-to-one comparison for candles and feather, it seems like most color, uh, what's the word? Associations are pretty universal across just every object, but sometimes a black feather is a bad omen in certain

Poppy 41:47

Ooh, yeah.

River 41:49

mostly eastern European cultures, if I remember correctly from what I looked it up. But, um, I don't, and maybe it's just me. I don't really see black as inherently a bad omen. I think it always depends on the context. Like black cats, black feathers, black birds,

Poppy 42:12

the Morgan is all about black birds, and that's not like a necessarily an

Skye 42:19

Well, technically she's also a

River 42:21

Depending on, yeah,

Poppy 42:23

Well,

Skye 42:23

like it

River 42:24

depending on who's calling her and, yeah.

Poppy 42:26

But, but the way that you work with her, you wouldn't interpret

Skye 42:31

no, no, me personally, in my day-to-day life. Now, if I had a crow feather gift given to me, I would say, oh, she's looking over me. This is a message from her saying, I see you. I'm with you. But historically, mythologically, seeing a crow, seeing a black feather

Poppy 42:51

and ravens.

Skye 42:52

the Morgan, definitely a

River 42:54

Makes you asshole clinch.

Poppy 42:57

The Raven by Edgar Ellen Poe.

River 42:59

Yeah. Yeah. So I've got a lot of fun things I need to figure out how to do with this little feather of mine. You can use it for smoke cleansing to waft the, the smoke around. Also, after a a hard day's work at the, at the factory or wherever it is you work, you could just come in and just sort of sweep it off you like a little wand. Mm-hmm. And that's all. I will just get a tool on a whim or it'll be given to me, and then I figure out afterwards what I'm gonna use it for. I usually don't have a plan in place when I get a tool, so I'm still figuring out what I'm gonna use this neat little feather for.

Skye 43:40

Love. I use my crow feather that I have to waft my dragon's blood incense when I

River 43:48

And it's, there's just something about like flicking a feather that feels so just like whimsical and magical

Skye 43:58

such a good job for being so thin and small. It has a little bit of

Poppy 44:02

Yeah. I mean, that's its job.

River 44:05

It's propelling. It's propelling like an eight pound animal with this thing and it's just, it's so, and I'll see a lot of feathers. I go on a lot of walks around my city and my neighborhood and usually I will see like little, yeah, like the little molting ones where like they're growing up and they're the like the little down feathers that are just like little puffs.

Poppy 44:31

We have a lot of blue jay feathers around here, so I'll see them and I'm like, oh, that's so gorgeous, but I don't wanna pick it up.

River 44:36

Yeah. And usually I don't have anything to properly handle feathers with when I'm out on my walks. This just happened right place, right time. I just had something I was able to contain it with, so now I have a neat little feather

Poppy 44:51

Very nice. Would you make it into, like, would you consider making it into a quilt or write your spiritual or like spells

River 45:01

That sounds like a lot of work. I'll use a ball ballpoint pen for that, honestly. Yeah. I love the, the romanticism of a feather quill. I've just never been good at, yeah, I've never been good at calligraphy and my handwriting's already so shitty that like adding loose wet ink to that, it is just going to make it way worse.

Poppy 45:23

Blots

River 45:24

It's just gonna be like big circles

Skye 45:27

You could just put the tip of a ballpoint pen on the end of it.

River 45:31

I could, but I also, I wanna leave it natural. I don't wanna leave it as it was when I found it and just work with that. Put it in my cap.

Skye 45:41

call it macaroni.

River 45:44

Hey, that's what's up. Uh, so yeah, and there's uh, for millennia feathers and spirituality and magic, you can find so much stuff about it. And I was looking into it and so much of the stuff I found was just sort of like regurgitating the same stuff over and over and over again, which is why I didn't really do a whole lot of research for this episode in particular.'cause it's like, yeah, the element of air, creativity, communication, intuition, the intellect. And I was like, yeah, bitch. Hell yeah. Go.

Skye 46:21

because you said that black can be like a negative, bad omen, et cetera, et cetera, but you don't feel that way. What to you, does this feather represent, however, because it is black and of the air element, like what does that mean to you?

River 46:40

To me it feels protective much like, um, an obsidian or a interline or something where it's like, Hey, you don't have to worry. We got your back. You are stressing yourself out way too much and you are forgetting that you're divinely blessed and protected. So like. Just as a big in your face reminder, here's a nice little black feather for you so you can stop freaking out. I also, I feel like there are very few signs and omens I would see where I would be like, that's bad. That's a bad omen.

Skye 47:20

Like a skull maybe. Like

River 47:22

If I, there was a period of time, not that long ago, every time I would like cloud gaze, every single cloud turned into a skull. And I was like, I don't know if that's just my mental illness or if that's like an omen and important of woe or something.

Poppy 47:38

And the dead crow that I found on election day 2024,

River 47:42

that was a bad

Poppy 47:43

was an omen.

River 47:44

Yeah. Seeing any sort of like dead animal or like a bird flying into a window, to me that's a bad omen.

Skye 47:52

and I think, you know what, an omen is. An omen. I think that it hits you in the gut, like I think it

River 47:57

Contextually with what you are going through, it's all, it's so subjective. Especially

Poppy 48:04

Because it's so easy to just see literally anything and be like, oh, that's a

River 48:07

the spiritual psychosis hits hard, so you do. And also for this time of year, birds are molting, so there are just feathers everywhere. They're getting ready for their migration, so they are just shedding their feathers, getting ready to travel. So it's important to remember not everything all of the time is a sign.

Skye 48:29

Horses not zebras, y'all.

River 48:31

Exactly. Don't go crazy trying to find signs where they're not, because I have, and it's not a fun, good time, but sometimes you get a little gift when you're least expecting it and you just get to go, Hey, thanks I needed that. So that's my show and tell for you guys today this cool feather I

Poppy 48:51

Thank you for

River 48:52

And it's totally legal that I have it in my possession because I checked the Migratory Bird Act and it's totally fine.

Skye 49:00

No one report them because it's

River 49:01

Nobody report me. It's fine. I literally said it was fine. off my jock,

Poppy 49:07

10 years from now, someone calls the Department of the Interior.

River 49:12

Department of Wildlife,

Poppy 49:14

Yeah.

River 49:15

and they're like, Hey, this person

Poppy 49:16

I don't know where this person

River 49:18

to,

Poppy 49:21

Okay. Are we ready? Are you guys ready? Okay. So most of our topics on this podcast are either centered around death or spirituality or witchcraft. You know, some combination of the three. However, My topic today tells the story of someone who defied death against all odds in one of the harshest environments on earth. Not only did he survive through sheer force of will, but he maintained his strength of spirit and passion for life, even after experiencing so much suffering. So through it all, he walked with death by his side, doing all that he could to survive taking comfort from the fact that all he could do was his best. So today I am telling the tale of v Robinson Cruso of the Sahara MRO prosperity.

River 50:17

Whoa.

Poppy 50:18

Do you guys know him?

River 50:19

never heard of

Poppy 50:20

Of the

Skye 50:20

At first, I thought you were gonna do that guy who got that pole stuck in his eye, but lived,

Poppy 50:26

Oh my God, no,

River 50:28

I mean, that's not

Poppy 50:29

think I've heard that

River 50:30

that's not a tale of, that's just luck. That's not really constant

Skye 50:34

Well, I mean, technically they

Poppy 50:35

The recovery?

Skye 50:36

did, like, um, like tests on him and it was like incredible

Poppy 50:42

Mm-hmm.

Skye 50:43

anyway,

River 50:43

perfectly centered.

Skye 50:44

no, I'm not familiar.

Poppy 50:45

there's so many survival stories. Uh, I thought that river might be because of the I shouldn't be alive obsession. I think he had an episode on that, or a whole like big hour long special episode.

River 50:58

what's the time period for

Poppy 51:00

This was the nineties. This happened in the nineties. Okay, so I got this information from various sources. Uh, it's not a super research heavy topic. A lot of it comes directly from a piece that he wrote for BBC news in 2014. So that was 20 years, like the 20 year anniversary of his ordeal. And also he did an interview in 2023. So a lot of this comes from that as well. Spoilers, he survives, he does not

River 51:32

Hell yeah, dude.

Poppy 51:33

just from the beginning, you know, he, he literally wrote most of what I'm going to tell you today. So who is he? Who the heck is Mauro Prosperity? He was born on July 13th, 1955 in Rome, Italy. So he's a cancer. Yeah. Uh, you wouldn't know it based on his attitude for the rest of this, but yes. He's a cancer. At 19, he was going to a school for the arts when he decided to become a police officer instead. So he had always been an athlete and for some reason that made him decide to become a police officer by or for the Pulia Desto, cause at this point, um, the Pulia Desto. Like the police force was part of the Italian military. So really he basically joined the military. Well, like I said, he was an athlete. He competed in the 1984 Olympics, held in Los Angeles, uh, representing Italy in the modern Pentathlon event. Do you guys know what the pentathlon is?

River 52:43

of it, but I don't know all the activities.

Poppy 52:46

I did not know. I had never heard of it before.

Skye 52:50

five activities instead of a triathlon? It's

Poppy 52:52

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, what the fuck is a pentathlon? Um,

River 52:57

more is there than swimming, running, biking, what else can you do?

Poppy 53:02

so this comes, the original pentathlon was part of the ancient Greek Olympic games. Uh, so the classic one was a group of five events that were supposed to exemplify things that a good soldier would be able to do. So long jump, javelin throw, 200 meter race, discus throw, and a 1500 meter race. So there's running, you're throwing shit, um, because they didn't have fucking guns or anything, you know, and you can't exactly stab people for sport, I don't

River 53:39

Not in the Olympics at least.

Poppy 53:42

Then in 1912, the modern pentathlon was introduced, so they switched up the events. It's still five events, and it's still focused on what a good soldier at that time would be able to to do really well. So fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show, jumping, cross country running and pistol shooting.

River 54:04

Okay, that makes sense.

Poppy 54:07

So pistols eventually were replaced by laser guns, so they're like shooting laser guns. And this year in 2025, in 2025, they took out shooting altogether and they replaced it with an obstacle course, which is more fun, but less, less fun at the same time. I don't

River 54:29

it's just a different kind of fun.

Poppy 54:31

I love obstacle courses.

River 54:32

I love watching Nin jewelry or

Poppy 54:35

So when Prosperity competed in the eighties, he would've been using a real pistol. They hadn't switched over to the Laser Pistols yet. He met his future wife, Sincia Paglia at the Olympics. He was competing and she was an English Russian interpreter at the time. Later on, she would say that she was immediately attracted to him while watching him compete due to his positivity and enthusiasm at overcoming challenges, which really became like. His thing throughout the rest of his life. Super positive dude as we'll. See, they got married six months after they met and they had three children together.

River 55:12

at 19.

Poppy 55:15

Uh, I don't, well let's see. He was born in 1955. They met in 1984, so he would've been 29 at that time, but still 29 competing in the Olympics, like running and swimming and everything. Like, that's on the older side, I think. Right?

River 55:32

I'm, I ain't never doing that shit.

Poppy 55:36

So this guy was an incredible athlete. even as he got older, he remained an athlete, uh, after he was retired as a professional athlete. So he stayed super active, running, competing in races, et cetera. In 1994, at 39 years old, his friend Giovan, Iman Zo, who was also a runner, asked him to compete in this super cool race he just heard about in Morocco called Morton De AKA Marathon of the Sands. So this was an ultra marathon, and an ultra marathon is just any race that is longer than a marathon. But this particular one was a race of 156 miles through the Sahara Desert taking place over the course of six to

Skye 56:27

Now can we get the length of a regular marathon?

Poppy 56:31

26.2 miles is a regular

River 56:34

damn.

Skye 56:34

is like, what, like six times as much as a regular marathon,

Poppy 56:39

Yes. Yeah. So it's basically like running a marathon every day for a week

River 56:44

On the sand.

Poppy 56:46

on in. Yeah. In the desert. Yeah. so in preparation for this, this mad lad trained by running 25 miles a day. So he's basically running a marathon every day trying to get in shape for this. Um, and he also, because it was gonna be in the desert, he started significantly reducing his water intake to get used to the feeling of dehydration, like running a marathon while

River 57:10

he's conditioning.

Poppy 57:12

'cause there's only so much that you can carry with you while you're running. So, uh, his wife was like, bro, what the fuck? This is dangerous. Uh, but apparently she didn't push him really hard on it. She was basically just like, let it be known. I don't agree with this, but you're gonna do what you're gonna do. So

Skye 57:30

I meet to Michael

Poppy 57:31

I guess he was just a, yeah. Yeah. He had like a, it seems like he had a really strong personality. Like, I don't know if it's just'cause he was Italian or what,

River 57:43

just like that.

Poppy 57:44

they're just, just very passionate about, you know, about running, I guess. So she was concerned because they had three children under the age of eight at that time. So they had three little kids. And apparently the race organizers, when you sign up for the race, they make you sign a form disclosing where you want your body to be shipped to if you die.

River 58:07

Yeah.

Poppy 58:09

But prosperity was like, ah, it's gonna be fine. He says that he told his wife, quote, the worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned.

River 58:19

I think

Poppy 58:20

he know that

River 58:20

are in store for you. Friend.

Skye 58:22

dude.

Poppy 58:23

yeah. This 39-year-old

River 58:25

I think your hubris might have got you.

Poppy 58:28

I mean, he's used to doing like super long races, um, challenging his body, et cetera, et cetera. So he was, he was very confident.

Skye 58:38

do you think that this is like a

Poppy 58:39

So

Skye 58:40

I,

Poppy 58:42

I don't, he just did this shit all the time.

River 58:45

Kid just thought it sounded fun.

Poppy 58:46

He was just like, oh, I do these things all the time. This one just happens to be in a desert. So now we're in Morocco, we're at the beginning of the race. Prosperity and Monzo, they've made it to Morocco. Um, they're prepping for safety. The race organizers tell everybody, if there's a sandstorm, take shelter. And if you get lost, walk toward the clouds, the gather it. Dawn,

River 59:14

That's so cryptic. That's so ominous.

Poppy 59:17

well, I, I guess'cause it's like the Sahara Desert and there aren't a ton of clouds. So in the dawn, like in the morning and at

River 59:24

has like a compass and give them like a general

Poppy 59:27

They do, they all have compasses, they all have maps, um, they all have flares. So there are about 80 people today. There's like a thousand people that do this race.'cause this is, this race still happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's been happening for like 30 years. but it was still pretty young at this point. So there were only 80 participants that were about to run 156 miles through the Sahara Desert. Each of them were carrying food, clothing, a sleeping bag, a compass, a portable stove and emergency kit that had a signal flare and a map.

Skye 1:00:00

weight too, like in a backpack. Like they're also, they also have weight on them.

Poppy 1:00:06

Yeah. Uh, which is why water was only available at checkpoints. So they're not,'cause they're running all, they're running a marathon so they can't carry water, which is really heavy. So if they wanted to drink, they would have to wait until they got to a checkpoint, like refill their small water bottle and then keep going. But thankfully there were like multiple checkpoints throughout the day. So, it's not like they're waiting a super long time between, so they would run a certain amount each day.'cause it's like a week long race. And then at night they would camp in the same spot. apparently he was doing really well. He says that in the evenings all of the Italians got together and hung out and that it was a good time. Like I bet that was, yeah. They're probably so tired though. Uh, so everything was going great until day four. Up until this point, they had covered about 60 miles. but on day four, that's when they got to the longest, hardest stretch of the race. It was April. And on this day in particular, it was about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. cause you're in the fucking Sahara

River 1:01:12

it's hot.

Poppy 1:01:14

not a lot of shade. So he and Monzo, they get started for the morning, and as they're starting, they notice, oh, it's pretty windy out today. You know, whatever. Tomorrow's feeling pretty good, prosperity's feeling pretty good. And he's, like we said, he's very competitive. So by the early afternoon, he had picked up his pace and left Monzo behind. So he's alone at this point. And at this point he was in fourth place too, out of 80. So he's doing really well. It was hot and windy, and he had run about 20 miles so far that day. And that's when the sandstorm hit. So, why are sandstorms dangerous? What, what could they po?

River 1:01:53

It is just a little wind. It's just a little wind and sand.

Poppy 1:01:57

Well, during a sandstorm, you can literally breathe sand into your lungs, can lead to serious lung damage. And I didn't know this, but the tiny dust particles can also apparently get absorbed into your bloodstream and cause cardiovascular problems, and they can even cause strokes. So. You don't wanna be breathing in, a ton of dust. And on top of that sand is sharp and it's gonna cut up your skin and irritate your eyes. And then on top of all of that, you can't see anything. So you lose visibility about the storm prosperity writes suddenly a very violent sandstorm began. The wind kicked in with the terrifying fury. I was swallowed by a yellow wall of sand. I was blinded. I couldn't breathe. The sand whipped my face. It was like a storm of needles. I understood for the first time how powerful a sandstorm could be. I turned my back on the wind and wrapped a scarf around my face to stop the sand from wounding me. I wasn't disoriented, but I had to keep moving to keep from getting buried. Eventually, I crouched down in a sheltered spot, waiting for the storm to end. So he's like, if I stand still, I'm gonna be buried in sand, so I gotta keep going. Yeah, sand is heavy. So he kept running through the storm. He's not just walking, he, he's like, I gotta keep my pace. I mean, I'm in fourth place. Might as

River 1:03:20

So he's running

Poppy 1:03:21

to, I don't know, I don't know if he turned his back just to put the scarf around his face or if he was already running against the wind. I don't know. but he keeps going. Apparently the storm continued for eight hours and by the time it was over, it was completely dark outside. His nose was bleeding, his throat was cut up, he had throat abrasions. And since it was dark, he just slept right there in the dunes. He's like, ah, well, I mean, what can I do? I just gotta sleep here. And the nighttime temperatures in the desert at that time of year are between 50 and 60 degrees. So it's, it's chilly. And he was dressed to be running a marathon in 115 degree heat. So he wasn't exactly dressed to be spending the night. No, he did have a sleeping bag at least. He seems like kind of a romantic guy. Like he really appreciates beauty and whatnot. In his article that he wrote, he mentions the other places that he loves to run ultra marathons at,, or that he loves ultra marathons in particular because they're usually in beautiful places. He writes, it was immediately fascinating. You have this sky that is white with stars that almost suffocates you. And he's looking at the bright side. He's looking on the bright side at this point, contemplating. He's like, well, at least I'm gonna have a good story to tell my buddy Monzo when I meet up with him

River 1:04:46

when I see him tomorrow.

Poppy 1:04:48

when I see him tomorrow. Yeah. Caught in this crazy sandstorm. Get to camp under the stars. Awesome. And this point of view. And throughout the rest of the story too, he reminds me. His philosophy reminds me a lot of stoicism specifically, like a few chapters in the Stoic Challenge, a Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, calmer, and More Resilient by William b Irvine. I think I recommended that a little while ago.

River 1:05:11

familiar.

Poppy 1:05:12

Yeah. But Stoicism is basically accepting what you can't change and then focusing on what you do have control over recognizing that there's good in everything. You know, like there's Al, there's always a bright side, and William b Irvine specifically talks a lot about if everything else sucks and you can't do anything to change it, at least you'll have a good story to tell.

River 1:05:38

Fair?

Poppy 1:05:39

So, you know, look on the bright side. So he wrote in his BBC article, oh, well I can't win now, but I can still make good time. Tomorrow morning. I'll get up really early and try to reach the finish. You have 36 hours to run that stage of the race any longer, and you are disqualified. So there was still a chance. What I couldn't have imagined was how dramatically the storm would change everything around me. the next day he gets up, everything looks different, the wind has blown the dunes around. So the landscape looks different. At this point. He is disoriented, but he did have a compass and a map. So he was confident that he would be able to navigate to the next checkpoint. However, it is really difficult. I don't know when the last time you guys used like a paper map was, but.

River 1:06:27

I was

Poppy 1:06:28

It's really difficult if you don't have a reference point or like landmarks or something.

River 1:06:33

know where you are on that map, it's kind of useless.

Poppy 1:06:38

And you're like, oh, I have to walk two miles in this direction toward this mountain. You're like, well, there's no mountain. So he's, any, he starts running. He's like, I'm, I'm trying to make good time still. There's still a chance I can win this thing and if I run, I'm probably gonna run into another person running the race. That also got caught in the sandstorm. Right. But he did not, he didn't see anyone. And eventually he climbed up high on one of the dunes. He saw nobody in any direction, and that's when he realized he was fucked. He says, I started to walk. What's the point of running? Running? Where?

River 1:07:18

Yeah.

Poppy 1:07:19

Yeah. He remembered stories that his grandfather used to tell him about fighting in World War I when they had no water, they would pee into their canteens and drink that when necessary. Pro tip, do not do this. This is incredibly dangerous. It is not recommended to drink your own urine even when you're dehydrated. Don't do it.

River 1:07:40

filter out all the yuck to get rid of it, so you are just drinking all the yuck and the toxins that your body's trying to get rid of.

Poppy 1:07:48

It's gonna fuck up your kidneys. It'll dehydrate you further. You're just drinking, drinking bad stuff. He didn't drink it yet. He was just, he said he wasn't desperate. Like he didn't really think he would have to drink it at any point'cause he was so confident he was gonna get out of it by the end of the day. But he did do it just as a precaution, like, just in case, you never know. Thankfully he was carrying a bunch of dehydrated food, but what do you need to cook? Dehydrated food? You need water. And he didn't have any extra water. So,'cause all the water was at the checkpoints, he tried to travel mostly at night to stay out of the sun as much as possible during the day. Uh, the next day, day two of being lost, he just kept going. He's still, he's still walking at this point. He's like, okay, race officials must have started a search for me. Somebody must be looking for me. Nobody was looking for him

River 1:08:46

Not on day two of being lost.

Poppy 1:08:49

the race. So this, this would've been day six of the race. So I think this would've been the last day

Skye 1:08:55

oh, no

Poppy 1:08:55

of the race. And it,

River 1:08:57

Nobody's looking you at the earliest. Maybe tomorrow,

Poppy 1:09:01

there's checkpoints, but it's like, are they keeping track of e every single person

River 1:09:05

not in the nineties.

Poppy 1:09:07

in the nineties. Uh, so yeah, so day two in the evening. He hears a helicopter in the distance and it's flying low. It's flying so low that he can see the pilot's white helmet., And so he shot his flare into the air and he waves the Italian flag thinking like they, that's

River 1:09:30

My, my search party,

Poppy 1:09:33

They're here,

River 1:09:34

Italian friends.

Skye 1:09:36

should say help. You know what I mean? Like, they,

Poppy 1:09:38

Yeah, it should. It should. But the pilot didn't see him. The flare that he used was really tiny about the size of a ballpoint pen, and it probably wasn't seen due to the intensity of the sun. I know, right? Like they tried to make them as small as possible so that they wouldn't have to carry a lot of weight, but in a life or death situation in the desert with the sun

River 1:10:01

take the extra like point 30 grams of weight. It's fine.

Poppy 1:10:07

Prosperity says I ran after him. I shouted at him. I called him Paolo. Giovanni, every random name that s Frank to mind, but the noise of the engine faded to a hum. And there was silence.

River 1:10:17

Damn

Skye 1:10:18

damn.

Poppy 1:10:19

I bet it's quiet as hell out

River 1:10:21

Unnervingly. So yeah,

Skye 1:10:23

Or it's just like, woo. With like the

River 1:10:26

you just hear the wind on the dunes.

Skye 1:10:28

over the dunes. Yeah.

Poppy 1:10:31

At this point he says he still didn't feel fear. He was still calm and rational, like thinking about how he was gonna get out of this. And he recognized that at this point. If I'm going to be saved, I'm gonna have to save myself.'cause if that helicopter didn't see me, they're not gonna find me. So he kept going in the S desert, one of the harshest environments on Earth, completely alone. Except occasionally he would pass like a camel or a tree. And during an interview in 2023, he commented something that I think is really important for us all to remember. He said, when you're going all out to win, you don't notice anything. I won Olympics and World Cups, but I didn't look around me as a professional, you have to do the race full stop. You have to win full stop. But in the desert, I learned that it's really important to look around you, to see what's happening, to know the being next to you. So he is like getting that sense of awareness, whereas the day before or a couple days before, he's just running to run. Not noticing his surroundings or how beau the beauty of the environment. Yeah. Just to get from point A to point B, not like enjoying the experience. Eventually that day he climbs up another dune to try to find some sort of landmark. And he sees a structure in the distance., I didn't look up how to say this. It's a marabout, I think is how you say it. Which is a type of Muslim shrine constructed to hold the remains of a dead holy man. So he hopes someone would be there. Apparently it's a place of worship and there are nomadic tribes that kind of like herd goats and whatnot through the land. Um, and they stop there to worship as they go. So he's like, okay, someone might be there. But when he got there, it was completely empty except for the holy man in the sarcophagus. Even still, he was like, I'm happy that there's a roof over my head. At least I'm not out in the sun. He places Italian flag up on the roof hoping that it would be visible from the air if somebody else came by. And then he settled in and cooked some of his dehydrated food with fresh pea.

River 1:12:46

Delicious the seasoning. Hmm. Do I detect flavors of piss?

Poppy 1:12:56

At one point he was up on the roof when he heard squeaking. So this is the part of the story that everybody knows about that made him famous. It was a roost of bats and he decided to drink their blood.

River 1:13:10

Whoa.

Poppy 1:13:11

Yeah.

Skye 1:13:12

of him.

River 1:13:13

Hold

Poppy 1:13:13

Yeah. So if, if this sort of thing makes you really squeamish, skip ahead like a minute. He says, I grabbed a handful of bats, cut their heads and mushed up their insides with a knife, then sucked them out. I ate at least 20 of them raw. So he thought that eating the bats,

River 1:13:32

You've got a stove brother.

Poppy 1:13:33

well he, he doesn't wanna lose any of the moisture because he's trying to get as much water into his body as he

River 1:13:40

Yeah.

Poppy 1:13:42

'cause at the, he's not starving at this point. He's not eating it for the food. He's got dehydrated food. He needs the water. And in 2023, the interviewer asked him, how did you get over the disgust and managed to eat those bats raw. He said, I ate them and that was it. The only thing was they stank a bit.

River 1:13:59

Hmm. When it's life or death, you just kind

Poppy 1:14:02

like, uh, I just ate them Afterwards, he carried the bats, remains outside, and he buried them. He gave them a nice little, little burial.

Skye 1:14:11

He's like, thanks buds. Sorry.

Poppy 1:14:13

Yeah.

River 1:14:14

I'm sorry to do

Poppy 1:14:14

After that, after that, he heard an airplane approaching, here's an engine in the

River 1:14:21

Take two. Rescue take two.

Poppy 1:14:23

two. Here we go. So he raced outside of the shelter. He digs a hole. He throws all of his plastic belongings in there and sets them on fire thinking like the smoke that it generates is gonna the plane. I know, right? Such a good idea.

Skye 1:14:36

Mm-hmm.

Poppy 1:14:37

it's going like the fire gets started. It starts smoking, and then another sandstorm hits.

River 1:14:42

bro.

Poppy 1:14:43

And I know, and so the wind is gonna blow the smoke away. There's dust in the air again, you can't see anything. And at that moment he says he had so much anger in his body, so it wasn't fear. He was pissed.

River 1:14:56

as hell too. I'd be mad as

Poppy 1:14:59

And the storm, yeah, the storm lasted for 12 hours. Sucks.

Skye 1:15:06

And he's only got so many resources, like he just burned so many of his resources. Like I'd be so pissed off. Yeah.

River 1:15:13

Yeah.

Skye 1:15:14

Oh.

Poppy 1:15:16

The next morning he woke up and he had come to a decision after seeing two aircraft and not being seen back, he realized that he was probably going to die. And so he became hopeless. Apparently in Italy, if they don't find your body and you're missing, it takes 10 years for your, for them to pronounce you dead. So your family can't get any of the benefits, if you pass away. And he was a police officer, so his family would've gotten his pension

River 1:15:42

he's got three kids.

Poppy 1:15:43

he had been. And he's got three kids and a wife, and he's feeling guilty. And he said he was also angry because he's like, if I go back out and I try to get to the checkpoint, I might die in the desert, and then I'm gonna turn into a skeleton and be buried by sand. And nobody's ever gonna find me. But if I stay here. And I die. Someone eventually is gonna come to the shrine and find my body, be able to identify me, and then my family will get the money. So he decided that the best thing for his family would be to commit suicide at the temple. That way he, he was gonna be found and his family would be taken care of. So he wrote a note to his wife using charcoal from the fire, and then took out the only knife he had, teeny tiny little knife and cut his wrists thinking I'm gonna bleed out overnight. And it'll be a slow, painless death. I just won't wake up. The next morning he woke up.

River 1:16:45

This

Poppy 1:16:45

He did not die.

River 1:16:46

break.

Poppy 1:16:48

He looked down at his wrist. He found that the blood had clotted and dried immediately because he was so dehydrated. He was so dehydrated, and the air was so dry

River 1:16:59

Oh no.

Poppy 1:17:02

He's like, well, fuck,

River 1:17:03

even kill yourself in the Sahara Desert.

Poppy 1:17:07

He says, I took it as a sign. I regained confidence and decided to see it as a new competition against myself. I became determined and focused again. So he is like, okay,

River 1:17:17

brother. Fuck yeah, dude.

Poppy 1:17:19

I guess, I guess I gotta, so he decided to go for it. He's like, okay. The organizer said, if you get lost, go toward the clouds and gather at dawn during the day, they'll disappear, but set your compass in the morning and carry on in that direction. So that's what he did. He sets off at this point, he finally drinks the pee that he's been saving up. He's like, I gotta, which probably made him sick.

River 1:17:43

yeah.

Poppy 1:17:45

So he's walking toward the mountains, like in the direction that the clouds were on his way. He's eating what he can find. Mice, lizards, ants. He was chewing up leaves for moisture. He had to cut the heels off of his shoes to provide some relief because his feet just had open sores from walking at this point. And think of the, the sand in your shoes, like in your pants, your chafing. He walked in the evenings when it was cool. Then during the day, he sheltered in any shade he could find, at night to stay warm. He dug pits and then buried himself in the sand to stay insulated because it was so cold at night. Days passed as they did. He continued to notice the beauty all around him. He says, I saw fantastic panoramas. I saw an enchanted valley, like a gigantic dry estuary. There were two canals and in the middle of mound of stones, like a castle. So he's still romanticizing everything and seeing the beauty. He realized that even in the desert there's food all around you. He found succulents and squeezed out their juice for the moisture, just trying to get any water that he could in his body. He didn't know it, but at this point the search was in full swing. They had noticed he was not there, like he didn't make it to the end. I'm sure Monzo sounded the alarm. His brother and brother-in-law had flown in from Italy to help the search, and eventually they found the shrine that he had been staying at. But of course, he was not there anymore.

River 1:19:14

Dang.

Poppy 1:19:15

Yeah. On the eighth day of being lost, he came across an oasis. It was mostly dried up, but there was a little puddle of water., And so he laid down by the water and tried to drink as much as he could, but he had a hard time swallowing because his mouth and and throat were so swollen due to dehydration. But he drank what he could and then promptly threw it all back up because his system just couldn't handle it. Yeah, yeah. So instead he just laid there by the puddle and took small sips throughout the day. Whatever he could manage, he spent the night there., Oh, at, he's laying there, he's taking small sips and on the ground he sees a human footprint, and he knew that he was going toward people. He was going in the right direction. And can you, you finally come to an oasis. You finally see water and then you see a sign of human life. Like just the relief that you

River 1:20:09

I can't imagine what that would feel like. That must be the best feeling in the world.

Poppy 1:20:13

On the ninth day, wakes up near the dry oasis. He fills up his canteen and he sets off again. As he's walking, he starts noticing goat droppings and eventually he sees, quote, small things moving in the distance. Turns out they were goats and they were being herded by a young girl. And about this moment, he says, I understood then that I was reborn. I'd been in the desert for nine and a half days. I felt I had been inside the belly of the desert like a pregnancy. I was born anew. And the little girl sees him and immediately runs away'cause she's terrified of this. This haggard looking man, stumbling out of the desert probably

River 1:20:58

blood on his wrist.

Poppy 1:21:01

Blood on. Yeah, his face is swollen.

Skye 1:21:05

probably from like a week without bathing in the desert.

River 1:21:07

swag list, you know.

Poppy 1:21:09

so she runs back to where her family is staying. It's, it's like a, a bunch of women, all of the men had left and gone into town, and it's a Muslim country, so it's like a bunch of women being around a man is

River 1:21:24

good. Not ideal.

Poppy 1:21:25

not safe, not good. But the woman, the girl's grandmother came out anyway, and she was like, oh, I gotta help you. We, we have to help you. And so she starts giving him goats milk and tea. So he's drinking that. He can't go inside of their tent because it's only women and he can't enter So the women try to feed him. They give him a bunch of food, like, oh, you're starving, you need to eat. But of course his body can't handle that at this point. And so he's throwing up a bunch, probably dehydrating himself more. The men come back from the village, they put him on a camel, and they drive him to the nearest village. And from there they call the police. They're like, Hey, this guy, we found this guy that's wandered out of the desert. He finds out at that point that they, that he had wandered all the way across the Moroccan border into Algeria. So at this point, he's 181 miles off course from the race trail, which is why he didn't see anybody from the race. Side note, Morocco and Algeria did not have a good relationship, and the border was apparently riddled with landmines. So it's good that he avoided

River 1:22:43

Holy

Poppy 1:22:43

imagine like, you're almost, you're almost back to civilization and you

River 1:22:48

and you get blowed up.

Poppy 1:22:51

Algeria was actually in the midst of a civil war at this time as well, so there's a lot of conflict going on. The police come and they arrest him and I, I don't think he speaks the language. So they're trying to communicate., They blindfold him because they think that he's some kind of agent from Morocco, like a spy or something that came through the desert and they take him back to the military base. But eventually they're like looking through his things and they find his race papers and they're like, oh, you're just a runner, so you're cool, you're cool. And then they celebrated. They're like, oh, yay, you're alive. They took him to the military infirmary, and they called his wife. And when she picked up the phone, he asked her, have you already had my funeral? Because he'd been gone for 10 days. I don't know what she said back to that, but I feel like he was still in, in a good humor. Even though his mind was still sharp and, and he was feeling good mentally. His body was not doing well. He had severe liver damage, kidney damage. He weighed 99 pounds.

Skye 1:23:58

how tall is he?

Poppy 1:24:00

I think he's a short, it said that he lost like 40 pounds. So he was pretty small to begin with. I don't know what his height was, but he started off at like 140 pounds, which I don't know, men's weights very well,

Skye 1:24:17

Michael's

Poppy 1:24:18

I feel like that's

Skye 1:24:19

he's pretty thin.

Poppy 1:24:20

you. Yeah. Yeah. So he was probably, and he's Italian. I don't know. Our Italian short cut that out. Uh, he needed 16 liters of IV fluid to replace all of the fluid that he had lost. He had to only eat liquids for months because he still couldn't keep anything down. He said it took him over two years to fully recover

River 1:24:45

Damn.

Poppy 1:24:47

the aftermath. What happened after that? Three years after his survival story, he returned to Morocco and ran the race again. This time he finished it.

Skye 1:25:00

They had two

Poppy 1:25:01

Uh, he said, I always finish my races.

Skye 1:25:04

sandwich.

Poppy 1:25:05

then, he's run the marathon de nine times. So he was like, I didn't finish the first time. Gotta make up for it by running it nine more times.

River 1:25:17

I guess

Poppy 1:25:19

he's also run a bunch of other ultra marathons, including a lot that take place in deserts. So he's not afraid of the desert. Seems like he became very comfortable with it. He and his wife Sensia ended up divorcing. He said my wife was a saint. She coped with me for many years, but at a certain point because of my lifestyle, we decided to split up. Yeah, dude, you're putting yourself in these situations and she's probably so stressed out about your health all the time. He ended up marrying someone else in 2019,, because of what happened to him and because his tiny little baby flare didn't do shit against the desert sun, they started making competitors carry big ass marine flares that weighed like a pound., And the runners hated it'cause they're like a whole pound you're gonna add to my backpack, but. I personally would rather carry an extra pound than be lost in the desert and have a helicopter pass over me. That's just me., Speaking of the race officials, the founder of the race, Patrick Bauer hated prosperity. He hated him. And he told Men's Journal in 1998 that prosperity must have made the whole thing up. He accused him of, getting picked up by somebody out in the desert, going somewhere for a few days, uh, and then showing back up in Algeria because he wanted to be famous or something like that. He was like, there's no way that anybody could survive that., But during the filming of an Italian documentary about his story, he went with the camera crew and followed the route that he took when he was lost in the desert. They came upon the shrine together, found some of his things there, and he, he dug in the ground where he said he had buried the bats, and they found a shit ton of bat skeletons down there. So they're like, yeah, he was here and he obviously ate and killed or killed and ate a bunch of bats. So, I don't know. I believe him. I,

River 1:27:19

I believe him. That's fucked up.

Poppy 1:27:23

yeah. So to tie it back to death from a young age, he said that since he could have an opinion about things like this, he had a fatalistic view of death, meaning. Death is how you're gonna die. When you're gonna die is predetermined from before you even exist. And talking about his story, he said, I lived with death arm in arm next to me every day. Death became a friend of mine. It was close to me, was with me always. Every day I looked to survive. And death kept me company positively, not even negatively. It gave me the force, the strength to not succumb. And he said, I learned something. I don't fear death. It is suffering that makes you scared. If you don't suffer, you don't feel fear. I didn't suffer because everything I could do, I did. He is now 70 years old. He survived the most intense ordeal you can imagine. And even through all that, he stayed optimistic. Tapping into that, stoicism that seems really deeply ingrained into who he is as a person. And researching all of this reminded me of my favorite prayer that I used to open and close my yoga classes with. So I'll close with this. The Serenity Prayer grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. And that's the story of Morrow Prosperity and how he survived the Sahara Desert.

River 1:28:50

Wow.

Poppy 1:28:52

The end,

River 1:28:53

What a story.

Poppy 1:28:53

it, it wasn't that long. I thought it was gonna be longer

Skye 1:28:57

Incredible. Okay, my turn my segment is one that you would probably think is one that River would do. So if you're listening to this and you saw the episode title, you probably assumed that I sky did feathers River's topic, and you probably assumed that River did my topic, which

River 1:29:20

You fool. You idiot.

Skye 1:29:24

always keeping you on your toes, which is secular saints or folk saints

River 1:29:32

Oh,

Skye 1:29:32

pop culture saints.

Poppy 1:29:35

I see.

Skye 1:29:36

Because we talked about this the other

River 1:29:38

from. Yes.

Skye 1:29:42

river their flowers because they did give me the idea for

River 1:29:46

love a pop culture saint.

Skye 1:29:48

on Friday. It's literally two days before we were recorded. So I was floating

River 1:29:53

Which I, I will say it's, it's shared flowers because you brought up like, I wonder if there is a saint, and I was like, I'm sure there is.

Skye 1:30:04

yeah. So it was sort of like my, I naturally sort of let it there, but then you brought it home, you put the punctuation on it for me. So I thank you so much

River 1:30:14

Swish, swish.

Skye 1:30:17

So, and again, I feel I didn't really do too. Super much research on this because there's not really a whole lot because it's

Poppy 1:30:28

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:30:31

personal and it's because it's not official. There's not really a whole lot you can look up. But the definition of a secular saint is someone who is widely admired and held as a model of inspiration, but are not formally recognized by a religious institution. So it's just a colloquial icon that many people admire after death.

Poppy 1:31:02

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:31:03

So some of the most famous ones are, we're gonna be Willie shas, William Shakespeare, me, yeah,

Poppy 1:31:12

so they don't have to be spiritual at all. Okay. Okay. Gotcha.

Skye 1:31:17

Marie Curie, prince Freddie Mercury, Martin Luther King, Jr. Darwin, uh, Bob Ross, Einstein, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Your big ones where people look up to you as if to say, you know, you did all these big things. You sort of represent X, Y, Z. Um, I'm gonna look towards you to be my saint

Poppy 1:31:41

Icons,

River 1:31:42

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:31:44

So why am I doing this? Why am I picking this topic today? River knows why.

Poppy 1:31:54

poppy doesn't know why

River 1:31:55

Poppy will find out

Skye 1:31:56

So another peek behind the curtain while we're recording this. You're listening to this. If you listen to it as soon as it drops, it's November. It is September when we are recording this. So the weather where we are is just starting to cool off. We're heading into fall. It's not quite fall yet. We have not reached that autumn equinox yet, but the vibes are there. But you're, we're starting to get excited for fall. The leaves aren't quite turning yet, but there's a cool breeze in the air

Poppy 1:32:31

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:32:32

and I'm yearning. I've had a PSL and I'm yearning for the,

Poppy 1:32:37

Oh,

Skye 1:32:37

times.

Poppy 1:32:39

I still haven't. I need to get

Skye 1:32:41

Get you one.

Poppy 1:32:43

I.

Skye 1:32:43

So, as I know that we probably all like to do during the change of seasons, we like to change the vibe up entirely. Maybe you add ho home decor. Um, I personally like to switch up my music. Especially on my drives to work. I love to be like, Ooh, like what's a

River 1:33:03

the fall time is when I'm bumping the queen of the damned soundtrack every single day.

Skye 1:33:09

exactly. So I had kind of been doing that a little bit leading up. So I'd been listening to like baroque music, sort of like Victorian instrumental, things like that. But I was looking on my phone for different, artists and albums and such. And I was reminded of an artist and of an album specifically, but of an artist mostly that is such a fall vibe. And that is Type O negative.

Poppy 1:33:41

Never heard of

River 1:33:42

You never heard of Typo Negative.

Skye 1:33:43

heard of Typo Negative.

River 1:33:45

That surprises me.

Poppy 1:33:46

Like what? I'm not a music person. I really don't listen to

Skye 1:33:51

So they're a gothic metal band from the nineties. I mean, I think they formed in like late eighties, but they were popular in the nineties and early aughts. So the front Man and lead singer of Typo Negative is Peter Steele.

River 1:34:06

It's so hot. he's so hot. Dude. He's got great tits. It's,

Skye 1:34:13

I found out in my research, hey, anywhere between six six and six eight,

Poppy 1:34:18

Oh,

Skye 1:34:19

he's

Poppy 1:34:19

hello.

River 1:34:20

like a break shit house.

Skye 1:34:22

He's huge.

River 1:34:23

He's a massive,

Poppy 1:34:25

like he might not be a good person. I don't know.

Skye 1:34:27

is a good person,

River 1:34:29

was past tense, unfortunately.

Skye 1:34:34

So I was getting really into listening to a lot of typo negative, like getting back into that. And then I was really getting into being looking into Peter Steele.'cause all I knew really about him was that like he was a little haughty and

Poppy 1:34:46

mm-hmm.

Skye 1:34:48

basically for goth bitches and was really

Poppy 1:34:52

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:34:52

it.

River 1:34:53

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:34:53

And did it in like a very slow, like vampiric way with a deep voice.

Poppy 1:34:59

Mm-hmm. I gotta listen to this guy.

Skye 1:35:02

So good. The music is a vibe, but I'm like, what does he look like now? Like what? And so I looked him up, uh, he's dead. And I was like, that damn bummer died in 2010.

Poppy 1:35:14

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:35:14

And then I said to River jokingly at work, well half jokingly, I said, new Feast Day Unlocked

River 1:35:21

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:35:22

April 14th, 2010, new Feast Day Unlocked. And then River said, oh, I bet you you could get like a pop culture candle for him. I bet they sell it online. They do on Etsy. There's one, I don't love the photo

River 1:35:36

I don't love it. I looked it up like that same day and I don't love the

Skye 1:35:41

And I am like, I bet I could make a better one.'cause the picture I showed you, the one where it's like kind of angled above where his like long hair and like his tits are looking great. Like that's the picture that I would

River 1:35:52

good. Yeah. The one I, it's just like such a dark, unfocused image of him with the one candle on Etsy. It's just not very

Poppy 1:36:00

Oh, he got his peepee out.

River 1:36:02

Yeah. There's one

Skye 1:36:04

that. I'm gonna get into that. So don't,

River 1:36:06

Don't worry, we're gonna touch on the peepee. Don't worry,

Poppy 1:36:09

You're gonna touch the

River 1:36:10

don't worry. We will touch his pee pee.

Poppy 1:36:13

Peepee means strength.

Skye 1:36:15

so he was in, um, Playgirl.

Poppy 1:36:18

Okay?

Skye 1:36:18

he is a cultural sex icon. Um, pp does mean strength and if you wanted to call upon him as a saint for sexual, like masculine strength, I would say that virality would be something like that you could call upon him for. I did go look at the Playgirl.

River 1:36:39

And how is it

Skye 1:36:42

He is in fact hung. So in case you were curious.

River 1:36:46

wait, cut or uncut?

Skye 1:36:49

Cut.

River 1:36:51

I'm not surprised.

Poppy 1:36:52

it's like the nineties

River 1:36:54

sometimes one of'em sneaks through.

Poppy 1:36:56

PDF of the legendary Playgirl Magazine with Peter

Skye 1:37:00

do have to like approve like a shady link. Like you do have to

Poppy 1:37:03

I, yeah, it's in a Google Drive

River 1:37:07

fuck yeah,

Skye 1:37:08

You gotta start at page

Poppy 1:37:09

if you wanna see

River 1:37:10

hey. Send that to the discord real quick. If you could

Skye 1:37:13

Yeah. That's where I went. I went through the Reddit, the Reddit link.

River 1:37:17

Nice.

Skye 1:37:18

Anyway, if we wanna have a live, react to some of these photos

River 1:37:22

This is private. This is on my private time. This is after the call has ended. you ever just look at penises sometimes just for the sake of it, or is that just me?

Poppy 1:37:30

Hmm.

River 1:37:31

Not even in like a horny way. I just like appreciate a penis

Skye 1:37:37

I live with one, so, yeah.

River 1:37:39

bear. You don't all have that luxury. I

Poppy 1:37:43

oh my. At the top comment. I can now delete dozens of slightly outof focus screenshots.

River 1:37:48

yeah.

Skye 1:37:49

These are high death. They're high death.

River 1:37:52

Hi, God. His tits are great.

Poppy 1:37:54

Oh my God. Jesus Christ. I've never seen anything like that. I don't know whether to be scared or happy.

Skye 1:38:00

It's like, it's tasteful, like

River 1:38:03

Oh, it's the whole magazine. I thought it was just his section. Thank you. Thank you.

Skye 1:38:10

You're welcome.

River 1:38:11

Oh, this is great. This is great for archives everywhere. This is, this is media history. This is archival type shit and I'm

Poppy 1:38:20

It won't load for me, but I'll just trust you.

Skye 1:38:24

You gotta open it on your phone.

Poppy 1:38:28

Okay.

Skye 1:38:28

it, you sent it to the discord so you could open it in your phone.

River 1:38:31

Yeah, I'm on it right

Poppy 1:38:32

Yeah.

Skye 1:38:33

Or a river could just hold it up to the camera when

River 1:38:35

I could. Yeah. God, he's so hot. They're all good.

Skye 1:38:39

Yeah. Just wait till you see

River 1:38:41

Oh, here is a good one.

Skye 1:38:44

yeah.

Poppy 1:38:45

oh,

River 1:38:46

That's a, that's a hog if I've ever

Poppy 1:38:48

Oh my

Skye 1:38:49

But there's some that are like more proportional. You can be like, whoa, okay. Like

River 1:38:54

Yeah.

Poppy 1:38:55

I thought it was gonna be like PG 13.

River 1:38:57

is Playgirl baby. Dick's

Poppy 1:39:00

have no experience with Playgirl.

River 1:39:02

It's like Playboy, but for women,

Poppy 1:39:04

I thought Playboy was also only PG 13. I thought

River 1:39:07

no, they show full bush. They show hole. Yeah, he does. That's a massive penis. And which makes sense if he's like six, eight.

Skye 1:39:22

Yeah.

River 1:39:23

I'm so sad. He's dead.

Skye 1:39:25

Me too. Found out. He's like my dad's age, though. Don't love that. Born the same year. Yeah.

River 1:39:32

How did he

Poppy 1:39:32

Weird.

Skye 1:39:34

he actually died of sepsis

River 1:39:36

Oh.

Poppy 1:39:37

Oh, that sucks.

Skye 1:39:39

diverticulitis, I think. but yeah.

River 1:39:42

I'm just looking at Peter Steele's penis right now for the rest of the episode. I'm sorry.

Skye 1:39:47

That's okay.

River 1:39:48

My bad. Thank you. Thank you for this gift.

Skye 1:39:52

glad I didn't see all of that while I was at work, because I did discover that he had a playgirl while I was at work, and the only thing that I saw was like the cover of the magazine, and I was like, and even

River 1:40:03

it's very tame. The cover is very tame compared to the contents inside.

Skye 1:40:10

But some fun facts about Peter that I stole just off of his wiki page, so. Mark that with an asterisk. Um, he was a park supervisor of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. So he is a nature lover, so you could potentially call upon him. And he also wrote a song called Green Man based off of both like the Green Man, like the mythological creature man, and also it's a play on words of when he was like a Parks and rec supervisor. So it's like he is the green man and he has an appreciation for that mythology

River 1:40:51

man.

Skye 1:40:51

for the green man. So love that about him. And as someone who works loosely with the horn, God who's affiliated with the Green man, I also love that about him. Um, he owned and loved cats. He's a cat lover, so we love that about him. Also, he had a lot of like, really self depreciating humor and he was very sarcastic, so he did get a little bit of backlash sometimes about, you know, people taking things too literally and being like, you don't care about shit. And he's like, you just don't fucking get me. And like, and he, anytime people would give him backlash, like he would give it right back and, and play into it and own it, which I really appreciate. He would

River 1:41:37

Because when you know what you're about, you don't have to prove yourself.

Skye 1:41:42

he, I, it seems to me like he never felt like he had to prove himself and he was just kind of like LOL. The girls who get it, get it and like

River 1:41:50

you don't fucking know me at all.

Skye 1:41:54

Um, and there's another quote here that I was, uh, this must be something that was well known back in the day for the fans of him in the nineties, I guess. But this says, quote, when Typo negative signed with Roadrunner records, Steele signed his recording contract with a mixture of suave hair conditioner and chocolate syrup mixed with food dye. Contrary to popular belief that it was his own blood and semen.

River 1:42:23

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Skye 1:42:24

I said, huh,

Poppy 1:42:25

like that's gonna rot

Skye 1:42:26

I read that,

River 1:42:27

That's gonna smell terrible.

Skye 1:42:29

But I can see, I could imagine there being a rumor that it's like he signed his record deal with his blood and come

River 1:42:36

actually it was SUA hair conditioner and chocolate syrup.

Skye 1:42:43

Yeah. So he's got a real, like, let that freak out. He's,

River 1:42:47

It's giving a very ionian lifestyle,

Skye 1:42:51

apparently he had stage fright. He did have trouble with addictions of multiple, like of drugs and alcohol. He had

River 1:42:59

rock rockstar

Skye 1:43:00

to, yeah. It seemed like he, and he worked in the parks and recreation. It seemed like he had a really good foundation. Was like genuinely a really good guy, but also was able to like, let us freak out. Based on his

River 1:43:12

Hell yeah.

Skye 1:43:13

and his performance and whatnot. And he was also physically a very big and intimidating Vampiric presence. But like Lokey a big softie underneath it

River 1:43:23

Yeah. Oh.

Skye 1:43:25

So there's so many things that I feel like, and because he's dead, like you could call upon him as a saint for strength, for, I mean, honestly, even if you needed assistance in doing a presentation, like he would

River 1:43:39

you just need a little confidence boost.

Skye 1:43:41

confidence boost. Um, you know, I just, I think he's awesome and I love his music and that's my, but my question to you guys is, is who would your secular saint be? They have to be dead and they have to be a of pop culture esque.

Poppy 1:43:58

Hmm

River 1:43:59

I mean, mine really, the first one that always comes to mind is always Freddie Mercury. That's like the number one, like, that's not like my, my unofficial patron. I guess I would say my un canonized saint is always Freddie Mercury.

Poppy 1:44:19

The first one that comes to mind for me is probably like Robin Williams would be a really good one.

River 1:44:25

one. Phillips Seymour Hoffman, I feel like would be a really good one.

Poppy 1:44:31

Gene Wilder.

River 1:44:32

Yeah.

Poppy 1:44:33

I don't know if he was a good person or not, though.

River 1:44:35

I feel like he was

Poppy 1:44:36

don't know much about his personal life. I don't, I mean, from that time period though, everybody was either a fucking wife beater or

River 1:44:43

Yeah.

Skye 1:44:44

Honestly talk about eating bats. Ozzy, we could be going Ozzy Osborne now Rest in

River 1:44:49

new pop culture saying unlocked.

Poppy 1:44:51

also don't know if he's a great role model.

River 1:44:54

no. He did some real messed up things back in his, his drug days.

Poppy 1:44:59

like pretty recently before he died, he was a big cheater even when he was had dementia.

River 1:45:07

Yeah. Po. But he's ner addict.

Poppy 1:45:10

Yeah.

Skye 1:45:10

still play

Poppy 1:45:11

You're so silly.

River 1:45:13

War pig is so good. Yeah.

Skye 1:45:16

So in regards to politics, you could call upon

Poppy 1:45:20

Mm-hmm.

Skye 1:45:21

as a, as a patron saint to defy the capital T, capital M the man.

River 1:45:28

Patron Saint Carl Marx.

Skye 1:45:30

I saw Karl Marx on there.

River 1:45:32

Yeah. Yep.

Poppy 1:45:34

Ooh, Anthony Bourdain,

Skye 1:45:35

I thought about Anthony Bourdain.

River 1:45:38

That's a really good one.

Poppy 1:45:39

Tra great for travel, great for cooking.

Skye 1:45:44

Yeah.

River 1:45:45

There was one. Oh my God. David Lynch. I was like, what's the celebrity death that happened this year that actually devastated me And I was like, oh my God. It was David Lynch this year.

Poppy 1:45:54

about creativity and like being yourself.

Skye 1:45:58

Welcoming the weird and saying, you know.

Poppy 1:46:01

Mm-hmm. Letting your freak flag fly, not taking any shit.

Skye 1:46:04

Mm-hmm.

River 1:46:04

It, the art does the talking. You figure it out.

Skye 1:46:07

girls who get it, get it,

River 1:46:09

yeah,

Skye 1:46:12

that's it. I, I feel like this topic sounds like it should be something bigger than what it is.

River 1:46:18

It can be. It has the capacity to be, I think you did it justice. Like you said, it's also like a very personal and subjective to each individual person and like what aspects of pop culture resonate with you and what you need.

Poppy 1:46:37

Yeah, and it's also just a good example for witchcraft in general. Like you can take anything that means something to you and use it in your practice. Yeah,

Skye 1:46:48

As long as it's open, as long as you're allowed to.

River 1:46:50

Yep. Hey, pop culture is as open

Poppy 1:46:53

in your

River 1:46:54

gets.

Skye 1:46:55

True. Listen to typo negative. Let your freak out. Find a pop culture saint to

Poppy 1:47:00

I'm gonna have

River 1:47:01

It's good stuff.

Skye 1:47:02

to the October Burn album specifically. Don't put it on shuffle because the songs bleed into each other and it sounds a

River 1:47:09

It's a progression. Yeah.

Poppy 1:47:12

okay.

Skye 1:47:14

It sounds choppy. If it's on shuffle, I should specify.

Poppy 1:47:17

Yeah. Okay. Wow. So we've. We've violated migratory bird acts. We've gotten

River 1:47:24

I never said

Poppy 1:47:25

really. Not really. We've gotten lost in the desert. We've looked at some gothic dong.

River 1:47:31

We looked at some great man

Poppy 1:47:32

really has something for everyone. Yeah.

River 1:47:35

Off the air, off the, I don't care if you keep this in editor. I wanna suck his dick so bad. It's

Poppy 1:47:40

oh my God.

River 1:47:41

It's a great dick. I am sorry. It's

Poppy 1:47:45

Your mouth is so little

River 1:47:48

I'll make it work. What fun we've had today.

Poppy 1:47:52

What fun do we have any final

River 1:47:56

No, I'm hungry. I want go eat tacos.

Poppy 1:47:59

Yeah. I'm so hungry.

Skye 1:48:02

No,

Poppy 1:48:03

Okay. Well, uh, if you would like to contact us and tell about your favorite penis, I don't know. You can, you can send that too.

River 1:48:15

Send us a top five list.

Poppy 1:48:17

do that. No, don't really don't

Skye 1:48:18

Don't send us any

Poppy 1:48:20

if you wanna, if you wanna send us, if you wanna send us your favorite album to listen to during the fall or winter, because we are heading into the winter

River 1:48:28

gets you into the dark half? Spirit?

Poppy 1:48:31

Yeah. Send that to death coven pod@gmail.com. You can also find us on Instagram, like DM, follow, I don't know, uh, at Death Coven Pod. We would love to hear from you.

Skye 1:48:47

also, what would you, listeners, um, if you were to put us each into a saw trap or collectively or

River 1:48:56

oh, come on man.

Skye 1:48:58

how

River 1:48:59

wanna do that. Why are you asking them to do

Poppy 1:49:02

ideas.

Skye 1:49:02

just curious what they think.

River 1:49:05

I don't wanna be the sucker in the trap.

Poppy 1:49:08

Send us some hypothetical ideas. Because I'm running out,

Skye 1:49:13

You can let one of us take over if you want.

River 1:49:15

Yeah,

Poppy 1:49:16

I'm not really running out. I just, I just want the listeners to.

Skye 1:49:19

Engage.

River 1:49:20

I just want some interaction. I just want an

Poppy 1:49:22

want, literally literally any message from anyone. I,

River 1:49:26

please. If you're out there. Please.

Poppy 1:49:29

to us. We're alone on this

River 1:49:31

I'm so lonely.

Skye 1:49:32

Send us hate mail at this point, like it's

River 1:49:34

I can't suck. Peter Steel's dick. I'm so lonely

Poppy 1:49:39

Oh God. And with that, buy the power of three.

Skye 1:49:43

And so it is.

River 1:49:44

and so it is.

Poppy 1:49:46

And so it is

River 1:49:48

I told you, dude, I'm swimming in from depression to mania.

Poppy 1:49:51

Jiminy

River 1:49:52

you guys two hours ago this what happened.

Poppy 1:49:57

Okay, let's go eat