Richmond Saints, Sinners & Superstitions (Valentine’s Day, Friday the 13th, monks, witches, underground tunnels) — Unscripted #035

In this episode of Vera House Unscripted, we explore the origins of Valentine’s Day and how ancient Roman festivals like Lupercalia continue to shape modern traditions. We talk through the historical roots of Saint Valentine, Friday the 13th superstition, and how belief systems evolve over time.

From there, the conversation shifts into Richmond-specific culture, including Friday the 13th tattoo traditions across the city and how local shops turn superstition into shared ritual. We also discuss recent sightings of Buddhist monks walking through Richmond, public reactions to visible faith practices, and how different belief systems coexist in modern urban spaces.

We spend time unpacking Richmond stories, including long-standing rumors about underground tunnels beneath the Richmond Coliseum and surrounding downtown buildings. The episode also touches on local witchcraft communities, pagan symbolism, and how internet forums and Reddit threads fuel curiosity around occult culture in Richmond.

Later in the episode, we move into broader conversations about authenticity, AI, and creator culture, including the development of Myke’s AI assistant and how technology intersects with storytelling, filmmaking, and personal branding. Throughout the discussion, we examine how mythology, religion, superstition, and modern media overlap in everyday life.

This episode centers on Richmond history, Valentine’s Day lore, Friday the 13th tattoos, monks downtown, witches, urban legends, and the belief systems that shape how people interpret the world around them.

Quick interjection to invite you to Vera House Studios. If you are a local Richmond business, entrepreneur, brand owner, or service provider—and you know you need to create better content to get your products and services in front of the right people—we can help.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Vera House podcast and happy Valentine's Day weekend. On today's episode, we talk about the history of Valentine's Day and what was known as the Lupercalia Festival. We talked about hidden tunnels underneath the Richmond Coliseum and where those may or may not lead. And we talked about how dinosaurs are fake. They're not real and they never existed. Such a bummer, man. I love dinosaurs. Sorry. We also talked about the history of Friday the 13th. We also talked about the monks that came through to spread a message of joy and peace. And we also talked about witches and if you're in need of a coven, where to find them. Stay tuned. It's a good one. So today's Freaky Friday, Friday the 13th. Tomorrow, as of this recording, will be Valentine's Day. That's right. Yeah, man. Happy Lover's Day. Happy Lover's Day. Happy Relationships Day. Happy buying, greeting, well, buying love cards and flowers and chocolates. Oh yeah, I guess we should fully embrace the love. That's right, dude. Get in the spirit. Happy Love Day. Yeah, we didn't go full out with costumes like Cupid costumes or something, but maybe we'll do that next year. Yeah, maybe. Dress up as like a little baby, the diaper and like a bow and arrow. Dude, I've got a bow and arrow, baby size bow and arrow and a really small diaper. Nice. I've just been looking for a reason to wear it. Yeah, dude. Now you have a reason. I'm sold. Let's do it. Where do you think Valentine's Day actually came from? Something about, I always heard this story that people would tell about the history of Valentine's Day, same valentine, the valentine like mobster and like a shooting Valentine's Day massacre. And that's pretty much all I know about it. Is there like a Valentine's Day like urban legend or is there lore around Valentine's Day? Yeah, I've never heard that one. Really? Yeah. The mobster thing? Yeah. I don't know where I heard it. Maybe it was on like a TV show, but yeah, I've heard a couple of different stories. Yeah, probably. So, what I know about Valentine's is that it was a fertility festival like in early Roman days. So, it was called Lupercalia and it was an ancient Roman fertility festival held on the 15th of February. They did purification rituals, animal sacrifices, and a ritualistic race where priests wearing goat skins ran through the streets striking people, especially women with strips of hide to promote fertility and ward off evil spirits. Wait, so they run through the streets whipping people with like leather, basically belts? Yeah. It's like, get inside and ****. Yeah, basically. Forgive the F-bomb, but yeah, get to it. Exactly. Yeah. All right. And this took place on Lupercal, which was a cave on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Man, the Romans were crazy. Oh, they definitely were. Wow. So, Lupercus, I think is the name. Yeah, it was an ancient Roman deity and the deity was honored at this time as the, like, I don't even know what this creature is. It's almost like this eight-breasted dog that was, like, the legend is that it fed Remus and Romulus, who were the founders of Rome, and this is like the early legend of how Rome was founded. And there's all kinds of, like, crazy, you know, stuff about this, but basically, it's like the Lupercal cave where this festival took place was considered the sanctuary of Lupercus, which is the same location where legend says the she-wolf nurtured the founders of Rome. So, it was like this wolf or this dog. Yeah, I see the picture of it. It's got a lot of titties. Yeah, yeah. So, that statue and then the two little babies underneath it are Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome. Romulus. Yep. That's the name of the most recent alien movie. Really? Yeah, Alien Romulus. Well, that makes sense because one of the other ones is Prometheus, right? Prometheus, yeah. Yeah, and these are all Roman figures. Even the crucifixion of Christ comes from the depiction of Prometheus being nailed to the rock, and he has, like, a chain on his foot and, like, all this other crazy stuff. There's a lot of, yeah, correlations between those two things. That's pretty cool, man. And, you know, since starting this podcast, I definitely have a new appreciation for history and lore. I always really liked, like, lore, urban legends, or just, like, legends in general because they were bigger, larger than life stories that were, there's truth in there somewhere, but no one really knows what the truth is. It's written down in various forms on scrolls and books in the Bible and, you know, under lock and key in a museum, and there's only two people that actually lived in, or lineage of the family that lived during the time when it was written down for the first, I love that. That's pretty cool. Same. Yeah. Well, and I think, like, when you dive into history, it helps you realize how much we don't know, and in my experience, and what I think, is that it helps people not take things as serious, you know? It's, like, currently in modern day, we, like, live in this world where it's, like, trust the experts and, like, all the, and, like, people can't even state their opinion without somebody arguing with them because, like, everyone thinks that they know everything. And the truth is, we hardly know anything. Oh, no. We don't know shit. Like, we don't, and especially when it comes to history, you'll realize, A, history repeats itself literally over and over and over again. A lot of the things that are happening today have been happening for thousands of years. Not that it justifies them, but it's good to be aware of that, right? Because if not, you just end up doom and gloom and thinking, like, oh, my God, the world is ending. It's like, well, if that's the case, the world's been ending for, you know, 29,000 years, basically. Right. I find it super fascinating to wrap your mind around history and how much we don't know compared to what we do know. That's why I love movies, right? I'm a big fan of interpretation, storytelling, using your imagination. So, like, sci-fi movies are, like, on the top of my list. And we mentioned Alien, Romulus, and Prometheus. I did a little bit of, like, just backstory research on the Alien universe because I like it. You know, grew up with it. They gave me nightmares when I was a kid. I had to sleep in my mom's bed. But I love the movies. Scared the shit out of me, but I love them. It turns out the guy that wrote the movies, his name is escaping me now, but it's all tied into the lore of Christianity, or rather, the lore of creation. So, the beginnings of man and woman and explores the religion versus creationism. Are we the product of an all-knowing, all-encompassing being? Are we the child of God, our Lord, our Savior? Or did we come from somewhere and we were created by something and we were put here? And Prometheus is the movie that explores all that stuff because Prometheus, you know, you can expand on Prometheus better than I can, but that's part of the Roman history. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is Greek. Greek history? Yeah. Okay. Like, especially going back to, like, Prometheus and the ancient depiction of him on the rock being nailed to the cross, which is really a rock. You know, a lot of what's in the Bible is like a retelling of some of these stories, and even those stories come from earlier than that, from the Sumerian tablets. Yeah. It's like literally the same story, you know? You know, speaking of the same story, today as of the release of this episode is Friday the 13th. Freaky Friday, spooky Friday, lucky number 13, unlucky number 13, I think some people would say. And looking into that, because I was curious about, you know, where's the origin of this unlucky, freaky Friday thing? Turns out it ties right in with all the stuff we've already been talking about. So, it dates back to early Christianity, but also to Norse mythology. Okay. So, in Norse mythology, the story centers on the banquet in Valhalla, the great hall of the gods. Twelve gods were invited, twelve being a number already associated with balance and harmony. Then an uninvited guest arrived, Loki, the trickster god. That made 13 at the table. Loki caused chaos, and as he often did, through manipulation and deception, he orchestrated the death of Baldr, the god of light, joy, and goodness. Baldr's death plunged the world into mourning and symbolized the loss of innocence and order. And it goes on to say that now, in the lore of Norse mythology, 13 is the lucky number because it's the opposite of balance and it signifies chaos and death and doom and gloom. But then, it goes even further. It says, when Christianity spread through Northern Europe, many Norse ideas didn't disappear. They merged with Christian symbols. Thirteen at the Last Supper with Judas as the betrayer, death following shortly after. Twelve equals harmony, thirteenth arrival brings downfall. Over time, this pattern became less about gods and myth, more about gut-level fear of imbalance. So, now, modern day, it's trickled down and trickled down and been diluted. Thirteen is like the unsettling. It makes you feel nervous that stuff might go wrong or something might happen. And they made movies about it, like Freaky Friday, and Friday the 13th was like a slasher film. But it dates back thousands of years. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess if you think about the number 12, right? There's so much that centers around the number 12, such as the zodiac, the numbers of months in a year, the 12-hour cycle of our daily clock, right? So, like, everything is at the number 12. So, it's like, yeah, if you slightly put that out of imbalance, you're on 13, right? It's just one more, and then it throws everything out of whack. That's really interesting. Throws it all out of whack, man. So, I'm a big fan of this Norse mythology, not renaissance, but there's a lot of new discovery or it's being brought back to light with the Marvel movies, and there's like side projects, there's been independent films. You gotta check out an independent film. I think it's called Ragnarok, which is the downfall of Asgard, the home of the Norse gods. But this takes place in the real world somewhere in the north of Scandinavia, and it's like this kid who gets arrested for having lit a barn on fire, and he is covered in burns. And whenever somebody gets near him or he gets nervous, things catch on fire, and it's not fire, it's electricity. And then the story goes off, and it turns out that dude may or may not be a long-passed-down descendant of Norse gods. I would definitely check that out. I've only seen a couple good theatrical or just media at all that was good regarding Norse mythology or the Vikings in general, which was, of course, the show itself called Vikings, which is fantastic. Then there's a movie called The Northmen. That movie is incredible. Yeah, that one's good. One of the best, besides the Norse mythology, one of the best movies I've ever seen. That was a good one. Alex Skarsgård should have won an Oscar. I don't know if he did, but it was so well shot. It was such a rich, well-told story without a lot of dialogue. That's the sign of a good movie is when you can watch it and understand it and follow it, and most of the time, they're not even speaking English. It's awesome. Yeah, that was a really good one. And yeah, the Viking show was really good too. Yeah, man. Yeah, these are all runes tattooed on my fingers. Oh, yeah. Talking about the number 13, what's interesting is if our calendar was the way that it should be to be in synchronicity with Earth and nature, we would have 13 months. Basically, we'd have 13 months equally of 28 days, and that would be the ideal calendar. And even early 1900s, there was a really strong push to change the Gregorian calendar to a lunar calendar, so it'd be 13 months of 28 days. And it just makes much more sense to be in tune with biology and human nature and even just the precession of the equinoxes and all that other stuff. But they stick with the 12-month calendar. That explains why, for me, it feels like it's wintertime. It's November. It's wintertime. It's December. January feels like it should be the beginning of when spring is starting to come, right? It's January. It's the new year. It's springtime. No, more winter. February, more winter. As we have seen thus far, it's February 5th as of this recording. It's three weeks post-snow, ice apocalypse, and the snow is just starting to melt. It's still piled up in weird areas, but now you can see the street, and it's crunchy enough so you're not going to slip and bust your ass. Although, our good friend, EB, who posted the ice skating video, she put another video up, and she's making her splash with the street skating. I'm sure. I'm sure. That is how the calendar is, though. Our year starts in January, but technically, the year, the way that the seasons are, it starts in March, because we didn't have 12 months. There are 10 months. There's only 10 months. There's two months added during the period of the Roman Empire. So, if you think about the month December, right, deca, like dec for December is 10, but it's the 12th month. And if you think of October, oct is 8, but it's the 10th month, but that's really the 8th month. And sept, sept is 7, right? So, that's the 7th month, but we use it as the 9th month. So, really, our calendar was always like January through December, but it started in what we know now as March. But after the reign of Julius Caesar, he named a new month after himself, July. And then his godson, who was Octavius Augustus Caesar, right after him, he wanted to fill the shoes of his godfather, Julius Caesar. So, he named a month after himself, and that month is known as August. So, July and August are made up months that the Romans gave us, and we just stuck with them. Frickin' Romans, man. Dude, you know that quote of all roads lead to Rome? Yeah. That is what this means. People have no idea how much every word we say in our daily language comes from Roman. So, we're all Roman. Yeah, I mean, literally. Yeah, pretty much. You know, the Romans conquered the entire planet. They're the longest lasting empire of all time. You know, even talking about Valentine's Day, right? The word romance, Roman, romance languages, like everything comes from Rome. That's crazy. Our political structure, our government infrastructure. That explains why all the government buildings look old as shit. Yeah. Even the new ones. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Everything is modeled after that. Even what's called like the fasciae, if you look at like all government buildings- The fasciae? Yeah, it's called like a fasciae or a fascis. It's basically, it's like an eagle with a bundle of sticks, and I think it's like 12 or 13- Like the eagles grabbing them. Yes. Yeah. And actually, no, they're vertical. Oh, okay. But yes, they're all bundled together and then the eagle is like on top of it. This was also a symbol that Hitler used as well. It's on our dollar bill. It's on all of our government buildings. It goes deep. It's crazy. You know, I mean, a hashtag, look it up. Yeah, look it up, dude. Even the word czar, the word czar. So like a Russian czar, like C-Z-A-R, is named after Caesar. Like Caesar is the almighty. Caesar is the king. He is the dictator. I was going to say what a clown, but yeah, I guess I can still say what a clown. Yeah. Well, regardless, not regardless, but in addition to all the lore surrounding Friday the 13th, there is something that you and I can take advantage of on that day, the day of this release in Richmond happens every year on Friday the 13th. Not a lot of people know about it, but more know about it every year, and that's free tattoos or $13 tattoos at most tattoo shops all across the city. Dude, I forgot about that. Friday the 13th is $13 tattoos all across the city. Should we go get some tattoos? We should. We should do that. We should go and get the number 13 tattooed on our cheeks. That's a good idea, actually. I like that idea. Yeah, like a little prison tat, but like, you know, not. Yeah. You get 13 inside of a heart, like a, you know, because it's Valentine's Day. 13 is like the next day. I like that. Yeah, yeah. But that would mean that this episode would have to be like our all-time most listened episode, you know? Well, and then we'd like memorialize it on our cheek. I mean, I'm down. If we do that, it's up to the listeners to make sure that it's the all-time to all-time listened to episode. Yeah. Yeah, I think we can make that happen. I think so, too. Yeah. You know, most of my tattoos, and I don't have them out right now, but most of my tattoos are Friday the 13th tattoos. Really? Yes. Man. I didn't really have a lot like 10, 15 years ago, and I got one on my shoulder and I was like, this is the coolest thing I've ever done. And then I was hooked. Like that happens, like you get one and all you want to do is get more. Yeah. And I was with a group of friends that were mostly tatted up already. So I was like, sure, I got to catch up. Yeah. Got some stuff to do. Never knew what I wanted. Mid 20s, late 20s, kind of, you know, just messing around, hanging around the fan. Heard about this Friday the 13th tattoo thing. Going there, the guy's like, you can look at this book and all of these designs are$13 and they've already been drawn up. Like, you can like pick ones and they're like 13s over hearts with like a knife through it. Or I've got one that's like two cards and a hat and there's like one in a three. Yeah. Like those are cool, like designs. But the coolest part about when I discovered this tattoo thing was that me and this group of friends decided that every Friday, the 13th, we would go as a group at all, get the same one. So we, every year, sometimes twice a year, we'd go and get our little Friday the 13th bro tats. And I don't hang out with a lot of these people now, but in that moment, in that time, like time period, now I can look back and talk about it. It was like, this is cool to do with our friends, do with your friends. It's like memorializing a friendship, a relationship, a period in time. I can always remember that. And that was enough reason for me to get it. You know, people always like used to say, you know, why would I get a tattoo if it doesn't have any meaning? Or I need to wait. So it has more meaning. Otherwise it's just frivolous. And like, I don't, I wouldn't want to do that. One, you're overthinking it. It's not that serious. If it looks stupid, then just get another one. Like nobody cares. Yeah. So to do that, where it's like, I don't really know. I don't, I wasn't crazy about getting pink Panther with a 13 on his hands because I don't really like the pink Panther that much. That's not true. Actually love, but to have that experience with this group of people and then like, we will get older. And as time goes by, we'll continue to potentially lose touch and grow and have families. But if I run into one of them, I hate, you still got the, you still got the eyeball with a 13 on it and they're like, yeah, that's right here, man. Yeah, yeah. It's cool. Yeah. It's like a time capsule. Yes. Yeah. It's totally that I've got some wild time capsules, but none, none for the lucky 13. So maybe, maybe this will have to be the first one. Yeah, man. I'm itching to get tattooed. Dude, me too. It's been a while. Yeah. And you know, we can memorialize this episode or we can memorialize this podcast or we can memorialize Vera house as it is right now. Yeah, we'll definitely have to get a couple of Vera tattoos. That's for sure. Yes. Vera tattoos. If you get a Vera house tattoo, we want to know. Yeah. You get free access to the podcast for life. Yes. If at any point anyone decides to get a Vera house tattoo, you're in. Yeah. You're in the club. You can listen to our podcast forever for free. For free. Yeah. It's a good, uh, it's a good deal. Did you see the video? I know we're, we're having to say goodbye to the ice. I wonder if anything will come back, but, um, if we'll get any more snow or anything, but you see this video that I tagged of like the sheep where they're on this hill at this farm out in like Pocahontas, you know, like Pocahontas park, Pocahontas County or something. Oh my God. Is that not the silliest thing? And they're doing it on purpose. Yeah. Well, like maybe, I don't even know. They're like walking back up the hill. But they're standing on this like hardened frozen hill of ice. And, uh, this is amazing. That's crazy. It's in Pocahontas. One of them goes flying, dude, and you can hear him hit the fence. They're all like standing at the top of the hill, like kind of waiting. Yep. Watching the other ones go. And they just slide down, fall down, and then they try to make it back up. And eventually they just all start sliding and falling down. I thought it was so funny. This is incredible. Yeah. It's so great that it's like in Pocahontas. This is in Pocahontas County. Yeah. And, um, the top comment was, hey, it's a lamb slide. Jesus. You know, there's a time and a place for bad puns. That undecided whether that was the time or the place. Yeah. Because sometimes, sometimes they hit you just right. And you're like, you know what? That was, that makes my skin crawl, but kudos. Cause it was real time. Yeah. You see the little frozen turds sliding down with. Oh man. Oh my God. Oh my God. They're so tiny. They're like little turd lits. Yeah. Oh man. Freaking cracked me up. It's incredible. Oh man. I love the internet sometimes. So what else is going on in Mike's world these days? Um, yeah, I mean, the studio is cranking along nicely. Uh, that's been keeping me busy. I launched a fully autonomous personal assistant AI robot basically, but her name's Jade. And, uh, yes, she works for me 24 hours a day. Jade. Yep. Yeah. How's it going? Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's, um, the learning curve is steep, you know, to like learn how to set up Claude bot and like all of the different, they're called cron jobs. And like, basically it has what's called a heartbeat, which is how it runs like consecutive tasks over and over again. Um, it's really interesting. It's a totally different way to think about AI than we're used to. It's not like chat UBT. It's not like regular Claude. You know, this thing, you can tell it to do something and then it will go and figure out how to do it. So for example, if you wanted it to like build you a mobile app for your company, you know, it would be able to say, okay, not, it wouldn't just give you advice on how to do it. It would say, okay, here's all the different things that I would need in order to accomplish this. So, oh, I need to download this onto my computer or I need to download this. And then it would go download it onto the computer for you. And then it would open up the application and do the actual task of what you need it to do. You could even have it, right? Like we have our Asana project management. Yeah. We could eat, like, this is just a theory, but you could have it have access to all your emails and everything, all your communication, your browser. And then as you're working, it would know the tasks you're completing and it could go in and update your entire project board based on what you do every day. The couple of things that I have it doing is I have it doing research on similar books to the book that I wrote in 2018. And it's like pulling a whole spreadsheet together and downloading a digest of similar books and doing a bunch of research on figuring out the best, like chapter structure, the ideal page length and chapter length and length of the book and all that stuff. And then I have it going through hundreds of transcripts of my training calls with my clients and looking for the lessons that I actually teach during my calls that I could then pull out of those lessons and use as chapters in my book. And it's doing all of this for me so that I don't have to go manually read all those transcripts and find all that and go back through them. So that's just one example. And I got a bunch of others, but that's been taking up plenty of my time. And yeah, I'm looking forward to like spring and warm weather. Dude, the future is here. This Skynet is being born in your basement. Pretty much, yeah. Terminators will be here and it's all your fault. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. You know, so I have a whole separate computer. I have a Mac mini that's plugged into a whole separate monitor. There's no chair in front of it because no one needs to sit there and use it. You could put a chair in there. That would just make it more creepy. It would, yeah. Put like a little like stuffed animal or something in it. But yeah. Nightmares. Yeah. But it's on its own isolated device and it only has access to whatever I give it access to, you know. But I mean, I could go on a whole rant about this, dude. I mean, I feel like I've tried to make a habit of being ahead of the curve, you know, like seeing what's going on and intentionally trying to catch a wave and ride it. Yeah. You know, like I got into digital marketing in 2014, which at the time I felt was late. And I was talking about affiliate marketing and no one even knew what I was talking about. Nobody even knew what influencer marketing or what an affiliate link was. So good example of me like getting in to that world ahead of time. Yeah. And growing my career with it. We could even use this podcast studio as an example, right? Like the evolution of AI is making it to where we don't know what's real. And so having conversational, authentic dialogue like this is really, really difficult for AI to replicate, right? Like if you listen to two AI chatbots talk to each other, it's like the stupidest thing you've ever heard. So this format right here is at the top of the food chain, and it's very hard for AI to replicate something like that. That being said, I feel confident saying that like we're getting into this type of stuff ahead of the curve. Yeah. And then same thing with all the AI stuff. You know, I've been using AI. It's not a replacement for creative work. You know, it's not a replacement for writing. It's not a replacement for intelligence. You know, it's meant to be an accomplice to helping you focus on the things that you want to spend your time on and the pursuits that are worthy of your time and your energy. You know, maybe you don't want to sit down and, you know, compare spreadsheets. Like that's not fun or fulfilling to most people. Hey, man, I love, love. Spreadsheets? Spreadsheets. You should get into accounting. You would love it. No, I hate it. Could never, not even for one day. Yeah, me neither. But exactly. So this is why we have AI. And yeah, so that's what's been going on in my world, I guess. How about you? Well, that's really cool. I mean, we talked a little bit about it before and you are building Skynet. That's why I'm glad that we're friends. So when you do release Terminator to go back into the past to kill whoever's going to save the world from the robot revolution, I'm just glad I'm on your team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm prepped, dude. I'm ready to go. Even with this whole winter storm, I was ready to rock and roll. I got all my like offline communication, all my comms set up. Yeah. All the good stuff. Home base. I know where home base is. Yep. I've got enough dry goods, like food, to last me like probably two months. Don't tell anybody that. Yeah. Well, now everybody knows. That's all right. Yeah. It's no one knows where you live. Yeah. And even if they do, you know. Good luck. Show up. It'll be a good time. It'll be, we'll have a party. It'll be fun. Well, I haven't been building an AI robot assistant in my basement. But what I have been doing is paying a lot of attention to content like this. Long form more so than short form. I've been really indulging in amateur, and I mean, I wouldn't even say amateur, but independent films or short films or short pieces of, we can call it long form because it's longer than a minute or two, but it's shorter than a feature. So 20 to 30 minutes, 15 to 30 minutes is like short film territory. And I've always liked and loved cinema. I was a part of a short film production a couple of years ago. So I have a huge interest in this type of expression, creativity and storytelling. And what I'm really fascinated by is the blend of people using tools and the same creative lens to amplify their voice on social media. That is so cool to me. People are taking the creative license and going far, far in the opposite direction from a crazy TikTok trend and making a movie that is only 30 seconds long. That is the coolest thing that I see on social media now. Now, having had the opportunity to try it out for myself, I can say from firsthand experience, it is no easy task from beginning to end. If you do not know what you're doing, it's going to drive you nuts. But it's a worthy pursuit because the outcome is leaps and bounds, more packed, chocked full of these little bits of creativity. And that's going back to what we were talking about and kind of the reason that a podcast is a great way to amplify an authentic voice and get creative and get cool and have a conversation. Skipping past ads on Facebook or Instagram, trends or reels that tend to go viral and going and leaning into the creative side of production and film and cinematography, but also using that as a way to sell your brand or to tell a story or to introduce people to your product, super creative. And the ones that do it well, aces, leaps and bounds above a lot of the other creators. And personally, I'm trying to adopt a little bit of that approach into all of the other things that I'm doing because for a long time, I think you probably relate to seeing this, there was a separation and a clear divide between your real working life and your hobbies or whatever you were doing creatively. So if you were a guitar player, you couldn't go to Target and play the guitar and just be good at playing guitar at Target. You're not going to work. That just doesn't work. So you had to separate it. And the creativity usually took a backseat in lieu of your job, your career, whatever was making you money, whatever was benefiting society, being an accountant. No one wants to hear you play guitar while you're supposed to read spreadsheets. Although you could probably do both and be pretty good at it. But the industry doesn't support guitar players, so skedaddle. But nowadays, with the rise of the creator economy and the support by people that are tuning in and watching and sharing and liking and commenting, real creators, real filmmakers, real creatives, people that have wanted a career in this field but never thought that they had an opportunity, have one. And it's in their phone or in their pocket right now. And I think that is super cool. Yeah. I've always said this, and it's probably one of my strongest beliefs, which is you can get paid beyond a full-time income to just be yourself. Now, is it easy? No. I mean, first of all, being yourself isn't easy. That's the hardest part. Yeah. Everybody's on a lifelong journey to figure out who am I and how do I become my authentic self and all that good stuff. Right. Today, I'm just these glasses. Yeah. Facts. Same. And then once you figure out who you are, to then put it out there into the world is a whole other Mount Everest that you have to climb. And doing both is insanely difficult. But if you can do it and you can push yourself to do it, it puts you in a very small class of people. And that is why people get paid so much money is because if it was easy, everybody would do it. So even though everyone can do it, they don't. Because there's a lot of, I don't want to say demons, but yeah, there's a lot of demons to hunt down on the pursuit of being any type of creator. It's like your biggest enemy is you. You are the one who always ends up judging yourself the most. It's not other people, right? It's often just you versus you. And I said this before, but it's you versus you and one of you has to die. You have said that before. You know, you have a tendency, you've got a nice catalog Rolodex of these profound sayings, and that's a good one. It's you versus you and one of you has to die. It reminds me of something called the spotlight effect. You heard about that? Or I think it is called the spotlight effect. I'll look it up here in a second. But essentially, the spotlight effect is the thought or the feeling when you enter into any sort of public space or any space where you're not by yourself, you feel like you're being watched. But the reality, the stark reality is that no one is paying attention to you, not even in the slightest. Even if someone looks at your way, they're not looking at you. They're just, you know, hey, observing. There's a person, there's a person, there's a person. I'm going to buy a skunk. That's really the long and short of it. Yeah. So in your head, when you walk into the car, like to the coffee shop, or you walk into the clothing store, or you walk into work, then you feel insecure or you feel like you forgot something. Your makeup's not right. Your hair doesn't look good. Maybe you didn't shower that morning. You're not feeling like you look your best or you feel like as you're walking, everyone is judging every little thing about the way you walk or about the way you speak. No one is paying attention to that. Yeah. No one except for you. Yeah. Everyone's paying attention to themselves. And it's like the sooner people can realize that, the more they'll get over their own fears. Because I actually think that most people are terrified of success. They're not terrified of failure. They're not terrified of what will happen if, you know, I put myself out there and like, you know, nobody cares. What scares them even more is what if I put myself out there and everyone sees it, right? And it's what we would consider to be successful. And that is the thing that terrifies people, right? Imagine, you know, you make a post and it gets seen by 16 million people, right? And I even told you, like, you know, I had that video and I was like, I'm about to delete it, you know? Yeah. And even, and I've been doing this for over a decade. I've had plenty of videos, you know, not quite as viral as that one, but I've had some that have been over 20 million and it does. And it's like, the feeling of success is actually the thing that brings a lot of like pressure and stress and anxiety and doubt and imposter syndrome and all that, you know? It's scary. Yeah. It's not for the faint of heart. It's not. It's not. You know, and it just, it just depends on if people want to take that leap and make that part of their life. And if they do and they do it the right way and it's well thought out, you can make a living doing all the things you want to do, you know? You can make a living being on a podcast and just racing a go-kart around your yard. Like, you could totally just do that if you wanted to. And the thing is, and I think there's a lot of through lines that we can kind of pull on, but when you're talking about racing a go-kart through your front yard, which is actually a racing course that leads to a mailbox shaped like a Hardee's that you can drive into and pick up your mail, seems like Willy Wonka land. It seems like the Wizard of Oz, it seems like the Frozen movies. It's not reality. And then what you see online is dozens, sometimes hundreds of examples of people that are living similar lifestyles. And especially nowadays, there's a lot of, if this is something that you're interested in, you probably see a lot more of it, but a lot of people explaining how easy it is. It's like, oh, you too could be a millionaire in two days. If you just buckle down, believe in yourself and try hard, you can do, you can do, you can have this piece of cake. You're sitting on a $30 million yacht with a helicopter on, it's like, you could have this too. Reality is, no, you can't. Not like that, not really. No one's going to tell you that. It's like, you know, like a little switch and, you know, bait and switch there. But the actual reality is, you can have a version of that. You can have a version of riches and success and, you know, sustenance and all of these things that you see that you want and, you know, other people have. You can have that stuff. And it's easier now than it has been, but that's also why it is a little bit harder than it has ever been. Because the reason that things are easy is because there's more information, there's more availability to the information than there has ever been. Which brings me to the point of like, if you have the perfect tool, but you don't know how to use it, then you can't build anything. You have chat GPT, which has every piece of knowledge ever created or ever written down or ever put on the internet, right at a keystroke. But you write in a chat GPT, how much does an elephant weigh? That's all you're going to get out of it. So it's just, it's easier now, but it's also harder than it's ever been. Yeah, well, what, you know, determines what you do and what you do determines who, you know, you know, and people like to think, you know, whatever, it's not what you know, it's who, you know, it's like, no one leads to the next. Yeah. Because plenty of successful people could know you. And if you don't know anything and you don't do anything, they have zero interest in you. It's true. Yeah, what you know, determines what you do and what you do determines who you know. And yeah, you know, it's not easy in the slightest. And a lot of those people are full of shit, too. You know, you see these people on yachts and helicopters and all that stuff, dude, it's just a matter of like 18 months before someone makes a YouTube video that says, oh, this was all fake. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's like, dude, you could rattle off every single name, you know, especially in this like big creator world, whether it's Jay Shetty, Iman Godsey, like all these people have been called out for basically being fakes, you know. Everybody's incentivized to make it seem like they are bigger and more successful than they are because that self-perpetuates them making more money, you know. And dude, even, you know, in the world that I come from of like early affiliate marketing and digital marketing and the very early days of like influencers, you know, it's tempting. It's tempting. Like people just stretch the truth just a little bit. Just a little bit. And it's frustrating because you see people, you know, I saw people that started at the same time as me and made it so much further ahead so much faster because they were willing to like cut corners and stuff. And I think like I'm always a bit paranoid just about all kinds of stuff, right? So I'm like, dude, I just know like, you know, when you make a mistake like that, it's going to come back and it's going to it's going to bite you in the ass, you know, and I'm not perfect by any means, but I think one of the things I've always tried to do is just keep that in mind. It's like, just do it the right way. It may take longer. It's going to be a pain in the ass, but just like do it the right way because you never know who's listening. You never know who's watching. The Internet's undefeated, you know, and they will crush you as soon as you give them an opportunity to do it. The Internet is undefeated. Yeah. Did you see the Buddhist monks walk through Richmond this past weekend? So, of course, I saw, you know, all kinds of stuff about it. Yeah. To me, I yeah, I didn't see it. I didn't go out of my way to learn about it. I didn't look it up. It was a walk for peace, right? So they're walking for peace. They seem to create a lot of chaos for them walking for peace, right? It's like, hey, I'm a monk and I'm creating peace, but actually we're celebrities and we're creating chaos. Yeah. It's kind of an interesting paradox, but I don't know a lot about it. That's a very on-brand take on what's supposed to be a noble pursuit. They'd love to talk to you, I'm sure. And not that it wasn't. No, they can't talk. They're monks. No, they can talk. They talk a lot. They were on a microphone in front of City Hall. Dude, okay, these are fake monks. These are not real monks. The Dalai Lama has been on YouTube for years. That is not a thing. Monks can talk. Not the real ones, dude. Not the real ones. Not the ones doing the Vipassana meditation. You don't speak to anybody. That's what I'm talking about, dude. Oh yeah, these aren't those guys. Those guys don't leave the mountaintop. That's what I'm saying. Those are the monks. These are different monks. These guys are doing 700 days pure silence. Yeah, this isn't that. Okay, well tell me about it because I don't know anything about it. Well, these are the spokespeople for those monks. Yeah, how about that? Yeah, this is like their extended family. Yeah, this is their street team. I like that, street team. This is literally their street team. Nice, I like that. So on day 100 of their 2,300 mile walk for peace, a group of venerable Buddhist monks crossed into Richmond on foot drawing thousands into the streets. How many miles? 2,300. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's how far they've been. That's how that far they've walked, or I think they will walk by the time they get to DC. That's their destination. Wow. So I think this is the first day in Virginia that I've seen this much of a crowd. This was a quote from somebody who was there. One of the quotes from the monks themselves is, we walk not just for fun. We walk to let all of us know that peace has been with us, all we need to do is open it up, awaken it. After it's awake, peace will be with us. So they've been walking for like 100 days, and they've walked through small towns, big cities, and anything in between, and their goal is to spread the message of peace. And essentially, or especially, the times that most of the US is kind of dealing with a multitude of unrest, confusion, anxiety, and fear, and all of that stuff. So it's a noble pursuit. I personally think it's pretty cool. Having been raised half Buddhist, I do have a specific fascination with this. Peace is something that we have to work for, just like going for a walk to earn money to buy a house or food. If we don't practice, we go until we suffer again and again. And these are like little things, right? These are small, seemingly bumper sticker messages. But the message is still there. And I think when I saw the clips, I wasn't down there, but when I saw clips, there are more people out there than I've seen in the city in a very long time. And to see them for something that wasn't a protest, it wasn't a riot, it wasn't to upheaval, to oppose any sort of political process. It wasn't because somebody got locked up unjustly. It was to walk with these monks that were walking through the city. That's cool, man. Objectively, that's cool. I think it's super cool. Yeah, I think it's super cool. So is it just a coincidence that your given nickname is Buddha Perry? No. Yeah, crazy how that worked out, huh? You said you were raised half Buddhist. Yes. What does this mean? So my dad and most of his cousins and sisters and brothers practice Buddhism. And there's an Americanized version of Buddhism. I can't remember what the name of it is, but there's a headquarters. It's called the SGI. You can look that up. It's out on the West Coast, which I've been to. It's essentially the opposite of going to church. But in America, for Buddhist Americans, you have a meeting. It's not like going to church where you pray to a deity. You meet up once a month, usually on a Sunday morning. You chant, and your chanting involves reading a book called the Gohonzon. And it's a chant that you read from beginning to end. It's all in Japanese or Chinese kanji, so I couldn't ever read it. But the words are spelled out so you can read the English words. When you're done with the chant, there's a, I believe, a time period of the chant Nam-myoho-ren-gen-kyo, which is just a mantra you chant over and over. After that, you just kind of hang out and talk to people. You meet up, you meet strangers in your community you haven't met yet, and then that becomes your Buddhist community. Now the coolest part about it, when I got older, because a lot of this I kind of was experienced or exposed to when I was a kid. When I got older and actually went out to the West Coast for the first time, for an extended period of time, I connected with some of my cousins out there, and they practice Buddhism still as well, with their families, with their siblings, or with their significant others and with their children. What they did is something that I think my dad referenced before, but I didn't understand. It's called a, it's just, I don't remember what it's called. It's a session where they share a story where Buddhism changed their life in a positive way. So outside of the regular meeting with the chanting and the mantra and all that, one person is tasked or chosen to share a story of how using the practices of Buddhism, the mindset shifts, the things, the outlooks, is really what a lot of it is about. How that took them from a place of strife and struggle to a place of peace and prosperity. And it's just, for someone who was raised in addition to that Baptist, which means I went to a church every Sunday, and I prayed to God, and I had a Bible, and I hated that, to be frank. Not that I like, you know, I just, I didn't like going to church. It seemed like a cult. Yeah. As I got older, I was like, this seems real weird, but not dissimilar to radical anything. It can seem a little unsettling. But what I really liked about this is that there was no deity. There was no, you had to be beholden to this way of being. Like in a lot of strict Christian faiths, you have to be beholden to a way of living, a way of acting, a way of communicating. Otherwise, you risk sin, and you have to repent. And there's all these, you know, rituals and these, you know, all these parameters that you're kind of stuck within and are abiding by in this Buddhism religion, if you can call it that. The main takeaway is to try your best to have a positive outlook on yourself and on the world. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Work and go throughout your life and your day with positivity and openness and caring and empathy and generosity. If you don't practice, no one cares. If you forget about it, no one cares. No one's going to judge you. The goal isn't to change you. The goal is for you to adopt a better way of being. Dude, it always blows my mind how you and I have lived so many lives all within our individual one life, and we've sat here and had many hours of conversations, and I'm like, oh, learned something new about you. That's crazy. I had no idea. Yeah, man. Um, that's pretty nuts. Buddha Parry. Haha, yeah. Look at that, dude. Then the friends had no idea. They were like, yeah, yeah, you know, half Buddhist. Yeah, dude, very cool. Very cool. Yeah, man. No, I think that's great, and I do like that. You mentioned this thing in your monologue, something about it, about the wisdom that's being shared is quite simple and concise, and I think the best wisdom is that, right? You look at all the – you could scroll through Instagram and find all these little quotes and stuff, but if you really took a moment and read a particular one and digested it and thought about how it applied to your life, a lot of the quotes that make the most sense or that we often revisit are like the simplest ones, you know? And it's like, yeah, not that life is simple, but many times the big things in life are simple. Like, be a good person, take care of yourself, treat others how you want to be treated, you know, all that good stuff. Yeah, man. And, you know, it cleared a lot of the uncertainty or the unknowns for me. It cleared a lot of that stuff up because it is simple. In the real world, person-to-person-to-person, it is fairly simple. Most people are a lot alike. Most people are more alike than they are different. And if that's how you go into most of your interactions, money-back guarantee you'll have a much better way. You'll have a much better day, I should say. Yeah. Well, and I think things get weird when people try to insert themselves and control that situation and try to say, everybody has to like everybody. And it's like, well, everybody should like everybody, right? But to dedicate your whole life into trying to force everybody to be the same and believe the same thing, it's insane. It's just insanity. It sounds like a long day at work, man. It sounds exhausting. I mean, and if you look at some of the people that I think are the most miserable, you know, and people that spend all their days arguing with people on the internet, these are people that are like heavily opinionated about what everyone else is doing with their life, you know? Yeah. And it's like, what a great way to be miserable is to try to have control over what everyone else does. There was actually a clip of the monks before they got to Virginia who came up against someone just like that. And this guy legitimately stood in their way so that he could voice his belief at them. Not with them, not to them, not a dialogue. Insane. At them. It's one of those guys you'd see on the side of the road with like the big, like six, ten foot tall sign that says, repent. Now you're a sinner. You live in sin. You're not following Christ's way. Come to me. Come to the side of Christ. He will forgive you if you come to Christianity. Like, believe in us. This is the way. You're going to hell if you don't believe this. And the monk is looking at him and he's like, yes, that's your way. And I believe in you and I'm happy that you found this way, but that's not our way. And I don't judge you for either. And I'm happy that you're in this life, this part of this journey for yourself, but that's not our way. We're going to go, excuse us, we're going to go this way. And he's like, no, you don't understand. If you don't repent now and you don't accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are going to hell. And the monk is like, I love you, my brother. I understand. I truly do love you. That's not our way. And that is the problem. Yeah. You don't care what the other person has to say. You want them to do what you want them to do. Right. Well, and you also want them to do the thing that you would never do, right? So, you're saying, I have this permanent belief and you have a permanent belief, but I want you to change yours and I'm unwilling to change mine. It's a power move. Yeah. So, it's like, you're a hypocrite in the act of, you know, signaling your virtue. Right. It's like, yeah, it's crazy. That right there, you know, we can go down that rabbit hole, but that's the thing. Yeah. I mean, it totally, you know, it's like the whole joke of, I support the current thing. I support the current thing. It's like, that's what everybody does. And I think it's, you know, I don't want to rub salt in anybody's wound, but it's like, look, when we are so hung up on like causes that are external to ourself and it becomes our entire identity and all we can think about and talk about and post about on the internet. And it's like this whole thing where you are in deep emotional turmoil over a certain topic and you feel so profound to like stand up and identify yourself and say like, this is the thing. Right. I personally think it's because like that person has struggled to find purpose within themselves. You know what I mean? And don't get me wrong. There are of course, causes where people say, this is like my entire life's purpose is like to dedicate myself to this. But in many cases, it's over like trivial stuff, you know, and it's like, yeah, pull any rabbit out of the hat, call it COVID, call it like any of this stuff. Right. Where people like, you know, want to lay themselves into the firing squad to say like, this is the hill that I'm going to die on. And it's like, really, this isn't that serious. Like, why do you have such an opinion about what everybody else does? And I don't know, it's just chaos, but it's like, I think if people are grounded and are centered within themselves, they don't get as bothered and they go back to what we've talked about before, which is like the thumbs up rule. It's like, hey, you do what's best for you and be the best version of yourself that you can. And I'm going to do the same thing. No, no, but you can't do that. You have to do what I'm telling you to do. Because if you don't, you're going to hell. Do you want to go to hell? Sure. If it gets me out of this conversation, I would love to go to hell. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird conundrum, you know, and brings us full circle back to history, which is if you read history, you would realize, oh, people have been doing this forever. And I probably shouldn't get so caught up into it and spend the vast majority of my day's energy on this because it means I've learned nothing in the span of, you know, humanity's past 2,500 years. That's my favorite thing. And personally, it's a journey to get to a place where perspective is like the biggest measuring stick, right? Perspective comes with learning and intelligently or trying your best to intelligently understand, like actually understand. And that understanding comes with empathy and trying to put yourself in the shoes of other people's situations fully as if that person was you, or if you were that person, if those things happened to them, and if you did those things, that kind of empathy and that kind of perspective is like, I think the person like the greatest gift that you can give yourself, if you can do it, because it's not easy or difficult. But thinking about history and then thinking about the current times and then thinking about the future, getting hung up on the small stuff is such a waste of time. And I can say that because I know exactly how easy it is and how humid it is. It's very human to just jump off to a conclusion like, bam, I hate you. I want to fight you now. That is in our DNA and never goes away. But you can do yourself a big favor, give yourself some perspective and try really hard to just let that shit slide. Totally agree. Yeah. And, you know, people have forgotten this, but you're allowed to dislike people, you know, like, you know, I don't like you, bro. Yeah, that's allowed. And you just hit them with a thumbs up. It's like, yeah, you're that's, that's perfectly fine. You know, like not everybody's going to like you and vice versa. You smell like Doritos, my guy. I got to go. I will say that would be terrible. Like the smell of Doritos. It's not great. That's not good. You don't want, you could smell like a lot of things. You don't want Doritos to be one of them. Nah, man. You want to hear some crazy history before we wrap up. There's a rumor that there are underground tunnels from the Richmond Coliseum that lead to different hotels throughout the city, including the Omni. I think I heard this rumor. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. So there are tunnels in Richmond that go back to the civil war. One of the steam tunnels can be accessed through the basement of VDOT's headquarters on Broad Street. The door to the tunnels was unlocked when I worked there back in the 1990s. Somebody says I worked there in those same tunnels. They also happen to connect to every major hospital downtown and the governor's mansion. What? Yeah, that's wild. And it makes you wonder. It's like, oh, maybe that's why they haven't demolished the Richmond Coliseum because it's hiding tunnels that connect to all of the city. That would be cool. And that would be the access point. That's what's going down. Conspiracies. Yeah. Richmond conspiracies. We need to look into this. Well, you know, the difference between a conspiracy and the truth, right? Ten minutes. I mean, it's getting to be that, you know, it used to be it used to be a decade. Yeah. Then it was down to like two years. Then it was six months. And now with the release of the Epstein files, I just got to say it's like I've been saying this and everyone's like, oh, that's crazy. You're a conspiracy theorist. It's like, oh, it turns out all of that was true. I'm only a conspiracy theorist until I'm proven right. Yeah. Or wrong or wrong. Then you're still a conspiracy theorist. I mean, you kind of a win win. Like, yeah, I think I'm crazy or I'm right. Yeah. And I mean, conspiracy, the word in itself was created by the CIA to cover up their own activities anyway. I'm not even a little bit surprised, but maybe maybe that's where the witches are hiding. Probably, you know, there's witches in Richmond. I've met a few. I think we both have. Let's be real. But depends on which ones. Well, if you're looking if you're a witch about town and you're trying to find your people, trying to find your gang, your gaggle or your crew, I think some would call it a coven. That is what it's called. Yep. Reddit is going to be your friend. I found a thread that is addressing which is just like that. OK, good afternoon. I was digging around and have not had any luck finding pagans last witch covens in the Richmond area. I found recommendations for shops and markets, which is lovely, but I prefer being around people instead of paying and leaving meetup. Coven finder meetup and coven finder have been hit or hit or bust and no one know of any groups. This is a classified ad for which covens in Richmond, Virginia. Well, there's an app called Coven Finder, apparently like Match.com, but for witches. Yeah. Dude, don't let me on there, bro. That's why. Oh, man. But it led me to a website because, of course, there's a website. Yeah. Let me to a website that's supposed to be a good resource for people, witches that are looking for a coven. Yeah. And this is the website. It's havensong.wixsite.com if you're really interested in it. OK. Haven Song Coven and Grove. Be it known that on the fifth day of June in the year 2019, a council comprised of 30 of the 33rd degree initiates of Blue Star tradition of Wicca was assembled representing the covens of Health Fire, excuse me, Hearth Fire, North Star, Obsidian, Polaris, Raven Star, Sapphire, Serenity, Spiral Tour, Starlight, Starsong, Summer Oak, Vela, Wellspring, White Oak and Willow Moonfire, a majority of the active covens of the tradition and six independent third degree initiatives of the tradition. So if you're a witch about town, this is your guy. That's definitely. Yeah, that's your cult for sure. Yeah. I've that. This is fascinating to me because you and I definitely both know some legit witches. Yeah. They need to hit up. What is it? Coven Finder. Yeah. Yeah. And dude, I mean, it fits into everything we've been talking about because it's just it's a belief pattern, right? It's yeah. On one hand, you got Christianity, then you got Buddhism. And then, yes, people absolutely still live by the pagan way. Yeah. You know, we were talking about the pagan, the pagan, I guess religion is it? I don't really know about it, but we were talking about that when we were talking about Krampus or Santa Claus. Yeah. Well, like paganism is really just the belief in multiple gods. And that's actually what all religion or spiritual belief was prior to modern day religion, like especially Christianity, right? And even if you go way back and you look at Indian religion, you look at the Sumerian tablets, you even look at Greek and Roman, like talking about Prometheus and all these other gods, like they actually have a correlation amongst a lot of them. You know, like there's an argument to be made that Prometheus represents Enki in the Sumerian tablets, and there are other correlations like Noah in the Christian Bible is Utnapishtim in the, I think it's called the Atrahasis, it's like the Indian text. And I might have some of that wrong, but there's basically correlations between all these different gods. So, it's the belief that all of these different societies and civilizations had a core group of deities or gods that they believed in, and a lot of them are kind of based on like the zodiac or different aspects of life, like love and, you know, whatever, right? But there were correlations amongst all these different groups of people. So, anyway, that's all paganism is, but it involved a lot of like witchcraft, especially in medieval times. And even in places like Iceland, all the witches were actually men, which are considered, I think they're considered warlocks, but they were witches. Yeah. And so, depending on where in the world someone is, paganism could look different, even witches can look different and what that meant, but a lot of it had to do with, you know, anything being ritualistic. And really, when the Roman Empire came along, specifically like Constantinople and Constantine and the Byzantine Empire, which is now today like modern-day Istanbul, when all of that happened, it was basically the curation of pagan religion to consolidate it all and have power over it. So, that's where people like Emperor Constantine started to like demonize being a pagan because it used to be the other way around. Like when there was rumors of this person named Jesus in early day Rome, like no one even knew what that was. They literally just dismissed it. And there's like documented letters between the consul and it wasn't Seneca, it was maybe, I forget who it was, but there's, you know, writings where the consul is saying like, hey, should we be concerned about this person, Jesus? Like, should we be concerned about this like little cult called Christianity? And they're like, no, it's just like this little fringe thing on the outskirts, like it's really not a big deal. Because the dominating belief was multiple gods and paganism, and that's how it was forever. And then eventually, Western Rome fell, Eastern Rome continued, and that became the Byzantine Empire. And then that's when Christianity became dominant and they started unleashing all sorts of, you know, overall messaging and pamphlets and even, you know, the orator in the, you know, in the front of the village would, you know, be told what to say by the consul and all of it was to kind of demonize pagans. And then eventually, they started hanging them and killing them and burning witches, and that's where all these songs and stuff come from. And it was to eliminate the idea of paganism because if everybody felt that they were obligated to one God, the message was much easier to control. It was easier to tell people, hey, you need to now make your sacrifices to us. And this is when church started, right? So, by partnering the emperor with the bishop, now you have religion as like the muscle for the emperor because now you can tell the people to do anything in the name of religion and in the name of the spirit, right? And you could get them to give you all of their grain, all of their money, they would donate their time, they would do free labor, and they would believe anything you say because if they wouldn't listen to the emperor, they would listen to the bishop and the church. And that's why you fast forward to today and they eventually got to a point where they had to separate church and state, right? So, that's why you have separation of church and state, but the truth is that they never separated. No, they didn't. You know, it's still the same thing. Yes, it is. But that's always, like, they've always been the inevitable, invincible duo is church and state, and you put them together because you can manipulate people into doing anything in the name of whoever the God is. Yeah. You know, that's how it's always been. But anyway, I digress. Dude, I was going to say it for you, but you're just, you're the master of mystic knowledge. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy fascinating. It is super fascinating. And I always tie it back to storytelling and cinema. There's truth in all parts of storytelling, including non-fiction, or fiction, including fiction. You know, the movie Prometheus is about Christianity, or about creation. I'm thinking about the multiple gods, paganism. I'm thinking about the movie Hellboy. You ever heard about that movie? Yeah, yeah. So, Hellboy, the short story is the Nazis are trying to open up a portal with science and black magic, and they do it by using technology. They open a portal and something sneaks through into our world, and it's this demon spawn, a baby. It gets adopted and becomes a superhero. The baby is actually the son of what was called the Fallen One, but it was a god from another dimension. And in the first movie, they open up another portal, and the seven gods of chaos start to come to Earth. Now, these seven gods of chaos look like a giant squid, or giant squid, like multiple of them. We've seen cave drawings, hieroglyphic drawings, sculptures, etchings of all kinds of different beings and deities, and a lot of them are shared in similarity across all different cultures. Squids, lots of tentacles, monsters, things with horns. It's just interesting. I find that the similarities are separated by time and thousands of miles, but they're all the same. If I'm going to be a conspiracy theorist, my conspiracy is on the mythical side of ancient beings and things like that, and what people actually saw. Now, I always split the dice here, split the conversation here. Did multiple people see the same thing and draw it to the best of their ability? Were they under the influence of something that we aren't aware of that existed at the time? Were they as evolved as we think they were based on what we know about them? Were people's imaginations extremely powerful in a way that what they saw could deceive them? Did that happen often? Were those people a part of the society or were they ostracized? Were the crazy people, the really smart people that told everybody that that wasn't real and everybody accepted it as truth? I have all those questions when I'm thinking about what's really going on, but it is fascinating that the things that keep permeating through time and through distance and are not changing, dragons, monsters, vampires, the Yeti, aliens, ancient aliens, the guy with the crazy hair, you can put a picture of him up, that dude. That stuff I find fascinating. Yeah. Well, there's a theory. I haven't dug into this one, but I'm like, huh, you never know. The dinosaurs are fake theory. You know that one? Somewhat. So, basically, it's the theory that, you know, all of these kind of creatures and beings and stuff that are spoken about in ancient texts are describing something that people saw or that was real. Whether it be something like a dragon or some of these different figures or even if you look at ancient, like, Egyptian hieroglyphs, it's depicting animals and different characters and stuff where you're like, what is this, right? And it's very hard to explain. And of course, anytime you can't explain anything, you just say, oh, it's religion or it's myth, right? Yeah. And yeah, myth is just another way of saying we don't know how to explain this. We don't know what it is. And, you know, even the description of angels, like, in the actual biblical text in Hebrew in the original scripture is describing something totally different than what it has been translated to be described as, right? So, we think of, like, angels as like these people with wings, but the way that they're described in the Bible or in the original canonical text- Is way worse. It's like totally different, right? And it explains all kinds of crazy stuff. So, the dinosaurs are fake theory is that there are remains of ancient civilizations and just millions of years past, right? Because there's even been a wheel discovered that was like 10 million years old and it's like we have no way to explain this, you know? There's so many, like, discoveries that just break what we think about history including things like Gobekli Tepe and Bimini Road and, like, all these different things, right? And there's people who know way more about it than I do, but the dinosaurs is fake theory is basically this because nobody talked about dinosaurs until, like, the late, late 1800s, early 1900s. There was no mention of anything about a dinosaur. Yeah. It's a very recent invention or idea and so, the theory is that dinosaurs was the answer to basically cover up anything that would ever be discovered that would not fit the mainstream narrative because then it'd be like, oh, wow, that was a dinosaur when really, maybe it was a dragon or the bones of the Nephilim or a giant or the Nazca mummies or an alien or whatever. That's the word I was trying to find, Nephilim. Yeah. That's the – if you want to look this up and you haven't seen what people think an actual angel looks like, look up a Nephilim. If you see something that looks like a Ferris wheel or a convoy ride with eyeballs and wings, then you're in the right place. Yeah. Dinosaurs as actually – the way that they've been drawn or the way that they – the bones or the fossils have been interpreted, scientists have more recently been coming out or the studies have been coming out to say that they weren't entirely accurate and they're like, we now know that the way that they are presented in Jurassic Park isn't really what they looked like. What they really looked like isn't as cool or it's way worse. So, we have to sugarcoat it because people wouldn't accept it now. Most of what they say that dinosaurs that stood on two feet or four feet looked like were birds. Giant birds. So, what you're saying is that the dinosaurs are fake theory has legs. Or wings. Or – look, you beat me to it. This podcast was recorded at Vera House Studios in Richmond, Virginia and produced by Perry Young and Mike Metzger.