Rainn Wilson | Spirituality, Acting and Radio Rental (RE-RELEASE)

Rainn Wilson, widely celebrated for his unforgettable portrayal of Dwight Schrute on "The Office," delves into his multifaceted career, personal growth, and the passions that fuel his creative endeavors. He's an accomplished writer, producer, and a fervent advocate for issues close to his heart. We'll explore his insights into the challenges and triumphs of his acting career, his philosophical outlook on life, his deep involvement with the Bahá'í Faith and his ventures into the world of writing with books like "Soul Boom" and spoooky stories in his role as Terry Carnation in the podcast, "Radio Rental". Join us as we uncover the layers behind one of television's most iconic characters, revealing the depth, humor, and intellect of Rainn Wilson in a conversation that promises to be as enlightening as it is entertaining.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Talking to Death is released weekly every Wednesday and brought
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dot com or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Talking to Death is a production of tenderfoot TV and
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Michael, how are you?

Speaker 3 (00:26):
I'm good? How is Payne?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Lindsay? He's tired. This whole podcasting thing is, you know,
not as easy as it looks. You have to talk
and use your mouth and breathe in and breathe out.
You have to wake up at reasonable times, do zoom calls.
It's actually pretty sweet. Yeah. I was gonna say, there's

(00:50):
something about the very first episode of any true crime show,
especially Up and Vanished. That first episode. It just there's
so much pressure to do it the right way, creatively,
and to deliver the information that you need and lay

(01:15):
it all out there for you. It's hard when my
head is in another place deep in this case, but
I'm having to rewind time and go back and deliver
you the basic facts of this story so you can
slowly get up to speed to where I'm at. And

(01:35):
so it is always an interesting exercise to kind of
go back in time a little bit and re enter
the mind frame I had basically a year ago when
I knew nothing about this case. There's also an important
factor to that, I think, because it's easy just to

(01:55):
jump straight to wherever my head is at right now
in the story. But I need to be able to
help you, as the listener, get to where I'm at,
so you understand why I feel that way or why
it's going this direction, who these people are, how do
we get to this point That really starts with the
foundation of episode one. So I just want to say

(02:19):
welcome to any and all of the Up and Vanished
listeners who migrated over from the Up and Vanished Feed
to check out the show. Season four drops in ten
days on February sixteenth, and starting that day on Friday
the sixteenth, we will be doing special recap episodes and

(02:39):
giving you exclusive bonus content and insight and interviews with
other true crime podcasters about Up and Vantish and about
making true crime podcasts right here on Talking to Death. Yeah,
I'm excited about being able to present this to you
in a way that maybe I can't necessarily do exactly

(03:00):
on the up and Vanished RSS feed, I can be
a little bit more candid, give you a little bit
more insight on my thoughts and opinions on things, to
offer you what I think. You know, people always ask
what do you think? And a lot of times I
cut that out of the Up and Vanish show because
I'm trying to be as objective as possible. I'm not

(03:21):
trying to sway you in one way or the other.
But obviously we're all human and I do have personal
thoughts about every single aspect of this case, and I'll
be able to give that to you on this show.
And so again reminder, starting on the sixteenth episode one
drops on the up and Vanished Feed as normal, and

(03:43):
right after that you can come back here to Talking
to Death and we'll give you a whole bunch that
you cannot get in the Up and Vanish Feed. And
we're gonna do that every single week. And we have
some really cool guests lined up, good friends of mine,
other true crime podcasters and experts in this space. And yeah,
I'm excited to pull the curtain back a little bit

(04:05):
this season and speak a little bit more freely on
some of the intricate aspects of this case, and also
the story building podcast building process. I kind of realized
that because of the way up in Vanished Sounds, being
this sort of cinematic story with music and a mix

(04:27):
of different range of audio taking you through this sonic space,
it's easy to forget how real some of these elements
are of the story, and I think it's important to
continue to highlight that and remind you just how real

(04:48):
all of this stuff is. And so I think that's
what you'll probably glean from a lot of the inside
stuff that we talk about right here on this show
starting on the sixteenth, and so at the end of
this episode, I will play a sixty second clip from
episode one that you can only hear here. It's a
snippet from part of the cold open of episode one,

(05:10):
just to give you a little taste. But moving on,
I also want to welcome all the radio rental listeners.
Thank you for migrating over. Today's episode is one of
my favorites so far, if not my absolute favorite, definitively
Rain Wilson, who is an amazing human being. Anyway, Today's
guest is Rain Wilson. You obviously know him from the office.

(05:35):
He played Dwight. He's also been in a bunch of
other really funny movies. He plays Terry Carnation on our
show Radio Rental. And it's funny because whenever I was
making Radio Rental, and I had this idea of an
anthology series that was a collection of weird, bizarre, supernatural

(05:57):
Twilight Zone esque stories that lived in a fictional world
that became Radio Rental, which is this fictional VHS rental store,
and there's this eclectic, bizarre, goofy ass shopkeeper and that's
Terry Carnation. And when I was building the show, I

(06:18):
had this vision for this shopkeeper character, and for whatever reason,
all I could picture in my head was Rain Wilson,
and I had no backup plan if we couldn't get
him to do it. I didn't even think that we
really could get him to do it. It was just
maybe I was trying to manifest that happening. Well, through
a series of emails and calls, I was able to

(06:39):
get on a zoom call with him, and I knew
that it was my one shot at locking him in
for this show. And I don't want to spoil too
much of it because Rain and I go into how
Terry Carnation started and how radio rentals started. But we
get into that and he also shares his own spooky story,
you could call his own radio rental story. This is

(07:01):
just a great human being. He's just funny as shit.
I've known him for a couple of years, but we've
only had so many sit down, long form conversations with
each other. And we have a really deep conversation about spirituality.
We talk about UFOs for a little bit, we talk

(07:21):
about podcasting, we talk about mental health. We kind of
go everywhere, and he's an open book, which I really appreciate.
And I think you'll really enjoy this episode and stay
tuned to the very end where I'll play a sixty
second clip from Up and Vanished episode one that comes

(07:42):
out on the sixteenth that you can only hear right
here on talking to death. So I googled your name
earlier today. See what you did? You were?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Is it like actresses? And it's like if you're google
an actress, it's like feet come up first because all
the foot fetishes.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, you try it, just.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Like reneis el Wigger, reneesel Wiger feet. Okay, I wonder
if Rain Wilson feet comes up.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
I'm looking for it. He does. Well, there you go.
It's from the office.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Are you serious?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Is that on Wiki feet?

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I mean some yes, How do you know what wiki feet?
Wiki feet is?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
That you don't know Wiki feet?

Speaker 4 (08:34):
No?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Have you been hiding under a rock, Petlin?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Why do feet need their own Wikipedia page?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Why do you think? Cause there's foot fetishist perverts out
there who love just anything involved with feet. There's all
these videos on YouTube of women that sell their feet
photographs online and make pay their way through college.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean I've heard about that. Yeah, but and
wikifeed is the pictures? Mean, why would you need to
know biography of your foot?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Well, it's not so much exciting sources that's hysterical like
Rene's Aleliger's feet started out uh on cold Mountain they were.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
So it's you know, it does this whole thing where
people also searched for okay, like your name. Yeah, and
somebody's kind of cracked me up with your with your name,
And so I want to see if you can answer
some of these questions for the internet. Oh dear God, Okay,
I wanted to know this stuff, right. So the first
one is what happened to rain Wilson.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
What did happen to Rain Wilson?

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, it's uhay, what happened?

Speaker 2 (09:38):
What happened was, you know, I just did some acting
and raised the sun and started a couple media companies
and and had a great time and worked on my
tennis game, did you? But uh, yeah, I play a

(09:58):
lot of tennis. But that's in fact I played in
two matches this weekend lost them both. But yeah, that's
that's what happens when you're known for like this one
role and then I haven't played Dwighton now ten years,
ten eleven years.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
It's a it's an offensive question. It's like you're assuming
that you did ye know what what happened to you? Who?

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah? And you can just go to IMDb and just
look at the credits there. It's pretty easy to do.
But yeah, it's like, what happened?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right? There's updates? What does Rain Wilson speak about.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
English?

Speaker 1 (10:38):
I've asked this and what did they mean?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
I speak about feet, I speak about what happened to
Rain Wilson. I think that you know this because this
book came out sol Boom six months ago, and so
I've just been doing a lot of speaking tours and
going to college campuses and stuff like that. So okay,
my imagination goes to, like, why is you know, And

(11:00):
one of the questions I bring up in the book
early on is like, why the hell is the guy
who played Dwight on the Office talking about spirituality? So
I wonder if it's just people like this is just weird?
How do I process this?

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah? Do you feel like people in general and maybe
and we're probably even a victim of that too, just
when they know someone for a thing, Yeah, that it's like,
oh does it go that? Does that thing? He can't
do this thing in this thing at the same time, Yeah,
like our brains just won't let us or absolutely, what's
up with that? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (11:30):
I think people just get lazy in that way. I
think that, And by the way, it works that way
in show business too. It's kind of like, Oh, it's
the guy who plays Dwight. So he plays big, weird
comic characters on sitcoms and he's not really an actor,
but I played you know, I played dozens of roles
in the theater before I ever got to do TV

(11:51):
and film, And then I played dozens of roles in
TV and film before I played Dwight.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Then while I was playing Dwight, I played another good
dozen and a couple dozen roles, and you know, in
movies like Super and you know, lots of other some
some bigger movies, some smaller movies. And then after Dwight,
you know, ten or eleven years ago, I played dozens
of roles. So this is what an actor does, right,
You play roles and you transform. I'm not like, I'm

(12:18):
not the Dwight guy, but act I act. One of
those roles took off like a rocket, right and was
a home run, great TV show. Love it, thrilled, so grateful.
But guys, I'm an actor. You're a podcaster and journalist
and host, right.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Just a podcaster though forever?

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Just a podcast, No, just a true crime podcaster if
there's not a dead body involved, no one, yes.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
A fuck or you though. I'll do a new podcast
like High Strange, for example, and I'll put it out
and someone will someone will make a comment on my
Instagram and say, is this the new up and Vanished?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Like what how could it be? I would be the
worst marketing executive known to man to call the new
season of Up and Vanished High Strange.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
And only be about UFOs and nothing else. Yeah, I
got two more him. What's Rain Wilson's real name?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
It's very true, but I will say it is Rain
Dietrick Wilson. But it's hysterical. Someone on my Wikipedia slipped
in the name Percival. So on my Wikipedia it says
Rain Perceval Wilson or Rain Percival Dietrick Wilson. I forget
which one it is. And now that's showing up all over.
I went and did an interview with someone. There's so like,

(13:42):
So Rain Percival, how'd you get the name Perceval? So
bravo to you, chef's kiss, kudos.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
He stuck it, just stuck. Those donations they want all
Wikipedia and they can't get it right.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
So they can't get it right.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
It works for me.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
They did, well, they told you it works for me.
How did this is? So this is a bad one.
How does Rain Wilson pronounce his name.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Ryen Wilson?

Speaker 1 (14:10):
So that's what I thought. Yeah, I've been saying it
wrong the whole time.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
That was another one that was you know, always with
substitute teachers, they'd be like Ryan, It's like, well it's
Rain ri a I N right. Yeah, then if you
add an N, how does that? How would that possibly
change the vowel sound there?

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Like it's more of rain now it's rain?

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah. When you were on the journey of becoming an actor,
growing up and going through Hollywood, before the office and
before any of your big movies, did you aspire to
be where you are today? Uh? Like? What did? What
was the perfect vision you had for yourself? If you
had done it correctly or fulfilled your dream?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Well? I love that question, Payne, seriously, I do, because
it's my career and my life as an actor surpassed
my wildest dreams. I never in a thousand years would
have thought that I would be a guy. And when

(15:14):
you go into target, my face is on mugs and
on bath mats and you know, and dish towels.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Are you numb to it?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
I mean, every once in a while people will send
me some new things like, oh look, my face is
on jellybeans now, Like, I hope I get a check
for that. That's so weird. But I yeah, you know,
I started, I really fell in love with acting, and
I fell in love with the theater. And I was
a nerdy theater kid. I was a nerdy kid in
high school and I was I played the bassoon, and

(15:44):
I was in the marching band, and I was in
Model United Nations and I was on the chess team,
and I was just dorky Dungeons and Dragons kid. And
then I moved to this new school that had a
good drama department and I started doing acting, and which
is also dorky in a slightly different way. Yeah, And

(16:05):
I found I was pretty good at it and I
could make people laugh, and I was always kind of
a goofball and I would just channel that into acting.
And I fell in love with acting in theater, and
then did a bunch of plays in college, and then
I went to acting school in New York. Again just
did nothing but theater. I wasn't even thinking about film
or TV. And it's funny the.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
I did.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
One of my first jobs was this bus and truck
Shakespeare tour going around the United States, and we performed
Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. And we
would pull into like a community college or downtown somewhere
and we would set up our RinkyDink little stage and
we would perform, and sometimes it was high school sometimes
a high school auditoriums at like ten am, and it

(16:49):
was which is brutal. And one of the guys on
the tour was Jeffrey Wright. I forget is he nominated
for anick Oscar this year. He's in the new film
American Fiction. He's been in tons of stuff. You'd recognize
him in a heart beat. He's he's an incredible actor.
And I was playing Demetrius in Midsommer Night's Dream and
he was Puck. And we finished the tour. We were

(17:12):
on the road for like seven months. Well, get back
to pick up our mail at the office and I
remember looking at my bank statement. It's like I had
saved the whole tour. I had saved twelve hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
And I was coming back to New York City with
twelve hundred dollars in the bank and I had just
worked for six or seven months. I was like fuck.
And then Jeffrey Wright is opening his mail and he's
like WHOA, And I look over and he was like what.
He goes I got a residual checks. Being residual he
did three days on a Harrison Ford movie. He had
a check for thirty five hundred dollars and in residual.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Dollble what you did for seven months? That Harrison Ford money.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
And I just was I just shook my head and
I was like, Okay, I need in the wrong business.
I need to really seriously think about. And that's when
I started going like, okay, shit, I gotta I really
got to pursue this more, and not just you know,
you can barely keep the lights on as a theater actor,
but I got to supplement it with some TV and film.

(18:15):
But I just thought of myself like, oh, I'm gonna
do some cool plays at some theaters, you know, and
I'm going to go, you know, what's the Alliance in Atlanta?
And I'm going to go to the Mark Tapeer Forum
and maybe some off Broadway. And then occasionally I'll do
like a guest spot on Law and Order or some
or Frasier or something like that and and do a

(18:38):
quirky character and that'll kind of help me keep the
lights on and keep me in Trader Joe's money. So
I came to la in around the year two thousand
and things just started taking off here in a in
a kind of a crazy way. And after a few
years of you know, some guest spots and movie roles

(19:01):
and whatnot. I got on Six Feet Under, which is
the show I did before the Office, which was a
big show on HBO at the time, and then onto
the Office after that, so and then like lead roles
in feature films and development deals and all kinds of opportunities.

(19:25):
I was this door again. I was this pimply Dungeons
and Dragons kid who turned into a theater geek. So
it's beyond my wildest dreams one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Did you ever reach a point in your career where
you felt like you had done it all at the
height of the busyness of the office. What kept driving
you to keep going back to work and not just say, man,
I did it. I'm tired.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Well, it's funny you say that, because it's like kind
of right now, I'm like in my late fifties and
I'm like, wow, I've really I won't say I've done
it all, because I haven't obviously, but you know, I've
never been nominated for an Oscar, let's say, although you
know that's a long shot, but there is part of

(20:11):
me is kind of like, you know, I did ten
years in the theater, and I did twenty years in
film and TV. I've played a bunch of memorable roles.
I got a bunch of Emmy nominations, did not win,
Thank you, Jeremy Piven. And and now that I'm doing
kind of more writing and podcasting and some other you

(20:34):
know stuff in nonprofit world, I part of me is like, yeah,
do I want to stick with this acting thing. I
don't think I'd ever like quit acting, but I think
I would like, as they say, i'd be entertaining offers,
you know, just kind of like I'm not going to
pursue shit. If someone wants to offer me X amount
of money to go play a cool role somewhere, I

(20:56):
would I would seriously consider it. But it's part of me.
Part of me is kind of at that place right now,
like I don't have the same hustle that I had
ten or fifteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
We're not starving artists anymore, are you. I mean I
was that part of it happy a little bit.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
That is part of it. Yeah, absolutely, And you know
I didn't have a trust fund, and you know, I
needed to make the money myself. And if I wasn't
going to get the next guest spot or the next
pilot role. Then I wasn't going to be able to
pay rent, So that is definitely a driver. But then

(21:32):
it starts to get really unhealthy. And you know, even
when I was on the office and making a lot
of money, like, there was long periods of time while
on the Office where I was really unhappy because it
just it wasn't enough, you know, it just well, it's
kind of maybe maybe you can relate to this, and
I'd love to hear your take on it too. I

(21:54):
think it's that it's that ancient human kind of crazy
hunger like for more, like, oh, this feels good, I
want some more. Like I was talking to bj Novak
about it and he was like, we both had that.
We did this event at the ninety second Street y
and we said the one thing we regret most about

(22:16):
the Office that we didn't enjoy it more. So here
we are. Here, I am on one of the most
successful TV shows ever, nominated for Emmys, making nice money,
great people, people love the show. It's really high quality.
And I was like, yeah, but I want I want
more more, you know what, I want more more fame,

(22:37):
I want more money, I want more attention. I want
more status. I want to be I want to like,
you know, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, those guys have like
big ass and movie star careers like can I want that?
And and that didn't work out for me. And frankly,

(22:57):
well kind of I'm pretty funny, but I'm not at
a Will Ferrell Jack Black level funny, you know what
I mean. And that's okay, I'm I'm fine with that,
But it's that it's that old, that ancient human conundrum
of like it's never enough, it's never enough. I mean
John d Rockefeller, the richest man in the world at

(23:17):
the time, had a reporter ask him how much money
is enough, and he famously replied, just a little bit more.
So that's kind of how I was on the office.
It was like, just a little bit more as opposed
to this is fucking great man, just fucking enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
So what would you have done, literally differently with this,
with this hindsight you have now.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
It's most literally just be grateful for what I have
and just relish.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
It and punish yourself in front and get to another level.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Or yeah, you know, of course, what I have tried
to develop projects and audition and try and do some
film rolls, of course, but just be much less attached
to the outcome. You know, the Buddha teaches about suffering
and the root cause of suffering is attachment and grasping, right,
It's it's it's not being present in yourself and just

(24:11):
being at peace with what you have, kind of one
breath at a time, being in the moment. It's it's
this constant human clutching and grasping for something outside of
ourselves to fill the void, to fill, to fill the
pain and soothe the pain. And I would have just
done less clutching and grasping, that's all. How are you
dealing with that? You know, one of the most successful

(24:32):
podcasters in the country that put you in the top ten.
You know, you have the Midas touch, so many of
your shows go into the top ten. You have you
just have a really for whatever reason, you're this kind
of like.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Whacking your now you weird mother.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
You look like, you know, an ecstasy swilling club kid.
Thank you, but you for some reason, I'll tell your
kid drugs. You look like you'd sell someone Molly at Coachella, But.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
I know the good kind of molly, yeah, yeah, not
the you know, overdose, not the Bathtub.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah, and but you know, you've you've been incredibly successful,
mostly in true crime, but you know, yeah Radio Rental
and High Strange and many other great shows. And how
does that feel for you? Does it feel like does
it feel like, well, I want the TV deal or
I want Tenderfoot to be bought by Amazon, or why

(25:31):
I want to cash in in this way? And how
I how come no one's approached me to have a
you know, my own show or you know, do you
know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Like I mean totally, I mean like when Up and
Vanished became successful, that was the first time I'd ever
gotten the taste of of anything like that, And it
was to me a culmination of all the work I'd
done throughout my whole career, going back to being doing
my own music and doing music videos and eventually telling

(26:00):
my own true crime story. And once it started clicking,
you know, a part of me, for the sustainability of
my own future and to have a career and to
no longer be a starting artist, was going to grab
on to the horns and never let go. And the
first thought I had after up in Vanish was I

(26:20):
don't want to be known just as the up and
Vanish Guy. This was a conscious thought that I had.
So I went and made Atlanta Monster, and then I
went on tour. Then I made up in Vantish season
two that I made Radio Rental, and and then I
looked up one day I was like, you know what
liill happened over these four years? Like how did I
I'm in a house that I bought? Now, how did
I get here? Right? And it wasn't really until last

(26:43):
year when I was working on High Strange that I
had this sort of eye opening moment and I realized
editing an episode of High Strange that this this moment
that I was in is like the pinnacle of my happiness.
I love building this world. I like having set this up,

(27:05):
and I'm in full control over this this thing, and
it's fun and it's all for the right reasons, and
it's all these different boxes are checked and so it's
not about doing this to get here, it's about being
able to keep doing this at all or having.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Well that's good, that's very healthy in a way where.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
It's like just doing it is kind of the point
for me, I think, But look.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Man, this is how we're both so lucky. We're we
both get to tell stories. Yeah, we're storytellers in different ways.
An actor is a storyteller, a podcast producer, host, director,
editor is as well. And you know, the thing I
love about your stories is like I'm a huge up
and Vanish fan, but and Atlanta Monster, Like you have

(27:47):
a social commentary running through it. It's not just salacious
true crime, like you're like you're peeling the onion and
kind of like a little bit on how the world
works and even in high strange and like the conspiracies
around around you know, uae S and and the government
and cover ups and uh, it's it's dare I say

(28:08):
it's important, you know what.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
I mean, like like it means that that approach or Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
And also the way that you did like season up
in Vanish was it Season three them, you know on
the on the Indian reservation, like the the the the
injustice and the economic injustice going on and the reality
of that life, like you open that up to millions
of people.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, and it's a scary topic to try to try
to navigate. It's like, I mean, it's it sounds messed up,
but it would be easier not saying I should or
I want to to make it about a white woman,
because if there's less tape to navigate, to do it
respectfully and appropriately, and that just comes with the territory.

(28:55):
And those are challenges that I want to take on
because I think that's probably reason why people who are
really talented don't do that, is because they don't want
to challenge themselves and stepping out of the box and
learn something about somebody else and how their life is
different than theirs, versus doing what they know how to
do already. Yeah you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, well said, well, I'm glad you made that adjustment
and that you get to just relish doing what you
get to do, you know. And it's true when you
do a season of one of your one of your shows,
like you're you get to be like you get to
be God in a way, like you're controlling the story
and the tone and that and that.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Music you don't know?

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah right right, Yeah, you're slowly dispersing.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
You're like you're dripping out RUMs. Yeah, come on, Okay,
I'll give you a bigger one because you're getting impatient.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Speaking of that, I want that. I want links to
the new The Homely season.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Oh yeah, I was also super high when I texted
you that little clip and then I was like, you know,
I just made it, Like is this too much? Is
this amazing? Is this the worst shit I've ever done?
And I was like, I don't know, but I'm like,
here it goes.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
You that's my that's my beta test is like, as
I'm making the podcast, I'll export little nuggets and shoot
them out to some of my friends and you know,
just see what they say. Sometimes they say nothing. Sometimes
they're like a.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Lot of people out there in the yeah, West Beach.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
All the way to the Riversion.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
I don't want to give too much away.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
It was really for me out by then. So that's how.
That's the cliffhanger for episode one, which comes out on
the sixteenth of February. Sweet, so this will be out. Actually,
it probably be almost bingeable by then. Crazy story though,
I mean, this woman went missing from Nome, Alaska. I'm
not sure if you know where that.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Is on a Yeah, I canally Russia. Yeah it's so
far away.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, small town of three thousand people and there's been
about twenty four unsolved disappearances in the past couple decades
and just very odd numbers for the size of the population,
and there's just some nefarious shit going on over there,
and it's been really scary and eye opening. I think

(31:17):
it's probably one of the most in depth seasons of
a show I've ever done. Damn excited to.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Did you ever feel in danger?

Speaker 1 (31:26):
And absolutely so. Yeah, I'll just go ahead and say
this now because it'll be out or I'll just cut it.
But there was a time there's a guy, the main suspect,
and this woman was murdered. She's not just missing, she
didn't go off on her own. I believe she was murdered,
and there's a main suspect and her clothes or belongings

(31:46):
were last seen in his tent. He's the last man
to have seen her. He fled Nome after this. He's
got a big rap sheet. He's not a good guy.
And so I have a fake Facebook account that I
started years ago, so it looks kind of legit now
has been there for years. And I won't say the
name because people are gonna go fuck it up. But
I just started messaging him. I was like, hey, do

(32:09):
you miss Alaska? And I just started talking to him,
and for whatever reason, he just took the bait, and
eventually I was trying.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
To figure not under your name this face?

Speaker 1 (32:17):
No, I catfished him and oh shit, I eventually found
out where he was. So I had the option of
going and pouncing on him and just saying, hey, boo, gotcha,
my name is Payne lindsay let's talk about this case,
which I knew he would just say fuck off. And
I was like, what's the point, Like why did I
come here?

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Is?

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Was it to get that moment for the podcast or
do I step out of my comfort zone or whatever
you think the journalistic ethics should be, and trying to
figure out if he did it or not, because that's
what the family wants me to do. And so I
met him as this fake guy, terrified that he was
going to figure out who I was. He didn't, and

(32:59):
we talked for two hours on the record, and in
my opinion, said some very incriminating statements. And to this day,
I'm not fully sure if he knows if I'm paying
Lendsy or not he's he's about to know, or if
he does know, and he's trying to play the game
that I think he lost with trying to play with fire,
and so it's a very strange thing. But it's like

(33:21):
it's what the detectives do in the movies. Yeah, it's
like what they do on True Detective, but no one
is really doing that.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah yeah yeah, but you get to do that.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
But I was really doing that.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah damn.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
So yeah that was scary that I'll.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Be hones that sounds scary. Wow, wow, mad props man,
that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
You should tell bj Novac that I'm I wish that
I had a cameo in that movie he did about
the True Crime ding like it was so good and
he nailed it. They did send me some little box
or something, but they don't want the box I want,
Like I think some people like you know, not that
I'm anybody, would probably think that. I wouldn't want to
make fun of myself. But that's all like me and

(33:59):
my team ever talk about. Is how much of a
trope this shit is? Sometimes?

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's hysterical. Yeah, I love I love
the way he went right into that. Uh prefix yeah,
totally totally listen. I talk about this in Soul Boom
a lot, like it's it's the ancient spiritual journey that

(34:24):
we're on, and every spiritual journey has to do with
the ego, right, you go as far back as you want,
you can go to Zoroastrianism and Hinduism and Buddhism. It's
all about the ego. The ego wants pleasure, the ego
wants status, the ego wants control, The ego wants power,
The ego wants kind of sex and comfort. These are

(34:49):
this is our natural egoic you know, uh, desire and
that's it's our caveman desire. In what you're saying, it's
humanistc there's nothing wrong, per se and on the right level.
But then when you are given billions of dollars and
a great deal of power, that ego can uh. And

(35:12):
I've had little tastes of that, you know, I had
little tastes of that kind of narcissism and entitlement.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
You mean, like yeah, yeah, you checked yourself as a hey, or.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
I've had to check myself at time, my wife, My
wife has had to check me, okay, yeah yeah, So
like well why would you do that? Like well, just
being kind of a self entitled prick at the height
of the office fame and doing a lot of other movies.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Like you got my coffee wrong? Kind of thing or what.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
There's so many. Yeah, they're just being you know, being short, impatient, judgmental.
Like I didn't prioritize family time when my son was
born and really young, like, and I would just be like,
I'm too busy and you know you we need to
schedule this, and it's you know, my make it in

(35:58):
me right yeah, and yeah, and I'm and I'm working
hard for the family. But it was, it was it
wasn't actions as much as it was attitude. But I
was I could be a not pleasant there were there
was a while there I could not be a very
pleasant guy. And so but I think that, you know,
I look at it from from spiritual terms that we

(36:21):
everyone is struggling in some way, shape or form with
with ego. You don't have to be elon musk. You
don't have to be one of the characters on succession.
You know you can. I've met plenty of people that
have a very small domain right like they're they're a
parking attendant in a circle of like seven other parking attendants.
But there's a hierarchy and a struggle and a battle

(36:42):
for power and control and status and money.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
No one's immune to it.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah, no one's immune, and we're all on that journey
to try and to quiet that that voice and to
seek a greater selflessness, a greater altruism and sacrificing, sacrificing time, energy,
comfort for the betterment of others. That's that's just plain

(37:08):
and simple. That's the spiritual path. It doesn't matter if
you're Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, it doesn't really matter. I'm a
ba High But that's that's the path we're on. And
your life will get healthier, deeper, richer, and wiser the
more you kind of embrace and love your ego but

(37:29):
recognize it and say I want to I want to
focus kind of on my on my higher self.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Is it about self clarity and uh healing? Do you
believe in a higher power or what are your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (37:43):
What do I believe? Yeah, I believe. I believe in
a higher power. I believe.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
What does that look like or what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Well, it's I. I have a chapter in the Soul
Boom book called the Notorious Good. So that's that's what
I believe in, the Notorious Good. But I think God.
People have a hard time with God because God is
equated in Western culture with the patriarchy, and it's like

(38:11):
big Daddy God. I call him sky Daddy, sky Daddy
with a beard, who knows everything we're doing. It's basically
Santa Claus pain, you've been naughty and nice. If you're naughty,
you're going to go to hell. Or you're naughty, I'm
going to punish you. And if you're nice, I'm going
to reward you. And this is baked into our culture, right,
It's in the Sistine Chapel, It's in our thoughts, it's

(38:34):
in our father who are in heaven, like it's on
the coins. Yeah. Yeah, And so for me, I had
a real revelation when I was reading about I was
really struggling with God, and a lot of people are.
And I was reading about the God of the Lakota
Sioux people, and the god concept in that region of

(38:57):
those indigenous people is called Wa kan Tanka, which means
the Great Mystery. So immediately when you think about God
as the great Mystery, and you don't think of a man,
and you don't think of a guy, you don't think
of a persona with superpowers on a cloud, you start
thinking about the great Mystery is contained within and throughout

(39:20):
nature and throughout time and throughout the elements and throughout north, south,
east and west, throughout the the multiverse, that it's a
it's a mysterious kind of creative force, like.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Like not an entity, but like the sum of everything or.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
That you get you're getting closer there. I mean, I
I believe that, you know, the higher power that I
look at, I do think has some some will, So
it's not just like a vague like electronic force or
something like that.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
But there is uh more than science.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
I think. I think God is more than science. I
think there is some volition. I think there is some
will coming from that, from that cosmic creative force. And
it's funny because I sat at this exact same table
talking to Neil Brennan about the cosmic creative force weird
and in this podcast this very podcast studio, and yeah,

(40:16):
but that but that really opened my eyes to a
new way of thinking about God and realizing like a
lot of people who say I don't believe in God,
I say, well, define your God, because I probably don't
believe in the God that you don't believe in.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's my thing with with religion that's always kind of
bothered me or I've struggled with, is you know, is
it that your God is real and this one is not?
You know, because I mean with a lot of religions,
you know in America, especially if you believe this, then
you're basically saying that they're wrong. Yeah, And so you know,
do you feel like the God that you believe in

(40:51):
is the correct one, or do you believe that there
is a God for everybody in some way or they
can coexist or is there anything to definitive or is
that not even what it's about, or I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, no, no, it's what you say is exactly right.
I once heard a radio show and there was a
Muslim and a Jew and a Christian talking about faith
and belief and whatnot, or set up for a joke,
and they were talking about God and this and that,
and you know, the Muslim was referring to him as Allah,
and then the Christian pastor was like, I don't believe

(41:26):
in Allah, and what you're worshiping is not God, and
I think it's a false prophet. And because I understand
God as the Father of the Son and the Holy Ghost,
and I understand the Triune God, and that's that's the
true God, and anyone who's worshiping anything else is a
false it's a false god, it's an idol. And of

(41:46):
course that's poppycock. I mean, give me a break. I
think anyone who is seeking some kind of higher truth
or transcendence or beauty or higher connection beyond just kind
of like our kind of material bodies that are, you know,
eating and pooping and fucking and all the stuff that

(42:06):
bodies do. Anyone who's that's a connection to to something higher,
however you conceive of that, whether it's Wakan Tanka or
Allah or God or Jehovah or the Princess Gaya or
you know, a wick in God or whatever, it's whatever
force is out there. So but that's throughout human history
it's been like our God versus your God and and that,

(42:29):
and that goes back to the Caveman days of like
we worship this rock god named Thar God, and then
you worship this log God named Govlax and our God.
If we conquer you, then our God is more powerful
and we're going to make you worship our God.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
That's that's tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands
of years people doing that, so we we have that
kind of baked in too. Is our God versus your.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
God verse tribal sense almost right?

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean where that that goes hand
in hand. Tribalism goes hand in hand with ego. So
we're talking about Elon Musk, We're talking about Twitter. You know,
Twitter is a bunch of egoistic tribes. It is. It
is the perfect showcase for egoism and tribalism. And it's
not helping the conversation. It's not helping the evolution away

(43:18):
from south an ego.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
I do, I do always feel a little bit like
a breath of fresh air when I read some of
your tweets, because it's always like, thank God, finally someone
who's not taking any of the shit. Seriously, it's crazy
out here, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
I try and lighten things up.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
I always appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Although I used to be on Twitter every day and
now yeah, I send one or two out a week,
and it's it's it's I don't have it on my
phone mean X right, yeah, X sorry, it's never gonna stick.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I read a story I've never heard it before that
your dad prayed away the ghosts in some Nicaroguin house
and it was maybe haunted with the what are you
talking about? What happened?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
For for real?

Speaker 1 (44:00):
For real? Okay, tell me the.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Story for real, for real, real real, So what's for real?
My family were members of the Bahai Faith and we
moved to Nicaragua in nineteen sixty nine. I was three
years old to go teach the Bahai Faith kind of
missionary work. But we weren't like kind of like converting

(44:23):
the natives. It was more it was a little more
positive than that. So there was a house for rent
on top of the hill that was this old Victorian
house in this town called Bluefields, Nicaragua, and it was
really cheap. And everyone was like, oh, you don't want
to rent that house. It's haunted, and we're like, okay,
yeah whatever, we're Americans, fuck you. So we rented the house.

(44:44):
This is what I've learned in the years. I was
only three, so I was just running around sucking my thumb.
But apparently every night we would go to bed and
my dad would hear these noises coming from downstairs, like
er he and then he kind of noticed, like he

(45:06):
would get up in the morning and go down and like,
why are the chairs in slightly different positions? Why has
everything been moved a little bit? And sure enough, the
next night it was like going to bed in the
middle of the night kind of er and he's like,
what the hell. So he went and got a piece

(45:27):
of chalk, and he went downstairs one night and drew
circles around all of the furniture and then went up
to sleep, heard the same noises, went down in the morning.
Every single piece of furniture in the house had moved
by three or four inches.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
So it's real.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
It was totally real. So he was like, holy shit,
So this is what he did. There's a high prayer
book that's filled with all kinds of prayers, and some
of the prayers there's a section like for the departed,
prayers that you say when someone passes, you know, for
the journey of their soul. And my dad and my
stepmom sat down and said every single prayer for the

(46:12):
departed from top to bottom and just you know, prayed
to just kind of like let the whatever souls are
trapped in this house or whatever force or whatever it is.
I mean, I don't know what to think.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
What's your dad think? It was?

Speaker 2 (46:27):
He just thought it. He thought it. He knew it
had to be some kind of ghost. It wasn't like
a There was no one sneaking in the house, the
doors were locked.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
It wasn't like what was a ghost to your dad?

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Like, I mean, this seems like classic Poultergeist, But I don't.
I don't really know what my dad thought. He passed
away a few years ago. I would have asked him otherwise,
but I don't know what he thought. I mean, he
just thought it was some kind of Poultergeist force. But
after that, after they did that prayers, it never happened again.
Every single night after that there were never noises and

(46:57):
no furniture moved.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
So what do you from that? Then?

Speaker 2 (47:01):
I take from that that if you need to get
rid of a ghost, get pick yourself up of a
high prayer book, say all the departed prayers. Boom, problem solved, boom.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Is this your radio rental story or it could be?

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, I could be. That would be pretty meta if
Rain Wilson called in with a radio rental story.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
We don't even say you're Rain Wilson though, just like
everyone else.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's It's just a voice, a random voice.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Let's talk for a second about the origin of Terry Carnation,
how that all started.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
So I had this idea, along with my friend Aaron Lee,
who's a brilliant comedy writer, of this, you know, a
character that I could play in some kind of recurring way.
We really loved. We were huge fans of Steve Coogan
and his character Alan Partridge. And if you know anything
about Steve Coogan, he's done straight parts and movies and

(47:54):
he's been in lots of different kinds of films and TV.
But at some point, maybe the early nineties or something,
he started playing this character named Alan Partridge. He started
as a newscaster and sportscaster. Then he had like a sitcom,
then he had like a podcast, and then he's written
audio books and he's had a bunch of different TV shows,

(48:16):
and he even has a great movie called Alpha Papa,
this Alan Partridge comedy. And he's just dufus kind of
like middle class, big toothed, self important newscaster. And I
just loved how there was an actor who had created

(48:36):
this long term character. So we were talking about, you know,
what kind of character could I play and how would
this work? And we had this idea for Terry Carnation,
and we had an idea that he would be hosting
a paranormal radio call in show, kind of like Coast
to Coast AM and we were inventing things about him

(48:57):
and this and that, and literally at that same time,
you called and we have the same podcast agent, and
you're like, I want to start doing this radio rental
and I want to have kind of like a host,
like a cryptique keeper kind of host, or would Rain
do it or would he play a character? It would
be really fun because I had tweeted how much I

(49:18):
loved Atlanta Monster, which I really love that that whole
series that you did, and so you knew I was
a fan, and I was like, yeah, I'll do it
if I can play Terry Carnation as the character, yeah,
kind of the host crypt keeper guy at the video
rental store. So that's then we just.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
It was kind of serendipitous to me because I mean
I remember hopping on the zoom because I didn't I
had no backup plans if you were like, hey man,
too busy, you can't do this. Yeah, I only could
see you in my head doing it. I don't know
where that even came from.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Yeah, that's funny.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
And then I was like in New York City and
I had a zoom schedule with you. I was like,
I was so tired. I was a little hungover too.
I was like, I can't blow this, you know. I
was like, let me just sell him on this somehow,
and hop on the zoom and described it to you,
and I was like, what do you mean you have
a similar character that you have. I'm like, is he

(50:14):
being for real? Does he think I'm being for real?

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:17):
I was like, well, shit, uh that's cool. Yeah, do
you want to do it then? Yeah? But that's been
super fun.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
It's been a great collaboration, and we were able to
make a whole Terry Carnation show separate from Radio Rental. Yeah,
and that was really fun too, to kind of take
him into some other that was more of a straight
up just comedy show. And but it's been super fun.
I mean, obviously people love the show. They're such huge

(50:48):
fans of it. There's such a loyal fan base. But yeah,
that's it, and it worked out great, and I love
working with Meredith and we have a lot of fun
doing it. People people really enjoy the show and and
they love following tear and Malachi his cat and their
little misadventures in between those spooky, spooky stories.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
I really need your help with something. And Okay, you
know how hard it is to sell a show in Hollywood.
It doesn't matter who you are, what you're doing. Yes,
And you know, my vision for Radio Rental in the
first place was always like bigger than the podcast itself.
It would be a really fun thing to reimagine visually
in either an anthology series or a movie series or

(51:30):
whatever it is, some scripted version of it. Right, But
it's a big swing because it's they have to bet
on making this world. And you know, we've gone and
we've kicked it around a few different times, and we've
almost sold it a few different times, and you know, really,
just selfishly, I just want to see it get made. Yeah, right, yeah,

(51:51):
And I'm like, you know, I care less about my
stake and I'm like, if we banded together in something
that may sense, that didn't hurt whatever you were trying
to do.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Ep, you're putting me on the spot right here, you.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Sign this piece of paper right here. It would be fun, though,
I think.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, man, that would be super fun.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
It'd be cool, which we talk about it, but it.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Would be it is a tricky one to figure out
because the audio stories are so interesting. I'm not sure
it would be what would you want it to be though,
I don't know. I mean, I haven't given any thought
to it. But if you had, well, the problem with
it is is I don't necessarily want to see I
don't necessarily want to see the people telling the stories,

(52:38):
and do you want to? Because the obvious way, like
low budget way to do it on like Discovery would
be people telling spooky stories and then having reenactments. Yeah,
that's just kind of like have you ever thought about
it animated?

Speaker 1 (52:53):
We have, but I feel like it deserves more than
that still, but it would still be cool because then
you could.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Hear people's voiceovers and then animate them and get different
animators for each story, so you didn't have a uniform
style of animation. One was more like anime, one more's
hand drawn, one was like AI, you know, and then
depending on suiting the story, then each one is like
a little black mirror, but like or is.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
It more anthology black Mirror modern pop culture? But they're
all based on true stories or creepy posters.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Do you guys own the rights to all the stories
we like, if someone comes on and tells like a
ghost story or.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
All the big ones, we definitely do cause we've you know,
even pitched those out separately, but they'd all be down to,
you know, for us to option that if they can
see it come to life. Yeah, yeah, so I mean,
and also either way it works. They always want new
stories anyways.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
But yeah, but I know how hard it is for
you guys to find those stories. So it's so much work.
You're going on redded and you're just yeah, if I
was calming the internet and YouTube and you've got researchers
and yeah, yeah, it's a it's a slog.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
I mean, it's it'd be easier to make them up
for those who want to talk shit. It's like, man,
if they're real, that's why it's harder. Yeah, I sign
myself up for that. But right, it's what it is.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
Yeah, well we'll continue the conversation.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah, it'd be fun. I got to throw it in
your ear and just you know, yeah, it might be
a fresh new approach and you know.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah, do it the way that I say animated. Animated
stuff you could do really fun. You could do really
cool stuff with it.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Yeah, yeah, what does soul Boom even mean?

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Well, the subtitle of the book is why we need
a Spiritual Revolution, And I'm trying to just reinvigorate conversations
around spirituality because spirituality either people have a knee jerk
reaction against it because it means religion and it means church,
and they're like, fuck that, I don't want to have
anything to do with that, right, or or it has
to do with this really new agey namby pamby airy

(55:03):
fairy kind of like crystals and incense and chakras and
and it's this really like vague thing that some are
yeah yeah, yeah, that you know their aunt Connie was
involved in. And they're like, oh, I don't want to,
but I do think that when you strip all that away,
take out the church, take out the new Age, spirituality

(55:25):
means that I'm a spiritual being. I have ninety years
in this fleshy, delightful, fleshy body. And what does that mean?
What kind of journey am I on? What's the meaning
of life? What happens when I die? Do I have
free will? What is love? What is beauty? What is God?

(55:45):
We talked a little bit about God, like these big
questions should be the questions that we're talking about all
the time. And they're not church questions, right, and they're
not new agey questions. They're life questions. It has as
much relevance as you know positive psychology in the study
of happiness and wellness. It's the study of of what

(56:08):
our souls are like. I don't believe that our consciousness
comes to an end when we're eighty seven or ninety
three or one hundred and two and then that's it,
and that there's no meaning to this vast, glorious, incredible
uh panapoly of stars and matter and energy, that it's
just always been here. Does that doesn't make any sense

(56:31):
to me.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
How do you grapple with how big it is? I mean,
it's so big we learn it. It's bigger every day.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
It's bigger every day.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, how do you how do you wrap your mind
around infinity? Because that's what the divine is, That's what's Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
I think we learned that there is no wall. I
think if you don't get to the end.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
It's not the Truman show. You don't bump.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah. Do you mean do you think that there's other
intelligent life? I mean, I think at this point would
be for me at least, it would be incredibly insane
if there wasn't.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
You'd have to be an idiot to think that there
wasn't some other kind of life out there. I mean,
that's crazy. Ian uaes aside, like just like we're the
only one out of trillions and trillions of stars, were
the only ones that that evolved here? And also the
other big mysteries like how why is there life on Earth?
Like there's there's chemicals, like when did chemistry turn into biology?

(57:23):
When exactly? And how do you have a bunch of chemicals.
You've got magnesium and lithium and silicon and you know,
carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and helium all kind of
bouncing around to various degrees on planet Earth? When does
a when does a pyramesium or an amoeba, you know?
Or when when does life start? And how The best

(57:48):
answer someone has is like, well, that must have been
on a meteor orte that fell into the ocean, which
is just a total non answer.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
Right, But they're saying that it was caused by something, right, Yeah,
mean basically right.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Caused by something. But it's one of the great It's
one of the great mysteries, you know, and no one
digs in. Also, like the mystery of human consciousness, Like, yeah,
we can be having this conversation and we can have
memories about you know, our families, and we can feel
things in our hearts, and we can go compose poetry

(58:21):
and operas, and we can marvel at the beauty of
a tree, and you know, we can come up with
incredible mathematical formulas like consciousness is beautiful and ineffable and
magical And did that really just happen because we have
slightly bigger brains than an ape? Is that really what

(58:42):
consciousness is?

Speaker 1 (58:43):
I mean, I always wonder and I'm sure Bill and
I the science guy or Nila Grosse Tyson would debunk
this somehow, but probably not definitively. If we evolve from apes,
then why are they still around? Maybe there's some good
reason for that.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Also, like what about the missing link? Like there's a
bunch there's a bunch of human species that they've found right, right,
and there's a bunch of monkey species, but like the
whole thing of like the missing.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Link, where's the first one of us?

Speaker 2 (59:12):
But they haven't really found Like where is that halfway
between monkey. You can't say neanderthal. There's a distinctly human.
They're a distinctly human species. They're dead, and there's chimpanzees
and orangutangs are just around. There's a distinctly you know,
monkey and ape species. And then what's what is in between?
And we don't have any fossils. It's a little bit weird.

(59:34):
And that gets me into what was that alien resurrection?
What was the one where the no, no, it was
the one with the bald aliens came down and like
made humans Prometheus?

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Yes, yes, yes, you wonder like, yeah, are we part
of the well, we part of the experiment. I mean
think about even just on Earth. If there's some you know,
like you go to South Georgia and there's some swamp preservation,
We're like, hey, guys, don't go tou anything in this
you know, preserved area, so the wildlife can be unbothered.

(01:00:06):
Are we that in some way? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
With a bunch of these ships flying around. But here's
the deal, Like these aliens answer me this.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
The uaes PS.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
United Arab Emirates is U A I D S or
I U D is A that's a that's something else.
That's a yeah, UAPs, Unidentified aerial phenomenon UAPs, Sorry about that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
I like UFO's that was always more fun.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
That's just that is more fun. But if these guys
wanted to not be seen, certainly they have the technology
to not be seen. So they want to be seen,
and they want to show us that they have a
technology that far surpasses anything we can even imagine, like
instantaneously going from here to there and you know, in

(01:00:55):
vast numbers and disappearing. I know you have so many
of those great stories, like so, what are the alien
species that are monitoring us? And I talk about this
a little bit in my book Soul Boom. I have
a conversation among aliens that are observing planet Earth about
what they're seeing, because what are they seeing. They're seeing
us destroy our own planet with climate change. They're seeing

(01:01:18):
us pump unlimited amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere,
causing heat trapping gases to create a blanket, and extreme
weather events that are killing more and more people and
ruining crops and starting droughts and all kinds of stuff.
They're seeing us do this. They're seeing us on the

(01:01:39):
verge of war. And actually fighting wars and they're observing
all that. But why do they want us to see them,
because they could just do it from behind the moon, right, what.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Do you think? Well, they clearly don't want us to
see them all the time. I mean, and maybe I
wonder if we're just getting a glimpse of them where
they were a moment ago.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
But they want us to have that glimp because if
they didn't want us to have that, they could control that, right,
But totally they can also control landing on the White
House lawn too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Sure, So, like you know, if if there's ever like
a disclosure moment and they revealed themselves to the whole world,
they would clearly be in control of that. They would
be holding that. It would be up to them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
I have the beginning of a science fiction movie, and
I want one of your fans to write it. Okay,
the alien spacecraft lands on the White House lawn. The
hatch opens, an alien comes out. I don't know what
it looks like. I'm look like an alien or looks
like a humanoid and says has a translator device or

(01:02:40):
something like that, so is able to speak perfect English
and says, I am the return of Jesus Christ boy,
because Christ returning on a cloud? What if Christ? What
if the return of Christ was an alien?

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
There's a lot of stories in the Bible that sound
a lot like euphociding. Yes, so if they're real, you
wonder what those big bright lights in this guy were
where they it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Was gone, the chariot of the gods and the fire back?
For that would be what's the craziest uap not UAE
story that from high strange? What's the one that like,
there's one that just sticks in your head and like, shit,
this is so so weird.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
I would really probably the biggest one to me, it
still has to be Travis Walton. And because I met
with this person, and you know, I was able to
give him a real assessment. This guy did not want
to be there today. He begrudgingly met to tell me

(01:03:50):
the story. He only even did it because I know
someone who happens to know him, which is also weird.
But he would have never talked about it because he's
over it and he was clearly living through this traumatic experience.
And so you have five different people saying that they
all saw the same thing, right, they all saw him
get sucked up into a spaceship in the middle of

(01:04:12):
the woods in Snowflake, Arizona, and then he was missing
for five days. And so either he was hiding and
they were all in on it. Where was he I
don't know, because they searched all the houses, or he
was unconscious in the woods and they couldn't find him
on all the dog searches and he somehow didn't die

(01:04:33):
out there, or he was for he's telling the truth.
It's just one of those things where it's it's it's
almost weirder the rational explanation for it. And he's convinced
after all these years that he was somehow injured by
this craft and they actually saved his life, is what

(01:04:53):
he thinks. They were like, oh shit, you know, I mean,
and I'm like, Dann, it kind of makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
What does a spleen do again? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
They love poking around in all the different holes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
That's the thing about the alien abduction thing that that
gets me. It's like, really like, but what do you
mean really like?

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Is it no?

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Really the anal probe, like you know with the pros
or all they need to do is like upload, uh,
you know, all the biological information that they want. They
don't need to like take someone up and like open
their anus and go.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
But maybe there's something just about that old school.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
But you cannot deny you cannot deny the dozens or
hundreds of military pilots around the world. Yeah, footage, that's
the first hand of these sober, lifelong military guys. These
are not some like crazy hippies living in the woods
in Idaho. These are like they're they're like, you know,

(01:05:59):
these Air Force commanders.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Intelligent people that you trusted to operate the most advanced
machines on earth. Those people are saying that one hundred
so it'd be and they have and they have footage,
They have footage. Yeah, yeah, I think that it's those
stories are always credible to me, and I often wonder
there's no way that all these stories that we've heard

(01:06:23):
throughout generations they're all not true, Like that would be
more insane if we've got to a level of just
intelligence as a human species where our imaginations have convinced
us that we've seen UFOs and aliens before.

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Doesn't but we know it's possible, But doesn't that sync
up with MDes near death experiences, which is which is
a way that you know you hear it all the time,
Like people dying on the operating table, floating above the table,
see the doctors working on them, are drawn into the light.
There's some loved ones with them, there's some kind of tunnel,

(01:07:03):
there's some kind of vague understanding that they're they're able
to kind of witness their whole life more like on
a tapestry rather than sequentially. So they're a little bit
outside of time and they're kind of called there, and
they're called back, and they choose to kind of come back,
like thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands every culture
in the world, Like, are we really having a collective

(01:07:27):
like dream?

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Like that's what I'm saying. That would be more bizarre
to me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
You know what Okam's razor is, which is like the
simplest answer is usually the right one or the most correct.
I mean, I know the phrase the simplest answer is
that near death experiences are true, that that's what happens
when we die, We're going into some kind of journey
to life. That's a simpler answer than to say, hundreds
of thousands of people around the world are having the

(01:07:52):
same weird illusory dreams.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
That's not about their data, right, Yeah, I mean I
even feel that sometimes about uh like deja vu. Ever
had a really good one ton where you're just like, hey,
this is not possible.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
When, especially when I was younger, I had deja vu
all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
You're about to like he's about to do this, and
you're gonna, yeah, what's up with that? Yeah? It makes it.
It's convincing when you if you have a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
I don't know. I think that, you know, if we're
trying to get somewhere like as far as Pluto or something,
we're not gonna get there efficiently by some combustible engine.
I think that somewhere in time and other realms or dimensions,
whatever it is, we have.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
To figure out how to We've got to figure out
how to navigate time. Because that's uh, And I love why.
I love the movie interstell or something.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
I should watch. I watched the last Night again what
it holds up? Yeah? It's good.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Oh man, rewatch I've seen it like three times, but
the last time it's been at least five or six years.
I love that movie. But we have to figure out
how to navigate time, and some some really unique way. Otherwise,
interstellar travel is just not possible.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
It's not possible. Yeah, we're not able to get there
the way.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
We have to go beyond the speed of light. Forget
the speed of light or.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Just skip that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Yeah, skip that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Maybe it's maybe far away is actually really close, Like
that's what it is, right so far away, but it's
actually just right here on Maybe it's all an illusion.
Maybe exactly right. You have a play around with AI,
like ever ask it questions or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Vaguely, Yeah, not so much. I haven't gone there too much.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
Ever gotten anywhere? Fun I like to have the AI.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Tell jokes in the style of a lot of my
comedian friends, and then I send them those jokes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
It's kind of funny that they can do that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
It's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
I put it to the test just to see the
other day. I was like, I don't even if it'll
do this. I was like, right, this like paragraph in
the way that Payne Lindsay would say it in his
new true crime podcast. Oh nice, And it did it.
And I was like, holy shit, that's pretty and it
was good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Yeah, And this is only the beginning of scratching the
surface of the AI, Like, oh, five years from now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah. And the thing is it's here to stay now.
It's there's no it's like the Internet. It's like wishing
that the Internet would go away first, that social.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Media would go away.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Yeah, well it's here too late. Well, before I let
you go, I want to show you one funny thing
actually has to do with AI. So my friend he's
an engineer at Tenderfoot and he does a lot all
the sound design for radio rental and high strange. He's
really hip on all the new things. So there's software
now that can you know, mimic your voice? Oh no,

(01:10:38):
and so, and it's just learning from all that's out
there on the internet. So people like myself or.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Did it do Rain Wilson's voice?

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
I'll have him do it, but he didn't mind. I
want to see if you can, Oh man, you can. Okay,
this is uh. I mean it's a little rowbody, but
not by much. You're like, okay, maybe you could see
how in like a year it would be out of control.
And there'll be some I'll have to say, Hey, that

(01:11:07):
wasn't really me that said that really fucked up thing. Right,
it'll be that which is like a deep fake of
audio scary, right, Okay, here we go.

Speaker 4 (01:11:18):
Greetings fellow truth seekers, and welcome back to Up and Vanished,
the podcast where we dive deep into the shadows of
cold cases. I'm your host Payne, but before we jump in,
I want to share a message from our partner spot
pet Insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
So I never said any of those words. I've never,
I never. I didn't even give it anything.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:11:46):
Greetings fellow truth seekers, schelde Verte.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
Up and Vanished podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
All of a sudden, you're fluent in French.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Yeah, I learned it real fast.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Damn which one is that?

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
I need to ask Cooper what it is. I'll text
it to you. But he just blindly sent me like
this in four languages, and I was like, what the
hell is going on? And it hurt my brain? But
I gave it nothing. I didn't. I never said these words.
And it's pretty close. Yeah. Yeah, especially if you don't
know me, you would just say, yeah, that's pain, right,
So I bet you yours is prob is Really that's scary.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
That's absolutely scary.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Yes, there'll be a moment where someone's getting I imagine
to like an audio that didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
But I imagine too, like Let's say that I was
sued and I was totally bankrupt, and some company came
and said, hey, for a million bucks, we want your
likeness and your voice. We get to do whatever the
hell we want to do with it. You sign it away,
and I'm like, screw it. Fine, they own this and
they own this voice. And then all of a sudden,

(01:12:58):
Rain Wilson is in like food commercials, Rain Wilson is
in porn. Rain Wilson is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
In you know, narrated. He wanted to do that. You
didn't get around the jagr in your career.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Cat food and porn. But you know, I'm that could
happen too.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Oh totally, yeah, I mean that's where that's what they
want to do. It wasn't the writer's strike a little
bit about that. There were some there were some aspects
and the tinge of that where like they can start,
you know, and I don't think that. I think the
human touch is always going to be a step ahead
of AI in creativity, Yeah, you know, because it's always
pulling from what we've already done. Yeah, but the recreating

(01:13:33):
of a voice.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
But you should do in a In one of your
Pain Lindency podcasts, you should you know, you do all
the you do the intro, and you do a bunch
of interstecial interstitials, make one of them AI and have
people try and guess which one is the AI.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
Out of AI.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
Pain.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Yeah, we're just like I squeeze in one segment of AI.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet you wouldn't mild it like
an ad for better help or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
That's what I really want it for. Yeah, second, stop
reading these day and the hats. Oh I said it.
I said it perfectly. Actually you want to redo it?
You got it? That's fine. Yeah, Well, thanks man, it's
been fun. I appreciate catching up pain, love what you do.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Happy to be here with you. Great conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Well I appreciate a manspit of last Thanks man, Yeah sure. Peace.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Talking to Death is a production of Tenderfoot TV and
iHeart Podcasts, created and hosted by Payne Lindsay. For Tenderfoot TV,
executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Co executive
producer is Mike Rooney. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. With original music by Makeup

(01:14:43):
and Vanity Set. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington,
Sean Nurney, Dayton Cole, and Gustav Wilde for Coohedo. Production
support by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis, and Trevor Young. Mixing
and mastering by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our cover
art was created by Rob Sheridan. Check out our website

(01:15:04):
Talking to Death podcast dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Thanks for listening, and here's an exclusive sneak peek of
the brand new season of Up and Vanished. Tune in
to Up and Vanished every Friday starting February sixteenth for
the full episodes. I'm sleep deprived, my stomach's empty, and

(01:15:36):
every breath I take feels like a conscious effort. I've
been like this for days now, disoriented and to put
it bluntly, scared out of my mind. Every sound, every
movement on this plane seems amplified. My surroundings feel surreal,

(01:16:00):
like I'm watching myself in third person. My mind just
can't keep up with the pace of reality. I've been
on four different flights in the last eighteen hours, small
rickety planes in the remote region of northern Alaska. Thanks

(01:16:21):
for listening to this episode of Talking to Death. This
series is released weekly absolutely free, but if you want
ad free listening and exclusive bonuses, you can subscribe to
tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or go to tenderfootplus dot
com