Share & Witch & Tell with Michael Cruz Kayne and "The Supermarket Sorceress"

What does real-life witch Lexa Roséan think of Etsy witches in the MLB playoffs? Is there a recipe to re-kill Bin Laden and/or save humanity from A. I.? And how easy it to f*ck up a spell? Plus: witch wars, curse battles, the origin of "abracadabra," the butt fumble of spells... and none of that Harry Potter sh*t. Also: Cheeseburger. • Learn more about Lexa Roséan http://www.lexarosean.com/ • Listen to "Sorry for Your Loss" https://www.audible.com/pd/Sorry-for-Your-Loss-Audiobook/B0CGJSXSPFby Michael Cruz Kayne Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  The Jets are losers. And they're

• 0:11Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 0:15Speaker 02

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• 0:48Pablo Torre?

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• 1:31Pablo Torre?

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• 1:55Pablo Torre?

  Can you explain what we look like to you for people who maybe aren't watching on YouTube yet?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  You look like a tree, sort of. Yeah, a tree.

• 2:04Pablo Torre?

  Sort of. That is a strong endorsement of this incredibly

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Because I see the bark.

• 2:09Pablo Torre?

  Static-y costume that I'm wearing.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  I see the bark. I see the trunk.

• 2:12Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  There aren't really leaves.

• 2:14Pablo Torre?

  Well, if I may wave my branches.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  There does appear to be one leaf.

• 2:19Pablo Torre?

  They gave us one [bleep] leaf?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  One leaf, one little orange leaf.

• 2:22Pablo Torre?

  One little orange leaf.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Well, the leaves have fallen now.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  When you say they gave you one leaf, it doesn't appear from looking at the costume that you spent like a ton of money on it. Because they kind of be grateful for what you got.

• 2:32Pablo Torre?

  The fact that it feels almost velveteen?

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:35Pablo Torre?

  It's like a satin?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe it's Armani.

• 2:39Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  It says something.

• 2:41Pablo Torre?

  Oh yeah, I'm wearing a sign on my chest, on my bark. It says, "No trespass."

• 2:47Speaker 03

  It's kind of like a foreboding tree.

• 2:50Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  It's an eerie tree.

• 2:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  In the yard of the house on like on top of the hill that you're not supposed to go to.

• 2:55Pablo Torre?

  And on that hill, there is a studio. And in the middle chair of the table in the studio, there is?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  A cheeseburger.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  A cheeseburger. Am I a cheeseburger? I am, there's a big piece of cheese.

• 3:08Pablo Torre?

  You're a cheeseburger.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  I'm a cheeseburger.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yum, yum, yum.

• 3:11Pablo Torre?

  A wrinkle on what our attention was.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  I assumed it was a hamburger based on an episode of this show that I've done before. And many discussions about Mr. Hamburger. Alonzo Hamburger Jones, the great comedian.

• 3:23Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 3:26Pablo Torre?

  What's happening? Oh, we forgot to turn these on?

• 3:29Speaker 03

  The production value here is crazy. You guys spare no expense.

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  And on this hill, in that house, there are

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Oh, look at this.

• 3:37Pablo Torre?

  Multiple producers.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Is my navel, I think so.

• 3:40Pablo Torre?

  Who are making clear that this is a Halloween episode.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Whoa, boo.

• 3:45Pablo Torre?

  Will we cut around this in the edit?

• 3:47Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 3:47Pablo Torre?

  Probably not. Are you familiar with the catchphrase comic Hamburger Jones?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to help me there.

• 3:56Pablo Torre?

  Well, there's a previous episode of this show we're gonna direct you to. Are you familiar with the aspiration scandal involving the Los Angeles Clippers? And Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Wow, no.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  That's perfectly fine. That just makes you a normal member of society.

• 4:12Pablo Torre?

  And also, there's another episode that you can catch up on. We're not here to quiz you. Michael and I are definitely not here to quiz you.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Wait, is the tree something to do with aspiration? Oh, because the tree, oh my god, the trees.

• 4:25Pablo Torre?

  God, damn it, are we?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  Okay, sorry, I'm sorry.

• 4:27Pablo Torre?

  We, we-

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Totally in the dark here.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  I think- Spookily in the dark. That's really good. Are we bad at co-hosting or merely doing a thematic reveal? Does a hamburger have to talk like that? The hamburger's not spooky at all. Cheeseburger.

• 4:43Pablo Torre?

  Cheeseburger.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  The cheeseburger, I think, is sort of inviting. It's kind of a delightful costume.

• 4:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. I do want to explain that, uh, Michael and I do this thing lately where the two of us sit at a table and we talk to someone who has no idea who we are or what we even do. And so, could you please introduce yourself to the Pablo Torre Finds Out audience by name and perhaps by occupation?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  So, my name is Alexa Roseanne, and I'm a professional witch and a psychoanalyst. And also, I'm not really wearing a costume, but I am wearing my Marie Laveau voodoo t-shirt. So she was a-

• 5:20Speaker 03

  The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  She was a famous, uh, practitioner of voodoo in New Orleans and a pretty amazing woman. But I'm just an ordinary-

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Witch?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  I mean, that, that, to me, is, that's a paradoxical description to me, every witch. I mean, I will, I will tell you just off the bat, your personality seems lovely, but inherently, I fear you.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Is that, is that okay to say that?

• 5:50Pablo Torre?

  Is that offensive, that we are kind of afraid of you?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  No, I'm cool with that.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Okay, good. Otherwise, it'd be a lot of pretending. I mean, you seem delightful. Just, I, I can only assume that when I hear the word witch, I have a certain set of priors about what that entails.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's par for the course, you know, when, when we do something good and we heal, then we're praised. But when the crops fail, we're burned.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:20Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  That's, that's pretty hardcore.

• 6:22Pablo Torre?

  I, I, I, I do want to explain, again, to those who are just listening and not watching, things you might be surprised if you clicked on this video and only knew of witches through the movies. You aren't wearing a hat.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  No, I was when I came in, but I, you mean the pointy witchy hat?

• 6:42Speaker 03

  That feels like the most offensive thing that's been said so far is the pointy hat thing. I just sort of, I assumed that was a caricature of a witch.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I didn't come with my broom either.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  Look at that.

• 6:53Pablo Torre?

  That was my follow up question.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  In front of your building.

• 6:59Pablo Torre?

  In true, like genuine appreciation, I want to say thank you for sitting here and allowing us to ask you questions that are going to be many degrees of stupid, but also I think sincere. I want to quote from no less a publication than The Village Voice.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Of course, sure.

• 7:17Pablo Torre?

  To point out that you, Alexa, were voted best witch in NYC.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  No shit.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, real shit.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  That's congratulations. That seems pretty cool. What's the, are there, for something like that, are there other witches that you're like, it better [BLEEP] and not go to this other witch?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's some [BLEEP] witches that you're like not a fan of.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Okay, interesting.

• 7:40Pablo Torre?

  How many witches would you say are in, well, I guess New York City is our, is our current location. Let's just keep it to that. How many of them?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I think thousands. There's many, many witches or witch wannabes, right?

• 7:56Speaker 03

  What's a witch, what, I feel like I'm about to embark on the tongue twister by accident. What makes a witch a witch wannabe? Why couldn't you be, if you want to be a witch, why couldn't, if you want to be a witch, why wouldn't you be a witch?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  So there's, there's a lot of different theories about that. Like when I was younger, I went through a series of initiations and studying to become a witch in a, in a tradition that dates back to Gerald Gardner, who was kind of the first person in England to come out of the witch closet in, I guess, 1958, the year I was born, after they repealed the witchcraft laws in England. Because before that, if you let yourself be known as witch, you might be burnt the stake, you might be hung. So at that time, back in the, in the mid eighties, I met several people who referred to themselves as hereditary witches, which...

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Sounded a little dubious, heredity, especially the hereditary druids, because they kind of disappeared, hard to trace. But today, there most likely are many hereditary witches, because the women and men that I grew up with all had kids. Well, the ones who do have kids, they grew up in Wiccan homes. So Wicca is a sort of modern reconstructive religion of what they imagined ancient pagan religions were like. But there are many people who just call themselves witches without going through any training.

• 9:32Pablo Torre?

  How does one get initiated, as you were, into this craft?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  So it's not a particularly proselytizing group, religion, if you want to call it. You have to ask, and then you have to study for a year and a day, and then you have to ask again. And there's like a year and a day studying between each initiation. And the third one-

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Literally one year and one day?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the third one, you become a high priest or a high priestess.

• 10:06Pablo Torre?

  Is there the equivalent of a pope for witches?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Well, we do have witch queens.

• 10:12Pablo Torre?

  Whoa!

• 10:12Speaker 01

  But they're, to be a witch queen, I don't know. You have to have a certain number of covens offshoot from you, or a certain number of initiates. I'm not a witch queen. But my priestess is, both of them are witch queens.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  I guess that makes sense. There's like a lot of bureaucracy. Because there has to be. In any hierarchical organization, there has to be-

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the more organized it became, the sort of more it fell apart.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Right. The more you're just like, I just want to [BLEEP] cast spells, guys. What the [BLEEP]?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  I gotta fill out a form and

• 10:48Pablo Torre?

  I was here for the newts.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  So that's why I'm very soft about, as I called before, wannabes, which is maybe, maybe not such a nice term. It's like, I kind of feel like, you know what, if you want to be a witch, be a witch. I wanted, want to be a witch when I was a little, little. And my mother would take me to the library and I would check out books on witchcraft. And I had an experience when I was like, maybe seven with my father of, like, I made him do this ritual with me to raise the dead and it worked. And, uh,

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Wait, what? What do you mean it worked?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  It worked.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  What, what happened? Yeah, but what do you, what does that mean?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Well, we used to go to Jamaica for our holiday. And there's a famous place there and a famous woman called the White Witch of Rose Hall. And, and she's kind of infamous because she had several husbands and, and kind of supposedly murdered them all. But I don't know where in my seven-year-old mind, I decided this wasn't true. And we should, I had read in a book that my mother got me in the library, a spell to raise the dead. And I wanted to raise the dead and I want to ask her what happened. Kind of wanted to clear her name. And I convinced my father to take me there at midnight. There's a place where she's supposedly buried there.

• 12:06Pablo Torre?

  There's a whole, I mean, needless to say, there's a whole Wikipedia page about this.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 12:10Pablo Torre?

  The White Witch of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Annie Palmer.

• 12:13Pablo Torre?

  In, in, in Rose Hall, Montego Bay.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Montego Bay.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  My father's favorite place.

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I've seen the commercials.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I only know, I only know it, I think, from the song Kokomo.

• 12:25Pablo Torre?

  I just want to point out to the basic sort of setup of like, why are we doing this beyond our general curiosity? Which is, in Michael's case, endless.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. We don't have enough time for the episode I want to do.

• 12:36Pablo Torre?

  But I would say that Witches are kind of having a moment right now. Not merely because it's literally Halloween.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  It is, it is 'tis the season of the witch.

• 12:47Pablo Torre?

  And 'tis the year of the witch, I dare say.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Oh, tell me about that.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm interested in this too.

• 12:52Pablo Torre?

  I mean, my, my, uh, daughter and my niece, their favorite thing is Wicked.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Oh, right. Wicked, oh, well, Wicked is fabulous.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Okay, good to know the witches like Wicked.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Movie and the Broadway show, oh, absolutely.

• 13:09Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and, and the story they're in of like, there is a green-skinned villain who turns out to be both the hero of the story and also like...

• 13:19Speaker 01

  It's a nice turnaround.

• 13:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I, I just wonder if in that, there is some resonance for you as somebody who maybe projects on the basis of her profession and her, perhaps, rituals as scary, but in fact, may well be a friend to all.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I'm totally down with that.

• 13:39Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that I'm wondering if, at some point in this episode, you will consider casting a spell on a couple of people that we might ask you to. Towards the end, not yet, but just me and Michael, we're gonna sort of like, soft-launch some, some curses.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we can talk about that. I, people always ask me, are you a good witch? Are you a bad witch? I say I'm a real witch. So, at times, you know, we need to lay some stuff down.

• 14:11Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  To protect ourselves.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Are witches with the curses, et cetera, are we ever like, cursing each other back and forth? Curse, curse battle?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Oh, don't even get me started on witch wars.

• 14:22Pablo Torre?

  Witch wars?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Witch wars. Of course, that's what they're called.

• 14:25Pablo Torre?

  The 106 in Park of witches.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  So sometimes witches are just blasting back and forth?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:32Pablo Torre?

  Oh my god. Damn, I do wanna understand.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  This episode's gonna be 12 hours long.

• 14:55Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 15:28Speaker 02

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• 16:05Pablo Torre?

  My understanding of the witch as a profession, and I guess wizards, is that how we should think of it? Are they related, separate? No, not the same thing at all.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  They can be, they can not be. Depends who you talk to.

• 16:17Pablo Torre?

  Right. Growing up, I was, of course, familiar with the stories of King Arthur, in which Merlin was, of course, a very famous wizard.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Mordred, you got Mordred, that's the bad one, right?

• 16:28Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Is it Mordred the evil, the evil?

• 16:30Pablo Torre?

  I don't want to cast aspersions in front of a witch about whether one is a good or a bad witch.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  My impression was Merlin was the good one, and Mordred was the evil one. I know this from playing the game. I can't think what the game's called. Avalon.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Avalon.

• 16:44Pablo Torre?

  Avalon.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I think so that's kind of what Wicked is about.

• 16:48Pablo Torre?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Sort of the idea of like, who's telling the story?

• 16:51Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  I see, I see. Okay, so you're saying that like, you know, the perspective might shift. My view is overly simplistic.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:00Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Okay, that's hurtful, but I, but probably correct.

• 17:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:03Pablo Torre?

  Likewise, Jafar, from Aladdin.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 17:08Pablo Torre?

  You know, he's working for the Sultan of Agrabah. But what if he too has a bunch of interests that my niece might enjoy?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, he, but we gotta, Jafar's a bad guy. Have you, are you familiar with, with Jafar?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  I'm not as familiar with Jafar.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Well, then we shouldn't dwell on it, but that guy's a bad guy.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  But you're making me think of the latest Superman, which brings up these kind of issues as well. Just the idea of like, who's the villain?

• 17:32Pablo Torre?

  Yes. Yeah, and, and I guess what I'm saying is, across not just the world of musical theater and the cinematic adaptations of musical theater, as well as various children's books, we're also getting to this point where, I mean, have you heard of the Etsy witches that have gone viral and the various things that they've done on the internet?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  I, I'm hearing about that, yes.

• 17:52Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I'm noticing that you're not eager to cosign what all the other alleged witches are up to, because they may not be up to the, you know, standards.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Listen, I'm in my crone years at this point. Do you know about the crone?

• 18:07Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Where we have, you know, the triple goddess, maiden, mother, and crone. So I'm in my older years, maybe a bit more laid back.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  You know, it's gonna really take something to get me up from the table, okay? To start stirring some shit, right.

• 18:26Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  In my youth, I cast my share.

• 18:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  I can't believe this is a conversation I'm having. That's not a sentence a person I have ever talked to in real life has said. Oh yeah, in my youth, buddy, I cast my share.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  I was flabbergasted to learn on the internet that one of the Etsy witches apparently only charged $16 for a cursed lifting spell. And a Mariners fan hired them for approximately $16. And there was a winning streak and then, of course, a horrific exit from the MLB playoffs. So mileage varies, I guess, on the efficacy of the $16 spell.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And listen, I have respect for the $16 and I have respect for that particular Etsy witch, whether she's, you know, self-initiated. There is, there are self-initiations. Whether she's gone through a true initiation process.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  But, you know, perhaps she didn't charge enough and that's why the spell kind of conked out midway. But there's, there's lots of theories that we could go into about that. You know my story, right?

• 19:35Pablo Torre?

  I would, I would love for you to tell.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Please, guys, tell me your story.

• 19:38Pablo Torre?

  The way that wicked allowed witches to do, I would love for you to tell your story.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Yes, please.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So, and George Vessi wrote about this in, in the New York Times.

• 19:46Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the great sports writer, George Vessi.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yes. So I had a group of fellows come to me. They were in their early 30s and they were New York Jets fans and the fathers had been Jets fans. So, you know, it's a thing inherited, right, to the, from the father to the son. And of course, the Jets had not won a Super Bowl since 1969 with Joe Namath. They wanted me to take the curse off of the Jets. So I agreed. I grew up in a football house. My father played football, his brother played. High school, a little bit of college, and I thought, well, maybe I, I can do this. No money involved, although you should always

• 20:30Speaker 01

  cross the palm with silver for anything that, business you do with a witch. You should do that.

• 20:37Pablo Torre?

  Is that literal or figurative?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Well, it, it could be paper money.

• 20:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. I don't think we have any silver, but you could probably scrounge up some dollars.

• 20:47Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I think, I, late at night on Fox News, they're selling, I think. You can, you can, you can get some of that.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Is, you said, the way you said, cross the palm with silver, sounded like it was a quote from something. Is that?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  It is. I don't know where it's from, but it's, yeah, it is.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  An ancient tome.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  An ancient tome.

• 21:02Pablo Torre?

  A rune, perhaps.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  So.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  He did the spell as I instructed and there were several phases to it. And as he was doing it, the Jets were winning and things were going along really well. And then it was that, that final game and chance that they had. And he, I didn't find this out till later, but they lost the game. And, you know, I forget what Vessi ended up writing about it. But what he didn't investigate, and I investigated afterwards, is like I called the fellow up. I was like, what happened? I actually was sick and could not, he went to Times Square to do this big ritual. And I instructed him on what to do, but I couldn't be with him.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  And he told me that he, he made a variation on the chant that I had given him.

• 21:54Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  To say that he wanted the Jets to win the Super Bowl in his lifetime, which was not what he was instructed. He was instructed to say to win, to, to win this game, this particular game in this particular year. So as a psychoanalyst, I have some theories about that.

• 22:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Which is that I think that these guys are, the Jets are losers. And there's, there's something about being invested in losers.

• 22:25Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And maybe not wanting to give up that status.

• 22:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh, you're saying he said, he self sabotaged the spell?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course he did. I mean, he should live a long life. He should live a very long life. And I'm convinced that one day in his lifetime, the Jets will win.

• 22:38Pablo Torre?

  But he basically.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Not this year.

• 22:41Pablo Torre?

  He, he edited the own, he edited his own fine print to make it so that the spell was undermined. Because as a psychoanalyst, you also can detect that some part of him, at the core of him, the most inner ring of his body is, is just a, a big loser who didn't want to stop losing.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  I mean, he went to a witch. He said, tell me how to do this. The witch goes, here's how you do it. And then you don't do what the witch says?

• 23:12Pablo Torre?

  And then it starts working. And then at the finish line, he's like, actually. Let's, you could, you could, you could make this work anytime as long as I'm still around, which just means, you know.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Jeez Louise.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  I know.

• 23:25Pablo Torre?

  That is a very, that's the butt fumble of spells.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Really? What, what, approximately what year are we talking about here?

• 23:31Speaker 01

  2010.

• 23:32Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Oh, so not that long ago.

• 23:34Pablo Torre?

  The 2010 Jets, as a matter of historical record, lost in the AFC title game with the aforementioned butt fumbler.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Oh, it was Mark Sanchez.

• 23:45Pablo Torre?

  Who this year has not been a great year, perhaps just merely as a matter of general observation for Mark Sanchez. We'll flash a headline here, not great for the guy who could have been saved via spell, uh, but instead was of course beholden to the, uh, self-editing of an inveterate hereditary loser.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Right, but they did win some earlier games.

• 24:09Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:10Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I mean, it made it the AFC title game.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:12Pablo Torre?

  Look, the, the notion that sports fans come to you, what about sports to you feels ripe for this sort of like, I guess, both psychosis and longing for some supernatural, truly supernatural intervention?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing I think of is baseball. A lot of superstition in baseball, right? They don't even need witches, kind of. They have all kinds of

• 24:39Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  superstitions and there's a history of curses with the Red Sox.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Curse the bambino.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Curse the bambino.

• 24:48Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  So.

• 24:49Pablo Torre?

  Jason Giambi, Yankee slugger, used to wear a lucky gold thong. Um, speaking to.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  Superstition.

• 24:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the power of such objects, of cursed objects.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Let me ask you this. I think of, the word superstition to me is pejorative. Immediately, it's like, kind of a silly thing, is that, do you view superstition in the same way?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  What I think of is respect. You know, there's certain, certain road you don't cross without, uh, leaving an offering, let's say.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Got it. Okay, respect.

• 25:23Pablo Torre?

  Well, when it comes to who taught you that respect. What did you inherit?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, that's a long story. I mean, I, my mother could read your mind, and that was really scary. So there's that kind of element of respect.

• 25:41Pablo Torre?

  Well, how vivid is your memory of what your mom was, was reading?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Oh, she just knew. She knew what you were up to. I mean, it was, it was truly scary.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  I think, I think what my question is, do you mean like in the way that I also think my mom knew what I was up to? Or do you mean like she had some kind of supernatural ability?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  No, I mean, she had some kind of super, she was born with a caul. Do you know what that is? It's a veil that, that the baby is covered in a, like a veil or a caul. And they say that those people are witches.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Wait, what the hell are you talking about? The baby is born with a, a, a-

• 26:14Pablo Torre?

  Oh, C A U L?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. But what, what does that look like?

• 26:18Pablo Torre?

  Well, you can describe it, I suppose, but I'm reading the definition.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I didn't see it, but it's kind of like a, a cloak or a veil.

• 26:26Pablo Torre?

  It's, it's a thin-

• 26:27Speaker 03

  When the baby is born, there's a cloak over the baby.

• 26:30Pablo Torre?

  A, a thin membrane covering a newborn's head at birth, which is sometimes associated with superstitions of, uh, yeah, various interpretations.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Never heard of this in my life.

• 26:41Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's a thin, filmy membrane of the amniotic sac, Michael.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 26:46Pablo Torre?

  That can cover a newborn's head and face at birth.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  A caul. C A W L?

• 26:51Pablo Torre?

  C A U L.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  C A U L.

• 26:54Pablo Torre?

  This is dramatic.

• 26:56Pablo Torre?

  This is dramatic.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  So your mother, your mother was born with a caul?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:01Pablo Torre?

  From, from, from the first second she showed up.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  And babies who are born with a caul, immediately, the assumption is that they have some kind of a power. Because this is, I guess, then extremely, I've never even heard of this, so it must be somewhat rare.

• 27:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I've never heard of it until now, to be, to be quite clear.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  But it's, but it's a thing.

• 27:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, some early, modern European traditions. Uh, oh, boy, yeah, linked caul birth to the ability to defend fertility and the harvest against the forces of evil. Oh, interesting, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a whole folklore around this.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Okay, I mean, I'm obsessed with this now. This is what I'm gonna spend the rest of my, after we're done here, that's what I'm gonna spend the rest of my day learning about.

• 27:40Pablo Torre?

  But your mom, in other words, her personal story is a supernatural one.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yes, and she did have supernatural powers. She could see things that other people couldn't see. She could read your unconscious. She could read your mind. And my father's mother, she also had some, she was an herbalist, but I mean, we're talking about the 60s. Like, who was into that in the 1960s?

• 28:10Pablo Torre?

  Herbalist, like a sativa or indica or like something?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  She grew plants. She made teas. She had knowledge.

• 28:18Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  So that's your father's, your father's mother, you said?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  And then your mother?

• 28:24Pablo Torre?

  Whoa.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yes. So you could say, I could say, oh, I'm a hereditary witch, but I've never, I've never claimed that.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Pablo's gonna do a tree joke.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I went, so you're gonna do a tree joke now?

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Something about a tree. Let's see what I don't know what it is, but something with a tree.

• 28:37Pablo Torre?

  You have a pretty spooky family tree.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  There you go. Was it worth it? Was that worth it, all that?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  That was totally worth it.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Okay, it's a very generous audience.

• 28:46Pablo Torre?

  I mean, someone knows what good entertainment is.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Is there some significance, the fact that it was these women that had these sort of natural abilities? Does it skip? Like, is it like, like only men can get color blindness, pretty much? Is it like a reverse? I don't know why I brought up color blindness. It's like only women?

• 29:02Pablo Torre?

  Is that true?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  I think color blindness is carried in the chromosomes.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Women can carry it, but they don't express it in general.

• 29:10Pablo Torre?

  The female condition in a nutshell.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, so men have the, my super, I have the superpower that only men have, I think, which is that I cannot see most colors. But women, like, are, but men can be witches, or no?

• 29:24Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Men, no, men can be witches.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  And there's not a separate, because I thought a warlock was a...

• 29:28Speaker 01

  But you know, there's a controversy over this.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  I don't know this.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  For me, my idea, men can be witches, women can be witches, trans people can be witches. But there is a certain sect, a dianic sect of witches, that are not very friendly to, uh, trans women.

• 29:48Pablo Torre?

  Whoa.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  These are, are they like generally more politically conservative witches? Like, on other subjects, or specifically that issue?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  You know, I love the dianic witches, because they were all so big fat feminists. And then, this is in the seventies, and then they all had babies through like, artificial insemination. And they all had boy babies. And I just thought, this is, this is really great, what are you gonna do with this, ladies?

• 30:12Speaker 03

  What, dianic is a derivative of who's, of some Diana?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Diana, the goddess, the goddess, Diana of the moon.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 30:19Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  He was ringing a bell.

• 30:21Pablo Torre?

  A bunch of real J.K. Rowling's over there, is what it sounds like.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Fuck her.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  She's not a witch, she's like, what the, come on.

• 30:30Pablo Torre?

  Stolen valor.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Are you not, now, prior to the, prior, are you saying that because of this trans issue? Or are you saying it also because of?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  I never ever liked her.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  This Harry Potter shit, I hate this shit.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  The Harry Potter shit. They made me read the Harry Potter back when the first book came out, so somebody could interview me and, you know, do a, do like, an article about what is a witch, think about Harry Potter. And I think that I was fairly kind, but it, it, I didn't enjoy it. I felt it had no, uh, this is a word, tom, which means taste. No, no salt in there, no spice in there.

• 31:08Pablo Torre?

  You're a master of not merely, uh, various spells, but vocabulary.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  There's probably just a whole, a whole nomenclature, in, like, a lexicon inside of witchery that we just don't know anything about.

• 31:18Pablo Torre?

  Except, uh, one thing that is clear and relatable is fuck J.K. Rowling.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I mean... That I understand.

• 31:25Pablo Torre?

  I, I do love the idea, by the way, if I can climb onto a soapbox made of... Of myself. I would love to observe that there are some witches out there, some real witches out there, allegedly, for whom the supernatural is certainly possible. This is built into the premise. But are like, but gender is not something we can interpret in a way that violates the binary of boy and girl.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  And how crazy is that?

• 31:55Pablo Torre?

  That seems a bit, a bit, dare I say, illogical. This is, when we talk about the interpretation of, I mean, you, Michael, you, what is, but no, I reference your, Michael is an excellent comedian who has a one man show. And the part of the underlying sort of like thought that just sparked in my head, so to speak, is this thing you think looks like this can actually be multiple things.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 32:20Pablo Torre?

  And so it is with gender and spells. I mean, as Aaron, as Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers once said, words are spells.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  He's not wrong.

• 32:31Pablo Torre?

  Don't necessarily want to co-sign him. Somehow.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Well, look up the origins of abracadabra.

• 32:36Pablo Torre?

  The origin of abracadabra. One popular etymology of it is that it comes from an Aramaic phrase, or in this other case, a Hebrew phrase, which translates to, I create as I speak. And there's yet another wing of theories that propose that it is corruption, so to speak. It's like a normative term.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  How dare you?

• 32:59Pablo Torre?

  How dare you? Of the Hebrew words for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ab ben rock ha'kodesh. In some form or fashion. I'm not great at.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Abracadabra.

• 33:11Pablo Torre?

  Abrac, abrac, abracadabra.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Abracadabra.

• 33:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  I didn't realize that was like a serious, I didn't realize that was a serious phrase.

• 33:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Say the first, the first meaning again.

• 33:24Pablo Torre?

  The first meaning, I create as I speak.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I create as I speak.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Words are spells.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Words are spells.

• 33:30Pablo Torre?

  The podcasters creed.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  The most reckless witches of them all.

• 33:38Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  What are the rules here? Okay, here's another question.

• 33:41Pablo Torre?

  What are the rules? I think we're learning them as we go.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  You spoke before, you alluded to the, like, the power of spells. Is there, like, what is the most, the most powerful thing that a spell has ever done?

• 33:56Pablo Torre?

  Ooh.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Do you understand my question?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, what's, what's the, hmm?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, Roland Nordic, she's gone. God rest her soul. I was lucky enough to have many teas with her to go to her apartment in the Upper West Side. She, she created a tarot deck and she wrote a book and she was a very lovely witch. So she used to tell us about, she's British, from the UK. She used to tell us that every week witches of London would gather and they would chant and they would do a spell to keep Hitler from ever touching the soil, on British soil. And, well, he never did, right?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  They had the air raids, but they never invaded by land or by foot.

• 34:51Pablo Torre?

  Whoa.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  That's pretty powerful.

• 34:53Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Winston Churchill.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. That guy's taking all the fucking credit. We will fight them on the beaches. Guess what? The fucking witches are doing it.

• 35:01Pablo Torre?

  We're fighting them in this cauldron.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:03Pablo Torre?

  Hypothetically, if we were to persuade you to cast a spell, how does that go? Like, what do we need to present to you? What do we need to tell you about? What do we need in terms of ingredients? How do we sort of make this happen?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Well, we did have, we did bring some ingredients, right, into the studio that were from a spell that I wrote in one of my books, Enchanted Evenings.

• 35:31Pablo Torre?

  I believe you have been in communication with Ryan Cortez, the most wicked of all.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  The most wonderfully wicked Ryan Cortez.

• 35:38Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  What do we got?

• 35:39Pablo Torre?

  You guys have been like hanging out on the side.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Black pepper and bay and chili.

• 35:42Pablo Torre?

  He brought over.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Okay, now, these, I would just say, these look like ingredients I would have in my home.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'm the supermarket sorceress. That's my, yeah.

• 35:50Pablo Torre?

  That's such a great rap name.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  So you think the ingredients that I use to make, like, you know, cookies or, you know, a nice chili, you could also use to cast a powerful spell?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 36:02Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So if you put all these things together, you can basically cause somebody to slip up.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Make a little mistake.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:14Pablo Torre?

  Oh, okay, so hold on. So this is important because it does not mean that we are wishing horrific consequences upon someone.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  And that is the thing I really worry about with spells. What, okay, so the little encounter I've had with spells in pop culture is always like, you do this, what is it? It's like a monkey's paw. Like, you do, you make a wish.

• 36:34Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  And the wish comes true, but in a super [bleep] up way that you didn't want it to come true in.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  There's that, and there's also like, it'll come back at you three times or ten to fold.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Is it possible for us to like very narrowly define the parameters of this, of the results of this spell, or is that just not how it works?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That's not really how it works.

• 36:53Pablo Torre?

  [bleep]. Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  But there is an element of how it works, and I, I write about this, I think, in almost every foreword of my book. So the idea is, and Aleister Crowley, who was known as the most wicked man in the world, he wrote a lot of books too, but he talked about this. And from a psychoanalytic standpoint, we also can understand this. So one of the examples given is, for example, let's say you want to kill somebody, okay, and you do a death spell.

• 37:23Pablo Torre?

  Ooh.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  So there's always this kind of idea that, oh, it could.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  It could bounce back, you know? It could mirror back. So how do you keep that from happening? So.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  And how would it mirror back? Like you, someone has a different spell that protects them from your spell? Or?

• 37:45Pablo Torre?

  Your rubber and I'm glue spell.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, or do you like say a word wrong and it ends up like? How do you, how do you know?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  It's more complicated than that. So if you were gonna wanna kill somebody.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Which we don't.

• 37:57Pablo Torre?

  For the record, legally speaking.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Legally speaking.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Not even legally, just in any way. I don't want, I don't want to.

• 38:02Pablo Torre?

  Also that.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Legally, ethically, but let's say that we did.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 38:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, for the purposes of podcasts.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Right, like, listen. I had a book coming out. That I was supposed to have a book signing at the, um. Was it the Borders? In the World Trade Center? In October, the first week of October of?

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Two thousand and one?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Yes. And so you know what happened, right?

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure do.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And we had all this publicity lined up and everything and everything got canceled. But. My publicist said to me, well, you know, channel whatever will have you on. If you do a spell to kill Osama bin Laden. And I said, yeah, no, I'm not gonna do that. And they were like, but blah, everyone wants him dead. And I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm just not gonna do that. I'm not feeling that. But you know, this book is actually about money. And I can tell you, there's gonna be a lot of financial problems and issues. Now, after this World Trade Center. And I was right about that.

• 39:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, there was a Borders bookstore, by the way, in the World Trade Center.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 39:09Pablo Torre?

  It was a three floor thing. Uh, yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a beautiful thing. You know, and I said, I can talk to people about money and investment. And that's all the, everything that this book is about. To help people out. And they were like, no, no, no, they only want you to kill Osama bin Laden. So just so you know, I wasn't even into.

• 39:27Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Killing Osama.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Even, even when it's someone who universally was regarded as killable. You're like, that's not really my thing.

• 39:33Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  But so, okay, so if you wanna kill somebody and you do the spell to kill somebody, it's not gonna work. Unless that person has a lot of suicidal ideation.

• 39:45Pablo Torre?

  Whoa.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  And if they don't, if they're a well adjusted person that's had, you know, years of psychoanalysis. And they feel pretty good about themselves. So that line that you sent. Is going to, if you think of like a line of electrical charge, right?

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  You send it, or like a magnet, right? There's a positive and you have to have a negative and then it's like boom, it hits. But if that's not there, it goes back to, return to the sender.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Oh my, okay, so it sounds kind of like, um.

• 40:18Pablo Torre?

  This is a high stakes decision.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  When my kids were littler than they are now, if they would try and push me, if I was like kind of already tipping over, I would fall down.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  But if I'm standing up straight, they're pushing me would actually knock them down.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  You've got this so perfectly.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. Well, I'm ready to be a witch, unless that's a bad thing to say, in which case I retract it.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  That's a wonderful thing, you cheeseburger, you.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  So yeah, so if you're gonna do that kind of work, you better make sure that you're very healthy in terms of your mental health and your physical health and emotional health. That would, you know, because otherwise it will, it will return to you.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  So you want, so um, your spell is more likely to succeed if it's some sort of a negative spell on, on an object that is already predisposed, like kind of teetering on the edge, you're kind of gonna push it over.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 41:09Pablo Torre?

  Okay, wow.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Fascinating.

• 41:11Pablo Torre?

  So what I found out already is that I need to come up with a backup because I was gonna ask you um, to re-kill Osama bin Laden.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  That would be, I mean, wow.

• 41:26Pablo Torre?

  That was gonna be the aggregated clip.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Could you, could you double, could you double kill?

• 41:30Pablo Torre?

  Could you revive Osama bin Laden and then kill him again?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And kill him again.

• 41:34Pablo Torre?

  And then we could also have The Rock leak out on Twitter that I had re-killed Osama bin Laden.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  The Rock, The Rock, the man, the man called The Rock?

• 41:43Pablo Torre?

  Are you not familiar with this?

• 41:44Speaker 03

  What is this?

• 41:45Pablo Torre?

  How The Rock tweeted out the news of the Osama bin Laden assassination by alluding to this thing before anyone else did?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  The Rock had the news first?

• 41:54Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Before Obama?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  I did not know that.

• 41:57Pablo Torre?

  Well, I don't know.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Kind of makes you think The Rock is a witch.

• 41:59Pablo Torre?

  It is May 1st, 2011, uh, at The Rock, quote.

• 42:05Pablo Torre?

  Just got word that will shock the world, dash, land of the free, dot, dot, dot, home of the brave, all caps, damn proud to be an American, exclamation point. Uh, 10:24 PM and not long after.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Wait, but he didn't say Osama bin Laden in there anyplace.

• 42:23Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, but then what happened was-

• 42:24Speaker 03

  He just got news that shocked the world and we just sort of interpreted that that meant Osama bin Laden.

• 42:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh, your theory is that he was like-

• 42:30Speaker 03

  That he was like, Doritos is releasing a new flavor.

• 42:33Pablo Torre?

  Ha, ha, ha. The 3D Dorito.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  They're bringing back Dipsy Doodles or something.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  But maybe he did know.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Maybe he did know.

• 42:41Pablo Torre?

  I'll tell you got Dipsy Doodles.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Osama bin Laden, indeed.

• 42:44Pablo Torre?

  Got double Dipsy Doodles.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Double Dipsy Doodle. That's what they called the operation.

• 42:59Speaker 04

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• 43:09Speaker 04

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• 43:15Speaker 05

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• 43:19Speaker 04

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• 43:24Speaker 05

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• 44:07Pablo Torre?

  I would like to try something on the level of like, uh, a pratfall spell. Like something embarrassing that happens in public that all of us might be able to observe. That we can even root for having cast such a spell. That prevents us from having true legal liability.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Most importantly, legal liability.

• 44:27Pablo Torre?

  Is there, is there someone, Michael, that you are thinking of?

• 44:30Speaker 03

  Well, okay, this is, I don't, tell me if this is allowed, what I'm gonna say.

• 44:33Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Because it's not a person.

• 44:35Pablo Torre?

  You can't curse me.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  No, it's not you.

• 44:37Pablo Torre?

  Is it Katie? Are you gonna curse Katie Nolan?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  No, Katie Nolan is a person, first of all. Katie, I think of you as a person. I do not wanna curse her. I wanted to curse AI. I want AI to be cursed.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  I am so down with that.

• 44:52Pablo Torre?

  This is a good idea. I was gonna go-

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Oh, these ingredients are really good for this because-

• 44:56Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 44:57Pablo Torre?

  Wait, I like this.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  AI needs to slip up so badly that everyone can see, "Oh, this is a bad investment. This, we can't trust this."

• 45:05Pablo Torre?

  I think this is a great idea. I was gonna go-

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Michael, are you brilliant or what?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  I think I'm brilliant. I think I might be the [bleep] smartest cheeseburger in all the land.

• 45:15Pablo Torre?

  Allow me to say, Michael, to that suggestion, well done.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  Cause like a burger. Really good, dude. You're [bleep] on fire, man.

• 45:25Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, my proposal, which I think we should not do, because yours is way better, was I was gonna curse Dan Orlovsky, because he hates me, and also he's scared of all of the spices on the table.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Oh, he is?

• 45:36Pablo Torre?

  You know, that's a separate matter.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Well, then he better just, he better, he better watch himself.

• 45:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, he already ran out of an end zone once, which feels like he was cursed by some other witch.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  I don't even, I don't even know whatever this beef is. I don't know what this is.

• 45:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's-

• 45:46Speaker 03

  You know what I think about when I see Dan Orlovsky? That guy's hands are so big.

• 45:51Pablo Torre?

  I know.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  If you ever watch the, whoever watch him on any of the shows, if he puts his hands in frame, they're, they are, and they are enormous. I don't know if we'll cut this out or not, but if we don't cut it out, you guys gotta find a picture of him. That when those hands get on screen, it's like, uh, um, it's like some kind of a supernatural creature.

• 46:06Pablo Torre?

  As someone who has giant tree hands right now-

• 46:09Speaker 03

  It is like that big. It is like that is the size of his hands.

• 46:11Pablo Torre?

  Imagine, imagine this but telestrating, like a Caleb Williams play on an iPad.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 46:16Pablo Torre?

  That's mostly what the Dan Orlovsky experience is like.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Like, just so, background for me, vis a vis AI. Like, just this week, the, they found out that, like, you know, if you, it'll take high-risk gambling bets that it will lose. I forget, and like, in Albania, they had a guy on TV saying that they're, the AI is pregnant with 83 babies. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 46:37Pablo Torre?

  I don't, but that sounds.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  How does that work?

• 46:40Speaker 03

  I don't know, I don't even know, I didn't understand what he was trying to say. He said that the AI in their country now has 83 babies, one of which will go to each, like, minister in the government. And each one will have his own, his own AI. I, I'm not a fan.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Not a fan. Also, all the energy.

• 46:57Pablo Torre?

  I know, the data centers.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  Oh, the energy.

• 46:59Pablo Torre?

  The data centers.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  The water and the energy and.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Everything.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  That this is taking, stealing.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  And it was supposed to be, it's gonna save you. AI is coming, it's gonna fix all the stuff. What is it? I don't think it does any of that. The chat, the chat GPT people or whatever, OpenAI.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  It elucidates.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  It's gonna do porn.

• 47:15Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Now it's gonna do porn?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  We're gonna do, I mean, which is, it was already doing porn, but they're like, they're like a mainstream company that's like, oh, and also, we do, it's, we do porn now.

• 47:25Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  I thought it was gonna end all our global everything, and instead it's like.

• 47:30Pablo Torre?

  I got, I got good news for you, though.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  As a psychoanalyst, I think this is really bad for humanity.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Yes, I agree.

• 47:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Now, now, is there some, like, wacky-ass way this is coming, gonna come back and bite me in the ass? This spell?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Okay. You seem very, you seem confident that it's not going to, but Pablo's very uncertain.

• 47:50Pablo Torre?

  This feels like a classic rake that you're accidentally gonna step on.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  This is like the beginning of a movie about a series of curses that I walk into, where like, a bunch of robots fall on top of me or something?

• 47:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, when you get.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there is such a thing as protecting yourself.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Okay, well, how do, let's do that, too.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  That is allowed.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  What with, in what way?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And we're not even talking about a person here, right? We're talking about a, what are we talking about?

• 48:14Pablo Torre?

  We're talking about truly interconnected series of, uh.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  A bunch of beeps and boops.

• 48:19Pablo Torre?

  Beeps and boops.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  But you're saying I protect myself?

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, ourselves, any witch can use self-defense.

• 48:27Pablo Torre?

  I think that this is a risk worth taking.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  And I would say if there's a way to, like, end the spell, to say, like, you know, any kind of. Negative ramifications should now and in the future be directed to Pablo. Is that something we can do in the smell? Or we can just say any kind of boomerang effect Pablo is willing to execute. Insofar as it's your podcast.

• 48:47Pablo Torre?

  It is my podcast. And also, to be very clear, we're talking not about Allen Iverson, in case we are accidentally cursing.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Yes, that's a good thing to do. We don't, there's a man named, are you familiar with Allen Iverson?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  He was a great bas-, he is, oh, he's a great basketball player.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  He's a great basketball player.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  And his initials are AI, so we don't want to have this curse.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, we don't want to, we don't want to harm him. We're talking about artificial intelligence.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:08Pablo Torre?

  Great. Um, we have a cauldron.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I'm putting this here, I don't know if you're gonna use it for anything or not, but there it is.

• 49:13Pablo Torre?

  I think we gotta make this, I, I, I would love, I would love.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  So these, of these are the four ingredients. These two are actually, uh, protective. So actually, we might, we might.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Just pour those on my head.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we might each wanna.

• 49:27Pablo Torre?

  Just smelling salt that [BLEEP].

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, just chomp on that.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Take a bay leaf.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:33Pablo Torre?

  Nice.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  I'm eager, any protective thing, I'm, I'm all for it. Like, I'm taking a bay leaf.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I'm, I have three bay leaves.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  I don't have to go to like a witch store, I can just buy a bay leaf.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Right in the supermarket.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Right, in the [BLEEP] supermarket.

• 49:47Pablo Torre?

  She's the, she's the [BLEEP] market sorcerer, sorceress.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Take a whiff of the, of the mint.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Put a little on your, a little on your bay leaf.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  A little on my bay leaf? Wow, that's really, that's.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  A little cinnamon, cinnamon is funny, because cinnamon can be used for.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  That mint is really, this is, this is, it's really minting.

• 50:09Pablo Torre?

  Ooh, oh boy. A little on the bay leaf, yep, there you go.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Okay, cinnamon also smelling?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you can put a little on your, on your minty bay leaf.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Okay. I am so into this [BLEEP], okay. I didn't think I would be into this, honestly. I think it's your vibes, Alexa has good.

• 50:25Pablo Torre?

  She has great vibes.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Energy.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you, gentlemen.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  So we have red sage, chili powder, black pepper, cinnamon, and we are gonna need a pinch of sulfur. So we're gonna need some matches to take, like, take the, scrape it off a match head.

• 50:43Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna get some of that, we got that.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Sage?

• 50:45Pablo Torre?

  Yep, it's going into the cauldron.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Going into the cauldron.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  You know, like, we need some real sage, meaning some wisdom.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  I see.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Instead of AI, wouldn't that be nice?

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  Agreed.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And cinnamon is...

• 51:03Speaker 03

  Where'd the cinnamon go?

• 51:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, here it is.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  For God's sake, Pablo, give it.

• 51:06Pablo Torre?

  Here it is, with haste.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  See, so cinnamon, depending on what you mix it with,

• 51:12Speaker 01

  depends on how it will act. It's a fast act, something that acts fast. So, you know, if you add it with some positive things, it's like, "Quickly, protect us. Keep us strong and successful. Here, quickly."

• 51:24Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  "Mess up AI." I'm just wondering, did, oh, did we have something to literally actually represent AI? What would be representative of that?

• 51:34Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, we got something.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  What I want to use is, I want someone to, like, print out...

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Oh, here it is. Listen to this.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  The, like, definition of AI.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  So, a piece of paper that has the definition of artificial intelligence on it?

• 51:53Pablo Torre?

  Oh, so we can target this?

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Put it in the call.

• 51:55Pablo Torre?

  Okay, hold on.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Can we get that?

• 51:56Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can write it down.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  No, I don't want you to use your handwriting.

• 52:00Pablo Torre?

  Oh, you want to type it? Okay.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  We did need matches.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  We do.

• 52:08Pablo Torre?

  Can you, uh, print out a piece of paper that has the definition of AI on it?

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Ask AI to define AI.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Yes, ask AI to define AI. I love it. I love it, I love it.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Oh, dude, this works. We're so set. We're so set forever.

• 52:24Pablo Torre?

  I think, I think this is exactly what America needs us to do. So, we have printed out, uh...

• 52:32Speaker 03

  We asked AI what AI is, and AI told us that it is, "The development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning, and problem solving." And then it goes on to give a little more gobbledygook, but that's kind of the, that's the crux of it.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so we're gonna fold that paper into nine folds.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  Nine, any particular kind of folds? We don't care.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Just nine times folded.

• 52:56Pablo Torre?

  One.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna be able to do nine halves, but there's, that's one. That's two. That's three. That's four. That's five. It's taking longer than I want it to. That's six. That's seven.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  And that is eight. And that is nine.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  So nine is the number of completion and endings.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  So that's gonna go in the cauldron.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Throw it in there?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  And we're gonna add some sulfur. So we're gonna add nine match heads. I don't wanna lose count.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Take your time. Four.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Four. You wanna do some?

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  I wonder how the people at Finelli's Cafe will feel about us using that.

• 53:46Pablo Torre?

  Shout out to, uh, local Soho institution.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  This is five.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Five.

• 53:50Pablo Torre?

  For unintentionally helping solve the world's foremost.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  This is six.

• 53:56Pablo Torre?

  Plague.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  This is seven. Pablo, I feel like the last two should be yours.

• 54:03Pablo Torre?

  This is...

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Eight and nine. Don't [bleep] this up and put an extra goddamn match head in there, I swear to God.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because then it'll be new beginnings.

• 54:11Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 54:12Pablo Torre?

  Oh, shit.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Can you do new beginning? Oh, [bleep].

• 54:15Speaker 01

  No, we didn't. That was eight.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait. I think there might be nine in there right now.

• 54:19Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  One, look, look. Come here and look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

• 54:26Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  [bleep] A.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  You see how easy it is?

• 54:29Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 54:30Pablo Torre?

  [bleep].

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 54:33Pablo Torre?

  Oh, [bleep], you're right. One, two, three.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  We don't want eight either, because eight is infinity.

• 54:41Pablo Torre?

  God damn it.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  [bleep] me, dude. This is [bleep] intense, dude.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  There's nine in there right now. [bleep] A.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Should I check it, too?

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Yes, everyone, everyone, everyone in the world, come and check it.

• 54:57Pablo Torre?

  We totally almost Orlovsky'd that.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  We almost [bleep]. But I got no beef with Dan Orlovsky. I don't know what happened. I have no, I have no problem with you. That, but that's, that's you and Pablo.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  [bleep] A. We were so close to AI, like, taking... What would, ten, ten is what? Ten is new beginning?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  New beginning.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  We don't want a new beginning.

• 55:18Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Eight is infinity.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  Oh, Jesus.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  We have all the stuff.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  I'm [bleep] nervous.

• 55:24Pablo Torre?

  I'm genuinely a little...

• 55:27Speaker 03

  I'm excited. I'm excited and scared.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  And we should probably go to Fortuna. The great goddess Fortuna. She rules the fortunes and things can go forward and things can go backwards.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  I'm absolutely not challenging you on which gods we're going to. I'm going for whatever gods you say.

• 55:47Pablo Torre?

  But oh, Fortuna also is, that is the, that's the Carmina Barana.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. Exactly.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 55:57Pablo Torre?

  Whoa. Okay.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Wait, is this, that's a.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  No, that's Carmen.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  Oh, sh**.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  So fabulous.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  That's bizet, goddammit.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  That's bizet.

• 56:11Pablo Torre?

  That, that is, uh.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Or is that?

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Me, what am I doing? God damn it.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Ba ba ba.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Cut this out.

• 56:24Pablo Torre?

  No, no, no. Leave it in. Roll the music underneath.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  I know stuff. Cut it out.

• 56:30Pablo Torre?

  So with this, uh, dramatic music playing underneath us in our post-production.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:36Pablo Torre?

  Edit.

• 56:37Speaker 03

  It will be there.

• 56:38Pablo Torre?

  What do we need to do?

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Oh goddess Fortuna. We ask you to protect the fate of mankind. And to

• 56:51Speaker 01

  turn the fortune of AI, cause it to slip up and fail so that it cannot harm humanity.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  So mote it be.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  So mote it be.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  So mote it be. Do you guys want to add any words to that?

• 57:13Pablo Torre?

  May humans masturbate the old fashioned way.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Amen. So mote it be.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  And that's beautiful.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  That is beautiful.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  So mote it be. And, you know, may, uh, may humans reign over technology and not the reverse.

• 57:32Pablo Torre?

  So mote it be.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  I have no spells vis a vis masturbating myself. I have not, I'm not, that's not for me.

• 57:39Pablo Torre?

  Methinks the witch doth touch too much.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Methinks the cheeseburger.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  Um, wow. Okay, wow.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Make love, not AI.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Yes, indeed.

• 57:52Pablo Torre?

  Damn. Um, I gotta say, I usually come up with like some very clever sign off to wrap it all together.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  You think so?

• 58:00Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out. But I gotta say,

• 58:06Pablo Torre?

  I think I'm pretty stumped.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ. Could that undo the spell? Could the spell be [__] up by that?

• 58:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Is it possible?

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Cleverness is never offensive.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Fortuna's not gonna be like, [__] this.

• 58:29Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.