Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Share & Witch & Tell with Michael Cruz Kayne and "The Supermarket Sorceress" About this episode 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
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Transcript 10,198 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 The Jets are losers. And they're
0:11 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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1:55 Pablo Torre? Can you explain what we look like to you for people who maybe aren't watching on YouTube yet?
2:00 Speaker 01 You look like a tree, sort of. Yeah, a tree.
2:04 Pablo Torre? Sort of. That is a strong endorsement of this incredibly
2:07 Speaker 01 Because I see the bark.
2:09 Pablo Torre? Static-y costume that I'm wearing.
2:10 Speaker 01 I see the bark. I see the trunk.
2:12 Pablo Torre? Yes.
2:13 Speaker 01 There aren't really leaves.
2:14 Pablo Torre? Well, if I may wave my branches.
2:18 Speaker 03 There does appear to be one leaf.
2:19 Pablo Torre? They gave us one [bleep] leaf?
2:21 Speaker 01 One leaf, one little orange leaf.
2:22 Pablo Torre? One little orange leaf.
2:23 Speaker 01 Well, the leaves have fallen now.
2:25 Speaker 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.
2:32 Pablo Torre? The fact that it feels almost velveteen?
2:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:35 Pablo Torre? It's like a satin?
2:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, maybe it's Armani.
2:39 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
2:39 Speaker 01 It says something.
2:41 Pablo Torre? Oh yeah, I'm wearing a sign on my chest, on my bark. It says, "No trespass."
2:47 Speaker 03 It's kind of like a foreboding tree.
2:50 Pablo Torre? That's right.
2:50 Speaker 03 It's an eerie tree.
2:51 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:52 Speaker 03 In the yard of the house on like on top of the hill that you're not supposed to go to.
2:55 Pablo Torre? And on that hill, there is a studio. And in the middle chair of the table in the studio, there is?
3:04 Speaker 01 A cheeseburger.
3:06 Speaker 03 A cheeseburger. Am I a cheeseburger? I am, there's a big piece of cheese.
3:08 Pablo Torre? You're a cheeseburger.
3:09 Speaker 03 I'm a cheeseburger.
3:10 Speaker 01 Yum, yum, yum.
3:11 Pablo Torre? A wrinkle on what our attention was.
3:14 Speaker 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.
3:23 Pablo Torre? Correct.
3:26 Pablo Torre? What's happening? Oh, we forgot to turn these on?
3:29 Speaker 03 The production value here is crazy. You guys spare no expense.
3:33 Pablo Torre? And on this hill, in that house, there are
3:36 Speaker 03 Oh, look at this.
3:37 Pablo Torre? Multiple producers.
3:39 Speaker 01 Is my navel, I think so.
3:40 Pablo Torre? Who are making clear that this is a Halloween episode.
3:43 Speaker 03 Whoa, boo.
3:45 Pablo Torre? Will we cut around this in the edit?
3:47 Speaker 03 I hope not.
3:47 Pablo Torre? Probably not. Are you familiar with the catchphrase comic Hamburger Jones?
3:55 Speaker 01 You're gonna have to help me there.
3:56 Pablo 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?
4:08 Speaker 01 Wow, no.
4:09 Speaker 03 That's perfectly fine. That just makes you a normal member of society.
4:12 Pablo 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.
4:19 Speaker 03 Wait, is the tree something to do with aspiration? Oh, because the tree, oh my god, the trees.
4:25 Pablo Torre? God, damn it, are we?
4:26 Speaker 03 Okay, sorry, I'm sorry.
4:27 Pablo Torre? We, we-
4:28 Speaker 01 Totally in the dark here.
4:29 Speaker 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.
4:43 Pablo Torre? Cheeseburger.
4:43 Speaker 03 The cheeseburger, I think, is sort of inviting. It's kind of a delightful costume.
4:46 Pablo 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?
5:05 Speaker 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-
5:20 Speaker 03 The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum.
5:23 Speaker 01 She was a famous, uh, practitioner of voodoo in New Orleans and a pretty amazing woman. But I'm just an ordinary-
5:34 Speaker 03 Witch?
5:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:35 Speaker 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.
5:47 Speaker 01 Wow.
5:48 Speaker 03 Is that, is that okay to say that?
5:50 Pablo Torre? Is that offensive, that we are kind of afraid of you?
5:55 Speaker 01 No, I'm cool with that.
5:57 Speaker 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.
6:09 Speaker 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.
6:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:20 Pablo Torre? Right.
6:21 Speaker 03 That's, that's pretty hardcore.
6:22 Pablo 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.
6:38 Speaker 01 No, I was when I came in, but I, you mean the pointy witchy hat?
6:42 Speaker 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.
6:50 Speaker 01 I didn't come with my broom either.
6:52 Speaker 03 Look at that.
6:53 Pablo Torre? That was my follow up question.
6:54 Speaker 01 In front of your building.
6:59 Pablo 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.
7:16 Speaker 03 Of course, sure.
7:17 Pablo Torre? To point out that you, Alexa, were voted best witch in NYC.
7:23 Speaker 03 No shit.
7:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, real shit.
7:25 Speaker 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?
7:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, actually.
7:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's some [BLEEP] witches that you're like not a fan of.
7:38 Speaker 01 For sure.
7:39 Speaker 03 Okay, interesting.
7:40 Pablo 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?
7:49 Speaker 01 I think thousands. There's many, many witches or witch wannabes, right?
7:56 Speaker 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?
8:10 Speaker 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...
8:53 Speaker 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.
9:32 Pablo Torre? How does one get initiated, as you were, into this craft?
9:38 Speaker 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-
9:59 Speaker 03 Literally one year and one day?
10:01 Speaker 01 Yeah. And the third one, you become a high priest or a high priestess.
10:06 Pablo Torre? Is there the equivalent of a pope for witches?
10:10 Speaker 01 Well, we do have witch queens.
10:12 Pablo Torre? Whoa!
10:12 Speaker 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.
10:28 Speaker 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-
10:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, the more organized it became, the sort of more it fell apart.
10:40 Speaker 03 Right. The more you're just like, I just want to [BLEEP] cast spells, guys. What the [BLEEP]?
10:44 Speaker 01 Exactly.
10:46 Speaker 03 I gotta fill out a form and
10:48 Pablo Torre? I was here for the newts.
10:50 Speaker 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,
11:22 Speaker 03 Wait, what? What do you mean it worked?
11:24 Speaker 01 It worked.
11:24 Speaker 03 What, what happened? Yeah, but what do you, what does that mean?
11:27 Speaker 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.
12:06 Pablo Torre? There's a whole, I mean, needless to say, there's a whole Wikipedia page about this.
12:09 Speaker 01 There you go.
12:10 Pablo Torre? The White Witch of Rose Hall, Annie Palmer.
12:12 Speaker 01 Annie Palmer.
12:13 Pablo Torre? In, in, in Rose Hall, Montego Bay.
12:16 Speaker 01 Montego Bay.
12:17 Speaker 03 Okay.
12:18 Speaker 01 My father's favorite place.
12:20 Pablo Torre? I mean, I've seen the commercials.
12:22 Speaker 03 I only know, I only know it, I think, from the song Kokomo.
12:25 Pablo 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.
12:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. We don't have enough time for the episode I want to do.
12:36 Pablo Torre? But I would say that Witches are kind of having a moment right now. Not merely because it's literally Halloween.
12:44 Speaker 01 It is, it is 'tis the season of the witch.
12:47 Pablo Torre? And 'tis the year of the witch, I dare say.
12:50 Speaker 01 Oh, tell me about that.
12:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm interested in this too.
12:52 Pablo Torre? I mean, my, my, uh, daughter and my niece, their favorite thing is Wicked.
12:59 Speaker 01 Oh, right. Wicked, oh, well, Wicked is fabulous.
13:02 Speaker 03 Okay, good to know the witches like Wicked.
13:04 Speaker 01 Movie and the Broadway show, oh, absolutely.
13:09 Pablo 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...
13:19 Speaker 01 It's a nice turnaround.
13:20 Pablo 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.
13:36 Speaker 01 I'm totally down with that.
13:39 Pablo 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.
13:59 Speaker 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.
14:11 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
14:12 Speaker 01 To protect ourselves.
14:14 Speaker 03 Are witches with the curses, et cetera, are we ever like, cursing each other back and forth? Curse, curse battle?
14:20 Speaker 01 Oh, don't even get me started on witch wars.
14:22 Pablo Torre? Witch wars?
14:23 Speaker 03 Witch wars. Of course, that's what they're called.
14:25 Pablo Torre? The 106 in Park of witches.
14:28 Speaker 03 So sometimes witches are just blasting back and forth?
14:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:32 Pablo Torre? Oh my god. Damn, I do wanna understand.
14:34 Speaker 03 This episode's gonna be 12 hours long.
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16:05 Pablo 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.
16:14 Speaker 01 They can be, they can not be. Depends who you talk to.
16:17 Pablo 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.
16:25 Speaker 03 Mordred, you got Mordred, that's the bad one, right?
16:28 Pablo Torre? Well.
16:29 Speaker 03 Is it Mordred the evil, the evil?
16:30 Pablo Torre? I don't want to cast aspersions in front of a witch about whether one is a good or a bad witch.
16:35 Speaker 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.
16:43 Speaker 01 Avalon.
16:44 Pablo Torre? Avalon.
16:45 Speaker 01 I think so that's kind of what Wicked is about.
16:48 Pablo Torre? That's what I'm saying.
16:48 Speaker 01 Sort of the idea of like, who's telling the story?
16:51 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm.
16:52 Speaker 03 I see, I see. Okay, so you're saying that like, you know, the perspective might shift. My view is overly simplistic.
16:59 Speaker 01 Right.
17:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
17:00 Speaker 03 Okay, that's hurtful, but I, but probably correct.
17:02 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:03 Speaker 03 Okay.
17:03 Pablo Torre? Likewise, Jafar, from Aladdin.
17:07 Speaker 03 Uh-huh.
17:08 Speaker 01 Hmm.
17:08 Pablo 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?
17:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, he, but we gotta, Jafar's a bad guy. Have you, are you familiar with, with Jafar?
17:20 Speaker 01 I'm not as familiar with Jafar.
17:22 Speaker 03 Well, then we shouldn't dwell on it, but that guy's a bad guy.
17:24 Speaker 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?
17:32 Pablo 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?
17:50 Speaker 01 I, I'm hearing about that, yes.
17:52 Pablo 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.
18:02 Speaker 01 Listen, I'm in my crone years at this point. Do you know about the crone?
18:07 Speaker 03 I don't.
18:08 Speaker 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.
18:18 Speaker 03 Got it.
18:18 Speaker 01 You know, it's gonna really take something to get me up from the table, okay? To start stirring some shit, right.
18:26 Pablo Torre? Right.
18:27 Speaker 01 In my youth, I cast my share.
18:31 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
18:32 Speaker 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.
18:42 Pablo 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.
19:07 Speaker 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.
19:22 Speaker 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?
19:35 Pablo Torre? I would, I would love for you to tell.
19:37 Speaker 03 Please, guys, tell me your story.
19:38 Pablo Torre? The way that wicked allowed witches to do, I would love for you to tell your story.
19:42 Speaker 03 Yes, please.
19:43 Speaker 01 So, and George Vessi wrote about this in, in the New York Times.
19:46 Pablo Torre? Yes, the great sports writer, George Vessi.
19:49 Speaker 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
20:30 Speaker 01 cross the palm with silver for anything that, business you do with a witch. You should do that.
20:37 Pablo Torre? Is that literal or figurative?
20:40 Speaker 01 Well, it, it could be paper money.
20:42 Pablo Torre? Okay.
20:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
20:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay. I don't think we have any silver, but you could probably scrounge up some dollars.
20:47 Pablo 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.
20:52 Speaker 03 Is, you said, the way you said, cross the palm with silver, sounded like it was a quote from something. Is that?
20:57 Speaker 01 It is. I don't know where it's from, but it's, yeah, it is.
21:00 Speaker 03 An ancient tome.
21:01 Speaker 01 An ancient tome.
21:02 Pablo Torre? A rune, perhaps.
21:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:05 Speaker 01 So.
21:08 Speaker 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.
21:47 Speaker 01 And he told me that he, he made a variation on the chant that I had given him.
21:54 Pablo Torre? Oh.
21:55 Speaker 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.
22:13 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 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.
22:25 Pablo Torre? Yes.
22:25 Speaker 01 And maybe not wanting to give up that status.
22:27 Pablo Torre? Oh, you're saying he said, he self sabotaged the spell?
22:30 Speaker 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.
22:38 Pablo Torre? But he basically.
22:40 Speaker 01 Not this year.
22:41 Pablo 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.
23:05 Speaker 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?
23:12 Pablo 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.
23:24 Speaker 03 Jeez Louise.
23:25 Speaker 01 I know.
23:25 Pablo Torre? That is a very, that's the butt fumble of spells.
23:29 Speaker 03 Really? What, what, approximately what year are we talking about here?
23:31 Speaker 01 2010.
23:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
23:33 Speaker 03 Oh, so not that long ago.
23:34 Pablo Torre? The 2010 Jets, as a matter of historical record, lost in the AFC title game with the aforementioned butt fumbler.
23:44 Speaker 03 Oh, it was Mark Sanchez.
23:45 Pablo 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.
24:07 Speaker 01 Right, but they did win some earlier games.
24:09 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
24:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:10 Pablo Torre? Oh, I mean, it made it the AFC title game.
24:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:12 Pablo 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?
24:30 Speaker 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
24:39 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
24:40 Speaker 01 superstitions and there's a history of curses with the Red Sox.
24:46 Speaker 03 Curse the bambino.
24:47 Speaker 01 Curse the bambino.
24:48 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
24:49 Speaker 01 So.
24:49 Pablo Torre? Jason Giambi, Yankee slugger, used to wear a lucky gold thong. Um, speaking to.
24:55 Speaker 01 Wow.
24:55 Speaker 03 Superstition.
24:56 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the power of such objects, of cursed objects.
25:00 Speaker 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?
25:10 Speaker 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.
25:20 Speaker 03 Got it. Okay, respect.
25:23 Pablo Torre? Well, when it comes to who taught you that respect. What did you inherit?
25:30 Speaker 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.
25:41 Pablo Torre? Well, how vivid is your memory of what your mom was, was reading?
25:47 Speaker 01 Oh, she just knew. She knew what you were up to. I mean, it was, it was truly scary.
25:52 Speaker 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?
25:59 Speaker 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.
26:11 Speaker 03 Wait, what the hell are you talking about? The baby is born with a, a, a-
26:14 Pablo Torre? Oh, C A U L?
26:15 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:16 Speaker 03 Oh, okay. But what, what does that look like?
26:18 Pablo Torre? Well, you can describe it, I suppose, but I'm reading the definition.
26:21 Speaker 01 I didn't see it, but it's kind of like a, a cloak or a veil.
26:26 Pablo Torre? It's, it's a thin-
26:27 Speaker 03 When the baby is born, there's a cloak over the baby.
26:30 Pablo Torre? A, a thin membrane covering a newborn's head at birth, which is sometimes associated with superstitions of, uh, yeah, various interpretations.
26:39 Speaker 03 Never heard of this in my life.
26:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it's a thin, filmy membrane of the amniotic sac, Michael.
26:45 Speaker 03 Huh.
26:46 Pablo Torre? That can cover a newborn's head and face at birth.
26:48 Speaker 03 A caul. C A W L?
26:51 Pablo Torre? C A U L.
26:52 Speaker 03 C A U L.
26:54 Pablo Torre? This is dramatic.
26:56 Pablo Torre? This is dramatic.
26:56 Speaker 03 So your mother, your mother was born with a caul?
26:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
27:01 Pablo Torre? From, from, from the first second she showed up.
27:04 Speaker 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.
27:13 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I've never heard of it until now, to be, to be quite clear.
27:16 Speaker 01 But it's, but it's a thing.
27:17 Pablo 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.
27:32 Speaker 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.
27:40 Pablo Torre? But your mom, in other words, her personal story is a supernatural one.
27:46 Speaker 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?
28:10 Pablo Torre? Herbalist, like a sativa or indica or like something?
28:14 Speaker 01 She grew plants. She made teas. She had knowledge.
28:18 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
28:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:19 Speaker 03 So that's your father's, your father's mother, you said?
28:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
28:23 Speaker 03 And then your mother?
28:24 Pablo Torre? Whoa.
28:24 Speaker 01 Yes. So you could say, I could say, oh, I'm a hereditary witch, but I've never, I've never claimed that.
28:31 Speaker 03 Pablo's gonna do a tree joke.
28:32 Speaker 01 I went, so you're gonna do a tree joke now?
28:34 Speaker 03 Something about a tree. Let's see what I don't know what it is, but something with a tree.
28:37 Pablo Torre? You have a pretty spooky family tree.
28:39 Speaker 03 There you go. Was it worth it? Was that worth it, all that?
28:43 Speaker 01 That was totally worth it.
28:44 Speaker 03 Okay, it's a very generous audience.
28:46 Pablo Torre? I mean, someone knows what good entertainment is.
28:50 Speaker 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?
29:02 Pablo Torre? Is that true?
29:02 Speaker 03 I think color blindness is carried in the chromosomes.
29:06 Speaker 01 Interesting.
29:06 Speaker 03 Women can carry it, but they don't express it in general.
29:10 Pablo Torre? The female condition in a nutshell.
29:13 Speaker 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?
29:24 Pablo Torre? Oh.
29:24 Speaker 01 Men, no, men can be witches.
29:26 Speaker 03 And there's not a separate, because I thought a warlock was a...
29:28 Speaker 01 But you know, there's a controversy over this.
29:31 Speaker 03 I don't know this.
29:32 Speaker 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.
29:48 Pablo Torre? Whoa.
29:49 Speaker 03 These are, are they like generally more politically conservative witches? Like, on other subjects, or specifically that issue?
29:55 Speaker 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?
30:12 Speaker 03 What, dianic is a derivative of who's, of some Diana?
30:15 Speaker 01 Diana, the goddess, the goddess, Diana of the moon.
30:18 Speaker 03 Okay.
30:19 Pablo Torre? That's right.
30:19 Speaker 03 He was ringing a bell.
30:21 Pablo Torre? A bunch of real J.K. Rowling's over there, is what it sounds like.
30:23 Speaker 01 Fuck her.
30:26 Speaker 01 She's not a witch, she's like, what the, come on.
30:30 Pablo Torre? Stolen valor.
30:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:32 Speaker 01 Exactly.
30:33 Speaker 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?
30:38 Speaker 01 I never ever liked her.
30:39 Speaker 03 This Harry Potter shit, I hate this shit.
30:41 Speaker 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.
31:08 Pablo Torre? You're a master of not merely, uh, various spells, but vocabulary.
31:12 Speaker 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.
31:18 Pablo Torre? Except, uh, one thing that is clear and relatable is fuck J.K. Rowling.
31:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:24 Speaker 03 I mean... That I understand.
31:25 Pablo 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.
31:54 Speaker 01 And how crazy is that?
31:55 Pablo 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.
32:19 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
32:20 Pablo Torre? And so it is with gender and spells. I mean, as Aaron, as Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers once said, words are spells.
32:30 Speaker 03 He's not wrong.
32:31 Pablo Torre? Don't necessarily want to co-sign him. Somehow.
32:33 Speaker 01 Well, look up the origins of abracadabra.
32:36 Pablo 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.
32:58 Speaker 03 How dare you?
32:59 Pablo 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.
33:10 Speaker 03 Abracadabra.
33:11 Pablo Torre? Abrac, abrac, abracadabra.
33:14 Speaker 01 Abracadabra.
33:17 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
33:17 Speaker 03 I didn't realize that was like a serious, I didn't realize that was a serious phrase.
33:21 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
33:22 Speaker 01 Say the first, the first meaning again.
33:24 Pablo Torre? The first meaning, I create as I speak.
33:26 Speaker 01 I create as I speak.
33:28 Speaker 03 Words are spells.
33:29 Speaker 01 Words are spells.
33:30 Pablo Torre? The podcasters creed.
33:34 Speaker 03 The most reckless witches of them all.
33:38 Pablo Torre? Oh, man.
33:39 Speaker 03 What are the rules here? Okay, here's another question.
33:41 Pablo Torre? What are the rules? I think we're learning them as we go.
33:43 Speaker 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?
33:56 Pablo Torre? Ooh.
33:57 Speaker 03 Do you understand my question?
33:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah, what's, what's the, hmm?
34:02 Speaker 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?
34:46 Speaker 01 They had the air raids, but they never invaded by land or by foot.
34:51 Pablo Torre? Whoa.
34:52 Speaker 01 That's pretty powerful.
34:53 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Winston Churchill.
34:54 Speaker 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.
35:01 Pablo Torre? We're fighting them in this cauldron.
35:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:03 Pablo 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?
35:21 Speaker 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.
35:31 Pablo Torre? I believe you have been in communication with Ryan Cortez, the most wicked of all.
35:35 Speaker 01 The most wonderfully wicked Ryan Cortez.
35:38 Pablo Torre? That's right.
35:38 Speaker 01 What do we got?
35:39 Pablo Torre? You guys have been like hanging out on the side.
35:40 Speaker 01 Black pepper and bay and chili.
35:42 Pablo Torre? He brought over.
35:43 Speaker 03 Okay, now, these, I would just say, these look like ingredients I would have in my home.
35:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, I'm the supermarket sorceress. That's my, yeah.
35:50 Pablo Torre? That's such a great rap name.
35:53 Speaker 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?
36:01 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
36:02 Pablo Torre? Right.
36:03 Speaker 01 Absolutely. So if you put all these things together, you can basically cause somebody to slip up.
36:12 Speaker 03 Make a little mistake.
36:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:14 Pablo Torre? Oh, okay, so hold on. So this is important because it does not mean that we are wishing horrific consequences upon someone.
36:23 Speaker 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.
36:34 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
36:35 Speaker 03 And the wish comes true, but in a super [bleep] up way that you didn't want it to come true in.
36:39 Speaker 01 There's that, and there's also like, it'll come back at you three times or ten to fold.
36:44 Speaker 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?
36:51 Speaker 01 That's not really how it works.
36:53 Pablo Torre? [bleep]. Yeah.
36:54 Speaker 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.
37:23 Pablo Torre? Ooh.
37:25 Speaker 01 So there's always this kind of idea that, oh, it could.
37:30 Speaker 01 It could bounce back, you know? It could mirror back. So how do you keep that from happening? So.
37:38 Speaker 03 And how would it mirror back? Like you, someone has a different spell that protects them from your spell? Or?
37:45 Pablo Torre? Your rubber and I'm glue spell.
37:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, or do you like say a word wrong and it ends up like? How do you, how do you know?
37:51 Speaker 01 It's more complicated than that. So if you were gonna wanna kill somebody.
37:56 Speaker 03 Which we don't.
37:57 Pablo Torre? For the record, legally speaking.
37:59 Speaker 01 Legally speaking.
37:59 Speaker 03 Not even legally, just in any way. I don't want, I don't want to.
38:02 Pablo Torre? Also that.
38:03 Speaker 01 Legally, ethically, but let's say that we did.
38:07 Speaker 03 Sure.
38:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, for the purposes of podcasts.
38:10 Speaker 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?
38:28 Speaker 03 Two thousand and one?
38:29 Speaker 01 Yes. And so you know what happened, right?
38:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, sure do.
38:32 Speaker 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.
39:04 Pablo Torre? Oh, there was a Borders bookstore, by the way, in the World Trade Center.
39:08 Speaker 03 Of course.
39:09 Pablo Torre? It was a three floor thing. Uh, yeah.
39:11 Speaker 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.
39:27 Pablo Torre? Right.
39:27 Speaker 01 Killing Osama.
39:28 Speaker 03 Even, even when it's someone who universally was regarded as killable. You're like, that's not really my thing.
39:33 Pablo Torre? Right, right, right, right.
39:35 Speaker 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.
39:45 Pablo Torre? Whoa.
39:46 Speaker 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?
40:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:03 Speaker 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.
40:15 Speaker 03 Oh my, okay, so it sounds kind of like, um.
40:18 Pablo Torre? This is a high stakes decision.
40:19 Speaker 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.
40:27 Speaker 01 That's right.
40:28 Speaker 03 But if I'm standing up straight, they're pushing me would actually knock them down.
40:31 Speaker 01 You've got this so perfectly.
40:34 Speaker 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.
40:38 Speaker 01 That's a wonderful thing, you cheeseburger, you.
40:43 Speaker 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.
40:56 Speaker 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.
41:08 Speaker 01 You got it.
41:09 Pablo Torre? Okay, wow.
41:11 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
41:11 Pablo 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.
41:24 Speaker 03 That would be, I mean, wow.
41:26 Pablo Torre? That was gonna be the aggregated clip.
41:28 Speaker 03 Could you, could you double, could you double kill?
41:30 Pablo Torre? Could you revive Osama bin Laden and then kill him again?
41:33 Speaker 01 And kill him again.
41:34 Pablo Torre? And then we could also have The Rock leak out on Twitter that I had re-killed Osama bin Laden.
41:41 Speaker 03 The Rock, The Rock, the man, the man called The Rock?
41:43 Pablo Torre? Are you not familiar with this?
41:44 Speaker 03 What is this?
41:45 Pablo Torre? How The Rock tweeted out the news of the Osama bin Laden assassination by alluding to this thing before anyone else did?
41:53 Speaker 03 The Rock had the news first?
41:54 Pablo Torre? That's right.
41:55 Speaker 01 Before Obama?
41:56 Speaker 03 I did not know that.
41:57 Pablo Torre? Well, I don't know.
41:57 Speaker 03 Kind of makes you think The Rock is a witch.
41:59 Pablo Torre? It is May 1st, 2011, uh, at The Rock, quote.
42:05 Pablo 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.
42:20 Speaker 03 Wait, but he didn't say Osama bin Laden in there anyplace.
42:23 Pablo Torre? Yeah, but then what happened was-
42:24 Speaker 03 He just got news that shocked the world and we just sort of interpreted that that meant Osama bin Laden.
42:27 Pablo Torre? Oh, your theory is that he was like-
42:30 Speaker 03 That he was like, Doritos is releasing a new flavor.
42:33 Pablo Torre? Ha, ha, ha. The 3D Dorito.
42:36 Speaker 03 They're bringing back Dipsy Doodles or something.
42:39 Speaker 01 But maybe he did know.
42:40 Speaker 03 Maybe he did know.
42:41 Pablo Torre? I'll tell you got Dipsy Doodles.
42:43 Speaker 03 Osama bin Laden, indeed.
42:44 Pablo Torre? Got double Dipsy Doodles.
42:45 Speaker 01 Hmm.
42:46 Speaker 03 Double Dipsy Doodle. That's what they called the operation.
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44:07 Pablo 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.
44:23 Speaker 03 Most importantly, legal liability.
44:27 Pablo Torre? Is there, is there someone, Michael, that you are thinking of?
44:30 Speaker 03 Well, okay, this is, I don't, tell me if this is allowed, what I'm gonna say.
44:33 Pablo Torre? Okay.
44:34 Speaker 03 Because it's not a person.
44:35 Pablo Torre? You can't curse me.
44:35 Speaker 03 No, it's not you.
44:37 Pablo Torre? Is it Katie? Are you gonna curse Katie Nolan?
44:38 Speaker 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.
44:50 Speaker 01 I am so down with that.
44:52 Pablo Torre? This is a good idea. I was gonna go-
44:53 Speaker 01 Oh, these ingredients are really good for this because-
44:56 Speaker 03 Let's go.
44:57 Pablo Torre? Wait, I like this.
44:57 Speaker 01 AI needs to slip up so badly that everyone can see, "Oh, this is a bad investment. This, we can't trust this."
45:05 Pablo Torre? I think this is a great idea. I was gonna go-
45:07 Speaker 01 Michael, are you brilliant or what?
45:09 Speaker 03 I think I'm brilliant. I think I might be the [bleep] smartest cheeseburger in all the land.
45:15 Pablo Torre? Allow me to say, Michael, to that suggestion, well done.
45:19 Speaker 01 Well done.
45:19 Speaker 03 Cause like a burger. Really good, dude. You're [bleep] on fire, man.
45:25 Pablo 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.
45:35 Speaker 01 Oh, he is?
45:36 Pablo Torre? You know, that's a separate matter.
45:37 Speaker 01 Well, then he better just, he better, he better watch himself.
45:40 Pablo Torre? Well, he already ran out of an end zone once, which feels like he was cursed by some other witch.
45:43 Speaker 03 I don't even, I don't even know whatever this beef is. I don't know what this is.
45:46 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it's-
45:46 Speaker 03 You know what I think about when I see Dan Orlovsky? That guy's hands are so big.
45:51 Pablo Torre? I know.
45:51 Speaker 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.
46:06 Pablo Torre? As someone who has giant tree hands right now-
46:09 Speaker 03 It is like that big. It is like that is the size of his hands.
46:11 Pablo Torre? Imagine, imagine this but telestrating, like a Caleb Williams play on an iPad.
46:16 Speaker 03 Exactly.
46:16 Pablo Torre? That's mostly what the Dan Orlovsky experience is like.
46:20 Speaker 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?
46:37 Pablo Torre? I don't, but that sounds.
46:39 Speaker 01 How does that work?
46:40 Speaker 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.
46:55 Speaker 01 Not a fan. Also, all the energy.
46:57 Pablo Torre? I know, the data centers.
46:58 Speaker 03 Oh, the energy.
46:59 Pablo Torre? The data centers.
46:59 Speaker 01 The water and the energy and.
47:01 Speaker 03 Everything.
47:02 Speaker 01 That this is taking, stealing.
47:04 Speaker 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.
47:13 Speaker 01 It elucidates.
47:14 Speaker 03 It's gonna do porn.
47:15 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
47:16 Speaker 01 Oh, no. Now it's gonna do porn?
47:18 Speaker 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.
47:25 Pablo Torre? Right, right, right, right.
47:27 Speaker 03 I thought it was gonna end all our global everything, and instead it's like.
47:30 Pablo Torre? I got, I got good news for you, though.
47:31 Speaker 01 As a psychoanalyst, I think this is really bad for humanity.
47:35 Speaker 03 Yes, I agree.
47:36 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:36 Speaker 03 Now, now, is there some, like, wacky-ass way this is coming, gonna come back and bite me in the ass? This spell?
47:43 Speaker 01 No, no.
47:44 Speaker 03 Okay. You seem very, you seem confident that it's not going to, but Pablo's very uncertain.
47:50 Pablo Torre? This feels like a classic rake that you're accidentally gonna step on.
47:54 Speaker 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?
47:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah, when you get.
48:00 Speaker 01 Well, you know, there is such a thing as protecting yourself.
48:04 Speaker 03 Okay, well, how do, let's do that, too.
48:06 Speaker 01 That is allowed.
48:07 Speaker 03 What with, in what way?
48:08 Speaker 01 And we're not even talking about a person here, right? We're talking about a, what are we talking about?
48:14 Pablo Torre? We're talking about truly interconnected series of, uh.
48:17 Speaker 03 A bunch of beeps and boops.
48:19 Pablo Torre? Beeps and boops.
48:20 Speaker 03 But you're saying I protect myself?
48:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, ourselves, any witch can use self-defense.
48:27 Pablo Torre? I think that this is a risk worth taking.
48:29 Speaker 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.
48:47 Pablo Torre? It is my podcast. And also, to be very clear, we're talking not about Allen Iverson, in case we are accidentally cursing.
48:52 Speaker 03 Yes, that's a good thing to do. We don't, there's a man named, are you familiar with Allen Iverson?
48:56 Speaker 01 No.
48:56 Speaker 03 He was a great bas-, he is, oh, he's a great basketball player.
48:58 Speaker 01 He's a great basketball player.
48:59 Speaker 03 And his initials are AI, so we don't want to have this curse.
49:02 Speaker 01 Oh, no, no, we don't want to, we don't want to harm him. We're talking about artificial intelligence.
49:07 Speaker 03 Yes.
49:08 Pablo Torre? Great. Um, we have a cauldron.
49:11 Speaker 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.
49:13 Pablo Torre? I think we gotta make this, I, I, I would love, I would love.
49:17 Speaker 01 So these, of these are the four ingredients. These two are actually, uh, protective. So actually, we might, we might.
49:24 Speaker 03 Just pour those on my head.
49:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, we might each wanna.
49:27 Pablo Torre? Just smelling salt that [BLEEP].
49:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, just chomp on that.
49:31 Speaker 01 Take a bay leaf.
49:32 Speaker 03 Okay.
49:33 Pablo Torre? Nice.
49:33 Speaker 03 I'm eager, any protective thing, I'm, I'm all for it. Like, I'm taking a bay leaf.
49:39 Speaker 01 I'm, I have three bay leaves.
49:41 Speaker 03 I don't have to go to like a witch store, I can just buy a bay leaf.
49:44 Speaker 01 Right in the supermarket.
49:45 Speaker 03 Right, in the [BLEEP] supermarket.
49:47 Pablo Torre? She's the, she's the [BLEEP] market sorcerer, sorceress.
49:51 Speaker 01 Take a whiff of the, of the mint.
49:56 Speaker 01 Put a little on your, a little on your bay leaf.
50:01 Speaker 03 A little on my bay leaf? Wow, that's really, that's.
50:03 Speaker 01 A little cinnamon, cinnamon is funny, because cinnamon can be used for.
50:07 Speaker 03 That mint is really, this is, this is, it's really minting.
50:09 Pablo Torre? Ooh, oh boy. A little on the bay leaf, yep, there you go.
50:13 Speaker 03 Okay, cinnamon also smelling?
50:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, and you can put a little on your, on your minty bay leaf.
50:17 Speaker 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.
50:25 Pablo Torre? She has great vibes.
50:26 Speaker 03 Energy.
50:27 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you, gentlemen.
50:29 Speaker 03 Okay.
50:30 Speaker 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.
50:43 Pablo Torre? We're gonna get some of that, we got that.
50:45 Speaker 01 Sage?
50:45 Pablo Torre? Yep, it's going into the cauldron.
50:48 Speaker 01 Going into the cauldron.
50:52 Speaker 01 You know, like, we need some real sage, meaning some wisdom.
50:56 Speaker 03 I see.
50:57 Speaker 01 Instead of AI, wouldn't that be nice?
51:00 Pablo Torre? Agreed.
51:01 Speaker 01 And cinnamon is...
51:03 Speaker 03 Where'd the cinnamon go?
51:04 Pablo Torre? Oh, here it is.
51:04 Speaker 03 For God's sake, Pablo, give it.
51:06 Pablo Torre? Here it is, with haste.
51:08 Speaker 01 See, so cinnamon, depending on what you mix it with,
51:12 Speaker 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."
51:24 Pablo Torre? Yes.
51:25 Speaker 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?
51:34 Pablo Torre? Yeah, we got something.
51:36 Speaker 01 What I want to use is, I want someone to, like, print out...
51:42 Speaker 03 Oh, here it is. Listen to this.
51:44 Speaker 01 The, like, definition of AI.
51:49 Speaker 03 So, a piece of paper that has the definition of artificial intelligence on it?
51:53 Pablo Torre? Oh, so we can target this?
51:54 Speaker 01 Put it in the call.
51:55 Pablo Torre? Okay, hold on.
51:56 Speaker 03 Can we get that?
51:56 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can write it down.
51:59 Speaker 01 No, I don't want you to use your handwriting.
52:00 Pablo Torre? Oh, you want to type it? Okay.
52:07 Speaker 01 We did need matches.
52:08 Speaker 03 We do.
52:08 Pablo Torre? Can you, uh, print out a piece of paper that has the definition of AI on it?
52:13 Speaker 03 Ask AI to define AI.
52:15 Speaker 01 Yes, ask AI to define AI. I love it. I love it, I love it.
52:20 Speaker 03 Oh, dude, this works. We're so set. We're so set forever.
52:24 Pablo Torre? I think, I think this is exactly what America needs us to do. So, we have printed out, uh...
52:32 Speaker 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.
52:48 Speaker 01 Okay, so we're gonna fold that paper into nine folds.
52:51 Speaker 03 Nine, any particular kind of folds? We don't care.
52:54 Speaker 01 Just nine times folded.
52:56 Pablo Torre? One.
52:56 Speaker 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.
53:16 Speaker 03 And that is eight. And that is nine.
53:21 Speaker 01 So nine is the number of completion and endings.
53:24 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:25 Speaker 01 So that's gonna go in the cauldron.
53:27 Speaker 03 Throw it in there?
53:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:29 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:29 Speaker 01 And we're gonna add some sulfur. So we're gonna add nine match heads. I don't wanna lose count.
53:36 Speaker 03 Take your time. Four.
53:39 Speaker 01 Four. You wanna do some?
53:41 Speaker 03 Okay.
53:43 Speaker 03 I wonder how the people at Finelli's Cafe will feel about us using that.
53:46 Pablo Torre? Shout out to, uh, local Soho institution.
53:49 Speaker 03 This is five.
53:50 Speaker 01 Five.
53:50 Pablo Torre? For unintentionally helping solve the world's foremost.
53:55 Speaker 03 This is six.
53:56 Pablo Torre? Plague.
53:59 Speaker 03 This is seven. Pablo, I feel like the last two should be yours.
54:03 Pablo Torre? This is...
54:04 Speaker 03 Eight and nine. Don't [bleep] this up and put an extra goddamn match head in there, I swear to God.
54:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, because then it'll be new beginnings.
54:11 Pablo Torre? Oh, boy.
54:12 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
54:12 Pablo Torre? Oh, shit.
54:13 Speaker 03 Can you do new beginning? Oh, [bleep].
54:15 Speaker 01 No, we didn't. That was eight.
54:17 Speaker 03 Wait, wait, wait. I think there might be nine in there right now.
54:19 Pablo Torre? No.
54:20 Speaker 03 One, look, look. Come here and look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
54:26 Pablo Torre? Oh, my God.
54:27 Speaker 03 [bleep] A.
54:28 Speaker 01 You see how easy it is?
54:29 Speaker 03 Holy shit.
54:30 Pablo Torre? [bleep].
54:31 Speaker 03 Wait, wait, wait.
54:33 Pablo Torre? Oh, [bleep], you're right. One, two, three.
54:37 Speaker 01 We don't want eight either, because eight is infinity.
54:41 Pablo Torre? God damn it.
54:42 Speaker 03 [bleep] me, dude. This is [bleep] intense, dude.
54:48 Speaker 03 There's nine in there right now. [bleep] A.
54:51 Speaker 01 Should I check it, too?
54:52 Speaker 03 Yes, everyone, everyone, everyone in the world, come and check it.
54:57 Pablo Torre? We totally almost Orlovsky'd that.
54:59 Speaker 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.
55:06 Speaker 01 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
55:12 Speaker 03 [bleep] A. We were so close to AI, like, taking... What would, ten, ten is what? Ten is new beginning?
55:17 Speaker 01 New beginning.
55:17 Speaker 03 We don't want a new beginning.
55:18 Pablo Torre? No.
55:19 Speaker 01 Eight is infinity.
55:20 Speaker 03 Oh, Jesus.
55:21 Speaker 01 We have all the stuff.
55:23 Speaker 03 I'm [bleep] nervous.
55:24 Pablo Torre? I'm genuinely a little...
55:27 Speaker 03 I'm excited. I'm excited and scared.
55:31 Speaker 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.
55:42 Speaker 03 I'm absolutely not challenging you on which gods we're going to. I'm going for whatever gods you say.
55:47 Pablo Torre? But oh, Fortuna also is, that is the, that's the Carmina Barana.
55:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is. Exactly.
55:56 Speaker 03 Wow.
55:57 Pablo Torre? Whoa. Okay.
56:00 Speaker 03 Wait, is this, that's a.
56:04 Speaker 01 No, that's Carmen.
56:05 Speaker 03 Oh, sh**.
56:06 Speaker 01 So fabulous.
56:08 Speaker 03 That's bizet, goddammit.
56:10 Speaker 01 That's bizet.
56:11 Pablo Torre? That, that is, uh.
56:12 Speaker 03 Oh.
56:17 Speaker 03 Or is that?
56:20 Speaker 03 Me, what am I doing? God damn it.
56:22 Speaker 01 Ba ba ba.
56:23 Speaker 03 Cut this out.
56:24 Pablo Torre? No, no, no. Leave it in. Roll the music underneath.
56:27 Speaker 03 I know stuff. Cut it out.
56:30 Pablo Torre? So with this, uh, dramatic music playing underneath us in our post-production.
56:36 Speaker 03 Yes.
56:36 Pablo Torre? Edit.
56:37 Speaker 03 It will be there.
56:38 Pablo Torre? What do we need to do?
56:40 Speaker 01 Oh goddess Fortuna. We ask you to protect the fate of mankind. And to
56:51 Speaker 01 turn the fortune of AI, cause it to slip up and fail so that it cannot harm humanity.
57:02 Speaker 01 So mote it be.
57:05 Speaker 01 So mote it be.
57:09 Speaker 01 So mote it be. Do you guys want to add any words to that?
57:13 Pablo Torre? May humans masturbate the old fashioned way.
57:19 Speaker 01 Amen. So mote it be.
57:20 Speaker 03 And that's beautiful.
57:21 Speaker 01 That is beautiful.
57:22 Speaker 03 So mote it be. And, you know, may, uh, may humans reign over technology and not the reverse.
57:32 Pablo Torre? So mote it be.
57:34 Speaker 03 I have no spells vis a vis masturbating myself. I have not, I'm not, that's not for me.
57:39 Pablo Torre? Methinks the witch doth touch too much.
57:41 Speaker 03 Methinks the cheeseburger.
57:47 Speaker 03 Um, wow. Okay, wow.
57:49 Speaker 01 Make love, not AI.
57:50 Speaker 03 Yes, indeed.
57:52 Pablo Torre? Damn. Um, I gotta say, I usually come up with like some very clever sign off to wrap it all together.
58:00 Speaker 03 You think so?
58:00 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out. But I gotta say,
58:06 Pablo Torre? I think I'm pretty stumped.
58:08 Speaker 03 Jesus Christ. Could that undo the spell? Could the spell be [__] up by that?
58:14 Speaker 01 No.
58:15 Speaker 03 Is it possible?
58:15 Speaker 01 Cleverness is never offensive.
58:17 Speaker 03 Fortuna's not gonna be like, [__] this.
58:29 Pablo 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.
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