Pagans, Neo-Pagans, Wiccans – Let’s Sort It Out!

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Pagans, Neo-Pagans, Wiccans – Let’s Sort It Out!" Stuff You Should Know
Release Date: June 3, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Pagans, Neo-Pagans, Wiccans – Let’s Sort It Out!", hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into the intricate world of paganism, exploring its ancient roots, the rise and suppression by Christianity, and its modern resurgence. The conversation aims to demystify various pagan traditions, highlighting their beliefs, practices, and evolution over time.

Ancient Paganism: Beliefs and Practices

Josh and Chuck begin by defining paganism as a collection of nature-based religions predating the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Josh Clark [01:29]:
"Paganism is not a religion. It's a set of typically nature-based religions that predated the Abrahamic religions."

They discuss key elements of ancient paganism:

• Animism: The belief that every object, living or non-living, possesses a spirit.

  Chuck Bryant [07:05]:
  "Animism is the belief that every object on the planet has a spirit. Rivers, trees, everything can animate or inanimate, influencing their behavior towards humans."

• Shamanism: Combining animism with a mediator (shaman) who communicates with spirits, often entering trance states through rituals involving singing, dancing, or substances.

• Ancestor Worship: Reverence for ancestors, stemming from burial practices suggesting belief in an afterlife where ancestors can aid the living.

• Polytheism: Worship of multiple gods, each with distinct roles and attributes.

  Josh Clark [10:37]:
  "There is not one single God. Even if there's a head of the gods, like Zeus or Odin, there are plenty of other gods who are gods in and of themselves."

The Rise of Christianity and Suppression of Paganism

The conversation transitions to how Christianity's ascendancy in the Roman Empire led to the suppression and demonization of pagan practices.

Chuck Bryant [05:07]:
"Christianity leapt forward as a sophisticated thing, using the same playbook against pagans that pagans once used against Christians."

Key points include:

• Terminology: The term "pagan" originally meant "country dweller" in Latin and became an insult as Christianity centralized power.

• Legal Suppression: Constantine's son enacted laws banning pagan practices publicly, with Theodosius later declaring Christianity the state religion and outlawing paganism entirely.

  Josh Clark [20:05]:
  "Christianity started to stamp out pagan religions all over the Roman Empire through laws and demonizing them."

• Demonization Tactics: Pagan gods were equated with Satan, transforming polytheistic beliefs into associations with evil.

  Chuck Bryant [21:30]:
  "They took pagan gods like Cernunnos and transformed their image into the Christian devil, demonizing entire religions."

Modern Paganism: Revival and Transformation

Josh and Chuck explore the revival of paganism in modern times, emphasizing that contemporary paganism is distinct from its ancient origins due to the lack of continuous tradition and the synthesis of various influences.

Josh Clark [06:03]:
"Modern paganism isn't a direct revival of ancient practices but a new synthesis inspired by historical elements."

Key aspects include:

• Renaissance Influence: Rediscovery of Greek and Roman philosophies during the Renaissance sparked renewed interest in polytheistic beliefs.

• The Enlightenment: Rational thinking led some to seek purpose in nature, fostering an intellectual interest in paganism.

• 20th Century Movements:

  • Gerald Gardner and Wicca: Gardner introduced Wicca in the 1930s, presenting it as a modern witchcraft practice with its own rituals and Book of Shadows.

    Chuck Bryant [43:41]:
    "Gerald Gardner was a British customs official who founded Wicca, claiming initiation by an ancient coven."

  • Dianic Wicca: A woman-centered branch focused on feminist ideals and celebrating female life cycles.

    Josh Clark [43:06]:
    "Dianic Wicca is more woman-centered, created to celebrate and honor biological cycles, excluding males to focus on women's roles."

  • Heathenry: An umbrella term for modern practices honoring Norse and Germanic deities, exemplified by movements like Ásatrú and Vanatrú.

Misconceptions and Historical Accuracy

The hosts address common misconceptions perpetuated by sources like the History Channel, emphasizing the importance of scholarly research over sensationalist portrayals.

Chuck Bryant [28:35]:
"The History Channel presents unsupported theories as facts, causing widespread misconceptions about paganism."

They critique figures like James Frazer and Margaret Murray, whose theories have been debunked but still influence modern pagan narratives.

• James Frazer: His work, The Golden Bough, suggested all religions stem from a common myth of a sacrificed king, a theory now considered overly simplistic.

  Josh Clark [30:10]:
  "Frazer's Golden Bough, despite its exhaustive research, is not entirely accurate but became a handbook for modern pagan movements."

• Margaret Murray: Proposed that European witches traced their lineage to ancient fertility cults, a claim now debunked.

  Chuck Bryant [32:09]:
  "Margaret Murray argued that modern witches descended from ancient fertility cults, but this has been thoroughly debunked."

Contemporary Pagan Movements and Culture

Modern paganism encompasses a diverse range of practices and beliefs, often intersecting with popular culture and music.

• Black Metal Scene: In Norway, elements of paganism influenced the black metal music scene, leading to radical acts like church burnings and extreme expressions of Norse paganism.

  Josh Clark [47:36]:
  "The Norwegian black metal scene turned towards heathenry, leading to extreme acts like burning medieval churches, which is not representative of paganism as a whole."

• Heathenry Subgroups:

  • Ásatrú: Focuses on the Aesir gods, emphasizing honor and valor.
  • Vanatrú: Centers on the Vanir gods, highlighting prosperity and nature.

  Chuck Bryant [46:18]:
  "Asatru worships the Aesir gods like Odin and Thor, while Vanatrú is concerned with Vanir gods, focusing on prosperity and nature."

• Druidry: A modern belief system celebrating nature as the divine, founded by Ross Nichols.

  Josh Clark [50:32]:
  "Modern Druidry, started by Ross Nichols, views nature itself as the divine and emphasizes it as a philosophy rather than a religion."

Legal Recognition and Modern Challenges

The episode touches on the legal recognition of pagan practices and ongoing challenges faced by modern pagans.

• Supreme Court Case: In 1986, Detmer v. Landen recognized Wicca as a true religion in the United States, protecting the use of ritual objects under the First Amendment.

  Josh Clark [44:35]:
  "Wicca was first recognized as a true religion in 1986 when the Supreme Court ruled in Detmer v. Landen, protecting the use of ritual objects."

• Modern Misrepresentations: Contemporary media often misrepresents paganism, leading to stereotypes and misunderstandings.

Conclusion

Josh and Chuck conclude by encouraging listeners to explore paganism with an open mind, emphasizing the diversity and adaptability of modern pagan practices. They highlight the importance of distinguishing between historical facts and popular misconceptions, urging critical engagement with sources and respect for the traditions being discussed.

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Notable Quotes

• Josh Clark [01:29]:
  "Paganism is not a religion. It's a set of typically nature-based religions that predated the Abrahamic religions."

• Chuck Bryant [07:05]:
  "Animism is the belief that every object on the planet has a spirit. Rivers, trees, everything can animate or inanimate, influencing their behavior towards humans."

• Josh Clark [10:37]:
  "There is not one single God. Even if there's a head of the gods, like Zeus or Odin, there are plenty of other gods who are gods in and of themselves."

• Chuck Bryant [21:30]:
  "They took pagan gods like Cernunnos and transformed their image into the Christian devil, demonizing entire religions."

• Josh Clark [20:05]:
  "Christianity started to stamp out pagan religions all over the Roman Empire through laws and demonizing them."

• Chuck Bryant [28:35]:
  "The History Channel presents unsupported theories as facts, causing widespread misconceptions about paganism."

• Josh Clark [30:10]:
  "Frazer's Golden Bough, despite its exhaustive research, is not entirely accurate but became a handbook for modern pagan movements."

• Chuck Bryant [46:18]:
  "Asatru worships the Aesir gods like Odin and Thor, while Vanatrú is concerned with Vanir gods, focusing on prosperity and nature."

• Josh Clark [44:35]:
  "Wicca was first recognized as a true religion in 1986 when the Supreme Court ruled in Detmer v. Landen, protecting the use of ritual objects."

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This comprehensive exploration provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of paganism's historical context, modern manifestations, and the challenges it faces today. Whether you're new to the topic or seeking to deepen your knowledge, Josh and Chuck offer valuable insights into the enduring legacy and evolving landscape of pagan beliefs.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Unknown]

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[Josh Clark]

Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Unknown]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And we both have antlers on our head. And this is stuff you should know.

[Josh Clark]

Just a couple of wooded pagans.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I'm excited about this one, man.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you know, we'll reference some previous episodes. We covered Wicca in our witchcraft up. And there's some Aleister Crowley in here. Of course.

[Unknown]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

You knew he was gonna make an appearance and it seems like there was something else too. But if you want the full picture, go back and listen to all those together. Just for a spooky. Why don't I say spooky? This is not even spooky. That's the whole problem.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's so ingrained that even after you know about it, you know, it's hard not to just shake that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

I was a church kid. I was raised Baptist. Pagans were spooky. They killed and sacrificed things.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I ran across a couple of websites, Christian websites, that essentially still think all of the same things that the church originally said about pagans back 1500 years ago.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So it's still alive and well.

[Josh Clark]

It's cool to know this story now, having left the Baptist church many, many years ago to finally understand, like, oh, at a certain point in history, they were just like, this is the religion and everything else is the devil.

[Unknown]

Right, yeah. And in retrospect, looking at this now, it's like, gosh, talk about getting your wires crossed.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's funny.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So we're talking about paganism, everybody. And hats off to Dave too, first of all, for helping us with this. This is a huge, big lump of a topic that almost every one of the things we're going to talk about could be broken out into its own episode. Yeah. So we're going to have to summarize. In a lot of ways, we're going to get a lot of stuff wrong. So apologies already to all of our pagan listeners out there and let us know, correct us about what we do get wrong. But we're going to try our best not to get stuff wrong because it's a really interesting set of religions. We should say that's what paganism is. It's not a religion. It's a set of typically nature based religions that before the original ancient paganism predated any of what we call the Abrahamic religions, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And that's my definition of paganism.

[Josh Clark]

Can we stop there?

[Unknown]

Yeah, we haven't gotten anything wrong so far, so.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, well, you mentioned those religions and it's pretty key to mention the Abrahamic religions because basically anything else outside of that was considered pagan historically. The word pagan actually was pretty much an insult at first when Christianity was on the rise. And we'll talk a lot about that here in a second. In the Roman Empire, if you did not convert to Christianity, you were called paganis, which is Latin for country dweller, which is basically like, hey, if you're not a Christian, you're a bumpkin, AKA pagan. Which is interesting.

[Unknown]

Oh yeah, it's definitely interesting. It's funny because that means that at some point in time, and we'll talk about when that happened, Christianity suddenly leapt forward as like a sophisticated thing, which is. So the table's basically turned because originally some of the Greek and actually Roman pagans were very suspicious of Christianity and said all sorts of libelous things against them. And then as Christianity rose to prominence, it used that same playbook against pagans. But yeah, it makes sense that it's like you were considered a hick or not up to date if you were still a pagan once Christianity became a thing in the Roman Empire.

[Josh Clark]

I think Bumpkin summed it up nicely.

[Unknown]

I thought so too. I like Bumpkin because it's like it's an insult, but it's just so round and happy that it's hard to Be angered by it if somebody calls you a bumpkin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. For some reason, bumpkin does have just sort of a. Like, I feel like bumpkins are happy.

[Unknown]

Right. They don't care what you think of them.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so should we talk a little bit about. You know, there's kind of two parts to this. There's ancient paganism, which is one thing that we're gonna speak about now, and then later we're gonna talk a little bit about modern paganism. But the kind of key distinction here is modern paganism isn't like, hey, we just brought back everything they were doing back then because it went away for a long time and now we're gonna do that same stuff. It was, you know, inspired by some of this stuff. But as you'll see, not a lot of text survived. So modern paganism is basically its own new thing.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And we'll talk about where it came from, but there's a lot of, well, just incorrect facts on the Internet that basically says this tradition has continued uninterrupted in secret. It had to be driven into secret by the rise of Christianity. And that just does not seem to be true.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but if we're going to go back to ancient paganism, we can talk about some of the different elements of. Because like you said, this is a lot of different things that are wrapped up under the term paganism. But animism is the first one. And that is the belief that every object on the planet basically has a spirit. People do. My dog does. Your dog does, which I totally believe. The rivers, the trees, everything in nature does animate or inanimate, which is why it's called animism. And they thought that nature can be a great thing, it can help protect us, or it can be a dangerous thing, it can cause us harm. And it's up to us to influence that through sacrifice and these rituals that we perform.

[Unknown]

Yeah. A good example of this, just real quick, is there's no absolute good and evil. That's one of those Abrahamic religious ideas. And paganism does not believe in that. So, for example, if you are crossing a raging river, that river might kill you and drown you. But it's not like the river is evil and wants to do that. It just can happen. So there's a risk, but it can also be a neutral thing. You can increase your chances of successfully crossing that river by maybe praying to it the spirit or the God of that river, or maybe offering a sacrifice. But it's not. There's no evil rivers in any of the Pagan religions, except for the River Styx. Yeah, I guess, maybe. But I think even then it's not necessarily absolutely evil.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. We've got shamanism, which is sort of like animism plus animism with a mascot and that the shaman is the person who steps forward and says, all right, we've got all these objects that have spirits, and I'm the person that can communicate with them. I will enter a trance, may take some drugs, may do a little singing and dancing to get there. Don't you worry about that. But I'll get there in that trance state and I'll be able to communicate with these spirits. Like, go through me.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I think the singing and dancing is subsequent to taking the drugs.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, I went to a rave or two in my day.

[Unknown]

Exactly. Every single person there was a shaman at that moment.

[Josh Clark]

This is what it felt like at the time, probably.

[Unknown]

Right. So there's a couple of things just from the ancient pagan religions that are still carried on today. Ancestor worship is another big one, especially as we'll see in the neo pagan Norse traditions. But it's essentially, you can see evidence of this in the fact that we buried people in the way that we started burying people, as if they're venerated, as if we understand that they need grave goods because there's an afterlife. And so it's not like a hard leap to the idea that those ancestors can help us out now that they're in the spirit world and so you can worship them. That's a big part of it, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Then we're going to get into this whole idea that. And something I found that looking through a lot of these pagans rites and religions, is that they looked at women very differently than early Christian, and some might even argue late Christian religions do, in that women were worshiped and venerated. The Earth Mother was a big part of the early deities and worshiped. And they found Venus figurines, these clay and stone figures from, like, 35,000 years ago that are clearly, like, probably used in fertility rites because they have, you know, exaggerated breasts on these figures and wide hips. And so the whole idea of the Earth Mother has been around for a long, long time.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And then you can pretty clearly demonstrate that the Earth Mother eventually evolved into Gaia from the Greek pantheon. Gaia is the mom of all the other gods. Which brings up another point. Polytheism. It's not monotheistic. There is not one single God, even if there's a head of the gods, like, say, Zeus or Odin or something. Like that there's still plenty of other gods who are gods. They're not saints, they're not angels, they're not assistants. They are gods in and of themselves. And so polytheism is a huge, huge part of any pagan religion, ancient or modern too.

[Josh Clark]

And I've never looked into this, but I mean, the idea of Mother Nature, that probably is kind of a trickle down from Goddess Mother, Earth mother.

[Unknown]

Right, I would think so too. Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I'm just taking a stab at that though.

[Unknown]

So don't you gotta be right? You know, I mean, it's not like that was just coincidental somebody came up with that in the 60s or something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's true.

[Unknown]

What about sacrifice, the stuff that pagans don't like to talk about?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, this is a can of worms that, you know, we can't fully open because there's a lot of debate about how much sacrifice there has been in all religions throughout ancient world history. A lot of times these. The people that say, like, oh, they were just killing babies left and right are written by the enemies of these people, in this case Christian and Roman accounts about how widespread it would be because they're trying to paint them in a certain way. But there definitely has been sacrifice, whether it was human or your finest crop or your best sheep.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I mean, we know for a fact that Germanic and Celtic tribes sacrificed humans just from the presence of bog bodies in the state that they were the way that they died, they're pretty much proof positive that there was sacrifice. And even outside of Europe, I mean, you know, the Inca maiden, the Lulea. Lulo. Lulalo.

[Josh Clark]

I think you mean Leilani the maiden.

[Unknown]

You remember the Inca maiden that has her knees pulled up to her chest and she looks like she's sleeping, but she was sacrificed 500 years ago. I mean, like, it did happen, but the idea that it was widespread or that they drank baby's blood or that kind of stuff, that was the exaggeration that really kind of were smears.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I finally watched the other day. It was about a month ago, I guess the Mel Gibson.

[Unknown]

Apocalypto.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'd never seen that for some reason. I finally watched it.

[Unknown]

How was it?

[Josh Clark]

Did you see it?

[Unknown]

No, but I've seen the scene that made you think of that.

[Josh Clark]

You know, it was pretty good. You know, I'm not like championing Mel Gibson, of course, but I just hadn't seen that movie. And I had a. I guess Emily was clearly not with me. And I was like oh, I've got a window and it popped up and I was like, you know what? I never saw that. Let me check it out. Very gross and gory in its depictions, but, you know, it was okay.

[Unknown]

Yeah, Mel Gibson is basically into snuff porn. Like, he loves that stuff. Have you ever seen We Were Soldiers?

[Josh Clark]

I did not see that. But that's supposed to be pretty gory too, right?

[Unknown]

It's one of the most violent. Yeah. Goriest war movies I've ever seen in my life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And I've seen the Guns of Navarone.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Was that Telly Savalas?

[Unknown]

No, he was in the Dirty Dozen. That's what you're thinking.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

That was good.

[Josh Clark]

Or forced tin from Navarro. Was he in that one too?

[Unknown]

I don't know if he was in that one. Dirty Dozen. He was definitely in the Dirty Dozen. That was a great one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. All right, we're getting away off topic here though, because we need to talk about idol worship and tree worship. That's another pretty common element in a lot of different pagan religions. It's right there in the Ten Commandments. Do not worship false idols. Idolatry was a big no no to Christians. And that's basically any physical representation of a God or a spirit. We usually, you know, growing up, Baptists thought of as like statues and stuff from biblical stories. But it can be a rock or something and then trees. Trees are big in many, many, most pagan religions. They love their trees.

[Unknown]

Yeah, they love them for sure. So, yeah, those are some high points or basics, I guess is a better way to put it, of ancient pagan religions. And because as we said before, there's not really a lot that survived from the ancients to today. A lot of that stuff has been gleaned by archaeologists, anthropologists, and it's from that base of knowledge that modern pagans draw from to create the newer versions of the pagan religions.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It feels like a break time, right?

[Unknown]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk about when Christianity decided. That's it. We're going to change the narrative right after this.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Unknown]

Right. And so the tide turned on pagans basically right out of the gate. But Constantine himself didn't do anything to persecute. He didn't use his official position as Emperor to persecute pagans.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he dipped his toe in the pool publicly.

[Unknown]

Yeah, exactly. Actually, I think he was fully immersed in the baptismal font instead. Well, yeah, his son though went full bore after pagans and outlawed paganism. He passed the first laws, Constantinius Constantius, not Constantinople Constantius, yes, yeah. He passed the first laws that made paganism and practices of paganism illegal. It was basically amounted to any public displays of paganism were outlawed. But not too long after a couple of decades, his successor, Theodosius, he said, Christianity is the state religion of the Roman Empire and if you do anything pagan, including in your own home, like you're, you're toast. Don't let us see you go anywhere near a chicken or you're in big trouble.

[Josh Clark]

And they said, what is toast? They went, you know, when your bread gets too close to the fire and it tastes better, that's toast.

[Unknown]

I hadn't tried that.

[Josh Clark]

So Christianity is on the rise and they started to stamp out pagan religions all over the Roman Empire through the laws that you mentioned and through a pretty brilliant plan which was literally demonizing them. I never really have thought about that word much until this as like, you know that demon is the root there. But that's literally what they did. They were like, you know what, everyone that you have been worshiping, they are the devil in disguise, right? Like the literal devil. Satan.

[Unknown]

Yes. And they actually took some of the existing gods and just basically copy pasted them into the conception of the devil, of Satan. And again, keep in mind Here, these, these pagan religions, they don't have anything even approximating Satan. Like, gods can be good or evil, protective or dangerous, but there's no, like, one evil polar foil to God, because there is no one God. It's not dual, it's plural. That's. That's part of pagan religion. Right. So it's ironic that they're like, you're God is Satan. And they're like, which one? They're like the one with the horns, the one with the antlers.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Unknown]

And so that's. That's basically how the modern conception of Satan came along. And so basically any God would just be equated with evil, with a demon, with Satan himself. And if you were caught practicing this now, you started to risk being killed by the people in charge.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Dave found this one pretty prominent Celtic God, Cernunnos. Yeah.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. C E R N U N N.

[Unknown]

It's like a mashup of Michael Cera, John Cena, and John Sununu.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, man, I almost said it wrong again. Cernunnos was, like I said, a prominent Celtic God and had. It was the antler God, had antlers. And they basically look back now and say, between Cernunnos and the Greek God Pan, like, it's not a far leap to go from antlers to horns. And that was basically probably the model for the Christian devil that, you know, once they decided, hey, we're just gonna be binary from now on.

[Unknown]

Right. But Cernunnos was wearing antlers because they indicated protectiveness, not necessarily of humans, but of the forest in the countryside. And you could be in Cernunnos's good graces by taking care of those things, or you could run afoul of Sir Nunnos and if you say, just stepped on a bunch of docks for no good reason. Yeah, but that he became Satan eventually, or he was one of the ones. I think they went basically local religion by local religion and identified who could be Satan and then demonize them and all the others.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, that makes sense. Like, who do they identify with? Like, who's going to scare them.

[Unknown]

Exactly. So now, because your God, your ancient pagan God is Satan, if you are caught worshiping that God or any God or any kind of polytheistic pagan religion, you're now in league with the devil. And again, you can be put to death for that kind of thing. And that developed into witch trials, the Inquisition, all sorts of terrible stuff that was essentially the Christian church persecuting in an effort to stamp out, like, any local rival religions.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, Stamp out is one thing they did. And you know, with the Christian armies and colonialism and missionaries, that was what they were doing all over the West. And then what they couldn't stamp out, or I don't know if it was what they couldn't stamp out, but they were stamping out everything they wanted to. And then they also said, but actually this Halloween and Christmas and Easter are pretty fun, and those are pagan based. So we're just going to tweak those and make them our own. Because who doesn't like Halloween?

[Unknown]

Yeah, everybody likes Halloween, which started out as Samhain, as we'll see. I think we've talked about that probably 15 times. You know what I think actually triggered this? Me thinking of this topic.

[Josh Clark]

What movie?

[Unknown]

No, it was Easter I was thinking about. I happened to be up and out around sunrise on Easter and it reminded me as a kid, being raised Catholic, of going to sunrise mass in Easter. And I was like, dude, you're standing there celebrating a religious service, watching the sun rise on a specific day in the spring. Like, it is so pagan based and it's in, like, in every single way. I think even Easter is like a shift or an adaptation of like Osteo, which I believe was one of the polytheistic pagan gods. Yeah, like it was. It's just there, out in the open, basically. And that made me wonder about the whole thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, the most dedicated would hike up Stone Mountain in the dead of night to go to the sunrise service on top of Stone Mountain.

[Unknown]

Yeah, pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So they were basically stamping with one foot, giving back rubs with the other with their hands. Stamp, stamp, rub, rub. That's what the Christians did to basically win the PR war of the religions and take over, essentially.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. If you're looking at the pagan comeback, which we're going to get into now, you can go back to the Renaissance when they said, hey, the Greek and Roman philosophers and all those books they were writing, it's like super interesting. We're into that stuff again. And we have the printing press now, so we can really print this stuff up and disseminate it. And there were Renaissance painters painting all these amazing romantic paintings of, like, mythological creatures and gods. And then the Enlightenment came along and said, Renaissance, hold my mead.

[Unknown]

So, yeah, the Enlightenment was like, in a couple of strange ways, it was really fertile ground for, like, an interest in paganism to come along. For one, the Enlightenment thinkers, just essentially as a first step, just rejected Christianity and monotheism in particular. And they Also were like, I really like the philosophy of these ancient Greeks and ancient Romans. They were polytheistic. Maybe I could be, too. So it kind of aroused, like, an intellectual interest in that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

But it also. It created an interest in paganism in a different way, too, because the Enlightenment created such rational thinking that some people were kind of repelled by it. And they're like, I'm going to go seek answers and purpose in nature instead. And that, probably more than anything, is how the Enlightenment led to an interest in paganism.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I also thought it was super interesting how much the arts played into all this. You know, I mentioned the Renaissance painters, but also romantic poets. Like, you can't read Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley without, like, wanting to go out into the woods and, like, be among nature. There were very. Just very moving poems about the world, the natural world around us and this sort of unseen magic in nature.

[Unknown]

Yeah. You've never wanted to take your clothes off in the woods, Read some Keats.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Unknown]

See how you feel after that.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh. I'm not a. I'm not a big naked in the. I'm not a big naked guy, period. I think it's been established, but probably because of the Baptist upbringing. But I feel too vulnerable out there in the woods.

[Unknown]

Yeah, No, I get that. There's mosquitoes and beetles and those worms that crawl up your pee hole.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I'll just. You can find me in my skivvies, at least.

[Unknown]

Are you a never nude?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I shower in a bathing suit.

[Unknown]

In cutoff jeans.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the cutoffs. Oh, man, it's so great.

[Unknown]

What else? Oh, oh. There was another thing that kind of created. I might have grown out of this interest, essentially, like kind of scholarship on paganism.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Some was good. Some was the kind of stuff that you would equate with finding on the History Channel today.

[Josh Clark]

You know, that was in the article and we talked about it a little bit offline. I did not know. I don't watch enough History Channel. I thought the History Channel was just like. We used to call it the War Channel because it was always just black and white World War II documentaries. But I know there is another side of the History Channel where with the alien sky. Do they have a lot of that kind of stuff?

[Unknown]

I think it's pretty much all. Yeah, that.

[Josh Clark]

Is it really? Okay.

[Unknown]

Yeah, pretty much. And I think it has been that way for a really long time. And I mean, not to bag on the History Channel is interesting, but I guess what I'm equating it to is really Interesting unsupported theories that like, if you're an actual scientist and you look into it, you're like, this is just made up.

[Josh Clark]

They're trying to make the entertaining television. Basically.

[Unknown]

Yes. But the problem is they present it factually and it gets taken factually by a lot of people. So they've caused a lot of problems. They essentially have ruined the world. Since single handedly the History Channel has.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I'm glad I know this because I'm going to stop saying, well, the History Channel said I would stop that.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, there were a couple of key people that came out of this that you kind of referenced. One was a guy named James Frazer. He was an anthropologist who wrote a book, very influential book in 1890 called the Golden Bow. B O u I'm sorry, Yeah. U w Jesus, what's going on with me?

[Unknown]

B O u G h. I'm going with bough.

[Josh Clark]

It's pronounced Bo.

[Unknown]

I think that's a History Channel type argument.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, we're not going to argue with this because who cares? But that's the way it's spelled. And his argument was that, you know, all religions basically go back to this one pagan myth about a king that was sacrificed to bless the land with fertility and you can kind of trace them all back to this.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And so modern historians have said that's a great theory, Frazier, but it's not correct. Frazer is not a History Channel type. He was a legitimate anthropologist. And one of the reasons the Golden Bow bow figures in is that he did an amazing amount of exhaustive research that in the book he describes a lot of ancient pagan traditions and beliefs and stuff. So the Golden Bough became kind of like a handbook for the modern pagan movements that followed.

[Josh Clark]

Do you know what I feel like inserting here?

[Unknown]

What?

[Josh Clark]

The way that you pronounce the word be. Like, why did they get Count Dracula? Who is that guy?

[Unknown]

I don't know. That's like a book on tape you heard once.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no, no. This is the YouTube guy. When you look up pronunciations.

[Unknown]

Oh yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There's one gentleman that talks like from Transylvania.

[Unknown]

Yeah, he really does, doesn't he? I never thought about it. He's great.

[Josh Clark]

Well, now this is saying bow, but I looked it up earlier and it said bow.

[Unknown]

Okay, Bow, bow, bow.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know if I believe that lady.

[Unknown]

Like when the bow breaks, wouldn't you just sit up and tell your mom that she got it wrong if she's saying when the bow breaks?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I've always said bow. But you know, maybe I'm wrong or maybe the Internet's wrong. That'd be a first.

[Unknown]

How about buh? Yeah, what was that? Buh.

[Josh Clark]

When the buh breaks. And then there is a History Channel type person that we should talk about, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray. She's definitely on that side of things, right?

[Unknown]

Yeah. She came up in the Bella and the Witch Elm episode because she was saying like Bella was murdered by a witch cult.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Unknown]

And she's one of the people who argued that the modern European witches trace their lineage unbroken back to fertility feminist cult that's been in the British Isles ever since time immemorial. And that's one of the things that's been debunked is that it's just not true. The Christian church and in their turn Judaism and Islam as well, did such a thorough job of interrupting the transmission from the ancient world to the modern world that it's just like, that's just not really possible. Now that's not to say that like in certain, like super, you know, rural local areas, there's like not folk traditions that actually do date back really far. I mean, everybody's seen Wicker man, right? But the thing is like, like Wicker man would be actually a bad example because that like is an actual ritual. They knew exactly what they were doing. They were performing rites, that kind of stuff. This would be more like, hey, we're dancing around the maypole. But we don't necessarily know every single thing that's going on. We're not performing every single aspect of this ancient ritual. Even though the ritual in some form or fashion still survived to today. It's not the full, the full monty. It's not the full Monty of the actual pagan folk religion that they're kind of venerating still.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Does that make sense?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, should we take our second break?

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we're going to take that break and we're going to move into the world of modern paganism right after this.

[Unknown]

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[Josh Clark]

This episode is sponsored by Liquid iv.

[Unknown]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Unknown]

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[Josh Clark]

That's right. And my buddy, I have to tell you, I love Liquid iv. I use it a lot. It hydrates me very well. I love that lemon lime. It tastes really good and I put it in my little Dopp kit when I travel and I feel like I'm always pretty well hydrated.

[Unknown]

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[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Unknown]

And it's basically like folk dancing that dates back to like the 15th century and probably before, but they can definitely trace it back that far. I was asking her about paganism. She's like, nope, not a pagan. I'm a Morris dancer.

[Josh Clark]

That's super cool. And not to get off topic, but since you brought up a 24, I just have to shout out their newest weird comedy from Tim Robinson.

[Unknown]

Oh yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Actually not from Tim Robinson. He's in it. But the movie Friendship I can highly recommend. And I went to the opening 11am screening in Atlanta and my friend, because you love Tim Robinson, you'll be glad to know at Phipps Plaza at 11am On a Friday, there were probably 25 to 30 Tim Robinson fans in there.

[Unknown]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

At that first showing.

[Unknown]

Was it rowdy?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, it's been a long time since I've seen a crowded. And it was crowded because it was probably a 50 person theater, so it was 70% full. A crowded movie with other people. Like a comedy where just a bunch of people are laughing at once. And it was so much fun.

[Unknown]

That's awesome, man.

[Josh Clark]

It was great.

[Unknown]

I wish I could have gone.

[Josh Clark]

I wish you could have gone too.

[Unknown]

Oh yeah. Are you talking about what, modern paganism?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we mentioned in several different ways that modern paganism is its own thing. One of the reasons why it's its own thing is because they just didn't write down a lot of stuff back then and stuff that was written down. It wasn't like the literal detailed handbook of how to do this ritual or this rite.

[Unknown]

It was pretty rare.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that's one of the reasons. And it was all stamped out. Some of the stuff that we've gotten modern wise comes from these Icelandic. Or maybe all of it, these Icelandic texts called the Eddas. Is that right?

[Unknown]

Yeah. As far as Norse religions, Norse pagan religions that fall under the umbrella term heathenism. This is where they get all their stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

I don't know if it's Edda's or Eddas. I think I agreed too soon.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, maybe Edda's.

[Unknown]

That and then the Viking sagas. And so the Viking sagas aren't like you said, it's not a handbook of how to worship Norse gods, but just mentions of it, like incidental references to stuff like that. The neo pagans who worship Norse gods have kind of taken that glean from that what some of these rituals and thoughts and mythologies were.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And we're not going to talk about all modern pagan religions, but we're going to mention, you know, we're going to highlight a few. We have to talk briefly, at least, about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. But again, if you want to hear a lot about that, listen to our Aleister. Really good episode, I think. Aleister Crowley episode.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

This was the secret society that Aleister Crowley was a member of. He was never the leader. Right. Or was he just sort of a.

[Unknown]

I think he did break off and try to become a leader at some point.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember. Yeah, maybe I should go back and listen to it.

[Unknown]

I don't remember either, but their whole thing. The reason we mentioned them is they were probably the first, what you could consider modern pagan religion. They practiced magic and they were into the Egyptian occult stuff. So that's why we bring them up. I don't think there's too many golden dawn people running around, but I guarantee there are some.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there's gotta be.

[Unknown]

What about Wicca?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we talked about Wicca in our witchcraft episode. That was from a long time ago, though, so it may not be our best work.

[Unknown]

No, that's one that would probably be pretty good to redo someday.

[Josh Clark]

Nah, we're not gonna redo stuff, are we?

[Unknown]

Okay, fine.

[Josh Clark]

Modern witchcraft or Wicca. W I C C A. Originally, it was W I C A as named by a guy named Gerald Gardner, who was a British customs official who worked in Malaysia, then came back to England in 1936, wrote a bunch of golden dawn stuff, a bunch of Aleister Crowley stuff, a bunch of Margaret Murray stuff, our History Channel lady. And he said, you know what? One night in 1939, a coven of witches initiated me, and they were members of this ancient fertility cult that I read about from Margaret Murray.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So it depends on who you talk to. Gardner might either be described as a huckster who made all this up, or a very gentle man. I saw somebody describe him, who knew him as utterly without malice, who may have made all this up, but he was known for writing what's called the Book of Shadows, which has become a big part of the Wiccan religion, which is essentially a personal recipe book of spells and rituals that has worked for a particular witch or coven. And sometimes it's shared and people can borrow from it and add to it, and they create their own Book of Shadows. But having your own. Basically, you know, in those Bugs Bunny cartoons where that witch is, like, looking through her book that would technically be a book of shadows that she's looking through to find like the ingredients for potions or whatever. That's a pretty literally cartoonish depiction of it. But that's, you know, essentially what she was doing.

[Josh Clark]

My favorite part is when she would leave the frame very quickly and her hairpins would fall out of her hair and float in the air.

[Unknown]

She was one of the most disturbing cartoon characters of all time, if you ask me. I love her, man. Yeah, like she was. She had that high pitched voice. And didn't she have like kind of a red cousin it type who wore like tennis shoes? He was a little off putting as well.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember that, but if I saw it, I'd probably know it.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So, yeah, the witch from Bugs Bunny.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. But back to Wiccans. They became very popular in the 60s and 70s with the feminist set and the environmentalist set. And there's still the Gerald Gardner focused. They call it Gardenarian Wicca. But if you're out at the 7:11 and you meet a modern Wiccan, she's probably practicing what's called Dianic Wicca, which is more woman centered. It came around in 1971 by a Wiccan activist name not Susanna, but Zuzanna Budapest. Great name.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And it wasn't until 20, I think 15, that Susanna Budapest indoctrinated her first male clergy member into Dianic Wicca. And other Dianic Wicca temples split off. And so it's rare to find a man in this religion. Like it's all women. And I read that they're anti patriarchy. They actually try to use their magic against the patriarchy, but they're not anti male. The reason that they exclude males is because their religion is created to celebrate and honor the life cycles, the biological cycles. In a lot of cases of a woman as she's born and then ages and then dies, and that essentially there's not a lot of role for men in that religion. But you know, you guys go form your own stuff. Go become druids, I think is their motto.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And here's a little dinner party factoid. If someone brings up Wiccan around the table, you can say, hey, did you know that it was actually first recognized as a True Religion in 1986 in the United States when the Supreme Court ruled in Detmer v. Landen. You don't have to know that part, but you could really knock their socks off if you do. It was where a prisoner was denied the use of ritual Wiccan objects. And they're like, hey, this is my religious stuff. And the First Amendment protects this. And the Supreme Court said, you know what? You're right.

[Unknown]

Yeah, probably a liberal court.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Unknown]

One other thing I gotta say, I ran across the UK finally suspended their witchcraft laws, their bans against practicing witchcraft in 1951, which is why Gerald Gardner's books start popping up in the 50s, even though he'd been doing this since the late 30s.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Unknown]

Isn't that interesting? Like, he could have been arrested and thrown in prison for practicing witchcraft before 1951.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. All right. So those were sort of the big heavy hitters that were the first big ones of modern paganism when it staged its comeback. But there are dozens of other smaller, much smaller modern pagan movements. Wicca is definitely the largest, but heathenry is one of them, which is basically an umbrella term for people who, like you mentioned the Norse and Germanic deities. They're really into Marvel, I guess, Marvel.

[Unknown]

And Lord of the Rings. If you thought Led Zeppelin was into Lord of the Rings yourself, to a heathen, like, they are into that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of Valhalla.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And I think the two biggest Germanic heathen religions actually, I guess I don't even think they're sects, but one is Asatru. Yeah, they worship the Aesir gods, who would be the. The highest of the pantheon of North Norse mythology, like Odin and Thor. And so people who are into Asatru are very much into honor and valor and getting into Valhalla. And then there's the Vanitru, which they're concerned with the Vanir gods, who are the rest of the gods who are more earthy, more nature based. They're into prosperity, that kind of stuff. And I think there's way more Asatru than Vanitru right now. And then one other thing about hedonism, there's a really interesting, like, kind of side history that you can go look up about the black metal scene, specifically the Norwegian black metal scene that essentially turned into. Turned their focus from Satanism, like traditional metal to heathenry. And so you've got like folk metal, Viking metal, Like they essentially just became heathens, but metal. And it just got really out of hand in the early 90s. It was really interesting stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, and I don't know if we could get a whole episode out of this. We probably could, or maybe a short stuff. But there was the very famous case of. Well, there were these series of arsons, these church arsons, like 20 of them, these very, very old Wooden medieval churches in Norway that were burned down. I think 20 of them were attributed. These arsons were attributed to black metal fans. And a couple of the arsonists were very prominent in the early Norwegian black metal scene. These guys, they were bandmates at first in this band Mayhem, but I think Varg Vikernes, sure, he left Mayhem at a certain point, but Euronymous is how this guy's known. Osteen Arseth, AKA Euronymous, I think, stayed in this black metal group, Mayhem for the run until he was murdered by Varg.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And they didn't exactly like set paganism's general public image on fire. Well, actually they kind of did.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah. Arsith was a Satanist vicar. Nees is, in addition to being a murderer, he's a avowed neo Nazi. And the whole scene in particular kind of gets caught up with nationalism a lot. So it's not a very representative picture of paganism as a whole or neo paganism as a whole. But still, I mean, it's just ridiculously interesting what happened there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally.

[Unknown]

It's worth mentioning, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I remember when this happened and I just. I didn't know much about. I still don't know much about that whole music scene, but it's. It's super interesting. My cousin is into it.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I was checking a lot of it out and some of it's really good. I'm not into folk metal though, at all.

[Josh Clark]

What is that? What's it sound like?

[Unknown]

It's, you know, that kind of like super proud Irish music. That's like rock from like Boston. Imagine that is like. It's got like back metal or almost. Almost.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Or no. So, yes, that. That Irish, like rock does from Boston. This is like the Norwegian metal version of that.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah, I'll listen to something, see what it does to me.

[Unknown]

Okay. Just look up folk metal and you'll see. But some of the other stuff is really good. Like Mayhem stuff was pretty interesting.

[Josh Clark]

What if this changed my life and set me on a course that one would never have expected here?

[Unknown]

54 years old, you start wearing corpse makeup.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Maybe get some antlers.

[Unknown]

Yeah, why not, man? Why not? Like really ask yourself, why not do that?

[Josh Clark]

I mean, I don't know. It's no crazier than any of the rest of them, if you ask me.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You mentioned Druids earlier kind of in passing. But that is a modern belief system that is tied to pre Christian British isle sort of religion. That's where the Druids came from, right?

[Unknown]

Yeah. And I saw that druids are a big difference between them and others is that nature itself is the divine. It's not like a manifestation of druid God or the goddesses or anything like it's nature. And I also saw that the practitioners don't really consider it a religion. They consider it more a philosophy or a way of life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And it was. Modern Druidry was started by a guy named Ross Nichols. And I don't know why, I just find it funny that like the modern Druids and modern Wiccans were started by guys named Ross and Gerald.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Isn't that a little weird?

[Unknown]

Yeah. They sound like a couple of guys who might live in a van together.

[Josh Clark]

They might, who knows?

[Unknown]

There's also ceremonial magic which would trace itself to, I guess, the Golden Dawn. There's neo paganism, which we should talk about because a lot of people use neo paganism as a term incorrectly to describe modern paganism, which is what we've been talking about this whole time. Neo paganism itself is a specific kind of pagan religion. So all neo pagans are pagan, but all pagans aren't neo pagans. And if you basically want to just come at this by saying, I like a little of this, I like a little of that. Oh, I would like to do a little bit of ritual magic. Yes. I want to go out in the woods and practice all this stuff, then Neo paganism is for you. It is wide open. They believe that everybody's beliefs are equal. They're very much opposed to the idea of absolute good and evil. They're very into nature. It's pretty much, I think, what people think about when they think about modern pagan religion.

[Josh Clark]

And that's neo paganism.

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Unknown]

And if you want to know more about that, there's a great site called neo-paganism.org they seem to be pretty authoritative on it.

[Josh Clark]

They should be with that website. That'd be a real shame if they weren't.

[Unknown]

Yeah, right. It's in comic Sans. And just one other thing about neo paganism, I think I said that a lot of people, that's what they think of. But they might be saying Wicca when they're talking about neo paganism. There's big differences between those two. Wicca is very magical based. The intent is to harness the power of nature to get something done, like get a job successfully or make someone fall in love with you, whatever. And Wicca is very much esoteric. So that means that there's a set amount of knowledge out there. There's Hidden Mystery knowledge in the universe that if you are an initiate into Wicca, like, you have to be initiated into a covenant, and you apply yourself and work and study, and you can have these mysteries of the universe revealed to you. Not at all what neo pagans believe. There's just a ton of differences. But, I mean, if any of this has floated your boat, you're like, I really want to check this out. There's a lot of stuff on the Internet that you can go read up on. I would just say use your just general common sense to decide what site you're on is whether it's legitimate or authoritative or if it's just some dude making stuff up.

[Josh Clark]

Gotta have the right font where you know you're in trouble.

[Unknown]

Exactly. It's a dead giveaway.

[Josh Clark]

You also mentioned a great band name in there. Hidden Mystery Knowledge.

[Unknown]

That's a good one. I feel like that's more an album, though.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Unknown]

And you better believe they're gonna have some Lord of the Rings character as the illustration.

[Josh Clark]

True.

[Unknown]

Well, if you want to know more about that stuff, like I said, go out on the Internet. And since I said that and Chuck had just said true, that means that it's time for listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

I'm going to call this a popcorn cooking tip. I'm surprised I haven't thought of.

[Unknown]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, guys. Writing. Because I want to tell you about my favorite way to cook popcorn. In bacon grease.

[Unknown]

Oh, yeah, I've heard of that.

[Josh Clark]

I hadn't heard of it. It's just right there in front of my face, too.

[Unknown]

You got bacon grease in front of your face?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I do. My aunt taught me her tried and true method for cooking popcorn on the stovetop. She puts a spoonful of bacon grease in a skillet, pours a popcorn salt over the grease. Oh, boy. Plops a couple of kernels in there and heats the whole thing up. And when the grease is at the right temperature, those kernels are gonna pop and alert you. You can start cooking. You pour in the rest of the kernels, cover your skillet, and let it pop away. The bacon grease gives the popcorn a little extra flavor. It really makes it even more delicious. You should give it a try sometime. Just don't forget to cover your skillet.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks for all the years of podcasting, listening pleasure you provided for me. I wish you both the best. That is from Randy with an I.

[Unknown]

Thanks a lot, Randy with an I. That's. Did. Did Randy sign the I with a little heart instead of a dot? Because that'd be fantastic. Yeah, thanks a lot, Randy. That was a great tip. We appreciate it. I'm quite sure everybody who loves popcorn and bacon, that's lovely listening appreciated that. If you want to be like Randy and send us a tip that everybody can appreciate, you can send it off to stuffpodcastiheartradio.com.

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Unknown]

Foreign.

[Josh Clark]

Let'S face it, everybody. With travel come curveballs. From flight delays to lost luggage, they put even the best laid plans at risk. Thank goodness for Avis with them. You know your rental car will come through and your plans are protected at all costs because it turns out Avis is here for your plans and they'll do whatever it takes to ensure you keep them, which is a big deal. And speaking of deals, you can save 20% when you pay now. Go to avis.complanonus to learn more. Abis Plan on us.

[Unknown]

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week I would buy.

[Unknown]

Two cups of banana pudding, but the.

[Josh Clark]

Price has gone up.

[Unknown]

So now I only buy one.

[Josh Clark]

Small but important ways from tech billionaires.

[Unknown]

To the bond market to. Yeah, banana pudding.

[Josh Clark]

If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chafton. And I'm Stacey Vanek Smith.

[Unknown]

So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.