Episode 218
#218 - Interview with storyteller & podcaster Alan Katz
Alan Katz has written for some of the most iconic shows and films, including Tales from the Crypt. Now, he’s taking the storytelling craft to a new medium. With The How NOT to Make a Movie Podcast, which was named Best Film Podcast of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly. We're diving into what makes a great storyteller, and the power of authenticity in writing. Finding out why podcasting has become the ultimate space for unfiltered creativity?
Seeing the shifting landscape of entertainment. From the challenges of staying relevant in Hollywood. To the freedom that independent creators now have. Alan shares his journey from screenwriting to podcasting. His thoughts on technology changing peopls lives. Which is The Donor podcast: A DNA Horror Story, all about finding out the unknown. It's a deep dive into the art of storytelling. The absurdity of the industry, and the undeniable pull of a well-told tale.
Be sure to check out more of Alan's work like is podcast's, projects and so much more, with the links provided below:
We have a magical link below with all our socials and handle so you can find us on your favorite pod spot 🤟.
Transcript
Alan
flip The fact that you can feel things so deeply is what makes you a great storyteller.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I think I have to be a good storyteller in order to keep up a podcast. you know it it It is.
::Alan
Indeed, indeed, indeed. but But in order to be a good podcaster and a good storyteller, you have to be in touch with emotions. yeah The thing that I've come to that to learn and to really love about podcasting is its intimacy.
::Alan
Most people listen to us through earbuds or earphones and they take our voices and the stories we tell and they put them between their ears right inside their own heads.
::Alan
And I love the intimacy of that, but I also love, well,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
There's, it's an honor, but there's responsibility too.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
There is. There's a lot.
::Alan
And yeah, yeah, yeah, and I, yeah, i I will, yeah, I want that responsibility too. Well, hey, look, it's like having a showbiz career.
::Alan
It's getting getting into the TV or movie business, It's a mountain. And getting onto that mountain is ah ah an almost impossible challenge. But that's not the hard part. Far harder once you've gotten onto the mountain is staying on the mountain. And that's kind of the same way with an audience because
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Sorry.
::Alan
No worries. Acquiring an audience is is hard, as as we both know. It takes a lot of work. But then you have to keep the audience. And to keep the audience, you have to keep delivering what it is that they come to you for.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
the the The number one thing that my dad always put into me was to always be yourself. because the thing that people are going to love about you is who you are as a person, not who you're representing, not what type of fictional character, James Bond 007, you're trying to portray. It stems from what makes you, you know, this is why like I've had even friends or even classmates be like, you you're not scared to talk the way that you do. And I'm like, that's just how I am. You know, I'm not, ooh, I'm like,
::Alan
what does that mean well
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Because um' i'm the type of I'm the type of person that voices my opinions and expression.
::Alan
the way
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you know i'm not I'm not a person that holds back. i'm like I always warn people, I'm like, look, I'm gonna lay it down straight. It may not be pretty, but it'd be honest.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's just, like again, to my point when I was saying before, were you can play different characters. You could pretend to be somebody that you're not. For me, I'm not interested in that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'd rather be myself, and if that means I have limited people in my life, that's fine. Because I'm living the best life that I can live for myself, for nobody else. And that's all that matters.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
so Plain and simple.
::Alan
how How did Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, to thine own self be true?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, this is... Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes. Ooh. Oh, wow. I can't remember Shakespeare off on top of that. I would have to like go through at least like six to seven different.
::Alan
i I really, yeah a couple of his plays I i adore.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You have to go in depth with them.
::Alan
ah Hamlet I love and Macbeth is, wow. There's, um ah talking ah Talking about the the the creative process, there's a the great English actor Ian McElin.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mm hmm.
::Alan
He he had a one has i don't if he's done recently has a one-person show that he tours with called Acting Shakespeare, in which he talks about his experiences as an actor acting Shakespeare.
::Alan
And then he brings it all around to what it's like to perform Macbeth, the Scottish play, which is which is actually Shakespeare's shortest play.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay.
::Alan
you know That's the one about the the scottish ah you know it's it's the Scottish play. It's all about murder and mayhem.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay.
::Alan
And it it it it contains a bunch of Shakespeare's best monologues.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, okay.
::Alan
And a lot of them belong to Macbeth. And so what but Ian McKellen did is he kind of broke down the story of the play and then he he gave then he read well He performed each of Macbeth's monologues in chronological order so that you saw the emotional rise and fall, his arc, his emotional arc of the man. And when he got to the very last monologue where he says, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at this petty pace, you suddenly understood why each and every word
::Alan
that Shakespeare had chosen was fucking brilliant. And when he gets to the last bit of the monologue, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. And when McKellen got to that word, nothing, you understood that from a from a writer's, from an actor's, from a performer's, from the audience's perspective,
::Alan
Really, the character arrived at his end point.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And from you as a creative person, yeah, watching someone break down not just their process, but really the genius of Shakespeare's process.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Well, it's a real interpretation of being realistic and being, you know, one of the
::Alan
Wow.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
One of the things that ah you yeah you have to like start to comprehend as you get older is this idea where storytelling, when we're talking about filmmaking, even in particular with writing, all of this is curated. So if you say something that is not a part of the major stream or what is allowed to be discussed or how it's supposed to be expressed, it's not going to be allowed to go out.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
but Isn't the whole idea, like again, to your point, like the whole idea of like Shakespeare is not, who gives a fuck that it was only 500 years? I don't care. The idea is of what the story is giving to you, what these characters are going through throughout the story. Their progressions, their emotions, their, um,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Even the depictions of these characters, if you think about in the different plays with Shakespeare.
::Alan
If I mentioned Romeo and Juliet, you understand the story that I'm talking about. I don't mean the particular story. I mean, oh, yes, the kind of boy gets girl, boy, you know, and and and everybody dies at the end kind of a story.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right.
::Alan
But yeah, you understand.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Alan
Hey, if I say Hamlet, you know, you kind of understand the character Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. It's it's remarkable
::Alan
really what that person created. ah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is.
::Alan
i was I was really lucky. It's funny, I set out to be an actor. I went to a place called Vassar College and it had a small, but very good Theatre department, drama department, Meryl Streep came came out of the Vassar College drama department. I don't think they turned her into Meryl Streep. I think she was in Meryl Streep before they before she entered the doors there, but yeah I think they they did well by her and she did well by them.
::Alan
being a drama major yeah Being a drama major, you had to take a lot of dramatic literature classes too.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
She's fantastic.
::Alan
You had to understand plays and what made plays work, and you had to understand how they were written.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
well yeah Well, that that honestly is, I was talking about this with an actor I had on. I think his name is Matt Drago. I even was saying that there is a major difference between theater actors and non-theater actors. like So much to the point that if you watch the movie, you can literally see the difference if you're paying attention. The way that they perform is completely different than other actors.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like
::Alan
it's It's true. I can tell you as someone who's hired many, many, many, many actors, when I hire actors, when I've hired actors to act on a TV series or film, the last thing I ever wanted them to do was act. Because the thing about The camera, it's a lot like the microphone, but the camera sees everything because it's right in your face.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Thank you.
::Alan
Acting is, when you're on stage, yes, you have to act because the people in the back row have to see and hear you. And it's about, there's some amplification these days, but it really, it's about projection.
::Alan
but For the camera, because there's a microphone there too, you don't have to project anything other than your honest self. And so what I always hired actors to do is be, to be whoever they are as honestly, as nakedly as they possibly could be with the character name we gave them and the words that we stuck in their mouths. I needed them to be as honest as they possibly could be. I didn't want them to act because if they acted,
::Alan
Absolutely, a fact is gonna end up on the cutting room floor because shit, they're acting again, really and truly. So for for film acting, the craft, and it is a craft, is learning how to really to go with the flow of the emotion of the scene and to be one with it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And that's harder than it looks. And to do it take after take after take. And sometimes with a camera and in all kinds of awkward positions just to accommodate the filmmaking of the thing. It is, yeah, it's it's ah it's a very real craft.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it' It's not also the only place where you find that problem. You find that problem even within music. When you take musicians, instrumentalists, you you you got to remember some of these people are playing a G chord thousands and thousands of times, and it can get to a point where I sometimes play instruments.
::Alan
Oh, sure. Sure!
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I sometimes make music myself. You get tired. You get exhausted. But, you know, being able to do that repetition, we're just at the blink of an eye.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You're there. But to your point, you're just be. And go through the motions, go through the floor in a scene cut and you're done and you're great.
::Alan
b Be present.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
There are people that have that ability. Yes, very much so.
::Alan
Be in the moment. I went through a excuse me a two decades long writer's block and a deepening depression, and I got really lucky. I bounced. Just before I cashed out, I hit bounce. And in coming back,
::Alan
I read, well, I'd been keeping a secret from myself for 45 years about something that happened to me when I was 14. And I finally went, all right, yeah, that happened. You gotta let give yourself a break because that happened to you. And once I was able to admit that this terrible thing happened to me and I was able to tell my own story to myself, I think I went from being ah ah a really good writer to being a storyteller.
::Alan
And I think when I became a storyteller, a lot of things changed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
wow
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Wow.
::Alan
and i
::Alan
the
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You see, by the way, yeah, no, I wanted to point out something because you bring up an excellent point that transition from writer
::Alan
the way that i
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
to storyteller, okay?
::Alan
Yeah, yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And one of the greatest examples of this is like, look at J.R. Tolkien. He was not a writer, he was a storyteller, because he was able to create within language, within in depth, with within in emotion, within an expression.
::Alan
It's funny, I was just listening to a history, it's a history podcast that I adore called The Rest is History, and and I was just listening to their talk and
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
ah episode and it's a lovely deep dive and they were talking about his world his experiences in the trenches in World War I and how that had a tremendous impact on the world that he created and he was also I think they pointed out very deeply Catholic and that also contributed to just his notion of the world
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mm hmm.
::Alan
it's its own sense of beginning, middle, and end. It's funny, they pointed out that he suddenly one day scribbled out a bunch of words. ah What is it? There was a hob. Damn, I just went up on in the first sentence of of the hobbit. There was a hobbit who lived at the bottom of a hole. I think it he he he's he he suddenly just woke up and he wrote those words. And then he thought, and God, where do I go from here?
::Alan
which is an amazing revelation that when you think where he went from here was so incredible, but you're exactly right. he He invested so much of himself, but so much into creating a vast and remarkable world that when you look at how, and here's the trick, he filled, other people filled their heads with that world.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
This is a Marillion, which came from his son, which is crazy. Crazy.
::Alan
Really, that that any artist, you know that this is what we do, that we, whether it's a song or it's a story, it's a movie, a book, that we communicate these abstract ideas from our heads to somebody else's. And the other person, in whatever way they do, they go, oh, I get that.
::Alan
and
::Alan
better yet, it makes their life better for having experienced it, gotten it. that My little podcasting company I i i ah found after I did a podcast, after I started my second podcast and I was so deeply into it, I discovered I'd be had found the thing I always wanted to be when I grew up, which is a podcaster.
::Alan
ah you know the When I found my passion for storytelling in addition to writing. ah The film and TV business are, in the best of times and under the best of circumstances, it it's stupid.
::Alan
It's ridiculous. It's it's it's it almost impossible. It's an almost impossible nut to crack. These days, it's even stupider. It's stupider by exponentially stupider.
::Alan
And so, yes, indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's run by a bunch of morons.
::Alan
here's So here's what here's here's what I began to think. ah Like I said, i there's a podcast that I do called the How Not to Make a Movie podcast, which I've been doing for, I'm in my fourth season now. And i started telling I started that podcast about four years ago because I needed to get a story off my chest about the making of the second Tales from the Crypt feature film, a thing called Bordello of Blood.
::Alan
and how the making of it just fucked up my career and my life. It really was part of why I went and had a two decades-long writers. look It was it was it was not was connected to it. But in telling that story, like I said, I discovered that I really loved this medium. And then a ah ah friend that I had grown up with, he approached me with a story And it's something that happened to him, an absolutely true story, that he wanted to turn into a TV series or a movie. I said, oh my God, don't do it. I'll digress for a second. The thing about taking an idea from your head and turning it into a movie or a TV show, there are
::Alan
thousands of fucking assholes standing in your way. And at any moment, any one of those fucking assholes can derail this project just because they're a fucking asshole. To do a podcast, there's only one fucking asshole in my way and it's me.
::Alan
And so long as I do the work and I find my audience, or I help the audience find it, I'm cool.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
Well, my friend approached me and he wanted to make a movie or a TV show. I said, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. And especially when he told me what had happened to him, I said, no, you must do this as a podcast.
::Alan
DNA horror story. In the mid-: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay.
::Alan
Jumped forward 27 years. He joined 23andMe, curious about his health genes. It never occurred to him the ramifications of adding his DNA to a growing DNA database. He lost his donor anonymity and suddenly seven total strangers found daddy, except six of them had no idea their actual biological father was this guy, a sperm donor. And these are 27, 28 year old people who suddenly discovered the fact that, wait, I'm not who I think I am.
::Alan
Um, this guy's son, the seventh was a, a young woman who had known for about a year that she was donor conceived and she'd been looking for him.
::Alan
And that, Hal is what I call him in story because I needed to keep various people's identities private because it's it's a crazy, crazy story.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
Um, he had been married for, two decades to a woman who brought in a ah son from a previous marriage, and he had raised that son and eventually adopted him as his own, but he never raised a biological child of his own. And so when he suddenly met these half dozen plus biological children of his, he he really kind of wanted to have whatever much of a family relationship with him that they wanted to have. He was very open-minded to it and he had
::Alan
He was a wealthy man, and so he was willing to help them or or you know make them feel familial in that way. if If he could, he was quite open to it. And it was the seventh, yeah you know and and there were various you know possibilities. One or two of them, they were so blown away by the fact fact that they didn't know. This was a shocking piece of information that they just quit 23andMe altogether.
::Alan
Their minds were blown. But the seventh, the seventh, the daughter, ah one of the daughters, she had been looking for him for a year because she was aware.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah Yeah.
::Alan
And she brought a thing called genetic sexual attraction to the table.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh my God. Oh my God.
::Alan
It is the craziest fucking story I had ever heard. And he he agreed to let me turn it into a podcast and
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Jesus.
::Alan
Like I said, it's called The Donor, a DNA horror story. It's seven episodes. and And while I was producing this and telling this story with him, I i discovered that as a form of storytelling, this is wonderful.
::Alan
And hey, this would still make a great movie or TV show, but rather than having to go and trotted in to a a bunch of places and try to explain to them what the story is, I don't have to explain anything, it's there in the podcast.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And you know and I think when when there's a certain critical mass point that the audience, someone's gonna look at it and go, hey, let's snap that up.
::Alan
And rather than me have to go into them, well, they're gonna come to me.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And so part of what I think podcasting gives people like you and me the chance to do is to flip the power dynamic with the money.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's um, you know.
::Alan
because Because we because it's it's our content really can have
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
considerable real value.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
That's all I'm going to say.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, you you bring up you bring up a really excellent point. I mean, I think that. I think that ive I personally have always had the hardest thing was.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We have to. We have to always follow a voice or an opinion. See, for me, I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in upstate New York, right outside of the city.
::Alan
Did you really?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Alan
Oh, interesting, interesting, interesting. hu rehaid ah Oh gosh.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, so I left the community. No, I was um I was Orthodox. I came from my dad is Moroccan. ah in sary And my mom is Ashkenazi and like third generation America.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, so I got a good Yeah it But the the thing that I realized is for a lot of we're called OTD which just stands for off the derich which means off the path um
::Alan
Oh, gosh, gosh, gosh. Oh, this is a whole other conversation. that we We'll have to have another podcast because we can go off on a whole fucking tangent right here. the man Right here, man. We can just go running amok.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
A lot of us like have figured out different ways of being able to create like lives outside. I've been out already for several years, but I have to explain even sometimes, like friends or classmates, like I don't see the world the same way you do. you know I have to like explain to them, like even this is the most simplest idea that I can explain, which is we as Jews,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
so you we See where I'm going with this? We as Jews see others as Gentiles, which means non-Jews. So basically everybody that's not Jewish is Gentiles.
::Alan
Yes. Which, look, it all stems from the fact that way, way, way back at a certain point in history to go by the story that we wrote but by ourselves about ourselves, that's what the Pentateuch, the Pentateuch is, the Old Testament, is a story we wrote by ourselves about ourselves.
::Alan
And when when these people, the Judeans, who eventually became the Jews, when these people wrote their story, they wrote the story but about how this Abram character suddenly found a deity called Yahweh and made that deity his deity.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
by ourselves, about ourselves.
::Alan
And they made a deal. And so Abram moved his family to the coast from Iraq, moved to the coast, and the deal was you will be a great nation, not people who come in and believe what you believe. that was not It was not a religion for sale. The the whole thing was it was a tribe.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And at at some point they decided to mark the tribe by the men, yes, by cutting off the ends of you know the demands cutting off the ends of their penises.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
As a religion.
::Alan
I'm not quite sure when that happened or or why specifically that happened, but that became a marker.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I will tell you the the thing about particularly when you look out through history, when you look at um different civilizations, you know, but we're talking about like even the mark scapes of what history has left us.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Jewish people have always kind of been what we now call mobile homes, okay?
::Alan
Oh, indeed, indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Or trailer homes. You know, we we kind of were like the gypsies for the Middle East. You know, where we were a constantly moving civilization. Like, yes, we kind of do have lands that belong, you know, is called the Kingdom of Israel, but history has changed so much to the point
::Alan
seven it It all comes down to 79 AD. There's just just very real moments in history when when the Romans, they destroyed the Second Temple, they threw all the Jews out of Jerusalem.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And shortly thereafter, you know more of the Jewish wars continued. And basically once the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and then Judea, ah that is when the the Jewish diaspora began.
::Alan
And we were not allowed there. And we were kept out of there for the most part. And so Jews went to Alexandria, and Jews ultimately went through the Levant, and they went ultimately through through ah Asia Minor and Turkey, and what ultimately became Europe.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They went all they went all.
::Alan
Yes, and and and that became yes that's how the Jewish diaspora ah happened. And what also happened is that because the Jews stopped There was no more, there was no longer a temple.
::Alan
And so the whole religion changed. the Rabbinic Judaism became interpretive.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And so really the whole nature, but the one of the other keys to to Judaism, it was never looking for converts. if In fact, because it marked the men, it did it in a way that basically said, you're going to have to do this if you want in on this group.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
and And that is in part, really, it just goes back. It's a it's just an echo of, because we began as a as a tribe, it began as one particular tribe.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
here Here's.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Here's here's are is your crazy part like to the point even like you know You're talking about the story with DNA and having these people being able to find like basically their long-lost biological for my own family Okay, we we're originally we were in Spain and then the Spanish Inquisition happened and our family spread out We were able to find
::Alan
Were you conversos? Were you conversos or did you leave, do you know?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So according to our family, there were four brothers, and one brother that we come from, his name is Shlomo, he went down to Morocco, and we've tried like try to be able to trace on our family.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
To this day, we have about 2,600 and something family members all together in about 13 different countries across the globe.
::Alan
wow Wow, wow, wow, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Isn't that crazy?
::Alan
oh we You and I are going to have a separate conversation for for for for for for for the donor podcast i've for ah a bonus episode.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah
::Alan
you you Oh my God, we we have to talk about that. That that is, i'm I'm enthralled.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah But this is and this is this is a point I'm trying to get at is we're if we look at our history we have to understand that like
::Alan
I'm enthralled.
::Alan
Yeah. Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
We spread across the globe. That means cultural cultural traditions, things that have been passed on. i mean Even living here in the United States, if we think about it, like we literally live in a place where a bunch of people have different cultures, they brought them over here, and now they're sharing that with us.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like
::Alan
That's the great thing about America.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like it's like the
::Alan
that is ah That is American exceptionalism is the fact that we are we were the first nation of other nations. That is our unique genius.
::Alan
It's not white guys and their money. That's not American exceptionalism. No, no, no, no, no. It is the fact that all these people from everywhere else in the country came And they brought their their dreams and their wishes and their desires and their willingness to work their fucking asses off. And they some of them willingly and some of them because they were kidnapped and forced to come here. But all those people brought their various their cultures, their tastes and their genius. And wow, they brought it all here. That if there's any kind of American melting pot, that is it.
::Alan
It is this amazing brain trust from all over the world, which I don't mean to get political, but the current environment is just fucking that up.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is.
::Alan
God, why would you piss all over the thing? It is the goose that lays the golden egg, you fucking idiots. All right, I'll shut up.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, you have a you have a very good point. I was i have a classmate of man mine. I'm currently in tech school. And he was in the Marines. And um I was talking to him about what's going on with Tulsi Gabbard, because here you have somebody that serves honorably for their country. And literally, knowing from him the amount that you have to sacrifice for yourself, the amount of discipline, the amount of things you have to take into account. And even time you're spending away from your normal life, like your family and people that you care about.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
and then you have people disrespect you. Like, if somebody disrespected him, I might punch them. It's like, it's not that he's, it's not that she's better or he's better. It's have respect for people that can do something that you fucking can't do, okay? You're not capable of doing. So respect the fact that they can do something that actually might actually save your life one of these days.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That's it.
::Alan
We are in strange, strange times, but then our our tribe has endured many such strange times in the past and we're still here.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is. It's interesting how we're. You can almost. You can almost ignore. Everyone around you.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Be it still claim that you're present. Ignore how other people are feeling, how other people are expressing themselves, but you know, you you're in, and I'm not saying you in particular, I'm just talking about in general.
::Alan
Hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's, and I've seen this personally, it's like you you're, hello, like, this bubble you're living in, it ain't real. And it's not gonna keep you floating very much longer, I promise you that.
::Alan
Indeed, I think, alas, America got revealed. um America didn't change. America got revealed for the country actually we always have been there's there's a real you know, we We want it to be so much better than it was and certainly than it is but there was always this
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mm hmm.
::Alan
a bullshit contradiction that was always there. And and God, we we we we tried to to to deny it, but denying the truth is always bullshit. You cannot in good faith say all men are created equal and then cut a deal with slavery. That is a such a contradiction. Right off the bat, you are full of shit if you think you can say one thing and then do that.
::Alan
So right really, if we're honest, if we're honest, it really is when Ben Franklin, ah after the Continental Congress decided to be the kind of know the kind of country we were gonna be, he walked out the door and someone said, what did they vote upon?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
What kind of country are are we going to be? And he said, a Republican, if we if we can keep it. And the answer to the question was apparently no, we could not.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I mean, haven't we learned from Star Wars? republics don't last
::Alan
No, no, indeed, indeed, indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
republics don't last
::Alan
ah They're very hard to keep up. it It takes an awful lot of work. It does, and it's it heartbreaking.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
here's the Here's the thing, and and and this is the revelation which we live in now. which is instead of you know we have how many We have odd 50 states. Each place that you are, each place that you're living, you can be able to create opportunities from there. you know I've been able to to speak and be able to see people that You build locally, okay? You have indie filmmakers, you have indie producers and artists, DJ makers. I met a couple of, ah you know, and they scrabble a bunch of people together. i It's hilarious. I think there was one film that was made out in, I think it was Montana or, um oh, not Montana. um There was another, no Canada, my apologies. So not in Canada. And they basically had like a bunch of sponsorships that came together to make the film.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It wasn't made by Hollywood or big blocked or block blocked. And it's good. It's just, we we have more access than we ever had before.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So you could choose to swallow the bullshit cereal, or you could venture out and maybe find something unique and exotic.
::Alan
or make something unique and exotic.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Unique and and exotic, yeah.
::Alan
It really is, there's there's empowerment there. It's not easy, but to me, podcasting, it it it it comes back to that as as a platform that anybody can start from.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
ah it's It's incredibly democratic and really and truly it's telling one's own story is remarkably empowering and helping other people tell their stories is even more empowering.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is
::Alan
We are living in a time when when I think people will be searching excuse me We'll be searching for empowerment, having so many other people trying to disempower them, that everything that we as storytellers can do to remind people or give them access to how they can empower themselves simply by telling their stories, finding community in their storytelling is the best medicine.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah You know, it is, and it's interesting because sometimes you'll find inspiration in the most, I'm talking from the most wildest ways possible. You know, it could be a dumb comment that somebody makes, or it could be a remark, or it could be something on a piece of paper, something you even see on your phone. And i you just have this moment.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's like as we say in the car biz. Fix it. It's turning on. It's working. The excited moment. um You can't force it. That's something I've noticed. You you can't force it to happen. You you could try to do yoga, Pilates, sweat. And I promise you it. I don't know. It's like if you it's like almost like if you want it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You have to be patient to find it, and then once you find it, you have to be beat be patient to do it.
::Alan
Being in the right place at the right time actually means having been in the right place at the wrong time up until that moment. And up until that moment, everyone was looking at you going, what the fuck are you standing there for?
::Alan
And then the thing happens, and everyone goes, fucking genius.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
::Alan
He he saw it coming. Well, yeah, you did. And so long as you had the patience and the perseverance to wait it out,
::Alan
You have to see the creative process is like any struggle, even a civil rights struggle.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
here
::Alan
It's a struggle. And that means you have to see it as a marathon, a long-term race, multi-generational in some cases.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
And so if you get sucked into reacting to the vicissitudes, the ups and downs, you know the bad days and decide, oh, no, there's you know the the fight is over.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
No, it's not. I know the good days thinking the fight is won. No, it's not. You have to always keep that large the largest possible picture in your head just to understand where you are in the process.
::Alan
Another way to another metaphor is it's ah it's a mosaic. And we are all just tiles in a much larger mosaic.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It is
::Alan
And as much of the mosaic as you can take in, that will give you the best possible chance to really appreciate where you fit in, how you fit in, and hey, all the other pieces that you can impact.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, you know, I wanted to point out there was a um there was a scientist that had theorized that this idea of what we believe, consciousness, or if you want to call it God, actually what it is is basically consciousness. So you have, like, to your point, you have the different mosaic tiles that make the big picture. So basically,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's not one god, it's gods. We are all gods. every single round Everything is all all combined, one entity. But the incredible part is is that one entity can have so many different parts, different complexities, almost.
::Alan
you could you could even approach it this way from a scientific, you know, if everything in this universe started in a singularity, then yeah, how much more one, how much more everything from the same stuff do you want to get beyond a singularity? It's everything in the universe crunched into one teeny tiny infinitesimal point. So yeah, it all comes from the same place.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's like with gold, for example. You know, when you gold plate things, you could spread gold an exceptional amount, but the thing is, it still has limits.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You can't coat an entire table with, it you know, not enough gold. um You know, it's just... But...
::Alan
you yeah You need enough time and space in the continuum to go around.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah It's the same idea even with us people, because yeah If we go back a few hundred thousand years, right?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay. I get it. There were different species of humans and there were discovering new ones as the years goes by. Great. But there's only Homo sapiens that still exist now.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So we basically come from the same people. We literally come from the same people. You know, it's, it's bananas when people are like, well, they're different.
::Alan
one of one One of the things that I did as part of the donor, the po the the podcast, are people who subscribe, get a a bonus episode every month, and those are absolutely worth the ah five bucks, I think, we're charging.
::Alan
and ah Yeah, yeah, yeah, and really, yeah, well, yeah, which i'm I'm starting something out here.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it back. You're bringing back: ::Alan
i'm i'm i'm trying I'm trying to build a customer base here, but
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Nice.
::Alan
ah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
nice
::Alan
I, because, you know, ah telling the story of people who looked into their DNA, I thought, all right, I'll look into my DNA. Now, I suspected that I am 100% Ashkenazi Jew. That was my suspicion. And that turned out to be the case.
::Alan
At 23andMe, there was some interesting information, not any great depth. All right, they said the part of Northern Europe where a lot of my family came from and yeah, okay, around ah Lithuania.
::Alan
Okay, cool, cool, cool.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Same.
::Alan
um But there were a couple of things relating to my mitochondrial DNA.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mhm.
::Alan
and what they can tell us about our mitochondrial DNA. And there are subgroups to mitochondrial DNA and our mitochondrial DNA is constant. it You can follow our mitochondrial DNA back a long way if you can connect it to it. And what was quite remarkable is that my subgroup, my my mitochondria mitochondrial DNA subgroup can all be traced to one woman And this is ah tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people probably. With this subgroup, it can all be traced back to one woman who lived in the Levant 2,000 years ago. We all, all million or so of us, however many there are, I don't, with probably more than that, we all come, we're all ultimately from the same woman born.
::Alan
That fucking blows my mind.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ou can get to what Jews were,: ::Alan
You're in a real fix.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
we
::Alan
There are all kinds of different reasons to be suspicious of you, my friend.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
NA, I have lineage going back: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And it's just like, wow.
::Alan
Yes.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Wow. Okay. they didn't They didn't lie to, they didn't lie to me all the way. Okay. They told me a little bit of truth. They threw in, you know, like the Mormons, they threw in a little bit of truth.
::Alan
Have you ever done anything at like ancestry with with with your family tree?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ing Ellis Island in the early: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like the the late: ::Alan
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And yeah they didn't really have, let's just say they didn't really have very kosher paperwork.
::Alan
sure Yeah, that was when a lot of us, a lot of us came.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So nothing was really properly documented. um My grandparents, they have documents. I don't know where it is, but like ancestry was really hard to find.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
My father's side was almost impossible.
::Alan
ah
::Alan
yeah's It's too bad.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, I know.
::Alan
i I got really lucky there when i yeah I, I had a cousin, the first cousin who'd done some family treeing over there and so I knew there was a little bit of stuff to find. I was shocked.
::Alan
so Super shocked by what 23andMe turned up. Now, usually for Jews, because especially ah Ashkenazi Jews, many, many of the Ashkenaz lived outside of official record keeping.
::Alan
The ones who lived in shtetls and in the nowhere, is there might they might have occurred in a census here and there because they wanted to know, you know, how many of them um were were living in the district.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
But it's unusual when you're Jewish to be able to go too far back in record keeping to be able to trace a family tree with any with any depth.
::Alan
And I was shocked because of my father's mother's father, a guy named Haevis Cohen.
::Alan
Cohen, Kohane, Kohane.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, so you're, you come from Kohanim.
::Alan
so I do. And I didn't.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Ah, you know, you can't, you can't marry a divorcee. You know that.
::Alan
ah now Now he tells me, and now he tells me. Well, I think because something to do with the fact that there was a a whole line of rabbis.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
A whole line of them.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
ck to someone who was born in: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
The reason, so to the audience that's listening, the reason why this is, Kohanim and Leviam, which are like the the two tribes, they are considered the highest class. They won't say this in Orthodox communities, but they are. They're considered the highest class of Jews. um So their documentation of record taking is is astonishing.
::Alan
unusual.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's astonishing.
::Alan
It's unusual for for in in the group. And it was a literate group, but however they didn't keep church records in that way. I don't know.
::Alan
Yeah, it was ah just a different, it was different. Wherever those records were kept, a lot they perhaps they were all destroyed. I don't know.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Well, also keep in mind, um I remember a lot of Kohanim and Liviam, particularly in Europe, had close connections within government. particularly regards around like rabbinical circles.
::Alan
Sure.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So um you have, by the way, the same thing applies even in Sephardi cultures. You have certain families, like Tolidano is a very famous family in Morocco that they have records spanning a very, very long period.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
um Reason being is is that you've had certain groups of Jews that have coincide with government. Why Morocco is complicated is because Morocco doesn't give flying fucks about any other government except theirs. So they're like, you want our documents? Fuck you. That's just wrong. And they're not the only Middle Eastern country that's like this.
::Alan
Morocco's also had a very unusual history with with with the Jews inside its borders.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Alan
It's actually been one of the kinds of gentler countries over the over the course of its history.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Well, they're the only Arab country to this day that, so Arab just means ethnicity. So you if ah have Arab Jews, you have Arab Christians, and you have Arab Muslim, um Islam, you're Muslims. And Morocco was kind of like Switzerland for the, you know, North Africa, Middle East, or or whatever you want to call it, where are all three lit religions coincide with one another. So meaning they have separate governments.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So you go to different courts. So if you have, for example, you don't, a Muslim doesn't go to a Christian court and a Christian, it's it's it's weird and it's strange and it's like very odd to Western culture to think like this, but you know, Morocco's not the only country like this. You take a country like in arab United Arab Emirates, it's even more insane.
::Alan
I would not hold up Western culture as any kind of paradigm of of ah of wonderful wonderfulness at the end of the day.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just, i I'm just giving comparison.
::Alan
So yeah no, no, no, no. But but you know our our perspective keeps shifting. And yeah, it's like, you know we we used to think that way yesterday but before new information dropped on our heads.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
a You know what the most hilarious thing was I heard the other day was there was this old-timer um black man. I think he was from the South. I i think his name was Richard. He was talking about when they had the civil rights um and they were going through segregation. And then they were allowed to go into these like white diners. And he's like, I was really proud, but the food wasn't that great.
::Alan
Oh, what you weren't missing.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah she said you like le we we we
::Alan
Food was better where they were by a fucking ton.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
and Oh, just hilarious. But you know what? Hey, they they marked they mark something really important history. And I mean, they look, they they they found out. They found out they weren't missing out that much. I'll tell you that right now.
::Alan
the the I wanted to make sure that that you and I had a chance to touch on the other thing that's part of of what I think your your podcast is about, which is cannabis.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yes
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You haven't been noticing?
::Alan
yeah Yeah, well, i i I had my hit before we started.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
e yeah
::Alan
i am I'm a wake and bake guy. I'm from the start of my day to the very end of my day.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, hell yeah.
::Alan
I i i like flour. I'm a flour guy. ah i um I love Durbin Poison before I work.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Ooh.
::Alan
Hell, I love Durbin Poison before I play tennis, because it just slows you down. It's just a lovely wide beam of focus.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So you like sha- you like- you like shatter. You like shatter?
::Alan
No, no, no.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like...
::Alan
Pure flour.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You don't do this. Oh, pure flower, okay.
::Alan
Pure, good good quality flour. Yeah, with with a high THC content. Yeah, i you know what I like to do, I like to i don't but don't grind it in advance. I crumbled it up in my fingertips before I'm about to use it.
::Alan
And I've got ah a pipe that I love.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Ooh.
::Alan
This is my my genius pipe. It's ah it's metal. all It's magnetic. And it comes apart like this. And the inside, you see the baffles, that's the filter.
::Alan
And so the whole thing is that. And so you put your little thing there and you hit it there.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Crazy It's
::Alan
there's it's quite It's quite simple and you can't break it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
like the future yeah a And I know this this one has already been cracked but it's it's held up so far but I totally I oh my god, I
::Alan
And for me, that was, wait a minute, yeah you can drop it and it won't shatter. like like ah you know and God, i've I've broken so many pipes that I love.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's one of the most heartbreaking things. Okay, I'm sorry, as a stoner, it is the most heartbreaking thing when you have your beautiful jug or your bong and it just, it shatters, you know? It's like you have to have a, you you have to have a levaya, okay?
::Alan
I'm going to live forever. Baby, remember my name. but's It's it the genius pipe. and um maybe you know if If I had two brain cells, I'd create a a ah an affiliate deal with them and I would i would hawk them like ah like a crazy person.
::Alan
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I, you know what's wild, by the way, I, um, a while back, I live here in Florida. I ran into this guy that was like 77 years old and he like hardcore stoner. I mean, the man was smoking a joint the whole entire time I was talking to him and it was like an hour. Okay. I, I, he was like quick, you know, it's just like new one just kept going. Um,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
is man has been smoking since: ::Alan
It's not the same.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Am I a doctor or a physician? I'm telling you what this man told me and the picture he showed me on his phone. So, I understand there's carcinogens that I just...
::Alan
it's It's not the same in a thousand different ways. i Among the the things that I'm um um um proud proud that I created, ah for a little while, Weed Maps had a news division.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
really I did not know that!
::Alan
They did. They had a news division, and when they had the news division, they hired a bunch of people from the l LA Times. Well, I live in Los Angeles. I know a bunch of people at the LA Times, and one of them hired me, and I wrote a 13-part, 28,000-word piece called ah Blunt Truths, a history of of marijuana prohibition.
::Alan
really go in deep dive. I've always wanted to tell the story of Harry Ainslinger, the man who made marijuana illegal.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
and one of them...
::Alan
And the reason really that that bugged him, ah Harry Ainslinger was a former prohibition cop. He was, to his credit, he was a very ah very good bureaucrat.
::Alan
a very good bureaucrat. ah He also happened to be a world-class racist. And in his spare time, he loved to play the piano, classical piano, European classical b piano. There was a kind of music that Harry Ainslinger detested. No, no, he fucking hate it. Jazz. Jazz. It disgusted him.
::Alan
first became the drug czar in: ::Alan
But it got on Harry's radar as jazz began to proliferate. And as you all the people who created jazz, King Oliver, especially Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, famously, famously, they looked at cannabis as not just but what they' something they did in their off hours. Cannabis was part of their creative process.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you
::Alan
And it it goes to to the thrust of the fact that alcohol and cannabis are not even remotely the same thing. What they do to our brains are completely different.
::Alan
You could not create jazz it while drinking. you're you're The first thing that alcohol does is it it completely screws with your motor skills, which cannabis does not do.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
that
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Reason, yeah, and by the way, to your point, the reason being is
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Cannabis in your brain, you have what's called the endocannabinol system, which means that when the weed enters your system, it it interacts with that part of your brain.
::Alan
Mm, good.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
This is a real thing that exists inside of your body right now. The same way your body releases DMT when you die and when you sleep, the same way that when psilocybin enters your brain, you can see on a scan on how where it literally interacts in the back of the brain and all of a sudden like you could see the flow just like boop and it just flows right down and it goes down from the spine through your back all the way down.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Why? To your point, it's not just him. You have people like Richard Nixon that decided that him winning a stupid presidential election that is the eight years, who cares?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Now, we're 40 years behind in Ibogaine Research, MDMA, psilocybin.
::Alan
oh Oh, yes, yes, yes.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It just, the list just goes on.
::Alan
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And guess what? It's: ::Alan
it it will be it will It will be universally legal relatively soon and for one reason and that's money.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Like, what?
::Alan
And as soon as it it goes off schedule one and the banks can begin to invest their dollars into it,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I know.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
oh
::Alan
That's what everyone's waiting for. And and look, because it's about because it's about money, at the end of the day, that that will win every argument, hands down, the money.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
money many Money, money, money, money.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Money.
::Alan
it will At the end of the day, the the money will overcome yeah it will it will overcome the racism that that started the prohibition in in the first place.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Both are green. Both are green.
::Alan
And it's really it's really sickening when a fucking alcoholic like Richard Nixon is, is, is taken a dump all over something like cannabis. It is so fucking sickening. Uh, when I bounced and I came back from the near dead, I, one of the things that I, so I started taking a mood stabilizer and I would got lucky. I found the right one and it worked very quickly and efficaciously and, uh,
::Alan
But what I didn't expect was it made all alcohol. It gave it a grapefruit skin-like aftertaste. and i And so I stopped drinking.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, I, oh, I know what you're, I know what you're talking about. Oh, it lingers. It lingers like, Oh, it's bad.
::Alan
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just just and and unpleasant. And so I used to, i love I loved martinis. I loved great red wine.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
All of it instantly became a vee. And so like on the on a dime, I stopped drinking. and went when i and okay And I probably drank more than I should have, but you know i'm I'm quite sure I did on on multiple, multiple, multiple occasions. I am now what what we would call California sober.
::Alan
I do not drink. I've smoked lots of cannabis. And yeah, I would i haven't tried Cybusillin. I've done mushrooms, yeah, I've done mushrooms ah once and it was wonderful. I would do it again in a heartbeat. ah But I have no use for alcohol. And I don't know, I find myself, yeah, I guess it's the converted. I find myself looking at alcohol culture and I'm constantly shocked by its wretched excess.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's interesting, if we go back a few thousand years ago, when the temple did stand, one thing that stands out was they had a ah ceremony where they burned essences. yeah And i I heard this from a rabbi, and he confirmed this. He said that one of the essences that they believed was used was cannabis.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And he explained to me, he was a really cool guy, um he explained to me that the reason being was, Israel is a great place to grow weed because of the dry climate and because of the ah mass amount of sunlight that you have, it's it's just a great place. And it also is very soothing. And when you have Kohanim and Leviam, that a lot of their practices were singing, they were singers.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
So this whole idea of like, even within our own tribe,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
connecting with the earth, connecting with the plant and giving back from our own self, it's it's just, this is not a Richard Nixon issue. you you You're taking away thousands and thousands of years of cultural rituals and and history from vast amount of cultures.
::Alan
Oh.
::Alan
Look at where it flowed from. I think they figured out that it started somewhere in Mongolia and because and then flowed along the trade routes. And it ended up everywhere, you know, that's how you get.
::Alan
Well, Durban poison is a South African land race that it's not native.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
It didn't start its cannabis didn't start there. But when it ended up in South Africa, it kind of nativized. And that's what makes it a land race. And it it became a a kind of plant unto itself.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's very adaptive. The in the crazy...
::Alan
Yes, it's a weed. It's a weed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's crazy because we we, as people, have been using hemp for thousands of years as clothing. I mean, they have artifice. You can go to a museum right now and find hemp clothes, you know, from archaeological sites. Like, this idea of where we live in a society that does not use hemp anymore, that does not use cannabis, is only the past 95-ish years
::Alan
of utter stupidity based on racism, based based really on one racist man who hated jazz and therefore, you know, there was resistance to what he tried to do.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right.
::Alan
e the ah Marijuana Tax Act of: ::Alan
the the marijuana tax act of: ::Alan
ah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
is
::Alan
But hey, that's how they got Al Capone too, right? They didn't get him on organized crime, they got him on tax evasion.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
hey
::Alan
That's that's that's always, that's the tool that the man uses. All right, I'll get you on tax evasion. Well, it's clever, but.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
to create way It's great way to have a raid. Not rave. Raid.
::Alan
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between the two.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, God. You know what? Um, speaking of which, there there's been a show that I've been watching. It's called Have you heard of severance?
::Alan
Great show, creepy as fuck.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I started watching the show before I went to before I went to tech school, I was working at a corporate job where I was so I was refilling a CPAP supplies for patients.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I was in the job having a mental breakdown while watching this TV show.
::Alan
Yeah. that would, well that that show could precipitate that kind of reaction to being in a corporate environment.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I got terrified sometimes of going to the elevator at work. like i'm not yeah and By the way, just an earlier point, severance feels so real.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Okay, it doesn't feel like something that's made up. It feels like, like a genuine real thing that could be happening right now.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But the scariest part about the entire show is you know, absolutely nothing.
::Alan
Yes, yes, that there's a whole most of the world's information is is not.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, nothing, you know, nothing.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They don't make any sense.
::Alan
Yeah, you you don't really fully understand how this world works and it's happening all around you.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's like they have smartphones, but yet they use typewriters and punch out boxes, but yet they have ID card, but yet they use digital computers with, you know, before they had the the laser mouse, they had the optical mouse, you know, with the ball, like, come on. Like, it's confusing. It's really confusing.
::Alan
there's there's a in in that: ::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's fascinating. Oof. Oof.
::Alan
And yeah, it's all the different subversive ways that they come for us.
::Alan
it That show encapsulates the paranoia.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What are you, an innie or an outie?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
That's the perceivment of choose.
::Alan
ah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Are you an innie or an outie? And wow, you're talking to yourself as if you're two completely different people. That that should come off as insane.
::Alan
Yes. and yet there's But you understand the logic of the two.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Alan
And the two different environments in which they exist have to keep going.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it's It's weird because they both live in desolate environments.
::Alan
It sucks.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right?
::Alan
It sucks either way.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah
::Alan
who who what what What does winning look like in this environment?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know what the
::Alan
that's
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
wild part is, is that the man, that the the one of the geniuses behind this was a man that gave a Zoolander. Ben Stiller. but i Oh my god.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah he He should go down in history as the man that fucked up a lot of human people's brains with his mad creations, I will say.
::Alan
That is one of the goals of being a creator, isn't it? iss to in In the nicest way possible. Fuck fuck up people's brains. Or yeah just, hey, change how they think for the better, hopefully.
::Alan
But that that is the point of storytelling.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I think, yeah. I mean, he has a substantial amount of power, let's be honest. I mean, he's been in the biz for an extremely long time. So obviously someone like him could do whatever the hell he wants to do. He doesn't need permission.
::Alan
You know, the the the nice thing about places like Netflix, if there's a nice thing about an Apple, it's what was true about HBO. And when I did Tales from the Crypt at HBO,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's not the same way anymore, though.
::Alan
But what was great about them, which I think is true about these these places, they let the creators alone. Over the course of think the 75 episodes of Tells in the Crypt that I wrote and produced, I think I got three notes from HBO total.
::Alan
If we'd been doing that for a network like ABC, CBS, or it would have been tens of thousands of fucking notes.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, my God. Monsters.
::Alan
HBO and the streamers, they they let the creators create. to their credit.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's wild because if you take company.
::Alan
They don't pay them, they haven't paid them correctly, so fuck them for that, but...
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, they don't.
::Alan
in
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Now, the thing is, if you look at even companies like Apple, OK? They do that with their creators, but at the same time, they have slave labor making their products in China. And at the same time, they force their ideologies on their in employment in like employment, and they will fire people for the most outlandish things. It's like, okay, so you're cool with this, but yet you're fucked up as hell and everything else.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Right? It's, it's, it's crazy. It's like, who would think Apple out of all places would give you severance?
::Alan
Well, not being an Apple person, I'm not shocked.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
He never created anything.
::Alan
so ah you know And while I'm PC, I ain't in love with Bill Gates either.
::Alan
Right, right, right, right.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
but But if you had to live in the Microsoft world, you were always subjected to Microsoft's lines of code that just don't belong there.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
bugs.
::Alan
And so why why the fuck did the why the fuck did the app do that?
::Alan
stupid code but okay okay okay okay it's Apple I yeah I'm I'm such I don't like being told what to do I'm bad that way so I don't know Apple always felt like I was being told what to do while what they're telling me no you with us you can create anything you want just do it our way
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it's um it's really wild because if you it's just a story as old as it literally is the story as old as time it's e you have to catch up nobody literally is a story as old as time where it's just the repetitive motion of you have these brilliant minds then they die and then it just turns into
::Alan
Now you got me doing it, dude. We've we've been sitting here so long, I gotta catch up.
::Alan
They get replaced by others.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
We all get replaced.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
i I mean, look at you know, Walt Disney dies from, so you know, from smoking way too many cigarettes. And yeah, that's on you like they literally at photoshopped like cigarettes out of his hand.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But anyway, You know, it that look at Disney now, like, look, I'm 26, you know, and again, like, there's an age difference between me and you, but you could probably also see the major difference between, like, Disney of yesteryear and now. I can't remember a time where, like,
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's hard to explain. It's like as as we keep getting, as we keep going further, they keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
::Alan
if If you want to have a you know it ah funny thing about Uncle Walt, Walt would have been so unhappy to learn that someone like a Michael Eisner had been running his company because he's Jewish.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And... a Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
you know so yeah as we
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
But here's it but way okay look here's the the thing, though. Sometimes you need crazy people in order to make incredible things.
::Alan
Oh, it's actually look, it's alas, just because you cannot separate some all of the bad out of the behaviors or the bad ways of thinking from the artists who you love.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
ah Hey, you know, I love T.S. Eliot. Man was ah a rabid anti-Semite, but I have his poetry floating around his inside my head. ah there are yeah there There are artists whose work i I really enjoy, but who I know really would detest us because of who we are.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I know. It's almost where you have to to separate those parts of the person. You know, it's you either can view them for who their life is or what they have made.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You know, ah one thing that is the out.
::Alan
There's the innie and the outie. See, but that's that's exactly it. do you You have to live two lives, the one inside and the one outside. And the one, yeah, it goes along to get along. And the other that's scared as fuck, because it doesn't know what's coming.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
What scares me sometimes is watching those videos of people about my age or like people in their 30s or even sometimes even people older in the 60s. Talking about the very same fucking shit we're talking about now. Like literally to the T. Only difference is they don't have smartphones.
::Alan
Not much changes, really.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No. But You wonder you wondered now with how everything has been advancing the way that it has, is there an opportunity for a new way of storytelling? A new way of how it's no longer where individual runs, it's individuals rule.
::Alan
There are always new ways to tell stories and you got to find the new ways because the audience They get bored with here. Hey, they'll start they start taking the story for for granted if you can throw an interesting plot twist in and well, hey Then you found a new way outside the box. But yeah, it's it's mandatory that we keep finding new ways to to, well, what are stories? Stories are an exploration of the human condition. And so as we continue to live these lives that we're living, yeah, we need to continue to examine them and they almost demand that we examine them in new and different ways as we go.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah, always finding, you know, it's it's all about not staying comfortable. It's about always finding new ways to better yourself. I feel that you look that chair is awful comfy. I'm telling you right now, it's a lot more fun out there. If you just venture out for a little while.
::Alan
You know, there there are two different ways. Two. essential different ways of seeing the world. There's, in essence, the conservative view and there's the progressive view.
::Alan
And there's actually an independent, there's ah there's a moderate view in between the two. But but the conservative the conservative wants to keep the world, well, it's right there in their name, conserve.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
What do you want to conserve? You don't want to conserve the future, it doesn't exist yet. Usually what they want to conserve is as much of the past as still remains in the present.
::Alan
And really, if they could take us back to the past, that's really what they want to can conserve. you know ze as much as it see like it As much as the past is in the present, that's let's conserve that and go forward grudgingly if at best. Whereas progressives, that too is right there in our name, what it is that we want to happen in the world. we forward progress.
::Alan
We want whatever it is now, surely it's there's got to be a better way to do it. Let's find it.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah
::Alan
Let's do that. And so this is the dynamic tension between these two ways of seeing the world and you have this large group of people in the middle as well who are trying to accommodate both yeah Yes.
::Alan
and yes there's Sometimes you can, but sometimes you can't.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's not.
::Alan
you You can't find a middle ground, for instance, with evil. You cannot compromise with evil because evil will never compromise with you.
::Alan
You're the only one who compromises and now you've you've turned a little evil. Evil didn't turn less less evil.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
ah gri
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
no i mean The greatest example of that is if you look at modern medicine. The majority of it comes from Nazi Germany. The majority of it comes from Nazi scientists that experimented on people for five years. Now, a lot of people benefit from a lot of these medications and procedures that exist now that have been perfected over that time.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Does that still excuse the amount of evil that it came from the people that made this stuff? No. No. But.
::Alan
The entirety of human history is a product, well, certainly, yeah, all over the fucking place, is the product of incredible cruelty to somebody.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
A lot of it, a lot of it is, yeah.
::Alan
you know Hey, we had slavery in this country. We still have slavery in this country. We just don't call it that anymore.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
No, it's called prisoners. Remember, it's its it's a different word it's a different word that these days.
::Alan
it Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and that's that that's one of the legalized forms of of of of slavery, yeah, is paying prisoners.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's prisoners.
::Alan
ah But hey, anyone who doesn't want a minimum wage is really bucking for slavery. Because what at the end of the day, what was slavery at its bottom line?
::Alan
It's wage theft. The whole point is I'm gonna get all your work product for free, minus whatever it costs to house, clothes, and feed you. keep you alive so you can produce the work. Everything that you produce, I get for free. And that was the point of slavery. And in the American South, ah there were three big cash crops that were very labor intensive, tobacco, sugarcane, and of course, cotton.
::Alan
the What slavery allowed the people who grew that stuff to do was to get all the manual labor required to get it from field to factory for virtually nothing.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
They made they made a fortune.
::Alan
Imagine imagine if oh my ah hey hey imagine if if if if on the other hand if the South had been forced to pay ah fair market and value for every last bit of that labor.
::Alan
Now, maybe the Confederacy wouldn't have written and revolted the way that it did over slavery, ah but hey, it might have become the first great worker state in the history of of the world.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I mean,
::Alan
Oh well.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
and No, to your point to your point, though. You look at places like Detroit, Michigan, OK, where you had the entire car industry, the American car industry was based there, and you had tons of factory workers and people that were relying on those places to stay afloat.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
All right, we're moving out.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
And you just
::Alan
What was that? Yeah, what what was the whole we're moving out decision based on? What was indeed?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
cheaper, cheaper labor. Yeah.
::Alan
Indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah. And um something.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Sometimes somebody else's gain becomes somebody else's benefit. And I don't know.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
and not in a good way. And it's just where you have to, I don't know, I feel like you have to be able to stay in the present and be able to realize, ah realize your strengths and your weaknesses. And even in the hardest of times, that just gives you more of the reason to get yourself back up.
::Alan
Indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yeah.
::Alan
Indeed.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes. um Before I forget, because you mentioned your podcast, i am do you have any social links and website perhaps?
::Alan
I do. you all these i've got ah We've got five podcasts going right this second. I've got 10 more in various stages of their
Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh, wow.
::Alan
ah The main podcast I do is the How Not to Make a Movie podcast, which you can find at how not to www.hownottomakeamovie.com.
::Alan
Dot-com all separated by dashes unfortunately, ah but there's also the donor a DNA horror story, which is at the donor podcast dot.com ah There's also a great new podcast.
::Alan
I didn't get to mention called ah the hall closet, which is an offshoot of the donor ah Donna Hall was one of the donor conceived people who very kindly agreed to talk to me ah when Donna told me her story and I thought, oh my God, that's a podcast unto itself. Donna grew up in a lower tier crime family outside of Philadelphia in the 80s and 90s. Her family wasn't the Corleone's from the Godfather, but they made national headlines just the same. Donna's mom, Phyllis, might be the worst mom ever.
::Alan
For sure. For real. ah She was in headlines. She was referred to as the home alone mom of Bucks County. She spent six months in prison for child endangerment. ah yeah Donna's stepdad, John Hall,
::Alan
was the Philadelphia Police Department's favorite snitch. He put more than 25 people behind bars based on bullshit confessions that he needed to get himself out of legal jeopardy of one kind or another. Among the people he put away was his own stepson, Herb, for 18 months on a murder charge that Herb had nothing he did not do.
::Alan
ah John Hall also put a man named Walter Ogrod on death row in Pennsylvania for 24 years on a murder Walter had not do, had nothing to do with. John describes what it was like growing up inside this insane environment, always feeling a bit like she didn't belong. She learned at the age of 40 that she was in fact the product of a sperm donation. She didn't belong to those people. She wasn't, she was half.
::Alan
but not entirely. And she she's an amazing storyteller, Donna. she ah She tells her story without an ounce of pity. She's smart. She's funny. And it's not just a story about true crime. It's really her search for safety and most importantly, empowerment.
::Alan
ah Donna, I'm biased because I've been working with her. She is a rock star as a storyteller. I dare anyone who listens to ah the Hall Closet podcast at thehallclosetpodcast.com not to fall in love with her as a storyteller and and just be on the edge of your seat waiting for every the next episodes.
::Alan
because it It's the craziest fucking story I've ever heard. and hey i look look look Look at my history of storytelling.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
it sounds like the craziest story
::Alan
Tells from the crypt and Outer Limits. I love strange stories. and that's that's that's what what i That's what I'm working on these days. All these strange, true stories that I keep bumping into and people keep coming to me with.
::Alan
Hey, ah one of the things I've learned since I became a podcaster, full-time really, is that everyone has a story, every last one of us. And because everyone has a story, everyone's got at least one podcast in them. Some people, they have multiple, lots and lots of podcasts in them, but everyone has a story, if properly told, that would fascinate everybody else.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Mm hmm.
::Alan
And that's my mission in life, is to tell every last one of those stories if I can.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Indeed. Hey.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
You can make it happen. You got to make it happen.
::Alan
I'll die trying.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Yes.
::Alan
But hey man, it so long as I got enough dope, I'm cool.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Hmm.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
you get that on the you know, on the on the on the stone, you know, like a a little joint holder.
::Alan
Absolutely.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
a
::Alan
Positively. yeah yeah yeah Yeah.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Making a new shindig.
::Alan
I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you how much fun this has been.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
It's been an absolute pleasure, my man. I mean, I think we went through 5,000 years of history and plus.
::Alan
Oh my God. We went, where did we not go?
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
yeah Right. That is the that is the question, indeed.
::Alan
Hey, let's, let's do this again sometime.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Sure.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
I'm now.
::Alan
i don't know I don't know when, but but let's lets lets let's commit to it. I think we just scratched the surface of all the places that we we that we could could go and talk about.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Oh,
::Alan
So let's let's ah let's do that.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
we'll talk about it. we We'll talk about after. But listent but listen, now it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on and I mean, hey, nothing like a good story.
::Alan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
::Alan
Hey, there you go.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
told the right way, right? no
::Alan
That's that's the secret sauce.
::Lost in the Groove Podcast
Secret sauce and mama no tella no no no I'm not gonna tell you that hey. So to all of you if you want to check out more of the podcast you can find us at Lost in the Groove Pod and with that we'll catch you on the next one. Peace out motherfuckers!
