Dr Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and this is the Live-Stream Symposium and thank you, every single one of us for the 50 000 subscribers here on YouTube. I’m really, really pleased that the channel, is growing and that you guys are interested in the academic study of Esotericism, Paganism and all things occult. And I have to thank, especially, my Patrons who allow me to keep doing this work and also all the PayPal donors and the Channel Members and everybody who is contributing also in the Super Chat. So thank you all so much. And I’m really happy to be here with you guys and with special guests, actually. So we also have here Filip from Let’s Talk Religion and Zevi from Seekers of Unity. You probably know them but if not, you know, you should totally check their channels out.
And so how are you guys, Filip and Zevi?
Filip Holm FH: I’m doing good. I’m very happy to know that you’ve reached 50 000 subscribers and congratulations so much, Angela. You deserve all of those subscribers and many, many more because the work you’re doing is just amazing and we’re happy to have you as part of this community.
AP: Thank you, guys, thank you, Filip, it’s very nice of you.
Zevi Slavin ZS: Yes, great, to be here with you. Thank you Angela and thank you Angela for arranging it. To Echo what Filip said for the amazing work you are doing, I think a lot of people see the exciting parts of it, they see the lights, they see the action they don’t see the hours and hours and hours of work that go on behind the scenes to make it happen. And as fellow content creators we have a, I think, an extra degree of appreciation for the work you’re doing bringing immense scholarship to the public – which is a great, great contribution, which I think will stand for many years as an incredible resource. So, on behalf of everyone who learns from you, including ourselves, thank you, Angela.
Oh, we have another friend here who has just appeared. Hello, Justin.
Dr Justin Sledge JS: Hey Angela, hey guys. Congratulations, Angela.
AP: Oh, thank you.
JS: Of course, of course.
AP: You seem to have rushed. Is everything OK?
JS: Yeah, just putting the kids down for their nap, so it’s like juggling several things… but wow, thank you, thank you for having me on again. Congratulations to you. Congratulations also to you Zevi.
AP: Oh yes, congratulations Zevi. You also reached the milestone.
ZS: We just reached 25, so halfway to you Angela.
AP: Well, you know I like to celebrate the, you know, these kinds of milestones but I don’t think that the number is necessarily related to… I think that the growth, I see the growth as more important, to be fair. I don’t see the numbers in absolute terms but more in relative terms if that makes sense.
ZS: Yeah, I think it’s very hard to measure the impact on any single person that we reach and I think it’s a great privilege that we’re able to celebrate together here as friends and colleagues and I think one of the main things that I’ve gained from this community, besides for all the people that comes along, is having people to teach alongside with and learn from and then for that I’m immensely, immensely grateful – beyond any numbers. These three are greater than three thousand or three million.
AP: Oh, I totally agree. I also think that the community is, you know, much more valuable than…
FH: Yeah, no, I agree. It’s wonderful both for us but also I think for the audience, right? Because we can work together and complement each other…
AP: And yeah, and we have different expertise. So that also really helps a lot and thank you, let me thank the people in the Super Chat thank you very much, Jeanette, for your coffee and thank you, Hank, who’s also a very generous Patron. So, happy days. I was asked this morning if I would be Puca-ing today. Who asked you that?
That’s funny. So yeah we are Puca-ing now – it’s a thing.
FH: What does it mean Angela to be Puca-ing?
AP: Yeah, that is something we need to find out. Apparently, the Pucca is this shape-shifting entity, figure. So maybe we are shape-shifting from the real to the virtual and you know, disentangling the mysteries of the Sacred, the Arcane and of Mysticism. I am trying to sort of unite all.
ZS: We’re all Puca-ing in that case.
JS: You know you’ve really arrived when your name becomes a verb.
AP: Yeah, that’s a marker of success. And Hank says the lady he’s staying with, okay. Yeah, we will remember her for inventing the term. And Jeanette says, LOL beard game. I’m the only one without a beard – I feel excluded from this game.
FH: I think we too have beards. We have to keep a lid on how much beard it is on screen at the same time, I think.
AP: Yeah.
JS: Literally the least effort required to engage with facial hair. It’s just, I don’t know, why anyone would… like people have a weird respect for beards. I’m like it’s the laziest thing possible.
AP: Why have beards become a thing lately? What happened to the world so that beards became
something?
ZS: Beards have an association with philosophy in ancient Greece. There’s a Greek expression, that it’s not the beard that makes the philosopher, right. Which I think would apply to what we’re saying here as well. There’s something about the beard and wisdom. I mean…
AP: Yeah, because the longer it is, the older you are. That makes sense and first of all, you need to
be old enough to have a beard.
ZS: You can see some of the white strands in Justin’s beard. That also points there to a degree of wisdom which I haven’t yet attained.
AP: He’s the wisest of us all.
ZS: Different levels, yeah, different levels…
JS: Definitely not, definitely not. No, I’ve, Zevi May appreciate this, I’ve been reading Melilla’s book, “Seekers of the Face” book and there’s a whole section of the Zohar that’s just like a 50-page monologue on God’s beard and how it like, attaches to God’s brain and skull, it’s very weird. And it’s like 13 parts of God’s beard and all this stuff, it’s bizarre. And I’ve been studying that for the past two weeks. And yeah this stuff on my mind, different kinds of dimensions of the Divine as a, you know, strung out through God’s beard. It’s so weird – like, I got to get whatever drugs those guys are on.
ZS: Is that for an upcoming episode?
JS: Say, what Zevi?
ZS: Is that for an upcoming episode?
JS: No, I mean eventually, I guess. Everything is at some point for an upcoming episode. No, I took a couple of weeks off from content creation – just actually, just take some downtime and do some studying on my own and things like that, so.
AP: That’s very wise.
JS: Yeah, I would recommend it. It’s one of those… I don’t know how you guys feel but there’s a superstition that I have, that if I walk away from this for any length of time and the whole like everything will collapse.
AP: It will collapse, yes. Yeah, I think we all have that kind of fear, don’t we?
JS: Yeah and it’s totally irrational, I mean, I really call it superstition. Like, you know, it’s a totally irrational superstition. But yeah, it’s been a good couple of weeks. I’ve started studying with an old professor of mine who’s a dear friend as well. We’re reading Proclus’s Elements of Theology together, which is a beast if you’ve ever tried to study it. It is a very, very difficult text.
AP: And that’s how Justin spends his pastime.
JS: Yeah, my downtime.
AP: Yeah, downtime, sorry.
Yeah, yeah it’s – yeah it’s a complete, a total masochist…
FH: Are you reading it in Greek?
JS: We have, I mean the standard Dodds Edition has the Greek and the English facing. But I have to admit that Proclus’s Greek is just so turgid. I don’t know how well you guys read Greek, I know Angela does.
AP: I do.
JS: But it’s just like the most turgid, technical… I mean technical Greek it’s just like every single word is like a technical term for Neoplatonism and he just uses, like you know, it’s a word that he likes to use a lot like unparticipated – amethekton – it’s just like such a weird word. Like the unparticipated is the unaffected by the causeless self-cause, you know. Oh God, it’s like reading ancient Heidegger or something. It’s just a mess.
ZS: Amethekton – it sounds like something you get over the Pharmacy Counter.
JS: Yeah, the disease of being unparticipated.
AP: Yeah, I think the next time I will need a strap-on Pharaoh beard to be part of, you know, the party and blending better.
JS: We’ll just take all of our beards off. I don’t know, I have nightmares where that happens. Like it’s like the total castration dreams but like I feel like things were like my beard falls off or like if folks ever had the dream where your teeth come out.AP: FH: Yeah.
ZS: Yeah, you feel terrible
JS: Yeah, that’s an awful dream. What weird creatures we are.
AP: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the same in other folk beliefs but in Italy, there’s the belief that when you dream that your teeth fall out it means that there’s somebody that is gonna die and depending on where the tooth is, it will be, you know, if it is like front teeth it will be somebody in your immediate family or if it is more distant day it could be even friends or part of the extended family.
FH: I don’t know.
AP: do you have that belief?
ZS: Yeah, there is something similar in Judaism where teeth falling out is an omen for something very bad and that and you’re not supposed to repeat such a dream if you have it. You’re supposed to keep it unmanifest in the real world don’t let it get out there.
JS: It’s like the only dream, right, that you’re not supposed to talk about. Like the other ones you have to you’re encouraged to get them interpreted.
ZS: Right and so for some of these dreams as well there’s a tradition to fast for them which is considered quite a serious fast and, It’s interesting that that very dream, in both traditions, is seen as quite severe and quite a gnarly one.
JS: It’s interesting it’s cross-cultural. Like, I mean obviously we’re all coming from very different… like I wonder if it occurs in like India or you know… because I was reading a paper once where they were talking about schizophrenic people and how the command voices and the Indian Subcontinent are not like evil in the same way they are in Western Europe and America and it’s just interesting like that the manifestation of that stuff can take such different forms cross-culturally. Like I wonder if that teeth… because I guess in the versions I have, my teeth never come out they’re just like, loose. But I wonder if that’s also like a cross-cultural dream and what would explain that. I’m pretty sure that Jung or someone would have something to say about it.
AP: Yeah, we have – sorry to interrupt you – we have a question and thank you, Raymond, for the Super Chat, he said following on the idea of Puca-ing do you all think a Heidegger can be credited with the first philosophical use of nouns as verbs? No, absolutely not.
JS: He can be credited with using them in completely insane ways though.
AP: Yes, I think that he bought it to the next level.
JS: Just the nothing, the nothing that nothings.
AP: The Dasein.
JS: Das Nicht nichtet. Yeah, who was it that wrote the paper against him? Was it that makes fun of that? It wasn’t Gadamer, it’s one of the logical positivists, it’s Carnap, it was Carnap. He wrote a paper and it’s like this is completely idiotic that people are spelled by this because you know Carnap was in the audience when Heidegger gave that, you know, Was ist Metaphysik? lecture 29 or whatever and Carnap just, like he was just sitting there with his blood boiling, listening to that. It must have been… I love that kind of stuff.
AP: Yeah, do you guys know who was the first one to do that? Plato maybe? But not in the same way as Heidegger did it. I think that most philosophers tend to use verbs, well, what was the question? It was about…
JS: Nouns as verbs. I mean it has to be, I mean Parmenides. Like that’s whole his whole stick, right?
AP: Like even before.
JS: His whole stick is that the participial form of on – indicates that that is a thing and that thing can be talked about and philosophically analysed and I mean if you, depending on who you listen to, you know, that’s why Western philosophy looks the way that it does and why Chinese philosophy doesn’t look that way because Chinese philosophy can’t – the grammar just doesn’t work that way. And you know, depending on who you ask, if you ask Heidegger that’s where everything went off the rails – we forgot how to talk about being.
ZS: Do you have a one-ing in Plotinus? The Neoplatonists, like the sense that the noun One turns into a verb. What’s the Greek on that?
AP: Pardon?
JS: Ta hen.
AP: Being – ta en, ta en is Greek for to be.
JS: Yeah but I don’t know if the one, the one ones in Plotinus, I think that it’s beyond, I mean I think in Plotinus the one’s just beyond all – it’s meta-ontological. There are no predicates that are true of it, ah there are no predicates that are true of it that aren’t equivocal.
AP: Hank says that the Magus lectures and this would be a reference to the Patreon community because I have obviously different tiers and the Magus tier Patrons get a monthly lecture and this month there will be Dr Jenny Butler. So it would be sort of a round table – we will be discussing it with her. So if you guys are interested in Irish and Celtic Paganism and Witchcraft you might want to consider joining my Patreon at a Magus tier. So thank you Hank for reminding me of that. And we have another Super Chat. Thank you, Grant Hobson, what got you all into Esotericism? I was into Greek mythology growing up but I got interested in it after seeing the Midnight Gospel and listening to a lot of Sun Ra in 2020. Much love for all the work.
So what got you guys into Esotericism? In my case, I think it was – maybe some people know that already if you have been following my channel for any length of time. But yeah I was interested in Esotericism since I was a child. Because I don’t really divulge much of my personal history and personal beliefs but I can say that in my family and in my hometown that, you know, there was a lot of Folk Witchcraft and yeah, I’ve had some kind of exposure since I was a child and I got interested in it, just instinctively but yeah then growing up and going to High School, I think that my gateway was probably Plotinus, for some reason.
[Laughter]
But yeah, I think that Plotinus was something that for me was the gateway drug. Even though it may not seem as though it is very related but there are some liaison points and Neoplatonism has been influential in the interpretation of magic practices from yeah, for many centuries. It was very influential in the Renaissance for instance.
But what about you guys? What got you interested… I know that you don’t talk specifically. I think that Justin and I tend to talk more specifically about Esotericism and you guys were on a tangent but you’re more interested in philosophy and mysticism, sorry religion for Filip and mysticism for Zevi if I’m not mistaken.
FH: It’s a good question So like you I have always been interested in mythology. I can remember just growing up I’ve always had an interest in… I used to watch documentaries and movies about ancient Egypt and I was really fascinated about all that stuff. But I think a lot of it… also the way I was exposed to those kinds of ideas was through music. Because as a teenager I would listen a lot to, well like so many other people, I was exposed to Indian philosophy through the Beatles, for example. I would also listen to a lot of Tool in my teenage years and they have a lot of esoteric and occult themes and lyrics and all this stuff. So I think it was like a gradual thing. A lot of music and a lot of interest since growing up that just led me in that direction over the years, I guess. And then I started studying religion and got into the mystical aspect of religion in particular and those tend to be pretty connected also, you know, mysticism tends to be esoteric a lot of the time.
AP: And what about you Zevi?
ZS: I got exposed to Mysticism and Esotericism and we should try and use those words differently but there is some overlap, as Filip was gesturing. Before I even knew that these categories existed, I grew up in a Hasidic community where we were taught Hasidic Philosophy from a very young age, in our early teens and for me actually discovering the categories of Mysticism and Esotericism and Occultism, whatnot was quite a radical realisation because I realised that what I had been studying in my own tiny Hasidic community was actually part of this large global phenomenon. This story that goes back to people like Plotinus and Plato and through the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and that was a really wild realisation that I made when I was about 16. Just through a novel that I’d come across which exposed me to some ideas from Christian and Islamic Mysticism initially and then I went through my own questions, my own sort of phase of religious questioning which led me into, you know, modern Americanised forms of Eastern Mysticism and trying to make sense of that with what I had been raised within mystical traditions. And I think it’s just been a slow, slow-burn evolving journey of my own exploration of the rightfully mystical traditions that I was raised in and then trying to understand them in their broader historical and philosophical context and it’s gone through all kinds of iterations and I’ve shared the journey, sort of at greater length on podcasts more but that’s a short version of it, a journey which I’m still on today and a journey which has led me to you wonderful people.
AP: Justin what about you? I think it was Alchemy, wasn’t it?
JS: So alchemy was my first love but I think it’s the same thing being a kid like I watched a lot of scary movies growing up and those are almost always sort of occulty and then just watching shows like Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World and In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy and these like shows that I think, for better or worse, do a good job of inculcating in you, like a sense of wonder, that the world’s really weird and there are weird things in the world. Like to I don’t know the Bermuda Triangle or vampires or whatever, Bigfoot. And I don’t know, I think what happened was those shows put a
sense of wondering me about sort of the arcane dimensions of the world and then as I got older I got sceptical of any of that stuff being true. Like I remember watching an analysis of the Bermuda
Triangle and it showed that Lloyds of London doesn’t charge any more insurance money for boats passing through the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else. In fact, it’s more expensive to insure boats going over Lake Michigan and I was like that at that point I was like, if insurance won’t make any money off of it it’s not really real. And so I turned more sceptical but the sense of wonder and that stuff never left me behind and so eventually I wanted to do something with it and I decided to make the terrible decision of becoming an academic and so here I am.
[Laughter]
But yeah, so I think it’s those kinds of shows – which it’s funny because I go back and watch some of them now and I’m like man, young children should not be exposed to some of that completely crazy nonsense. It can lead you to all kinds of terrible beliefs about, I don’t know, ancient Egyptian people or whatever, people who built the pyramids and things like that. I don’t know, yeah, I mean like watching things like yeah, they used anti-gravity to build the pyramids. Like the same kind of ads that run on our channels by the way.
AP: Yes.
JS: TV ads, amazing, yeah.
AP: Yeah it’s kind of scary when you look at the kind of ads that YouTube chooses to run over our videos.
ZS: We are not sponsored by Gaia, we have to be clear about that.
[Laughter]
JS: Yeah, definitely not.
AP: We are going to all get demonetised now.
JS: They’ll pull their funding. I do wish we had some control over that stuff. More control over at least veto power at some level like, you know, being able to do that. But yeah, it’s like ancient alien stuff is just so toxic. But yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that really spawned the interest in me and yeah, John Dee Alchemy stuff and that never went away.
AP: Mmm, hi Marco, says, please not Gaia.
JS: That stuff is so bad.
AP: And thank you, Dave. Another patron of mine and I’m also glad to have met João I can only find this comment of you now but I know that you’ve been in the chat since the beginning. It was really nice meeting him. I don’t know if you guys have ever met any of your Patrons. I have met a few of my Patrons and it was really nice. Have you had that experience? Justin has – I gather from the nodding.
FH: Not me, I think. No, not that I can remember, at least.
AP: You would remember that I would imagine.
FH: I was defended now but no, I don’t know.
ZS: I’ve had the chance very, very sweet, very sweet to meet people in real life. So it’s quite real shall we say.
AP: And Andrew, who is actually my first Patron and also the moderator. So thank you for moderating the chat. He says you guys need to make offerings to the YouTube algorithm to get better ads. That’s a good point. We should try some techno-magic or cyber-magic.
FH: So what actually determines what ads are on our videos? Because I know….
AP: I think YouTube chooses. I think that actually, it is the advertisers that decide what kind of videos they want to join and then depending on how YouTube categorises your YouTube channel, you know, they will be able to make an offer or something like that, that’s my understanding anyway
JS: I don’t know if we all wrote to Gaia and be like please don’t sponsor our Channel anymore.
[Laughter]
You know, most I think a lot of YouTubers are desperately trying to get sponsors I wonder if we’d be the only ones to be like please don’t, please don’t sponsor our stuff.
[Laughter]
AP: Yeah, I think that my only concern is that people who watch our channel may think that we are, you know, somewhat sponsored by them or related to them, which is obviously not the case.
JS: No they actually reached out to me for a sponsorship – one of those shows on Gaia. And I was like absolutely not. I get angry the person seemed like coming, I don’t know… The New Agey stuff always strikes me as like just a hair’s breadth away from some real malevolent, I don’t know, like manifesting things into reality and stuff. Like that stuff worries me. I don’t know, like once you manifest – stop bothering me.
AP: What’s your what’s the weirdest sponsorship that you’ve been offered and I’m guessing rejected since it was the weirdest? I have a good one but I want to hear yours first.
FH: Like the weirdest one I can think of is that was offered to do a sponsorship with a company that sold glasses. The argument was that I wear glasses and so on.
[Laughter]
AP: And thank you, Dave. Another patron of mine and I’m also glad to have met João I can only find this comment of you now but I know that you’ve been in the chat since the beginning. It was really nice meeting him. I don’t know if you guys have ever met any of your Patrons. I have met a few of my Patrons and it was really nice. Have you had that experience? Justin has – I gather from the nodding.
FH: Not me, I think. No, not that I can remember, at least.
AP: You would remember that I would imagine.
FH: I was defended now but no, I don’t know.
ZS: I’ve had the chance very, very sweet, very sweet to meet people in real life. So it’s quite real shall we say.
AP: And Andrew, who is actually my first Patron and also the moderator. So thank you for moderating the chat. He says you guys need to make offerings to the YouTube algorithm to get better ads. That’s a good point. We should try some techno-magic or cyber-magic.
FH: So what actually determines what ads are on our videos? Because I know….
AP: I think YouTube chooses. I think that actually, it is the advertisers that decide what kind of videos they want to join and then depending on how YouTube categorises your YouTube channel, you know, they will be able to make an offer or something like that, that’s my understanding anyway
JS: I don’t know if we all wrote to Gaia and be like please don’t sponsor our Channel anymore.
[Laughter]
You know, most I think a lot of YouTubers are desperately trying to get sponsors I wonder if we’d be the only ones to be like please don’t, please don’t sponsor our stuff.
[Laughter]
AP: Yeah, I think that my only concern is that people who watch our channel may think that we are, you know, somewhat sponsored by them or related to them, which is obviously not the case.
JS: No they actually reached out to me for a sponsorship – one of those shows on Gaia. And I was like absolutely not. I get angry the person seemed like coming, I don’t know… The New Agey stuff always strikes me as like just a hair’s breadth away from some real malevolent, I don’t know, like manifesting things into reality and stuff. That stuff worries me. I don’t know, like once you manifest – stop bothering me.
AP: What’s your what’s the weirdest sponsorship that you’ve been offered and I’m guessing rejected since it was the weirdest? I have a good one but I want to hear yours first.
FH: Like the weirdest one I can think of is that was offered to do a sponsorship with a company that sold glasses. The argument was that I wear glasses and so on.
[Laughter]
It would be a good April Fool’s prank to do as an Esotericism OnlyFans. I don’t know.
AP: Oh yeah. I think that… Justin, I think you should open an OnlyFans.
[Laughter]
As an April Fool or we should do it all together?
JS: Altogether, yeah.
AP: If I do it people will think…
JS: You would have to pay Zevi, that’s the whole point.
[Laughter]
AP: Yeah, after they pay they will find like pictures of us with books and stuff.
JS: You can do like a John Dee and Edward Kelly OnlyFans
ZS: You could do a book-porn OnlyFans. Just our books in nice lighting and in nature settings.
JS: Like blurry naked people in the background.
FH: Perfectly ordered books.
AP: Perfectly ordered.
JS: Let’s explore that. People who do that like makes me crazy when people organize their books like, according to like colour and things like that I’ve been to people’s houses like that and it like irks me for some reason
AP: Because you’re an Aquarian.
FH: I do order them chronologically.
JS: Does that make sense? Or like, I have my philosophy books organized by time period. So like…
FH: Yeah, yeah.
JS: Yeah so but like I’ve been to places where like all the yellow and red books are all… Like, that makes sense if you have like, Loeb Classics or something, they’re all the same. But yeah I went to this person’s house and there was like all the red books were in place and all the yellow books from one place and I was like you don’t really read… that’s like it irked me.
AP: I order my books by not ordering them. So I just have them spread around everywhere just like everything else because I’m very untidy and very messy as a person. So yeah, what you see is the very small space that I have tidied up. But otherwise, it’s an explosion now of Angela’s stuff.
JS: That’s why it should be, it’s the sign that you’re working. I don’t know if I ever want to do a person’s office and it was like, super tidy I would I’d be like what? No work gets done in here. Yeah, the mess is indicative of the work.
ZS: Filip’s checking to see if his place is messy. So that’s good.
FH: It’s pretty messy so that’s good.
JS: Yeah but Filip’s background always looks like the modern equivalent of like, a Baroque painting. It’s like random books and musical instruments and stuff. With like the chiaroscuro lighting and stuff, like, Filip lives in a Baroque painting somehow.
FH: Yep.
JS: There you go – it’s like lutes and stuff, like it actually is like, you know, medieval instruments.
AP: But how do you guys think that our work may change academia? You know, or not really academia per se because I don’t want to be that grandiose in my assumptions or hypotheses but you know, even the perception, the public perception of academic knowledge. Do you think that we may be affecting it somehow and how, if so?
FH: I hope so. At the very least I think and hope that we can affect the way that this kind of information is conveyed because it is often, you know, the Ivory Tower thing of the only people that read academic articles or other academics and so the information doesn’t get out there. And I think… I was going to say us but I don’t know if I can call myself an academic at the moment academics in general I think can get much better at getting the information out there and hopefully what we’re doing can kind of show the way a little bit. At least one way to do it.
AP: Yeah I cannot really talk much about it at this moment because everything is kind of confidential at the moment. But I will be part of a team of a new academic association for the study of Esotericism that has, as one of its aims to reach out, also, to the community of practitioners. So I really, really like this project and I look forward to revealing more about it because it’s part of a big research project that will be happening in the next seven years. So yeah, as soon as it goes public I will tell you guys everything about it. But it’s really exciting, especially for the aspect of trying to reach out to the public and divulge academic scholarship in an easy-to-understand way, even to the community of practitioners and create a bridge and create communication. So I really like that.
FH: That’s great.
ZS: That’s super cool. Angela, you’ve presented, right, at academic conferences about your public scholarship work on YouTube?
AP: Yes, yeah, I also actually gave a lecture at Harvard University and I will give another one next year and they asked me to give lectures specifically about that – how to, you know, to use an academic methodology on social media because they noticed my use of references, the fact that I use the, you know, peer-reviewed scholarship and things like that and how to integrate that with the social media format. Also at the last Conference of the Association for the Study of Religion because the theme of the conference was religion and public engagement I decided okay, I’m gonna give a paper on being a public scholar on YouTube and disseminating academic scholarship. So yes, I have given lectures, you know, like and conference papers on that. And I think they were well received by the public. I think that a lot of academics actually would really like to have a wider outreach. I also got some backlash from other academics because of parts of the way, aspects of how I convey the, you know, the what I do, the content that I do but I think that mostly, at least the ones that I’ve spoken to they really appreciate my work, so that is nice.
ZS: That’s very cool, it’s really cool to see those bridges being built and to see the interest sort of from both sides. I’ll be curious to hear Justin’s thoughts as well because Justin is a, you know, a career academic in some sense and I’m not, I’m a sort of outsider academically – doing independent scholarship and I’m kind of crossing over with the religious world as well. So I love my viewership with people coming from the religious community being exposed to, for the first time, to academic ideas and I think that there is – there’s definitely a necessity to bring those academic ideas, sort of, to reveal the secret to the public. Because they don’t make their way to the public by natural means
and I think that the job of being a communicator is incredibly important the same thing that in science you have science researchers and science communicators and those aren’t mutually exclusive. Network is equally important I think that the role of communicating is important and as you’re mentioning it, the academics themselves, they want to be engaging with public scholarship and they need to be, to some extent. And I think that the role of academics, seeing the capacity to share or to be involved in sharing, one of those guests, I think. I think we’re only going to see that grow, I think we’re at the very beginning of that intersection.
AP: Yeah, I think that academics generally would want to have a wider outreach. The thing is that when you are in academia you tend to always be within certain circles and you’re used to doing things in a very specific way. And I don’t think that there is really an awareness that those ways are not that, you know, I wouldn’t say appealing to the public but they are not really open to the public because, for instance, there are academics that will publish their papers on academia.edu but a lot of people don’t even know what that is. Or I think that in a lot of cases there is kind of an assumption that academics are making their scholarship available for those who search for it, the problem is that you need to have the knowledge and you know, in a way the training to, first of all, gather the difference between a source that is academic and another one that isn’t. And second, to get through the, you know, the search engines that will allow you to access the databases that will allow you to access those kinds of papers and articles and books. And I don’t think that the public, you know, the layperson is trained to do that. So yeah, in that way YouTube is helpful because you don’t have to go through a specific database to find a paper but you just search for, you know, what interests you and you may find one of our videos and that can be much easier to find as a resource.
FH: I think the whole social media thing is a really great middle ground but it has sort of emerged in the last few years because before, I could be wrong I guess, but it’s sort of a balance in between the two extremes. Because if you’re working in the bigger, sort of, at least previously, you know, TV for example, then you’re controlled in what content you can make, based on whatever a studio might want or what’s going to get the viewers, right? Whereas on the other side you have the ivory tower, academic bubble right, that just doesn’t get out to the public. With things like YouTube and similar platforms. We have the opportunity to, for example, take the time to cover a topic properly using all the research and all this but it’s also a platform where that does reach a large audience I think that’s a really great opportunity. It hasn’t been around for that long. I think that’s very important.
JS: Yeah and just to think that, I mean, whether academics like it or not or whether anyone likes it or not YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet. And we’re living in an age, I mean Twitter’s stuff is a good example of just like really serious disinformation and misinformation or just bad information and of one of the places where it’s most pernicious is in Religious Studies. I mean it’s amazing how so much information about religion stuff, in general, is just either bad or confessional or slanted in certain kinds of ways. And so, you know, I would say that not only are we lucky that we have the opportunity to do what we do but other academics are going to have to eventually come around to the reality that if they want to live in a functioning civil society they have to put content on things like YouTube. Because if they don’t it’ll get filled with crazy people I mean if you look at the distance between, I don’t know, like my content and someone who’s similar and makes similar kind of content someone like, I don’t know, Robert Sepehr who’s just a, you know, a purveyor of complete nonsense and racist conspiracy theories and stuff. It’s a, you know, the middle ground is very thin and so yeah, I think that we are going to change it – the tenor of online education because people desperately want good information. And you know that’s why I really appreciate your methodology, Angela. It’s that, you know, you cite your sources and it’s clear where you’re getting the stuff from so yeah, I think it’s going to have to be the case that we’re going to have to eventually… the tenor will have to change because people want the information. And if people aren’t making good information on YouTube it’ll just be cluttered with all kinds of bad stuff.
AP: Yeah I agree, I agree with you. I think that in some cases… I think that at first, I was a bit concerned that it could, I don’t know, somewhat undermine me as a scholar, you know, in the eyes of other academics because, I don’t know, because of being on YouTube and because of my style and things like that. But then I thought that, you know, I just really wanted to share this kind of content and I wanted to do it by being myself, you know, to put it very, very simply. So but yeah, I agree I think that it’s kind of near-sighted and you know, to not see that YouTube is the second most used search engine as you said. I’m guessing the first one is Google.
JS: And it’s funny because for people below the age of 25 it’s the first, larger search engine. So you know, my friends, my students I was actually talking to my students about this and they’re like yeah if I’m if I want to know something about Plato’s Republic I don’t read Wikipedia, I’d go to YouTube. And I was like yeah, this is the lesson that I think academics really mistake is that you know, the common public, most people are not going to JSTOR to look for peer-reviewed articles that are hard to read and hard to find even if you can you know get them, they’re not going to get information from there because there’s a there are so many objective barriers in the way. They’re going to go to YouTube and they’re going to type in Plotinus and it’s just a roll of the dice if that information is going to be high quality or not. I don’t know, I feel like for me it’s a, you know, sort of a sacred duty, at some level, to provide the best information I can. Because, you know, between all of us, you know, you know tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are watching this content and you know, I don’t want to be on my shoulders that I’m pumping out bad stuff. I don’t know. It’s a huge privilege and a duty. I’m gonna take both as seriously as I can.
AP: Yeah I think that at the same time I also don’t want to make it seem as though I think and probably you think that YouTube is the beginning and the end of the education process. Obviously, you know, I’m hoping that my content, you know, will work as an appetizer for people and then people will get curious and interested and then they will go and read, perhaps, the papers on JSTOR, maybe not on JSTOR if they don’t have an academic affiliation of some sorts but on academia.edu. And if you ask nicely lots of academics will give you their papers for free because we don’t get paid anything for our peer-reviewed publications. So we are generally very happy to share. I was asked recently, for instance, to send, by a few colleagues, a recent chapter that I published in an edited book and I never had any problems with that and I know many academics that don’t have problems with that. So I encourage people to also go on and read the actual research and get familiar with it. So I think that when you have a background knowledge through one of our videos it is even easier than to approach an academic paper or an academic article. Whereas if you go directly to the article, without any prior knowledge, it might be much more difficult. So I’m hoping that my work is on YouTube is an appetizer and then people will go and read the, you know, the actual research. And then yeah, if it is behind the paywall I think that there are ways that you can get through that.
FH: There are ways, yes.
AP: Some you cannot say out loud.
[Laughter]
JS: Yeah one of the best ones got to cut down this week, sadly.
AP: Pardon.
JS: Yeah one of the best ways of getting access to books, not so legally, got shut down this week, sadly. I don’t know.
AP: Really?
JS: it’s crazy. Yeah, books on this like B-OK the big one of the big places to get pirated books got shut down. You have to go find Brill books in real life now.
ZS: I think Z-library also went down.
JS: Yeah, Z-library.
AP: …. of the secret. We do not recommend you use that. I didn’t know it was shut down by the way. Was it recent?
ZS: I’m a bit more partisan to sharing these resources with people because me, being an outsider would never have had access to any academia without things like Sci-Hub and Lib-gen. And I had the founder of Sci-Hub over the channel for the interview to talk about her work and I that there’s so much corruption in the publishing industry that these measures are really important. But I think to the earlier point, I think that trying to approach any subject academic often can be so overwhelming that having a person that can sort of represent – like a guide into the field, like some sort of way-signs. It’s like oh, I know that if I watch a video of Angela’s or Phillips or Justin’s, I know that there will have done a lot of the reading and then, when they tell me and the research doesn’t end there, it merely begins and they tell me, oh these are the best reading recommendations, this is who’s being cited. I think there’s a certain trust there in that relationship that allows people to then continue the journey on their own. And I think that role, as a guide in academia, is also a very important one.
AP: Hmm yeah absolutely.
JS: Yeah and I think the landscape, I mean we’re still pumping out more PhDs than there are jobs for and I think that the downside of that is obvious but I think one of the up-shots is that an industrial, educational reserve army that could be pumping that content to YouTube and I think in many ways making a pretty good living doing it. I mean, I don’t know about you guys but you know I wish that they were equivalent channels to ours that were about like upper-level math, like one of the things that I would love, you know, to do is like go and relearn, I don’t know, like linear algebra or something and just having like, you know, an academic who’s able to teach things like upper-level maths accessibly would be, I’d love something…
AP: I’m surprised that there isn’t a channel on that. I never searched for it but I know that in other areas of science, physics, etc. there are YouTube channels that do that.
JS: Yep, there’s some but it’s, you know, it’s a sweet spot of, you know, how arcane can you get, how far can you niche down and still, you know, have a successful Channel. I think we’re all evidence that you can Niche down pretty far.
[Laughter]
But yeah, just like having, I don’t know like there’s no really great YouTube channel logic which really blows my mind.
AP: Well I’m not surprised, I’m kidding. We definitely need a fun YouTube channel on logic.
ZS: People complain about how YouTube is so saturated and there’s no way to break into the market and everything’s done already. It’s really not the case. Like I think there’s like, you’re saying Justin there’s so many academics that have really valuable knowledge, that there is a ready and waiting audience and I think some people that are like driving themselves crazy trying to find, you know, teaching positions should consider going onto social media and beginning to share. I think it’s totally true and I think there are so many fields within the Humanities and outside that just aren’t being tapped at all.
JS: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting how overly saturated, in some ways, like Esotericism stuff is and Religious Studies. Like if you were to look at Religious Studies departments in the world it looks nothing like the YouTube landscape of Religious Studies, if you think about like the way that it skews you would think that there was an Esotericism specialist in every department, when in fact there’s, you know, none hardly. So it’s just funny that it skews in the way that it does, at least in terms of Religious Studies, you know, like I don’t know, it’s amazing that there aren’t other kinds of Religious Study scholars on YouTube.
AP: Yeah, well yeah there is obviously Andrew.
JS: And he even does like his speciality is like magic and stuff in late antiquity.
AP: Yeah, yeah.
JS: Yeah, so it’s funny how it skews in that direction. But yeah it’s just like a super, I don’t know, it’s hilariously strange.
AP: I think because we are the odd ones and so as a consequence, we had to sort of get on YouTube. Because yeah I wonder why that is the case that the religious studies YouTube community tends to skew more towards magic and Esotericism. Probably because of that, probably because it is kind of an outsider topic even within Religious Studies and so we needed to find different avenues to reach out to the public.
Thank you for the Super Chat, these minds are so fine congrats, Dr P.
Thank you I have a few of my supporters and Patrons that call me Dr P. which is fine, which is funny.
So yeah, I think that it’s important to be on YouTube and deliver this kind of knowledge and have an exchange with the community as well. And I think it’s also the case that with Esotericism, Paganism and new religious movements, seem to be, especially those that involve some kind of magic, they seem to be more interested in what academics have to say and even a bit more permeable to, you know, research outputs and even to amend their practices and belief system according to that. And that, I think, is different from other religions. So there is an interesting book that I’ve cited many times by Kocku von Stuckrad on the scientification of religion and he has a few chapters on that. And he’s not the only academic who’s talked about it and I totally agree with the fact that there are specifically, you know, certain magic-practising traditions from the mid-20th century onwards that tend to be particularly interested in the outputs from academic scholarship. So I think that that’s also a reason why, perhaps, our work and in the academic study of Esotericism on YouTube can appeal more to the community of practitioners because there is this interest, to begin with, and YouTube makes it more accessible.
JS: Yeah that’s sort of true and it’s intimidating. I don’t know, I worry about that, you know, to what degree you know you’re having an impact on people’s spiritual life.
AP: Oh well, I’m terrified now. Now, speaking of Brill, I’m working on delivering my first draft that I will, you know send in in a week or, you know, in a week or two but anxiety rising fast but other than that. But yeah for instance since my research is in Anthropology of Religion, that’s my PhD turned into a book by the way. I was rereading my chapters and I kept thinking when this book comes out you, know, what would these people think? Will they get mad at me, you know, will people change the way they practice depending on my data analysis and my conclusions? So I do have these kinds of thoughts and I think that especially in Anthropology that tends to be a worry that a lot of scholars have because you are working with people, you get data from people and then you are publishing something publicly that could affect their lives in one way or another. In some cases, it could affect their livelihoods, so I tend to anonymise my informants but there are cases where either they cannot be anonymised or they do not want to be anonymised and in those cases, I’m personally a bit worried about when my book comes out, in that regard. In a way, I’m shielded by the language barrier because I’m publishing it at the moment in English and my informants are Italians.
So but at the same time it kind of worries me, not because I’ve said or I’ve done anything unethical or anything of the sort. But I think the practitioners tend to have their own perspective on things and you as a scholar who is analysing a practice, a tradition in my case, you know, in the wider sense throughout Italy you will have a different perspective and a different conclusion from what they have. So for instance, I have a case study on an Italian Shaman who claims to be the last Italian Shaman of a hereditary tradition and basically part of my thesis is that there is, you know, an entire tradition of Italian Shamanism that is part of the vernacular healing tradition in Italy. So obviously she might be disappointed about that but it’s not, you know, it’s not the case that I’ve done anything unethical it is just that etic perspective which means the perspective of the scholar is always going to be different or different to some degree from the emic perspective which is the perspective of the practitioner. So when you’re an Anthropologist you always have to face that kind of thing. So how is my work going to affect people? And that is a bit scary. And with us on YouTube, we also have that even when we don’t do active Anthropology, it is still an anthropological endeavour in a way.
FH: Yeah, I had a moment like that in my last video which was on the Shams al-Ma’arif, well two videos ago I guess, which, you know, I make a point in that video of connecting that book to Sufism that it’s a part of the Sufi tradition, in some way an expression of the esoteric kind of occult side of Sufism. And at the same time at least in some parts of the world you know Sufis are oppressed and are seen as heretics and all these kinds of things and you know, the thought crossed my mind is like am I adding fuel to the fire to these people who want to make, you know, the Sufis to be magicians and heretics and dangerous and so on by connecting it to Ahmad al-Buni and his book, which is certainly an occult book in many ways. So there are situations like that and definitely where the ethical side of it becomes a consideration.
AP: How do you resolve that conflict?
FH: In this case, I didn’t really think about it until after I had already finished the video but I guess I always just try to keep that kind of distance in the video when I’m talking about it and that. So, for example, right now I’m writing another video about Neoplatonism in Islam, in Islamic thought and that’s also another factor there is that a lot of people say from the Salafi and Wahhabi side of things will accuse many of these traditional Islamic scholars of adapting, you know, just being Greek philosophers and trying to force that into Islam. And so while writing that episode I also tried to make make it clear that, you know, for these scholars, they’re not taking or at least there from their perspective they’re not taking Greek philosophy and trying to fit it into Islam rather they’re seeing similarities between the two traditions and simply saying well this is saying the same thing and so we can use this language to complement what the Quran is saying, for example. To keep that what you refer to as the emic perspective, like to just also make sure to have the discussion be as broad as possible and to present the different perspectives, I guess, in this case, was important to me. I don’t know if that answers your question but.
AP: Yeah, I think it does and what about you Justin? How do you feel about practitioners, you know, being affected by your content?
JS: I mean not being a practitioner myself, it’s sort of strange. Like this is – sometimes people have gotten angry at me about this, that I’m not a practitioner. Like this somehow that them learning about the material from me, despite the fact that I don’t believe it, is somehow an indictment of its worthiness to be believed in – some strange sentence but I hope you could hope that that came out right. But there’s a strange sort of idea that because I don’t believe in, I don’t know, whatever magic stuff – that somehow it’s not worthy of belief, which is not something I believe. But yeah, so that’s that’s one aspect of it.
I think the other side of it is I don’t have to pretend, I don’t pretend to give anyone any answers about the veridicality of any of this material and so in that way I have some distance, philosophical distance from how it’s landing. Although I do feel it is weird sometimes where I get emails of people asking me for like magical spells and stuff to, I don’t know, get their girlfriend back or something like that and like, you know, like I don’t have any such spell and if I did I wouldn’t give it to anyone. So I guess there’s that.
What’s the other side of it? I don’t know. I’d also just think I’m not making that much of an impact probably, at least in my faith community. I don’t know Zevi if you have the same experience that I do but I feel like the Jewish community is the least interested in this stuff. They’re the most resistant to anyone talking about it in public in some ways. I get like some of the harshest feedback from Orthodox Jewish people being like, how dare you talk about the Zohar or whatever. I don’t know, it’s bizarre, it’s such a strange thing. So I don’t know, I don’t know that I’m having much of an impact in that way but in the sense that I kind of have a methodological agnosticism. People are going to do with it what they will and that’s the long and the short of it. If someone wants to go out there and practice Enochian Magic, that’s their business. I don’t know, they’re not making any… In some ways I think I’m making it both easier because I’m making it accessible, the material more accessible. But also I’m really sceptical about all this material and so at the same time, I’m also trying to encourage critical thinking, as well. I’m not sure if that’s acting as an increase in people being interested in trying to practice this stuff or pumping the brakes on it. But maybe both, I don’t know. I mean I got an email the other day about the Abramelin, someone reached out to me and said, you know, how dare you talk about the dancing monkeys at the end of the Abramelin? Like you’re making fun of my spirituality and I’m like, I didn’t write the book man like I can’t help it that this book has dancing monkeys at the end.
[Laughter]
Spirit, you know, spirit, you can summon a spirit of my monkeys and stuff I’m like it’s not my fault. We can’t kill the messenger. I guess you can.
AP: But don’t.
JS: Yeah, there’s a long history of that don’t do it but it’s that kind of stuff where people like think no, no, the John Dee stuff that I point out inconsistencies in the John Dee material it’s as if it’s an indictment of people who practice Enochian Magic. I’m like look man if it’s working for you, it’s working for you, that’s your business. Like have fun, you know, go talk to angels I don’t know, it sounds fun, but I don’t know. Hopefully again it’s some combination of it’s enabling people to think on their own but also providing people with a critical attitude toward this material because I feel like a lot of it, a lot of the attitudes online are very credulous and I feel like credulity in general is…
AP: I don’t know because I think that in the community of magic practitioners I think there is a lot of criticism of that kind, of the credulous ones. So I think that even within, you know, the community of practitioners even online on YouTube or on TikTok, I think that the ones that tend to get more attention tend to endorse or at least try to endorse a more critical, even sceptical sometimes, approach to Magic and Magic practices. I think that is, yeah, but if you look at the people that practice those things and in the real world. I think that there is a lot of that in what you’re saying. Like when you go to events, for instance, Esoteric events or yeah, I think that you tend to find that kind of attitude but online, at least maybe it’s my echo chamber but my impression is that you know people that tend to endure, it’s a more critical approach, tend to get, you know, more attraction within the community and be more respected,
even when they are practitioners and they do believe in the, you know, in the reality and effectiveness of magic practices.
But I think that there is a lot of value given to that kind of scepticism an open-minded scepticism, where you don’t just believe in anything but at the same time you keep an open mind. If you know, you do a magic working and the thing that you ask for happens, in that case even if you can be sceptical in terms of trying to find evidence of the effectiveness of that or having a critical approach towards it. For some people also practice atheistic Witchcraft, for instance and they are particularly sceptical about their own practice and see that more in psychological terms. So I think that there is a variety of approaches to the practice and I think that’s also why for instance our channels are appealing because of that critical mindset and even sceptical.
FH: yeah, definitely. In my case also there I mean since I talk so much about the Islamic world and Islam a lot of my audience is from that region and I do find that most of the comments are very appreciative and really are very thankful for the information and the content. But there is also kind of an uneasiness from a lot of people from that region and for good reason because of the history of orientalism and colonialism and all that stuff. But I do find that is still kind of a hurdle I have to get over. I have to get people to trust me first, at least some people because they have this idea that, oh here comes this white, Western guy who’s going to talk about Islam. Like what does he know? It’s good to be careful and sceptical at first and but hopefully, you know, hopefully, eventually from the content they will realize that I’m not one of those.
AP: Yeah, I’m getting in the meantime, I’m getting a lot of comments about, you know, this beard club. Well, thank you for saying that, it makes me hopeful about our future. I like that you use if you use our, you know, I called it a Symposium for a reason, but yeah, I’m getting a lot of comments about the fact that we are a beard club and I feel very excluded and there were also comments of people saying that now they want to grow a beard and so it’s like, yeah, I’m sure I was the one who convinced you of that.
[Laughter]
JS: Yeah, it is interesting the amount of bearded people who do religious studies on the internet. Like Andrew – beardo. Yeah, that’s a yeah, I guess like I said, it’s just like, a so hilarious that it has any social value considering it’s just laziness or it can be just laziness.
AP: Well in my case it would entail a lot of effort.
JS: You would say you take… yeah, yeah but you but all three of you also have like great heads of hair, so good for you. So funny. Yeah, you know the beard.
ZS: In some way Justin actually you guys have inverted hair patterns.
JS: Exactly, yeah.
ZS: I just wanna add a comment to what we’re saying earlier about some of the quandaries of sharing and material we are with people that are listening from religious communities and we’re all dealing with overlapping with different communities so it makes our work interesting and the reflection an interesting one. I was thinking similarly to Filip, we’re doing an upcoming I don’t know if this is public yet but an oncoming collaboration on Neoplatonism and I have some real, like religious or like moral quandary writing that, and I think I’m gonna have to put in like a heavy disclaimer and afterward about that. Because I know that my own like, life trajectory was changed because of research that I encountered about my own tradition and it’s hard always to say whether that change was a positive or negative one. And like do I want to be someone who’s bringing that change to others and obviously, I believe that what I’m thinking, what I’m reading is obviously like the best available scholarship on the issue when I feel persuaded by the cases that are being made and I wouldn’t present something if it was just nonsense. And if I think it is nonsense I say so.
But still, I think like maybe, sometimes like the bliss of not knowing is a better one and who am I to burst that bubble? And I hear people saying like, oh, if someone’s faith is going to be changed because of one article or one YouTube video then their faith isn’t very real. And I don’t buy into that, I think that one’s faith can be moved pretty… by anything that’s presented with earnestness and seriousness and if there’s some serious facts that are challenging. And I think that there is some responsibility in doing that and I’m not the truth is I’m not entirely sure and settled on that question. But I think that like what does give me some solace is firstly, we’re not demagogues, we’re not forcing anyone to listen to our opinions, we’re putting it out there and if someone wants to watch they’re welcome to. And if it’s someone who’s underage they should have their own parental permission on what they’re watching online. And they could be watching much that’s twisted online, that’s for sure. And then we try to present what we find to be the best evidence and it’s peer-reviewed and it’s critical and it’s thoughtful and while trying to be open-minded and if that’s going to… if what we find to be factual is going to change some directions then maybe that’s moving them in a direction or something which is more factual. Maybe that’s not a bad thing but I think I’m sitting in that question at the moment and it’s like it’s a living question for me.
JS: I like how the most dangerous thing we could pedal on our channels is Neoplatonism. It’s like, hey kids you want some emanations? Like of all of the dangerous, of all the stuff that we could be peddling that’s that, you know, that our real worry is that we might… people might pick up some dangerous Neoplatonism. Yeah, I mean I’m joking at some level but yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s an interesting question Zevi. Like to what degree are we responsible for people? I mean I think anyone who’s coming from a religious community who’s – no one’s going to be swayed by a YouTube video. I can’t imagine that’s not part of a larger process that someone’s going through. You know and I also think about the interaction with the stuff in mental health stuff I mean that there’s a pretty significant overlap that I’ve noticed between people who are interested in Occultism and people who also suffer from mental health stuff. Then, you know, to what degree, you know, is that also contributing to… You know like I’ve had to put like a basically, a disclaimer on my website being like I can’t offer you like psychological counselling because I get emails like weekly with people having intrusive thoughts and stuff like that. But yeah, it is an interesting question – to what degree we’re we can we be responsible for that? But I do like the idea that we’re peddling Neoplatonism, it’s dangerous stuff.
AP: Yeah, I mean in terms of mental health issues and Esotericism I’m not really sure about that because, I mean in terms of the prevalence of mental health issues because my impression is that lately there is a prevalence of mental health issues among, you know, every community. Maybe also because there is more awareness of those. For instance, I see a big difference between the UK and Italy in terms of the awareness towards mental health issues and so it would seem as though in Italy there are fewer but I’m not sure if that is true or whether, you know, they are just unacknowledged.
JS: But I’d be curious to see if like the, I don’t know, the Beowulf channel gets the same kind of emails. I don’t know, you know, and the thing that Andrew said that you know, it’s really just religious content people getting strangest emails and I was like, yeah but if you get the strangest emails imagine the kind of stuff that Angela and I get. But yeah I, wonder if, I don’t know, I guess probably Jackson Crawford has to deal with racist people a lot. Imagine that’s the fringey, scary stuff in his world. But I wonder about other kinds of like if more normie channels that deal with, I don’t know, English grammar, linguistics. I wonder if they get… what their emails look like.
AP: Yeah anyway, I think it’s time to wrap up the live stream, otherwise I will keep you guys here the whole day. But thank you, thank you so much for being here and celebrate with me and the audience, the people in the chat at the 50K mark. And yeah, if you guys are not familiar with these bearded people’s channels, go check them out.
JS: Look at my beardos.
AP: The beardos plus Angela.
[Laughter]
FH: Angela and the beardos, yeah.
JS: Yeah the thing it’s like goth girl and beardos.
AP: Sounds like the name of a band.
[general agreement]
So yeah thank you guys for coming over and celebrate with me.
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