TRANSCRIPT Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Ep. 382: Gail Thackray Heals Carrie’s Past (Part 2): Regression Edition

[00:00:00] Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

[00:00:08] Carrie Poppy: Hello! Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, claims of the paranormal. No! We take part ourselves.

[00:00:18] Ross Blocher: Yes. When they make the claims, we show up, so you don’t have to. I’m Ross Blocher.

[00:00:22] Carrie Poppy: And I’m Ross Blocher.

[00:00:23] Ross Blocher: Nope.

[00:00:24] Carrie Poppy: And I am Carrie Poppy.

[00:00:27] Ross Blocher: That’s right.

[00:00:28] Carrie Poppy: That’s right. And we are back with more Gail Thackray.

[00:00:31] Ross Blocher: There’s so much more Gail Thackray!

[00:00:33] Carrie Poppy: And this time I was going back to see her keynote speech, “Trauma Release through Regression”. But first, Ross, you’re holding up the program from the event and giving it a quizzical look.

[00:00:47] Ross Blocher: Well, because guess who’s on the back of the program?

[00:00:50] Carrie Poppy: Gail Thackray?

[00:00:51] Ross Blocher: Yeah! That’s—I mean, pride of place with all of these big names at the Conscious Life Expo, that she’s on the back.

[00:00:56] Carrie Poppy: Expensive.

[00:00:57] Ross Blocher: Yeah. How much did Gail Thackray thack-pay for that?

[00:00:59] Carrie Poppy: I can answer that question! ‘Cause remember how I almost spoke at Conscious Life Expo?

[00:01:04] Ross Blocher: Yes. Oh, they gave you like a pricing guide?

[00:01:07] Carrie Poppy: I think so.

[00:01:08] Ross Blocher: What is the back pay for the back of the schedule? What is the back pay for Gail Thackray?

[00:01:15] Carrie Poppy: (Giggles.) Conscious Life Expo.

[00:01:18] Ross Blocher: Okay, Carrie’s looking this up. It says she’s a success coach and apparently she was involved in four pieces of programming at Conscious Life Expo: Energy Healing, Remove Pain and Emotional Blocks—I think that was the first one you told us about.

[00:01:30] Carrie Poppy: I think that’s right.

[00:01:31] Ross Blocher: Then Soulmates and Twin Flames Panel. She was probably up there with TwinRay.

[00:01:36] Carrie Poppy: TwinRay, you would think.

[00:01:37] Ross Blocher: Woah, Thackray, TwinRay! And then, Trauma Released Through Past Life Regression. That’s this one, right?

(Carrie confirms.)

Ooh. And then Psychic Surgery Healing Session. (Gasps.) I missed that?! Aw!

[00:01:50] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I missed—I couldn’t believe I missed that. She mentioned it at the end of this event, and I was like—

[00:01:54] Ross Blocher: It was a Monday night one. So, like after the expo’s kind of done, there’s still some things going on, on Monday. Oh, man. I would’ve gone back for that!

[00:02:02] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I wonder if she’s actually doing the thing with the chicken guts.

[00:02:05] Ross Blocher: Yeah! Yeah. What does the psychic surgery look like? Especially since turns out her connection with John of God is even more extensive than I’d initially grokked.

[00:02:14] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. She wrote a book about him, back in the day when she could say his name.

[00:02:20] Ross Blocher: Yeah, you may remember that last time she had begged off saying, “Uh, it’s not important where I had my big spiritual revelation. It was with a healer. We won’t mention their name.” Yeah. She wrote a book, called Gail Thackray’s Spiritual Journeys Visiting John of God, and apparently made a movie, called John of God: Just a Man.

[00:02:37] Carrie Poppy: Wait, Gail Thackray is in the title?

(Ross confirms.)

So, it’d be like if I wrote a book that was like Carrie Poppy’s Trauma Book by Carrie Poppy? (Chuckles.)

[00:02:45] Ross Blocher: Yes. Yeah, Just like that. So, at least on Amazon, I’m seeing, 13 titles that she’s written, including one called The Gift: Psychic Surgeries in the Philippines.

[00:02:56] Carrie Poppy: Gail Thackray’s The Gift: Psychic Surgery in the Philippines?

[00:03:00] Ross Blocher: No. (Laughs.) That would be great if all of them started with Gail Thackray.

[00:03:01] Carrie Poppy: Should be! (Laughs.) I want her to do that for everything!

[00:03:04] Ross Blocher: I can add that if you want me to.

(Carrie confirms.)

You wanna hear some other titles?

(Carrie confirms.)

Okay. Gail Thackray’s What’s Up with My Life? Finding and Living Your True Purpose. Gail Thackray’s 10 Essential Oils You Must Have. Gail Thackray’s Skyrocket Your Brand. Gail Thackray’s How to Use a Pendulum.

(Carrie laughs helplessly.)

Oh, you like this, don’t you? Uh, Gail Thackray’s Gemstones for Love, Health, and Money. Gail Thackray’s 30 Days to Prosperity. Gail Thackray’s How to Talk to Your Pets, Gail Thackray’s Reiki Level 2. There’s also level three and master. And my favorite that I’m quite intrigued by: Gail Thackray’s Running with Wolves: A Woman’s Memoir of Sex, Scandal, and Seduction. I’ve gotta read some of the description from this one.

(Carrie confirms.)

“How did a young girl from England,”—oh, by the way, listeners have corroborated. She is from Yorkshire. The accent works out.

[00:04:05] Carrie Poppy: Confirmed. Checks out. Okay, good.

[00:04:10] Ross Blocher: Okay. “How did a young girl from England end up owning the largest erotic library in the world?”

[00:04:15] Carrie Poppy: I don’t know!

[00:04:16] Ross Blocher: Which now makes me wonder how she tittered so much at pussy pain.

[00:04:21] Carrie Poppy: Oh, good point!

[00:04:22] Ross Blocher: “From creating a multimillion-dollar phone sex biz for the mob—”

[00:04:26] Carrie Poppy: What?!

[00:04:27] Ross Blocher: “—to shaking up Larry Flynt’s enterprise, Gail shares the raw truth running one of the largest adult companies through the advent of the web.”

[00:04:34] Carrie Poppy: Oh my God! We’ve missed everything. Okay. We need this book!

[00:04:39] Ross Blocher: So, we are now the Gail Thackray podcast. We’re just gonna be reporting on everything about her. Oh yeah. This description goes on, and it looks juicy.

[00:04:48] Carrie Poppy: “Running with Wolves”. Got it. Okay. Oh, there’s an audio book. Does she read it?

[00:04:53] Clip: How did a young girl from England end up owning the largest erotic library in the world?

[00:04:58] Carrie Poppy: Yep, that’s her. Whew. Okay.

[00:05:00] Ross Blocher: Alright, hold on. I’m gonna order it now, ’cause I have credits.

[00:05:03] Carrie Poppy: She’s reading it in such a soporific way for such titillating material.

[00:05:09] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Totally. Yeah. The inflections didn’t seem quite concomitant with the subject matter. But hey, I’m in. I’m gonna listen to this.

[00:05:16] Carrie Poppy: It reminds me of when I was in high school choir, and so was my friend Claire. And she would always point out that—that song “Lady Marmalade” was really in, and she thought it was really funny that one of the singers goes (gutturally) “silky smooth”. She was like, “Shouldn’t—if it’s smooth, you should be making a smooth sound!”

[00:05:37] Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah! you’re right. This is a really—

[00:05:39] Carrie Poppy: (Growling.) “Siiilky smooth!” I don’t know who the singer was.

[00:05:42] Ross Blocher: Louis Armstrong. ?

[00:05:43] Carrie Poppy: I think it was Christina Aguilera. Okay.

[00:05:46] Ross Blocher: Okay! Anyways, that was a long aside to say that she has put quite a bit of effort into promoting John of God in other platforms. Actually, I’m not sure if that was the point of the diversion.

[00:05:55] Carrie Poppy: Oh, yes. Yeah. God, at this point?

[00:05:57] Ross Blocher: We were talking about her appearances at Conscious Life Expo. That’s right. She did a psychic surgery healing session. That’s what got us going. Anyways.

[00:06:06] Carrie Poppy: Yes. Oh, yeah, what a thing to miss. Well, I paid $45 to go back and see her on Sunday. But real quick, what else is in that bio for her?

[00:06:14] Ross Blocher: It says, “Gail is a success coach who believes we can be both materially successful and lead a spiritually empowered life.” Ooh! You can have your cake and eat it too. “She’s the author of 30 Day—” Oh, I’m sorry. “Gail Thackray’s 30 Days to Prosperity: A Workbook to Manifest Abundance. Gail Thackray’s What’s Up With Your Life? Finding and Living Your True Purpose, and spiritual books on natural healing and developing intuition. She has lead groups around the world, seeking inner truth and spiritual enlightenment. We are born with a divine blueprint of great potential. Wake up that passion and start living your dreams.” Okay.

[00:06:54] Carrie Poppy: Alright! Cool. Well, you know, anything with trauma and the title, I’m showing up.

[00:06:58] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. Trauma Release Through—

[00:07:02] Carrie Poppy: Regression!

[00:07:03] Ross Blocher: Past Life Regression. Oh, yeah. This sounds right up your alley.

[00:07:06] Carrie Poppy: Oh, totally. So, we’ve done past life regressions before.

[00:07:10] Ross Blocher: You were Cleopatra or someone very close to her.

[00:07:11] Carrie Poppy: Cleopatra’s friend? No, I think it was Cleopatra’s sex slave or some kind of slave.

[00:07:16] Ross Blocher: Like a handmaiden slave? Oh wait! That’s juicy.

[00:07:19] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. (Laughs.) Yeah. But then we found out that there was a painting of Cleopatra on the wall behind me.

[00:07:23] Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) Not that day, but we came back to that area later. And I looked at the wall. I was like, oh, there is a giant Cleopatra painted on the wall directly across the street from the psychic out her window. I could just see her now like looking at you, kinda like glancing behind you. “Cleo…patra.”

[00:07:40] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Glass, George Glass!

[00:07:42] Ross Blocher: I don’t know why she keeps coming up!

[00:07:45] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yeah. Even if that wasn’t intentional, I think it still came from that wall.

(Ross agrees.)

Okay. Anyway, in this case, Gail Thackray is going to release the trauma that is stored in the body from this current life’s situations, but which has sort of karmic ancestors in your past life as well.

[00:08:06] Ross Blocher: Thank goodness you’re encountering someone in this life who can sweep up all the past ones.

(Carrie affirms.)

And she’s gonna do this for a whole group of people all at once, within the span of, uuuuh, an hour, hour and a half, in a conference room. I’m into it.

[00:08:22] Carrie Poppy: So, you may recall that in the last episode, she individually healed some people of their physical problems by figuring out what emotional thing was connected to it in their past. And in this case, she’s gonna spend the first half of her talk doing that same thing. But then, the second half, she’s going to teach us to do regressions so that we can do them ourselves or do them on other people.

[00:08:48] Ross Blocher: Oh, now we’re talking!

[00:08:49] Carrie Poppy: And then, she’s gonna certify us.

[00:08:52] Ross Blocher: (Gasps.) What?! Oh, okay. That’s right! I think I remember you ending up with the certification. Oh, this is—his is exciting,

[00:08:59] Carrie Poppy: That’s right! Folk, that’s right. I am certified in past life regression! By the one and only Gail Thackray’s Gail Thackray!

(Ross laughs.)

[00:09:12] Carrie Poppy: Okay. So, I’ll tell you a little about this replay of the healing session, but we’ll go through that kind of fast, and then tell you about the part that was different.

(Ross agrees.)

So, first someone came up to introduce her—this other woman I didn’t recognize—and said, “So, who was at Gail’s last event yesterday?” And most of us raise our hands. Not all. Oh, and by the way, it was really packed in this room too.

[00:09:35] Ross Blocher: Again?

[00:09:36] Carrie Poppy: But not as packed as the free one, as you might expect.

[00:09:40] Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. The $45 a head thinned out the crowd a tiny bit. Okay.

[00:09:44] Carrie Poppy: Yes. There was enough room for us all to sit in chairs and to turn those chairs and face each other at one point. So.

[00:09:50] Ross Blocher: That sounds like you got your $45 worth.

(Carrie laughs.)

You got to sit in a chair!

[00:09:54] Carrie Poppy: “You give $45, we’ll keep this up to fire code.”

(They laugh.)

And this person giving the intro said, “And you’re probably aware that Gail is a sixth-generation reiki master.”

[00:10:08] Ross Blocher: Which doesn’t mean that she comes from ancestors who practice this. That was my mistake. Sixth generation meaning from the person who created the system, it has been passed down from one master to another. And she’s like, you know, within Kevin Bacon’s reach of the original reiki master.

[00:10:26] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. It’s funny though, because sixth generation—yeah, you’re right. You’re right to see it that way. You want your number to be low. But I feel like with sixth generation, you don’t even know—am I supposed to be impressed by how high that is or how low that is?

[00:10:38] Ross Blocher: Right. Right. Ooh, 20th generation! But yeah. Now we’re talking about a dilution.

[00:10:43] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Really far from the originator. Well, anyway, she’s sixth generation. We all know that. And this introducer says, “And she’s doing so much to help people resolve their traumas. She is really one of the most spectacular healers here.”

So, we all clap for Gail. Gail comes up. And right away she wants to know who’s in this room and what can I do for you? You know, should I be mostly doing one-on-one healings here for you guys, or teaching you to do this for other people?

[00:11:14] Ross Blocher: I’m a little hung up on the person introducing saying she’s one of the most effective healers here, at Conscious Life Expo. It just suggests that there’s a lineup somewhere of like the most effective healers, and I really want to know what that cream of the crop is. And how they—

[00:11:28] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excuse me. Excuse me! Who’s the least effective healer here?

[00:11:30] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And who’s the most And how did you determine that? Anyways.

[00:11:34] Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) So, she says, “I can get a sense in this room that there’s a lot of healing energy, a lot of people here who have gotten healings before, but you’ve probably gotten them from healers who were blocked. And I bet there are even some blocked healers who are present here tonight.”

(Ross “woah”s.)

So, she says, “Who’s a healer here?” And some people give kind of like a—the so-so hand. You know? If you will.

(Ross confirms.)

Eh, so-so.

Yeah, a lot of people just sort of don’t seem sure. Like, “Oh, yeah, I kind of sign off on that, but I—maybe I wouldn’t hang up a shingle.”

And she says, “Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I’m getting kind of a, ‘Oh, I’m not sure whether I’m devoted to this or not yet.’ So—”

[00:12:13] Ross Blocher: “I’d like you to call on me, but I don’t want to admit I’m a fraud.”

[00:12:17] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Maybe. She says, “Oh, so do you want me to focus on you guys or on other people?” And there’s this sort of murmur of response, no real cohesion. So, she says, “Okay, okay, we’ll do both. We’ll do both.” (Clapping.) And everyone says yaaay. Okay. So, she acknowledges one healer in our midst. There is a man named Mark in the back, and she says, “Mark in the back is from the New York expo.” And we all turn to look at him. And he is just this very slick businessman guy just standing in the back, and he kind of gives a like, (bumbling) “Oh, hello uh, don’t look at me. This isn’t—uh, I don’t like to be the center of attention,” kind of hand up gesture. And I would actually meet this guy later.

So, at lunch he came up to my table and stood with me, ’cause there’s so few tables. You all have to share them. And he came up to me, and I said, “Is your name Mark?!”

And he was like, “Woah! Yes!” And he’s so impressed.

[00:13:09] Ross Blocher: “Whoa, an intuitive!” You could’ve really played that.

[00:13:13] Carrie Poppy: I was like, “Are you from New York?” Yeah. Yeah, but—

[00:13:15] Ross Blocher: “I’m getting East Coast vibes.”

[00:13:16] Carrie Poppy: But I said like, “Oh, I saw you Gail Thackray’s thing.” I tried to get him to talk a little about her.

And he was like, “Oh, I just think she’s very talented. I think a lot of people here—I think there’s a lot of great talent here.” Okay. So, his name is Mark Becker. I looked him up later. And—

[00:13:33] Ross Blocher: Hmm! Right now, I’m picturing like American Psycho, ’cause you said slicked back business guy.

[00:13:37] Carrie Poppy: Okay.

[00:13:38] Clip:

Mark Becker: This is the new Life Expo. I’m gonna take you through a tour of the new Life Expo, which I’ve been doing for over 30 years. I want people to reach their maximum potential. I want people to open up their minds for all possibilities. At the beginning, I was telling people we’re gonna use magnets and crystals. We’re gonna have air purifiers and water purifiers. You’re gonna buy bottled water. You’re gonna take herbs. You’re gonna do yoga. And they thought I was crazy. And I am crazy. Because right now, more important than ever, is to learn how to strengthen your immune system, especially with this virus—supposed virus going on. So, people will learn what to do if they had a vaccination, how to negate the effects. They’ll learn what to do if they didn’t have a vaccination. They’ll learn what to do if they had covid, if they didn’t have covid.

[00:14:23] Carrie Poppy: So, Mark is a covid truther. He doesn’t think that covid is caused by a virus, but the vaccine is still bad.

[00:14:31] Ross Blocher: That’s not at all what I was expecting. He looks like a spiritual type, maybe like a, “I live near the beach” retiree or something. Long hair, very tan skin. Is that kind of what he looked like when you saw him?

[00:14:42] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I see a lot of those people in LA, and I still just think like rich businessman with that. That’s the version of the personality.

[00:14:50] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah. Could be the—you know, the—

[00:14:52] Carrie Poppy: Santa Monica rich guy. (Chuckles.)

[00:14:54] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah, I was just hearing that in Portland, Oregon there’s a lot of people who are super rich, but they don’t look it. They for the—

[00:15:00] Carrie Poppy: Oh, uh-huh. Uh-huh. A lot of plaid.

[00:15:00] Ross Blocher: Yeah. You know, they’re just going for the low-key exterior. But they’ve got a ton of money.

[00:15:07] Carrie Poppy: Aaanyway. So, she determines that there are some healers here, but many people aren’t. So, she says, “Okay. And how many of you have had past life regression?” And a bunch of us raise our hands. And then, she says, “How many of you have had a spontaneous glimpse into a past life? Like, you’re doing something, and you have Deja vu doing it.” And you know, more hands. She says, “That’s a past life. That was a past life. How many of you have recurring health issues within unclear source?” Many people do. “How many of you have physical problems?” Now, it’s getting like very broad. More people. And she says, “You can be miraculously healed by finding the traumatic memory in this life or a past life and clearing that energy.” And this time, she’s gonna say trauma a lot more than she did in that first talk.

[00:15:55] Ross Blocher: And it sounds like she’s promoting this past life explanation as far more than just one factor to consider. It sounds like she’s saying like, “Oh, yeah. These things are caused by stuff that happened in your past lives.”

[00:16:09] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Right. Yeah. She—there was no one that she stopped and said, “Oh, no, that’s not a past life. Your foot hurts because you broke your foot. If you broke your foot, then the cause of your foot pain is not the injury. It is the circumstance you put yourself into when you broke your foot. And that circumstance was driven by your traumatic reenactment of your past life experience.”

[00:16:38] Ross Blocher: Oh, this is already too much. I do—

[00:16:40] Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) It’s very Scientology!

[00:16:42] Ross Blocher: Yeah! It’s very engram-y. There’s a certain economy to this belief in past lives that I appreciate. Just that you’re sort of recycling souls rather than having this endless well of souls that new individuals come from. The main problem I see with that though is that—well, I don’t know if it’s the main problem; it’s a problem—that there’s more people now than at any time in the past, so. I don’t know. I guess you just had people  sporadically showing up. But at any point you would pick in the past, there were fewer people on the playing field currently enjoying a life than there are now. So, that means you had to have a lot of people in the dugout just waiting to experience a life. And now, finally they’re all here. Or maybe there’s a lot more that are sitting on the benches.

[00:17:26] Carrie Poppy: Or there’s new souls being created. Sometimes there are new ones?

[00:17:30] Ross Blocher: Maybe, but then she’d have to admit that there’s people walking around who don’t have past lives, and it doesn’t seem like many of these past life folks are willing to commit to that.

[00:17:38] Carrie Poppy: Maybe she’d say, “Oh, they are walking around, but they don’t come here, because they don’t have a bunch of complaints to heal.”

[00:17:44] Ross Blocher: Right. Yeah! Interesting. In which case, sounds like it’s advantageous to not have a bunch of past lives.

[00:17:50] Carrie Poppy: (Warbles.) Yeah! I think that’s right!

[00:17:51] Ross Blocher: But what were—what were you doing all this time beforehand? Just like waiting in the before times? Hanging out in heaven?

[00:17:57] Carrie Poppy: I think that soul just wasn’t even created. God, on August 8th, 2023, was like, “I’m out! I gotta make more!” And then he makes 35 more.

[00:18:06] Ross Blocher: Okay. Fresh batch!

[00:18:07] Carrie Poppy: So, she says, “We’re going to be doing this memory work and you’re gonna be opening up a memory. And so, you’re gonna get more and more of that memory over the next few days. You might get a little bit in this room, but as the days and weeks go on, little bits of it are gonna flit into your awareness that you didn’t even get here today.”

[00:18:27] Ross Blocher: And if you don’t, I’ll never hear about it, ’cause I’ll be gone.

[00:18:30] Carrie Poppy: Also, that’s a very easy thing to set up for someone so they start inventing things, confabulating.

(Ross agrees.)

Okay, so she tells us more about her theology, but I’ll slam through this, ’cause we learned so much about it last time. Again, anyone in your family of origin, anyone in your immediate, very important social network, these are all people you knew from your past life. Ross and I certainly would be people who have known each other—well, our entire existence as souls.

[00:18:56] Ross Blocher: This seems inefficient and like it creates permutational problems, but, okay. Sure.

[00:19:02] Carrie Poppy: And there are themes, moral lessons, physical problems, purpose issues that recur for many lifetimes for each soul.

[00:19:11] Ross Blocher: See, this bothers me, ’cause like our current generations move around a lot more than previous ones did. So, you know, it’s very easy for me to be good friends with somebody who grew up in Brazil, say. But now our lives are intertwined and our friend connection. So, if you say that we knew each other in a past life, well then we probably had to be living within the same locale of one another. Yeah, and that sort of breaks down. Now all of a sudden, all of their friend group also had to live close to them.

(Carrie agrees.)

I don’t see this extending into the past, especially with fewer people as you go farther back, so—

[00:19:46] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause everyone knew—what?—100 people, maximum. Yeah, that’s a good point.

[00:19:50] Ross Blocher: I’m sensing a plot hole.

[00:19:52] Carrie Poppy: So, I don’t know if he mentioned this last time, but when you crossover—also known as dying—you wait for the other people in your soul group. It’s sort of like that idea in Christianity that some people have, that after you die, you go into a holding place, and you wait for the tribulation or whatever. And then, everybody’s released. It’s like that, except it’s just your soul group. So, if Cara dies 10 years before you, she’s put into sort of a holding pattern until you go too. And then the whole class—

[00:20:19] Ross Blocher: Like a boarding group in the sky.

[00:20:22] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! And then the whole graduating class goes through the next rank together.

[00:20:29] Ross Blocher: Alright. So far, I’m unimpressed, but I’ll hear her out.

[00:20:32] Carrie Poppy: So, when you’re doing this crossing over process with your soul group, you do a life review.

[00:20:39] Ross Blocher: Alright. I’ve heard that idea before.

[00:20:40] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Did you ever see Defending your Life?

(Ross confirms.)

Albert Brooks. I love that movie.

[00:20:44] Ross Blocher: This has come up on the podcast before, but yes, now I have.

[00:20:47] Carrie Poppy: Okay. Yeah. It’s so good. So anyway, It’s like that. You—like, you watch your whole life, but then you think about what you were good and bad with, and that’s when you do those agreements that you liked so much from the last episode—where you decide which problems you’re gonna have in your next life, because you didn’t do so hot at learning them last time.

[00:21:07] Ross Blocher: Nobody does this. This doesn’t happen. It’s ridiculous.

[00:21:13] Carrie Poppy: I don’t think this happened! (Laughs.)

[00:21:16] Ross Blocher: No—yeah, nah, just—it’s a dumb idea, but okay. Keep going. Gail.

[00:21:24] Carrie Poppy: You choose your financial situation.

[00:21:27] Ross Blocher: No!

[00:21:28] Carrie Poppy: You choose your financial difficulty. You choose your parents. You choose your childhood, whether it was difficult or not. You choose your siblings. You choose your soulmate. You choose your romantic connections. If someone harms you in this life, you harmed them in a past life. So, you chose that in order to make it up to them. Okay?

[00:21:52] Ross Blocher: No, it’s not okay.

(Carrie laughs and struggles to speak.)

Okay. It’s inefficient. It’s unrealistic. It’s unhelpful. I don’t like anything about that. Oh, for my next life, clearly I’m deficient in these—I’m trying to picture myself doing it after my life that I’m in right now. And I look back and I say, “Well, geez, okay, I could have done things better. So, in the next life, let’s make a little plan for myself.” I don’t know. Why couldn’t I do that while I was still alive?

[00:22:23] Carrie Poppy: Elements of this feel vindictive. Like, you know, if I harm you—let’s say—let’s assume unintentionally I harm you sometime in the course of our friendship, and then when I die, you’re like, (grumbling) “I’m gonna hurt her back so bad this time!” (Laughing.) It’s like not a really healthy way!

[00:22:40] Ross Blocher: Oh. And clearly in this next life, I or you need to get kicked out of our home three times or experience poverty. Or—what?! No! That’s not a way to learn things. But then we’re gonna forget that we decided on this until some lady tells us that we did that.

[00:22:59] Carrie Poppy: And then, it’s okay to remember, even though the whole design has been for us not to.

[00:23:03] Ross Blocher: It’s a bad system! This didn’t happen.

[00:23:09] Carrie Poppy: So, she gives an example. “Let’s say you were a soldier in World War II. And the last thing that happened was you stood on a land bomb and blew off your leg, and your leg is gone. So, that energy is still there in that leg. And so, you may suddenly have an injury in that leg in this life and think, ‘Well, I fell down the stairs or a car backed into me, and that’s why that happened.’ But no!”

[00:23:34] Ross Blocher: Or someone put a rod in my back!

[00:23:36] Carrie Poppy: Right?! But no, it’s not the car running over you. It’s World War II.

[00:23:42] Ross Blocher: But didn’t you—in the life before you were a World War II soldier—decide that you needed to have your leg blown off? Isn’t that how this works?

(Carrie confirms.)

This is stupid! All of this is stupid. It’s way—it makes way more sense if you just assume that life is random, and things happen to you, and the world doesn’t—it doesn’t hate you. It doesn’t love you. It’s just indifferent.

(Carrie laughs and agrees.)

It’s a world doing its world thing, and you’re just in its way. You’re part of it.

[00:24:07] Carrie Poppy: You’re actually not the star of this story.

Okay, so then she starts to do those same kind of feelings, kind of led by cold reading impulses. And she’s walking through the crowd asking people what their physical or emotional complaints are. And this time, she starts by asking if anyone has a birthmark, and a bunch of people would answer her. But I just wanna note here, I counted up how many volunteers she actually talked to in the course of walking through, ’cause it was so rapid. And she got through 15 people!

[00:24:37] Ross Blocher: Oh, that’s pretty good!

[00:24:38] Carrie Poppy: It is really fast. And when I go through, you’ll see how little attention she gives to each person. So, she asks about the birthmark, and there’s one woman who says, “Yeah, I have a birth mark! I have it on my back.”

And Gail’s like, “That’s a bullet wound! Who else?”

[00:24:52] Ross Blocher: Whoa! What?! Okay. So, she just instantly, because of her amazing spiritual ability, can rewind these past lives from some person she’s just seeing across the room. She knows that back birthmark was a bullet wound.

[00:25:07] Carrie Poppy: That’s right. And you know why she knows? ‘Cause she hears it. She’s clairaudient.

[00:25:12] Ross Blocher: Oh, so someone else is hip to this and telling her.

[00:25:15] Carrie Poppy: Her guides. Yep. Okay. Volunteer number two. Someone over on the other side of the room. “I also have a beauty mark! It’s on my butt. It’s a—it looks like a circle of islands on my butt!”

[00:25:27] Ross Blocher: Oh. Oh, that’s interesting info. Okay. What is she gonna say to that?

[00:25:31] Carrie Poppy: Okay. Yeah. You wanna guess?

[00:25:32] Ross Blocher: Hmm. The islands are tempting. Like, I feel like she’s gonna want something to explain the island pattern, but I’m just gonna go with like an explosive.

[00:25:42] Carrie Poppy: No, Gail wasn’t sure, but it was something in the 1400s. It was made of armor. It was a spiky thing. Some kind of accident from battle or torture. Okay. Third birthmark, someone with one on their ankle. And she says, “My mom has the same thing.” Gail ignores that.

And she says, “That’s a rope mark. In a past life, you were tied up. Anyone else?”

[00:26:06] Ross Blocher: (Whispers.) What?!

[00:26:07] Carrie Poppy: Next person.

[00:26:08] Ross Blocher: Well then, anybody who’s ever been tied up, do they have future selves that have these same marks around their ankles? You’d think that would be quite common.

[00:26:17] Carrie Poppy: Probably, yeah. Yeah. Next person is just like, “I have a hip problem!” So, now it’s really a free for all.

But this person was born with a hip condition, and she says, “Oh, yeah, that’s because you had it smashed several times in another life. Who else?”

Next person says, “I have a birthmark on the back of my arm!”

And she says, “Oh, yeah, you were hit by an arrow in a past life as a Native American, and it didn’t kill you. It was a mistake.”

(They laugh incredulously.)

And then, that woman said that she didn’t know she had Native American guides, but she’s recently learned that. So, there you go.

[00:26:54] Ross Blocher: Verification. Multiple independent lines of evidence.

[00:27:00] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. (Laughs.) So, now we’re getting more and more hands, and half the people are still like, “But I had a birthmark! That’s what the actual question was.” And then, half the people are like, “Are we talking about medical conditions now?!”

(Ross laughs.)

So, next person says, “I have a birthmark at my upper thigh!”

And she says, “Yes. That was in a fight! It was something deliberate. Someone did that to you. It’s a big wooden thing. A spear!”

[00:27:21] Ross Blocher: I feel like there’s a couple motivating factors going on here. One is, you know, everyone just wants to be heard and share their stories. Hey, I want to talk about my bodily injuries! And another one is we all want stories. Everything’s better when it’s told in the context of a story. We want to be part of a story. We remember things better when they’re parts of stories. I can see why this is appealing.

[00:27:43] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. It makes your life a lot tidier and more explicable. So, the next person was me.

(Ross “oooh!”s.)

So, I raised my hand, and I said, “I don’t know if this is the right kind of thing, but I was born with a hole in my heart.” Which I was. It closed up on its own.

(Ross “woah”s.)

And she said, “Yes, yours is emotional. You have some emotional trauma, and we’re gonna get into that. But I also feel that you were killed that way!”

[00:28:08] Ross Blocher: Woah. Oh my goodness.

[00:28:10] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, emotional trauma, killed through my heart somehow. And then she said, “But it is in your heart chakra.” So, three explanations in one.

[00:28:22] Ross Blocher: Yeah, pick, choose, match.

[00:28:24] Carrie Poppy: I would’ve thought it was just like a fetal development thing. But nope!

[00:28:27] Ross Blocher: Uh-huh, ’cause that happens.

[00:28:28] Carrie Poppy: But no, no, no, no, no. It’s emotional trauma, killed that way, heart chakra. Next person raises her hand and is like, “I was born blind,” and it was so obvious to me that this woman is blind now. She was using a cane. She had glasses on. She’s like, “I was born blind.”

And Gail, who is supposed to be a medical seer, is like, “Oh, and you got over it!? You just healed?”

And she’s like—

[00:28:56] Ross Blocher: Oh no.

[00:28:57] Carrie Poppy: “No!”

[00:28:58] Ross Blocher: Why—why would you? Oh, Gail.

[00:28:59] Carrie Poppy: “No. I’m blind now.”

(They laugh.)

[00:29:06] Ross Blocher: Gail Thackray’s Insensitive Guess by Gail Thackray.

[00:29:10] Carrie Poppy: It is, but it’s also like, girl, you’re doing your job right now! You’re cold reading. Look around for canes!

[00:29:18] Ross Blocher: I wonder if this could be the same sight impaired person that tried to get healed by Kimberly Meredith last year.

[00:29:26] Carrie Poppy: Oh, maybe! Well, she did—maybe these details will remind you. She did say—I don’t have this in my notes, but I recall her saying, “I can see like light patches and stuff, but like the big E on an eye chart, I have to use glasses to see that from a distance.” Yeah.

[00:29:42] Ross Blocher: Gotcha. Okay. It doesn’t necessarily confirm or deny.

[00:29:46] Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. So, Gail, though, had an explanation. This woman was a seer many times in a past life, but she was always persecuted for being psychic. And so, she has a fear of being a seer. And her own fear of vision is what made her blind.

[00:30:06] Ross Blocher: Oh, none of this is necessary! Ooh, I don’t like this layer of explanation. ‘Cause if you scrape it off, everything is so much better.

[00:30:13] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Yeah. Everything makes more sense. Yeah.

[00:30:16] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Why introduce this?

[00:30:19] Carrie Poppy: Also, I see a problem.

[00:30:21] Ross Blocher: She’s like a little chaos machine. Okay. What’s the problem?

[00:30:24] Carrie Poppy: This is supposed to be instantaneous healing. Shouldn’t this woman not be blind now that you told her where it came from?!

[00:30:31] Ross Blocher: Right?!

[00:30:32] Carrie Poppy: I think since her thing is—it would be so obvious if a blind person could suddenly see. So, she had to move on quickly.

(They laugh.)

And I was just like, “What? That was the test! That was the test!” But it’s just—the moment passed.

[00:30:47] Ross Blocher: Yeah. We would be—if the woman suddenly said, “Oh, wow, I can see much better,” immediately, of course Gail Thackray would love that and embrace that. But the fact that it doesn’t happen? Meh.

[00:31:02] Carrie Poppy: Right, right. So, Gail says to the crowd, “Okay, who here has a strained relationship with their family?”

[00:31:08] Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah. What percentage is that?

[00:31:09] Carrie Poppy: It was definitely a big chunk. So, she was like, “Yeah, a lot of outsiders, a lot of black sheep, right?” And everyone’s like mmm. And she says, “Who feels like they didn’t belong?” And she finds this one volunteer. And she says, “You were very different from the others, weren’t you?”

And she’s like, “Yes, my siblings. I have four sisters and one brother.”

And Gail says, “Yes, and there’s a closeness between them, and it feels like you are not actually in on it. Right?”

And she’s like, “Oh my god, yes!” Now, of course she got this from, “I don’t feel like I belong to my family”, but okay.

[00:31:44] Ross Blocher: Well, if it’s cold reading, pretty good execution of a cold reading.

[00:31:48] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, totally. Just extrapolate +10% each time.

[00:31:51] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Ooh, yeah, I like that. That’s a good general rule. “Okay, so I feel like this was suggested to me. I’m gonna push it just a little bit farther, enough that I can reel it in if I have to. But it’ll sound pretty impressive if I don’t have to.”

[00:32:05] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. It’s like amplify and withdraw. Amplify and withdraw. Amplify, amplify!

[00:32:07] Ross Blocher: Yeah, I like that.

[00:32:08] Carrie Poppy: Okay. But she does give this woman maybe the best advice she’ll give tonight, which is a low bar. But this woman who doesn’t get along with her family, Gail says, “Well, you know, you can’t change how people are. But what you can do is change yourself, and you’ll be amazed at how other people change.”

(Laughing.) I was like, yeah, that’s—

[00:32:28] Ross Blocher: Good general advice.

[00:32:28] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, that’s okay advice. I don’t know why I paid $45 for it at a healing thing, but good.

[00:32:35] Ross Blocher: I guess when you’ve got everybody here for whatever purpose, every now and then you can just insert your general good life advice. It feels like Bashar does that all the time.

(Carrie agrees.)

Like, “Oh, I’ve got a convenient little maxim that fits nicely here.”

[00:32:49] Carrie Poppy: And I should give her credit. I don’t think she said this one was a past life. She didn’t say it wasn’t, but I don’t think she even brought up this person’s past life. Next person I have in my notes says, “sad sister”. She has a bad relationship with her brother and her brother’s wife, and so Gail said, “They persecute you, don’t they? They think you’re weird.”

And she said, “Yes!” Which I think is really interesting. I mean like she must just be picking up on the vibe of this crowd that like a lot of these people feel estranged from their families. They feel like just sort of on the edge of some—I don’t know, some way that you’re phenotypically different from your family of origin.

[00:33:26] Ross Blocher: Yeah. For every person at the Conscious Life Expo, there is an uncomfortable Thanksgiving.

[00:33:30] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it really seems like that. Yeah. So, “They persecute you. They think you’re weird.” She says yes! And Gail says, “Yes, you were in the Salem Witch Trials. And now they’re afraid of you.”

(Ross “woah”s.)

Yeah. Okay, then she calls on another person raising their hand in the back, and that person says she has a pattern of abandonment with her mother. And what does Gail see for her? So, now we’re getting that more kind of psychic—you know, everyone’s realizing, “Oh! If you can just see it, I’ll just ask you what you see for me.”

Gail says, “Yes, there was a separation in your past life. You were the mother, and she was the child.”

And everyone goes aaaah. And the woman was like, “That makes sense. I feel like the mother sometimes.”

[00:34:21] Ross Blocher: “Hey, we’re in the in-between life. How about this time we switch it up? So, I was just your mom, can I be your daughter next time?” So weird. I mean, the first thing I would do is be like, “Well, that was fun.” And turn around and like find somebody else like, “Hey! Why don’t we match up this time?”

[00:34:37] Carrie Poppy: Oh, wow! You’re just gonna dump me.

(Ross confirms.)

You’re gonna dump me. You’re gonna dump Cara and Drew.

[00:34:40] Ross Blocher: We had a podcast. That was great. Really enjoyed that.

[00:34:44] Carrie Poppy: Wow! The first thing you’re gonna do in the afterlife (laughing) is be like—

[00:34:48] Ross Blocher: “Hey, Max! Hey, let’s hook up. I’ve already lived a few Lives with Carrie.”

(Carrie “wow”s several times in disbelief.)

“We’ve known each other for 20 lives. I think we’re good. We’ve learned what we can from each other.” (Laughs.)

[00:35:02] Carrie Poppy: The first thing?! The first thing!

[00:35:06] Ross Blocher: I like how insulted you are.

[00:35:07] Carrie Poppy: Well, I mean, what’s really insulting about it is we probably will die together and be thrown into a shallow grave. And then—

[00:35:15] Ross Blocher: There is a non-zero chance.

[00:35:16] Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) In your last dying breath, you’re gonna be like, (a croaking death rattle) “The very first thing I’m gonna do—I’m gonna be like, ‘Give me someone else.’”

[00:35:23] Ross Blocher: “I’m getting all new friends in the afterlife.”

My friend, Chris, that’s his refrain anytime—I don’t know—we like make fun of him in the group or something, he just says, “I need all new friends.”

(They laugh.)

[00:35:38] Carrie Poppy: My friend, Sam, from college, whenever he would get to a red light that like was taking too long, because the red lights in our college town weren’t metered. They were just timed, so you’d often just sit there for five minutes. (Laughing.) He would just sit there honking and saying, “I. HATE. LIFE. I! Hate! Life!”

(They laugh.)

Okay. So, volunteer number 12. She was an adopted daughter.

[00:36:08] Ross Blocher: Have these all been women so far?

[00:36:09] Carrie Poppy: Uh, this time, I think so. Yeah. So, this is an adult woman, but she’s adopted. And she’s like, “Okay, I was adopted at birth. I have a good relationship with my adoptive parents, but I was born with a hole in my heart.”

[00:36:23] Ross Blocher: Oh! Another hole in the heart!

[00:36:24] Carrie Poppy: Hole in the heart. What’s up, ventricular septal defect! What up, what up? So, and she’s like, “I went back, and I found my birth mother, and it was fine, but—”

And then, Gail just cuts her off. This is too much. And she says, “Listen, you chose to be adopted.” Ooooh.

[00:36:38] Ross Blocher: Oh. “And it turns out your adoptive parents, actually, you go way back with!” I know where this is going.

[00:36:44] Carrie Poppy: Well, actually Gail just went off on this weird tangent where she talked about her adopted cousin and how her aunt adopted the cousin, and her aunt has a name that’s very similar to the birth mother’s name.

[00:36:56] Ross Blocher: Never mind, I don’t know where this is going!

[00:36:58] Carrie Poppy: Tried to make great hay out of that. Like, okay. Well, they’re both named Pauline. Okay. Next volunteer. I called her sad mom. She has a bad relationship with her son—and oh, this was so interesting! That’s all she told Gail. “I have a bad relationship with my son.”

Gail says, “Well, that’s clearly a past life. ‘Cause clearly nothing bad happened to him in this life here.”

[00:37:24] Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. Just immediately saying, “You must be a very good mom. He’s got no reason to complain.”

[00:37:29] Carrie Poppy: Right. “You are the person sitting in front of me. So, obviously I take your side! And from there we’ll work forward.”

[00:37:34] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. “Because what point is there in me taking the side of someone who’s not here to represent—”

[00:37:40] Carrie Poppy: “Paying me $45.”

(Ross agrees and sighs.)

Yep. But also, so annoying! So annoying. Could permanently alter the course of these two people’s relationship with this dumb little sentence.

[00:37:51] Ross Blocher: Exactly! Yeah. That’s what’s so frustrating, and this is true for I think mediums in general—what they do that really irritates me is that by creating this storytelling so lazily off the top of your head, whatever just kind of jumps in your head, you throw it out to this person who very likely could take it seriously. And it could affect their decision making in the future. Because you ate banana bread for lunch, and your brain went this way when you made your anecdote. I don’t know, it’s like—it feels so arbitrary and just tied to whatever Gail Thackray just happens to be thinking at the moment, and that bothers me that that has to become important for this person.

[00:38:32] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! I mean, we all like gather our understanding of the universe and of our own lives in part from information we get from our peers. And I feel like people like Gail are giving themselves more than one vote in that process. It’s fine to give me your opinion. That’s fine. I’m even fine with you giving me like your—an opinion that might offend someone else. I’m like—I think I’m more willing to accept that than some, but don’t tell me that it’s you plus a bunch of guides! Or it’s you plus God! No, it’s you!

[00:39:04] Ross Blocher: Right! Yeah. That’s a really good way of stating it. Yeah. You’re gaming the voting system. That’s what you’re doing. You’re—

[00:39:11] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! In the marketplace of reality!

[00:39:14] Ross Blocher: Yeah! I like that. You’re buying extra votes. Yeah.

[00:39:17] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Not Okay. Unconstitutional.

[00:39:19] Ross Blocher: That’s not good. You need to be indicted for monkeying with an election.

[00:39:25] Carrie Poppy: “Lock her—” Don’t.

Okay. Um, sad daughter. Okay. So, the next woman is like, “Why am I like the mother to my mother?” Which is clearly a setup.

(Ross laughs.)

You just want Gail to say that you were the mother to your mother, at this point.

[00:39:38] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. But give me a story that I can later on use with that imprimatur of the guides!

[00:39:45] Carrie Poppy: And so, she does. She says, “Because she was in a past life. And also, your aunt was your mother.” Sure.

[00:39:53] Ross Blocher: That’s right. You set up the t-ball; I’ll hit it. There you go.

[00:39:58] Carrie Poppy: “And here’s a little extra. Your aunt was your mother.” Pfft! Okay. Last volunteer. Another sad sister. She says, “My mother and my sister don’t speak to one another, and that affects the whole family.”

And again, Gail gives her that same advice she gave someone else. “Work on yourself, and the people around you will change.” Okay.

[00:40:17] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Okay. Practical. I’m really wishing at this moment for someone to raise their hand and do the whole Tom Arnold “I’m my own grandpa” song, just see what she does with that.

[00:40:26] Carrie Poppy: Oh, I don’t know that.

[00:40:27] Ross Blocher: Oh, okay. It’s, you know, this whole logic about how this person ends up technically being their own grandfather.

[00:40:32] Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. Fun.

[00:40:33] Ross Blocher: And you know, just how she’d deal with some really bizarre family situation.

[00:40:37] Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, good point! Yeah. I wonder how she’d react to like those adopted daughters who end up marrying their biological dad. I’m sure she’d (mumbling).

[00:40:44] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm! Yeah, she’d have a field day.

Hey everybody, this is Ross of the Future just chiming in to talk about Squarespace! Who doesn’t love Squarespace? The people who don’t know about Squarespace. So, Squarespace is a website where you can make other websites, and you might even say it’s an all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Because you need a website, right? And you probably have all these great ideas, but maybe you’re not a web designer.

Well, with Squarespace, you can create a beautiful website. You can engage with your audience, you can sell anything—your products, content you create, even your time. And if you sign up for a Squarespace website, you’re going to have access to an online store. There’s guides to help you. Again, you don’t have to be a web designer, but if you are—guess what? Squarespace also has all of these advanced tools that you can take advantage of as well. With Squarespace extensions, you can connect your store to vetted third party tools to extend the functionality of your website. Also, with Fluid Engine, the next generation website design system from Squarespace, it’s never been easier to unlock your creativity!

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[00:42:39] Promo:

Music: Fast-paced synth.

Yucky Jessica: (Rachel McElroy doing a rasping, whiny voice.) I am Yucky Jessica.

Chuck Crudsworth: (Griffin McElroy doing a gravely, nasal voice.) I’m Chuck Crudsworth.

Yucky Jessica: And this is—

Jessica & Chuck: Terrible!

Chuck Crudsworth: A podcast where we talk about things we hate that are awful!

Yucky Jessica: Today, we’re discussing Wonderful!, a podcast on the Maximum Fun network?

Chuck Crudsworth: Hosts Rachel and Griffin McElroy, a real-life married couple—

Yucky Jessica: Yuuuck!

Chuck Crudsworth: —discuss a wide range of topics: music, video games, poetry, snacks!

Yucky Jessica: But I hate all that stuff!

Chuck Crudsworth: I know you do, Yucky Jessica!

Yucky Jessica: It comes out every Wednesday, the worst day of the week, wherever you download your podcasts.

Chuck Crudsworth: For our next topic, we’re talking Fiona, the baby hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo.

(Music ends.)

Yucky Jessica: I hate this little hippo!

[00:43:21] Carrie Poppy: Okay, so then we segue into the big show here: the recovered memory regression.

[00:43:27] Ross Blocher: I really hope someday you actually go on a Segway ride, and somehow you work it into the storytelling. “We Segway into the jungle,” and it’s a literal segue ride.

[00:43:38] Carrie Poppy: For the longest time, I thought segue was spelled segueway.

[00:43:41] Ross Blocher: Oh. Like, S-E-G-U-E-W-A-Y? Segueway.

[00:43:46] Carrie Poppy: So, I would write segueway.

(They laugh.)

[00:43:48] Ross Blocher: That’s great. I like that.

[00:43:51] Carrie Poppy: It turns out, the way’s in there. Okay. So, she has us write down some things we want to know about ourselves. They can be emotional, physical, mental, spiritual. Anything that you want to explain. Why are you smiling?

[00:44:04] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) I’m just—I did actually see some people riding Segways at the Santa Monica Beach recently, and if anyone gets close to me now, I’m just telling myself I need to make sure to say, “Nice Segway,” to anybody who gets near me.

[00:44:17] Carrie Poppy: Sure! Or one finger in the air and say, “Segway!”

[00:44:22] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Okay. Continue with your actual points.

[00:44:23] Carrie Poppy: Alright, so the kind of stuff we’re gonna be writing down is like why do I feel, think, or behave in a particular way that confounds me? Or why does my body feel such and such a way? Or what’s causing my illness? What’s causing my distress? Why are my relationships the way they are?

[00:44:39] Ross Blocher: Ah, the last person you should be asking this to. You’re vulnerable. You need guidance. And now, you get Gail Thackray’s Explanations with Gail Thackray.

[00:44:48] Carrie Poppy: We all write these on the back of a card, and I asked about my migraines on it, and then she had us turn it over and I believe write our email address so we could go on her mailing list as well. Which is so Peter Popoff. What are you even gonna do with this?

[00:45:01] Ross Blocher: Please enter my fundraising ecosystem.

[00:45:04] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. And you know, maybe I’ll take good notes and see what it is you’re lacking in your life and use that against you later. Who knows?

She’s gonna do a hypnotic regression on us. She says, “It’s not gonna be like a trance. Don’t get the wrong impression. It’s more like making up a story, but—”

[00:45:21] Ross Blocher: Boy, that sounded really Scientology for a second there. “It’s not a trance.” Remember, they’re always trying to like be very clear. “This is not hypnosis! Okay, now we’re gonna do this very hypnosis-like thing.” For auditing.

[00:45:31] Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. No, I didn’t remember that. Okay. Interesting. That makes sense! So, yeah, she says, “It won’t be a trance, but it’s more like you’re making up a story, but it’s not things you’d ordinarily make up. So, you’re gonna have the sense that you’re just playing along with my instruction.”

[00:45:46] Ross Blocher: Oooh, I don’t like this.

[00:45:47] Carrie Poppy: “But overrule that analysis.”

[00:45:50] Ross Blocher: This is soupy and gross.

[00:45:51] Carrie Poppy: “And let this through and assume that it’s real.” Okay. She says, “Sometimes we block ourselves saying, ‘that’s not right or that’s my imagination’. Don’t do that. Be childlike.” And then she said, “Does anyone else have this problem? A real left-brain thinker?” And I raised my hand. A few people do. And she’s like, “I get you. I’m the same way. I get it!”

(Ross chuckles.)

So, that really made me feel reassured that I was gonna be able to succeed.

[00:46:19] Ross Blocher: And also let your guard down so that you wouldn’t question the weird things your brain comes up with!

[00:46:24] Carrie Poppy: If a cynic like Gail Thackray can still reach the divine, certainly I can.

[00:46:29] Ross Blocher: A hard-nosed cynic like Gail Thackray!

[00:46:33] Carrie Poppy: So, she asks again who has had a hypnotherapy session or a regression. There are many, many hands. And she says, “If you haven’t before, you should know people really feel like they’re making it up at first, but the repetition helps you have confidence that it’s a true memory.” And I was thinking about this, that she actually like hearkens on the repetition is so interesting, because repeating things makes you believe them. Like, that’s why people have like confidence phrases they repeat to—you know, affirmations and stuff. It helps you feel more confident that something’s true on its own.

[00:47:09] Ross Blocher: And that’s on also why that’s the mechanism of the big lie, you know, where you just keep saying something often enough. And people eventually believe it.

[00:47:18] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Don’t like it!

[00:47:19] Ross Blocher: Right now, it seems the stakes are low in this little exercise of coming up with little backstories to your problems. But I don’t like it! Because it’s just a really—I would say—unreliable method. That can cause big problems.

[00:47:34] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Well, I mean I think one of the problems is if you think you got healed here today, but you’re not going to see the effects until you leave—I could just see that spelling not getting treatment for something you could have gotten a lot earlier.

[00:47:47] Ross Blocher: Right. And then, like we’ve discussed, now you’re away. You’re gone from this environment. You’re on your own, and all you know is that it didn’t work the way you were expecting it to, and there’s no recourse. You can’t go directly back to Gail. Can’t get your $45 back. But now you’re convinced that maybe you did something wrong. I don’t like it! I don’t like any of it.

[00:48:10] Carrie Poppy: So, we’re gonna go into a recovered memory meditation, and this will mimic very closely what’s usually called recovered memory therapy. Which is where a therapist or healer or anybody lays someone else down and says, “I’m going to help you remember something that you so far have forgotten. I’m gonna help you get that back.”

[00:48:33] Ross Blocher: “That information is somewhere in your head, but you don’t have access to it right now. But we can, by some method, bring that old memory back to the foreground of your mind. And don’t worry, it’s reliable.”

[00:48:46] Carrie Poppy: Right. A big problem with it is that it’s not reliable. It’s an invitation to do a lot of imaginatory work, and our memories are kind of imagination machines. That’s—we have this idea of what happened, and then we replay the tape, and we imagine what happened. And every time we do that, we kind of confabulate the original memory a little bit. So, famously in the ’90s, this ruined a lot of people’s lives as they started to believe things had happened to them that hadn’t happened. And so, when I hear we’re going to do a memory regression, I think of all that.

[00:49:22] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it’s just a popular misunderstanding of how the mind and memory works that allows that to sound convincing. We use these analogies of our memory to being like cassette tapes or hard drives or—you know, whatever technology seems relevant to the moment. You know, we’re like a security camera. We record things, and that can’t be unreal. But—

[00:49:43] Carrie Poppy: This is the mistaken notion. Yeah.

[00:49:45] Ross Blocher: Right. But it’s so much more fluid than that. And like if I say, “Hey, remember that time when you were little, and your dad was wearing the really bright plaid with the neon blue and magenta?” You can picture your father wearing that thing. There you go. Now you have it in your head. You’re seeing him. I’m seeing my dad wearing something like that. I know he never did. But now I can picture it. And if you tell me that that’s a real memory, there we go. It can enter Ross’s updated recollection of the past.

[00:50:12] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. And this is everyone, you guys. This isn’t like some people; this isn’t just people who have mental illness or people who have a certain personality feature. This can happen to anybody.

[00:50:23] Ross Blocher: Yeah. If it’s a bug, it’s a bug we all share.

[00:50:25] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, some people are even more prone to it, but everyone’s a little prone to it. Don’t—even the people who have like super memories who say that they remember every day of their life? Still prone to false memory. They just have confidence that they remember those things.

[00:50:37] Ross Blocher: So, don’t feel like it’s a personal failing. ‘Cause it’s just being human.

[00:50:42] Carrie Poppy: That’s right. That’s right! So, anyway, that’s the mind frame I’m going into this with. (Chuckles.) So.

[00:50:47] Ross Blocher: Yeah. But not everybody else in this room!

[00:50:49] Carrie Poppy: That’s probably right. So, Gail says, “You know, I’m clairaudient. I hear things rather than seeing them. So, this may happen for you. If it does, it’s going to feel a lot like thinking or like—mm—making it up, especially if you’re very left-brained.”

(Ross giggles.)

“But you might feel a tingle or a buzz in your right ear, which is a great sign that you’re getting a message from spirit.”

[00:51:16] Ross Blocher: That’s some pretty good power of suggestion stuff there. Like, “Ooh, once you feel like that tingle on the back of your neck, or—” You know, whatever it is, the things that you can easily get yourself to feel if you want to, if you fixate on them. I could make my—oh, I’m gonna do it now. I’m gonna see if I can get my neck to tingle. (Beat.) Yep. I can do it. I can do it. Yeah.

[00:51:36] Carrie Poppy: It gave me kind of a shiver up my back, but yeah. Something happens.

[00:51:38] Ross Blocher: Okay. Close enough. Y’all feel it? You feel the tingle?

[00:51:43] Carrie Poppy: Okay, so then Gail tells us the story of the first time she got a past life regression. So, it was before her spiritual epiphany, which we all know took place at age 40. And she had just gone to a hypnotherapist in order to help her aunt stop smoking.

[00:51:59] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow. That’s dedication. I’m gonna go subject myself to a hypnotherapy class so you can stop smoking.

[00:52:06] Carrie Poppy: Not a class. Just like took her to a hypnotherapist.

[00:52:08] Ross Blocher: Oh, I see. She took her aunt (ah-nt) to the hypnotherapist. Look at me, saying aunt (ah-nt) now. I’m impressionable.

[00:52:17] Carrie Poppy: So, he does this meditation with the aunt, but then he says, “You know, you—I think you should do it too,” and kind of singles Gail out, and says that she could really benefit from a past life regression. And of course, she’s skeptical. She doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.

[00:52:30] Ross Blocher: (Skeptically.) So skeptical.

[00:52:31] Carrie Poppy: But she decides to do it. And in that regression, Gail saw herself as a Native American woman.

[00:52:38] Ross Blocher: Why?! Leave the Native Americans alone!

[00:52:42] Carrie Poppy: Gathering stones for spiritual guidance.

[00:52:46] Ross Blocher: Leave them alone!

[00:52:48] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) And she got “profound messages” during the session and was streaming tears. It was an emotional release. And the hypnotherapist told her that she had been a shaman in that past life.

[00:52:59] Ross Blocher: Spiritual fetishism is so—ah, weird. Obnoxious.

[00:53:04] Carrie Poppy: So, she was a Native American shaman in that past life. And do you know how she knows it?

[00:53:09] Ross Blocher: Um, because she saw it, and she was convinced.

[00:53:15] Carrie Poppy: Mm-mm. Because she knew things in that regression that you could not possibly know as a White girl growing up in the UK.

[00:53:20] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow. Like—such as?

[00:53:25] Carrie Poppy: Such as, for example, in the vision, she lived on a high mountain. And the back of her house was a cave, and the front was a wooden hut. And when she grew up in the UK, the only Native Americans she saw on TV were in wigwams!

[00:53:48] Ross Blocher: (Strained.) God. Okay.

[00:53:49] Carrie Poppy: That’s it. That’s the story.

[00:53:50] Ross Blocher: Yeah, not impressive.

[00:53:51] Carrie Poppy: She did not even say, “And then, I went and looked, and indeed they lived in caves with wooden doors.” No! Doesn’t even tell us that much! Just I saw something different!

[00:53:58] Ross Blocher: It wasn’t what I expected. Yeah. Therefore, convincing. Oh my god. Raise your standards of evidence!

[00:54:06] Carrie Poppy: Let’s start the regression. Okay. So, we all close our eyes. We lean back in our chairs. There’s some beautiful music playing. And she says, “Pick one of those personal issues from your card. Relationship issue, physical, whatever. Uncross your legs, and put white light all around you, and see your angels and protectors all around you.” And then, she does a very classic regression technique. “Stand at the top of a staircase and start walking down the staircase.” Have you never heard this?

[00:54:37] Ross Blocher: Yeah, I have.

[00:54:38] Carrie Poppy: Okay, so she says, “Picture those steps exactly. It could be ones that you’ve seen. It can be ones that you haven’t, but really picture them and focus on them.” And you go down the steps one by one, starting with the 20th step, (getting softer and more peaceful) and you’re going 20, 19, and deeper with 18, and deeper with 17, and then sixteen.

[00:54:56] Ross Blocher: I gotta admit, that’s kind of fun. Oh, I’m sorry.

[00:54:59] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it does. It definitely relaxes you.

[00:55:02] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And it’s such an easy visual. I like it.

[00:55:05] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. Yep. “And then, you find yourself in front of a door, and you open the door.” Okay. So, as you open the door, she says, “On the other side, you’re going to see a totally different scene. And right away, I want you to figure out who you are. Look down at your feet. Get a sense of who you are. Are you male or female, old or young? What are you wearing? Where are you?” And she’s, you know, guiding us through this with a very light sing-song, encouraging us to picture what she’s saying. “Look around. Are you outside? Are you inside? We’ve taken you someplace pleasant. Figure out who’s nearby. Ask yourself where is everybody? Are there others there? And now, go forward or backwards just a little bit to reveal the events we need to reveal to our subconscious. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And look down at your feet! And look up and find out where you are!” And she’s raised her voice into this like anxiety. You know, it tells me like, “Oh! Something’s bad’s happening now!”

[00:56:10] Ross Blocher: Yeah, “Do it now!”

[00:56:12] Carrie Poppy: “It was something good before, but now something bad’s happening!”

[00:56:15] Ross Blocher: Or almost like, “Make a decision now! Like, no waffling! First thing you see!”

[00:56:20] Carrie Poppy: Yes, that too. Definitely. So, her voice is quickening, and she says, “There may be people around you! You might feel anxiety, fear, pain. Some of you may have people around you that are not being very nice to you. You may not like this but hold onto it. See the people there, even if they’re being aggressive. Tap into what they’re doing, why you’re there. Get as much info as possible!” And the way she’s describing it, it’s very clear this is supposed to be a memory of conflict with other humans. It’s not an avalanche; it’s someone is murdering you. Right? Something like that.

[00:56:49] Ross Blocher: Okay. Woah! Oh my. There’s a sociologist version of me who really wishes we could capture all these stories and like get the, you know, genders and identifying information and what part of the world they were in. And I feel like if we could put this on a map, we’d get these clusters of an inordinate number of Native Americans and—I don’t know—people near Cleopatra. I don’t know, maybe we’ve got some Egyptians. Just people, groups that Americans like to go to in their visions of the past. And I feel like we’d ignore entire swaths of the world. Like, where’s all the people from Southeast Asia or Africa or Argentina? I don’t know. That’s my guess, and I think it would be kind of fun to ask and do that map, make that map.

[00:57:36] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I feel like you don’t hear about Australia ever, yeah, in these.

[00:57:40] Ross Blocher: Yeah. I feel like it says more about just the public spiritual associations than it does about actual distribution of people around the planet.

[00:57:50] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. Okay. So, now she’s going to basically suggest that we look at people, the people around us in this violent situation we seem to be in and connect one of our aggressors to someone in our current life.

(Ross “woah!”s.)

So, here’s how she puts it.

[00:58:08] Clip:

Gail Thackray: Tap into who it is and why you are there. And I know some of you’re getting quite emotional. That’s okay. Just hold in there. Just see if you get as much information as you can. Look at the people. Look at them in the eyes and say, “Who are you today, in my lifetime today?” Look at those people and see if you can recognize them.

[00:58:27] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, look at your aggressors, and find someone in your current life that you can blame this on.

[00:58:32] Ross Blocher: Oh my goodness. Okay.

[00:58:34] Carrie Poppy: Just seems unhealthy. Seems like an unhealthy message to me. And then she tells us to let go of that energy, leave that past life, cut the cords of that bad experience. You no longer need that experience—or that relationship, seems to be the implication. Like, maybe you’re cutting off this person in your real life now.

[00:58:53] Ross Blocher: Just because they ran at you in battle in 1583 doesn’t mean they need to be your boss now.

(Carrie agrees with laughter.)

Out of all the people on the planet, that’s the one that you picked as your boss. Time to quit your job.

[00:59:09] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I think that’s the implication here. Here’s how she says it.

[00:59:12] Clip:

Gail Thackray: And then, now say to yourself, “I wanna release that into a past life. I no longer need to hold onto that energy.” We are now going to leave that past life. But before we leave that past life, I want you to see if you can understand that these people that may have harmed you are just simply players in your experience. You no longer need to continue to have that relationship. We can cut all cords. We can remove all negative energy from that experience. We are gonna bring through only the positive things. We are gonna bring through your talents and your wisdom.

[00:59:53] Carrie Poppy: Is that how that sounds to you? Yeah?

[00:59:55] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. Well, make decisions in your current life, shake things up based on what you just came up with in this exercise. Whew.

[01:00:06] Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm, mm-hm! Um, okay. Next, she tells us to picture our own birth, like our birth in this current lifetime.

[01:00:16] Clip:

Gail Thackray: You’re in your mum’s womb. We’re about to be born. It’s now your birthday. In this lifetime, we’re about to be born into this reality, but we no longer have that calming energy. It’s been cleared and deleted from that lifetime and all lifetimes.

[01:00:37] Carrie Poppy: Ross is making a frustrated, blown out cheek face, the universal symbol for “I give up on this!”

[01:00:45] Ross Blocher: So, that’s weird. Like, she seems to be saying all of these karmic ties have been broken, but clearly not! ‘Cause all of this is about this past life debt following you.

[01:00:56] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! This kind of confused me, ’cause she was leading me through my birth to this current life, but she’s painting it idyllically. So, she’s—it’s like she’s sort of rewriting the story, I guess? I guess is the idea?

[01:01:09] Ross Blocher: This complicates things. I just—I don’t see how this is clarifying or minimizing or helpful.

[01:01:17] Carrie Poppy: Uh, yeah. And then, as she goes on with that train of thought, she’s saying, “Yeah, we all come through healthy and happy, growing a little older, everyone loves us.” So, she can’t possibly be saying, “This is the past everyone in this room had.” She’s already established that it’s not. So, it’s like she’s saying something different, like let’s picture a different life. What if you had been born a totally different way, and totally different things had happened to you? Wouldn’t you feel better? Uh, I guess!

[01:01:42] Ross Blocher: Well, yeah! I can imagine a version of my life that is a little better. Yeah.

[01:01:47] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! I don’t know, it just sort of made me feel sad! Just like I don’t wanna like rewrite my entire memory and like take away the bad things like just for you, Gail. I don’t—it was weird.

[01:01:59] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Well, and we talked about this problem in the last episode with Gail, and that’s that you made this plan for a reason, presumably, before you were born. You decided, “Oh, I need these various failures or adversities or physical challenges for myself.” And now, somehow you’re supposed to be resolving or fixing that? Well, no, you chose that for yourself! For a Reason! Yeah. I don’t understand. These are at odds.

[01:02:26] Carrie Poppy: The only person allowed to square that circle is Gail.

[01:02:29] Ross Blocher: I don’t—I don’t need Gail in the mix! I just don’t!

[01:02:33] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Yeah, that’s fair. So, we replace all our negative memories with happy ones. And that’s done. What? Oh, you have a question, sir?

[01:02:41] Ross Blocher: Oh, no, no.

[01:02:42] Carrie Poppy: Okay. Just in pain?

(Ross confirms with a laugh.)

Okay! So, as we come out of that, she asks if anyone wants to share what their experience was. “Did everyone have a good experience?” There’s lots of mumbles.

A volunteer raises her hand, and she says, “I felt energy in my hands, and I felt my body shaking, but I didn’t really see anything. I just like—I really felt like a quivering, a shaking. It kind of scared me, honestly. But it—I guess it was a lot of releasing, but it’s just physical, and I don’t really know why it happens.” It sounded kind of medical, like what she was describing. I was kinda like ugh! But Gail said, “Oh yeah, you only feel it physically, because you couldn’t see anything. It’s a dark torture room.”

[01:03:25] Ross Blocher: (Disgusted.) Oh goodness! Wh-wh-why?!

[01:03:27] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! “You endured some kind of torture. People were pulling you in different ways. There were things on your hips and your thighs.” And Gail says, “Does that make sense to you?”

And she says, “Well, I have always had a fear that I have an energy in me that doesn’t belong to me.”

(Ross “oh no”s sympathetically.)

And Gail says, “Yeah, that’s from a past life!”

[01:03:51] Ross Blocher: Ooh, I don’t like any of this!

[01:03:53] Carrie Poppy: Nope! Me neither. Me neither.

[01:03:55] Ross Blocher: I mean, geez, if you just like making things up, do improv!

[01:03:59] Carrie Poppy: Totally! You’re making things up again, Gail.

[01:04:01] Ross Blocher: Yeah. But maybe leave the torture rooms out.

[01:04:04] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. At least everyone knows it’s fake in improv.

[01:04:07] Ross Blocher: But now, also it seems like she’s giving this person a license to be sort of a grieved about this imagined situation. Alright.

[01:04:17] Carrie Poppy: And—if permission is even the word; she’s saddling her with feeling aggrieved by that situation. You know?

[01:04:23] Ross Blocher: “Man, those assholes who put me in the torture room! That I didn’t know about five minutes ago!”

[01:04:26] Carrie Poppy: That did this to you! Like, (inaudible)—Yeah. I really think when people hear this the first time, this idea of like trauma causing everything in your body, it feels like freedom. But I think eventually, it does not feel like freedom. Because you’re slowly disenfranchising yourself from the people who might support you and your struggles by framing them all as villains in your story. And yeah, I just feel like I’ve just watched that happen over and over.

[01:04:52] Ross Blocher: Ugh, this complicates everything! All the people around you now. It’s not just the relationship you have with them; it’s some compounded relationship over multiple lifetimes where, geez, well now you’re my podcast cohost, but before you were my sister, and then at some point like I—

[01:05:08] Carrie Poppy: And then, we fucked. And then, I killed you!

[01:05:10] Ross Blocher: And I was your mother. And yeah, big mess.

(Carrie agrees.)

That’s not—no. Why would anyone want this? It’s like just the power of storytelling, I guess. We want stories. We’re storytelling animals.

[01:05:23] Carrie Poppy: And if it were true, you’d wanna know. You know?

[01:05:25] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. Yes. Yeah. Big if true.

[01:05:28] Carrie Poppy: Yep. So, Gail’s still on volunteer 16, and she asks her if she has a brother, and volunteer 16 says no. And she says, “Okay, someone who’s like a brother?”

And she says, (thoughtfully) “Nnno.”

(Ross “wow”s.)

And she says, “Like a brother, but a bad brother. It’s a bad relationship.”

[01:05:52] Ross Blocher: Someone who holds you down and spits in your face.

[01:05:55] Carrie Poppy: Preferably male, but I’ll take anything at this point!

And she sits there, and she thinks, and she just sort of shakes her head. She can’t think of anyone.

[01:06:03] Ross Blocher: “I’m not used to this Barnum statement failing!”

[01:06:07] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) And I mean, this poor woman, all she wants to know is why does my body shake when I try to do a meditation? And now, Gail’s off on this like your brother and you were tortured. Ugh. Okay, so Gail’s still on the imaginary brother, and she says, “He’s quite aggressive with you.”

And she says—

[01:06:23] Ross Blocher: We still haven’t established this guy!

[01:06:25] Carrie Poppy: “I just—I don’t know. Like today? Like, in my adult life today?”

And Gail’s like yes!

She’s like, “Okay. Um, well, okay. I—okay. Okay. I would say that in my work environment—”

[01:06:37] Ross Blocher: Oh no, now poor Kevin at work is the bad guy, the brother who tortured her in a past life.

[01:06:44] Carrie Poppy: Right? “My bosses are always like that to me.”

She says, “Okay, yes! They were your persecutors from past lives, and now they’re recurring in this lifetime.” And she says, “Do you have a lot of fear around those men?”

And she says, (meekly) “Yeah, yeah, and I get—”

[01:07:02] Ross Blocher: “Now that you say it, yeah. And it’s even worse.”

[01:07:04] Carrie Poppy: “And I give my power away to them.” And I’m thinking like—I mean, that might be true, but I’m thinking it is your boss. You give them power; that’s part of the deal, you know? Ugh, I don’t know. So, Gail—

[01:07:14] Ross Blocher: I hope work wasn’t paying for this workshop.

[01:07:17] Carrie Poppy: She works at Conscious Life Expo.

(They laugh.)

She’s like, “Mark in the back is my boss. He’s the worst!”

[01:07:24] Ross Blocher: “Ellen Steinfeld!”

[01:07:27] Carrie Poppy: But no, they were persecutors from past lives. Now, they’re recurring in this lifetime. And Gail says, “Yes, yes. Something happened to you in Northern France in a past life. Are you from Northern France?” And she’s like no. And she’s like, “Yes, exactly! It’s a past life.”

[01:07:44] Ross Blocher: (Mumbles unintelligibly.) Okay. Alright.

[01:07:45] Carrie Poppy: So—“That’s exactly what I meant!” So, then—bless this woman—she drags Gail back to the problem she actually started with, kicking and screaming. And says, “I just need to understand what’s happening in my body.”

[01:08:01] Ross Blocher: Oh, right! That’s where we started!

[01:08:02] Carrie Poppy: “I shake all the time.”

[01:08:04] Ross Blocher: Oh, so she’s already aware of this. It didn’t just emerge as she was doing this one exercise.

[01:08:09] Carrie Poppy: Right. This has happened to her before. It’s even worse when she’s meditating.

[01:08:13] Ross Blocher: And we’ve moved from there to suspecting our bosses at work of formerly torturing us in the past life.

(Carrie confirms.)

No, this is not efficient. This does nothing!

[01:08:23] Carrie Poppy: It’s bad for everybody!

So, Gail says, “Well, you shifted all that energy today, so you should feel better already, but you’ll feel it really going away over the next few days.”

[01:08:35] Ross Blocher: Now that you’re giving all your male coworkers the side eye.

[01:08:38] Carrie Poppy: Right? And like your tremor or whatever is gonna go away? Hopefully it’s benign. But Jesus, this is none of your business, Gail, like calming her down about what her medical conditions are! You don’t know!

[01:08:48] Ross Blocher: This is where we immediately need to capture this woman’s name and contact information.

[01:08:53] Carrie Poppy: I know. I think that so much at these things.

[01:08:55] Ross Blocher: Yeah. And then, contact her a month later and be like, “Oh, still shaking? Okay. Well then, forget everything Gail Thackray said. Disregard.”

[01:09:01] Carrie Poppy: Right, right. Hopefully she hears this.

Okay, so the next person says that they had a not great father, and he’s now 90. He has Parkinson’s. She’s his caregiver. “He’s a narcissistic energy vampire. He sucks energy out of me.”

And Gail says, “And you’re psychically sensitive, so you pick those things up.”

And she’s like, “Yeah, yeah, I do. Well, anyway, in my regression, I stepped out of the door, and there were mountains and snow, and I was wearing layers of cotton.” Which seems inefficient for snow, but okay. And she says, “I felt like I was in like Norway or something. I had a drape over my head.” I feel like Norway we don’t hear that much! I’ll give her that.

(Ross agrees.)

Though, since Frozen, all bets are off.

[01:09:47] Ross Blocher: Oh yeah. She’s thinking of the Saami people. Yeah.

[01:09:48] Carrie Poppy: Oh, you think so?

[01:09:49] Ross Blocher: Maybe? Yeah.

[01:09:50] Carrie Poppy: So, I had a drape over my head and a shawl and a skirt and kind of little pointy boots.

[01:09:56] Ross Blocher: Ooh, accessorizing! Yeah. Well, I guess Gail did have you look right down at your feet.

[01:10:00] Carrie Poppy: Yep. “And so, when I went back in time, I was having a baby, and there was a medicine man at my feet, and there were women around me, and I was giving birth to my dad.” So—

[01:10:11] Ross Blocher: That’s a sentence you don’t want to hear out of context.

[01:10:14] Carrie Poppy: But bless this girl. How close is she following? She’s just picking up every single little Gail Thackray plot point she can! She’s like, “I was a medicine man in a past life in Norway. And my dad came out of my crotch.” Uh, what are you showing me?

[01:10:29] Ross Blocher: Just one of the Saami people.

[01:10:30] Carrie Poppy: Oh, one of the girls from—oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this could be what she thinks she is.

[01:10:35] Ross Blocher: Yeah. “I’m a good student. I’m giving you exactly what you were asking for.”

[01:10:38] Carrie Poppy: Yep. “I too am one of the people who gave birth to my mom!”

So, then Gail asked her something that’s a red flag to me, but she did not expand on it. She said, “Was there a period of time that you were unaware of all this?”

[01:10:51] Ross Blocher: Yeah! My entire life leading up to five minutes ago!

[01:10:56] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) True. What I think of is since this started with her dad not being a great dad, it sounds like a repressed memory claim to me. But it could not be; there’s a lot of ways that sentence could go. So, hard to say. So, Gail says, “In this lifetime—”

[01:11:13] Ross Blocher: Pointy boots!

[01:11:14] Carrie Poppy: Ah, there we go! This is where she was from! But yeah, that looks like Frozen, right?

[01:11:19] Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah. That is the people group it’s based on.

[01:11:21] Carrie Poppy: And do they all wear pointy shoes in Frozen?

[01:11:24] Ross Blocher: I don’t know, but I found the picture of people wearing pointy shoes, and I’m content.

[01:11:28] Carrie Poppy: But I wanna know if she got this idea from Frozen! Frozen pointy shoes.

[01:11:31] Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah. Well, it’s Christophe, who is like the Saami people, and yeah, I think he does have points on his boots.

[01:11:38] Carrie Poppy: Oh, yep. He has pointy boots.

[01:11:40] Ross Blocher: He sure does!

[01:11:41] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Okay, there you go. So, Gail says, “You’re gonna notice that your dad is a nicer person now that you did this healing.” So, there you go!

[01:11:48] Ross Blocher: Well, let’s hope that’s true! Chill out, cantankerous 90-year-old narcissist!

[01:11:54] Carrie Poppy: So, our next volunteer was a guy, first guy.

[01:11:56] Ross Blocher: First guy? Okay.

[01:11:57] Carrie Poppy: And he saw himself in 1200s France. And this is a quote, “My daughter was my mom. My soulmate was my little sister. And my ex appeared as my father.”

[01:12:07] Ross Blocher: I was gonna call this literally incestuous—I don’t know, but this feels incestuous. This is just weird. Expand your circle, people.

[01:12:15] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) I love that everyone is just catching on this quickly. They’re like, “Oh, you got one? I got three!”

[01:12:20] Ross Blocher: This is like Dorothy coming back at the end of The Wizard of Oz saying like, “You were there, and you were there, and you were there!”

[01:12:25] Carrie Poppy: “You were there. Sure! You too! Why not?”

[01:12:27] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Because when we’re kids and someone asks us to make up a story, who do we use? Yeah, Mom, Dad, brother, sister. The people in our immediate environment.

(Carrie agrees.)

I don’t—just—this just feels very solipsistic and basic and simple.

[01:12:41] Carrie Poppy: And I just got this information from you and regurgitated it to you.

(Ross agrees.)

Yeah. (Nasally.) “And my dog was my cat. My giraffe was my panda.”

(They laugh.)

Uh, so he says he feels now that his daughter was his mother in a past life, and Gail’s just sort of like mmm. And then she says—

[01:13:00] Ross Blocher: I don’t want people thinking about this, about their kids!

[01:13:03] Carrie Poppy: That your daughter was your mother? (Laughs.)

[01:13:04] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Especially not like your wife. I don’t know. This gets very uncomfortable, the implications of the—

[01:13:09] Carrie Poppy: I like it. (Laughs.)

[01:13:09] Ross Blocher: (Laughing.) You like it. Okay.

[01:13:12] Carrie Poppy: So, Gail says, “The energy will all change around this now by going there and understanding it as he has today.”

(Ross “oh no”s.)

So, that whole situation with his daughter being his mom and his soulmate being his little sister and his ex appearing as his father—that will be solved!

[01:13:28] Ross Blocher: What is she unleashing on his family? I especially don’t like it when you’re—I don’t know—thinking of someone who is in a non-boinking relationship in your life, in a boinking relationship in a previous life.

(Carrie agrees.)

I don’t know; it’s a road too far.

[01:13:42] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s weird.

[01:13:43] Ross Blocher: Stop crossing those lines.

[01:13:47] Carrie Poppy: Okay, working on others. So, next she’s going to talk to us about how to do this for other people. ‘Cause remember, a lot of us are healers here today! So, first of all, she tells us to practice the feeling we’re feeling right now, and we will have it more. Yeah, that’s true.

[01:13:59] Ross Blocher: Yeah. Well, yes. There you go. Good job, Gail. You said a true thing.

[01:14:03] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. She said, “You may have a feeling or a sense or a glimpse of a past life today, but once you open that crack, you see it more and more and more.” I’m like, well, yeah, because you’re thinking about it.

[01:14:13] Ross Blocher: That’s the danger. Yep.

[01:14:14] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, but she wants us to get more psychic so we can work on others now, because everyone here can get certified in this technique today! But we need to bring our highest vibration in order to help others, and it could make us a bit spacey. Is everybody okay with that?

And like, in this room? Yeah. We’re all okay with that.

[01:14:34] Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) At the Conscious Life Expo, “Is it okay if we get a little spacey in this room? Is that okay? Are we okay with that?”

[01:14:38] Carrie Poppy: (Hurriedly.) “Um, no! I have a business meeting in an hour!”

(They giggle.)

[01:14:42] Ross Blocher: “I need to—I need to go trade stocks! I gotta do it! On the hour, every hour I trade stocks!”

[01:14:50] Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) A day trader. Only Mark in the back of the room is a day trader. Okay. So, she says, “You don’t wanna be in your highest vibration all the time, because you know it makes you spacey. It makes you unable to plug into the other parts of your life, which is why we wanna be able to choose to get into that space, which is what we’re doing now. So, first of all, we’re gonna do some chakra cleaning to get you the most powerful you can be.”

We put our hands on our throat. We put our hands on our heart. We put our hands on our third eye. The third eye is for giving and receiving messages, the hardest for removing negative energy. The third eye is for removing anything that’s blocking you from seeing psychically. And of course, the third eye is gonna be the most important. So, “We wanna get that spinning, that chakra, that energy wheel. You wanna receive clairvoyance, see directions, see things through the psychic eye!” And then she says, “Release! And WHOOSH!” And then she said, (softly) “And then, just feel that buzz. Keep your eyes closed and see if you can see that blue/purple color.”

Which does kind of make you see a purple/blue color. Sure.

[01:15:55] Ross Blocher: Of course. One of those things like the tingle on the neck. You can suggest it. It’ll happen. Voila! We’ve verified a supernatural occurrence.

[01:16:04] Carrie Poppy: It’s funny too, ’cause if you make that very specific—if you say, “See the purple tiger with the policeman’s hat,” then we just go, ha-ha-ha-ha, of course I’m seeing that. You just said it. But if you make it kind of vague like this, it’s suddenly magic.

(Ross agrees.)

“So, look around the room with your third eye, with your eyes closed. It might feel like your imagination, but you’ll start to see the room, and you’ll start to see spirits. And you might see your main guide—the one who has been with you through it all. You’re gonna see them in a misty ball of purple light. Some people see them visually, some people just feel it.”

And so, the very first image I got in my head was Jim Carrey as Bruce Almighty.

[01:16:51] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow! Okay! And Carrie’s showing me Jim Carrey as Bruce Almighty with like a yo-yo that looks like the planet Earth.

[01:16:58] Carrie Poppy: That’s right! So, this is the poster for the movie Bruce Almighty, starring Jim Carrey from—god, what? 2010? Somewhere around there? Earlier?

[01:17:06] Ross Blocher: Oh, even—oh goodness. Early 2000s.

[01:17:10] Carrie Poppy: Okay. But this is immediately what I saw. ‘Cause he was coming out of the clouds. This is the image my brain served up.

[01:17:16] Ross Blocher: This is your guide!

[01:17:18] Carrie Poppy: So, I am committing Bruce Almighty—which I have never seen—that character is my spirit guide. Yep. And always has been for all of eternity.

[01:17:28] Ross Blocher: Okay! That’s what came to you.

[01:17:30] Carrie Poppy: That’s what came!

[01:17:30] Ross Blocher: This guided visualization. Okay.

[01:17:33] Carrie Poppy: (Hurriedly.) That’s what she said, to accept it! I’m accepting it!

[01:17:35] Ross Blocher: Verified.

[01:17:36] Carrie Poppy: So, then she had us gently open our eyes. (Laughs.) All I’ve got with me now is Jim Carrey. And—

[01:17:42] Ross Blocher: You’re like, alrighty then!

[01:17:45] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) And then, she preps us for healing the others. So, what we just did for our understanding, for understanding ourselves better, we’re now gonna do it for others. And she says, “Who here does reiki?”

And I don’t mean to brag, but I was given the reiki energy in 2014. So, I raised my hands, and so do about 40 other people. And I’m like, (disappointed) “Oh. There’s a lot of Reiki people here.” But—

(They laugh.)

[01:18:14] Ross Blocher: It’d be more impressive at like a developer’s conference.

[01:18:17] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. True. Yeah. This—reiki is really widespread. So, she says, “If you remember your Reiki symbols, you can do that to energize your hands.” And I do remember one of them, so I did it. “But even if you don’t, I can make you just as powerful. And here’s how.”

You ready, listeners?

[01:18:34] Ross Blocher: Tincture.

[01:18:35] Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) No tincture. “You can do this without any props. Tap three times on your crown.” We’re doing it.

[01:18:43] Ross Blocher: Yep. Like we’re saying, “Good boy, good girl.”

[01:18:45] Carrie Poppy: “Tap three times on the left hand.” (Three quiet taps.) “Tap three times on the right hand.” (Three quiet taps.) “Put hands out in front of you. Call in energy, and feel it coming down from above and say, ‘I am activating!’”

[01:19:02] Ross Blocher: I’m calling down energy from above. I am activating!

[01:19:05] Carrie Poppy: “I would like my spirit guides to come in and help me.”

[01:19:08] Ross Blocher: I would like my spirit guides to come in and help me!

[01:19:11] Carrie Poppy: And as you hold your hands out in front of you and the blood drains from them, you’ll feel a tingle in your hands. She did not mention the blood. I am.

“And bring white light in and raise your soul vibration of your heart and your highest chakras.” You doing that?

[01:19:28] Ross Blocher: Yeah. There’s a visual component to all of this, and yeah, I can—I feel the sensation.

[01:19:34] Carrie Poppy: Okay. “You may feel your soul body leaving. You may become lightheaded. Take deep breaths. Try to float out of your body.” If you’re listening to this podcast in a car, please don’t float out of your body!

[01:19:46] Ross Blocher: But if you’re in the passenger seat, that’s fine. You can float out of your body.

[01:19:50] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) She says, “This is a great time to be in tune to do healing work, but we can’t do that right now, so we’re gonna bring ourselves back. We’re gonna get grounded. Disconnect. Vacuum your body with your right arm.”

[01:20:03] Ross Blocher: Woah! Vacuum?!

[01:20:04] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) She rubs her right arm over her left shoulder, and then her left arm over her right shoulder.

[01:20:11] Ross Blocher: Okay. Okay. Like, vacuum sealing ourselves back in our bodies?

[01:20:14] Carrie Poppy: I think it’s like vacuuming off the energy. She calls that crisscrossing the body, and she says, “That’s how we get in and out of the zone when we do a healing. And now, you’ll do them on one another.”

Now, a problem is we’ve all just done them.

[01:20:31] Ross Blocher: To yourself, so you’re good. Right?

[01:20:32] Carrie Poppy: Yeah! But okay, we’re gonna see another scene, I guess.

[01:20:35] Ross Blocher: This is like in Scientology, when you’ve gotten rid of all your thetans, and then you get to like a level of OT where you’re like, “Now, we’re gonna get rid of more thetans.”

And you’re like, “Wait, I thought you already told me we got rid of all of them.”

“Oh, no. L Ron Hubbard developed a new thing, and it invoked new thetans that somehow we weren’t aware of before when we said you got rid of all your thetans.”

[01:20:51] Carrie Poppy: Oh no, this is never-ending.

(Ross laughs and agrees.)

So, we’re gonna do this team healing where we basically split off into duos, and we do this on each other. And she leads us through the whole process. But truly, the whole process is the same as what you just heard. It’s just now me being the voice of Gail once.

[01:21:08] Ross Blocher: Now, you’re a pair of lonely ones who were meant to be a two-oh, a duo.

[01:21:11] Carrie Poppy: Yes. Is that a song?

[01:21:13] Ross Blocher: Yeah, from An American Tale, a Don Bluth film. (Singing.) “A duo. A duo.”

(Carrie sings along but can’t remember the words.)

“A pair of lonely ones who were meant to be a two—”

[01:21:22] Carrie Poppy: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. That’s been forever. So, a woman right over by me, she asked to be near me. I say, “Oh, I’d love that.” And I actually—at first, I thought she was a listener I had met earlier at the conference. So, I was like, “Um, did we meet before?”

And she’s like, “I—I don’t think so.”

[01:21:39] Ross Blocher: In a past life, we did!

[01:21:40] Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, either it wasn’t—

[01:21:42] Ross Blocher: Did you torture me in a past life?!

[01:21:45] Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) I think it wasn’t a listener, but if it was, you did a great job! So, she was from Michigan, but she lives here in LA now, and this is her first time there. And she was really nervous. She actually said, “What I’m trying to figure out is my anxiety. I’m just so anxious.”

(Ross “aw”s.)

Yeah. I really kind of immediately went into like comforting mode. Like, “Oh, you know, that’s a really common problem. Oh.” Okay. I’m gonna call her Sarah. And Sarah wanted to experiment with being the client first. She wanted me to be the healer. So, I went through the whole thing. I lead her down the staircase. I walk her through looking around. And so, Sarah comes back out, and I ask her about it. And she did see some things that appeared meaningful for her. Like, there’s like a reference she kind of connected with, with sports, that I didn’t quite follow. And then, she also saw submarine with very long hallways.

Later that year, a submarine would be a big news story, but it did not have long hallways.

[01:22:39] Ross Blocher: A submersible, at least. Yeah.

[01:22:41] Carrie Poppy: Okay. And then, we switch. Sarah walks me down the hallway, and what I wrote down is that I saw a tennis court from my old high school and that I had the feeling of my partner. I was like playing tennis with a partner, and the partner’s trying to support me, but they’re simultaneously kind of let down by me. Like, I’m doing a bad job, and they’re being encouraging, but I can also see they’re frustrated and like, “Come on! Why aren’t you better at this?”

So, I’m trying to live up to the expectation, and I’m failing and, eeeh, like trying to chase around this ball, eeh!

(Ross “aw”s.)

And I guess I wrote down, “Maybe the partner is my brother?” Question mark? And that’s about all the wisdom I got out of that. So, we get out of our little not-a-trance, and we start telling each other about our little stories and kind of trying to make meaning out of them. But both of us are kind of like, “Huh, okay. So—yeah. Well, I never played tennis.”

I go, “I’ve never been on a submarine!” You know, this means nothing to either of us. And then, Gail is like, “Oh! Oh my gosh! We’re running out of time! Okay, listen. Everybody come to my booth after this and share your insights. And in fact, I accidentally left the certificates at the booth. So—gosh, I’ve never done that before. Why don’t you go and meet us at the booth? And—”

[01:23:55] Ross Blocher: I like that not only is this certificate so easy to achieve—you just attend this workshop, and you get the certificate—but you don’t even have to do that. All you have to do is know to go to the booth and be like, “Oh, I’d like my certificate, please.”

[01:24:07] Carrie Poppy: Totally. Yep. Also, her booth—

[01:24:09] Ross Blocher: I could’ve gone by and gotten a certificate.

[01:24:11] Carrie Poppy: Almost certainly. Also, her booth was—she was selling so much stuff. I was like, “Did you mean to leave your certificates there to get us back to your booth?”

[01:24:22] Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. And can everybody here really fit at your booth?

[01:24:25] Carrie Poppy: No, they could not, Ross! No, they could not. There was a line. And her daughter, who couldn’t be more than like 14, was running the booth while she ran to find the certificates—which took a long time.

[01:24:38] Ross Blocher: Now, I’m really wishing I knew, and I had gone and gotten my certificate.

[01:24:41] Carrie Poppy: Oh, I should have called you over there.

[01:24:42] Ross Blocher: Yeah. (Playfully angry.) You should have.

[01:24:44] Carrie Poppy: Sorry. (laughs.) But her daughter was taking appointments for Gail’s healing sessions as she stood there. So, we’re all standing there silently waiting for our certificates to come. And her daughter’s like, “Does anyone wanna do a healing session?”

And people are like, “Oh yeah, well, we just did. Well, okay.” And so, her sessions start filling up while we’re all standing there waiting.

[01:25:08] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. It seems like that could be by design. Oh, I bet this daughter has stories to tell.

[01:25:13] Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I hope she does one day. Oh, and by the way, a private session was 150 bucks. Yeah.

[01:25:19] Ross Blocher: Oh, wow! Oh my goodness.

[01:25:20] Carrie Poppy: So, Gail comes back with her certificates, and I could hear her speaking to the woman in front of me as she got hers. And Gail asked her what she got out of the experience, and she said she saw a lot of trees and animal pelts. And Gail was like, “Ah, yes, you’re very aboriginal. You must have tapped into true source energy with this one.”

And then, I got up there and I told Gail that I had these visions of like a tennis court and ice skating and PE class and, you know, I kind of saw this sports theme and maybe like the expectations of others—you know, letting them down with not being good enough yet.

And Gail said, “Ah, they’re showing you that you are going through all your childhood traumas and clearing them!”

[01:26:03] Ross Blocher: Oh, she knew exactly what to say to you.

[01:26:06] Carrie Poppy: Yeah? Okay, sure. Wh-why?

[01:26:09] Ross Blocher: Oh, just ’cause she’s reinforcing the whole trauma thing. To Carrie Poppy.

[01:26:12] Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She just screams trauma at me.

(Ross laughs.)

So, as I leave, I’m flagged over by these people sitting at table like three tables away. And they’re like, “Come over here! Come over here.” I come over, and it is Lori Spagna’s team.

[01:26:29] Ross Blocher: Oh! Uh-oh.

[01:26:30] Carrie Poppy: And they hand me her flyer.

[01:26:32] Ross Blocher: Okay. I’m sure you’re worried for a second, like, “Oh no. Do you recognize me?”

[01:26:36] Carrie Poppy: Right! Yeah, ’cause it was like—

[01:26:37] Ross Blocher: Because you’re Lori Spagna enemy number one.

[01:26:40] Carrie Poppy: And I really felt singled out too. It was like there were a lot of us. It was like, “YOU!” So, this guy hands me a flyer and he says, “She told me to give this to you.”

[01:26:50] Ross Blocher: What?

[01:26:51] Carrie Poppy: And he points at Lori’s picture. And I’m like, “She wants me to go?”

And then, his face totally cracks, and he laughs. He is like, “I’m just kidding! I’m just saying that to everybody who passes by here! I’m just a friend of hers! She’s in the bathroom! Anyway, her name’s Lori Spagna and you should come to her!” (Laughs.)

[01:27:11] Ross Blocher: What a cutup.

[01:27:12] Carrie Poppy: My god. It like scared the living Jesus into me.

[01:27:16] Ross Blocher: Yeah. “Oh no. She’s trained her staff to recognize Carrie Poppy and pull her aside.”

[01:27:23] Carrie Poppy: She’s calling me in for like weird duels or something.

[01:27:25] Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. She’s gonna meet you behind the school yard at six, and she’s gonna try to beat you up.

[01:27:31] Carrie Poppy: And like leaves just like her own picture. And she’s like, “Just point at me, and say I wanna see her.” Um, anyway, I wrote in my notes: “They laugh. I laugh too, though I don’t know what the joke is anymore.” That’s the end of my notes.

[01:27:46] Ross Blocher: Woah. Woah! Got deep there.

(They laugh.)

Wow. Okay. Yay! Gail Thackray! Uh, yeah, there’s a lot to this person. We’ve gotta read her sex industry memoir.

[01:28:01] Carrie Poppy: We probably have to.

[01:28:03] Ross Blocher: Due diligence. Well, thank you for sharing those two events that you attended at Conscious Life Expo with Gail Thackray.

[01:28:10] Carrie Poppy: You’re welcome. It was an honor and a privilege. And Gail, if you’re out there, we’d love to have you on the show!

[01:28:16] Ross Blocher: Absolutely. The door is open.

[01:28:18] Carrie Poppy: But not literally. I have a cat.

[01:28:19] Ross Blocher: Now, look at your feet!

(Carrie laughs.)

That’s it for our show.

[01:28:23] Carrie Poppy: Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.

[01:28:25] Ross Blocher: Our administrative manager is Ian Kremer! You can support us by going to MaximumFun.org/join. That’s where you can become part of the Maximum Fun family, get bonus content, and just feel good about you, because you’ve made our lives possible!

[01:28:41] Carrie Poppy: And remember:

[01:28:43] Music: “I’m My Own Grandpa” performed by Tom Arnold in The Stupids.

And he became my grandchild, ’cause he was my daughter’s son

My wife is now my mother’s mother, and it makes me blue

Because although she is my wife, she’s my grandmother too

If my wife is my grandmother, then I am her grandchild

And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild

This has got to be the strangest thing I ever saw!

As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

I’m my own grandpa

Everybody!

I’m my own grandpa

It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so!

I’m my own grandpa!

(Music ends.)

[01:29:23] Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

[01:29:35] Promo:

Music: Fun, percussive music.

Manolo Moreno: Hey, when you listen to podcasts, it really just comes down to whether or not you like the sound of everyone’s voices. My voice is one of the sounds you’ll hear on the podcast Dr. Gameshow. And this is the voice of co-host and fearless leader, Jo Firestone.

Jo Firestone: This is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners, and we play them with callers over Zoom we’ve never spoken to in our lives.

(Manolo laughs.)

So, that is basically the concept of this show. Pretty chill.

Manolo Moreno: So, take it or leave it, bucko. And here’s what some of the listeners have to say.

Speaker 1: It’s funny, wholesome, and it never fails to make me smile.

Speaker 2: I just started listening, and I’m already binging it. I haven’t laughed as hard in ages. I wish I discovered it sooner.

Manolo Moreno: You can find Dr. Gameshow on MaximumFun.org.

(Music ends.)

[01:30:21] Sound Effect: Cheerful ukulele chord.

[01:30:22] Speaker 1: Maximum Fun.

[01:30:23] Speaker 2: A worker-owned network.

[01:30:24] Speaker 3: Of artist owned shows.

[01:30:26] Speaker 4: Supported—

[01:30:27] Speaker 5: —directly—

[01:30:28] Speaker 6: —by you!

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