Transcript
music
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.
carrie poppy
Hello, welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie! The show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal. No, tut, tut, tut. In 2020, we’re taking part ourselves.
ross blocher
[Laughing] That’s right, when they make the claims, we show up so you don’t have to. I’m Ross Blocher.
carrie
And I’m Carrie Poppy.
ross
And yeah, happy New Year.
carrie
Happy New Year.
ross
We took a couple weeks off. That was nice.
carrie
It was nice.
ross
We’re all rested up and uh.
carrie
Sort of. We’re both having rough days.
ross
Yeah. It happens.
carrie
It happens.
ross
But it was a good break. Got to do lots of reading. It was nice.
carrie
It was nice. I had a nice break, too. Yeah, not much to report on, which means nice and slow.
ross
That means you were actually breaking. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] Excellent.
carrie
What was your favorite book you read in 2019?
ross
The whole year? Well, we’ve already sung the praises of Factfulness.
carrie
People should read Factfulness.
ross
I feel like I should choose something that’s not really well known. Because I really enjoyed Just Mercy. I really enjoyed Unfollow. That’s Megan Phelps-Roper’s story about leaving Westboro Baptist Church. Oh, here we go. One of my friends at work wrote I Moved to Los Angeles to Work in Animation, and it’s just such a great little graphic novel where she talks very logically about what choices she had to make, what she had to give up, how she could save money, how she improved her artistic career and took advantage of resources. It’s really well laid out, where I’d give it to anybody who’s trying to follow an artistic career. You know, even if it’s not purely animation. She kind of went from doing comics. Anyways, I highly recommend that. Natalie Nourigat.
carrie
I remember seeing that at Skylight Bookstore, taking a picture and sending it to you and being like, “Do you about this?” You were like, “Hm, my friend wrote it.”
ross
Yeah, it was a good year of reading. I set my own new personal best, 56 books in one year.
carrie
Nice. I think I only read 43.
ross
Wow.
carrie
Yeah. I’m really falling asleep on the job.
ross
I’ve been moving up. I need to stop that. Now I’m spending too much time reading.
carrie
My 2020 resolution is actually to read 40, bring it down a little. Because I noticed I was tricking myself into reading shorter books, and not enjoying them. I felt like I had to get to the end of it, because I have to get more and more. It’s like, that’s not reading more.
ross
Yeah, you shouldn’t have to feel like you’re gaming the system.
carrie
Exactly. Anyway.
ross
Here we are.
carrie
About this show.
ross
Oh yeah. Oh No, Ross and Carrie! We’ve got a bunch of fun things that we’re excited to tell you about, but we thought we should begin the year again with psychic predictions.
carrie
Yes. This is our new tradition.
ross
I know what you’re thinking. Oh, you’ve been talking about psychics a lot lately. Well—
carrie
Is that true?
ross
Yeah. We had Cindy Kaza, and then we talked with Susan and Mark about psychics.
carrie
Oh, and then there was the woman who talked to Jimmy Stewart for me.
ross
Yeah, the Hollywood psychic. And then we did a review of Sister Rocky’s predictions from the previous years. We’ve been talking a lot about psychics. But, we brought you something primo.
carrie
[Laughing] And this is our new tradition.
ross
This is some high grade psychic.
carrie
Beginning of the year, ask a psychic what’s gonna happen to us. End of the year, see if it was true.
ross
See if it panned out.
carrie
So, if you don’t like it, don’t worry. We’re only doing it until we die.
ross
So we were tossing around a few different ideas of how we could get our predictions, but then a friend of ours recommended a particular video.
carrie
Yes. So this wasn’t in the context of, “Carrie, you should see this because of your show.” It was our friend Caroline, Drew’s and my very good friend, and her husband Vince, also our very good friend, he was having his 30th birthday. And we went over to his apartment instead of doing—this seems to happen at every party these days. You have these plans. We’re gonna play these specific games, we’re gonna drink this thing, we’re gonna eat these things. And then someone’s like, “We all gotta see this YouTube video.” And then you end up watching like, at least five or six before you get back to what you were doing.
ross
Sounds about right, yup.
carrie
So apparently Caroline loves to pull out this Youtube video.
ross
I think that’s also how we got the Flat Earth movement, from that addictiveness of YouTube videos, and them suggesting the next thing for you.
carrie
Oh, sure. That’s how we ended up—
ross
With the modern Flat Earth movement, starting with Mark Sargeant and going up. Like, it all start—and Teal Swan, too, is really reliant upon people finding her on YouTube. So, thanks YouTube. Good job.
carrie
Um, but in this case, it was a very pleasant video that Caroline pulled out, and said, “I make everyone watch this. You haven’t seen it yet? Oh my god. Carrie, you’re gonna love it.”
ross
She was right.
carrie
“Drew, you’re gonna love it.” So we sit down. She pulls up this video. So, it’s from Jubilee, which is a channel I’m pretty familiar with, that’s usually they will take people of opposing viewpoints and have them sit down and converse with each other, and there’s usually some sort of social experiment kind of aspect to it. Our friend Spencer was in one talking to Flat Earthers. This one, though, was five real psychics figure out who the sixth, phony psychic is amongst them. And they all haven’t met before.
ross
Which is a great concept.
carrie
It’s so funny. It’s like watching Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, where you have to sit there and go, “Well, these are all fiction, but which one did they identify as fiction?” [Both laugh.]
ross
Right. If you can necessarily buy into those abilities. But yeah, people who are professional psychics, can they tell the person who is not a professional psychic? So it was an even mix of men and women, there were six total. And the rules of the game are they stand up on a stage and they talk to each other for awhile, and they ask each other probing questions. “Oh, do you do Reiki, and what planets are you from, and what’s your vibration?”
carrie
“Who’s a star seed?”
ross
And uh, so then everybody, you know, like voting somebody off the island, they all take turns holding up their vote about who they think is the fake. And I will say, from the outside, I did tell somebody as I was doing this, I nominate two that I thought it was gonna be. The first one they voted off was one of the two that I had chosen.
carrie
The first one they voted off was the one I chose.
ross
Oh, okay. My metric that I was using was, who was most trying to put on the stereotypical psychic look? And so that’s kind of what I went by. Uh, so yeah, so she was gone, and then it turned out she was one of the actual psychics, and she said, “I work in light, these people all work in darkness.”
carrie
Yeah, she really threw everybody under the bus.
ross
Totally. That was one of the little debates amongst the psychics, was asking each other—one woman asked, “Oh, do you do dark magic?” to this man that we’ll describe in just a moment. There was this immediate, visceral reaction of, “Uh, no.”
carrie
“There’s no such thing. There’s just magic.”
ross
“It’s all about your intention.” Also it has a lot of kind of racist connotations, talking about—
carrie
Black versus white magic.
ross
Right, yeah specifically. Exactly. So then they all conferred again.
carrie
And then they voted another person off.
ross
If you’re worried about a spoiler, pause right here. Go watch the video. It’s on Jubilee.
carrie
[Sing-song] Spoilers, spoilers, spoiler time.
ross
It’s funny, there were three women and they voted out two of the women. The only other woman remaining was the fake. But, one person really stands out in this video.
carrie
Okay, so we start the video at Caroline’s house, and Drew just busts up laughing. And he’s like, “‘Well, it’s this guy!”
ross
[Laughing] Oh, who’s the fake?
carrie
Is the fake. ‘Cause it’s so—
ross
Over the top.
carrie
—it seems so clear that this person is putting on airs, and I was like, “I don’t think so, because it’s so obvious.” Like, he’s so the odd ball out that if they cast this one guy, he’s just a totally different energy from everyone else, that’s on Jubilee. [Ross laughs.] I don’t think it’s gonna be him. And the whole time, Drew’s like, “It’s him, it’s him, it’s him!” And it’s not.
ross
It’s not?
carrie
He’s a real psychic. He, in fact, says he has psychic powers.
ross
He stands out from everybody else—
carrie
—for many reasons.
ross
Yeah, he’s taller. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] He’s—well, he’s more dapper.
carrie
He has a handlebar moustache, and a standard American dialect.
ross
Describe that for me. What does standard American dialect mean?
carrie
I’m not good at doing it, but [With a posh inflection] it’s that very proper American accent of the 30s and 40s that almost sounds British but isn’t.
ross
[Same infliction] Aha, and very annunciated syllables.
carrie
Yes, and it just suggests I’m very fancy.
ross
[In a normal tone] And he is very fancy. He’s also wearing a suit. In this case it’s just a—
carrie
I think we are dealing with a cut of like, a smoking jacket or a robe, where it comes over quite a bit.
ross
It’s a very high jacket, yeah, and it’s got kind of a darker lapel. He’s wearing a red lapel pin, he’s got the red tie and some sort of jewelry stuck into the knot of the tie. But yeah, he’s a striking figure, and just looks so different from everybody else.
carrie
So much. He’s the person who you’d ask to, I don’t know, come to your spooky graveyard wedding, and be your officiant.
ross
Pale skin, so almost looks like he could also be a mortician or something like that. So yeah, he just immediately stands out, because he’s got the accent, he’s got this bearing.
carrie
He’s doing the whole thing.
ross
And he’s talking about spells and—I want to know more about this guy.
carrie
Right, he completely dominates the entire scene.
ross
And his name is—
carrie
Richard-Lael. And when you watch the video you keep thinking, “Why are they giving him his last name, and everyone else just gets a first name?”
ross
Yeah, why is he Richard-Lael?
carrie
It’s because his name is Richard-hypen-Lael Lillard.
ross
So, you looked him up.
carrie
Yeah. Oh, we immediately—Drew and I were like, “Well, we’ve checked out of this party mentally. We’re just looking up Richard-Lael for awhile now.”
ross
Oh, and since we’ve already kind of spoiled how it ends, of course right after everybody fails after the second round, and they commit to, “Yeah, we’ve definitely outed the fake psychic,” then we find out they’re wrong. And immediately, everybody says, “I knew it!” when they point to the third woman, the actual fake psychic, who had been one of the two that I guessed. ‘Cause she was, you know, dressed in the shawl, and just kind of had that look of like, what would a psychic wear? Oh, they’d wear this kind of flowery, loose-draped thing.
carrie
Oh, she was the second person you chose?
ross
Yeah.
carrie
Nicely done.
ross
Thank you. And yeah, everybody immediately, “I knew it! I knew it! I looked at your shoes!”
carrie
“I knew it! I was certain!” A trap I know I have fallen into, because sometimes if I dunno, others, maybe if a twist or whatever, you’re trying to figure it out, it can be very easy to be like, “Oh, I predicted that, because at one point I thought that.” Kind of forgetting, well, you had like eight theories going, and you never landed on one. And now that one stands out a bunch.
ross
Those ones seem remarkably clear. Which is funny, ‘cause that happened to the second woman, who was kicked out. She said at the end, “I even predicted in advance, I wrote it down. I said that it would be a woman, and that she would—”
carrie
“She would have brown, curly hair.” Then she pulls it out and no, it’s like—
ross
She pulls out her phone. “Oh, I said straight hair, but I knew it.” [Both laugh.]
carrie
That part doesn’t matter, because it’s not right.
ross
Yeah, memories are fun that way. So, yeah, so you looked him up. Was it hard?
carrie
Uh, no. Uh-uh. You know, actually I think initially, I think Caroline had already gone on a deep dive about this, and so she was like, “We all gotta go sometime!” And she sent me the link to his house, and she said, “He does psychic readings out of this crazy Victorian house. We gotta go.” And I said, “You know, Ross and I have to get 2020 predictions.” And she was like, [Making strained noises] “You have to go! You have to do this!”
ross
Oh, so Caroline hasn’t met him yet.
carrie
No.
ross
Oh, she’s gotta go!
carrie
And she is a big fan. She told me as soon as I said we were going, she was like, “Tell him I’m a big fan!” Okay. Awesome. Uh, my friend Caroline...
ross
Now, some of you may remember Caroline from our alien meditation investigation. She joined us for that.
carrie
She met the cat aliens with us.
ross
He goes as The Gentleman Psychic. You booked with him, and found out that it could be either one hour for $120, or half an hour for $85 dollars. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] So, this is your standard economy of scale. The more time you buy with him, the less expensive it is per minute.
carrie
The only real way to contact him was through his website, where you need to give an email address, and we’re kind of Googleable. And psychics, some of them—some of them Google you. So I was like, “Eh, how do I handle this?” So, I have a burner account with the name Carrie and a different last name, and I used that to email him.
ross
A rare instance of subterfuge.
carrie
[Laughing] The last name is suggested in the email address. I don’t actually say that’s my name. Then I thought—after I emailed him I was like, “I wonder if I Google that—” ‘Cause I never tried just like, Googling that name, Carrie and this other last name, Los Angeles, “—what do I get?” And I pull it up, and there’s like, a woman who like—not like we look the same or anything, but like, I could dress up like this woman. And like, she’s probably in her mid-30s. I was like, “I bet I can be a believable this woman.”
ross
This is Carrie’s commitment to the bit.
carrie
“What does she do?” So she’s a marriage and family therapist and psychologist, and she has brown hair. So I was like, “I have to dye my hair brown!” [Both laugh.] So I went—so I had injured my foot that day, but I hobbled over to Walgreens, got some brown hair dye, and uhh, dyed my hair.
ross
I like that you all did this just on the hunch that he might Google you, thinking that was your name. Excellent. Okay.
carrie
Correct. Also the email address suggests that I really like cats.
ross
That’s funny, that will come up. Cats and whether we should like them or not. So uh, he sent his address, and we set up a time. It was on a Thursday night.
carrie
I just said my friend was coming. I didn’t even say like, your first name.
ross
And he didn’t ask.
carrie
Yeah. Well, big whoop.
ross
More the merrier.
carrie
And we did decide to do a half hour each.
ross
And uh, oh my goodness, this house. You told me. You got there first and you said, “You’ll know it when you see it.”
carrie
[Laughs] “It won’t be a problem.”
ross
As Richard-Lael is to other psychics, this house is to other houses on that block. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] You go, “Oh, that’s the one I’m interested in over there.”
carrie
It’s a funny moment coming on that street, because you’re going like, “Okay, where’s the—it’s that one.”
ross
[Laughing] “Oh, it might be that two storey one with the Victorian style.”
carrie
Right, the gables that stretch into the pink, dark night.
ross
It was twilight going into nighttime.
carrie
It was beautiful. It was the greatest moment to arrive.
ross
It looked super spooky and wonderful. Yeah.
carrie
Our readings were at 6 P.M.?
ross
Correct.
carrie
And he lives in Pasadena, which is a couple of towns over from us, but still not too bad a drive.
ross
Yeah, Pasadena has a lot of that kind of classic architecture, and it’s notorious for its horrible parking. And there was ample parking.
carrie
Oh, I don’t think of Pasadena as notorious for its horrible parking. Huh, interesting.
ross
Oh, I sure do. Oh yeah, and the house has a turret. Sort of a faux third floor, looks like there’s an attic up there, maybe with some windows. Yeah, and a big porch in front, like a balcony on the second floor. It’s an amazing looking—it’s like a dollhouse expanded upward, with a slightly creepier feel, maybe just because we know about our friend who lives there.
carrie
What is inside.
ross
So uh, yeah. How did it go when you showed up?
carrie
Yeah, I just said, “Oh, I’ll go in even though Ross isn’t here yet. I can chat with him a little bit. So, knocked on the door, he was right there and ready. Opened up and said, [Posh accent] “Hello, my friend.”
ross
[Posh accent] “Hello, my friend. Come on in, come on in.”
carrie
[Laughing] That sounds very Silence of the Lambs. So, he let me in and led me to sort of a sitting room. So, immediately you’re walking through velvet-clad walls and just art everywhere, and all of it in the theme, all of it occultist or just like, spiritualist. There’s nothing that’s just like, “Oh, and also I’m reading this Charles Dickens book.” No. That would not belong.
ross
Yeah, oh, the design is amazing. So there’s sort of a foyer as you walk in, and there’s stripey wallpaper, and then off to the left there’s a little room where we’ll end up and that’s got like a print. But all of it feels like old style wallpaper. Then there’s this main room where he first kind of welcomed us, let us in, and it’s all red and there’s antlers in some of his decorating. There’s animal heads on the wall, and there’s paintings, there’s a suit of armor as you walk in. A very beautiful, fancy suit of armor. Yeah, okay, what else is there?
carrie
Okay, so he introduced me to a woman, who he said, “This is my dear friend, Alice.” Not her real name. And then he had me sit down. He said, “Would you like a spot of tea?” And I said, “Yeah, that’d be great.” ‘Cause, well first of all, hot drinks.
ross
Uh, yeah.
carrie
You gonna offer me hot drinks at the very top of one of our investigations? Uh, yes. For you, I’m gonna take this hot drink. It will improve your score. So he brought out a pot of tea and it was pretty good. It was a little too sweet for me, but it was good. Like, earl grey plus some fruit teas.
ross
Yeah, and he said there was just a hint of chocolate.
carrie
Yeah, hint of chocolate, yeah. Which I think already sweetened it, so it didn’t need sugar. So then—
ross
Well he put—I don’t know if he put honey in yours, but he did in mine.
carrie
No, I asked for sugar instead of honey.
ross
Oh, I see. Okay. I had honey, and then he put some milk in mine as well. But yeah, tea right off the bat, and the tea service was concomitant with the house.
carrie
Yes. And he brought honey for his own cup, put some in, and then said, “I have to go wash my hands. I got honey on my hands.” Which would become a theme.
ross
Oh, yes.
carrie
I think maybe he should just have sugar. Honey got involved three or four times, and he had to keep going and washing his hands. Just a little before you showed up, a couple things happened. So, Alice said to me, “Running a bit late.” And it was like 6:03. And I was like—I didn’t think I was, so I was like, “Oh, am I?” And she said, “No, your friend.” I was like, “Oh, I mean, okay. I mean, very barely, but sure.”
ross
I was running late, yeah.
carrie
By like three minutes. So then we, just the three of us chatted a little bit. She mentioned that he had recently been on Ghost Adventures, a show on the television.
ross
Which we hadn’t seen yet.
carrie
Which I hadn’t seen, and she said it as if she kind of assumed that’s why I was there. Because she just sort of tossed it off like, “Well yeah, you know, there’s been a lot of people coming since—” And I said, “I’m sorry, what’s that?” And she said, “Oh! Oh, okay. He uh, it’s a television show, and he was on it, and whenever they re-air it we get a lot of calls and emails.” And I said, “Oh, okay. I discovered it ‘cause of the Jubilee video.” And she kind of—she knew what that was. She kind of nodded like, “Well, that’s not as good a way to encounter him” is kind of the vibe I got. He came back in and—
ross
Interesting. Now that I’ve seen the other video, I’d think it would be the other way around.
carrie
Interesting. Okay. Well so, he came back in and I said, “Yeah, you know, I discovered you from Jubilee. Well actually, my friend Caroline did. She said to tell you she’s a big fan.” Oh, okay. And then he said, “You know, I—ugh—that whole thing. I just—you know, I was—I knew who it was from the beginning of course, but I thought part of the game was to try to keep extending it and doing two or three levels, you know? But at level two, they let us vote on whether to continue the game or not, and I thought for sure we would all vote yes, you know, to continue the game.”
ross
And that’s true. I think he did—I think he was the one person who put his and up to like, yeah, let’s keep going.
carrie
Mm-hm. But the others voted to end it there, and so he was like, “Yeah, so I was just, the whole time I was saving my real guess that was her.” Mm. Okay. Undisprovable. Un-unprovable. There you have it. He knew all along.
ross
Excellent. So yeah, I came up to the door, and there was tape over the doorbell to let you know, no no, we knock here.
carrie
We knock here. Probably also the doorbell doesn’t work.
ross
Doorbells weren’t invented when this house was built.
carrie
But tape was.
ross
So I hit the little knocker, and he showed up right away and, “Hello my friend, come in, come in.” And uh, it’s a little overwhelming, you know. This man—oh man, okay, so this time he had a different suit on. It was a double-breasted suit with bright shiny red buttons, and a purple cravat, a large gem in that. And he’s got, I don’t know, something hanging out of one of the pockets, sort of a chain. I would assume a pocket watch, but.
carrie
It’s kind of the outfit you would expect like, a fancy teddy bear to wear.
ross
Okay, okay, yeah. The wedding teddy bear or something. It’s just, wow, okay, this is amazing.
carrie
This is happening.
ross
He’s got the curly moustache and just this whole affectation, and it felt for me like I had this moment of stepping into like a civil war reenactment camp. And then the thing of like, oh, do I meet you halfway? Am I—
carrie
[Posh voice] “Oh, yes, hello, I’m Ross.” [Both laugh.]
ross
And then, oh shoot, I have to commit to that now.
carrie
Like, bow all the way to the waist.
ross
I’m not dressed for it. No, I certainly didn’t do that. But it’s just, “Okay, wow, what’s happening? This is amazing. I love this.” Because it’s so themed and—
carrie
Yeah, it reminded me of the haunted mansion, but it is a lot more chipper than the haunted mansion is. You know what, it’s like the feel of the game Clue.
ross
Oh, yes. Yes. Very much so. That’s a good way to describe it. And Alice, I don’t think she was dressed up in any way. She wasn’t matching the whole aesthetic.
carrie
Although I think she was wearing all black.
ross
Was she? Okay.
carrie
But yeah. Sort of typical person.
ross
Yeah well, now knowing that conversation, I can feel like either she just wasn’t very sociable where I was concerned, or she was judging me, I don’t know. But I think we barely spoke five words to each other.
carrie
Oh, okay. Well, she apparently does the organizing of his schedule. She told me that they do three to six readings a day. [Ross responds emphatically with “wow”.] Pretty good business.
ross
Yeah, absolutely. They mentioned that the house was built in 1890, which I thought was pretty cool. ‘Cause I’ve talked before about my wife’s kind of creepy house that she was raised in that was built in 1893. So yeah, similar era.
carrie
I think 1893 is also when— [Laughs] I was just about to say something insane. I was about to say, “I think 1893 is when James Randi was born.”
ross
No.
carrie
Nope! That’s impossible.
ross
Oh, that’s funny. Though 1893 was the year of the Columbian Expedition, which was a significant year. Devil in the White City. Good book. Yeah, and then he got me the tea, and oh yeah, this is wonderful. I love this place, I want to stay here forever. So yeah, I was already into this. I was like, “This is great. You’re serving me hot drinks, they’re delicious. They’re not too sweet for me.” And yeah, you started asking about his name. “How did you come about by the name Richard-Lael?” And he said, “Oh, Lael. It means ‘Chosen by God.’”
carrie
Yeah, he who was chosen. Something like that.
ross
And don’t take my—[Posh accent] And don’t take my accent to be exact, because it’ll probably change throughout the recording. I can’t maintain that consistency. But it’s very—it’s very soft, it’s very—
carrie
Proper?
ross
Proper. Yes. Well-pronounced. It’s funny, because he lost it for just a second when he was trying to remember the fruits that were in the tea. [Carrie laughs.] He said something like, “Oh, I can’t even think. Uh, mango, pear, pomegranate.” Like, it wasn’t quite that stark a difference, but just for a second the accent went away, and then—
carrie
His real personality came in for a second.
ross
—snap, came back.
carrie
Yeah. That’s funny.
ross
But yeah, he said he “used to be Richie when he was a kid, and that was cute, that was sweet, but I got tired of it. Then I became, I don’t know, what’s next, Rich?” And eventually he decided on Richard like his father and his father’s father, but that wasn’t exciting enough. He added the middle name there as a hyphenate.
carrie
I also asked him how you do tell a fake psychic. How do you know if you’re in the midst of a fake psychic?
ross
What did he say?
carrie
Well, he made a good point. He said, “Well, everyone’s psychic. So you’re never really in the midst of a fake psychic, because everyone has those abilities. It’s just whether you’ve developed them.” Okay. Fair enough.
ross
Good angle.
carrie
And then he said—the question really at play there is, who is making a living off of it, and has, you know, lots of experience tapping into it? So I felt actually like that was a better squirrely response to get out of not doing the Jubilee game right. I mean, if someone had been like, “Oh well, I don’t know, I think everyone’s psychic.” I think I would’ve been like, “Oh, Touché.”
ross
That’s true. Coulda use that. So then it was time for your reading. You were first.
carrie
Yeah. They asked me if I wanted you to come along, and I said, “Yeah, why not?”
ross
I said, “Okay, sure. Or I could sit here and be silently judged by Alice for half an hour.”
carrie
For being three minutes late.
ross
I mean, either one’s just as good.
carrie
But before I tell you what happened in the sitting room with the tarot deck, I love podcasts.
ross
Oh, me too.
carrie
Yeah? What’s your favorite podcast?
ross
I’m a big fan. My favorite? I’m gonna say Reading Glasses.
carrie
Okay, well, I’m gonna challenge you to also listen to this one.
promo
Music: “War” by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong with lead vocals by Edwin Starr plays in the background. John Roderick: Friendly Fire is a podcast about war movies, but it’s so much more than that. Adam Pranica: It’s history! Speaker 1 (Film clip): Was just supposed to be another assignment. Ben Harrison: It’s comedy. Speaker 2 (Film clip): Under no circumstances are you to engage the enemy. Adam: It’s... cinema studies. Murdock (Rambo: First Blood Part II): That's a hell of a combination. John: So, subscribe and download Friendly Fire on your podcatcher of choice. Ben: Or at MaximumFun.org. Adam: And also, come see us at San Francisco Sketchfest on January 16th. Ben: You can get tickets at SFsketchfest.com. Speaker 3 (Film clip): [A strained whisper] Mission… accomplished. [Music fades out.]
carrie
What do you think?
ross
Oh, that sounds like a great show, too. In fact, I’m gonna listen to it right now. Goodbye.
carrie
Oh! Oh, no. I don’t know why I brought that up. So, speaking of reading, I went into a little side room that Richard-Lael pulled me toward.
ross
And, you know, I guess based on the layout of the house, we were inside the turret?
carrie
Yeah. I think so. The little round sitting room off of the foyer.
ross
Later on we did watch the Ghost Adventure show, and they described that as the seancé room. Which is where, if I were to hold a seancé, I would. We did not that evening. But it’s very enclosed, and it’s I guess hexagonal. And yeah, very narrow space. So you kind of edge in, watch your knees carefully as you get to your seat.
carrie
So we’ve got our little um, saucer and teacup and we’re walking in with that. So it is time to do my reading. [Ross responds affirmatively.] So he takes out a tarot deck, which I didn’t know was gonna happen.
ross
And he seats himself on the far side on a chair and we’re seated to his left.
carrie
Right under a painting of him as Satan.
ross
[Laughing] The painting, yeah. We stopped to talk about that. He tells us the story of a photographer friend who insisted on taking a photo of him, and then “I tried to have a painting done and I did not like it, but then I realized this is perfect.” And he’s the devil with horns and glowing red eyes.
carrie
It’s pretty dope.
ross
Oh, it’s awesome. I want one like that. Oh, and he tells us that he he had a former life as a celebrity impersonator.
carrie
Right. So I knew that he had been an actor, because he has an IMDB. I think he was in the movie Clementine, is that what it’s called? Uh, Nectarine? Clementine?
ross
Tangerine?
carrie
Tangerine? Yeah, Tangerine. That’s it.
ross
Really?
carrie
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know the movie?
ross
No.
carrie
It was that one that was shot on an iPhone, like—and it was also the people who made The Florida Project. I’ve never seen either one. People love both, they’re supposed to be very good. But yeah, so he was in that. So it seemed to me like he started out as an actor, which is a trajectory we’ve seen before.
ross
So he tells us that he has played both Willy Wonka, the newer Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka, and Freddie Mercury of Queen fame. And yeah, he’s very well suited to the part. He still kind of has that look of a very dapper Freddie Mercury. And I was looking at him throughout the night—we were very close to him with the lighting—he reminded me a lot of Jimmy Fallon. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] I think he could do that as well. So, if you were somewhere between Freddie Mercury and Jimmy Fallon, you got Richard-Lael. Add a little bit of the overbite too that made him well-suited to do the Freddie Mercury thing. Everything we learned about this guy was just more layers to him. So yes.
carrie
We could set the scene of the character for this whole episode, but what did he actually say would happen to us? [Ross responds affirmatively.] So he had me take the tarot deck and cut it three times with my left hand.
ross
Yes, before he even gave it to you, he said, “Some people don’t let you touch the tarot deck. I do, I just—I cleanse it.” So he held it up, kind of closed his eyes, focused, and blew on it in circular motions.
carrie
The way people blow on wine and circle it around, it’s kind of like that.
ross
But yeah, then you cut it into the three piles, and then assembled those, and then did that two more times. Three of three.
carrie
And he said, “Your left hand, please,” which—that was a little—a little suspicious. Tends to be where people wear their wedding and engagement rings.
ross
Oh! Clever. That’s super smart. I didn’t think about that. That’s ‘cause you’re smart.
carrie
Thank you. Well, I think I was thinking about it because I have an engagement ring on, which—I mean engagement is such a specific moment in your life, right?
ross
It’s a period of transition.
carrie
Period of t—oh, that’s interesting.
ross
[Posh tone] Carrie, it’s a period of transition.
carrie
That’s interesting, ‘cause as I was reflecting on his reading later on, I was like, “Maybe he did Google me and determine I was that woman.” Because there were a few things that I didn’t really put together at the time that would make sense for her, that I just passed by. Anyway.
ross
Yeah, I don’t get that feeling, but uh—
carrie
I didn’t at the time either, so either could be true. Okay, so I cut the cards. He said, “So first, I’m going to lay them out and we’ll have a more general reading, and then we can get more specific, okay? Okay.” So, he makes a pretty elaborate little um, what would you call it? Blueprint of cards.
ross
Configuration, yeah. He lays out first in the center three cards, and then there’s one card laid across them, perpendicular.
carrie
Which was death.
ross
[Laughing] Yeah, that’s a dramatic opening. Then he’s got, above that, closer to us, there’s two groups of three. So one on the left, one on the right. And then below that central group, there’s another three and three. So you’ve got sixteen cards total.
carrie
Oh, I’m glad you were counting.
ross
Counting cards.
carrie
[Laughs] Each little area had its own meaning in terms of your life or future. So the first we were going to talk about was the deep past.
ross
Yes. Yeah, those center three were past, present, and future, in broad strokes.
carrie
So—oh, first of all, one of the cards laying closest to me was a peacock.
ross
[Laughs] Okay, so, peacocks. Remember, that’s—if you listened to our psychic Sister Rocky review episode, we made our own predictions for the year 2020.
carrie
And I said a peacock would make national news.
ross
So, immediately after this we found out—and this was still in 2019, right—NBC had announced its new streaming service and it would be called—
carrie
Peacock.
ross
Peacock.
carrie
After you and I recorded, I told Drew all of our predictions, and he said, “Oh, there’s that NBC streaming service.” And I was like, “Oh, what’s—is that called Peacock?”
ross
Yeah, we didn’t know that.
carrie
For sure. But it had been announced in 2019, so it doesn’t count. But it’s fun.
ross
Yeah. So here’s a peacock.
carrie
Here’s another peacock. Oh my god.
ross
In a lovely illustration. These cards, again, are completely consistent with the decor and design of the house. They have this feeling of an engraving that’s been colorized. Each one has the name of the card, maybe it’s a character, maybe it’s an emotion. Then down below, there’s translations in four different languages, so it’s like Italian—
carrie
Spanish.
ross
—German, for sure. Maybe French.
carrie
Oh, you know, maybe I thought the Italian was Spanish.
ross
But there’s four language tran—I kept looking at the German ones.
carrie
Uh-huh. Yeah, he said that I was going to be going through change in my life, and change is often painful. In fact, it’s likely painful, and you’ll need to regroup after it. But just keep going, that’s okay, it’s not a bad thing. He kept saying that. He would say that a lot. “It’s not a bad thing.” He said, “Okay, now here we have your deep past. You were in a bad place. Now you’re kind of coming into your own.”
ross
Yeah, you were up against a wall.
carrie
Yeah, “before you were—it was not good, but now journey has taken you away from that. Now you will be journeying out of your comfort zone, but in a good way. It’s not a bad thing, it’s not a bad thing.” He said that I’ve opened a door, which I must admit, I’ve done many times.
ross
Yeah, I think just this evening you were opening a door, when you came in this room.
carrie
Yeah, yeah. Totally. But he said, “Now, you’ve helped a lot of people in service. You’re always serving others. Service, service, and the service industry, or whatever it might be.” And anybody can frame their work as service. I can do that.
ross
Or some job that they’ve done.
carrie
Right. But it doesn’t land for me as like, “Oh yeah, I’m like exhausted by all my service.” That’s just not particularly something I would think. But, if I were a marriage and family therapist.
ross
Huh. Yeah. Yeah, though I feel it’s like, such an easy, generic thing that you’d say that to anybody. And—
carrie
I think probably especially women.
ross
And I think he was looking—I won’t be able to remember well which cards tracked with which parts of the reading, because he very fluidly kind of moves between the cards, and uses them to tell the story. And like you’ve been intimating, there’s a lot of kind of poetic statements, restatements, stating something and then stating its reverse sentiment at the same time. But I know at some point there was a servant card, so that might have—
carrie
Yeah, but that was——he told us—
ross
Was that later on?
carrie
—that meant someone who keeps secrets.
ross
Oh, that was part of that, yeah. So it may have been one of the cards too. Anyways.
carrie
Okay. And then he said I need to remember that the work I’m doing is for me, to take care of me. Sure, it helps other people, that’s fine. But it’s still about you, you know. Look after yourself.
ross
Take care of yourself, yes.
carrie
He said I’ll be releasing a lot of sorrow and negativity, and I’m moving toward becoming the old woman card.
ross
Oh yeah, where you just want to sit in your chair.
carrie
Where you just sit in your chair, you’re comfortable, you’re confident. You know what you want. It’s where we all want to be. Eventually, I’m getting there. Then you ran out of tea— [Both start laughing.] —and he leaped to attention.
ross
[Posh tone] “Oh, do you need more tea?”
carrie
[Also posh tone] “Did you need some more tea?”
ross
“Oh, sure. I mean, I won’t say no to more tea.” “Okay. Let’s fix this.”
carrie
It’s the kind of thing where like, in my memory this obviously didn’t happen. I see him like, turning over the table, because it’s just that abrupt, him standing up.
ross
But of course, there’s no exit path, ‘cause we’re all just like barely fitting in this tiny little space. And so I have to kind of edge out to not knock my knees on the table.
carrie
At least I was thinking, “Isn’t your friend in the other room? Like, she can grab the tea.”
ross
Call to her, yeah. Make her earn her keep. So I get out of the way. He sidles his way out. He goes off to get it. He comes back, he pours me a fresh batch, he gets honey on his hands again.
carrie
[Laughing] He has to go wash his hands.
ross
“Pardon me, I just need to go take care of the honey and get it off my hands.” So we’re sitting there going, “This place is lovely. This is amazing.”
carrie
“This is just beautiful.” And quickly taking pictures of the cards.
ross
This time he brings back this lovely, ornate metal tea pot, and he leaves the whole serving tray right next to us. And again, I get out, he gets in, there’s this whole shuffling thing. And the table’s wobbling, and he assures us, “The table’s level, it’s just the floor that’s uneven.” So yes, then we can resume this intimate psychic reading.
carrie
So my next card was a—I’m not sure what the overall tableau was, but what stood out to him was that there was a statue of Atlas within the tableau.
ross
Oh, yeah, somewhere in the background. Yeah, that was interesting. He would often point to something and say, “Oh, see that figure back there? That’s you.”
carrie
Yeah, and it would be something I wouldn’t have even noticed.
ross
Right, sometimes they’re barely perceptible. The lighting is very low in here as well, so you know, you really have to like get close to these cards and kind of rotate your head to see, what is that? What’s that a picture of?
carrie
Right. Yeah, “That Atlas is very important. You take the world on your shoulders. So going forward you need to minimize that, look out for yourself, not so much for others.” Okay. He mentioned that I had a few transition cards. So there was a butterfly, famous transition symbol. A peacock that, you know. First he’s just hanging out, then suddenly he’s these big flashy thing.
ross
Fwomp. Yeah, okay, that’s a transition. The ring on your hand, that’s a transition.
carrie
And then the death card, which you know, “Doesn’t have to be literal. It can just mean the end of something, the beginning of something new.”
ross
And I think the death was dramatically the one that was askew, the only one that’s rotated.
carrie
The one that he was like, “This kind of affects all the others. Death.”
ross
Which is so funny, because, you know, we’ve seen enough psychic readings now to know that the death card, of course, is just super fun to have in the deck, to have it show up. Because it’s such a—it draws so much attention to it. And I think everybody has their kind of speaking points to it, to to say, “Ah, we’re not talking about literal death.” But now I’m just waiting for one psychic to say like, “Oh, someone’s gonna die.”
carrie
Yeah, totally. Which I’m sure when these decks were first invented, people were doing that.
ross
Because people died more.
carrie
People died more, that’s true. You gotta read Factfulness.
ross
[Laughs] Yeah, death was more of a person’s life. You know, there was a higher chance that your child would die, that someone would get consumption.
carrie
Your wife would die.
ross
We’ll get to that.
carrie
So he said, “When things seem inconsistent, just pause. Pause, regain your strength, take some deep breaths.” Okay.
ross
That’s good advice. Another theme of this evening.
carrie
So then he said, “Do you do vision boards in general?” And I said, “Uh, no not in general, but I did this year.” He said, “Oh, good, because those are your messages to the universe, and they will help you achieve what you want. So it’s very good you did it.” And so I’d like to show you, Ross—
ross
Your vision board?
carrie
—my vision board that I made at my friend Kate Raft’s New Years party. Please hold.
ross
[Laughs] Oh boy. Okay. Carrie is rummaging around. She is pulling out—oh, she’s got it. She’s got a visual aid here. It’s roughly, maybe—
carrie
[Making emphatic “dun dun dun” noises] My vision for 2020!
ross
—11x14 maybe. Um, yeah, we’ve got Dr. Oz is very prominent at the top middle there. Is that Newt Gingrich? [Laughs.]
carrie
Yes, Newt Gingrich with a giraffe.
ross
What the hell is happening? It’s funny, the reason I question that being Newt Gingrich is because that’s not how I’m used to seeing Newt Gingrich.
carrie
Sure, he’s with a giraffe.
ross
Okay. Let’s see, we’ve got—you’ve cut out something that says “typical tacos”, “revenge” in red. I don’t recognize that guy on the lower left. We’ve got—
carrie
Oh yeah, he’s the seller of a hyperbaric oxygen clinic chamber.
ross
Oh, that looked like a duffel bag to me. Okay.
carrie
Here, I can hand this to you. I don’t know why I’m holding it up dramatically.
ross
Oh, no, this has been fun. Okay, and you found 20 and another 20, so those are cut together for 2020. Most of this is something that would have to do with our investigations. Oh, there’s a UFO you’ve placed above Newt Gingrich’s head. We’ll have to post a photo of this.
carrie
You’re missing some of the best stuff.
ross
Oh, okay, let’s see here. We’ve got some phrases. “The year of disclosure.” “Skype or phone readings, only $100 for 30 minutes.” “Plant protein powered.” “Completely clear skin.”
carrie
Yes, completely clear skin in 2020.
ross
“Moderate to severe painful intercourse.”
carrie
[Laughing] I was waiting for you to see that one.
ross
Yeah. That—wow.
carrie
I tried to just cut out a bunch of the side effects in medicine ads. They’re so small.
ross
“Law of attraction coaching.” “Gas and bloating, stomach pain.” [Both start laughing.] Yeah, alright, so this is your—
carrie
My vision board for 2020.
ross
—your wonderful vision board. I’m gonna take a picture of this.
carrie
Yeah, Katie just brought out a bunch of her magazines. She is uh, Drew’s co-host on This Podcast is Self Care.
ross
Oh yeah, they did that recently. They videoed each other making vision boards, and she was doing it superfast. She’s gonna make the fastest vision board. She did it.
carrie
So she just pulled out a bunch of old magazines and had us all do this, which was very fun. Anyway.
ross
But you gotta pay attention now Carrie, that’s important.
carrie
That’s a really important thing I did.
ross
I think he was assuming you took the exercise more seriously.
carrie
I did take it seriously. This is what I want. I want wheat to fill me up.
ross
You want, what was it, painful intercourse?
carrie
I want— [Laughs] moderate to severe painful intercourse. [Both laugh.] Oh no, addiction to opioids. Okay, gas and bloating and stomach pain. I mean, that’s going to happen at some point in 2020 anyway. Might as well—you know, here’s the thing. Set your sights low, you can achieve them. That was the lesson of Paradox of Choice. Lower your expectations, you’ll be happier.
ross
Okay. Yeah, that works sometimes with movies.
carrie
Totally. Yeah, I mean if you want to like Up, you should probably set your sights low. Okay— [Both start laughing.]
ross
Did you just cast shade at Up? [Carrie responds affirmatively.] Are you the only person in America who doesn’t like Up?
carrie
Have we not talked about this? Ugh, it’s just like, everyone was talking about how it’s so good, so by the time I saw it I was like, “Okay. This is fine.”
ross
Alright, we can still be friends.
carrie
But it’s low on my Pixar list. It’s probably bottom seven.
ross
Okay. Interesting.
carrie
[Laughs] Bottom four. I don’t know. It’s better than A Bug’s Life. And it’s better than Cars too.
ross
Well, yes, that’s for sure. Moving along.
carrie
So, okay, then he said—there was one set of three cards that represent where my mind is right now. So that had a young woman in it. Interesting that I would have a young woman and an old woman in my spread. And he said the young woman represents possibility. You know, she’s deciding which way to go. So when we see the young woman, she’s standing on a porch, and you can both see the house she’s just left and the sort of skyline behind her. And so for him, he felt like that was representative of she’s deciding. Is she going to go out into the world, or go back into the house?
ross
Oh, is this where he pointed to the skyline and said, “These were painted as trees, but it kind of looks like the Los Angeles skyline.” And he’s right. It did.
carrie
It does, yeah. It was kind of cool. “You probably have a lot of questions right now, but you have the information you need to decide whether to go and do it, and take advantage of your goals.” This was definitely a point where I was like, “This is so vague, I’m sort of losing the thought train a little bit.” You know?
ross
I felt that often. Like, I have to really focus in that moment, and I’m trying to remember as much as I can. And these sentences are spoken in very abstract language, very poetic language. And then there’s like a restatement, and he’ll very fluidly go into the next concept, which is not even opposite but maybe tangential. You’ll be like, “Wait, how did we get there?” [Carrie responds affirmatively.] So I found myself doing that a lot. And with the abstract language, you know, I’ll be putting so much mental effort into reifying these concepts, and then I’ll kind of lose track of like, “Wait, how did we get—where is it going?” So yeah, I was getting that impression a lot.
carrie
Yeah. So yeah, I kind of, to clarify, said like, “So I’m kind of deciding whether to go internal or external.” And he said, “Yes, exactly.” So that vision board’s really important. That’s the beginning of your motivation to start your year and the rest of your life. Which, as a reminder, has Newt Gingrich, a giraffe, and Dr. Oz on it. And sandwiches.
ross
And uh, “moderate to severely painful intercourse.”
carrie
[Laughing] Well. Oh, and reconnecting to my higher self with vibrational medicine. I’m gonna do that.
ross
Was this where he was talking about you being the unifier?
carrie
Yes! Yeah. So the card was called cheerfulness, but it had a person I think sort of standing above a couch or something, sort of looking like a host. Kind of like, I’m the life of the party.
ross
I remember you had some opposites. There was like the virgin and the harlot. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] There was the sinner and the saint. He said that makes you the unifier. You’re the go-between.
carrie
I like that. Yeah. He’s like, “You can kind of, you know, merge people of differing points of view.” I was like, okay! I like this. “You unify those who don’t go together or get along.” And then he said, “Okay, now this row over here—” Which was the row kind of closer to you, Ross. “—these are the things that are outside your control.” And the first one is a picture of a human baby.
ross
Yes. And he starts talking about the pain of being born, making your way out of the birth canal. But also the pain for the mother, but how as soon as she holds that baby, all that pain goes away.
carrie
It’s all worth it. And he said, “You know, at first she gets pregnant and she thinks, like, ‘oh, that’s just gas. It’s probably just gas.’” [Ross laughs.] He said that a few times. It is just gas for me.
ross
Yeah, he didn’t say that you were actually gonna have a baby.
carrie
No, he said, “It’s not necessarily literal. It could be just, you know, it doesn’t mean that. But whatever you’re working on, you gotta let it grow.”
ross
Spoiler alert, I don’t think he ever stated that anything was literal.
carrie
That’s true.
ross
It could be this thing, or it could be the opposite. It could be the friend or it could be the enemy.
carrie
[Laughs] You know, I’m just remembering how I— [They are interrupted by the sound of an air horn in far distance.]
ross
Woah.
carrie
It’s like a ship?
ross
Maybe that’s Gabriel’s Horn. Maybe it’s the Rapture.
carrie
Oh! That actually, when you said that I got a little bit of fear. [Ross laughs.] Not excitement. Like, okay.
ross
Oh no, what if it’s real?
carrie
Wow. And I was really doing the thing for awhile, and I— [Both break into laughter.] “Well, shit. Okay.”
ross
I dunno, I kinda want to leave that in.
carrie
Yeah. Okay. Okay, so this does remind me though, because he said, “The baby’s not necessarily literal, but whatever you’re working on, you’ve got to let it grow. It’s gonna be painful, but the birth will be wonderful. It’s this brand new thing.” So I’m going back to my January 7th email to him. I said, “Hi there! My friend and I are interested in coming in for readings. We’re both taking new, bold steps in 2020. I’m excited to hear what you see in store for us.” So, that may have been a subtle influence. He said to be resolved. I can do it, and it will be so worth it, and you have to implement change in order to do your vision board. At this point I’m thinking, “God, I needed to pay more attention during that vision board.”
ross
“You have not seen my vision board.”
carrie
[Laughs] Okay, so then the second card—we’re still in the row of things outside my control—the second one was the gift card, and he said, “Beware of gifts, because gifts come with strings.”
ross
This wasn’t like a Starbucks gift card. This was just a tarot card that had a gift on it. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] Oh yeah, that’s right. Beware of the strings. There’s strings attached.
carrie
Yeah. Beware, be cautious. And then—
ross
Good advice.
carrie
Yeah. I will be suspicious of all my friends.
ross
Now, I hope everyone listening, that you are also kind of applying these to your life for 2020, or whenever you’re listening to this. Maybe you’re listening to it in 2050. Good on you. Come find me.
carrie
What’s happening right now? [Both laugh.]
ross
Tell me—look me straight in the eye and say, “Watermelon.”
carrie
What is happening for you right now?
ross
I’m setting myself up an interesting interaction for 2050. That’s all I’m doing.
carrie
[Laughing] Great. Okay so January— [Both break into more laughter.] What is—2020.
ross
2020, which is now.
carrie
[Laughing] Right, okay. So you’ll be 67.
ross
Yeah. I will.
carrie
Huh. You think we’ll still be making this show?
ross
Hope so.
carrie
Yeah. I think we will.
ross
Well, there’s so many products targeted at aging people specifically.
carrie
I keep thinking that, and like, when one of us is dying we’re gonna make such good episodes, Ross.
ross
Those’ll be the best. See?
carrie
I just really hope that it’s of some, you know, nice thing. Like old age.
ross
Indeed.
carrie
Okay, um. So— [Both laugh.]
ross
Carry on.
carrie
So then on this card there was also, I guess, an image of St. Michael. Maybe his little statue or something. [Ross responds affirmatively.] And he said, “Now that’s important, because St. Michael, he stops fear. He chops off the head of fear.”
ross
Oh, you don’t even need to fear fear itself when you got St. Michael around.
carrie
Yeah. Okay, then this would become very important. The third thing outside my control was, the friend card was upside down. So—
ross
Oh, yeah. We haven’t talked about this. The cards can be right side up, or they can be upside down. Different meanings, kind of like when we had the house blessed with Steven Mason.
carrie
Was there an upside down thing then?
ross
Yeah like, as we were reading the definitions of cards, there were two different interpretations based on whether the card was right side up.
carrie
I’m pretty sure tarot readers have said this to me before, too. I think it’s a common thing. But yeah, the right side up interpretation would be sort of the one you’d expect, and the upside down is like, oh but it’s reversed. So my friend card, first of all had a picture of a young woman. She was carrying like, daisies or something in her arms.
ross
Oh yes. And flowers represent friends and families and close ones.
carrie
Yes, all good. But she’s upside down, so what does this mean? “Well, it means that you need to be your own friend, and you’re going to lose some friends, and that’s okay. Because you have to be your own friend. And I, myself, have let friendships go, and you just have to appreciate the time you had with that person. It will all be fine.” Oh yeah, and he said something about like, knowing you did the right thing. “You did the right thing.”
ross
This was speaking to Carrie.
carrie
Yeah, could you tell? [Ross responds affirmatively and Carrie laughs.] Yeah, this was the only thing that like, it’s like, “Ah, well, that’s a solid hit.” The other things were like, I could make it work, but.
ross
Well, when he said that I knew like, “Oh, wow, okay.”
carrie
It was a hit for you, too.
ross
Yeah, now we’re talking. Like everything we’ve heard up to this point is like, okay, yeah, most people could—
carrie
Yeah, why not?
ross
Most people could say like, “Yeah, that’s me.” But this one was like, “Oh wow, that feels kind of specific and current.”
carrie
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, we can’t get too specific here, for the obvious reasons. But yeah, there’s just been a shitty thing that happened, but this is sort of how I would sum it up is like, I am totally confident I did the right thing. It just fucking sucks. You know. So uh, fair enough, Richard-Lael.
ross
Yeah, he asked you if you had any questions. Maybe he noticed your affect, or maybe it was a time to take a breath. But you said, “Well, I know who that is,” referring to this friend being lost. And—I love this moment. This was my favorite moment. He kind of chuckled and said, “Well, I can only tell you things that you already know.” And I thought, “Wow.” Because for me, that’s something I felt is always kind of under the surface when we’re talking to a psychic, is that the only reason that you can verify that these things are true that they’re telling you is because you already know that. And so, it’s this kind of interplay between new information being revealed and the fact that the information would be useless unless you already knew it actually applied to you. And so him saying that just made it feel like, oh wow!
carrie
Little peek behind the curtain.
ross
Gets what he’s doing here. Yeah, I thought that was actually—it was like a nice little moment of honesty, and I really loved hearing a psychic say that.
carrie
Huh. Interesting. I remember in that moment. It was one of those things where you’re just barely, you know, my sentence overlaps his or something, and I kind of caught it a few sentences later. I was like, “What did that mean?” I just sort of kept going. So, glad you were recording in that moment—
ross
I reveled in that moment, yeah.
carrie
—in your brain. So I did ask him, “Do you see anything for my love life this year?”
ross
Oh yeah, at this point he had started putting the cards away.
carrie
Oh, did he? And I was like, “Ah bup bup.” You know, we had both only said we were going to do a half hour, which was the cheaper reading. So I was like, you know, “Do you need to move on?” He said, “Ah, I have a little bit of wiggle room, it’s okay. Do you have more questions?”
ross
Right, and we were right at 6:30, so there had been time for introduction, and tea, and Ross showing up late.
carrie
So I said, “Okay, well, do you see anything for my love life this year?” And as you and I and our listeners know, because they’ve been to DrewCarrieShow.com, I’m getting married October 24th. So, you know, if he said something like that, that would prove his powers a little bit. And he said, “Your love life, okay.” He put out some cards and he said, “To the sexiest nerd and best partner a girl could dream of. Your hugs have supernatural powers for me. Thank you for sharing space with me. Owl of my love, now and forever.”
ross
No, he didn’t say any of that.
carrie
I think he did—oh, you know what?
ross
I think you’re looking at something else.
carrie
Jackie Lovett said that to Mitchell Lovett.
ross
Oh!
carrie
On a Jumbotron!
ross
It’s a Jumbotron! Hey! Who knew that had shown up?
carrie
Jackie, Mitchell, you guys sound cute.
ross
Owl of my love.
carrie
Pretty cute. They sound very cute.
ross
Yeah. And they listen to our show.
carrie
And they have the same last name.
ross
So they’re classy.
carrie
I mean, it’s like it was preordained that they’d fall in love.
ross
Oh, what a coincidence.
carrie
I know.
ross
And their last name is my reaction to this message.
carrie
Lovett. Okay, but for my love life.
ross
Yeah, what did he actually say?
carrie
Okay, so one of the cards I got was a cat, and I had kind of set him up for thinking I was a cat lover with my email address. Um, but if he had seen that or put it together—
ross
He wasn’t playing to cat lovers necessarily.
carrie
Yeah, he didn’t capitalize—”catitalize” on that. [Both laugh.]
ross
And I should say, he had laid out—I don’t know if these were all new cards dealt from the fresh deck, or how he had sourced these, but he had laid a little configuration of five. So one in the middle and then one above, below, and to each side to do this reading about your love—
carrie
I’m glad you have any sense of the physical world around you, ‘cause I—if you had asked me how many cards that was, I would’ve been like, “Eighteen two.”
ross
This is why this is teamwork. [Carrie laughs and affirms.] I fixate on certain details, you fixate on others. Speaking of which, we have not mentioned there was also a beautiful crystal ball on the table.
carrie
Yeah, which I really hoped he would use. ‘Cause we’re asking him to future trip here, and then—
ross
I hope he’ll let us come back and do other other magic with him.
carrie
Me too. We like you. So, okay, the cat. He said, “Do you know what people mean when they say cats have staff?” And I said, “Oh, sure, that, you know, they’re standoffish, and so we end up serving them. They seem more like the master.” He said, “Yes, exactly. So, you know, you need to use the giles of a cat. You know, a cat will wake you up at 5 A.M. just because it sees a tiny bit of its food bowl at the bottom even though it’s got tons of food. Cat will pee on your rug and look you straight in the eye.” [Laughs] It started to sound like, have you had a lot of bad cats?
ross
Oh, yeah. He said something very specific, like, “It’ll pee on your Bavarian rug,” or something like that. And I said, “This sounds personal.” [Both laugh.]
carrie
It did! It totally did.
ross
But it was all right, you know. That’s what cats do. I’ve got a cat—
carrie
Yup, cats can be like that.
ross
—and she’s a cutie but she’s a meanie.
carrie
I think cats basically are just the most humanlike of the companion animals. We’re like, “This isn’t what we want out of a—we want you to love us more than we love each other.”
ross
But then he said, “What is also true is that soon as that cat decides to just nuzzle up to you and love you for a mere moment, all of that fades away.”
carrie
Yup. It’s a real power flex, cats. So he said, “You know, you can play a little cat and mouse with this person.” So, this other person is going to emerge in my love life, and it’s someone with whom I had something before. And they’re gonna be more interested in me than I am in them this time. And, you know, if you want it, just play the game a little bit. Be a little mysterious. Don’t put it all out there, you know?
ross
These are very interesting things to say to someone with an engagement ring.
carrie
Right?
ross
Yeah, is he referring to Drew, or is he talking about some other future man who’s gonna come?
carrie
Yeah, I don’t think either iteration of that really makes sense. I wonder if he just thought, if you ask the question, “What do you see in my love life?”, you’re single, the end. But yeah, no, I know. We’re both glancing at my glistening ring finger.
ross
Beautiful ring.
carrie
Made in a laboratory.
ross
Nice.
carrie
Okay so then the next card was a maid, though I think she was labeled the servant. And he said, you know, “The maid of the house, she knows your secrets. She, you know, she might be polishing the China, but she’s listening the whole time.”
ross
“She’s paying attention. She’s smiling, she’s nodding. She’s doing her job. But she knows things.” I was like, “Oh.”
carrie
I guess that’s the air I want to have. The cat, or the nosy maid. He said, “If you want a relationship, it’s something you’ll have to work for.” Which, well, true.
ross
Somewhere around here, as he’s reading you, there was a sound of some sort. But he heard it as a knock at the door, and immediately he springs up again. And so I get out of the—
carrie
“Do we need tea?”
ross
I get out of the way, you know, and he shuffles out, and I shuffle back in. And he goes and checks the door, and nobody’s there. He says, “Surely, you heard that. Did you hear that?”
carrie
“You heard that too, right?”
ross
I said, “I dunno, I heard something. I dunno if it was a knock.”
carrie
I didn’t hear anything.
ross
Okay. He said, “Well, I do have a porch ghost.”
carrie
Yes! So, he thinks there is a ghost of a young man who lived across the street, who died. And I did see their altar to him over on that side. And he said this young man was wanted by the police, because he cooked methamphetamine, and then when the police were circling his house he just—
ross
Consumed all of his methamphetamines—
carrie
—consumed like, tons of the meth until until it killed him.
ross
—and died.
carrie
Which, I feel like that would make news. I tried Googling it. I don’t know, but who knows? Anyway, that’s horrific if accurate.
ross
Oh, man. Awful.
carrie
But I also love the thought that like, someone dies in this, you know, totally awful, hideous way, and then you’re like, “What am I gonna do in the afterlife? I gotta go knock on the neighbor’s door. This is how I’m gonna get my comeuppance.”
ross
And when we later watched that Ghost Adventure show, we’ll probably talk about in a little bit, very different persona in that show. Oh, goodness. Yeah, we’ll talk about that later. But there’s another ghost that they mention who lives in the house, who’s kind of an older, dapper gentleman.
carrie
Oh, okay. I missed this.
ross
But I guess that wasn’t the one who knocks at the door. It’s the porch ghost.
carrie
My next question to him was whether I was headed the right direction at work. He said, “Oh, work can be a little toxic sometimes. You’re in a bubble.” And then uh, I had an enemy card, and he said, “That troubles me.” But we kind of talked this out. I said, “Well, could it be the same person who’s like, sort of the friend gone sour?”
ross
I think he noticed like, the friend was upside down, and the—
carrie
The enemy was right side up.
ross
Right side up, yeah. Interesting. He said, “Oh, it could be.”
carrie
“Yeah, could be the same person.”
ross
It seemed like any time you asked him a question, he would find a way to accommodate that—your theory and say, “Oh, that could be true.”
carrie
“Yeah, sure. Could be that, yes.” He said, “But, you know, you’re going to be brought to victory and to financial reward.” Which is great, I have a lot of student debt. Um, and then uh, he said, “And you’re good at what you do, but you knew that.”
ross
I’m just trying to imagine the person who’d be like, “Actually, you know what?”
carrie
“I am terrible at my job.”
ross
“I kinda suck. I’m really bad in play. I’m just waiting for someone to notice.” Like Creed Bratton from The Office.
carrie
[Laughs] Yeah. I think there are probably people who would think that, but I can’t think of anyone who would say it out loud. So he said I need to meditate, breathe often, especially as I’m going into work. Breathe, hold, exhale.
ross
Oh yeah. He had a very specific kind of order and time about that, like ten seconds in, hold for ten seconds, ten seconds out.
carrie
[Breathes deeply] Which you and I then just started doing, as he’s talking. [Breathes deeply again.]
ross
Our mirror neurons were just firing.
carrie
Yeah. Just uh, it does work. It does make you feel calm right away. Okay, so then I said, “If I have one more question, I do wonder what you think will happen in November 2020.” And he said, “Ugh. The way I see it—”
ross
Yeah, he knew exactly what you were talking about. You know, it’s funny, ‘cause I was a little slow on the uptake. I was thinking like, “Oh, that’s very specific. She’s asking about November. What could happen? She’s getting married in October.” And then he knew—
carrie
Honeymoon?
ross
—he knew exactly what you were asking about.
carrie
Yup. He said, “Ugh. The way I see it—and I hope I’m wrong, I hope I’m wrong.” And then I knew where he was going, and I said, “Oh, I hope you’re wrong, too.” Then, actually, I loved this moment. Rather than continue his sort of psychic storyline, he just like, gets down to brass tacks and he’s like, “Listen, Russia wants Trump, because he destabilizes the U.S.”
ross
I mean, he’s still using the same like, speaking cadence and everything. But yeah.
carrie
He’s like, “Listen, I’ve read some Nathan Silver recently.”
ross
Right, yeah, totally. And he said, “And people on the left, we want the same thing.” And he’s making assumptions about us that we’re also on the left. “But we on the left, we can’t figure out who is more pure.” I’m like, okay.
carrie
Yeah, I know what he’s talking about there.
ross
And he said that he’s particularly avoided on social media any kind of denigrating of anyone on the left. You know, in case that they end up—
carrie
The candidate, yeah.
ross
In the case that they show up as the nominee, because he’s then going to get behind them and say, “This is the best thing ever!”
carrie
Better than Trump.
ross
But he feels that we’ll be too busy fighting ourselves to ever take on Trump and his momentum and his incumbency. So yeah, he goes with that. Yeah, we even get into talking about his favorite candidate out of the left. But we won’t share that, because he’s trying to stay neutral on social media.
carrie
Fair enough. And then as he’s closing that out, he said, “I do hope I’m wrong, but I don’t feel I’m wrong.” Oof. Rough. But one thing he said, he brought up an analogy that he had used before, which is like, being a psychic is basically like watching a parade. Something passes in front of you, you feel like you’re getting the whole picture, but if you actually took a helicopter up above the crowd and saw, you’d see, no, I wasn’t getting the whole picture. You know, the parade route had this serpentine trajectory across the city, and oh, someone got distracted and wandered into a store. And this other person tripped.
ross
Right, there was a bomb threat called, and yeah. He had all these little things that could mess with what you’re seeing from one perspective. I like that analogy. So yeah, I can see how things are working, but there are many things that could change them from a different perspective. He had some very specific predictions about Trump, though. He said that he knew that Trump would be impeached. Of course, easy to say now. He said, “But I don’t think he’ll be removed from office. But, I do think he’ll die in office. Maybe in his second term.”
carrie
He said uh, “Probably just like a heart attack or something.” But yeah, thinks he’ll die in office, not—he didn’t think it would be an assassination.
ross
So there we go. We’re talking politics again. You know what, I would be very impressed with anyone who’s listening who’s like, “Yeah, I’m a Trump supporter, but eh, I’m okay with these podcasters.” If so, write us. I’d be interested in hearing from you.
carrie
Write to us. We’ll see how that conversation plays out. But here’s something interesting to hear.
ross
Yeah, I want to hear from you, if like, you’ve listened to us bellyache about Trump and you’re like, “Meh. That’s their opinion.”
carrie
“That’s cool.” Then he started talking a little bit about how old people don’t like change, and I don’t know, went into just sort of a little bit of philosophizing about voters, and—
ross
Yeah. That was fun conversation. I felt like that moment was our closest look at Richard-Lael, the person himself. ‘Cause he feels very performative, and the more we’ve seen of him, the more we see like, he very much can put on a persona.
carrie
Right, we’ll see others.
ross
Yeah. So it just felt like, hey, now we’re talking turkey.
carrie
I didn’t call him on this, because why bother. But I did notice um, one contradiction. He was saying, you know, old people, they kind of like, they don’t realize things have changed and so on. And then another time he said, “Well, everyone grows in wisdom as they age.” Those things seem at odds to me, but. So then it was your turn.
ross
Well, Carrie, I would love to tell you all about my reading, but first I think we should talk about shoes.
carrie
Why not? I love a shoe. I love a comfortable shoe that’s also like, pretty, but also nice for the Earth, but also like, already feels broken in. I don’t cut up my foot the first five times I wear it.
ross
Okay, well, if you’re looking for all of that, and you’re looking for a shoe that’s stylish and sustainable, it’s comfortable, it’s washable, all in one pair of shoes. Well, Rothy’s are the perfect flats for life on the go.
carrie
Really? So that meets all of the needs I listed.
ross
Yeah, all of them. Yeah. It’s kind of uncanny. It’s not at all like a can.
carrie
[Laughs] It’s kind of like a can though, because it’s made out of recycled water bottles!
ross
[Laughing] What! It’s everything!
carrie
Oh, they need to use that as a slogan. Rothy’s, it’s uncanny. [Both laugh.] Please Tweet at Rothy’s and tell them. No, I have a really cute pair of Rothy’s. They’re green with a little gold design on the toe, and they’re really comfortable. I don’t like having to wear sort of like, office clothes. It’s just, ugh, so boring. So when I have to wear something like that, I’m like, “At least give me a little pep.” And I feel like Rothy’s gives you just that little extra something something.
ross
Okay. Yeah, Cara went in for the pointed, more traditional kind of black shoes, but they do have like, a little bit of blue piping on them. So, see that, even that’s got a little pizzazz.
carrie
Got a little something something something. It’s uncanny. So, Rothy’s come in an ever-changing array of colors, prints, and patterns, and they’re available in a range of styles, like sneakers, loafers, pointes, and more.
ross
And again, they’re made from repurposed plastic water bottles. In fact, Rothy’s has diverted over 35 million water bottles from landfills already.
carrie
So you’ll quickly discover why Buzzfeed called them their forever shoes. So, check out all the amazing styles available right now at Rothys.com/ohno.
carrie
Comfort, style, sustainability. These are the shoes you’ve been waiting for.
carrie
But you know what else I frickin’ love, besides just shoes?
ross
Wait. Wait. Let me turn over this card here. Oh, that’s a gift card. Okay, let me turn this one over. It says “Squarespace.”
carrie
That’s exactly right. Wow. The tarot gods knew.
ross
It’s all in the cards.
ross
That’s all you need to know. That probably makes you want to go get a Squarespace like right now.
carrie
That is a celebrity endorsement by Drew Carrie. Genuinely it made making our wedding website pretty dang easy.
ross
Oh, that’s awesome.
carrie
I had used a—I won’t even speak its name, but I had used a competitor’s website creation service at one point, and it’s a dark time in my past that I’m moving past, because now I have seen the light. It was really easy to make like a very pretty website that looked like, oh yeah, this actually looks good. It’s not just like, oh look at that. Carrie made a website. It’s like, “You made a good website!”
ross
Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, it looks great. And that’s how you create a beautiful website, to blog or publish content, promote your physical or online business, announce an upcoming event or special project.
carrie
Squarespace gives you access to beautiful templates created by world class designers.
ross
Woah.
carrie
I know. And they have powerful ecommerce functionality, if you want to sell things.
ross
And they have a new way to buy domains and choose from over 200 extensions. That’s right, you don’t have to get .com. You can also get .horse.
carrie
You can get .horse, you can get—
ross
.net, .biz.
carrie
.biz. I miss .biz.
ross
Or, I hope they’ve instituted my recommendation, which is to offer .calm.
carrie
Oh! Fun.
ross
Yeah. Meditation.calm.
carrie
Yeah, I wonder if the app Calm uses that at all. Calm.calm.
ross
Everybody would have to get much better at pronunciation.
carrie
Yeah, true. But you know who could direct you for that. [Both laugh.]
ross
TheGentlemanPsychic.calm.
carrie
And they have 24/7 award winning customer support.
ross
So check out Squarespace.com/ohno for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch—that’s right, you can work on it beforehand—then use the offer code OHNO to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
ross
So it was my turn. He collected all the cards back, he blew on them again, he gave them to me. I cut them with my left hand. He had told us too, that he once had somebody who had taken the deck and just kept shuffling it for ten minutes. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] Maybe don’t do that.
carrie
Yeah. He said, “You know, do it as long as the spirit moves you, but you know, within reason.”
ross
So he laid out the same grid of cards, starting with the three in the middle and the one laid across them. And I think the one laid across them, I don’t know if I got a good look at the caption on that one, but it looked like an Aristotle type figure, a Socrates. You know, like some sort of thinker.
carrie
Oh yes. It was called the scholar or something.
ross
Was that it? Okay, that makes sense. And he said, “Ah, okay. I can see here that you tend to overthink. You’re philosophical. Every action is planned.” I thought uh, “Yeah, okay. You got me. Then again, I’ve been staring intently at you with my face scrunched up for the last half hour, but.”
carrie
Right. I feel like that’s a lot like him saying the thing to me about service. It’s like, eh, it could go either way.
ross
Anyone could connect with that.
carrie
Well, yeah, but also like, I see that right there, I’m not gonna assume you’re just bullshitting me.
ross
Oh yeah, totally, yeah. And he said that there was a surprise recently in my life. And, uh, it was really shocking me, and I’m coming out of that.
carrie
Does that match for you?
ross
Well, it’s interesting too, because he doesn’t ever stop to say—to check, to confirm that, to make sure that it did resonate with you. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] Often times, I think, psychics that we talk to are more interested in getting that verification, of like, “Ah, I was right, wasn’t I! See?” Um, he didn’t have much interest in that. He was spinning a tale, he was putting together all these different ideas and archetypes and blending them in storytelling.
carrie
It’s much more of a show.
ross
Yeah. You know, he’s already told us that he has kind of a background as a performance artist, and yeah, very much here he’s putting on a really good show. And I don’t mean that in sort of a—
carrie
Pejorative.
ross
Yeah. But that’s not immediately landing for me. I’m trying to think, “Well, what was that shock? What shocked me recently?” But we’re already moving on to other things, so I still haven’t figured out what that shock was. Maybe it was him telling me that that shocked me.
carrie
Well, what about the health of your family member’s a concern.
ross
Okay, see. You’re so much better at remembering my own past than I am. [Carrie laughs.] Um, that’s interesting. Well, let’s see, my dad had stage four prostate cancer, or does. But now he’s on treatments to kind of reduce testosterone, so now his prognosis is much better.
carrie
Oh, that’s great. Okay.
ross
Yeah, yeah, and if you had told me that within—this is now six months later. If you had told me closer to that, then I would’ve been, “Oh, yeah, that was a big shock.”
carrie
Yeah. Well maybe the spirits have been saving it up because we didn’t get any psychic readings.
ross
Uh, there was a thief card. He was reversed. Had something to do with like, feeling taken advantage of. Yeah, I’m trying to remember exactly what the thief was doing. But, the lesson that he got to very quickly was that when a door closes in my face, don’t let that completely stop me. There’s still a way you can find.
carrie
Don’t take no for an answer.
ross
Yeah, you know, find your way through a window or something. He didn’t say that, but the idea was like, yeah you can still get to that goal, so keep going forward. So hold that and, you know, stick a pin in that, because I think there’s another contradiction coming.
carrie
Okay. Also if that wall is someone else’s consent, just leave it alone.
ross
Yeah, and I said, “Ah, so don’t take no for an answer.” And I feel uncomfortable even saying that, because there are situations where that is not—
carrie
That is bad advice.
ross
—ever the right reaction. Didn’t react to that, but here we come to the next card. Which was, again, in that group of three. This is the past, the present, and now the future. The widower. [Carrie chuckles quietly.] So there’s a picture of a very dapper looking man in a suit—
carrie
With a handlebar moustache, who looks exactly like Richard-Lael.
ross
It really does look quite a bit like Richard. Laying a wreath down on this giant tombstone. One of those obelisk style tombstones. And immediately, my eyes are drawn to the inscription on the tombstone.
carrie
So this is a man whose wife has died, and in the little vignette—
ross
He’s the widower. He’s visiting his wife’s grave, and it says, in Italian—and so I’m gonna say this wrong—”Alla mia cara moglie.” So, my wife’s name is right there, Cara. [Carrie starts laughing.] And it’s very—
carrie
In the dead middle.
ross
—it is the largest of all of these words. Very prominent. Right next to the wreath, it just says Cara on a grave. Widower. That’s the card, and my future. Oh, shit! [Both laugh.]
carrie
All the psychics want Cara out of the picture. The last one was in love with you.
ross
It’s so funny. I was showing this to Cara later, and she’s like, “What is going on? They used to just always predict that I was having a baby, and now they’re all trying to kill me or get rid of me.” [Carrie laughs loudly.] She was very offended. So, I didn’t say that to him, but wanted to see like, would he go there? I did say, “Now, is this a literal widower?” And he said, “Not necessarily. Not necessarily.” He said it twice, which makes that even less convincing. Sounds like it’s more likely. So, goodness, we gotta watch out for Cara in this next year.
carrie
And I tried really hard to get it. I was like, “Okay, but can it be? Sometimes it is?” “Not necessarily.”
ross
Yeah, and you even said, “Does that mean he could lose his spouse?”
carrie
“That means sometimes, right?”
ross
And he didn’t take any of that bait. Um, he just said, “No no, the message here though is that there will be some sort of loss, or at least—” We kind of played around with this concept. It could also be a perceived loss. So it might turn out that it wasn’t actually a loss.
carrie
Yeah, this is starting to feel like the definition of a miracle. Oh, you don’t feel you got one? Let’s find a way you can imagine you got one.
ross
Uh, but the important message was that there is life after this loss, and I need to remember that, so. You know, take your time but then move along. Remember that you’re alive. So, okay. Then I asked if I could take a picture of the card, because I wanted to remember this. Here’s what we found later is that, you know, you could say it was the low lighting.
carrie
I say it was the spirits.
ross
You could say it was the phone glitching. Or yeah, you could say that there was some spiritual activity here, but I put the phone right over that card and thought I was taking a nice, steady picture, and what I got was this big blur.
carrie
Yup, and all of my pictures were blurry.
ross
Bunch of blurs. [Carrie makes dramatic “dun dun dun” sound.] Yeah. So, make of that what you will.
carrie
Make of that what you will.
ross
Pretty fascinating.
carrie
But also it was a very dark room.
ross
Coincidence?
carrie
Yes.
ross
[Laughing] So yeah, he was fine with that. He didn’t seem to mind. You took some pictures of him and me as he was giving the reading, and yeah, he didn’t bat an eye at that or anything.
carrie
Yeah. One of my two favorite professors in grad school, he was of the very strong opinion like, just start taking pictures, and if they say no, you stop, and you have seven or eight. So.
ross
Okay. Well there you go. He was in the photos looking very Freddie Mercury, too.
carrie
But blurry.
ross
Imagine Freddie Mercury but blurry. He did mention that he reads the cards from right to left. Interesting factoid. Uh, then there was a card—someone was wearing like a blindfold.
carrie
Oh, this was weird. Yeah, it was like somewhere in between an angel and Lady Justice.
ross
Yeah. It wasn’t an archetype I’m familiar with. I can’t remember what the caption of the card was. Yeah, he was even likening it to—actually this was kind of interesting.
carrie
It was hope.
ross
Was it hope?
carrie
Yeah, I remember him saying hope blinds you.
ross
Very good. Yes. Because I was saying, well, this is also reminding me of justice, because hope was wearing a blindfold, but the blindfold was slightly askew. But also he was commenting on the pose of the figure, this young person that was kind of reclining over and said it sort of looks like one of those Victorian graves. And I said, “Oh, like the weeping angels.” He said yes. Which is also interesting, and I pointed this out to Cara, because she’s always loved that kind of grave. The grave she wants, with the big weeping angel.
carrie
I dunno if I’ve been aware of the weeping angel graves.
ross
Oh yeah, they can look really creepy sometimes. It’s just, you know, a carved figure of someone with the wings and—
carrie
Oh, angel of grief.
ross
—hunched over.
carrie
Oh, shit. Jeez.
ross
Yeah. You’re doing some images, uh, searching there?
carrie
I don’t think I have ever seen this in person. Oh my god. For eternity? Wow!
ross
Yeah, you got the idea. So Cara wants something very dramatic like that. So, as I’m thinking about this big grave with my wife’s name on it, and then we go straight to this weeping angel kind of pose, I thought, “Oh goodness, Cara is not gonna like this at all.” It was really weird that the head of the figure as its reclined was in this contraption that was kind of posed like a guillotine but it sort of—
carrie
But was like a hand harp?
ross
Kind of like a lyre but without the strings. He didn’t know what it was, either. So yeah, the hope card was a very strange one. The lesson there was that I shouldn’t be blinded by hope, and that I’m a very hopeful person.
carrie
Right. Hope can blind you.
ross
Yeah. I felt like this was—felt like a hit for me. He said, “Don’t let hope blind you from realities.” And I felt like that was where we stuck a pin in me not taking no for an answer, knowing that my goal is still attainable. And so I kind of pointed that out. I said, “Oh interesting, okay. So hope will blind me, but then I can still be hopeful again that I’m gonna achieve my ultimate goal?” So he’s saying like, hope will get me to the end, but also hope will blind you. Just felt like a little bit of a contradiction to me. There was a servant card representing like, someone who represents themselves and just focuses on doing the duty. You had gotten that same card at a different location earlier. I tried to ask, “Okay, well, is that a person, is that a process, is that myself?” He said, “It could be any of those. You need to do what you need to do.” Yeah, very hard to pin him down on any of these things.
carrie
I don’t know how else to describe this, and this might sound crazy, but his words are like uh, like a cloud filling the room instead of like—it’s not like a—
ross
Yeah, it’s an atmosphere.
carrie
Yeah, that one might be the not crazy person way to say it. But yeah, it’s like it’s all around. It’s not like he’s giving you information for you to absorb and interact with. It’s just like, “I’m just filling the space with these ideas.”
ross
Yeah, and sort of inviting you to just play in there and insert things that are worrying you or on your mind. Yeah, and it just moves around very fluidly, and so I think it really did take a lot of focus to kind of track what’s going on in the moment. Because it did have this kind of rhythmic melody to it. Though I don’t want to give the impression that he was talking constantly. He also used silence very artfully as well. And sometimes you would ask a question, or I would ask a question, and he would respond just with like, a meaningful glance— [Carrie responds affirmatively.] —and wait for your reactions and say, “There you go.” Something like that. I think the message of the servant was, you need to keep doing your duty. Like, the things that need to be done. And sometimes when life is really tough, it might be the smallest thing, like making your bed could be a big accomplishment.
carrie
Yeah, yeah. I remember him saying that, yeah.
ross
And all of these things, you know, it sounds right, but then you think, “Wait a second, how does that connect to the last thing? That seems very different and not always easy to identify that connective fiber.” So there was a melancholy card.
carrie
That’s in your future. [Ross responds affirmatively.] Well, I mean, that makes sense. The widower is not happy.
ross
Oh, there you go. But he doesn’t look at the melancholy card and say, “Oh, you’re gonna be sad in the future.” Which would be the more surface-level, easy reading.
carrie
If it’s sad, it’s symbolic. If it’s happy, it’s just the thing.
ross
And then he moved on to, there was a priest card. I want to say the priest was upside down.
carrie
I think that’s right.
ross
Or whatever orientation it meant that I needed to focus on the spiritual side, and that there’s an imbalance between the outer world and the spiritual world for me. And I thought, “Okay, now we’re starting to talk.” You know, one could easily say that. Oh, you’re too much of a rationalist, you’re not uh—
carrie
Yeah, if you have to pick one or the other.
ross
Yeah, exactly. So I asked, “Oh, does that mean I should seek out spirituality?” And he said, “Well, I would say you should meditate.” Then he talked a little more about the fact that he does yoga. He was talking about how we’re all bombarded every day with all the notifications and the social media. Oh, he’s so right about all that. I was definitely feeling that. Here’s my exercise that I need to do, that in the morning I sit so that I am flat footed, and then I should be upright but don’t put so much like, muscle effort into being upright that my shoulders are pincing. I like how he said that. Then do the ten seconds breathing in, hold for ten seconds, ten seconds out. That’s a pretty long time. Then he said, “You know what, do this five times, yes. I’m getting the number five. That’s your number.” Oh, good number for me, okay.
carrie
I heard him say five was good for you, but I didn’t realize that was about your breaths.
ross
And then he talked more about like, the voices in our heads and how they only say the mean things. You know, you’re gonna be late, you’re gonna lose the account. So all of that was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, those are good things to think about, to be aware of in a calm moment, and inoculate ourselves against a little bit. Then he had kind of a little aside where he was talking about how maybe a good time just to be silent is the one time that we’re actually alone in LA, which is in our cars. He said, “Yeah, sometimes you’re trying to just drive 15 miles, and it takes you two hours. Maybe that’s a good moment just not to plan anything, to turn off.” And that also spoke to me, ‘cause, you know, if I’m in a car, well hey, I’m listening to a podcast, I’m listening to an audiobook.
carrie
Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve turned everything off. I actually feel like I don’t listen to that much audio in my non-driving life, so that always feels a little bit of a cocoon to me. Like, oh look, I can listen to this Weakerthan’s album with no guilt, I’m just in this car.
ross
Oh, nice. Yeah, every now and then I’ll hit that moment where it’s like, “Okay, I don’t need to be absorbing information right now, let’s listen to some music.”
carrie
Yeah, it’s important to get there.
ross
So he was talking about that, and he was talking about how he used to have road rage. He gave us the smallest little snippet of additional information about himself. He said that, “Once, when I was a hairdresser, I was driving around one time and there was this woman. She was going so slowly in front of me, and I was stuck behind her, and I was so mad.”
carrie
I was thinking, “There is a real chance that was me.”
ross
[Laughs] Okay. And uh, and as he drove past her, he said, “I saw my reflection in the mirror, and my veins were bulging. And she was just so peaceful, oblivious to it all.”
carrie
Just happy and grinning.
ross
Yeah, it was a moment of reflection for him, like, “Oh, I’ve really gone off the deep end.” So uh, you know, he was very quick to acknowledge that sometimes he needs these lessons himself. At some point, he wrapped it up and said, “Yes, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.” And so he made a music reference—
carrie
I didn’t hear that!
ross
And so then I said, “So would you say then that my melancholy need not be an infinite sadness?”
carrie
[Laughs] I caught it. I don’t think he did.
ross
Yeah, I think you kind of guffawed, like— [Ross guffaws and they both laugh.] And he said, “No, it need not be.” So yeah, maybe didn’t get the reference, or he was just playing along. I can’t remember what card this was related to, but he was telling me about how you can kind of travel through time. Just sort of like he was giving that example of the parade earlier, how you can shift perspective. You can do that with time as well, and you have the ability to talk to your younger self and comfort him and tell him it’s gonna be okay, or I understand your pain, I understand that hurt that you’re feeling, and—
carrie
This really reminds me of Teal Swan. [Ross responds affirmatively.] ‘Cause that’s what her completion process is.
ross
Interesting, okay. And then in the same way, you can consult with your older self and receive wisdom from him. And he can tell you, you know, like, “Oh, here’s what you’re missing, here’s all the good things to come.” And so there was very much a directionality to it, that, you know—
carrie
Right. Wisdom increases.
ross
Right. So you are spirituality at a greater place than what came before, but that will continue to expand out to the older you. Again, a little bit of that contradiction, where you’re smarter as you grow older unless you’re a Trump supporter.
carrie
Right, yeah. It’s so weird how in—maybe in culture at large, but it seems especially true in spiritual circles. There’s this lifting up of the young and the old as particularly close to God, and everyone in the middle, it’s sort of like, eh, you’re just normos.
ross
Yeah. So then he was looking at the grouping of cards that were down and to the left. These are things that are on my mind right now. The gift was there. Geschenk in German.
carrie
Be careful of those strings.
ross
Yeah, though for me he was just saying, “Don’t forget that you have gifts.” So it was a slightly different takeaway. St. Michael was there as well.
carrie
Oh, okay. Cutting off the head of fear for you.
ross
The only thing to fear is the lack of St. Michael. There was some card that I think had a woman on it, but it was like a foe card. I didn’t need to worry about taking on the fight with the foe.
carrie
Yeah, I don’t think I—I must have been off thinking about something. Oh, I know what I was thinking about. I was thinking about when I was a kid, I actually did—childhood was rough—I wrote a song to myself from my future self.
ross
Woah, you were already doing this.
carrie
I was doing it, yeah.
ross
Living the dream.
carrie
About like, how everything’s gonna be okay. Like, I’m here, I’m you in 20 years, whatever, and everything’s okay.
ross
Wow. Did you hold onto that?
carrie
Yeah. Kinda. I can still remember like, three words of it, and the basic tune. But I’m not going to sing it.
ross
Oh, wow. There was a lover card, telling me to speak my own truth. And yeah, this one did not resonate with me at all. He’s saying, “Yeah, you know, that persona where you’re saying I just do what I do, I don’t care. Your opinions don’t effect me.” And I thought, “Well, that’s not me. That’s not where my head’s at. But okay.”
carrie
Yeah. It was hard to tell in that part what was proscriptive and what wa descriptive. Yeah, I couldn’t tell like, I’m sorry, are you telling Ross to do that or to stop doing that?
ross
Yeah, and he of course fluidly moves between both, but this was in the category of things that are on my mind right now. And so I thought, “Yeah, okay, that’s not right.” Interesting. Think of that what you will. And I think he had sort of skipped past one card, or hadn't really talked about it, and it was farthest from me. But I asked about it, and he said, “Oh, that’s the room card, and it’s also upside down. So that’s a warning that you need to reverse the melancholy of your life, or it will be chaos.”
carrie
Oh, gosh.
ross
Yeah, right? Get rid of that melancholy.
carrie
How’d he get that all out of an upside down room?
ross
Well, jeez, these cards are potent. So, meditation, very important.
carrie
Okay. Or your room will turn upside down.
ross
Then you asked him why the widower was upside down.
carrie
Yeah! Oh yeah, we had made so much out of upside down-ness, and then such an obvious one that wasn’t mentioned was upside down.
ross
Well, it does two things. That means that the widower is now facing you—
carrie
Meaning Ross.
ross
—and then it’s also telling us that the loss may not actually be death or true loss, it may turn out that it was only perceived loss. Another lesson he had for me was that I need to release sorrow and that it’s important to cry. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] And it’s interesting. Most of the time, you know, ‘cause I would be kind of looking at him the whole time. He’s the one speaking in the room, and every now and then you take courteous kind of looks away to look at the cards or look at Carrie or whatever. But you know, I was watching him most of the time and he would usually be kind of looking down, speaking sort of to the table. But every now and then he would look up and make eye contact to make a point or make a connection. And so yeah, he looked me very much directly in the eyes and said, “It’s okay to cry.” [Carrie makes “aw” sound.] And uh, yeah. It was very sweet, and so I said, “Okay, well, it’s interesting. It’s not normally a reaction from me. The most I usually feel like that is in a touching movie.” He said, “Well, push yourself. Do it. Like, make yourself—”
carrie
“Make yourself cry.”
ross
Yeah! And I thought that was really interesting. And so he was saying it’s kind of like laughing, it’s one of those fake it ‘til you make it kind of things. And I had said how, you know, that just feels kind of disingenuous to me. He said, “No no, like sometimes you sort of need that to get the process going.” [Carrie responds affirmatively.] “Tears are healing.”
carrie
Yeah, he did say, especially as men, we’re sort of, you know, the culture tells us not to tap into this part of ourselves.
ross
Mm-hm. That was kind of the end of that, and he said, “Do you have any more questions?” as he gathered the cards together. And I said, “Well, I’ll ask the same thing as Carrie. Can you tell me a bit about my love life in the coming year?”
carrie
Now, it should be mentioned Ross doesn’t—you don’t wear a wedding ring in general.
ross
I don’t.
carrie
Yeah. So you weren’t wearing a wedding ring.
ross
Yeah. I’ve lost two wedding rings, and they were— [Carrie laughs.] Yeah, they were cheap ones. I don’t. We don’t. And he really didn’t say anything that I would say was actually about my love life.
carrie
Okay. Yeah, I’m not remembering how he answered that at all.
ross
I think the scholar came out again. You can be your own worst enemy, but you can also be your own best friend. I think.
carrie
Okay. That’s a pretty solid barnum statement, could apply for anyone.
ross
He did say, like, I need to be clear about my needs, or that was like, I think I took that as the takeaway. And he said, “Yeah, be clear about your needs.” Yes, that’s when he used the word vibrations. I remember ‘cause I was like, “Okay, I’m paying attention now, you just said vibrations.” He said, “Yeah, ‘cause statements are like vibrations. You sort of put them out there, and they bounce off of other things and make effects and, you know, it’ starts to effect the world around you.” So the way he was saying is like, okay, that’s the more responsible way to use vibrations, so I’ll let it go.
carrie
The metaphorical energy of what you put out there.
ross
Indeed. The messenger card was also there, and he told me to be open to the message. But yeah, nothing that was like, “Oh, you’re gonna have a breakup,” or “Oh, you’re gonna find the love of your life.” Nothing. Nothing like that. So then—
carrie
Or, “It appears you’ve been married for half your life.”
ross
[Laughs] Right, yeah. I didn’t have any impression that he had any idea of my marital status—
carrie
Yeah, in either direction.
ross
—from anything he was saying, right. And uh, he just didn’t go there. I asked him about creative projects. He looked at a few other cards, and he saw a house. There was a prison, but that wasn’t a bad thing, ‘cause we’re breaking out of the prison. He told me that I’m going on a solo journey. So maybe I’m gonna release a solo album, I don’t know.
carrie
Oh, you should.
ross
Uh, he saw springtime and freshness in creativity. So hey, that’s good for creativity. Then he asked, “Any other questions?” We were kind of up in our time at this point, but he was saying, “Oh no, we can keep going a bit. My next person doesn’t show up for an hour.” So he’s being very generous about that. You asked a very interesting question.
carrie
Did I?
ross
About—
carrie
“Do animals go to heaven?”
ross
You didn’t. [Carrie laughs.] That’s the one time you haven’t asked that. Uh, you asked about your mother’s health. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] And he said, “Now, I don’t do health, because I’m not a doctor.” And then like, he dropped some cards at the moment, and he went to go get those. But uh, he said, “It’s very much like the analogy I gave before.”
carrie
Yeah, “It’s that parade floating by.”
ross
“It’s like an impressionist painting.” And then he was kind of describing like, those pointillism paintings where you get up close and oh, it’s just dots. So yeah, again, we almost kind of caught him in a contradiction again, ‘cause he was starting to say, “So, I do get a picture.”
carrie
Mm-hm. “And I’m not gonna tell you what it is.”
ross
And I said, “Oh, but you don’t trust that picture.” And he said, “Oh, no, no.” ‘Cause, you know, as a psychic he can’t be saying, “No, I don’t trust my—these images I’m getting.” And then he kind of thought about that and said, “Well, with health I don’t.” Yeah, so.
carrie
It’s like, he believes the vision he’s getting, but it could mean anything.
ross
But as anybody who’s listened to our show for a while, you’ll know that for us, that’s a big deal when a psychic will make statements, strong statements, about what you need to do medically, or not do medically.
carrie
Yeah, huge props to him in contrast to Sister Rocky in that area.
ross
Yeah. So that was another thing where I thought, “Yeah, right on, buddy. Good job.” Then I asked about the number five, you know, where did that come from? And he said, “You know, I just—I like that feeling for you. It’s just what’s right for you.” He said, “Five is the number of creativity.” So. There you go. And so then you said, “Do I get a number?”
carrie
Yeah, I want a number.
ross
And uh, so he gave you three, like right away.
carrie
Right away.
ross
He did not miss a beat. He knew you were a three already.
carrie
Yeah, he kind of uh, he was facing me so I don’t think you would have seen it, but it really felt like a genuine like, light up moment. He was like, “Three!” and his eyes kind of got bigger and brighter in like an, “Oh, I’m glad you asked!” sort of thing.
ross
Yeah, and you were kind of like pushing him for like, “Why three, what’s so great about three?” And uh—
carrie
Didn’t mean to be pushy, just wanted to know what three was.
ross
He was like, “Oh no, this is a great number. That’s the number of the trinity, that’s uh, you can easily like, add it and get three, six, nine, twelve. And it goes from like, odd to even, odd to even.” And so Carrie— [Carrie laughs.] “Is that true for any odd number?”
carrie
Yeah, you double it and it becomes an even number. And he said, “Well yes, but three is magical.”
ross
[Laughs] Yeah and so then he was giving far more examples of like, uh, ancient spells in which if you said a name three times it would conjure something. You said, “Like Beetlejuice?” [Both laugh.] You were making him work for the three. And he was like, “No no, but like, it shows up everywhere. Like, you need to set up threes. As soon as you say three, it’s a collection.” And so then we were helping him out, like “Yeah, like in comedy, or a three act structure in a play. Rule of thirds in photography, yeah.”
carrie
Because you need at least two to set a pattern and three to interrupt it.
ross
Right, exactly. So um, he gave you that number. That was pretty fun. And of course, he’s saying three is a magic number, so I’m singing School House Rock.
carrie
I was thinking about that, too.
ross
I did not put a quote from that into the conversation. I was very tempted.
carrie
Well, I don’t think I was pushy, I was just asking what three is.
ross
Fair enough.
carrie
Yeah, you gotta know.
ross
You asked him about his dialect.
carrie
Oh yeah, yeah. I was like, “Where are you from?”
ross
He said, “Well, I grew up in Missouri, and I lived for awhile in England, and I was very posh. And when people would ask me ‘where are you from’, I would say my mother. And when they would ask ‘where does your accent come from’, I would say from my mouth.” [Ross laughs.]
carrie
Right, he had this whole little dialogue of how he would respond to—
ross
About his dialect.
carrie
Yeah. The conversations he would have about his dialogue.
ross
You could tell that he—of course everybody asks him that, and so he’s got a way of kind of deflecting it. It was a deflection, but an artful one and a fun one. And yeah, that’s when you mentioned kind of the 50s actors and he said, “Yeah, mid-Atlantic.”
carrie
Yeah, and then he said, “Really, more 30s.” Okay. Didn’t realize that’s who you studied.
ross
He said, “I’m a very old man.” And we all laughed at that, ‘cause he’s maybe a couple years older than we are.
carrie
Yeah, he’s 40, he mentioned later.
ross
Okay. So that was the end of our reading, so then he kind of led us into the foyer, and we talked about paying him. You had to go to the bathroom, so I paid him. I had come fresh from the ATM, so I didn’t have change. So rounding up from $85, I gave him $100.
carrie
Oh, so did I.
ross
I felt good doing it—
carrie
That’s what I did as well—
ross
—’cause he did a great job.
carrie
—when I came back out and almost left without paying him. He was like, “Uh, did you have cash as well?” And I was like, “Oh, shit! I’m sorry.”
ross
Just, everything he did was very gracious, very sweet. Oh yeah, I should say also, he was showing me while you were in the bathroom—and you came in and got part of this show—he was showing me this model of the Addam’s Family house that he had built. So, you know, imagine someone who builds their own trains, but he’s gotten this kind of house kit and he’s customized it to make it fit the Addam’s Family. And there’s trees around, and moss growing on things. There’s a little Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. He said that it was all an homage to an episode of Scooby Doo where they meet the Addam’s Family, and he’s giving all these great details about these weird cameos and I totally have to watch this now. But he said that the Addam’s Family was, as a kid, his entry point into the occult, and that they were all just so cheerful and happy about it. He just loved the aesthetic.
carrie
Yeah, yeah, the fun spooks.
ross
And it just got him into this whole world of occultism.
carrie
It’s pretty fun.
ross
Yeah, he showed off his various things for a little bit, and then we left.
carrie
And then later, we pulled up. We were like, “We gotta watch Ghost Adventures.” [Ross responds affirmatively and laughs.] And then we did.
ross
Oh, my goodness.
carrie
Turns out—
ross
—very different Richard-Lael.
carrie
Yeah. Huh.
ross
He was—well, he had shaved his head. He was wearing a different suit, I’m sure he has quite a few. He was, right off the bat, declaring himself a Satanist.
carrie
Yes. You know, gestured to that picture of himself as Satan and like, it just gave this whole other air to the experience of being in his house and being around him. And the ghost hunters were using devices to try to feel if he had accidentally let any spirits in, and they were like ‘ooh’ in the seancé room, which is the room you and I had been in. “Oh, it’s really lighting up in here.” And one was particularly on the chair you would one day sit in.
ross
[Emphatically] Alright! Um, yeah, which makes me think that when they asked you early on like, “Oh, did you find out about Richard through Ghost Adventures,” when you said you hadn’t that probably hit a little reset button in their minds. Like, “Oh, they’re not thinking of you as the Satanist now!”
carrie
Yes, I think that’s right. I mean, she didn’t actually ask, but when I didn’t know what it was—
ross
I had never seen Ghost Adventure before, because—
carrie
Me neither. There’s so many of those.
ross
Yes. Oh, no kidding. And actually, right now for a friend I’m gonna start watching one called Hellier. I just have so little—I don’t know, interest, because they all are the same, and just the way they have to build drama. And this was completely that. You know, they showed them coming up the street, and everything had the dark vignette around it, and they’ve pumped up the contrast, and they’re putting in little— [Ross starts to imitate loud, screechy sound effects and wind clips commonly used in paranormal-themed shows.]
carrie
Which I always get distracted by and want to like, remove in my head and just see the raw footage of the two people being like, “Really? So, you heard a sound.” “Yes, I heard a sound.” [Both laugh.]
ross
Right, ‘cause that’s what the original b-roll or the original uh, footage looked like. It’s kind of like watching a movie where you can tell, oh, this is day for night shooting. You know, like they put a filter over the camera. This was shot at, you know, two o’clock, but you want it to look like it’s—
carrie
Oh, I don’t think I have uh, enough of a film eye for that.
ross
—7 P.M. When you said that, that’s what I thought of. ‘Cause like, now I’m just fixating on that. And in the same way it’s like, oh man, everything you had to contrive to make this little piece of screen gem.
carrie
You know what it reminds me of, now that you say that? Okay, you haven’t seen Midsommar—
ross
Not yet.
carrie
—but is it a story about a crazy cult with some possibly supernatural elements? Yes. But, the thing that takes me out of the movie every time is a moment where someone correctly identifies a pube in their food. Every time I’m like, “Okay.”
ross
This came up in conversation with you and Drew the other day. You were both debating about this.
carrie
Yeah. Okay. A beard hair, and these people in this cult, a lot of them have big old bushy beards. Most of them are blond, ‘cause it’s in Sweden, but several of them are brunette. And they got their scraggly—and I’m always like, “Now you’ve lost me, Midsommar.” [Both laugh.] This whole time—
ross
There’s no way you could know that was a pubic hair.
carrie
Yeah, you wouldn’t know, and it wouldn’t just come into your mind all of a sudden. “Oh, it’s definitely a pubic hair.” Anyway, Drew feels the opposite. He feels he could correctly identify a pubic hair in his meal.
ross
Yeah, well, I was introduced to this over the course of our dinner the other night, and— [Carrie giggles.] —I weighed in more on Drew’s side here, just saying that I would say that if you see a hair and have that feeling like, okay, this looks like a soft hair that’s been protected in an enclosed environment and it’s kind of got a thickness and oiliness to it, you could say, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s a pube,” and you’d probably be like 80-90% correct.
carrie
Wow. I don’t feel that way at all.
ross
There is a chance it could not be a pube, but I think you’d have a good—better than random guess.
carrie
I don’t think I personally would. But I also—I don’t think I have ever seen any hair not attached to someone’s body and thought, “That’s a pube.”
ross
Oh. I have. Well, I also pee in urinals on a regular basis.
carrie
Oh, true.
ross
So, you know what, Drew and I have seen far more pubes than you have.
carrie
[Gasps] Woah!
ross
Oh, I just changed Carrie’s perspective.
carrie
Oh, that’s interesting, because—oh. Because Drew put this out on Twitter. [Ross laughs.] He made a Twitter poll, and it was pretty 50/50.
ross
We’ve already talked about this way more than I thought I ever would in my life.
carrie
[Laughs] It was pretty 50/50 and I wonder if it was those who have used urinals and those who have very little experience analyzing pubic hairs.
ross
Yeah, we’re busy like, trying to knock them around like, feel like we’re doing a favor. Like, yeah, I’m gonna get that one off the edge for you, there you go. Got it in the bottom, that’ll flush down.
carrie
‘Cause, I mean, I’ve seen pubic hair but it’s always been attached to somebody. [Both laugh.] It’s not just hanging out somewhere.
ross
Alright. I’m glad we had this conversation.
carrie
Wow. Drew! [Ross laughs.] Hey babe? He might be asleep. It’s midnight. [Both laugh.] Oh, that’s it for our show.
ross
Anyway, so yeah. This ghost hunting show was your typical absurdity, but it was so funny, ‘cause he was just playing up because they wanted him to. And he was gladly ascending. He was playing up this kind of dark Satanist character who deals with dangerous magic.
carrie
And mentioned that he’s a Satanist, but doesn’t believe in God or Satan, and for a second I was like, “Oh! Like the Satanic temple, who are all like, kind of cheeky atheists?” But no, ‘cause then he said, “But I do believe in like, spirits. And sure, some people might call them demons.” I was like oh, okay, nevermind.
ross
That reminds me. As you were in the bathroom, he was mentioning to me something about how people come and they’ve got all kinds of backgrounds. Christians, atheists. And I said, “Oh, well, is it something that you can feel as an energy, that you can differentiate between people?” And he said, “Oh no, not really.” But yeah, then seeing that video later where he stated that, just, oh, okay. Didn’t see that coming. But of course the silliest thing was that they kept shooting this footage, and they would have these different histograms on the side, little graphs overlaid on top of this black and white footage, you know, showing you something that they never, as far as I could see, explained. “Here’s what this is measuring.” And it would be putting these little dots around the image, like overlaid on top of people. And then there would be—the dots would have lines between them, and it would form this perfect little like, human stick figure, which would be floating around in the frame somewhere.
carrie
And then they’d say, “Oh my god, that’s a ghost.”
ross
Over nothing. So you would have like a solid black wall, or like a red pattern.
carrie
I wouldn’t see anything there.
ross
Yeah, there’s nothing visually, at least in the color spectrum to denote the shape, but all of a sudden they’ve overlaid these dots that—[Gasps] “There’s a weird little human figure standing over your shoulder!”
carrie
And then not explain to us like, okay, but what is your software supposed to detect?
ross
Yeah, what are you sensing? Is this in UV? What’s going on?
carrie
Is this heat?
ross
Which just made it look silly. So silly.
carrie
Yeah. Uh, who is that compelling for? I guess a lot of people.
ross
Well, anyway. That was an exciting reading with Richard-Lael. You wanna hold off on rating this one?
carrie
Yeah. Let’s see how 2020 pans out. Will I become Dr. Oz?
ross
The hardest part will be to kind of write down these predictions in such a way that we can judge them true or false.
carrie
That’s what I was just gonna ask you. Looking back at this, what stands out to you as something that like, okay, either will happen or won’t for you.
ross
Oh yeah. This is not for me, but as we were saying goodbye to him, we were saying, “Well, we hope you’re wrong about Trump, and if you are wrong we’ll come back and celebrate. And I guess if you are right, we’ll come back and commiserate.” So that’s definitely something. Uh well, we can see if Cara dies. Then he will be my mortal enemy.
carrie
You can be like, “Why didn’t you warn me? You just kept saying that it probably wasn’t.”
ross
[Laughs] Yeah, seriously. Those are things I would need to know. You’re gonna have maybe an old flame come back, and be more interested in you. This could go with that other psychic prediction that someone’s gonna interrupt your wedding. That was from the Hollywood lady.
carrie
Right. Someone named Milo.
ross
Right. I would almost say that it kind of reflects well on him as a psychic, I think because he is dealing more in just general advice, storytelling, and juxtaposition of ideas, just to create this spirit of meditation and introspection and reflection. Rather than, like, giving you specific things to watch out for, people to worry about. There was, you know, a little bit of that. I just gotta say, I was transfixed the whole time.
carrie
Oh yeah, it’s so interesting.
ross
I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience. It’s the best time I’ve ever had in a psychic reading.
carrie
Ah, lovely. That might be true of me, too. I’m not sure. Pretty good.
ross
I would gladly do it again, and yeah, just really enjoyed him as a person and as a character, and that house is just amazing, so.
carrie
Oh, Trump dying in office, that’s a prediction.
ross
Oh yeah, and that—well, the second term, so we wouldn’t get there, but yeah. We can keep that in the long run.
carrie
Right. Second term—
ross
Yeah, I would highly recommend this if you’re looking for a psychic reading.
carrie
Yeah, for sure. It’s a bit pricy. It’s a weird thing, when we’re doing things for this show that ordinarily I would not want to pay nearly that much for—there’s this educational aspect that makes it okay.
ross
I’m glad you said that, ‘cause I feel like my sense of what these things are supposed to be worth is totally throw out the window. I feel like I’ve lost my moorings on that. [Both laugh.]
carrie
I mean, you know, if you spend a hundred dollars on a dinner, you’d be like, that’s a very expensive dinner.
ross
‘Cause like, on your vision board there, what does it say? Like, a hundred dollars for thirty minutes?
carrie
Yeah, for Carlos the medium.
ross
Yeah, it is a fair amount of money. So this has to be something where you have kind of discretionary—the ability. In this case, we’re doing a podcast.
carrie
Yeah. You are, in part, paying for the ambiance, and it’s pretty rad.
ross
Maybe in a year we’ll be able to talk more about his accuracy or lack thereof, but hot drinks?
carrie
Thumbs up.
ross
Solid thumbs up.
carrie
Thumbs up, right from the getgo. Though I will say, I believe on his website it says you’ll get tea and scones. That’s how my friend from England says it. Scones. Uh, yeah. We only got tea.
ross
Well, now—
carrie
I demand all one hundred dollars back, or one scone.
ross
At the same time, I felt like this guy gets it. I feel like he’s kind of aware of what he’s doing and what’s going on and that he’s purposefully delivering kind of the best version of a psychic reading he can that will be hopefully relevant and cause people to live better lives. And, you know, I’m reminded of, you know, we talked to our friend Mark Edward before. You know, he always kind of rides that line, because he still gives psychic readings. And I feel like he does something very similar, which is, you know, how can we help give somebody just some positive things to think about?
carrie
Yeah, I’m not totally for that angle.
ross
There’s kind of better and worse versions of psychic readings, and I feel like what Richard-Lael is doing is here definitely on the best side of it.
carrie
Yeah, yeah. If you’re still going to go along with the gambit that you are a psychic, do it this way. Say you’re a Satanist and give me some tea.
ross
[Laughs] Indeed. So yeah, great way to start 2020, and uh, hopefully our listeners will help us keep our eyes open for all these things. It was so funny, as we were getting ready to publish our Sister Rocky review at the end of 2019, a lot of people were writing us saying, “Oh, I set my calender to remind you!”
carrie
Yeah, thank you.
ross
So uh, alright. We’ll rely upon you all to remind us to revisit Richard-Lael at the end of the year.
carrie
And I’ll watch out for any frenemies, just in case there’s more than that one.
ross
And if you’re anywhere near San Francisco, you should come see us!
carrie
Oh yeah! Come see our little SketchFest show!
ross
Very soon. It’s gonna be Tuesday the 21st of January, 8 P.M., right. So you got a little time to get off of work and get over there from wherever else in San Francisco you are. We’re gonna be at Cobb’s Comedy Club again. Great venue. We’ll have visuals, we’ll have a fresh investigation we’re very excited about.
carrie
It’s gonna be very fun.
ross
So uh, yeah, come join us.
carrie
And there are still tixs. There is even—I think there is one ticket still in the front row.
ross
Woah, what?
carrie
I think so.
ross
Oh, that’s crazy. So uh, yeah, you can find it at, uh, if you go to MaximumFun.org, there is an events section. You can find it there.
carrie
Yeah. Brand new events section.
ross
Or on our social media, we’ve posted links to that recently. Speaking of which, you can find us on Facebook.com/onrac.
carrie
Or you can find us on Twitter @OhNoPodcast.
ross
I should also mention that our administrative producer is Ian Kramer.
carrie
And our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.
ross
You can support us at MaximumFun.org/donate. That’s where you can help fund our investigations. That’s where the majority of our support comes from, and uh, we really rely upon all of our generous listeners who chip a little bit towards, you know, going to seminars where we walk on broken glass.
carrie
Oh. Glass now.
ross
No, that hasn’t happened yet.
carrie
Interesting. Another way you can help us out is leave a positive review on, say, iTunes or whatever method you use to get a podcast.
ross
That would be a very classy, handlebar moustache kind of thing to do. [Carrie responds affirmatively.] And remember!
clip
Speaker 1: Are you a magician? Richard-Lael: Um, in a sense, yes. I don’t do magic tricks. Speaker 1: Black or white? Richard-Lael: There’s no such thing. There is no such thing. [General chatter of agreement from a crowd in the background.] Richard-Lael: It’s all about intent. It’s all about intent. Speaker 1: Well, if you violate free will, that’s black magic. So, I mean, but call it what you want. Richard-Lael: People think of light magic and dark magic, and really it’s just about intent. I think they were surprised because I wasn’t all light and love and my higher power.
music
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” plays, then fades out.
promo
Music: Upbeat, cheerful music plays in the background. Allie Goertz: Hi, I'm Allie Goertz! Julia Prescott: And I'm Julia Prescott. And we host— Both: —Round Springfield! Julia: Round Springfield is a new Simpsons podcast that is Simpsons-adjacent— Allie: Mm-hm. Julia: —um, in its topic. We talk to Simpsons writers, directors, voiceover actors, you name it, about non-Simpsons things that they've done. Because, surprise! They're all extremely talented. Allie: Absolutely. For example, David X. Cohen worked on The Simpsons, but then created a little show called Futurama! Julia: Mm-hm! Allie: That's our very first episode. Julia: Yeah! Allie: So tune in for stuff like that with Yeardly Smith, with Tim Long, with different writers and voice actors. It's gonna be so much fun, and we are every other week on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts! [Music fades out.]
speaker 2
Comedy and culture.
speaker 3
Artist owned—
speaker 4
—Audience supported.
About the show
Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. Follow us as we join religions, undergo alternative treatments, seek out the paranormal, and always find the humor in life’s biggest mysteries. We show up – so you don’t have to. Every week we share a new investigation, interview, or update.
Follow @ohnopodcast on Twitter and join the Facebook group!
Get in touch with the show
@OhNoPodcast
/ONRACPeople
How to listen
Stream or download episodes directly from our website, or listen via your favorite podcatcher!
