We're previewing the ROCHESTER FRINGE FESTIVAL and plugging EGO AND THE ORACLE — come see us at the Blackfriars Theater on September 25 at 10 PM and September 26 at 8 PM (tickets $20 at rochesterfringe.com). I sit with Jim from Jim's Big Ego and Sean Peters as we walk through the show's vibe: think musical divination — part fortune telling, part musical improv, and part group therapy, all rolled into an hour and fifteen minutes of delightful chaos.

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/55f37104-71ee-4563-9df4-beae4cad6d70/

The process is simple and beautiful: everyone writes a real question, someone spins a wheel of Jim’s songs, the band plays the chosen track, and Sean interprets what the music and lyrics reveal — equal parts comedy, tenderness, and occasional spooky accuracy. We also riff about the Question Clown, the “question poetry” Jim stitches together from the unread cards, and why the whole thing resonates so well with an earnest Fringe crowd (our audience skews delightfully neurodivergent and deeply into the weird). If you like being seen, hearing great songs that span folk, electronica, and unpop anthems, and watching live creativity teeter on the edge (then catch itself), this is the show for you. Come for the music, stay for the revelations — grab your tickets at rochesterfringe.com and we’ll see you at EGO AND THE ORACLE.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Visit joebeanroasters.com to get fresh roasted specialty coffee either by the bag or with a Perpetual Joy subscription!

Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Not.

I'm your host, Chris Lindstrom.

We're doing previews for the Rochester Fringe festival happening from September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets for as many events as you can possibly go to.

And you definitely want to do that.

And I'm here with some guests.

Guests, why don't you introduce yourselves?

I'm Jim from Jim's Big Ego and Sean.

I am Sean Peters.

I am the interpreter of the Ego and the Oracle show.

So the Ego and the Oracle is.

A hour and 15 minute show happening.

At the Blackfriars Theater on September 25th at 10pm and September 26th, Saturday at 8pm get your tickets at rochesterfringe.com $20 tickets for the show.

And this seems like an absolute blast.

So let's talk about the show and the format.

So Ego and the Oracle seems like this is a wide ranging, multidisciplinary, fringy show from top to bottom.

100%.

Yeah.

I like to tell people because I have, I have the harder job of explaining it because see, Jim, Jim leads an amazing band, so he can say, oh, I'm on stage playing music.

What I have to explain to people is that it is about one third a Fortune telling show, 1/3 an improvisational show and musical improv and, and, and, and life improv, and then about one third therapy in front of a group of anywhere from 20 to 120 people.

I mean, I like to say divination.

It's a, it's a musical divination show.

I mean, other than that, I mean, there's not that much going on in the show.

No.

No.

So you could see it at any mall in America.

So when, when you're, when you're developing, you know, when you're developing this show,.

Because this is not obviously the first run of this, when you're developing the.

Show, how did that process go?

Because that's, I find the process of.

Coming up with the style of show so fascinating.

How did that process go to develop what has turned into, you know, a traveling show for fringe festivals and other things like that?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, credit to credit where credit is due.

We.

Sean was not there, but my band was a guest on a radio show called Radio 8 Ball out in Olympia, Washington years ago run by a guy named Andres Jones.

And usually he was taking calls from listeners and then they would have a question and he would play A random song on a CD player that had eight discs in it.

And then the song that came up, he would explain as the answer to the question.

And we thought, this is fantastic.

We should do this live.

So we actually did it live in his studio.

And then the original versions of the Ego and the Oracle we worked on with Andras, and we developed the spinning wheel with 30 of Jim Spagigo songs on it.

And Andres Kamen was the interpreter for some of them, but he's out, you know, bicoastal.

And we, you know, the.

The.

We kind of went our separate ways, but we've continued to do the show with Sean.

We had another interpreter named Jenny Gutsbizal, who is also fantastic in that role.

It's Sean's is the hardest role in the show, because finding that connection between the song that comes up on the wheel, I mean, we should really explain the process a little bit better.

Some steps.

Yeah, there are some specific steps that happen.

So every person that comes into the show is given a piece of paper where they can write down a question, and we strongly advise them to write a question they actually want answered.

You.

You'll always end up with some people that just want to be clever on their question or ask a meta question.

And we'll take them.

They just don't tend to be as satisfying for anybody in the room.

And, you know, if I wanted no one to be satisfied in the room, I, you know, go back to dating anyway, so.

But everybody fills it out, we put it in a box, and then we take them out at random.

That person is invited on stage to read their question out loud, and then they approach this wheel with, like, sound effects, pomp and circumstance.

They spin the wheel, and we announce what that song is.

And then the band plays the song start to end, and then we remind everybody what the question is.

And then it is my job, between the music I just heard, the lyrics I just heard, and also talking to the person, I mean, a lot of what I do is ask questions and try to take care of that person, especially if they came upstage and have made themselves vulnerable with their question.

And most of the time, it's pretty funny.

Sometimes it's really touching.

And just often enough, it is so dead accurate that even people that came in thinking it was a lark go, okay, I may have just seen some actual prognostication.

Yeah, it's funny, too, because I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

No, no.

Was that.

Was that a plant?

I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing you think in that situation.

Yep.

We.

It was very interesting.

The la.

We did.

Just did a show last weekend.

Luckily we had the.

We won't have the Question Clown for the.

For this, but we've added a new.

New character called the Question Clown.

So if somebody does have like a clown question that they've, you know, I don't know, what's the age of the, the average age of the band or what, you know, some.

Some silly question, the Question Clown kind of runs up and grabs the question out of Sean's hand.

But we'll.

We'll deal with that in a different way at this show.

But in this last show, we actually had somebody who had seen the.

Who had asked an important question of the ego and the Oracle.

Oh, decade ago, you know.

No, no, no.

So before my gosh, before my involvement.

Right.

And.

And asked why.

Why didn't I listen to the Oracle back then?

Because the answer that he had gotten was.

Was more dead on.

And time had shown that the song.

The Oracle knew the Oracle was oracular.

Well.

And I think that's also.

I think it's something special about fringe shows is there's an earnestness to a lot of them.

There's not there, obviously.

Many can be.

They can be ironic, they can be other things as well.

But I think one of the features.

That I've grown to really enjoy is that there.

There's an earnestness, there's a genuineness to.

A lot of the performing and a lot of them are just people that want to do a thing because there's an opportunity.

And somebody said, yes, right?

There's people who, there's professionals that do.

These things, touring, obviously, y' all are doing this more frequently and have, you know, performed in many different ways.

But then there's people who are just like, hey, this is my time to do a show, and I do a show this time every year.

And it's their outlet and there's this beautiful factor.

And I love that you brought up that.

Yes, you get.

There's joke questions and there's other things, but that the best version is when people are asking something honest and, and the humor makes itself and the honest moments make themselves.

If you try to force those, that's when people feel like it's a put on.

They feel like it's fake.

And I think that's where it resonates is when they know that the performers are being honest and earnest as well.

I mean, I think one of the cool things also is that my band has been around For a while.

And we have a really large back catalog.

As a matter of fact, we have songs that don't even make it on the wheel.

And we start out with 30 songs, and then over the course of the show, we add maybe seven different songs as each song gets replaced on the wheel as one of them comes up to answer a question.

And it's it for me.

It's such a great show to play because it isn't the typical concert where it's like, here's another song we wrote.

You know, this actually has a purpose.

And the star of the show is not Jim Spagigo, my band.

The star of the show is the person in the chair asking a serious question and making themselves vulnerable and.

And really looking for an answer.

And.

Oh, I was just gonna say.

And I was a fan of Jim's music and the band's music before I ever came on stage with them.

And there's a lyrical density and emotional texture to their music.

You know, there's some stuff that is just outright angry and then there's stuff that is so kind and so inviting.

And then there, there, there, you know, there are terms and titles like Math Prof. Rockstar.

There was a.

There's a line.

What is it?

I'm a semi simian environmentalist with bipedal omnivore.

Semi simian who's always mating.

Yeah.

Right.

So, like.

So all I have to do to be really good at my job, or the first thing I have to do, at very least, is just listen because there's stuff in there.

And.

But I'm.

I'm with Jim, which is the person.

The people that come up on stage always are what decide whether the show is going to be funny or poignant or a hit.

Yeah.

So your background, Sean, is it in improv performing?

So what is, what is your background.

That you bring to this?

Yeah, well, well, first of all, it's kind of funny that you were talking about, like, some people are doing this as an out there one creative outlet.

Yeah.

Jim and I have a lot of things in common in the sense that we both are performers.

I have an acting and improv background, done improv troupes and training in Los Angeles.

Jim is amazing songwriter and musician.

Then we're both also authors, and then we both have day jobs because neither of those other two things are lucrative enough for us to, you know, turn our backs on it.

Shout out the day jobs.

Love it.

Me too.

Yeah, well, you know, and if you can get one that, like, you're actually good at and sometimes makes you happy?

Amazing.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

But my background, I also, I was a psychology major.

I didn't.

I knew I never wanted to be a therapist just because I, I didn't know that if I had the empathy to do it seven, I mean, five days a week, eight hours a day.

But for those two, one to two hours on stage, it feels really good to just listen to people and try to give them an answer that helps them.

Yeah.

And I love that opportunity too.

Right.

Is that being present with somebody else for a time period, you know, with all these fringe interviews, I'm doing them often back to back, and it's 20 minutes here.

It's 20 minutes.

It's 20 minutes.

But those 20 minutes is being present with somebody else and trying to see something and, you know, really interact with somebody for the time you have.

And I love that factor of the show because it's, it's a very gratifying thing to have somebody else feel seen because of the skills you have.

It's wildly underrated.

It just feels great when somebody says, oh, wow, that was a fantastic experience.

I was really nervous.

I was nervous coming onto stage, I was nervous showing up for the podcast.

And then after, they just feel great because they were seen.

Yeah.

There is a welcoming, I mean, there's a welcoming attitude, an air to your podcast, Chris.

And I think we're definitely want make people to feel welcome.

Sean has a great way of balancing humor and compassion.

And so really, I think the over the overarching feeling to the show is compassion, but there is also quite a bit of humor.

And there a guest has nothing to fear sitting next to Sean and asking a question.

It's a friendly environment for sure.

Yeah.

I try to, I try to make sure that like I make fun of myself first, the band second, and them third.

Yeah.

And.

And by that point, they, I think most of the audience and the person wants in on it by that point.

Versus coming out guns hot and saying, well, you asked a question.

That's so embarrassing.

Let's all laugh at you.

I'm a little crueler.

I'm a little crueler when it's.

Somebody gets called on and I actually know who they are and I can, I can play with my food before I eat it kind of a little bit.

But yeah, I think justifiably so.

Fair enough.

Sometimes it's fun to stretch in that direction as well.

So I'm kind of intrigued.

So, like when you don't, like, you.

Don't know, you don't know the order.

Of the songs that are coming up for the day.

Right.

You know the list.

You know that, hey, you're going to go roughly in these directions.

When you're basically having a new order of a list every show, how does that process feel?

As somebody who's, you know, you've toured, you've done enough playing to have just chosen your own order.

How does it feel to not have control of that every night?

I've got to be on my toes on these shows.

So.

So, I mean, the whole band does.

And because we don't know what's coming up next, we know all the songs.

But, you know, it's funny, like, we.

Were talking about, well, can we bring in a substitute player, soloist or something?

And it's impossible because we'd have to say, well, okay, you've got to learn these 40 songs and you're going to play seven of them.

Yeah.

So.

But even for us, you know, some of those songs are really date back quite a long time because we've been a band a long time.

And, yeah, I mean, there's always the possibility that I'm gonna mess up and then that messing up is going to be part of Sean's interpretation as to how.

How that song answered the question.

It is not so from.

From performance point of view, this is not a safe, you know, way to make a show.

Like, lots of things can go wrong.

There is no net and people do fall.

But one of my favorite songwriters, John Gorko, once said to me, jim, nobody goes to the circus to see the.

Tightrope walker get it right.

Yeah.

There's a reason why Philippe Petit was so famous.

Yes.

And I would say that the only correction I would do is the only net.

There is no net except each other.

Yeah.

So.

And, and.

And that includes the audience.

Like, no one's there rooting for someone not to pull it out before it hits the fire.

Right.

The band knows that I will riff.

If they're figuring out what key that song they haven't played in 16 years is, they know I'll riff and vice versa.

If I am like, I'm struggling and struggling, I know I can turn to the band and say, jim, what were you thinking when you wrote this song?

Right.

Does any.

Did anybody.

That's always a sign.

Yeah.

Did anyone in the band hear something that maybe I'm missing?

And so we are each other's net, but we let.

We're all comfortable enough to let each other, you know, fall two thirds of the way to the floor.

So that the catch is interesting.

Oh, it's Way more fun that way.

It's dynamic.

Yeah.

And even when the, like when.

When the song that comes up just seems like an impossible song as an answer the question, that journey to find the way in which it relates to the question and how it answers it is always this, you know, it.

Yeah, it's a little bit hair raising, but it's all.

It always ends up being kind of.

Fun, especially if I can get the audience to go, oh,.

Well, I kind of love that too.

Right.

I mean, I love the idea of.

The thing that is holding you up.

Is relationship and skills.

Right.

It's the skill is the recovery, the skill is the flying on your feet.

Obviously the skill of playing, you know, is core to that.

But the skill is being flexible, is being.

Being available to rotate and move to the right spot for the moment and also being able to read what is the moment that you're in.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

And being present is really.

It's a big part of it.

Yeah.

Being present and listening.

We all have.

Well, I mean, so I was reading.

I was reading the bio and a line struck me on the band's bio and it's the first line, which is.

The greatest band in the history of recorded music.

Perform a Google search for the greatest band in the history of recorded music.

And you only get one result.

Jim's big ego.

And I appreciate the, you know, the.

Sensitivity to other performers to state it in that sensitive way.

Like the Beatles, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

The Rolling Stones.

Yeah.

At what?

I love that.

That is in the bio that.

I adore that completely.

When you're describing, if somebody asks you.

A question, never heard of the band,.

And they say, oh, you're in a band.

What kind of music do you play, Jim?

How would you define that?

We had to kind of build our own.

Right now we really do fit pretty nicely into folk rock.

But for a long time we kind of built our own genre called unpop for the unpopulous.

Because our music is, you know, generally unpopular and we like to appeal to people who also feel that they've been unpopular at some point in their lives, which turns out to be everyone.

Yeah, no, and I think that's.

So that is.

That's where I'm going to dovetail.

So I will say one.

When I saw that, saw that this was on the list of shows for fringe, I told the person who was helping to arrange the interviews, I'm like, this is my.

One of my must haves when it comes to interviews.

So I'm definitely one of those Kids who was, you know, the.

I had no idea how to be a social person.

But the things that felt to me like comfort that I listened to with my dad, that I listened to on repeat are, you know, the greats of the genre, which is, you know, it's weird.

Al Yankovic is like my.

That's my gold star.

And then the Dr. Demento collection, right, Is my.

Those were my gold stars.

Those were my shining.

Those are my direction was.

Oh, these people are just doing the.

Things they want to do and they don't give a shit that this is weird, that this is different.

They're just doing these songs and they're creating these things for.

For the people that they hit.

It's such a specific.

It's such a specific feeling.

Like, I'll say, as somebody who felt very alone, right?

Other than being around family, I didn't feel like I had the friends that understood me that I was in that space.

And you always felt that comfort with, oh, these people are weird too.

These people are odd.

These people are doing these songs.

I can't believe somebody wrote that.

And that's always been present for me.

And as soon as I saw, I'm like, oh, God, it just rang in my head.

That song, one of your songs, just rang in my head from the 30th anniversary collection of Dr. Demento and how many times I had heard stress on that album.

And as soon as I saw it, I'm like, oh, it just started ringing in my head and I could hear.

Every beat of it and it just.

Brings back all those specific memories of time.

That's awesome.

And I got a chance to then,.

You know, over the last few days, just sit and listen to just.

I'm just gonna go down the popular,.

You know, the most listened to things.

I'm like, oh, man, I wish I would have done this a lot earlier because, man, I loved so many of the songs and that they did hit all.

They hit so many different things, right?

They hit nerd topics, they hit, you know, angry topics, they hit serious topics.

And it was just.

It was.

Was a beautiful diversity of feeling through so many of the songs.

Gosh, thank you so much.

What I'm kind of wondering is like.

That whole thing, like, you know, that.

Opportunity to do all these different little.

Sub genres or tones within the unpop.

World that you live in.

How does that strike you that you're.

Like hitting all those different notes all the time?

Is that just.

Is that on purpose?

Is that just part of the process?

Yeah, I mean, I Should.

It's.

I think the thing is that I don't feel constrained by genre.

Yeah.

When I write my songs, I'm certainly not writing in.

There are some genres I'm not writing in, but I am.

I'm writing across, let's say, four different genres.

I did make an electronica album recently in Iceland that I've always wanted to make because one of my heroes growing up was Brian Eno.

I think the thing is that I listened to a lot of different things when I was growing up, and they all really made.

They made me feel, you know, they made life meaningful back then.

And so.

And so sometimes I think I pick up from David Byrne or Brian Eno.

You know, there's some of these people that I was listening to back then, and I.

And I am emulating them and I.

And I do want to sound like them.

John Prine, you know, or, you know, these great songwriters.

And also a lot of the songwriters that I met when I came up in the scene in Boston that really just probably most people haven't heard of, but that are just brilliant and have had a big effect on me.

So, like, I'm not trying to be clever with the genre switching.

I. I'm just inspired by lots of different types of music and.

And I.

And the songs turn out that way mostly.

Yeah.

And I love that you brought up, like, Brian Eno.

So, you know, it's one name, but his influence is so wide and diverse.

And, you know, somebody who I've grown to really love is, you know, David Byrne as well like that.

You know, the Talking Heads influence to me is that is diversity, right?

It's both.

Diversity in style, diversity in background, diversity of inspiration, diversity in mental style.

Right.

There's, like.

There's very few things that are more.

Of that style of music that I was mentioning, right?

That oddity music than Talking Head songs, right?

They live in that world.

There's whole songs.

One of.

One of my favorite songs of Talking Heads is Cities, from one of the early albums.

Yeah.

The whole song's about him trying to decide what city he's gonna live in.

That is the entire lyrics of the song.

That is ridiculous that that is a popular song.

It makes no sense whatsoever because that's.

That's an autistic person trying to figure out how to decide where to live.

That's the whole song.

And it's also musically so phenomenal, and it's performed so fantastically.

And it's still a song about trying to decide where to live or a song about how I'D never live in the suburbs because I would kill myself.

Like, this is.

These songs are so.

Are so of that style, but they've also passed into that world of general appreciation.

And I just love that that can be both things at the same time.

And I love that, you know, when.

You're talking, when you're hitting those notes in your songs.

I was feeling all that diversity as well, and it made me very happy.

Over the last few days.

Oh, I'm so glad.

That's great.

That.

That is truly great.

And I did want to say, I did get to meet Dr. Demeno.

I went out to see him in the studio out in la, and I actually went to his house to record no Way.

In his garage or his.

It wasn't a garage.

It was like a huge shed that.

With these bowed shelves full of records.

I was gonna say it has to.

Be, like, bordering on a hoarder's paradise.

Yeah.

Except all music.

Yeah.

And, yeah, I was.

I mean, I wasn't intimidated because he was very friendly.

I just, you know, he made you.

Feel right at home.

But also I felt kind of the weight of this greatness in terms of.

What he had put together over all those years.

Yeah.

And I love using that term for him as well, because for.

For the outsiders, like, his genuine oddity.

And I. I love that DJ mentality that was, hey, we're just gonna make this as odd as possible.

And now we're.

We're not trying to appeal to everybody.

We're trying to appeal to the people.

That care about this kind of thing.

But I think that's why, you know, shows like this can work as well is that, you know, they're.

You know, you might find the person,.

You know, the person that has some of that history or that passion or that remembrance and the nostalgia for these.

Kind of things, and then you might have somebody who's never heard any of the songs before, and they get to get to visit these for the first time.

And that has to be a fantastic thing.

And, like, as the interpreter for that,.

Sean, like to be present, to hear people hear some of these songs that might affect them in a way they.

They have no idea what they're in for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I will say, you know, the latest stats that I've looked at say that about 10 to 15% of the people on the planet are neurodivergent.

Yeah.

Our audience percentage is higher.

I can't imagine why.

It's what you write about, which is interesting.

Yeah, it's blessedly higher.

And.

And so it does mean we do get quite a few people that are fans, like yourself, of some of the music and know it.

And I get to say to them, oh, you know this song?

What does it say to you?

But it's just as rich to ask them, oh, you've never heard this song before.

What did you hear?

What stood out for you?

And it really doesn't matter whether they're hearing it for the first time or.

Or the last time before.

You know, the Oracle.

Well, I was going to say, I.

Didn't know that was part of the show.

I didn't know there was ritual killings.

As part of the show.

Sean, listen, there's a couple of songs that, when they come, I sometimes don't do readings because it's like tarot.

You turn over that death card in the wrong spot and you go, would you like to step outside the tent?

Do you need a drink?

You need a drink?

What can I do for you?

But I wanted to go back to one other thing that you said where you were talking about the David Byrne song, where he's just deciding on cities.

I would say that Jim's big ego does have their own version of that, except they don't get to think it through.

And that is that at the end of our show.

Oh, yeah.

You know, we've collected anywhere between, as I've said, 20 to 120 cards, and we've only read seven of them on stage.

And Jim does something that I've never seen any other human do with him in the band, and he creates kind of musical beat poetry, we call it question poetry, where he takes the entire stack of every question that was not read and sings them and carves every single time you carve some narrative out of it.

By the end, certain ones get thrown to the ground, other ones get held, and by the end, the room has gotten a reading.

Yeah, that process has to be just a blast to do.

It.

It is always terrifying to do that, to do the question poetry.

And we actually, even.

Even outside of the eu, in the Oracle, we've done it with just questions from the audience, but.

Sorry, napkins, like poetry from the audience, but something about the ego and the oracle, because they're all questions and a lot of them actually are really heartfelt.

Um, and we, you know, they didn't get to ask them.

And so I'm reading them and then finding a melody for them on the spot.

And then what'll happen is there'll be one that I have to hold on to, and then it'll come back and it'll become a chorus, and we'll have two or three that become a chorus and they work together.

And by the end, it's, you know, it's just bass and drums and my voice.

But there's a lot there because it's actually representative of the whole room and it's not representative of me.

And, you know, the name of the band is Jim's Big Ego.

And I'm really trying to call attention to that because it shouldn't be about the lead guy, you know, it should be about the room.

And that's what we're trying to.

That's what we're trying to go after.

Yeah.

So I'm going to put the plugs.

Out again for the show.

It's September 25th at 10, September 26th at 8 at the Black Friars Theater.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets to $20 tickets.

I kind of want to pivot to, like, I mean, I was reading.

I was reading your bio and the other history, and when I saw, you know, I, I knew the one song very intimately, but I saw the second one is about, you know, a superhero.

I'm like, okay, well, I've seen lots of nerd.

Nerd bands.

Do you know songs, songs about superheroes.

And, you know, so many, so many.

Songs have been done about them in the past.

And then I looked like, oh, there's.

A reason he's doing that one.

That's really interesting to see that, like, you know, you're, you know, these things are ingrained in you from history.

How does that.

It has to be so fascinating to have that pervasive comics influence in your life.

And what I'm referring to is your.

Your dad was one of the more notable illustrators in the DC universe for a long.

My uncle, actually.

Uncle.

Sorry about apologize.

Has to be a fascinating thing to have been around.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, I, I thought it was normal that every, every kid had a.

An uncle that would just bring them a couple of supermarket bags full of.

Comic books every weekend, but that was not normal.

And.

And so we just had kind of an embarrassment of.

Of comics just delivered to us, which was nuts.

And I, and I, I did not.

Honestly, I didn't take the comic book seriously growing up.

And then one day I was out,.

I took my Uncle Carmine out to.

To dinner and we were being waited on, and I was joking about, oh, he's a famous comic book artist.

And the man said, oh, really?

What.

Who did you draw?

And he said, well, I created the Barry Allen Flash.

And the man almost dropped what he was holding and said, you know, that was my inspiration.

That's why I moved to America, was that, you know, those books gave me the courage to pick up and go, to make me think I could do this.

And I'm so much happier here.

And then he left and I felt like an idiot.

And then my uncle said, yeah, Jimmy, you know, the bubbles, they're not always in English, you know, they're in bubbles.

So they can just put any kind of language in there.

Then they ship the books out everywhere.

Yeah, they're easy to translate.

And I'm like, wow, I totally got this wrong.

Comic books are actually really profound as a medium because they can go all over the world and these stories can really touch a lot of people.

And I think this was a bit of an ode.

That song Battle out of Barry Allen is a bit of an ode to my uncle.

Yeah.

And it's also so fascinating to you.

Look at the resonance, right?

And you see like, oh, all right, well, we had a one season show on cbs.

Okay, that's cool.

All right.

Barry Allen is on cbs.

And then you watch like this proliferation.

Of, you know, the animated shows and the animated movies that brought these back into vogue and that these stories got to be told and these stories that can tell so much about society and so much about the way we work, the way we interact with others.

Right.

And then, all right, there's some silly stuff too, but, man, when you see some of these characters brought to life,.

Like, it has to be.

I mean, for me, it's.

I just love it too, because it's.

You see what might be these giant caricatures from that time, like, oh, super smart gorilla.

Okay, cool.

Super smart gorilla, that's right.

Yeah.

And then you watch Detective.

Yeah, yeah, you watch.

And then you watch a version of that and you're like, oh, oh, there's.

Some real, there's some depth, there's some, there's some, you know, ennui, there's some.

Pathos, there's some like, oh, what would.

It be like to live like that?

And then to tackle those kind of.

Topics through the lens of, you know, you know, arch kind of things is just one of the delightful things in.

Life is to take a silly thing and also explore society and life with it.

Yeah.

Well, if I, if I may, because.

So the books.

I've written two books for middle grade readers.

They were called the Unforgettable Logan Foster and.

And its sequel.

And the, the premise is that a neurodivergent Orphan gets fostered by a nice couple who are hiding something from him.

And it turns out that they are superheroes and that all the superhero content that has existed for 100 years is all real and just a cover story so that people don't freak out when they happen to see someone dressed like that in public.

And it is because I grew up reading Marvel in D.C. every time I got sick back in the days before everybody had a screen in their hands, the thing you could read on a day where you had 101 temperature in your tonsils were the size of golf balls was.

You know, my parents would come back from.

My dad would come back from the magazine store, right, with a stack of these and, you know, and I would read those.

And there were.

There were really stories about, what does it mean to be a hero?

What's the difference between being a hero and a villain?

And this idea of, like, almost all these heroes were trying to balance what it takes to be a hero and what it takes to just exist in the world.

And so there I am, you know, I wasn't published until I was 50, and I.

Here I am writing about the things that meant something to me when I was 12.

I mean, what a great opportunity to.

To, you know, to think about the kids that need that book.

And I. I think that's.

I think that's one of the joys of, you know, we have, you know, I'm around some.

We just.

We have a librarian show just about to launch with four librarians from different, you know, three of them for towns.

One works for a school, and they're doing like, you know, Rochester's Book Club.

But the thing for me is just how genuinely excited they are to share great.

Share great books of all different, you.

Know, stripes and backgrounds and colors and everything else that there's these people that are dedicating their time to, oh, highlighting these.

These books that give the kids escape, that give kids imagination, you know, they let them explore their imagination, that let them dive into, you know, these parts of their personality.

And, like, I'm just so lucky to be able to be around them and, you know, feel their passion to provide these for people.

It has to be just.

Has to be a delightful thing to.

When.

When you get that feedback from somebody that read that and said, oh, yeah, this really.

This worked for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Whether it's from them or it's from their librarian or teacher that says, oh, I've got a. I've got a Logan foster kid that I'm giving this book to, like, I've done a couple of conferences and stuff and had actual teachers and librarians say, I, I got one for you.

I, I'm buying this book to put in the hands of this kid.

And then, you know, and then they email me a week ago or two later and they're like, kid hasn't finished a book in three years and he's asking, when's this?

Where's the second one?

Yeah, so, yeah, it's amazing.

That's the, that's the power of being.

Seen, being seen as a kid.

Right back to where you were saying.

Right.

And that they're also seeing that part of you as well, which is like, that's the part that is in the end, when you're doing these, doing a good deed.

Right.

You know, helping a kid feel something like, those are the things that make you feel satisfied as, as a real ass adult too.

I did want to pivot in as.

Well to, you know, Jim, your books.

I was just reading the, you know, I was reading the, you know, the through lines about the concept.

You know, I love the idea, right.

With this, you know, integrated technology that we're, we're living in the nascent stages of full integration into technology and that.

How do you live in that world?

Who are the people that are against, who are the people that are for and what is beneficial to them?

How did the process go writing novels?

I was reluctant to start writing a novel.

I, I was.

My keyboard player is Josh Cantor, and I was on a bus with him coming back from a gig because Jesse and Dan had taken the van back and we wanted to stay in New York for a little longer.

So we.

In the city and so we stayed another couple of days and we took the bus back.

And it occurred to me, like, this is not going away.

You know, this sending a little bit of text back and forth fulfills something so deep people are willing to risk everything for it.

And then all of a sudden I had this entire world.

I guess I had been thinking about a lot of the sub topics.

Absolutely.

I was thinking a lot about kind of, well, what if we had an economic system that didn't rely on trade and money and any kind of currency and not even.

Not bitcoin, nothing, where everything was actually upside down, where where gifts are given and offered and received and rated.

And so I sort of, from that and the phone realization, the character Mardo popped into my head and he was, you know, sort of fully integrated into a kind of a web or a mesh, you know, environment, but fully in the world too, physically, not like living as an avatar or anything.

And part of this community that, that did that just was a gifting, like a high tech gifting economy and how it changes the way you think when you're actually not thinking about things in terms of a numerical value and rather you're thinking about things in terms of a subjective value.

And that was sort of the big exploration for most of the first book.

And then I've.

I've kind of gone on and wrote a second book in the same series.

And I'm trying to finish the trilogy out.

And.

Yeah, I'm close.

Yeah, close.

So doing, you know, writing a whole.

Novel, you know, is.

Was this your first time trying to stretch to that, you know, that many pages, that duration of writing?

Oh, yeah.

And I couldn't, I just couldn't imagine it.

So what I did was I had, I said, I.

Every party I went to, I said, I've got this idea for a story.

And then I would talk to people for an hour, you know, about alternative economics and, you know, technological gift giving and, you know, I would.

Suddenly I. I stopped being invited to parties.

Yeah.

For some reason.

And you.

Only you weren't hit often enough.

Like, you weren't.

That's what I needed.

Slap me you really hard across the face.

And then one day I stepped out on my way to work and I stepped out into the street and I almost got hit by a car.

And I realized, oh, this entire world will die if I don't write it down.

Yeah.

And I started writing that day.

Yeah, those, those moments.

Right.

It's.

I think it's unfair that, you know, to expect that you have some of those like, flash moments where, oh, I've got to do this now.

Yeah.

But if you're somebody who's paying attention.

And you're like, you know what there,.

If, if anything else.

All right, let's.

This is the reason.

Let's, let's go.

And you're probably just waiting.

You're not waiting.

But that moment, you.

Something was going to happen.

Whether it's that or something else, that.

Just pushed you over the edge because you're probably really close because you're really.

Thinking about this stuff.

And I love that you mentioned economics as well.

It's one of my One of my nerderies and one of the things I like to think about a lot is, you know, it's behaviors and incentives and those kind of things.

Because there's so many things that we're incentivized to do that aren't beneficial to society.

Yeah, right.

And that, like, oh, I try to understand the way things work.

So this goes back to the.

The neurodivergent audience.

I love understanding how things work so I don't have to worry about them because at some point I figured it out like, oh, this is.

If this happens, this is what I expected.

Okay.

I don't have to think about this anymore.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Modeling.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm that kind of person where like, you know, my wife has emotions and things.

So for, like, for me is I.

Want to understand economics.

I want.

Understand what my.

The expected behaviors are so I can see and expect it.

But I love that, you know, this was something that was sitting in your head, that it was boiling.

And the name of the show is.

Just Can't Not Right.

So that's the way I think about this is I love talking to the.

People that just can't not do the things they're doing.

And I know the double negative, but for me, that's.

It's there for a reason because it's.

It's this boiling over of, oh, I gotta do it.

Even if you're not there yet and you haven't done it yet, it's there.

You gotta get there and you'll get there.

But you do have to start.

You have to start.

It's a hard realization.

Yeah.

Sean, how did you decide to start?

See, I think you have to.

I think the most important thing to me in almost all creative pursuits is you've got to start and you've got to finish.

And.

And that is to say, if I, you know, I talk about writers all the time and young writers, especially when I visit, and I'm like, you know, you're.

That idea that your first draft has to be perfect or precious or anything that starts with the letter P is.

Is.

Is tyranny.

Right.

Like, it is what's getting in the way of it ever being what you want it to be.

Yeah.

But then there's also.

So, you know, I.

So often I've been working on things where I know what I've just written isn't good enough yet, but I write past it believing that I might learn something just like my characters down the road that will inform, like, oh, that would have been better if that happened, or if they said that, or I might not even have needed any of that.

And you only discover that if you go past it.

If you ride through the speed bumps and then clean up the car when you get where you're going.

Right.

And then the ability to finish a thing is also about, you know, you get your feedback, you do your second, third, 100th draft, whatever it is, and say.

And understand, it's never perfect.

It just, it has to be done.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

Yeah.

And I think that's where my improv background really helps me is because I know that, you know, doing the perfect improv on stage will never happen, but I might get the biggest laugh and say, scene.

Yeah, right.

And I know that that's, that's when to end.

And so, yeah, I, I'm somebody that always has a, you know, a couple of creative bees in my bonnet and stuff.

And for me, getting started is hard, but I, as soon as I start, I kind of commit to finishing, and that's a big deal.

Yeah.

You've reminded me of something, Sean.

And actually, I mean, if there's any of you aspiring writers out there that are a little afraid of doing this, one of the things you reminded me of was that so much goes on subconsciously when you're writing and you can't control it.

So even when you think there's crap going down on the page and your subconscious is still at work, and you might find that it's actually something really critical to the whole story that comes out.

I was very much thinking the same thing, Jim.

It's like you can't control it.

Yeah.

During that flow state.

Right.

You're going to find an honesty in.

That or that state of just doing.

Right.

Like, it's the authors that say, oh, well, what do you do when you wait for that spark of creativity?

Like, no, I write from 8 to.

To noon.

I eat lunch, then I write from one to three.

That's my process, and that's when I write.

And then you find those moments of.

Honesty through that process of doing.

Yeah, I, I like that you said the flow state thing as well in our show just this past week.

I.

It was really.

This is me tooting our own horn.

I thought it was a great show, and I heard from other people that it was a great show.

And I remember there was a moment in the middle of it where I, you know, whether it was just, just like, like I was looking down at my notes or whatever, and I had a moment of going like this Is a great show.

We're having a great show right now.

Yeah.

And I had this moment, this tiny voice that said to me, so how do we keep it going?

How do we.

Or how do we turn it up?

And.

And I literally looked at that voice, which is weird because you can't look at a voice.

It's just audio.

And I said, or we could just enjoy how well it's going.

Yeah.

And I. I committed to myself.

I'm pretty sure if people in the audience saw it, they probably saw me smiling for some weird reason.

Yeah.

And that's why the rest of the show was every bit as good, if not better, was because I. I didn't worry about trying to make it.

Keep it that good or make it better.

I just go back to what you said.

I was present and I was enjoying the process and I.

And I was trusting my process.

And I feel like our show when.

When it's working.

Yeah.

That is a perfect.

That.

It's why what should be the scariest thing any of us have ever done never feels that way for more than a couple of seconds.

Yeah.

And I, I think that's such a.

It's such a specific feeling that is.

It is hard to define when, when, you know, some, you know, this is gonna, you know, this is good.

And being able to recognize it and continue is that whole thing of you've.

Gotten to be really good at what you do.

Right.

And it's.

It's one of those weird realizations that,.

Like, in my day job, like, oh,.

Oh, people are coming to me.

Oh, I'm the expert now.

I'm an expert in this.

Which is.

It's jarring.

Right.

It's jarring.

As somebody who never.

You don't think of yourself that way.

You think of yourself as, you know,.

As the kid that you were or.

The person who was floundering and all.

Those things, or just the guy that.

Knocked his toothbrush off the sink just five minutes before work.

Yeah, exactly.

And then people perceive you as something else.

And sometimes those things come together and you feel like, oh, yeah, I'm really good at this.

And I know this is good right now.

And it's not self aggrandizing.

It's not blowing smoke up your own ass.

It's, oh, I know what good is,.

And I know we just hit that moment.

And I.

It's.

That feeling is so awesome when you.

Know that this has gone well.

And if you can immediately feel grateful.

Yeah.

Right.

And enjoy.

Right.

Because they're fleeting moments.

Right.

It is a fleeting moment.

But it's, you know, whatever you want to call the thief of joy.

Right.

It is.

It is thinking about.

It is thinking about what could have been and all these other things.

And if you can have that moment and be like, I am not only happy but grateful in this moment.

You stay in it longer.

You 100% stay in it longer.

So, yeah, we're striving for it.

Well, great job closing out the show, Sean.

So if you want to feel those kind of special moments, if you want to have those existential, joyful moments, if you want to feel something and also hear some really fun and cool music.

On stage, I want you to go.

Check out Ego and the Oracle at the Blackfriars theater on the 25th and 26th.

Get your [email protected].

Sean, where can people find you online if they want to check you out for everything else that you do?

Yeah, I'm not super active on socials too much, but Sean Peters writes.com and Sean Peters writes on a lot of platforms like TikTok.

You might see me.

But also, I mean, the most important thing probably as an author is like, if you enjoy young people's writing or if you've got a young person in your life who you think needs to be seen.

The Unforgettable Logan Foster and the sequel, the Unforgettable Logan Foster and the Shadow of Doubt are available on every possible platform from HarperCollins.

So that's a great way to find me too.

Yeah.

And definitely tell your librarian to bring in if they don't already have it.

It's great for the libraries.

It's great for the kids.

It's great for the authors.

Jim, where can people find your stuff?

A number of websites.

So bigego.com for the band Jim's Bigego jiminfantino.com links will get you all the links to everything.

And the book site is wakefulwanderer.com.

So the books are.

The first book is the Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to New New England and Beyond.

And that's available on the website and also on all the, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.

Etc.

So, yeah.

And if you like, if you like strange speculative fiction, that.

Yeah, that is kind of odd.

Not quite Philip K. Dick odd, but pretty odd.

You'll enjoy the books.

Well, I'm very much looking forward to checking those out.

Guys, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

If you want to check out other shows on the Lunchadore Podcast network, go to lunchadore.org Like I mentioned, we have reader's advisory starting soon.

I also want people to check out friend Rob Bell, who's doing Lo Fi music and talking about plants, along with his relationships with friends and people he has met.

It's just a blast of a show and is just condensed creativity all in one hour.

So, guys, thank you so much for.

Joining and we'll see you out on the fringe.

See you then.

Thank you.

This has been a presentation of the.

Lunchadore podcast Network work.

I am also addicted to stress.