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Takeaways:
- We rescued a chill outdoor cat who taught us patience while negotiating space with our dogs and snack-driven chaos.
- I lean on classroom humor to hold attention, but I also draw hard lines when jokes become mean or disrespectful.
- We're grappling with ChatGPT: it saved hours on syllabus edits, yet it hallucinates, fuels plagiarism, and forces assignment redesigns.
- I call out lazy, offensive 'redneck' punchlines; authentic insider humor comes from lived nuance, not incest or toothless stereotypes.
- We notice some exhaustion with culture-war theatrics — politicians' scare tactics now lose traction when people's wallets are hurting.
- I set firm classroom expectations about respect and pronouns, and remind students that not every opinion is equally valid.
- We geeked out about queer representation on TV — Agatha All Along felt like a joyful, spooky, queer win worth revisiting.
- Being professors means we juggle weird schedules, long commutes, and pet chaos, so community and small comforts keep us afloat.
We spent a lot of time at home on this one — if you thought a podcast about queer Appalachian life couldn't also be a pet show, think again. I introduce Brother Gus (who may very well be the twin of Ziggy) and we fumble through the delights and logistics of new cats meeting old dogs: Rue, Ziggy, face-scratches, hissing showdowns and the slow, weird choreography that happens when animals learn to live together. I tell the story of the lady who brought Gus to us and how resilient he is after living outdoors; Dash marvels at the softness of his pattern and at the sheer number of treats our fur-people have managed to weaponize into a swarm around our ankles. We also lean into the season — leaves turning, the nightmare of winter, and the small, cozy rituals that keep us sane (and occasionally moving houses). Between the pet anecdotes we riff on real-life domestic problems: listing a house, landlords, the crushing math of rents vs. mortgages when you have a fleet of animals, and how moving in winter sounds awful unless it's your birthday weekend. We close the loop on fall vibes with a love letter to spooky season — talking pumpkin displays, local Appalachian oddities like the Kenova Pumpkin House, and plans for a low-effort, high-fun Halloween live stream. If you want something warm, slightly chaotic and deeply domestic, this is us cuddled on the couch, trying to keep the animals quiet long enough to say hello.
youtube nonsense: Queernecks podcast, Agatha All Along review, WandaVision analysis, queer representation in Marvel, Appalachian folklore stories, Canova Pumpkin House West Virginia, Halloween podcast special, moving with pets advice, introducing cats to dogs tips, pet adoption rescue stories, AI in education ChatGPT Copilot, teaching with AI tools, handling students classroom humor, pronouns in the classroom, culture wars trans issues, Appalachian humor and redneck jokes, film theory male gaze discussion, queer TV watch party, podcast Patreon community, hosting a Halloween livestream
Transcripts
Foreign.
Speaker A:Welcome to Queer Next, the podcast that puts the yee haul in y' all means all.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Beck.
Speaker B:And I am your host, Dash.
Speaker B:Welcome to today's episode.
Speaker B:Let me see the baby.
Speaker A:Back up.
Speaker B:Look, Ziggy, hold on, hold on.
Speaker A:Look, I got what you like.
Speaker A:I got what you need.
Speaker A:Here we go.
Speaker B:R's trying to get in on the treats.
Speaker A:All right, all right, we're back up.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:This is Brother Gus.
Speaker A:Let me turn off this light.
Speaker B:Go, Gadget Arms.
Speaker B:Oh.
Speaker B:Oh, his.
Speaker B:His pattern is so soft.
Speaker B:He's, like, diluted.
Speaker B:Oh, he likes face scratches.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:He's a good boy.
Speaker B:He looks just like cats are matching.
Speaker A:I like his little white mouth and his white chin.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker B:I like that about hers, too.
Speaker B:They really are almost identical.
Speaker B:That's funny.
Speaker A:Rue.
Speaker A:Rue, come on.
Speaker A:We're not.
Speaker A:They're just piled up.
Speaker A:He has realized that the dogs like to chase him.
Speaker A:He has realized the dogs like to chase him, but that they're not going to hurt him.
Speaker A:So he just stands there and hisses, and it's just a whole showdown.
Speaker A:And then Rue runs away.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker A:But they're working on it.
Speaker A:Yeah, they're working on it.
Speaker B:Cats get through that process quite a bit faster than dogs do.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, you can tell nothing bothers this guy, but we think that he came from a house and somebody dumped him, and then he was on his own for a good long while because you can't leave food out or anything or he'll eat it.
Speaker A:He scavenges, but he's doing great with the litter box and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:So get off the mic.
Speaker A:They've got something to say.
Speaker A:He's the.
Speaker A:The cat is figuring out how to do how to cat on a inside level.
Speaker A:Shanna has played with him.
Speaker A:I haven't, cuz I always have the dogs with me.
Speaker A:And anytime the cat does anything, like, we're still working through that.
Speaker A:So I haven't been able to be around when he was playing yet.
Speaker A:Shannon gets up in the middle of the night and that's when she does it.
Speaker A:But he gets a little too rambunctious for it.
Speaker A:Like, he really likes the.
Speaker A:She has, like, a fishing line, like a little fishing pole with a feather on the end of it, and he just gets, like, a little wild and out.
Speaker A:It's really cute.
Speaker A:It's not, you know, he doesn't hurt anything or anything, but I think it would really freak the dogs out if they were in here and he was doing that.
Speaker B:If he was abandoned.
Speaker B:He's probably really been missing that kind of intense interaction.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Play is so important to cats.
Speaker B:Like a lot of people.
Speaker B:Don't they really under.
Speaker B:Stimulate their indoor cats.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Last night the cat went to bed with Shanna.
Speaker A:Shanna has to be at work at 6 o' clock in the morning, so she has to leave here at 5:00 in the morning.
Speaker A:I would die personally before I could do that job.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:So she goes to bed a lot earlier than I do usually.
Speaker A:And when I went to bed, the cat was laying at the end of the bed by her feet.
Speaker A:And Rue jumped up in the bed like five times.
Speaker A:Rue tries to shepherd me towards bed starting at like 6:30pm like, she's a.
Speaker A:She's an old lady at heart.
Speaker A:And every time I push my little table out, she runs.
Speaker A:Jumps up and runs down the hallway like, let's go.
Speaker B:Ready?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:She tried several times to get me to go to bed last night and every time she jumped past the cat.
Speaker A:And there was no fights last night.
Speaker A:So that was.
Speaker A:That was good.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:They've just gotta figure each other out.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think what they want right now is treats.
Speaker B:They have gotten a little too used to getting treats.
Speaker B:And so now anytime I stand up, all of them start screaming and they swarm around my leg like fuzzy little sharks.
Speaker B:So maybe that's what she's after.
Speaker B:Anyway, welcome back.
Speaker B:Welcome to the show, Mr.
Speaker B:Guest.
Speaker B:You're beautiful and we love you.
Speaker A:Hey, thank you, Bubby.
Speaker B:You're gonna be the show art for this week's episode.
Speaker B:I'm gonna do a side by side of him and Ziggy and y'.
Speaker B:All.
Speaker B:Listeners have to guess which is which because they are nearly identical.
Speaker A:Yeah, he's.
Speaker B:Although he's about twice as much.
Speaker B:She only weighs like five pounds.
Speaker A:Well, this guy is right at 11.
Speaker B:He's noticed that I'm here.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He can see the screen.
Speaker A:Yeah, he seems to be very smart.
Speaker A:I mean, he survived outside by himself for who knows how long.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, so he had some wherewithal.
Speaker A:I don't know where in Toledo he came from.
Speaker A:I don't know where they were living or what the.
Speaker A:She.
Speaker A:She was a young lesbian.
Speaker A:The lady that brought him to us was a young lesbian that works in the disability arena.
Speaker A:She works for this.
Speaker A:An offshoot of the company that Shanna works for, doing a different, totally different job.
Speaker A:So I can't imagine it's a super nice area because they don't make a lot of money and she said she lives on her own and stuff.
Speaker A:But she said she had a house,.
Speaker B:So I don't know.
Speaker A:Context clues say it was probably an okay area.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Meaning nobody heard him or hopefully.
Speaker B:I mean, he's clearly healthy, so.
Speaker A:And he's, he's very receptive to people.
Speaker A:He has no, no qualms of, of touching humans and letting humans handle him.
Speaker A:And as you can see, he's just very chill.
Speaker A:He's a chill little guy.
Speaker B:He's going to fit right in.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I love him.
Speaker B:So the leaves are turning here.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's fall.
Speaker B:Like they're all going to come down in my yard and it's yet another thing I don't have time for.
Speaker A:Yeah, they're starting to turn here.
Speaker A:I noticed the tops of them.
Speaker A:I think you're a week or two ahead of us up there.
Speaker B:So it's been cold a bit longer.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm excited though.
Speaker A:Fall's my favorite season.
Speaker B:That's what I was about to say.
Speaker B:I'm not complaining necessarily.
Speaker B:I mean, for both of us it is.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:Fall is the pre winter.
Speaker B:So I mean, for everybody,.
Speaker A:Yeah, fall is pretty winter.
Speaker B:But for both of us that's especially awful news because winter has just got off.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Where we live.
Speaker A:I'm not ready for it.
Speaker A:I'm so not ready for the cold.
Speaker B:Oh, I called.
Speaker B:Oh, I didn't call him.
Speaker B:I. I texted my landlord, realtor, the guy who helped me buy this house and I told him, I was like, hey, I'm.
Speaker B:I have a four hour round trip to my new job.
Speaker B:It's like, granted it's not every day of the week, but I'm already dying.
Speaker B:It's only been, it's not even halfway through the semester yet, so I'm gonna have to move.
Speaker B:Can you help?
Speaker B:And he was like, yeah.
Speaker B:I said, do you really think somebody's gonna buy this piece of shit house?
Speaker B:And he said, yeah, somebody will buy it.
Speaker B:I don't know how long it'll take, but somebody will buy it.
Speaker B:So I think we're just gonna go ahead and list it.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:Well, good for you, bud.
Speaker B:Maybe the guy.
Speaker B:I have a strange neighbor who lives behind me who owns a couple of other houses that he rents out here in town.
Speaker B:Maybe he'll buy it.
Speaker A:That would be great news.
Speaker B:Yeah, but the cats are not gonna like moving again.
Speaker B:But doing that in the winter though, I mean that this could be weird timing for something like that.
Speaker A:We almost always moved in the winter and then this time around we moved on my birthday weekend.
Speaker A:So the next time we move, it'll have to be my birthday weekend again.
Speaker B:Because of when you signed the lease or because of some other rule?
Speaker A:Yeah, because when we sign the lease, it'll.
Speaker A:My lease is from September 1st to September 1st.
Speaker B:So I looked at rentals in the town.
Speaker B:This where my job is in there.
Speaker B:Anything like, close to the size I would need for me and all of these animals.
Speaker B:Plus also the fact that I have all these animals.
Speaker B:It would be about three times what my current mortgage is.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:It's nuts.
Speaker B:So I was like, okay, I guess I'm gonna buy again.
Speaker B:Either that or I'm just gonna live in my truck.
Speaker B:Did you do anything for Joke Thief?
Speaker A:I thought about it a lot.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker B:I didn't think about it a lot.
Speaker B:I thought about it a little.
Speaker A:I have something I could probably pull out if we needed to, but I did not prepare anything.
Speaker A:No, I had.
Speaker A:Well, not on top of the flu.
Speaker A:I just had a lot going on this week.
Speaker B:Yeah, I also thought about it and I did try to do some brainstorming and think of some stuff that doesn't involve.
Speaker B:So the issue, issue with joke thief and YouTube is that it means a lot more editing for me than like, finding and trimming the format and stuff like that.
Speaker B:So I looked.
Speaker B:I tried to, like, look up, you know, generic jokes and stuff.
Speaker B:I was looking for redneck jokes, the stuff I found.
Speaker B:So this is.
Speaker B:Maybe it qualifies as Joke Thief, but it's not funny.
Speaker B:These are abhorrent jokes.
Speaker A:Like dead baby jokes.
Speaker B:Worse.
Speaker B:Like, I mean, they're all clearly AI slop, most of them, but.
Speaker B:So they don't.
Speaker B:A lot of them don't really make sense.
Speaker B:The ones I found, some of them are, okay, this is this one.
Speaker B:And a lot of them are, like, really specific to certain regions.
Speaker B:But then there's one.
Speaker B:I swear to God, I don't even know if I might edit this one out, honestly, but.
Speaker B:Or maybe I'll keep it in just so that folks know, like, what it's like to try to find stuff like this.
Speaker B:Like, the niche we operate in is minuscule.
Speaker B:Like self aware, conscious, queer, lefty, redneck, you know, Appalachian content.
Speaker B:It just doesn't exist.
Speaker B:And so trying to find anything that is on your same wavelength is impossible.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Well, I guess not impossible because we found some listeners, which is kind of.
Speaker B:That surprised me.
Speaker B:But there's this one joke and it said, how do you circumcise a redneck?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:You kick his sister in the jaw.
Speaker B:Isn't that crazy?
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's almost funny, but, like, it's also.
Speaker B:I don't know, you know, what it feels like is that moment where you get too high.
Speaker B:You take too high of a bong grip or something, and you're like, wait a minute.
Speaker B:This is a mistake.
Speaker B:This is too much.
Speaker B:This is black belt level shit.
Speaker B:I didn't sign up for this.
Speaker B:Like, whoever wrote that joke, they weren't a redneck.
Speaker B:First of all, I don't.
Speaker B:I just don't think a redneck would have written that joke because.
Speaker B:Not because violence isn't funny to us, but because the incest thing is tired.
Speaker B:We just.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Which I don't know.
Speaker B:So I was like, whoever wrote that, if it was a human, I don't know where they went to find that thought, I guess.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Because some of them are just like, really old ones and.
Speaker B:And not very good.
Speaker B:So one of them was like, what do you get when you put.
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:Yeah, what do you get when you put a bunch of rednecks on a bus, A full set of teeth.
Speaker A:As somebody dealing with dental issues.
Speaker A:That's funny.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's all those are.
Speaker B:Those are like, the old, tried and true ones because they're just in the air.
Speaker B:They're always accessible.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And because, like, the.
Speaker B:The redneck jokes, Jeff Foxworthy's.
Speaker B:He's his.
Speaker B:That's not this.
Speaker B:Those.
Speaker B:They're separate.
Speaker B:The stuff he's doing is more like.
Speaker B:It's from inside the redneck experience, I think.
Speaker A:Gotcha.
Speaker A:Got you.
Speaker B:Let me see.
Speaker A:A few of them applied to my family.
Speaker A:Like, have you ever mowed the grass and found a transmission that might.
Speaker A:You might be a redneck.
Speaker B:See, that's good.
Speaker B:And that's, like, more nuanced.
Speaker B:And that's the kind of thing that a redneck would have written.
Speaker B:Like, someone who doesn't really know what our experiences are.
Speaker B:All they have is incest and toothlessness.
Speaker A:Well, I do know people like that.
Speaker A:Not everyone from Appalachia is like that.
Speaker B:It isn't even, you know, whether it's an applicable or universal experience.
Speaker B:It's that there are much funnier things that happen to us and there's.
Speaker B:We don't need to keep going back to the same dumb.
Speaker B:Well, one of my favorite kinds of jokes is whenever it's a.
Speaker B:It's a linguistics joke where if the word ends in a noun making morpheme.
Speaker B:So, er.
Speaker B:Dancer.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's where you.
Speaker B:You apply the noun making morpheme to the end of a verb to turn it into the noun version of the person who does that thing.
Speaker B:And so if you say one of those words or somebody says one of those words, like if you say I, I met somebody the other day who was a dancer, I would say, dancer, I hardly know her.
Speaker B:And that has I.
Speaker B:Every time now I hear somebody say a word that ends in or.
Speaker B:Or er.
Speaker B:Or anything like that morpheme in my head goes, whatever her, I hardly know her.
Speaker B:And it's because there was.
Speaker B:There's a YouTuber that makes that joke and.
Speaker B:And it's contagious.
Speaker B:His name's Curtis Connor.
Speaker B:And I actually don't know that much about him.
Speaker B:I just saw one of his videos one day and he was making that joke, like, over and over again.
Speaker B:I was like, it's in my head now.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:When I was a kid, there was this book called the Big New.
Speaker A:The Big Book of New American Humor.
Speaker A:And it was a giant yellow book that was like the phone book.
Speaker A:It was huge.
Speaker A:And it was just page after page of.
Speaker A:There were Saturday Night Live skit transcripts in there.
Speaker A:There were comedian transcripts in there.
Speaker A:There were cartoons.
Speaker A:There were just all kinds of things.
Speaker A:It was so memorable that I tracked down a copy of it later.
Speaker A:I have a copy of it in there in my book, in my book boxes.
Speaker A:But there was one.
Speaker A:There was one cartoon that I printed out and I made.
Speaker A:I made a copy of it and I put it.
Speaker A:Yearbook or not my yearbook, my locker.
Speaker A:And people thought it was so strange.
Speaker A:And I don't know what it says about me, but the joke was, there was a man sitting on a table with a doctor, right?
Speaker A:And there was a string going to his crotch.
Speaker A:And the joke was.
Speaker A:And the string was tied to the doorknob.
Speaker A:And the joke was, it was like taking off a tooth.
Speaker A:And he was like, are you sure you have it in the right place, Doctor?
Speaker A:Like, they were going to rip it off by slamming the door, Right?
Speaker A:That made me cackle.
Speaker A:Like that just made me cackle for some reason.
Speaker A:And I hung that thing on every locker door I had all through high school.
Speaker A:That made me laugh.
Speaker A:I was a proto lesbian, I guess.
Speaker A:Analyze that.
Speaker B:Yeah, we need Freud for that.
Speaker A:I always tell my students, yeah, my parents ran a sex shop and now I teach women's studies, so do your own math on that.
Speaker B:I said something to mine.
Speaker B:I. I guess my students are starting to get a feel for the fact that I. I enjoy humor because I've relaxed, I guess, in class, and I just say stuff like, without really thinking about it right now.
Speaker B:And so I was talking about how just I was we were talking about, like, context specific details and stuff.
Speaker B:And I was describing how, like, how easy.
Speaker B:It's easier to see context from outside than inside.
Speaker B:And so, for instance, like, I can see the context of Minnesota as somebody who is not from here.
Speaker B:And I use driving as an example.
Speaker B:I was like, you know, it's.
Speaker B:I've had to change my expectations of what driving is like because the culture of driving here is so different than where I'm from.
Speaker B:Nobody's ever been in a hurry here.
Speaker B:And so I said, where I'm from, everybody drives like they're late for court.
Speaker B:And half of them are.
Speaker B:And that might be the first joke I told them.
Speaker B:And they were like, oh, my God.
Speaker B:But though last week, one of them got a little too bold, and I had to.
Speaker B:I might have overdone it because I made fun of him back, but because he.
Speaker B:He was, like, making fun of me, but not.
Speaker B:He was doing okay at first.
Speaker B:His first one was fine.
Speaker B:But he was doing this over and over in the class because I said I was looking for the dry erase markers.
Speaker B:And I said, somebody moved them so, you know, so we wouldn't huff them or something like that.
Speaker B:And he goes, no, they just saw your handwriting.
Speaker B:And I laughed because that's a pretty good one.
Speaker B:Like, I make fun of my handwriting all the time on the board.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:You know, I. I'm like, I don't.
Speaker B:I don't even know why I'm doing this.
Speaker B:I'll have to read it to you when I'm done writing it.
Speaker B:But then he.
Speaker B:He said a couple more, and I was like, this is.
Speaker B:This is getting kind of fierce.
Speaker B:You're getting a little big for your britches here.
Speaker B:And I said I was talking to them about rhetoric and how, you know, when you learn about certain, like, the logical fallacies, you see them everywhere.
Speaker B:You can't unhear these things.
Speaker B:And it's how most of us communicate.
Speaker B:And he goes, well, you could unhear it if you just took your hearing aids out.
Speaker B:And I was like, that's.
Speaker B:It's weird to say something like that.
Speaker B:It's not funny.
Speaker B:And I want you to stop trying to do that.
Speaker B:I want you to.
Speaker B:You need to learn now.
Speaker B:It's time to learn that there's only so much humor welcome in a space that has a job to do.
Speaker B:And so I said, I don't remember how I said it, but I basically said I'd still be able to hear you mouth breathing, though.
Speaker B:And the rest of the class descended into hysterics.
Speaker B:They laughed so Hard.
Speaker B:I thought I was gonna have to dismiss them.
Speaker B:And I was like, I overdid it.
Speaker B:Because he didn't know.
Speaker B:He has no way of knowing.
Speaker B:He's trying to, to make fun of one of the meanest people he's ever met and with like the, the most like the shortest fuse on their witness.
Speaker B:He just, he didn't know that.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:And there's no reason for him to suspect it.
Speaker B:And so then halfway through saying it, I realized, like, I probably shouldn't be this mean to him.
Speaker B:I probably shouldn't.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker B:I shouldn't be giving him a taste of his own medicine in, in public, in front of people.
Speaker B:So he.
Speaker B:I asked him to stay after class and I was like, that was weird what happened there.
Speaker B:We should not do that again.
Speaker B:Like, let's be being funny is fine, but let's make sure that we're respectful whenever we're, you know, joking back and forth.
Speaker B:And he was like, no hard feelings.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:I didn't upset you.
Speaker B:And I was like, that is not what I'm worried about.
Speaker B:I'm worried about you telling my boss what I just did to you.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Like, you don't even know how much power you have right now.
Speaker B:If you told my boss I said that, I mean, I actually don't know if she would care that much.
Speaker B:But still, that's not the kind of thing you ought to be doing in class.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:They can be pretty lenient.
Speaker A:I messed up pretty good one time and they let me keep my job.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I don't think it would.
Speaker B:Be a favorable offense really.
Speaker B:But it's not the kind of reputation I want.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker B:To feel safe in my class.
Speaker B:But yeah, when I said I really, I just realized when I said it, I was like, this is meaner than it should have been.
Speaker B:Like, I didn't have to do that to you.
Speaker A:I had a student come at me with the audacity this, this week too.
Speaker B:Oh God, please tell that story.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The email ended with help me help you, which is one of my favorite lines right now.
Speaker A:I've said it to Shannon maybe 50 times, basically.
Speaker A:So what happened was that she asked me to take the directions of the discussion board assignment and highlight the important parts, which is already kind of out of.
Speaker A:Out of the ordinary, but I thought, you know, she's trying, I can help her, whatever.
Speaker A:So I did it.
Speaker A:And I don't check my email for my online class every day because it's a very part time job and there's no emergencies in that in that, in that area of my life, their lack of planning does not my emergency make.
Speaker A:And their discussion board posts are due on Thursday nights and I didn't respond until Friday morning.
Speaker A:Now I responded as soon as she sent it, as soon as I got it right.
Speaker A:And in the email she asked me if I would please start checking my email more often and then help me help you.
Speaker A:That was who I was just like, wow.
Speaker A:And I really do think it was an AI written kind of thing because to have that kind of audacity, just the, the, the voice that it used, either that or she's a real piece of work is.
Speaker B:I don't know if AI would do that.
Speaker B:I've actually been, I, I have to use it now because of teaching.
Speaker B:I've gotten maybe 10 human written essays this whole semester so far.
Speaker B:And so I have to design, I have to redesign my assignments for after midterm.
Speaker B:So I've been, I was around with it with chat GPT, trying to break it in various ways and I hate it.
Speaker B:I hate it so much.
Speaker B:So I, I would get angry at it just in the same way that like when I see it in their papers, when I'm like a sentence into a, an essay written by AI and I immediately get angry at the student and start grading harder.
Speaker B:And you know, I have to grade their papers twice now because I have to read them a second to make sure that I was as fair as I could be wherever I could.
Speaker B:But I was giving it my assignments and trying to make it make sense.
Speaker B:It's getting better at like not taking the bait.
Speaker B:It's not like it's not getting better at writing.
Speaker B:What I mean is if you throw a non sequitur or a red herring at it and I'm intentionally using the formal logical fallacies, it, it knows it can sort of sense what you're doing and it will redirect.
Speaker B:It still does the thing where like y, yes, you're absolutely brilliant.
Speaker B:But I would back off of that kind of claim and restate it this way so you can still drag it super far afield by asking any follow up questions.
Speaker B:I don't want to about teaching, but this is about AI and it's about media and I've been doing research on that.
Speaker B:Have you read Insidification?
Speaker B:Let me find the author of that.
Speaker B:Cory Doctorow is a activist and authority.
Speaker B:He coined the term insidification and I think that there's like textbooks about it now.
Speaker B:Who's this one?
Speaker B:This is the one I read and it's about it's, it's not just about AI or anything like that.
Speaker B:It's about the way that we, anything can become gradually, on almost an automated kind of process, a consecutively worse version of itself because of capitalism.
Speaker B:Essentially when the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Speaker B:That's Godd Bart's law.
Speaker B:That just means that like if, if what I'm.
Speaker B:If I'm designing websites based on how often the AI search engines will index them, then they become, it becomes less about making good content and the, the target becomes making content that will be indexed by AI.
Speaker B:And so that's why all these websites are way worse now and you can't actually find information.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I brought that up.
Speaker B:Oh, AI.
Speaker B:There's also the issue of it's really reaching the end of its imaginary utility.
Speaker B:We were sold this promise of, of automation that it hasn't been able to actually deliver on.
Speaker B:And so now they're beginning to refine who their target audience is and it's students.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:My conspiracy theory is that chatbots Anyway, like generative AI, like ChatGPT, are beginning to target students who don't want to do their work or, or who are illiterate or whatever.
Speaker B:Specifically because it's, it's got a new feature where you can, the essay it writes for you.
Speaker B:You can click edit and edit it in the window so that when you copy and paste it, it doesn't the formatting up.
Speaker B:Oh wow.
Speaker B:Everything I learned about it's so depressing.
Speaker A:I do know that you don't even have to copy and paste it.
Speaker A:You can just say output this as a docs file and it'll output it as a PDF or a docs file or whatever you want.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And maybe that's not new.
Speaker B:I just don't use it that often.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, I have found some useful uses of, of Chat GPT for example, I fed my syllabus into it and said so like I had everything for a Monday Wednesday section and I wanted all the Monday Wednesdays changed to Tuesday Thursday and I wanted all the dates updated for this semester.
Speaker A:And I said do that.
Speaker A:And it did it in like a minute and a half.
Speaker A:And this saved me hours of like useless clicking and you know, and that's.
Speaker B:The kind of thing that it was that, you know, we invented AI decades ago.
Speaker B:It's always been good at that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it, that's the kind of thing it should be doing for us.
Speaker B:Those menial tasks that aren't a whole economy or skill set of their own that somebody should be doing, you know, as a job.
Speaker B:That's the Star Trek future we all deserve.
Speaker B:We didn't build the Star Trek future.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I tried, though.
Speaker B:I. I tried the.
Speaker B:That with this one wasn't Chat GPT.
Speaker B:It was whichever one is in.
Speaker B:It's in these Microsoft products.
Speaker B:Copilot.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:I haven't used.
Speaker B:My last school wasn't a Microsoft school, so I had never seen it before.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:It's shoved into everything.
Speaker B:And so I was, I tried doing that with a project, you know, like, that has a lot of kind of complex due dates all up.
Speaker B:It hallucinated a bunch of stuff and I was like, all right, you just, you cost me time instead of saving me time, which is what's happening to the students.
Speaker B:They just don't know it yet because they're going to have to redo all of this stuff.
Speaker A:Yeah, Chat GBT was just starting to be a thing when I taught English.
Speaker A:I can't imagine doing it now that everybody knows what it is.
Speaker B:Well, in a lot of people maybe.
Speaker B:Anyway, a lot of other people have this.
Speaker B:This complex relationship to it who teach English because we're the ones who made it that we're the ones who they hired as annotators to teach it how to.
Speaker B:To do this stuff.
Speaker B:They just didn't.
Speaker B:We didn't really know what we were making.
Speaker B:Like 10, 12 years ago, all of these random tech firms sprung up and were offering $20 an hour to people with humanities degrees or English degrees.
Speaker B:At the time, $20 an hour was pretty good for where I was living.
Speaker B:And, you know, your whole job was to basically have a conversation with this AI and you just didn't know what it was at the time.
Speaker B:You didn't know what you were building.
Speaker B:This is like in Terminator 2 where the guy built Skynet, but he didn't realize that's what he was building.
Speaker B: And then in: Speaker B:I remember this dude, this guy I worked with at eku, this is the only correct thing he's ever said, to my knowledge.
Speaker B:We were at a retreat for enrollment management and it had just.
Speaker B:We had just discovered it.
Speaker B:So we were playing with it and we were like, hey, write a mission statement for a university.
Speaker B:And it did the thing.
Speaker B:It was like it that Chat GPT does, which is like write something super vague based on keywords that we had fed it when we were annotators.
Speaker B:And this guy goes, oh, there's a Sarlacc under there.
Speaker B:And I was like, I hate you, but that's a really smart and accurate thing.
Speaker B:Sarlacc is the pit monster in Star wars that Luke Skywalker gets the.
Speaker B:Almost gets thrown into on the planet Tatooine.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Which was an oddly specific reference as well, but which is kind of why I hate the guy.
Speaker B:But he was right, I think.
Speaker B:I've actually been thinking about him a lot lately.
Speaker B:I'm like, I mean, I probably still wouldn't like you.
Speaker B:He's the only person I ever knew who consciously spoke in standard American English so that he didn't have to use they them pronouns.
Speaker B:He would.
Speaker B:He was.
Speaker B:He never said singular they.
Speaker B:He always said his or her because he needed that argument that I speak correct grammar.
Speaker B:So I won't use singular they to be true.
Speaker B:Wow, fine.
Speaker B:If you want to work that hard.
Speaker A:I didn't have any they them deniers this semester that they were out out loud about it anyway.
Speaker A:I usually have at least one a semester.
Speaker A:One guy that says, oh, I don't use them because I.
Speaker A:The first day of.
Speaker A:I always open with the exercise while we do the introductions.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:But the end of class, I say, I'm going to take a stab at your last name.
Speaker A:What I want you to do is give me the first name you want me to use and your pronouns.
Speaker A:And usually I'm like, I'm Dave, and I don't use pronouns.
Speaker A:And I laugh in their face and like, say Dave for the rest of the semester in place of any kind of other pronoun.
Speaker A:And it really embarrasses them and it makes me laugh all semester.
Speaker A:But I didn't have any of those this semester.
Speaker A:So that was.
Speaker B:That was good.
Speaker B:Do you think people are.
Speaker B:Do you.
Speaker B:Do you think that there's maybe some burnout with the culture wars?
Speaker A:Oh, for sure.
Speaker B:These folks who used to be so easily fired up and stoked about the culture war, especially trans issues, I have.
Speaker A:Been targeted this week for polling.
Speaker A:Like the.
Speaker A:The political polling.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And one of them, the here in northwest Ohio, Marcy Capture, is running for senator.
Speaker A:She's from Northwest Ohio.
Speaker A:Her and John Husted are the two people.
Speaker A:And she has been running ads.
Speaker A:So he has been running ads to say, Marcy kept her believes in transsexual surgeries for children and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:So she followed it up with an ad that says, it's illegal.
Speaker A:I don't support that at all.
Speaker A:And so a lot of people have been like, that's some transphobic.
Speaker A:You need to Take it down.
Speaker A:And the polling people were like, how do you feel about the transphobic ads that have been out?
Speaker A:And I was like, well, let me tell you.
Speaker A:And I can't believe they even asked me about it.
Speaker A:So that is.
Speaker A:I appreciate that there's somebody out there cares about it and that.
Speaker A:That's becoming a com.
Speaker A:Topic of conversation.
Speaker B:There's a lot of data coming out from the.
Speaker B:The right wing think tanks where they're starting to realize that it's not really trading.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker B:It's not earning them the.
Speaker B:The capital they.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:It used to.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B: worked on them really well in: Speaker B:No, it's not.
Speaker B:It's only been.
Speaker B:It's been 18 months.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:It feels like it's been a decade.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, because it's round two.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:We had to deal with it for four years, and then we got some reprieve and now we're right back in shit.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B: But from: Speaker B:And they fell for it, voted for a.
Speaker B:And now they're suffering the economic consequences.
Speaker B:And it's not as easy to be lied to about what the real problem is, because even the dumbest person is not going to be able to be convinced of.
Speaker B:Of the logic that a trans person who lives in another state is the reason you lost your job and you can't afford food and your mortgage has doubled and whatever.
Speaker B:Like, being able to be manipulated by logical fallacies doesn't make a person stupid.
Speaker B:Plenty of people are subject to that kind of thing.
Speaker B:So I think they assumed that because they were able to manipulate them that they were stupid people.
Speaker B:So then they just started talking to them like they were stupid.
Speaker B:And I think they were like, wait a minute, I'm not dumb.
Speaker B:What are you doing?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:I made my students do that as well and didn't get a couple of them.
Speaker B:They just don't like to speak is all it is.
Speaker B:Like they refuse to say their names.
Speaker B:So when, yeah, I. I was like, okay, so nobody really bucked at saying the pronouns they didn't want to speak at all.
Speaker A:I've got one class like that that I cannot get to me to.
Speaker A:I Cannot get them to speak to me, but I tell them I have a superpower when it comes.
Speaker A:You know how everything you ever did kind of prepared you for being a professor?
Speaker A:My, my doing bingo calling really set me up to be a good professor.
Speaker A:Because in bingo calling you sit on a little desk raised above everyone.
Speaker A:And when we had the big bingo we had so I would have 600 sets of eyes on me and I was messing with their money, you know, and these were old, a lot of old people.
Speaker A:And there is no set of 30 freshmen that are going to out glare me that I haven't already survived.
Speaker A:Old grandma's being pissed off that I ain't calling their number.
Speaker A:You know, there's no amount of freshmen that can out gangster the grandmas.
Speaker A:And I survived 15 years of that stuff.
Speaker A:So you will crack before I do is.
Speaker A:Is what I tell them.
Speaker A:And I let it get awkward sometimes until somebody finally raises their hand and I'm like, all right, let's get.
Speaker A:Keep.
Speaker A:Keep going.
Speaker B:I done that as well.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't tolerate it as well as I used to though, because of the past five years of workplace trauma where like the spidey sense you have that, that is anxiety is usually wrong.
Speaker B:You know, in.
Speaker B:In an environment like a professional one, there's not really a tiger behind you.
Speaker B:There's not really an ax murderer, you know, sitting across the table from you.
Speaker B:Your old lizard brain is.
Speaker B:Reacted to something that is not really there.
Speaker B:But in my case, there kind of was a tiger behind me and there kind of was an axe murderer across the table a lot of the last several years of working in diversity, equity and inclusion as a trans person.
Speaker B:And so my brain still knows that.
Speaker B:Also, I know the lizard brain thing has been debunked before anybody comments on.
Speaker B:It's just easier to say because I know I.
Speaker B:And it's like I feel this.
Speaker B:I know the same thing cognitively.
Speaker B:I'm like, these are just kids and we're actually in this together.
Speaker B:We don't.
Speaker B:Even if they view this as adversarial or oppositional, if I do my job right, they won't by the end of it.
Speaker B:But that I noticed on day one, I. I was anxious about being faced with them because so much of the past several years of my professional environment has been so dangerous.
Speaker A:Hear that?
Speaker B:So now I'm.
Speaker B:It's like exposure therapy, like deprogramming.
Speaker A:One thing that I'm always worried about, that I never know which part somebody's going to try to report.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:Because we talk about some really controversial things in my classes.
Speaker A:And our, one of our friends, I don't know if you're his friend, but my friend Jamie, he teaches for the university, he showed a video that I often show that talks about sex ed in America.
Speaker A:It's a John Oliver video.
Speaker A:And there's a joke that he makes.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's funny in context that he says something about, remember kids, when you masturbate, the, the fluid that comes out of you are God's, are Jesus's tears.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And it's funny in context.
Speaker A:Somebody complained to the, the dean of students that he showed that video in class.
Speaker A:And you just never know.
Speaker A:Like, I've showed that video 30 times if I've showed it once, you know what I mean?
Speaker A:Because I show it every time we talk about sex ed in America.
Speaker A:It's a good video.
Speaker B:Well, and they're complaining all the time.
Speaker B:The dean or whoever's job is to kind of go like, can't help you, you know?
Speaker A:Well, it came back to him.
Speaker B:That's what I was about to say.
Speaker B:Dependent on the politics of the institution you work at, things could be, you could be at greater risk of something like that.
Speaker A:He didn't get in any trouble, but he did get asked, what does this mean?
Speaker A:That kind of thing, which I guess I can understand, you know, out of context.
Speaker A:That would be a weird email to.
Speaker B:Get as a D. Especially if the kid misrepresented what it was.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So, yeah, I never know what's.
Speaker A:Because I use a lot of John.
Speaker A:I use probably three John Olivers a semester because I use a lot of videos in my work.
Speaker A:Because I figure if somebody has a budget and writers and editing and the ability to put in videos and examples and I can show them a 10 minute video and then we can talk about that, or I can spend a half an hour explaining the same damn thing and we have less time to talk about it, you know, so I'm, I'm a big fan of bringing in examples and using music videos and stuff like that.
Speaker A:So I use and, and humor.
Speaker A:If you can make somebody laugh, then they're listening to you usually.
Speaker A:And so I do use humor in the classroom a lot.
Speaker B:I had to break the news to mind that not every opinion is valid.
Speaker B:This past week, you would have thought I shot Santa Claus in front of them.
Speaker B:I was taken aback by the look on some of their faces and I was like, what happened just now?
Speaker B:Like, is that a central core belief of yours?
Speaker B:How did you come by this belief?
Speaker B:Because Because I always joke about the fact that people think every opinion is valid.
Speaker B:I didn't know people actually thought it.
Speaker B:As I said, like, were you taught this?
Speaker B:Were you taught that every opinion is valid?
Speaker B:And they said, yeah, we were explicitly taught that in, like, elementary school.
Speaker B:I was like, I am so sorry, but that's not accurate.
Speaker B:They lied to you.
Speaker B:And so I was like, okay, how do I pull this back?
Speaker B:Because I don't want to.
Speaker B:I. I was like, now they think I'm attacking their teachers.
Speaker B:And so I was like, all right, why do you think that they might have told you that lie?
Speaker B:And actually, the kid that I had the awkward exchange with, he was like, maybe they were just trying to, like, give us the confidence to speak our minds.
Speaker B:And I was like, that's really insightful.
Speaker B:Like, yeah, they didn't.
Speaker B:That's not how you should do that.
Speaker B:I mean, I can think of a ton of ways to maybe influence a child to feel comfortable speaking their mind, even if they're wrong.
Speaker B:Maybe decriminalizing the thought of being wrong and pointing out that mistakes are good.
Speaker B:And that's how we got on the topic of logical fallacies.
Speaker B:I was like, oh, God.
Speaker B:Let me show y' all some stuff we've known for thousands of years.
Speaker A:Well, happy birthday tomorrow, sir.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:You and my wife share a birthday.
Speaker A:I had to wrap presents earlier.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I am gonna go to dinner with my friends who live up in Morris, so that'll be fun.
Speaker B:But other than that, nice.
Speaker B:It's just a Monday.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're on fall break this week.
Speaker B:Oh, nice.
Speaker B:Ours is week after.
Speaker A:Yeah, ours is this week, which I couldn't have gotten sick at a better time because it gave me a couple extra days because I haven't done any related the last couple of days until today, so.
Speaker A:And I didn't do a whole lot today, so tomorrow we'll spend all day celebrating Shanna, so.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because she's awesome.
Speaker A:He really is.
Speaker A:But, I mean, we're all we have, so we have to celebrate each other, you know?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:Like, I'm not laughing at the thought, but the way you said it was kind of like I expected there to be a rainbow come up.
Speaker B:Like, something really, like, heartfelt and cheesy.
Speaker B:Like, it was a sitcom, you know, that just felt very, like 80s or 90s sitcom to me.
Speaker A:Do you remember the show My Two Dads and how they did that without the queer subtext?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:You've never heard of my Two dads.
Speaker A:So there was a girl and her mom dies and they didn't know.
Speaker A:It's before DNA was a thing.
Speaker A:And they didn't know which of these two men were the father.
Speaker A:So they moved in together and raised her as a.
Speaker A:As two is two straight dads.
Speaker B:That's crazy.
Speaker B:All right, so it's Paul Reiser.
Speaker B:I don't know this other guy.
Speaker B:Greg.
Speaker B:Ev again.
Speaker B:Eve, Jan, whatever.
Speaker B:Greg, if you're a fan, sorry for mispronouncing your name.
Speaker B:Nope, never heard of it.
Speaker B:I do like Paul Reiser.
Speaker A:You should watch a couple of episodes.
Speaker A:It's really interesting because they go the extra mile to not be queer.
Speaker B:I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking that it might be fun to.
Speaker B:And maybe like lower effort for us to pick like a TV show or something to.
Speaker B:To watch together.
Speaker B:Like kind of like a book club, but not with reading.
Speaker B:But I couldn't really think of what a good show would be.
Speaker A:I finished a good book this week.
Speaker A:My audio.
Speaker A:So I listened to a lot of audiobooks during the school year because I'm in the car so much and this one was like a 28 hour listen.
Speaker A:It was written by the same lady that wrote the Help, Catherine Stodget, I think is how you pronounce it it.
Speaker A:But it was called the Calamity Club and it was pretty good.
Speaker A:I. I enjoyed it.
Speaker A: It was set in: Speaker A:It was really good.
Speaker B:I got.
Speaker B:Vanessa got me a Kindle for my birthday.
Speaker B:And when you get one of those, you get a three month free trial of Kindle Unlimited.
Speaker B:And the only thing on it is fiction.
Speaker B:And I don't really read fiction especially I don't read contemporary fiction.
Speaker B:I don't have anything against it.
Speaker B:It's just I haven't had time for it.
Speaker B:And then once you get out of the.
Speaker B:The stream, like the river of that particular.
Speaker B:What those trends are.
Speaker B:I'm just not literate in what people are reading and writing right now for fiction.
Speaker B:So I, I need to.
Speaker B:To find some things to read that aren't film theory or social theory.
Speaker B:Because I like that stuff too.
Speaker B:I love that stuff.
Speaker B:Actually I'm reading Underground film right now by Parker Tyler for this chapter that I'm gonna be writing.
Speaker B:And he was like this big iconoclast and like one of the basically the inventors of film criticism were these like queer sex freaks.
Speaker B:Which explains a lot.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:My honors project students I have two of them doing the male gaze.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of media artifacts in their, in their project.
Speaker A:Speaking of film theory, which I don't know a lot about, but I know more about the male gaze than any of it.
Speaker A:Just because so many students, students have used it over the years.
Speaker A:I've done some reading.
Speaker A:I find all that so interesting.
Speaker A:But I never took any classes.
Speaker A:The only class that I had that had any films really was the History of the Future class.
Speaker A:And that was a book and a movie a week that we had to watch.
Speaker A:But it really wasn't criticism, it was just genre, you know.
Speaker A:That was an interesting class, though.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, Laura Mulvey is the person who coined and I think it's kind of a general concept that you can apply to a lot of things outside of film.
Speaker B:That's the only thing of hers that I read.
Speaker B:But I also want to rewatch Agatha all along.
Speaker B:I want you to watch it because I think you'd like it.
Speaker A:I've never even heard of that.
Speaker B:I told you about it a long time ago.
Speaker B:It's one of the Marvels.
Speaker B:It's a TV show and it was kind of a side project, side quest.
Speaker B:It's a spin off of a side quest called WandaVision.
Speaker B:But it's, it's queer.
Speaker B:It's the only IP in the Marvel universe that has an.
Speaker B:Not only an out queer person.
Speaker B:Their story, they are the main character and their queer relationship is central to the story.
Speaker B:Like her partner, like her ex girlfriend is also a main character.
Speaker B:And their relationship, their identity as a couple who experienced a loss of, of a, of a child.
Speaker B:Like they decided to tell that story in the context of a lesbian relationship.
Speaker B:It's, it's.
Speaker B:And it did kind of.
Speaker B:It broke the Internet like it specifically broke queer.
Speaker B:Tick tock.
Speaker B:Like folks were not okay because it was good television and it was so out of left field for a property like Marvel.
Speaker B:The Avengers universe, right?
Speaker B:The big like we are the Earth stands for America in Avengers.
Speaker B:And so like it was just really cool to have those themes suddenly show up, not only covertly but overtly.
Speaker B:It's not queer coded.
Speaker B:It's queer as hell and it's about witches.
Speaker B:So it's very like, it's very ooky, spooky Halloween season.
Speaker B: tch it because it's also from: Speaker B:So it's like from the before times, but when, when the, you know, the world was still full of possibility.
Speaker B:But it's on.
Speaker B:These are all on Disney Which I know you don't have.
Speaker A:I have Hulu, so I should have Disney until I can add it.
Speaker A:It's only $3.
Speaker B:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:Well, because the episodes are not super long.
Speaker B:It's not, like, movie length, and it would just be fun.
Speaker B:And we haven't tried that.
Speaker B:We haven't tried to, like, do multiple, you know, a series of things.
Speaker B:And it's only like.
Speaker B:It's a short seat.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:They're only like, maybe eight.
Speaker B:Eight episodes.
Speaker B:I think I'm in.
Speaker B:Look and see if you can find it.
Speaker B:And if you can, we can.
Speaker A:What's his name?
Speaker A:WandaVision.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:1.
Speaker B:So I will need to give you a bit of a primer because the character appears in WandaVision, but the.
Speaker B:The show, and her name is Agatha.
Speaker B:The show is called Agatha all Along.
Speaker A:Agatha all along.
Speaker B:WandaVision is also good.
Speaker B:It's weird.
Speaker B:And so that name comes from the reveal in WandaVision that it was Agatha all along.
Speaker B:That she is.
Speaker B:She was the bad guy living in in plain sight in WandaVision.
Speaker B:Because WandaVision is also about grief and loss.
Speaker B:This.
Speaker B:The Scarlet Witch.
Speaker B:This is totally left field, but what's her name?
Speaker B:Olson.
Speaker B:Not one of the twins.
Speaker A:Elizabeth.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Her character Wanda, is a.
Speaker B:Is a witch, and her husband dies in this big war with the Avengers.
Speaker B:And in her grief, she constructs an alternate reality in which he's still alive.
Speaker B:They're a happy couple, and it takes the form of them living in all these television genres through the decades.
Speaker B:So each episode is, you know, they're.
Speaker B:They're Robin, Laura Petrie in the.
Speaker B:In the Dick Van Dyke show, or they're in Three's Company or something like that, like, through the decade.
Speaker B:So it's really cool show, but I just didn't really connect.
Speaker B:I didn't care about the characters except for Agatha, which is her neighbor in the show.
Speaker B:And we assume that she's a construct, just like all the other things.
Speaker B:But it turns out she's actually another witch.
Speaker B:She could sense she's just floating out in space, I guess.
Speaker B:She could sense this big power.
Speaker B:How much power it would take Wanda to be able to do something like that.
Speaker B:It's crazy to construct a reality, and she wanted the power.
Speaker B:But Agatha becomes the main character in Agatha all along.
Speaker B:So she's also a really complicated, like, anti hero, which is one of my favorite tropes.
Speaker B:Like, she's not all, like, goody two shoes like so many of the Marvel people are.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:She's old and queer and damaged, and we get to learn all this cool stuff about her.
Speaker A:So this might shock you, but the only Marvel movie I've seen is Black Panther.
Speaker B:That doesn't shock me.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's actually true of a lot of people I know who don't care about Marvel.
Speaker B:They were intrigued by Black Panther.
Speaker B:If you liked Black Panther, you would also like Thor Ragnarok.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's pretty singular in that whole universe.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Comedy is so overt.
Speaker B:Did you ever see what we do in the shadows?
Speaker B:Not the TV show, the original one, The.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker B:The movie.
Speaker A:No, no.
Speaker B:One of.
Speaker B:The guy.
Speaker B:One of the guys who wrote it.
Speaker B:His name is Taika Waititi.
Speaker B:He.
Speaker B:He's a. I think he's Maori.
Speaker B:He's from New Zealand.
Speaker B:He's.
Speaker B:He wrote it with Jermaine Clement, who was a dude.
Speaker B:He was one of the Flight of the Concords.
Speaker B:This is getting, like, really, really into old TV lore, comedy lore.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:Doing Agatha sounds fun because it's a happy place.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Could definitely use more of that.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, I've been rambling enough, and I'll probably have to trim half of that out, so.
Speaker B:Let's hear from this week's sponsor, which is stupid.
Speaker B:This week's episode of Queer Next is sponsored by making up stuff about buildings.
Speaker B:We're still workshopping the name, but you already know the folkloric tradition of which we speak.
Speaker B:It is an integral part of the equally sacred practice of cruising around all night.
Speaker B:Cruising was born of necessity, specifically the need to pass the time and shorten the distance for social visits among friends and kin spread across the county.
Speaker B:If we're all out buzzing the back roads like bored flies on a cow pie, we're bound to run into each other at regular intervals.
Speaker B:But nature abhors a vacuum, and those intervals can be mighty long.
Speaker B:So storytelling takes the wheel a while.
Speaker B:From my own experience, the ooky, spooky season of fall produces the most thrilling hidden mysteries of the otherwise depressing dereliction of Appalachia.
Speaker B:As the leaves turn and die, clapboard structures, normally obscured in the spring and summer months, become faintly visible in the distance, and their backstories must be told.
Speaker B:Perhaps a witch lived there, or a Wendigo, or a family of cannibals.
Speaker B:Abandoned fire towers inspire legends of luminous forest sprites or lanky ranging beasts so tall their spiky fur scrapes the treetop.
Speaker B:The old hospital was closed after a mysterious illness killed everyone in town a century ago.
Speaker B:And the abandoned town hall was once the secret meeting site of A satanic cult.
Speaker B:In the 60s, every closed down school was the site of some monstrous teacher, evil conspiracy or heinous supernatural happening.
Speaker B:Houses with occupants are not exempt.
Speaker B:In fact, the lores of house and occupants become intertwined until each is hardly legible without the other.
Speaker B:And hardly anything inspires more ghoulish tales than a closed down sanatorium or asylum.
Speaker B:This is all to say nothing of stories that get told in cemeteries or churches.
Speaker B:I mean it.
Speaker B:Don't talk about it.
Speaker B:You might conjure something.
Speaker B:Or maybe conjuring is what we're trying to do here.
Speaker B:Maybe that's the real purpose of the whole enterprise.
Speaker B:These buildings are disappearing and their significance is more than the space they took up or the materials that make made them.
Speaker B:With them go the people, the music, the stories, the lives that built their first meanings.
Speaker B:And no one is coming to preserve it for us.
Speaker B:So in honor of them and us and yourselves, go tell a story.
Speaker B:Make it right up out of thin air and don't give a hoot if it sounds true.
Speaker A:That was a good one.
Speaker B:I was thinking about you and Shannon driving around.
Speaker A:I love doing that.
Speaker A:We just look at old houses and new houses and.
Speaker A:And where we live is pretty affluent.
Speaker A:Not because we have money, just that's where we ended up.
Speaker A:So any which direction you go, you go into really nice neighborhoods and areas with big houses and estates and.
Speaker A:And that kind of thing.
Speaker A:And it's not even the nicest parts of Toledo.
Speaker A:I had no idea there were so many nice parts of Toledo.
Speaker B:I didn't either.
Speaker A:Yeah, there really are.
Speaker B:Honestly, I kind of ignored Toledo the whole time I lived up there.
Speaker A:Yeah, I like living up here.
Speaker A:We want to move back to BG at some point, but I like living here.
Speaker A:I like the access to everything.
Speaker A:We're 10 minutes away from anything you could possibly want.
Speaker B:That is certainly not anything to sneeze at.
Speaker B:Sneeze at?
Speaker B:Is that a phrase?
Speaker A:Yes, it is.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I thought it was.
Speaker B:And then as soon as I said it, I thought I sound insane.
Speaker B:That can't be a thing.
Speaker A:No,.
Speaker B:Yeah, I would.
Speaker B:I would.
Speaker B:I would give a lot to have access to.
Speaker B:I will say that I have gotten some pretty.
Speaker B:Some habits I never thought I could get from living out here where nothing.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Where not a single convenience exists and one of them is cooking.
Speaker B:Like being able to cook your own food, first of all, saves you hundreds of dollars a month.
Speaker B:Takeout is expensive as.
Speaker B:Or even just going to drive throughs and stuff.
Speaker A:It's the same cost to go to McDonald's as it is to go to Chili's these days.
Speaker B:That too, yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then you're getting into, you know, tips.
Speaker B:And anytime I go out, I'm trying to, like, errand max, where, like, I need to.
Speaker B:I need to do everything I could possibly do while I'm out because it takes a goddamn long to do anything.
Speaker B:And so that costs more money because I'm like, well, I should go to the dollar store and get, you know, more treats for the cats.
Speaker B:And then while I'm out here, there's a grocery store nearby, but everything is exorbitantly priced.
Speaker B:I thought I knew what rural was, and I did.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:I knew what our kind of rural is.
Speaker B:The kind of rural that has people in it.
Speaker B:It's a totally different beast than the kind of rural that is empty.
Speaker A:Then you've got me over here ordering stuff for same day delivery on Amazon.
Speaker A:Things like wrapping paper and tape, which, speaking of tape, I got.
Speaker A:I was wrapping Shanna's birthday present that I got.
Speaker A:This is actual Scotch tape.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It has gotten so much thinner.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like, it's so tiny now.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You have to use twice as much.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It used to be so much thicker.
Speaker B:Because, you know, they haven't improved the product.
Speaker A:No, not at all.
Speaker A:It's just not as wide at all.
Speaker A:It was wild.
Speaker A:It's the incredible shrinking box again.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Hi, Rue.
Speaker A:Hi, baby.
Speaker B:Did you bring in now about Appalachian interest?
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker A:I brought a fun one this week.
Speaker B:Yay.
Speaker A:All right, this week's noun of Appalachian interest takes us to 748 Beach street in Canova, West Virginia, where every October, one house gets buried under about 3,000 Jack O' lanterns.
Speaker A:It's called the Canova Pumpkin House, and it belongs to Rick Griffith, a longtime local pharmacist and former mayor.
Speaker A: g with a few pumpkins back in: Speaker A:And apparently, some point, he looked at that reasonable number of pumpkins and decided reasonable was not the direction he wanted to go.
Speaker A:Over the years, the display grew to about 3,000 carved pumpkins, roughly the population of Canova.
Speaker A:They cover the porch, the yard, the roof, the giant wooden displays surrounding the house.
Speaker A:There's even a wall of pumpkins arranged like a choir and set to music.
Speaker A:And you might be wondering, who carves 3,000 pumpkins?
Speaker A:And the answer is basically everybody.
Speaker A:The pumpkin house has become a community tradition, with volunteers helping to scoop, carve, move, and light the thousands of pumpkins each year.
Speaker A: ouse itself dates back to the: Speaker A:Thousands of visitors now come to Canova to see it each year, and it's a totally free experience.
Speaker A:The pumpkins are lit day and night, so stop by anytime.
Speaker A: id, what this really needs is: Speaker A:And so a tradition continues.
Speaker A:And that's our noun of Appalachian interest for this week.
Speaker A:The Canova Pumpkin House.
Speaker B:Wait, let me Google it.
Speaker A:Boy.
Speaker A:It's like two blocks over from where my ex girlfriend lives, so I've been there many a time.
Speaker A:But it's really cool.
Speaker A:Like, it really is a local landmark.
Speaker B:Holy wow.
Speaker B:I bet this is a nightmare to clean up.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, me too.
Speaker A:There's just so many of them.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, God.
Speaker B:I have one and it started to rot.
Speaker A:Can you imagine the fruit flies?
Speaker B:Oh, Lord.
Speaker B:I wonder.
Speaker B:I bet, though, like, you know how people, if they do when they're arranging flowers and stuff like that, there's things you can maybe products you can spray on them to preserve them longer.
Speaker B:Maybe, maybe there's something like that for pumpkins, but.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Cool.
Speaker A:I thought since it was getting to be spooky season.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Let us know if you've been to the Canova Pumpkin House and post it.
Speaker B:Tag us on Facebook.
Speaker B:Oh, also, the.
Speaker B:The what you call it, Patreon, is it's free to join.
Speaker B:Like, you can.
Speaker B:You can pay if you.
Speaker B:There's a tier where if you just, like, really, really want to pay to listen to the show, you can.
Speaker B:You can get it ad free in there.
Speaker B:But right now, everything I. I've been doing in there, which isn't much at all, is available for free.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And I don't know how to tell y' all where to find it, but if you're on Patreon, I think you can just search for us.
Speaker B:Let me look.
Speaker B:It's in our show notes.
Speaker B:It's probably just like patreon.com yeah, patreon.com forward/cw queer next.
Speaker B:I don't understand that.
Speaker B:That's what it says.
Speaker B:It is always in the beginning of the show notes, so you can sub there.
Speaker B:We would love to have folks in there, so we can also.
Speaker B:I can link that to the Discord.
Speaker B:Would love to be able to see, you know, hang out and interact with y'.
Speaker B:All.
Speaker B:Anyway, join the Patreon.
Speaker B:Then we can hang out.
Speaker A:What do you want to do for Halloween?
Speaker B:Well, you mean, like, besides watching the movie?
Speaker A:When should I have that watched?
Speaker A:Like, what do you want to do?
Speaker A:I guess is what I'm asking.
Speaker A:Halloween falls on Saturday this year.
Speaker B:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:I was thinking about that earlier.
Speaker B:We should probably, like, hash that out.
Speaker A:Maybe do it Friday night.
Speaker A:That would be fun.
Speaker B:Go.
Speaker B:Go live or record or.
Speaker A:Going live like we did last year would be fun.
Speaker B:That's what I was thinking too.
Speaker B:Like, you know, a dumb costume.
Speaker B:Maybe make some.
Speaker B:Some games or something and then go live.
Speaker B:We gotta make sure because we only have, like.
Speaker B:Like 60 or 70 followers on YouTube, which is fine.
Speaker B:You know, we're not trying to be famous.
Speaker B:But what I mean is, like, not everybody who listens to us is.
Speaker B:Is doing it on YouTube.
Speaker B:So if.
Speaker B:If we could get folks.
Speaker B:If folks wanted to join the Patreon, we can go live in both places at the same time.
Speaker B:And that way you don't have to watch us on YouTube.
Speaker B:But, yeah, that sounds fun.
Speaker B:There's a lot of tech stuff I have to figure out because I guarantee you I've forgotten it between last year and now, but.
Speaker B:But yeah, that was fun.
Speaker A:I will start working on a costume.
Speaker A:I don't know how I'm gonna top Mrs. Roper, but we'll see what I come up with.
Speaker A:I looked pretty good last year.
Speaker A:I'll get.
Speaker A:I'll give myself that.
Speaker B:Pretty epic.
Speaker B:For sure.
Speaker B:Maybe.
Speaker B:Maybe.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to be related to the movie, but maybe I would recommend, like, watching it just so you can get an idea, and it might help you think up some stuff.
Speaker B:You know, think of some things.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:All right, I'll put it on my list.
Speaker B:And people have done some creative stuff with the movie.
Speaker B:There's one that's called.
Speaker B:It's a Night of the dawn of the Day of the Dead of the Messed Up Freaked Out Monsters.
Speaker B:A really long title.
Speaker B:And what it is, is somebody took them.
Speaker B:Took that movie and dubbed it over with their own dialogue.
Speaker B:There's a whole sequence where they're, like, reacting to something and they're going, like, is that a duck?
Speaker B:It's just people trying to figure out if something was a duck or not.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's pretty stupid.
Speaker B:But, you know, it's been in the public domain so long that people have gotten to play with it.
Speaker B:That would be funny if we wrote dialogue for it.
Speaker B:That's a lot of work, though.
Speaker B:But we could do it for, like, one scene.
Speaker B:Well, I gotta get back to grading.
Speaker A:Yeah, I've got a lot to do, too.
Speaker A:I have.
Speaker A:I'm two weeks behind on attendance, so.
Speaker A:Yeah, I. I really just didn't do anything for a stretch of, like, three days, so.
Speaker B:Yeah, it happens.
Speaker B:I've been expecting to catch a bug.
Speaker B:I'm sure I will, but I haven't yet.
Speaker A:I thought I would catch it from school, but I caught it from Shanna's work, so that's how it goes, I guess.
Speaker B:Well, we hope everybody else is staying healthy, enjoying whatever the fall.
Speaker B:Fall looks like where you are, and maybe dreading winter less than we are.
Speaker B:And we did.
Speaker B:Should we even spin the wheel of what have you?
Speaker B:We're going to ignore whatever it says.
Speaker B:Should we watch the first episode of Agatha for next week?
Speaker A:I'm sure.
Speaker A:I'm sure I can fit that in.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Watch it.
Speaker B:And, like, try to think of every.
Speaker B:Like, write down every question that.
Speaker B:About how confused you are so that I can answer.
Speaker A:Okay, I can do that.
Speaker B:So we just decided all of a sudden we're gonna start watching Agatha all along because it makes me feel good.
Speaker B:And I hope.
Speaker B:Hope that it makes you feel good and hope other folks.
Speaker B:So revisit that queer sort of smaller budget Avengers property with us.
Speaker B:And let's live vicariously through the time machine that is television.
Speaker B:We'll see you next time.
Speaker B:This is probably going to be released on Wednesday, so we'll see you then.
Speaker B:Say hi to your mom and them.
Speaker A:Bye,.
Speaker B:Sam.
