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Celebrating the Genius of American Architect Mickey Muennig
Episode 31212th August 2025 • Not Real Art • Crewest Studio
00:00:00 00:13:17

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In this week’s episode, host Scott "Sourdough" Power describes his recent 20th wedding anniversary celebration at the breathtaking Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur. Nestled among nature's grandeur, this luxe getaway highlights the seamless blend of architecture and the environment, thanks to the visionary work of designer Mickey Muennig.

Scott paints a vivid picture of the stunning landscapes that envelop the Inn, where each view is a testament to the beauty of eco-minded design. Muennig’s unique approach to architecture at Post Ranch Inn embraces sustainability and fosters a deeper connection with the surrounding nature. Scott reflects on how this experience enriched his understanding of creativity and its role in harmonizing human life with the natural world.

The episode is a delightful journey through joy, love, and reflection, as Scott shares personal anecdotes about his time spent there with his partner. Listeners will hear about the invigorating beauty of Big Sur and the enchanting allure of Post Ranch Inn, described as a luxurious treehouse suspended in time. 

Scott also explores broader themes of creativity and community in the arts, encouraging listeners to support and celebrate the artists that inspire us. With a dash of humor and whimsy, he invites everyone to join him in appreciating the interplay of love, nature, creativity, and architecture—reminding us all that life’s most precious moments are meant for sharing.

For more information, please visit https://notrealart.com/architect-mickey-muennig

Transcripts

Speaker A:

The Not Real Art podcast is intended for creative audiences only.

Speaker A:

The Not Real Art podcast celebrates creativity and creative culture worldwide.

Speaker A:

It contains material that is fresh, fun and inspiring and is not suitable for boring old art snobs.

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Now let's get started and enjoy the show.

Speaker B:

Greetings and salutations, my creative brothers and sisters.

Speaker B:

Welcome to Not Real Art, the podcast where we talk to the world's most creative people.

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I am your host.

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Faithful, trusty, loyal, tireless, relentless host.

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Sourdough coming at you from Crew West Studio in Los Angeles.

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How are you people?

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Thanks for tuning in.

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We do this for you.

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We love.

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We love you guys and really appreciate your loyalty.

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So thank you so much for showing up.

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Yet again, I want to thank, as I always do, our Fiscal sponsor, Arterial Arterial.org Fiscal sponsorship of not Real Art allows us to raise money to support what we do and the work we do by asking generous people like you for your support, your financial support by making a donation.

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But that donation is tax deductible because Arturial is our fiscal sponsor.

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Arturo is a 501c3 arts nonprofit focused on storytelling and storytelling in the arts.

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And so we are grateful for their support of our show.

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So please consider supporting our work.

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It helps us keep everything free, free of advertising, free to consume, free to enjoy.

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Free.

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Free.

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Free is fantastic, isn't it?

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So let's keep it free.

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People, please consider supporting the show by going to notrelart.com or arturo.org as always, of course, I want to encourage you to go to our website, notrelart.com and check out all the good, healthy stuff we have for you there, not the least of which is the exclusive video series Remote with the one and only Badir McCleary.

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Where Badir follows, well, he.

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He travels the world and is following the trail of public art around the world and.

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And demystifying and explaining the power and the impact of public art around the world.

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So please check out remote art.com okay, people, as you might have heard, it's August.

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It's the month of August and dog days of summer.

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And I have decided that we're going to spend all of August doing auditorials.

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As you know, the last week of every month I drop an auditorial short episode.

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I get on a soapbox, talk about something that's near and dear to my heart.

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And hopefully it's, you know, interesting to you and relevant to you and has some value and utility for you as well, if nothing, but then to just give you something to think about.

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But this month, rather than waiting to the last week of the month, I thought I just turn August into the month of August.

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Torials.

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This is the month of August.

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Torials, people.

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So every week we're going to drop auditorials on Tuesday, and I'm going to get on my soapbox and talk about something that's on my mind.

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And today, today I'm going to talk about something that is very special, because this year, on June 11th, a couple months ago, June 11th was my 20th wedding anniversary.

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Yeah, you heard it right.

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Years of marriage.

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For my wife, it feels like 40, but for me, it's gone by so quick.

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And I know you're thinking, scott, how the hell are you?

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Have you been married 20 years?

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I mean, you're.

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You're only like, you know, 40.

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You must have gotten married when you're 20.

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Well, no, people, I'm 55.

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I got married at 35.

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Doing the math.

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I can't believe it.

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20 years of marriage, and hopefully my wife won't wise up and kick my ass to the curb anytime soon because I love her.

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She's the best.

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Anyway, I wanted to tell you about our wedding anniversary because we did something amazing that I think is really special, and I want to tell you about it.

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So, you know, being the 20th wedding anniversary, of course, we wanted to do something really special that we've never done before.

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And, you know, some people want to get on a plane and fly to somewhere exotic and do something, you know, romantic like that, you know, and we thought about it.

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We thought about, you know, going to someplace romantic, whether it's France or Italy or Greece or whatever.

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But, you know, it's a lot of travel.

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You get on the plane, you got to fly for hours.

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Expensive, too, of course.

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And we decided, you know what, we live in California.

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And rather than getting on a plane and flying somewhere and wasting all that time flying somewhere amazing, we live in an amazing place, and let's enjoy our amazing state.

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And in fact, you know, as busy as we are with the kids and everything, it's like we don't really get to do and travel in California quite like we'd like to.

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And one part of California we love is the central coast and Big Sur and that whole area.

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And we got married actually in Carmel Valley, and that's just up the coast.

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And we hadn't been to Carmel in years and years and years.

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And we want.

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So we wanted to go back to where we were married and which was awesome, but then we wanted to do something we'd never done before and go someplace really, really special.

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And so we drove to Big Sur and we stayed at a place called Post Ranch Inn.

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And Post Ranch Inn is truly one of those places that you want to go to on a special milestone like your 20th wedding anniversary.

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A because freaking expensive and you need to save your pennies.

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But it's just, you know, it's special and you know, it's a nice way to commemorate, you know, a wedding anniversary or something or a honeymoon maybe.

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So we go to this place called Post Ranch Inn.

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And I've never been and it blew me away.

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And number one, of course, it's in Big Sur, which is an incredibly gorgeous part of California, incredibly gorgeous part of the world, full stop.

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Hands down, Big Sur is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

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And this place called Post Ranch Inn is right there.

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And part of what makes Post Ranch.

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Well, the reason Post Ranch Inn is so special is because of the person who built it, the person who designed it.

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And that person was Mickey Munich.

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And on not real art.

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You know, I'd like to say that we talk to the world's most creative people.

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Well, Mickey Munich was clearly one of the world's most creative people.

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Just going to read you a little bit that I learned about Mickey, Mickey Munich.

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Wall street journal wrote in:

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The writer Alastair Gordon wrote this, said Mickey Munich became the first master of eco minded architecture perfecting green roof construction more than 30 years before it became the fashionable way to build.

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He's an unsung hero of the green movement precisely because he never made an effort to publicize himself.

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How cool is that?

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Just a guy, a visionary, an artist out there doing it.

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Doesn't care about any publicity.

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He just out there doing the work.

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And man does it show.

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Man does it show.

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You know, I will say that Mickey clearly was one of these visionary people that made an impression.

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His managing partner, Mike Freed said Mickey had a passion for design and for doing something that no one else had done architecturally in the hotel business.

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Not only did Mickey sleep in the forest with the redwoods and oak trees to choose the best location for each room, but he also refused to accept conventional thinking about hotel rooms.

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He was a true visionary.

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And what these hotel rooms, what they mean by that is these hotel rooms are essentially little cabins that are designed to integrate into the landscape.

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So if.

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And it's right on the coast.

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That's the thing.

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So Big Sur, this property is like right on the edge of the continent, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

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So out in the distance all you see are blue Water views of the Pacific Ocean.

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And Post Ranch Inn is a collection of cabins that are built both right on the edge of the continent overlooking the water, but then also kind of behind, on the other side of the street, so to speak, on the, on the hillside.

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He has these cabins that almost like tree houses that have been built in the trees that also kind of look out over the ocean.

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But really you're in the tree line and so you're surrounded by these trees.

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So you have these two different kinds of experiences.

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You feel like you're camping in a treehouse.

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If you're staying in one of the kind of treehouse cabins or if you're staying on one of the cabins that are on the coast, you're just looking out over the blue water, you know, of the Pacific Ocean.

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And it's just breathtaking.

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You know, you know ospreys or various hawks and big birds are flying over and you know, you know you're seeing wildlife.

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Years I saw a skunk run by, I was happy that he kept running.

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So anyway, so you're nestled in the, the tree line.

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You got wildlife running around, you got the, the, the, the blue water views from each of these cabins.

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And these cabins are small.

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I mean they're not necessarily big.

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Some are bigger than others, of course, but they're all super ecologically designed, very green.

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They're, they're just integrated into nature, integrated into the landscape.

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And that was what was so visionary, one of the things that was so visionary.

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ed on the California coast in:

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Having studied with Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma, he worked with various architects, merely disciples of Gough and Frank Lloyd Wright in Joplin.

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In Denver, Colorado, his creative mind later roamed and when he sketching and shaping the ridge, giving us, you know, the design for Post Ranch Inn and you know, the objective was to provide a unique and artistic experience of the Big Sur coast.

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The primary features are guest privacy, comfort, inspiring views and high quality amenities within a variety of accommodations.

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You know, the inn is located on one of the most historic ranches in Big Sur owned by the Post family.

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The theme of the inn really is about Big Sur history with all the units featured after the early settlers at Big Sur.

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And by the way, this artistic experience that they're talking about, the property is huge and guess what, there are artworks and sculptures like all throughout the property.

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And so, and there's hiking trails so you can be hiking around and then you hike upon an artwork.

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And by the way, all the artworks are for sale.

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Not that I can afford any of them.

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Some of them are huge.

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Just, just moving some of these artworks because a lot of these artworks are made out of, you know, they're sculptures, right?

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So they're made out of concrete or stone or steel or iron or what have you.

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So they're big, they're heavy and expensive but beautiful and very much add to the magic of this Post Ranch in experience in Big Sur.

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And so I just wanted to take some time to shout out to Mickey Munig and his vision for for Post Ranch Inn.

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And you know, it is.

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It takes artists like Mickey to change the world and to connect with nature and to connect with our humanity and connect with our earth.

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And I just love the fact that Mickey didn't care about being famous or having any publicity.

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He just wanted to do the work in this amazing place and help people connect with nature and help people connect with their humanity and do that through very visionary and inspiring and innovative architecture and design that is sustainable and green.

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And so shout out to Mickey Munich.

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Thank you Mickey for giving my wife and I an amazing experience for our 20th wedding anniversary.

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And for all of you guys listening, if you have the chance to go someday to Post Ranch in to celebrate something special, please do and check it out.

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Be sure to google it.

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You'll.

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You'll love it.

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Start saving because I think I'm going to be in debt for a long time.

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I'm paying for this thing, but it was worth it.

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And I just wanted to shout out to Mickey Munich for his vision there at Post Ranch Inn.

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So that's all I got today people.

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Thanks for tuning in Sourdough over and out foreign.

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Thanks for listening to the Not Real Art podcast.

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Please make sure to like this episode, write a review and share with your friends on Social.

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Also remember to subscribe so you get all of our new episodes.

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Not rel Art is produced by Crew West Studios in Los Angeles.

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Our theme music was created by Ricky Peugeot and Desi Delauro from the band parlor Social.

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Thanks again for listening to Not Real Art.

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We'll be back soon with another inspiring episode celebrating creative culture and the artists who make it.

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