This week, cartoonist and ultimate Creative Weirdo Todd Purse joins AP for an inspiring and fun conversation about art, imagination, and the power of bringing ideas to life on the page. Todd makes his living, as he says, by "drawing pictures on coffee bags"- but he also consistently produces whimsical and positive paranormal themed art which he shares on instagram (@toddde85), and publishes zines and prints of his work as well. In conversation, AP and Todd get into some of his early influences, talk about the wonderful medium of comic books and comic strips, and the intersection of paranormal concepts and the creative process.

This lends itself to a lot of geeking out about everything from Calvin and Hobbes to the Loch Ness Monster, from Star Wars to Mothman, and the various trickster masks of the Kentucky Goblins. Other themes explored include parenting, the timelessness of some forms of media, humor, and underlying faith in humanity despite the horrors of the world.

Todd also contributes to the comic book adaptation of Illuminatus!, which was discussed in episode 28- Hailing Discordia with Bobby Campbell- and is the artist behind Welcome UFO People, a collaboration with Rob Kristofferson of Our Strange Skies fame.

Todd is always a pleasure to talk to or hear in conversation- and his work is highly recommended! Check it out here:

https://www.createmagicstudios.com/

Michael M. Hughes joins AP this week to discuss the proliferation of AI technology and the impact it's having on every aspect of society. Michael is an author, a journalist, a tarot reader, and teacher, and his recent writings include a "Humanifesto" which promotes biological intelligence and resists the artifice being sold to us by the tech industry. In both his written work- regularly updated to reflect new insights- and in conversation here, the necessity of so-called AI applications is called into question, leveraged against the very real harms it causes in the human psyche and to the environment.

From AI slop to plagiarism issues, broligarchs and enshittification, and what Hughes refers to as the "coprophagic ouroboros", the facade of the allegedly monumental shift in tech- not to mention the economic bubble it creates- is revealed for what it is. The conversation is far from being all doom and gloom, though, with plenty of laughs and some uplifting suggestions about how to gently work one's way back to creating, living life, and connecting with the beauty of art, literature, and community.

Read MIchael's humanifesto here: https://medium.com/@michaelmhughes/kill-the-robots-7bad904e3c9e

and check out his website here: https://www.michaelmhughes.com/

For this week's Third Time's the Charm (3xtC) presentation, Icy Sedgwick joins AP to venture into the realm of found footage horror movies with a look at Paranormal Activity 3. As it happens, Icy was the perfect guest to have on for this subject, as she has an honest-to-goodness doctorate in horror movies and used the Paranormal Activity series for her Ph D! In this discussion, she and AP get into the benefits and drawbacks of found footage as a genre, what it says about our perception of paranormal events, and even some of the folklore and tropes that pervade these narratives.

Icy is also a former ghost hunter, a folklorist, and a dark fantasy writer- and these rarified talents and experiences lend themselves well to discussions around the paranormal in both fictional and allegedly true accounts... and everything in-between. The conversation covers everything from how ghosts and demons are portrayed in media, the differences in these portrayals in British and American productions, and the ways in which horror narratives mirror the popular consciousness more readily than other forms of fiction.

They also briefly discuss Icy's book, Rebel Folklore, which is available for purchase on Amazon. She also hosts the wonderful podcast Fabulous Folklore, which you can check out here: https://pod.co/fabulous-folklore-with-icy
And for her writings and other works go here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/