Speaker 1: I'm guilty. I'm one of those podcast listeners. Except when
Speaker 1: I go looking for a podcast, I want to be
Speaker 1: able to find it. I'll read about it on Google,
Speaker 1: and then I go searching for it on iHeart or Spotify,
Speaker 1: and I can't find that Rob low Interview. I can't
Speaker 1: find something Mark merindid I can't find it. So as
Speaker 1: a podcaster, it was my goal to create something that
Speaker 1: makes it so much easier for you to take what
Speaker 1: you found out and find it Ero dot net, aet net.
Speaker 1: It's twenty different podcasts for you to explore. Hey, there
Speaker 1: you are. I feel like doing some podcrashing today. Go
Speaker 1: in there and talk to some people that are actually
Speaker 1: living this lifestyle and bringing storytelling to the highest level
Speaker 1: it's ever been. Podcrashing episode number four eighty two puts
Speaker 1: his focus on actor writer Storm from his podcast The
Speaker 1: Red Weather. Hello and good morning party people. Hey, how's
Speaker 1: it going, man, I'm doing fantastic. How about you?
Speaker 2: Oh good, it's early, but I'm waking up.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I'm getting through my pot of tea, so the caffeine's
Speaker 2: kicking in.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. When you're doing the tea, that means
Speaker 1: you're reaching for that that little element of hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go here, because creativity is on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of this.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the way that you're working your words with
Speaker 1: the red weather, in the way that you're part of
Speaker 1: the story. I love that because that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that I'm learning and doing all my research about podcasting
Speaker 1: is that listeners want to feel like they're part of
Speaker 1: your life, not not a third party or even a
Speaker 1: fourth party storyline that's made out of journalism.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is something that I learned the hard way
Speaker 3: by starting the first podcast I did. I started in
Speaker 3: twenty and twelve, I want to say, wait, doing back
Speaker 3: in the infancy, okay, And my idea was to do
Speaker 3: a book podcast is called Literary Disco, and it was
Speaker 3: my friends and I and what we thought at the
Speaker 3: time was, well, if we're going to be talking about books,
Speaker 3: we should present ourselves as book experts. We need to
Speaker 3: show off how smart we are, how much research we've done.
Speaker 2: And the reality is that's.
Speaker 3: The worst approach people really want is they want you
Speaker 3: to get up there like Joe Rogan or you know,
Speaker 3: name your podcaster and say I don't know anything, but
Speaker 3: I'm curious about it. And I want to look into it,
Speaker 3: and that's what people respond to. And it was a
Speaker 3: real lesson for me that you know, took me ten
Speaker 3: years to learn that the more you're honest about like
Speaker 3: what you don't know, that's what that's what draws people in.
Speaker 1: So then would you say that's part of the glue
Speaker 1: when it comes to telling the story of a a trainer,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you had me when it's like seventeen
Speaker 1: year old nobody found right away. I'm taking back to
Speaker 1: my own personal life in Billings, Montana, when there was
Speaker 1: a missing thirteen or fourteen year old girl and they
Speaker 1: found her at the lake. All of a sudden, I'm going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, writer, you're onto something here.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, no, that's horrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I you know, I just wanted to I
Speaker 3: wanted to get back to well first, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: taking the audience back to my own adolescents and my
Speaker 3: own stupidity as an adolescent was always the point. And
Speaker 3: you know, I think that works. That works for me
Speaker 3: doubly because like, on one hand, it's just like a good
Speaker 3: narrative position to take as it draws people in. Also
Speaker 3: because people think of me still as a teenager, because
Speaker 3: they grew up with boy meet's world, and so like
Speaker 3: I have this sort of like you know, cheat code
Speaker 3: that when I say, like, you know, do you remember
Speaker 3: when I was fifteen, everyone kind of does, so, so
Speaker 3: it was it was an easy thing for me to do, particularly,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I do think that, like, you know, hopefully,
Speaker 3: I've had a couple of people say to me, like,
Speaker 3: you know, friends who have listened or you know, acquaintances
Speaker 3: who have said, like, you know, listening to the Red
Speaker 3: Weather made me go back and like pull out some
Speaker 3: of my old diaries and like my old journals and
Speaker 3: poems I used to write. And I love that, and
Speaker 3: I hope that that, you know, the more you know
Speaker 3: the old writing lesson is like the more specific you are,
Speaker 3: the more universal it becomes in a weird way. And
Speaker 3: so I knew that, like if I went back into
Speaker 3: my life as specifically as possible, even with a fake crime,
Speaker 3: you know, the actual missing girl is made up, but
Speaker 3: the rest of it is very specific to my childhood
Speaker 3: and real memories and real friends. And the more I
Speaker 3: could lean into that in a weird way, even though
Speaker 3: I grew up in this kind of you know, unique
Speaker 3: situation of being a child actor of being in the Redwoods,
Speaker 3: being surrounded by sort of communes and this kind of
Speaker 3: weird scene. It would actually make it more universal the
Speaker 3: more I leaned into the specificity.
Speaker 1: But doesn't it felt all normal? Did it not? Because
Speaker 1: that's the one thing that I'm learning about.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We can all stand on the outside and oh, point
Speaker 1: our fingers, oh oh oh, but then when you're living
Speaker 1: in it, it's like, why are you owing me?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is how we live.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: And I think that that, you know, the initial impetus
Speaker 3: for the red Weather was me.
Speaker 2: Suddenly at forty six.
Speaker 3: Or forty five, whenever I first started doing this, realizing like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, what was going on with like my
Speaker 3: like my one buddy who lived I knew his parents
Speaker 3: had started a commune and then it had fallen apart,
Speaker 3: but like I didn't know the details. We never talked
Speaker 3: about and we're still friends, but we never talk about it,
Speaker 3: you know. And I was like, I'm just gonna sit
Speaker 3: down with him for a couple hours and interview him
Speaker 3: because I don't know, like what was his parents doing,
Speaker 3: Like why why were all these parties there? And like
Speaker 3: I knew drugs were involved, but like I just didn't ask.
Speaker 3: It was just normal, so he didn't. And then there
Speaker 3: were kids that I went to, you know, I went
Speaker 3: to this really small hippie school out in the middle
Speaker 3: of the woods, you know, in part because I was
Speaker 3: acting at the time. But a lot of the kids
Speaker 3: who were going there were going there because they were
Speaker 3: being kept out of public school because they were in
Speaker 3: some sort of religious commune situation.
Speaker 2: And like I never asked them about that.
Speaker 3: I just knew that, Like there were multiple kids who
Speaker 3: were related in some way, and you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 3: it turns out because they were all fathered by the
Speaker 3: same guru who was leading their their family, you know,
Speaker 3: their their families. They had different moms, but they all
Speaker 3: the same dad, and that's why they were all half Indian.
Speaker 3: And I was just trying to figure this out, like
Speaker 3: why would they related? And sometimes they refer to each
Speaker 3: other as cousins and sometimes as brothers your sisters.
Speaker 2: I just didn't know.
Speaker 3: So the lot of the red weather was me like
Speaker 3: just being like, wait, is that normal? I need to
Speaker 3: go back and like ask some people about this, and
Speaker 3: that's you know, yeah, but I agree, man, Like when
Speaker 3: you're a kid, you're just in it, you never question it.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that you put this in diaries
Speaker 1: and journals because to go back there. But my question
Speaker 1: is when you went back in there to do the
Speaker 1: podcast to read what you put on the paper, did
Speaker 1: you go in there as the actor or as the
Speaker 1: person who laid the ink into those veins of that tree?
Speaker 2: Wo God, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: As mostly I would say mostly as an actor, I
Speaker 3: think I was. Yeah, I think I was mostly like,
Speaker 3: what's going to be the most effective way to convey
Speaker 3: this and to make Yeah? Yeah, So I would say
Speaker 3: it was more of an acting exercise.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when you're digging up the pass, though, aren't you
Speaker 1: in essence saying, oh, I've got to live this now,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I've got thirty two year of daily
Speaker 1: writing inside this room, and it's like, if I step
Speaker 1: back to nineteen ninety eight right now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: carry it with me for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: How the hell did you survive this?
Speaker 2: No, man, it was it was. It was very I
Speaker 2: would say.
Speaker 3: Like once I came up came up with the idea
Speaker 3: of making it like, you know, a fictional true crime
Speaker 3: thing where I was I needed to deliver the most
Speaker 3: exciting story I could. The material the like the real
Speaker 3: material then took second place. It was like, okay, I
Speaker 3: need I need to first and foremost, I needed to
Speaker 3: just make this an exciting mystery. I need this to
Speaker 3: have like a roller coaster ride of like ups and downs.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of that was just super fake,
Speaker 3: super fictional, and and so it was more about structuring
Speaker 3: the story and taking that raw material and finding a
Speaker 3: way to contextualize it. So when I would interview people,
Speaker 3: like talking to my dad about a story to always
Speaker 3: tell you know, I'm asking him questions about this story,
Speaker 3: and I'm going.
Speaker 2: To apply it to a completely fake situation. So you know,
Speaker 2: there was a level of remove there that was that
Speaker 2: made it easy.
Speaker 3: I was more concerned about how people would feel about
Speaker 3: once it was all put together, like the people that
Speaker 3: I interviewed, because a lot of their words are taken
Speaker 3: out of context. You know, I asked my brother about
Speaker 3: a girl we grew up with, and it's a real
Speaker 3: person that I'm asking him about, and he is a
Speaker 3: real answer. But then I apply that to a fictional
Speaker 3: character and and so that's you know, it's a real
Speaker 3: it's a real trip for even my friends and family
Speaker 3: to listen to who are in it. They've like been
Speaker 3: calling me being like, but hold on, but this part was.
Speaker 2: Real And I love that. I love that even they
Speaker 2: can't quite parse it all together. You know what? What's what? Oh?
Speaker 1: My god. Tony Bean, one of my the guitars that
Speaker 1: was in our in our garage band, still hates me
Speaker 1: to this day because he said that I got him
Speaker 1: wrong in my book Halloween seventy eight. I said it
Speaker 1: was based on a true story. Tony, It's not really you.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you would do this to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: did you go through that too?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, most, for the most part of my friends are
Speaker 3: is like, super supportive, and I haven't so far, I
Speaker 3: haven't heard. I mean I've heard some grumblings from my
Speaker 3: town in general, like people sort of like, what does
Speaker 3: this say about our town or is this a reflection
Speaker 3: of you know? Like, But no, for the most part,
Speaker 3: like all the people that I interviewed that I work
Speaker 3: with to make this are preally happy with it and
Speaker 3: and get it and enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Right or Strong
Speaker 1: coming up next. The name of his podcast, The Red weather.
Speaker 1: We are back with actor, right or strong? Well, the
Speaker 1: one thing that you do quite well with the red
Speaker 1: weather is the fact that you do what what We've
Speaker 1: always been trained in broadcasting and they might do it
Speaker 1: in acting too, Who, what, where, why, when? And how?
Speaker 1: If you can't focus on that, you have no story.
Speaker 1: And you've got a story here, man, because you're you're
Speaker 1: answering every one of those questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was a lot like I don't
Speaker 3: think I realized when I first had the idea and knew.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously I had a lot of material because
Speaker 3: it was based on my own life and my own
Speaker 3: friends and all that. But when I started organizing it,
Speaker 3: I realized how hard crime writing it is like mystery writing,
Speaker 3: because you know, if you're going to point fingers at
Speaker 3: somebody and say, like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe this
Speaker 3: person had something to do with her disappearance, that better
Speaker 3: be a fully realized story because if you can't just
Speaker 3: point fingers, you have to like make it really plausible
Speaker 3: otherwise the audience is going to know it's a red herring,
Speaker 3: it's fake, it's not you know, And so I had
Speaker 3: to get my facts very my My fake facts had
Speaker 3: to be very good, and they had to line up
Speaker 3: with my fact facts very well, like my memories and
Speaker 3: the actual things about my town or my life.
Speaker 2: So it was a lot of work.
Speaker 3: I would say this was this was probably six months
Speaker 3: of outlining and eight months of writing, and then only
Speaker 3: after that only about a month the recording, and then
Speaker 3: a lot of time editing. You know, I would say
Speaker 3: another three months editing.
Speaker 2: So this is a big, you know, a big thing.
Speaker 3: But the outlining and the writing was the most complicated
Speaker 3: because it is ultimately a mystery. It's ultimately a you know,
Speaker 3: kind of like a a crime novel more than even
Speaker 3: a true crime podcast, So I had to structure it accordingly.
Speaker 1: You know what's gonna happen, writer, You're going to be
Speaker 1: walking along in an everyday world and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your eye because you've done the homework and you've now
Speaker 1: lived what it's like to investigate things, You're going to
Speaker 1: spot something that a police department didn't, and they're going
Speaker 1: to start coming to you because you've got that keen
Speaker 1: sense of investigation inside of you. Do you not feel
Speaker 1: that when you listen to this, No.
Speaker 3: I'm a horrible detective for Red Weather, which is part
Speaker 3: of the fun is that like, yes, no, I wanted to.
Speaker 3: I wanted to like basically, through the course of this season,
Speaker 3: you know, learn how to be you know, I wanted
Speaker 3: I definitely wanted to writer the narrator of this podcast,
Speaker 3: to be a horrible journalist and a horrible.
Speaker 2: Detective at the beginning. I think that, you know, because
Speaker 2: that is the truth.
Speaker 3: Like when I was thinking, like what would I do
Speaker 3: if I was going to investigate a crime, I was like,
Speaker 3: I would want it to be live and I'd just
Speaker 3: walk right into the police station. Well, it turns out
Speaker 3: that's the wrong jurisdiction because where my property is is
Speaker 3: not even in this proper town of Sebastapull, California.
Speaker 2: It's in the shape, you know.
Speaker 3: So I was like, well, that's great, that's going in
Speaker 3: the podcast, Like that's going to be scene one. So
Speaker 3: like I completely flail, and I think that that's endearing.
Speaker 3: I mean to the point we were saying earlier about
Speaker 3: like when you admit that you don't know anything, it
Speaker 3: actually draws people in.
Speaker 2: That's that was kind of the same thing.
Speaker 3: It was like, I need to be a bad detective
Speaker 3: and then you know, hopefully by the end of the season.
Speaker 3: I've learned a few things and I've grown, but yeah,
Speaker 3: if there's a season two, I'll probably be a better detective.
Speaker 1: Well as an investigator. That writer and that producer you
Speaker 1: scare the living Bajiebis out of me when Anna is
Speaker 1: walking alone, because in my heart, as a father and grandfather,
Speaker 1: I'm going, what the hell's going on in this story
Speaker 1: because I can't stop buying pick a rup. That's what
Speaker 1: we did in the seventies. If you saw somebody walking along,
Speaker 1: you picked them up and you took them home. You
Speaker 1: are doing that today, which then causes that shiver while
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the Red Weather.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a it's a spooky vibe. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean now, I mean the other thing is like
Speaker 3: a story like this can only take place pre cell phones.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't, you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't tell stories like this anymore because everyone's pretty
Speaker 3: safe these days, and kids have a way to contact
Speaker 3: their parents, even in you know, the most isolated situation.
Speaker 3: So I think that, like I'll you know, it's kind
Speaker 3: of intentional that I go back to the nineties, because
Speaker 3: you can't have a mystery like this without if it
Speaker 3: was taking place in the twenty teens, for instance, it
Speaker 3: just wouldn't exist. So good for good for today's teenagers
Speaker 3: that they're safer and less likely to be murdered or kidnapped,
Speaker 3: but way less interesting storytelling wise.
Speaker 1: So was light a real person, mister Eric Lipsky.
Speaker 2: No, No, completely made it really?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what what a believable See that just
Speaker 1: shows your writing skills right there, because I totally believed
Speaker 1: in mister Eric Lidski.
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, here's the real story is I wrote.
Speaker 3: I wrote about this character. I created this character. I
Speaker 3: wrote several pages of dialogue that was just lectures, you know,
Speaker 3: because at one point I find his like a ten
Speaker 3: tape lecture series, and so I just wrote a brief, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a series of like little lectures about how
Speaker 3: his philosophy on trees and psychedelic drugs and and I.
Speaker 3: But the whole time I was writing it, I knew
Speaker 3: that in I had this actor named Chris Lemke, who
Speaker 3: is an amazing actor.
Speaker 2: He was he was a child actor in Canada.
Speaker 3: Same era as me, and he's never quite made it
Speaker 3: as like a huge television star or movie star, but
Speaker 3: he is a he is a known actor and I
Speaker 3: just think he's brilliant and he's a very committed I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say full method, but he's a very committed actor.
Speaker 3: And so I presented him with these pages and the situation,
Speaker 3: and I gave him a radio shack microphone from the
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties and a tape recorder, and I.
Speaker 2: Said, what do you think about being el Rick?
Speaker 3: Could you just take these these and go do some
Speaker 3: lectures for me based on these three pages that I wrote.
Speaker 2: And six weeks later he.
Speaker 3: Turned in four full tapes full of lectures of him
Speaker 3: in character and yeah, and so what you actually get
Speaker 3: in The Red Weather and the third episode of The
Speaker 3: Red Weather is not anything that I wrote. It's actually
Speaker 3: stuff that he improvised that I then had to listen
Speaker 3: to and I pulled from to create the episode. He's
Speaker 3: a genius and it's just made it made it, made
Speaker 3: is so much more real. Exactly it made it because
Speaker 3: I am genuinely listening to it trying to piece together
Speaker 3: what this guy was all about, because I didn't know
Speaker 3: he as an actor, had gone off and just recorded
Speaker 3: himself in the desert. He recorded himself in the woods,
Speaker 3: and he really did just talk into the mic and
Speaker 3: so it was beautiful as it was a beautiful, like
Speaker 3: full so moment as a creator, writer, actor like it
Speaker 3: just made it so real.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot.
Speaker 3: Of different actors who came to me with that kind of.
Speaker 2: Approach and made this thing really elevated in.
Speaker 1: You share a quote that really touches me. You being
Speaker 1: up there in the red forest and I'm hearing the
Speaker 1: Carolinas in a forest that has white pines and elms
Speaker 1: and beautiful things that Carolina brings, and you say something
Speaker 1: here that I think it's going to really change me.
Speaker 1: One human hour is thirty tree hours. We planted seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred trees. I'm going to be out there with seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred trees talking to them about you got thirty hours
Speaker 1: ahead of me, mister tree. What a w I need
Speaker 1: to learn?
Speaker 2: That's so funny. It was weird. I did come up.
Speaker 3: I had written when I was writing this philosophy for
Speaker 3: l Reck, and I came up with this idea of
Speaker 3: tree time.
Speaker 2: It turns out it is an established thing.
Speaker 3: That people have written about, have talked about, I know,
Speaker 3: and I always just thought about it because you know,
Speaker 3: growing up in the Redwoods, there would be two thousand
Speaker 3: year old trees, three thousand year old trees around us.
Speaker 3: And I remember at one point thinking, you know, if
Speaker 3: the oldest species on Earth has chosen this part of
Speaker 3: the world to live in and survive for this long
Speaker 3: and basically the greatest threat that redwood trees ever faced
Speaker 3: were humans, right, Like, we're the ones that destroyed what
Speaker 3: otherwise would still be a pristine old growth redwood forest.
Speaker 2: I was like, that means that's a pretty good place
Speaker 2: to live. That means like that's.
Speaker 3: A pretty stable ecologically speaking, that's probably a pretty good
Speaker 3: spot to live in the good soil, good weather.
Speaker 2: So that was always my thought. It's like the trees kind.
Speaker 3: Of have a better idea of what you know, a
Speaker 3: longer term sense of reality and the earth cycles than
Speaker 3: we humans do.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I wrote that into the thing.
Speaker 3: And then it turns out that there have been a
Speaker 3: lot of philosophy like philosophical discussions about tree time. Like literally,
Speaker 3: that phrase is an existing thing. I didn't even realize.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, trees are my life. Trees and rocks, man,
Speaker 1: Native Americans will teach you those are the storytellers. Sit
Speaker 1: by a rock and tell me what you're thinking.
Speaker 2: Absolutely man, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: Wow, where can people go to find out more about
Speaker 1: everything that you're doing?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: First of all, they got to stop by the Red
Speaker 1: Weather because it is quite the experience for the drive
Speaker 1: in or if they're listening at work or even at home,
Speaker 1: because it really pulls this in and as your grandmother
Speaker 1: would say, it activates your imagination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thank you man.
Speaker 3: That's what I really hope that it like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's like a movie in your mind. That's
Speaker 3: what I meant for is Yeah, thanks man. I yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I did everything on location. There's no studio work.
Speaker 3: It was all, you know, just running around and really
Speaker 3: do living it. So I'm glad that that translates. No.
Speaker 2: Otherwise, I'm on Instagram. That's kind of my.
Speaker 3: Big social only social media, forward front facing version of myself.
Speaker 2: I'm still doing Podmeats World.
Speaker 3: We're watching Bloying Meet's World, so that podcast is ongoing
Speaker 3: and we have episodes coming out every week.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, otherwise, if.
Speaker 3: Anybody listens to whether I want to hit me up
Speaker 3: on Instagram, I'm I really appreciating the feedback right now.
Speaker 3: It's a very very personal, very weird story. So getting
Speaker 3: getting feedback is just it's super heart man.
Speaker 1: Well, you got to come back to this show anytime
Speaker 1: in the future. The door is always going to be
Speaker 1: open for your writer. Thank you so much, Ur, you'd
Speaker 1: be brilliant today.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah you too, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Fred.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, just wanted to let you know.
Speaker 4: I always sit by the Lenape Rock here in Manhattan
Speaker 4: whenever I do their trails, and I sit and I
Speaker 4: listen to whatever they have to say because we still
Speaker 4: have some of the uh leftover caverns of where the
Speaker 4: Lennape tribe was when they were here in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Oh see, now you've got my attention. Okay, So writer
Speaker 1: and I are coming up there to do a podcast
Speaker 1: about those rocks.
Speaker 5: Literally in the middle of the in Wood Park and
Speaker 5: it's literally says this is here as a landmark of
Speaker 5: where the Lennape tribe was, and then if you continue
Speaker 5: to walk just a little further in, it'll take you
Speaker 5: to where the caves were, but the city Parks Department
Speaker 5: put rocks in there, but they it's there being even
Speaker 5: seed still see the trail of how they went down
Speaker 5: alongside the formations.
Speaker 1: Wow, I love that stuff, right, around. I love that stuff.
Speaker 2: You want me too. You seen it this past Saturday.
Speaker 1: I'll probably do it again this Saturday.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, dude.
Speaker 1: You guys have fun today. Okay,