Speaker 1: How are you doing today? Erin, I am well, and well,
how are you? Absolutely hanging in there? Absolutely absolutely. I
gotta ask you about the Cabinet of Curiosities? Are we
going to read about you? Because you've created so many
curiosity things over the years. I mean, it's like you
should have your own chapter, dude.
Speaker 2: So I'll say that maybe the introduction is a bit
like that, but it's more like, let's talk about my
favorite room in the world and give you a tour
of that room. That's probably what us personal as it gets.
Speaker 1: See, that's what I love about this is because it's
not what if in your world? No, let's go do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, memorizing dates and
names for history is boring, and I think that we
need to peel it back and look at the stories
behind these people or these events. It's really fun.
Speaker 1: Well, how did you discover that Lincoln's son was rescued
by his assassin's brother? Seriously?
Speaker 2: Yeah, doesn't that just sound too weird to have actually happened. Yeah.
I you know, we're getting close to fourteen hundred stories
that we've told on this podcast over six plus years,
so it's a lot of tales I don't remember where
a lot of them come from. But you know, the
pitching process usually ends up with a story has been
presented to me and I have to decide in my
gut does that sound like a curiosity or not? And yeah,
the Edwin Thomas Booth and Robert Todd Lincoln's story is
definitely a curiosity. It ticks all the boxes.
Speaker 1: See, you're proving that there are several pages of history
that we're not getting inside our own journeys.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, look, if I asked you who invented
the pringles can and you looked it up online, you'd
learned his name is Frederick Bauer and he invented it
in nineteen sixty six. And that's a great fact, right,
But it's not fun. Now if I told you that
when he died in two thousand and eight, that he
was cremated and part of his remains were buried in
a pringles can. It's a story and all of a
sudden gives very very interesting And people have asked what
flavor because his kids actually stopped at a convenient store
and stood in front of a rack of pringles cans
and said, what flavor do we bury dead? And they
went with original because you know why not.
Speaker 1: I totally get that because I always tell people, I said, man,
you know, when I'm done, you know, he cooked me
up and then and then just flushed me down the toilet,
so I can be part of the water system.
Speaker 2: I've started to ask people what flavor Pringles can they
would want to be buried in, and for me, I
think it's barbecue.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll give you that. I'm gonna have to go
with the original. Either that or something with an onion
flavor to it that would be pretty nice.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You've even got a story in here about dogs, and
I love dog stories, but capturing a German spy, how'desveil?
Speaker 2: You know? We got a New England dog from Connecticut
named Stubby. Stubby was very cute, and it was World
War One and his human was a Yale student and
went off to Europe as a lot of young men
did for World War One, and Stubby stowed away and
came with him and in the process managed to participate
in something like four major offenses and close to twenty
battles I think seventeen battles, and Stubby was given awards
and was there to boost morale and did tasks for
the soldiers and came home a hero. It's great. And
when Stubby passed away, the dog was taxidermied and is
on display at the Smithsonian today. So yeah, yeah, it's
a fun story.
Speaker 1: Wow. One of the things that I've always loved about
you Erin is the fact that you really do live
the lifestyle of the way podcasting came into being. It
was the writers that brought podcasting to the world, not
the comedians, not the musicians, and you continue to bring
that energy forward in everything that you do.
Speaker 2: Well. You know, I think that the priority seems to
be focused on celebrities coming into the podcasting space, and
I'm just holding that door open and trying to keep
the light on for writers and saying like, this is
a great space. Look, it's oral storytelling, right in whatever
format you decide your podcast is going to be, it's
oral storytelling. And that is an ancient, ancient storytelling art.
So I mean, that's fine bringing a comedian or a celebrity,
that's great. They're going to have an audience and they
can sell ads on that. But you know, there's a
place for good story.
Speaker 1: I love the cover of the book in the way
that it reminds me so much of some Harry Houdini.
Speaker 2: Mmmm. Yes, it has a I mean yeah, it has
sort of like a Victorian shop feel to it, which
I really like. And you know, we obviously grabbed the
inspiration off of the cover art for the podcast itself.
But when the hardcovers showed up at my house and
there's that guilt on the gold and it just shines
in the light. Yeah, it's a beautiful hardcover.
Speaker 1: You know, you kind of point something out to us
in England that there are wizards outside of the Harry
Potter story. I mean, I mean, I would love to
walk those streets at night.
Speaker 2: Yeah. John Dee in particular, his last name is spelled
d Ee, was a very very wild personality. We did
an episode of Lore on him years ago called Black
and Wild, and yeah, he was an alchemist and had
all sorts of cool historical artifacts that were you know,
like an obsidian disc from Central America and you know,
a wax disc with carvings on it, and you can
see some of those things at the British Museum today.
It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: How are you getting your your listeners to go from
Lore to the brand new podcast that you create. Because
you're endlessly creating even with other people other podcasts. How
do you how do you get them to transition over
and continue to support.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the that's the challenge, right, I mean that's
you can you can you can tell the listeners on
the Lore feed, hey I've got a new show and
here's where to find information about it. Then you just
sort of cross your fingers and help they go over there.
And there's a real good crossover between low listeners and
Cabinet and curiosity listeners. You know. There there's the fandom
is very They help each other out, and often it's
the same person who listens to both shows. So yeah,
I like to think of Law as like a meal, yeah,
and Cabinet is more of a snack.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I may be a freak here, but I
wear earphones every time I come into the studio. I
don't know what you do in your studio and stuff,
but do you find yourself wearing earphones even while you write,
so that you have that comfort up there? It's almost
like a blanket of sorts.
Speaker 2: I love quiet, so I will often put on some headphones,
like some cans that have noise canceling and just kind
of bask in the glory of silence while I write.
It's great. But other times I'll throw music on something
It sounds super stereotypical, but I'll put on Chad's music
from my composer or law or something else that's moody
like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I call that head music. You've got to have it, man,
because you've got to have some sort of path that
puts your creativity on so that you can have flow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. And I can't put something with lyrics on
because then I'm going to start thinking about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or old songs, Oh god, no, because all of a sudden,
I'm back in nineteen seventy eight and that's not where
I want to be.
Speaker 2: Classic rock has its place, but not while I'm writing.
Speaker 1: Do you consider yourself a content addic? And the reason
why I bring that up is because you're always digging.
You're bringing things to us, and it's almost like I
feel like that I'm at this fancy restaurant and you're saying, Hey,
we've got something new for you to try tonight.
Speaker 2: I you know, I think that I'm a naturally curious person.
I want to like I love asking the question why. Yeah,
you know, so they did that thing. You know that
thing is weird that they did. That's great, But why
why did they do that? Why did they think in
eighteen ninety two that it was okay to dig Mercy
Brown's body up in Rhode Island burn her heart, put
the ashes in a tonic and feed it to her
brother to see if it would heal him from suberculosis? Like,
why did they think that was okay to do? I
love asking those questions.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you? Dude?
Speaker 2: You can go to Lore podcast dot com, lor podcast
dot com. You go to my personal site, Aaronmanky dot com,
but then you have to figure out how to spell it.
Yeah right, yeah yeah, And Laura's a great place to go,
or Grimandmild dot com. We'll have all the shows I make,
including Lord. I'll have my bio. It has my appearances listening,
I think, but that might be in the lower page.
I'm going to be in Minneapolis tomorrow night doing a
live Lore show. I'll be in Milwaukee Friday night, and
then Saturday I'm in Naperville, Illinois doing a book event
at Anderson's Books. Wow.
Speaker 1: If you ever make it down to the Carolinas, we've
got to have a face to FaceTime dude.
Speaker 2: That'd be fun. I really love that. Yeah, I don't
know if I ever told you this. I released an
episode on the Cora Tree in the Outer Banks randomly,
like I played episodes months and months out. I released
it years ago. It was the week that we announced
the TV show for Law and by the time the
episode came out. I had booked randomly a vacation for
the family in the Outer Banks. So I was in
a rented house in the Outer Banks when the Outer
Banks episode came out. But that was, like, I don't know,
twenty nineteen in the before times.
Speaker 1: Wow, those Outer Banks are to you, man. You don't
forget them, do you.
Speaker 2: No, you don't, you don't.
Speaker 1: Well, please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Erin. Thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Eric, be brilliant today.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks you too.