Coming Down

The average person's knowledge of gambling strategy can be boiled down to the iconic chorus of noted sage and rotisserie king Kenny Rogers' timeless epic:

You've got to know when to hold 'em

Know when to fold 'em

Know when to walk away

And know when to run

But today's guest is not your average person. Our friend Jesse knows a thing or two about card games and strategy, and he decided to put his knowledge to the test with his crack team of fellow nerds on the blackjack table in Vegas.

Cutting someone out of your life is never easy. Oftentimes it's difficult to even admit that you have a toxic relationship, let alone do anything about it. It becomes exponentially harder when you share an emotional bond with that person. Especially when it's one of your parents. Strap in for a long one, folks. This one's about Nathan's dad.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2001, technology would have advanced enough to reduce the work week to 15 hours in developed nations. There's every reason to believe he was right, but it didn't happen. Rather than freeing the populace from work, the free market has instead created pointless jobs that diminish our labor, damage our self esteem and keep people locked in poverty.

Work is bullshit. The notion that everyone needs to be employed in order to justify their reason to exist is categorically false, a lie perpetuated by capitalist dogma. The truth is, our employers need our labor far more than we need them. Right now there's a lot of people who are taking their power back from shitty jobs, and we salute this movement.

Most kids at some time or another choose to test the boundaries of our theft laws. Some get caught right away and learn their lesson early, while others may have allegedly gone on a minor crime spree. Either way, once you get clipped for using your five-finger discount, the good times always come crashing to a halt. The consequences, however, can vary wildly.

In the juvenile justice system of 1990s Bend Oregon, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police, who ostensibly investigate crime, and peer jurors, a panel of shitty kids who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. -Vi

Satanism, witchcraft, occult. These mysterious, often misunderstood terms inspire powerful feelings in humans. Most of us are taught from a young age to fear and mistrust these concepts and anyone promoting them. When we encounter locations in the wild connected to these practices, one never knows what one will find. Or who...

Welcome to our second Halloween spook-tacular!

Whether you're building an in-home ossuary or just trying to find a preserved insect display to tie together your decor, an oddities shop is likely your destination. This bizarre backroom industry has been quietly burgeoning in the last decade - from expos to Etsy and everything in between. In this guest episode, Nathan's good friends Will and Cheyenne give us a rundown of their experiences on the road with their homegrown business Atomic Folk Art.

We get surly in another round of hypothetical questions!

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." -Juliet Capulet

We all know people with common names. Matthew went to high school with two Jeremy Johnsons who lived across the street from each other. Matthew himself hangs out with three other Matts on the regular. But even so, it's rare that one is confused for a perfect stranger on the basis of name alone. Welcome to Matthew's personal Twilight Zone episode.

Not everyone is proud of the things they've done for money. Many of us have had to walk a long, strange road to get where we are now. Here's a few stories from the trenches out there on the fringe.