Loving the Strange

Loving the Strange

By Shaun FarrarSociety & Culture
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Loving the Strange episodes

  • Hauntings! So scary! So strange! LOVING THE STRANGE

    Ghosts are . . . well, they seem to be everywhere and nowhere all at once, and that’s a little strange, right?

    Come hang out with us as we talk about ghosties!

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504950/spookiest-ghost-stories-all-50-states

    https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a29055997/scary-ghost-stories/

    https://www.southernliving.com/home-garden/holidays-occasions/scary-ghost-stories?slide=f7f75ff3-3024-46a9-b7ad-bbfa3989db6f#f7f75ff3-3024-46a9-b7ad-bbfa3989db6f

    https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/essays-culture/real-ghost-stories-for-campfires/

    http://abandonedtrailsofacadianationalpark.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-secret-cave-of-flying-mountain.html

    Ghosts of Acadia by Marcus LiBrizzi

    1 hr 4 min
  • The Weird Things That Parents Do LOVING THE STRANGE

    Parents. We all have some. Some of us are actual parents Sometimes parents are amazing. Sometimes? Not so much. But a lot of parents (amazing or not) do a lot of weird things. So, that’s what we’re looking at the strange things parents do.

    Ready?
    • Calling your baby partner Mommy or Daddy or Mom or Pops or whatever.
    • Talking about poop and asking if they have to go to the bathroom.
    • Early bedtimes . In Spain they get to stay up til 10 because families want to interact.
    • Spelling out words
    • Driving the SUV
    • Lying that you have allergies – often to pets, sometimes to people.
    • Baby talk
    • Throwing kids into the water to learn how to swim.
    • Write poems for the water at the restaurant.
    • Mr. Tree – One dad would pretend the tree was pontificating about the tree farm.
    • Fancy pants – Some parents only use wine glasses to drink everything.
    • Going back to work right after you have a baby. In Belgium you get four months. Austria? Until they are two.
    • Baby walkers – Canadians have banned them.
    • Lifting up your child to smell their butt.
    • Covering their eyes when scary or sexy things happen on videos.
    • Trying their food before they try their food. And cutting it up into itty bitty pieces.
      • The actual FUNNY stories are in the podcast itself, so check it out.


      https://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/g18660316/weird-things-american-parents-do/

      https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a51564/weird-things-parents-did-growing-up/


      1 hr 12 min
    • When Dreams Come True--Prophecy or Luck LOVING THE STRANGE

      Welcome to Loving The Strange.

      Psychic dreams. Dreams that foretell the future. Sleep disorder or something more? Some people think of it as a glitch in the matrix. As Dr. David Ryback wrote in 1986, “Future Memory as Holographic Process: A Scientific Model For Psychic Dreams,”

      “Psychic phenomena are only byproducts of the simultaneous-everywhere matrix. Individual brains are bits of the greater hologram. They have access under certain circumstances to all the information in the total cybernetic system. . . . “

      And we sort of talked about that a little? Mostly Shaun took us off topic because Carrie swore; Shaun reveled in being “the talent” and we ended up talking about body odor for a long time before circling back to dreams.

      Shaun halfway outed Carrie about her serial killer dreams and Carrie gave a couple examples from her past.

      Stanley Krippner wrote,

      Dreams and visions are, in a sense, experiences occupying two opposing sides of a spectrum. According to Wikipedia the visionary state is achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. For as long as human beings have kept records of their experiences, they have described extraordinary occurrences: reveries in which they appeared to receive the thoughts of another person, dreams in which they seemed to become aware of faraway events, rituals in which future happenings were supposedly predicted, and mental processes that were said to produce direct action on distant physical objects.
      These purported occurrences may have been instances of phenomena that contemporary parapsychologists call telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. Collectively, they are referred to as “psi” or reported interactions between organisms and their environment in which information exchange or influence has occurred that cannot be explained through mainstream science’s understanding of sensory-motor channels. They are regarded as anomalous because they appear to occur beyond the constraints of time, space, and energy. The noted Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote a skeptical treatise on anomalous dreams entitled, “On Divination.” In his treatise, he pointed out that: (Stanley Krippner)

      https://corrosion-doctors.org/Dreaming%20is%20Personal/Psychic.htm

      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1986.tb00445.x

      https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/dreaming-overview

      BE A PART OF OUR MISSION!

      Hey! We’re all about inspiring each other to be weird, to be ourselves and to be brave and we’re starting to collect stories about each other’s bravery. Those brave moments can be HUGE or small, but we want you to share them with us so we can share them with the world. You can be anonymous if you aren’t brave enough to use your name. It’s totally chill.

      1 hr 4 min
    • The Beauty of Not Fitting In LOVING THE STRANGE

      This week’s episode is called THE BEAUTY OF NOT FITTING IN. And one of the big aspects of understanding that is understand what it is to feel belonging.

      According to harleytherapy.com, a counseling site from the UK.

      “Belonging is defined as feeling part of a group, whether that is a family, a set of friends, or a workplace.”

      They quote psychologist Abraham Maslow, who worked on human motivation and created a ‘the Hierarchy of Needs’ models, saying that he “saw ‘love and belonging’  as so important he placed them third only to our basic ‘physiological needs’ like food and shelter, and ‘safety needs’ like employment and good health.””

      So feeling like you belong is important, but it’s also a way a lot of us feel and there’s a certain freedom and beauty in not belonging.

      Over on heartstories, writer Crystal Gronto says

      “Feeling like you don’t fit in with the crowd teaches you to see and appreciate differences in people.  It teaches you empathy and compassion for others who are on the outside.  It gives you eyes to see things that the crowd, can so easily miss.”

      Tiny Buddha’s Anne Bechard writes:

      “Everybody tries to fit in because they desperately want to feel at home wherever they are. But fitting in will never get you home. Fitting in is about trying to adapt to a world that’s not your own. You don’t belong there.
      “Belonging is about inhabiting the world as the real you. And the hard reality is that you’ll never fit in where you don’t belong. Here’s what it actually takes to truly belong where you’re meant to be—even if you don’t seem to fit in anywhere.”

      The notes for this podcast are too long to fit here. Sorry! To read them all, head to https://carriejonesbooks.blog/the-beauty-of-not-fitting-in-loving-the-strange/
      1 hr 54 min
    • Goat-hair Unibrows and the Strange Things People Do For Beauty LOVING THE STRANGE

      This week’s episode of LOVING THE STRANGE is all about the things we do for beauty. These are things in history and now, right?

      Because this world is weirdly obsessed with looking hawt and has been for a long time.

      From CITI/IO it says,

      “In Hollywood films, it is practically a given that female spies will look stunning, and female nuclear scientists will be attractive blondes. In this world, beauty is considered to be a peoples’ defining feature.
      “People love to worship celebrities and buy magazines that show their ‘perfect bodies’ and ‘perfect lives’. This feeds an unrealistic expectation of what life is really like. Not everyone is a male or female model with flawless skin. Actually, many magazine photos are touched up by photographers to remove blemishes and spots.”

      They go on to say that attractive people can spend up to a third of their income maintaining their looks.

      In a 2006 article, “Examining a society obsessed with appearance,” Kathryn Masterson writes,

      “Last year, Americans spent $9.4 billion on cosmetic surgery, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. More than 10 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2005, including 3.8 million Botox injections. Cosmetic surgery is so common it has branched over to entertainment: A host of plastic-surgery shows, including “Extreme Makeover,” “Dr. 90210” and “The Swan,” allow us to watch the unattractive (or those who simply feel that way) pursue an ideal of physical attractiveness.

      So, let’s talk about some of the weirdness:

      TANNING

      You know it’s weird that we try to change the color of our skin despite the whole skin-cancer issue.

      And even before now and the time of spray tans (to avoid the sun-induced cancer) people would paint their legs too. During WWII especially when there wasn’t any pantyhose or nylon out there.

      THE OPPOSITE OF TANNING

      In Europe in those horrible Middle Ages, it was the thing to have pale skin because if you weren’t pale that meant you went outside and if you went outside? Well, that meant you were a peasant. Rich people did NOT work in the sun.

      So to make that difference even more obvious, some would get some leaches and bleed out a bit to get that almost-dead look of vampires. Yay rich people? Using that money wisely.

      Cough.

      Things haven’t changed much.

      WHITE TEETH AND BLACK TEETH

      In Japan for a bit, military commanders’ daughters would have their teeth blackened with a lacquer made from taking vinegar and dissolving iron in it.

      Eventually, the practice expanded and it was the aristocrats. And then those of us commoners had it for special occasions. It eventually was banned, but I’m not sure why.

      It wasn’t just Japan though. Queen Elizabeth of England’s past had nasty teeth, black and naturally so because she ate too much sugar and didn’t have Crest, I guess. So, all these other ladies blackened their teeth to look wealthy and pretend like they had eaten tons of expensive sugar products just like the queen.

      THE COD PIECE

      Because we all want to pretend like there’s a giant kielbasa down there.

      THE TAPE WORM

      Because being skinny is worth parasites, meningitis and epilepsy.

      BUTT IMPLANTS

      Once, someone hacked my Amazon account and ordered butt padding. Honestly, I could use this, but they weren’t sending it to my house.


      1 hr 6 min
    • Things People Do For Good Luck (or to Avoid the Bad) LOVING THE STRANGE

      This week’s episode is all about the things we do for luck and why.

      Carrie has all these rituals on New Year’s Eve:

      Eat Hopping John

      Eat 12 grapes at midnight in a minute or less.

      Kiss someone you love or can tolerate.

      Smashing the peppermint pig.

      Wear yellow underwear for good fortune.

      Burn our wishes the night before.

      No cleaning on New Year’s Day.

      Carrie: My Portuguese grandmother would throw water out the window and sprinkle sugar outside. I don’t really do that anymore. I probably should.

      Dee Harris wrote in that she was always told not to wash clothes on New Year’s Day because you’d wash away your good luck, so all her laundry is done by 10 p.m. on Dec. 31.

      We also talked about where some of our superstitions come from—especially Padiddle—and how to attract good luck.

      According to bakadesuyo to attract good luck,
      • Listen to hunches
      • Turn bad luck into good
      • Expect it
      • Maximize your opportunities.
        • We also talked about:
        • Knock on wood
        • Throw salt over my shoulder
        • Lucky pennies

          • Oh, and what’s a padiddle? Apparently it originated as a kissing game, but in our family when we’re in the car and we see a car with one headlight, yell “piddle” and punch the ceiling.

          1 hr 34 min
        • The Strange (And Potentially Adorable) Things People Have Done On Dates LOVING THE STRANGE

          Hey! Welcome to episode 18 of LOVING THE STRANGE where we talk about the strange, adorable things people do on dates!

          Dates. What are those long lost things?

          Thank you all so much for listening! This wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t here.

          So here are a few stories.

          I was set up by a coworker with his wife’s cousin. I worked in a deli at a grocery store. So our first meeting I was in a hair net and apron and no make up. I barely remembered what he looked like but we must have hit it off because the next day my coworker said the guy wanted to swap phone numbers. I wasn’t from this area so i was nervous when he invited me to a town I never heard of April fool’s for a bonfire. I took a chance and found my way there. When I arrived it was only me and him at his friends farm, no one had arrived yet. I was nervous. Once others arrived we went muddin in his truck amd danced under the stars in the light of the fire. His friend’s truck got stuck in the mud so my date went to help pull him out and his truck got stuck. They ended up dragging it out with a tractor but the truck wasnt in neutral so the tie rod end snapped. My date was upset so someone handed him a bottle of homemade wine. He got drunk but we still had a good time. At the end of the date he walked me to my car and said he was gonna go sleep on top of a silo. I was nervous he was gonna roll off and fall to his death…. So that was an awkward but memorable first date…. We have been together for a total of 10 yrs , 8.5 of those years we have been married. Still going strong
          Amanda Courtney
          Sad I missed this. My hubby and I connected online and our first date was in a nature park. I took us on a short cut off the trail to visit some horses that live on the backside of the park and we ended up lost in the woods for three hours
          Autumn Gin
          First one: I rode with a friend to her mom’s for the weekend (so I didn’t have a car) and they left to go somewhere on that Saturday. I had a friend (he was a guy) come pick me up to get Steak ‘n Shake. While we were eating my female friend came to get me to take me to her place. She comes in and goes “is this a date?” While I was saying “no” he was saying “yes”. Needless to say it was very awkward after that.
           Anonymous


          1 hr 9 min
        • The Weird Things People Say LOVING THE STRANGE

          Hey! Welcome to episode 17 of LOVING THE STRANGE where we talk about the strange, adorable things people say.

          Thank you all so much for listening! This wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t here.

          Hey, did you know that families create their own familect? It’s a dialect that’s just for them, sort of a bunch of inside jokes and words that co-opt new meanings and it’s meant to show connectedness.

          There’s a whole big article by Kathryn Harris in the Atlantic on it. In it she quotes linguist and Georgetown professor Cynthia Gordon as saying, “Any group of people that has extended contact over time and sees itself as distinctive is going to have some specialized uses of language,” Gordon told her. “Listening to recordings of other families is like being immersed in a different world.”

          It’s interesting to wonder if this is true about communities and regions too. By listening to their unique sayings do we get to understand their world, right?

          Let’s start with Shaun’s grampa’s apparent favorite:

          Colder Than A Well Digger’s Arse:

          Ah. I can see where Shaun gets his love for language and cussing. I can’t find the exact etymology of this, but most people think it’s Southern and it’s because either:

          1. Well digger’s bums stick up when they are digging and therefore get cold.
          2. When the well digger is in the well, the well usually doesn’t have that big a circumfrance and therefor their bottom is up against the side of the cold, hard, frigid earth as they dig. That makes their bummy cold. Poor little bums.
            3. Other great Southern weather idioms are –

            It's hog Killin' weather

            It’s cold as a wedge.

            If the creek don’t rise.

            Laurie Flood asked:

            If you don’t use the phrase all ‘stov up are you even from maine?

            Ah, Laurie, we’d lose many people from away if this was the requirement, but for those of you not from here, let’s explain.

            We can’t fit all the notes we have, but if you want to check them out, head over to Carrie’s blog

            https://carriejonesbooks.blog/colder-than-a-well-diggers-arse-the-weird-and-adorable-sometimes-things-people-say-loving-the-strange-podcast/

            1 hr 4 min
          3. Strange and Adorable Things We All Do But Don't Admit To LOVING THE STRANGE

            Hey! Welcome to episode 16 of LOVING THE STRANGE where we talk about the strange, adorable things people do.

            Thank you all so much for listening! This wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t here.

            Let me have a moment of bravery and tell you something I (Carrie) do.

            I hold my breath.

            I hold my breath when I put pants on.

            I hold my breath when I put my bra on.

            I hold my breath when I walk up stairs.

            I speed up my pace when I’m running if other people are around.

            I also used to

            Eat burgers by layer.

            Other things we talked about.

            People who put their long, long hair over the seat back in the airplane row in front of you. – This is not something Shaun can handle.

            Forgetting to put water in microwave noodles.

            Pretending you’re on the Voice or in a dance battle.

            Assuming people are laughing at you when they’re just laughing near you.

            Sending an email and then being like, oh crap, I should read that before I hit send and immediately reading it.

            PRETENDING TO BE INTERVIEWED and acting it out with facial expressions.

            The extra shout-outs go to our high level patrons who also read Carrie’s books in progress and get some art in the mail sometimes.

            Autumn Gin

            Claire De Brey

            Jenn Duffield

            Pam Leffler

            Joan Stradling

            Nancy Stone

            Sam Spellacy

            Toni Floback

            Shay Altair

            Rachael Azbill

            For more resources and laughs about how we are all adorably strange, check out these links!


            https://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/weird-things-other-people-totally-do-too

            https://www.ranker.com/list/things-we-have-all-done-but-wont-admit/ashley-reign

            https://www.boredpanda.com/things-people-do-dont-admit/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic


            PRETENDING ZOMBIES OR BIG FOOT OR BAD GUYS ARE RUNNING AFTER YOU when you are running.

            “Throwing away the box from your microwave meal and then immediately having to fish it out to find out how long to cook it.”

            1 hr 5 min
          4. Who is Stranger? The North or the South? LOVING THE STRANGE

            Hey! Welcome to episode 15 of LOVING THE STRANGE where we talk about the strange, weird things people love and why.

            And this week’s episode is all about the north versus the south where Shaun basically wins. It was supposed to be about which is stranger? It devolved into who is better.

            Oops.

            We talk about food, alcohol, manners, and so much more. I hope you’ll check it out! And like and subscribe or sign up for the blog posts so you never miss our weirdness.

            Thank you all so much for listening! This wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t here.

            The extra shout-outs go to our high level patrons who also read Carrie’s books in progress and get some art in the mail sometimes.

            Autumn Gin

            Claire De Brey

            Jenn Duffield

            Pam Leffler

            Joan Stradling

            Nancy Stone

            Sam Spellacy

            Toni Floback

            Shay Altair

            Rachael Azbill

            LET’S HANG OUT!

            HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

            MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

            JUST CLICK ON THIS LINK AND FIND OUT HOW WE CAN INTERACT MORE.

            HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

            https://carriejonesbooks.blog/dogs-are-smarter-than-people-the-podcast/Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.


            We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

            Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

            Thanks so much for being one of the 260,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

            One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about aliens and if they are here. And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about the the what makes a sexy beginning and emergency poop. We’re classy like that.

            And Carrie has a new book coming out! In June! You can pre-order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

            1 hr 5 min

          About Loving the Strange

          From the publisher's feed

          Embrace the strange. This funny, honest, and helpful podcast is all about embracing the weirdness inside and outside of you to have the best life possible