Thank you all for putting up with our April Fool's Day outtake last week, we promise this one is legit and not just a string of nonsense words! Claire, Erin, and special guests @hawthornewhisperer and @oscarmiked discuss Overprepared Dads Bellamy and Kane, how to rave responsibly, why the Pawnee Goddesses are superior to the Boy Scouts of America, and whether that backpack is a metaphor. Also gold star to anyone who can identify the "Friends" reference in the title of this outtake.

This week's episode is delayed while Erin's traveling, but don't worry, fam! We have a once-in-a-lifetime surprise for you to help you fill the hours until Wednesday when the 408 recap goes live. "BUT CLAIRIN WHAT'S THE BIG NEWS???" Listen, if we just told you right here in the track description, what would be the point of listening to hear the amazingness yourself?

P.S. there was a ton of wild speculation flying around yesterday about what the surprise could be; some of you already guessed it, and congrats to you! We just ask that you don't tweet spoilers until the end of the day; we want all our fans to get the chance to listen in on this huge moment and hear it all unfold exactly as it happened.

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P.P.S. April Fool's! :-) This is, of course, not a big exciting announcement, it's a sneak peek into the editing process of making this podcast. The "um cut" is when Erin and I go through and laboriously slice out every individual "um", "uh", "like", rambling half-formed thought, and mumbled nonsense that would make listening to us unbearable for 2.5 hours if we left them all in. For fun, Erin edited a bunch of the garbage together and we've been making ourselves cry-laugh over it for a week. THANK YOU FOR TOLERATING US, WE THINK WE'RE HILARIOUS

Welcome back to Part 2 of our recap of "Gimme Shelter," already one of our faves of the season!

Part 1, all about the lady BAMFs of Science Island and their snartastic "ramsi" Murphy, can be found here - https://soundcloud.com/meta-station/episode-4x07-gimme-shelter-part-i-science-island

Also don't miss the outtake from that section where we learned some hard truths about our very different priorities on postapocalyptic house tours - https://soundcloud.com/meta-station/clairin-outtakes-beccas-house

And now, please join as we plummet into the depths of emotional despair as Harper, Kane and the Blakes get trapped by the black rain in a crucible of dark and terrible pain from which most of them do not emerge by the end of the episode, DOES ANYONE ELSE SOMETIMES JUST WANT TO THROW IN THE TOWEL AND SWITCH TO "PARKS AND REC" OR SOMETHING BECAUSE JESUS H. CHRIST THIS ONE GOT GRIM

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0:00 – Story Craft 101: Raise the Stakes By Making Them Smaller

0:08 – This Is Not a Drill: Black Rain Moves the Apocalypse from Abstraction to Reality

0:15 – From the Ashes They Will Rise: Octavia, Bellamy and Kane Hit Rock Bottom

0:21 – If Bellamy Can’t Protect Everyone All the Time, Does He Even Know Who He Is?

0:34 – Fire and Water Imagery in That Octilian Scene

0:46 – Gradually Moving From “IF THIS EPISODE HAS OCTILIAN HATE SEX I QUIT ” to “. . . Okay I Can See It”

0:51 – We’re at Record-High Levels of Optimism About the Show Finally Reckoning With Octavia's Treatment of Bellamy

1:00 – LOL If You Didn’t Think We’d Spend a Full Hour on Kellamy You Must Be New Here

1:16 – Kane’s Season Arc Finally Starts to Emerge

1:22 – “My Sister My Responsibility” and Love Are Not the Same Thing

1:39 – Today On “Erin and Claire Get Super Real About Their Personal Lives”: Purging the False Narratives About Who You Are, Even When It’s Excruciating, Is Progress

1:54 – Next Week, We Have Special Guests! @hawthornewhisperer and @knowlesian on Tumblr Will Be Joining Us For 408 Before We Go Back On Hiatus!

Welcome back to Meta Station, for a podcast so overloaded with content we had to split it into two parts! Stand by in the next day or so for our epic discussion of the Arkadia storyline, featuring Harper, Kane and the Blakes. In the meantime, please enjoy Murphy making apple-and-walnut risotto, Emori being the world's best con artist, Clarke and Abby having a TINY difference of opinion over what "choice" means, and Abby calling her husband all "hey baby, put Season One Kane on the phone real quick, I need murder advice." GOD THIS EPISODE WAS SO FUCKING GOOD

0:00 – WE ARE VERY ALL-CAPS ABOUT THE EMORI CONTENT IN THIS EPISODE

0:23 – “We Have No Choice” vs. “We Always Have a Choice”: The Griffin Women Debate Ethics

0:39 – "Taking a Life Should Never Be Easy": This Mashup of Season One Kane and Season Four Kane Is LIT

Join us on a recap of episode 407's architecture porn, in which Erin is skeptical about how Murphy's powering that gas stove while Claire kept freeze-framing to swoon over vases, and we pilfer a segment from our friends over at The Afictionados podcast to do our own "Clarke Griffin Shower Watch."

Writers left alone too long while on crazy book deadlines make very, very poor life choices.

In which there is a mild difference of opinion between your two hosts about whether Claire's joke is really hilarious or really stupid.

Welcome back to Meta Station, where Roan is an action hero, Luna is magic, and Niylah is the most emotionally mature person on this show. Also Erin thinks she's figured out a Blake sibling arc we might actually be able to get hyped for, Claire's still crying over how only one of Kane's new daughters wants to hug him, and Jaha remains perched atop the fourth wall. This was a good one, fam.

0:00 – The Nap Rotation Theory

0:02 – Let’s Not Breeze Past the Revelation That Becca Pramheda Kept Toy Cars In Her Place of Work

0:05 – The Unexpected Magic of the Raven/Murphy/Luna Power Trio

0:15 – MURPHY IS LEARNING TO LOVE AND WE’RE EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT

0:20 – Medical Ethics On Science Island: Shit’s About to Get Very Real

0:29 – Erin’s Science Island “Bones” AU

0:31 - WHY CAN’T EVERYONE JUST MOVE INTO THAT PRISTINE TEN-STORY LAB THAT CLEARLY RODE OUT THE FIRST APOCALYPSE JUST FINE

0:34 – Luna’s Magical Healing Effect on Raven’s Brain: These People REALLY Need a Therapist TBH

0:41 – Abby, Clarke and “There Has to Be Another Way”

0:46 – Murphy’s Gonna Have to Land the Rocket, We’re Calling It Right Now

0:47 – Octavia Gets Rebooted Back to Last Season and We Have Some Questions But Are Also Maybe Beginning to Figure Out Where They’re Going With This

1:11 – We Need to Talk About the Blakes’ Deeply Dysfunctional Relationship

1:26 – Erin’s Grand Unified Blake Theory: On Rewatch, We Might Know Where Bellamy’s Arc Is Going and If We’re Right We LOVE IT

1:46 – The Shakespearean Tragedy of Marcus Kane

2:04 – Mad Max: Fury Roan

2:09 – Niylah Is the Actual Best

2:17 – The Eternal Hope of Clarke Griffin

2:20 – “Clarke, If I Never See You Again, [ERIN, FILL IN THE BLANK!]”

2:28 – In Which Our Discussion of "Gimme Shelter" Goes a Bit Sideways

Claire and Erin go in two very different directions with pop culture references about that Murphy/Raven storyline.

Ever wondered why Jackson says "Abby" so much? How the cast prepped to play chipped versions of themselves? What Sachin always thought Jackson's first name should be? What Henry Ian Cusick's hair feels like when you run your fingers through it? Were you perhaps in the market for a Paige-and-Sachin-are-best-friends story no one has heard before, some very light and non-spoilery hints about what's to come on Science Island, or a pair of HAUNTINGLY accurate impressions of Bellamy Blake and Charles Pike?

MY FRIEND, YOU HAVE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE.

We got to hang out via Skype with Sachin Sahel ("Eric" Jackson on "The 100") last week to talk about episode 405 and had the time of our goddamn lives. You will too.