A fun episode! Jaydie comes onto talk with the StoryFellers and brings a breadth and depth of knowledge that Joe and Shlok desperately need. She talks about dowries, the effect and pressure they had on most marriages in fourteenth century Italy, and seeds the idea of a heist that features the concept.

The idea for the story featured in the next episode was borne out of Jaydie's focus in her graduate studies, and there's a wonderful focusing function that happens because of it. A lot of what we do here at StoryFellers is engage with and work on storytelling without any real expectation of seriousness, but it is nice to work with a topic that is innately weighty, and see what we can do with it.

In a quest to find as many balances as possible, there is something to be said about doing it with the concept of the podcast: apply the lens of silliness to seriousness, and maybe it'll lead to something new. You'll have to see in our next episode when we premiere the story that we come up with. It's a ton of fun.

The title does give it away, but thankfully there's more to us than just the premise.

Listen in for a funny premise, controversial characters, and middling English accents.

I just want to note here that Joe chose Jack the Ripper without telling me (Shlok is writing this) obviously – that's how improv works – but I chose Jeffrey Dahmer without him saying anything. Call it the universe, call it cosmic togetherness, call it the divine, but something's in the air and it ain't summertime (it's been quite rainy these past few days).

Much love, much love!

A lot of this episode is Shlok and Joe talking about music, which then results in a retrospective on their writing. It's a good place to do that every now and then.

Shlok also, gingerly and then all at once enthusiastically, pitches Joe his idea for a musical about the military industrial complex set to the music of a man with an acoustic guitar (a la Jack Johnson); this might be a good pivot, considering Shlok's going to send a lot of demos about this project to Joe. Maybe the musical could be called "Jingo Hell"?

Joe brainstorms a setting for the StoryFellers' most recent improvisation, which will take place in the next episode. It's a real treat.

We (yeah, yeah, I mean Shlok and Joe, I mean Joe and Shlok, but who are we kidding here, it's just you and me in this little description box) talk a bit about the standup/influencer character we want to explore, and the need for stronger character dynamics in general.

We also talk a lot about I Think You Should Leave, and dream up a new podcast called "We Think You Should Stay."

Then both of us took it a little seriously and we got graphics, music, and episode ideas tied together. Thirteen episodes in and we're already thinking of a spinoff.

This is how empires are built.

Here, Joe and Shlok take a break from the format, and accidentally end up reverting back to the format anyway (though this time they get to the final product a little quicker, which is better).

Listen to Fritzel the Elf try to convince the chosen one, a man who goes about his corporate job in the big city, to leave his life and save Fritzel's realm from total destruction. The one problem? Fritzel forgot to set a When2Meet (or Calendly, for those that are a little older).

Towards the end of the episode Shlok and Joe also discuss a potential standup tour and try to figure out what the specific angle of this could be. This might turn into something kinda fun so for posterity, this is the first episode it was discussed.

A real part two episode! This one was a surprise, but it made so much sense thematically. We just had to do it.

In this episode, Shlok and Joe get existential: with AI going everywhere, what's the point of trying to come up with quick, absurd stories?

Thankfully, Joe and Shlok get to a point of resolution that goes beyond despair. Sure, AI may take our jobs, but it doesn't mean we can't try a little harder to write more interesting stories.

We had a lot of fun recording this, and we can't wait to write more.

In this episode, Joe comes in with a fresh idea: ask ChatGPT to try to do our jobs.

We hear ChatGPT come up with scripts based on the premises of past stories we've developed on this podcast, read them out, and try to figure out if we like them (surprise: sometimes, we do).

This was a lot of fun to make, and part one of a deeper investigation into how we should continue doing this podcast, and continue writing in general with the advent of large language models.

We finally finished the story that was inspired by Ryan's anecdote! Shlok and Joe had a lot of fun writing this docudrama-style play about two hardboiled detectives interviewing a man accused of killing all his short buff friends at bodybuilding camp.

We have a guest: Ryan Natcharian!

In this episode she shares a wonderful story from her time as a camp counselor, which is paired well with Joe's category suggestion of a horror/slasher film. Listen to us amalgamate the two options into a true crime documentary featuring a serial killer that only targets short buff dudes at a bodybuilding summer camp.

Also, Shlok introduces the word "equanimity," and later, the word "verdure." He is very pleased with himself.

We tried something pretty different for this episode – improv! Just two guys having fun in accents they've never really done before (Joe did Transylvanian, and Shlok is pretty sure he started off Central European and slid right into Southern), working out a scene they might end up working on later.

Listen to us figure out what an anxiety-ridden vampire talking to his ambiguously-centered therapist about his condition sounds like.