What's it like to experience suicidal ideation? Many people do. Finding a good answer to the question "Why not?" Why does writing and singing and recording about dark thoughts help them go away? Everyone needs to deal with death in some form, from time to time. What works? Jay Semko of The Northern Pikes and I go over songs he's written that tell "a pretty dark story, but with a happy tune." Where was all the bliss supposed to come from, in Christianity? Troy reveals his favourite jokey stuff I've recorded. I record George playing drums in my living room. Singing into the corner of a room. I strum guitars with a razorblade for a pick.

George Turcotte: drums

Getting the boot or walking away from one's birth culture. Doesn't matter whether you're fundamentalist Christian, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, Sikh or Mormon... it's quite the mind effword. A bunch of stories, including people who were excommunicated and shunned for being gay. An elaborate music collaboration manages to get the song done two hours before the podcast airs...

Guitar and riffwriting: Troy Tuttle

Is evil a thing? Are some people, and do some people do, evil? (What did John Douglas, the man who invented the profiling of serial killers for the FBI think?) When you realize your fear and disgust, respect and acceptance responses are programmed into you.

George Turcotte: drums and "alright!"

Kids these days! Having your perspectives and concerns invalidated in a church circle if you were in your 20s, hadn't got married and had kids. Have modern kids been coddled? (yes). Can we do anything about that? (probably not.) The importance of bike rides. Boredom as the mother of invention, and if there's insufficient boredom?

Debbie Michelin: singing bowl and vocalizations

Pleasure, joy and happiness. Targets for offense, shame and "correction"? Why? Is enjoying a thing "idolatry" and cheating on God?

Is getting annoyed about anything that brings other people joy, but not you, more common than we want to admit? Do we all have an inner Grinch? (we do.)

Pop music, Harry Potter, gym selfies, TV, comic books and pants... the things we gave up to keep our church status. If it makes you happy, it can't be that good, right?

Economist, Season 3 interview contributor Evan emails drum parts played on a digital kit to be used on this week's song! (This week, I go as Pink Floyd as I possibly can...)

Evan Sauve: drums

A silly little song, a violent bible reading and a very unfunny revisiting of messed up church attitudes about sex, with Angel DeSantis talking in detail in the middle of the episode about being born into and growing up in The Children of God/The Family, a pedophile sex cult. (warning, this episode contains a trigger warning, and trigger warnings in and of themselves are found to increase stress and alarm.)

My Washing Machine: percussion

A fun one about high school, and what was cool, and why we weren't. Popped collars, Ralph Lauren rugby shirts, boat shoes, depression and all the rest of it. I got a real live professional punk bass player/Plymouth Brethren missionary's daughter to play on this one!

George Turcotte: drums

Do you have a problem with rules, especially ones that have never been put into words? Is Christianity about hiding one's self away in a church to keep spiritually safe? What would Frank Zappa have to say?

Joel D'amour: additional voices

A whole bunch of musings on alcohol, from people who sell it, to rock stars who drank too much of it, to people who grew up in farm country where some people applied it internally, hourly.

drums: George Turcotte

Death In Tiny Spoonfuls: An album/novel concept that centers around entropy, death and impermanence. The value of an outside perspective from someone new. How would your church have seemed to an outsider wandering in? Music production discussion with Jay Semko of The Northern Pikes.

drums: George Turcotte