What's Kraken with Jo Szewczyk

David R. Wilcox, award-winning author of Protecting Pat Robertson: Confessions of a High-Priced Bag Man, spent the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s as Pat Robertson's bodyguard. On What's Kraken with Jo Szewczyk, he takes us into the back seat of the company car where one sentence, 'give them the list,' sent the Christian Broadcasting Network into a tailspin. From secret diamond-mining deals with dictators to a polluting oil refinery and a hundred-million-dollar stock deal, this is the 700 Club the cameras never showed.

Key Moments

* The back-seat argument over CBN's 3.5-million-name donor list, and the three words that changed everything

* Donations drop 42% and more than 600 ministry staff lose their jobs

* Secret mining deals with Mobutu Sese Seko and Charles Taylor, and the cholera appeal that shipped Tylenol and mining equipment

* Dede Robertson's brutally honest review of Pat's Larry King appearance

* The Family Channel IPO, and the question about the cleaning lady nobody wanted to answer

The Takeaway

Don't put your faith in a man in a nice suit. David's advice to his younger self: question your pastors, ask where the money goes, and if they won't show you the books, get the hell out of Dodge.

Guest Links

God's Glorious Grifters podcast: https://www.thegggpodcast.com

Big Fat Cat Books: https://www.bigfatcatbooks.com

Jo's book, Scarlet Shadows: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Former Berkeley cop turned police chief Brian Brady writes the Golden Gate Tales, a series of San Francisco crime novels built from decades on the job. He and Jo talk about why fiction beats true crime for him and the dead time TV never shows. They also get into AI as a research tool rather than a writer, and the $3,000 ‘bestseller guarantee’ that burned an ex-cop who should have known better.

Key Moments

• Why crime fiction beats true crime for him, and how his characters are composites of real cops (with the occasional thinly veiled villain)
• The dead time TV skips: weeks waiting on DNA, and why that downtime is where his characters get built
• AI as ‘Google on steroids’ for research only, and why he still drove the road himself to check it
• Getting taken by a fly-by-night publisher, and why a few hundred dollars on a literary attorney protects your rights

The Takeaway
Brian’s advice to his younger self: be a little more realistic, set reasonable goals, and take time with the people around you who’d like to have you there.

Guest Links
Books: https://www.goldengatetales.com/books
Website: https://www.goldengatetales.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bbrady132/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goldengatetales
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@AuthorBrianBrady
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goldengatetalebbrady

Jo’s book, Scarlet Shadows: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Llewellyn author and medium Sharon Farber wasn't born with 'the gift' — she chose it. A massage therapist and energy healer for years, she took up mediumship after a single home demonstration, trained at England's Arthur Findlay College, gave 118 free practice readings, and now teaches others to do the same. Jo and Sharon get into ghosts versus spirits, why she doesn't believe in demons or attachments, whether time exists on the other side, and what trance mediumship actually is.

Key Moments

• How one living-room demonstration turned a massage therapist into a medium — and the 118 free readings that followed
• Why nearly every beginner in her one-day class makes a validated contact, and what separates evidential mediumship from vague 'grandmother in the kitchen' readings
• Ghosts vs. spirits: why she believes no one gets stuck, and why people who took their own lives come through most often
• Trance mediumship explained — blending closely with spirit without possession, plus the boisterous guide she still can't name

The Takeaway
'If I can, so can you.' Sharon wasn't born a medium. She chose it, practiced, and never stopped developing, and she believes anyone willing to do the same can connect with loved ones in spirit.

Guest Links
Website: https://sharonfarber.net

Choosing to Be a Medium (Llewellyn): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0738757489

Choosing to Be a Trance Medium (Llewellyn): https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Choosing+to+Be+a+Trance+Medium+Sharon+Farber

YouTube, TikTok, classes, circles, and her St. Croix mediumship retreat: https://sharonfarber.net

Read Jo's novel Scarlet Shadows: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Bean is the friend who's been in the hot seat since 1996 — the one who drove Jo everywhere, fronted the better motel, and shows up in Surviving Gen X because he was actually there. For Jo's birthday they go back through all of it: the AOL messages that started it, the two-for-a-dollar Big Macs, the sofa they kept shaking down for taco money, and the motel in LA that turned out to be an old brothel that wasn't nearly as 'not currently a brothel' as advertised.

Key Moments

• The sofa that kept giving — flip it, shake it, and there's a dollar in change for tacos
• A motel booked sight unseen that was still very much in business, and stairs he had to crab-walk up
• The landlord who called about the gardener working on a Sunday. It was Bean. Mowing his own lawn.
• Why he stuck around when Jo was blacked out for the first few years of the friendship

The Takeaway

Bean's version: anyone who dismisses Jo has their blinders on. Jo's version: he wouldn't be here without him. Thirty years, one taco split two ways, and neither of them ever went without.

Links

Jo's crime mystery Scarlet Shadows, book one of the Scarlet Mysteries: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

Jo's memoir Surviving Gen X, where Bean shows up as himself: Surviving Gen X

As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Buying through our links costs you nothing extra and helps keep the show running.

Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Jo Szewczyk talks with Rob Gutro — a pet medium and award-winning paranormal author who spent his career as a meteorologist, working for the Weather Channel, NOAA, and NASA before retiring after 25 years. Rob uses the law of conservation of energy to explain what he thinks happens after death, draws a hard line between ghosts and spirits, and talks about what animals communicate back to the people who loved them.

KEY MOMENTS

- The physics pitch: energy can't be destroyed, only transformed — so where does yours go?

- Ghosts are earthbound and running down like a battery; spirits crossed over. The difference matters.

- A dog who wouldn't stop mentioning Taylor Swift, and the pet parent who explained why

- Why dreams are the easiest channel — your logical mind is asleep and finally out of the way

THE TAKEAWAY

Believe more in yourself. Don't doubt yourself, because you can do anything. He went back to school three times to get there.

ROB GUTRO

robgutro.com (also petspirits.com)

Books on Amazon

Jo's new book Scarlet Shadows can be found here (Pre order till 15 Oct 2026)

As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Buying through our links costs you nothing extra and helps keep the show running.

Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Tonya Todd identifies as an author, actress and activist, and when she stepped off the board of the Henderson Writers Group she decided the third A needed work. So she built a banned books series — seven books a year, seven different panels, and a new episode every day of Banned Books Week.

Jo and Tonya get into who actually does the banning, how the fear of it is already changing what publishers will take on, and the rage-read of Dracula that turned into her own novel.

Key Moments

• It's usually one or two people who never read the book — and then nobody else gets to either
• Writers are now being accused of AI for using the rule of three and em dashes. Those bots got their punctuation from us (sorry bots!)
• Mina Murray solves the entire case, and they pat her on the head and send her to bed — so Tonya is writing her side
• Write first thing in the morning. It's not selfish; it's the oxygen mask

The Takeaway

What she'd tell her younger self: You are capable of this. She didn't start sooner because she never saw anyone who looked like her doing it, so she assumed it wasn't an option. And for anyone worried about representation--you don't owe your art to your identity. Write whatever your muse moves you to write.

Guest Links

MsTonyaTodd.com — website and newsletter
@MsTonyaTodd across social media
Tonya's books on Amazon: https://link.amazon/B07cqCan1

Jo's crime mystery Scarlet Shadows, book one of the Scarlet Mysteries: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Buying through our links costs you nothing extra and helps keep the show running.

Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Screenwriter, publisher, and Horror Writers Association member Eric Miller joins What's Kraken? with Jo Szewczyk to talk about his first novel, Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed? It's a horror-comedy where a washed-up high school basketball star inherits a fortune, a haunted mansion, and a family curse played out in magical games against shapeshifting demons. Eric's spent three decades in Hollywood writing SyFy creature features and running his own small press, and he breaks down why character comes before plot, why horror needs comedy breaks, and why he refuses to leave a reader in the dark without a way out.

Key Moments

- The Uncle Ed setup: a missing uncle who looks 40 at 90, a nephew named Max, and whatever the hell is going on in that basement

- Character first, always: if you don't care who's in the room, the plot doesn't save you

- Horror with comedy breaks vs. comedy with horror: cleansing the palate so you can go a step darker

- Screenplay vs. novel: in a novel, there's nobody to yell cut

The Takeaway

Go as dark as the story demands, but always show the reader the path out. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and yes, sometimes the light is a train. Either way, there's a way through.

Guest Links

Website: https://www.ericmillerwrites.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ragingeric/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RagingEricMiller

Big Time Books: https://www.bigtimebooks.com/

Whatever Happened to Uncle Ed?: https://amzn.to/4hrf6Nx

Jo's novel, *Scarlet Shadows*: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

Empty Hell is an Amazon Associate. Links above may be affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

All our links in one place: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Raymond Creamer, the writer-director of Goody Goody, a Shudder original about a home birth that goes very wrong in a snowbound cabin, joins What's Kraken? with Jo Szewczyk on press day for his feature debut. We get into festival whiplash, why Kill Bill: Volume 1 taught him cinema can hold everything, directing Samantha Robinson in dance terms, and the reshoot where the cast threw his pages away and made the scene better.

Key Moments

- Press day is its own skill set: five festivals in April, and a Shudder rep pulling him out of line for The Furious twice.

- Cinema can hold everything: Kill Bill was samurai film, Western, anime and horror at once, and horror gives him room a relationship drama can't.

- Directing in dance terms: choreographing Samantha Robinson's physicality, the glissade that stumped the cast, and why casting is 80% of directing.

- Throw the pages away: the day-three reshoot with cinematographer Tristan Noelle, and the jet-lag fight that was pure ad-lib.

The Takeaway

Stay the course. The weird books are fine. You're building you. And the point of writing a book isn't to have a book; it's to find yourself in the making of it.

Guest Links

Goody Goody is streaming on Shudder: https://www.shudder.com/

Jo's novel, Scarlet Shadows: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

Empty Hell is an Amazon Associate. Links above may be affiliate links, which means we earn a small commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

All our links in one place: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Mark Blacknell grew up in working-class Philly in the '70s — the son of an atheist socialist union organizer who had him reading Mao at eight. He ran bets for guys named Little Sween and Big Sween, joined the Marines to spite his father, and got out of boot camp just in time for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. Then came a master's degree, a band, a job with the governor of Pennsylvania, two years on a kibbutz on the Lebanon border, five on Maui, and finally a Soto Zen practice he's since stripped down to one instruction: sit down and stare at a wall. Jo and Mark get into the long road between all of it, and why he stopped using Buddhist words altogether.

Key Moments

- 'Did you join the F-ing Marines? You tell your mother.' — enlisting to rebel against his dad, right before the Gulf War

- An ornithologist on TV sent him to a kibbutz on the Lebanon border for two years — and the IRS still found him there

- Why he dropped words like dharma and emptiness, called it silent prayer, and got in hot water with the Zen establishment

- The practice: no teacher, no breathing exercise, no clearing your mind — face a wall and start with five minutes

The Takeaway

Don't expect your family or your peers to appreciate your practice. Lose the appreciation. Appreciate yourself, and other people start appreciating you naturally — balance leads to balance.

Guest Links

stareatthewall.org

Stare at the Wall: Living the Universe From Where You Sit

His documentary: Woke Up Alive in Israel

Jo's crime mystery Scarlet Shadows, book one of the Scarlet Mysteries: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Buying through our links costs you nothing extra and helps keep the show running.

Everything Empty Hell: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell

Grief coach Camille joins Jo Szewczyk on What's Kraken? for one of the most open conversations this show has had. After losing her youngest son to suicide in 2010, Camille refused the victim role and built a practice out of what she learned — helping people rebuild an identity after loss instead of waiting for grief to end. Jo opens up about his own father's death and the shoulda-coulda-woulda that follows. It's heavy, it's funny in places, and it's genuinely useful.

TAKEAWAY: 'I would lose him a million times over just to have that experience.' Camille didn't make her grief smaller — she changed the story she tells about it. 'I lost my son' became 'I had my son,' and the weight moved.

Key Moments

* Why Camille refused to be a victim after her son's death, and chose to thrive instead

* The one-word flip: 'I lost my son' becomes 'I had my son'

* Why there are no stages of grief for the people left behind — that model was written for the dying

* The client whose son was murdered, and the question Camille asked her instead

* Twenty pull-ups at 61, and what that has to do with healing

Guest: Coach Camille — grief and trauma coaching

Website: https://yourcoachcamille.com

Phone: 831-246-1038 (business line)

First session is a free 30-minute consult.

This episode discusses suicide and the loss of a child. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a local crisis line.

Jo's crime mystery Scarlet Shadows, book one of the Scarlet Mysteries: https://amzn.to/4wJk4cc

As an Amazon Associate, Empty Hell earns from qualifying purchases. Links in our notes may be affiliate links, which cost you nothing extra.

Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/Emptyhell