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chin-wag: to have a chat, a friendly conversation. Actor Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma, author and philosopher, join forces for a freewheeling series of conversations that dive deep (like, really, really deep) into the wilderness of the mind. Featuring prominent guests from diverse fields, Chinwag is esoteric in the best way possible, as Paul and Stephen delve into anything and everything: Are we living in a simulation? What’s the most perfect sentence in literature? Is Bigfoot interdimensi ...
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Dedicated to the academic discussion of the acclaimed actor, Paul Giamatti. Every week we move through a new piece in the Paul canon. Blessed be the Giamatti, praise be.
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🌌☄️☠️ In this third and final installment, Paul reads aloud the eerie saga of The Colour Out of Space, one of his favorite stories from the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. So far in our reading, we felt the creeping dread as the Gardner farm transformed under the influence of a sinister meteorite. Strange colors, twisted vegetation, and a …
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🌌☄️☠️ In this second of three hair-raising installments, Paul continues reading the eerie saga of The Colour Out of Space, one of his favorite stories from the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. As we return to the shadowed countryside west of Arkham, the strange events at the Blasted Heath intensify. Following the meteorite crash on Nahum Ga…
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🌌☄️☠️ In this first of three spine-tingling installments, Paul reads aloud the eerie saga of The Colour Out of Space, one of his favorite stories from the master of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. Set in the remote, shadowed countryside west of Arkham, the story takes us to the desolate Blasted Heath, where strange things have begun to take root. Af…
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👽🤖👀 Get ready for a mind-bending special episode of Chinwag, where Paul Giamatti and Steven Asma dive deep into the future and the search for alien life with Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb! But that's not all—Dr. Loeb also takes us on a cosmic journey through his cutting-edge research on interstellar objects and alien space trash. Could we be …
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🧙♀️🐈⬛🧪 What kind of mischief were the Windsor witches into? Were they shapeshifters? And what’s the deal with black cats? Professor Asma dives into the infamous stories of witchcraft and witch trials, exploring the dark, mysterious history behind them. The Professor sheds light on the use of Voodoo dolls within witchcraft, while also breaking dow…
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🪄🪄🪄 Recorded live at Spotify Studios: get ready for a spellbinding adventure as Paul and Stephen dive into the mystical world of alchemy and black magic with Lodge 49 creator Jim Gavin! Ever heard of the shadowy figure Comenius or the immortal legends of like Joan of Arc and Saint Germain? Well, buckle up because we’re throwing in scorpios, the mys…
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🧙♂️✨👺 Join Paul and Stephen on a wild ride through forgotten lore, secret societies, and the mystical world of alchemy recorded live at Spotify Studios in Los Angeles! Our hosts join forces with special guest Jim Gavin, creator of Lodge 49 and novelist extraordinaire. The trio unravels the hidden links between the Masons and the Templars, delving …
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🐲🐲🐲 Join Paul and Stephen for a wild, off-the-rails Q&A session at their live taping in Portland! Brace yourself as they tackle burning questions like: What will future myths look like? What exactly is a eunuch? And which creature made its debut in cave paintings? Things get Freudian fast—yes, that kind of Freudian—and just when you think it can’t …
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👿👿👿 Recorded live from Portland’s Revolution Hall, Paul and Stephen are back with part two of their deep dive into myth and mayhem! This time, they unravel the wild legend of the Minotaur. Starting on the ancient Island of Crete, they trace the rise of King Minos, Queen Pasiphae’s bizarre infatuation with a divine bull, and the birth of the fearsom…
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🦄🪄🦏 Welcome to another thrilling episode of Chinwag recorded live at Portland's Revolution Hall! Today, Paul and Stephen dive into the enchanting world of magical creatures and cryptids. We're talking platypuses, narwhals, and, of course, unicorns! Paul reveals the unicorn’s ancient roots, the laziness of the chimera…and that unicorn horn was the f…
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☄️🔭👽 Paul and Stephen are joined by illustrious theoretical physicist, Harvard Professor and space detective, Avi Loeb. And if you think you know his POV already, you may be surprised! Get ready for a cosmic journey as Professor Loeb shares his insights on the mysteries of the universe and the search for extraterrestrial life. Why, pray tell, isn’t…
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🔪🔪🔪 This week, one of Paul and Stephen’s favorite Chinwags: Killer Psyche podcast host, Candice DeLong. Candice spent two decades in the FBI as a criminal profiler tracking serial killers and working such notorious cases as the Unabomber and the Chicago Tylenol Murders. Paul and Stephen explore the terrifying and tactical world of tracking murderer…
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🛸🛸🛸 Paul and Stephen are joined by intrepid investigative journalist Leslie Kean — the very journalist who broke the groundbreaking 2017 UFO story to The New York Times and introduced the world to the Pentagon’s UFO videos. Leslie unveils the intriguing story of Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon program responsible for the investigatio…
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🐺🐺🐺 Under the shadow of the full moon at the Boston Armory, Paul and Stephen tackle beastly audience questions in this live recording of Chinwag. Ever wondered why cats are such mysterious predators, or if Bela Lugosi really donned werewolf fur? The conversation shifts to popular culture’s take on werewolves, the impact of Twilight on werewolf cult…
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🐺🌖🐺 Recorded live at the historic Boston Armory, join hosts Paul and Stephen for a thrilling conversation on werewolves, from ancient myths to modern interpretations. Go back in time to break down the great werewolves of the past: Jan Thys of Livonia, Peter Stump, and of course…the Beast of Gévaudan, a mysterious creature in 18th-century France. La…
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🧿🧿🧿 More Chinwag with DEVO’S co-founder, and author of the beautiful new book “Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti”, Mark Mothersbaugh. Mark shares his earliest memory of AI which happened to involve Timothy Leary’s AI therapist! Then, DEVO’s frontman takes us back to a memorable church trip when he hears people speaking in tongues. And what’s all that got…
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🤖🖼🎸 This Chinwag welcomes Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO’s co-founder and author of the fascinating new book “Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.” Come along and reminisce about DEVO’s first live appearance on SNL, thanks to the legendary Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Mark is tickled to learn Paul and Stephen were spooked by DEVO as kids, and Mar…
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🦾🐕🦺🦻🏼 On this riveting Chinwag, Paul and Stephen speak to Riva Lehrer, an award-winning artist, writer, and curator with an unconventional approach to portraiture. Together they explore the nuances of living with a disability, stigma, defining beauty, and the complexities of human interactions. Riva shares the importance of representation and the …
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📰🛸🕵🏼♀️ Fortean Times has been bringing weirdness into people’s lives for over 50 years and Paul’s been reading its pages since he was a mere Chin-cub. Now join Paul and Stephen as they meet the man behind the mag, esteemed News Editor, Ian Simmons. What follows is a mind-bending exploration of the weird and wonderful including a colorful sketch of…
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👨🏼🏫🍏🕰️ The Professor is in for Chinwag Office Hours! Professor Stephen Asma offers his rarefied time and detours into more of the unusual topics you crave. This week on Office Hours, Stephen drops his knowledge on the Mothman and the psychology of creepiness. What is the purpose of creepy feelings and eerie sensations? Are they interdimensional be…
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🏐🏐🏐 Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma were delighted to speak with the wonderful Kathryn Hahn in this early Chinwag gem. They were fascinated by Hahn's deep knowledge of cults, con men, hypnosis, brainwashing dogs, and the power of late night volleyball sessions. Hear about Travis the chimpanzee, radical nuns, lice couches, whether the Popes "Netflix …
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📚🧐🏛 Paul’s been studying up on Western philosophy and has even more burning questions for our exceedingly patient resident expert, Professor Stephen Asma. Lean in to these bite-sized lessons about rationalists, empiricists and idealists, and Stephen’s explanation of the notoriously difficult to understand German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich …
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😊🎙️👽 It’s the audience’s turn to ask Paul, Stephen and the hilarious Bill Hader anything at this Chinwag recorded live from Dynasty Typewriter in L.A., and things go off the rails pretty quick! If aliens land on Earth, what movie would this trio show them first? Then at the audience’s prodding, hear their favorite alien abduction movies, which cryp…
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🎬🍿🎞 Recorded live at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles, Paul and Stephen are joined by comedy legend Bill Hader for a night of hilarious and obscure impressions, a rundown of insane B- movies, their shared fear of the school bus, and so much more! What did Hader overhear director Sam Raimi say walking out of a screening of Cannibal Holocaust? What …
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📓✍🏽🛢️ In this captivating Bonus-Wag, hosts Paul and Stephen sit down with investigative historian David Grann for a cerebral exploration. Grann’s journey began as a journalist with an insatiable passion for storytelling. How did he transition from reporting facts to weaving gripping narratives? Then, imagine a man unfairly sent to death row, despit…
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🌊🏴☠️⚓ Paul and Stephen embark on a deep-sea exploration of maritime history with David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Lost City of Z, and most recently, The Wager. The trio unravel tales of mutinies, scurvy, and the enigmatic allure of failure. Did you know most seamen couldn’t swim? How were sailors selected or found aboard thes…
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☠️🤝☠️ Join Paul and Stephen for a special bonus episode as they sit down with investigative journalist Leslie Kean. The topic? Spirit hands—ethereal entities that connect the living and the dead. Leslie describes witnessing famed British spirit medium Stewart Alexander conjuring spirit hands seemingly from nothing – conjuring a black amorphous goo …
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🎺🎺🎺 Open your mind as Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma talk about accessing the spirit world with investigative journalist Leslie Kean — the very journalist who broke the groundbreaking 2017 UFO story to The New York Times and introduced the world to the Pentagon’s UFO videos. The trio delve into the esoteric world of ectoplasm and explore its weight…
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🪐🕰️💫 Paul, Stephen and Chuck Bryant on being a strict materialist, natural evolution, Olaf Stapledon, and more Stuff You Should Know. Plus, Chuck shares a creepy ghost story that challenges his skeptical nature to this day. Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer, and the self-proclaimed Emperor of Neptune. Stephen Asma is a professor …
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☢️☢️☢️ Paul and Stephen are joined by Stuff You Should Know’s Chuck Bryant for a deep wag on lizard people, the importance and impermanence of what we leave behind, the rarity of finding dinosaur bones, nuclear semiotics, and of course, the Silurian Hypothesis. How do we know advanced civilizations didn’t exist before us and what does that mean for…
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📻✋🏼♆ It’s back to the WagBag we go! This week, Chinwag listener Scott S. writes in with an account of his grandfather’s panic during Orson Welles’s famed 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast. Paul recalls his own grandfather’s memory of that fateful broadcast, as well as that of the Hindenburg! Then, Barbara C. writes us with a fascinating tutorial…
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📿📿📿 Paul and Stephen are honored to welcome the esteemed Dr. Khy Sovanratana, dear friend of Dr. Stephen Asma, and former monk in the Theravada tradition in Cambodia. After 34 years as a monk, Dr. Sovanratana removed his robe and left the monastery to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Cambodian government. Many think they know Buddhism…
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🤖🌭🏦 Recorded at Spotify Studios... Elizabeth Banks reflects on her collegiate aspirations to become the next Diane Sawyer, and whether AI could make its own Everything Everywhere All At Once. But…could it replicate the hot dog fingers fight scene? Among other topics, our hosts and Ms. Banks ponder why so many actors are introverts? And what does ch…
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❄️🐻👻 Recorded at Spotify Studios... Join Paul and Stephen as they sit down to discuss death and their paranormal encounters with Paul’s Fred Claus co-star Elizabeth Banks. They discuss what drove Elizabeth to make her 2023 hit film Cocaine Bear, the omen of the white owl on her doorstep, and how they would all like to be buried or in Stephen’s case…
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🧀🌝🛰️ Paul and Stephen explore more moon theories…is the moon made of cheese? Might the moon be a spacecraft? Are we all descendants of moon-people? And can someone claim the moon? All this and H.P. Lovecraft, burgeoning schools of space law, and real estate on the moon (not to mention Pluto!!) Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer, a…
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🌒🌒🌒 Ever since they tackled the hollow earth, Paul and Stephen have wanted to talk about weird moon conspiracy theories. Was the Apollo moon landing faked or was it really a movie set? Why does the American flag appear to be flapping on a windless moon? Where was Neil Armstrong’s camera in that famed picture and what about those eyewitness accounts…
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⭐️📬🌎 Deep into the Chinwag Mailbag we go! Caroline writes about an incredible near-death experience that’s left her feeling like a ghost in her own life. Then, how almost dying can alter religious convictions and spiritual reality, DMT, the Bahá’í faith, and Victor Hugo! Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer. Stephen Asma is a profes…
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⚾️⚾️⚾️ Part 2 of Paul and Stephen’s Chinwag turns to the religion of baseball with writer, comedian and passionate fan, Alex Edelman. If Paul is gonna talk sports, it’s bound to be about its spiritual pull and ability to expand space and time. They’ll get into all of it: superstition, Mark “the Bird” Fidrych, the legendary Bart Giamatti, George Gre…
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💬🛸🩻 We’re diving back into the Chinwag Mailbag! Billy C. wants to know how Paul would like to see UFOs portrayed in films. Should paranormal encounters be big and fantastical, or what about - no special effects at all? Then, Paul’s got some obscure film recommendations and of course, Betty and Barney Hill, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Russia…
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🦈🦈🦈 Paul and Stephen welcome brilliant writer and comedian Alex Edelman for a deep chinwag on spirituality, religion, improvisation, and paranormal leanings. Listen as they dive right in with why the CIA should use Baby Shark in its interrogation program, the importance and virtue of repetition in the process of joke writing, the Socratic method in…
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📖🫱🏽🫲🏾👽 We’re diving into the Chinwag Mailbag! Paul in Australia writes to Paul and Stephen with a topic of biblical proportion! He brings to Chinwag the theory known as Paleocontact, which states that our ancient ancestors experienced contact with other non-terrestrial civilizations. Do ancient texts support the idea that paleocontact goes back to…
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🐒🐒🐒 Paul and Stephen are thrilled to talk Bigfoot with acclaimed actor Jesse Eisenberg who stars in the fantastic new movie Sasquatch Sunset. Sasquatch Sunset is an unprecedented look at a year in the life of a family of Sasquatches, as they forage, mate, and hope to find others like them in the forest. What do Sasquatches do in private, and how do…
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🎭👻👯♂️ The origin story of Paul and Justin Theroux’s friendship, formed 30 years ago while messing around backstage and onstage in a depressing Chekhov play. Justin’s memory is razor sharp and deep, and he shares the moment Paul first experienced fame after his breakout appearance as Pig Vomit in Howard Stern’s Private Parts. Also, theaters are spo…
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🧘🏻♂️🧘🏻♂️🧘🏻♂️ Paul and Stephen are joined by Paul’s old friend, perpetually youthful actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux. Learn all you ever wanted to know about the Oakwoods temporary housing in LA from former inhabitants Paul and Justin. Then rattlesnakes in Runyon Canyon, coyotes in Central Park, and how the Lindbergh kidnapping made pitbull…
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👓🎥🐦 On this Bonus-Wag, Paul and Stephen ask Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris about his ground-breaking invention of the Interrotron camera and how it takes the viewer closer to a documentary subject. Also, what John le Carré says in Errol Morris’s film The Pigeon Tunnel that makes Stephen wonder if being a spy is similar to being an acto…
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📽️📽️📽️ Paul and Stephen are excited to meet Academy Award-winning Director and avid book collector Errol Morris. Stephen’s funky blue lighting and Paul’s floatation tank-talk mark the start of this Chinwag and in just a few short turns, the conversation goes from the idea of the bodhisattva in Buddhism to the weirdness of Florida, in particular Ver…
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⚔️🇳🇴🦈 Paul and Stephen talk about Stephen’s trip to Norway and his readings from an 8th Century book of spells found in the floorboards of an old church. Is Iceland or Norway known for delicacies like rotten shark? They’re not sure, but still not fans (of the shark meals). And listeners out there, do you want to hear Paul and Stephen explore Berser…
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👔👔👔 Paul puts Stephen in the hot seat for Part 1 of this rigorous round of “Ask the Philosopher!” This is not just your basic Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. You’ll learn the importance of Pythagoras, besides that theorem you learned in grade school (with an obligatory mention of passing gas). Then, hear about the mindf*ck of Zeno’s paradox, famed t…
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🐙💭🪸 Paul and Stephen have a few more questions for resident Octopus expert, author, philosopher and biologist, Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith. When does consciousness emerge in the evolutionary process and does it exist in every bit of matter - even a grain of sand? Then, do Octopuses have language and what is its function? And controversial questio…
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🐙🐙🐙 The Octopus is fascinating and mysterious, and as Paul and Stephen discover, a cephalopod that offers incredible lessons in consciousness, intelligence, awareness and being. The octopus might also be the closest we have to studying the alien mind. Peter Godfrey-Smith is an author, Professor of Biology, philosopher of science and skilled scuba d…
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