Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
You know what else was bothering me? Because we import.

Jim's book into Google Google often tries to correct Jim's grammar. Both of us looking for the killer, Both of us are looking for the killer. Like shut up Google, not a New York Times best seller.

Baloreilly (00:10)
Yes.

You

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:26)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through I'm Adam Ruzzo and with me as always is a hapless investigator, it's Brian O'Reilly. Welcome, Brian.

Baloreilly (00:40)
investigating a murder. Adam, you wouldn't happen to be a murderer, would you?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:46)
Only if these potato chips... ⁓ a

Baloreilly (00:49)
Ha, Phil

sticks. I'll have to go to the local gang and ask them if they've killed anyone recently. But I will find this By asking people if they are him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:58)
be truthful.

Yeah, I'm sure everyone will be truthful, no problem. Ryan, we are on day number two of Full Moon. We're looking at chapters eight, nine, and 10 today. In these chapters, first drops off his report for Murphy at Special Investigations. Denton gets to take a look at it and then has Agent Harris give Harry the false lead on the street wolves, hopefully sending Harry into his death or at least incapacitation. Harry then follows up on that lead in chapter nine.

and we see him haplessly off the street wolves to the point where they have to come after him later in the book. And then in chapter 10, Harry arrives at his office to find Marcon already there, and Marcon tries to hire him again, unsuccessfully. Instead, Harry gets to pry out some information from Marcon regarding

and the Northwest Passage Project. So let's start at the beginning. Since this is the second day, this is the first day of the full moon as far as is concerned. What do you think the purpose of this chapter is? It's very straightforward as far as we can tell.

Baloreilly (02:07)
Yeah, I think that Jim is doing something here that I have to give him credit which is he is establishing that the FBI are in some way supernaturally clued in without giving you any information that leads you to conceive of them as the ultimate villain. I really do think in Full Moon, the actual mystery is very well written, but I think that unlike Stormfront, where

everything's sort of all happening at the same time and it's really a rollicking adventure. Jim's trying to do a more convoluted plot here and it therefore ends up to be a little bit more station to station. know, this is the chapter where the FBI gives Dresden the false lead. That's really all that happens.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:55)
Yeah, and the other thing of course is this chapter serves as a way for Denton to find out that A, Harry's for real, because he looks briefly at Harry's report, sees the Hexenwolf belts on there, and freaks the hell out in his head. Like it doesn't show visibly, but I have to imagine he's going, oh crap, he knows about the belts. They're not supposed to know about the belts. And as a result, that's why he gives him the lead.

So it's a very matter of fact chapter, but I think it occurred to me while I was reading it this time that Denton is actually set up, like he could be a Agent Tilly character. He could be like someone that actually helps Dresden, but up at the FBI level.

That's a good distraction, because at that point, when you have a brand new character like this enters into a mystery story, you have to ask yourself,

Okay, are they the killer? But this is a good misdirection, I believe, because it is setting up Denton as, maybe Denton is not the killer, he's the potential ally. Because sometimes you get a potential ally added in the suspect list.

Baloreilly (03:59)
Right, I mean, there's an alternative explanation for behavior at the crime scene, which is that the reason they're so stressed out is because they know that there's actual werewolves.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:11)
Right, that could be it too. Yep, exactly.

Baloreilly (04:13)
So I think Jim does a good job setting that up here. And I think that he's laying the groundwork through SI for the idea that there are authorities that are mortal authorities, but that do know some supernatural things. And we're going to see that later with the librarians as a concept invoked at the end of this book, not by name.

And then Jim will deliver on

year is down the line.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:40)
Okay, so one other thing that I wanted to bring up before we leave this chapter, as we said, it's pretty straightforward. catches up with Harry and gives him the information about the street wolves, one of the things he said is quote, God, Denton would kill me if he found out. He doesn't like it when someone breaks the rules, unquote. And it occurs to me, this is the guy who decided to throw out the rule book and just

Murder bad guys. So, is Agent Harris a really good actor or is there some cognitive dissonance going on here where you have by the book FBI agent who also is like, yeah, but the book doesn't work sometimes so we gotta go vigilante.

Baloreilly (05:17)
So I think it's a little bit of both. think Denton, as we'll find out in the soul gaze Harry has with him later, is someone who for most of his career did play things by the But I think that you're actually correct. thinks at least that he is a good actor. That's why he tries to spin the story about Ben at the end of that situation. And he's not as good as he thinks he is because Wilson tells him to shut up then. And here, Harry says,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:38)
Mm-hmm. That's a point.

Baloreilly (05:46)
quote, you mean like he's doing by sending you here to me? Harry knows instantly that Harris is not doing this against Denton's witches, but at his

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:00)
So moving on to chapter nine, this is where Harry shows up at the Street Wolf's garage, the Full Moon garage, which even Harry says, quote, thank God it's not too obvious or anything, unquote.

So he finally gets there, he opens the door, finds it unlocked, which is a little bit odd, but he opens the door, he's like, hello, hello, anybody here? I'm not a I'm Harry Dresden, can I speak to the street wolves? And he starts hearing something in the dark, gets nervous and puts his hand in his pocket for his blasting rod, and then he hears the click of a shotgun.

and somebody says, your hand out of your jacket. Up until this point, I think that we both agree that Harry isn't doing anything monumentally stupid. Like, he's announced his presence. He's not sneaking in, he's not breaking in, he's not trying to threaten anybody or go out of his way to provoke anyone at this point. But a lot of people answered that this scene contained one of the dumbest things in the whole series. So, talk to me about that, Brian. What part of this went wrong for Harry?

Baloreilly (07:03)
I think that it goes wrong from the very beginning. And we made fun of this at the top of the show that Harry's plan appears to be to come here and just be like, hey guys, kill anyone lately. that's really where it falls apart. He doesn't have a way to talk to the street wolves who make them treat him like a friend. And Harry doesn't often think of this. He doesn't often try to figure out.

how can I get these people to see me positively? He's not a very manipulative guy in that sense. And I think that here it costs him because not having anything prepared for the fast talk lets the extreme reaction of the street wolves really put him in a situation where he just simply doesn't know what to do.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:33)
That's true.

Yeah, and the offending moment here sounds an awful lot like the kind of line that we would bad cop say in an interrogation down at the precinct. He says, quote, there were fake wolf tracks around the murder scene and the feds think someone used a weapon lined with wolf teeth to tear the victims up. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? the idea is here, normally,

This kind of provocative accusation happens in a situation where the accuser has the upper hand. It happens when he's got a partner with him against a single person or down at the precinct or whatever. Here, Harry is doing the same provocative thing in a room full of potential werewolves that he can't see.

That I think is what people identify as the really really bad move because right after that Someone starts chanting kill him

Baloreilly (08:50)
Yeah, and the crazy thing here is that there's one of two possibilities with the street world. Either one, they're a gang. So you're gonna come in and accuse this gang of committing a murder they didn't commit. How is that gonna be productive? Are they gonna give you any information? Or two, they're a bunch of serial killers. In which case, definitely don't do it like this.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:14)
It's the same thing as the department store with the Alphas all over again. He's like, this is a bad idea. And then he goes in and if that had been the actual killers, he would have been dead then. This is another moment where he almost dies now because, and I think if they had been the actual killers, Parker would not have held them back. He would have helped them kill Harry right there, right then, because if Harry's suspecting them, then.

They don't want him telling anybody about that suspicion. So this is a situation where the only reason again that Harry gets out alive is because he didn't find the killers.

Baloreilly (09:53)
And moreover, like you said, barely gets out alive because the first thing he has to do is deflect a shotgun blast. And then the only reason that doesn't get more desperate is because Parker restrains the gang from killing him in public on the street outside.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:12)
Right, Now, one thing that always bugged me, one question I always had when reading this it's clear that these are lycanthropes, and as we learned in the last episode when Bob was giving the whole rundown, these are vanilla people that cannot turn into wolves of any kind. Instead, they have a sort of channel to a spirit of bestial rage.

that they can call upon that gives them extra strength, healing, endurance, ⁓ senses, and similar to the way that a white court vampire can call upon his or her demon in order to get those same kinds of things, right? It's very similar, in fact. But it seems clear here that influence of that spirit

is controlling them to at least some degree. So my question for are they always like this? Or is this something to do with the full moon? Like, why can't they control themselves?

Baloreilly (11:13)
So I think there's a lot of possible options. They know Dresden's a wizard the second he walks in. And I think in general, when clued in supernatural people are confronted with a wizard who is behaving antagonistically towards them, they immediately go into fight or flight Because everybody knows that wizards can blow the whole damn building up.

So I think that's a huge part of it. They're giving in to the grip of the rage spirit as part of the fight or flight response provoked basically by Harry's mere presence.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:53)
Okay, yep, I could see that.

I believe this is exacerbated by the fact that they've got this spirit of bestial rage inside their head, and I think it's.

pushing them to be more territorial than they otherwise would be.

getting pushed to the limit in the same way that the winter is pushing Harry's territoriality later in the series.

Baloreilly (12:13)
Yeah, and I think it might even go beyond that. Because I think when Dresden starts talking about somebody used a weapon made of wolf teeth to kill them, would you know anything about that? This is another one of those, oh, wizards should know better moments, because they assume that Dresden should know they're not the killers. They actually are not, they are actually innocent. So what does this sound like?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:28)
Hahaha!

Hmm.

Baloreilly (12:43)
This sounds like one of those Worden frame up, you know, the only trial is gonna be 15 minutes and then off with your head situations. They feel like Harry's accusation here isn't just him phishing, it's him trying to put it on And that's what makes them think, we can't let this guy leave.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:04)
I could definitely see that. And the other thing is these guys probably are afraid of basically anything except a wizard. So he's kind of tapping into a fear that they don't normally ever have to deal with, they are, and that makes them lean on their spirit of rage more, which lets it influence them more. But I think if they were not in this situation, like if they go out to a bar,

Baloreilly (13:13)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:33)
they're not going to be this amped up with like being in control by the spirit.

Baloreilly (13:40)
Yeah, mean, presumably if a mortal cop walked in and had basically the same notion, they'd be able to restrain themselves from killing the cop. that, and also because if that had happened in the past, and listen, people have questioned the biker gang in the past about crimes that have gone down, then they wouldn't be staying at this garage anymore. You know, they would have had to flee. They can't have Chicago PD come down on them.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:52)
because they wouldn't feel as threatened.

Baloreilly (14:08)
And they know Harry works with the cops, so it's not a particularly different calculus. It's just the fact that he's a wizard makes them act more in tune with the animal rage than with, you know, higher level thinking. And we actually get a pretty good picture of the extent to which their rage is influencing them, because Dresden's soul gazes Parker, the leader, as he's leaving.

And think that's very illustrative of one, who these people are, and two, why this was a bad idea.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:44)
Absolutely, let's look at that soul gaze. goes like this,

The ocean beating at a tide wall. The fury was directed at me, Dresden, at the man who had invaded his territory, challenged his authority, and driven his people out of control, endangering them. I saw that he was the leader of the lycanthropes called the street wolves, men and women with the minds and souls of beasts, and that he was aging, not as strong as he'd once been. Others, like the woman earlier, were beginning to challenge his authority.

Tonight's events might tear him from leadership and he would never live through it. If Parker was to live, I had to die. He had to kill me, pure and simple, and he had to do it alone to prove his strength to the pack. That was the only thing that kept him from coming at my throat that very second. Worse, he didn't know a damn thing about last month's killings."

Baloreilly (15:59)
this is a group of people who not only are willing to kill Dresden, but who feel a compulsion to use death, to use murder as a way of maintaining their social hierarchy. This is like a cartel more than a normal biker gang.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:20)
Yeah, absolutely. And as we saw right in the middle of that quote, he talked about the man who had invaded his territory, being Dresden, and challenged his authority. Those elements to me kind of sounded a lot like the way the winter mantle works on Harry. So that's kind of where I got that idea. That seems to be my best evidence for that. Okay, so after this, Harry is worried, right? jumps in the beetle and gets away. He uses his force ring to get out then gets in the beetle.

he then broods for a while. Wizards are great at brooding. he's wondering, like, okay, they're definitely gonna come after me. I saw in Parker's mind he thinks he has to kill me or he's gonna die, so I have to be able to deal with that. Can I kill him if it comes to that? And he then says this, quote, Parker and his lycanthropes weren't human. The first law of magic, thou shalt not kill, wouldn't necessarily apply to them. Legally,

I might be able to make a case for the use of lethal magic to the White Council." Unquote. this is interesting because it does seem to me the way that Bob described them and the way that we see them, they do seem like mortals. It does seem like the first law of magic should apply to them. What do you think, Brian?

Baloreilly (17:32)
So I think that your comparison to a White Court Vampire's demon was actually very illustrative here. I think Bob knows what a lycanthrope is by reputation, by academic literature, but the insight Harry's gotten from this soul gaze has demonstrated to him that the relationship between the lycanthrope and their rage spirit is more akin to that relationship that classifies a White Court Vampire as

someone who you can kill using magic. So since that is Harry's perceiving people, he thinks that legally, in terms of the way the laws of magic are actually adjudicated at the White Council level, he can sort of use the White Court vampire precedent, the precedent of other beings like that, maybe ghouls or something.

as an excuse for why killing with magic here was acceptable. Now he's not even sure about that, but I don't think this is something where Harry's saying they're not human in the sense of they're primarily supernatural creatures. I think he's saying it in the sense of they are inhuman enough to legally qualify as able to be killed with magic.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:51)
Okay, I wanna see courtroom drama play I wanna see Butcher interrogate the idea of how inhuman do you have to be for the first law to stop protecting you? That would be an interesting side story or even something for a main story to deal with. I did enjoy sort of the legalism and interesting things going on in turncoats, so that would kind of bring that back.

Coming back to this, the way that I interpret the first law, all of the laws, the point of those laws is to make sure that people don't get corrupted by black magic. And the idea of killing another human with black magic, the only way to do that is if you want it to happen, right? Dresden's very clear. You cannot do magic if you don't believe in what you are trying to accomplish.

let's say you needed to kill this guy and one is a Red Court vampire, one is a lycanthrope,

One is a white court vampire. I would argue that the white court vampires and the lycanthropes are human enough to cause black magic corruption. But I think that's a question for Bob we want to talk about in the future where's that line?

Baloreilly (20:02)
And I think Harry agrees with you. He says afterwards that I didn't want to believe killing was deep inside of me. That was black magic and it was easy to do. He's, making the counter argument to himself. I don't think that the question is whether killing the street wolves from Dresden's perspective would be black magic. I think it would be. Harry does.

see them fundamentally as people who are, as Kincaid says, as human as you are. But I think that he's sort of trying to flesh out the idea that the laws of magic are about being able to explain to the White Council that this doesn't make you think killing people is okay.

because the purpose of the first law. It's to protect the wizards on the council from each other and to a certain extent to protect mortals at large. So if you can convince the council that there is a differentiation in your head that is reasonable and you actually believe it, I think that's why he's saying he might be able to make that case. But I think that that's a case that

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:16)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (21:19)
he doesn't actually believe.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:21)
All right, so we talked a little bit about the fact that the way that he approaches this is obviously dumb. In retrospect, he says it's dumb in this chapter. So, Brian, how should Harry have approached this lead? The obvious answer is be more circumspect, man. Try and like connect with them first. Be like, hey, some people are pointin' the blame your way. I don't think it was you guys. just look, do you know any information that could help me? You know, be a little bit ⁓ cagey about it. Maybe that's the first step.

Baloreilly (21:50)
Yeah, Harry is not particularly good at just trying to get people on his side. We're going to see this in the Marcon chapter, even when it might be to his advantage to deal with an antagonist in a manner that is at first friendly. know, Irish diplomacy, tell a man to go to hell, but make him look forward to the trip. Harry is terrible at that. I think though, the bigger issue is that he just doesn't have any plan at all.

And the reason he doesn't have any plan is because he has no idea what he's getting into with these people. He knows absolutely nothing about them. And he has no knowledge of if they're gonna even be at the garage or how many of them they're gonna be.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:32)
or how violent they are. Like, he just got a tip about them, but are these hardened killers? Are they just thugs that get fights every once in a while? Maybe they steal stuff sometimes? there are different levels of biker gang in terms of violence and, like, danger.

Baloreilly (22:48)
And I think that realistically what happened here is, and an older Harry I think would have done this, he needed to talk to SI, to Stallings, to Rawlins, to Murphy about these guys. What do you guys know about them? What do the cops know about them? Have you heard of these people? You where can I find them? Where's a good place to approach them? That's information that the police presumably know because presumably they have interacted with them. And why doesn't he do that?

Well, cause Murphy's in her office meeting with this IA person and he can't talk to her right now. What Dresden needed to do was nothing. He needed to wait or find someone else like Carmichael who he could have this conversation with. But since that option is immediately available to him, he jumps into the Dresden, well, don't let moss grow under your feet mode

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (23:41)
thing that occurs to me is like one of the most useful tactics that any or private investigator has is the stakeout, right? You just watch people to see what they're doing to get more information about their patterns and their habits. And that helps you discern like, okay, this person goes past the site of the murder every day around the time the murder occurred. Maybe that helps us.

understand more about their opportunity, right? fact that he doesn't have time for a stakeout does make it a little bit more understandable what he does here.

Baloreilly (24:18)
I think that there's other options. mean, he's about to ⁓ talk to Marcon in the next scene, and he could have also asked the criminal element in Chicago about the street wolves. We don't think he has a lot of contacts in that direction, but presumably he could put some feelers out, especially because now a bunch of people do think he's working with Marcon, so he might be able to lean on that to get some information.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:40)
Right.

He even tried to use that reputation here and Parker calls him out on it you're right. I think the problem with that argument about, yeah, he should have talked to Marcon or some other criminal element to get information. That might work because he does kind of do that later. I think the problem here is that

Harry does not want to owe anything to Marcon. He doesn't want to owe anything to criminals. He does not want that connection. He already doesn't like that there's a connection there. He does not want to make it worse. So while that might be a possible solution, it's not one that this version of Harry would ever use.

Baloreilly (25:09)
You

And as we'll get into in the next chapter, this is something that makes him different from your typical noir private detective who, you know, occasionally dabbles in the gray areas, you know, knows the bookie at the local bar and, you know, has contacts in that community that the police don't have. Harry is less willing to associate with people who he deems morally problematic than the police are.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:49)
Yeah, absolutely, but something that makes him a little more like a noir detective is this quote he says, quote, I brooded over that for a block or so and then shook my head. I wouldn't run. I had made this trouble for myself and I would get out of it myself, unquote. He is always determined to clean up his own mess. we talked about that in the first book, like he goes over the possibilities of calling in the cavalry and dismisses them.

for somewhat good reasons, but it really comes down to this. A very core value of Harry Dresden is, I've gotta clean up my own messes, and I think that's part of him punishing himself and blaming himself for all the other trauma that's happened in his life, and he's kind of doing penance for those things.

Baloreilly (26:35)
Yeah, Harry definitely does not feel like he deserves other people stepping in to help bail him out because in his mind when other people try to help him they get hurt.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:42)
Mm-hmm.

that's about it for that chapter. The end of the chapter is him going back to his office where he told Murphy he was gonna wait to hear from her after she read the report, and instead he finds Marcon in his office. But not just in his office, Brian, sitting in Dresden's chair. Not as a guest looking hire Dresden, but as offensively as you could when you take over somebody else's office before they even show up.

I found a very interesting mirror there, right? This is a situation where Marcon is mirroring Harry's disrespect. Marcon can deal it out just like Dresden when it suits him.

Baloreilly (27:27)
And man does he get Harry with it. Quote, he sat at ease in my chair, my chair, mind you, and regarded me with perpetual calm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:37)
Yeah, that territoriality that gets emphasized by the winter mantle, it's already there. It's definitely there to begin with.

Baloreilly (27:43)
Yeah.

You noted something else Hendrix is there too. And Harry again dismisses him a lineman who hadn't been smart enough to get into the prose. And we've discussed that Harry's wrong about this and will continue to be wrong about this. The funny thing for me is, because I've been reading ahead in the series as we're getting prepared to do the future books, Harry will make jokes

not looking that smart in the future. will say to people like Aurora, it's not your fault. I don't even look that smart. And he never really thinks about applying this to someone like Hendrix. It's just an interesting duality.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:24)
Right,

he relies on people underestimating him lot in the series, and you're right, he does not conceive that Hendrix might be doing the same thing. And we made this point last time, Harry should at least have figured out, Marcon doesn't keep a right-hand man in that position for a decade who isn't.

able to think on his feet and like Marcon out of, yes, a generic mobster would want like your biggest, toughest guy as your enforcer and you'd want him to be somebody who just takes orders and doesn't think, but that's not Marcon. If you really knew who Marcon was, which you should Mr. Dresden, cause you soul gazed him, you should know that Marcon wants competence in addition to just physical prowess.

Baloreilly (29:14)
So Harry starts off this conversation already upset and that tone of annoyance at really quickly snowballs into hostility. And it's interesting because Harry has said already in this book and said at the end of Stormfront that he didn't deny the rumors that Marcon put him up to taking out cells.

But then, when he's in Marcon's face, he can't keep that level of diplomatic calculation. Something about Marcon's presence, maybe just the fact that he's sitting in his chair, sets Harry off

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:01)
Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of this chapter, Harry is basically shaking with anger and he's surprised at how angry he feels at Marcon. So Brian, why is Harry this angry at Marcon at this moment?

Baloreilly (30:19)
think Marcon challenges Harry's notion that there are good guys and bad guys, and he's one of the good guys, which means that the bad guys are people who he doesn't associate with and who aren't on his team. As we asked in one of our first episodes, there's an argument that Marcon is good for Chicago. And

Harry throws that argument in Marcon's face in this chapter, but I think that Marcon's civility, his calm, the fact that he tries to negotiate things out with Dresden despite the hostility that Dresden throws at him, really unsettles Harry. You're a bad guy, Marcon. You need to act like it. Stop being so damn cogenial and civil and rational.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:13)
Yeah,

that sounds right, that really does. And specifically,

Later on, he even says, I wanted to hate the man, but disgust, maybe anger was as far as I could go, unquote. So that really goes to what you're saying. Like, you're absolutely right. Marcon does not fit the villain profile that Dresden wants to put him in, and every time he does do something that makes him seem more human, it makes it harder for Dresden to hate him, which is what he wants to do. But when he seems human, which in this chapter,

He's here because he's scared. He needs Dresden's help. And we know that that is Dresden's kryptonite. When somebody else is earnestly asking for his help, it's the one button they can push to always get him to behave the way they want him to behave. Now, somebody asking for his help in a dishonest way, he's gonna see right through and say, get the heck out of here. But he sees it here and he accepts it and it makes Marcon seem more human.

Baloreilly (31:53)
Hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:13)
to him and he can't just put him in that villain bracket that you're talking about the way that he will with Nicodemus for example.

Baloreilly (32:19)
Yeah, and I think another part of it is that Harry also knows that he himself does bad things. He destroys property. He has put innocent people in danger. Accidentally, of course, but he has done it. Harry creates situations that create danger for other mortals when he's dealing with his business, his self-appointed business.

as the supernatural sheriff of Chicago. And when he looks across the aisle at Marcon, who can tell him, I'm doing everything in my power to minimize violence in the streets with a straight face, it makes Harry, without actually saying it to himself, question how good of a guy he is if he does burn down the occasional building.

And if good people do get hurt because of the things that chase him to the city.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:20)
Yeah, and I would want to point out because it does say in the text, Harry tries to answer this question of why he's so angry. He said, hadn't realized how much it had sickened me to have my name associated with his unquote. Now I want to take that a step further. It's not just that Harry is angry that his name is associated with Marcone's because that's been the case for a couple of months. But what has happened today and the day before the day before yesterday, he found out that

The reason that Murphy hasn't been calling him is because Harry's name has been associated with Marcon and she's under an IA investigation and she can't be seen with him because of his sullied reputation. today, he could not see Murphy. He even mentions that he was disappointed because he missed their normal banter about the case.

he was looking forward to that this morning, but the fact that there was an IA investigator in her office prevented that. And what does he blame all of this on? He blames it all on Marcon. So whether you are on the camp that he's already kind of infatuated with her romantically at this point, I think we can at least agree that she is one of his very few actual friends that he has any kind of relationship with. And he needs, he wants to be more social.

and he misses her friendship at the very least, and he's subconsciously blaming that on Marcon because he just found out that that is what's been keeping him from his friend.

Baloreilly (34:59)
think that's a really good point because in the future Dresden won't be as antagonistic towards Marcon. Now other things happen between them in the intervening time. You know, at the end of this book, Marcon is instrumental in Harry's survival. But I think you make a good point. There's something else emotionally bugging him. That's not something that's happening in every book.

that he can't really access here. think that's a really good identification of a feeling that Harry can't even admit to himself.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:33)
Yeah, and I would love to know that that was Jim's intention all along in what's going on here. Maybe we're just reading something into the page that wasn't something that Jim intended there. But you know what? It's not always about what the author's intent was. I think that that fits really well with the rest of the series and Dresden's character.

Baloreilly (35:50)
Well, I also don't think we should be shy about looking into the text like that because Jim has talked about on multiple occasions, the limitations of writing from Harry's perspective and how it affects the story he can tell.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:02)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (36:06)
to look for situations where we're getting a skewed perspective either because Harry doesn't actually know key information or because he won't admit it to himself. So I think that's an excellent point. Now the actual purpose of Marcon's visit here is to offer Harry a job and he offers it on very generous terms.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:26)
Absolutely. Like, yeah, name your hours. Here's a very generous salary. All you have to do is be my security consultant. He's basically offering him guard's job, when what guard does later. Not like direct bodyguard, but the information that she and Monarch Securities provides to him for defensive purposes, generally speaking.

Baloreilly (36:35)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:46)
So moving on, I wanna back up just a second because in this exchange, Marcon loses his cool. That is a very unusual event.

Baloreilly (36:57)
Marcoon has the best poker face, arguably, of anyone in the series. I mean, literally, in the last book we read, he gets killed and nobody else sees coming that he's gonna be able to, you know, come back from that. The man is just incredible at hiding But here, when Harry insults him,

Quote, Marcon's normally passionless face went white. His jaw clenched over words of rage. That's a guy who's on the verge of losing his top.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:30)
Yeah, and he never shows that. If anything, he uses like a wry smile to react to people who normally are trying to rattle him. Instead, let's look at what actually rattled him. this is by the way, Marcon is saying this first. I am a man of business, Mr. Dresden. Would you prefer anarchy in the streets? Wars between rival crime lords? I bring order to that chaos.

No, you just make chaos more efficient and organized, I shot back. Stick whatever pretty words you want onto it, but that doesn't change the fact that you're a thug, a fucking animal that should be in a cage, nothing more." Unquote. So that is what causes Marcon to lose his cool. So, Brian, what about that is the thing that really gets to Marcon? Or is it something else?

Baloreilly (38:25)
I think in large part, it's Dresden calling him a thug, a fucking animal. Because Marcon is trying really hard to be civil with Dresden. He cultivates an aura of civility, urbane sophistication.

And partially because Marcon needs to tell himself that he is bringing order to the chaos. And Dresden saying, that's a lie, you're a thug, is striking out at not just his morality, but his self-identity.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:09)
think that's absolutely right. And there's another element to it. A, he's actually scared in this scene, more scared than he ever has been before. He really thinks that he does not have what it takes to stop this killer. He seems to know something about it that actually rattled him to the point where he's coming here and trying to get Dresden on his side. In fact, he helps Dresden with nothing in exchange in the hopes that it will protect him. So.

A, he's already anxious and afraid so he's already having trouble keeping that down. Then, number two, we know that the thing that allows him to sleep well at night is that he thinks he's doing some good. He tells himself that he is a good guy, better than the others, because of the whole thing with Amanda Beckett. Because he has this compulsion to try to make sure that crime doesn't spill over.

any more than it absolutely has to because of that trauma that happened. Like the bullet went and killed this innocent kid and it should, and it was meant for him and he feels responsible for that.

Baloreilly (40:12)
Yeah, Marcon sees himself almost the way that, you know, ⁓ a CIA torturer would see himself. That he's doing something that's unsavory, that's bad, that makes him compromised morally, but something that's necessary, that someone has to do. And with him doing it, the least harm is created. And Dresden asserting

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:35)
Yes.

Baloreilly (40:41)
No, you cause more harm. You're just like the people you hold yourself apart from. You're not a intellectually sophisticated, philosophically possibly justified villain.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:57)
yeah, Marcon sees himself as good by comparing himself to lesser people, right? The people that he sees as lesser, those base criminals, those animals, the violence in the streets, the ones that will not bring order to the chaos. And Dresden sees himself, tries to see himself as being better, a good person by comparing himself to people like Marcon. So when Marcon,

appears civil and tries to hire Harry as if they were on equal footing, that makes Harry really mad. And when Harry treats Marcon and directly compares him to the people that Marcon thinks should be lesser than him on the moral scale, that makes him really mad. That's an interesting mirroring happening in this scene. They both get angry because both of them are punching at their biggest insecurities.

Baloreilly (41:48)
And I also think it's part of the reason why Marcon doesn't ever try to kill Dresden. Because Dresden is in a way a representation of the fear that Marcon has that he actually isn't preventing any more Amanda Beckett than the last guy. And he feels like

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:55)
Mmm.

Baloreilly (42:16)
If he went after Dresden violently, he'd be proving Dresden right.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:23)
Yeah, he'd be admitting to himself that Dresden is right by doing that. Yeah, wow. ⁓ that's a very good point. Because you always wonder, why didn't he just go after Dresden? And a lot of ways you could say it, well, Dresden has never been in his way enough to deserve it. Like that's the on the surface reading of it, but I really like your point.

Baloreilly (42:43)
Marcon is gonna give Dresden some key information here. as you said, even though Dresden does not agree to his offer, that Harley McFin is someone that Dresden has to look into about the Northwest Passage Project. So we know that Marcon is involved in a business sense with the Northwest Passage Project,

you don't just go to Dresden when you have business difficulties that might turn violent, you're a mobster. So why does Marcon already think he's got to bring Dresden in and think that he has to bring him in with regards to the Northwest Passage Project?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:26)
Yeah, that's a very good question, because we talked about it. Dresden accuses him, and I think he's right, that Marcon is here because he's scared. That means he knows that the thing that is doing these killings is, one, not stoppable by normal means.

So he's hoping that Harry can put together something to stop this thing before it gets to Marcon because he's like, from what I read,

Literally, I have no chance if this thing is coming for me. And it already went after my business associate and one of my bodyguards. On the other hand, how does he know that Harley McFinn is involved? It might be the Lou Guru. Is he speculating? Has he heard Scuttlebutt? Is he just throwing it out there? He acts like he thinks this is a real, direct, solid connection.

Baloreilly (44:11)
on the one hand, you could just say that ⁓ Jim hasn't really thought this through. He needs somebody to give Dresden the information. It's cool if it comes from Marcon who's involved. But on the other hand, I think that the plot is more sophisticated than that. And one of two things is happening Either one, this is an early indication, the same way that Marcon's trying to hire Harry, that he's trying to...

increase his understanding of the supernatural world and with ears to the ground all over the place he's picked up on something about McFinn maybe the fact that he disappears every full that lets him know hey this could be the guy or two, Marcon's so insightful that he realizes okay my business partner who got killed

involved in the Northwest Passage Project. Who died last night? Spike, one of my associates. The only reason someone would go after one of my associates and this businessman is if it was about this deal. Either way, Marcon is a very resourceful, very intelligent character, and that's why he's coming to this conclusion. We just don't actually have insight into which of those options it is.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:32)
Okay, a couple more points we wanna make here before we end out this chapter. Number one, Harry has already gotten better at speaking insolence to power. We saw in the very first meeting with Marcon, okay, maybe he was unprepared, but he sounded...

Well, he was trying to threaten Marcon and he sounded like a guy trying to threaten someone, not somebody actually threatening, but just someone that was trying to pretend to be threatening. Somebody was learning the trade. But in this one, he speaks confidently. He just shuts him down. He says, no, I'm not taking your deal. Get out of my office, leave. And then when Marcon finally presents the deal, he says, do you think I'm an idiot? I'm not signing this.

this is dumb, and then he says, no, here's what you're gonna do, you're gonna give me the information because I know you're afraid. So you're gonna give me the information and I'm gonna figure it out and you're gonna leave right now and I'm gonna owe you nothing. That confident Dresden who's ready to just throw that kind of disrespect and insolence into the face of a villain is the one we've come to know and love. He's here already.

Baloreilly (46:36)
Yeah, and there's a couple reasons why I think we can speculate that this goes so differently. It's not just a matter of the immediate circumstances Harry's met Marcon before. It's also a matter of, as we said in Stormfront, at the end of that book, Harry takes a level up mentally in terms of his confidence in his own abilities and in the fact that he's a wizard, dammit. And what's happened to Harry today?

somebody's already tried to kill him. Harry's not scared. He's already got death hanging over his head in an immediate sense. He's just kind of, unable to really conceive of what I do here will make things worse for me. Now it sort of does, it ends up saving him, but it sort of does because it gets Marcon involved in trying to get leverage over Harry. But Dresden just can't even.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:06)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (47:31)
worry about Marcon's reaction because he's already sort of feeling like he's got nothing left to lose.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:39)
That's true. The more the books go on, the more Marcon is mad at me seems like such a small concern. By the time you're dealing with a titan, Marcon being mad at you seems like such a petty thing until Marcon gets thrown in Namcheel and then it becomes a lot less petty. So the last thing I wanted to point out with regards to this point is the difference between this and the first meeting he has with Marcon in Stormfront is in that meeting in Stormfront, A,

He had just come from a brutal murder scene that had shaken him pretty badly. B, he was afraid. He was clearly shaking with fear in that scene right after he met with Marcon. In this one, instead, he's shaking with anger. And we know that Harry is one of those people that under pressure gets more competent, more clear-headed. He performs better under that kind of pressure.

Baloreilly (48:33)
Yeah, when Harry's angry, he's still self-possessed. When he's afraid, he loses that to a certain extent.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:41)
The last thing to mention, Brian, is Harry has this one quote to the end that I thought was very interesting. Let me ask you what your opinion of it is. Quote, as a wizard, I take the unknown and I turn it into something that can be measured. I take that cloak of terror off of things, make people able somehow to deal with them, unquote.

Baloreilly (48:41)
Mm-hmm.

I really like this. I think it's relevant to the series in a few ways. But the thing that struck me immediately is that's what a scientist does. probes the darkness shows you, no, it's not a monster under the bed. No, lightning is not a God trying to smite you. It's a natural reaction of the elements. And that's why Dresden in the early books often has

unflattering things to say about the 21st century's scientific mindset. It's not because he thinks that what scientists do is stupid or limited or fundamentally wrong. It's that he feels like he's doing the same thing all the time, but he's looked at like a kook and he resents the fact that scientific credence.

is not applied to the things that he deals with, even though he knows they're just as real as, you know, lightning strikes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:09)
Yeah, absolutely. That's very interesting because you thought scientist, I thought, hey, this is what a good cop does. A good investigator takes the unknown and turns it into something they measured, the cloak of terror off of things and makes people able to deal with them. And that's both true, but that I think connected back to what we talked about in the previous episode, which was, how does this guy, Dresden,

Baloreilly (50:18)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:34)
go from the Ozarks on a farm to becoming a private investigator because this quote right here is what he thinks wizards should be, taking the unknown and making it something that can be measured, and that's what a good investigator does. Those dovetail really well together, and so I think it now makes even more sense why he became private investigator because at his core, he is curious.

and he wants to take the unknown and make it known. Hell, maybe that's why he's a publicly practicing wizard.

Baloreilly (51:08)
Yeah, I mean, it definitely is a great explanation of why Harry's not doing something that's more, quote, wizardy. It's because he thinks this is actually the most wizardy thing he could be doing. Okay, so I think that brings us to the end of chapter to our question for Bob.

So, Bob, we see a lot of mortal magic in the Dresden Files, but I want to know, in your voluminous experience, what kind of mortal magic is the most unusual, the

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:46)
Man, Brian, I would have loved to have him here for this question because we do see quite a lot of magic in the Dresden files, but an awful lot of it is Dresden's magic. So we don't have a lot of sources to get this information from. Unfortunately, Bob said he couldn't make it because he's chasing down information on a red herring.

Baloreilly (52:07)
Wait, he actually said a red herring? Is he just, like, openly lying now?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:12)
No, no, it's something to do with the FOMOR, some kind of new spy fish that they have. I don't know. I didn't ask too many questions. So I guess it's up to us. Now, we had a lot of good answers from this on the Reddit. And by the way, I don't know if I've mentioned this before. You don't have to answer in the subreddit. If you don't use Reddit, you can send us an email if you have any answers to these questions, macatrnt.fm. So.

Baloreilly (52:20)
okay.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:36)
What mortal magic is the most unusual relative to the rest? And there were a lot of good answers. My first answer, however, one that I did not see mentioned, is Intellectus. Most of the magic that we've seen involves moving energy around. Fire magic, ice magic, air magic, force magic. It's all moving energy around in one way or another. But this magic, Intellectus, is somehow generating a massive

database of information on the fly or consulting one that is updated instantaneously. He knows exactly how many bees there are, how many anthills, exactly where every tree branch is. All of that information is somehow magically stored and recalled instantaneously whenever he needs it. And that is very unusual compared to everything else that we've seen.

Baloreilly (53:29)
Yeah, I mean, I think that's one where the quantum entanglement physicists would have a field day figuring out how intellectus works. There's another example of it though, and this one is explicitly mortal magic. The archive has intellectus over everything that's ever been written down. And we know that was set up by mortals back in the day. The archive is crazy and is

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:36)
Right.

Yeah

Baloreilly (53:59)
totally different from even just in terms of power, anything we've seen from like the senior council.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:05)
Yeah, absolutely, I'm surprised. That's a really good point. Nobody said archive. I know that you had an interesting conversation about another option in the Reddit. What is your particular answer to this question?

Baloreilly (54:16)
So I'm gonna make a brief discussion of gravity magic, kind of the prelude to what I think is a better answer. and I just wanna say this because it took me a while to kind of articulate what I was saying in a manner that I thought actually explained it. The way that Dresden manipulates elements is pretty consistent in terms of those elements following physical laws that are based on the science we understand today. The way he moves around fire, the way he uses ice.

All that stuff fits with sort of how science expects you to do it. It follows the laws of thermodynamics. Right. Gravity magic is different because he appears to manipulate gravity as a field independent of the things that generate gravity. So fire, know Dresden doesn't like literally pull actual flames out of the air around him to make his fire spell. He pulls heat and that heat generates fire.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:49)
It sounds intuitive, yeah.

Baloreilly (55:14)
The thing that generates gravity is mass. And Dresden is able to manipulate gravity without manipulating mass. That's something that current science would say is impossible even when you account for the fact that magic is doing the manipulation. It's like trying to make fire without heat. It's definitely possible that we'll actually learn in 200 years that you can manipulate gravity in that fashion. But

At this point, we don't actually have very good explanation for how Dresden's spell description of gravity magic matches up with how gravity works in the world. And that's different from air and force and fire and ice when he uses those spells, those elements. So I wanted to say that because a lot of people had a problem with me using that example on the Reddit thread. So I just wanted to try to articulate what I was saying better. But my actual answer...

is something that I also didn't see mentioned in the Reddit thread, is necromancy. And specifically, I'm not talking about Sue or zombies. I'm talking about what Kumori does to that guy that Lamar and the other EMT pick up in Deadbeat when they use magic not to heal him, but just to not let him die.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:16)
Hmm

Baloreilly (56:38)
That's crazy. That's like pure manipulation of what we would think of almost as divine province, like the angel of death in Ghost Story, Kumori's holding an angel at bay in that sense. That is really mind-blowing to

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:57)
Yeah, I mean, even zombies, like, trying to explain that scientifically doesn't make a huge, like, I guess you have like an ether connecting the cells that don't do anything anymore, they're powering them back up, but they've been decayed, like a black court vampire that's like a desiccated corpse.

does not have muscles that can possibly move anything anymore. So is it like kinetic magic that's moving their muscles at that point? I don't know, but that's beyond mortal magic. So necromancy is a good answer.

The other ones that we got, Hospital Fox, Dresden the Shade, and Thacker815 all answered Merlin's work on Demonreach, which is a really good answer. That is, that seems like...

I think it's kind of described as simple magic, but stacked on top of itself so many times that it does impossible things.

Baloreilly (57:50)
Yeah, in the story, that is the answer. Bob can't make heads or tails of it, and he understands everything else that we've talked about. So in story, this is definitely the answer. Now it probably has to do with Merlin doing things in multiple times, but even the fact that through basically uncountable sunrises, it has apparently not decayed in the slightest is true.

Truly a puzzle that I don't think we've gotten all the answers to.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (58:21)
Yeah, I think it's implied that it's taking the energy from the beings, it's using them as an energy source to both contain them and keep the prison itself running over time, which that seems like the real trick, right? Where...

Baloreilly (58:40)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (58:40)
These

things are like, some of them are divine beings. We know there's a Negloshi in there. Like they are their own power source that it's somehow able to extract stuff from. We're definitely gonna have a whole episode where we talk about Demonreach when we get there. now, let's move on to ⁓ Hospitable Fox. Brian suggested River Shoulders magic is the same as wizard magic. And I think that the forest people have been referred to as mortals in the past in at least one of the books.

why don't you talk to us about what Hospital Fox said?

Baloreilly (59:10)
Yeah, in the same comment that he talked about ⁓ Merlin's work on Demonreach, he said, quote, ⁓

Yeah, what river shoulders could do is really nuts. The one thing I wonder is, since forest people are obviously a different species than us, I wonder if it's actually not that weird. They're just able to think of things and perceive things in a way that we can't. For example, we know, like people know how to produce sound waves that cancel out other sound waves.

So that even though there's two things making a sound wave, what you hear is absolute silence because you are canceling the wave out with the sort of exact opposite wave. And throwing a rock to produce the exact opposite wave as the ripple was on the lake is nuts to be able to do that. Like that's wild, but it is physically possible.

So I wonder if it's just that the forest people are able to perceive those wavelengths in a way that somebody like Harry can't see the subtlety of.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:43)
yeah, yeah, I could definitely see that being the thing. Like the way they interact with magic, because I think we talked about it earlier, is that the way that you perceive magic might impact the way that you can work with magic. Like that there's not really a school of like fire magic versus ice magic versus this kind of magic. It's all one magic that people categorize within their

own head and maybe the way that the forest people categorize magic, the way they think about it at the lowest level might be different than the way that humans do or can and maybe that is what he's going to teach Harry in the future.

Baloreilly (1:01:29)
Yeah, I mean, that would be really cool to see.

Temeraire64 pointed out that healing magic is kind of weak in the Dresden Files in a way that seems, plot convenient, but white-court vampires can self-heal despite being just mortals with a demon stapled to their souls. know, Thomas comes back from getting his neck broken in Blood Rites, wizards can't even... ⁓

quickly heal fairly simple injuries.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:57)
Yeah, that's a really big outlier. That's a great point. I didn't even think about the fact that, this magic is just way weaker and that makes it an outlier, but it's 100 % true. And it's probably got something to do. I think it's hinted a couple of times that ⁓ manipulating the actual flesh of another person, another mortal, is very problematic and it can cause issues. they talked about how if you change transmortification, if you change somebody else into an animal,

they're gonna lose their humanity, but if you change yourself into an animal, then you're fine if you use your own magic to do it. So that might have something to do with it here.

Baloreilly (1:02:35)
Yeah, I also think that, and I wanna make clear, Adam and I both think that Jim does an amazing job of using magic as an accompaniment to the laws of physics as we know them in reality. That's why these outliers stand out. They're the few places where if you just believe magic exists, what the characters do doesn't immediately make sense as a possible thing because the physics of the world

works cogently with the magic we see displayed. And I wonder if part of the reason why healing is so hard is that it's like manipulating biology, but from the level of physics. You when we study biology in school, biology is also chemistry, biology is also physics. You have to sort of have all of those laws in place for biological laws to function.

And if the way that you're trying to manipulate mortal flesh isn't from, you know, direct contact on the biological level, but sort of using physics to cajole the body into doing what you want in that sort of minute and tiny scale, that just might be way harder to do because you're sort of going through so many different layers of process to create the effects that you want.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:04:03)
And as Scorpion gives us the last outlier when it comes to mortal magic, specifically, it's sort of ⁓ artifice-ing where the mortal can pull a little rectangle out of their pocket, ask it a question, and get a fairly accurate answer on almost any topic known to man. I have to say, this is actually a lot like the answer of Ivy in the archive, ⁓ but anybody can do it, which is really weird. But...

Baloreilly (1:04:29)
Yeah, I think it's a huge plot hole in the series, honestly.

mean, yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:04:33)
Cell phones cause a lot of plotholes, but that was a great

joke. But I think it's also a very good answer because, Sufficiently advanced technology appearing to be magic, as Arthur C. Clarke said,

is what we're looking at here, right? If you took somebody from 1900 and you brought them to today where somebody could just, ⁓ who was the Queen of England in 1692? Here's the answer. That would amaze them if you could just have all that information at the tip of your fingertips. And everything else that mortals can do in the last 20 to 30 years must seem like their own version of magic to the supernatural world.

Baloreilly (1:05:14)
Yeah, I mean, as I said in the thread, in a world where LIDAR exists, right? Like, is anything a wizard does actually unbelievable? The way technology has advanced, think, makes it more possible to view the magic in the story as reasonable.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:23)
Right?

And the closest analog, of course, if you ask a wizard from 1900, they would say, well, of course you can do that. I've got three different demons that can give me that kind of information. just call them up. And of course, the cost there is usually a lot more than 40 bucks a month is the problem. All right, so I think that's gonna close out our question for Bob here. But Brian, we've got a really good question next week. Speaking of demons being called up from below.

Baloreilly (1:05:41)
Ha ha ha.

So next week, we're going to be doing the chapter where we meet Charm Zagoroth. And our question is, who did kill Harry's parents and why? Obviously, we find out later that Lord Wraith was involved in the death of Maggie Senior, but why'd have to kill her?

is it that she did or knows that got her a spot on his hit list and not just, you know, contact deleted from his phone?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:32)
Yeah, I mean, he's super old at this point. I think it's implied that he's like a thousand years old or something. He has to know that killing wizards is a dangerous business. He knows that death curses exist. And in fact, he winds up being the target of one and yet he tries to do it anyway. He must have a really good reason beyond just being a jilted lover. That's my impression anyway.

Baloreilly (1:06:57)
Yeah, totally agree. And we'll be interested to see what our listeners come up with

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:07:02)
so go ahead and send us your answers. Either hop on Reddit when you hear this episode and let us know, or send us an email, mac at rnt.fm.