Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
Yeah, no, I know. I just want this first episode to make a really good impression. Like when Harry busts down the doors of the Varsity to confront Marcon.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:18)
Welcome one, welcome all. I am Adam, and this is Recorded Neutral Territory, a Dresden Files podcast where we go chapter by chapter discussing all the amazing and interesting things this series has to offer. Joining me is an overzealous warden, it's Brian. Welcome, Brian.

Baloreilly (00:35)
Hey, Adam, I'm really excited to kick things off here, so let's get to it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:40)
Let's jump right into Stormfront with the very first line in the series.

I heard the mailman approach my office door half an hour earlier than usual. He didn't sound right. His footsteps fell more heavily, jauntily, and he whistled. A new guy.

Baloreilly (00:56)
So Butcher, the author of the Dresden Files, known for some killer first lines. I love this one, even though it's not necessarily as memorable as some of the others are, because it's great for Dresden's characterization. In this chapter, they're going to talk about the fact that Harry's a wizard a lot, but this is showing us that Harry's a detective. Harry, like Sherlock Holmes, notices

that the mailman's footfalls are heavier than usual, it's gotta be a new guy.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:33)
Yeah, powers of observation. mean, if I was sitting in the same place and I heard the same male person come every day, maybe I would notice that it was different. I can't guarantee that I would. I'm not that observant for sure, but it shows that he is. part of, I mean, he describes the word wizard later in the series, like comes from the word wise, right? It's people who know things. But in Harry's perspective, it's not just like in D &D terms, his intelligence, it's also his wisdom score.

is what makes him a good detective, whereas his intelligence would make him a good wizard. And having both of those be pretty high is what makes Harry who he is.

Baloreilly (02:10)
Yeah, he's definitely got that great passive perception role. I think that Part of what's really interesting about him starting with sound as Harry's sort of the details he's picking up on is that later in the series, we're going to hear about listening, which is a thing that Harry does over and over and over again. And Butcher is really key on telling us that he's not necessarily sure it's magic.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:18)
Mm.

Baloreilly (02:36)
And that's what he's trying to get across here. Harry has this perceptiveness that is distinct from his wizardness.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:42)
Yeah.

It's almost like a knack. Like this one thing that's almost magical that he's good at for some reason. So yeah, I definitely like that. The other thing that occurred to me with this line is you're right. It's not the kind of line that jumps out like the building was on fire and it wasn't my fault. But there is one thing about this line that when I was rereading it, of thinking about it critically is very interesting because...

Baloreilly (02:46)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:08)
If you know you're going into a noir style detective, like hard boiled thing, and you hear that the mailman didn't sound right, his footsteps fell more heavily, at that point, your brain might be saying, this is like, this is a hit, somebody coming to take him out, or somebody coming to strong arm him for information or something, right? That's the kind of thing that might happen in a noir detective story. But then it...

pivots and goes, jauntily and whistling. No, it's just a new guy. That's all it is. So in my head, I feel like it's kind of doing those things. The other thing that I think that we're going to come back to in a number of different points is discussing how efficient Butcher is with this series, his technical capabilities as a writer to fit a lot of information at the right time of the story so that it just flows and you feel like you want to keep going. This whole introduction.

is a really great examination because we learn a lot of stuff. What happens after this, right? He talks about how the mailman knocked and Harry winces. And then he explains that the mail always just gets put in the slot unless it's registered. Therefore, this is registered mail. Therefore, it's not good news for Harry because he's broke.

So like, it's doing a lot with so little. Like the mailman's coming to drop off some mail and it's not consequential. I thought it might be. I went and looked. The mail that Harry receives here is never referenced again. That's not important to the story, but him receiving the mail and the interaction with the mailman is setting up very important elements. So let's sort of move on forward here. So he talks to the mailman for a little while and then he tries to explain that he is in fact a wizard.

Baloreilly (04:51)
Yeah.

So just right before we touch on that explanation, one thing that I think is important here is it's really great at establishing the noir tone because routine things like getting the mail are bad. That's very noir. know, if it...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:06)
Hmm.

Yeah. Noir is very

cynical and sort of glass half empty. Yeah.

Baloreilly (05:18)
Exactly, pessimistic, yes, precisely. And that pessimism really, you know, colors everything, especially in the first couple books, even when they're gonna talk about human nature. You know, we kind of dwell on the negatives, makes sense given the plot, but we dwell on the negatives a lot more than the positives, and that kind of flips later in the series.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:35)
Mm-hmm.

That's true. And one thing that I was thinking about when rereading through the series recently is that even if the tropes and the description of the world and the other characters in it can be very cynical as it is in most noir things, Harry himself, generally not cynical. He's very generally more hopeful and optimistic. Like he'll go into situations where...

Baloreilly (05:59)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:08)
He doesn't have a really good chance of getting out of them alive, but he still has hope that he will. It's very like Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings. There's always a little bit of hope carried around in Harry's soul. And so that's an interesting element of him that we're gonna continue to track.

Baloreilly (06:22)
Okay, so this is the mailman talking to Harry after he sees the stencil on Harry's An actual wizard? He asked, grinning, as though I should let him in on the joke. Spells, potions, demons and incantations, subtle and quick to anger? Not so subtle. I jerked the mail out of his hand and looked pointedly at his clipboard. Can I sign for my mail, please? The new man-man's grin vanished.

placed by a scowl. He passed over the clipboard to let me sign for the mail, another late notice from my landlord, and said, you're a nut. That's what you are.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:03)
So what I love about this passage is something that, again, didn't occur to me until I really listened to it with a critical ear. I listen to the audio books a lot or read it with a critical eye is we see him ask for the mail twice before this interaction that you just read, right? He just tries to tug at the mail, like, please give it to me, like politely, basically. And we get to this point and the guy asks him,

you're a wizard, so you're subtle and quick to anger. And Harry responds, not so subtle, which of course the whole thing is an allusion to the description of wizards in the Lord of the Rings, which they're described as subtle and quick to anger, right? So obviously the mailman has read Lord of the Rings and so has Harry. But in this moment, Harry is acknowledging that.

He is blatant and quick to anger, right? He didn't deny that he's quick to anger. He only denied that he's subtle. And that is a perfect encapsulation of Harry throughout the entire early part of the series, is he is blatant and quick to anger. And so here you have Harry describing himself in response to this, but he also did try to be subtle upfront, right? He tried to politely take it and the guy kept holding onto it in order to have this conversation with him. So.

I thought that that is really just an enjoyable element when you dive into it. It's one of those things that you can only necessarily pick up on a reread.

Baloreilly (08:29)
Yeah, the books are definitely worth rereading. mean, if only for the sort of mythological elements, there's a lot of stuff that you don't catch the first time through, but there's also simply jokes that you'll only catch the second time through. Something I love about this moment is that the mailman wants to be let in on the joke, you know, for the idea that no one's actually gonna say they're a wizard. And that works two different ways in the series, right?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:36)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (08:57)
First, normal people are incredulous. You're a wizard, like what are you crazy? But also, there are other wizards. Harry's just the only one who advertises in the Yellow Pages. So on both sides, it's sort of incredible that he puts his name out there. Both the supernatural community and the average person want to be led into the joke, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And he never does.

really come up with a satisfactory reason of why he should be the only Wizard of Chicago in the Yellow Pages.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:31)
Yeah, we can kind of intuit why he's doing it, but I think even like bad guys later, isn't Nicodemus is like interrogating him later, like why do you do what you do later in Death Masks? And it's like an interesting introspection moment for him because he is the one.

that's describing this all in first person, and he's never really acknowledged to us, the audience, why he does what he does. We can infer it, a lot of times he sort of describes the Spider-Man mythology, like a theme and concept, great power has great responsibility, I need to do that, but he's never necessarily acknowledged why he personally chose this way to use his power for good in a responsible way.

Baloreilly (10:11)
And the

story comes out and Harry definitely tells us, gives us justifications for it. But I think that it's still sort of an open question whether he knows himself enough to actually know why he does exactly what he does. And the fact that he's immediately called a nut within the first page of the first book by a random guy, you know, we're going to hear that.

Not those exact words, but we're gonna hear that sentiment over and over again, right?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:38)
a way to set him up as an underdog, right?

Throughout the whole series, like Harry is the underdog in almost every situation. If Harry gets stronger, Butcher throws harder things for him to deal with because generally people like an underdog and it's a more interesting story to read about when somebody has to fight their way up from the bottom. So, yeah, so setting the world to disbelieve him is one way to set him up that way as more relatable and interesting hero.

In particular, the element here that I wanted to talk about later in this episode is why doesn't Harry just prove to these people that he can do magic, right? He could do any of a number of things, even all the way back in Stormfront to prove it. Like he could call up a wind. He could light a candle right in front of them. Here, hold this candle. I'll light it with a snap of my fingers. Flick him big as there. Like he could prove it. And it seems like it bothers him.

when people don't believe him, so why doesn't he? We're gonna answer that question or try to answer that question later on in this episode. Let's continue with what we got here.

Baloreilly (11:43)
Yeah,

I think a funny thing is that Harry is simultaneously honest and also naturally secretive. He tells the truth, but he doesn't really like doing it. Anyway, so the next thing we have to talk about is the big kind of whiplash that comes like three lines after this exchange that kind of starts coloring in the world in a totally different way. So I can't wait to get to it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:49)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Yeah, absolutely. So we start with Harry being sort of humiliated by the mailman who doesn't believe he's a wizard and then immediately goes to a really like confident description of who he is, which starts with, my name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Condor it at your own risk. I'm a wizard. I work out of an office in Midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I'm the only openly practicing wizard in the country.

You can find me in the yellow pages under Wizards. Believe it or not, I'm the only one there.

Baloreilly (12:48)
So there's so much to get into here. We're gonna save the last part. I just wanna talk about the first part for a second. So Harry gives you his full name. We're gonna find out later. That matters a lot. That's very important. And then he immediately says, conjure by it at your own risk. Okay, so this could mean a lot of things, but let's discuss the first immediate meaning. Literally, conjure me at your own risk. So.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:08)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (13:15)
These books are written by Harry. They're in the first person and presumably he's writing them, you know, from the perspective of the end of the series of events that he's talking about.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:25)
A lot of people theorize that it's the books, the Merlin books that we see in Proven, or Turncoat, that we see in the Merlin's office. Every Merlin has been keeping this series of books about their life going all the way back to the original Merlin, and maybe Harry becomes the Merlin, and these are his books. I think that's a very interesting idea that could be what's happening here.

Baloreilly (13:48)
Yes, certainly. And specifically, the original Merlin started that chain. We don't actually know if it's a chain of all Merlins or, and this is also really interesting, right? They're on Ebenezer's shelf. He's the Blackstaff. So it's a master apprentice chain, we think, we know that much, which could involve every Merlin. It could involve some of the Merlins. It could involve every Blackstaff.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:57)
Hmm.

That's right, they're on Ebeneezer's

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (14:16)
We have no idea, you know, could just be masters. It could be family members just to see that, right? But okay, so let's hold on for a second. So the first could be, he's really powerful. Don't conjure him, you dummy. But that's not what the line says. It doesn't say conjure me at your own risk. It says conjure by my name at your own risk. So, conjure by my name.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:18)
I expect we'll learn a lot more about that in the coming books. Hmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (14:45)
Okay, there's a couple things that can mean. One, do things in my name at your own risk. If you signal that you're on my team, that's risky. Okay, that's definitely true. We know that, just with the books in the series, we know that's true. It can also mean that at the end of the series, Harry's not just going to be someone who conjures anymore. He's going to be something that others conjure by. So,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:53)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (15:15)
I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but have you considered that interpretation? That Harry will be something you can conjure?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:25)
Yeah, so we've seen that it's possible in this series for mortals to become essentially deity powered, but we've also seen that as beings gain power, they also gain restrictions. That's true in almost every like super high level being that we've seen. Mab, very powerful, very restricted. The White God, even more powerful, even more restricted. know, Odin.

The Earl King very restricted in what they can do and when they can do it. I think Harry is going to continue to gain in power somehow. Maybe it has something to do with his star-born nature, with whatever is going to happen that requires a star-born that's of implied later in the books. And I think that that power-up is going to put him at that class so that you can go in your backyard with a circle and if you have the right, like their lead to Earl King or whatever,

that you can conjure Harry using a circle and he might come, but if he doesn't like why you did it, he might be mad at you. Like conjure it by your own risk. Conjure, buy it at your own risk, I should say. So I think that kind of is implied even back here at the very first book. And I think this line is repeated at the very end of Stormfront, right? It's sort of a book end.

Baloreilly (16:46)
Yeah, so this is, I think that's a great explanation. I think that that's absolutely what is being driven at here. Now, I think it's an open question whether Harry is going to ascend, if we want to use that word, whether he's going to become something that is strictly not quite mortal anymore. But I think that that's something that a seed that has been planted as early as book one.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:59)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (17:10)
which, you know, we're not gonna get into the whole discussion of where is the series gonna go at the end in the beginning of the first episode, guys. We're not doing that, but...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:17)
Yeah,

something I did want to mention, we're recording this post-Battleground before 12 months. So if you're listening back to this from the future, we don't know anything that's gonna happen in 12 months, or anything past that, obviously. We'll obviously update the podcast with our thoughts on 12 months when that comes out in Mirror Mirror and the rest, but that's where we are right now.

Baloreilly (17:40)
Right, that's really important for you to say that because the power ups that he's had so far have kept him at the level of mortal, distinctly. He has to be mortal to have the positions that he has right now. So this is definitely still something that's speculative at this point. And you can interpret it the other way. You can interpret it as when he's saying, conjure by it at your own risk, he's just saying, if you act in my name, people are gonna come for you. That's absolutely a...possible interpretation. So I don't mean to shoot everybody down who doesn't think that that's gonna happen to Harry, who thinks he just stays immortal.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:12)
yeah, I'm not, I

don't have a headcanon that I'm like super tied to about what's coming up. I think it could be a number of different things. Butcher has surprised me in the past and I think he could keep doing it.

Baloreilly (18:24)
Okay, so immediately after that statement, which has laid out a, I don't know if we're gonna call it a mystery, but at least a plot point that hasn't been resolved in 15 books, what does he give us? His advertisement. So we're not gonna read the text of the ad here, but Harry uses that, Butcher uses that to pivot into this idea that people call him just to ask if he's serious. And he interprets that action.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:36)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (18:53)
not as just people messing with him, but as being a fundamental signal about where people are in the year 2000 when Stormfront is set. So Harry says, Butcher writes, the end of the 20th century and the dawn of the new millennium had seen something of a renaissance in public awareness of the paranormal. Psychics, haunts, vampires, you name it.

People still didn't take them seriously, but all the things science had promised us hadn't come to pass. Disease was still a problem, starvation was still a problem, violence and crime and war were still problems. In spite of the advance of technology, things just hadn't changed the way everyone had hoped and thought they would. Science, the largest religion of the 20th century.

had become somewhat tarnished by the images of exploding space shuttles, crack babies, and a generation of complacent Americans who had allowed the television to raise their children. People were looking for something. I think they didn't just know what. And even though they were once again starting to open their eyes to the world of magic and the arcane that had been with them all the while, they still thought I might be some kind of joke.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:10)
This is such an interesting way to develop the world that he's created here. So what's interesting about it is all the things science had promised hadn't come to pass. And then he describes a bunch of political problems, which is interesting. But this is also Harry's view of the world. So I've been trying to determine whether Harry's world is functionally different from ours.

and he's describing it in like a real difference? Or if he's just describing Harry's view of our own world differently, what do you think about that?

Baloreilly (20:48)
So I think there's two things that are going on here. One, think what you said, the second thing you said is true. Harry's view on the world is somewhat skewed. The world that Butcher is describing is our world. Like this is the point of divergence effectively. Everything up to this point is just the history of our world with a little bit of a secret history filled in in the gaps. But I think that it's partially Harry's point of view and it's partially reflective of

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:08)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (21:16)
Butcher's point of view as someone who grew up in the era Butcher did. So I'm in my mid 30s. I'm younger than Harry. I'm younger than the author. Harry is 25 at the start of this book approximately and it starts in year 2000. So he's like smack dab in the middle of gen X. And you know, what is like that generation known for? You know, this is grunge. This is clerks, know, the Kevin Smith films. This is, you know, the WTO riots. It's

a generation that sees America triumphant in the Cold War and that still doesn't solve every problem. So I don't think Harry is critiquing the science and a lot of people I think take this as Harry saying that like don't believe science. I don't think that's the point of this. I think the point of this is to say that you know we trusted the establishment to see us through this like the world could end at any minute nuclear

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:55)
Mmm.

Baloreilly (22:16)
war could happen at any time, situation. And it has done that, but there's still war, there's still disease, there's still crime. You know, the 90s, were not like, New York started to get cleaned up, Chicago started to get cleaned up, but they weren't necessarily the best time to live in the inner city of those communities. So it's this idea that what appears to be the entire establishment's consensus, scientific consensus, technocratic consensus,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:31)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (22:44)
about how the world works hasn't fixed everything. And the rebelliousness is just a little bit more aimless than I think we've probably experienced in our lives, more politically pointed rebelliousness.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:56)
Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah, I like what you're saying there because he then follows up by saying, and because people are feeling this way, their eyes were once again open to the world of magic in the arcane. They basically were rejecting the status quo explanation of there's no such thing as vampires. Everything's fine. We have it under control because of the source. The source is, as you say,

you know, they're politically disenfranchised or feeling, like the institutions weren't fixing the problems they thought they were going to fix, whether that's fair or not. That's how the generation, sort of the zeitgeist of that group was and how he's describing it here. But I think it's very interesting to say the way that Butcher describes this, they were once again starting to open their eyes to the worlds of magic in the arcane that had been with them all of the while.

I wonder what closed their eyes in the first place. And I'm just thinking back like, okay, say for the sake of argument, we just roll things back. Red court, white court, werewolves, the Denarians, they all existed for the past 2000 years. How would people of the different periods of time like deal with that? And the explanation in these books is I think, you know, well, that's why we get stories.

about werewolves and vampires, and that's why they're just stories, because they're so crazy, people wouldn't believe them. And so you would have these stories that are just treated as stories by most of society throughout all of history, and now you're getting to a more modern time where it's like there's so many people, there's so much technology, we must know everything now. So I think that's a very interesting element to this.

is how he paints the universe around them and why those people, and we see it a couple of times, those people sort of going immediately, like Rudolph, perfect example, going immediately into denial about what they'd actually seen and what it takes to see this supernatural preternatural world and accept it. And we see that in a couple of different characters, Murphy, Billy, Butters, we literally see them.

accepting the world around them. And I think it's gonna be an interesting question we're gonna talk about in a future episode. Like, what does it take to recognize and accept that reality versus, like, that most people don't seem to have within this series?

Baloreilly (25:21)
Yeah, and I think that there's an important question that you hinted at there of, you know, why did people become close to the supernatural if it actually exists? And I, you know, I mean, the books are already just, the book series has already discussed the librarians as a force in that. I think that the masquerade is something of a deliberate process by certain interested groups. We can get to that in the future.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:29)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (25:45)
But one thing that I wanna point out before we move on from this is this is set in the year 2000. So what's an example of a piece of media that deals with the paranormal from the same time period? The X-Files, right? That's like my ur example of how people at this point in the late 90s are sort of thinking about the paranormal, science fiction, fantasy elements. And the X-Files is all about

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:58)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (26:11)
know, Scully's a doctor, like she does doctor stuff the whole series. They're not knocking doctors, but she doesn't have all the answers. You know, we want to believe in something more, you know? So it's, I don't.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:23)
Yeah. But that's actually

the opposite, right? Cause in the Dresden verse, people don't want to believe. They go to great lengths to rationalize away their belief. And we were just talking about this before the show. It kind of clicked for me. Like, I wonder if there's like a blanket spell on humanity as a whole to get them to just be a little bit more skeptical of anything supernatural. That might explain why people

collectively haven't gotten together and say, hey, you saw that, right? Yeah, I saw that. Maybe we should tell more people about this collectively so they don't just call us all nuts. I don't know. It's something to think about.

Baloreilly (27:04)
So I haven't prepared for this, but I think one thing we have to remember is the length of the starborn cycle. We're going to talk about the fact that Harry's a starborn a lot, guys. that's, go read the books before you listen to these because, spoilers all. But the last starborn cycle would have happened in the middle of the 14th century. So that's, know, the 1330s or whatever. that's a hundred years before, Columbus and the fall of, the Byzantine Empire and the sort of,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:10)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (27:29)
early modern period starting. So you figure that something about that star-born cycle affected the development of the early modern period if those are big events in the Dresdenverse. I don't, you know, I do want to prepare something for that if we were going to go into full speculation of what and when and how, but that'd be my bet. If there's some kernel of a magical cause of enlightenment,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:39)
Hmm, yeah.

Baloreilly (27:54)
disbelief in the supernatural, that that's where it starts.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:58)
yeah, that is really good. I hadn't considered that because it seems like whatever the star born thing is, going by what's happening in the current books, it seems like that has a big impact. And it's a number of different things, right? In the recent books that have gotten bigger and bigger and culminating with the battle of Chicago, right? So.

at least several thousands, know, tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, can't ignore this anymore. So maybe something like that could have happened back then as well. It comes around and like the supernatural bleeds over into mortal life more during those periods and is much less directly involved in other periods. Or like you say, something was put into place.

to cause the enlightenment to sort of hide the supernatural more or less. But anyway, we're gonna get, go ahead.

Baloreilly (28:54)
So,

yeah, we're gonna go from, big picture speculation about Harry and the nature of, you his world to little details of characterization that Butcher gives us. And he just does it one after another. I mean, this is literally two sentences later. So Harry's just explained, you know, people calling him in the Yellow Pages. Let's hear what he says about people he actually works for.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (29:17)
Yeah, and it's preceded by him saying, it's been slow. I'm not doing well. My business isn't doing well. I'm poor. Again, another, that's a way to keep Harry like as the underdog. Not only do people not believe in him, he also has this resources problem. He's perpetually on the brink of losing his business, his home. So like he has all of that to deal with and that becomes an issue multiple times in these early books.

where it's like, well, I gotta take this client, really need the money, but like, it's probably not the right thing to take. But here's how he describes how an earlier interaction went.

I'd gotten travel expenses plus an hour's pay and gone away feeling I had done the honest, righteous, and impractical thing. I heard later that he'd hired a Scheister psychic to come in and perform a ceremony with lot of incense and black lights. Some people.

Baloreilly (30:26)
So Harry, honest to a fault, doesn't want to explain to this guy, there are haunted houses, I've been in them, I could do an exorcism, this just isn't one. He's not gonna go take him to where there are ghosts and show him this is what a ghost looks like, this is how I know you don't have one. He doesn't divulge that much info, but he tells the truth anyway, to the point where it's literally he's late on his rent.

It's literally hitting him in the pocketbook that he won't just stick around and, you know, do a a seance or whatever. And this honesty, first we find out it's magically significant later when we talk about Mortimer and, you know, how him lying, you know, corrupts his ability to access his full power. So it's magically significant that Harris is honest. It matters. He's got a lot of power and he's using it in a way that he sees as responsible by being honest about it. But

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:58)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (31:21)
It also kind of gives us an insight just into who Harry is. I think the kids on TikTok today might describe him as a little bit neuro-spicy. He doesn't pick up all the time on sort of the subtle social clues that people give you to kind of signal how they want you to behave as opposed to just the literal response to what they've asked you.

This guy asked, is my house haunted? Answer, no. Completely glazing over the subtext of, no, I want my house to be haunted. If Harry does a vent of servitas and blows some wind and makes a shutter slam, he makes a hell of a lot more money and the guy's a hell of a lot happier. So the fact that he doesn't do that, is significant, it is good, but you're saying this is a good character trait to have. It's magically good that he has it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:54)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (32:16)
but it's also something that is not normal. Harry's a weirdo.

So the next thing that we're confronted with in the book, and we're not gonna read this because it's a long interaction, but Harry's called by a woman named Monica. So we're gonna later find out that this is Monica Sells, the wife of Victor Sells, who is, you know, not to say too much right away, an important character in the book, right? So they set up an appointment.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:42)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (32:46)
for them to meet after a little bit of a, doesn't really think it's a job that he should be doing. It doesn't sound like something that's, you know, you need a wizard for, but whatever, we'll set up a time to meet. but Monica does something that is, that signals that maybe this is a job for a wizard a little bit. And Harry picks up on it immediately, which I think is interesting that Butcher is kind of giving us that right away. So,

When Harry asks for her name, she says, call me Monica. People who don't know diddly about wizards don't like to give us their names. They're convinced that if they give a wizard their name from their own lips, it could be used against them. To be fair, they're right.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:29)
So Brian, as you mentioned, we see Harry do a lot of detective stuff in these early chapters. We don't see him doing any magic, but this is the first time that we get like a rule of how magic works in this universe. It's sort of hinting at it. We learn a lot more later, but here it's very clearly stated that if a wizard and others that we learn about later get...

someone's name from their own lips that it can be used against them. So I just want to call that out. Every time we learn something new, magically speaking, about this world, I'm adding it to a big list. And so we're going to see as each interaction, each piece of the world is slowly built up. And by the end of this, we'll have a big document with all the rules of magic. Now, they are rules of magic.

as Harry knows them at the time. And I fully expect us to cross out some of these rules as he learns more about the world. Like there are things that happen in the series that he didn't think was possible with regards to magic and he learns that he was mistaken. So it's a bit of an unreliable narrator situation here, but this is a good point to just note that this is the first piece of magic that we actually learn about here.

Baloreilly (34:40)
There's a fan theory that Harry, there's rules of magic, and then there are the laws of magic. And we're gonna discuss the laws of magic soon. there's a fan theory that Harry is going to break all of the laws of magic before the end of the series. I'm not sure. Yeah, that's been confirmed.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:46)
Hmm.

I think actually that's a word of Jim or he's confirmed it. But again,

he's also confirmed that he lies to us. But I think this one's pretty solid. I think he's pretty clearly said, yeah, I've wrote down those rules of magic. So obviously Harry has to break them all by the end of the series, right? It's like a checkoff rule list. Yeah.

Baloreilly (35:12)
Right, so,

and this is amazing because he said that, right, not, you know, it doesn't say this anywhere in the book. He didn't say it after book one was published. He said that much later. But this is the first rule of magic we've received. Harry's already broken it. He's already told us his full name from his own lips. Yeah, so it's really, it's setting that up and it's also really lending some, that's why we spent so much time discussing.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:28)
That's true. Yeah.

Baloreilly (35:39)
him giving the name and the conjure by it at your own risk because the next thing he tells us is don't do that. So we don't know yet enough to know the significance of Harry telling us that even though we already know by the rules he shouldn't.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:45)
Yeah.

Well, to be fair though...

If we're talking about like we're reading these accounts as they're written down, if you write your name, is that the same? Can somebody get it from a written account of your name or like, yeah, cause you made a weird swirl when you wrote the A and that's part of how you personally write your name. And it's the same way that when you, he describes it later, is like when you enunciate your name in a specific way, it describes who you are to a wizard so they can use it to bind you later. Maybe the written word, the written name written by your own hand is the same.

kind of thing as giving a wizard their name from their own lips is described.

Baloreilly (36:33)
Yeah, I think that's correct. And he's going to go into more detail on how a true name is more than just the sequence of sounds. It's about exactly how the person whose name it is thinks of says.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:46)
Right, that's very relevant to

this book as we get to later with the demon that he has to call. So after this, we get to him talking to Monica and convincing her to come down and saying, no charge consultation. If I feel I can help you, I will. Otherwise, I'll refer you to another private investigator that's good with missing persons or whatever. But then she hangs up, he's got an appointment, and the phone rang again.

Baloreilly (36:51)
precisely.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:14)
almost the instant I put it down, making me jump. I peered at it. I don't trust electronics. Anything manufactured after the 40s is suspect, and it doesn't seem to have much liking for me. You name it, cars, radios, telephones, TVs, VCRs, none of them seem to behave well for me. I don't even like to use automatic pencils.

Baloreilly (37:34)
So there's two interesting things about this. First thing is this is a rule of magic, magic effects technology, but that's not what he says. He doesn't say they don't like my magic. He says they don't have much liking for me. So part of this is Harry, you know, we later find out actually has a good reason to, you know, avoid electronics and et cetera. But this is also setting up Harry, his personality.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:51)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (38:04)
as a bit of a luddite You know, he doesn't trust the hot new thing, even if the hot new thing actually came out 20 years ago and everybody else is already using it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (38:13)
He's kind of personifying, like anthropomorphizing this magical rule. when something, when he tries to, it was probably something that was just sort of ingrained in him as he was growing up. he's like.

when he was with Justin and if he ever met other kids and they were using I don't know, a Walkman or something, whatever would be appropriate for his growing up period. And he like, man, that seems cool. I want to try it. And then it breaks every time he tries it. He kind of anthropomorphizes this as like, all this new stuff doesn't like me. I'm sure intellectually, because later he explains to us, intellectually he knows that the magic that's in him is interacting badly with the technology and causing it to break. So he knows that

on one level, but on the emotional level, he feels it's personal. I think that's kind of funny.

Baloreilly (38:59)
Yeah,

and I think this is actually very important to recognize that it's his feeling, because you can read this in two ways. You can read this as, Butcher is a bit of a traditionalist, and he's setting up the notion that the traditional things are more...

But I don't think that's what's happening. I think Harry's a bit of a traditionalist. And if you think about it for more than two seconds, makes perfect sense. You know, who was Harry raised by? People who were hundreds of years old, right? His first real father figure after his own father, when he's taken out of the foster care system, is Justin. And his second is Ebenezer. And they're both, you know, 100, 300, you know, at the time they're raising him. He's raised by people who are, by virtue of being so long lived,

traditionalists. So a lot of character Harry's characterizations come down to the peculiar circumstances in which he was raised. think we see that as through lines in the books and it's something that we're going to talk about again and again because Harry is and he's described as such a little bit of a weird guy. It's not really his fault. He had a weird upbringing.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:06)
absolutely. So what do we have next? We have Dresden picking up the phone again, and it's Murphy. She's the Madison. She needs his help. And we have a bit of a sort of introduction to Murphy and what she is in this area.

Baloreilly (40:24)
Vampire attacks, troll maraudings, and fairy abductions of children didn't fit very neatly on a police report. But at the same time, people got attacked, infants got stolen, property was damaged or destroyed, and someone had to look into it. In Chicago, or pretty much anywhere in Chicagoland. That person was Karen Murphy. I was her library of the supernatural on legs and a paid consultant for the police department.

Two bodies? Two deaths by means unknown? I hadn't handled anything like that for her before.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:02)
This makes me wonder, like, what has he handled for her before this point? Like, it's described that he's, you know, been working with her for a while, and, she's got him as a consultant already on the payroll, et cetera. But he's describing here he's never handled two bodies by means unknown. I'm guessing before he's found like...

he referenced vampire attacks and things like that. So maybe they found a body with vampire bites or something to that effect. But this time it's two bodies. So it's not just a lone hunter of the night that he's familiar with. It's something else that's going on. And that makes him a little bit nervous.

Baloreilly (41:41)
Right, and we know that a restoration of faith has canonically happened before Stormfront. That's where Harry and Murphy meet for the first time. They rescue a girl from a troll. So we know.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:46)
Mm-hmm.

And for those

who don't remember, that's a short story from the Side Jobs book.

Baloreilly (41:54)
Yes,

and you can also actually get it for free on the web. So that's when they've met and they know they've handled troll maraudings. I think that we can assume Harry talks up the first several books how his real skill is thaumaturgy. That's what he's really good at. We see all his evocation, but thaumaturgy is what he's really good at. So you figure that a lot of what he's done for the police department is locating stuff that's been taken. It's probably not all missing children.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:57)
there you go.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (42:22)
It's probably the supernatural equivalent of a magpie broken into a jewelry store kind of thing. We can expect that special investigations, but just careful about this. It's not homicide, right? So they're not just getting crimes that involve people dying or being seriously injured. They're getting anything that's too weird for everybody else. So it's probably we can infer thaumaturgical skills that Harry's been employing and the

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:27)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (42:50)
and that's why it's such a big plot point later, the actual like, how did somebody murder someone with magic stuff has not come up before.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (42:58)
Yeah, I think, because it lists the things here that he's basically helped her against supernatural predators, but not against any sorcerers or anybody using magic in a way that would require police attention. So that's an interesting element of the world that we're learning here. And she then goes on to say, hey, come to the Madison 10th floor. You know, I'll instruct them to let you up. See you in 15 minutes. And Harry has to say, said, I looked at the clock.

Monica No Last Name would be here in little more than 45 minutes, I've sort of got an appointment. Dresden, I've got a pair of bodies with no leads and no spot specs and a killer walking around. Your appointment can wait.

Baloreilly (43:41)
So something that's great about this is that Murphy and Dresden are really similar, which is part of why they butt heads in the early books so much. Dresden is somebody who, we've already kind of seen hints of it, thinks that what he thinks is right is what's gotta happen because it would be wrong to do otherwise. Murphy's the same way. She doesn't know what the appointment's about, but it's not as important as two bodies. So the fact that she's...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:48)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (44:10)
somebody who demands that what she thinks is right must happen is the reason why, and it's not always handled the most deftly as a interpersonal dynamic, but it's the reason why they do butt heads so often in, you know, one, two, and three on the series list.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (44:27)
That's a really good insight. Yeah, righteous is how I would describe both of them, how they view themselves. And certainly we see Harry in righteous anger several times, but just righteous in general of like, I'm doing the right thing. And sometimes they're both righteous about something. And then one of them has to say, okay, but mine involves two dead bodies and probably killed by magic. And Harry has to go,

actually maybe that is more important, right? He has to have the humility to say, well, yeah, I didn't know that part. I should definitely do something about that. I also really like the sets up there, they're dynamic, they're sort of cop duo dynamic, where he says, I've sort of got an appointment and she says, Dresden, I've sort of got a pair of corpses. So like that sort of banter back and forth, we see that throughout the whole series and they kind of use it as a defense mechanism too, especially in the

parts of these chapters where she's bringing him up to this floor and he can see that she's nervous and they both sort of just sort of talk about this using this cop banter style without actually talking a lot of substance because of their nerves. It's how they handle it.

Baloreilly (45:36)
And that's a really good point because we don't know how many times Murphy's been to a crime scene like this either. I mean, she's a lieutenant in the police. She's obviously seen some things, but we're gonna get to it. This is pretty brutal. One thing that I wanna mention you brought up is that Harry does come around. He says, okay, I'll be there. He shows up. And that really does differentiate him because there's other characters in the series, Ebenezer as one easy, prominent example, who are not even the bad guys. They're the good guys.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (45:59)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (46:04)
You can put quotes around that to whatever extent you want to, but they're mostly on the side of the angels and they're not flexible. Harry has this really unique combination that I think, Butcher wants us to think is good and that I do think is good, where he is stubborn and he sticks to his guns about his beliefs and he really does care about doing what he thinks is right. But if you can convince him that, no, actually,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:12)
Hmm

Baloreilly (46:31)
You know, pause, think about it for a second. What I'm telling you to do is actually, what's more right, he will let himself be convinced.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:40)
Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with how you talk to Harry, right? I think we might've mentioned it earlier, Harry, if you give Harry attitude, he is more than willing to give it right back to you. especially when the bad guys talk to him, it's often in a very condescending and demanding way. And what do they get? They get nothing. They get obstinate, stubborn Harry. But...

Baloreilly (46:44)
Hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:04)
When somebody that he knows or somebody is politely asking and explaining to him properly, he is willing to hear them out. He is not just going to stubbornly dig his heels in if they are right on the topic. He will think about what they said, he will process it, and it may in fact change his mind. That's a very important distinction, I think. And I think a lot of it has to do with how you talk to Harry. He will not be willing to listen to you if you do it in a shitty way, more or less.

So the last part of this chapter is just him setting down the details of, gotta be back here by 2 30 and I'm gonna go see Murphy and try to help with this thing. It's a couple of blocks away. And the last line on the chapter is probably even better than the first line. Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face. Which is a fun Dresden twist on the, know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you thing.

Baloreilly (48:00)
we'll see later on that, you know, how are you being paranoid in chapter one of Stormfront? Hardly. Come on, paranoia. You gotta nurture that talent. That's gonna grow.

So there's a lot to dig into in chapter one. We're not always gonna spend this much time on this amount of text, but we're gonna actually stop our discussion here. And we're gonna talk about a bit of a bigger question that we have after reading chapter, and that looks ahead to the next chapter a little bit.

We're gonna call this our questions for

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:35)
does Harry go when he needs information? He goes to ask Bob. So that's what we're gonna be, we're gonna take our hand at trying to be Bob and answering these questions. So the first one we wanna discuss on this episode is why doesn't Harry just prove that he's a wizard?

So in the first chapter, we saw him being kind of humiliated when the mailman doesn't believe that he's a wizard. And I get why he, in that situation, would say, it's not worth trying to demonstrate to this guy. He's just gonna be, he's not an important person in my life, whatever. He's just gonna go. But in the second chapter, we see him interacting with Murphy and with Murphy's partner, Carmichael, Detective Carmichael, who is very skeptical of Harry.

And in that situation, and in a lot of other situations throughout the book, it sometimes seems like A, Harry feels very bad, humiliated, shamed, whatever, when people treat him like he's a fraud, because he does not think he is, obviously, right? So why doesn't he just prove it in those important situations? So, Brian, why don't you answer first? What do you think is the reason for this?

Baloreilly (49:48)
So I think there's two. I think one of them is very practical with the mailman. How do you prove it? You tell him, okay, hold this candle, I'm gonna light it. So what does he immediately think? it's a trick candle. Because that's what a normal person would suspect. it's a trick candle. You you're a magician. You're not a wizard, you're a magician. So the lens that he'd have to go to to actually convince somebody are.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:00)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (50:10)
It just, you know, on average, probably pretty elaborate. It would probably take a little while every time. And it's just impractical for him to do that for everyone. But that leads to this larger question of like, okay, so don't prove it to the mailman. Why don't you spend some time convincing Carmichael? And, and, right.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:13)
Hmm.

He's important, he's

the partner of the woman that pays a lot of your rent. So like, why can't you take him aside one day and say, I know you don't believe it, but watch, here, I'm gonna call up some wind, I'm gonna do this fire thing, you know, we're gonna go to a junkyard and I'm gonna destroy some stuff with fire. You pick and I will do it. I can't hide explosives in this junkyard just to, you go over, examine that car.

Find the explosive. There's not, I'm gonna blow it up. Like it seems like there should be a way to do it.

Baloreilly (50:56)
Right, so my background, I have a degree in economics. I think it would be like if I tried to, every time I saw somebody explain something that had to do with economics in a way that just was bad, didn't make sense, know, every time your dad says something that doesn't make sense about, fiscal policy at the dinner table, if I tried to correct them. And psychologically, one, I don't want to because I'm afraid that regardless of how much I say,

they're just always gonna rationalize a reason not to believe me. that that, you know, it's just not like, doesn't matter that they acknowledge that they think that I'm, bright and that I know things and this is my specialty. I can't actually be right when it comes to the stuff that's important to them emotionally, right? So if somebody's skepticism is important to them emotionally, Harry probably feels like he's never gonna be able to pierce that veil. But also, what if I was trying to explain economics, not to somebody who...

knew that was a thing that people studied and got degrees in. But to somebody who, you know, had never even heard the word before, what if I was going to go to an uncontacted tribe in Brazil and try to explain, Pareto equilibrium or, the, you know, why it makes sense to trade, you know, mutton for wine, even if you're better at producing both, you know, you record and exchange stuff like stuff that like,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:16)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (52:19)
If you take an Econ 101, you might even know it already, right? But to somebody who just lives in a world where this is not real, where does somebody who knows this inside and out actually start to prove it, right? For Harry, he probably wants to do thaumaturgy or something. That's where, I'll show you that I can do take this thing, give it to a dog, him run away, and I'll be able to find the dog. that's a, just make a fire, man. But that doesn't even really occur to him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:33)
Right.

Baloreilly (52:49)
because he's always, as a sort of conscious adult human being, he's always lived in the world of economics being real, of magic being real, of it being a thing. Like, it doesn't really occur to him of how he properly could convince somebody.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:06)
Yeah, he doesn't

remember what it's like to not believe in it. That's an interesting idea. Yeah, because for example, if you see someone who's deeply into any given subject, sometimes they are not good teachers.

Baloreilly (53:10)
Mm-mm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:20)
Whereas someone who has just recently learned that subject is a much better teacher because they know what it's like to learn it. They did it just recently. They have the understanding of the person they're talking to. So that's a very good point. Another speculation that I have had is maybe Harry has tried to prove it before and it's just always gone badly. Like people, like you said, people didn't believe him or...

he just got more humiliated in the end because they didn't believe even after he showed it to them. And just, he just makes him depressed every time that he tries to prove it and it fails. So he doesn't even bother trying anymore. He kind of flinches away from even bothering with that.

It's like you either believe me you don't. I'm not even gonna bother. Like that's kind of my own speculation. Like just imagine what his life has been like leading to this moment. He's probably run into situations where he's wanted to prove himself and maybe as a younger man, he did just try and it always seemed to make things worse so he just stopped trying.

Baloreilly (54:16)
Yeah, and think that there's also, you know, the highly advertised in the yellow pages. We know that the White Council doesn't stop him from doing so, even though they don't exactly approve. I think that we get the impression from the books, it's never quite stated, that there is a soft masquerade in the sense of there's no rules about being able to clue people in or not being able to clue people in. But if you, on a mass scale, tried to clue people in,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Baloreilly (54:46)
the supernatural, somebody would come for you. So I think practically Harry knows he can't prove it to everybody who would be in his interest to prove it to. On the one hand because they won't believe him and he doesn't know how to do it right, but on the other hand because if he succeeded at doing it he'd actually get into more trouble.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:48)
Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, and so another piece of this is that it's very satisfying when we finally see in Battlegrounds, he proves it to people that are skeptical because he gets the knight's mantle, the banner where he gets his people following him and he tries to explain that he's a wizard and there's that guy, Randy, who says something along the lines of, wait, you think you're a wizard? And he's like, yes, I'm a wizard. And then later he demonstrates it by like,

throwing a bolt of lightning at a tree and exploding it. And Randy goes, we got a wizard, yeah. Like just, it's very satisfying to see them cheer him on at that moment because he's acting as their champion. Because this whole time he has been really resisting.

the urge to show off and prove it to people so that when he finally does it 17 books later, it's very satisfying to read. Any other thoughts on this before I go to the fan commentary?

Baloreilly (56:04)
Yeah, so that's a great point for one thing. And also let's think about what's different in that circumstance. nobody's gonna come for Harry for, you know, showing, right? Yeah. And then two, you know, at that point, Harry's a much older man. He's a father. He's become, Molly's been his apprentice already. He's become someone teaches people about magic. He's just not that person yet.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:13)
Yeah, you're right.

Yeah. All right, so this question was asked on the r slash dresden files subreddit and I found a couple of answers that I think were also very insightful and interesting. Three main sort of threads of answers to this question popped out. The first one was, why doesn't just prove it? To gain an advantage. In many of the situations we see the

Mundane's, the normies, will underestimate him because they don't believe he's a wizard. He can then use what he is to get out of handcuffs or whatever to escape from a situation because they didn't properly put him under running water like Nicodemus does to shut him down if they got him captive. So Space Monkey 877 properly described that.

Another answer was to avoid a worse situation. I kind of alluded this to this earlier, but Sarcastic Kenobi and Error 404 both said something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing,

If you demonstrate magic and actually succeed in convincing the audience it is real, you have a high chance of wind up in a worse situation than if the person just thought you were a charlatan. You go from an annoying human who might just be humiliating you on a personal level to dealing with a babbling idiot whose entire worldview was just shattered. And if you're in the middle of like a situation where you need these people get out of harm's way,

just convincing them to go is much easier than, yes, I'm a wizard, magic is real, and like, you also have to run. having that existential crisis in the middle of another crisis is bad. So that's another good answer. And Jimbo the Risen Clown came up with another one that I'm entitling because fuck you, that's why. A lot of people are answering with very rational answers, but let's be honest, folks, this is Harry we're talking about. He's frequently stubborn, contrarian, and obstetuous.

Obst... Trep-erous. he likely doesn't prove that he's a wizard because it galls him to have to prove something to anyone. And this is me interrupting, especially people that are being kind of rude to him. If someone accuses him being a liar or mockingly asks him for proof,

Baloreilly (58:22)
streperous.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (58:37)
that they don't think he could provide, he's going to dig in his ears, surely because he's partly a contrarian. Honestly, if someone was polite about asking for proof, he'd probably give it to them, but how often has that ever happened? Thanks, Jimbo. That's actually a really good point that a lot of other people didn't point out.

Baloreilly (58:50)

Yeah, when he started that answer, I was like, well, that's a little bit silly. It's not just because of that. And he convinced me he wouldn't be over in the end. Definitely. That's, yeah. If somebody actually did politely ask him, hey, can you prove it to me? He totally would. I'm a thousand percent one.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:07)
Yep. And our question next time, is Marcon actually preferable to the alternative? Because the books, and maybe Harry and maybe some other characters, sort of argue that Marcon is better than Chaos and Gang Wars, but is that really the case? So we're gonna try to answer that. I'm gonna post this question to the Reddit. This podcast probably won't be released before...

that actually gets posted but we're gonna try to post these questions to the subreddit, and we'll also have an email address that you guys can try to answer us on these questions, so we'll have some listener contributions to each question that we talk about at the end of the episode. So, hope to see you guys there next time. For Brian, I am Adam, saying goodnight and have a good one.