the Wikkid podcast

Santa brings Covid for Christmas. Drums recorded in absentia . Barns burn down. Friends in neglectful, controlling and abusive relationships. The possibility of helping these friends with being drawn in too much. Is partner abuse something only men do? Trying to play guitar like Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols. Additional Musicians George Turcotte: drums

Kissing and telling. Michael Vedder and I discuss what it is to be a fundamentalist lad trying to navigate hookup culture without exactly hooking up. Wife application forms. Meghan tells us how things ended up with her Brethren paramour. Anson and I talk about being in the same room as people, but with your attention in cyberspace. Trucks get stuck in snowy laneways. It gets a little country in he...

Warning: the following program contains frank discussion of people trying to find sexual gratification in both church and hookup culture, within, and outside, the bounds of wedlocks both holy and infernal. Viewers are advised to thank me later. Meghan talks about sexual chemistry, and whether hookup culture serves dudes better than dames. Evan gives an economist's perspective on investing in a fut...

Trying to date irreligious or only semi-religious women without getting kicked out of one's church. A song written for a high tech honey, which was fairly well received. I turn my guitar amp all the way up to three (its highest setting is six). Meghan spills the tea on her secret trysts with a member of the mysterious Plymouth Brethren Christian Church/Cult. Susan and Anson weight in on workplace...

Flirting. With Christian girls? Can you win a woman's heart with a song? Michael Vedder shares some firsts, including first (church) girlfriend, and first dumping of a committed church girl so he could be free to get his feet dirty enough from walking around in the actual world to possibly need to wash them. Harold talks about how a man who was the only survivor of a car accident when he was five,...

This week’s episode takes a frank, uncomfortable look at the mechanics of sexual attraction and mate selection, particularly in church communities, and an equally frank, uncomfortable look at the mechanics of trying to have spirituality despite the objections of… well… religious people If you're 30 and you don't think you're ever going to have a bridal shower or any baby showers, can you just thro...

This week's episode is about divorce: people who've been through them, and people not allowed to have them because church, stuff like that. Some homes manage all the domestic drama and drywall damage without the divorce proceedings. Additional Musicians Evan Sauve: drums

For season 4 of The Wikkid Podcast , love is in the air (as things tend to be when they blow up). This episode explores that thing we tell young people that "there's someone for everyone," or in the Christian circles "the Lord has someone picked out for you to spend the rest of you life with." Author and actress Susan Isaacs (Angry Conversations With God) contributes to this season. Additional Mus...

The entire host of Wikkid commenters weighs in about pointless arguments, and about whether they ever speak with, or listen to, people with whom they RILLY, RILLY disagree. Groupthink. George Carlin, Larry Norman and Faust are mentioned. Jam at George's new place. I get an electric piano. Jenny speaks Chinese for us. The huge, sprawling Death in Tiny Spoonfuls album is brought to an eerie, atmosph...

Church zombies. Staff meetings and other endless sermons. Melody, Ruth and Emilee talk about what made these unceasing dronings so tedious. Michael remembers what it was like to speak up in bible study, and talk about talking about talking about the bible. Johann talks about how staff meetings should be run. Kim talks about what being a preacher's daughter was like (spoilers: it sucked) and what h...

They're everywhere. You want to do your day, and they want to pull you in, online or uptown, into some kind of lecture, sermon or talk. Putting on the full armour of God and then claiming to be as thin-skinned as the princess from The Princess and the Pea. Friends: The One Where Ross Does Something Problematic. The shameless use of describing one's self in "light" (vs. "dark") and "awakened" (vs....

Recording cello. With fireworks. An in-depth interview with John, raised in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, the extremist offshoot of my own birth culture, which I have no real trouble calling an outright cult. Also much insight into the Mormon experience, from Natalie. South Park. Emailed drums. Spiritual cripples looking to hobble everyone nearby.

It's pretty hard to talk to people when they've got you cast in a different story from the one you feel you're living. Religious groups that split up family relationships. Trying to interact with family and friends from a group that's kicked you out of it. The difference between getting kicked out and leaving voluntarily. Playing with Plato. Narcissism and gnosticism.

If you had a chance to sit down of an evening and have a chat with the residents of a community graveyard, what would you ask them? The Guy Code. GenXers sorry to get everything we always wanted. People who will move heaven and earth to avoid having conversations that need to be had. Additional Musicians George Turcotte: drums

What makes you really feel alive? What makes you feel like you're sleepwalking through a living death? The importance of play. What works when you feel like crap? Where does inspiration come from?

What's it like to experience suicidal ideation? Many people do. Finding a good answer to the question "Why not?" Why does writing and singing and recording about dark thoughts help them go away? Everyone needs to deal with death in some form, from time to time. What works? Jay Semko of The Northern Pikes and I go over songs he's written that tell "a pretty dark story, but with a happy tune." Where...

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

Is evil a thing? Are some people, and do some people do, evil? (What did John Douglas, the man who invented the profiling of serial killers for the FBI think?) When you realize your fear and disgust, respect and acceptance responses are programmed into you. Additional Musicians George Turcotte: drums and "alright!" Dave Whelen and Joel D'amour: voices in sound montage

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

Pleasure, joy and happiness. Targets for offense, shame and "correction"? Why? Is enjoying a thing "idolatry" and cheating on God? Is getting annoyed about anything that brings other people joy, but not you, more common than we want to admit? Do we all have an inner Grinch? (we do.) Pop music, Harry Potter, gym selfies, TV, comic books and pants... the things we gave up to keep our church status....

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

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

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

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

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