Rewired

Matt Stine and Jaye Anne Beringer

We left the systems. We're finding what's alive. rewiredshow.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Sep 30

    Episode 011: A Race Car in the Red

    There is a kind of tired that sleep does not touch, and this episode is ninety minutes of two people circling it. The card came up world-weary — a woman on a throne with a whiskey in her hand and her eyes closed, shutting out the noise long enough to hear something. Then a second card turned up uninvited, the one Matt says has been stalking him. Between them they name the thing: the exhaustion is not personal. It was built. Card: Queen of Blues (Queen of Cups) — Rhythm and Soul Tarot, Stacy Williams-Ng. Illustrated after Bessie Smith. The deck is a southern deck. Stacy Williams-Ng looked at the four suits and wondered whether the four principal American musics would map onto them — blues for cups, obviously — and then found out they did. Every card has a song. There is a Spotify playlist. Matt has been reading from it daily since Mystic South turned him toward land and ancestors, and he notes, with the particular delight of a thing confirming itself, that the Magician in this deck is a conjure man. The Queen of Blues is Bessie Smith, gown and fur coat, glass of whiskey, looking — as Jaye Anne puts it — like the end of a long hard day. Come at me, bro. I don't even care. And that turns out to be the safe thing about her: she is too tired to spin up drama, so what's left is the actual question. What do you need? Her song is "I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama," which Matt plays on mic, and which is three minutes of a woman declining to keep doing this. Then the Four of Swords shows up, because of course it does. In this deck the swords are guitars, and the sleeping figure will not rest unless the guitar and the notepad are within reach — blades coming down into her head from the headboard. Not the peaceful RWS effigy. This reluctant, forced rest. I went so hard that I passed out while I was still going. Matt: that is not just a card for me, that is a card for the world right now. From there it widens, and the widening is the episode. If everyone is running in the red, who benefits? Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * All mutable signs, terrible spatial awareness, and an elbow sliced open at 3 a.m. on a half-wall in Savannah * An Airbnb that used to be an 1800s Episcopal church — original stained glass, three-story ceiling, air conditioning losing badly * Bonaventure Cemetery, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: a hoodoo woman on retainer to curse the judge, the DA and the jury * Lughnasadh, Lugh the master of all trades, fidchell, and the Irish folk band that shares the name * The Rhythm and Soul Tarot — four musical genres mapped to four suits, a song for every card, and a conjure man for the Magician * The Queen of Blues as Bessie Smith: too tired to spin up drama, which is exactly what makes her approachable * "I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama," played on mic, and the case for everyone calming down about a third of the way * The Four of Swords in guitars — rest you only get by collapsing, and why that is a card for the world and not just for Matt * Aéropostale on Thanksgiving: a thirteen-hour shift with no break, a five-minute break taken proudly, and learning what gets praised * Ninety hours a week to sell life insurance, and whose pocket the ninetieth hour actually lands in * Reading 1800–1850 and finding it sounds suspiciously like now — artisans displaced, and a new argument about who the enemy is * "Slavery denigrates white labor" — the tell that the fight was never about the master * White Trash, manufactured division, and an uprising coordinated over Discord that took nobody's life * Gödel, Bertrand Russell, and the proof that a complete system will generate statements it cannot resolve * Jaye Anne's reframe: logic is an air trait, not an earth trait — it only feels solid because it is moving * The letter B, the Buddhism class, and the several weeks it took a room to understand consensus hallucination * Why you do not want to kill the ego, and why the necessary thing is often the thing we dislike * Dream work, and the only question that matters: what does it mean to you * Chaos magic as the scientific method pointed at your own life * Is killing always wrong — and the West Wing episode about not being conscious for your own worst moment * Yellow fever in Memphis, bodies in the street, and the argument that we are doing better than we feel * The performance review as a loyalty test, and the question the episode ends on: how do you opt out? Lines that landed * I went so hard that I passed out while I was still going. — Matt * That's not just a card for me. That's a card for the world right now. — Matt * Everybody's going hard as a m**********r all the time. Just trying to get through the week. — Matt * I'm like a race car in the red. You know what happens when a race car gets in the red and you keep going? It's gonna blow. — Matt * I'm too tired to spin up drama. What do you need? — Jaye Anne * It's gonna be all right. It's not gonna be fun, but it's gonna be all right. — Matt * To get an A at life, just ignore your own bodily needs. — Jaye Anne * Did you die, Jaye Anne? — Matt * Your master's not your enemy — it's actually each other. — Matt * They're too busy fighting each other to unite against the real problem. — Jaye Anne * Stop searching for something that doesn't exist. — Matt * Logic is not an earth trait. It is an air trait. Everything comes literally out of thin air. — Jaye Anne * There is no stillness in the air. — Jaye Anne * It is a consensus hallucination. — Matt * The ego is absolutely necessary. You do not want to kill the ego. You want to understand the ego. — Matt * The most important question is: what does it mean to you? — Jaye Anne * Is killing always wrong? I cannot answer that question. I don't think that question has an answer. — Matt * You got asked to wear a mask, not be burned. That's an improvement. — Matt * Not only do I have to do my job, but I also have to perform. — Matt * I just want to opt out of the machine. How do you just opt out? — Matt * The cards have a funny way of making you talk about the thing that you actually need to talk about. — Matt * Stay tuned to yourself. — Jaye Anne Referenced * Rhythm and Soul Tarot — Stacy Williams-Ng; a southern deck mapping blues, jazz, gospel and soul to the four suits, with a song for every card and a companion Spotify playlist * Bessie Smith, "I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama" — the Queen of Blues' song, played on mic * Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil — John Berendt; the 1997 film with Kevin Spacey and John Cusack, and how Spacey got House of Cards * Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah — active since the 1700s, above-ground crypts in the marshland * Lughnasadh / Lúnasa — Lugh, master of every trade; fidchell, the Irish game nobody has fully reconstructed; and the trad band Lúnasa * Kurt Gödel — the incompleteness theorems, and Bertrand Russell's attempt to derive all of mathematics formally * White Trash — Nancy Isenberg (Jaye Anne couldn't place the author on mic); manufactured racism and sexism as class control * A recent uprising coordinated over Discord — leaders arrested rather than killed, looters made to give it back, families protected (Jaye Anne thought Nepal, unconfirmed on air) * The West Wing — the PTSD episode, and not being conscious for your own worst moment * Pulp Fiction — the race car in the red * Mystic South — the turn toward land, ancestors and conjure * The Memphis yellow fever epidemic — bodies piled in the street, and the spots where it happened What we left unresolved Nearly all of it, and Matt says so out loud: I have no idea if this podcast made any sense to anybody. It felt very much like soul bearing more so than actually talking through something. Whether logic was discovered or invented, and whether that distinction even does any work. Whether there is any version of engaging with the machine that is not simply performing for it. Whether "things are better than they were" is perspective or anesthetic — Jaye Anne holds both, and does not collapse them. And the one the whole episode circles without landing: if you cannot go at half speed and get half the result, and the only available setting is all-in, then what exactly is the move? Matt asks how you opt out. Nobody answers. Jaye Anne takes it home instead by pointing back inward — stay tuned to yourself — which is either the answer or the only thing anyone can actually do on a Tuesday. Chapters 0:00 — Ten episodes in, and everything's mutable 5:54 — Savannah: an Airbnb that used to be a church 9:50 — Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 15:04 — Lughnasadh, Lugh, and the pull toward older things 17:20 — The Rhythm and Soul Tarot and the Queen of Blues 22:59 — Bessie Smith, and everybody's frantic 28:43 — The Four of Swords has been stalking me 30:32 — A race car in the red 32:36 — The Protestant work ethic and the thirteen-hour shift 37:15 — 1800 to 1850 sounds suspiciously like now 40:08 — The real enemy nobody's fighting 48:33 — Gödel: stop looking for certainty 49:55 — Logic is an air trait, not an earth trait 54:52 — Consensus hallucination and the necessary ego 60:37 — Chaos magic is the scientific method on life 63:41 — Is killing always wrong? 69:45 — Better off than we think 81:31 — How do you opt out of the machine? ~1h24 · One moment: Matt holding up the Four of Swords — guitars for blades, a woman who won't sleep without the notepad in reach — and saying it isn't his card, it's everyone's right now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 011: A Race Car in the Red
  2. Sep 29

    Episode 010: Fighting for the Three

    There is a version of the vampire that stopped being a monster somewhere in the last century and started being a mirror. Not the thing out there you drive a stake through — the thing in here that has to take something from someone in order to keep going. That's the whole episode. The card just got there first. Matt showed up in a black shirt, dark nails, hair slicked back, holding an Edgar Allan Poe mug, and said he'd been drawn to dark things all day. Jaye Anne clocked it immediately. The deck came out — a deck he's used maybe three times, rediscovered because he redid the closet and can finally see what he owns — and the Knight of Swords landed: a vampire warrior mid-leap, blades already thrown. Direct, intense, impulsive. They act first and ask questions later, or never. Then the guidebook — the Codex, which Matt would like to bring back as a word — hands over the real subject. Pagan author and journalist Margot Adler studied vampire fiction and named the modern ones moral vampires: powerful creatures struggling desperately to do what is right. And the passage that stopped him cold: that description holds up a dark mirror to modern human beings. We have wondrous technology paid for by draining the planet and the people at the bottom of it. The vampire has to do the same thing, constantly, or cease to exist. We just do it slowly enough to not feel it. From there it gets tangled, which is the point. Every ethical exit is also a door onto someone else's harm. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * Ten episodes into a show that wasn't an idea in January — and nobody on this call has mowed a lawn this century * Y2K nostalgia as a diagnostic: no data centers in the eighties, one Apple II in the corner of the office, and neon on every Kmart * "Adulting is an outfit I put on" — being good at things you actively dislike * The Tarot of the Vampires arrives, and the Knight of Swords with it * Margot Adler's moral vampire, and the dark mirror it holds up * Kill Amazon: a thought experiment that eats its own tail, then does it again with return-to-office and converted real estate * A Civil War reenactment where a seven-year-old asks who the good guys are and gets the wrong answer, confidently * The evangelism class, and a testimony that only works below the Mason-Dixon line * Inconsistent ethics — everyone has them, including whoever is currently invoking theirs at you * Punitive versus restorative, and why sometimes you don't want to restore anybody * Mystic South, the pull toward something older, and conjure's Bible as the primary spell book * The Buddhabrot, sacred geometry, and the line between "everything is connected" and homogenizing someone else's tradition * The rabbis, the midrash, and the permission to never resolve the tension * A pendant that says warrior in ancient Irish, and the archetype Matt spent years trying to push away Lines that landed * That description holds up a dark mirror to modern human beings. — Matt * We are consuming the lifeblood of the planet, but we're doing it so slowly we can't tell that we're bleeding it to death. — Matt * Sometimes you're the one providing the blood and sometimes you're the one consuming the blood. And sometimes you're both. — Matt * Sometimes you suck your own blood. — Jaye Anne * The only thing that is absolutely constant is the fact that nothing is absolutely constant. — Matt * Maybe I'm the bad guy. Why would I be the bad guy? How would I grapple with this? And sort of humanizing that monster — I think that's integration. — Jaye Anne * The anti-hero is in here. — Matt * Good people do bad things and bad people can do good things and it's really hard to know for sure what you're dealing with. — Jaye Anne * I'm gonna air quotes every single time I say right or wrong on this show. — Matt * When I run away, the people I don't like always win. — Matt * I don't see a lot of people who are fighting for anything like the third alternative. A lot of people fighting for the one and the two. Not a lot of people fighting for the three. — Matt * The integration. — Jaye Anne Referenced * Tarot of the Vampires — Charles Harrington, illustrated by Craig Maher; guidebook Codex of the Vampires * Margot Adler — pagan author and journalist, her study of vampire fiction and the "moral vampire" * Interview with the Vampire / The Vampire Chronicles, Dark Shadows, Buffy, True Blood, Twilight — the tormented-hero lineage * Breaking Bad — Walter White's wardrobe going dark as he does * The Buddhabrot — the fractal set whose forms echo Buddhist, Christian, Celtic and Indian sacred art * Mystic South — and the turn toward ancestral, conjure and folk-magic material * Midrash — the rabbinic practice of asking without resolving * Savannah: the oldest Torah scroll in the United States, afternoon squalls, and a little fan that keeps the flies off What we left unresolved Basically everything, on purpose. Whether there is any such thing as an ethical choice once you follow the consequences far enough. Whether "everything is archetypally connected" is an insight or just what white people do to indigenous traditions. Whether the third alternative is a real position or just a way of refusing the first two. Matt: all I can think about most of the time is that there is no answer. Jaye Anne, on the Buddhabrot: you can't fully define it. You can't put it in a box. The show is the asking. The card just showed up dressed for it. Chapters 0:00 — Ten episodes in, still figuring it out 3:02 — The eighties were not twenty years ago 6:23 — Adulting is an outfit I put on 7:20 — Pulling from the Tarot of the Vampires 17:34 — The Knight of Swords: direct, intense, impulsive 20:41 — The vampire as tormented hero 22:03 — A dark mirror to modern human beings 25:08 — Kill Amazon and see what happens 30:38 — Ethics is not easy — it might be impossible 35:27 — Who are the good guys? 45:22 — I have inconsistent ethics. So do you. 50:06 — Mystic South, conjure, and the Bible as spell book 59:00 — The rabbis never resolve the midrash 72:30 — The warrior I tried to push away 73:52 — Fighting for the three ~1h16 · One moment: Matt pulling a pendant toward the camera — ohm on one side, warrior in ancient Irish on the other — to explain the part of himself he spent years trying to put down. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 010: Fighting for the Three
  3. Sep 13

    Episode 009: FROM THE VAULT - You Can't Cut the Magnet

    This is a dispatch from the vault: an unreleased episode of Matt’s old show, Contemplating Resonance, and the very first time he and Jaye Anne ever talked on a microphone. He’s hosting; she’s the guest — an energy healer there to talk self-healing, surprising self-care, and the divine feminine. Neither of them knew it yet, but this conversation is the seed that became Rewired. The through-line is the divine feminine and the long project of getting it back. Jaye Anne — an energy healer since 2015, and, like Matt, raised deep in the church — lays out how so many of us were trained into the masculine and cut off from the feminine, how both men and women are missing their initiation rituals, and how the only emotions we were allowed were the ones you could point at a battle. From there it goes into the body: feedback loops, the heroine’s journey, “the slippery slope that saved my life,” boundaries, and the real engine of change — rewriting the subconscious programming running underneath food and money and exhaustion. It’s warmer and more forward-facing than the Rewired format that grew out of it, but the DNA is unmistakable: two people thinking out loud, a card pulled before they begin, and her north star line — hurt people hurt people, and healed people inspire others. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * New vault intro (0:00) — Matt welcomes Rewired listeners and frames where this came from * Meeting on mic for the first time: the Falken’s Mage name, Hana O’Neill’s word-of-the-year card for Matt (”Boundaries”), and pulling Star Mother from the Work Your Light oracle — “you can’t make this up” * Jaye Anne’s path — an energy healer since 2015 — and the super-Christian upbringing she and Matt both survived * You can’t cut the magnet: masculine and feminine as one inseparable polarity, and the “feminine is the data, masculine is the program” metaphor * Missing our initiation rituals; the only emotions allowed were the ones you could channel into battle; the church’s problem with the feminine * Feedback loops in the body — positive and negative — and creation as a feminine act (a baby, a book, a spell, a whatever) * The heroine’s journey and “the slippery slope that saved my life” * Boundaries: how to ask for what you actually need * Who’s running the show — rewriting subconscious programming under food, money, relationships, and a whole culture living in deep exhaustion * “Being reprogrammed by myself — highly recommend, ten out of ten”; bad things happen, and healing is a wave * Energy work vs. traditional therapy, herbal tea as genuine magic, and the sign-off that accidentally predicted this whole show Lines that landed * “You cannot cut the magnet. You can’t think about anything outside the context of masculine and feminine.” — Jaye Anne * “For anyone who’s a computer nerd: the feminine is the data, the storage. The masculine is the program that runs it.” — Jaye Anne * “The only emotions that were allowed were the ones you could somehow channel into battle.” — Matt * “Being reprogrammed by myself? Highly recommend. Ten out of ten.” — Matt * “It was the slippery slope that saved my life.” — Jaye Anne * “Hurt people hurt people. And healed people inspire others.” — Jaye Anne Referenced * Contemplating Resonance — Matt’s prior podcast (this is an unreleased episode from that run) * Work Your Light Oracle (card pulled: Star Mother) & The Starseed Oracle — Rebecca Campbell (decks in play) * Hana O’Neill — pulled Matt’s word-of-the-year card two years running (this year: “Boundaries”) * “Hurt people hurt people / healed people inspire others” — Jaye Anne’s core frame * The heroine’s journey (as distinct from the hero’s journey); muscle testing / applied kinesiology * Nervous-system regulation and subconscious reprogramming * How I Met Your Mother (the “shatter” perception gag) What we left unresolved This one resolves more than it leaves open — it’s a healing conversation, forward-facing by nature. The real dangling thread is the one neither of them could see at the time: they sign off with “we’ll just have to do another one of Contemplating Resonance,” two people who’d only just met sensing there was more here. There was. The “another one” became Rewired — which makes this episode less an open question than a quiet origin story you only recognize in hindsight. Chapters 0:00 — From the vault: welcome to Rewired 2:03 — Contemplating Resonance: meeting Jaye Anne & pulling Star Mother 10:08 — Jaye Anne’s path: energy healer & a shared Christian upbringing 16:17 — You can’t cut the magnet: the divine feminine & masculine 30:59 — Missing our initiation rituals: emotions, war metaphors & the church 46:59 — Feedback loops in the body: creation, positive & negative 55:06 — The slippery slope that saved my life 1:08:59 — Boundaries: asking for what you actually need 1:16:19 — Who’s running the show: rewriting subconscious programming 1:28:08 — Reprogrammed by myself, ten out of ten 1:32:34 — Energy work vs. therapy, herbs as magic & “let’s do another one” ~1h44 · One moment: they close with “we’ll just have to do another one of Contemplating Resonance” — with no idea the “another one” would become this show. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 009: FROM THE VAULT - You Can't Cut the Magnet
  4. Aug 30

    Episode 008: When Do We Bare Our Teeth?

    Matt pulls Strength as a jumper (it fell face-up) from the Symdala Tarot, a round mandala deck whose guidebook gives every card a one-word activation. Strength’s word: ferocity. Leo, the Sun, fire, Kabbalistic mercy and severity — and, as it happens, Jupiter sauntering into Leo on Matt’s own Jupiter return. The card doesn’t name the topic so much as the temperature, and this one runs hot. The heat comes from a Threads fight Matt wandered into: is AI conscious, and — more to the point — is a witch allowed to ask? That cracks open the real subject: the AI purity war in spiritual spaces, and the shadow underneath it. Condemn AI as capitalist extraction while typing the condemnation on an AI-laced phone; brand the tool evil because it can be misused. Matt’s counter is the spine of the episode — “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it” — and Jaye Anne names the machinery it feeds: when a community demands everyone believe the same thing or be excommunicated, that’s how you make a cult. From there: shadow armies, the haunted machine, ugly laws and manufactured enemies, regulation-not-boycott, and a close that turns the ferocity inward — when something bugs you, go open the box. It’s usually empty. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The round Symdala mandala deck, jumpers, and three majors in a row (Empress → Magician → Strength) * Strength’s activation — ferocity — Leo/Sun/fire/mercy & severity, and Jupiter into Leo on Matt’s Jupiter return; “when do we bare our teeth?” * The Threads fight: is AI conscious, whataboutism as a “made-up fallacy,” and the earth-based-spirituality DM callout * “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it” — Mein Kampf, the Communist Manifesto, book bans, and every system carrying its own dark side * Shadow armies: how we draft each other into camps — Christian-nationalist, techno-bro, anti-AI — and the pagans who built the internet * Everything is magic: praying to the demo gods, Crowley’s “every intentional act is a magical act,” and technology as the magic that got reliable * Hiding what’s uncomfortable: ugly laws, mental institutions, the Cold War enemy, and manufacturing a new one when the old one falls * How you make a cult: purity, the AI scarlet letter, and the excommunication reflex Matt already survived once in church * Regulation, not boycotts: the $20 cog, “you’re the product,” finding Mariana Lewis through AI, guns/sweatshops and the limits of analogy, complexity vs. sound bites * Monsanto, the DoD, the Pentagon rings, and doing business with “anybody who pays” * Ferocity was the energy: you can’t bring half yourself; do your own work; the tail whip and consciousness seeking equilibrium * The close: “why does this bug you?” and the box that turns out to be empty Lines that landed * “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it.” — Matt * “If everyone has to believe the same thing or else they fear being excommunicated — that’s how you make a cult.” — Jaye Anne * “No one cares about your $20 a month. Cut off all individual use of AI tomorrow and the number of data centers being built will not change.” — Matt * “Technology doesn’t cause things. It amplifies things that already exist.” — Matt * “Maybe the card didn’t specify the topic so much as the energy.” — Matt, on pulling ferocity * “You can’t bring half yourself to that conversation. It’s going to wear you out — and it does.” — Matt * “Sometimes it’s just: this box is empty. I was so afraid of this box, and it’s just empty.” — Jaye Anne Referenced * The Symdala Tarot — Jennifer Cooper Steidley (round mandala deck; per-card one-word activations) * Strength (major arcana): Leo, the Sun, elemental fire, Kabbalistic mercy & severity; Jupiter’s ingress into Leo / Matt’s Jupiter return in the 12th * Aleister Crowley — “every intentional act is a magical act”; magick as “causing change in accordance with will” * Perplexity / Gemini Deep Research — citation-first AI research; how Matt found (and paid $1k+) Mariana Lewis * The Gutenberg-press panic; the automobile — every new technology scares people first * Cold War childhood: Rocky IV, The Americans, USA-vs-USSR Olympic hockey * “Corporations are people” / money as speech; Sun Tzu — “all warfare is based on deception” * MAHA / RFK / the Monsanto–Bayer merger * Pivotal (2014): Matt’s Monsanto and Department of Defense client work; the Pentagon rings * Jung — the collective unconscious, shadow, and doing your own work; WarGames (the talking computer that first hooked young Matt on AI) What we left unresolved The one they name out loud: what does it actually look like to engage in a way that helps? Both of them feel the pull between powerlessness and head-in-the-sand, and neither wants to just doom-post daily or go numb. Matt’s working answer — engage with ideas, do your own shadow work, trust that it feeds the collective unconscious as a lagging indicator — runs straight into Jaye Anne’s honest objection that “a lot of people say that’s not enough,” and the risk that “everyone who dies is just collateral damage” is exactly the logic they refuse. They leave the tension standing: bare your teeth, yes, but at what, and how, without becoming the thing you’re biting. Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: “what even is this show?” & the round Symdala deck 5:19 — The card: Strength, and the activation is “ferocity” 13:50 — The Threads fight: is AI conscious, and who gets to ask 20:36 — Consume the idea, don’t be consumed 25:49 — Shadow armies & the haunted machine 32:00 — Everything is magic: Crowley & the intentional act 36:29 — Hiding what’s uncomfortable: ugly laws & manufactured enemies 44:02 — How you make a cult: purity & the AI scarlet letter 50:47 — Regulation, not boycotts: the $20 cog & complexity vs. sound bites 67:18 — Monsanto, the DOD & “anybody who pays” 71:11 — Ferocity was the energy: bring your whole self, do your own work 80:11 — “Why does this bug you?” & the empty box ~1h24 · One moment: Matt found Mariana Lewis — and spent over a thousand dollars with her — because an AI research tool surfaced her work. The thing the purity narrative swears could never happen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 008: When Do We Bare Our Teeth?
  5. Aug 16

    Episode 007: The Most Repressed Archetype

    Matt pulls a deck he hasn’t touched in over a year — the Deviant Moon Tarot, where the clothing is stitched from photographed 19th-century tombstones and nothing in the deck is more than a little bit unsettling — and turns up the Magician: four arms, four tools, and four shadows foreshadowing behind him. Light and dark, baked into one card. What starts as “why don’t I use this deck more” becomes the realest conversation the show has had about creative fear, the machinery that keeps you compliant, and the shadow you can’t afford to repress. Jaye Anne frames the Magician as all the potential in the world — the perfect little bubble of a dream before anything’s been embodied — and the double-edged fear of popping it to make it real. Matt takes it structural: people don’t create because they’re terrified of their own creations, of what they could actually do. And the system is built to keep it that way. Enter biofuel tickets — Robert Anton Wilson’s name for money — the arrangement where you exchange labor for the right to survive, and your work only “counts” if it’s funding someone else’s dream. From there it goes into shadow: the deck’s own name (deviant + moon), the myth of a God who is only good, fear as an egregore, and a synchronicity too good to script. No answer, as usual — just something with teeth. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The Deviant Moon deck: tombstone-cloth citizens, crescent-moon heads, “why’d you make this card this way,” and the value of knowing an artist’s process * The Magician as pure potential — and why the main reason people don’t create is that they’re terrified of what they could actually make * Biofuel tickets: Robert Anton Wilson, the survival tax, and why work “for your own family” or “just to do it” doesn’t count * The last authentic piece: the dream as the final living vestige, and the risk of bringing it into a world that might just kick it over * “Deviant Moon” as a name — the excommunicated one, the dark side of the emotions, a full shadow-work deck * Divine shadow masculine: read the first five books of the Bible with an open mind; repress a pole and it gets louder; the projection screen * Polarity in every tool and suit — and why creation needs the contrast (bright color on a black ground, bass under the treble, a night chart) * Fear as an egregore: Jaye Anne’s near-shot-for-shot Star Trek: Voyager memory, fighting vs. confronting, and who actually holds the power * The most repressed archetype — the summation * The Commodore 64 dream, Jeri Ryan / Seven of Nine, and collapsing into imposter syndrome the instant the anima validates you * Bluey, a stick, and the line with teeth: once you make it, it’s not yours anymore Lines that landed * “The Magician is the most repressed archetype. Everybody has access to the Magician, but almost no one believes that they have access.” — Matt * “We’ve decided that people have to do something for us so that they have the right to survive on the planet.” — Matt * “I’d rather fund my own dream, not someone else’s dream.” — Matt * “They’re not mad about that, honey. They’re mad about something else and they don’t even know what it is. This is the projection screen.” — Matt * “Trying to fight it makes it more powerful. It’s actually when you just walk up and confront it that it becomes small.” — Matt * “You had to have the dark contrast in order to appreciate that.” — Jaye Anne * “Once you bring something into the world, it’s no longer yours.” — Jaye Anne / “Ooh. That’s got teeth.” — Matt Referenced * Deviant Moon Tarot by Patrick Valenza (US Games) — and the deluxe companion book on the making of each card * Robert Anton Wilson — “biofuel tickets” as a reframe for money * The Bible — the first five books; Noah out of the boat * Star Trek: Voyager — the collective-dream episode where an embodiment of fear grows stronger the more it’s fed (an egregore) * Jeri Ryan / Seven of Nine — the Borg-to-individual arc across Voyager and Picard; Q; the Borg Queen * Commodore 64 — the retro-platform game-making scene * A Wrinkle in Time * Bluey — the beach episode: Bingo’s stick-bird, and the dad’s line * Concept: the egregore; Black Moon Lilith in the 12th, Scorpio Venus, a night chart What we left unresolved Matt names it himself: “like most episodes, we’re not landing on an answer.” The Bluey close is the open door — you create something and all of a sudden it’s not yours — explicitly teed up as a whole other episode they don’t take here. The hardest form of it (your kids as autonomous beings you can’t control) gets set down, not resolved. What you’re supposed to do with the unavoidable fact that creation leaves your hands the moment it’s real stays deliberately unanswered. Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: rewiring, integration & “unpolished on purpose” 3:21 — The card: The Magician from the Deviant Moon Tarot 6:58 — Four arms, four shadows: the Magician as pure potential 13:09 — Terrified of your own creation 16:45 — Biofuel tickets: Robert Anton Wilson & the survival tax 22:24 — The last authentic piece: doing it just to do it 27:35 — “Deviant Moon”: the shadow-work deck 34:36 — Divine shadow masculine: the God who isn’t only good 42:56 — Every tool has a shadow — and creation needs the contrast 49:28 — Fear is an egregore: Voyager, confront vs. fight & the most repressed archetype 59:04 — Seven of Nine, the Commodore 64 dream & imposter syndrome 1:06:32 — “It’s no longer yours”: the Bluey close ~1h10 · One moment: Matt dreamed — that same night — that Jeri Ryan played his Commodore 64 game and praised it, and he immediately started apologizing for it. The most Magician thing possible, undone the second the anima said “this is good.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 007: The Most Repressed Archetype
  6. Aug 2

    Episode 006: The Tension Is the Point

    It’s Pride Month, so Matt brings the queer deck and pulls The Empress: bearded, liberation-focused, shield reading live, laugh, liberate. What starts as a structure-of-the-tarot argument turns, through the card’s shadow — the great mother and the devouring mother — into the realest AI conversation we’ve had: not “is it good or evil,” but why we keep trying to shove the parts we don’t like under the rug, and what that costs us. Matt and Jaye Anne start by arguing the architecture of the majors — is it the hero’s journey, or something else? (Matt’s read: Magician/High Priestess are the divine masculine and feminine; Empress/Emperor are the Great Mother and Great Father — more embodied, more tangible.) Then the Empress’s shadow drags the whole thing into AI: creative force and devouring force are the same force. They take apart the false-purity line, the urge to hit a “hide all AI content” button and pretend it isn’t part of reality, and the both/and they keep circling — you can’t have the light without understanding the dark. It ends, against the odds, in hope. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The card: The Gay Marseille Tarot (The Word Witch), the bearded Empress and the “trans masculine anarchist anti-emperor,” Audre Lorde’s erotic, and live, laugh, liberate * Is the major arcana the hero’s journey? Divine masculine/feminine (Magician/High Priestess) vs. the Great Mother/Father (Empress/Emperor) — and the Hidden Door game Matt built so you experience the stations non-linearly * Mariana Lewis & the archetypal tarot school; Jung, anima/animus, and why the Magician and High Priestess are ineffable, not keyword definitions * The great mother and the devouring mother — the shadow hinge from the Empress into AI * Fitting the narrative: how picking a side strips the nuance; the “hide all AI” button; the Anthropic / national-security export parallel; left-hand/right-hand path — “to protect yourself from a hacker, you need to know how to hack” * Pandora’s box: the AI book cover, “TarotPulse would never have been,” and sovereignty cutting both ways * “We don’t hide this stuff” — the unchanging evangelical God, and the Archetypal Family Field work of separating the archetype from your imago * The devouring mother, “Your Mom’s a Bitch and It’s Okay,” Old Navy folding tables, and learning to live in the mess * Magnets, pH, electricity, cyclical history — and the wisdom Matt gets walked into: “we’re gonna make it” Lines that landed * “You can be mad that we took it out of the box. That’s not going to make it go away. It’s okay to be mad — it’s just not going back in.” — Matt * “You’re personally sovereign. You do not have to use it. You do not have to like it. But that doesn’t mean you get to tell me it is morally wrong that I did.” — Matt * “To do the light side, you have to understand the dark side… if you want to protect yourself from a hacker, you need to know how to hack. And they’re trying to say, well that’s dark, so you can’t have the light either. What does that do? That just makes us blind.” — Matt * “This is what mother means — its essence. But it is not the mother. It’s just an anchor we can hold on to to consider the mother through.” — Matt * “You can’t get rid of binaries. You can get rid of the assumption that it’s an either/or. It’s both ends and everything in between. And the tension is the point.” — Matt * “Even if all you do is your own work, you are still making things better. You don’t have to go out on a crusade to fix the world. Fix yourself.” — Matt * “Two sides of the same coin. If you pretend the other side is over there — it’s not. You’re imagining this over there. It’s on you.” — Jaye Anne Referenced * The Gay Marseille Tarot by The Word Witch (thewordwitchtarot.com/gaymarseille) — the bearded Empress, the “trans masculine anarchist anti-emperor” * Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” * Mariana Lewis & the archetypal tarot school * Carl Jung — anima/animus, archetypes, the imago * The Archetypal Family Field program * Hidden Door — Matt’s tarot-majors game with non-linear stations * Arthur C. Clarke’s third law (callback) * Anthropic & the national-security export restriction; export-grade browser encryption history * Star Trek: Lower Decks — the infinite-parallel-universes rifts * Old Navy / Aeropostale folding tables as an entropy metaphor What we left unresolved Where the lines actually go. They agree you have to draw some line — but every line you draw leaves something true on the other side of it. The honest version of this episode is that the answer to “what do you do with the unavoidable shadow of any creation” can be one thing this week and another next, and that drawing the line is itself the never-finished work. Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: Toy Story, “howdy,” and the big 4- 05:44 — The card: The Empress from The Gay Marseille Tarot (Pride Month) 8:33 — Is the major arcana the hero’s journey? Divine M/F vs. Great Mother/Father 15:42 — Mariana Lewis & the archetypal tarot school 20:11 — The Empress’s shadow → AI: the great mother and the devouring mother 23:11 — Fitting the narrative: shadow/light & the “hide all AI” button 30:50 — Pandora’s box: the AI book cover, TarotPulse & sovereignty 35:18 — “We don’t hide this”: the unchanging God & separating the archetype from your imago 43:01 — The devouring mother, “Your Mom’s a Bitch and It’s Okay” & living in the mess 51:47 — The bearded Empress, “the tension is the point” & “we’re gonna make it” ~1h10 · One moment: Jaye Anne and a friend’s forever-unwritten book, “Your Mom’s a Bitch and It’s Okay.” It’s Pride Month — hence the deck. The Five of Wands does not stalk Matt this time; the Empress does. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 006: The Tension Is the Point
  7. Jul 19

    Episode 005: There's No Waning Cycle

    Astrology isn’t predicting it; it’s reflecting it — the cosmos enforcing cycles a culture of endless progress refuses to honor. The question we couldn’t close: can you turn the heat down halfway, or does the whole thing have to burn to complete? Two hosts who promised structure and immediately abandon it pull the Ten of Swords from the food-themed Magic Pantry deck — an onion, mid-chop, weeping — and let it drag them into the real subject: collective exhaustion in a culture that has lost its waning phase. A second pull, the Five of Wands from the Crow deck — the card that stalked them last episode — turns it toward astrology as a mirror, not a cause. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The card: the Magic Pantry deck (wands = spices, cups = fruit, swords = “eat your vegetables”) and the Ten of Swords as deep exhaustion * “Long-term tired”: trauma reframed as unclosed grief tabs * Technology has no waning cycle — iPhone to Uber to ChatGPT, zero to a million with no time to integrate * The second pull, the recurring Five of Wands → astrology and Tarnas’s Cosmos and Psyche * Pluto-Saturn 2020 and the Uranus-Pluto cycles of the 1960s and 2012–15 * Ole Miss across the Uranus-Pluto cycle: 1848 founding, James Meredith, the noose incident * Astrology as reflection, not causation: “a high percentage of non-random data, we call that information” Lines that landed * “I’m like long-term tired.” — Jaye Anne * “I just wanna put plants in the ground… I’m done with this chaos for the sake of chaos.” — Jaye Anne * “I feel like we’re not ever even fully processing the cycle before the next cycle starts.” — Matt * “There’s no waning cycle. We’re just waxing a hundred percent of the time.” — Matt * “The planets keep moving. The universe is like, you can try, but that’s not how anything works.” — Matt * “I don’t believe the planets cause the things. I don’t think it’s about causation. It’s way more about reflection.” — Matt * “When we look at a significantly high percentage of non-random data, we call that information.” — Matt Referenced * The Magic Pantry deck & the Crow deck * Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche * Pluto-Saturn 2020 (COVID), the 1960s Uranus-Pluto conjunction (civil rights), the 2012–15 square * The USA Pluto return (with Rome / Magna Carta parallels) * Ole Miss: 1848 founding, James Meredith, the 2012–15 noose incident * Melville & Moby-Dick * Supabase / TarotPulse * The iPhone, Uber, and ChatGPT growth curves What we left unresolved Can you dial a Ten of Swords down to a Five — turn the heat halfway — or does the over-pressurized vessel have to spark and burn to complete the cycle? “Well… that doesn’t sound great.” Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: no plan today 1:21 — The card: Ten of Swords (the Magic Pantry deck) 10:15 — Long-term tired: trauma as unclosed grief tabs 12:18 — Technology has no waning cycle: iPhone → Uber → ChatGPT 32:52 — Second pull: the recurring Five of Wands (Crow deck) 35:00 — Cosmos and Psyche: Pluto-Saturn 2020 & the Uranus-Pluto cycles 49:19 — Ole Miss across the Uranus-Pluto cycle: 1848 → Meredith → the noose 53:45 — The US Pluto return & astrology as reflection, not causation 1:04:01 — Dial it down to a five + the hungry-podcast finale ~1h11 · One moment: Matt botching the geometry — “What is ninety plus four… I cannot do math right now. What is wrong with my brain? …Five. I can do five.” — and the cosmic-dread finale collapsing into guacamole and crostini. The Five of Wands recurs from Episode 4. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 005: There's No Waning Cycle
  8. Jul 5

    Episode 004: Animism All the Way Down

    This is the one where we mix the things you’re not supposed to mix, argue that the purity line around technology is shadow projection in an ethics costume, and follow animism past the point of comfort: if it’s animism, it’s animism all the way down, or it isn’t animism at all. The most charged question in modern practice: can you blend AI and technology with magic, or does it make you a charlatan? Drawing the Five of Wands reversed — passionate voices pulling in five directions with no one in charge — Matt and Jaye Anne argue the loud arguments against AI are mostly shadow projection: people meeting their own fear in a mirror that reflects both the self and the collective back at them. They dismantle the false-purity line and trace technology’s mystical lineage from Mesmer through electrical healing to the Flexner Report. Their longest episode. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The card: the Eldritch Overload deck (Weird Works) and how to read reversals (resistance, shadow, twisting the knife) * AI as mirror: “you’re not really mad about AI — figure out what you’re actually mad about” * Provenance & purity policing: the sweatshop-mug thought experiment, the vaccine/abortion parallel, and “at what point am I entitled to a piece of your sovereignty?” * Individual vs. corporate: an ADHD plastic-bag rabbit hole on why personal purity changes nothing structural * Technology IS magic: Clarke’s law, a childhood Atari, 1980s BBS chat rooms, and a 2025 Commodore 64 next to the altar * Animism all the way down: Crowley’s definition of magic, AI-assisted astrology against a real ephemeris * The god of AI: “we sacrifice to the gods we create” — Mesmer, the Flexner Report, TechGnosis Lines that landed * “People are encountering their shadow through technology right now. AI is doing a really interesting twisting of that knife, because it is a mirror.” — Matt * “You’re not really mad about AI. But you are mad. So figure out what you’re actually mad about.” — Matt * “At what point am I entitled to any piece of your sovereignty? And for what reasons?” — Jaye Anne * “If you’re gonna throw animism in my face, then it’s animism all the way down or it’s not animism.” — Matt * “AI is not going back in the tube. That toothpaste is out.” — Matt * “We chose science and technology as the new gods. And we sacrifice human lives to those gods every single day.” — Jaye Anne * “Technology and magic are likely to be indistinguishable in the future. We’re making a very hair’s-line slice right now by believing we can say they’re different.” — Jaye Anne Referenced * The Eldritch Overload deck (Weird Works) — a tech-magic / cyberpunk deck that inverts the standard reversal meanings * Arthur C. Clarke’s third law * Aleister Crowley’s definition of magic * Erik Davis, TechGnosis * Franz Mesmer / mesmerism * Edgar Cayce * The Flexner Report (1910) & the AMA * The Commodore 64 reissue, Atari 2600, Q-Link “People Connection” * Demetra George (Hellenistic astrology) * Zelda: Skyward Sword What we left unresolved What you actually do with the unavoidable harm of any creation — and the honest admission the answer can be one thing this week and something else next. “Erase the line. What value was this line to me?” Chapters 0:00 — Cold open (music) & the howdy / y’all detour 3:33 — The card: Five of Wands reversed (the Weird Works deck) 9:06 — How to read reversals 17:10 — AI as a mirror: “you’re not really mad about AI” 22:06 — Provenance & purity: the mug, vaccines & sovereignty 32:14 — Individual vs. corporate: the plastic-bag rabbit hole 41:04 — Technology IS magic: Clarke’s law & the Commodore altar 56:02 — Animism all the way down: AI in spiritual practice 1:08:33 — The god of AI & the mystical history of tech 1:26:49 — Wind-down: predictive brains, Skyward Sword & erasing the line ~1h36 · One moment: reading the deck’s grim reversed meaning, Matt mock-panics — “What are you trying to tell us, Deck?” — then, explaining floppies to younger listeners, “a floppy disk is a 3D print of the save icon.” The Five of Wands recurs in Episode 5. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 004: Animism All the Way Down
  9. Jun 21

    Episode 003: Shadow Capitalism

    On the surface, a riff on the King of Pentacles. Underneath: reality as a set of consented games — speakeasies, masks, LARPing, capitalism — and AI as an amplifier of whatever is already there, not a creator of anything new. Jaye Anne named it on-mic: “it was mostly about shadow capitalism.” Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The card: the Gen Z Tarot’s renamed suits (Aesthetic / Mood / Facts / Guap) and the Zaddy as shadow material * Games, rituals, masks, and reality: Robert Anton Wilson, the magic circle, speakeasies, masking and code-switching * Capitalism as the big game — “a system that feeds on itself; you can’t optimize it without destroying it” * AI as amplifier, not creator — the fake-pill detection app, and “AI makes good people better and bad people worse” * Is the King of Pentacles allowed to exist? Star Trek’s post-scarcity economy, scarcity vs. abundance, earning your existence * Resource vs. being: the hard problem of consciousness, and how moving “the line” leads to genocide Lines that landed * “He looks like a James Bond Frankenstein’s-monster situation.” — Matt * “You are experiencing your reality only through the predictive mechanisms of your brain.” — Matt * “Most of our aversion to capitalism is emotional, it’s not logical.” — Matt * “AI makes good people better and bad people worse… it’s an amplifier.” — Matt * “What is okay to think of as a resource versus a being?” — Matt * “You’re violently murdering a carrot when you eat it.” — Jaye Anne * “Everywhere you draw the line, if you actually feel the tension… everywhere you draw the line sucks. Everywhere.” — Matt Referenced * The Gen Z Tarot & the Millennial Tarot * Robert Anton Wilson & chaos magic * The magic circle / ritual-as-game * New York speakeasies * Star Trek’s post-scarcity economy * The hard problem of consciousness * A fake-pill detection app used across the global majority * ASL — Jaye Anne is fluent * “Do it for the plot” / the Chariot What we left unresolved Where do you draw the line between a resource and a being, and who has the authority to draw it? “Everywhere you draw the line sucks.” Chapters 0:00 — Intro (cold-open music) & welcome 2:53 — The card: King of Guap, the Zaddy 8:10 — The aversion as shadow 10:28 — Games, rituals, masks & reality 28:33 — Capitalism as the big game 33:21 — AI as amplifier, not creator 46:16 — Is the King of Pentacles allowed to exist? 53:34 — Resource vs. being: where do you draw the line? 1:06:17 — Win-lose, do it for the plot, Gen Z slang 1:17:19 — Wind-down & outro ~1h19 · One moment: Jaye Anne’s reluctant “wealthy character” experiment — “my pajamas have lobsters on them, that’s not weird at all” — and Matt learning “left on read” months too late, right before kids hit him with “six seven” at a graduation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 003: Shadow Capitalism
  10. Jun 21

    Episode 002: Participant, Not Consumer

    Two white people take on appropriation vs. appreciation and refuse to dodge it. The Hanged Man — Matt’s recurring card, drawn 3 of the 4 times he’s ever cut this deck — presides over the whole hour: suspension between two ways of being, willing surrender rather than giving up. The core move is to reject the clean binary: there’s no filter that spits out yes/no, and anyone selling you one is selling the colonial-purity reflex in spiritual drag. What they build instead is a working framework — participant, not consumer; reciprocity over extraction; find the through-line archetype and its local expression rather than importing the exotic object. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * The card: the Neon Tarot, the recurring Hanged Man, and why tarot works at all (78 gateways, the tension of opposites) * Why appropriation happens: the colonial wound, and white people severed from their own earth-connection going looking for it elsewhere * The “appropriation police” — usually outside the tradition they’re defending — and why gatekeeping often does more harm than good * The useful line: private practice vs. setting up as a paid teacher of a tradition you have no relationship to (Matt’s Irish pagan teacher: “you don’t get to teach this yet”) * Inspiration, not appropriation: Weston Price, bone broth, turmeric, and finding the local instantiation of a universal archetype * Projection and the confession: the rage is about feeling void of culture, not the practice itself Lines that landed * “A lot of white people are just running around trying to find something they can’t remember.” — Jaye Anne * “Me adopting a practice and performing it in private is pretty limited in how much damage it’ll do. But when I set myself up as a teacher — and then charge you money for it — that’s when you’re in a place you probably ought not to be.” — Matt * “Doing it in a way that is consciously trying to be in right relationship and getting it wrong is better than getting it perfect and yet having no relationship to the culture.” — Matt * “I am going to try to be a participant in this, not a consumer of it.” — Matt * “You can slap Christian in front of anything and it’s almost always a more disgusting version of the thing you wanted.” — Matt * “When our answer to dealing with evil is to do evil to the evildoers… we become them.” — Matt * “Purity is a lie. I think that’s something our brain makes up to feel safe.” — Jaye Anne Referenced * The Neon Tarot * Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) * Palo Santo — with mugwort and juniper as local alternatives * Weston A. Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration * Mudras & palmistry → the “Christian mudra” through-line * “Christian yoga” * The CreativeMind seminar — “what you believe to be real will continue to be created” * John Donne — “no man is an island” What we left unresolved They refuse to answer the question on purpose. “If you thought we were gonna answer the question — we’re not, sorry.” How each person navigates right relationship is theirs alone to work out. Chapters 0:00 — Intro (cold-open music) & welcome 1:27 — The card: Neon Tarot & the recurring Hanged Man 5:36 — What the Hanged Man means 13:57 — Why tarot works: 78 gateways to the question 16:43 — Why appropriation happens: colonialism & the culture we forgot 22:31 — The appropriation police: intuition vs. policing 28:44 — Drawing the line: participant, not consumer 46:36 — Inspiration not appropriation: the through-line archetype 53:14 — Christian-washing & the real thing 59:03 — Filtered reality, projection & the culture-void confession 1:10:07 — Purity is a lie 1:13:20 — Wrapping up: no easy answers & where to find us ~1h17 · One moment: Matt lands the pun — “we have beaten the hangman to death, which is the next card in sequence” — and at the close, “the hanged man is back. Never left.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 002: Participant, Not Consumer
  11. Jun 21

    Episode 001: What Kind of Smoke Is It?

    NOTE: We forgot to pull a card. On the debut. The one rule of the show — pull a card, follow it, leave it unresolved — missed on episode one. So we did the only honest thing a tarot-adjacent podcast can do: we pulled it late. Months later, blind, from a deck that didn’t exist when we recorded — card 32, Fumus / Smoke, from The Wild Unknown Alchemy deck. Smoldering. Warning. Illusion. Smoke is the thing that reaches you before the fire does, and the only question it asks is what kind. Incense and herbs — or the fear-stricken scent of something burning down? That’s the whole episode: two people raised in the same smell of holiness, working out which one it was. We didn’t pull a card. The card pulled us. We just noticed late. The debut, and the origin story under the whole show. Matt — Appalachian folk Christianity to hardcore Memphis evangelicalism (street evangelism on Beale Street) to witchcraft, across 25 years as a software architect now working in AI — and Jaye Anne — homeschooled and church-schooled six days a week, an “Irish goodbye” out by senior year — compare notes on getting free of controlling, fear-driven Christianity and what each rebuilt on the other side. Stated topic: religious trauma. Real subject: sovereignty — a spirituality that runs you versus one you author yourself. Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts In this episode * Two origin stories: street-evangelist-to-witch, and the homeschool-charismatic walkout * Charismatic vs. “stuffy” church — and the theory that the neurodivergent cluster in both * The exits: a church schism, a “give more money” sermon the weekend of the Virginia Tech shooting, and an “atheists are sexual deviants” last straw * The mechanism of control: how every appeal bottoms out at biblical inerrancy — which is purely circular * Trump-era hypocrisy, end-times “fanfic from the 1800s,” and the fantasies coming true * What’s on the other side: sovereignty, self-defined ethics, and Wisdom as a woman screaming in the streets Lines that landed * “I went from being an ultra-evangelical Christian to practicing witchcraft. And I’m a software engineer and architect who works professionally with AI all day, every day.” — Matt * “Brainwashing children is part of our lifestyle. That’s exactly what it is.” — Jaye Anne * “It’s never about actually getting people what they need. It’s about making people easier to control. If you control the ways people are allowed to hear from God, it’s not a long stretch before you can make yourself God.” — Matt * “It’s inerrant because it says it’s inerrant.” — Matt * “I can be so spiritual and yet retain personal sovereignty. I don’t have to have an outside authority telling me what’s okay and what’s not okay.” — Matt Referenced Biblical inerrancy — the circular keystone the whole structure rests on The unforgivable sin (blasphemy of the Holy Spirit) — the undefined sin that fuels the anxiety The Left Behind series & John Nelson Darby — the 1800s source of Rapture / end-times theology The A Beka curriculum — "history and science from a Christian perspective" Proverbs — "Wisdom cries out in the streets… and wisdom's a female" The 90s Kmart "blue light special" internet Witchcraft & the occult — the sovereign spirituality on the other side What we left unresolved How do you deconstruct without building a new rigid orthodoxy out of the reaction? Matt admits even the American flag is now a trigger: “and that’s probably not good either.” The exit door and the trap turn out to be the same door. ~1h20. Go deeper: “Smoke Rings,” Sam Cooke — eyes closed. To ponder: copal, sage, cedar, sandalwood. Chapters 0:00 — Intro (cold-open music) & welcome 2:48 — Matt’s origin: evangelist to witch to AI architect 10:30 — Jaye Anne’s 90s: Kmart blue-light internet 14:54 — Charismatic vs. stuffy church & neurodivergence 22:26 — Out of the bubble: insulated worlds cracking open 27:36 — Two exits: schisms, money sermons & the last straw 37:13 — The mechanism of control: inerrancy 39:13 — Trump, hypocrisy & end-times fanfic 1:04:49 — The cost: anxiety, shame & patriotic programming 1:13:17 — After deconstruction: sovereignty & reconstruction This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rewiredshow.substack.com

    Episode 001: What Kind of Smoke Is It?

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We left the systems. We're finding what's alive. rewiredshow.substack.com