Talks With Terry: Recent Episodes
Terry Clark
I'm Terry, and this is my space to talk about the things that interest me. If you want to hear something random or different, this show is for you. No gimmicks, no topic restrictions, just a guy speaking about everything from music, to ghosts, to religion, to social justice, and everything in between.
Nothing fancy, just going with the flow.
In light of recent events, this month's topic is going to surround books. Today, we are going to be talking about the act of banning books, what classic books have been banned, and the reasoning behind wanting certain books to be taken away. How much are we willing to lose for the sake of avoiding discomfort? Let's dive deep and try to uncover the lessons we may lose when we take away our books.
Hello and Happy New Year! I was away for a bit because of reasons, but I'm back and ready to post some more. This episode is to help get things back on track, and for me to catch you guys up on what's been going on. Hope you guys will join me in starting this year off on a better foot.
It's that time of year again. People are caroling and stores are abundant with the hottest gifts that you can find on a sale. Everyone comes together with a smile on their face and the whole of America seems to come together to celebrate Christmas. But you may have also seen the posts and news stories talking about a battle for the soul of the nation. It's been going on for over a decade, but your parent's favorite news outlets are talking again about the War on Christmas. Another year, another collection of scarcely sourced stories about how baby eating progressives are trying to eliminate history from existence. Of all human conflicts out there, this is by far on of the dumbest. So strap in while we cover the seasonal siege on our Yuletide traditions.
Carol Of The Bells by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
I'm back and this time things are twice as festive! To ring in the holiday season, we're gonna be looking at Spotify's Christmas Classics playlist and go over some of our favorite Christmas songs of all time. Which classics stand out and which ones don't? From holiday bops to fireside friendlies we are gonna cover some of the best music this holiday has to offer.
Carol Of The Bells by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
Spoiler alert: An American holiday has had a troubled past that was overlooked within the history books. While most of this month is meant to focus on the spirit of thanksgiving, it's important to understand the history surrounding the holiday itself. So much information about that special day in Plymouth goes unrecognized and the truth behind who the Pilgrims were and what happened to the Native Americans they met. This will be the darker episode of the month, but I think it's important that we talk about the history of Thanksgiving.
This month's topic is going to revolve around Thanksgiving. What better way to celebrate it than to ask: what does Thanksgiving look like around the world. Many different countries and cultures hold celebrations centered around harvest time from the German Erntedankfest to the Chinese August Moon Festival. What does the Fall time signal for others? This week we find out by checking out the Thanksgiving-style holidays around the world.
Even wondered about that fiery pit of an afterlife that people keep ranting about? Where did it come from? Am I going to end up there? Why is my pastor always yelling about it? This week we dive into the origins of Hell, the Lake of Fire where the souls of the wicked are tormented for eternity. We'll also cover the versions of this afterlife that exist throughout different religions from every continent. Is a place like this something to be feared, or something to be contemplated? Let's find out on our last episode of the Halloween season.
What Halloween season would be complete without some scary stories to freak you out? Today we've got three stories from online authors, each their own brand of spine tingling. Stalkers, secret organizations, and forces of nature all come together to give us out first ever Talks with Terry scary story corner!
Have you ever woken in the middle of the night to the feeling that you're being watched? Has your body felt paralyzed, while your eyes dart around the room, scanning for danger? Have you gazed at the shadows and found a tall man watching over your with a nice outfit and red eyes? Then you might have been visited by the subject of this week's episode. Hundreds of people from all over the world claim to have been visited in the night by a strange man with a black hat, watching them as they sleep. No definitive explanation has been given, with some calling the entity a trick of our dreams and others calling him a demon in disguise. Whatever he is, the world knows him only by the name: The Black Hat Man.
This week, in honor of the month of spooky, we are going over the various genres and subgenres within the horror sphere. Everything under the bloody rainbow including slashers, supernatural horrors, and plain old messed-up people and the movies that they inhabit, as well a little book and video game. What makes something horror? What separates the masked killer from the demon-possessed child? We're here to cover what makes up the world of horror and maybe give you some movies to watch this Halloween season.
For our first week of the spooky season, I'm going over the brief but scary history of Alton, Illinois, which has been called "America's Most Haunted Small Town". I'm looking at everything, from the local Native American cryptid that once terrorized the Mississippi River to the ghosts of former prisoners that now roam all over town. It's gonna be short, sweet, and all about specters on this weeks episode!
Kicking off the spooky season with a little book club, we are going to be talking about Dan Simmons' award winning book, The Terror. This historical fiction thriller is set within Franklin's Lost Expedition, a British naval expedition from the 1840's whose goal was to find the fabled Northwest Passage within the Northern Polar Sea. At the time, the expedition vanished without a trace, and no one knows exactly what occurred while they spent years stuck in the ice. Today, I'll be talking about the history behind the Franklin Expedition, why it was so popular, why it likely failed, and how Simmons encapsulated the the story within an epic, dark suspense novel. Bundle up as we dive into the frigid wasteland described as "The Cold White Nothing".
These week we're taking it easy by reviewing the popular DC movie, The Suicide Squad directed by James Gunn. I'll be going over what I though about the movie, how the characters stacked up, and how the team that made this did a great job at tackling an R-rated, character driven action movie that stands out far from its predecessor.
So I wanted to combine my love of video games with the informative nature of this show. To that end, I found a story from over a decade ago about an event in the World of Warcraft universe that created a dark corner of history for the game and its fandom. I had never heard of this even before, and learning more about it made me realize why so many people, including actual researchers, found this month-long experience so fascinating. Today, we'll take a dive into the history of what is know to gamers as "The Corrupted Blood Incident".
This is going to be a special, serious episode dedicated to a couple of people in my life who have been dealing with a lot of personal issues by themselves. I'm going to make sure that they know and understand that it's okay to ask for help and seek it out, especially when you're dealing with mental and emotional stress. I've had my personal experiences with anxiety and stress, and the help I received Allowed me to grow into who I am today. So for those listening that have been on the edge with these feelings and emotions, there is nothing wrong with asking for help. We all need it, but some people think we don't. This episode is our space to understand that professional help is sometimes necessary to help confront whatever it holding us back. We'll work through it and talk about it together.
In this week's obsession over a certain topic, I've decided to devote some time this week giving a brief overview of survivorship bias in the world. Like the logical fallacies, I think this concept gets overlooked constantly in everyday life. Have you ever sat and listened to someone encourage people to take the same paths in life they did? Was there ever a conclusion that someone came to that seemed too simple? There are a host of hidden reasons inside of certain people's arguments that go overlooked, and they can be found under the umbrella of survival bias.
So a good friend of mine reached out and said that her friend had been offered a job at a direct marketing firm in Chicago. I got flashbacks to my very short time being duped by a similar company close to home, and my friend and I agreed that this Chicago job was another trap under a different company. So this episode, I'm covering what to look out for with jobs like this in the hopes that it helps people understand what to look for when encountering these types of jobs and what to avoid. Working together on this will help make sure that these companies can stop profiting off of the young and the desperate.
I'm back after a long hiatus and I've decided to talk about the one subject that has been poking at the back of my head for months now: The Labor Shortage. Though "shortage" might not be the best way to describe it. This episode will quickly cover what has been happening with the exodus of minimum wage workers and why this is happening. In the end, I'll discuss what I think needs to be done to solve the problem. Spoiler Alert: Give people more money.
This week we are discussing the traits in males that are often destructive and dangerous to society. This is a general overview of the topic, but we will be going over some of the biggest issues facing and caused by men in the world today. Rip up you "man cards" guys, we don't deserve them anymore.
So I have this friend named Wicked (it's his online name so it's not that weird) that has been sending me a lot of news headlines that he gets from random pages he follows on social media. I got tired of trying to steer him away from this stuff, but I thought I could build off of these stories and turn them into a teaching moment. So I set out to find the truth behind the headlines and see what I could find. It's not gonna be fun, but the news was never fun to begin with. Join me for our very first installment of Wicked News!
Today we are talking about the belief of taking the Bible as literal. I doesn't sound like much but there is a lot that can be covered in this segment regarding the history of Biblical Literacy and what it means for us today. Whether you are religious or not, it may be important to understand what literalism is and why it still affects us to this day. Today we try to read between the lines and cover the topic of Biblical Literalism in Christianity.
This podcast is gonna become slightly more educational, and what better way to start than with some logical fallacies! We live in a world where everyone is arguing with each other all the time, and some people are more good at it than others. In this sort of climate, it's important to understand what a logical fallacy is and how you can avoid it. I actually did a decent ten minutes of research and wrote a reasonable script that I followed for most of the show, so you know this one will be a doozy. Hopefully after this episode, we will be able to recognize some of the lapses in logic that trip us up sometimes and learn how to make our arguments smarter.
I'm not the first or last person you will hear talk about this, but we are talking gun control. I'm gonna try and not get too political and just help educate about the debate surrounding gun control as well as some key things you often hear throughout the media. I think we are living in a time where we need to look at what guns have done to our country and what they mean to those on both sides of the barrel. I think that guns should be enjoyed responsibly, but we are talking about public safety here. Load up, it's another monotone masterpiece of firearm politics.
No but honestly this episode is all about cancel culture. I'm gonna try to take a non-biased approach and just try to explain what I think it is and give some examples of what to look for, but this is just a way for me to talk about the Mr. Potato Head story I didn't cover. I won't get too heated, but I do think we need to have this discussion so that we can learn how to identify what are legitimate concerns people are trying to address and what are false allegations that are being used to rile people up. I can't get canceled with less than 10 followers can I? I guess we will find out.
Want to know a little more about the COVID-19 vaccines that people are taking right now? You should talk to your local public health department or doctor for that. But this week I have a little fact sheet given to me about the Pfizer vaccine that I got and it makes for an interesting read. Today we'll talk about some of these facts and I'll let you know how I'm feeling after getting my first dose. For more accurate and trustworthy information about vaccines, please visit the CDC Vaccines and Immunizations page for more info. Stay healthy and stay safe everyone!
So many people are struggling right now just to make ends meet, and to many the amount they are being paid isn't enough. While Congress still can't decide on what needs to be done, I felt it would be nice to go over how the minimum wage got to where it was today and where we should go from here. From a brief history of workers' rights to the multiple arguments for and against raising the wage, we will go into what this could mean for millions of Americans.
This week I'll be going over the situation in Texas where cold temperatures have caused massive power and utility outages that are affecting millions of Texans right now. We will be covering the conditions leading up to this disaster, what is being done to help, how a couple of asshats are trying to shift the blame rather than taking responsibility and doing their jobs. Of course I'll also be listing ways that you can help support Texas. I forced myself to not title this episode "The Lone Star State of Emergency" because this is supposed to be a more serious episode. I will devote almost ten minutes to laughing at Ted Cruz though.
A new Call of Duty, people mad about microtransactions again, and the next rising star of the PC indie game scene. All of this and more on this week's episode of Talks with Terry!
So apparently a bunch of people on Reddit woke up, chose fiscal violence, and decided to beat wealthy Wall Street hedge funds at their own game. Will GameStop be able to recover now that people are buying into their stocks? I don't know, but what I do know is the revenge is cold and the hypocrisy is hot! You've heard it a thousand times by now, but let's talk about the Wall Street drama that has taken over this final week in January.
It's time for more gaming stuff! This week I update my statements of Cyberpunk after pouting about it a month after beating it. Next, we go over some special news surrounding Disney, Ubisoft, and the future of Star Wars games. Finally I round out the episode with a somewhat quick review of For The King, the engaging lovechild of D&D gameplay and Dark Souls difficulty. Let's get back to having something fun to talk about!
I'm not the first to talk about this and I wont be the last. Today we have a special rant surrounding the assault and attempted coup on the Capitol building that took place this week. I'll be going over some of the initial information I could find and be giving my opinions on the matter. 2021 is already off to a hell of a start and we aren't done with January yet.
We're back with the conclusion of our education episode. Last time it was all about what was wrong and this week we are talking about how we can fix it. There are a lot of problems that need to be fixed, but if we can manage to do it then our future students will have more knowledge and less trauma. Covering everything from how we got here to where do we need to go from here, this episode will be a nice little ending to our education discussion.
So Cyberpunk 2077 came out this week and its something that I've been looking forward to for years. Its only been out for a couple of days, but the gaming community is already divided about whether or not it has lived up to the hype. I've decided to take some time this week and talk about my first impressions with the game and dive a little into the issues that people have argued over. It's another look into the gaming world, and I will die defending another game that I love.
Honestly, I feel like we all have some sort of beef with the American education system in one way or another. For this episode, I wanted to go over some of the negative observations I've made over the years and why take issue with them. This part will cover the problems, and a future episode will go over some solutions to consider for the future. Class is in session, and these notes will definitely be on the test.
I've heard a lot of older people talk about video games as a waste of time. Why would you play childish games when you could be doing something productive or developing a constructive hobby? I thought a lot about this and decided to dedicate an episode to talk about where the stigma of video games as being childish and how they compare to other popular hobbies. It may seem like a mind-wasting activity, but it may actually be the most stimulating leisure hobby out there.
Today I have a little rant about the first job I had out of college in the middle of COVID. It had great pay, friendly coworkers, and a lot of promise... but I only lasted for three days. Please enjoy the story of how I went through a deceitful and insane job that forced me to learn a lot about the job market.
Have you ever been somewhere normal that … didn't feel normal at all? Have there been points in your life where you feel like your very existence isn't as solid as you think it is?
You're not crazy, you're experiencing something called liminality, a strange phenomenon that messes with how our brains sense and process our reality. Today, we'll go over the origins and features of liminality and break down what happens when we find ourselves in liminal spaces.
Reality might feel a bit warped . . . but that may be a good thing.
I talk about my experiences listening to bad music and try to understand what features go into making music pleasurable to hear. From the technical side to the more personal touches that are used, I think we can come up with some standards for why some music sounds better than others.
We're starting off strong with a discussion about the end of the world. The focus isn't about how the world is ending for good, but rather a way that the world is changing, for better or worse.
Welcome to Talks With Terry! This is my new show about everything that I'd like to talk about. I'm excited to see where this goes, so please enjoy while I introduce myself and my show to the world!