Jess, Ryan and Damien kick off the ninth season chatting deep on pivotal moments in their lives, women in whiskey, and how to pronounce marquis. Oh, and an O. Henry story with terrible employees, arranged marriages, and something called Beautiful Hole. Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pondering what could have been with our ninth book in the vast collection, Roads of Destiny: And Other Tales of Alternative Histories and Parallel Realms, edited by Alasdair Richmond. In this episode, our featured story is: Roads of Destiny by O. Henry.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading Salt Slow by Julia Armfield; drinking Uncle Nearest 1884.
Damien is watching Marshmallow (2025; dir. Daniel DelPurgatorio); drinking Mary Dowling bourbon.
Ryan is reading Yeehaw Junction by Kayli Scholz; drinking the Aberlour 12.
If you liked this week’s story, read The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges.
Up next: "An Undistinguished Boy" by Gerald Kersh.
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Damien: [00:00:00] I think he was being pretty naive in all the scenarios.
Jess: sure don't agree to marry someone within eight minutes who's a tragically rich whatever.
Ryan: Too. Super hot though, Jess.
Damien: Yeah. Super hot. You're forgetting that. Super hot, rich, rich.
Jess: Oh my God. You forget how hot these ladies are.
Damien: smoke it hot.
Ryan: Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we are Whiskey and the Weird, the podcast that for the past eight seasons has been bringing you unrivaled literary critiques of the best of yesteryear's weird fiction as collected in the British library's tales of the weird series.
Each season we have journeyed together through one edition of this now voluminous series. And each episode we've turned to one story for in-depth discussion, but never along the table of contents prescribed [00:01:00] path.
Damien: What a goofy way of saying never in order.
I love you, Ryan. Please continue.
Ryan: This is part of my, my favorite part every season.
Damien: I love it.
Ryan: If you don't want the stories spoiled, make sure you take the road less traveled and read ahead. Alternatively, our summaries will do the job for you. This season we were fated to pluck the strings of the multiverse as we take a dimensional left at the corner of reality to trek through
Jess: what is happening,
Ryan: roads of destiny, and other tales of alternative histories and parallel realms edited by Alistair Richmond.
Thanks, Alistair. Look there through the fog. Is that,
Jess: why is it foggy? [00:02:00]
Ryan: A road sign, but which way does it point and to what? Time? Time, or. Or or place or where am I?
Damien: No,
Ryan: why am I wearing a tricorn hat?
Damien: We're losing him. We lost him. Tricorn hat
Ryan: Jessica, help.
Jess: What are we doing? Oof. Trico hats for everybody actually.
Okay. We are going with the titular story. Roads of Destiny by O Henry
O.
Damien: Henry.
Ryan: Excellent. I like O Henry.
Damien: Oh really?
Ryan: Oh, I do.
Damien: Oh, wow.
Ryan: But before we get to that, oh, we have some bar talk to do. Damien, what are you drinking tonight?
Damien: If you're a first time listener, thank you so much for joining us this season.
Go back and, uh, listen to when we were really terrible and not just pretending to be terrible in our first season, but you will come to a conclusion that every time that we have a kickoff. [00:03:00] Ryan surprises us with a brand new Re-Scripted intro catching both Jess and myself completely off guard. So this one had a lot more melodrama than I was preparing for.
And a Jess point, I wanna know where the fog came from, but some root cause there, it's an alternate reality road signs point anywhere. I think they typically give you some information next. Anyway, no thanks for asking. It'll be adjusted for next time to you. And then looking forward to a fresh new season.
Really excited about the theme of this book. So, so, so can't wait to dive into the first story. Oh, what's in my glass? So, gang, after our brief reprieve from a recording, I got a chance to experience a number of whiskeys at the end of last season. I was telling you how we went through this like, um, advent calendar of whiskeys.
Mm-hmm. And one that stood out as being one of my absolute favorite is called. Mary Dowling. It's a Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey that's been finished. Oh, I've heard of this in Tequila Barrels. It's a [00:04:00] high rye mash bill. It is absolutely delightful. The distillery is water fill and Frazier. Mary Dowling is the sole proprietor.
It is straight out the Kentucky region.
Jess: Hmm. Fancy bottle.
Damien: It's in Louisville. Yeah. Check out this bottle. Beautiful. The color. Beautiful, gorgeous. Really classic, very alchemical, but , tasting notes, super smooth. A light kind of banana, vanilla, caramel light like bread, but not toast.
Really nice. Kick. A black pepper. It is just, it's delicious. It's really delicious. Oddly complex, but drink super simply, if that makes sense. I loved it. I loved it. It was one of the favorites that stood out. I was graced by my beautiful smoking hot wife with a bottle for Christmas because she knew how much I loved it.
Thanks, Kara. So I couldn't wait to introduce it to you both on this, our first episode of the new season.
Ryan: I should also like to say that the next time I give a flowery description of a scotch and [00:05:00] you complain about it, I'm gonna point you back to this episode.
Damien: Please do. I gotta give Mary Dowling or do, because I'm just, you know, it's, look, we drink a lot of whiskey, we drink a lot of spirits.
We try a lot of beers and cans and short bottles of fill in the blank. And we like a lot of them. We don't like a lot of them. But I have any really stand out as being something new that you go, this, this is something I can get behind. And I think this is one of the first bottles that I've experienced in the, you know, nine seasons that we've been doing this, where I was like, wow,
Jess: this is my new
Damien: whiskey.
Yeah, this is one of my new jams. So I was excited to share it with you and I,
Ryan: I'm writing it down. I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for that. The Mary Dowling.
Damien: Yeah, I
Jess: like
Damien: the model. Mary Dowling finished in Tequila Barrels, so you get that nice like little smooth cactus fruit finish. I don't know, as far as other things, uh, I just watched a film called Marshmallow.
Have either of you heard it?
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: No.
Damien: So Marshmallow is a [00:06:00] little bit of an interesting film. It was 2025. It was directed by Daniel Dell Purgatorio. I don't wanna say too much about it. Good name. Yeah. Really rolls off the tongue. Thanks Daniel. I don't wanna say too much about it. It gives Stranger Things vibe because it's got this nostalgia, like kid focused cast.
You have no idea where it's going.
Hmm.
You don't know in the first act. You don't know in the second act. And you only get an inkling in the third act and then by the end you're like, okay, wouldn't have known. That's all I want to say about this movie. 'cause I spent all my time talking about Mary Dowling bourbon whiskey.
So just go in mind. Marshmallow.
Jess: Marshmallow.
Damien: I think it's on shutter, so go in blind, watch it. Don't read up on it. The tagline to the film is question everything. Mm-hmm. It's got a crazy cool cover. Very retro cover.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: Marshmallow by Daniel Dell Purgatorium. [00:07:00]
Ryan: Cool.
Damien: What about you Jess? What's going on?
Jess: Well exactly like Damien, I also tried a lot of very fancy whiskeys over Christmas, except they weren't fancy and I bought them for the like dollar airplane bottles for, we play like family games where you like, you know, like white elephant and you fight over gifts.
It's like the reverse white vets. So I bought the worst sounding whiskeys I could find, so I got a banana peanut butter cookie dough. Ew.
Damien: Nope, nope.
Jess: They were all terrible when I did not buy bigger bottles of any of those. But I did have some leftover Uncle Nearest the 1884, so that's a good one. That's what I'm drinking instead.
And I don't buy this a ton unless, I don't know. It's just like I, I try new things and then I try this and it's just sort of like, oh yeah, this is what whiskey should taste like. It is. Um, it's great. It's just, if you imagine what a good whiskey tastes like in your mind, it's this one. And I just read a Short Story Collection by Julia Armfield.[00:08:00]
She is the one who wrote, she's
Ryan: The Wives Under the Sea.
Jess: Yes. Which is the best book I've read in a really long time. So this is a short story collection from a few years prior, and it's really cool. It's all the stories are about like, tough, weird ladies. She has another novel out that kind of fits the same character genre of just sort of like.
Wet horror where everything's just like gross and wet and it's really fun to read and she's so cool and everything she writes is awesome. And the short story collection is called Salt Slow by the very cool.
Damien: Oh, ooh. Good
Jess: tiger, Julia. Yeah, it's like a kind of a peacocky looking cover. It's great. Ryan, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, thank you Jessica. Tonight I'm drinking the Alure 12, which is of course a really nice highland whiskey. And in fact, this is, this is a whiskey that I recommend to people who are just getting into whiskey, particularly. Like it's a great recommendation if you've got that friend who wants to get into whiskey, but they only read like Golf magazine or Men's Health.
And so they [00:09:00] think that the only whiskey out there is McKellan. So, so there's, we all know there's more whiskeys than that. People think, oh, McKellan's like the greatest. I was like, well try this one. 'cause it's, it's similar enough in, in Palette, but it's like half the price of McKellan. So it's a good way to.
Introduce people to the, to the wide world of whiskey. Other, other than that, there's, there's nothing extremely remarkable about their 12-year-old iteration. It's just a really good whiskey. It's a whiskey well-made. So Alure 12, hope I'm saying that right. As for what I've been doing I had a chance to read a brand new book about Florida over the holiday break.
Damien: God
Ryan: really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. It's called Yeehaw Junction by Kaylee Shoals.
Damien: Yes.
Ryan: Now, if you're a Floridian, you might know that Yeehaw Junction is a real place. It's on Highway 60 all the way over on the East Coast, almost all the way to the East Coast. And it used to be a railroad junction that was one of the [00:10:00] only places where you could change direction on, on the rail from north, south to east west.
And so it's this really, really super rundown place now. Only known for a long time, only known for a horribly rundown bar and inn called the Desert Inn, which then was demolished when a trucker ran through it. Sure makes sense. And so now there's absolutely makes sense, no reason to go to Yeehaw Junction.
So when I saw that this book was titled that, I was like, I've gotta pick this up. It's also got a really compelling black, white, and green cover.
Damien: Okay.
Ryan: So I, I picked this up. It is about a family, I'll use that word, family, a family of children, and the people who look after them.
Damien: Oh, that sounds harrowing.
Ryan: Yeah, they're, they're really, really, really poor. People who are not participating in society, in, in, in many of the normal ways. Uh, the book opens. It's from, it's from the perspective of a kid named Skeet who aspires to be a school shooter. [00:11:00] And it, and it goes, it goes
Damien: just laughing. Yikes.
Ryan: It's a book that comes, like, I opened it and it comes with content warnings and I'm, I'm one of the people that really dislikes content.
Warnings. Yeah. And so I almost didn't continue to go through it 'cause I really can't stand that. But I did. And it's really a dark book. It's very dark, it's very disturbing. It is unpleasant in many ways. And yet it gives you a glimpse of an imagined way in which some people in this great state of ours probably do
Damien: yours
Ryan: Go through their day.
Yeah. You are from here too.
Damien: Yeah. Yeah. I am.
Ryan: You have to claim it. You have
Damien: to. No, I ran off.
Ryan: It's a really, really, really, really dark story though, y'all. I think I've already said that, but I don't think it can be said again. Kayleigh Sholtz, yeehaw Junction. It's short. I may even be classified as novella. I don't know, but it's very readable and it's, and it's very interesting,
Damien: interesting
Jess: title and a real,
Ryan: definitely fun horror.
Yeah, definitely in the whole, absolutely. A horror genre.
Damien: All right, [00:12:00]
Ryan: so that's what we're reading. That's what we're watching, that's what we're drinking. And what are we talking about tonight? Well, we're talking about William Sidney Porter, of course, who was born on September 11th, 1862. And before you can say that's not who our author is for tonight.
Let me stop you and say Yes it is.
Damien: Yeah, it is. Actually,
Ryan: we're so advanced. Yeah, you
Jess: got 'em.
Ryan: We're so advanced. We're dealing with pseudonyms now, folks. Okay. So as I was saying, he was born on September 11th, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is sometime around the time that roadwork on I 40 began. His mother, sadly died birthing his younger brother, and so he was raised solely by his father as a boy.
He was an avid reader and demonstrated a familiarity for languages. At 19, he became a pharmacist, and at 20 he moved to Texas because he had developed a persistent cough and thought he haunted Texas, [00:13:00] drier Air of Texas. Might help. Shortly after his move to Texas, though he left the pharmaceutical world to work in a cigar store, so we'll probably never know if the Dryer Air of Texas had curative properties.
Damien: I don't. I'm just gonna go to the asbestos smoothie shop because that's where I'm gonna go next.
Ryan: He became quite a musician himself though, in Texas, taking up the guitar and the mandolin and joining the choir, I don't mind saying, of St. David's Episcopal Church.
Damien: All right.
Ryan: In 1887, he married AAL Estes and an elopement, and quickly they had two children, but the first died only hours after being born.
Damien: Sorry.
Ryan: Sometime later, he began working as a bank teller. Now, this guy goes through quite a number of careers. Began working as a bank teller, but didn't understand that what was left in the drawer at the close of business was not meant for him to take home. [00:14:00]
Why
Ryan: else would he? He
work
Jess: in a bank.
Ryan: He was arrested and imprisoned for embezzlement,
Jess: weak
Ryan: after posting bail,
Damien: worked. Dunking Donuts, you know that you could take home the donuts at the end of
Ryan: the day. Yeah. Doesn't, doesn't fly in the bank. Yeah.
Damien: Garbage Should have been in the manual.
Ryan: After posting bail, he got spooked on the way to his court date and fled to Honduras where he lived in a hotel in Trujillo and befriended a famous train robber.
Damien: You're making all of this up,
Ryan: you would think, but the dude just cannot help his case here. In any event, their friendship inspired one of his more famous stories, which was called Cabbages and Kings, two subjects which have heretofore never been considered together. Teen 97 was a rough year upon learning.
His wife was seriously ill. He left exile, returned to the [00:15:00] states only to have ael die, and then the law catch up with him. All told he served three years in prison, but it was there that he began to publish. He published 14 stories from prison under different pen names, but the one that seemed to get the most public traction was O Henry.
Now. I know you're a curious lot, so I looked into this for you. Thank you. And the O stands for Olivier. I admit that I was somewhat disappointed to discover that it stood for anything I just really wanted to do. It should have just been
Damien: Oh yeah,
Ryan: yeah. Various people.
Damien: Shortlist should have been exclamation point, to be honest.
I mean, that would've been great.
Ryan: I think that was already taken by the candy bar
Damien: preempted.
Ryan: various people have posited theories for how he chose this pseudonym, but my favorite theory on account of it being absolutely indefensible is offered by scholar Guy Davenport, who wrote, I can't even get through this. The pseudonym that he [00:16:00] began to write under in prison is constructed from the first two letters of
Damien: SC.
Ryan: And the second and last two letters of Penitentiary.
Damien: Penitentiary.
Ryan: How did this guy come up with that? That's absolutely preposterous.
Damien: Well, because obviously it was in an Ohio penitentiary,
Ryan: but you don't come up with the name of something like by looking. Okay. Look, I mean, it's
Damien: also not true. Like he, he, he didn't get the spelling right there.
Ryan: So this is one step above saying that he constructed his pseudonym using the alphabet.
Damien: Yeah. If you look at all the letters that have ever existed in any order. Right. He picked a few of them picked,
Ryan: yeah. Dear Porter drank himself to death on June.
Jess: At least it wasn't the, as the asbestos factory.
Damien: Well, we don't know. He didn't get there.
Ryan: We don't know. He was a drinking. He [00:17:00] didn't get there. June the fifth, 1910.
So let's raise a glass.
Jess: Oof. Oh,
Damien: you were savage.
Ryan: Even before he died, though, he had become a titan in the American literary scene. In 1919, the O Henry Award was created to recognize superior achievement in short story writing, and it is still awarded today. After 2002, the format changed, and in 2021, it settled into the current format of a guest editor selecting the 20 best O Henry Prize winners, and then those being published in an annual anthology called The Best Short Stories of, uh, insert Year Here, the 2025 Editor was Edward P.
Jones. Our story Tonight, roads of Destiny, was first published in Ainsley's Magazine in April of 1903. Which was an American literary periodical running from 1897 to 1926. Other [00:18:00] famous contributors included Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen Crane, and PG Woodhouse. And I'd be remiss not to point out that if you looked at the volume we're reading from the editor Mr.
Richmond has labeled the story as being first published in 1909 which is not true.
Jess: Oh my God. Throw the whole book in the garbage.
Ryan: I'm sorry. It's
Damien: not true. All right, folks. Remember how I said he never tells us anything ahead of time? This was the one thing he told us that
Jess: time. We did get a text about this.
Damien: We got a text about this. He was furious.
Ryan: I rest my case.
Jess: Jessica
Ryan: has our summary tonight.
Damien: Oh, I can't wait.
Jess: Does she ever Okay. Roads of Destiny? I wrote part one, but I don't think I wrote part two. Part one, we have a narrator and his name is David. He's a poet, but really he's a shepherd and actually he's my nemesis.
Nah, [00:19:00] harm man. David is essentially doing an open mic night at the bar. He's written poetry that's being performed. The drunks applaud and there's a sober notary there who can see how terrible the lyrics are. David walks home remembering that he's had a falling out with Yvonne, who is presumably his girlfriend.
He's determined to get famous and spite her with his fame, so he makes a plan as he's packing up like the one shirt he owns in the shed that he lives in behind his dad's house where he's a sheep herder. He walks past the light that's on in Yvonne's window with his bindle, and he walks past the sheep that he neglects during the day to write poetry until he comes to dun dun dun, a fork in the road.
He turns left
Damien: path as tra oh,
Jess: within a half an hour he finds a woman all wrapped in a [00:20:00] shawl, a big guy and a bunch of servants with a stuck carriage. He's pushing and pulling and helps free the horses and the carriage and the buggy or whatever it's, and then the big guy says, get in the carriage. So David does because he is an idiot.
Ryan: That's never, you should never do that.
Jess: If a big guy tells you to get in the carriage, don't get in the carriage.
Ryan: I
Damien: don't care what his mustaches
Ryan: look like.
Damien: Yeah. Get in the carriage.
Jess: No,
Damien: he does love
Jess: alone are the carriage around for a little bit and they reach an in the innkeeper, tries to tell them it's too late, it's the middle of the night.
Nobody good is trying to. Get a hotel room in the middle of the night, but the big man bellows about how he's the Marquis Day boat per twee or something. So he gets let in, the Marques continues to yell, and this time for like a million candles. And then he quizzes David about who he is. He's David and what he does.
Mm-hmm. Shepherd, but you know, with a dash of poetry.
Damien: Mm-hmm.
Jess: The marque gives us all the relevant backstory we need. The [00:21:00] girl in the shawl is his niece and he was supposed to have married her off, but typical woman, she threw a fit about marrying a guy three times her age. So instead Uncle Marquis said he would marry her off to the first man they met after leaving this unsuccessful wedding.
That's where David comes in.
Damien: Guess what dog? That's what you get for hysteria. Guess what dog?
Jess: So a real old man or a bad poet, sheep heard her. So David's got 10 minutes to decide if he wants to marry her. He asks Lucy, you know, BCF asks kind of what she wants, but basically he doesn't really listen because she's so tragically beautiful and it's also just very right and she's rich and it's meant to be.
And so he decides in eight minutes, so they should get married. Yvonne, who you know, he gives the news to the marquis who manages to find, of course, your regular middle of the night [00:22:00] priest, and he marries the two of them off and they live happily ever after.
Ryan: Guarantee it costs extra.
Jess: Just kidding. Our idiot narrator decides he needs justice for all of the ways that Lucy, his wife of one minute, has been wronged and he challenges the marquee to a dual.
But not with swords. Just with pistols. Okay. 1, 2, 3, dual. And David is immediately shot in the heart. RIP David The marquees, bundles the crew up and they go in surge of another. More alive husband.
Damien: Bye.
Jess: Okay. P flashback music. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're back. What about the shoot at the fork in the road? You know, that's a great question.
Damien: Yeah, we'll get there.
Jess: Okay, so we're back at the fork in the road. And this time David goes right, so he walks for days, he's aiming for Paris. He snooze by [00:23:00] the side of the road, he hits up peasants for bad bread, eventually makes it to the city. He finds a vacant house to squat in, and he spends his days writing bad poetry and foraging for, uh, what just looks like wine.
On one return foraging trip, he finds a beautiful woman sitting on the stairs claiming she used to live in the house. Does he live here? Yes. But not on the third floor. No. David helps her with her shoe and he falls in love again. Yvonne Shaman on Meanwhile,
what,
on the third floor of this same building, the beautiful woman, a regular guy and a big giant guy, sit plotting and planning, oh man, do they wanna kill this king?
They have a plan, but they need help carrying it out. Luckily for them, the beautiful woman has just met a big idiot who's very obviously in love with her and they can trick [00:24:00] him into doing the plan.
Damien: What's his name?
Jess: I bet his name is David. David. So they do, she says, Hey David, my mom is dying. And I need you to get a secret message to my uncle who I guess lives in, works in the castle.
She gives him a secret code and a letter that will get him passed the guards. So he goes, he gives a code, gets punch of, gets by a bunch of security checkpoints, and the guards all immediately realize he's an idiot who's setting the king up to be killed. David does not believe them. Obviously, that hot, hot lady wouldn't steer him wrong.
Damien: Nope.
Jess: So our king is like, okay, well do your plan, but you have to stand here in the window and pretend to be the king. If your weird code words don't get you murdered, you are right. The hot, hot woman wasn't plotting anything. Obviously David immediately gets murdered [00:25:00] by a sorry David, by a bullet from the gun.
I knew it was coming from the big guy, and the big guy was the marquee from the left fork. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, more. Yeah.
Damien: What happens if he doesn't go the left road or the right road?
Jess: Well, why don't we go back in time? We're back at the fork. And you know what? Our man, Dave's really had a change in heart.
He's being too hasty. Obviously Yvonne is the one for him. No doubt. So instead of going straight or right or left, he turns around. He and Yvonne get married, his dad dies. They get to live in the big house, and he writes his bad poetry while tending the sheep, happily ever after. Nope. Wrong again. He's a terrible shepherd, still a worst poet.
And Yvonne is always mad at him for being terrible at both of those things,
Ryan: women. Then,
Jess: so the notary, the [00:26:00] notary who heard David's bad poetry at the beginning of the story offers to send some of it off to a friend of his. The friend knows poetry and will tell David honestly if he has real skill and should keep writing it or intent, he's actually terrible and should just concentrate on his sheep and his wife.
Damien: Yeah. In that order,
Jess: obviously. Right. Obviously the friend says his poems are terrible. We use some bird metaphors, but the message is, you're not a poet. Stop trying. You're terrible. Take care of your wife. You idiot. David is bummed, but he appreciates the feedback so much that he buys a gun from a guy who basically runs a pawn shop on his walk home.
Then he burns all his poems and then he promptly kills himself. The whole village. Here's the gunshot and our meddling notary finds the pawn shop gun, which obviously once belongs to and bears the crest of the marque day. Bow tweed, the
Ryan: bellowing,
Damien: marquee, uh, the Marquez.
Jess: So [00:27:00] that's our happily ever after.
Damien: Nice. Well
Ryan: done, Jess. So what's the, what's the over under on Marquee versus Marquise?
Damien: Marquise.
Ryan: Marquise is how you say it, marquee. I've heard.
Damien: Who
Jess: knows,
Damien: man.
Jess: I have heard both, and I am going with the pronunciation of the audiobook version of the story I listened to before this. Fair enough. So you can fight some old guy on YouTube.
Damien: I, you know what? So I,
Ryan: why is the old guy often me on YouTube,
Jess: some old guy named Brian?
Damien: I, when I see Marquee, I think Marquee Daad, and I've never heard him referred to as Marqui Marqui Marquis Daad. So I give it the marquee, I give it the silent s, or as I like to say, the island.
Ryan: Horrible. Somebody cut that in post, huh? Let's get into our actual discussion.
Damien: All right, let's do it.
Ryan: Uh, the title of the story is, the Title of our Anthology Roads. Sure. Is [00:28:00] of Destiny. So when you guys think of Destiny
Damien: Yes.
Ryan: What comes to mind for you?
Damien: A fantastic concept. One that's interesting.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: One that probably when I think of like preordained destination mm-hmm. I think of like the religious implications. Mm-hmm. So tied to, I think it's Lutheranism is really, that's one of the like founding principles,
Ryan: Presbyterianism.
Damien: Okay. So I was wrong, but is this, it was somewhere in that realm.
Ryan: It was
Damien: faded, but when I, when I hear destiny and, and like preordained direction, I just think it's something that one, I don't necessarily agree with or believe in.
I don't think that, that you were, you were destined to end up in one place or with one person or whatever the case may be. Mm-hmm. So that's why I called it fantastic. But it is novel and interesting and really sort of a fun ideology and a fun concept. Yeah. So that's what I think of when I think of destiny.
Something that [00:29:00] is fun to describe, fun to talk about, to reminisce about, but akin to horoscopes is not real.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jess: Yeah. Same. I think. In my life has never come up. I have never once thought about it. What is my destiny? I think that's a weird thing to think about, but I do like when lots of
Ryan: people think about it though.
Yeah, no doubt. Yeah,
Jess: I, yeah. But it's just like the people who are like on cooking shows who are just like, oh, I gotta win this competition to prove all my haters. And it's like, why have is that destiny? Why? Well, it's just like, why do you have haters? Why don't you have better friends? Like, why are you thinking about your destiny?
Why don't you just have a better, less weird life?
Damien: And chefs are kind of jerky though, so, and a better omelet.
Jess: It's just like, my dad didn't want me to be a chef, and this will prove to him. I was just like, anyway, whatever. What?
Ryan: Hey Jess, what were you doing right before we started recording?
Jess: Watching Chopped baby?
Damien: Hey Sharks.
Jess: But when it is in a story where you're like. [00:30:00] Someone's gonna try and outsmart their destiny, you're just like, okay, you're not, it
Ryan: works.
Jess: Yeah. And I'm excited to find how it's gonna backfire.
Damien: I am super curious to hear your thoughts on Destiny, Ryan.
Ryan: So I generally side with everything you all have said.
And I, I'm often stunned by the number of people who talk about destiny only when it is in reference to something positive that's happened in their life.
Damien: Sure. Yeah, exactly.
Ryan: Yeah. People never start referring to their fate or their destiny, almost never when something negative has happened.
Damien: You know what's interesting?
I think I would say that for Destiny, destiny as a positive connotation, I think that fate has somewhat a
Ryan: negative connotation. Negative connotation. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. I can see that I swim in, in, in the religious waters a little bit more than either of you two. I, I
Jess: don't know about that
Damien: father.
Ryan: And I hear, you know, I hear a lot of people use phrases like God's plan for me,
Damien: right.
Ryan: And so that's a, that's a tough pill for me to [00:31:00] swallow theologically because my view of God tends to be much larger and much more cosmic.
Damien: And is that aligned with your faith's view or your faith's view
Ryan: Sometimes,
Damien: yeah.
Ryan: Um, I think that that God's got better things to do than plot out every minute of my day.
Damien: Are you saying he can't, or that he just doesn't,
Ryan: didn't say that he couldn't. He probably doesn't.
Damien: God's plan. Shout out to Drake.
Ryan: Yeah, it's, uh, I think that, uh, you know, the, the, the, the anecdote that always comes to mind is, is from an.
Novel called Cold Sassy Tree by Olivia Ann Burns. It's a really bizarre novel for a lot of people to have read, and certainly no one who listens to this podcast will ever have read it. But there's a, a scene in there in which a boy, the protagonist of the story will, who's 12 years old, um, gets caught up on a train trestle with his dog when a train approaches and the dog flees immediately because he knows it's coming way before Will does.
Damien: Yeah. It's a train
Ryan: and, and will freezes. [00:32:00] And so eventually he decides that the only chance he's got to survive is to lie down and let the train pass over him. So he does that and the train passes over him and he gets scraped up and bruised and bumped around. But he lives
Damien: Whoa. Time
Ryan: out. And so
Damien: Really?
Ryan: Yeah, in the, it's a novel, Damien.
Damien: Oh, okay.
Ryan: So in the later scene when he's lying in bed recovering, his grandfather enters the room. And like a lot of southern novels, the grandfather's a voice of wisdom here.
Damien: Right, of course.
Ryan: And will asks the grandfather, grandpa, do you think it was God who put the idea in my head to lay down on the train trestle?
The grandfather says, well, will, you can think that if you want to, but if you believe that, you also have to believe that God put the fool idea in your head to be up there in the first place. What God gave you was a brain and the will to use it. And that tends, that tends to summarize more of my thoughts on fate and destiny.
Damien: All right.
Ryan: I, from a religious context, before we really get going any deeper and, and maybe [00:33:00] it's too late, any particular hopes or expectations for the stories this season?
Damien: I said it already. I am, I am psyched. I am psyched about this. When we were talking about, novels to look at for the next season, last season, and just brought this one up, I was like, yes.
It hearkens back to the potential for weather, strange weather. Mm-hmm. Uh, for the bug. The creepy crawly one just sort of takes us, I feel like we've been pretty focused on ghost hauntings possessions. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, sort of demon skewing, jilted love, like ruthless murder. And it was all well and good, but I want to get back to some, it's only Thursday.
I, I wanna get back to some weird potential sci-fi, and so I see a lot of potential. Yeah.
Ryan: Okay.
Damien: Coming in with, with, oh, Henry I think is great, but just looking at some of the titles, I can't wait to dive into the rest of this volume. I really am. I, I have high expectations. I mean, going back again, Prometheus strange weather.
Mm-hmm. [00:34:00] Some of the more like science backed themes. I think this could be one of them, even though, and there's been good volumes
Ryan: for us. We've really enjoyed those
Damien: discussions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm pretty psyched. My expectations are high already. Just reading, this story alone and reading the intro to this story, it's definitely a more contemporary spin.
This volume was published this year, right? It was, I I think it's, it might be a year old. No, this
Jess: one's a, yeah, a couple years old maybe.
Damien: Oh, it is? Okay. Let's
Ryan: see. 20, 23. So not too
Damien: old. Well, I think the podcast started before that and it did notice that there are some, uh, possible influences brought to us by the editor.
Alistair, you got some,
Ryan: yeah. All of a sudden they're starting to do their own, if this, then That's right.
Damien: Absolutely true. What about you, Jess? What are you thinking?
Jess: I've obviously read all of the stories and this is genuinely, I think, one of the stranger combinations of stories because like the title is a mouthful.
It's, other tales of alternate histories and parallel reals [00:35:00] and some other weird stuff. And I don't know. And the introductory material is fun. The intros to each story is fun. There are some like if, then if that kind of things there are also like a framing question for each story that I thought was an interesting way
Yeah.
To kind of organize things. So I think even if some of the stories are not ones that we like, I think there'll be some interesting discussions about like, why is this in here? Does this fit alternate
Damien: cool
Jess: history? Does this count as weird fiction?
Damien: Mm-hmm.
Jess: Just because it's kind of an alternate history, does that automatically make it weird?
Damien: Well, it is interesting that the entire, like editor's preface to the volume goes into is a defense of that. Really? Yeah. And it really is a defense of that. It's saying before you sit here and say, this doesn't really jive with the rest of the tales of the weird SIR series. Actually it does.
Jess: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Damien: And [00:36:00] here's a couple concrete examples of like, Scottish collections or whatever. Or, or, or Scottish terminologies and
Jess: Yeah. But then as we read them, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, it's good.
Interesting
Ryan: to see. I'm gonna make a note of that to talk about at a later time. That's a, that's an interesting point, Damien.
Damien: Well good, you, you make that note, Ry.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm making note. Write it down. It's,
Damien: the note's been made. We made a note. Y'all.
Ryan: I think that, oddly, I, I guess my feeling towards this, this anthology so far is cautious interest.
Damien: Okay.
Ryan: It's the, it's the first time strong
Jess: dislike.
Ryan: It's the, no, it's the first time.
I really haven't, I haven't known what to expect. And I think that goes to what Damien was, was talking about like, like the last couple of seasons I've, I've known what to expect and I've known what I wanted to see and what I didn't wanna see. Right. Or I've known. Right. This is an
Jess: occult
Ryan: detective I hope to see, right?
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: Right. Yeah. And I knew to expect a Jules de Grandin story, and we didn't get one until we added
Jess: it. My God, I'm [00:37:00] still mad
Damien: about
Jess: that.
Damien: This is seasons ago.
Ryan: But no, I, I am curious to see what is in this volume. I am very curious to see, and I was very curious and pleasantly surprised to see an O Henry story, not typically known as a weird fiction author.
So, yeah, we'll see where this takes us. I, I think it could be some pretty interesting days ahead.
Damien: Well, you know, given that, not just that it's the title story, but also that very, it very like. Comfortably fit within the theme that was promised in the editor's note. I mean, it defines it really?
Jess: Yeah, it does.
I mean, I thought it's not the first story in the collection, but I thought it would be a good one to kick it off. Here's the most literal interpretation of paths diverging. It's paths diverging.
Damien: So one literal path.
Ryan: Well, let's, let's dive into it then. Each of the three paths David could take in this story all end in his death.
So why does it matter which one he chooses? [00:38:00] What is, what is o he trying to say? Yeah.
Damien: Yeah. I mean, isn't that the underlying theme that you can't escape your, your fate, your destiny, positive, negative, right? Is that at the end of the day, like you could have vastly different ways to approach there, but it's the same players, a different play, same end.
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: And so I, or
Ryan: is he saying like the same end for everybody? Death is the end for everybody no matter what.
Damien: Is that, what's happening here? I just think it's, it's, it's like this outcome, this particular outcome, which happened to be death for David, but this particular outcome and the players involved are there, even though the course in which that destiny plays itself out could be vastly different.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Damien: And so it was interesting, and I I, that was especially validating in the, you know, turnaround go home rejoin Yvonne thing is that there's still like, there's a degradation of relationship that mm-hmm. That juicy, spicy love fades into over comfort. Uh, you know, he lets wolves take his sheep dwelling the numbers down from 800 to 800.
Yeah. 800 sheep is a lot of sheep. I, I don't even know how you [00:39:00] keep tally on that. He neither those, he. He, he commits himself to bad poetry. So he is still sitting in the garage, like cranking out tunes on his, uh, on his acoustic right. And then his friend tells him he's terrible. And so he goes and he buys a gun that happened to belong to the Maree and, you know, takes himself out.
So the bullet finds it's mark years later. It's just, it's one of those like, interesting concepts. And I think it was, the way it was fleshed out was really surprising. It was a little spell binding, I think in o Henry's, pros. But it was fun. And I think ultimately it was a very simple, a, a simple motif.
Mm-hmm. Which is, you'll, it's not final destination. Death will come for you, but it's definitely a, like all roads lead to the same outcome,
Ryan: I had the strangest thought while reading this, that I would love to see, uh, sort of a remix of this story written, each of the three paths written from the perspective of the gun.
I just thought that would be really weird if
Damien: off.
Ryan: Yeah, you could call it check off. Exactly. Check
Damien: off. [00:40:00] Yeah.
Ryan: So Jess, yeah. Fate free will, what's going on here?
Jess: So it's interesting that they're, different options. He's got his three pads, but he's exactly the same in all three of them. He falls immediately and tragically in love with someone that he shouldn't because he's just kind of a dingbat.
He makes, and, and
Ryan: he married dingbat
Jess: and he makes terrible decisions that lead to his death. And so it's, I like, it's interesting you can't escape your fate, but also if your fate is just that you're an idiot,
Damien: he's pretty, uh, would you call it naivete? I, I think he was being pretty naive in all the scenarios.
Ryan: Very,
Jess: I don't sure don't agree to marry someone within eight minutes who's a tragically rich whatever.
Ryan: Too. Super hot though, Jess.
Damien: Yeah. Super hot. You're forgetting that. Super hot, rich, rich.
Jess: Oh my God. You forget how hot these ladies are. I mean, and so
Damien: smoke it hot.
Jess: It's, yeah, like you can't escape your destiny, [00:41:00] but also you can't escape the dumb decisions you're gonna continuously make.
Ryan: You can't escape yourself everywhere you go. There you are.
Jess: There you are.
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: Being his real dink bat,
Ryan: I thought maybe one of the messages of this was don't walk out on your wife.
Damien: His wife, and ended up,
Ryan: he still died anyway, so. Yeah. Yeah. He still died anyway. Think they weren't married. I came to that conclusion after the first two.
Damien: No, they weren't. They got married when he turned
Ryan: and
Damien: went back, right?
Ryan: Yeah, he came back.
Damien: But they were, they were together. They were betrothed.
Ryan: Well, there definitely seems to be some commentary here on class and privilege and power. And what did you pick up on Jess?
Jess: This one was funny 'cause like I'm reading it and I feel like I am falling for the propaganda of like, this guy's only got one shirt.
Oh, he sucks, right? Like he's written as this like poor sheep herder. But again, it goes back to like he's a poor sheep herder 'cause he's doing a really, really bad job.
Damien: Yeah, [00:42:00]
Jess: there's obviously a bunch of class stuff in here, but if you're just really, really, really bad at every job you are also probably just not going to make money or be successful if you, you know, like not to be a, but also sort of, not to be a pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?
But if two thirds of your sheep get eaten because you're writing depressed emo poetry. I mean, some of that's on you.
Damien: Yeah. It's got a little bit's on you. I think it's interesting be because it's sort of lampoons or satirizes, the idea of the romantic artist. Mm-hmm. And it's just like, no, actually not, it's just a dude who makes bad decisions.
This isn't like,
Jess: and people immediately take advantage of him,
Damien: you know? Right,
Jess: right, right, right. Everyone can see that he's a doofus.
Damien: Yeah. Where he's, where he's pleading his case to a king and say, I, I, this woman struck me as a pure soul. Like, there's no way she would ever do anything wrong. It's like, nah, man, you were a foil.
You,
Ryan: no,
Damien: you were Patsy. So get outta here.
Ryan: So I was reading this, [00:43:00] I'm like, early on in the, in the first branch, the left branch, there's, there's, uh, a passage that, that has these words in it. The lady is my niece, mad Moel, Lucy Dave Vaz. She is of noble descent and is possessed of 10,000 francs a year in her own right.
As to her charms You have but to observe for yourself. Yeah. If the inventory pleases your shepherd's heart, she becomes your wife at a word. And when I read that word inventory, I actually noted, you can see here in the margin
Jess: it's a,
Ryan: Jess will love this.
Jess: Yeah.
Damien: He did write that. He puts
Jess: in the paper, you just gotta sell your niece to literally the first guy.
Damien: But there was also, there was also another line, um, and I'm sorry I don't have it in front of me, but it was something about like the, something that radiated from her, like an alabaster radiance or something. And I was just thinking, this is a cleavage commentary thing, thing going on. Oh God, yes. It was 100% sexualizing her.
But then he goes on to give all this like, you [00:44:00] know, slightly poetic, like she's terribly crafted, but
Jess: tragically beautiful.
Damien: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sounded just like an emo band from the late nineties. It was pretty bad.
Ryan: Well, what do you think about the idea that all of us have unlived lives out there? What might have been, if we'd made different choices is, is that a melancholy thought for you or an empowering thought, or perhaps something else
Jess: Exhausting.
Ryan: It's an exhausting thought. I love it. Yeah.
Jess: I like, it Makes me think of a, you know, like an old man at a bar who's just like, oh, if I wouldn't have hurt my ankle, I could have gotten that
Damien: Yes.
Jess: Uh, football scholarship, but then my homecoming queen girlfriend would've married me and none of that happened. And so instead I'm, you know, sitting, wasting away at this bar. It's just like, okay, well none of those things happened [00:45:00] 60 years ago. Right? Other things could have happened,
Damien: but it becomes. It becomes like everything that defines that person
Jess: to
Damien: that person.
Jess: Yes. The missed opportunities. Yeah, the missed
Damien: opportunity. Right.
Jess: The people who got promoted over someone that, you know, like
Damien: I, I, I honestly think, and it's interesting because we, we were talking earlier about, or I was mentioning earlier about how I associate the concept of destiny with faith and, and a lot of like religious foundations.
And I still think that to be the case, especially for these sort of situations, mm, it gives people a chance to hope when all hope is otherwise lost. Like they are basically saying, oh, if only this didn't happen, I would've had a much better life. And so they sit there and basically live out what could have been.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it takes away a little bit of the pain and lamentation of where they are right now. And so I think that's why folks do that or like give that possibility, but the pain so, so
Ryan: empowering for some people
Damien: then it is empowering,
Jess: but it also makes it
Damien: to do so.
Jess: And it's [00:46:00] not your fault.
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: Right. It was, you know, like, this thing happened.
Damien: Right.
Jess: To me, it
Damien: wasn't my plan, it was somebody else's plan, or yet some other entity's plan. But I, I think that that's especially harrowing because there's no way you can go back and change it. Like there isn't the mechanism, well,
Jess: there is, if you're not a weirdo and you're just like, oh, I wish I would've gone to nursing school, go back to nursing school.
Damien: I'm saying, I'm saying to do it. Yeah. For
Jess: these guys at the bar
Damien: approach, where it's just like, I'm never gonna leave this stool at the bar. My chance has passed. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. So then they sit there and they paint this narrative to themselves mm-hmm. Day after day while, getting sauced.
So it's, it's, it's tragically, and, and I, I don't wanna use the word romantic, because it isn't, it's, it's really sad. But the plain and simple fact is it is something that it serve as its own sort of like foundational basis of belief for so many people. And it's just. It's a bummer.
Ryan: That's a good way to put it.
A foundational belief.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: For some folks, like [00:47:00] I could, could have been, I could have done.
Damien: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: And when, when you read books about leaders who have been successful, for example, there is always a claiming of agency that happens
Jess: Yes.
Ryan: At various significant points in their life. Right. There's a claiming of agency and and I think that that's what the old guy at the bar Yeah.
In Jessica's imagination has not
Jess: done well. The agency is, every good thing that has happened is because of my decision. Yeah. Every bad thing that has happened is, is your fault, is a missed
Damien: opportunity.
Jess: Yeah. Or is someone else's fault.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jess: So I didn't have agency for the bad decisions, only the good ones,
Damien: I don't know like the first episode for this season, but it does beg the question, especially when we're kind of presented and kind of given this now.
I can think of one particular time in my life, and again, I'm not one who harps on destiny or, or like follows that pursuit. Mm-hmm. But I do think of one time that I was just like, I think this would've been a very pivotal moment. This would've been my split in the road.
Ryan: [00:48:00] Mm-hmm.
Damien: That sort of dictated the rest of my future had I pursued it.
But it's because the implications of this particular moment were so grand. Did you
Ryan: recognize it at the time or was it only in, in retrospect?
Damien: I definitely recognized it at the time where it wasn't like a butterfly effect thing or like a sound of thunder thing where I step off the path and crush a, you know, fly, you know, like millions of years later.
Like it's chaos rules. It was, it was definitely something where it changed the trajectory of my entire, like future post-college, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it was, it was, I was, I was auditioning to be a part of Universal Studios in like Kyoto, I think, or Tokyo. Woo. One of the KY OTOs.
Ryan: There's, there's one.
Damien: Yeah. There, there is one. I, I just can't remember if it was Tokyo or Kyoto. I think it was Kyoto. So anyway, universal Studios. I had just graduated college. I was really into theater. I was really into improv and stuff. And I went and auditioned to be a part of the American cast that they needed for a stunt show and for like street actors in this [00:49:00] new Universal studios park in Japan.
And it was like a two year fellowship. Mm-hmm. And they house you. I would've been out of the United States for two years. I would've been completely like, isolated on that, you know, in a, an Asian country where I knew nobody, it would've been an entirely new career path or, uh, a new life path for me that was enough removed.
And like, I, I don't wanna say trauma, but like. Impactfully heavy enough to where I think that would've set me off into a totally different course of life. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And not like what I had for breakfast yesterday morning. Right. Same. Right. I think long term, but that was something that I please out in my mind where if I pursued this and if I did this, or if I achieved success in this 'cause I bombed the audition, but if I, like, my life would've been totally different right now.
Mm-hmm. And that is, that is one of the very few moments in my entire life from good decisions, bad decisions made where I was like, that probably would've set a vastly different course. Yeah. And I'm curious if, if you two have one.
Ryan: I, I have, uh, a [00:50:00] few, uh, and they're not as, they're not all as major. As that.
Yeah. But
Damien: what's the, like what's the biggest one? If you had to flow into the top,
Ryan: the decision to enter the priesthood.
Damien: Sure. Yeah. Right,
Ryan: right. In some ways of looking at it, yeah, it's a career path, but in other ways it's, it's a life for sure. Right?
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: No doubt. Doubt. And in fact, Damien, I'm, I'll bring you up because you and I were sitting at a bar in Providence, Rhode Island a number of years ago.
And you asked Long the red door, it was the red door. The red door, yeah, the red door. And you asked how long I'd been doing this and I said something like, like at that point it was like 16 years. And you said with some sense of like awe or shock or incredulity, like you're really gonna do this thing your whole life, aren't you?
And I reflected, didn't you? I've reflected on that moment
Jess: too late to get out
Ryan: many times. Like, because like for me, the answer it was immediately, well, yeah, but I was like, what if there was a different answer to that question? Interesting. What would that, interesting? Would that like what, like, I, I don't go down that path or I haven't [00:51:00] gone down that path and I don't foresee myself going down that path.
But people like you who are looking at it from the outside in
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: See the opportunity to do different things and, and you take them like you've changed jobs, uh, uh, a time or two, right? Yeah. So your life is not as wrapped up in who you are, is a little bit more separate from what you do.
Damien: That good point.
Ryan: Yeah. so yeah. So the decision end of the priesthood is a, is a big moment for that.
Damien: Have you questioned it? Have you
Ryan: wonder like No, no, no. I haven't never. I haven't really, I haven't really, I mean, it's been, it's been a very good life for me. And there's been other, there's been small moments along the way where you're like, well, if I had done that differently, then something else might have happened.
But you, you can't dwell on that. Right. 'cause you didn't, you
Damien: didn't. Right. I mean, we're not talking about like, oh, I should have ordered the Cuban. Instead I got
Ryan: right
Damien: this stupid, my life has altered its course, but. That is, that is a significant one. I'm glad to hear that I was involved with it though. You bet.
Did I ever have a conversation with you that changed your life?
Jess: I have not historically [00:52:00] dwelled on any of these things, but you know, I changed my major in college from one thing to something very different. Yeah. Um, when we graduated undergrad we didn't know what we were gonna do.
Josh had gotten accepted to one grad school. I had gotten accepted to another in different parts of the country, and we moved to the one with a better financial deal. You know, like they were gonna pay for more of Josh's school than they would've paid for mine. So that's how we ended up there. You know,
Damien: I almost wonder those practical decisions though, are sort of like.
Deprioritize in this grand scheme of fate and destiny because it's like, okay, if you make this, they shouldn't be. I think they are right. I be, make a smart decision. It's like, okay, you made the logical decision. So this isn't really like a, what could have been if I chose poorly, you know?
Jess: Right. Like, I guess we could have gone to Boulder.
It probably wouldn't have been that different of a life. Right? Like we're,
Ryan: you could have stuck with [00:53:00] shepherding and poetry.
Jess: I could have been a, a po you know, like we have a fairly new little baby. Most of my friends who are my same age have kids in, if not junior high, high school, some are graduating.
Wow. So am I, uh, funny late in life decision to have a child. I mean, I don't think it's that late in life. No, not late at all. Come on, comparatively late. And I, I enjoy my child and I'm glad we had him, but life would've been drastically different if he showed up 20 years earlier.
Damien: Yeah, that's
Ryan: true. Mean, I think this, this conversation is also one that, that happens for people who enter predominantly risky job arenas.
Like, like people who decide I'm going to be a writer no matter what. Sure. Or I'm, I, I'm going
Damien: risk.
Jess: Yeah. I'm gonna be an actor. I'm gonna, yeah. Yeah. That's fair.
Ryan: So at some point along those roads, like most people bail out that, [00:54:00] right. Because they have to pay their bills.
Damien: Yeah. Maybe it's not even risk, maybe it's vulnerability.
Mm-hmm. Because we all have risky jobs. I mean, I work in like startup tech, right? So of course that's a risky job, but I like that risk. I like the volatility. But
Ryan: there's another startup tech the next time,
Damien: right. If
Ryan: this one fails, there's another
Damien: one down the road. It's not of vulnerability. Mm-hmm. You know, there's a lot of sacrifice that goes into that sort of a choice where you say, I'm gonna pursue an art or a passion or something like that and try and make a career out of it.
That's, that's. I think large. Yeah. I, it is interesting. And you have to, there's a certain amount of courage where you have to say, okay, mm-hmm. Good, bad, or indifferent, like, good on you for making this decision. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's a hell of a choice. I would never do what I do now, being in the situation that I'm in now, if I hadn't established a comfortable, like, safety net prior to this.
And that's probably why the instance that I shared stands out most prominently for me. It's because I was young and unencumbered and I had the mobility to be able to just get up and go. Right. So
Ryan: these decisions become colored [00:55:00] by by things like family.
Damien: Yeah, exactly. Very
Ryan: quickly in life,
Damien: you sort, you sort of anchor yourself down with so many things as you get older, as you get more established in, in one path. And so the, what would've happened if I didn't go to, Publix yesterday? Mm-hmm. Versus, it's just, it's a little bit different. It doesn't carry that same gravitas, but you find those moments.
Like Jess said, she changed her major in college. You know, this was right after college for me. It was Ryan, it was you entering into seminary. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Making a decision. Mm-hmm. Right. College. That is, again, that is very pivotal time. Yeah. That like early twenties period is just, I think that's the top.
Well, I think the other place
Ryan: that our path, this kind of conversation comes up a lot too, is when something, something bad happens that, that you avoided by doing some mundane task for three minutes longer, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So like you, you, you forgot to feed the dog. So you go back into the house, you feed the dog, and then you go to the store and you're caught in a traffic jam and you learn that the traffic jam is, is on, on the result of a [00:56:00] horrible accident that has happened.
Yeah. And you think, God, that happened three minutes ago. If I hadn't have. Gone back into the house and fed the dog like so Was that fate? Mm-hmm. Was that destiny? Yeah. I think the, I think there's, there's lots of realms in which these conversations happen. Do you find any redemption in this story or is this a cynical story for you?
Damien: I think it's allegorical, so there is no redemption.
Ryan: Okay.
Damien: I didn't identify, or I didn't sympathize with any of the characters. David proved to be a fop. He was a dead FOP through and through, and so it was interesting. I think the story writing was good, but it, it was, it was like an ace of fable, right?
It was just like, mm-hmm. You had to pick people to embody certain traits and then you wrote a story around it, and that story was to say that fate is inevitable.
Jess: I think, yeah. I read it slightly less as fate is inevitable, as you are inevitably going to make the same stupid decisions, whatever situation like you are the same.
Anytime there's a hot girl around. You're gonna [00:57:00] screw it up and get shot.
Damien: Don't be a simp
Ryan: Book Jessica today for your fraternity Speaks speakers. Listen, men,
I found it hard to find any sort of redemption in the story. I don't know if it was a necessary component that I was missing, but it was, I was very intrigued when we, when we finished the right path and then I saw that there was more story and then he was gonna go back. That was a really sur a big surprise for me and a, and an intriguing moment of the story.
And I thought the redemption is gonna be found, but then he dies anyway and it's the same gun and the same and worse and it's like, oh yeah, worse. Yeah. So I guess I found it to be a bit cynical. I did for a little while try to jam a square peg into a round hole. And I don't know if either of you good for you, tried to try to do this as well, but the pick up, did you pick up on any biblical illusions in the story?
Damien: I don't know, because I never read the Bible. I saw the
Ryan: movie though. Okay. Yeah. Well, parts of the [00:58:00] movie are pretty good.
Jess: There's a lot of shepherds in the Bible.
Ryan: Yeah. Right. And one of those shepherds in the Bible is King David, who's also a poet.
Damien: Oh.
Jess: And,
Ryan: uh, and so I ling trying to make on
Damien: by, was, was he on by a marque and a saucy gal?
Ryan: Well, so I try, I kept trying to make something of this and I don't think I could, but I, I je he je was definitely undone by a saucy gal. He, uh, her name was Beth Sheba. He was definitely undone by that.
Damien: Beth Sheba. Was it Jezebel?
Ryan: Well, Jezebel was a, Jezebel was aba. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. But like he says, he hasn't read it.
Damien: I've never read the bbb.
Ryan: And I tried to make something of the Marqui. I was like, oh, I bet there's something in his name. I bet there's something in his name that relates to this. So I looked up his name, the meaning of his name in French. It means beautiful whole. So that didn't pan?
Nope.
Damien: Oh. Which is a he's alt punk [00:59:00] song. A beautiful,
Ryan: rough
Damien: downloaded on.
Ryan: So I don't know if any, if anybody out there can do anything with with the Biblical King David in this story, I'd be interested to hear it. 'cause I think there might be something there, but I just couldn't find it.
Jess: Beautiful.
Damien: Yeah.
You
Ryan: know, let me, let me ask you this. Does David bear any moral responsibility for his actions in any of these paths? No. Or is he just, is he on rails?
Damien: He's on rails.
Ryan: You think
Damien: I, he's on Rails because he has just mentioned this earlier, like he has absolutely zero agency and demonstrates zero agency. He is allegedly like a leaf in the wind.
Ryan: But those are two different things. Demonstrating zero agency and having zero agency, two different things.
Damien: I
Jess: think he
Damien: has agency, I think he has it and he demonstrates it.
Jess: I think he has it and he
Ryan: and fails to use
Jess: it and fails to use it. He's just sort of like, oh, woe is me. This hot girl would never steer me wrong.
Damien: But his [01:00:00] agency is like the only time he demonstrates agency is when he turns around and goes home to Yvonne
Jess: and buys a gun
Damien: and buys a gun. 40 tens from the beautiful hole, which will be charged, loaded, and stocked with a bullet for another 10,
Ryan: which was such a weird
Damien: pricing structure.
Ryan: It was a sales pitch.
Damien: It was, it was good.
Jess: I mean, yeah,
Ryan: I guess it's like, it's like the car salesman. Oh, you wanted the steering wheel too?
Damien: I don't know. I would disagree because he's a symbolic character just like everyone else in this, and it's to get the underlying theme across.
Like, I just think that he is a doofus. Mm. And so as Duffusses are, they just sort of wander in one path, another turn around and go back and whatever happens, happens. Circumstances guided him. He never demonstrated agency. He was always being influenced by someone else.
Ryan: I like what you say when you say the only agency he demonstrated was to turn around and go back.
I think that's half right, because I think there's another point in [01:01:00] which he demonstrated definite agency, which was to leave, go past Yvonne to begin with. Right. So in the, in the beginning, the very beginning, he walks faster room. Yeah. To get to the, to get to the forked paths. Right. And he, he walks past her.
He chooses that.
How about the writing?
Damien: I like O Henry. He is got this like mm-hmm. Biting undertone to everything he does. It's just so fun and so cutting and he's a joy to read and so I absolutely, I can't fault on that. And I like it. And it probably perseveres more than it should for being as simplistic as it was at the end of the story.
Mm-hmm. Read the last words and you're like, okay. But still, it digs its hooks into you and sticks with you.
Jess: Yeah, the number of ways that he insults this guy's poetry, I found very rewarding. Like you just only hear about how bad he is and everything. And that was funny. It was funny every time,
Damien: like he is a, I think God.
Ryan: Yeah. Oh, Henry is a masterful writer. I mean, there's a reason they named the, the name, the prize after him. Uh, [01:02:00] just a couple. Uh, I loved how he described the, the bellowing fat man. As Jessica put it, a couple of quick quotes for you in case you haven't read it. So this is on page 93. Huge gentleman waved a hand.
You will enter the carriage. He said, in a large voice like himself, but smoothed by art and habit. This is the part I really like. Obedience belonged in the path of such a voice. Great description.
Jess: Yeah.
Ryan: And then on page 1 0 1, this was a description of, of the town. This is on the right branch of the story.
The street. Once sheltering citizens of import and consequence was now given over to those who ever follow in the wake of decline. The houses were tall and still possessed of a ruined dignity, but many of them were empty, safe for dust. And the spider by night there was the clash [01:03:00] of steel and the cries of brawler, straying restlessly from in to in where one's gentility.
Abode was now, but a rancid and rude incontinence. I mean, you can, you can see that.
Damien: That
just,
Damien: you can smell that. That's can smell it. Yeah. There's no testing. Oh, Henry's got a gift.
Ryan: 1 0 9 is the last one I wanna offer. this is a great line. Describe the woman commanded the Duke. Yes.
Damien: Yes.
Do it.
Ryan: And how you came to be her Duke.
Describe her. Said David with a tender smile.
Damien: Words
Ryan: don't exist. You would command words to perform miracles. Yes. I'm saving that one for later.
Damien: That's what I wanted to reference earlier when I didn't have the book and I was like, the way he describes.
Ryan: Yes. It was just, it was masterful. You would command words to perform miracles
Damien: it and you know, poetry because all his other poetry actually sucks.
Jess: And you can just picture him doing like hand gestures. Yes. Right.
Ryan: Uh, Uhhuh. Yep. [01:04:00] Well, how did this story fit with the theme of the anthology, aside from the fact that the anthology is named, right.
Damien: I mean, it's does it path it's different.
Ryan: Yeah. So
Damien: yeah, guess what? You did it.
Ryan: How many alternate roads are you giving it out of?
13.
Jess: Yeah, I'd say at least 13 alternate paths you could. Yeah, 13. 13
Damien: alternate
Jess: paths. I don't think you get more alternate paths than the one about them.
Damien: Although what is interesting and maybe detracts is that all paths lead to the same outcome. So it's like they do. Yeah. Is it really a different path?
Ryan: Is it just one path?
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: Well, and this something that was in the intro that I thought was worth maybe keeping. In mind was, this was described as having non interacting outcomes versus I think other stories where you Oh, that's a good point. Okay. Go back in time and you might see yourself. Mm-hmm. Or you might be aware that you're
Damien: mm-hmm.
Jess: Picking one option. So this one was Yeah. Referred to as non interacting [01:05:00] outcomes. Oh.
Damien: And like Loki Marvel lore, it's, it's a branch off the main timeline that terminates as opposed to rejoining the timeline. Yeah. But I would disagree and say it rejoins the timeline because in all situations he's dead by the same gun.
Jess: So, yeah.
Ryan: So there, there's actually a real quantum physics theory of time out there called the block universe, in which all possibilities exist in the same universe. It's largely discredited, but it's interesting to think about largely,
Jess: huh? Not totally.
Ryan: There's a few hangers on passer,
Damien: spy hangers
Ryan: on, I think a, I think a lot of these people are sort of in that like string theory, multiverse realm.
And the block universe. People are, are kind of old now, but it fits with, with exactly the way this story goes. We typically ask at this point, did the scare hold up? And at least for this story, we're going to pass on that question. The story's not intended to be scary, and what I'm [01:06:00] surmising is that most of the stories in this volume are not intended to be scary.
Jess: Yeah. But we could maybe revisit
Damien: Yeah. What the question if they're Yeah. Instead of scary. Can we say, did the harrow harrowing ness, I don't know what just the, the, the dreadfulness, did they
harrow,
Damien: did they, did they,
Ryan: did they
Damien: alt? Did they dread?
Jess: They dread.
Damien: I mean, I don't even Dreadful. Yeah. There wasn't dreadful all to be all is to be expected.
But I have to assume that there's gonna be some stories that paint like this counterfactual. And again, that's pulling directly from the editor's intro, like this counterfactual, present or future Yeah. Or alt history that makes you go, Ooh, things are better. Well,
Ryan: maybe the better question is, is right now, is this a weird story or just an alt history story?
Damien: I think that's, that's a good call. Is
Ryan: it? That might be a that. Is
Damien: it truly weird or does it
Ryan: just It is truly weird. Yeah. Yeah. As for this story, I, I don't think this one's that weird. I think it just alts.
Damien: [01:07:00] Yeah. I think it's a little too allegorical to be weird, so I think it ought too, yeah, I'll agree. Jess,
Jess: if they, yeah, if they intersected, I guess is the word.
Like if any, anyone was, if they intersected,
Ryan: it might be, yeah, it might be weird.
Jess: It was aware that there were options then maybe. But no one in the story is aware that anything weird is happening because that he's just taking, like if one of the
Ryan: options, the woman that he was to marry was Yvonne, but not in the others or.
Jess: Or he just was like, oh, I'm getting a weird feeling that I've been here. But like even a recognition of like that
Ryan: right.
Jess: That there were options.
Ryan: Like when he's holding the gun and he's like, I've, I've shot this gun
Jess: before. Yeah. Something like that would, would be all I would need. But I think if the characters don't have any awareness that anything weird is happening, it's probably not super weird.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: Well that brings us to our whiskey ratings. That's how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the weird from Zero Fingers of Whiskey to Five Fingers [01:08:00] of Whiskey. Jess, what are you giving Roads of Destiny?
Jess: Let's go with the four and a half. I like what his mind, I like to hate that, hate David. He's a terrible character and bad things happen to him a bunch of times.
That's gonna bump those numbers.
Damien: I can see that. You want a full, full fist Whiskey from Jessica. Just have terrible things happen to bad people
Jess: and And this one that happens to him three times. Very rewarding.
Damien: Exactly. You get over and over. Four and a half. Dang. Well, I'll, I'll come in at a three and a half.
Okay. I'm not as into it. I, I did. And, and that's strictly on the strength of o Henry's writing. I think the, the concept was strong and I think the underlying, like, again, if we want to make this a parable, great. You did a good job. But otherwise, it's a bit of a nothing burger. I felt nothing for the characters themselves.
I caught the concept, the underlying themes and where he wanted to go with it. I love the satirical bite. I love the poet where it wasn't deserved and the bad poetry, where it was like, all that stuff is good, but those are all elements [01:09:00] attributed to the writer and a flex and not necessarily reflective of a really strong story standalone.
So because of that, I came at a three and a half. Okay. I enjoyed it, but it missed a lot of the other pieces. What about you, Ry?
Ryan: So I, I really, I really agree with a lot of what you said. I wrote down a four.
Damien: Okay.
Ryan: I think a strong start for us. Strong story to. Title your anthology after. Like, Damien, I wanted a little more plot here.
Maybe not just three, choose your own adventure style, but I gotta, I gotta hand it to him,
Damien: end it like page 64, where you know what's gonna happen to poor old,
Ryan: right, right. I gotta hand it to him like, this is a super creative story for the time. I'm not sure how many people were, and maybe we're gonna find out, there was actually more people writing these sorts of stories than I, than I knew about.
But I don't know that that's true. And I know Henry's language is just fantastic. It's, it's hard
Damien: to top
Ryan: something to savor as you read it. So really a great read for me, [01:10:00] even though I got to the end was like, eh, I sort of wish a little more happened, but I'm giving it four fingers.
Damien: It's so, you know, Ryan, it's interesting that you say that because I think of, when I think of like, oh, Henry stories, I think of how you chew on the words.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Damien: It's the best way to put it. Like, and it's a slow chew, it's like a, it's like a super dry beef chew, or you just like. This is staying in my mouth. That's a
Ryan: positive.
That's
Ryan: a positive thing, folks,
Damien: but it's flavorful, so I will take it. Yeah,
Ryan: yeah. Well if you liked Roads of Destiny by O Henry, Damien has a slightly different recommendation for you.
Damien: Yeah. Gang. A literal, if this than that, is gonna go to a Broadway musical that I happen to see Off Broadway called If Then Music by Tom Kit Lyrics and book by Brian Yorkie. It premiered in 20 on that way of broad. And again, I saw it, I would say probably eight or nine years ago when it came [01:11:00] through their off-Broadway tour, the lead.
Played by Adina Menzel or as John Travolta likes to call her, the incomparable. Yeah, thanks Jess. I needed that backtrack there. The reason we bring this up looking, I, I gotta be honest, like if we're gonna follow a theme here that's about like alternate histories and what could have been is we may be pulling from a pretty small but concentrated pool, so it's a bit, it could have been anything.
Let's give you a musical. If then features a protagonist named Elizabeth who moves back to New York City after divorcing her husband, she's in her late thirties. She comes to an opportunity where she has two distinct paths she can follow. She either meets up with her friend Kate, who's a kindergarten teacher who encourages her to go by the nickname Liz and go to a concert.
Or she meets up with her friend, Lucas goes to a party, he takes her then to [01:12:00] a rally, a Humana or an activist rally and encourages her to go back to her college nickname of Beth. And from this, two different paths are created for Elizabeth and we see how both of them pan out. The sad part without being spoiling is that she still feels pain, endures loss in each of those paths.
So the underlying theme is pretty consistent with what we saw here, which was you can't escape a bad life if that's what you're owed. But again, this, uh, it was a pretty good musical. I don't remember any of the songs that came from it, but I enjoyed it. While I watched it, it was called If Then, I Dunno if it's touring, check it out.
Jess: Nice.
Ryan: Great. Damian, that's a, that's a great recomme. We, I don't think we've ever had a musical before. We've done
Damien: a player a musical before. Yeah. So let's get, let's get kooky.
Ryan: Let's do it. I do wanna give props to our editor, Alistair Richmond, who offers his own, if this, then that with each one of these stories.
And for this story, he recommended checking out the Garden of Forking [01:13:00] Paths by Jorge Luis Borga. And so I did. It's a great story. I love Borga and I hope that you do too. Is it a better story than the o Henry story? I'm gonna stop short of saying that it's a deeper story. It's a, it's a thicker story. It's a, it's a story with more heft to it.
It's a story that you're gonna think about a lot longer than you think about David and his sheep and his bad poetry and his guns. It will, it would certainly. And, and it hasn't, uh, ever achieved the kind of garden variety popularity that an O Henry story is known for, but that's one of the reasons o Henry is so successful.
Or was so successful. Borges's stories are much more metaphysical and the Garden of Forking Paths is no exception, but it's really a joy to read and a joy to ponder, and so kudos to to Richmond for pointing that out to us. I recommend it as well. That's gonna do it for this episode of Whiskey in the Weird.
Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, and if you enjoyed it, would you drop a rating or [01:14:00] review wherever you catch your podcasts? We always wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandis for providing the music for whiskey and the Weird, and Damien, if they'd like to tell us about the Roads of Destiny they've taken or not, where can they do that or
Damien: could
Ryan: not,
Damien: or could not?
Follow us on all the meta properties. That's Instagram threads. Facebook at whiskey in the weird, we're at whiskey in the Weird, on all those meta properties. We're also on blue sky, so juice us up. We spell our whiskeys with an E and we hope you do two. If not, I strongly encourage you to follow different path, although you will still get shot by a gun, owned by a marquee
Ryan: named
Damien: Beautiful Hole.
Or Marquis. Yeah, named Beautiful Hole. Give it up for a beautiful hole. Back
Jess: to you. No thank you
Ryan: Jess. What do we read next?
Jess: Let's read An Undistinguished Boy by Gerald Kirsch.
Ryan: That sounds terrible. Next week on whiskey and the Weird,
Jess: a Boring Boy that [01:15:00] everyone hates.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're whiskey and the Weird Somebody Send Us Home.
Jess: As always, keep your friends through the ages. Send your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Bye-bye everybody.