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Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore

Ask Baba Yaga w/ Taisia Kitaiskaia

Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore

Multitude

Legends, Urbanlegends, Learning, History, Alcohol, Folklore, Comedy, Society & Culture, Myths, Educational, Gods, Mythology, Drunkhistory

4.82K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever wanted to ask your local forest witch a question? Enter “Ask Baba Yaga” and Taisia Kitaiskaia. We talk with the wonderful author about her process of channeling the Slavic folklore character, how she grew up with the story, AND one lucky Conspiriter gets their question answered by Baba Yaga!

This week, Julia recommends The Red Threads of Fate by JY Yang

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about heavy subjects like existentialism, abuse, Soviet Russia, loneliness, and death. 


Guest

- Taisia Kitaiskaia is the author of Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles and its forthcoming follow-up, Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Troubled Times; Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers , a collaboration with artist Katy Horan, and the accompanying The Literary Witches Oracle; and a forthcoming book of poetry, The Nightgown and Other Poems (Deep Vellum). She posts a new "Ask Baba Yaga" piece weekly on Instagram



Sponsors

- Honeybook: A purpose-built business management platform for creative small businesses. Get 50% off your first year on HoneyBook.com/SPIRITS.

- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Visit skillshare.com/spirits2 to get two months of Skillshare Premium for free! This week Amanda recommends “Happy Houseplants: Caring For Your Plants.”

- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code Spirits at checkout.


Find Us Online

If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. 

Transcripts are available at spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to SpiritsPodcast.com.


About Us

Spirits was created by Julia Schifini, Amanda McLoughlin and Eric Schneider. We are founding members of Multitude, a production collective of indie audio professionals. Our music is "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore.

0:04.2

Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

0:07.6

I'm Amanda. And I'm Julia. And this is episode 157, Ask Baba Yaga with Taicia Katyskaya.

0:14.0

I am so excited for this episode. I feel like I say that every episode, but I'm genuinely very excited for this episode.

0:19.9

Because it's not very often that we get to talk to a folklore character.

0:24.8

It is so exciting. Listen, we go into it in depth, but Ask Baba Yaga is one of those, like, beautiful phenomena of the internet that I have been enjoying for my whole, like, from college onward.

0:36.7

Like, it feels like my whole adult life.

0:38.5

Mm-hmm. I could tell you were very excited as you recorded this episode. And we even had

0:42.2

Babiaga herself, aka. Taya, give an answer to a problem that a spirit's listener was facing. So

0:48.4

this is a good one, y'all. Yes, definitely stick around because it's the last thing we kind of do

0:52.9

in the episode, and it is worth everything.

0:55.9

You know who else is worth everything, Julia?

0:57.7

Is it our new patrons?

0:59.4

Our new patrons.

1:00.4

And there are so many to thank.

1:01.7

Charlotte, Kyle of the Husky, Ian, Jessica, Aaron and Tila, her amazing wonder daughter, hi Tila.

1:07.3

Ian F. Megan Linger and Megan Rubinstein.

1:10.2

Yes, and they join the ranks of our wonderful, amazing, supporting producer-level patrons.

1:16.0

Philip, Tasha, Deborah, Molly, Megan, Skyla, Sammy, Josie, Neal, Jessica, and Phil Frush.

1:22.5

And our legend-level patrons who may or may not walk around the forest on chicken feet.

1:27.0

Hannah, Morgan, Emily, James,

1:29.0

Bia me up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Cody, Mr. Folk, Sarah, and Jack Marie. Who's to say? Maybe they

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