Barbed wire, known for being sharp, famous for being fences.

Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun.

Let's find out why barbed wire is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey,

Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more

interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guest today is

Jason Pargin, and he has a new book out basically right now. In case you don't know, Jason

Pargin is a New York Times best-selling novelist, and today

is a celebration, because tomorrow, if you're hearing this right when it drops, tomorrow

is the release date for his newest novel.

It's titled, If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe.

It's the fourth book in the John Dies at the End series.

It also stands on its own. It explains itself. I can tell you that because I've read it and it's excellent. I'm really excited for you because you get to enjoy this fantastic new novel. Also, I do hope you'll consider getting it, if nothing else, because Jason Pargin is an amazing guest on this podcast and he does these podcasts entirely to let people know about, you know,

his latest novels, because that's his job, that's his business, and he's amazing at it.

Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes, used internet resources like native-land.ca

to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsi and Lanapi peoples. Acknowledged Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsi and Lanapi peoples.

Acknowledged Jason recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee,

and Saath Zayaha peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are

very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about barbed wire, which is a topic

Jason and I picked for a whole bunch of reasons, because as you'll hear, it's a perfect fit for this

podcast. As we'll discuss, it's also a relatively dark topic, especially as this podcast goes.

Barbed wire has had a lot of, you know, negative uses, negative valences.

And the reasons for that, background for that history of that, that is why we got an

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