This episode of the sharing tapes was made possible by our supporters on Patreon, Moses, Pay Pixel, Sophie Jasell, and Jessica Gio Gaiyma. If you'd like to support the show as well, please go to patreon.com slash homestead corner. For as little as $5 a month, you get early access to ad-free versions of episodes, a special behind-the-scenes podcast, and patron-only AMA live streams. Before we get started, this episode contains strong existential dread and despair,

discussions of religious fundamentalism, historical anti-Semitism, including mentions of the Holocaust,

colonialism, terror, character death, and mild body horror. Content warnings and a full transcript

are available in the show notes. Sorry, I haven't recorded anything for a while.

I would say I've been busy, but even with everything that's happened, this is the quietest my life has been since Bobby Agora.

Guess that's what happens when you sort of quit your job without actually quitting your job.

No. It's not my life that's been busy. It's my mind. Honestly, I don't think it's been quiet up there since I listened to Amy's tape, at least not while I'm sober, which I currently

am just for the record. Unfortunately.

Getting high helps keep the fear at bay, but that doesn't mean it's gone.

I've spent my whole life trying to figure out the shape of the universe,

obsessing over those little puzzles

and paradoxes of physics that might finally answer those big questions. And now that all those

answers have just been dropped into my lap, I'm not... I've always thought of the universe as deterministic.

A leads to B, leads to C, a long chain of simple causation all the way back to the Big Bang,

shaped by nothing more than the laws of physics.

But a part of me always held on to the idea that there was some small exception for us.

That human life, human consciousness has some cosmic significance in the grand scheme of the

universe.

That we give it purpose and shape by trying to understand it.

That we're able to determine our own paths, our own choices, if only in small ways.

But no.

Turns out, there are an infinite number of Rens who made the exact same choices I have,

...