I'm

M.

The Welcome to Spearits podcast. This is a sometimes boozy, sometimes not, dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

I'm Amanda.

And I'm Julia.

And this, episode 319, all about legendary popes with the one, the only Daniel Lavery.

Daniel, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so pleased to be here.

I think this is the first episode where I've asked the guest like, hey, what do you feel like? Any topics you said in a list of things that all look fascinating, legendary popes, and I said, no further questions. So I have no knowledge what to expect, and I'm sure it's going to be delightful. I promise you that it will be.

Excellent. That's what we like to hear. Now, you are somebody whose work I've been reading on the

internet for a long time, which I may describe as a weird, humorous, wonderful, archaic, interested in mythology, folklore, and tradition.

How do you describe what you do and what you're interested in professionally to people who don't know your work?

That sounds about right. I would say like a professional amateur of general interest, which also describes a lot of the internet of the last decade or so.

But I used to run a sort of general interest site called The Toast with my friend of business partner, Nicole Cliff, and then

went on to write an advice column for a little while at Slate called Dear Prudence. And now I run a

newsletter called The Chattner, formerly the Shatner Chattner, but William Shatner is very litigious.

Some of my areas of sort of like perpetual interest have to do with like medieval Christian

legends and folklore folklore among others.

But so this is definitely a sort of sweet spot of mine.

I think you gave Shatner new relevance among, you know, young and middle-aged queer people,

but that's just me.

...