The future is impossible to predict. That's what rational people will tell you,

confident in their belief that there's just no way to be absolutely certain about what's to come.

And in a lot of ways, they're right.

Take me, for example.

Nearly 11 years ago, I started this podcast

with a handful of topics that I wanted to write about.

And I distinctly remember thinking, maybe five episodes in, that I could manage to find

20 subjects to cover.

I simply could not envision a way to do this week after week for over a decade, and yet,

here we are.

In fact, if we don't count lore legends, today's episode is the 300th brand new episode of lore,

which, yeah, I'm pretty dang proud of, but I certainly couldn't have predicted this outcome,

no matter how much I would have wanted to. The fact is, we live in a world of instant access,

we're spoiled, miraculous devices in our pockets or on our laps that can locate just about

any piece of knowledge. Free public libraries that open up a world of experiences just by walking

in and opening up a book. And yet, despite that connection to everything we could possibly know,

the future is a complete and total blank slate.

Which, of course, means that people have always been trying to find new ways to cheat that system.

Divination through an oracle, interpretation of dreams, and scrying mirrors.

We humans have been very creative in our search for answers.

But if history is any indication, there's one tool

that has been more popular and more fear-inducing than all the others combined. And you

...