Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. Happy Hallows Eve, everyone.

I'm pretty sure you know these lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Double, double, toil and trouble.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fennie snake in the cauldron boil and bake,

eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and blind worms sting,

lizard's leg and howl its wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hellbroth, boil,

and bubble.

It's what you could call an archetypal image. Three old crones standing above a black

cauldron that sits simmering over a fire. They add a dash of this,

a bit of that. They stoop and stir and pause to sniff the heady brew which roils and bubbles like a

primordial sea. What's in there, we ask, feeling both revulsion and an undeniable attraction.

Of course, we want to see what's in that cauldron.

We want to gaze into the murky, bubbling depths.

We almost don't want to, but at the same time, we can't resist peering into that primordial broth.

Even though if we do so, we know we might see things that are pretty gross, you know,

half-boiled snakes and lizard eyes and such. And who knows, if we were to actually take a drink of

that Crohn's potion, what would happen to us? It could be poison. We could drop dead on the spot,

...