Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. Hello, friends, and welcome back to speaking with Joy. You are joining me for yet another episode

of what I've been calling in my mind the Escape Cast. This is your center for good, true,

beautiful, and wholesome distraction in this very weird season we find ourselves living through.

Today I have the great fun of sharing a podcast I recorded back in December with my dear

friend Mariah Zemer. Mariah is an illustrator and an artist, and you'll get to hear more

about her in this podcast, which I recorded with her back when she was still living in Scotland as the artist and residence at the Institute for Theology Imagination of the Arts.

But the reason that I wanted to record this quick introduction is that something exciting has happened since we recorded the introduction, which is that Mariah's wonderful book, which she illustrated

and her father wrote, was just released and published yesterday, so you can go find Jumba

and Friends through the link on my page on Joy Clarkson.com or on Amazon, and I wanted to tell you all that

before you listen to this interview.

I know that you will love this fascinating conversation with Mariah and I am so happy to introduce you without further ado to this episode.

A Philosophy of Dood my friend Mariah.

Welcome on, Mariah.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me, enjoy.

I should give the, what's the word I want? This is probably

a sign of the thing that I'm about to say. I should give the proviso that both of us have colds.

So we may be sniffly, sniffly or scratchy, but I'm sure you all can manage through anyway.

So Mariah and I actually kind of go way back in one sense, don't we Mariah?

Because we met at Biola University.

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