How Did We Get Into Paganism

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com

 

S3E20 TRANSCRIPT:

Mark: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Mark. 

Yucca: And I'm Yucca 

Mark: And today we are going to ask one, another questions about our practices. What have they been like in the past? What are they like now? What are they likely or how would we like for them to evolve in the future? Basically just do sort of a Q and a back and forth between one another, to learn more about the details of how our spiritual practices go. 

Yucca: Right. And how there can be very different approaches. I think that you and I share a lot, but we also come at things from, from pretty different perspectives as well.

Mark: We do we do. I mean, particularly in the way that we envisioned the wheel of the year, I think is, is, you know, markedly different 

Yucca: And also just one of the things I love about our conversations is that there's a, there's a pretty big age gap between us is a pretty big just family style, lifestyle gap, you know, gender differences. So I've really valued these conversations. Thank you. And I, I hope that that is interesting to, to all of you listeners as well.

Mark: yeah. I hope it is. And I hope that it's worthy of spending the next half an hour, 40 minutes of your time. And I really value these conversations too. This is a, this is something I look forward to every year. 

Yucca: Yeah, likewise. So, I mean, I think this is a really interesting chance to see how practices can kind of change and evolve over time with the person. So we've, we've talked about it a little bit before, but how did you get into this pagan thing? 

Mark: Oh, 

Yucca: went from, from an atheist to a pagan, right?

Well, you're still atheist, but you know, to an atheopagan 

Mark: Right, right. yeah.

I was raised in a household that Just didn't have any religion and it was never discussed. So it's not like we decided that we were atheists. It's just that we were never anything else?

Yucca: Just we're okay.

Mark: my father was a scientist. My mother was a nurse. Science was the way you, you learned things. The universe was interesting and full of stuff that was knowable and discoverable and and it was really prized to learn stuff and know stuff. So. In relation to all matters, kind of spiritual and religious. I became one of those sort of snotty atheists because I thought that, I mean, every religion that I encountered was filled with nonsense, utter nonsense, talking burning bushes and resurrected people and parted oceans and. You know, 11,000 virgins in heaven and just crazy, crazy, crazy stuff to my mind. And excuse me So I dismissed that entire aspect of human behavior and culture out of hand and had nothing to do with it. My only encounter with it was when I sang in a church choir when I was in high school, which was basically because all of my music. Gang friends also saying in the same choir and the, the brilliant director of music at my high school was also the director of that choir at the church.

So I just went there on Sundays and sang and that, and then a subsequent experience with seeing early music taught me a lot about. Christianity and Christian theology because of the words of all the songs and particularly translations from the Latin of medieval and Renaissance music, you learn a great deal about kind of the mentality and all that. As well as the study of history, because this, the study of Christianity the study of European history is in large part, the study of Christianity and its various fractions. Competitions and all that sort of thing. So really wasn't interested in any of that. And out of the blue, a friend of mine who had been, he'd been a roommate when I was in college and we'd stayed in touch.

He was considerably older than I still is considerably older than I am. Invited me to a, an autumnal Equinox circle. That was being held by his coven 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: and. I don't know why he invited me to this thing. I honestly, I don't have to this day, I have no idea why he invited it to me. I guess he just thought that I might get something out of it.

And I don't know why I went, but I did. And it was really weird in the one hand. I mean, with people standing in a circle, holding hands and drumming and chanting. You know, speaking to invisible presences and, you know, like gods and elements and directions and things like that. And that part was all pretty weird.

But there was also something that was very compelling about it. I realized it's the autumnal Equinox. That's a really important milestone in the year. I'm a deep environmentalist. I am really, really committed to. To nature and to the biosphere and to the health of the biosphere. Why don't, why am I not aware that that's happening? Why don't I know what phase the moon is in all the time. And I realized how disconnected I was in many ways, and this was a valuable way of observing these things that would. Bring me into a closer alignment with the cycles of nature and that's how it started. And from there I went to I was invited to go to the reclaiming, the big reclaiming spiral dance in San Francisco which I've attended several times, but this was the first time it was a long time ago.

It was in the eighties when it was still held at the women's building in San Francisco. And so I had an experience of a ritual of hundreds of people as well as experiences of smaller group rituals, I went to a UL ritual and there was kind of a vigil all night to wait until the sun came up and watched the sun come up.

And by that time I was kind of hooked and set up an alternate. Started doing observances on my own. And within a couple of years, I was leading rituals and writing chants and being a leader in my local community. To some degree I think because that's the sort of a natural trajectory. And also, cause I have some leadership capacity and 

Yucca: Sure. That's part of your personality.

Mark: Yeah.

it's just kind of how I'm built.

And that, that's how I got. That, that honestly is how I got here. And I, it never crossed my mind to actually believe in the invisible presences that they were talking to in the circles. And I didn't really discover until much later that people were literally believing that those were invisible intelligence self-aware beings out there in the universe. Well, how about you? Why don't you talk about your. Rival into paganism, which was very different. 

Yucca: Yeah. So I, I grew up this way pretty much my, and I'll be a little bit vague for the privacy of the people who are alive today. But it, my family, my parents were different. Deeply loved each other got along great, but you know, had different religious beliefs there. My mother was a Christian and that her, her faith was really important to her.

And that was something that she definitely gave to the older siblings. So my family has a pair of older siblings, a big gap, and then younger sibling. But she ended up dying when I was fairly young. So the younger siblings, we were raised more by our dad, whereas the older ones had been raised, by, by both of them.

But my dad had arrived at paganism. From Catholicism with a little bounce into Quakerism you know, kind of stepping stone there. And we just, I also I grew up in Santa Fe, which is kind of a new age Mecca. There was just grew up around lots of lots of everything, right? A lot of the kind of traditional Wu stuff.

But there's a lot of different people there and just an interest in that kind of stuff. So that was just normal. That was around me. There were pagans around me. There were there were all the Tibetans stuff and then way G shops and and then also. Heavily very, very old Catholic communities as well.

And the, the Catholicism of Northern New Mexico and the rural Southwest is very different than the rest of the world. Because if you just, it's a really interesting history to get into. But the church was kicked out. For awhile. And the people continue to practice and kind of developed their own just continue to practice.

And so there, there are little non church legs in this big church, sanctioned little sun patios and things like that. So I know this will be kind of offensive to some. People, but the Catholicism here is very pagan and a lot of ways, very, very earth centered and very kind of into the land. But we.

Rural and paying a lot of attention to what's going on with our land that we were living with. My father was really careful about the types of words that got, you know, we don't live off the land. We live with the land and paying attention to th the solstice is we're having a lot of the words whenever really used.

Right. We weren't calling it Yule. We weren't calling it the Equinox, but, but we'd joke about, okay, well, if you know, the, the light, the sun is going in the right direction now, right. As it starts to get sunny again and, and all of that. And it was really important to him that we be raised also with tools with mental tools and emotional tools that could help with.

In the world. So being able to meditate, that was just something that we were taught grounding. I remember doing like the visualization, practicing, breathing, and practicing the, the bubble or the egg protection and, and those sorts of things. W just were really important that they'd be passed on to us kids.

And at some point, I don't know where I picked the words up, but we're talking early teens. I just started using the word pagan. I don't know. I just, that, wherever that came from was how I, I mean, there were other people who were pagan, but that was just, I started to use it. If I was ever filling out a form of.

Wicked down. I never really considered myself wicked, but that was the thing that I thought would get closest to what I was on a, on a list. So it's like, okay, that'll kind of represent what I am, cause I don't want to put down other, right. I guess it could put down other, but, or, none of the above.

So I put that down. And. The same with, for you? I, it never, it never occurred to me that people literally believed in like the God stuff. Like I was kind of into, like, I liked some of like the goddess stuff. I thought that was really cool. I liked like the image, you know, some of those like old, like, Like figurines, like the Venus figurine and those sorts of things.

I thought that was really like interesting. And I had read the all like the mist of Avalon series and, and all of that stuff. And it was just an enjoy that, that quite a bit. And again, it really wasn't until. In my, probably early twenties when I had been doing the pagan perspective for years and just reading people's comments, that it just dawned on me that wow, these people are literally taking these.

It was like actual beings. Like I thought that's just like, Like the Christians did. And like I thought that was, I thought that pretty much the only people who did that, and I know this is quite naive, but I thought that was really the Abrahamic religions and that nobody else really took it literal. And then of course being educated more, I found it.

Oh, okay. So actually there are other religions too, that, that think of their gods as literal beings. But for instance, the Hindus that I had been exposed to. Talk to me about it being metaphors. They hadn't talked about them as being literal beings. And I also grew up around permaculture and all of that sort of thing.

And so I actually ended up as a teen six, I think I was 17. Probably. I went out to your part of the world and did some. Permaculture stuff with star Hawk that was of course blended in with the paganism and activism stuff and and came back home. And there's a lot of that happening here in Northern New Mexico as well.

And it just was this really good fit, this natural fit. And then I went into the life sciences and just kind of hung out in there and Continue to just have that as being part of my, yeah, this is my identity. This is, who I am or what I like to do, how I view the world, but it's always been very interesting because there is kind of that split in the family where there's like the half that is definitely quite Christian within the like immediate family.

And then the half of my, my closest sibling and father and stepmother and like that side. That's sort of pagan and we just don't ever talk about it at family meetings when we're all together, just don't say anything. So that's since it's very, it's evolved very organically, I've never have really seen a separation between where there was a moment where I'm like, yes, I'm pagan.

Now just kind of always was.

Mark: Well, so let me see would you describe. How would you describe the evolution of, well, actually it's your turn to ask me a question that just occurred to me. 

Yucca: Hmm, I think I'm going to steal your question. So, mark, how would you describe the evolution of your practice from when you. Entered into it to today because you've got quite a bit of big journey between there and here.

Mark: Yeah.

Okay. I should have thought more about my answer to this question before figuring it out for you. The, I was always a kid who wanted to live in a museum. I made my rooms like museums with displays of minerals and seashells and feathers. And. Other natural objects. Right. And as I got older, that turned more into kind of the museum of ethnography and natural history where I have various kinds of ethnic art that I find just so alive and so compelling.

As well as the natural objects and artifacts and all that kind of stuff. And so it became very natural for me to put together an altar with precious objects that had meaning to me, the idea of objects that tell stories. When I look at them was just something that I got very instinctually. And so. that that's my understanding of what a magical item is. Right. A magical item is one that has a sentimental value to you because it has a story behind it. So it kind of started there and with going to these rituals, which were all group rituals, it, it bears saying, because. Paganism has fragmented a lot, even as it's grown a lot in the time that I've been involved with it, most of the practitioners are solitary and there are reasons for that, that we can get into.

But at the time that I got into it, it was a group activity and You know, I, I went to this belt teen festival on this sacred land, up in Mendocino county, and we ran around naked and raised a maypole and danced around it and danced around a fire and had all these wonderful experiences. There were, there were problems with that community that came to the full. After a while, but my early experiences with them were transcendently freeing and beautiful. So that is kind of where my experience started from. So after I took on more leadership responsibilities, I started to settle into more of a sense of myself as a, as an active exponent in a community rather than. You know, somebody that just got invited to events and was a participant. I, I participated more in organizing events and just started to see myself in a somewhat different context that way.

And my circle of friends grew and grew and grew because one of the things that I saw in the local pagan community any way was that they were some of the most amazing and interesting people I had ever met. They were creative and thoughtful and growth-oriented, and generally speaking had really you know, progressive and kind politics.

Were just lots of reasons to, to, to way deeper into this, the subculture. And my practice began to change around the time that that climate began to change in the, in the mid to late nineties, was a big influx of folks into paganism that were former Christian. And it changed the culture. They brought a lot of their frameworks with them. I, they didn't intend to, 

Yucca: but like the idea of. 

Mark: yes. The idea that, 

Yucca: like practice versus faith. 

Mark: right, right. The idea that you had to have faith in the, in literal gods was something that I had never been confronted with in the whole time that I had been practicing and. Suddenly there it was. And there were these debates about, you know, the nature of the gods, whether the gods existed at all, all this kind of stuff.

And I withdrew from attending so many group activities. And particularly, even though I went to Penn via con the big convention every year, I worked there as a volunteer. So most of my time was taken up with my volunteer duties and that was okay because I was there to visit with my friends and go to parties after hours and all that kind of stuff.

The workshops themselves were almost entirely just stuff that I didn't believe. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Just things I didn't believe in. And it became increasingly clear to me that a lot of what people were doing in the pagan community was stuff that I just didn't think was real. It didn't seem reality grounded to me. And so, and I've told this story before, so I'll kind of skip over it.

I, there were some unethical things that happened that were excused as the will of the gods in around 2005. And I quit the community and that's when I, about six months later when I was missing it and really seeing that there was a lot of value that I was getting out of religious practice, even though. I wasn't a believer that got me onto this whole investigation about what is religion? What does it do? What's it function for us as humans? How can we get that function without having to believe in a bunch of stuff for which there's no evidence. And that led eventually to my writing, the essay that became the book.

Atheopagan so much. Practice has been much more solitary in recent years, but it's starting to turn again with the advent of the Northern California affinity group for atheopagan ism. We're, we're having in-person rituals and we're planning another one for the summer solstice. And it's exciting. It's a really cool thing.

They're wonderful group of people and. It's feeling like a really exciting new chapter. 

Yucca: Have well, and you have had your ritual circle many years as well. 

Mark: Yes. That's true. Yes. I've been a part of dark sun for 31 years. This this coming sewing Hallows and 

Yucca: And y'all usually do the, the wheel of the year, right? You aren't getting together, every weekend, but you get together typically eight times a year.

Mark: About eight times a year. Yeah. And they, they generally focus around the time of the wheel of the year holidays. The most significant rituals That we do though, are for Hallows and annual. And it's a lot more free form around the rest of the year, which I've always wanted to change, but I never have changed.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: That does sound very similar to many other picking groups as well, but it kind of seems to be the most excitement around those two particular holidays.

Mark: Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. So. So that's how my practice has evolved up until now. And there's some glimmers of things. Th there are things that I really miss about the paganism that I first encountered in the eighties that I want to say. There were things that were really screwed up about that paganism that I wasn't really aware of at the time.

There were real problems with with lack of consent.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Particularly in behavior of men, towards women there were, there were problems like the ethical one that I encountered that caused me to leave the, the community. There were people who had set themselves up as a high muckety muck of some pagan church or organization.

And then. Be charismatic narcissists who are shitty to other people and there'd be financial mismanagement, and there'd be no preferential treatment for people who are young and pretty and just, just 

Yucca: All that.

Mark: stuff. But that.

said there was a beautiful freedom in being able to go out into the woods and. Maybe take some mushrooms and just be free and alive in nature and celebrating these rituals with other people of like mind. It was very beautiful. And I, I miss that and I, I hope to go back to it maybe without the mushrooms. But but I hope to go back to more of that kind of practice because that's really what got me into it in the first place.

It's not an intellectual exercise. It's something that feeds something much deeper in me. And those beautiful experiences are what I treasure from my memories of my pagan life. 

Yucca: It's beautiful. 

Mark: Thank you. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So how about you? How, how have things evolved since, say since, since you were out on your own. 

Yucca: Yeah. It's interesting to think about because a lot of it, I mean, has. Just changed with me as my particular needs have changed. Right. What's and I think that's this, everybody's doing that to a certain extent. It wasn't a lot of it. Wasn't me sitting down and saying, I have a practice. What can I do for my practice?

It was what's going on in my life. And what are the tools that I have to try and be living the life that I want. And so that's, at various times certain things would be more or less important. And I definitely experimented a lot with things like. We actually were chatting a little bit before the recording about things like elements.

Right. I think we both said that, we had both kind of tried using the classical elements at some point in our practice and kind of moved away from that. And, had sort of tried out using, you know, the goddess or the triple goddess, things like that in practice. And just been like this, this isn't really working sort of moved away from that.

I've had something very interesting over the last, I guess, about more than 15 years now, I made my first YouTube channel. I guess it was 17 years ago at this point and started sharing things. And I'm a very, a lot of my practice has been very solitary and telephone. Having my family and then it's become more of a family practicing for awhile.

It was a little partnership practice and then adding in, the kids. But because I did get online and start sharing, I had originally started sharing on YouTube is just kind of a. There was a very different YouTube community at the time. It was its own company. Actually, it didn't even belong to Google or any of those things.

And there was like this interesting little pagan community there where like, we would just kind of share things back and forth. And then, I started building the channel and then eventually I got onto the pagan perspective. And then I was on that for about. Well, until it shut down, like, I guess it was 10 or 11 years.

And Th that was, it was kind of in the way that we, you know, we, you and I talk about different topics every week. It gave me a nice like point to come back to every week and think about this new topic. But almost every week was just a challenge because they were like, so what do you think about ghosts?

What do you think about this? God, and heck a tie in that. And, and, I'd want to try and come up with like a very diplomatic way of, of saying. And like, I don't buy that, but, but still have something of value to say. And it was, it was definitely challenging to be on the, the channel. I had a lot of conflict in the background and kind of felt, kind of picked on and attacked by a couple of the, you know, the more strong, like vegan fronts and stuff.

But I felt it was really important to be on there because I mean, that's actually how we met. You made a comment on one of the. Videos that just, said, no, you don't have to believe in God. That's cool. He can be a pagan and I don't believe in gods. But I just had so many people make comments.

They're like, I'm so glad you made this video. Like, I, I felt so alone. I didn't know that that was a thing I'm so glad that like there's other pagans like me. I kind of felt, although I enjoyed that, I felt like a little bit of an obligation. Right. And I had like this one wanting to serve to be like, I want to provide.

And get this word out here. Even though. You know, it might not be the best kind of emotional thing. But there was that really wonderful, the value of the thinking and the connecting with people which is another reason I'm just so grateful for what we do here, because there's no like secret tension.

no like mark and I are not arguing and fighting in the background. Right. That's not happening. And, but still get to feel like. Contributing to a community and, and offering to a community and sharing to this kind of wide world. That's, that's been really important in that in the last, I guess, decade and a half is to be able to contribute that way.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but it's just been very interesting to be a very kind of private person with a very. Kind of solitary practice and yet be talking about it to the world all the time. 

Mark: Yeah, that is, that is interesting. Yeah, so

your, your practice has been solitary, but there's been this kind of public window into it, but by your own descriptions of how you practice and what you think, and those kinds of things. 

Yucca: Yeah. And I think that helps. Well, I understand that I really want to be part of a larger community and that's, I guess, kind of what we could maybe go into is, where do we think we're wanting to go from here, but as my own kids grow and as I'm in a very different life stage than I was before just feeling like.

More community. Right. I want to open up to the world and, and be not just, I haven't felt like my twenties, right. I'm 33 now my, my twenties were about. Oh, goodness. Get some feet under me, survive, get through this, just kind of this scramble and now I'm feeling like, okay, no, and I, you know, put some roots down.

I want to start to grow and flourish and of course the, my practice is part of that. Cause that's just the, the practices is how do I live my life? 

Mark: Sure. Sure. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. So what's your next question for me? 

Yucca: Well, you started to touch on it a little bit. But you know, what, what do you think right now that, that you're. Maybe missing and working towards, you know, where do you see? What, what are the things that the places for growth that you see.

Mark: there are a lot of different dimensions to that because the atheopagan community is a growing community. And as, as the founder of the path that presents challenges and opportunities to me. A lot of which at this stage have to do with finding ways to get out of the way, finding ways to let go and let other people take on.

Significant pieces of, of what needs to be done. I'm in communication with a woman who is interested in taking over the editing of the atheopagan voice newsletter, for example, which would be wonderful. I mean, I would still contribute content and stuff, but I wouldn't have to do all the work of pulling it together every month.

Yucca: You put, I want to interrupt you for just a second. Mark does a tremendous amount. Of work for the community. It's really, I'm really grateful. There's just so much you worked on putting, helping with the retreat. You're on the council, you do the atheopagan voice. You've been on multiple different subcommittees and getting the Facebook group going and this podcast and everything.

So it's just really, really amazing. 

Mark: Well, it's a, it's a labor of love and I, I appreciate your recognition. And at the same time, it's like, When I first created this path that I called atheopagan ism, it was just for me. And I didn't really expect that it was gonna take off, but it turns out there's So.

many people out there who are, you know, science grounded, and they don't want to believe in a bunch of superstitious stuff.

What they still want to celebrate living. They still want to celebrate the magnificence of the cosmos and the world. They still want to have community and meaning, and to live a good life, according to some virtuous values. And I just kind of came along at the right place at the right time, I guess. But the community is growing and, and we're doing more.

So part of what my hope is to do is to. Divest myself of some of those responsibilities so that they can kind of, you know, fly on their own. And then to sort of rededicate myself to my personal practice a little bit more Without falling into the fallacy of the good old days. There is a lot that I miss about the sense of wonder and beauty that I had when I first arrived in paganism.

Because it was beautiful. It was a beautiful vision for the world. It was a beautiful way of interacting with one another. There was an openness of heart that the people that were attracted to it generally speaking, really brought and all of that was. Back for me by the century retreat, because I saw it once again, you know, people being vulnerable people being courageous and, you know, doing the work to grow people just generally being really good.

Good, amazing, interesting, fantastic people. So I would like to continue building this community by finding new ways to connect people. And, you know, so that's fostering the affinity group program. That's, you know, we're, we're talking about the possibility of maybe doing a, an online conference at some point so that more people could access it, that weren't able to come to the century retreat.

And of course, we'll do another century retreat in 2024. Community building and then turning back and taking a look at myself and saying, okay, well, who am I now? How has this changed me over the last, what, 12 years now? Something like that, that Ethiopianism is benefiting. And where do I want to grow next? Where, where do I. What what's the next piece for me. And if some of that ends up pointing back to running around naked in the woods, I wouldn't mind observers might mind, but I wouldn't mind. So. How about you? What, what do you see happening in the future? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And I should also say Yucca also does a lot for our community. She chairs the atheopagan society council. She's our media cleric. So she's directing the The revitalization of our YouTube channel and our Instagram account. There's, there's a lot going on for a mother of two young children. So I'm super, and of course this podcast, so I am super appreciative of everything that you do.

And I so value our relationship. 

Yucca: Thank you. Yeah, well, this is definitely, this is a big component. It feels really good to have that, that community piece. Right. A lot of my focus is there. I know with my practice, another component is bringing. Back in, we talk about this one a lot, but the self care component, I know that that's one that, I talk a good talk, but you know, I'll get into it for a while and then it'll kind of slip out of it, and, and being better about there's some things that I'm really, really, you could say religious about right.

Getting outside every day by. Taking time to myself and doing a little meditation, you know, that that doesn't always happen. And when it does, I feel just so much better and I'm just like a better person, a better, I work better. I'm a better parent, all of those things. So. I'm looking, looking towards growth and looking towards towards the balancing in that area and more effectively.

Right. And so, being able to. Let myself not just be the care giver because that's a role that I've really been in my whole life. Really, even as a kid, I was always the, the person in the background who was, doing, taking care of everybody else and I'm comfortable there. Right. I prefer again. Do this weird thing where like I talk to people on a podcast on YouTube, like I actually prefer to be in the background.

I actually prefer to be doing that background work. And just taking care of everybody else, but working on, Hey, maybe I could be one of those people I take care of. And, so that's, really the, the directions that I see that kind of growing out and the growing down into the ground to that, that rooting.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I can, I can see that for you. Yeah, that's good. So do you have another question for me? 

Yucca: I do have a question for our listeners. 

Which is what topics all of you would like to hear? Because we, before we know it, we're, we're coming up on solstice already. So we're going to be talking about the solstice soon, and we've got topics that we want to be discussing, but we also really love hearing from you.

What topics that maybe even if we've covered it before, I mean, we're in three years now of topics of what are the things that are really meaningful to you that you want to. So we'd really invite that. Any of your comments or questions on that, that area?

Mark: Yeah, that would be great. You need to understand that from our standpoint, we've been doing this for more than two years now on a weekly basis. That's a lot of subjects. That's a whole lot of subjects, even though eight of them every year are taken up by the wheel of the year holidays. And we always do an episode on each of those holidays.

Yucca: There's another 47.

Mark: Yes exactly. That's, that's just so many different topics. And we are creative people, but we are not infinitely creative people. So there are times when we, you know, arrive at the time to record the podcast and it's like, Hmm, what are we going to talk about? So your help with this and letting us know what you would like to hear our thoughts and input about would be really helpful. And you can of course reach us@thewonderpodcastqueuesatgmail.com. That's the wonder podcast, Q s@gmail.com. And we hope to hear from you soon. It only takes a second to shoot us an email. And so please do that. 

Yucca: Yeah. And do we, do you know, really appreciate you being here? This is, it's been, it's just amazing to see. And, the downloads and listens and the emails that we get from all of you. So you're a real big part of our lives. So we appreciate that.

Mark: Absolutely. I'm, I'm always, I'm always So thrilled when I, when someone says to me, oh, I heard you on the podcast. And it's like, oh yes, they heard me on the podcast.

Yucca: So thank you all. 

Mark: Yeah, thanks everyone. And thank you, Yucca. Great conversation.