This Podcast is a Ritual

Since America's #1 Wizard recently relocated to the Netherlands, this very important position in the United States' magical landscape is currently open, raising the question everyone's been asking, "Who will be America's NEXT #1 wizard?" And this is precisely the question our resident expert in such matters, the former "America's #1 Wizard" Devin Person, addresses in this supremely superlative episode exploring the heights of achievement and the depths of wizardry with his well known and awar...

From d20-powered fireballs to point-and-click quests, magic is an essential ingredient in many games, while games themselves offer some intriguing ideas about the practice of actual magic. Thankfully, Dr. Jeff Howard is a scholar of games and occulture—as well as the author of "Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives" and "Game Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Magic Systems in Theory and Practice"—so he's well equipped to patiently explain the rules and help us find the wisdom...

From Q to the Great Gazoo, the Wizard calls upon a variety of extra-dimensional imps and tricky ideas to illustrate this meta-archetype, laying the groundwork for even more magic to come. Featuring Batman's biggest fan, hot-rodding teenagers from Dimension X, and even more delightful (and somewhat irritating) invoked entities. So come along dum-dum and join the Patreon where you can hear this full bonus episode and plenty of other tricksterish, whimsical, wizardly bonus episodes. Listen to Ho...

If you've been feeling lately like life is an unfair game, you're not alone. And game designer, author, and anti-fascist scholar Max Haiven knows why. In his latest book, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to Twenty-First Century Fascism, Haiven uses games to explain how financialized capitalism recruits us into our own exploitation, seeing ourselves as "players," rather than people, who would be winning and succeeding... if only someone wasn't cheating us!—and how fascist polit...

Using chance to make choices has a long magical history, from complex divination systems to mythologies that imagine the gods gambling and throwing dice to determine human affairs. By taking a simple coin toss as our starting practice, we can learn to let go of the heavy burden of contemplation and let the fates take a more collaborative role in our decision making process. So flip a coin and learn whether you should join the Patreon where you'll find the full bonus episode where I share the ...