the Wikkid podcast
church upbringing gone wrong, depression... and music
About the show
Being raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian group in the 1980s can cause some very predictable problems. Depression can be a Christian teenager's most constant companion despite church promises to the contrary. Dark humour, and even darker music, can help. This podcast is centered around the songs I wrote to deal back then, and what happened when I then picked away at recording workable versions of them for decades.
contact me with questions and comments at [email protected] or on Twitter @WikkidPerson
the Wikkid podcast on social media
Episodes
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Episode 65: (I Don't Know) What You'd Like
May 22nd, 2024 | Season 5 | 2 hrs 1 min
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
Reaching some conclusions about worship. Realizing that, given how different various people's preferences are as to worship styles, and how opinionated they are as to what they like, I had no idea what God might or might not like. If worship is for his benefit rather than our own, then surely everything's not equally good? (He didn't much like Cain's bloodless, vegan sacrifice, did he?) Can worship be so much about us and our tribe and providing a curated emotional experience that we've left God out of his own party almost entirely?
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Episode 66: Champions
June 5th, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 55 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
Trying to get to know the Unknowable a bit without claiming to know all the right answers. Growing up with an all-inclusive Universal Belief Package, you tend to walk around acting like you have all of the right thinking about anything much that matters much. Especially eternal stuff. Some of us were champions at that. This is about the process of repenting of unearned certainty of this kind.
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Episode 67: Fade From Sight
June 19th, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 7 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
Sometimes, in a lot of church flocks, certain sheep just... vanish, never to be seen again. And sometimes people are kind of glad, especially if they are boring, annoying or discontented sheep. And sometimes that sheep is you. Keeping friends or losing touch with them. Oversharing.
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Episode 68: Wasp Tent
July 3rd, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 40 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
This week, the Wikkid Podcast gets NSFW (Not Safe For A Worship Service). Kristian Kitsch. Kristian Krap so crappy you can't decide whether you're too Christian or too cool to own it. Heathen spatulas. Should there be Christian Archie comics? What would a Christian version of The Archies band play like, Sugar, Sugar? Growing up with that sacred/secular line. A discussion of two paintings, on an audio-only podcast. Are The Carpenters too wholesome to comfortably sit on the shelf next to Neil Young and Tom Waits? A juvenile British sense of humour about sex and the body. Obscenity? It's all in your polka dot undies.
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Episode 69: The Only Game In Town
July 17th, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 37 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
In this antepenultimate episode: "Canada Bill" Jones and why he played a poker game he knew was crooked. Have you ever attended a church that openly preached that their group was the only right one, or at least the rightest one by far in the area? (Or did they just live like this was the case?) In Brethren circles, non-membership has its privileges. Sports and poker metaphors. Teaching people they can't simply go to another church intensifies the fighting over everything in the group you've made the only game in town. How many drummers does one man need? A lot of painstaking technical trickery, trying to make a blast from the past blast rather than crash. Closing in prayer as a way of forestalling an open discussion.
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Episode 70: Not Your Fault
July 31st, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 45 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
In the penultimate episode: People like blaming young people for stuff, and young people sometimes blame themselves. (For parents divorcing, family vehicles needing repair, and church splits.) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition, and The New King James Revised Standard Amplified Message Version. Geoff literally causes a division before age 20. Church communities as great buckets for hiding candles under. Does this song sound like the theme to TV's The Facts of Life?
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Episode 71: In The Eyes Of God
August 14th, 2024 | Season 5 | 1 hr 51 mins
bible, christianity, depression, exclusive brethren, fundamentalism, guitar, hell, home recording, music, music production, parents, plymouth brethren, rapture, susan isaacs, therapeutic
Drums recorded in shipping containers. Jonathan Haidt says we're 90% chimps and 10% bees. Laws and rules as weaponized disgust responses. Being a different person with an entirely different set of values, priorities and ethics when part of a group, as opposed to as a private individual. The Doctrine of Separation. Taught overtly or only by example, does your group live as if other Christians are in no way connected to them? Barber Shop Quartet mentors. Eating chocolate, reading murder mysteries and staying up all night.