So Odin & Thor walk into a Starbucks ... .

There are a lot of podcasts, so the trick is to figure out which are worth listening to, but by the time you've worked your way through one or more episodes, you've either struck gold or taken a bullet, and just with the sheer number of 'casts, it's more likely you've bet on a loser. The prevalent mediocrity of this infotaining medium is that many instead rely on the idea of obnoxious morning show radio DJ personas rather than doing justice to their episode's subject, barely giving a surface level presentation that gets lost between the weak attempts at humour and self-indulgent prattle.

Given all that, I should warn you away from Blurry Photos.⸶ Yet before you completely take my word for it, bookending their Runes episode there's an unexpectedly funny NorsePlay audiosketch where Loki gives Odin a giftcard to Starbucks at the front-end, and a pretty clever Loki on social media skit at the back. So unless you know absolutely nothing about runes, don't bother with the middle, because there's barely any coffee in that cup, but its fluffy whip topping & chocolate dregs are fun.

[Lego diorama from Blurry Photos.] 

⸶ I must admit their Eilean Mor Lighthouse Mystery episode's actually good (possibly also because the more verbally spastic co-host is absent) and weeds a lot of legend from facts in the account, and perhaps even proposes some strange Neolithic connection to the ancient human sacrifices at the Calanais Standing Stones then being ferried over "to the Gods" on the Flannan Isles where the lighthouse is. Note that this resembles an instance in the Norse Lore where Odin-as-boatman ferries the body of Sinfjötli away to take him to Valhalla in The Saga of the Volsungs, and perhaps this motif's later Arthurian adaptation where Arthur is taken to the Isle of Avalon at the end only to return in the hour of Britain's greatest need. One could connect all this as leading into burning ship sea burials which would dispense with a physical island endpoint, reaching the Gods instead by funerary pyromancy. And if any of this fits with the later disappearance of the three lighthouse keepers, perhaps they were selected by Baldr for their dutiful attention to maintaining his attribute of light, and brought to Breiðablik, his hall of "broad-gleaming" ... ?

#    #    #

Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.